Tommy

by William Illsey Atkinson

  Tommy’s standing behind his number-six gun crew as cic nails the Judy in a radar lock and takes override control. In half a second, dc motors spin Turret Six faster than humanly possible to face the Judy. Then Central’s work is done: the radar light snaps off, the manual light snaps on — Up to you guys! — and humans take over the end game. Quick as thought, Crew Six spin their twin forties to get the oncoming Judy in their circular wire sights. Fire crew work hand cranks to shift the multi-ton guns: left gunner controls pitch, right gunner yaw. The system seems designed for deadlock, but Crew Six have drilled themselves into perfect fluidity and work together like the fingers of a hand. Up she comes, over she swings, and the Judy sits in the bull’s-eye, caught like a fly in a spiderweb.

  bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam, just like that. Eight shots in four seconds from the forty’s twin barrels. Bright brass shells burst smoking from the ejectors and clang along tracks to the spent-shell receptacles. Tommy blinks, stunned by the concussions. When the tears are out of his eyes there’s nothing inside the gunsights; the Judy is vapor and the air ahead is clear. He runs to rub his knuckles on Czerny’s helmet.

  Czerny is aa Crew Six chief, the yaw man sitting on the right. He and his fire and load crews are yelling and punching the air. During Tommy’s endless drills, they got in the habit of using Czerny’s bald head as a good luck charm. Now he wears a helmet that months of battle have polished smooth. Tommy waits his turn, then violently knuckles the shiny patch of steel. He can practically hear Czerny smile.

  Another Judy approaches, its approach path so close to the first that Combat Information Center needn’t override. The load crew, moving like the pistons in an engine, bang new clips into the forties’ magazines. Six seconds later, the attacker meets the same fate as Judy-san ichi. Bits of plane and pilot fill the air.

  Great shooting! Tommy yells. At least he thinks he’s yelled it. He can’t hear himself.

  You see that, sir! Czerny yells back. You see that!

  Tommy smiles. The crew is giving him the thumbs-up, looking at him like he’s the Lord God Almighty. He is suddenly, ridiculously proud of these men, some of them career sailors older than he is. He feels like the father of high-spirited sons.

  Suddenly it’s quieter: the battle has hit a lull. The first wave of kamikazes has been killed, and Bataan’s caps have another hour before they’re low on fuel and have to return. Cleanup crews dump the spent aa shells out of the receptacles and into the sea.

  Back on the bridge Tommy salutes Schaeffer. The captain beams: he’s seen the gunnery. Tommy is about to say something when he looks past the captain’s shoulder and feels his blood freeze. Another Judy is coming straight at them.

  Words flow into Tommy’s head from an Annapolis textbook. Bearing: If bearing is invariant and range is decreasing, collision is inevitable.

  Schaeffer follows his gaze: for an instant both men stand frozen. Tommy looks at the helmsman. He’s a kid, a conscript, and he’s frozen, too, only he’s not recovering. Without speaking Tommy runs to the kid, body-checks him off the wheel, and spins it hard-a-port. Reaches with his free hand and moves the squawk knob to blr rm.

  Mr. Mitzuk! This is Atkinson on the bridge! Flank speed, I say again flank speed! Pile it on, fifty atmospheres if you have to! We’re under attack!

  The Judy closes slowly, slowly. Its dive is shallow, otherwise they’d never have seen it. Sixty feet beneath him the forties go off, in slow motion this time: bam . . . bam . . . bam. And then the chilling sound, the signal of despair: the ChipChipChip of the twenty-millimeters. The things could hardly hurt a starling. They have the range and stopping power of a baseball, and when they open up you know there’s nothing left but prayer.

  Slowly, slowly, Bataan turns. The Judy bores through black clouds of flak. One wing dissolves and it rolls, remaining wing pointed at the sky, but it’s still coming. Bataan turns, turns. Another forty-mil shell smacks the Judy. It’s so close that Tommy gets a quick glimpse of the pilot’s face. Wingless, tailless, nothing left of it but a fuselage, it glances obliquely off the island, just missing the bridge. There’s a reek of smoke, a clang of steel-on-steel, but for some absurd reason the Judy doesn’t detonate. It sinks the last ten feet toward the flight deck and heads straight for the av-fuel tanks. Tommy stops breathing.

  The Judy clears Bataan’s stern by eighteen inches. It hits the ocean: its big concussion bomb goes flash-boom and sluices the aft deck in debris — oil and metal, water and bone. Jap salad, Czerny calls it.

  Then silence again. The clock speeds up. Tommy takes a deep breath, the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted.

  He’s alive.

  Yet the battle is far from over. In fact, it’s barely underway. Ten-Go resumes.

  In the mayhem of action, the U.S. invasion fleet can’t ride at anchor. Instead, the task group’s ships keep station with boilers hot and turbines humming. This gives them a manoeuvrability that has already saved Bataan. Now cvl-29 sits flanked by two larger ships, each two miles to either side and all three parallel to the landing beach. Starboard-landward lies a powerful anti-aircraft cruiser. Her long-barrelled batteries fire five-inch shells, not Bataan’s small-caliber birdshot. Tommy’s glad of the cruiser’s umbrella; Bataan sits within three seconds of protection, the time it takes a five-inch shell to fly two miles. Already the cruiser has filled the sky with flak that’s dense enough to walk on. Tommy looks aloft to see twin Judys dive into a vile black cloud and come apart like kids’ toys. That’s good shooting, but the five-inch is also a nasty weapon, dead accurate and fast. Tommy wishes Bataan had ten of them. Their range is nine miles on the surface and six miles in the air, and they’re enormously powerful. A five-inch even looks brutal: its snout thrusts from its hemispherical faring like a monster’s fang.

  Port-seaward lies another carrier, cv-17 Benjamin Franklin. At twenty-seven thousand tons, she’s practically the size of three Bataans. Tommy raises his binoculars, scans Big Ben, and feels uneasy: something’s wrong with her silhouette. He realizes that her whole flight lane is bare. A cap should be on the prep strip poised to catapult, but Franklin still has her planes struck below. Sweet Jesus, Tommy thinks, why hasn’t she scrambled? All those volatiles sitting smack in the middle of a big cv!

  As if on cue, a Myrt dodges a flak cloud and drops a bomb on Franklin’s forward elevator. It’s a textbook hit, dead-on precise, and Tommy stares horror-stricken as the carrier erupts. In seconds she’s invisible, engulfed in oily smoke licked at its base by roiling flames. Detonation after detonation rips through her. Even at four thousand yards the noise is overwhelming. Tommy sees a two-ton piece of elevator soar six hundred feet into the air.

  Then he hears other explosions. They go off like strings of Fourth of July ladyfingers, p-p-pop! p-p-p-pop! Tommy knows the sound: it’s airborne ordnance, frag bombs and rockets. He wants to vomit. Some inexpressible fool on Franklin must have kept his reserve cap in hangar fully armed and fueled.

  Fragmentation bombs are the latest thing in tactical armament. They’re antipersonnel devices, each meticulously made to broadcast thousands of shards of tempered steel at twice the speed of sound, designed to shred as much flesh as possible. Now they’re doing their work on U.S. Navy personnel. My God, Tommy thinks, Franklin’s hangar deck must be a white-hot hell. That’s court-martial country. Numb with horror, he consults his watch. Oh-nine-hundred. Time for morning coffee.

  He looks up as a pair of Hellcats roars by, threading flak a hundred feet above the waves. It’s Bataan’s cap 1 leader, Flight Lieutenant Locke Trigg, pursuing the Myrt that’s gutted Franklin. The Jap was a standard bomber, not a kamikaze, and its pilot is trying to escape. But Locke is on him. Locke’s a triple ace, and wingtip to wingtip with him flies David Ander’s Corsair. The outcome’s certain: sayonara Myrt.

  All hands! All hands! This is the captain! We are going to the aid of Franklin! Captain Shaeffer’s standing at the command mike ten
feet away, his voice booming everywhere. Fire teams stand ready! aa crews hold posts until relieved! I say again, aa crews hold posts! Chief Navigator, you have the con!

  Tommy starts at his title. He runs to the helmsman — the kid’s been replaced by a seasoned yeoman — and snaps orders. Left half rudder! Meet her! Mr. Mitzuk, full all boilers! Engine room, ahead one-eighth! Steady — cvl-29 comes sweetly round and creeps at twelve knots toward the inferno that is Franklin.

  Chief Navigator! Get more way on her! The captain’s voice is unamplified this time, but delivered at a bellow. Tommy shouts back without looking.

  Can’t, sir! If Ben’s av tanks catch we’ll need instant full astern or she’ll fry us! I’ll come in slow and hold alongside parallel at our hoses’ maximum range!

  Schaeffer thinks, then yells, Confirm! Immediate evasion if there’s fatal danger to us!

  Aye aye, sir!

  The Okinawa land breeze increases, thinning Franklin’s smoke shroud. Tommy sees movement on her flight deck as the big ship’s damage crews bring their own hoses into action.

  Sir? Sir! Recommend we inform Franklin we’re offering aid!

  Schaeffer nods, snaps a dial, picks up his mike again. This time, Tommy can’t hear what he’s saying, but a minute later one of the black imps on Franklin’s deck looks up and waves wildly in their direction. Tommy waves back even though he knows he can’t be seen: We’re on our way!

  All around him there’s a sudden crump-bang as hunks of aircraft bounce off Bataan’s flight deck. Another aa scratch. Tommy remembers that as he’s running to fight a fire, the world’s second-biggest military is doing all it can to kill him.

  He glances to starboard. The aa cruiser has seen their plight and changed station to converge, closing on Franklin and Bataan and filling the air above them with an iron shield of five-inch. Maybe it wasn’t Czerny who splashed that last Jap. As Tommy watches, the cruiser’s aft turrets whip counterclockwise and stop, aiming just above and forward of Bataan. Radar control, he thinks: no human can react that fast.

  He looks ahead and nearly has a heart attack. A Judy has penetrated the flak umbrella and leveled off at wavetop height. Like the Myrt that hit Big Ben, it’s not a kamikaze: it has a skilled and canny pilot, who skims the surface of the sea seeking targets. He crosses Bataan’s bow, dips his starboard wing, banks right, and hurtles into the corridor of water that separates the aa cruiser from Bataan. Still under radar control, the cruiser’s guns snap down and left to track it. For an instant the Judy sits right between the cruiser and Bataan.

  Oh God no, Tommy thinks. I saw this. I saw it.

  Festive as marquee lights, the cruiser’s facing batteries wink on and off and on.

  Feathers watches the battle in fascination. Weather stable, offshore winds at five, glass thirty-one, intermittent kamikaze squalls. Fast motion to starboard: low-flying Judy. Tommy’s crews will nail it. Flak everywhere. Wait: that’s cruiser fire. Don’t lead him so much, you morons! I’d never bag a mallard if I shot like that. Funny, never looked down a live gun barrel before. What’s that color? Gold-vermillion, yes. Who wrote that?

  One one thousand, two one thousand. Hopkins! thinks Feathers, with a flash of pleasure.

  Three one thousand. The cruiser’s shells arrive.

  A great fist smacks Bataan: one-two, three-four-five. People on the bridge stumble. The air is sharp with high explosive. Tommy staggers to the wheel and helps up the helmsman.

  Kamikaze! shouts Captain Schaeffer.

  Nossir! Friendly fire! I think our own cruiser shelled us!

  Did she hit our bridge!

  No, sir!

  Where then!

  Don’t know, sir! Somewhere on the island!

  Find out, Lieutenant Commander! I have the con!

  Sir, we’re headed toward Franklin, we have to check way! Engine room, dead stop all! Sir, you have the con! Full astern if Franklin comes too close!

  Tommy turns, sprints. He knows Bataan’s layout.

  Part of the con island facing the cruiser is met.

  April 2, 1945

  Southeast of Okinawa

  Sir. What you doin’?

  I want to see his face.

  Sir. No.

  Let me see his face, Yeoman. Just his face —

  Sir, can’t do that. We followed regulations, had to. He’s embalmed.

  Embalmed, Jesus! What does that mean!

  Means he’s readied for sea burial, sir. I know he was your friend. ’M sorry.

  You’re sorry! Goddammit, show me his face! I have to say goodbye!

  A hand like a ham comes down on Tommy’s forearm. Sir? Sir?

  Tommy looks up, wild.

  He hasn’t got a face, the yeoman says. Tenderly almost.

  Tommy’s hands slide off the body wrap.

  Din’ wanna tell you, sir, we filled ’is body bag with shovels. Not sure we got all a’ him. Not sure ever’thin’ in there is him. Seven people and Loot’nant Mason got in the way a’ them shells. He was — splashed, sir. All on ’em like that, big mess. Any comfort to you, sir, he never knew what hit ’im. Them five-inch shells is meant for big stuff, ships ’n’ such. Human bein’ get inna way . . . well.

  Splashed, Tommy says. He can’t feel his skin.

  Yessir. Better you go up on the flight deck now. Time to start.

  Flight deck. Yes.

  Tha’s it, sir. Come along now. He’d want you there.

  The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair,

  There’s men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold,

  The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,

  And there with the rest are the lads who will never be old.

  There’s chaps from the town and the field and the till and the cart,

  And many to count are the stalwart, and many the brave,

  And many the handsome of face and the handsome of heart,

  And few that will carry their looks or their truth to the grave.

  I wish one could know them, I wish there were tokens to tell

  The fortunate fellows that now you can never discern;

  And then one could talk with them friendly and wish them farewell

  And watch them depart on the way that they will not return.

  But now you may stare as you like and there’s nothing to scan;

  And brushing your elbow unguessed-at and not to be told

  They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,

  The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.

  Four verses, ninety seconds at standard recital: it takes Tommy five minutes and no one interrupts. Tommy’s crying, the gun crews are crying, the y2c who peeled Tommy off Feathers’ body bag is a basket case. Nobody’s immune. Some res publica, Tommy thinks. People weep for a godling, a prince who had more than what a hundred of them will make in their lives. But that’s just doctrine; this was a man. Crazy, caring, insouciant, dancing on the wire. Who’d have stayed the same if he’d woken one day to find his wealth had vanished.

  Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.

  No more to build on there. And they, since they

  Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

  At first Tommy wants to be left alone to bay at the moon. But the Navy cannot allow it. Lieutenant Commander Atkinson may hurt — that is permitted. But he must continue to toil.

  Surprisingly, work proves an anodyne. Bataan escorts Franklin away from Okinawa, south of the battle zone, while the big cv licks her wounds and does jury repairs to retrieve propulsion and steering. Franklin will not only survive; she will steam to California. There, with every slip on the West Coast filled by other floating wounded from Ten-Go, Big Ben will limp through Panama to New York. She’s suffered the worst damage ever dealt to
a carrier short of sinking, but she hasn’t sunk. It’s a tragic miracle.

  Task Force 58 gets its revenge on the day Bataan returns. Imperial hq dispatches IJS Yamato, world’s biggest dreadnaught and pride of its fleet, to disrupt Operation Iceberg. Yamato is a floating fortress, a forty-thousand-ton slab of steel, but in the age of air power she’s a dinosaur. At noon on April 6, tf58’s surface radar pinpoints Yamato. Instantly, Bataan and nine of her sister carriers scramble caps. They fall on the enormous ship and hammer her with bombs and torpedoes without taking a single hit in response. Bataan scores four of the twelve confirmed strikes, punching three times above her weight. At two p.m. Yamato capsizes. An hour later, she is rent by a shattering explosion as her magazine detonates. Her fragments fall to the floor of the East China Sea.

  Tommy learns all this and doesn’t care. He scans the rf flimsies, notes and files their contents, but attaches no meaning to them. His navigation stays flawless, he gives and receives orders as proficiently as before, he eats and shaves and showers and sleeps and talks to the captain. Yet twice a day he recalls a German general’s dictum: A war, even the most victorious, is a national misfortune.

  Operations continue. More cvs take hits: Enterprise, Essex, Bunker Hill. But Ten-Go was Japan’s last throw, and the dice have fallen snake eyes. Her air attacks diminish, stutter, stop. Suddenly it’s all over but the shouting. Japan has neither ships nor planes. The Pacific is America’s lake.

  Still, Japan does not surrender: she has not lost a war in a thousand years and cannot grasp the concept of defeat. The one-sided carnage goes on. Bataan’s caps hammer the Home Islands at will. They invent a new sport, strafing locomotives to see how high the steam shoots when a boiler explodes. They sink another battleship, IJS Hyuga, as she cowers at dock. Recon photos show her turrets rising from the water like the Arizona’s at Pearl Harbor. Bataan’s planes butcher barges and ferries, warehouses and lighthouses, biplanes and sampans. Nothing escapes her caps’ ferocity. Turkey shoots are all that’s left.