“Hai,” Muto said. “Yes, they are more alert. The blackout is better than it was-not as good as it ought to be, but better than it was. They had fighters out looking for us. Night interceptions aren’t easy, but they found one of the planes in the flight.”
The officers listening to the briefing exchanged glances, but no one said anything. Like Fuchida, some of the others had to know about the USA’s electronic detection gear. Until someone figured out countermeasures, Muto didn’t need to.
“There was an exchange of fire,” Muto continued. “The H8K has a couple of bullet holes in the tail, but nothing serious. The pilot broke off contact and escaped. After that, all the antiaircraft guns around Los Angeles harbor started going off. The tracers helped us more than they hurt; they showed exactly where the harbor was and lit it for us.”
“What did you see?” Three officers asked the same question at the same time.
“More freighters and more Navy ships than we did two weeks ago,” Lieutenant Muto answered. “They are building strength. What else can they be building it for but a strike against Hawaii?”
“Did you see any carriers?” Fuchida asked, ahead of anyone else.
“No, sir.” Muto paused to yawn again. “I’m sure I didn’t. Carriers stand out because of their size and their flight deck. Warships, yes. Freighters-maybe troopships-yes. But no carriers.”
“If they aren’t in Los Angeles, they will be in San Diego or San Francisco or Seattle.” Fuchida spoke with complete assurance. “The question is, how many will the Americans bring against us? That will tell a large part of the story of how the fight goes.”
“Hai. Honto. Our alliance with the Germans serves us well here.” Minoru Genda sounded as precise as usual. Fuchida admired the way his friend saw not only the big picture but also how pieces of it applied to a particular situation. Genda went on, “If Germany and the USA were not at war, the Americans could move more carriers from the Atlantic and attack us with overwhelming strength.”
“We’re better than they are,” Fuchida said.
“We’ve had the advantage when we met them,” Genda responded. “We were lucky to get away from the fighting at the invasion with as little damage as we did. If that one torpedo hadn’t been a dud, they would have sunk Akagi or hurt her badly. I heard the thud, and then-nothing. I was very glad.”
“Gaining the advantage before going into the fight is part of being better,” Fuchida said stubbornly. “Our pilots are better than theirs. Zeros are better than their Wildcats. We saw that.”
“Wildcats are good enough to be dangerous with a good pilot,” Genda said.
Fuchida snorted. “If the pilot is good enough, what he flies hardly matters. But our fliers are better, all in all. As for Wildcats, they can take damage and they’re very fast in a dive. Otherwise, the Zero outdoes them in every way.”
Major Kuro Horikawa was an Army pilot. He said, “You will have Army fighters and bombers to help you against the Americans.”
Neither Fuchida nor Genda spoke right away. Major Horikawa meant well. Telling him straight out that his planes weren’t as important as he thought would make him lose face. Commander Genda chose his words with obvious care: “So far, neither side has had much luck striking ships with land-based aircraft.”
“Your planes will be very useful if the enemy lands on Oahu,” Fuchida added. “We will certainly be fighting out of the range of land-based fighters, though, and probably out of the range of most land-based bombers as well. Our goal is to defend Hawaii as far forward as possible.”
“Your G4M bombers are likely to be in the fight.” Horikawa couldn’t quite hide his resentment. “They’re land-based, even if they’re Navy aircraft.”
“They were specially designed for long range,” Fuchida said. “Even so, it is not yet decided whether they will go into the fight.” The G4Ms got their extremely long range by carrying lots of fuel. They sacrificed crew armor, self-sealing gas tanks, and structural strength for that range… and raids on Australia, Burma, and India had shown them to be extremely inflammable. Fuchida didn’t want to talk about that. The Navy didn’t air its dirty little secrets in front of the Army, any more than the Army told the Navy about its.
“We need to find out about the American carriers,” Genda told Lieutenant Muto. That was the most important order of business for him, too. Any Navy man with a gram of sense knew carriers were what really mattered. Yamato and Musashi were the biggest, most powerful battleships ever built. But if American bombers or torpedo planes flying off carriers sank them before they came within gun range of enemy battlewagons, what good were they?
As far as Fuchida was concerned, the Navy would have done better to build carriers with the steel and labor that went into the superdreadnoughts. Other opinions had prevailed, though. He couldn’t do anything about that but regret it.
“We’ll try our best to locate them, sir,” Lieutenant Muto promised.
“Good,” Fuchida said. “We caught the Americans by surprise here. They had better not do the same to us.”
“They won’t. We won’t let them,” Genda said. “If they want to take these islands back, they’ll have to go through everything we can throw at them-and we can throw a lot.”
THE BUZZ OF the Stearman’s engine grew thinner as Joe Crosetti eased back on the throttle. The runway swelled beneath and ahead of him. He checked his airspeed and angle of descent. Still a trifle steep… He pulled back on the stick, just a little, and the Yellow Peril’s nose rose a bit. Airspeed was okay, but he checked again to make sure his flaps were down. They were. They had been the last three times he checked, too.
Here came the runway. No time for second thoughts now. He just wanted to do things right. Ninety percent of the trouble in the last twenty feet… That wasn’t a second thought; his flight instructor had drilled it into him till it never left his mind.
Down! The Stearman bounced. Joe’s teeth clicked together. It wasn’t so smooth as he would have liked, but he was down. If he bounced once, he didn’t bounce twice. The little biplane taxied to a stop. Joe let out a long sigh and killed the engine. He unfastened his chute and his safety belt.
Lieutenant Ralph Goodwin strode across the tarmac to him. “Not bad, Mr. Crosetti,” he said. “Pretty smooth, in fact, up until the very last moment there.”
“Thank you, sir,” Joe said. “I’m sorry about that.”
“I’ve seen people walk away from plenty worse after their first solo,” Goodwin answered. “How does it feel?”
Realization of what he’d done washed through Crosetti. “Swell, sir!” He wasn’t the first in his training squadron to solo, but he was ahead of more cadets than he was behind.
“All right, then,” Goodwin said. “Let’s see you walk away from it.”
Joe got out of the Yellow Peril. He gave the wing an affectionate pat. “When can I go up again?”
“Oh, it won’t be long,” the flight instructor said. “But you’ll be moving into a new squadron soon. They may transfer you to another base-they’ll have to check the openings here.”
As Chapel Hill had before it, Pensacola was starting to feel like home. “I hope they don’t,” Joe said.
“Wouldn’t hurt you if they did,” Goodwin told him. “You’ve got to be able to fly anywhere, not just at a place you know well. But you’ll take a step up, any which way. You’ve done what you can do on this baby. Time to see how you handle a Texan.”
“Yeah.” Joe knew he sounded less excited than he should have. He didn’t want to climb into another trainer, even a more advanced one. He wanted to get into a Wildcat and start shooting down Japs.