B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (8 page)

“Ships
at eleven-o-clock!” he shouted. “Pickett? You still up front?”

“Yeah,
I see ‘em. Going in now!” Pickett was there, bravely leading the charge, and it
was already one for the record books. Of the 54 planes off
Ticonderoga
, only
22 remained. There were seven
Helldivers
, five
Avengers
and the
rest were fighters. The squadrons off
Wasp
had also been ravaged by the
deadly precision rockets that had claimed one plane after another in a hellish
nightmare in the skies. But the American pressed on.

Higman
grimaced and shirked when he saw Stevens plane hit above him. It was a near miss,
but a small fragment of shrapnel struck his windshield on the right side and he
could see the glass spider out in a crack. He pulled the stick and threw his
helldiver over to get ready to dive. Then he heard something he had never once
heard before in battle. It sounded like Iron Mike Mulligan was throwing in the
towel!

“All
units; all flights, this is Mulligan. We have orders to abort. I repeat, break off
and do a 360. They want us out of here on the double.”

Hot
damn, thought Higman. I’ve got the bastards right in front of me and lost two good
men getting here, and now they want us to bug out and fly home? What kind of
stew was Mulligan serving up today? The same thing had happened over Tokyo a few
days ago. Maybe the brass had negotiated a settlement to this conflict, but it
sure didn’t look like it from his point of view.

“What’s
up, Big Mike? Why we turning tail?”

“Orders
from Flag! Pull on it and get out of there, before one of those rockets lights your
ass on fire!”

Higman
shook his head, distressed, angry, but knowing he couldn’t take the fight to the
enemy alone. It would be all he could do to get what was left of his squadron
back to
Ticonderoga
, and there would be a lot of empty chairs at the
flight debriefing this afternoon. Hell! They must have lost thirty planes in
ten minutes. He had never seen anything like it. At the “Great Marianas Turkey
Shoot” they had taken down over 500 Japanese planes while losing only 23 on the
first day. By that stage in the war the fine edge of pilot training, tactics,
and the new planes the US deployed was enough to make for a decisive and
overwhelming victory in the most lopsided aerial duel in history. It had been a
long time since the US took a licking in the skies over the Pacific.

There
was something not right about this, thought Higman. It just isn’t right. Those aren’t
planes we’re fighting out there. They aren’t men. We’re up against some kind of
slick new rocket system, and it’s eating us alive. Who knows how many we lost
today? Whatever the Russians had up there on the horizon, it was a real game
changer. We’re going to have to hit them with every goddamned thing we have to
get through a defense like that… Everything we have.

Chapter 8

Back
on
Ticonderoga
that was the new
consensus too, though Ziggy Sprague wasn’t happy about it one bit. He wanted to
press on up north and settle the score, but word came in from Halsey on the
Missouri
—pull
the boys out.

Apparently
some starchy British Admiral had chewed on his ear and convinced him the Russians
might have more up north than we bargained for, he thought. Well how in God’s
name would they ever know that unless we get up there after them? The fleet had
nothing on surface radar returns, but the two radar pickets were still in tight
on this Russian task force, though they reported it was difficult to track
them. The ships came and went on the radar screens.

He
could not know that the architecture on the two newer ships,
Orlan
and
Admiral
Golovko
, incorporated reduced radar cross section features, odd angles and special
reflective tiling and paint that made the ships very slippery when even modern
radars tried to finger them. Sprague’s two radar pickets would get a contact on
Kirov
, see other ships nearby, and then they would vanish again.

Yet
orders were orders. Halsey wanted to coordinate with the British and was also moving
up his own task force. The Russians were playing hardball, and it looked like
the Bull wanted to double up on them to make sure they got the message. That
was the only way Sprague could figure it…until the missiles came in.

They
had nothing on radar. Then one man thought he saw something. The P-900s were just
too fast to track on their terminal run at Mach 2.5, over 3000 kph. The US antenna
swept the horizon once every ten seconds. If an operator managed to get a lucky
return blip on the missile, by the time the system swept around for another
look the
Sizzlers
would have traveled eight and a half kilometers.
Instead of a steady inward approach like the aircraft they were used to
tracking, the blip would seem to hop across the screen sweep after sweep,
covering over 50 kilometers range in a single minute! By the time the radar
operator interpreted this as a threat instead of a glitch, it was too late.
Even as he turned his head to report the anomaly, something came at the fleet,
low and fast, and it found the
Wasp
about a thousand yards off the
starboard side of
Ticonderoga
.

The
ship just blew up in an angry orange fireball forward of the island, and all Sprague
could think of when he saw it was that some rogue Japanese submarine had slipped
inside his destroyer screen and put a torpedo into the carrier. A minute later
the second
Sunburn
came in, and this time Sprague had his field glasses
up and saw something blur in on
Bataan
. That ship was hit amidships, and
a huge column of smoke billowed up to mark the kill. He looked up, thinking he
might see Kamikazes diving on the task group, but he could only see his fighter
reserve on combat air patrol over the carriers. What was going on here?

Wasp
was hit again. He literally saw a
Hellcat
blown apart on the forward flight deck and a segment of the wing spin up through
a red-black fist of fire and smoke.

“Signal
Wasp!”
He shouted. “How bad is it over there?”

The
fourth
Sizzler
executed a late stage popup maneuver and struck the island
flush, and the explosion was terrific.
Wasp
seemed to list from the
shock alone, then slowly righted herself and continued wobbling forward through
smoke and fire.

When
the first missile hit, it struck right beneath the forward 5 inch gun battery and
smashed on through the armor plating. The missile delivered a 400 kilogram warhead,
and the additional kinetic impact was severe. Thankfully most of the missile’s
fuel had been expended, but the shock and fire were immediate.

Seaman
Ernest Bird had been on a ladder right near the impact site just a minute before
the missile hit home. In that time he had casually climbed up to the flight
deck, and strolled over to chat with Gunner’s Mate Ralph Cella. They called
Ernie the “Lucky Bird” because fate had spared him a gruesome end earlier that
year when his relief had been late, keeping him at his post instead of seeing
him off to the mess hall that day. A thousand pound bomb came flaming in
through the deck that morning, and uninvited guest for breakfast. Ernie’s luck
was still good, but he was still close enough to the forward battery to be
knocked on his ass by the concussion and shock when the missile hit.

The
battery was soon embroiled in a raging fire, with hot jets of flame piercing through
holes in the deck around the gun mount. Seaman Bird struggled to his feet and
ran to do his job—fire control. He was going to be a very busy man that day.

When
the second missile hit Chuck Malkasian had made it down to his post in the engine
room. He was water tender on the boilers that morning, but soon had more water
on his hands than he would ever need. A four inch thick steel bulkhead blew apart
and the ocean came raging in.

“Close
all water tight doors!” It was Chief Warrant Officer Woody Morrow. The ‘Wood Man’
was standing tall at his post, his deep voice clear even over the roaring rush
of seawater. Crewmen rushed to the doors, struggling to get them shut against
the force of the inrushing water from the adjacent compartment, their knuckles
white on the iron securing wheels.

“Hey
Wood Man!” Malkasian yelled back. “How the hell we gonna’ get out of here if we
shut this last hatch?”

“Can
it, Malkasian. Take the ladder up behind the boilers.”

“Well
it’s hot as hell back there, Chief!”

Malkasian
didn’t have to explain any further. The boiler exploded and he was knocked to the
deck. He saw boiler man Red Riley thrown against a bulkhead by the explosion
and killed instantly, his broken body lifeless on the deck as the water surged
in. Chief Morrow was dazed but the rest of the crew in the compartment were all
alive. Malkasian struggled up on his knees grabbed the Chief by his collar and
began dragging him towards the safety of the still open hatch.

“Come
on! Come On, Everybody out! There’s nothing we can do here. Get through and seal
this last hatch!”

They
made it through, tired, wet and shaking with shock and adrenaline. Malkasian was
leaning forward, hands on his knees, amazed by what he had seen.

“I
ain’t no water tender down here no more,” he said, breathing hard, then looked over
his shoulder as a seaman came down a ladder.

“Up
on deck!” the man shouted. It was Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class Alfred J. Lewis. “Hey
Malkasian, grab a fire hose.”

“What
are you doing here, Lewis. They hit the forward flight deck too. Your plank is out
there.”

“The
forward flight deck?” Lewis put his hands on his hips, the light of anger in his
eyes now. My goddamned plank is on that deck!” Lewis was off at a run for the
nearest ladder up. He was supposed to be on his gun at 09:00 hours, but his gun
was blown to hell now. Nobody was going to burn up his plank while he was still
alive on this ship. Nobody!

He
was up on deck and stunned by what he saw. The main island was hit square in the
middle, and ragged metal shards gaped from the wound while damage control teams
sent arcs of water into the fiery breach. Forward of that, the 5 inch battery
was completely enveloped in fire and smoke, and he knew no one in there was
getting out alive. The flight deck was tilted at least ten degrees off the horizontal,
and the ship was listing. The main elevator was blocked by damage and fire, and
out on the forward flight deck he saw what he had came to prevent, a fire
raging, and very near the place where he imagined his cherished plank resided!

Lord
almighty! We took three bad hits! He hadn’t seen anything like this since that bomb
that almost killed Lucky Bird Ernie, and he was off at a run to help manhandle
a fire hose forward to fight the fire.

“Let’s
move it!” he shouted. “That’s my plank out there!”

The
damage control team fought its way forward behind two fire hoses, slowly getting
good streams of water on the fires. Twenty minutes later they had doused the
fire well, but it was still smoking badly, and in that time the ship had listed
another five degrees.

“Hey,
where you going, Lewis?” It was Merle Hart from the plumbing shop.

“I’m
going up there to get my goddamned plank,” said Lewis. “Can’t you see this list?
Why aren’t you down below with a wrench plugging leaks, Merle? This isn’t looking
good here. Another five degrees and we could tip right over. Look how they’re
trying to secure those planes!” He pointed at a crew of five airmen who were
desperately trying to stabilize three
Corsairs
on the aft flight deck.

Lewis
had taken up a crow bar in his strong right arm and went forward through the blowing
smoke, his feet unsteady on the wet, tilted deck. He managed to keep his
footing until he worked his way very near the torn metal gridding near the fire
they had been fighting. There, beneath a segment of overlaid metal grills, he
saw the original wooden flight deck.

This
place is as good as any other, he thought, and he knelt down to wedge his crowbar
into the deck where a wood plank seemed nice and loose. He was going to get his
plank, one way or another. Then he was going to go back to his bunk and get the
certificate of ownership too!

As
for CV-18, her proud career would soon be over. The damage below decks when the
boiler exploded had compromised two more bulkheads, and they collapsed under the
searing heat of the fires. The Captain, Wendel G. “Windy” Switzer, had seen enough
to realize the ship was down for the count. He gave the order to flood all
magazines and to try counter-flooding to correct the list but the fire in the
main island had now merged with the inferno below the forward 5 inch battery,
and those magazines could not be flooded. They exploded not long after Lewis
had retreated below decks with his plank, and the damage to the port side of
the ship was now fatal.

CV
Wasp
was going to sink again, and Captain Vladimir Karpov now had the dubious
distinction of sinking the same carrier, at least by name, twice. She would not
be present years later when the Gemini capsules returned to earth, and another
US carrier would have to pluck Stafford, Lovell and other intrepid Gemini
Astronauts from the sea. The Union Minerals and Alloys Corp. of New York City,
would have to buy some other ship in 1973 when the venerable lady was decommissioned
and sold for scrap. There would never be another ship in the US Navy by that
name again—it was officially retired.

The
sinking of the
Wasp
put a set of strange bookends on the war, with CV-7 sunk
just before it began to herald its terrible onset, and CV-18 sunk just after it
ended, warning of a new conflict in the making at that very moment. Just what
that conflict might entail, no man knew at that moment. In fact, all history
was waiting for the outcome of the battle now engaged, for it would all be
re-written from this moment forward. None of this had ever happened in the timeline
that had brought
Kirov
through the war and safely into Vladivostok in
the year 2021. This was all new.

As
for Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class Alfred J. Lewis, he made it to his bunk, and also made
it off the ship with his plank. In fact, it kept him afloat until he could be
picked up by a destroyer, and he held on to it for dear life—all his life, along
with his certificate of ownership.

The
hit to
Bataan
was not as bad, though they did lose five
Hellcats
on
the flight deck there. That said, Ziggy Sprague was shocked to realize that he
had suddenly lost a fleet carrier and was watching another escort carrier burn,
and this without even knowing who or what it was that had attacked his task group!
He was furious and on the radio to Halsey at once.

“Goddammit
Bull! We just got hit up here!
Wasp
is a burning wreck and I think we’ll
lose her. She’s listing bad and they can’t seem to correct it. Windy Switzer is
giving the order to abandon ship. What the hell’s going on? Why are you coming out
to the mound now when we’re right in the middle of this thing?”

“Sorry,
Ziggy. It has nothing to do with you, but I’ve got two more task groups in the bullpen,
if that’s what you mean. Recover your strike wave and hold tight. I’m bringing
the whole shit and shebang up north to reinforce you. Admiral Fraser has opened
my eyes on what this threat may be up north. Apparently it’s a fast battlecruiser
with advanced rocket weapons, and it’s been giving the Brits nightmares.”

“Yeah?
Well I’ve got some bad dreams to deliver as well. There’s nothing wrong with the
rest of my group, particularly
North Dakota
and
South Carolina
. Suppose
I let the big guns roll on up north for a closer look? And I’ve still got
ninety planes in reserve—at least until we got hit just now. We can recover our
first strike wave, refuel and rearm in a couple hours and be ready to rumble
again.”

“Did
you see what hit Wasp?”

“Hell
if I know. Didn’t see but a blur just before she went up in smoke. We had
nothing on radar either. It just came out of nowhere.”