Quest of the Seventh Carrier Read online

  Quest of the Seventh Carrier

  Peter Albano

  © Peter Albano 1989

  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 1989 by Zebra Books.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Acknowledgements

  I am indebted to airline pilots Dennis D. Silver and William D. Wilkerson for advising on aircraft performance and flight characteristics. For solving technical problems with computers, codes and electronic equipment, my thanks to Doctor Roland W. Koch. Special thanks to Master Mariner Donald Brandmeyer who advised on the many problems confronting a carrier at war.

  Finally, my gratitude to librarian Robin Swallow whose untiring aid eliminated hours from my research.

  Table of Contents

  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 One

  Lieutenant Taku Ishikawa knew his Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero-sen much more intimately than any mistress he had ever bedded. True, like a woman, when cold she could be capricious and sometimes stubborn. But when hot, with lubricants flowing, the lithe white fighter molded herself to him, became an extension of his body and mind, of his determination to serve the emperor, lashing out with claws of burning tracers to destroy the Mikado’s enemies.

  A gentle move of the stick to the left matched by the light touch of his left foot for rudder control, dropped his port wing and turned the gleaming white fighter into a shallow left bank over the eastern reaches of Tokyo Bay, the warm Sakae purring contentedly, hot oil flowing through and around the valves, gears and pistons of "her fourteen cylinders. Carefully, the Japanese pilot eased back his throttle a notch until the Zero loafed through the sky, tachometer reading a low 1,100 rpms.

  He loved flying. These moments when a man became one with the gods, became his own kami, transcending reality and emerging into a kind of personal nirvana. Here he dwelled with the infinite rulers, controlling his body yet demanding a bare perception of it. A breath on the stick, a glance at his rudder, just the thought of palming the throttle commanded ailerons, rudders, elevators, maneuvering the machine which was not only part of his body, but his universal self as well. A kind of tranquil coexistence with The Blessed One, perhaps another incarnation and, indeed, a fitting overture to the mortal danger of aerial combat and its frenzied excitement.

  He glanced quickly to his right and then to his left. Hovering off his elevators were two new wingmen, replacements for the veterans Shio Yoshida and Yozan Sakanishi who had been lost in the great air battles over the Straits of Malacca. Ensign Akiko Yosano bobbed and weaved erratically off his port elevator fighting his Zero’s delicately balanced controls while to starboard NAP First Class Junichiro Tanizaki overcontrolled his ship with equal clumsiness.

  Ishikawa preferred the V formation to “line abreast”, especially when breaking in new wingmen. “Line abreast” left the leader relatively safe since just maintaining formation required all eyes to be focused in his direction. This left the wingmen far more vulnerable to an experienced attacker. Of course, with the V3 the wingmen still had to maintain station, however, keeping station on the leader’s elevators was much simpler than maintaining a precise station abreast. In addition, the V allowed the wingmen to guard each other’s flanks while at the same time both men could use his comrades as a guide to speed and separation. But regardless of the formation, the “three” must fly as a team, choreographed and synchronized like Kabuki dancers. Yosano and Tanizaki were too new, too uncertain, and squandered too much of their time and energy maintaining station. Taku prayed to Amaterasu for time to train the youngsters before leading them against Colonel Moammar Khadafy’s veterans.

  He twisted his broad shoulders restlessly as the close confines of the tiny cockpit exerted its usual claustrophobic effect. Now that he had passed the age of sixty, his neck began to ache after just twenty minutes of flying. He reached back. Rubbed his tight, bunched muscles. His eyes scanned his instruments; fuel 110 gallons, rpms 1,100, speed 122 knots, altitude 3,700 meters, manifold pressure 57 centimeters of mercury, oil temperature 63. His gaze paused on a brass plate screwed into the wooden instrument panel below the altimeter and for the thousandth time he read it:

  Mitsubishi Jukogyo KK, Nakajima Hikoki KK, Nigatsu 10, 2,600, Model 11, Type O, Serial 136.

  It was a strange day. A strange day, indeed. A milky scum of cirrus stretched to the north and east at 1,000 meters while 1,000 meters higher, widely scattered clouds stretched in all directions like carefully piled cotton balls, veneering the sky all the way to the far horizon where the crenulated battlements of a black thunderhead were slowly creeping over the rim of the sea. Everywhere, gulls were working, huge flocks of them that stretched low across the horizon, their wings twinkling like flurrying snowflakes in the filtered sun-light.

  Taku sighed. How impossibly small was man and his frail little bird in these gigantic dimensions. Shaking the cobwebs of boredom from his brain, he scanned the horizon, moving his eyes in the short jerky movements of the veteran fighter pilot, never focusing intensively on any object, but, instead, relying on his peripheral vision to detect the tiny fly specks in the distance that could grow wings, sprout machine guns and blast the unwary pilot from the sky before he could catch his breath.

  Nevertheless, there was nothing to menace his flight or the great carrier Yonaga it protected 3,700 meters below. At anchor after repairs of damage sustained fighting Khadafy’s carriers and cruisers in the South China Sea, the great carrier appeared as small as an insect pinned to a vast blue tatami. He smiled. After eleven weeks of availability in the enormous graving dock at Yokosuka, the great 82,000-ton carrier was back in fighting trim, all traces of battle damage repaired. But her air groups had been decimated and hundreds of her crew killed and wounded by Libyan bombs, torpedoes and shells. As a result, many of her crew were young and inexperienced replacements like Yosano and Tanizaki. Still, the heart and sinew of the crew were her veterans; most, like himself, over sixty years of age. Notwithstanding age and experience, all were permeated with the spirit of bushido, all had pledged their lives to the Mikado and all had promised fervently to seek nirvana and a place in the Yasakuni Shrine through death in battle. Fine samurai all, indeed, with strong karmas and the full round balls of brave men, not the shriveled raisins of cowards.

  A glance overhead filled his eyes with the high milky veil of scudding cirrus and his mind with thoughts of the Chinese laser system and the strange world that had grown after the erratic killer beam platforms had been orbited. Put in place to control the Russian and American nuclear insanity, the deuterium-fluorine laser system of twenty killer satellites and three command stations had malfunctioned from the beginning, destroying jets and rockets at the moment of ignition. The first day over 15,000 passengers and crew members of commercial and military aircraft had been killed when laser beams struck over 1,400 jets simultaneously. In the Middle East, scores of Iraqi and Iranian soldiers were killed when handheld rockets exploded in their faces and two PLO fighters died attacking an Israeli school bus, their anti-tank rocket exploding. Quickly, the world learned all jet and rocket propelled aircraft and weapons were useless junk.

  A curious world had emerged from the chaos. No longer cowed and intimidated by the nuclear hegemony imposed by the superpowers
, third world nations, possessors of most of the old World War II ships and planes long discarded by Russia and America, stormed onto the international scene with newfound power. Financed by unlimited oil money and a rumored infusion of drug profits, Colonel Moammar Khadafy had imposed an oil embargo on the West and Japan and backed vast Arab armies in attempts to destroy Israel and humiliate the United States. Russia had helped in the buying of World War II carriers, cruisers and aircraft which were unleashed against the Japanese — a people the colonel hated as much as the Israelis and Americans.

  Yonaga had met the Arab battle groups in the Mediterranean and South China Sea, blunting an Arab thrust into Israel and sinking three carriers, three cruisers and destroying hundreds of enemy aircraft. But rumors were rife of a new Arab jihad: a massing of Syrian, Libyan, Egyptian, and Lebanese troops for another attempt to smash the hated Jews once and for all. As yet, Iraqi and Iranian forces were too busy killing each other to join the new offensive.

  Subconsciously, and with the detached concentration of a veteran fighter pilot, Taku’s eyes continued their flittering search. At least forty kilometers to the north, traffic was stacked up over the Tokyo International Airport to almost 4,000 meters, antique piston-engined aircraft circling far to the north over Funabashi, inland to Kumagaya and east over the Boso Peninsula all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The big planes’ turns to the south were shallow, all pilots nervously avoiding Yonaga’s patrolled airspace over the bay. Idly he watched a huge Lockheed C-121 Constellation, flying on top of the stack of orbiting aircraft, bank slowly to the east and away from the bay and Yonaga's forbidden space. He marvelled at the four great Wright 3,250 horse-power, Turbo-Compound boosted engines. Someday a more powerful engine would replace his 950 horsepower Sakae. The air group commander, Commander Yoshi Matsuhara, had promised that new, more powerful engines were being manufactured by Nakajima. But Matsuhara was a pro-American fool and could not be trusted. Anyway, no engines had been shipped to Yonaga and he was still flying with an engine manufactured in 1939. Galling were reports through Israeli intelligence that the Arabs were replacing the engines in their Messerschmitts with new 1,900 horsepower Daimler-Benz power plants. He twisted angrily against his harness.

  A Douglass DC-4 Skymaster took off from Tokyo International and disappeared to the south, its path monitored automatically by his shifting, narrow eyes while his mind — the subliminal kaleidoscope of memories of all fighting men who have spent too many lonely hours on patrol — drifted back in time and distance to early years, to parents, to lovers.

  A patch of turquoise in a break in the clouds brought back the island of Kobata Shima and the restless sea surrounding it. Less than twelve square kilometers in area, heavily wooded, Kobata Shima jutted from the Bungo Suido like an emerald tower, crowned by Mount Amakusa. He remembered the magnificent vistas, the most beautiful being the view from the unmanned lighthouse built on the rocky promontory jutting from the southeast slope of the peak. From here one could see the north shore of Kyushu just seven kilometers to the south while to the north the coast of Shikoku was visible when the northwest monsoon blew.

  Mists are perennial in the Suido. Here the warm currents of the Inland Sea meet the cold surges of the Pacific, filling the straits with whirlpools and roaring unceasingly, the wind whipping the tops from the waves in graceful ostrich plumes of curling spray while haze and fog, born of the warring currents, mount in banks and streamers. In the summer the thunderheads build up each day over Kyushu’s peaks, tall silver ranges of clouds turning purple and a sullen leaden blue when the sun is low on the horizon, threatening rain but seldom making good that threat, though thunder rumbles in the evening and lightning flickers from cloud to cloud as if armies are battling for the sky.

  Life on Kobata Shima was hard, depending on the whims of the sea and the creatures within; the shark and mackerel, the squid and octopus, abalone and carp. When the fishing was good, Taku and his father, Shimei (Oto-san), worked from morning stars to evening stars — asaboshi yoboshi, the islanders called it. Taku could never forget the back-breaking octopus fishing which was seventy percent of their catch. Oto-san would attach a belt from the engine of their small boat to a roller shaft on the gunwale. This shaft turned a pulley which extended over the gunwale. Then Taku would grasp one of their glass floats and untie the rope which traversed the sea bottom with, perhaps, one hundred octopus pots secured. Threading the hawser over the pulley, the boat would slowly follow the line along as the pulley pulled pot after pot alongside the tiny, heaving boat. Too heavy a load for the pulley alone, Taku would stand with his legs spread wide, one foot stretched to the prow, grasp the water-soaked hemp with bare hands, heave the pots aboard and empty the slimy, glutinous contents into the holding tank amidships. Years of this back-breaking labor fleshed out his tall frame with corded arm and back muscles, thick neck and powerful chest.

  Drag fishing was not nearly as hard. To make a drag, Shimei and Taku would tie a number of large hooks to a crossbar, attach it to a hawser and then drag the contraption across the bottom like a rake. Easy work, it was sure to hook flatheads, sole and seabream; all delicious and all received by his beaming mother, Hatsuyo (Oka-san), with eager hands. Taku’s mouth watered whenever he recalled the thick slices of raw flathead smothered with soy sauce, served with rice, barley and pickled radishes.

  Although the work was long and hard, there was fun to be found at festival time. Of the five traditional festivals celebrated by all of Japan — the Seven Herbs, Girls' Day, Boys' Day, Stars' Day and Chrysanthemum Day — Taku's favorite was Boys’ Day, Tango no sekko, celebrated on May fifth. All nine hundred inhabitants of Kobata Shima exalted their sons on this day by erecting long poles outside their houses and flying huge carp banners made of brightly colored material that swelled in the wind and appeared to swim vigorously against an invisible current. This symbol of determination, strength, energy and willpower found its largest and proudest banner in front of the modest Ishikawa home. Hatsuyo prepared shimaki — a special sweet sake flavored with the herb shobu and sweet jellied sea weed.

  Like every home on Kobata Shima, Taku's house did not face to the northeast, because that was where the evil spirits dwelled. A modest structure, it was located three kilometers south of the village and halfway up the mountain where it blended into the glade that sheltered it. The house was built entirely of wood and paper, structured pieces fitted perfectly into the uprights without the use of a single nail, the entire building held down by the weight of its thatched roof. Not a trace of varnish or paint marred the prized natural color of wood.

  Disdaining the community bath located in the village, the Ishikawas enjoyed the unprecedented luxury of their own small iron cauldron. The tub, filled with warm water heated by an oil burner, was sheltered by a wooden shed behind the house. Each evening after thoroughly scrubbing themselves, the family entered in an inflexible order: Shimei first, Hatsuyo second, and Taku last.

  After the bath, Hatsuyo served the meal in the main room — a large “six mat” room furnished with low tables, zabutons, a heater and the inevitable bookcases. Usually the meal would consist of sliced raw sea bream or halibut, rice, seaweed dipped in dough and, perhaps, garnished with pickled cucumbers or beets. Usually, after discussing plans for tomorrow’s fishing, Shimei loved to describe the family’s samurai roots — proud origins that set them apart from the rest of the inhabitants of Kobata Shima.

  But it was not until Taku was in his teens that he understood fully the family’s glorious past. Four hundred years before, the Ishikawas came to prominence serving as warriors for the feared Daimyo, Lord Takauji Akase of Yokuhashi, a small city on the north coast of Kyushu. Here, impregnable in his castle high atop Mount Nakatsu, the Daimyo ruled, his fearless samurai ranging as far south as Kumamoto, bringing allegiance to Akase or rolling heads. The fiercest were the Ishikawas.

  This fealty to the Akase hegemony continued into the nineteenth century. It ended bloodily in 1871 during the Meiji restoration when
all samurai were declared outlaws, toppled from their stations of power and arrogance and became the poorest of the poor overnight.

  “But never suiheisha,” Shimei asserted over and over again. Taku and Hatsuyo would nod because no one of the samurai class could ever sink to the depths of suiheisha — the lowest class of menial and unclean butchers, peddlers, tenant farmers and laborers. Everyone knew this loss of face would have inevitably led to kao o tsubusu — a fate that drained from a man’s body and mind all that was strength to him, leaving him an empty shell and less than a man in the eyes of other men in the kami. Indeed, the proud traditions of bushido were continued by the Ishikawas on the field of honor in the service of Emperor Meiji: Grandfather, Colonel Sachiko Ishikawa, dispatched by a Chinese bullet leading his company in a gallant but futile assault on the Boxers’ works at Peking in 1900; Great Uncle, Commander Noboru Ishikawa, who lost a leg at Port Arthur in 1905 when he raced his torpedo boat destroyer into the harbor on a daring torpedo attack; Uncle, Lieutenant Gozen Ishikawa who joined his ancestors after personally dispatching four filth-eating Formosan pirates with his great, curved, killing blade while leading a naval landing party on the island of Tsu in the Korean Straits in 1911.

  Yes, the traditions were alive and family pride unsullied, no trace of kao a tsubusu to stain the family escutcheon. Proudly, the family paid daily homage to their glorious ancestors by standing before the paulownia wood shrine that Shimei had built in the forest behind the house and praying to Amaterasu, Izanami and Izanagi for the strength and resolve to maintain the family honor.

  In his earlier memories Taku recalled studying the Hagakure — the code of bushido and handbook for the conduct of the samurai. “There is only one way to be a man,” his father told him, voice steely with resolve.