Free The Twilight Warriors by Robert Gandt Page B

and rejoin.
    But they weren’t out of harm’s way yet. As they were clearing the Japanese coastline, another Tail End Charlie, Ens. Rob Harris, called that he was losing gasoline. His fuel system had taken a hit, and he was down to only 20 gallons.
    A couple of minutes later, Harris’s engine quit, and he put the Corsair down in the frigid water off Shikoku. Overhead, another Tail End Charlie, Ens. Les Gray, circled, keeping an eye on Harris. He could see the pilot scrambling out of the cockpit, but the Corsair was sinking quickly. Harris wasn’t dragging his life raft out with him.
    Within seconds the Corsair had vanished. And so had Rob Harris.

7THE MOOD IN BOYS’ TOWN
    USS
INTREPID

168 MILES SOUTHEAST OF KYUSHU, JAPAN
MARCH 18, 1945
    T he men in the gun tubs couldn’t believe it. Their first damned day back in the war, and it was happening all over again. A Japanese plane was skimming the water, somehow dodging the curtain of antiaircraft fire, headed straight for
Intrepid
.
    It seemed like the replay of a bad dream. Most of the men on the deck had been aboard
Intrepid
four months earlier when two kamikazes, five minutes apart, plunged through the carrier’s flight deck, snuffing out nearly a hundred lives and taking the ship out of action.
    This one was a twin-engine bomber, and its pilot seemed to be blessed with divine protection. Oily black bursts were exploding all around him. The ocean below the bomber frothed with the splashes of spent ordnance. He kept coming.
    Japanese planes had been stalking
Intrepid
all morning. Fresh yellow blips kept showing up on the radar screens in CIC—the combat information center. CAP fighters from all the task group carriers were intercepting the bogeys, which were quickly tagged as bandits. As the intruders flew into range of the antiaircraft guns on the screening ships, the CAP fighters were forced to withdraw and let the gunners blaze away. Most of the attackers were shot down or chased away.
    But not all. Through the CAP screen and then through the hail of antiaircraft fire came a Yokosuka P1Y Frances bomber.
Intrepid
’s 5-inchers hammered away, mostly missing. As the Frances came closer, every Bofors 40-millimeter and rapid-fire Oerlikon 20-millimeter gun on
Intrepid
’s starboard side opened up.
    The Frances was taking hits, trailing smoke—but still flying. The men on
Intrepid
could see the two round cowlings with the radial engines and the distinctive long, slender wings. As the bomber bored closer, they could make out the figures of the pilots in the glass-enclosed cockpit.
    The gunners braced themselves for the inevitable. This thing was clearly not a torpedo plane or a bomber. It was another kamikaze, and he had them bore sighted. Just when it seemed that the Japanese plane would smash into
Intrepid
’s flight deck, a round from one of the 5-inch guns clipped the Frances’s tail.
    The bomber’s nose pitched straight down. In a scene that lasted less than two seconds but would remain fixed in their memories for the rest of their lives, the gunners had a plan view of the Japanese bomber. It was so close they felt they could reach out and touch it. The moment was captured by a combat photographer—the orange ball of the rising sun emblazoned on the starboard wing, port wing tip shattered by gunfire, Japanese crewmen hunched inside the cockpit.
    The bomber hit the water 50 feet from
Intrepid
’s starboard bow. The explosion showered fire and debris against
Intrepid
’s starboard side and into the exposed hangar bay. Flames enveloped the forward hangar bay, lighting off the fabric control surfaces of parked airplanes and scorching painted surfaces.
    By a miracle, none of the airplanes exploded. There were casualties, but not all were caused by the kamikaze crash. One of
Intrepid
’s escorts, the cruiser
Atlanta
, was also shooting at the incoming kamikaze and fired a 5-inch shell too close to
Intrepid
’s fantail. In the brief action, one sailor was killed