by Peter Albano
Typical of the samurai mentality, it was an all-or-nothing strike. Forty-five Aichi D3As, 42 Nakajima B5Ns took off from Yonaga. They were followed by twenty-seven Zeros, twelve F6F Hellcats, and the two Seafires. Fifteen Zeros remained with Yonaga as CAP.
As soon as Iwata cleared the carrier’s deck, Brent swung his big bulk around to the rear of the dive bomber, the ball-bearing mounted gunner’s seat moving as smoothly as a glider. Iwata’s voice filled his earphones, “Load and lock.”
“Load and lock,” Brent repeated. After unsnapping the upper strap of his safety harness, the lieutenant released the Nambu’s well lock and pulled the Type 96, 7.7-millimeter machine gun from its compartment, releasing its locking mechanism. Leaning back with his feet firmly planted on the footrest, he swung the beautifully balanced 24-pound weapon in an azimuth from beam to beam and then from the vertical to the horizontal and finally, he pushed up on the twin pistol grips until the muzzle pointed down beneath the tail. Not quite satisfied with the feel the machine gun, he moved it from side to side in quick, jerky motions before nodding to himself with satisfaction.
He reset the lock, released the spring-loaded breech plate lock, and raised the top cover. The armorers had pulled the belt through the receiver, but, for safety, had not seated a round in the firing chamber. The belt was perfectly aligned and each projectile had been carefully lubricated. There was the usual mix of color-coded rounds: alternately red and blue for anti-personnel and armor-piercing with every fifth round tipped yellow for tracer.
He snapped the cover shut and grabbed the wooden cocking handle. He pulled it back hard and released it. Ringing metallically, the spring pulled the handle back and the bolt snapped into place, driving a round into the firing chamber. As was his habit, he partially opened the breech plate and peeked into the firing mechanism. A round was seated and it all looked ready. Sighing, the gunner sank back and raised his weapon by gripping the double pistol grips and pushing down. He locked the weapon into place and opened his microphone, “Weapon loaded and locked, Commander.”
“Very well. Keep a weather eye out for enemy fighters, Mister Ross.”
Brent chuckled. That last command had been completely unnecessary. He began his habitual scan, short, jerky movements that depended more on peripheral vision to detect specks than the direct, piercing stare which often could be fooled or just miss something that could be caught by the corner of one’s eye.
The first aircraft airborne, Iwata circled the bomber counterclockwise and gained altitude as the echelons of “threes” formed up behind him. Superstitious about the number “three,” the Japanese preferred to fly in three, threes of threes. Consequently, Iwata’s first twenty-seven bombers climbed to 8,000 feet and then headed to the south and west. They were followed by 18 more D3As.
Iwata flew at a slow speed as the Nakajima torpedo bombers took off followed by the fighters. It was a huge train of aircraft, and time was required to assemble the disparate units into a cohesive whole. But fuel was priceless, and none of it would be wasted circling the carrier. Instead, the bombers proceeded toward their target at a slow speed into a brilliant eggshell blue sky, unmarred by a single cloud. It was a day brimming with life, but Brent knew it would soon be filled with death.
Finally, almost an hour after taking off, Brent could look down from 8,000 feet and see the swarm of mottled-green B5Ns lumbering 2,000 feet below with their 1,760 pound torpedoes slung beneath their fuselages. Then, high above at twenty-four-thousand-feet, he stared at the fighters. All were painted white with black cowlings except for Yoshi Matsuhara’s which led and was identified as the air group commander with its red cowling and green hood. Raising his binoculars, Brent felt a thrill of joy and confidence as he studied Yoshi’s Zero and the two Seafires which had black bands painted around the tapered noses of their Rolls Royce engines.
For nearly an hour the great armada droned southward without sighting anything. Brent had turned on his radio and switched to all six frequencies, but only a blank carrier wave rustled and hissed in his earphones. He left the set tuned into the fighter frequency because the high-flying fighter pilots should spot the enemy first. He was not disappointed.
Yoshi Matsuhara broke radio silence and Brent knew the curtain was going up. “Edo group, this is Edo leader. Many fighters at one o’clock high,” he reported, using the English and American system of reporting. He called on his flight leaders, each commanding three sections of Zeros. “Edo, Shogo and Musashi flights engage. Beer Bottle flight remain in top cover.”
Brent brought up his glasses and studied the sky high to the south. He saw swarms of gnats descending toward them. Yoshi was intercepting with twenty-five Zeros and his two Seafires. “Beer Bottle” was Commander Conrad Crellin. He was to maintain top cover with his Hellcats while Matsuhara led the interception. It appeared he would be greatly outnumbered.
Then Brent heard Iwata’s excited voice in the intercom calling his dive bombers. “Yosano flight, this is Yosano leader. Many ships to the south!”
Brent stood up and raised his glasses. It was the enemy’s battle group, unmistakably. He could see the entire force of 11 ships on the horizon just above the leading edge of their starboard wing. Two carriers in a column, two cruisers flanking the carriers and the entire group surrounded by seven escorts. Moving at flank speed, the enemy ships churned white curving wakes in the beautiful turquoise sea. He glanced to the east. JU 87s and AT 6s with fighters, streaming far to the east and headed north toward Yonaga. The enemy had launched his attack, but late. His aircraft did not have the great range of the Japanese, and he had been forced to wait and close the range. A terrible disadvantage. But he had the advantage of numbers.
Brent heard Lieutenant Joji Kai’s voice shouting orders to his torpedo bombers. “Kami flight, this is Kami leader. Sections one through seven, take the lead carrier, sections eight through fourteen, take the second. Banzai!” The torpedo bombers began to lose altitude and split into two groups.
Then Iwata split his Aichi D3As between the two targets and Brent felt the pulse of the Sakae engine pick up. He unlocked the Nambu and swung it up over the tail. High above he could see trouble. Now he could count about fifty enemy fighters racing in to challenge Yoshi’s twenty-seven. Brent muttered a short prayer.
*
Yoshi peered through his new 90-millimeter anti-glare armorglass windscreen and felt his stomach suddenly contort and sicken. At least fifty ME 109s flying in pairs were diving on him. And racing in from what seemed the entire southern hemisphere of his compass, another twenty to twenty-five fighters were already closing in on the bombers. He needed every available fighter — now! He spoke into his microphone, “Beer Bottle leader, this is Edo leader. Screen the bombers. Engage! Engage!”
Crellin’s voice came back. “This is Beer Bottle leader. Thanks for the invitation. I hate being a wallflower. On our way.”
Glancing upward, Yoshi saw the twelve great fighters peel off into split-esses and follow their leader in screaming dives, plummeting toward the carriers and the Japanese torpedo and dive bombers that were closing in fast on their targets. The Hellcats could offer some immediate protection, but they could not stop all of the fighters. At least the odds would be better. But he had abandoned his top cover. He had no reserves. The enemy had given him no choice.
He had punched his throttle to the next to last stop. The new Sakae 43 was red-lined at 3100 rpms, and the cylinder head temperature showed a maximum of 290 degrees. He dared not jam the throttle into overboost for more than a minute or two. Once when climbing hard over Yonaga over Tokyo Bay, the temperature had suddenly shot up to 280 degrees. But even at the next to last stop, he was pulling away from York and Willard-Smith. He throttled back slightly.
He stared through his range finder. The enemy filled the first ring. His heart jumped, eyes widened. A blood-red Messerschmitt led with a black and white zebra-patterned fighter close aboard. Rosencrance and Vatz. He felt hot hate rise like a poisonous gorge that clogg
ed his throat and thickened his tongue. He spoke into his microphone. “All sections hold on the first pass and then individual combat.” The red ME filled his second ring.
The MEs had the advantage of altitude and speed. But in a head-on pass, the advantage went only to the better shots and the lucky ones. Rosencrance saw him and ruddered over to bring his spinner nose-to-nose with the Zero. The renegade American had some hate of his own to satisfy, and he was not deficient in courage.
Both men opened fire at three hundred meters. Then the sky was laced with intertwining threads of tracers. A Zero exploded, another dropped off trailing smoke. A wing flew off a ME, and another flipped over onto its back and screamed for the sea, a dead pilot at the controls. Two more ME dropped off trailing smoke and glycol.
Yoshi snarled with pleasure as he saw small fire motes blink on the leading edge of the red fighter’s wing and bits of aluminum whip into the wind. He was scoring. Shells and bullets snapped past, and he felt a slight jar as slugs hit his right wing. At the last instant, both Yoshi and Rosencrance dropped right and left wings and passed each other like two stunt flyers at an air show. The ME brushed by so close, the Japanese felt his fighter bounce in the backwash. Neither had been seriously damaged.
As Yoshi pulled the stick back into the pit of his stomach, his earphones were filled with the usual frantic shouts of men fighting for their lives and the lives of their comrades in aerial combat: “Kuruna! There’s one on your tail!”
“See him. Give me some help!”
“Break left — break left!”
Matsuhara’s one German pilot, Heinrich Stuffermann, was in trouble early. He heard the Greek, Nicholas Antonopolis, shout out, “Stauffermann! Above you. Dive! Dive!”
But Stauffermann must have been too slow. Out of the corner of his eye, Yoshi saw a great yellow-red flash as the tanks of a Zero exploded. A good man gone in a blink.
Everywhere the sky was filled with twisting, turning planes and tracers sizzling through the sky, leaving white trails of burned phosphorous. Perhaps a dozen funeral pyres already hung in the still air like black grave markers. Four or five white parachutes descended slowly. The battle had degenerated, as all dogfights do, into a big, brawling battle that filled hundreds of square kilometers of sky. The air group commander had no time to look and wonder. In a dogfight a man survived more by instinct than by careful reason. By the time a man deliberated all the ramifications of a maneuver, he could be killed several times over.
At the top of his loop, Yoshi jammed the stick to the right and balancing delicately with rudder, half-rolled into the final maneuver of an Immelmann. Anticipating the Zero’s quickness, Rosencrance had not tried to match it. Instead, he chandelled far to the south, curving up into a graceful turn of his own. Yoshi cursed. The American was far out of range. Then a shout in his earphones sent icewater coursing through his veins. It was Elwyn York. “Edo Leader, two of them buggers are on your arse!”
A drumming on his control surfaces turned his head. Two MEs were closing in fast from both quarters. He put Rosencrance out of his mind. His life was on the line, and he could lose it in the next second. He jammed the throttle into overboost and the fighter leaped like a startled rabbit. The needle of the cylinder head temperature began to move. But the MEs had the advantage of great diving speed and were well within range. Then two Seafires closed in behind the Messerschmitts to complete the murderous ensemble. The MEs were firing, the Englishmen were firing, and Yoshi Matsuhara was twisting and diving for his life.
A shout from the Cockney, “Scragged the whoreson!”
Then Willard-Smith’s triumphant cry, “One more of the bastards on his way to Mecca, or wherever the bloody cutthroats go.”
Both MEs were burning and twisting toward the sea.
There was no time to rejoice. Rosencrance with Vatz by his side was making another run with two more black MEs following closely. The two Seafires closed in close aboard Yoshi, and the seven aircraft stormed toward each other.
*
The sky was raining fighters. Brent swung the machine gun and crouched down low in his wicker seat as a black ME 109 screamed down on his tail. Already ten or eleven torpedo bombers had been blasted from the sky as if the enemy were sharpening his eye with target practice. And the enemy ships had opened up with a storm of five-inch, 38-caliber AA fire. Hundreds of black smudges blossomed in the sky like the flowers of death, menacing friend and foe alike. Two Aichis just to the right and behind were shot from the sky in the ME’s first pass. The third vanished as a five-inch shell detonated its 250-kilogram bomb. Everywhere the fighters were diving and climbing, shooting down bombers like hungry lions tearing at the carcass of a downed wildebeest.
Brent’s heart pounded so hard he could feel it pulse in his neck. The black fighter grew in his ring sight. Flame leaped from its wings and cowling. Tracers rained past. The black plane finally filled all three rings. Zero deflection. He pressed the trigger. He felt the weapon jerk and vibrate in his hands and saw his tracers punch straight on into the enemy’s spinner, some ricocheting off the hood and armorglass windscreen. Immediately the Daimler Benz left a trail of smoke as its oil tank was shot out and hot oil sprayed the engine. Brent was waving his fist and shouting, “Burn, you son-of-a-bitch!” as the stricken fighter plunged toward the sea.
“Good shooting!” Iwata said into his earphones.
But the entire bomber force was facing disaster. At least half of the big planes had been shot out of the sky in less than three minutes. Then the F6F Hellcats arrived, hurtling down from twenty-four thousand feet like vengeful blue javelins. On their first pass, four MEs were shot to pieces. Then most of the pressure was off the Aichis and the Nakajimas, the Arab fighters turning to fight the big, powerful American Hellcats. But the Americans were outnumbered by at least two to one.
Brent switched to the fighter frequency. “Crellin, this is Fife. Give me some help.”
“Break right, Fife!”
“God damn it. What the fuck’s wrong with your radio, Crellin? You’re coming in like shit!”
“Shaw. At two o’clock. Two of ’em.”
“See ’em, Yates. Take the one on the right.”
“Crellin, this is Spevak. For Chrissakes, there are three on your ass. Dive! Dive! Nothing can dive with us!”
“Crellin’s burning.”
“Oh, shit.”
Brent watched as a black trail of smoke arced off into the sea far below. There was no parachute. Here the gallant young American Conrad Crellin would rest for eternity with thousands of other young men. And he had scarcely known him, spoken to him, and now he was gone forever, not even fingernail and hair clippings to send home.
The dogfight moved off far to the south, but not all of the MEs were occupied by the Hellcats. Brent caught a glimpse of something coming up hard from below. “Bank, Iwata!” he shouted into the intercom. “Bank left!”
The pilot put the stick over hard to the left and the big plane dropped its wing. Standing up on his toes, Brent pushed the pistol grips up and stared down into the flaming jaws of death. A ME 109 was standing on its tail and firing into their blind spot.
Brent pressed the trigger and saw his tracers smash into the fuselage and march forward. There were hard thumping sounds as the enemy’s tracers raked the fuselage. Chunks of aluminum flew off into the slipstream. Then the ME fell off and streaked toward the sea.
Iwata righted the dive bomber and said, “Well done, gunner.” And then, “Stand by. We will begin our run in a few seconds.” The voice was very calm.
Brent took a quick look to the south. At least ten more enemy Messerschmitts had been shot down, but only eight F6Fs were still in the sky. And two of these were trailing smoke and had turned for home. He looked down and he thought he would vomit. He could only count twelve B5N torpedo bombers. Lieutenant Joji Kai still led, but large patches of skin had been blasted from his wing, his canopy was shattered, and it appeared his two crewmen were either dead or badly injured. Yet
the big plane still bore on toward Al Kufra with its unmistakable silhouette of the Essex-class carrier-high island structure with pyramiding five-inch gun houses both fore and aft.
The entire Arab battle force was firing now with their 40-millimeter and 20-millimeter batteries. The two cruisers and the seven Gearings had bunched in close to the carriers to concentrate their fire support. With hundreds of guns firing, each ship rippled with leaping flashes, billowing clouds of brown smoke trailing in its wake. Thousands of tracers stormed to meet the torpedo planes, shorts ripping the water in front of the Nakajimas as they lumbered in, hundreds of spent 40-millimeter shells self-destructing in small black puffs astern of the bombers. Six MEs of the CAP attacked in desperate attempts to destroy the survivors. One Nakajima was hit, lost a wing, and tumbled across the surface, disintegrating as if it were bouncing across concrete. Another exploded, and two more plunged into the sea in enormous splashes. The eight survivors drove on with fatal determination. Seven finally launched their torpedoes.
Immediately the two carriers turned hard to starboard in an attempt to thread through the seven wakes. The big planes turned away... but not Kai’s bomber. The Nakajima with the yellow cowling and the yellow stripe charged in on the Al Kufra. It seemed impossible that Al Kufra’s gunners could miss. And some did not. The windscreen disappeared in a blizzard of broken Plexiglas and aluminum peeled from hits on the wings and fuselage like the skin of a snake. But somehow the B5N remained airborne and closed in on the wildly turning carrier, which appeared to be evading all three torpedoes streaking toward her.
Kai released his torpedo at only a hundred meters. He could not miss. Brent waited to see the big plane pull up and turn. But Kai had a long memory — a long, hateful memory of a time off Okinawa when he missed this same ship. Worse, he had been constantly reminded for over four decades by humiliating taunts aimed at the kamikaze pilot who had returned. But the gods had been kind. He would not miss the second time.
“My God, he’s going to ram,” Brent shouted.
