Quest of the Seventh Carrier

by Peter Albano

  Taku shrieked with anguish as he watched the glowing red and white balls strike home. Bits of metal, sloughed off from the doomed Zero’s left wing followed by the hood, tumbled in the slipstream like trash. The stricken fighter crabbed awkwardly, right wing drooping, then half rolled as if piloted by a drunk. The MEs bored in, flattening their dives. Another half roll and Yosano suddenly flew a level course, streaming black smoke. He was either wounded, mad or paralyzed by fear. In any event, he was dead meat.

  “No! No! Never fly straight and level in a dog fight,” Ishikawa agonized into his mask.

  Precisely on his killing angle, Friessner fired a burst from a mere thirty meters and Yosano died instantly, a twenty millimeter shell striking him in the back, blowing his left lung, a half-dozen ribs and most of his heart into his shattered instrument panel. Curving slowly and flaring like a struck match, the stricken Zero rolled and curved toward the bay leaving a giant black grave marker across the sky.

  Cursing, crying, pounding his instrument panel with a gloved fist, Taku climbed hard toward Tanizaki, the ready Zeros following but still far below. “Dive! Dive, Junichiro!” he cried into his microphone. But the young pilot pulled up into a climbing turn impossible for the jet black MEs to follow. A half roll completed Tanizaki’s Immelmann turn and he faced his pursuers head on. Well drilled, and obviously experienced, the two enemy pilots split into a “Y,” forcing Tanizaki to choose. He chose the fighter to his right. As the Mitsubishi whipped into its turn and opened fire, the other ME turned in and began its own run. The stream of tracers blew off the Zero’s canopy, punctured the fuselage in a dozen places and shredded the rudder. Slow rolling, the young Japanese passed his pursuers, flame streaming from the fuel tank in his fuselage like a newborn comet.

  “Bail out! Bail out!” Taku screamed. A brown figure dropped from the flaming Zero and a parachute opened.

  “Thanks to the gods.”

  A quick glance showed the checkerboard and blood red ME far below where the two ready Zeros slashed into them, Commander Yoshi Matsuhara’s machine with its familiar red cowl and green hood in the lead. Far astern, the two black MEs were following the parachute down. Like great white sharks on a feeding frenzy, they slashed in on Tanizaki’s form which was a pendulum oscillating beneath a white canopy. Instead of killing the man, they destroyed the parachute. The young pilot plunged into the Uraga Peninsula, shrouds and riddled chute streaming behind.

  “Swine! Filthy dogs!” Ishikawa cried. But the moment of butchery gave Taku his chance at the two remaining bombers which were beginning their runs three hundred meters above him. Horsing the stick back and tramping right rudder, he swept up under the trailing Douglas’ tail. Bringing the luminous bead of his gun sight to the nose of the bomber, Yoshi waited until the huge plane filled all three rings. He felt a warmth in his groin and his lips were suddenly parched. He squeezed the tit.

  The fighter bucked, shells and steel-jacketed bullets smashing into the bomber’s belly. The DC-3 began shedding aluminum in sheets like a molting reptile. Standing on its tail, the Zero was in danger of stalling, but Taku urged the little fighter on, ruddering to the right, sending his tracers into the right engine and wing root where the airframe was weakest.

  The wing bent up, the bomber half rolled to the left and the wing flopped down like an injured bird trying to escape a predator. Lazily, the huge plane continued to roll to the left, right wing incredibly working up and down, spilling its guts; ganglions of color-coded control wires, ruptured hydraulic piping and fuel lines, streaming red hydraulic fluid and lacy white runnels of gasoline.

  Unable to hold its climb any longer and with its airspeed indicator crowding zero, the vibrating Mitsubishi objected with dead controls and a screaming Sakae. Taku allowed the weight and torque of the engine to twist the fighter to the right and fall off into a dive. With air flowing over his control surfaces once more, he horsed the stick back, stomped left rudder and trimmed into a shallow dive, glancing over his shoulder at the Douglas. As he watched, the bomber made its own roll and plunged straight down. Two hundred meters above the bay, the right wing broke loose, twisting and planing wildly behind the Douglas like a leaf in a typhoon.

  There was no time to celebrate, to enjoy his enemy’s death plunge. Instead, Taku streaked downward trading altitude for speed as tracers snapped past, the two black MEs on his tail, 500 meters astern. The lieutenant knew his Zero better than its designer, Jiro Horikoshi, and its builder, Mitsubishi. Because the Zero could not out dive the heavier Messerschmitt, Taku pulled back on his stick, but slowly, curving into an elongated chandelle, trying to lull his enemies into thinking he was repeating the same error made by Yosano and Tanizaki. They took the bait. Sharply, they broke to both sides and streaked in for the kill, guns hammering.

  Taku was ready for them. While a pneumatic drill pounded on his left wing, vibrating the aircraft and sending bits of torn aluminum showering into the slipstream, he chopped power to five hundred rpms and pushed the black knob of his pitch control to full forward, turning his propeller into a speed-killing drag. Hands moving in a blur, he cracked the flap handle to full down, trimming hard for the abrupt change in the balance of the fighter. Killing speed, like an anchor snagging a coral head, Taku felt himself lunge forward against the straps. Two black shapes hurtled past, one on each side.

  “Banzai! Banzai!” he screamed, raising his flaps, restoring pitch, punching the throttle and skidding with a touch of right rudder into the flat turn that only the lithe Zero could execute. A black ME was precisely where it should have been, only forty meters ahead and filling his gun sight. A perfect one-quarter deflection shot. He could not miss.

  A short burst of only ten twenty-millimeter shells blew off the vertical stabilizer, smashed the canopy and exploded the pilot’s head like a dropped melon. A yellow-red custard splattered into the Zero’s propeller, speckling his windshield. On full throttle, the ME dropped off on one wing and then gyrated wildly downward, a demented, tortured moth in its death throes.

  Fearfully, Taku searched for the other 109s. The sharp eyes found a black ME streaking into a dive and racing far out of range to the east, already crossing the Boso Peninsula while, far to the north, actually over the city of Tokyo, the ready Zeros kept Friessner and Rosencrance locked in a vicious, tumbling dog fight.

  The last bomber. He must kill the last bomber. But his fight with the MEs had cost him altitude. Taken him far out of range. More curses. He banked toward the south, the bay, Yonaga and the bomber which was almost on the wildly turning carrier.

  “She is close, very close. Your twenty-five millimeter…” He palmed the velvet charm bag hanging from his instrument panel, “In the name of The Blessed One, open up with your machine guns — the secondaries!”

  “Secondary battery, commence firing!” Admiral Fujita shouted at the talker.

  Yonaga had 186 twenty-five-millimeter guns in triple mounts. Most were in batteries of four protected by twenty-two-millimeter steel-plated tubs in galleries flanking the flight deck. However, six mounts were scattered over the foretop, two bolted to the deck on each side of the aft director and two more secured to the starboard side of the stack. In all, fifty-seven triple mounts bore on the approaching bomber.

  With rippling staccato blasts, 171 twenty-five-millimeter guns came to life, their concussions weaving through the heavy explosions of cannons like a concerto of snare drums counterpointed by heavy percussions. Brent Ross stood in awe as thousands of tracers stormed, converging on the Douglas like a smoking blizzard, the horizon filling with puffs of brown smoke as falling shells self-destructed. But the plane plodded on, apparently oblivious to the death all around.

  “Elevation forty-degree, bomb bay doors open, Admiral,” Brent called out at the top of his lungs.

  “More speed! More speed!” Fujita shouted down the voice tube.

  A frightened, anxious voice came back, “Five-hundred-twenty-five-pounds of steam pressure, one-hundred-forty-five revolutions, sir. Engi
neering can give you no more with four boilers down for descaling.”

  “Only twenty-two knots,” Fujita spat to himself. And then staring anxiously at the approaching aircraft, “Left full rudder,”

  “Left full rudder, sir.”

  Brent felt the ship correct its heel to port, come to an even keel and then begin its new turn. But it was slow — very slow. Abruptly, little lights winked on the bomber’s fuselage and bits of metal flew from the port wing followed by a yellow glow and black puff of smoke from the port engine.

  “Banzai! Banzai!”

  Yet, the plane bored on through a sky pockmarked with drifting shell bursts and ripped by tracers, never deviating from its course. “Sabbah swine!” Fujita shouted, waving a fist. “Kill them! Kill them!” Suddenly, at an altitude of two thousand feet and with its left wing dragging, six gleaming objects parted from the pregnant belly and arced downward, glistening like raindrops in the sun.

  Dropping his glasses, Brent stood transfixed, a cold snake uncoiling in his chest, guts turned to ice water. Fear. No, terror. A familiar sensation that brought sour gorge to his throat and froze his muscles. Sixteen-inch biceps were of no avail against five-hundred-pound bombs. Nevertheless, he stood tall; hardened his jaw. From the corner of his eye he could see every other man on the bridge do exactly the same. “Bombs away, sir,” he called into Fujita’s ear, the timbre of his voice deceptively calm.

  “Right full rudder,” Fujita ordered.

  Again, the ship heeled hard. Gripping the windscreen with white knuckles, Brent stared upward as the bombs screeched down, followed by the Douglas which had dropped its port wing and lurched into a dive. The bombs and plane seemed to be descending directly on his head. The young lieutenant gave no ground, choking back his fear and stiffening his back even more. Run? Where could he run? That was steel-tipped AP ordnance plunging down. He held his breath and his countenance became stone.

  Two bombs exploded off the port bow, sending 400 foot columns of blue water skyward, flashes of the exploding HE drowned instantly by the geysers. Another was a plate-bending near miss off the bow, soaking the bow gun crews with tons of water, but doing no serious damage. The remaining three fell harmlessly in a stick to starboard.

  Cheers! “Banzai!”

  The plane, burning and obviously out of control, plunged downward, a wounded bird stripped of its ability to fly, dying in agonized gyrations. Mesmerized, every man on the bridge stared upward as the thirteen-ton aircraft with both engines burning accelerated its dive, headed directly for the bridge. An abrupt flip and the plane headed to port in what appeared to be its final plunge. More cheers, followed by silent horror, as the plane began to level and turn.

  “No. No, dear God, no.” Brent prayed to himself as the Douglas miraculously pulled from its dive just three hundred feet off the port side and almost on the water. It stormed toward the carrier, trailing flame and greasy black smoke, chunks of wreckage falling into the water behind it. Brent could see every detail; two huge Pratt and Whitney radial engines, wheels retracted like double chins, old-fashioned unretracted tail wheel, black radar nose, the “El Al” emblazoned on wings and fuselage, the flaps and aileron of the left wing shot from their control lines and flopping helplessly, shiny aluminum blasted free of paint and rimming shell and bullet holes, exposing crisscrossing spars and ribs. No pilots were visible behind the shattered windshields.

  Fujita waved a tiny fist, “Amaterasu, where are you?”

  Veering wildly, the plane dropped below the flight deck, then up, glancing off the port edge of the deck at at least 200 miles per hour, bouncing like a ball as high as the mast head, spilling burning gasoline as it roared across the deck from port to starboard. With a shock like a Kyushu earthquake, it impacted the aft director carrying it away with two twenty-five-millimeter mounts, crews firing until the plane crashed down their muzzles. With both wings sheared off and its nose crushed all the way back to the bomb bay, the remains of the Douglas spun and rained into the sea, kicking up white spray all along the starboard side. The director, twenty-five-millimeter guns and the eighteen members of the gun crews tumbled from the platform in burning bits and pieces. Two crewmen wrapped in flames, twisted into the inferno on the flight deck, screaming hideously as they fell past the flag bridge.

  Fujita shouted a barrage of orders to Naoyuki and the voice tube: “All stop! Rudder amidships. Fire and Rescue to the flight deck! Do not — I repeat, do not ventilate ship!”

  Brent Ross wretched as pungent waves of burning fuel laced with the sickly sweet smell of incinerated human flesh filled his nostrils. Starting down into the flames, he felt his eyes water. Smoke, he told himself. Yes, that's what it is, smoke. Self-consciously, he wiped his face with a handkerchief.

  On three-quarter throttle, Lieutenant Taku Ishikawa nursed the wounded Zero upward, ever upward, gaining altitude — the fighter pilot’s most precious commodity. Fearfully, he examined his damaged wing. Thirteen millimeter slugs had punched a dozen holes in it, but most ominous was a hit from a twenty-millimeter shell which had blasted a huge chunk of skin off the top of the wing. He could actually see the center section of the tapered main wing spar that ran from wing tip to wing tip, part of the rear spar, aileron transverse linkage, flap actuating motor, the breech and ammunition box of the Orlikon and rows of stringers. But miraculously, despite black splotches from burned powder, the sturdy spars and stringers appeared intact. Nevertheless, the gaping hole served as an air trap, dragging and slowing the aircraft, canceling the natural torque of the engine.

  He jerked his eyes down below the trailing edge of his starboard wing and felt a surge of terror and anger slither around inside of him like some loathsome reptile. Smoke. Greasy black smoke wreathed Yonaga. She was dead in the water. No chance to land on that flight deck. He could ditch. But that was risky; especially with his damage. Bail out? Unthinkable while he had control. Tokyo International. Only forty kilometers away. Yes. That was it. He banked carefully toward the city.

  There, over the huge metropolis, two aircraft were locked in a dog fight while two columns of black smoke brooded over the heart of the city. Without warning, his elevators took a blow. A glance in his rear view mirror revealed a black shadow behind him, a white spinner and cowl leaping with flame. The Arab had not fled. Indeed, a wily fighter, he had circled back high, attacked out of a cloud.

  A punch drove the throttle to the fire wall while a kick to the left rudder with the stick shoved to the left and then down, half rolled the Zero into a vertical dive. His wing stayed on but control was sloppy, the altered trim of the machine tugging hard to the left. More skin slaked off from the wing.

  A flurry of thuds and the stick stung his hands, the ME only a one hundred meter behind and gaining. One chance. Only one chance. Taku pulled back hard on the stick, tramped right rudder and then immediately countered with left rudder, jinking to the right and then left as he pulled out of the dive, horizon plunging below the cowling.

  Desperately, the black aircraft tried to match the maneuver. But its ton of excess weight defeated it and plunged past, still firing. The Zero took its death blow. A burst of thirteen-millimeter bullets punched through the canopy, splintered the instrument panel, ripping the velvet charm bag and spilling icons under Ishikawa’s feet. Two twenty-millimeter shells blew off the top of the cowling and shot the heads off of three cylinders. Out of balance, belching oil, flames and black smoke, the Sakae tried to rip itself from its mounts.

  With speed born of panic, Taku killed the ignition. Side slip. He must side slip. But the controls had been shot away and the fighter dropped off on one wing and began its final spin. He was blind, oil and soot covering his punctured windshield and goggles. Flames streaked back, came up through the floor, seared his boots, ignited the left leg of his flight suit. He tore his helmet and mask off, beat at the flames, yanked the little rubber ball over his head. With a woosh, the canopy ripped away and the wind and noise battered him. A frantic jerk pulled the harness pin and he
gripped the cockpit rim, pushing with his feet and levering himself up, fighting the terrible centrifugal force of the spin.

  His sword hilt caught on the cockpit’s combing. Screaming with rage and fear, he finally managed to pull the sword free and work his head above the windscreen, the tearing wind sucking him out of the cockpit. Immediately, he stopped, whipping in space like a dervish. The top of his fur-lined right boot had caught on the steel quadrant of the pitch control. He was chained to the fighter — a nightmare that whipped with typhoon winds, clawed at his flesh and made his eyes watery, beat him and shrieked in his ears like banshees, the shattered fighter dragging him down by the leg. Flames were burning his leg like a blowtorch. Screaming, cursing, crying, he pushed with all his strength, felt the boot rip and then come free.

  Incredibly, he changed worlds, and suddenly he was floating in peace, in a place of no noise and no buffeting. It was so quiet and restful he felt like going to sleep. Like a flash of lightning, his brain cleared and he pulled the D-ring, hearing a sharp crack like a rifle shot as the parachute popped open. He was floating, free, a cloud, a soaring sea gull. Only two hundred meters beneath him, the Boso Peninsula. The Messerschmitt? Where was the enemy fighter? He caught a needle-nosed black shape out of the corner of his eye. The ME diving for the kill. He looked down. Houses. People looking up with white faces. Fields and trees. Many trees and the earth which had been so remote rushed up at him. With quick, jerky movements, he worked his shrouds, spilling air and dropping precipitously toward a thicket of pine trees, bullets snapping angrily by.