by Peter Albano
Nodding, Brent glanced at his ammunition belt. Only a single round showed. He pulled back hard on the wooden grip of the cocking handle and ejected the last three rounds. Quickly, Bowman removed the empty box and dropped it into a corner of the ready box. Then, with Brent helping, he lifted a fresh box containing 110 rounds up to the breech and snapped it into place. Brent flipped up the top cover of the machine gun’s breech. “Load one!” Brent ordered.
Bowman passed the brass tag loader of the belt through the block. “One loaded,” he said.
Brent pulled back the handle on the side of the block and let the powerful spring drive the first round home, the gib at the top of the extractor gripping the cartridge. “Load two!” Brent snapped. Bowman jerked the brass tag leader, and Brent pulled back on the handle and let it fly back again. The first round shot smoothly into the breech. Then the lieutenant raised up and peered into the breech to assure himself the belt was seated properly, slammed down hard on the cover, engaging the two spring-loaded locks. “Loaded and cocked,” he said, glancing at his loader out of the corner of his eye. He locked the weapon into a vertical position and watched curiously as they closed on the downed pilot of the Seafire. He raised his binoculars.
Bobbing in his tiny yellow life raft, the man was dressed in a brown flying suit, and a helmet with goggles up. With white skin, large nose, and big round eyes, he was definitely not Japanese. He was waving at the submarine and smiling. “Sure as hell not a Japanese,” he heard Williams mutter. The captain turned to Hara. “All ahead slow.”
“All ahead slow, sir.” The rhythm of the big diesels dropped.
Williams glanced at the gyro repeater. “Left to zero-four-five, helmsman. We’ll come alongside starboard side to.”
“Left to zero-four-five, starboard side to, sir.”
“Very well.” Williams pulled a loud hailer from its brackets on the windscreen and raised it to his lips. Turning to the stern, he shouted at the five-inch gun crew which was standing just aft of the cannon with buoys, life preservers, and lines. ‘starboard side to!”
A young sailor, Boatswain’s Mate Second Class Hitoshi Motoshima, who was the senior surviving petty officer, shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth, “Starboard side to, sir.”
The floating pilot was just a few yards ahead and off the starboard bow. “All stop.” Despite the stopped engines, the submarine continued, its great momentum carrying it forward.
“All back one-third.”
Brent felt the vibrations come through the grating as the screws fought almost sixteen hundred tons of inertia. Instinctively he steadied his weapon. Now the pilot was very close and off the starboard beam. Motoshima began to whirl the “monkey’s fist” at the end of a line over his head. With a quick, expert flip of his wrist, he released the line and the lead weighted “fist” carried over the raft and the line actually dropped over the pilot’s shoulder. The pilot grabbed the line and began to pull himself in.
“All stop!” The boat wallowed in the gentle swell, its idling diesels alternately burbling under water and then firing blue smoke and spumes of eggwhite spray into the air as the seas first covered the exhausts and then fell away with the submarine’s roll. Quickly the pilot was pulled in, and in a moment Boatswain’s Mate Motoshima, secured to a stanchion by a life line, pulled the tall, thin pilot aboard. The flier steadied himself by gripping a lifeline and then, helped by the boatswain’s mate, walked toward the bridge, grinning.
“Lend a hand,” Williams said to Bowman.
The loader reached down and pulled on the pilot’s flying jacket as he mounted the ladder slowly to the bridge. The captain extended his hand and had to actually look up to find the lanky airman’s eyes. Tall, slender, and hawk-nosed, with high cheek bones with hollows beneath them, the man had a narrow but square, strong chin. His most impressive feature was his eyes. Wide and blue, they had the look of a one who could recite Shakespeare, Shelley, or Keats or kill with equal aplomb. Over all, he bore a striking resemblance to Basil Rathbone playing Sherlock Holmes in an early B movie.
Williams said to the newcomer, “Welcome aboard. I’m Lieutenant Reginald Williams. I’m the captain of this boat.”
The pilot smiled enigmatically, and looked around the bridge at the crew, which stared back curiously, as if they were studying an alien from outer space. Grasping the captain’s hand, he spoke in a cultured voice made hard by a nasal twang, as if his nose were stuffed with hollow iron beads. “Captain Colin Willard-Smith here.” He dropped the captain’s hand and glanced around at the twenty-millimeter guns and then at the Brownings. His eyes came to rest on Brent Ross. “I say, old chaps-your shooting was a bit of all right.” He studied the blood on the lieutenant’s helmet and life jacket, but said nothing.
Brent stared back. “Didn’t mean to knock you down, Captain.” And then with a wry smile, he added, “Not really cricket, was it?”
Willard-Smith laughed. “Quite so. But I was hard on that JU’s arse.” He looked around and then returned to Williams. “You chaps put up quite a lot of flak. Upon my word, amazing accuracy. Shot out my oil tank and coolant lines.”
“Sorry, Captain,” Williams said. He stared over the port beam where the two enemy airmen drifted in their raft. After a quick sight through the bearing ring, he said, “All ahead slow, left standard rudder. Steady up on one-nine-zero.”
Brent unlocked the fifty-caliber and began to bring it to bear on the two men in the raft. Every man on the bridge stared at him and at Williams. Willard-Smith caught on quickly. “I say, chaps. You’re not...”
Williams interrupted him, “We’re going to pick them up, Captain.” And then to Brent, ‘secure the fifty, Mister Ross.”
“Aye aye, Sir,” Brent said, locking the weapon into place.
Williams glanced at the sky, forward, aft and then shouted down the hatch into the conning tower, “Plot! Have you been able to keep your DR track?”
The voice of Navigator Lieutenant Charlie Cadenbach came back, “Plot aye. We have, sir. I’ve been reading your course and speed changes from my repeaters. But you know I could be miles off. I need to shoot sun lines — run up my noon sight. Request permission to come to the bridge.”
“Negative! You’ll have to wait until we secure from battle surface. We’ll be stopping in a hundred yards to pick up a couple of fliers. Then I want your best course back to Yokosuka.”
There was a short silence interrupted only by the roar of the diesels and the sloshing sounds of water running down the hull and out the scuppers and drains. Then Ca-denbach’s reply came up through the hatch, “I suggest three-five-zero, Captain.” There was disappointment in his voice.
Williams returned to the pilot, “If you drop down that hatch,” he gestured to the hatch to the conning tower, “Lieutenant Cadenbach will direct you to the wardroom. You’ll find hot coffee and sandwiches there.” He waved around the bridge grimly where coagulating blood still oozed down the steel windscreen as if it had been flung from the brush of a madman. “We’ve had casualties. I can’t spare a man.”
The Englishman pursed his lips and then tightened his jaw. “With your permission, Captain, I’ll remain here. I have excellent eyes.” He gestured at the gore-splattered periscope shears and the windscreen. “I can stand duty as a lookout.”
“You’re up to it? After all, we just shot you down.” The Englishman drew himself up and spoke with astonishing quiescence. “Quite fit, thank you. Been shot down before. Almost bought the farm in the Falklands. This bit was quite easy. Didn’t even get wet.”
Williams smiled. “Very well. Keep an eye on the sky. Our radar is out.” Williams glanced off the port side where the two enemy flyers stared back from their raft. “All stop. Prepare to pick up survivors.” The five-inch-gun crew moved to the rail.
Willard-Smith waved a hand to the northwest, where a great dogfight had sprawled across most of the western horizon. “They’re jolly well having a go at it up there. Must be the biggest show since the Battle of Br
itain.” He spoke to Williams. “Captain, aren’t you going to try to pick up more survivors?”
“I wish I could.” Williams gestured at the two enemy pilots, who were now only a few feet off the port quarter. “After we pick them up, we’ve got to head for the yards. We’re badly damaged. Taking on water in one of our main ballast tanks and leaking chlorine. And there could be more Stukas around. Another near miss could deep-six us.” He shook his head with resignation. “Admiral Fujita may send some destroyers. But it’s risky-very risky. Saipan and Tinian are just too close.”
Brent stared up at the sky. It looked as if at least a hundred aircraft were trying to destroy each other. The fight had drifted quite low, and individual aircraft were easy to see. There was smoke in the sky like twisted black pillars, and several parachutes drifted slowly toward the sea. He raised his glasses and almost chortled with joy as he found a Zero with a red cowling and green hood. It was climbing over the fight with a Seafire hard on its rudder. He fingered the Browning and muttered to himself, “Yoshi Matsuhara, may your kamis be riding with you this day.”
“Survivors aboard,” was the shout from the stern.
“Very well. All ahead standard. Come right to three-five-zero.”
Slowly, Blackfin picked up speed and curved toward the north.
*
Commander Yoshi Matsuhara cursed. Rosencrance and Vatz, flying in tandem, were a thousand meters beneath him and perhaps twenty kilometers to the north. Rosencrance had lost one wingman and so had he. Willard-Smith was gone, perhaps dead. His last transmission still rang in the flight leader’s ears. “Sorry, old chaps,” the Englishman had said as if he were excusing himself from a table ladened with tea and crumpets. “I’ve caught one. Got to ditch straight away.”
“Hit the silk!” York’s anguished voice had countered. “Sorry, old man. Beastly luck. My chute’s been shot out. Got to take the old girl for a swim. Best of luck and all that. Cheerio.” Then Willard-Smith’s radio went dead.
“Tenno Jimmu,” Yoshi implored, calling on the spirit of Japan’s first emperor. “Look out for him, sacred one. He is a good man.” He needed the skillful Englishman. He had fought with rare verve, panache, and audacity. In fact, even the new fighter pilot, Pilot Officer Elwyn York, had adapted miraculously as soon as the firing began. Some men were like that. The Cockney, too, had put on an amazing performance. He had already shot down two Junkers and damaged an ME 109. Yoshi needed more pilots like these.
Climbing to 8,000 meters on a big semicircular swing far to the southwest, Yoshi dropped his starboard wing to give himself a view of the fighting below. It was the single biggest air battle he had ever seen. Admiral Fujita had committed at least four squadrons of Yonaga’s fighter group to the fight. He wanted Blackfin and would sacrifice almost anything and anyone to save her. It was more than just the submarine, more than just hunger for victory, more than the obsession to destroy his enemy. It was his attachment to Brent Ross... Yoshi was sure of it. He had long ago suspected the big, brilliant, brawling American had become the old admiral’s surrogate son — a replacement for Kazuo, his boy, who had been incinerated at Hiroshima in 1945.
The fighter circuit was filled with frantic shouts of triumph and fear. “Break left Shizuyo! Now! Now!”
“Breaking left. Your radio sounds awful, Arii.”
“Shigamitsu! Where are you? It’s Arii.”
“Below you, Arii. Stopped one with my engine. Losing oil pressure. You are in charge. Banzai!”
Yoshi’s eyes were caught by a burning Zero curving up in its death agony. A heart-wrenching plea came through the earphones, “Bail out, Noritaka. In the name of the gods, bail out!” But the Zero fell off into its final plunge with a closed canopy.
“Above you! Above you, Mizumoto. Two of them at five o’clock.”
“See them, Tokita. Stay with me.”
“I have the one on the left!”
“Turning. Tokita.”
“No! No! Dive! Dive, Mizumoto!”
There was a gigantic explosion below and to the north. A Zero and an ME 109 had collided head-on. Yoshi punched his instrument panel. It was the young NAP (Naval Air Pilot) Masaichi Mizumoto. He had stormed through the gates of the Yasakuni Shrine in a spectacular blaze of glory — a heroic demise that had burnished his karma and ensured that his spirit would dwell for eternity with the countless heroes awaiting them all at the sacred Yasakuni Shrine. “Banzai!”
Stomach churning, the flight leader ignored the carnage and fought the overpowering urge to plunge into the battle. He had one quest. A single quarry to hunt.
Finally Matsuhara saw what he had been looking for: a flash of red below and black-and-white zebra stripes. Rosencrance and Vatz. Unlike all other participants in the sprawling brawl, these two were flying in perfect syncronization, Rosencrance leading, Vatz behind and off his port side. As usual, Rosencrance was looking for an easy kill and had found it. Just as Yoshi’s eyes came into focus on the pair, Rosencrance blasted a crippled Zero out of the sky almost casually with a short burst. The perfectly aimed shells and bullets struck the fighter’s fuselage tank, and the small plane vanished in a single Vesuvian blast. “New self-sealing tanks! That isn”t supposed to happen!” Yoshi anguished. But Rosencrance was already banking toward another smoking Mitsubishi fleeing toward the northeast, away from the fight.
Without conscious thought, and broiling with hate and anger, the Japanese pilot punched the engine into overboost, pulled back hard on the stick, and then pushed the control column hard to the left, half-rolling into a dive. A quick glance told him Pilot Officer Elwyn York had anticipated the maneuver and was holding his position. Yoshi spoke into his microphone, “Edo Three, this is Edo Leader. Stay with me on my first pass on the red Messerschmitt. Then individual combat.”
“Right, guv’nor. I’ve got the black arsehole!” And then York’s hate, too, boiled through the earphones, “The bloody butchers.”
Accelerating in near vertical dives, the pair flashed past a smoking ME 109 just as it rolled and a body dropped out. Quickly a parachute popped opened. Yoshi felt the Zero-sen begin to vibrate. Anxiously he stole a look at his instruments; tachometer crowding the red line at 2,800 rpms, 107 centimeters of manifold pressure, cylinder head temperature still a tolerable 200 degrees Celsius. And the white airspeed needle chased around the clock faster and faster — 320, 360, 360— the white needle overtaking the slower red danger indicator.
The vibrations increased until the aircraft was gripped with fearful shaking, like an old man dying of fever. Both hands could not hold it still. The muscles of Mat-suhara’s arms and shoulders began to ache. His airframe was in jeopardy, but he had no choice. Rosencrance was hard on the tail of the smoking Mitsubishi and was almost in range. It was Shigamitsu. He could see the single red stripe of the section leader on the Zero-sen’s rudder. The American renegade had a perfect killing angle — astern and above the tail. Flame leaped from his guns.
With the airspeed indicator showing 410 knots, Yoshi pulled back on the control column. At this tremendous speed he stood a good chance of overtaking his enemy before Rosencrance could kill Shigamitsu. He also stood a good chance of losing consciousness or his wings or both. He braced his feet and pulled back on the column with both hands with all the strength he could muster. He thought the stick would break off in his hands like a piece of bamboo. As the dive flattened, the g-forces went to work. He could feel his cheeks sag, his eyes water, and tears run down his cheeks, his mouth as dry as the Gobi. His head became a rock that bent his neck and forced him deep into his parachute pack until he thought his spine would crack. Then the heavy, dull aching pain in his stomach began, the dampness in his crotch as his bladder dribbled, and he feared for his bowels. Now his worst fears were realized. As the airframe shook and trembled, bouncing him about in his seat against the restraints, the wings began to flap as if they were trying to break off. The weight of the huge new Sakae 42 engine persisted on its trajectory toward the earth and had incr
eased his wing loading far beyond design specifications. But the little machine held together, flattened out behind Rosencrance and Vatz, just where the commander wanted to be.
However, very swiftly, Commander Yoshi Matsuhara’s body lost its battle with gravity and inertia. With centrifugal force draining the blood from his head, his peripheral vision was first to go, leaving him with the peculiar sensation of looking down a tunnel. Then the universe clouded and darkened as if misty gray lenses had been drawn across his eyes. He was on the very edge of unconsciousness. He slipped into the darkness and knew not when or for how long before the twilight of consciousness crept back. Groggily, he shook his head, tightened his stomach muscles, and breathed in short, explosive gasps, screaming “Amaterasu!” over and over again to relieve the pressure. Then, with blood pumping back into his brain, his vision cleared like a slowly opening curtain. The Zero was standing on its starboard wing and was on the brink of a stall. Hastily he brought it back under control. The amazing York was still with him.
He was too late. Shigamitsu’s Zero was a roaring torch, twisting into the sea, leaving thick black smoke like a streamer of black silk behind. Lieutenant Todoa Shigamitsu was drifting above it under the glaring white canopy of his parachute. Casually the two Messerschmitts banked toward the parachutist. Shigamitsu saw death coming and raised his pistol in a last futile, defiant gesture. Yoshi screamed “No!” as the red fighter fired. Shigamitsu jerked as if he were shocked by great jolts of electricity and then sagged in the embrace of death.
His vision still shadowed by the g-forces, Yoshi felt a ravening beast break loose in his guts. Shrieking with tears on his cheeks and his judgment clouded by rage and the lack of blood in his brain, he fired. At six hundred meters and with the ME filling only two rings in his range finder, the full deflection shot missed. Immediately the two enemy machines looped and half-rolled in a perfect Immelmann, a quick, smart maneuver that took Yoshi by surprise. They must have heard a warning on their radios. Abruptly his vision cleared and his sensibilities returned. Wiping his cheeks and nose with the back of his glove, he cursed his poor judgment and amateurish performance. “MEs are not supposed to turn that short — that fast,” he muttered deep in his chest. A glance in his mirror told him York was still on station off his starboard elevator. He felt a new wave of confidence. Hunching forward, he brought the red machine into his range finder. Revenge! Revenge! The samurai’s most precious commodity. He must have it at any cost.