by Peter Albano
Loaded on board the carrier Illustrious in May 1982 with 27 other Sea Harriers, Captain Colin Willard-Smith had piloted his fighter in the British assault on the Falkland Islands. Here he accounted for three Argentinian aircraft, a Super Etendard off Port Stanley, and two Skyhawks over Falkland Sound. But it had been a miserable little war that accomplished little and cost the Royal Navy six fine ships: Sheffield, Ardent, Antelope, Coventry, Atlantic Conveyor, and Sir Galahad. Most were easy meat for Exocet missiles. Hundreds of fine young Englishmen died, including four of his best friends who were killed when their Sea Harriers were shot down.
He would never forget 1983 and the two events that shocked and changed the world, perhaps forever. First, the impossible saga of the seventh carrier-carrier Yonaga. Designated as the flagship for the seven-carrier Pearl Harbor strike force in 1941, the one-thousand-foot warship had been frozen-in in a secret cove on Siberia’s Chukchi Peninsula two months before the attack. Breaking free after forty-two years of icy entrapment, the great carrier, manned by aging, maddened samurai led by the indomitable Admiral Fujita, had stormed south from the Bering Sea and destroyed the carrier Peleliu and sunk the battleship New Jersey in Pearl Harbor. Then the return to Japan and the crew learned the impossible had happened: Japan had surrendered nearly four decades before.
Then the second cataclysmic event occurred the day Yonaga anchored in Tokyo Bay. Captain Colin Willard-Smith had been flying at thirty-three thousand feet with his two wingmen just south of Portsmouth on a routine training mission when the orbiting Chinese particle beam system malfunctioned. He would never forget the great flash that lit the heavens with an atomic glare, the laser beams like sheet lightning that struck all three fighters simultaneously. His wingmen were killed instantly as their fuel exploded while he was more fortunate, his engine burning and vibrating its way right off of its mountings. Luckily he had had time to eject just before his tanks exploded. From that day forward, not one jet, not one rocket had flown.
Willard-Smith liked his Seafire, which had been completely rebuilt by Vickers. Certainly it was an antique, with a top speed of less than one-half that of his Sea Harrier. But it was a pleasingly simple aircraft, with only seventeen instruments to read and no high-tech electronics equipment to malfunction. With this generation of aircraft, you could see the man you killed or he could see you as he pressed his own red button. Death was delivered from close range, sometimes under a hundred-yards, not impersonally from over the horizon by radar and computer-guided missiles that implacably hunted down invisible targets. There was the anticipation here of the hunt for like creatures of like intelligence. He smiled, thinking of the ducks he had shot in the marshy fens of Northumberland. But the birds he hunted now were armed with machine guns and cannons and could shoot back.
He scanned his instruments. All was well, but he had edged up a hair on the flight leader. Easing the throttle with a touch like a feather, he watched his rev-counter drop slightly, to 2,000 rpms. Grunting with approval, he noted his manifold pressure holding steady at thirty inches, airspeed 180 knots, oil pressure 80 pounds, coolant temperature 102 degrees Celsius. And now he was on station precisely where he belonged.
But not Pilot Officer Elwyn York. The poor Cockney was dragging low and wide to the right. He could be a liability, would be easy meat for any experienced enemy pilot. York was a likable young man with a Cockney accent thicker than Yorkshire pudding. He felt that someday York would be a fine fighter pilot, but not yet. It was still too soon. Willard-Smith hoped for an uneventful patrol.
He turned his head sharply, glanced over his shoulders and into his rearview mirrors. Nothing, not even a sea bird. He felt relieved. He glanced at the Zero. The air group commander flew the only Mitsubishi that was not painted in the standard pattern of white fuselage and black cowling of Yonaga’s Zeros. Instead, Commander Yoshi Matsuhara’s Zero was distinctive, with red cowling and green hood.
Captain Colin Willard-Smith had learned much of Commander Yoshi Matsuhara during his two months of training on board the carrier Yonaga. The commander was probably the finest fighter pilot he had ever met and an enigma that defied time and understanding. First, the man was over sixty-years-old, yet his hair was as black as newly mined coal, his face unlined, with intelligent eyes that were bright and alert. This astonishing resistance to aging had been evident in all Japanese holdouts Willard-Smith had met. Especially in old Admiral Fujita. Matsuhara’s old crew chief, Chief Teruhiko Yoshitomi, had put it succinctly one day in Yonaga’s hangar deck. “Without tobacco, sake, and women for forty-two years, of course, we are still young!” Then the old chief had cackled, spraying spittle like a broken garden hose.
Ironically, Matsuhara was an American. He had been born in Los Angeles but raised in the Japanese tradition of bushido by his father, who had been a gardener and trashman. He entered Japan’s equivalent to the Royal Naval College, Eta Jima, when only fifteen and was flying with the first squadron of Zeros in China by 1940. This remarkable squadron shot down 99 Chinese aircraft in less than a year while losing only two of their own antiaircraft fire. Then Matsuhara’s transfer to Yonaga and the long entrapment on the Arctic Circle. The breakout, attack on Pearl Harbor, and return to Tokyo.
Immediately, the orbiting Chinese laser system turned the world upside down. With their rockets and jets nothing but useless, rusting junk, United States and Russia found their hegemony broken. Their fleets, dependent on high-tech controlled rockets and cruise missiles, were rendered practically impotent. Second-rate powers such as Greece, India, Brazil, Chile, and dozens of others, armed with hundreds of World War II ships, emerged as new powers. Glasnost became a mockery and as foolish a word as detente. Terrorism ran wild. Awash in oil money and wearing a new cloak of arrogance, Colonel Moammar Kadafi stormed onto the world stage in a leading role as unifier and leader of the Arab jihad (holy war) against Israel and all infidels — especially Israel’s new ally Japan. The oil embargo by OPEC followed, and massed Arab armies attacked Israel and Japanese hostages were murdered by the hundreds.
Commander Yoshi Matsuhara led Yonaga’s air groups when the great ship charged into the Mediterranean and smashed Kadafi’s land-based air power and saved Israel. More battles followed in the Southwest Pacific, over Korea and the Yellow Sea. With the usual mind-set of the Arab, not one defeat, one insult, one slight had been forgotten by Kadafi. The war raged on, feeding and growing on Arab hatred and Japanese pride. It seemed to have a life of its own, and men like Matsuhara and Kenneth Rosencrance were its lifeblood. In fact, it was said Commander Matsuhara now boasted over thirty Arab aircraft added to his kills.
Now all Englishmen had a score to settle with Moammar Kadafi, too. In an insane attempt to corner the world market on oil, Arab submarines had torpedoed eleven oil-pumping platforms in the North Sea, killing over a thousand men. Then an enraged Margaret Thatcher foolishly dispatched a carrier force to the Mediterranean where Illustrious and Hermes were lost along with most of their aircraft. A dozen of Willard-Smith’s best friends died. It was then he decided it was time for revenge. He resigned his commission and joined Yonaga’s air groups as a special employee of the Japanese National Parks Service, the carrier’s ludicrous cover forced on Fujita by the Diet. By coincidence, he and Pilot Officer Elwyn York had joined on the same day. He had heard York’s brother had been killed on one of the oil rigs.
Matsuhara’s voice in his earphones interrupted his thoughts. “Edo Flight, this is Edo Leader. Sighted a wake at two o’clock. Am investigating. Edo One and Edo Two remain in top cover.”
Pulling his mask close and securing it over his mouth, Willard-Smith acknowledged, “Edo Leader, this is Edo Two. Remain in top cover.” Dropping his right wing, the Englishman stared down hard to the northwest through a large break in the clouds. To the north and west he saw a white streak in the sea like a hyphen ending in a blue-green dot plodding on a northerly heading. It most certainly looked like a submarine. Perhaps it was one of Kadafi’s old Whiskeys or Zulus. They were k
nown to be operating in the area and would look like Blackfin from the air. Then he heard York repeat Matsuhara’s command.
Quickly Matsuhara’s voice came back, using Yonaga’s code name, “Iceman,” and reporting the sighting to the carrier. Then, with the grace only shown by the Mitsubishi A6M2, the Japanese fighter whipped into a half roll and split-essed into a dive, cowling pointed toward the strange vessel.
*
Driven by her four powerful Fairbanks-Morse diesels, Blackfin bulled her way through an unusually large swell like a pregnant whale. Challenged by the heaving deck, Lieutenant Brent Ross clung to the windscreen shielding the bridge and cursed as a hail of spray struck him in the face like handful of frozen pellets. Six-feet-four and weighing a trim, muscular 220 pounds, the young lieutenant called on all the power in his arms and legs to keep his balance behind the twin wooden grips of the fifty-caliber Browning Mark 2 machine gun as Blackfin crashed through the blue wall and rolled down into the inevitable trough that followed.
At battle surface, the upper works of the submarine were crowded: two lookouts high on their platform on the periscope shears and two more in the small enclosed bridge platform; five members of the stubby five-inch, twenty-five caliber dual-purpose cannon aft of the bridge huddling forward of their weapon under the “cigarette deck,” a small platform extending back from the bridge; six men manning a pair of twenty-millimeter Orlikons on the cigarette deck; four more men ready behind a pair of fifty-caliber machine guns in the bridge enclosure itself.
Here Brent Ross and his loader, Gunner’s Mate Third Class Humphrey Bowman, manned the port machine gun while Cryptologist Third Class Tony “Crog” Romero manned the starboard fifty with his loader, Yeoman Third Class Yuiji Ichioka. Adding to the crowded conditions were Quartermaster Second Class Harold Sturgis gripping the helm and Seaman First Class Tatsunori Hara at the annunciators, So big he seemed like a crowd himself, the captain, Lieutenant Reginald Williams, stood between Sturgis and Hara just behind the huge pair of binoculars secured to the TBT (Target Bearing Transmitter,) a waterproof instrument that automatically transmitted target bearings to the attack team in the conning tower under his feet.
Brent had learned to appreciate Blackfin despite her antique design. Her ten torpedo tubes gave her a deadly sting, and her thin cylindrical pressure hull was surprisingly durable. Built by the Electric Boat Company at Groton, Connecticut, in 1942, Blackfin was of the Gato Class, arguably the best fleet boat of World War II. Small by modern standards, she was only three hundred twelve feet long with a beam of twenty-seven feet. She displaced one thousand five hundred twenty-six tons surfaced, two thousand twenty-four tons submerged. Her four new six-thousand horsepower Fairbanks-Morse engines could drive her on the surface at twenty-six knots while submerged her battery could push her up to nine knots.
But she was a wounded boat, a speared fish punished by six-hundred-pound depth charges. With the tops of a dozen cells of her battery cracked and leaking chlorine gas, a bilge pump knocked completely off its foundation, two compressors disabled, and three sea valves ruptured, Blackfin could not submerge. Damage Control was repairing the cells by drawing hot soldering irons across the cracks, melting the mastic and resealing the cracks. The sea valves were being torn down and either repaired or replaced. But there was nothing that could be done about the bilge pump and the pair of compressors. Heavy equipment in a yard would be required to lift and reset the units. And the pressure hull had an ominous bulge between frames forty-six and forty-seven just abaft the five-inch gun. It had not leaked, but the threat of collapse was there. Brent knew Williams did not dare submerge the boat. Blackfin was locked on the surface and forced to steam the shortest possible course for Yokosuka — a course that had taken her within easy range of Arab bases in the Marianas. And her radios, ESM (Electronic Support Measures), and ECM (Electronic Counter Measures) gear were out and they had used their last BRT-1 buoy. In a very real sense, the boat was blind and deaf and mute.
The two-day hail of perhaps hundreds of depth charges had taken its toll of the crew, too. Every man was fatigued, nerves worn to a hard, ragged edge. Two fights had broken out in the engine room. In the last, one machinist’s mate had almost killed another with a wrench. Both men were on report and would be court-martialed when they reached Japan.
Brent sighed as the waves calmed, and his nerves unwound slightly with the flattening sea. He patted the breech of the machine gun and ran his fingers over the huge belted bullets all the way to the ammunition box. Caressing the big slugs gave him a feeling of confidence and helped calm him. He chuckled to himself at the incongruously gay effect of the color coding: blue for armor piercing, red for ball, and yellow for tracer. Ordinarily, an enlisted man would be the gunner. However, during shakedown outside New York, Brent had proved himself the best marksman on the ship. Consequently, he had been assigned to the port fifty. This pleased Brent. His unerring accuracy was well known. In fact, during the past five years, while serving on Yonaga, he had shot down a Douglas DC-3 and two Messerschmitt 109s while riding as the tail gunner in a Nakajima B5N torpedo bomber. He had a knack for quickly analyzing and solving the perplexing multidimensional problems of aerial gunnery and anticipating his enemy’s moves. He also knew he had been very lucky.
He glanced at Lieutenant Reginald Williams’ broad back and thick neck. Williams was a Negro, so black his skin appeared blue whenever the sun broke through and reflected from it. Sweeping the horizon with his binoculars, Williams turned to port. Brent stared at the rugged profile. The cheek was strong and regal, his forehead deep and intelligent, his nose flattened as if he had been pounded in too many street fights. And indeed, raised in south-central Los Angeles, Williams had had more than his share of back alley brawls. He had been All City Player of the Year in high school and an All American linebacker at the University of Southern California when Brent had achieved the same honor at the Academy as a fullback. They had never met on the field, and Williams had taunted Brent, claiming he could have taught Brent something about defense. Despite their having shared mortal dangers together, Brent had not been able to shed a distrust, a dislike for his vaporish captain. Someday he would find the time and place to force the big man into making good his boasts.
And there was another reason to despise the big black. The sub’s original captain had been Admiral Mark Allen, who had been Brent’s lifetime friend and mentor. When Admiral Allen died of a stroke and massive heart attack while under depth charge attack off Tomonuto Atoll, Williams, then the executive officer, took command. Immediately, he had ordered the admiral’s lungs pumped full of air and then had his body fired out of a torpedo tube along with bits of wreckage. Certainly, as a military expedient, the decision was correct. Wreckage, a body, and hundreds of gallons of oil had convinced the pair of stalking Arab destroyers that the submarine had indeed been sunk. This ruse had led to the successful attack on the Gefara. Yet the imperious, uncaring attitude, the arrogance and cold enigmatic smile that turned Williams’ thick lips at the corners as if he had found some private amusement in Brent’s agony, grated on the young lieutenant. No, Brent Ross would not forget. There were things to be settled between them. If they survived.
“Captain,” came up from the conning tower. It was the voice of Electronics Warfare Technician Matthew Dante. “I’ve got the ESM working, sir.”
“Well done, Dante. Any readings?” Williams asked, leaning over the hatch.
“Two powerful transmitters with signature characteristics of land-based radar, but I don’t have them in my threat library. Big, sir. Each at least fifty-five-hundred megahertz. On the bearings of Saipan and Tinian.”
“Are they ranging us?”
“Negative, sir. Too long a range. The curvature of the earth is sending their search right over us.”
“Good. Good. Anything else. Ships? Aircraft?”
“Negative, sir. The usual UHF and VHF ship to ship garbage bouncing off the ionosphere on the other side of the pond and a few faint radar p
ulses from the Marshalls and Gilberts and the eastern Carolines and that’s it.”
“What about our IFF (Identification Friend or Foe)?”
“Sorry, Sir. Still out.”
“Damn,” Williams spat, punching the steel wind screen so hard it rang like a bell. “Stay with it Dante and keep a close watch.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Aircraft! Aircraft! Bearing two-four-zero, elevation fifty!” a lookout shouted from his platform on the periscope shears.
Every head turned, the five-inch gun crew leaped to their weapon, and every machine gun on the port side swung to the port quarter. Unlocking his weapon, Brent swung the perfectly balanced sixty-five-pound machine gun to the left and bent his knees as he elevated the muzzle and pushed a small lever on the breech from “Safe” to “Fire.” Carefully, he grasped the handles and placed both thumbs on the rodlike trigger. From the corner of his eye he could see Gunner’s Mate Third Class Humphrey Bowman reach down into the ready box and unfasten the top on another ammunition box.
“All guns that bear, stand by to open fire on aircraft closing on our port quarter!” Williams shouted.
Brent found the diving aircraft and centered it in his ring sight. Radial engine, white wings, and two more white aircraft circling above it. White, the color of Japanese fighters. But the aircraft circling above were not Zero-sens. They were unlike any fighters he had ever seen. Was this an Arab trick? Then the lieutenant saw a flash of orange and green as the diving aircraft flattened its dive. “Yoshi! Yoshi Matsuhara!” Brent shouted.
