The Roundtable
Forum
Official Newsletter of the Battle of Midway Roundtable
17 January 2011
Issue Number: 2011-02
Our 14th Year
~ IN THIS ISSUE ~
1. Member Survey: the BOM’s Most Memorable Scene
2. What Did George Gay See?
3. The Third Man in the TBD
4. Editor’s Notes
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MEMBER
SURVEY: THE BOM’S MOST MEMORABLE SCENE
( See
issues 2010-38, 2011-01 )
As mentioned in the last issue, the
votes for the BOM’s most memorable scene came with a number of worthy comments
from our members. Here’s a sampling:
“...Commander
Joe Rochefort rushing to his meeting with Admiral Nimitz, carrying details of
the Yamamoto intercept revealing June 4 as the target date.” —Roundtable founder Bill Price, Virginia
“Memorable might not be the best
description of it, but VT8’s empty ready room has to rate at the top.” —Bob Bryson, Georgia
“...the few
moments after the last of the torpedo bombers were shot down, where all hope of
stopping the Japanese juggernaught looked hopeless, and the SBDs appearing
overhead and going into their dives, seconds before unleashing their bombs and
turning defeat into victory.” —Pete
Shumbo, Connecticut
“...the classic photo
of the Hiryu, the front of her flight deck burned away, one of her
elevators thrown up against the bridge. Nothing I've ever seen from the
BOM shows the savagery of the combat quite like that. —Eric Carra, Illinois
“It may not be possible, nor even desirable, to distill an event of the
magnitude and impact of the BOM into one scene. This effect is magnified for those of us born well after the
fact, who have no contemporary memory of it, but whose perceptions have been
shaded by early accounts and legends in print and on film. The Roundtable has been invaluable in
helping sort legend from fact. Even so, the first scene that came to mind was
that of a Dauntless pilot whose luck ran out.
Flak wounds him and damages his aircraft on the third sortie, on the
second day of the battle, after the outcome had been decided. The surviving bombers are sent out after a
damaged cruiser, at most a secondary target.
Unable to pull his damaged SBD out of the dive, the pilot crashes
fatally into the liquid wall at 240 knots.
The aircraft is bent and mangled, and floats for a brief instant before
being swallowed by the sea. It is among
the scenes that has haunted me for some time, but it took a moment to recall
its source—it was the death of Lt. Warren Henry, a fictional character from the
television mini-series based on Herman Wouk’s novel War and Remembrance.” —Scott Kair, Illinois
“...Dick Best's dive on Akagi...First,
the attack was in formation instead of single aircraft. Second, the
attack was off the port beam instead of down the deck. Third, the attack
was not the standard vertical dive, but some shallower angle. This attack
illustrates the fog of war and the ability of our pilots to improvise rather
than blindly follow doctrine.” —Scott
Smith, Washington (state)
“As the flames and smoke rise from the [Akagi], all those Japanese
officers involved in the execution of the Pearl Harbor attack are seeing their
dreams of victory and glory go up in smoke. No more fitting scene could
depict the shattering effect the attack on the carriers had on the Imperial
Japanese Navy.” —Don Boyer, Hawaii
“...McClusky's squadrons sighting and
attacking the Japanese fleet...I leave it to better students of the battle to
game out how it would have developed had McClusky not spotted the Japanese, but
had come home empty-handed. The
histories lead me to the view that those Dauntless actions comprised a
threshold event. Before those
actions, the battle might not have been won.
After them, it probably could not have been lost.” —Bill Shields, Arizona
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WHAT DID GEORGE GAY SEE?
This has been one of the Roundtable’s favorite topics
almost from Day One. At issue is
whether VT-8 survivor Ensign George Gay could have literally seen everything
that he claimed during his 1943 Navy Department interview and in his 1979
book. The subject was given thorough
treatment in No Right to Win, pages 198-204, as well as in a subsequent
extensive analysis authored by Jon Parshall and posted on our web site ( click here ).
While the matter seemed to be laid to rest at that point,
it was still left with one or two arguable elements, and Roundtable member CDR
David B. Gillis, MC, USNR-Retired has offered some interesting data that might
merit further review of the subject.
Dr. Gillis, a practicing physician in Texas, brings a respectable
background to the discussion, having served in three campaigns, from Vietnam to
Gulf War II, as the flight surgeon for Marine helicopter squadrons. He is also a licensed private pilot.
Previous analyses, cited above, as to whether George Gay
could have actually seen multiple Japanese carriers burning and sinking were
centered on his limited visibility while floating in or on the sea after being
shot down. During the daylight hours on
June 4th, he remained in the water with his head not more than about one foot
above the surface. With the cover of
darkness, he inflated his raft and got in, raising his visual elevation to
perhaps three feet. It’s those minimal
elevations from the ocean’s surface that suggest Gay’s view to the horizon
could have extended not more than a few miles, far short of what he’d need to
see everything he claimed.
Dr. Gillis points out that such a conclusion requires the
sea to be perfectly flat the entire time Gay is in water, not cresting and
falling on swells that average six feet or more. He also makes note of various reports of flames and smoke rising
high in the sky above the burning carriers, as well as the smoke column above Midway’s
bombed fuel tanks. Thus, to be aware
that the enemy ships were burning, Gay would only need to be able to see the
rising smoke in daytime or the glow of flames at night, either of which would
obviously rise far above his theoretical horizon.
In No Right to Win, the distances between the final
positions of Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu were calculated as 12 to 39
nautical miles from each other. Thus,
if Gay had been perfectly positioned among them, his distance to the farthest
of the three would have been something like 20 to 25 miles. With the new considerations offered by Dr.
Gillis, would that have enabled Gay to see all three ships on fire and
eventually sink?
Dr. Gillis plotted a new visibility chart for Gay from the
given information in No Right to Win plus his new postulations concerning
ocean swells and the height of rising flame and smoke, and it is presented
below. His conclusion is that, at least
during the momentary crests of swells, Gay’s view to both the horizon and
especially to any fire and smoke rising high above it would have been well
beyond what was previously credited to him and well beyond that necessary to at
least glimpse telling evidence of all three burning carriers.
Your comments on Dr. Gillis’ theory and especially on his
submitted data points will be welcome.
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Line
of Sight Calculator Results - Distances in Feet |
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David B. Gillis, 01 Dec 2010 |
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http://www.calculatoredge.com/electronics/lineofsight.htm |
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Ensign
Gay Eye Height, Ft. |
Burning
Carrier Flame/Smoke |
Eye
Horizon, Miles |
Carrier
Flame/Smoke Horizon, Miles |
Total
Line of Sight, Miles |
State |
|
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
p 201, No
Right to Win, |
|
1 |
88 |
1 |
13 |
14 |
Carrier
Height, |
|
1 |
100 |
1 |
14 |
15 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
1 |
200 |
1 |
20 |
21 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
1 |
300 |
1 |
24 |
25 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
1 |
400 |
1 |
28 |
29 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
1 |
500 |
1 |
32 |
33 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
1 |
1000 |
1 |
45 |
46 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
7 |
500 |
4 |
32 |
36 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
7 |
1000 |
4 |
45 |
49 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
3 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
p. 201, No
Right To Win, |
|
3 |
88 |
2 |
13 |
15 |
Carrier
Height, |
|
3 |
100 |
2 |
14 |
16 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
3 |
200 |
2 |
20 |
22 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
3 |
300 |
2 |
24 |
26 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
3 |
400 |
2 |
28 |
30 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
3 |
500 |
2 |
32 |
34 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
3 |
1000 |
2 |
45 |
47 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
9 |
500 |
4 |
32 |
36 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
|
9 |
1000 |
4 |
45 |
49 |
Flame/Smoke
Height, |
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THE THIRD MAN IN THE
TBD
Here’s a question that crops up frequently among our newer
members. Sharp-eyed readers of the
various BOM histories, like new member CDR William Eldard (USN-Retired) in
Virginia have noted that the TBD Devastator was a three-place aircraft, yet all
accounts of the BOM mention only one aircrewman accompanying the pilot into
battle. What was the third seat for,
and why was it empty at Midway?
The answer is that the TBD was designed as a multi-mission
aircraft, capable of attacking with torpedoes, bombs, or depth charges. The latter two were dropped by the
aircraft’s bombardier, who was the “third” aircrewman aboard. (Number two was the radioman-gunner). Torpedoes were released by the pilot, making
the bombardier unnecessary when the plane was torpedo-armed. Thus the TBD squadrons at Midway launched
into history with an empty seat in each aircraft, and the bombardiers who
stayed behind had reason to be extremely thankful.
New members need feel no embarrassment at not figuring that
out for themselves, since it even escaped some of the men then aboard the
carriers at Midway. One of stay-behind
bombardiers was future Roundtable member and VT-8 vet Francis “FX” Cotton,
who astounded his very worried brother, Hornet sailor Bernie Cotton by
showing up alive in the squadron’s armory after the TBDs were long
overdue. “I could have shot him,” said
Bernie upon relating the tale years later.
That may have been one of the more ironic quotes from a BOM vet ever
recorded on the Roundtable.
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EDITOR’S NOTES
~ Regarding the USS Hornet deck log
featured in the last issue: the original file was laid out in landscape format
(on its left side), making it necessary to manually re-orient the image in
order to read it. Rich Leonard doctored
the file for us so that it shows up in the proper format when first
opened. Click here to check it
out, or use the link on our home page.
It’s a 6-page document, so you can use the blue up and down arrows (in
Adobe Reader) to change the page.
~ Birthday greetings to another very senior
BOM vet on our roster, VB-6 gunner Edward Anderson, who gets to blow out 94
candles on his cake later this month.
Many of you will remember Ed from the “Battle 360” television miniseries
about USS Enterprise (CV-6). He
was featured as having been in the rear seat of Lou Hopkins’ SBD on the morning
of 4 June 1942, and equally responsible as Lou for getting the plane safely
back aboard the ship.
~ I want to acknowledge with thanks those many
members who participated in our second “Most Memorable Scene” survey. As I said in the last issue, it was
interesting to see responses that were both consistent with as well as
differing from those of the first survey in 2004. But for what it might be worth, my personal favorite among them
all remains that of Ted Kraver in Arizona, who offered this for the first
survey: “My visualization of the Battle of Midway
is five carriers, a cruiser, a destroyer, and over a hundred aircraft resting
on the bottom of the Pacific 12,000 feet down: a littered battlefield,
undisturbed by time or man.” I
don’t think it can be said any better than that.
YOUR COMMENTS ARE INVITED
Members are always welcome to submit comments or inquiries for
publication in the Roundtable Forum.
Well-crafted essays or expanded articles on Midway-related subjects
are especially invited, including book or media reviews, photos, documents, web
links, etc. For guidance with anything
you might like to submit, please view our FAQs.