Harry Turtledove: Days of Infamy

“Ready there?” he called to the bombardier. “Coming up on the target.”

“Yes, sir… Bombs free!”

The Nakajima rose as the bombs fell. With the whole bomb load and a lot of its fuel gone, it was as light and lively as it would ever be. “We’ve done everything we can do here,” Fuchida said. “Time to go home now.”

“Yes, sir,” the bombardier said again, and then, in sudden excitement, “Hit! That’s a hit!”

Was it? Fuchida had thought they’d made hits before, only to watch U.S. warships steam on, apparently undamaged. Why should it be any different here? Another look at his fuel gauge told him he didn’t really want to linger to find out.

He swung the B5N1 south. Japanese warplanes were leaving the battle by ones and twos and forming into larger groups as they flew: Aichis and Nakajimas protected by Zeros. Too many Japanese planes and pilots weren’t leaving the battle at all. But they’d done what they set out to do. Without air cover, the Yankees couldn’t possibly hope to invade Hawaii. And their air cover was smashed to smithereens.

Then another question occurred to him. How were his side’s carriers faring?

THE FIRST DIVE bombers called Helldivers had been biplanes. A movie about them was one of the things that interested the Japanese in the technique. Not least because of the film, Japanese Navy men still often called any dive bomber a Helldiver. Only in nightmares had Minoru Genda ever imagined Helldivers screaming down on a ship in which he served.

A bomb burst just off to port. The great gout of water it threw up drenched everyone on the bridge. It soaked Genda’s masuku, too. He took the worthless cloth thing off and threw it away. An ensign was rubbing at Admiral Yamamoto’s dress uniform with a towel. Yamamoto shoved the youngster away, saying, “Never mind. I don’t have to be pretty to fight a war.”

Engine roaring, the dive bomber streaked away just above wavetop height. Two Zeros pursued it. They quickly shot it down, but it had already done what it set out to do.

Captain Kaku swung Akagi hard to port. Someone on the bridge made a questioning noise. Kaku said, “They will expect me to turn away from the bomb burst, so I will turn towards it. Maybe I will throw off their aim.”

No one else said a word, not even Yamamoto. Kaku was Akagi ’s skipper; how she was handled rested on his shoulders. And when a bomb burst to starboard, even closer than the first one had to port, everybody cheered. An explosion so close was liable to damage the hull, but the carrier’s crew could repair wounds like that at their leisure.

“Sir, Zuikaku is hit!” the signals officer reported to Yamamoto. “Two bombs through the flight deck-major damage.”

Before Yamamoto could answer, another American dive bomber stooped on Akagi. Captain Kaku was already swinging the carrier toward the last burst.

Maybe the American pilot guessed with him this time. Maybe his luck just ran out. Either way, the bomb hit the carrier a few meters ahead of the forwardmost elevator. Deck planking, jagged chunks of the steel beneath it, and flight-crew men all flew through the air.

Genda braced for yet another bomb, but no more came. A plane crashed into the sea not far from the wounded Akagi. Genda thought it was a dive bomber, but he couldn’t be sure. Flight-crew men dragged hoses across the deck toward the hole in the ship. Down below, damage-control parties would be doing what they could to restore and repair.

“Can we land planes?” the signals officer asked. “Our strike force is coming home.”

“We can land them,” Genda said. “I wouldn’t want to try to launch, but we can land-if we don’t get hit again, that is.”

He cast a wary eye up to the heavens, but it seemed as if no more dive bombers would come roaring down on the Akagi. He dared hope not, anyhow. And then word came from the flight deck: the surviving American planes were flying north. Genda wondered where they would land with two of their carriers destroyed and the third crippled. Maybe they would ditch in the Pacific, as the crews from the B-25s had done. That would save some of the fliers, even if the planes were lost.

He looked out at the flight-crew men and damage-control parties working on Akagi. He thought of the pounding Zuikaku had taken. And he thought of what the Japanese strike force had done to the American carriers. Turning to Admiral Yamamoto, he said, “Sir, this fight reminds me too much of a duel of submachine guns at three paces.”

Somber pride in his voice, Captain Kaku said, “Maybe so, but we had the better gunners today.”

“Today, yes,” Yamamoto said. But it wasn’t quite agreement, for he went on, “What will the Americans throw at us the next time? What will we have to answer?”

SABURO SHINDO WASN’T sure how many Wildcats he’d shot down. Three, he thought, but it might have been two or four or maybe, if he was very lucky, even five. All knew was, his Zero still flew, and some Americans didn’t.

Quite a few Japanese didn’t, either. Nothing had come cheap today. The Americans had fought ferociously. They’d fought ferociously-and they’d lost. What Japan had paid was worth the price. The invasion fleet behind the carriers, wherever it was, would come no farther. Shindo was sure of that. Without air superiority, trying a landing on Oahu was an invitation to suicide.

“Attention! Attention!” A radio alert blared in his earphones. “Planes from Zuikaku, divert to Shokaku or Akagi! Attention! Attention! Planes from Zuikaku, divert to Shokaku or Akagi!”

“ Zakennayo! ” he muttered. So the Yankees’ strike force had done damage, too. That was… unfortunate. The Americans might be-were-clumsy and none too skillful, but they’d given it everything they had. Not enough, though. They had no carriers left that could land planes, while Japan still had two.

If all the Japanese planes from the strike force had come home safely, Akagi and Shokaku wouldn’t have been able to accommodate them. As things were, that wouldn’t be a problem.

And here came the survivors from the U.S. attack, heading north toward who could say what? They were scattered all over the sky. Shindo saw enemy fighters and dive bombers-no torpedo planes. Had the defenders knocked down all of them? He wouldn’t have been surprised; the Devastator couldn’t get out of its own way.

Shindo dove on a dive bomber. He didn’t think the Douglas Dauntless’ pilot saw him till he opened fire, and maybe not even then. The American plane never tried to take evasive action. It heeled to the right and arced down into the sea.

One more small victory. Shindo flew on towards Akagi.

WHILE MITSUO FUCHIDA was in combat, he’d-mostly-forgotten about the ache in the right side of his belly. He couldn’t ignore it any more. It felt as if an angry dragon had sunk its teeth in there and didn’t want to let go.

I have one thing left to do, he told himself. I have to get this plane down. My radioman and my bombardier are depending on me. After that… After that, he intended to head for sick bay as fast as he could go. Genda and me, he thought. We’re two of a kind. He wondered how his friend was doing.

His first glimpse of Akagi came as a shock. Because she was landing planes, he’d assumed she’d come through the American attack unscathed. Now he found out what such assumptions were worth. Had that bomb struck near the stern instead of at the bow, the whole strike force would have been trying to come down on Shokaku — and wouldn’t that have been a lovely mess?