Days of Infamy (44 page)

Genda stepped off into the water and he followed suit.

His life belt kept his head well above the water, but the slapping of the choppy water between the two ships splashed oil into his face and eyes, stinging them. It was hard to see as he swam the few strokes over to the destroyer. When crew members aboard realized who was approaching, several jumped in, coming to his side, and he shouted for them to first help Genda, who was floundering, trying to keep one hand above the oil-slicked water, clutching the canvas bag containing the Z flag.

Together they reached the netting, and eager hands pulled him aloft and onto the deck of the destroyer, whose captain stood at rigid attention, saluting the admiral, his white uniform now stained black with oil.

“I am transferring my flag to your ship,” Yamamoto said formally.

“I am humbled and honored by your presence, sir.”

“We’re the last. May I suggest cutting away lines and moving away,” Yamamoto ordered.

Seconds later the lines were cut. The engines slowly revved up, helm put over gently to turn away without swinging their fantail into the dying carrier. He could sense the sighs of relief by all aboard.

Akagi
loomed like a giant above them. With the angle of list, the bridge all but towered directly above the small destroyer, threatening to engulf it if the ship should roll, the heat of the inferno consuming the carrier so intense he actually had to shield his face. A sailor offered him a basin of fresh water and a white towel. He made it a point of first passing it to Genda, who rinsed out his eyes, wiped his face somewhat clean, and then with a bow passed the soiled towel back to Yamamoto, who did the same. The sailor took the towel back, clutching it as if were now some honored, historic heirloom.

They were making way, standing a hundred yards off, then a hundred and fifty.

Another explosion, this one bursting somewhere below the water line, flame and a geyser of water soaring up, the great ship lurching; then more explosions, louder. He sensed it must be the torpedo or bomb lockers far below, their detonations ripping out the keel of the ship.

She started to settle, list now over sixty degrees, and then the death plunge began, deck nearly vertical so that for a moment it looked as if she would indeed roll over, and then this beloved ship simply died, like a beloved dog that drew a final breath and then slowly laid its head down. Resting on her starboard side, stern angling down slightly,
Akagi
settled deeper and deeper, great blasts of air, steam, and smoke venting out her starboard side, water foaming.

To his horror he saw a few men were still on board after all. Somehow they had made it up to stand precariously on what had been the side of the ship, perhaps blown clear out by the blasts of air escaping the ship. One of them actually appeared to salute. A sigh, a cry went up from all those watching and Yamamoto, crying unashamedly, saluted back. In spite of his belief in the absurdity of the tradition of a highly trained officer feeling compelled to die with his ship when rescue was but yards away, he felt a wave of guilt for leaving those who had been trapped aboard.

And then she was gone. Oil and smoke bubbled up from the foaming sea; a moment later explosions rocked the destroyer as they
tore through
Akagi
even as she started her long slide down to the ocean floor. Then there was nothing but an oil-slick sea, wreckage bubbling up, and the vast ocean had claimed another victim of the war.

A bugler on the destroyer sounded a ceremonial flourish, a salute to the fallen. All bowed their heads, and nearly all wept. A lone Zero came down low, skimming over the water, and then pulled up, rocking its wings in salute.

FUCHIDA WEPT WITH
them. The strike wave that had destroyed
Lexington
was returning, and those who had flown off their beloved
Akagi
were being ordered to land on any carrier available.

But he could not leave her yet as he pulled up from his salute, circling one more time before breaking toward
Kaga
, to go into the landing pattern… and then he saw it. A thin, almost invisible wake was closing in on
Kaga
but two miles ahead.

“Submarine two miles off
Kaga
’s bow!” he shouted, sending the message in the clear, and he dived over, lining up, and began to strafe. With luck perhaps one of his twenty-millimeter rounds just might strike the periscope, but at least his gunfire would mark the position.

“SHIT!”

“Dive! Take her deep!”

Captain Lubbers slapped up the handles of the periscope, stepping back, a petty officer hitting the periscope down button. There was a vibration—something had hit the periscope.
Thresher
started to arc down.

Another minute at most, and he could have put four fish into that other damn carrier. It had been coming straight at him.

“Damn it!”

Through the hull he could hear soft thumps, explosions. He cursed that damn Zero, which he had only caught a glimpse of, as water began to foam up around the periscope lens.

“We better get ready. They’ve spotted us,” was all he said, heading down from the periscope room to the main deck.

“Did you get that signal out about the Jap carrier sinking?” he asked, looking over at his radio operator, who grinned, nodded, and gave him a thumbs up.

“Wish it’d been us that did it,” he said bitterly, his attention turned away to his sound detector, who announced he had something inbound, sounding like a destroyer.

With those fat carriers out there, they were going to be swarming all over him, he realized bitterly. Angling down now through a hundred feet, his firing solution on the carrier lost, he raged in silent frustration. Without doubt the fattest targets of the war had decided to steam straight at him. He should have fired earlier, instead of electing to wait until range was down to two thousand yards. And now the moment was lost.

But at least he had had the pleasure of watching the other Jap go down, and even as they dived they could hear the distant rumbling of the huge ship, as it sank into the depths, bulkheads collapsing, explosions rumbling, the noise so loud it all but drowned out the sound of the approaching destroyers that would doggedly follow him and drop depth charges for the next two hours.

“I THINK THERE’S
supposed to be some tradition that I’m to be the last one off,” Captain Sherman announced, trying to put a smile on, though the anguish in his voice was obvious.

“Fine then, you got it,” Admiral Newton replied.

The old Lady Lex was heavy down by the bow, water now beginning to pour in through the huge hole blasted there by the secondary explosion of the aviation gas. As the thousands upon thousands of gallons of seawater began to cascade in, the ocean did what the firefighters could not, dousing the flames eight decks below. Vents of hissing steam and smoke roared back up.

A destroyer and cruiser lay off her side. Dozens of launches were in the water, picking up survivors. The last of the sixteen hundred men were leaving four hundred of their dead comrades behind.

He walked to the edge of the deck and noted something strange. There were rows of shoes; for some reason men had taken them off before jumping off. He looked down at his old “brown
shoes,” proud symbol of a naval aviator, and opted to keep them on.

It was roughly a twenty-foot drop.
Lex
was going to go down bow first, rather than rolling over, though the list to port was significant, otherwise it would have been a nearly deadly eighty-foot jump.

A hundred or more ropes dangled over the side. More than a few of his men had decided to try and climb down rather than take the jump, but the ropes were now so slick with oil that such an attempt simply resulted in bad friction burns to the hands.

He took his flag and handed it to his steward.

“Can you manage this?” he asked.

The steward smiled, saluted, set down a duffel bag, and stuffed the flag inside. Admiral Newton asked for the same regarding his flag. The duffel bag had two Mae Wests secured to it.

Sherman looked back toward the bridge, the famed silhouette unique to
Lexington
and
Saratoga.
Fires, boiling up from the abandoned engine room, were pouring out a soaring plume of black smoke from the stacks, and the bridge itself was aflame now.

He could feel the list increasing under his feet as the bow slipped deeper beneath the waves, and as it did so the distance to the water actually began to increase where they stood.

“Over you go, gentlemen,” Sherman announced, and he even gave Newton a bit of a shove as the commander of the task force leapt off, steward and the last of the bridge staff following.

He paused a moment, looking about, wanting to make sure he was the last able-bodied man off. He saw a couple of jumpers farther aft, cradling between them a wounded comrade, an “asbestos Joe” sitting on the edge, kicking off his bright leggings and then slipping off the side, hitting the water and surfacing. He was about to jump when he spotted a chaplain who was coming out of the smoke, walking backward slowly, looking toward the inferno amidships.

“Come on, Padre! Over with you.”

The man looked at him, face tear streaked, and actually shook his head.

“Padre, now!”

“I had to leave four men down there,” the priest cried, a sob shuddering through him.

There was a moment of horror at the implication that the padre was looking for help, that he’d have to go back.

“They were dying, we couldn’t move them they were so badly burned. I gave them last rites.” He began to sob. “They told me to go. Two of them were brothers.”

He was clutching a sheet of note paper, names and addresses scribbled on them.

“Padre, you staying won’t change it for them,” Sherman said, his own voice husky with emotion. “Now come on, jump with me.”

The padre stood next to him, hesitated, and shook his head.

“Damn it, Father, you don’t go, I don’t go. The Lord is with them now, we can’t do anything more for them.”

He pointed to the paper crumpled up in the priest’s hand.

“Give that to me.”

The priest did not resist as Sherman took the sheet of paper and scanned the names: two seamen second class from Millburn,
New Jersey, a lieutenant from Texas, a petty officer—merciful God, he recognized the name, an old hand on
Lex
from the engine room.

He folded the slip of paper up and stuck it into his pocket.

“Find me after this and we’ll write the letters together. OK?”

The priest nodded.

Before he could say another word, Sherman forcefully shoved him over the side. He spared one final glance back, saluted the bridge, the American flag still flying above it, turned, and jumped.

MINUTES
later he was on the deck of the old cruiser
Chicago.
Picked up by their launch boat, Newton had preceded him up the netting. He had hung on to the padre, pushing him into the launch first and then up the net, just to make sure that the distraught priest did not do anything foolish and try to go back.

Ritual was followed as he was piped aboard, returning the salute of
Chicago
’s captain, who greeted him and shook his hand.

“Sir,
Portland, Astoria
, and two destroyers are currently engaged at long range with a Japanese cruiser to our southwest about twenty miles from here.”

Newton, black with oil, but face wiped clean, already had binoculars up, trained aft, and even without the binoculars Sherman could see
Astoria
, hull down on the horizon, flashes of gunfire.

An explosion rocked
Lexington
, and his attention was focused back on his ship. Her stern was rising rapidly. It seemed impossibly high out of the water, surely her back would break from the strain but she held together. And then ever so slowly she began her death slide, going down at the bow, flags still flying.

A shiver went down his back. The
Chicago
was noted for its band. Only a handful could be spared, a few brass and woodwinds, the rest of them at crucial battle stations. They began to play the old Navy hymn.