From 1942 to 1945, Ernest M. Eller served on the staff of Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet (CinCPac). Shortly before the Battle of Midway erupted in June 1942, then-Commander Eller was among the select staff who flew to the atoll with Nimitz to assess readiness for the pending clash, as well as to boost morale. Eller’s role, he said, was “from the standpoint that there would be a report on this operation that could be very significant.” Eller later recounted his headquarters’-eye view of the action that unfolded at Midway—including the fate of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) (see “Fighting for Survival,”)—in a 1977 oral history interview with the U.S. Naval Institute.
We were trying to make a combined attack in which the torpedo planes, the bombers, and the fighters would all arrive at the same time. The fighters were up high, and the torpedo planes were coming in low. The bombing squadron hadn’t yet located the Japanese and was off on a slightly different course. The torpedo planes went in and were nearly all shot down; our fighter planes were waiting for the bombers, and I’m not sure they could have done much good for the torpedo planes, anyway. So all squadrons of torpedo planes were finished. Yet their sacrifice made victory possible.
The USS Hornet’s [CV-8] bombers and fighters searched south toward Midway for the Japanese and missed the battle. All we had left were the dive bombers of the Yorktown and Enterprise [CV-6]. Just as the last torpedo attack ended, with the Japanese fighters down low combating them, the American dive bombers descended like doom and devastated three of the four Japanese carriers—the fourth, the Hiryū, was hidden under a cloud bank.
So the fate of Midway—and in many ways the fate of the war—was decided by around a hundred men. Of course, you have to count the others, because the torpedo planes had brought the Japanese fighters down from the sky. Therefore, our bombers could go in and attack. The attacks from Midway had a very beneficial effect on the battle in forcing the Japanese to maneuver, delaying rearming and launching attacks against our carriers.
Information was coming through in fragments. At first we were dismayed when we began to get reports of what was happening on Midway with the destructive raids of the Japanese. Then the reports from the planes that survived the early attacks weren’t encouraging. They didn’t seem to have hit anything, or didn’t claim much, anyhow. This was all happening so fast, of course, that we were enveloped in a maze of information, some good and some bad. By late in the day we began to get a better picture, though. We had hit three of the carriers and they were burning, verified by a submarine that reported seeing this, and sending torpedoes into one of them.
We were feeling pretty good around the staff in the afternoon. Then the Yorktown was hit. We didn’t know how many Japanese carriers really were out there. The night came on. Our carrier pilots found the Hiryū late in the day and hit her, and she ultimately sank. The Yorktown lost power; she got power back and then she was hit again by another group of planes. She took a very heavy list and the captain abandoned ship, which nobody was happy about. Then she floated all night and through 5 June. The next morning, the captain went back with a salvage party to try to save her. With a fleet tug towing her and a destroyer alongside, she was being righted and making headway toward Pearl Harbor on the 6th. Then a Japanese submarine torpedoed and sank the destroyer alongside, the USS Hammann [DD-412].
Other torpedoes hit the Yorktown, knocking people overboard. I had a classmate, Lieutenant Commander Ernest J. Davis, who was the gunnery officer. He was up on deck. They were tossing guns and heavy equipment overboard to right the ship. When the torpedo hit, he was blown overboard, and the Hammann was sinking fast. As she went down, her depth charges exploded. He had an old-fashioned gold pocket watch, and it was crushed to about the thickness of a silver dollar against his thigh. He too was crushed inside, but he recovered. This is the sort of concussion that you get in water when there is an underwater explosion. I suppose he was treading water so he got the heavy impact mostly below his waist.
After the battle, I started on the report, and I interviewed everyone I could get in touch with. I interviewed all the flag officers, captains of ships, gunnery officers, squadron commanders of planes, and others, and I asked them to all send in full reports. So I guess that for Midway, I got the fullest picture of any battle that I wrote action reports on, because they were all there. They all came into Pearl Harbor, and I talked to them right away when their recollections were fresh.