The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-06-11
Fifty Jap Warships
 In Midway Attacks
tCOntlnued from Page D

rom Page D
 we saw the ships lined in two columns with their destroyers and lighter craft flanking the heavier capital ships. We paid no attention to them. We were after the carriers, which we knew would be farther back behind the main units.
 Japs Tried to Hide
 '"The big, fluffy clouds made vis- ibility difficult, and the Japanese carriers tried to hide under them.
 "But we spotted them way down below through hole in the clouds. There were two of them in sight. l concentrated on one which was cir- cling round and round, the typical Japanese defense maneuver against high level bombing attacks.
 We were greeted by hail of anti-airfract fire which lowered all round us, like big black puff balls.
 Make no mistake, those gum ners were good. They put up ver- itable curtain O. fire around the carrier.
 Just then zero fighters came up to attack us and believe me things were pretty hot up there for a few minutes.
 We swung around into bombing position with high explosives burst ing all over the place and the zeroes banging away at us.
 "The carriers decks were empty. We found out later its planes at that very moment were attacking Midway.
 Our element (three planes) went down out of the sun for the run over the target.
 "The doors of the bombing com- partment swung open and over we went.
 We laid our bombs right smack across the port bow and we headed for home as fast as our motors would carry us.
 I could not see the effects of our bombs immediately, but the tail gunner yelled over the inter- phone
 "'We got her right on the housel'
 Flames, Smoke BeIched
 q looked down as. we banked around. Sure enough the entire bow of the carrier was belching smoke and flames. Even from our high altitude we could see that the carrier had been badly hit.
 The Japanese fighters gave us little trouble. They seemed to be more interested in the carrier than in us and we soon lost them"
 Then Sweeney told of the critical moment when the planes returned to the Midway base to find that the island had been under bombardment for half an hour un- der the full fury of Japanese carrier based high level, dive bombers and fighter plane attacks.
 They did not attempt to bomb the runways," he said. Evidently they intended to use the runways for their own planes after they captured the island.
 But the carriers were attacked by navy torpedo planes and dive bombers as well as our high level bombers and torpedo planes and they were knocked out.
 We started @ second attack as soon as we had been refuelled. We saw two ships burning as we flew out. One was carrier and the other was a capital ship (battle- ship. Both were about 20 miles behind the main body of the Jap anese, who were fleeing in a gen. orally westward direction.
 we could not find the other carriers, despite our intense search, so, we picked out the biggest ship in the flock, which I judge twas either a battleship or a heavy cruiseer.
 Barrage Really Heavy
 "We were not bothered by zeros but the anti-aircraft bararge was as heavy as any ever want to go through.
 we had the sun pretty well at our backs as we made a run across the big ship, which apparently sensed that we had picked it out as a victim.
 The ship was travelling at full speed, twisting and turning and made every conceivable maneuver to throw us off. Its wake looked like a piece of wrinkled ribbon on, blue background.
 That run was just about as nearly perfect a bombing run as it was lAossible to obtain. Our pat tern bombs smashed into the ship near the stern and sent a great puff of black oily smoke and a huge jet of flame bursting from its stern.
 We did not hang around to watch but high-railed it home, using the fires of crippled Japanese ships a S beacons with which to get our bearings"
 Another of Sweeney's flying for tresses was credited with destroy ing a Japanese destroyer despite several hits by anti-aircraft frag- ment which had damaged wing spar and practically blinded for the time Lieut.. Jack D. Whidden, A, Van Nuys, Cal, pilot. and Lieut.. Charles R. Crowell, p, Freeport, III, co-pilot.
 Whiddens plane destroyed a zero which attempted to attack it. 
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