John levels off at 10,000 feet, finally able to match the power of the two engines without superchargers. The drop tanks--long empty--will have to go: their extra drag could be the difference between making it home or not. With a flick of two switches, they detach from the wings and tumble to the deserted sea below.
The sea is not deserted for long. Now it is full of US Navy warships, battering the islands north of Okinawa at will. At least if I have to ditch, I have a pretty good chance of getting picked up quick around here, John thought, provided some trigger-happy swabbies don’t shoot me.
As promised, John informs Bomber Command of the B-24’s problem when he gets within radio range. A few minutes after that, Okinawa looms ahead, the mountains of the north clearly visible. It is time to start down: he gets busy with the Before Landing checklist. The fuel gauges begin to flirt with the low end of their scales.
Keep them running, girl…This is gonna be real close!
Time seems to drag. This mission should have been over a long time ago. Preparations for landing make the cramped cockpit a busy place. As the descent takes them through thin, patchy clouds, John doesn’t even notice that the brilliant blue sky of altitude is fading to the less-vibrant hue of sea level.
Air traffic control tells him to plan a landing to the west-southwest, so he hugs the east coast until clear of the mountains. There are plenty of other aircraft approaching the island. A controller’s voice barks in John’s headphones: “Focus 4-7, how about orbiting for a few minutes while I get this flight of transports down? They’re running on fumes.”
A quick glance at the fuel gauges tells John what he already knows all too well.
“Unable, Kadena. Unable.” John replies. “I’m pretty low on gas myself.”
“All right, Focus…we’ll sandwich you in. Do you have visual on traffic to your south?”
“Roger, Kadena. I’ve got them.”
At least a dozen C-46 and C-47 transports are approaching from the opposite direction, clustered in V-shaped groups known as the “finger four” formation. As they begin to peel off for landing, forming a ragged, downward sloping line to the runway, one of the transports turns wide to accommodate f-stop. John snuggles his plane into the landing queue.
He taps the fuel gauges one more time, just to make sure they’re not lying. They don’t budge--not even a needle’s width. He begins to consider one more option to ensure making the field.
Maybe I should shut that right one down…It’ll be no sweat making the fuel last on one engine…
But he knows better. Flying on one engine always feels a lot dicier than two. And if you have to go around--abort the approach, climb away and circle for another try--an F-5 can get real squirrelly when you pour the coals to just one engine. Many pilots have died after losing one of the engines during takeoff. Their planes just rolled over and augured into the ground.
I’m going to leave them both running, thank you.
The ground is now close but not close enough. Flaps down…gear down...and in a few more moments, f-stop is on the ground and taxiing to its spot on the squadron ramp.
She is guided to a stop by her crew chief, Staff Sergeant Chuck Jaworski. He holds up the closed-fist signal that means set brakes. Technicians immediately begin removing the film cartridges from the 5 cameras, load them into a jeep and speed off for immediate development. John would join the Intelligence staff people shortly, who would debrief him on the mission and evaluate the photos.
As the props spin to a stop, John rolls down the side windows of the canopy and releases the upper section. Jaworski, a bull of a man, towers above him on the wing, folds the upper canopy back out of the way, straddles the cockpit and effortlessly lifts the tall, sturdy but very stiff Captain Worth out of the cockpit by the armpits. The weather has turned. The storm has finally arrived and is unleashing its rain. John can tell right away Chuck is not pleased.
“You’re a little late, ain’t you, skipper? And where the hell are my drop tanks?” Jaworski asks.
“Right supercharger dropped out at 20,000 feet, Sarge…lost power…fluctuated…”
“You weren’t trying to get away from anybody at the time, I hope?”
“No… not then.”
Two of Jaworski’s mechanics stand by the aircraft’s nose, awaiting instructions, getting wet.
“Petrillo, Lucas…” Jaworski says, “get a look at the right intercooler and waste gate ducting…we’ve got ourselves a sick supercharger here.”
Glancing at the supercharger, which protrudes slightly from the upper side of the right tail boom behind the engine, Jaworski says, “Well, she didn’t blow apart, anyway…” and steps over the cockpit to the right wing. John follows him. Petrillo and Lucas get to work removing the access panels at the rear of the engine nacelle.
Chuck Jaworski is 27 years old; something of an old man in this Army. He is married with two kids, who he hasn’t seen since late 1942; a tough survivor of the hardscrabble steel mills of Pittsburgh. A highly skilled mechanic and intuitive troubleshooter, he has been John Worth’s crew chief for the last three years. The bond of respect, admiration, and trust between the sergeant and the captain is immeasurable. When not around other people, they call each other by their first names, indifferent to the breach of military etiquette.
Petrillo and Lucas remove the nacelle panel covering the suspected ducting. Jaworski kneels on the wing and begins to feel around the still hot ducting with a gloved hand, ignoring the steady rain that turns to steam on contact with the ducting.
“Here it is… this duct clamp is blown… leaking at the waste gate… that’s why you lost power,” Chuck says, correct as usual. “Lucky you didn’t melt the tail boom off.”
John kneels and leans forward to look down into the nacelle, but his body, still stiff from over five hours of sitting in the cockpit, just doesn’t bend the way he wants. Instead, he topples forward, his right forearm plunging onto a sharp edge of the now-exposed ducting. The cut is deep...there is lots of blood.
John grimaces as he pulls the arm back, yelling: “Ah, shit!”
“That’s gonna need stitches, Captain,” Chuck says.
“Yeah, yeah, I know… Corporal Petrillo, hand me one of those clean rags, please. I’ll just wrap it up and walk over to the hospital. I could use the exercise.”
John turns to Chuck. “Just tell them I’ll be a little late for debriefing, Sarge.”
Chapter Six
John Worth made his way to the hospital dispensary adjacent to the airfield, his bleeding forearm still wrapped with the rag. The rain had let up a bit.
As he entered the dispensary tent, crowded with scores of sick and injured soldiers and airmen, busy nurses, and medics, the first thing--and the last--he saw was the nurse at the triage station, Second Lieutenant Marjorie Braden. The harsh electric lighting in the tent illuminated only her, with a surprisingly soft glow. Everybody and everything else was in olive drab shadow and made no sound.
She was pretty enough, even in fatigues and without make-up; a little taller than average, with lithe body and chestnut hair--probably shoulder-length, now tied back--and green eyes that flashed like beacons of awareness and purpose. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing and spoke in a direct, no-nonsense manner that was authoritative but not intimidating. John stood in the tent’s entryway, a man transfixed.
Impatiently, she calls out to him: “I can help you over here, sir… but how about knocking the mud off those boots first?”
Wordlessly, he complies.
“OK, Captain, what’ve we got here?” she asks, peeling off the bloody rag.
“Hmm…looks like you’ll live…just needs some stitches.”
She cocks an eyebrow and with just a touch of sarcasm, asks: “Should I start processing your Purple Heart right away?”
John snaps out of his trance. And a sassy one, too, this nurse…
“Nah…don’t bother, Lieutenant. I’ve already got one.” He replies with a shy smile, his voic
e matter-of- fact, almost humble, trying like crazy to mask this spontaneous attraction to her--and failing.
But he has gotten her attention, too. Marjorie Braden reconsidered her opening lines:
OK, Marge…start over! This guy standing in front of you may be some kind of war hero and you’re mouthing off like some little smartass!
She starts over by putting her finger on the leather name tag of his flight jacket and reading aloud: “Captain J.P. Worth. What does the J.P. stand for?”
“John Peter”
She writes that down on the form in front of her. Centered on his name tag are the embossed pilot’s wings.
“What do you fly, Captain Worth?”
“I fly an F-5,” John says. Seeing that she has no idea what an F-5 is, he adds, “That’s a P-38 modified for photo reconnaissance.”
“A P-38! So you’re a fighter pilot.”
“No, I’m not.” John’s voice is still matter-of-fact, almost apologetic. “I fly photo recon.”
Lieutenant Braden thinks: Am I hearing this right? This guy in front of me flies a fighter but talks like a down-to-earth kind of guy. He doesn’t swagger and he’s not waving his willy in my face…What’s his game?
Marge decides not to assign a medic to do the stitching. She will handle this one herself.
“How’d you get cut, anyway?”
“I was looking at a supercharger with my crew chief… it gave me problems on my last flight. I slipped and sorta fell into the nacelle...”
“Wow! A pilot getting his hands dirty! Didn’t you read the Officer’s Manual?”
John laughs. “No, I guess not.”
While she stitches, they engage in the ritual performed by all those in the service meeting for the first time, asking where are you from? His answer is Des Moines, Iowa. Hers is Chicago.
The small talk turns serious. He answers her questions about photo recon: what its purpose is, what flying the missions is like. Marge is incredulous his plane has no guns, only cameras, but he still flies into harm’s way regularly, all the while insisting he is not a fighter pilot. He’s telling me this like it’s no big deal… it’s just his job. And I don’t think all this modesty stuff is some kind of put-on! He’s sincere!
Marge Braden is surprised to learn he is only 23, just a year older than her. He seems so much older. And there is something else…
He’s got the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.
In her mind, all the elaborately designed filters military nurses employ to select suitable mates from the vast pool of available men begin to signal in unison: this one definitely passes the test, Marjorie…which is a good thing, because she really likes this guy.
Then her stomach begins to grumble. Loudly.
“Did you miss lunch?” John asks. He’s not trying to mock her; he’s genuinely concerned.
“Yeah,” she says, a bit embarrassed. “I try not to eat the hospital food…it’s soooo lousy.”
It was time to throw caution to the wind. In the bustling circus Okinawa was becoming, he might never see her again. Besides, this is war. We could all be dead tomorrow
The debrief he is supposed to be attending is all but forgotten.
Gingerly, he makes his move. “Could I get you something to eat? From the Officers’ Mess, maybe?”
“Well, we’re kind of busy right now… but I’ll tell you what. I’m off at 0400. Want to meet there for breakfast?”
Chapter Seven
In accordance with Foreign Minister Togo’s directive, the Japanese Army and Navy leaders hurried to develop new proposals on how to best use the nuclear weapon against the American invasion. Their air forces--both Army and Navy--had never been part of the equation: they had no aircraft capable of lifting a 20,000 pound load, the weight of Professor Inaba’s device. In fact, no air force in the world had such a capability. Even the mighty American B-29 bomber, while having the ability to carry a 20,000 pound payload, could not carry a single object weighing that much: the load had to be distributed between its two bomb bays. Not that the Japanese hadn’t tried. They had once attempted to increase the payload capacity of their highest performance bomber, the twin-engined Ki-67 “Hiryu,” code named “Peggy” by the Allies, by using a rocket-assisted takeoff system.
The normal weapons payload for a Peggy was 2400 pounds.
Stripped of all non-essential equipment and carrying minimum fuel, she was given a 15,000 pound test payload. As the severely laden aircraft struggled to accelerate on takeoff role, the pilot fired the rocket motor. The Peggy staggered into the air, but the thrust of the underslung rocket caused excessive nose-up angle of attack. The pilot fought to maintain control, but the instant the rocket expended its fuel the plane stalled and, dropping its left wing, plummeted the 800 feet to the ground, killing the pilot and destroying the aircraft.
The Imperial War Council decreed there would be no more test flights of this sort. Suicide must be put to more expedient uses.
The Navy’s new plan sought to destroy the invasion fleet before it reached the beaches of Kyushu. Unfortunately, they had no practical way to do it. The problem was the same one that plagued their San Francisco plan: how to place the weapon on the surface of a sea teeming with opposing vessels, beneath a sky full of opposing aircraft.
They probably had a better chance of sneaking into San Francisco Bay than the middle of the invasion fleet.
The “middle” was a somewhat relative term, too. Where would that be on a fleet that stretched across the horizon and occupied more than a hundred square miles of ocean? Choice landing beaches stretched around southern Kyushu from Miyazaki in the east to Kushikino in the west, some 100 linear miles of coastline. One nuclear weapon could devastate, at best, five square miles and destroy some of the invasion fleet, perhaps as much as 25%, but not all.
No, the Navy’s role against the US invasion of Kyushu would be the same as at Okinawa: Kamikaze, but on a grander scale. The Japanese Navy had left about 3000 such aircraft, hundreds of suicide motor boats laden with explosives, plus the handful of destroyers and submarines still operational. The rest of the Imperial Fleet’s might lay at the bottom of the sea, lost to the “luck” of the US Navy. They never realized it was not “luck” at all, but their signal codes had long ago been broken and their plans revealed in the intercepted radio transmissions.
The Army had a more practical plan for the defense of the homeland, code-named Ketsu-Go; a part of this plan--called Ketsu-Go 6--covered the defense of Kyushu. It took no great strategist to determine southern Kyushu was the next logical landing place for US forces. It was in easy proximity to Okinawa, the Philippines and the Marianas. The meager road and rail network coupled with the central and northern mountains would make Japanese reinforcement of the southern defenders physically difficult and easily interdicted by US air power. Once US airfields were established on southern Kyushu, almost all of Japan, including Tokyo, was within the range of any US combat airplane, not just the long-range B-29’s.
Even with a massive Kamikaze onslaught against the invasion fleet, the Japanese Army General Staff was certain American troops would succeed in landing on southern Kyushu. They could not stop them with the conventional forces at hand--but Professor Inaba’s device was anything but conventional.
Ariake Bay, also known as Shibushi-wan, lies in the southeast corner of Kyushu, central to the likely invasion beaches. The General Staff had determined this area to be most critical to their defensive plan. Destroying the invaders at this location would divide the attacking forces and greatly hinder the landing of reinforcements and logistical support. Once cut off from each other, the divided attackers to the north and west could be defeated in detail.
Here was the perfect place to employ the nuclear weapon: hidden in plain sight 1 or 2 kilometers inland, with high ground to the rear, shielding the island’s interior from the blast; a deadly trap of unbelievable killing power, planned to be detonated about 48 hours after the first wave, when most of the invading American devi
ls would already be on shore.
Chapter Eight
0400 is a busy time at Kadena’s Joint Officers’ Mess, where Lieutenant Braden and Captain Worth had arranged to meet. Pilots and staff officers start their day long before first light; and of course, nurses have to eat, too, but they found it usually more convenient to eat at the hospital mess, as it was closer to their guarded, barbed wire-encircled living quarters. Also, it was far away from the constant, often unwanted flirting and frat house shenanigans of the numerically superior male officers.
John Worth, stitched up arm and all, had just finished collecting a tray of food and was pouring himself a cup of coffee when Marge Braden and a few of the other nurses from her night shift cautiously entered. Seeing John, Marge bid her fellow nurses goodbye and headed toward him, breezily tossing off fervent offers of a seat and lustful attention from every group of men she passed. Not so long ago in combat theaters, nurses were forbidden from leaving their hospital without armed MP escort for protection against friendly as well as enemy troops. Okinawa, however, was thought to be as secure and orderly now as any stateside base. While fraternization was still officially forbidden, the regulations were “unofficially” relaxed and the natural urges of men and women quickly surged to the forefront. It blew across the officer ranks--both male and female--like a blast of fresh air, relieving some of the boredom and uncertainty of a stalemated war with no end in sight.
“Good Morning, Captain Worth!” Marge says, gushing a bit. “Sleep well?”
“I was OK except for the agonizing pain in my arm…some butcher sewed me up and…”
Marge interrupts with mock indignation. “Hey! With all due respect, sir, I’ll have you know you were sewn up by one of 5th Air Force’s finest!” Grabbing his arm, she gives it a cursory inspection. “And I must say the work still looks damn good, too!”
“No, really…it’s great…I’m just kidding, Marjorie. Where should we sit?”
East Wind Returns Page 3