Winter of the World

‘But we have just three.’ Eddie pointed with his ham sandwich at the smoke-blackened carrier in the dry dock, with workmen swarming all over her. ‘And that includes the broken-down Yorktown.’

‘Well, we know they’re coming, and they don’t know we’re lying in wait.’

‘I sure hope that makes as much difference as Nimitz thinks.’

‘Yeah, so do I.’

When Chuck returned to the basement, he was told that he no longer worked there. He had been reassigned – to the Yorktown.

‘It’s Vandermeier’s way of punishing me,’ Eddie said tearfully that evening. ‘He thinks you’ll die.’

‘Don’t be pessimistic,’ Chuck said. ‘We might win the war.’

A few days before the attack, the Japanese changed to new code books. The men in the basement sighed and started again from scratch, but they produced little new intelligence before the battle. Nimitz had to make do with what he already had, and hope the Japanese did not revise the whole plan at the last minute.

The Japanese expected to take Midway by surprise and overwhelm it easily. They hoped the Americans would then attack in full force in a bid to win the atoll back. At that point, the Japanese reserve fleet would pounce and wipe out the entire American fleet. Japan would rule the Pacific.

And the USA would ask for peace talks.

Nimitz planned to nip the scheme in the bud by ambushing the strike force before they could take Midway.

Chuck was now part of the ambush.

He packed his kitbag and kissed Eddie goodbye, then they went together to the dockside.

There they ran into Vandermeier.

‘There was no time to repair the watertight compartments,’ he told them. ‘If she’s holed, she’ll go down like a lead coffin.’

Chuck put a restraining hand on Eddie’s shoulder and said: ‘How’s your eye, Captain?’

Vandermeier’s mouth twisted in a grimace of malice. ‘Good luck, faggot.’ He walked away.

Chuck shook hands with Eddie and went on board.

He forgot about Vandermeier instantly, for at long last he had his wish: he was at sea – and on one of the greatest ships ever made.

The Yorktown was the lead ship of the carrier class. She was longer than two football pitches and had a crew of more than two thousand. She carried ninety aircraft: elderly Douglas Devastator torpedo bombers with folding wings; newer Douglas Dauntless dive bombers; and Grumman Wildcat fighters to escort the bombers.

Almost everything was below, apart from the island structure, which stood up thirty feet from the flight deck. It contained the ship’s command and communications heart, with the bridge, the radio room just below it, the chart house and the aviators’ ready room. Behind these was a huge smokestack containing three funnels in a row.

Some of the repairmen were still aboard, finishing their work, when she left the dry dock and steamed out of Pearl Harbor. Chuck thrilled to the throb of her colossal engines as she put to sea. When she reached deep water and began to rise and fall with the swell of the Pacific Ocean, he felt as if he were dancing.

Chuck was assigned to the radio room, a sensible posting that made use of his experience in handling signals.

The carrier steamed to a rendezvous north-east of Midway, her welded patches creaking like new shoes. The ship had a soda fountain, known as the Gedunk, that served freshly made ice cream. There on the first afternoon Chuck ran into Trixie Paxman, whom he had last seen at The Band Round The Hat. He was glad to have a friend aboard.

On Wednesday 3 June, the day before the predicted attack, a navy flying boat on reconnaissance west of Midway spotted a convoy of Japanese transport ships – presumably carrying the occupation force that was to take over the atoll after the battle. The news was broadcast to all US ships, and Chuck in the radio room of the Yorktown was among the first to know. It was hard confirmation that his comrades in the basement had been right, and he felt a sense of relief that they had been vindicated. That was ironic, he realized: he would not be in such danger if they had been wrong and the Japanese were elsewhere.

He had been in the navy for a year and a half, but until now he had never gone into battle. The hastily repaired Yorktown was going to be the target of Japanese torpedoes and bombs. She was steaming towards people who would do everything in their power to sink her, and sink Chuck too. It was a weird feeling. Most of the time he was strangely calm, but every now and again he felt an impulse to dive over the side and start swimming back towards Hawaii.