Dave’s four .30-caliber Browning machine guns opened up, forty rounds a second slashing out, calibrated to converge into a target at two hundred fifty yards, the convergence crisscrossing just ahead of his target, beginning to spread. Sixteen rounds slashed across the forward cowling of the Zero, severing an oil line, two more cutting into the fuel line, a red-hot tracer sparking the spray of gas into a flash of fire. A second later the Zero was trailing smoke, snap rolling to avoid his fire. He shot past the enemy plane, losing sight of him.
It had yet to even register whether he had done anything or not.
My God, it is all so fast. Damn fast. No time for bullshit heroics or witty comments back and forth like in the movies, where the enemy were all so clearly visible, and slow, and just sitting ducks. He lost sight of his target.
“Number seven! On your tail!”
It took a second to register: I’m number seven!
He caught a glimpse of tracers snapping over the top of his canopy, and he was still in a forty-five-degree dive, inverted.
Pull stick, and fly into it. Roll, he’s got my wing. He pushed stick forward, instantly pulling two negative G’s. Damn, I always puke with negative G’s.
He was too frightened to vomit now. The tracers were dropping away. He pulled a sharp half roll, reversed stick, instantly back to two positive G’s, looked aft. The Zero was gone. Another smoking trail of fire visible for a second, this one a white plane in flames, going down. My kill?
“He’s still on you, seven!”
He strained to look aft. Caught a glimpse of the Zero following him, tightening his turn inside of him. Damn, they can outturn us! Everyone said our planes outturned theirs! Someone gave us the wrong info!
Reverse roll, he’s got me. Try to outturn, he’s got me. They were still at twelve thousand feet.
He slammed his stick forward, stomach feeling like it was up in his throat, and he began to vomit even as he nosed over into a power dive nearly straight down at eighty degrees.
Outrun him, go for a cloud below.
Damn! I’m supposed to be part of the squadron. Where the hell are they?
He fumbled for his mike.
“Diving! Can’t outturn these bastards!”
His mission was to provide air cover and support for the attacking bombers. That was gone now. He was flying to save his life, tracers winking past him first to port, then starboard, as the Zero tried to line up on him, the heavier Wildcat beginning to pull away… and then they were into the clouds.
He had no idea what the bottom ceiling was as his plane shuddered slightly from the change in air density of the cloud and the turbulence within it.
Tropical, morning. Most likely less than a thousand-foot base above the ocean. He was redlining at over 320 miles per hour and down to three thousand.
He pulled back hard, G load building up again, four, then five, world going darker, blurry, vision narrowing, orientation lost inside the gray-shrouded world.
Blinding flash of sunlight—he was out of the cloud, blue ocean below, a moment of panic again: I’m going in—and then he leveled out, five hundred feet above the gently rolling Pacific.
And then a buffet, a flash of fire and smoke. He had come out of the cloud with a Jap battleship barely a mile off his starboard wing, Their gunners were opening up.
He pulled into a chandelle, climbing and turning, caught a glimpse of another Wildcat popping out of the cloud, this one, amazingly, actually on the tail of a Zero, stitching it. Flaming wreckage tumbling out of the cloud behind the dueling planes; impossible to tell if was a Jap or one of his.
He felt like a complete and total idiot, for a few seconds imagining standing before McCloskey or even Halsey himself—if I get out of this alive, he thought—explaining not only why he had failed to escort the bombers but had gotten separated from his squadron as well.
The bombers? Where the hell were they? Where were the Jap flattops?
Flashes of tracers again. He looked aft. The bastard had chased him all the way down, popped out of the cloud behind him and was lining up for a kill, flying through his own antiaircraft fire from the battleship.
Dave pulled back on his stick, rolling out of the banking turn, and popped back up into the cloud… and for the moment out of the fight.
Eight miles south of Hiei
06:28 hrs local time
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER DAN Struble, leading the combined squadron of fifteen Dauntless dive bombers, caught glimpses of the air battle raging eight miles or more off his starboard wing, listening in on the same frequency as the fighters, hearing the near panic, thin trails of smoke streaking down.
Now what?
He could see the Jap battleship. We can be over it in less than three minutes. Hold back? Where the hell were the flattops?
“This is B-17 Gloria Ann, anyone out there read me?”
Jesus Christ, what the hell was a 17 doing out here, he wondered.
He keyed his mike.
“Go ahead, Gloria Ann, this is Phoenix Three.”
“Are you bombers?”
He hesitated. It could be a Jap.
“Can’t say, Gloria Ann,” he replied finally.
“Well damn it, whoever you are, there’s three of us and we’re taking out that Jap battleship. If you’re nearby I’d appreciate some help. I’m coming in from Wheeler.”
Do I support or not? They had flown little more than a hundred ten miles. Plenty of fuel left for an hour of searching before having to head back. But search where? The old man said he wanted their flattops. Well damn it, no one was telling him where they were, and his fighter escort was gone.
“You with me, Phoenix?” It was almost a plea. He could actually see them, or at least the bursts of Japanese gunfire that was now shooting towards the northeast.
“Skipper, we got Japs at five o’clock high!”
His tail gunner’s voice cracked with excitement. The kid was barely eighteen.
He looked aft. Couldn’t see them.
“How many?”
“Three coming in, sir!”
A second later there was a flash of light. One of his bombers off his starboard side, flying in echelon astern, snap rolled over, wing trailing flame, a Jap cutting up through the formation. It was one of their new fighters he had heard rumor of. That decided it!
While he was looking aft another bastard had snuck up on them from below!
We’re going to get cut apart up here if we hang around any longer.
“Come on, Phoenix, help us!” It was the B-17, and he could see that one of them was trailing smoke as they lumbered toward the battleship.
He keyed his mike.
“Phoenix three, follow me. Let’s get the battleship!”
Halsey would most likely hang his hide out to dry, but then again, that would only happen if he was still alive an hour from now. There was no way in hell they were going to outfly these new damn Jap fighters, loaded down with half-ton bombs, without their own escorts covering them.
Enterprise
06:29 hrs local time
“GOD DAMN IT,” Halsey snapped, angry gaze fixed on the loudspeaker. It was getting hard to discern anything. Radio discipline was breaking down entirely, but it was clear enough that his fighters, flying ahead, had not cleared away any of their fighters, or for that matter picked up an inbound track, and his dive bombers were committing to the battleship.
“Damn all.”
And he stalked out of the CIC, up a flight and from there out to the bridge.
The reserve Wildcats, five of them, were spotted on the deck, engines turning over slowly, waiting to launch if an incoming were picked up by the new radar unit, its antenna looking for all the world like a giant mattress spring turning atop the highest mast.
Hang Struble when he gets back?
No, God damn it. If they’re getting bounced by fighters without any cover from our fighters, there’s nothing they can do now but unload on the nearest target and get the hell out.
The Japs had gotten there first, which meant that either they launched in total darkness or were a damn sight closer to that battleship than he was. Losing X-ray Delta, he had no search going on to his northwest and west-northwest, and his gut instinct now told him they were somewhere over there.
“Sir.”
It was the captain of Enterprise.
He nodded.
“Sir, we’re picking up the broadcast from the mainland. The President is about to speak.”
“Pipe it through the ship,” Halsey said coldly, hoping that their commander-in-chief would say something, anything, to boost morale and the fighting spirit of his crew.
Hiei
06:29 hrs local time
THE THREE B-17S, flying in a V formation, were coming straight in, at a suicidal three thousand feet. Two Zeroes were on their tails, hammering them hard, flying as well into the wall of antiaircraft going up. The fifty 25mm guns mounted on the starboard side of the battleship were sending up a fusillade of fire. Its five-and six-inchers, barrels depressed, were firing as well.
One of the 17s suddenly rolled over, its entire portside wing shearing off from a direct hit, part of the wing spinning back in the plane’s slipstream, smashing into the trailing Zero, destroying it as well.
Hiei couldn’t turn or maneuver.
“Enemy bombers to port. Dive bombers!”
Nagita raised his glasses, spotting them within seconds. At least two planes were on fire, and he felt a momentary flash of anger. Too much attention had been focused on the approaching 17s. On the two surviving enemy heavy bombers, bomb bay doors were opened, and a second later each plane unloaded ten five-hundred-pound general-purpose high explosives. No armor piercing could be found in the shambles of Wheeler.
All Captain Nagita could do was stand and watch, hoping the two bombers had dropped short. The second one, trailing smoke from a flaming outboard engine, banked up sharply and away.
Eight seconds later the first bomb hit the ocean a quarter mile to starboard, just forward of the bow, and at half-second intervals the other nineteen bombs walked in toward Hiei, each hit sending a tower of foaming water two hundred feet into the air, concussion racing through the ocean, rattling the thirty-six-thousand-ton mass of the ship.
The drop from the one bomber walked across the bow of the ship, missing by less than fifty yards.
Someone pulled him down flat, his damage control officer, and then it hit, the eighth bomb from the lead 17 impacting into the starboard side of number one turret, the blast not penetrating through, but nevertheless tearing across the deck, wiping out three of the twenty-five-millimeter mounts, annihilating their crews, splinters howling across the width of the ship and halfway back to the stern, shattering a window of the bridge, decapitating the assistant helmsman. A fragment of bomb casing penetrated the wall aft, killing two more men in the corridor.
Nagita picked himself back up, and looked over the railing. Smoke was still swirling around number one turret. Though the bomb had not penetrated, it was obvious the blast had dismounted the gun from its bearings. It could have been worse.
“They’re diving!”
He looked up.
The American dive bombers, at least ten of them, were beginning to wing over.
Honolulu
06:30 hrs local time
IT HAD NOT taken James long to find a scattering of paper outside the wreckage of CinCPac. In fact the ground was carpeted with paper, shattered filing cabinets, and what he suspected was even part of one of their ultrasecret IBM calculating machines used for decrypting.
Dianne had finally spotted a blank sheet bearing the letterhead of the Office of Personnel, CinCPac.
Dianne had a pen in her purse, which somehow she had managed to hang on to throughout all this insanity, and he quickly forged an authorization that the bearer of this note was temporarily drafted to assist with the repair and deployment of radios, by direct order of Admiral Kimmel, authorizing the bearer to commandeer whatever personnel and equipment needed, dated it yesterday, and with a flourish made an indecipherable signature, since he could not, at this moment, possibly remember the man’s name.
He hung on to the note and with its power in less than ten minutes had a Navy deuce and a half, with a driver and three armed marines, who seemed to be glad to be dragged away from standing around, guarding the still burning ruins of CinCPac. He loaded his team into the back of the truck and headed for Joe’s radio shop. James rode up front, ready to stick the note in the face of any Shore Patrol or cop who tried to stop them, and stuck Joe in the back, out of sight, since the appearance of someone Japanese might trigger an undesirable reaction.
With the truck backed up to the front door of the shop, Joe busily directed the team as it stripped out shortwave radios, ham radios, and bins full of radio tubes and tools, loading them onto the truck.
James stood silent, watching, the thought crossing his mind that at this moment, this man was loading out thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and there was no damn inventory. It’d be a snowball’s chance in hell that he’d ever get compensated.
Joe was on the phone, which amazingly was still working, at least in this part of town, making calls, and within minutes several cars pulled up, Joe introducing them as friends who knew radios.
“Hey, everyone come over here,” one of them cried, bursting into the doorway of the shop and pointing out to his polished black Cadillac.
He ran back to his car, popping the doors open. The car was still running, and mounted in the dashboard was what looked to be a very expensive radio with shortwave frequencies.
“It’s the President. He’s going to speak!”
Everyone fell silent, work for that moment forgotten. The crowd gathered round the open doors, with James standing to one side. Farther down the street he saw where a car had come to a dead stop in the middle of the road, the driver shouting for some men futilely training a couple of garden hoses on a burning house to come over.
“Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States …”
The sound of the applause wavered, distorted, the owner of the car gingerly working the tuning dial.
James’s focus shifted. Dozens of plumes of smoke rose nearly straight up in the still morning air, flattening out several thousand feet above Honolulu. One could easily pick out where Pearl was, a solid black column of smoke darkening the western sky. A lone ambulance raced past, weaving around the car in the middle of the street, where a crowd was gathering, bell clattering. As it roared past he could see that the sides of the ambulance were flame scorched and had been pierced by shrapnel.
And as it receded all seemed strangely quiet: small crowds gathering around parked cars. Somewhere off in the distance, a loudspeaker was on. So strangely quiet and hushed. And then that voice, that voice familiar to the entire world could be heard, crackling on some radios, sharp and clear on others.
“Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy …”
Infamy. He hadn’t heard that word used in years. It had a Victorian era ring to it. He looked back at the oily black smoke twisting up into the morning sky over Pearl, heard the distant receding rattle of the ambulance, an air raid siren warbling in the distance, aware now that it had been shrieking thus ever since they had arrived at the radio shop.
“Always will we remember the character of the attack against us …”
He thought of the dead marine by his side, of watching as Oklahoma rolled over in its death throes, taking hundreds of young men with her, of his mother-in-law, sobbing as she salvaged but a single photo of her dead grandson before fleeing their home. He remembered the row of bodies, not even decently covered with a sheet or blanket, lined up outside the ruins of headquarters, while he and Dianne had picked around between them, looking for a blank sheet of paper to forge a document.
“Our answer …”
How do we answer, he wondered. Damn, I hate the bastards, but how do we answer? With what?
; A distant explosion rumbled over them. He looked back toward Pearl. Something had blown; a fireball was climbing heavenward. God, was there anything left there to blow up? Was the bombardment starting again?
He suddenly felt all so tired, beyond exhaustion. When did I sleep last? He’d been up the entire night before the attack, and his left arm was throbbing He looked down at the bandage, stained dark from congealed blood. Two days now without sleep?
He tried to focus on the President’s words. Should I be at attention? It was the commander-in-chief speaking. Does he know what is really going on out here?
He looked at the group gathered around. All were silent. Joe’s hands were clenched with anger barely suppressed. Dianne had started to cry, tears coursing down her cheeks as she shuddered and held back a sob.
“… a state of war exists between the United States and the Empire of Japan …”
No one spoke. Another explosion rumbled across the island: a cruiser hit during the night bombardment was torn apart as its forward magazine ignited.
“… and win through to the inevitable victory, so help us God.”
There was an eruption of applause on the radio, but around him all were silent, grim.
Several turned to look back to him. He was in command here.
Am I supposed to say something, he wondered. The fireball from the exploding cruiser was spreading out in a dark oily plume, its burnt offering mingling with the hundreds of other fires out of control.
“Let’s get back to work,” was all he could say. The President had said what needed to be said. Now it was time to get back to work.
What happened next he wasn’t quite sure. For a moment he thought it was Margaret, and then to his shock and embarrassment a whispered voice.
“It’s Dianne, I’m not Margaret.”
Apparently he had collapsed and was now in the backseat of the Cadillac, jacket off, and she was gently moving his good hand away from her waist.
“He OK?”
It was Joe, looking in anxiously.
Days of Infamy Page 11