Days of Infamy

by Newt Gingrich

  The carrier was turning to starboard. He made a guess: She’ll straighten out and start to reverse, and aimed for that point.

  It was the last clear and conscious decision he ever made.

  Three seconds later a six-inch shell burst directly in front of his plane fifty yards ahead. An impartial observer would have called it an excellent shot. Fragments tore into the Dauntless’s Wright Cyclone engine, severing electrical cables, fuel line, oil lines, cracking two cylinders, a fragment slicing across the side of Struble’s head, fracturing his skull, nearly knocking him unconscious.

  The dive bomber lurched for a moment, skidding to port. He was all but blinded.

  He was less than five hundred yards out. Release… but something within whispered he was dying, that his plane was dying.

  “Jimmy?”

  No response from his tail gunner. He wanted to apologize somehow to the kid back there, but their intercom link was gone, and he couldn’t hear the kid crying. He began to recite the Twenty-third Psalm.

  Akagi was turning, straightening out to shift to starboard.

  Struble’s Dauntless slammed into the deck, forty yards aft of the bridge, bomb breaking loose from its pinions, after plane, bomb, pilot, and gunner had smashed through the deck, burst into the hangar deck, and impacted on top of a Kate that had returned from a scouting mission and was being refueled. The spray of aviation gas aboard the Dauntless engulfed the crew working on their plane.

  The bomb, now detached, crashed through two more decks—even as the wreckage of the plane and its dead pilot and gunner skidded off the hangar deck floor, spreading a plume of wreckage. The bomb failed to detonate. The detonator had rested for over two years in a storage bunker, moisture slowly doing its work, corroding the assembly for the plunger. It should have been opened, if need be greased, and checked before being screwed into the bomb, but the sergeant responsible was dead, killed in the bombardment, and his replacement was just told to screw it in, there was no time to waste, and he had not checked to make sure the detonator plunger worked smoothly, so that the impact failed to release it.

  But for Commander Struble and his gunner, that no longer mattered, or ever would matter. His plane, however, had nevertheless taken Akagi out of the fight.

  “JESUS Christ, Skipper, you see that?”

  It was Gary, his ball turret gunner, who was supposed to be watching out for Japs underneath while at the same time reporting their bomb fall.

  “Did we get it?” Welldon shouted.

  “Negative, Skipper, short.”

  “God damn it! I told them we ain’t worth shit against a fast-moving ship!”

  “Skipper. One of the Dauntless bombers, it deliberately crashed into the other Nip carrier. Look at it burn!”

  “Everyone shut the hell up, watch our own patterns!” Welldon shouted, but nevertheless he did spare a glance to port and caught a glimpse of a spreading fireball on the other carrier, with two bomb splashes to either side of it.

  “Where’s Pat’s Girl?” he asked, even as he put his B-17 into a harrowing sixty-degree bank to starboard, turning away from the two enemy ships.

  “She’s gone, sir.” It was Carl, his top gunner. “Didn’t you see? His wing just folded up.”

  “Any chutes?”

  “Yeah, as if that would help. Shark food.”

  “Christ, if we were fighting the Krauts, at least we’d come down on dry land,” someone else chimed in.

  “Everyone shut the hell up. I want a strike report!”

  “No go, skipper,” Gary came back. “Pat never dropped. We fell short by a hundred yards. The damn Jap maneuvered out of the way. I don’t even know where the hell the other plane is.”

  I could have told them what would be the results, Welldon thought. But that didn’t matter now. It was getting the hell out of here that counted, and he aimed straight for the nearest cloud. Thunderstorm or not, it was better than facing the damn Zeroes again.

  As he leveled out he caught a glimpse of Akagi. Gary was right: it was indeed burning fiercely. He wondered if whoever had dived into it had done so deliberately or as a desperate dying act. Well, if they ever figured it out, he’d most likely get the Medal of Honor and they’d claim the ship as sunk. As for the rest of them, no one would remember or care.

  DAVE popped back out of the cloud, and saw the last few seconds of Struble’s dive into the carrier. The sight of it left him stunned. Why? He knew he was pissed off over missing one strike and the electrical release failure on the second strike leaving him without a bomb. But commit suicide? After taking the antiaircraft hit, he should have released, pulled up, and bailed out.

  He barely knew the guy, and yet had looked up to him as some sort of ideal, a guy without fear, what they were all supposed to be.

  The two surviving Dauntlesses dropped, both bombs short, pulled out and away. The P-40s and 36s, or indeed his own wingmen, were nowhere to be seen.

  Above he saw a B-17. A Zero popped out of the same cloud he had been in but seconds before, swinging in underneath the 17, nosing up to fire at him.

  This one, at least for a few brief seconds, was absurdly easy. All he had to do was pull stick back—he was on his six, two hundred yards out—and then squeeze.

  The Zero’s pilot didn’t even have a second to react before his starboard wing root erupted into flames, the plane rolling over, canopy popping, the pilot tumbling out, so close that for an instant he feared he would ram the man, catching a glimpse of his face as he fell past, chute beginning to deploy.

  That simple?

  “Thanks, Wildcat!”

  It sounded like Gloria Ann, he wasn’t sure. For only seconds later he was in the same position as the Zero he had just dropped, tracers cutting into his wing.

  Terrified, he pulled hard stick, rudder, and rolled back into the cloud.

  He continued to turn for several seconds, his compass tumbling, artificial horizon upside down, then inverting around, stabilizing, telling him he was in a steep dive. He followed the instruments, pulled back, chopping throttle as he did so. He had been drilled for countless hours to trust the instruments, never what his body was telling him, even though his inner ear, jumbled and rejumbled, was sending a signal to his brain that he was in a vertical dive, while the instruments said he was leveling out in the turbulent gloom of the cloud.

  He trusted the instruments and leveled out, turning back on a heading of 85 degrees. He prayed that the fuel indicator was off even as he switched from starboard to port tank. He was down to a half a tank on port side, starboard was virtually empty. If these instruments were reading true, he’d barely make it back to Oahu, and he leaned out the mixture until the engine was barely firing.

  He did not know that of the sixteen planes that had launched, four were struggling to get back home, and that of all the planes that had launched from Enterprise, his fighter and two of the Dauntlesses were the only ones left in the air. Nor did he know that he was the first ace of the war. All that he knew was that in those darkening clouds it was both lonely and terrifying.

  Akagi

  THE THREE OF them, Yamamoto, Genda, and Fuchida, were leaning over the railing, looking aft, the entire stern of Akagi engulfed in flames.

  No one spoke, watching as fire crews were already snaking out lines, spraying water and foam toward the huge hole torn into the deck aft of the bridge.

  “Sir!”

  It was one of his staff, and Yamamoto nodded.

  “Sir, damage control reports the American plane crashed through to the hangar deck. So far we’ve lost eight of our planes below, but we think the fire can be contained. Amazing, sir, the enemy bomb has been found two decks farther down, it did not explode. We have several men on it now, working to remove the fuse.”

  “That explains it,” Fuchida interjected softly. “I thought the damage should be worse.”

  “The gods were with us,” Genda replied.

  Yamamoto sighed, looking back at the hole torn by the crashing Dauntless
.

  “The Americans have bushido,” he said softly. “Anyone who thinks differently now is a fool.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Hickam Army Air Force Base

  December 8, 1941

  17:25 hrs local time

  HE SAT BACK in his chair, light-headed, definitely feeling shaky. Evening sunlight slanted in through the open hangar doors, actually rather unearthly and beautiful, colors distorting due to the gloom of smoke hanging over the base.

  All had heard the running commentary of the battle an hour past, stood silent, some in tears as the dying pilot’s screams burst from the loudspeaker, a scattering of cheers when Gloria Ann reported that one carrier was hit and definitely burning, and then silence again when he reported how it had been hit.

  James had tried to stay focused on the Japanese transmissions. Four carriers sighted by the B-17—they had definitely struck the main fleet and perhaps damaged at least one. Both could detect a certain level of stress when one of the Japanese carrier radio operators sent a message in the clear, ordering all their planes aloft to divert to other carriers.

  He and Collingwood talked it over.

  “Maybe,” James finally ventured, “they split last night, those two carriers a southern force, perhaps detailed to protect the battleship, explaining their aircraft presence over it before any of our forces hit at dawn. That’s the one Halsey launched his second strike against. The picture just might fit.”

  James sketched a rough map out on a piece of scrap paper.

  “If so, it means six carriers. One might have been sunk. We know we damaged another,” Collingwood replied. “It just might even up the odds a bit for Lexington.”

  It had started a running debate. Being the only outside radio link on the base, the hangar was rapidly assuming the air of a headquarters. A couple of one-stars were in there now, along with a good scattering of colonels and others, all debating what the data meant, what was the next move. Several of them were behind James, listening in. He did not recognize a single one of them, and instinctively he shut up, but the debate was on.

  At that moment it struck him just how extraordinarily vulnerable they had been and still were. There was no clear chain of command. General Short was supposedly running the show as the senior ranking military official on the island, but where he was no one could say.

  It reminded him, chillingly, of some of the confidential reports he had read analyzing the French collapse a year ago. How their commander-in-chief was safely billeted at a chateau just outside of Paris, with one, exactly one land line linking him to the front lines, and no radios since no one trusted them against German monitoring, as if any code they might create would be cracked in minutes. It might have worked in 1918, where an advance of but a mile was trumpeted as victory, but in a modern fluid war, where the front was shifting fifty to seventy-five miles a day, it had doomed them from the start.

  Are we France now, he wondered, as Collingwood lit him another cigarette and passed it over, while the generals and colonels behind them argued as to just how many Jap carriers were still out there and if they would be back tomorrow. The point was moot anyhow. From what they had listened to earlier, the island no longer had a single plane capable of offensive action other than one, perhaps two, shot-up B-17s and maybe a couple of Dauntlesses.

  “You know something?” James sighed, while the argument behind them continued. “Maybe we hit the wrong target just now.”

  “What the hell do you mean?” Collingwood asked.

  “Think about it. Our guys are sweating out the oil supply if Enterprise is still out there. There’s no way it will come back here if it is still alive. Hell, the channel might be blocked for days regardless of what they say, and then what is Halsey supposed to do, just sit out there? Just hang a ‘kick me’ sign on him for the Jap subs. He needs oil to get back to the States.”

  “So what are you getting at?”

  “Their oilers. We know they don’t have many. Suppose our guys had targeted them instead. They’d even be easier to hit, slower with fewer guns, one good shot and boom the thing just tears apart. Do that and the Japanese fleet might be screwed.”

  Collingwood stared at him intently for a moment and sighed.

  “Wish the hell we’d thought of that earlier”—he paused—“like yesterday and somehow communicated it.

  “Try convincing them now,” and he pointed back to the staff officers fruitlessly arguing behind them, “and besides, we don’t have anything left to hit with.”

  James half lowered his head, frustrated, angry, numb with exhaustion. The pain in his arm was getting worse by the minute.

  The brass behind him could argue all they wanted, he just felt an infinite exhaustion. It was time to try and go home.

  “I’m leaving,” he announced and tried to stand up, and next thing he knew he was back in the chair, his legs giving out.

  “Dianne!”

  She had been sitting against a hangar wall, head down, dozing, but was awake, wiping her eyes as she came over to Collingwood.

  “Would you help Commander Watson here to the hospital?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t need a hospital.”

  “It’s an order, James,” Collingwood said, “so let’s not play any more silly games about this, or I’ll pull one of those generals over there into it to back me up.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” James announced. “We’ve got to start rebuilding a decoding center here, or somewhere.”

  “Sure, James, now go.”

  He nodded and stood up. Dianne gently put an arm around him, and they started toward the open hangar door, Collingwood by his side. He had a vague recollection that last night he had parked his Plymouth up near CinCPac. Damn, that was a couple of miles away.

  “Dianne, you know where the hospital area is set up?”

  “Yes, sir, I think so.”

  “Take that car over there,” and he pointed out a battered DeSoto, and fished the keys out of his pocket. “If they release him, take him home, then you go home too and get some rest. I’ll see both of you tomorrow.”

  She helped James get into the car, slipped into the driver’s seat, and got it rolling, driving around piles of wreckage. She had to back up off a street that was closed, with water from a broken main spraying twenty feet into the air. A Shore Patrolman told her there was an unexploded fourteen-inch shell down in the hole. It was obvious he was not pleased with his assignment; he looked back over his shoulder nervously as he gave directions for getting around to the base hospital area, set up in a row of barracks.

  She backed up, turned the corner, and then slowed.

  “Merciful God,” she whispered, and pulled up onto the curb, turning off the engine.

  James, eyes half closed, stirred and looked out the window.

  The lawn area in front of the hospital looked like something that reminded him of old photographs of the Civil War. Three long rows of bodies were laid out on the lawn, covered with blankets, sheets, old tarps. A team of stretcher bearers was setting a body down even as he watched, lifting him off the stretcher, pausing for a moment. Then they picked up the stretcher and went back into the barracks hall.

  Dianne had the door open.

  “Come on, sir, you’ve got to go in there. At least let them get some sulfa on the wound and we’ll get out.”

  He tried to smile, as if he wasn’t afraid, but suddenly he was terrified. The memory of the amputation of his hand while he was still awake came back. The local anesthesia had barely blocked the pain.

  He leaned against her as they started for the barracks door. On the opposite side of the lawn, more than a hundred men were waiting, some lying on stretchers, others sitting, a few standing. Every kind of injury imaginable confronted James. Men cradled broken arms. Some looked as if they were not hit at all, but just sat or stood, eyes vacant. Others rocked back and forth, clutching their stomach, chest, head, a leg, or what was left of a leg, and there was a universal moaning
, crying, occasional screams.

  He stopped, unable to move another step.

  “Stay right here,” Dianne said, and she let go of his side, going up to a female nurse who was bent over a stretcher case. A corpsman by her side was cutting back the man’s uniform jacket, revealing a hole in his right chest, blood leaking out with every breath.

  “Priority!” she shouted. She marked a number on the wounded man’s forehead with a grease pen and motioned for a stretcher team to pick him up and take him inside.

  The doorway was open and James could see in. Though it was still daylight, bright incandescent lamps were set up inside. At least a dozen surgery teams were at work, with mess hall tables now surgical tables.

  The sight of it made him feel weaker, as if he were going to faint.

  “Sir, she wants to look at you,”

  It was Dianne, and by her side the female nurse. Her uniform might have been sparkling white once; now it was literally caked with dried blood and fresh blood, as if she had just staggered out of a slaughterhouse—which, he realized, this actually was. The woman would normally have been very pretty—tall, jet black hair tucked under her cap—but now her eyes were hollow, dark circles, and a nervous tic was causing an eyelid to flutter.

  “Let me see the arm,” she said woodenly.

  He raised the bandaged stump up.

  “You lose this yesterday or today?” she asked, almost matter-of-factly, as if asking him about the weather.

  “No. The hand was amputated four years ago. He was hit on the Panay,” Dianne said. “The stump was hit by shrapnel or a bullet yesterday morning.”

  The nurse nodded.

  “Panay? What was that?”

  He couldn’t reply.

  She took his arm, and he winced as she raised it, sniffed the bandage, nose wrinkling, then let the stump go. She put a blood-caked hand to his forehead.

  “Sir, it’s infected and you’re running a fever,” she said. “I’m marking you low priority. Take a seat on the lawn,” and she started to raise her grease pen to write whatever was the code for his case on his forehead.