The Twilight Warriors Part 3

Vice Adm. Matome Ugaki studied the map spread out on his desk. The tiny atoll looked no bigger than a flyspeck. Reaching the enemy base at Ulithi would be a demanding feat of navigation for his tokko tokko airmen, but it could be done. airmen, but it could be done.

Ugaki had arrived at his new command post in Kanoya in mid-February 1945, just as the American invasion of Iwo Jima was about to begin. Frustrated and angry, the admiral followed the inexorable progress of the battle. By March 6, 1945, the vital airfield at Iwo Jima was in American hands. In two more weeks the battle for the island would be over.

With carrier-based close air support no longer necessary, the American carriers were withdrawing from Iwo Jima. A j.a.panese reconnaissance plane had just reported that sixteen U.S. carriers were entering the lagoon at Ulithi.

To Ugaki, this was an irresistible opportunity. It would be glorious! Such an audacious tokko tokko mission would send a single, s.h.i.+ning statement to the world: the j.a.panese people would never surrender. mission would send a single, s.h.i.+ning statement to the world: the j.a.panese people would never surrender.

Ugaki gave the order to prepare the operation, which took the name Tan No. 2. (Tan No. 1 had been a similar strike on the U.S. anchorage at Majuro from the j.a.panese base on Truk but was aborted because the U.S. fleet departed Majuro before the attack.) Called the Azusa Special Attack Unit, the tokko tokko pilots would fly two dozen twin-engine Yokosuka P1Y "Frances" bombers nonstop from Kanoya to Ulithi, a distance of 1,350 miles. Each bomber had a crew of three and carried an 800-kilogram (1,764-lb.) bomb. The Tan operation would be the longest and boldest kamikaze raid ever attempted. pilots would fly two dozen twin-engine Yokosuka P1Y "Frances" bombers nonstop from Kanoya to Ulithi, a distance of 1,350 miles. Each bomber had a crew of three and carried an 800-kilogram (1,764-lb.) bomb. The Tan operation would be the longest and boldest kamikaze raid ever attempted.

The first component of the mission, a j.a.panese flying boat, took off at 0300 from Kagos.h.i.+ma, on the southern tip of j.a.pan, to scout the weather en route to Ulithi. Four land-based bombers left Kanoya at 0430 to patrol in advance of the main force. Four more flying boats launched from Kagos.h.i.+ma at 0730 to serve as pathfinders for the twenty-four kamikaze bombers, led by Lt. Kuromaru Naoto.

The Tan No. 2 mission began to unravel early. Plagued by the same problems that afflicted every j.a.panese air combat unit-bad gasoline and shortages of parts-thirteen of the Frances bombers developed engine trouble. Most were able to divert to the j.a.panese-held island of Minami Daito. Two ditched in the ocean.

As the remaining eleven bombers neared Ulithi, a system of heavy rain squalls forced them to climb above the clouds, depriving them of visual navigation cues. When they guessed they were near Ulithi, they descended back through the clouds-and saw nothing. Finally spotting the island of Yap, 120 miles west of Ulithi, they turned toward their target.

By now the mission was well behind schedule. Darkness was descending over the Pacific. Because of the diversions around weather, the bombers were at the extreme end of their range. One by one the Nakajima NK9B engines coughed and went silent. Nine of the bombers splashed into the darkened sea.

Two were still flying. As the shape of Ulithi lagoon loomed out of the darkness, the fatigued pilots peered down, trying to pick out the s.h.i.+ps in the anchorage. Their targets were almost invisible. Almost, but not entirely.

It was dark on the flight deck of the USS Randolph Randolph. Radioman Second Cla.s.s V. J. Verdolini had just gotten off watch. He was walking along the starboard edge of the flight deck, on his way to the Radio 3 compartment near the stern, when he heard music. It was coming from the hangar bay below. A movie-A Song to Remember-was playing, and more than a hundred crewmen were crammed into the open bay. Verdolini hesitated, then decided to go below and catch the end of the movie. It was a decision that saved his life.

The movie was nearly over. It ended with Cornel Wilde, as the composer Frederic Chopin, playing the "Heroic Polonaise." Verdolini was standing in the back of the crowded hangar bay, about to head back to the stern, when a white flash blinded him. A thunderous explosion rocked the s.h.i.+p. Verdolini was slammed to the steel deck.

Dazed, he staggered to his feet, dimly aware of the klaxon sounding the general quarters alarm. Bodies were lying around him. Except for flash burns on his face and arms, Verdolini wasn't seriously injured. By the time they extinguished the blazes on Randolph Randolph, twenty-five men were dead and more than a hundred were wounded.

Not for several more hours did they piece together what had happened. The kamikaze bomber-one of the two that made it to Ulithi that night-crashed into Randolph Randolph's starboard side aft, just below the flight deck. With almost no fuel remaining, the Frances bomber didn't burn, but its bomb exploded with horrific results. They later found the remains of the three j.a.panese crewmen in the wreckage of the bomber.

The second kamikaze was less successful. Searching for a target on the darkened atoll, the pilot zeroed in on what appeared to be the silhouette of an enemy wars.h.i.+p. It was, in fact, tiny Sorlen Island. The Frances bomber plunged straight into the uninhabited islet and exploded.

The brazenness of the attack shocked everyone. To fleet and task force commanders, the attack was an eye-opener. Before they invaded Okinawa, they would have to stamp out the bases where the kamikazes lived.

Smoke was still spewing from the charred fantail of Randolph Randolph the next morning when the next morning when Intrepid Intrepid pulled into the Ulithi anchorage. Sober-faced sailors stared from the rail at the wreckage on pulled into the Ulithi anchorage. Sober-faced sailors stared from the rail at the wreckage on Randolph Randolph's stern. For those who had just joined the carrier in San Francisco, it was a first glimpse of the reality of war.

The voyage from Pearl Harbor had taken ten days. To the "plank owners"-sailors who had been aboard Intrepid Intrepid since her commissioning in August 1943-pulling back into the Ulithi lagoon evoked a flood of memories, some good, some painful. Ulithi was where they had come between battles to rest and replenish. The recreational facility on Mog Mog Island was where they sloshed around in the surf, drank their ration of two warm beers, and swapped news and war stories with sailors from other s.h.i.+ps. since her commissioning in August 1943-pulling back into the Ulithi lagoon evoked a flood of memories, some good, some painful. Ulithi was where they had come between battles to rest and replenish. The recreational facility on Mog Mog Island was where they sloshed around in the surf, drank their ration of two warm beers, and swapped news and war stories with sailors from other s.h.i.+ps.

Ulithi was also the place where Intrepid Intrepid had come five months earlier, her decks smoldering and the stench of death filling the hangar bay, after enduring two consecutive kamikaze strikes off the Philippines. had come five months earlier, her decks smoldering and the stench of death filling the hangar bay, after enduring two consecutive kamikaze strikes off the Philippines.

Ulithi looked different now. Everywhere, from one end of the big heart-shaped lagoon to the other, were s.h.i.+ps-carriers, destroyers, battles.h.i.+ps-all part of the the vast fleet a.s.sembling for the invasion of the last stepping-stone to j.a.pan, Okinawa.

The U.S. military's path to j.a.pan had been divided since 1943 when the joint chiefs dictated that forces of the U.S. Army, under Douglas MacArthur, would advance via the Solomons, the Bismarck Archipelago, New Guinea, and the Philippines. The U.S. Navy, led in the Pacific by Chester Nimitz, would drive across the central Pacific, landing Marines in the Marshalls, the Carolines, and the Marianas, and now on Okinawa.

It was an awkward, two-headed command structure, unlike the situation in Europe, where Gen. Dwight Eisenhower had supreme command of all U.S. forces. At Okinawa, the Army-Navy command sharing would continue. A U.S. Army general, Simon Buckner Jr., would command the ground forces, while Fifth Fleet commander Adm. Raymond Spruance would have overall responsibility for the invasion.

Just as confusing was the Navy's habit of changing the fleet designations. When Spruance was in command, the armada was called the Fifth Fleet, but when he was relieved by his counterpart, Adm. Bull Halsey, it became the Third Fleet, and the designation of each task force and task group was similarly changed.

The name changes gave everyone headaches, including the enemy. Halsey likened it to changing drivers and keeping the horses. "It was hard on the horses," he explained later, "but it was effective. It consistently misled the j.a.ps into an exaggerated conception of our seagoing strength."

Neither Halsey nor hardly any other American in 1945 had trouble using words such as j.a.ps j.a.ps or or Nips Nips. No one would forget that it was the j.a.ps who had perpetrated the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Magazine articles and intelligence reports confirmed that rampaging j.a.p troops bayoneted babies, beheaded prisoners, and raped their conquered people. Hating j.a.ps made it easy to kill them.

The hatred and racism were mutual. j.a.panese fighting men held Americans, as well as most other Westerners, in contempt. j.a.panese soldiers and sailors were fed a steady stream of salacious stories about how barbaric U.S. troops rolled over civilians and prisoners with their tanks. Americans were spoiled, decadent, uncivilized. They would go down in defeat because they lacked the courageous spirit of j.a.panese fighting men.

We welcome Intrepid Intrepid to the Okinawa area," said the silky voice on the radio. "Kamikaze division number 147 will join you on your arrival." to the Okinawa area," said the silky voice on the radio. "Kamikaze division number 147 will join you on your arrival."

The voice belonged to Tokyo Rose, whose broadcasts from j.a.pan were coming over the s.h.i.+p's radio. The announcer was supposed to sound like an evil seductress who knew the location of every U.S. s.h.i.+p and planted thoughts about what the GIs' wives and girlfriends were up to while they were at war. The idea was to erode the morale of the U.S. fighting men, but it produced the opposite effect. Most thought it was great entertainment.

Tokyo Rose, who was actually a composite of eight or more female broadcasters, had a mocking, sardonic humor that made them laugh. "h.e.l.lo again," she would start out, "this is your favorite enemy." The shows had music, popular and cla.s.sic, and news from home, mostly concerning disasters and privations of the war, and then accounts of all the American s.h.i.+ps sunk and battles lost. Sailors cracked up when they heard, often for the third or fourth time, that their their s.h.i.+p had been sent to the bottom. s.h.i.+p had been sent to the bottom.

Still, the Tail End Charlies had to wonder. How did she know Intrepid Intrepid was on its way? What else did she know about them? Was it true about the kamikazes joining them? What was so important about Okinawa? was on its way? What else did she know about them? Was it true about the kamikazes joining them? What was so important about Okinawa?

The answer was geography. The Great Loochoo-the name the ancients bestowed on the island of Okinawa-was 340 miles from j.a.pan. The island was 64 miles long, set in the middle of the Ryukyus, the chain that dangled like a stinger from the rump of the j.a.panese home islands.

For seven centuries the Great Loochoo had been an autonomous kingdom, maintaining a precarious balance between the competing powers of China and j.a.pan. The militaristic Meiji dynasty of j.a.pan swept down to annex the Ryukyus in 1879 and since then had governed it in colonial fas.h.i.+on. Okinawans became second-cla.s.s citizens of the j.a.panese empire, whose administrators considered the Okinawans to be ignorant and racially inferior. As a result, the natives of the Great Loochoo retained their own customs and dialects. For the most part they had no use for the abstract j.a.panese notions of bus.h.i.+do bus.h.i.+do and loyalty to an emperor. and loyalty to an emperor.

The majority of the 450,000 Okinawans lived in the south. Most were farmers living in thatched huts or small frame houses. Private automobiles were virtually nonexistent. Two of the three primitive railroads were horse-drawn. There were only three towns of any significance: Toguchi, on the spa.r.s.ely populated northern peninsula; Shuri, ancient seat of the Great Loochoo and site of a castle; and Naha, the modern capital.

Okinawa's major a.s.sets were its three airfields and half dozen natural harbors. But the real prize was its proximity to the enemy homeland. The Great Loochoo would be the springboard to j.a.pan.

By mid-March 1945, the man responsible for the amphibious a.s.sault on the Great Loochoo was making his final preparations.

They called him the "Alligator." In a war that demanded the invasion of the enemy's ocean empire one island at a time, Vice Adm. Richmond K. Turner was the acknowledged master. Though Kelly Turner earned the "Alligator" label because of his mastery of amphibious operations, those who knew him thought it also described his personality. His subordinates had their own name for him, never used in his presence-"Terrible" Turner. A Time Time magazine article commented about Turner, "To his colleagues (who know how to use monosyllables respectfully) he is known as 'a mean son of a b.i.t.c.h.'" magazine article commented about Turner, "To his colleagues (who know how to use monosyllables respectfully) he is known as 'a mean son of a b.i.t.c.h.'"

Turner had a high, receding hairline, bushy eyebrows, and steel-rimmed spectacles through which he could direct a withering glower like a barrage from his guns. s.h.i.+ps he commanded were remembered as "taut" rather than "happy."

The Alligator, for his part, had no interest in happy. His reputation for arrogance nearly matched that of his old boss, Adm. Ernest King, the chief of naval operations, who once described Turner as "brilliant, caustic, arrogant and tactless." Coming from King, it was the highest form of compliment. It meant that he saw in Turner a version of himself.

Turner and his equally cantankerous counterpart, Marine Maj. Gen. Holland "Howlin' Mad" Smith, had been a formidable team in the invasions of Betio, Makin, Majuro, Kwajalein, Roi, and Namur. In March 1944, Turner commanded the nearly flawless landings on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. In February 1945, he directed the b.l.o.o.d.y campaign at Iwo Jima.

Here at Okinawa the Alligator would be running the greatest invasion of them all. As usual, he had developed a plan that covered every detail of the complex operation, leaving his subcommanders no gray area or need for improvisation. He was still, as naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison observed, "the same driving, swearing, sweating 'Kelly' whose head could conceive more new ideas and retain more details than any flag officer in the Navy."

Aboard his flags.h.i.+p, the cruiser Eldorado Eldorado, Turner was making final preparations for the invasion when his eye was drawn to a cl.u.s.ter of mountainous islands 15 miles southwest of Okinawa called the Kerama Retto. Retto Retto meant "archipelago," and what interested Turner was the natural anchorage between the largest island of the group and the five smaller ones to the west. meant "archipelago," and what interested Turner was the natural anchorage between the largest island of the group and the five smaller ones to the west.

It looked to Turner as if the anchorage-"roadstead" in naval parlance-might be able to shelter seventy-five or more of his s.h.i.+ps. Even better, both ends of the anchorage could be protected by antisubmarine nets. Another feature he liked was the Aka Channel, a two-mile clearway ideal for seaplanes and their tenders.

The trouble was, none of Turner's task group commanders agreed with him. Trying to take the Kerama Retto only a few days before the April 1 invasion of Okinawa was too great a risk. If the j.a.panese put up a tenacious defense, it would tie up the invasion force and divert resources from the critical landings on Okinawa.

It wasn't the Alligator's style to be dissuaded when he knew he was right. True to form, he listened to the arguments, then dismissed them all. h.e.l.l, yes, it was a risk, but it was worth it. One thing he'd learned from Iwo Jima was that an invasion fleet needed a sheltered anchorage for replenishment.

In any case, Turner doubted the j.a.panese would put up a fierce resistance. The whole d.a.m.ned Retto, he told his staff, could probably be captured by a single battalion. Still, to be on the safe side, he would agree to a division-sized amphibious a.s.sault.

The major threat to Turner's s.h.i.+ps would be the kamikazes based in southern j.a.pan. And the carriers of Mitscher's Task Force 58-the Fast Carrier Task Force-were already on their way to j.a.pan to hit the kamikaze bases.

Among them was the newcomer, USS Intrepid Intrepid.

6

FIRST BLOODING FIRST BLOODING USS INTREPID INTREPID

138 MILES SOUTHEAST OF KYUSHU, j.a.pAN

MARCH 18, 1945

The squawk box blared at 0415. Erickson climbed down from his third-tier bunk in Boys' Town and joined the line in the head. No one had gotten much sleep. The chatter this morning was subdued, not the usual raunchy banter. After a quick breakfast in the wardroom, Erickson made his way to the squadron ready room.

The pilots looked like aliens, all wearing red-lensed goggles to protect their night vision from the glare of the ready room lights. They were also wearing something new-a green nylon anti-blackout suit. Called a "G-suit," the garment was supposed to inflate during high acceleration, squeezing the pilot's legs and torso and preventing a blackout because of blood draining from his brain.

Being a lowly ensign, like a full third of the squadron pilots, Erickson knew his place. He went to the back of the ready room and took a seat in the last row. The leather-upholstered ready room seats were another anomaly that was peculiar to the flying Navy, like the brown shoes and green uniforms worn by naval aviators. The high-backed seats looked more appropriate for an airliner than a naval vessel.

A few minutes before 0500, the squadron skipper came barging in. If Will Rawie was nervous, he didn't show it. In fact, Rawie seemed more nonchalant than ever, keeping a matter-of-fact demeanor as he told them where they were headed on their first combat mission.

They were going to j.a.pan.

The mood in the ready room turned even more somber. No one was really surprised. They'd already been briefed that their first targets before the Okinawa invasion would probably be the airfields in j.a.pan. That was where the kamikazes came from.

Until that morning, that's what it had been-probably. Now Rawie had just cleared it up for them. He stuck a map of southern j.a.pan up on the bulkhead.

From the back of the ready room, the Tail End Charlies stared through their red-lensed goggles. Reality was setting in. Any of them who still worried that he was missing the war could officially stop worrying.

The primary target was Oita airfield on the southernmost island of Kyushu. In case of bad weather, the secondary would be Saeki airfield. Erickson jotted the flight information on his knee board. With a grease pencil he marked on his plotting board the coordinates of Point Option-the position where the carrier was supposed to be at the end of the four-hour mission. If the carrier had to duck into rain squalls for cover or run from an enemy threat, Point Option could be 75 miles off when a strike came home low on fuel.

Rawie read off the aircraft a.s.signments. Twelve Corsairs were headed for Kyushu. Another eight Corsairs as well as four F6F-5N h.e.l.lcat night fighters would fly CAP-combat air patrol-over the task group. Intrepid Intrepid and her task group were dangerously close to j.a.pan. The job of the CAP fighters was to intercept enemy aircraft before they could get to the carriers. and her task group were dangerously close to j.a.pan. The job of the CAP fighters was to intercept enemy aircraft before they could get to the carriers.

The j.a.panese already knew they were there. All through the night enemy aircraft had been probing the task force defenses. The snoopers were driven off by antiaircraft fire from the destroyer screen. No one doubted that they would be back in force now that they'd located the fleet.

At 0520 the gravel-voiced order came over the ready room squawk box: "Pilots, man your planes." Each man pulled on his parachute harness, Mae West life preserver, and .38 revolver. They dropped the red-lensed goggles in a box outside the ready room. In silence they trudged down the dimly lighted pa.s.sageway and up the steel ladder to the catwalk at the edge of the flight deck.

A chill wind swept over the deck. Beyond the rail they saw only the empty void of the ocean and sky.

The flight deck was covered with warplanes. Ordnancemen were scrambling over them, hanging bombs, rockets, loading .50-caliber guns. The Corsairs were in the front of the pack, wings folded, noses tilted up, looking like raptors in the darkness.

Country Landreth was one of the CAP pilots. As a combat veteran with three and a half kills to his credit, he had been a natural choice for the critical job of fleet defense on their first day of action.

Picking his way through the parked airplanes, Landreth found his Corsair in the front of the pack. The CAP fighters would be first to catapult, then take their station over the task group while the strike aircraft were launching. The wings of the CAP fighters were clean-no bombs or rockets, just the single 160-gallon drop tank on the center station beneath the fuselage.

Erickson's fighter was further back on the deck. He found it in the darkness, gave it a once-over, then climbed up to the c.o.c.kpit. The plane captain-the Navy term for a crew chief-was an enlisted man a good ten years older than Erickson. Erickson was surprised to see that the man was in tears and shaking. He'd heard the sky was thick with j.a.panese airplanes headed for the Intrepid Intrepid. He was afraid for his life.

Erickson was struck by the absurdity of the situation. He was about to launch on a combat mission into the heartland of the enemy. But before he took off he had to console an anxiety-stricken sailor who would remain behind on the carrier. Erickson told the man not to worry, everything would be fine.

After he'd strapped in, Erickson flicked on the instrument panel lights. Seconds later a voice boomed over the flight deck bullhorn: "Erickson, turn off those G.o.dd.a.m.n lights!" He flicked off the lights. d.a.m.n d.a.m.n. He'd forgotten that the flight deck was supposed to be blacked out. He wondered for a moment how the air boss knew who he was, then he remembered: up in the island they had every plane and pilot's position on the deck plotted. His first mission, and everyone on the flight deck had just heard that he'd screwed up.

Minutes later over the same bullhorn came the order to start engines. Up and down the deck the big three-bladed propellers whirled. Tongues of flame spat from exhaust stacks. The rustle of wind was dissolved in the sound of chuffing, belching radial engines. A cloud of sweet-smelling exhaust smoke drifted down the deck and through the open c.o.c.kpits.

Erickson's engine settled down to a low, steady throb. Following the lighted wands of the plane director, he taxied to the number one catapult on the port side of the forward deck. On signal, he unfolded the Corsair's wings, then checked to make sure they were locked in place.

Nearly an hour remained before sunrise, but the eastern sky was turning pale, offering a tiny pencil line of horizon. Except for his night carrier qualifications aboard USS Core Core nearly four months before, Erickson had no experience at launching in darkness. nearly four months before, Erickson had no experience at launching in darkness.

One after another, the Corsairs hurtled down the catapult track. Erickson's flight leader, CAG Hyland, was already airborne. Windy Hill had just launched from the starboard catapult. Erickson waited while the crewmen hooked the catapult shuttle to the belly of his airplane. On signal he pushed the throttle up to full power, checked his gauges, then shoved his head back against the headrest. He gave the ready-to-launch salute.

The catapult fired. Erickson felt like a stone in a slingshot. He sensed the dark shape of the carrier sweeping away behind him. The hard thrust of the hydraulic catapult abruptly ceased, and the Corsair hurtled into the night sky.

Minutes later, Erickson was joined up with Hyland's flight, tucked in behind Windy Hill's right wing, on his way to j.a.pan.

From his CAP station at 20,000 feet, Landreth squinted into the pinkening sky. It was still too dark to pick out the shapes of wars.h.i.+ps against the blackened ocean. All the carriers in Intrepid Intrepid's Task Group 58.4 had launched their strikes. Now the aircraft were en route to the targets.

Most of the time, combat air patrol was an exercise in boredom. You droned in an orbit over the task force, conserving fuel, waiting for a sudden urgent call from the FIDO-fighter director-whose radar showed incoming unidentified aircraft, called bogeys. When the bogeys were identified as hostile, they became bandits. In the s.p.a.ce of seconds, boredom was replaced with a surge of adrenaline-charged excitement.

For Landreth, no such call had come. In the warm solitude of his c.o.c.kpit, he had time to reflect. Like most pilots in the wartime Navy, he was a reserve officer. When the war ended and the military shrank back to peacetime size, they would return to civilian life. Now that Landreth was in his second tour of combat duty, he had reached a decision. He wanted to stay in.

The night before, he'd brought up the subject with the skipper over a toddy in Rawie's stateroom. Technically, it was a breach of regulations. Drinking aboard Navy s.h.i.+ps had been banned since 1914 when Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels issued General Order 99: "The use or introduction for drinking purposes of alcoholic liquors on board any naval vessel, or within any navy yard or station, is strictly prohibited, and commanding officers will be held directly responsible for the enforcement of this order."

It was one of those rules that begged to be broken. Most squadron pilots had stashes of booze for the purpose of late-night debriefings, celebrations of promotions and victories, and toasts to fallen comrades. Few commanding officers made an issue of it, and Will Rawie was no exception. Rawie, in fact, was a firm believer in the salutary benefits of a libation with his pilots and kept his own supply for that purpose.

Rawie told Landreth he had his blessing to become a regular officer in the Navy. It was exactly what Landreth had hoped to hear. He left the skipper's stateroom with a warm contentment from the drinks and the knowledge that he had a career ahead of him in the Navy.

Landreth was still feeling the contentment as he and his flight continued their orbit on their CAP station. It was quiet in their sector, although the h.e.l.lcat night fighter pilots on the opposite side of the task force had been sent after a pair of intruders, a twin-engine Kawasaki Ki-45 "Nick" fighter and a Mitsubis.h.i.+ G4M Betty bomber. They only managed to get a quick burst into the Nick before both aircraft escaped in the clouds.

Landreth's...o...b..t was bringing him back to an easterly heading. As he watched, the rim of the sun broke through the horizon. In a matter of minutes, the sea was bathed in an ethereal orange glow. One by one, the gray s.h.i.+ps below became visible.

Landreth was astounded. "From horizon to horizon," he recalled, "the ocean was covered with the might of the United States Navy. Five task groups-twenty-one carriers and all their escorts." Until that moment, the ultimate victory of the United States over j.a.pan had been only a vague a.s.sumption. Gazing down at the armada of wars.h.i.+ps, Landreth was struck with a sudden realization: the outcome of the war was a certainty. It was almost over. The day was close when the fighting would be over.

What Landreth didn't know was that for him that day was today.

Erickson was hearing noises. He was in his a.s.signed slot-Tail End Charlie-in CAG Hyland's four-plane division. They were droning over the open ocean, en route to j.a.pan. And Erickson kept hearing these worrisome sounds from his Corsair.

With them were more flights from the fighter squadron, VF-10, making a total of nineteen fighters. All were armed with eight of the new 5-inch HVARs, which someone had aptly nicknamed "Holy Moses," describing their reaction the first time they fired the rockets.

Erickson was still hearing the worrisome noises. He knew what they were, of course, but they didn't go away. Such noises were a joke-and a common phenomenon-among fighter pilots. On your first long mission over water, you heard things. You heard a roughness in the engine, a buzz in the controls, a rattle that didn't belong. After you stopped worrying about the noises, you worried about other things: losing fuel, magnetos shorting out, oil leaking.

Erickson knew all this, but he worried anyway. For a while he worried that his guns might not work. After running out of things to worry about, he started wondering about his parachute. Would he be able to open it? He practiced reaching for the D-ring of the chute. Just in case.

After an hour over the water, they spotted the sh.o.r.eline of Kyushu. The primary target, Oita airfield, lay on the northeast coast, looking across the Bungo Strait at the island of s.h.i.+koku. Oita wasn't visible. It was obscured beneath a heavy cloud cover, and Hyland made his first decision as a strike leader. They would go for the secondary target, the Saeki naval base and airfield. Saeki was thirty miles south of Oita and visible through the broken cloud deck.

Erickson armed his guns and set his rockets to fire in salvo. One after the other the Corsairs pushed over in their dives. As the airfield, buildings, and revetments swelled in his winds.h.i.+eld, Erickson could see the parked j.a.panese airplanes lined up, red meatb.a.l.l.s on their wings.