There had been a buildup of deadly fumes below decks during the afternoon, and yet he had ordered full watertight integrity to be maintained, anticipating at least one more air strike from the island, or an enemy carrier. A brief coded message had been sent from Yamamoto, wishing them luck, but also saying they must rely upon their own guns since there were no longer planes to spare for her protection.
He had sworn a solemn oath that if he ever got his ship out of this, when he returned to Tokyo, he would try and find a way to reach the Emperor himself to denounce this flagrant abandonment of one of Japan’s most precious lines of defense, the guns of a battleship, recklessly thrown away by a commander obsessed with airplanes.
But with dusk settling, as he listened in on radio reports of a final and feeble American attack on Akagi, he felt assured that there would be no more air strikes, though the threat of submarines was all but certain. At least one of the Imperial fleet’s own subs was now slowly circling him, helping to stand guard, though. And a half hour ago he had ordered watertight conditions above the flooded-out zone of the ship to be unsealed, ventilator fans turned back on, to clear out the noxious fumes which had killed dozens of his men fighting to contain the still-smoldering fires.
The flash of the fourth torpedo blew into the bowels of the ship, having first burst through a fuel blister that had been drained out, the precious oil pumped over to a port-side fuel tank to help with counterbalance. The explosion was not contained by the bunker oil, which would not have flash burned, and it therefore broke into the main compartments of the ship, racing through an open corridor. There was a momentary wave of thousand-degree heat that incinerated a score of men caught in its path and in that one-second burst blew into a doorway open to a magazine of five-inch shells. The magazine was nearly empty; most of the the ammunition had been expended during the night bombardment and antiaircraft fire repelling the air attacks. The shells were standard. The huge brass cartridges were kept open, and the number of prepackaged powder bags called for were first stuffed inside the cartridge by a loader, then another man fitted the actual shell atop the cartridge, sealing the unit shut, and set the fuse. It would then be loaded into a hoist that took it up topside to the gun turret.
Nearly half a ton of powder bags were exposed, either inside open shells or in racks, some properly sealed, some opened during the heat of battle and then not secured afterwards as crews turned to damage control. The junior officer in charge of that magazine was new to his post and had not followed correct procedure to secure the magazine and properly dispose of two powder bags that had broken open in the heat of action, during which his crew was expected to prepare and put in the hoist up to eight rounds a minute. The broken five-pound bags were now resting on the floor.
The torpedo flash burst into the open doorway of the magazine, open because the air was being vented out, and scant milliseconds later the two open bags of powder flashed, setting off a chain reaction within the room so that even as the explosion from the torpedo reached its limits, the partial vacuum left in its wake now caused a backflash of flame. The explosion from the five-inch magazine crashed through two bulkheads and into the main ammunition hoist for number two turret. Topside, not only the bulk of the turret, but the deck itself provided so much armor that a direct hit from an incoming shell or 500-kilogram bomb most likely would not have penetrated into the hoist for the three-quarter-ton shells and powder bags.
But six decks down, the explosion met little resistance. It blew into the hoist, most of the fire and heat soaring up, but enough going down that it flashed into one of the four main magazines for the fourteen-inch guns.
The two aft turret magazines had been flooded as a precaution, but not the two magazines forward.
Captain Nagita barely had time to register the fact that they had taken at least one torpedo hit, and then the entire forward half deck of the battleship Hiei burst asunder, the fireball, like that of the Arizona, racing thousands of feet heavenward.
Unlike with the Arizona, there was no mud only thirty-five feet down to settle into; they were in nearly two hundred fathoms of water.
The explosion raced down the main corridors, through open doorways, up and down ventilation shafts; anything that could burn—secondary magazines, wood, bedding, paint on the walls, uniforms and the men wearing them—flashed.
Even before the last of the debris from the main explosion had finally splashed into the ocean, Hiei was going down, its captain and all but a hundred or so of its crew dead. A few compartments aft near the stern, with watertight doors secured to contain smoldering fires in the next compartments, actually held, the men behind them surviving, along with a couple of dozen men laboring in the starboard side engine room. For them, the force of the explosion hit with such violence that most were knocked unconscious, the rooms they were trapped in as black as the deepest cave, except for the dim glow of a few emergency battle lamps that still worked.
The aft end of the ship, in spite of the thousands of tons of water still on board from the hits, and counterflooding, for a brief instant actually lifted clear of the ocean and then plunged down, as if pulled into the ocean by a primordial monster concealed beneath the waves.
The wreckage of the ship started its long dive to the bottom, internal explosions still igniting, but the increasing pressure of the water flooding in containing the burst.
The few men still alive and tragically still conscious might have grasped what was happening. What had been a forward bulkhead was now the floor they lay upon. As the ship reached a depth of four hundred feet, the overpressure of the ocean caused the remaining bulkheads to implode, those farther forward bursting first. Those farthest aft could hear the implosions marching closer and closer, like the sound of terrible iron shutters being slammed shut, crushing all within.
Those who were Buddhist called upon his name, some called for their mothers, a few, secretly Christian, called upon Christ. And then their bulkheads collapsed as well. At that depth the water pressure was over four hundred pounds per square inch. Life was crushed out before they even had time to drown.
U.S.S. Gudgeon
17:55 hrs local time
THE CHEERING FINALLY died down.
“Boys, we got ourselves a battleship,” Captain Lubbers announced over the public address. “Now secure for silent running. Those destroyers out there will be pissed as hell.”
There was still some back slapping, handshakes all around. All knew that if their cruise had been cut short by but two days (they all had groaned when told they were staying out to sea) they would have been inside Pearl Harbor yesterday. Now it was payback time instead.
As all hands quieted down, the sound echoing through the ocean rumbled past their hull, sound traveling far quicker and farther at sea.
There were muffled explosions, and then a strange metallic sound, almost like a tin can being crushed under foot.
“Bulkheads collapsing as she goes down,” one of the torpedo men forward whispered.
There was a moment of silence, then that crushing tin can sound again, louder.
“Poor bastards,” someone said softly.
“The hell with them, they started this,” a petty officer replied coldly.
Hickam Army Air Force Base
17:59 hrs local time
THE ENGINE WAS rough, sputtering. According to the fuel gauges, he was empty. His mixture was set so lean it would barely fire at this altitude.
David spared another quick glance to the southwest. The fireball that had been there minutes ago was gone; the only light now was twilight of the setting sun. He didn’t give it another thought. He was trying to stay alive, and anything beyond that was blocked off.
He was lining up on the base leg of the pattern; amazingly, there was now a radio hookup, clearing him to land on runway three. He pulled full flaps, trying to keep his approach so high that if the engine cut, he still had enough air speed to nose over, go into a glide, and reach the threshold. In a few more seconds he’
d be there. He held off on landing gear until safely within range—too much drag otherwise.
Behind him were two Dauntlesses, both more or less shot up, but not declaring an emergency, and a B-17, Gloria Ann, that incredible lone survivor after but two days of war. She had two wounded and one dead on board, but was told to stay in pattern so the small boys could land first, their fuel nearly exhausted.
“This is X-ray One, on final,” and he banked over hard, leveled out, throttle back, flipped the switches for landing gear. Keep the nose down.
“X-ray One, your landing gear is not deployed!”
He spared a quick glance down at his instrument board. One gear was showing green, the other no light at all.
“I got green on one.”
“No gear, break off and go around.”
The hell with that. He could smell the engine burning out from the far too lean mixture. He was running on fumes; break off now and he’d wind up plowing into the wreckage of the bases below before he could even get back into the pattern. His landing gear was shot up, and circling wasn’t going to change a damn thing now.
He angled to one side of the landing strip; thank God this one was wide, at least two hundred feet across.
“X-ray One, go around!”
He didn’t even bother to reply. Felt ground effect begin to kick in as he began to level out ten feet above the runway, air speed dropping, back stick, don’t yo-yo, little more back stick, his battered Wildcat floating for a hundred yards and then a gut-tearing screeching as the aluminum underbelly hit the concrete. The nose dropped, props striking, instantly stopping, bent back. He began to skid sideways, part of his starboard wing shearing off as the Wildcat looped on its belly. He braced; the impact was hard, blurring his vision… and then silence, except for the wailing of an ambulance siren, two vehicles racing over, one a truck with a roughly painted red cross on its side, the other a crash wagon, an asbestos Joe riding on the sideboard, jumping off even before the truck rolled to a stop, the man leaping up on to the portside wing, climbing up to Dave’s side while two others ran to the front of the plane and began to hose the engine with fire retardant.
The asbestos Joe, looking like some kind of spaceman from a Flash Gordon serial, reached in, unsnapped his harness and pulled him out of the cockpit.
“You injured, sir?”
“Don’t think so.”
They were on the ground, his rescuer guiding him a safe distance back from the Wildcat, which seemed like a dying friend, engine ticking from the heat, hissing from the fire retardant striking hot metal, its lifeblood, oil and hydraulic fluid, pooling out underneath it.
And he suddenly felt heartsick. She had been his plane. When first she was given to him, just a month ago, and he had made his first landing on the Enterprise, he’d go to the hangar deck at night, walking around her, running his hands along her side, as if she were a lover whom he could always trust and who in turn could trust him. He had believed that together they’d always come back. She had been something living to him, and now she was dying.
An army mechanic came up, chewing a wad of tobacco, took a long look, and shook his head.
“Junk pile for spare parts now.”
Dave looked at him coldly.
“You just screwed up fifty-three thousand dollars, sir.”
“Get the hell away and leave me alone,” Dave snapped. The mechanic, still shaking his head, walked away.
A tractor rolled up and turned. The mechanic and two other men ran cables out, sinking hooks in through the cowling to the engine frame.
“Take her away, Charlie,” the mechanic shouted. The tractor revved up. He wanted to scream at them to stop, to leave her alone as she died, but she was blocking part of the active runway. The Dauntless behind him had aborted and circled around. Gloria Ann, higher up, was circling the field, popping off another red flare to indicate wounded aboard.
His plane emitted a harsh metallic cry as they began to drag her away, bits of aluminum undercarriage and part of a tire left behind in her wake, trailing oil, hydraulic fluid, even a faint whiff of av gas. They dumped her at the edge of the runway, disconnected, and the tractor drove off. To either side were other dead planes, some of them completely burned out, others being dissected, like bodies on an autopsy table cut open for parts, or maybe in some vain hope that, Frankensteinlike, life could be jolted back into them.
The Dauntlesses came in, rolled out, and last came Gloria Ann, silhouetted by the western twilight, most of her vertical stabilizer and rudder shot clear away, holes punched through the length of the fuselage. She came down with a hard bounce, lifted, seemed to hang in a dangerous stall, nosing over slightly, came down hard again on two wheels, tires shrieking in protest, and then rolled out. The meat wagon that had been beside his plane was now racing down the runway, siren echoing.
He stood by his plane, took off his leather helmet, unsnapped the seat parachute, and just let it drop to the ground, lifted off his yellow Mae West, let that drop as well, and opened his shirt, letting the cool breeze envelop him.
“Sir?”
It was the damn pesky intelligence officer from earlier, clipboard in hand, the colonel who had sent them out by his side.
He didn’t reply, didn’t salute.
“Just a few questions,” the colonel said softly, “then we’ll leave you alone for now.” He nodded.
“We heard that a dive bomber crashed into one of the Jap carriers.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Who?”
“I think it was Struble.”
“Was it a controlled crash?”
“What?”
“Did he deliberately fly it in?”
Something told him they were looking for a hero. He didn’t know. Dan could have already been dead; the shell burst had pretty well hit him head on.
“Yeah, he flew her in,” he finally replied.
“Can you identify the carrier?”
“Akagi, I think.”
“Was it the same as the carrier hit earlier?”
He looked at them, tried to picture the glimpse of the first carrier, but he was down low then, skimming waves, trying to cover the Devastators, God save them, those poor bastards.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“One more question, sir.” It was the lieutenant, but the colonel put his hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder.
“Later, we can do it later.”
The lieutenant, a bit embarrassed, walked away, heading up toward where the two Dauntlesses had taxied off the runway.
“Need a cigarette, son?” the colonel asked.
Dave nodded. Yeah, I started smoking this morning, he realized.
The colonel lit one and handed it over, reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a flask, and handed it to Dave as well.
“Take a good long drink.”
Dave did, almost as if ordered. Unlike most pilots, he had never joined in the riotous drinking bouts when on leave. He had rarely had anything more than a few beers. But he took the flask, downed two long gulps, coughed a bit between the smoke and the burning of the whiskey, and handed the flask back.
“Son, I think you should know something.”
He looked at the officer, face barely distinguishable now in the deepening twilight.
“You’re an ace. First of the war. Radio reports state you dropped two Japs this afternoon. Reports of other pilots say you got three in the other two fights. The whole nation will be hearing about you, son. You better be ready for it.”
“Who said I got five?” he asked, confused. It was all so damn confusing… too much to take in now.
The colonel hesitated.
“Struble for one witnessed two of your kills and reported them earlier today.”
“I don’t remember,” was all he could say, “and besides, like I said, Struble is dead.”
“I know.”
The colonel squeezed his shoulder in a fatherly gesture and walked away, leaving him alone with t
he wreckage of his plane.
He was alone, soft tropical breeze touching him, cooling, gentle. He sat down, sinking into the shadows, hands touching the warm earth, recalling boyhood days, lying on the ground, watching the clouds, wondering how angels saw them, a few memories, a precious few, of girls by his side, playing at almost making love, snuggled together on a sunlit hillside, concealed in the high grass.
It was a life, a world, remote, gone forever. He began to shake, too many images flashing in his mind, like a film projector gone berserk, running insanely fast, film spilling out: Struble, Gregory, a glimpse of a white plane, red sun on fuselage. Did I kill that man? The P-40 pilot screaming as he burned… Turn off your damn mike! Enterprise—were they still alive… Am I still alive?
He felt as if there were two of him sitting there. There was him, the me of this moment, shivering, stinking of sweat, vomit, fear, and yes, feeling a strange, detached, primal joy. I am still alive, the rest are dead, but I am still here, still breathing. I am alive.
And there was the “other.” Someone who was him, who just two days ago could laugh as he darted between sunlit clouds, and could look heavenward, high up, all so high up where the air was so thin and pure, knowing at that moment there was not another living soul who saw the world as he did. A boy who could laugh, smile, dream of his girl by his side in the darkness, memories of home, Midwestern pastures and distant horizons.
That boy was someone else, who at that moment arose out of him, and without looking back, walked away, into the darkness. He would be lost out there forever, a fading memory, wandering alone—and he would never return.
Dave lowered his head and silently wept.
Chapter Twelve
Enterprise
145 miles east-southeast of Oahu
19:15 hrs local time
COMMANDER STUBBS, ADMIRAL Halsey by his side, stood on the deck of their beloved Enterprise, still listing at nearly eight degrees to starboard, Stubbs with megaphone in hand.
Days of Infamy Page 26