by Kevin Miller
Brazier got up from the table. “Taps in a few minutes, and the Chief is gonna be in here to put us to bed.”
“Too keyed up to sleep,” Lloyd said.
“Me, too,” Darce added. “I know. Let’s celebrate your birthday, Child-airs. I swiped two cookies from the mess decks.”
“Today, or last week?” Wayne asked.
“Today, dammit. They fresh. Here.”
Darce lifted up his bottom rack and retrieved a napkin. Inside were two oatmeal and raisin cookies. Darce broke them in pieces to share, offering a piece to Childers first.
“Happy Birthday, you cheatin’ Okie. Cookies and a Chesterfield to celebrate you coming of age on a broken tub in the middle of nowhere. All we need is a pitcher of pink lemonade.”
“Darce, I’ll never know why a bum like you smokes them Chesta-fields. You’d think you’re some kind of officer or somethin,’ puttin’ on airs.” Barkley chided.
Darce patted out some cigarettes from the pack he held. “Any Joe can smoke Luckys, but the Crescent City has class when it comes to cigarettes. You only live once. Here, my good underage men, Chesterfields all around.”
“The smoking lamp will be out in a few minutes…” Brazier said, wishing he hadn’t. Darce didn’t miss a beat.
“What they gonna do? Put me in the back of a TBD with Ensign Smith?”
The men took the cigarettes that Darce offered and lit them, mindful that taps would sound in mere minutes.
“Don’t say I never gave ya nothin’, Okie.”
“Thanks, Cajun.”
“Happy Birthday, Child-airs.”
Though baked by other sailors deep inside the bowels of Yorktown, the men – reminded of the comforts of home, kitchens with familiar smells, devoted mothers in aprons tending to something on the stove – munched on their wedges of American goodness. They had to finish their cigarettes before lights out. Maybe the chiefs would cut them some slack at bed check. Nobody wanted to sleep just yet, and Childers was turning twenty-one. Childers hoped Chief Esders would be the one to check on them. He’d look the other way.
“Gotta say, Darce, these officer cigarettes ain’t bad,” Phillips said.
“Yeah, live a little, ya know.”
The 1MC sounded with four bells.
Ding, ding…Ding, ding…Taps, taps. Lights out. Maintain silence about the decks. The smoking lamp is out throughout the ship. Now taps.
“Okay, Lloyd, the party’s over,” his brother said.
“Birthday’s not for two more hours!” Childers protested.
Darce gobbled the last piece of his cookie and swallowed it. “This is just like Fat Tuesday in the Quarter. At midnight it all shuts down. ’Cept here on Yorky, it shuts down at 2200.”
“Here’s to sinkin’ those yellow Japs tomorrow,” Barkley said before polishing off his cookie fragment.
“They’re gonna wake us in about five hours,” Brazier said, and Childers’ birthday party broke up before it started. Some men hung their chambray shirts on pegs near their rack, and others grabbed their dopp kits and shuffled to the head to brush their teeth. Hundreds of men in adjacent compartments did the same under the red lighting – and the regimentation – of their nighttime shipboard routine.
Childers crawled into his rack and pulled up the sheet. Wayne was above, and Phillips below. He’d met Phillips only months before, and now he was as much of a brother to him as Wayne was. They had also been together aboard Saratoga when it was torpedoed. Felt like an earthquake.
In the darkened compartment, he heard Darce’s voice from the bunk cluster at his head.
“VT-2 sank the Jap carrier, and VT-5 got in some good licks. Now it’s our turn to join the fun. Aye, aye, sir.”
“Go to sleep, dammit,” someone growled. Dodson?
Childers had been as excited as the rest of them when they got the word they were coming to Yorktown. Big talk about sending Tojo to kingdom come. And on his birthday, of all days. They’d have fighter help tomorrow, and the Dauntlesses would soften the Japs up before they went in to finish them off. Harry wouldn’t miss, and Childers would protect their six. He rolled over and pulled the sheet up over his head.
With his eyes open, he thought about tomorrow. June 4th. What would it be like to see a Zero pointing at him? He wanted one to point at him, to have a chance to bag one, but at the same time he was terrified of it. Harry could sink the carrier; Childers would be happy to shoot one Jap plane. Something to tell his grandchildren…
He had encountered the VT-5 guys about a week ago in Pearl Harbor when the ship was in dry dock. He knew one from before December 7th, but he was different now, offering just a quick wave before ignoring Childers and going back to the banter of his mates. Unspoken was that they were in a club Childers did not yet belong to. They’d already been in combat. Tested by fire. Childers hadn’t. He wanted to face the test, yet now trembled in fear under the sheet of his bunk. Would they all make it? Would he measure up?
Please help us, God.
He said a prayer, asking for strength, asking for courage, asking for sleep. He thought of the open skies of Norman, and red dust. And red meatballs painted on the wings of a Zero fighter. How he missed that red dust.
Rocked by gentle North Pacific swells and in the company of his brother and brothers, Aviation Radioman 3rd Lloyd Childers drifted off to sleep, and turned twenty-one.
Chapter 6
HIJMS Hiryū, 0430 June 4, 1942
Maruyama looked along the left side of the nose as he sat in the observer seat of his Type 97, parked among a pack of others behind the center elevator on Hiryū’s flight deck. At the head was Tomonaga’s plane, and ahead of him was a 135-meter stretch of wooden flight deck that rose and fell in a gentle rhythm. On the bow, a steam vapor line indicated the winds were in takeoff alignment, and, high on the island, the wind sock lay out at full extension. Next to it, at the truck, the red-and-white ensign above a column of signal flags snapped in the breeze, silhouetted against the brightening eastern sky.
The last escort Zero-sen had just cleared the bow, waved aloft by hundreds of men crammed along the bow catwalks and island perches, waving their caps in wild, joyous enthusiasm in the same manner they had that December morning, and for the Darwin strike and Trincomalee. He and the others could not hear their shouts of banzai above the roar of the fighter as it jumped into the air. Behind Tomonaga, Maruyama and 16 more kankōs waited with idling engines. Ahead was Hiryū’s rubber-stained and grimy deck, telling evidence of the last six months of hard combat. Airborne, the fighters turned easy left so the wingmen could join on the leaders as they climbed overhead.
The torpedo bombers were loaded with 800-kilogram bombs to be dropped in level delivery. Lieutenant Tomonaga appeared confident. His first lead from a ship. Maruyama had heard he had plenty of combat under his belt, but out here things were different. They chose Tomonaga. Who was he to question? He watched his flight leader taxi his camouflaged green Type 97 to the takeoff stripe, showing no trepidation.
In their wake, Sōryū launched fighters, which, like her sister ship Hiryū, would contribute another 18 kankōs to hit Sand Island. Far to starboard, the flagship was now launching her dive-bombers, and soon the first Zero-sen departed from Kaga.
Maruyama spoke into the voicetube. “Ready for takeoff, Nakao-sen?” He saw the pilot nod his head.
“Checklist complete! Ready for takeoff!” Seaman 1/c Nakao answered.
“Very well. Hamada, you ready back there?”
“Ready!” the gunner answered.
Maruyama nodded his acknowledgment. He then watched Tomonaga’s plane gain speed as the heavy Type 97 accelerated down the deck. If Tomonaga could get airborne from his spot on the center elevator, they all could. Before Tomonaga got to the bow, his tailwheel lifted off the deck, and the bomber became airborne without trouble. Dozens of men on the catwalks watched him fly away as they cheered in wild, delirious gyrations.
To the southwest, plump kanbaku dive-bombers from the
two CarDiv 1 carriers lifted into the air and initiated their rendezvous turns as shotais of CAP fighters overhead transited to their assigned patrol sectors. Maruyama evaluated the clouds: scattered to occasional broken. Visibility clear. In the level-bomber next to him, Chief Tatsu smiled at Maruyama from his own observer position in the middle of the airplane’s glass cage. The kankō crews waited their turns for takeoff with eager impatience.
One by one they roared down Hiryū’s deck and floated off the bow as the main wheels of each slowly retracted into the wings. With his charges following in trail, Tomonaga led them left in a climbing rendezvous circle over the ship. Behind them, Sōryū’s level-bombers did the same according to doctrine.
Nakao added a bit of throttle and taxied into position behind Chief Tatsu’s plane, now positioned for takeoff. Hurry, Maruyama thought. Too much interval! Nakao inched ahead, watching and waiting his turn as their airplane vibrated from the firing cylinders. Flames flickered from the cowl flaps as Tatsu’s pilot firewalled his throttle, and, as soon as it vacated its spot, Nakao moved into it and aligned the Type 97 on centerline.
“Here we go!” he shouted, which Maruyama and Hamada easily heard through their leather flying helmets.
Sudden yet familiar force pushed them back in their seats as Nakao released the brakes. The engine thundered at full power, and, as they passed the island, Maruyama looked up and saluted. Admiral Yamaguchi was on the wing and looked down at them as they roared past. Picking up speed, Maruyama caught glimpses of the beaming faces of the crew, many of whom he recognized. They continued to wave madly, having not lost any of their enthusiasm since the first Zero-sen had taken off five minutes earlier.
On centerline and feeling their heavy load underneath, they rolled over the red flight deck hinomaru as the deck edge loomed up. Maruyama felt the tail lift, and, like the others, the kankō separated from the deck. Underneath them, the knifing ship’s bow and the cobalt water came into view.
Maruyama counted the Type 97s in the semicircle ahead: nine, and Tomonaga’s first chutai was almost formed, six sleek silhouettes on the red sky. Busy with his cockpit tasks, Nakao cleaned up and trimmed the plane as he banked to the inside of the circle to get on bearing line. Behind him, Maruyama heard Hamada ready the guns as the kankō’s engine sustained its muscular purr.
As Nakao turned their kankō through east, the sun peeked above the horizon, a bright red line radiating streaks of crimson among the gray clouds. The striking symbol of their national emblem emblazoned in the dawn sky was not lost on Nakao, who let out a spirited banzai as the nose of the bomber passed above the low sun.
Now on bearing line, his pilot concentrated on the join up while Maruyama noted the time and heading to Midway. A magnetic heading of 150 was almost their takeoff heading, and the Mobile Force would be able to close the atoll and recover them without much maneuvering. Maruyama liked the fuel cushion this afforded them and watched content while Nakao slid underneath Chief Tatsu’s bomber as small flames spit from its cowl. Once Nakao was stable on the right wing, Tatsu-san smiled his encouragement and clenched his fists in excitement. Above, a chutai of escort fighters glided over Tomonaga’s flight as the last Type 97 cleared Hiryū’s bow. Maruyama checked the time: 0441.
Below, a float plane suddenly shot from the side of Haruna and reversed course to the north. Poor devils, Maruyama thought, glad that he was in a frontline unit and not off alone in a sputtering biplane with floats. He spotted another scout below, heading into the spectacular sunrise on another lonely 150-mile search leg.
Around them, strike aircraft from the other carriers joined in recognizable formations, and Maruyama guessed Tomonaga-san would do one more circle before setting out to the southeast. Abeam Sōryū, some three miles aft, he spotted the kankōs that would be part of a simultaneous attack, with Tomonaga’s group hitting Sand Island and Sōryū’s targeting the airfield facilities on Eastern. The rendezvous geometry was working perfectly, even better than the Darwin attack, and, with ninety degrees to go, Tomonaga would have each chutai of strike aircraft converging on him. He would then lead a giant 108-plane formation to the southeast.
As Nakao held position in the climb, Maruyama scanned the airspace around them. Glancing behind him, he caught Hamada communicating in makeshift semaphore with the gunner in the kankō to their right. “Look for the enemy!” Maruyama scolded as a chagrined Hamada complied.
Holes in the clouds were easy to navigate through as they climbed to cruising altitude, and, once above them, Maruyama saw that the surface was obscured unless he looked almost straight down. Good, he thought. The Mobile Force is protected. With Midway over an hour distant, he could hope for clear weather to see their assigned target: the fuel tanks along Sand Island’s southeastern shore.
Leveling at 15,000 feet, Tomonaga leaned his fuel and adjusted the RPM for cruise. The other chutais were aboard now, with the Sōryū Type 97s to his left and the dive-bombers stepped down and right. Above them the fighters weaved back and forth along their flanks. Maruyama rode among an airborne armada of black-nosed warplanes. Most were camouflaged green, while the fighters wore a buff color. Each carried a large oblong shape beneath them, bombs or fuel tanks, and all had a simple red ball affixed to their fuselages and wing tips. Battle-hardened sons of Nippon flew them for a determined purpose in the service of the Emperor. They had transited for almost an hour when Nakao sang out.
“What’s that? To the right and low, about two o’clock!”
Maruyama snapped his head right and picked it up, an American Catalina. The big seaplane seemed to hover as it turned toward a cloud buildup in which to hide.1 The fighters did not yet seem interested. Maruyama looked toward the strike leader to ensure that he saw it. They continued on course, and soon the American was obscured by the clouds.
He consulted his chart. “We should be able to sight Midway in twenty or thirty minutes,” Maruyama said into the voicetube for the benefit of his crew. “Keep a sharp lookout for Grummans; we are inside one hundred miles.”
The Japanese formation, designed as a jab punch to prod the Americans at Pearl Harbor into action, continued southeast. Unconcerned by the American plane, they flew above the scattered clouds in silence. Maruyama expected the Americans to come up but was not too worried. Maybe an American Grumman would get lucky, but antiaircraft was more of a concern. Some of his mates would not return to Hiryū, but he could not think of that.
“How is our fuel?” he asked Nakao.
“Plenty – on schedule,” the pilot answered.
“Good, get ready. Hamada-kun, get ready.”
First Lieutenant Dan Iverson taxied his SBD Dauntless out of its spot on Eastern Island as the frantic lineman motioned him forward to catch up with the SBD ahead. Everyone on the flight line was going bananas, but to Iverson hurrying did no good when his flight lead was waiting for the major to take off anyway. The Japs were coming…as the colonel had said they would. The linesman taxied him forward with fear in his eyes, taking nervous glances at the sky, but neither Iverson nor the corporal directing him could do anything about it until the traffic ahead moved. Keep yer shirt on, Mac.
In the lead SBD, Major Henderson taxied to the runway as the new Navy torpedo bombers rolled for takeoff. Twin-engine Army bombers were next. Iverson squeezed this throat mic.
“Ready to go back there, Reid?”
No answer.
“Reid, can you hear me?”
Iverson turned in his seat and noticed Reid looking elsewhere. He shouted.
“Reid! Can you hear me on the interphone?”
“No, sir!” Reid shouted back. Reid then tried his interphone; no response. “Didja hear that, sir?”
“No! Okay, we’ll just have to shout. You ready?”
“Yes, sir! Green light from the tower!”
Iverson peered around the nose of his Dauntless to maintain proper taxi interval, the air raid sirens audible over the sound of his whirring engine mere feet ahead of him. He twisted in his seat t
o count the SBDs. Eighteen total, including him.
The sun had been up for over an hour, and skies were clear with only a few scattered clouds. The Army B-26s now rolled down the runway at double the normal takeoff interval. To the north, Iverson spotted the Navy Grummans in a neatly spaced bearing-line rendezvous. The lead held a left-hand turn – going right at the Japs.
The major and his two wingman rolled together and became airborne in section, their engine revs drowning out the wailing sirens. Along the runway, marines wearing old Brodie helmets test-fired their antiaircraft guns. To be sure, Iverson looked up into the blue – nothing.
“Watch for Japs overhead, Reid!”
“Will do, sir!”
Another section of SBDs roared down Eastern’s runway, and when it was Iverson’s turn, he taxied onto the left half of the runway to allow “R” Bear, one of the green second looey’s, to take position on his right wing. With his thumbs-up returned, they gunned their engines together and rolled down the runway as a formation.
Once airborne, Iverson followed Captain Glidden’s section in a running rendezvous. Ahead, Major Henderson led them to the assembly area east of the atoll. Iverson’s engine hummed as normal.
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Iverson flinched in his seat at the sound of Reid test firing the twin .30s. He whipped his head back to see Reid checking the full firing arc of the barrels.
“’Preciate if you’d warn me next time!” Iverson shouted.
“Sorry, Lieutenant! Guns check good!”
“Good. Let me know if any of our guys don’t make it!”
“Yes, sir!”
Iverson flew form and monitored his engine instruments. These new SBD-2s were nice; steady and fast, all metal fuselage and tough. He and most of the others had never dropped a bomb from one, and nobody in the squadron had combat experience.
In an easy turn on the inside, Iverson leaned his fuel. He’d need it later. The men in the SBDs next to him pointed back toward Midway. Iverson looked over his shoulder at Midway and saw large formations of green airplanes heading toward it. Above, wisps of contrails signified the presence of Major Parks and his fighters in their attack runs. Iverson hadn’t heard anything on the radio.