Flames in the Sky: Epic stories of WWII air war heroism from the author of The Big Show (Pierre Clostermann's Air War Collection Book 2)

by Pierre Clostermann

  The operation against the naval convoy off Lingayen was carried out by the last four Kamikaze squadrons. They arrived over the target mingled with orthodox bombers. As a result the A.A. failed to pick them out and in the confusion five ships were sunk and twenty-five badly and forty-two slightly damaged. A total of 1600 American soldiers and sailors were killed.

  It was terrifying, and the American Navy rather lost that feeling of being on top which it had acquired after its recent victories. Draconion measures were taken by the censorship to prevent the Japanese from getting to know the damage they had done. Unfortunately the jungle-covered islands swarmed with spies in enemy pay, and Tokyo was soon informed.

  The Japanese now started doing the thing in a big way. On Kyushu, the most southerly of the main Japanese islands, the suicide-planes began to mass on the airfields. And, not content with using normal fighters and bombers, they decided to create a special machine for the job. Hence the Oka or Baka.[17]

  It was a single-seater plane in miniature, rocket-propelled and reaching 600 m.p.h. and carrying a one-ton warhead in the nose. The designer of this piloted flying-bomb was Captain Niki. It was brought to within about twenty-five miles of the objective—i.e. still out of range of A.A. guns—by a parent plane. Owing to its speed, this machine was virtually unstoppable, and it could cause appalling damage, as the Americans were soon to discover.

  The island of Okinawa marked the last step before the invasion of the Japanese mainland, and its strategic importance justified sacrifices. However, after the Iwo Jima business in February 1945—this mere pimple on the ocean had cost the Marines 20,616 lives before they captured it—the American staff had decided to leave nothing to chance. A formidable armada consisting of 318 warships and 1119 transports carrying 548,000 men appeared on the morning of 1st April off this little island, hardly as big as the Isle of Wight.

  After eighty-two days of bitter, ferocious fighting Okinawa fell. But in the meantime the Kamikazes had struck. Result:

  33 warships sunk, including some aircraft-carriers and cruisers.

  57 transports lost.

  223 ships damaged.

  12,260 men killed.

  33,769 men wounded.

  The Japanese lost 2702 planes, normal and suicide, in that battle. Most of the stocks of Bakas were immobilised on the island itself, luckily for the Americans. Some were used for the first time in the massed attack on 12th April. Out of 38 launched, 13 scored hits and destroyed their targets.

  Overwhelmed by this avalanche, the U.S. Navy sent back desperate SOS’s for immediate supplies of special A.A. ammunition and replacements of 20- and 40-mm. gun barrels. Hundreds of tons of shells with proximity fuses were sent out from the States by air to stop the rot.

  In fact, this was only the beginning of the battle. Okinawa was now the jumping-off point for the invasion of Japan. Thousands of ships were concentrating there, thousands of tons of supplies were piling up. The Kamikazes—there were about 2000 of them scattered among the thirty-three main airfields on Kyushu—continued their daily attacks on this enormous target where every hit was a bull.

  To reduce the extent of the destruction the Americans took sweeping measures. The island was ringed by about a hundred radar-equipped destroyers. They could call into action 625 fighter planes and 7400 A.A. guns controlled by 140 radar posts. Under this umbrella of steel the preparations went on, but so did the damage. Fourteen of the destroyers were sunk and forty-two damaged by Kamikazes. The Laffey alone was attacked eighty-four times in one day. She was hit ten times, destroyed twenty-three aircraft, and dodged the rest. After a couple of days fifty of the crew had to be evacuated, suffering from shattered nervous systems. It was hardly surprising.

  * * *

  On 6th August 1945 at 1.45 a.m. Superfortress No. 44-86292 took off from Tinian airfield. Its pilot Lieutenant-Col. Paul Tibbetts, had christened his big four-engined plane ‘Enola Gay’ in honour of his mother. At 8.15 a.m. the lone aircraft opened its specially constructed bomb-bay. A long, dark shape, checked by a small parachute, spiralled down in the sunny summer sky over Hiroshima. It was the first atomic bomb.

  * * *

  9th August 1945

  The great naval air-base at Omura, the oldest and also the most important on Kyushu as its planes covered the naval yards at Sasebo and Nagasaki, was nothing but a heap of ruins. The position of the five great runways could only be distinguished by the different colour of the craters. The airfield was pitted all over with them, mostly brown ringed with red earth. But where the runways had been they were grey and bespattered with pale lumps of concrete. Aircraft were still burning, mere shells—Zeros, Norms, Sallys, slender-nosed Nicks, tubby Jacks, twin-engined Helens. Smashed fuselages, duralumin plates sawn in half by machine-gun bullets, smashed undercarts, black remains of burnt-out engines, propellers twisted into pathetic shapes, puddles of molten aluminium under collapsed wings. A blanket of heavy oil smoke drifting towards the sea covered this charnel-house.

  The hangars and workshops had been razed to the ground and the debris scattered far and wide by blast. Yet some men had survived the cataclysm. They swarmed over the field, collecting what was still usable, rolling drums of petrol, unearthing ammunition boxes from caches covered with dry grass.

  Within the gaping foundations of the control tower a shelter had been rigged up with camouflaged tarpaulins. In one corner stood a long telescopic wireless aerial flanked by an improvised chimney. Four men sat there in silence.

  The first was crouched down and with rapid strokes of his fan was brightening a small charcoal fire and watching some salmon balls cooking. A second, kneeling on the lowest step of the stairs, was rolling more balls between his fingers. The ground was littered with empty tins, a few bottles of Saki and cigarette butts. On the wall, hanging on nails, were a few oil-stained flying-suits, helmets and oxygen masks.

  Sitting back to back on the edge of a table covered with naval charts the two other men were listening to Tokyo radio:

  ‘Hiroshima . . . dead too numerous to count . . . inhabitants burnt alive in the streets or crushed under collapsing houses . . . impossible to distinguish the dead from the wounded . . . impossible to identify them . . . honourable peace . . . new weapon and flames from the sky . . . honourable peace . . . honourable peace . . .’[18]

  The transmission was poor and the speaker’s voice was interrupted by interference. But the sense was clear enough. It was a call to capitulate.

  The man nearest the radio stretched out his arm and turned it off and turned towards his companion. His lips in a thin line, the latter was abstractedly toying with his Samurai sword, drawing the gleaming blade from the brown lacquer scabbard and ramming it home again with his gloved palm. Both were in the black uniform of the Imperial Navy. On the collar of his tunic one had a gold star. He was Rear-Admiral Ugaki, commanding the fifth air fleet; the other had two stars. He was Vice-Admiral Fukada, commanding the first mobile detachment of the Naval Air Force.

  Their units were now scattered over the devastated airfields of the island of Kyushu and there was no possibility of re-establishing control. There they were in that shelter, their commands had dwindled away and there was no hope left. The moment had come, the moment they had so often discussed as they drank their green tea. There was only one honourable way out.

  Looking long into each other’s eyes, without saying a word, according to the customary farewell as between brothers in arms, they bowed low. They then exchanged swords after kissing the ivory hilts, and bowed again. How far off were the happy days when, as young cadets, they had parcelled up the world every evening and offered it to their Emperor. A brief order, and the two orderlies ran up the stairs. From outside came the sound of shouts and men running. The two admirals sat down again, facing each other this time, and heads bowed and arms crossed they meditated in silence.

  * * *

  Hundreds of men on the airfield were converging on the narrow road which led to the cliffs. They swarmed down the steps
cut in the rock. Down below the placid waters of Sasebo Bay lapped the gently sloping beach.

  The men swept away with brooms the inch or two of carefully raked sand which hid a long runway built of planks. They removed the camouflage nets draping the rocks, revealing caves at the foot of the cliffs. Cormorants used to disport themselves there, but the men had enlarged the caves with picks and dynamite and they now sheltered a few precious planes still remaining.

  Two Bettys were laboriously trundled out by the sweating men, the wheels sinking in the sand. The lowering storm-laden sky hung like a pall in the heavy electric heat.

  The mechanics started up the engines at once. There were no starter batteries. Instead they used a curious system of ropes wound round the airscrew spinner. Three men gave a sudden heave, and the perfectly serviced Kasei 21 in each case started straight away, throwing back a cloud of sand which scraped off the paint on the tailplane like emery paper.

  The crews arrived. The pilots wore thick pebble glasses and moved clumsily in their sheepskin jackets.

  A Lilliputian tractor emerged from a tunnel, dragging two trailers. On each was a Baka, carefully laid in a padded cradle. The armourers brought out trolleys carrying one-ton cylinders of T.N.T., which they fitted into the nose of the machines with the help of the tackle on the tractor. The five detonators were carefully screwed home and the whole covered by a streamlined nose.

  The engines were now warm and so they were switched off. The Bakas were slipped under the Bettys’ bellies, between the legs of the undercarriage. Everything was all set. There must have been upwards of a thousand men round the planes, their eyes fixed on the stairway hewn in the cliff.

  Admirals Ugaki and Fukada slowly descended the steps. Ugaki had slipped on over his uniform a long white robe, with the sleeves turned up to the elbows. On the back was embroidered a five-petalled pink cherry blossom, and the same emblem was painted on the fuselage of the two Bakas. Fukada had simply thrown a sort of white cape over his shoulders and he held a Samurai sword clasped against his chest with both hands.

  It was exactly 11.02 a.m. Everyone bowed low before the two officers, and at that very moment a vivid flash ripped the sky, so brilliant that the clouds were still shimmering with light a long time afterwards. The men straightened up with a jerk, and before their terrified gaze a colossal pillar of flame rose up behind the green hills on the other side of the bay. It rose, incredibly wide, straight towards the sky. They knew that at the foot of that dazzling column, which surged up dragging with it billowing white and pink clouds of vapour, stood Nagasaki.

  Four prodigious thunderclaps rolled from hill to hill like an earthquake. Stones broke away from the cliff. In spite of the distance, a sudden gust, like the wind from a gigantic fan, whipped up the water and swept ribbons of foam over the bay. Enormous balls of fire burgeoned and were swept up by the air rising from the flames into the incandescent clouds. Others and yet others bellied out and pursued them upwards. The sky now was as heavy as lead, except over there where the fires of Nagasaki formed a monstrous false dawn.

  It had all been so quick, and so unreal, that they stood transfixed with horror. They would have remained petrified indefinitely, but the blast of a whistle broke the silence. The men bestirred themselves and returned to their tasks, but they kept on turning to look towards the south.

  After a last accolade the two admirals, assisted by the respectful ground-crews, took their place in the exiguous cockpits of the Bakas. They tightened the safety straps and the transparent hoods were carefully screwed down over their heads. A hook was inserted into the ring on either side of the cockpit and the winch jerkily heaved up each flying-torpedo until it was wedged against the Betty’s fuselage. Four steel braces kept them rigidly in place.

  Ugaki, enclosed in that aluminium and perspex coffin, was already cut off from his fellow men. He was in darkness, for the Baka’s cockpit fitted tightly into the plane’s bomb-bay. The two rudders of his machine pressed like hands against the cold round belly of the Betty. The voices from outside came muffled through the walls of his plane as from another world. He felt the slight jolts as the crew climbed on board. The door opening cast a brief ray of light and he saw for one moment the copper wires and tubes criss-crossing, like entrails stuck on the smooth walls of the plane’s abdomen. He felt the shudder as the engines started up, heard the radar antennae vibrate in harmony with the whirring propellers. By pressing his cheek against the perspex, Ugaki could cast a glance downwards. He saw only the planks of the runway trembling under the oleo-legs. A brake squeaked, then another as the pilot lined the aircraft up. The throb of the engines ticking over gave way to a roar as they opened up and the Betty began to move.

  As he was suspended slightly behind the centre of gravity, he felt, amplified, the pilot’s kicks on the rudder bar to correct incipient swings. Spurts of sand grated on the Baka’s stubby wings.

  There was a crosswind and the take-off seemed to take ages. The plane bounced clumsily on one wheel. Ugaki felt a twinge of anxiety, not for himself, as he had already ceased to be, but an accident now would mean that his mission had failed.

  The jolting ceased. The plane lurched in the air, as the pilot tried to steady it for the climb. As the flaps were raised, the airflow seemed to press him into the body of the aircraft. The wheels shuddered as they were still revolving when the undercart came up, then he felt the plane beginning to climb. The thin metal skin quivered in the airflow.

  Now it was just a question of waiting. In about 150 minutes the green light would come on, meaning he must get ready. Then the red light and he would be dropped, facing the enemy. Until then he would be left hunched up, alone, with his thoughts. Only the slow, desperately slow, luminous hands of his watch linked him with the outside world.

  It was 11.50. Two Myrts[19] must by now have joined the two Bettys, taking off from one of the three airfields at Kumamoto. They belonged to the 18th Flotilla and each had been fitted to carry a 22-in. torpedo. Who would be flying them? The officers must have thrown dice for the honour of participating in this mission.

  12 o’clock.—The Hondo archipelago, a rocky tracery strewn over the China sea, where the multi-coloured junks and sampans with their sails of straw glide on the sunlit waters. He quickly suppressed a poignant regret.

  12.10.—They must be over Kagashima Bay with its moving sands criss-crossed with palisades where the pearl oysters are patiently cultivated. Dirty yellow waters, the home of the giant ray, that offspring of the devil.

  12.15.—Above Kanoya airfield the escort of George[20] fighters climbed to join them, circling like vultures. They were to protect them as far as Okinawa. How many intact planes would they have succeeded in collecting?

  Nearly two interminable hours had now dragged by. Cramp knotted his thighs. The oxygen was beginning to run short—after the bombardment there had been no equipment at Omura for recharging the bottles. The cold, too, penetrated the thin cloth of his uniform. There was nothing to be seen down below, the dazzling sunlight blotted everything out.

  The parent plane, handicapped by the extra drag of the Baka, was beginning to labour. Ugaki could feel by its sluggishness that it had reached its ceiling—about 23,000 feet. The engines were doing their best, but their unsteady, fluctuating beat showed that the pilot was having a job synchronising them.

  1.40.—Green light! Ugaki planted his feet firmly on the rudder bar and took a firm grip on the stick with one hand and on the trimmer with the other. His body was tensed forward. What was there inside that shaven head under the black leather helmet? Hatred? Cold rage? Fear of the unknown? Probably a deliberate blank. The thoughts which are life to us were merely incidental to him, banished by concentration on the act he still had to accomplish.

  1.41.—Red! The braces parted with a twang and the Baka fell into space. The sudden sunlight seared his eyeballs. Made nose-heavy by the weight of its warhead, the machine immediately went into a dive. A gently left-right movement to get the feel of the controls—t
he Baka was horribly unstable. A glance at the instrument panel: A.S.I. 360 m.p.h.; altimeter 23,000 feet; artificial horizon, nose low; compass, heading South.

  On the left, the selector box for the five rocket units—two under the wings and three in the fuselage. Then, straight in front, the red-painted arming handle. He gave it a sharp pull. The trinitro-anisol charge was now live. His thumb pressed the button on the stick and the wing rockets came into action. Ugaki was glued to his seat, his back bent by the terrific acceleration. 530 m.p.h., but he had already lost 3000 precious feet of altitude. He glanced round. Far behind him the Bettys were turning for home. The two Myrts were diving vertically down covered by the Georges. Down below lay the semi-circle of destroyers, like bright needles on the blue sea, forming the radar screen for Okinawa straight ahead.

  The island seemed to float like the corpse of some deep-sea monster. Only the thin reptilian backbone emerged, scarred with the straight lines of the eight American landing-strips. Right at the tip stood Mount Kuribare, with its dark gaping crater, overlooking Bruckner Bay, which was swarming with ships.

  The ear-splitting sound of the rockets had alerted the batteries at Ie Shima, but this flying torpedo was going so fast that the A.A. burst far behind its fiery wake. To the left, followed by black bursts from 40-mm. fire and white bursts from 20-mm., Fukada’s Baka was hurtling like a meteor down towards the Kyukyu roadstead.

  Behind him the two Myrts, two slender cruciform shapes, followed at water level. A first explosion—a hit—then a spout of water near a Liberty ship—a miss.