Tears in the Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

“You win in battles with timing . . . the timing of cunning . . . a timing which the enemy does not expect.” Surprise leaves an enemy low, outwitted, taciturn. America “will be utterly crushed with one blow,” an Imperial Navy admiral told the commanders of the Pearl Harbor task force at a briefing before the battle. “It is planned to shift the balance of power and thereby confuse the enemy at the outset and deprive him of his fighting spirit.” 24
    But a surprise attack, a modern coup de main, demanded careful planning, constant practice, strict secrecy, a willingness to sacrifice, and a lot of luck. 25
    The Japanese have seven gods of good fortune, and on December 8, 1941, these seven kami were with them. The attack on Hawaii left much of the Pacific Fleet burning or at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. The surprise sorties against the other targets in the Pacific were stunning victories as well. Still, of all the units on the attack that day, the force with the most luck was the 11th Air Fleet, SaburSakai and his fellow pilots in the fighters and bombers that had soared into the air from bases on Formosa to bomb Clark Field in the Philippines.
    The battle plan had originally called for the Formosa squadrons to take off at 2:30 a.m., which would have put them over the target just after first light, roughly the same moment that the Pearl Harbor attack force, some five thousand miles to the east, was diving on Honolulu’s airfields and on the battleships of the American Pacific Fleet. But a rare and very unseasonal “thick pea-soup fog” rolled in from the Straits of Formosa that morning. And standing on the tarmac in their flight suits,SaburSakai and his comrades could not see more than five yards in front of them.
    Through the fog came a voice from the loudspeakers on the control tower: “Takeoff is delayed indefinitely,” and with that announcement, every pilot instantly understood that the element of surprise had been lost, for surely the Americans at Clark Field and at the other U.S. bases in the Philippines would have heard of the attack at Pearl Harbor and would be prepared for them, or perhaps the enemy was on its way to attack Formosa and the Japanese airfields there. 26
    Sakai and his fellow pilots, cupping their hands to their ears and listening for the sounds of American bombers overhead, waited for the fog to lift. Five o’clock, six o’clock, seven o’clock. At last the fog gave way to mist, mist to blue sky, and by eight forty-five, all squadrons were headed south.
    The attack was now six hours behind schedule and Sakai was sure “after the long delay . . . [the enemy] would be awaiting us in great strength.”
    Just after noon the formation of fifty-three bombers and forty-five Zeros came roaring in from the South China Sea and the Zambales mountains. Below them, on the plains of Pampanga Province, was Clark Field, the main air base of the United States Army Forces in the Far East, General Douglas MacArthur’s army in the Philippines. When Sakai looked down, he saw “some sixty enemy bombers and fighters neatly parked along the airfield runways . . . squatted there like sitting ducks.” 27
    The Japanese airman was astonished. Why, he wondered, weren’t the Americans in the air, “waiting for us?”
    The bombers made their passes first. To Sakai, whose squadron of fighters was circling above, protecting the bombers, the attack on Clark Field looked “perfect.” He watched from his cockpit as “long strings of bombs tumbled from the bays” of the bombers “and dropped toward the targets.” When they hit, “the entire air base seemed to [rise] into the air with the explosions. Pieces of airplanes, hangars, and other ground installations scattered wildly. Great fires erupted and smoke boiled upward.” 28
    Now the Zeros took their turn. They “circled down to 13,000 feet