A Dawn Like Thunder Page 5

  The smell of coffee usually drew him to the enlisted men’s mess, which never stopped dispensing food and drink to the men coming on and off watch. While he and the other pilots tucked into a breakfast of steak and shirred eggs on monogrammed china in the officers’ wardroom, the enlisted men ate their own fare of dry cereal with watery powdered milk, or navy beans in ketchup sauce, on steel trays.

  He always finished his walks on the windswept flight deck. Standing there in the darkness, he could imagine the Japanese war fleet coming inexorably toward them as it closed on Midway, narrowing the distance with each passing hour.

  Like his hero Saint-Exupéry, who had joined the French air force to fight the German Luftwaffe, Bill Evans understood what was at stake if the Allies lost the war. He had recently written to a professor from his Wesleyan days, summing up his thoughts.

  The Fates have been kind to me. In a war where any semblance of pleasure is, to say the least, bad taste, I find many things that would please you. When you hear others saying harsh things about American youth, know how wrong they all are.

  So many times now that it has become commonplace, I’ve seen incidents that make me know that we are not soft or bitter; perhaps stupid at first, but never weak. The boys who brought nothing but contempt and indifference in college — who showed an apparent lack of responsibility — carry now the load with a pride no Spartan ever bettered.

  Many of my friends are now dead. To a man, each died with a nonchalance that they would have denied was courage. They simply called it lack of fear, and forgot the triumph. If anything great or good is born of this war, it should not be valued in the colonies we may win or in the pages historians will attempt to write, but rather in the youth of our country, who never trained for war, rather almost never believed in war, but who have, from some hidden source, brought forth a gallantry which is homespun it is so real.

  I say these things because I know you liked and understood boys, because I wanted you to know that they have not let you down. That out here, between a spaceless sea and sky, American youth has found itself and given itself so that at home the spark may catch, burst into flame and burn high. If the country takes these sacrifices with indifference it will be the cruelest ingratitude the world has ever known. . . .

  My luck can’t hold out much longer, but the flame goes on and on — that is important. Please give my best wishes to all of the family, and may all you do find favor in God’s grace.

  Bill

  Old Langdon

  MONDAY, 1 JUNE 1942

  LUKE FIELD

  FORD ISLAND, PEARL HARBOR

  CARRIER AIR SUPPORT UNIT (CASU-5)

  Although he was only thirty-two years old, “Old Langdon” was the name many of the younger pilots used in referring to him, as in, “Man, there goes Old Langdon.” It was said with a mixture of envy and admiration, both for Fieberling’s leadership style and for the sophisticated way he led his personal life. Langdon Kellogg Fieberling was a polished ladies’ man.

  The other lieutenants called him “Count” or “Fieb.” To Lieutenant DeWitt “Pete” Peterkin, he was just Lang. A 1937 graduate of Yale, Pete Peterkin was one of the ground officers responsible for supervising the dozens of enlisted men who maintained and repaired the squadron’s aircraft. He had become Fieberling’s closest friend in Torpedo Eight.

  Already going gray at the temples of his thick brown hair, Fieberling drove a bright green, highly polished Lincoln Zephyr convertible. When he was off duty, there would usually be a good-looking young woman riding alongside him in the passenger seat. Tall and slender, he dressed impeccably in tailored gabardine uniforms.

  More important to the men who served under him was the fact that his good-natured personality was almost the exact opposite of Swede Larsen’s. There was no bravado in him at all. In the face of tough situations, he always seemed calm and self-contained.

  Although a full lieutenant, he projected an attitude that no job in the Navy was beneath him. If he decided that a hangar needed to be swept, he might start doing it himself, only to find himself surrounded by pilots and enlisted men anxious to help him finish the job. Usually, he would only have to suggest that something needed to be done for one of his men to eagerly undertake the task.

  Fieberling took his own share of abuse from Larsen, but always remained cool and seemingly unperturbed in the face of it. Without ever undermining Larsen’s authority, he quietly urged the pilots to simply do their jobs until the whole squadron reconnected again under Commander Waldron on the Hornet.

  On the Sunday night before their long flight to Midway Atoll, he worked alongside the others to prepare the planes in CASU-5. He had an ability to remember names and numbers, and used the gift as they went over the checklists to make sure that all the crews and aircraft were equipped with everything they needed.

  At about midnight, he went around to each of the departing crews, urging the pilots and gunners to catch a few hours of sleep. Due to their nervous excitement, it came hard for all of them.

  At 0600 on the first of June, he brought the five other pilots together in the small squadron office at the back of CASU-5. Lieutenant Jack Barnum, the flight officer, Smiley Morgan, the navigation officer, and Pete Peterkin, the engineer officer, joined them there.

  None of the pilots in the squadron had any experience flying great distances over water, and Swede Larsen had arranged for two Navy pilots who flew long-range PBY patrol bombers to accompany the detachment on the flight. Patrol pilots received far more rigorous training in navigation, and they were going to serve as the navigators for the trip.

  Aside from Ozzie Gaynier, who was twenty-seven, the pilots ranged in age from twenty-two to twenty-five. Vic Lewis was the youngest by just one day behind Charlie Brannon. Fieberling surveyed their solemn faces, keeping his eyes, voice, and manner calm and reassuring.

  They would be making a pretty long hop across the Pacific, he told them. Someone had said it might be the longest formation flight ever attempted using single-engine aircraft. The distance was more than twelve hundred nautical miles, and the flight would take most of the day. They would be flying over open ocean all the way.

  The other pilots were well aware of what the result would be if a crew had to ditch in the middle of the Pacific. With a battle approaching, the chance of a recovery ship being sent for them was practically nil.

  Fieberling himself would lead the first element, with Bert Earnest on his left wing and Charlie Brannon on his right. Ozzie Gaynier would lead the second element, in right echelon behind Brannon, with Vic Lewis and Darrel Woodside on his wings. The two PBY pilots would fly in the flight leaders’ planes.

  There was to be radio silence all the way. No one knew how far their radios carried, and it was essential that the Japanese not be made aware of reinforcements being sent to garrison Midway. All communication would be made with hand signals.

  If Fieberling knew anything about their future missions once they reached Midway, he didn’t tell them. He asked if there were any questions. There weren’t. Standing up, he wished them all good luck and said it was time to man their planes.

  As the others grabbed their gear and headed out of the hangar, Fieberling motioned Pete Peterkin to remain behind. When they were alone, he grinned and said, “I’d like to ask you a favor, Pete.”

  “Anything,” said Peterkin.

  “If something happens to me out there, I was hoping you could visit Laura in San Francisco.”

  He left the rest of it unsaid. Peterkin knew exactly what he meant. On the morning the Chaumont had left San Francisco for Pearl Harbor, Fieberling had been standing at the railing between Smiley Morgan and Pete Peterkin as the ship passed Alcatraz Island and headed across the bay to the open sea.

  Looking toward the Oakland Hills, Smiley could see the unusual bell tower at the University of California at Berkeley. He suddenly remembered that Lieutenant Fieberling had gone there.

  “It will probably be a long time before I see her again,” F
ieberling had said wistfully.

  Morgan thought he was referring to his college alma mater, but Pete Peterkin knew he was talking about Laura Cassidy, the girl Fieberling had just asked to marry him. Lang had told him the whole story the night before.

  Fieberling said that he had always had a wild streak in him. After growing up in his parents’ home on Wesley Avenue in Oakland Hills, he had met Laura in a class at Oakland High School. They dated until he left to attend Berkeley, and had continued going out together when Laura followed him there. It was clear to him that she wanted to get married, but he wasn’t ready.

  A star of the University of California rugby team, he had joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. Then he discovered fast girls and convertibles. Quitting college when his grades suffered, he had traveled around the country for two years working jobs at expensive resorts before eventually joining the Navy as an aviation cadet, earning his wings in 1937.

  For the next five years he had lived for the moment, playing the field and sweeping it clean. Shortly before the squadron was set to fly to San Francisco, he had been amazed to learn through a mutual friend that Laura hadn’t seriously dated anyone since he had left, and was apparently still waiting for him in the hope he would one day come back to her.

  While flying across the country in his Avenger, Fieberling came to a horrible awakening. It was the stark awareness that he had wasted five years in casual love affairs, while passing up the real happiness he could have shared with the one woman who truly loved him. In the darkness of his cockpit, he realized that he loved her, too.

  As soon as the squadron arrived in San Francisco, he borrowed a car at the Alameda Naval Air Station and drove straight to her home. Later that night, he proposed to her and she tearfully accepted him. They had three days together before the Chaumont departed. He had never been happier, he told Peterkin. His only regret was having let her down all of those years.

  As they emerged from CASU-5, light was just beginning to seep over the roofs of the buildings on the eastern edge of Ford Island. In the coolness of dawn, the six blue-gray Avengers were lined up on one of the aprons next to the runway. The undersides of the wings and fuselages had been painted white. The planes were warmed up and ready to go.

  A large group of men had assembled near the runway to watch the takeoff. The crowd included most of the squadron’s mechanics, ordnancemen, and other ground personnel, who had worked all night to prepare the planes. The pilots who hadn’t been chosen came, too.

  Swede Larsen arrived in a jeep as the six flight crews were ready to board their planes. He was holding a stack of brightly colored decals that he had planned to cement to the fuselages of the planes.

  Each decal showed a large closed fist. Underneath it in large block letters was the word “attack.” Now there wasn’t time to mount them. Instead, Swede handed one to each pilot and shook his hand.

  There’s going to be a big battle out there, he told them. He wanted each man to remember the motto of the squadron when they got there. Thrusting his right arm forward, he raised his closed fist high into the air.

  “ATTACK!” he shouted. “ATTACK . . . ATTACK!”

  Bert Earnest and Charlie Brannon were standing nearby, barely managing to suppress their grins. Brannon was always a practical joker. Aside from Dorothy, his wife of two months, and flying, he didn’t take anything seriously.

  He had found a kindred spirit in Bert Earnest.

  When Larsen’s back was turned, the two of them silently brandished the salute that Larsen had just demonstrated. After raising their fists aloft, they simultaneously extended their middle fingers into the air.

  The crews boarded the planes. At a signal from Fieberling, the pilots turned over the already warmed-up engines. He led them out onto the runway, and they took off in single file.

  Smiley Morgan watched the planes as they slowly climbed into the sky over Ford Island and headed west toward the horizon. As he said a prayer for them, the growling pitch of the seventeen-hundred-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines slowly faded into the distance.

  Tex

  MONDAY, 1 JUNE 1942

  NORTHEAST OF MIDWAY ATOLL

  USS HORNET

  The Skipper stood up from his cushioned chair in the front row of Ready Room Four and turned to face the seventeen other pilots in his squadron. His eyes were deadly serious, and his words conveyed the magnitude of what they were up against.

  “They’ll get here Wednesday or Thursday morning,” he said. “I figure the odds to be about two and a half to one against us.”

  Tex Gay had listened to Lieutenant Jurika’s briefing on Sunday when the intelligence officer had described the carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers that were part of the huge Japanese striking force. Tex didn’t like the sound of the odds then, either. And he didn’t like the feeling they gave him in the pit of his stomach.

  “Based on all the current dope,” Waldron said, “we’ll probably be making our first attack against the Jap fleet early in the morning. When we’re finished, we’ll all return to the carrier, refuel, and make a second attack later in the morning.”

  The Skipper told them that he was trying to persuade the air group commander to let him make another attack after dark. His idea was that the Japanese would be punch-drunk and reeling from the daylight assaults, and the squadron could get in close for more hits in the darkness.

  “Get as much sack time as you can,” he said, before adding, “and you might want to tidy up your personal affairs and write a letter home just in case some of us don’t get back.”

  Not for the first time since the Hornet had sailed, Tex Gay had to silently wrestle with a truly repugnant thought. He wondered if he would turn yellow when the moment of truth arrived and he was face-to-face with the Japanese fighter planes.

  The pressure of imminent battle was weighing heavily on him, and it was something he had to work hard to control. He wondered if the others were feeling it, too. From what he could see, the banter among them continued unabated, as if they didn’t have a care in the world. One of the pilots, Whitey Moore, seemed to sleep right through it all.

  Tex knew the strain had definitely gotten to some of them. Just hours before the Hornet had left Pearl Harbor for Midway, Eddie Fayle, a Torpedo Eight pilot from New Jersey who had grown up in France and was, of course, nicknamed “Frenchy,” had gone out by himself into a pineapple field near their barracks. He came back with a deep wound in his right leg.

  Frenchy’s story was that he had been looking for a ripe pineapple and had accidentally fallen off a lava rock, driving the knife into his leg. Ensign Bill Evans had been the duty officer that day, and was a man who chose his words carefully. In the Torpedo Eight official log he wrote, “27 May 1942. Ens. Fayle received at his own hand a knife wound in his right leg. . . .”

  Tex thought it was an accident. Frenchy did a lot of stupid things but he was no coward. Either way, Frenchy had to be left behind in the hospital when the Hornet departed the next morning.

  You might want to tidy up your personal affairs and write a letter home just in case some of us don’t get back.

  It had never struck Tex Gay that he wouldn’t get back. It might happen to one of the others, but not to him. He would get through. The lessons he had learned in life were to do your best in the face of whatever challenge came your way. He wasn’t one to dwell on things over which he had no control.

  He had been born in Waco, Texas, on March 8, 1917. His mother’s people had arrived there by covered wagon. In the 1920s, his father built a good business in the Texas oil fields handling the legal end of leasing development sites to the independent drillers called “wildcatters.” When his father’s job forced them to move to Dallas, George had started his education at a private school. He was a typical young Texan in almost every sense but one. Although it was unusual for Texas boys to take swimming lessons, his mother had insisted he learn how. He never found out why.

  Tex experienced a life-changing event one su
mmer when the family was attending the Texas State Fair. One of the oil companies had arranged to take people up on twenty-minute sightseeing flights in a Ford Tri-Motor airplane. He asked his parents to take him but they refused.

  His grandmother was standing off to the side, and when she saw the boy’s disappointment, she said, “Come on, son . . . I came here in a covered wagon and I’m not afraid of that thing.”

  Once in the air, the two of them had a ball. Soaring over the fairground was by far the most exhilarating thing George had ever done. As soon as they were back on the ground, he wanted to go back up again, but a long waiting line stretched across the field.

  From then on, he wanted to fly a plane himself.

  After the stock market crashed, the family faced hard times. The oil fields were shut down and his father was thrown out of work along with thousands of others. The boy helped the family make ends meet by working at a local drugstore for ten cents an hour. He started a paper route, eventually taking over four of them.

  It wasn’t enough, and the family had to split up. George’s sister stayed with their parents, and he went to live with an aunt and uncle until his father found work again. Eventually, Tex saved enough money to attend the mechanical engineering school at Texas A & M, where he started in 1936. Hoping to fly airplanes, he joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.

  He was forced to quit school three years later when his money ran out. By then, the war clouds over Europe were gathering again. Although his father was convinced that America would soon be in another war, he wanted his son to finish college. Tex made the case that he wanted to be a flier.

  He took the physical for the Army Air Corps, but failed it. The Army doctor said he had an irregular heartbeat and wasn’t suitable pilot material. However, a friend told him that the Navy was also looking for pilots. Surprisingly, he had no problem passing the Navy’s physical exam and went on to earn his wings at Opa-Locka, Florida. A month before Pearl Harbor, he was assigned to Torpedo Eight.