Pearl Harbour - A novel of December 8th Read Free Page B

Arizona, clearly visible in the light of dawn.
    The battleship row was now clearly illuminated by the morning light, a few men stirring on the decks, lights shining from open hatches and portholes, smoke curling up from galley stoves preparing to serve out the traditional Sunday morning breakfast of bacon and eggs.
    It was all so peaceful.
     
    USN Carrier Enterprise: Two hundred fifty miles west-southwest of Oahu 5:50 a.m.

    Admiral Halsey was frustrated and annoyed.
    He was supposed to be pulling into Pearl in another two and a half hours so his men could go ashore for Sunday.
    They were simply not going to make it.
    Head winds and heavy seas had made refueling the destroyers really difficult. The tin cans were always the ships that ran out of fuel first, and you simply had to slow down to refuel them when they got too thirsty. The result was a significant delay in getting home.
    Still, he thought to himself as he looked out from the bridge of the Enterprise toward the destroyers and cruisers surrounding his flagship, we have had a good run out to Wake Island and we are trained to fighting trim. Besides, it was damn good just to be out of Pearl and out at sea. For the last month, anytime they were anchored in port, it set his skin to crawling, the thought of just how damn vulnerable they were.
    It was almost light enough to launch the carrier air patrol and forward on a flight of planes back to base. With the off-load of marine aircraft at Wake Island, and the launch in a few hours of a flight back to Pearl Harbor, he’d be down to less than sixty aircraft on board, but still it was enough to protect the carrier task force and throw a pretty good punch if he had to.
    Sitting back in his chair, he looked down on the flight deck in the early morning twilight. Crew chiefs were already at their planes, waiting for enough light to give them a final going over. Up forward, the “sweep down” crew would soon line up to walk the deck, checking every inch of the launch area for anything that might be swept up into an engine. Even a dropped penny blown up into a whirling prop could definitely ruin somebody’s day. His crew was damn good, nearly all of them kids, but damn good kids, proud of their ship and their jobs. All of them had taken from him the sense that a crisis was close at hand. They were ready for it.
    If trouble does come, we will ensure America can be proud of the big E, he thought to himself. He took another long sip of coffee, his gaze focused eastward, taking in the beauty of an approaching dawn over the Pacific, the moment, a peaceful one.
     
    Two Hundred Ten Miles North of Oahu 7 December 1941 (8 December Tokyo Time): 5:50 a.m.
     
    The Imperial Japanese Navy carrier Akagi turned eastward into the wind. Standing in the cockpit of his “Kate” three-seater torpedo bomber, Commander Fuchida braced his hands on either side of the open canopy, fearful that his trembling would be visible.
    Akagi heeled over as it turned, pounded by towering forty- foot waves that, as their heading shifted from south to southeast and now to east, became a stomach-lurching sea. Spray from the crests of waves scudded over the bow with each downward plunge of the 34,000-ton aircraft carrier.
    With each plunge a shudder ran through the ship, deck crews bracing themselves, more than one doubling over, the sickness of the sea overtaking them. Yet the excitement of the moment drove them on, and even retching they would continue with their efforts.
    The quartering wind was now head-on, and he could feel the vibration coursing up from the steam turbines in the engine room, through the flight deck, up the struts of the landing gear of his plane, striking the soles of his feet, the trembling of the ship matching his own trembling of excitement. They were racing up to flank speed, 133,000 horsepower, from the nineteen steam boilers turning the four drive shafts, the roar of the exhaust screaming out of the starboard side stack audible even