Seven Days of Infamy by Nicholas Best

Author:Nicholas Best
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2017-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

BRITAIN CHEERS THE NEWS

Across the Pacific, Fuchida arrived back at the task force sometime after midday. After a long flight, the carrier Akagi was a welcome sight as his aircraft touched down on the rolling deck and came to a halt at last.

His friend Genda was there to meet him. Fuchida immediately asked how many planes had been lost in the attack. Genda reckoned about thirty. In fact twenty-nine had been downed over Oahu. Another ten or fifteen were so badly shot up that they had been pushed overboard as soon as their crews were safe. A further forty or so had been hit and would have to be repaired before they could fly again.

The returning aircraft were being refueled and rearmed as Fuchida jumped out of the cockpit. The fighters had to be ready to take off again at short notice to defend the task force if the Americans found it. Now that they were no longer needed, many of the horizontal bombers were being hurriedly converted to carry torpedoes, which were much more effective than bombs at sea.

Fuchida was summoned to make a report. He made his way to the bridge, where Admiral Nagumo and his staff were waiting.

Fuchida told them that four U.S. battleships had been sunk. He had seen them with his own eyes. He thought another three had been badly damaged. The eighth battleship had also been hit, although less seriously, from what Fuchida had been able to make out.

They gathered around a berthing chart of Pearl Harbor. Fuchida took them through the attack, showing where the ships had been hit. When he had finished, Nagumo asked him the crucial question. Could the American fleet use Pearl Harbor for the next six months?

Not in Fuchida’s opinion. Small ships maybe, but a large force would be unable to leave port. In the short term, the Americans were stymied.

That was what Nagumo wanted to hear. By some accounts, Fuchida pointed out that there were still undamaged cruisers in harbor. The dockyards and the fuel tanks were there for the taking. He thought they should be attacked that afternoon, along with the airfields again and the battleships still afloat. The Japanese should finish the job while they had the chance.

Nagumo wasn’t convinced. They had already done enough, in his opinion. The task force itself was the target now. His first duty was to protect his ships before the aircraft from America’s missing carriers found them.

Genda tried to persuade him to look for the U.S. carriers and sink them first. The carriers had always been the main target, but Nagumo wasn’t having it. The gods had been with them so far. He didn’t want to tempt fate any further.

He gave orders for the afternoon’s attack to be canceled. A little later Akagi hoisted the withdraw signal from the masthead. The task force turned toward the northwest and headed away from Hawaii.

* * *

The attack had been an outstanding success by anybody’s standards, but it was not the only triumph the Japanese enjoyed that morning.

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