Alternate Generals (22 page)

I mean, I hadn't realized the Japanese even
owned
so many carriers. All those lovely great wooden flight decks down there below us—I had the
strangest
thought that they could have made the most marvelous dance floor, right on top of the Pacific Ocean.

However, there was no time for
that
sort of thing. The ships were already opening fire and huge dirty puffs of smoke appeared all about us, unreasonably close and making the most
ghastly
noise. I reached for the bomb release, while up in the cockpit Major Stamps announced: "Okay, guys, stick your heads between your legs and kiss your asses goodbye. Here we go."

—Capt. Basil Crispus, unpublished manuscript

Mitchell's B-17's had arrived at the worst possible time. Slowed to a nine-knot crawl for refueling, their usual tight defensive formation in disarray, Nagumo's ships were wide open.

The Japanese gunners put up a withering storm of AA fire, all the same. Flak chopped the port wing clean off Lt. Jack Devlin's Fortress, sending it spinning into the sea. Capt. Roy Earle's bomber simply vanished in a great blinding explosion.

By now everyone was being hit. Great holes appeared in wings and fuselages; controls went mushy as flying surfaces shredded away. Fires broke out and engines began to smoke. Yet the ten remaining planes roared on; as would be proved again and again over the next few years, the B-17 was an almighty hard airplane to shoot down.

The human body was less durable. Already the Fortresses were becoming flying abattoirs where wounded men screamed in pain and rage and copilots wrestled the controls from dead pilots.

Then they were over the target.

—Edward Jablonski,
Flying Fortress

Watching from
Akagi
's bridge, Captain Genda was professionally impressed. The big bombers were faster than they looked and their pilots obviously knew their business. Brave men, too, to attack at such a low altitude; Genda felt an impulse to salute.

A stick of bombs exploded off
Akagi
's port bow.
Kaga
and
Soryu
vanished for a moment behind towering columns of water, only to reappear a moment later, untouched. It seemed the combined fleet might escape harm after all.

Then a B-17 roared close overhead, through a wall of fire from
Akagi
's
guns. Genda looked up and saw a number of black objects dropping out of the bomber's belly, like a sow giving birth to a littler of pigs. A second later
Akagi
's
flight deck erupted in flame and smoke and Genda was knocked off his feet. As he hit the deck Admiral Nagumo landed on top of him.

At about the same time
Soryu
took a bomb through her flight deck, starting fires on the hanger deck below.
Zuikaku
, turning sharply to dodge the bombs, plowed into the tanker
Shinkoku Maru
, tearing a huge hole in the tanker's side and crumpling the brand-new carrier's bow. The destroyer
Akigumo
took a stick of bombs amidships that broke her in two.

Then the bombers were gone, climbing sharply away into the clouds. All, that is, but one.

On
Akagi
's shattered bridge, supporting a dazed Nagumo, Genda watched in amazement as a single Fortress came circling back, trailing smoke. Every ship in the fleet was firing at it, even the mortally wounded
Akagi
, but it bored through the flak in a shallow dive, heading straight for
Kaga
. Genda realized suddenly what the American was doing.

—John Toland,
Rising Sun

Our plane was the last one in the formation and we were still hauling ass out of there, Lt. Martinez pouring on the gas, trying to get up into the clouds before those Zeroes could take off. I was manning the port waist gun, watching to see if anything was after us. So I saw the whole thing.

You could see the Old Man's plane was hit bad. Smoke was trailing out behind and it looked like part of his port wing was gone. There was no way to know about the crew, of course, but I think they must have all been dead by then. There's just no other way the Old Man would have done what he did.

He hit that Jap carrier square in the middle of her flight deck, right next to the bridge island. For a second you could see the tail of his plane sticking up there like part of a big dead bird. Then there was this huge explosion, like nothing I'd ever seen before. It must have been like the end of the world for those poor damn Japs.

I felt like I ought to say a prayer or something. But I just wasn't up to it. I had a piece of shrapnel through my leg and it was really starting to hurt like a son of a bitch.

—M/Sgt. Darrell Hatfield, interviewed by Quentin Reynolds,
They Called It North Pacific

The President had called a meeting in the Oval Office at 3 p.m. to discuss the deteriorating situation in the Pacific. He was just telling us how he still hoped to avoid war with Japan—at least until Hitler was defeated—but that if war did come, he wanted the Japanese to commit the first overt act. Then a naval officer came in with a message from Hawaii.

"My God," the President said upon hearing the news. "This is terrible. I was afraid of something like this."

Secretary Knox said, "Mr. President, they were clearly on their way to attack Pearl Harbor. There's just no other explanation. Surely that justified a preemptive strike."

The President shook his head. "Frank," he said, "you know that and I know that, but I've got to sell this to the American people. And they've all grown up on cowboy movies. They still think the good guy never draws first."

Secretary Hull said, "What will you do now, sir?"

"Ask Congress to declare war," the President said. "There's no choice now. We're committed."

He turned to me. "Find out if Mitchell is still alive, Henry. I'd like to have the crazy bastard shot, but I suppose I'm going to have to give him the Medal of Honor. He's started the war and he may as well be its first hero."

—Secretary of War Henry Stimson, private diaries

By midmorning
Kaga
had sunk and
Akagi
was a blazing hulk.
Soryu
was still seaworthy but unable to fly planes, and
Zuikaku
, her bow damaged, was having trouble keeping up. But Nagumo, now flying his flag in
Shokaku
, refused even to consider turning back. He had never believed they would take the Americans by surprise; he had always expected to have to fight his way in. His losses so far had been heavy, but not unacceptable.

The Combined Fleet pushed onward, shadowed at a discreet distance by Bellinger's seaplanes but otherwise unmolested. The tankers had been left behind and the warships were now making almost thirty knots. Now some pilots begged to be allowed to launch an attack; their planes lacked the range for a round trip, but they were ready to make a one-way suicide raid. Nagumo vetoed the idea. He had lost too many planes and pilots already.

In Hawaii, despite great and general confusion about what had happened, it was realized that there was now no choice but to finish was Mitchell had begun. A message when out to Admiral Newton, just outbound for Midway with
Lexington
and a stout escort force: forget Midway, turn north, find the Japanese and attack when in range.

Only eight B-17s had made it back, none in remotely flyable condition. Hickam Field still had a dozen new A-20 attack bombers and thirty obsolete B-18s. Late in the afternoon, when a PBY reported the carrier group only 500 miles from Oahu, the decision was made to strike with what was at hand.

The A-20s were very fast, too quick even for the nimble Zeroes; they hit and ran without loss. But their small bomb loads were inadequate against warships, and their pilots green; they damaged a couple of destroyers, nothing more.

The B-18s arrived an hour later. They had no business there at all. Essentially little more than modified DC-3 transports, they could barely make 120 mph. They carried only two machine guns and no armor. They were slaughtered. None survived; none even got near the target.

But the massacre left the Zeroes low on ammunition. They began landing to reload, while Nagumo watched the sky. Soon it would be dark and he would have all night to run toward Hawaii, to get in range for a dawn attack.

That was when the
Lexington
's planes appeared overhead. One of the fastest carriers in the world, "Lady Lex" had been powering northeast all day with a bone in her teeth. Now her scout bombers fell out of the clouds in near-vertical dives against Nagumo's carriers.
Hiryu
was ripped apart, then the lame
Zuikaku
, while bombs again mauled
Soryu
. In the twilight,
Shokaku
's pilots tailed the victorious SBDs back to
Lexington
and put two torpedoes into her, but she managed to limp into Pearl Harbor the next day.

That morning, when he had read the Imperial Rescript to his officers, Nagumo had commanded the biggest carrier force ever assembled. Now, a short December day later, he was down to two carriers, one a helpless cripple. And there was no telling what other American forces might be out there.

It was time to quit. As darkness fell, the remains of the Pearl Harbor attack force turned and headed back toward Japan. Meanwhile Kimmel's battleships, which had finally sortied from Pearl Harbor, waddled slowly northward, striving doggedly to reach the scene of the fight that had, like history, already left them behind.

—Fletcher Pratt,
Battles That Changed History

On Saturday, December 6—a day which will live in infamy—air and naval forces of the Empire of Japan attempted to launch an attack against American forces in Hawaii.

Fortunately, the approaching force was detected and destroyed by American military and naval aircraft. A great airman, General Mitchell, gave his life in the battle, as did many other brave men.

I ask that Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attempt by Japan on Saturday, December 6, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

—President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Congress, Dec. 8, 1941

Billy Mitchell died as he had lived, an outrageous and incorrigible spirit; a loose cannon on the deck of history, and an annoying problem for those who argue, as is now fashionable, that individuals cannot affect the course of great events. Since the day in 1914 when Gavrilo Princip gunned down the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, no single act by a single man has had such enormous consequences.

Unquestionably, Mitchell had handed Japan a calamitous defeat. A priceless asset, the finest carrier force in the world, had virtually ceased to exist even before the war was properly begun. Even worse was the loss of so many expert pilots and seamen, who could never be replaced in time to meet the American counterattack.

And the ambitious plan of conquest had been thrown fatally off schedule. Everything—the landings in Malaya and Luzon, even the delivery of the formal declaration of war—had been timed to the projected December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor. Like the Germans they admired so much, the Japanese militarists were good at devising highly complex schemes of war; unlike their allies, however, they seemed unable to think on their feet, to react quickly and improvise when things failed to go as planned. The Japanese blitz, which was supposed to conquer all of Southeast Asia in three months, never quite recovered its balance.

On the debit side, the quick victory had made the Americans dangerously overconfident. The image of the Japanese as myopic buck-toothed buffoons had been reinforced; all that was needed was to "slap the little yellow bastards down" and teach them not to trifle with their racial superiors. Reality would come soon enough, during the bloody campaign to relieve the Philippines—where the U.S. Navy would lose more ships than had been present at Pearl Harbor that morning—and the shock and disillusionment would do much to turn the American public against the war.

But all that was in the future. For now, America had a hero.

—William Manchester,
Pacific Crucible

There was smoke on the water, there was fire upon the sea,
When General Billy Mitchell flew against the enemy—

—"Smoke on the Water," copyright 1942 by Woody Guthrie

A hero! Why would anyone call that son of a bitch a hero? The only thing I can say for him, he had the decency to get killed.

So he stopped a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Look, our people in Hawaii weren't helpless, you know. They had radar, so they'd have spotted the Japs coming and been ready for them. And then after beating off the attack we could still have gone after their carriers and sunk them. We'd have kicked their asses, you better believe it.

And if the Japs had fired the first shots, then the American people would have gotten together behind the President, and we'd have stayed in there and won the war properly.

As it was, thanks to Mr. Hero Billy Mitchell, we never did have a unified war effort against Japan, the way we did against Hitler. The isolationists ran around calling the President a warmonger, claiming Mitchell had secret orders from the White House, all that crap. Of course the Republicans were glad to have an excuse to oppose the President on any question, while the liberals were never comfortable about going to war to protect white colonialism in Asia. And John Q. Public, poor bastard, just didn't want to fight any wars anywhere if it could be avoided.

So the war in the Pacific dragged on indecisively, year after year, and the opposition grew—my God, we even had people marching against the war, right in front of the White House! Young punks were writing, "Hell, no, I won't go!" on draft-office walls, enough to make you puke. Till finally it got so bad the President just gave up and announced he wouldn't run again in '44.

I always thought it was a mercy that FDR died right after the election. At least he didn't have to watch Dewey making that half-assed peace with Tokyo—and we wouldn't even have gotten that, only Hitler was finished and Stalin's troops were massing on the Chinese border and the Japs realized they'd get a better deal with us than they would from Moscow.