It packed a wallop, too. Along with the bombs waiting in the bomb bay, it carried five 20mm cannon and five more machine guns. Any U.S. fighter that jumped an H8K was liable to get a very nasty surprise. Not only that, the flying boat, unlike a lot of Japanese planes, was well protected, with self-sealing fuel tanks in the hull and a good fire-extinguishing system. As far as Fuchida could see, the designers had thought of everything.
He said as much to the pilot, who sat to his left. Lieutenant Kinsuke Muto grinned a crooked grin. “Oh, they did, Fuchida-san,” Muto said. “The only trouble was, it took them a while, or the plane would have been in service a long time ago.”
“I heard something about this last year, but not too much,” Fuchida said. “I was busy training for the Hawaii operation. Tell me more, please.”
“Busy? I’ll bet you were, sir-just a little.” Muto laughed out loud, then went on, “Well, you know we wanted something better than the H6K: faster, with longer range, and a plane that wouldn’t catch fire the first time a bullet came anywhere near it.” He laughed again, not that it was funny; attacks against the Dutch East Indies and New Guinea had shown that the H6K turned into a torch when the enemy started shooting at it.
Fuchida leaned forward in his seat to lay a gentle hand on the instrument panel in front of him. “We have what we wanted, too.”
“Hai. We do-now.” Lieutenant Muto stressed the last word. “But it wasn’t easy. The first flight tests showed the beast was unstable at takeoff and a disaster on the water generally. They had to do a total redesign on the lower hull, and it set them back for months.”
“Ah, is that what the trouble was?” Fuchida said. “I knew there was a delay, but I don’t think I ever heard why. It was worth waiting for, though-the plane handles beautifully on the water now. I saw that when we took off from Pearl City.”
Muto snorted. “Hardly a tough test, sir. The water inside Pearl Harbor is going to be calm, no matter what. But wait till you see this baby out on the open ocean. It’s just as good there.”
“You know best,” Fuchida said. He had a hasty familiarization with the H8K. He’d been bound and determined to come on this mission, but he hadn’t wanted to be dead weight while he was along.
The radioman brought tea to Fuchida and Muto. He hesitated for a moment, wondering which man to serve first: Fuchida had the higher rank, but Muto sat in the pilot’s chair. The two of them pointed to each other. They both laughed.
“Give it to Muto-san,” Fuchida said. “He’s the captain of this ship. I’m just excess baggage.”
Muto took a cup of tea. A moment later, Fuchida had one, too. He looked out the window. There was nothing much to see: only black ocean below and dark blue sky above. He couldn’t spot the other two flying boats. He was in the leader, while they trailed his plane to either side.
After sipping, Fuchida asked, “How long till we reach the mainland?”
“Another couple of hours,” Lieutenant Muto answered. “Long before then, though, we’ll use the Yankees’ radio stations to home in on our target.”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” Fuchida nodded. “I did the same thing with the Honolulu stations when we hit Pearl Harbor. They even told me the weather was good.”
“That must have been handy. You speak English, then?” Muto said.
“I speak some, yes,” Fuchida told him. “And it was very handy. I’d been wondering how to find out what sort of cloud cover they had down there. It would have made a difference in how high we flew. I’d been wondering-and the Americans went and told me.”
“I hope they do it again. San Francisco can be a foggy town, I hear,” Muto said. “I don’t want to have to drop my bombs any old place. I want to hit something worthwhile in the harbor there.”
“Don’t worry. The Americans will be chattering away,” Fuchida promised. “They don’t have anything that can reach Hawaii from the mainland and get back, so of course they won’t think we have anything that can reach the mainland from Hawaii.”
Lieutenant Muto grinned at him. “Surprise!”
“Hai.” Mitsuo Fuchida grinned back.
On they went. The throbbing of the four Mitsubishi fourteen-cylinder radial engines seemed to penetrate Fuchida’s bones. He flew the plane for a couple of minutes when Muto got up to answer a call of nature. He knew he’d be doing more on the way back. Even in a speedy H8K, San Francisco was ten hours from Honolulu. He held course and altitude. That he could do, and do well enough. He wouldn’t have wanted to be at the controls if American fighters attacked the flying boat, or if he had to put it down at sea.
Muto returned and took over again. Fuchida leaned back in his chair. He could doze if he wanted to. He did for a while, to stay fresh for the return flight. Then the radioman hurried up with something written on a scrap of paper. The number had to be the new course for San Francisco. Muto glanced down at it, nodded, murmured, “Arigato,” and swung the plane’s nose a little to the north.
“Our navigation was pretty good,” Fuchida said, seeing how small a correction he made.
“Not bad,” Muto agreed. He pointed out through the forward window. “Demons take me if that’s not the California coast.”
Sleepiness fell from Fuchida like a discarded cloak. He leaned out and peered into darkness. Sure enough, those lights ahead marked the edge of land-the edge of a continent dreaming it was immune from war. He laughed softly. “This is what the Americans call blackout.”
“They’ll get better at it once we’ve been here and gone, I expect.” Muto laughed, too. “Of course, that will be a little too late.”
Fuchida had heard that German submarines were having a field day sinking freighters silhouetted against the bright lights of the U.S. East Coast. He hadn’t known whether to believe it. He did now.
A few minutes later, the flying boats approached San Francisco from the south. An English phrase occurred to Fuchida: lit up like a Christmas tree. The city probably wasn’t so bright as it would have been in peacetime, but it was plenty bright enough. Fuchida said, “The harbor is on the eastern side of the city, on the bay, not here by the ocean.”
“Yes, I know,” Muto answered, and then spoke over the intercom to the bombardier: “Are you ready? We are going into the bombing run.”
“Ready, yes, sir.” The reply sounded in Fuchida’s earphones as well as Muto’s.
Nobody on the ground paid any attention to the three flying boats. No searchlights tried to spear them. No antiaircraft fire came up at them. If anyone had any idea at all that they were there, he had to assume they belonged to the USA. A street that ran diagonally through the heart of San Francisco guided them straight to the harbor.
Not even the piers with warships tied up alongside them were properly blacked out. Fuchida grinned. We’ve caught them napping again, he thought. But then the grin slipped. Two could play at this game-the Yankee B-25s and the U.S. submarine had surprised the Japanese in Hawaii.
“Bombs free!” the bombardier exclaimed. The H8K grew livelier as it got lighter, but to a much smaller degree than Fuchida’s B5N1 had over Pearl Harbor. The flying boat was a far heavier plane. Fuchida hoped the other two Japanese aircraft were also bombing. He couldn’t tell. He had a good forward view, but not to the side or behind.
Lieutenant Muto swung the flying boat in a sharp turn back toward Hawaii. “I think, Fuchida-san, we’ve just worn out our welcome,” he said.
“Hai. Honto,” Fuchida agreed gravely.
“Hits! We have hits!” That wasn’t the bombardier-it was the rear gunner, who manned the 20mm cannon in the tail turret. Of all the crew, he had the best view of what was going on behind the H8K. A moment later, he added, “The other two planes still have bombs left. They’re unloading them on the city.”
“Good. Very good,” Muto said. “The Americans think they’re immune from war. They need to learn they’re not.”
After the flying boats dropped their bombs, a few antiaircraft guns did start shooting. None of the bursts came
anywhere near the Japanese planes. Lieutenant Muto whooped exultantly. So did the radioman. As the California coast vanished behind the H8Ks, he said, “The Yankees will never catch us now!”
Mitsuo Fuchida was less sure of that than his comrades. They didn’t know about the interrogations of the U.S. soldiers from the strange installation near Opana. The USA had a way to track planes through the air electronically. Fuchida gathered his own country was also working on such devices, but Japan didn’t have them up and running yet. If one was operating anywhere near San Francisco, it might guide fighters after the flying boats.
He shrugged. If that happened, it happened. Even if it did, fighters wouldn’t have an easy time finding the H8Ks in the darkness. And the Japanese planes, though slower and less maneuverable than U.S. fighters, were armed well enough to give a good account of themselves.
The danger of pursuit shrank with each passing minute. Fighters had only limited range. If they wanted to get home again, they couldn’t go too far out to sea. The flying boats, on the other hand…
Muto leaned back in his seat. “Copilot, would you like to hold this course for a few hours and let me grab a little sleep?”
“Of course. My pleasure.” Fuchida admired the smooth way Muto gave orders to a superior officer.
“Good. Domo arigato,” Muto said. “Wake me at once if there’s any trouble, of course, or when the radioman picks up the signal from the I-25.”
“I’ll do that,” Fuchida promised, most sincerely. Yes, indeed, trying to land the flying boat on the Pacific was the last thing he wanted to do. Muto closed his eyes. He started snoring inside a few minutes. Fuchida admired him again, this time for his coolness.
Fuchida kept an eye on the compass and the airspeed indicator and the altimeter. He held the course Muto had given him. Every minute put San Francisco five and a half kilometers farther behind the flying boat, Honolulu five and a half kilometers closer. Too bad so many kilometers lay between them.
He was proud that their navigation to the U.S. mainland had worked out so well. The flight wouldn’t have been easy by daylight, let alone with most of it at night. Fuchida laughed. Three Japanese flying boats would have got a rather warmer reception if they’d appeared over San Francisco with the sun still in the sky.
In any case, the round trip between Honolulu and San Francisco was about twenty hours. Without a layover-again, unlikely! — much of it had to be by night.
After about three and a half hours, Lieutenant Muto yawned and stretched and opened his eyes. He looked over at Fuchida and asked, “How is everything?”
“Fine,” Fuchida answered. “We were going on to the Panama Canal from San Francisco, weren’t we?”
“The Panama Canal?” Muto’s eyes flashed to the compass. Only after he made sure of the course did he laugh. “You know how to wake a fellow up in a hurry, don’t you, Commander?”
“I try,” Fuchida said. Lieutenant Muto clucked in mock reproach and shook his head. Though Fuchida had been joking, he couldn’t help looking back toward the southeast. The Panama Canal lay in that direction. If Japan could put it out of action, that would be a tremendous blow to the USA. If the Americans had to ship everything around South America…
Regretfully, he shook his head. The Panama Canal was more than twice as far from Honolulu as San Francisco was: out of range even for an H8K. The Canal would be well defended, too, and the Americans would move heaven and earth to repair whatever damage it suffered. Attacking it was nice to think about. So was making love to a beautiful movie actress. In real life, neither was likely to be practical.
Little by little, the sky began to grow light. They were flying away from the sunrise, which slowed it, but it came anyway. Even when dawn did arrive, though, there was nothing to see but sky above and an endless expanse of ocean below. Fuchida checked the fuel gauge. They’d filled every tank to overflowing before takeoff. Even so, they didn’t have enough left to get back to Honolulu.
Half an hour later, the radioman’s voice sounded in Muto’s earphones, and in Fuchida’s: “I have the signal from the I-25! ”
“Ichi-ban! ” Muto exclaimed. The relief in his voice said he must have been watching the needle drop toward empty, too. “What is the bearing?”
“Sir, we’re going to need to swing south about five degrees,” the radioman replied. “We’ll all keep our eyes peeled after that. By the strength of the signal, I don’t think we’re very far away.”
“Pass the word to the other planes on the low-power circuit,” Muto said. “No one’s likely to pick it up here, and no one’s likely to be able to do anything about it even if he does.”
“Hai,” the radioman said.
A crewman on one of the other flying boats first spotted the surfaced submarine. His radioman passed the word to Fuchida’s H8K and the third one. Then Fuchida and Muto both pointed out the window at the same time. Muto brought the flying boat down to the water. Spray kicked up from the hull as it landed. Suddenly, its motion took on a new character. For a plane, it had an excellent hull. For a boat… Fuchida gulped. I am a good sailor, he told himself sternly.
Muto taxied up alongside the I-25. Sailors on the sub’s deck waved to the flying boat. “How did it go?” somebody shouted. Muto and Fuchida waved and grinned. The sailors clapped their hands. They yelled, “Banzai! ”
Then they got down to business. The I-25 carried fuel for the last leg of the flying boats’ return to Honolulu. Two sailors in a boat ran a hose from the submarine to the H8K. Fuchida listened to fuel flowing into the tanks. When the plane had enough to get back to Honolulu, the sailors disconnected the hose.
Muto taxied out of the way. The other two flying boats refueled in turn. When all three had got what they needed, the submarine sailed away. Fuchida breathed a silent sigh of relief when the H8Ks got airborne once more after long takeoff runs that put him in mind of geese sprinting along the surface of a lake before they could get airborne. The flying boats had been hideously vulnerable as they bobbed on the surface of the Pacific. Now they were in their proper element again, and could take care of themselves.
They came back to the Pan American Clipper base about four in the afternoon. Japanese officers waited for them as if they really were tourists coming to Hawaii from the West Coast of the USA. Applause and shouts of, “Banzai! ” greeted them as they got out of the planes.
“Radio in the United States is going mad!” a signals officer yelled. “The Yankees are saying this was as big an embarrassment as Pearl Harbor!”
Fuchida and Muto bowed to each other. Then they both yawned. Together, they started to laugh.
COMPASSIONATE LEAVE WAS the last thing Joe Crosetti wanted. But here he was, tearing across the country on the fastest trains he could get. Most of the bombs the Japs had dropped on San Francisco came down on the harbor or near it. As they were leaving, though, they’d emptied their racks-and one of those afterthoughts had landed on the house where Uncle Tony and Aunt Maria and their four kids lived. One of the kids was still alive, though he’d lost a leg. He’d been blown into a tree across the street, which doubtless saved his life. The rest of the family? Gone.
In the harbor, the Japs had damaged a cruiser, a destroyer, and two freighters, and they’d sent another freighter to the bottom. Nobody’d laid a glove on them, not so far as anyone could tell. They’d come out of the night, done their dirty work, and then disappeared again.
To Joe, the ships mattered much less than his family. Had his aunt and uncle’s house not been hit, he might have given the enemy grudging credit for a nice piece of work. Not now. Now the war was personal. He did want to string up the San Francisco civil-defense authorities, who must have been asleep at the switch when the Japs came in. Had they had their radar on? Had they watched it if they had? Not likely, not by what had happened.
No one paid any special attention to him as he rolled west across the country. Men in uniform were a dime a dozen. More were soldiers than sailors, and more sailors were ratings than off
icers, but Joe wasn’t unusual enough to draw notice. That suited him fine. He preferred being alone with his thoughts.
His own family lived only a few blocks from what had been Uncle Tony’s house. The bomb could have blown up his mom and dad as easily as his aunt and uncle. He couldn’t see anything but dumb luck that had kept it from doing just that-and there was a thought he would rather not have had.
His train got into the Southern Pacific station at First and Broadway in Oakland at two in the morning on the day of the funeral. His father waited on the platform for him. Dad was in his usual fisherman’s dungarees; he wouldn’t change to a suit till later.
They embraced. Dad hadn’t shrunk, exactly, but he seemed frailer than he had before Joe started flight training. Joe didn’t stop and think how much more muscle he’d added since then; he wasn’t built like a middle infielder any more.
His father kissed him on the cheek, saying, “Good to see you, boy. I wish it wasn’t for something like this.”
“Jesus, so do I!” Joe said. “Those dirty, stinking bastards. I-”
“You go pay ’em back, that’s all,” his father said. “Those other pilots, they can yell, ‘Remember Pearl Harbor!’ when they give the Japs what-for. You, you yell, ‘Remember Tony and Maria and Lou and Tina and Gina!’-and Paul, too, dammit!”
“I will,” Joe said. “I’ve got a picture of ’em in my wallet. Whenever I go up, it goes up with me.” He wished he were flying planes hotter than the sedate trainers at Pensacola. You had to crawl before you could walk and walk before you could run, but he wanted to run like Jesse Owens-run right at the Japs and run right over them.
“Okay, Joey.” His father set a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, then. I’ll take you back to the house. That all your stuff?”
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