Days of Infamy Read Free Page B

“I would venture that by dawn their carriers might very well be in range of Oahu to provide support and to seek us out. In fact we might be able to force them into placing their carriers close to the island and revealing their position.”
    “Go on,” Yamamoto said with the slightest trace of a smile, already anticipating what his trusted lieutenant was going to offer. The two of them were so often in synch with each other’s thinking.
    “You mentioned an idea earlier today, sir,” Genda replied, his voice now edged with excitement as he pointed at the charts. “During the night, send our two fast battleships
Hiei
and
Kirishima
down along the east coast of the island. They can be in position before midnight. Bombard their bases on the east coast, swing around Diamond Head, and then attack their fortifications and then finally Pearl Harbor itself. The firing mission would take three or four hours at most, but render yet more damage and panic. It would seem to indicate, as well, a traditional move prior to an amphibious assault come dawn.
    “I have read the reports on their Admiral Halsey. He is highly aggressive, bombastic, and pride alone will drive him forward into our net. He will launch in reply and thereby reveal his position not in a strike against our carriers but against the battleships as they withdraw from Oahu after bombarding Pearl Harbor. Once his position is revealed by that strike we then counterstrike, catching their carriersas they are still recovering their planes from the attempt on our battleships.”
    He smiled.
    “We hit them turning their planes around on deck and below in their hangar, planes that are being loaded with gas and bombs; if but one of our bombs strikes them at that moment,” he paused for effect, “that carrier is destroyed.”
    They had run simulations and war games based on such a scenario. What would happen if a strike could be launched against an enemy carrier while its deck and hangar bay were fully loaded with aircraft, fueling up and arming? The calculation was always the same: utterly catastrophic. It had been, as well, the argument of the battleship admirals against deploying carriers into the front line of action—they were simply too vulnerable if caught by surprise, while a battleship could withstand relentless pounding and continue to fight.
    Well, that would be put to the test come morning, he thought.
    There was murmuring from several in the room. It was one thing to be battleship sailors and talk about the glory of a ship-to-ship action at sea, but to risk such precious assets in a shore bombardment, when an enemy fleet might be farther out to sea, boxing them in? To use battleships as bait? It was a very unsettling and unnerving concept. Only an airman could have proposed it.
    Yamamoto smiled in reply. It was, of course, exactly what he had been thinking most of the afternoon. Such a bold and open challenge, a nighttime bombardment by two battleships, which could indeed inflict yet more punishing damage… such an act could not go unchallenged. The American carriers would have to reveal themselves. And to risk a battleship, even two, if by so doing he could bag the three American carriers… that was a risk well worth taking.
    “To place two of His Majesty’s battleships at such risk?” Nagumo’s chief of staff replied, the shock evident in his voice.
    Yamamoto looked over at him. The response, of course, was expected. So many in the navy were still emotionally linked to battleships. The ships were so big, so expensive and precious, that though admirals of all fleets talked about the moment of encounter, all actuallyshied from it, frightened of the risk even to one ship. The British and Germans had demonstrated that clearly at Jutland, when both at different stages of that battle back in 1916 threw away a chance for a stunning victory, out of a fear of potential loss.
    It was not how Nelson, or most definitely for that matter, the legendary Togo, would view