Days of Infamy (12 page)

It was tough work at night. His crew had trained to some extent at night ops, but never for the preparing of a full launch in the predawn twilight. As fast as he trained a crew, men were reassigned to other ships as the Navy struggled to meet its explosive growth demands, the thinking being to leaven crews with men of experience. And night launches were dangerous. Already one man was dead, a nineteen-year-old who backed into the whirling prop of a Devastator, decapitating him, and though Halsey hated to put the statistic so grimly, the accident had taken that plane out of the lineup until its props could be replaced, slowing down the launch prep.

The launch chief motioned with his flashlight for the boys securing
the chocks to the first Dauntless to pull clear, and then a few seconds later dropped down low, pointing his flashlight forward.

The pilot released his brakes, and the heavily laden plane, fuel tanks topped off, a half ton of explosives under its belly, began to roll forward into the wind, thirty-three knots of it delivered from the whirling turbines below deck, driving the thirty-thousand-ton carrier forward at flank speed, ten knots more from the early morning trade winds, coming straight down the length of deck as
Enterprise
ran on a heading of 60 degrees.

With stick full forward, the tail of the Dauntless rose up after but a hundred feet of rollout, the pilot giving her nearly full right rudder to counteract the torque of the engine. It swerved slightly. Halsey held his breath. If the kid flying the plane should lose his orientation and skid over the side, it could trigger a conflagration that would stop the entire launch and ignite a flare of light that any Jap spotter or sub could see from twenty miles away, or worse yet the bomb slung beneath would detonate, taking
Enterprise
out of this action on the second day of the war.

The young pilot corrected, started to ease back on his stick, a little less rudder as airspeed built up, wind slamming against the vertical stabilizer, which was now able to provide more bite and counterforce to the torque. He lifted off a good seventy-five feet short of the bow.

Even before his roll-out was finished, the second scout plane started forward. Thirty seconds later the third was up, and then the fourth.

Halsey was able to relax for a moment, while down on the deck a mad scramble now ensued as the deck crews for each of the forty-two planes preparing for launch spotted them into position, engines roaring. In the darkness another man died, though none of his comrades knew of his fate until a half hour later, when someone noticed that the red-headed kid, nicknamed Red of course, seaman second class and a new transfer onto the
Enterprise
only three weeks before, was missing. By that time he was already dead, blown off the aft end of
the deck by the prop wash of a Devastator as it revved up to full power for a magneto check. Unable to swim, and without a life jacket, his fate had been mercifully swift, unlike the fate so many of his comrades would face this day.

BLEARY-EYED, FUCHIDA COULD
not keep away, even though he had been specifically ordered by Yamamoto himself to stand down from operations this day. He had slipped out onto the main deck, out of sight of his admiral, to watch as the first of the scout planes was launched.

From each of the four carriers in the task group, five planes
were going aloft, spreading outward like fingers or the tentacles of a squid, in an arc from north around to southwest, each plane to run out two hundred fifty miles, turn ninety degrees to port for fifteen minutes, then do a reverse track back in, the process to continue throughout the day until the enemy carriers had been spotted.

A visit to the pilot ready room, though, had revealed to him what had transpired while he had sweated through his nightmares, haunted by his friend Matsuo, drenched in flames, slumped in front of him as the rescue crew had dragged him screaming and protesting out of the wrecked Kate.

He finally heard that
Hiei
was crippled, slowly heading away from Oahu.
Soryu
and
Hiryu
, detached and with but two escorting destroyers, soon to be joined by the battleship
Kirishima
, were deployed to the southwest of Oahu, ready to provide air cover for the cripple, while the rest of the task force was here, northwest of Oahu, searching westward for the Americans.

It was a risky plan. If
Hiei
had not been crippled, the entire task force was to have rejoined by midday, all six carriers in mutual support of each other. As it was now, their planes could overlap each other above
Hiei
, but if the three missing American carriers were together, and struck either group, the risk could be grave. It all depended upon who found whom first.

The five scout planes took off, banking out to the north to northwest, disappearing into the night, while the aft elevator team was already at work, bringing up the dozen Zeroes that would provide combat air patrol over the fleet. Down on the hangar deck, the Kates and Vals that could still fly after yesterday’s hard fighting were even now loading up with ordnance for when the Americans were found.

Inwardly he prayed they were not found today. Yamamoto’s orders had been strict. The hero of the third strike on Pearl Harbor was to rest today. So, like his friend Genda, he would be stuck on the deck, watching as others flew off to glory.

It would be, he feared, a long, frustrating day ahead.

“THIS IS X-RAY
Delta. This is X-ray Delta. Hickam or Ford, do you read?”

James Watson came over to stand behind the civilian ham radio operator who carefully adjusted the dial, bringing the signal in more clearly on the small speaker.

“That’s a carrier scout plane frequency,” a petty officer announced. “It’s gotta be
Enterprise.”

The airwave they were on crackled and hissed, but there was no response. Watson looked over at Collingwood, the senior officer in the room.

“Hickam must have some radio on line by now,” Collingwood whispered. “They can’t be completely shut down.”

“A lot of incoming was impacting around there,” a young naval ensign, the left side of his face bandaged from a burn, replied, slurring his words a bit.

“This is X-ray Delta. This is X-ray Delta… Hickam or Ford, do you read?”

The voice was more insistent now, but still no response.

More eyes were turning to Collingwood.

“We might be the only radio station up and running,” James whispered to him.

“What about a radio on any of our planes?” someone asked.

“What planes?” the ensign replied coldly. “I was over at Hickam just before the battleships hit us. They most likely blew what was left to hell.”

“This is X-ray Delta. This is X-ray Delta …” A pause. “Damn it, does anyone read me over there?”

“Give me the mike,” Collingwood said. The civilian operator motioned for him to sit down by his side and slid it over.

“X-ray Delta.” Collingwood paused. “This is Pearl. Come in.”

A pause.

“This is X-ray Delta, stay off the air, Pearl, I’m raising Hickam or Ford.”

Collingwood sighed. What did he dare to say in the clear?

“This is all you got, X-ray Delta. Repeat, this is all you got.”

“How the hell do I know you’re not a Jap? Give proper code identification.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Collingwood muttered, mike still switched on.

James said nothing. Is this what they’ve reduced us to, he wondered? Were Hickam, Ford Island, Wheeler, Kaneohe, Ewa, and all the naval and army airbases off line now? If so, just how in hell do we coordinate any kind of response?

James leaned over Collingwood’s shoulder and with his one hand pressed the transmit.

“X-ray Delta, this is Pearl. Name your favorite club and I’ll tell you where it is.”

He felt damn foolish but could think of no alternative.

“Screw you, you gotta be kidding.”

“I’m not kidding, X-ray Delta.”

Again a pause.

“Della’s.”

James stood back up and looked around the room, which was now illuminated by the early light of dawn, blackout curtains drawn back from the shattered window frames.

“All right, do any of you know where the hell that is? If not, we’re screwed trying to coordinate with
Enterprise.”

“Yeah, Della’s,” a petty officer growled, unlit cigar clenched between his teeth.

He went up to Collingwood’s side and pressed the transmit key.

“Yeah, kid, it’s on Wahela Street and supposedly off limits to all military personnel. You’ll get a dose for sure if you go in there. How the hell do you know about it?”

Another pause.

“OK, Pearl, this is X-ray Delta inbound. What trade do you
have for me?” and James felt he could detect a slight chuckle in the reply.

What any of them knew was sketchy. All command structure had broken down in this mad night of confusion. Rumors were still floating that the Japs were landing at Kaneohe.

There was a moment of silence from the dozens pressed into the radio repair shack.

“Exactly what do we know?” Collingwood finally asked, looking around. “I don’t want rumors, I want hard facts.”

“That Jap battleship was definitely hit,” the ensign replied. “We know that, and it was retiring westward.”

“We got the shit kicked out of us,” the petty officer snapped bitterly. “That’s about it as far as any of us know.”

Collingwood nodded to the petty officer.

“You got his trust, tell him.”

The petty officer pressed down on the transmit button.

“Listen, kid. We got hit hard by two Jap battleships during the night. We know one of them got clobbered in return and is limping off to the west of the island. You should be able to spot him. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Any fix on their flattops?”

The petty officer looked over at Collingwood and James.

Sure, they had pretty well figured the strike had come from the north, though no one, as far as he knew, had gotten that information out. In twelve hours, steaming at twenty knots, they could be anywhere inside a circle nearly five hundred nautical miles across, over two hundred thousand square miles of ocean to choose from.

Both shook their heads. If X-ray Delta was indeed flying from the
Enterprise
, Halsey’s guess as to where to search was more likely a damn sight better than anything they could provide. It was frustrating beyond belief. There still must be a few dozen planes capable of flying this morning, and dozens of civilian planes tucked into the small private strips around the island. Someone had wandered in reporting that several of the surviving B-17s, now up at Wheeler, were getting set to try and hit the battleship.

“Repeat, any fix on their flattops?”

The petty officer pressed down on the send button.

“You got the same coordinates we do,” the petty officer replied.

Another pause.

“Good reply,” Collingwood whispered. “The Japs have got to be listening,” and as if in response, a shrieking warble suddenly overrode the frequency. The Japs had listened long enough and were now attempting to jam.

“Right, Pearl.” The reply was hard to pick up over the jamming, but still came through, which meant the search plane must be fairly close.

“Will relay. Over.”

Collingwood sighed, leaned back in his chair.

“Sir, a suggestion.”

It was the civilian operator, and James realized he didn’t even know the man’s name.

“It looks like nearly all communications are up the creek without a paddle. I own a radio repair shop in town and I’m president of the ham radio club which meets there. Get me some official-looking paperwork and a truck. I’ll round some guys up with their radios, clean out the gear in my shop, and maybe we can get something running. I’m willing to bet everything has pretty well been knocked to hell if that kid can’t raise anyone but us.”

James said nothing. The man who was talking was obviously Japanese.

Collingwood looked up at James as if reading his mind. If this guy tried to get on any base unescorted now, he’d most likely be shot. How the hell he had even managed to get here was a mystery. He had just pulled in and offloaded his rig out of the back of a small Model A truck marked
Joe’s Radio Repair, Free Delivery
, and toted in the gear they were now using.

The truck, riddled from a nearby hit, was sitting outside the door, all four tires flat, a puddle of rusty water underneath from the blown-out radiator.

“Hey, Dianne,” James asked. “Can you dig me up some CinCPac stationery?”

The exhausted woman was half asleep under one of the repair tables. She looked out at him with bleary eyes.

“You gotta be kidding sir. The building is gone.” She sighed.

“There must be paper strewn from one end of the base to the other,” James replied.

“Find some,” Collingwood ordered. “Commander Watson’s on to something. Forge a signature, any signature, otherwise this guy and his friends won’t get anywhere. Round up some guards for them, preferably some marines, to provide escort, and those of you standing around here doing nothing, go with our friend here. I want radios up and running at every base on this island by midmorning. We know
Enterprise
is out there,
Lexington
too. We’ve got to get communications running again. Now move.”