by Peter Albano
With a complete loss of control, the fighter shot skyward, revolving like a mortally wounded gladiator trying to prolong his life by refusing to leave his feet. At the moment the fighter stalled, a figure plummeted from the cockpit, the leader from his parachute trailing. But the panicked pilot had jumped too soon. His parachute tangled in the jagged remains of the tail, and as the ME streaked over into its final dive, a waving, screaming figure trailed it. “Enjoy it all the way down, you bloody bugger,” Willard-Smith muttered.
He continued to pull back on the stick, reaching for the sky and the treasure of altitude. He watched Matsuhara’s Zero snap into a tight loop and half-roll and roar into a dive after Rosencrance. But the canny American was miles to the north and west, taking advantage of the Messerschmitt’s tremendous diving ability. The Oberstleutnant knew he could not turn with a Zero. At least a mile to the right, Willard-Smith saw York’s Seafire continuing to climb with him, while far below and trailing Rosencrance, Vatz’s ME 109 flattened its dive only a few feet above the sea. The striped fighter was hopelessly out of range and curving to the west. Vatz, too, had no stomach for a dogfight with a more maneuverable enemy.
The black ME with its pilot trapped in his parachute shrouds twisted into the sea far below while to the north and west a half dozen ribbons of black smoke spelled out the epitaphs of immolated fighters. More parachutes were drifting toward the sea. To the north. Willard-Smith saw a flock of JU 87s circling in a single line over Blackfin like vultures. Then, in his earphones, he heard Matsuhara’s voice. “Edo flight, this is Edo Leader. Blackfin bearing zero-zero-zero. Engage bombers! Follow my lead.”
Willard-Smith’s acknowledgment was followed quickly by York’s.
The English captain pulled back on the stick, kicked left rudder, and then pushed the control column forward, split-essing into a near vertical dive. With his stomach pushed down hard by centrifugal force and his bladder suddenly feeling very full, he watched the sky revolve, and then the blue line of the horizon shot up. Abruptly his windshield was filled with the vast expanse of the Pacific and the pressure on his stomach and bladder eased. A little right rudder balanced by a touch of elevator and aileron turned him toward the bombers. Gradually the tail of the Zero worked into his gunsight. His left foot moved slightly, ruddering him to his position on the leader’s left while York crept up on the right. Far ahead and below he could see the JUs casually circling over their target. Suddenly, the leader peeled off into a dive. They would arrive at the bomb line late — too late.
Cursing, Willard-Smith pounded the instrument panel. Another bomber was streaking for Blackfin. It must be hell down there. Hell!
*
The third bomber had waited until the second had released its bombs before dropping out of the circle and diving on Blackfin. Obviously upset by the vicious, accurate antiaircraft machine guns, the second Junkers had veered at the last instant and its bombs did nothing more than kill a thousand fish a good three hundred yards off the submarine’s starboard quarter. Despite the pilot’s maneuver, a twenty-millimeter shell had smashed the oil intake and cooler of the big plane and Brent had shot off the JU’s left wheel. With bits of wreckage tearing off into the slipstream and with the big Jumo engine vomiting black smoke like a lung-shot animal blowing blood, the Stuka clawed for altitude. It was followed by the cheers, jeers and waved fists of Blackfin’s gun crews.
But the third bomber pilot was made of tougher stuff. Trombones screaming, he put his spinner right on the submarine’s bridge. The cannon spat its flames and roared its challenge, its shells screeching past the diving bomber, but, this time, exploding amongst the four remaining bombers high above. Although none was destroyed, the ring was broken and the big planes wheeled in confusion like a covey of terrified quail scattered by a hunter’s shotgun.
With the gun crews cheers echoing in his ears and Williams yelling, “Kill the motherfuckers!” Brent felt an inexplicable calm grip him as he watched the bomber grow in his sight. Bowman had loaded another full box of ammunition and he had found the first two bombers highly vulnerable. Now he realized they must drop into range if they wished to attain killing accuracy. He had had hits on both of the first two. He licked his lips. Felt a warm primal heat down low. The same heat he had felt the last time he had made love to Dale McIntyre. Strange. No, it was insane how the sexy woman could come back at a moment like this. Where was his early fear? The terror? How could sex and killing walk through a man’s mind hand-in-hand? He was confused. Combat could fan all of a man’s emotions and power them like nothing else. And sometimes, in a queer way, it compressed his entire life and ran it past him kaleidoscopically like a broken projector. The drowning swimmer syndrome, he snorted to himself.
“Fighters! Three fighters! Japanese! Bearing one-nine-five, elevation angle thirty. Closing on the bombers.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Brent could see the white fighters bolting down in a perfect V on the four highflying bombers, which had reestablished their ragged circle. Matsuhara was back. He knew his friend would return. But there was no time for distraction, no time even to cheer. He had taken his deep breath and was holding it in his lungs — a ritual he had learned as a youth when hunting game birds in the woods of New England with his father. “Hold your breath, keep both eyes open, and squeeze the trigger steadily but gently,” his father had drummed into his head on a hundred hunts.
The shiny black bombs dropped and the terror, the horror, returned. Mesmerized by the projectiles, Brent felt the flush of deep warmth vanish, replaced by ice water that seemed to drop through his bowels. His emotions had come full circle — fear to courage and back to fear again. Hands trembling, heart beating so hard he could feel the blood pounding in his temples, he sighted on the Junkers. He expected it to begin its pullout, but instead the pilot continued his dive. Bright red began to wink just outside the breaks in the gull wing, and it screamed down only a few feet from the swarm of falling bombs. They were being strafed. Incredible. The JU could die in the explosion of its own bombs. The pilot must be a fanatic, or insane. The twenties blasted to life and Brent pressed the trigger. Shaking from the recoil and balancing the weapon against the submarine’s roll by counteracting with the powerful muscles of his thighs, back, and arms, he kept the big spinner in the center of his sights. The smell of cordite hit his senses like an elixir.
Seven-point-nine-two-millimeter slugs struck the steel deck with clangs and pings, ricocheting with high whines and sharp buzzing sounds, as if a hive of nasty insects had been unearthed by a plow. Struck on the front and top of his helmet by at least four slugs, Chief Gunner’s Mate Phil Robinson was hurried to the deck, helmet flying, the gray-yellow contents of his skull scattering across the deck in a slimy mass. The one remaining lookout on the shears clutched his chest and then, screaming through a gout of blood, toppled over his safety rail with the roll of the boat. He tumbled into the sea like a child’s rag doll. More blood rained on the bridge crew. Brent groaned aloud and cursed into the roar of his gun.
“Left full rudder!” Williams shrieked. “Kill him! Kill him!” The boat heeled into a sharp turn.
The bombs screamed down. They would impact in seconds. They were so close, the big cylinder and its four smaller companions seemed to diverge and each became a distinct canister of doom, finned, fused, ready to blow Blackfin to oblivion. It was like a nightmare where you run and run but you are sliding in grease and a hideous monster gains on you, comes closer and closer until you gag on its foul breath. Then it bares its fangs and reaches out with claws like razors.
Brent shook the paralyzing images from his brain, ignored the bombs, fought back. He would kill his killers.
Chaplets of tracers like strings of burning beads converged on the Junkers. Bits and chunks of skin were blasted from the leading edge of the wing. Bright yellow flashes blinked on and off like Christmas lights, and the right dive brake and aileron were blown off by twenty-millimeter strikes. Immediately the plane veered to the left, giving Brent
a clear shot at the right side of the cockpit. His big rounds blew out the rear canopy and decapitated the gunner. He wanted the pilot. Cursing, he adjusted his stream with a hard, even tug on the right handle. More bullets smashed the canopy and shot out the armorglass windscreen with the pilot’s face dissolving in the blizzard of shattered glass. With two headless men in the cockpit, the big bomber half-rolled to its left and smashed into the sea with a violence rarely seen by any man.
At that instant, the bombs struck just off the starboard bow. The 500-kilogram bomb sent an enormous cliff of water soaring majestically into the sky so close the boat leaped from the sea like a harpooned whale. Ringing and booming, a sound like a great temple gong reverberated through every strake and frame in the boat. The concussion knocked Humphrey Bowman and Yuiji Ichioka from their feet. Ichioka slid across the deck, his helmet striking the binnacle post so hard the impact sounded like a sledgehammer striking a pot. He rolled to the side, groaning. Brent staggered and grabbed the windscreen while Bowman was knocked across the ready box. There were screams of pain and fear.
Then the tower collapsed into spreading rings of ripples, green water, and spray drenching every man. Holding the fifty-caliber with one hand, Crog Romero reached down and pulled the groggy Ichioka to his feet with the other.
“Steady up on two-seven-five!” Williams shouted, big fists firmly gripping the windscreen as the submarine bounced and wallowed in the tortured sea. He glanced at Hara, who was still on his feet but stunned. “All ahead one-third.” The Japanese pulled the levers of his annunciator stiffly, like an automaton. The engines slowed. Williams shouted down the hatch, “Communications! Damage report!”
“Communications, aye! I have Damage Control on line. Nothing yet, sir,” a frightened voice came back.
“Very well. Hurry it up.”
“Speed eight, one-hundred-eighty-revolution, sir,” Hara said in a flat voice.
“They’re all coming!” the starboard bridge lookout shouted.
Williams threw a glance skyward. He had no choice. “Fuck the damage. All ahead flank!”
“All ahead flank, sir.” Hara pushed the levers all the way to the last stop. The rhythm of the four diesels picked up and the boat surged. They were not down by the head yet. Brent sighed with relief. Maybe their battered pressure hull had withstood the shock. Certainly the explosion of the 500-kilogram bomb had been more devastating than any depth charge they had taken. His neck was sore. The concussion had jerked his head so hard, his helmet had come up off his skull and then been snapped down by his chin strap. That had never happened before in the many battles he had fought.
Williams shouted down the hatch, “God damn it. Where’s that damage report? I want a report from the forward torpedo room and battery room immediately.”
Pushing his helmet back, Brent stared skyward and shook the numbness from his brain. A sharp pang brought his hand to his neck, and he rubbed it mechanically. Another bomber had peeled off, and the three remaining had stopped circling and were in a line behind it like impatient commuters waiting to board a train. And, indeed, they had a very good reason to be impatient. Matsuhara and his two Seafires were streaking down on them like lances hurled by a vengeful deity. The JUs had wasted time in their leisurely attack and now the price would be paid. Another Stuka fell off into its dive at precisely the moment Matsuhara and his wingmen opened fire.
The next moments were a continuation of the mad nightmare for Brent Ross. Two diving bombers, fighters ripping into the two left in the depleted circle, a Seafire plunging desperately after the last diving Stuka, the explosion of the cannon, the deafening chatter of the machine guns, the smell of cordite, the vibration of the Browning that jarred his teeth and strained the muscles of his arms and shoulders, the terrible pain that shot downward from his neck. And the ring sight and his target, Williams shouting commands to the helmsman, desperately trying to throw off the enemy pilot’s aim. Kill or be killed. Another wild, inexplicable swing in emotions. Terror or a killing frenzy. He knew not what it was. Perhaps a mixture of both. It made no difference to the enemy. They were coming after him en masse this time.
Just before the lead Stuka reached the bomb release point, it vanished in a blinding explosion like a nova blossoming in a millisecond of glory. Releasing the trigger and blinking out the afterimages flashing from his retinas, Brent stared in amazement. A huge circle of sky above was filled with flying wreckage, roiling smoke, flashing reds and oranges of burning vaporized clouds of fuel and showers of aluminum that actually burned in a smoking rain like a beast with ten thousand tentacles. Big chunks dropped too: the engine crashing a hundred yards ahead of the boat, a spatted wheel bouncing off the stern. And small bits of hot aluminum rained down, but most missed Blackfin.
Brent heard the trombones before he saw the next bomber. Now he felt thankful for the noisemaker. He brought his ring sight to the precise center of the point where the Stuka had exploded. The Junkers plunged through the smoke. Instantly the machine guns yammered out their welcome. Brent’s eyes widened with new fear and dismay. A Seafire was close on the tail of the bomber. Both were firmly locked into the cascade of tracers. The pilot of the Seafire was firing. Both aircraft were close — very close.
Caught by twenty-millimeter shells from behind, and ripped by twenties and fifty-caliber slugs from the submarine, the Stuka came apart at precisely the moment its pilot released his bombs. It was not more than a hundred yards above the bridge and slightly to starboard. First its right wing broke away at the fillet in a welter of torn skin, broken spars, and stringers, spilling its entrails- a ganglia of broken wires, color-coded control wires, broken fuel lines, and spraying red hydraulic fluid from broken piping like a slashed carotid artery. Then its engine vibrated from shot-out mounts and pulled the big plane to the side. It tumbled crazily around its one remaining wing and then it too broke loose. The fuselage plummeted downward into the sea as if it had been suddenly turned to cast iron and the bombs burst harmlessly off Blackfin’s starboard beam. There were cheers and then the cheers turned to groans. The Seafire was in trouble. They had hit it, too.
Engine smoking and trailing a thin white mist of glycol, the British fighter pulled from its dive and curved off to the west, gradually gaining altitude. “He’s had it,” Williams said grimly. “Keep a sharp lookout. If he bails out or ditches, we’ll pick him up.”
“They got ‘em. Got ‘em both, Captain,” a bridge lookout shouted, pointing overhead.
The men began to cheer. Matsuhara and the pilot of the second Seafire had scored. One of the two remaining Stukas was spinning into the sea, its engine burning like a blowtorch. The other Stuka was diving, trailing smoke. As Brent watched, the big bomber flattened its dive just a few feet above the water. “He’s going to ditch,” Brent observed.
“If our fighter doesn’t kill him,” Williams said, gesturing at the second Seafire that was circling above the doomed bomber.
Slowly the big bomber settled, catching first a low swell with its tail wheel and left elevator, bouncing high and then dropping down again. This time it came down flat, the pilot trying desperately to keep his wheels from catching the sea and flipping him over. In a burst of blue water and white spray, the bomber plopped into the sea, dragging its tail and then dropping on its belly. It bobbed up and down and immediately began to settle. Two figures were seen scrambling out of the cockpit. The Seafire circled once more and then pulled into a sharp climb, pointing its nose toward Matsuhara’s waiting Zero and the dogfight that still raged on the far horizon.
Williams turned to Tatsunori Hara, “All ahead standard.” And then to Harold Sturgis, “Left standard rudder, steady up on the downed plane.”
“Are we going to pick them up or kill them, Captain?” Brent asked casually.
“What would you suggest?”
Brent did not hesitate. He spoke through the heat in his guts, his chest, his heart: “Kill ‘em.” Shocked faces turned toward the young lieutenant.
Willia
ms pondered for a moment. “Now I know why they call you ‘the American samurai.’”
Brent stiffened, not sure if he had been insulted or complemented. Before he could answer, a shout turned his head. “The Seafire’s back. It’s ditching. Fine off the starboard quarter.”
Every man turned, watched and prayed as the damaged British fighter glided low over the sea, close aboard the starboard side. With his landing gear retracted, the pilot’s problem was simpler than that that had faced the pilot of the JU 87. Slipping and skidding across the surface like a thrown rock, the wings of the sleek fighter sent up two enormous sheets of water as it tore through the surface at at least eighty knots. It bounced high, slapped the water, bounced again, and then was caught by the grasp of the sea and wrestled to a stop in a geyser of white spray and blue water. Immediately a figure threw out a dinghy, stepped gingerly to a wing, and slipped into the raft.
“Made It. Made it,” Williams said with obvious relief. He turned to Sturgis. “Belay my last order. We’ll pick up our own first. Can you track him?”
“Aye, aye, sir. I can track him.”
“Very well. Call out your course once you steady up on him.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Call out my course.”
“Sir,” a voice came up from the conning tower. “Damage control reports the intake valve on our number one main ballast tank is ruptured and we’re taking on seawater. The chief engineer says we can hold even with the pump.”
“Tell him to jury-rig the number two pump. It can be crossed over.”
“He is, sir.”
“Very well.”
Sturgis said to Williams, “Steady on zero-four-seven, sir.”
“Well done, Quartermaster. Hold her there.” Williams turned aft. “Five-inch gun crew,” he shouted. “Stand by to pick up survivors.” The men left their weapon. Stepping gingerly around their dead gun captain, they began to unpack lines and life preservers from a locker under the cigarette deck. The captain announced to the bridge crew, “We’ll pick up our own first, then we’ll take care of the enemy.” He waved to the port bow, where two men were visible floating in an inflatable dinghy and faced Brent. Then, with his face as inscrutable as a sealed book, he said softly, “I’ll keep your suggestion in mind, Mister Ross- yes indeed.”
