Evening star., 1943-04-25

than a thousand planes could IN
whole attack.
The four heavy cruisers steamed
abeam in the center of the force.
Three of the light cruisers were aft
OF them and three forward. The six
destroyers champed and paved
around them in a rough, diamond
shaped formation so that whichever
way plane came in there would be
hoofs in its face. And the sleak,
truculent ships steamed along black
ly behind their guns and stuck UP
against the light sky like toys.
The Attack Starts.
Get the nearest big one," said
Swede oversthe radio and threw the
throttle over as far as it would go
and pulled as much mercury as the
motor would take..~ The plane
punched and sprang forward like
a kicked horse. Get the nearest
big one" were the only words uttered
by anybody during the whole attack
Nobody wanted to take up any of
his minds thinking of words. And
during the two months when Tor
pedo 8 had been waiting to get re-
venge for Midway, that was one of
the things they had drilled Onto do
without words. They had expected
it would be useful not to have to
spend fractions of seconds thinking
OF words and had so indoctrinated
themselves with the teamwork of at
tack that each man knew instantly,
by what the flight leader was doing,
just where to place himself and Just
what to do there.
Torpedo 8 had been coming up
from the southeast when the tar
get was spotted. The target was
about IS miles off when first
seen. The sky around the tar
get was fishbelly white and clear
of clouds, but there was a purple
colored curl of cloud northwest of
the Jap task force. 1t looked as if
1t had been draped up there in the
sky by somebody who wanted to get
those Japs for it was in exactly the
position where it ought to be. Tor
pedo planes coming out of that cloud
would have the cover of it during
Is or 20 seconds of the most dan
gerous part of the run and then
would come out of 1t on the nose
to drop across the targets bow.
SWede saw the cloud and headed for
it right away, with all he had, as
if it were that Crescent road cottage
of his in Birmingham, and Taur-
man, Fayle, Barnum and Ries tore
right along with him, the five mo-
tors going like one with a steady
laundering
Swede saw little orange lights
Pickering at him from the ships.
winking on and off like firef1ies. and
knew these were the guns firing at
him and waited a moment in his
mind to see how close they were
coming. 1t takes what seems long
time to both sides of the deal, to the
fellows shooting the gun and the
fellows being shot at by it, for anti
aircraft fire to climb up from muzzle
to target. Two dive bombers had
come up from the carrier with Tor
pedo 8 and Swede, while waiting in
his mind for the shells to explode
and show where they were, looked
around for them and saw little black
specks off a ways and saw them
get bigger until they got as big as
small birds and recognized them
for Zeros coming toward him, two
or three or maybe half a dozen
Zeros, maybe more, off in the west
there, tearing along to head him
of. Then strange black chrysan-
emum-shaped puffs of smoke
fowered in the sky directly ahead
of him and began to walk toward
him. each flowerlike puff with large
hurtling chunks of steel for petals.
and he began to jink and cork
screw and thought, where the hell
are those dive bombers at" and
figured they must be climbing and
wondered bitterly why it was that
dive bombers always felt they needed
to dive off the top of the sky when
5000 or 10000 feet would be enough
to give them all the velocity possible.
A Near Disaster.
He couldn't hear anything except
the motor working and he was so
used to that he hardly heard 1t.
The rubber-padded phones hung
silently on his ears. He kept forcing
his throttle over as far as it could
go, trying to push it past the
furthest point, and kept one eye on
the instrument panel and kept an
other on those ominous puffs of