Returning to the cockpit, he stopped and chatted with Byrnes, who was running through a schematic of the bomb’s detonation circuits. Every so often the ordnance expert glanced at a small console mounted above his lap.
“Any chance of it going off before we get there?” asked Dennings.
“Lightning strike could do it,” answered Byrnes.
Dennings looked at him in horror. “A little late with a warning, aren’t you? We’ve been flying through the middle of an electrical storm since midnight.”
Byrnes looked up and grinned. “We could have gone up just as easily on the ground. What the hell, we made it, didn’t we?”
Dennings couldn’t believe Byrnes’s matter-of-fact attitude. “Was General Morrison aware of the risk?”
“Better than anyone. He’s been on the atomic bomb project from the beginning.”
Dennings shuddered and turned away. Insane, he thought, the operation was insane. It’d be a miracle if any of them lived to tell about it.
Five hours into the flight and lighter by 2,000 gallons of expended fuel, Dennings leveled the B-29 off at 10,000 feet. The crew became more upbeat as the dawn’s orange glow tinted the eastern sky. The storm was far behind them, and they could see the rolling swells of the sea and a few scattered white clouds.
A young and inexperienced pilot, Okinaga was one of the lucky ones. Out of his recently graduated class of twenty-two, who were rushed through training during Japan’s desperate days, he and three others were ordered to perform coastal patrols. The rest went into kamikaze squadrons.
Okinaga was deeply disappointed. He would have gladly given his life for the Emperor, but he accepted boring patrol duty as a temporary assignment, hoping to be called for a more glorious mission when the Americans invaded his homeland.
As the lone aircraft grew larger, Okinaga didn’t believe what he saw. He rubbed his eyes and squinted. Soon he could clearly make out the ninety-foot polished aluminum fuselage, the huge 141-foot wings, and the three-story vertical stabilizer of an American B-29.
He stared dumfounded. The bomber was flying out of the northeast from an empty sea, 20,000 feet below its combat ceiling. Unanswerable questions flooded his mind. Where had it come from? Why was it flying toward central Japan with one engine feathered? What was its mission?
Like a shark knifing toward a bleeding whale, Okinaga closed to within a mile. Still no evasive action. The crew seemed asleep or bent on suicide.
Okinaga had no more time for guessing games. The great winged bomber was looming up before him. He jammed the throttle of his Mitsubishi A6M Zero against its stop and made a circling dive. The Zero handled like a swallow, the 1,130-horsepower Sakae engine hurtling him behind and beneath the sleek, gleaming B-29.
Too late the tail gunner sighted the fighter and belatedly opened fire. Okinaga squeezed the gun tit on his control stick. His Zero shuddered as his two machine guns and two twenty-millimeter cannons shredded metal and human flesh.
A light touch of the rudder and his tracers ate their way into the wing and the B-29’s number-three engine. The cowling ripped and tore away, oil poured through holes, followed by flames. The bomber seemed to hover momentarily, and then it flipped on its side and spun toward the sea.
Only after the choked-off cry of the tail gunner and his short burst of fire did the
Dennings shouted into the intercom as he fought to level the plane. “Stanton, jettison the bomb! Jettison the goddamn bomb!”
The bombardier, wedged against his bombsight by the centrifugal force, yelled back. “It won’t fall free unless you straighten us out.”
The number-three engine was blazing now. The sudden loss of two engines, both on the same side, had thrown the plane over until it was standing on one wing. Working in unison, Dennings and Stromp struggled with the controls, fighting the dying aircraft to an even keel. Dennings pulled back on the throttles, leveling out but sending the bomber into a flat, sickening stall.
Stanton pulled himself to an upright position and popped open the bomb-bay doors. “Hold it steady,” he yelled futilely. He wasted no time adjusting the bombsight. He pushed the bomb release button.
Nothing happened. The violent twisting motion had jammed the atomic bomb against its tight quarters.
White-faced, Stanton struck the release with his fist, but the bomb stubbornly remained in place. “It’s jammed!” he cried. “It won’t fall free.”
Fighting for a few more moments of life, knowing that if they survived they must all take their own lives by cyanide, Dennings struggled to ditch the mortally wounded aircraft in the sea.
He almost made it. He came within two hundred feet of settling the
Braving the winds and spray, Captain Arne Korvold stood on the open bridge of the Norwegian Rindal Lines passenger-cargo liner
She seemed to have a ten-degree permanent list but rolled to twenty as the swells smashed into her exposed port broadside. The only sign of life was a wisp of smoke from her stack. Korvold grimly noted that her lifeboats had been launched, and a sweep of the restless sea failed to find any sign of them. He refocused the binoculars and read the English name spelled out beneath the Japanese characters on the bow.
She was called the
The radio operator shook his head. “Nothing. Not a peep wince we sighted her. Her radio must be closed down. Impossible to believe they abandoned ship without a distress call.”
Korvold stared silently through the bridge windows at the Japanese ship drifting less than a kilometer off his starboard rail. Norwegian by birth, he was a short, distinguished man who never made a hurried gesture. His ice-blue eyes seldom blinked, and his lips beneath the trimmed beard seemed constantly frozen in a slight smile. Twenty-six years at sea, mostly in cruise ships, he had a warm and friendly disposition, respected by his crew and admired by the passengers.
He tugged at his short graying beard and swore quietly to himself. The tropical storm had unexpectedly swung north onto his course and put him nearly two days behind schedule on his passage from the port of Pusan, Korea, to San Francisco. Korvol had not left the bridge for forty-eight hours and he was exhausted. Just as he was about to take a welcome rest, they sighted the seemingly derelict
“Permission to take a boarding crew across, Captain?”
Korvold looked up into the sculpted Nordic face of Chief Officer Oscar Steep. The eyes that stared back were a darker blue than Korvold’s. The chief officer stood lean and as straight as a light pole, skin tanned and hair bleached blond from exposure to the sun.
Korvold didn’t immediately answer but walked over to a bridge window and gazed down at the sea separating the two ships. From wave crest to trough the waves were running three to meters. “I’m not of a mind to risk lives, Mr. Steep. Better wait until seas calm a bit.”
“I’ve taken a boat through worse.”
“No hurry. She’s a dead ship, dead as a body in the morgue. And from the look of her, her cargo has shifted and she’s taking on water. Better we leave her be and search for her boats.”
“There may be injured men over there,” Steen persisted.
Korvold shook his head. “No captain would have abandoned ship and left injured crewmen behind.”
“No captain in his right senses maybe. But what kind of a man would desert a sound ship and lower boats in the midst of a sixty-five knot gale typhoon without sending a Mayday signal?”
“A mystery all right,” Korvold agreed.
“And there’s her cargo to consider,” Steen continued. “Her waterline indicates a full load. She looks capable of transporting over seven thousand automobiles.”
Korvold gave Steen a shrewd look. “You thinking salvage, Mr. Steen?”
“Yes, sir, I am. If she’s totally abandoned with a full cargo, and we can sail her into port, our salvage claim should be equal to half her value or better. The company as well as the crew could share in five or six hundred million kroner.”
Korvold considered for a few moments, a tantalizing thought of greed wrestling with a deep feeling of foreboding. Greed won out. “Pick your boarding crew, and include the assistant engineer. If there’s smoke from her funnel, her machinery must still be in working order.” He paused. “But I still prefer you wait for the water to settle.”