Battle of Midway
American carrier aircraft had difficulty locating the target. The strike from Hornet, led by Commander Stanhope C. Ring, did not fly in the right direction. Air Group Eight's dive bombers missed the Japanese carriers. Torpedo Squadron 8 flew in the correct direction. However, the 10 F4Fs from Hornet had run out of fuel and had to crash into the ocean. Waldron's squadron saw the enemy carriers and began attacking at 09:20, followed by Torpedo Squadron 6 (VT-6, from Enterprise) whose Wildcat fighter escorts also ran low on fuel and had to turn back at 09:40. Without fighter escort, all fifteen TBD Devastators of VT-8 were shot down without being able to do any damage, with Ensign George Gay the only survivor. VT-6 lost 10 of their 14 Devastators, and 10 of Yorktown's VT-3's 12 Devastators were shot down with no hits. Part of the problem was the poor performance of the Mark 13 torpedoes. Senior Navy and Bureau of Ordnance officers never asked why six torpedoes, released so close to the Japanese carriers, produced no hits. The Japanese combat air patrol, flying Mitsubishi A6M2 Zeros shot down the unescorted, slow, under-armed TBDs. A few TBDs managed to get close enough to drop their torpedoes and shoot their machine guns at the enemy ships. This made the Japanese carriers to make sharp turns. The TBD Devastator was never again used in combat.