1945

"Good." Bradley relaxed. The situation was under control. LeMay might be overly aggressive, but he was ambitious and ethical and would follow direct and succinct orders. He would not jeopardize a chance at that third star. One question nagged at Bradley. "Tell me, what would Tibbets have done if he could not have found the target in the mist? He could not have returned to Tinian."

LeMay was horrified at the thought. "Hell no! Nobody's gonna try and land a bomber with an atom bomb on it, or any other kind of bomb for that matter, at a base of mine if I can help it. No, sir, he was to drop it in the ocean if he had to. If it was already armed, then it would go off and he would kill a lot of fishes but that's all. Better he kills fishes than the damn thing explodes when he lands at Tinian and we lose a perfectly good base and a helluva lot of good guys."

Made sense, Bradley thought, although the very idea of discarding one of their precious atomic bombs was jarring after all the effort that had gone into developing them. "What about the navy?" Bradley teased. "Any concern that you might cause damage to them if you'd had to ditch the bomb?"

LeMay grinned evilly. "Screw the navy. Nah, sir, they would have been warned."

Bradley laughed and rose. "General LeMay, please go back to killing Japs, and for God's sake, smoke that darn cigar."

CHAPTER 51

THE PACIFIC, SOUTH OF TANEGA-SHIMA ISLAND

The ocean floor is far from flat. Its undulating hills and valleys of varying sizes and depths generally reflect the land it surrounds. Japan, a hilly and mountainous collection of islands, is encircled by a submerged continuation of herself. Thus, a submarine lying in hiding on the ocean floor on the Japanese continental shelf was rarely a stable and level platform.

The I-58 was down at the bow and tilted slightly to starboard as she lay silently on the bottom. This made any normal function such as standing, walking, or sitting awkward at best. One couldn't even lie down properly under the circumstances, and this made sleeping difficult. Exhaustion on the sub was a common result.

But, hidden as they were in a submerged crevasse, they were safe from detection. Sonar probes couldn't find them. Commander Hashimoto again reviewed his successes and his failures. On the positive side of the ledger were the sinkings of two freighters and an American warship that might have been a light cruiser or a destroyer. Which it was he didn't know. It had attacked him so quickly while he was lining up another freighter that his only concern was to sink it quickly and get away. Identifying it was irrelevant.

On the negative side, three fairly undistinguished ships were all he had to show for a combat cruise in which he had hoped for fat pickings once he had penetrated the American destroyer screen. Despite his best efforts, it hadn't worked out that way. Even though hundreds of American transports and scores of carriers were in the area, the vastness of the North Pacific worked to hide them. Then, when he did find a group of potential targets, the wolfish and snarling destroyers were always present. He had attacked on occasion, but the counterattacks by the destroyers had forced him to hide, and the men of the I-58 did not press the attacks to their conclusions.

At least he had gotten rid of the kaiten. The last remaining suicide-torpedo pilot had ridden his chariot to glory and death the previous day. Whether he had hit the freighter they'd targeted, Hashimoto didn't know. He and the crew of the I-58 rather doubted it as there had been no explosions rumbling in the distant ocean. With profound sadness, he imagined the kaiten spiraling downward in the sea's darkness to oblivion. What a waste. He hoped the eager young fool had died quickly.

One other time, the I-58 had been forced to make an emergency descent when a pair of American destroyers had angrily charged on his periscope. He thought they'd been directed to him by an airplane that had seen the I-58's shape underneath the waves. At least his unloved executive officer had finally served a purpose, if not in life then in death. The man had been killed in an earlier depth charge attack when an explosion hurled him against a pipe, cracking his skull. Afterward, his body had been kept in cold storage. When the depth charges got too close for comfort, the cadaver was stuffed into a torpedo tube and released upward with some debris. It had convinced the destroyers that the I-58 had been killed and they had departed.

Hashimoto checked his position. He was fifty miles south of the island of Tanega-Shima, which itself was south of Kyushu. Tanega-Shima was not a safe haven as it had been occupied by the American 158th Regimental Combat Team since early November, several days before the main assault on Kyushu.

Hashimoto had intended to stay closer to Kyushu, but American destroyers and a lack of good targets had caused him to stalk his prey ever farther away from Japan proper.