They had three carriers. The Japanese also had three, including two of the newest, largest, and fastest in the Navy. The Americans had who knows what for pilots. The Japanese had men who’d smashed everything they came up against from Hawaii to Ceylon. The Americans used Wildcats for fighters. The Japanese used Zeros. Shindo yawned and smiled at the same time. A Wildcat could take more punishment than a Zero. It could, yes-and it needed to. He dozed off one more time, laughing a little as he did.
When he woke again, it was with someone’s hand on his shoulder. Full alertness returned instantly. “Is it time?” he asked.
“Not quite yet, sir.” The man standing beside him was one of the wardroom stewards. “We’re serving out a combat meal before the fliers go up.” He held out a bowl full of nigirimeshi — rice balls wrapped in bamboo shoots, with plums at their centers.
“Arigato.” Shindo took one and bit into it. The stewards had served the same meal before the fliers set off for Pearl Harbor. Another man carried a tray with cups of green tea. Shindo washed down his breakfast with it.
Akagi ’s three elevators were lifting planes from the hangar deck to the flight deck, getting them ready to go into action. Flight-crew men wrestled the bombers and fighters into position one after another. As soon as each elevator went up and came down, another plane went on. Up above, more men from the flight crew would be fueling the planes and making sure their engines and control surfaces and instruments were in good working order. Armorers would be loading bombs and torpedoes, machine-gun bullets and cannon shells. When the time came…
Before it came, though, Shindo gathered up the fighter pilots he would be leading. “Some of you were stuck on Oahu with me when the American bombers raided us,” he said. “They fooled us, and they hit us, and they made us lose face. Now is our chance to get revenge. Are we going to let it slip through our fingers?”
“Iye! ” the fliers answered loudly. Not all of them had been stuck on the island, but every one had been embarrassed. Of course they would say no.
“Good,” Shindo told them. “Very good. They want a lesson. It’s up to us to give them one. By the time we’re through with them, they won’t want to come anywhere near Hawaii for the next hundred years. Let’s give the Emperor a Banzai! and then go out there and serve him.”
“Banzai! ” the fighter pilots shouted. They hurried up to the flight deck.
Shindo climbed into his Zero. Morning twilight stained the eastern sky with gray. Somewhere out there, the enemy waited. As Shindo went through his checks, he was pretty sure he knew where. Any which way, he would get a signal from the bombers, whose radios were more fully hooked into the reconnaissance network.
Planes began roaring off the flight deck. He fired up his engine. It roared to smooth, powerful life. His turn came soon. The air officer swung his green lantern in a circle. Shindo’s Zero sped along, dipped as it went off the end of the deck, and soared into the sky.
XV
IN HIS NAKAJIMA B5N1, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida listened to the reports coming in from the flying boats and from the float planes the fleet had launched to search for the American carriers and their surrounding vessels. He didn’t think he would have long to wait; the Japanese knew about where the enemy would be.
And he proved right. He hadn’t been airborne long before a float-plane pilot found the foe. “Range approximately 150 kilometers,” the pilot shouted. “Bearing is 045.” He paused, then shouted again: “They are launching planes! Repeat-they are launching planes!”
We’re up first, Fuchida thought. Good. Ignoring the growing ache in his belly, he spoke to his radioman: “Relay the position to our aircraft.”
“Hai, Commander-san,” First Flying Petty Officer Tokunobu Mizuki said. He took care of that with his usual unflustered competence.
Fuchida worried that the Americans would intercept the float plane’s signal and learn where the fleet was. He shrugged. With their electronics, they would see from which direction the Japanese strike was coming and trace it back anyhow. Maybe we should have thrown them a curve, thought Fuchida, a baseball fan. Probably too late to worry about it now.
“Shindo here, Commander.” The fighter pilot’s voice, calm as usual, sounded in Fuchida’s earphones.
“Go ahead,” Fuchida said.
“Question, sir,” Saburo Shindo said. “If we spot the American airplanes on their way to our fleet, do we peel off and attack them, or do we continue with you?”
“Come with us,” Fuchida answered without hesitation. “We’ll need your help to keep the Wildcats off us, and the Zeros up over our ships will tend to the Americans.”
“All right, sir. That’s the way we’ll do it, then. Out.” Lieutenant Shindo broke the connection. Fuchida smiled to himself. Shindo, no doubt, would be telling the fighter pilots of the decision. Just as surely, he wouldn’t raise his voice while he did it. With his machinelike competence, Shindo might have come out of the Mitsubishi aircraft plant himself.
Somewhere not too far away-and drawing closer by several kilometers every minute-an American officer was likely listening to the same question from one of his subordinates. How would he answer it? How would his answer change the building battle? We’ll see, Fuchida thought.
As when planes from the Japanese carriers attacked the Enterprise and then the Lexington — and as when aircraft from the Lexington delivered their alarming counterstroke-the two fleets here would not draw close enough to see each other and turn their guns on each other. This war was overturning centuries of naval tradition.
Sudden excited gabble filled Fuchida’s earphones. Dryly, Petty Officer Mizuki said, “Some of our men have spotted the Americans’ airplanes, sir.”
“Really?” Fuchida matched dry for dry. “I never would have guessed.” Mizuki chuckled.
A moment later, Fuchida saw the Americans himself. They were flying a little lower than the Japanese, and noticeably slower: their torpedo planes were lumbering pigs, obsolete when compared to the sleek Nakajima B5N2s in Fuchida’s strike force. American torpedoes weren’t all they might have been, either. Several duds had proved a hit from them wasn’t necessarily fatal, or even damaging.
Would the Wildcats climb up and try to strike the Japanese? Fuchida hoped so. They were slower than Zeros in everything but an emergency dive, and gaining altitude would cost them still more speed. Shindo and the rest of the Japanese fighter pilots had to be licking their chops.
But the Wildcats pressed on to the south, not leaving the attack aircraft they were assigned to shepherd. Fuchida nodded to himself. He would have made the same choice. He had made the same choice for his side. He ordered Mizuki to radio word of the sighting back to the fleet.
“Aye aye, sir,” the radioman answered. “I would have done it without orders in a minute if you hadn’t spoken up.” From a lot of ratings, that would have been a shocking breach of discipline. Mizuki and Fuchida had been together for a long time. The petty officer knew what needed doing in his small sphere as well as Fuchida did in the larger one.
Each strike force slightly adjusted its course based on the direction in which the other had been flying. If the Americans had thrown a curve… Fuchida refused to worry about it. He already had the approximate bearing from the Japanese reconnaissance aircraft.
He had the bearing. He knew how far he’d come. Where were the Americans, then? All he saw was the vast blue expanse of the Pacific. He didn’t want the men he led spotting the fleet ahead of him. He was their leader. Didn’t that mean he ought to be first at everything?