The Unsolved Disaster of Midway - The Flight to Nowhere

hello everybody it's chris from military aviation history and i want to talk about the battle of midway now during this engagement in 1942 american carriers like the uss yorktown the uss enterprise sank four japanese carriers in what would essentially become one of the most pivotal if not the most pivotal engagement of the second world war in the pacific however next to yorktown and enterprise you had a third carrier and that was uss hornet in the area and uss hornet also sent out dauntless dive from us it also sent out devastated torpedo bombers and it also sent out wild cat fighters against the japanese fleet but somehow this episode of the battle is often forgotten as the historian craig simmons has noted no aspect of the battle of midway is more controversial or enigmatic than the role of the hornet air group on june 4th to introduce you to this event i will be using some excellent footage here from the up and coming title task force admiral to provide some great visuals for you to enjoy they are not a sponsor i just really like what they're doing so i thought i'd show them off here and if you're interested in tfa do check out the description below for more information but now back to uss hornet and this episode really is far removed from sort of the popular image of the battle and the decisive outcome that the battle had in the end it doesn't start with american planes going up into the air and japanese carriers going down in a matter of hours uss hornet's air group falls apart in a tragic combination of human error bad luck and technical mishaps and they don't have a single japanese ton to show for this was the flight to nowhere to understand what happened we first have to look at hornet's strikeforce and their respective leaders among the fours were tbd devastators from torpedo 8 commanded by lieutenant commander john c waldron by all accounts waldron 41 years old was eccentric and a skilled pilot and one who would not accept complacency once aboard his ship he drilled his men like no one else in a letter to his nephew who was an inspiring aviator he once wrote take this business seriously it is a serious business and it is not a sport two squadrons of sbd dauntless dive bombers were also aboard bombing eight and scouting aid scouting eight was commanded by lieutenant commander walter rhodey while the lieutenant commander robert johnson commanded bombing aid hornet's wildcats in turn were commanded by lieutenant commander samuel mitchell this was mitchell's first rodeo as a commanding officer he was motivated but inexperienced following hornet's commander rear admiral pete mitchell from a previous placement overall command of hornet's air group fell on stanhope ring he was once described as the picture of the ideal naval officer with the looks of a movie star and academic credentials reboot he embraced protocol discipline and by the book action this made him a skilled administrator but it did little to hornets morale as rings perceived pettiness and frequent punishments brewed up resentment growing ever stronger as rings piloting and leadership deficiencies were put on display during training missions it reached a point where his official title seahak that's commander a hornet air group was turned amongst the men of the strike force into seahawk it seems that everybody had a story about him and his reputation with his men was a continuous downward spiral as we will see at midway the cauldron well and truly burst this leaves admiral mark pete mitcher an oval command on uss hornet graduating in 1916 as the 33rd aviator in the history of the us navy he was a pioneer and a long time advocate of naval aviation and as such he felt entitled to have a say in the micromanagement of air operations promoted to a flag rank just before the cruise and remaining in charge of hornet waiting for his new assignment he rightfully expected midway to be the opportunity he needed to rise further in the ranks to an even more prestigious command hard calls in the days leading up to the battle there were quite a few disagreements between some of the executive officers uh warden for example he was a very outspoken man and he argued that hornets of wildcats should be covering him his devastators instead of the dauntless of course that would also mean that the wildcats would be staying low instead of high up with the dauntlesses because as diver bombers they obviously need that altitude to come in and mitchell agreed i recommend it to captain mitcher that we the fighters go in with protection for the torpedo planes alone ethel mitchell disagreed citing superior japanese aircraft performance and his reason was that if the wildcards are up high with the dauntlesses they could cover both the dauntless and the devastators because if the devastators get attacked they can just radio this in and the wildcats will come to superior altitude attacking the zeros maybe even catching them by surprise if however the wildcats were already stuck at low altitude escorting the devastators and the dauntlesses get attacked the wildcat does not have the performance to get up there in time worse yet while it climbs it is essentially a sitting duck to the japanese fighter aircraft and there was some really good combat experience throughout the war that really showed that yeah staying up high really was the better option for example during the coral sea they were of course the spd dauntlesses that suffered heavily during their attack against shokaku and zuikaku whereas the devastators down low were essentially completely unmolested by japanese fighters so it was a hard call to make but staying at altitude generally was the better call so you can't really blame mitchell for saying what he does but of course you can't also blame waldron for asking for her have some close escorts with him in fact on the day of the battle he goes up to mitchell and he just he just wants one fighter with him maybe even pilate obey one of his own men the admiral he had enough and as the planes were warming up he turns around to mitchell and tells him exactly where he expects his wildcats to be mitchell go out and stay with the bombers get off my deck ten wildcats of fighting eight took off first as they climbed to twenty thousand feet fifteen spd dauntlesses from scouting eight followed then came stanhope ring leading roadie's bombing aid of 18 dive bombers finally waldron's torpedo 8 took off but as the flight deck had not enough space nine of the 15 had to be brought up from the hangar as a rather green outfit serving on a ship that had just been commissioned a few months earlier the air group used a deferred departure mode which meant that all planes in the air would circle the ship until the last ones formed so as to depart together it lessened the chances of losing an element along the way but it took a lot of time and as we will see strike coordination was the least of the concerns that morning by the time that everybody was in the air ring who was leading the strike as seahawk ordered what was called a parade-like double v-shaped formation himself on point and the spd daunter squadrons to either side of him after that the dauntlesses were ordered to start climbing to twenty thousand feet by now the wildcats had blown through a considerable amount of fuel already and the close formation flying off bombing aid and scouting aid extort not only extra gas due to the constant manipulation of the throttle but also took much of the pilot's concentration as one pilot remembered we flew parade formation and the throttle was in constant use to maintain position locked and loaded by the time the hornet's air group is underway nearly an hour has passed anything but ideal but the real disaster the real disaster is yet to come and on that sneaky cliffhanger let's go into a very very quick intermission if you enjoy my content please consider the whole subscribing with hitting the bell notification liking commenting on these videos because yes of course it's my business interest to remind you that that's why we youtubers do that and yes it helps the channel but consider this it is actually a win-win situation because as you do that you're setting off this chain of youtube voodoo that happens in the background and you're reminding you youtube that you in fact enjoy this content so that means that if i put out a new video on every first day of every month except first first day of every month because that's my off week yes it's complicated i'm german on what i call mad military aviation history day i'm starting to embrace this acronym youtube knows that you want to watch my videos so please consider subscribing liking and commenting and do me and yourself a favor because you get regular free content and i get to do this so let's win win together and now back to the video 265. when the uss hornet launched their planes at 0-700 on june 4th 1942 it was set in a north-easterly position of kiddo bhutai the japanese carrier fleet and a course of 239 would have put it straight over nagumo's flat tops an initial distance of 155 miles quickly extended to 180 miles by 8 am as hornet had to steer away from the japanese into the wind to launch her craft instead of flying a bearing of 239 hornet strike force eventually flew nearly straight west 265. his historians to this day can only speculate why there are two possibilities one is that ring who was an indifferent navigator simply miscalculated the course and mature did not question it admit the haste and eagerness of the morning's launch despite protests from at least two of the squadron commanders the other is that mitchell himself calculated a 265 course and ordered ring to take it in the hope that it would lead him to the two missing carriers the first scenario is possible but unlikely these two missing carriers were of course steaming towards midway with the rest of kikobutai but the us navy had failed to spot them with some assuming that the japanese were operating two task forces with two carriers each in any case the assigned course of 265 degrees was not explained to the rest of the officers and waldron already frustrated pulled aside his squadron navigator telling him that the course was wrong and that he would fly his own course if need be don't think i'm lost just track me so if anything happens the boys can count on you to bring him back waldron did not wait long waldron breaks order to proceed under radio silence hornet's air group was on the way little more than 30 minutes passed before the silence broke suddenly it was waldron challenging ring on the open radio the ensuing conversation was as short as it was charged reconstructed here based on craig simmons research you're going the wrong direction for the japanese carriers i'm leading this flight and you fly with us right here listen i know where the damn jab fleet is you fly on us i'm leading this formation ah damn it we don't have time for this to hell with you i know where they are and i'm going for them having given ring what essentially translates into the vocal rendition of the finger torpedo eight follows wolverine as he breaks off from the strike force heading south west towards where he felt that the japanese carrier fleet would be a house of cards stanhope ring however flew on bombing 8 and scouting 8 as well as his escorts from fighting 8 in tow some pilots remember spotting the devastators down low breaking off another 30 minutes passed approaching 0 900 hours the wildcat pilots started to run low on fuel some of them had gauges showing less than half a tank left uncertainty took hold as hornet had not provided a point option but had simply indicated that it would steam towards the enemy still they pressed on until ensign john mcginnery took the initiative accelerating to his flightlet's side he gestured to mitchell indicating low fuel mitchell shook his head and mcinerry fell back into position a few minutes passed and there was mcinerney and once again reappearing next to mitchell gesturing towards his fuel gauge mitchell now forcefully waved him back into position but mcinerry's patience snapped gesturing to his wingman he broke off the seal had broken one by one the wildcats peeled off mitchell now all alone soon followed suit speaking about this event in 1981 he said i broke it off when i saw that it would be foolish to go any further ring and the dauntless force were now on their own continuing 265 in silence torpedo 8 meanwhile walrun and vt-8 have continued their southwesterly course which proved accurate and they soon come inside of the japanese fleet which is now turning away from them while also recovering the aircraft that it had sent out against midway waldron at this point takes to the radio and tries to hail seahag stand hope from johnny1 stand hope from johnny1 not receiving a reply worldwide left the channel open perhaps in the hope that someone somewhere could home in on the signal the fractured parts here of his transmissions were recorded by fellow aviators and although waldron was in an unfavorable position he had to press the attack all right we're going in there's no turning back we'll fly straight at them we're going in good luck come on watch those fighters how am i doing you see that splat who did that my two wingmen are in the water george gay a fellow tbd devastated pilots saw waldron hit the water gay was the last tbd devastator left flying his gunner out of action gail launched his torpedo but it is unclear if it actually dropped in any case his target zoryu was not hit he had gotten close so close that the fighters had left them so as not to fly into their own aaa and as he flew over soryo banking around her island he saw the gunners tracking him opening the throttle wide he tried to make it back but soon his heroes were on him again setting his engine on fire he hit the water got out of his seat checked on his dead gunner took the life raft and swam for it gay had been torpedo 8's last plane in the air and he would be the only survivor in a tragic twist of irony the fighter cover that waldron had wanted was actually there but it never got involved jim gray's wildcats from uss enterprise during the confusion which had followed the launch found and mistakenly followed waldron's tbd's thinking he had joined with eugene lindsay's torpedo 6 from his own carrier as both had agreed that lindsay would send a code word on the radio if he was under attack he simply circled over the ketobutai without knowledge of the butchery happening below him leaving for fear of lack of gas he missed torpedo 6 that got slaughtered 15 minutes later the same way as torpedo eight had or frantically calling for his fighter support hornet's air group was not the only one with communication problems that day bingo fuel elsewhere johnson oft bombing aid was worried so far he had followed stanhope ring but his flight's fuel was coming up to the point of no return looking at the map he was presented with two options double back and find uss hornet or strike a core south towards midway perhaps able to find the japanese carriers along the way he signaled his planes and turned now it was a ring's moment to break radio silence in a futile attempt to order johnson back into formation continuing westwards 265 he was now leading his remaining scout bombers from scouting eight but then ring was suddenly alone around 10 100 hours roadie had turned around too with no more planes to follow ring himself double backed that morning he had been in command of a force of 58 planes now he was all alone the beacon is lit to return to hornet each plane was given a set b receiver and on hornet itself you had a y e transmitter and this y e set b homing system was quite a simple one essentially a different morse code letter would be sent into different directions of the aircraft carrier and once the pilot receives that signal he then knows what direction to fly however although the system was quite a simple one it was also prone to failure for example the lower airplane was the less likely it would receive a strong signal or any signal at all and even if it did receive a signal even at higher altitudes sometimes this would be quite rely unreliable unreliable mitchell for example on his way back has to hand over the lead to one of his wingmen because his wingman has a better signal than mitchell's mitchell's receiver was apparently malfunctioning at this point in time but mitchell at this point in time had also reduced the altitude his flight was flying at from 23 000 to 8000 feet and he did this to conserve fuel and also to conserve oxygen and in nautical terms this flight vf8 gets a very close of making it back to hornet but again in nautical terms it misses it by a narrow margin and now flying into the nether the pilots are forced to ditch one after the other and after four days pby catalinas managed to find eight hungry starving dehydrated and sunburned men and fish them out of the sea but two are never seen again midway having flown southeast and missing kirubutai due to its course change johnson now turned north east in the hope of making it back to hornet encountering a pby catalina the dye formers received a blink course correction for midway at the same time a ye homing signal was picked up and as such the formation fractured johnson took 14 planes to midway while his exo flew with two more towards the homing signal setting down on hornet at 11 4500 hours approaching midway johnson lost three sbds on the way with the last one ditching in the lagoon itself on their final approach friendly aa fire opened up but was luckily unable to score a hit before recognizing the mistake after landing the remaining 11 dauntlesses were refueled and flew back to uss hornet later in the afternoon home sweet home even though he had been the last one to turn around stanhope ring was the first to make it back to us's hornet not noticing that ring's plane still carried its 500 pound bomb the hornet's crew assumed he was returning from a successful strike and cheered when he climbed out of the cockpit ring did not acknowledge the cheers and went straight back to his stateroom without reporting to the bridge not until walt rohde landed a few minutes later and climbed up to the bridge to report did mitchell find out what had happened the pain however didn't stop here in the afternoon hornet found itself at the center of another snafu essentially the planes that landed at midway johnson's plane at midway had come in and were starting to land but this was around the time that the strike against the last japanese carrier to hear you was supposed to be launched and mitchell realized that due to technical difficulties and because of the delay with johnson's aircraft coming in that he couldn't get his whole strike out so halfway through the process he sent out a strike that he already had in the sky and he kept the other men grounded on on the carrier amongst them were also roadie and ring now hornet might as well not have bothered because by the time that the 14 planes that did manage to take off and fly towards the japanese carrier theory was already burning fiercely after being bombed by yorktown and enterprise so the pilots had nothing else to do but try to target auxiliary targets in the area and attacking multiple different ships japanese ships they didn't score a single hit which essentially was a little bit more insult to injury unmitigated disaster while waldron's attack on the japanese carriers is wildly known the flight to nowhere isn't it was an unmitigated disaster in the first mission against the enemy the hornet's air group had literally fallen apart first the torpedo planes then the fighters and finally the bombers had all abandoned their commanding officer who had returned alone of the 59 planes that had launched only 20 had come back 11 more bombers would eventually fly in from midway but not one bomb had been dropped on the japanese given the spectacular victory by the u.s navy at midway it is perhaps no surprise that this affair was somewhat brushed under the carpet there is a gaping hole in the official record concerning the activities of hornets air group on june 4th though all unit commanders were required to submit official written reports after each action there is only one official report from the hornet written by or at least signed by pete mitcher on the one hand the after action report never correlated with the accounts of surviving pilots especially the course discrepancy was never explained for more than 50 years students of the battle of midway took mitcher at his word and described the hornet's air group as missing the japanese because the american planes flew south of the target but as ronald russell noted post battle interviews memoirs letters and other such sources mostly indicate that the hornet air groups had not flown to the southwest on a course of 239 but to the west on a course of 265 degrees admiral spruce himself in command of task force 16 was very critical of mitch's report indicating in his own factual yet damning feedback to admiral nimitz that where discrepancies exist between enterprises and hornet's report the enterprise report should be taken as the more accurate now while this hush up might make us feel a bit murphed off there might be some compelling reasons why mitcher might have submitted his reports with some artistic interpretations first off at the time most navy commanders assumed that the japanese operated in two carrier groups fletcher himself on yorktown had decided to retain a reserve halving his strike force just in case a second carrier fleet turned up it seemed that mitcher on the other hand would rather attack in another direction by the time of the after-action report everyone had realized that the japanese instead of operating in two carrier groups had used a single one second pretty much every squadron commander and pilot including the lost men of torpedo 8 had disobeyed orders and mutilate if this was reported all of them would be invited to a court martial and that would have been the final nail in the coffin as far as uss hornet's air group was concerned so while mitchell might have covered for himself too in doing so he also covered his men something he was known for he went as far as recommending waldron and his squadron for the congressional medal of honor the highest u.s distinction instead torpedo 8 received the presidential unit citation and waldron the navy cross third and this ties in with the previous point the navy had won a tremendous victory there was little use now to roll up the whole affair with said court martials in what might be perceived as sullying the memory of the men that were lost specifically waldron and a devastator cruise for the navy this was the time for medals and torpedo 8 was even commemorated in a special movie reel that you see here however the attempt to make sense of the loss also contributed to one of the now outdated narratives of the battle for many years the sacrifice of torpedo 8 and the other devastator cruise was portrayed as a sacrifice luring the japanese fighters down low just giving a clear run for the spd dauntlesses this is a lovely story except that it is also complete nonsense the reason it is nonsense has to do with the performance of the mitsubishi zero which can climb from sea level to 15 000 feet in about 5 minutes flat it doesn't take much in the way of mathematical ability that if torpedo 8 is completely destroyed by 09 37 hours and torpedo 6 is driven out by 10 o'clock and those american dive bombers aren't going to show up until 10 20. the zeroes had all the time they needed to get back to altitude and most of them probably did thus except perhaps for depleting the xero's ammunition it is unlikely that this torpedo squadrons had the effect that has commonly been attributed to them in the end we will never truly know why the flight to nowhere happened the way it did but if you're interested in knowing more why not check out the uss hornet's official after action report that i have right here from june 13th you can find that also linked in the description below and beyond that if you're looking for some reading material on this battle and also want to know more about uss hornet's involvement why not check out craig simmons the battle of midway or jonathan partials and anthony tully's shattered sword those are the two main publications with the most up-to-date historiography that are out at the moment and of course there's also for veterans accounts ronald russell's no right to win all sources are in the description below and the books that i've just mentioned also there with some affiliate links at this point tell me what you thought about the flight to nowhere about uss hornet's involvement are you surprised you know about this do you have do you have anything to add what is your opinion about this whole affair put them down in the comments below i'd be very interested to read all your comments and feedback as well and i want to thank of course task force admiral here for providing some fantastic visuals and sound to the uh to the video and i also want to specifically thanking uh chris voltsis for his voiceover work and assistance as well and at this point there's nothing left to say except thank you very much for watching have a great day and see you in the sky

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 320,786

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Id: jgd7Jdh6iYc

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Lubyak]

Poor Hornet really got the short end of the stick at Midway. Though it's kind of fascinating to watch the difference between Yorktown's, Hornet's and Kidō Butai's air operations. That the IJN was able to launch coordinated strikes off of 4 flight decks, the USN only manged the same on 1 out of their 3 carriers. Rather ironically though, that random squadrons of American planes kept showing up throughout the whole morning probably did a lot for keeping the Japanese off balance and reactive long enough for their air defence system to utterly collapse.

[u/When_Ducks_Attack]

Back in the day, I wrote a thing on the Flight to Nowhere that was nicely received by the Battle of Midway Round Table. If anybody's interested, here it is.

[u/Duncan-M]

I did the unthinkable and read the YouTube comments for that video, and someone posting seemed to point that there is a good counterargument that 265 degree flight was incorrect, that Hornet's aircraft were going 239 degrees was correct.

I googled it and read some articles and it seems that many don't agree with the Shattered Sword 265 deg version, stating that they cherry picked only some accounts and disregarded accounts stating pilots spotted an island from the air that they shouldn't have been able to see if they were going 265 (Kure island).

What's the story on the controversy?

[u/JustARandomCatholic]

Please remember to add a ~paragraph sized submission statement explaining what this source is and why it's valuable. Thanks in advance!

[u/taesu99]

The Battle of Midway went down in history as perhaps the most important victory of the US Navy in World War 2 - but beyond this success lies a tragic story of how a whole US carrier strike group collapsed within only a couple of hours.