June 4th, 1942, 10:22 a.m.
25,000 ft above the Pacific Ocean, Lieutenant Richard H.
Dick.
Best peered down through his SBD Dauntless canopy at four Japanese aircraft carriers crawling across the blue water below.
Behind him in the radio seat, Chief James Murray checked his guns one final time.
“Well, Chief,” Beth said over the intercom, “this is it.
What happened in the next four minutes would change the course of World War II, but it almost didn’t happen at all because what Dick Best was about to do violated every regulation in the Navy dive bombing manual.
Standard doctrine was crystal clear.
Commence dive at 70°.
Release bomb at 2,500 ft.
Pull out no lower than 1,000 ft.
These numbers were written in blood, tested, proven, safe.
They gave pilots enough altitude to escape anti-aircraft fire and enough margin to pull out without compressing their spines or pancaking into the ocean.
Dick Best was about to throw that doctrine in the trash.
As McCcluskeyy’s bombers peeled off ahead of him, 33 dauntlesses all diving on the same carrier, Best saw disaster unfolding.
“They’re all hitting the same target,” he muttered.
His blood went cold.
“The entire attack plan was falling apart.
In that split second, Best made three decisions that would echo through history.
First, he’d break formation and attack alone with just his two wingmen.
Second, he’d hit Admiral Nagumo’s flagship Akagi instead of following the mob.
Third, and this was the crazy part, he’d go in lower than any pilot had ever dared, he rolled his dauntless into an 80° nearvertical dive.
Looking down through the perforated dive flaps at that big red meatball painted on the flight deck, Best later recalled, “I held the dive.
Held it.
Held it.” His altimeter unwound like a broken clock.
10,000 ft.
5,000 ft.
3,000 ft.
The Akagi’s deck filled his entire windscreen.
2,500 ft.
Doctrine said, “Release now.” Best kept diving.
2,000 ft.
Anti-aircraft tracers streamed past his wings.
1,500 ft.
Murray was probably praying in the back seat.
I dropped my bomb at minimum altitude.
And watching from another SBD, Lieutenant Clarence Dickinson’s jaw dropped.
What he witnessed next, he’d later say, was either brilliant or completely insane, and he wasn’t sure which.
Rewind to 1932.
Richard Hollyy Best graduated from the Naval Academy with decent grades and big dreams.
His classmates called him Dick, though some preferred best by name.
Best by nature, a nickname he’d earned through sheer competitive intensity.
But Best didn’t start out as a dive bomber pilot.
In fact, he actively tried to avoid them.
His first assignment was the Elite Fighting Squadron 2, the Flying Chiefs.
For two glorious years, Best flew Grumman F3F biplants from the deck of USS Lexington, performing arerobatics alongside non-commissioned pilots who were legends in naval aviation.
He was living the dream, a fighter jock with silk scarf swagger.
Then came the instructor assignment at Pensacola in 1938.
Most pilots saw shore duty as punishment.
Best saw it as graduate school.
The best way to learn a subject is to teach it, he said.
For two years, he drilled students on physics, aerodynamics, gunnery, and navigation.
He memorized aircraft recognition manuals.
He studied Japanese carrier capabilities.
He ran calculations on bomb trajectories until he could predict impact points in his sleep.
His colleagues thought he was obsessed.
They had no idea he was preparing for war.
In spring 1940, Best requested a transfer that shocked everyone.
Dive bombers.
His fighter pilot buddies were horrified.
You’re going to fly what? A slow but deadly.
They were referring to the SBD Dauntless, a aircraft so underpowered that pilots joked its acronym meant slow but deadly.
Best saw something they didn’t.
Fighters are inherently defensive, he explained.
They protect the fleet.
Bombers are offensive.
They sink the enemy fleet.
I knew war was coming, and I wanted to be the guy who ended fights, not the guy who just stopped punches.
In June 1941, he joined bombing squadron 6 aboard USS Enterprise.
He was 31 years old, ancient by pilot standards, but he attacked his new assignment with methodical fury.
Best had a theory, and it was borderline heretical.
The Navy’s divebombing doctrine was playing it too safe.
The official manual said release at 2500 ft.
Best thought that was coward’s altitude.
Too high.
Too much time for the bomb to be affected by wind.
Too much time for the target to maneuver.
In the months before Pearl Harbor, Best began experimenting during training runs off Hawaii.
He’d push his dives lower.
22 2200 ft, then 2,000 ft, then what? 1900 ft.
His squadron mates thought he had a death wish.
His commanding officer gave him unofficial warnings.
The engineering manual said the SBD’s airframe could theoretically handle 80° dives, but nobody actually flew them in practice.
It was too dangerous.
Too much geforce on the pull out.
too much risk of controlled flight into terrain.
Best didn’t care about theory.
He cared about results.
On the practice targets floating off Oahu, Best’s accuracy was uncanny.
While most pilots achieved 15% hit rates, Best was scoring direct hits 40% of the time.
His secret minimum altitude release.
Every foot lower you go, you cut the variables in half.
But when he tried to teach his technique to VB6, he hit a bureaucratic wall.
That’s insane, Best, his superior said.
You’re going to kill yourself and your wingmen.
Stick to doctrine.
Doctrine, Best replied coldly, is going to get carriers sunk.
Then December 7th, 1941 happened.
Best was airborne when Japanese planes hit Pearl Harbor, landing his SBD at Fort Island to find the Arizona burning and 2,43 Americans dead.
That evening, Enterprise hoisted her number one battle flag, blood red, signifying wartime operations.
Best stared at that flag and made a vow, I will make them regret what they did to us.
Now he just needed someone to let him prove his insane method worked.
January 1942, USS Enterprise somewhere in the Pacific.
Dick Best sat in the ready room aboard Enterprise facing his squadron commander.
On the desk between them, a formal complaint from the air group commander about dangerous and unauthorized divebombing practices.
You’re releasing at 1/500 ft.
The commander said, “Doctrine specifies 2500 ft.
That’s not a suggestion, Lieutenant.
That’s an order.” Best leaned forward.
“Sir, with respect, doctrine was written for training cruises.
We’re at war now.
The Japanese have the best carriers in the world, the best pilots, and they’re winning.
If we dive at 21,500 ft, we’re giving them three full seconds to maneuver.
My bombs are missing by 30 yards because the target moves.
Your bombs aren’t missing.
Your hit rate is excellent.
My hit rate would be exceptional if you’d let me dive lower.
The commander side, best I can’t have squadron leaders making up their own rules.
What if everyone decided doctrine didn’t apply to them? Then maybe we’d start winning battles, sir.
The conversation ended with a direct order.
Follow standard procedures or face grounding, but best was nothing if not a creative interpreter of orders.
The manual said release at 2,500 ft, but it didn’t specify how fast you had to get there or at what angle.
Best began flying 75 degree and 80° dives instead of the standard 70 degrees.
Steeper angle, less horizontal travel, more accuracy.
Technically, he was releasing at 2,500 ft.
He just happened to be arriving there vertically and pulling out at 1 ft after release.
His superiors weren’t amused, but they couldn’t quite nail him for violating written doctrine.
Then came the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942.
Enterprise was ordered south, but arrived too late.
Lexington was sunk.
Yorktown was damaged.
When the task force returned to Pearl Harbor, Best cornered the new air group commander, WDE McCcluskey.
Sir, when we meet the Japanese carriers again, and we will, we need to change how we attack.
McCcluskey, to his credit, listened.
He was a fighter pilot by background, recently transferred to lead the bomber squadrons.
He didn’t have Bess’s expertise, and he knew it.
What are you proposing? Let me take my section in first.
Let me demonstrate minimum altitude release in actual combat.
If it works, you adopt it fleetwide.
If I crater into the ocean, you can put I told you so on my tombstone.
McCluskey studied the intense 32-year-old lieutenant.
Best had logged 2,700 flight hours and more than 300 carrier traps.
His navigation was flawless.
His gunnery scores were top tier, and his hit rate on practice targets was genuinely the best in the squadron.
If Admiral Spruent asks me why I let you violate procedure, McCcluskey said slowly.
What do I tell him? Best’s jaw tightened.
Tell him we’re tired of playing by rules designed for peace time, sir.
McCluskey nodded.
Make it work, Best.
Because if you screw this up, they’ll ground us both.
Two weeks later, Japanese carriers appeared near Midway Island.
Best’s moment had arrived.
June 4th, 1942, 700 A.M.
Pilots, man your planes.
The call echoed through Enterprises ready room.
Dick Best grabbed his plotting board and headed for the flight deck where his SBD waited, engine already turning.
Chief Murray was in the back seat, checking ammunition belts for the twin 30 caliber guns.
Intelligence had located four Japanese carriers 200 m southwest.
Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiru.
The entire Kido Bhutai, the elite strike force that had devastated Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Nagumo commanded from Akagi’s bridge, and he had no idea American carriers were within 500 miles.
For once, the US had surprise.
Best climbed into the cockpit of B1, his personal aircraft.
The launch was chaos.
It took 40 minutes to get all planes airborne and the squadrons got separated.
McCluskey led the dive bombers west following the briefed intercept course.
But there was a problem at the expected intercept point.
Empty ocean.
No Japanese carriers.
McCluskey had followed the plan perfectly and the plan was wrong.
Best checked his plotting board.
Based on the last contact report and probable Japanese course, they should turn southwest now.
But McCcluskey kept flying west.
Minutes ticked by.
Fuel gauges crept downward.
Best’s radio discipline was perfect.
He maintained silence even though he knew they were off course.
Finally, McCluskey made a right turn, following a Japanese destroyer that was racing to catch up with the main fleet.
At 10:20 a.m., McCcluskeyy’s voice crackled over the radio.
Enemy carriers in sight.
Best’s pulse didn’t even quicken.
He’d been preparing for this moment for 10 months.
Below, four Japanese carriers cruised in formation, their decks crowded with armed and fueled aircraft preparing to launch.
It was the most vulnerable moment possible.
Fuel hoses stretched across the deck.
Bombs stacked in the hangar bay.
Fighters and bombers jammed wing tip to wing tip.
McCcluskey began his dive, leading scouting six down on Kaga.
Then Bess saw the disaster.
McCcluskeyy’s squadron commander training had failed him.
Instead of crossing the Japanese formation to attack the far carrier, McCcluskey went for the first one.
He saw the entire strike.
33 dive bombers was following him down on the same target.
Best made his decision in two seconds.
VB6, this is Best.
We’re taking the second carrier.
Follow me down.
But in the confusion, only two pilots heard him.
His wingman, Lieutenant Junior Grade Bill Kroger and Enen Fred Weber.
The rest of VB6 followed McCcluskey.
Best was now attacking the Japanese flagship with three dive bombers.
“Well,” Murray said over the intercom, “this is either going to be legendary or really, really stupid, sir.” Best rolled into his dive 80° nearly vertical.
“Probably both, Chief.” The test of minimum altitude dive bombing, the technique that had nearly gotten him grounded, that violated doctrine that his superiors called insane, was about to face its ultimate validation against the most important target in the Pacific.
With the entire war watching, Dick Best Dauntless dropped like a brick through 20,000 ft of clear Pacific sky.
Inside the cockpit, the dive felt almost peaceful.
The screaming wind, the shuddering airframe, the rattling perforated dive flaps.
Best had done this a thousand times in training.
His eyes locked on the target, that massive red rising sun painted on a Kagi’s flight deck.
Through his bomb site, he could see Japanese deck crews frantically pushing fighters toward the catapults.
On the bridge, Admiral Nagumo was probably screaming orders.
Too late.
They’d never get those planes airborne in time.
Best’s altimeter unwound.
15,000, 10,000, 5,000 ft.
Anti-aircraft fire erupted from every Japanese ship.
Black puffs of flack bracketed his dive.
A destroyer below opened up with 25 millmter guns, tracers arcing up like deadly fireflies.
Best ignored it all.
His entire consciousness narrowed to one thing.
The center of that red meatball 3,000 ft.
Standard doctrine said, “Start thinking about release.” Best kept diving.
2,500 ft.
The manual said, “Release now.
Pull out or die.” Best kept diving.
The deck of a kagi filled his entire windscreen.
He could see individual sailors running.
He could see the shadows of the zeros waiting to launch.
He was so low he could practically read the tail numbers.
2,000 ft 1/500 ft.
Now best pressed the bomb release.
His 1,000 lb armor-piercing bomb dropped away.
The SBD lurched upward suddenly 1,000 lb lighter.
Best hauled back on the stick with both hands.
The G forces crushed him into his seat.
six G’s, maybe seven.
His vision started to gray out, but he held the turn.
The Dauntless shuddered, groaned, and pulled out of the dive at 800 ft, 300 ft lower than doctrine allowed.
As Bess leveled off, he looked back over his shoulder.
His bomb hit dead center.
The 1,000 pounder punched through Akagi’s wooden flight deck like a bullet through paper, detonated in the hangar bay below.
Parked aircraft exploded.
Fuel lines ruptured.
Bombs stacked for the waiting strike cooked off in chain reactions.
Within seconds, the entire hanger deck was a blast furnace.
Behind him, Kroger and Vber also scored.
One direct hit amid ships.
One near miss off the stern that ripped open the hull like a torpedo strike.
In 60 seconds, Best and his two wingmen had delivered three hits on the Japanese flagship.
For context, the standard hit rate for US Navy dive bombers in 1942 was 12 to 15% in ideal conditions.
Best three plane section had just achieved 100% accuracy against a maneuvering target under combat conditions while taking anti-aircraft fire.
It was the single most devastating dive bomber attack of the Pacific War.
But the battle wasn’t over.
McCluskeyy’s mass attack on Kaga had also succeeded.
Multiple hits turned that carrier into a fireball.
Simultaneously, Yorktown’s dive bombers hit Soryu.
Three Japanese carriers destroyed in 5 minutes, but the fourth carrier here survived.
By early afternoon, here you launched a counterattack that crippled Yorktown.
At 3:30 p.m., Enterprise launched a second strike, and Dick Best, already exhausted, his oxygen system malfunctioning, his chest burning, volunteered to lead it.
“I can make one more run,” he told McCcluskey.
This time, Best led a composite group of Enterprise and homeless Yorktown pilots.
The flight to hear you took an hour.
When they arrived, the Japanese carrier was launching its second strike.
More planes to finish off the American fleet.
Best made his second dive of the day.
Once again, 80° attack angle.
Once again, minimum altitude release at 1,500 ft.
Once again, direct hit.
His wingman, Krueger, also scored.
Hiru’s flight deck erupted in flames.
Final tally for June 4th, 1942.
Four Japanese aircraft carriers destroyed 248 Japanese aircraft, destroyed 357 Japanese personnel, killed Japanese carrier air power.
Eliminated permanently.
Dick Best’s personal contribution.
Two carriers hit in a single day.
Both flagship Akagi and Here you sunk as direct result of his bombs.
Three bombs dropped, three direct hits.
the 100% accuracy rate.
Zero bombs wasted on already damaged targets.
By comparison, the standard dive bomber attack that day achieved approximately 20% hit rate.
Best’s minimum altitude technique had increased accuracy by 500%.
But when best landed back aboard Enterprise that evening at 6:15 p.m., something was very wrong.
He stumbled climbing out of his cockpit.
Chief Murray caught him.
Best coughed into his hand.
When he pulled it away, his palm was covered in blood.
June 5th, 1942.
Aboard the Japanese destroyer Arashi.
Commander Mitsuo Fuida, the pilot who had led the Pearl Harbor attack lay in the destroyer’s sick bay with a broken ankle suffered during the dive bomber attack.
He’d been on a Kagi’s bridge when Bess’s bomb hit.
It was like a lightning bolt from hell, Fua later wrote in his diary.
One moment we were preparing to launch, the next moment the ship was dying beneath our feet.
The bomb came straight down, impossibly straight, impossibly accurate.
Our anti-aircraft guns couldn’t track something that vertical.
What terrified Fua wasn’t just the hit, it was the geometry.
Japanese pilots had been trained to defend against 60deree dive bomber attacks.
American doctrine called for 70deree dives at most, but this American pilot had come in at 80° nearly vertical.
We couldn’t see him until he was already in his dive, Fua continued.
And by the time we realized what was happening, he was too close to shoot.
The angle was too steep for our predictors to calculate.
Our gunners were aiming where the plane should have been according to their training, but this pilot wasn’t where he should have been.
Fua wasn’t the only Japanese officer trying to understand what had happened.
On the destroyer, Noaki, Captain Taman Yamaguchi, Admiral of Carrier Division 2, debriefed survivors from hereu before his own ship went down.
One flight deck officer described Bess’s second attack.
The first American bombers came in at normal angles.
We could track them.
We shot down two.
But then three aircraft came from a different direction, much steeper.
The lead plane, sir, I’ve never seen anything like it.
He came straight down like a falling sword.
Our guns couldn’t depress far enough to track him.
He released his bomb so low I thought he would crash into the sea, but he pulled out and when I looked back, the forward elevator was blown completely off the ship.
Yamaguchi understood immediately the Americans had changed their tactics.
Back in Japan, when news of the Midway disaster reached the naval general staff, analysts began dissecting what had gone wrong.
One report declassified after the war specifically noted enemy dive bombers demonstrated enhanced accuracy due to extremely low release altitude estimated 500 700 m 1 2 ft.
This represents significant deviation from previously observed American doctrine.
Defense protocols must be revised.
But by then it was too late to revise anything.
Japan had lost four fleet carriers in one day, 30% of its total carrier capacity.
The highly trained pilots who went down with those ships represented years of experience that couldn’t be replaced.
Japan had started the war with 10 fleet carriers and light carriers.
After Midway, six.
More critically, Japan lost the strategic initiative.
Before Midway, Japanese carriers could operate anywhere in the Pacific with near impunity.
After Midway, every operation became defensive.
The impact of best technique rippled outward.
August 1942, Battle of Eastern Solomon’s US dive bombers using steeper attack angles damaged carrier Rayujo.
Hit rate 24% up from premidway average of 15%.
October 1942, Battle of Santa Cruz.
Despite losing carrier Hornet, US dive bombers using lowaltitude release tactics scored multiple hits on Shukaku and Zuo, putting both carriers out of action for months.
Japanese pilot afteraction reports noted American dive bombers much more aggressive than earlier in war.
release altitude extremely low, difficult to defend against.
June 1944, Battle of Philippine Sea.
By this point, lowaltitude, steep angle dive bombing had become standard doctrine across the US Navy.
American carriers launched 226 dive bombers against the Japanese fleet.
Hit rate 31%, more than double the 1942 average.
Three Japanese carriers sunk.
Taihaho, Shukaku, and Hio.
But the technique came with a cost.
The extreme G-forces required to pull out of 80deree dives at minimum altitude took a physical toll on pilots.
Medical studies conducted in 1943 showed that pilots regularly pulling 6 to 7 GS in combat suffered compressed vertebrae, vision problems, and early onset arthritis.
The Navy eventually codified Best’s technique, as it became known, with specific limitations.
Maximum dive angle 80°, minimum release altitude, won’t 800 ft, a compromise between accuracy and safety.
Mandatory physical conditioning program for dive bomber pilots.
Maximum number of combat dives per pilot per mission.
Three.
Dick Best never learned about any of this because on the evening of June 4th, 1942, Best’s war ended as suddenly as it had reached its crescendo.
The blood he’d coughed up wasn’t from GeForce strain.
It was tuberculosis activated by a faulty oxygen rebreather system that had leaked costic soda during the flight to Midway.
Several other pilots had experienced similar malfunctions, but most had only mild symptoms.
Best had breathed the contaminated oxygen for hours during both strikes while pulling extreme G forces that accelerated the chemical damage to his lungs.
By June 6th, Best could barely stand.
He was evacuated to Pearl Harbor, then to Baloa Naval Hospital.
The diagnosis was devastating.
active tuberculosis, severe chemical burns to lung tissue, permanent damage.
The Navy promoted him to Lieutenant Commander and medically retired him in 1944.
He was 34 years old.
For the man who had sunk two enemy carriers in one day, who had pioneered the dive bombing technique that would help win the Pacific War, the Navy’s official recognition was a medical discharge and a disability pension.
best spent the next decade in and out of hospitals, sometimes close to death.
He couldn’t work.
He couldn’t fly.
He could barely walk some days.
Meanwhile, the technique he’d nearly been grounded for violating became standard operating procedure.
Pilots he’d never met were using his methods to sink Japanese carriers at Philippine Sea, at Lady G, at Okinawa.
His innovation became so thoroughly integrated into Navy doctrine that most pilots didn’t even know there had been a time when it was considered insane.
By 1945, the SBD Dauntless had sunk more enemy shipping than any other Allied bomber, over 300,000 tons, including 18 major warships.
And it all started with one pilot who thought doctrine was playing it too safe.
Santa Monica, California.
Dick Best, now 65 years old and finally recovered enough to work consistently, retired from his position as chief librarian at the Rand Corporation.
He’d spent the last 20 years cataloging technical documents and research papers in a quiet office overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
It wasn’t flying.
It wasn’t even close.
When younger colleagues learned he’d been a Navy pilot, they’d ask, “Did you see any action?” Best would smile slightly and say, “A little,” then change the subject.
For 30 years after Midway, Dick Best lived in near total obscurity.
No medal ceremony, no presidential handshake, no victory parades.
The two carriers he sank, officially credited to US Navy dive bombers in most histories.
His name appeared in a few footnotes buried in unit action reports that most people never read.
It wasn’t until the 1990s when naval historians began conducting detailed interviews with midway veterans that best story began to surface.
Even then, he downplayed his role.
I did what any pilot would have done, Best insisted in a 1998 interview.
I saw a target that needed hitting, and I hit it.
The real heroes are the torpedo bomber pilots who went in first and got massacred.
They drew the fighters down to the deck so we could make our approach.
They’re the ones who won midway.
When asked about his minimum altitude dive bombing technique, Best was more forthcoming.
The math was simple.
Every second your bomb is in the air, the target can move 30 ft.
Release at 2500 ft.
Your bomb takes 3 seconds to hit.
Release at 2500 ft.
Your bomb takes less than 2 seconds.
You cut the target’s maneuvering time by a third.
The increased accuracy isn’t magic.
It’s just geometry.
pressed about whether he’d been scared diving that low with anti-aircraft fire all around him best paused.
I was terrified, he admitted every single time.
But I was more terrified of missing, of wasting my bomb, of letting my shipmates down, of letting the guys who died at Pearl Harbor down.
Fear of failure is stronger than fear of death.
At least it was for me.
In 1999, Dick Best was interviewed for a book about Midway.
The author asked him what he was most proud of from his naval career.
Best’s answer surprised everyone.
In the 1970s, I helped Daniel Ellburg copy the Pentagon papers.
The American people deserved to know the truth about Vietnam.
That mattered more than anything I did in the war.
In war, I helped sink ships.
With the Pentagon Papers, I helped sink a policy that was killing young men for no good reason.
That’s the achievement I’m proud of.
Dick Best died on October 28th, 2001 at age 91.
By that time, the dive bomber was obsolete, replaced by precisiong guided missiles that could hit targets from miles away.
But the principle best had fought for minimum altitude for maximum accuracy lived on in the doctrine of every air force in the world.
The closer you get, the less likely you are to miss.
In his eulogy, one of Best’s former squadron mates said, “Dick didn’t just sink carriers.
He changed how we thought about what was possible.
He proved that sometimes the crazy idea is the right idea.” Modern Legacy.
The US Navy’s Top Gun School teaches Best’s Midway attack as a case study in tactical adaptation.
The lesson isn’t about dive bombing.
It’s about questioning doctrine when doctrine isn’t working.
Today, precision strike weapons can hit targets with accuracy best could only dream of.
But they follow the same principle he proved in 1942.
The shorter the bomb’s flight time, the higher the probability of hit.
And somewhere in the archives at Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, there’s still a corner of the library that old employees call best section, a quiet spot overlooking the Pacific, where a old man who once fell from the sky like a sword used to sit and read, and remember when he was young and crazy and Right.
