The following column is strictly for RWT: Readers With Ovaries are directed to the Sewing Column by my pretty little colleague Miss Primrose Entwhistle, or to Household Hints for Busy Mums, written by Prudence Whiteside.
From here on it's blokes only, and if there's the remotest whiff of oestrogen or the merest suggestion of a handbag from this point on, there'll be trouble.
Is that it? Are the girls all gone? Excellent! - Last December occurred the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (and if you want to know why the US is the US and not Luxembourg, two days after Pearl Harbor, the US government placed orders for 40 aircraft carriers). The next major Japanese move against the US was against the most westerly American bases in the Pacific. But the US Pacific Commander in Chief, the great Chester Nimitz, was able, through Ultra intelligence, to read all the Japanese radio traffic. He knew the attack was coming.
But code-breaking was just about the only area in which the Americans had an advantage over the Japanese: the emperor's aircraft were infinitely superior, his crews better trained and more skilled. Most pilots of US torpedo bombers had never fired a torpedo, even in training, and the weapons themselves were hopelessly slow and unreliable.
I'm sorry. Let me pause here. I got a distinct trace of progesterone a moment ago. Lads, just check to see if some pesky female isn't reading over your shoulder. Can't have RWO sharing these column inches when they should be off learning how to bake scones, clean the silver and make beds. Are we still a girl-free zone? We are? Excellent! - There was a heated dispute on board the US carriers whether or not a fighter escort should stick with the torpedo bombers going in: those who argued for a mixed force, as opposed to fighters maintaining top cover at 20,000 feet, lost. Moreover, in the confusion of a highly complex operation despatching waves of bombers and escorts, co-ordination collapsed, and instead of air-fleets proceeding according to a careful plan, they went to their targets like stampeding wildebeest on the Serengeti.
The first wave of US torpedo bombers attacking the Japanese were all, bar one, shot down on the approach run; and though some launched their torpedoes, if any hit their targets they were duds and did not explode. A comparable fate awaited the second wave of bombers.
The next wave of 15 US torpedo aircraft came in towards the Japanese carrier the Akagi. They were pounced on by Japanese Zero fighters, and all of them shot down. Of the 45 men in them, just one survived. No Japanese ship was even hit. Twenty thousand feet above them, the US fighter cover circled uselessly.
Of the next 14-strong wave of torpedo planes, 11 were shot down. These were followed by 12 more torpedo bombers, this time with a close-in escort of fighters. However the latter were soon seen off by the Zeroes, which then made mincemeat of the bombers.
A petticoat. I heard the distinct rustle of a petticoat! Check around you lads, just in case. . . They can be damned wily, these females. Almost human at times. All clear? Good. - As I was saying, mincemeat, utter mincemeat. Even when the US Navy was able to get a fighter escort with its bombers, they were no match for the Zeroes. To cap it all, almost the entire attacking force from the aircraft carrier Hornet flew in the wrong direction and missed the battle. Its fighter escort ran out of fuel and ditched in the sea: the lot. And of the 51 torpedo planes which attacked the Japanese fleet, only seven returned. Not one Japanese vessel was damaged by a single torpedo, for the loss of 44 planes.
The nature of the enemy they were facing was made clear by the fate of Ensign Wesley Osmus from Chicago. Shot down, he was recovered by the Japanese destroyer Arashi. After being questioned, he was led to the vessel's fantail, where he was despatched with a fire-axe to the head. When he despairingly held on to the rail with his hands, the Japanese smashed them with the axe, and he fell to his doom.
In the US fleet, bedlam reigned. Messages were sent but not received; some pilots failed to report the sightings of Japanese vessels and US admirals were throughout almost wholly in the dark. And yet, and yet. . .
For there is a moral to this story, chaps. It is this. Every tale has a different angle. The foregoing is not an account of an American defeat but one of victory. The battle was Midway, in June 1942: and though the torpedo bombers were engulfed by catastrophe, American dive-bombers - by extraordinary good fortune - led by a Commander McCluskey (of course) found the three Japanese carriers, their decks crowded with planes being refuelled and re-bombed. The US dive bombers got them at the very worst moment in an aircraft carrier's cycle. Within minutes, all three carriers exploded in a trinity of infernos and sank. Thus, one of the most vital events in world history which changed the entire war in the Pacific; and its outcome depended not so much upon any great American military skills, but upon an astounding stroke of good fortune and aided by some quite astonishing bravery.
Why this Diary? Oh, mostly because I've just been reading - and now plagiarising - Alvin Kernan's brilliant The Unknown Battle of Midway, recently published by Yale.
- Shall we let the little ladies back in now?