Annapolis, page 67
The horizon to the northwest looked as if three fuel dumps had been bombed. Three columns of thick black smoke were rising straight up and leveling out at five thousand feet. Two columns were rising from over the horizon, but one was in plain view, about eight miles away.
“Here’s a test, Stafford,” said Brockman. “Without looking at your book, tell me the class of that carrier. I want to know, because we’re going to finish her.”
“Uh…” Tom turned the ring to bring the scope to full magnification. “The island is to starboard, sir, and, I can’t quite tell, but I think she has a fold-down starboard stack… I’d say she’s Kaga class, sir.”
“The Academy trains you boys well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now go see the chief engineer. Find out how much time we have on our batteries if we maintain a speed of two-thirds ahead. Then get aft and see to soldering a ruptured hydraulic line.”
“Let George do it,” cracked Steinberg.
Brockman grabbed the intercom and told the crew what he had just seen. From one end of the boat to the other came the strange muffled sound of men cheering in enclosed spaces, in dense air.
ADRIFT, 1345
Charlie Osterhausser had seen Bill Stafford’s Dauntless hit the water. He had rocked his wings when he flew over, which meant that their position had been noted and someone would come for them. It might be a PBY; it might be a destroyer; it might be a sub.
Until then Bill and Omer would float along in their yellow rubber raft and watch the show from the cheap seats.
Two of the Japanese carriers were dead in the water. The middle one had continued to steam north, hopelessly trying to stay in the fight. Meanwhile, the undamaged Hiryu, on the distant horizon, had launched a strike.
Bill watched all of it through a small pair of Zeiss binoculars his grandfather had given him, powerful 7 × 50s that looked like nothing more than opera glasses.
Omer pulled out the emergency survival all-purpose fishing pack, which contained hooks, hand lines, feathered drails, a little net, and a booklet on the preparation of raw fish.
“What the hell are you doing now?” Bill asked.
Omer grinned. He was a career sailor, long-faced, leathered, somewhere in his thirties, and completely unfamiliar with any but navy dentists, most of whom were completely unfamiliar with anything but pulling teeth. “This here’s a big damn fishin’ hole. Let’s see if this little booklet tells you how to catch fish.”
“Omer, there’s a battle going on.”
“Fish don’t know that. But keep that forty-five handy, Lieutenant, case I catch us a shark.”
Bill thought about that for a moment and decided it wasn’t a bad idea. He pulled out the heavy black pistol and laid it in his lap. Then he went back to his binoculars.
He wasn’t worried about the Japanese. They had moved on to the northwest, following a battlefield that moved as inexorably as the turning earth itself. Every bomb, every explosion, and every ditched plane along the seventy-five-mile path of battle had already been swallowed by the sea, and it seemed now as if nothing had passed this way since the beginning of time.
Except for that periscope appearing about half a mile to the south.
He saw the wake first, just a little moving riffle on the surface. Then he focused and tried to remember the differences between American and Japanese periscopes. One of them had an asparagus-stick top, the other a straight finger. But damned if he could remember.
So he decided not to wave. Best wait for the PBYs.
NAUTILUS, 1350
Tom Stafford was passing a short distance from his brother, but Commander Brockman’s 360-degree periscope sweep did not reveal any yellow rafts, perhaps because downed fliers were not the object of the chase. It was that carrier, still under way but still burning.
Half a dozen times, Brockman told Tom to check his silhouette book against the vessel in the periscope to make certain they were not sinking an American carrier.
At 2,700 yards, Brockman fired three torpedoes at a track angle of 125 degrees starboard and a depth of sixteen feet.
“Running hot, straight, and normal, sir!” cried the sonar operator.
Brockman watched the wakes track right toward the ship, and described their progress. Three minutes… four… the wakes had reached the ship.
“Hit!” said Brockman at three minutes and forty-five seconds. “Flames jumping, bow to midships.”
After congratulations all around, he asked the other four officers in the conning tower to view and verify: fires rising, men abandoning ship, boats pulling away.
Larry Steinberg was the last to look, and Tom sensed that something was wrong as soon as he stepped away from the scope.
“We just bagged a carrier,” said Brockman. “Why do you look like the Dodgers just lost the World Series?”
“Shouldn’t sonar have picked up the explosions?” asked Steinberg softly.
“Sound does funny things underwater, Larry. What else but our torpedo would have made her burst into flames?”
“Induced explosions from her fires, sir. She was burning when we got to her.”
“A small fire in her stern. Now look at her.”
Steinberg put his eye back to the periscope. Tom knew that he wanted credit for the carrier as much as they all did. “She’s burning like the Arizona, sir.”
“All right, then.” Brockman grabbed the intercom. “This is the captain speaking. Notch one Jap carrier into your belts.”
ADRIFT, 1415
“Hunker down, Omer,” said Bill Stafford. “Here comes a destroyer.”
“Shit-all.”
“Damn sub’s leading her right to us.”
Omer pulled out his knife. “You keep that forty-five handy, Lieutenant.”
As the first depth charge was dropped, Omer said, “There goes the fishin’.”
For an hour, the Japanese destroyer crisscrossed the area, depth-charging the hell out of every square inch. The surface of the sea exploded and rumbled. Geysers rose. Huge hills of white water came up like bubbles in a simmering stew and, once or twice, the raft almost capsized.
Bill and Omer wondered how deep the sub had gone to escape, and they wondered if the Japanese would forget about them in all the action. No evidence of the sub ever came up, which they took as a good sign. But when the destroyer turned toward them, they knew it was a bad sign.
They were prisoners before nightfall.
They were taken to the Arashi’s wardroom, not much different from an American wardroom, except for the picture of Hirohito instead of Franklin Roosevelt. A pharmacist’s mate gave them ointments for the contusions they had suffered, then water and a little rice. Then they were left with a single, grim-faced guard.
Bill asked Omer, “How much do you know about Midway?”
“I been there once.”
The guard growled at them: no talking.
Bill made a gesture for a cigarette.
The guard shook his head: no cigarettes.
Bill turned to Omer, still trying to be casual. “We tell them we were attached to Midway two weeks ago. We tell them all we know about the island, because they know it, too. We tell them nothing about the Task Force Sixteen.”
The guard growled again. Moods were not good in the imperial fleet that day.
Through the porthole, Bill could see one of the reasons: American dive-bombers had found the Hiryu and were sweeping down at the big flat silhouette, leaving great clouds of red, orange, and black erupting after them. It was like watching those telescope films of eruptions of the sun.
And Bill knew, with a strangling sense of despair, that he was as far away from those dive-bombers, and his own carrier, and the girl whose picture was in his pocket, as he was from the sun.
cincpac, 1830
If there ever had been a day when Will Stafford could say “What’s good for the U.S. Navy…” it was today.
Of course, his joy was tempered. They had no casualty lists yet, but the torpedo squadrons had been wiped out, and half of the pilots in VS-6 were missing. He told himself there was a fifty-fifty chance that Billy was safe aboard, and if he was among the missing, a fifty-fifty chance that a PBY was fishing him out of the water already.
It looked by then as if they might lose the Yorktown, but the Hiryu was definitely going to join the other three Jap carriers, and Enterprise and Hornet were untouched. So long as Spruance played it close to the vest and didn’t go chasing Yamamoto’s battleships in the dark—and there was no reason to expect Ray Spruance to change his character after forty years—this one would go down as a huge victory.
When Jack arrived, Will filled him in and promised that he would get Jack the Nimitz communiqué an hour ahead of everyone else. “I shouldn’t, but if I can do something for one of my boys, I’ll do it.”
That was when Jack realized how worried his father was. It was as if he knew that two of his sons were beyond his help, so he would help the one that he could.
“Thanks, Dad. Can you tell me about something Eddie Browne said—”
“Whatever Eddie Browne said, keep a lid on it. Tell the story the way we want you to, and everyone will be all right.”
ABOARD THE ARASHI, 2200
Bill Stafford looked at the tip of a dagger held under his nose.
“This very sharp. You like you balls? You tell truth.”
“I’ve already told you the truth.”
Young Lieutenant Kita—skinny and slight with a little mustache like Hitler’s—stepped back and nodded to the marine beside him.
Slap!
The interrogation had been going on for two hours and was now being conducted under the red lightbulbs of a darkened ship.
“I told you,” said Bill, “we were detached to Midway two weeks ago.”
“But you navy flier. Why they do that?”
“We’re from the Saratoga, and she’s been torpedoed.”
“We know.” Kita smiled. “We have good torpedo. Not like yours.”
“I wouldn’t know. I drop bombs.”
“Torpedoes your sub fire at carrier—two miss, one hit and break in half.”
That was a bad sign, thought Bill. They were giving him intelligence. That meant they weren’t worried about it going anywhere. It was also a sign that he was in the hands of amateurs. Of course, he had known that as soon as they started the interrogation with both subjects in the room.
“I tell you something. Now you tell me. How many American carriers?”
“I flew from Midway with the marine dive-bombers under Major Henderson.”
“I think you lie.” Then he turned to Omer, held the dagger beneath his nose for a moment, just to let him see it. “You think he lie? He officer. You sailor wearin’ blue dungaree. He think he better than you. He lie, right?”
Omer looked into the Japanese officer’s eyes. “You know what I think?”
Lieutenant Kita smiled. “Say what you think.”
“If I had a dog as ugly as you, I’d shave his ass and make him walk backwards.”
Lieutenant Kita stood up straight, looked around to make sure that neither of the others could understand what was just said. Then he nodded to the marine.
Slap!
Omer Royal barely reacted.
Lieutenant Kita turned back to Bill Stafford. He pawed through Stafford’s personal effects on the table—cigarette lighter, pocketknife, standard issue bowie knife, those fine binoculars—and he picked up the photo of that beautiful Irish face.
“You want to see her again?”
“We all want to see our wives again,” answered Bill.
“Well, you tell truth, you see her.”
And Bill Stafford once more recited everything he knew about Midway, based on guesswork and secondhand information. He even told them the exact length of the airstrip.
“Keep tellin’ ’em that stuff, Lieutenant,” said Omer, “all the way to the prison camp.”
The questioning went on for another hour, until the skipper appeared and called the lieutenant outside.
At least it was a pleasant night, thought Bill, even if he still had his hands tied behind his back. A cool breeze was blowing through the open doors on both sides of the wardroom, and the moonlight was shining on the surface of the sea.
Now Lieutenant Kita returned, but he did not make any eye contact with the prisoners. He was carrying a sidearm, which he offered to the other Japanese officers, neither of whom would take it.
And Bill realized, with a sudden sense of the absolute and utter waste of it all, that there was not going to be a prison camp. These faces, in this dim red light, were the last that he was going to see.
Lieutenant Kita seemed to be pleading with the others. He even picked up the binoculars, offering them in exchange for the execution. But nothing could convince them to do what the skipper had apparently ordered.
So, in a shaking voice, Lieutenant Kita told the Americans, “Please to stand up.”
Bill and Omer looked at each other.
“I don’t like this,” said Omer.
“No talking,” said Kita.
Bill tried to say something, but his throat had closed up tight. He gestured with his chin to Omer, and they both stood.
What a waste, he thought. What a fucking waste.
With his pistol, Lieutenant Kita gestured to the door. “Go.”
But Bill did not move. He looked down at the table, at the picture of Maureen, lying amid his pocket junk.
He tried to speak again, and the lieutenant realized what he wanted, so he picked up the picture and put it into Bill’s breast pocket.
“Thank you.”
“Orders,” said the lieutenant apologetically. “War bad.”
And prodded along by the guard, they were led out, down the deck, past the torpedo tubes and the five-inch gun turret, to the depth-charge racks at the stern.
The destroyer was moving fast, leaving a long white wake gleaming in the moonlight behind it.
Bill thought of how beautiful it all looked, and he wished that he had been able to show it to Maureen, just once, that wondrous wide sea in the night.
Then Omer Royal drawled, “Hey, Lieutenant, once there was these two dogs—”
It was the last voice that Bill Stafford would hear.
A hand drove itself into his back and sent him into the churning wake.
He felt Omer falling beside him, but his senses were overwhelmed and Omer faded from his thoughts.
The foaming wake rolled over him and rolled him over in its embrace. He tried to tread water, but his hands were still bound tightly. He rolled once to the surface and saw the face of the moon. He cried Maureen’s name and cursed at all the other wonderful things he would never see. And then he was swallowed into the phosphorescent warmth of the Pacific night.
Gods did not die and cogs did not cry… only men.
x
Missing in Action
At 1245 on June 6, while Spruance was still launching planes at the stragglers of the Japanese fleet, Nimitz issued his first battle communiqué.
By the time the other reporters saw it, Jack had read it, underlined it, and filed it on the wire, with a story to follow. The first sentence: “Through the skill and devotion to duty of our armed forces of all branches in the Midway area, our citizens can now rejoice that a momentous victory is in the making.”
Who the hell wrote this stuff? Nimitz himself? It read like lead.
Jack punched up the prose and dug up whatever else he could. He even went over to Hickham Field, to interview the army pilots who had done the high-level bombing. Lieutenant Colonel Sweeney said his squadron had personally sunk three of the carriers, and, hell, “We never once had to look for the enemy because the navy planes had located the task force perfectly.”
A lot of newspapers would swallow Sweeney’s story whole.
But Jack would tell the real story: it was impossible to hit moving ships from 20,000 feet; it took navy dive-bombers. This would put Jack in tight with navy fliers, no matter what else he ever wrote.
Jack and his father stayed up late that night, in the blackout darkness, listening to the KGMB Glenn Miller broadcast. Jack sipped his Primo, Will his Jack Daniel’s. They talked a lot about baseball. They tried not to mention what was sitting on the veranda in front of them like a bad-tempered dog. No sense worrying about Billy until there was something concrete. Talk about the good news, instead: the Nautilus was back on patrol after putting three torpedoes into a Jap carrier.
Then, out of nowhere, Will said, “I knew a Jap once.”
“At the Academy?” asked Jack.
Will nodded. “He was my best friend. Now he’s probably… Ah, hell, he’s probably worried about his sons, too.”
THE DOORBELL JANGLED Jack awake around nine.
A moment later, Juan came into his room with a yellow Western Union envelope. “About time you get up. Your dad and me, we already been to church, and he gone to CINCPAC.”
Jack snatched the telegram. It was from Harry Dowd, filed at 10:00 a.m. in New York City: READ ALL ABOUT IT IN DAILY NEWS: “NAVY HAD WORD OF JAP PLAN TO STRIKE AT SEA.” GREAT STORY. WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE FOR APS. GET FOLLOW-UP FROM INSIDE, OR GET NEW JOB. TEXT TO FOLLOW.
In the shower, Jack figured it out: someone in Naval Intelligence had told a reporter all about Station Hypo and the Jap code. Now it was all over the papers in New York, and probably in Chicago and Washington, too. Scooped again.
By now some spy had mailed the article to another spy with a short-wave radio—probably a German on the Maine coast, who could transmit to a U-boat. From there it would go to Berlin. And finally the news would reach Tokyo: “America knows something you don’t: your code has been broken.” Then the code would be changed.
So why not build up morale by making those code breakers look like heroes?
Jack knew the whole story, right down to the little trick with AF and fresh water. He could even see the headline: “How We Trapped the Japs.”
An hour later, a second telegram arrived with the Daily News article: THE STRENGTH OF THE JAPANESE FORCES WITH WHICH THE AMERICAN NAVY IS BATTLING SOMEWHERE WEST OF MIDWAY ISLAND… WAS WELL KNOWN IN AMERICAN NAVAL CIRCLES SEVERAL DAYS BEFORE THE BATTLE BEGAN, RELIABLE SOURCES IN NAVAL INTELLIGENCE REPORTED HERE TONIGHT.
