The Silver Waterfall

by Kevin Miller

  Why?

  Leslie seethed at the thought of going into combat unarmed, of leading his men with nothing. Did some bonehead screw up the wiring, connecting arming to release? He had always armed his bombs manually, but, today of all days, he had used the newfangled electrical method. Modern 20th century technology over tried and true. Should he go back to Yorktown? He selected the interphone to discuss it with his radioman.

  “Gallagher, do you know what just happened?”

  “Yes, Skipper. I felt the bomb come off. What for?”

  “The damn electrical arming switch, that’s what for! I’m wondering about going back to reload,” Leslie snapped back, thinking aloud more than asking for his radioman’s opinion.

  Still boiling, Leslie scanned behind him and saw a splash on the surface far below. Another bomb? He looked at his wingmen, and noticed an SBD in the second division was missing his. Furious, he turned to the third division in time to see another 1000-pound bomb fall free to the North Pacific.

  Dammit!

  Leslie had to break radio silence or the whole squadron would be unarmed.

  “Do not, repeat, do not arm the electrical release! Arm manually!” he barked on the radio. Having checked his wingman on either side for thumbs-up signals of acknowledgement, he continued to berate himself in silent rage – and again slapped the dashboard in frustration.

  Below, among the twelve Devastators of Torpedo Three, Lloyd Childers flinched at a sudden tall geyser of spray off to starboard. He shouted to his pilot, Harry Corl, and lifted his head skyward to find the reason.

  “Harry, you see that? Are we under attack?” Surprised and anxious, Childers continued to scan about for the enemy.

  Corl nodded before he answered on the interphone that he, too, had seen the splash. Both men checked between the scattered clouds above them.

  “I think that must have come from the VB up there,” Corl said. Next to them, other wary crews searched for more unexpected missiles coming out of the clouds. Off their right, they saw evidence of another impact seconds earlier: a plume of mist hovering over a white mark on the surface.

  What are those guys dropping on? Childers thought. Between the clouds, he caught glimpses of the Wildcat escorts. Only six, with two trailing the torpedo planes. It was something. The VB boys were way up above in the teens. For the moment a spectator, Childers was charged with anticipation. We’re gonna sink a carrier!

  He and the others in his compartment had been awakened at 0400. Grateful to have slept, he felt a calm confidence. After waiting for what seemed like forever in the radioman ready room, the order had come down for pilots to man their planes. He had run out to the flight deck and met Corl by their TBD. Once inside and strapped in, Childers pressed the interphone. “Harry, today is my 21st birthday. Theoretically I’m a man. Let’s celebrate.”

  Flying on the skipper’s wing, they had an unobstructed view to starboard. On the CO’s left wing, Chief Esders held position. Behind him, Bobby Brazier had his hand resting on the canopy rail as if on a Sunday drive.

  Childers’s eye picked up another falling bomb and watched it smack the surface a half-mile off their wing. What the hell is going on? Through a break above he identified a formation of specks – SBDs – before they were hidden by another cloud. Skipper Massey had seen enough and veered the formation left as his nervous pilots followed.

  Soon the excitement faded, and monotony returned as they droned ahead to the southwest. Childers liked flying with Harry, an experienced Warrant, but, to him, a fellow sailor. It was different with the commissioned officers: the chasm of separation present even inside a TBD cockpit. Officers got the briefing from the bridge, and gunners like Childers just jumped in the back, not knowing where they were going. The gunners weren’t expected to ask. Just operate the radio and shoot the enemy. Ours is but to do and…

  Harry he could talk to. Though filled with respect for him, Childers could ask Harry what they were doing and why, as an equal. With him, Childers felt part of the team. Some of his fellows had strong relationships with their pilots, even the Annapolis officers. Some didn’t. One guy had a report chit written on him by his own pilot and got busted down to seaman. Then he had to save his pilot in combat or lose his own life. The unfairness of it.

  As Corl held position on the CO, Childers continued to search in the direction of the explosions. He knew enough about navigation and fuel to know they would find the Japs in the next thirty minutes, or they would go home empty-handed. Though he was apprehensive about his first taste of combat, he was now a twenty-one-year-old man in a torpedo bomber cockpit flying with the best pilot in the squadron. Sinking a carrier would be a great birthday present.

  He scanned off his right wing…and saw something. A small disturbance on the horizon. And another! Waves? No.

  “Harry, got somethin’ to starboard, about thirty degrees off our nose.”

  Corl turned his head and soon nodded. Dark smudges. He counted them as he maintained formation. Signs of ship stack gas or screening smoke, lots of it, about 25 miles away. He gave up counting.

  “You got ’em, Lloyd. I’m tellin’ the CO.”

  Corl rocked their wings as a signal to Massey, and Childers caught the attention of his wingmen and pointed to the contacts. He received knowing nods and thumbs-up signals in return as the sighting was passed down the line to the excited pilots and gunners. Within a minute, the skipper turned the formation northwest and put the enemy off their left nose.

  This is it!

  Lieutenant Commander John Thach – everyone called him Jimmie – struggled to keep visual on the formations above and below him as he led his four Wildcats of Fighting Three.

  The bomb splashes next to the TBDs startled him. They must have come from Max someplace above. A switch snafu? He couldn’t see the bombers, but Lem Massey was turning his torpeckers north. Maybe he had something off to starboard. Thach followed the TBDs…easier to see. Two more of his F4Fs were tied on to VT-3. It was better than nothing, and if they were near the Japs, at least he had some gas left to mix it up.

  Lem and his TBDs were easy to track, only occasionally obscured by the scattered, puffy clouds. They rolled out north, and Thach scanned the horizon ahead and above. Nothing. As a fighter pilot, his world was one of silent pondering. Though he had his mates in their charges next to him, each man was alone. Alone with his thoughts. Alone in his cockpit. Thach thought about the admiral, Captain Buckmaster, his friends, Lem below him and Max above. The captain and the admiral were too damn stingy with his fighters. Thach and his fellow COs had devised a plan. Would it work? Next to him, his wingmen wondered the same – but about their own skipper and his new way to fight the Zeros.

  They continued ahead, and Lem took his boys closer to the surface. There must be something on his nose, but the clouds obscured the horizon. Thach checked his fuel…and continued to scan.

  Then, an antiaircraft burst off his right, yellow. And then another. A blue one. Through a break he saw a ship, a destroyer trailing a big wake. On its fantail a turret fired.

  Lem found ’em!

  Thach then picked up the CAP, a formation of Zeros. A bunch of them, slicing down from above, inside two miles. Shocked, he called out a warning.

  “This is Jimmie! Bandits at ten high!”

  “Tally!” Macomber answered.

  A sudden flash to their left, and Red Dog’s F4F flared up. He nosed over as unseen Zeros from below streamed past them toward the Devastators ahead. Red Dog never had a chance. The air around Thach was unexpectedly filled with agile enemy fighters, and he found himself flying through faint lines of tracer smoke made by his attackers seconds earlier.

  Holy shit! he thought as he struggled to get a count: at least twenty. The Japs seemed to be falling over themselves to take turns at his puny formation. Macomber cried that he was hit, and Tom Cheek escorting the TDBs yelled about something. The swarm of fighters Thach faced overwhelmed him more than he had ever been in an airplane. Lem’s screams
for help broke through the confusion as Thach fought off one Jap after another.

  Sonofabitch!

  Thach tried his beam defense maneuver and pulled hard into the threat. Once his assailant took its nose off to reposition, Thach reversed into it. Each of the Wildcats scissored back and forth to defend itself, with both sides taking snap shots. Macomber was there but no longer transmitting. The nimble Japs pushed them around, but one got slow as he corrected his angle on Macomber. As Thach reversed, a shot fell into his lap. This Zero, painted khaki, appeared to hover in front of him as it pulled lead on Macomber. Thach lifted his nose and squeezed. Rows of tracers raked the fighter from bottom to top, and Thach kicked left rudder to avoid the growing cloud of black smoke.

  More Zeros rolled in. Voices screamed on the radio, one of them Lem. Thach twisted in his seat to keep sight, grunting as he pulled, gasping for breath as he let off, then bracing for another high-g turn. He had never experienced such sensory overload, but he surprised himself that he could fly and track and talk. Gotta do something.

  “Ram, slide right, and act like a section leader!”

  Ensign Ram Dibb pulled away and into the tracer lines as he was ordered, with two Japs in pursuit. Thach avoided a Zero and was now free.

  “I’ve got two on my tail! I need help!” the desperate ensign shouted.

  “Reverse left!” Thach answered, pulling his Wildcat across Dibb’s extended six as Macomber, his radio out, held on.

  Thach saw a high deflection shot develop, just like in training off Point Loma. He kept his pull in as Dibb flew across his nose with a Jap in trail. Assessing range, he bunted for a moment to close it, and squeezed again as the Zero touched his canopy bow. The enemy’s cowling blew off as the engine burst into flames.

  “Reverse!” Thach radioed to Dibb as he stabilized abeam, and, at that moment, Dibb got it. With another on his tail, he pulled into the skipper, who was maneuvering for a repeat high-side attack. Yes! With the Zero out of range for the moment, Dibb allowed himself to float, which sweetened the angles for the CO. As the enemy cranked on a turn to align, Dibb pulled into him and stepped on top rudder. Across from him the CO opened up, and his rounds stitched across the Jap, cutting a wing off and sending the burning fighter spinning to the sea.

  Thach rolled out to check his belly. Sonofabitch!

  A Zero was in for its own high-side shot. Once its nose lit up, Thach leveled and pulled up, and the machine gun rounds missed low. The enemy overshot and Thach reversed, perplexed that Macomber was a thousand feet below them. Below him the slow TBDs continued on the surface, one on fire. Behind them, a white parachute bloomed.

  Dibb was in, and the Jap, belly up to him as it went after the CO, didn’t see him coming. When Thach reversed back, the Zero followed into Dibb’s gunsight. Dibb, fascinated, tracked the beige-colored plane with the strange cage canopy in front of him. In the cage was the bastard enemy who had just shot Red Dog. He didn’t know Dibb was behind him. For a moment, Dibb felt as if he were an executioner, holding a pistol to a man’s head. Despite flying through space, the head was stabilized in front of him, for an instant not moving. Steady. Deserving. Zero deflection, like the textbook. Pull a little lead… Now!

  Dibb fired, and the first rounds flashed on the fuselage before the Zero exploded in front of him. He snatched his Wildcat up and away as flames filled his windscreen, and rolled over to watch the burning plane that carried the pilot he had summarily executed nose over. Finished. Revenge for Red Dog. Die, you sonofabitch!

  He twisted his body to check his six and, seeing nothing, twisted back to check his other side. The Japs were gone. After bigger game.

  “Hiryū reports enemy formation approaching from the east.”

  As they’d had to do all morning, the First Air Fleet staff scanned the reported quadrant to assess the attack, and watch the CAP do its lethal work.

  Genda’s practiced eye was the first to identify them. “More Douglas torpedo bombers,” he said, loud enough for all to hear.

  “Carrier based?” Kusaka asked.

  Genda kept the glasses to his eyes as he answered. “Yes, Chief of Staff.” Low on the water and over ten miles distant, the dots seemed to be running on Hiryū to the northeast. One burst into flame, as the reckless American planes had in each attack.

  Nagumo was now more worried than angry. He had just beaten back a torpedo attack, and the Americans were attacking him again. As long as they did, he was unable to strike back. His carrier captains had to defend their ships, which hindered spotting and warm up. Save for a few fighters, his flight deck was clear, all of them were, and his impatience turned to alarm. This level of resistance was not anticipated, and it was more than the slipping timeline that unnerved him. There had to be another carrier to the east. No submarine sighting reports of a large task force? No reported intelligence? He sensed a need to run northwest and regroup as Genda had counseled while concentrating his floatplane scouts to the east. Once definitively located, he’d send the iron gauntlet to smash the Americans. If CarDiv 2 could escape another attack. What’s out there?

  “Kusaka!”

  “Hai, Force Commander!”

  “What do you recommend?”

  Kusaka looked about as he gathered his thoughts. Genda was close enough to hear, as was Fuchida, who looked up from a bench.

  “Admiral, after we defeat this attack, we run north and bring the attack groups up. Once spotted and warmed up, we’ll launch. And, if we cannot send all the escort fighters we wish, we’ll proceed regardless. In the event CarDiv 2 lags behind, so be it. They’ll launch their planes as soon as possible. I’d say no more than twenty minutes after we do – if we change course now.”

  “When do you expect our CarDiv 1 carriers to launch?”

  Kusaka swallowed. “With all required preparations and the turn to launch heading…1100, Force Commander.”

  Nagumo shook his head in disgust. An hour. An hour ago Kusaka had said it would be an hour.

  “Admiral, the Americans are exhausting themselves in these futile, piecemeal attacks. We’ve repulsed each one. We are superior in equipment and training. They are no match for us. We’ll run to get clear, bring up the attack force, and send it the moment it is ready.”

  “And what of our fighters?” Nagumo growled. Genda leaned in to hear the answer.

  “Admiral, if we cannot recover them, and some must land in the water, so be it. We all agree that time is the most important factor now. Recommend consider that we designate one of the CarDiv 2 ships to serve as a recovery deck for all of our CAP fighters until we can redistribute them to their own ships.” Kusaka seemed confident in his answers.

  Genda had to agree. It made sense. Some of the Zero-sens, out of ammunition and fuel, would have to be sacrificed as the attack group was spotted aft on each deck. It was vital to get them airborne. Extra Type Zeros in the hangar bays, earmarked for the Midway defense force, could be pressed into service of the First Air Fleet. Priorities. Akagi and Kaga steamed north to minimize their exposure, the top priority.

  Nagumo had been disappointed by events – and misled by his fliers, junior and senior – all morning. Now, he could only acquiesce.

  “Proceed as recommended,” he said to Kusaka, holding his gaze. You had better be right.

  Chapter 18

  LTJG Bud Kroeger, Bombing Six, 1005 June 4, 1942

  Kroeger studied the ships off to the northeast and eased away from the skipper for a better view. Many white wakes, some larger than others. Going in all directions, mostly south, and some east. His eyes darted back and forth from the enemy warships ahead to flying form on the CO. Across from Best, Fred Weber seemed to spend more time assessing the ships than flying wing. Looking behind, Kroeger sensed the others in their cockpits picking their targets, excited, checking their switches, their engine readings, fuel, and making one last calculation on their plotting boards – an initial steer for home.

  Awestruck, he focused on the two closest carriers. No islands
to speak of, they looked like big yellow planks on the water. Their high freeboards gave an impression of being top-heavy. One was huge: Kaga by the recognition photos. Checking the VS – the Sails – above, it looked to Kroeger as if they would go for the one a few miles further to the right. Skipper Best was as cool as ever and scanned below with no indication of excitement. His own mouth dry from adrenalin, Kroeger looked across the skipper for enemy fighters and saw none. Yes, they were going for the big one, Kaga.

  “Halterman, there they are. One o’clock about fifteen miles. Ready back there?”

  “Yes, sir,” the radioman answered. Kroeger heard him stow his guns in preparation for the dive.

  More ships came into view as the cloud break opened, screen vessels to the south. How big was this fleet? There’s gotta be CAP up someplace. The sun blazed above his right shoulder and the geometry became clear. The CO would roll them in left from out of the sun. Perfect, just like training, just like Skipper Best had said he’d lead VB-6. Best fishtailed his plane, the signal to take column as his gunner stowed his free .30s. Kroeger nodded when Best glanced at him, and closed his throttle to adjust. He’d follow his CO down the chute as number two. He’d follow him down to hell and back. And Dick Best would get him home.

  The Sails were still in their vee, on top of him, but angling toward their carrier to the right. Ten miles! Where are the Zeros? The ship types were visible now: destroyers and cruisers. No, that fat one must be a battleship. Targets galore, but today Bud Kroeger was going to hit a carrier, the biggest damn carrier in the Jap Navy! It headed northeast, and he squinted to see if it had any planes on deck. There were a few parked aft, probably getting ready for launch. Too far away to tell, but, if they were, he’d lay his bomb right on the flag man. He rechecked that his weapon was armed. Fixed guns – charged. Canopy – back. Blower – low. Prop pitch – low. What was he forgetting? At least another five minutes. Below, the sun reflected the ripple texture on the blue surface. There’s a plane! He followed it as it flew east, a mere speck and in no hurry. Alone. He looked for others and caught himself breathing in the thin air, mouth open from anticipation and repressed fear.