They’d seen the American fighters, and started taking evasive action. That was pretty funny. They weren’t slow and they weren’t completely ungraceful, but no bomber had a prayer of outdodging a fighter that wanted to come after it. The Bettys also started shooting. They carried several machine guns in blisters on the fuselage-almost impossible to aim well-and a 20mm cannon in a clumsy turret at the rear of the plane.
When Joe got on the tail of one, the Jap in that rear turret started banging away at him. The cannon didn’t shoot very fast. There’d be a flash and a puff of smoke as the shell burst, then a little while later another one. Joe fired a burst as he swung the Hellcat’s nose across that turret. The tail gunner stopped shooting: wounded or dead.
With that annoyance gone, Joe sawed the Hellcat’s nose across the Betty’s left wing root and squeezed off another burst. Sure as hell, the bomber caught fire. Intelligence said Bettys carried a lot of fuel to give them long range, and that they lacked armor and self-sealing tanks. It sure looked as if Intelligence knew what it was talking about.
He went after another bomber and shot it down just the same way. The poor bastard in the rear turret never had a chance-and once he was gone, none of the weapons the Betty carried could damage a tough bird like a Hellcat except by luck. Joe knew a moment’s pity for the fliers trapped in their burning planes, but only a moment’s. They would have bombed his carrier if they’d got the chance. And they would have yelled, “Banzai!” while they did it, too. Screw ’em.
Still… Three miles was a hell of a long way to fall when you were on fire.
Other U.S. pilots found different ways of attacking the Bettys. Some flew straight at the bombers and shot up their cockpits. Others climbed past them and dove like falcons stooping on doves. The unescorted Bettys were slaughtered. Watching, taking part, Joe again felt tempted to pity, but again not for long. This was the enemy. The only reason they weren’t doing the same thing to him was that they couldn’t. They surely wanted to.
Trails of smoke and flame told of Betty after Betty going into the Pacific. They never had a chance. They must have counted on getting close to the American fleet without being spotted. They might have done some damage if they had. The way things were, it was a massacre.
“Let’s head for home, children,” the squadron leader said. “We’ve got one enemy carrier sunk, one enemy carrier dead in the water and burning, no other carriers spotted. By the size of the enemy strike, it probably set out from two ships. We did what we came to do, in other words. We’ve cleared the way for things to go forward.”
That sounded good to Joe. He wanted to shoot up some more Japanese ships, but a glance at the fuel gauge told him hanging around wasn’t a good idea. He had to find north again, the same way he’d had to find south when he went after the Bettys.
He shook his head with amazement that approached awe. Two Bettys for sure. He thought he’d got a Zero and a Kate. One fight and he was within shouting distance of being an ace. He’d dreamt about doing stuff like that, but he’d had trouble believing it. Believe it or not, he’d done it.
He hoped Orson Sharp was okay. He’d looked around whenever he got the chance-which wasn’t very often-but he hadn’t spotted his longtime roomie. He kept telling himself that didn’t prove anything one way or the other. Sharp was probably looking around for him, too, and not finding him.
On he went toward the north. He wondered how much damage the Jap strike force had been able to do. Less than it would have before it tangled with the American planes, that was for damn sure. And where would the Japs land now? Both of their carriers were out of business. Would they go on to Oahu? Maybe some of the Zeros could get there, but the Vals and Kates didn’t have a chance. “Oh, too bad,” Joe said, and laughed.
He might have been speaking of the devil, because he got a radio call on the all-planes circuit from a Hellcat a few miles ahead of him: “Heads up, boys. Here come the Japs on the way home-except they don’t know home burned down. Every plane we splash now is one more we don’t have to worry about later on.”
Joe didn’t need long to spot what was left of the enemy’s air armada. He whistled softly to himself. The Japs had had a lot more planes the first time the American strike force ran into them. The U.S. fleet’s antiaircraft guns and the combat air patrol must have done a hell of a job. That looked like good news.
Zeros still escorted the surviving dive bombers and torpedo planes. Hellcats roared to the attack. Joe took another look at his fuel gauge. He’d be pushing it if he gunned his bird real hard-but why was he in this cockpit, if not to push it?
He saw a Kate flying south as if it didn’t have a care in the world. Was that the sneaky bastard who’d given him the slip last time by jinking left instead of right? He nodded to himself. He thought so. “Fool me once, shame on you,” he said. “Fool me twice, shame on me.” He goosed the Hellcat and raced toward the Jap torpedo plane.
COMMANDER MITSUO FUCHIDA’S HEART WAS HEAVY as lead inside him. He knew the strike force he led hadn’t come close to defeating and driving back the U.S. fleet. In words of one syllable, the Japanese had got smashed. A glance at the battered remnants of the strike force was enough to tell him that. Far too many Japanese planes had never got to the American fleet. Of the ones that had, far too many hadn’t got away.
And what would become of the ones that had done everything they were supposed to do? That was another good question, one much better than he wished it were. He’d seen the size of the American strike force when its path crossed his. What had the Yankees done to the Japanese fleet? Were any flight decks left for these few poor planes to land on?
He checked his fuel gauge. He’d been running as lean as he could, but he didn’t have a chance of getting back to Oahu with what was in his tanks, and he knew it. He hadn’t said anything to his radioman and bombardier, not yet. No point borrowing trouble, not when they already had so much. Maybe Akagi or Shokaku — maybe Akagi and Shokaku — still waited. He could hope. Hope didn’t hurt, and didn’t cost anything.
One of the handful of Zeros still flying with the strike force waggled its wings to get Fuchida’s attention. He waved to show he’d got the signal. The pilot (yes, that was Shindo; Fuchida might have known he was too tough and too sneaky for the Americans to kill) pointed south.
Fuchida’s eyes followed that leather-gloved index finger. There in the privacy of the cockpit, he groaned. Running into the U.S. strike force coming and going struck him as most unfair, though it wasn’t really surprising, not when both air fleets had to fly reciprocal courses to strike their enemies and return.
“Attention!” he called over the all-planes circuit. “Attention! Enemy aircraft dead ahead!” That would wake up anybody who hadn’t noticed. Then he added what was, under the circumstances, the worst thing he could say: “They appear to have seen us.”
“What do we do now, Commander-san?” Petty Officer Mizuki asked.
“We try to get through them or past them,” said Fuchida, who had no better answer. How? And what if they succeeded? Hope one of the carriers still survived? Hope some of the other ships in the Japanese fleet still survived, so he might be rescued if he ditched? That struck him as most likely, and also as a very poor best.
Reaching the Japanese fleet would be an adventure in itself. Here came the Americans. Fuchida tried to get some feel for their numbers, some feel for how many the combat air patrol over Akagi and Shokaku and the fleet’s antiaircraft had shot down. It wasn’t easy, not with enemy planes spread out all over the sky ahead. The shortest answer he could find was not as many as I wish they had.