Movie Director John Ford was at Midway a few days before the famous World War II naval battle. In addition to the Academy Award winning Documentary "Midway" he also made a second documentary called "Torpedo Squadron". No one has seen the entire film except the producers and a few families . Ford was on the island of Midway during the battle in 1942 and personally supervised, or himself filmed, the action there. Others of his crew were at sea aboard U. S. Aircraft carriers stationed north west of the island. A good deal of color footage was shot. By happenstance, some of the footage focused on the pilots and crew members of Torpedo Squadron 8 on the U.S.S. Hornet. Some of the pre battle shots showed them as a group, and others showed them as individuals, going about their business, laughing and joking around their airplanes. The Navy men flew obsolete torpedo planes, called Devestators. Because of what Clausewitz called "the fog of war," they arrived at their targets unescorted by fighters and all 14 the torpedo planes were shot down. Of the 40 crew members of the torpedo squadron there was only one survivor. Of course, Ford knew this when he was assembling the film, so among the opening credits is a plaque reading, "In Memoriam." This the last film taken of the men of the spuadron before they were to die in battle.
Ford saw to it, or tried to see to it, that copies of the film went only to the families of Torpedo Squadron 8. Only 30 copies were made. Some few minutes of the film can be seen in a TV production, "John Ford Goes to War," now on DVD. ( some of this information comes from a post by Robert Maxwell on the IMDB)
To see pictures from that documentary click on the title above for a link to a web site where the web site creator obtained a copy of the documentary from the daughter of John C Waldron the squadron commander who was killed with the rest of his squadron.
Herman Wouk in his novel "War and Remembrance" has listed the members of torpedo squadron 8 and two other torpedo squadrons from the U.S.S. Yorktown and U.S.S. Enterprise and said this about the naval aviators that attacked the Japanese aircraft carriers that day.
"So long as men choose to decide the turns of history with the slaughter of youths--- and even in a better day, when this form of human sacrifice has been abolished like the ancient superstitious, but no more horrible form--- the memory of these three American torpedo plane squadrons should not die. The old sagas would halt the tale to list the names and birthplaces of the men who fought so well. Let this romance follow the tradition. These were the young men of the three squadrons, their names recovered from an already fading record." Wouk then lists the names and home town of all of the crew member in the three squadrons with those who died outlined in black. It is the most haunting section of his great novel.
All together, these three torpedo Squadrons lost 33 pilots and 45 radiomen-gunners that day. The slow obsolete American torpedo planes were slaughtered by Japanese Zeroes and AA fire. Herman Wouk had this to say: "In a planned coodinated attack, the dive-bombers were supposed to distract the enemy fighters, so as to give the torpedo planes their chance to come in. Instead the torpedo planes had pulled down the Zeroes and cleared the air for the dive-bombers. What was not luck, but the soul of the United States of America in action, was this willingness of the torpedo plane squadrons to go in against hopeless odds. This was the extra ounce of martial weight that in a few decisive minutes tipped the balance of history." The Japanese lost four aircraft carriers and the U.S. lost the Yorktown in this naval battle fought from the air. The Japanese attack on Midway failed and it was the turning point in the war in the Pacific.
