by Peter Albano
Stern first, the boat hit the coral bottom, settled slowly, and then rolled over onto her starboard side on the coral bed. Bubbles of air and gouts of oil streamed upward. But all was silent, as silent as a tomb.
*
Just after a PBM reported one enemy carrier sunk and another damaged, Yonaga made contact with the enemy air groups. The cheering and shouts of “Banzai!” ceased abruptly.
“Radar reports many enemy aircraft closing from the south and southeast. Range one hundred kilometers,” Seaman Naoyuki reported to Admiral Fujita, who had been on the flag bridge the entire day.
“Very well,” Admiral Fujita said, raising his binoculars. Flanking the admiral, with their helmets pulled down and strapped, Rear Admiral Whitehead and Colonel Bernstein stared through their own glasses.
A shout from a lookout on the foretop, “Many aircraft bearing zero-three-zero, elevation angle twenty.”
Whitehead shifted his search and found them. A flock of insects winging toward them. He had been sunk five times. Would this be his sixth? This couldn’t be happening. How in the world did he ever get himself into this crazy situation? An American rear admiral on the bridge of a Japanese carrier fighting Arabs. Like all men committed to combat, he felt helpless, the victim of other men’s decisions made in faraway places. Faceless men, perhaps on the whim of injured pride or vanity, had unleashed the forces that drew him inexorably to a face-to-face showdown with death. He had never been able to adjust to that feeling.
Fujita shouted into the voice tube: “Break radio silence. CAP intercept raid approaching from the south. Flagship to escorts: assume AA stations. New course zero-nine-zero, speed thirty-two.”
For a long moment there was silence as dozens of pairs of binoculars studied the southern horizon. Now Whitehead could see the unmistakable form of the JU 87s: gull-winged, spatted wheels, and he could even see the huge bombs slung beneath their fuselages. And old North American AT-6 “Texan” advanced trainers could be seen: Pratt and Whitney radial engine, high “greenhouse” canopy for the two man crew, retracted landing gear. They flew low on the water with torpedoes hanging from their crutches. And above the bombers, a screen of ME 109 fighters.
“All escorts answer,” came up the tube.
“Very well. All ahead flank, left full rudder, steady up on zero-nine-zero.”
Whitehead felt the plates beneath his feet vibrate with new intensity as the four great engines strained to deliver all of their power to the drive shafts. The carrier heeled and turned to the east, uncovering her entire starboard AA battery to the approaching aircraft. All seven destroyers raced in, taking stations within five hundred meters of Yonaga: Fite leading, three Fletchers to starboard and three to port.
Whitehead caught a flash of white high in the sky as twelve Zeros of the CAP raced in to intercept — the remaining three were struck below for one defect or another. The first Stuka spiraled down in flames, followed by four AT-6s. Then the Messerschmitts poured down and the dogfight forced the CAP to abandon the attack on the bombers.
Whitehead turned to Admiral Fujita. “I count only twelve enemy fighters, Admiral. They must have left most of them with their carriers.”
“One squadron. Foolish.” He turned to the talker, “All guns that bear, stand by to open fire.” The command was unnecessary. Hundreds of barrels were cranked up, and trainers and pointer were already tracking the approaching aircraft.
The dogfight tumbled across the sky and veered off to the west. The enemy must have kept his best pilots with his carriers. The single squadron of fighters trying to protect the bombers seemed poorly led, and the pilots were definitely second rate. Within minutes the superb Zero pilots shot down half the fighters with only the loss of one of their own. The surviving MEs fled to the south. But the distraction had freed the bombers for their runs.
Whitehead counted twenty-two torpedo bombers and thirty-three Stukas. He said to Admiral Fujita, “They must’ve overloaded their air groups with fighters. Two fleet carriers should be able to launch more bombers than this.” He waved to the south.
Fujita’s smirk was filled with irony. “If we do not stop them, this may be quite enough, Admiral Whitehead.”
Naoyuki turned to Admiral Fujita, “Fire control reports enemy in range, sir.”
“Batteries one and three, engage the dive bombers. Batteries five and seven, engage torpedo bombers. Main battery, commence firing. Commence! Commence!”
Thunder boomed and lightning flashed as sixteen 5- inch guns fired as one. Every man on the bridge grabbed his ears as the cannons blasted out a steady barrage of twenty rounds per gun per minute. Whitehead almost gagged on the sharp smell of cordite, brown smoke billowing up and enveloping the bridge before being whipped away by the stiff breeze. Six of the torpedo bombers were plucked from the sky, crashing into the water, skipping, tumbling, disintegrating. And the Zeros whirled, five of them racing in after the “Texans” while the remaining six shot upward after the dive bombers, their 2000-horsepower Sakae 42 engines giving them incredible climbing power.
Four destroyers had opened fire with their five-inch guns. The slow AT-6s dropped down close to the water. Now the Fletchers were firing with their automatic weapons. The torpedo bombers were excellent targets. Slow, lumbering. Ignoring their own AA fire, five Zeros raced in behind the torpedo bombers while the old trainers charged into the jaws of flaming hell. Two more exploded, the Zeros savagely tore in on the tails of the aircraft which had formed a ragged line, converging on the carrier. The rear gunners fired back at their tormentors with single 7.7-millimeter guns. They were hopelessly outgunned. Cannon shells and machine gun bullets sent three more of the North Americans crashing into the sea. But the survivors passed over the line of escorts and bore on toward Yonaga. These men were made of much sterner stuff than the inept fighter pilots. Whitehead counted ten survivors.
Fujita stabbed a finger upward where the Stukas were wheeling in preparation to dive. The sound of their engines deepened as pilots set their propellers at full coarse, their hinged dive brakes were down, and they had formed a single line. “Well-coordinated attack,” he said. But the Stukas were also taking heavy casualties. They seemed to be floundering in a sea of ugly, black-booming flowers. Half of them had been shot down and the Zeros zoomed up under their fuselages where they were blind and shot down five more in their first pass. But the fighters and the AA would never stop them all and every man in the fleet knew it.
Whitehead felt an old familiar fear clutch at his throat. He had known this strange, tingling coldness many years before. He had survived the horror of those five ghastly sinkings. Now, perhaps, he had tempted fate once too often. He stared at the torpedo bombers — only six were in the air now. They were close, splashes leaping up all around, tracers streaking by, Zeros still in pursuit. But they formed their line, came on as a single unit, and at only 800 meters, dropped their torpedoes. One plunged into the sea behind its weapon.
“Right full rudder!” Fujita screamed.
The great carrier turned sharply, heeling to port. The first three torpedoes passed ahead, another with a defective gyro leaped from the sea like a great fish and turned away crazily. But the last two did not miss.
Yonaga fairly leaped and boomed with agony as a tremendous one-two punch of high explosives caught her amidships on the starboard side. Fujita came off his feet, binoculars flying up over his head with the force of the blasts which came so quickly that they seemed to blend into each other. Wrapping one arm around a stanchion, Whitehead grabbed the little admiral and held him steady. The bearing ring flew off the gyro repeater and sailed out over the flight deck, and the tiny chart table broke its deck bolts and crashed down onto the deck, drafting machine, parallel rules, pencils and dividers flying.
Two AT-6s crashed into the sea, one veered off Yonaga’s bow where Fite shot it down, another zoomed off toward the carrier’s stern, and the last actually flew over the ship. Looking up, Whitehead felt he could almost touch the oil-streaked bot
tom of the fuselage: The roar of the 600-horsepower radial engine barked down at him, and he could see flames shooting out of the exhaust ports of the collector rings. Twenty-five-millimeter guns in the foretop ripped off the cowling, shot off the greenhouse, and the plane skidded across the sky, its starboard elevator blown away. Then its wing folded up at the root, flew free, spilling hydraulic fluid like blood, and the big plane barely cleared Yonaga’s stack as it tumbled wildly into the sea, sending up a column of blue water and white spray. The wreck floated for a few seconds and then the weight of the big Pratt and Whitney engine dragged it under like an anchor.
Whitehead felt the deck move under his feet. They were listing. “Are you going to reduce speed?” he shouted into Fujita’s ear.
The little admiral stabbed a Finger upward at the Stukas, which were peeling off. “We cannot.”
Showing unbelievable calm, the old man shouted down the tube, “Left full rudder and circle left until I change the order.”
“F6Fs!” Bernstein shouted.
“Impossible!” Whitehead said. But they were there, six of the magnificent fighters. They joined the Zeros and tore into the Stukas.
“I can’t believe this,” Bernstein cried.
But Whitehead understood. “They’re returning from our attack — they have great range and carry four hundred rounds of ammunition for each gun. That’s forty seconds of fire power.” He waved. “Obviously, they have some left for the dive bombers.”
The Mitsubishis and the Grummans ripped into the Stukas like hawks after pigeons. At once, five of the Arab aircraft spun, tumbled, and burned, streaking for the sea and vanishing in geysers of water. But three were diving on Yonaga, and then two more winged over into dives despite the fighters. The big Jumo engines shrieked, the aircraft grew, Yonaga circled, AA guns fired, tracers webbed the sky.
Whitehead stood hypnotized. His fingers were suddenly numb, and his binoculars dropped to his waist. He had experienced every kind of engagement, every kind of attack. Nothing was as horrifying as a dive bomber screaming down on you. No place to hide, he said to himself as he had many times decades before. He choked back the fear, set a brave, hard-jawed expression on his face and raised his binoculars. No one, absolutely no one would know how scared he really was.
The first plane was so low he could clearly see the pilot’s goggled face peering through his sight. He released his single 500-kilogram bomb and pulled up directly into the six streams of 50-caliber slugs fired by a pursuing Hellcat. The great slugs ripped the bomber and blew off the pilot’s head. The big plane twisted across the sky like a mallard blasted by buckshot and gyrated into the sea, smoking and shedding aluminum skin in sheets.
The big black bomb shrieked down. Convinced as all men were who had ever been under dive-bombing attack, Whitehead knew that bomb was plunging down directly on him. He gritted his teeth until his jaws ached, gripped his binoculars so tight the bones of his knuckles showed through the skin like snow-white knobs. His bladder was suddenly dangerously full. The bomb struck just off the starboard bow, jolting the ship with the power of the near-miss. Blue water and spray drenched some of the gun crews.
Two more Stukas howled down, bombs swinging free beneath their propellers by their crutches. The first missed, too, shooting a tower of water 200 feet in the air just off the port beam. The second did not miss. There was a booming sound like a rifle shot in an empty boiler, ripping tortured metal. The great ship shook and trembled, and two 5-inch guns and four or five 25-millimeter mounts exploded skyward from the bow along with a dozen bodies. A bomb had hit directly in a gallery on the starboard bow. Flames and acrid smoke poured over the bridge.
“Flood Number One and Number Three magazines!” Fujita shouted at Naoyuki. “And I want a damage report.” He looked around at the sky. A few enemy planes were fleeing toward the south with F6Fs and Zeros in pursuit. There was no threat. He shouted down the tube, “Rudder amidships, let her swing to one-eight-zero and steady up. All ahead standard. Relay the changes to the escorts by bridge-to-bridge.”
Immediately the pulse of the engines slowed and the great carrier swung to her left until the course was finally found and she was held steady on a southerly heading. A new, ominous whistling sound could be heard throughout the ship: the sound of escaping air. The high-pitched sound came from pipes, leaky gaskets around watertight doors, ventilation ducts and electric cables passing through bulkheads. To the experienced seaman, these were serious danger signals: air was being vented by the pressure of water entering the ship from the torpedo hits.
Fujita shouted anxiously at Naoyuki, “Tell the chief engineer I am waiting for a damage report!” He punched the windscreen with a tiny fist. “Expedite! Expedite!”
“Sir,” Naoyuki said. “Chief Engineer Yoshida suggests you reduce speed. There is serious flooding on the starboard side.”
“Sacred Buddha. Yonaga should take two torpedoes like mosquito bites.” He shouted down the tube, “All ahead slow.”
Bernstein said to Fujita, “Those were unusually powerful warheads, Admiral. They must be using Semtex.”
Before Fujita could answer, Naoyuki said, “Chief Engineer Yoshida reports two hits on the starboard side between frames one-one-eight and one-zero-nine. Both hydraulic machinery rooms on the starboard side are flooded, and there is water in the starboard compressor room. The starboard ready oil tank is ruptured, and we have some water in Number Two damage-control station. At least one H beam has been driven through the bulkhead between Number Three and Number One boiler rooms. The boiler rooms are flooding, and there are leaks in the outboard bulkheads of Number Three fire room. He is shoring the fireroom bulkheads, and it appears the flooding can be contained in the machinery rooms and the boiler rooms. But there is saltwater in the freshwater lines in Engine Room Three. Casualties are heavy. Every man on watch in Number Three boiler room was killed, and most of those in Number One boiler room are casualties.
Fujita was grim. The list had increased to about seven degrees. He shouted at Naoyuki, “Tell the chief engineer to counterflood with fuel tanks two and four. They are empty. And he is to pump from the bilges in the Number Three engine room to the bilges in a port engine room until we are on an even keel. We can not have this list when our air groups land.”
“Returning aircraft!” was shouted from the foretop.
“Our air groups.” Every man on the bridge raised his glasses.
“There are so few,” Whitehead whispered.
Bernstein spoke grimly. “Eleven Zeros, seven Aichis, and five Nakajimas.”
“Can’t be — can’t be,” Whitehead groaned.
The returning aircraft joined the CAP, and all of the aircraft began to circle Yonaga counterclockwise. Red flares indicating casualties were fired from four bombers.
“Sir,” Naoyuki said “the chief engineer reports all bulkheads holding, bilge pumps are reducing the flooding in Number Three fire room.”
Fujita nodded, then muttered, “Very well.” The frightening sound of escaping air had ceased, and the list had decreased. Everyone relaxed.
A backfire high overhead turned every head up. All of the aircraft were low on fuel.
The old admiral glanced at the ensign. The wind was from the northeast. He shouted orders down the tube, and the carrier swung into the wind. “Two block Pennant Two. Stand by to receive aircraft,” he said to the talker.
The first Nakajima with a huge hole in her wing and with a dead gunner approached the stern, hook extended.
*
An hour later, Yonaga had recovered her decimated air groups and cut a new course for Tokyo Bay. Shipping ten thousand tons of water by flooding and counterflooding, she steamed four feet lower in the water. Still, with over one thousand watertight compartments and a superb damage-control party working like madmen, she could make twelve knots safely. Her seven escorts hovered close, like concerned courtiers tending their wounded queen.
A quick, limited staff meeting was held in Flag Plot. Chief Engine
er Lieutenant Tatsuya Yoshida did not attend; he was busy in the bowels of the ship. The damage had been controlled, and the flooding was being gradually reduced. Along with the rest of the staff, Commander Yoshi Matsuhara, Captain Colin Willard-Smith, Lieutenant Brent Ross and Commander Thkuya Iwata were all there. The flyers had shed their heavy, fur-lined jackets and helmets, but were still in their flight clothes. All were filthy, exhaust and gunpowder streaking their faces and outlining the shape of their goggles as if they had been spray-painted.
Numbed by shock, Brent had to force himself to concentrate on the voices that droned on, itemizing the casualties, cloaking the horrors of their losses in the camouflage of cold, impersonal statistics. Their air groups had been virtually wiped out. A few more stragglers had managed to find the carrier, but the tally of returning air groups was appalling; thirteen Zeros, one Seafire, six Hellcats, eight dive bombers, and seven torpedo bombers, a total of 28 survivors out of a proud fleet of 138 warplanes that had departed. And Yonaga was gravely injured, but not in danger of sinking. One hundred twenty-four of her crewmen were known dead, and 173 were wounded.
But the enemy’s losses had been catastrophic. The carrier Ramli al Kabir had been sunk and Al Kufra seriously damaged. Most of the enemy’s aircraft had been destroyed.
“Blackfin? Blackfin?” Admiral Brent said, leaning over the table anxiously.
The old man’s face was grim. “There have been reports by some of our native observers of an enormous explosion just off the southern entrance of Tomonuto. And we have further verification by intercepted plain language transmission from enemy destroyers which indicated rescue operations were underway and a great vessel must have been sunk.”
Brent pounded the table with a closed fist. “Then the old linebacker scored.” He turned to Matsuhara. “I knew he had it in him.” The expression on Fujita’s face squelched his levity. “They’re okay?”
Fujita shook his head. “Blackfin did not transmit the prearranged signal. It has been five hours since the reports.”