Boshiro was slightly disappointed when none of the four burned in a way that would signify they carried either ammunition or fuel. Regardless, these were four ships that would never again carry cargo for the Americans.
The ships rumbled and creaked as they began to break apart and plunged to the bottom. Boshiro wondered if any sailors were trapped and screaming in their metal coffins. He shuddered. It was the submariner’s nightmare.
The deck crew of the I-74 saw lifeboats lowered and the surviving crew members scramble to safety. Brief thought was given to killing them, but Boshiro dismissed the option. Surely they’d had time to radio for help, which meant that either airplanes or destroyers would be on them in a short while. All the time the sub had been on the surface, lookouts had ignored the one-sided battle and strained instead for the sight of a warship or an airplane. The Americans were now patrolling the approaches to Pearl Harbor and, even though badly hurt, were still a dangerous enemy. They would delight in wreaking vengeance on a Japanese sub.
Commander Boshiro made a decision. He ordered the sub submerged. He would stay underwater until certain that his boat was safe, then he would head east, toward California. He would travel back along the route the four ships had taken from America and see if any other plums were ready to fall from the tree.
Perhaps next time he’d get a chance to sink something truly important.
Halsey and Nimitz had toured the harbor area and been brought up to speed on the damage to the ships. Admiral Chester W Nimitz was fifty-six, white-haired, and robust. He had an affable, easygoing personality, which hid a degree of toughness that often surprised others when it came to the surface. At first, Nimitz was not going to relieve the disgraced Admiral Kimmel until the end of the year, but realization of the scope of the fuel crisis, which threatened to cripple the Pacific Fleet, had accelerated his takeover.
Although three years older, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey was subordinate to Nimitz. Halsey was colorful, aggressive, energetic, and he made good press copy. Upon receipt of the pre-Pearl Harbor war warning, Halsey had not dallied. He had ordered his ships and planes to shoot any nearby Japanese and the hell with the consequences. While he wished nothing more than to have his two carriers unleashed against the Japanese, he accepted the logic that it was not possible until the supply situation was resolved and the fleet beefed up by reinforcements from the Atlantic.
It was for this reason that the two admirals met in Kimmel’s old office, overlooking the submarine pens. General Short had been invited to attend, and he was expected momentarily. In the meantime, the two admirals reviewed the catastrophe.
Of the eight battleships so neatly anchored off Ford Island at the time of the attack, two, perhaps three, would be of use by the end of 1942. For the others, it would take longer, perhaps forever.
The Arizona and the Utah were sunk and likely unsalvageable. The Arizona, in particular, was a charred hulk in which more than a thousand men were entombed, while the Utah had partially capsized.
The Oklahoma had also capsized and had been prevented from rolling completely over only when her masts snagged themselves in the harbor’s muddy bottom. The Oklahoma would be out of commission for years at best. It was very likely she would never be salvaged.
The California had also been sunk, but engineers had declared it was possible that she could be refloated by spring and sent to the mainland for repairs. So too would the heroic Nevada, the only battleship that had tried to escape the carnage at Pearl.
The West Virginia had sustained extensive damage and, like the Arizona, was a burned-out hulk. However, engineers were confident they could raise her in about a year and send her back for refitting. Nimitz and Halsey wondered if they would have a year to work with.
Not all the news was bad. The Tennessee had sustained damage to her number 2 and number 3 turrets but was otherwise unhurt. She had already departed for California. The Maryland, even though hulled by a bomb, had also departed for the States. During the attack, she’d had the ghoulish good fortune to be protected from Japanese attackers by the corpse of the Oklahoma, just as the Tennessee had been covered by the West Virginia.
That left the Pennsylvania. The battleship had been in dry dock and not anchored off Ford Island; thus, she had emerged relatively unscathed from the first attacks. The last one, however, had hurt her badly. Bombs had knocked out her forward fourteen-inch turrets, and a near miss had sprung her hull. Flames from the burning oil and fuel cascading from the storage tanks had caused additional damage, but her engineering plant was still intact and she could make headway.
“Get her the hell out of here,” snapped Halsey. “If the Japs come, they’d get the present of a nearly usable battleship. Send her to California just as fast as she can get there.”
Nimitz agreed and gave the orders for the Pennsylvania to depart as soon as she was minimally ready. With the departures of the Tennessee and the Maryland, along with escorting destroyers, the fleet anchorage was beginning to look empty and forlorn. Many other ships had been sunk or damaged, but they were replaceable, while battleships were not. The Colorado was on the West Coast, and additional help was arriving there in the form of the New Mexico, the Mississippi, and the Idaho from the Atlantic Fleet.
More important, in both admirals’ estimation, was the arrival in the Pacific of the carrier Yorktown. Nimitz and Halsey were convinced that the day of the battleship had passed and that the carrier was the new queen of the seas.
Until the damaged ships were repaired and new ones delivered, the balance of power in the Pacific still lay with the Japanese: ten carriers to three; and maybe a dozen Jap battleships to America’s four. The United States still had a number of cruisers, destroyers, and subs in the area, but these were more than matched by the Japanese. With the war raging in the Atlantic as well, it was unlikely that very many more reinforcements would be forthcoming from that arena.
General Walter Short entered the room and sat down. “I hear you’ve routed ships back to the States after yesterday’s attack on those freighters.”
“Yes,” said Nimitz while Halsey glared at the general, who, in his opinion, had been as negligent as Kimmel during the December 7 attack. Both admirals considered it hideously unfair that Kimmel had been sacked while Short retained his position. “Six civilian ships were sunk yesterday, and we believe four of them by the same sub. We have to prepare for convoy and escort duty just like we are doing in the Atlantic against Nazi U-boats. I decided that any ship that could be sent back to the mainland should be returned there. In the future, priority will be given to escorting ships carrying material that can repair the ships and the fuel depot. Anything else will have to wait.”
“You don’t understand,” said Short. “Those ships contained more than supplies. They contained food.”
“Food?” Halsey asked harshly. “Who the hell cares about food on a tropical island?”
Short met Halsey’s anger with his own. “You will in a little while, Admiral. This place may be tropical, but it grows everything except food. Much of what we eat is imported. No food ships and the people of Hawaii starve. Maybe you boys on your floating palaces have enough to eat, but the people of Honolulu are going to be hurting in a couple of weeks if the food ships stop coming in.”