End of the Beginning

by Harry Turtledove

  “Captain Iwabuchi is a very . . . energetic man, sir,” Shimizu said carefully.

  Horino laughed. “He certainly is. All right, Corporal. You may go.” Shimizu saluted and left in a hurry. He’d got his message across and hadn’t got in trouble for it. That would do—and then some.

  VIII

  LIEUTENANT SABURO SHINDO WAS LESS GLAD TO BE AT SEA AGAIN THAN HE’D EXPECTED. Akagi and her escorting destroyers and cruisers steamed north. So did Shokaku, some kilometers away. They wouldn’t have sortied if there hadn’t been good intelligence that the Americans were on their way again.

  He wished Zuikaku were with them. They’d had three carriers the last time they faced the U.S. Navy, and they’d needed all of them. The Yankees might not be very skillful, but they didn’t give up. That worried Shindo, who’d thought conquering Hawaii would be plenty to knock the USA out of the Pacific War.

  “Karma,” he muttered. That submarine skipper had got lucky. He’d heard some of his superiors wondering if the Americans had broken Japanese codes, but he didn’t believe it. How could gaijin ever learn Japanese well enough to do such a thing? It had to be impossible.

  Akagi and Shokaku steamed toward the biggest breach the Americans had torn in the line of picket boats. It stood to reason that the Yankees would try to send their ships through there. He would have done the same thing if he commanded the American fleet.

  Commander Fuchida was pacing along the flight deck. He nodded to Shindo. “Your planes will be ready to fight when we make contact?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Shindo answered. “Of course, sir.” Shindo paused, then asked, “Do we know how big the enemy fleet is?”

  “Not exactly,” Fuchida answered. “Our best guess is that it’s about the same size as the one last year, maybe one carrier more. Even with only two carriers of our own, we should be able to handle that.”

  “Why don’t we know better, sir?” Shindo asked.

  “Because most of the yards where the Americans build carriers are on their East Coast,” Fuchida said. “We can’t do reconnaissance there, and neither can Germany.”

  “Their ships have to come through the Panama Canal to get at us,” Shindo said. “Can’t we count them once they’ve got to the Pacific?”

  “We’ve tried. We haven’t had much luck,” Fuchida told him. “We’ve lost a couple of H8Ks that tried to spy on the canal. The Americans patrol aggressively in that area. We didn’t get any worthwhile information, either.”

  “Too bad,” Shindo said, which was as close as he would come to criticizing any of his superiors. He wanted to know what he was up against. Meticulous planning was a big part of what made the Hawaii operation so successful.

  “Shigata ga nai,” Fuchida said, which was true enough. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I do wish we had Zuikaku here with us, though. Well, shigata ga nai there, too.”

  “If the Yankees have the same number of carriers and the same kinds of planes as they did last year, we’ll beat them again. We’ll beat the pants off them.”

  Before Fuchida could answer, the public-address system called his name: “Commander Fuchida! Report to the bridge immediately! Commander Fuchida! Report to the—”

  “Please excuse me,” Fuchida said, and dashed across the flight deck towards Akagi’s island.

  What was going on? Shindo waited for his own summons to the bridge, or perhaps for the klaxons of general quarters. Neither came, which left him stewing in his own juices. A couple of minutes later, though, Akagi changed course to starboard. He nodded to himself. The skipper had found out something he hadn’t known before.

  And then the PA system brayed to life again: “All flying crews report to the briefing room! Attention, please! All flying crews report to the briefing room at once!”

  Now it was Shindo’s turn to run as if possessed. He sprinted for a hatchway: the briefing room was on the hangar deck, below the flight deck. The soles of his shoes clanged on the iron treads of the stairs.

  A few fliers beat him to the briefing room, but only a few. He found a seat near the front, so he could get the best look at the maps and charts and blackboards there. More and more men came in after him, all chattering excitedly. They knew they were liable to be going into action before long.

  They quieted when Commander Fuchida and Commander Genda walked into the room. The man who led air operations and the man who planned them waited a few minutes to let the laggards crowd in. Then Minoru Genda spoke without preamble: “We have found the enemy.”

  “Ah.” Shindo made the same noise as most of the men around him. The boys in Intelligence hadn’t been altogether asleep at the switch, then. They really had known the Americans were coming. Akagi and Shokaku had sailed in good time to give the enemy a warm reception.

  “The Americans are moving more or less along the path we anticipated,” Genda went on. “A sampan just east of the ones the Yankees have been attacking spotted their ships and broke radio silence to deliver the warning. The signal cut off abruptly before the message was completed.”

  Saburo Shindo knew what that meant. The Yankees had spotted the sampan or traced the signal. Some good men, some brave men, were dead. Yasukuni Shrine held some new spirits.

  “It appears the U.S. fleet may be somewhat larger than we expected,” Commander Fuchida said. “We shall engage it even so, of course. The more damage we do to it, the harder the time the Americans will have landing on Oahu. Banzai for the Emperor!”

  “Banzai! Banzai!” The cry filled the briefing room. Shindo joined it.

  “Oahu has received the sampan’s signal,” Genda said. “Mitsubishi G4Ms are airborne, and will assist us in our attack on U.S. forces.”

  More Banzai!s rang out. Shindo joined those, too, though less wholeheartedly. The G4M was fast for a bomber, and could carry a large load a long way. There its virtues ended. It was gruesomely vulnerable to enemy fighters; with gallows humor, G4M pilots called their plane the one-shot lighter for the ease with which it caught fire. And a good deal of combat had proved high-level bombers had to be lucky to hit ships moving far below. Some of the G4Ms doubtless would carry torpedoes, but their pilots didn’t have the practice carrier-based B5N2 fliers got.

  “Range to our targets is about three hundred kilometers,” Fuchida said. “We want to strike as fast as we can, before they are fully prepared.”

  “Suggestion, sir!” Shindo’s hand shot into the air.

  “Yes, Lieutenant?” Fuchida said.

  “We ought to fly a dogleg to the east or west before proceeding against the enemy,” Shindo said. “That way, he won’t be able to follow the reciprocal of our course back to the ship, whether he picks us up visually or with his fancy electronics.”

  The idea seemed to take Fuchida by surprise. He talked with Genda in voices too low for Shindo to make out what they were saying. Then, with some reluctance, he shook his head. “If we had worked this out with Shokaku beforehand, it would be a good ploy. But we can’t break radio silence to discuss it, and we can’t have our planes arriving over the target after hers. A coordinated attack is vital.”

  “Yes, sir.” Shindo wished he’d thought of it sooner, but he could see that Fuchida’s reply made at least some sense.

  Genda added, “Even if the Americans get through, I believe our combat air patrol should be able to handle them. Their torpedo bombers are waddling death traps, and we will be more alert for their dive bombers.”

  Last time, Akagi had been damaged, Zuikaku badly damaged. Shindo hoped Genda wasn’t being too optimistic. But the powers that be weren’t wrong when they said a quick, hard blow would serve Japan best.

  “I’ll be with you,” Fuchida said. “Remember—carriers first. Everything else is an afterthought. Strike hard, for the Emperor’s sake. Banzai!”

  “Banzai!” Shindo shouted along with the rest of the fliers. “Banzai!”

  A SCOWLING REGULAR NAVY LIEUTENANT COMMANDER PROWLED the front of the Bunker Hill’s briefing room. He sipped from,
of all things, a glass of milk as he paced. No one laughed at him. It soothed his ulcer, which he’d got perhaps not least from contemplating the idea of a fleet carrier full of Reserve pilots.

  “The Japs know we’re here,” he said without preamble. “One of their damn little picket boats got off a signal before we sank her. Odds are good we’ll be seeing bandits before too long. They’ll get their strike in on us before we can hit them. That means we probably have to take a punch and then knock them cold. Are you up for it, gentlemen?”

  “Yes, sir!” Joe Crosetti’s hungry howl was one among many. He’d been waiting for this day more than a year and a half, since December 7, 1941. Now the Japs seemed likely to be within arm’s reach, or at least within Hellcat’s reach—at last. The urge to go out and hit them all but overwhelmed him.

  After another swig from that glass of milk, the briefing officer said, “Well, you’d better be. Your aircraft have cost Uncle Sam a nice piece of change. So has your training, such as it is.” He had a long nose, excellent for looking down. “Add in whatever you happen to be worth and it comes to quite a sum. Try to bring it back—unless you find a good reason not to, of course.”

  That last sobering sentence reminded Joe this wasn’t a game. They were playing for keeps, and there might be reasons not to come home. He refused to worry about it. He didn’t think it would, or could, happen to him.

  “Questions?” the briefing officer asked.

  Nobody said anything for a little while. All Joe wanted to know was, Where are the Japs? The briefing office couldn’t tell him that, not yet. By the looks on the other fliers’ faces, they felt the same way. Then someone asked, “Sir, what do we do if we run into enemy planes on the way to their ships?”

  That was a good question. Attacking the Japanese aircraft along the way might make it harder for the Japs to strike the U.S. carriers here, but it would also lessen the Americans’ chances of knocking out the enemy carriers. The briefing officer frowned. “You’ll have to use your best judgment on that, gentlemen. If you think you can hurt them, do it. If you think you’ll have a better shot at their carriers by avoiding contact, do that.”

  Joe turned to Orson Sharp and whispered, “Whatever we do, we get the credit if it works out and the blame if it doesn’t.”

  “What else is new?” Sharp whispered back, a response more cynical than he usually gave.

  “For now, take your places in your aircraft,” the briefing officer said. “You don’t have long to wait. I’d bet my life on that.” He was betting his life on how well some of the pilots could do against a foe who had smashed U.S. fliers whenever they met.

  Not this time, Joe thought fiercely as he hurried to his Hellcat. The F6F wasn’t a particularly pretty plane. The big radial engine gave it a blunt nose, like that of a prizefighter who’d stopped too many lefts with his face. A Jap Zero looked a lot more elegant. But the Hellcat had almost twice the horsepower, more firepower with its battery of heavy machine guns, sturdier construction, self-sealing fuel tanks, and good armor protecting the pilot. The pilot. The words weren’t an abstraction to Joe, not any more. That means me.

  He raced across the planking of the flight deck and scrambled up into his plane. He slid the canopy shut and dogged it. The cockpit smelled of leather and avgas and lubricants: intimate odors and mechanical ones, all mixed together. Joe longed for a cigarette, but smoking around oxygen and high-octane gas was hazardous to your life expectancy.

  Sailors in yellow helmets and thin yellow smocks worn over their tunics stood by to direct the planes’ movements when they took off. Sailors in red helmets and smocks waited near the carrier’s island. They were crash crews and repairmen. The only men in blue helmets and smocks—the sailors who handled the planes while static—left on the flight deck were the pair poised to take away the chocks that secured the lead Hellcat in its place.

  “Pilots, start your engines!” It wasn’t the voice of God roaring through the loudspeakers, but that of the executive officer. On the Bunker Hill, as on any ship, the skipper was God, and the exec was his prophet.

  Joe knew a horrid fear that his engine wouldn’t catch, that he would have to stay behind. But it roared to life with the others. The prop blurred into near-invisibility. Joe eyed the instruments. It wasn’t a test this time; he wasn’t sitting in a simulator or a lard-butt trainer. This was for all the marbles.

  The sailors in yellow formed a line across the flight deck. “Prepare to launch planes!” came the command from the island. Joe heard it both over the loudspeakers and through his earphones. The last two men in blue took the chocks away from the lead plane. A man in yellow walked backwards, making come-hither motions with his hands. The Hellcat followed, also at a walking pace.

  Just in front of the island stood a man with a checkered flag in his right hand. He made grinding motions with his left. The lead plane’s engine sped up. Another roar came from the loudspeakers: “Launch planes!” The man with the flag made more grinding motions. The lead plane’s motor raced. The checkered flag went down. The F6F raced along the flight deck, dipped as it shot off the bow, then gained altitude again and shot up to take its place in what would soon be the greatest assemblage of naval airpower the world had ever known.

  Plane after plane took off. After what seemed forever but was only a few minutes, Joe’s turn came. He followed the beckoning sailor in yellow to the center of the deck, revved his engine higher and higher at the flagman’s signal, and whooped when the checkered flag dropped. Now!

  Acceleration slammed him back in his seat as the Hellcat darted forward. That sickening lurch when it went off the deck . . . He hauled back on the stick and gave the plane all the throttle she had. Up she went. Hell, she might have been doing the Indian Rope Trick, the way she climbed. Nothing he’d trained in even came close.

  But an F6F wasn’t a widowmaker, the way some hot planes were. She played tough, but she played fair. And the higher Joe got, the more of the U.S. fleet he could see spread out below him. With any luck at all, they’d give the Japs the biggest kick in the ass the world had ever known.

  Along with Bunker Hill, Essex and three more brand-new fleet carriers steamed toward Hawaii. So did the repaired Hornet. So did Ranger. She wasn’t an ideal combat carrier, but she could carry planes to make this big fist even bigger. And so did five light carriers, which could keep up with their bigger sisters no matter what, and close to a dozen escort carriers, which couldn’t. The baby flattops would get left behind in a fast-moving action, but among them they brought almost as many planes into action as the Essex-class ships.

  Joe spotted his element leader and took his place below and to the right of the other Hellcat. He’d wanted to lead an element—Orson Sharp led one. But wingman was what they’d given him, and he knew he had to squash that gnawing jealousy. He’d been good enough to get here, goddammit. If he did his job well, he might be leading an element pretty damn quick.

  Dive bombers and torpedo planes went into formation with the fighters. The torpedo planes were new Grumman Avengers, not the lumbering Douglas Devastators that couldn’t get out of their own way and had failed so miserably the year before.

  “All hands! All hands! Listen up, everybody!” Excitement crackled in Joe’s earphones. On the short-range, plane-to-plane circuit, the officer went on, “We’ve got a bearing on the Japs—a cruiser’s recon plane found the bastards. I got the word just before I launched. Range about 160, maybe 170, course 200. That’ll get us close enough to find ’em on our own, anyway. Let’s go hunting!”

  The fierce shouts that filled Joe’s head made him want to snatch off the earphones. But he didn’t. He added to the din. Like a swarm of bees—a big swarm of bees—the U.S. aircraft buzzed south.

  MITSUO FUCHIDA’S B5N2 FELT DIFFERENT WITH A TORPEDO from the way a B5N1 had with bombs slung beneath. The long, heavy torpedo made the aircraft a bit slower, a bit clumsier. He shrugged. He would do what needed doing anyway.

  Patches of white, fluffy cloud sailed
past every now and again. For the most part, though, the sky was clear and the sea below calm. As the Yankees had the year before, they’d picked better weather to attack Hawaii than Japan had at the end of 1941. Fuchida shrugged again. The United States could pick and choose. As far as he could see, Japan hadn’t had a choice. Roosevelt had cut off metal shipments, frozen assets, and, most important, stopped the flow of oil, all to dislodge Japan from her rightful empire in China. If she’d bowed to U.S. extortion, she would have been America’s puppet forever after. Better to fight, to seize the chance to be one of the great powers in the world.

  He peered ahead, hoping to catch sight of the American ships. That was foolish, as a glance at his watch told him. He and his comrades hadn’t flown nearly long enough to put the enemy in sight.

  He clicked his tongue between his teeth. He didn’t have so many comrades as he would have liked. Only about 120 planes were winging their way north—a third as many as had flown against Hawaii at the start of the war in the Pacific. He wished Zuikaku hadn’t been hit. That had to be bad luck . . . didn’t it? Her planes would have made this sortie half again as strong.

  “Airplanes ahead!” The words in his earphones were quietly spoken, but they might as well have been screamed. Now he would see what the Americans had come up with this time.

  When he found the enemy air armada, he thought for a moment he was seeing spots before his eyes. That many planes? He bowed in the cockpit, not to the oncoming Yankees but to Admiral Yamamoto. The commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet had said before the war started that Japan would have six months or a year to do as she pleased in the Pacific, but things would get much harder after that. Conquering Hawaii had stretched Japan’s hegemony out to a year and a half and even a little more, but Yamamoto, as usual, seemed to know what he was talking about.

  As more Japanese fliers saw the Americans, questions dinned in Fuchida’s earphones. He commanded the Emperor’s aircraft, as he had at Pearl Harbor and in the first fight in the North Pacific. Most of the increasingly alarmed queries boiled down to, Do we attack the enemy’s planes, or do we go on to strike at his ships?