Winds of War (104 page)
“Me? No
thanks
.”
“Fred, you’re an engineer, you know business, and your grasp of the theory is adequate. That’s the desired combination, and it’s rare. Unfortunately, no job in the world is more important right now, and you know that.”
“But ye gods, who would I work for? And report to? Not the National Bureau of Standards, for God’s sake!”
“That point is wide open. For secrecy, you might just get a consultant post in the Navy. Captain Kelleher is full of fire to get going, which rather amuses me. Years ago, Fermi came to the Navy with this entire project outlined. They turned him away as a crackpot. The Navy turned away Enrico Fermi! Well Fred? Will you serve?”
After a pause, Kirby said, “Where would I be posted?”
“It would have to be in Washington.” Kirby was silent so long that Lawrence added, “Something wrong with going to Washington?”
“I didn’t say that, but if you want those electromagnets built –”
“That’s a year away, even assuming the approach is approved and the money is appropriated. This must be done now. What do you say?”
This was Lawrence in his urgent and imperious vein, which Kirby knew well. He considered Lawrence possibly the most brilliant man alive. Kirby was several years older than the Nobel Prize winner. He had given up a straight scientific career and gone into industry after his Ph.D., largely because of his encounters with Lawrence and a few other men much younger than himself and unreachably more brilliant. They had made him feel outclassed and deflated. To be urged now by this man to take a task of this importance was irresistible.
“I hope to hell I’m not offered the job,” he said. “If I am, I’ll accept.”
By the time the sun rose over San Francisco, the line between night and day had travelled halfway around the earth, and the invasion of the Soviet Union was half a day old. Masses of men had been killed, most of them Russians, and the Soviet air force had lost hundreds of airplanes - or perhaps more than a thousand; the disaster was already beyond precise documenting.
In the officers’ club at the Mare Island Navy Yard, at a window table in the sunshine, several submarine skippers were chatting about the invasion over ham and eggs. There was little dispute over the outcome. All agreed that the Soviet Union would be crushed; some gave the Red Army as long as six weeks, others foresaw the end in three weeks or ten days. These young professional officers were not a narrow-minded or prejudiced handful; their view was held in the armed forces of the United States right to the top. The wretched showing of the Red Army against Finland had confirmed the judgment that Communism, and Stalin’s bloody purges, had reduced Russia to a nation of no military account. American war plans, in June 1941, ignored the Soviet Union in estimating the world strategic picture.
The submariners at Mare Island, peacefully gossipping at breakfast about the spread of the holocaust on the other side of the world, were expressing only what the service as a whole believed.
The main topic of discussion was whether or not the Japanese would now strike; and if so, where. These few lieutenant commanders inclined to agree that so long as the President kept up his suicidal policy of letting them buy more and more oil and scrap-iron, the Japs would probably hold off. But the consensus lasted only until Branch Hoban of the
Devilfish
challenged it.
No skipper in the squadron had more prestige. Hoban’s high standing in his class, his chilling air of competence, his sharp bridge game, his golf shooting in the seventies, his ability to hold liquor, his beautiful wife, his own magazine-cover good looks, all added up to an almost suspiciously glamorous façade. But the façade was backed by performance. Under his command the
Devilfish
had earned three E’s in engineering and gunnery, and in fleet maneuvers in May he had sneaked the
Devilfish
inside a destroyer screen and hypothetically sunk a battleship. He was clearly a comer headed for flag rank. When Lieutenant Commander Hoban talked, others listened.
Hoban argued that the world situation was like a football game, and that in Asia, the Russian Siberian army was the player facing Japan. With this latest move, Hitler had sucked the Russian man back toward the other wing, to be held as Stalin’s last reserve. This was Japan’s big chance. The Nips now had a clear field to run the ball from China south to Singapore, the Celebes, and Java, cleaning up all the rich European possessions. If only they moved fast enough, they could go over the line before the United States could pull itself together and interfere. He broke off elaborating this favorite metaphor of servicemen and left the breakfast table when he saw his new executive officer motioning to him from the doorway.
Lieutenant Aster handed him a dispatch from Commander, Submarines Pacific: DEVILFISH OVERHAUL CANCELLED EXCEPTION REPAIRS VITAL OPERATIONAL READINESS X REPORT EARLIEST POSSIBLE DATE UNDERWAY MANILA.
“Well, well, back to base!” Hoban grinned, with a trace of high-strung eagerness. “Very well! So ComSubPac expects the kickoff too. Let’s see, today’s the twenty-second, eh? There’s that compressor and number four torpedo tube that have to be buttoned up. Obviously we don’t get the new motor generator, and all the job orders will have to wait till we get alongside in Manila. But that’s okay.” Holding the dispatch against the wall, he pencilled in neat print,
Underway twenty-fourth 0700,
and handed it to Aster. “Send that off operational priority.”
“Can we do it, sir?”
“Make the Captain of the Yard an information addressee. He’ll damn well get us out of here.”
“Aye aye, sir. We’ll be short an officer. Ensign Bulotti’s hospitalized for two weeks.”
“Damnation.
That
I forgot. Well, we sail with four officers, then. Stand watch-and-watch till we get to Pearl, and try to hook us a fresh ensign out of the sub pool there.”
“Captain, do you know anybody in ComSubPac Personnel?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Well enough to swipe an ensign off new construction?”
To Aster’s saucy grin, Hoban returned a droll grimace. “Got someone in mind?”
“There’s this ensign, a shipmate of mine off the
S-45
who’s just reported aboard the
Tuna
. It’s two whole months away from shakedown.”
“Is he a good officer?”
“Well, unfortunately he’s a sack rat and goof-off.”
“Then what do we want him for?”
“I can make him deliver. In a pinch he’s resourceful and courageous. His father’s a captain in War Plans, and his brother flies an SBD off the
Enterprise
.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad. What class is he?”
“He’s a reserve. Look, Captain,” Aster exclaimed, at Hoban’s wry expression, “the officer pool will be full of reserves. You’re not going to keep a whole wardroom of regulars. Not on the
Devilfish
. Byron stands a good watch, and I know him.”
“Byron?”
“His name’s Byron Henry. Briny, they call him.”
“Okay, maybe I’ll telephone Pearl. Kind of a dirty trick to play on this Briny, though, isn’t it? New construction, based in Pearl, is a lot better duty than going to Manila in the
Devilfish
.”
“Tough titty.”
Hoban looked curiously at his executive officer. He did not yet have Aster sized up. “Don’t you like him, Lady?”
Aster shrugged. “We’re short a watch stander.”
The Pacific showed no combative specks to the westward-moving sunrise. Early sunlight slanted into the hangar deck of the
Enterprise
, moored to buoys in Pearl Harbor, on disembowelled airplanes, half-assembled torpedoes, and all the vast clutter of the floating machine shop that this deck was in peacetime. Sailors in greasy dungarees and officers in khakis were at work everywhere. Through the steel hollow, smelling as all carriers do of gasoline, rubber, metal, and sea air, a boatswain’s pipe reverberated above the workaday noise, followed by a Southern voice loudspeaker, “
Now hear this, Meeting of all officers in the wardroom in ten minutes.
”
Warren Henry climbed out of the cockpit of an SBD, wiping his hands on a greasy cloth. He put on his khaki cap, saying to the sailors working with him, “That’s me. Wish me luck.”
When he arrived in the wardroom, officers in khaki shirts and black ties already filled the chairs and lined the sides. Amidships, against the forward bulkhead, stood the movie screen, and on the green baize of a nearby table a slide projector rested. The captain, a chubby man with thick prematurely gray hair, rose and strode before the screen as soon as he saw Warren. “Gentlemen, I guess you’ve all heard the news. I’ve been keeping track on the shortwave, and it seems clear already that Der Führer has caught Joe Stalin with his hammer and sickle down.” The officers tittered formally at the captain’s pleasantry. “Personally, I feel sorry for the Russian people, saddled with such lousy leadership. The few times I’ve encountered their navy officers, I’ve found them friendly and quite professional, though somewhat odd in their ways.”
The question is, how does this affect the mission of the
Enterprise
?”
Now, as many of us know, Lieutenant Henry of Scouter Squadron Six is something of a red-hot on military history. I’ve asked him to give us a short fill-in here, before we get on with the day’s work, so that – attention on deck!”
Rear Admiral Colton appeared through a doorway, and with the noisy scrape of scores of chairs, all the officers stood up. He was a barrel-chested man with a plump purplish face scarred by plane crashes, a naval aviator dating back to the
Langley
, now ComAirPac’s chief of staff. The captain conducted him to a leather armchair hastily vacated by his exec. Lighting an enormous black cigar, the admiral motioned at the officers to take their seats.
Standing before the screen, Warren started in the modest monotone of most Navy instructors, hands on hips, legs slightly apart. He made the conventional deprecatory joke about his ignorance, then went straight at the topic.
Okay. Now, naturally, our concern is the Japanese. In theory, there should be no battle problem here. We’re so much stronger than Japan in military potential that any Jap move to start a war looks suicidal. So you hear civilians say we’ll blow the little yellow bastards off the map in two weeks, and all that poppycock.” Some of the young officers were smiling; their smiles faded. Warren hooked a blue and yellow Hydrographic Office chart over the movie screen, and took up a pointer. “Here’s a chart of the Pacific. People shouldn’t talk about blowing anybody off the map without a map in front of them.” Warren’s pointer circled the French, Dutch, and British possessions in southeast Asia. “Oil, rubber, tin, rice - you name what Japan needs to be a leading world power, and there it sits. With what’s happened to the armed forces of the European empires since 1939, it’s almost up for grabs. And the first thing to notice is that it’s all in the Jap back yard. We have to steam for days, far past Japan, just to get there. The territory in dispute, in any Pacific war, will be ten thousand miles or more from San Francisco, and at some points only eight hundred miles from Tokyo.
“Well, so our government’s been trying to keep the Japs quiet by letting them buy from us all the steel, scrap iron, and oil they want, though of course the stuff goes straight into the stockpile they need to fight a war against us. Now, I have no opinion of that policy -”
“
I
sure have,” came a sarcastic gravelly growl from the admiral. The officers laughed and applauded. Colton went on, “It’s not fit for tender ears. Sooner or later they’ll come steaming east, burning Texaco oil and shooting pieces of old Buicks at us. Some policy! Go ahead, Lieutenant. Sorry.”
Quiet ensued as Warren took away the chart. A pallid slide flashed on the screen, a situation map of the Russo-Japanese war.
“Okay, a little ancient history now. Here’s Port Arthur,” Warren pointed, “tucked far into the Yellow Sea, behind Korea. Jap back yard again. Here’s where the Japs beat the Russians in 1905. Without a declaration of war, they made a sneak attack on the Czar’s navy, a night torpedo attack. The Russkis never recovered. The Nips landed and besieged this key ice-free port. When Port Arthur finally fell, that was it. The Czar accepted a negotiated peace with a primitive country, one-sixtieth the size of his own! It was as great a victory for the Japs as the American Revolution was for us.
“Now I personally think our history books don’t give that war enough play. That’s where modern Japanese history starts. Maybe that’s where all modern history starts. Because that’s where the colored man for the first time took on the white man and beat him.”
In one corner, near the serving pantry, the white-coated steward’s mates, all Filipino or Negro, were gathered. When the topic was not secret, they had the privilege of listening to officer lectures. Glances now wandered to them from all over the wardroom, in a sudden stillness. The Filipino faces were blank masks. The Negroes’ expressions were various and enigmatic; some of the younger ones tartly smiled. This awkward moment caught Warren unawares. The presence of the steward’s mates had been a matter of course to him, hardly noticed. He shook off the embarrassment and plowed on.
“Well, this was a hell of a feat, only half a century after Perry opened up the country. The Japs learned fast. They traded silk and art objects to the British for a modern steam navy. They hired the Germans to train them an army. Then they crossed to the mainland and licked Russia.
“But remember, Moscow was a whole continent away from Port Arthur. The only link was a railroad. Long supply lines licked the Czar. Long supply lines licked Cornwallis and long supply lines licked Napoleon in Russia. The further you have to go to fight, the more you thin out your strength just getting there and coming back.
“Incidentally, at the Naval War College, war games often start with a sneak attack by the Japs on us, right here in Pearl Harbor. That derives from the Port Arthur attack. The way the Japanese mind works, why shouldn’t they repeat a trick on the white devils that once paid off so well?
