The Silver Waterfall

by Kevin Miller

  “Spectators get below! All not engaged with the launch off the flight deck! Spot and warm up the strike group at once!”

  A bell sounded as the amidships elevator lowered to the hangar bay to retrieve a dive-bomber. Farther aft, another elevator brought up the first Type 99 with an armor-piercing bomb slung below it. The kanbaku pilots next to Maruyama appeared confused, and some ran along the edge of the flight deck edge to parking spots aft as others returned to the ready room to retrieve their gear and plotting boards. Maruyama and his mates cheered them with cries of banzai! and exhortations to take revenge on the savage American killers.

  “Get below!” Tomonaga barked at his torpedo pilots. He grabbed the arm of one and shoved him toward the catwalk ladder. Maruyama filed behind the others, with his eyes on Akagi and Kaga. Red blooms of flame opened and then disappeared inside the hideous black columns over each. On the southern horizon, more Yankee airplanes dodged the screening cruisers as they fired, and the uneasy men scanned for threats. Before he stepped off the flight deck, Maruyama lifted his eyes to the bridge. Above the cluster of mantelets were windows he could not see inside, revealing only dancing reflections of the sea on the glass as the ship raced over the waves.

  Are we doomed?

  The deck shuddered and another shockwave of warm air blew through Akagi’s bridge as Fuchida struggled to the ladder. The induced explosions had been coming from further aft, but this one was much closer. Fresh planes and weapons.

  Aoki, more enraged than Fuchida had never seen him, shouted orders to the helmsman and into the voice tube as Masuda led the firefighting effort on the flight deck. It appeared hopeless. A hose-team spraying water on the midships elevator was blown up and overboard when the flight deck below them erupted into flaming fragments. Fearful survivors refused to pick up another wild hose that whipsawed across the hot deck, its gushing water turning to steam. Shrapnel tore into the hammock mantelets along the island and set them on fire. White smoke drifted into the bridge from the ladder well next to the chart table. Akagi circled as Aoki fought to control her. A realist, Fuchida knew she was dying. I will die today, too.

  The horizon around Akagi was filled with flame, fire, and death. Black trails led to concentric circles on the water that signified the violent destruction – ours or theirs? – of warplanes carrying one or more young men. Reverberations of gunfire from screen ships and airplane engines – ours or theirs? – filled the bridge, as did the cracking of timbers and the roaring fires on Akagi’s flight deck. To the east, destroyers made smoke as nearby cruisers fired at unseen attackers with their main battery turrets. Fuchida stopped.

  Oh, no…

  One of the CarDiv 2 carriers erupted in towering flame as fiery debris fanned high above. Across the water, Kaga continued to blow herself apart. Fuchida considered her finished. But the ship he saw on the eastern horizon was just a low slab covered by a bright flare the length of her, as if she were carrying white-burning magnesium. The smoke that spewed from above the long flare was black, gray, brown, red. Could any survive on that blazing and gruesome funeral pyre? The intact carrier turned, and Fuchida could make out the island to port. Hiryū was still alive.

  Sōryū was dying, then. No, it was already dead. Take me, too.

  Shock and thunder from below jolted everyone. After they steadied themselves, Kusaka argued with the commander to abandon. Nagumo refused, not willing to concede defeat, unbelieving. Fuchida knew the real reason. Pride.

  Genda stared speechless at Sōryū in her death throes, and sensed Fuchida studying him.

  “We goofed. I goofed.”

  “Genda-kun, we broke off too much at once.” Fuchida said. Another blast from behind sprayed the island with splinters as the men flinched.

  “Engines stop,” Aoki commanded, unable to control his ship. Masuda stood behind his captain. Others on the bridge held their breath as they waited for the unthinkable.

  “Pass the word,” Aoki muttered to Masuda before resuming his position near the starboard windows. Resolute, he wished that the next blast would kill him. Behind him, Masuda relayed the command to abandon.

  Off to port, Nagara hove to, waiting to embark the commander of the Mobile Force and his staff. Near her, an escort ship closed on the derelict to pick up survivors. With a bright flash, Kaga convulsed again, throwing off another giant section that lifted clear. Half the size of one of His Majesty’s destroyers, the twisted steel structure slapped the sea and disappeared beneath a huge wave. The concussion from it raced across the water and shook Akagi’s bridge windows with a deep ba-boooom.

  “Hiryū is left to fight,” Fuchida said, forgetting for the moment the pain in his side.

  “If I were Yamaguchi, I’d run,” Genda replied, standing like a statue amid the chaos. To Fuchida, the bright eyes of his friend had turned black.

  Best checked Kroeger and Weber in position. Good. He left his throttle alone as the three sprinted toward the outer ring for safety. Two thousand feet above, two sections of three Zeros crossed from right to left. Best saw what they were going for: TBDs attacking a carrier to the east, two or three miles away. Two of the Devastators blazed up as a swarm of fighters worked them over. Is that Gene and VT-6?

  Searching all around him, Best scanned for threats as he bumped the throttle, then checked to see if the others could keep up. Ahead, he saw a speck that grew larger on the windscreen. It was a floatplane that resembled a fighter with two big feet for floats. The enemy plane bore down on them for a head-on shot. Best pointed at it, and Kroeger nodded. The three SBD pilots lifted their noses at the intruder and, when satisfied with the range and deflection, fired their fixed guns in a fusillade of tracers. The floatplane pulled up and away, and Best watched it fly off to the northeast – toward the burning carrier.

  “Holy shit, Skipper!”

  Best turned around to see what had caught Chief Murray’s attention. A huge explosion had blown Kaga’s elevator into the air, and transformed it into a burning and smoking wafer that seemed to float above the carrier before falling back into the maelstrom of fire and smoke. Next to Kaga, Akagi was still moving. Inside her, muffled flashes from induced explosions lit up both existing openings and new ones made by the destructive force. Best assumed most of the planes were in the hangar bay, and probably loaded.

  Three carriers burned with fierce intensity, but a fourth was untouched. Who hit that one to the north? Best wondered. Whoever it was, they nailed it.

  Behind him, Murray was awestruck by the scene they had created.

  “Whoa, sir!”

  Max Leslie made sure that all his chicks headed east. One after another, internal explosions from the carrier they had attacked flashed their destructive power. In mere minutes, the ship had been transformed into a molten inferno, laid to waste by his boys! Lefty stayed with him as the others egressed east. Gripped by the scene, Leslie was unable to leave. His pilots shouted their excitement, taking peeks over their shoulders and marveling at the damage they had inflicted.

  To the west, two carriers gave off heavy smoke. Leslie didn’t know if it was Wally or the Enterprise guys who had done it. Maybe Hornet got in their first licks. Then, a massive blast from one doomed ship generated a fireball that bloomed into a mushroom-like cloud. On the radio, pilots howled with shocked amazement at the spectacle, followed by primal screams of revenge, of retribution, from boys, some of whom two years ago could not have brought themselves to shoot a crow resting on a rail fence. “Bobby, didja see that fat mother explode! Die, you yellow bastards!”

  The cloud rose high through the existing black column of smoke, as if lifting the dying ship and supporting sea into the air along with it. More shouts of excitement, the bloodthirsty and racial cursing of hated enemies, hundreds of whom had surely just perished. With the cloud, a release, a euphoric cleansing of stored tension, an almost sexual tension of conquest followed by loving acceptance that the men sensed deep inside. Loved by warfare, the ancient competitive human achievement.

&n
bsp; They had been tested, after months and years of preparation, days of anxiety, pressure, growing hatred, pointless worry, and the raw fear of death before they’d even had a chance to really live. They’d manned up on their wooden decks in their flimsy planes with unreliable guns and flown west over a desolate expanse where a tested enemy waited for them in a fight where neither gave quarter. They’d met the test, in the clinch, an uppercut knockout of a schoolyard bully – an enemy vanquished – but more than that, they’d gained acceptance, a chance to live. I’m gonna live!

  Each man sensed he was forever changed, the scene indelibly etched in their memories for as long as they would live.

  Maneuvering hard in his own fight for his life, Thach noticed carriers blaze up in the distance. Max and Lem had scored, but he could only discern the black columns for a split-second before dealing with the Zero crossing his nose. The poor torpeckers were on their own, had been for almost ten minutes, and when the last Zero disengaged, he looked around for the TBDs to escort any survivors back.

  During a lull, he saw the dive-bombers attack the eastern carrier, sun glinting off them as they rolled and dove in practiced order, one by one. The carrier didn’t seem to see them, running to the aide of her stricken mates to the west before being ambushed and pounced on by Bombing Three. Thach soon saw hits on the deck, along with near misses that lifted great geyser columns of water high alongside the carrier. The shimmering water fell back in a curtain of spray on the flight deck. Another unseen bomb then tore it open with devastating flame and blasted fragments thrown high. Mesmerized, he watched the ship shudder from the blows, as it was also consumed by flames that spread faster than he could imagine. Like campfire tinder soaked in lighter fluid, the fire suddenly bloomed into a bright and crackling inferno, fully involved.

  After circling east of the Japanese, he turned for home with only three of his Wildcats. On the way, he spotted a lone TBD, shot up and misting, the gunner not moving…maybe dead. Thach joined, and the pilot waved a greeting. He didn’t look like Lem, but it was a Yorktown bird. What about the others? Surely more TBDs had made it than this one derelict. To Thach, the torpedo bomber next to him would never fly again, and the forlorn pilot inside it could only fly back and hope to save his gunner and be reunited with his squadronmates. The pilot, older and probably enlisted, kept his eyes on Thach, almost accusingly. Where were you? Behind him, the gunner’s head moved. He is alive.

  Thach’s F4F’s couldn’t stay with the wounded torpedo bomber due to fuel considerations, but the poor SOB was flying in the right direction. Should find the ship in another hour. Along their flight path floated clouds suitable for cover, and after a thorough scan Thach saw no enemy. He pointed off his nose, gave a thumbs up to the VT pilot, and waved good-bye. The TBD pilot, carrying his half-dead gunner behind him, could only wave a response.1 Thach and his wingmen pressed on.

  Thach thought about Lem and VT-3. Though he and his wingmen had had their hands full with at least two squadrons of Zeros, he cursed himself that he couldn’t have defended the TBDs better than he did. Maybe this one got spit out from Lem and the formation, he rationalized…not believing it himself. Who was he kidding? The Nips had a field day back there.

  Though together in formation, each Wildcat pilot, from the solitary bubbles of their own cockpits, reflected on what they had been through over the past hour. For the next hour, with only the clouds and North Pacific swells to keep them company, they transited back to Yorktown in silence.

  Sure hope Lem made it, Thach thought. I’m sorry, Lem.

  * * *

  1 CAP W.G. Esders and ARM2c R.B. Brazier, Torpedo Three

  Chapter 21

  Navigation Bridge, USS Hornet, 1140 June 4, 1942

  Marc Mitscher couldn’t take it anymore.

  On the bridge since the launch, he nervously smoked cigarette after cigarette. He was mentally with his boys out there, imagining the open ocean, the sudden squalls that required deviation from course, the droning of radial engines over the vast sea. Jap fighters, barrage-fired antiaircraft. And time melting away. Did Stan get them through? Did they hit them? Or was a formation of fifty enemy planes coming for him? Across the water Enterprise had recovered her fighters some time ago, but where were his? They had launched and departed with the bombers at roughly the same time. If they were still airborne, they were on fumes, but he saw nothing on the horizon. What happened out there? Conscious of the OOD and quartermasters observing his nervous fidgeting, he stepped into his at-sea cabin and closed the door.

  Removing his duck-billed cap, he rubbed his hand over the smooth skin of his bald head. He felt 100 years old. And looked it. Getting Hornet ready for sea, the dash through the canal, the onload and rushed delivery of the Army B-25s to a launch position deep in enemy waters, an imagined periscope behind every whitecap… All had added more lines to his sunburned neck and subtracted more hair from his spotted head. He needed rest. He needed shore duty, and was ready to relinquish this command, the pinnacle of any aviator’s career, as soon as this operation was over. More than anything, he needed a drink.

  At a knock on his door, he placed the cap back on his head.

  “Enter.”

  Apollo Soucek, his Air Officer, opened the door. Soucek passed for a friend at sea, if ship captains were allowed to have friends.

  “Sir, our planes are returning.”

  “Good, good,” Mitscher said, grabbing a fresh pack of cigarettes before leading them back to the bridge. He stepped out onto the port bridge wing as a formation of SBDs roared overhead. Leaning over the edge, he saw Enterprise a few miles behind him, recovering her own planes.

  “How many, Apollo?” Mitscher asked him.

  Soucek winced. “Not as many as I was expecting, sir. About twenty SBDs.”

  Taken aback, Mitscher pressed for more. “No fighters? They must be out of gas.”

  “No, sir – maybe they jumped on the nearest available deck,” Soucek said, pointing at Enterprise, an offer of hope that they all weren’t shot down.

  If the fighters were out of gas, the TBDs were near empty. The corrugated rattletraps were slower, but all his planes had been airborne for almost four hours. He thought of John Waldron, who had been standing right here five hours earlier. Both of them knew he was going to die. Waldron had all but begged on his knees for fighter protection. One damned fighter. When Mitscher refused him, Waldron set his face. You couldn’t even give him one, Mitscher thought, condemning himself, wishing he could go back in time and grant the last request of a dying man. He’d never forget Waldron’s determined visage, the fire in his eyes. The boys said he was part Sioux Indian. Did he find the Japs? Is he still out there?

  The first dive-bomber approached the ramp, and Mitscher noticed it was still carrying its 500-pounder. Alarmed, he cried out, “Is that bomb hung?” Before anyone could answer, the Dauntless took the LSO cut and plopped down on deck as it snagged a wire. Once freed, it taxied up, and Mitscher recognized the face of Walt Rodee as the dive-bomber passed the island. Where’s Stanhope? Was he shot down?

  The next plane rolled wings level, and Mitscher’s heart sank. It, too, had its bomb affixed. Oh, no! Mitscher thought as the young pilot taxied forward. Another scout – with another bomb – trapped aboard. Mitscher walked over to Soucek’s station and spoke in a low tone. “Get Skipper Rodee up here right now.”

  The SBDs recovered in thirty second intervals. Mitscher watched them as his lookouts scanned the skies around Hornet for more of his aviators. All the SBDs carried their bombs. They hadn’t dropped, obviously hadn’t tried. But where were Bombing Eight, the fighters, and Waldron’s torpedo planes? Tension gripped him, and he fought to remain calm. The first report is always wrong.

  A lone SBD came into the landing circle and dirtied up, armed like the others. With no other airplanes overhead, Mitscher followed it off the abeam, assessed the quality of its approach, watched it slow as it slid toward the ramp and the LSO’s outstretched arms. Roger pass, and as the LSO f
licked the paddle across his throat, the Dauntless sat down on deck with a little bounce. Hornet’s landing pattern was empty.

  Mitscher focused on the cockpit as the plane taxied past. Stanhope! He waited for Ring to look up to catch his wave, a thumbs up, a smile. Ring didn’t acknowledge the bridge as he taxied to his spot, concentrating instead on his director. Mitscher inspected Ring’s plane for damage and found none. None of them had any holes or torn fabric. Had they even found the enemy? All went off together; why had only the scouts returned? In his wake, Enterprise continued to recover planes – and Mitscher recognized the planform of a TBD. Maybe Johnny went over there.

  Ring deplaned and found the nearest catwalk hatch to go below. At that moment, Walt Rodee stepped onto the bridge wing.

  “Lieutenant Commander Rodee, reporting as ordered, sir.”

  “Walt, why didn’t you guys drop?”

  “We didn’t find them sir.”

  Mitscher let it sink in as a nervous Rodee stood, waiting for the next question.

  “Did Ruff find them? Where’s he?”

  “Sir, I don’t think so. Last time I saw him, he was headin’ to Midway.”

  “You saw Midway?”

  “Yes, sir, the smoke from it anyway. Guess the Japs beat it up. Ruff took his boys in that direction, and that’s all I know, sir.”

  “And Waldron?”

  “Don’t know, sir… He left about thirty minutes after we left here.”