“They got lots of destroyers. Not so many cruisers.”
He thought like I did: If there was a cruiser in there, the Japs knew it was the prime target and they’d be ready; still, that’s the one I’d hit. When you’re looking for a fight, hit the biggest guy in the bar.
MODAHL:
The kid was right; of course. There was no way we were going to sucker punch the Japs with a hundred-knot PBY. Yet I knew there would be targets in Rabaul so we had to check Buka first.
Snyder not coming back last night was the wild card. If the Japanese had radar at Rabaul, they could take the darkness away from us. Ditto night fighters with radar. Intelligence said they didn’t have radar, and we had seen no indications that Intel was wrong, but still, Joe did what we plan to do, and he didn’t come home.
Probably flak got him. God knows, in a heavily defended harbor, flying over a couple of dozen warships, the flak was probably thick enough to walk on.
Bombing at masthead height is our only realistic method for delivering the bombs. Hell, we don’t even have a bombsight: We took it out when we put in the bow guns. The Catalina is an up-close and personal weapon. We’ll stick it in their ear and pull the trigger, which will work, amazingly enough, if we can take advantage of the darkness to surprise them.
We’ll pull it off or we won’t. That’s the truth of it.
POTTINGER:
Talk about going along for the ride: These two go blithely about their bloody work without a thought for the rest of the crew. The have ice water in their veins. And neither asked if damaging a ship was worth the life of every man in this plane. Or anybody’s life.
They’re assassins, pure and simple, and they thought they were invulnerable.
Of course, the Japanese were assassins, too.
All of these assholes were in it for the blood.
One hundred knots is glacially slow when you’re going to a fire. I was so nervous that I had trouble sitting still. Despite my faith in Pottinger’s expertise, I kept staring into the darkness, trying to see what was out there. I didn’t want to fly into a mountain and these islands certainly had ‘em. When Pottinger said we had reached the mouth of the channel between the two, we turned north. Blindly.
As we motored up the channel at two thousand feet, I wondered why I didn’t want to put off the moment of truth, till tomorrow night, or next week, or next year. Or forever. I decided that a man needs a future if he is to stay on an even keel, and with Rabaul up ahead, the future was nothing but a coin flip. I wanted it to be over.
Pottinger and Varitek, the radioman, were on the radar; they reported lots of blips. We came up the moonpath and looked with binoculars: We counted twenty-three ships in the harbor, about half of them warships and the rest freighters and tankers. Lots of targets.
“I think the one in the center of the harbor is a cruiser,” Modahl said, and passed the binoculars to me. As he turned the plane to the north, to seaward, I turned the focus wheel of the binoculars and studied it through his side window. With the vibration of the plane and the low light level — all we had was moonlight — it was hard to tell. She was big, all right, and long enough, easily the biggest warship in the harbor.
“Looks like a cruiser to me,” I agreed. I lost the moon as I tried to focus on other ships. Modahl turned the Witch 180 degrees and motored back south. This time the harbor was on my side.
“See anything that looks like a carrier?” he asked.
“I’m looking.” Destroyer, destroyer, maybe a small cruiser … more destroyers. A sub. No, two subs.
“Two subs, no carrier,” I said, still scanning.
“I’d like to bomb a carrier before I die,” Modahl muttered. Everyone on the circuit heard that, of course, and I thought he should watch his lip. No use getting the crew in a sweat. But it was his crew, so I let the remark go by.
“The biggest ship I see is the cruiser in the center,” I said, and handed back the glasses.
“Surrounded by cans. When they hear us, everyone opens fire, and Vesuvius will erupt under our ass.”
“We can always do a destroyer. We can send one or two to the bottom. They are excellent targets.”
“I know.”
We turned and motored north again. He waited until the moonlight reflected on the harbor and studied it again with the binoculars. Pottinger was standing behind us. He didn’t say anything, kept bent over so he could look out at the harbor.
“The cruiser,” Modahl said with finality. He told the crew, as if they didn’t know, “We are off Rabaul harbor. The Japs have twenty-three ships there, one of which appears to be a cruiser. Radio, send off a contact report. When you’re finished we’ll attack.”
“What do you want me to say, Mr. Modahl?”
“Just what I said. Twenty-three ships, et cetera.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me when you have an acknowledgment.”
The cruiser lay at a forty-five-degree angle to the moonpath, which had to be the direction of our approach since we were bombing visually. To maximize our chances of getting a hit, we should train off the four bombs, that is, drop them one at a time with a set interval between them — we were going to try to drop the bomb that had hung on the rack at Buka. On the other hand, we could do the most damage if we salvoed all four bombs right down the smokestack. The obvious compromise was to salvo them in pairs with an appropriate interval between pairs — that was Modahl’s choice. He didn’t ask anyone’s opinion; he merely announced how we were going to do it.
Hoffman consulted the chart. If we managed to get up to 250 mph at weapons release, an interval of two-tenths of a second would give us seventy-five feet between salvos. Modahl knew the math cold and gave his approval. Hoffman set two-tenths of a second on the interval-ometer.
“How low are you going to go?” Pottinger asked. The cockpit lights reflected in the sweat on his face.
“As low as possible.”
“We’re going to get caught in the bombs’ blast.”
“Every foot of altitude increases our chances of missing.”
“And of getting home,” Pottinger said flatly.
“Get back to your station,” Modahl snapped. “The enemy is there, and I intend to hit him.”
“I’m merely pointing out the obvious.”
“Take it up with Commander Jones the next time you see him.”
“If I see him.”
“Goddamn it, Pottinger! That’s enough! Get back to your station and shut the fuck up.”
The crew heard this exchange, which was one reason Modahl was so infuriated. Right then I would have bet serious money that Modahl and Pottinger would never again fly together.
We flew inbound at three thousand feet. Modahl had climbed higher so he could dive with the engines at idle and still get plenty of airspeed. I was used to the speed of the Dauntless, so motoring inbound toward the proper dive point — waiting, waiting, waiting — was like having poison ivy and being unable to scratch.
“Now,” he said, finally, and we both pushed forward on the yokes as he pulled back the throttles and advanced the prop levers. The engines gurgled … and the airspeed began increasing. Modahl ran the trim forward. Down we swooped, accelerating ever so slowly.
The cruiser was dead ahead, anchored, without a single light showing. The black shapes on the silver water, the darkness of the land surrounding the bay, the moon and stars above … it was like something from a dream. Or a nightmare.
I called the altitudes. “Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen …”
He pushed harder on the yoke, ran the nose trim full down. Speed passing 180, 190 …
Every gun in the Jap fleet opened fire, all at once.