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by Ronald Russell
(The following originally appeared in Veterans
Biographies, distributed during the annual Battle of Midway commemoration
in San Francisco, June 2006)
In
September 1941, upon completion of pilot training advanced carrier training in
Florida, Ensign Clayton E. Fisher was assigned to Bombing Squadron 8 (VB-8)
aboard the brand new carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) at Norfolk,
Virginia. The ship was placed in
commission in October, and for the next few months conducted shakedown and
training operations in the Atlantic and Caribbean. One day in March 1942, two Army B-25 medium bombers were
mysteriously brought aboard the ship just before it got underway for an
unexplained operation. The VB-8 pilots
were amazed to see the two big planes take off from the carrier. Without knowing it, they had witnessed the
first operational test of Lt. Col. Jimmie Doolittle’s proposal for attacking
the Japanese mainland with carrier-launched B-25s.
Fisher and the rest of the Hornet’s crew got to
see the real thing two months later, as Doolittle and his sixteen B-25s
launched from the ship on their dramatic mission that stunned the enemy’s high
command. As a direct result, Japanese
Admiral Yamamoto was given the go-ahead for his expansive Midway operation, in
which Fisher flew five missions as the pilot of a VB-8 SBD dive bomber.
The morning of 4 June 1942 saw the Hornet airmen’s
first combat sortie. Fisher was
assigned to fly wing on the air group commander, an honor that brought him a
great deal of apprehension since the much-feared Japanese Zeros would seek out
the group commander’s flight in any air combat. But it was not to be—only Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8) among the Hornet’s
four squadrons made contact with the enemy carriers; the rest returned to
the ship or in some cases landed in the sea due to lack of fuel.
Later that same day, VB-8 was sent with other squadrons
to attack the Japanese carrier Hiryu, which had escaped the devastating
strikes that morning by USS Yorktown and USS Enterprise aircraft. The Hiryu was already fatally hit by
the time VB-8 arrived overhead, so the squadron dove on one of its escorting
cruisers. Fisher’s 1000-pound bomb
failed to release at the bottom of his dive, nearly driving his SBD into the
water. As it happened, the extra weight
propelled his plane through and beyond the enemy task force at an enormous
speed, and he was relieved to see Japanese antiaircraft gunners firing well
behind him as a result.
By the following day, June 5th, four enemy carriers had
been sunk, but Admiral Spruance, was uncertain whether there might be
more. While searching for additional
Japanese ships, a lone destroyer, the Tanikaze, was sighted and attacked
by multiple Navy squadrons as well as two flights of Army B-17s. Fisher’s bomb missed just astern of the
ship, which may have been the luckiest vessel on either side in the Battle of
Midway—over a hundred bombs were dropped on the elusive target with only minor
damage from a near miss.
The 6th of June saw further searches for possible
Japanese carriers. Two cruisers and two
destroyers were found and attacked by planes from the Hornet and Enterprise
as well as Marine aircraft from Midway.
Fisher’s bomb missed on that sortie, but on a second flight that
afternoon he got a crippling direct hit on the destroyer Arashio as it
tried to screen the cruisers Mogami and Mikuma. The Mikuma sank as the result of that
action, while the badly damaged Mogami and Arashio eventually
made it back to port.
The Battle of Midway was finally over. By the end of the day on June 6th, Fisher
was emotionally drained and physically exhausted. He had logged seventeen hours on his five combat sorties. His most vivid memory of Midway, though, was
not the trauma of aerial combat.
Instead, he remembers looking into the VT-8 ready room as the sun set on
June 4th. What he saw was a ghostly
emptiness. Instead numerous pilots
reviewing the day’s battle, there were just empty seats. The only sign of the men who should have
been there was their uniforms hanging on hooks, after having changed into their
flight suits.
But he had survived, and there were
other sorties to be flown and battles to be fought. He would do so both in the Pacific and in Korea, in SBDs as well
as F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair fighters.
Note: for much more on Clay Fisher, please see these links:
Clay Fisher on the SBD in Combat
Clay Fisher at the Battle of Midway (link to Pacific War Historical Society)
Clay Fisher at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands (link to Pacific War Historical Society)
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