Days of Infamy (11 page)

Get there first over the battleship, then fan out and search, that would be his game now. It was the only card he felt he could play against whoever it was who was playing out his own on the other side.

“No. They have to be north of the island and are moving southwest, and will be somewhere in here by morning,” and again he pointed to the plot board, the tens of thousands of square miles of ocean west of Oahu.

“All strike aircraft to be armed with torpedoes or armor piercing. Strict orders: They are to go for the carriers.”

“That battleship if they can’t find the carriers?” McCloskey asked.

“What can it do to us?” Halsey snapped. “If they’ve got a damaged battleship out there, that means at least one carrier or more close by providing air cover as they pull it out. That’s what I want.

“Now get to work!”

He left McCloskey to work out the details, climbed the ladder up to the next deck, and went into his cabin, closing the door. The blackout curtain over the porthole was drawn shut and he double-checked it before turning on the light over his bunk.

Without bothering even to take his shoes off he lay down and snapped the light off.

Damn all. If only I had a full complement of aircraft. I’ve got a strike force of less than forty bombers. Chances are half, two thirds would be lost, especially the aging albatrosses, the Devastators. The
poor kids on those planes were doomed, and he wondered how many of them were sleeping soundly at this moment, and how many were lying awake in the dark as he now was, wondering what dawn would bring.

FIVE
decks below the admiral, Lieutenant Dave Dellacroce stared into the darkness. The room was blacked out, the only sound the snoring of his roommate, Lieutenant Pat Gregory.

That son of a bitch can sleep through anything, he thought ruefully, almost angry at him for his composure, his eager excitement expressed over dinner, that in a few hours they’d be giving payback to the Japs.

Yet again Dave played back the story, constantly repeating in his head, of just how the hell he had got here. Born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, he had, of course, gone to Purdue, planning on being an electrical engineer, and then one day he’d seen a poster on a bulletin board, a very seductive poster: he could learn to fly for free, at Uncle Sam’s expense and wouldn’t even have to join up.

It was a deal too good to pass up, and he, along with dozens of other guys, had shown up at the airport adjoining campus. Amelia Earhart had even been there to give them a little pep talk about the joys of flying. And she sure as hell was right.

He took the physical, passed, then signed a little bit of paperwork, kind of noticing the fine print that if he was accepted into the program, took the lessons, and got his license, in the event of a “national emergency” he was subject to mobilization. But what the hell, he would be with the Navy, an officer and a pilot. And besides, except for the squabbling in Spain and somewhere in Africa, and China, who could ever imagine a national emergency? And the skies called.

He soloed in only seven hours in a Piper J-3 Cub, a little beauty, damn near cracked her up five hours later when he buzzed his girlfriend’s farmhouse and got a little too close. She was, in fact, a big reason he’d gotten into a plane to start with. He wanted to impress her since she was starting to talk about some guy going to Indiana
University who wanted to be a doctor. In fact, she ditched him just a couple of weeks later anyhow.

Someone reported his nearly fatal buzz job, most likely her father, the old goat, and his instructor, a kindly old guy with a limp from the Great War, chewed him out a bit, then took him out and showed him how to do it safely, this time over another girl’s house, Betty, who he was now engaged to. They’d even played dogfights, with his instructor blowing up a balloon, tossing it out the open window, and telling him to find it and hit it.

So he was just about to graduate from Purdue, class of 1940, had a hundred-plus hours flying with “the club”—and then the letter came in the mail, telling him there was indeed a “national emergency.”

Actually it had all been rather exciting. The little sixty-five-horsepower Piper Cubs and Aeronca Chiefs were left behind for Stearmans, then up to hefty T-6s, and he had qualified in the spring for the Navy’s F4F Wildcat. In June he had made his first carrier landing—damn, that was a sweat-soaked moment—and in November been assigned to
Enterprise
, just barely catching up with her before she sailed last week.

It had postponed yet again getting married to Betty. Though he missed her, longed for her, the thrill of being on the
Enterprise
was some compensation, and after this posting, there would be plenty of time.

Yesterday had changed all that in a matter of seconds. The game of just fooling around with life was over; now it was real. The other guys had spent the day cursing the Japs, and then clamoring for action, and word was in a few hours they were going to get some.

He had boasted along with the rest; after all, that’s what carrier fighter pilots were supposed to do. But now? In the dark, he just stared at the ceiling, feeling the vibration of the ship as it ran through the night, course changing every fifteen minutes, some hammering a couple decks above, crews doing final work on a plane most likely, sound of a hoist nearby, bringing up bombs from the magazines buried deep below the waterline.

He wished now he had married Betty. Though he’d never admit it to any of the guys, when it came to women he had never gotten all that far, in fact not far at all. Betty was a devout Methodist and drew clear lines and kept to them. If I get out of this alive, I’m getting her over to Oahu any way I can and marry her the same day, he thought. But thinking about that was nearly as maddening as thinking about what was coming in a few short hours, and alternating back and forth between the two, he did not sleep a wink… not knowing that except for a very lucky few, all were lying awake, captivated by the fear or anticipation of what was to come.

IT HAD BEEN
a tough operation, one rehearsed dozens of times, but never until now actually attempted under combat conditions: a nighttime refueling.

The last of the tankers had finally cast off from abeam of
Akagi.

They had not been able to top off. Only two of the four carriers of his group were running with full loads of fuel;
Akagi
was seven hundred tons of oil short,
Kaga
nearly eight hundred tons, but it should be enough for one full day of fast combat operations with sufficient oil left to take them into the Marshalls, where the reserve civilian tankers were waiting.

That was not his concern at the moment, however. Yamamoto still was quietly seething over Nagita and the damage to
Hiei
, how he had allowed a night attack from seaward to strike his ship and cripple it. Rather than placing his destroyers landward, they should have been covering out to sea, anticipating that some of the American ships had managed to slip out of Pearl and past the submarines, which had failed so abysmally in keeping the port bottled up.

It was an aspect of the plan made by Nagumo that he had allowed to stay in place, the ridiculous waste of suicide midget subs, tying up
the heavier fleet subs that had to carry them into position. Nagumo had allowed the rest of the subs to be scattered about, rather than concentrating all near the entryway into Oahu, keeping perhaps one or two as pickets farther out for rescue of downed pilots.

Every last fleet sub available should have been positioned off the main channel. They had, as an entire group, proven worse than useless so far. Repeated attempts to raise them had been futile; they were laying low and thus out of radio contact for a change in orders.

He would address that later. He had to focus on the moment, knowing that exhaustion was taking hold. He had been up more than twenty-four hours now and needed to get at least a few hours’ rest.

Yamamoto looked at the latest telegraph reports from
Hiei:
only able to use two of its four propeller shafts due to the explosion astern, which had also bent the rudder; barely able to make five knots, meaning it would be less than twenty nautical miles west of Oahu at dawn. If the Americans did indeed have any land-based aircraft left, that would be their target at first light.

Let them come, though he doubted there would be more than a handful left after the punishment delivered to their bases.

What he hoped for now, though he would never dare to say it even to Genda or any of his closest advisers, was that the crippled
Hiei
would indeed act as a lure—a lure for American carrier-based planes.

And the scout planes and fighters of
Hiryu
and
Soryu
would be waiting, circling high above, observing the inbound track of the enemy attackers and then sweeping out on a reciprocal bearing.

Of course he did not want to lose
Hiei
, but her damage might be heaven-sent to guide him in to his opponent’s fleet. A trade of a battleship for their three elusive carriers would be worth it, even if many back in Tokyo would howl over the loss.

It was nearly three local time. Refueling done, his own task force would pick up speed to twenty knots, moving to be a hundred fifty nautical miles west of
Hiei
come dawn, deck loaded with
every plane available for a massive strike while
Soryu
and
Hiryu
, a hundred miles farther south, would cover attacks from that direction. His main task force would cast their net westward, the second force to the south, and either they would find the Americans, or the Americans themselves would reveal their position when they went for
Hiei.

He yawned, knowing he needed to sleep, even if only for an hour. Turning off the light, he lay down on top of his bunk, not bothering to take off his shoes.

SEETHING WITH FRUSTRATION
, Captain Nagita turned away from his anxious staff on the bridge, subduing a curse.

They were making little more than six knots. Leaving the enclosed bridge, he paced the port-side railing and looked aft. The list had been corrected by counterflooding, and from the port railing, pumps were shooting out a steady cascade of oily water, which was, of course, leaving a shimmering wake that stretched twenty miles astern, all the way back to where they had been hit nearly three hours ago. The waning moon to the southwest cast a wavery reflection off the oil slick.

The damaged bunker had been sealed off, but was now filled with seawater. They’d have to go all the way back to Yokohama and into dry dock to have the twenty-foot-wide hole blown into their side repaired. It would take weeks to get there—under tow, because the real damage to
Hiei
had not been the blow amidships. Two divers had gone over to examine the hit far astern, one losing his life when his safety line had tangled and then parted under the strain of trying to keep him in position, the exhausted surviving diver bobbing back up minutes later, reporting that it looked like the port-side propeller had a blade blown off, the others were bent, inboard portside the shaft
was also bent, and the rudder was definitely twisted, thrown completely out of alignment. Full power to the starboard engine barely compensated for what would be a perpetual turn if not for the counteracting pull of the destroyers, which were laboring at full steam, thus eating up dozens of tons of yet more precious fuel, as they angled far to port, hauling a towline secured to the bow of the damaged battleship.

He knew what would happen come dawn. The Americans would be on them like carrion flies. He had considered ordering
Kirishima
to stay alongside, her antiaircraft batteries to lend fire support, but decided against it. To lose their sister ship while trying to save
Hiei
would be a crime unforgivable in the eyes of the Emperor. He had ordered her to make full steam to the rendezvous with their two escorting carriers,
Soryu
and
Hiryu
, which were lingering a hundred miles to their southwest, ready to provide protection for the crippled battleship.

He could only hope that somehow Yamamoto’s mosquitoes, as he called them, flying off those two carriers, could somehow keep the American planes at bay until they were safely out of range.

And he knew that in less that thirty-five minutes, nautical twilight would begin to brighten the eastern horizon behind them, and in an hour and a half they would stand out clear, unless the gods, by some divine favor, sent a fog or a storm to conceal them, but in answer to that, the stars overhead twinkled uncaringly through a high scattering of tropical clouds that covered only half the sky.

“LAUNCH THE SCOUT
planes,” Halsey ordered quietly. He was leaning against the railing, sipping his third cup of coffee since awakening a half hour ago.

Enterprise
turned from her race to the north, into the northeast trade winds. Off the starboard quarter the horizon was beginning to show the faint deep purple glow of a tropical dawn, while to the west the moon was starting to arc back down toward the horizon.

The boys had minimal experience with night launches at sea, with the flight path illuminated only by dull red lights set to either side of the flight line. Red-colored flashlights were used by crews guiding planes into position.

The first of the four scout bombers, with a thousand-pound armor-piercing bomb strapped beneath it, was revved to full power, bursts of flame snapping from its exhaust pipes as the heavy fourteen-cylinder radial engine was pushed to maximum power. The launch chief stood to one side, waving a red-hooded flashlight over his head in tighter and tighter circles.

The aft elevator crew was hard at work, bringing up every available plane. First came the nine Grumman Wildcats that would provide escort. They needed the least run-out space on the carrier deck, and once the four scout planes were cleared, they would be spotted just forward of amidships. Behind them would come the fifteen Dauntless dive bombers, each burdened with a single half-ton armor-piercing bomb, and then behind them the eighteen Devastator torpedo bombers, each carrying a one-ton torpedo.