Against All Odds

[A Life Aloft]

This week marks the 76th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway which is recognized as the "turning point of the Pacific." Against all odds and being heavily outnumbered, it was the Allies' first major Naval victory against the Japanese.

USS Yorktown

USS Enterprise

USS Hornet

Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. Thanks in part to major advances in code breaking, the United States was able to preempt and counter Japan’s planned ambush of its few remaining aircraft carriers, inflicting permanent damage on the Japanese Navy. The Battle of Midway is known as turning point in the Pacific campaign, the victory allowed the United States and its allies to move into an offensive position.

This fleet engagement between U.S. and Japanese navies in the north-central Pacific Ocean resulted from Japan’s desire to sink the American aircraft carriers that had escaped destruction at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, Japanese fleet commander, chose to invade a target relatively close to Pearl Harbor to draw out the American fleet, calculating that when the United States began its counterattack, the Japanese would be prepared to crush them. Instead, an American intelligence breakthrough and the solving of the Japanese fleet codes, enabled Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Chester W. Nimitz to understand the exact Japanese plans. Nimitz placed available U.S. carriers in position to surprise the Japanese moving up for their preparatory air strikes on Midway Island itself.

The Japanese carriers were caught while refueling and rearming their planes, making them especially vulnerable. The Americans sank four fleet carriers–the entire strength of the task force.....Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, with 322 aircraft and over five thousand sailors. The Japanese also lost the heavy cruiser Mikuma. American losses included 147 aircraft and more than three hundred seamen.

Former U.S. Navy Master Chief Deen Brown, center, with Capt. Paul Whitescarver, Commander of the U.S. Naval Submarine Base New London, left, and Command Master Chief Cary Carroll of the Naval Submarine Support Center, place a wreath in memory of those lost in battle as navy personnel mark the 76th anniversary of the WWII Battle of Midway, Monday, June 4, 2018, at the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton. Brown was a radioman on the submarine USS Trout which was on patrol around the battle.

Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran salutes a wreath during the Battle of Midway 76th Anniversary Commemoration Ceremony at the U.S. Navy Memorial.

 

[A Life Aloft]

At 93, Lt. Col. Lloyd Childers retains a memory as sharp as the aim and tactics he used to help turn back Japanese Zeros during World War II’s Battle of Midway.

Seventy-two years after the radioman rear-gunner pelted the enemy from a United States Navy “Devastator” torpedo bomber — first with a 30-caliber machine gun and then with a .45 caliber pistol, after the machine gun jammed — the Moraga resident says, “I remember everything.” After all, it was his birthday.

Seated in the Aegis Living facility where he now lives, just days after being honored at a Battle at Midway Roundtable, Childers pages through scrapbooks. But he doesn’t need to see the photos or reread the letter he wrote to his family in 1942, describing his 21st birthday with, “Boy, what a flight that was.”

Childers says the happiest part of turning 21 on the day of battle — June 4, 1942 — was watching the Japanese war planes turning away. “During the attack, they were chasing us all the way, trying to kill us. I knew how they operated; they wanted to keep their home carrier in sight at all times. They’d just left that point, so that’s why they turned back,” he says.

His legs were shot up — his right leg shattered at the ankle — by the time the nearest Japanese pilot came close enough for him to see the man clearly. “He knew we were out of ammunition,” Childers says. “He saluted us. They were trying to kill us, but they didn’t hate us. It was an impersonal thing.”

By the time Childers and his pilot got back to their carrier, the Yorktown, the ship was listing badly and Childers was groggy from the loss of blood. “We had to circle twice. We couldn’t control the elevator because a 20 mm (round) had hit it and there was a hole the size of a football. We water-landed and the Enterprise picked us up.

“My brother, Wayne, was on the Yorktown and asked me later, ‘Why didn’t you wave at me?'” The memory makes him shake his head at the wonder and weirdness of war. As the sole surviving gunner out of 12 that day, and in 2014 the last-known survivor of his Midway squadron, Childers isn’t sentimental as much as sincere.

“A hero is a guy who saves somebody’s life by heroic act,” he says. “You have to be willing to do crazy acts, to charge when the moment isn’t clear.”

Childers says the main thing he taught his three sons about war is “the bitter truth: There’s no reason for it.” Surprisingly, he remained in the military for 27 years, fighting in the Korean and Vietnam Wars before earning a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas in 1972 and serving as an administrator at Chapman University for 16 years.

His first love, aviation, explains the incongruity of a man opposed to what he calls “war games.” He is doggedly earnest when he says, “Every young man should have some military time.” Asked if women should be included, he says, “When I reported to my first position, 50 percent of the people were women. It was a training group for B-25s. They were doing everything except flying the airplane.”

After the Korean War, Childers became commander of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 361 during the Vietnam War. Determined not to accept a higher commission and become a “ground pounder,” his unit held the highest flight time record in a month, 2,173 hours, and conducted Operation Midnight, the war’s first nighttime helicopter strike.

But flying helicopters and earning three Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Purple Heart, 14 Air Medals, the Legion of Merit and the Vietnam Cross never rivaled his affection for his favorite warbird, the F4U Corsair. Known as “the bent-wing bird” for its inverted-wing design, Childers says, “The first time I flew it, I said, ‘This plane flies like a Singer sewing machine.'”

Embedded in the memories — of his first wife, Mary, and of leaders he admires, like FDR, who “didn’t ignore the economy” and General Douglas MacArthur, who he says “was inclined to be arrogant but thought officers should be in the front line with their people” — Childers holds to one principle.

“I started out at the bottom,” he says. “I understood enlisted people. My first commanding officer had a rule that I followed: never chew out an enlisted man. Save the chewing out for the department head.”

As a Marine, he says there “is no front line” and that he never considered himself superior to his troops. “I believed in treating my enlisted people with respect,” he says. “That’s why they liked me.”

 

[BravoHotel]

I spent four years on Midway, 2004-2008. Thanks for sharing.

 

[milleR]

My Great Uncle was on the Yorktown at Coral Sea and again at Midway. He went back on board to get her under tow when she was torpedoed so he had the dubious honor of being one of the few men to abandon her three times.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

I thought that this thread was going to be about Phil Collins.

 

[U_of_I_Tweak]

I first really learned about the battle from the computer game Aces of the Pacific. I played that for hours on end (with unlimited ammo of course).

I later found the companion book that detailed the US breaking the code, and leaning that target "AF" had a water shortage.

It was amazing that I learned more of that pivotal battle from a computer game than from the entirety of my formal education!

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

 

[A Life Aloft]

My Great Uncle was on the Yorktown at Coral Sea and again at Midway. He went back on board to get her under tow when she was torpedoed so he had the dubious honor of being one of the few men to abandon her three times.

Wow! That is damn amazing. She limped back to Pearl and Nimitz wanted her repaired as quickly as possible to get her back underway. This is the damage I found: "A 551-pound armor-piercing bomb had plunged through the flight deck 15 feet inboard of her island and penetrated fifty feet into the ship before exploding above the forward engine room. Six compartments were destroyed, as were the lighting systems on three decks and across 24 frames. The gears controlling the No. 2 elevator were damaged. She had lost her radar and refrigeration system. Near misses by eight bombs had opened seams in her hull from frames 100 to 130 and ruptured the fuel-oil compartments. Rear Adm. Aubrey Fitch, aboard the damaged carrier, estimated that repairing the Yorktown would take ninety days."

Within minutes of docking, the first of 1,400 repairmen, who would work around the clock, swarmed into the drydock to begin repairing the Yorktown. To satisfy the enormous power needs of the repair crews the Navy contacted Leslie Hicks, president of the Hawaiian Electric Company, who arranged a series of rolling blackouts in Honolulu. Only the most urgent repairs were made. Instead of individually fixing the hull’s ruptured seams, an enormous steel plate was welded over the damaged section.

At 11:00 a.m. on May 28, Drydock Number One was flooded and the Yorktown was towed into the harbor with workmen still busy aboard. On the morning of May 30, more patched than repaired but fit enough to fight, Yorktown steamed out of Pearl Harbor. With an air group composed of aircraft from three carriers, Yorktown sped to a rendezvous with the Enterprise and Hornet at “Point Luck.”

 

[milleR]

Wow! That is damn amazing. She limped back to Pearl and Nimitz wanted her repaired as quickly as possible to get her back underway. This is the damage I found: "A 551-pound armor-piercing bomb had plunged through the flight deck 15 feet inboard of her island and penetrated fifty feet into the ship before exploding above the forward engine room. Six compartments were destroyed, as were the lighting systems on three decks and across 24 frames. The gears controlling the No. 2 elevator were damaged. She had lost her radar and refrigeration system. Near misses by eight bombs had opened seams in her hull from frames 100 to 130 and ruptured the fuel-oil compartments. Rear Adm. Aubrey Fitch, aboard the damaged carrier, estimated that repairing the Yorktown would take ninety days."

Within minutes of docking, the first of 1,400 repairmen, who would work around the clock, swarmed into the drydock to begin repairing the Yorktown. To satisfy the enormous power needs of the repair crews the Navy contacted Leslie Hicks, president of the Hawaiian Electric Company, who arranged a series of rolling blackouts in Honolulu. Only the most urgent repairs were made. Instead of individually fixing the hull’s ruptured seams, an enormous steel plate was welded over the damaged section.

At 11:00 a.m. on May 28, Drydock Number One was flooded and the Yorktown was towed into the harbor with workmen still busy aboard. On the morning of May 30, more patched than repaired but fit enough to fight, Yorktown steamed out of Pearl Harbor. With an air group composed of aircraft from three carriers, Yorktown sped to a rendezvous with the Enterprise and Hornet at “Point Luck.”

It’s absolutely incredible what they accomplished.

My uncle Norman was in charge of a damage control team and I’m guessing drew short straw to go back on board at Midway.

His older brother Jim was a pilot that went down off Guadalcanal when a crate of flares came loose and ignited launching off the catapault of the Salt Lake City. Spent several days in a raft and almost run over by a Japanese destroyer before getting picked up. He later died testing dive bomb drops when either the bomb or the rack (nobody knows) took the prop off his Corsair over the Chesapeake.

My Dads father was one of two men out of his entire replacement company to walk out of Bastogne. He was lucky enough to get placed in a platoon of seasoned guys who saved his life.

Talk about the greatest generation

 

[A Life Aloft]

It’s absolutely incredible what they accomplished.

My uncle Norman was in charge of a damage control team and I’m guessing drew short straw to go back on board at Midway.

His older brother Jim was a pilot that went down off Guadalcanal when a crate of flares came loose and ignited launching off the catapault of the Salt Lake City. Spent several days in a raft and almost run over by a Japanese destroyer before getting picked up. He later died testing dive bomb drops when either the bomb or the rack (nobody knows) took the prop off his Corsair over the Chesapeake.

My Dads father was one of two men out of his entire replacement company to walk out of Bastogne. He was lucky enough to get placed in a platoon of seasoned guys who saved his life.

Talk about the greatest generation