The first group of five torpedo bombers crossed south of the
submarine base, low and slow, heading along the Southeast Loch, the full
formation extending almost entirely across the loch so that, when the turns
were required, each plane would have the most room to line up on their target
and the least amount to turn. There was no indication of enemy AA fire. The
leader eased left, crossed the formation heading for the southernmost mooring,
a Tennessee class battleship. Like a ballet perfectly synchronized, each
following aircraft made its course adjustment to line up on its target as they
had practiced so often together.
“Too low,” mumbled Fuchida, as he watched the last bomber
bank right to begin its difficult turn towards the northernmost target. The
pilot evidently had been flustered by the aircraft crossing ahead of him closer
than they had practiced, and momentarily pulled back on his throttle. Fuchida
saw a ripple of wake on the water below the torpedo bomber’s right wing and
then, to his horror, saw the wing catch a wave top. Instantly the four tons of
aircraft, aircrew and torpedo were spinning a cartwheel like a crazed circus
acrobat, flipping over and over above the water, finally settling in a vast
spray of water.
Fuchida had a flash of anxiety. Would the other pilots
flinch from their attack on the northernmost part of Battleship Row? Before he
could be visited by more apprehensive thoughts, the second group of attackers
flashed down the loch, fifteen seconds behind the lead formation. The same
ballet ensued, aircraft lining up their drops, this time with the clearances as
they had practiced. Fuchida locked his eyes on the last aircraft, willing it to
stay aloft. The torpedo bomber banked, turned right, seemed to shudder a little
in the air, then the wings leveled. Fuchida saw the splash as this aircraft
released its weapon. A good attack!
“A hit! Number 1 position!” shouted his pilot and bombardier
together. “A hit! Number 2 position! A hit! Number 3 position!”
“Three hits in the first wave,” thought Fuchida, as he
pulled out his clipboard with the chart of the harbor. He made pencil tic marks
next to each ship that was hit.
Another wave appeared at the end of the loch. Arcs of
machine gun fire streamed out from a destroyer moored against the quay at the
Navy Yard. Two streams converged on one of the torpedo bombers, releasing a
flow of red flame from its wing root. Its torpedo tumbled away, jettisoned. The
bomber pulled up, stalled, and like a fluttering cherry blossom hit the ground
inside the Navy Yard. A red balloon of fire brightened the sky.
“Damnation,” muttered Fuchida.
Three of the covering A6M Zero fighters rolled over and
streaked down, aiming for the offending destroyer. Streams of machine gun
bullets lashed up and down the destroyer’s deck. Fuchida could hear the distant
deeper, rapid “chug chug chug” sound as the fighter pilots added their 20mm
cannon to the fire of their 7.7mm machine guns. The third fighter pulled up.
Nothing more came from the destroyer. The next formation of torpedo bombers
slipped by, unimpeded.
“A hit! Number 2 position! A hit! Number three position! A
hit! Number 5 position!”
In less than ninety seconds 25 torpedo bombers had completed
their attack. Fuchida and his crew had counted sixteen hits. Position 2 and 3,
the simplest runs, had taken the brunt of the attack, five hits. Both ships looked
on the verge of capsizing. Position 1 had taken three hits, and position 5 one.
Position 4 had taken two hits, but it was difficult to say if the hits were on
the repair ship or the battleship. Certainly the repair ship took at least one,
as it appeared to be broken in half. Fuchida scribbled notes on his kneeboard,
his mind calculating ferociously.
“A hit! Number seventeen position! A hit! Number twenty-one
position!”
Fuchida jerked his eyes out of the cockpit and looked out
over the harbor. To the north, plumes of cascading water were settling
alongside two cruisers. As he watched, another plume climbed skyward.
“A hit! Number seventeen position!” The bombardier’s voice
was getting hoarse with excitement. Fuchida could feel his own pulse pounding.
Somehow, two miles south of the events, he thought he caught a whiff of raw
fuel oil.
As his eyes gazed over the harbor, he saw five poppy seeds
arc down from high in the sky and fall around the number-two position
battleship. They exploded and kicked up huge columns of water seventy feet
high. The level bombers were attacking. Five water columns—five misses. He sent
his prayers to will the hand of providence to guide the bombs of his
compatriots—Genda-san would never let him live it down if his level bombers failed.
Another set of water columns rose up. Four columns and one
dull flash. A hit.
Fuchida looked down to his clipboard to record the
information, marking the AP bomb hit, searching the chart for Number Seventeen
position to record the torpedo hits. Suddenly the cockpit lit up—his skin
almost seemed to peel from the radiance of the white flash of light, impossibly
bright for a second, then two—and he looked up to see the most incredible
explosion envelope the northern part of Battleship Row.
“The Heavens have struck number four position,” Fuchida
heard Ohno intone as he watched smoke and flying, burning pieces of debris cast
up 500 meters into the sky. While a part of his mind was dumb-founded at the
power of the explosion, another part said that he would not need to worry about
striking the battleship berthed next to the repair ship. Were any of his
bombers caught in the blast?
He shook his head to bring himself back to reality. Speed
was needed, quickness. Looking down at his chart, he circled the positions of
ships needing more attention. He snapped an order to Ohno, who put more power
to the engine and edged over to where the reserve torpedo bombers were flying
their racetrack, waiting expectantly. He pulled alongside one, and Fuchida
pulled out his prepared cardboard sheets with large numbers printed on them,
one for each mooring position in the harbor. He showed the number to the
aircrew of the first B5N Kate. The pilot nodded, saluted, and dropped back in
formation. One by one he gave the reserves their assignments. It was now
perhaps five minutes since the first torpedo had hit, and ugly black puffs of
AA fire were beginning to soil the sky.
He gave out the last of the assignments, ticking off the
last circled numbers as he did. When all the circles were checked, he still had
three torpedo bombers left. He had assigned attackers to the outlying cruisers,
the cruiser moored next to 1010 Dock, the cruisers at the carrier moorings, the
battleships that could use another hole or two. What to do with this last
three? He sent two against the cruisers at the Navy Yard piers—even if the
targets were foreshortened into slivers by the angle of approach, they would be
bound to hit something valuable if the torpedo survived the launch. The last
torpedo? His friend Lt. Suzuki grinned at him across the gulf between the two
aircraft. He had told him back on the Akagi that he wanted a challenge. Let him
have a go at the drydock caisson.
He fired a Black Dragon flare. The reserve torpedo bombers
broke formation to attack their targets as nearly simultaneously as possible.
He watched them swoop into position. Black puffs of AA fire
seemed dark and ugly compared to the white water splashed up as the torpedoes
fell into the harbor.
“A hit! Number 14 position!” New hits were announced.
Fuchida continued to record damage. Eventually, the last of the torpedoes were
launched, the last hits recorded. Fuchida glanced at his watch. It seemed
impossible, but it was a bare fifteen minutes from when the attack had started.
Fuchida fired a Red Dragon flare. In doing so he released
his escort fighters and SEAD support. They banked away, heading for their
assigned airfields. They would strafe the air bases, and then the fighters
would fly top cover to ensure that no American aircraft got aloft. They would
remain as guards until the second wave arrived to relieve them.
He watched as Suzuki’s plane descended to attack altitude.
He heard Ohno say, “Our turn, sir?” It interrupted his
concentration, but Fuchida assented, and directed the pilot towards the Navy
Yard piers. They climbed to 2,000 meters—good level bombing altitude against a
fixed target, low enough for accuracy, high enough to be out of machine gun
range.
Fuchida was inspecting the cruisers with his binoculars when
he felt the bomber suddenly lift.
“Bombs released!” shouted the bombardier, who
kept his eyes pressed to his bombsight. Fuchida could not resist—he went down
on his knees and looked out the observer’s sight in the floor of the bomber. At
this altitude the details on the ground were in sharp focus, he could even see
small figures of men rushing along the piers heading for the ships. He spotted
their two 250kg bombs gracefully descending, becoming smaller and smaller, and
saw the shipyard piers far, far ahead of them, he could not see how the bombs
could possibly get there—then, in a rush, bombs and targets merged. There was a
red flash along the line where the pier and a class “A” cruiser met, and
further along a huge splash in the turning basin.
“One hit!” Fuchida called out.
“What did we get?” Ohno asked.
Fuchida paused to heighten the pilot’s anxiety.
“A garbage scow, I think,” he said tonelessly. Ohno seemed
to slump in his seat. Fuchida reached forward and patted him on the side of the
head. “Ohno-san, the Yankees have 10,000-ton garbage scows with gun turrets, it
appears.” The pilot laughed.
Fuchida had now about 30 minutes to consider the next
necessary decisions. Egusa would be arriving with the second-wave dive-bombers.
He ordered his pilot to climb to 3,000 meters to meet them while he inspected
the harbor. His crew had counted 30 hits of the 50 torpedoes, not as many as
expected but the distribution was good. Five of the battleships along Ford
Island were finished, two capsized, two with water over their main decks, and
one blasted apart and sending up a tremendous cloud of smoke that obscured most
of Battleship Row. All the torpedo-accessible cruisers had taken one or two
torpedo hits, one class “B” cruiser was capsized, another obviously sinking. It
was impossible to tell what the torpedoes had done to the ships at the Navy
Yard piers, but something had happened from the amount of smoke.
“Did you see Suzuki-san?” he called to the bombardier. The
man pointed to a column of smoke and burning debris. The Yankees were awake and
shooting. He would meet Suzuki-san at the Yasukuni Shrine when he, too, gave
his life for the Emperor.
Fuchida saw a large tanker backing out of its berth at Ford
Island. Centered in the channel, the froth at its stern meant the captain was
trying to twist the ship to line up to go hide in the loch beyond the Navy
Yard.
“Good, we’ll sink you right there,” he thought.
The dive-bombers appeared on the horizon—they were 15
minutes early, excellent timing. Fuchida made his last decisions, and his pilot
turned the plane to join up with the dive-bombers’ command elements. There was
no time to give individual assignments, so Fuchida pulled up to each of the
nine chutai leaders and flashed the number of their target assignment to them.
Two chutai would put the tanker on the bottom. Four chutai would hit the four
cruisers at the Navy Yard Piers. The remaining three would hit the surviving
cruisers anchored north of Ford Island or put some bombs in the nests of
destroyers.
The dive-bombing conditions were horrible, with smoke
obscuring the targets and a layer of 70% cloud cover at 1,500 meters altitude
over parts of the harbor that threw off all chances of bombing as the crews had
been trained. The American AA fire was suddenly tremendous—far better than what
would come from a Japanese fleet under similar circumstances; but then again,
AA fire was defensive, and the Japanese did not honor the defensive.
But through it all the dive-bombers attacked bravely.
The two chutai attacking the oiler put six hits into the huge
hull, and it lit up like a Chinese fireworks fountain, gushing red flames and
oily black smoke. But sinking that oiler, with all her separate storage tanks
only partially filled with a cargo that was lighter than water, proved to be
more difficult than expected. The bombs missed the relatively small engineering
spaces, so the oiler remained under way. Her captain put her aground off
Hospital Point, well out of the channel. Later, the current twisted her off the
shore, but Navy tugs got lines across her at the extreme bow and stern and,
with the help of her engines, put her firmly aground on the other side of the
channel. Burning fuel streamed down the channel, halting all movement out of
the harbor.
Otherwise, the performance of the dive-bombers was less than
what was expected, but good under the circumstances. Egusa had expected half
the bombs to hit, but the actual score appeared to be well short of that. The
smoke, the clouds, the brisk wind and the even brisker AA fire seemed to take
away the favor of providence from the dive-bombers. But attacking targets
further away from the smoke clouds around Ford Island was a good decision, and
so while the hit percentage was down, many useful hits were scored.
Finally, the dive-bombers completed their attacks, and after
a last flurry of strafing, they abandoned the harbor to their new enemies.
Fuchida directed his pilot to take a last tour of the
harbor. His bombardier took photographs to help with the battle damage
assessment.
Four battleships sunk by torpedoes, five or six hits apiece.
There would be very little left of them to salvage, particularly the two that
capsized. One battleship was blown apart by the mighty 800kg bombs, a point
that Fuchida would report with particular pride. It, too, would never float again.
There were several AP bomb hits on the other inboard battleships which
hopefully detonated in their engineering spaces, crippling them for six months
to a year. It appeared that only one battleship escaped heavy damage, the ship
in the drydock, but the gods do not favor the greedy, it would have been
unreasonable to expect more and that ship was not vulnerable enough to warrant
expending limited ammunition on it.
They had exceeded Yamamoto’s goal of one battleship sunk and
a total of four battleships crippled—they had achieved five battleships sunk,
and crippled two more. Yamamoto would be pleased.
Damage to lower priority targets was also excellent. Of the
eight cruisers in port, the four anchored scattered around the harbor were all
put down by a combination of torpedoes and bombs. The smoke over the Navy Yard
piers made damage assessment difficult, but where there is smoke there is fire,
and it looked to Fuchida’s eye that two of the four cruisers there were burning
fiercely, and another one leaning against the pier, half-sunk. Smoke also came
out of five of the nests of destroyers, indicating that the dive-bombers had
some successes there. The photographs later would show another four destroyers
sunk, one destroyer-minelayer sunk, and six destroyers damaged.
Five battleships sunk, seven cruisers sunk or destroyed,
eleven destroyer-class vessels sunk or heavily damaged, a huge oiler grounded
and melting. As Fuchida tallied the results, he could not see how they could
have been better. Perhaps better dive-bombing could have added to the margins
with a few more of the smaller warships, but it was nearly a clean sweep of the
most important targets.
As he departed the Pearl Harbor area for a quick tour of Ewa
and Wheeler fields before heading back to the carrier, Fuchida’s eyes were
drawn to the huge oil storage tanks lined up like soldiers marching up the
hills on the periphery of the harbor.
“How foolish are the Americans,” he thought. “They make all
this effort to bring out millions of liters of fuel for their fleet, and then
do not protect the fleet. Of what use is oil without warships? The Americans
make war like accountants. They have no Yamato damashii, no kesshitai. Clearly
providence favors we Japanese. We will take the southern resource areas, the
Philippines and Singapore, and the Americans and British accountants will see
that war is too costly to defend places that they can hardly spell. They will
be pleased to have done with it all and bow to us across a negotiating table.
Then they will give all this oil to us as war reparations.”
With this thought his plane turned away from the white fuel
tanks, and Fuchida’s heart was glad that he did not have to bother with such
dishonorable targets.
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