Several more from the high altitude formation broke loose in a pattern that looked like a typical dive-bomb attack. So I put the ship in another starboard turn to lower our profile toward them, but just as that happened, several more low altitude aircraft sped toward us from the aft side of the ship.
These were Val dive bombers; why would they be coming in low like this?
The two high altitude bombers, both Judys, missed the ship by a pretty wide margin, evidently because of inexperienced pilots. But the Vals, apparently loaded with bombs, kept coming straight on.
Once again, the Buffalo’s guns cut them to ribbons, this time at a safer distance out, but it was still very disturbing. “What on God’s Earth are they doing?” I said to myself.
The attack continued like this several more times at a very rapid but even pace. The Japanese would sometimes actually drop their bombs but we were lucky to be missed each time. This was either because of the poor skill of the Japanese pilots or the superb skill of the Buffalo’s crew.
But mixed into the shifting formations of attacking aircraft, there were always several coming in either at angles much too steep to drop their bombs or much too low. And those ones always came in very straight and very fast, and would keep coming even after you hit them, until you completely destroyed them. Those were the ones that absolutely scared the ever-living daylights out of me.
Sometime during the fourth or fifth wave of these attacks, my attention turned toward one of the escorting destroyers. They were under furious attack as well, and I thought maybe I could figure out what the Japs were doing if I watched them from a different point of view.
A Val dive bomber broke loose from the high altitude formation and began a shallow dive. There was, as before, no way to release a bomb from that angle and hit a target. At an altitude of about five thousand feet, he pushed his aircraft over into a very steep dive. The anti-aircraft guns on the destroyer had hit him several times by then, and the aircraft was trailing smoke. There was no way to release a bomb at that angle and speed and expect it to land on target, let alone pull out of a dive like that without the pilot losing consciousness.
As the aircraft continued on, there was no bomb release. “Maybe they hit the pilot?” I thought to myself. But I quickly disregarded that because it still didn’t explain the attack angle.
Then, with no apparent attempt to pull out, or veer away, that airplane crashed straight down into the center of the superstructure of the destroyer and exploded into a huge fireball.
Because I remembered the Japanese sailor who blew himself up on the deck of my ship that very morning, I figured out what they were doing. And when I realized this, had I not been busily engaged in directing my own ship in combat, I would have surely been sick.
“Admiral, something is different,” I said.
The attack had been over for almost two hours. I had consulted the major before deciding to invite the admiral to the bridge to give him the report on my observations of the battle.
“How so?” the admiral responded.
“The attack pattern has changed. Some dive bombers aren’t releasing their bombs. The dive pattern has shifted from a straight run from a high altitude, to a slight dive until they reach a lower altitude and higher speed, followed by a dive which would be too steep to use a bomb effectively.”
“Why couldn’t these just be unskilled pilots?” the admiral asked.
“It’s like they don’t intend to pull out, sir. Usually you can hit a Nip’s plane once or twice with anti-aircraft fire, and they turn away, but some of these are not turning back, even when obviously damaged. And then there are the low level bombers that come in right down almost on the water.”
“What would be the purpose of such an approach?” he asked me, looking a little puzzled.
“That’s just it. They could never release their bombs without getting caught and killed in the blast themselves,” I answered.
“So just what is it you think they’re trying to do?”
“Well, the Japs are a different culture where honor is everything and to lose a fight brings an ultimate dishonor. My marine division officer, an expert in Nip culture, reminded me of the passage from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: ‘On desperate ground, I would proclaim to my soldiers the hopelessness of saving their lives. For it is the soldier’s disposition to offer an obstinate resistance when surrounded, to fight hard when he cannot help himself, and to obey promptly when he has fallen into danger.’”
“What exactly are you saying, Commander Williams?”
“Sir, I think we are winning the war much more than the Japs can face up to. Look at all the territory they had at their peak and where they are now. And with us taking back the Philippines, there seems little hope for them maintaining their empire for much more than a few years.
I continued, “It may seem crazy to you or me, but I think they are deliberately crashing their aircraft into us, because they are fighting as Sun Tzu would say, ‘on desperate ground.’”
“That’s insane!” he said. “What kind of a nut job would do something like that?”
“Is it really, though?” I asked. “Look, sir; if you completely set aside the abhorrent principles of killing yourself like that and look at it from the tactical viewpoint,” I added as he began to look at me like I was one of those “nut jobs.”
“But Commander Williams, all through the war, there have been examples of injured Nips crashing their aircraft into our ships,” the admiral said, apparently still not willing to believe it.
“I understand, sir, but think about it: for the price of two or three planes, bombs, and pilots, they might be getting hits that would sink an aircraft carrier or battleship. Whereas before, we would shoot down twenty or thirty of them, and some of the time, they still wouldn’t even get any hits at all.
“It is an act of desperation, for sure,” I continued. “And the pilots themselves would have to be insane to do it. But I think if that’s what they’re doing, insane or not, they are going to get some very terrifying results from it. Because how do you defend yourself against a man who knows he’s already dead?”
“I see your point, Commander Williams,” the admiral said. “Do you have anything else to report?”
“Just the observation that the enemy has to be very desperate to do something like this, sir. I think we have them on the run in the worst possible way, and from here on out, they are going to fight like cornered rabid dogs.”
And rabid dogs are all that they were in my mind. To me, they were nothing but the most utterly soulless and depraved animals to ever live, and I became frustrated that I could not think of enough to do to eliminate this blight from the face of God’s Earth.
Wounded Buffalo
Now, when you are the commanding officer of a ship during wartime, there are your good days, like the flag raising at Iwo Jima; your bad days, like the events following the bombing of the Franklin; and then there are your outright terrible days. There was a time when the Buffalo experienced several really bad days in a row, which then stretched out to weeks in a row.
During a war, you learn to expect that bad things are going to happen, but you never know just what will happen, when it will happen, or how bad it will be. No matter how prepared you are, it is never quite accurate to say you are ready. When something finally does happen, you suddenly experience the cumulative effects of the decisions you make on a daily basis. After being in command for only a short time, you realize not many decisions are unimportant, so you always have to think them through, try to predict what the outcome of them will be, then hope for the best.