Release an unreliable torpedo within a restrictive envelope.
Escape from a faster enemy.
Each challenge might be manageable alone.
Together they produced catastrophe.
This is how military systems fail.
Not always through one enormous flaw.
Sometimes through several weaknesses stacking until courage becomes the only remaining resource.
Courage is a poor substitute for a functioning system.
The men had plenty of courage.
The system around them was not ready.
Waldron's Greatest Success Was Also What Killed His Squadron
He found the Japanese fleet.
That sentence contains the tragedy.
Hornet's other strike elements struggled to locate the enemy.
Waldron's navigational judgment brought VT-8 directly to the target.
Had fighter escort and coordinated dive bombers been with him, his decision might have become celebrated as the opening move of a successful combined attack.
Instead, the squadron arrived alone.
Good tactical judgment met bad operational coordination.
The result was annihilation.
This is why outcomes should not be used automatically to judge decisions.
Waldron was correct about where the enemy was.
Correctness did not save him.
The Men Behind Him Trusted That Decision
Fifteen aircraft did not arrive independently.
The squadron followed its commander.
Pilots saw the Japanese carriers.
They also saw the Zeros.
They could understand what was about to happen.
Individual pilots still had controls.
A man could theoretically break away.
Turn toward open ocean.
Attempt to survive.
They continued.
Partly because of orders.
Partly because of training.
Partly because the carrier ahead was exactly the target they had crossed the ocean to find.
Military cohesion turns thirty individual people into one formation.
At Midway, that cohesion held until the formation itself was destroyed.
The Rear Gunners Deserve Equal Place in the Story
Popular retellings naturally focus on pilots because pilots controlled the aircraft.
Every TBD carried a second man.
Radioman-gunner.
He sat behind the pilot.
He communicated.
He watched the rear hemisphere.
When Zeros attacked, he became the aircraft's only direct defense against fighters approaching from behind.
Imagine that position.
The pilot faces forward toward a carrier.
The gunner faces backward toward the aircraft trying to kill them.
The two men experience different battles inside the same cockpit.
The pilot sees the objective.
The gunner sees the threat.
Neither can leave.
Many gunners continued firing until their aircraft went down.
Their names are less often remembered.
Their risk was identical.
Of the thirty men in VT-8's attack, twenty-nine died.
Not fourteen pilots and fifteen anonymous passengers.
Twenty-nine individual airmen.
George Gay Carried Their Story Back
When only one man survives a disaster, memory places an enormous burden on him.
Gay became more than a surviving pilot.
He became one of the people who could describe what happened to the squadron.
His account helped the Navy understand the attack.
He could testify that the men had pressed forward.
He could describe Japanese carrier activity he had observed from the water.
He could explain the destruction of VT-8 from inside it.
A dead squadron cannot write its own after-action report.
The survivor becomes its voice.
Gay would later continue flying combat.
Midway did not end his war.
But the fact that he alone returned from the fifteen Hornet Devastators permanently attached him to the memory of June 4.
His Survival Was Not the Result of Being Less Courageous
This is worth saying because survivor stories sometimes create uncomfortable comparisons.
Gay did not live because he turned away while others pressed on.
He attacked.
Released his torpedo.
Was shot down.
His survival came from circumstances after the aircraft hit the water.
Position.
Damage.
Physical survival.
Concealment.
Luck.
Another man making the same decisions could die.
That is combat.
Courage influences behavior.
Chance influences survival.
The two should never be confused.
He Spent Hours in Water Surrounded by the Battle He Had Just Left
The Pacific is enormous when viewed from an aircraft.
From the surface, it becomes even larger.
A man in the water occupies almost no space.
Ships can pass without seeing him.
Aircraft can cross overhead without noticing.
Exposure becomes dangerous.
Rescue uncertain.
Gay stayed hidden while Japanese forces remained nearby.
He witnessed smoke rising from the carriers after the American dive-bomber attack.
Think about what that must have meant.
He had seen his squadron destroyed trying to accomplish the same basic objective.
Now the enemy ships were burning.
There could be satisfaction.
Grief.
Shock.
None of those emotions changed the fact that he was still alone in the ocean.
History was turning in America's favor above him.
His own survival remained unresolved.
Eventually an American Patrol Aircraft Found Him
Gay was rescued and returned to American control.
Only then could the full truth of VT-8's destruction become clear to him.
No other man from the fifteen Hornet TBD crews had survived.
The squadron room would never look the same.
Thirty men had launched.
One had returned.
Military organizations are built to absorb loss.
Replacement pilots arrive.
New aircraft arrive.
A squadron designation can continue.
But institutional continuity is not human continuity.
The men who had eaten together, trained together, complained about equipment together, and launched together were gone.
A name could be rebuilt.
That morning's group could not.
Hornet Had to Receive an Air Group Missing an Entire Squadron
Carrier flight decks are designed around return.
Aircraft launch.
Then, after combat, lookouts search the horizon.
Planes appear.
Landing operations begin.
Fuel states are checked.
Damaged aircraft receive priority.
Medical teams wait.
On June 4, some aircraft returned.
Others arrived at different carriers or Midway.