War and Remembrance (58 page)

It was a perfect coordinated attack. It was timed almost to the second. It was a freak accident.

Wade McClusky had sighted a lone Japanese destroyer heading northeast. It must be returning from some mission, he had guessed; if
so,
it was scoring a long white arrow on the sea pointing toward Nagumo. He had made the simple astute decision to turn and follow the arrow.

Meantime, the torpedo attacks of Waldron, Lindsey, and Massey had followed hard upon each other by luck. McClusky had sighted the Striking Force at almost the next moment by luck. The
Yorktown’s
dive-bombers, launched a whole hour later, had arrived at the same time by luck.

In a planned coordinated attack, the dive-bombers were supposed to distract the enemy fighters, so as to give the vulnerable torpedo planes their chance to come in. Instead, the torpedo planes had pulled down the Zeroes and cleared the air for the dive-bombers. What was not luck, but the soul of the United States of America in action, was this willingness of the torpedo plane squadrons to go in against hopeless odds. This was the extra ounce of martial weight that in a few decisive minutes tipped the balance of history.

So long as men choose to decide the turns of history with the slaughter of youths — and even in a better day, when this form of human sacrifice has been abolished like the ancient, superstitious, but no more horrible form — the memory of these three American torpedo plane squadrons should not
die. The old sagas would halt the tale to list the names and birthplaces of men who fought so well. Let this romance follow the tradition. These were the young men of the three squadrons, their names recovered from an already fading record.

Survivor

Warren Henry had, of course, not a glimmer of this tactical miracle.

Shut in his cockpit, isolated by radio silence, locked into the array of blue bombers roaring through the sky over a thickening cloud cover, all he knew was that McClusky at last had — for one blessed reason or another — turned northeast; that radio silence had been broken by one weak garbled aircraft transmission and another, suggesting that somebody must have found the Japs, the next by a ship’s high-powered radio, squawking in the unmistakable high-strung tones of Miles Browning,
“Attack! I say again, ATTACK!”

For the first time in over two hours, Warren then heard the baritone voice of McClusky, calm, clear, faintly sarcastic, the young professional cooling the excited old fud,
“Wilco, as soon as I find the bastards.
“ At once he felt a surge of warm confidence in McClusky. Within minutes the Japanese fleet burst into view, a stunning spread of ships from horizon to horizon, showing through breaks in the layer of clouds.

It looked just like the Pacific Fleet on a major battle exercise. That was Warren’s first thought, and to dive-bomb them seemed like murder. McClusky droned orders to commence the descent to the attack point. The bomber group sank toward the dazzling white clouds, and broke through the upper layer for a panoramic view of the whole enemy force under wisps of low cloud.

The formation was in bad disorder. Long wakes curled and crisscrossed in the sea like a child’s finger painting of white on blue, the screening ships raggedly headed this way and that; black AA puffballs floated all over the scene; and the pale yellow lights of gun muzzles winked everywhere. In his first glimpse Warren had seen only one carrier, but here were three almost in column, all heading into the wind, with black smoke and long, long white wakes streaming straight back; and far to the north was another big ship, possibly a fourth one, in a clump of escorts.

Tiny aircraft in a swarm were flitting and darting at wavetop height among the ships. Warren saw one trail smoke, another burst into flame; some kind of action was going on down there, but
where was the combat air patrol?
The sky was eerily vacant. McClusky was already issuing attack orders! One squadron to one carrier, Scouting Six for the rear flattop, Bombing Six for the second one; let that third one go for now. It was all happening fast, for there was McClusky starting to push over into his dive, and Warren’s squadron leader was following him.

From here on this was familiar stuff, plain squadron attack drill, the ABC of dive-bombing. The one difference — so he told himself in these last seconds, with his hand on the diving brake lever, when he was beginning to
feel better than he had ever felt in his whole life — the one difference now was that the oblong thing which he had to hit fifteen thousand feet down there on the sea wasn’t a target sled but a carrier! That made the shot a hell of a lot easier. The flight deck was a hundred times the size of a sled. He had more than once splintered the edge of a sled with a dummy bomb.

Yet again,
where was the combat air patrol?
That had been his worry right along, unescorted as they were. This thing so far was an unbelievable cinch. He kept glancing over his shoulders for Zeroes pouncing out of the clouds. There wasn’t a sign of them. McClusky and the first few bombers, already on their steep way down far below, one staggered behind the other, weren’t even catching any AA. Warren had often pictured and dreamed of attacks on carriers, but never of a walkover like this.

He said into the intercom in high spirits, “Well here we go, I guess, Cornett. All set?”

“Yes, Mr. Henry.” Matter-of-fact drawl. “Say, where the heck are the Zeroes, Mr. Henry?”

“Search me. Are you complaining?”

“No sir, Mr. Henry! Just you drop that egg in there, sir.”

“Going to try. We’ll have the sun on our starboard side. That’s where they’re likely to show up.”

“Okay, Mr. Henry. I’ve got my eye peeled. Good luck.”

Warren pulled the lever of his diving flaps. The perforated metal
V
opened all along his wings. The airplane mushily slowed. The flattop went out of sight beside the fuselage, under the wing. The nose came up, the plane gave its almost living warning shudder; Warren pushed over, dizzily dropped the nose straight toward the water far, far below, and straightened out in a roller-coaster plunge.

And there, by God, was the carrier in his telescopic sight, right over the little wobbling ball. Now if the telescope only wouldn’t fog up as they plunged into the warmer air! Visibility through the oily film of the canopy wouldn’t be very good.

It was an excellent dive. The danger was always overshooting and standing on your head, when the dive was almost impossible to control, but he was dropping toward the flattop at a beautiful angle, maybe sixty-five, seventy degrees, from almost dead astern, a little to port, perfect. He wasn’t sitting on his seat now but hanging facedown in his straps, the pure dive sensation. He always thought it was like jumping off a high dive board. There was the same headfirst feeling, the same queaziness in gut and balls that you never got over. It was a long way down, almost a whole minute, and he had excellent controls to straighten out slips or wobbles, but this dive was going fine. With a pedal jammed in hard to neutralize the SBD’s usual yaw, they were skimming down sweetly, the throttled-back engine purring,
the air whiffling noisily on the brakes — and that flight deck was sitting right there in his little lens, not fogging over at all, growing bigger and plainer, with the hardwood decking bright yellow in the sunlight, the big red ball conspicuous in the white oblong forward of the island, the planes crowded aft in a jumble, and minuscule Japs running around them like insects. As his altimeter reeled backward his ears popped and the plane warmed.