1942

Marshall would understand that he’d done his duty, wouldn’t he? Short swore silently as he agreed with Kimmel’s comment about the war warning messages being so damned ambiguous. Who would have thought the Japs, or anyone else for that matter, were capable of sailing a fleet across the Pacific and striking without any warning at all, and without anyone even noticing them? Since then he had ordered additional patrols by his remaining planes and had begun working with Kimmel on coordinating those patrols with naval planes and then sharing the information. Should they have done that sooner? Probably, he thought.

“You got enough oil for your ships?” Short asked. He was well aware of the extent of the fuel loss and what it implied. He was, however, curious as to what Kimmel would admit.

Kimmel sighed. “We’re gonna need help, and fast. Halsey’s ships are guzzling it like there’s no tomorrow, and the three movable battleships will need to have their tanks topped off before they can depart. Frankly, General, we’re suspending all but the most essential patrol operations until we get resupplied. As much as I’d like to humor Halsey, we just can’t afford to have him running around chasing Japs and burning oil at this time. Christ, we lost four and a half million gallons of it that morning, and we have no way of replacing it, or storing it even if it was replaced.”

This confirmed to Short what his own intelligence people had found out. It did not strike him as unusual that he had used army personnel to spy on navy operations. He was disturbed because the events of Sunday had conclusively proven that a fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor wasn’t much use to anyone. Someone had better get some oil to Pearl Harbor so the navy could get out and do some fighting.

Short considered himself fortunate that he had sufficient aviation gas for the planes he had remaining. He also had the eight B-17s that had flown in on December 7, although several had been damaged in the fighting. If the Japs came again, he would use these superweapons, the so-called Flying Fortresses. Time would tell if they were as effective as they were supposed to be.

At least, he reminded himself, he hadn’t lost a fleet, only a few planes. Planes could be replaced fairly quickly, but battleships took years to build. Poor Kimmel. Poor bastard.

CHAPTER 3

There was silence in the War Room of the White House as the litany of disasters was enumerated. Guam had fallen, and it was only a matter of time before isolated and outnumbered Wake Island would be conquered. The Japanese had landed in the Philippines, and the combined American and Filipino forces were falling back in disorder in the face of the Japanese onslaught.

Nor were the Americans alone in their agonies. The British in Malaya had been invaded, and the Japanese were driving through what had been considered impassable jungles to the city of Singapore. Hong Kong was surrounded and besieged, and, like that of Wake, its fall was inevitable. The British, in their haste to shore up the defenses of Singapore, had suffered a naval defeat almost on a level with the disaster at Pearl Harbor when the battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales were sunk by Japanese planes.

As a result, there were no Allied capital ships in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii. The Japanese had at least ten carriers in that area to America’s two, although a third carrier was en route. The Japanese had a dozen battleships operating in the Pacific, while the Americans had only four, and these were in West Coast waters, nowhere near the scene of the action.

For the time being at least, the Japanese possessed overwhelming naval strength in the western Pacific.

To further complicate matters and drain America’s still limited resources, the Nazis had declared war on the United States and had commenced U-boat operations along America’s eastern shore. Shocked American civilians now saw oil tankers burning off the shores of New Jersey, and U-boats were rumored to be moving up the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers.

That the Chinese had followed with a declaration against Japan and Germany was considered a mixed blessing at best. While China had been fighting Japan for years, her army was considered corrupt and inept. Numerous other countries had followed America’s lead and declared war against the Axis, but they were small nations and would have little impact in the coming struggle.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt swiveled his wheelchair and looked at Admiral Ernest King. King, irascible and blunt, had just been named chief of naval operations. He replaced Admiral Harold Stark, who had been the navy’s senior officer at the time of Pearl Harbor. Stark’s reputation was in decline as some of the blame for Pearl Harbor had fallen on him.

King paced angrily, like a bear in a cage. Roosevelt smiled slightly. “I envy you.”

King stopped and blinked in surprise. “Envy me what, sir?”