Shooting War Page #2

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He ran into the whole bunch of 'em.

And 15 or 16 torpedo planes went down.

These men of torpedo squadron eight

found the Japanese carriers.

They scored no hits,

but they distracted enemy gunners,

allowing our dive bombers

to sink four carriers.

Only one man, George Gay,

on the right, survived.

One of Ford's crew shot these pictures.

The director made them into a short

memorial film for the next of kin.

Midway shifted the balance

of naval power in the Pacific.

It cost the Japanese

almost half their carriers.

Still, their wounded navy

continued to pose a deadly threat.

October, 1942. The Hornet steams

toward the battle of Santa Cruz

near Guadalcanal.

With the Enterprise, she was soon

fighting off assaults from the air.

How close the combat often was

is demonstrated by this sequence,

shot from the Enterprise.

A near miss shakes the Enterprise.

An enemy shadow is cast

on the flight deck as the ship fights on.

The camera catches the wild swing of

the huge ship as it takes evasive action.

But still the bombs rained down.

The camera survived this hit,

but not the cameraman.

The Hornet did not survive either.

We were listing to the starboard.

Real heavy list.

I went to the fantail

to help with the wounded,

where I stayed until

we finally abandoned ship.

I swam out about 45 degrees this way.

Got out so far

and here come the destroyers.

I figured, "This is gonna be

a piece of cake. Pick us up real quick."

Then they backed down and took off.

The destroyer starts circling

around the ship and firing.

"What are they firing at?"

We looked in the sky.

Coming in was a V formation

of twin-engine bombers.

You could see the five-inch

anti-aircraft bursts up there.

They came in, went right overhead,

and one hit the fantail back here

and the rest was in a pattern

round the stern of the ship.

It continued on and never came back.

I got picked up right after that

by the 411 Anderson.

That final bombing run

was a coup de grce.

The Hornet's short,

brave life was ended

when American destroyers sank her.

Our ship had been in commission

for one year and six days.

But the carrier war

in the Pacific never ceased.

We didn't have motors

but you had to hand-crank.

When we did flight-deck operations,

we did not hand-crank at three turns

per second on the small crank.

We used the big crank

and would start going up to high speed

because we wanted

slow motion of the crash.

The pilot coming in for landing.

If you ever see the photographer

start that big crank,

look out, you bought the farm.

The footage taken on the flight decks

forms an eerie ballet of destruction

and of unlikely survival.

By late 1942, we were officially

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