There is less in this than meets the eye.
Tallulah Bankhead
I
The Japanese Fleet returned in triumph to Hiroshima Bay on 13 June. The American carriers had been destroyed, Midway Island occupied after a bitter four-day struggle. It was a modern-day Tsushima, celebrated throughout Japan as a victory for the virtues of the Japanese way and as a defeat for the godless materialists on the other side of the ocean.
But the cost to the Japanese carrier force had been high. Kaga was at the bottom of the Pacific; Hiryu, torpedoed by a US submarine during the voyage back to Japan, would take six months to repair. Akagi and Soryu, though hardly damaged, needed extensive replacements of aircraft and pilots. The other carriers would not return for some weeks. Shokaku and Zuikaku had sailed for the south immediately after the naval engagement to take part in the previously postponed Coral Sea operation. and Ryujo were still at Midway, waiting while the island’s airstrips were made ready to receive their planes. So all in all it would be at least six weeks before Kido Butai could again operate as a coherent striking force.
For Yamamoto, once more relaxing aboard Yamato in Hiroshima Bay, it was an opportunity for taking stock. The crushing victory he had just secured had not brought the Americans cap-in-hand to the negotiating table. He had never really believed that it would. Midway was only one of a series of hammer-blows designed to weaken American resolve. Each of these blows paved the way for another. Where should the next one be struck?
Before the Battle of Midway Yamamoto had been reasonably sure of his answer to this question. Despite his airy promises to Kuroshima in early May the Japanese Commander-in-Chief had never seriously considered an all-out
Assault on the British position in the Indian Ocean. Japan’s primary enemy, the only one which could stand between the nation and its destiny on the Asian mainland, remained the United States. Even after Midway this could never be forgotten. The next blow, and the one after that, must be aimed at American power, at American resolve, until the Americans themselves were forced to call a halt to this war.
Yamamoto’s next priority was Oahu, the most important of the Hawaiian Islands. It stood at the centre of the Pacific chess-board. Pearl Harbor was the central Pacific naval base, the funnel through which American military potential would be poured into the Pacific bottle. Without Oahu, without Pearl, the Americans would have to mount their Pacific operations from the distant coast of the American continent, a formidable if not impossible task.
The Japanese capture of Oahu would also be a psychological blow of enormous proportions. Midway had been too far from the United States. It had been a naval tragedy and another island occupied. But there were many islands, and navies could always be built again. Midway had brought bad news, traumatic news, of the war home to America, but it had not brought the war itself. That was what was needed. The occupation of American soil, of American bases, of American civilians. Oahu.
Even before Midway, Ugaki and Yamamoto had canvassed support for such an operation, but the Army had refused to supply the necessary troops and the Naval General Staff had denounced the plan as being too hazardous. Now, with such a victory behind him, Yamamoto hoped that he could obtain the troops and the go-ahead from his naval superiors. He was soon to be disillusioned.
The Army saw matters in a different light. It always had. Japan, an island power with continental aspirations, had produced two services of equal status and power which looked in opposite directions. While the Navy directed its energies eastward towards the Pacific and its American enemy, the Army looked west towards China, its ever-reluctant bride. Soliciting the co-operation of this bride was the Army’s eternal task; that, and fighting off the other noted rapists of the underdeveloped world, the great powers of continental Europe and Anglo-America.
The Navy’s role, according to the Army, was basically secondary. It consisted of securing the Army’s lines of communication between the home islands and the conquered territories, and of fending off naval interference from the other great powers. In 1905 this had meant little more than controlling the Straits of Japan, and though by 1942 the role had expanded geographically - south towards the protection of the vital oil, east against
The air-sea threat posed by the United States - in essence it remained the same. Japan’s destiny lay on the Asian mainland, not amongst the myriad coral atolls of the Pacific. Action in the latter zone served action in the former, not vice versa.
The glorious victory at Midway was interpreted in this light by the Army leaders. The Navy was doing its job, holding off American interference in the vital Chinese warzone. It would have to continue to do this job, until such time as the Army had made China a fit place for Japanese to live in. For this latter task the Army needed all the divisions it had. Or nearly all of them. It was recognised that certain army units would have to be deployed alongside the Navy - the Pacific was an amphibious, not a purely oceanic setting - but their number would have to be small. The Japanese Army was not an infinitely expendable resource.
The struggle in China continued. Little progress had been made in the seven months since Pearl Harbor. In Chungking Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek still defied the Japanese, despite the loss of the Burmese end of his road to the outside world. In the north-central provinces of Shensi and Shansi the activities of the communist partisans under Mao Tse-tung were becoming more rather than less troublesome. The Japanese invaders were still wading in thick treacle.
What could be done to solve this painful problem? Blind to the realities of the situation the Japanese, in true Western style, sought to solve an internal problem by juggling with the periphery. They convinced themselves, despite evidence to the contrary, that the Chinese would give up their struggle if completely cut off from external aid.
One source of this aid was India. An air-lift was now supplying Chiang Kai-shek from bases in Assam. Throttling this route at its source would involve the invasion of India, an operation which would involve the participation of the Navy and perhaps also Japan’s Axis partners.
There were many in the Japanese Army leadership who welcomed the idea of co-operation with Germany in the Middle East/India area. Unfortunately their enthusiasm was not shared by either the Navy or, more important, the German Fuhrer. German policy was becoming increasingly anti-Japanese in the summer of 1942. Even before Midway it had been an ambivalent mixture of reluctant admiration and vague distaste. Ciano noted in his diary that the latter was gaining the upper hand in the months that followed Yamamoto’s great victory:
It is all very well for the Japanese to win because they are our allies, but after all
They belong to the yellow race and their successes are gained at the expense of
The white race. It is a leitmotiv which frequently appears in the conversations of
The Germans.
The Germans were slightly more tactful in the presence of their ‘yellow’ aUy, but the Japanese were not fooled. If Ribbentrop’s charm was not transparent enough for them, then the steadfast German refusal either to offer or receive practical suggestions for joint activity was an obvious enough indication of Japan’s status in German eyes. When the Japanese proposed a jointly sponsored declaration of independence for India and the Arabs the Germans simply ignored them. All offers of military co-operation in the Indian Ocean were spumed. The heirs of the Rising Sun got the distinct impression that they were being bmshed off.
So, with neither Navy or Axis support forthcoming, the Army was forced to abandon its cherished Indian offensive. Its leaders were forced to turn their attention to the other imaginary source of Chinese resolution - Soviet support of the Chinese partisans. Joining the war against Russia had been a possibility since Barbarossa began, and now, in the summer of 1942, it seemed both practical and necessary. The new wave of German victories in May and June had worn down Soviet strength still further; the new wave of German hostility towards Japan made it imperative that the latter secured its natural rights in eastern Siberia while it was still possible. The Kwangtung Army was ordered to update its invasion plans.
At an Imperial War Cabinet meeting on 5 July the Army announced and defended its decision. The conquest of eastern Siberia would both facilitate the conquest of China and provide much-needed lebensraum for Japan’s crowded Empire. It would finally eliminate the Soviet Union from the war. Simultaneously the Germans would be pushing the British out of the stmggle. And the United States would not be able to fight on alone against both Germany and Japan.
Yamamoto, who was not present at the meeting, strongly disagreed with the Army’s chosen course of action. He believed that the divisions earmarked for Siberia could be used to better strategic effect against Oahu. But he received no support from the Naval General Staff, who still considered that the Oahu operation was far too hazardous. Nor was this the worst of it. On 16 July Yamamoto was informed that the three smaller carriers - Ryujo. Junyo and the new Hiyo - would be needed in the Sea of Japan to support the Army’s operation against Vladivostok. Which left him with only Kido Butafs four large carriers for the continuation of the war against the United States. He had to do something with them, or the
Momentum gathered at Midway would be lost. Denied the chance to attack Oahu, Yamamoto began to consider more daring possibilities.
II
Shortly before 06.00 on 7 August the green lights glowed on the decks of Hiyo, Ryujo andJunyo, and the Kates and Vais sped past them and into the air. Once in formation they flew off to the north. Forty miles ahead of them the Russian city of Vladivostok was welcoming the first rays of the morning sun. To the Japanese pilots the huge red orb in the east seemed like a vast replica of their flag strung across the horizon.
At 06.45 the first bombs rained down on Vladivostok harbour, sinking two Soviet cruisers of the moribund Pacific Fleet and three American merchantmen flying the Soviet flag.
At almost the same moment six divisions of the Kwangtung Army moved into the attack at two places on the Manchurian border, near Hunchun, scene of border fighting in 1938, and at the point 120 miles further north where the Harbin-Vladivostok railway crossed the frontier. Three hours later a further seven divisions of the Kwangtung Army, also in two groups, moved forward in western Manchuria, into the semi-desert region around Buir Nor where the Soviet, Mongolian and Manchurian borders join. The objective of these divisions was the large Siberian town of Chita, two hundred miles to the north-west, at the junction of the Trans-Siberian and Chinese Eastern Railways.
The Japanese declaration of war, following at the usual discreet distance behind the commencement of hostilities, was delivered to the Soviet ambassador in Tokyo at midday. Imperial Japan had taken the final reckless plunge.
In the Harbin HQ of the Kwangtung Army its commander. General Umezu, radiated confidence. His crack army, shunted into the wings of the war since 1937, would at last have the chance to prove its devotion and virility to the Sun God reigning in Tokyo. The defeats suffered in the border ‘skirmishes’ of 1938-9 had been forgotten.
They would soon be remembered. Considering the smallness of the force at his disposal - a mere seventeen divisions - Umezu’s confidence was astonishing, and only explicable in terms of the ‘victory disease’ prevalent at all levels of the Japanese Armed Forces in early August 1942. The Kwangtung Army’s intelligence work was wholly incompetent; it was reckoned that there were eight Red Army divisions east of Chita, but in fact
There were fifteen, and they were commanded by one of the war’s greatest generals - Konstantin Rokossovsky, the future victor of Mutankiang, Vladimir and Smolensk. Stavka had sent him east to take command of the remnants of the Far Eastern Army in mid-July, and he had talked with Zhukov on the eve of his departure from Kuybyshev. The two generals had agreed that Vladivostok would be impossible to hold, but that any further loss of territory should and could be avoided.
If General Umezu had been privy to this conversation he might have been better prepared for what was to follow in August. But instead he interpreted the rapid progress of the armies converging on Vladivostok as further confirmation of Soviet weakness. The three divisions following the railway, spearheaded by the famous ‘Gem’ Division, fought their way into Voroshilov on the Trans-Siberian only four days after crossing the border. Vladivostok was effectively cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union, and on 13 August the battle for the city began, the Japanese ground forces receiving ample air support from the aircraft based in Manchuria and the carriers still lying forty miles offshore. There was little doubt that the city would fall within a week.
But in the west the Japanese were running into trouble. The attack along the dry Khalka river-bed from the railhead at Halun-Arshan met the same fate as the almost identical sortie launched in 1939- The numbers on each side were roughly equal, but the Soviet forces were qualitatively far superior. The Japanese had no heavy tanks, no medium tanks to match the T-34s, and none of that battle-sense won by the Soviet tank-crews in close encounters with the German panzers. After advancing fifty miles across the arid fiats towards Buir Nor the four divisions of the Japanese left wing were simply routed by Rokossovsky’s brilliantly executed armoured encirclement. The right wing fared no better. Three days later, in the area of Kharanor, it received a similar thrashing.
General Umezu’s confidence was rather strained by these defeats, but his spirits were slightly restored by the surrender of the small Soviet force still in Vladivostok on 19 August. Japanese losses had been heavier than expected however, and after two divisions had been entrained for the west to bolster their ailing comrades on the Mongolian front there only remained three depleted divisions for the march on Khabarovsk, some four hundred miles up the Trans-Siberian. By the end of the month they had covered forty of them, reaching the small town of Sibirtsevo. They were to get no further.
The military leaders in Tokyo had grossly under-estimated the Red Army in the Far East, and had grossly overestimated the ability of their own forces, hitherto used exclusively against either non-industrialised nations or
15. Japan Attacks the Soviet Union
Western armies fighting in unfamiliar surroundings, to overcome a Western army that was fighting in its own back-yard and with superior weaponry. The spirit of banzai could not compensate for the disparity of strength.
The decision to attack the Soviet Union, which had been taken for opportunist rather than sound strategic reasons, was to prove the worst legacy of the ‘victory disease’ engendered by Midway and earlier triumphs. It won the Japanese nothing but the city of Vladivostok and the consequent blockage of the American-Soviet supply route. This might have proven its worth given time, but time was never on the side of Japan. On the debit side the attack on the Soviet Union ruled out the reallocation of the Kwangtung Army to other theatres, and it tied down a large portion of the Japanese Army’s Air Force at a time when Japan was crucially short of planes and trained pilots. The last slack had been taken up; the Japanese Army had lost its flexibility.
And as for the three carriers used against Vladivostok - their absence was soon to be dearly felt elsewhere.
Ill
While battle had raged through the streets of Vladivostok Kido Butai had been passing close by the spot from which, nine months before, it had opened the war against the United States. This time only four carriers - Akagi, Soryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku - were rolling and pitching in the North Pacific waves, but other factors had proved more constant. Admiral Nagumo was still pacing across his bridge expressing anxiety. Admiral Kusaka was still reassuring him.
This time Kusaka had less cause for optimism, iovKido Butai was not the force it had been. Victory had taken its toll, and both Genda and Fuchida were worried about the quality of the pilots drafted in to replace those lost at Midway. Japanese training programmes had been crippled by the shortage of aviation fuel, and these replacement pilots had not enjoyed the many hours aloft that had been granted their predecessors. This was all the more serious in that the battles to come would probably prove harder than those already past. Genda and Fuchida tried to suppress their doubts as they pored over the maps of Los Angeles and San Diego in the Akagi operations room.
Yamamoto, denied the chance to hit Oahu, had decided to give the Americans a lesson in vulnerability by hitting the Californian coast. The choice of San Diego as a target was obvious enough; it was the biggest US
Navy base on the West Coast. Los Angeles, to Yamamoto, represented something more intangible. In his years as Naval Attache in Washington the Admiral had learnt, or thought he had learnt, a great deal about the American character. Americans were a nation of materialists and a nation of dreamers living in uneasy conjunction. He had decided to attack both, the material in San Diego, the dream in Los Angeles.
It would be risky. Surprise, though essential, might well prove elusive. Kido Butai would have to pass through the Hawaii-West Coast sea-lanes without being detected. Once within range of its targets the fleet would be vulnerable to attack from shore-based aircraft. Withdrawal would have to be swift indeed. Once out of reach of these aircraft Kido Butai would be safe, for according to Japanese Intelligence the US Navy only possessed one remaining carrier, the Ranger. And since their agent in Panama had not reported this carrier’s passage through the Canal, it was assumed that she was still in the Atlantic.
Through the second week of August the carriers sailed on undetected at the maximum speed allowed by the accompanying oil tankers. The search-planes flew a 180-degree arc to a distance of 300 miles ahead of the fleet, and several times the carriers changed course to avoid being sighted by merchant ships. By early morning on 18 August they were approaching their destination, a point some two hundred miles off the Californian coast, equidistant from Los Angeles and San Diego. So far everything was proceeding according to plan.
As the sky lightened in the west the planes left the decks of the four carriers. Both cities were to be attacked simultaneously, to maximise the element of surprise and to give an exaggerated impression of Japanese strength. Tomonaga was to lead the planes from Shokaku and Zuikaku against Los Angeles, Fuchida those fvomAkagi and Soryu against San Diego.
On the American coast a sleepy radar operator in San Diego picked up the incoming flight but assumed it was composed of American planes. There was no particular reason for this assumption, save the general expectation that the Japanese were about to attack Oahu and an understandable refusal to believe that Yamamoto would have the temerity to attack the sacred soil of continental America. In Los Angeles the radar operator seems to have been completely asleep; no other satisfactory explanation has ever been found for the complete failure to detect the enemy approach.
Fuchida’s planes swept into the attack at 07.15. Their sole target was the naval base in San Diego Bay, and to their joy the Japanese pilots discovered that once again the American warships were unprotected by torpedo nets.
Their old friends the battleships Pennsylvania and Maryland, which had been under repair in the dockyards ever since Pearl Harbor, were once again sent to a shallow harbour floor by Japanese bombs and torpedoes. The battleship Mississippi, the cruisers Vincennes, Chicago and Minneapolis, and several destroyers suffered similar fates.
The attackers did not escape unscathed. Though the AA defences had little reason to congratulate themselves the American fighters, once airborne, took a heavy toll of the Japanese planes. Nearly a third of Fuchida’s force failed to return to the waiting carriers.
Over Los Angeles Tomonaga’s attack was inflicting less material damage but wreaking untold havoc in the wonderlands of the American psyche. Turning in from the sea along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Japanese bombers homed in on the eccentric target Yamamoto had chosen for them - the Hollywood dream factory. The Warner, Universal and Walt Disney studios, strung out along Ventura Boulevard, were hit by numerous bombs. One of them killed the well-known director Michael Curtiz in his car at the Warner studio gates; another destroyed all the prints of his latest film, Casablanca, in the Warner editing rooms. As a minor concession to military rationale, the Japanese planes also attacked the Lockheed aviation factories three miles further north in the San Fernando valley. With rather less deliberation a stray bomb knocked the H and the WOOD from the famous Hollywood sign, leaving, or so Oliver Hardy was later to claim, a splendid memorial to his talents in the night-time sky. And with splendid irony another Japanese bomb destroyed the cinema at which John Huston’s Across the Pacific had opened the previous week.
By this time the American fighters had belatedly scrambled into the air from their Long Beach and Los Alamitos airfields, and several stray members of the attacking force were brought down over the city. But by and large Tomonaga’s force had disappeared before the population of Los Angeles was aware of its arrival. The panic only set in later. For weeks afterwards, nervous citizens would either scan the sky for unfriendly planes or form standing patrols on the beaches, their eyes peeled for the inevitable Japanese invasion barges.
By 11.00 Nagumo’s carriers had recovered all the planes that were going to return, and Kido Butai was making top speed into the south-west. For the next forth-eight hours it was attacked spasmodically, and with little noticeable effect, by shore-based American planes of all shapes and sizes. By nightfall on 20 August Nagumo believed his fleet was safe, from both attack and detection. He ordered a change of course to the south-east.
Nagumo did not know that ten miles behind him, its low silhouette hidden by the horizon’s curve, the American submarine Cuttlefish was doggedly trailing his giant carriers. At midnight on 20 August her captain reported the Japanese change of course.
IV
Contrary to Japanese belief the US Navy possessed three operational carriers in August 1942, not one. Two of them, moreover, were in the Pacific. Saratoga, though badly damaged by a torpedo in January, had not, as the Japanese happily assumed, been sunk. In June it had re-emerged from the San Diego repair yards and was now in Pearl Harbor. Neither was Wasp where the Luftwaffe had said it was - at the bottom of the Mediterranean. In fact this carrier had passed through the Panama Canal in early July, unnoticed by the local Japanese agent, who was languishing in an American military prison in the Canal Zone. His codebook was still in use however, as the American intelligence authorities relayed comforting but false information to Tokyo. Wasp had also required extensive repairs, and had only been passed fully operational the previous week. It had sailed for Pearl only forty-eight hours before Fuchida’s planes appeared over San Diego harbour.
So Admiral Nimitz, still Pacific C-in-C despite the Midway debacle, had something to play with. When the news of the Californian attacks reached him in Hawaii he acted with commendable speed. Saratoga was leaving Pearl Harbor before the morning was over; she was to rendezvous with Wasp in the vicinity of Clipperton Island, some eight hundred miles off the Mexican coast.
Nimitz did not know where Nagumo was going, but he suspected the worst. Though the reports coming in from Cuttlefish suggested that Kido Butai was returning home via the southern Pacific, the American C-in-C feared a Japanese strike against the Panama Canal. He was right, but it would be two nerve-wracking days before Cuttlefish reported Nagumo’s change of course and confirmed Nimitz’s suspicions. From that moment on the question was - could the Japanese carriers be overtaken? It seemed likely that Kido Butai, operating at such distance from its bases, would be moving slowly to conserve fuel. If so, then there was a chance.
The Japanese carriers, once beyond the reach of shore-based aircraft, had indeed reduced speed for that reason, but not to the degree Nimitz was
Hoping for. He had assumed that the maximum speed of the accompanying tankers - around twelve knots - would be the maximum speed of the fleet. He was mistaken. The tankers had been left behind after a last refuelling on the morning of 22 August; more were waiting farther to the south, having sailed from Truk at the beginning of the month.
Aboard Kido Butai spirits were high. Another great victory! They had attacked the American mainland with relative impunity! In the operations rooms the maps of San Diego and Los Angeles had been returned to the map-drawers, and those of the Panama Canal Zone brought out for intense perusal. Genda and the flight leaders studied the paths to be taken by the torpedo-bombers as they homed in on the giant gates of the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks.
The destruction of these gates, Yamamoto had discovered in consultation with Japanese engineers, would put the Canal out of action for many months. Allied trade would be gravely impeded, and additional strain placed on an already precarious shipping situation. It would also make it harder for the US Navy to switch its ships from ocean to ocean at short notice. But the main rationale behind the Canal attack was psychological. The mere fact of a successful Japanese strike against an American installation 9000 miles from Japan was what counted. Surely the enemy would realise from this the impossibility of winning the Pacific war.
Aboard the Japanese ships the days went by. The rough and cold northern Pacific was a long way behind them now, and the crews relaxed in the bright tropical sun. Kido Butai was over 7000 miles from Japan, further than it had travelled in the Ceylon operation. Even Nagumo had almost ceased his worrying, a fact which caused Kusaka a certain amount of anxiety.
On the morning of 26 August the fleet rendezvoused with the tankers sent out from Truk and took on another week’s fuel. By evening on the following day Kido Butai was one hundred miles due west of Coiba Island, 450 miles from the Pacific end of the Panama Canal. Genda went over the attack plans with the flight leaders one more time.
At 06.00 on 28 August the carriers were lying fifty miles off the wide entrance to the Gulf of Panama. The planes were speeding down the flight decks and into the sky. Once again Mitsuo Fuchida would lead them into the attack. Soon after 06.30 the 120 Japanese planes moved off in formation, the dawn to their right, Panama straight ahead.
Three hundred miles to the west Rear-Admiral Frank Fletcher stood on the bridge of the Saratoga and watched the same dawn ease the darkness away.
His force comprised the two carriers Wasp and Saratoga, the battleships Washington and North Carolina, five cruisers and seventeen destroyers. It was almost within striking distance of where Fletcher assumed the enemy had to be. His search-planes were about to be launched; he assumed that the Catalinas based at Fort Amador in the Canal Zone would already be in the air. Soon there should be news.
The American fleet was observing complete radio silence, and there was one important fact of which Fletcher was unaware. Ranger, the sole US carrier in the Atlantic, had been relieved of escort duty and rushed south across the Caribbean to join the battle. It had arrived at the Atlantic end of the Canal in the early hours of that morning, and was due to pass through to the Pacific the following night.
There would not be time. At 07.10 Ranger's captain received two pieces of information. One of the Catalinas had found the Japanese fleet, and the Canal Zone radar installations, on full alert for several days, had picked up an incoming flight of enemy planes. The only naval battle in history to span two oceans was underway.
The Canal Zone’s AA defences had been greatly strengthened in the months that followed Midway, and the radar warning had given the USAF plentiful time to scramble, so Fuchida’s planes received a lively welcome. The Vais and their Zero escort were assailed by American fighters - mostly Wildcats - high above the Canal Zone, and both sides suffered heavy losses. Far below the raging dogfights the Kates were flying through a hail of flak towards the Pedro Miguel locks. Two broke through to launch their torpedoes against the lower gates, both of which were severely damaged. But since the locks were empty and the upper gates also closed there was no uncontrollable rush of water. The one torpedo dropped inside the locks exploded harmlessly when it hit the shallow bottom. As his surviving planes turned back to sea a frustrated Fuchida radioed Nagumo that there was need of a second strike.
The Admiral, waiting for such news with Kusaka on the Akagi bridge, agreed to launch one. There was no likelihood of US naval forces in the area, and his fleet could protect itself against the Panama fighters. The search-planes from the cruisers Tone and Chikuma had been out on patrol to the east and south since 06.30, and had found nothing but empty ocean. The sky was still clear. At 08.15 Nagumo ordered the second strike-force into the air.
Unknown to the Japanese theirs were not the only planes hurtling down a carrier’s flight deck. At around 08.25 Ranger W2is launching its fighter - and
Torpedo-bombers from a point five miles off Colon in the Atlantic Ocean. They flew across the isthmus, passing on their left the fire and smoke left by Fuchida’s raid, and ventured out into the Gulf of Panama.
At around the same moment Admiral Fletcher was listening to the clanking of the Saratoga lift as it brought the armed planes up from the hangar deck. The distance between his task force and the Japanese was rapidly closing. Fletcher offered a silent prayer of thanks for the blanket of cloud which seemed to be accompanying his eastward passage.
From the viewpoint of the Akagi bridge these clouds were still no more than a line across the western horizon, and Nagumo and Kusaka were preoccupied with watching the recovery of Fuchida’s returning planes. Soon after 09.30 Kusaka went down to talk with Fuchida himself, leaving Nagumo to fret on his own. The Admiral noticed the clouds on the horizon. They were coming nearer. Could the Tone search-plane have missed something out there to the west?
‘What could it have missed?’ asked the sarcastic Kusaka on his return. ‘A fleet of American carriers? All but one were sunk at Midway! And if that one is out there, we shall have no trouble in destroying it.’
The logic seemed sound to Nagumo, but before he had time to ponder the question further some disquieting news came in. A flight of approaching bombers was reported by the northernmost Japanese destroyers. As the Zero patrols above the fleet sped north to intercept this menace, Nagumo and Kusaka asked each other where it had come from. It could only be the mainland. But what were carrier planes, Dauntlesses and Devastators, doing in Panama? Could that one carrier be in the area?
For the next ten minutes the two Admirals considered this question, as the flak and the Zeroes dealt with Ranger's planes. No great damage was suffered; only Soryu was hit by a bomb and the resultant fire was easily extinguished.
Nagumo’s problems were not yet over, however, for now he received news from Tomonaga. The second strike on Panama had been as unfortunate as the first. The American air defences were still unbroken, the lock-gates were still unbreached, and there was need for a third strike.
Nagumo now found it difficult to take a decision. There were too many imponderables. Kusaka tried to assist him. The first strike should be ordered back on to the flight deck, he urged. If there was an American carrier in the area - which he doubted - then Fuchida’s planes could be sent to destroy it. If not then a third strike could be launched against the Canal. Kido Butai had not come 9000 miles to be baulked by a pair of lock-gates.
Kusaka’s confidence restored Nagumo’s. He agreed with his Chief of Staff. Unfortunately their conversation had taken ten minutes, and they would prove the most important ten minutes in Kido Butafs glorious but short career.
Wasp and Saratoga had launched their planes soon after 09.00. Fletcher had learnt something from the Midway battle, and he had sent the slower torpedo-bombers off ahead. They would pull the fighter defences down to the surface, and so maximise the chances of the dive-bombers.
Fletcher knew he was outnumbered two to one in carriers and planes, but he also knew that he had surprise on his side. And this time there was none of that false confidence which had preceded Midway; the crews knew what they had to do, knew that it was going to be extremely hard, and that they were going to do it anyway.
By 10.55 the flight decks of the four Japanese carriers were almost full of planes loaded with high explosives. At that moment a fresh flight of enemy aircraft was sighted moving in from the west. This time there were more of them. Where were all these planes coming from? A chill of desperate uncertainty passed through the minds of the Japanese sailors.
The American torpedo-planes bored in towards the Japanese carriers, through the vicious flak and the marauding Zeroes. One by one they went down, eliciting murmurs from Nagumo in praise of their reckless gallantry. ‘The Americans must be feeling desperate today,’ muttered the more prosaic Kusaka. Nagumo did not answer. Perhaps a dumb foreboding was growing in his consciousness. The torpedo-bombers had at least scattered his fleet, and the Zeroes had all been pulled down close to the water. Nagumo looked up, in time to catch the first glimpse of the American dive-bombers dropping out of the sun. Nemesis had arrived. It was 11.10.
The 500 and 800-pound bombs lanced into the flight decks of all four carriers, tearing huge holes and starting blazing fires. The fuel and explosives in the densely-packed planes ignited. The Japanese firefighting teams were unable to contain the spreading flames. Burnt men lay screaming in agony amidst the charred corpses of their comrades.
Some of the bombs had passed clean through the flight decks to explode on the hangar decks below. These triggered off more multiple explosions as the fires spread to the bomb and torpedo racks. Fuel lines ignited, sending rivulets of flame washing across the decks of the listing carriers.
None of them had been hit by torpedoes, and none were damaged below the water-line, but only Shokakti's engines and rudder were still working at
14.00, and only she would still be tenuously afloat at the end of the day. The still-buming hulk of this famous carrier would be sunk by its own destroyer escort on the following morning.
Nagumo and Kusaka had abandoned the stricken Akagi within thirty minutes of the attack. From the bridge of the battleship Kirishima they watched the carriers of Kido Butai bum. Pearl Harbor, Ceylon, Midway, California - it had been a glorious morning. But now it was past noon, and the sun was commencing its downward turn. The Rising Sun would rise no more.
World History
