22. When Courage and Good Fortune Combine
The courage, grit, and determination of US airmen secured victory, but they were helped by a series of unexpected lucky breaks that lined up one after the other in favor of the Americans. First of those was a bungled mass launch that helped rather than hurt the US. In June, 1942, the US Navy had not yet mastered the intricacies of massed carrier attacks. The plan had been for all three American carriers to launch a single massive aerial strike, but poor coordination led to delays. As a result, the earliest planes to launch were forced to loiter near the carriers, waiting for the remainder and burning precious fuel needed to reach the Japanese fleet and return. After nearly an hour of that, the different carrier air groups were ordered to proceed towards the enemy fleet on their own without waiting for the others.
Had all gone to plan, the massed American strike force would have been led by the most senior pilot, Commander Stanhope C. Ring of the Hornet. As it transpired, Ring performed poorly that day, and led the Hornet’s planes on a wrong heading that missed the Japanese fleet altogether. Had all three carrier air groups assembled on time, they would all have followed Ring in what came to be known as “the flight to nowhere“. So in the first lucky break, the bungled mass launch resulted in the air groups of the Enterprise and Yorktown heading out in search of the enemy under their own leaders, Lieutenant Commander Wade C. McClusky and Lieutenant Max Leslie, respectively. As seen below, those two proved more effective than Ring, and unlike him, actually managed to find the enemy.
