Days of Infamy (14 page)

Where the hell were the Dauntlesses and Devastators? They had to go in together. But go in on what? The Jap fighters were already over the battleship; the hope of getting there first and then getting a vector on where they approached from was blown. And none of the other search planes had reported a damn thing other than empty sea.

His section leader, as ordered, was going into a three-hundred-sixty-degree circle, the Wildcats looking for the bombers that were supposed to be right behind them, but had somehow disappeared in the scattering of clouds over the last fifteen minutes.

He could see four Jap planes.

His radio crackled. It was the squadron leader.

“Anyone see the rest of our boys?”

No one replied.

Damn!

“OK. Keep your formations tight. Stick to me like glue. We’re going in!”

What?

“Hey, ain’t we supposed to wait?” someone called back.

“They’re above us and building up. We’re dead meat if we wait down here. Let’s clear the way. The bomber boys must be right behind us.”

A momentary pause. No one replied, and Dave as the most junior of pilots in the squadron knew he’d be nuts to say anything.

“We either fight now or get bounced from above. There’s only four of ’em, target practice for us. Keep your formations tight and stay with me!”

Dave throttled up with the other Wildcats. Noses pointed high to gain precious altitude, fuel mixture nudged up, carb heat check for a few seconds and then shut off, trigger guard flipped back.

In spite of his fear, for the next few seconds he could feel the exhilarating surge of it. It was a helluva long way from cruising around a Midwest airfield in a sixty-five-horsepower trainer. At full throttle the twelve-hundred-horse Wildcat accelerated, leaping heavenward, vibrating, sending a corkscrew thrill down his spine.

They had been told by Intelligence that the Japs were still flying their old ′96 models off of carriers, planes that would supposedly be dead meat against a Wildcat. But these fighters looked sleeker. Retractable landing gear; they weren’t ′96s.

What the hell were they? The new Zeroes that there had been rumors about? But they were supposedly not assigned to carriers yet. There wasn’t time to think about it now. The four Jap planes were breaking into two sections of two, turning in to meet him.

He spared a quick glance down. A scattering of morning tropical clouds was drifting across the ocean. Through a hole in one he could see what appeared to be the oil slick from their battleship. Don’t think about it now.

Where the hell were the bombers? He looked back over his shoulders to both sides. The Devastators must be below the cloud cover. The Dauntlesses, not in sight.

Range was closing fast, damn fast. Whatever they were, these Jap planes had power.

The first pass through was a head-on which for a brief instant terrified him, the Jap fighter opening up while boring straight in, the two of them playing chicken with each other. He thought he clipped off part of a wingtip, felt the shudder of a hit as well, both banking hard right in the final split second before a head-on impact.

He pulled back hard, stick in his gut, rudder full right, banking turn almost ninety degrees, plane ready to shudder into an accelerated stall, the pressure of the four-G turn narrowing his vision.

He looked straight up and back. Where the hell were the other guys of his section?

“Damn it, Dave, stick with me!” It had to be Gregory shouting.

As he came through a hundred eighty degrees of turn he saw a fiery trail spiraling downward. Was it Gregory? Where was the Jap?

For all in his squadron this was their first fight. Sure, they had practiced before against Army pilots in P-36s and 40s, but not now, not for real, and already, one—no, two—planes were flaming torches spinning down, both of them Wildcats.

All formations had broken up, no coordination with wingmen. He caught a glimpse of a Wildcat below him about a thousand feet or so, a white Zero cutting in behind him, twin contrails appearing off its wingtips, triggered by the wing vortexes in the warm humid tropical air.

He did a half roll coming out of his turn, pulled the stick back, dropping inverted and from three hundred yards astern of his unsuspecting target, which was closing in on the Wildcat it was pursuing.

Dave’s four .30-caliber Browning machine guns opened up, forty rounds a second slashing out, calibrated to converge into a target at two hundred fifty yards, the convergence crisscrossing just ahead of his target, beginning to spread. Sixteen rounds slashed across the forward cowling of the Zero, severing an oil line, two more cutting into the fuel line, a red-hot tracer sparking the spray of gas into a flash of fire. A second later the Zero was trailing smoke, snap rolling to avoid his fire. He shot past the enemy plane, losing sight of him.

It had yet to even register whether he had done anything or not.

My God, it is all so fast. Damn fast. No time for bullshit heroics or witty comments back and forth like in the movies, where the enemy were all so clearly visible, and slow, and just sitting ducks. He lost sight of his target.

“Number seven! On your tail!”

It took a second to register: I’m number seven!

He caught a glimpse of tracers snapping over the top of his canopy, and he was still in a forty-five-degree dive, inverted.

Pull stick, and fly into it. Roll, he’s got my wing. He pushed stick forward, instantly pulling two negative G’s. Damn, I always puke with negative G’s.

He was too frightened to vomit now. The tracers were dropping away. He pulled a sharp half roll, reversed stick, instantly back to two positive G’s, looked aft. The Zero was gone. Another smoking trail of fire visible for a second, this one a white plane in flames, going down. My kill?

“He’s still on you, seven!”

He strained to look aft. Caught a glimpse of the Zero following him, tightening his turn inside of him. Damn, they can outturn us! Everyone said our planes outturned theirs! Someone gave us the wrong info!

Reverse roll, he’s got me. Try to outturn, he’s got me. They were still at twelve thousand feet.

He slammed his stick forward, stomach feeling like it was up in his throat, and he began to vomit even as he nosed over into a power dive nearly straight down at eighty degrees.

Outrun him, go for a cloud below.

Damn! I’m supposed to be part of the squadron. Where the hell are they?

He fumbled for his mike.

“Diving! Can’t outturn these bastards!”

His mission was to provide air cover and support for the attacking bombers. That was gone now. He was flying to save his life, tracers winking past him first to port, then starboard, as the Zero tried to line up on him, the heavier Wildcat beginning to pull away… and then they were into the clouds.

He had no idea what the bottom ceiling was as his plane shuddered slightly from the change in air density of the cloud and the turbulence within it.

Tropical, morning. Most likely less than a thousand-foot base above the ocean. He was redlining at over 320 miles per hour and down to three thousand.

He pulled back hard, G load building up again, four, then five, world going darker, blurry, vision narrowing, orientation lost inside the gray-shrouded world.

Blinding flash of sunlight—he was out of the cloud, blue ocean below, a moment of panic again: I’m going in—and then he leveled out, five hundred feet above the gently rolling Pacific.

And then a buffet, a flash of fire and smoke. He had come out of the cloud with a Jap battleship barely a mile off his starboard wing, Their gunners were opening up.

He pulled into a chandelle, climbing and turning, caught a glimpse of another Wildcat popping out of the cloud, this one, amazingly, actually on the tail of a Zero, stitching it. Flaming wreckage tumbling out of the cloud behind the dueling planes; impossible to tell if was a Jap or one of his.

He felt like a complete and total idiot, for a few seconds imagining standing before McCloskey or even Halsey himself—if I get out of this alive, he thought—explaining not only why he had failed to escort the bombers but had gotten separated from his squadron as well.

The bombers? Where the hell were they? Where were the Jap flattops?

Flashes of tracers again. He looked aft. The bastard had chased him all the way down, popped out of the cloud behind him and was lining up for a kill, flying through his own antiaircraft fire from the battleship.

Dave pulled back on his stick, rolling out of the banking turn, and popped back up into the cloud… and for the moment out of the fight.

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER DAN
Struble, leading the combined squadron of fifteen Dauntless dive bombers, caught glimpses of the air battle raging eight miles or more off his starboard wing, listening in on the
same frequency as the fighters, hearing the near panic, thin trails of smoke streaking down.

Now what?

He could see the Jap battleship. We can be over it in less than three minutes. Hold back? Where the hell were the flattops?

“This is B-17 Gloria Ann, anyone out there read me?”

Jesus Christ, what the hell was a 17 doing out here, he wondered.

He keyed his mike.

“Go ahead, Gloria Ann, this is Phoenix Three.”

“Are you bombers?”

He hesitated. It could be a Jap.

“Can’t say, Gloria Ann,” he replied finally.

“Well damn it, whoever you are, there’s three of us and we’re taking out that Jap battleship. If you’re nearby I’d appreciate some help. I’m coming in from Wheeler.”

Do I support or not? They had flown little more than a hundred ten miles. Plenty of fuel left for an hour of searching before having to head back. But search where? The old man said he wanted their flattops. Well damn it, no one was telling him where they were, and his fighter escort was gone.

“You with me, Phoenix?” It was almost a plea. He could actually see them, or at least the bursts of Japanese gunfire that was now shooting towards the northeast.

“Skipper, we got Japs at five o’clock high!”

His tail gunner’s voice cracked with excitement. The kid was barely eighteen.

He looked aft. Couldn’t see them.

“How many?”

“Three coming in, sir!”

A second later there was a flash of light. One of his bombers off his starboard side, flying in echelon astern, snap rolled over, wing trailing flame, a Jap cutting up through the formation. It was one of their new fighters he had heard rumor of. That decided it!

While he was looking aft another bastard had snuck up on them from below!

We’re going to get cut apart up here if we hang around any longer.

“Come on, Phoenix, help us!” It was the B-17, and he could see that one of them was trailing smoke as they lumbered toward the battleship.

He keyed his mike.

“Phoenix three, follow me. Let’s get the battleship!”

Halsey would most likely hang his hide out to dry, but then again, that would only happen if he was still alive an hour from now. There was no way in hell they were going to outfly these new damn Jap fighters, loaded down with half-ton bombs, without their own escorts covering them.

“GOD DAMN IT,”
Halsey snapped, angry gaze fixed on the loudspeaker. It was getting hard to discern anything. Radio discipline was breaking down entirely, but it was clear enough that his fighters, flying ahead, had not cleared away any of their fighters, or for that matter picked up an inbound track, and his dive bombers were committing to the battleship.

“Damn all.”

And he stalked out of the CIC, up a flight and from there out to the bridge.

The reserve Wildcats, five of them, were spotted on the deck, engines turning over slowly, waiting to launch if an incoming were picked up by the new radar unit, its antenna looking for all the world like a giant mattress spring turning atop the highest mast.

Hang Struble when he gets back?

No, God damn it. If they’re getting bounced by fighters without any cover from our fighters, there’s nothing they can do now but unload on the nearest target and get the hell out.

The Japs had gotten there first, which meant that either they launched in total darkness or were a damn sight closer to that
battleship than he was. Losing X-ray Delta, he had no search going on to his northwest and west-northwest, and his gut instinct now told him they were somewhere over there.

“Sir.”

It was the captain of
Enterprise.

He nodded.

“Sir, we’re picking up the broadcast from the mainland. The President is about to speak.”

“Pipe it through the ship,” Halsey said coldly, hoping that their commander-in-chief would say something, anything, to boost morale and the fighting spirit of his crew.

THE THREE B-17S
, flying in a V formation, were coming straight in, at a suicidal three thousand feet. Two Zeroes were on their tails, hammering them hard, flying as well into the wall of antiaircraft going up. The fifty 25mm guns mounted on the starboard side of the battleship were sending up a fusillade of fire. Its five-and six-inchers, barrels depressed, were firing as well.

One of the 17s suddenly rolled over, its entire portside wing shearing off from a direct hit, part of the wing spinning back in the plane’s slipstream, smashing into the trailing Zero, destroying it as well.

Hiei
couldn’t turn or maneuver.

“Enemy bombers to port. Dive bombers!”

Nagita raised his glasses, spotting them within seconds. At least two planes were on fire, and he felt a momentary flash of anger. Too much attention had been focused on the approaching 17s. On the two surviving enemy heavy bombers, bomb bay doors were opened, and a second later each plane unloaded ten five-hundred-pound general-purpose high explosives. No armor piercing could be found in the shambles of Wheeler.

All Captain Nagita could do was stand and watch, hoping the two
bombers had dropped short. The second one, trailing smoke from a flaming outboard engine, banked up sharply and away.