The Roundtable
Forum
Official
Newsletter of the Battle of Midway
Roundtable
13 May 2011
Issue
Number: 2011-11
Our 14th Year
~
AROUND THE TABLE ~
MEMBERS’
TOPICS IN THIS ISSUE:
1. Why Didn’t Nagumo “Get It?”
2. TBD Combat Radius at Coral Sea and Midway
3. Carrier in Life Magazine Photos
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1. WHY DIDN’T NAGUMO “GET IT?” ( see issues #9 and 10 )
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27 April 2011
From: CAPT Charles M. deGruy, USN-Ret
California
Regarding the latest issue, I agree with Lu Yu that
most of the “blunders” we criticize are in hindsight from Monday morning
quarterbacks. Sometimes the tone in
some of the BOMRT comments becomes too critical of the actual players on both
sides. I have a fair amount of
experience in naval aviation during 38 years in the United States Navy,
including commands at sea, but I try not to second-guess someone who was there,
on-scene, in the heat of battle. We
should always keep in mind the quote of President Theodore Roosevelt:
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man
who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of
deeds could have done better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by
dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short
again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but
who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a
worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high
achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring
greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who
knew neither victory nor defeat."
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25 April 2011
From: Stephen D. Regan
Iowa
author, In Bitter Tempest: the Biography of Admiral Frank Jack
Fletcher
Yu Lu, a fellow Iowan, is correct that Nagumo made several mistakes;
but before we totally trash him, let's walk in his shoes for a bit. He was very conservative and a
traditionalist as seen by his sundry actions during the war. After Coral Sea, Halsey and Fletcher decided
to spit out significant false communications to act as a decoy of the real
fleet's actions. Nagumo had to think
about the fact that the carriers may well have been in the Coral Sea, and he
had to wonder whether the U.S. had the courage to try an offensive action
against the Japanese or were willing to defend Midway with their carriers.
This was early in the war and scouting reports on both sides were
fragmented, unclear, non-specific, and exaggerated, to say nothing of not
seeing anything at all. My perspective
is that everyone makes a ton a mistakes in battle from the highest admiral to
the lowest tar. Sometimes victory goes to the side that makes the fewest
mistakes; sometime victory is just plain luck. Occasionally victory goes to the
side that is superior in perfect planning and execution. I cannot remember a battle that fits that
concept.
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2. TBD COMBAT RADIUS AT CORAL SEA AND MIDWAY
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25 April 2011
From: Mark Horan
Connecticut
co-author, A
Glorious Page In Our History
In regards to Scott Kair's comments in issue #9, he
wrote:
"VT-8 began its attack beyond the point of having sufficient fuel
to return to Hornet."
This is a commonly held fallacy. As the tail end of Task Force 16's
aerial striking force, the 15 TBD-1s of VT-8 commenced their launch in the
neighborhood of 175 nm from Kido Butai. This is the exact same distance
at which VT-6's 14 TBD-1s were launched.
Note, this distance is considerably less than the 202 nm from which the 12
TBD-1s of VT-2 and the 9 TBD-1s of VT-5 were launched on 8 May in the Coral
Sea. On that day only one TBD failed to return safely to its
carrier. The one lost (from VT-2) ditched 20 miles from Task Force 17
from fuel exhaustion. However, that plane had an engine that was running
too rich, but the pilot opted to remain with the squadron on the mission.
Furthermore, both squadrons had fighter escorts, composed of much
shorter-legged F4F-3s, and all of those known to have fought their way clear of
the Japanese carriers with knowledge of where they were managed to get back as
well. Thus, this shows that the TBD-1 was easily capable of making a 405
nm round trip on a combat mission carrying a torpedo—and, in the case of VT-2,
it did it with a full three-man aircrew and a BAR in the center seat.
On 4 June 1942, five TBD-1s of VT-6 survived the maelstrom over Kido
Butai, One, with all tanks holed (I interviewed the aircrew),
force-landed at sea only 30 nm or so from Kido Butai. However, each of
the other four, without holed tanks, made it back to and landed safely on USS Enterprise
(CV-6). All three were in the air for over 5 hours. The last to land, T-11, logged 5.4 hours for
the mission.
Thus, if a 405 nm round trip was possible in the Coral Sea, and all four VT-6
survivors made the 350+ nm round trip (having made a decided detour to the
south of Kido Butai before attacking), there is no way VT-8 was flying the
mission without having sufficient fuel to return.
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3. CARRIER IN LIFE MAGAZINE PHOTOS ( see the Featured Link, issue #9 )
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17 April 2011
From: Robert Morgan
California
With the exception of
a few images like the burning Hellcat photo and the exploding bomb photo, the
Life CV in the
photos is Enterprise, pre- war.
The other photos are probably from early to mid-1941 judging by the
paint schemes on the planes, and by Enterprise's Measure 1 paint scheme;
note the paucity of anti-aircraft guns and radar which would have been
augmented even by early 1942. However,
a few are from 1942, like the hangar deck scene with the SBD in the
background. Again, aircraft markings
and colors are the key, and a few planes even have their side number with the
"6" showing.
The famous burning Hellcat photo also was taken aboard Enterprise, but
in 1944. The exploding bomb photo was
from Eastern Solomons. One image has Enterprise
in the Panama Canal with a North Carolina-class battleship in the background,
probably Washington, which would date that photo as during 1945 when the
two transited to the Atlantic together. I'm guessing that the Life
Magazine website folks noted that all of the photos were of CV-6 and just put
them all together without really dating them.
Life did a 1941 carrier story, and Enterprise was the featured
carrier, so the personnel photos probably date from then. Precisely when in 1941 they actually visited
the Big E and took the photos I don't know, but obviously after Admiral Halsey
transferred his flag to Enterprise from Yorktown when CV-5 was
sent to the Atlantic, so I'm guessing sometime in the fall of 1941.
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~ NOW
HEAR THIS! ~
NEWS
& INFO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Marine Corps Aerial Navigator at the BOM?
- Featured Link
- Editor’s Notes
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MARINE CORPS AERIAL
NAVIGATOR AT THE BOM?
In preparing chapter 15
in No Right to Win (“The Imposters”), I was compelled to deal with a
disagreeable subject: men claiming to be BOM vets who were never there. In each case I had to approach the issue
with extreme caution, for to expose someone as a fraudulent “veteran’ and turn
out to be wrong would have been an irreconcilable embarrassment.
Therefore, with that
precaution, I gently offer a few questions regarding a gentlemen said to be a
Marine BOM vet and who will be feted at the Navy’s official commemoration in
Washington on June 3rd. You can read all
about it here.
So here are my
questions:
(1) What aircraft was flying ammunition from
Hawaii to Midway in the midst of the “main battle?”
(2) What aircraft, such as the above, had a
Marine Corps sergeant as its navigator?
(3) What aircraft, such as the above, “actively
participated in the defeat of [the] Imperial Japanese navy” as stated in the
article?
As with the imposters
exposed in No Right to Win, I initiate this inquiry on the assumption
that the named individual is, in fact, a BOM vet but whoever is describing his
service there doesn’t have the facts right.
But at the opposite extreme, should this fellow turn out to be in the
same category as the three guys in the book, then something needs to be done
about it soon. The Navy’s official
ceremony begins at 9:00 AM on Friday, June 3rd, at the USN Memorial in
Washington, with the Chief of Naval Operations as the guest speaker.
Can anyone provide the
answers? —RR
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FEATURED LINK
We’ve all seen the photos of Bert Earnest’s bullet-riddled
TBF that crashed on Midway, and we know that Earnest and his radioman, Roundtable
member Harry Ferrier survived the ordeal while the plane’s gunner, Seaman 1/c
Jay D. Manning was killed during the attack over the enemy fleet. There are some familiar photos of Earnest
and Ferrier with their plane, but so far as I know, there have been no photos
of Manning among anyone’s BOM archives.
Now there are, and this may be may be another Roundtable
exclusive. John Greaves spotted this
on-line newspaper article, a photocopy of the 1942 announcement in Manning’s
home town paper concerning his loss (“Gold Star’) at Midway. The article covers several veterans; Manning
is the second from the top.
Click
here for the featured link..
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EDITOR’S NOTES
~ Here is CNO Admiral Gary Roughead’s message
to the entire USN establishment concerning this year’s BOM commemorations. Click
here.
~ WTOK-TV, channel 11 in Meridian, MS, is
seeking BOM veterans for a special commemoration of the battle. If anyone in that area is interested or
wants more info, call the station’s public affairs office, 601-679-2602.