So far, so good, Genda thought. Then, in almost the same instant, he heard the shout he really dreaded: “Helldivers! ”
MITSUO FUCHIDA’S B5B1 still had bombs left in the bomb bay. That kept him loitering over the battle above the American fleet in the hope of doing more harm. Actually, he wasn’t sure he or any of the other level bombers had done the Yankees any harm yet. He knew they’d scored near misses. Hits? He shrugged in the cockpit. Moving targets were much tougher than ships tied up in a harbor.
Next time, it’ll be all torpedo planes and dive bombers, he thought with a twinge of regret. We’ll save the level bombers for shore installations.
“See anything behind us, Mizuki?” he called through the intercom. He checked six whenever he could, but Mizuki faced that way all the time.
“No, sir,” the radioman answered. “Pretty quiet up here. Not a lot of Wildcats left.”
He was right. Most of the fighters that had flown over the American fleet had gone into the Pacific. Too many Zeros and Japanese attack aircraft had gone down with them, though-too many skilled pilots, too. No one could say the Americans hadn’t fought hard. No one could say they weren’t brave, either. They’d done everything with their Wildcats anyone could imagine, and a little more besides.
And it hadn’t been enough. One of their aircraft carriers, smashed by torpedoes and bombs, had already sunk. Another lay dead in the water, burning from stem to stern. They were abandoning ship there. And the last enemy carrier had taken at least two bomb hits. Damage-control parties on that ship must have worked like fiends, for she wasn’t burning. But she wouldn’t be operating aircraft for quite a while, either, not with those holes in her flight deck she wouldn’t.
Two U.S. destroyers and a bigger ship-a cruiser or a battlewagon-had also taken damage. Fuchida was inclined to shrug them off. They were small change in a modern naval battle.
An Aichi dove on the surviving carrier. It got shot down before it could drop its bomb. Fuchida cursed. He spoke to his bombardier: “I’m going to make one last run at that ship myself. Give it what we have left.”
“Hai, Commander,” the bombardier answered. “I am ashamed not to have served my country and the Emperor better.”
“Don’t be,” Fuchida said. “You’ve done everything as best you could. War is a hard business, and we’re going to have to revise some of our doctrine. No shame, no blame. If there is blame, it goes to me for not flying the plane straighter.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you very much,” the bombardier said. “You’re kinder than I deserve.”
Fuchida concentrated on going straight over the surviving U.S. carrier. He had no more bombers following him; formations had broken down during the past wild… He looked at his wristwatch. Could this fight have lasted only forty-five minutes? So the watch insisted. He couldn’t say it was wrong, but he felt as if he’d aged years.
“Ready there?” he called to the bombardier. “Coming up on the target.”
“Yes, sir… Bombs free!”
The Nakajima rose as the bombs fell. With the whole bomb load and a lot of its fuel gone, it was as light and lively as it would ever be. “We’ve done everything we can do here,” Fuchida said. “Time to go home now.”
“Yes, sir,” the bombardier said again, and then, in sudden excitement, “Hit! That’s a hit!”
Was it? Fuchida had thought they’d made hits before, only to watch U.S. warships steam on, apparently undamaged. Why should it be any different here? Another look at his fuel gauge told him he didn’t really want to linger to find out.
He swung the B5N1 south. Japanese warplanes were leaving the battle by ones and twos and forming into larger groups as they flew: Aichis and Nakajimas protected by Zeros. Too many Japanese planes and pilots weren’t leaving the battle at all. But they’d done what they set out to do. Without air cover, the Yankees couldn’t possibly hope to invade Hawaii. And their air cover was smashed to smithereens.
Then another question occurred to him. How were his side’s carriers faring?
THE FIRST DIVE bombers called Helldivers had been biplanes. A movie about them was one of the things that interested the Japanese in the technique. Not least because of the film, Japanese Navy men still often called any dive bomber a Helldiver. Only in nightmares had Minoru Genda ever imagined Helldivers screaming down on a ship in which he served.
A bomb burst just off to port. The great gout of water it threw up drenched everyone on the bridge. It soaked Genda’s masuku, too. He took the worthless cloth thing off and threw it away. An ensign was rubbing at Admiral Yamamoto’s dress uniform with a towel. Yamamoto shoved the youngster away, saying, “Never mind. I don’t have to be pretty to fight a war.”
Engine roaring, the dive bomber streaked away just above wavetop height. Two Zeros pursued it. They quickly shot it down, but it had already done what it set out to do.
Captain Kaku swung Akagi hard to port. Someone on the bridge made a questioning noise. Kaku said, “They will expect me to turn away from the bomb burst, so I will turn towards it. Maybe I will throw off their aim.”
No one else said a word, not even Yamamoto. Kaku was Akagi ’s skipper; how she was handled rested on his shoulders. And when a bomb burst to starboard, even closer than the first one had to port, everybody cheered. An explosion so close was liable to damage the hull, but the carrier’s crew could repair wounds like that at their leisure.
“Sir, Zuikaku is hit!” the signals officer reported to Yamamoto. “Two bombs through the flight deck-major damage.”
Before Yamamoto could answer, another American dive bomber stooped on Akagi. Captain Kaku was already swinging the carrier toward the last burst.
Maybe the American pilot guessed with him this time. Maybe his luck just ran out. Either way, the bomb hit the carrier a few meters ahead of the forwardmost elevator. Deck planking, jagged chunks of the steel beneath it, and flight-crew men all flew through the air.
Genda braced for yet another bomb, but no more came. A plane crashed into the sea not far from the wounded Akagi. Genda thought it was a dive bomber, but he couldn’t be sure. Flight-crew men dragged hoses across the deck toward the hole in the ship. Down below, damage-control parties would be doing what they could to restore and repair.
“Can we land planes?” the signals officer asked. “Our strike force is coming home.”
“We can land them,” Genda said. “I wouldn’t want to try to launch, but we can land-if we don’t get hit again, that is.”
He cast a wary eye up to the heavens, but it seemed as if no more dive bombers would come roaring down on the Akagi. He dared hope not, anyhow. And then word came from the flight deck: the surviving American planes were flying north. Genda wondered where they would land with two of their carriers destroyed and the third crippled. Maybe they would ditch in the Pacific, as the crews from the B-25s had done. That would save some of the fliers, even if the planes were lost.
He looked out at the flight-crew men and damage-control parties working on Akagi. He thought of the pounding Zuikaku had taken. And he thought of what the Japanese strike force had done to the American carriers. Turning to Admiral Yamamoto, he said, “Sir, this fight reminds me too much of a duel of submachine guns at three paces.”
Somber pride in his voice, Captain Kaku said, “Maybe so, but we had the better gunners today.”