On June 4, 1942, every American torpedo bomber that attacked the Japanese fleet at Midway was shot down or crippled. Not one torpedo hit. Four Japanese carriers were still afloat, still launching aircraft, still winning.
Lieutenant Dick Best — a thirty-two-year-old dive bomber pilot from USS Enterprise — pushed into a near-vertical dive toward Akagi, the flagship of Japan's strike force. Three planes against a fleet carrier. No fighter escort. And an oxygen system that was already poisoning him with every breath he took.
This is the story of the pilot who changed the war in a single afternoon — and what it cost him.
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Lieutenant Dick Best — a thirty-two-year-old dive bomber pilot from USS Enterprise — pushed into a near-vertical dive toward Akagi, the flagship of Japan's strike force. Three planes against a fleet carrier. No fighter escort. And an oxygen system that was already poisoning him with every breath he took.
This is the story of the pilot who changed the war in a single afternoon — and what it cost him.
🔔 Subscribe for more untold WW2 stories: https://www.youtube.com/@WWII-Records
👍 Like this video if you learned something new
💬 Should Dick Best have received the Medal of Honor? Tell us in the comments.
#worldwar2 #ww2history #ww2 #wwii #ww2records
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LearningTranscript
00:00june 4th 1942 0706 lieutenant dick best climbed into his sbd dauntless on the flight deck of
00:09uss enterprise and watched the torpedo bombers launch ahead of him one squadron after another
00:15heading for four japanese carriers northwest of midway atoll 32 with a decade of carrier
00:22landings behind him the best dive bomber pilot in the pacific fleet and he knew it
00:28vice admiral chuichi nagumo had brought the kito butai four fleet carriers akagi kaga soryu and hiryu
00:37with 248 combat aircraft to seize midway and crush whatever the americans sent to stop him
00:44the americans had three carriers left in the entire pacific enterprise hornet and yorktown so badly
00:52damaged at the battle of the coral sea that repair crews at pearl harbor had worked 72 straight hours
00:58to make her seaworthy three against four if these carriers went down nothing stood between japan
01:05and hawaii but navy codebreakers under commander joseph rochefort had cracked the japanese naval code
01:13admiral chester nimitz knew where naguma would strike and when he would arrive for the first time
01:19since pearl harbor the americans had set the trap the problem was springing it throughout the morning
01:25american aircraft attacked the japanese fleet in wave after wave land-based bombers from midway scored
01:31zero hits marine dive bombers lost half their planes army b-26 marauders armed with torpedoes missed
01:40everything the zero fighters tore them apart then the carrier torpedo squadrons came in low and slow
01:47torpedo 8 from hornet went first 15 tbd devastators no fighter escort every single aircraft was shot down
01:56of 30 crewmen one survived ensign george gay floating in the ocean as the battle raged above him
02:04torpedo 6 from enterprise lost 10 of 14 torpedo 3 from yorktown lost 10 of 12. of 41 torpedo bombers
02:13launched
02:14from american carriers that morning only six returned not one torpedo hit a japanese ship but their
02:22sacrifice dragged every zero fighter down to sea level the sky at 20 000 feet above the japanese carriers
02:28was empty and three squadrons of sbd dauntless dive bombers were closing in from that altitude
02:36undetected dick best led one of them what happens next changed the entire pacific war
02:43please hit that like button it helps more people find stories like this one subscribe if you haven't already
02:49now oh 10 22 over the pacific bombing six had been airborne for over two hours fuel was critical
02:57three pilots had already turned back with engine trouble lieutenant commander wade mccluskey the air
03:02group commander was a fighter pilot leading dive bombers for the first time in combat he had spent over
03:08an hour searching empty ocean for the japanese fleet then he found them mccluskey pushed into his dive
03:15scouting scouting six followed and all 31 dauntlesses aimed at the same carrier kaga the akagi the carrier
03:22that had led the attack on pearl harbor nagumo's own flagship steamed five miles away untouched her
03:29hangar deck was loaded with 18 fueled and armed torpedo bombers dick best pulled out of his dive climbed
03:36back to altitude and turned toward akagi with two wingmen three planes against the most important ship in
03:42the japanese navy three bombs and not a single zero between them and the flight deck dick best had done
03:50the math in his head before he rolled into the dive three dauntlesses against the fleet carrier no margin
03:56for error his wingmen were lieutenant junior grade edwin kroger on his left and ensign frederick
04:02weber on his right both were solid pilots neither had ever attacked a ship this large the sbd
04:08dauntless was built for exactly this moment its perforated split flaps slowed the aircraft in a
04:13near vertical dive to 240 knots stable enough for a pilot to hold his aim on a moving target
04:19a displacement gear swung the 1 000 pound bomb clear of the propeller arc at release the bomb site was
04:25a
04:26three power telescope mounted on the left side of the cockpit at 70 degrees nose down the pilot lined up
04:32his target through that scope and held the dive until the altimeter unwound past 1500 feet
04:37then he pulled the manual release felt the aircraft lurch upward as the bomb dropped free and hauled
04:43back on the stick through five or six g's to level off above the water the kill window was about
04:48four
04:48seconds if the pilot released too early the bomb drifted long too late and he would not have enough
04:55altitude to pull out the japanese carrier steamed at 30 knots and could turn sharply which meant the aim
05:01point shifted throughout the dive everything depended on the pilot's eye his nerve and his ability
05:07to correct in real time during the long search at 20 000 feet that morning several pilots in bombing
05:13six had reported trouble breathing the rebreather system in the sbd used sodium hydroxide canisters
05:19to scrub carbon dioxide from exhaled air and recycle the remaining oxygen on a normal mission it worked
05:26but this flight had been airborne far longer than planned the canisters had overheated best ordered the
05:31squadron to descend to 15 000 feet where the thinner air was still breathable without the mask he had
05:37pulled his own mask off and snorted out the acrid fumes his throat burned but there was no time to
05:43think about it the japanese fleet was below now best rolled his dauntless into the dive above akagi
05:50the carrier had just turned into the wind her flight deck stretched 780 feet below him tan colored
05:56with a red circle painted near amid ships around her escort destroyers opened fire black puffs of
06:04anti-aircraft flak dotted the sky best ignored them he fixed his scope on the rising sun painted at the
06:11center
06:11of the deck and held the altimeter spun 12 000 8 000 4 000 the flight deck filled his telescope
06:20he could
06:21see individual crewmen running at 1500 feet best pulled the manual release handle the 1000 pound bomb
06:29swung clear of the propeller and dropped he slammed the stick back and felt the blood drain from his head
06:35as the dauntless pulled through six g's and leveled off 50 feet above the water behind him his rear gunner
06:43aviation chief james murray braced against the force and watched the bomb fall it struck the flight deck
06:50just aft of the amid ship's elevator and punched straight through into the upper hangar the detonation
06:56ripped through fueled aircraft packed wing to wing a column of fire erupted through the hole in the deck
07:03secondary explosions followed within seconds as armed bombs and torpedoes cooked off one after another
07:10akagi was burning from the inside out kroger's bomb had struck the water near the bridge
07:16weber's had hit the sea near the stern jamming akagi's rudder three planes had attacked one direct hit
07:24and akagi would never launch another aircraft
07:29within five minutes three of nogumo's four carriers were burning while best had put his bomb into akagi
07:35scouting six and the rest of bombing six had smashed kaga with at least four direct hits
07:42simultaneously 17 dauntlesses from yorktown's bombing three had caught soryu and planted three bombs along
07:48her flight deck by 10 31 on the morning of june 4th the most powerful carrier strike force in the
07:54world
07:54had been gutted but here you survived she had been steaming several miles north of the other three
08:00carriers hidden by scattered cloud cover not a single american pilot had seen her and rear admiral
08:07tamon yamaguchi commanding carrier division 2 from hiryu's bridge was already scrambling a counter-strike
08:14best pulled his battered dauntless back toward enterprise the flight deck of the big e was chaos
08:19nearly half the sbds that had launched that morning were missing some had been shot down most had
08:26simply run out of fuel somewhere over the pacific mccluskey had made it back bleeding from five shrapnel
08:32wounds in his arms and shoulders he would not fly again that day lieutenant earl gallaher commander of
08:38scouting six was now the senior dive bomber pilot on enterprise best climbed out of his cockpit and felt
08:45something wrong in his chest a dull ache below his ribs a rawness in his throat that had not been
08:51there
08:51before takeoff he coughed once hard and tasted something metallic he said nothing at 1100 here you
08:59launched her first counter-strike 18 aichi dive bombers escorted by six zeros guided to yorktown by a
09:06float plane from the cruiser chikuma yorktown's combat air patrol intercepted them 12 miles out and
09:12destroyed 11. the remaining seven pushed through three bombs hit yorktown one penetrated the flight
09:19deck and exploded in the uptakes snuffing out five of her six boilers yorktown slowed to a crawl and
09:26went dead in the water two and a half hours later here you struck again ten nakajima torpedo bombers
09:32slipped through yorktown's weakened defenses and put two torpedoes into her port side the carrier listed 23
09:39degrees and was abandoned of the three american carriers that had started the morning only
09:45enterprise and hornet remained operational one japanese carrier was still fighting and she had
09:50already crippled one of theirs at 14 45 one of yorktown's airborne scouts radioed a contact report
09:56one carrier two battleships three cruisers four destroyers bearing northwest hear you admiral raymond
10:05spruance aboard enterprise ordered an immediate strike every flyable dive bomber on the ship would
10:10go gallagher would lead 25 dauntlesses six from scouting six three from best's bombing six and 14
10:17orphaned aircraft from yorktown's bombing three no torpedo bombers no fighter escort the surviving tbd's
10:24were grounded the wildcats were needed for fleet defense best had three aircraft left from the 16 he
10:30had launched that morning his chest burned with every breath the metallic taste had not gone away
10:36he strapped into his dauntless anyway chief murray settled into the rear seat behind him at 15 30
10:42enterprise turned into the wind one by one 25 dauntlesses rolled down her deck and climbed toward
10:48here you the last japanese carrier afloat the pilot who had hit akagi six hours earlier was going back for
10:56another the 25 dauntlesses flew northwest in a loose formation at 13 000 feet below them three columns of
11:04black smoke rose from the ocean where akagi kaga and soryu drifted and burned the pilots could see the
11:11glow of fires even from altitude somewhere beyond those pyres here you was still making 30 knots best flew
11:18with two wingmen kroger again on his left and ensign lou hopkins replacing weber whose aircraft had
11:25taken damage during the morning attack three planes from bombing six the same number he had taken
11:30against akagi his chest felt heavier now each breath pulled against something deep in his lungs
11:36a tightness that had not been there six hours earlier the sodium hydroxide fumes from the faulty
11:42rebreather had done their work during the long morning search and the damage was compounding with every
11:48hour he stayed in the air best gripped the stick and focused on the horizon at 1645 gallaher spotted
11:55the target a single carrier with escort ships spread across several miles of ocean here you was heading
12:01north her flight deck was intact on it ground crews were frantically arming the last nine operational
12:07aircraft for a desperate third strike against the americans five dive bombers and four torpedo planes
12:14everything here you had left gallaher ordered the attack he would lead scouting six down first aiming
12:21for here you he assigned lieutenant de witt shumway's 14 yorktown bombers from bombing three to the
12:28battleship haruna steaming nearby best and his three bombing six aircraft would follow gallaher onto the
12:34carrier the approach was textbook the dauntlesses had climbed to 19 000 feet and positioned themselves up sun
12:41unlike the morning attack there was no confusion no miscommunication no wrong target the cruiser
12:48chikuma spotted them first and fired anti-aircraft guns skyward to alert the combat air patrol 14 zero
12:56scrambled upward but they were already too late gallaher tipped over and dove his first two bombs missed
13:03as here you healed hard to port shumway watching from altitude saw the misses and made a split second
13:09decision he abandoned haruna and redirected bombing three onto the carrier the sky above here you filled
13:16with diving dauntlesses from two squadrons converging from different angles zeros clawed at them on the way
13:22down harassing pilots through their dives and throwing off aim the attack was chaotic overlapping and
13:29relentless the first direct hit landed near the forward elevator the blast was so powerful it threw the steel
13:36platform upward and slammed it against the carrier's bridge a second bomb struck the flight deck amid ships
13:42then a third then a fourth fire swept across here use forward hangar deck the armed aircraft waiting
13:49for launch exploded one after another here usability to fight was gone in under 90 seconds one of those four
13:57hits belonged to dick best for the second time in a single day his 1 000 pound bomb had found
14:03a japanese
14:04carrier's flight deck no other pilot in the history of naval warfare had ever done what best had just done
14:10struck two enemy fleet carriers with direct bomb hits in the same battle on the same day flying the same
14:17aircraft but as best pulled out of his dive and leveled off above the water he coughed hard into his
14:23oxygen mask
14:24when he pulled the mask away it was spattered with red
14:29best nursed his dauntless back to enterprise on fumes the fuel gauge had been hovering near empty for
14:35the last 20 minutes of the return flight every few minutes he coughed and every cough brought more red
14:41into the mask behind him chief murray watched the back of his pilot's head and said nothing there was
14:47nothing to say at 13 000 feet over open ocean with the nearest friendly deck 40 miles east he landed
14:54hard the
14:55tail hook caught the third wire and the dauntless jerked to a stop on enterprise's flight deck best sat
15:02in the cockpit for a long moment before unstrapping when he pulled himself over the side and dropped
15:07onto the deck his knees buckled a plane handler grabbed his arm best waved him off walked to the island
15:14and reported to the air officer two carriers hit two confirmed strikes mission complete then he coughed again
15:23hard enough to double over and the flight deck crew saw the blood on his flight suit the flight surgeon
15:29examined him that evening temperature 103 degrees rattling sounds in the right lung blood in every
15:37cough best was grounded immediately he would not fly the next day or the day after or any day for
15:44the rest
15:44of the war june 4th 1942 was the last day dick best ever sat in the cockpit of a military
15:52aircraft
15:53700 miles to the west admiral isoroku yamamoto was trying to salvage a disaster from the bridge of
16:01the battleship yamato he had received fragmentary reports throughout the day three carriers burning
16:07then four he ordered vice admiral nobutake kondo to assemble a surface force of battleships and cruisers
16:14and close for a night engagement if japanese guns could find the american carriers in the dark
16:19the battle might still be won but admiral spruance refused the bait he turned task force 16 east at
16:27midnight opening the distance spruance understood what yamamoto wanted he would not risk two irreplaceable
16:35carriers in a night gun battle against a fleet that still had 11 battleships the american admiral would
16:41wait for daylight and let his pilots finish the job there was nothing left to finish kaga sank at 1915
16:48that evening taking 800 crewmen with her soryu went under 20 minutes later with 718 dead akagi burned
16:57through the night at dawn on june 5th her own destroyers torpedoed her to hasten the sinking
17:03she went down with 267 of her crew nagumo had transferred his flag to the cruiser nagara hours
17:10earlier the admiral who had commanded the attack on pearl harbor had watched his flagship burn from a
17:15destroyer's deck here you lasted longest she burned through the night and into the morning her fires
17:22visible for miles captain tomeo kaku and rear admiral yamaguchi refused to leave both men chose to go
17:29down with the ship at 0900 on june 5th here you finally slipped beneath the surface 392 of her crew
17:37died with her four japanese fleet carriers sunk in a single battle 3057 japanese dead 248 aircraft
17:47destroyed the kito butai the most feared naval strike force on earth had ceased to exist and the
17:54pilot who had personally helped sink two of those four carriers was lying in a bunk aboard enterprise
17:59coughing blood into a towel enterprise docked at pearl harbor on june 8th best was carried off
18:07the ship on a stretcher he had spent the four-day voyage in his bunk his fever climbing the coughing
18:13growing worse doctors at pearl harbor hospital admitted him on the same day and ordered a chest x-ray
18:20the film showed an infiltrate spreading across the upper lobe of his right lung increased modeling
18:25extended outward from the hilum the junction where the bronchial tubes and blood vessels enter the
18:30lung tissue the diagnosis came within 48 hours chemical pneumonitis caused by inhaled sodium hydroxide
18:37fumes and something far worse active pulmonary tuberculosis best had carried latent tuberculosis for
18:45years without knowing it the bacteria had walled themselves off inside a tiny granuloma deep in
18:51his lung dormant and harmless the caustic soda fumes he had inhaled at 20 000 feet that morning had
18:58burned through the granuloma's wall like acid through paper the dormant bacteria were now active
19:03multiplying destroying lung tissue from the inside the very breath that had kept him alive long enough
19:10to sink two carriers was now killing him he was not alone during the debrief after midway navy
19:16investigators discovered that half the pilots in bombing six had reported problems with their oxygen
19:21systems during the morning flight the rebreather canisters had overheated on multiple aircraft
19:27during the unusually long search other pilots had experienced burning throats and nausea but none of
19:33them carried the latent tuberculosis that made the exposure lethal best had drawn the worst possible hand
19:40a mechanical defect in an oxygen canister combined with a medical condition no one had ever tested him for
19:47the treatment in 1942 was brutal and slow no antibiotics existed for tuberculosis doctors
19:54collapsed sections of the infected lung to starve the bacteria of air a procedure called therapeutic
20:00pneumothorax best lay in a hospital bed while the war he had helped turn raged on without him
20:08yorktown had not survived midway either on june 6th salvage crews had reboarded the listing carrier
20:14and were fighting to save her when the japanese submarine i-168 found her two torpedo struck yorktown's
20:22starboard side the destroyer hammond lashed alongside for support took a torpedo amid ships and broke in
20:29half sinking in four minutes with 81 of her crew yorktown held on through the night but capsized and sank
20:37at
20:37dawn on june 7th the americans had lost one carrier and one destroyer 307 americans had died in the battle
20:45but the strategic math was devastating for japan the trained air groups that had operated from those
20:50carriers pilots who had spent years mastering carrier landings torpedo runs and coordinated strikes
20:57were irreplaceable japan's naval aviation training pipeline could not produce experienced carrier
21:03pilots fast enough to replace the ones lost in midway the kito butai had taken a decade to build
21:09it was destroyed in a single afternoon for the rest of the war the imperial japanese navy would fight on
21:16the
21:16defensive midway had not just been a battle it had been the hinge and the man who had struck the
21:23blow
21:23that broke that hinge one bomb into akagi one bomb into hiryu lay in a hospital bed at pearl harbor
21:31watching his lungs slowly fail dick best spent 32 months in that hospital through the summer of 1942
21:39while the marines landed on guadalcanal through the fall while enterprise fought the battles of the eastern
21:44solomons and santa cruz through 1943 while new essex class carriers slid down the ways at shipyards
21:51in virginia and new jersey through the spring of 1944 while the fleet he had helped save at midway
21:57grew into the largest naval armada in history best watched it all from a bed at the naval hospital in
22:05seattle the navy awarded him the navy cross the highest decoration for valor the service could bestow
22:11second only to the medal of honor the citation described extraordinary heroism during the air
22:17battle of midway it noted that he had led dive bombing assaults against japanese naval units
22:22under concentrated anti-aircraft fire and powerful fighter opposition
22:28dive bombing was a death-defying ride of terror that he had flown at distances from his own forces
22:36that made return unlikely due to fuel exhaustion that he had pressed home his attacks with extreme
22:42disregard for his own personal safety the citation did not mention that his own aircraft's oxygen system
22:47had ended his career he also received the distinguished flying cross for his earlier
22:52strikes against the marshall islands two of the navy's highest awards for a pilot who would never touch a
22:58flight stick again in march 1944 best was medically retired with the rank of lieutenant commander and a full
23:05disability rating he was 33 years old 10 months earlier streptomycin had entered clinical trials
23:11had his tuberculosis activated a year later the antibiotic might have saved his lungs the timing was
23:18as cruel as the malfunction that caused it the navy never told best exactly what had gone wrong with
23:23the rebreather canisters maintenance logs from enterprises air department for june 1942 were incomplete
23:29so we have a copy of his logbook page that shows him making really what amounted to the final landing
23:37for this aircraft the final successful landing of the airplane the investigation into the oxygen failures
23:43across bombing six produced no public report best knew only what the doctors told him and that no one
23:50would ever be held accountable for the malfunction after discharge from the hospital best moved to santa
23:56monica california he took a position with a small research division at douglas aircraft corporation the
24:02company that had built the dauntless he had flown at midway in december 1948 that division was absorbed
24:09into a new independent organization the rand corporation best became head of rand's security department
24:17he spent the next 27 years there protecting classified cold war research at one of the most secretive
24:23think tanks in the country the pilot who had helped win the pacific war spent the cold war making sure
24:30soviet intelligence never reached the documents that defined american nuclear strategy he rarely spoke
24:36about midway for decades his role in the battle received little public attention histories of the
24:43engagement focused on mccluskey's decision to continue searching for the japanese fleet on the sacrifice of
24:49the torpedo squadrons on the code breakers who had made the ambush possible best's name appeared in footnotes
24:56and appendices not in chapter titles the man who had hit two fleet carriers in six hours had become a
25:03classified footnote himself then in 1976 a phone call came hollywood was making a film about midway the
25:13producers wanted technical consultants who had been there dick best picked up the phone
25:20best served as a technical consultant on the 1976 film midway alongside joseph rochefort the code
25:27breaker whose team had cracked the japanese naval cipher on set best met george gay the sole survivor of
25:35torpedo 8 for the first time two men who had lived through opposite ends of the same battle
25:41gay had watched from the ocean as best squadron dove on the carriers above him they had never
25:47spoken before that day the film brought a brief wave of recognition but it faded best returned to his
25:53quiet life in santa monica he had retired from rand the year before he tended his garden he attended
26:00occasional reunions of enterprise veterans he did not seek attention when historians visited he answered
26:06their questions precisely and without embellishment he corrected errors in published accounts when he
26:11found them he did not exaggerate his role or diminish anyone else's in 1998 admiral thomas morrer former
26:20chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and vice admiral william hauser launched a formal campaign to
26:25upgrade best navy cross to the medal of honor their argument was straightforward no other pilot in
26:31history had struck two enemy fleet carriers in a single day and the action had directly changed the
26:37outcome of the most important naval battle of the 20th century the campaign failed the navy declined the
26:44upgrade no reason was made public richard halsey best died on october 28 2001 at the age of 91 in
26:53santa
26:54monica he was buried at arlington national cemetery section 54 site 3192 full military honors a flag folded
27:0313 times and handed to his family a headstone among thousands marking a man who had changed the course of
27:10a war in six hours and spent the next 59 years watching from the ground in 2019 director roland emmerich
27:18released a second film about the battle actor ed skrine played dick best on october 28th of that year
27:25the 18th anniversary of best's death screen visited arlington and stood at the grave of the man he had
27:32portrayed he had studied best's combat reports watched archival footage and read every interview the pilot
27:39had ever given screen laid a wreath and stood in silence the sbd dauntless that best flew survives in
27:47memory but not in metal no individual aircraft from bombing six at midway has been recovered
27:53but the dauntless itself the dive bomber that sank more enemy shipping than any other allied aircraft
28:00in the war stands preserved in the national naval aviation museum in pensacola florida walk past the
28:07display and read the placard it does not mention dick best by name dick best never got his medal of
28:15honor
28:15but you can make sure his story keeps going hit that like button it is the single fastest way to
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28:22this story moving subscribe and turn on notifications there are more names like his buried in combat
28:29reports and service records leave a comment below tell us where you are watching from if someone in your
28:35family fought in the second world war we would love to hear their story we read them all thank you
28:42for
28:42for watching
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