Author Topic: First-Hand Account of the Sinking of Yorktown at Midway  (Read 785 times)

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Offline PeteS in CA

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First-Hand Account of the Sinking of Yorktown at Midway
« on: August 14, 2019, 10:01:19 pm »
See This Picture? This Aircraft Carrier Was Sunk (A Member of the Crew Told Us How)

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After working in a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp in Idaho, Ray Daves enlisted in the Navy in the spring of 1938 and reported for basic training the following year. He was at Pearl Harbor, serving at Pacific Fleet Headquarters as a radioman, when the Japanese attacked; he was wounded in the hand. Afterward, he requested sea duty on a warship and was assigned to the submarine Dolphin (SS-169), on which he served one war patrol before being reassigned as a radioman second class aboard the aircraft carrier Yorktown (CV-5).

After the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 7-8, 1942), in which the Yorktown was heavily engaged and damaged, the carrier returned to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for a promised three months in port to make necessary repairs; due to the urgency of the war, the three months was cut to three days.
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The Battle of Midway––May 27-June 4, 1942: Everybody on the Yorktown was looking forward to liberty in Honolulu. After nearly four months at sea, even three days ashore sounded pretty good. I was still out on the flight deck with the rest of the crew when Captain [Elliott] Buckmaster came over the loudspeaker and told us he was sorry. No liberty cards for anybody. All hands were needed to get our ship repaired and resupplied and ready to sail in time. In time for what, he couldn’t tell us yet, but he said it was important.
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The 30th of May was our deadline to get back out to sea, and we met it. I still didn’t know where we were going or why we were in such a hurry to get there. And I couldn’t imagine why Admiral Chester Nimitz himself came aboard to see us off. He was the top dog at Pearl Harbor, Commander in Chief of the whole Pacific Fleet.

In the radio shack, we referred to him as CinCPac. For him to take such a personal interest in our next mission, it had to be important. Somewhere in the South Pacific, probably. All the radiomen thought so, until the Yorktown cleared the channel. The cruisers and destroyers were just getting into formation around us when the whole task force turned north. That was our first clue. The captain hadn’t said anything yet, but it seemed obvious to us. We guessed we were going to Midway!

This article is a bit longish. It covers from the time when USS Yorktown was under repair in PH after the Battle of the Coral Sea through abandoning ship after Yorktown was torpedoed.

A couple of notes, based on info from Shattered Sword, an excellent recent book about the Battle of Midway. First the reason there was uncertainty whether the IJN would have 4 or 5 carriers is that it was known that Zuikaku had been significantly damaged at Coral Sea, but sister Shokaku had not. Thus, in principle, Shokaku could have been at Midway, but was not, because combining her and Zuikaku's depleted airgroups was contrary to IJN practice.

Second, contrary to what USN pilots believed and reported, the first attack that took out 3 of the IJN carriers did not attack them immediately before they launched a major strike. Logs from the IJN carriers demonstrate that they were continually landing, rearming, and launching fighters for their CAP. This precluded having a strike spotted for launch. The Zero's nost effective gun was it's 20mm cannon, for which it did not carry a lot of rounds. This resulted in the continual rearming of fighters. It was having the torpedo and dive bombers within the enclosed hangar decks that made the SBDs' bomb hits so devastating. The enclosed deck confinedt the blast within the hangar, setting planes alight, slaughtering plane handlers and damage control men, and eventually cooking off ordnance (on planes and in temporary stowage around the hangar deck due to changes in plane arming).
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