Winter of the World

As Chuck stared forward from the bridge, terrified and helpless to do anything to defend himself, a deck gunner found his range and hit a Val. The plane seemed to break into three pieces. Two fell into the sea and one crashed into the side of the ship. Then another Val blew up. Chuck cheered.

But that left six.

The Yorktown made a sudden turn to starboard.

The Vals braved the hail of death from the deck guns to chase after the ship.

As they got closer, the machine guns on the catwalks either side of the flight deck also opened up. Now the Yorktown’s guns played a lethal symphony, with deep booms from the five-inch barrels, mid-range sounds from the Chicago pianos, and the urgent rattle of machine guns.

Chuck saw the first bomb.

Many Japanese bombs had a delayed fuse. Instead of exploding on impact, they went off a second or so later; the idea being that they would crash through the deck and explode deep in the interior, causing maximum devastation.

But this bomb rolled along the Yorktown’s deck.

Chuck watched in mesmerized horror. For a moment it looked as if it might do no harm. Then it went off with a boom and a flash of flame. The two Chicago pianos aft were destroyed in an instant. Small fires appeared on deck and in the towers.

To Chuck’s amazement the men around him remained as cool as if they were attending a war game in a conference room. Admiral Fletcher issued orders even as he staggered across the shuddering deck of the flag bridge. Moments later, damage control teams were dashing across the flight deck with fire hoses, and stretcher parties were picking up the wounded and carrying them down steep companionways to dressing stations below.

There were no major fires: the carbon dioxide in the fuel lines had prevented that. And there were no bomb-loaded planes on deck to blow up.

A moment later another Val screamed down at the Yorktown and a bomb hit the smokestack. The explosion rocked the mighty ship. A huge pall of oily black smoke gouted from the funnels. The bomb must have damaged the engines, Chuck realized, because the ship lost speed immediately.

More bombs missed their targets, landing in the sea, sending up geysers that splashed on to the deck, where sea water mingled with the blood of the wounded.

The Yorktown slowed to a halt. When the crippled ship was dead in the water, the Japanese scored a third hit, and a bomb crashed through the forward elevator and exploded somewhere below.

Then, suddenly, it was over, and the surviving Vals climbed into the clear blue Pacific sky.

I’m still alive, Chuck thought.

The ship was not lost. Fire-control parties were at work before the Japanese were out of sight. Down below, the engineers said they could get the boilers going within an hour. Repair crews patched the hole in the flight deck with six-by-four planks of Douglas fir.

But the radio gear had been destroyed, so Admiral Fletcher was deaf and blind. With his personal staff he transferred to the cruiser Astoria, and he handed over tactical command to Spruance on the Enterprise.

Under his breath, Chuck said: ‘Fuck you, Vandermeier – I survived.’

He spoke too soon.

The engines throbbed back to life. Now under the command of Captain Buckmaster, the Yorktown began once again to cut through the Pacific waves. Some of her planes had already taken refuge on the Enterprise, but others were still in the air, so she turned into the wind, and they began to touch down and refuel. As she had no working radio, Chuck and his colleagues became a semaphore team to communicate with other ships using old-fashioned flags.

At half past two, the radar of a cruiser escorting the Yorktown revealed planes coming in low from the west – an attack flight from the Hiryu, presumably. The cruiser signalled the news to the carrier. Buckmaster sent up twelve Wildcats to intercept.

The Wildcats must have been unable to stop the attack, for ten torpedo bombers appeared, skimming the waves, heading straight for the Yorktown.

Chuck could see the planes clearly. They were Nakajima B5Ns, called Kates by the Americans. Each carried a torpedo slung under its fuselage, the weapon almost half the length of the entire plane.

The four heavy cruisers escorting the carrier shelled the sea around her, throwing up a screen of foamy water, but the Japanese pilots were not so easily deterred, and they flew straight through the spray.

Chuck saw the first plane drop its torpedo. The long bomb splashed into the water, pointed at the Yorktown.

The plane flashed past the ship so close that Chuck saw the pilot’s face. He was wearing a white-and-red headband as well as his flight helmet. He shook a triumphant fist at the crew on deck. Then he was gone.