While the Midway-based forces were attacking the Japanese fleet, the US carriers began launching their own strike groups. Aboard USS Hornet was Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8), equipped with Douglas TBD-1 Devastators — the same squadron to which the six Avengers that had taken off from Midway actually belonged. Now it was the main group’s turn. They were led by Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron. Among them was Ensign George Henry Gay Jr. with his gunner Aviation Radioman Third Class Robert K. Huntington in their Devastator T-14. At 7:05 they received their orders and Gay was the first in his squadron to take off. It took almost an hour to get all planes airborne and in formation.
USS Hornet’s attack force, led by Lieutenant Stanhope Ring, headed due west on what proved to be a fruitless errand over an empty sea. But Waldron was convinced he knew where the Japanese fleet would be. Telling his men “Just follow me. I’ll take you to ’em,” he broke formation and headed southwest at 8:25.
At 9:18 Waldron and his men spotted the Japanese carrier fleet and descended to attack with their torpedoes. They were immediately swarmed by the 21 Zeros on combat air patrol. One by one the slow Devastators were shot down by fighters or ships’ AA fire. Huntington tried to engage the attackers from his rear gun but soon cried out that he was hit, and the radio went silent. Undeterred by the chaos around him and already wounded himself, Gay took aim at the carrier Kaga and released his torpedo. Realising that turning away at that moment would expose the plane’s underbelly to the carrier’s AA, he continued straight on, turned around Kaga’s island and followed the flight deck, weaving to avoid fire.
Clearing the deck, five Zeros were waiting for him. Finally he pancaked into the water. Surviving the crash he tried to save Huntington, but he was dead. To avoid being strafed Gay dived beneath the surface, and when he came up he found the plane’s uninflated life raft floating nearby, which he tucked between his legs. He also found the black seat cushion from the cockpit, which he held over his head to avoid detection. And so he lay there, alone in the middle of the Japanese carrier fleet, watching the subsequent Devastator attacks fail one by one — his own torpedo had also missed. But then he witnessed something else entirely: the arrival of the Dauntlesses.
Gay floated there for the rest of the day. When darkness finally fell he dared to inflate the raft — several compartments were punctured by bullets but enough remained to keep him afloat. At 6:20 the following morning he was spotted by a PBY Catalina on reconnaissance, and his position was reported. On the return leg that afternoon the Catalina located him again and, finding no rescue boat had reached him, landed and picked him up. Injured in his left arm and hand and with burns from the crash, he was brought back to Midway.
Of the 15 Devastators in VT-8 all were shot down, and every man but Gay was killed. Of the 41 Devastators sent against the Japanese fleet from Hornet, Enterprise and Yorktown combined, only six returned and not a single torpedo found its mark. Yet their sacrifice was not entirely in vain — as described in the next chapter.
