by Peter Albano
“Yoshi what?” Williams countered.
“Friendly aircraft, Captain,” Brent said.
“It’s not a question of identity, Mister Ross,” Williams said, staring through his glasses. “Only range.”
“It’s a Zero! My God, man. Are you blind?” Brent heard Bowman gasp, and every man on the bridge turned, wide-eyed.
“Belay that crap, Mister Ross!” Williams bellowed. “You know I can’t allow any aircraft to make a run on this ship. I don’t give a goddamn if Jesus Christ is at the controls.”
Brent locked the machine gun in place and waved at the sky frantically. “But they’re friendly fighters! That’s Yoshi Matsuhara’s paint job.” There was desperation in his voice.
“He’ll be the late Yoshi Matsuhara if he gets any closer,” Williams rumbled. Brent whirled on the captain, crouching, muscles bunched. Williams faced him, glaring. Every man stared at the pair with disbelief. Their captain and executive officer were about to come to blows. The impossibility of the situation was written on every face.
As if he had heard the threat, the pilot of the diving fighter pulled up, well out of range of the machine guns but not the five-inch. He was obviously showing his markings — big red circles outlined in black on his wings and fuselage.
“Permission to open fire,” the gun captain, Chief Gunner’s Mate Phil Robinson, shouted.
“No!” Brent screamed.
“Very well, Mister Ross,” Williams said in a sudden change of mood, voice almost placating and condescending. “You’re right. You’re right.” And then to Robinson, “Negative! He has Japanese markings. Secure your weapon.” He stared at Brent out of the corner of his eye. There was obvious concern in the intense black eyes. There was also fatigue. He knew Brent, too, was worn out, his nerves drawn taut as a bowstring. None of them were acting normally,
Brem wondered at his actions, his words. He had lost control with his captain in front of enlisted men. This was unforgivable. Militarily, he knew Williams had been correct. Yet the thought of sacrificing his best friend to military expediency had been intolerable. He knew Williams was trying to restore the situation. He sighed and choked back the sour gorge that had burned the back of his throat. He studied the fighter through his glasses.
Every man watched as the Zero banked toward the ship and began a shallow dive. The canopy was open and the pilot was waving. The engine backfired, and a small puff of black smoke like a punctuation mark was left in its slipstream. “He’s throttling down, Captain,” Brent shouted.
“Very well,” Williams said. “Machine gunners! Put your weapons on safe and stop tracking,” the captain added.
Now low on the water and very close, the lithe fighter came up on the stern of the sub, passing to port with the grace of a gliding gull. Brent’s eyes feasted on the beautiful bird. It was like finding an old friend. The red cowling covering the powerful new Sakae engine, the muzzles of the two twenty-millimeter cannons protruding from the wings, the channels in the orange hood for the 7.7- millimeter slugs of the two synchronized machine guns, the graceful rounded wings and tail surfaces, the long tapering fuselage painted a gleaming white that glared in the sunlight like Alpine snow, high canopy which was open, making the pilot clearly visible. He was smiling and waving, and his goggles were up. There was a white band wrapped around his head.
Brent felt the last of his anger melt, and for the first time in weeks he felt a surge of relief and happiness. It was Yoshi Matsuhara. There was no doubt about that. Dropping his binoculars to his waist and waving frantically, Brent shouted, “Banzai! Banzai!” He was joined by Crog Romero’s loader, Yeoman Third Class Yuiji Ichioka, and the man at the annunciators, Seaman First Class Tatsunori Hara, who shouted their own Banzais!” The Americans stared at Brent and the two Japanese curiously.
“What in hell was that about?” Williams asked, calmly and with the quiet authority of the officer in command.
Brent acknowledged his captain’s change in demeanor with the respect expected of a subordinate. However, he could not completely shield his distaste for the man. “An old Japanese greeting,” Ross said curtly.
Williams’ chuckle could not wash away the lingering tensions. “Yeah. Like a cheer after a touchdown.”
Humphrey Bowman stabbed a finger at the fighter, which had banked sharply and had begun a run down their starboard side. “He’s wearing a white bandana around his head,” he said, turning to Yuiji Ichioka, who stood behind him next to the starboard’s Browning’s ready box.
Ichioka stared stoically, “That’s not a bandana.”
“What is it, Yuiji?”
They all stared as the beautiful fighter swooped even lower and dropped its starboard wing, passing only a few feet from the submarine’s starboard side. After the bark of the big radial engine subsided, the Japanese answered. “It’s his hachimachi headband. It shows his determination to die for the Emperor.”
There was a long silence as all hands watched the Zero begin to turn again, several miles astern. “You still believe in that stuff?” Bowman asked. Williams stirred restlessly but remained silent.
“We still have those traditions, our code of bushido,” Ichioka said.
The usually taciturn Seaman First Class Tatsunori Hara turned from the annunciators and said to Bowman, “Ali good Japanese are raised in the tradition of bushido. Know the Hagakure, respect the emperor...”
“Belay the bullshit,” Williams snapped. “We still have a war to fight All hands will observe bridge silence.” Bowman turned away: the Japanese hunched over stiffly and appeared crestfallen.
“Captain!” a lookout, Seaman Max Orlin, shouted from his perch on the port side of the shears. “He’s really taking off.” Orlin waved at the Zero.
With its Sakae screaming at full power, the white fighter was rocketing skyward in a near vertical climb. Brent squinted into the sky in confusion. Orlin cleared his confusion.
“Aircraft, bearing two-two-zero. Elevation thirty-five,” the young seaman shouted from the shears. The voice was suddenly high, nervous, and frightened.
Every head swung and binoculars came up in unison as if choreographed. Brent flicked his focusing knob and found them. A dozen needle-nosed aircraft with fixed landing gear. He knew they were JU 87 Stuka dive bombers before he saw their Libyan markings. They were in trouble. Serious trouble.
*
When Commander Yoshi Matsuhara heard Captain Colin Willard-Smith’s cooly modulated voice reporting, “Stukas! Many Stukas bearing two-six-zero, altitude twenty-two-hundred meters, range twelve kilometers,” he was just turning to make another run past the submarine. It had been a joyful moment. He had seen Brent Ross. Clearly, the big bulk of his friend had been visible waving from the bridge of the Blackfin.
Immediately, Matsuhara put the big American out of his mind. His hands moved in a blur, palming the throttle into overboost, enriching his mixture by pushing forward on the black lever attached to the throttle quadrant, pulling back hard on the stick, slamming the canopy shut, locking it and snapping on his oxygen mask. A flick of his thumb flipped the safety cover off the red firing button on his control column. As the blue line of the horizon plummeted beneath his cowling and the fighter rocketed upward, his windscreen filled with a sky that had cleared with the suddenness peculiar to latitudes neighboring the Tropic of Cancer. Then he saw them, a swarm of specks on the far western horizon. Even at this long range, he could see the unmistakable gull wings and spatted wheels of the Junkers dive bomber. They were in their usual inverted V. The formation was straggling and sloppy. Must be Arab pilots. The mercenaries flew much tighter formations.
Yoshi spat an oath. He was in the worst possible position to intercept... low, out of range, easily visible to the enemy. But York and Willard-Smith were in an ideal position. Yoshi’s oaths turned to grunts of satisfaction. Side by side and from above the two Seafires were curving toward the intruders.
The commander spoke into his microphone, “Edo Two and Three this is Edo Lea
der. Intercept! Intercept!” He heard acknowledgments from his two wingmen. Then watching the white needle of his altimeter chase around the dial, clicking off hectometers like seconds, he cursed and pounded the instrument. “Izanagi and Izanami,” he pleaded, naming the gods who created the Japanese Islands, “Faster faster!” he shouted, in an agony of frustration.
He heard Captain Colin Willard-Smith’s crisp, cultured voice as calm as a man ordering sushi. The man could move from English units to metric and back to English with amazing agility. “Edo Three, this is Edo Two. Form up two hundred yards off my starboard wing. We’ll boff the last two blighters. Take the one on the right. Chop, chop, old boy.”
York’s metallic voice touched with a wry edge of irony came back without a hint of fear or even nervousness. “Roger, your lordship. I’ll scrag the last sod on the right.”
Yoshi nodded in approval. Wiliard-Smith knew what he was doing, and York certainly sounded confident for a new man. By attacking the last two aircraft, the Seafires would avoid most of the fire from the enemy’s gunners. Perhaps he had underestimated his two new wingmen. He toggled the radio to the carrier frequency. “Iceman, this is Edo Leader.”
“Edo Leader, this is Iceman. Go ahead.”
“Iceman, submarine sighted is Blackfin. Many enemy dive bombers approaching from the west. Coordinates the same. Am engaging. Request fighter support.”
“Roger, Edo One. Six sections enroute. Any enemy fighters?”
Yoshi searched the sky frantically. He saw nothing but the two thunderheads on the northern horizon tapering and blending into a high cirrus “mackereled” sky which had drifted south like a thick lace curtain. There could be enemy fighters above the cirrus. They must be somewhere. Surely the enemy would not send his bombers into an attack without escorts. But Arabs could be bold beyond belief or as cowardly as whipped curs. They were completely unpredictable. He shifted his search to the enemy bombers, which were above him and to the west and closing fast, and the two British fighters curving into shallow dives as they began their first run.
“Negative. No enemy fighters,” Yoshi said.
The next transmission froze Yoshi’s blood. “Edo One. Many enemy fighters closing your coordinates high and northwest of you. We are monitoring their fighter frequency.”
After acknowledging, the commander made a quick sweep of the sky, and sighed with momentary relief when the search failed to reveal any enemy fighters. But he knew they could pour down through the cover at any moment. He prayed for at least enough time for one pass before the Messerschmitts arrived.
Now he was close to the approaching bombers. He could see an awesome 500-kilogram bomb slung beneath the fuselage of each plane on a crutch and four 50-kilogram bombs racked under their wings. Suddenly, tracers leaped from the rear-guns of the last half dozen Junkers. White fireflies whipped upward, converging on the two diving British fighters like a snow storm. But the Englishmen ignored the deadly hail and continued their dives, holding their fire for point-blank shots. They were in range, and as the Japanese watched, the two Seafires slashed down on the two trailing bombers like sharks following a blood scent. Flashing red gouts of flame, their twenty-millimeter cannons thumped out rounds, leaving brown puffs pockmarking the sky behind them.
Yoshi shouted “Banzai!” as a Stuka lost a wing and flipped over into an impossibly tight roll and tumbled crazily toward the sea. Another, trailing a thick ribbon of black smoke, dropped out of the formation and corkscrewed into a near vertical plunge. The Englishmen were good. “Banzai! Banzai!” he shouted. Licking his suddenly parched lips with the tip of his tongue, his thumb closed over the red button as the belly of the leading JU 87 filled the first ring of his range finder.
The flight commander heard Willard-Smith exult, “Tally bloody ho!”
Then Elwyn York, “I boffed ‘im, the bloody whoreson!”
The Seafires plunged through the formation and began to pull out for a second pass. The bombers plodded on, ignoring their losses. Almost casually, the survivors changed formation, stacking up in an oblique line which always preceded an attack. Abruptly, Yoshi saw the Stukas’ hinged slatlike air brakes drop below their outer wings and the formation slowed as the pilots set their propellers at full course. They were preparing to dive. They were very brave for Arabs. They would press home their attack despite the fighters. The three fighters could not destroy them all and they knew it. Some would get through to Blackfin. The leading JU 87 filled the second ring of Yoshi’s range finder, and his thumb restlessly caressed the red button. “Not yet. Not yet,” he told himself. “One more ring.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see the Seafires pulling out of their dives and curving up for their second pass.
Still climbing in full overboost, the Mitsubishi began to vibrate its objections. Apprehensively, Commander Matsuhara eyed his instruments. The needle of the tachometer was pushing toward the red line at 2800 rpms, manifold pressure 105 centimeters of boost, cylinder head temperature an alarming 255 degrees Celsius, and the needle was flirting with the red line at 260. He could burn out his engine. But he had no choice. He left the throttle in full overboost. Hunched over his controls, he bit down hard on his lower lip until there was a salty taste in his mouth. The first Stuka grew in his range finder and, at last, filled all three rings.
Hanging on his propeller with the fighter threatening to stall and shaking like a sapling in a monsoon, he punched the red button. The tremendous recoil of the two Orlikons and two 7.7 millimeter machine guns slowed the fighter even more and it actually seemed to stop in midair, defying the laws of physics, gravity, and aerodynamics. Yoshi was convinced he was hanging in the sky in the grasp of some benevolent sky kami. Firing from below and at one-quarter deflection ahead and at a range of only one hundred meters, the Japanese could not miss. With a warm rush of near ecstasy, Yoshi saw his shells and bullets blast and chew the JU’s belly. Huge chunks of aluminum skin were blasted and ripped from the bottom of the bomber as if some maddened invisible giant were attacking the airframe with an ax, exposing the bottom keel and “U” stringers, frames, and control runs. For one horrifying moment, he realized his stream could set off the bombs, detonating an explosion that could destroy killer and killed. Then his fighter made its own decision.
With insufficient airspeed and lift lost, the Zero dropped off onto its port wing and began to twist into its notoriously tight spin. Pushing the stick forward, and balancing with a touch of rudder, Matsuhara turned with the torque of the great engine, regaining speed and control. With air rushing over his airfoils again, he eased the spin into a spiral and pulled back on the stick.
Glancing skyward, he shouted “Banzai!” as he saw the leading Stuka with a dead man at the controls turn and fall into in own final spinning death plunge. His shouts were interrupted by Willard-Smith’s voice, “Many fighters to the northwest, high. Diving.”
Then Pilot Officer Elwyn York’s voice. There was unbelievable confidence in the timbre, “More bloody fighters to the nor’east, comin’ on like a pack o’ whores sniffin’ a quid.”
Bottoming out, Yoshi swiveled, his head frantically at the two sightings. With a blood-red Messtrschmitt leading, twelve enemy fighters were pouring out of the high cirrus cover just where he had expected them. He felt a cold reptile twist in his guts. Captain Kenneth Rosencrance and his Fourth Fighter Squadron. The butcher was back. However, to the northeast, four sections of three Zeros were closing at a tremendous speed. Yoshi felt his heart leap with joy.
The bombers were still doggedly holding to their run while squadrons of fighters converged on the same tiny spot in the Pacific where the catalyst of it all, the prized Blackfin, plodded slowly below. This was how battles developed. Unexpected. Unplanned. A sudden tactical situation that could initially involve a few and then more and more until a grand strategic encounter developed where ships, planes, and men were squandered like pawns by drunken chess players. There was even potential for a major carrier confrontation here. Perhaps a surface actio
n. Thousands could die for the life of the single old wounded submarine plodding along so innocuously far below. That is if the Arabs had the stomach for it and would bring their carrier battle group north. Yoshi knew Admiral Fujita would not hesitate to stack all the chips and roll the dice.
A new voice filled his earphones. He recognized the voice of Lieutenant Todoa Shigamitsu, a young veteran of the Self Defense Force and superb pilot. “Edo Leader, this is Ronin Leader. Have you in sight. With your permission, I will intercept enemy fighters.”
“Roger Ronin Leader. Engage enemy fighters. I will continue to engage enemy bombers. Out.”
Matsuhara’s mind worked with the speed and precision of a computer. With a little luck, Shigamitsu’s Zeros would intercept Rosencrance somewhere to the north and above the bombers. But only a fool could expect the Japanese to stop all of the ME 109s. After all, the Fourth Fighter Squadron was composed of hand-picked mercenaries: Germans, Russians, Americans, and at least one Japanese renegade Yoshi had heard about. They were the best. Not one Arab was included. He looked to his right and then to his left. York and Willard-Smith were climbing with him.
Keying his microphone, Yoshi spoke, “Edo Flight, this is Edo Leader. Continue to engage bombers. Individual combat. Banzai!”
“Roger, Edo Leader,” Willard-Srnith’s voice oozed back. “And “Banzai” to you, old boy.”
“Roger, guv’nor,” York said, suddenly keying into the frequency. “Let’s bugger the lot.”
The three fighters zoomed upward.
*
“All guns that bear, stand by to open fire!” Williams shouted. Lieutenant Brent Ross already had the lead JU 87 in his sights. However, the plane was far too high. He muttered a few choice obscenities under his breath. They would be forced to wait until the enemy delivered his attack. Wait until the bombs were already dropping before they had a shot — if then. He gritted and ground his teeth in frustration.
