Today, I find myself reflecting on the death of John Waldron as a comfort.

Last edited Sat Nov 9, 2024, 05:00 PM - Edit history (1)

I may not, probably won't, live to see the restoration of American Democracy, which has clearly ended, and so I'm thinking about the death of John Waldron.

Possibly he's an obscure figure to most people who do not study the history of the war between the United States and Japan that took place between December of 1941 until August of 1945.

In 1942, the United States was back on its heels, experiencing overwhelming defeats in the Pacific, defeat in Hawaii, defeat in the Philippines, defeat at Wake Island, defeat in what would become Indonesia, Except for a "show event," the Doolittle raid on Japan (which actually ended up being more significant than it should have been for the Japanese), the United States had lost everywhere up until May of 1942, until the battle of the Coral Sea, which was a tactical draw slightly in favor of the Japanese, as the US lost one capital ship (the aircraft carrier Lexington) and suffered severe damage to a second, (the Yorktown), but was nonetheless a slightly strategic victory for the Americans, inasmuch as the Japanese invasion of Port Moresby was cancelled with the loss of a light carrier and the depletion of the air arm of a fleet carrier.

The Yorktown managed to get back to Pearl Harbor, where a herculean effort managed to patch her up for the upcoming battle of Midway, one of the most famous naval battles in world history.

Accounts of the Battle are often romantic, as in the books Miracle at Midway and Incredible Victory, a more useful and sober and profoundly analytical book that I highly recommend is Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway.

I've read all three and still leaf through them from time to time. (I also read a Japanese account of the battle, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story that is roundly criticized in Shattered Sword.)

In many ways, the United States was outclassed in terms of equipment available for the Battle of Midway, but the brilliant intelligence work, the balanced risk taking of Admiral Chester Nimitz, and the absolute ineffable courage displayed by American sailors and naval aviation officers, produced an outstanding victory that, nevertheless, at the outset was leading to a huge American defeat.

Particularly outclassed in technical capability was a torpedo bomber known as the Douglas TBD Devastator, which compared to Japanese torpedo bombers and fighters was slow, fragile, and dropped inferior torpedoes that often failed to detonate because they were regarded to be too expensive to test, and absent tests, their flaws were not known. (The United States would not develop an effective torpedo until 1943.)

Three US aircraft carriers faced four Japanese Carriers in the battle of Midway. They were the hastily patched up Yorktown, the Enterprise, and the Hornet, the latter being the carrier that launched the Dolittle raid, and the carrier on which John Waldron served. In the battle all four Japanese carriers were sunk, none of them by planes from the Hornet, all by planes from the Enterprise and the Yorktown. In return for four carriers lost, the Japanese sank Yorktown, but not before its pilots struck some of the fatal blows in the battle.

The romantic histories of the battle of Midway focus, rightly I think, on John Waldron, who disobeyed orders by directing the 15 obsolete Douglas TBD Devastator to follow a different course than his ship's dive bombers, under the command of the less than stellar Stanhope Ring. Ring's planes never found the Japanese fleet, but Waldron's did and as a result was wiped out; all 15 planes were shut down, and all but one of the crewmen were killed, a man named Ensign George Gay, who reported seeing Waldron die when his plane was hit by Japanese Zero fighters, but managed to survive being shot down himself and was recovered by the US Navy after the battle by being plucked from the sea by US float planes.

In romantic histories, much is made of Waldron's partial Native American heritage; one of his grandparents was Oglala Sioux; his success in locating the Japanese fleet is attributed to his Native American "sense," of tracking, when in actuality the success that doomed him was based on his correct interpretation of briefings vs the incorrect interpretation of his superiors. So much for romance.

Ensign Gay, the sole survivor of Hornet's VT8, reported that Waldron ordered his men to continue to attack the Japanese fleet to the last man, saying "Even if only one of us is left, I want that man to go in and get a hit." None of his planes were left; none of them got a hit.

It is said that the successful attack on the Japanese fleet by American dive bombers about an hour after Waldron died can be attributed in part, to the exhaustion of the Japanese fighter cover from having to shoot down so many American torpedo bombers near the surface, so that they were not at altitude when the dive bombers that were to sink three of the Japanese carriers with strikes that took place in a period of about 15 minutes went into their killing dives. Thus the distracted and tired Japanes fighters could not prevent the successful attack that sank three carriers. (A fourth Japanese carrier was sunk later in the day.)

Depending on the version of history one reads though - and I accept it - the sacrifice of the torpedo bombers, including those from Yorktown where only one or two planes returned, thus made the US victory possible by distracting the highly trained and well equipped Japanese fighter crews from the threat. Their deaths led to the United States Navy's success.

When he died though, John Waldron could not know that. When he died the US was losing the battle. He did not know that the United States would win the battle and then the war. Yet it did. He did his best, lost, and so, though he would never know it, his country survived because of his sacrifice.

That gives me hope. Even though our country is suffering and will suffer from this moral defeat in electing a complete venal fool to the White House once again, and even though I may not live to see our country restored, John Waldron's story resonates with hope.

This is a bit long winded, but it's a reflection of what's on my mind that gives me some peace even though I am not, and never will be, as important as John Waldron was to American history.

We can come back to sanity, although suffering will be involved. I may not live to see it, but I have not lost hope for the future.