Read Online Pearl Harbour - A novel of December 8th by William R. Forstchen, Newt Gingrich - Free Book Online

that was great!” he shouted.
    “Another one then?”
    “Sure!”
    This time he felt more confident and once the roll was completed, he could not resist leaning forward and slapping Fuchida on the shoulder, the pilot laughing.
    “I’ll take you on as a student and have you flying off carriers in six months!”
    “If only,” James replied.
    Their four rolls had dropped them down a couple of thousand feet, so he could now see Tokyo Bay clearly ahead.
    “We’ll soon be over the bay, so no playing around, but I want to show you something,” Fuchida announced.
    “Anything.”
    And James found the nausea was gone, and at this moment he wished they could just continue to stay up here, to float through the sky, the roar of the engine now a wonderful harmonious sound.
    “Recognize anything?” Fuchida asked.
    James looked around and found that he could easily see the vast sprawl of the city just half a dozen miles ahead, smoke from factories, not sure but perhaps a glimpse of the Imperial compound, and then the harbor itself filled with hundreds of ships, half a dozen passenger steamers, dozens of cargo ships, even the dots of sails of sampans and there, in the naval yard, his own ship, the Oklahoma.

    Fuchida banked slightly and lined up on the battlewagon and throttled up, the pitch of the engine going from a steady reassuring hum to a loud roar, the wind shrieking in the wires and support struts.
    Details started to become evident, even the white dots of sailors up on deck.
    “You still strapped in?” Fuchida asked.
    “Yes, why?”
    And with that his stomach felt as if it were up in his throat as Fuchida pushed the nose over into a dive, again a moment of panic, but James rode it out, stunned by the acceleration of speed, the size of his ship growing. They were heading down at a 60-degree dive for the bay below, and though he trusted the pilot, he did wonder for a second if they would just simply plow into the ocean. At what seemed the last possible second he felt as if he were being shoved down into his seat as they pulled several Gs coming out of the dive, leveling out a scant fifty feet above the harbor, racing straight toward the Oklahoma.
    They were less than a mile out, and within seconds the battleship seemed to fill the world before him, becoming larger and yet larger. He could see some of the sailors on the deck turning, looking, pointing.
    “Can’t get too close!” Fuchida shouted, “your captain might not approve!”
    And he yanked back on the stick, the plane soaring back up and then banking over sharply so that James was looking straight down at the deck, five hundred feet below.
    “That’s what a torpedo attack would be like!” Fuchida shouted.
    James could not reply, startled by the moment. He had been caught up by the sheer exhilaration, even contemplating how he would boast to his comrades later that he was aboard the plane that buzzed them, but now he saw it differently.
    He could imagine twenty, thirty such planes coming in at the same time and the thought was frightful. And in that instant he knew that the pilot Fuchida was right, and all the admirals were dead on wrong. This crate he was in was the future, not the guns down below.
    It took years to build a battlewagon and tens of millions of dollars, and millions more just to keep her afloat each year. The plane he was in, how much? Ten thousand at most. The pilot far more expensive than the plane. If twenty such planes could break through, armed with torpedoes, the only thing that could stop them would be other planes, if they reacted fast enough. If not, the battleship was as good as dead.
    Their conversation of last night, Fuchida’s animated lecture of this morning--he was right. Planes would continue to improve, become faster, more agile, have greater range, be more deadly, while the battleship had reached its climax: nothing could be added to it to make it more efficient other than to just make it bigger, with bigger guns, but what