The Twilight Warriors (17 page)

Trails of smoke were arcing toward the ocean, marking the funeral pyres of Japanese bombers. A few of the Bettys had turned back to Kyushu, and others were trying to make it to a nearby cloud bank. Most of the Zeroes had disappeared, either shot down or chased away.

The Corsairs were out of ammunition. Oglevee had lost sight of his leader,
Dick Mason, so he pulled up above the fray, where he was joined by Mills and Dudley, the other two pilots in their division. The melee was almost over, and fighters from other carriers had shown up to pick off the few remaining Japanese stragglers.

But Dick Mason was missing. The last they’d seen of him was during their final dive through the formation of Bettys. The three
Tail End Charlies circled until they were low on fuel, then headed back to
Intrepid
, still wondering what happened to their leader.

They never found out. No trace of Dick Mason was ever discovered.

Back in their ready room, the three Corsair pilots tried to describe what they had seen. There had been something different about these Betty bombers. They were slower and less maneuverable than they should have been. Several pilots reported observing a peculiar object protruding from the bellies of the bombers.

Whatever it was, it went down with the Bettys. Not a single one made it through.

A
dmiral Ugaki’s masklike expression remained unchanged while he listened to the reports. None of his eighteen Betty bombers had returned to Kanoya. Only a few Zero pilots had survived to tell the story.

The first mission of the Thunder Gods had ended in disaster. American fighters had pounced on the slow-flying bombers when they were still 60 miles from the enemy task force. When the first few bombers were shot down, the rest scattered, and it became impossible for the Zeroes to protect them.

Some of the Bettys jettisoned their
Ohka
s, but it didn’t save them. One by one they were shot down in flames. A few tried to hide in the clouds, but each was caught and destroyed. The battle was over in ten minutes.

Gloom settled like a pall over the air fleet headquarters. Only a few hours before they had been cheering, saluting, and waving farewells to the noble young Thunder Gods. The last words of the indomitable Goro Nonaka—“This is Minatogawa!”—had sent a surge of pride through every man on the field. Now sixteen Thunder Gods, including Nonaka, were gone. Their sacrifice had accomplished nothing.

Abruptly Ugaki rose and left the bunker. Whatever emotions
he may have felt, he was keeping to himself. It wasn’t in Ugaki’s chemistry to wring his hands over such things. Nor would he display remorse at having ignored the counsel of a subordinate such as Captain Okamura.

The flat countryside outside the bunker was bathed in the soft sunshine of spring. As Ugaki trudged back to his command shack on the hill, he began to shed his anguish at the failed mission. He was no stranger to calamity. Since the Imperial Japanese Navy’s first great triumph at Pearl Harbor, he had witnessed crushing defeats at Midway, the Solomons, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and then Leyte Gulf. Only by the narrowest of margins had he escaped being killed with Yamamoto. He’d been spared again at Leyte Gulf. Ugaki was a religious man, and he chose to believe that he had been saved by divine intervention so that he could deliver retribution to the Americans.

By now Ugaki was ensnared in the same web of delusions that guided the Japanese high command. Even if the
Ohka
s had failed to reach their targets, Ugaki was sure that many of his other
tokko
raiders had inflicted great losses on the enemy. Based on several pilots’ final radio transmissions of “
I am going to ram a carrier,” he concluded that the United States had lost at least five carriers in the past four days. At this rate, the Americans would have no choice except to withdraw.

A
s usual, Vice Adm. Kelly Turner was right. The Japanese didn’t suspect that the Americans had an interest in the Kerama Retto, the cluster of islands off Okinawa. The Retto was defended by only a small Japanese force. Turner’s amphibious invasion at dawn on March 26 took them by surprise.

But the Alligator hadn’t taken any chances. For two days before the Army’s 77th Division landed on the islands, three destroyers and two cruisers had hammered the coastline with shellfire. Carrier-based fighter-bombers delivered air strikes, and underwater demolition teams surveyed the landing beaches and marked the
locations of coral reefs. When the landing ships and troop-filled amphibious tractors hit the beaches, most of the defenders fell back to the hills and caves. Except for a handful of holdouts who remained in hiding, the small garrison was soon wiped out.

The only retaliation came that evening in the form of nine kamikaze aircraft. One managed to hit a destroyer’s stern, taking out a 40-millimeter gun mount. Another destroyer took a near miss.

In less than twenty-four hours, the Kerama Retto became U.S. property. An unexpected bonus was the discovery of more than 250 “Q-boats”—18-foot-long suicide boats, built of plywood and armed with 250-pound depth charges. The boats were hidden in camouflaged shelters and caves throughout the islands of the Retto. With a crew of one, they had a top speed of about 20 knots and were intended for a massed night attack on the U.S. transport ships off Okinawa.

Within two days of the invasion, Turner’s new anchorage at Kerama Retto was open for business. Tankers, ammunition ships, repair ships, and mine and patrol craft all began crowding into the roadstead. Two squadrons of PBM Mariner seaplanes began operating in the cleared waterway.

It was the last stage of preparation. The Alligator was ready to land on Okinawa.

11
THREE SECONDS TO DIE

NORTHERN RYUKYU ISLANDS
MARCH 26, 1945

E
rickson’s confidence was growing. He was still the CAG’s number four, and this morning they were attacking the island of Amami Oshima, at the northern end of the Ryukyu chain. It was part of the preinvasion softening up, hitting each of the Japanese island bases north of Okinawa.

The flight of VBF-10 and VF-10 Corsairs rocketed and strafed the barracks complex on the island until all the buildings were ablaze. Then they returned to
Intrepid
for a quick lunch, and an hour later they were doing the same thing to the enemy airfield at Tokuno, one island below Amami Oshima.

It was dangerous work. The Japanese were shooting back with all the firepower they had on the island, but so far none of the Corsairs had been hit. Pulling off the target, Erickson could see the results of their efforts. Smoke was pouring from the shattered buildings and airplanes.

Erickson allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction. This was precisely what he had been trained for, flying a fighter-bomber in combat, and he was doing it damned well.

Then something caught his eye. Another Corsair, one flown by Ens. Al Hasse, was still in its dive. As Erickson watched, the dark blue shape of the fighter morphed into an orange ball of fire.

Erickson blinked, not sure of what he’d seen. There’d been no telltale trail of smoke, no radio call, no clue that Hasse was hit. It happened in an instant. The Corsair was there, then it was gone, a shower of burning debris. Erickson kept his eyes on the fireball until it hit the ocean. To no one’s surprise, there was no parachute.

Al Hasse was one of the residents of Boys’ Town. He and
Erickson had been buddies since their flight training days. An old naval aviation adage flashed through Erickson’s head: “Three years to train, three seconds to die.”

The flight rejoined and headed back to the carrier. For once the tactical frequency was silent. No one felt like talking.

T
he day didn’t get any better. Another Tail End Charlie, Ens. Jim “
Ziggy” South, had hung around Tokuno to make an extra run on the target. South was a muscular young man who had been an amateur boxer back in Kansas. He’d earned the nickname “Ziggy,” he liked to say, because he zigged in the ring when he should have zagged.

Pulling off the target, he found that he was all alone. While he made his extra run on the target, the rest of his flight had departed. And then, flying solo back to the ship, South started hearing things. A bothersome noise was coming from up front, as if his engine was cutting out.

Nearing the
Intrepid
, he spotted a pair of Corsairs from his squadron, a section led by skipper Will Rawie, with his wingman, Ens. Tommy Thompson. South joined up on Thompson’s wing, and together they entered an orbit over the ship while they waited for the signal to recover.

It was then when things went to hell.

Ziggy South never knew whether he was distracted by his engine noises or Thompson made a too-abrupt control input. All he knew was that in the next moment his propeller was whacking like a meat cleaver through Tommy Thompson’s starboard wing.

Both Corsairs were finished. Thompson’s crippled fighter rolled into a dive, shedding pieces from its destroyed wing. Thompson jettisoned the canopy and went over the side. Seconds later his parachute canopy blossomed, and he floated down toward a waiting destroyer.

South’s Corsair was still controllable, but the shattered propeller was shaking the airplane so hard he had to shut the engine
down. Preferring to ditch instead of bailing out, he glided the big gull-winged fighter down to the water.

It would have been a successful ditching. The problem was, the Corsair lost hydraulic power when the engine shut down, and the landing gear flopped out. When the fighter hit the water, it flipped upside down and sank like a stone.

South was trapped in the sinking airplane. He was snagged by his parachute, which was caught on something inside the cockpit. Running out of breath, with the water pressure building in his ears, he fought against the panic that gripped him. In desperation, he yanked the handle that would inflate his life raft.

With a pop and an explosion of gas, the raft inflated, shoving him out of the seat. The raft soared to the surface, hauling South with it. Gasping, he clung to the raft, too weak from the struggle even to wave his arms. A sailor from a nearby destroyer dove into the water and swam to him with a line.

South was hauled aboard the tin can, still dazed and wondering what the hell had happened. All he knew was that five minutes earlier he’d been flying on Tommy Thompson’s wing, and now they were both on a destroyer.

I
t was another somber evening in Boys’ Town. This one seemed especially grim, since several of them had watched Al Hasse get blown to bits over Tokuno that morning.

By now, observing the loss of one of the Tail End Charlies had become a ritual. First someone had to empty the missing man’s locker and inventory his effects. Then they broke out their stash of Coon Range whisky, which they’d sneaked aboard back in Alameda. They would toast the departed pilot, recall a few good stories about him, and mostly try to numb their own jangled emotions.

Losing a guy like Hasse was tough. He had been with them through flight training, through advanced fighter indoctrination, and through the forming up of the new squadron and air group. Hasse was a short, good-looking kid from South Dakota. He had
been something of a ladies’ man, with a string of concurrent girlfriends back in the States.

Like most of the
Tail End Charlies, Hasse had left a set of just-in-case instructions. If he didn’t make it back, his buddies were supposed to retrieve a pack of love letters from his personal effects and get rid of them. No need to break any more hearts than necessary.

And so they did. It took several more rounds of Coon Range and a few more toasts, then they gathered up the letters. In a solemn procession they made their way up to the darkened catwalk at the edge of the flight deck. The night sky was suitably black, without horizon or moonlight. Silently they tossed Al Hasse’s love letters over the rail, watching the fluttering paper vanish in the blackness of the Pacific.

T
hree days later they were on their way back to Kyushu. This time they were in the company of three other divisions, including Helldivers from the bombing squadron, VB-10, and Avengers from the torpedo squadron, VT-10, whom the other airmen called “Torpeckers.” The mission was to find the elusive Japanese fleet, which was reported to be assembling to engage the American invasion force at Okinawa.

Led by Hyland, the strike group swept over the designated place in the ocean off Kyushu. A low cloud cover obscured most of the area. They found no sign of the Japanese warships. Hyland then took them inland to their alternative targets, the airfields on Kyushu.

It was a replay of the first two days of strikes. Even though the fields had been hit multiple times, the antiaircraft fire was as intense as ever. Just as before, the Japanese gunners were filling the sky with black bursts of gunfire.

One after the other, the Corsairs rolled in, jinking and weaving, trying to elude the gunners while keeping their sights on the target. Erickson, in his usual slot as Hyland’s Tail End Charlie and Windy Hill’s wingman, was amazed that no one had been hit.