Whirlwind: War in the Pacific by Richard Freeman

Author:Richard Freeman [Freeman, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2019-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

9.‘Scratch one flat-top’

Takagi had mistaken a destroyer and a tanker for a carrier force. Fletcher was now to mistake an invasion force for a carrier strike force.

By dawn on 7 May the nearly 5000 men on Lexington and Yorktown had been awake for an hour or more. They knew that their carriers were within range of the enemy and that battle could not be far away. TF-17 had 128 planes ready for the fight: 36 fighters, 70 dive-bombers and 22 torpedo bombers. But where was the elusive enemy? And would they find the Japanese before the Japanese found them?

Scouting was alternated between the two carriers so that one carrier was always left with a full complement of planes in case of attack. That day it was Yorktown’s turn to begin. Shortly after 06.00 ten Douglas SBDs broke the calm stillness of the new day as they lifted off the deck of Yorktown in search of enemy forces to the north. Anxiety was high on the idle flight deck as the fighters and bombers stood ready for launch. The clock ticked past 07.00. By now the scouts should have reached their maximum range, yet still there was no news of the enemy.

After the Yorktown scouts had flown off, the cruiser Curtiss launched some Seagull scout observation planes. These proved to be a nuisance as they wandered around the airspace and kept appearing and disappearing off the carrier radar screens. Fighters had to be sent up to check which planes were scouts and which were enemy aircraft. Lexington’s Fighter Director, Lieutenant Frank Gill, vigorously complained about them in his after-battle report, writing ‘We undoubtedly missed 1-2 Jap shadowers and wasted radio silence and gasoline on too many of our own people. In the future these patrols should never be used unless better organised as to their tactics and unless they have I.F.F.’ (IFF, which stands for Identify Friend or Foe, was a radio system to distinguish American from enemy planes.)

The tension was broken at 07.30 when a Kawanishi snooper was detected by a Lexington fighter pilot. A frisson of alarm passed through the great carrier: the Japanese now knew the location of TF-17, but the Americans had still not found the enemy force. At least, though, the waiting deck crew had the satisfaction of watching the end of the Kawanishi. It could be seen spinning down at a distance of three miles, smoke trailing behind it until it burst into a ball of flame on impacting the sea. Other bogies (unidentified planes) kept making their presence felt as they shadowed the American force. None was fully identified, partly because, in places, the patrols were passing through thick black clouds.

Around the time that the carriers were fending off bogies, the first reports began to come in of sightings of Japanese ships. At 07.35 a Yorktown SBD reported seeing two heavy cruisers north-east of Misima Island in the Louisiades – exactly on the route that Fletcher assumed the Moresby force to be taking. Then at 08.

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