The Silver Waterfall

by Kevin Miller

  Lieutenant Matsumura was leading his formation of kankō torpedo bombers toward ships moored along the west of Ford Island. The carriers they had hoped were there were gone, not one visible anywhere in the harbor. Looking south, Maruyama had seen a destroyer near the channel before he was startled by a black AA puff.

  More Type 97’s from Akagi and Kaga swooped down in sharp descending turns as they picked out their targets on battleship row. To his left he watched a formation of Zeros dive on an American airfield, and flights of kanbakus dove on the Ford and Hickam runways.

  Matsumura signaled to Maruyama’s flight leader to skip the planned attack on the slim pickings on Ford Island’s west side and circle north of the island and target battleship row with kankō from the other carriers. As the formation bore in on the lone battleship and cruisers along Ford’s western moorings, Maruyama’s veered north.

  The harbor was full of vessels, crammed together in nests with fat battleships moored alongside each other. Fascinated, he noted the cage masts of some and tripod masts of others, seeing in reality what he had only seen in grainy images and drawings. Nothing moved on the calm water. They passed over a single battleship to the north, painted a darker gray than the others. On its decks he saw men – running.

  His pilot banked right to stay with their lead over the submarine docks to set up on battleship row. It was just like their training in the Kurils, and Maruyama readied his aiming glass. Straining against the g-force, he again noted men running below him on the piers and harbor streets. The American battle wagons gleamed gray in the morning sunlight, and the first geyser appeared against the hull of one of them.

  His pilot rolled upright to do a belly check. To the east the Aloha Tower stood out, with Diamond Head in the background, a postcard image printed indelibly on Maruyama’s memory.

  Over the wharf, they knifed down toward the water. To the south, some American ships were shooting – and missing – the kankōs ahead. More towering geysers, and Maruyama saw one battleship was not attracting as much attention as those on its left and right. His pilot saw it too, and lined up on a ship in the middle of the row as another geyser erupted from it.

  “Stand by!” his pilot ordered. “Stand by…!”

  Their kankō continued to slow and descend, and as it did a torpedo exploded against this new ship. Then another, with water climbing over 100 meters into the air! Maruyama was committed now, and through his aiming glass he saw the hulking battleship fill his viewfinder.

  Release!

  As Maruyama yanked on the handle, the weighty torpedo fell from the aircraft. Free of it, the kankō jumped into the air as the pilot firewalled the engine. Behind him, the gunner shouted as he fired at something along the pier and Maruyama snapped his head left to see the threat. It was only the gunner taking a potshot at a moored cruiser. No enemy Grummans were visible.

  To his right, circular wakes fanned away from the struck battleships, and their targeted ship already listed to port. Three Zero-sens roared overhead then dove to strafe the airfield. The antiaircraft increased as tracers shot past.

  “Hit! We got a hit!”

  Both Maruyama and his pilot craned their necks right to see the result of their work, as spray hovered high above their target before settling back as a falling curtain. Ahead, fighters and dive-bombers worked over the Navy field at Ewa Beach, as Maruyama’s formation of kankōs veered clear as they clawed their way west to safety.

  Maruyama, looking south at the moment, sensed a flash behind and to his right. The gunner gave a whoop, and Maruyama turned in time to see a massive sheet of flame envelop the whole of Ford Island. As the flames turned to black smoke, they felt a shockwave and, a second later, heard the concussive BOOM from the massive blast. Maruyama noted that the antiaircraft fire had suddenly stopped as an enormous conflagration hundreds of meters high flared from one end of an American battlewagon. His Majesty’s airplanes buzzed around it like insects near a flame.

  Arizona. And Oklahoma. Hundreds had perished in the two ships, and Maruyama had played a part.

  “Let’s go below,” Miyauchi said as he turned, and, with nothing better to do, Maruyama followed. They dogged the hatch and headed forward to a ladder under the bridge. Hearing commotion above, they stopped as Lieutenant Tomonaga raced down the ladder. Smiling at his kankō squadron mates, he continued down without saying a word.

  Behind him, the Air Officer followed at a more leisurely pace. The two pilots waited at a respectful distance for him to continue.

  “Ah, it is a good day for Carrier Division 2,” the grinning Air Officer said as his eyes met theirs. He did not stop as he turned to descend the next ladder, but said over his shoulder as he disappeared below, “Tomonaga will lead the first strike.”

  Out of earshot, Miyauchi spoke. “What will we strike first?”

  “We’ve been steaming east for days. Hawaii again? The American fleet? Midway?”

  “Whatever it is, if there is a first strike there must be more strikes to follow.”

  Maruyama nodded. “And Tomonaga-san is given the lead of the First Air Fleet? Guess we’ll know what it is before long.”

  “I hope we fly with him on the first strike,” Miyauchi said. “Let’s go below and spread the news.”

  “And take bets. I say Hawaii again.”

  “I say their fleet.”

  The two aviators trundled down the ladders to the mess decks, knowing that whatever tomorrow brought, Tomonaga would lead them to it.

  Chapter 2

  Ready Room Four, USS Hornet, June 2, 1942

  Looking up from the Acey-Deucy table, Ensign Bill Evans noted the back of the skipper’s head.

  As the junior pilots next to him concentrated on yet another mindless game, Evans studied his CO. He was odd, and even after eight months with him, he had not figured him out. He was awake up there – he never dozed in the ready room – but he was motionless. Suddenly, his hand shot out and then curved back in. Evans caught the gaze of the duty officer, Whitey Moore, who, seated at a desk in front of their CO, suppressed a smile.

  Evans had yet to figure Skipper Waldron. He was just a weird duck – that was the only way to explain it. All the ring-knockers were, from the pompous CHAG – Commander Hornet Air Group, aka “Sea Hag” – Ring to their bullying senior lieutenant, Swede Larsen. Captain Mitscher, the Navy’s real-life ancient mariner, must have entered the academy a year after the Civil War ended. What happened to men at Annapolis? At least Swede wasn’t aboard.

  All the Torpedo Eight pilots were there, and all were on edge. They managed to keep it under the surface. Playing Acey-Deucy passed the time, as did reading the worn April 1942 copy of Life magazine. Grant Teats was writing a letter, and Abbie Abercrombie dozed in his chair with his baseball cap in front of his face. However, only yesterday the skipper had laid it on the line.

  “They’ll get here Wednesday or Thursday morning. I figure the odds to be about two and a half to one against us.”

  Evans and the others listened as Waldron then discussed how the morning and afternoon attacks would go, his dark prediction contrary to the upbeat assessment. The skipper predicted VT-8 would make two morning attacks, which gave Evans hope. But, in the next sentence, Waldron said he was trying to persuade CHAG to let them make a night attack “when they’re punch-drunk and reeling.” That comment left Evans punch-drunk and reeling. A night attack? After two daytime attacks against real ships defended by real Zeros? None of them, including the skipper, had combat experience. Nugget ensigns like Evans had never taken off from a carrier with a torpedo. They’d never even seen it done.

  With a start, Waldron stood and turned.

  “All right, listen up.”

  The players put down the dice and returned to their high-back seats. Abbie straightened up in his seat as he rubbed his eyes. XO Owens looked over his shoulder to ensure the room came to order. Waldron stood with arms crossed, waiting hawk-like for the junior pilots to take their places. Once satisfied, he began.


  “The only way we’re gonna get in is to maintain mutual support. Now, Sea Hag says that we are going to go out as a group, with us on the deck, VS and VB high above, and VF escorting all of us. Fine…but it’s crackers to think that we’re going to stay together all the way to the Japs, which will be probably 150 miles away once we depart. First, there’s the airspeed difference, and surely there will be small heading changes on the way to spread us out. And once we find ’em, it’s going to be a free-for-all. Trust me. When we get there, it’s going to be us, alone.”

  Evans glanced over at Tex and Rusty, both riveted on the CO. In contrast, Abbie had his head down, but looked up as soon as Waldron stepped to the chalkboard.

  “As we go in we’re gonna keep our speed up; I’ll set my RPM for 105 knots to give you guys behind me something to play with. The Japs will hightail it away at flank speed – they’d be dopey not to – but even with an 80-knot speed advantage it’s going to take a while to catch the bastards. I figure in clear weather we’ll spot silhouettes at 20 miles. Once I determine our target, which will be the closest carrier, we’ll all – all – go in on it. So, 20 miles at 80 knots, that’s fifteen minutes, and that doesn’t count us overtaking them on their bow and reversing for launch. That’s the math, so I give us twenty minutes.”

  Evans nodded. After months of the CO’s drills, he could do this word problem standing on his head.

  “Now, what else does that mean? That means we’ll have to defend from their CAP fighters for most of that, maybe the whole twenty minutes, if they get lucky and see us early. XO, get with Chief Dobbs and tell the gunners; we’ve gotta conserve our .30 cal ammo and not spray it all over God’s creation on edgy shots. I say this to let you pilots know, too. If your gunner back there fires everything scattershot in the first few minutes, it’s gonna be a long day. Even changing an ammo belt will seem like forever when you’re under attack. Make sure they wait till the Japs are in range, then give it to ’em.”

  Bill Evans was reminded of Waldron’s words the day before. All of them knew some of them wouldn’t return from the first attack, and, if one survived, it was only to return, rearm, wolf down a sandwich, and go back into another whirlwind of hot lead, with more culled from the herd. And then…return at night? Evans couldn’t believe it, that he was even sitting in a ready room on a carrier in the middle of the Pacific. He glanced at the wings on his chest. You asked for this.

  Waldron, energized, picked up a piece of chalk. “Now, we have our two tactical divisions. Once we run down a carrier…maybe the only one out there or one I choose, don’t know what we’ll find…we’re going to split as we’ve been trained, as we’ve discussed. I’ll take one side and XO’s division the other. But before we split we need to stay together until the last minute. To give ourselves every advantage, we’re gonna fly in close echelon.”

  Some shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. What? Close echelon? Waldron now began drawing on the board, speaking as he did.

  “At some point our VF is going to be off engaged elsewhere. Enemy fighters will get through. My division will be leading in left and right echelon. Jimmie, your division will be stepped down, and about 100 yards aft, like this.”

  The pilots watched as Waldron drew on the board like a football coach diagramming a play. Evans looked at XO Owens. He appeared as dumbfounded as the others.

  “We’ll go in low and fast, together in echelon. Jimmie, your planes are going to keep lookout for all of us; the planes to the right look left and planes to left look right. When the Zeros attack, we’ll mass defensive fire from fifteen guns. The near formation can only jam their tracking and maybe the gunners can get off some bursts, but the XO’s division will have freedom of maneuver. With the Jap bellies exposed, you trailers can pull up and spray ’em with high deflection shots from yer fixed .30’s that will either flame ’em or scare them off. Then re-dress the formation. I’ll be watching, and if I need to will throttle back a bit so you can catch up. We’ll stay close until the split point, probably inside three miles…they’ll be running hard.”

  Evans was skeptical. Although his Devastator flew in Waldron’s first division, he saw this as merely a way to buy time for it at the cost of XO’s TBDs. But as Waldron explained the tactic through the blizzard of chalk dust, it made sense. Any way the Japs came at VT-8, they could counter. The Japs would likely swoop down from the high side and rake them; if Evans and his mates could just see them in time, their gunners could hold them off so they couldn’t track.

  Waldron loved these chalk talks, and he could tell his pilots caught on to the logic. He didn’t tell them about his plan for fighter protection, because it wasn’t approved yet. He had to ask within the next 24 hours.

  It was a long shot, but they needed hope. They needed something.

  Chapter 3

  Flag Bridge, USS Yorktown, June 2, 1942

  From his chair on the flag bridge, Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher watched as the oiler Platte fell off Yorktown’s starboard quarter after two hours alongside. Even though he was no longer a ship captain like Elliott Buckmaster and therefore responsible, after each underway replenishment breakaway it was as if a weight were lifted from him. No fires and no injuries, and with full bunkers he felt secure. Platte was dispatched to the east as Yorktown steamed west with the rest of her escorts to find Ray Spruance and Task Force 16 already on station. Fletcher lingered as he scanned the horizon and assessed the positioning of his screen. Station keeping was an area in which he excelled; how he loved to eyeball a heading and ring up speed to get there with minimal corrections and no disruption to the formation. He liked passing his techniques down to junior officers of the deck, often taking the conn of his battleship New Mexico and maneuvering it like a destroyer. Frank Jack could handle ships. Carrier task force command? The jury was still out, at CINCPAC HQ in Makalapa Hill and in his own mind.

  What more did they want? He’d stopped them at Coral Sea. But for the loss of Lexington, he’d be lauded as a modern-day Nelson. A naval battle where he never saw a ship. Did King or Chester Nimitz ever experience that, or even imagine it? Hell, his ships rescued over 90 percent of Lexington’s crew with the Japanese threatening from the north…. Did he receive any credit?

  He took another look at Platte, and was reminded of Neosho, his vital tanker set on and sunk by Japanese carrier planes that knew their job. If he hadn’t lost her and her fuel, things may have been different. He had to fight, he had to refuel, and he had to take risk, all while the courtiers at Pearl and Washington expected perfection. None of them had ever seen anything like this: airplanes doing all the fighting.

  Lexington survivors said it was aviation fuel in the lines that doomed her, that fed fires her damage control parties could not extinguish. That lesson was passed, a lesson learned literally under fire. She burned that evening, horrible and magnificent, a towering column of black rising into the darkening blue. Fire. From enemy bombs and torpedoes. He had seen it. Main Navy had heard about it.

  Here on his flag bridge he had stood that very morning, a helpless spectator as Elliott Buckmaster from the bridge wing shouted commands and twisted Yorktown like a snake to avoid the Jap dive-bombers overhead:

  “Admiral, get down!” Lewis shouted.

  Fletcher ignored his Chief of Staff, absorbed by the sight of enemy bombs separating from their aircraft. The cacophony generated by the antiaircraft guns was deafening and drowned out any aircraft noise, but through it he could hear Elliott shouting orders to the helm. Yorktown heeled hard amid cordite smoke and the thunderous sounds of her guns, which together rose into a singular roar. It was as if the carrier were roaring like a lion in defiance of attacking insects. Fletcher was spellbound as he watched one bomb fall toward the starboard bow, visible through a sheet of his own flickering tracers, wobbling as it fell to the sea, harmless now, but with more black insects, more shouts, more thunder.

  Lewis yanked him down, and the admiral’s World War I doughboy helmet turned cockeyed as the bom
b exploded off their bow with a deep whump within the firestorm of guns. They felt the impact aft as salt spray from the first bomb rained on them. They looked up in time to see another falling bomb as the deck tilted starboard as Elliott shifted his rudder to throw off his current assailant. It too missed to starboard. Seconds later, they were rocked by an impact aft which heaved the deck so high that for a moment they were weightless before falling back on their stinging hands and knees. Seawater slid down the sloping deck and was absorbed by their wash khakis.

  They heard a sudden whirr whirr whirr and then were blown into the armored bulkhead by the concussive force of an explosion that pelted the island with fragments. The bomb must have hit the island, and for a moment Fletcher wondered if anything on the bridge and air plot was still alive. Shocked gun crews took a moment to recover before they – those who could – resumed their fire at the hovering insects. Fletcher and Lewis could only lay flat on the wet and heeling deck, the smells of burning flight deck mingling with cordite. How bad are we hurt? Though his ears rung, he heard more shouts from Elliott as he gave orders to the helm. Good.

  Fletcher returned his scan to the horizon. Sixty-six men were lost in that attack, most killed instantly from a bomb that tore through the flight deck. The blood, limbs ripped from their torsos. As he continued to reflect on the battle, it was clear Yorktown was wounded below the waterline, his task force was low on fuel, and aviator reports were suspect or wrong. Had been from the get-go, and the fires on Lexington increased. He had little choice to do much more than retire, but Washington blamed him for not attacking that afternoon. What’s the difference, he thought. The two carriers he had defeated at Coral Sea were not involved in this operation off Midway.

  So said the CINCPAC staff! Yes, the same intelligence staff that was in place on December 6, who were fuzzy about the enemy order of battle only last month. Now they’ve pinned the enemy movements down to precise minutes and miles…and expect me to bank on that?