Glenn Beck - Miracles and Massacres - True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

Butch lay in his bunk, still in his flight suit, flipping playing cards into the hat of his dress uniform across the small sleeping room. He had a championship run going, forty-four cards without a single miss. The unofficial all-time wardroom record was in sight.

He paused his target practice as the ship listed slightly to starboard, and he felt the rumble of the carrier’s engines as they labored to turn the Lexington into the wind for another launch.

He sighed, flipped another card into the hat, and recalled a phrase he’d heard a thousand damned times from his instructors.

A lot of war is waiting .

All through the Academy, and then later on in flight school in Pensacola, Florida, that was the wet blanket some old-timer would toss out whenever a rookie was overheard fantasizing about the exciting life of a navy flyer.

No, the wise guy would say, that’s not the way it is. There would be hours and days and even months of tense anticipation followed quickly by a few terrifying minutes of heart-stopping, blood-curdling, adrenaline-pumping chaos. If you were brave and prepared and skilled and exceptionally lucky, that flash of chaos could be kept just barely under your control. You might even live to tell your grandkids about it all.

Butch’s father had once said that if you ever want to hear God laugh, all you’ve got to do is make a plan. At the time, his dad’s comment concerned his own struggles to build a business and support his family through the depths of the Great Depression, but his admonition was as true in battle as anywhere else. The military brass often spent weeks on their brilliant strategies and tactics, only to see the tables turned in a last-minute frenzy when the enemy failed to behave as expected.

The day’s plan, for example, was set to be supervised from the flag bridge by Vice Admiral Wilson Brown. Before it all blew up it had probably looked just swell on paper.

The USS Lexington and the rest of Task Force 11 had been ordered to attack the enemy base at Rabaul, a major strategic prize off the coast of New Guinea that had recently been overtaken by the Japanese. The loss of this base was a major blow to the Allies. As the enemy ramped up air and sea forces there it would become a huge threat to vital shipping lanes.

While this small task force didn’t pack nearly enough muscle to actually retake the base, their job was to throw a monkey wrench into the machine and cause as much damage as they could. Butch’s air division had been chosen to lead the assault—bombing runways, sinking ships in the harbor, destroying as many hangar-bound Japanese Zeroes as possible. Down the road, a larger Allied operation would follow up, conquer the base, and send the Japs packing.

The battle plan hardly had a chance to get going, before a long-range enemy scouted the American ships. Butch had just returned from his morning patrol by then and could only watch as other fighter pilots from the Lexington took off and went after the airborne spy.

Butch’s shipmates had taken the scout, but before he was shot down the sneaky bastard had almost certainly radioed his position and sent a warning to his distant commanders.

And that changed everything. A surprise attack by a minor strike force was one thing, but without that element of surprise, Task Force 11 was just a slow-moving target, a sitting duck in the middle of some very hostile waters. Another enemy reconnaissance flight soon followed, another Japanese spotter plane was splashed, and that was all the convincing required to turn the whole mission into a bust.

But at this point, even running away wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.

TF 11 had already made it to a waypoint a little over 450 miles from Rabaul, and now the enemy was alerted. By this time Admiral Aritomo Goto had likely cooked up a surprise of his own for the discovered Americans—one involving a swift and overwhelming retaliation with a squadron or two of his long-range bombers and torpedo planes.

Though the American attack was off, an official retreat hadn’t yet been ordered. Admiral Brown was famously reluctant to give up on a strategic goal, so for the moment all the task force could do was stay the dangerous course toward Rabaul, keep a sharp eye on the skies, and wait.

Butch wondered how he might stack up in an all-out, life-or-death dogfight like the one that might be coming soon. That was one test he hadn’t faced so far.

According to his reviews, he was an exceptional pilot, and since he was a boy he’d been an excellent marksman. Putting those two skills together, though, had proven to be the biggest challenge of his twenty-eight years. He’d flown plenty of missions, but he still hadn’t had the opportunity to fire a single shot in battle.

Butch flipped one card and then another for two more direct hits.

In the calm before the storm, he thought about his father.

The last letter he’d written to him a few years ago had been dashed off and routine, nothing like the note he would have written if he’d known there’d never be another. He’d let an awful lot go unsaid over the years, but thank you was the one sentiment that Butch had probably neglected the most. And when his father was murdered—gangland-style, no less—a number of unpleasant things that had gone unspoken were confirmed.

A busload of reporters and photographers had nearly ruined the funeral. But, after a few ugly days of lurid headlines—CAR CRASH KILLS CAPONE CANARY, SHOTGUN JUSTICE FOR UNDERWORLD SNITCH—the stories shrank and slipped to the back pages and were gradually forgotten.

Mother said that’s what his father would have wanted in the end: to be forgotten by all except his family. Whatever his failings, Dad had been proud of his boy and girls. Flaws and all, he’d done the best he could for them, and he had hoped that the tarnish on their family name would fade with time.

But his bad choices had left quite a dubious legacy. Easy Eddie was survived by a criminal record, a broken marriage, a young trophy girlfriend, two fine daughters who’d grown up mostly without him, and a fairly shy, slightly overweight, navy pilot son who was pushing thirty years old and still waiting to prove himself among his peers.

Butch drew in a deep breath, took aim past the brim of the hat, and flipped the last card that would tie his personal best.

The door to the cabin banged open, swatting the flying queen of diamonds cleanly into the trash can. His friend and wingman, Marion “Duff” Dufilho, stood there, trying to catch his breath.

“C’mon, Butch, we’re up!”

Out in the hall a loud Klaxon had begun to wail. As the two men clattered up the stairs toward the flight deck they felt the big ship beginning to maneuver and accelerate, and heard the repeating action order booming over the horns from high on the bridge:

Battle stations!

Battle stations!

Battle stations!

No need for a stop by the ready room; they got their mission briefing on the run.

• • •

Radar had picked up what looked like a jagged V about seventy-five miles west. As it disappeared and reappeared among the shifting storms the operator soon realized what he was seeing: a large contact that wasn’t one of us, inbound at eight thousand feet and making 150 knots. A patrol was scrambled and launched to investigate.

Meanwhile, an earlier air patrol was returning, low on fuel and ready to land, but the remaining idle planes on the deck had been cleared and stacked astern to allow the just-departed squadron to take off. Now all those planes had to be moved to the bow again so the returning out-of-fuel patrol could be recovered before they started dropping dead-stick into the drink.

The flight deck was helter-skelter and crowded wingtip to wingtip. All available hands were occupied with respotting the planes, fore and then aft again. Aircraft were being fueled and rearmed, and the air boss was bullhorning and directing it all like a mad orchestra conductor.