Chapter 49
The SBD Dauntless was an excellent plane. Fairly fast and agile for a dive bomber, with a heavy bomb load and enough armor to come back missing a wing. It had the range to scout the enemy, and still have enough to attack at the end. It could put its payload down on a pickle barrel. And it was a joy to fly. It was, in a word, the perfect dive bomber.
Or so Ensign Manuel Lawrence told himself, to take his mind off what had gone over the radio. He never wanted to hear
that scream ever, ever again.
"We're going to hit the Japs with everything we've got, ya hear?" His commanding officer had ground out, when the scream stopped.
Lawrence had no desire to dispute the point. As strange as it had been to see that tall woman with
blue hair walk in with the Admiral? Everyone aboard
Saratoga had quickly become attached to their ship. The old girl never let them down.
And none of them would let her down, after hearing the anguish in her voice. They couldn't.
"I think I see something at two o'clock, sir!" That was the designated scout, the man with the best eyesight in the entire squadron. And those eyes had been looking almost religiously for any sign of Japanese warships.
"Make it...at least one carrier and escorts."
Straining his own gaze down towards the ocean, far below, Lawrence let out a soft whistle. A Jap flattop was clearly visible. Boxy and fat, the ship was steaming along in formation with several destroyers. He couldn't see any smoke, but then, the Japanese had that idiotic downward facing exhaust. According to his identification book, anyway, that he had turned his eyes towards and was frantically paging through.
Not Akagi. Not Soryuu. Kaga?
Glancing back down at the carrier, blissfully unaware of the Americans rapidly approaching, the Ensign clicked his tongue. It was certainly ungainly enough to be
Kaga. Right.
This is going to be exciting. Training can only do so much.
"You alright back there?" Lawrence spared a glance over his shoulder, shouting back at his gunner.
A slam into his seat answered him, and a grin he couldn't see. "Of course! I'd pay good money for a chance to get some back for Pearl!"
Grinning himself, Lawrence returned his attention to his wingmates. Sunlight glinted off the wings of the Dauntlesses, and the handful of Wildcats escorting them. Far below, he knew that the same light shone on Devastators. He was glad he wasn't in
that deathtrap. It took a special kind of person to go into battle in a Devastator.
He wasn't that kind of person.
Regardless, those planes were still important. Admiral Thompson and Admiral Halsey had come up, jointly, with the new 'hammer and anvil' approach to bombing. The torpedo and dive bombers would coordinate their attacks as one group. The Japs wouldn't know where to send their fighters, and at least some of the weapons would get through. The divebombers were the hammer and the Devastators the anvil.
"The Japs are going to come down on them
like an anvil."
Muttering to himself, the young American goosed his throttle a bit, pulling in behind his wingman. As the sunlight grew ever brighter, the Dauntlesses began to line up for their dive. It was now or never, and they wouldn't get another chance to hit the Japs like this again.
"Alright, everyone, let's show the Japs what it means to fight the United States Navy!"
With a chorus of cheers answering him, the Commander winged over first. And the rest of the squadron followed him, angling down on
Kaga.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
To the perspective of the Japanese, the Americans had come out of nowhere. Only a handful of
Reisen fighters had been left behind in the attack, too few remaining from the raid on Pearl Harbor. That bare handful of A6Ms had been caught off-guard, when American torpedo bombers came into sight of the lookouts aboard
Kaga and
Hiryuu. With little to no forewarning, the fighters set to their duty. Silver wings glinted, as they twisted out of patrol formation and down to attack the Americans. No plane in the world could match the A6M's agility and they proved it.
Within seconds of sighting the Devastators,
Reisen pilots were already looming out of the blue. With radial engines roaring in their ears, the Japanese pilots dove down on the hapless Americans. To their credit, the torpedo bombers did not deviate from their courses. Even the Japanese pilots felt a tinge of respect for that.
Gaijin fools the Americans may be, they did not lack for bravery. Even as twenty millimeter shells lanced into the fuselages of their planes, the Americans kept going. One, two, three of the planes crashed into the water in flames. The
Reisen, shells expended, had to pull off as fire broke out from
Kaga. The Americans didn't even hesitate and dove right into the anti-aircraft fire.
Kaga was not refit to modern standards. Her defensive suite was adequate at best. Yet, the Devastators died. What else could they do? They had to fly low and slow to drop their payload, and a blind monkey could hardly fail to hit a plane such as that. The gunners aboard
Kaga were no such thing. Grimly setting to their tasks, orders were barked out and men rushed forward with ammunition. It was a well oiled machine that could not fail to do its job.
The clatter of twenty-five millimeter guns was only matched by the shrill shouts of gun commanders and the thud of ammunition boxes being pulled off mounts.
Americans flew into this fusillade of defensive fire. They died.
And yet, they kept coming with a dogged determination that was almost
Samurai. Inside
Kaga's fighters, the pilots who had pulled off could only watch. Despite flames licking their fuselages, the Americans threw themselves into the fray. Not a single one of their planes pulled off and away, until it had released its torpedo.
I almost envy these Americans. They are fighting with more honor than many men I have seen.
Sitting secure in his
Reisen, a young Japanese pilot shook his head. The Americans missed their strike on
Kaga, he could see it. For all the futility of their attack, these men were worthy of respect. They deserved that much.
A soft sigh came from the young man's lips. His head turned towards the sun, as he prepared to move towards the heavens again. The Americans were all dead or retreating, and he must return to his...his...
What is that?
Grey specks were visible towards the sun. Little more than dots in his vision that could be explained away as sunspots. Yet, there were too many for that. They were moving too fast as well. It couldn't--they wouldn't--not even--
"American dive bombers!" The young pilot screamed into his radio, pulling harshly on his control stick. The force of his sudden maneuver pushed him back into his seat. His body screamed back at him, protesting his actions. He didn't even notice. "The Americans are coming from the sun!"
Around him, the other
Reisen pilots were quick to turn up.
Kaga's pilots were some of the most experienced in the entire Imperial Navy, and her A6M pilots were chosen for their immense skill and experience on top of that. It was a lucky man who flew a
Reisen.
None of these men felt lucky now. Their beautiful fighters struggled to climb into the air, as the grey specks quickly coalesced into American planes. The roundel, a star, only drove that point home. Like shooting stars they dove down in perfect formation, one plane after another. Their gull-wings scythed through the air, while the planes went into as steep a dive as physically possible.
Beneath them,
Kaga frantically pulled into a starboard turn. Even as she made that turn, forcing her escorts to do the same, a massive explosion rocked the destroyer
Arare. Flames and water shot into the sky. With a tortured groan of crumpled steel,
Arare began to settle into the water.
One of the American torpedoes, having overshot
Kaga, impacted the destroyer. A few men cried out in a blind rage at the sight. The destroyer came to a rapid halt, listing sharply. Her crew could spare no attention for
Kaga, wrapped up as they were in trying to save their own ship. Nor could the crew of
Kaga provide aid to their escort.
For the American planes, screaming from the heavens, would give no time to think.
Kaga's sharp turn had succeeded in throwing off the aim of the first American planes. Bombs dropped from those aircraft impacted the water on her port flank, popping rivets and buckling hull plates. However, they caused no severe damage. Men who knew what to listen for may have heard a stifled cry of pain, echoing over the
thud thud thud of heavy guns joined by the clatter of machine cannons. Her crew continued to fire, the
Reisen pilots ignoring the fire and charging at the Americans in their desperation to save their home.
It would not be enough.
Not every American would miss, of course. Adjusting their trajectory to compensate for the turn, the second wave of bombers was deadly accurate. Fat black bombs, larger than any Japanese weapon, fell from the centerline of each plane.
Kaga, as a legacy of her battleship hull, could not turn hard or fast enough to evade them. Three bombs hit home in rapid succession. Each impact rattled the carrier and threw men to her deck. Fireballs reached into the sky, smoke and debris flying away from the carrier.
The explosions flung some men onto the decks of the nearby destroyers, and the crippled
Arare was hit by a piece of
Kaga's deck. A deck that had been shattered by the rapid explosions. Each bomb was enough to cripple a smaller warship, and the old carrier had taken three of them. It was a testament to her crew that she did not stop, dead in the water, despite the ruined flight deck and fires raging in her hangar.
With flames wracking her from the bombs,
Kaga turned away from the battle at Wake. Her escort fighters gave up chasing the fleeing American dive bombers, returning like a flock of birds defending their nest. Each pilot felt suitably chastened for focusing on the torpedo bombers instead of watching, despite knowing that there were too few of them to cover every approach. Despite the crippled
Arare serving as an example of what ignoring the torpedoes could have done.
These men would never forget the sight of Dauntless bombers coming out of the sun.
Far away from the flaming wrecks of
Kaga and
Arare, or even the smoldering
Saratoga, another battle was being waged. With Japanese cruisers withdrawing to support their flagships, the Marines on Wake were given a respite from the gunfire. No silver Japanese planes flew in their skies any longer. This would be a cause for celebration.
Were these men not engaged in a battle to the death with hardened Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces.
With a savage jerk of his wrists, Corporal Steven Miller pulled his rifle from the chest of one such man. The Japanese soldier fell, clutching at his heart. Miller paid him no more mind than a butchered cow already turning to parry a bayonet from another Jap. After the destroyers and cruisers had left, these men seemed to have lost all sense of self-preservation. With calls of
Banzai ringing, they had charged right into the guns of the Marines. And, in more than a few cases, into foxholes.
Goddamnit!
Grunting with exertion, Miller pushed up and to the right. The smaller Japanese man, overbalanced by the movement, slipped on the blood coating the foxhole. His rifle flew past the Marine, and Miller didn't give him a chance to recover. His Springfield, bayonet stained red, stabbed into the SNLF man's side. A strangled gurgle came from bloodied lips, as the Jap tried to pry the blade out of his side.
Miller obliged.
"Take that, you goddamned asshole." The Marine spat out, pulling his bayonet free. Ignoring the pained cries of the soldier beneath him, the Marine scrambled up and out of his foxhole. All around him, the screams of dying men echoed through the air. His own comrade, his foxhole buddy, lay dead inside the hole with the two Japs.
Colonel Devereux had long since vanished. Either back to the command bunker or under a swarm of Japanese steel, Miller didn't know. All he did know, was that the chatter of a machine gun was firing at SNLF forces just ahead of him. Men who weren't looking in his direction.
Those bastards are going to pay
!
Dropping to his stomach, the Marine pulled back the bolt on his Springfield and stuck a new stripper clip in. With a satisfying
click, the old bolt was rammed home and he could do what Marines did best. Shoot better than any other man on the planet.
"This is for Davidson, you sons of bitches." Miller growled, his finger pulling the trigger on his antique rifle. Old it may have been, whoever was on the receiving end of a .30-06 didn't care how old the bullet or gun was. A Japanese marine fell, a strangled scream alerting his comrades to Miller. Who, without hesitation, pulled back his bolt and fired again.
Return fire forced him to roll into an empty foxhole, but he never once stopped shooting. Miller was a marine, through and through. It would take more than bullets pinging around his head to make him stop. His actions were almost mechanical. Training and a desire for revenge had taken over. He pulled his bolt back and rammed bullets home. He aimed and fired. Each bullet he shot found a target.
Screams of anger from the Japs rang in his ears, as Miller smiled grimly. His eyes had long since hardened to the death he was seeing. It almost didn't register, when his rifle found its mark. When an SNLF soldier fell back, his head vanishing in pink mist. He only felt the need to avenge every single American those bastards had killed. He would make them
bleed. No matter what it took.
He would only duck down when a bullet ricocheted off his helmet and forced him down.
Groaning a bit as his head rang with the impact, Miller kept his head down until the firing stopped.
All of the firing. Confusion warred with pain and caution, and won out. Sticking his head over the lip of the foxhole, the Marine's eyes scanned the horizon. The burning destroyers on the beach were still there. The SNLF men were still there.
Or, at least, their corpses. Miller could see more than a few men he had shot, laying on the ground. Dead or nearly there. Even more Japanese soldiers were piled at the foot of the machine gun nests, where they had finally been pushed back. He wasn't enough of a fool to think they were
all dead. If nothing else, this was not the only beach that the Japs had landed on. But this little slice of Wake? It was as clear as it would ever be.
Corporal Miller didn't know what to feel, about that. On the one hand, the Japs were gone or dead. On the other, he wasn't able to kill any more of them.
Ah hell, at least we held the island. Now we need those navy bastards to get here and relieve us.
Letting out a tired sigh, the Marine propped his rifle against the side of the hole, and slid down. His hands shook as they pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. He knew it was likely he'd have to move to fight other parts of the island, but for now, he was going to take a smoke and rest. God knew he needed it.
When the last of the Japanese planes had vanished over the horizon, Sara picked herself up on the ruin of her bridge. Her entire body felt as if it was on fire, reflecting the blaze burning on her deck. Her bridge had been torn to pieces. The man who had come up from her damage control teams was dead. His body had been torn into pieces and scattered across the room. Sara couldn't bring herself to look at it for too long, her stomach churning and her heart aching.
A lot of the pain came from the fact she couldn't bring herself to care, not really, about a nameless officer she had never talked to. All her attention was on the silent man laying at her feet.
Admiral...
Thompson was covered in blood. Her own and his own. His head was cradled in her lap, as she sat in the flickering lights from what remained of her electric network up here. He was quiet in her lap and she had no idea what to do. She could try and use whatever she knew from her medical teams, but she had no supplies or experience in using them. So Sara did the only thing she could.
Hold him and gently run her hand over his pale face.
"Admiral...why didn't you go somewhere safe?" Sara whispered, her hand running along a gash over his eye. Her body had shielded him, but there was only so much she could cover.
No words answered her question, either. She hadn't really expected any.
"You never did care about yourself, did you? Just about the others. Just about me."
Tears pricked at her green eyes. Tears that Sara didn't wipe away. Faintly, she heard her pilots reporting that they had hit a Japanese carrier. Words that she knew would pain her Admiral, if he could hear them. He cared too much. She often wondered. If he could really put aside the girls
he knew and realize they were not the ones that he would have to face in combat.
This wasn't the way she wanted to find that out.
Choking back a cry, the carrier turned her reddened eyes out of her shattered command center, and over to
Enterprise. Little E was the lucky one. She hadn't been hit once in this battle, and was steaming along. Her decks were crowded with her own planes and Sara's. And her voice was begging a way in.
"Aunt Sara, what's going on over there! Please talk to me!" The panic in her voice was something that Sara hated. She was the older one. She was the one who should have to take on the load of this war, and keep her Little E innocent.
But if things went anything like they had, in her Admiral's past, she wouldn't be that lucky. None of them would.
"I--I'm alright, Little E." Despite the hitch in her voice, Sara couldn't let herself look weak. "I'm okay."
"What about Admiral Thompson, then?" Little E's words hit harder than she probably expected.
"Da---Admiral Halsey needs to know if he's okay. Is he? You haven't said anything and I'm so worried and I need to know that he--"
Ordinarily, the rambling of her little niece would have brought a smile to Sara's face. Right now, it just pained her more than any fire or any number of explosions.
"He...he's hurt. Badly." Sara returned her eyes to her entirely-too-pale Admiral. Biting her lip, she turned off her connection to Enterprise, and tried to speak through her damaged hull. "If anyone can hear me, I need a corpsman on the bridge. Please hurry, the Admiral is---the Admiral--"
She couldn't finish the sentence.
"...Aunt Sara..." Little E restored the connection, without even a second to waste. Her voice was tiny and quiet.
"I..."
A connection that was soon taken away from her. Bull Halsey's gruff voice replaced it, likely speaking directly through the TBS system.
"Listen up over there. Saratoga, I know what happened, but I need you to stay focused
you hear me? Don't forget what he would want you to do."
Sara had never forgotten what her Admiral wanted her to do. She couldn't.
"Right now, I need to know if you can get back to Pearl. Can you?"
Looking down at her blood covered hands, Sara sucked in a deep breath. It was difficult to breathe...the damage to her stack? She wasn't sure. But she could move under her own power. Not at full speed and she wouldn't want to make sudden turns if she could avoid it. However, she could still move.
"Yes. I think I can." Her response was as mechanical as her hull.
"Damn good news." Halsey grunted, even as he barked orders at his own crew.
"Right, I'm detaching Northampton and a few destroyers to escort you back. Get that Admiral of yours back before he does some damn fool thing again, and get yourself fixed up. We're going to need every ship we can get out here."
"Please be careful, Aunt Sara!" Little E managed to break in one more time, before the connection was cut entirely. Sara smiled, ever so slightly, before it faded away.
She could hear corpsman running towards her bridge, and she needed to be ready when they arrived. Her Admiral's soft breaths were too weak.
She would be damned before she let him die.
Very difficult. I think that's what I can say for this one.
Of course, after this, we're moving out of the battles and back to stuff I find easier to write. For example, Germany. Though that's a couple chapters away. Next chapter will wrap up Wake and after that, I'll probably cover a couple more chapters in the Pacific, though nothing as major as Second Wake.
Which I tried to meld Midway and Coral Sea here, to some extent.
Either way, next chapter shouldn't take near as long, I think. Holding the Line should also be updated soon to cover the after effects of this. Debating if that will be before or after the next mainline chapter.
