Hunter Sniper

The twin Zeros rushed out to sea and turned as if on a dime, heading back in for a second pass. Those Japanese Zeros were nothing if not nimble.

The men on the ground were also quick. They had been through this before on other landings. The beach was not undefended. Antiaircraft batteries sprang into action, filling the sky with tracers and flak, trying to knock down the Zeros.

One of the planes was hit and began trailing smoke, but rushed away and disappeared toward the interior of Leyte. It would remain to be seen whether the plane reached its hidden base. The second plane strafed the beach one last time for good measure, its machine guns churning up the sand. Then it, too, vanished.

“That was exciting,” said Philly, picking himself up off the ground and brushing sand and gravel from his uniform and helmet. “I guess those Japanese still aren’t ready to give up. Nobody told them that the battle was over.”

“Nope, not until we’ve killed off the last one,” Deke agreed.

Looking around at the devastation, he felt a bit stunned by the attack. In addition to the burning tank, bombs had also hit one of the buildings at the camp, so that the building was on fire, its flames spreading to the thatched roof of a neighboring building. A handful of soldiers rushed to carry supplies out of the burning buildings before it was too late. Several wounded men lay on the ground, some struggling to get up, some not moving at all.

Deke hadn’t been wounded, and he was relieved to see that none of the other snipers had been either. But at the same time, the air attack made him feel defenseless. After all, how could anyone defend against such fast-moving planes? A lone man with a rifle couldn’t do much. Deke shook his head, reminded once again that modern warfare was a whole lot bigger than a man with a rifle and a bowie knife.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

As it turned out, the Japanese fighters hadn’t been the only planes in the sky.

Philly pointed. “Look, it’s one of ours. He’s been up there this whole time!”

The lone American reconnaissance plane was still airborne over the beach. The pilot had evidently decided that the plane was too slow to make a run for it. Instead, he had dropped even lower, apparently hoping that the two Japanese Zeros would be too busy to notice him.

That strategy had worked — to a point. However, the reconnaissance aircraft was far from being out of danger. The storm of flak was intended for the enemy planes, but the airbursts were indiscriminate.

From the uneven flight path, it was clear that the pilot was struggling for control of his plane and trying to dodge whatever ground fire he could. Lucky for him, the ground troops seemed to be doing their best not to shoot down one of their own.

But the sturdy plane wasn’t out of danger yet. At any moment, one of the fast-moving Zeros could wipe out the recon plane like a bird snapping its beak on an insect, without so much as a second thought.

The pilot’s flight path carried him directly over the spot where one of the Japanese bombs was detonating. At that instant an explosive geyser clawed its way upward in a tornado of high explosives, ripping off the entire tail of the small reconnaissance plane. One moment the tail had been there, and the next moment it was gone. The front section of the plane and the wings were untouched.

Fighter pilots got all the glory, but it spoke to the pilot’s skill that he was able to wrestle with the controls as the plane plunged toward the beach. It wasn’t going to be a controlled landing, but it looked like the pilot was going to avoid crashing altogether — just barely.

Soldiers ran out of the way as the plane came down, swinging wildly from side to side and dipping up and down like a paper airplane caught in a whirlwind. The wheels touched down, and the plane skidded across the sand before coming to a halt. Soldiers ran to help the pilot and copilot get out. By some miracle, the plane had not caught on fire.

Allowing himself to be led away, the pilot looked back at what was left of his plane and stared at the missing tail section.

Technically, he had not been shot down, but it was hard to find a term that explained that the tail of a reconnaissance plane in flight had been blown off by a Japanese bomb on the ground. Some clerk down the line would likely put it down as mechanical failure and leave it at that.

“How about that,” he said. “I thought something was wrong.”

“I’ll say, buddy,” a soldier replied. “It looks like the whole back half of your plane is gone!”

Then the pilot shook off the helping hands and walked nonchalantly away.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Once the excitement of the attack by the Japanese Zeros had died down, the men prepared to move out.

“That was just two lousy Japanese,” Honcho pointed out. “There’s a lot more where those came from, and we’re gonna go find them.”

“I think they already found us,” Philly pointed out.