1942 Page 14

  “Now,” he muttered, “if only their fleet would come.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Jamie Priest found it difficult to wear a regulation uniform. The multitude of sores on his body, along with a gash on his back that he’d gotten from a piece of metal, caused him to wince every time something rubbed against his raw flesh. He was also still gaunt and haggard from his time in the water, and his head had been shaved in order to treat other cuts and sores.

  “Lieutenant, you look like hell,” Admiral Nimitz said in a gentle, joking voice. Beside him, Admiral Spruance smiled.

  “Thank you, sir. I have to admit it’s pretty much the way I feel.”

  “You were very fortunate,” Spruance said. “The boys in that PBY had just about given up and were going to head for home when they spotted you. No one had any idea you would have drifted that far to the east.”

  Well, Jamie thought, so much for our sense of navigation. “What about the others, sir? No one seems to know.”

  “Son,” said Nimitz, “you were the only survivor in that cluster of debris.”

  Jamie’s eyes filled with tears and his voice broke. “I’m sorry, sir. I tried so hard to help them.”

  “We know you did,” said Spruance. “Maybe you survived for a reason. Now, show us the pictures and tell us how you got them.”

  Jamie took a deep breath and got a grip on his emotions. In a plain manila envelope were the developed photos that Seaman Fiorini had taken. The navy had enlarged them to eight by ten, and the developing unit held the negatives. Other copies were en route to Washington. Fiorini would have been pleased.

  “Spread them on my desk,” Nimitz said eagerly.

  Jamie passed one of the glossies to Nimitz. “Admiral, only two are truly significant, and this one may be the most important. It proves that the Japanese ship fired eighteen-inch shells.”

  The enlarged picture was somewhat grainy, but it clearly showed Jamie holding a measuring tape against the base of a gigantic shell. The unit indicators were clearly visible on the tape.

  “Good Lord,” Nimitz muttered.

  Jamie passed another across. “And this, sir, is the second most important. At the time Seaman Fiorini took this, the Jap was damned near alongside the hulk of the Pennsylvania. Even though the Jap is slightly farther away, you can see the enormous size differential.”

  “Unbelievable,” said Spruance. “Like an adult among small children. That Jap battlewagon is twice the size of the Pennsylvania.”

  “At least that much, sir,” Jamie added. “The pictures don’t give a true indication of perspective. Sir, may I ask who the Jap is?”

  Spruance looked at Nimitz, who shrugged for him to go ahead. “Lieutenant, the ship must be their new battlewagon, the Yamato. We’d heard rumors that she was nearly finished and that she was big. What we didn’t know was how big. We thought she’d be in the same league as our North Carolina and Washington, at about 37,000 tons, and carry sixteen-inch guns. The Pennsylvania displaced 33,000 tons, and this beast must go sixty-five or seventy thousand.”

  “And carry eighteen-inchers,” Nimitz added, still almost disbelievingly. The proportional difference in strength and weight of shell went far beyond the two inches in size.

  Spruance shook his head. “Our engineers recently concluded that an eighteen-inch gun was years away in development, and that the Japs would have difficulty doing anything better than fourteens. God, they’ve euchred us again.”

  Nimitz stood up and paced his small office. “This also means that we must dismiss any thoughts of using our battleships in duels with theirs. The North Carolina and Washington are en route to Pacific waters, but they’re not going to get even close to that monster unless the odds are overwhelmingly in our advantage.” He turned to Spruance. “Ray, all this does is confirm that we’re going to have to win this war with carriers and subs, not battleships.”

  “Even if we had any battleships, we wouldn’t use them,” Spruance grumbled.

  The South Dakota, a more modern version of the Washington and North Carolina, was finishing her shakedown training, but that was it. The Alabama would be launched shortly, but would not be ready until late in the year. The others in the class, the Indiana and Massachusetts, would be launched in 1942 but would not be ready until the next year. Not counting the old battlewagons in California waters, the United States would have three battleships in the Pacific.

  These ships, however, were all in the 37,000-ton class. The 45,000-ton Iowa was scheduled for launch in late summer but would not be available for duty until mid-1943. Even if she were available, the Iowa would be seriously outgunned by the Yamato.

  “No battleships and no carriers,” said Nimitz. “All of that means no relief for Hawaii or the Philippines.”

  “Sir,” said Jamie, “are the islands going to be invaded?”

  “It could happen at any time,” Nimitz answered. Both he and Spruance knew it was about to occur as they spoke, but Lieutenant Priest had not been cleared for Magic information.

  “Then I would like to return to sea duty as soon as possible.”

  “You’re entitled to go on leave,” Spruance said.

  “I’d like to take it some other time.” Jamie grinned through cracked lips. “After all, sir, there’s a war on.”

  Nimitz smiled. “So there is, son, but you’re not going to be in it for a while. I’m assigning you to staff work here so we can pump your brain about the Yamato, as well as the Japanese gunnery and torpedoes. Not too many people have seen the Jap navy in action like you have.”

  Spruance looked away as Nimitz made his speech. Another Magic intercept had caught an angry Yamamoto castigating someone on the Yamato for executing American prisoners. Lieutenant Jamie Priest appeared to be the sole survivor of the last voyage of the Pennsylvania. There was no chance he was going back in harm’s way at this time.

  There was also no chance that either admiral was going to tell the young man of the fate of his comrades.

  In a strange way, the scene unfolding below him reminded Jake of his childhood in the hills of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, when he didn’t have any money and had to watch the high school football games from up on the higher ground. From such a distance, he had no idea who had the ball or who was winning. All he could see were dots moving slowly and relatively silently across a field. Sometimes he could hear distant cheering or the tinny blare of a band, but the noises seemed disconnected from the events.

  Jake had placed himself on a spur of the Waianae Range, which ran down the western side of Oahu. He hoped fervently that he was invisible to the Japanese and that there was nothing on the hill that might attract their fire. The normally peaceful and beautiful white beaches of Haleiwa were about two miles away, but, through his binoculars, he could see events clearly as they unfolded.

  The shelling had begun at first light. The American defenses were new and poorly concealed. Raw scars in the earth had shown the Japanese just where to fire, and they had done so to great effect, pulverizing most of their targets. Jake picked out two battleships and four heavy cruisers insolently standing just a couple of miles offshore as they poured thunderous fire into selected areas while transports patiently waited behind them.

  The recently dug-in Americans had nothing to respond with and could only absorb the punishment that systematically destroyed all the hard work they’d done. What the ships didn’t hit, the planes did. At almost any moment, there were at least a score of Zeros and Kate bombers overhead. Jake couldn’t begin to imagine what it must be like in that thunderous hell on the beaches. Even where he was, he could feel the earth tremble as shells and bombs hit home.

  At about ten in the morning, he counted fifty-four landing craft heading toward the beach. If each carried its full complement of twenty-four men, almost thirteen hundred Japanese soldiers were in the first wave. Granted, there were more Americans than that in the area, but the Japanese attack was focused on one point, and the other spread-out American defenders could do n
othing to help their beleaguered comrades.

  When the landing craft beached on the white sands, ramps on their front ends were dropped, and tiny dots, Japanese soldiers, came pouring out. Jake exulted when some of them fell and actually cheered when one of the landing craft burst into flames from a shell. But it was too little, and the Japanese quickly overran targeted American positions and established a perimeter while the landing craft returned for more soldiers.

  Within a few hours, Jake estimated there were between five and six thousand Japanese on the beach, with more arriving almost continuously. Also landed were a handful of vehicles, towed artillery, and small tanks. He saw other dots. These were American defenders fleeing southward down the road to Schofield Barracks and Oahu. Overhead, Japanese planes strafed and bombed anything that moved, and the retreat quickly became a rout.

  Japanese gunnery had begun seeking targets farther inland, and Jake decided it was time to leave. He packed his binoculars and mounted his motorcycle. He would go cross-country and not try the road, which was quickly becoming a death trap full of burning and wrecked vehicles. He was not alone in this decision; numerous clusters of men trekked south across the fields.

  Smoke could be seen from the small towns in the area. Waialua, with its five thousand people, was in flames, while the coastal village of Haleiwa itself, with only a couple of hundred souls in cottages and shacks, had been flattened by the battle.

  Civilians had begun withdrawing when the shelling started, and now they clogged the one narrow road that the army needed for withdrawal of the wounded, evacuation of shattered units, and arrival of reinforcements. There was nothing but chaos on the roads, and Jake could see no sign of American reinforcements heading northward against the flow.

  He watched in horror as Japanese planes swept across the narrow road and killed without discrimination. It was like the newsreels he’d seen of the Nazis butchering innocent civilians in France in 1940. It was hard to believe it was happening to Americans on American soil, but the truth lay before him.

  Fortunately, darkness would fall in a couple of hours. If the retreating mass of people could stay clear of the fires that would attract planes, they might make it through to Schofield.

  So too, Jake thought grimly, might he.

  President Roosevelt’s face was ashen and drawn. His hands shook, and he looked on the verge of collapse. Admiral King resisted the urge to call for medical assistance as he remembered General Marshall’s comments about the president’s health. What he was seeing was a prime example of the stresses that were destroying the man who appeared in public as strong, unflappable, and buoyantly confident.

  Finally, Roosevelt was able to speak. “I know it was expected, but it is still a shock. It’s like the death of a loved one who’s been dying for months. No matter how much we think we’re prepared, it’s still a tragedy.”

  King kept his silence. Roosevelt had just gotten official word of the Japanese landings on Oahu.

  “Is there nothing we can do?” the president asked.

  King and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox locked eyes. They had been over this ground many times. Partly as a result of the decision that Germany was the primary enemy, there were few resources available to the navy. Another factor was Japan’s unnerving and totally unexpected propensity to be dominant in several crucial areas, and only time, as the American war machine gradually geared up, would shift those dominances.

  “The public is going to crucify me if Hawaii falls,” Roosevelt said. “Thank God there’s time to repair the damage before the next presidential elections, although my party is going to catch hell in fall’s congressional races.”

  “The Japs will take Hawaii,” King said tersely. Wait. Had the president just said he was going to run for a fourth term? The third one in 1940 had been unprecedented. Would his health hold up for the current term, much less one more?

  Roosevelt tried to rub the pain from behind his eyes with his knuckles. “When that happens, there will be no reason for Bataan and Corregidor to hang on. Do you know the soldiers in the Philippines are fantasizing that we will soon land ten thousand Negro soldiers on white horses to save them? My God, they’re going mad over there. How long do you give Oahu, Admiral?”

  “Ground warfare isn’t my specialty, sir, but my experts say two to three weeks at the most. If the Japs adhere to the pattern established in their earlier attacks, in Malaya and the Philippines, they won’t wait too long before advancing. They like to keep their opposition off balance.”

  “Singapore will soon fall as well,” Knox said.

  The British and Empire troops had almost entirely withdrawn across the Johore Strait, which meant that only the small island that contained the city of Singapore remained of all Malaya. The British had been outmaneuvered by the Japanese, who’d moved through the jungles instead of using the roads and, when on the roads, had mounted many of their troops on bicycles, enabling them to travel with astonishing swiftness.

  “When that occurs,” Knox continued, “the Japanese will control all of the western Pacific and be in a position to attack Australia. We will find it very difficult to fend off an invasion down there.”

  Roosevelt nodded grimly. “Would they do that?”

  “It would be a tremendous reach,” King answered, “and doubtless not in their original plans. However, neither was Hawaii. Success breeds ambition and this is no exception.”

  “Perhaps ambition will be their downfall,” Roosevelt murmured, and the others nodded. “Tell me, Admiral, when can you mount a counterattack and retake the Hawaiian Islands?”

  King was surprised. A counterattack of any force was a contravention of the policy of Germany First. “We need more ships, and we need an army. According to General Marshall, we will have an army well before we have the ships. Let’s face it, sir; even though we have a number under construction, ships take years to build, while a soldier can be trained in far less time. If we are going to counterattack by the end of this year, it will be largely with what resources we have now. If you want to wait until the end of 1943, then we will have a fair degree of dominance.”

  Roosevelt nodded. “What would you need to attack now?”

  “Carriers, sir. And a solution to the torpedo problem with our submarines. The days of the battleship are over, except to protect the carriers and for shore bombardment. I wouldn’t let any of our battleships go against that Japanese giant unless the odds were heavily stacked in my favor, like the British finally wound up with against the German Bismarck.”

  Roosevelt and Knox agreed. Until the Yamato made her entrance, the German Bismarck had been the largest warship ever. She’d finally been sunk, but not until she’d been crippled by torpedoes from planes, and only then by the concentrated fire of several Royal Navy battleships and cruisers. The recently arrived information about the Yamato had stunned them. Confirming pictures were en route, and it had already been decided that the public would not see them for a long while. Nor would anybody comment on the possibility that there might be a sister or two of the Yamato under construction in Japanese shipyards.

  “You have three carriers in the Pacific, do you not?” Roosevelt asked of King.

  The question was rhetorical. The Enterprise and Lexington had been in the Pacific at the time of Pearl Harbor, and the Yorktown had arrived shortly after. That left the Ranger, Saratoga, Wasp, Hornet, and the small Long Island operating in the Atlantic.

  Roosevelt smiled for the first time during the meeting. “Why do we need carriers in the Atlantic? The German surface naval threat is nonexistent, and the fleet carriers are little use against their subs.”

  Knox responded. “They will be used to support amphibious operations.”

  “Which,” Roosevelt said, “will not occur for some time. And, when they do occur, can’t the carriers be moved from one ocean to another fairly rapidly? After all, isn’t that mobility part of their purpose?”

  King liked what he was hearing. “At last count, the Japs had nine
or ten carriers, but several of them were small, like the Long Island. While they doubtless have others under construction, they suffer from the same time constraints we do. Also, light carriers like the Long Island are better suited for use against German U-boats, which is why we are converting merchantmen to small carriers. The fleet carriers serve no purpose, other than political, in the Atlantic.”

  The president winced at the word political, and Knox averted his eyes. The very close relationship between Roosevelt and the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, was an ongoing sore point with King and others who felt that the president was far too deferential to British concerns.

  “Be that as it may,” Roosevelt said, “you shall have your carriers. Not all at once, mind you, as we cannot give even the slightest hint that we are shifting our focus away from helping England and Russia. Perhaps we can do something sooner than late 1943. I leave it to you to come up with a suitable plan.”

  King was pleased. He had won part of the battle for the Pacific. With carriers, he could strike at the Japanese. It would be too late for Hawaii, of course, but it would occur. Now he could get on with other problems. The torpedoes were a nagging situation. Did they work properly or not? Then, of course, there was the problem with carrier-based planes. Right now, the Japanese Zero ruled the skies, and all the carriers in the world wouldn’t change a thing unless there was a good plane on them. Almost all the American carrier planes were F4F Wildcats, which hadn’t been tested in battle. King and the other admirals were certain that the Wildcat was superior to the P-36 or the P-40, but just how much better was the question.

  All in all, though, King was pleased. He’d gotten the promise of reinforcements and seen the president apparently shake off his unexpected case of nerves. On a really good note, King hadn’t been invited to have one of the president’s famous martinis. Maybe he’d been too blunt with his commander in chief, but that was okay. In King’s opinion, the President of the United States made a lousy martini.