Meanwhile, navy, marine, and army planes from Midway attacked Nagumo’s fleet and were shot down or driven off without causing damage. U.S.S. Nautilus, a submarine, launched a torpedo at a Japanese carrier that missed. Nautilus was driven off by depth charges. Then Hornet’s torpedo bombers spotted the Japanese. Every single plane was shot down. Enterprise’s torpedo squadron then appeared, the Japanese shot down 10 of the 14 planes. Yorktown’s torpedo planes attacked next and suffered the same fate.
At this point (at 10:24 a.m.), on June 4, 1942, Nagumo’s carriers had defeated land-based air attacks and a submarine attack and shot down almost all of the Americans’ most formidable aircraft — their torpedo planes. It looked as if Yamamoto’s main fleet would have little to do.
At 10:26, Lieutenant Commander Clarence McClusky, leading the two dive bomber squadrons from Enterprise back to the carrier after an unsuccessful search, saw the carriers Kaga and Akagi through a break in the clouds. He signaled one squadron to follow him, and dived on Kaga. His second-in-command, Lieutenant W.E. Gallaher, led the second squadron on Akagi. The Enterprise dive bombers arrived while the Japanese Zeros were at a low altitude where they had been shooting down torpedo planes. Kaga was soon burning from stem to stern. Akagi took a hit on the flight deck and the explosion blew off the planes that were trying to refuel. Another bomb exploded in the torpedo magazine. Nagumo moved his flag from Akagi to a destroyer and the Japanese abandoned the ship. A Japanese destroyer sent Akagi to the bottom. A third Japanese carrier, Soryu, moved up and prepared to launch its Zeros. Just then, some of Yorktown’s dive bombers under Lieutenant Commander Maxwell Leslie appeared. They dived on Soryu, and three hits turned the Japanese carrier into an inferno. Then Nautilus reappeared and shot three torpedoes into Soryu. The ship broke in two and went down in a sizzling mass of steam.
Nagumo had one carrier left: Hiryu. He sent its planes off to attack the American ships, wherever they were. They found Yorktown, which had just launched its remaining dive bombers. The Japanese planes crippled Yorktown, but, while they were doing that, Yorktown’s second set of dive bombers found Hiryu. They attacked, refueled on Enterprise, and then returned with Enterprise’s dive bombers. The crippled Hiryu began to sink and went to the bottom the next day.
Nagumo signaled to Yamamoto what had happened and recommended he call off the expedition. Yamamoto was beside himself with rage and relieved Nagumo of his command. He refused to turn back. But after a short time, he realized that, without air cover, he would be heading for a disaster. He turned back.
Yorktown, which had been severely damaged in the Coral Sea and hastily repaired, was towed back to Pearl Harbor for more repairs. But a Japanese submarine spotted her and her tow ship and sank them both. “Waltzing Matilda,” as her crew called her, was a big loss, but it was nothing compared to what the Japanese had suffered.
In five minutes, with the destruction of Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu, Nagumo went from complete triumph to utter defeat. Then the destruction of Hiryu wiped out all of Japan’s operational fleet carriers. Japan could never build enough carriers or train enough pilots to come near to matching the Americans.
The Japanese tried, however. They turned what was to be a sister ship of Yamato and Musashi into an aircraft carrier. The new carrier, Sinano, became the biggest and most powerful aircraft carrier in the world, dwarfing the mighty old Saratoga. Sinano made her maiden voyage in November of 1944. On November 29, 1944, the U.S. submarine Archerfish sank Sinano before she could send a plane into combat.
That may have been prophetic. Many naval analysts think that nuclear-powered submarines may really be the new capital ships. At the present, aircraft carriers have been invaluable in projecting American power to the far corners of the world. But the big, powerful, and highly vulnerable ships have not been used since World War II against a major naval or air power.
Chapter 38
A Machine Gun for Every Man: Submachine Guns and Assault Rifles
The landings of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the other paratroop outfits in Normandy on D day were nothing like what happened on maneuvers. Each landing was mass confusion — almost chaos. The troops landed at night, a pitch-black night, scattered over a strange countryside. Some spent hours trying find another paratrooper. Many were unable to join all their regular units for quite a while.
Staff Sergeant Harrison Summers was at least able to join his battalion, the first battalion of the 502nd Regiment. Summers’s battalion commander, desperately short of men, gave the sergeant 15 strangers and told him to capture a German coast artillery barracks. Summers took his Thompson submachine gun, a basic load of ammunition, and the 15 strangers. Because the other men didn’t know him and didn’t trust him, Summers knew he’d have to lead them, not just tell them what to do.
The “barracks” was actually a number of buildings, strung out over almost half a mile. Summers ran up to the first building, kicked in the door, and mowed down four of the defenders with his tommy gun. The rest dashed out the back door. Summers looked around and saw that he was alone. “His” men were hiding in a ditch. He left them there and charged the second building. The Germans there saw him coming and fled. That encouraged one of the 15, a machine gunner, to set up his weapon and fire on the third building, covering Summers’s next charge. The Germans in the third building opened fire on Summers. From somewhere, a lieutenant appeared and told Summers he would join him. The officer, though, was hit as he and Summers reached the door. Summers entered alone and sprayed the room with his submachine gun. He killed six Germans, and the rest fled.
While Summers was catching his breath, a captain appeared and offered to join him on his attack on the next building. They set out, but the captain caught a bullet in his heart. Once again, Summers broke into a building with his tommy gun blazing. He killed six Germans, and the rest surrendered. Summers’s scratch platoon had moved up cautiously, and one of them volunteered to join him on his next attack. The machine gunner followed to give them fire support. Summers and his two companions killed 30 more Germans.
Summers kicked in the door of the next building and found 15 German soldiers eating breakfast, apparently never having noticed all the shooting that had been going on around them. With his tommy gun Summers shot them all down at the table.
Harrison Summers was a man of great courage and initiative. But he could not have accomplished what he did without his submachine gun. The submachine gun (often abbreviated SMG), a small machine gun that fired pistol ammunition, was born in World War I. It achieved maturity in World War II, where it became the most valuable weapon in every army for clearing buildings and urban fighting.
In the Soviet Union’s Red Army, it was as important as the rifle. In a typical Red Army attack, submachine gunners in the first wave laid down a barrage of small arms fire from 200 yards and worked their way forward. Then the tanks, with “tank riders” advanced. Tank riders were soldiers with submachine guns and hand grenades who fired on any enemies they saw. They protected the tanks from antitank guns in the enemy front lines as well as from infantry with antitank grenades and panzerfausts. The panzerfaust was a very small recoilless gun, an ancestor of the Russian RPG-7 (erroneously called a rocket-propelled grenade launcher), which fired a shaped-charge shell considerably larger than its diameter. Tank riders led a life that was short and not at all merry. A single burst of machine gun fire could — and usually did — clear a tank of all its tank riders.