Again, Galloway’s face paled momentarily, but he didn’t say anything.
That’s not true. I wasn‘t trying to be a fucking hero. All I was trying to do was get that Wildcat to Wake, where it was needed.
"What the hell were you thinking, Galloway? Can you at least tell me that?"
"I was thinking they needed that Wildcat on Wake, Sir."
"Did it occur to you that in the shape that Wildcat was, you could have done some real damage, crashing it onto the deck of the Saratoga?"
"Sir, the aircraft was in good shape," Galloway said.
"It had been surveyed, for Christ’s sake, by skilled BUAIR engineering personnel and declared a total loss." He was referring to the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics.
"Sir, the aircraft was OK," Galloway insisted doggedly. "Sir, I made the landing."
General Mclnerney believed everything Galloway was telling him. He also believed that if he were a younger man, given the same circumstances, he would-he hoped-have done precisely what Galloway had done. That meant doing what you could to help your squadron mates, even if that meant putting your ass in a potentially lethal crack. It had taken a large set of balls to take off the way Galloway had. If he hadn’t found Sara, he would have been shark food.
The general also found it hard to fault a young man who, fully aware of what he was going to find when he got there, had ridden-OK, flown -toward the sound of the guns. Purposely sailed, to put it poetically, into harm’s way.
And he also believed that Galloway had actually come very close to becoming a Marine Corps legend. Professionally-as opposed to parochially, as a Marine-General Mclnerney believed that it had been a mistake to recall Task Force 14 before, at the very least, it had flown its aircraft off to reinforce the Wake Island garrison.
That move came as the result of a change of command. Things almost always got fucked up during a change of command, at least initially. How much Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the former Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, was responsible for the disaster at Pearl Harbor was open to debate. But since he was CINCPAC, he was responsible for whatever happened to the ships of his command. And after the Japanese had wiped out Battleship Row, he had to go.
Mclnerney privately believed-from his admittedly parochial viewpoint as an aviator-that the loss of most of the battleship fleet was probably a blessing in disguise. There were two schools in the upper echelons of the Navy, the Battleship Admirals and the Carrier Admirals. There was no way that the Battleship Admirals could any longer maintain that their dreadnoughts were impregnable to airplanes; most of their battleships were on the bottom at Pearl.
Conversely, the Carrier Admirals could now argue that battleships were vulnerable to carrier-borne aircraft, using the same carnage on Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor as proof of their argument. That just might give command of the naval war in the Pacific to the Carrier Admirals.
Mclnerney knew that it wouldn’t be an all-out victory for the Carrier Admirals over the Battleship Admirals. The battleships that could be repaired would be repaired and sent into action; those still under construction would be completed. But if it came to choosing between a new battleship and a new carrier, the Navy would get a new carrier. And the really senior Navy brass would no longer be able to push Carrier Admirals subtly aside in favor of Battleship Admirals.
No aircraft carriers had been sunk at Pearl. It might have been just dumb luck that they were all at sea, but the point was that none of them had been sunk. And since there were no longer sufficient battleships to do it, it would be the aircraft carriers that would have to carry the battle to the enemy. And when the discussions were held about how to take the battle to the enemy, the opinions of the Carrier Admirals would carry much more weight than they had on December 6, 1941.
Admiral Husband E. Kimmel had to go, and he knew it, and so did everybody else in CINCPAC Headquarters. From 1100 on December 7, Kimmel had had to consider himself only the caretaker of the Pacific Fleet, holding the authority of CINCPAC only until his replacement could get to Hawaii. As it actually turned out, he wasn’t even given that. He was relieved, and an interim commander appointed, while Admiral King and the rest of the brass in Washington made up their minds who would replace him.
They had settled on Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Mclnerney personally knew Nimitz slightly, and liked him. Professionally, he knew him better and admired him. But Nimitz hadn’t even been chosen to be CINCPAC when the decision had been made to send three carrier groups to sea, two to make diversionary strikes, and the third, Task Force 14, to reinforce Wake.
The decision to recall it had come after the humiliated Kimmel had been relieved, and before Nimitz could get to Hawaii and raise his flag as CINCPAC.
Mclnerney believed the recall order did not take into consideration what a bloody nose the Americans on Wake had given the Japanese with the pitifully few men, weapons, and aircraft at their disposal. Commander Winfield Scott Cunningham, the overall commander on Wake, and the Marines under Majors Devereux and Putnam, had practically worked miracles with what they had.
The decision to recall Task Force 14 had obviously been made because it was not wise to risk Sara and the three cruisers. Mclnerney was willing to admit that probably made sense, given the overall strength of the battered Pacific Fleet; but there was no reason for not making a greater effort to reinforce Wake.
Another twelve hours’ steaming would have put them within easy range to fly VFM-221’s F2A-3 Buffalo fighters (and Galloway’s lone F4F-4 Wildcat) off Sara onto Wake. It seemed likely to Mclnerney that risking the Tangier, with her Marine Defense Battalion and all that ammunition aboard, by sending her onto Wake would have been justified. Tangier could probably have been given air cover by VFM-221 and, for a while at least, as Sara steamed in the opposite direction, by Navy fighters aboard Sara.
Instead, Tangier had turned around with the others and gone back to Pearl Harbor . . . and at the moment she turned, she was almost at the point where the carriers could have launched aircraft to protect her.
Mclnerney was not willing to go so far as to assert that the presence of the additional aircraft (he was painfully aware of the inadequacies of the Buffalo) and the reinforcement Defense Battalion would have kept the Japanese from taking Wake, but there was no doubt in his mind that the planes and the men- and, more important, the five-inch shells-would have made it a very costly operation for them.
If that had happened, and if T/Sgt. Charley Galloway had managed to get his Wildcat onto Wake and into the battle, he would have become a Marine Corps legend.
But it hadn’t happened. Sara and the rest of Task Force 14 had returned to Pearl with Galloway and his F4F-4 aboard.
There was a good deal of frustration aboard Sara when that happened. Mclnerney had learned that a number of senior officers had actually recommended to the Task Force Commander that he ignore the recall order from Pearl and go on with the original mission. In the end, of course, they had obeyed their orders.
Meanwhile, Mclnerney guessed-very sure he was close to the truth-that some chickenshit sonofabitch, probably a swabbie, had pointed out that what that damned Marine flying sergeant had done was in clear violation of any number of regulations.