Word: akagi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Japanese carriers were on their way toward the biggest offensive of all. "Spirits were high-and why not?" exulted a Japanese naval aviator aboard the carrier flagship Akagi. "Every man was convinced that he was about to participate in yet another brilliant victory...
...risk," Nimitz told his task force commanders, Rear Admirals Raymond A. Spruance and Frank Jack Fletcher, who well knew that the three carriers were about all that stood between the Japanese and California. Not far away, gliding serenely through a fog bank amid their great escort, the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu prepared for their strike...
...torpedo runs, he put his men to work frantically rearming the planes for a counterstrike against the U.S. carriers. The flight decks were packed with armed, fueled planes as the big ships began turning into the wind. At 1024 the order to start launching came down from Akagi's bridge by voice tube, and the air officer flapped a white flag. At that instant, slanting and howling down at 70° out of light clouds, the SBD Dauntless dive bombers of Enterprise and Yorktown bore down undetected and unopposed. "Helldivers!" screamed a lookout on Akagi. Within minutes the dive...
...night the force sailed Author Fuchida was knocked out of his air command by an emergency appendectomy. But early on the morning of June 4, he climbed shakily to the flight deck of the flagship Akagi to see his boys launch the first strike on Midway. He watched the carriers easily brush off first retaliatory attacks by land-based Marine and Army planes. Then: "A lookout screamed 'Hell-divers!' I looked up to see three black enemy planes plummeting toward our ship. Some of our machine guns managed to fire a few frantic bursts at them...
...Minutes. It was the U.S. fleet that had achieved the surprise. Caught with most of its planes aboard, the Akagi exploded and burned. So did two sister carriers, the Kaga and Soryu (Hiryu, the fourth, survived to be wrecked by an evening raid). In two minutes the whole course of the Pacific war changed. That night, its air striking power destroyed, the Japanese invasion armada turned in "emptiness, cheerlessness and chagrin" and limped for home. (The U.S. Navy lost the Yorktown, one of the three carriers that it was able to muster for the great battle...