‘Yeah,’ Lew agreed. Yet while he felt horror that so many great ships and so many fine men had been done to death in such a treacherous way, he was aware of no fear, and not even any regret. Only a calm satisfaction that it should finally have happened.
‘They’ve scuppered us,’ Pimm groaned, staring at the sinking ships, the huge pall of smoke which hung over Pearl, the shattered planes on Hickam Field. ‘The entire Pacific Fleet, knocked out at one blow.’
‘Not quite,’ Lew told him. ‘They missed the carriers.’
For Lexington, Yorktown and Saratoga were at sea. And North Carolina and Washington were both in full commission, while South Dakota and Massachusetts had both been launched, and Indiana and Alabama would soon be in the water. Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin were on the stocks, and two more were on the way, Illinois and Kentucky. While Slater had shown him the basic plans for the Montanas, devised as soon as Brenda had relayed the details of the Yamato. Here were going to be five battleships, each of seventy thousand tons full load with sixteen inches of belt armour and twelve sixteen-inch guns. They were truly the ships of the future, and in the States there were hundreds of thousands of young men waiting to man them. Japan would have no answer to the massive force being brought against her.
He took the launch into the dock, put his men ashore, and went back for more. He worked until noon, when the attack was long ended, and the flames were being brought under control. And Vermont, like Arizona and Oklahoma, had become a total loss. When he got ashore for the last time, Brenda was there.
‘Oh, Lew,’ she said. ‘Is it true what they’re saying, that in one morning Japan has won the war? Oh, Lew, when you think that May died to prevent this...’
He put his arm round her shoulder, and held her against his tattered, soaking jacket. ‘May didn’t die in vain,’ he told her. ‘The Japanese haven’t even won a battle. They’ve committed murder. What’s going to happen next is like nothing anyone in Tokyo has ever dreamed of, in their worst nightmares.’ He looked down at her. ‘We’re going to see to that, right?’
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Raging Sea, Searing Sky Page 39