At 6:02 on the morning of June 4th, 1942, Enson Albert Kyle Ernest sat in the cockpit of a Grumman TBF-1 Avenger on Midway Island, watching mechanics fuel a torpedo bomber that had never seen combat.

25 years old, zero combat hours, zero enemy kills.

Behind him in the turret sat Seaman First Class J Manning, age 20.

Below in the vententral position crouched radioman thirdclass Harry Frier 17 years old.

The Japanese had dispatched 108 aircraft to destroy Midway that morning supported by four carriers and the entire combined fleet.

Ernest TBF was aircraft 8T1 bureau number 00380, first aircraft off the Grumman production line.

The TBF1 Avenger had arrived at Pearl Harbor 6 days earlier.

Ernest and five other pilots from Torpedo Squadron 8 had flown them to Midway three days ago.

The rest of VT8 was somewhere at sea aboard USS Hornet flying the obsolete TBD Devastator.

Ernest Detachment had the new plane bigger, faster.

Nobody knew if that would matter.

Lieutenant Langden Fbring commanded the six plane detachment.

At 32, the other pilots called him Old Langden.

He’d briefed them 2 days earlier.

The Japanese fleet was coming.

four carriers, battleships, cruisers, the entire Kido Bhutai that had struck Pearl Harbor.

Midway had 52 combat aircraft to stop them.

Three American carriers waited somewhere north.

If Midway fell, Pearl Harbor was next.

At 555, a truck raced down the flight line.

Marines were shouting, “Enemy carriers bearing 320° 150 nautical miles out.

Launch everything.

” Ernest started his engine.

The right cyclone radial roared to life.

He’d never dropped a live torpedo.

None of them had except Febrling.

Six TBF Avengers lifted off midway at 600 hours.

No fighter escort.

The Marine Wildcats were already scrambling to defend the island.

Ernest flew behind Feverling.

Manning test fired his turret gun.

Frier checked his vententral gun and radio.

They climbed to 8,000 ft and turned northwest.

Nothing but water for 150 m.

By 1942, torpedo bombing had become a suicide mission.

You had to fly low, straight, slow.

The Japanese knew this.

Their zero fighters were faster than anything America had at Coral Sea.

One month earlier, American torpedo squadrons had been slaughtered.

Most torpedo bomber crews didn’t survive their first attack.

At 0710, Ernest saw the Japanese fleet.

Four massive carriers in formation, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and above them, black specks diving toward the six American planes.

Zero fighters, too many to count.

Feebrling dove toward the carriers.

The other five Avengers followed.

Ernest pushed his stick forward.

Manning opened fire.

Frier was firing from below.

Tracers were everywhere.

The first TBF exploded in midair.

The second tumbled into the sea, then the third.

Then the fourth.

Ernest saw Feebling’s plane spiral down.

Five Avengers gone in less than 3 minutes.

Ernest was alone.

Zeros were coming from three directions.

20 mm cannon fire punched through his windshield.

Glass shrapnel hit his neck.

Blood ran down inside his flight suit.

His instrument panel exploded.

The compass stopped working.

Manning’s gun went silent.

Frier came on the intercom.

Manning was hit bad, maybe dead.

Frier himself was wounded.

Ernest was 200 ft above the water.

He opened his bomb bay doors and released his torpedo at the nearest cruiser and missed.

More cannon fire tore through the fuselage.

His elevator controls went dead.

The stick wouldn’t respond.

The Avenger should have crashed.

Instead, it kept flying level.

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Back to Ernest.

He was still taking fire.

Bullets hitting the armor plate behind his seat.

His hydraulics were shot.

One landing gear wheel wouldn’t extend.

No compass, no airspeed indicator, no altimeter, no radio.

Manning was definitely dead.

Blood everywhere in the turret.

The right engine was still running.

And when he adjusted his elevator trim tabs, the aircraft responded.

Not much, just enough to gain altitude and turn slightly.

He was controlling a 3-tonon aircraft with trim tabs designed for fine adjustments.

Ernest nursed the crippled TBF into a cloud bank.

The zeros broke off.

They assumed he was finished.

He flew east by dead reckoning, following the morning sun.

If he missed midway, the next land was Pearl Harbor, 1,200 m away.

He had maybe 2 hours of fuel, one wheel, no instruments, a dead gunner, a wounded radio men, and 73 bullet holes he didn’t know about yet.

Ernest flew at 2,000 ft inside the cloud.

The TBF shuddered with every adjustment of the trim tabs.

The big cyclone engine was running rough, but it was running.

That was all that mattered.

He had no way to check his fuel.

The gauge was destroyed along with everything else on his instrument panel.

He estimated he’d burned maybe half his fuel getting to the Japanese fleet and attacking.

That left him roughly 90 minutes, maybe less.

200 m back to Midway.

He had to find it.

The Pacific Ocean covered 64 million square miles.

Midway atal was 2 square miles of coral and sand.

Miss it by 5 miles and he’d never see it.

He’d run out of fuel and ditch in the ocean.

With one wheel down, the TBF would cartwheel and break apart on impact.

He and Frier would have maybe 30 seconds before it sank.

Frier’s voice came through the intercom.

He was conscious again.

He’d been knocked out by the same 20 mm shell that killed Manning.

Blood was running down from the turret into his position.

He couldn’t tell if it was Manning’s blood or his own.

He was wounded, but he could move.

He tried to see into the bomb bay through the small window to confirm the torpedo was gone, but Manning’s blood covered the glass.

Ernest told Farrier to stay on the intercom.

He needed to know someone else was alive.

The solitude at 2,000 ft with a dead crewman behind him and instruments that looked like a junkyard was making it hard to think.

Frier acknowledged his voice was weak but steady.

The trim tabs were designed to make tiny adjustments during level flight.

Ernest was using them to control pitch and maintain altitude.

When he adjusted the tab nose down, the aircraft descended.

Nose up, it climbed.

But the response was slow, sluggish.

If he overcorrected, the TBF would enter a dive or climb he couldn’t recover from.

He had to think 5 seconds ahead of every adjustment.

His rudder still worked.

That gave him directional control.

He could turn, but every turn bled off air speed and altitude.

He had to keep the turns gentle.

The aircraft was barely controllable in straight flight.

A hard turn would probably kill him.

At 0745, he broke out of the clouds.

The sun was higher now, still east.

He corrected his heading slightly.

Frier asked if they were going to make it.

Ernest didn’t answer.

He didn’t know.

The flight back was taking longer than the flight out.

He was flying slower, more cautious.

The TBF was damaged in ways he couldn’t see.

Control surfaces were probably shot up.

The airframe had taken dozens of hits.

Something could fail at any moment.

A fuel line could rupture.

The engine could seize.

The tail could fall off.

He was flying a dying aircraft and hoping it would last 30 more minutes.

At 0820, he saw smoke on the horizon.

Black smoke.

Midway was burning.

The Japanese strike had hit the island while he was attacking their carriers.

He corrected his heading toward the smoke.

The island came into view 10 minutes later.

Sand, buildings, runway.

He’d found it.

Now he had to land on one wheel with no hydraulics, no flaps, no speed control.

The Marines on Midway had just been bombed.

They’d be trigger-happy.

Ernest had no radio to announce his approach.

He had to follow the emergency procedure for damaged aircraft.

A specific flight pattern with specific turns.

If he didn’t execute it perfectly, the anti-aircraft guns would shoot him down half a mile from safety.

And if he survived that, he still had to land a three-tonon aircraft on one wheel using only trim tabs at 120 mph.

on a runway probably cratered by Japanese bombs.

Ernest circled midway at 1500 ft.

The runway was intact.

The Japanese had hit fuel tanks and buildings but missed the runway.

He could see fires burning across the island.

Smoke drifted south.

He began the emergency approach pattern.

Left turn, straight leg, right turn, straight leg.

The specific sequence that told ground forces he was friendly and damaged.

Anti-aircraft gunners tracked him but held fire.

They recognized the pattern.

One of their own was coming home.

Ernest completed the sequence and turned onto final approach.

The runway was 6,000 ft long, plenty of distance, but he had one wheel and no flaps.

Normal landing speed for a TBF was 75 knots.

Without flaps, he’d be coming in at over a 100 knots.

Fast.

Very fast.

He adjusted the trim tabs to descend.

The nose dropped slightly.

The TBF began losing altitude.

300 ft.

200 100.

The island was rushing toward him.

He could see Marines running toward the runway.

Ambulances fire trucks.

They knew what was coming.

50 ft.

The right main gear was down and locked.

The left gear was stuck retracted.

When the right wheel touched, the aircraft would pivot left and cartwheel.

Standard procedure was to land as slowly as possible and try to keep the wing up as long as possible.

But Ernest didn’t have that option.

He was coming in hot with almost no control, 20 ft.

He adjusted the trim tabs to level off.

The TBF settled toward the runway.

The right wheel touched concrete at 0944.

The aircraft bounced, came down again.

The right gear held.

The left wing dropped.

Ernest fought to keep it up using rudder and trim.

The wing tip scraped the runway.

Sparks flew.

The propeller was still turning.

If the left wing dug in, the aircraft would flip.

The TBF slewed left.

Ernest kept the rudder hard right.

The tail swung around.

The aircraft spun 90° and stopped.

Engine still running.

Ernest shut it down.

silence.

He sat in the cockpit for 3 seconds.

He was alive on the ground at midway.

Marines surrounded the aircraft.

Medics climbed onto the wing.

They pulled open the canopy.

Ernest tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t work.

They lifted him out.

Blood covered his flight suit.

His neck wound had bled for 90 minutes.

He pointed to the turret.

Manning was up there.

They needed to get Manning.

Two medics climbed to the turret.

They looked inside and climbed back down.

One of them shook his head.

Ernest already knew.

He’d known since 0715 when Manning’s gun went silent.

Frier was pulled from the vententral position.

He was conscious, wounded, but walking.

17 years old, and he just survived what nobody should survive.

Ground crews examined the TBF.

They started counting bullet holes.

Seven in the engine cowling, 15 in the fuselage, 20 in the wings, 30 in the tail section.

They stopped counting at 73.

64 hits from 7.

7 mm machine guns.

Nine hits from 20 mm cannons.

The elevator control cables were severed.

The hydraulic lines were cut.

The compass was destroyed.

One propeller blade had a bullet hole through it.

A photographer arrived.

Bureau number 00380 needed to be documented.

First TBF Avenger in combat.

Only survivor of six.

Flew 200 miles with no elevator control.

Landed on one wheel.

The aircraft would be shipped to Pearl Harbor for examination.

Engineers needed to understand how it stayed airborne.

Ernest was taken to the base hospital.

Doctors removed glass fragments from his neck.

The wound wasn’t deep, but he’d lost blood.

They cleaned it and bandaged it.

he’d be fine physically, but five pilots were dead.

Jay Manning was dead.

15 more VT8 pilots had launched from Hornet that morning in TBD Devastators.

None of them came back except Enen George Gay, who was picked up from the ocean the next day.

Torpedo Squadron 8 had sent 21 aircraft into combat on June 4th.

48 men, three survived.

Ernest Frier gay.

45 dead.

94% casualties.

The highest loss rate of any American squadron in any single action in the entire war.

And the battle wasn’t over yet.

American dive bombers were still attacking the Japanese carriers.

The outcome of the entire Pacific War was being decided while Ernest sat in a hospital bed on Midway.

By noon on June 4th, the outcome of the Battle of Midway was clear.

American dive bombers from Enterprise in Yorktown had caught three Japanese carriers with their decks full of armed aircraft.

Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu were burning.

A fourth carrier here was hit that afternoon and sank the next day.

Japan had lost four fleet carriers in one day.

The backbone of the Keobai was broken.

The carriers that had struck Pearl Harbor were gone.

The sacrifice of torpedo squadron 8 had made it possible.

The six TBFs from Midway attacked first, then 15 TBD Devastators from Hornet, then torpedo planes from Enterprise in Yorktown.

All three attacks failed to score a single torpedo hit, but they pulled the Japanese fighter cover down to sea level.

They forced the carriers to maneuver constantly.

They prevented the Japanese from launching their own strike.

And while the Zeros were busy destroying torpedo planes at wavetop height, American dive bombers arrived at altitude unopposed.

VT8 had bought that window with blood.

45 men dead, 21 aircraft destroyed, zero torpedo hits, but they changed the course of the war.

Ernest remained in the hospital on midway for 2 days.

Admiral Chester Nimttz flew in from Pearl Harbor on June 5th to inspect the island and meet with survivors.

He visited Ernest in the hospital.

The admiral asked what happened.

Ernest told him the launch, the attack, Manning killed, the flight back on trim tabs alone, the landing.

Nimttz listened without interrupting.

When Ernest finished, the admiral was quiet for several seconds.

Then he said Ernest’s return flight was an epic in combat aviation.

The words weren’t casual praise.

Nimttz had commanded submarines in World War I.

He’d seen combat.

He knew what was routine and what was extraordinary.

Flying 200 m with no elevator control and landing on one wheel was extraordinary.

Two weeks later, the Navy announced Ernest would receive two Navy crosses for June 4th.

The first for pressing home his attack against overwhelming opposition.

The second for bringing his aircraft and crew back to Midway.

Two Navy crosses in one day for one mission.

Almost unprecedented.

The citations were approved before the damaged TBF had even reached Pearl Harbor for inspection.

Frier also received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart.

He’d been wounded but stayed conscious.

He’d helped Ernest by confirming systems and providing whatever information he could from his position.

17 years old and decorated for valor, but the awards meant little compared to the losses.

Lieutenant Feebrling was dead.

The five other TBF pilots were dead.

Their gunners and radio men were dead.

18 men total from the Midway detachment and from Hornet, Lieutenant Commander John Waldron was dead.

Every pilot and crewman from his 15 TBDs was dead except George Gay.

VT8 had been effectively annihilated.

The squadron was reconstituted in July.

New pilots, new aircraft, new crews.

The rebuilt VT8 was assigned to USS Saratoga and sent to the Solomon Islands.

The Marines had landed on Guadal Canal in August.

Japanese forces were counterattacking.

The Navy needed every torpedo squadron in the Pacific.

Nest went with them.

He’d survived midway, but the war wasn’t over.

He was 25 years old with three months of combat experience.

The Navy needed experienced pilots, men who’d seen action and lived.

Men who knew how to survive.

Ernest was now one of the most experienced torpedo bomber pilots in the Pacific Fleet.

In September and October 1942, VT8 flew missions from Saratoga and later from Henderson Field on Guad Canal.

Ernest flew strike missions against Japanese cruisers and destroyers.

He bombed shore installations.

He attacked transports.

The aircraft were better.

The tactics were better.

The Avenger was proving itself as the best torpedo bomber in the war.

But the missions were still dangerous.

Japanese fighters were still faster.

Anti-aircraft fire was still deadly.

On September 16th, Ernest was part of a strike force that put a torpedo into a Japanese cruiser.

On October 9th, he led a flight that bombed enemy positions at Cape Esperants.

The missions added up.

The risks added up.

By November, the jungle and exhaustion had broken most of VT8.

The squadron was withdrawn and disbanded for the second time.

Ernest had earned a third Navy cross, three and 6 months.

But the question nobody could answer was how long his luck would hold.

Ernest flew his last combat mission from Henderson Field on November 12th, 1942, 6 months after Midway.

The squadron had lost more pilots and crews at Guad Canal.

Not as catastrophically as June 4th, but steadily.

One plane lost here.

Two pilots killed there.

The cumulative effect was the same.

By November, VT8 was exhausted.

The survivors were rotated back to the United States.

Ernest combat record was extraordinary.

Three Navy crosses, multiple strike missions, zero aircraft lost under his command after Midway.

He’d proven that June 4th wasn’t luck.

He was simply one of the best torpedo bomber pilots in the Navy.

Calm under fire, excellent judgment, able to make decisions when everything was going wrong.

Those were the qualities that kept pilots alive.

The Navy recognized it.

Instead of giving Ernest a desk job, they made him an instructor.

New torpedo bomber pilots needed to learn from someone who’d survived, someone who could teach them what worked and what got you killed.

Ernest spent 1943 training the next generation of naval aviators.

He taught them how to approach a target, how to evade fighters, how to survive when your aircraft was damaged, how to fly on instruments that weren’t there anymore.

But Ernest didn’t stay an instructor forever.

The Navy needed experienced combat pilots for new missions.

After the war in the Pacific ended in August 1945, Ernest remained in the Navy.

He joined in 1941 expecting to serve a few years, but naval aviation was his career now.

He was good at it.

The Navy needed men like him.

In the years after the war, Ernest flew different missions, hurricane reconnaissance, weather observation, search and rescue.

The Navy was adapting to peaceime operations, but still needed skilled pilots.

Ernest flew B17s modified for hurricane hunting, flying into storms that would destroy most aircraft, reading weather patterns, saving lives by providing early warnings.

It wasn’t combat, but it was dangerous work that required the same skills, situational awareness, calm decision-making, ability to handle damaged aircraft.

He was promoted steadily, lieutenant, lieutenant, commander, commander, captain.

Each promotion brought more responsibility.

He commanded squadrons.

He commanded air stations.

In the 1960s, he was given command of Naval Air Station Oceanana in Virginia, one of the largest naval air stations on the East Coast, thousands of personnel, hundreds of aircraft.

The boy who’d flown a Shotup Avenger back to Midway was now responsible for an entire air station.

Ernest retired from the Navy in 1973.

31 years of service.

He’d seen the Navy transform from propeller-driven torpedo bombers to supersonic jets.

From 1942, when America was losing the war to 1973, when America had the most powerful navy in the world, he’d been part of that transformation.

After retirement, Ernest rarely spoke about Midway.

Other veterans from the battle became famous.

George Gay wrote a book and appeared on television.

He was called the sole survivor of Torpedo Squadron 8.

Ernest and Frier joked that they were the other sole survivors, but Ernest didn’t seek publicity.

He’d done his duty.

That was enough.

The Battle of Midway remained the defining moment of his life.

June 4th, 1942.

The day he lost friends.

The day he flew an aircraft that shouldn’t have stayed airborne.

the day he learned what he was capable of when everything was falling apart.