Admiral Nagumo spoke in wondering tones: “All this fighting, and we have yet to set eyes on an enemy ship.”
“True, sir.” Genda nodded. He could hardly blame Nagumo for his surprise; there had never been a naval battle fought beyond gunnery range before, not in all the history of the world. After a moment, he went on, “The Americans haven’t seen our ships, either. That doesn’t mean we can’t hurt them.”
“Hai. That’s true, too.” Nagumo still sounded surprised.
COMMANDER MITSUO FUCHIDA stared out across the Pacific. More than anything else, he wanted to be the man who spotted the Americans’ flotilla. So he thought, anyway, till another flier shouted out that he saw ships. Then Fuchida discovered that he’d been wrong. Discovering the enemy was all very well. Destroying him was more important.
“Look for the carrier-or maybe carriers,” he radioed to the pilots in the bombers and dive bombers and torpedo planes. “Worry about other ships only after you’ve wrecked the carrier force. Bombers, line up behind your leaders.”
In training for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had discovered that most of their high-altitude bombardiers were not very accurate. They had not had the time to train them all up to the same standard. Instead, they’d assigned the best crews as leaders, and had the others follow them precisely and bomb just where they had. That had dramatically improved their percentage of hits. Now they would try it again.
“There!” A pilot’s voice cracked with excitement. “That ship is launching planes!”
For a moment, Fuchida didn’t see them. Then the glint of sun off metal or glass drew his eye toward the enemy planes, tiny in the distance. Yes, the ship that was launching them had a flight deck, but she also had smooth, almost rakish lines that showed the hull had originally been intended for a battleship or battle cruiser. The Akagi and the Kaga were the same sort of conversion. The Americans, if Fuchida remembered rightly, had started the Lexington and the Saratoga as battlewagons before changing their minds.
Which one was that, down below? He shrugged. It hardly mattered. Now that the Japanese had spotted her, they had to hit her.
He and his comrades had been spotted, too. The ships around the carrier started throwing up antiaircraft fire. Most of them began taking evasive action. The carrier stayed headed into the wind so she could go on sending up planes. That made her easier to pick out from the others.
“Each group-attack the target,” Fuchida ordered. “Fighters, accompany the torpedo planes.” They were the ones that had to fly low and straight. They most needed fighter protection. Fuchida went on, “Lead bombers-line up on the enemy carrier.”
He was a lead bomber himself. He used the voice tube to ask his bombardier how he should set the bomber’s course. “Five degrees to the left, sir,” the man said at once, and then, half a minute later, “Another five degrees.”
Fuchida obeyed with machinelike precision. For the time being, he was not his own man, only an extension of the bombardier’s will. Tracers climbed from the ships below, reaching for his plane. Flak burst in black clouds. Some of the explosions came close enough to shake the bomber, making it rise and dip in the air. He was flying straight and level, which gave the gunners a splendid target. He kept on even so. The mission was all that mattered.
Then the B5N1 leaped again. “Bombs gone!” the bombardier cried exultantly.
The bombardiers flying behind Fuchida would do their best to launch their bomb loads from the same spot as he had. Now the bomber was his again. He could speed up, slow down, jink, dive, or climb to evade the ferocious antiaircraft fire coming up from the Pacific.
And he could pay attention to the rest of the attack on the carrier. Down tumbled the bombs, till they disappeared against the background of the ocean. Zeros and Buffaloes were dueling at lower altitude. Several planes aimed straight for the carriers. Those would be the B5N2s with their torpedoes. One of them caught fire and crashed, then another-shot down, no doubt, by American fighters. The rest bored in on the enemy ship.
Bombs began bursting around the carrier. Was that a hit? Commander Fuchida couldn’t be sure. The big ship dodged desperately. She didn’t seem to be slowing down. If any of the bombs had struck home, they hadn’t done much damage. Fuchida’s curses made his disappointment echo in the cockpit.
Where were the Aichi D3A1s? The dive bombers shouldn’t miss, especially when the enemy fighters were pulled down toward the sea battling Zeros and attacking torpedo planes. That gave the Aichis a free run at the target.
Just about all the bombs from the high-altitude bombers had fallen now. Fuchida had thought some of them hit. The splashes couldn’t have come closer to the carrier. But she emerged from those columns of water still twisting and dodging at top speed. Hitting a moving target from four kilometers up wasn’t easy. We should have done it, though. Fuchida bit his lip in mortification.
Without warning, the carrier staggered, as a man might after an unexpected blow to the face. A plume of water rose from her port side. “Hit!” Fuchida screamed, unable to hold in his delight. “That’s a torpedo hit!”
The American carrier slowed to a crawl. The Aichis chose that moment to dive on her. The pilots in those planes were the best Japan had. They’d been training for months. When they struck, they didn’t miss. Bombs burst all around the carrier-and on her flight deck, too.
“Banzai! ” The fiercely joyous cry burst from Mitsuo Fuchida. “Banzai! Banzai! ” A moment later, he remembered his duty, and radioed back to the Japanese task force: “Enemy carrier heavily damaged. Black smoke rising. I can see flame through it. She is listing to port, more and more as I watch. She lies almost dead in the water now…” He switched to the frequency the fliers used: “Anyone who still has bombs, use them against the American battleships or cruisers.”
Only a few bombs fell. He’d expected nothing different. The carrier was the main target, and the Japanese had devoted most of their effort to wrecking her. Schwerpunkt, the Germans called the point of concentration. The fliers had done what they had to do. Fuchida circled over the carrier like a vulture over a dying ox. The list stabilized; some alert engineer must have begun counterflooding. But that only meant she sank on an even keel instead of rolling over. No more than half an hour went by from the first torpedo hit to the moment she slid beneath the waves.
One of the battleships or cruisers down there was on fire. The Japanese might not have had much to throw at the carrier’s escorts, but they’d done damage. Fuchida radioed the news to his carriers. He eyed the fuel gauge. It was getting low. No-it had got low. Where his was low, some of the others’ would be lower. Time to head back to the task force. Yes, they’d done what needed doing.
LIEUTENANT FLETCHER ARMITAGE supposed he was lucky to be alive. That was about as much luck as he could find in the situation. He shook his head wearily. One hand scrabbled through his pockets, looking for a pack of cigarettes. He found it. He still had his gun, too. Compared to what a lot of his fellow artillerymen had gone through, he was a lucky fellow.
He pulled out the Chesterfields. He couldn’t come up with a Zippo or matches, but that didn’t matter. He sprawled in front of a little fire somewhere not far south of Haleiwa. He got the cigarette going from that and sucked harsh smoke into his lungs.
“Can I scrounge one of those off you, Lieutenant?” asked a sergeant who sounded every bit as exhausted as Fletch felt.
“Why the hell not?” Fletch held out the pack.
“Thanks.” The sergeant lit his cigarette, too. In the red, flickering firelight, he looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week. That was impossible, as he proceeded to prove: “Was it just yesterday morning when the Japs started jumping on us?”