Also by R. Cameron Cooke
Sword of the Legion Series
ROME: FURY OF THE LEGION (Gaul, 57 B.C.)
ROME: TEMPEST OF THE LEGION (Adriatic Sea, 49-48 B.C.)
ROME: SWORD OF THE LEGION (Egypt, 48 B.C.)
Jack Tremain WWII Submarine Series
PRIDE RUNS DEEP
SINK THE SHIGURE
Other Titles
RISE TO VICTORY
THE CONSTANTINE COVENANT (as Aiden Crisp)
DIVE BENEATH THE SUN
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by R. Cameron Cooke
ASIN-B01GYEJUNI
DIVE BENEATH THE SUN
By
R. Cameron Cooke
CHAPTER I
Sixteen Hellcat fighters screamed out of the low clouds from the south, descending on the sleepy harbor like angry hornets pouncing on their prey. Moments later, sixteen more planes appeared, this time from the east, Helldiver bombers, their droning engines almost as ominous as their open bomb bay doors, both causing mass panic below.
Sirens blared and whistles blew in the town and on the anchored ships. Japanese soldiers and sailors dropped their mid-morning tasks and rushed to their air attack stations, confusion and disbelief on their faces. The prospect of an enemy air raid had not been at the forefront of their thoughts this morning, and it was little wonder why. The port of Davao, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, had not suffered a significant air attack in the nearly three years since the Japanese had taken it, not since the great offensive of 1941 and 1942, when the few Allied aircraft left to defend the islands had performed a handful of raids before being eradicated from the skies. The raids of those days had been little more than poorly executed nuisances – two or three aircraft at the most, dropping bombs from high altitude with little or no effect.
This raid was much different. The planes now forming up overhead were all naval aircraft belonging to carrier based squadrons. After flying over hundreds of miles of ocean with wings and bays brimming with weapons, they had converged to strike their target simultaneously. It was a well-coordinated attack by an enemy that had grown bolder by the day as the tables of the war drastically turned in their favor.
Anti-aircraft guns trained skyward. Watertight doors clanged shut. A flurry of activity covered every ship’s deck as white-shirted sailors carted ammunition to the gun mounts and gloved officers pointed swords at the tiny dots in the sky. Similar preparations were being made by the land batteries along the waterfront. But they were painfully out of practice, and most were still unprepared by the time the American warplanes fell upon them. As the lead planes nosed over to start their bombing runs, many of the Japanese peering skyward silently wondered if this was merely a raid, or if it was a precursor to an invasion. Did the American fleet sit just over the horizon carrying thousands of marines and soldiers that would soon be landing in massive waves, as they had at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Bougainville, Saipan, and countless other islands that had once belonged to the empire?
A cacophony of gunfire erupted across the harbor. Machine guns rattled away in short bursts from two dozen positions. Anti-aircraft emplacements on ship and shore peppered the sky with twenty-five millimeter shells, every fifth round a glowing tracer. Ten centimeter naval guns added their weight to the barrage, their elevated barrels spitting out exploding shells that filled the air with deadly shrapnel. But the American aircraft came on, driving through the metal storm with complete disregard for their well-being. They were focused on their target and nothing else. One aircraft received a direct hit and burst into flames, its wings and tail separating and spiraling uncontrollably to the sea. Another began trailing black smoke, its fuselage pierced by the unseen flying metal. It swerved away from the formation and limped back out to sea, its engine sputtering.
Standing on the porch of his headquarters, binoculars in hand, Colonel Baron Rikishi Matsumoto watched the American planes approach while his frantic staff milled about him, answering buzzing phones and speaking curtly to the commanders of the various posts about the shore base. From the direction of the flight path of the two American squadrons, Matsumoto knew what their target was, just as he knew this was not a typical bombing raid. There were many ships in the harbor, many valid targets – small and medium-sized freighters, a tanker, and a handful of warships – but he somehow knew these would all be bypassed.
He glanced at the warehouse down the quay. It was just one of many, indistinguishable from the rest. Would the Americans know which one to strike? Was their intelligence that good? But how could they know what was in that warehouse, when the secret had been guarded so closely, even kept from most of his own staff officers? He had not even shared it with his deputy.
“Colonel,” the major behind him reported after hanging up a phone. “The airfield at Buayan is sending fighters to our aid. They should be here within the hour.”
“They should have been here an hour ago,” Matsumoto grumbled. “Are they not assigned air cover for this anchorage?”
The question was a rhetorical one, and this was picked up on by the major who knew his colonel well and melted back into the frenzied staff, leaving Matsumoto to his thoughts.
It was getting more difficult now to get anything done with any kind of efficiency. The cooperation of the old days, the great days, when Japan’s resources were numerous and her might was reaching across the Pacific and Southeast Asia, was scarcely a memory now. The veteran pilots, soldiers, and sailors that had led the spearhead across the hemisphere were largely gone, used deplorably by the high command, their lives wasted in foolish over-reaches that had turned into disasters. The Aleutians, Midway, Guadalcanal, and Burma had cost the Empire many a needed warrior, seasoned warriors who had blooded themselves through years of warfare in China. The new breed was years away from coming close to measuring up to their predecessors. And those were years Japan did not have.
The American dive bombers peeled over, one by one, dropping out of the sky and plummeting towards their target. They screamed overhead, diving at an enormous speed, releasing their payloads and then straining wings and engines to pull up. The bombs landed every few seconds, some exploding in the water, some on the dock, some bathing the area in fiery incendiary jelly. As the attack played out before his eyes, Matsumoto counted the planes and the bombs in order to maintain his own sanity. He saw one building leveled by an explosion, and many fires broke out nearby. Soon, the ensuing clouds of smoke hid the warehouse from view and he was left to wonder as to its fate as successive bombs continued to fall. After the last of the dive bombers had released its lethal load, an echelon of fighters swooped in at low altitude, heading for the same target area. Their wings came alive with fiery tails as rockets took to flight, screeching across the sky, leaving white trails behind them. As impressive and intimidating as the weapons were, the American pilots did not employ them with much control, and most fell short of the shoreline, exploding harmlessly in the bay, their only casualty a small, abandoned tugboat, blown to bits at its moorings.
Now came the payback.
The American planes, brought to a low altitude by their bombing runs, had to run the gauntlet of fire from every battery in the harbor. Each swerved and darted right and left in an attempt to throw off the gunners. One fighter was too close to a shell when it exploded. Either the pilot had been killed or the controls had been destroyed, because it nosed straight down, its engine still running at full power when it struck the water and disintegrated. But most of the planes were more fortunate, succe
ssfully dodging their way out of the deadly harbor and heading back out to sea.
Matsumoto then saw one of the dive bombers bank sharply, peel away from the others, and come back around for another pass, a very brave and foolish act. The bomber flew directly at the churning cloud of smoke, its wing-mounted cannons blazing a spew of tracer rounds whose ricochets bounded into the jungle-covered hills beyond the town. It was a good run, most of the rounds striking near the target, tossing debris into the air, but still the smoke was too thick for Matsumoto to make out whether the warehouse had been hit. Perhaps had all of the planes made such a daring run their mission would have been a success, but this valiant pilot would now suffer for his act of bravery. Having fallen behind his compatriots, his plane became the sole target for every battery on the waterfront. It swerved and banked as it worked its way around the harbor at near wave-top level. Eventually, it turned toward the open sea, and it was at that moment, when it was heading away and presenting the steadiest target, that one of the streams of speeding metal reached up to lick its tail. Pieces of the fuselage fell away, and a smudge of black smoke appeared that served to mask its retreat from view.
It would not get far, Matsumoto thought, as he watched the black trail disappear beyond the hills of Samal Island on the far side of the bay. Judging from its trajectory, it would crash into the sea on the other side of the small island.
The harbor fell silent again as the batteries ceased fire and the Pacific breeze began to carry away the tufts of smoke marring the sky. The all clear sirens wailed, and the tropical island port assumed some of its former tranquility. Further down the waterfront, whistles blew as fire crews rushed to put out the flames among the row of buildings where most of the bombs had landed. It was not long before the fires were under control and the smoke dissipated enough for Matsumoto to see that the warehouse was still intact.
So, the enemy had failed this time. But would they fail the next time? If American carriers were within striking distance, would they not send another sortie, and another, until their mission was accomplished?
As Matsumoto pondered this, and how the enemy could have possibly known the exact location of the secret cargo, or of the cargo’s existence, the major in the room behind him hung up the phone and marched quickly to his side.
“Your pardon, Colonel, but our coastal battery on Samal is reporting that the American plane has splashed down in the sea approximately five kilometers from the shore. They believe the pilot is still alive.”
But Matsumoto did not hear him. He was distracted by something that had caught his eye – a distant flicker on one of the jungle-covered hills commanding the bay, as if something metallic had caught the sun’s reflection.
“Colonel?” the major said hesitantly when Matsumoto did not answer.
“Do we have any foot patrols combing the jungle today?” Matsumoto asked suddenly.
The major looked confused. “No, sir. Not today. Company C is scheduled to go out tomorrow on a routine sweep.”
Matsumoto nodded, thoughts racing through his head. Were some of the local guerillas observing the harbor and passing the information on to the Allies? Could it be as simple as that? It never failed to astonish him how the resistance fighters on Mindanao managed to stay one step ahead of the Japanese occupation forces, in spite of the reprisals of the Kempeitai. The guerillas were well-supplied with American-made sub-machine guns, grenades, and mortars, and had taken a toll on convoys and patrols that had strayed too far from protected areas. For the most part, their attacks had been restricted to the other side of Mindanao, but their leaders had been known to solicit new recruits from the populace in and around Davao from time to time.
The flicker of light appeared on the hill again. Matsumoto’s instinctive reaction was to send a heavily armed company to the top of that hill at once, but he resisted the urge. It would take hours for such a foray to be assembled, and such preparations would surely be observed by the locals and reported to whoever was up on that hill. The area would be deserted by the time his men arrived. No, much better to wait until tomorrow, when one of the regular patrols went out. He would make sure they were seen marching off in the opposite direction. It would raise less suspicion.
“Forgive me, Colonel,” the major said awkwardly, still waiting for a reply. “But what should we do about the enemy pilot?”
“Alert Lieutenant Tamanagi, Major,” Matsumoto said, breaking out of his thoughts. “Inform the naval commandant, as well. Tell them, I want the pilot alive.”
As the major bowed and hurried away, Matsumoto glanced at the warehouse again, surrounded by the smoking ruins of the adjacent buildings. The Americans would try again. So, something would have to be done. Still, he was curious as to how the enemy knew of the secret cargo. Perhaps this American pilot could shed some light, or perhaps he knew nothing. Either way, the interrogation squad was very thorough. The American would talk, one way or another.
CHAPTER II
“Louie, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Answer me, damn it!”
Lieutenant Frank Trott, USN, shouted into the intercom as he fought to hold the Helldiver steady. Still, there was no response from his rear-seat gunner, and now he feared the worst. Louie, a nineteen-year-old kid from Philly who had a thing for Katharine Hepburn, and who had talked non-stop about the famous actress on the long flight from the carrier, had not spoken to him since that last burst of shrapnel had sliced through the plane, wrecking the controls. The damage had transformed the normally responsive dive bomber into such a lethargic beast that Trott did not dare take his eyes off of the instrument panel. The windshield was cracked and broken in several places, including two very devilish holes to his immediate left and right, where a whizzing piece of metal had passed through the cockpit and had nearly taken his head off.
“Louie!” he shouted again. “I don’t know if you can hear me, buddy, but I can’t hold her up! We’re going to ditch! Brace yourself!”
Though Trott had said it, he was not certain that he could set the plane down safely. It seemed to be coming apart all around him.
The Helldiver was considered the most advanced dive bomber in the navy, and it looked good on paper – a carrier-launched bomber that had a bomb bay with stream-lined doors to reduce drag, a four-bladed propeller instead of the usual three, and an engine more powerful than any of the navy’s previous dive bombers. It was a flying messenger of death to its enemies, but it was also often considered a deathtrap by its pilots. It was sluggish when landing on a pitching carrier deck, and Trott had heard that was because the navy had demanded several last minute modifications to the design which drastically increased the weight and redefined the envisioned operating envelope. Trott had spent several frustrating months learning the handling nuances introduced by those last-minute changes. Now, with his Helldiver peppered with shrapnel, the operating envelope had been redefined again, and he was quickly reducing his mental estimate of how long he could keep the plane airborne.
There was a chance he could bail out, but he was not certain he could hold the plane steady enough for even that. Besides, he did not know Louie’s state, and he could not just leave him back there to go down with the plane alone.
Trott knew that he was out of range of the Japanese triple-A batteries, but he could not exactly estimate his current position or heading. He prayed the pitching and rolling blue mass visible between the cracks in the front windshield meant that he was headed out to sea. The nose oscillated up and down with every gyration of the plane. It was just a roll of the dice how she would hit the water. Strike nose down at too steep of an angle, and the Helldiver would come apart, killing him instantly. If the nose was too high, the tail would hit first, either breaking the plane in two or sending it flipping end over end. He jerked on the stick, pulling up to counteract the downward motion of the nose, using every muscle in his arms, like a rodeo cowboy riding a maddened bull.
“Come on! Come on!” he shouted, unable to hear himself over the screaming wind w
histling through the shattered canopy.
After what seemed like an eternity, the dreaded moment of impact finally came, and, through some miracle Trott could not explain, the Helldiver came down onto its belly, bounced once into the air in a jerking motion that felt like the worst carrier landing he had ever experienced, and then finally came to a rest in a flurry of spray. The engine screeched to a stop, and then, suddenly, everything was quiet.
Trott’s body ached from the pummeling it had taken, and a contusion on his head smarted at having struck the canopy latch. But, other than that, it seemed he was in one piece. He wrenched open the canopy as far as it would budge, unstrapped himself from the harness, and climbed out of the opening that was only just large enough for him to wiggle through. Almost immediately, he noticed that the plane was tilted hard left, with the wing on that side nearly fully submerged. It was evident she was sinking.
He had to hurry.
On unsteady legs that had been crammed inside a cockpit for the last three hours, he climbed out onto the starboard wing and began making his way aft. The canopy over the gunner’s perch was already open, as Louie usually kept it in combat. There was no movement, and Trott hesitated for a moment before peering around the edge. There was Louie, still strapped to his seat, coated in blood from the chest down, arms limp at his sides. Groping for the release on the rear-seater’s harness, Trott instantly felt sick when his hand passed through the man’s blood-soaked jacket and met no resistance. There was a six-inch hole where his heart should have been. Behind the radioman’s fogged goggles, a pair of open, unblinking eyes stared straight ahead in death. Trott then noticed the jagged hole in the side of the cockpit where an enemy shell had penetrated, undoubtedly the same one that had killed the young man who dreamed of Katherine Hepburn. As the water began pouring into the cockpit, Trott knew he had no choice but to leave Louie. He took one last look at the dead man, and then turned and jumped into the sea.
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