Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (44 page)

So as the Nakijima 97 “Kate” torpedo planes raced across the flat waters, there was literally nothing to stop them. Only a quarter of the eight hundred naval anti-aircraft guns were manned, and just four of the Army’s thirty batteries. None of the various Navy, Marine, or Army Air Corps fighters were on alert—it was Sunday morning, after all. Worse, in an effort to counter local sabotage, the planes were all parked wingtip to wingtip for better ground security. From the air they made perfect targets.

Five battleships were sunk: the
Oklahoma
,
West Virginia
,
California, Utah
, and
Arizona
. The
Nevada
managed to get under way but was heavily damaged, so she was deliberately beached to avoid sinking in the channel. Both the
Maryland
and the
Pennsylvania
were damaged but serviceable. The Japanese second wave of 171 aircraft, all dive-bombers and fighters, hit the airfields again and reattacked the harbor area. The raid would destroy 18 ships and more than 160 aircraft, damaging 100 more. The Navy and Marines would lose 2,117 men, most from the
Arizona
, with another 779 wounded. Army casualties numbered 228 dead and 459 wounded. The Japanese lost 64 dead with one captured—and claimed a great victory.

But even surprised and unprepared, the Americans fought back ferociously, and despite the sneak attack, nearly 30 percent of the Japanese strike force sustained damage or didn’t return. A few American fighter pilots managed to get airborne and hit back, so Welch and Taylor weren’t completely alone that day.

After getting off the ground from Haleiwa, the two P-40s swung around the west coast of the island over the flight of B-17s coming in from the mainland. They then ambushed twelve Val dive-bombers attacking Ewa Field, a Marine air base on the southwest side of the island near the channel into Pearl Harbor. Taylor and Welch would go on to shoot down four enemy aircraft apiece, and both would survive the day—in fact, both would survive the war.
^*

Others weren’t so fortunate. At least eight USAAF pilots got airborne, but one was killed by a Zero and another by friendly fire as he returned to land. Later that night five F4F Wildcats from VF-6 off the USS
Enterprise
flew into Ford Island. Lt. Cmdr. Howard Young, their carrier air group commander (CAG), had made it in earlier that day, informed the Navy of the flight’s arrival, and was himself in the control tower as the fighters arrived. Perfectly illustrating a less discussed risk of combat flying, the Americans manning the airfield’s anti-aircraft guns just saw planes and opened fire.

Lt. (j.g.) Fritz Hebel, the flight lead, was hit but evaded fire, got out of the harbor, and flew on to Wheeler, where the Army then shot him down. He fractured his skull against the gunsight and would later die of his wounds. Hebel’s wingman, Ens. Herbert Menges, was riddled with bullets and crashed into the Palms Hotel, dying on impact. Lt. (j.g.) Eric Allen bailed out over the harbor, and the gunners shot at him in his partially deployed parachute. Hit by a .50-caliber shell, Allen survived the impact and swam to a nearby minesweeper but died the next day.

Ens. Gayle Hermann’s Wildcat was hit nearly twenty times, knocking the engine out. He came down in a cane field near Ford Island’s seaplane base and, amazingly, was unhurt. That left Ens. James Daniels with the only airborne Wildcat. When the shooting started he promptly switched off his lights and dropped down low over the channel.
^*
Lt. Cmdr. Young eventually got the trigger-happy sailors to cease firing and also managed to convince Daniels that the island was
not
in Japanese hands. Narrowly missing the beached
Nevada
, the ensign landed and taxied to the parking area in front of the control tower. As he rolled to a stop someone opened up with a machine gun. Gayle Hermann, the other surviving pilot, had just walked in from the cane field and was waiting for his friend. When the firing began he ran up and pistol-whipped the shooter, thus ending the stupidity for one night.

The infamous fourteen-point message from Tokyo that essentially declared war had finally been transcribed and presented to the Americans by Japan’s diplomats in Washington. It was late, however, and the attack on Hawaii had already occurred. In fact, Japan’s diplomatic code had been broken long before, so U.S. analysts had decoded and translated the message before the Japanese diplomats did so. The biggest difference that even a one-hour warning would’ve made would have been fighter air cover over Oahu. If even a few squadrons had gotten airborne and caught the strike force by surprise, many lives could’ve been saved. Torpedo bombers and dive-bombers are extremely vulnerable to fighters, and their attack plan would’ve been thrown into confusion if they themselves were under attack. A much larger percentage of anti-aircraft guns would’ve been manned and ready as well.

Horrible as it was, the Pearl Harbor attack was not a complete military disaster. Depots, maintenance facilities, and dry docks were largely undamaged. The 140-million-gallon fuel farm was untouched. Both the
West Virginia
and the
California
were raised and returned to service by 1944, and
Utah
, though a battleship, had been demilitarized before December 7 and was only used for training.
Nevada
,
Tennessee
,
Maryland
, and
Pennsylvania
were all fully operational later in 1942. In any event, the Pacific naval theater would be controlled not by battleships but by aircraft carriers, and the U.S. carriers had all escaped the attack.

The Japanese slunk away to the north, then headed west for home. The fact that they missed the three Pacific fleet carriers negated, to a large degree, the effectiveness of their assault. This failure, combined with the rage produced in the United States, backfired badly on the Japanese. There was no hesitation now about full war mobilization and very little political opposition. In one stroke, the Japanese had provoked and irrevocably motivated the one enemy from which they had the most fear.

Steaming back west, Nagumo actually passed within a few hundred miles of the targets he most needed to destroy. On the morning of the attack Task Force 8, built around the USS
Enterprise
, was barely 200 miles west of Oahu. Commanded by Admiral Bill Halsey, she’d delivered Marine Fighting Squadron (VMF) 211 to Wake Island. The USS
Lexington
and Task Force 12 was returning from Midway Island and lay about 500 miles southeast of Hawaii, with the last carrier, USS
Saratoga
, was in San Diego completing a refit. All would return to Pearl Harbor, and the USS
Yorktown
would be transferred from the Atlantic Fleet within weeks.

Late in the afternoon on December 8, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution declaring war on the Empire of Japan. Winston Churchill couldn’t help being relieved. Now America was in it openly. He would say to Congress later that month that the best war news of all was that “the United States, united as never before, has drawn the sword for freedom and cast away the scabbard.” Churchill later wrote that he “went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

Across the world Hitler received the news happily and, thinking of Japan, said, “We can’t lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years.” Many of his fighting men, including Hans Marseille, had exactly the opposite reaction. Some even hoped that it would remain a conflict in the Pacific and that Germany would stay out of it. After all, the Tripartite Act stipulated German assistance only if Japan was attacked, not if it did the attacking.

But on December 10 both Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Bogged down outside of Moscow, Hitler was certain that Japan would open a second front against the Soviet Union and relieve some of that pressure. The Japanese threat did initially keep Stalin from redeploying his Far Eastern forces, but by December he’d learned that as long as Moscow did not fall, then Japan would not attack. Tokyo had long experience with the Russians and had no intention of invading unless conditions were perfect. In any event, with the immediate threat from the American navy neutralized (or so they thought), the Japanese set the rest of their plan into motion.

On the American end of the Pacific this began with Wake Island, some 2,300 miles west of Oahu. The USS
Enterprise
wasn’t at Pearl Harbor because on December 4 she’d delivered twelve Marine F4F Wildcats to the little atoll. Commanded by Major Paul Putnam, the group arrived with no real mechanics, no manuals, pilots who had very little experience in their new planes, and no radar. On December 8, thirty-six “Betty” bombers flew 650 miles from Kwajalein to attack the tiny American outpost. Nicknamed the “Hamaki” (Cigar) due to its tendency to burst into flame if hit, the Japanese planes nonetheless plastered Wake and destroyed seven of the twelve fighter aircraft.

Major James Devereux, the Marine commander, immediately repositioned his larger guns and erected dummy emplacements made from wood. His remaining pilots flew reconnaissance patrols and were airborne three days later when the Japanese arrived under Rear Adm. Sadamichi Kajioka and shelled the old gun positions. The defenders patiently held their fire. When the cruiser
Yubari
, the admiral’s flagship, came within 4,500 yards of shore, the Marines opened up. Hit and trailing smoke, she limped back out of range. Then the destroyer
Hayati
was struck and blew up. The remaining four Wildcats had been circling overhead during all this and now attacked with bombs, machine guns, and a vengeance. A troop transport and second destroyer were damaged, and at 0815 the destroyer
Kisaragi
exploded. The last casualty that day was a Japanese submarine caught by Marine Lt. David Kliewer and his Wildcat.

Meanwhile, the USS
Saratoga,
accompanied by three heavy cruisers and nine destroyers, was charging west toward Wake Island. Task Force 14 also contained 300 Marine reinforcements, radar equipment, and 3 million rounds of machine-gun ammunition. However, the carriers
Soryu
and
Hiryu
were diverted from their homeward voyage to deal with Wake Island, and on December 21 they appeared offshore. With their arrival, 140 aircraft and some 1,000 Japanese marines faced off against the unsupported Americans.
^*

At this point, Task Force 14 was only 600 miles from the atoll, but the acting commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. William S. Pye, decided to recall the
Saratoga
and leave the Wake defenders to their fate.
^*
Pye was the sort of officer who’d been awarded the Navy Cross for “exceptionally distinguished and valuable service on the staff of the commander in chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, in addition to excellent performance of his routine staff duties in preparing a series of orders for the conduct of battleship and fleet, based upon the best thought and experience of the United States fleet and British fleet during the late war.”

The Marines were incensed. One wonders what might have happened if
Saratoga
had caught both Japanese carriers by surprise. There was a real tactical opportunity to make the Japanese bleed and prevent the fall of Wake Island. Of course, there was also a very real chance of losing a carrier, and given the catastrophe at Pearl Harbor two weeks before, most admirals were inclined to be cautious. However, it was all-out war at this point, Americans were in danger, and something other than a withdrawal should have been attempted.

Two days before Christmas 1941, Wake Island was surrendered by the ranking naval officer, Cmdr. Winfield Scott Cunningham—much to Major Devereux’s disgust. The Marines had fought hard, giving the startled Japanese a taste of things to come. Capt. Henry Talmage Elrod became the first Marine aviator to be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on Wake. He’d personally shot down two Zeros and was credited with sinking the
Kisaragi
. After VMF-211’s planes were destroyed, he, like all the surviving pilots, continued fighting on the ground; he was killed by a Japanese soldier playing dead.
^*
Cunningham didn’t have much of a choice except fighting to the death, and with Pye’s betrayal no one really considered that.

The end of 1941 saw Guam and Hong Kong fall into enemy hands. England, still reeling from the battles for France and Britain, was heavily committed in North Africa and in no real position to intervene effectively in the Pacific. The Royal Navy had also just lost the
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
off the Malaysian coast to land-based Japanese aircraft. By January the British were in full retreat down the peninsula toward their great, supposedly impregnable fortress of Singapore—which fell on February 15, 1942.

Sweeping south and east, the Japanese then attacked the Philippine Islands, Dutch East Indies, and New Guinea in quick succession. The defenders were disorganized, surprised, and in many cases hindered by locals who believed the Japanese were liberating them from colonial oppression. They quickly learned otherwise after meeting the Japanese army: food was confiscated, men were pressed into labor gangs, and, following the Nanking pattern, women were raped.
^*
For her part in the Great War, Japan had also been given the Marshall and Caroline Islands, Palau, Saipan, and Tinian (among others)—all former German colonies. These, plus the new conquests, were quickly turned into what were essentially unsinkable aircraft carriers.

The Allies were truly on their heels in the early spring of 1942, and things looked bleak on all fronts. Rommel’s Afrikakorps was sweeping toward Tobruk, and the Russians were about to face Operation Fridericus, the great German thrust into the Caucasian oil fields. America was mobilizing to meet wartime requirements with the remnants of a peacetime military, but relief would take time. With the country desperate for a victory of any kind, on April 2, 1942, the USS
Hornet
left Alameda, California. Rendezvousing with the USS
Enterprise
, four cruisers, and eight destroyers, the combined task force headed west, deep into the Pacific toward the Japanese home islands.