Trial of the Seventh Carrier Read online

  Trial of the Seventh Carrier

  Peter Albano

  © Peter Albano 1990

  Peter Albano has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1990 by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For Angie Dante and Josephine Clark, who nurtured their trying little brother through the barren years. With infinite patience and enduring love, they taught him the value of compassion and understanding.

  Acknowledgements

  The author gratefully acknowledges:

  Master Mariner Donald Brandmeyer, for his generous help with the problems encountered by warships both in port and at sea;

  William D. Wilkerson and Dennis D. Silver, for their advice on the characteristics of aircraft in all aspects of flight, especially in the stress of combat;

  Kevin Eldridge and John Maloney, of the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California, who contributed invaluable information about the Rolls Royce Merlin engine and the Zero fighter;

  John McCoy, of the Museum of Flying in Santa Monica, California, for offering his expertise on the Spitfire fighter;

  Harvey Gray and Dave Cannalte, of the USS Bowfin Memorial, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for answering questions about the World War II fleet boat;

  Mary Annis, my wife, for her infinite patience and careful reading of the manuscript; and

  Robert K. Rosencrance, for lending his technical and editorial skills in the preparation of the manuscript. I am also indebted to Mr. Rosencrance for his thoughtful suggestions concerning plot and character development.

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Preface

  Willard-Smith’s whole universe was the diving ME 109 in a head-on pass, growing in his windscreen with frightening speed. He hunched forward, caressing the red button. But suddenly, either in a panic or experiencing a loss of control, the enemy pilot did the worst possible thing. He pulled back on the stick.

  Shouting in triumph, Willard-Smith saw the entire Messerschmitt exposed like the belly of a trout ripe for gutting. “Here’s your ticket to Mecca, or Valhalla, or wherever you’re going.” he muttered as he squeezed the button. At zero deflection and at close range, the sledgehammer blows of the big shells blasted chunks of aluminum into the slipstream, exposing stringers, frames, and cables.

  The mortally wounded fighter shot skyward and then, as it paused in a stall, a figure plummeted from the cockpit. But the panicked pilot had jumped too soon. His parachute tangled in the remains of the tail, and as the ME streaked downward in its final dive, a waving, screaming figure trailed behind it.

  “Enjoy it all the way down, you bloody bastard,” Willard-Smith murmured.

  Chapter One

  A slight pressure on the stick dropped the right wing of the Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero-sen, and Air Group Commander Yoshi Matsuhara stared down over his wing tip. From three thousand meters, the western Pacific was as serene and as placid as its name would imply. Here and there an occasional whitecap flecked the infinite blue with white streaks like random threads left by a careless seamstress. Fortunately, the sea was comparatively calm, easy to read when not obscured by the low-scudding clouds. However, beneath the commander and close to the water, clouds like white vaporous cotton balls paraded, casting their flat, dark shadows on the sea and blending in the distance into a solid carpet. On the northern horizon thunderheads soared arrogantly into the heavens, solid white mountaintops in the brilliant sunlight, their slopes convoluted with gray chasms and black crevices. Beneath them, solid shafts of rain screened down like curtains at a Kabuki theater. It was a stagy, arty scene, almost unnatural in its beauty. But Commander Yoshi Matsuhara saw no beauty, only obstructions and hindrances to his mission. Cursing, he called on the sun goddess Amaterasu o-Mi-Kami to clear the skies and help him in his search for the American submarine Blackfin and his friend Lieutenant Brent Ross before Colonel Moammar Kadafi’s Arabs found them.

  Brent Ross, the young American giant, his constant companion for the past five years, temporarily assigned to Blackfin, a fighter and philosopher so imbued with the spirit of bushido the world’s news media referred to him as the “American samurai.” But Amaterasu had deserted them both this day.

  Searching between the clouds Matsuhara found an empty sea mocking him and cursed the gods who refused to cooperate and allow him a glimpse of Blackfin. The tough little sub had stalked an Arab force of two carriers, a pair of cruisers, and at least a dozen destroyers. The carriers had been the principal threat, the primary prey. The first was an old British Majestic class purchased from India and given the Arab name Gefara. The second was a new ship, the former Principe de Asturias, bought from Spain and renamed Ramli al Kabir. After Blackfin sank Gefara off Tomonuto Atoll, the enemy task force commander, lacking the stomach to engage the great carrier Yonaga with only one capital ship, had turned his fleet south and headed back for Tomonuto in the western Carolines or the Arab base in Surabaya in Indonesia. In any event, the enemy force had disappeared.

  Blackfin’s single transmission by BRT-1 — a delayed transmission by a buoy left in her wake — reported heavy damage by depth charge attack. Unable to submerge, she was steaming on the surface on a northerly heading which would take her to Japan and also within easy range of Arab bases on Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas Islands. She had not been heard from in over twenty hours. Either her radios were damaged or she was maintaining radio silence. In any event, as vulnerable as she was, complete electronic shutdown was a wise decision.

  Reports indicated the enemy was hunting Blackfin. Observers on Aguijan, a small, impregnable citadel-like island four miles south of Tinian, had reported unusual activity. At least one staffel (12 aircraft) of enemy Messerschmitt 109 fighters and “numerous” Junkers 87 Stuka dive bombers had taken off just an hour before. No doubt maddened by Blackfin’s destruction of their carrier, they were hunting the submarine, too. The submarine would be easy to spot if it were not for the clouds. He must find her first.

  Anxiously, the commander looked for the white telltale scar of a wake, but he saw nothing, nothing at all. He was tempted to drop lower, beneath the clouds, but didn’t dare. A blood-red machine had been reported as the leader of the enemy fighters. The American renegade Oberstleutnant (Squadron Leader) Kenneth Rosencrance flew the only red fighter in Kadafi’s air force. This meant Rosencrance’s Vierter Jagerstaffel (Fourth Fighter Squadron) was the squadron sighted by the observers on Agui-jan. He knew Rosencrance and his mercenaries would fly high above the squadrons of JU 87s which were hunting Blackfin. The experienced fighter pilot with 22 kills, Rosencrance always sought the advantage of altitude. He would have it this day.

  Matsuhara damned the clouds again. If he were attacked, he would need every meter of altitude. Actually, he was far too low now to engage Messerschmitts. Never give an ME the advantage of altitude, it could outdive anything. He pounded his padded combing in frustration.

  He stabbed a finger for the twentieth time onto the chart attached to the plotting board strapped to his leg. Blackfin’s last position was reported at twelve degrees north, one hundred fifty-one degrees, thirty minutes east. According to his DR (dead reckoning) track, he had just pa
ssed to the north of the large red X he had marked on his chart in carrier Yonaga’s briefing room when he and his two wingmen had been given the latest information on the sub’s position.

  His wingmen. What insanity: two Englishmen flying Seafires. He was a mallard with two albatroses dragging it down by the rudders. But ancient Admiral Fujita had insisted. Must be a sign of senility. The old admiral was over a hundred years old and still commanded with a will like the finely tempered and carefully drawn steel of Yoshi’s killing blade. But his judgment was sometimes suspect, and in this case, irrational. “These are two of England’s finest,” the old man had insisted from his desk in Yonaga’s Flag Country. “The first she has sent us. There are more to come. They need experience — your expertise. Imbue them with the Yamato damashii (Japanese spirit) of a samurai and fearless warrior for our new emperor.” And then he had added, using the honorific fourth level of speech reserved for the Mikado, “And remember, always. Emperor Akihito has proclaimed, his rule as the age of Heisei.”

  “Yamato damashii” Matsuhara snorted to himself. These Englishmen were so phlegmatic and unperturbable he wondered how they could arouse themselves enough to “pillow” a woman. Without a doubt, the Englishwoman was the most bored female on earth. And Admiral Fujita had mentioned toe age of Heisei — the age of “attaining peace.” Yoshi laughed bitterly. “What peace?” he asked himself. With oil two hundred dollars a barrel and the Arabs buying up warships in wholesale lots, rebuilding old World War II aircraft and receiving new models from Germany, who was attaining peace? The commander laughed again. With an effort he calmed himself as a new concern entered his mind.

  Straining at his six-point military harness, the flight leader twisted uncomfortably and glanced over his right elevator. He winced as he saw the Seafire F47 bounce and weave, obviously controlled by the hand of a pilot not yet totally at home with his aircraft. Pilot Officer Elwyn York, a thirty-one-year-old Cockney from London’s East End, was at the controls.

  Born just off Petticoat Lane in a grime-coated tenement, York proudly claimed true Cockney antecedents. When he first met the man, the Cockney had explained, “Because me Mum dropped me where you could ’ear the bells of Saint Mary-le-Bow. Them’s the only Cockneys — horned that close to the ol’ church.”

  To Yoshi, Elwyn York was an odd one indeed. Although in the old tradition of the Imperial Navy, English was the language of Yonaga and Matsuhara was at home with the language, he had difficulty understanding the Britisher’s thick Cockney accent. Short and compact, York had a broad neck, barrel chest, and muscular arms that gave the impression of toughness, like a block of stone. Everything about him was dark — black, unruly hair that valanced over his ears and covered his forehead almost to his eyebrows, eyes the color of burned oak, skin tanned and seared by too many years in the sun. And, indeed, he had spent five years in Africa, he claimed, flying as a bush pilot. Proudly, he boasted of years at the controls of old Douglas DC-3s, Cessnas, De Havilland Caribous and Otters, Constellations, and many more. He claimed thousands of hours, flying runs in South Africa, Botswana, Rhodesia, Mozambique, Zambia, Angola, and most of the emerging nations of the continent. Yoshi suspected the experience had been military, probably bomb and supply runs for the highest bidder and not the innocuous freight and passenger flights York claimed. He had also suspected the cooling wave of Glasnost had put men like York out of work. His nature would take him to the hottest war, and none wad hotter than the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis and their allies, Japan. Yet there must be some altruism in the man. Without a doubt, the Cockney had a hatred for the Arabs. If not, if he wanted a war, he could have joined Kadafi’s killers for a million a year and fifty-thousand for each kill. He would only make pilot officer’s pay flying for Yonaga.

  Although Pilot Officer Elwyn York was an excellent multi-engine pilot, he had never flown a single-engined piston fighter and had only twenty-three hours at the controls of a Seafire. He had a shocking lack of regard for authority, and his radio discipline was appalling. Matsuhara’s biggest problem with York would be to keep the Cockney alive long enough to make a competent fighter pilot of him. There was an excellent chance the Englishman would kill himself long before Rosencrance and his veterans got the opportunity to dispatch him. Or perhaps he would adapt fast enough in combat to survive on his own. Some men did.

  The Japanese pilot’s eyes wandered over the English fighter. Adapted from its land-based variant, the Spitfire F.24, the Seafire’s long, elliptical wings folded to fit carrier Yonaga’s nine-meter elevators. It was fitted with slinging points and a retractable arrester hook and an additional internal fuselage tank, augmented by a flush-fitting tank beneath the center fuselage and two more underwing blister tanks. The additional tankage gave the fighter a respectable range of over sixteen hundred kilometers. Overall, the British fighter was a beautiful, graceful bird; needle-nosed propeller boss, rounded hood housing its new 2530 horsepower Rolls Royce Griffon 88 engine, short bubble canopy flaring smartly into its vertical tail fin, rounded fuselage. In all, it presented a view of an aerodynamically clean aircraft with the lethal punch of four short-barreled Hispano-Suiza twenty-millimeter cannons in its wings.

  Except for its black propeller boss, the Seafire was painted white, like all of Yonaga’s fighters, with Japanese markings on its wings and fuselage. In the tradition of the old Imperial Navy, a blue band just behind the canopy identified it as a member of Koku Kantai (First Air Fleet) while slightly aft of the blue band a single green stripe indicated it belonged to Yonaga’s air groups. The usual three-digit number on the tail identified the mission of the aircraft and the aircraft itself. It was an imposing, deadly appearing machine, the consummate example of Britain’s finest efforts in World War II fighter design.

  But Yoshi would not trade it — or any aircraft, for that matter — for his Mitsubishi Zero-sen. With the orbiting of the Chinese deuterium-fluorine particle-beam system of twenty weapons platforms at 930 miles and three command modules in geosynchronous orbit at 22,300 miles, the age of rockets and jets had come to a flaming, shattering end in a millisecond in 1983. Now the reciprocating engine reigned supreme and the Zero had emerged as the finest of all the old resurrected World War II fighters. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 of Kadafi’s air force had been a tough, redoubtable enemy, but still, nothing could dogfight a Zero.

  Commander Yoshi Matsuhara glanced to his left. He smiled, finding a well-piloted Seafire maintaining its station precisely as if attached to the Zero’s left rudder by an umbilical cord. Captain Colin Willard-Smith, thirty-four-years-old, a sixteen-year veteran of the Royal Navy, and one of the most natural pilots Yoshi had ever seen. Willard-Smith was a natural in the sense he had the innate knack of fitting his aircraft so perfectly he broke through the barrier separating man from machine and the fighter seemed to become an extension of the man himself. He knew how to push his fighter to its limit of power and acrobatics, yet never to the point of compromising control when the aircraft inevitably fought back with mushy stick and hard, balky rudder pedals and fearful vibrations. His reactions were instinctive, reflexes like lightning, a dead shot and, Yoshi suspected, an unemotional, merciless killer. In fact, Yoshi had heard the captain had three kills of Argentinian aircraft during that strange war in the Falklands in 1982. Yes, indeed, Captain Colin Willard-Smith was a welcome addition.

  Captain Colin Willard-Smith eyed Commander Yoshi Matsuhara’s Zero and moved his rudder pedals and control column without conscious thought, maintaining his station off the flight leader’s elevator despite the light Japanese fighter’s tendency to react to the wind and thermals like a feather while the Seafire, which was fifteen hundred pounds heavier, tended to plow through the invisible drifts and barriers. Tall and slender, with sandy hair and the large nose of an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat, Willard-Smith felt bulky in his fur-lined flight suit that covered his body from boots to chin. His goggles were up, his oxygen mask unsnapped and pushed to one side but still close enough so that he could spea
k easily into his microphone. Because pure oxygen made his throat feel raw and sore, he used his mask only when altitude gave him no choice. He disliked the goggles, too. They interfered with his peripheral vision, and without radar, only a man’s eyes stood between him and a quick death.

  They were within range of the Libyan bases in the Marianas, and the thought made him squirm uneasily. At a low altitude, they would be at a terrible disadvantage if spotted by a high-flying Arab patrol. “Beware of the Hun in the sun,” English pilots had told themselves through two wars. The adage still remained like a genetic legacy.

  Restlessly, Colin Willard-Smith moved his eyes in the quick, jerky movements of the experienced fighter pilot, side to side and then overhead, never allowing the sun or cloud formations to distract him or interrupt the rhythm of his search. He had learned long ago to depend on his peripheral vision to detect flyspecks that could develop wings and sprout machine guns and blast the unwary pilot from the sky in seconds. For some strange optical reason it was possible to spot objects as small as needle points with a quick side glance while simply staring at the same area revealed nothing at all. His neck felt stiff from the cold and continuous movement and he rubbed it briskly with a gloved palm without interrupting his search. He and Pilot Officer York were responsible for Commander Matsuhara’s cover while the flight leader searched for the submarine Blackfin. A momentary lapse, a fleeting moment of carelessness, and they could all be dead.

  He chuckled as he thought of the insane set of circumstances that had brought him to the western Pacific as a member of carrier Yonaga’s air groups. The son of a barrister from Barmston in Humberside, Colin Willard-Smith had joined the Royal Navy at eighteen. By age twenty-one, he had become an experienced Sea Harrier pilot. Despite the unreliable Ferranti Blue Fox multi-mode radar and armed with only two Sidewinder AIM 9L missiles, Willard-Smith grew fond of the V/STOL (vertical short takeoff and landing) Sea Harrier. It could use almost any platform to take off and land. The 21,500-pound thrust of its Rolls Royce Pegasus engine gave it a top speed of Mach 1.2, and it responded to the controls like a thoroughbred. It was capable of matching aerobatics with the best and could carry two Aden thirty-millimeter guns in wing pods in addition to the two Sidewinders.