Enterprise 07:25 hrs
“Sir’”
He turned back from the side of the bridge where he had been watching the first of the returning Wildcats, number seven. It was obvious the plane had been in a fight, scorch marks streaking back across the wings from the four machine guns, what looked to be a hole just behind the cockpit. The pilot bounced it hard, snagging the last line, nearly going over the safety barrier before being pulled up short
There was no jaunty climbing out of the plane for this one. The crew chief was up by his side, helping him to stand up, the pilot turning his head aside, bending over to vomit the moment he was on the deck
“Sir?”
Halsey looked back. It was McCloskey
“Bad news. Radar is certain they picked up at least one plane trailing the Wildcats, another probable with the Dauntlesses. One of the pilots just radioed in that he thinks he saw it, the plane up high, having pulled a contrail for a moment.”
Halsey took it in
“And the Devastators?”
“They are heading back in now, sir. Nothing.”
He nodded. He had taken the first swing and it had gone wide, into thin air. Sure, they were claiming a kill on the battleship, but the hell with that. There was plenty of time later to get it, if what was left on Pearl didn’t finish it off first. No, he had swung wide, missed, and now the Japs had a fix on him
“How long before the torpedo planes are in?”
“At least another forty-five minutes on this heading, sir.”
Damn
“All right. I want coffee and sandwiches all around for every kid down there manning the guns. Launch the remaining Wildcats. Bombers to be spotted on deck, refueled and loaded. With luck we might get them off again before the Japs find us.”
“I think we should order the Devastators to jettison their torpedoes,” McCloskey, standing to one side, offered
“Why?”
“Increase their air speed. We still have fifty fish on board. Besides, one of them screws it on landing and that load detonates, we’re history.”
Each fish cost over ten thousand dollars. His senior flight officer was suggesting dumping nearly two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of ordnance. The day before yesterday, a trick like that and he’d be back in Washington before a review board with some damn senator howling for his head over the “profligate waste of our military.”
It’d buy maybe ten minutes in recovery time and make the landings safer. But they’d lose twenty to thirty minutes reloading them. He nodded
“Dump ‘em. Every minute we spend on this bearing gives me a knot in my gut. I want us turned about and out at flank speed the moment the last plane is aboard. Have the squadron commanders for the fighters and dive bombers report to me directly as soon as they are aboard.”
McCloskey looked at him, saying nothing
“I’m not sure yet if it’s an ass-chewing or a medal. It was my call to start with. The Japs beat us to the punch getting their planes there first. Just have them report here to the bridge.”
He turned back to watch as one after another the Wildcats and Dauntlesses staggered in, five of the fighters, seven of the dive bombers, and finally the Devastators came into view, slowly lining up one after the other to land. The rest of the Dauntless search planes had already been recovered as well
And then the word came at last. Radar was reporting a large inbound from the northwest, thirty-plus planes, range thirty miles out, speed at 180. They would be on them in ten minutes
The last of the Devastators touched down, and even before the recovery crew unhooked it from the arresting cable, Enterprise started to heel over hard to starboard, engines pounding up to flank speed, her escorting screen of destroyers and cruiser moving in closer to provide a protective ring
McCloskey handed him a helmet and he put it on. All hell was about to break loose
The minutes dragged out, radar reports coming in every minute, and then first contact by the Wildcats, and within seconds that fight sounded like it was going horribly wrong
What in hell is wrong with our planes and pilots, he wondered. Wildcat after Wildcat was getting splashed, pilots screaming the damn Jap planes were faster and could turn inside them
He left tactical command to the captain of this ship, fire control to the gunnery commander, what was happening down on the deck to the air boss and his crews. At this moment he was merely a spectator
He realized that he was about to come under fire for the first time in his life. Chances were, as well, that not a single man aboard this ship had ever faced it before. He suspected that most, like himself, were so well conditioned that they now functioned automatically no matter how frightened they were. That was what training had always been about, to so condition a man that he could do his duty, even when scared witless
They were running on a southerly heading at flank speed and then, with a shouted command from the captain, who stood beside him, head craned back, binoculars pointed straight up, the order was passed for hard aport, and seconds later Enterprise, like a lumbering but still agile racehorse, started to turn, heeling over
Jap dive bombers were winging up and over, coming down
Every gun to port and starboard was pointed nearly vertically, a fusillade pouring straight up with a cacophonic roar. Twenty-millimeters, the old 1.1-inch guns, the thunderclap bark of five-inchers. The screen of destroyers was adding in their punch as well, tracers crisscrossing, heavier shells bursting, most behind the flight of dive bombers
“This one is gonna be close,” someone cried. He spared a quick glance down on the deck. Crews were working feverishly to turn around the Dauntlesses, Wildcats, and Devastators, their pilots still in the cockpits of most of the planes, frozen in place, looking heavenward
“Four torpedo planes bearing 265 degrees!”
He turned away from the planes overhead, swinging about. Sure enough, they were coming in, damn low, a lone Wildcat in pursuit, splashing one even as he watched
“Hard to starboard!”
Enterprise, jinking and weaving, leveled out, and gradually began to turn to the west
He could see two dots detach, one of the dive bombers, even as it released, breaking up, flames engulfing it
The two dots resolved into stubby cylinders, coming down. Men on the deck forward began to scramble, running
It was going to be tight . . damn, it was going to . . . The first bomb detonated when it hit the water fifty yards off the port bow, where Enterprise would have been if it had continued on its course of just thirty seconds ago . . . but the second one came straight down, punching through the deck close to the stern, aft of the elevator. For a brief instant the impact was nothing more than a small shower of splinters as the bomb penetrated the teak deck, punching a hole little more than three feet in diameter. Less than a twentieth of a second later it blew in the hangar deck, striking a small electric-powered tractor used to move planes, tractor and its driver blown to oblivion, the blast then taking with it the shot-up Wildcat the driver had been pulling toward the machine shop for repairs, the blast wave washing back through the hangar deck
As designed, the sides of the hangar deck were open to the sea, not just to provide a steady cooling breeze for the men laboring below, but also as open vents if an explosion should occur
A three-inch pipe for pumping up avgas from one of the fuel tanks below was severed. In another tenth of a second the spray of pressurized gas ignited in a fireball, blast and flames washing into the aft machine shop, killing all within
A fair amount of the blast blew straight up, expanding the entry hole, which could originally have been covered over with a few heavy sheets of plywood, into a gaping, flaming hole, twenty feet across, at that instant ending the ability of Enterprise to recover planes
Some of the blast punched downward through the hangar deck into the galley deck below, killing and wounding a score of men. Within seconds the automatic sprinklers in the hangar deck were turned on,
a fire crew, standing ready, turning a foam spray onto the flames, even though of those still alive half were wounded from the blast
Up on the deck, men were down, sprawled flat, heads covered with their arms, or curled against any protection to be found, a stanchion, splinter shield, or, ironically, under the parked planes loaded with 100 octane gas, as debris soared to the heavens and then came raining down
The successful dive bomber pulled out at nearly deck level, banked sharply, and raced out to sea
The captain of the Enterprise watched the impact for only a few-seconds and then swung his binoculars on to the incoming torpedo planes lining up for a quartering attack astern
“Twenty degrees starboard!”
One was dropped by the trailing Wildcat. A second Kate blew apart as he passed near the bow of an escorting destroyer. The remaining two dropped their fish from a half mile out, the two planes splitting in opposite directions. At the same instant a cry went up that four more dive bombers were winging over
Still he said nothing. It was no longer his job. He stood silent watching, with another call coming in that a second wave was approaching from west-northwest, fifteen miles out and closing fast, twenty-plus planes
Leveling out from its turn to starboard, Enterprise was racing full out at nearly thirty-five knots. Reports were the Jap torpedoes could do forty-five to fifty knots. A stern chase. Halsey ran a quick calculation in his head, knowing the captain was doing the same: about two minutes; turn or run straight?
Antiaircraft fire was soaring upward, the smell of cordite from the guns forward whipping past the bridge. It was going to be tight. One of the dive bombers was hit, turning, wing shearing off, but the other three bore in. A second one ignited into flames. Two dropped, bombs coming down, misjudging, he could see they’d strike to port, but the Val wrapped in flames . . . My God, the man was coming straight in, not releasing, steepening his dive at his target, which, racing at flank speed, was trying to run out from under
“Down!”
He needed no urging, was flat on the open bridge, the howl of the engine cut off a second later by a thunderclap, as dive bomber, pilot, and gunner, with a five-hundred-kilo armor-piercing bomb, crashed forward of the bridge, into the starboard gunnery deck. The armor-piercing bomb blew when it hit the heavy steel of an antiaircraft gun’s breech. The Japanese plane burst apart, engine cutting through the deck, which projected out from the side of the carrier, and scraped down the side of the carrier, trailing flame, the exploding bomb slicing out a section of decking, tearing a gaping hole into the gunnery deck thirty feet across, but not penetrating into the vitals of the carrier. A fireball of flame erupted as shrapnel from the bomb tore open one of the Devastator bombers that had been spotted forward, instantly killing its crew, spilling out more than two hundred gallons of fuel, which instantly flashed, threatening to spread under the rest of Enterprises planes on deck. The heat was blown back by the thirty-knot wind slapping against the bridge, so Halsey had to shield his face
The phone on the bridge rang. A young ensign, sticking his head out, shouted, “Captain, we got a report of torpedo running to starboard!”
Halsey went with the captain around to the starboard railing and looked out. It was a blood-chilling sight, the wake of a torpedo cutting through the water, running exactly parallel to them less than fifty yards off, slowly overtaking the carrier. A few seconds later another call, reporting a second torpedo, this one to port, on the same track
Enterprise was boxed, unable to maneuver as two more dive bombers winged in. And somehow running straight ahead, unable to turn, saved them. The dive bomber pilots, side by side, coordinated their release well, and the bombs detonated where Enterprise would have been if she had started to turn in either direction
From bow clear back to the bridge Enterprise seemed to be burning, listing now several degrees to port, plates below the waterline crushed in from the near misses
Deck crews were valiantly struggling to save their planes, unable to move farther aft due to the bomb explosion in the recovery area, nor forward because of the fire raging along the deck forward of the bridge. Firefighters were turning their water hoses and foam sprayers on the planes, soaking them down, while other teams sprayed foam underneath to try and contain the spreading pool of avgas from the destroyed Devastator and the Val. A second Devastator burst into flames, crew trapped inside. He could hear their screams
If the deck had been packed with the ship’s full complement of nearly a hundred planes, rather than the thirty survivors of the first strike and patrol, there would have been no room to move aircraft, and a massive chain reaction would have ignited them all
Thus momentarily saved, Enterprise staggered into a low-hanging mist, an early morning tropical shower, still engulfed in smoke and flames. The second wave, this one from Hiryu, was upon them, eight Kates, nine Vals, and seven escorting Zeroes. Through the clouds the strike leader in a Val saw one of the escorting cruisers, Salt Lake City, momentarily mistook it for a small carrier, half obscured by the smoke trailing astern from the Enterprise, and at the same instant heard an exuberant report from one of the surviving Vals from Soryu that the first enemy carrier was awash in flames and starting to roll over
He went into his dive on the cruiser, followed by the rest of his group, and a minute later the cruiser was a flaming wreck, hit by three bombs and bracketed by three near misses. The group leader for the Kates, flying lower, at the last possible moment countermanded the order to hit the cruiser, but then was torn apart by antiaircraft fire from a destroyer, his group then splitting up, four heading for Enterprise, the other three for the burning cruiser. One of the surviving Wildcats died fending off the attack on Enterprise; a second pilot rammed a Kate when he ran out of ammunition. One of the torpedoes, however, took the cruiser amidships, breaking its back. Another Kate declared a hit on the Enterprise and proudly announced it was sinking. In reality he had missed, the torpedo striking wreckage falling off the ship astern
And then it was over, the attack wave leaving, planes scattered out, a lone Wildcat of their combat air patrol reporting the Japs were retiring to the northwest, the same direction they had come from. There remained a total of four American fighters still alive over the carrier. There was no place for them to land, and McCloskey gave them the option of circling until the deck was cleared, when they could try a landing without arresting gear, or running instead for Pearl. There was a hesitation, and then their leader loyally said they’d hang on and circle. They had guts. It’d been practiced before, landing without arresting hook on, assuming a hit to the stern of the ship, but the entire deck would have to be clear to give them enough space for a rollout, with brakes locked, a temporary barrier set up at the bow as a final stop point, though hitting the wires strung there would smash the prop and take the plane out of action
A brief tropical squall lashed the deck for a moment as they steamed through the low-hanging clouds. The cooling rain was a relief, and it helped a bit with the fire, and then the ship burst back out into sunshine. Halsey thought for a moment how such random things, that momentary squall, might one day be seen as a significant part of the battle, a hand of God that perhaps saved his ship
Fire crews were out all along the deck, pouring water down into the hole aft, other crews foaming down the impact along the railing. A small dozer, driven by a crewman in an asbestos suit, was pushing the twisted, burning wreckage of the two Devastators over the side railing. Halsey caught a glimpse of a chaplain walking alongside the tractor, making the sign of the cross in blessing as one plane after another went over the rail, her dead, flame-blackened crew still strapped in, and disappeared into the sea
“Stubbs. I want a report!”
He was overriding the captain, but the hell with protocol
The chief engineering officer for Enterprise, Commander Stubbs, was out on the bridge, helmet off, wiping his brow. During the excitement of the attack he had nearly chewed through his unlit cigar, which hung no
w at a drunken angle from the corner of his mouth. “Sir?”
“How bad?”
“We got fires down in the main galley, a severed gas line aft which has been secured. Aft machine shop is still burning. Reports of at least twenty hull ruptures, nearly all on the starboard side from bulkheads fifteen through thirty-five, from near misses. Watertight security is holding, though. Thank God no direct torpedo hits.”
He forced a smile. “She’ll hold, sir.”
“Good man. Now how soon can I launch?”
“Sir?”
“You heard me, damn it. How soon can we launch?”
Stubbs went over to the railing of the bridge and looked at the fire still raging forward
“Give me an hour, sir.”
“Fine.”
“But sir, what about recovery? We won’t be able to land a full strike force for hours. Those birds up there now, the fighters, we can squeeze in, but the others?” and he shrugged his shoulders. “The entire arresting system was blown out, and it’ll take hours to cover that hole once the fire is contained. And that covering is going to have to be reinforced to withstand the shock of touchdown from the heavier planes.”
“I’ll figure that out later,” Halsey replied. “Just get us ready to launch as soon as possible. I think the Japs are close, real close. Maybe less than a hundred miles off. I want to hit those bastards before they get in a second blow. Now get to it, man!”
Akagi 08:00 hrs
The first after-battle reports were coming in, picked up from squadron leaders of Soryu and Hiryu returning to their ships
One Enterprise-class ship, most likely the Enterprise itself, was reported as listing and sinking, deck awash in flames. Strangely, a second ship--the squadron leader insisted it was a carrier as well--was sinking. His report was countered though by an angry Zero pilot from Soryu, insisting the Hiryu’s men had hit a cruiser
Pearl Harbour and Days of Infamy Page 48