Free Days of Infamy by Newt Gingrich Page B

focused on the ship.
    “Range… seven thousand one hundred yards …”
    The geyser of water blew two hundred yards forward of the destroyer to his port side, the column of water soaring a hundred feet into the air, seconds later the charging destroyer, pitching and rocking, slashing through the wake of the blast and the cascades of sea water showering down.
    More flares were erupting above them. Suddenly a blinding spotlight clicked on, and then another, from the Japanese cruiser to the west of the battleship, the spotlight sweeping back and forth.
    The flashes from his own single four-incher were blinding as well, so that he let his binoculars drop.
    Eight bursts of light, as brilliant as the sun, fired in sequences oftwo, each sequence spaced a couple of seconds after the next from the battleship straight ahead, joined a few seconds later by the second battleship, which had been running a mile astern of his target. Their heavy guns were opening up at last.
    My God, here it comes.
    And it came, the fourteen-inch shells raining down, one striking directly between
Ward
and the destroyer to port, and then in a second his portside companion was gone, just simply gone, caught amidships, three quarters of a ton of armor-piercing slicing through the hull just above the water line.
    The destroyer escort to his starboard side had taken a similar hit, but luck had held for her. The armor-piercing shells were designed for a plunging strike into an enemy cruiser or battleship, designed to slice through eight, ten inches of armor and then to keep on punching down before finally detonating. For the starboard-side destroyer escort, it had simply gone through the paper-thin superstructure of the bridge, killing four men, turning the ship’s captain into a pulplike spray, and then punched through the starboard side to strike the sea a quarter mile away before exploding.
    But for the ship to port, the shell had angled into the engine room, hitting a steam turbine which was encased with high-grade steel, and blown, the explosion breaking the back of the ship, tearing off the entire aft end, the flash bursting into the aft magazine for the five-inchers, igniting half a dozen tons of powder.
    Another shell burst in the ocean seventy-five yards off the portside bow of
Ward.
Not a killing blow, though the overpressure underwater ruptured plates, and shrapnel eviscerated the crew of the forward antiaircraft gun, which had started to open up as well, silencing their brave but futile efforts.
    “Range six thousand, five hundred yards!”
    He looked over at the captain of the
Ward.
The lad stood not saying a word. Draemel smiled inwardly. Best damn tradition of Annapolis on display here. His boys were doing OK, and he was proud of them—but how many of these kids would die in the next fewminutes, how many were already dead? He had heard some unsettling rumors. Suppose after all this their torpedoes weren’t effective, suppose they just bounced off the armor siding of that thirty-six-thousand-ton monster straight ahead? If so, he hoped everyone on the damn ordnance board responsible fried in hell. He was pitting well over two thousand young men on this gamble. It had better be worth it.
    He could not let his fears show now. There was only one order left to give, when to turn and launch torpedoes, and he prayed to God his nerve would hold long enough to do that—and that he lived long enough to do it right. He had seen the destruction in Pearl. It was payback time, and he wanted in on that first strike back.
    There was a momentary eye contact between him and the young captain, illuminated by the flash of the Japanese guns. Both forced a smile, said nothing, but the look expressed a thousand words about fears, courage, the realization of what had to be done, and the realization of the price that job would require.
    They were well within torpedo range now, almost suicidally close. But the farther out with his torpedoes, the slower the speed for the