The melee with the Zeros that had gone out ahead of the main force didn’t last long. The Americans in the new fighters knew the planes that could hurt their ships were more important. They bored in on the Nakajimas and Aichis.
When Fuchida tried to get one of the Americans in his sights, he had trouble holding it there-it was that fast. He fired a quick burst, then threw the B5N2 sharply to the left. The new fighter zoomed by, close enough to give him a good look at the pilot. The plane bore a family resemblance to an oversized Wildcat, but had been refined in almost every way possible. How powerful was the engine that drove it? Strong enough to leave Zeros in the dust, plainly. That was not good news.
Mizuki fired a burst, too. His snarls came through the intercom, so he hadn’t hit anything, either. Maybe he’d made the American pull away. That would be something, anyhow.
Not all the beefy new American fighters were turning away. Compared to them, the Aichis and Nakajimas the Japanese strike-force pilots flew might have been nailed in place. Dive bombers and torpedo planes fell out of the sky one after another. A few pilots cried out over the radio as they went down. More didn’t have the chance.
Then, like a summer lightning storm, the Americans were gone. The rest of the Japanese no doubt as horrified and dismayed as Fuchida, they flew on. What waited for them when they found the enemy fleet?
DON’T DOGFIGHT THE JAPS. Use your speed. Use your firepower. People had been telling Joe Crosetti that from the minute he started training. He’d believed it, too, but only in the way he believed in the Pythagorean theorem: it was one more thing he’d learned in school.
The minute he saw Zeros maneuvering, he suddenly understood why everybody said the same thing about them. The Japs turned tighter than anything he’d flown probably since graduating from Yellow Perils. Get into a dogfight with them and they’d turn inside you and shoot your ass off.
Diving past them, raking them with your machine guns, standing on the Hellcat’s tail to climb again for another dive-that looked like a better plan. Joe’s element leader was as green as he was, but he also remembered the lessons. They zoomed past the Zeros, guns blazing, and then went after the Japanese dive bombers and torpedo planes-Vals and Kates in the reporting code they’d learned. Zeros were supposed to be Zekes, but most pilots called them Zeros anyway.
Back in school, some people couldn’t remember what the big deal about the square of the hypotenuse was. Sure as hell, some of the Navy pilots here couldn’t remember not to get into a turning contest with the fighters with meatballs on their wings. Some of them paid for it, too. “I’m going down!” somebody wailed. Somebody else shouted for his mother, but Mommy couldn’t help him now.
As Joe made for a Kate, the plane with the torpedo under its belly opened up on him. Tracers zipped past the cockpit. He swung slightly to the left, expecting the Kate to turn to the right. But the pilot-a slightly horse-faced fellow with a mustache-pulled his plane to the left instead. That caught Joe by surprise and left him without a good shot at the Kate.
There was a flight of Vals. The dive bombers seemed to waddle through the air. Their fixed landing gear made them look like antiques. They’d done a hell of a lot of damage to Allied ships, though.
Joe’s element leader bored in on them. He shot one down almost at once. They were built tougher than Zeros, but a few rounds through the engine would do the trick. Joe got one in his sights. The other thing they’d said in school was, Get in close. He did. The Val almost filled his sights before he thumbed the firing button on the stick.
Flames shot from the machine guns on his wings. Recoil made the Hellcat seem to stagger in the air. Joe whooped when he saw chunks of sheet metal fly off the Val. Trailing smoke, the plane spun down toward the ocean more than two miles below. “Got him!” Joe yelled. “Fucking nailed him!”
A moment later, a Jap in another Val almost nailed him. He’d forgotten Vals and Kates carried rear gunners. All his combat training had been fighter against fighter. The assumption was that if he could handle that, he could handle anything. And so he could-if he didn’t do something idiotic. He dove to get away from the gunner.
He tried to count how many Japanese planes went down. He couldn’t. Too much was happening too fast. But the Hellcats knocked down a good many. He was sure of that. He was swinging around for another go at the Kates when the squadron leader summoned the American fighters back to the Dauntlesses and Avengers they were shepherding.
“This is just act one, boys,” the officer said. “We’ve got carriers to catch. That’s the blowoff.”
He was right, and Joe knew it. All the same, he hated to break away.
SABURO SHINDO WAS CALM to the point of being boring. He knew as much. He even cultivated the image. It made him all the more impressive on the rare occasions when he lost his temper-or seemed to for effect.
Now, though, he felt shaken to the core. He’d just seen his Zeros-planes that had dominated every foe they faced-hammered as if they were so many Russian biplanes. He hadn’t thought it was possible, but these new American fighters could outrun, outdive, and outclimb his beloved aircraft by margins embarrassingly large. How had the Yankees done it? That there were such swarms of the new enemy planes only made things worse.
The American pilots were raw. He saw that right away. He was able to take advantage of it almost at once, getting on an enemy plane’s tail and sending a burst of machine-gun fire into it. But he couldn’t stay on its tail for long, because it ran away from him with effortless ease. And the machine-gun rounds didn’t knock it down or set it on fire. Wildcats had been able to take a lot of damage-and needed to. By all appearances, this new and bigger fighter was tougher yet.
He used his 20mm cannon against the next American he fought. They did the trick-the enemy plane spiraled down toward the sea. But they were slow-firing and didn’t have a lot of ammunition. If he ran dry with them, he was in trouble.
And he could be in trouble even if he didn’t. A bullet slammed into his right wing-fortunately, out near the tip, past the fuel tank. Watching another Zero going down trailing a comet’s tail of fire reminded him how inadequate the self-sealing on those tanks was. And getting hit by a burst might well make his plane break up in midair even if it didn’t burn. Zeros were built light to make them faster and more maneuverable. Everything came with a price, though. If they got shot up, they often paid that price.
A horrified voice in his earphones: “What do we do, sir? They’re tearing us up!”
“Protect the strike planes,” Shindo answered, banking frantically to try to protect himself. “They’re the ones that matter. We’re just along for the ride.” Even as he spoke, another Aichi dive bomber caught fire and plummeted, the pilot probably dead.
Giving the order and having it mean anything were very different. The Americans dove on the Aichis and Nakajimas, flailed them with those heavy machine guns they carried, streaked away before the protecting Zeros could do much, and climbed to deliver another punishing attack.
Then, quite suddenly, they were gone. They closed up on their own torpedo planes and dive bombers and flew on to the south, towards Akagi and Shokaku. Shindo belatedly realized that his fighters hadn’t had the chance to attack the enemy’s strike aircraft. The combat air patrol above the Japanese carriers would have to defend them.
And the combat air patrol above the American’s carriers would have to defend them. Shindo’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage smile. No one, from the Indian Ocean to the eastern Pacific here, had yet managed to keep Japanese Navy fliers from striking what they intended to strike. And, he vowed to himself, no one would now.