Days of Infamy (16 page)

And farther to the southwest, the Devastators, their commander having decided to steer far clear of the battleship, had his squadron spread out in a wide search formation, running more to the west, the plane farthest to the south almost stumbling on
Soryu
, which as the Devastator flew by but eight miles away was momentarily obscured by a low bank of clouds.

CAPTAIN NAGITA BRACED
himself against the explosion, a magazine of five-inch shells aft lighting off, killing all fifty men of the damage control team that had been trying to douse the raging fires below decks between number three and four turrets. The magazines for the aft fourteen-inchers had already been flooded, but the electrical supply for the pump into the smaller five-inch aft ammunition storage area had been severed.

They were listing ten degrees to starboard, dead in the water, six of the boilers blown out by the first of the two dive bomber hits. His escorting destroyers were circling back in to secure a new tow line.

He watched their efforts, saying nothing. It was all but a forlorn hope now, and in his mind he could not help but play out the scenarios of a different history. If only Yamamoto had withdrawn the way Nagumo most certainly would have, this pride of the Imperial Navy would be safe. If only Yamamoto had assigned to him two, even one more destroyer that he could have kept to seaward, the surprise
attack by the Americans during the night would have been detected and destroyed before it even got within range. If only he had turned but five seconds later, the torpedo that hit astern would have passed harmlessly by. If only…

The only certainty he had now was that his ship was barely surviving and the Americans would be back.

HE HAD SAID
nothing for the last fifty minutes, still absorbed in what the American president had said. “Infamy… dastardly… treachery, win through to absolute victory …”

Silently he damned the Foreign Minister and all who worked in that office. Every last one of them should be out here now, on the front lines. They had failed utterly. America would be aroused to fury, no longer seeing this as a war about economics, or even about imperialism aimed at China and the need for Japan to secure that anguished, wracked nation, bring order, and perhaps one day even be seen as a potential ally against communism. No, now they would see it as a moral crusade, the kind of war Americans would embrace without the political division that he had hoped would eventually bring them, as a divided nation, to the negotiating table.

His only hope, Japan’s only hope now was to continue to inflict such hammer blows of damage that somehow he could break their will to pay the price for the absolute victory their Roosevelt had called for.

One thing, though, was certain at this moment. At least one of their carriers was due south of Oahu, a hundred twenty miles off. A Zero covering
Hiei
had trailed a damaged Wildcat back to what was reported to be
Enterprise.
Another report was just in from a second scout plane, trailing their dive bombers. The two reported different coordinates thirty miles apart, frustratingly typical, especially from pilots and spotters not specifically trained for the task. But still it was confirmation, and
Soryu
had ventured a very brief break in radio silence,
informing him that they and
Hiryu
were preparing a full launch to lift off within a half hour.

“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 av gas 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!”