Pacific Glory

by P. T. Deutermann

  One day he’d heard two ensigns talking about the “curious” fact that the Lone Ranger had been the only survivor from that medical evacuation crash off Guadalcanal. He’d braced them up about that, and they’d immediately retreated into ensign-versus-senior-lieutenant formality. The next day he’d had Sykes paint a white horse on the side of his barge. After that, Mick pulled into his own shell, flying as professionally as he could but keeping himself apart from the camaraderie of the squadron. People left him alone, and that was fine with him. He’d gotten a carrier at Midway and a cruiser today. They could talk behind his back all they wanted, but they couldn’t take those achievements away from him, and the gun camera would back him up. Fuck ’em if they couldn’t take a joke.

  The skipper came up on the radio and declared that they had reached the rendezvous position with the carrier formations. Couldn’t tell it by me, Mick thought, looking into the well of darkness that was the sea below.

  There was no moon, and a high, thin overcast was blocking most available starlight. Everyone started looking for a home. Any home. The skipper put the ten planes of his squadron into a circular orbit at eight thousand feet and reported in to the Enterprise. They could hear other squadrons doing the same thing, and it wasn’t long before the first ditching calls began to come out over the Mayday frequency. Then suddenly there was light, everywhere. Each of the big-deck carriers had its red and white flight deck lights on, and several battleship targeting searchlights were pointed straight up into the air to act as beacons for the returning planes. It looked like a Hollywood premiere night, and it was a heartwarming sight. Mick wondered what brave soul had made that decision. Probably Admiral Mitscher—Spruance wasn’t an aviator. Of course, if there were any Jap subs lurking nearby, the carriers would be meat.

  “Bombing Eight, Big Easy, cleared for the break,” came the radio call. “Call your states.”

  Commander Blake came up and read out the landing order by side numbers and then directed the first plane to make his approach. The rest of them were to follow him down to a five-thousand-foot holding pattern above the break circle, which itself was only a thousand feet above the sea surface.

  “Which one’s ours?” Sykes asked from the gunner’s seat.

  “Damned if I know,” Mick said. “That one, I guess. But if we have to, I’m gonna land on the first carrier that smiles at me.”

  Sykes just laughed. “Hi-yo, Silver,” he said.

  The first guy to make an approach was one of the ensigns. Mick watched his wing lights spiral down toward the back end of a carrier, presumably the Big E, line up on the deck, and then fly right over the carrier and back off the front end.

  “Bolter, bolter,” came the PriFly radio call. “Try it again, two-niner. Next in line, hold in the break.”

  Two-niner, he thought—that’s Georgie. With literally a ringside seat, Mick watched the struggling ensign pull his bomber around in the left-hand pattern, line up again, and this time settle into a pretty good-looking approach, right up to the point where he landed in a brief sheet of fire along the portside catwalks and then went cartwheeling over the side. An escorting destroyer immediately drove into the area of the crash and began lighting up the sea surface with searchlights, but all Mick could see was a cloud of steam and smoke drifting over the water alongside the carrier’s wide white wake. Georgie, Georgie, he thought. You should have listened.

  “Green deck, green deck, three-one, commence your approach.”

  Wow, Mick thought. Normally they’d have closed the deck down until they could inspect the arresting gear and clear away any debris. Side number thirty-one must be running on fumes.

  He checked his own fuel tanks. After the nearly two-hundred-mile trip back, he was good for another fifteen minutes or so, assuming the gauges were working reliably. He continued circling at low cruise power, watching the other guys in the squadron trying to get aboard.

  Three-one made it on the first pass. Three-six boltered twice and then was told to ditch alongside another escorting destroyer, having lost a main mount on his second attempt. The skipper got down on his first try, but the plane after him ran out of fuel during his approach, stalled, and then augured straight into the carrier’s wake before he could set up for a ditch.

  God damn, Mick thought, this is going to cost us more planes than the Japs did today. Then he was startled by the appearance of a star shell off to the north, and then another and another. As he was figuring out what to make of that, one went off about ten thousand feet over the Big E, lighting up the carrier and the flight deck in its magnesium glare. Someone’s really taking chances tonight, Mick thought. As the parachute flare descended through the crowd of waiting planes, a second one went off back up at altitude. It turned the night into day, and the next three planes landed safely on their first pass. Then it was his turn.

  “Here we go, Jimmy,” he said. “Hang on.”

  He lined up on the carrier’s stern and watched the landing signal officer’s illuminated wands as he came onto the glide path. At the last moment, just as the LSO indicated the cut command, the star shell illuminating Enterprise’s deck winked out. There should have been another one lighting off above it. Instead, for a critical instant, Mick was totally blind. He got one fleeting image of the after five-inch mounts along the starboard side and then felt a terrific wallop as he landed. He reflexively firewalled the throttle, which was standard procedure in case the hook didn’t catch, and the next moment found himself flying off the bow and then settling toward the black ocean in front of him.

  Still at full power, he pulled the nose up and braced himself for impact, but the Dauntless struggled back into the air and he was able to lower the nose, gain some airspeed, and exhale.

  “Two-seven, state?”

  “Two-seven, I’ve got enough for another pass, maybe two,” Mick called.

  “Roger, two-seven, and execute your pattern. We have a green deck.”

  “Two-seven,” Mick replied, acknowledging the order to try again. “You okay back there, Jimmy?” he asked his gunner. He thought he smelled engine exhaust.

  “Uh, yessir, but we got a problem, I think. The deck’s gone, back of my seat. It’s breezy back here.”

  “Two-seven, this is Boss.”

  “Two-seven?”

  “Two-seven, your tail hook has been found on the flight deck. Pick a destroyer, put her down, Lieutenant.”

  Goddammit, Mick thought. Here I am with all the gas I need and now I have to ditch. Shit!

  “Two-seven, wilco,” he acknowledged. He banked out of the pattern and went looking for a destroyer, of which there were plenty around the carrier. His night vision wasn’t totally back yet, but it was coming. More star shells were popping now above the formation. Where were you when I needed you? he wondered.

  “Okay, gunner-man,” he said. “Swim call. Check your vest, turn on your light, and push on the back of my seat. Canopy coming back.”

  Mick turned on his landing lights and flew past a destroyer some three miles off the Big E’s port side. He saw men rushing on deck to man their motor whaleboat and others assembling on the forecastle around the rescue swimmer davit.

  “If I can do this right, we’ll hit flat, and then the nose will pitch straight down. Roll out either side and get away from it. If we go inverted, remember to follow your bubbles, and don’t inflate your vest until you’re clear of the aircraft. Just like in the Dilbert Dunker, only noisier, okay?”

  “Got it, boss. Low and slow, please.”

  “Low, slow, and flat,” Mick said and put down the flaps. He kept the gear up so that they’d be clean at water entry.

  He flew past the destroyer, with his landing lights still on so they could follow him in the dark. When the destroyer skipper realized he was going to ditch on their starboard side, he turned on some searchlights pointed down at the water to give Mick a visible surface reference.

  Those boys have done this before, Mick thought. He banked left into a one-eighty, leveled ou
t about a half mile behind the tin can, and started slowing. The object of the game was a slightly nose-up flat stall just above the water and right alongside the destroyer. He started into his final turn.

  As he came in on the destroyer, he could see he was going too fast, much too fast. If he did stall it, he’d be way out in front, and time was of the essence if they were going to be rescued. He poured on the power and went around. As long as he had gas, he could do that until he got it just right.

  The second approach was better. He started the descent much farther back, and this time he felt the big bomber shuddering as it lost most of its lift only a few hundred yards behind the ship. He let her settle until he could no longer see water over the nose and then pulled slowly back on the stick. A moment later she hit with a gut-flattening bang and immediately flipped upside down. A wall of water flooded the open cockpit. Mick waited for the regulation three-count for the initial turbulence to subside, then hit his latches, felt the harness go slack, and kicked down, away from his seat, just as he’d done a dozen times in the Dilbert Dunker training back at flight school. A second later he was bumping his head on the wing, and then he popped up to the surface behind it. He fired his Mae West life vest.

  He looked around for Jimmy but couldn’t see him, so he started yelling his name. The plane was going vertical now, submerged to the star emblem on the rear fuselage. Amazingly the landing lights were still on underwater, showing the silhouette of the sinking plane against green water. He thrashed around the tail, shouting for Jimmy, but still couldn’t find him. For the briefest instant, he thought he saw Jimmy’s waving arm silhouetted against the green glow under the plane. Shit! He was still in his gunner’s compartment. As Mick jackknifed to go get him, the landing lights winked out and the plane slid past him into the depths of the Philippine Sea, the portside horizontal stabilizer pushing him roughly out of the way. When he popped back up to the surface, defeated by his inflated Mae West, the ship’s boat was alongside and several hands were reaching for him. He forced himself to stop fighting and let them pull him into the bobbing whaleboat.

  Damn, he thought. Damn, damn, damn!

  “What’s that, Lieutenant?” a young ensign in a bulky kapok life jacket shouted at him over the noise of the boat’s engine. “You okay? You hurt anywhere?”

  “Not yet,” Mick murmured. “Just my right hand. And my gunner.”

  He let them position him in the back of the boat. Somebody threw a damp blanket over his shoulders. He wanted to ask them to look around for Jimmy, but he knew that was pointless now. There were white searchlights everywhere around the scene of the crash, and the gray steel sides of the destroyer were already closer. If Jimmy had been on the surface, they’d have seen him.

  Mick closed his eyes against sudden tears. He wasn’t the Lone Ranger. He was fucking Jonah himself. Just like on the medevac plane.

  * * *

  One day later Mick sat down with the squadron’s informal accident board and debriefed both his part in the strike and the subsequent ditching. The board consisted of three officers, Bombing Eight’s XO and two lieutenant commanders from the Enterprise’s other bombing squadron. A yeoman sat at one end of the table, taking notes. Commander Blake and the ship’s assistant air boss were in the room, but they were there strictly as observers.

  When Mick was finished, the board members had some questions about why he had lost control during the final moments of his landing and what, in his opinion, had happened to his gunner. Mick knew that the purpose of the board was to gather the facts while they were still fresh in everyone’s mind, not to apportion blame for knocking his tail hook off and losing his gunner in the course of the ditching. He described how the star shell had wiped out his night vision and then disappeared right when he needed it most. Then he recounted the ditching.

  “Was Petty Officer Sykes injured during the strike operations?”

  “No, sir. We were both fine. We went through the ditching checklist together on the way back. I didn’t like the first pass, so I went around to make sure we went in nearer that tin can. He was braced, vest on, and reported ready for impact.”

  “Any idea what happened?”

  “We hit pretty hard, despite my best efforts, and the plane flipped. Once the water came in, I lost comms with Sykes. I did what we were trained to do in the Dunker. Once on the surface I swam around the tail looking for him.” He hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, the landing lights were still on as the plane went down. I think I saw his arm sticking out of the gunner’s compartment as the plane sank. I’m not positive. She went down pretty quick, and then the lights went out. I got about a one-second look.”

  The board members looked at each other, but no one commented.

  “I tried to go down and get him, but my own life vest prevented it. Then the rescue boat was there and they were hauling me in.”

  “So he may have been trapped in the aircraft?”

  Mick sighed. “It’s possible, sir. Or he may have been unconscious or even dead, and it was his vest that was lifting him partway out of the gunner’s compartment.”

  The XO asked him some more questions about his control settings at the time of impact and then asked the other members if they had anything else. Neither of them did. The XO looked up over Mick’s shoulder, nodded fractionally, and then had one more item for Mick.

  “You broke off during your dive on that carrier. In your after-action report you said you didn’t think she was worth another bomb because she was already burning. Then you stated you rolled in on what you described as a heavy cruiser and hit her, causing that ship to explode and disappear. Is that all correct?”

  “Yes, sir.” Mick’s right hand had begun to hurt again. He realized he was clenching his fists at the questions.

  “We can’t document that, of course, because no one else saw it happen.”

  “I dove on the explosion plume and fired my forward guns, trying to get it on the gun camera. But of course…”

  “Yes, that film was lost with the plane. Okay: Why didn’t you join up on the rest of the formation when they headed west?”

  “I lost track of them in the dive. By the time I pulled up, everyone else was gone. The sky was full of flak bursts, there were ships going everywhere, and it took me some time to avoid flak and get back up to safe altitude because I still had that thousand-pounder hanging.”

  “Your radio working?”

  “Yes, sir, but I was busy. The Japs weren’t happy that their carrier was burning.”

  “And when you got clear?’

  “I looked around for another target.”

  “Did you try to communicate with the skipper while you were looking?”

  “Uh, negative, sir. I figured they’d gone after another target and that by the time I rejoined, the action would be over.” Even as he said it, Mick knew his excuse sounded pretty lame.

  “Oka-a-a-y,” the XO said. “And would the fact that you remained behind in the area of the carrier attack account for your having a relatively good fuel reserve when everyone came back?”

  Mick flinched. That hurt. “Yes, sir, probably,” he admitted finally. “After I dropped my bomb, I went back to altitude and then looked around for a friendly gaggle. But I didn’t go anywhere; I just orbited high enough to stay out of the flak.”

  “And your radio was working, right?”

  He keeps saying that, Mick thought. He knew what the XO was implying. “Yes, sir. I could hear the chatter of an attack going on, but since I wasn’t there, it didn’t seem right for me to break into that looking for a steer.”

  “So you orbited, and then?”

  “Saw eastbound contrails, checked in, and joined up.”

  “Was the cruiser you hit still burning at that point?”

  “She was gone, XO,” Mick said. “I believe that bomb got into a magazine. She disappeared in one really big blast, and when the smoke cleared, there wasn’t anything down there. Not even any Jap tin can
s.”

  Mick heard a door open and close softly behind him but didn’t turn around.

  “Well, okay, Mick, thank you. Let me remind you that this is an informal proceeding, not a court-martial or a pretrial hearing or anything like that. We have your written report, plus the report of other pilots, and we’ve interviewed the PriFly people and the LSOs on what happened out on the flight deck. Assuming you’ve recovered physically from your ditching, you will resume your normal duties.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “That is all.”

  When Mick got up to leave, he saw that the skipper was no longer in the room.

  A week later Mick received orders to join Composite Squadron Eleven, based on an escort carrier. The squadron exec knocked on his stateroom door and asked if he could have a minute. He told Mick that one of the escort destroyers, the Evans, was being detached the next day to join the Seventh Fleet, which was assembling to support MacArthur’s invasion of the Philippines. Mick would ride the Evans down to the area of Leyte Gulf and there transfer aboard the escort carrier Madison Bay.

  “I’m being shit-canned, right, XO?” Mick asked, pretty much knowing the answer to his question.

  “Um, not exactly,” the XO said. “There’s been a fleetwide draft for pilots to beef up the light carrier forces. They needed two bomber guys, and we and one other squadron got tagged to give up one each.”