. The Battle of Midway Roundtable .
"Decision at Midway"
INTRODUCTION: This is not an official after-action report, but it does
give a detailed narration of the action of VF-6 at Midway on the first day of
the carrier battle. It was written by
James Gray, who as a lieutenant had been the squadron C.O. during the BOM. He wrote it in 1963, over 20 years after the
battle. It was privately distributed
rather than published, and the original copy is held at the U.S. Naval Academy
museum. It’s been cited as a reference
in notable histories of the battle, such as The First Team (John
Lundstrom, 1984) and A Glorious Page In Our History (Robert Cressman et
al, 1990).
The original document contained numerous spelling errors and is a bit difficult to read due to its length and paragraph structure. This version has been edited to correct the errors and to present it in a format that is easier to read on a web page. Paragraph breaks have been added where appropriate, and subheadings have been inserted by the editor in order to separate Gray’s somewhat rambling narrative into logical segments. The editor has also inserted numbered endnotes at key points where statements by Gray require correction or comment. Beyond that, the words that follow are exactly as written by Gray.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: “Decision at Midway” in this
format (word-processed to a digital document, with spelling and punctuation
corrections, reformatted paragraphs, and inserted subheadings and endnotes) is
copyright 2009 by Ronald W. Russell, Lodi, California USA. Permission to copy and quote, in whole or in
part, is granted providing that source
citation is made to: “The Battle of
Midway Roundtable, http://www.midway42.org." For comment or inquiry to the editor, click here.
1. “ONLY A FOOL RUNS
OUT OF GAS”
Among the records of varying historical importance which repose in
the United States Naval Academy Museum at Annapolis is "The War Record of
Fighting Squadron Six." This is a diary
type document in which the squadron's duty officers summed up each day's
activities during the seven months of World War II, on and subsequent to
December seventh 1941. Fighting Six was
embarked in the USS ENTERPRISE. Since
it was informally maintained and not a required item by the instructions from
higher authority then in effect, this document found its way to the museum
rather than to the national archives.
It is unfortunate that battle reports and messages in the record
do so little to explain the "why" of decisions or actions taken in
the heat of battle or under the yoke of great responsibility. Great men who played prominent parts in the
writing of history are able to recast the details in later years through the
publication of their memoirs. Less
important men who through circumstance made a small appearance upon one of the
great stages of history are less fortunate.
As commanding officer of Fighting Squadron Six at the Battle of Midway
it was my privilege to play a small part.
There were many, many factors which would seem to have absolutely
no bearing on the action of 4 June 1942 which served to influence decisions
taken on that day. Early training in
aviation, previous experiences in combat, the Battle of the Coral Sea less than
a month earlier were such factors. It
will presently become evident that it is appropriate to consider some of these
before reviewing in detail the part played by Fighting Six as escort to the
initial ENTERPRISE strike group at the Battle of Midway. Neither these nor the squadron's "War
Record" were considered by Morison, Bates or any of the other numerous
authors or students of the battle. In
his "Climax at Midway" Thaddeus Tuleja comes closer than most.
In his excellent book, “The Big E,” Commander Edward P. Stafford,
USN makes the following statements concerning the pre-launch activities in
ENTERPRISE and the initial action on 4 June 1942.
After breakfast Lindsey and Jim Gray held a conference. Gray's Wildcats were to fly cover for
Lindsey's Torpedo planes. Gray would
stay high to keep the altitude advantage he needed over the agile Zeros and
would dive to the attack on receipt of Lindsey's signal for assistance...
At 1110 Jim Gray caught sight of the enemy carriers. He looked
below him for the torpedo planes and saw the tiny wide winged wedges disappear
into a cloud, headed for the target.
This tactic, he remembered, had been used at Coral Sea where the
Devastators of the YORKTOWN and LEXINGTON had successfully used cloud cover in
making their approaches. The flight of
fighters armed their guns and flew on toward the enemy, awaiting Gene Lindsey's
call to action.
It never came...One after the other the Devastators slid,
cartwheeled, dived into the sea as fighters’ bullets found the engines or the
controls or the gas tanks or the pilots...
Gene Lindsey and his gunner died under the bullets of the fighters
or in the resulting stone wall collision with the sea...Jim Gray circled with
ten fighters five miles overhead.
Between the scattered clouds he could see the curling wakes and flashing
guns of a fleet under attack. Some, at
least, of the frantic radio transmissions made by the torpedo pilots must have
filtered into his radio, which was tuned to Lindsey's frequency. But he did not receive the prearranged
distress signal—and he had a dual responsibility. In a decision which has been a matter of bitter controversy with
naval (aviation) ever since, Gray elected to keep his fighters high, preserving
their altitude advantage, in order to cover McClusky's dive bombers in their
approach.
If there is "bitter controversy in Naval Aviation ever
since," let it be known that the controversy is between those who know the
facts of the matter and those who don't.
Suffice to say, Captain George D. Murray, Commanding Officer, USS
ENTERPRISE, and Lt. Commander Wade McClusky, the air group commander, never
questioned any decision made by any of their flight commanders. Later that year when he reported at
Pensacola as Chief of Naval Air Training, Vice Admiral Murray ordered the
writer to serve as squadron commander of the fighter training squadron there.
But this is ahead of our story.
Let us go back to Milwaukee County Airport in 1929, before it was known
as General Mitchell Field. It was there
that the writer learned to fly as a flight student under the late
"Speed" Holman (with whose Laird biplane he was first to win the
Thompson Trophy Race three times), the late Stan La Parle, and Frank Ernst (who
now nears the senior pilot position at Northwest Airlines if he doesn't already
hold it). Part and parcel of the
fundamentals which these pioneers drove home to their students was "Only a
fool runs out of gas in an airplane."
This was stressed as forcefully as "don't lose flying
speed." On navigation training
flights at Pensacola years later it was given the same weight. Over a fleet engagement still much later at
Midway these words were to play a part in my decision to remain at altitude for
reasons which will soon be apparent.
2. THE DASH FOUR
WILDCAT
The introduction of the F4F-4 "Wildcat" into Fighting
Six took place after the Marcus Island raid in March, to the tune of howls of
anguish from the pilots due to the heaviness of the aircraft. This was in contrast to simultaneous
expressions of pleasure at having received for the first time a fully combat
ready fighter. Until April of 1942 we
had fought in the F4F-3A which was without self-sealing tanks or armor
plate. Thanks only to home-made armor
fashioned behind our seats from boiler plate obtained from the ENTERPRISE
engine room, had several of us returned safely from the Marshall strike in
thoroughly perforated airplanes. There
we learned that we were no match for the Zero in maneuverability. Thanks to their pulling up in front of our guns
after completing firing runs on us, we had been able to make some kills against
the Japanese.
We tried to improvise additional gasoline capacity since the
additional weight (nearly eight thousand pounds from the 7400 with which we
flew in a fully combat loaded "3A") seriously reduced our range. The record reads on 22 April 1942,
"Fighting Six is now working on a monstrosity to put more gas in an
F4F-4. Okay if it weighed nothing
full."
Our fears concerning fuel limitation were not without foundation. On 4 June, the day of the battle, Machinist
W. H. Warden (we had enlisted pilots in those days) landed in the water out of
gas although he had been airborne well under three hours on a combat air patrol
over ENTERPRISE which involved nothing more than circling overhead. The escort fighters on the initial strike
had been airborne longer than Warden by the time they were recovered at 1250 on
the day of the battle.
That fuel was a major problem was further corroborated by the fact
that the Fighting Eight escort group under Lt. Commander S. G. "Pat"
Mitchell failed to head for home soon enough, and the entire flight landed in
the water out of fuel.
3. THE ROLE OF A
CARRIER FIGHTER
There is a factor concerning the proper use of fighters which is
appropriate here. On 7 December 7 1941,
the following entry was made in the War Record.
No planes launched to attack the Japanese planes rendezvousing
over Barbers Point. At 0830 all
fighters were available, engines running and pilots in planes (fully armed)...the
order was given to launch the four plane combat air patrol and to send the rest
of the fighters down number one elevator.
Maintained combat air patrol over ship until sunset.
Since we were in the cockpits of our planes with radios turned on,
just south of Oahu, we could hear the frantic messages of men under mortal
attack as our aircraft, launched but a few minutes before, stumbled into the
middle of the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor with no warning of any kind. We knew that there were Japanese aircraft to
be countered and we wanted to go after them.
Our skipper, Wade McClusky, asked Captain Murray and Admiral Halsey to
launch us for what we hoped would be a field day. The admiral reminded us that these fighters were for the defense
of our own fleet, and this is what they would be used for. We were bitter and we had difficulty sharing the admiral's view, but history has
left no question that the admiral made the correct decision.
The following excerpts from the War Record indicate exactly how unhappy
we had been at not getting into action over Pearl:
22 December 1941. Everyone
seems to feel it's the war between the two yellow races. Wake was attacked this morning and probably
surrendered with SARATOGA but 700 miles away and us steaming around in circles
east of the 180th...
23 December 1941. Wake is
gone, Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila
are all seriously threatened. We still
haven't dared to stick our necks in to fight.
When we were over the Japanese fleet at Midway with ten aircraft
and the major slice of ENTERPRISE's protection, Admiral Halsey's advice that
these aircraft were meant primarily to defend the fleet added considerable
weight to its leader's belief that this unit must not run short of fuel.
4. COPING WITH THE ZERO
On May 28th we received a pilot aboard who had participated in the
Battle of the Coral Sea. We spent many
hours trying to learn in detail what had happened there. This pilot, Wileman by name, drove home
several points which greatly influenced our plan of action at Midway. Wileman told us that every time one of our
fighters had gotten off by himself and had tried to mix it up with the Japanese
Zeros, he was either lost or badly shot up.
Dick Bull, one of my classmates at Annapolis and at Pensacola (who was
very experienced since he had been flying privately before he entered the
academy in 1932) was last seen alive chasing after a pair of Zeros between the
clouds. It was the fighters and the
dive bombers as they reached their push over points which had taken the losses
in the Coral Sea. The torpedo planes
had flown using cloud cover to make their attacks and returned practically
unscathed. The LEXINGTON torpedo planes
made their attack on their target (which was later identified as the carrier
SHOKAKU) through a hole in the clouds.
5. AIR GROUP TACTICAL
PLANS
Incident to our years of training together in Air Group Six1,
we had considered the proper tactics to attack a fleet. (In those days the turnover was very slow in
contrast to the present. My tour in
Fighting Six lasted over three years, or a year longer than any duty assignment
held in twenty-odd years of service since.)
Without an external bomb load, the fighter was considered almost useless
against a major ship unless it could strafe a carrier with a full deckload of
aircraft. No bombs were carried by the
fighters at Midway.
Most of the ships of the Japanese fleet at Midway were screened
from us because they were under cloud.
Through thin patches we could occasionally see the wakes of some of the
ships, and the one carrier that we could see in the clear did not have planes
on deck. We could see no airborne
aircraft at all. Had the dive bombers
shown up before our gas remaining required that we return to ENTERPRISE, we
should have gone down for the purpose of spreading the A-A fire and to guard
their tails from any Zeros which might come in on them as they arrived at the
push-over point. On the sixth of June
we used this tactic successfully when Fighting Six strafed accompanying
destroyers as the dive bombers plastered a MOGAMI class cruiser. The pictures of the results compose a large
part of the small Battle of Midway photographic portfolio.
These then are some of the ingredients which played a part in our
actions of 4 June, 1942. May we now
consider the actual sequence of events as the vivid memories of over twenty
years are called upon to record them for the first time since the squadron
“Narrative of Events” (which is in the archives) was prepared by me as
commanding officer.
The preliminaries of the battle are not reported correctly by
Commander Stafford. Gene Lindsey, as he
noted, had cracked up coming aboard when he flew out from Ford Island a few
days earlier to head for Midway. He had
been the first plane to land, and we were all seriously jolted when we saw him
go over the side as we circled waiting for our turn. Gene had made a slow approach and fell off in a stall as he came
over the ramp. He and his crew were
rescued, but he had been badly cut about the face and badly shaken up. He was left pretty much to himself to rest
and repair as we steamed to our date with history. My conference concerning the procedure to be followed in
escorting the torpedo planes was with Lieutenant Art Ely, the operations
officer. Contrary to Commander
Stafford's statement in “The Big E,” I never saw Gene Lindsey from the time of
his crack-up until the Midway launch, save to mention in the mess how pleased
we were of his successful rescue.
Art, and the exec, Lem Massey2, concurred that we should put the fighters high for the benefit of
the dive bombers since at the Coral Sea action it was pretty much proved that
U.S. fighters had to have altitude over the Zero to be of any use at all. The subject of possible cloud cover never
came up. Art was to say "Come on
down, Jim" in the event he thought he needed help.
6. THE EVE OF BATTLE
There are enough war stories on the shelves to cover adequately
the pre-battle thoughts and actions of men who may not see another sunrise
after the next. Most of these were
written by men who lived this experience.
Still, we have yet to see one which could describe the activities of Air
Group Six on any "strike night" or the night before the Battle of
Midway. These pilots were a keenly
trained collection of professionals who for the most part had spent a year or
more working together for just this chance to make a major score against the
Japanese.
There were no religious services so far as memory serves. We were too busy. Guns were loaded bullet by bullet with loving care. (Several of us lost out on sure kills in
previous actions when nothing happened as triggers were pressed.) Firing circuits were checked. No dirty airplanes ever flew from ENTERPRISE
in those days. Plane captains took
pride in keeping their aircraft gleaming and sleek. Many bought wax with their own money to outdo the others. Charts and plotting boards were cleaned and
prepared for the morning's data. By the
time all of the preliminaries were in hand, most were too exhausted to do more
than turn in and go quickly to sleep.
It is doubtful that there were any atheists in ENTERPRISE on the night
of 3 June, 1942. The prayers which were
routine from all of us were a little more intense perhaps.
At breakfast the next day, the small talk was hardly different
from any other morning. “One eyed
sandwiches” were an ENTERPRISE favorite, and that's what most of us had (a
slice of toast holed to accommodate an egg which is fried in butter therein
until the egg is “over medium”
and the toast golden brown). Collins,
the chief wardroom steward, was gifted in being able to keep a large number of
constantly starving aviators happy with his offerings of good food. If one of our wives could do the “one eye”
as well, we never identified her.
7. THE FOURTH OF JUNE
Until launch at ten o'clock3, the entire activity was a
repeat of the same things we'd done over a hundred times before. 4 June, 1942, was a warm, rather damp, hazy
day with considerable numbers of low cloud patches. The meteorological record undoubtedly reposes somewhere in
Washington, but there is no need to dig it out. After takeoff we made our standard rendezvous, and on getting
over the low cumulous it became a clear, beautiful day. Our group joined without difficulty in five
two-plane sections.
We started our long climb immediately on join up, getting about
half way to our desired altitude of about twenty two thousand feet by the time
the torpedo planes were formed. A
formation of TBDs (code for "Devastators") was seen at this time to
be joined up and headed for the enemy.
Since they were without fighter escort we took station over them and
continued to climb. We had a
considerable speed advantage so it was necessary to "S" turn back and
forth, even in the climb, in order to keep the torpedo planes in sight.
It was impossible to tell one torpedo outfit from another at
altitude so it actually turned out later that it was Torpedo Eight over which
we flew since they had fifteen planes in formation (Torpedo Six was able to get
off only fourteen) and they flew a bee line for the Japanese fleet. For a while we tried to cover another outfit
on diverging course, but it was too far behind us to continue. We learned later that Torpedo Six made a
considerable dog leg to the southwest, overshooting by an estimated fifty miles
then searching to the northwest and finally attacking toward the northeast.
This added three sides of a square to their approach path.4, 5 The foregoing accounts
for my not having heard anything from Ely.
Our torpedo planes didn't arrive at the target until well after we had
reached the limit of our fuel safety margin and were hightailing it for home.
We had little difficulty in following the torpedo planes below
us. The low scud was above them but
less than a quarter of the sky was overcast—until we arrived in the area where
we were expecting the Zeros to come diving out of the sun at any moment. As we neared our estimated time of arrival
in the vicinity of the fleet, we continued to S-turn as much to keep from being
ambushed as we did to see our torpedo planes.
Then, as if in an answer to our prayers, a huge area of solid overcast
was noted ahead to the westward. Once
the torpedo planes were safely under that they could use the clouds for cover,
and we could concentrate on keeping the area sanitized for the dive bombers.
We watched the torpedo planes disappear under that solid sheet of
cloud, and at our altitude there was precious little we could do for them
thereafter. We maintained course until
LTJG J. C. "Jack" Kelley came on the air with "there they are at
one o'clock down, skipper." We
thought he meant aircraft, and aboard my plane the guns were recharged as an
extra precaution that the two dummy rounds with which each belt was led had
been worked out in favor of live rounds.
We could see the Japanese fleet.
8. OVER THE ENEMY FLEET
There is
no question that all of us knew we were "on" in the world's center
ring that day. Seeing the white
feathers of ships’ wakes at high speed at the far edge of the overcast, and
realizing that there for the first time in plain sight were the Japanese who
had been knocking hell out of us for seven months was a sensation not many men
know in a lifetime. Our necks were
working overtime as our eyes searched every sector for McClusky and Co. and for
the highly respected Zeros.
For some
time we had been flying a dead reckoning course since the torpedo aircraft were
no longer with us. We closed the Jap
fleet until just outside their anti-aircraft range—easily determined by bursts
which were let go at our flight for the purpose of determining just this from
their point of view.
We entered
a gentle left turn in order to try to spot the dive bombers. While in the turn the Zeros were slaughtering
our torpedo planes under the cloud layer beneath us. Our radios were working perfectly on this flight and it can be
said that Torpedo Eight went to glory with teeth clenched tightly and hands on
trigger and throttle. There wasn't one
peep from any of them during their run in.6 Jack Kelley later said he heard someone
mention Zeros, but that was it.
We
completed a few circles making trial radio calls to the group commander without
success. We were receiving the
"YE" signal from ENTERPRISE loud and clear, so we weren't the least
bit concerned with navigation. We tried
to call the ship to report our YE sector as an aid to the others, but our
transmitters wouldn't cover the distance.
We could hear the ENTERPRISE, but she couldn't hear us.7
Eventually,
attention went in a
routine manner to the gas gauge. The
jolt which one receives upon noting that from a completely unsuspected source
there is now a critical problem was mine at that moment. Fuel was at about half of what we had been
used to having at the completion of some two hours of flying. The problem now became one of whether or not
to make a strafing dive on the carrier which we could see clear of the
clouds. If the SBDs were to arrive,
mixing it up with the Zeros other than a firing pass was out of the
question. In a dogfight, throttles are
"two blocked" at full and propeller revolutions are at high
R.P.M. Under this kind of demand,
gasoline disappears as though there is a hole in the tank. We simply were now without that
capability. YE is line of sight. While
we could hear ENTERPRISE at altitude we should lose it down low. These, too, were considerations which were
going through my mind as we circled.
Returning from the Marcus strike some months before, the writer
missed the ship by but a few miles because it was hidden in a rain squall. Only because Admiral Halsey broke radio
silence less than a thousand miles from Tokyo to bring me in did the Air Group
Six roster still include my name. None
of us cared to get that low on fuel ever again.
Since there would be no margin for error were we to get down low
at this distance, the sensible thing to do was to fuel, or so it seemed at the
time. After what seemed an eternity
waiting for the SBDs, we headed for ENTERPRISE and landed aboard just a few
minutes later since it was "down hill" all the way. We had been airborne about three hours—some
more, some less since the leader hit the deck at recovery time and not everyone
got aboard on the first pass.
9. “THERE WAS VERY
LITTLE THAT WE COULD HAVE DONE”
It wasn't until after sunset and our last combat air patrol was on
deck that we heard the details of the day's work (we all made at least three
flights that day). When news reached us
that the torpedo boys had been nearly wiped out, the shock was as total as that
which one could expect from a death in his immediate family. These were shipmates and dear friends of
many years. To lose so many in a single
day was devastating. We were too tired
and too busy to do more than feel the pang of an aching heart. The Battle of Midway continued through six
June and Fighting Six was very much involved in the entire action.
Some weeks later we were headed for home aboard MOUNT VERNON. Ensign George H. Gay, Torpedo Eight's only
survivor, was aboard, and so naturally we asked him how the Japanese could have
been so successful when there was so much cloud cover about. He conceded that with fighter tactics as we
knew them, there was very little that we could have done between the overcast
at eight hundred feet and the water. It
was through Gay that we learned that Lt. Commander Waldron had led a
"book" style attack on the Japanese, deploying from a vee of vees to
a line abreast, barreling in at full throttle "on the deck." Unfortunately, full throttle in the TBD
wasn't too much over a hundred knots.
This meant that the very maneuverable Jap fighters had just enough room
to make high side approaches, picking off the single torpedo planes one at a
time, for a grand slam. Gay admitted
that had they remained at cloud level, they probably could have gotten close in
before being knocked down, but with the torpedoes then in inventory the maximum
drop altitude was something under a hundred feet. One way or the other, since they had come down low to drop, our
torpedo planes had "bought it" that day.
It was at Midway that Jimmy Thach used the "Thach
Weave," which he had devised, to keep himself and his flight in business
when he was under fire by Zeros at low altitude. This consisted of keeping another plane or section in view off to
one side so that each could watch the tail of the other, and then weave over to
shoot off any violators. Jimmy and Co.
had all they could do to get out of there with their own necks, much less help
out with the torpedo planes. His 'weave'
was like today's angle deck carrier—so simple that all of us wondered why we
hadn't thought of it long before.
Thanks to this tactic and with the solidly built "brick out
house" Grummans, the Zeros never again bested U.S. Navy fighters in World
War II.
10. HINDSIGHT
Sunday morning quarterbacks are as active after a sea fight as for
any football game. Although the C.O.
and nearly every member of the squadron was decorated for his part in the Battle
of Midway, there were those who made it clear that they could have done
better. The foregoing is our story and
while it is unfortunate for us that the spotlight of history burned less
brightly in the actions before Midway and after—particularly in '44 and '45
when we were knocking hell out of them—only with the benefit of
foresight equal to hindsight could we have acted more wisely than we did. Without question we should have immediately
pushed over to strafe Japanese ships by way of creating a diversion to help our
torpedo people. Since we believed the
Zeros to be at altitude up in our area, hunting for our dive bombers, we had no
inkling of the picture down below until it was all over. All
of us feel deeply for the days of living which our shipmates missed and the
years of sadness which their loss brought to those dear to them.
At Pensacola we were too busy to have our thoughts anywhere but to
the future. At Barin Field we would
often do over two thousand hours of flying in a twenty four hour period. The squadron worked an "eight day
week" or every eighth day off.
This meant that the senior people never had a day off. Notwithstanding, thoughts did go back to
Midway and "If I had only known..."
The Navy needed fighter pilots and thousands of them in
1942-43. Training duty was Naval
Aviation's highest priority, with one exception: in December 1943 night fighter
volunteers were needed to stop Japanese fliers whose tactics had shifted to the
darkness. As much to get some rest as
to get another shot at the ones who got away, the writer went back to
ENTERPRISE and tried his utmost to make payment in full for any debt he may
have owed the gallant torpedo pilots of the Battle of Midway.
Editor’s
Notes
1. Regarding “Air Group 6”: Here, Gray is using nomenclature that became
correct late in 1942, but actually is not accurate for the Battle of
Midway. At that time and before, the
air wing aboard Enterprise was known simply as the Enterprise Air
Group; frequently abbreviated as EAG.
For example, Wade McClusky was referred to as the CEAG. Gray wrote this document long after the war,
so he is simply remembering a familiar protocol that existed during its latter
half and beyond.
2. Gray does make a notable error in this and
the preceding paragraph. He is
remembering LT Art Ely and LCDR “Lem” Massey as the VT-6 operations and
executive officers, respectively, which was true before the BOM. But by the time of the battle, Massey had
become C.O. of VT-3 and Ely had advanced to X.O. of VT-6.
3. The ships of the U.S. task forces maintained
+10 time on their clocks, which applied to the Hawaiian zone. Midway actually lies in the +12 time zone,
so “ten o’clock” in Gray’s narrative is 0800 Midway time.
4. The statement that VT-6 “made a considerable
dog leg [turn] to the southwest” raises the question, “turn from what?” Does Gray mean that VT-6 deviated southwest
from its base course of 240 degrees true?
Or is he saying that upon launch, VT-6 headed southwest relative to his
own initial base course (specifically, that of VF-6 while tracking VT-8)? If it’s the former, there’s nothing in the
historical record that says VT-6 made such a turn. In fact, the 50-mile overshoot and “three sided square” described
here more resembles the track of McClusky’s SBDs than that of VT-6.
5. If Gray is saying VT-6 headed southwest upon
launch relative to himself and therefore to VT-8, then the Hornet air
group (with VF-6 overhead) was obviously on a course that was not southwesterly. That would have to be 265 degrees true, the
westbound track postulated by Bowen Weisheit in The Last Flight of Ensign C.
Markland Kelly, Junior, USNR.
6. This suggests that different radio
frequencies were used by the Hornet and Enterprise air
groups. Transmissions were heard from
Waldron by other Hornet airmen, at the time he broke away from the
group’s base course and during his run-in on the Japanese fleet. Then, Gray states above that he did receive
a transmission from VF-6 pilot LT(j.g.) Kelley, indicating that Gray could
receive on his own squadron or air group’s assigned tactical frequency.
7.
The Enterprise actually heard at least three clear transmissions
from Gray, commencing at 0952. Gray’s
communication problems apparently were due to his aircraft’s radio receiver
rather than its transmitter, or to Gray’s operation of his receiver. Another possibility, however unlikely, is
that his aircraft transmitter was tuned to a frequency that Enterprise was
monitoring but which did not match the air group’s tactical frequency. In any case, the fact that Gray heard a good
YE signal indicates he was easily within receiving range of the Enterprise.
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