The next day, the 16th, 33 Nells raided Wake Island at 1340. The Marines, however, greeted the Japanese fliers with novel fire control methods. Kinney and Kliewer, aloft on patrol, spotted the incoming formations closing on the atoll at 18,000 feet, almost 10 minutes before they reached Wake’s airspace. The U.S. pilots radioed the enemy’s altitude to the gun batteries. The early warning permitted Lewis to enter the data into the M-4 director and pass the solution to Godbold. Battery D hurled 95 rounds skyward. Battery E’s first shots seemed to explode ahead of the formation, but Gunner McKinstry reported that the lead plane in one of the formations dropped, smoking, to the rear of the formation. He estimated that at least four other planes cleared the island trailing smoke. Godbold estimated that four planes had been damaged and one had crashed some distance from the island. Japanese accounts, however, provide no support for Godbold’s estimate, acknowledging neither losses nor damage to Japanese aircraft during the attack that day. Kliewer and Kinney each attacked the formations of planes, but with little effect, partly because only one of Kinney’s four machine guns functioned.
That day, as half of Wake’s submarine support—the Tambor—retired toward Oahu because of an irreparable leak in her forward torpedo room, Kinney returned to the task of keeping the planes ready to fight with field expedient repairs and borrowed gear. Kinney and his helpers fashioned gun cleaning rods from welding rods. The pervasive, intrusive coral sand threatened to cause severe mechanical damage to the planes. Kinney borrowed a compressor from PanAm (two previous compressors had been “strafed out of commission”) to try to keep the planes clean by blasting a mixture of air and kerosene to blow out the accumulations of grit.
National Archives Photo 80-G-266632
Marines from the 4th Defense Battalion embark in Tangier (AV-8) at Pearl Harbor, 15 December 1941, bound for Wake. Barely visible beyond the first Marine at the head of the gangway is a sobering reminder of the events of eight days before: the mainmast of the sunken Arizona (BB-39). Tank farm spared by the Japanese on that day lies at right background.
To help Kinney and Hamilton and their small but dedicated band of civilians, Aviation Machinist’s Mate Hesson, who had been wounded on the 14th, violated doctor’s orders and returned to duty. He resumed work on the planes, carrying on as effectively as ever in spite of his injures. Putnam later recalled Hesson’s service as being “the very foundation of the entire aerial defense of Wake Island.”
At Pearl Harbor, in the lengthening shadows of 15 December (16 December on Wake), the relief expedition made ready to sail. The Tangier, the oiler Neches (AO-5) and four destroyers sailed at 1730 on the 15th (On Wake, 1400 on 16 December.). The Saratoga and the remainder of the escort—delayed by the time it took to fuel the carrier—were to sail the following day. “The twilight sortie,” First Lieutenant Robert D. Heinl, Jr., as commander of Battery F, 3-Inch Antiaircraft Group, wrote of the Tangier’s sailing, “dramatized the adventure.” The ships steamed past somber reminders of 7 December—the beached battleship Nevada and a Douglas SBD Dauntless from the Enterprise that had been shot down by “friendly fire” off Fort Kamehameha. “The waters beyond sight of Oahu,” First Lieutenant Heinl noted, “seemed very lonely waters indeed.... Columbus’ men, sailing westward in hourly apprehension of toppling off the edge of a square earth, could not have felt the seas to be more inscrutable and less friendly.”
Wake’s dogged defense caused Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, Commander, South Seas Force (Fourth Fleet), to seek help. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet, responded by assigning a force under the command of Rear Admiral Hiroaki Abe, Commander, 8th Cruiser Division, consisting of carriers Hiryu and Soryu and escorting ships, to reinforce Inoue. At 1630 on 16 December, the two carriers (with 118 aircraft), screened by the heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma and the destroyers Tanikaze and Urakaze, detached from their Pearl Harbor Striking Force, and headed toward Wake.
As Abe’s ships steamed toward Wake, U.S. Navy radio intelligence operators intercepted Japanese radio transmissions. The messages, when decoded, caused the intelligence analysts to suspect that connections existed among the Japanese Fourth Fleet operations “CruDiv 8” (the Tone and the Chikuma), “Cardiv 2” (the Soryu and the Hiryu), and “Airon 24” (24th Flotilla). Aerial reconnaissance flights from the Marshalls followed.