As we flew along I found myself thinking about Oklahoma when I was a kid, when my dad and sister and I were still living together. I couldn’t remember what my mother looked like; she died when I was very young. I remembered my sister’s face, though. Maybe she resembled Mama.
The island first appeared as a shadow on the horizon, just a darkening of that junction of sea and sky. I turned the plane ten degrees right to hit it dead on.
The minutes ticked away as I stared at it, wondering. Finally I checked my watch. Five hours. We had attacked the harbor five hours earlier.
Ten minutes later I could definitely see that it was an island, a low green thing, little rise on the spine, which meant it wasn’t coral.
Pottinger was in the left seat at that time, so I pointed it out to him. He merely stared, didn’t say anything. About that time Dutch Amme came down from the flight engineer’s station and announced that the temps were rising on the starboard engine.
“And we’re running out of gas. An hour more, at the most.”
I pointed out the island to him, and he had to grab the back of the seat to keep from falling.
In less than a minute we had everyone trooping up to the cockpit to take a look. Finally, I ran them all back to their stations.
That island looked like the promised land.
POTTINGER:
A miracle, that was what it was. We were delivered. We were going to make it, going to live. Going to have some tomorrows.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The island was there, yet it was so far away. We would reach it, land in the lee, swim ashore …
Please God, let us live. Let me and these others live to marry and have children and contribute something to the world.
Hear me. Let us do this.
HOFFMAN:
I was so happy I couldn’t stand still. I wanted to pound everyone on the back. Sure, I had been fighting despair, telling myself we weren’t going to die when I really figured we might. The hull was a sieve — when the ensign set the Witch in the water we were going to have to get out as it sank. I knew that, everyone did. And still, now we had a chance.
“Fighter!”
One of the guys in the blisters saw it first and called it.
“A float fighter.”
I rolled the trim over a bit, got us drifting downward toward the water. The elevator control cables had been damaged in the bomb blast. The trim wheel was the only reason we were still alive.
“He hasn’t seen us yet. Still high, crossing from starboard to port behind us, heading nearly east it looks like.”
After a bit, “Okay, he’s three miles or so out to the east, going away. Never saw us.”
The Japanese put some of their Zeros on floats, which made a lot of sense since the Zero had such great range. The float fighters could be operated out of bays and lagoons where airfields didn’t exist and do a nice job of patrolling vast expanses of ocean. The performance penalty they paid to carry the floats was too great to allow them to go toe-to-toe with land or carrier-based fighters. They could slice and dice a Catalina, though.
“Shit, it’s coming back.”
I kept the Cat descending. We were a couple hundred feet above the water, far too high. I wanted us right on the wavetops.
“He’s coming in from the port stern quarter, curving, coming down, about a half mile …”
I could hear someone sobbing on the intercom.
“I don’t know who’s making that goddamn noise,” I said, “but it had better stop.”
We were about a hundred feet high, I thought, when the float fighter opened fire. I saw his shells hit the water in front of us and heard the fifty in the port blister open up with a short burst. And another, then a long rolling blast as the plane shuddered from the impact of cannon shells.
The fighter pulled out straight ahead, so he went over us and out to my right. He flew straight until he was well out of range of our gun in the starboard blister, then initiated a gentle turn to come around behind.
“Anybody hurt?” I asked.
“He ripped the port wing, which is empty,” Dutch Amme said.
“Good shooting, since he had to break off early.”
I was down on the water by then, very carefully working the trim. I didn’t have much altitude control remaining — if we hit the water at speed our problems would be permanently over.
I thought about turning into this guy when he committed himself to one side or the other. The island dead ahead had me paralyzed though. There it was, a strip of green between sea and sky. Instinctively, I knew that it was our only hope, and I didn’t want to waste a drop of gas in my haste to get there.
Perhaps I could skid the plane a little to try to throw off the Zero pilot’s aim. I fed in some rudder, twisted the yoke to hold it level.
And the lousy crate began sinking. We bounced once on a swell and that damn near did it for us right there. We lost some speed and hung right on the ragged edge of a stall. Long seconds crept by before we accelerated enough for me to exhale. By then I had the rudder where it belonged, but it was a close thing. At least the plane didn’t come apart when it kissed the swell.
Pottinger was hanging on for dear life. “Don’t kill us,” he pleaded.
On the next pass the Zero tried to score on the starboard engine, the only one keeping us aloft. I could feel the shells slamming into us, tearing at the area just behind the cockpit. Instinctively I ducked my head, trying to make myself as small as possible.
I could hear one of the waist fifties pounding.
“Are you gunners going to shoot this guy or let him fuck us?”
With us against the water, the Zero couldn’t press home his attacks, but he was hammering us good before he had to break off.
“He holed the right tank,” Amme shouted. “We’re losing fuel.”
Oh, baby!
“He’s streaming fuel or something,” Hoffman screamed. “You guys hit him that last pass.”
They all started talking at once. I couldn’t shut them up.
“If he’s crippled, the next pass will be right on the water, from dead astern,” I told Pottinger. “He’ll pour it to us.”
“Naw. He’ll head for home.”
“Like hell. He’ll kill us or die trying. That’s what I’d do if I were him.”
Sure enough, the enemy fighter came in low so he could press the attack and break off without hitting the ocean. He was directly behind, dead astern, so both the blister gunners cut loose with their fifties. Short bursts, then longer as he closed the distance.
Someone was screaming on the intercom, shouting curses at the Jap, when the intercom went dead.
I could feel the cannon shells punching home — the cannons in Zeros had low cyclic rates; I swear every round this guy fired hit us. One fifty abruptly stopped firing. The other finished with a long buzz saw burst, then the Zero swept overhead so close I could hear the roar of his engine. At that point it was running better than ours, which was missing badly.
I glanced up in time to see that the enemy fighter was trailing fire. He went into a slight left turn and gently descended until he hit the ocean about a mile from us. Just a little splash, then he was gone.
Our right engine still ran, though fuel was pouring out of the wing. As if we had any to spare.
The island lay dead ahead, but oh, too far, too far.
Now the engine began missing.
We’d never make it. Never.
Coughing, sputtering, the engine wasn’t developing enough power to hold us up.
I shouted at Pottinger to hang on, but he had already let go of the controls and braced himself against the instrument panel. As I rolled the trim nose up, I gently retarded the throttle.