At 09:20 when the planes reached the point where they expected to find the enemy carriers, the airmen gazed down upon empty ocean. At this point, the air group commander made a hard decision. His planes were low on fuel; and, if they initiated a search, some aircraft might not make it back to the carriers. On the other hand, if the strike returned to "Enterprise" and missed the enemy carriers, Midway Island might fall. Worse yet, Japanese bombers might knock out "Enterprise", "Hornet", and "Yorktown", leaving little or nothing between America and the forces of the Japanese Empire. Therefore, the American pilots ignored their fuel problem and began searching for the enemy. At 10:05, they spied, on the horizon to the northwest, the silhouettes of three large carriers and a number of escorts. At first, several pilots thought that their leader had brought them back to their own ships; but closer inspection revealed pagoda masts and yellow flight decks. These ships could only be Japanese.