Boshiro had a dilemma. He was submerged in relative safety, and planned on remaining that way until dark. Then he could surface and cruise faster, possibly close in on some of the enemy ships. Then he would attack. That would be prudent. Surfacing in daylight would make the I-74 as visible to the Americans as they were to him.
But he was fairly certain that Admiral Yamamoto in Pearl Harbor was unaware of the force creeping up on him. Thus, he had to warn the admiral immediately, and that meant surfacing so that a radio message could be sent off.
Surfacing would be tantamount to suicide. Additional American ships were coming into view, and they confirmed his suspicions about the size of the American forces.
They also made his decision simple. Regardless of the cost, Yamamoto had to be warned. “Surface,” he ordered.
Admiral Raymond Spruance paced the bridge of his flagship, the carrier Enterprise. A little while earlier, the sound of explosions had resonated in the distance.
“Well?”
Captain Mitscher had taken it on himself to find out. “Damndest thing, but a Jap sub came up just about right under a couple of our planes. After the pilots got over their shock, they began strafing and bombing. Those were the explosions we heard.”
Spruance nodded. It was bound to happen sooner or later. It was too much to hope they would never be seen. “Did they get the sub?”
“Confirmed. Both pilots reported seeing her break in half and sink. A destroyer is just about there and has spotted large pieces of wreckage and a couple of bodies. She’s not on the bottom and pretending to be dead; that sub is gone.”
“There was only one reason for her to surface like that,” Spruance said. “She’d seen us and was going to signal her friends. Did she get off a message?”
Mitscher shrugged. “We don’t know. It all happened so fast, no one was listening.”
“Then we must assume she did,” Spruance said thoughtfully, “and react accordingly.”
The admiral continued pacing. “We must assume that she gave Yamamoto a full description of the fleet, its direction and speed. Yamamoto will be able to do the calculations and recognize that we can attack just after first light. He will have all his defenses prepared for us.”
He stopped and stared up at the sky. “Then we must weigh that fact against our instructions, which were explicit: We were not to take any undue risks with the fleet.”
Mitscher was aghast at the implication. “Jesus, you’re not thinking of pulling back, are you? Not after we’ve come this far!”
Spruance smiled benignly. “Hell no. Of course we’re not pulling back. We’ll just speed up and attack a little sooner.”
The aircraft carrier Hiryu had been moved as close to Ford Island as was possible, but she was still about a hundred yards off. The darkness and the presence of wrecked American ships made moving closer in to shore dangerous, and the availability of barges made it unnecessary.
A large crane had been set up on the Hiryu’s flight deck. It had been dismantled from a shore facility and moved to the carrier, where it had been reassembled and buttressed to stand the weight of an airplane. Despite its looking jury-rigged, the engineers were confident it would work.
While this work was going on, several Zeros had been disassembled and were ready to lift into the barge. There would be one plane per barge, and it would take almost an hour to raise and lower the plane onto the vessel. From there, it was an extremely short trip to the island, where another winch would remove the plane and set it on dry land. Trucks would then tow it to the airfield, which was already almost ready for planes to take off and land as literally hundreds of men had been filling the cratered runways all day and night.
Commander Fuchida estimated that his disassembly-assembly line would begin within minutes, and, once the first plane was at Ford Island, at midday, Zeros would be ready for combat at the rate of one per hour. He had moved to the island, where he would watch the carrier and oversee the other part of the operation. He did not consider basing himself on the carrier. His leg would not permit him to move about. As it was, he was in a wheelchair.
He was pleased, as was Commander Watanabe, who stood beside him, visibly impressed. If everything went according to their improvised schedule, the Hiryu’s sixty-plus planes would all be patrolling Oahu’s skies in a little more than two days, and not the originally estimated one week. A smaller number of planes would be ready by nightfall.
Day and night were somewhat irrelevant terms. Floodlights bathed the Hiryu in an unnatural glow and permitted work to be done on her. Other ships were similarly lit as repair crews worked through the night, and, in the channel, the Akagi still burned, although not as brightly.
The emphasis on speed had come as the result of a garbled and incomplete message received from a Japanese submarine. Watanabe had relayed the information to Fuchida. “The sub had just begun to identify herself when she went off the air. We have no idea what her message was going to be, except that there was sufficient reason for her to surface and try to send. We presume she was sighted and sunk,” he said.
Fuchida had nodded grimly. If the sub had been sunk, it meant the Americans were nearby. But in what strength? Yamamoto had been adamant that the main body of the American navy was in Icelandic waters. Of course they could be racing toward Hawaii, but that trip would take weeks.
Both men had concluded that the likeliest threat came from American submarines. The unfortunate Japanese submarine must have spotted a large American wolf pack heading this way and had died sending the message.
Yamamoto had responded by urging haste with Fuchida’s project.
It was deemed far more likely to succeed in the short run than towing the Akagi from the channel. The Hiryu’s planes must be ready to attack the American subs and protect the fleet when it finally did emerge from Pearl Harbor.
Both men, however, were still extremely disturbed by the lack of air cover. Since it was night and the Japanese floatplanes lacked radar, most had been recalled so the planes could get some maintenance and the pilots get a little rest. Many of the remainder of the men of the fleet were also resting and preparing for the day. Yamamoto had determined that there was no point in all of them working themselves to exhaustion. Men were not machines. They were flesh and blood that had to eat and rest.
“Please tell me, Commander, precisely how many planes are in the air at this moment?”
Watanabe grimaced. “Two, and neither of them fighters.”
“Tomorrow night I’ll give you a dozen,” Fuchida promised.
Watanabe laughed. “It is a gift I’ll accept gladly. Then you can get back to the hospital, so your leg can heal.”
Fuchida wished Watanabe hadn’t reminded him about his wound. With all his activities, he had almost forgotten it. He had to stay seated most of the time with his leg propped up, but he could still command.
A distant growl caught their attention. It was hard to identify over the sounds of voices and clattering machinery emanating from the Hiryu.
“Planes,” Fuchida said, puzzled.
“Can’t be,” said Watanabe. Then he looked ill. “No, can’t be.”
Out of the darkness they dropped. The dive-bombers from the American carriers had easily eluded the Japanese search planes and, like moths attracted to light, had homed in on the lights illuminating the Japanese ships.