Voyages of the Seventh Carrier

by Peter Albano

  “Astern?”

  “Compartment five-seven-one. Auxiliary steering engine.”

  “Flood the magazine and five-seven-one.”

  “The hatches are dogged, sir. Our men will drown like rats, sir.”

  “I know, I know!” Fujita punched the windscreen.

  A tremendous blast to port turned Brent’s head to where four great waterspouts crashed into the sea in a London-fog of spray, hanging over the tortured white eddies that swirled and crashed into each other in ever-widening circles. A great black cigar bobbed and rolled in the midst of the turmoil.

  “Submarine! Bearing two-seven-zero, range two thousand,” Brent screamed.

  “Port battery open fire!”

  With a crash and roar of vented anger and frustration, twenty five-inch guns exploded, the gun layers shouting with excitement and rage. Three Zeros swept low, guns blazing, leaving brown trails of burned gun powder. Men boiled from the submarine’s conning tower and fore and aft escape hatches and began to unlimber a pair of deck guns. But Yonaga’s fire and that of two destroyers struck the submarine with a typhoon of steel and explosives, blowing both guns from their mounts and hurling crewmen into the sea like torn rag dolls. In a moment, the stern dropped, and then the submarine made her final plunge stern first, bow pointed at the sky in a final defiant gesture. Heads bobbed in the usual gravemarkers of the sea; casks, barrels, planks, spreading oil, and face down corpses.

  “Ship to ship and fighter frequency, no prisoners!”

  The fighters flashed down, gunning survivors with 20 millimeter cannons and 7 point 7 millimeter machine guns.

  More blasts off the starboard bow as another pair of enraged escorts sowed the seas with great explosions while Aichis and Zeros circled. But no black cigar bobbed. However, through his glasses, Brent saw great gobs of oil belch to the surface and spread in ever-widening flat blue-black pools.

  “Escort number three reports second submarine sunk. He has spotted oil and has picked up ship breaking up sounds on his sonar.” Brent shuddered. Breaking up sounds: compartments collapsing in a dying ship as she plunged into the black depths, water pressure tearing bulkheads from their frames and rupturing watertight doors, drowning fear-maddened men in a pitch-black hell that challenged the horror of the worst nightmares of every man who had ever warred at sea.

  “They are only Arabs and Germans,” Fujita said as if he had read Brent’s mind. “Just drowning dogs.” And then briskly told the talker, “Instruct Escort number three to square out from the oil slick. It could be a ruse, and those breaking up sounds could be the tanker.” He waved at the black pall, which was not far astern.

  After speaking into his mouthpiece, Seaman Naoyuki said to the admiral, “Commander Atsumi reports Escort number three has acknowledged on bridge to bridge.”

  “Very well.” He turned to the voice. “Come left to two-eight-zero, speed eighteen.” The great ship swung slowly, and Brent noticed the list slowly vanish as thousands of tons of seawater were pumped into the port blisters. Again to the talker: “Inform the damage control officer that I want to make at least twenty-four knots, but will not increase speed until I have his report.”

  The talker paled. “After damage control reports water in number three engine room.”

  “Sacred Buddha! Can we stay ahead of it with our bilge pumps?”

  Every man on the bridge stared at the talker. “They are shoring and caulking, sir. And Commander Fukioka suggests you reduce speed to sixteen.”

  Cursing, Fujita agreed, and the pulse of the engines slowed as speed was reduced. “Instruct the officer of the deck to steam course two-eight-zero, speed sixteen and to make the hoist. All hands will remain at General Quarters. Escorts resume standard cruising formation. Department heads meet with me now in Flag Plot.” The old man stomped off the bridge.

  Chapter Eight

  “Those were big warheads,” Fujita said from the head of the table.

  “At least three hundred kilograms, admiral,” Mark Allen said. “Probably a new HE the Russians call Nytrolyte B — three to four times the explosive power of our old TNT warheads.”

  The old Japanese drummed the tabletop, skeletal hands corded with new blue veins. “Wire guided?”

  “Two missed,” Brent Ross said abruptly.

  The fingers stopped. “If an Arab was on the periscope, that would be expected.”

  Despite the somber atmosphere, smiles appeared on the faces of the officers. Fujita turned to an enlisted man who sat at a table with a phone to his ear. “Radioman Ozawa. I want a report from after damage control.”

  Ozawa spoke over the mouthpiece, and his painful words struck with the force of javelins. “Commander Fukioka reports gyo hits between frames one-zero-two and one-two-zero and below the armor belt, blowing open the blister, original shell and shearing bottom plates. Each explosion blew holes ten meters by four meters in the hull…”

  “My God! Twelve feet by thirty feet,” Mark Allen muttered.

  “Fire rooms eleven and thirteen, number seven auxiliary five inch magazine, compartment five-seven-one, auxiliary engine room three, the starboard thrust block room and the next compartment inboard, the center motor room, are flooded.” He listened intently, then continued. “Also, water in ventilation intakes is flooding the pump and dynamo room. Bilge fuel tanks five, seven, nine, and eleven are wide open to the sea and an eight inch fuel line was ruptured. We have a report of water in some of our fuel lines, but we have not isolated this damage as yet.” There was a pause, and then the thunderbolt. “The bulkhead between number eleven fireroom and number three engine room is leaking in a dozen places.” Gasps of horror and disbelief whispered through the room like the wings of death.

  Fujita struck the table with an open palm, shriveled face drained of blood and withered like a yellow raisin. He shouted at Ozawo. “The bulkhead between number eleven fireroom and number three engine room should not leak — not from this damage. Tell Fukioka I want an explanation.”

  The enlisted man spoke hastily and fearfully into the mouthpiece while every officer in the room stared at him. He turned to the admiral. “Commander Fukioka says the armored box around our engine rooms and magazines has reduced flexibility in our plates, admiral. The explosions sheared revets in the armor plating and drove a reinforcing beam through the engine room bulkhead. He claims similar damage within thirty meters of the points of impact.”

  Brent Ross stared wide-eyed at Mark Allen. The Japanese had been immensely proud of the ship’s armor, compartmentation, and especially the eight inch armored box that enclosed her vitals. But now the urge to produce an impregnable steel fortress inside the hull had worked against them. The ship had been gravely wounded by just two hits.

  “Admiral,” Mark Allen said, “it would be foolish to attempt to reach Tokyo Bay in this condition.”

  “We may have no choice. Keep in mind, Admiral Allen, we can lose number three engine room and still make eighteen knots. We have, perhaps, ten flooded compartments and have lost four fuel tanks.”

  “But our watertight integrity has been breached. You could lose an engine room, and the entire starboard quarter is weakened. More hits on that side could capsize us. And you have that longitudinal bulkhead running from stem to stern that won’t allow the flow of water from starboard to port in your bilges. These ships are top heavy, anyway.” Allen circled a single finger over his head. “That’s how Yamato was lost — maybe a dozen hits on her port side, the water built up.” He turned his palm up and shrugged. “And she rolled over.”

  A silence descended, so heavy it seemed to bend the shoulders of every man in the room. And new ship sounds were heard — the frantic heart-pump throb of pumps deep in the vitals of the ship. Allen broke the silence. “We’re twenty five hundred miles from Tokyo Bay, but only three hundred from Pearl Harbor.”

  “You are suggesting putting into Pearl Harbor?”

  “Of course, admiral.”

  “But all of you,” Fujita said, gestur
ing at the Americans and Bernstein, “have repeatedly told me the United States is neutral.”

  Dempster spoke for the first time. “True, sir. But there is a huge graving dock…” He glanced at Mark Allen.

  The American admiral answered the unspoken question. “The dock can handle Yonaga.”

  The veined hands pressed on the table, and Brent could almost feel the force of the encyclopedic mind at work. Fujita spoke deliberately. “I remember in the Great East Asia War, December 1939, the British cruisers Ajax, Achilles, and Exeter caught the German pocket battleship Graf Spee off Uruguay. Graf Spee was badly damaged and docked in Montevideo — a neutral port. By international law, they gave her seventy-two hours. Her captain scuttled her in the River Plate.” He turned to Mark Allen. “We would be subject to the same law.”

  “Of course! But, maybe, we can persuade the US to give us more time. And there is no immediate threat to Japan from the Arab battle group — not with an angry Margaret Thatcher charging down on them.”

  Fujita spoke with new animation. “We could weld patches over the holes, shore our weakened bulkheads, insure the watertight integrity of number three engine room.” He punched the table. “Admiral Allen, have your cryptographer encode a message in a cypher we have never used.”

  “Zebra One,” Brent Ross said abruptly.

  “Very well. Addressee?”

  “Principal addressee should be CINCPACFLT. I would also suggest COMNAVBASE, COMNAVLOGPAC, NAVSHIPYD and NAVSECGUDET.”

  The old sailor threw up his hand in surrender. “Please, admiral, you Americans and your acronyms defy reason — logic.”

  “Sorry, sir. I meant Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet, Commander Naval Base, Commander Naval Logistics Command, Commander Naval Shipyard, and the Naval Security Group Detachment.”

  “Why did you not say as much the first time?” A chuckle relieved some of the tension. Fujita continued, eyes on Brent Ross: “Request immediate graving dock availability for — ah, minor damage repair. ETA,” He glanced at Captain Kawamoto who scribbled on a pad furiously.

  “Twenty hours at sixteen knots, admiral.”

  Fujita looked at a brass ship’s clock on the bulkhead. “ETA, sixteen hundred hours, on Friday, thirteen March.” He moved back to the American ensign. “And Mr. Ross, request landing instructions for a single Nakajima.”

  “One, sir?”

  “Yes. We will send our bottom blocking profile and related drawings to the dockmaster.”

  “Of course, of course,” Brent heard Mark Allen say to himself.

  The black eyes flashed to Bernstein. “Colonel, we will make use of your encryption box.”

  “Sir?”

  “Send a signal to our escort commander in Subic Bay. I want those seven Fletchers to make for Pearl Harbor under forced draft. When we sortie, I want twelve escorts!” Coming to his feet, he turned to the paulownia wood shrine. Every man stood. The Japanese clapped twice. Then, the old man spoke slowly — reverent words that dropped from his lips like pebbles into a pond: “Amaterasu, help us show the courage of the great samurai Masahige Kusunoki who, one half a millennium ago, strove to restore the Imperial throne and when defeated by a cowardly ronin, shouted, ‘Seven lives for the nation’ as he committed seppuku. Let these words fall from our lips as we attack our enemies, remembering a man can be honored by the courage of his enemy.” The line of his mouth altered, eyes chilled to the hardness of ebony, sweeping the room with anger that was a palpable thing: “But not by the bite of a mad dog!”

  “Banzai!”

  Chapter Nine

  “Tangents on Koko Head and Barbers Point,” Fujita shouted from his position at the front of the bridge.

  “Koko Head bearing zero-four-three, Barbers Point three-two-zero, sir,” a quartermaster said, staring through the sights of a bearing ring mounted on a gyro-repeater.

  Furiously, Kawamoto worked a drafting machine and parallel rules on a chart tacked to the table attached to the windscreen. “Twenty-five kilometers to the main channel, sir. I suggest course three-four-eight.”

  “Very well. Radar verify range to harbor entrance.” The talker repeated the command.

  “Radar reports the range to harbor entrance twenty-five kilometers.”

  “Very well.”

  Kawamoto turned from the table, yellow parchment face broken by a triumphant grin.

  “Come right to three-four-eight,” the admiral shouted into the voice tube.

  The unfamiliar roar of a dozen Rolls Royce Merlin engines turned Brent’s head. Raising his binoculars, he found twelve American P-51 Mustangs flying in pairs, circling the task force. P-51s had appeared the day before with a pair of PBYs and a gull-winged Martin Mariner. From that moment on, constant American patrols had circled the ships, but well out of range. No surface ships had appeared, and the sea was free even of pleasure craft. Kathryn had been confined to her cabin since the torpedo attack.

  Lowering his glasses, Brent turned with the rest of the staff as Mark Allen stepped on the bridge. “Berthing assignment, admiral,” he said, waving a printout. “The graving dock is not ready.”

  “Not ready? We sent the request two days ago!”

  “I know, sir. But they are still repairing damage you did to the New Jersey.”

  The Japanese looked at each other with mixed elation and disappointment.

  Allen continued. “They’re towing her out now. It will take them eight hours to pump out and set up, and we can enter tomorrow morning at zero eight hundred.”

  “That will leave us with fifty to sixty hours of availability.”

  “We could lay-to out here, admiral.”

  “I know, but it would be dangerous, and we are shipping more water in engine room number three.” Brent knew the admiral had no choice. The pumps had barely kept even with the ruptured bulkhead, and the ship had been slowed by thousands of tons of seawater, which flooded a dozen compartments on her starboard quarter. A like amount was pumped into her port blisters to counteract the list. Now she was on an even keel, but lower in the water, slower and less maneuverable.

  “Docking instructions, Admiral Allen?”

  Allen took a deep breath. “They want to isolate Yonaga, sir. We are to tie up to bollards just southeast of Ford Island.”

  “Numbers?”

  “No numbers, sir. They are marked Tennessee.”

  A long, hard silence infected the bridge like a plague. Fujita spoke to Allen. “Anything new on the World Court and United Nations?”

  “No, sir. The same. The Arab powers, Russia, and her lackeys insist that the US enforce international law. Seventy-two hours, sir.”

  “Criminals insisting on law enforcement,” Fujita snorted. “Your nation’s interests ride with Yonaga, too,” the old Japanese added with unabashed bitterness.

  “I agree with you, admiral. At this moment, I am not proud of my country. But remember, sir, democracies are highly sensitive to public opinion, and there is the matter of placating the moderate Arab powers, Russia…”

  “It is called appeasement,” Fujita snapped sharply. Before the American could answer, he turned to the talker. “By flashing light…” He stopped and grimaced, “No — bridge to bridge; everyone on earth knows where we are. Yonaga will stand in first. Escorts maintain a tight screen until I have cleared the channel. I do not want a torpedo up my stern post.”

  “All of that, sir?”

  “That is correct!”

  Allen broke in. “The escorts will receive berthing instructions by flashing light from the Aloha Tower.”

  Fujita snorted. “Aloha! They have ‘aloha’ everything. That is the most overused word on earth. Can they not think of any other?”

  *

  Yonaga, nudged by a pair of navy tugs, tied up to the bollards marked Tennessee. Craning his neck curiously, Brent could see the white bridge-like Arizona Memorial ahead, crammed with people staring at Yonaga through glinting binoculars. Rusting and still oozing oil, the tomb of over eleven hundred men could
be seen clearly, lying beneath the memorial and at right angles to it. Fore and aft and marked with names of victims of the “Day of Infamy,” bollards stretched like grave markers: Nevada, Vestal, Arizona, West Virginia, Maryland, and Oklahoma were all visible from the bridge. To the north, low-lying Ford Island showed thick green undergrowth along the shore and a cluster of neglected hangars in its interior. And here, too, hundreds crowded, studying the great carrier.

  Behind Ford Island and in the distance the mountainous interior of Oahu loomed. Green escarpment mounting upon green escarpment soared upward behind Honolulu, Aiea, and the obscene sprawl of buildings and freeways, blending into the pristine grandeur of the Koolau Mountains where cane fields gave way to majestic buttresses and citadels of sheer rock. Dominating all like great silent sentinels, Mount Tanalus and Mount Olympus were wrapped with moisture-laden clouds driven by the northeasterly trade winds, swirling around the mountaintops like lacy nightcaps touched with apricot and gold by the slanting rays of the afternoon sun.

  But Brent did not see the beauty. Instead, he stared with the other men directly south where the five escorts had tied up at the wharves at the Naval Supply Center of Kuahua Island — a mass of shops, derricks, and more staring people. Every man on the bridge was impressed by the massive facility. When they stood in, they had left the naval shipyard to starboard, made their turn to the east in the basin just south of Ford Island, skirted the shipyard’s northern edge, passing three dry docks and finding the New Jersey tied up just outside the giant graving dock. From their mooring, they could stare south down the broad waters of Southeast Loch — the body of water the attacking torpedo planes had swooped over in making their runs on 7 December, 1941.

  Bordering the loch were fueling docks, the submarine base, and acres of supply and repair depots. Off Yonaga’s starboard bow across the bay, Brent could see a large white ferry boat loaded with passengers making for the Arizona Memorial.