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At Midway, Japanese pilots attacked an American carrier twice in two hours — and reported sinking two different ships. It was the same ship. She'd been repaired so fast they couldn't believe what they were looking at.
This wasn't a one-time miracle. Across three years and thousands of miles of ocean, Japanese pilots confirmed kills on American ships again and again. Direct hits. Torpedo strikes. Fires visible from miles away. And yet those same ships kept reappearing on the horizon — launching planes, firing guns, refusing to die.
Japan's own carriers sank from less damage. One of their newest, most armored carriers went down from a single torpedo hit. Meanwhile, an American carrier absorbed over 120 explosions fifty miles from Japan — and sailed home under her own power.
Why? The answer involves a New York City fireman, a machinist with a CO2 tank, and a philosophy that turned every cook, chaplain, and signalman into something the Japanese Navy never built.
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This wasn't a one-time miracle. Across three years and thousands of miles of ocean, Japanese pilots confirmed kills on American ships again and again. Direct hits. Torpedo strikes. Fires visible from miles away. And yet those same ships kept reappearing on the horizon — launching planes, firing guns, refusing to die.
Japan's own carriers sank from less damage. One of their newest, most armored carriers went down from a single torpedo hit. Meanwhile, an American carrier absorbed over 120 explosions fifty miles from Japan — and sailed home under her own power.
Why? The answer involves a New York City fireman, a machinist with a CO2 tank, and a philosophy that turned every cook, chaplain, and signalman into something the Japanese Navy never built.
Subscribe for forgotten WW2 stories ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@ww2dossierr
Like if you think this story deserves to be remembered.
Comment below — where are you watching from?
#worldwar2 #ww2 #militaryhistory #ww2stories
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LearningTranscript
00:00June 4th, 1942, 230 miles northwest of Midway Atoll.
00:06Lieutenant Joichi Tomonaga is leading 10 torpedo bombers off the deck of Hiryu,
00:11the last Japanese carrier still able to launch aircraft.
00:15His orders are simple.
00:16Find the American carrier that the first wave crippled 90 minutes ago and finish it.
00:21Tomonaga already knows he will not come back.
00:24A bullet punctured his fuel tank during the morning strike on Midway.
00:28He has enough fuel to reach the target, not enough to return.
00:32He volunteered anyway.
00:34When his formation descends through broken clouds, what Tomonaga sees does not match the briefing.
00:39The American carrier below is making 20 knots.
00:42Her flight deck is clear.
00:44Fighters circle in combat air patrol overhead.
00:47There is no smoke, no list, no flame.
00:51Nothing to suggest this ship has been touched.
00:53Tomonaga does not hesitate.
00:55He identifies what he believes is a second, undamaged American carrier and attacks.
01:01Two torpedoes slam into the port side.
01:03The carrier shudders, begins to list.
01:06The Japanese pilots who survived the run report back to Hiryu with confidence.
01:10A second American flattop crippled.
01:12Two carriers knocked out in a single afternoon.
01:15Except there is no second carrier.
01:18Tomonaga's pilots have just attacked the same ship, USS Yorktown, that the first wave hit barely two hours earlier with
01:25three bombs.
01:26In those two hours, Yorktown's crew had patched the flight deck, restarted boilers that had gone cold, restored speed from
01:33dead in the water to 20 knots, and launched fighters.
01:36So fast, so completely, that incoming Japanese pilots could not believe they were looking at a wounded ship.
01:43This single act of confusion opened a question that would haunt the Imperial Japanese Navy across every ocean for three
01:50years, all the way to the home islands.
01:52Why do American ships refuse to die?
01:55If the men who saved Yorktown deserve to be remembered, a like and a subscribe helped their story reach the
02:01audience it was made for.
02:03What made Yorktown's resurrection so unsettling was not just the speed, it was the discipline.
02:09Survivors from Tomonaga's formation reported that even as torpedoes were running,
02:14damage control parties on Yorktown's listing deck were already moving toward the impact point, not away from it.
02:20Hoses, portable pumps, shoring timbers, coordinated, rehearsed, almost mechanical.
02:28These were not men reacting to disaster.
02:30These were men executing a plan they had practiced so many times that the disaster itself was just another drill
02:36with real fire.
02:37And here is a fact worth holding onto, because it will come back later in a way that changes everything.
02:43Yorktown should not have been at Midway at all.
02:45Three weeks before Tomonaga's attack, Yorktown had limped into Pearl Harbor, trailing an oil slick 10 miles long.
02:53At the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 8th, a 551-pound armor-piercing bomb had punched through her
02:59flight deck and detonated five decks below,
03:02killing 66 men, shredding six compartments, rupturing fuel oil tanks across 24 frames.
03:08Rear Admiral Aubrey Fitch looked at the damage and wrote one number, 90 days.
03:15Admiral Chester Nimitz looked at the same damage, looked at the intelligence decrypt on his desk that said four Japanese
03:21carriers were heading for Midway on June 4th,
03:23and said three words to the shipyard,
03:26You have 72 hours.
03:281,400 civilian workers entered the dry dock before the water had finished draining.
03:32They welded in three shifts around the clock.
03:35The electrical grid on Oahu buckled under the load.
03:39Rolling blackouts hit neighborhoods across the island to feed power to the arc welders inside Yorktown's hull.
03:45Steel plates were cut, hauled, and hammered into place over gaps that would normally take weeks of careful measurement.
03:51Nobody measured twice.
03:52When Yorktown sailed on May 30th, two days and 20 hours after entering dry dock, welders from the repair ship
04:00Vestal were still aboard, still working.
04:03The flight deck looked like a patchwork quilt.
04:06Whole sections of her internal framing had been replaced with whatever steel was at hand.
04:10Her radar was unreliable.
04:12Her refrigeration system was gone.
04:14She was not repaired.
04:16She was held together by willpower and fresh welds.
04:19But she could make 20 knots.
04:21She could launch planes.
04:23She could fight.
04:25Now hold that number.
04:2772 hours to bring a crippled carrier back from the dead.
04:30Because on the same day Yorktown survived two separate attacks at Midway,
04:34four Japanese carriers absorbed fewer hits than Yorktown had taken at Coral Sea alone.
04:40Every one of them burned uncontrollably and sank.
04:44Same ocean.
04:45Same afternoon.
04:46Same weapons.
04:47The Americans took more punishment and lived.
04:51The Japanese took less and died.
04:53And the reason was not thicker armor or better luck.
04:57It was something invisible.
04:59Something the Japanese had never built into their ships, their training, or their thinking.
05:04And they would fail to build it even after watching the proof burn in front of them for three straight
05:10years.
05:11That invisible thing did not begin in a shipyard or an admiral's war room.
05:16It began in a fire station in lower Manhattan, with a man who had never set foot on a warship,
05:22and whose name no history of the Pacific War has ever made famous.
05:26May 8th, 1942, the Coral Sea, 400 miles south of the Solomon Islands.
05:34The aircraft carrier USS Lexington has taken two torpedo hits and two bomb hits.
05:39She is burning, but she is alive.
05:42Her damage control teams are fighting fires across three decks, and they are winning.
05:47By early afternoon, the fires are mostly contained.
05:51The flight deck is clear enough to recover aircraft.
05:54Captain Frederick Sherman believes the ship can be saved.
05:57Then, at 1247, a massive explosion rips through the interior of the ship.
06:03And then another.
06:04And another.
06:05The blasts are not from Japanese weapons.
06:08They are from Lexington's own aviation gasoline.
06:11Fuel lines that run through the ship,
06:14lines that carried high-octane fuel to aircraft on the flight deck,
06:18had been ruptured by the torpedo hits hours earlier.
06:21Nobody had drained them.
06:23Nobody had purged them.
06:24Invisible gasoline vapor had been pooling in enclosed spaces deep inside the hull for three hours,
06:30creeping through passageways, filling compartments.
06:34All it needed was a spark.
06:36By evening, Lexington is gone.
06:40216 men are dead.
06:42The Navy has lost one of its four Pacific carriers,
06:46not to enemy bombs, but to its own fuel.
06:497,000 miles east of Lexington's grave,
06:51In a classroom at a naval training station on the American mainland,
06:55a 44-year-old lieutenant with calloused hands and no combat experience reads the damage report.
07:01His name is Harold Burke.
07:03Before the war, he was the deputy chief of the New York City Fire Department,
07:0720 years of walking into burning buildings in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
07:11He has never served on a warship.
07:13But he recognizes instantly what killed Lexington,
07:17because he has seen it kill people in tenement hallways.
07:20Vapor accumulation in an enclosed space.
07:22No ventilation protocol.
07:24No fog suppression.
07:25No preset isolation plan.
07:28A shipboard fire, Burke realizes,
07:30obeys the same physics as a fire in a six-story walk-up.
07:34The Navy just doesn't know it yet.
07:35What Burke does next will quietly become one of the most important decisions in the Pacific War,
07:40and almost nobody outside the Navy's Bureau of Ships will ever hear about it.
07:45He walks into the office of Rear Admiral Edward Cochran,
07:48chief of the Bureau of Ships, and he makes a case.
07:51The Navy's standard firefighting tool is a solid-stream nozzle,
07:55a hard jet of water aimed at the base of a flame.
07:58It is what every sailor has been taught.
08:00And it is, Burke explains,
08:02almost useless against the kind of fire that sank Lexington.
08:05A fuel vapor fire does not sit in one place.
08:08It moves.
08:10It fills spaces.
08:11A solid stream pushes through it and hits a bulkhead.
08:14A fog nozzle, a device that breaks water into a fine mist,
08:18does something different.
08:19It fills the same space the vapor fills.
08:22It absorbs heat across thousands of tiny droplets instead of one stream.
08:26It suffocates the fire instead of chasing it.
08:30Cochran listens.
08:31And then he does something that admirals rarely do.
08:34He hands a lieutenant the keys.
08:36Burke, along with another reservist named Thomas Kilduff,
08:40a former officer in the Boston Fire Department,
08:42is given authority to train the entire United States Navy in shipboard firefighting.
08:48Not a unit.
08:49Not a squadron.
08:50The fleet.
08:51Within months, they build firefighting schools at every major continental naval base.
08:56They train over 260 instructors,
09:00men who then fan out to every ship in the Pacific and Atlantic.
09:04The curriculum is not theory.
09:06It is live fire.
09:08Sailors walk into steel compartments filled with burning fuel oil,
09:12wearing the gear they will wear in combat,
09:14using the nozzles they will use when a bomb comes through the overhead.
09:17They learn that fire is not a monster.
09:20It is a physics problem.
09:22And physics problems have solutions.
09:24Here is where the invisible system begins to take shape.
09:28Because Burke's schools do not just teach technique,
09:31they teach a philosophy that will separate the American Navy from every other fleet in the world.
09:36Damage control is not a specialty.
09:38It is a universal skill.
09:40Every sailor, the cook, the signalman, the aviation mechanic, the chaplain's assistant,
09:46learns how to fight fire, shore a bulkhead, and seal a flooded compartment.
09:51On an American warship, the loss of the designated damage control team does not mean the loss of the ship.
09:57It means someone else picks up the hose.
10:00Remember that.
10:01Because on the morning Yorktown was hit at Midway,
10:04the first bomb killed and wounded a significant portion of her primary damage control party.
10:09On any Japanese carrier that day, that would have been the beginning of the end.
10:14On Yorktown, it was a setback measured in minutes.
10:18And there is another name from Yorktown worth knowing.
10:21Machinist Oscar Myers, the air fuel officer.
10:25After reading the Lexington Damage Report,
10:27Myers had designed and installed a carbon dioxide purging system for Yorktown's aviation fuel lines.
10:34Before the Japanese dive bombers arrived at Midway,
10:37Myers ordered every fuel line aboard the ship flushed with CO2,
10:41replacing gasoline vapor with inert gas.
10:44When the bombs hit and fire erupted across the hangar deck,
10:48the fuel lines did not explode.
10:50The vapor was not there.
10:52The same weapon that killed Lexington in May
10:54had been neutralized aboard Yorktown in June.
10:57Not by better armor.
10:59By one machinist who read a report and built a fix.
11:02But here is the question that turns this story into something larger than one ship or one battle.
11:08If the Americans could learn this lesson in 30 days,
11:12Lexington sinks May 8th, Yorktown fights June 4th.
11:15Why couldn't the Japanese learn it in three years?
11:19Because at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944,
11:22Japan's newest, most advanced, most heavily armored carrier would sink from a single torpedo hit.
11:29And the reason it sank is almost identical to the reason Lexington sank.
11:33Except by then, the Japanese had had 25 months to study the problem.
11:38They hadn't.
11:38June 19th, 1944.
11:41The Philippine Sea, 300 miles west of Guam.
11:45The aircraft carrier Taiho is the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
11:49Commissioned three months ago, she is the most modern flattop Japan has ever built.
11:54Armored flight deck, reinforced hull, every lesson of midway supposedly welded into her steel.
12:00She is Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's flagship.
12:02She is launching her second strike wave of the morning when a lookout spots white lines in the water.
12:07Torpedo wakes.
12:09Six of them, fanning out from the American submarine Albacore.
12:12What happens next is an act of extraordinary courage.
12:16Warrant Officer Sakio Komatsu, a pilot who has just lifted off Taiho's flight deck,
12:21sees the torpedoes below him.
12:23He pushes his plane into a dive and crashes into the path of one,
12:27destroying it with his own aircraft and his own life.
12:30Four others miss, but the sixth torpedo strikes the starboard side forward,
12:35jamming the forward elevator and rupturing the aviation fuel tanks beneath it.
12:39The damage, by any reasonable measure, is survivable.
12:43Taiho's machinery still works.
12:45Her pumps are functioning.
12:46There is no fire.
12:48She slows by a knot and a half.
12:50Ozawa orders the jammed elevator covered with wooden planks from the mess hall
12:54so flight operations can continue.
12:56By 9.20, the job is done.
12:58Taiho launches another wave of aircraft.
13:01She appears to be fine.
13:02But below decks, aviation gasoline is leaking from the ruptured tanks into the forward elevator pit,
13:08mixing with seawater and vaporizing.
13:11The fumes are spreading.
13:13And here is where a decision is made that will kill 1,650 men.
13:18Taiho's damage control officer, whose name has not survived in the records,
13:22only his rank and his inexperience, orders the ship's ventilation system fully opened.
13:27His reasoning is logical on the surface.
13:30Move air through the ship.
13:31Push the fumes out.
13:33It is the kind of decision a man makes when he has studied the theory of vapor dispersal,
13:37but has never stood in a burning compartment and felt which way the air moves.
13:42On an American carrier, the damage control manual is explicit.
13:46Isolate.
13:47Seal the contaminated space.
13:49Purge with carbon dioxide.
13:51Do not, under any circumstances, open ventilation into the hangers.
13:56Oscar Myers understood this aboard Yorktown in 1942.
14:00Every damage control instructor trained by Harold Burke's schools understood it by 1943.
14:05On Taiho, the ventilation ducts carry gasoline vapor from the elevator pit into both the upper and lower hangers.
14:13Within hours, the ship's enclosed hangar bays, sealed by design with no way for fumes to escape naturally,
14:20are saturated with an invisible, explosive atmosphere.
14:24The crew can smell it.
14:25Officers report it.
14:27But there is no protocol for what to do next, because no protocol exists.
14:31At 2.32 in the afternoon, seven hours after a single torpedo hit that should have been a footnote,
14:38a spark ignites the vapor in the forward hangar.
14:41The explosion buckles the armored flight deck upward like tinfoil and blows out the sides of the ship.
14:47Taiho sinks in minutes.
14:491,650 men die.
14:53Sakiokomatsu's sacrifice, his life traded for one torpedo, is erased.
14:58Now, hold two facts side by side.
15:01This is where the pattern becomes visible.
15:04At Midway, two years before Taiho, all four Japanese carriers,
15:09Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, burned out of control and sank after relatively modest bomb damage.
15:17The reason was the same in every case.
15:20Aviation fuel and loose ordnance on enclosed hangar decks ignited,
15:25and damage control teams could not contain the fires.
15:28On those ships, damage control was the job of a specialized engineering cadre.
15:34When the first explosions killed those specialists, which they almost always did,
15:39nobody else aboard had the training to fight the fire.
15:43Hundreds of sailors showed extraordinary bravery,
15:45hauling water with buckets, beating flames with blankets.
15:48But bravery without technique is not damage control.
15:52It is sacrifice.
15:54After Midway, Japan studied the problem.
15:57They did.
15:58Reports were written.
16:00Recommendations were made.
16:02Carrier air groups began arming aircraft on the flight deck
16:05instead of inside the enclosed hangars.
16:08Taiho herself was designed with an armored flight deck
16:10specifically to absorb bomb hits.
16:13But the one thing that would have saved her,
16:15training every man aboard in damage control,
16:18building a system where any sailor could pick up a hose and know what to do,
16:22that never changed.
16:24Because changing it would have required dismantling the rigid hierarchy
16:28that defined the Imperial Japanese Navy.
16:31Damage control was engineering work.
16:33Engineering was beneath the dignity of a deck officer or an aviator.
16:38The idea that a cook or a signalman should learn to fight fires
16:42was culturally unthinkable in a fleet built on the principle
16:45that every man has exactly one job and never touches another.
16:50The Americans had exactly the opposite principle.
16:53Every man has his job, and every man is also a firefighter.
16:58The difference sounds administrative.
17:00On the morning of June 4, 1942,
17:03it was the difference between a carrier that came back from the dead
17:06and four that didn't.
17:09And on the afternoon of June 19, 1944,
17:13two years, two weeks, and thousands of dead sailors later,
17:17it was still the difference.
17:19But Taiho was not the worst consequence of this failure.
17:22The worst consequence was not a ship that sank.
17:25It was something far more dangerous.
17:28A navy that could no longer tell the difference
17:30between what it had destroyed and what was still fighting.
17:34Because when your pilots report a confirmed kill
17:37and the target is still afloat three days later,
17:40you have two choices.
17:41You can ask why your ships die from one torpedo and theirs don't.
17:45Or you can decide that your pilots are right
17:48and the enemy must be building new ships faster than you can count them.
17:52Japan chose the second explanation.
17:55And in October 1944,
17:57that choice would produce the most catastrophic intelligence failure of the Pacific War.
18:02October 12, 1944,
18:05the waters east of Formosa.
18:07Admiral William Halsey's 3rd Fleet,
18:1017 carriers,
18:11six battleships,
18:12over a thousand aircraft,
18:14is pounding Japanese airfields on the island
18:16as a diversion before the landings at late Gulf.
18:19The Japanese respond with everything they have.
18:22Land-based naval air groups launch waves of night torpedo attacks
18:26against the American fleet.
18:28The pilots are young,
18:30most of them with fewer than 100 hours of flight time.
18:33They attack in darkness
18:34through anti-aircraft fire that lights the sky like an electric storm.
18:39Most of them die.
18:40But some get through.
18:41On the night of October 13,
18:43a torpedo hits the heavy cruiser USS Canberra near her engine room.
18:48She goes dead in the water.
18:50The next night,
18:51another torpedo finds the light cruiser USS Houston flooding her engineering spaces.
18:57Two American ships crippled.
18:59No ship sunk.
19:01That is what happened.
19:02Here is what Japan believed happened.
19:04The surviving pilots,
19:06disoriented by night flying,
19:08blinded by anti-aircraft tracers,
19:10many of them on their first combat mission,
19:13returned to Formosa and reported a catastrophe
19:16inflicted on the American fleet.
19:18Fires on the horizon became sinking carriers.
19:22Near misses became direct hits.
19:24Explosions from their own comrades' planes
19:26crashing into the sea became detonating magazines.
19:30By the time the reports were compiled,
19:32filtered upward,
19:34and presented to Imperial General Headquarters,
19:36the numbers were staggering.
19:38On October 16,
19:39Tokyo announced to the world
19:41that Japanese naval aviation
19:43had sunk 11 American aircraft carriers,
19:46two battleships,
19:48three cruisers,
19:49and one destroyer.
19:50The emperor issued a special rescript.
19:53Radio Tokyo broadcast the victory.
19:56Newspapers printed celebratory editions.
19:58Extra rations of sake
20:00were distributed to the civilian population.
20:02The streets of Tokyo,
20:04for the first time in months,
20:06felt something like hope.
20:08The actual score,
20:09zero ships sunk.
20:11Two cruisers damaged.
20:13Now pay attention to what happens next,
20:15because this is not a story about bad pilots.
20:18It is a story about what happens
20:20when an entire navy cannot imagine
20:22that enemy ships survive.
20:24The Japanese pilots were not lying.
20:26They were reporting what their training
20:28had taught them to expect.
20:29In the Imperial Japanese Navy,
20:31a confirmed torpedo hit
20:33on a carrier-sized target was,
20:35by doctrine and by experience,
20:37a kill.
20:38Their own carriers proved it.
20:39Akagi,
20:40Kaga,
20:41Soryu,
20:42Hiryu,
20:43Shoho,
20:44Taiho,
20:45Shokaku,
20:46Hiyo.
20:46Hit them with bombs or torpedoes,
20:48and they burned and sank.
20:50Japanese damage assessment models
20:52were built on Japanese damage outcomes.
20:54A torpedo in the engine room
20:56meant a dead ship,
20:57because on a Japanese ship,
20:59it did.
20:59The idea that an American cruiser
21:01could absorb a torpedo in her engine room,
21:04lose all power,
21:05and still be saved,
21:06towed,
21:07patched,
21:07and returned to service,
21:09did not exist in any Japanese training manual,
21:12intelligence estimate,
21:13or operational model.
21:15It was not a possibility
21:16they had failed to consider.
21:18It was a possibility
21:19that contradicted everything they knew
21:21about how ships die.
21:22So when the pilots said
21:24they had sunk 11 carriers,
21:26the intelligence officers in Tokyo
21:28had no reason to disbelieve them.
21:30The reports fit the model.
21:32The model was built on Japanese ships,
21:35and Japanese ships,
21:37when hit like that,
21:38sank.
21:39Halsey,
21:40reading the intercepts of Tokyo celebration,
21:43composed the message to Nimitz
21:44that would become one of the most quoted lines of the war.
21:48Nimitz released it to the press.
21:50Admiral Halsey reports
21:51that the 3rd Fleet's sunken and damaged ships
21:54have been salvaged
21:55and are retiring at high speed toward the enemy.
21:59It was a joke,
22:00but the strategic consequences were not.
22:03Halsey,
22:04seeing an opportunity,
22:05ordered the two crippled cruisers
22:07towed slowly south,
22:08a formation the fleet nicknamed
22:10Cripple Division I.
22:12He then positioned a covering force
22:14of carriers and cruisers nearby
22:16and waited.
22:17If Japan sent a surface force
22:19to finish off the damaged ships,
22:21Halsey would spring the trap.
22:23Japan sent one.
22:24Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima
22:26sortied from the inland sea
22:28with two heavy cruisers and escorts,
22:30ordered to destroy the remnants
22:32of the shattered American fleet.
22:34But Shima was a careful man.
22:37As his force moved south,
22:39his own reconnaissance told him a story
22:41that did not match Tokyo's celebration.
22:44There were American carriers on the horizon,
22:46operational carriers,
22:48launching aircraft.
22:50Shima quickly concluded
22:51that the pilot reports were,
22:53in his judgment,
22:54wildly inflated.
22:56He turned around and went home.
22:58Shima understood.
22:59But the men who made the decisions
23:01in Tokyo did not.
23:03And 10 days later,
23:04when the Imperial Japanese Navy
23:06committed its remaining surface fleet
23:08to the Battle of Leyte Gulf,
23:10the largest naval battle in history,
23:12the operational planning
23:13was built on a foundation of fantasy.
23:16Japanese admirals believed
23:18they were engaging
23:19a crippled, diminished American fleet.
23:21They believed the carriers were gone.
23:24They believed the math
23:25had finally shifted in their favor.
23:27They were sailing
23:28into the full strength of a navy
23:29whose ships they had sunk,
23:32repeatedly,
23:33and which kept appearing on the horizon,
23:35intact,
23:36launching aircraft,
23:37firing guns,
23:38refusing to stay dead.
23:40And within weeks of Leyte,
23:42Japan would reach a conclusion
23:44that redefined the rest of the war.
23:46If conventional attacks
23:47could not kill American ships,
23:49if bombs and torpedoes
23:51and confirmed hits
23:53produced confirmed kills
23:54that turned out to be alive,
23:56then the only way to be certain
23:58a ship was destroyed
23:59was to ride the weapon
24:01all the way to the target,
24:03to see the explosion
24:04from inside it,
24:06to leave nothing to doubt.
24:08The answer to the damage control gap
24:10was the kamikaze,
24:12and the Americans
24:13were about to learn
24:14whether the system
24:15Harold Burke and Oscar Myers
24:16had built
24:17could survive a weapon
24:19that had never existed before.
24:20By the autumn of 1944,
24:23the Imperial Japanese Navy
24:24had arrived at a conclusion
24:26that was,
24:26in its own terrible way,
24:28perfectly rational.
24:30Conventional attacks
24:31did not work,
24:32not because Japanese pilots
24:34lacked skill or courage,
24:35they had both,
24:37but because the targets
24:38refused to behave
24:39the way targets
24:39were supposed to behave.
24:41Carriers that absorbed
24:42three bombs
24:43were flying aircraft
24:44again within hours.
24:45Cruisers with flooded
24:46engine rooms
24:47were towed to port
24:48and returned to the fleet.
24:50Destroyers hit by torpedoes
24:51at dusk
24:52were firing their guns
24:53again at dawn.
24:54The damage control gap
24:56had broken the math
24:57that all of Japanese
24:58naval aviation
24:59was built on,
25:00the equation where
25:01one well-placed weapon
25:02equals one dead ship.
25:04If the weapon
25:05could not be trusted
25:06to finish the job,
25:07then the pilot
25:08would have to finish it himself.
25:09He would fly the plane
25:11into the ship.
25:11He would see the deck plating
25:13fill his windshield.
25:14He would know,
25:16in the last fraction
25:17of a second,
25:18that this kill
25:19was confirmed
25:20because he
25:21was the confirmation.
25:22The kamikaze
25:24was not born
25:24from desperation alone.
25:26It was born
25:27from a specific
25:28operational problem.
25:30American ships
25:31would not die.
25:32And off Okinawa
25:33in the spring of 1945,
25:35the system
25:36that Harold Burke
25:37and Oscar Myers
25:38and 1,400 welders
25:40at Pearl Harbor
25:41had built
25:41would face
25:42the most intense test
25:44of ship survivability
25:45in the history
25:46of naval warfare.
25:48April 16th, 1945.
25:51Radar picket station
25:52number one,
25:5480 miles north
25:55of Okinawa.
25:56The destroyer,
25:57USS Laffey,
25:59376 feet of steel,
26:02336 men,
26:03is stationed
26:04at the outer edge
26:05of the fleet's
26:06early warning screen.
26:08Her job
26:08is to detect
26:09incoming Japanese aircraft
26:11and vector
26:12combat air patrol
26:13fighters toward them.
26:14She is a tripwire.
26:16And this morning,
26:18she is about to absorb
26:19the full weight
26:20of a 50 aircraft
26:21Japanese strike.
26:23Commander Frederick Julian Becton,
26:25Laffey's captain,
26:27sees the first wave
26:28at 827.
26:30Aichi D3A Val dive bombers
26:32dropping out of overcast.
26:34His gunners open fire.
26:36They splash the first one.
26:37The second one comes through.
26:39What follows is 80 minutes
26:41that will earn Laffey
26:42a nickname she carries
26:43to this day.
26:44The attacks come
26:45in overlapping waves.
26:47Dive bombers,
26:48then kamikazes,
26:49then more dive bombers.
26:50No pause between them.
26:52Within the first 20 minutes,
26:54two kamikazes crash
26:55into her aft section,
26:57starting fires
26:58in the ammunition
26:58handling spaces.
27:00A bomb hit jams
27:01one of the 5-inch gun mounts.
27:03Damage control parties
27:04move to the fires
27:05while gun crews
27:06keep shooting.
27:07A third kamikaze hits,
27:09then a fourth.
27:10Then a bomb penetrates
27:11the deck
27:11and detonates below.
27:13Shrapnel severs
27:14a fire main.
27:15The aft section
27:16of the ship
27:16is burning,
27:17flooding,
27:18and taking hits
27:19simultaneously.
27:21And here is where
27:21Burke's philosophy
27:22is tested in real time.
27:24Laffey's designated
27:25damage control teams
27:26are already committed.
27:28Some are wounded.
27:29Some are dead.
27:30What happens next
27:31is not confusion.
27:32It is the system
27:33working as designed.
27:35Cooks,
27:36signalmen,
27:37torpedo men,
27:38sailors whose primary job
27:39has nothing to do
27:40with firefighting,
27:41pick up hoses,
27:43grab shoring timbers,
27:44and move toward the damage.
27:45They have all done this before.
27:47In training,
27:48in steel compartments
27:49filled with real fire
27:50and real smoke.
27:51They are not improvising.
27:53They are executing a skill
27:54that was drilled into them
27:55at boot camp,
27:56at sea,
27:57and in Harold Burke's schools.
27:59A fifth kamikaze
28:00hits abreast of the bridge.
28:02A sixth.
28:03A bomb jams the rudder
28:05hard left,
28:05locking Laffey
28:06into a helpless circle.
28:08Her afterguns are wrecked.
28:10Fires burn
28:10across four compartments.
28:12An officer approaches
28:13Becton on the bridge
28:14and asks the question,
28:16Should they prepare
28:17to abandon ship?
28:18Becton's answer
28:19becomes the most quoted line
28:21in the ship's history.
28:22No.
28:23I'll never abandon ship
28:24as long as a single gun
28:26will fire.
28:26It is not bravado.
28:28It is an assessment.
28:30Becton can see
28:31that his men
28:31are still fighting the fires.
28:33The forward guns
28:34are still shooting.
28:35The ship is still afloat.
28:36The system has not collapsed.
28:39By 9.47,
28:4080 minutes after the first attack,
28:43Corsairs from the escort carrier
28:44Shamrock Bay
28:45arrive and drive off
28:47the remaining Japanese planes.
28:49Laffey has been hit
28:50by six kamikazes
28:51and four bombs.
28:5322 aircraft attacked her.
28:55Her crew shot down nine.
28:5832 men are dead.
29:0071 are wounded.
29:01Her stern is shattered.
29:03Her rudder is locked.
29:04Three of her gun mounts
29:05are destroyed.
29:06She is still floating.
29:07She will be towed to port,
29:09repaired,
29:10and returned to service.
29:12Historian Samuel Elliot Morrison
29:14will write that
29:15probably no ship
29:16had ever survived
29:17an attack of the intensity
29:18Laffey experienced
29:19that morning.
29:20But here is what matters
29:22for the larger question.
29:23Every one of those
29:24kamikaze pilots
29:25achieved what Japanese
29:27doctrine demanded.
29:28They confirmed
29:29their kills.
29:30They saw their planes
29:31hit the target.
29:32They felt the impact.
29:34By every measure
29:35the Imperial Japanese Navy had,
29:38Laffey should have been
29:38at the bottom of the Pacific
29:40by noon.
29:41She wasn't.
29:42Because the system
29:43that kept her alive
29:44was not visible
29:45from the cockpit
29:46of a diving airplane,
29:47and Laffey was not even
29:48close to the hardest test.
29:50Three weeks before
29:51Laffey's ordeal,
29:53another American ship
29:54had absorbed damage
29:55so catastrophic
29:56that by every precedent
29:57in naval history,
29:59American,
29:59Japanese,
30:00British,
30:01any Navy,
30:02she should have been
30:03a total loss
30:04before sunrise.
30:05She suffered more dead
30:07than any United States
30:08warship that stayed afloat
30:10in the entire war.
30:11Her own admiral said
30:13there was no precedent
30:14in the annals of sea warfare
30:15for what her crew did.
30:17She was 50 miles
30:18from the Japanese coast.
30:20She was burning
30:21from bow to stern,
30:22and 710 men
30:24decided not to leave.
30:27March 19, 1945.
30:2970 miles southeast
30:31of the Japanese island
30:32of Shikoku.
30:34The aircraft carrier
30:35USS Franklin,
30:36Captain Leslie Garris
30:37commanding,
30:38is preparing to launch
30:39a strike against
30:40Japanese warships
30:41in Kobe Harbor.
30:42It is just before dawn.
30:4531 aircraft sit
30:46on the flight deck,
30:47fueled, armed,
30:49engines warming.
30:50Below, on the hangar deck,
30:52another 22 planes
30:53are loaded with bombs
30:54and Tiny Tim rockets,
30:5611.5-foot missiles,
30:57each carrying 150 pounds
31:00of explosive.
31:01At 712,
31:02a single Japanese
31:03Yokosuka D-4Y Judy dive bomber
31:06drops out of low cloud cover
31:08and places two 550-pound
31:11semi-armor-piercing bombs
31:12into the center
31:13of Franklin's flight deck.
31:15The first bomb
31:16punches through the flight deck
31:17and detonates
31:18on the hangar deck,
31:19engulfing the 22 planes below
31:21in a fireball
31:22that blows the number one elevator
31:24out of its shaft
31:25like a cork.
31:25The second bomb lands
31:27among the 31 armed planes
31:29on the flight deck,
31:30igniting their fuel tanks.
31:32What follows is not a fire.
31:34It is a chain reaction.
31:36Fueled planes explode.
31:38Bombs cook off.
31:39Tiny Tim rockets ignite
31:40and scream across the deck
31:42horizontally,
31:43trailing fire,
31:44slamming into gun mounts,
31:45catwalk structures,
31:46anything in their path.
31:48Machine gun ammunition
31:49clatters in all directions.
31:51Over 120 secondary explosions
31:53rip through the ship
31:54in the first 30 minutes.
31:56Flames climb 200 feet
31:58above the flight deck.
31:59Franklin,
32:00dead in the water,
32:01listing 13 degrees to starboard
32:02without radio communications,
32:04is 50 miles from the enemy coast
32:06and drifting closer.
32:08More than 300 men
32:09are dead in the first minutes.
32:11The primary damage control teams
32:12on the hangar deck,
32:13the men stationed at the point
32:15of greatest impact,
32:16are among them.
32:17Fire mains are severed.
32:18Compartments below decks
32:19are filling with smoke
32:20so dense that men
32:21cannot see their own hands.
32:23And below that smoke,
32:24300 men are trapped.
32:26Lieutenant Junior Grade
32:27Donald Gary,
32:28a 32-year-old engineering officer,
32:31finds them.
32:31They are in a mess compartment
32:33deep in the ship,
32:34sealed in by fire
32:35on every side,
32:37unable to see an exit.
32:39Gary does not know
32:40a safe route out.
32:41He searches through
32:42burning passageways
32:43until he finds one,
32:45a path through the smoke
32:46and wreckage
32:47that leads to the flight deck.
32:48He goes back down.
32:50He leads the 300 men out,
32:52single file,
32:53through corridors
32:54where the paint
32:55on the bulkheads
32:56is blistering.
32:57Then he goes below again.
32:58And again.
33:00Each time finding more men,
33:02each time leading them
33:03through a ship
33:04that is trying to kill
33:05everyone inside it.
33:06On the flight deck,
33:08Father Joseph O'Callaghan,
33:09a Jesuit priest
33:11serving as Franklin's chaplain,
33:12is doing something
33:13no one trained him for
33:15and everyone needs him to do.
33:17He is organizing
33:18firefighting parties.
33:19He is directing men
33:21away from cook-off zones
33:22where ordinance
33:23is about to explode.
33:24He is carrying
33:25wounded sailors to safety.
33:27He is administering
33:28last rites to the dying
33:30between trips
33:31to the ammunition magazines
33:32where he helps sailors
33:33jettison live bombs
33:35over the side
33:35before the fire reaches them.
33:38O'Callaghan is not
33:38a damage control officer.
33:40He is not an engineer.
33:41He is a 40-year-old priest
33:43from Boston
33:44and he is doing exactly
33:45what Harold Burke's
33:46philosophy demands.
33:48Every man on an American warship
33:50fights the fire.
33:51Your job title is irrelevant.
33:54The ship is your job.
33:55By late morning,
33:56a decision crystallizes.
33:58Captain Garris estimates
34:00that over 800 men
34:01are dead or missing.
34:03Much of the crew
34:03has been blown overboard
34:05or evacuated
34:06to escorting ships.
34:07Those who remain
34:08face a calculus
34:09that has no precedent.
34:10Franklin has suffered
34:11more casualties
34:12than any American carrier
34:14that sank
34:15during the entire war.
34:16More than Lexington.
34:18More than Yorktown.
34:19More than Wasp.
34:20More than Hornet.
34:22She is,
34:23by every historical standard,
34:24a dead ship.
34:26710 men stay aboard.
34:28They fight the fires
34:30through the morning,
34:31through the afternoon,
34:32through the night.
34:33The cruiser,
34:34Santa Fe,
34:35comes alongside so close
34:36that her paint blisters
34:38from Franklin's heat,
34:39passing hoses across the gap.
34:42Slowly,
34:43compartment by compartment,
34:44the fires are beaten back.
34:46The list is corrected.
34:48One boiler is restored.
34:50Then another.
34:51Franklin begins to move
34:53under her own power.
34:54She will sail 12,000 miles,
34:57from 50 miles off Japan
34:58to the Brooklyn Navy Yard
35:00under her own steam.
35:02When she arrives,
35:03she is the most heavily damaged carrier
35:06in the history
35:06of the United States Navy
35:08to survive.
35:09Vice Admiral Aubrey Fitch,
35:11the same man
35:12who had estimated Yorktown's repair
35:14at 90 days
35:15three years earlier,
35:17declares that there is no precedent
35:18in the annals of sea warfare
35:20for what her crew has done.
35:22Both Gary and O'Callaghan
35:24receive the Medal of Honor.
35:26Now step back
35:27from Franklin's burning deck
35:28and ask the question
35:30that runs through this entire story.
35:32The Japanese pilot
35:33who dropped those bombs
35:34saw the explosions.
35:36He saw the fireball
35:37climbing 200 feet
35:38above the flight deck.
35:40He saw a ship
35:41dead in the water,
35:42listing,
35:43wreathed in smoke.
35:45He returned to base
35:46and reported,
35:46with complete honesty,
35:48that he had destroyed
35:49an American carrier.
35:51He had not.
35:52And neither had the pilots
35:54at Formosa.
35:55And neither had the pilots
35:56at Midway
35:57who attacked Yorktown twice.
35:59And neither would
36:00the kamikaze pilots
36:01at Okinawa
36:02who flew their planes
36:03into ships
36:03and felt the impact
36:05in the last instant
36:06of their lives.
36:07The reason is the same
36:08in every case.
36:10But it is not one reason.
36:12It is a chain.
36:13And the final link
36:14connects all the others
36:15in a way that no one
36:16on the Japanese side
36:17ever saw clearly
36:18until the war
36:19was already lost.
36:21Here is the chain,
36:22link by link.
36:24Each one matters.
36:26Remove any single one
36:27and the answer
36:28falls apart.
36:30The first link
36:31was steel.
36:32American carriers
36:33were designed
36:34with open hangar bays,
36:36the sides exposed
36:37to the sea.
36:37It was not an aesthetic choice.
36:40It was a survival decision.
36:42When aviation fuel
36:43leaked and vaporized,
36:44the fumes drifted overboard
36:46instead of pooling
36:47in an enclosed space.
36:48Japanese carriers
36:49sealed their hangars shut.
36:51The intent was
36:52to protect aircraft
36:52from weather and salt spray.
36:54The effect was
36:55to build a bomb
36:56inside every ship
36:57and wait for a spark.
36:58When Yorktown's
36:59hangar deck
37:00took three bomb hits
37:01at Midway,
37:02the fires had ventilation.
37:03Oxygen fed the flames,
37:05but the fumes escaped.
37:06When Akagi took
37:07a single bomb
37:08in roughly the same location,
37:10the sealed hangar
37:11trapped the vapor.
37:12The fire fed on itself.
37:14No amount of courage
37:15could put it out
37:15because the ship's
37:16own architecture
37:17was working against
37:18every man holding a hose.
37:20The second link
37:21was people.
37:22On every American warship,
37:24from carrier to destroyer
37:25to minesweeper,
37:27damage control
37:27was trained
37:28as a universal skill,
37:29not a department,
37:31not a specialty,
37:32a condition of service.
37:34Harold Burke's schools
37:35did not produce
37:35damage control experts.
37:37They produced a navy
37:38where every sailor
37:40carried a baseline understanding
37:41of fire, flooding,
37:43and structural failure.
37:44Enough to pick up a hose,
37:47shore a bulkhead,
37:47or seal a hatch
37:49without waiting for orders
37:50from an engineer
37:51who might already be dead.
37:52On Japanese warships,
37:54damage control
37:55was the province
37:56of a trained
37:56engineering cadre.
37:58When they survived
37:59the first hit,
38:00they were effective.
38:01When they didn't,
38:02and the first hit
38:03usually killed them
38:04because they were stationed
38:05near the most vulnerable spaces,
38:07the rest of the crew
38:08had nothing.
38:09Not because they lacked bravery.
38:11Japanese sailors
38:12showed courage
38:13that defies description.
38:14They fought fires
38:15with buckets,
38:16with blankets,
38:17with their bare hands.
38:19But bravery
38:20is not a system.
38:21It does not know
38:22which valve to close,
38:23which compartment to flood,
38:25which hatch to seal
38:26to stop a fire
38:27from jumping to the magazine.
38:28The third link
38:29was speed of learning.
38:31This is the one
38:32that separates
38:32a good navy
38:33from an unbeatable one.
38:35The American system
38:36did not start the war
38:37with superior damage control.
38:39It built it in real time,
38:41under fire,
38:42by studying every failure
38:43and distributing the lessons
38:45fleet-wide within weeks.
38:47Lexington burned
38:47on May 8, 1942.
38:50By June 4,
38:51Oscar Myers
38:52had installed
38:52CO2 purging
38:53on Yorktown,
38:54and the fix
38:55that would have saved Lexington
38:56saved Yorktown instead.
38:5830 days.
38:59One dead carrier
39:00to one live carrier
39:02in 30 days.
39:03After Midway,
39:05the Navy produced
39:05formal war damage reports
39:07for every ship
39:08that took a hit.
39:09The reports
39:09were not classified studies
39:11buried in filing cabinets.
39:12They were distributed
39:13to every commanding officer,
39:15every damage control assistant,
39:17every shipyard
39:18in the country.
39:18When the Essex-class carriers
39:20entered service in 1943,
39:22their design
39:23already incorporated
39:24the lessons
39:24from Lexington,
39:25Yorktown,
39:26Wasp,
39:27and Hornet.
39:28Every ship that died
39:29made the next ship
39:30harder to kill.
39:31Japan tried.
39:33After Midway,
39:34the Imperial Navy
39:35wrote reports too.
39:36They shifted aircraft
39:37arming to the flight deck.
39:39They designed Taiho
39:40with an armored flight deck.
39:41But the institutional machinery
39:43to distribute lessons,
39:45retrain crews fleet-wide,
39:46and redesign procedures
39:48at speed,
39:48that machinery
39:49did not exist.
39:51It could not exist
39:52because it required
39:53something the Imperial
39:54Japanese Navy's
39:55rigid hierarchy
39:56could not produce.
39:57A culture where
39:59a junior officer's
40:00damage report
40:00could change
40:01an admiral's procedures
40:02within a month.
40:04And this is the fourth link,
40:06the one that locks
40:07the chain closed.
40:08Japan could not close
40:10the damage control gap
40:11because the gap
40:12was not technical.
40:13It was cultural.
40:15It was the difference
40:16between a Navy that said
40:17every man is a firefighter
40:19and a Navy that said
40:20every man has one job.
40:23Between a system
40:24that treated failure
40:24as data
40:25and a system
40:26that treated failure
40:27as disgrace.
40:28Between an institution
40:30that let a New York City
40:31fireman rewrite
40:32fleet doctrine
40:33and an institution
40:34where suggesting
40:35that a cook
40:35should learn to fight fires
40:37would have been an insult
40:38to the engineering corps.
40:40The result was an asymmetry
40:41that compounded
40:42with every battle.
40:43Each year,
40:44the Americans got better
40:45at saving ships.
40:46Each year,
40:47the Japanese fell
40:48further behind
40:49in understanding
40:50why their confirmed kills
40:51kept reappearing
40:52on the horizon.
40:54On May 11, 1945,
40:56two kamikazes
40:57hit the carrier
40:58USS Bunker Hill
40:59off Okinawa
41:01within 30 seconds
41:02of each other.
41:03Fires consumed
41:04the flight deck.
41:06396 men died.
41:09Below decks,
41:10in the engineering spaces,
41:12Commander Joseph Carmichael
41:13and his team
41:13kept the boilers running
41:15and the pressure
41:16in the firemanes,
41:17the pressure
41:17that fed water
41:18to every hose
41:19on the ship,
41:20alive.
41:2199 of his 500
41:23engine room sailors
41:24were killed
41:25or wounded around him.
41:26The survivors
41:27did not leave.
41:29They stayed
41:30at their stations
41:30because the firemanes
41:32were the ship
41:32and they knew it.
41:34Bunker Hill lived.
41:36Her captain,
41:37George Seitz,
41:38said afterward
41:38that words
41:39could not express
41:40the debt owed
41:41to the men
41:42who died at their posts
41:43below decks
41:44keeping the boilers going.
41:46He did not call them
41:47damage control specialists.
41:49He called them
41:50the men
41:51who saved the ship.
41:52That phrase,
41:53the men
41:54who saved the ship,
41:55is the answer
41:56to the question
41:57in the title
41:57of this story
41:58and it is also
42:00the answer
42:00to a question
42:01Japan never managed
42:02to ask in the right way
42:03because the men
42:05who saved the ship
42:06were not a special team.
42:07They were everyone.
42:09And there is one more
42:10thing worth knowing
42:11about where this story began
42:13and about the men
42:14who were there
42:15when it started.
42:16Lieutenant Joichi Tomonaga
42:18never returned
42:19from the attack
42:20on Yorktown.
42:21He knew he wouldn't.
42:22His fuel tank
42:23had been punctured
42:24that morning
42:25over Midway
42:25and when he volunteered
42:27to lead the torpedo strike
42:28every man
42:29on Hiryu's bridge
42:30understood
42:31what he was choosing.
42:32He flew into
42:33the anti-aircraft fire
42:35and was shot down.
42:36He was 30 years old.
42:38Tomonaga was brave,
42:40skilled,
42:40and wrong.
42:41Not because he missed.
42:43His squadron
42:43put two torpedoes
42:45into Yorktown.
42:46But because everything
42:47his navy had taught him
42:48about what happens
42:49when torpedoes
42:50hit carriers
42:51was built on
42:52what happened
42:52to Japanese carriers.
42:53and Japanese carriers
42:55died.
42:56So he reported,
42:57through his wingman,
42:58that a second American
42:59carrier had been destroyed.
43:01The intelligence staff
43:02on Hiryu
43:03recorded it as fact.
43:05That fact
43:06became part of the model
43:07that shaped Japanese
43:08decisions
43:09for the next three years.
43:11A model built
43:12on the assumption
43:12that the enemy's ships
43:14were as fragile
43:15as their own.
43:16They never were.
43:17Yorktown finally sank
43:19on June 7, 1942,
43:21three days after
43:22Tomonaga's attack.
43:23when the Japanese
43:24submarine I-168
43:26found her under tow
43:28and put two more
43:29torpedoes into her side.
43:31She had survived
43:32the Coral Sea.
43:33She had survived
43:34a 72-hour resurrection.
43:36She had survived
43:37two full airstrikes
43:39in a single afternoon.
43:40It took a submarine,
43:42finding her nearly motionless,
43:44to do what an entire
43:45carrier air group
43:47could not.
43:47But by then,
43:49Yorktown had already
43:50changed the war.
43:51The confusion
43:53her damage control caused,
43:54the Japanese belief
43:55that two carriers
43:56were hit instead of one,
43:58distorted Japan's count
43:59of American carrier strength
44:01for months.
44:02And the lessons
44:03her crew paid for
44:04with their lives
44:04flowed directly
44:05into every American carrier
44:07that came after her.
44:09Harold Burke
44:10returned to the New York City
44:11Fire Department
44:12after the war.
44:13In 1947,
44:15he was appointed
44:15Chief of Department,
44:17the highest uniformed rank
44:18in the largest
44:19fire department
44:20in the world.
44:21The fog nozzle
44:22he had fought
44:23to put on every ship
44:24in the Pacific
44:24became standard equipment
44:26in fire departments
44:27across the country.
44:28He never wrote a memoir.
44:30Most histories
44:31of the Pacific War
44:32do not mention his name.
44:34He died in 1979
44:35at 81
44:36and was buried
44:38without military honors
44:39because he was,
44:40officially,
44:41a fireman
44:42who happened to spend
44:43four years in the Navy.
44:45The 260 instructors
44:47he trained
44:48went back to their cities,
44:49New York,
44:50Boston,
44:51Chicago,
44:52Philadelphia,
44:53San Francisco,
44:54and brought with them
44:55techniques they had learned
44:56teaching sailors
44:57to save ships.
44:58The American Fire Service
45:00after 1945
45:01was quietly,
45:03permanently reshaped
45:04by men
45:05who had spent the war
45:06standing in steel boxes
45:07full of burning fuel oil,
45:09teaching 20-year-old kids
45:11from Iowa and Alabama
45:12that fire
45:13is not a monster.
45:14It is a physics problem.
45:16Commander Frederick Becton,
45:18who refused to abandon Laffey,
45:20retired as a rear admiral
45:22and wrote a book called
45:23The Ship That Would Not Die.
45:25Laffey herself
45:26sits today
45:27at Patriots Point
45:28in Mount Pleasant,
45:29South Carolina,
45:30a museum ship
45:31still afloat,
45:33seven decades
45:34after 22 Japanese aircraft
45:36tried to send her
45:37to the bottom
45:38in 80 minutes.
45:39Moored beside her
45:40at the same dock
45:41is another museum ship,
45:43the aircraft carrier
45:44USS Yorktown.
45:46Not the Yorktown
45:47that sank at Midway.
45:48She rests
45:49three miles down
45:50on the floor
45:51of the Pacific,
45:52where NOAA cameras
45:53recently filmed her
45:54for the first time
45:55in decades,
45:56her anti-aircraft guns
45:58still pointing upward.
45:59The Yorktown
46:00at Patriots Point
46:01is CV-10,
46:03the Essex-class carrier
46:04the Navy commissioned
46:05in April 1943,
46:07ten months
46:08after the original
46:09went down.
46:09They gave her
46:10the same name.
46:11They gave her
46:12Oscar Mayer's CO2 system,
46:15Harold Burke's
46:15fog nozzles,
46:16and the damage control
46:17procedures written
46:18in the blood
46:19of every ship
46:20that came before her.
46:21She fought through
46:22the rest of the war
46:23without sinking.
46:24The question
46:25in the title
46:26of this story,
46:27why Japanese pilots
46:28who confirmed kills
46:29found American ships
46:31still fighting,
46:32has a simple answer
46:33that took 60 minutes
46:34to earn.
46:35Because on American ships,
46:37every man was
46:37a damage control party.
46:39the cook,
46:40the chaplain,
46:41the signalman,
46:42the mechanic.
46:43The system that kept
46:45those ships alive
46:45was invisible
46:46from the cockpit
46:47of a diving airplane.
46:48It lived in the hands
46:50of men whose names
46:51never appeared
46:52in any battle report,
46:53who picked up hoses
46:54they had been trained
46:55to use
46:56and walked toward fires
46:57they had been taught
46:58to fight.
46:59Not because they were fearless,
47:01because they had practiced.
47:02Japan built ships
47:04to win battles.
47:05America built ships
47:06to survive them.
47:07And in a war of attrition
47:09across the largest ocean
47:10on earth,
47:11the navy that keeps
47:12its ships afloat
47:13one day longer
47:14is the navy that wins.
47:18I appreciate you spending
47:19this time with these stories
47:20and with the men
47:21who lived them.
47:22If this video gave you
47:23something worth remembering,
47:25a like genuinely helps.
47:26It tells the algorithm
47:28that this kind of history,
47:29the quiet, detailed kind,
47:31deserves an audience.
47:32If you want more stories
47:34like this,
47:34subscribe and tap the bell
47:36so you don't miss the next one.
47:37I'd love to know,
47:38where are you watching
47:39from today?
47:40And if someone in your family
47:41served in the Second World War,
47:43a grandfather,
47:44a great uncle,
47:45a neighbor who never
47:46talked about it,
47:47tell us about them
47:48in the comments.
47:49These stories belong
47:50to real families.
47:52Yours might be one of them.