Fuchida’s jubilant signal, Tora, Tora, Tora, still echoed on the airwaves, as it would resound through the history of these tumultuous hours for decades to come. Some events were simply so weighty in their impact, with a gravitational pull on the stream of causality that doomed them to reoccur.
And this was one of them.
Japan’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor had been all but pre-ordained when the Strike South Camp found itself largely unopposed in this retelling of events. For the Empire had already taken every province to the north of any value. Its troops garrisoned the long Trans-Siberian Rail as it wound its way up from Old Vladivostok, now called Urajio by the Japanese. Once it reached Khabarovsk, it then skirted the long bend of the Amur River, up and over until it reached Chita, a little over 200 miles from Lake Baikal. Those steel rails formed the Empire’s northern border, and beyond the line, the endless stretches of tree sewn taiga held no interest for the Japanese. Even though there were vast reserves of oil and other resources there, Japan knew little about them, nor did it have the means of finding and developing those resources in that vast wilderness.
So instead, the eyes of the Generals and Admirals looked south, to the rubber plantations and proven oil fields of the Dutch Pacific Colonies, largely defenseless, like ripened fruit on a low hanging bough. The only caveat in taking them was the growing presence of the American military in the Philippines. All the sea lanes that would carry that oil and rubber back to Japan would have to transit waters within easy reach of US forces in the Philippines, and so war with the United States was deemed inevitable. The American bases in the Philippines would have to be attacked, and the islands occupied, and if this were so, then the navy, largely through the voice of Admiral Yamamoto, strongly argued that the American navy must also be attacked, and if possible, destroyed.
The plan was worked out in exacting detail and rehearsed by the attack squadrons over many weeks of intensive training. As bold as it was risky, it would involve the cream of the Japanese carrier fleet, the Kido Butai, with the lion’s share of the navy’s best pilots. They would strike perhaps the strongest military bastion in the Pacific at that time, the massive combination of Army muscle and land based air power, and the hardened steel of America’s Pacific Battleship squadrons all packed into the corner of one small island, Pearl Harbor. All of America’s offensive war making power in the Pacific lay in that one place, quietly asleep on a balmy Sunday morning.
Off to the north, Admiral Nagumo sat in his Red Steel Castle, the carrier Akagi, flagship of the Kido Butai, and his thumping heart echoed the reports of exploding bombs and torpedoes as his first strike wave delivered its attack. His ship was the perfect example of the pivot in naval strategy that he would now so ably demonstrate. For Akagi was conceived as a fast battlecruiser of the Amagi class, in an era where battleships still reigned supreme. Now it had morphed into an aircraft carrier, the new queen of the seas insofar as many in the Navy were concerned.
Japanese ship naming conventions selected the towering strength of mountains to name their battleships, which was how Akagi began its career before its conversion. The ship now beneath Nagumo’s feet had therefore been named for Mount Akagi, one of the three fabled “mountains of Jomo.” That was the ancestral name of the province right there in the heart of the main island of Honshu, no more than 100 kilometers from Tokyo. Roughly translated, the ship’s name was the “Red Castle.”
Akagi had also seen many upgrades over the years, but strangely, her three tiered flight decks that had been revamped and overshadowed by one main upper deck in Fedorov’s history, still remained. A small island superstructure had been added by 1938, on the port side to keep it clear from the vented steam and smoke of the downward facing stacks, which were on the starboard side of the ship. That tall island had been packed with long vertical bundles of sand bags to protect it from the shrapnel of war, two thick bands below the conning tower windows, and one row above. There stood Admiral Nagumo atop his Red Castle, surrounded by Lieutenants and Commanders of every stripe.
An hour earlier, the ship had turned into the wind, and at that moment, with that single turn of the wheel, Japan as a nation had set her course for war that would lead her empire either to renewed glory, or to complete destruction.
“Now we climb our Mountain,” said Nagumo as he watched the planes taking off.
“May we find the lost treasure!” said his Fleet Air Officer, Masuda Shogo. He was referring to the legend associated with the rust iron red of the volcanic caldera on Mount Akagi, where it was said that the lost treasure of the Tokugawa Shogunate was secretly buried hundreds of years ago, and never found again. Those who have sought to discover it would have to first brave the icy cold winds that blew down the flanks of that mountain, the Karakkaze. That was what the pilots now called the bite of the wind when the carrier increased her speed and turned just before the planes would launch, the Karakkaze. Into that wind, Japan would now send the best trained naval aviation pilots in the world, and in some of the best combat planes designed to date.
The Aichi D3A1 KanBaku dive bomber the Allies called the “Val” was a relative newcomer, entering production just two years ago in December of 1939. With excellent range at almost 900 miles, it was a superb dive bomber, very stable in the near vertical dive it was capable of, which gave it lethal accuracy in the hands of a skilled pilot.
The Nakajima B5N2 KanKo Torpedo Bomber, known as the “Kate,” had a distinctive long windowed canopy for excellent visibility, good speed and exceptional range exceeding 1200 miles. It was superior to its American counterpart in every respect, for the lumbering Douglas TBD “Devastator” was a plane that too often failed to live up to its threatening name.
The Japanese plane was 100MPH faster, had a third more range, and carried the world’s premier aerial borne torpedo, the Type 91, with 800 kilograms of striking power and fabled reliability. By comparison the American Mark XIII was plagued with problems in 1941 and 1942, with many surface runners and duds weakening the striking power of the TBD squadrons. The US flyers would be lucky to get the torpedo to run true a third of the time, and then even luckier if they got a hit and it actually exploded.
The Japanese Type 91 had several unique features that made it so advanced for its day. First there were wooden tail fins added to the torpedo to stabilize the airborne segment of its attack. They would be shed upon entry into the water, where a special PID controller system would take over to minimize roll in the sea. While the American plane had to come in low and slow, the Kate could race in at cruising speeds exceeding 200 MPH, much faster than the maximum speed of the American TBDs. For the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese had further modified the wooden fins to allow the torpedo to run in the shallow waters of the harbor instead of descending to 100 feet, as most torpedoes would do after hitting the water. The Gyorai, as they called it, the Thunderfish, were already tearing the bellies of the American battleships open when Nagumo got the urgent sighting report from Lieutenant Saburo Shindo’s fighters off Akagi.
The men in those Japanese planes were as good as they came, many recruited at the age of 15 through the Japanese Yokaren program. Eager to find fresh young minds and bodies to mold and train, the Japanese staged formation flights over schools to arouse interest and stir the imagination of the young boys. Many times the pilots would even ‘bomb” the school yards with small rubber balls attached to tiny parachutes, a gift to the young boys who stood in awe below. Recruitment followed soon after, and the one percent who made the grade entered a rigorous Spartan training regimen, grueling and very tough, where physical beatings would follow any lapse or failure, to harden the young boys into fighting men.
There at Tsuchiura on Lake Kasumigaura, the ‘Misty Lagoon,’ the discipline bordered on sadistic, and yet to the boys that made it that far, failure was unthinkable. If they were to be expelled from the training school, their family would be so dishonored that they might be forever ostracized. A discharge for poor performance was feared as th
e ultimate shame, but being human flesh and blood, for some that failure came in the form of suicide. Those who survived were as tough as hardened steel, and with skills to match the determination and willpower this rigorous training program had instilled in them.
Yet there was an artistry to their flying that was almost Zen like, for many had actually sat in long hours with Zen Monks and priests, who instilled in them the virtue of fighting with no mind. Their actions would then become instinctive, reflexive, without contamination by the discriminating consciousness. That was the Cherry blossom on the insignia inscribed on his left sleeve, and with it were the iron anchor of the navy and the wings he had labored so long and hard to earn.
The third plane to rise from those carriers was the Mitsubishi A6M Reisen “Zero,” a plane the Allies called the “Zeke.” It was a real shadow dancer in the skies, light, quick, and with whisper soft responsiveness at the flight controls that led many pilots who flew it to say it seemed as though the plane was a part of their own bodies. With the wings and fuselage built as one piece, the plane had strength and durability for the rigorous stresses of a dog fight in which it excelled. It could out range and out fight any Allied plane that opposed it in late 1941, hitting hard with two 20mm Type-99 cannons on the wings, and a pair of 7.7mm machineguns on the engine cowling.
Allied flyers who inspected one they had recovered from the Aleutians in 1942 would say that it was “built like a fine watch,” with a dash board that was a “marvel of simplicity,” and it was the scourge of the skies over the Pacific for many long months, until the Americans finally built planes like the Hellcat, P-38, and Mustang to match it.
One famous Zero pilot was the man who had planned the entire operation, Minoru Genda, and he had reveled in the skies with his white winged plane for months before the war, honing his skills to a fine and perfect art. One maneuver he devised to shake off an enemy fighter coming from behind became the famous Hineri-Komi, or “turning in.” It was a kind of pitch back maneuver, and it was refined to perfection by another Japanese Ace, Mochizuki Isamu. The plane would start a loop, and pitch over to one side at the top with a right rudder side slip followed by a hard left rudder that ended up putting the plane behind the attacking enemy. It was widely adopted and taught at the Yokosuka Naval Air School, becoming the bane of many an Allied pilot in those early months of the war.
So by the time these Japanese boy recruits had left the school yards behind to become men, and reached the decks of those carriers, they had hundreds of hours of flying experience behind them, uncompromising discipline, chiseled skill, and the planes to use every ounce of that ability. They had also formed a close knit comradery that was even tighter than traditional family circles. Only their fellow aviators knew just how hard it had been to get where they were, enduring deprivation, humiliation, endless physical hardships and beatings, the constant pressure to succeed, and fear of failure.
Admiral Nagumo’s flyers were truly an elite class, even as the war was just beginning, and many would stop and bow to the wall in the wardroom where another onetime Captain of the Red Castle, one Isokoru Yamamoto, had ordered that the name of any flyer who ever died in action should be inscribed. It would take a wall full of those names, he had once told them, before they would ever reach the lofty heights their ship was named for, or before they would ever truly climb the mountain that was before them now.
“Order the planes from 5th Carrier Division to launch immediately, but they will assemble over the task force and await my order to move out.” Nagumo was listening to an urgent inner voice, something was itching at him, a thrumming sense of warning and alarm. He had earlier ordered those planes to be held back, but the thought that they would be sitting on the flight decks, armed and fueled, seemed too great a risk at that moment. If there were American carriers close by, he wanted to face them with a sword in hand.
His sixth sense was serving him well, for at that moment the planes of Bombing Six off the USS Enterprise were already in the air, and heading northwest to the point signaled by Ensign Teaff in plane 6S-2. They would soon be spotted by Lieutenant Saburo Shindo’s fighters, and the level of alarm now became a burning certainty in Nagumo’s mind. The enemy was there, and he already knew exactly where the Japanese carriers were. He knew that miles and miles ago, thought Nagumo, though he would never know how the careful stealth of his approach to this attack had been undone. Somehow the enemy had wind of his carriers, and he was coming in for the kill.
The orders flashed to Zuikaku and Shokaku could not come soon enough, the fitful flag signals snapping in the stiff breeze with an almost frantic movement—launch all ready aircraft!
Chapter 5
Vice Admiral Bull Halsey was well named. He stood on thick short legs, which supported his barrel chested torso and well muscled arms. His big head sat at the top, with wild brows and the glint of mischief in his blue eyes that was often mistaken for anger. A no nonsense man, his disposition could flare that way on a moment’s notice, but a wry grin would just as easily tug the corners of his heavy bulldog jaw. Under fire he would soon become cool and unperturbed, preferring to wear a broad white helmet on the weather bridge during any enemy attack, and personally watching the fall of every bomb that was directed at his ship as if he were evaluating the enemy pilot in a training drill.
But this was no drill… Even as the ship beat to quarters for its first official action of the Pacific War, Halsey was deep in thought, wondering whether he would be able to hurt the enemy he had just stumbled upon. Search Six had flashed the report, but only from a single plane. He could either get on the radio and ask Lieutenant Commander Hoppings to confirm the sighting, or he could take it as the war warning it was, and do something about it. Minutes later, when the news came that Pearl Harbor itself was already under attack, any shred of hesitation he may have had left him completely. He had already put the ship on its toes, and ordered Battleship Division 1 to get up north after that sighting.
Now he was sending Lieutenant Commander William Hollingsworth out with Bombing Six, 17 SBD-2 Dauntless dive bombers. Lieutenant Commander Eugene Lindsey’s TBDs were still arming, but they would be up on deck soon. And he already had Wade McClusky up overhead with 16 Wildcats. It was going to be one hell of a morning, and the only question in his mind was how to coordinate his attack with Newman’s task force, the man who had proposed this impromptu exercise that now saw his ship sitting right on the edge of the enemy attack on Pearl.
Captain Fredrick Sherman on the Lady Lex was about 75 miles northeast of his position, and would need time to get close enough to launch an attack if this sighting report was accurate. But Halsey knew that every minute counted now. If his ship was sighted by the enemy, McClusky’s 16 Wildcats would be a fairly thin shield, and if he kept them all here on CAP, who was going to escort the strike wave in? He thought of Putman’s 12 Marine Wildcats, delivered to Wake just 48 hours ago, and realized they would do a lot more good here on the Enterprise than they ever would on that island.
“Damn it,” he swore. “Where the hell is Lexington?”
Captain Murray had no answer for him, which did little for Halsey’s mood, but every instinct in the Admiral’s body was urging him to attack.
“Alright,” he said. “Notify Young that he can take in everything we have, including half McClusky’s fighters. That means we arm what’s left of Scouting Six.”
“That’ll be the ten SBDs, sir. Hopping took out the other eight.”
“Fine, get ‘em armed and off this ship heading northeast. We can’t wait for Lexington, but be damn sure they know where the bar is out there, and they’d better show up for the fight.”
He couldn’t be too hard on Newman and Sherman, for the Lexington was coming all the way from a position off Midway. In fact, had it not been for his suggestion concerning this exercise, the Enterprise would already be back at Pearl Harbor, and tight under the gun. So it was just good Joss that Enterprise was here, he thought. Halsey believed in luck, lived by it,
and would always knock on wood whenever he made an overoptimistic prediction. Now he hoped his Joss was good that day, for from his perspective, the whole navy was counting on him now, and he was going to do everything possible to find a fight.
The strike group would become 27 SBDs now that Bombing Six had been augmented with the rest of those planes from Scouting Six. Along with the 18 TBD Devastators, and eight Wildcats in escort, Halsey would throw 53 planes at the Japanese that morning. They formed up at a little after 09:40 and were heading off into the brightening skies to look for that fight.
And they would soon find it.
* * *
Saburo Shindo was still up when they came, flights of dark blue planes against the pale sky. He had been the first to find and shoot down an American carrier based aircraft, for the planes Halsey had sent to Pearl in the old historical timeline never had that mission. Instead they were up in that strike wave, raw, untried pilots for the most part, yet feeling strength in numbers…. Until they saw what they were up against. Shindo and the two other fighters from his Shotai off the Akagi were not alone.
The skies above the Japanese fleet were thick with swarms of aircraft. Many were the strike planes still taking off from the 5th Carrier Division, and they were already breaking away in small groups and heading south. Yet all the fighters, 15 Zeros off Shokaku led by Lt. Tadashi Kaneko, and another 15 off Zuikaku led by Lt. Masao Sato, joined the standing CAP assigned to the fleet, which amounted to 36 additional fighters, nine from each of the four remaining carriers. So the 45 American strike planes escorted by 8 Wildcats were now going to be facing 66 Zeros, and the result was a cold, unflinching mathematical carnage.
The brave Wildcats surged ahead to almost certain doom, while the 18 torpedo bombers broke off and dove for the deck. The dive bombers had to maintain altitude if they were ever to mount an attack, and of the 27 that flew out that day, 10 were killed outright, and another seven forced to break off and evade. Shotai after Shotai ripped through the formation, savaging the American planes like hawks streaking through a flight of lumbering geese. Planes were burning, trailing long smoky tails, and several exploded, careening down out of the sky in a mad cartwheel of death.
Tide Of Fortune (Kirov Series Book 20) Page 4