Dick Lehr - Dead Reckoning: The Story of How Johnny Mitchell and His Fighter Pilots Took on Admiral Yamamoto and Avenged Pearl Harbor

Contents

Dedicated to the memory of John F. Lehr,

Staff Sergeant, USMC, Guam, 19451947

(in alphabetical order)

The Yamamoto Mission Pilots

ROGER J. AMES : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Laramie, Wyoming; cover flight

EVERETT H. ANGLIN : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Arlington, Texas; cover flight

REX T. BARBER : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Culver, Oregon; attack flight

DOUGLAS S. CANNING : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Wayne, Nebraska; cover flight

DELTON C. GOERKE : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Syracuse, New York; cover flight

LAWRENCE A. GRAEBNER : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, St. Paul, Minnesota; cover flight

RAYMOND K. HINE : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Harrison, Ohio; attack flight

BESBY F. HOLMES : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, San Francisco, California; attack flight

JULIUS JACK JACOBSON : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, San Diego, California; cover flight

LOUIS R. KITTEL : Major, Army Air Force, Fargo, North Dakota; cover flight

THOMAS G. LANPHIER, JR. : Captain, Army Air Force, Detroit, Michigan; attack flight

ALBERT R. LONG : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Taft, Texas; cover flight

JOHN W. MITCHELL : Major, Army Air Force, Enid, Mississippi; ace pilot, mission planner, cover flight leader

WILLIAM E. SMITH : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Glendale, California; cover flight

ELDON E. STRATTON : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Anderson, Missouri; cover flight

GORDON WHITAKER : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force, Goldsboro, North Carolina; cover flight

Other Notable Characters

WALLACE L. DINN : Lieutenant, Army Air Force; friend of John Mitchell, killed in action

JOSEPH FINNEGAN : Lieutenant Commander, US Navy; code breaker, Station Hypo, Pearl Harbor

ELLERY GROSS : Lieutenant, Army Air Force; friend of John Mitchell, killed in P-38 Lightning test flight

WILLIAM J. BULL HALSEY, JR. : Admiral, US Navy; commander, US forces, Solomon Islands

HIROSHI HAYASHI : Chief Pilot, Betty bomber No. 326, April 18, 1943

WILFRED J. HOLMES : Lieutenant Commander, US Navy; code breaker, Station Hypo, Pearl Harbor

CHIYOKO KAWAI : geisha and Yamamotos mistress

ALVA RED LASSWELL : Major, US Marine Corps; code breaker, Station Hypo, Pearl Harbor

EDWIN T. LAYTON : Commander, US Navy; intelligence officer, US Pacific Fleet

JAMES MCLANAHAN : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force; originally assigned to the attack flight in the Yamamoto mission but replaced when engine trouble forced him to turn back

ANNIE LEE MILLER MITCHELL : wife of John Mitchell

EUNICE MASSEY MITCHELL : stepmother of John Mitchell

LILLIAN FLORENCE DICKINSON MITCHELL : mother of John Mitchell

NOAH BOOTHE MITCHELL : father of John Mitchell

MARC PETE MITSCHER : Rear Admiral, US Navy; commander, Air Forces, Solomon Islands

JOSEPH MOORE : First Lieutenant, Army Air Force; originally assigned to the attack flight in the Yamamoto mission but replaced when engine trouble forced him to turn back

CHUICHI NAGUMO : Vice Admiral, Imperial Japanese Navy; oversaw Pearl Harbor attack

CHESTER W. NIMITZ : Admiral, US Navy; commander in chief, US Pacific Fleet

JOSEPH J. ROCHEFORT : Commander, US Navy; officer in charge, Station Hypo, Pearl Harbor

SHOICHI SUGITA : Flight Petty Officer; pilot of one of six Zeros escorting Yamamoto from Rabaul to Bougainville on April 18, 1943

SADAYOSHI TAKANO : father of Isoroku Yamamoto

MATOME UGAKI : Vice Admiral; chief of staff, Combined Fleet, Imperial Japanese Navy; passenger aboard Betty bomber No. 326, April 18, 1943

HENRY VIC VICCELLIO : Colonel, Army Air Force; John Mitchells commander

YASUJI WATANABE : Captain, Imperial Japanese Navy; longtime aide to Yamamoto

ISOROKU YAMAMOTO : Admiral; commander in chief, Combined Fleet, Imperial Japanese Navy; passenger aboard Betty bomber No. 323, April 18, 1943

REIKO MIHASHI YAMAMOTO : wife of Isoroku Yamamoto

KENJI YANAGIYA : Flight Petty Officer; pilot of one of six Zeros escorting Yamamoto from Rabaul to Bougainville on April 18, 1943

THE FIRST ONE APPEARED FROM THE CLEAR BLUE SKY EARLY ON A Sunday morning, out of nowhere, it seemed, as sailors, soldiers, and civilians aboard ships, at airfields, in bunkhouses and in bungalows were just waking up, some shaving, others showering, still others already sipping coffee in the mess halls where they gathered for breakfast, many nursing hangovers after a night spent socializing on shore leave or at the base itself. Indeed, at Wheeler Field, some were still going strong, wearing tuxedoes and stumbling out of the officers club at 7:51 a.m. into the bright light of day, laughing and carrying on after their all-night party. These men dismissed the hum of engines in the sky, assuming that Navy planes were performing maneuvers, and they likely felt sorry for the pilots having to fly at the crack of dawn, on Gods day, no less, while most of the thousands of men and women assigned to Pearl Harbor were off duty. But as the hum grew louder, some of the men in their tuxes realized the engine noise did not sound quite right, different from their Navy planes, and in that moment the casual mood turned dark. As the planes closed in, the rising sun insignias on their wings were revealed, and in the next seconds a wave of Japanese dive-bombers opened fire, strafing and dropping their payload. The officers in tuxedoes, festive seconds before, ran for their lives, just as Americans stationed all around the Hawaiian island of Oahu did, as the shock and awe at Wheeler Field were repeated in the next nine minutes at other airfields and naval stations and then extended to the sprawling US Pacific Fleet moored at Pearl Harbor.

It was a surprise naval aerial assault involving 183 Japanese attack planes and bombers loaded with armor-piercing bombs, shallow-water torpedoes, and machine guns, all of which, in a flash, found targets on the ground and in the harbor. Bombs whistled to earth, sending up columns of oily black smoke from the hangars they flattened and the rows and rows of US fighter planes they wrecked, while men raced outside, dazed and wild eyed, pulling on pants, shirts, or a bath towel, dodging ear-shattering explosions, bullets, and shrapnel, some reaching safety, others not, their bodies bludgeoned by the blasts and bullets. At the mess hall at Hickham Field, a bomb plummeting through the roof exploded, killing some thirty-five men who only had thoughts about what to eat for breakfast on their minds. At 7:55 a.m., the Nevada ships band was readying to play The Star-Spangled Banner when two Japanese planes strafed the deck and shredded an American flag, just as an officer at the Ford Island Command Center at 7:58 a.m. frantically typed what became one of the most famous radio dispatches ever: AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT DRILL. At the same moment, an ensign using binoculars aboard the battleship Arizona stared at Japanese planes, unimpededly dropping one bomb after another onto Ford Island, before he broke to sound the ships three-blast alarm signaling an air raid, a howling siren that made its way throughout the six-hundred-foot-long destroyer. Men on other ship decks, too, gaped at the aerial savaging of airfields until something else caught their eyes: slender black masses in the waters below racing toward them, which the seamen instantly identified as shallow-water torpedoes, bombs that had splashed into the water from low-flying Japanese dive-bombers and were now speeding toward their battleships, the