Lieutenant Joichi Tomonaga, a survivor of the lost Hiryu, was the Air Officer in charge, a man that had died in the real history at Midway. His planes would form up and head southwest, but it would be a long two hours before they reached the target zone, and they would not find Halsey that day. Heavy clouds had obscured the sea, but they continued on, all eyes searching through any break in the cover for any sign of enemy ships.
At a little after 09:30, three white wakes were spotted, and one of them was a carrier. That was all the Japanese needed, and they started the attack. They did not know it at that time, but they had just spotted the newest addition to the U.S. carrier fleet, the Bunker Hill, now the flagship of Ziggy Sprague’s task force.
Clifton Sprague had come up through the ranks of Naval Aviation, and had served well as the Air Officer aboard the first Yorktown, CV-5, piloting the first two landings ever made on that carrier. Yet he had been in and out of the Naval War Colleges to learn the art of strategy and tactics at sea, and his only real experience had been active participation in fleet problems and related drills on a 16 month tour aboard Lady Lex. Before the war, he had a lowly seaplane tender in 1940, the Tangier, and finally saw action at Pearl Harbor when his was one of the very first ships to return fire against the Japanese attackers.
It may have been desperation that drove his sailors to their guns that day, for Tangier had just taken on a full load of torpedoes and was a disaster waiting to happen. Yet Sprague remained cool, directing the fire of his gunners, even as he watched one ship after another take hits all around him. That action made him a Captain. They were going to send him to Seattle where he was to take command of NAS Sand Point, and his name was on the roster for the new Essex class return of the Wasp, CV-18, but then he had been bumped up by Nimitz to take over Bunker Hill. Sprague thought he would spend long months cutting his teeth with air ferry duty on the light escort carriers, and it was a real break for him to get the Bunker Hill, and most unusual for a mere Captain to be given charge of a full task force. But Halsey had asked for him earlier, prodding Nimitz to let him bring Independence and Princeton down into the active combat zone, so when Bunker Hill was needed, Ziggy found a seat.
Now he would serve under his old student from aviation school, William Halsey. The two men had flown many hours together when Halsey learned to fly under Sprague’s able instruction. Now Halsey had sent him to the school of hard knocks, and he was about to get one, when his first hour of real naval combat at sea was at hand. He had 30 fighters up on CAP, 20 F4’s and 10 of the newer F6 Hellcats that had arrived with Bunker Hill. In the battle that ensued, the Japanese would lose only one of their Zeroes, but the Americans would get through to down ten enemy dive bombers and seven torpedo bombers. Yet 40 of the 65 strike planes in Hara’s first wave would also get through to those ships.
Light cruiser Phoenix was the first to be hit, a bomb striking her near the fantail. Destroyer O’Bannon took a serious blow amidships, and was double teamed when another bomb struck her forward. But the only hit that mattered, to either side, was the single torpedo that found Bunker Hill.
It was not U.S. Navy policy to attempt to defeat the enemy attack by maneuver. The Americans posted their supporting ships close by the carriers, and it was that massed firepower that would be the backbone of the US defense. A bit of a maverick, Sprague had already violated that policy by making some amazing turns and maneuvers to throw off three attacking enemy dive bombers, their bombs falling off the port side of the ship. In doing so, he kept a wary eye on his cruisers, but that single torpedo bomber, a B6N, put its fish right on target, and it could not be avoided.
The was a high white wash of water off the port side, then all that water was vaporized by the explosion. Ziggy felt the hard thud, the heavy blast, the roll of the ship, and he knew he had been skewered. He swore inwardly, but remained outwardly cool, a hard look set on his face. An officer of the deck made the mistake of swearing aloud, and Ziggy, who was normally not one to dress a man down for a lapse, simply gave him that look. “This isn’t a CVE,” he said. “Look to your post.”
The navy disparaged the CVE as being three things, all denoted by those three initials: Combustible, Vulnerable, Expendable. But that was not the case for Bunker Hill. A light carrier might have been put out of action by that torpedo, but Ziggy had a ship that could take more punishment and still keep running. He also had a little ‘luck of the Irish’ on this Saint Patrick’s Day engagement, for the torpedo struck in a safe location, far from avgas bunkers and magazines. His damage control crews also knew that this ship was definitely not expendable, and they rushed to heal the breach and mend the wound with vigor. There would be minor flooding amidships, but no list developed, and Ziggy knew his flight deck was still squared off and level for ongoing operations. He sent one signal to Halsey. “09:42—Torpedo amidships—damage under control—CV-17 is H.G.U…” Those last three initials meant, of course, “Haze Grey and Underway.”
When Halsey read it he smiled. Ziggy had taken a punch that had been meant for him, and the gritty senior officer knew that. The Bull sent back a simple three word reply: “Have at ’em!” That message was also received by Ray Spruance, and between the two of them, they would launch a devastating counterpunch against Hara’s task force that would more than balance the scales.
King Kong had been waiting for news, the singular agony of the fleet carrier commander in a battle like this. All the action was well beyond his horizon, and nothing he could see, so patience was the only virtue he could embrace. He stood stolidly on the bridge of the Great Phoenix, carrier Taiho, waiting for the runners to come up from the signals room, delivering one morsel of information at a time, just a small piece of the puzzle that Hara had to fit together in his mind as he tried to ascertain what was happening. He had waited nearly two hours for the first piece: “Sighted enemy Carrier — Attacking!” Now he waited for results.
A runner came up, saluting before announcing the latest news in a loud voice for all to hear. “Torpedo hit on one enemy carrier!” That was all, leaving Hara to wonder how many enemy carriers were even there. Only one had been reported prior to the attack, and it was good to hear that it had been hit, but this could not be the entire American carrier force. Where were the others?
This was his fate—waiting, asking these inward questions, guessing, making calculated assumptions, trying to surmise things from these incomplete snippets of signals traffic. His entire situational awareness of the battle was reduced to the tapping fingers of a man riding in the wild rear seat of a torpedo bomber, over 300 miles away. Tracer rounds from enemy fighters streaked past his plane, and a heavy flak round exploded close by, sending a hail of shrapnel against the fuselage. He would crane his neck around, straining to see what was happening below. A rake of clouds would open, and there he saw another American ship on fire. His finger moved in a fitful haste: “Cruiser burning amidships!” five minutes later that signal would be shouted out on the bridge of Taiho, with Hara standing there, gazing out to sea, like a mountain island of calm.