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Shaun Thomas (Underdog), OSC
to remember
McCusky, Elbert Scott (Ace of Midway NC2x), CAPT.
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Contact Info
Last Address Little Rock
Date of Passing Jun 15, 1997
Official Badges
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Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
We just shot his ass off!" McCuskey whooped when he and his wingman downed a Japanese flying boat in early 1942.
Central Pacific Campaign (1941-43)/Battle of Midway
From Month/Year
June / 1942
To Month/Year
June / 1942
Description The Battle of Midway in the Pacific Theater of Operations was one of the most important naval battles of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy (USN), under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo on Midway Atoll, inflicting irreparable damage on the Japanese fleet. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." It was Japan's first naval defeat since the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits in 1863.
The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese hoped that another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to capitulate in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific.
The Japanese plan was to lure the United States' aircraft carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii itself.
The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the American reaction and poor initial dispositions.Most significantly, American codebreakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to set up an ambush of its own. Four Japanese aircraft carriers—Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, all part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier—and a heavy cruiser were sunk at a cost of one American aircraft carrier and a destroyer. After Midway and the exhausting attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's shipbuilding and pilot training programs were unable to keep pace in replacing their losses, while the U.S. steadily increased its output in both areas.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
June / 1942
To Month/Year
June / 1942
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
Memories Battle of Midway Badly damaged at the Coral Sea, Yorktown returned to Pearl Harbor for 72 hours of intensive, if jury-rigged repairs - enough to make her seaworthy for the upcoming confrontation at Midway. Some changes were made to her torpedo and fighting squadrons. The personnel of Fighting 42 were merged into Fighting 3 (VF-3) under the command of the great Jimmy Thach. They were equipped with twenty-seven of the latest F4F-4 folding-wing Wildcats.
VF-3 had trouble from the start, beginning with the death of its exec in a flying accident. Once they got to sea, they found out that the new Wildcat's guns had not been mounted, but were stowed in the wing wells, packed in cosmolene. The ordnance men had to clean, mount, and boresight the guns. At sea, they could not boresight the guns in the normal way, with a target set up 1,000 from the plane. They improvised some templates, worked around the clock, and prepared the guns before June 4.
The initial plans for that day included McCuskey with the escort for the torpedo planes; an assignment that he did not relish at all. Since the TBDs flew at 1,000 feet, there was nowhere for the Wildcats to dive away to. Luckily for McCuskey, Jimmy Thach assigned him to CAP, instead of torpedo escort. As has been re-told countless times, the torpedo squadrons were virtually wiped out, but their sacrifice allowed the SBDs to sink three carriers. Yamamoto's fleet had been dealt a crushing blow.
Late that afternoon American fliers found a fourth enemy carrier and badly damaged it too, but our own fleet now came under attack. Lieutenant Elbert McCuskey took off from Yorktown with three other Wildcat pilots of VF-3 and faced the attacking Japanese dive bombers who were flying in a V of V's. McCuskey went straight through the first V and shot down the outside plane, then turned slightly and nailed the two rear planes in the second V. From then on it turned into a dogfight with thXevalXs, two of which got on McCuskey's tail. He dove away and when climbing for altitude realized he was out of ammunition. He radioed Yorktown that he was coming in for replenishment, but was told to hold off. He considered chopping off a Val's tail with his propeller (as Jimmy Thach had advised) but thought better of it.
Later the same day he destroyed two Zeros escorting enemy torpedo planes.
But enough Jap planes got through to hit Yorktown, badly enough so that she could not be saved. The gallant ship was abandoned later that afternoon. Lieutenant McCuskey had been stationed on Lexington when she went down in the Coral Sea; now his second ship, Yorktown, was doomed too. His one consolation was that he had blasted five of the enemy in one day. And of course, Midwaywas a great victory for the U.S. Navy, the turning point of the war in the Pacific. With a total of 6.5 in the first six months of the war, he was the top Navy ace at the time.
