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Authors: Craig L. Symonds

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During the four months after Pearl Harbor, the Kid
ō
Butai burnished its reputation further, as those months witnessed a dizzying string of Japanese successes that fed what historians later labeled “victory disease” in Japan, and caused lots of hand-wringing in Washington. And it was not just the Kid
ō
Butai. Perhaps the most chilling event of this period for the
Allies was the loss of the Royal Navy battleship
Prince of Wales
, just arrived in the Far East after a lengthy high-speed cruise from the Atlantic, and her consort, the battle cruiser
Repulse
, both sunk on December 10 by land-based Japanese bombers staged out of Indochina. Though Japanese carrier bombers and torpedo planes had sunk or damaged eight U.S. battleships in Pearl Harbor, those ships had been at anchor. The sinking of the
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
while they were alert, manned, and under way was proof that airplanes could indeed sink battleships.
28

In the subsequent weeks and months, Japanese forces landed in the Philippines, on the Malay Peninsula, and on Borneo, Sumatra, and Java. Thailand surrendered on December 9; Hong Kong fell on Christmas Day; Manila on January 2; and, most shocking of all, the supposedly impregnable citadel at Singapore fell on February 15. The Kid
ō
Butai attacked Darwin, Australia, on February 19. After that, the giant
Kaga
headed back to Japan for a refit after striking a submerged reef off Palau, but the other five carriers of the Kid
ō
Butai, along with a substantial escort, steamed into the Indian Ocean. In the wake of this rampage, the Japanese conquered an island empire of more than ten thousand square miles and secured the resource base that they hoped would make them self-reliant and invulnerable. More cautious observers within the Japanese leadership might have noted that most of these dramatic naval victories had been raids—hit-and-run strikes—that the American battle fleet in Pearl Harbor had been at anchor, and that the
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
had lacked air cover. It was hardly the time for carping, however, for the Kid
ō
Butai and its unlikely commander had become the absolute master of the seas. In the early spring of 1942, the Japanese decision to go to war with Britain, Holland, and the United States seemed not “romantic and illogical” but shrewd—even brilliant.

*
Imperial Navy junior officers attempted a coup of their own in May 1932 when a group of them participated in the assassination of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. As in 1926, the long-term result was an effort to placate and appease the dissatisfied junior officers.

*
Initially the Japanese had planned to convert the battle cruiser
Amagi
into acarrier, but after the
Amagi
was damaged during a 1923 earthquake, the Japanese were allowed to substitute the even larger battleship
Kaga
. As shown in the next chapter, the Americans did much the same thing with two battle cruisers that they had under construction that subsequently became the carriers
Lexington
(CV-2) and
Saratoga
(CV-3).

*
Japan also had three large seaplane tenders (
Ryuho, Chitóse
, and
Chiyoda
) that were converted into aircraft carriers after the Battle of Midway. See
Appendix A
.

*
During 1942, the United States built 47,836 airplanes to Japan’s 8,861. Over the course of the war, the United States built more than four times as many combat airplanes as Japan: 324,750 to Japan’s 76,320.

**
Though the Allied code names for Japanese aircraft did not come into use until 1943, these code names will be used throughout the text for the sake of clarity.

3
The Brown Shoe Navy

A
nd what of the American carriers? Where were they during this rampage by the Kid
ō
Butai? In January of 1942 there were three American carriers in the Pacific. Two of them were big, oversize carriers equivalent to the Japanese
Kaga
and
Akagi
—and for much the same reason. They had been laid down as battle cruisers in 1916 as part of America’s buildup for possible involvement in World War I. By the time the United States entered the war in 1917, it had become clear that the most urgent need was for destroyers to protect the convoys, and the United States halted work on the big warships to concentrate on escorts. When the war ended, their big hulls lay unfinished on the building ways. American sponsorship of the 1922 Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty made it clear that they would never be completed as battle cruisers, and like the Japanese, the U.S. converted two of them into carriers, naming them for battles of the American Revolution: the
Lexington
(CV-2) and the
Saratoga
(CV-3). At 50,000 tons each, they
were even larger than
Kaga
and
Akagi
and capable of carrying as many as ninety airplanes each.
*

In addition to these two behemoths, the United States had five other carriers on the Navy List. Two of them,
Ranger
(CV-4) and
Wasp
(CV-7), were smaller ships, generally equivalent to the Japanese
S
ō
ry
ū
and
Hiry
ū
, but three of them,
Yorktown
(CV-5),
Enterprise
(CV-6), and
Hornet
(CV-8), were all relatively new, purpose-built carriers that displaced just under 20,000 tons empty and about 25,500 tons with their embarked air group of 60 to 80 planes, which made them roughly comparable to the Japanese
Sh
ō
kaku
and
Zuikaku
.

Had all five of America’s big carriers been deployed as a unit, they would have made a worthy opponent for the Kid
ō
Butai. The United States, however, faced a two-ocean war, and consequently only one of those new carriers—the
Enterprise
—was in the Pacific. Until April 1941, the
Yorktown
had been there too, but that month Roosevelt had ordered her to the Atlantic to beef up the so-called neutrality patrols against Nazi U-boats. For its part, the
Hornet
was so new that, although she was commissioned in October, six weeks before Pearl Harbor, her final fitting-out kept her in Norfolk, Virginia, until March of 1942. In addition, both of the smaller carriers (
Ranger
and
Wasp
) were also in the Atlantic. Until the
Yorktown
returned to the Pacific and the
Hornet
was fitted out, Nimitz would have only three carriers: the
Lexington
and
Saratoga
, and the smaller but newer
Enterprise
.
1

Nimitz kept them busy, putting each at the center of a task force that conducted nearly constant patrols north, west, and south of Hawaii. In addition to the carrier, each task force had two or three cruisers and a squadron of destroyers to provide a screen, plus a fleet oiler to keep the warships (especially the fuel-guzzling destroyers) under way. A task force of one carrier, three cruisers, and six destroyers burned up 5,800 barrels of oil every day—and more when conducting high-speed flight operations. Throughout the
Pacific War, fought as it was over a huge expanse of ocean, it was critical for both sides to pay close attention to the fueling needs of their warships; the loss of an oiler could severely restrict the operating capabilities of an entire task force.
2

The commanding officers of these task forces were a disparate lot, and only one of them was a brown shoe. When Congress created the Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAir) in 1921, it had mandated that all Navy flight squadrons were to be commanded by qualified pilots. In addition, a Navy board had recommended (but did not require) that only qualified aviators should command carriers. Because of that, a number of ambitious black-shoe officers, including several who were quite senior, applied for pilot training in order to have access to these new commands. Veteran pilots considered them opportunists and scornfully referred to them as “Johnny-come-latelys.” Even worse, from their point of view, other senior officers who never completed pilot training at all still managed to qualify for carrier command by going through a four-week familiarization program in Pensacola, Florida, to become “naval observers.” These men wore silver wings rather than gold, and though they were not certified to fly, they
were
authorized to command flight units, including carriers. Behind their backs, the pilots called them “kiwis” after the flightless New Zealand bird. Opportunism and careerism may have been factors for many, but some Johnny-come-latelys underwent a genuine conversion. One who did was William F. Halsey.
3

Halsey graduated from the Naval Academy in 1904, three years behind King and a year ahead of Nimitz. Like most officers of his generation, he had spent most of his career as a surface warfare officer, serving aboard the battleship
Kansas
during the world-circling cruise of Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet in 1907–9, and commanding destroyers during World War I. He commanded several more destroyers after the war until he was assigned to the Naval Academy in 1927 to take charge of the
Reina Mercedes
, a prize from the Spanish-American War that the Navy had turned into a training vessel for midshipmen. In that capacity, Halsey was responsible for all of the Academy’s floating property, including its small seaplane squadron. Eager to learn something about this new service, he asked the
squadron’s young commander, Lieutenant Dewitt “Duke” Ramsey, to take him on a flight. More flights followed, some with Captain Halsey at the controls. “My whole naval career changed right then,” Halsey wrote later. “I became fascinated with it…. Soon I was eating, drinking, and breathing aviation.” Halsey was so excited by the potential of this new service that he applied for flight training at the end of his Naval Academy tour. He was hugely disappointed when he failed the eye test.
4

After a year as a student at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and another at the Army War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., Halsey received an offer from King, then serving as chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, to command the carrier
Saratoga
if he completed the short observer’s course at Pensacola. Once he got there, however, Halsey managed to get himself transferred into the full pilot training program despite his age and his poor eyesight; he earned his gold wings as a 52-year-old grandfather. In January of 1942, he was the only vice admiral in the Navy who was a naval aviator. Officially he was commander, Aircraft Battle Force; operationally, he was the commanding officer of Task Force 8, built around the carrier
Enterprise
. Halsey did not command the ship itself—that responsibility fell to the ship’s captain, George D. Murray, a career naval aviator who had earned his gold wings in 1915. Murray was responsible for the day-to-day management of the vessel and its crew. Halsey was a kind of passenger on the
Enterprise
, having a suite of rooms known as flag quarters in the island amidships, and dispensing orders through a staff.

Vice Admiral William F. Halsey sports gold wings on the breast of his forest-green aviator’s uniform. Note the cigarette in his right hand. (U.S. Naval Institute)

As a midshipman at the Academy, Halsey had played fullback on the football team and he possessed something of a fullback’s attitude. He was direct, often blunt, occasionally profane, and utterly fearless. Some thought his facial features resembled those of a bulldog, and not only did that give him his nickname, it added to his reputation for ferocity. To balance that, he was outgoing and gregarious, a bit of a showman and, like Yamamoto, willing to speak his mind openly. Once the war began, he became a favorite of newspaper reporters, who counted on him to provide some fiery rhetoric for their columns. He seldom let them down. After Pearl Harbor, he claimed that he had always distrusted “Japs,” and vowed that by the time he was through with them, the Japanese language would be spoken only in hell.
5

BOOK: The Battle of Midway
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ads

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