THE ROUNDTABLE FORUM
Official newsletter of the Battle of Midway Roundtable
"To promote awareness and understanding of the great battle and to
honor the men who fought and won it."
12 June 2005....................Issue No.
2005-23....................Our 8th Year
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AROUND THE TABLE ...............................................
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MEMBERS'
TOPICS IN THIS ISSUE
1. 63rd BOM Anniversary, San Diego
2.
LT Royal Ingersoll, USS Hornet
3.
Enterprise Sunk at Pearl Harbor?
5.
The 70-Degree Dive
"63rd BOM Anniversary, San Diego" (see issues 5-21, 5-22)
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10 June 2005
From: Nancy
Mahi nmahi@comcast.net
I very much enjoyed the impressive ceremony aboard the USS Midway on Friday
night, and it was a pleasure to meet Clay Fisher in person and hear his
fine talk. The whole evening was a lovely tribute to the veterans.
The next night eight members of Torpedo Squadron 8 and their families had a
reunion dinner at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, and we had a wonderful
time. Due to unforeseen circumstances, our our scheduled speaker
didn't show up. In the meeting room next door, Navy officers were having
their annual dinner to commemorate the Battle of Midway, and when they heard
that there were Torpedo 8 veterans next door, they invited them to
come in and be introduced. Of course the veterans obliged, and they
received a long standing ovation. Then the officer in charge of the
program handed the microphone to the first one and asked each man to
speak. It was very moving as each man spoke a few words. Most
talked of what they did during the BOM. The youngest had been 17; the
oldest 27. Some spoke of their Navy or civilian careers.
Others told where they were from and where they lived now. You could
have heard a pin drop in that room, as the Navy officers were mesmerized
by what the veterans had to say. It was very emotional, and I wasn't the
only person who was touched by it.
After the men talked, the officers gave them another long standing ovation, and
it was clear that this was a group who sincerely appreciated all that these
veterans had given. They also toasted them.
The Navy officer in charge asked if he could talk to our group, which he did,
and he gave an excellent short speech about how the accomplishments of the
veterans are an inspiration to the officers of today. If ever there were
a group to make veterans feel worthy, it was this bunch! I was so
thankful to be able to witness it.
Some of the men later said it was one of the best weekend of their lives, and I
can certainly understand why they would feel that way. I hope the
tributes to our veterans never stop.
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Nancy is the niece of VT-8 pilot ENS Grant Teats. She sent a photo of
the veterans assembled for the reunion, and I've added it to the 63rd
anniversary page on our Image Board, Link #3. For a faster look, here's
the direct URL:
http://www.midway42.org/temp/2005-2-sdgo-vt8vets.jpg
From left to right in the picture: Lee Marona, Bill Tunstall, Ed
McKenna, Ervin Wendt, George Bernstein (Roundtable member), Frank Balsley,
Chester Zieneski, Eddy Velasquez.
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11 June 2005
From: Hugh
Ambrose ambrose@ddaymuseum.org
Heading into San Diego
last week for the 63rd Anniversary of the Battle of Midway, I could
tell that it was going to be great even before I got there. Driving along Harbor Boulevard, I could see
the USS Midway from miles away. Her berth is on the doorstep of the downtown
area. Seeing her grand lines set
against the city skyline like that surprised me. It is unusual to see such a Man o’ War parked next to
skyscrapers. But CV-41 is more than a
match for the office buildings.
The ceremony began in
the evening of June 3rd, a clear and pleasant day. More than a thousand people attended and the Navy did a fine job
of decorating and catering and so forth.
The stars of the evening were the veterans. Among them were a number of VT-8 veterans who were having a
reunion. Standing there on the flight
deck with them was a great experience.
Several of them told me that it brought back a lot of memories for them:
the concentration, the fear, the effort.
As they surveyed the planes scattered about—planes that came into
service long after WWII and whose careers ended long ago—the overwhelming
sensation was of time. It was all such
a long time ago. So much has happened
since then. But then, with a slow shake
of the head and a quick grin, these old pilots would say that their experiences
on the flight deck are treasured memories.
They feel lucky to have been a part of it.
Asked to deliver the
key note speech in 15 minutes or less, I tried to find something
appropriate. Many in the audience knew
little of the battle, while the veterans knew it much better than me. In fact, that’s how I began my talk—with an
admission that trying to describe the Battle of Midway to a group of guys who
fought it was a tough assignment and maybe they could cut me some slack. That brought a smile. All in all, it was a great night.
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I've also added Hugh's speech aboard USS Midway to our Image
Board, Link #3, 63rd Anniversary page. Here's the direct URL:
http://www.midway42.org/temp/2005-2-ambrose-speech.htm
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4
June 2005
From:
Grace Ingersoll grace@eskimo.com
This is my saddest time of the year. June 4th is the day I lost my father
and my family, too. The fact that this date is immediately preceded
by Memorial Day and followed closely by Fathers Day just adds to the pressure.
Also, so many widows were forever changed when they got the awful news
about the loss of their husbands.
That was certainly the case in my family. You may remember that my
dad, LT Royal Rodney Ingersoll, II, USN was stationed on the superstructure
(aft) of the USS Hornet (CV8) and was one of the 5 men
who were killed instantly when Dan Sheedy's shot-up plane made a hard landing
on the Hornet during the Battle of Midway. The plane's machine
guns fired a spray of bullets. Dan, who had taken off from the Yorktown,
was sure he had turned off all the things he was supposed to have turned
off, including the guns, before landing. He was also wounded and was
raving when they got him out of his plane. He told me what it had been
like to fly squares over an empty ocean trying to find any signs of a place he
could land before his fuel gave out. He also said that it was 5 days
after he landed before he found out that there had been 5 deaths.
I
am forever grateful to Bernie Cotton for telling me his eye witness account of
my dad's death. Bless you, Bernie. And also to Fred Branyan for
hours and hours of help trying to research various questions related to this
incident. Fred's father was serving on the Hornet at the
time my dad died. Many of my AWON (American WWII Orphans Network) friends
have had the same experience that I did, that no one in the family would talk
to me about my father's death--it was as if there was a cone of silence over
the whole subject. It was some years later before I finally realized that
my father had actually died and was not coming home ever.
A
retired army officer who belongs to the AWON did some research and surprised me
by telling me that all four of the other men killed on board the Hornet
that day in June have been awarded Purple Hearts. One thing I would like
to do before I die is follow through on seeing whether I can get that
recognition for my dad, too. So many projects, so little time and energy
to do them.
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Four of the men killed in the Sheedy incident received purple hearts, but
the fifth, LT Ingersoll, did not? Is that true? Does anyone have
records or archival data to explain that?
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Ed. note: Ron Graetz commented to me that the Japanese initially
claimed that they'd sunk the USS Enterprise during the Pearl Harbor
attack. I hadn't heard about that before so I asked him for more
details. Here is his report. Is anyone else aware of such Japanese
claims?
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30
May 2005
From:
Ron Graetz RNSGR8S@peoplepc.com
(BOM vet, R/G, VT-6, USS Enterprise)
We
were told the Japs had maps showing where each ship was moored. Since the
"E" was not in port, our mooring spot was occupied by an
old battle-wagon (I believe the Utah) which had wood decks over the
gun turrets. We would do high-altitude bombing practice on it, with
water-filled bombs.
It
rolled over on one side and sank and the Japs announced they had sunk the Enterprise.
My wife (then my fiance) and my family heard it announced on
the radio back in western Iowa. They spent a couple of
days wondering if I was dead or alive.
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"Casualties of the BOM" (see issues 5-20, 5-21)
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31
May 2005
From:
Robert Cressman
Re Walt Grist's message in Forum 5-21 concerning the names
of the Midway casualties, they're in the photo caption on p.165 of A
Glorious Page in Our History: Manning of VT-8 (Earnest's turret
gunner), the two Army casualties were 2ndLT J.D. Nave and MSGT F.
Peoples; the marines were MAJ Benson, CPL Frank L. Dupes, PVTs Maurice A.
Belanger, William A. Burke, Robert L. Holsbro, Robert E. Mowrey, Reed
(VMSB-241), and Abraham Zuckerman. I have copies of the muster
rolls so that I could sort out where the USMC casualties came from.
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Bob Cressman was the lead author of "A Glorious Page In Our
History." And for those who are counting KIA statistics on Midway
atoll itself, it should be noted that VT-8 TBF gunner Manning died in his plane
during the torpedo attack, and was DOA upon returning to Midway.
Consequently, it would seem that there was a total of ten KIA on the atoll
during the Japanese air attack. One or two others who were wounded
apparently died of their wounds after being transported off Midway.
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31
May 2005
From:
Johan Lupander pandionutv@tele2.se
(Sweden)
I understand that even if an SBD doing a dive bombing run assumed a
perpendicular attitude (i.e., the lengthwise axis pointing straight down, 90
degrees) the lift vector resulted in that the actual track of the plane was
something like 70 degrees to the vertical.
If this is correct, the offset between the plane's attitude and its actual
direction of movement should have complicated bomb aiming quite a bit, given
that aiming was done using a fairly narrow-view sight pointing along the
plane's longitudinal axis.
What is the opinion of the Roundtable's SBD pilots?
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1
June 2005
From:
Clay Fisher cfisher3@san.rr.com
(BOM vet, SBD pilot, VB-8, USS Hornet)
I sketched out a diagram of a dive bomber in a vertical position and following
a 70 degree track (path) and assuming the pilot released his bomb at 1,500/2000
feet. The bomb would be released and
would drop almost straight down due to air resistance.
Our
standard dive usually started from 10,000 to 14,000 feet. We rolled out
of our formation in either a nose down right or left turn to start the dive and
at the same time we opened our split dive flaps (dive brakes). We wanted to be able to steep the dive to
where we were in a vertical aircraft position to the water or ground
surface. The track (path) of the
aircraft was about 70 degrees. You knew
when you were in a vertical position when your butt was not pushing against you
seat nor were you hanging against the safety belt.
You
had to correct the lead for wind factors and the target’s speed, and
probably equally important was trying to keep the aircraft from skidding
laterally. We used our left hand to
adjust the rudder trim tab, a small wheel.
There was a ball in the “needle/ ball” indicator instrument. If you were skidding, the ball would be off
center either right or left.
The
SBD dive bomber was a tough old bird structurally and we could do hard snap
pull outs at 1,500 and still recover safely.
We completely blacked out on a snap pull out, but you also recovered
your vision more rapidly. The SBD did
not have shoulder straps in 1942 and during a hard pull out I always tried to
get my head down near my thighs so I would not black out as much.
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1
June 2005
From:
Lew Hopkins lhopkins@satx.rr.com
(BOM vet, SBD pilot, VB-6, USS Enterprise)
I
have the following comments about the mechanics and the procedures involved in
the diving and the aiming. First off, a perpendicular dive is one I have
never experienced. Normally you are in a 60-70 degree mode and believe
me, even at those angles, you think you are going vertical.
The SBD was a phenomenally stable aircraft in a dive—it does not yaw, it does
not porpoise, it does not wobble, it just goes directly on the selected dive
path. It responds promptly to any adjustments. (For those pilots who flew
both the SBD and it's successor the SB2C, the SBD was far superior as a dive
bomber; in fact some squadrons resisted in transitioning to the SB2C).
I mentioned diving at a 60-70 degree angle. In a combat situation, and
with a large number of planes diving on a given target, the point of entry
varies from the first plane to dive to the last plane. This is further
complicated if the target is moving, and the winds vary at different altitudes.
So the attainment of a perfect dive angle is not an easy one and the pilot has
to exercise a considerable amount of judgment to make the corrections
necessitated by the entry point and the target movement. Thus it is a
tribute to the dive bomber pilots at Midway in that they were able to accommodate
to those variables and get a reasonable number of hits.
By way of comparison, when I was training pilots in dive bombing, and diving on
a fixed target, with known winds, I was able to achieve a 50 foot CEP (circular
error probable), a performance not in any way attainable under the combat
conditions described above.
I turn now to the subject of aiming. In the SBDs at Midway we were
equipped with a tubular gun sight aligned longitudinally with the plane's axis,
and containing clearly defined cross hairs. If the plane is perfectly
stabilized (no yaw, no pitch), the bomb upon release will follow the flight
path as established by the plane. If at the time of release there is any
yaw or pitch, the bomb will not go as aimed. In the case of a moving target
such as a ship the pilot must take into consideration that in the seconds
between release and the bomb hitting, the ship will have moved somewhat. In the
case of a carrier the aim point would be on the extreme bow edge, thus the bomb
would theoretically hit the deck somewhere near amid ships.
After the above discussion, one needs to be reminded that in 1942 the
technology involved in dive bombing resided in the pilot's mind. There
were NO inertial instruments, NO global positioning devices, NO relative motion
indicators, and NO guidance systems in the bombs!
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................................................. NOW
HEAR THIS! ..................................................
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NEWS
& INFO IN THIS ISSUE
--The
BOM by David Lippman
--Who
Attacked the Akagi?
--What's
Wrong With This Picture?
--TV
This Week
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THE BOM BY DAVID LIPPMAN
Ed Fox brought my attention to the work of noted author David H. Lippman.
Lippman has created a chronological narrative of all aspects of WWII that may
be one of the most comprehensive and best written that you're likely to
find. You can read it on the Internet at.....
http://www.usswashington.com/dl_index.htm
To read the BOM segment, scroll down to 1942 and click the "24-26
May" link. Each page includes incidents from all theaters of the war
in a specific time frame, so the BOM items on this page are few. But as
you proceed through subsequent pages (click "next" at the bottom of
each page), the BOM becomes more prevalent, until you reach 4 June 1942, which
takes up four pages itself, nearly all on the BOM.
As I said, the writing here is excellent, with much colorful insight on the
events and personalities of the war. His BOM narrative does contain a few
of the usual errors, but that arises from his reliance on the familiar
references by Morison and Lord.
But Lippman's work is not just a rewrite of familiar references. His day
by day, hour by hour narrative of the war makes for very compelling reading,
the likes of which I haven't seen elsewhere with such quality. If this
were a book instead of an on-line resource, I'd call it one of those "you
can't put it down" books. As it is, I have a hard time resisting the
urge to click "next" at the bottom of each page.
I've added a link to Lippman's narrative at the bottom of our web
site's home page.
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WHO ATTACKED THE AKAGI?
The Robert Horton "Battle of Midway" production on the Discovery
Channel (see issue 5-21) reminded me of a confusion factor concerning VB-6 at
the BOM. There seems to be two versions of how many pilots followed Dick
Best in his dive upon the Akagi. My favorite BOM reference, A
Glorious Page In Our History indicates that only two did so: LTjg
Kroeger and ENS Weber (see p. 102). But elsewhere we find reports that
Best's entire section of 5 planes attacked Akagi.
One of those was Wilbur Roberts, flying as number four in Best's section.
In the Discovery Channel video, Roberts states that he saw Best's bomb hit--not
very likely if he dove on Kaga, as indicated in A Glorious Page.
But Roberts' memory may have been less than perfect, for in the same video he
states that only two TBDs survived on the morning of June 4th--as an Enterprise
vet, he should have known that five of them made it back to the ship
(one was jettisoned due to extensive damage).
The VB-6 after-action report vaguely suggests that Best's division did indeed
split up at some point. LT Penland (who authored the report) states
that "the first section of the first division [Best's] joined up
immediately after pull-out from the dive." I'm guessing that the
"first section" was Best, Kroeger, and Weber, and that the
"second section," upon which Penland doesn't elaborate, was Roberts
and ENS Halsey--who either did or didn't hold their dives on Kaga after
Best shifted toward Akagi.
But then Roberts says he saw Best's bomb hit Akagi, and he was there,
not me, so I have to respect that. Still, the question remains: was
Akagi attacked by just three SBDs of Best's section, or all
five? Anyone care to sort this out for us?
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WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
I caught a couple photos of a very interesting T-A4 Skyhawk on the flight
deck of the USS Hornet (CV-12) during a recent visit to Alameda.
Now who besides me thinks the markings and paint scheme on this bird are
just a little bit odd? Pat Doyle, did you ever chase one of these
in your F-14? Or get chased?
(Click these URLs for two views of the Skyhawk:)
http://www.midway42.org/temp/ta4-1.jpg
http://www.midway42.org/temp/ta4-2.jpg
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TV THIS WEEK
Here's a snappy salute to Roundtable member Greg Gaynier (nephew of VT-8
TBF pilot Oswald Gaynier at the BOM) for volunteering to be
our TV broadcast forecaster and reporter (see issues 5-15 and 5-22).
Here is Greg's first report of programs or movies that should be of interest to
our members during the upcoming week (June 6 - 12, Monday to
Sunday). All times shown are Eastern, so check your local guide for the
time in your area:
Networks:
HC = History Channel, TCM = Turner Classic Movies
Tuesday, 14 June
6:00 AM (HC): History Channel
Classroom--Japan Under American Occupation
Thursday, 16 June
8:00 PM (HC): Wake Island, Alamo of the Pacific (excellent
documentary; set your VCR)
10:00 PM (HC): Modern Marvels: Secret Japanese Aircraft of
World War II
11:00 PM
(HC): Inside the Great Battles: Iwo Jima
Friday, 17 June
6:00 AM (HC): History Channel Classroom--Hiroshima; the Decision to
Drop the Bomb
9:00 AM (TCM): Ace of Aces (1933). WWI aviation classic
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For a glossary of abbreviations, acronyms, and terms
used in The Roundtable Forum, click the following URL or go to our home page
and click "The Roundtable Glossary" link.
http://www.midway42.org/glossary.htm
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