The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  The Hawk could reach a speed of 280 miles per hour at 10,700 feet and was armed with four machine guns. It became famous among the pilots of the many countries to which it was sold for its superb controllability (it was used against latest-model Messerschmitts early in World War II—with success). In tests against the early Spitfire Mk. I, Hawk fighters flown by British pilots had proven able at high speeds to outmaneuver the Spitfire. At high diving speeds the British fighter encountered heavy resistance to aileron movement, and could roll only in sluggish fashion. The Hawk, by comparison, remained extremely light on the controls even at high speeds.

  A report of tests with the Hawk at England’s Royal Aircraft Establishment (against the Spitfire Mk. I) showed the Hawk “as extremely easy to fly with exceptionally good .handling characteristics and beautifully harmonized controls. At 400 miles per hour the Hawk proved far superior to the Spitfire in a diving attack . . . and in a dogfight at 250 miles per hour the American fighter again proved the superior machine. . . .” There were many advantages to the Spitfire, of course, which earned it its classical reputation the world over, but the British reports noted that the Hawk was “by far the better airplane for aerial combat in which maneuverability was of prime importance.”

  The Chinese government purchased the Curtiss demonstrator model in 1937 (for a reported $55,000) to be used as the personal fighter of Claire Chennault. Early in

  1938 the Curtiss company had orders for 112 of these outstanding fighter planes; late that same year the Hawks were in China.

  The soaring hopes for these machines, with which China might begin to wrest back air superiority from the Mitsubishi Type 96 fighters, were dashed to wreckage almost immediately.

  First the planes experienced serious delays in getting to the combat zone. The Chinese cursed and accused Curtiss engineers of failing to assemble the airplanes in proper fashion, with the result that the Hawks suffered a rash of mechanical breakdowns and failures. Troubleshooters from the company rushed to China and finally cleared up the mechanical bottleneck, but not without outraged cries from the Americans that the fault lay not with the airplanes but in the stupendous mechanical ineptitude of the Chinese.

  Late in 1938 the first Hawks were in the air with Chinese pilots. What ensued was enough to make strong men weep. One after the other, the Chinese fliers wiped out Hawk fighters in bizarre accidents, until the ranks of the pilots were decimated by these fatalities.

  Initial combat training was held at Hengyang, where the airfield has been calmly described as a “hysterical madhouse.” The Chinese students were forced to fly in the midst of Russian pilots sharing the field with them, and the Russians were wild, unpredictable, and totally without concern for the shattered nerves and battered bodies of their Chinese companions. During several days of the week, and often at night, the Japanese further reduced the numbers of the precious Curtiss fighters by pouring a continuous rain of bombs upon the airfield.

  But no one could outdo the Chinese themselves. Because of the wild antics of the Russians and the distressing accuracy of Japanese bombardiers, training with the Hawk fighters was moved to a distant field.

  There, on their first formation flight, six out of the 13 Chinese pilots involved destroyed their Hawk fighters while doing nothing more involved than trying to land

  RED STARS AND ZEROS

  By the summer of 1939, two years after they first began to crumble resistance in Shanghai, the Japanese military machine looked back with satisfaction upon its accomplishments on the Asiatic mainland since the Marco Polo Bridge incident. There had been a towering slaughter of the Chinese—a bloodbath that the Japanese admitted was deliberately calculated to bend the Chinese through terror to their will. The Japanese had climaxed their two years of military operations with the virtual achievement of all their original goals. It was true that the Chinese still defended their land (a surprise to those in the Japanese hierarchy who looked upon the Chinese with contempt), and that at times the cost to Japan in men and materiel had been unexpectedly high.

  Nevertheless, the price was acceptable. Vast portions of China lay in Japanese hands, and the plunder of that nation was following the same pattern as had taken place in Manchuria. The sea lanes were a Japanese thoroughfare, and merchant ships flying the Rising Sun sailed low in the water from holds bulging with materials desired in the Japanese islands.

  From the Japanese point of view, there seemed to be little left in China in the way of meaningful resistance. Dozens of towns and villages had been wiped entirely off the map, cities had been gutted, and the fear-inspired discipline had brought many millions of Chinese laborers to perform for their conquerors. What industry the Japanese did not control had been shredded or destroyed; only a small fraction had escaped, carried under terrible hardship into the remote areas of China by her defenders.

  After the occupation of Hankow, China’s tottering forces were frantically dug in behind the natural defense barriers of the land. The Japanese had mauled the Chinese steadily, pushing them always back, until at long last the Chinese Army could begin to take advantage of its surface features. They entrenched themselves within mountains, at the far end of gorges and ravines; they dug in on the opposite sides of treacherous and wide mudbanks, rivers, and swamps. The Japanese Army took a long and hard look at the high and narrow mountain passes of Szechwan, they studied the tumbling might of the Yellow River, and they looked askance at the curving, deep gorges of the Yangtze. They looked; and they held their positions. Why risk the army and precious weapons when wings and bombs now could accomplish the same task of destruction, and at infinitely less cost?

  BOOK TWO

  “NIITAKA YAMA NOBORE”

  “December 7, 1941 . . . will live as the date of one of the most brilliant military performances of all time. Superbly planned and superbly executed ...”

  “On December 7, 1941, he [the Japanese] achieved complete surprise. He struck swiftly, boldly, accurately. . . . He made full capital of the paralyzing effect of his initial assault

  “The attack achieved perfect tactical surprise. . . . From the standpoint of air employment alone, his first stroke was masterful ”

  These are strong statements. At first glance one might attribute them to a zealous Japanese historian preparing an “objective record” of the opening phase of the great Pacific war which exploded into being on the morning of December 7, 1941, with the swift and stunning assault of the Japanese Navy against our installations at Pearl Harbor. Certainly the statements are a ringing tribute to the overwhelming success enjoyed by the Japanese in their pulverizing air strike of that Sunday morning.

  But they were never written by any Japanese historian. Instead, they are excerpts—only a few among many like them—from official United States military documents. Three dozen years is a time long enough to dull the emotional response to the scene and permit a dispassionate appraisal of the manner with which we were plunged into all-out war. The years soften the emotions, and also cloud the memory of the debacle that committed this nation to 1,351 days of combat. Even today it requires a sharp jogging of memory to recall the extent of the severe losses we endured on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

  In her two-pronged, devastating aerial attack with 353 carrier-based warplanes, Japan’s pilots either sank or rendered useless for a long time to come the battleships Arizona, California, Oklahoma, Nevada, and West Virginia; three destroyers; the target ship Utah; the minelayer Oglala; and a large floating drydock.

  The battleships Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee sustained heavy damage and loss of life, as did the three cruisers Helena, Honolulu, and Raleigh, the seaplane tender Curtiss, and the repair ship Vestal.

  There were a total of 301 American naval aircraft of different types in the Oahu area on the morning of December 7. Japanese bombs and guns destroyed or severely damaged more than half this force.

  Another 11 U.S. Navy aircraft were destroyed during the raging Pearl Harbor battle. The carrier Enterprise was 200 miles dist
ant from the Hawaiian islands when it launched a group of planes, all of which were armed and carrying live ammunition. Several of these aircraft blundered into the heavy antiaircraft barrages that studded Hawaiian skies. Most of the planes, however, were shot down by Japanese fighters that attacked the American carrier aircraft immediately upon encountering them in the air. Of the 11 crews, nine were lost. Not one of these U.S. Navy aircraft fired so much as a single shot in defense against the marauding Japanese planes!

  During the investigation into the circumstances leading up to the staggering blow dealt against Pearl Harbor, a review board queried a Pacific Fleet intelligence officer on his opinion as to what might have happened had the carriers Enterprise and Lexington, in the Hawaiian Islands area, attacked the Japanese task force. The response was not encouraging: “I think the American forces would have taken the licking of their life. The American people were not psychologically prepared for war. I am referring to the American Navy as part of the American people. American carrier planes were attacked by Japanese fighters, and it is to be observed that these planes were armed with machine-gun ammunition and their machine guns were ready to fire. I can find no record of any of these carrier planes firing one single shot at any Jap plane.”

  The Japanese study of their own Pearl Harbor strike notes an essential law of airpower doctrine: “The fundamental rule of any air battle is to gain immediate control of the local air by eliminating the defensive activities of enemy fighter planes. This precept was rigidly adhered to in the Pearl Harbor attack.”1

  Japanese bombs and guns swiftly eliminated 37 bombers and 104 fighter planes of the Army Air Forces in the opening phase of the strike. During this process they shattered and set aflame hangars, storage shops and warehouses, barracks, fuel and ammunition storage dumps, and other vital installations. The official report of the attack notes, regarding the blows delivered against Wheeler Field: “Almost all of the bombs, released at altitudes of 200 to 250 feet, struck with deadly accuracy along the hangar line. They destroyed forty-three airplanes by fire and twenty-nine by other means.”

  The plan was simple: wipe out the air defenses of the Americans, and achieve, as quickly as possible, maximum air superiority so that the dive, level, and attack bombers might carry out their missions with minimum interference from the enemy.

  Lieutenant Akira Sakamoto led 25 Val dive bombers of the first attacking wave in a shrieking assault against Hoiler Air Base. Japanese intelligence had pinpointed Hoiler as the main center of American fighter-plane operations in Hawaii; Sakamoto’s mission was to eliminate this fighter opposition before the planes, reportedly kept under alert status, could get off the ground.

  Hard on the heels of the Sakamoto attack came 26 more dive bombers led by Lieutenant Commander Ka-kuichi Takahashi. The second attacking wave swarmed over Hickam Air Field, spotted as the center of American heavy-bomber operations. Destroying these planes and the base facilities would prevent a long-range bomber pursuit of the Nagumo Task Force of six aircraft carriers-and 17 supporting ships. The Japanese formation split into two wedges; one struck at the bomber base, while the other force rushed against Ford Island, where the Japanese believed a strong force of American Navy fighters were based. Complete surprise was achieved—and the dive bombers smothered the opposition.

  “While a few enemy planes managed to get off the ground,” noted the Japanese study of the Nagumo Task

  Force mission, “our attacking aerial forces were relatively free from enemy fighter opposition, and our fleet was now protected from an American aerial counterattack.”2 The opening phase of the battle went in classic style— as dictated by the Japanese.

  We suffered disastrously in human lives lost. A total of 2,844 men from the military forces on Oahu died. Enemy fire wounded and maimed another 1,178 Americans.

  Despite the tremendous victory gained, Japan escaped with only trifling losses—far less than the Japanese themselves expected. So successful was the surprise attack, and so effectively did the follow-up waves of planes carry out their missions, that the entire assault cost the Japanese only 29 aircraft shot down and 55 men lost. Not one Japanese vessel sustained so much as a scratch.

  For this insignificant price, Japan destroyed more than 300 American aircraft, wiped out military airpower in the Hawaiian area, rendered impotent all but the carriers of the Pacific battle fleet, shattered island installations, eliminated Hawaii as a source of major reinforcements for the rest of the Pacific area, and killed and wounded more than 4,000 Americans. Its extraordinarily light losses also left the Japanese task force free to hurl its strength at other objectives in the Pacific.

  During the many years since that crushing defeat, the events that occurred at Pearl Harbor and during the preceding weeks have undergone the scrutiny of hundreds of investigations and studies. Literally millions of words have accumulated as to who was to blame for the debacle, and what were the shadowy conditions that permitted the Japanese to strike so decisively a blow at the most powerful American bastion in the Pacific. Political considerations throughout many of the investigations have transcended the straightforward recital of military events (which at best are still beset with confusion arising from honest differences of opinion), and the attempts to conclude the unhappy affair with firm answers remain burdened with accusations, countercharges, and dark hints.

  The official studies as they relate to the participation of the Army Air Forces note that the “attack achieved perfect tactical surprise: neither the exact day nor the location of the initial Japanese blow had been correctly estimated.” There is also what the author regards as the most conclusive argument in understanding what lay behind the stunning success of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor: “Nothing in the record indicates that the story would have been substantially better had airmen been in full control of their own forces, whatever minor differences that might have meant. Wherever the fault lay, the AAF in Hawaii, and the fleet whose defense was its chief mission, suffered an overwhelming defeat.”

  There is a hard fact about the Pearl Harbor attack that gains little attention: our military strength in the Territory of Hawaii was far from the ineffectual force it has been made to seem. The United States had more than sufficient strength in warships, carriers near the islands, and land-based aircraft to have dealt the Japanese crushing losses. It should be understood clearly that it was not military weakness in numbers which committed to death nearly 3,000 men on Oahu Island. Rather, it was the combination of perfect tactical surprise on the part of the Japanese, and the ineffectual manner in which we responded to that attack, that gained for the enemy their signal success.

  “If the American air force had detected in advance the approach of the Japanese fighters and bombers and had thrown up an air defense of fighter planes,” concluded Commander Okumiya in the Japanese critique of the mission, “our accomplishments would surely have been lessened and our losses increased. It is conceivable that, had Pearl Harbor been protected by air defenses, the assault against Hawaii could have lost much of its effectiveness, and the nature of the Pacific War proportionally altered.”

  The events leading up to the Japanese air strike seem more bizarre with the passage of time. Not once, but five times, we received warning through movement of Japanese forces of the attack that was about to take place.

  We ignored the sinking of a Japanese submarine by an American destroyer off Pearl Harbor, before the attack.

  No one appeared to be galvanized into action, or at least into sounding a warning, by the shooting down, and death, of an American Navy pilot by Japanese fighter planes, before the attack.

  We ignored the sighting by radar of a Zero floatplane fighter, catapulted off the cruiser Chikuma, which reconnoitered Pearl Harbor before the first attacking wave reached its targets.

  We ignored both the first and the second warnings of radar operator T/3 Joe Lockard, who detected on his radar screen, and reported, the lead wave of Japanese bombers even then on their way to bomb Oahu.

&n
bsp; And it is documented fact that an American seaman watched 25 Japanese bombers circling, unmolested, over Pearl Harbor—while the bombers waited for a second force to catch up with them before commencing their dive-bombing runs!

  For the full telling of the story, we must return to November 28, 1941, and turn back the clock. . . .

  By the afternoon of November 28, the military and naval commanders in Hawaii had read the contents of a secret message which had been received less than 24 hours previously from the War Department in Washington, D.C. The message carried a warning unmistakable to any military official: there appeared every indication of an impending break in relations between the United States and the Japanese Empire. Diplomatic negotiations to halt the ugly trend of events in the Pacific and Asia were foundering; the situation, which seemed to worsen with every day and almost with every hour, carried within it the implicit threat of exploding into military action on the part of the Japanese. There could be little question as to this possibility, for the message included, among other points of emphasis, this warning:

  Japanese future action unpredictable, but hostile action possible at any moment.