Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

After the mayor sat down, another speaker limped up to the microphone. The cadets greeted him with a hand much more heartfelt than the one they’d given his Honor. Lieutenant Zachary Gunston was a Buffalo native. Like Jack Hadley, he’d also been a Wildcat pilot in the battle in the North Pacific the summer before. Also like Hadley, he’d had to ditch his fighter, and a destroyer had plucked him from the drink.

He pointed out to the cadets. “It’s up to you to carry the ball,” he said. “My buddies and I, we took it as far as we could go. We didn’t quite have the machines we needed, and we didn’t quite have the techniques we needed, either. You’ve learned in your training a lot of what we had to find out the hard way. Your ships will be better. Your planes will be better-I hear the fighters aboard the new carriers are a long step up from Wildcats. But in the end”-he pointed again-“it’s going to be up to you, and what you’ve got inside you.

“We made a mistake,” Gunston went on. “We figured the Japs were patsies, pushovers. We’ve been paying for that mistake ever since we made it. They’re tougher and smarter than we ever dreamt they could be. Now it’s going to be up to you to teach ’em a lesson: no matter how tough they are, no matter how smart they are, nobody sucker-punches the United States of America and gets away with it. Nobody! Am I right or am I wrong?”

“Right!” The word came out as a fierce growl from the throat of every graduating cadet. Joe felt like a dog snarling at another dog on the street-and God help that other sorry mutt, too!

“Okay, then, gentlemen. I think you are about ready to be commissioned now,” Lieutenant Gunston said.

“Please rise, raise your right hands, and repeat the oath after me.” Along with his classmates, his squadmates, Joe Crosetti did. Pride tingled through him. If he had to blink rapidly several times to keep tears from forming and running down his face, he wasn’t the only one. Beside him, another kid’s eyelids were marching doubletime, too. When the oath was complete, Gunston looked out at the brand-new officers. “Welcome to the Navy, Ensigns! You’ve got a big job ahead of you.”

Joe looked down at the gold stripe on his sleeve. He was as junior an officer as possible-an ensign with no seniority-but he was, by God, an officer! Crosetti the fisherman’s son, an officer in the U.S. Navy! If this wasn’t one hell of a country, he didn’t know what would be.

“Congratulations, Ensign Crosetti,” said that youngster beside Joe who’d also been blinking. He was blond and handsome and looked as if he came from a Main Line family. Maybe he did. But he wasn’t any more an ensign than Joe was.

“Thanks, Ensign Cooper. Same to you,” Joe said. Nobody was ragging on anybody today, and who your father was, what he did for a living, or how big a bankroll he had didn’t matter. The way it looked to Joe, that they didn’t, or shouldn’t, matter was a big part of what the war was about.

Twisting, he looked back towards Orson Sharp. He couldn’t see his roomie. Too many other newly minted officers stood between them. Guys were starting to move around and find their special friends. Even when Joe did, he had trouble seeing past the taller people in his class. But he knew about where Sharp would be, and headed back there. Sharp was coming up toward him. They clasped hands.

“We’ve been waiting a long time,” Joe said-it seemed like forever since he’d volunteered. “Now-”

“We get to wait some more,” the ensign from Utah finished for him. “We have to get a ship. We have to get trained up on whatever we fly, whether it’s a Wildcat or one of these new jobs Lieutenant Gunston was talking about. And we have to wait till enough carriers are ready to give us the best shot at licking the Japanese.”

Every word of that was eminently sensible. Joe liked it no more because of that. If anything, he liked it less. “You’re no fun,” he said.

“I know,” said Sharp, who laughed at the wet-blanket reputation he’d had all the way through the training program. “Before too long, though, the Japs will say the same thing.”

“Yeah!” Joe said.

WATCHING SOME OF THE PILOTS who’d come to Hawaii as replacements, Lieutenant Saburo Shindo wondered how they’d ever made it out of flight school. They had trouble finding Haleiwa, let alone landing at the airstrip there. A few of them might never have made the acquaintance of their airplanes before these flights, or so it seemed to Shindo.

When he finally couldn’t stand watching any more, he got on the telephone to Commander Fuchida.

“Moshi-moshi,” the head of the Japanese naval air effort said. “Fuchida here.”

“This is Shindo, Fuchida- san. What the devil’s happened to flight school since we went through it?” Mitsuo Fuchida laughed, not all together comfortably. “By all I’ve heard from Japan, nothing much has happened to it.”

“Then what’s wrong with the chowderheads it’s turning out?” Shindo demanded. “Plenty of the Americans we faced were good pilots. We had better planes, and that helped a lot, but we had better fliers, too. These people… Yes, a Zero is better than a Wildcat, but it’s not that much better-not enough to let these people go up against Wildcats with good pilots and hope to beat them.”

“They’re about the same as we were when we got out of flight school,” Fuchida said.

“No!” Shindo denied the mere possibility.

But Fuchida said, “Hai. The difference, Shindo- san, is that we had plenty of combat experience against the Chinese and the Russians who flew for them before we took on the Americans. We were veterans. We were ready.”

Shindo thought about it. Had he been that green when he left the flight school at Kasumigaura? He didn’t want to believe it. He’d certainly thought he knew what he was doing. Of course, so did these gas-wasting idiots. “Maybe,” he said, most grudgingly.

“With some experience, they’ll do fine.” Fuchida’s voice was soothing. “And remember, the Yankees have taken worse combat losses than we have. If they come at us, they’ll have more inexperienced pilots in the air than we do.”

“I suppose so.” Shindo still wasn’t happy. “Have you seen these new ones, though? They haven’t had much time up there, and they sure fly like it. Fuel still must be tighter than a mouse’s asshole back in the home islands.”

“Er-yes.” Fuchida, a straitlaced sort, made heavy going of the comparison. He continued, “It shouldn’t be. With the Dutch East Indies in our hands… That’s why we fought the war in the first place.”

“If the problem isn’t fuel, the program’s gone to the dogs,” Shindo said. “It’s as simple as that. I tell you, some of these people aren’t ready to fly combat missions against pilots who know what they’re doing.”

“Get them as ready as you can, Shindo- san, and do it as fast as you can, too,” Fuchida said. “Things are stirring in the United States. The Yankees keep launching new carriers, and they’re supposed to be getting new fighters, too.”

“You’re full of good news today,” Shindo said. “Where are our new fighters?”

Fuchida didn’t answer that. Shindo knew why, too. The replacement for the Zero had been on the drawing boards for a couple of years. It seemed unlikely to come off the drawing boards any time soon. The Army was starting to get a new fighter. The Hien, with an engine based on the one that powered the German Me-109, was a much tougher plane than the Hayabusa. But it was also much less reliable, needed skilled mechanics-always in short supply-to keep it running, and was available in much smaller numbers than the older machine.