by Peter Albano
The cloud build up had been steady. Now, in the late afternoon, with the sun a big bail of fire blurred by streamers of cirrus in the west, the thunderhead had become a giant, looming over the rim of the world to the south like the finger of a gargantuan hand, top flattened into an anvil shape and burning with silver and bright golds, its own internal lightning like a candle in a storm. Taku saw no beauty. Once, off the Cape Verde Islands, Yonaga had been attacked by Arab aircraft flying through just such a storm; a turbulent, dangerous maelstrom that could tear the wings from a bomber, yet at the same time made radar detection impossible.
He turned his head slowly. The heart of the new Japan – the hedonistic, materialistic Japan, corrupted from ancient values and traditions – stretched below. To the northwest, Tokyo, a concrete wasteland crammed with twelve million souls and stinking of garbage and petrol fumes despite the Arab oil embargo; to the southwest, Yokahama, the nation’s greatest port with docks that stank like sewers; to the east the Boso Peninsula and Point Nojima, greenery bulldozed off and scarred with new housing; to the north Kashiwa and the Tokyo International Airport. Only to the far west was the immutability of ancient Japan evident. Here, standing like an eleven thousand meter shrine to the gods and ancestral values, loomed Fujisan. Rising majestically in the haze, the great mountain appeared two dimensional, cut by the gods from a blue rice paper shoji and glued to the blue vault of the sky where it allowed the colors of the declining sun to filter through with weird luminosity. Surely, the gods abided there. Yes, the home of Izanagi and Izanami whose union begat the islands of Japan and gave birth to the storm god, Susano, his gentle sister Amaterasu, the moon god Tsuki-Yomi and the legion of kami that populate every stream, wood, tree and field.
A glint the size of a pinhead to the north turned his head. A four-engined Douglas DC-6. Now two others; both Douglas DC-3s. Curiously, the trio had dropped out of the anvil head of the thunderhead — no place for a transport — and had joined the stack of orbiting aircraft over the airport at three thousand meters. Even stranger, they were in a column and circling at the same altitude. Something was not quite right. Taku stirred uneasily.
An unexpected bank toward Yonaga by the DC-6 jarred Ishikawa out of his lethargy. For once, he was glad he had a radio. As the transport, followed by its two companions, broke into Yonaga’s forbidden airspace, he threw the “transmit” switch and spoke into his oxygen mask, “Iceman. Iceman, this is Edo Leader. Three multi-engined aircraft bearing three-one-zero, range forty kilometers, altitude three thousand meters closing on you. Request permission to intercept.”
“Edo Leader, this is Iceman, Intercept! Intercept!” cracked in his earphones.
Taku keyed the microphone. “Edo flight, this is Edo Leader. Intercept the three intruder aircraft bearing three-one-zero, range forty. Follow my lead.” Immediately, he heard Yosano and Tanizaki acknowledge with excited voices his command. “Do not engage until I open fire.”
Eyes never wavering from the Douglases, Taku’s hands and feet moved without conscious command, as if they were more a part of the machine than the man, punching the throttle to the next to last notch, horsing the stick to the left while trimming with left rudder. “The kill — the kill,” he muttered to himself, turning toward the approaching Douglases. “That is what life is all about.” As he snapped the ring of the gun tit from “safe” to “fire”, he smiled for the first time in over a year.
*
Carrier Yonaga was an organized bedlam of honking klaxons, bellowed commands, the pounding of boots on steel decks and ladders, the tweet of boatswains’ pipes, the slamming of watertight doors, the clank of the bower anchor chain being winched on board, the harsh clatter of brass on polished steel as 127 millimeter shells were rammed home and the coughs, barks and roar of Sakae engines as four ready pilots started their engines.
High on the flag bridge of the carrier, Lieutenant J.G. Brent Ross secured his helmet strap while moving to his battle station at the front of the windscreen — a perch 220 feet above the waterline, where he stood facing the bow with a lookout on one side and the ship’s captain, Admiral Hiroshi Fujita, on the other. From this narrow platform, he had an unobstructed view of the ship’s port side, bow and most of the starboard side. However, the superstructure and massive tilted stack obscured most of the stern.
The young lieutenant was impressive. Six-feet-four inches tall and blond with over two hundred pounds of muscle packed on a solid frame, he was square-jawed with dark eyebrows that almost met over electric blue eyes — the eyes of a poet or a killer. Yonaga’s crew never failed to amaze him. In less than three minutes, the foretop twenty-five millimeter machine guns were already manned, as were scores of other twenty-five millimeter triple mounts in the galleries surrounding the 1,040-foot flight deck. In long galleries, like thickets of pines, the muzzles of thirty-six, 127-millimeter guns tracked skyward, pointers and trainers perched on their steel bicycle seats, cranking their wheels furiously, loaders, handlers and talkers standing by, every man helmeted and dressed in number three green battle fatigues.
Raising his glasses to the west and tilting his head back, Brent adjusted his focusing knob with his thumb. There they were — three aircraft, slow Douglas transports, banking toward Yonaga.
“Bearing two-eight-zero, range thirty-five, elevation angle thirty-two. A DC-Six followed by two DC-Threes. They’re entering our airspace in a column, Admiral Fujita,” he shouted over the cacophony. “And they have El Al markings, sir.”
“Very well, Lieutenant,” Admiral Fujita rasped. “You have the eyes of a hawk.”
The young lieutenant stood taller. “The markings, sir?”
“They mean nothing, Lieutenant. They have entered our airspace.”
“Of course, sir.”
Tiny and shrunken by a hundred years, Admiral Fujita’s withered countenance reminded Brent Ross of a mummy he had seen years ago in the Egyptian exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum. Browned by age, sea and sun, the ancient admiral’s skin had the texture of old leather lined with countless fissures like a relief map of a countryside ravaged by a hundred storms. But the straight as a die posture hinted at a spine of tempered steel and the narrow black eyes were pinpoints of polished onyx glowing with intelligence and opening on a wily brain that grasped problems and produced solutions with computer-like speed.
“All guns manned and ready, damage control manned and ready, CIC manned and ready, bridge manned and ready, engine room manned and ready except boilers three, six, ten, and twelve,” the talker, Seaman Naoyuki, reported, shouting over his mouthpiece. “Condition Zed set, sir.”
“Very well. Launch ready aircraft.”
A powerful basso profundo, strong enough to fill the Metropolitan Opera House boomed over the din. “Not enough wind, Admiral. You should wait until we’re underway” The voice belonged to Rear Admiral Mark Allen, sixty-five-year-old veteran of three wars and twelve carrier battles, on liaison from the United States Naval Intelligence (NIS) with Brent Ross. A scholar who had assisted Samuel E. Morison in the writing of the monumental History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, he was tall, slender, with clear unlined skin, only his thick, snow white hair that hung over his forehead which attested to his years.
“One on the Beaufort Scale,” Fujita noted, staring up at Allen.
“Yes, sir. One knot. We may lose aircraft. It may be for nothing, Admiral Fujita.”
“We must try.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Allen conceded, grudgingly.
Brent Ross caught a glint high and to the west. “Plexiglas,” he breathed. Leaning back, he raised his glasses and sharpened the focus. He saw four, needle-nosed aircraft flying in pairs, diving from the top of the stacked aircraft. “Messerschmitts! ME One-Oh-Nines! Four, bearing two-eight-five relative, elevation angle forty, altitude five thousand meters, diving on our CAP.”
“Impossible!” Mark Allen sputtered. “Impossible. They don’t have the range! Must be ours — P-Fifty-Ones.”
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br /> “Radar verify and ECM give me an IFF reading,” Fujita shouted at Naoyuki.
The talker spoke hastily into his headset. Within seconds he turned to the admiral. “Radar verifies, sir. ECM reports no IFF pulses from the four intruders. Closing from two-eight-five at a high speed, altitude four-two-two-zero. They came out of the turbulence, sir, and into the stacked aircraft.”
“Inform CAP of possible four enemy fighters bearing two-eight-five from me. CAP must engage and destroy the raid closing from two-seven-zero.” Fujita pounded the windscreen with a tiny fist, and spoke again to the talker, “All guns that bear, track raid closing from two-seven-zero. Stand by to commence firing. Local control.”
Naoyuki repeated the commands into his mouthpiece.
Concentrating on the approaching transports, Brent Ross gasped incredulously, “Bomb bays, Admiral Fujita. The Douglases have bomb bays and they’re open”
“I can’t believe it,” Admiral Allen said, glassing the approaching aircraft. “They moved all those control and hydraulic lines. Incredible!”
In a column, the bombers began a straggling run on Yonaga. But with an enormous air space that extended from Tokyo Harbor to the Uraga Peninsula and from Yokahama to Kizarazu the lumbering transports were still several minutes from the fifty-degree bomb release angle. Like hawks diving for the kill, Ishikawa’s section plummeted from the southwestern sky while four aircraft, now unmistakably ME 109s led by a garishly painted red and white fighter, dove from the west.
“The checkerboard — Johannes Friessner,” Brent shouted, waving.
“What the hell? ‘Killer’ Friessner?” Mark Allen growled. “Where did he come from?”
At that moment, the first ready A6M2, piloted by Air Group Leader, Commander Yoshi Matsuhara, hurtled down the deck and clawed for altitude, wheels retracting immediately. Then the second Zero raced through the steam hanging listlessly over the bow vent, leaped from the bow, sagged, stalled and crashed into the sea in an explosion of blue water, white spray and torn aluminum.
“Sacred Buddha,” Fujita hissed under his breath.
Every man on the bridge held his breath as the third fighter sank toward the sea like a wet bowstring, kicked up spray with its propeller and then stood on its tail and thundered into the sky on Matsuhara’s tail, over boosted Sakae shrieking. The fourth crashed in a cartwheel, flinging wreckage in a great semicircle of white spray, the pilot’s body arching high into the sky and crashing into the water, arms and legs flailing like a rubber mannequin.
“Anchor is aweigh, sir,” the talker reported.
“Very well,” Fujita acknowledged. And then shouting down the voice tube, “Secure the anchor detail. All ahead flank. Right full rudder. Steady up on zero-one-zero.”
Brent felt the great ship surge forward and heel.
Lieutenant Ishikawa had seen the four enemy fighters seconds before their sighting was reported by Yonaga. But he had no choice. He ignored the fighters.
“Edo flight, this is Edo Leader. Intercept and destroy transports, keep an eye on your tails…” he growled into the fighter frequency. “Check your guns and follow my lead!”
As acknowledgments rasped in his earphones, he punched the throttle to the last notch, jolting the Sakae into overboost. Horsing back on the stick and kicking left rudder, he split-essed into a dive, caressing the gun tit on the control column and clearing his guns with a one second burst from the two 20-millimeter Orlikon cannons in his wings and the pair of 7.7-Nambus mounted on the cowl. Pulled by the 950 horsepower Sakae into a near vertical dive, the Mitsubishi accelerated quickly, airspeed indicator crowding 400 knots, the white needle of the altimeter racing around the dial counterclockwise, faster and faster, the fighter, a plunging, berserk demon shrieking, vibrating from the tremendous air pressure building against its airfoils.
With all his strength, Taku gripped the stiff, vibrating control column, pushing both rudder pedals firmly with a little more left than right rudder to counteract the enormous torque of the radial engine at full military power. Tasting bile, he swallowed hard, throat irritated and raw from pure oxygen. He glanced over his shoulder. Four MEs in pairs, diving on their tails, but still out of range. A checkerboard and a blood-red machine. “Killer” Friessner and his American gangster wingman, Kenneth “Rosie” Rosencrance. His section would get one pass — one pass at the Douglases, which were obviously bombers, and then the Messerschmitts would be on them.
He keyed his microphone. “Individual combat — line abreast — Yosano engage the second Douglas, Tanizaki the third. But watch the One-Oh-Nines on our tails.”
Yosano and Tanizaki acknowledged. The arrowhead became the broad blade of a sweeping sword and Taku’s full concentration went to the bombers. The lead plane, the DC-6. Slowly, without conscious thought, he worked the huge lumbering target into the first ring of his bouncing range finder. Too far. It did not even fill his first ring. At least eight hundred meters.
Something sparked and flashed on the fuselage of the Douglas. Then flashes leaped upwards and glowing fireflies left smoking trails as they arced toward him and fell off short. A turret. A dorsal mounted power turret firing at least 12.7 millimeter. But too far. “Amateurs,” he snorted.
But in a split second the range had shortened and the fireflies snapped angrily past him and to his right. Turning gently, he set up for a perfect deflection shot from three-quarters above. The bomber filled his third ring and the luminous bead of his electric reflector sight centered just aft of the turret and on the “A” of the “El Al” He thumbed the tit.
After the first gun camera pressure, he felt the recoil, the light six-thousand-pound aircraft bucking, shuddering and slowing ten knots as the Orlikons and the 7.7s fired, glittering brass cartridge cases tumbling from chutes beneath the cowl and the trailing edge of the wing. Streams of tracers hosed into the giant. Moving the stick gently and leveling with a breath of rudder, he marched the flaming sledgehammers forward. They ripped through the thin metal airframe like a dull buzz saw through a bundle of dry kindling, hurling chunks of aluminum into the slipstream. The turret shattered into a glitter of streaking confetti.
“Die, damn you, die,” he screamed into his mask. “I’m burning out my guns.”
Almost as if answering his pleas, yellow flame exploded from the port wing tank of the staggering Douglas, smearing the sky with an ugly black banner. Then, suddenly, the wing collapsed at the root and at that instant the plodding giant rolled violently to the right and collapsed as if it had hit a brick wall, streaming gouts of flame and debris. As it fell, a cartwheeling shattered bird of monstrous proportions, caught in flight by a full charge of shot, the fuselage rotated like a pinwheel, spewing wreckage and four bodies. One plunged into the sea, twisting, turning slowly until splashing into the bay. But the other three pulled frantically at the steel D-rings of their parachute harnesses, nylon blooming like white cherry blossoms.
“Banzai! Banzai!” Taku shouted joyously, plunging past the dying aircraft and through the parachutes. But his joy was tempered with the knowledge that his long four-second burst had left him with only eleven seconds of firepower. Then as he pulled back on the stick and felt his head swim and the wicker seat creak and pop beneath him from the effects of at least five “gs”, the AA began.
“Main battery, all armament that bears, commence firing! Commence firing!”
“Our CAP, Admiral!” Mark Allen shouted, gesticulating wildly.
“They are samurai, they will take their chances,” Fujita answered, gripping the voice tube with a single tiny hand.
Because Admiral Fujita believed earplugs interfered with communications, not one member of the crew wore ear protection. Brent Ross dropped his glasses and clapped his hands over his ears as twenty-two cannons fired as one. The sound was cataclysmic — a great thunderclap that overwhelmed the senses, impossible decibels piercing ear drums like hot needles, sending a signal of physical pain to the brain instead of sound. The young American shook his head, groa
ned and cursed.
Thunder became a drumbeat as sweating gunners rammed home the semi-fixed ammunition, each gun belching flame and brown smoke laced with acrid cordite twenty times a minute. The pungent smell was two martinis; a beautiful naked woman. Brent felt a dryness in the mouth, cold insects scurrying up and down his neck, his heart a hammer against his ribs. The passion of battle; the near sexual excitement of meeting and fighting like creatures of like intelligence to the death. He focused his glasses with trembling hands. That madman — the great World War II ace Taku Ishikawa — had already shot down the lead DC-6 in a sky pockmarked with ugly brown smears. As usual, the gunners cared nothing about identity; only range. The ready Zeros, Matsuhara and a single wingman, were standing on their tails, climbing frantically while high above four ME 109s, one a checkerboard, his wingman completely blood red and a pair that looked like they had been dipped in tar, hurtled down like hurled javelins. “A layer cake — a murderous layer cake,” Brent breathed to himself.
As Brent watched, Ishikawa shot through the wreckage and parachutes of the bomber he had destroyed and just as he began to pull out of his dive, his wingmen opened fire. But they plunged past the bombers with no effect, the Douglases boring on toward Yonaga, ignoring the exploding death all around. Horrified, Brent watched as Yosano and then Tanizaki pulled up hard and the Messerschmitts opened fire. “No! No! No!”
“No! No! No! Stretch your dives!” Taku Ishikawa screamed, watching Yosano and Tanizaki pull up, Yosano breaking left and Tanizaki breaking right. Taku knew the Zero’s superior climb was of no help now. Plunging at well over four hundred knots, the 109s split into two elements of two, Oberst Friessner and Kenneth Rosencrance curving down on Akiko Yosano, the pair of black MEs plunging after Junichiro Tanizaki. For Yosano, it was over quickly. Flame leaped from the checkerboard’s engine mounted 20 millimeter cannon and two thirteen-millimeter cowl mounted Borsig machine guns. Yosano, foolishly jerking his Zero into a steep climb in an attempt to use the superior acrobatic ability of his fighter which weighed a ton less than his enemy, flew directly into Friessner’s tracer stream — a storm of steel and explosives unerringly deflected in anticipation of the maneuver.
