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Cuttlefish -> RE: Small Ship, Big War (5/31/2007 12:36:58 AM)
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October 6, 1942
Location: 420 miles northeast of Canton Island
Course: Southeast
Attached to: TF 79
Mission: Air combat
System Damage: 8
Float Damage: 0
Fires: 0
Fuel: 458
Orders: Attack American shipping between Canton Island and Palmyra.
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Lieutenant JG Jim Pederson checked his fuel level as he eased his PBY Catalina around to a more southerly course. It was nearing the point where he would have to turn the plane around and head back to Palmyra. So far it had been another routine patrol, nothing to see but the ocean below and a fair amount of cloud cover. Still, he knew better than to complain about boredom. It set a bad example for the other eight men of the crew. And Pederson remembered quite well what had happened back in April, when the Japs had come undetected right through this area and smashed a large convoy.
It had been VP-12 on patrol then, too. They spotted the enemy carriers, all right – after ten ships had been sunk and all they could do was watch the Japs head home, cocky as you please. Heads had rolled over that debacle, and Pederson for one was determined not to let that happen again.
“Hey Skip, I see a plane,” said a scratchy voice in his headphones. That would be Chris Underwood back in the port blister. “About 5000 feet below us at 30 degrees left, maybe a quarter mile off. Hey, there’s two planes!”
“There they are,” said his navigator, looking down. “I see meatballs. Skip, those are Zeroes.” Pederson could see them now too, angling away from his plane. As he watched they sliced through a cloudbank and emerged on the other side.
Pederson felt a rush of adrenaline. Zeroes out here could only mean one thing: Jap carriers. He turned the PBY to follow them, giving the engines a little more power. They were falling slowly behind even so, but that was all right. Pederson wanted to follow them. He did not want to be seen.
They trailed the fighters for several miles. Pederson kept to the clouds as much as possible, staying well above and behind the enemy planes.
“Everyone stay alert,” he told his crew. “There may be more of them, and we don’t want to get jumped.” The warning was scarcely necessary. The crew was pretty keyed up now, and everyone was aware of the danger. The PBY was a tough plane but no one wanted to be on the receiving end of an attack by Japanese fighters.
They came out of a cloud bank. In the distance the sun glinted off the wings of the two Zeroes. And on the ocean beyond them was a Jap carrier. It was a big one, with a yellow flight deck. In the near distance a destroyer trailed a long wake as it kept pace with the carrier.
“I count one carrier and three escorts, destroyers or light cruisers,” said his copilot. “The carrier is a Shokaku class. The closest ship is a…let’s see…” He thumbed quickly through his ship recognition cards. “Looks like a Fubuki class destroyer, Hibiki type. Their course is southeast.”
“Call it in, Riggs,” Pederson told his radio operator. He banked the plane around to get back into the clouds. This was no place to linger out in the open.
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“Captain Ishii, sir!” came the radio operator’s voice over the speaking tube. Captain Ishii stepped across the bridge to the tube.
“Yes?” he said.
“Sir, I’m picking up a radio transmission. It’s in code, sir, but the signal is fairly strong. They must be close. An American plane, I think. It sounds as though they are broadcasting coordinates.”
Captain Ishii swore softly, then thanked the radio operator and asked him to let him know if he picked up anything else. So much for sneaking through undetected, he thought to himself. He wondered what Nagumo was going to do now.
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