C. Wade McClusky Jr., hero of the battle at Midway honored
As everyone is reminding me in my email, tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of the battle at Midway Islands. C. Wade McClusky Jr. led that effort which turned the tide of the War in the Pacific against the Japanese. He was a squadron commander on the USS Enterprise which was at sea when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor so it escaped the destruction. 75 years ago, with coded Japanese radio traffic guiding them, the carrier steamed towards the islands to intercept a second invasion. McClusky’s squadron was tasked with finding the Japanese fleet. From the Associated Press;
More time — and fuel — was wasted as McClusky’s group circled while waiting for other carrier-based planes that didn’t show up. About two hours into the search and running low on gas, McClusky was faced with a choice: return to the Enterprise or keep searching, with the realization that most of his planes would have to ditch in the ocean. He kept going.
According to the U.S. Navy’s official account of the battle, McClusky soon spotted a Japanese destroyer and correctly surmised it was headed toward the main Japanese fleet. Around 10:20 a.m., he led 30 other Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers into the attack against the Japanese aircraft carriers.
When the day was over, the fliers from the Enterprise and Yorktown had sunk three carriers and mortally damaged a fourth. McClusky, wounded in the initial attack, made it back to his carrier with less than five gallons of fuel in his tank. Some of the other surviving two-man planes had even less. Ten planes in his squadron had to ditch in the sea and their crews were never found.
For his actions, McClusky was awarded the Navy Cross.
Now, in his hometown of Buffalo, New York, a statue of him in his flight suit will be erected in Buffalo’s new park to honor war heroes.
According to his son, Phil, the Buffalo tribute is something the Navy hero would’ve never sought for himself.
“He was a quiet guy. He was not a big talker,” said the son, 63, who lives outside Baltimore and plans to attend Sunday’s ceremony. “He was a professional naval officer.”
Category: Navy
For Navy Cryptologists, the Battle of Midway is somewhat of a monument to how cryptology can win the battle.
CDR Joe Rochefort ran the Hypo Station at Pearl Harbor and he was the guy who directed the famous message in the clear from Midway reporting their H2O purification gear had broken. The Japs then sent out a message that AF’s gear had broken down, confirming the ID of AF as Midway.
Rochefort was 100% confident in telling Nimitz that Midway was the target and then he proceeded to pass the entire Japanese OOB and accurately predicted when they would be detected and in what position.
This gave Nimitz the edge he needed.
Of course, the men who fought the Japanese, many sacrificing their lives, are the real heroes, but Rochefort was a superstar. After the battle, Admiral Nimitz brought Rochefort in front of the entire PACFLT staff (which had been VERY critical of SIGINT after Pearl Harbor) and told them that more than anyone else, Rochefort had secured victory for the US Navy.
There is so much that is fascinating about that battle. If I had had the opportunity to fight in the air, and I could do nothing else in WW2, I would want to be one of the dive bombers who caught the Japanese carriers with their pants down.
Imagine the feeling of sweet revenge to be one of the men who sent the Pearl Harbor attack carriers to Davy Jones locker. Gives me chills just thinking about it.
MC,
I bought the 65 episode series “Secrets of War” (narrated by Charlton Heston, of course) and on disk #1 is “Breaking the Japanese Code.” Really interesting stuff. Seems we were listening in on the Japanese since the ’30s. Check it out:
Link
MustangCryppie,
Have you read ‘Cryptonomicon’ by Neal Stephenson? If not, you’ll love it.
I have a copy at home. One of these days I’ll get to it. Guess I’ll have to push it up higher in the list.
God Bless Rochefort. My only glimpse of the Battle of Midway comes from the film, “Midway.” Loved it! I don’t know how accurate that film might be, but it definitely shows the important role played by cryptologists in turning the tide of the war in the Pacific. I think Henry Fonda (as Nimitz) said to Hal Holbrook (as Rochefort) something like, “You’ve earned your salary, this month.” And then some.
Some interesting movie trivia:
“Midway” (A “story” film that took significant “poetic licenses” with the source material) made extensive use of footage from the film “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (Pearl Harbor attack – and much truer to the original events than Midway, but less “story”). If you watch them back to back, the recycled scenes become obvious.
IJN Carriers in a storm.
Launches of IJN aircraft.
Aircraft on the ground blowing up.
A keep crashing and rolling next to a building.
A lone AA gunner, in a sandbagged pit, heroically fighting despite wearing much bandage.
And many others.
Tora! Tora! Tora! was a commercial flop, so the studio recouped losses by selling chunks of it as stock footage, to movies and TV shows.
T!3 is well worth watching, but it is not an “action movie”.
On top of that… they dive bombed those carriers knowing they likely wouldn’t make it back. 5 gallons in the tank?
This is why I get so pissed atthe posers… these people served, and truly put their lives on the line to protect us. Anybody trying to steal that honor should be forced to clean the restrooms in the VA for the rest of their lives 7 days a week.
He was willing to forfeit his life for the greater good. IMO, ‘Midway’ is the pivotal battle in the Pacific Theatre. After that, the Japanese mostly stopped expanding their territory and began to fight primarily a defensive war.
Captain McClusky kicked ass and took names that day. I can’t imagine the joy at detecting those task forces and then watching them be annihilated by our dive bombers.
That’s take names and kick ass and I don’t know how to write.
I think you said it properly. There was far more emphasis on kicking than on names…..
CDR Joe Rochefort is supposed to have been a very, shall we say, eccentric person. Often worked in his slippers. Was not adequately recognized for his bravery until after the way, I have read, b/c he was Jewish.
From what I’ve heard he was a grumpy guy and yes, eccentric, but brilliant.
He was not liked by the boys in DC. Can’t remember their names off the top of my head. Officers named Redmond I believe. Anyway, Rochefort was pretty much cashiered from his job at Station Hypo. Finished the war as the skipper of a sub tender IIRC.
Was finally recognized in the 1980s by President Reagan.
Rochefort had something on his desk or behind his desk which said (and I paraphrase), “There is no limit to what you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
I know that Reagan had the same message on his desk. I have always wondered if he got that from CDR Rochefort.
So that’s why Hal Holbrook was in his bathrobe in the Midway movie.
The best line in that movie was when Charleton Heston asked Holbrook, (playing Rochefort) “do any of your people here ever take a bath, it really stinks in here.”
Holbrook looks at him and says, “I don’t know, what day is it?”
That was a great movie, but it was also the beginning of the push to make America feel guilty of racism for locking up the Japanese in camps after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
The kid that played Heston’s son represented every stinking liberal in the world as he told his father that his girlfriend was much more important than anything the US Navy would do in their battle with Japan.
That totally ruined that movie as it just makes you want to grab the little fuck and bitch slap him into next Tuesday. I always fast forward through it and =refuse to watch it on TV whenever it comes on because of that little bitch…
Thanks for that info. “It’s all very clear to me now…”
The Navy doesn’t pay you to sit around crying over girl’s picture. You better shape up Tiger or some hot shot Jap pilot going to lame your ass!
“You better shape up, Tiger, or some hot-shot Jap pilot is going to flame your ass!” Flame! I think Heston said to Edward Albert.
Segment from Fox News of Navy dive bomber Norman Jack “Dusty” Kleiss. He died more than a year ago at the age of 100. At the time of his death Kleiss was the last surviving dive bomber of Midway.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/5458101649001/?#sp=show-clips
Its about time he was honored!
Midway may or may not have been the turning point of the war in the Pacific, but it sure as H**l was the high water mark of the Japanese advance. The loss of four carriers and their highly experienced aircrews was a major blow. Coupled with Japanese losses in the Battle of the Coral Sea just prior to Midway, Japanese carrier aviation suffered crippling losses among their elite pilot force, buying time for American industrial might to rev up wartime production. After Midway, victory was no longer a reasonable expectation for the Empire of Japan.
Yes, I think you are correct regarding our industrial strength. It needed time to rev up, as we were probably not at strength, beforehand. We had to switch our industrial footing from commercial, to wartime production and that takes some time.
A noteworthy difference:
Germany and Japan were running at ~100% war-economy, for years. Russia got there fairly quickly.
The USA never made it to 40% War-economy.
-forty- percent.
Take a look at the list of US Aircraft carriers on Wikipedia, and look at how many we made in WW2. Stunning.
At peak production, we were launching three ten-thousand ton Liberty Ships -per day-.
We created enough military cargo trucks to equip our forces and our allies. Eisenhower gave great credit to the common “deuce and a half” for making victory possible. The Russians received a ver, very large number of them to support their own offensives.
Planes, guns, ammunition, food, fuel, and all the little bits and pieces that feed a modern war machine.
-forty- percent war-footing.
Even today, the PRC with 1.5 billion people (or more) has a smaller economy than the USA, despite decades of heavy effort at industrialization and growth.
There is a -reason- the Marxists have to poison Capitalism to death. They cant possibly defeat it head to head, and the certainly cant come anywhere close to matching it in anything useful.
Like.
I don’t understand…how might the Japanese have thought they could defeat _us_? Yes, they bested the British in Malaya, but that was their own “backyard,” for lack of a better term. Because of Pearl Harbor? Wasn’t that their attempt to cripple any American action against them, in their own territory, rather than a first strike against our homeland? Correct me if I am wrong, but they weren’t really after us…were they?
Navy folks, do please clarify what I garble here: The Japanese strategy was to seek one final decisive battle with the USA, destroy our fleet, and thus force us to seek peace on Japan’s terms. They never seriously planned an invasion of the west coast, merely to give a credible threat of it, to force our submission. This strategy was entirely achievable, provided they did so -quickly-. Had they caught two of the three carriers at anchor in the Pearl Harbor attack, we would have been highly unlikely to have dug ourselves out of a hole that deep. And/or, if they had struck a third time, destroying the repair facilities and drydocks, plus the fuel storage. Interestingly, there have been wargame scenarios where the Japanese player baits the USA player into an opening battle off Hawaii, instead of inflicting a harbor raid. Six IJN carriers versus three USA. We had eight battleships to their two. they also had over 20 submarines. Depending on how the battle was established, the odds swing anywhere from “somewhat in IJN favor” to “massacre of the USN”. Anything sunk outside the harbor would have been lost, unsalvageable. Far greater percentages of US crews would have died, out of swimming range of dry land. With the fleet damages and busy, a subsequent attack on the Pearl Harbor repair and fuel infrastructure would have been near total, in one raid. Nagumo was -cautious-, where a bolder commander might have achieved much greater results. It cost Japan dearly. Moving into 1942, the IJN tried very hard to produce the “One Great Battle” where they would scrap our fleet and force a negotiated settlement on Japanese terms. The battle of Coral Sea should have been a wake-up that we were not the amateurs they expected. (also that our carriers were surprisingly hard to actually sink, despite the lack of armored flight decks. Midway was supposed to be that “decisive” battle. The problem was, we suckered them into an ambush. Had that been a real “meeting engagement”, things would have been likely far less in our favor. But, with each… Read more »
Thank you!
I am constantly amazed at the numbers of implements of war that the US produced during the Second World War.
The numbers are just staggering.
So Yamamoto was right when he said that they have awakened a giant and filled him with a terrible resolve…
I’ve been reading all about WWII for a while now, I’m just finishing up Rommel, the Triumphant Fox and the rise of the Afrika Corps.
Next is some books bout Ike. those are going to be long reads, but I still like the feeling of a book in my hand.
Very briefly, back in ’02, I had orders to the USS McClusky before they were swapped for P-3 squadron orders. Never put much thought into its naming before this point. Well, I almost got on a ship, anyway…
I am proud to be one of those devotees of TAH that pestered Jonn’s ass to honor Captain McCluskey. If not for our incredibly brave naval aviators at Midway, the lingua franca in California today might be Japanese.
Instead of Spanish…
There were a lot of people that made the victory at Midway possible – not just the aviators and intel guys.
Look at the work that the people at the Pearl Harbor shipyard did to get the Yorktown back in service after the hammering she took at Coral Sea – initial estimates stated that it would take weeks to get her back in fighting shape, they did it in 24 hours! Without her, the battle could have turned in the favor of the Japanese.
The aircrews… torpedo squadrons slaughtered during their attacks, but it pulled the air cover down and allowed the Dive Bombers to get through. John Waldron leading Torpedo 8 into a no win situation. Marine Corps squadrons, using Vindicator dive bombers trying to deliver the first hits of the battle. Army Air Corps bombers trying to bomb ships at high altitudes. Brave men all, putting it on the line, knowing that failure was not an option.
Midway was a turning point, and there were a ton of unsung heroes that fought and died defending our country during those crucial days of the war.
It’s an amazing story all around.
I knew a pilot from the South
pacific. I asked him if he was at Midway or any of the other battles. After a pause, he quietly said, “I was in them all.”
He was always guilt ridden about what he had to do. After two decades of drinking he sobered up. He went to Mass regularly and prayed for his soul since he took so many.
He was one of the sweetest clients my dad ever had…but he readily admitted he was a terrible drunk and bad father after the war.
It was hard for me to believe that because all I ever knew of him was this courtly gentleman with Errol Flynn looks who went to the same college as me. Oh, to have been on campus in those days!
He named his oldest son Corsair. His memorial service was are really hard one of all my dad’s friends/clients who passed.
I always wanted to know more about his experiences, but it wasn’t my place to ask his children. He was always sad when the war was mentioned and changed the subject. I think he felt it wasn’t proper conversation for a young woman to be burdened with.
God bless you Gene.