“You’ve got five minutes; be tactical, adaptable, and flexible or you’re dead, the ship is sunk, and the war is lost.”

In five minutes, the latest antiship cruise missiles can travel more than 200 nautical miles. In five minutes, a swarm of supersonic, sea-skimming antiship cruise missiles could critically damage and sink an entire carrier strike group. In five minutes, the ability of one person to overcome the death of comrades and the stress of life-and-death decisions, all while a cunning adversary is diligently trying to kill them, will determine success. As it did during five minutes on 4 June 1942 in the Battle of Midway, future victory requires life-and-death decision making, leveraging adaptability and flexibility to overcome the fog of war, all while shipmates are dying.

The U.S. Navy’s next war will not take place in a sanctuary, safe in the security blanket of low- risk operations. The proliferation of extended range, high-speed weapons and sensors able to find, fix, and target U.S. Navy ships creates the fastest, riskiest, and deadliest battlefield ever in naval warfare. In the near future, adversaries will be able to put every U.S. Navy ship at risk in ways not experienced since World War II. Establishing maritime superiority will require adaptable, flexible, and tactically lethal personnel. The U.S. Navy must be ready when deterrence fails to “conduct decisive combat operations to defeat any enemy.”[1] The return of long-term strategic competition as the central challenge to U.S. national security pits ships and sailors against a formidable list of high-seas adversaries.[2] Future combat against a great power’s arsenal will not mirror the past 17 years of post-9/11 experience. Winning and surviving will require expert tactical execution relying upon adaptability and flexibility.

Recently retired Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Scott Swift describes the fleet as the U.S. Navy’s “basic warfighting element.”[3] Successful fleet-to-fleet combat requires tactical, adaptable, and flexible crews. If sailors do not know how to fight, it is impossible for the fleet to fight. For the fleet to be victorious, sailors must win at their level. Victory at the individual level requires sharply-honed, tactical skills. If crews have not mastered tactics in training, it is impossible to expect them to adapt and flex to the non-scripted, dynamic, and deadly reality of warfare. Conquering the stress and fog of war requires processing events as they happen, making snap decisions, and then executing. Adaptability and flexibility woven into tactical prowess is what enables maritime superiority and ultimate victory.

The Battle of Midway, 4–6 June 1942, is rich with feats of expert tactical performance paired with adaptability and flexibility in a desperate battle. However, one example stands above the rest. On the morning of 4 June, one individual’s adaptability and flexibility during five minutes in a tactically confused environment produced ultimate victory. The combat adaptability of Lieutenant Richard Halsey Best resulted in 50 percent of the Japanese carriers being mortally damaged during the USS Enterprise’s (CV-6) morning attack. His actions demonstrate how brilliant adaptation and individual tactical execution produce maritime superiority.

Midway: Life, Death, and Victory

In the summer of 1942, the U.S. Navy found itself waylaid by a lethal and effective great power navy. Pearl Harbor had been the greatest defeat ever of the U.S. Navy. Eighteen ships lay at the bottom in the homeport of the Pacific Fleet.[4] The Battle of the Coral Sea had been a tactical draw and throughout the Pacific, U.S Navy sailors reacted to Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) attacks rather than going on the offensive against an ever-expanding Japanese empire.[5]

In early June 1942, the IJN hoped to draw the U.S. Navy into a decisive battle at Midway.[6] Admiral Yamamoto Isoruku’s sought to eradicate the remnants of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.[7] On 27 May 1942, four of Japan’s most powerful aircraft carriers of the Kidō Butai (“Mobile Force”) weighed anchor and set course for Midway.[8[ Each of the four carriers, the Akagi, Hiryū, Kaga, and Soryu had been a crucial part of the previous December’s stunning attack on Pearl Harbor. On 4 June, the veteran pilots and sailors readied themselves for decisive battle 200 nautical miles northwest of Midway.[9]

Under the command of Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, Task Force Seventeen (TF 17), the USS Hornet (CV-8), USS Yorktown (CV-5), and Enterprise prepared for battle against the Japanese.[10] Every crew member of every ship and in every cockpit had the same mission: Avenge Pearl Harbor by sinking Japanese carriers. On board the Enterprise on the morning of 4 June, her crew stood ready to launch aircraft, man the guns, and if necessary, fight the ship if any Japanese aviators found their mark.

Scouting Squadron Six (VS-6), Bombing Squadron Six (VB-6), and Torpedo Squadron Six (VT-6) formed the Enterprise’s striking power.[11] VB-6’s mission was to destroy land- and surface- based adversaries from the air. Lieutenant Richard Halsey Best, the commanding officer of VB-6, led a squadron of 15 SBD-3 Douglas Dauntlesses, a single-engine dive-bomber capable of delivering up to a single 1,000-pound bomb in a near-vertical, 70-degree dive at close to 290 miles per hour.[12] The crew consisted of the pilot and the gunner/radioman.[13]

Skipper Dick Best graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1932.14 After his mandatory time as ship’s company, he went through flight school in NAS Pensacola, Florida, and then flew fighters with Fighting Squadron Two (VF-2) on board the USS Lexington (CV 1). Next, he returned to Pensacola to instruct. He reported to VB-6 in May 1940 and subsequently witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, and flew missions during the Marshall Islands, Wake Island, and Marcus Islands campaigns.[15]Dick Best took command of VB-6 in mid-March of 1942 while aboard the Enterprise.[16]

On 4 June, the Enterprise’s morning strike package consisted of a total of 32 SBDs.[17] Commander Enterprise Air Group (CEAG), Lieutenant Commander Clarence Wade McClusky, led the strike. [18] He had two wingmen, followed by 14 VS-6 SBDs with Dick Best leading all 15 VB-6 SBDs as the trail element. Best divided his squadron into three elements of five each and led the first of these three elements.[19]

The Enterprise strike package briefed at 0400, began launching at 0700, and proceeded on mission at 0745.[20] For the next two and a half hours, the pilots and gunners strained their eyes to attempt to get tally of any IJN ships or wakes to lead them to their targets. Throughout their flight, the skies remained mostly clear with only scattered clouds from about 1,500-2,500 feet with light winds.[21]

Hour after hour, the hunt continued for the Kidō Butai at 20,000 feet in the cold, open cockpits of VB-6’s SBD Dauntlesses.[22[ While searching for the Japanese, one of Best’s wingmen, Lieutenant (j.g) Ed Kroeger, signaled that he had run out of oxygen. Rather than let Kroeger break formation by descending, Dick Best elected to keep formation integrity, doffed his oxygen mask, and descended the entire squadron to 15,000 feet.[23] This placed VB-6 below and in trail of CEAG and VS-6 as they hunted for the Japanese carriers.[24]

Bombing Six’s SBDs were loaded with 1,000-pound bombs, as opposed to the one 500-pound and two 100-pound bombs carried by CEAG and VS-6. This increased VB-6’s required fuel flow to maintain formation.[25] The rendezvous and extended search for the Kidō Butai, combined with the higher fuel flow, ran one of Dick Best’s SBDs out of fuel.[26] He watched powerlessly as Ensign Tony Schneider ditched in the vast expanse of the open Pacific with little hope for rescue.[27] This left the strike package with 31 SBDs.

Finally, after being airborne for nearly three hours, at 0955 the Enterprise strike package spotted the IJN destroyer Arashi, racing to rejoin the Kidō Butai.[28] McClusky changed course and followed the Arashi. Her dash to get back into formation lead the Enterprise strikers to the whole of the Kidō Butai.

Prior to being sighted by McClusky, the Japanese had been under U.S attack all morning. While failing to hit their targets, the unceasing U.S. attacks had succeeded in breaking down the Kidō Butai’s carrier-box formation.[29]

At 1002, McClusky identified the four carriers of the Kidō Butai. As CEAG looked northward and gained tally of the carriers, the Kaga and Akagi formed the closest and southernmost portion of the formation with the Akagi in the lead on the right and the Kaga to the left and slightly further aft. About five miles northeast of the Kaga and Akagi, the Soryu and Hiryū sailed in a lead-trail formation.[30]

CEAG McClusky began to maneuver the Enterprise’s strike package for a southeast to northwest oriented dive-attack on the Akagi and Kaga. As the formation approached the beginning of their attack run, McClusky and VS-6 remained ahead and above Best’s squadron. This placed CEAG and VS-6 closest to the Akagi with VB-6 in trail.

From CEAG McClusky’s perspective, the Kaga and Akagi appeared to be almost equidistant. Conversely from Dick Best’s cockpit, the Japanese carrier formation had a greater range than azimuth component. This led to confusion about which squadrons would attack which carrier at a crucial time.

The tactical manual recommended when multiple squadrons are attacking multiple carriers, the lead squadron should take the farthest carrier from the strike package’s flight path. This leaves the trail element to attack the closest carrier. This target sort based on relative distance is designed to achieve simultaneous attacks against multiple targets.[31] Per doctrine, CEAG and VS-6 should attack the far carrier, the Akagi, with the trail squadron, VB-6, attacking the closest carrier, the Kaga. An additional source of confusion may have been LCDR McClusky’s lack of extensive dive bomber experience.[32] Prior to becoming CEAG in April, he had been the skipper of VF-6 and exclusively had flown fighters.[33]

From McClusky’s cockpit, the Japanese formation relative to his attack geometry required target sort clarification. CEAG attempted to use the radio to assign targets by saying “Earl [VS-6 commanding officer, Liuetenant Gallaher], you take the carrier on the left, and Best, you take the carrier on the right. Earl, you follow me down.”[34]

Potentially at the same time as CEAG’s radio call, Dick Best keyed the radio to say he would be “attacking according to doctrine.”[35] Based on VB-6’s location in the trail element of the strike package and the relative formation of the two carriers, Dick Best and his 14 pilots anticipated attacking the near carrier, the Kaga. They also anticipated McClusky and VS-6 would attack the farthest carrier from the package’s flight path, the Akagi. Despite CEAG and Best’s use of the radio, neither aircraft heard the other’s call. In the resulting confusion, CEAG, VS-6, and VB-6 all maneuvered to simultaneously attack the Kaga.36

At 1022, CEAG McClusky started his dive-attack.[37] Per the prestrike brief and CEAG’s radio call, VS-6 followed McClusky down the dive chute and towards the Kaga.

Prior to attacking the Kaga, Dick Best shifted his squadron’s formation to echelon and prepared to dive by opening his dive flaps and setting his propeller pitch for attack.[38] Nearly instantaneously, he saw flashes of SBDs diving right on top of him “here came McClusky and Gallaher from Scouting Six . . . belting right in front of me . . . they had jumped my target!”[39] He quickly avoided colliding with the diving SBDs, retracted his dive-flaps, and waggled his wings to signal his squadron to rejoin and cancel the attack on the Kaga.[40]

Despite this, 11 SBDs from VB-6 pressed on and attacked the Kaga. These aircraft compounded CEAG’s nonstandard target sort by sticking to doctrine, failing to cancel their attack, and shift their target. The confusion among the Enterprise’s dive-bombers resulted in 28 out of 31 SBDs racing towards the Kaga with zero attacking the Akagi.[41]

Now, even lower on fuel, most likely mildly-hypoxic, having had already lost one aircraft, and after nearly colliding with the rest of the Enterprise’s dive-bombers, Dick Best climbed back up to 14,000 feet to attack the Akagi.[42] It would be just his aircraft and his two wingmen, with only one 1,000-pound bomb each against the flagship of the Kidō Butai. Limited time and dwindling fuel, combined with the carrier’s evasive maneuvering at greater than 20 knots, prevented a bow- on attack and resulted in Dick Best diving from abeam the Akagi.[43] This meant each 1,000-pound bomb had to hit within the ship’s 103-foot beam as opposed to her 855-foot length; an 88 percent smaller target.[44]

At approximately 1025, Dick Best pushed forward on the stick and dove towards the Akagi.[45] He focused on placing the carrier in his forward windscreen and dive sight. As he aimed for dead amidships, the rising sun on the forward portion of the flight deck grew larger and larger as his airspeed built up, and his altitude rapidly decreased. He noticed a Zero starting its takeoff run and thought, “Best, if you’re a real hero, when you’ve dropped your bomb, you’ll aileron around and shoot that son-of-a-bitch.”[46] At 1500 feet, 500 feet lower than the standard release altitude, when he knew he could not wait one second longer, he mashed the weapons release button, swinging his 1,000-pounder free of his SBD, and propelling the bomb at 410 feet per second towards the Akagi’s flight deck.[47]

He recovered from the dive and accelerated to nearly 290 miles per hour, as fast his SBD would take him and his gunner, Aviation Chief Radioman J. F. Murray. As the wave tops raced past, he glanced back and rewardingly saw a huge explosion towering over the Akagi from his 1,000-pound bomb, the only hit scored against the flagship of the Kidō Butai.[48] His adaptability and flexibility to switch targets, combined with his tactical skills, placed his bomb in the middle of the Akagi’s flight deck, nearly on top of the middeck aircraft elevator.[49] The one-one-hundredth second delay fuse allowed the bomb to penetrate the flight deck before exploding in the enclosed hangar deck.[50] As he egressed he reflected that “everything was blowing up.”[51]

The bomb exploded in the hangar deck, igniting the fueled and armed Japanese aircraft, taking the Akagi immediately out of the battle. Best’s bomb destroyed any hope of her remaining 35 dive and torpedo bombers getting airborne.52 Approximately eight and a half hours later, Captain Aoki Taikjirō ordered the ship abandoned.[53] The next morning, Yamamoto ordered the Akagi to be scuttled. Japanese torpedoes sent her to the bottom at 0520 on 5 June.[54]

Just prior to Dick Best’s hit, McClusky, VS-6, and the rest of VB-6 scored five hits on the Kaga, setting her ablaze and causing mass casualties.[55] In the same five minutes, the SBD’s from the Yorktown crushed the Soryu setting her aflame.[56] As a result of that morning’s U.S. Navy carrier-based dive-bomb attacks, and Dick Best’s tactical agility, smoke billowed from raging fires aboard three of the four IJN carriers as their crews fought desperately to save their ships and their lives.

Before Dick Best’s bomb tore through the Akagi, the Kidō Butai mustered 63 dive and torpedo bombers aboard the Akagi and Hiryū. With the Akagi out of the battle, the Kidō Butai also lost her 35-strike aircraft. Now, the IJN only had the 28 dive and torpedo bombers remaining on board the Hiryū. Without Dick Best’s combat adaptation, the U.S Navy would have failed to strike the Akagi, leaving the Japanese with two carriers and 63 strike aircraft. Dick Best’s adaptability and flexibility in hitting the Akagi dramatically shrank the Kidō Butai’s striking power by 55 percent.[57]

In the afternoon, the Hiryū launched two strikes using her remaining 28 dive and torpedo bombers, first damaging and then sinking the Yorktown.[58] It is reasonable to assume a Japanese counterstrike of up to 63 dive and torpedo bombers, vice just the Hiryū’s 28, may have succeeded in sinking more than the Yorktown on the afternoon of 4 June.

Later that afternoon, Dick Best flew his second flight. He and the four remaining VB-6 aircraft took part in a combined attack between the Enterprise and the Yorktown, hoping to sink the sole remaining carrier of the once proud Kidō Butai, the Hiryū.[59] During this flight, he scored his second hit of the day, this time against the Hiryū. He was one of only two U.S. Navy aviators to score two hits on 4 June.[60] The bombs he dropped during his two dive attacks on 4 June critically damaged 50 percent of the IJN carriers in the battle.

Dick Best’s flawless execution, high situational awareness, and tactical improvisation created strategic success at Midway. He saw the immediate danger of CEAG, VS-6, and VB-6 attacking the same ship and had the situational awareness to instantaneously swap targets. Then his expert dive-bomb marksmanship doomed the Akagi.

For his actions on 4 June, Lieutenant Richard Halsey Best was awarded the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross.[61] On 4 June as the commanding officer of VB-6, his squadron lost 10 SBD’s.[62] As their skipper on 4 June, he briefed at 0400, flew two flights, logged approximately 7 hours and 15 minutes of total flight time, dropped two bombs, scored two hits, and landed at 1834; a greater than 14-hour-long crew day from his first brief to his last landing.[63] He was the only pilot to hit the Akagi and on his last flight in the Navy, he hit the Hiryū. After his second trap aboard the Enterprise, he started vomiting. The ship’s doctor diagnosed him with tuberculosis and he would never fly again. In 1944, he retired from active service on full disability.[64]

Conclusion 

Dick Best’s tactical skills, adaptability, and flexibility helped demolish the IJN at Midway. Despite the stress and confusion, he saw through the fog of war, rose above the loss of his squadronmates, determined what must be done to destroy the enemy, and then did it. The five crucial minutes he spent above the Akagi were the culmination of years of effort. The countless hours he spent studying and practicing tactics and tactical problems, then dissecting and debriefing each event, set the stage for his shift in target and then dive attack at approximately 1025 on 4 June.

In order to mirror Dick Best’s success during five minutes in the summer of 1942, today’s sailors must devote themselves to mastering tactics. This ascends above mere checklist execution and rote memorization. Future victory requires Sailors with the ability to lethally execute while their shipmates are dying. Lethal execution is the foundation of the U.S. Navy’s ability to operate forward, establish maritime superiority, and emerge victorious.

Victory hinges upon the individual, not on a particular weapons systems’ capabilities. Survival and triumphing over the enemy’s fleet requires adaptable, flexible, and lethal Sailors. Future combat against a great power will test the limits of the U.S. Navy’s fleets and Sailors. To fight the fleet and win requires tactical sailors. Recent mishaps raise the question about the U.S. Navy’s ability to operate safely in peacetime, much less successfully in combat. Every member of the U.S. Navy must relentlessly seek to master their craft, their weapons, and themselves. The tide of battle will turn in the U.S. Navy’s favor if Sailors are tactical, adaptable, and flexible as Lieutenant Richard Halsey Best was during five minutes on 4 June.

The U.S. Navy no longer operates in a comfortable low-risk world. Future great power opponents can find, fix, and target ships, submarines, and aircraft. Regardless of the tactics or the weapons systems or the danger, Sailors must be able to execute while under fire. Success requires delivering shattering blows while absorbing enemy attacks, despite the maddening stress and dizzying confusion of combat. Adaptation and flexibility founded upon tactical execution will result in the next U.S. Navy victory.

Your five minutes is now. You are on board a ship somewhere in the Pacific, or you are sailing in the Eastern Mediterranean, maybe the Northern Arabian Gulf or perhaps in the Baltic. Your ship is likely ranged by multiple overlapping threat rings from land borne, air borne, and sea borne threats. The seas are rough, the weather is poor, not every combat system is fully functional, and the enemy knows you are there. It is month six of a seven-month deployment. The general quarters alarm goes off. In your five minutes, will you have what it takes to focus, execute, adapt, flex, and win?

Now is the time to hone the individual lethality of U.S. Navy sailors. Your five minutes have begun. The clock has started, it is racing down to zero, victory depends on you, and your life is in the balance. Dick Best made a difference. Will you?

Endnotes

1 Design for Maintaining Maritime Supremacy, Version 1.0, (Washington DC: Department of the Navy, January 2016), 1.

2 National Defense Strategy, (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 2018), 2. 3 Admiral Scott H. Swift, “A Fleet Must Be Able to Fight,” Proceedings, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018-05/fleet-must-be-able-fight.

4 Mark E. Stille, The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War, (London: Osprey, 2014), 28.

5 Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan, (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), 162.

6 Stille, 34.

7 Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway,

(Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005), 33.

8 Ibid., 3.

9 Ibid., 147.

10 Ibid., 94.

11 Craig L. Symonds, The Battle of Midway, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 376.

12 Stephen L. Moore, Pacific Payback: The Carrier Aviators Who Avenged Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway,

(New York: Penguin, 2014), 2.

13 Symonds, 52.

14 Richard Halsey Best, Lieutenant Commander United States Navy, http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/rhbest.htm.

15 Moore, 36.

16 Ibid., 138.

17 Symonds, 295.

18 Commander, Naval Air Forces (CNAF) Rear Admiral C. Wade McClusky Award, the winner between the Atlantic and Pacific Fleet F/A-18E/F Battle Efficiency Award Winners.

19 Moore, 185.

20 Ibid., 191.

21 VB-6 Report of Action, June 4-6, 1942, http://www.cv6.org/ship/logs/action19420604-vb6.htm.

22 At 20,000 feet, the air temperature was -12 degrees Fahrenheit with a corresponding 46% drop in air density compared to at sea level. To prevent the brain from experiencing hypoxemic hypoxia, an inadequate supply of oxygen to the brain due to low barometric pressure decreasing the amount of breathable oxygen, OPNAVINST 3710 requires all occupants aboard naval aircraft to use supplemental oxygen when the cabin altitude exceeds 10,000 feet. Any flight above 13,000 feet without oxygen is prohibited. OPNAVINST 3710.7V, 8-5.

23 Symonds, 297.

24 Moore, 209.

25 Symonds, 295.

26 Ibid., 297.

27 Both rescued by a PBY Catalina on the morning of 6 June, Moore, 325.

28 Ibid., 208.

29 Parshall and Tully, 219.

30 Symonds, 299.

31 Ibid., 298.

32 Moore, 138.

33 Symonds, 295.

34 Moore, 217.

35 Parshall and Tully, 228.

36 Symonds, 301.

37 Moore, 217.

38 Symonds, 301.

39 Moore, 223.

40 Symonds, 301.

41 Moore, 235.

42 Ibid., 226.

43 Parshall and Tully, 239.

44 Stille, 163.

45 Moore, 227.

46 Symonds, 304.

47 Moore, 228.

48 Symonds, 304.

49 Parshall and Tully, 242.

50 Moore, 228.

51 Symonds, 305.

52 Parshall and Tully, 524.

53 Ibid., 334.

54 Ibid., 353.

55 Ibid., 249.

56 Moore, 230.

57 Parshall and Tully, 524.

58 Ibid., 520-522.

59 Symonds, 332.

60 Ibid., 333.

61 Best, http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/rhbest.htm.

62 VB-6 Report of Action.

63 Moore, 297.

64 Symonds, 364.