By 6:15am on October 26, 1942, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands was underway.
Although the American fleet did not yet know it, a massive Japanese airstrike was heading
right for it.
At 7:10, shortly after an enemy scout plane had reported contact with American ships,
the Japanese carrier force—called Kido-Butai—launched 194 aircraft and sent them on a mission
to annihilate the American carriers.
200 miles away, and twenty minutes later, the American fleet—called Task Force 61—having
finally received its own accurate scouting report, scrambled its own mission.
One of the American carriers was USS Hornet, a 25,000-ton Yorktown-class carrier commissioned
back in October 1941.
At 7:32am, Hornet began launching its airstrike.
Its first wave consisted of 29 aircraft: fifteen SBD dive bombers, eight Grumman F4F fighter
planes, and six Grumman TBF torpedo bombers.
ENS Clayton Fisher was part of that mission.
Twenty-three years old, Fisher flew one of the SBDs, the two-seat dive bombers.
He had been up all night, back when the first reported sightings of Japanese ships reached
his squadron’s ready room.
The previous evening he had expected the admirals to order an immediate launch, especially since
the sky was clear and the moon was bright, but no orders came.
Although Fisher did not yet know the reason, RADM Thomas Kinkaid had decided to hold back
all launches until his scout planes confirmed the presence of the enemy carriers.
Fisher remembered the agonizing waiting and the tension he felt when the “go” signal
finally arrived: "All the pilots expected Hornet’s aircraft
would be launched at dawn, but nothing happened.
The task force commander was waiting for more accurate Japanese position reports.
All I could think about was an early enemy surprise attack and having bombs come crashing
down on our planes on the fight deck.
Finally, we were given the command, “Pilots, man your planes!”
We rushed onto the flight deck and over the bullhorn boomed the command, “Start all
engines!”
While taxiing forward to the takeoff spot, flight deck crew members held up chalkboards
with a great morale-builder message, which relayed that there was one more enemy aircraft
carrier than previously reported.
We had been briefed before we left the ready room that we would have only four F4F Wildcat
fighters from our fighter squadron to escort the dive bombers.
Were we on a suicide mission?
I was too busy checking out my engine and getting my plane ready for takeoff to think
too much about what would lie ahead."
LCDR Gus Widhelm commanded Hornet’s airstrike.
Guided by the scouting report sent to him only ten minutes before takeoff, Widhelm led
his planes straight to the Japanese fleet.
At 9am, after only 90 minutes in the air, the American planes found four Japanese ships.
Specifically, they encountered two cruisers and two destroyers, which comprised part of
the Imperial Navy’s Vanguard force.
However, these surface ships were not the primary targets.
RADM Kinkaid wanted his pilots to strike the Japanese carriers. Using hand signals, Widhelm
ordered his aviators to keep going.
They must keep flying and pass over these surface ships, even if it meant stretching
their fuel supply to the limit.
The gamble paid off.
Fifteen minutes later, off his starboard bow, Widhelm caught sight of the Japanese carrier
task force.
In the center of it was a 32,000-ton aircraft carrier, the Shokaku.
Widhelm broke radio silence, saying: “Contact bearing about 345.
I have one carrier in sight.
I am going after it!”
Widhelm signaled to his dive bomber pilots and to the four-plane division of fighters
that provided his close escort.
They would attempt to take out the carrier.
The remaining planes would test their luck against a nearby cruiser.
Just after USS Hornet’s dive bomber pilots changed direction, they encountered the Japanese
fighter screen.
23 A6M Type Zero fighters charged in at the American planes and a whirling dogfight occurred
at around 12,000 feet.
The four US fighter planes were no match for their adversaries, and in a few minutes, one
of them was shot down and the other three were badly mauled by machine gun fire.
After dispatching the American fighters, thirteen of the Japanese fighter pilots pounced on
the American dive bombers, who now had to rely on their rear seat gunners for protection.
In the first few passes, Gus Widhelm’s plane was hit and it began streaming oil.
Shouting obscenities into the radio, blaming the American fighter pilots for their shoddy
assistance, he pulled his plane out of formation and ditched in the ocean.
The Japanese fighter pilots did not let up.
After Widhelm’s plane went down, ENS Kenneth White was wounded and part of his plane was
damaged.
He, too, dropped out of formation.
Then, ENS Phillip Grant’s plane was hit.
It went down, streaming smoke.
Both he and his gunner, RM Floyd Kilmer, perished in the crash.
Next, Japanese fighters targeted ENS Fisher’s plane.
A burst of gunfire severed his plane’s hydraulic line, sending fluid streaming down into the
bilges beneath his feet.
This battle damage prevented Fisher from scoring a hit on Shokaku.
He remembered what happened next: "As our formation was approaching the position
to commence our dives, I checked my hydraulically operated dive brakes.
The brakes wouldn’t open!
As the planes ahead of me opened their dive brakes and began rolling into their dives,
all I could do was follow the last plane down.
But I had to move away from their dive paths so I wouldn’t overrun them.
With their dive brakes extended, the dive bombers would reach a maximum dive speed of
about 240 knots.
My plane accelerated rapidly to over 300 knots!
Because of my excessive speed, I started pulling out above 2,000 feet and continued down until
I had leveled out low over the water.
My dive path had taken me well ahead of the Shokaku."
Although Fisher missed his target, his shipmates did not.
Ten SBDs dived on Shokaku and released their bombs.
In a few minutes, Shokaku was pummeled with eight direct hits.
The damage was extensive.
The flight deck was cratered and sixty Japanese sailors were killed.
However, the destruction was not irreparable.
When they detected the American dive bombers, Shokaku’s crew shut off the fuel lines and
sealed the carrier’s ordnance.
As a result, no secondary explosions occurred and Shokaku did not turn into a burning pyre
as had happened to four Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway.
Still, the damage kept Shokaku out of action for the next twenty months.
It did not return to combat until June 1944.
For Hornet’s dive bomber pilots, escaping the cloud of Japanese fighters that encircled
them proved to be a dramatic endeavor.
ENS Fisher remembered what happened to him: "When I finally leveled off at 300 feet, my
gunner yelled, “We got a Zero on our tail!”
Putting it mildly, it was a horrifying feeling.
I couldn’t outmaneuver a Zero!
My gunner, Radioman George Ferguson, practically shot off our rudder trying to hit it.
Both wings were riddled with small jagged holes after being hit with 7.7-millimeter
bullets.
One bullet passed between my legs, shattering my engine’s temperature gauge.
Finally, the Zero fired his 20-millimeter cannons, and a shell exploded in the radio
transmitter located behind my armored seat.
A radio-frequency manual was blown to bits with confetti flying all over the cockpit.
The concussion from the exploding shell felt like I had been hit by a hard blow on the
top of my head.
Simultaneously, I felt a red-hot burning sensation in my right arm just below the shoulder.
Shrapnel fragments flying around in the cockpit had hit my upper right arm just above the
elbow.
Momentarily stunned, I had lost my vision, but my mind was visualizing the shimmering,
wavering faces of my mother and my wife, Annie.
I didn’t want to die, but I felt completely helpless."
Fisher’s SBD was badly damaged.
His flaps jammed and his plane began leaking fuel.
His gunner had been wounded and the two rear-facing 30-caliber machine guns had also jammed.
Fisher described what happened next: "After recovering from the shock of the concussion,
as my vision cleared, the Zero fighter, with its big red meatball insignia, was flying
off my right wing, just like a wingman.
The pilot was staring at me!
When our eyes met, he drifted back behind us.
Ferguson had been shot in both thighs with 7.7-millimeter bullets and a piece of shrapnel
had gouged some flesh out of the calf of his right leg.
In spite of his wounds, Ferguson managed to reload the jammed guns and waited for the
Zero to get into firing range.
The Zero’s pilot evidently felt we were cold turkey and moved slowly into position
for the kill.
Ferguson fired first and hit the engine of the Zero.
With its engine smoking, the Zero pulled sharply away from us and then disappeared.
We had miraculously survived; Ferguson had not panicked.
He had saved both our lives."
It took another 90 minutes for Fisher to get back to safety.
When he found USS Hornet, he discovered that it had been badly damaged by a Japanese attack.
He rerouted to the other US carrier, USS Enterprise, but by the time he arrived, Fisher discovered
that his plane was too badly damaged to land on the deck.
At 11:12, he ditched his dive bomber in the water near an Atlanta-class cruiser, USS Juneau.
The crash knocked him unconscious, but his gunner, George Ferguson, pulled him from the
sinking plane and into a life raft.
In four minutes, the crew of Juneau had both aviators safely aboard and sent them down
to sick bay.
Clayton Fisher retired from the Navy after 21 years of service.
He died in 2012, two weeks short of his 93rd birthday.
He considered himself one of the lucky ones.
Of the other 28 aircraft that had accompanied LCDR Widhelm’s group, only 17 of them made
it back to their ships.
Four planes had been shot down, killing all seven men on board.
Four other planes ditched due to battle damage, and one of those pilots was never seen again.
The effort to cripple the Shokaku had come at great cost, claiming the lives of some
of the finest aviators the US Navy had ever known.