American fighters began tumbling in flames. The Buffaloes couldn’t climb and dive with the Zeros. They couldn’t turn as tightly, either. Fuchida smiled. He knew white men thought Japan built junk. But whose planes survived and whose spun helplessly toward the Pacific? Junk, was it?
Then the Zeros were in among the American attack aircraft. The U.S. torpedo bombers were simply sitting ducks: too slow to run away and too poorly armed to fight back. His own B5N2s far outdid them. Zeros hacked down several in swift succession. The dive bombers were better at both evading and defending themselves. Fuchida couldn’t fault the American pilots’ courage. He’d seen that from the beginning. But courage went only so far. Without skill and an adequate airplane under you, courage was only likely to get you killed.
A handful of the Brewster Buffaloes tried to come after the Japanese bombers and torpedo planes. Again, the covering Zeros had no trouble driving them off or shooting them down, though they did damage one Aichi dive bomber enough to make it turn back.
Commander Fuchida swung his planes a few degrees north of their previous course. He also ordered them to spread out more widely, to give themselves the best chance of finding the American ships. They droned on. Somewhere out here, in this vast ocean…
FROM THE AKAGI ’S bridge, Commander Minoru Genda swept the western sky with field glasses. Fuchida’s planes had crossed paths with the American attack force about forty-five minutes after flying west. That had been about forty-five minutes before, which meant the Americans should find the Japanese task force… now, more or less.
Beside Genda, Admiral Nagumo looked thoroughly grim-but then, Nagumo usually looked that way. “This could prove very expensive,” he said.
Genda shrugged. “Yes, sir,” he said; he couldn’t openly disagree with his superior. But he went on, “We are as ready for the attack as we can be. We have fighters overhead. All the antiaircraft guns are manned. The ships are tightly buttoned up. We can give a good account of ourselves. We have been very lucky so far. When we war-gamed this attack, we thought we might well lose a couple of carriers. As long as Operation Hawaii succeeds, it will be worth it.”
The twin lines between Nagumo’s eyes got deeper. “Easy for you to speak so lightly of losses, Commander. This is not your task force.” Genda looked down at his shoes for a moment, accepting the rebuke.
A yeoman rushed onto the bridge. “Destroyer Tanikaze and combat air patrol report enemy aircraft in sight!” he exclaimed.
Tanikaze, right now, was the westernmost of the destroyers screening the task force. She would have sent the signal by blinker unless her captain disobeyed orders. The planes had to use radio. Could the Americans pick them up?
Too late to worry about it now-no sooner had the yeoman spoken than black puffs of antiaircraft fire started filling the western sky. “Now the Anglo-Saxons will see what we can do,” Genda said.
“Hai.” Chuichi Nagumo nodded heavily. “And we will also see what they can do.”
“So far, they haven’t done much. We can stop them,” Genda said confidently.
The first glimpse he got of American planes was of the smoke and fire trailing from one as it splashed into the Pacific. All at once, the Akagi started maneuvering like a destroyer, to make herself as difficult a target as she could. The deck beneath Genda’s feet thrummed as the big ship’s engines went up to full power.
Akagi ’s antiaircraft guns started firing. Genda couldn’t see what they were shooting at, but their crews had a much broader view of the action than he did. He hoped they shot well.
All five other carriers were dodging, too, as were the supporting ships in the task force. As far as Genda was concerned, the Americans were welcome to go after destroyers or cruisers or even the two battleships that had sailed from Hitokappu Bay. In the new calculus of naval warfare, carriers were all that mattered.
Bombs splashed down around one of those carriers-Genda thought it was the Kaga, but he wasn’t sure. Then, amidst the tall columns of white water the near misses threw up, he saw a swelling cloud of black smoke. The ship was hit, how badly he had no way to guess. A dive bomber streaked off toward the west, a Zero hot on its tail. That was an uneven contest. The dive bomber did a flat roll and splashed into the sea. But its crew had hurt their foes before falling. Commander Genda nodded a salute to brave men.
Somebody on the bridge screamed, “Torpedo plane!” and pointed to starboard. Automatically, Genda’s head whipped that way. The U.S. aircraft was plainly on its attack run, zooming straight toward the Akagi. Antiaircraft fire converged on it. A Zero dove towards it. Its pilot ignored all distractions. He needed to be perfectly aligned to drop his torpedo, and perfectly aligned he was.
Genda watched the fish fall from the plane, watched it dive into the Pacific. The Japanese had had to expend a lot of sweat and engineering on their torpedoes to make sure they didn’t go too deep and bury themselves in the mud under the lochs of Pearl Harbor. Here on the open ocean, that mattered not a bit. The American torpedo could dive as it pleased. It would come up soon enough to strike.
Not fifteen seconds after the torpedo plane launched its missile, the Zero shot it down. That was, of course, fifteen seconds too late. The Akagi turned sharply to starboard, to try to present the smallest possible surface to the torpedo. Some men on the bridge prayed. Others cursed. Some did both at once.
Neither would do any good now. Everything depended on that American pilot’s aim. Genda gritted his teeth. He feared the enemy flier had known exactly what he was doing, and had done it well. He’d thrown his life away like a ten-sen coin to make sure he had the proper line. Which meant…
Thump! The impact echoed through the carrier. But it was only a thump, not the boom Genda had tried to brace himself against.
“A dud!” Half a dozen men said it at once. Smiles of glad relief filled the bridge. Minoru Genda laughed at himself. Maybe prayer had more to do with how things went than he’d thought.
“Some kami watched over us there,” Admiral Nagumo said, which amounted to the same thing.
Another yeoman rushed onto the bridge. Bowing to Nagumo, he said, “Sir, Kaga signals bomb damage from two hits toward the stern. It would have been much worse, her captain says, if the hangar deck hadn’t been empty of planes.”
Nagumo and Genda and everyone else who heard that nodded. Planes waiting to take off were fires waiting to happen. And, like the rest of the carriers, the Kaga had already used up a lot of the munitions she’d brought to Hawaii. That helped make her less inflammable, too. Nagumo asked, “Does she still have power? What speed can she make?”
Genda added, “Can she land planes?” Nagumo, a big-gun admiral down to his toes, would not think of a question like that.
But Nagumo was the task-force commander, and the yeoman answered him first: “Sir, the engine room has taken some damage, but she can make fifteen knots. The engineers are doing all they can with repairs.” Having said that, the rating turned and bowed to Genda. “There is damage on the flight deck, sir. Right now, the ship cannot land planes. Again, the crew does hope to make repairs and keep her battleworthy.”
“Tell them to do all they can. Until we seize airstrips on Oahu, we have to have our flight decks clear,” Genda said. Saluting, the yeoman hurried back to the blinker.
The action seemed over. A few escort vessels were still firing, but Genda couldn’t see that they had any targets. The American planes that had attacked the task force had either gone down or fled.