When that news reached the bridge of Akagi, there was an audible hiss from one of the junior officer’s quick intake of breath. One minute they were filled with jubilation. The American carriers had been found, hit by Hara’s pilots, and a second strike was already in the air. The next minute 5th Carrier Division was stricken from the rolls of active combatants.
Nagumo’s expression was cold and stoic, yet one man noticed the small tremor in his white gloved hand, his jaw tight, eyes narrow. The outcome of this battle was now riding the thunderheads with his dive bombers.
The second strike, mostly from Carrier Division 1 was over the American task force a little after noon, the skies still slate grey, and a light rain beginning to fall. They did not yet know what had befallen their brothers with Carrier Division 5, and if they had it would have probably made them just a little more rash, a little more determined, but a little less effective with anger clouding over the stony calm a good dive bomber needed to ply his craft.
They were going to be very good that day as well. Pensacola took the first hit, very near the wound she had suffered the previous January. It seemed the enemy was rubbing salt there, but the scrappy cruiser was not seriously hurt. The chopping recoil of the flak guns punctuated the hour for Halsey now, drowning out the last of the chatter he had been listening to over the radio set. He knew enough to realize his flyers had hurt the enemy, but now he ran outside to the weather deck just in time to see two bombs straddle the Enterprise, one striking very near the bow, its explosion close enough to score the metal with the claw marks of shrapnel.
The second bomb was close amidships, the belt armor taking the brunt of that near hit. Big E would get off easy that day, for those were the only two bombs that would touch her. Hornet’s luck was not so good. That ship was going to take four more bomb hits, the after elevators useless, and a deck fire there impeding any further flight deck operations. One struck near the island, the concussion nearly blasting open the lower hatch and shaking the bridge some 50 feet above. Another did the real damage when it penetrated the flight deck, plunged down into the hanger deck and even blew through that as well. The explosion took out two TBDs that had just been refueled and armed, and the fires were severe.
That hit shook the ship so hard that the temporary hull patch the engineers were working on to seal off that earlier torpedo hit was shaken loose and the see rushed in again, sweeping three men away and flooding two more compartments before they could seal off those hatches. Soon that water would begin to overwhelm the pumps, and Hornet was settling heavily into the water, listing to port and smothered with thick black smoke. Mitscher was almost certain that the carrier had been struck a fatal blow, and began passing the word for the crews to make ready to abandon ship. It wasn’t the steel ship he was worried about any longer, but the 3000 men that were riding its burning back.
It was going to cost that strike wing a single Zero, six Vals, one of the four Kates, and thirteen other Vals damaged by flak in that attack. That was a small price to pay for the Hornet, and Halsey’s only solace was the fact that he had hit all three carriers in that first attack, and Big E was still alive and well. His boys would return, many having to divert to Suva from VF-8 and VB-8 off the Hornet. Then he would work like a madman to get those planes turned over and ready to go again. Enterprise would manage to get 31 SBDs up again, but with only six Wildcats in escort. This time they side swiped the burning Carrier Division 5, and followed a small flight of planes that were heading north. There they found Carrier Division 1, and right there between the two flattops was the biggest battleship they had ever laid eyes on.
The weather was terrible, with the same row of thunderstorms that had swept over the US task force earlier, but down they came. Only one would get lucky enough to do any serious harm, and it was Akagi that would shake with that hit, which set off aviation fuel on the hanger deck and started a hot fire that was serious enough to halt operations. Soryu wasn’t touched, but the tremor in Nagumo’s hand was visibly noticeable now, and he hid it in his jacket pocket. The realization of what had just happened was only too evident. Carrier Division 5 was gone. Most of the surviving planes were diverted to the pot marked airfield near Nandi on the main Fiji Island, but there was not enough aviation support there to sustain operations indefinitely. Akagi had her nice new refit spoiled by that hit, though Nagumo believed the ship could be made operational within a few hours.
Yet in those hours, there was only Soryu out there as the sole remaining operational carrier in the Kido Butai. The Blue Dragon was all that remained.
Even Thunder Gods fall.
Lieutenant Hayashi learned that the hard way when his battered D3A finally reached Nandi. He was down off the plane, seeing soldiers from a Naval infantry battalion pushing a B5N aside to clear the small portion of the runway that was still functional. That set his mind on finding his good friend Subota, and he ran off toward a small group of torpedo bombers, hoping to find him there. What he found instead was the terrible news that his comrade was seen in a bad tail spin dive, right at the edge of a thunder storm.
His eyes wide, a frantic look on his face, Hayashi turned and ran back to his dive bomber, pushing a sergeant aside and climbing up, heedless of the man’s shouts that the airfield could not be cleared for his takeoff. He tried to turn his engine over. He’d get out there and find Subota. It was the only thing to do, but the plane simply sputtered and died, its fuel exhausted. He had been lucky to make that landing safely, and his D3A wasn’t going anywhere until it could be serviced.
Hayashi felt the wave of despair sweep over him, his eyes glassy. He imagined Subota’s plane going down in that wild sea, imagined him alone out there at the edge of that storm, watching the lightning, hearing the raucous boom of the thunder, feeling the hard cold rain on his face. It would be a fitting death, but even as he thought that, he bent forward, both fists at his forehead, and leaned heavily on his flight panel, the tears streaking the char of smoke on his face. The Marine Sergeant saw him there, and said nothing more. He took off his cap, rubbed his chin, and strode away.
The Blue Dragon was all that remained….
That was the one burning thought in Yamamoto’s mind as soon as the battle ended. What if he had listened to that truculent officer from Takami and watched those rockets savage this American attack? No, he had decided to fight this battle on even terms, but the losses the Kido Butai had sustained were very heavy relative to the damage he inflicted on his enemy. He knew they had sunk at least one American fleet carrier, but for that they traded Zuikaku. Admiral Hara sadly reported that he did not think they could save the ship. Shoho was also gone, leaving only Zuiho still afloat, but out of the war for at least four months or longer. Hara’s group was a broken sword.
At least Akagi was not seriously hurt, and could probably be fully operational in a few days. Yet now so many questions crowded his mind wanting answers. Could he adequately cover the delivery of the Tanaka Regiment to Nandi with only one fully operational carrier? His fuel reserve was now at 55%, and he could not linger here for very much longer. What about all those planes and pilots that had diverted to Nandi and Tavua? They would have to hold their own for a time until Army planes relieved them, but it would not be wise to leave those experienced carrier trained pilots there on the islands. A look at his plane inventory found him with only 141 planes at sea including five B5Ns stranded on the Zuiho, unable to take off.