Snowflakes dissolving in pure air

With the rest of the world thinking back to the 1930s, I find my own imagination going back to the 1940s. I mean the early 1940s in the Pacific, when America was losing every battle. It is a moment in which a strange aberration appeared in American military behavior.

At its most successful, the 20th century American military was a triumph of logistics and support over almost all other elements. The salient feature of 20th century American military strategy was not maneuver, or aggression, or valorous combat, although all of these were present, of course. The salient feature was the advance of American supply capability - steadily putting in superior infrastructure behind your forces while degrading the supply lines on the other side. In World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, U.S. forces secured physical assets and then tried to choke off the enemy main force by interdicting supply. When the war rested on these terms, as World War II did, we won. When the outcome depended on other variables (as in Vietnam) we didn't.

Anyway, in 1942 the U.S. couldn't play this game in the Pacific. American forces were green and outnumbered, and burdened with obsolete equipment like the Vought Vindicator, the Douglas Devastator, and the Brewster Buffalo "flying coffin." All physical assets (Pearl Harbor, Midway Island) were vulnerable. It would be two tough years before the U.S. could build its force up to the point where it could adopt its preferred "logistical advance with attrition" strategy.

Until then, a plan was needed. Up until the Battle of the Coral Sea, the American and British response in the Pacific had been fairly consistent. No matter where they were, from Singapore to Manila to Wake Island, Allied garrisons defended passively for awhile, had their planes shot down, and then surrendered.

But starting at Coral Sea, American strategy took on a decidedly more aggressive character. I don't know who gets credit for this. One obvious change was that at both Coral Sea and Midway the newly-appointed Frank Fletcher was the senior U.S. commander. Fletcher has been criticized as a timid battleship guy (and seriously, you do not want to get into this debate - rehabilitation attempt is here). But I notice he won his battles. Before Fletcher, the U.S. Navy was getting its ass kicked. Under Fletcher, they sank five Japanese carriers in two months and killed 4,000 Japanese sailors, against the loss of two carriers and 850 Americans.

Analysis of the Battle of Midway rightly focuses on the climactic attack of the American dive bombers, which in just a few minutes turned the Japanese carriers into raging infernos. Because of the incredible narrative force of that climax – I’ve just spent another half hour thinking about it – there is a tendency to forget what came before. And what came before was, simply put, the aviation equivalent of a series of human wave assaults.

A brief summary of American activity on June 4th, 1942:

• 0520: Scouts find the Japanese carriers.
• 0600: Every plane from Midway Island is in the air.
• 0615: Twenty three U.S. fighters (mostly Brewster Buffaloes) attack incoming Japanese planes. 16 are shot down.
• 0710: Four U.S. B-26 bombers (jury-rigged to carry torpedoes, and piloted by people who had never trained for this type of mission) and six Marine torpedo bombers attack the Japanese fleet. They do no damage, and all but two are shot down.
• 0755: Sixteen Marine dive bombers attack the Japanese fleet. No damage is done. Eight make it home, six of which are damaged beyond repair.
• 0815: Fifteen B-17s make a high altitude run at the Japanese carriers. No damage is done.
• 0820: Eleven Vindicators attack the Japanese carriers. Amazingly, seven survive the mission. No damage is done.

If you're keeping score, at this point the Japanese have been under attack for about three hours. They've taken no damage and shot down or permanently crippled around 40 U.S. aircraft.

It gets better. Now the Japanese strike force is returning from Midway. Planes start landing, refueling, and re-arming for a new strike.

• 0925: Fifteen Devastators from Hornet's Torpedo 8 attack the Japanese carriers without fighter escort. They're all shot down. No damage is done to the Japanese. (Survivor George Gay comments: "when we finally got up to the Battle of Midway it was the first time I had ever carried a torpedo on an aircraft and was the first time I had ever had taken a torpedo off of a ship, had never even seen it done. None of the other Ensigns in the squadron had either.")
• 0940: Twenty six Devastators (14 from Enterprise and 12 from Yorktown) attack the Japanese fleet. All but four are shot down, and no damage is done.

So now the Japanese have shot down maybe 80 U.S. planes and no ship has yet sustained significant damage.

• 1022: 49 dive bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown drop out of the sky and turn the Japanese carriers Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu into scrap metal. This takes about six minutes.
  
• 1705: Enterprise dive bombers take out Hiryu, the last remaining Japanese carrier.
  

And that was it. The Americans just kept attacking, with anything that would fly, at whatever cost - until the Japanese fighters ran out of fuel, ammo, altitude, and stamina.

My great uncle, whose destroyer was sunk by a Kamikaze off Okinawa, used to tell me how crazy the Japanese were, how little they valued human life. It was a point of pride for him that Americans didn't do suicide missions. American propaganda, during the war and after, stressed this, too. Americans wouldn’t send a poor boy up in a Baka bomb, with no chance of ever coming home. A Brewster Buffalo or Vought Vindicator, maybe, but...

Here is the final note to the attack plan of Hornet's doomed Torpedo 8, from commander John Charles Waldron:

My greatest hope is that we encounter a favorable tactical situation, but if we don't, and the worst comes to worst, I want each of us to do his utmost to destroy our enemies. If there is only one plane left to make a final run-in, I want that man to go in and get a hit. May God be with us all. Good Luck, happy landings, and give 'em hell.

Brian Victoria in Zen at War describes a radio message from a doomed Japanese unit. It quotes Bassui's letter to a dying disciple: “Your end which is endless is as a snowflake dissolving in the pure air.”

Pilots of Torpedo 8, May 1942