John Schettler - Fallen Angels - 9 Days Falling, Volume II

Ziggy Spraguesigned off and placed the handset in its overhead cradle. So it wasn’t over yet, he thought. Some son-of-a-bitch wanted to carry on the fight. First Babe Brown gets mixed up in a surface action and loses ships without ever setting eyes on the enemy… Now this. I send five Hellcats up to have a look around and not one comes back. Sprague turned to the ship’s Captain, William Sinton, where he was standing by the flag plot.

The celebration on the news of Japan’s unconditional surrender the previous evening was apparently premature. Sprague was reading the communiqué, shaking his head. ‘… it is according to the dictates of time and fate that We have resolved, by enduring the unendurable and bearing the unbearable, to pave the way for a grand peace for all generations to come.’ Time and fate, he thought. They had nothing to do with it. The US Navy decided the matter, but apparently something was left undone.

“Looks like we hit the bottle a little early,” said Sprague.

“Admiral?” Captain Sinton had just returned to the bridge and was checking the positions and status of other units in the task group as TF.38.3 steamed north off Hokkaido. He had been with the ship six months after relieving Captain Dixie Kiefer, who had been seriously wounded by a Japanese kamikaze attack in January. Two planes hit the ship and caused serious harm, one on the flight deck and a second right on the superstructure of the island. Ticonderoga had to steam all the way home to Puget Sound after that. When the repair job was finished, the lines of her “measure 33 dazzle scheme” camouflage had been painted over with new slate gray. Yet even without her old war paint or skipper, “Big T” was still a hard fighting ship.

Captain Sinton worked into his new position well enough, bright, competent, and eager to please. But with an Admiral on board you never quite warm the seat in a command position. Sprague was an old salt, with as much raw experience as any man in the fleet, and Sinton admired him greatly, though he did tend to feel he was always walking in his shadow.

“We lost Redeye One,” Sprague said flatly.

“The whole flight?”

“Sounds that way. I was just on the TBS with Mulholland on the Benner .” He was referring to the “Talk Between Ship” radio system in use late in the war. “Five planes, five missing. That’s lousy math any way we look at it, Captain. So now we put some real iron in the sky and get up there and see about this business.”

“You figure the Japs are still fighting, Admiral?”

“Someone is, and on this watch I do the fighting.”

“Scuttlebutt says the Russians might be involved.”

“Yeah, I heard that too. Well, I don’t care if it’s the Russians or the Japanese. We’re going north in force and if we have to knock a few heads together, so be it. Would you get down to Flight One and Brief Ingalls and Kanaga on this?”

“Of course, sir…. But what are we looking for, Admiral?”

“Anything with a rising sun painted on it. You see any meatballs—they get the deep six, no questions asked. As for the Russians, that’s a different matter. Word is they’re involved in amphibious operations up in the Kuriles, but Halsey thinks they’re getting pushy over Hokkaido. We don’t want Russian troops of any sort on the main Japanese islands. That’s official, so that’s the line on this one, Captain. If we see evidence the Russians are planning such a landing we let them know, in no uncertain terms, that it will be opposed by the United States Navy.”

Sinton raised an eyebrow at that. “I hear Patton was spitting tacks and ready to go after the Russians in Germany a while back,” he said. “Now here we are facing them down over Japan. It seems to me we could send this message via radio.”

Sprague nodded. “Something tells me we’re going to be holding the line in both places for a good long while, Mister Sinton, and it starts right here. This is my watch, and I intend to lay down the law. If we can do it on the radio, well and good. If not, I want Helldivers and Avengers in the air, and well escorted. Coordinate this operation with Wasp as well. No fooling around this time. Have the flight crews ready in thirty minutes.”

“I understand, sir, but what exactly are the rules of engagement here?”

“Get up there and find out who put five of my planes and airmen in the deep blue sea. Cover any search and rescue operation being mounted by Benner and Sutherland . If we find as much as a Japanese fishing boat out there, it goes down. If we find Russians, then here are the rules of engagement—just one— either they back off or we come in shooting. We order them to do a 360 and stay 20 miles off the coast of Hokkaido at all times. Any ship that crosses the line will be presumed hostile and engaged. End of story.”

The Fighting 87th was the air wing assigned to Ticonderoga , comprised of four squadrons: two fighter squadrons, one dive bomber, and one torpedo squadron, eighty-six planes in all. Lt. Commander Chuck Ingalls was already hopping mad after the news that he had lost five planes and airmen before noon that day. All the planes were from VF-87, F-6F5 Hellcats on a simple recon operation up north. That left him with 24 more planes, and 12 in reserve with VBF-87. He was told to have 18 ready to go within the hour, half his total fighter force. Ingalls men would be escorting Helldivers , the business end of Ticonderoga’s air wing that day, with all of thirty two dive bombers reporting ready for action. There would also be a dozen TBM-3 Avengers from VT-87.

The dive bombers of VB-87 were the first to get the word whenever the ship wanted to flex some muscle. The squadron had been busy in recent days, and was ready for action. In previous weeks they had flown strikes against the surviving Imperial Japanese Fleet units at Kure on July 24 and 28, and then bombed factories near Tokyo. When “Big T” led the task force north in August the squadron hit targets at Aomori and Ominato, their final strike being mounted just a few days ago against the Yokohama docks on the 13th.