It had taken him two weeks to catch the hops he needed to get out to Pearl and catch Enterprise. As the buzz of conversation in the ready room rose, he reflected on the events of New Year’s Eve. Glory had finally rejoined the living, and his groin quivered with the memory of that tumultuous night. He was sorry about his encounter with Beauty Vincent, but Jesus, that poor bastard took everything so seriously. It had been like meeting up with Sir Galahad and trying to explain why he’d spent the entire night with Maid Marian. Or somebody, he thought. Maybe it was Guinevere. Anyway, he hoped that hot little blond nurse had calibrated the poor bastard’s pecker once and for all. Marsh was an XO, and there was some hard fighting coming up. The Japs would fight to the last man, and they obviously expected the Americans to do the same thing. Now that the Marines were going into Guam and Saipan, there were rumors that the Jap battle fleet might come out, after having taken a powder through most of 1943.
“Gentlemen,” the air intelligence officer began from the podium. The room full of chattering aviators ignored him. The squadron CO, Commander Bill Blake, stood up, put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. When the room got quiet, he nodded at the intelligence officer.
“Gentlemen,” the bookish-looking lieutenant commander began again. “The Japanese carrier fleet is at sea.”
There were low cheers around the room.
“As you know, our task force has been fighting off land-based air strikes for the past two days. The brass is calling it shuttle bombing. Carrier air comes at us from way out there, then goes to a nearby island strip, refuels, rearms, and hits us again on their way back to their home carriers.”
“There’s a cure for that,” the skipper said.
“Not until we know where they are, Skipper,” the briefer said. “As of this moment, we have not located the enemy carriers.”
“But they know where we are?” the skipper asked.
“As long as we’re tethered to Saipan, apparently they do. We’ve got picket submarines out looking, three hundred fifty miles or better, so we’re expecting a sighting report at any time. Your fighter buddies have been busy, but you guys won’t launch until we get a solid posit.”
“We know they’re coming from the west—why not go out there like they did at Midway and just find the bastards?” Blake asked.
“Because Admiral Spruance remembers what they brought with them at Midway. He doesn’t want to get sucked into a battleship-versus-carrier action. His mission, our mission, is to protect the landings going on right now at Saipan.”
“But, shit, we’ve got seven big-decks, plus eight light carriers. Surely we could spare a couple to go hunting Jap carriers? We only had three decks all in at Midway.”
“Skipper,” the intel officer said, “that decision’s way beyond my pay grade, okay? For now, let me show you what we think they’re bringing to the party.”
He put up a chart, provoking some low whistles from the front row, where the senior officers in the squadron sat. Mick couldn’t see the chart from the back row, but there seemed to be a lot of ships listed.
“Five big-decks, four light carriers, five battlewagons, the usual gaggle of heavy cruisers and tin cans. Pretty much the whole of what they call their Mobile Fleet. Probably six, seven hundred aircraft total, including the stuff they’ve stashed ashore.”
That number produced a moment of silence. The fighter squadrons from the three nearby battle groups had been scrambling all morning against raids from the west and north. So far, only a few Japanese planes had made it through the screen, including one that had almost scored on the Big E.
“As I said before, no bomber raids will go out until we have a much better fix on where their carrier formations are.”
“The day’s a’wastin’,” Commander Blake said. “It’s already fifteen hundred. If we have to go a couple hundred miles out and back, you’re talking swim call tonight.”
“If I may be permitted an educated guess,” the intel officer began, but stopped when everyone started laughing. The skipper waved his hand to shut it off.
“You guys are probably not going anywhere today. If it’s any comfort, the fighter people are claiming huge Jap losses, and I mean huge. Seventy bogeys down here, thirty over there, thirty-seven of forty-two over Guam, counts like that. Even by fighter pilot BS standards, that’s significant.”
More laughter. The fighter guys were notorious for inflating their scores, which their after-action gun camera films inevitably deflated. Bomber pilots, on the other hand, were always scrupulously honest. Every ship sunk was at least a cruiser, if not a battleship.
“Anyway, if half of what the fighter-biters say is true, when we do find the Mobile Fleet, it ought to not be too bad getting in.”
Easy for you to say, Mick thought. The ship’s intel officers stood behind them in every way—usually way behind them when the shit started. A lot depended on whether or not their own fighters could go with them. If not, even a few hundred Zeros over the Jap carrier formations would be no cakewalk.
The briefer went through weather conditions expected over the Marianas for the next two days and the general plan of movement. He stressed that Admiral Spruance would not leave his Marines uncovered, by which he meant that the American carriers would stay close to the invasion forces. That in turn meant that when they did launch, it could be a long flight, two hundred miles minimum, maybe more. Getting out to the targets would be guaranteed. Getting back aboard safely would not.
When the briefing was finished, the skipper stood up. “Guys, since none of us is really night qualified, it’s too late to go carrier hunting today. They can’t hide that many carriers for too much longer, and then we’re gonna throw the book at them. Hit the sack early, and be ready at first light.”
That night in one of the carrier’s two wardrooms Mick listened to the fighter pilots whooping it up over the day’s action. They were calling it the biggest bag of the war, with literally hundreds of Japanese planes shot down or destroyed on the ground and with relatively few casualties among the American formations. The battle groups were finally headed west to find the Jap carriers, and tomorrow promised to be the dive bombers’ day.
* * *
The entire squadron was in the ready room by 0700, waiting for the final brief and the order to launch. All available fighters had taken off at dawn, headed out for their combat air patrol stations seventy miles from the Big E. To the pilots of Bombing Eight, however, the day turned into one big washout. The fighters came back and went out again, but with fewer engagements being reported. The intel officer had come into the ready room twice to tell them that they were still waiting for locating data on the Jap carriers. By 1300, Mick had gone back to his stateroom for a nap. At 1430, a call came from the ready room: One of our subs has located the Jap Mobile Fleet with sufficient precision that a strike launch has been slated for 1530. The sub claims one carrier sunk, but lots more out there desperately needing attention.
Mick got up, washed his face, got his gear, and returned to the ready room. The final brief was short and sweet: Fly west by southwest for two hundred eighty miles and blast the Nip bastards. Frequencies and call signs were on their knee pads; the weather should be CAVU in the target area. Every American carrier was going to participate in the strike. Any questions?
There was only one problem that no one wanted to talk about: By the time they got back, it would be almost dark. Mick waited for someone to point out the obvious: A night recovery after an opposed strike and then a long flight back was a prescription for many accidents. Theoretically, all the pilots were night qualified, but in practice, except for some very specialized squadrons, this wasn’t true. They’d all done some night approaches on well-lit outlying fields at Pensacola, but, in general, combat operations were a daytime affair for the carrier Navy. One crash on the deck with a gaggle of waiting planes stacked up behind the bird farm, all low on fuel, could spell disaster for the whole air group, as Commander Oxerhaus had pointed out so vividly. No one sai
d a word. The elephant in the room went unnamed.
“Bomber pilots, man your planes,” came over the announcing system.
Skipper Blake stood up. “Okay, guys: Here’s your chance to repeat Midway. Let’s go get ’em.”
As Mick strapped on his parachute and survival vest, one of the squadron’s two ensigns, Georgie White, came over to him. He and Mick had become pinochle buddies.
“Mick,” he said, “I don’t think I can do this.”
“The mission, or the getting back aboard part?” Mick asked.
“Night landing,” George said. “I can’t do that. I know I can’t do that.”
“Say something to the skipper?”
“Yeah,” Georgie said.
“What’d he say?”
“That if I downed myself, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.”
“That’s helpful.”
“Well, shit, I know what he’s saying. But the rest of my life will end the first time I try a night approach. I barely passed at P-cola, and even my instructor said, if it weren’t wartime, he’da given me a down right there and then.”
Mick checked his knee pads. “Here’s the thing, Georgie: We’re sending a couple hundred bombers against the Jap carriers. If the fighter-biters can be believed, which is always a stretch, there won’t be much opposition.”
“I know, I know.”
“But: We’re all gonna come back low on fuel and flying in the damn dark. One guy prangs on the round-down, the rest of us are gonna be in the soup.”
Georgie nodded.
“So if you really don’t think you can do that, don’t go. Don’t kill yourself and your gunner.”
“They’ll take my wings, Mick.”
“So you go do something else. Or go home. You’ve done your bit.”
“Jesus, man, I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, my advice? Go see the skipper, tell him you want out, that you don’t want to put other guys in the drink because you know you can’t do night landings. Is that the truth?”
“Yeah, I think it is.”
“Well, there you go, Georgie. Nobody can fault you for telling the truth. He can big-deal it all he wants, but really? It’s just another strike. I gotta go.”
Mick went topside to his plane and was strapped in by his plane captain. The Big E had already turned into the wind, producing a forty-five-knot relative wind across the deck. The shirts were all leaning into it as they directed the various aircraft to unfold their wings, lock them down, and then taxi into the conga line. Signal halyards on the island were standing straight out in the stiff wind, with the Fox flag two-blocked, indicating an imminent launch.
His gunner, Petty Officer Jimmy Sykes, was already in. A single thousand-pound armor-piercing bomb was slung under the fuselage. With that big a bomb, the wings were clean except for two drop tanks. Around him twenty-three dive bombers were already turning up, with some being signaled to the midships line for launch. A bluish cloud of engine smoke was streaming aft from all the waiting bombers. The plane-guard destroyers behind the carrier were shimmering in all the exhaust smoke. Mick looked around for Georgie but didn’t see him. Then a shirt was waving at him, and he slid the canopy forward and got ready for takeoff.
An hour and forty minutes later, they saw the first wakes, as the Japanese capital ships began to turn into their defensive circles. From fifteen thousand feet, the ships below were small black dashes on the dark blue sea, their wakes creating bright white lines that pointed right at them. There’d been no fighter opposition. Mick reluctantly concluded that, for once, the fighter guys had been telling the truth. A few flak bursts were popping below them, red winks blooming into dirty black shreds. On signal they dropped their external fuel tanks.
Commander Blake called the bombing order, told everybody to arm, and led the attack down against the biggest carrier. One after another, the dive bombers rolled onto their backs, pulled in, and started down.
“I’ve been here before,” Mick mumbled to himself.
“Look at all those damn ships!” Gunner Sykes said.
“Hang on, Jimmy,” he said. He split his flaps and rolled in.
He was the seventh bomber to roll down into a steep dive on a carrier that was already smoking. He saw enormous columns of water erupting all along the big ship’s sides, and the glow of a large fire aft on her flight deck. He felt rather than saw the antiaircraft fire coming from the escorting cruisers and destroyers, but he definitely saw the bomber ahead of him plant one right on the ship’s flight deck. There was a puff of dust and debris, and then a world-ending explosion as the ship’s entire flight deck mounded up and then collapsed into a ball of orange fire.
Mick pulled out of his dive and turned away. The Dauntless creaked and strained with the weight of that big AP bomb as he pulled left, trying to get flat.
No point in wasting another bomb on that baby, he thought. She was done for. He looked for another target as the skipper came up on the strike circuit and called off the rest of the bomb run, ordering the squadron to head west, looking for another carrier. At that moment, however, Mick saw a battleship pop out from under a cloud. He was lower than he liked to be, just over nine thousand feet, and there were more and more thumps of black flak appearing around him. What caught his attention was the fact that the battlewagon wasn’t circling. It was running northwest, as if trying to get away instead of protecting the nearest carrier.
Mick made a snap decision. Instead of following the rest of the squadron, he rolled in on the battlewagon and then went straight down until the big ship, looking more like a heavy cruiser now, began to fill his windscreen. He adjusted the telescopic sight of the Dauntless to point right at the ship’s bow and then, at four thousand feet, released the bomb.
Immediately he banked to the right and began to pull back on the stick, aiming to level off at sea level well forward of the target, scramble out of the engagement area, and rejoin the squadron.
“Holy shit!” Sykes exclaimed over the intercom.
“Did I get him?” Mick said, straining to get the words out as the g-forces flattened his face and made his vision go red.
“Oh, God, yes,” Sykes said. “Lookit that!”
Mick got the Dauntless level at about two hundred feet over the sea, banked right, and looked back at his cruiser. He saw an enormous column of black smoke, boiling with red and orange fire, rising from where the ship had been.
He pulled right again and flew back toward the evolving catastrophe, dipped the nose, and fired his forward guns. He didn’t care about doing any damage. What he wanted was for his gun cameras to record what had happened to the Jap cruiser. They flew through the fuming cloud of smoke and fire, the aircraft bumping and sliding in the hot turbulence. I must have hit a magazine, he thought. The ship had simply disappeared.
He climbed back up to altitude and started looking around. The Jap fleet was dispersing in every direction, with newly arrived formations of American dive bombers falling out of the sky to litter the sea with armor-piercing bombs. There were several stationary columns of black smoke mingling with the puffy white clouds covering the Philippine Sea. He glanced at his fuel gauges and pulled back on the throttle. No bomb, no more work for him to do. Time to loiter, join up with the squadron, and head back to the carrier. As he looked around, he realized that the sun was setting. He focused on the radio, made sure he was on the right freq.
A few minutes later, he heard Commander Blake gathering up his chickens after everyone had expended his useful ordnance. Mick listened for a few minutes, caught sight of some contrails to the north, and headed for the gaggle. He was very grateful for not having sighted a single Zero. Fifteen minutes later he joined up with the rest of Bombing Eight. There were two planes missing. He settled into the echelon formation and checked in with the skipper.
“Where you been, McCarty?” Commander Blake asked.
“Got me a cruiser,” Mick said. “I was lined up on that carrier, but she blew up. So I went
hunting.”
“We did, too, McCarty,” Blake said. “We missed you.”
Oops, Mick thought. Gonna hear about this later. By rights, he should have followed them after breaking off his bombing run.
The sky to the east was getting darker by the moment.
“Are we in trouble, Lieutenant?” Sykes asked over the intercom. He wore a split headphone, one ear for intercom, the other ear set on the tactical frequency assigned to their squadron.
“Aren’t we always, Jimmy?”
There wasn’t too much interpilot chatter on the way back to the carrier. The pilots were concentrating on their fuel states and thinking about the landings to come. Mick had Sykes dig out the ditching checklist for their plane, and together they went through it. During the hour or so that it took to get back to the carrier, the skipper drew up a verbal order-of-landing list as a function of who would have the least fuel left when they caught up with the ship. Enterprise reported she was heading west to shorten the transit distance, but as everyone knew, that wouldn’t solve the darkness problem.
Mick ended up as tail-end Charlie on the list because he had the most fuel remaining, not having been with the rest of the squadron on their pursuit of other carriers. No longer in the heat of the moment, he knew he should have stayed with the squadron. It had just seemed the logical thing to do, he thought. No point in wasting a big bomb on a carrier that was already aflame from one end to the other, and he’d absolutely blasted that other big Jap. He also knew, however, that this wouldn’t help his reputation in Bombing Eight. Gunner Sykes had told him that he was already being called the Lone Ranger by some of the squadron pilots. There’d been some guys from his first squadron on the Yorktown who were now department heads in this squadron, and his reputation as something of a maverick had preceded him. He was also older than most of the replacement pilots coming to Bombing Eight.
Pacific Glory Page 22
