Customer Reviews

The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons

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4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a very interesting little book. While brief, it raises some interesting conclusions. The result will not doubt spark contention among veterans and historians. I am left to realize now why the account of Midway given to us by the likes of Walter Lord and Gordon Sprague seem to not quite ring correct. For those interested in the US carrier air operations at Midway, this book paints a dim picture. As a military officer myself, I can say Mr. Kernan's account of Navy incompetence, careerism, cover-up, cowardice, courage will grip you. The tale is, of course, complex. It involves complex air and weapon systems, communications, training, command control, and leadership. The author reached conclusions which leave the reader to decide whether actions were the result of incompetence, indifference, or cowardice. Air Group commander Stanhope Ring, from the Hornet, was a disaster. His blunders were covered up by the Hornet operational staff. That he received the same award as Lieutenant Commander Waldron is ironic (to say the least). Evidence seems to suggest Ring was haunted by his failure on June fourth for the rest of his life. He wrote private explanations of why his airstike got lost and missed the Japanese fleet. Whether his explanation is sufficient to explain what happened is left for the reader to judge (I do not believe his account) Captain Mitscher of the Hornet does not come off well here either (there are no after action reports from the Hornet, which is unbelievable. If we had lost the battle, many careers would have been over). Admiral Fletcher was really the only competent carrier commander among the Americans. If Admiral Halsey was present, the Americans might not have botched things so badly. The Enterprise fighter section leader, LT Gray, led his planes out of the battle zone (abandoning Torpedo 8 to be slaughtered), claiming Bingo fuel. The passage of time has not diminished the stench of cowardice here. Gray (to this day) feels his actions were justified, based upon the severe fuel limitations of the Wildcat fighter. Such was the drama of Midway. New methods of war, causing more than the usual friction. In such cases, sheer courage and the random factor must be left to make up the difference. I recommend this book for those who consider themselves "experts" on the battle. It will send them running back to their books to study charts of the movements of the air groups. There is much detail tucked into this work, especially in the notes. For example, the fate of the pilots picked up by the Makigumo and the Arashi. I was surprised that George Gay (only survivor of Torpedo Eight's attack) had his ashes scattered in the waters off Midway. How fitting. I did not know (but learned from a footnote) that Commander Joseph Rochefort [was] caught in the infighting between the director of naval intelligence and the director of naval communications over which directorate should control the production and dissemination of communications intelligence and lost his post. His analysis of Japanese message traffic was decisive in giving our Navy the initiative in launching their counterattack. I recommend this book, and learned much from it. I think it will do much to keep the memory of the Midway pilots alive. The story of Torpedo 8 is one of the epic stories in American military history. The true story would make a good screenplay, I believe. I look forward to upcoming scholarship on the battle, because it will be interested in seeing how this work is received by naval historians.

. Professor Kernan was kind enough to forward an advance copy of his latest book to me, which focuses on what he considers the biggest "unknown" of the epic Battle of Midway in 1942: the full story of the U.S. torpedo squadrons; their strategy, training, planning, sorties, and sacrifice. As veteran of Torpedo Squadron Six (VT-6) on the USS Enterprise during the battle, he is uniquely qualified to comment on such matters, and as a university professor in English literature, he is masterfully equipped to write about them. The result is a gripping tale of what was like to live and work aboard the Enterprise and VT-6 during those desperate early months of the war.
. Unfortunately, this book suffers from a deficiency also seen in Kernan's recent fictional tale of the Battle of Midway, "Love and Glory": he really needs to employ the service of an independent editor before submitting a manuscript for publication. "The Unknown Battle of Midway," an otherwise interesting and useful book, is sullied by numerous typesetting or content issues (example: one chart shows VT-6 breaking away from Ring and the Hornet air group--a simple typo, but a glaring graphic flub that jumps out at the knowledgeable reader who expects to see VT-8 there). In critiquing the book for him, I provided the author with a list of the mistakes, which he says will be helpful in producing a subsequent paperback edition. (Interestingly, his very best book, "Crossing the Line," has none of these kinds of problems. It is five-star quality in all regards.)
. If you can get past such glitches (and most readers probably aren't the editorial nitpicker that I am), this book is a positive addition to a well-rounded Battle of Midway library. I would give it at least one more star if its structural errors were fixed. (Reviewed by R. W. Russell, editor, The Battle of Midway Roundtable, www.midway42.org)

At the beginning of World War II the author was an 18-year old enlisted aviation ordnanceman who subsequently served on several carriers in the Pacific. Readers would hope that he would leverage this experience to provide a unique and original viewpoint of war on a carrier. Unfortunately, Kernan strays far outside his expertise. Many of his comments and some of his facts are dead wrong; some of his comments and many of his interpretations can seem to be creditable on a superficial level, but are also either dead wrong or one of the breed of insidious half-truths that have a life of their own and are hard to squash. This book will be cited in future works, so another cottage industry has been created to correct the horde of myths and inaccuracies that will trickle down into Naval history from this book. To crown this achievement, Kernan creates a new "conspiracy theory" about the Battle of Midway.
Any good conspiracy theorist needs to first establish his personal credibility. This Kernan attempts in a few introductory chapters where he talks about military history, carrier aviation, ship design, and aerial torpedoes. His believability dies quickly. Specifically, I count 20 substantive or interpretive errors or half-truths in the book's first 25 pages.
There are errors where his facts are just dead wrong:
* "The USS Oglala was hit by four torpedoes ..." No, she was not hit by any torpedoes - she sustained underwater damage from a single torpedo hit on a light cruiser that was moored inboard of her. Because she sank without taking any direct hits herself she was later known as The Ship that Was Frightened to Death;
* The Japanese had not "stalemated the Russians in Manchuria," actually the Japanese were soundly beaten at Nomonhan, the 23rd Division being nearly annihilated with 76% casualties. The only reason the Soviets halted was because they had Poland to invade and then the Germans to repulse;
* The US Navy had radar "courtesy of the British." No the first USN radar was on a ship in April of 1937, and the first production radar, the CXAM, began installation in May of 1940. Exchange of radar information with the British did not happen until the Fall of 1940;
* Carriers to launch wanted 30 knots of wind over the deck, not "30 knots [of ship's speed] plus the wind."
... and many other factual errors.
There are errors where his proffered opinions are either only half right or misleading. For example, his comments on the placement of islands on carriers, boiler and engine room subdivision, and stack numbers and placement are superficial and uninformed, and generally half-truths. Tonnage limitations and how the disposal of stack gasses effect turbulence in the landing area is never mentioned. He thinks that early US carrier designs had arresting gear at both ends of the ship because "depending on the wind, the carriers were as likely to launch and land planes while going backward as forward" - no, Alvin, the arresting gear at both ends was for emergency recoveries without having to break the deck spot, or in the event of battle damage.
Even more egregiously, he does not understand the distinction between belt armor and a ships torpedo protection system, mixing them up in his discussion and then laughably coming to the conclusion that carriers succumbed to enemy torpedoes "because they were not armored enough." He uses technical terms improperly: for example, a ship's propeller shafts are referred to as "drive shafts," equating a carrier's propulsion system with that of a 1941 Chevrolet roadster.
After thus establishing his credibility, Kernan then goes on to collect some of the reasons why so many of the US torpedo bombers were lost at Midway. Most are straightforward, collected from other secondary sources dealing with the battle, and are presented in a workmanlike manner. However, when he moves to original material he reveals his true roots, not those of a Navy aviation ordnanceman, but of an English Professor from an Ivy League school. What he really wants is to talk about racism and class barriers in the wartime Navy. Racism he could work in only for a sentence, since it is clearly irrelevant to the story. Classism, however, becomes the centerpiece of the only "original" analysis in the book. Kernan contends that there was a conspiracy among the Navy high command to confuse or suppress the facts surrounding the attack of Torpedo 8 in order to protect the career of the Commander Hornet Air Group (CHAG), Commander Ring.
The bare facts are the following: the enemy carriers were located inexactly. Ring and Waldron have an argument before launch on the flyout course to use to find the enemy, but Ring is unconvinced by Waldron's arguments. Ring, as CHAG, gathers his squadrons and heads out. 30 minutes after launch Waldron again argues over the radio with the CHAG, then, on his own hook, departs from the formation with his squadron of torpedo bombers. Waldron finds the carrier, attacks, and his entire squadron is shot down, inflicting no damage. Ring does not find the target and returns to the Hornet.
Waldron is Alvin Kernan's hero. He dedicates the book to him.
In Kernan's view, Waldron is the self-sacrificing hero and Ring is the goat for not agreeing with him, and subsequently for not finding the targets when presented with the "correct" course by Waldron. This is exactly 180 degrees out, and where Kernan displays a lamentable ignorance of how military organizations work. Waldron was obligated to present his views to his commander; however, he was equally obligated to follow the orders of his commander afterwards. Kernan spends a lot of ink explaining why the Devastator was a poor aircraft and inadequate to the task; how, then, can he make Waldron out as a hero for disobeying orders and leading his squadron on a suicide attack in such an inadequate aircraft? If the TBD was unlikely to penetrate to the target without fighter support and the diversion of a dive bombing attack, points all well made by Kernan, how can Kernan subsequently praise him for doing just that?
Waldron was guilty of disobeying orders, and should have been court-martialed; the real "conspiracy" was that the Navy gave him a Navy Cross for getting himself and his people killed.
Examine what could have been: if Waldron had followed his commander's orders, he would have arrived at the point of no return and turned back, undoubtedly with a great big "I told you so" expression on his face. But then, his torpedo squadron would have been back on the Hornet and available for subsequent strikes, including those against Hiryu and against the Japanese cruisers on the 6th, after the Zeros were gone and the TBD had a reasonable chance of getting hits. Had he acted appropriately, his combat power would have been preserved for later, instead of senselessly thrown away. These points totally evade Kernan as he obsesses with his conspiracy theory.
The evidence that Kernan presents to support his idea that there was a Naval Academy Alumni Association conspiracy to "save" Ring career is that Ring did not submit an after action report (rather, that Kernan could not find an after action report in the archives, quite a different thing), and that Mitscher's after action report was inaccurate as it supposed that Ring passed to the south of the target carriers, when he evidently actually passed to the north. Kernan does not understand that the after action reports, submitted only days after a battle, sometimes reflect the very real confusion of the battle. Considering that Torpedo 8 and Fighting 8 were lost in toto, Mitscher was writing a report based on limited inputs and not a full picture. Often only an exhaustive after-action review is able to get the facts sorted out. From this slim reed - the lack of a report, and an inaccurate report - Kernan claims a conspiracy to protect Ring. That's the jist of Kernan's argument. There is no other evidence, no corroborating testimony, no other facts, just Kernan's perception of class jealousy manifested into a conviction of a conspiracy.
One wonders if Kernan's research in the field of English is held to the same standard of evidence.
One should buy this book if one would like to see a collection of secondary source information regarding the US torpedo bombers at Midway. He has some quotations from works that are not easily located, and collects faithfully most of the arguments against US torpedoes and the Devastator torpedo bomber that are located in disparate sources. One should not buy the book for clear charts or graphics - "minimalist" is the style, so minimalist as to be nearly incomprehensible. One should also purchase this book if one wants to be entertained when the real naval historians go into damage control mode to stamp out all the disinformation spread by this book.
One should not buy this book if you are less than an expert in the field, for you are likely to be misled by what is known in the Navy as "bum gouge."
Dr. Alan D. Zimm, CDR USN (ret) (By the way, NOT a USNA grad).

Many people remember the battle of Midway as the turning point of the war in the Pacific due to the sinking of four Japanese aircraft carriers, and rightly so. But would the American success at Midway been possible without the heroic actions of their torpedo squadrons? Probably not. In this eye-opening account of the battle, author Alvin Kernan sheds much new light on these intrepid airmen who, flying obsoloete aircraft and using defective torpedoes, cleared the way for the SBD Dauntlesses to deliver the crushing blows on the Japanese carriers.

After sighting the enemy carriers, the three American flattops began launching their torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and fighters in the hopes of making a coordinated attack on the Japanese fleet. However, while en route to the target, almost all of the squadrons became separated and the USS Hornet's contingent of fighters and dive bombers never even made it to the Japanese fleet. Its aircraft either returned to the carrier or ditched in the sea. Meanwhile, ,the planes from USS Yorktown and USS Enterprise were not able to coordinate their attacks. Thus, the torpedo planes attacked without fighter protection.

These planes were thrown into a virtual meat grinder of anti aircraft fire and pursuit from Japanese fighters. Out of a compliment of 51 planes, 44 were shot down. One man, Ensign George Gay, survived from Torpedo squadron 8. Not a single American torpedo hit the Japanese fleet. However, this sacrifice was not in vain, for a few minutes later, the SBDs found the Japanese and in the span of a few minutes sent three Japanese carriers to the bottom. The fourth followed later in the day.

The author brings up some interesting points in the book. For example, he mentions the confusing flight plan of the Hornet's commander Ring, who, for some reason, chose to fly a course which would take him well north of the Japanese fleet. He then failed to write an after action report upon returning to the Hornet. The author also describes the inferiority of the American aircraft, specifically, there extremely limited range which, in the end, caused the American fighters to turn back. Also, the fighters that did make it to the Japanese fleet never flew down to help out the lumbering Devastators. In all intents and purposes, the SBDs happened to end up in the right place at precisely the right time. If they had not, the battle could have turned out much differently.

This is a fascinating book. I've read several books about the battle of Midway, but none have went into the depth of exploring the destruction of the torpedo planes as this one does. The writer, a former member of the Enterprise's air group, describes the battle as only a true eyewitness could. He raises some alarming quetions which I had never thought about before reading this book. Although the book itself is somewhat short, it does a masterful job of covering the plight of the torpedo planes.

I highly recommend this fine book. If you've read anything previously about the battle of Midway, you must read this book. It sheds some new light on the heroic sacrifice of the American torpedo squadrons and how their actions paved the way for the American victory.

This rather short work provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of America's great victory over Japan at the Battle of Midway. Despite our victory, many young lives were squandered due to poorly designed torpedos, a lack of training, and plenty of corruption and incompetence at the manufacturing stage of weapons production. Before the Battle of Midway, just a few months after America's defeat at Pearl Harbor, America had just come through the Great Depression, and the Navy had little money to develop and perfect torpedo bombing. This piece does a very good job of explaining how it came to be that the torpedo squadrons launched against the Japanese at the Battle of Midway achieved not a single hit against the Japanese, and were themselves slaughtered by the Japanese Zero fighters and by flak.

This book is a cautionary tale as to why we owe it to our fighting forces to insist that the weapons with which we equip them are tested, and that they work. This was not done at Midway as regards the Torpedo Squadrons. The torpedos were terribly designed, almost none of the men had ever even launched a torpedo (some had never even flown with a torpedo attached to an airplane) and the Navy had developed no real tactics for attacking ships with torpedo planes. The result was disaster, that was rescued by the very competent dive-bombers, which won the Battle of Midway for the US Navy, vindicating prewar emphasis on dive-bombing tactics against ships.

Another thing that comes out in this work is the courage and heroism of the men of the torpedo planes. They knew that their chances of survival were poor. But they gave the battle their all. Depending on the account, it seems that the constant (disorganized) attacks by the American torpedo planes (which, thanks to Commander Waldron, located the Japanese first) kept the Japanese on the defensive until the American dive-bombers ended Japan's naval superiority for all time, by sinking three Japanese carriers in a matter of minutes.

This book also contains many anecdotes of the time, about what it was like to be a Naval aviator in the World War Two Navy, the relationships between officers and enlisted men, and the like. This is a well-written and authentic piece.

A fine work. Readable and recommended.

This tome is a part of The Yale Library of Military History, a series which appears to deserve serious scrutiny. Kernan was a crew member on one of the carriers that participated in the Battle of Midway.

It is, in fact, sometimes difficult to separate personal memoir from history in this book, which is not detrimental. Kernan's view is intensely personal and he takes time to further slam the reputation of one of the battle's decidedly lesser lights. He is also fulsomely critical of the Navy bureaucrats, special interests and politicians who sent torpedo bombers and submarines into the war with clearly defective torpedoes.

Kernan's singular focus on the destruction of the torpedo bomber squadrons lays the basis for a uniquely personal history, which is absolutely fascinating. In 144 pages, Kernan illuminates both the tragedy and glory of war in a way that is rarely seen. If nothing more, he gives voice to the names and souls of the brave young men who put their country first and went bravely to their deaths in their country's name. Not a spirit you see put forth much these days. Ironically, were it not for such young men as Kernan describes --- and as he himself was --- today's carpers and critics might not enjoy their freedom to denigrate the United States.

Kernan provides a unique critique of both the strategic and tactical failures that made the Battle of Midway such a close-run affair, truly as Kernan affirms, a matter more of luck than anything else.

His analysis of the lack of communication between Admirals on aircraft carriers just 10 miles apart, fighters patrolling at 20,000 feet while torpedo bombers were being slaughtered below, the foolishness of a group commander over his more daring and soon dead squadron leader all resonate with a condemning sadness rarely seen in any but first-hand accounts of war.

Kernan was a first-hand participant one-step removed: he was an 18 year old enlisted sailor. But everything he says feels like it was collected from the participants themselves, although he also relies very heavily on personal memoirs of others and official reports.

The amount of detail Kernan squeezes into so few pages is amazing. There is an obvious degree of anger that some officers who should have been court martialled for their performance were papered over by other career officers to spare them embarassment and keep their future careers alive.

All in all, for any student of American history, this is a must read.

Jerry

This book has nothing new other than studies conducted later in the war on the proper deployment of a torpedo from an aircraft. It is written in a minimalist attack with conclusions that do not support the intended idea of the book to honor the losses of the torpedo squadrons in the Battle of Midway. Kernan wants to attack the senior leadership that he feels sacrificed these torpedo squadron. It must be noted Kernan was a junior enlisted man in VT-6 on the U.S.S. Enterprise during the battle and this book doesn't hide the bias against the senior leadership he has held onto since June 4th 1942. Shame on him for trying to put this attack (some of which is justified) as scholarly work.

Kernan's main theories are that the Navy should have known better to utilize its torpedo bombers, while not yet having a replacement and better bomber, and the leadership should have been better and had other options but doesn't elaborate on what could have been an option. He suggests as if it's the first time this theory has been put forward that the US Navy got lucky on June 4th 1942. That the US Navy got lucky has been a theory for a while. However Kernan's other theories while interesting don't hold much water. Instead of honoring the sacrifice of these brave men who fought the Devastators at Midway and what their sacrifice meant for the Navy Kernan wants to prosecute the leaders long after the leaders had died.

If Kernan's two theories of better torpedo bombers are to be taken seriously one must affix the destruction of the bombers widely around the Navy not just to the squadron commanders. The nation if not the world was coming out of the Depression. Due to this funds were not there to test the torpedoes effectively and nor was there money to develop a new torpedo bomber. After President Roosevelt infused the Navy with money did new weapon systems become a possibility. Many of the new systems, the new fast battleships, the Fletcher class destroyers and new aircraft such as the new Avenger torpedo bombers were just coming into service. Unfortunately for the Battle of Midway there were 6 Avengers from the first production run available. Therefore the Navy was caught in transition rather than as Kernan asserts relegated to obsolete aircraft. Simply put you go to war with what you got not what's coming off the assembly line next month.

If Kernan was really interested in this argument of willful neglect by the senior leadership in utilizing obsolete equipment he would have brought up the Marines flying Brewster Buffaloes which were called by flying coffins by anyone who knew anything about the Buffaloes as supporting evidence but never brings up the Buffaloes. The combat experience and knowledge acquired from the Battle of the Coral Sea and other raids were that the Devastators could take care of themselves while the Dauntlessness needed an escort. With that knowledge it is understandable where the tactical leaders chose to defend the Dauntlessness. A larger question could be did the Japanese realize how ineffective the Devastators were and did not regard them as a threat. But with Fuchida's quotes in Kernan's work it seems that the Japanese did regard the Devastators as a threat and dealt with the threat by bringing Zeroes down to deal with the Devastators. Therefore a better conclusion is that the first part of dumb luck for the Navy was that the Devastator's faults in combat weren't revealed as a lemon earlier. The Japanese Navy was lucky recipient of the lack of knowledge of the Devestators faults. If the US Navy had realized this lesson earlier no doubt the US carriers would have had a different make up of the carrier air group for the Battle of Midway.

Kernan is right in the torpedoes being faulty they were and it was criminal. However the interesting points is that the Navy hadn't developed the correct deployment of the Mark XIII torpedo. That was also criminal, however the question should be did the Devastator have the performance needed for optimum deployment of the weapon. The answer is no. The Devestators were going to be destroyed if they were to be used and according to the knowledge of the time they had to be used (based on strategies and the lack of a replacement aircraft in full production).

The last main theory is the leadership should have been better. Again he is right but he addresses this theory partially. He does not address that the nation had been at war for six months and the separation of peace time officers to wartime leaders was taking place. This was true all over the Navy. The submarine force was brutally separating the peacetime administrators from the wartime aggressive leaders. The difference between the air arm and submarine force here is the amount of enemy contact up to the Battle of the Coral Sea the air arm had been doing isolated raids to keep the Japanese off balance while the submarine force had been continually behind the Japanese lines in contact with the Japanese Navy. The Battle of Midway was the second time the air arm was in contact with the Japanese Navy. This fact would suggest that the air arm was still thinking that peacetime theories and leaders could still be effective. It is to the credit rather the detriment of the air admirals that they made changes and became as brutal as the submarine leaders in finding the wartime leaders after Midway. However Kernan wants to present the worst possible image of the leadership.

It must be addressed that Kernan was a member of VT-6 the USS Enterprise's torpedo squadron that suffered terrible losses. Kernan attacks Jim Grey the leader of the Enterprise's fighters during the attack and all but calls Capt. Grey (USN ret.) a coward because Grey didn't come to the Enterprise's torpedo squadron's rescue. Kernan relates a 1994 public apology at a Midway symposium and ends with an attack of how Capt grey ends his apology, "Sorry about that". Based on Kernan's own evidence he is attacking Grey for not finding VT-6 in Kernan's own words was a "group grope" or confusing circumstances and then Grey didn't hear a radio call for assistance. Kernan here should know better since the Historical record is replete with the air filled with irrelevant communications between planes. It is very plausible in battle Grey didn't hear the communication. This is nothing more than decades old embitterment from when friends of his were shot down because Capt. Grey covered mistakenly covered the wrong squadron. If anyone should be empathetic to Grey it should be Kernan who for decades was erroneously blamed for shooting down Lt. Commander Edward Butch O'Hare. Kernan has been a "victim" of the fog of war as Capt. Grey was one would expect better from Kernan. Instead another "victim" to the fog of war was Grey and Kernan should have realized this and not attacked him.

Kernan directed a large amount of his attack against Commander Stanhope Cotton Ring. This attack seems warranted however Kernan stops short of attacking Capt later Admiral Marc Mitscher. This seems to place all the blame of the Hornet's air group issues on Ring when Mitscher must share some of the blame. Read Mrazek's A Dawn Like Thunder for a synopsis and better interpretation of what should have been Kernan's theory about Ring and Mitscher. Mrazek accomplished Kernan's desire in five pages where Kernan took over 160 it must be said Mrazek didn't have the axe to grind that Kernan seems to have.

What Kernan does not acknowledge in this book is that the Navy learned from Midway and made corrections. The major lesson was that the Navy changed its air group composition to less torpedo bombers and more dive bombers. Later in the war when Kamikazes were a threat the air group composition was changed to more fighters. Again as a gunner on an Avenger throughout the war Kernan would have known about these changes but he refuses to admit to them.

If a reader was just to read this book to understand the Battle of Midway the reader would have a distorted understanding of the battle and this book must be read in concert with other books that abound on the Battle of Midway just so that this book can be put into any Historical context. This book is nothing more than the airing of grievances held by Kernan as an 18 year old junior enlisted man who lost friends. That doesn't make for scholarly or impressive work of History.

Having purchased this book recently, I was dismayed to find two glaring and inexcusable errors in the very first paragraph of Mr. Kernan's book.
First, the Oglala was not tied up alone on the dock (1010 dock). She was tied up alongside the USS Helena. Anyone who has read of the Pearl Harbor attack SHOULD know that.
Second, and more importantly, the Helena, not the Oglala was hit by one NOT four torpedoes! Had four torpedoes hit the Oglala-Helena space, two things would have happened: the Helena would have been sunk at her berth (she was not) and the Oglala, being made of wood, would have been blasted into so many matchsticks.
If this is the standard of scholarship today, I want a refund!

This was purchased as a gift for my husband. Once he started reading it he couldn't put it down. It was a good rainy day book for him.

one of the first things I noticed upon reading this book was that the author was a 'veteran member of one of the torpedo squadrons" that fought at Midway. I thought it was unlikely that any of the pilots of the few surviving torpedo bombers was still alive, though maybe some of the radio-operator/gunners were.

I was a bit disappointed to read that the extent of Kernan's participation in the torpedo attacks in question was as an ordinanceman for Torpedo 6 aboard the USS Enterprise. I am by no means saying his participation wasn't significant, nor am I saying that I don't think he was just as brave as anyone else. I simply thought (and still believe) that kernan was neither then nor now in a position to second-guess command decisions made by men whose level of responsibility was far greater than his own.

For example, another reviewer correctly pointed out that Waldron, while undoubtedly brave and a fine pilot, committed a grievous military offense in disobeying a direct order from his commanding officer. Disobeying a commanding officer in a combat situation is precisely how to get a lot of people killed, and that is exactly what happened except in this case "a lot" turned out to be "every plane in the squadron." Kernan, however, heaps praise on Waldron's correct guess for the position of the Japanese fleet.

I can't help but believe that Kernan, as an enlisted man, feels or at one time felt a certain jealousy or misguided animosity toward commissioned officers, such as those who flew many of the planes or made some of the command decisions aboard the ships. For example, Kernan points out rather uselessly that among the seven surviving TBD Devastators among all three carrier squadrons, "a high number were enlisted pilots." The clear implication is that the enlisted pilots were more skilled than the Annapolis pilots, who were, in Kernan's view, privileged "ringknockers' and other such members of the good ol' boy fraternity that had excluded him.

Excuse me, but I don't think an Annapolis ring or lack of one counted during the devastators' attack runs, as no amount of flying skill could make a lumbering, 1934 torpedo bomber design escape a Japanese Zero pilot at low level, with a height advantage, and little or no American fighter escort. Ironically, by Kernan's logic, it was only a matter of flying skill that resulted in a torpedo bomber pilot's survival or death during the attack. Waldron, Lindsey, and Massey all died, therefore they must not have been very good pilots. Clearly, kernan didn't intend to say this, so there really wasn't any point to him mentioning that a "high number" of the survivors weren't officers, unless he just wants to get that anti-Annapolis shot in.

Kernan also goes to great pains to point out that American fighter pilots might have been afraid to tangle with the Mitsubishi Zero pilots. This suggestion is so insulting that it alone destroyed Kernan's credibility for me. He doesn't question the courage of the American bomber pilots (as well he should not), and yet the fighter pilots are subject to his accusations of cowardice? Kernan must have had a great view of the battle above the Japanese fleet, from the hangar deck of the Enterprise. He wasn't there and yet he has the gall to write as though he was riding in the cockpit, thinking other people's thoughts. Kernan should know that despite the F4F's deficiencies (and there were many), the Mitsubishi A6M also had many deficiencies which American fighter pilots were gradually learning how to exploit through teamwork and a greater understanding of how to make the most of their own plane's strengths. Kernan conveniently forgets from time to time that in June 1942 America had been in combat with the Japanese for only half a year, against an enemy with a [shrinking] numerical advantage and the initiative. considering these things, the F4F pilots performed very well. Needless to say, the American navy had no lack of volunteers for the fighter units, even if the F4F in use at the time was inferior to the A6M in several respects.

All in all, Kernan writes fluidly enough, and the way he presents his case might convince the casual reader that there was some kind of conspiracy to cover up American incompetence at Midway. A more informed reader will be aware that America was new to the war and still learning how fight it, and still learning how to build the weapons to win it. The A6M Zero was designed in response to the Japanese' experience against Seversky P-35s and Russian I-16s in China. The F6F Hellcat was designed in response to the American experience against the Japanese. Kernan should be applauding the navy rather than bashing it.

He seems to really dislike the elitist Annapolis types, and yet it is clear that his position as a Yale professor paved the way for this dreck to reach the book store.

What's good enough for the goose, Kernan. Whatever.