Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Battle Of Midway 20170602

And hank kudzik, also a navy veteran, make up the panel. I cant tell you how excited i am to be here today. Thank you, wes, and jim, and the American Veterans center. Ive been here all day yesterday. I was at the Wounded Warrior experience. Its tremendous to read about history. As we heard from general richie yesterday, its more important that were hearing it from those that participated in history. And we get to hear it from some phenomenal and amazing men and women that weve heard from the last couple of days. The mofford marines, i never heard that story before but ill be reading more, how can you not be interested after that . What i thought i would do is just give you a brief overview on the battle of midway. But really keep my portion short, because i think we all want to hear from these three gentlemen that were there. And the can offer much more information than what i can give you. But i will say, in the last five to ten years, were very fortunate, some fantastic books have been written on the battle of midway. And all of the rich detail. And ill point you to that and just give you the highlights. But shattered sword is an excellent book written from the japanese perspective. Incredible victory was written shortly after world war ii. Theres pacific crucible that just recently came out. No right to win, sergeant foxs story, who is here with us today. A lot of rich books out there if youre interested. Please go read more, because youll definitely learn even more than what we can go through this morning. Lets go back to 1941, december 7th. How many of you remember september 11th, 2001 . Exactly. And so if you think back to december 7th in this generation, that was their september 11th. They all remember where they were on december 7th. The biggest difference is, we have twitter. We have smartphones. We have facebook. We have everything to communicate. What did they rely on . They relied on the radio and they relied on pen and paper to send letters. So a lot of the information wasnt available. People didnt know what was going on until they heard from fdr about the attack. So december 7th, it starts. The japanese are off. Their main goal is to secure natural resources. They need oil, they need metals. So that started. And starting from then through about march 1942, they did not lose. They were on a rampage. They were two to three months ahead of their prewar planning, in taking different parts of the pacific. So its interesting to put your mind back to what they were thinking at the time. They could not be stopped. They sent six Aircraft Carriers to hawaii to attack pearl harbor. So they caught us completely offguard. They ten took the philippines. They pushed south to new guinea. They really owned the pacific. They pushed into the east indies in january and february of 1942. Their goal, their goal, whenever they pushed south, was to control australia as well and to cut our lifeline. We were continuing to supply australia and keep them in the fight. Then a fantastic thing happened for our country. And we heard about it yesterday. On april 18th, 1942, the dolittle raiders hit tokyo. That was a turning point. We didnt realize it at the time. Yamamoto, the combined commander of the chief, had been pushing the emperor and the leadership of japan to take midway. They said no, we want to push south and take australia. The dolittle raid gave him the backing he needed to push his plan to invade and take midway. His thinking and his argument was, weve got to protect the eastern approach to tokyo. We cant allow the americans to attack us unknown again. And so that really set the wheels in motion for the battle of midway. In addition, there was the battle of coral sea down in the south pacific, which again was one of the first battles where we stepped up and we took on the japanese, carrier for carrier. So again, a very, very important battle. And then that brings us to january 3rd and january 4th for the battle of midway. The japanese sent three invasion groups. They sortied most of their fleet. Any ship that was not already engaged in action or not in for repairs sortied for the invasion of midway. They sent three forces. One contained the aircraft can questions, four of the six that attacked pearl harbor. They also had the occupation force and invasion force were coming up from different angles onto midway. Their approach was from the northwest. And if it hadnt been for the code breakers in station hypo in pearl harbor, we would not have been prepared. Admiral nimitz listened to the code breaking team. And he very fortunately stationed our two task forces up northeast of midway. And we waited. We knew they were coming. We had an idea of the direction. We had an idea of the strength. But we didnt have all the details. We didnt have everything. And thats what well hear today. And so we had three Aircraft Carriers stationed up northeast, against basically all of the combined fleet and their four Aircraft Carriers. With that, i want to turn it over to sergeant fox. Sergeant fox, a marine stationed on midway during the battle. Weve got captain John Crawford who was on the yorktown. We have chief hank kudzik who was on the uss nautilus submarine which also participated in the malts battl midway. Were fortunate today to hear about a very complex battle from three veterans who were there, but from three very different perspectives. With that, sergeant fox, ill turn it to you. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I want to thank wes smith and his volunteers, and especially Lieutenant Dan heywood, who traveled out to the airport, met my wife and i, and fought that traffic all the way back to the renaissance hotel. Thank you, sir. And i bring greetings from a surviv survivor. Okay. Sorry about that. I bring greetings from a survivor of the yorktown, otis knight, to captain crawford. You signed a chit of his of 2. 90 when you were an ensign and he was a plane pusher on the Aircraft Carrier. Chief, i have something for you when i get finished with my little ditty here. Ive been searching for a boat person for some time. And i finally found one. My role at midway was so insignificant that i wonder why im here. I dont know how i got recommended or who sent me name in. I was told the general did. And i looked back in my history and tried to find out how many generals i d s i know. Not very meany. I didnt shoot down any planes, didnt sink any ships, nor rescued any pilots. I never even fired a shot. I had one of the best machine gun teams on the island. And we would compete with other teams during the time that we were waiting for this battle. I had a. 30 caliber water cooled machine gun in a bunker in the south tip of sand island. In my Job Description was to deny the enemy access to the real estate in front of me. And my bunker was located underneath about eight or nine feet of coral sand and brush. And i had a view of 25 yards of the beach and 100 yards of surf to the reef. We would test fire our weapons once a week. I think they only did that to make sure that we would clean them, just enough to cause us to tear down the weapon. My brownie had 500 rounds per minute rate of fire. We carried 5,000 rounds of ammunition in the machine gun bunker. And if you do your math, youll figure out how long we would last. Twice we would pull our guns out and place them in antiaircraft position to fire at a tow target. This scenario did not last too long. 40 millimeter guns to my right always shut down the tow line. The. 50 caliber machine guns would crease the tail line towing the target, causing the pilot to expend some expletives you could hear all the with an i to pearl harbor. The pilot came back to our position and chewed everybody out. He told us after the third mission, that was it. He would rather have he was going to refuse to fly, stating he would rather be shot down by the enemy than some dumbass marine. But my gun position was buried under ten feet of coral sand and the bunker was poured concrete. And i was privileged to go back to midway this past june to be a guest at the 70th anniversary of the battle of midway. And they have preserved my bunker. I lived in that for about eight months. The bumping bunker itself was m concrete but lined with sandbags. Our deck was sand and wood. We had a slant on the deck where we stood. You can figure out or imagine a van, delivery van, and the rear window. That was your port for your gun. The van is what you had behind you with your supplies or extra ammunition or hand grenades. But our deck was slanted to one side with a twofoot slot to the right. We figured if the japanese threw hand grenades in at us, we would kick them to the side and down this little slot. So we would practice with beer cans full of sand and throw it at us. None of them ever came into the bunker. They would land in front of the machine gun or underneath the tripod of the gun. So much for our practice, our learning about what to do if hand grenades came in at us. The interior was lshaped at the point of the the deepest point of the l, pointed towards the beach. We had barbed wire strung, that we would lay. Im sure that we annihilated many a supply route, supply store, with our request for barbed wire. When the barbed wire was laid out, we would make concertinas and walk them out on the surf of the water. Our casualty there was being hit by the portuguese man of war which as some of you know is kind of a rare stinging animal. In school, when i explain this to the elementary kids at fifth grade level, what the barbed wire was for, they couldnt understand it, they wanted to see one. With the help of some of the farm supply people, why, we built barbed wire entanglement at the school, 15, 20 feet long, identical to what we had. The kids attempted to crawl through it. I had comments from the parents that night through the teacher. What is mr. Fox doing out there . But no real complaints. They thought that was kind of neat. And the kids wanted to leave it up. But we couldnt do it, we had to take it down after a week. We made personnel mines ourselves with the help of engineers. And these boxes of mines were laid out on the beach with shrapnel inside of it, from sheet metal works, glass, metal shavings with dynamite packed in it. In the back end of it was a detonator with dynamite attached to the side of it. So with a target that we could shoot at. We could detonate these from our gun positions. At this position where we lived, we were supplied food or were carried. It was a quiet area. They would pick us up in a truck and take us back to eat a decent meal in the cafeteria or the mess hall. But we had to supply our own head. Once in a while, the co would fly overhead and notice that ours and some of the other heads were visible. And we had to camouflage it. So we got door hinges from the engineers, and we made a collapsible head. It was one of our number one unflushables. We had to use it, you would pull out the rope, lash the rope down down, use the head and lower it down. The island itself was only seven feet above sea level. And when you would dig down for a head, you would run into water very soon. The communications on our island from gun to gun was done with a twostranded telephone run by two batteries, class d batteries inside the telephone. You would crank to send a signal out to have people pick it up. The standby was a sound power phone. That had one line from one gun position to yours, and then a line stuck in the ground that you kept damp and wet. This was more reliable than the won with tone with the battery. We had to make sure the fresh water in that gun position was not used in that portion of the ground. Human element entered in there. When you had to use that telephone, you went out there and took care of that damp ground. I think that was the origin of the pee call. Our troll at night was alonger side the barbed wire to our left in my area. And i would take brush with me and drag brush around behind me, tie it on my ammunition belt so that the brush drug in the sand. When i got to the end of my route and turned around, i could tell whether anybody had crossed my path. One night it was attempted by the od, came out and walked in my path and saw that i was doing my job, i guess, and went up and hid in the brush. But i didnt know that. But i saw his tracks as they left where i had walked. So i went on, came up, and i found him in the brush behind me. And i stuck my b. A. R. In the back of his chest and said, who goes there . I almost got courtmartialed for that one. The next day, the First Sergeant called me in and he charged me im getting ahead of myself. During that time of walking patrol, we had a terrible storm. No moon, no stars. Lightning. Some of the barbed wire that was off the island into the water, the water gets struck with lois, the barbed wire would glow as you can walk along. We stayed quite a ways away from it because of the lightning strikes and the thunder and the collapse, the birds on the island would sound off. If you ever heard a moaning bird on the island, it sounds like a human being calling for help or in trouble. This builds up your adrenaline a little bit to stay alert. And a little bit, probably about two weeks, i think it was, before the japanese attacked and we knew they were coming, we were told to be careful of people attempting, the enemy trying to sneak on the island. On this particular night of the storm, ideal time, i noticed a head out in the surf. And i watched it, stopped, and it came closer, got up on the shore, crawled left and right, i laid down, took the safety off, lined up, and fired three rounds. When those three rounds went off, that was enough for my part of the island to get going, something was up. The guard came out, the sergeant, the entire guard detail, calling my name. I would not call out my name, fox, fox, where the hell are you . I thought, if theres more out there, i didnt want to give away where i was. We waited, and they finally found me, crawled up and pointed to my image. He understood, cautioned everybody to lay down and when dusk dawn came, why, we found out it was a monk seal that i had shot. The First Sergeant called me in the next morning and charged me a dollar because i had only hit the seal twice. But during the day of the attack, i was ordered underground, all of us that had machine gun positions were ordered underground, not to be seen, not to be visible. And i thought about what was going on at eastern island, which i had been on often. Thats where all the aircraft were stored. And operated from. There was 127 combat aircraft over there. And i knew that when we got the alert that the japanese were en route, we saw our planes leaving. The times that i had been over there to eastern island, every time a plane would take off, get on the runway, his crew would stand out by the abutment and salute the plane as it went by. Every one of them. As good luck. When the japanese did arrive, all they did was strafe my position and shoot up the position at our outhouse, which upset us. We never did get a chance to fire back. The navy, the tdfs, the enterprise, the yorktown, the hornet, all took care of the Japanese Carriers. When a bomb was dropped near a Japanese Carrier, why, the episode changed, order of battle changed. They were on the defensive, they werent on the offensive anymore. We did not know this on the island for some days. We didnt stand down for probably about six or seven hours. And unbeknownst to me that night was another submarine out there, along with the chiefs here, and that was the tambor commanded by captain murphy. He had been submerged. That night when he came to the surface to get radio message, he was told theres targets in the area and also friendlies, to be careful. He did see silhouettes on the horizon. As he began to approach them, saw them change position, two or three times. He had to submerge, find another position, come to the surface, and ask finally for the flasher on top of his con, the red light, identify yourself, as he was crossing the bow of a cruiser, japanese cruiser. When that happened, he found out who they were. Immediately he dove. The japanese on the surface turned around, and trying to get into an attack position. The two cruisers crashed into each other. One tboned the other one. That i did not know at the time until after the war. But those two heavy cruisers were headed for midway to bombard Midway Island itself, sand island. So i was always after somebody in the boat service from the tambor to try to find to give a gift to them of my appreciation, which im going to forward to the chief here which this is over with. When i left midway, i went on to my cockiness of being a young marine on the island was diminishing, i was learning the hard way, i guess. I went on to ewoiwo jima. I went on to nagasaki, the occupation, and on to korea. I often thought about all those people that lost their lives for us. I made a promise. For all the guys that never returned and for all the men that gave that last effort and could not get back to be as fortunate as i, i will tell our kids about what you did and why. Semper fi. [ applause ] thanks, sergeant fox. Thats a great story. I think he underplays his role on midway. If the japanese had landed, he would have been right in the middle of in the thick of things when they tried to come ashore. To put things in perspective, midway is too small, its only 2. 4 square miles. Its smaller than downtown d. C. , the area that were talking about. So captain crawford . Yes. First of all, let me say, if anyone has trouble hearing, just wave their hand and ill try to turn up the volume, or turn it down. Angle it towards your mouth. Oh, good. First of all, the battle of midway is a tremendous story. Its seen at many levels. At the historical level, historians see it as one of the great battles, most significant, decisive battles of all history, not u. S. History, all history, ranking with salamus, laponto, jutland, and other great historydetermining battles. Thats a view thats not wellknown, even in the United States navy. Only in the last couple of years has the navy decided that and determined officially that it is the greatest naval battle ever fought by the United States navy. And as such, is celebrated at all ships and stations in the navy marine corps. As regards the public, its particularly unknown. If you doubt me, pick up your sons history book and see if it rates more than one paragraph in 2,000 pages of American History. So im not going to correct that, im not going to rectify that difficulty. But the American Veterans center here has taken a big step forward by doing their part to see that every american child knows and understands the significance of the battle of midway. Let me begin with my beginning. I was ordered after graduation from the Naval Academy to pearl harbor to join the carrier yorktown. I got there in late may, and went aboard the ship the night before she deployed for the battle. Now, yorktown had just come back from the battle of the coral sea, where it had been heavily damaged. And while i was waiting there to go aboard, i was told by my boss, a lieutenant, flag lieutenant, take your time, it will be around here for two or three months. Admiral rickover gave two or three days to repair the damage. And i got aboard about 10 00. We were off for midway early the next morning with the tide. Shortly after we took the air group aboard, the officers were assembled in the ward room. And the briefing officer pulled down a map of the whole pacific, and started to enlighten us on what was ahead. It was staggering in its perspective. He outlined or he stated the fact that the combined might of the Japanese Navy was headed in an attempt to take Midway Island, and to oppose them, admiral nimitz had mustered about 38 or 40 ships, including three carriers. Now, i remember clearly, because i was interested in carriers, that the japanese numbers were mentioned as included. Certainly taga, akage, also soygaku. Here the battle carriers were coming, and we were reminded what we all knew, we had three carriers, yorktown, enterprise, the stalwarts, and the new, barely tested hornet. So we were the whole japanese order of battle was laid out, a force going up to hit the aleutians, properly diversionary. The commander in chief of the Japanese Navy on the big battleship yamamato. Coming from midwesterly direction to occupy the island when taken over, and another support group. Pretty foremidable stuff. Now i was innocent enough to know that the history of intelligence, it wasnt all that great. They seemed to know what they were talking about. The executive officer told me he was too busy to assign me any duties. Just get in the watch list. Take my four on and eight off and after about two weeks from now hed be able to get to me. I didnt understand what was up. But now i d i didnt i had to have a sense of, do these guys really know what theyre talking about . The answer came four days later on when i was standing watch as junior officer of the deck on the carrier yorktown. A message was handed it to the officer of the deck who handed it to me. Were tend of the line. I read it. Enemy planes headed midway three, four, five and that is northwest about 100 miles and the time miraculously is when the intelligence said it would be. It turns out that our intelligence people had so studied that battle that they told the operating forces the bearing on which the Striking Force of jap carriers would come in, the distance at which they would be launched the strikes and just everything right counsdown to a t. I became a true believer at that point. The intelligent people had really hit the hit one the circuit on that one. So the battle as far as i was concerned went pretty much like this i was aware that a message had been sent by admiral frank jack flesh fletcher and in charge and included the yorktown, sent to admiral spruins who had the enterprise and hornet. The message went, proceed southwestward and engage the enemy when located. We held back, fletcher held back to bring in the scouting group. And then we awaited the events. I was entranced of seeing the first lodge strike force ever take off from the uk carrier. Ill never forget it. I stood there on the deck. I watched the torpedo bombers take off and then the divebombers and looking at the horizon, 80 ships of the carrier yorktown headed westward to strike the navy. Then came the period of waiting. What was going to happen . I should mention one thing i learned. I was in a room with a few torpedo plane pilots. They could barely get off the flight deck fully loaded with gasoline. It was barely chugged off the flight deck at 100 knots. I also knew by this time i would keep my ears open that they were going to be hit or could expect to be hid hit over the enemy by jap nears zero fighters that could make 350 to 400 knots. I felt, gee, how can these guys know that and still keep up the morale that they were showing . But they did. And naturally, then waited as everyone did for the planes to return. Well, skipping ahead a little bit, 41 planes of that type took off from the u. S. Carriers, hornet, enterprise and yorktown. 41. None came back, not one came back to hornet. None came back to yorktown. I watched for them. There was not a wimper. The charge of the last brigade. They went tout do their duty. And there was an immense payoff of doing that duty. Because in writing, over the Japanese Carrier force, saw you and hear you, they found that i mean the these torpedo planes were immediately struck. They pulled down the japanese zeros to see level. The torpedo planes were going in at seawater level. And all the talk the fighters came down and hit and took out and shot down all the torpedo planes. But in that interval, almost by miracle, there was a rendezvous of our divebombers at 14,000 feet. Enterprise divebombers, yorktown divebombers. All of them coming in unopposed over the combined might of the japanese of the carrier force. And they dove and they got three out of the four carriers. They were in shambled when they left. They were called the famous 5 minutes. All of the divebombers came back. But i want to emphasize here that sometimes bravery even almost futile bravery, the bravery is certainly marines and navy people and others demonstrate as a matter of course, cant have a payoff. And you cant win by intellect and planning and technology you have to face up to challenges that face you and even when the process seems futile. Give it the best you can. Do it give it best you can. I will try. The motto of the marines and the guy asked to take the island, he said i will try, sir. And they did. Okay. Now i talked quite a long without and to this purpose, to emphasize the role of bravery, but now i want to point out that bravery alone is not sufficient. We had brilliant intelligence and not just as an accident if admiral showers who was to have spoke ton day but is unfortunately deceased, he would be able to tell you i had story of intelligence and the role of intelligence at midway that would stagger your mind. And its brilliant. And, again, because those some of those analysts used to spend as much as 20 hours of the day in midway day of midway approach. It was only a few days before midway before we had it pinned down as june 4th. Before we had it pinned down the debates between people in washington and the cryptologists or whether they were really headed for mid the entire Japanese Navy . Well, nimitz figured out a way. Hit them from the flank. Or in his texan terminology, were going to bush whack them. He sent the yorktown and the enterprise and the hornet up on the north about 200 miles north of Midway Island sure in the comfort of the fact that the japanese were going to come in an 315. And it worked out beautifully. That just exactly what happened. We caught the japanese. We were the admiral in charge of the task force that was running the tell me the name of the guide, spruins, as soons got the intelligence of the japanese Striking Force, he launched a full load that, is every single carrier he had throwing you might say caution to a. Side. And he got them got them in just the manner i described you to. So it was brilliant planning on the part of nimitz and spruins. How did his brilliance show itself otherwise . The aviators naturally elate bid having shot down so many japanese planes and sunk so many carriers. They wanted to go chasing after the japanese body. But admiral knew that we would get cut to piece its we ran up against the main body of the Japanese Navy. So he carried out the orders the carried out the orders in this way. He turned away from the enemy and headed east of midway and then came back and was stationed off of midway at the morning after the battle. Ill just take a second to tell you that or can you ask questions later if you want. What was the real significance of the battle of midway. You should know that. You should know that significance more than what i told you. I want to the microphone over to my comrade in arms here, chief kunzik. I have to give you two things first. I learned the word what is this business chief . I learned the meaning of chief the day after i got the Naval Academy. I roomed with an admiral. You know all about the navy. I said who is this guy going around saluting chief. He said, jack, he says, you learn this and you learn most important lesson youll ever learn in the navy. The chiefs run the navy. He was right. This chief served a former boss of mine e was my football coach. Bill brockman, a great man. Okay, chief. Take it away. Yeah, please. My name is hank kudzig. Chief. And i come from bethlehem, pennsylvania. During world war ii, i spent all my time on two submarines. We fwhoe thknow that midway was conflict. So what was a submarine doing there . December 17 completely changed my life. I was 16yearold kid. Dinlt know what to do with my life coming up. So when the nap knees bombed pearl harbor, two days after christmas in 1941, i went to the recruiting office. I didnt lie. I didnt lie. I told them i was 16. But i had a birthday coming up. I had a recruiter, he said well go through the preliminaries and you put up your hand and say i do or what it takes to he said, son, youre in the navy. No mention of a submarine. I didnt know what a submarine looked like. I couldnt tell the difference between a baby stroller and a submarine. I want to go to war but submarine wasnt in the plans. But anyway, those things happened in those days. I didnt go to school whatsoever from boot camp which was real quick to the west coast. I wind up in the navy yard in pearl harbor. And there was a lot of us. What do they do . It was a work detail. My first work detail was helping to take the dead bodies of the oklahoma. And the mine layer was another one. Youre asking me to go back to 1942 and dig in this can of and pick out all these things. Some of them, other than midway are very emotional for me. Because the nautalis was built between 1928 and 1930. There were three submarines built in those days, the arganaut, nautilas. I w it was 12 years old already when the war started n those days in the early days, they didnt know what to do with the submarines. You know . They generally had six for teed y torpedo tube os on it. Shirley temple rode around on the norwal before the war. Well, i happened to be on a work detail on the carrier saratoga. These were work details. We were waiting to be assigned in a fresh water tank. Wire brushing rust. Decided to take her on a shakedown or whatever it was to do. Well, im still in the fresh water tank. Wire brushing rust. An explosion occurred. An explosion. What was that . Well, get out of that tank. So i get out of that tank. What happened . Oh, i dont know. Something put a hole in the water line. It was either a mine or a torpedo. But it was a hole. So we managed to get it back. When i crawl out of that fresh water tank, i didnt want any part of Aircraft Carriers. So when i look over and i see the submarine base. I figure well maybe i ought to apply for something id rather be on that end shooting these torpedos rather than receiving them. I had to go to the chaplin because the chief in charge of the work detail wouldnt let me go. But the chaplin was very sympathetic. He said, son, you know what youre getting into . He says, but i tell you, ill let you go over there and you talk to him. And you bring back a chip saying theyll accept you. Ill free from you this work detail. I wound up waiting for it to be assigned to a submarine. Along came the submarine about the middle of may. And i became crew member. I really wanted combat. I didnt want ships company, anything like that. I wanted to get in there and sock it to him. The submarine carries 28. Ten in a tube. We left pearl harbor to go on patrol around midway. What is everybody excited midway for . Its nothing but a sand bar. We went into the goonyville hotel and spent the night. I know the goonyville hotel. I spent a few nights there. When you finish a run on a submarine. They reward you. I think theyre trying to entice you to make another run. So they give you two weeks r r. If you happen to come back into pearl that, two weeks r r is at the Royal Hawaiian hotel on waikiki. You use the bathtub for your beer cans. Were not going to take bathe in. There were going to take a bath out on the beach. Okay. When we finally did get on our station, all right, were, like i say, all my everybodys assigned to duty watch or four on, eight off, four on, eight off. This is what you do on a submarine. So you dont eat three meals a day. Youre either sleeping or doing depends on what your hours are. And chief . Were running a little long. Can you wrap it up real quickly . Can i wrap it up real quick . Yeah. You dont want me to tell them about the boom boom and what happened . Can you tell it in a can you tell the boom instead of the boom boom . Now my watches were elbow to elbow with the executive officer, the skip eastern so forth. Okay. So thats why youre going to ask me, how i do know all this stuff . My watch was either in a control room, the tower or the bridge. I wanted to get on the bridge when this submarine i want to get some fresh air. You never smelled such bad air in your life as you will on a submarine. If you can take that diesel smell and you have odors coming out of the batteries, that disintegrates your clothes. And if you can stand pressure is the boom boom coming up . And the foul air, maybe you can become a submariner. Anyway, let me get to the meat of this thing because this is midway. There we sit on our patrol area and captains dream, a flotilla of ships is coming by. What is this . Ozzie. Ozzie is the name of the deck. We dont even have to plot a firing course. We can just sit here and shoot torpedos and see what happens. Thats exactly what happened. He picked out a big cruiser and another large vessel, looked like a cargo vessel. This is the first. Understand this ramshackle bunch of submarines they put in the water. She was already 12 years old. And a riveted submarine. Did you hear what i said . Riveted. What does that remind you the titanic was riveted. And look what happened to her. We had a submarine with a half inch pressure hull. They have two hulls. Pressure hull and out of that on the other side of that is the ballice hull. And the japanese were involved, right . The japanese were there, too . Coming up . Okay. So the skipper says were going to make ready tube one, two, three and four. Torpedo tubes. Here we go. Were going to shoot them. Hallelujah. Im so excited because this is what i wanted. I wanted to join the navy and get into the combat. So the skipper fires fire one, fire two. Didnt even have to turn the sub. He fires two more. Three and four. One hit, two hit, three hit. But no explosions. Disaster. We fired four torpedos, all of them hit, we didnt sink a thing. We paid for it. Now Something Else was new to us, depth charges. Boy, they came falling down. They werent going to let us get away. So they pounded us with close to 40 depth charges which was the worst thing i ever heard in my life. Well, they had another mission to get by us an they didnt spend too much time. So we managed to survive their attack. The next day and a half, strange thing happened. One of my things was every so often when youre submerged, you take a look around. Of course, you dont want any surprises, you know, to a surface and there is something in your i spotted some smoke on the horizon. Whats the smoke . Talk to the executive. I see smoke. Okay, let me take a look. Youre right. There is smoke there. Lets investigate. Well, we get up on the surface. And we started to head towards the smoke. Guess what it was . An Aircraft Carrier. Hallelujah. Man, were couldnt happen again. We couldnt we couldnt shoot some more torpedos and not go on. No. Okay. Well track this guy. So his friend and my captain bill brockman said were going to get as close as we can. Now a submarine fights, fires torpedos at least 1500 yards or less. Not greater than. That you want to be between 1,000 yard mark and the 1500 mark. How about 700 yards . Thats how close we were. The captain could read some of the japanese writing on the ship. Thats how close we were. Make tubes ready, one, two, and three. Okay. They were ready to go. Now you fire from the tower. Fire one, fire two, fire three. Number one hit, number two hit, number three hit. Water is a very good acoustical sound. You could hear everything. One exploded. Two exploded, three did not. Now we had we had props at the problems at the beginning of the war torpedos not exploding. Here we got two fish that was enough to take the carrier of tremendous list. Now it was they were patching her up. They wanted to land some of the planes that were the carriers were sunk. The planes are going to land in the water or land on hard surface and it was that. But we sank the ship. Now with the Aircraft Carrier chief swreshgs to wrap up here. Okay. You heard it from the boss now. Am i through for the day . Yeah. Well, for now. Okay. I just want we sank the carrier. We got so close we could spit at the destroyer. And we sank her with one torpedo. And now there was another destroyer the next day. She came after us because she okay, im going to get the nautilis. The chief will be here all week so if you want to come back no, im just kidding. We fired down the throat shot. I think he would still be going. [ applause ] thank you. He wanted to find a way to take a picture through the periscope. The skipper is happier than hell. Ozzie, did you see it . Did you see it . Well, ozzie took his camera and he had a vdevice. He said, ozzie, did you see it . He didnt see anything. Of course he didnt. Kament are the camera saw it. This is a picture of it sinking an enemy vessel. What a great story. Thanks, chief. Thats awesome. And what a great panel, right . Lets say thank you. You can see author presentations from todays 75th Anniversary Event about the battle of midway at 8 00 eastern on American History tv. Former fbi director james comey is set to testify next thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee Investigating russian activities during last years election. Cspan3 will have live coverage at sock eastern time. Can you find it on cspan. Org and listen live on the cspan radio app. A year later, all the forces, a lot of the forces we talked about had been moved forward. At 10 00 on real america, a 1967 monthly film series on the activities of president lyndon johnson. He had often rashgd that one of the chief executives most important jobs is attracting able and talented Public Servants to washington. The month of june would see two major appointmentes, first, alexander trobridge as secretary of commerce and Thurgood Marshall as associate justice of the supreme court. Sunday at 6 30 eastern. George Washington University history professor greg burzinski discusses the cold war competition between u. S. And china to influence newly independent african and asian countries. During the 1960s, the u. S. Rivalry intensified and this is really an important point where i think to Many American policymakers, chinese activities in Southeast Asia and africa start to become as or more worry so many. And at 9 00, they talk about confederate colonel john s. Mosby. A couple different times general lee complained to stewart that mosby was fighting in too many small groups. You know, the decentralized way that he operated didnt make sense. He needed to mask his forces. He would have six combat controls out at any given night. Go to cspan. Org to see the complete schedule. They examine the impactst landmark 1954 brown versus board of Education Supreme Court decision and ending segregation in public schools. Community advocates recall the childhood experiences leading up to the decision. Another panel follows on opportunity and integration after the decision