On Seas So Crimson
Page 40
“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Kusaka asked.
“Denied,” Yamaguchi said coolly, causing the other man to stiffen.
I’m going to let you stand there for awhile, Yamaguchi thought uncharitably. He continued to make notations as he read, continuing for thirty pages as Rear Admiral Kusaka grew noticeably angrier.
“Do you know the reason why I did not divert this force to strike Wake Island, Rear Admiral Kusaka?” Yamaguchi asked, then continued before Kusaka could respond. “Because I see no reason to lose even one more airplane seizing a simple atoll in the middle of the Pacific.”
“But sir…” Kusaka started to respond.
“I was not finished,” Yamaguchi snapped, causing the other admiral to shut up. He finished writing a short note for the front piece of the Kido Butai’s after action report.
Production of the Sandaburo warheads must be increased at once, Yamaguchi thought. It is critical to the war’s success.
“If we capture Wake, as I think we will after Vice Admiral Inoue realizes how many forces he already has, the Americans will likely attempt to take it back,” Yamaguchi said. “When this happens, we will need every pilot we have to strike them one more heavy blow. It is the only way we will succeed.”
Kusaka looked as if he would like to say something, but Yamaguchi stood from behind his desk. Reaching to his right, he pulled out a simple courier’s portfolio.
“Also included in this packet are your transfer orders, I thought I would give you an early start on your movement to Vice Admiral Inoue’s staff,” Yamaguchi said. “Since you are so fixated with Wake, it is perhaps a move for the best.”
He keeps a straight face despite the fact I have just basically relieved him, Yamaguchi thought, looking at Kusaka. No matter, he will soon not be my problem.
“I have instructed Captain Genda to make a Suisei ready for your departure,” Yamaguchi said. “May you have good fortune.”
Kusaka took the courier’s bag, stepped back two steps, and bowed. Yamaguchi gave the man a short nod in return, and then watched as the junior flag officer exited his day cabin. Turning, he went back to the map of the Pacific that was hung on the bulkhead. Exhaling heavily, he regarded the Dutch East Indies.
Our entire war effort comes down to those islands, he thought. I wish the Kido Butai could fully participate. Shaking his head, he returned to his desk and sat down, placing his feet up and tipping his cap down over his eyes. But, for now, we have done our part, and we must rest.
Less than two minutes after he sat down, Vice Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, victor of the Battle of Hawaii, slept for the first time in weeks.
ACTS OF WAR DRAMATIS PERSONAE
U.S.S. Nautilus
Lieutenant (j.g.) Nicholas “Nick” Elrod Cobb
Lieutenant Commander Jason Freeman
Ensign Larry Workman
Lieutenant Commander Harold Banes
Chief Robert Pound
U.S.S. Houston
Commander Jacob Thoreau Morton
Chief Petty Officer Roberts
Seaman Third Class Teague
Captain Sean Wallace
Lieutenant Adam Connor
Lieutenant Commander David Sloan
VMF-21
Major Adam Jefferson Haynes
Captain Scott Walters
Captain Keith Seidel
Captain William Kennedy
Captain Jacob Bowles
Captain David West
Captain Todd Burke
Wing Commander Connor O’Rourke
VB-8
Lieutenant Eric Melville Cobb
Ensign Charles Read
Radioman First Class Willie Brown
VMF-14
Captains Samuel and David Cobb
Major Max Bowden
Pearl Harbor and Oahu
Admiral Hank Jensen
Rear Admiral Daniel Graham
Vice Admiral Jacob Bowles
Patricia Ann Cobb
Josephine Marie Morton
Joanna “Sadie” Cobb
Nurse Beverly Bowden
Lieutenant Colonel John McKenna.
Commander Keith Hertling
Nurse Nancy Hertling
Alabama
Alma Cobb nee Lee
Samuel Cobb
Elma Cotner
Theodore Cotner
Joyce Cotner
Beauregard Forrest Cotner
AFTERWORD TO ACTS OF WAR
I would like to take this opportunity to thank a few people for their help with this novel. As always, my wife Anita has been her usual supportive self. It is not easy, nor exactly fun, being an author’s spouse. Writing, by and large, is a solitary activity, and at least in my case, very streak oriented. Doing little things like, oh, making sure I eat and occasionally come out of the room to interact with humans is not always properly rewarded by the proper amount of gratitude. However, no matter how much I may get annoyed, I am grateful that I am married to a wonderful woman who has always been willing to help me get things done. Even when I grumble about being forced to go to sleep when I have “just one more paragraph,” I know that I drafted about as well as a man in ye olde wife lottery. Love you honey, and here’s to many more “Hey, I have an idea…” discussions in the future.
Second, I’d like to thank other individuals who have lent me beta reading support and lent me help with this manuscript. Kat Mitchell, despite her protestations, two major moves, and occasional bout of absentmindedness has done another great job correcting my grammar. My sister, Catherine Cole, put her editorial skills to use when she could between her numerous other commitments. Author Alma Boykin has provided a willing ear and eye to scan over things and sometimes save me from myself in earlier iterations. Mary Cantrell provided professional editing service on short notice despite me being delayed thanks to an onset of Murphy. Finally Patricia Hildebrand, in addition to introducing me to Mary, is responsible for inspiring a version change via stating, “I’ve watched lots of World War II documentaries, and I can’t tell where this deviates from what actually occurred.” Well, 150 pages later, I hope that the Point of Deviation from our actual timeline was much clearer.
Lastly, as always, thank you for purchasing this book. Please tell your family and friends about it, and if you liked it give it a rating on Amazon. Merchandise associated with it is available on Redbubble (http://www.redbubble.com/people/youngblai/works/12774584-battle-of-hawaii?grid_pos=1&p=canvas-print) and CafePress (http://www.cafepress.com/mf/93163485/battle-of-hawaii-acts-of-war_tshirt?productId=1400901475 ).
COLLISIONS OF THE DAMNED
Original Text Copyright © 2015 James Young
All rights reserved.
Dedication
To the “ragged, rugged warriors” of the ABDA Command. Gone but not forgotten.
STANDARD SHIP DIAGRAMS
MAPS OF THE EAST INDIES
CHAPTER 1: JUNCTIONS
War means fighting, and fighting means killing.—Nathan Bedford Forrest, CSA.
Red One
Gulf of Mexico
0530 Eastern Time
29 March 1943
The explosion, low on the horizon to his starboard in the predawn darkness, caused Major Adam Haynes to whip his head around in a Pavlovian response. His hands reflexively tightened on the Wildcat’s stick and throttle, a subconscious dance born from years of living and killing in the cockpit. As the stocky Marine major watched, the bright flash transformed into a dancing, yellowish glow that reflected off the water.
Tanker, he thought, blue eyes narrowing. The Krauts are getting downright brazen in their submarine attacks. That ship can’t be more than twenty miles off the coast!
The Second World War or, as some were calling it, the Usurper’s War, had resumed a little over seventy-two hours before. According to their preflight briefing, more than two dozen ships had been struck up and down both coasts of Florida. Nazi Germany, it seemed, had been far more prepared for war than the United States.
Or at least,
that’s what I gather from having to send fighters out to try and spot submarines, Adam thought with disgust. At least there weren’t enough bombs to go around to us.
“Red One…” his wingman, First Lieutenant Griffin Teague, started to report.
“Saw it, Two,” Adam affirmed resignedly. He brought the short, tubby Wildcat into a gentle turn. “Red Three, take Four and go up to ten thousand feet, heading three five oh true,” Adam barked into his throat microphone. “Two, open it up, we’re going down to angels three. Kill your navigation lights.”
Pushing his nose down, Adam checked to make sure Three and Four had understood his implied order to keep their lights on. Seeing that the pilots had, he watched as his altimeter unwound to three thousand feet. Satisfied with his built up airspeed and that Red Two was sufficiently distant as to give them both room to maneuver, Adam kept his throttle just below the maximum as he hurtled northward.
“Any aircraft this frequency! Any aircraft this frequency! This is U.S. Army Locust Flight, please respond!” a call crackled through his headphones crackled.
Locust Flight? This better not be a Kraut tri… Adam started to think. The stream of tracers that shot up into the dark sky and intersected with a slightly blacker shape in several bright flashes brought that thought to a halt. His eyes on the stricken aircraft, Adam did notice that it had released several bombs until there was a series of waterspouts in close proximity to the tracers’ point of origin. Before the spray from the bombs had finished falling, the bomber fell off to one side, dipped a wing, and cartwheeled into the Gulf of Mexico in a brilliant cascade of flame and sea.
Holy shit! Adam thought, his mouth suddenly cotton. Kicking his rudder, he brought the Wildcat’s nose around to a westerly heading to maintain separation from the tracers’ origin.
“Locust Flight, this is Buccaneer One,” Adam replied, a sickening feeling in his stomach. “Locust Flight, this is Buccaneer One.”
The ominous silence in return told him that the bomber in question had probably been Locust Flight. Looking to his starboard, he sighted a white wake on the ocean, and was able to follow it to the German submarine below.
Well at least it’s bright enough to see now, he thought. The glint of sunlight on glass to his north, and slightly higher, also told him that the dead bomber had indeed been Locust Leader.
Dammit, what was that Army frequency again? Adam wondered. Before he could start breaking out his knee pad, his headphones crackled.
“Navy fighters, Navy fighters, this is Locust Two,” a very shaken Southern drawl echoed in his headphones.
“Locust Two, Red One,” Adam replied quickly. “You carrying any ordnance on that thing, or are we waiting for help?”
“I’ve got four depth charges,” Locust Two replied after a moment. “We’ve called for help, Eglin Field says it will be at least twenty minutes.”
“Red One, Red Three,” his second section leader, First Lieutenant Mark Butler, interrupted. “I have contacted Homeplate and they report we will have aircraft on station in ten minutes.”
Ten minutes from now that submarine should be dived, Adam thought with a flash of anger. In fact, I don’t know why he’s not diving now.
“We don’t have ten minutes, Red Three,” Adam replied, his tone matter of fact. Keeping his fighter in a bank as he circled the submarine, he realized he could see figures running to the conning tower from the large gun on deck.
“Hell, we probably don’t even have five,” Adam snapped. “Red Three, come on down with Four, set up on that bastard’s bow. Locust, you want to come in from astern or one of the sides?”
There was a long pause. Just as Adam was about to make the bomber pilot’s decision for him, the Army officer replied.
“Astern, Red One,” the man stated, his voice shaking even further.
“Red Three, me and Red Two are coming in from the bastard’s port quarter,” Adam said. “When I give you the word, your section comes in from the starboard bow. Clear that damn conning tower, Locust Two you come in from astern and kill the son of a bitch. Everyone clear?”
There were three acknowledgments of varying certainty as Adam circled to the submarine’s port side. As he looked over the Nazi submarine, Adam realized that the sun was starting to glisten off a trail of oil streaming from the U-boat’s starboard beam.
Might explain why he hasn’t dived yet, Adam thought. In these waters that’d stick out like a sore thumb. Taking one last look around, Adam saw that the bullet shaped Army bomber was making its final turn. Cursing mentally, he pulled his own fighter up into an Immelman, the Wildcat growing sluggish as it lost velocity.
I want my damn Spitfire back, Adam seethed, the F4F finally finishing its reversal. With one more quick look to see Red Two on his wing, the B-26 starting its attack run, and Red Three and Four in their own dives, Adam pushed his nose down and advanced the throttle. The Pratt & Whitney began thundering in the cramped cockpit, the vibration thrumming up his arm. Watching his instruments, Adam lessened the angle of his dive as he passed five hundred feet, leveling off barely two wingspans above the waves.
“Red Flight, do not pull up until you’re past the submarine, whatever you do,” Adam warned as the four fighters hurtled towards the U-boat. With his naked eye, Adam watched as the German vessel began to turn towards him, giving the Army pilot a much narrower target. With a strangely detached thought, he realized that the conning tower had three additional platforms, two of which held twin cannons and the last with a quadruple mount. Deciding the fighters were a lesser threat, the crew of the last weapon swung aft towards the approaching bomber.
That’s the bastard who has to die, Adam decided, bending down to his sight as he passed roughly a half mile from the submarine. The conning tower jumped into sharp relief as he stared into the glass, and Adam had a split second to register several sharp flashes directed towards him before he was squeezing his own trigger.
The next handful of seconds was a cacophony of sights and sounds that his mind only dimly registered. Only later would Adam realize the several loud bangs he heard were the sound of the German gunner briefly finding the range to his fighter. Or that the red mist at the edge of his sight picture was Red Two’s fire blasting apart a lookout’s head and simultaneously mortally wounding the U-boat’s commander.
In the moment, Adam watched as his own six .50-caliber machine guns briefly concentrated their fire on an area the size of a window pane before once again scything across the submarine’s deck as the Wildcat closed through its convergence range of two hundred yards. In those pair of horrible seconds, his guns placed over a hundred rounds into the quad mount’s gunner, three of the 20-mm Oerlikons, and both assistant gunners. All three men slumped to the flak platform’s deck as Adam released his trigger, flashing over the submarine in a blur of gray and roar of propeller.
Seeing his flight leader was past, Red Three opened fire at just over three hundred yards. His burst of fire caught a lookout just as the man stood up to try and reman the forward anti-aircraft gun. The German’s sailor’s scream, subsequent trip overboard, and hailstorm of half-inch slugs convinced the remaining bridge watch to continue hugging the conning tower’s deck. As Red Three and Four roared overhead, the Army bomber’s nose guns added another burst of motivation just before Locust Two’s bombardier released his weapons.
Dropped from under one hundred feet, the four depth charges separated from the speeding B-26 and arced downwards towards their target. As Adam brought the Wildcat around, the first charge landed astern of the turning U-boat. Even as the submarine was shaking from that blast, the next charge exploded underneath the submarine’s stern, sending her spinning propellers out of the water. Before the turning, glistening blades had dropped back out of sight, the third depth charge struck at the base of the conning tower with a bright flash and eruption of debris. The fourth charge’s failure to detonate was lost in the violence of the blast, the U-boat heeling over to starboard before returning to an even keel with smoke p
ouring from her amidships.
Pretty sure that’s done her in. The vessel’s slowing and settling reinforced Adam’s thought, and he saw a hatch open at the vessels’s stern. With a smile that would have been horrible to behold had someone else shared the cockpit, Adam finished bringing the Wildcat’s nose back onto the U-boat two miles away. Grimly, he closed with the mortally wounded submarine at a far slower rate than he had begun his previous strafing run.
Oh no, you bastards, you don’t get off that easy, he thought with a satisfied rage. Even as he dived, Adam noted that the Wildcat’s engine sounded far rougher than it had just a few moments before. Ignoring the sound, he lined his sight up on the men struggling to get out of the hatch.
“Red One, there’s a white sheet forward,” Red Three stated.
I don’t give a shit… Adam thought. He watched as two of the men on deck struggling with a raft turned and looked back towards Adam’s approaching fighter. One man dived over the side, the other leapt back towards the hatch just as another German sailor had poked his head out. Adam began laughing uncontrollably as the exiting sailor took two boots to his face, his comrade bending awkwardly in a way that almost certainly indicated a broken leg.
Give my regards to Goering when you get to Hell, Adam thought, starting to squeeze the trigger.
“Red One! Red One! They’re surrendering!” Red Three cried.