Sentinels of Fire

ELEVEN

By daylight the damage to the front of the pilothouse didn’t look that bad. There was a slash in the metal, as if some giant had taken a paring knife to the horizontal row of portholes across the front. The shipfitters actually found the wingtip from the baka bomb in a twenty-millimeter guntub on the starboard side. They were able to weld some plate over the gash, so now there was no reason for us to make a trip back down to the duty destroyer tender. Not that they would have let us leave station anyway.

With the air picture quiet after dawn GQ, I met with the department heads. The officers had made short work of the wardroom’s ration of morning fat-pills, otherwise known as hot cinnamon rolls.

“Close calls last night, gents,” I began. “We got lucky when the first baka couldn’t find us, we backed down on the second so he missed ahead, and we blinded the third one. That almost backfired on us, because we solved his where’s-my-target problem for him.”

“I can’t believe these things have a man in them,” Peter said. “Flying a rocket?”

“Even better,” Jimmy Enright said, “we think they launched from a surfaced submarine.”

“I’m waiting to see if they think we’ve gone looney-tunes up here when that report gets in,” I said. “The question is, what can we do to protect ourselves if they come back?”

“I vote for learning how to submerge, like that sub did last night,” Marty offered.

“I think we should request an additional section of CAP,” Jimmy said. “Have them patrol an area ten miles north of us, but at five thousand feet instead of fifteen thousand. Their radars can’t see things on the surface, but they’ll see that red flare. They could drop flares of their own and then go down and strafe that bastard.”

“Put that in an op-immediate message to the commodore,” I said. “They’ll need time to change out the night-fighters’ weapons load. One problem, though: We let them take the first shot.”

“Maybe patrol our station in a big circle?” Marty asked. “We can’t generate a firing solution on a baka anyway, and certainly not at night, so it doesn’t much matter if the guns can bear or not, but going that fast, the baka pilot probably can’t turn that thing if his target is constantly turning.”

I nodded. That, too, would probably work, or at least make it a lot harder for the baka pilot. One thing I’d noticed at dawn GQ was that the cloud cover had blown off. Tonight might be clear, with our mortal enemy, the moon, shining in full splendor. We needed to do something.

“We’ll try it,” I said. “In fact, maybe start doing it now. There’s nothing to say that sub can’t surface in daylight, shoot one or two, and go back down.”

Then Chop surprised all of us. “Could we get the task force to send one of the Jeep carriers up here with a couple of destroyers?” he said. “You know, form a hunter-killer group like we did in LantFleet, and go hunt down that sub? He has to be hanging around here somewhere.”

I’d forgotten Peter had done his first tour in an Atlantic Fleet destroyer, where the problem was the Nazi U-boat, not kamikazes. “So far they haven’t been willing to spare even a fourth tin can for the picket line, Chop, let alone a carrier,” I said. “That could work, though. That has to be a pretty big submarine to be able to carry three bakas. Or maybe even more.”

What I didn’t say was that Halsey and his staff were less than receptive to suggestions from mere tin cans out on the edge of the huge task force formation. The phone interrupted us.

“Large raid, many bogeys, Captain. They look to go past us, but…”

“Do it,” I said, and the GQ alarm sounded seconds later. “We’ll pick this up when the raid’s over,” I said, getting up to go get my battle gear.

“If we’re still here,” I heard Marty mutter.

I went into Combat to see what was shaping up. All three picket ships had detected the massed formations of Jap bombers and fighters that were coming toward us from their supposedly badly damaged bases in Kyushu. According to the air-raid net, three big-decks were spitting off CAP as fast as they could unfold their wings. The on-station CAP might be able to disrupt the incoming formations, but there looked to be several dozen Jap planes inbound, so this was going to be a three-alarm air battle.

I got on the 1MC and briefed the crew, telling everyone to be alert for the inevitable low-fliers. Having said that, I realized it had been unnecessary. “You don’t need to be told that,” I said, my voice echoing strangely over the topside speakers. “You guys know your business. Everybody says Malloy’s a lucky ship, but I think you make your own luck because everybody does his job in a superb fashion. Keep it up, and we may just get to sail away from this fire pit. That is all.”

I climbed up into my chair on the bridge and waited, like everyone else. It was a clear day, with a little haze but not much. My head itched under the straps of my steel helmet liner, but I didn’t even think about taking it off. With sunglasses on I was able to watch surreptitiously the expressions on the bridge watch team’s faces, which ranged from bravado to thinly masked fear. The bosun’s mate of the GQ team was one Robert Hanks, nicknamed Slim Bob, undoubtedly because of his Buddha-sized belly. Slim Bob stood at the back bulkhead of the pilothouse, legs spread in a stance reminiscent of Lord Nelson to accommodate a nonexistent heaving main, one arm behind his back and the other perched on his expansive front porch, that hand firmly gripping his silver bosun’s call, which was slung around his neck with an ornate white lanyard made up of a hundred different sailor knots. His round red face was set in an expression of supreme indifference.

The officer of the deck was Lieutenant (junior grade) Barry Waddell, six foot three, skinny as a rail, and permanently hunched forward to avoid hitting his head on various objects mounted in the overhead. He was a Dartmouth grad, OCS, and reportedly a serious scholar of English literature. He was the ship’s first lieutenant, in charge of First Division, the bosun’s mates. Chief Dougherty, of course, was the real first lieutenant, having eighteen years of seamanship experience in destroyers, but there had to be a division officer, and Barry was it. He looked like a scholar and nothing at all like what one would expect from that admiring sobriquet “destroyerman.” Here he was, though, out on the Okinawa picket line and very far from Hanover, New Hampshire, watching out the empty portholes through binoculars that were bigger than his scholarly hands as we bored a large, continuous, three-degree right rudder circle in the water while the CIC team vectored fighters toward the approaching Jap formations.

“Bridge, Combat. Possible low-fliers, bearing zero niner zero, range twenty miles, closing, fast, composition two, maybe three.”

“Where’s our CAP?”

“Diverted to the main raid, Captain. We’re on our own until they get more planes up.”

Situation normal, I thought.

“Officer of the Deck, steer due north, speed twenty knots, narrow weave.”

Our circling stopped as Malloy steadied up on a northerly course to present all our guns to the incoming Japs. The main battery director slewed off to starboard and began searching the horizon. Twenty miles, forty thousand yards, two, maybe three planes headed in, 300 miles per hour, 5 miles per minute, we had four minutes to find them, lock on with radar, open fire, and knock them down before they came through the ship and killed us all.

“Sky One, Captain. Open fire as soon as you have a solution, even if they’re out of range.”

“Sky One, aye.”

A minute later our two remaining five-inch gun mounts slewed out to starboard, slaved their servos to the electronic orders rising from Main Battery Plot, elevated, and began shooting. Their most effective range was six to eight miles, but that was for computed, accurate, killing fire. The guns could actually throw shells farther, out to nine miles. Against a surface target, that would have shells falling all over the place, but with these new VT frag shells, anything that disrupted that little proximity fuze’s cone of radiated energy would trigger a blast, and it only took one to knock a plane out of the sky. That possibility was well worth the expenditure of ammo, especially when the bastards were aiming to to crash on board.

I felt my insides clenching when the five-inch started up, but I was determined to sit in my chair and let my people do what they did best: fight the ship. I swiveled the chair to starboard and searched the horizon for those black puffs that would indicate that the shells were seeing something worth detonating over. There was more haze now, or more than I had noticed before. I thought about maneuvering, executing a weave or a zigzag to confuse the approaching suiciders, but, being a gun-hand, I knew that the best chances for a hit came from keeping the ship steady on course and speed, reducing the variables of the fire-control solution on those of the approaching targets. Pray there wasn’t an I-boat out there, refining a torpedo firing solution.

The twin barrels of mount fifty-two continued to hammer away, elevated at about twenty degrees. Hot shell casings were clanging around the forecastle as the crew inside the mount labored to feed those two hungry guns.

There: black puffs, and then a bright flamer, a black dot careening out of the sky and cartwheeling across the water in a boil of blazing avgas and white water.

I moved my binoculars right, then left, looking for more black dots, more puffs. Couldn’t see any, but then I could. A whole constellation of black puffs, and then another fireball, this one going straight up into the air, looping over, and sheeting down into the sea, followed by an impressive mountain of white water as its bomb went off. I wanted to cheer, but the guns were still shooting, and now the forties had joined in.

At this point I really wanted to get out of that chair, get out to the bridge wing to urge on the massed barrels of Malloy’s broadside as the twenties joined in, and then I saw it, a black dot, no, a real silhouette now, stubby wings, pieces being chewed off by our guns, that big, ugly bomb seeming to wiggle from side to side as we tore the plane to pieces, until finally one of our shells found the bomb itself. The plane and its bomb dissolved in a white flash, close, so very close, and then came a clatter of debris flaying the sides of the ship, followed by a thunderclap that shook the bridge. It was strong enough to break windows, if we’d still had any.

The guns stopped shooting. Unfortunately my ears did not stop ringing. I was dimly aware that the bitch-box was trying to tell me something.

“Say again, Combat?”

“High-altitude bogeys, possibly bombers, two seven zero, range thirty-seven miles, composition four. We’ve just received CAP and we’re vectoring them to engage, but the plot shows these guys’re on a course to overfly our station.”

“Captain, aye,” I said. “Officer of the Deck, right three degrees rudder and increase speed to twenty-five knots.”

I heard the director slewing around to the west, looking for the incoming Japs. As we began to execute a wide circle, the director would have to keep moving in its effort to achieve a lock-on. If they were high-altitude bombers, a circle was the best maneuver. If they were kamis, well, it was anybody’s guess. As I thought about it, I realized the Japs would probably not employ conventional high-altitude bombing tactics against a destroyer-sized target. A carrier, maybe, but a tin can? The chances of their getting a hit were minimal.

So what, then? Overfly your target at eighteen thousand feet and then execute a vertical dive? A conventional dive bomber would allow room for a pullout, but a kami? He’d come straight down, and that would make for another impossible fire-control problem, with us having to shoot straight up. Four Jap carriers had learned that the hard way, at Midway.

I keyed the bitch-box. “Combat, Captain. Lay out a five mile wide figure eight on the DRT and issue conning instructions to the bridge to maintain that track.”

“Combat, aye.”

I then called Marty up on Sky One and explained to him what I thought they were going to try. He confirmed my own intuition — there was no way that we could engage a vertical diver.

“So we have to make him miss, Marty,” I said. “He’ll be coming down so fast he’ll be skinning his paint off, but that won’t allow him any time for reacting to a sudden maneuver. Here’s what I want: You guys start looking low for the usual kami low-flier tactics. You can’t do anything about the vertical divers, but they may also be a distraction. Sector searches, coordinate with Combat, and let me worry about the high-fliers.”

“Sky One, aye,” Marty said. For once, he sounded a bit uncertain. I was glad he couldn’t see how uncertain I was about any of this.

Then I got on the 1MC. “This is the captain speaking. We have a high-altitude raid inbound. Our CAP is after them. They’re either conventional bombers or kamis. If they’re kamis, they’re going to try a vertical dive attack. You’ll see we’ve gone into a figure-eight pattern to make it really hard for them to hit us, but here’s the thing: I think they’re a diversion. While we’re all looking up, the real kamis are going to attack from low level, right on the water, just like they always do. So everybody topside look low. Let the CAP take care of the guys way up there, but let’s not get caught by some low-flying sneaky bastard. That is all.”

“Bridge, Sky One.”

“Captain, aye.”

“We could take those high-fliers under fire, Captain. They’re in our computer’s range.”

“We’ve got CAP up there, Marty,” I said. “Let’s not go shooting down any Corsairs.”

“Sky One, aye.”

“Look down, look flat. Bring your director radar down flat on the sea surface.”

“Sky One.”

The officer of the deck turned in my direction and surprised me. “Thanks for telling us what’s going in, Captain,” he said, his voice tight with fear. “It helps.”

I nodded. What I didn’t want to tell him or anyone else was that this looked like a pincer effort: high-fliers coming in from the west doing suicide dives while low-fliers came boring in from the east or the north, on the deck, skimming the waves, hiding in the sea return of our own radar displays. I felt that familiar coil deep down in my belly. My steel throne beckoned, but I shut it out of my consciousness. The ship heeled as we reversed the constant turn to start the other leg of the figure-eight.

Think, I told myself. What else should we be doing? The figure-eight maneuver would make the vertical-dive planes strain really hard to get a hit. If they did hit us, we’d be finished. They’d punch right through our unarmored ship, from the 01 level right down through the keel, and we’d be open to the sea and gone in minutes.

Don’t think about that, I told myself. What else should we be doing?

“Bridge, Combat. Our CAP is engaging. Two Corsairs, reporting four Bettys. They’ve flamed one, and now it’s a furball.”

“Captain, aye. Watch your surface-search radar, Jimmy. Watch it hard.”

“Combat, aye, and now two Bettys flamed.”

Then I heard director fifty-one stop its rumbling search and steady on a bearing to the north. Moments later both five-inch gun mounts swung out and began firing. I felt a momentary surge of elation. I’d been right. Then it hit me: The figure-eight might help with a high-diver, but it would mask our own batteries if we got skimmers.

“Bridge, Combat. Third Betty flamed, but number four has disappeared. They’re looking.”

“Captain, aye.” They’re looking, but probably not in the right place. This was either going to work or it wasn’t. I got out of my chair and went out to the engaged side, where clouds of gun smoke and bits of burned wadding were streaming over the bridge wing as mount fifty-two blasted away at some unseen target. I wanted to look out to the north, where the guns were firing, but instead, I looked straight up, and, great God Almighty, there he was. I think my heart stopped. The OOD looked up when I did and yelled, “Oh, shit!”

Black circle, glinting windscreen, knife-thin wings, two engines, in a slow spiral but a screaming dive, coming right for us, coming right for me, and there was nothing I could do about it but watch in morbid fascination. A moment later he slashed into the sea not a hundred yards from our port side, unable to turn tightly enough to intercept our figure-eight, and leaving nothing but a small line of white froth where he went in. I held my breath, waiting for a close-aboard bomb blast, but nothing happened, and then I lifted my head to see what the guns were working on.

Two black dots were coming in low, not twenty feet off the sea surface, jinking from side to side through a virtual hail of tracers and a forest of shell-splashes and VT-frag detonations from the five-inch, forties, and twenties, raising white and green waterspouts all around them.

“Steady as she goes,” I yelled into the pilothouse so that the guns wouldn’t have to be constantly training because of the figure-eight.

Then, by God, the two kamis collided. One jinked right, the other left, and they smashed into each other and then both went into the sea at several hundred miles an hour, cartwheeling for nearly a quarter mile before all the wreckage stopped splashing down. The guns quit, and I could hear cheers and jeers from the nearby guntubs. I heard a second sound and looked over to see our Dartmouth scholar feeding the fishes over the port bullrail. He’d been that scared, and I wanted to tell him I knew exactly how he felt. I wasn’t sure how many people had actually seen that Betty go in. I turned away and relaxed my hands, which had been gripping my binoculars so hard that they were cramping.

“Bridge, Combat. Sonar’s reporting a wide noise-spoke abaft the beam, possible deep explosion?”

“Tell ’em it’s okay; that was the missing Betty.”

“It was?”

“He came straight down, just barely missed us. You can call off your CAP search now.”

“Combat, aye,” Jimmy answered, his voice sounding just a bit weak. Then I saw something ominous to the northeast of our station: a rising column of dense black smoke blooming up over the eastern horizon. I called Combat and confirmed the bearing matched the station of the next picket destroyer over, USS Daniels. Combat tried to raise them but received no reply. I asked if they’d been attacked by high-fliers, but Combat had no information; Daniels’s CAP was being controlled on a different radio circuit to avoid mutual interference. I told Combat to keep trying, but it sure didn’t look good. We also tried to raise the Westfall, who’d been stationed farther east, but received no response from her, either.

Will this never end? I wondered. Again.