The Roundtable
Forum
Official Newsletter of the Battle of Midway Roundtable
27 January 2011
Issue Number: 2011-03
Our 14th Year
~ IN THIS ISSUE ~
1. Member Survey: the BOM’s Most Memorable Scene
2. VB-3 and VT-8 War Diaries
3. Jimmy Thach at Midway
4. Salute to All BOM Vets
5. Editor’s Notes
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MEMBER SURVEY: THE
BOM’S MOST MEMORABLE SCENE
( See issues 2010-38, 2011-01, 2011-02 )
18 January 2011
From: Bryan Crisman, BOM vet, Disbursing Officer, USS Yorktown
(CV-5)
Tennessee
My most memorable
"event" of the Battle of Midway is not a scene but the
"arrogance" or "lack-of-humility" or
"over-confidence" that the Japanese displayed before the battle
even started. Maintaining the same
air cover with the Main Force and other units, the Japanese could have had
SEVEN aircraft carriers at their disposal to combat our small group of three,
although the the USS Hornet (CV-8) wasn’t really prepared for combat
since the entire crew was relatively new on this newest aircraft carrier.
Providing the ineffective diversion to Alaska was omitted, the small carrier assigned to that task force could have joined the Nagumo force. Also, the two carriers diverted to Coral Sea were supposed to be available for the Midway battle. Perhaps, any one or more of these three ships may have been more than our meager ill-trained and ill-equipped forces would have been able to defeat the Japanese.
Also, other factors played
against the Japanese, Their submarines arrived at their station too late;
their seaplane refueling plan was thwarted, the aircraft that found Task
Force 17 was delayed in departing because of mechanical troubles; then, there
were radio transmission problems that required a personal delivery of the
message regarding the presence of a U.S. carrier; the breaking of their
code, and on and on it goes with weather and a faulty battle plan laced with
arrogance or too much self-confidence.
Who is qualified to say
that Divine Intervention was not involved? I remember that
most of us thought we were on a suicide mission and would be lucky if we
survived. This was designed to be an "all-out" battle by the
Japanese to gain full control of the Pacific, and an "all-out" battle
by the U.S. to arrest the advances of the Japanese toward Midway and/or the
other Hawaiian Islands. From the perspective of either side, this
battle was designed to be a "make or break" engagement and
that's the way it turned out.
To even plan a major aggressive
move in the Coral Sea in less than a month before the major proposed Midway
battle and delute its forces by the Aleutian campaign illustrated arrogance or
too much self-confidence by the Japanese, and good fortune for the meager U.S.
forces.
Anyway, that's my image of the
Battle of Midway.
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16 January 2011
From: Ronald Graetz, BOM vet,
radioman-gunner, VT-6, USS Enterprise (CV-6)
California
I should have written this last week, but felt that the "most
memorable scene" was too personal.
I guess you should hear it.
I joined Torpedo Squadron Six in August of 1941. I was
immediately assigned to fly with Ensign Rombach, our squadron communications
officer. My first flight in an airplane was in TBD number 6-T-9 with
Ensign Rombach, off the deck of the Enterprise.
Up until April of 1942 I had never ridden with any other pilot.
Then, that April day, Mr. Rombach came to me and told me he was going to send
me to a two week aerial gunnery school at NAS Kaneohe. I tried to talk him out of it and cited our
great squadron training program. When I kept resisting, he told me that
the Enterprise had orders to go to the Coral Sea to help the Lexington. He said, "some of us may not come
back" and I could not change his mind. He took a very close friend
of mine, Wilburn Glenn, to fly "back seat" with him.
As it turned out, the Enterprise did not get to the Coral Sea
early enough to get into action and turned around and returned to Pearl
Harbor. But, the crew assignment never changed back, and Glenn was still
Ensign Rombach’s rear seat man at the Battle of Midway.
Due to a shortage of planes, we had been rotating duty days, and on 4
June my pilot and I were not assigned to fly. My "most memorable
scene" was standing on the edge of the flight deck and
watching Ensign Rombach’s plane rumble up the deck for takeoff, and
Glenn already had the twin-30 guns out and ready and was facing aft. All
the way up the deck, Glenn alternated two signals, first the “thumbs up” with
both hands and then both hands over his head, in a double fist, like a boxer
does, and he kept that up until the plane left the deck.
They never returned. I have
never forgotten the sight of Glenn doing those signs for us.
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VB-3
AND VT-8 WAR DIARIES
Rich Leonard has sent us copies of the official war diaries
of Bombing Squadron 3 (VB-3) and Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8), for the periods
immediately before, during, and after the BOM.
They make for interesting reading if you want to focus on the sometimes
mundane day-to-day activities of the squadrons. The section of the VB-3 diary covering the BOM is highly detailed,
and has been posted on our web site for quite a while. (See “After Action Reports” on our home
page.)
The VT-8 diary covers the entire months of May and June
1942. After June 4th, the diary mainly
deals with the TBF detachment under LT Larsen, which is understandable given
the squadron’s fate that day. The
flight of the squadron’s TBDs and TBFs on the 4th is only described in one
brief paragraph.
These files are very large, about 25 mB for the entire set,
so they won’t appear on our web site.
However, they are available to any member by request, either via e-mail
attachments or on a CD in postal mail.
The latter is recommended for anyone restricted to a dialup Internet
connection—for others, the files can be sent in a series of e-mail messages.
The files are in .pdf format, which can be read with the
Adobe Reader, Adobe Acrobat, and other .pdf readers. They include the BOM after-action report by TBF pilot Bert Earnest,
and the report of “radio chatter” heard from VT-8 by VB-8 Aviation Radioman
Leroy Quillen. The latter is also found
in Captain Mitcher’s official USS Hornet after-action report of the
battle.
To request the files by either method, click
here or draft a message to midway.rt@gmail.com. If you want the files on a CD in postal mail, be sure to say so
and you’ll receive ordering information.
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JIMMIE THACH AT MIDWAY
CDR Pat Doyle, USNR, in Arizona
has sent us a link to an on-line U.S. Naval Institute article authored by VF-3
skipper John “Jimmie” Thach. The
article is adapted from Thach’s oral history on file at the USNI, and is his
personal account of the flight of the six VF-3/VF-42 escort aircraft that
engaged the Japanese CAP on 4 June 1942.
His insight and reflections about the battle make for very interesting
reading. To see it, click
here.
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SALUTE TO ALL BOM VETS
17 January 2011
From: Jeffrey
Crosby
New Jersey
To all veterans of the BOM: I
am probably one of the newest members of the Roundtable. My first knowledge of this
battle was a chance reading of Incredible Victory in my junior year
of high school in 1974. I am somewhat
ashamed to say that my history classes barely covered any of the naval or air
battles in WW2. Until my reading of Incredible
Victory I barely knew what an aircraft carrier was. After that I have continued to this date to
read and study about each of the theaters of the war.
I wanted to thank each and every one of you for your unselfish
sacrifices that you made way back then.
I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like for you to drop
everything that you were doing and enlist in the military, not knowing where
you were going to end up and what you were going to do once you got there. Who knows what my world would have turned
out like had you not done this.
I was fortunate enough to meet some of the surviving members of the
Doolittle raiders, and it was an honor to shake their hands. Since I will probably never have an
opportunity to meet any of you, I just wanted to say thanks again for your time
and service to our country. God bless
all of you.
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EDITOR’S NOTES
~ If you have the Military History Channel
available with your TV service, there are two upcoming broadcasts worthy of
mention. The first is the Battle of the
Santa Cruz Islands episode from the “Battle 360: USS Enterprise”
series. It was at Santa Cruz, four
months after the BOM, that the Hornet was lost and the Enterprise nearly
lost. It’s on the MHC at 4:30 AM and
again at 10:30 AM on Friday, January 28th.
~ The other MHC offering is “Kaigun: the
Imperial Japanese Navy.” This is an
excellent documentary covering the history of the IJN plus the postwar
development of the Japanese MSDF (navy).
The times are 5:20 AM and 11:20 PM on Saturday, Jan. 29th, and 5:20 AM
and 11:20 AM on Sunday, Jan. 30th. The
times might be different in your area—check your local guide.
~ John Greaves in Canada sends a link for a
collage of modern USN aircraft done up in historic markings and paint schemes
as part of the celebration of the 100th year of U.S. naval aviation. The S-3B Viking with authentic BOM colors
featured in issue 2010-36 is included.
There are many very interesting photos, especially the planes painted in
those bright 1930s hues. Click here to see them
all.
~ There’s a copy of George Gay’s Sole
Survivor, autographed by Gay, currently available on eBay. The bidding closes at 9:12 PM EST on
Saturday, January 29th. If interested, click
here.
~ Although its subject is outside of our usual
focus on the Roundtable, James Hornfischer’s The Last Stand of the Tin Can
Sailors (Bantam, 2004) has been among our members’ favorite recently
published Pacific War books. Tin Can
Sailors is the heroic story of the Navy’s desperate fight off Samar, with
CVEs, DDs, and DEs going up against the IJN’s heavy battle line centered on the
Yamato. The author has a new
offering now available, and it hits a little closer to home for us: Neptune’s
Inferno: the U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal (Bantam, 2011). While the Guadalcanal and Solomons
stories are well known, this book’s focus is strictly on the naval battles and
especially the naval personnel of both sides.
Reader reviews for the Roundtable will be welcome.
~ Coincidentally, James Hornfischer also has a
new on-line article on the subject of Samuel Eliot Morison, author of the
quintessential History of United States Naval Operations in World War
II. If you only knew of Morison as
the author of the 15-volume work, the article will give you some interesting
insight as to his experiences that led him to create it. It’s three pages on the Smithsonian web
site, and you can read
it here.
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.