Wings of Glory: A USS Enterprise Naval Adventure Novel, page 13
“Still working on it, sir,” said the torpedo officer. “Number one is reloaded, though.”
“Very well… tell them to open outer doors on one, three and four,” ordered the captain. “Set—”
“Sir! Sir! That Jap DD is back again!” exclaimed the sonar tech. “Bearing dead ahead and beat rate indicates thirty knots, sir! She’s barrelin’ right for us!”
Brockman heaved the scope around. Sure enough, the knife-like bow of a destroyer… the Arashi… was headed directly for his scope. With a heavy frothing at her bow, she reminded Brockman of a mad bull.
“Dammit…” Brockman pounded his fist on the scope’s barrel. “Down scope… Dive, take us deep. Two-five-zero and make it snappy! Friggin’ Japs won’t let us get away with a damned thing, will they?”
TORPEDO SIX – COMMANDER EUGENE LINDSEY
“Red Tare, Red Leader… double line on division,” Gene Lindsey said over the radio, trying to keep the throbbing pain in his back from spilling over into his voice. “Doc, you take station on my portside, fifty yard sep.”
“That’s a Rodge, Red Leader,” Doc Ely said. “All Blue evens form up on my six.”
Seated behind Lindsey at the torpedo station, Arnie “Pickles” LaCroix heard Lindsey groan and knew he’d switched his mic off, “You okay, Skipper?”
“Yeah, just swell, Pickles,” Lindsey said, his voice now a bit more strained over the intercom. “All I gotta do is sit on my ever-widening can up here and drive. No sweat. Charlie, patch me in to Enterprise.”
“Go ahead, boss,” replied Charles Grenat after switching frequencies.
“Front Desk, Front Desk… Tiki Bar is ready to open,” Lindsey reported and managed a wry grin.
“Understood, Tiki Bar. Permission to serve granted… and good luck. Out.”
“Acknowledged, Front Desk… with thanks,” said Lindsey and sighed. “Okay, Charlie, put me back on with the squad… Red Tare section, come to course two-four-zero at angels two. From this point on, we are observing radio silence. All acknowledge and then we go dark. Over.”
“Red Tare two, Roger,” said PJ Riley and stretched in his seat.
Just forward of the squadron’s XO, Gene Lindsey’s plane began to descend, and he followed. Riley grinned when he saw Chief Grenat’s thumb go up. There was a lot of pep in that squadron, and it made him proud. He knew that Gene Lindsey felt the same way. The two men tried very hard to focus on the job and not on the lousy statistics that had already cropped up about torpedo planes. About how they were little better than fish in a barrel for a skilled Zeke pilot…
Just when the unwelcome gloom began to slither its way into his psyche, Petty Officer Doug Chambers spoke up from the far rear radioman’s seat, “Hey… I ever tell you fellas about the Kraut who racked up thirty airplane kills in one day?”
The torpedoman in between began to chuckle. He’d obviously heard and like Riley, was glad for the levity.
“No, radioman… what about the Kraut who got thirty planes in one day?” asked Riley with a grin.
Chambers paused dramatically and said, “Worst mechanic the Luftwaffe ever had!”
The three men broke up. Riley shook his head, “Hey… I got that beat. Did you fellas know that both my grandparents fought in World War One?”
“That right, sir?” giggled the torpedoman.
“Yeah… they got a divorce!” Riley guffawed and levelled off on Lindsey’s tail.
“Red Tare three acknowledge,” stated Tom Eversol from astern of Doc Ely. As he got low, he began to monitor the waves. The very reason Lindsey was flying so low. He sighed and tried to settle in, finding it difficult to do so.
“You okay, Skip?” Dale Grimshaw asked from the middle seat. “You seem down.”
Eversol thought of his friend Dusty and about the camaraderie in a bomber crew. The usual line between officers and enlisted was so often blurred or wiped completely out. How could two or three men cram themselves into a tube and not be close whatever anyone might say.
In spite of this, however, there was one thing that the officer must always keep in mind. He was the captain. The man responsible for the care of the plane and her crew. That meant their morale and attitudes as well. He’d already let his trepidation and deep-seated foreboding show through.
He owed it to these men not to throw a bucket of water on their good spirits. They’d need them in the next hour or so.
“Oh… just thinkin’ about the mission, fellas,” Eversol lied. He pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his inner pocket and lit one. “I think we got a good thirty, forty minutes before we sink the Jap fleet. Let’s all have a smoke, huh?”
“Uhm… I left mine,” grumped Grimshaw.
“Smoked my last one at breakfast,” admitted the radioman.
“No worries,” said Ebersol and passed the pack and lighter back past his headrest. “Have a couple on me. Crew that smokes together wins the war together, right?”
Ensign Severin Rombach was the last in Lindsey’s line. It reminded him of just a few months earlier when he’d followed then exec. Lance Massey into a line of Jap ships at Kwajalein. He’d been tail-end Charlie that day, too.
Back then, though, he had reliable Ronnie Gretz in his back seat. Now he flew with two guys he hadn’t even met until that morning. Seemed like capable men… but Rombach was used to Gretz and even Grimshaw, for that matter… and he liked what he was used to.
“Hey, Skipper… mind if I tell a riddle?” asked the radioman.
Rombach smiled, “Nah, help to pass the time.”
“Okay… I’m hairy on the outside, soft on the inside. I start with C and end with T… what am I?”
“Oh, hell… I ain’t sayin’ that in front of Mr. Rombach, ya’ dope…” muttered the torpedoman.
Rombach laughed, “It’s a coconut! Okay, I got one… I’m hard goin’ in, soft comin’ out, and I don’t mind if you blow me… what am I?”
“Your torpedo!” blurted the torpedoman and then coughed.
Both Rombach and the radioman broke up. As Rombach wiped his eyes, he said, “Nope! It’s chewing gum. Get your mind outta the gutter torpedoman.”
“Don’t mind him, sir… he always thinks about torpedoes.”
“Ah, Geez… that’s dirty pool…” grumped the torpedoman but couldn’t help but chuckle.
Leading the starboard formation, Gene Lindsey checked his wristwatch and leaned forward, gently arching his back. When a forge-heated rod of agony xylophoned its way up and down his rib cage, the veteran pilot bit off an agonized cry and clenched his teeth. He had to close his eyes to fight back the waves of pain and darkness that flittered at the edges of his vision.
His ditching on the way out from Pearl had been worse than he’d let on, at least to his squadron. Lindsey had several bruised ribs and more than one fractured vertebra. The truth was that he shouldn’t be flying at all. However, a hefty bribe and a little browbeating in sickbay had gotten him cleared.
As he sat in his seat, gasping and trying to wipe the water from his eyes, Gene Lindsey wondered if he’d made the right choice. After all…
Lindsey sat forward and squinted over his starboard wing. There was something out there… something on the horizon that broke the soft line… no, just watery eyes…
“Hey, Skipper…” Grenat said from the rear seat. “You see that off to starboard? How about you, Pickles?”
“Uhm… looks like clouds, maybe?” LaCroix opined.
Lindsey grinned and found his voice. It was gruff and pain-filled, but he didn’t care, “Nope… I believe… believe that’s smoke! Announce to the boys, Grenat. Red Tare, standby to change course… Go to full power.”
Lindsey began to bank his aircraft and steadied up on a course of three-two-zero. Doc Ely followed suit and like two long sinewy cat tails, the remaining dozen Devastators turned in a perfect arc toward their destiny.
“Should I alert the ship, sir?” Grenat asked.
“Negative, radio,” Lindsey said. “Let’s get closer and verify. Hate to throw up a false alarm.”
It took only a few more minutes before the Devastators drew close enough to make out more than smoke on the horizon. First several and then more than a dozen tiny ships rose up from the blue water. Chief among these, steaming in a line perhaps two or three miles apart, were two enormous carriers. They were instantly recognizable especially as the one in the vanguard was the battleship conversion known as Kaga. The massive ship had flight decks attached above a pre-existing superstructure and dwarfed the cruisers, destroyers, and even battleships that drove through the sea nearby.
“Looks like they’re headed northeast…” Lindsey muttered. “Not toward Midway but… but maybe toward an intercept with our boys… Grenat! Dit out our position and that we’ve located Jap carriers. Also inform Enterprise that we’re engaging. Then get me Doc.”
A few moments later, the radioman announced, “Message sent, Skipper. Got the Blue freq. on the squawk for you.”
“Red Tare, Red Tare, Red Tare Leader,” Lindsey said in his best confident warrior tone. “Boys, that’s Yamamoto’s fleet ahead. Kaga in the van and I think Akagi in her wake. Those are more likely than not two of the bastards that hit us at Pearl back in December. We’re goin’ in. Drop down to one-five hundred feet. Red Tare Two, I want you to break left and angle around on a wide port turn. We’re gonna grab Kaga in an anvil attack. You read me, Doc?”
“That’s a Rodge, Leader,” Arthur “Doc” Ely said jovially. “Let’s give them slopes what for!”
“Stay focused, gentlemen,” Lindsey said, “and God bless you all.”
He angled down toward the sea, getting low enough to avoid direct fire until they were closer and high enough to be able to maneuver. At least what maneuvering a clunky, slow, and inadequately armored TBD could do against angry Zekes.
Below, the sea was a great circle of royal blue. A deep and inviting color that seemed to promise untold wonders below the gentle rolling swell that danced upon its sun-dappled surface. Above, a robin’s egg sphere domed the world, interrupted only by intermittent puffs of pure white cotton. A painter’s dream of azure, cerulean, and gold. In spite of all of that beauty, however, Gene Lindsey’s soul bore the crushing weight of destiny upon it. The next few minutes might be the last he or any of his men experienced on Earth… and they might also determine how history would unfold forever.
The Japanese fleet’s true size only grew more impressive as the TBDs approached. Dozens of ships, some close together and a ring of screening destroyers and cruisers arrayed far beyond the carriers. It was these that Lindsey and Ely now approached at less than two hundred knots.
“Jig’s up now,” Lindsey commented as fireflies of tracer rounds began to rise up before them in a swarm. These were followed quickly by bright white-orange explosions as anti-aircraft shells soared into the sky from 125 and 150 millimeter deck guns. “Jim! Jim! We’re gonna need you pretty soon, here! Flying into ack-ack screening… hope you’re still up there, huh?”
Lindsey had heard Gray’s earlier report of losing torpedo six. Based on what he’d reported in, the Wildcats from Enterprise’s torpedo escorts had probably glommed onto birds from Hornet. However, to Lindsey’s surprise, Jim Gray did answer.
“Uhm… Gene… we’re above you… but our fuel is getting critically low. Estimate we’ll have to break off and return to Front Desk in less than five…”
“What’re you shittin’ me!?” That was PJ Riley on the channel now.
“Dammit, Lieutenant! We need cover or them Zekes’ll have us for breakfast!” Doc Ely shouted.
“Clear the damned channel!” Lindsey snapped. He drew in a steadying breath. “Jim… they’re right… but if you gotta go… you gotta go. We’re goin’ in. Red Tare out. Pickles, arm the fish. Grenat… ready your gun.”
Doc’s line of aircraft banked away, rapidly growing smaller as they arced around to come at the big carrier from the other side. Sun winked off the canopies before the big planes were shrunken by perspective. Lindsey wished them well and turned back to keeping his own section alive a few more minutes.
Although slow, the TBD was still eating up a mile every twenty seconds, and the toy ships in the distance began to swell, as did the effect of their curtain of protective fire. Lindsey began jinking, sliding first port and then starboard. In his mind, he was in the ring with an opponent far larger than himself. He ducked and weaved and moved, angling for an opening to deliver his one and only blockbuster punch.
By some miracle, Lindsey’s Devastator made it past the outer ring of tin cans. He whooped in elation, but the jolt of emotion was soon kicked out from under him.
“Skipper… we lost B T five…” Grenat said glumly.
“Any chutes?” asked the pilot.
“Uhm… that’s a negative, sir… the plane… it exploded, sir. Hit by a five-inch shell… sorry sir,” Grenat’s voice sounded as brittle as elderly parchment.
“Very well…” Lindsey croaked and focused ahead once more. “Stand by… we’re goin’ in!”
Ahead and below, the mighty Kaga loomed before them. A massive industrial dragon hungry for American flesh. Lindsey shoved his stick forward and dove, hurrying down toward the sea to level off so low that the flight deck of the big carrier would be over his head.
“Zekes!” shouted Grenat even as his .30 caliber Browning began to chatter.
“Keep ‘em occupied as best you can, Grenat!” shouted Lindsey. “Get ready, Pickles… set depth to twenty feet!”
“Set and armed!” LaCroix shouted.
Lindsey’s Devastator was peppered as multiple streams of 7.7mm rounds began to rain down upon them. Two A6M Zeroes were diving down on the big lumbering TBD and unloading as they strafed past and back toward the other American planes in Lindsey’s rear.
The men were shouting something, but the pilot couldn’t hear. His focus was on the carrier, now looming up like some gigantic gray monolith. Its size and power seemed to mock Lindsey, almost daring him to come closer with his fragile little kite and pathetic torpedo. He gritted his teeth and vowed to oblige, trying to hold back until the last possible moment.
That moment came quickly. Behind him, he heard Grenat screaming and then the clatter of his automatic weapon ceased. LaCroix was shouting and babbling incoherently as more Zekes came at them, their heavier 20mm rounds punching straight through the plane’s fuel tanks and shattering the cockpit glass. Lindsey jerked the emergency release handle for the torpedo even as LaCroix did. The two men’s simultaneous actions being the last they’d ever take.
Eugene Lindsey’s torpedo plummeted away from the burning aircraft as she began to tumble. The fish splashed down, dove to nearly sixty feet before righting itself and streaking for Kaga’s bow at forty-six knots. Behind it, the Devastator tumbled in, smashing into the swell and summersaulting for several seconds before disintegrating into shards of aluminum, glass, and human flesh.
PJ Riley let out a cry of rage and despair as he watched his commander and friend die. Unfortunately, he had little time to do anything about it, as the same zero section was gunning for him. The pilot tried to jink, slipping sideways and avoiding the first attack, but he’d inadvertently steered directly into a line of AA fire from the carrier now only a thousand yards ahead.
Three centimeter rounds hammered into the plane’s engine cowling and tore through the metal like wet paper, killing the engine and the pilot instantly. Behind him, the torpedoman yanked on the release lever, dropping his fish just as the Devastator began to roll. His body was torn open and blasted into bloody rags as several dozen 20mm rounds ripped through his section of the cockpit.
In the rear seat, Doug Chambers felt no fear. He had time to ponder how strange that was. He was sitting backwards and couldn’t see what was going on ahead, yet he knew exactly what had happened. Even as his aircraft began to roll and fall toward the ocean, the radioman never stopped firing. The last thing he knew was the sight of his tracers digging into the starboard wing of an attacking zero and the Japanese airplane blossoming into a rising sun of fiery death. Then the TBD hit the concrete-hard ocean at over a hundred fifty knots and Doug Chambers knew no more.
Severin Rombach was not blessed with a numbing calm. He had the rear position and watched as, one by one, his friends and shipmates were blown out of the sky. He saw that both Lindsey’s and Riley’s torpedoes streaked into the big carrier’s side, the first did not explode and the second was blown apart by machine gun fire from Kaga’s deck.
When Blue eleven, the plane right in front of him, somehow passed through the zero and anti-aircraft fire and zipped past the mighty carrier’s bow, Rombach allowed himself a surge of hope. Maybe he’d make it, too… maybe he’d somehow slip past the slathering jaws of death that day…
It was not to be, however. A six-inch shell from one of the screening cruisers plunged straight into the center cockpit and exploded. The entire plane was engulfed in flame and shattered like crystal.
Arthur “Doc” Ely and his two crewmates came closest to escaping. Doc led his division in low, only fifty feet over the surface. When his torpedo failed to deploy, the pilot cursed and angled to pass just ahead of the carrier’s bow. His idea was to get close, rise up and rattle his aircraft until the weapon detached, even if he had to drop it on the slant’s deck.
He never got the chance, however. Doc’s engine was penetrated by several heavy rounds and spluttered out, tongues of flame licking along the aircraft’s sides. Having lost its motive power, the bulky airplane, made all the bulkier by the mark XIII torpedo, nosed over and struck the water, cartwheeling across three swells before settling upside down. Mercifully, the three men inside were dead when the towering prow of Kaga smashed into and through the waterlogged plane, her thirty-six thousand tons obliterating the aluminum skin and frames like papier mâché.
Tom Eversol was surprised by his own roar of defiance and fury when he saw his friend die. Up until then… all morning in fact… he’d been plagued by a numbing melancholia he couldn’t shake. He’d convinced himself that this was his last morning on Earth. Yet in spite of this, when death came stalking, Tom Eversol rose to the fight.
