by James Young
The Lexington was going through her own suffering even as the Saratoga’s magazine detonated. Handled more ably than the Saratoga, the Lady Lex was still a large, long target. Two torpedoes on her port side opened her engineering spaces. A third hit forward caused cracks in the aviation gasoline stowage. Even as brave, doomed men in the fire rooms attempted to secure the boilers and escape, the Lexington was struck on her starboard quarter by a final weapon that destroyed her pumping room. Ablaze forward, with water pressure falling precipitously throughout her fire mains, the Lexington staggered forward barely under steerage way.
In moments the attack was over. Steaming undisturbed, the Yorktown turned away from her wounded brethren and prepared to steam into the wind so she could accept the USN's surviving fighters. Shaken, those members of her crew topside looked back towards the blazing Saratoga and Lexington. For years, these two vessels had symbolized the strength of American naval aviation. Now, like twin ill omens for American’s chances, they lay broken and wounded. Moreover, with the Saratoga’s seemingly imminent demise and the Lexington’s future very much in doubt, Yorktown was the only American carrier remaining with the Pacific Fleet’s main body. As such, she was a priority target for her foes. At the barked orders of her task force commander, Yorktown turned south, gathering what escorts she could around her. With only twelve fighters left to guard her precious flight deck, there was nothing more that she could do in the area.
For the Japanese, the cost had been steep. Scattered, the strike group began to straggle north to their rendezvous point.
Semper Flight
1045 Local (1545 Eastern)
Trying to simultaneously fly and look at the ships ten miles away, Sam Cobb once more cursed everyone above his squadron commander.
That fucking duty officer needs to be shot, not cashiered, Sam thought disgustedly. Or someone on the staff below needs to be. Internally, his guts were churning, left hand trembling on the stick as he tried to continue holding the binoculars. He could see the listing Colorado, blazing Arizona, and settling West Virginia. Three destroyers and what appeared to be a light cruiser were in attendance to the three battleships, but with a sick feeling in his stomach Sam had a feeling things were not going well. As if to reinforce his horror, the Colorado suddenly jerked in the water and began to roll towards starboard. Before Sam’s terrified eyes, the 33,000-ton ship accelerated like a carnival ride, her mast smashing into the mass of black dots surrounding her with a visible splash.
Holy shit, that’s…he had time to begin thinking before David interrupted his thoughts.
“Bogeys, three o’clock low!” his twin reported tersely. Turning, Sam saw the four forms low on the water. The aircraft were four Kates, the survivors from a pair of Zuikaku and Shokaku chutais. Realizing information would be at a premium, the senior officer of the group had diverted to take a look at the burning American battleships on his way back to the carrier.
Well hello you bastards, Sam thought as he gazed at the four olive green aircraft with bright red circles. Kicking his rudder and putting the stick over, Sam brought the Wildcat around and shoved the throttle forward. His pulse quickening and mouth suddenly dry, he took a deep breath to steady himself as he closed on the now fleeing group of bombers. Charging his guns, he activated his throat mike.
“I’ve got the leader, you get the second section,” he ordered David.
“On it,” his brother replied. For a brief moment, Sam felt the weight of every hour of classroom instruction, flight training, and gunnery practice that had brought him to this point. Kicking his rudder to bring him in from high on the starboard side, he lined up on his target.
With twelve pairs of eyes within the group of four bombers it should have been impossible for the two Wildcats to gain surprise. Unfortunately for the Kate crews, all their eyes were on the waters where the glistening red bottom was slowly disappearing or the Arizona and West Virginia’s continued struggles against the sea, turbulent waters where the Colorado had just disappeared and debris was still shooting violently up to the surface. As such, the only warning that the four Kates received was the startled yelp of the rearmost plane’s tail gunner when he looked up upon hearing the growing sound of aircraft engines.
Sam squeezed the trigger as the Kate reached the edge of his gunsight. Having underestimated the torpedo bomber’s speed and his own closure rate, he fired too late for his streams of fire to have a chance to converge. Rather than an airframe rending buzzsaw, his two second burst was a hailstorm that put impacts all over the target. Still, while not spectacular, the burst more than did its job. Caught just as he was beginning to shout instructions to the plane’s observer, the Kate’s pilot was slain almost instantaneously by two bullets smashing his right arm and evacuating his chest cavity. Whether the plane would have survived the partially severed rudder cables, fuel leak, or damaged engine became academic as the mortally wounded man slumped forward. Nose down, the Kate became the last roller coaster the other two men would ever ride as it hurtled into the Pacific.
Swinging his head around, Sam watched the cloud of debris and fireball that had been David’s target arcing downwards. His brother was pulling up and turning towards him, and Sam made a quick check of David’s tail knowing that the other Marine was doing the same for him. When neither one of them saw anything, they turned back towards the two Kates, the Japanese bombers running away and descending to right above the water to force the Americans to make shallow attacks rather than the preferred diving slash.
“I’ve got first run,” David grunted as the two brothers completed their turn and accelerated after the running Japanese aircraft.
“Got you covered,” Sam said, pulling up and astern of David’s fighter as they circled wide of the two Japanese bombers.
Both Kate pilots sideslipped, attempting to keep the Americans in the cone of fire from their tail gunners. David pushed his nose over into a slight dive, choosing the left-hand Kate to engage. Once in range, the Marine opened fire, followed moments later by the tail gunners of the two bombers. The initial burst was behind the target, but Sam watched as his brother corrected as he swung in behind the bombers.
Watch those gunners, you idiot, Sam thought worriedly. He need not have been concerned, his brother only firing a quick two second burst before snap rolling away. The burst of fire smashed into the Kate’s rear, the huge .50-caliber bullets scything through the rear gunner’s arms and knocking a portion off the tail stabilizer.
“Gunners are a little friskier than I thought,” David muttered. “I’m all right though.”
“Going in,” Sam replied. “Starboard torpedo bomber.” With that, he put his own nose down and, making a curving turn, came in from full deflection. The Kate’s gunner still managed to turn his machine gun towards Sam, but the combination of the Wildcat’s angle and the wind from the Kate’s passage pushing against the bullets caused the man’s burst to go mostly wide. Sam, in turn, put his three second burst through the Kate’s forward fuselage, cockpit, and wingroot. The starboard wing fluttered off, sending the Kate into a quick spin to the side. Before the pilot had chance to realize his bomber was missing a wing and he himself had two ruined legs, the Kate was smashing into the Pacific in a plume of spray.
Sam ended his run to see David slipping onto the last bomber’s tail. Noting the lack of return fire and ruined rear cockpit, David closed to point blank range before squeezing the trigger. The end was blissfully quick, the four streams cutting through the pilot and observer prior to setting the fuselage on fire. Streaming smoke, the torpedo bomber nosed into the water and cartwheeled tail over nose before resting with its belly towards the sky. David pulled up over the wreckage, rejoining with his brother.
Sam realized his breath was coming in rapid gasps, his pulse racing.
We just killed those men, Sam thought. Between the Colorado’s death and their four kills, war was suddenly very, very real to Sam.
“Goddammit,” he muttered, suffering a chill despite his
cockpit being hot as hell from the sun. My brothers are out there. Tootsie’s back at Pearl. These bastards could be invading us! Suddenly, it was extremely important that he and his brother find what was left of the American fleet, if only to convince themselves that the situation was not as bad as they thought.
U.S.S. Nautilus
1050 Local (1550 Eastern)
Nick would have been touched that his brother had thought of him. Especially since he was most definitely in harms way. Nautilus, after much careful maneuvering, had found herself in position to strike.
“Sir, first escort has passed over us!” the sound man reported.
The tension in the control room went up another notch, every man realizing what Jason’s next command was going to be.
“Periscope depth! Up periscope!” Jason barked. “All ahead one third!”
The Nautilus’s began coming up on an even keel from her current depth of one hundred feet, the planesmen working in smooth concert at their station. Crouching down, Lt. Commander Freeman grabbed the handles of the periscope as it came up above waist height. He did not need to give any more orders, the crew knowing exactly what he had planned.
“Tubes one through six flooded and ready in all respects!” Ensign Workman intoned from his station. From where he sat at the torpedo data computer (TDC), Nick prepared to begin entering the range and bearing of enemy ships. An analog device, the TDC did most of the math necessary to tell Nautilus where she had to aim her torpedoes in order to get a hit.
“Periscope depth, sir,” Lieutenant Banes barked.
Lt. Commander Freeman was already aware of that fact, the scope coming up through the Pacific depths. Nick felt his palms go sweaty as he watched the Nautilus’s captain hurriedly lower the magnification.
“Target one, angle on the bow starboard twenty-five degrees, heading oh nine oh, speed twenty-six knots, range one thousand yards!” he barked. There was an audible intake of breath, everyone amazed that they were so close to the enemy. Nick, ignoring the fear that tried to grip him, entered the data into the TDC as Chief Pound began updating the Nautilus’s manual plot.
“Match bearings…mark!” Freeman barked, ordering the last entry to made into the TDC.
“Bearings set!” Nick shouted back.
“Torpedoes one through six set!” Workman reported.
“Fire one!” Freeman shouted.
There was the hiss of compressed air as Nautilus expelled her first war shot barely thirty seconds after her periscope had passed through the waves. The vessel jumped as the twenty-foot-long torpedo exited the bow tube, lightening the bow before the planesmen corrected it.
“Fire two!”
Once more the process was repeated.
“Fire three! Fire four! Second target!” Freeman shouted, spinning the scope. “Twin carrier!”
Nick could tell the Nautilus’s commander was fighting to keep his voice calm.
Even if they kill us after this, these shots are a submarine commander’s dream, Nick thought, fighting to control his own elation.
“Target two, angle on the bow one nine zero, heading oh eight five, same speed, range twelve hundred yards! Match bearing!” Freeman barked.
Time was not on their side. Their first shots had almost certainly been sighted in the clear Pacific, and the ships would already be beginning to take evasive action.
“Bearings set!” Workman replied, his voice several octaves higher.
“Fire tubes nine through twelve!”
The Nautilus jumped three more times, the planesmen correcting again to keep the vessel from broaching. Lt. Commander Freeman started to turn the periscope again, then suddenly stopped.
“Take her deep! Rig for depth charging, all ahead flank!” Freeman shouted, his voice full of obvious terror. The crew sprang into action, Freeman slapping the periscope handles upwards as the device slipped back in its runners.
“Jap tin can, two thousand yards and closing,” Nautilus’s master said resignedly.
We are dead, Nick thought as he gripped the TDC to keep from falling forward as the Nautilus dived. Still, we got our licks in.
Admiral Yamaguchi was watching the approach of the Akagi’s final Shiden.
“I need to speak with that chutai leader as soon as he lands,” Yamaguchi said. “If we are going to launch a third strike, I want to know what went…What in the hell is that destroyer doing?”
The last exclamation was in response to the destroyer Akigumo heeling out of line from behind the Zuikaku, smoke pouring from her stack. Yamaguchi brought up his binoculars as his signals officer began relaying his question. As he watched, he saw the Zuikaku and Shokaku also suddenly start to turn, both of them heeling hard away from each other.
Submarine, Yamaguchi had time to realize, nausea starting to turn his stomach just as Nautilus’s torpedoes arrived.
With the range as short as it was, there was almost no chance that Nautilus should miss. Unfortunately, the Bureau of Ordnance, in one of those decisions that made perfect sense in peacetime, had only tested a handful of torpedoes with live warheads in the previous decade. If they had tested live torpedoes, they would have realized that the weapons’ contact exploders had a terrible habit of bending on impact, rather than striking back into the warhead as designed.
Nautilus’s first bow torpedo, hitting directly opposite the Zuikaku’s first fireroom, suffered such a malfunction, hitting with a thud! Each and every man in the compartment had a few shaken seconds to realize that they had just narrowly escaped Death’s scythe before the second fireroom crew caught the Grim Reaper’s back swing. Exploding with a roar, the second torpedo immediately snuffed out half of the carrier’s propulsion and knocked most of the vessel’s crew off their feet.
The third torpedo hit the Japanese carrier forward, the shock effect causing the Zuikaku’s flight deck to leap forward in a jostling of deck hands, just landed aircraft, and fuel bowser. The mixture of hot engines, rent fuel tanks, and live ordnance had predictable effects, the fireball visible from the Akagi’s flag bridge. Less visible, but far more ominous for the large carrier, was the locking of the forward elevator in the down position and disruption of the hangar fire sprinklers.
Lt. Commander Freeman had misjudged the Zuikaku’s speed by a couple of knots. As a result, the final torpedo almost missed the carrier. Almost, in this case, was potentially worse than a full on hit, the torpedo impacting on the carrier’s port shaft. The resultant blast ripped the prop off, the still-turning blade whipping to the side and ripping a huge portion from the rudder before descending into the depths. Listing, afire on her deck and from damage belowdecks, the Zuikaku continued her lazy turn and began coming to a stop. As the shocked members of the Kido Butai watched, the recently returned aircraft on deck continued to explode in an ominious pyrotechnic display.
Like her sister, Shokaku benefited from the Bureau of Ordnance’s miserliness. The first torpedo to find her slammed into her hull abreast the forward bomb magazine. Rather than detonating in what would have been a spectacular, and fatal blow, the dud weapon broke apart on impact. It was followed by a second dud that hit abreast the aviation gas storage, then a third that would have deprived the carrier of all power.
The third torpedo from Nautilus’s stern tubes finally functioned as designed, staving in the side of the Shokaku’s steering room. In an instant, the Shokaku lost the ability to correct her turn, continuing on to port towards the battleship Kirishima. Reacting quickly, the latter vessel’s master put the battleship’s own helm hard over, the two vessels passing within one hundred yards of one another. Barking orders, the carrier’s captain brought his vessel to a slow stop even as signal flags were run up to inform the rest of the Kido Butai of the ship’s predicament.
Akigumo, her captain beside himself from rage, charged down on the Nautilus’s position even as the spray from the torpedo strikes was still settling. The second-youngest tin can in the Imperial Japanese Navy, the destroyer was one of the best equipped vessels to
deal with a submarine threat. Accelerating quickly, the vessel passed over the Nautilus’s position and, at the signal from her gunnery officer, began rolling depth charges from her stern. Nicknamed “ash cans” due to their shape, the weapons were set for a close pattern that was intended to shatter the American submarines’ hull.
As the vessel continued on, the assistant gunnery officer at the stern watched the swell behind the Akigumo for explosions. Belatedly, the man realized that the depth charge crew had forgotten to arm the weapons for a shallow setting in order to catch the rapidly diving American submarine.
“Splashes, sir,” the Nautilus’ soundman said from his board. Nick, moving quickly, snatched the phones off the man’s head.
“I think you’ll want to be able to hear in the morning, Seaman Jenkins,” he said in way of explanation. “That’s probably going to be a little loud.”
In reality, I don’t need a blow by blow of my own death, Nick had time to think.
Click! Click! Click! Click!
The sound of the depth charge fuses arming was clearly audible to every man within the submarine. For a brief, frozen moment of time, the men in the control room all winced in anticipation.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The Nautilus jumped violently both vertically and sideways. Nick watched the XO pitched off his feet, as a string of charges exploded seemingly all around them. In reality, the error in depth setting for the charges had been the worst thing that could have happened to Nautilus, the intended setting having been far too shallow. The world jumped violently, seemingly blurring with the violence of the submarine’s motion. The roar was primordial, like some huge sea monster had the Nautilus in its jaws and was shaking it like a bone. Paint chips descended like snow from the bulkheads and ceiling, adding to the surreal effect.