THE ROUNDTABLE FORUM
Official
newsletter of the Battle of Midway Roundtable
“To
promote awareness and understanding of the great battle,
and
to honor the men who fought and won it.”
16
NOVEMBER 2007..........ISSUE NO. 2007-43..........OUR 11th YEAR
===============
AROUND THE TABLE ===============
Members’
topics in this issue:
1. Ring’s “Lost Letter of Midway”
2. Last Voyage of the Yamato
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1. RING’S “LOST LETTER OF MIDWAY”
Ed. note: the following message
from Clay Fisher refers to Hornet
Air Group commander Stanhope Ring’s “Lost Letter of Midway,” written four
years after the battle. It wasn’t
published until more than fifty years had passed, after being discovered more or less by accident. It appeared in the August 1999 issue of USNI
“Proceedings,” within an article by CAPT B. R. Linder, USN-Ret. If you have the second edition of our
Roundtable archive CD (distributed in January 2005), it can be found in the
“Hornet Air Group” folder. For anyone
else who would like to read the letter, it’s a
Word document that I can attach and send to you by e-mail. Just click “reply” on this message to
request the file. And for anyone who
might not know, Clay flew as Ring’s wingman at Midway.
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1
Nov 2007
CDR Clayton E.
Fisher, USN-Ret
Southern California
BOM
vet, SBD pilot, VB-8, USS Hornet
cfisher3@san.rr.com
I've been reviewing my files and pictures of my naval
career, and I came across the Lost Letter of Midway. I'm only interested in commenting on the
contents of the actual letter CDR Ring wrote in 1946. My conclusions are that
Ring wrote a pretty factual letter.
Ring stated, “Departure from the Hornet was
taken on a preestimated (his spelling) interception course.” My only interpretation of the
“preestimated” interception course, based upon my navigation experience as a
scout bomber pilot, is the course we all plotted in our ready rooms using the
last known position of the enemy carrier task force. The fact that the enemy carriers were recovering their aircraft
that had attacked Midway, and were headed into the wind at probably 25 knots
would not have moved the task force too far from the original position, in
my estimation. The only information I have read about the wind is that the wind
was fairly light from the southeast.
Quoting Ring:
“Upon arrival at the line between the last reported position of the
enemy and Midway Island, since the high group had made no contact, I
decided that I should proceed on the assumption that the enemy was closing
Midway...VT-8 and Enterprise made contact with the enemy, north of the
point at which I turned south...Hornet Group proceeded south until smoke
from Midway was sighted.” To the best of memory Ring did not turn
south until after he directed me by hand signals to pass on his order to
Rodee [CO, VS-8] to form a scouting line.
Ring discussed the fact that Enterprise and Hornet's
YE codes were different (same problem on June 5th): “I switched radio to the homing frequency but Enterprise
was all I heard.” I don't remember
homing in on the Hornet YE when I followed Rodee back to the Hornet,
but I'm sure I did. I can imaging how
screwed up the flight leader of VF-8 could have been if he tried to use the Enterprise
YE signals. I assume the VF-8 pilots
descended to at least 10 to 12 thousand feet while heading back to the Hornet.
YE signals should have been very strong at those altitudes.
I'm still convinced we were south of the enemy task
force. I was damned scared as we approached the estimated position of the
enemy carriers and I was only searching the clear sky above and to the
northeast. Also, the sun was behind us
so the fighters could have really had an advantage of surprise.
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2. LAST VOYAGE OF THE YAMATO (see issues #41, 42)
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11 Nov 2007
Scott Kair
Illinois
scott3491@insightbb.com
This
week's newsletter left superlatives in the dust. Between the posts from
Adm. Showers and Don Boyer, and the link to Jon Parshall's tabular movements of
Yamato, there lies a significant contribution to our understanding
of an under-appreciated event. The last
voyage of Yamato seems to have been treated as a footnote appended
to the Battle of Okinawa. The Forum discussion of the
episode illustrates not only how fortunate we were that this was the
case, but the mechanisms by which a serious threat to the
American war effort was eliminated.
That
the voyage resulted from a courtier reading something into a query from the
Emperor reveals another aspect of why Japan lost. It's difficult to imagine Adm. King or Adm. Leahy misreading a
"cue" from FDR and frantically cooking up a disaster. It was through Adm. Showers' post,
though, that clarity arrived. While I'm not well read on the
episode, those accounts I've seen seem to have attributed detection
of the voyage to the submarine cordon around the home islands. Radio intercepts were mentioned obliquely if
at all, and left the impression that they were picked up and utilized
only after Yamato left port.
The
overall impression was that the interception and destruction of Yamato
was fairly ad hoc—we just happened to have a sizeable carrier force in the
vicinity that wasn't too busy that day, Mitscher threw a plan
together, and they sank Yamato and most of its task force, as if
for practice. Adm. Showers'
recollections illuminate the episode as being far more
substantial, and a far greater credit to our forces than previously
realized. For one, that the intercepts
were obviously given priority attention is an indication that Yamato
was a serious threat to our operations on and around Okinawa. The
admiral's aversion toward speculative history became
understandable with a single shudder.
The
fact that there was greater and more detailed foreknowledge, and the level
of planning that it suggests, is the revelation. The Yamato
episode becomes, in this new light, neither irrelevant nor comparable to
the Battle of Midway. The U.S. Navy's execution of the Yamato
serves as a contrast to Midway:
there was nothing incredible nor miraculous about sinking the Yamato,
and we had every right to win.
There was an obvious disparity of force in our favor; the desperation
was theirs. But there were no
compounded communications failures, no flights to nowhere, no sacrifices of
good men (on our part) in flying coffins, no untried arming
devices jettisoning bombs in the sea, and no wholesale weapons systems
failure.
What
was revealed this week was how much our navy had learned, adapted
and grown—in size, proficiency, and efficiency—in a short three
years. That our navy was able to do so may well have been
the true Miracle of Midway.
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9
Nov 2007
Bob
Bryson
Georgia
bob@adventuresinsavannah.com
For
those that might not have read it yet, Japanese Destroyer Captain by
Tameichi Hara has an interesting description of the sortie of the Yamato
from the perspective of the captain of the Yahagi that sailed with the Yamato on her
final cruise. It's a pretty good book also for those with an interest in
the naval battle for the Solomons.
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11
Nov 2007
James Bowen
Australia
jamesbowen2@bigpond.com
Russ invited comment
on the last voyage of the Yamato (2 November 2007 issue of the Forum),
and Don Boyer responded with comment that Hirohito's questioning of the
omission to use warships, such as battleships, in the defence of Okinawa would
be viewed by the Imperial Navy high command as only a “suggestion” because “the
emperor reigned but did not rule directly.”
I would like to draw attention to a very different view of Hirohito's
role as commander in chief of Japan's armed forces, put forward by Professor
Herbert P. Bix in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. The extract below is from my own chapter on
Imperial Japan's military high command:
----
Following the surrender in 1945, the
Japanese falsely portrayed Emperor Hirohito as a figurehead commander in chief
of Japan's armed forces to protect their emperor from being tried as a war
criminal. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Emperor Hirohito,
Professor Herbert P. Bix has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that Hirohito
played a very active role in the direction of the Pacific War from 1937 to
1945. See: “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan”, (2000) HarperCollins, New
York...The Supreme Commander of the Allied Occupation Forces in Japan, General
Douglas MacArthur, was fully aware of the deception in regard to Hirohito's
functions and responsibilities as commander in chief of Japan's military
forces, but saw fit to go along with the deception because it enabled him to
rule occupied Japan with the full cooperation of the emperor.
-----
The full chapter can
be found at:
http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforaustralia/battaust/AustInvasion/JapHighCommd.html
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===============
NOW HEAR THIS! ===============
News
& info in this issue:
- Honoring Ken Boulier
- TBDs at Jaluit Atoll
- Forum Notes
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HONORING
KEN BOULIER
Please join me in
honoring the memory of long-time Roundtable member and communications
intelligence veteran of the Battle of Midway, CWO Kenneth A. Boulier,
USN-Retired, who departed for his last muster on November 4th. Ken was one of the small cadre of ComInt
vets on the Roundtable who over the years brought us important new
understandings as to how and why our “priceless advantage” at Midway—advance
knowledge of the enemy’s attack plan—was achieved. He was a decoding specialist at the communications intelligence
unit at Melbourne, Australia, which worked closely with Joseph Rochefort’s
C.I.U. at Pearl Harbor.
The following are
excerpts from his published obituary, with thanks to Don McDonald:
-----
“One of the last survivors of the Battle of Corregidor in the
Second World War died at his home in Glen Burnie, MD, on Nov. 4th at the age of
91. Chief Warrant Officer Boulier
served 21 years in the U.S. Navy. Ken
Boulier served aboard the USS Houston and the USS New Mexico and
was a code breaker while stationed in the Philippines during WWII. In March 1942, he escaped Corregidor to
Australia on the submarine USS Permit days before the Japanese took
control of the island. The USS Permit was chased and depth charged
several times by the Japanese and at one point was submerged for 22 1/2 hours
before escaping.
“Ken helped decipher the Japanese transmissions that led to
the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto's plane on April 18, 1942 [sic]. Yamamoto was
the Commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet and the architect of the Pearl
Harbor bombing.
“While [he was] stationed in Australia, the code breakers
were able to warn U.S. Forces before the attack [at Midway] in June 1942.
Boulier was awarded the Army Distinguished Unit Badge with oak leaf cluster,
The Good Conduct Medal, The American Theater National Defense Service Medal and
The Philippine Defense WWII Victory Medal.
“Kenneth Boulier died peacefully at his home surrounded by
his family, including his wife of 61 years, Eileen O'Toole Boulier. He is also survived by their 8 children, 18
grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren.”
-----
I especially remember Ken for the cordial and lengthy
interview he gave me while I was writing No Right to Win. That interview resulted in one of my
favorite passages in the book, which you can find on pages 236-237.
Farewell and following seas to an honored veteran and true
friend of the Roundtable.
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TBDs
AT JALUIT ATOLL
Bill
Vickrey sends a URL giving updates on the planned recovery of two remarkably
intact TBDs from Jaluit Atoll in the Marianas.
Click here for the latest word:
http://www.tighar.org/Projects/Devastator/nextphase.htm
The potential TBD
recovery by TIGHAR first came to our attention early this year (see issue
#2007-02). TIGHAR is the same outfit
that recovered, restored, and donated an SBD to Midway Airport at Chicago in
2004.
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FORUM
NOTES
~ Anti-spam programs and filters are
continuing to plague the efficient distribution of this newsletter, which is a
type of bulk e-mail that looks like spam to some servers. That causes error messages with nearly every
issue that I send. The details are
technical and lengthy, so I’ll spare you the bother. Just be aware that if The Roundtable Forum mysteriously
stops arriving at your in-box each week, I may have encountered a problem with
your e-mail address that I can’t work around.
Just contact me and we’ll sort it out together, one way or another. (My contact info appears at the bottom of
every issue of the Forum.)
~ A good clue that I’ve had a problem with
your e-mail address is to check the current issue of The Roundtable Forum on
our web site (click “Weekly Newsletter” under the VT picture). If you see an edition there that didn’t show
up in your in-box, you’ll probably want to contact me in order to find out
why. If you do, be sure to give me some
means of getting back to you other than your Roundtable e-mail address.
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Get
the Roundtable’s Book: NO RIGHT TO
WIN: A Continuing Dialogue With Veterans Of The Battle Of Midway
Now
available with a companion CD, while supplies last. Click for full information:
http://www.russbook.com/
If
you cannot access the above web site, send a message to the editor for full
details on No Right to Win.
(Roundtable members can just click “reply” on this message.)
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For
a glossary of abbreviations, acronyms, and terms used in The Roundtable
Forum, go to our home page and click the “Roundtable Glossary” link, or
here is the direct URL:
http://www.midway42.org/glossary.htm
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Roundtable (“the Forum”)
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