The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  Then—there it is! The officer cries out uFire!,y Flame and smoke erupt from the Number One gun; a high-explosive shell screeches through the wet air at the enemy submersible.

  This is the first shot fired in the war which has not yet begun....

  The shell howls harmlessly through the air, missing the conning tower of the submarine by scant inches. Even as it ricochets from the water with a high-pitched whine another shell bursts from the destroyer’s gun position. The flame and smoke barely have time to erupt from the muzzle when hell breaks loose across the water. The second shell smashes with a terrifying belch of bright red flame and exploding metal directly against Japanese steel. First blood has been drawn.

  Another shell follows, and yet another, as the gun crew pumps the explosive missiles swiftly into their weapon. Even as steel and fire crash into the submarine (hopelessly wrecked with the first hit), Ward heels hard over, her screws churning madly. Puffs of smoke blossom with hissing sounds on the aft deck, and in pairs the depth charges waddle through the air, splash into the ocean. Seconds later crushing shock waves rip through the water just below the surface. Water boils and leaps into the air.

  The crushed and broken Japanese submarine clutches her two-man crew and drags them down to a watery grave.

  At 0651 hours Ward gets off a message to Pearl Harbor: “We have dropped depth charges on sub operating in defensive area.”

  Perhaps the message is not strong enough. Two minutes later, exactly at 0653 hours, a second message crackles to Pearl: “We have attacked, fired upon and dropped depth charges on sub operating in defensive area.”

  The operator at Bishop’s Point acknowledges the receipt of both messages.

  Nothing comes of that flash signal....

  It seems that there is little indeed at Pearl Harbor this fateful morning that can function properly or create a desired response. Since ten minutes before four o’clock, when the three American warships searched for the enemy submarine, a radio naval station has listened to all the conversations which pass between the ships.

  The men then on duty at the radio sets made absolutely no move to report this information to the duty officer!

  Not until Ward dispatches specific messages of armed contact with the unknown submarine is action first taken.

  But again there are bungled operations—and again the priceless opportunity goes by the board. A yeoman, described subsequently in official investigations as “not very bright,” delays in decoding the flash messages received from the destroyer. Not until 12 minutes past seven o’clock do the messages reach the duty officer. This man, at least (and at last!) wastes no time; immediately naval headquarters orders the destroyer Monaghan to move out and render assistance to Ward.

  During this period the staff duty officer encounters difficulty in trying to reach Admiral Kimmel. It still seems difficult to believe, but alert planning is so poor that there is no direct line to the Admiral’s quarters. The commander of the naval forces is completely out of touch with his warships, aircraft, shore installations, and men. The local switchboard is so congested that it is 25 minutes past seven before the Admiral receives word that an enemy submarine had been sighted three hours and 42 minutes previously, and that this same submarine has been attacked and is presumed sunk—35 minutes before Admiral Kimmel is finally informed of this fact.

  By the time the Admiral receives the information, dresses, rushes to his office, and reviews the reports waiting for him, it is too late.

  It is 15 minutes before seven o’clock the morning of December 7....

  The aircraft carrier Enterprise steams at high speed toward Pearl Harbor. Shortly after dawn, 200 miles from the naval base (the same distance from the naval base as the six carriers of the Nagumo Force, but on a different bearing), the carrier launches several flights of planes which at this moment are flying on to Ford Island.

  At 0645 hours the ship is quiet. In the radio room the operators handle routine messages. Suddenly:

  “Don’t shoot! This is an American plane!”

  The anguished scream which bursts so unexpectedly from the radio is tom from the throat of Ensign Manuel Gonzalez, of Enterprise’s Bombing Squadron Six. On his way to Ford Island, Gonzalez flies within sight of the Japanese bombers and their prowling fighter escorts, at that very moment racing in toward Pearl Harbor. But Gonzalez does not live very much longer; the Zero fighter pilots are swift and sure.

  Ensign Manuel Gonzalez, USN, is the first American to die in the war which has not yet begun.

  No alarms, no alerts are sounded. It is bitter irony, but Gonzalez truly dies in vain.

  It is 15 minutes before seven o’clock the morning of December 7. ...

  Two men sit in the darkened interior of an Army mobile radar station at Opana on Kahuku Point, Oahu. The radar station has been active since four o’clock; in another 15 minutes the two men will shut down the power systems, lock the station, and go off duty.

  One of the men stares into the glowing radar screen. There is disbelief in his eyes. There appears a single small blip on the screen; it is an aircraft, unidentified, bearing at high speed toward Oahu.

  There should be no blip—not in this position. At once the senior operator, T/3 Joe Lockard, picks up the telephone and notifies his immediate superior that an unidentified aircraft, possibly hostile, is approaching the island.

  A soldier on duty has provided evidence of being alert, of using his equipment properly, of providing the first radar warning of the coming strike.

  But fate is yet to smile grimly. The reaction to Lockard’s report is not one of action. It is, in fact, dismissed with annoyance. Lockard is reprimanded lightly and is ordered to quit having the “jitters.” After all, it is a beautiful Sunday morning and the officer on duty does not like to be disturbed by excitable enlisted men who disrupt his routine with panicky calls about unidentified aircraft.

  This is the United States Army. When you are an enlisted man and you have been “read off” by your superior, you do not argue with that officer. And so the man who tracks on radar the first of the Japanese planes approaching Oahu, and follows that enemy aircraft for 15 minutes on his glowing screen, can do nothing else but to say, “Yes, sir,” and replace the telephone on its cradle.

  It is now seven o’clock. Each of the six radar stations maintained by the Army for the specific purpose of scanning the approaches to Oahu for hostile aircraft has reached the prescribed limit of its required morning alert time. The men are now free to close down the stations and return to their barracks for morning mess.

  Five stations close down; one remains open. The sixth station is the same radar site at Opana which earlier picked up on its scope the advance Japanese floatplane. T/3 Joe Lockard, the same man who shortly before has been told to get rid of his “jitters,” prepares to disengage the radar set, power down the installation, and secure the truck.

  But he delays. Private George Elliot, Lockard’s assistant, asks for additional instruction in operating the new radar equipment. Since the truck which is to carry the two men to their mess hall is late, Lockard agrees.

  It is now two minutes past seven o’clock—two minutes after the radar station was to have been closed down. Once again fate intercedes, and once again the United States is given an incalculable reprieve from the devastation even at that moment rushing toward the American fleet and our land-based aircraft. Once again the United States seems strangely impelled to ignore all the warning signs and leave itself naked to the imminent enemy assault.

  The warning comes again on that same radar screen. This time there is no single airplane. This time the strange shadow which appears on the radar scope grows into glowing pips which can only be airplanes—many, many airplanes—moving in formation.

  The two operators stare at the screen, first with disbelief, then the thought that something has gone wrong with the set. There simply can’t be that many airplanes in the air!

  But the new electronic equipment functions perfectly. And t
hose are airplanes, at approximately 132 miles’ distance from Oahu. Their bearing is three degrees east of north and they move inexorably toward Oahu with a ground speed estimated at 150 miles per hour.

  Elliot plots the mass swarm of aircraft for 15 minutes until he is absolutely certain of the flight track. There is no longer any doubt whatsoever of what the two men see, and in alarm they watch the glowing mass on the screen paint its electronic picture of the great formation which every moment slashes time and distance between itself and Pearl Harbor.

  Lockard reaches for the phone; then he hesitates. He had called in once before and had not only been ignored, but had been mildly reprimanded by his superior. Should they call in again? Of course! There is no question but that they must flash the alarm at once, inform their superior of what is happening. Out there on the ocean is a mass of airplanes, and they can only be enemy airplanes. All hell itself is winging toward them. They must warn Pearl Harbor!

  Lockard picks up the telephone for the second time at exactly 17 minutes past seven o’clock. Destiny squeezes out the remaining minutes and seconds—the Japanese air armada is only 38 minutes away from the precise instant that the first bomb will be released from its shackles.

  Three minutes pass. Lockard finally speaks to the watch officer at the information center of the Hawaiian Interceptor Command at Fort Shafter. This is the critical moment. Joe Lockard is the one man with knowledge of the onrushing enemy attack who is in the position to warn

  Oahu. With his warning, fighters can be sent into the air to intercept the enemy force well out to sea. American carriers can dispatch their fighting airplanes. Ships can go to full air defense status, and the entire sprawling installation can come to some measurable semblance of bristling guns. The more helpless planes—bombers, scouts, and auxiliaries—can be dispersed. Warships not only can protect themselves and the base with their weapons, but they can get under way quickly and increase tremendously the difficulties of the Japanese in attacking the moving, gun-firing targets. If Lockard’s warning is acted upon, the debacle then rushing like an avalanche at Pearl Harbor at its worst can do no more damage, at best may have the strength of its blow shunted and diluted.

  The watch officer is Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler. He listens to Lockard’s report, which is given with some excitement. But Lieutenant Tyler is not impressed; indeed, Tyler is not even the regular duty officer. He is an Air Corps officer present at Fort Shafter “solely for training and observation.” He is green and inexperienced, he is not eager to “rock the boat” so early in the morning—and it is this forced calmness that destroys the last opportunity of salvation for Pearl Harbor and nearly 3,000 men who will die.

  Tyler dismisses the threat of an approaching enemy air fleet. The concept of a mass Japanese attack is ridiculous to him. He knows, also, that a formation of B-17 bombers is expected from California, scheduled to land at Oahu for fuel before staging on to the Philippines. Tyler knows, also, that some additional aircraft are expected momentarily from the carrier Enterprise. Most likely there are also the regular Navy search planes in the air.

  So many probables are enough to keep Tyler very calm indeed. The information, the precious information telling where the Japanese air fleet is located, what bearing it follows, what speed it is making, and when it will arrive— all this Tyler dismisses, without any further checking, as “unimportant.” In his ill-advised opinion the information is not worth acting upon.

  “Okay; it's okay. That's all”

  In that curt dismissal to Joe Lockard the fate of Pearl Harbor is sealed. Lieutenant Tyler dismisses the report of the radar station and turns his mind to other thoughts.

  (Later, when the angry investigators begin to sift through the factual debris strewn in the wake of the Japanese strike, Joe Lockard is not to be forgotten. He is to win an officer’s commission and the Distinguished Service Medal for “exceptionally meritorious and distinguished service in a position of great responsibility.”)

  It is 30 minutes past seven o’clock the morning of December 7. ...

  Time is running out fast for Pearl Harbor. In only 25 more minutes the first bomb will fall. Back at the Opana radar station, Lockard and Elliot remain at the glowing scope. They continue to plot the incoming formations until the unidentified aircraft are only 22 miles away. At this distance the two men lose the incoming aircraft on the permanent “echo” of their electronic equipment. Brakes squeal outside; Lockard and Elliot board the truck that will take them to breakfast.

  Even as they bounce over the road, Fate steps in for one final attempt at least to minimize the disaster about to overwhelm our military bastion. It is a last chance, watered down by the passage of time, but still a last chance.

  We do not take advantage of it....

  In Pearl Harbor, Boatswain’s Mate Milligan is on the deck of the destroyer Allen. Milligan is a man with excellent eyesight, and as he looks into the clear morning sky he can see 20 to 25 planes orbiting slowly at about 5,000 feet. Their formation is a splendid sight to behold as the sun glistens off the wings of the turning planes.

  It is calamitous that Milligan does not have binoculars through which to view the wheeling about of that impressive formation. If so, then he could easily have noticed that the aircraft circling so leisurely at 5,000 feet bear the red ball of Japan on their wings and fuselages.

  Incredible though it is, the planes which Milligan studies are Aichi 99 dive bombers. They arrived at Pearl Harbor before the heavily laden torpedo bombers, and here, for many long minutes, the dive bombers wait. In complete safety, unopposed, they circle over the most powerful American naval bastion in the world. It is almost too much to believe—but it is true.

  It is also unfortunate that this particular man, Milligan, has not been informed of the change in training operations at Pearl Harbor. For the six weeks prior to December 7 at the naval base, there were held at Oahu regular Sunday morning antiaircraft exercises, in which crews took field positions for defense against simulated attack by carrier-based planes!

  But on this morning, December 7, the carriers are at sea and the antiaircraft training exercises have been canceled. Milligan, however, knows only that there have been frequent air attack drills of late, and the thought that the planes he sees circling for so many precious minutes could possibly be Japanese never enters his mind.

  It is 55 minutes past seven o’clock the morning of December 7.. ..

  Time has run out

  AIR FIGHT OVER PEARL

  JAPANESE

  Captain Y. Watanabe, Imperial Japanese Navy:

  In Japanese tactics we are told that when we have two enemies—one in front and one in back—first we must cut in front with our sword. Only cut and not kill—but make it hard. Then we attack the back enemy and kill him, and then return to the front enemy and kill him. We aimed not to capture but to cripple Pearl Harbor. We might have returned for the capture later.

  The order to destroy the targets of the enemy at Pearl Harbor was issued exactly at 3:23 a.m. (Tokyo time) on December 8, 1941, when Commander Mitsuo Fuchida of carrier Akagi, supreme air commander of the Pearl Harbor Attack Air Groups, radioed all his pilots in the air over or approaching the naval bastion:

  “All aircraft immediately attack enemy positions.” Moments later Fuchida dispatched his second radio message, this time to Admiral Nagumo, awaiting word with the task force:

  **We have succeeded in the surprise attack.**

  “These two wireless messages,” recorded Commander Masatake Okumiya in a study of Japanese airpower in World War n, “were the signals for raising the curtain of war all across the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. Immediately thereafter Japanese air fleets launched their attacks against enemy installations over a front of thousands of miles.”1

  “The first bomb that started that war screamed away from an Aichi 99 dive bomber flown by Lieutenant Akira Sakamoto....”

  Sakamoto. Immediately behind Sakamoto’s aircraft, splitting up into wedges to strike at separate ta
rgets, came another two dozen raiders, plunging from the sky at different angles and screeching around in precision formation turns so as to come into their targets from different points of the compass. The maneuvers, so carefully planned, came off beautifully as the bombers arrowed in along different courses, hurling their bombs with extraordinary accuracy into the aircraft and installations scattered throughout the American base area.

  Hard on the heels of Sakamoto’s group, but veering off to strike swiftly against Hickam Air Field, rushed 26 more dive bombers led by Lieutenant Commander Ka-kuichi Takahashi. Before the startled defenders knew what had hit them, the bombers were coming back for repeated passes, tearing through the flames and smoke of their own making, strafing planes, men, gun positions, and anything that moved. The strafing attacks were intended mainly for their demoralizing effect, and they carried out this intention as the thunderstorm of flying lead sent men diving to shelters.

  Ford Island, which the Japanese had charted as the center of American Navy fighter strength, took the third hammerhead blow from the air.

  Now the Japanese went after the warships arrayed before them in military textbook fashion. While one force of bombers droned overhead in precision formation to release their bombs from level flight, Commanders Fuchida and Shigeharu Murata directed 89 level and torpedo bombers against the warships.

  The plunging dives of the Aichi 99s, the coordinated strikes of the level bombers from above and the torpedo bombers just above the water, was the signal for the waiting Zero fighters to come barreling out of the sky. And they came in a whirlwind of cannon shells and streams of lead, Lieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya at their helm. Behind the commander rushed 42 more Zero fighters, slashing expertly at targets that would keep enemy gunners ducking instead of putting up counterfire against the many bombers. The Mitsubishis cut in at minimum altitude, pilots snapping hot bursts against antiaircraft emplacements, aircraft, gun positions against warships, and any ground targets that appeared prime for their massed cannon and machine guns.