Pearl Harbour and Days of Infamy

by Newt Gingrich

  Fifteen miles northeast of Hiryu and Soryu, twenty-eight miles southeast of Akagi 16:30 hrs local time

  “Damn it, they aren’t here!” It was Struble.

  “And that son of a bitch is still trailing us,” one of the P-40 pilots interjected. “Let me go for the bastard.”

  “Negative on that,” Struble snapped. “He’ll just lead you into the clouds. They know we’re coming. I want you with us.”

  “Just great,” the P-40 pilot replied.

  Dave, tense, palms sweating inside his leather gloves, kept scanning straight ahead. The damn sun was lower, straight into his eyes, giving him a headache. But that was where the Zeroes would come from.

  Cloud cover was changing, the morning and midday cumulus combining into towering cumulonimbus that rose to over twenty-five thousand feet, some of them dark with flickers of lightning.

  The sky ahead darkened, one of the taller clouds blocking it out. Good, it’d give them some contrast, background to search out any Zeroes, and would block out the sun. But the view below was restricted through the cloud openings, and ten minutes back Struble and Welldon had finally broken radio silence to debate whether they should drop down to three thousand feet or not, giving them better visibility of the ocean below, skimming in just below the taller of the clouds.

  Struble had opted to stay at twelve, and Dave wondered if they might very well have flown right over the Jap fleet and not even seen it. But then again, the Japanese fighter pilots were aggressive as all hell; if they were near or over the fleet, they’d be bounced by now.

  The towering cloud ahead looked dangerous, and Welldon’s B-17 began a gentle turn to the right, northward. He could have gone either way, Dave thought; maybe he’s on to something, or with luck maybe not; they’d circle past the Japs, drop their loads, and get the hell out. As it was, it was going to be close to a nighttime landing, something he never really liked. He wasn’t even qualified for it yet on a carrier--and he had already heard how anything in the sky over Pearl at night was most definitely being shot at.

  They were now onto a northerly heading, and Welldon, regardless of what Struble said, was going into a shallow dive, punching lower to try and get a better view. Several long minutes passed. The storm cell was a good ten miles across. It could in fact have an entire Jap fleet hidden under it. He knew that was what Halsey would do, what any carrier commander would do if he knew a strike was inbound, and together with Gloria Ann they were definitely being followed and reported on.

  Several things now happened almost at the same instant.

  Welldon aboard the B-17 Gloria Ann interrupted the momentary silence. “Got a ship in sight to our north at ten o’clock!”

  At nearly the same instant, from the corner of his eye Dave saw one of the P-36s just fold up, a wing shearing off, the spark of tracers and the flash of white, with a red meatball on its fuselage, silhouetted against the darker mass of clouds forward and above.

  “X-ray, stay with me!” was all he could gasp as he slammed into full throttle, hitting it so fast that the engine sputtered for an instant, cylinders flooding with fuel before clearing and accelerating. Some instinct told him to pull up and bank hard. As he did so, more tracers snapped past his canopy, slashing the air where he would have been if he had continued on the same trajectory but one second longer.

  He banked so hard that he rolled inverted, nose high, and as he did so he caught another glimpse of a Zero, this one cutting between two of the B-17s, knocking out an engine on Pat’s Girl as it dove through. He pulled stick back hard into his gut, lined up and squeezed off a burst, another deflection shot, and the Zero walked straight into it. With the Zero flying at just over three hundred miles an hour and his four .30 caliber machine guns each firing ten rounds a second, the Zero passed through his fire, flying more than the length of a football field every second, so that only one round from each gun would impact before the enemy plane was through the cone of fire. But he was pulling back hard enough on his stick that nine rounds actually hit, walking across the top of the Zero’s fuselage, blowing out a cylinder head on the Zero’s Nakajima fourteen-cylinder engine, fragments cutting a fuel line, another round blowing through the top of the pilot’s canopy, killing him instantly.

  Dave barely saw what was happening. The Zero screamed past him, apparently still under control. He rolled out into a shallow dive between Pat’s Girl and Gloria Ann, caught a glimpse of flame licking back from the inboard port engine of Pat’s Girl, a glimpse of the Veronica Lake lookalike painted on her side. He pulled back up, barely hearing the radio chatter, someone, an Army pilot, screaming he was on fire and couldn’t pop his canopy, Gloria Ann calling for the strike group to follow his lead, Struble cursing, then ordering his group into a shallow dive behind the B-17s.

  Get above it, Dave thought, and he pulled back hard on his stick, still flying at full throttle, almost redlining the engine. He went into a climb, looked forward, to either side, up, which was now relative to his plane, back to the horizon to the northeast. Another glimpse of two Zeroes coming around hard, two trails of smoke and flame, one without doubt the P-40 with the doomed pilot screaming, mike switched on.

  “Jesus . . . I’m burning! God I can’t get the canopy back. Oh God!”

  He felt guilt, wishing the man would switch the mike off or just die. It was horrifying to listen to.

  “I see them. God damn flattops! Two, make that three . . . no, four of them!”

  It sounded like Gloria Ann.

  Dave continued through his climb, turning it into a loop, arcing up, over, coming back down, now back behind the heavy bombers and dive bombers. There was not enough time for Struble’s group to do what they preferred, climb for a diving strike from high altitude. It was going to have to be a glide bomb run, which left them vulnerable all the way in.

  A burst of antiaircraft fire ignited forward of the 17s, then a barrage. He was out of the loop, building speed. More tracers from above; the Japs were concentrating on the 17s. More hits on Pat’s Girl, sparks walking up the fuselage, a Zero dropping down onto its tail, actually dropping wheels and flaps to kill off his speed.

  The burst of 7.7- and 20-millimeter fire from the Zero tore into the tail and elevator assembly of Pat’s Girl. Fragments flew off.

  He was at long range, a good six hundred yards back, but opened up, arcing his fire in, afraid for a second his own shots were impacting into Pat’s. The Zero, seeing the tracers, broke right, going into a dive as he turned, pulling up wheels and flaps. For a second he thought he had him, but then he overshot, and the Zero disappeared astern.

  Christ, he’ll be on my tail!

  He began to jink violently, jamming in left rudder, then right, looking over his shoulder. His wingmen were nowhere to be seen.

  The Zero rolled in behind him. Still at full throttle, he started into a dive, looked back over his shoulder for another second, then turned to look straight ahead. A moment of pure terror: He barely cleared the tail wheel of Pat’s Girl, diving underneath the bomber and its trail of fire and debris. The Zero diverted from him and focused back on Pat, pouring in more fire as Dave went inverted, diving.

  The screaming of the dying P-40 pilot abruptly ended. Gloria was back on, announcing he was starting his bomb run, the other 17s to drop when he did.

  Dave pulled out of his dive at three thousand feet and four miles out from the Japanese carrier Akagi, a shellburst nearby marking the fact that they were firing at him.

  He spared a quick glance at the enemy ship. It didn’t look like the one they had hit earlier in the day. He didn’t have time for a second look. More tracers snapped by his canopy. A sound of impact, and something struck the back of his armored seat so hard he felt it like a hammer blow, the 20-millimeter shell detonating, blowing out the rear of his canopy.

  He pulled back hard, heading for the clouds . . . and heard Struble announce he was going in.

  Akagi

  Every gun on both the port and starboard side of Akagi’s fl
ight deck was pointed aloft, firing.

  Yamamoto stood motionless, watching, and Fuchida, heart racing, watched as the first of the dive bombers began to go up, inverting, rolling into his dive . . . and his heart was actually with them.

  Were the Americans insane? Five dive bombers attacking the main fleet? It was a futile gesture--and a brave one that filled his heart with admiration, even though it was his ship they had picked out to attack.

  Did they know this was the flagship? he wondered.

  Over Akagi

  Lieutenant Commander Dan Struble lined up forward of the carrier as he went into a shallow twenty-degree dive, flak bursting around him.

  To his port side he saw Gloria Ann. It was heading toward the other carrier, two miles farther on. He wanted to call for him to divert, but knew he was already on his bomb run.

  Should I divert?

  I can’t now, he realized. If we got any chance of scoring a hit, it is now. I can’t afford the extra thirty seconds to turn onto the other target. None of us will make it with so many Zeroes closing in.

  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 wa
s 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.