dumfounded by it.
Yet, Hara’s classmate sent the reply: “Deeply appreciate your admonition. We shall do better and count on your co-operation.”5
Seven more Zeroes quickly appeared on Ryujo’s decks. Their propellers were just beginning to spin when Amatsukaze’s lookouts shouted: “Many enemy planes approaching.”
They were from Saratoga. Thirty Dauntlesses and eight Avengers under Commander Harry Felt. The dive-bombers flew at fourteen thousand feet above broken and fleecy cloud cover, but the torpedo planes circled at a lower level waiting to strike when all enemy guns were turned toward the Dauntlesses.
Now the dive-bombers came sliding down a staircase of clouds.
They came out of a bright sun that blinded enemy gunners and polished the white caps ruffling a dark blue sea; thirty pilots diving one after another through tracers reaching up like yellow straws, thirty pairs of hands and feet working sticks and rudder-bars to steady aircraft bucking beneath the onslaught of heavier flak; and thirty rear-gunners sitting tensely to watch the narrow tan deck of Ryujo growing larger and larger. Five thousand feet, and the pilots bent to their bombsight tubes to center that deck in the crosshairs. Two thousand feet and they seized release handles. Thirty thousand-pounders falling on wildly weaving Ryujo, thirty great eggs describing their yawning parabola in full view of morbidly fascinated Japanese seamen; and then the pilots were drawing back hard on sticks, pulling out fast and flat and away while tracers seemed to wrap them in confetti and their own gunners cursed with fierce joy and raked the enemy decks with bullets.
Then the Avengers came skimming in off Ryujo’s bows, launching an anvil attack from either side so that no matter which way the enemy carrier turned to evade she would still be exposed to warheads.
Ryujo never had a chance.
Scarlet flames shot up from her. Explosions staggered and punctured her. Smoke billowed upward in huge balls that thinned as they rose into the air like pillars. As many as ten bombs had pierced her decks and at least one torpedo flashed into her side. She was an iron red sieve and Commander Hara watched in agony as she rolled over to expose her red-leaded belly. There was a hole in that, too. Then Hara’s ship and the others were rushing to her side to take off survivors. Three of her Zeros appeared, returning from the Guadalcanal strike. They circled wistfully overhead before ditching alongside the destroyers. The pilots were rescued. Ryujo would sink shortly after dusk with a hundred Japanese still aboard her.
To the west, Rear Admiral Mikawa saw the smoke columns rising from the dying carrier, and he turned to look fearfully in the direction of Henderson Field.
Ryujo’s fighters and bombers had joined with about a half-dozen Betty bombers from Rabaul to raid Henderson earlier that afternoon. All of Captain Smith’s available Wildcats had been waiting for them. They shot down sixteen enemy planes. Captain Marion Carl flamed two bombers and a Zero, and Lieutenants Zennith Pond and Kenneth Frazier and Marine Gunner Henry Hamilton shot down a pair apiece. Four Wildcats were lost, but only three pilots.
It was far from being the most famous aerial battle in Solomons history, but it marked the beginning of the end for Japanese air power.
When Admiral Nagumo heard of the attack on Ryujo he thought that the time to avenge Midway was at hand. He still believed that Fletcher had three big carriers in the vicinity, unaware that Wasp had been sent south to refuel. The flattops which a float plane had reported sighting after two o’clock were Enterprise and Saratoga.
Certain that Fletcher had flown off all his planes against sacrificial Ryujo, Nagumo ordered Zuikaku and Shokaku to send every eagle they could fly screaming against the Americans.
They missed Saratoga entirely, but they caught Enterprise at about half-past four—and they also caught a tiger by the tail.
Fletcher had not forgotten Lexington or Yorktown, and he had not flown off all of his planes. He had fifty-three Wildcats stacked in the skies, waiting. They tangled with the Japanese planes—dive-bombing Vals and single-engine torpedo-launching Kates heavily protected by layers of Zeros—and a wild scrimmage raged overhead. Even returning American dive-bombers and torpedo-planes roared into the battle.
But most of this action raged at the edge of a perimeter far outside the range of Enterprise’s guns; far, far beyond the sight of lookouts squinting into the bright tropic afternoon. The Big E, yet to be scratched in the Pacific War, still sailed along at twenty- seven knots with all her planes up and all her Marines and sailors at battle stations. A few minutes after five o’clock a 20-mm gun-pointer caught the flash of sun-on-a-wing. It was a Val turning over, the first of thirty.
Enterprise’s guns opened up. Behind her, mighty North Carolina belched out an umbrella of steel and smoke over the imperiled flattop. But the Vals kept coming down. Every seven seconds one of them peeled off and dove. They attacked with all the skill that Felt’s dive-bombers had shown over Ryujo. Even though square-winged Wildcats slashed and growled at them coming down, risking friendly aircraft fire, the Japanese pilots never faltered.
Soon Big E’s gunners could see the landing-gear “pants” of the leading Val, could make out the horrible dark blob of an egg nestling between them, and could see, with indrawn breath, that blob detach, yawn, and fall.
There was a monstrous shuddering slap against Enterprise’s side. The first bomb had near-missed.
Big E twisted and turned. Her own gunners and North Carolina’s spat networks of steel across the sky, but at 5:14 the big carrier took her first bomb-hit of the war. A thousand-pounder crashed through the after elevator. It penetrated to the third deck before its delayed-action fuse exploded it with a whip-sawing roar that flung every man aboard up-down-and-sideways. Thirty-five sailors were killed. Huge holes were torn in the deck and sideplates were ruptured. Thirty seconds later, the second bomb hit—only fifteen feet from the first.
Again a violent whipping motion, again death—thirty-nine sailors—but this time smoke and fire. Stores of five-inch powder bags had been hit.
Listing and pouring out smoke, the Big E still raced along at twenty-seven knots —and then she took a third bomb.
Fortunately, it was only a 500-pounder, and its fuse was defective. Damage was comparatively slight. Enterprise was still moving ahead, and all that Captain Arthur Davis and his men need do now was to save their burning ship.
From Lieutenant Commander Herschel Smith in Central Station came the orders. Surrounded by deck plans and diagrams of every system—fresh and salt water, oil and gasoline, ventilation, steam, electricity—and flanked by a battery of telephone-talkers, Smith relayed his instructions to teams of fire-fighters, repairmen, and rescuers.
Men with hoses played streams of water on burning bedding or clothing, men with foam generators smothered burning oil, men with CO2 extinguishers put out electrical fires; and men in asbestos suits and breathing-masks shambled into burning compartments to rescue wounded or burned sailors, bringing them to other men in gauze masks and white coats who sewed flesh or straightened bones or sprayed charred skin with unguents. Other men with axes trimmed shattered timbers around deck holes, hammering square sheets of boiler plate over them. Debris parties cleared the decks of bomb fragments or replaced torn planking. Weakened and dangerous areas were marked off. Gradually, Big E was prepared to receive planes topside. Belowdecks, officers and bluejackets strove to get her on an even keel again. Three portside ballast tanks were flooded while those to starboard were pumped out. Flooded storerooms had to be pumped dry. Carpenters
