Flight to Nowhere during the Battle of Midway June 1942.

[The Basket]

They got rid of the Devastators very quick and no Devastators were at Solomans or Santa Cruz.

Since the torpedoes carried by the TBDs even if they hit wouldn't have exploded is a double gut punch. Sad story.

 

[Norman]

So I am trying to find out about the Flight to Nowhere during the Battle of Midway June 1942.

So off the Hornet, in the first wave, we had

Devastator torpedo squadron (VT-8)
Dauntless dive bomber squadron (VS-8)
Wildcat Fighter Squadron (VF-8)
Dauntless dive bomber squadron (VB-8)

Now there was a difference of opinion of where the Kido Butai was between Lt. Cmdr. John C. Waldron (Devastator torpedo squadron (VT-8) and Cmdr. Stanhope C. Ring (Cmdr Hornet Air Group) and this continued in the flight. Waldron even broke radio silence and told Ring he was going the wrong way. Waldron would against orders fly to where he believed Kido Butai was and the rest of his squadron would follow. VT-8 would lose all its aircraft and all but 1 man. Waldron was right but it cost him his life.

So did the Hornet Air Group fly to find 2 carriers that weren't there? Or did they fly with the Enterprise Air Group and chose the wrong way? How did Waldron know where they were if Ring didn't?

Anyone got a link so I can find exactly which USN air group did what?

See "battle of midway forum" in Google for complete info.

 

[Norman]

So I am trying to find out about the Flight to Nowhere during the Battle of Midway June 1942.

So off the Hornet, in the first wave, we had

Devastator torpedo squadron (VT-8)
Dauntless dive bomber squadron (VS-8)
Wildcat Fighter Squadron (VF-8)
Dauntless dive bomber squadron (VB-8)

Now there was a difference of opinion of where the Kido Butai was between Lt. Cmdr. John C. Waldron (Devastator torpedo squadron (VT-8) and Cmdr. Stanhope C. Ring (Cmdr Hornet Air Group) and this continued in the flight. Waldron even broke radio silence and told Ring he was going the wrong way. Waldron would against orders fly to where he believed Kido Butai was and the rest of his squadron would follow. VT-8 would lose all its aircraft and all but 1 man. Waldron was right but it cost him his life.

So did the Hornet Air Group fly to find 2 carriers that weren't there? Or did they fly with the Enterprise Air Group and chose the wrong way? How did Waldron know where they were if Ring didn't?

Anyone got a link so I can find exactly which USN air group did what?

Google "battle of midway forum" for complete info.

 

[RCAFson]

Battle of Midway RoundTable

 

[paulrward]

Hello All :

Attached is a set of maps depicting Stanhope Ring's flight to nowhere. The first is a composite map,
in the second, I have separated out the official report's account of the movements of the units, and
the third map shows the actual tracks of the units based on the accounts of the survivors ( except
Stanhope Ring! )

Respectfully :

Paul R. Ward

 

[MIflyer]

I have seen those. And it is disturbing that the inaccurate data on the Hornet Air Group's flight paths contributed to the loss of the two Wildcat pilots that were not recovered.

 

[Conslaw]

It wasn't so much that the SBD was a "hella nifty dogfighter" as it was that the prewar pilots were often cross-trained in bombers and fighters. The SBD was rated for standard aerobatic maneuvers, and with an experienced pilot was not a sitting duck. Still, there is no escaping the fact that the SBD was almost 100 mph slower than the A6M-21, with half the climb rate. It might not be true that the SBD shot down more EA in aerial combat than were lost, but it is also true that comparatively few Navy and Marine SBDs were lost to fighters in the Pacific. The Army A-24 version seemed not to fair as well.

 

[GrauGeist]

The Army A-24 pilots didn't have the cross-training that the USN SBD pilots had.
The A-24 was identical to the SBD in performance, but the pilot's skills are what makes the difference between the two.

 

[The Basket]

I doubt the Dauntless at Midway were dogfighting. Trying not to get shot down would be a better description.

Zero was a lot more boom and zoom then people take it for.

Here is a trick. We have 4 carriers but intelligence did state possible 5.

So if we say that Shokaku and/or Zuikaku or what ever light carrier you like is out there then it don't have put a different slant on it.

 

[The Basket]

The actions of Lt CDR Waldron just don't understand what's going on.

He went against Ring in the briefing. He broke radio silence to say Ring was wrong. He then disobeyed orders and took his squadron with him! That's mutiny Mr Christian! Why would he do that? No idea.

Navigation in ww2 was pure luck so a few degrees here or there is normal. The Japanese fleet were in a hypothetical circle so as long as you head towards the circle then you may or may not find anything.

So we not talking 230 or 232 degrees here as that could be easily covered by random error. 260 degrees West is no random error! So if Waldron was saying we need to go 231 and not 230 degrees then that make no sense.

However if he knew they were going 260 west then yes I can understand the mutiny.

Any military guy can advise that you don't curse out you commanding officer and that a commanding officer can be a complete nitwit.

Had Waldron survived then a court martial could have been his reward.

 

[MIflyer]

it is interesting that Cmdr Waldron chose essentially the same course that the Yorktown Air Group did, and presumably both analyses were based on a more reasonable assumption of the average speed of the IJN fleet when operating under combat conditions. Coordination between the three US carriers was minimal. The task force command switched over to the Yorktown when it arrived after the two other carriers were already there and the three sets of leaders never sat down and made plans. And not one of them made a Plan B.

If Waldron had not disobeyed orders we might well have lost the battle since the IJN probably would have had time to complete their re-arming and launch their strike force at the US carriers. And the SBD's from the Yorktown and Enterprise would have arrived over the IJN fleet without any fighter escort.

Yes, a court martial might have been a possibility if Waldron had made it back - and not attacked the IJN on that day. No one would have court martialed him if VT-8 had been the only force from teh Hornet to attack the IJN. But he did not make it back and the USN named a new destroyer after him in 1944.

As for the Yorktown Capt , soon to be promoted to Admiral, Mitscher, he ordered his diaries covering that portion of his life to be destroyed after his death.

By the way, at Coral Sea only one SBD did dogfighting with the Zeros. The rest acted like dive bombers and flew a defensive formation. They were supposed to be attacking Kates, not Zekes.

 

[Juha3]

The actions of Lt CDR Waldron just don't understand what's going on.

He went against Ring in the briefing. He broke radio silence to say Ring was wrong. He then disobeyed orders and took his squadron with him! That's mutiny Mr Christian! Why would he do that? No idea.

Navigation in ww2 was pure luck so a few degrees here or there is normal. The Japanese fleet were in a hypothetical circle so as long as you head towards the circle then you may or may not find anything.

So we not talking 230 or 232 degrees here as that could be easily covered by random error. 260 degrees West is no random error! So if Waldron was saying we need to go 231 and not 230 degrees then that make no sense.

However if he knew they were going 260 west then yes I can understand the mutiny.

Any military guy can advise that you don't curse out you commanding officer and that a commanding officer can be a complete nitwit.

Had Waldron survived then a court martial could have been his reward.

Not necessarily, armed forces like winners, even if one wins by disobeying orders. Like Nelson at Copenhagen in 1801. Of course at that case Parker knew his subordinate and has no inclination to demand court martial. Of course if you disobey you better be right otherwise you will be in big trouble.

 

[The Basket]

You not familiar with military.

Guys at pearl harbour were going to be court martialled for taking an axe to the ammunition lockers.

The proceedings were quashed but never underestimate the stupidity of officers.

If you look at the Flight to Nowhere, Ring and his authority were utterly discredited. How many men did he lose? How many aircraft? He could have been court martialled too.

 

[MIflyer]

I served with two especially outstanding officers in the USAF. Top notch guys, all the way. And they were part of two consecutive utter programmatic disasters. The first disaster the SECAF said, "This was a huge mistake and we will be years recovering from it." For the second disaster a special high level review was held and a former CSAF said, "Your problem is obvious. We used to be able to do this mission, now we can no longer. We changed who we put in charge a decade ago. Fire the ones you have in charge and rehire the ones you fired." What do you think happened to those two outstanding gentlemen with that record of failure on their records?

They both made General.

In contrast, for that first disaster it sounded good to me, too, but I was in college at the time. I was never involved in it. But when the 2nd disastrous idea came along I had some very relevant experience and said it was dumb and would not work. I ultimately was proved right but I never made it past O-5, and that was fine with me because I would have had to lie and say it was a great idea.

Both those guys who made general were part of enormous screw-ups, but they were officially approved screw-ups as part of high level approved Master Plans. They did not think up those ideas but just executed them. Other generals and senior people thought them up. Me, I was a guy who was telling them their big ideas would not work; the fact that I was proved right did not matter.

So Commander Ring was promoted to Captain and made Admiral after the war because he screwed up big time but did so in an officially approved manner, following the correct procedures and with the endorsement of his commander, Admiral-select Mitscher. The sad part is that they should have given Waldron the MOH but then it was only fairly recently that the real story came out.

 

[SaparotRob]

I remember reading about big time corporate failures years ago. There was a phrase "the punishment of the innocent". The brave few who pointed out the emperor had no clothes were the first canned.

 

[Juha3]

You not familiar with military.

Guys at pearl harbour were going to be court martialled for taking an axe to the ammunition lockers.

The proceedings were quashed but never underestimate the stupidity of officers.

If you look at the Flight to Nowhere, Ring and his authority were utterly discredited. How many men did he lose? How many aircraft? He could have been court martialled too.

I'm ex-sapper corporal, not a big deal, some 75% of Finnish men of my age group served (nowadays down to 66%), some 20-30% of them as junior NCOs, but I was trained as first line soldier and to be capable to take independent decisions and even argue on sapper business with infantry officers in case of my squad being subordinated to an infantry platoon/company.

Ps. and some 50 years ago one commander of one of our coastal battery decided that the situation was so tense that he must load his guns with live ammo, in the haste they did not find immediately the key of the magazine, so one senior NCO broken into the magazine with help of a crowbar. No talk on court martial, there had been a problem and it was solved in no time. And that was with the coastal artillery which was in 70s known to have much more than its share of bullying NCOs and officers. On the other hand i encountered almost no bullying while serving, maybe the higher echelon thought that running around carrying four 10 kg/22 lbs training A/T mines and handling all kind of nasties was stressful enough.

 

[The Basket]

I doubt Waldron would have got medal of honour. Disobeyed his chain of command.

Pretty much all of Hornets air group disobeyed Ring. To me Waldron being right meant that Ring must have been wrong.

Now there is a possibility that the Kido Butai was heading North West when the sighting report came in. There a quite a few naval reports where the ships are heading in the wrong direction. This was due to Zig Zagging or perhaps in this case the carriers were heading into the wind. But of course the target was Midway.

The Enterprise Dive bombers did initially miss the carriers and went too far south because they believed the carriers were in a straight line to Midway. Having to head into the wind made the Kido Butai go into reverse.

So based on last sighting going NW then maybe a West course was reasonable. Or they were going after Zuikaku. We may never know the truth.

The military don't do anything wrong. So when they do something wrong it never happened.

Enterprise Wildcat squadron accidentally followed the Hornet Air Group. If they were both going same direction then this error could have been rectified.

 

[Juha3]

There are armies and armies, In the Red Army later in the WWII one could argue even with Stalin. In 1944 during the final phases of the planning of the Operation Bagration the STAVKA (Highest HQ) plan was shown to the Front (Army Group) commanders, one of them, Rokossovky?, was not happy with the attack plan on his Front sector and said it and figured out a sketch of a plan which he thought was better. Stalin, who had accepted the STAVKA plan, did not like that someone argued against it. He asked a couple times from Rokossovsky "Are You sure?". Rokossovsky say "Yes". Stalin then said to him: "Go to hallway and think your answer very carefully and then come back" R went to hallway and thought that he was in very dangerous position but decided that his plan was better. He returned to the conference room. Everybody looked at him and Stalin stared him sternly and asked "Do you still think that the original plan was poor?" R said "Yes". Stalin stared him even more sternly a while but then said "Ok, do what you like but you are personally responsible for success." And in Stalin's SU everybody knew that it was not an empty threat.

 

[MIflyer]

An officer I served with had been at Clear AFS, AK and walked into the tracking center one day to see that the radar had one track, probably a meteorite, but that the computer was counting that track over and over. The Sgt on duty looked up, saw the track count and turned white. The officer pointed out that the track count did not match the radar data and told him that the computer was stuck in do loop and was sending the data automatically to NORAD HQ at Cheyenne Mtn, so call them and tell them was was going on. Then they lost communications with NORAD. So he told them to call Peterson AFB and have them contact NORAD, if required by driving over there.

The problem was resolved and by the time the computer was shut down it had counted thousands of inbounds from that one track.

The NORAD HQ sent a letter complaining that Clear AFS had not followed the proper procedure for handling the problem (since the procedure did not work when the comm went down).

The next week they sent out a letter with a new procedure, the one he had devised in real time. So they had chastised him for not following the procedure and then changed the procedure to match what he had done. That is the way some military people think.

And as for the Enterprise Wildcats following VT-8, the ship had a deck problm so their Wildcats launched later than had been planned and thus did not have a visual on their own airplanes. Also, the USN had very restrictive lints on radio communications, so the fighters could not call up the SBDs and TBDs and ask them wher ethey were. And when the Enterprise Wildcats arrived over the IJN fleet they did not bother to mention the fact over the radio until they finally hit their fuel limit and departed.

 

[The Basket]

Thing I likes reading about Midway is the toss of the coin nature. It was hanging by a thread and could have gone either way. Which is not always the case. Plus it was a very clear decisive victory which again is rare. Happened all in a day like some murderous play.

So plenty of meat whereas Battle of Britain or Jutland is open to usual internet babble.

Problem you court martial Ring them you court martial Mitscher. Yeah. Not happening.

How the USN got so much wrong and yet set 4 carriers ablaze is quite something. With such heavy aircraft losses it would be easy to portray it as a defeat if things turned out sour. But victory rights all wrongs.

The Devastator may have been a fuel/air bomb bullet magnet carrying a junk torpedo that didn't work but the courage of the men who flew in her is 2nd to none in the annals of air combat. I have total admiration for them.