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, trad
e 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.
The air was beginning to get cooler, but he kept the canopy open. He was already soaked in sweat as he knew he would be the entire flight out regardless of how cold it got further aloft.
Hickam Army Air Force Base 15:25 hrs local time
“James?”
“Huh? Yeah, sweetheart. . .” “No, sir, it’s Dianne.”
More than a bit surprised, he sat up, a few of the sailors sitting on the floor of the hangar nearby chuckling.
Not thinking, he put both arms back to brace himself as he got up, and nearly fell over on his left side. Dianne grabbed him by the shoulders.
“God damn,” he gasped, stump hitting the hard concrete floor, pain radiating up his arm. She steadied him.
“They got another radio up, and, sir, Collingwood and the rest of the crew are here.”
James saw his boss sitting by a table where a monster of a radio was set up, dials glowing. Joe was standing behind the unit, checking the antenna lead. Collingwood saw him sitting up, and motioned for him to come over.
Dianne helped him to his feet and without asking raised his left arm, checking the bandage, sniffing it again, this time wrinkling her nose.
“You’re going to the hospital,” she announced sharply, “and I’m taking you there.”
“I’m OK.”
“Sir,” and he noticed she had dropped the James routine, “it’s getting infected.”
“Later.”
She gave him a defiant look but then finally relented and stepped back.
He went over to the long table that someone had dragged in, and sat down on a folding chair next to Collingwood, who lit a cigarette and then handed it to James, pushing over a cup of coffee as well.
“You look like crap, James.”
“Well, sir, you don’t look much better,” James quipped back.
He had often wondered if Collingwood only had one uniform shirt in his entire wardrobe, for there always seemed to be ash and coffee stains in the same place.
“This lad here has got us on the right frequencies,” and Collingwood nodded to Joe.
“He’s a good man,” James said forcefully, loud enough so others would hear. “If it wasn’t for him and his friends, our asses would really be in the sling right now.”
Joe reddened slightly, and nodded thanks.
James wondered for a moment if somehow they could wrangle a security clearance for him. Their entire operation in the basement of CinCPac was gone; they were going to have to rebuild a couple of hundred thousand dollars’ worth of radio receivers from scratch. All their files were gone, the new IBM calculating machines that the team was just starting to get the hang of using, the darn things able to help sort coded word groups and pop out a card the size of an old dollar bill upon which was recorded the last use of that letter grouped for cross-referencing to earlier transmissions. All their translation books, all of it was gone. It’d take months before they could even have a remote chance of rebuilding and starting over.
Once things settled down he would have to suggest to Collingwood that a large detail be sent over to sweep the grounds clean, but then again they weren’t the only ones in that building with closely guarded secrets not shared with others. Someone had most likely already thought of it. He looked at Joe again and sadly realized that for now he could help, but a week from now, chances were he wouldn’t be allowed within a mile of any base. There was no way in hell they could wrangle a security clearance for him. He even found himself wondering if, given his own family, he might lose his security clearance as well and find himself sitting out the rest of the war stuck in some damn supply depot back in the States.
“Let’s look at that arm,” Collingwood said, and reluctantly James lifted it up, not letting the pain of movement register on his face.
“I need you here for a little while, and then you’re going over to the hospital to get it properly cleaned and bandaged. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, listen to this.”
He threw a switch and the small loudspeaker next to the radio crackled to life.
It was Japanese. Damn, they were back in business!
It took a moment to get the feel of it; the signal was weak, distorted. Joe, back around behind them, leaned over and touched a dial ever so slightly. It came in clearer.
James looked at the lit-up dial.
“One of their naval air-to-ship frequencies.”
“Exactly.”
“Repeat. Ten American planes, course bearing two six five degrees. They are . . .”
The signal wavered for a second, hard to discern.
“You get that?” James asked, and Collingwood shook his head.
“He said Army and Navy dive bombers,” Joe interjected softly, barely a whisper.
They looked back at him and nodded their thanks.
Joe walked away to join a group working to set up another radio.
“Our guys have already been spotted,” James said softly. “Must be a scout plane watching our coast.”
“Should we send them a warning?” Collingwood asked.
This was outside their game. They were cryptanalysts, not tactical air officers.
He shook his head.
“What good will it do them? The Japanese might monitor it and know we’re on to them,” he sighed, “and besides, those kids are doomed anyhow.”
Collingwood nodded and lit another cigarette from the stub of his last one.
“Wish we had a directional antenna up, try and get a fix on them that way.”
Another plane was reporting in on the same frequency, obviously far distant, barely audible, reporting no sighting, and it was turning 90 degrees to the south to start the next leg of its search. A couple of more reported in, doing the same.
From the difference in signal strength he suspected the other planes were part of the Japanese search pattern to the west of their fleet. There was nothing else, and from that he could deduct that Lexington had yet to be spotted. Her location was as much a mystery to him, and for that matter everyone else on their side, as it was to the Japanese.
“Stay with this,” Collingwood said. “I want to see if our miracle worker over there can get us a couple of more radios set up to monitor their other frequencies.”
James turned off the loudspeaker switch and worked on a set of headphones. Ever so gently touching the dial, shifting the frequency but a few kilohertz to either side and back again, picking up snippets of conversation, broadcasting in the clear, scout planes, a lot of them reporting in. And then the first one, giving another bearing on the small attack group, announced he was trailing them astern.
It was so damn frustrating. They were finally getting some information in here, but still it was
only fragmentary. No one was sure, with Kimmel dead, exactly who was in charge of naval operations at this moment. As for the Army, General Short, who he suspected would not be in command much longer, was last reported down inspecting beach defenses.
All he could do for the moment was sit and listen and feel impotent while others did the fighting.
Akagi 16:15 hrs local time
They had been running back into the wind for fifteen minutes. The last of the returning scout planes had been recovered, and a new wave was going out for a final sweep before dark. If the navigator aboard the scout plane trailing the Americans was accurate in his reports, the small attack force was now seventy miles out and tracking to their south. With luck they might miss the fleet entirely.
Each of the four carriers with his task force was launching Zeroes to intercept, with a total of twenty-five committed to defending against the incoming raid. Soryu and Hiryu, not yet up to rendezvous and still trailing fifty miles to the south-southeast, were putting up all their remaining fighters, thirteen of them.
The last of the Zeroes and scout planes lifted off, and as one the entire fleet came about, returning to their westerly heading. The twenty minutes of launch time had shifted them ten miles farther to the north, shifting Hiryu and Soryu as well in the same direction.
The wind was beginning to be an increasingly frustrating factor for the admiral. Every launch and recovery required coming around nearly a hundred and forty degrees from his intended course, eating up thousands upon thousands of liters of precious oil in the process. His calculations of yesterday about the reserve available to take them to the Marshalls were becoming less and less valid. He had hoped to at least do a partial fuel transfer to the always hungry destroyers before dark. That would be impossible now, with another American strike wave coming in.
It was also impossible, of course, for him to know that the navigator aboard the scout plane trailing the Americans was indeed off by a good fifteen miles on his estimate, and that the twenty-minute run to the northeast for recovery and launch had tracked the main fleet out of visual for the Americans, but had edged Soryu and Hiryu almost within sight.
Pearl Harbour and Days of Infamy Page 58
