They knew bombs might be released within seconds.
They also knew American fighters were mixed with them.
Identification had to happen quickly.
The risk of friendly fire increased as O’Hare continued making passes.
This is one reason interceptor doctrine tries to destroy attacking aircraft well before they reach the ships.
Once enemy bombers, friendly fighters, and shipboard antiaircraft fire occupy the same small area of sky, every participant’s problem becomes harder.
O’Hare had already done the most valuable part of his work at distance.
He had broken the formation before its final bombing run.
Now he was nearly out of both space and ammunition.
His final attack ended because the guns could no longer continue
O’Hare made another firing pass.
Then his ammunition was exhausted.
The thirty-four seconds had been divided across multiple attacks.
The Wildcat still flew.
O’Hare could still maneuver.
But his principal weapon was gone.
At that point, whatever Japanese aircraft remained would face Lexington itself.
Four bombers reached the release area according to American accounts.
They dropped a total of ten 250-kilogram bombs.
The carrier maneuvered violently.
The nearest bombs missed by only about 100 feet. (Lịch Sử Hải Quân)
One hundred feet is close enough to make the phrase “saved the carrier” understandable.
Had one or more of those bombs landed on the flight deck, elevators, hangar areas, aviation-fuel systems, or machinery spaces, the consequences could have been serious.
An aircraft carrier is not merely a large ship that happens to carry airplanes.
Its offensive power depends on a functioning flight deck, aircraft-handling system, fuel supply, weapons storage, and complex internal machinery.
A bomb does not have to sink a carrier to remove it from a campaign.
It only has to damage the right place.
O’Hare had reduced the attack before the bombs were released
The surviving bombers still threatened Lexington, but they were no longer the intact formation that had approached minutes earlier.
Some had been shot down.
Some had been damaged.
One had abandoned the bombing attempt.
Formation integrity had been disrupted.
Gunners had been forced to defend themselves.
Pilots had been forced to watch for a fighter attacking from alternating directions.
The original bombing solution had been degraded.
This is difficult to quantify.
Bombing accuracy depends on altitude, speed, formation, target motion, visibility, timing, and crew coordination.
A formation under repeated fighter attack cannot devote the same attention to precise bombing as one approaching unopposed.
O’Hare’s intervention therefore influenced not just how many bombers arrived but how they arrived.
The final miss cannot be attributed entirely to him.
Lexington’s radical maneuvering mattered.
Shipboard antiaircraft fire mattered.
Japanese bombing accuracy mattered.
But O’Hare had transformed a concentrated incoming attack into a damaged, harassed formation.
That is why the Navy regarded his action as potentially decisive.
The official victory total was five, but history is more complicated
O’Hare initially believed he had destroyed more aircraft.
The official wartime assessment credited him with five bombers destroyed and a sixth badly damaged.
That made him the first U.S. Navy fighter ace of World War II. (Lịch Sử Hải Quân)
Postwar access to Japanese records complicated that exact number.
Modern Navy historical work indicates that the second Japanese formation contained eight aircraft rather than nine and that three were certainly seen falling in flames during O’Hare’s attack, while other aircraft he hit survived long enough to continue or return.
Different official Navy historical pages themselves reflect the difficulty of reconstructing the engagement, with some later summaries describing four actual kills and two damaged while the Medal of Honor record continues to preserve the wartime credit of five and one. (Lịch Sử Hải Quân)
This should not be treated as evidence that O’Hare’s achievement was fabricated.
It demonstrates how aerial victory claims work.
The Navy awarded credit using the best information available immediately after combat.
O’Hare attacked multiple aircraft in only a few minutes.
Several bombers were already damaged.
Other American fighters and antiaircraft guns were also engaging Japanese aircraft during the larger battle.
Postwar records allow historians to separate some losses more accurately.
The distinction between official wartime score and probable physical losses caused directly by one pilot is normal in air-war history.
O’Hare’s tactical impact remains clear regardless of which accounting system is used.
The entire Japanese strike force suffered catastrophic losses
The second formation was only part of the larger engagement.
Seventeen G4Ms had been sent toward Task Force 11 in two groups.
American Wildcats, Dauntlesses, and shipboard antiaircraft fire hit them hard.
Modern Navy reconstruction states that only two of the seventeen Bettys returned to Rabaul, both damaged aircraft that had been engaged by O’Hare. (Lịch Sử Hải Quân)
Other Japanese reconnaissance aircraft were also lost during the day.
The immediate Japanese land-based bomber force available for operations against the task force was severely reduced.
From an operational perspective, this was much larger than one pilot’s score.
American carrier defense had worked.
Radar gave warning.
Fighter direction moved aircraft toward contacts.
Fighter pilots intercepted.
Dauntless crews assisted.
Shipboard gunners fired.
The carrier maneuvered.
No single layer was perfect.
Together they prevented a major Japanese success.
O’Hare became famous because, for several crucial minutes, nearly all those layers narrowed to one fighter between the second formation and the carrier.
His Wildcat came back with remarkably little damage
Given the intensity of the defensive fire, O’Hare’s aircraft escaped surprisingly well.
Modern Navy history records only one bullet hole attributable to the engagement. (Lịch Sử Hải Quân)
Then, after surviving Japanese gunners, he encountered another danger.
Friendly fire.
When O’Hare approached Lexington to land, at least one nervous American machine gunner opened fire at the returning Wildcat.
Thach later remembered the incident in his oral history.
O’Hare landed safely.
His reaction afterward became part of squadron legend because of how understated it was.
Rather than exploding in anger at the young gunner, O’Hare responded with characteristic restraint.
The exact wording survives through Thach’s later recollection and should therefore be treated as remembered dialogue rather than a cockpit recording, but the story captures how O’Hare’s contemporaries viewed him: technically confident, controlled, and not inclined toward theatrical self-promotion. (U.S. Naval Institute)
The fighter that had just flown through Japanese bomber fire nearly received more damage from its own ship than from the enemy.
Such confusion was not unusual in early carrier warfare.
Everyone aboard Lexington was learning in real time.
The historic Wildcat did not survive the war either
O’Hare’s aircraft was an F4F associated in modern Navy accounts with Bureau Number 4031, remembered in connection with the February 20 action.
The airplane itself did not become a preserved museum relic.
It was later lost while being transferred in carrier operations. (Lịch Sử Hải Quân)
That means the physical Wildcat most closely associated with one of the most famous early-war fighter actions disappeared while the pilot’s reputation continued growing.
Photographs taken later showed O’Hare in Wildcats marked with Japanese flags representing his official victories.
Those images became iconic.
They should not always be read as literal photographic documentation of the exact combat aircraft used during the engagement.
Wartime publicity photography often reconstructed appearances around surviving aircraft and available equipment.
What mattered to the public was the man.
The small row of Japanese flags became visual shorthand for an event that had lasted only minutes.
O’Hare’s combat had lasted roughly six minutes
The time scale is one of the most extraordinary aspects of the engagement.
The famous defense is often described as lasting approximately six minutes.
Six minutes is shorter than many modern aircraft taxi sequences.
It is shorter than the time required to read a detailed account of the battle.
Within that period, O’Hare had to:
identify the formation,
judge its course,
recognize that his wingman could not fire,
choose an attack geometry,
dive,
aim,
fire,
break away,
avoid defensive guns,
reposition,
attack from another side,
identify new targets,
manage ammunition,
watch his distance from the carrier,
and eventually avoid both enemy fire and American antiaircraft fire.
This is why describing the action simply as “O’Hare shot down five bombers” loses much of what made it remarkable.
The number is the visible result.
The difficult part was making correct decisions quickly enough that the number became possible.
His first decision was not “which bomber should I shoot?”
It was “where must my fighter be?”
That is a more fundamental fighter-pilot question.
A pilot in the wrong position may never get a useful shot.
A pilot with position can create several.
O’Hare had altitude.
He had speed.
He had a bomber formation committed to one direction because its target was the carrier.
He therefore knew something the Japanese could not easily change: where they needed to go.
The bombers could maneuver defensively, but every large course change reduced their chance of reaching Lexington in time and in formation.
O’Hare did not have to chase them across the Pacific.
He could position himself where their path and his attack path intersected.
This turned the bombers’ mission requirement into a vulnerability.
They had to continue generally toward the ship.
O’Hare could move around them.
That is why one fighter could influence an entire formation.
Deflection shooting turned crossing speed into an advantage
Imagine firing at a moving car from another moving vehicle crossing its path.
Aiming directly at the car means the bullets arrive behind it.
The shooter must aim ahead.
The greater the crossing speed, distance, and angle, the greater the required lead.
Aerial deflection shooting applies the same concept in three dimensions.
Now add several hundred miles per hour of relative motion.
Add climb and descent.
Add vibration.
Add a target that is firing back.
Add no computer sight calculating the solution automatically.
The pilot must estimate almost everything.
O’Hare’s training gave him unusual skill at this.
Instead of avoiding difficult crossing shots and choosing the easier tail position, he accepted the harder shooting problem because the tactical position was safer and more effective.
That choice explains the apparent paradox of the battle.
The position that made shooting more difficult helped make survival more likely.
O’Hare’s gunnery ability allowed him to exploit it.
He aimed at parts of the bomber that mattered
The G4M was large compared with the Wildcat.
But a bomber is not destroyed simply by filling random areas of aluminum with holes.
Effective fighter gunnery seeks engines, fuel systems, crew positions, control areas, or structural sections.
O’Hare’s firing runs concentrated on engines and wing areas.