Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher — ‘Black Jack Fletcher’ to his men — was a spare, leathery veteran of the Coral Sea. He was in tactical command of the forces mustered to defend Midway. Fletcher was the commander of Task Force 17 built around the patched-up Yorktown. He had no control over the Midway-based forces, the submarines operating in the area, or the force sent to defend the Aleutians. Nor did he exercise much control over Task Force 16, which was centered on the Enterprise and the Hornet, under the temporary command of Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance; Rear Admiral William Halsey (mistakenly nicknamed ‘Bull’ by a confused journalist) was in the hospital being treated for a skin disease.

In one sense Yamamoto had done the US Navy a favor at Pearl Harbor by effectively forcing America into the new age of carrier warfare. Although in 1941 the Navy was still wedded to the notion that battleships and big guns engaging in epic Jutland-style battles constituted naval warfare, they were forced by the destruction of Battleship Row to make full and exclusive use of their real power — the carriers and the fighter planes, with their bombs and airborne torpedoes. Nimitz and his subordinate officers were adept at meeting the new situation, while Yamamoto had to contend with the highly conservative staff of the Japanese Navy, many of whom found his interest in naval air warfare anathema.

With the vast area of the Central and South Pacific to defend and with only modest forces at his disposal, Nimitz would have found himself in difficulties many times had not American intelligence come to his aid. The Japanese codes had been broken long before the war started, and as a result the Pacific Command usually had enough information from decoded fleet messages to form a reasonably accurate picture of Japanese intentions.

By 10 May intelligence had already confirmed Nimitz’s suspicions about the next Japanese objective — Midway. He even had the major details of Yamamoto’s plan, along with his approximate schedule and routes. Nimitz was familiar enough with Yamamoto’s philosophy and style to predict a full attack on the island, with the destruction of the American carriers as one of the primary objectives, even though some of his officers feared that it was all an elaborate deception designed to cover another attack on Pearl Harbor or the West Coast.

The North Pacific Task Force — two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, a destroyer division, a nine-destroyer strike group, six S-Class submarines, and numerous other craft was formed by 17 May and placed under the command of Rear Admiral Robert (‘Fuzzy’) Theobald. Theobald did not get to Kodiak, off the Alaskan coast, to take command until 27 May, however; and the main body of his fleet was still assembling when the Japanese attacked Dutch Harbor on 3 June.

Meanwhile, on 24 May, Fletcher received a high-priority, top secret message at Tongatabu in the Friendly Islands where he was refueling and repairing what damage he could after his pounding on the Coral Sea. ‘What it said,’ he later recalled, ‘was simply this: Get the hell back here, quick.’ Fletcher hoisted anchor almost immediately; 26 May marked the Yorktown’s hundredth day at sea without proper replenishment — a record unequaled by any other modern American warship up to that time — and on 27 May she was steaming up the channel to Pearl Harbor to the accompaniment of whistles, sirens, and cheers. On 28 May the Hornet and Enterprise left to take up their stations; Yorktown followed on 30 May. Fletcher and Spruance had received their orders: to ‘...inflict maximum damage on the enemy by employing strong attrition attacks’ (in other words, heavy air strikes. A further letter of instruction directed them to be ‘governed by the principles of calculated risk.’

Nagumo’s Japanese carrier force left their home base on 26 May, followed by Yamamoto and the Main Body on 28 May. Neither commander was feeling very happy; Yamamoto was suffering from stomach cramps caused by tension, and Nagumo was worried because his carriers and crew had had barely a month for maintenance and refresher training. He later commented, ‘We participated in the battle with meager training and without knowledge of the enemy.’ Morale among the men in the fleet was high, however. Meanwhile, Japanese submarines were taking up stations east of Midway to intercept any American ships sent out to relieve the island.

As they approached Midway from the west the Japanese Main Striking Force was shielded from patrolling American search planes by the many storms and fogs that occur in that area in May and June. Aboard his flagship, the carrier Akagi, Nagumo went over his plans for the last time. He decided to send 100 planes against Midway on 4 June and to hold back an equal number, including some torpedo planes, for a second wave. Of his many long-range scouts, which included cruiser and battleship float planes with a range of over 600 miles, seven would be detailed to keep a lookout for an enemy task force while Midway was being hit. They would cover an arc from due south to northeast; in the unlikely event that an American force should appear, the second wave could be sent against it instead of against the island.

Starting on 30 May, Nimitz began taking precautions to ensure against a Japanese sneak attack. The 22 Navy Catalina patrol bombers on Midway were sent on daily sweeps 700 miles out, and the Midway B-17s flew on daily search-attack missions to the area where the enemy was expected.

The waddling Catalinas were both the joy and despair of American pilots. They climbed, flew, and landed at almost the same speed (about 65 knots) and were armed only with .30 caliber machine guns in side blisters. The rumbling amphibians were death traps when cornered by Japanese fighters, but their redeeming feature was that they could fly almost all day long without refueling.

Just before noon on 2 June, Task Forces 16 and 17 — the Yorktown and her escorts, and the Enterprise, Hornet and their escorts — rendezvoused at ‘Point Luck’ about 325 miles northeast of Midway, and Fletcher took command of the combined fleet.

The Battle of Midway opened at 0300 hours on 3 June, more than 1,000 miles from the atoll itself with the diversionary attack in the Aleutians (1. The Thousand-Mile War) . Theobald had deployed his force 400 miles south of Kodiak, fearing an attack on the American base at Dutch Harbor. Hosogaya’s force slipped by the Americans easily in the fog and rain, however, and the base in the Eastern Aleutians was heavily bombed. The undefended islands of Attu and Kiska were occupied by the Japanese by 7 June, but the Army P-40s on Unmak convinced Hosogaya to bypass that island.

At 0843 hours the first sighting report was received from a Midway-based Catalina pilot, who continued to shadow the 11 Japanese ships he had found until 1100 hours. Fletcher concluded rightly that they were not the large carrier force he was expecting; in fact, they were probably Kondo’s Midway Occupation Force. Nine Army B-17s took off from Midway to attack the convoy, but made no hits. Fletcher, who was 300 miles east-northeast of Midway (and some 400 miles east of Nagumo), was certain that the Japanese carriers would approach the island from the northwest and strike the following day. Assuming that his presence was — and would remain — unknown, he hoped to be in a position to launch an attack against the carriers from their left flank as soon as the enemy planes had begun their strike against Midway. At 1931 hours on 3 June, he altered course to the southwest, which would bring him to a point some 200 miles north of Midway by morning. Through the night of 3-4 June the two carrier forces sailed toward each other on converging courses.

At 0430 hours on the morning of 4 June, 15 minutes after some 11 Catalinas had taken off from Midway to make another attempt to find the Japanese carriers, the Yorktown sent up ten dive bombers on a 100-mile search, as a routine precaution against the possibility of surprise. At the same time, 215 miles to the west, Nagumo was launching his first strike against Midway: 36 Nakajima B₅N2s (Kates), 36 Aichi D₃A2s (Vals), and 36 Mitsubichi A6M₃s (Zeros) rose from the decks of their four carriers. At 0500 hours the 108 Japanese planes were in formation, flying on a steady course for Midway.

Along with this first strike wave, Nagumo also sent up seven float planes to make a 300- mile reconnaissance. But no one in command really expected the American fleet to be anywhere near the area, and their overconfidence must have been transmitted to the search planes. Even though a seaplane from the heavy cruiser Chikuma passed almost directly over the US force and had an indecisive encounter with one of the Yorktown’s Dauntless dive bombers, it failed to either spot the American ships or to report the engagement, which would have been a sure sign of the presence of an American aircraft carrier in the vicinity.

At 0530 hours one of the Catalina pilots spotted the Japanese carriers through the heavy cloud cover and radioed a report back to Midway; the message was intercepted by the Enterprise and relayed to Fletcher on Yorktown at 0534 hours. A few minutes later, at 0545 hours, a second PBY radioed another message, without even bothering with code:

‘Many planes headed Midway, repeat, Midway. .. .’

Continued in Part Three  . . . . .