Whip by Martin Caidin Read Free Book Online Page A

size of the fleet they had going for them.
    Anyway, earlier that same morning, it was the fourth of June, the day of the real confrontation, the marines went out to intercept a force of Zero fighters. Buffaloes and Wildcats, and the Zeros came down on them. If you didn't know what happened I'm sure you can figure it for yourselves. Carnage. A bloody slaughter. The Zeros tore the marines into little pieces. We had just gotten the news of that mess when we started turning over our engines. We had four Marauders, as you know, and we were intended to perform in concert with those six Avengers. Anyway, the two Marauders of the 38th Group held lead and right-wing position. Whip was holding down left wing, and we had another ship from the 22nd behind us to fill the slot. We were only fifteen minutes out from Midway when we sighted them. The whole bloody horizon was filled with Japanese warships. Difficult, I daresay, to forget that moment. The time was precisely five minutes past seven. Not the most auspicious start for a day…
    "Pity the poor bombardiers. Month after month they'd trained with their Norden sights and their fancy gadgets, and now that the enemy was growing ever larger on the horizon, all they could do was check their sights and activate their arming devices and turn everything over to the pilots. We weren't going to make any bomb runs, of course, we were going as low as we could and aiming was nothing more than the pilot pointing his machine where he hoped the enemy vessel would be, and sending his torpedo on its way. Sounds terribly simple, but it isn't, really.
    "Anyway, things were happening quickly now. I mean, we saw the warships, and the Japanese saw us just about the same time. Whip was talking with the other pilots so they could each select a different target, and the gunners were on the line now, rather excited, and difficult to blame them, even for shouting the way they did, because directly before us, about twenty miles away, were more fighter aircraft than I'd ever seen in my life.
    Two large formations of Zeros cruising in wide circles.
    "I'd always prided myself on being cool in a nasty situation, but I found I wasn't cool anymore. I was cold right down to my toes. I realized quite suddenly that all those fighters out there were going to do everything they could to keep us from getting to the carriers. You can guess that's what Whip selected — the largest carrier in sight.
    "The tempo began to pick up. Whip firewalled the throttles and eased ahead on the yoke.
    What he calls balls to the wall. The Marauder is fast, and we were squeezing from them everything they had to give, and the dive helped.
    But the torpedoes slowed us down and just gave the Zeros more time to make their move. I should add that the Zeros were high, oh, perhaps fifteen to twenty thousand above us, so they could pick exactly how they were going to make their runs on us, with all the advantages of speed picked up in their dives. They could trade off height for diving speed and perfect positioning, but I imagine you're all quite familiar with this sort of thing."
    A voice came quietly from the group. "Amen."
    Alex smiled. "Our gunners called off at least eighteen Zeros peeling off on us. I found myself admiring those pilots. I mean, they didn't break formation or throw their advantage away. They wheeled about smartly and came at us in precision, where they could do the most damage.
    "Well. By now I could make out the shape and disposition of the fleet getting closer with every moment. What I saw did nothing to inspire confidence. The warships were deployed miles deep, arranged in a loose box formation, with the carriers moving swiftly.
    This way they kept plenty of maneuvering room for evading our attacks, and still they retained the protection of all the other warships. I imagine that totaled several thousand antiaircraft weapons of various calibers, and the fighters, to say nothing of the carriers themselves."
    Alex went quiet for