Trial by Fire Page 14

  “One more thing,” he told Sauer. “Figure out a way to tie men together, one behind the other, so if we have to run through smoke, nobody gets left behind.”

  Then he had another thought—he should tell the bridge, Central, or someone that he had 300 men trapped on the messdecks and that he was trying to get them out. He looked around for a sound-powered phone station. Then he asked the chief, who said there was one in the serving galley. They found it quickly, and switched into the 1JV circuit. He spun the caller handle. Nobody answered. He dialed another circuit, with the same results. The lines had probably been burned away, like everything else in the ship.

  “Okay, we tried,” he told the chief. “I’m gonna go exploring.”

  “Want company?” the chief asked. Sauer also stepped up.

  J.R. almost said yes, but then explained to them quietly that if all the khaki went out that scullery hatch, the men would think they were being abandoned. The chief pointed out that Ensign Sauer could remain behind. J.R. just looked at him. The chief grinned back. An ensign. Right. Okay, I’ll stay behind.

  There were no replacement oxygen cannisters on the messdecks, so he donned a gas mask. If he encountered one of the damage control lockers he might be able to find an OBA, but for now, the mask would have to do. He did acquire a flashlight and a spare from a small fire station next to the serving line. He nodded at the chief, who opened up the scullery hatch, and then stepped into the dark vestibule.

  First, he tested the air. The familiar stink of gasoline and burning oil was pretty bad, but he could breathe. The temperature in the narrow passageway was easily over 100 degrees and the sounds coming from the next deck up were not encouraging. The ship’s main galley was on this deck but a few hundred feet farther aft. The passageway from the galley to the messdecks, where the men actually ate, was a zigzag affair because the massive boiler uptakes and smokestack pipes were in the way. If he remembered correctly there were two smaller passageways that led out to the ship’s starboard side sponson decks from just behind the uptake plenums. When the ship conducted an underway replenishment at sea, steel highlines would be sent over from the supply ship to this sponson. That way pallets of food could be manhandled by working parties directly back to the galley areas where the ship’s refrigerated and freezer spaces were. The scullery passageway divided into two branches, one on each side of the uptakes.

  He started aft, feeling his way along the passageway, whose battle lanterns had given up the ghost. The thin beam from his flashlight pierced the accumulated smoke, but just barely. As he got closer to where the passageway first divided, he heard a bomb go off and then the clatter of collapsing sheet metal. He felt a sudden pressure drop in the air that made his ears pop and then a noise like wind whipping down a canyon. Before he knew it, he was being sucked down the passageway. He frantically grabbed for a handhold along the bulkheads and finally caught a vertical cableway. There was a roar of fast-moving air now, but it wasn’t coming from the passageway. He dropped down onto his hands and knees and crept up to the turn that led to the right, making sure he always had something to hang on to. He made the turn, crept about ten feet, and then began the next turn, to the left this time. Something warned him not to do that, so he jammed one leg against a steel protrusion on the bulkhead. He was barely able to keep himself from being sucked around the corner.

  He was aghast when he did finally manage to get a look around the corner. The entire bulkhead had been ripped away, and he was looking into the uptake plenum itself, a steel mineshaft-like structure. There were four large, steel ducts in the uptake space, each one about ten feet square. Two of them carried clean combustion air down from the stack to feed the boilers. The other two took the products of combustion from those same boilers—smoke, superheated gases, steam, and a haze of acidic soot—back up the stack and out into the sea air. He realized he no longer needed the flashlight. He could see and that was because, above him, there was an enormous fire, and that’s what was sucking the air out of the ship. Incongruously, there were streams of steaming-hot water sluicing back down the sides of the uptake chamber.

  That’s the hangar bay way up there, he thought. No wonder we lost all power—with no air supply the boilers couldn’t function. Even as he stared up at this horrifying sight, a bright white bolus of flame appeared above him as something blew up in the hangar bay. That Jap bomb had ruptured all the uptake chambers. What had followed the Jap’s bomb had finished the job.

  He curled under himself and clawed his way back into the original scullery passageway. For some reason the moaning darkness was more comforting than seeing the interior of the ship’s smokestack chambers. That had been like looking into an active volcano. There were all sorts of objects—airplane engines, wheels, a crumpled wing—tangled up in the plenum chamber stringers, making it look like a charred steel clothesline. No way they were going to get by that mess, he thought. Then he remembered there was a second branch to this passageway. Try the other side, he said to himself, but for just a moment he just sat there on the warm deck, that evil breeze blowing past his head. So, do it, his brain told him. “Gimme a sec,” he said, out loud this time. He was being overcome with a feeling of hopelessness, a sense that he should maybe just curl up right here on the deck and grab a quick nap. He was tired, very tired. The cacophony of explosions and rending metal above him didn’t help. Maybe for just a few minutes, he told himself. He tried to change position but his leg slipped on something oily and he went down hard. His forehead hit a sharp fitting on the bulkhead and it hurt, really hurt. Wait a minute, he thought, wiping blood out of his right eye. It’s the air, or lack of it. Shit! There’s carbon monoxide in this passageway, and that’s what was lulling him into a quick nap, one from which he would never awake. Dammit!

  He sat back only to hit that object a second time, hard enough to see stars this time. The sudden jolt brought him completely out of his gathering funk and he was able to focus again. Then he heard something coming—something falling down through the ruined uptake chamber, something big and heavy, banging its way through the spiderweb of steel stringers that supported the uptakes, getting closer, tumbling, bang, bang, crash, and then it punched through the skin of the uptake shaft and crashed down practically on top of him. He had no time to think, move, or do anything at all, and then there it was: the thing: a 1,000-pound bomb, its casing seams oozing a brown liquid and little puffs of harsh chemical smoke. Its steel casing was hot, really hot, hot enough to singe his skin. It was missing its fins, and, thank God, the safety wire was still threaded through its nose and—wait.

  Oh, shit, there was no safety wire going through the tail assembly, and that little propeller at the back of the bomb was turning in the hot draft flowing through the passageway, but not quickly. Its shaft must have been bent because it gave off a squeak on each revolution. He knew that propeller was a counter. It didn’t mean that the bomb would explode when it reached its count, but it might, and the bomb’s casing was hot enough to make his khaki trousers smoke.

  As he stared in horror at this monster bomb lying practically in his lap, quietly arming itself, there came a really big boom from the hangar deck that seemed to twist the entire length of the ship’s hull. The remains of the uptakes rattled like a load of trash cans overturning on the street, and then the damned bomb moved, pinning his right leg to the deck. It felt like a bus had just quietly parked on his leg. For one long, agonizing moment, he watched that little propeller go around and around, one squeak at a time, as its geared shaft withdrew the internal pins that blocked the fusing train within the bomb.

  Once again, he experienced a sudden fog, as if he was being mesmerized by that lethal little propeller. Another blast from the hangar deck above, and this time more things came rattling down the uptake plenum, including an aircraft engine that burst through the sides of the uptake and dislodged the bomb. He yelled in pain but then realized he was free. This time he didn’t hesitate—he rolled sideways and kept rolling all the way back do
wn the passageway, wind or no Goddamned wind, until he was back at the T-junction. He tried again to gather his wits. The rumble of explosions up on the hangar deck continued unabated, each one contributing a new cascade of burning metal down into the uptake chambers.

  Move, move, move, damn you, his brain yelled. He did, rolling into the other branch of the passageway, where suddenly it was quieter and not so hot. A piece of his mind was still waiting for that 1,000-pounder to let go, in which case his search for a way out would become academic.

  A way out. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Find a way out. Three hundred guys are waiting, hoping, praying that you succeed. Move!

  Don’t want to.

  But he did, and within minutes he found a hatch. He undogged it, pushed, and then tumbled out onto one of the sponson decks. The sudden blast of clean, fresh air almost undid him and he staggered around the sloping deck like some kind of drunk. He had to grab a stanchion to stop sliding toward the deck’s edge. When he fully opened his eyes, he was stunned to see another ship right there, tight alongside. A cruiser, and there were men not that far away pointing at him and yelling. There were big streams of water coming up from that ship, playing up and down and all along Franklin’s blistered sides. A big blast up on the flight deck flung more burning debris all over the place. The firefighters over on the cruiser hit the deck. Instinctively, he did, too, although nothing was falling on or near him until a flaming wing tumbled over the deck edge above, painting the ship’s sides with burning gasoline until it hit the sea.

  He struggled to stand back up. Men on the cruiser were signaling him to jump, pointing to a tangle of monkey-lines in the water between the two ships. Both ships were apparently dead in the water, so all he had to do was jump and someone would pull him in. All he had to do was just let go.

  No, dammit. That’s not why you’re here.

  He had work to do. He put up a hand and then drew the number 300 backward in the air, pointed back into the hatch, took two deep breaths, and forced himself to go back in. It took him an unpleasant thirty minutes to find his way back to the messdecks. If anything, the passageway was even hotter and there seemed to be more wreckage now in his way than on his way out. The fuming bomb—his bomb—was no longer in sight. But—there was a way out, for the moment, anyway. Now all he had to do was go get them. He realized he’d been going uphill, which meant that the starboard list was getting worse. He tried to hurry through the labyrinth of passageways, vestibules, and hatches leading back to the messdecks but if anything, there was more debris in the passageway. When he finally opened up the scullery hatch, he was hit by a wave of warm air that smelled in equal parts of mortal fear and gasoline fumes.

  “Listen up,” he shouted at the crowd of men who’d hurried to cluster around the scullery hatch. “I’ve found a way out, and there’s a cruiser right alongside you can get to. First hundred: come with me. There isn’t room for any more, so I’ll be back. You got my word on that. Chief?”

  “Sir,” the chief answered.

  “You figure out a way to keep them hooked up?”

  “Yes, sir, each man grabs the belt of the guy in front of him.”

  “That’ll do it,” J.R. said. Then he started shouting again. “Hook up. Some of the passageways are full dark and there’s wreckage, smoke, and some really big holes, so just keep moving. Once we get outside, you’ll need to bear a hand in receiving a highline, and they’ll get you down. All right?”

  No one responded. For an instant the only sound was that of the rumbling fire on the hangar deck.

  “I said: All right?” he shouted.

  They responded with a muted “all right.” He was facing a virtual sea of terrified eyes. Scared shitless, he thought. And for good reason. Me, too.

  “Let’s go—first hundred. Follow me.”

  He felt a hand grab the back of his belt in a death grip. The chief opened the hatch. At first, he couldn’t move until the nearest men behind him got the idea and stepped forward. It felt like walking in a nightmare, straining to get the line moving while those frightening orange flares erupted ahead of them and everyone was able to see just how much debris was in the way. But they did move, even if it felt like he was pulling the whole train all by himself. When he finally got to the hatch leading out to the sponson deck, he stepped aside and yelled at them to hustle up. They didn’t need much encouraging at that point, and in only a few minutes 300 of them were crowded around the sloping sponson deck.

  So much for my great plan, he thought, grinning at the chief and Ensign Sauer as they tumbled out of the hatch bringing up the rear, the last to leave the messdecks. Then some shouting began at the other edge of the crowd. The slanting deck, wet from the cruiser’s firefighting streams, made it hard to stand up and suddenly men were tumbling off the edge into the sea between the ships, unable to get their footing on the slippery steel. All J.R. could do was hang on to the hatch itself and watch a slow-motion avalanche of terrified men gathering speed as sliders grabbed the stationary men. Within sixty seconds, almost the entire crowd was down in the water, some men disappearing when other men fell on them from forty feet above. J.R. thought they looked like the swarm in a commercial fishing net when they begin to haul it in.

  The cruiser people, God bless ’em, didn’t hesitate. Men carrying the ends of lines jumped in and passed their lines to the struggling Franklin crewmen. Others up on the cruiser’s main deck heaved around smartly and began pulling people out of the water. At one point, J.R. thought there were as many cruiser men in the water between the ships as Franklin men. Suddenly, as if to add to the terror, the cruiser’s five-inch-gun secondary batteries cut loose, firing at a Jap plane that was trying to crash into the once-in-a-lifetime target of two ships tied together in the open ocean.

  J.R. suddenly had to just sit down on the wet steel as his brain became completely overloaded. The chief was hanging on for dear life at the other side of the sponson. Ensign Sauer had apparently joined the human waterfall going over the side. J.R. hooked the back of his belt to a tie-down fitting in the deck and decided it was finally time to take a little nap. He was helped along by a roaring noise in his ears, which he hoped wasn’t something about to fall on him. Or another Jap bomber. Exhausted, he simply passed out.

  26

  George still didn’t know where the captain was, so he headed back into the passageway behind the bridge, bracing himself against the starboard list. A quarter mile directly ahead Pittsburgh was painstakingly maneuvering to get her stern right under the bows of the stricken carrier to begin the business of passing the heavy towing hawser. She was hampered by the fact that the hawser was sinking as it absorbed water, putting it right in the way of the cruiser’s backing propellers. They had to pull it back aboard Pittsburgh, wait and hold it while the ship put on a backing bell, then stop it, and then let it slip back into the sea. It was taking over sixty men just to hold on to it. Then the Franklin’s forecastle crew would have to heave around, by hand since there was no power to the winches, to bring the bitter end ever closer to the bullnose.

  He glanced sideways at the inclinometer as he left the bridge. Thirteen degrees. Well, actually, it was more like fifteen degrees now. He just kept going. If Central couldn’t get some counterflooding under way pretty soon they’d all be swimming. At least all the fires would go out, he thought, cheerily.

  Santa Fe had ceased firing on nearby bogeys, for which George was grateful. The noise had been terrific, amplified as it was between the steel sides of the two ships. Twenty feet back was the captain’s sea cabin. George knocked on the door and then tried the handle. Locked. He knocked again. Then the anti-air gunfire next door started up again, and this time it included 40 and 20 mm guns. George stood there in the passageway, holding his breath. He finally heard the sound of an aircraft engine, howling at redline RPM, pass close over the ship, followed by what he recognized as the determined growl of a Corsair engine accompanied by 50-caliber fire. Then all he heard was the staccato banging o
f small-caliber AA ammo cooking off down along Franklin’s flight deck. Santa Fe must have ceased firing to let that Corsair take care of business.

  He banged on the sea-cabin door one more time, then pressed his ear against the thin metal of the door. He thought he heard something inside, but couldn’t make out what it was. But he was definitely in there. Then a talker was calling for him from out on the bridge. He gave up and hurried back out into the pilothouse. The talker was pointing down onto the flight deck forward, where dozens of men were desperately trying to take cover as more and more of the ready-service ammo lockers, bathed in the remains of a lake of burning gasoline trapped in the portside catwalks by the ship’s list, cooked off with increasing ferocity, shooting armor-piercing incendiary tracer rounds in all directions, including some that punched through the backside of the port bridgewing and killed one of the lookouts. The hapless man grunted in pain and then folded onto the deck gratings, bleeding horribly, but still holding his binoculars.

  George closed his eyes yet again to banish the sight, but then opened them in time to first hear and then see a Tiny Tim rocket arcing high over the flight deck, its rocket going half-blast. It got up to about 400 feet, then arced over and headed directly toward the Pittsburgh. George found himself mouthing the words: no, no, no, as he watched the rocket, its back end still spitting flaming smoke, fly right over the cruiser’s after eight-inch gun director and then disappear somewhere abeam of the ship. They’re gonna get tired of that, George thought, remembering the previous rocket. Two bloodstained corpsmen appeared out of nowhere to tend to the bloody mess on the bridgewing.

  He looked back down at the flight deck and saw that the remaining men up there had given up on taking the highline. There was a continuous stream of men sliding down monkey-lines or chain ladders into the water between Franklin and Santa Fe, where the light cruiser’s crew worked frantically to get them out from between the two ships. He reluctantly went over to the starboard bridgewing and looked down. Some force of wind and sea was slowly pushing the two ships closer together, creating a closing wedge of looming steel that threatened to crush the frantic swimmers thrashing below.