Days of Infamy (12 page)

Wildcats had proved themselves no match for Zeros. What about Buffaloes?
We'll find out
, Fuchida thought. “Odd-numbered Zeros, attack the U.S. planes,” he ordered. “Even-numbered Zeros, stay with our force.” As nine or ten Zeros peeled off, the sun shone brightly on the Rising Suns on their wings and fuselages. Some of the stumpy Buffaloes turned to meet them. Fuchida sent a message back to the task force: “From size of enemy force, estimate it comes from one carrier. Repeat, from
one
carrier.”

American fighters began tumbling in flames. The Buffaloes couldn't climb and dive with the Zeros. They couldn't turn as tightly, either. Fuchida smiled. He knew white men thought Japan built junk. But whose planes survived and whose spun helplessly toward the Pacific? Junk, was it?

Then the Zeros were in among the American attack aircraft. The U.S. torpedo bombers were simply sitting ducks: too slow to run away and too poorly armed to fight back. His own B5N2s far outdid them. Zeros hacked down several in swift succession. The dive bombers were better at both evading and defending themselves. Fuchida couldn't fault the American pilots' courage. He'd seen that from the beginning. But courage went only so far. Without skill and an adequate airplane under you, courage was only likely to get you killed.

A handful of the Brewster Buffaloes tried to come after the Japanese bombers and torpedo planes. Again, the covering Zeros had no trouble driving them off or shooting them down, though they did damage one Aichi dive bomber enough to make it turn back.

Commander Fuchida swung his planes a few degrees north of their previous course. He also ordered them to spread out more widely, to give themselves the best chance of finding the American ships. They droned on. Somewhere out here, in this vast ocean . . .

F
ROM THE
A
KAGI
'
S
bridge, Commander Minoru Genda swept the western sky with field glasses. Fuchida's planes had crossed paths with the American attack force about forty-five minutes after flying west. That had been about forty-five minutes before, which meant the Americans should find the Japanese task force . . . now, more or less.

Beside Genda, Admiral Nagumo looked thoroughly grim—but then, Nagumo usually looked that way. “This could prove very expensive,” he said.

Genda shrugged. “Yes, sir,” he said; he couldn't openly disagree with his superior. But he went on, “We are as ready for the attack as we can be. We have fighters overhead. All the antiaircraft guns are manned. The ships are tightly buttoned up. We can give a good account of ourselves. We have been very lucky so far. When we war-gamed this attack, we thought we might well lose a couple of carriers. As long as Operation Hawaii succeeds, it will be worth it.”

The twin lines between Nagumo's eyes got deeper. “Easy for you to speak so lightly of losses, Commander. This is not your task force.” Genda looked down at his shoes for a moment, accepting the rebuke.

A yeoman rushed onto the bridge. “Destroyer
Tanikaze
and combat air patrol report enemy aircraft in sight!” he exclaimed.

Tanikaze
, right now, was the westernmost of the destroyers screening the task force. She would have sent the signal by blinker unless her captain disobeyed orders. The planes had to use radio. Could the Americans pick them up?

Too late to worry about it now—no sooner had the yeoman spoken than black puffs of antiaircraft fire started filling the western sky. “Now the Anglo-Saxons will see what we can do,” Genda said.

“
Hai
.” Chuichi Nagumo nodded heavily. “And we will also see what they can do.”

“So far, they haven't done much. We can stop them,” Genda said confidently.

The first glimpse he got of American planes was of the smoke and fire trailing from one as it splashed into the Pacific. All at once, the
Akagi
started maneuvering like a destroyer, to make herself as difficult a target as she could. The deck beneath Genda's feet thrummed as the big ship's engines went up to full power.

Akagi
's antiaircraft guns started firing. Genda couldn't see what they were shooting at, but their crews had a much broader view of the action than he did. He hoped they shot well.

All five other carriers were dodging, too, as were the supporting ships in the task force. As far as Genda was concerned, the Americans were welcome to go after destroyers or cruisers or even the two battleships that had sailed from Hitokappu Bay. In the new calculus of naval warfare, carriers were all that mattered.

Bombs splashed down around one of those carriers—Genda thought it was the
Kaga
, but he wasn't sure. Then, amidst the tall columns of white water
the near misses threw up, he saw a swelling cloud of black smoke. The ship was hit, how badly he had no way to guess. A dive bomber streaked off toward the west, a Zero hot on its tail. That was an uneven contest. The dive bomber did a flat roll and splashed into the sea. But its crew had hurt their foes before falling. Commander Genda nodded a salute to brave men.

Somebody on the bridge screamed, “Torpedo plane!” and pointed to starboard. Automatically, Genda's head whipped that way. The U.S. aircraft was plainly on its attack run, zooming straight toward the
Akagi
. Antiaircraft fire converged on it. A Zero dove towards it. Its pilot ignored all distractions. He needed to be perfectly aligned to drop his torpedo, and perfectly aligned he was.

Genda watched the fish fall from the plane, watched it dive into the Pacific. The Japanese had had to expend a lot of sweat and engineering on their torpedoes to make sure they didn't go too deep and bury themselves in the mud under the lochs of Pearl Harbor. Here on the open ocean, that mattered not a bit. The American torpedo could dive as it pleased. It would come up soon enough to strike.

Not fifteen seconds after the torpedo plane launched its missile, the Zero shot it down. That was, of course, fifteen seconds too late. The
Akagi
turned sharply to starboard, to try to present the smallest possible surface to the torpedo. Some men on the bridge prayed. Others cursed. Some did both at once.

Neither would do any good now. Everything depended on that American pilot's aim. Genda gritted his teeth. He feared the enemy flier had known exactly what he was doing, and had done it well. He'd thrown his life away like a ten-sen coin to make sure he had the proper line. Which meant . . .

Thump!
The impact echoed through the carrier. But it was only a thump, not the boom Genda had tried to brace himself against.

“A dud!” Half a dozen men said it at once. Smiles of glad relief filled the bridge. Minoru Genda laughed at himself. Maybe prayer had more to do with how things went than he'd thought.

“Some
kami
watched over us there,” Admiral Nagumo said, which amounted to the same thing.

Another yeoman rushed onto the bridge. Bowing to Nagumo, he said, “Sir,
Kaga
signals bomb damage from two hits toward the stern. It would have been much worse, her captain says, if the hangar deck hadn't been empty of planes.”

Nagumo and Genda and everyone else who heard that nodded. Planes waiting to take off were fires waiting to happen. And, like the rest of the carriers, the
Kaga
had already used up a lot of the munitions she'd brought to Hawaii. That helped make her less inflammable, too. Nagumo asked, “Does she still have power? What speed can she make?”

Genda added, “Can she land planes?” Nagumo, a big-gun admiral down to his toes, would not think of a question like that.

But Nagumo was the task-force commander, and the yeoman answered him first: “Sir, the engine room has taken some damage, but she can make fifteen knots. The engineers are doing all they can with repairs.” Having said that, the rating turned and bowed to Genda. “There is damage on the flight deck, sir. Right now, the ship cannot land planes. Again, the crew does hope to make repairs and keep her battleworthy.”

“Tell them to do all they can. Until we seize airstrips on Oahu, we have to have our flight decks clear,” Genda said. Saluting, the yeoman hurried back to the blinker.

The action seemed over. A few escort vessels were still firing, but Genda couldn't see that they had any targets. The American planes that had attacked the task force had either gone down or fled.

Admiral Nagumo spoke in wondering tones: “All this fighting, and we have yet to set eyes on an enemy ship.”

“True, sir.” Genda nodded. He could hardly blame Nagumo for his surprise; there had never been a naval battle fought beyond gunnery range before, not in all the history of the world. After a moment, he went on, “The Americans haven't seen our ships, either. That doesn't mean we can't hurt them.”

“
Hai
. That's true, too.” Nagumo still sounded surprised.

C
OMMANDER
M
ITSUO
F
UCHIDA
stared out across the Pacific. More than anything else, he wanted to be the man who spotted the Americans' flotilla. So he thought, anyway, till another flier shouted out that he saw ships. Then Fuchida discovered that he'd been wrong. Discovering the enemy was all very well. Destroying him was more important.

“Look for the carrier—or maybe carriers,” he radioed to the pilots in the bombers and dive bombers and torpedo planes. “Worry about other ships only after you've wrecked the carrier force. Bombers, line up behind your leaders.”

In training for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had discovered that most of their high-altitude bombardiers were not very accurate. They had not had the time to train them all up to the same standard. Instead, they'd assigned the best crews as leaders, and had the others follow them precisely and bomb just where they had. That had dramatically improved their percentage of hits. Now they would try it again.

“There!” A pilot's voice cracked with excitement. “That ship is launching planes!”

For a moment, Fuchida didn't see them. Then the glint of sun off metal or glass drew his eye toward the enemy planes, tiny in the distance. Yes, the ship that was launching them had a flight deck, but she also had smooth, almost rakish lines that showed the hull had originally been intended for a battleship or battle cruiser. The
Akagi
and the
Kaga
were the same sort of conversion. The Americans, if Fuchida remembered rightly, had started the
Lexington
and the
Saratoga
as battlewagons before changing their minds.

Which one was that, down below? He shrugged. It hardly mattered. Now that the Japanese had spotted her, they had to hit her.

He and his comrades had been spotted, too. The ships around the carrier started throwing up antiaircraft fire. Most of them began taking evasive action. The carrier stayed headed into the wind so she could go on sending up planes. That made her easier to pick out from the others.

“Each group—attack the target,” Fuchida ordered. “Fighters, accompany the torpedo planes.” They were the ones that had to fly low and straight. They most needed fighter protection. Fuchida went on, “Lead bombers—line up on the enemy carrier.”

He was a lead bomber himself. He used the voice tube to ask his bombardier how he should set the bomber's course. “Five degrees to the left, sir,” the man said at once, and then, half a minute later, “Another five degrees.”

Fuchida obeyed with machinelike precision. For the time being, he was not his own man, only an extension of the bombardier's will. Tracers climbed from the ships below, reaching for his plane. Flak burst in black clouds. Some of the explosions came close enough to shake the bomber, making it rise and dip in the air. He was flying straight and level, which gave the gunners a splendid target. He kept on even so. The mission was all that mattered.

Then the B5N1 leaped again. “Bombs gone!” the bombardier cried exultantly.

The bombardiers flying behind Fuchida would do their best to launch their bomb loads from the same spot as he had. Now the bomber was his again. He could speed up, slow down, jink, dive, or climb to evade the ferocious antiaircraft fire coming up from the Pacific.

And he could pay attention to the rest of the attack on the carrier. Down tumbled the bombs, till they disappeared against the background of the ocean. Zeros and Buffaloes were dueling at lower altitude. Several planes aimed straight for the carriers. Those would be the B5N2s with their torpedoes. One of them caught fire and crashed, then another—shot down, no doubt, by American fighters. The rest bored in on the enemy ship.

Bombs began bursting around the carrier. Was that a hit? Commander Fuchida couldn't be sure. The big ship dodged desperately. She didn't seem to be slowing down. If any of the bombs had struck home, they hadn't done much damage. Fuchida's curses made his disappointment echo in the cockpit.

Where were the Aichi D3A1s? The dive bombers shouldn't miss, especially when the enemy fighters were pulled down toward the sea battling Zeros and attacking torpedo planes. That gave the Aichis a free run at the target.

Just about all the bombs from the high-altitude bombers had fallen now. Fuchida had thought some of them hit. The splashes couldn't have come closer to the carrier. But she emerged from those columns of water still twisting and dodging at top speed. Hitting a moving target from four kilometers up wasn't easy.
We should have done it, though
. Fuchida bit his lip in mortification.