Reporting from a World War II Aircraft Carrier

For the Battle of Midway, International News Service correspondent Richard Tregaskis sailed on the USS Hornet from Pearl Harbor and watched as its pilots set off to do battle with the Japanese fleet. What was it like? Here is how Tregaskis described his experience:

"Watching a modern sea battle from an aircraft carrier is like witnessing a football game from the locker room.

It consists mostly of seeing the boys dash out the door, then waiting nervously, endlessly, for them to come back, and finally putting together a picture of what has happened from the stories they pant out as they sink into welcome relaxation.

Between the times they run out and come back (IF they come back) you have the noises of the crowd to guide you in your nervous guessing game—the clouds of smoke that rise beyond the horizon, and the garbled mouthings of the interplane radios coming from a span of perhaps more than 100 miles.

If you are lucky, this remote contact with the battle is your only contact. If you are unlucky, the enemy bombers find your ship while your own planes are out, and your period of waiting is punctuated by blasts of high explosives.

That, at least, is what the veterans will tell you; if you ask them ‘what’s it like on an aircraft carrier during a battle?’ and my own experience during the Battle of Midway, confirms the impression. I was aboard an aircraft carrier which launched slugging divebombers, torpedo planes and fighters against the Japanese.

I remember the tenseness in the air as we watched the boys take off for battle on the bright morning of June Fourth, the first and decisive day of the Midway fracas. All of us knew these lads were heading for the climactic experience of any military man’s life. We knew the chances they were going to have to take, the whirlpool of action and chaos and gunfire they were going to become embroiled in that morning.

The enemy had been sighted and his position and strength fixed. The teletype machine in the pilots’ ready rooms had snapped the lads into action as the message was pecked out, word by word: 'Pilots will man planes . . . . maintain search attack procedure. . . . each group attack one carrier. . . . we will continue closing. . . . pilots man planes.' The captain had authorized the use of profanity in referring to the foe, on this particular day: 'Go get the bastards,' clicked the teletype.

The pilots had been waiting for this final word ever since the details of an enemy contact had flashed over the teletype nearly an hour before. I had been one of their restless number squirming in the armchairs of the ready room, fidgeting, smoking cigarettes in chains, trying to read the smudgy magazines that lay about, jumping nervously each time the teletype began to peck out a message.

Now, that message, had begun to come through at last. The boys leapt to their feet, rummaged in their gear lockers, pulled helmets and goggles on their heads. This, one of them shouted, was IT.

Now they had pulled open the heavy, watertight ready room doors and were thumping along to their planes. I heard the shout 'Stand clear of propellers' relayed along the deck by hoarse, excited voices. Then, 'Stand by to start all engines.' And after that, the hiss and sputter of the start, the rough, raucous sound of the engine catching and shouting out the rowdy, discorded sound of its horsepower. The mounting of the sound of engine upon engine left the deck shaking with the power of it.

From the second level of the bridge I looked down on the planes warming up, the shimmering arcs of propellers mingled amidst a disorderly pile of wings and fuselages, punctuated by the blue flame and spitting smoke of exhausts. The deck operations officer, his ridiculously small, checkered flag in his hand, staggered out amidst the multiple gales of propeller slipstreams and prepared to send the first plane on its way to battle.

Up in the flight control gallery on the bridge I could see the green 'go' flag in the wind. I saw the deck officer glance up at it, and then, with an intent straight look at the first pilot in line, bring his own flag sharply downwards.

And so the first plane, her motor roaring full gun, began to waddle forward. I tried to detect the expression of the pilot’s face as he swept by gaining momentum, but even with my field glasses I could make out only his goggles trained fixedly forward, his drawn, intense cheek, his hands aptly busy with the controls.

The roar of his motor reached a peak of sound as he swept by, an upleasant rough-throated gargle rising to a shout—and then he was near the end of the deck, his wheels lifting a thin distance off the boards, then sweeping off over the blue water.

Now the second plane was moving into line, beginning her take-off run; and it was the same as the first; the same motor roar, reaching a peak pitch, the same intense pilot’s face going by, same deft hands working in the cockpit, and then the ominous flattening of the motor sound as the plane dipped from the end of the deck, its wings shadowing water.

It was not hard to imagine the thoughts passing through the pilots’ minds at this time of stress: the forward straining of their nerves as they swept down the deck knowing they were heading for combat; the quick imaginings of the action that might wait for them; the reality of the presence of death, the first straight look into the eyes of death; and superimposed against this thought-landscape, the hand and foot motions, the habited reactions, the intricate worry of simply flying—of the oft-repeated technique of simply getting a plane into the air.

This was the modern beginning of the modern conflict; far different, perhaps, from the slow-swinging battle lines, the ponderous maneuvering that preceded an old-style naval engagement—but every bit as exciting. And, strangely, a reversion to the old style of knights rattling out to meet the foe in a tourney.

When the last planes had taken off, time seemed to sag and stop for a few moments—as we all knew it would be some time before our planes would reach the enemy. But there was no sense of relaxation. We stood at battle stations, anxiously squinting at the horizon. For we knew a plague of Japanese bombers might pop into sight at any minute.

Below me along the deck I could see the circular nests surrounding the anti-aircraft guns, with white blogs and dark goggles marking the upturned faces of the crews. I could see several gunners strapped into position, their feet ready on the trigger pedals.

But for some time at least, they were not to have a change to fire. Staring at the sphere of the sea, we could see nothing but our own craft for a space of many minutes, although lookouts turned in many a false alarm. And then there was the hue and cry and sudden movement that comes when something unmistakable is sighted; and now, astern and to our port side, we could see a turnip-shaped cloud of smoke rising, just over the horizon.

I turned my field glasses on the smoke column—and as I looked, a peppering of dark spots suddenly flung against the sky near the smoke. I knew that I was watching anti-aircraft bursts. I could see not planes among them; the distance was too great. But I knew that somewhere over the horizon, planes were diving on a ship; and the ship was defending itself with clouds of ackackfire.

As I watched, I could see the swarm of bursts growing larger, spreading over the sky. And then, suddenly, amidst the black flecks, a brilliant little yellow light winked into being, like a tiny flashlight hanging over the horizon.

Now, as I saw it settling towards the curved horizon-rim, still burning brightly, the fact that this was a plane, afire, seeped into my brain.

Visually, it was far removed, only a tiny, impersonal signal light in the distance; but I knew that for the pilot, the light meant the color and the searing heat of flames, and perhaps the agony of knowing that he was dying. Or perhaps, mercifully, he was dead of wounds before his plane became a roman candle and snuffed itself into the sea.

'It’s a flamer, a flamer,' said the young signal officer standing next to me. His eyes burned with excitement.

But for me, the excitement of the moment came with suspense; the suspense of wondering what the flamer and the smoke-display indicated. Did they mean success or defeat for our side? Did they mean that squadrons of Japanese bombers might soon target us, or that Japanese planes and ships had been put out of action? And who had died in that flaming plane—one of ours or one of theirs?

There was some respite from the suspense of wondering what was happening. Down in the air pilot room, sitting amidst rows of radio equipment, one could hear quick words being passed between planes in battle; crackling, distorted voice of fliers in the midst of breathless action. And we knew from what we heard that many of our flying men were machine gunning the enemy from the air and hitting assigned objectives with bombs.

“You take the one to the left and I’ll take the one to the right,” said the voice, clearly. And a few seconds later, the same voice repeated: 'You take the little one over there to the left. Somebody’s taking the one over to the right.' Evidently our fliers were still picking their targets.

And so the day went; by watching the sea from a high level, keeping an intent eye on the horizon, and listening to the radio in snatches, one could patch together a conception of what MIGHT be happening out there. But it was only when the fliers returned to tell their excited yarns, that the suspense of wondering what was occurring out on the ocean gridiron, was relieved.

When the fliers came back, and stormed into the their ready rooms full of jubilant shouts and congratulations, we gathered a fairly coherent story: on that day four of the enemy carriers and some other ships had been blasted and set afire. One of our own carriers had been attacked by dive bombers—and that explained the net of anti-aircraft fire, and the flamer we had seen, which incidentally was one of many Japanese aircraft knocked into the drink on that attack,

On this and subsequent days of battle, I was struck by the effect that intense action evidently produced in the fliers. It was like intoxication: many of them talked liked whirlwinds, their eyes dilated, and they seemed to have little control over the volume of their voices.

I remember particularly one young lieutenant whom I saw in his ready room following a successful attack by our divebombers upon a Japanese battleship. It had been his first attack.

His hair was standing askew on his crown like a disordered pile of feathers. His eyes stared. He talked so fast his words fell over each other. He gesticulated like a marionette.

'We hit em,' he said, and repeated it over. 'And we’ll go back and do it again.'

I asked him whether he had left the battleship afire. But he did not seem to focus on the question. 'Everything was black,' he said.

'Was it smoke,' I asked, 'or the color of the battleship?'

'I don’t know,' he said. 'Everything was black. We’ll go back and hit ‘em again. What are we waiting for?' And that is a literal transcription of his conversation.

Two days later, when the battle had come to an end, and the pilots had a chance to relax, to settle down in the wardroom and regain their usual composure, I saw the same pilot in a blue funk. His face looked drawn and there were pockets under his eyes.

'Feel bad?' I asked him.

'Terrible,' he said. 'Like a hangover.' Which I presume was the truth. He was suffering a hangover after a jag of the most intense excitement in the world."