Tactical Lesson of Midway: The Thach Weave
When the U.S. Navy entered the war in the Pacific, fighting squadron aircraft strength stood at 18 planes. Operational experience, showed that more fighters were needed, to (1) protect the carrier herself and (2) to protect the attack groups composed of dive/scout bombers and torpedo bombers. Even when temporarily augmented to 27 planes, there were too few fighters to adequately perform both missions. Since neither the Enterprise's nor the Hornet's fighters accompanied their respective attack groups only Yorktown's experience proved instructive.
First, only six Wildcat fighters accompanied the attack group and they were relatively ineffective against the Japanese combat air patrol onslaught. But even in numbers on defense, they did not do well as Japanese carrier [dive] bomber and torpedo plane crews fought their way through the U.S. combat air patrol (even though augmented by fighters from TF-16) to twice cripple Yorktown and, after the second attack, force her temporary abandonment. The story of the fighter escort for the torpedo bombers and dive bombers from the carriers, with the exception of that concerning the Yorktown's group, was altogether dismal. Indeed, the small number of fighters from VF-3 that attempted to cover VT-3's attack on the morning of 4 June had found the Americans overwhelmed by the Zeroes. The only silver lining was the survival of most American fighters, a result owed in part to the successful implementation of the "beam defense" tactic of Lt. Comdr. John S. 'Jimmy' Thach (of Yorktown's VF-3), a tactic later named the "Thach Weave" in his honor.
"It is indeed surprising," Jimmy Thach wrote on the evening of June 4, 1942, "that any of our pilots returned alive. Any success our fighter pilots may have against the Japanese Zero fighter is not [Thach's italics] due to the performance of the airplane we fly [the Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat] but is the result of the comparatively poor marksmanship of the Japanese, stupid mistakes made by a few of their pilots and superior marksmanship and team work of some of our pilots. The only way we can ever bring our guns to bear on the Zero fighter is to trick them into recovering in front of an F4F or shoot them when they are preoccupied in firing at one of our own planes."
Thach warned that unless the Wildcat's performance was improved, the F4F pilots could not carry out their mission, which would have a, "definite and alarming effect on the morale of most of our carrier based VF [fighter] pilots." "If we expect to keep our carriers afloat," he concluded, "we must provide a VF airplane superior to the Japanese Zero in at least climb and speed, if not maneuverability."
The problem was that on June 4, 1942, and for some time thereafter, there was no way to improve the performance of the F4F. The Vought F4U Corsair and the Grumman F6F Hellcat were under development, but a long time away from equipping first-line carriers. Admiral Nimitz, in reviewing Thach's comments, noted an important distinction: in the Battle of Midway, the Japanese fighters outnumbered the American. Finding that 27 fighters (a temporary expedient) proved too few, the fighter strength was increased to 36. "If the F4Fs were not equal to Zeros on a one-to-one basis," historian John B. Lundstrom has noted in his magnificent work The First Team, "Nimitz at least would see to it that there were more F4F-4s available to fight." Providentially, while Jimmy Thach enjoyed 30 days leave at his home in Coronado, he met with Lt. Cmdr. James Flatley, who had been exec of VF-42 in Yorktown in the Battle of the Coral Sea and who was commanding the new VF-10, training at North Island. The two men, good friends, "freely exchanged experiences and ideas." Flatley had, almost simultaneous with Thach, pondered fighter tactics in the wake of his own combat experience at Coral Sea. "Our planes and our pilots, if properly handled," Flatley declared, "are more than a match for the enemy." He praised the F4F-4 Wildcat's excellent armament [six .50-caliber machine guns], protected fuel system, and greater strength, "Let's not condemn our equipment. It shoots the enemy down in flames and gets most of us back to our base. Remember the mission of the fighter plane, the enemy's VF mission is the same as our own. Work out tactics on that basis. We should be able to out smart him?"
Thach spent some of his leave revising the section on "fighter tactics" in Current Carrier Orders and Doctrine, U.S. Fleet Aircraft, Volume One, Carrier Aircraft USF-74 (Revised), and substituted two-plane sections and four-plane divisions in place of the old three-plane divisions. He also inserted sketches of the "beam defense formation" and explained how it had been proved successful at Midway. Thach's work, Lundstrom notes, offered the first steps in providing the Navy's fighter pilots concrete tactics to counter fighters with superior speed and maneuverability. For those significant efforts, setting forth and describing tactics proved in the crucible of combat at Midway, Jimmy Thach would receive the Distinguished Service Medal.