Our searches went out early in the morning but up to 3 o’clock in the afternoon, none of them had any success. Having stayed up most of last night, I went below for a nap. At about 4 I was wakened by the loudspeaker directing Lieut. Commander Myers to dial 006. Such messages, I had learned, usually meant activity of an interesting sort so I was on the alert for what would be coming next. The loudspeaker presently said: “All fighter pilots report to the ready room immediately.” Then it said: “All torpedo-bomber pilots report to the ready room immediately.” Then it said: “All dive-bomber pilots report to the ready room immediately.”

In flag plot, I learned that search planes from another carrier had at last found the Japanese fleet 250 miles to the northwest of us. Our previous searches, sent farther out, had missed them entirely. Apparently the Japanese had stopped to fuel heading into the wind from the east and, being much closer to us than we had any right to expect, had escaped detection on this account. Mitscher had had his haircut and also made a plan. He called for an immediate combined attack of 100 or so dive and torpedo bombers, escorted by fighter planes in case there were any fighters left on the Japanese carriers. The attack was timed to leave at about 4:30, reach the Japanese about 6:30 and get back to our carriers a couple of hours later. The last part of the plan was even riskier than the attack itself. At night, carriers are hard to find and landings on them difficult in any case. On this occasion, our planes would be nearly out of gas, since the attack was to be made with heavy loads at close to maximum range. The objective however, seemed to justify the risk. [Click here for a view of the Attack Map layout with a quick return to this page.]

The interval of four hours or so between the time the planes took off and the time they began to return was, on our carrier, a period of suspense even more intense and unrelieved than the periods waiting in yesterday’s battle. No word came back until around 7 o’clock when a message was relayed from Lieut. Commander Ralph Weymouth, commanding our dive bombers, to the effect that hits had been made and fires seen on four Japanese carriers. General quarters had been sounded. Admiral Mitscher sat on his windy bridge rubbing his chin from time to time. Between 7 and 7:30 he smoked three cigarettes, taking them carefully from his leather case and lighting each with a wooden match, cupped under the box, on the first attempt. Shortly after dusk, a flight of four combat patrol planes came in to our deck and others landed on other carriers. At about this time also the lights of the first planes returning from the strike at the Japanese fleet began to sparkle in the west like little green and red jewels against the last dim light of sunset.

The deck crash on our carrier was the most spectacular single incident observable on our ship. It was a microscopic detail in an hour of such eerie and eccentric horror which, for the pilots who went through it successfully, outweighed the appalling risks of the mission which had preceded it.

Shortly after the deck crash, I felt my way down a darkened ladder and along a dim and winding passageway to the dive-bomber ready room. On the way I passed the ship’s surgeon and several stretcher-bearers, lowering the wounded men to the hangar deck to be taken to sick bay. A few feet farther along, behind a door, still on stretchers but completely wrapped in sheets were the bodies of the two men who had been killed. When I reached the ready room, Weymouth was telling an intelligence officer about the bombing of the fleet. All of our pilots he said had started back with him except one and most of those who had not landed on our deck were presumably safe on other carriers or in the nearby water, where destroyers were sure to find them. The pilot who had been lost — shot dead in his cockpit by a pursuing Japanese fighter — was the same one who, three days ago, had taken me with him in his dive-bomber over Saipan.