Pearl Harbour and Days of Infamy Page 2

  He slowed. Five sailors piled out, all of them obviously drunk to the point of collapse. Laughing, shouting, cursing, they started to argue with the driver.

  The security at the barred gate came out of their small office, wearily shaking their heads.

  Something compelled Watson--at least it would be a diversion for the moment--and he walked the hundred yards up to the gate.

  “Damn cabbie is robbing us blind!” one of the sailors was moaning as he fumbled in his pockets.

  The marine guard at the gate stood silent, obviously annoyed at this disturbance of the peace of a Sunday morning.

  Watson stepped around the gate, not even sure why he was doing so, and the marines, seeing his approach, came to attention and saluted, though they looked at him with a bit of a jaundiced eye. He had long ago acquired some of the idiosyncrasies of those buried down in the basement office of Naval Intelligence: rumpled uniform; in his case, the replacement hand, his claw as he called it; a coffee stain or two on his jacket; unshaven for two days; he looked not much better than the drunken sailors, but nevertheless they came to weary attention and saluted.

  “Problem here?” Watson asked.

  At the sight of him the drunken sailors came to pantomimes of attention, several offering exaggerated salutes, though a chief petty officer, still holding a touch of sobriety, saluted formally.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said, swaying slightly.

  “Two dollars,” the cabbie snapped, leaning out his open window.

  “Like hell,” one of the drunks replied, “you said a buck for back to the base.”

  “That’s before one of you got sick in my cab. Now I got to clean it!”

  “We ain’t got the money,” the sailor who had obviously gotten sick replied, barely able to stand.

  The petty officer looked at Watson and shrugged.

  “We’re broke, sir,” he said thickly.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Watson said, and in fact he was glad for the momentary distraction. He could well remember more than one similar night in his own life.

  Watson pulled out his wallet, found two bucks, and went up to the cab, wrinkling his nose slightly at the smell wafting out of it. It was a mess inside and he pulled out an extra dollar.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Watson said softly, and handed him the money.

  The cabbie nodded, taking the money.

  “Thank you, sir,” the petty officer announced, and the others chorused their profound and eternal gratitude.

  “When you’re clean and sober, come back and pay me. I’m Watson, Naval Intelligence.”

  The petty officer nodded, as if taking deep and profound note of this information.

  “Now go down and find your Liberty Boat and get the hell back on board your ships,” James snapped.

  “Come on, boys,” the chief petty officer slurred. One of the men started to collapse, his comrades held him up, and they started to pass through the gate.

  The petty officer turned and saluted again.

  “You are a gentleman, sir. I know I’m drunk, sir. Stinking drunk. But when I’m sober, I’d like to buy you a drink. Just look me up. O’Reilly, sir, Quentin O’Reilly, thirty years,” and he pointed to the hash marks on his sleeve.

  “I’m retiring next week; that’s why me and my boys got drunk. So, look me up.”

  “Fine, I’ll do that,” James said with a smile. He had been a midshipman at Annapolis when this man was already at sea.

  “Promise?”

  Watson nodded.

  “Ask for me on my ship, sir. Everyone knows me,” and he proudly pointed out across the channel.

  “There she is sir, the Arizona, finest battlewagon afloat.”

  They staggered down toward the dock where the weary crew of the overnight Liberty Boat waited to haul in the last of the drunks staggering back from Honolulu.

  James shook his head, his anxieties of the moment forgotten, glad actually for the diversion.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  It was the cabbie, standing now outside his vehicle, lighting a cigarette.

  “Sorry about the problem.”

  The cabbie chuckled softly and shook his head.

  “Dam stupid kids, most of them. Usually I can spot the ones who are about to get sick and drive past them. Now I got to clean that mess,” and he gestured to the backseat, “before calling it a night.”

  “Again, I’m sorry.”

  The cabbie actually smiled.

  “Deal with it all the time, sir. It won’t kill me. Besides, like I said, most of them are just kids acting stupid.”

  Nothing was said for a moment. James looked over at the man. He looked to be in his early thirties, Nisei Japanese.

  There had been so many warnings, reports, spies everywhere. General Stark had decided that a war warning meant to look out for sabotage, and thus he had ordered all planes at the air bases to be parked wing tip to wing tip so they could be more easily guarded.

  Was this a spy? James wondered.

  The cabbie noticed his gaze.

  “Looks like you’ve had a long night yourself, sir,” the cabbie said.

  James rubbed the stubble of his beard with his good hand and chuckled softly.

  “An all-nighter, you could say.”

  The cabbie dropped his cigarette on the pavement and stubbed it out.

  “Hope all these war rumors are just hot air,” the cabbie said softly.

  A bit surprised, James looked at him.

  “Imagine the fix it puts me in? I was born in Japan, but now I’m an American. My kids were born here; my wife was born here. Yeah, I heard the rumors; bet you did too. I hope it doesn’t come, that’s for sure.”

  The cabbie smiled.

  “Well, sir, got to clean this rig out and call it a night.”

  He hesitated and then extended his hand, and James took it warmly.

  “Luck to you.”

  The cabbie smiled sadly and got into the cab.

  “Good luck to all of us,” he sighed, “I think we’re going to need it soon.”

  The cabbie made an exaggerated gesture of exhaling due to the smell and, shifting gears, he drove off.

  James turned away, sighed, and looked down at his watch. Five fifty a.m. Damn all, Kimmel should be up by now. Surely he must be up and on his way in.

  The Liberty Boat with the drunks on board was slowly motoring over to the Arizona, clearly visible in the light of dawn.

  The battleship row was now clearly illuminated by the morning light, a few men stirring on the decks, lights shining from open hatches and portholes, smoke curling up from galley stoves preparing to serve out the traditional Sunday morning breakfast of bacon and eggs.

  It was all so peaceful.

  USN Carrier Enterprise: Two hundred fifty miles west-southwest of Oahu 5:50 a.m.

  Admiral Halsey was frustrated and annoyed.

  He was supposed to be pulling into Pearl in another two and a half hours so his men could go ashore for Sunday.

  They were simply not going to make it.

  Head winds and heavy seas had made refueling the destroyers really difficult. The tin cans were always the ships that ran out of fuel first, and you simply had to slow down to refuel them when they got too thirsty. The result was a significant delay in getting home.

  Still, he thought to himself as he looked out from the bridge of the Enterprise toward the destroyers and cruisers surrounding his flagship, we have had a good run out to Wake Island and we are trained to fighting trim. Besides, it was damn good just to be out of Pearl and out at sea. For the last month, anytime they were anchored in port, it set his skin to crawling, the thought of just how damn vulnerable they were.

  It was almost light enough to launch the carrier air patrol and forward on a flight of planes back to base. With the off-load of marine aircraft at Wake Island, and the launch in a few hours of a flight back to Pearl Harbor, he’d be down to less than sixty aircraft on board, but still it was enough to protect th
e carrier task force and throw a pretty good punch if he had to.

  Sitting back in his chair, he looked down on the flight deck in the early morning twilight. Crew chiefs were already at their planes, waiting for enough light to give them a final going over. Up forward, the “sweep down” crew would soon line up to walk the deck, checking every inch of the launch area for anything that might be swept up into an engine. Even a dropped penny blown up into a whirling prop could definitely ruin somebody’s day. His crew was damn good, nearly all of them kids, but damn good kids, proud of their ship and their jobs. All of them had taken from him the sense that a crisis was close at hand. They were ready for it.

  If trouble does come, we will ensure America can be proud of the big E, he thought to himself. He took another long sip of coffee, his gaze focused eastward, taking in the beauty of an approaching dawn over the Pacific, the moment, a peaceful one.

  Two Hundred Ten Miles North of Oahu 7 December 1941 (8 December Tokyo Time): 5:50 a.m.

  The Imperial Japanese Navy carrier Akagi turned eastward into the wind. Standing in the cockpit of his “Kate” three-seater torpedo bomber, Commander Fuchida braced his hands on either side of the open canopy, fearful that his trembling would be visible.

  Akagi heeled over as it turned, pounded by towering forty- foot waves that, as their heading shifted from south to southeast and now to east, became a stomach-lurching sea. Spray from the crests of waves scudded over the bow with each downward plunge of the 34,000-ton aircraft carrier.

  With each plunge a shudder ran through the ship, deck crews bracing themselves, more than one doubling over, the sickness of the sea overtaking them. Yet the excitement of the moment drove them on, and even retching they would continue with their efforts.

  The quartering wind was now head-on, and he could feel the vibration coursing up from the steam turbines in the engine room, through the flight deck, up the struts of the landing gear of his plane, striking the soles of his feet, the trembling of the ship matching his own trembling of excitement. They were racing up to flank speed, 133,000 horsepower, from the nineteen steam boilers turning the four drive shafts, the roar of the exhaust screaming out of the starboard side stack audible even above the howling of the wind. She was alive, her 850 feet of deck swarming with life, the nearly fifty aircraft of the first strike wave. The Zeroes were forward, the lightweight fighters needing the least room to launch, followed by the Kates and Vals, all laden with torpedoes or bombs for the total strike force to be launched from six carriers; over fifty of those bombs were actually sixteen-inch naval artillery shells, a ton in weight, mounted with stabilizing fins. The specially picked pilots of those planes would have a tough time on rollout, their planes launching with half a ton of weight over their design limits.

  Deck crews raced about, the chief mechanic of each plane standing to one side, watching intently, listening, eyes scanning back and forth. The engines had been running now for over twenty minutes, were warmed up, the shifting of the wind forcing more air through the cowling intakes. Over the shoulder of his pilot in the forward seat, he could see the temperature gauges for oil and manifold dropping slightly. Good, there was always the danger of overheating. The fourteen-cylinder Sakai air-cooled engine rated at just over one thousand horsepower for takeoff, was running smooth.

  All checks had been run, magneto switches thrown, the crew chief listening carefully to the slight drop in rpms with each magneto check, able to tell without even looking at a gauge that all was well. Carb deicer was cleared and off, oil pressure good, fuel pressure good, artificial horizon and tum-bank indicator swaying back and forth with the rocking of the ship.

  He caught the eye of his chief and nodded; the chief had given him the traditional headband that he now sported like a samurai of old. He grinned and gave a thumbs-up signal that all was well.

  Assistants knelt under either wing, hands wrapped taut around the ropes that would pull the wheel chokes clear. In this mad, rolling sea, there’d be a disaster in the making if they were removed too early. A plane rolling back or forward into another, since they were spaced but a few feet apart, could set off a chain-reaction explosion that would sweep the deck and in an instant shatter the entire plan.

  He faced into the more than fifty-knot blow sweeping the deck. It was refreshing, bracing. Three days ago, as they steamed down from the northern waters, it had been bitter, freezing, ice forming on the deck. But in the last day and a half they had shifted into more tropical waters and now, in his heavy flight suit, padded with rabbit fur, the heavy boots, kapok life vest, revolver in shoulder holster, padded leather flight helmet, he was sweating profusely and knew that once at altitude that sweat could be dangerous.

  The wind was a cooling blessing.

  He checked his chronometer: it was just after 6:00 a.m. local time.

  He shifted his gaze to the bridge and made eye contact with his friend, the intellectual architect of this moment, Commander Genda.

  Years ago it was Genda who first postulated this type of plan. He was met with such violent reaction that his lectures had to be curtailed, and yet he had persevered, citing every source from the German Clausewitz and the concept of the Schwerpunkt, to the teachings of the American strategist Mahan. For any hope of victory, Japan must effectively end its naval war on the first day, with the first crippling strike that would shatter enemy morale and cripple his ability to respond. We did so at Port Arthur in 1904, he said, the decisive blow as the opening move, the true tradition of the samurai who in one blinding sweep ends the duel before it has really started. It was Genda who had finally risen to the inner circle of naval advisors, and his words had reached Yamamoto when the government finally made its choice to turn “south” rather than “north,” meaning a naval war to seize the rich colonies of the collapsing European powers rather than confront the beleaguered Soviet Union for control of Siberia rich in resources yes, but a nightmare to organize and make productive for an industrial nation. Besides, the army had bungled its probing attacks in Mongolia the year before, crushed by the power of Soviet armor and artillery.

  Fuchida caught Genda’s eye, salutes were exchanged between two old friends, and he knew Genda was in agony, wishing to go with them and not be tied to the deck command bridge.

  The shuddering of the engines leveled out into a steady pulsing, drumming rumble. The bow of the great ship rose up on the waves, paused, and crashed down. Even in this, the most rigorous of services, if this was an exercise, the operation would be canceled. But not now, not today. A typhoon could be blowing, and yet still they would struggle to launch.

  It was a few minutes after six local time. The tropical twilight was brightening to the east, arcing under low, scudding clouds, the trailing wisps of the storm front that had covered their advance across four thousand miles of northern seas breaking apart in the morning light.

  A bosun’s pipe shrieked over the ship’s public address system. He went rigid, eyes focused on the string of signal flags just aft of the bridge, heart pounding. And there it was, the legendary Z flag, the flag that had been reverently brought out from its honored place aboard the old flagship Mikusa and with full honors brought aboard this ship, to be used for this moment.

  The very flag that Admiral Togo had raised in 1905 to signal the commencement of action against the Russians at the Battle of Tsushima.

  Another shriek of the bosun’s pipe and the flag that was at half-mast ever so sharply rose to the top of the signal mast. At the sight of it thus, a wild shout went up. The years of training now came to the fore. Within seconds he could see the first Zero begin to roll forward into the near sixty-knot wind, its rollout timed so that the deck would be level and dropping away.

  It lifted easily, fifty feet shy of the bow. Already behind it rolled a second Zero, then the third. To meet the plan a plane had to clear every fifteen seconds. If the pilot lost an engine now, he was ordered to press over, go into the towering seas, and thus meet his fate. There was no time now for delay.
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  Ten of the Zeroes were clear. A last look over at his crew chief, who was twirling his raised right hand in a tight circle, signal to the pilot of his plane to rev up.

  The plane shuddered with its pent-up fury, massive radial engine thundering, exhaust whipping back. Fuchida was actually tempted to remain standing, but knew that was foolish bravado.

  He slipped down into the cockpit, quickly buckling his harness on, pulling the shoulder straps tight, slapping his pilot, directly in front of him, on the shoulder.

  Now seated, he could not see ahead and could only catch a glimpse of the wingtip of the Kate in front and to their port side.

  The crew chief continued to circle his fist, faster and tighter, the plane shuddering as the engine roared at full throttle, only the chocks and the pilot with both feet locked to the toe brakes keeping it from leaping forward. Unlike with a ground takeoff, there was no room to zigzag into place. The massive bulk of the engine forward blocked the view ahead.

  With a dramatic gesture the crew chief pointed down with his left hand, signaling the crews holding the lines to the chokes to pull them clear. At the same instant he looked back up at the pilot, saluted, and then pointed directly forward.

  The heavy Kate began to roll forward, the launch chief, up on the bridge, timing the moment so that the deck was pitching up; thus by the time they reached the end of the deck, it would be pitching back down.

  “Wind speed seventy,” the pilot shouted, “seventy-five.” They were past the bridge. Though indicated speed was seventy-five, in fact they were just barely moving at little more than twenty-five knots. The pilot already had his stick slightly forward to raise the tail up, the big rudder aft biting into the wind with plenty of right rudder by the pilot to counteract the tremendous torque generated by the engine. He could feel a lightness to the aircraft, a slight buffeting from the torque, the pilot feeding in more right rudder, stick easing back, the deck dropping away beneath them. The Kate felt sluggish, hovering on a stall, pilot nosing her down slightly, running parallel to the deck for a few seconds so that it looked like they were heading straight into the sea.