Voyages of the Seventh Carrier

by Peter Albano

  There was an awkward silence. The Americans stared at the deck. Finally, the senior American raised his head. “Then sea duty?”

  Turning his head quickly, the Japanese pulled himself from painful memories. “Yes. When Akagi was commissioned in nineteen twenty-seven, I was a full commander; and I was posted as her first air-operations officer. We developed dive-bombing and torpedobombing tactics.”

  Allen’s voice took a hard edge. “You did a good job.”

  The Japanese smiled. “Yes, indeed, we did.”

  “Then what, Admiral?”

  Hiroshi Fujita swelled, seemed to grow in his chair. “Yonaga! The planning for the world’s greatest carrier began in nineteen thirty-five. I worked on the designs of all the Yamatos from their keels up.” The narrow eyes moved from man to man. “The Yamatos were the greatest warships ever built.”

  “You told us.”

  “Oh?” Confusion clouded the flat face like a sudden squall.

  Another lapse. Brent wondered about the old man’s memory. He knew that aging men often displayed astonishing recall of events long past, yet were unable to remember conversations minutes old. Was Admiral Fujita showing symptoms of senility? He had certainly lived long enough. But, on the other hand, he was intelligent, perceptive and capable of quick decisions. And Brent suspected he had the mind of a master tactician. The squall passed.

  “Oh, yes… yes.” The eyes glinted with a hint of triumph as if the Japanese had peered into the ensign’s mind. Brent stirred uneasily as the ancient sailor continued, directing a question at Brent. “I did not tell you of the Yamatos.”

  “You told us there were four.”

  “Yes. Yamato, Musashi and Shinana, which was a carrier, also. But Yonaga was a modified Yamato – enlarged.” The eyes moved from Ross to Allen. “I told you this.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “And your best battleships, BBs New Jersey, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin would have just been target practice for Yamatoi four hundred sixty millimeter… ah, sorry, eighteen-point-two-inch guns.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps! Ha! Each of Yamato’s turrets weighed twenty-five hundred tons – more than your destroyers. We put two foot facings on the turrets. In fact we built special mills to roll the steel. And each gun weighed one hundred seventy tons, could fire a thirty-two hundred pound shell nearly twenty-five miles. And her bridge tower soared eighty feet above her main deck and was topped by a hundred foot optical range finder.”

  Mark Allen nodded. “We knew of most of these things. We studied fragments of old plans and interviewed naval architects and officers. But you’re the first officer I’ve met who was in the original planning of the class. What do you know of radar – if any?”

  “We were working on surface search radar in nineteen forty-one. But Yamato was not fitted-out when I left.”

  Mark Allen nodded. “Late in the war all members of the class were fitted with Type Thirteen.”

  “Type Thirteen?”

  “Yes. A crude surface search radar with antennas like twin bedsprings,” Allen said. “Please continue.”

  “Yamato’s tower was so large it had six decks, two elevators and was air-conditioned.” Brent heard Yeoman Martin whistle softly. “The hull was divided into five decks, twelve hundred watertight compartments with a double bulkhead dividing her from stem to stern.” The old man leaned back and breathed deeply. The Americans waited silently.

  Finally, Mark Allen spoke. “I didn’t know the compartmentation was that elaborate. What about armor?”

  The old man leaned forward, both hands flat on the oak. “The heaviest ever installed on any ship. It was an innovative design which, of course, Yonaga has. The armor was designed as a box that enclosed the ship’s vitals. For instance, this vessel’s amidships section containing sixteen engine and boiler rooms is shielded by eight inch armor capable of resisting a twenty-five hundred pound bomb dropped from ten thousand feet.”

  “Your belt line – Yonaga has an armor belt; I saw it.”

  “Yes. All Yamatos had a sixteen inch plate at the waterline tapering down to four inches twenty feet below the waterline.”

  “Double bottom?”

  The old man chuckled. “No. Triple.”

  “Speed?”

  “The class was designed with twelve Kanpon boilers – speed twenty-seven knots.”

  “Not enough.”

  “Perhaps. But Yonaga has sixteen Kanpon boilers and makes a flank speed of thirty-two knots. And keep in mind, she displaces eighty-four thousand tons – twelve thousand tons more than her sisters.”

  “That's more than the Queen Mary? Allen mused. And then thoughtfully, “You know, Admiral, we knew nothing of these ships until after the War when we researched them. Even when they were engaged and sunk, we were not aware of their ‘specs.’”

  “Sunk!” the old man said thickly. “Sunk?”

  “You must have known, Admiral. You copied news reports.”

  “But we never believed… ah, could conceive of defeat. We construed such reports as propaganda – lies.”

  “It’s true … They’re gone.”

  “But not to your battleships – never! Atomic bombs?”

  “No, Admiral. Musashi and Yamato to aircraft, and Shinana to a submarine.”

  Silence, as bony tendrils pressed against the desk, delicate jaw worked against itself. The old man’s grief carried Brent back to their first meeting when Captain Aogi had informed Admiral Fujita of the loss of his family. And, now, the old man had lost another family.

  Mark Allen spoke softly, “You wish to end the meeting, sir?”

  The tendrils relented, dropped to the old man’s lap. He spoke to no one in particular. “I am a carrier sailor – one of the foremost proponents of air power – developed carriers for the imperial navy – designed the greatest carrier.” He waved a hand. “But how in the world did the Admiralty manage to lose those ships?”

  “Swarms of planes – hundreds attacking from all points of the compass.”

  “Shinana?”

  “She sortied from Tokyo Bay in forty-four to escape air raids. She was incomplete – still had yard workmen aboard and poor watertight integrity. Even gaskets were missing from her watertight doors. Six fish… ah, torpedos, put her down.”

  “But that is not enough. The two battleships lost to aircraft. The Admiralty must have made some ill-advised decisions. They were capable of surpassing stupidity.”

  “True. Yamato was thrown away. I helped plan the attacks against her.”

  The narrow eyes widened. “You!” The word sounded like an expletive.

  Brent eyed the two old admirals who hunched forward staring at each other as adversaries. They were lost – overcome by memories, old battles, triumphs and defeats. And all of it was as fresh as yesterday’s events. And it would never die, not as long as old warriors lived.

  Suddenly, Mark Allen came erect. He had found his moment of glory to relive. “Yes. I was a junior operations officer on Admiral Mitscher’s staff in carrier Bunker Hill. Task Force Fifty-Eight. We had twelve carriers.”

  “When? Where?”

  “Early April, nineteen forty-five; about one hundred twenty miles southwest of Kyushu. Yamato was headed for Okinawa with a few destroyers and a light cruiser. It was a suicide mission.”

  “You interviewed officers. You are certain it was suicide?”

  “It’s old history, Admiral, verified by records and interviews. And Yamato only had fuel enough to reach Okinawa – not return.”

  “Okinawa was under American attack?”

  “Of course. Yamato was to fight her way to the island, beach herself, send most of her crew to fight ashore as infantry and use her weapons as fire support for the Japanese Army.”

  It was the admiral’s turn to stare in disbelief. “Amazing! Amazing! The naval general staff actually concocted that insanity.”

  “Yes, Admiral. We attacked with over four hundred dive bombers and torpedo bombers.”


  Fujita interrupted with a wave. “Air support! You said she was only one hundred twenty miles southwest of Kyushu.”

  “None!”

  The old sailor looked from man to man, spoke like his mouth was filled with acid. “None! Sacred Buddha – none!”

  “No, admiral. And we were amazed, too. The Yamato, the cruiser and most of the destroyers were thrown away.”

  The old man sighed, slumped. “She must have taken a lot of punishment”

  “Yes. At least ten torpedos and perhaps seventeen bombs.”

  “She must have shot down most of her attackers.”

  Allen and Ross exchanged a glance. “Ten planes were shot down – twelve Americans lost.”

  The voice was almost a whisper. “Japanese losses.”

  “Over four thousand dead.”

  “No! No!” the voice was filled with pain. Brent Ross half rose, felt an urge to apologize, choked the ludicrous impulse back. But the admiral caught himself, straightened with both hands again on the desk. “But it is consistent,” he said flatly.

  “Consistent?”

  “Yes. They are in the Yasakuni Shrine – all heroes.”

  The glinting black eyes bored into Mark Allen. “You must be proud. You did the planning.” The words cracked through the room like breaking ice.

  Grasping his armrests, Allen hunched forward, giving no quarter. “As proud as you are of Plan Z and the thousand dead Americans still in Arizona.”

  Again, Brent disbelieved what he heard: two old admirals still fighting a war long over, remembering every detail of their victories and defeats; still hating, filled with bitterness.

  There was a welcome knock on the door. Nodding to Brent, Fujita gestured. Opening the door quickly, Brent ushered in Radioman Kojaku. Quickly, the rating crossed the room, bowed and handed the admiral several documents, saying, “Commander Fujimoto sent these, Admiral. We just copied them.”

  “Very well. Return to your duties.” In a moment, Kojaku was gone. Silence as the old man scanned the documents, face twisting slowly into a scowl. The eyes moved to Allen, voice shedding anger, curiosity creeping in. “I have heard the Libyan leader, Kadafi, is a strange man.”

  “Strange! Ha! The understatement of the year, Admiral,” Allen said, hostility fading quickly. “He’s a madman who has made an asylum of an entire nation.” The American nodded at the documents. “He’s done something against us… ah, I mean you – Japan.”

  Fujita seemed not to hear. “Why does this world so often choose lunatics as leaders?” He let the rhetorical question hang. Then waving a document, “He has taken the Japanese ambassador and his staff hostage – thirty-two in all. Demands an apology from Japan for our interception of the DC-3. Calls us criminals and—” a bony fist hit the deck “—little yellow monkeys.”

  “He’s dangerous and he has fanatical followers.”

  “He carries his own ‘forty-seven ronin,’ Admiral Allen.”

  “Yes, and completely unpredictable and very dangerous-capable of the most irrational acts of terrorism,” Allen added. “Anywhere, with any weapons and for the most ludicrous reasons.”

  “Then they are plotting against Yonaga,” Fujita mused.

  “Probably.”

  Fujita snatched the phone from his desk, shouted into the mouthpiece, “Fugimoto! Contact the Captain of the Port. I want to know if there are any Libyan ships in the harbor.” He slammed the phone down, turned to Allen. “Our ambassador hostage – I have never heard of such things.”

  “Ha,” the American admiral snorted, “five years ago the Ayatollah – ah, I mean Iran, took the American ambassador and his entire staff hostage.”

  The old Oriental knuckled his forehead, dark eyes glaring at the desk top. “Terrorism,” he said ruefully. “A stranger to my generation.”

  “You have returned to a strange, changed world, Admiral. Acts of terrorism are often committed for no logical reason against innocent people. Bombs have been exploded at random in London, Paris, Los Angeles, Beirut, Tel Aviv; in planes, trains, airports, cars, buses, killing indiscriminately. In Israel, antitank rockets have been used against school buses. In South Africa, a civilian airliner was shot down by an antiaircraft rocket. The Pope was shot by a man protesting ‘Russian and American imperialism’ – if you can believe that – an American president was shot by a man who was trying to impress a young actress which, of course, is equally crazy, and in—”

  “Please, please,” Fujita said, interrupting with a wave. “We have taken precautions—”

  Again, the phone rang. Fujita talked in short bursts of Japanese so rapid that Brent was unable to grasp full meaning. But after cradling the phone, the old mariner turned to the Americans.

  “One Libyan ship, the Zilah, a seventy-two hundred ton freighter, is in port. She is loading general cargo and is scheduled to sail in seven days.” A single finger traced and retraced a short path on the oak. The withered old man suddenly sat tall, eyes moving from one American to the other. “Please continue debriefing my crew.” And then with the hard edge of command, “These proceedings are now closed. You are dismissed.”

  As Brent Ross exited, he heard Admiral Fujita’s voice again. “Hironaka-san, call a staff meeting immediately.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Brent Ross closed the door quickly.

  Chapter VIII

  In the next week, Brent found the Yonaga was not the most startling story of the day. Exceeding even news of the return of the great carrier were reports of the effectiveness of China’s orbiting laser weapon system. It appeared that beams were targeted by sensing both heat and ultraviolet light emissions. No jet could leave the ground; not a rocket could be fired and not a single orbiting satellite had escaped the killer rays. In fact, on 14 December, 1,437 commercial, military and private jets were set afire simultaneously all over the world, crashing with the loss of over 15,000 lives. One hundred twenty-six Iranian and Iraqi soldiers and sixteen terrorists were killed when their rocket-propelled weapons exploded immediately after ignition.

  World tensions had boiled over in the United Nations. Watching news reports on the ship’s only television set in the senior officers’ wardroom – a set which vanished two nights later – Brent had been sobered by the intensity of emotions displayed by the Chinese, Russian and American representatives. Even on television, Brent had sensed that the Security Council was as charged as the interior of a thunderhead the day that China’s special representative, Wang Chung Po, apologized into the cameras. He claimed that the system was put into place to preserve world peace, but had somehow malfunctioned.

  The Russian representative, Oleg Troyanovsky, had come to his feet shouting, “But how? Why? You have killed thousands, destroyed aircraft, rockets, intelligence satellites and inflicted billions of rubles in damage.”

  “Yes,” the American Representative agreed, “Barbaric! A wanton, senseless killing of innocents.”

  “It was a mistake,” the Chinese replied. “We were attempting to prevent a war. Certainly we did not intend to hurt anyone. The control satellites malfunctioned, commanding the twenty laser stations to fire and we do not know why. We are attempting to correct the situation.”

  “Correct the situation! Thousands are dead!” Troyanovsky shrieked. The other members of the council stared silently, leaning over the great round table.

  Then Wang Chung Po came to his feet slowly, knuckles pressed to the table top, and made the statement Brent would hear quoted over and over for years to come: “Yes. Thousands are dead but you would kill billions, sterilize this planet, remove all life. The United States and Russia never consult other nations in time of crises – when nuclear war is threatened. Yet, we live on this planet, too. We regret the deaths, but you cannot launch your precious bombs, can you? You cannot spy on us, can you? We hope you can live with the frustration.”

  Rising to their feet, the representatives of France, India, Peru, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, the Netherlands and Malta had ch
eered and applauded despite the banging gavel of President Ahmed Paweik Khalil of Egypt.

  And Brent saw a strange new world emerge from the Chinese coup. Because only aircraft powered by reciprocating engines could fly, the nations slowly acknowledged that their vast fleets of jets and rockets were nothing but rusting junk. The hunt was on for old aircraft powered by gasoline engines. Especially valuable were World War II military planes, and the world’s museums and private collections were being plundered by the major powers. Old pilots were finding themselves approached by men laden with money, lured from retirement to fly the old planes and retrain young jet pilots. And the loss of missile firepower brought on a frantic hunt for big gunned ships.

  Brent eyed reports from the Middle East uneasily. With the Israeli Air Force grounded, the Arab states had begun to rattle their sabers. Now, Kadafi ranted against Israel as well as Yonaga and Japan. Syrian President Hafez Assad, Lebanon’s Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, and Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Yassir Arafat – all avowed enemies of Israel – scrambled to build their forces. Even Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini had called a truce, uniting for the expected jihad – holy war – against the hated Israelis. And loyal to the Arab cause, King Hussein of Jordan had rallied to th e jihad. Only Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, had held out, refusing to allow Libyan forces to cross his borders and mass in the Sinai. But his position was tenuous and he wavered dangerously.

  Brent, however, tried to put the international situation out of his mind, and concentrate on his responsibilities aboard Yonaga. Interviewing a steady stream of officers, the young ensign grew hardened to stories of great samurai families, devotion and heroic deeds over Pearl Harbor. Sentiment was lacking. Faces were hard, backs erect, looks uncompromising. There was devotion to the emperor, reverence for Admiral Fujita, pride in Yonaga and a surprising lack of interest in families.

  “This is the facade of the samurai,” Mark Allen commented one evening, stretched on his bunk. “Hard, arrogant, completely unsentimental.”

  “They love their families.”