On the morning of June 4, 1942, 41 Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers launched from three American aircraft carriers to attack the Japanese fleet at Midway. Of those 41 aircraft, 35 were shot down. Their torpedoes scored no hits. Their crews died in numbers that still stagger the imagination. Of those 82 airmen who flew that day, only 12 survived.
Yet their sacrifice changed the course of history. By preventing the Japanese from launching their own strikes and by drawing every Japanese Zero down to sea level, the torpedo bombers cleared the sky for American dive bombers to arrive unopposed. By the end of the day, all four Japanese carriers were destroyed.
Along with 158 other pilots, the three squadron commanders who led those attacks, Lt. Cmdr. John Waldron, Lt. Cmdr. Eugene Lindsey and Lt. Cmdr. Lance Massey, each received the Navy Cross, the nation's second-highest award for valor. For 83 years, a small group of advocates has argued they deserved more.
Now, with the support of the Navy's top historian and a member of Congress, a retired Marine major believes he has assembled the evidence to finally get them the Medal of Honor.
A Marine's Decades-Long Mission
Maj. Thomas Rychlik, USMC (Ret.), has spent more than a decade building the case for these three men.
As a young man, he read Walter Lord's "Incredible Victory," the definitive account of Midway. In 1967, he bought a paperback copy and read it repeatedly. The story of what the torpedo bomber pilots did that day never left him.
"Valor was all over the battlefield," Rychlik said. "I was impressed. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to attend the Naval Academy"
Rychlik graduated from Annapolis and spent 20 years as a Marine infantry officer. While on active duty, the conviction that these men deserved the Medal of Honor took hold. But he had a family and a career. After fully retiring in 2018, he began digging into primary source documents, ship logs and after-action reports that had been classified or overlooked for decades.
What he found, he believes, changes everything.
The Battle of Midway
The TBD Devastator was already obsolete by June 1942. It was slow, with a maximum speed of 110 mph when lugging a 2000 pound torpedo. Its Mark 13 torpedo was unreliable, often running erratically, sinking immediately or failing to detonate at all. To have any chance of hitting, pilots had to fly low and straight toward their targets, directly into the teeth of Japanese antiaircraft fire and fighter defenses.
"That's what makes these men so heroic," Rychlik said. "They knew there was such a little chance of hitting, but they still went ahead and did it."
What drove them to risk their lives in faulty equipment with unreliable weapons? Six months of fury and the chance at payback.
"All of these guys were so angry at the Japanese for Pearl Harbor," Rychlik said. "They hadn't been able to do a whole lot about it since. They knew they had a chance at vengeance on the Japanese. Very young men, so angry that they were willing to do anything they could to get back at them."
On June 4, 1942, the Japanese carrier fleet approached Midway. The American aviators finally had their chance to strike back.
The Man Who Disobeyed Orders and Found the Enemy
Lt. Cmdr. John Waldron was 41 years old, born in South Dakota with Lakota Sioux blood in his veins. He had graduated near the bottom of his Naval Academy class, but he was one of the most skilled aviators in the fleet.
He commanded Torpedo Squadron 8 aboard the USS Hornet. He had trained his young pilots hard, drilling them relentlessly while other squadrons watched with laughter and derision. His was the only squadron that regularly exercised on deck. He installed makeshift armor around crew seats and doubled the defensive firepower of their rear-facing machine guns. His men revered him, calling him "The Indian."
The night before the battle, Waldron told his men, "If there is only one plane left to make the final run in, I want that man to go in and get a hit."
On the morning of June 4, Waldron stood on the bridge of the Hornet in a heated argument with Capt. Marc Mitscher and Air Group Commander Stanhope Ring. Waldron had been arguing for close fighter escort, but Mitscher refused.
Then came the dispute over navigation. Ring, who had a questionable track record finding targets, insisted on a course of 265 degrees to intercept the Japanese fleet. Waldron, who had done his own calculations based on the morning's sighting reports, knew it was wrong. He argued for a more southwesterly heading of 240 degrees, the same course the Enterprise and Yorktown air groups would fly.
Waldron had reason to distrust Ring's navigation. During earlier operations in the Caribbean, Ring had gotten lost and couldn't find his own aircraft carrier with the entire air group behind him. One of the pilots had to plot a course to get them home.
"He felt that he was better qualified," Rychlik said. "Ring was senior but did not have significant time in the cockpit, didn't have the experience leading aircraft and men that Waldron did."
Mitscher overruled Waldron. He was ordered to fly Ring's course.
After launch, Waldron followed orders for about 15 minutes. Then he broke radio silence and tried one more time to convince Ring he was going the wrong way.
"You're going the wrong direction for the Japanese carrier force," Waldron radioed.
Ring was furious. "I'm leading this flight," he snapped back. "You fly right here."
"Well, the hell with you," Waldron replied. "I know where they are and I'm going to them."
Waldron banked his squadron southwest, alone, without fighter escort, away from the rest of the Hornet air group.
Waldron had attended law school. He knew the difference between an unlawful order and a lawful one. Ring's order was entirely lawful. Waldron chose to disobey it anyway, knowing that if he was wrong and survived, his career was over. He could have been court-martialed.
"I had to put myself in the cockpit," Rychlik said. "If he stays with his air group, he probably gets back to his ship and doesn't get charged with disobeying an order. But he said, 'I know where they are.' He had the moral fortitude to say, 'I'm willing to get court-martialed if I get back to my ship, but I'm doing this.' I don't think I could have done that."
Waldron found the Japanese carrier fleet at 9:20 a.m. Ring flew west over empty ocean. His fighters ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea. His dive bombers returned to the ship without ever finding the enemy.
At 9:20, Torpedo Squadron 8 attacked alone, without fighter escort. Every Zero in the fleet descended on them. The Devastators held course as the fighters made pass after pass, ripping through their formations. The Japanese pilots focused on the leader.
All 15 aircraft were shot down. Twenty-nine of 30 men were killed. Only Ensign George Gay survived, floating amid the wreckage as the battle raged above him.
But Waldron's attack had forced the Japanese combat air patrol down to sea level. The massive smoke from anti-aircraft fire, ship maneuvering and burning aircraft marked the fleet's location for the squadrons that followed. And critically, the Japanese carriers were tied up servicing their fighters instead of arming the strike aircraft that could have destroyed the newly discovered American fleet.
"If Waldron doesn't do what he does, break away from the air group and find the Japanese, a lot of what happens later doesn't happen," Rychlik said. "The Japanese CAP has all the altitude and ammunition to defend against the dive bombers when they show up."
The Commander Who Should Not Have Flown
Lt. Cmdr. Eugene Lindsey had commanded Torpedo Squadron 6 aboard the USS Enterprise for nearly two years. He was one of the most experienced torpedo plane pilots in the Navy, having already earned a Distinguished Flying Cross for leading attacks against Japanese shipping at Kwajalein and Wake Island.
On May 28, as the Enterprise sortied from Pearl Harbor for what would become the Battle of Midway, Lindsey's TBD crashed while attempting to land. He was pulled from the water by a destroyer. He had a punctured lung, broken ribs, severe lacerations to his face and chest, and a badly injured back.
He spent the next seven days in sick bay.
On the morning of June 4, Lt. Cmdr. Wade McClusky saw Lindsey in the wardroom at breakfast. His face was still swollen, the healing gash across his forehead still visible. He moved stiffly, his ribs still taped. He was pale from blood loss.
"You look pretty beat up, Skipper," one of his pilots told him. "You really feel well enough to fly today?"
Lindsey looked at him.
"This is the real thing today," he said. "The thing we've been training for. I'll take the squadron in."
His injuries were so severe he couldn't climb into his own aircraft. His plane captain had to help lift him into the cockpit. His face was so swollen he couldn't wear his goggles.
Rychlik consulted a retired Navy flight surgeon about Lindsey's injuries. According to Rychlik, her assessment was unequivocal. In the current Navy, and even from the '90s and 2000s, there's no way he would have been allowed to fly. That would have been the case during WWII as well.
Lindsey had something else on his mind as well. Just a year earlier, another torpedo squadron commander, Lt. Joe Taylor, had crashed in similar circumstances. Taylor described being trapped underwater as his canopy jammed shut, breaking the bones in both hands as he beat his way through the plexiglass to escape. He had shredded the skin on his arms and hands to save himself. Lindsey had just lived through nearly the same trauma. He realized that if he was shot down and had to ditch, he might not be able to get out.
He led his squadron anyway.
His men knew their skipper's condition. They had seen him lowered into his cockpit. They knew he probably couldn't survive a water landing. And they followed him without hesitation.
"The men in his squadron knew his compromised position," Rychlik said. "They thought, if the Skipper is doing it, we're doing it."
Torpedo Squadron 6 found the Japanese fleet by following the smoke from Waldron's attack. With no fighter escort, they too pressed their assault. As they closed on the carriers, Lindsey split his force to attempt an "anvil" attack from two directions. Over 30 Zeros attacked. One after another, the Devastators fell into the sea as the bullets tore into their engines, controls, fuel tanks and pilots.
Ten of the 14 aircraft were shot down. Lindsey was among the dead. The four surviving planes were so badly damaged that one had to be pushed overboard after landing. None of their torpedoes hit.
Their attack continued to occupy the Japanese combat air patrol, spreading mass confusion among the Japanese carrier crews. As the Japanese tried to fight off the remaining torpedo bombers, American dive bombers arrived on scene.
The Commander Who Went After the Final Carrier
Lt. Cmdr. Lance Massey commanded Torpedo Squadron 3 from the USS Yorktown. On Feb. 1, 1942, he had become the first American torpedo plane pilot in history to score a confirmed hit against an enemy ship, sinking the 18,000-ton Japanese transport Bordeaux Maru at Kwajalein. In a war where American torpedoes failed more often than they worked, Massey's was one of the few that scored a kill.
The night before Midway, Massey gathered some of his officers in his stateroom and produced a bottle of Scotch. He told them the odds were long. When they went out tomorrow, he said, he didn't see how they'd ever get back.
Unlike Torpedo 8 and Torpedo 6, Massey's squadron launched with six Wildcat fighters as escort, led by Lt. Cmdr. Jimmy Thach, inventor of the famous "Thach Weave" defensive maneuver. Seventeen dive bombers flew above them. But as they approached the Japanese fleet, everything fell apart.
Torpedo Squadron 3 spotted the smoke from Waldron's and Lindsey's attacks and altered course toward it. As they closed on the fleet, between 36 and 43 Zeros attacked. Thach's fighters did what they could, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. He managed to get five of his six pilots back to the Yorktown.
Then Massey saw something that changed everything. The dive bombers from Enterprise had arrived and were tearing into the carriers Kaga and Akagi. The Yorktown's dive bombers were hitting Soryu. Three of the four Japanese carriers were under attack or already burning.
One carrier remained untouched, the Hiryu, farthest from Massey's squadron.
Massey made a courageous decision that ultimately sealed his fate. According to an account from Rear Adm. Samuel Cox, Director of the Naval History and Heritage Command, "Massey led his TBDs against the carrier Hiryu, already steaming at maximum speed in the opposite direction, resulting in yet another lengthy tail chase."
It was a death sentence. The closer carriers would have been easier targets. Attacking Hiryu meant flying even further through Zero-infested airspace, giving the Japanese fighters more time to pick off his slow-moving torpedo bombers one by one.
But Massey understood that he piled onto Soryu like doctrine suggested, Hiryu's combat air patrol would be free to reinforce the other carriers or intercept the dive bombers. By attacking Hiryu, he would draw its defenders to his own squadron, occupying them during the critical moments when the dive bombers were destroying the other three carriers. Best case scenario, maybe they could even score a hit on the final enemy carrier.
"He could have piled on the closer Soryu," Rychlik said. "But he saw there was one carrier not being attacked, and he went after it."
The Zeros quickly gave chase. About a mile from Hiryu, Massey's plane was hit, burst into flames and headed for the water. Witnesses saw him stand up in his seat as the aircraft crashed into the sea.
Of his 12 aircraft, 10 were shot down. The two survivors were so badly damaged they had to ditch before reaching the Yorktown. None of their torpedoes hit.
What Rychlik discovered in his research was that Capt. Elliott Buckmaster, commander of the Yorktown, had recommended Massey for the Medal of Honor. Rychlik found notes and documents indicating that Buckmaster made the recommendation, though he has not been able to locate the actual award documentation itself.
The Yorktown was torpedoed and eventually sunk shortly after the engagement. With that, Buckmaster's recommendation was never considered by Admiral Chester Nimitz's awards board.
"I found notes and documents showing he was recommended," Rychlik said. "But I have not been able to find the letter itself. It's lost to history."
The Sacrifice That Won the Battle
The timeline tells the story of victory. Waldron initiated the attack. His sacrifice allowed Lindsey to spot the enemy fleet and launch his own attack. Massey chose to put himself in danger to draw enemy defenses away from the carriers as Lt. Cmdr. McClusky led his dive bombers over the Japanese fleet.
By the time the dive bombers began their attack, there was not a single Zero at altitude to oppose them. Every Japanese fighter was at sea level, chasing torpedo bombers or returning to their carriers for fuel and ammunition.
Because of the confusion and chaos, the torpedo bombers caused, Japanese aircraft were on or below deck switching out armament or being refueled. Fuel lines, exposed ammunition and explosives, torpedoes and bombs were sprawled across the deck as the crews frantically tried to get the planes back into the air.
Within the span of five minutes, planes from Enterprise and Yorktown put fatal bombs into Kaga, Akagi and Soryu. As the bombs punched through the carrier decks, they ignited a massive fireball of explosives that sent all three ships to the bottom of the Pacific.
"Even Dick Best admitted the torpedo bomber pilots won the Battle of Midway, despite what he did," Rychlik said.
Best arrived over the Japanese fleet to find calm skies and no fighter opposition. The Zeros were all at sea level picking off the torpedo bombers. He dove on the Akagi through a hail of anti-aircraft fire, giving him just enough space to turn the tide of the battle.
The success of the dive bombers was secured by the sacrifice of Waldron, Lindsey, Massey and their men. The loss of the Japanese carriers altered the entire course of the conflict.
The Navy’s Initial Assessments
Every aviator who attacked the Japanese carriers that day received the Navy Cross. One notable exception was Marine Capt. Richard Fleming, who received the Medal of Honor for attacking the cruiser Mikuma on June 5. His enlisted gunner, Pfc. George Toms, received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
But those Marines flew from Midway Island, and his award went through the Marine Corps chain of command. Confronted by all those endorsements, Admiral Nimitz had no choice but to approve it. No sailor under Nimitz's command received the Medal of Honor for Midway, despite the enormous gravity of what had occurred.
Rychlik believes several factors explain this, starting with the fact that Nimitz simply didn't have the full picture.
Capt. George Murray, commanding the Enterprise, chose not to mention Lindsey's earlier crash, his injuries or the extraordinary circumstances of his final flight in his after-action report.
"It would have reflected negatively on Murray for letting him fly that day," Rychlik said. "The case for the Medal of Honor never made it to Nimitz."
Meanwhile, Capt. Marc Mitscher filed an after-action report claiming the Hornet air group had flown a course of 239 degrees, not 265. He lied, instead claiming he flew the route that Waldron actually did. In the 1980s, a retired Marine major named Bowen Weisheit interviewed surviving pilots from the Hornet air group.
With few exceptions, they remembered flying "westerly," "almost due west," or "at 265 degrees." One pilot pointed to the chart and said, "We went the wrong way to start with."
Rear Adm. Raymond Spruance was skeptical of the contradiction. In the opening paragraph of his own report to Nimitz, he wrote that when there were disparities between the Hornet's report and the others, the Enterprise account should be taken as more accurate.
"It’s pretty damning for him to say that in paragraph one," Rychlik said. "But Nimitz did not pursue the matter."
Finally, the loss of the Yorktown and the death of most witnesses to Massey’s actions prevented his award from ever going up the chain of command.
There was also a deeper issue the Navy didn't want to acknowledge. That would be the torpedo scandal and the fact the torpedo bombers were horribly outdated and flawed planes.
"If they had awarded these guys the Medal of Honor, they would be acknowledging they were sending these guys to their deaths with faulty equipment," Rychlik said. "The torpedoes were bad. The planes were bad."
This isn't the first effort to win these men the Medal of Honor. In 1981, a group of Waldron's surviving Naval Academy classmates attempted to make the case for all three. The effort failed because it relied solely on secondary sources.
Even Mitscher himself tried to get Waldron the Medal of Honor. He failed as well.
The Navy's Reluctance to Upgrade Awards
On top of everything, the Navy during WWII was extremely reluctant to award the Medal of Honor to anyone. The Navy suffered extreme losses and witnessed countless examples of extraordinary heroism in the opening attack at Pearl Harbor. Fifteen sailors earned the award during the bombing, sparking backlash among military leadership and politicians as to why so many awards were given for such a disastrous event.
Going forward, the Navy hesitated countless times to decorate its sailors with the award and the numbers prove it. During WWII, the Army, including the Army Air Force, awarded 341 Medals of Honor. The Marine Corps awarded 82. The Navy awarded just 57, of which, 15 were for Pearl Harbor alone.
But the real disparity is in what has happened since. The Army has repeatedly reviewed and upgraded awards when new evidence emerged or when prejudice was found to have influenced original decisions.
In 1997, President Clinton awarded seven Medals of Honor to Black soldiers whose valor in WWII had been overlooked due to racism, including 1st Lt. Vernon Baker and Staff Sgt. Ruben Rivers.
In 2000, 22 Japanese-American soldiers from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team received upgrades, including Senator Daniel Inouye. The 2014 Valor 24 initiative upgraded another 24 Distinguished Service Crosses to Medals of Honor for soldiers from WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
The Navy, according to Rychlik, has been far more reluctant. "The Navy has only done it twice since World War II," he said.
But there is recent precedent for hope. In February 2026, President Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to Capt. Royce Williams, a 100-year-old Navy pilot whose 1952 dogfight against seven Soviet MiG-15s had been classified for decades.
Williams had originally received a Silver Star, upgraded to the Navy Cross in 2023, and finally the Medal of Honor after Congress passed legislation waiving the statute of limitations. The effort took more than a decade and required the backing of over 120 admirals and generals.
The Marine Corps also recently announced that Capt. John Ripley and Maj. James Capers Jr. are to receive the award for their heroic actions and sacrifices during the Vietnam War.
Even the Air Force, after much congressional effort and pushback from the Navy, upgraded Master Sergeant John Chapman’s posthumous Air Force Cross to the Medal of Honor in 2018.
For Rychlik, these cases prove it can be done. The question is whether the Navy will apply the same standard to the aviators who helped win the Battle of Midway.
The Fight Continues
In 2021, four members of Congress wrote to the Secretary of the Navy requesting a review of the case. The Navy's Council of Review Boards rejected the request without even consulting the Naval History and Heritage Command.
Rychlik filed FOIA requests and discovered the Navy had "no evidentiary information in the records" to justify its response.
Then came a breakthrough. In August 2025, Rear Adm. Cox wrote a letter stating that the three squadron commanders "would likely have been awarded Medals of Honor had the information been available in 1942 to Admiral Nimitz and his staff."
Cox concluded that previous reviews were "pro forma" and recommended the case be submitted to the Secretary of the Navy for review.
"Someone who is the Navy's top historian and knows a lot about the Battle of Midway is willing to go out and acknowledge what these guys did is special," Rychlik said. "It's pretty serious."
Critics might argue that the torpedo bombers scored no hits and sank no carriers. But sinking a ship alone does not earn the Medal of Honor. The award requires "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty." It is about the nature of the sacrifice, not merely the result.
Rear Adm. Nevin Carr, a Naval Academy classmate of Rychlik's who reviewed the research, framed it in terms of consequence. Carr observed that a Marine who jumps on a grenade to save his buddies is unlikely to affect the outcome of a battle, but is fully deserving of the award. What these torpedo bomber pilots did was equally as heroic but also changed the course of the entire Pacific War and likely the course of history itself.
"Midway is the greatest naval victory in U.S. Navy history," Rychlik said. "These men deserve to be recognized for what they did to win it."
The Families They Left Behind
Cmdr. Lance B. Massey USN (Ret.) was five years old when his father was killed at Midway. His mother, widowed twice by naval aviators, rarely spoke of her late husband.
"I learned more about my father in the last 10 years than I ever knew before," Lance said of Rychlik’s efforts.
Still, his father's sacrifice shaped his entire life. Lance followed his father into naval aviation, graduating from the Naval Academy and flying more than 200 combat missions over North Vietnam. He retired after 30 years in the Navy. His son followed his footsteps into the military.
"I felt the whole time I was in the Navy it was because of my father," he said.
The family has always been proud of the Navy Cross. But after eight decades and multiple failed efforts to upgrade the award, Lance has learned not to get his hopes up.
"I would be surprised if it ever happens. I'm 89 years old,” he said. “I won't be around anymore. My son will be. Maybe if they do give it to my father, he'll be the one that accepts it."
Susan Vicedomini, Lindsey's granddaughter, grew up hearing stories about her grandfather. Her mother had just turned three when Lindsey was killed.
"There is only one picture that she ever owned that shows her with him,” Vicedomini said. “It’s blurry, she was just a baby."
The family knew Lindsey had been injured before the battle, but not the extent of it.
"We always heard that he was banged up and in sick bay," Vicedomini said. "I never heard he couldn't put on his own goggles or had to be lowered into the cockpit."
To her, that hidden detail is what makes her grandfather's sacrifice extraordinary.
"It’s one thing to say 'if I go out, I may not return', but to go out with the level of injuries he had, he was already operating while hampered," she said. "No one would have thought twice if he stayed in sick bay. To me, that is the step above and beyond."
Her mother passed away in 2017. Now, every time Vicedomini learns something new about her grandfather from Rychlik, her first thought is to call her.
"But I can't," she said. "It's bittersweet."
If the Medal of Honor is awarded, she said, "It's verification that all the family stories of him going above and beyond meant something and the country acknowledges it meant something."
Waiting for Justice
In November 1945, a clearly uncomfortable Nimitz came face to face with Waldron’s sister Isle when he presented a posthumous Navy Cross to the family on behalf of her son, Commander George Philip.
Rychlik has a photograph from that day. The five-star admiral stands with Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. No one in the room looks happy except Philip’s widow. Waldron’s sister, who lost both her sons in the war in addition to her brother, was clearly aware of the role Nimitz played in disapproving of her brother’s Medal of Honor that the South Dakota congressional delegation had requested in 1942.
Rychlik's room over the garage has become a shrine to Midway. His wife calls his study "the Midway room."
He is now in regular contact with the office of Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia, whose staff has committed to weekly updates as they work to build Navy and congressional support for a review of these cases.
Rychlik now believes he has enough primary source evidence to get the record corrected. His research has shown that the Nimitz was unaware of many of these facts and chose not to investigate Mitscher’s flawed after action report, preventing each man from receiving the Medal of Honor.
A crucial aspect of the valor all these men, obsolete aircraft and erratic torpedoes, was not something that could have been acknowledged by the Navy to justify the awards as it may have disclosed to the Japanese these weaknesses and exposed the Navy to criticism for sending men into battle with such poor equipment.
"To someday be in the same room with some of these families and see them get the award their grandparents deserved," Rychlik said. "That would be the crowning achievement of my life."
Eighty-three years have passed since the morning of June 4, 1942. The men who flew those missions are long gone. But their families remain, and so does the historical record. The Navy has a chance to do what Admiral Nimitz was unable to at the time, acknowledge what John Waldron, Eugene Lindsey and Lance Massey did to win the most important naval battle in modern history.
