John Schettler - Ironfall

Being farthest east and north, Rokuro found himself flying right into Halsey’s heavy CAP that morning. Halsey had allocated a full 50% of his fighters to that mission, with the other half flying escort, so there were a good many up. All 24 of the F4 Wildcats off the Enterprise were already in the sky, with twelve of those loitering to wait for the strike planes to join them. Another twelve F6 Hellcats were also on dedicated CAP, and they saw the Japanese sweep mission on radar 29 miles out. The resulting fighter duel was intense, but something happened that would shock the Japanese for the first time in the war—they would lose, and very badly.

That something was the F6F-Hellcat, which had made its debut flight in June of 1942 in the real history, but never got into a fight until September of 1943. In this history, it was fighting six months early, and the new Lady Lex had come with two dozen. With a powerful engine, rugged design including bullet resistant canopy, and armor around the cockpit, oil tank, and cooler, it was built to fight and survive. In fact, it had been built to order as a plane specifically meant to match, and defeat, the dread Japanese Zero.

Throughout its development, the Navy brought in some of its top Aces to work directly with the Grumman engineers who were building the plane, and hear right from the horse’s mouth what was needed or wanted by the pilots. One of those aces was Lieutenant Commander Butch O'Hare. He had been the Navy’s first flying Ace and Medal of Honor winner when he defended the carrier Lexington from a flight of nine Japanese Betty twin-engine bombers. He would get three of them, damaging others, as he utilized a high side angle of attack to avoid the dangerous sting of their tail guns. Once he got back to Pearl, the reporters descended on him, for America was looking for heroes to bolster morale, and Butch O’Hare was a perfect candidate, cool, personable, and handsome.

He was flown to the White House to get his Medal of Honor, put on Parade in Saint Louis, and then relocated to Hawaii to train other pilots. There he related everything he knew about the enemy Zero, and how to fly against it. He told the young pilots never to follow one into a loop, for the Zero could turn tighter than the F4 and would end up on its tail. Instead it had to be countered with a break hard to the right, which would bring the F4 around in a timely way to get back on the Zero’s tail after it came out of that loop. And he also passed on the one good habit that had served him well— always look over your shoulder , no matter what you were doing. Even if you thought you were alone out there, in a one-on-one duel with a single enemy fighter, you look over that shoulder. It was a life saver to many a Navy Pilot.

With new planes like the F6, and pilots trained by men like Butch O’Hare to fly them, the game had suddenly changed in the skies over Halsey’s carriers. Lieutenant Rokuro’s twelve Zeroes raced to engage, but for the first time they were bested and savaged by the speed and hitting power of this new American plane. They hit many of the Hellcats, but they kept flying, and when they hit back with those four.50 caliber MGs, the Zero was cut to pieces.

Ten of the twelve would go down, and the entire Shotai of those new B6N ‘Heavenly Mountains’ went into the sea, all except Lieutenant Rokuro, who managed to evade and dive away into clouds. The Zeroes got two Wildcats and one Hellcat, but the Japanese survivors were shaken by the bruising losses they had sustained. Rokuro knew he could not take the chance that he would also be shot down without sending a report back to Admiral Hara’s carriers. So he ordered his radio man to send a message in the clear, even if it meant violating radio silence—“ Sighted two enemy carriers, three cruisers, four destroyers. Enemy strike in the air!”

TheJapanese decided to hit back hard, those same maintenance crews sweating out another wild 40 minutes on the hangar decks, knowing the enemy was already out after them. That sighting report from the savaged recon sweep put the Americans quite far out, about 350 miles southwest of Hara’s present position. Taiho and Tosa still had time to get a strike in the air before those American planes found them, but there would be little margin for error.

Cruising at 160 knots, the American strike wave would take two hours and twenty minutes to reach them. That window was wide enough for Hara to continue to launch his morning CAP patrols while the strike was armed and spotted. The sun had just broken over the horizon when Lieutenant Rokuro’s warning was received. The messenger read off the signal tersely on the bridge of the Taiho , and King Kong Hara stood silently, his implacable self, seemingly unmoved. When he spoke, the order was exactly what the other officers wanted to hear.

“Signal all carriers in this task force. Prepare for naval strike! Admirals Nagumo and Yamaguchi should be notified immediately.”

That would set in motion the frenetic machine below decks, the fueling, arming, lifting and spotting of the planes. Taiho had started the day with only 18 Zeroes, 27 D5-A2’s and 18 B6N’s. Four of those B6N’s were already expended, and Lieutenant Rokuro was winging his way back home in the only surviving plane.

Tosa had the bulk of the fighters, 26 Zeroes, with 27 dive bombers and 12 torpedo bombers. Junyo had 15 Zeroes, 15 dive bombers and 6 torpedo bombers. That was a total of 164 planes, but 16 had already gone out on that ill-fated recon sweep. Hara was going to have to hold back at least half his fighters for defense, so he sent 23 Zeroes aloft for the strike, which was launching by 7:10. They would be joined by 36 dive bombers and 29 torpedo bombers, making the first strike wave 88 planes. The question after that launch was also crucial—could the second wave be armed and launched before the Americans arrived?

The crews would have another slim hour, and if the enemy got there sooner than expected, the flight decks might be crowded with planes, all armed a fueled, a most undesirable situation for any carrier commander to find himself in. The alternative would be to wait out the American strike, devoting the remaining time to servicing all the remaining fighters and getting them aloft, and this is what Hara elected to do.

Lieutenant Joichi Tomonaga, a survivor of the lost Hiryu , was the Air Officer in charge, a man that had died in the real history at Midway. His planes would form up and head southwest, but it would be a long two hours before they reached the target zone, and they would not find Halsey that day. Heavy clouds had obscured the sea, but they continued on, all eyes searching through any break in the cover for any sign of enemy ships.

At a little after 09:30, three white wakes were spotted, and one of them was a carrier. That was all the Japanese needed, and they started the attack. They did not know it at that time, but they had just spotted the newest addition to the U.S. carrier fleet, the Bunker Hill , now the flagship of Ziggy Sprague’s task force.

Clifton Sprague had come up through the ranks of Naval Aviation, and had served well as the Air Officer aboard the first Yorktown , CV-5, piloting the first two landings ever made on that carrier. Yet he had been in and out of the Naval War Colleges to learn the art of strategy and tactics at sea, and his only real experience had been active participation in fleet problems and related drills on a 16 month tour aboard Lady Lex. Before the war, he had a lowly seaplane tender in 1940, the Tangier , and finally saw action at Pearl Harbor when his was one of the very first ships to return fire against the Japanese attackers.