Which Way Did They Go?: Midway's Mysterious Tragedy Is Solved By A $10 Bill

There is one mystery concerning the June1942 Battle of Midway that has long confoundedhistorians: Why did not even one Hornet divebomber attack the Japanese carrier force? Reportedly, they were on the same course as theplanes from Yorktown and Enterprise and took off at the same time. Numerous official and unofficialexplanations all came down to simple bad luck.There is no denying that luck and chance playeda major role at Midway. In the case of HornetsAir Group 8, however, so did bad judgment, poorleadership, and arrogance. It was a simple $10 billthat provided the missing clue to the mystery.

- Mark Carlson

A Friend’s Death and a Chance Encounter

Bowen Weisheit was a Maryland native and trial lawyer. Before the war, he had attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and had studied celestial aerial navigation under the legendary Lt. Cmdr. P. V. H. Weems. One of his fraternity brothers was Markland Kelly Jr. Kelly was bound for a naval aviation career and soon joined Hornet’s Fighting 8 (VF-8) under Lt. Cmdr. Sam Mitchell. Kelly died at Midway when his Hellcat didn’t make it back to the carrier. Weisheit, who had joined the Marine Corps and served as a navigator, learned of his friend’s death after the battle. After the war, Kelly’s father had established an educational foundation in the name of his son and made Weisheit a trustee. At one meeting, Weisheit spotted a framed $10 bill on the wall. It was a “Short Snorter,” traditionally given to the pilot of a rescue plane by a downed aviator. A Fighting 8 pilot had given the bill to PBY pilot Ensign Jerry Crawford on June 8, 1942. On the bill were latitude and longitude coordinates. After making a copy of the bill, Weisheit went home and examined charts of the Pacific. After plotting the location where the VF-8 pilots had been found, he then read Walter Lord and Samuel Eliot Morison’s accounts of the battle and realized that the coordinates were more than 250 miles east of the location of where VF-8 had supposedly been flying back to Hornet. So began his quest to find the truth.