This passage is memorable as the final climatic point in the epic battle of Midway, as dive-bomber pilot Dusty Kleiss recounts landing the final blows on the Japanese carrier fleet, sinking the fourth and last Japanese carrier in the attack force late in the afternoon on June 4, 1942. It was the battle that not only changed the fortunes of the United States in the Pacific war, but arguably marked the turning point between the Allied and Axis powers in the global war as well.

Midway was a huge strategic victory for the United States in the war against Japan, and in the larger scheme of World War II, for several reasons. First, in a single morning it decimated the Kido Butai, the Japanese carrier fleet which up to that point had been the finest naval force in the world. Second, it decisively ended Japan’s opportunity to end the war with a quick military strike to be followed by a negotiated peace. Had the Japanese sunk the American carrier fleet at Midway and then threatened or occupied Hawaii, the Americans might have had to sue for peace and the Japanese would have kept the empire they had acquired in Asia and the southwest Pacific. Third, if the Japanese had triumphed at Midway, there would have no doubt been political support in the United States to reevaluate President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Germany first” strategy, with material and strategic consequences that would have impacted the European war. Fourth, it shifted the military initiative in the Pacific to the Americans, who could now contemplate beginning ground operations to roll back Japanese-occupied territories (which the Americans did, beginning at Guadalcanal in August 1942). Fifth, by holding the base at Midway as a refueling base for submarines, the Americans shaved 2,300 miles off submarine patrols, allowing the American submarine campaign to go forward with gradually tightening the economic noose by destroying Japanese shipping. Sixth, the Japanese lost their best carrier aviators and squadrons in the battle, which were human resources for both battle and training which could not be replaced (both Japanese and German pilots in World War II essentially flew until they died). Seventh, Japanese military morale was deeply impacted. News of the defeat was hidden from the public, but from this point forward the Imperial Japanese army would have to wage an increasingly desperate defensive struggle to halt the relentless American advance toward the home islands.

But it should be noted that the battle of Midway was not over on June 4, 1942, when Dusty Kleiss became the only pilot, along with Dick Best, to score bomb hits on two aircraft carriers (Kleiss struck the Kaga and Hiryu, while Best struck the Akagi and the Hiryu as well). Even after the four carriers were sunk, the Japanese hoped to damage the American carriers by stalking them with the remaining battleships in their fleet. Damage was done on both sides in the few following days. The Yorktown had valiantly stayed afloat despite bombing damage, but succumbed to torpedo strikes from a Japanese submarine. Kleiss would score one more bomb strike, sinking the Japanese cruiser Mikuma on June 6, before Admiral Raymond Spruance would break off the battle and seal the victory by disengaging the American fleet on June 7, 1942—exactly six months to the day after Pearl Harbor.

When the Enterprise docked back at Pearl Harbor on June 13, Dusty Kleiss knew that he had survived an epic battle. What he did not know at that moment was that for him, combat was over. Unlike the Japanese and Germans, the Americans rotated their experienced pilots back home to train new aviators. This policy allowed experienced combat pilots to train new pilots with realistic aerial scenarios. This was an edge, particularly as the war went forward and the new pilots faced enemy pilots whose combat training was rudimentary, given that their experienced combat pilots were killed off. Kleiss was rotated home to be a training pilot for the rest of the war.

Less than a month after the battle of Midway, Kleiss married his beloved Jean in Las Vegas on July 3, 1942, and they were married for 64 years until her death. Dusty Kleiss committed to write his memoir Never Call Me a Hero at the age of 99 because he believed that he owed it to his comrades and to history. He insisted that the real heroes of the Battle of Midway were men like his friends Bill West, Tom Eversole, and Bruno Gaido, all of whom were killed in the war against Japan. He said that he considered himself “just a lucky fool.”  Norman Jack “Dusty” Kleiss passed away in 2016 at the age of 100 years old.     

Note: This is the last of a series of four posts on Dusty Kleiss's memoir. Read Part One. Part Two. Part Three.