Alan D. Zimm
Page 46
He shook his head to bring himself back to reality. Speed was needed, quickness. Looking down at his chart, he circled the positions of ships needing more attention. He snapped an order to Ohno, who put more power to the engine and edged over to where the reserve torpedo bombers were flying their racetrack, waiting expectantly. He pulled alongside one, and Fuchida pulled out his prepared cardboard sheets with large numbers printed on them, one for each mooring position in the harbor. He showed the number to the aircrew of the first B5N Kate. The pilot nodded, saluted, and dropped back in formation. One by one he gave the reserves their assignments. It was now perhaps five minutes since the first torpedo had hit, and ugly black puffs of AA fire were beginning to soil the sky.
He gave out the last of the assignments, ticking off the last circled numbers as he did. When all the circles were checked, he still had three torpedo bombers left. He had assigned attackers to the outlying cruisers, the cruiser moored next to 1010 Dock, the cruisers at the carrier moorings, the battleships that could use another hole or two. What to do with this last three? He sent two against the cruisers at the Navy Yard piers—even if the targets were foreshortened into slivers by the angle of approach, they would be bound to hit something valuable if the torpedo survived the launch. The last torpedo? His friend Lt. Suzuki grinned at him across the gulf between the two aircraft. He had told him back on the Akagi that he wanted a challenge. Let him have a go at the drydock caisson.
He fired a Black Dragon flare. The reserve torpedo bombers broke formation to attack their targets as nearly simultaneously as possible.
He watched them swoop into position. Black puffs of AA fire seemed dark and ugly compared to the white water splashed up as the torpedoes fell into the harbor.
“A hit! Number 14 position!” New hits were announced. Fuchida continued to record damage. Eventually, the last of the torpedoes were launched, the last hits recorded. Fuchida glanced at his watch. It seemed impossible, but it was a bare fifteen minutes from when the attack had started.
Fuchida fired a Red Dragon flare. In doing so he released his escort fighters and SEAD support. They banked away, heading for their assigned airfields. They would strafe the air bases, and then the fighters would fly top cover to ensure that no American aircraft got aloft. They would remain as guards until the second wave arrived to relieve them.
He watched as Suzuki’s plane descended to attack altitude.
He heard Ohno say, “Our turn, sir?” It interrupted his concentration, but Fuchida assented, and directed the pilot towards the Navy Yard piers. They climbed to 2,000 meters—good level bombing altitude against a fixed target, low enough for accuracy, high enough to be out of machine gun range.
Fuchida was inspecting the cruisers with his binoculars when he felt the bomber suddenly lift. “Bombs released!” shouted the bombardier, who kept his eyes pressed to his bombsight. Fuchida could not resist—he went down on his knees and looked out the observer’s sight in the floor of the bomber. At this altitude the details on the ground were in sharp focus, he could even see small figures of men rushing along the piers heading for the ships. He spotted their two 250kg bombs gracefully descending, becoming smaller and smaller, and saw the shipyard piers far, far ahead of them, he could not see how the bombs could possibly get there—then, in a rush, bombs and targets merged. There was a red flash along the line where the pier and a class “A” cruiser met, and further along a huge splash in the turning basin.
“One hit!” Fuchida called out.
“What did we get?” Ohno asked.
Fuchida paused to heighten the pilot’s anxiety.
“A garbage scow, I think,” he said tonelessly. Ohno seemed to slump in his seat. Fuchida reached forward and patted him on the side of the head. “Ohno-san, the Yankees have 10,000-ton garbage scows with gun turrets, it appears.” The pilot laughed.
Fuchida had now about 30 minutes to consider the next necessary decisions. Egusa would be arriving with the second-wave dive-bombers. He ordered his pilot to climb to 3,000 meters to meet them while he inspected the harbor. His crew had counted 30 hits of the 50 torpedoes, not as many as expected but the distribution was good. Five of the battleships along Ford Island were finished, two capsized, two with water over their main decks, and one blasted apart and sending up a tremendous cloud of smoke that obscured most of Battleship Row. All the torpedo-accessible cruisers had taken one or two torpedo hits, one class “B” cruiser was capsized, another obviously sinking. It was impossible to tell what the torpedoes had done to the ships at the Navy Yard piers, but something had happened from the amount of smoke.
“Did you see Suzuki-san?” he called to the bombardier. The man pointed to a column of smoke and burning debris. The Yankees were awake and shooting. He would meet Suzuki-san at the Yasukuni Shrine when he, too, gave his life for the Emperor.
Fuchida saw a large tanker backing out of its berth at Ford Island. Centered in the channel, the froth at its stern meant the captain was trying to twist the ship to line up to go hide in the loch beyond the Navy Yard.
“Good, we’ll sink you right there,” he thought.
The dive-bombers appeared on the horizon—they were 15 minutes early, excellent timing. Fuchida made his last decisions, and his pilot turned the plane to join up with the dive-bombers’ command elements. There was no time to give individual assignments, so Fuchida pulled up to each of the nine chutai leaders and flashed the number of their target assignment to them. Two chutai would put the tanker on the bottom. Four chutai would hit the four cruisers at the Navy Yard Piers. The remaining three would hit the surviving cruisers anchored north of Ford Island or put some bombs in the nests of destroyers.
The dive-bombing conditions were horrible, with smoke obscuring the targets and a layer of 70% cloud cover at 1,500 meters altitude over parts of the harbor that threw off all chances of bombing as the crews had been trained. The American AA fire was suddenly tremendous—far better than what would come from a Japanese fleet under similar circumstances; but then again, AA fire was defensive, and the Japanese did not honor the defensive.
But through it all the dive-bombers attacked bravely.
The two chutai attacking the oiler put six hits into the huge hull, and it lit up like a Chinese fireworks fountain, gushing red flames and oily black smoke. But sinking that oiler, with all her separate storage tanks only partially filled with a cargo that was lighter than water, proved to be more difficult than expected. The bombs missed the relatively small engineering spaces, so the oiler remained under way. Her captain put her aground off Hospital Point, well out of the channel. Later, the current twisted her off the shore, but Navy tugs got lines across her at the extreme bow and stern and, with the help of her engines, put her firmly aground on the other side of the channel. Burning fuel streamed down the channel, halting all movement out of the harbor.
Otherwise, the performance of the dive-bombers was less than what was expected, but good under the circumstances. Egusa had expected half the bombs to hit, but the actual score appeared to be well short of that. The smoke, the clouds, the brisk wind and the even brisker AA fire seemed to take away the favor of providence from the dive-bombers. But attacking targets further away from the smoke clouds around Ford Island was a good decision, and so while the hit percentage was down, many useful hits were scored.
Finally, the dive-bombers completed their attacks, and after a last flurry of strafing, they abandoned the harbor to their new enemies.
Fuchida directed his pilot to take a last tour of the harbor. His bombardier took photographs to help with the battle damage assessment.
Four battleships sunk by torpedoes, five or six hits apiece. There would be very little left of them to salvage, particularly the two that capsized. One battleship was blown apart by the mighty 800kg bombs, a point that Fuchida would report with particular pride. It, too, would never float again. There were several AP bomb hits on the other inboard battleships which hopefully detonated in their engineering spaces, crippling
them for six months to a year. It appeared that only one battleship escaped heavy damage, the ship in the drydock, but the gods do not favor the greedy, it would have been unreasonable to expect more and that ship was not vulnerable enough to warrant expending limited ammunition on it.
They had exceeded Yamamoto’s goal of one battleship sunk and a total of four battleships crippled—they had achieved five battleships sunk, and crippled two more. Yamamoto would be pleased.
Damage to lower priority targets was also excellent. Of the eight cruisers in port, the four anchored scattered around the harbor were all put down by a combination of torpedoes and bombs. The smoke over the Navy Yard piers made damage assessment difficult, but where there is smoke there is fire, and it looked to Fuchida’s eye that two of the four cruisers there were burning fiercely, and another one leaning against the pier, half-sunk. Smoke also came out of five of the nests of destroyers, indicating that the dive-bombers had some successes there. The photographs later would show another four destroyers sunk, one destroyer-minelayer sunk, and six destroyers damaged.
Five battleships sunk, seven cruisers sunk or destroyed, eleven destroyer-class vessels sunk or heavily damaged, a huge oiler grounded and melting. As Fuchida tallied the results, he could not see how they could have been better. Perhaps better dive-bombing could have added to the margins with a few more of the smaller warships, but it was nearly a clean sweep of the most important targets.
As he departed the Pearl Harbor area for a quick tour of Ewa and Wheeler fields before heading back to the carrier, Fuchida’s eyes were drawn to the huge oil storage tanks lined up like soldiers marching up the hills on the periphery of the harbor.
“How foolish are the Americans,” he thought. “They make all this effort to bring out millions of liters of fuel for their fleet, and then do not protect the fleet. Of what use is oil without warships? The Americans make war like accountants. They have no Yamato damashii, no kesshitai. Clearly providence favors we Japanese. We will take the southern resource areas, the Philippines and Singapore, and the Americans and British accountants will see that war is too costly to defend places that they can hardly spell. They will be pleased to have done with it all and bow to us across a negotiating table. Then they will give all this oil to us as war reparations.”
With this thought his plane turned away from the white fuel tanks, and Fuchida’s heart was glad that he did not have to bother with such dishonorable targets.
APPENDIX E
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am told in the publishing business that a book has two positions of especial importance: what is said first, and what is said last. The subject of the book should surely have first priority. However, next must come acknowledgement of the many people who made substantive contributions to this work.
All good books are necessarily the result of the efforts of many people who take the time to help the author get the facts right and keep him from straying into ideas that cannot be substantiated. I have been blessed by many experts who have given freely their time, shared their research, and provided valued criticism. Their contributions have done nothing but improve this work. I cannot mention them all, but must mention a few, as they contributed immensely.
William O’Neil, Captain USNR (ret) and a senior analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, was generous with his time and talents. He provided references, important documents and excellent comments throughout the manuscript. Chapter 9 was extensively modified from his input.
Christopher Powers, Captain USN (ret) provided extensive and valuable comments, along with the perspective of a strike fighter pilot and Air Boss.
Trent Hone provided valued research material and extensive comments. Under his cogent criticism arguments were strengthened and alternative explanations suggested.
Tim Lazendorfer provided almost a page-by-page critique of the work which proved exceptionally valuable.
David Aiken of the Pearl Harbor History Associates provided references and comments. He generously shared his research and comprehensive knowledge of the Japanese torpedo attack and other areas.
Jon Parshall, David Dickson, and (soon to be) Dr. David Flannigan provided comments and criticism. Mark Campbell made the suggestion that resulted in the “pop history” portion of the introduction. Terry Sofian shared his compilation of information on the Japanese aircraft groups’ attack missions.
Nathan Okun, a respected expert in World War II ordnance and armor penetration technology, contributed comments throughout, along with specific help on the construction and performance of Japanese bombs and ship damage.
Terry Kirby of HURL provided information on the creation of the NOVA television program. Parks Stephenson (one of the good guys who fell into evil company) and I engaged in a spirited exchange on the fate of the fifth midget submarine. I look forward to his book.
Ralph Norton, a petroleum expert, generously provided extensive information on fuel oil storage tank construction and firefighting measures dating back to the 1930s. He provided much of the information on fuel tank specifications, operations, and fire prevention measures, along with information on the experiences of the Haifa refinery. Edward Rudnicki, an Army ordnance expert, assisted with several technical points.
My thanks to the “Fire Control Group,” of naval history experts with many publication credits, who have been generous with their time and assistance over the years. They provided many valued documents, insights, inspiration and, when needed, correction. Thank you, all.
My valued critics would have me point out that some of what is discussed in this book still has room for additional research and debate, which I encourage—it can only improve our understanding of World War II naval history and of the Pearl Harbor Raid. Many of the best points made in this study were at their suggestion. They held everything to a high standard, for which I am grateful.
My sincere thanks to my dear wife Deborah and daughter Natalie. Thank you for putting up with my disappearances into the basement book cave for so many months.
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