On the morning of October 26, 1942, the two fleets embroiled in the Battle of the Santa
Cruz Islands rushed to get their airstrikes off their carrier decks.
The two fleets had discovered each other at roughly the same time.
Between 6:15 and 8:00am, American scout planes reported multiple contacts with the Japanese
fleet in the waters northwest of Santa Cruz.
Meanwhile, at 6:17, a Japanese scout plane from the carrier Shokaku made contact with
the American fleet, Task Force 61.
However, the contact report did not reach the ranking Japanese commander, VADM Chuichi
Nagumo, until 7am.
Both sides launched their airstrikes simultaneously.
Nagumo’s planes started getting airborne at 7:10.
And on the American side, USS Hornet began launching about twenty minutes later.
On the American flagship, USS Enterprise, RADM Thomas Kinkaid realized that time was
of the essence.
His strike groups needed to head off as soon as they were launched.
There was no time for a multi-squadron rendezvous.
At 7:50am, Enterprise turned into the wind to launch its airstrike.
The deck handlers held up a sign, warning the pilots that they were on their own.
It read: “Proceed without Hornet.”
Twenty planes got off the deck: 9 TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, 3 SBD Dauntless dive bombers,
and 8 F4F Wildcat fighters.
Led by CDR Richard Gaines, Enterprise’s attack group headed northwest, seeking out
the last reported position of Kido-Butai, then 20 minutes old, which placed the enemy
fleet at 200 miles’ distance, traveling at a speed of 25 knots.
Making haste, the torpedo bombers took up a cruising altitude of 9,000 feet.
The fighters were 1,000 feet above them, and the dive bombers higher still.
Enterprise’s airstrike had proceeded about 60 miles when they were attacked by the Japanese
airstrike, which was coming at them from exactly the opposite direction.
Leading a pack of nine A6M Type Zero fighters, LT Saneyasu Hidaka saw the American planes.
Fearful of what they might accomplish if left unchecked, Hidaka decided to peel away from
the main body of the Japanese airstrike and give the Americans a rude surprise.
He signaled to his wingmen to attack.
Swooping down from 14,000 feet, the Zeros homed in on the nine TBF Avengers led by LCDR
John Collett. LT Hidaka aimed for Collett’s plane, riddling
it with machine gun fire.
Gamely, the two gunners inside the plane, Radioman Thomas Churchill Nelson and Aviation
Machinist Mate Stephen Nadison, Jr., returned fire.
But soon, their torpedo bomber caught fire and they realized they needed to bail out.
Radioman Nelson was only twenty-two years old.
He was the tunnel gunner, the man who operated the radio in the belly of the plane.
He was the only member of his crew to survive.
Years later, he described how he got out: "Just about that time the Zeros jumped us.
They came down right out of the sun.
The turret gunner was firing a 50-caliber right over my head; I could hear that.
I levered the 30-caliber down but I didn’t see anybody.
About that time we got hit.
Almost immediately, there was a lot of smoke and pieces flying past that I could see.
I found out later that we got hit right up in the cockpit area.
I grabbed the microphone and tried to call the pilot a couple of times and never got
an answer back.
I pulled the pin on the door and it shattered.
When I pulled the pin, it let the hinges go, so I kicked the door out—what was left of
it—to make a hole to get out.
I clipped on my emergency chute.
It was a 36-foot diameter chute that we had; I clipped that onto my harness and got the
gunner to come down out of the cockpit.
He never wore his harness because it was cramped, so I handed it up to him.
He indicated for me to get out of his way, so I bailed out.
I didn’t wait, or count to 10, or yell Geronimo.
I just pulled the ring right away.
When I went out of the hatch, I hit the edge of the plane and it skinned me pretty bad
right along the ankle.
Whap!
It blacked me out.
When I came to, I heard a funny noise and that damned Zero that got us was strafing
me.
The chute was all of a sudden filled with a lot of holes.
So, I started playing like I was dead.
As a result, when I got down and hit the water, I went under, and when I came back up I was
all tangled up in the chute.
The harness and chute and everything weighed quite a bit.
I got it off okay but one of those damned shrouds caught on my belt buckle, so I loosened
that and got rid of that.
About that time I pulled on my Mae West.
One side was good but the other was a dud.
I got it over my head anyway.
There was shrapnel coming down around me.
I ducked under the water.
I watched and two Zeros and some of our F4Fs were having a dogfight right over my head.
I saw a couple of planes shot down right there.
I had just barely made it.
By the time I went out, I was only at 2,000 feet.
I probably should have died."
Nelson’s fellow crewmen did not survive.
Nadison never left the airplane, apparently unable to put on his emergency chute in time.
LCDR Collett bailed out over the wing, but was never seen again.
Two other American torpedo planes were shot down during the ambush, as were three American
fighter planes.
Two other torpedo bombers aborted the mission and ditched into the ocean on the way back
to their fleet.
Only four torpedo planes managed to reach the Japanese fleet and drop torpedoes.
All of them missed their targets.
Floating in his half-filled Mae West, Radioman Nelson was alone in the water for the next
24 hours.
Sunburned and delirious, he began shouting into the heavens: “I want to see my 21st
birthday!”
Nelson had already turned 22, but he had been born on February 29 during a leap year and
had long held onto the personal goal of living to see 21 leap years.
For a while, he didn’t think it would happen.
Early morning on the next day, October 27, the Japanese fleet reached the area where
he was adrift.
The crew from the destroyer Yugumo found him and pulled him from the Pacific.
Nelson remembered the moment: "I kept myself afloat and pretty soon the dawn
came and the sun came up and it was a beautiful sunrise, sort of like the Japanese flag with
all those rays.
So now I was delirious.
I was looking around and I thought I saw something on the horizon.
It looked like a bunch of sticks.
I thought I was hallucinating.
So I didn’t look at them any longer.
I looked back a little later and, by God, they were moving.
It turned out to be the Jap battleship fleet.
They had those big pagoda towers on them; the cruisers, the destroyers, the whole thing.
They were making a zig-zag pattern and I was right in the middle of one of their squares.
So I thought, well it’s better than nothing.
I would rather take a chance on them than be shark breakfast.
So every time I rose up on a wave I would kick my feet to make a lot of whitewater.
They just passed me by so I started cussing at them.
The last cruiser was just going past me and then a destroyer came right across his bow
and almost collided with him and came alongside me.
He put on the brakes and you might say he threw a Jacob’s ladder over the side.
I was so weak I couldn’t even pull myself up.
I just hung on.
They pulled me in with the ladder and got me up on the deck.
They poured a bucket of fresh water over me to wash the salt off.
My hands were just terrible.
I looked terrible."
Although the Japanese sailors gave Nelson food, water, and medical treatment, they were
primarily concerned with interrogating him, determining his rank, rating, and position—and
most importantly, determining on which carrier he served.
Initially, Nelson lied and told them that he belonged to USS Hornet, but in searching
his belongings, his captors found a pharmacy receipt that bore the name of his true ship,
USS Enterprise.
Nevertheless, Nelson tried to confuse his interrogators as much as possible.
"They took me into the wardroom and started questioning me.
They had this teapot sitting there.
Every time I answered a question they would give me about a thimbleful of tea.
Of course I was so damned dehydrated that all I really wanted was water!
After a few questions I began to realize that what they really wanted to know was how well
they had done at Pearl Harbor.
Having been there and seen all the damage and everything, I thought, well, I’m going
to sink every damned ship we ever had.
So that’s the type of report I was giving them—total destruction of everything!
I kept telling those lies.
Then the interpreter started questioning me a lot more civil-type questions.
So I asked him why it was that Japan started the war.
He said, “When you put up that ABCD encirclement ring, that cut off our oil supply and we had
converted all our ships to oil burners and we only had a six month supply of oil.
So it was either fight or give up.
The Army had so much success in China that we thought we had better do it.”
That was the reason he gave."
The Japanese took Nelson to Truk Atoll and then to the Japanese home islands, where he
remained a prisoner of war until August 1945.
In 1942, at the time of his disappearance, the US Navy declared him missing in action.
Believing him dead, residents in his hometown named a road, Nelson Avenue, in his honor.
In 2004, Nelson managed to reach his 21st leap year when he turned 84.
He died on May 18, 2011, at age 91.
Nelson considered himself lucky.
Five aviators from Enterprise’s morning strike never returned, making the ultimate
sacrifice.
This was part of the heavy price paid by the US fleet at Santa Cruz, the price paid for
rushing into battle in order to be the first fleet to deliver the killing blow.