Days of Infamy

by Newt Gingrich

  “Ferguson here, sir.”

  “Patch me through to the engine room.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It took long seconds before someone picked up on the other side. He could barely hear who was speaking over the background noise of what sounded like steam blasting, men shouting.

  “Just answer yes or no,” Stubbs shouted, “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes …” The voice was distant.

  “This is Commander Stubbs. We are aware of your situation. I’m going to give it to you straight.”

  “Go ahead …”

  “We can’t get you out yet. You have two decks of water and fire above you. We cannot get to you now, but as God is my witness I promise we will.”

  “Christ, sir. It’s over a hundred and thirty down here.”

  Damn, that could put a man down in a matter of minutes. He could imagine the nightmare of it, steam venting, the claustrophobia, knowing one is trapped, the terror of feeling the ship listing more to starboard. Wondering if it would just keep on rolling over, invert, and then plunge down—and then one waited, hearing bulkheads collapsing, lights blowing out, waiting for death in the boiling darkness.

  “You must stay at your posts,” Stubbs said slowly. “Do not try any of the emergency hatches.”

  He hesitated.

  “And we need you. If you abandon your post, this ship will lose the last of its power. You are the only ones left. We lose you, Enterprise will sink.”

  A pause on the other side.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I promise we’ll get you out. Call in to damage control every fifteen minutes. We’ll keep you posted. Now stick with it, son.”

  “What the hell else can we do?” came a distant reply.

  “That’s the stuff.”

  He hung up, unable to say anything else. Chances were, by the time they did pump the decks clear—if they could pump them clear—the men down in the engine room would all be dead. They were still getting some air; the intake and exhaust stacks to the boilers had to still be working, otherwise the fires would have snuffed out by now.

  It would be the heat that would kill them.

  He left the fifth deck and started up to topside. He paused on the hangar deck. Fires here, damage from the first attack, were pretty well under control. The aft elevator hung down at a drunken angle. A crew was already working on it. He wondered if that was a futile gesture. It would take a shipyard with a heavy crane to lift the elevator out so that the hydraulics could be replaced, a new shaft set into place, and then the elevator deck itself replaced. It was a crazy gesture, but on the other hand, it was some kind of signal that they were working to turn Enterprise back into a fighting ship. For the moment, any more hands sent below would be in the way.

  Amidships was now a hospital area. Once men pulled out from below were stabilized, they were brought up here where at least the air was cooler, an ocean breeze blowing gently through the open sides. A group of sailors were lined up, waiting their turn to give blood for their comrades, corpsmen matching up types and doing direct transfers.

  Once topside, he pressed up to the main deck. Seeing the flight deck relative to the horizon, the extent of the list became visible and for a moment far more alarming. They were going to have to evacuate any possible positions below on the portside that could be sacrificed and flood them to keep the ship on an even keel. What was left? He’d have to get back into damage control and run down the prospects.

  As reported, he could now see the smudge of smoke on the southern horizon. In spite of the lowering tropical clouds, slanting rain coming down off both port and starboard sides a mile or two out; he could just barely make out the high masthead of Indianapolis—a damn good old ship, nearly a battle cruiser with its armament and displacement.

  He could only hope that she had enough oil on board so they could pump some across to replace the tens of thousands of gallons lost from the torpedo hits and flooding; otherwise, even if they saved Enterprise from sinking, she’d soon be dead in the water anyhow, along with her surviving escorts.

  He turned and went back up to the bridge to report in.

  Halsey stood on the open bridge, silent, nodding as Stubbs made his report.

  And even as he started to explain what was going on below, the deck bumped beneath the soles of their feet, almost as if they had struck something; a second later a blast of fire erupted out of their starboard side. An instant later the explosion changed tone, sounding like large firecrackers. Tracer streaks soared up through the rising fireball.

  “What the hell was that?” Halsey cried.

  Stubbs shook his head.

  “I think it was one of the forty-millimeter magazines.” He sighed. “It just lit off.”

  He thought of the young ensign leading the valiant effort to try and empty it before it blew. He wondered if anyone knew the kid’s name.

  “Stubbs, should I transfer my flag over to Indianapolis?” Halsey finally asked.

  Stubbs looked him straight in the eye and shook his head.

  “Sir, I hate to sound like some rotten movie line here, but I’ll have to say it: Don’t give up the ship.”

  Halsey smiled and grasped Stubbs’s hand.

  Chapter Ten

  Hickam Army Air Force Base

  December 8, 1941

  14:40 hrs local time

  “ANY QUESTIONS?”

  No one spoke. Dave thought that if ever there was a ragtag group this had to be it. Three Wildcats including his own. Three P-40s, two P-36s, five Dauntlesses, which would be the core of the strike force, and three B-17s.

  None of them had trained together except for the Dauntless and Wildcat crews off of Enterprise. The B-17 guys were fresh from the States flying the older B variant. All the fighters flew at different speeds and had different handling characteristics, and all knew after but a day and a half of battle that they were dead meat against the Zeroes.

  It had actually turned into a bit of a democratic process. Struble, as senior rank, had first made noises that he would plan and lead the strike, but the army guys sided with Welldon, captain of the B-17 Gloria Ann, and without much argument Struble had deferred.

  The plan was straightforward and simple. They would launch the B-17s first, followed by the Navy planes, then the 40s and 36s, which would barely have enough fuel to get there and back. If the Japs were where the PBY, which had gone silent a half hour ago, had said they were, and if they maintained their heading, then maybe this motley crew would have a chance of doing real damage to the Japanese carriers.

  Altitude would be twelve thousand, a compromise between different aircraft as to most economical cruising height for fuel. Cloud cover was over fifty percent, tops up to twenty thousand; it was going to be turbulent. Welldon in the lead would elect whether to go straight through a cloud or circle around it if it looked too tough to fly through.

  There was nothing more to be said.

  Any semblance of bravado was gone. A Catholic chaplain had wandered over, and those of the faith took communion and absolution; those not of the faith, including more than a few who had been agnostic at best the day before, knelt for a blessing.

  Engines were turning over, warming up. On his knee pad Dave had written down the primary and secondary radio frequencies, the call signal for his small group of Wildcats—it would be X-ray One—the estimated position of the Japanese fleet, and a ditching position the Navy had just handed off. A civilian interisland steamer off of Kauai had patched into the Navy frequency over at the newly established radio center, and asked if it could help out in any way. They were told a Navy sub running on the surface at flank speed was trying to move up behind the enemy group, but would not have time to do rescue operations if it was to have any chance of closing with the enemy. So it had to be the old steamer. It had been a gutsy move on their part. While helping a pilot low on fuel or shot up, they might be getting a visit from a Jap sub, but they called in anyhow.

  There was an exchange of nod
s, the group breaking up, crews already aboard the B-17s, gunners mounted aft in the Dauntlesses.

  Dave climbed up onto the wing of his Wildcat, almost into the cockpit before thinking about the fact that his feet had just left the earth, and he knew with almost utter certainty he would never walk on this earth again. An army sergeant helped him slide in and strap on the shoulder harness, tightened it, then patted him on the shoulder.

  “Good luck to you, sir.”

  He could only nod. Why was it that most of the mechanics always seemed old enough, at the very least, to be an elder brother, or perhaps even a father? The man could not see his eyes; he had sunglasses on already since they would be flying all the way into a westerly sun—yet another advantage for the Japs.

  All he could do was nod, not sure of his voice.

  The mechanic backed off the wing, came around in front, hands held high indicating for him to hold position. There would be no control tower transmits. First of all, there was no longer a control tower. It had been blown out in the bombardment last night by a direct hit from a fourteen-inch shell, thus proving that the Japs had either the best gunners in the world or the luckiest. Second, the transmission just might be monitored and give advance warning. As it was, they were taking off on the north-south runway. Hundreds of men had been working all day to fill in enough of the craters to give them a halfway decent takeoff run. They were to stay low, go over the island to the north, then turn west, keeping well out of visual range of Hiei, which was still surviving off the coast and could relay a report.

  The first of the three B-17s, Gloria Ann, taxied out, followed by the other two, Pat’s Girl and Four Aces. The nose art on Pat’s Girl definitely had an appeal. The artist was good. The girl looked like Veronica Lake, her distinctive peekaboo hair style not just covering her eye but strategically placed to make sure the painting passed censors and the more prudish. The last thought on his mind would have been anything to do with that. He could barely remember how his own girlfriend looked, the sound of her voice, the smell of her hair. All he could focus on was rpms, engine heat, and manifold pressure.

  Next out were the dive bombers. Struble gave him a wave as he taxied past. The lead B-17 was at the end of the runway, stopped for a moment to do the final runup; then without fanfare it powered up, starting its long rollout laden with ten five-hundred-pound armor-piercing bombs. The Navy had wanted them to haul torpedoes, but Welldon had absolutely refused on that one. They were not trained, and were too damn vulnerable going in barely above stall speed against a target that big. He had at least won that point.

  The second B-17 rolled out onto the runway twenty seconds later and started its runup even before Gloria Ann lifted off.

  He caught a flicker of movement and looked down. It was his army mechanic, signaling him to roll out. Chocks had already been pulled. He pushed up the throttle several hundred rpm, and the Wildcat began a slow roll; then he gave it full right rudder to turn. As he did so, the mechanic came to attention and saluted. All he could do was raise his left hand in reply, sort of a wave. He had a feeling that he was saying goodbye to the last man he would ever see.

  He followed the last of the dive bombers. All the planes were doing slow weaves back and forth, with noses high. There was no other way to see forward other than to do a zigzagging weave as they taxied. It also allowed a final check of rudder controls.

  Struble roared down the runway a hundred feet off to his right, a half-ton armor-piercing bomb slung under his belly. Three more Dauntlesses followed; one more to go. He pressed down hard on his brakes, ran the engine up, did a final check of magnetos and carb heater, watching if rpms dropped. If the drop was more than 150 rpms, something was wrong, and he actually prayed something would blow out, or that rpm drop would hit, which could honorably abort him from the mission.

  More than one pilot in advanced training with carrier landings and takeoffs would finally hit a panic point after two or three bad landings in a row. He could not just say he was out of it; instead, he’d nudge the throttle down when doing final check, claim a problem, and be pushed over to one side, then express mystification later when it worked OK. The air boss might look the other way once, tell the guy to get some sack time and go up later—but that was peacetime.

  The engine checked out. There was no honorable way out. The Dauntless ahead of him had already swung onto the runway, powered up, and gone on its way.

  Though he was a Catholic, religion was something that he had let drop after his mother died when he was fourteen and his old man, in his bitterness, stopped going to church. But today he had taken communion, the first time in years, and he made the sign of the cross.

  “Christ, don’t let me screw up,” was all he could pray. He pushed the throttle forward and rolled out onto the runway with hard right rudder and a touch of brake to turn. He straightened out, now with a good deal of right rudder. It was not a carrier takeoff with built-in fifty-knot headwind to lift him off in just a few hundred feet. He was fully gassed up, patches quickly riveted up adding a touch of drag.

  He kept right rudder in to counteract the torque and rotating slipstream. His tail came up, and he edged the stick back ever so slightly to avoid a prop strike, a touch of right aileron against the twenty-degree crosswind. Air speed up to sixty; she was starting to feel lighter. Damn crater ahead, hope they packed the dirt down tight. Work crews stood to one side, some waving their caps. He rolled through the filled-in crater. God damn… a rough bounce. He caught air for a second, airspeed still too slow for rotation, bounced down hard, kept stick forward. Panic now and you start yo-yoing and wind up nosing in or ground looping.

  Another damn crater ahead. Stick felt right; he eased it back just an inch or so as he hit the lip of the earth-filled crater, bounced, just above stall speed, leveled it out, several feet off the ground, airspeed now building fast, crosswind causing him to drift. Not high enough to drop a wing into it, let it drift.

  Airspeed now ninety-five, end of runway approaching. He hit the switch for landing gear and airspeed really began to pick up. Start to notch up the flaps, now back on the stick.

  And for a brief instant he actually did feel the joy again that had first gotten him hooked on flying three years ago, when as a sophomore in college, he had joined the flying club, which just happened to be sponsored by the United States Navy.

  That little contract was a million miles and eternity away from this moment. If he had known then what he knew now …?

  With no time to think about it, he banked to starboard to get around the raging firestorm of the oil tank farms, the wreckage that was Pearl Harbor. He had a glimpse of a ship turtled, its bottom punched through by a hit from a fourteen-inch shell. Someone had said it was the Oklahoma.

  Coming around the far side of the smoking inferno he could see the Dauntlesses formed up already, slowly climbing, ahead of them the three B-17s, stately, huge. At least I’m not in one of those, he thought.

  They were crossing up over the center of the island, same route the Japs had taken yesterday but in reverse, he thought. Plumes of smoke still soared up from Wheeler and Schofield. Down on the road below, rolling south, was a military column, trucks, and some armored cars. It made him nervous for a second. Hopefully by now some discipline regarding shooting at anything in the air had been restored. At least with these men it had. The planes stayed low, at a thousand feet. From beyond the hills to the west he could see a smudge of smoke far off, which he thought had to be Hiei. Was it less than eight hours ago I was over that, he wondered. And now he was going out on his third strike of the day.

  He remembered reading how pilots with the RAF last year were flying six to eight sorties a day, but hell, that was different, they were up, engaged in a matter of minutes, and if the worst happened they could land on home territory or bail out and come down next to some village where civilians would stand them a pint. He had a longer way to fly on one mission than the RAF pilots were flying all day. Furthermore, flying over open water was a
lot more nerve-racking. Go down out over that enormous ocean and you’re shark food.

  The thought of it made him think of the heavy .45 in its shoulder holster, underneath his inflatable Mae West. If I go down into the drink, can’t get a life raft, then that will be it, he thought.

  The column was moving into a formation. His place was with the two surviving Wildcats. One of them was not even from his old squadron, a plane that had been left behind by Lexington for an engine replacement. He couldn’t even remember the pilot’s name. Off his portside wing the P-40s and 36s came up, flanking the Dauntlesses to the west.

  They were over the Dole plantation, the ground climbing as they headed for the pass, going through it, some serious buffeting for a moment, trade winds rolling off the hills to the east of them, the ocean visible ahead. A couple of minutes later the 17s began their stately turns, the rest of the formation following, sliding above the north shore beach.

  Damn! A few tracers went up between the 40s and the Dauntlesses. He looked down, saw the gunners. No one broke radio silence, but he knew every pilot was cursing. After a day of this, a man was tempted to just maybe do a very fast and very low fly-by and strafe a few rounds, not killing them but definitely scaring the crap out of them.

  The gun fell silent. They flew on, peaks to their south now shielding any possible sighting by Hiei or Zeroes that might be covering it. The last of the greenery dropped away; they were out over the ocean. The lead B-17 wagged its wing, turning slightly onto a heading of west-southwest 255 degrees, then began a slow climb of three hundred feet a minute, not pushing it as they hauled their two-and-a-half-ton bomb loads heavenward. He eased back ever so slightly on his stick, checking to port and starboard, wingmen positioned correctly in a V. He leaned out the fuel mixture slightly. It was a long way out there and back, and every ounce of fuel was precious. A couple of hundred feet ahead were the five dive bombers, flying in echelon, Struble in the lead position left and forward, the army fighters on their other flank.