“They couldn’t have put that one in a worse place,” said Captain Douglas, his face grim and set.
“Thank god we launched the dive bombers half an hour ago,” said Fletcher. “We’re going to take some lumps here, but we put 60 SBDs in the air with a good escort, and they better find those bastards.”
“They’ll find them,” said Douglas, “and they’ll hurt them too. Let’s hope to god we’ve got an operational flight deck here when they get home.”
They could already see the damage control teams rushing to get a hose stream right into that hole in the flight deck. It looked bad, and it was going to get a lot worse. Sakamoto’s bomb would not be the last to hit home. The pilots of the Misty Lagoon were in rare form that day, and it was Hayashi’s group that proved to be particularly lethal.
He dove into the blooming dawn, seeing the line of distant clouds framing the horizon. Hayashi was in the lead, riding his machine with the special brew of adrenaline that only active combat can produce. It was fear restrained by excitement and the sheer will to survive and bring harm to the enemy. It was dedication and bravery, and both came with a heavy dose of mayhem and insanity. There were thirty seconds down, five to pull out, and just before, that single split second on the edge of fate where the bomb releases, swinging down on the trapeze, and whistling into the leaden sky. He had to time that moment perfectly, the effort of synapse, muscle and bone.
All the while he focused his mind on only one thing—the target—ignoring all else. Somewhere, the ten other things he had to do in a dive were all being processed by his brain. His hands and feet moved, applying just the right pressure, at just the right time. Then it was bomb away. Hayashi was going to get his hit. He could hear the explosion, and see the bright tongues of fire leaping up in his wake after he pulled out. His would be one of three other bombs delivered to that carrier that morning, and when they were done, the Saratoga was a flaming wreck.
The fires were burning deep, well below the main flight deck, but it wasn’t until Hayashi had made the climb up to 10,000 feet again that the final blow would be delivered by the N5N torpedo bombers. Matsua had arrived with the 18 planes of the Lucky Crane, and they were going in. Four bomb hits on Saratoga would now get insult added to injury when two torpedoes put the ship into a steep list. Fletcher suddenly had much more to worry about than clearing his flight deck. It was now a question of whether he could even save the ship.
The island was largely intact, but the hangar deck was severely compromised with three separate fires, and he had two gaping holes on his starboard side, and a list that forced him to counter-flood and lose his main magazine in the process. No matter what he did now, Saratoga was out of this fight. Her planes were still out there somewhere, but her war would soon be over. Captain Douglas came running up the stairs to the smoky bridge, his eyes carrying the bad news before he could speak a single word.
“It doesn’t look good,” he said. “We’re still shipping water, and they can’t stop that breach forward. We’ll be down at the bow well over 5 degrees in ten minutes. Admiral, I think we’re going to lose her. You had best consider transferring your flag to one of the cruisers.”
“My God,” said Fletcher as another explosion thundered up. “Look at the Yorktown.”
They stared, seeing the tall column of fire and smoke amidships. Seven bombs had done the work there, and one of them set off the aviation bomb storage magazine. It blew a thirty-five-foot segment of the hull clean off the ship, and now the smoke was so heavy they could barely see the bow of the carrier. “We’re going to lose them both…” Fletcher had a dull, vacant look in his eye. “I knew we were looking for too much trouble coming north like this. Why the hell wasn’t I more careful?” It was too late for caution now.
The ship rumbled with a heavy vibration.
“Sir,” said the Captain. “With your permission, I think we should get the crew off as soon as we can. They’re after the cruisers now. Minneapolis took at least two hits, along with Pensacola. Chester is damn near dead in the water, but New Orleans still has some fight in her. Get on over there, sir. We’ll need you off this ship.”
Fletcher could hardly believe what had just happened to his task force. One minute he was leaning on a hand rail, eyeing the weather report with one ear cocked towards the overhead radio speaker. The pilots were finally getting into the fight at the other end of this affair, out there somewhere to the northwest, but they couldn’t return to this little slice of hell on the sea. If any man among them would live out this day, they would have to get to the Santa Cruz Islands. There was a small landing strip there, and Ndeni was still controlled by the Aussies.
He looked at Captain Douglass, eyes glassy as he spoke. “Get a signal off to CINCPAC if we still can. Tell them what happened and that I’m taking anything that can still float to Brisbane.”
In thirty minutes time, Sakamoto, Ema, Hayashi and Matsua had virtually destroyed Taffy Eleven, and neither Saratoga nor Yorktown would make it anywhere near Brisbane.
Chapter 23
The radar eyes on the Takami had not failed to notice the drama unfolding in the Coral Sea. Fukada seemed very restless on his bridge watch, lingering after Captain Harada had come up to relieve him. He was hovering over the Phased Array readout panels, asking Lieutenant Ryoko Otani one question after another.
“How far off is that mess?” He was seeming multiple contacts, and getting a bit nervous. They were over the last reported position of the Japanese 5th Carrier division.
“That’s right on the edge of our scanning range,” said Otani. “About 170 Nautical miles as I read it.” The SPY-1D could range out 175 nautical miles for airborne contacts at that altitude, and about 45 for low approach vector targets like missiles. Had the planes been higher, the radar could have seen much farther. But they were getting an assist from one of the helicopters, and seeing an event that was actually 290 miles away.
“Too far for our SM-2s,” said Fukada. “But our SM-3s could get out there.”
“What’s all this about?” Captain Harada came over, arms folded, eyes on Otani’s screens.
“A nice little swarm over the 5th Carrier Division,” she explained.
“A launch or recovery operation?”
“Could be a bit of both, but the fact that it came on my screen from the south leads me to suspect the latter.”
“It might also be an enemy strike underway,” said Fukada. “We can’t rule that out.”
“How many bees?” asked Harada.
“I’m reading 97 distinct contacts, but we had six marked as likely CAP patrols earlier.”
“If that is a strike then those carriers would have doubled down on that with a scramble. Did we send a warning?”