A CODE FOR TOMORROW: A Ingram Novel (The Todd Ingram Series Book 2)

by JOHN J. GOBBELL

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  26 October, 1942

  U.S.S. Howell (DD 482)

  120 Miles North Of The Santa Cruz Islands

  8˚ 52.3' S; 166˚19.3' E

  Where the hell are they? Ingram’s teeth chattered as he looked up to the overcast. The Japanese were up there; he heard their high-pitched engines milling about.

  A desperate Kinkaid had found a squall. It was a nice one with blessed rain coming down in light sheets, enveloping them, mercifully cooling his body and washing away the grime and filth of three days hard steaming, making the ship look slick, like it had just been painted. Ingram whipped off his helmet and held his face up, the pure water running down his cheeks, his neck, his back, soaking his shirt and trousers.

  Dutton called from CIC, “Japs directly overhead, F4Fs chewing them up.”

  Beside him stood Justice, his new talker, without his helmet, a stupid grin on his face. Justice was a tall, blondish beanpole with the largest set of keys clipped to his belt Ingram had ever seen. Every time Justice took a step, his keys jingled. Ingram figured there were fifty at least. He made a note to ask sometime where they all belonged.

  “Ingram!” Landa shouted.

  “Yes, Sir?”

  “What the hell. You a damned Clabber Girl? Put the helmet back on. We got a war to fight.”

  Ingram sighed. Only Jerry 'Boom Boom' Landa could get away with talking to his executive officer like that. “Yes, Sir.” He donned his helmet and jabbed Justice in the ribs to do the same.

  Soon they heard rumblings to the south. Dutton reported the Hornet group was under attack. Some of the firing, Ingram recognized as the ‘crumff’ of five-inch guns along with the ‘pom-pom’ of 40 millimeter canons.

  “Jesus!” said Dutton.

  “What?”

  “Hold on.” Radio silence had been broken and a loud speaker squawked loudly in the background. At length Dutton said, “Gun Control and Bridge, this is Combat.”

  “Go ahead,” said Landa.

  “Overheard on TACT TWO from the Anderson.” The U.S.S. Anderson was a destroyer assigned to the Hornet’s protective screen, the formation steaming on a parallel course ten miles south. “No squall for the Hornet to hide in. The Japs planted a bomb on her flight deck aft, two more amidships. They also stuck two torpedoes in her engineering spaces. Another Jap did a ‘Hari Kari’ into the hanger deck with two bombs exploding among airplanes. Said she’s burning from stem to stern, is dead in the water and listing ten degrees.”

  “Good God,” gasped Landa. Just then they heard another loud ‘whump’ from the south.

  Ingram signed off, unable to believe that the graceful ship they had been steaming with the past few days, the one who winked her light so mysteriously last night, was now in mortal danger. Who’s next?

  Landa looked up at Ingram. “Squall won't last forever. Shoot straight, Todd.”

  Five minutes later, the rain stopped. Ten minutes after that, the clouds burned off giving way to a bright mid-morning. To the south, a tall, two thousand foot column of angry black smoke marked the spot where the Hornet lay dead in the water. Little specs darted overhead, spitting death, some falling in flames from the pock-marked sky.

  “Luther, what’s the latest on the Hornet?” Ingram asked.

  Speakers blared in CIC, some with panicky voices. Dutton’s voice was loaded with line static, “She’s still in deep trouble, but the fires are under control. They think they can re-light boilers. Northampton is rigging a line to tow her. Now they--oops!”

  “What?”

  Dutton’s voice was sharp. “Air search. Bogeys on the way. Bearing three-three-zero, range thirty thousand. ETA about ten minutes.”

  “Gun control aye.” Ingram turned to Justice. “Tell all stations to expect an air attack from the northwest in ten minutes.”

  The Aichi D3A1 Navy, Type 99, carrier dive-bombers droned in at 10,000 feet. Designated “Val” by the allied forces, the low wing monoplanes were powered by a 1070 horsepower Kensei radial engine. They had a fixed landing gear, thus only flew at about 150 knots. But the fixed landing gear helped slow them in dives, increasing their bombing accuracy. The Val carried a crew of two and a bomb load of one 551 pound bomb under the fuselage and a 132 pound bomb under each wing. They approached in their standard pattern of three plane vees, three vees to a nine plane cluster. This morning they tried to work their way east to dive out of the sun. But the F4F Wildcat fighters, flying combat air patrol overhead, drove them to the north, the little black specs well outlined against the sky. Some Vals fell in flames, as the American fighters wove in among them.

  Ingram looked up to the Mark 37 director seeing just the top of Wilson’s battle helmet. “You have them, Jack?”

  “On target and tracking, Range 14,000 yards.”

  “Plan on opening fire at 12,000.”

  “Roger.”

  The hum of Japanese engines grew to a roar as the dive bombers approached.

  Justice’s keys jingled as he pushed his helmet back and counted, “...nine, twelve, fifteen, aw shiiit, there’s only two planes in the last group. We was short-changed.”

  You’ll be okay, Justice.

  Just then the lead pushed over for his dive, his two wingmen following.

  An enormous explosion rocked the battlegroup. Ingram jerked around to see the cruiser San Juan completely enveloped in a dark, roiling cloud. Bomb? Torpedo?.

  “My God, she’s blown up!” said Landa.

  The San Juan's prow nosed out of the cloud. She had simultaneously fired all of her twelve five-inch guns, fifty-six forty millimeter and innumerable twenty millimeter canons. She was soon joined by the South Dakota, Portland, and Enterprise.

  At a nod from Landa, Ingram shouted, “Commence fire!”

  Within two seconds all five of the Howell’s five inch guns sent their salvoes to the sky with a rippling 'crack;' her forty and twenty millimeter guns soon joining in.

  The Howell’s guns were pointed to port, their barrels cranked up to eighty degrees elevation, as they fired at the Japanese airplanes. A standard five-inch thirty-eight caliber gun has a muzzle velocity of 2,600 feet per second. Shooting at a rate of twelve to fifteen rounds a minute, the gun fires with a vicious ‘crack’ that is so strong, so piercing, that one standing near the muzzle risks a broken eardrum and possible loss of hearing. It’s concussion feels as if an out of control freight train has just raced by, all one-hundred cars at once. The muzzle of Leo Seltzer's mount was within forty feet of where Ingram stood. That damned muzzle blast could shatter the half-inch thick glass in the pilot house portholes if the quartermasters didn’t undog them and trice them up. Stuffing cotton in his ears didn’t help much. Nor did clamping on the sound powered phones. It was worse with the other ships firing around him, a powerful anti-rhythmic concussive force, the projectiles soaring skyward, pock-marking the sky, bursting among the enemy bombers locked in their death-plunges.

  “Left standard rudder!” shouted Landa.

  A bomb burst off the Howell's starboard bow, a tall column of water hissing skyward as they raced past.

  Landa shouted again as he pointed to three Japanese Val dive bombers trailing smoke. One was on fire and coming straight down. The other two were spinning, pieces ripping off the planes as they twirled in the sky.

  The CRUMFF CRUMFF CRUMFF of Task Force 16's guns banged methodically. The destroyers of the outer ring kept a mad pace with the San Juan, and South Dakota, all pouring lead into the sky like fire hoses, dark puffs littering the atmosphere from horizon to horizon, the ship’s twisting in desperate serpentine movements, evading bombs. Three more Vals pushed over into their dives, two exploding in mid-air, flaming pieces twirling about. Just then, six Vals in two groups of three, came at them from straight ahead, poised to plunge straight down.

  “Ingram!” Landa shouted, has face bright-red.

  “Sir?”

  “Take those planes under fire, damnit!” Even as he shrieked, a bomb exploded in
a loud ‘whack’ on the Enterprise’s forward flight deck, then another hit amidships, smoke erupting as a third bomb fell in the water alongside, sending up an enormous plume of cascading mist.

  “Sir!”

  It wasn’t easy to shift targets. The forties and twenties were firing independently. And Wilson’s five gun mounts were in local control, concentrating on a Val that had just finished its dive, leaving twin plumes of water along the South Dakota's starboard side. Chased by two F4Fs, it swooped directly overhead, its engine shrieking, staying low in a mad dash to escape. Mount fifty-two erupted, blasting off the Val’s left wing, only five hundred yards away. The brown-green plane spun furiously on its axis for a moment, then hit the water, disintegrating in flames.

  “Jack! Tell Seltzer to shift targets to the meatballs off the bow,” Ingram shouted.

  As if clairvoyant, Seltzer twirled his mount and acquired the planes in four seconds, then commenced fire. Down they screamed, 7,000, 5,000, 3,000 feet. Suddenly, the lead Val blew up. The one to starboard lost part of its tail assembly, but kept diving, shedding parts until it flipped into a furious spin, spewing pieces through a sky already littered with the puffs of hundreds of exploding projectiles.

  The third Val plunged through 1,000 feet. Seltzer's mount bellowed, its five-inch projectile bursting directly before the dive-bomber’s nose now. The Val shuddered, its bombs prematurely released, falling harmlessly into the sea.

  A cheer forming in Ingram's throat turned to a gasp of horror. The plane, it's pilot most likely dying, shifted its course slightly from the Enterprise, a target he knew he would never reach.

  With a slight wiggle of the stick, the enemy pilot headed directly for the Howell.

  Mount Fifty-two roared again. Mount fifty-one shifted and acquired the Val, spewing out its own stream of anti-aircraft projectiles. Soon the forward forty-millimeters blasted at the dive bomber.

  As it bore in closer, Ingram saw the pilot hunched over his stick, his head below the instrument panel, most likely dead.

  “Left full rudder,” Landa shouted.

  “Eiiiyahhhh.” Ingram screamed.

  Somehow, the Japanese pilot raised his head at the last moment. He looked Ingram in the eyes, his Val headed straight for the bridge. But he must have shoved the stick at the last instant, possibly in pain. For his dive bomber suddenly pitched down and smacked onto the foredeck, caroming into mount fifty-one and erupting into flames.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  26 October, 1942

  U.S.S. Howell (DD 482)

  120 Miles North Of The Santa Cruz Islands

  8˚ 44.1' S; 166˚ 29.6' E

  Flames. Searing, white-hot heat. Burning gasoline and lung-rasping smoke. Men coughing and screaming. Ingram found himself behind director fifty-one, shoved against a stanchion, a leg dangling over the side of the pilot house. Two or three red-hot nickel-size pieces of metal were imbedded in his khaki shirt, the garment blackened and tattered. And he had no idea how he had lost his helmet

  Steaming pieces of wreckage littered the bridge. Just below, a man was on fire, twirling and shrieking, as another tried to beat out the flames. The fiery wraith screamed horribly and clambered on the aft bulwark, leaving a trail of soot and blood as he frantically grabbed at air. He stood and something jingled a half second before he jumped far into space, his body a blazing torch before it smacked the water.

  “Jesus!” Ingram wobbled to his feet and grabbed a stanchion. “What the--?”

  Fanned by the wind, the gasoline-fed flames leaped at him, searing his skin and eyebrows, making him throw his hands to his face.

  Justice was gone. Their phone sets lay scattered across the deck as if ripped from their heads by Frankenstein’s monster. The deck heeled drunkenly to starboard as, the Howell leaned into the left turn just ordered by Landa.

  Landa! The captain!

  A long, deep, whistle-blast sounded among the gunfire as the Howell rose and fell on waves heeling crazily to starboard. Jammed in her turn, the destroyer was halfway through a circle that would hurl her nose-to-nose with the Enterprise, the carrier’s bow boiling toward them like an enormous meat cleaver, white sheets of water peeling off both sides.

  “Oh, no,” Ingram gasped. Then he leaned down and shouted, “Captain!”

  No response. Smoke poured from the pilot house, wreckage and bodies were splayed across the deck, some bleeding profusely, others jerking spasmodically. One or two were on their feet, holding their heads, stumbling about.

  Jack Wilson leaned out of director fifty-one, his mouth open in horror.

  Ingram glanced up. “You okay?”

  All Wilson could do was jerk his head up and down.

  “Keep shooting.” Ingram pointed to another group of dive-bombers charging toward the Enterprise. “Go to local control if you have to.”

  “Right.” Wilson spun his director, relieved to resume fighting with the guns aft, leaving the mess up forward to others.

  Ingram scurried down the ladder to the bridge deck and rushed to the pilot house hatch. Smoke and fire billowed off the fo’c’sle, singeing his hair and eyebrows. Coughing spasmodically, he grabbed a coat off the deck, held it over his head and dashed into the relative safety of the pilot house. A dozen or so fist-sized puncture holes in the forward bulkhead explained what had happened. Twisted, bodies lay in the pilot house; some groaning, some not moving at all. Through the starboard hatchway, he saw Fred Robertson, the OOD and Lucien O'Donnell, the JOOD. Both lay on the deck in crumpled heaps.

  The Enterprise's horn bellowed again---closer.

  No time to check.

  He ran to the ship’s wheel and twirled the rudder to hard right. Nothing. It didn’t answer. He reached to the aft bulkhead and flipped the steering motor handle through its positions. Nothing. Then he eased the sound powered phones away from the dead lee-helmsman and held up the mouthpiece. “After steering, conn. After steering, conn.” Nothing. Dear God.

  “Captain?”

  Behind him was a noise like a rapidly draining bathtub. He rushed out on the port bridgewing finding Landa trying to rise, his head rested against the bulwark, his hands laying palms up on the deck. “Jerry, you okay?”

  Landa gasped and wheezed horribly, his face turning ashen. Blood from a scalp wound poured over his head. But it was Landa’s breathing; he almost looked blue. Landa looked at Ingram for a moment, his lips moving, but then his eyes closed and his chin fell to his shoulder where just below--

  “Jerry, for crying out loud,” Ingram mouthed, looking at a golf ball size chink of ragged edged shrapnel protruding from Landa’s chest. It looked hot; wisps of steam rose from it.

  The carrier's whistle sounded again, strident, closer. Ingram stood. “Nooooo.”

  The Enterprise hurtled at them like an avalanche. Even if he could move the rudder, it wouldn’t have mattered, it was far too late. The carrier’s horn bellowed five times, the danger signal. Contact was imminent, the 25,500 ton carrier and the 2,100 ton destroyer rushing at each other, at sixty knots relative speed, the result like a five hundred head-on train wrecks on the same track.

  But...she leaned to starboard.

  It was hard to believe but the carrier really was leaning into a turn. Ingram felt a surge of joy. Maybe, just ,maybe. Then, she leaned harder, poised to snap around as was the ship’s characteristic.

  “Oh, thank you,” was all he could think of saying as the ponderous carrier heeled more sharply, skidding into a hard left turn. Ingram dashed back in the pilot house to the lee-helm, its brass pedestal still gleaming from the polishing it had been given this morning. He rang up back full on the starboard engine, an attempt to twist the Howell’s stern clockwise.

  The little pointers on the engineroom telegraph went 'clink, clink,' in response. Thank God! At least something was working. But even if the Howell side-swiped the giant ship, the destroyer's hull would still be smashed like an oversized pomegranate.

  The Howell’s engineers managed to reverse the sta
rboard shaft, the ship vibrating as her screw bit the water in the opposite direction. Then Ingram dashed outside in time to see the overhang of the Enterprise’s flight deck swoop close overhead, barely missing the mast as it hurtled by. Men on the Enterprise’s catwalks merely glanced at them, and went on loading and firing their forty and twenty millimeter cannons without interruption, nearly oblivious to the burning destroyer just beneath them as flames roared on her own flight deck.

  The ships passed, beam to beam, the distance less than fifty feet. Perhaps in defiance, the Howell’s starboard quarter glanced off the aircraft carrier. The destroyer shuddered, her screwguard ripping away as if it were a piece of spaghetti.

  With the Enterprise gone, Ingram ran back in the pilot house and rang up ahead full again on the starboard engine, then back two thirds on the port engine, an attempt to neutralize the jammed rudder, having no idea if it would work. Then he stepped outside to check on Landa, as five men from a repair party surged though, herding wounded below, pitching smoking wreckage over the side.

  One of them, a young redhead with pimples stepped over. His eyes were wide as he asked, “You okay, Sir?”

  “Yes. What’s your name?”

  “uhh...W-W-W-Wilcox, Sir, shipfitter third.”

  “Well, Wilcox. You’re now lee helmsman. Go in and man that engine room telegraph and do what I tell you.”

  Wilcox stepped back in surprise. “But, Sir. I’m not sure if I-----”

  “Go!” Ingram spun Wilcox around, slapped him on the rump and shoved him into the pilot house.

  The Howell’s combined after-battery roared at the dive bombers as the destroyer boiled through in her death circle at twenty-seven knots. But there weren’t many Vals, perhaps six or so, and those were being worked over by the F4Fs.

  Now she spun toward the San Juan; her guns still blazing into the sky. Following the Enterprise’s cue, the San Juan neatly swerved to avoid the Howell, as if she were a maniacal wraith lurching in uncontrolled rage among friend and foe.