Return of Sky Ghost
By Mack Maloney
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About this ebook
In a parallel universe, the Nazi war machine has finally been defeated after fifty years of combat. But just a few weeks after Victory in Europe Day, war breaks out in a hitherto peaceful theater: the Pacific. A small American ship is on a routine patrol when its captain spies three aircraft-carrying submarines so large that they leave tidal waves in their wakes. Dozens of attack planes stream out from the colossal ships, destroying Pearl Harbor in a matter of minutes before disappearing back into the sea.
Ace fighter pilot Hawk Hunter has heard this story before. A refugee from the dimension where World War II ended in 1945, he’s still getting used to this new universe when the Japanese strike. To defeat them, the United States will need the Wingman—the finest pilot of all time—to rise up in this reality just as he has in the other.
Return of the Sky Ghost is the fifteenth book of the Wingman series, which also includes Wingman and The Circle War.
Mack Maloney
Mack Maloney is the author of numerous fiction series, including Wingman, ChopperOps, Starhawk, and Pirate Hunters, as well as UFOs in Wartime – What They Didn’t Want You to Know. A native Bostonian, Maloney received a bachelor of science degree in journalism at Suffolk University and a master of arts degree in film at Emerson College. He is the host of a national radio show, Mack Maloney’s Military X-Files.
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- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The ghost came thru we think , must keep reading on to find the answer
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Return of Sky Ghost - Mack Maloney
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Wingman
Return of the Sky Ghost
Mack Maloney
Contents
PART 1
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
PART 2
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Preview: Tomorrow War
A Biography of Mack Maloney
Part 1
One
Mid Pacific Ocean
December, 1998
THE SMALL NAVY PATROL boat USS Neponset was two hours out of Oahu, Hawaii, when it happened.
It was a cloudless day, a Sunday, and very hot for December. The seas were extraordinarily calm. There was no wind. The commander of the vessel had stopped and allowed his crew a 10-minute cool-off and swim.
Half the men were in the water; the others were sunning themselves on deck. They were just kids mostly, the oldest among them was twenty-two. World War II had ended two months before, and all the fighting had taken place in Europe. The crew of the sleek, wood-and-plastic Neponset had been half a world away from the hostilities. None of them had ever seen combat.
Nor had their commander, Lieutenant A. J. Noonan. Compact, rugged, with a friendly face and a lightning-quick mind, at twenty-four, he was barely older than his men.
It had started out as a routine patrol. The Neponset was a TPB, a torpedo patrol boat. It had made this trip every other day for the past six months. Basically two hours out and two hours back, these voyages were always uneventful. Occasionally the crew would help civilian boats in trouble, or serve as navigation beacons for off-course aircraft. But the guns on the patrol boat had never been fired except in training. Same with its air torpedoes.
So the crew was swimming and Lt. Noonan was in the chart room below, rechecking his navigation plots, when the world suddenly turned upside down.
The first indication of trouble came when Noonan heard his men gasp—all at once. Then the shouting began. Then came cries of disbelief. He hurried up to the deck and the first thing he saw was a wall of water heading for his vessel. One word flashed into his mind: tsunami. A huge tidal wave was coming right for them.
Noonan reacted instantly. He yelled for the men in the water to get back onboard fast. None of them needed further prompting—they were already scrambling up the access ladder onto the foredeck. Noonan hit several buttons on his control panel at once. The boat’s powerful engines immediately roared to life.
Then he spun around and activated the boat’s Main/AC battle management computer, the thinking machine
which was aboard every U.S. Navy vessel, big and small, as well as every Air Corps airplane, every Army tank, jeep, and helicopter. Noonan hastily typed two words into the keyboard: tidal wave. When he looked up again, the wall of water was just a mile away.
But there was something else too—something more frightening than the tsunami. For now, Noonan could see beyond the wave. And what he saw just didn’t seem real.
It was a submarine. Yet it was enormous. Bigger even than the largest Navy megacarrier—and that was one mile long!
This ship, this monster, was longer than a mile, and wider by half. It was flat, squat, like a huge, metallic hammerhead shark. Still, it was at least ten decks thick. The whole thing seemed so unnatural; like a huge floating city had just popped up from beneath the waves.
In a second Noonan knew what had happened. This tidal wave bearing down on them had been caused not by an undersea earthquake or some other natural event, but simply by the monstrous ship breaking the surface.
It was that big.
As soon as all his men were safely on board, Noonan hit the ship’s throttle and the TPB took off like a rocket. The vessel could top 100 knots, but he knew he could not outrun the tidal wave. No ship was that fast. His only option was to face the tsunami head-on.
He turned the TPB hard to port and pointed the nose right at the coming wall of water. At the same time he shouted an order for all his men to get below and strap down.
The wave was 750 feet away now and seemed to be growing by the second. Noonan increased throttle to 100 percent and locked his steering column down. He pushed a button which sealed every window, bulkhead, and weapons port on the ship. This was called cocooning. Another lever lowered a glass canopy, which fit snugly over the open bridge, sealing him in with just his navigator and boatswain.
Now the wave was just 250 feet away. The TPB was heading for it at nearly ninety-five knots. Noonan had time to yell Hang on! just one more time.
Then it hit …
And then everything went black.
The thirty-five-foot patrol boat collided with the wave with such force, it was lifted two-thirds of the way up the side of the 100-foot wall of water. Only then did its forward momentum kick in and knife the bow through the swell, popping the boat out the other side. The Neponset plummeted down sixty feet, nose over and straight into the ocean, hitting the surface hard and going completely under.
But Noonan had performed well. He’d done everything right. The vessel was watertight and thus buoyant. It popped back up to the surface almost immediately, and though battered and woozy, was still afloat.
More important, everyone on board was safe.
The TPB stabilized, the engines coughed a few times, but then came right back on line. Noonan heard the Main/AC beeping and when he turned around he saw the computer was advising him to meet the tidal wave head-on. He even smiled a bit—his quick thinking had beaten the thinking machine by several crucial seconds.
But now Noonan and his crew had other problems. Bigger problems. There was no great wave blocking them from the huge ship anymore. It was just 2500 feet away, in all its monstrous glory. Noonan immediately called his crew to battle stations. Those men running to their deck guns just stared in utter disbelief at the gigantic ship.
Noonan had never seen anything like it. No one in the crew had. The sub was not of U.S. military design, that was for certain. First, it was dark green, not the usual drab Navy gray. And it just didn’t look Navy.
It was sharper, more extreme than any current Navy design, with many angles and attachments. It really did look more like a mechanical creature than a ship, especially with its wide mouth, expelling steam, and the four-stories-high multi-window bridge. Its aqua-tinted Plexiglas windows looked like a set of giant green eyes.
Noonan cut back all speed, and hastily called the boat’s cameraman to the bridge. The man arrived a few seconds later, wearing a bulky battlesuit complete with flak jacket and helmet, and lugging a large insta-film movie camera. He took one look at the floating monster and almost went right over. Noonan steadied him and told him to shoot the length of the ship twice, and then concentrate on the bridge. Meanwhile, Noonan punched the Main/AC options panel and began the process of sending a secure message back to his home port at Oahu.
He had to tell someone about this.
The cameraman had just started rolling when something else happened. About five miles beyond the first ship, another monstrous sub had surfaced. This one in a gentler fashion, causing little of the tsunami effect. But this sub was just as big as the first monster and it too opened a giant mouth and began belching steam as soon as it surfaced. Then three miles beyond that one, another giant broke the waves.
Noonan and his crew were astonished at what was happening. One moment they’d been enjoying a leisurely, peaceful patrol. Now it seemed as if some hell beneath the ocean had opened up and its worst creatures were coming to the surface.
The cameraman ran out of film or courage or both, and quickly scrambled below. Noonan put the TPB into a 180-turn, not quite sure what to do next. He was still a minute away from getting a secure line back to base. Until that happened, he felt his duty was to stay where he was and report back what he was seeing.
His headphones began buzzing. It was his radar man. An aircraft was approaching from the northwest. Noonan saw it a moment later. He recognized the plane right away. It was CB-201, a huge twelve-engine maritime cargo airplane. The crew of Noonan’s vessel saw this particular aircraft frequently while patrolling these waters. It was an island-hopper, delivering supplies, food, and mail to far-flung U.S. Navy posts.
Now it had blundered into this nightmare.
The airplane was flying at 6,000 feet, but its pilots, obviously not believing their eyes, were descending to get a better look at the three giant ships. Suddenly one section atop the first ship opened and an array of antiaircraft muzzles appeared. They turned toward the CB-201 and fired at once. Each shell contained a tiny radi-seeker nose cone. Each one scored a direct hit either on one of the airplane’s twelve engines or on its cockpit, the hottest places on its airframe.
The mammoth airplane simply disintegrated in flight. One moment it was there—the next, it was just a huge cloud of tiny debris. No fire, no smoke. Forty-five lives and a gigantic aircraft gone. Just like that.
Suddenly, the steam stopped belching out of the great ships. A tremendous roar was heard—so loud it stung Noonan’s ears. He would later discover this was the sound of many jet engines revving up at once. A few moments later, an airplane came roaring out of the mouth of the first monster sub. There was another one right behind it. Then another, and another.
The airplanes were huge! They had long slender fuselages, swept-back wings with eight jet engines per side. Each airplane was carrying a huge bomb under each wing. The bombs were so big, they were nearly one-third of the length of the airplane.
Now planes began flying out of the other two great ships as well. They, too, were huge. They, too, were carrying enormous bombs under their wings.
Noonan took only a few moments to decide his next course of action. These ships were alien to him, as were the airplanes. They were obviously taking off to bomb something, somewhere, and the only likely targets around were American military or civilian sites. Plus, they’d just shot down an American plane.
So there really was only one thing he could do …
He keyed his microphone.
Prepare for action,
he told his crew.
If the crew was astonished by his order, they did not show it. Bells began blowing and Klaxons screaming. Yet the men stayed calm. Noonan soon had twice as much power at his disposal as before. The TPB’s double-reaction engines were now kicking up to 150 percent.
He turned his bow toward the first big ship. It was about half a mile away and still disgorging the huge bombers. The TPB had sixteen air torpedoes on board, plus ten triple-fifty machine guns on deck. But this ship was the size of a small city. It was bristling with guns and radar dishes and missile launchers. David had had a better chance against Goliath.
Still, Noonan knew his duty.
He put on his helmet, hit the throttle, and made sure his vessel’s battle seals were still tight and in place. Then, at 2000 feet out, he ordered the first air torpedo launched.
It went off the front rail clean, displaying its characteristic yellow plume of smoke. The fifteen-foot-long silver tube rose steadily, leveled off at exactly fifty-five feet and began its target run. Noonan watched the torpedo’s progress on his weapons management screen. The Main/AC computer behind him was buzzing about something, but he had no time to attend to it now.
The torpedo gained speed as it neared the huge ship. Noonan took over manual steering at 750 feet out and turned the weapon toward the control window of the monster sub. At 500 feet out, the torpedo’s impact motor clicked on, and suddenly the weapon and its substantial warhead were streaking up toward the sub’s eyelike control bridge at more than 300 knots.
Impact came three seconds later. The missile smashed through the window and exploded. A good hit!
But Noonan was already turning the TPB hard to starboard and booting all power. They had barely scratched the huge ship—and now it knew they were here.
He ordered a second air torpedo launched. Like the first, it rose in a cloud of yellow smoke, leveled off, and began looking for an impact point. Noonan steered its nose toward the end of the giant ship—maybe he could hit a crucial propulsion component and at least disable the behemoth.
But this was not to be. Just as the air torpedo’s impact motor was turning on, an antimissile missile shot out from the foredeck of the sub and in a burst of amazing speed, hit the torpedo and simply vaporized it.
Noonan was astounded at the gigantic ship’s lightning-quick defenses. This thing really did act like it was from another world!
Still, he ordered a third air torpedo launched. For this one, he would swing back around and try for a hit on the sub’s huge mouth, which was still expelling huge bombers at a rate of one every ten seconds.
The third torpedo went off the rail and made it to within 200 feet of the sub’s bow before another antimissile missile materialized from the foredeck and blew it up.
Noonan swung the TPB around a fourth time—he was running on pure adrenaline now. The engines were screaming, the chatter in the ship’s radio was deafening as his men shouted out targets and defenses on the side of the nearest mystery ship. They were within 500 feet now and the thing looked like a huge floating skyscraper lying on its side. By comparison, they were like a gnat trying to take down a buffalo—or more appropriately, a minnow trying to stop a whale. The dreamlike quality of the whole thing was the strangest of all. Noonan kept asking himself over and over: Is this really happening?
Then he started picking up puffs of red smoke coming from the bottom two levels of the ship. Then the air around him literally began shaking.
Disruption shells incoming!
his sea defense officer’s voice shouted in his headphone.
Those three words were enough to make anyone’s stomach turn. If a disruption shell made a direct hit, it would destroy the TPB in two seconds. Or even if a DS hit the water near the ship, its disruption waves could fry all the electronics onboard, blow up the engines, and leave them powerless and unarmed.
Three disruption shells went screaming over the TPB and landed about 1000 feet beyond. Their shock waves still shook the vessel from stem to stern, but no permanent damage resulted. It would have been prudent to withdraw.
But Noonan would have none of that—he was furious that such a huge ship would dare to destroy his own and hurt his men. He turned the TPB back toward the front of the sub and ordered another air torpedo be fired.
At that moment, all defensive fire from the big ship suddenly ceased. It was so quick, so strange, Noonan took it as a bad omen. Behind him the Main/AC had been buzzing wildly—only now did he turn around and hit its reveal
function The Main/AC spit out a ticker tape that said just one thing: initiate evasive action.
But it was too late for that. Noonan looked beyond the computer to the rear of the ship and saw another amazing and frightening sight. Another vessel, smaller than the aircraft-carrying subs, but just as terrifying and alien, had surfaced off his stern and was coming at full speed right at them!
Noonan initiated the Main/AC advice and began to twist the little patrol boat out of the way—but it was not soon enough. The sharp bow of the enemy vessel sliced right through the middle of the patrol boat, killing seven of his men instantly and tearing the little vessel in two.
The engines blew up a second later. The next thing he knew, Noonan was flying through the air, his hair on fire, the combat gloves burning right off his skin.
In his last conscious moment, he saw many things: His men in the water. His vessel in two pieces, smoking and sinking. The wake of the strange ship that had split them in half. And beyond, the big, bombed-up airplanes still flying out of the mouths of the huge submarines. And in that last blink, he saw a flag flying above both the huge aircraft carrier sub and the ship that had just destroyed his own.
The flag was white with a huge red ball in the middle.
The Rising Sun symbol—the emblem of the Armed Forces of Japan.
Two hundred and fifty-five miles to the southeast, a B-17/52 superheavy bomber was about twenty minutes away from landing.
The crew of the gigantic aircraft, forty-four men in all, were strapping down equipment, securing weapons, and stowing away all loose gear.
The airplane was a cross between a B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-52 bomber. The nose and fuselage were reminiscent of the famous Fortress; the swept-back wings and high tail came from the ’52. The monstrous airplane had sixteen engines; six of them were now shut down for the landing approach. There was a total of twenty-six gun stations up and down the fuselage, each one bearing a triple- .50 caliber machine gun. Each of these weapons now had to be locked down and their ammunition belts secured.
The giant bomber was heading for Hickam Field, the sprawling if sleepy air base located on southern Oahu, near Honolulu. The airplane was on a training mission. More than half the crew were making their first flight. The primary flight crew were all veterans of the recently completed fighting in Europe. Now they and their much-patched slightly battered airplane would spend a six-week tour of duty in the friendly environs of Hawaii.
Or at least that’s what was supposed to happen.
The plane was now fifteen miles out from Hickam. The navigation section was bringing up a TV image of the air base; they would be putting down on Runway 5-Left a six-mile-long asphalt strip built to handle the Air Corps’s largest bombers like the B-17/52. The radio section had made contact with the base; the skies were clear; there was no air traffic in the area. The B-17/52 was cleared to come straight in, which was good. Just to turn the huge bomber in a ninety-degree bank could take more than fifteen minutes and an avalanche of new navigation plots. For an airplane as massive as the B-17/52, a straight-ahead landing was definitely preferred.
At ten miles out, two more engines were shut down; now the aircraft was flying on eight, the minimum required for safe landing. The nonessential crewmembers—the gunners, the oilers, the radio engineers—were strapped in, preparing for touchdown. At the moment, the major concern of the plane’s four pilots was one of postflight maintenance. As it was Sunday morning, they wondered if a large enough ground crew would be on hand to service the big plane once it was down.
They were five minutes out when the lead pilot called Hickam for final landing clearance, a mere formality. But instead of granting the OK the tower personnel sent a rather odd message: Hang on …
the shaky voice told them. And prepare to go around.
Now this was a problem because the huge bomber was already descending, losing altitude from its cruising height of 65,000 feet. It was so big, that to be waved off now would be a major operation. The plane would have to restart its eight dormant engines, halt its descent, and claw for some altitude. A new flight plot would have to be calculated and a long, slow turn initiated.
Why then wouldn’t Hickam air control give them the OK?
Just on a whim, the lead pilot punched the Situation Inquiry
button on his Main/AC computer. Why, he was asking the battle management machine, couldn’t they land at Hickam?
The answer that came back was as puzzling as it was startling.
It read: Impending Enemy Action.
A moment later the pilot’s situation awareness display began blinking. The air defense computer was suddenly going berserk. The TV screen popped on and instantly the bomber’s pilots were staring mouths agape at a huge airborne force heading for the same field they were—but from the opposite direction!
There were at least fifty airplanes in all, flying in ten chevrons of five each. These airplanes were enormous, bigger than the B-17/52 itself. They were about to make landfall over Keahi Point. They were heading northeast, toward Hickam Field and the huge Navy base nearby. The place called Pearl Harbor.
The American bomber’s pilots began evasive action as directed by the Main/AC. At the same moment, Hickam Field air control told the B-17/52 to abort its landing, do a slow turn, and go into a holding pattern at 35,000 feet.
The pilots complied, hastily restarting the eight turned-off engines and yanking back on the control column to get some height. The second pilot called back to the crew compartment and ordered the gunners back to their stations immediately. The gunnery officer unsealed the recently stowed ammunition feeds. Confused and more than a little anxious, the plane’s gunners dashed to their triple-.50s.
Meanwhile the bomber climbed to the prescribed altitude of 35,000 feet and went into a long, looping circuit high above Hickam field.
From this height, they were about to witness a devastating action that would go down in history.
The approaching bomber force split in two just after making landfall.
Half the number turned slightly east, their noses pointed toward Hickam Field. The remainder continued northeast, toward Pearl Harbor.
There were thirty-four U.S. Navy ships at anchor in Pearl this Sunday morning. Eight destroyers, five frigates, four battle cruisers, plus numerous patrol vessels and rocket boats. Biggest of all though were the five megacarriers. They were the USS Detroit, USS Boston, USS Cleveland, USS Las Vegas, and USS Chicago.
Each carrier was nearly a mile long and half a mile wide. Their immense decks contained twelve separate launching and landing zones each, complete with twenty steam catapults, rocket-assist rails, and massive arrays of arresting cables. The ship’s company for each megacarrier topped 25,000 men, not counting the pilots and air crews for the aircraft on board. Each ship weighed more than 200,000 tons. Their displacement was nearly sixty-five feet.
The Cleveland was the only megacarrier permanently assigned to Pearl Harbor. The other four had transitioned from the Atlantic six weeks before, after the European War had ended. Their crews were in need of hard-earned rest; the ships themselves in need of major refurbishment. Pearl Harbor—with its proximity to some of the world’s most beautiful beaches and its vast ship repair yards—offered both.
Each megacarrier had its full complement of aircraft on board this dreadful morning. More than 250 Navy bombers—fourteen-engined B-332 Privateers mostly—were aboard each ship, along with five complete air wings of Navy fighters, a mix of F-J14Y Sea Furys and F-9F-265 SuperPanthers.
Many of these airplanes were up on the decks of the carriers; but like the ships themselves, they were in the midst of major reconditioning. None of them were ready for action.
There would be no air raid sirens. No alert Klaxons, no warning at all about what was to fall on Pearl Harbor. The attacking bomber force came out of the west, thirty airplanes now aligned into two long lines of fifteen each. They swept over the anchored giants, one massive bomb under each wing. These bombs, it would be later determined, were a variation of the DG-42, a German-produced super-blockbusting weapon containing nearly 200 tons of high explosive. Three such weapons had obliterated Paris about a year before, beginning the last brutal phase of the European War. Though the Germans eventually lost the war, the designs for their huge bomb, as well as some bombs themselves, had been floating on the black market for months. Now they were hanging from the wings of the attacking airplanes.
The first two planes peeled off and came in low and slow. Their target was the Las Vegas, docked in the first repair slip of the Pearl Harbor facility. The lead airplane let loose its pair of bombs and with a great scream of jet engines, turned wide and began climbing again. Both bombs hit the Vegas midships—but neither one exploded. They passed right through the carrier’s hull, traveled the width of the ship, and exited the other side. More than 100 men were killed by the pair of tumbling bombs, but their warheads did not explode.
The second bomber came in and did a bombing run that duplicated the first. Two massive bombs fell from its wings as the bomber turned left and began to climb. The first bomb hit the water 100 feet from the side of the Vegas and sank. The second bomb went right through the deck however and detonated.
The explosion was so bright dozens of people within a mile of the blast were blinded permanently. It was so loud, it deafened hundreds more. The great ship was literally picked up out of the water and slammed back down again, creating a massive blow-back wave. A gigantic plume of fire, in the characteristic shape of a flower, rose high above the ship, petals of flame spilling out for miles around. Once this firestorm dissipated, there was nothing left. The ship had been utterly blown apart, along with all the dock works and the repair facility. All that was left was a massive crater, half of it now filling with tons of seawater.
In a flash, 28,761 people had been killed and three times as many wounded.
Just like that, the USS Las Vegas simply ceased to exist.
Meanwhile two more bombers were heading for the Cleveland. As with the previous attack, the first two bombs from the lead airplane were massive duds. One went through the deck of the megacarrier, the other simply bounced off. The second plane’s weapons did not malfunction however. Both went through the Cleveland’s hull, traveled deep inside, and detonated.
The explosion two seconds later was twice as massive as the one that had destroyed the Vegas, twice as bright, twice as loud. The Cleveland was blown apart so completely, no piece of wreckage was more than a foot long. The ship did not sink per se, simply because there was not enough wreckage to constitute a sinking. Pieces of the Cleveland would later be found as far away as Molokai, some forty-five miles to the southeast. More than 25,000 sailors and airmen were blown apart with her.
The Boston and the Detroit shared similar fates. Both were hit by two massive DG-42 bombs each; both were blown to kingdom come along with their crews. Only the USS Chicago was spared. It was hit by no less than six DG-42s—all of which failed to explode. The bombs themselves caused severe damage plowing into the ship, killing more than 1000 people, wounding many more, and starting dozens of huge fires. But the Chicago did not sink, and its airplanes were not destroyed.
Even in this dark hour, it was apparent it had lived to fight again.
The second group of DG-42-carrying bombers attacked Hickam Field and the city of Honolulu beyond.
Eight DG-42s fell on Hickam—four exploded, but this was enough to obliterate the place and the surrounding countryside for ten miles around.
Eight more DG-42s were dropped on Honolulu itself—five detonated, vaporizing just about everything within a twelve-mile radius and killing nearly half a million people in the process.
With the bombs dropped and their sneak attack complete, the enemy bombers linked up again and headed northwest, leaving behind death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. High above, the B-17/52 continued circling, its crew members in a collective state of shock at what they’d just seen. The pilots were too stunned to even make a Mayday radio call. They simply did not believe what their eyes were telling them.
The American bomber would later be forced to crash-land on a sandbar near Ewa Beach; it was a tribute to the pilots that only a handful of their crew were killed in emergency touchdown. When the survivors finally made it to where Hickam Field should have been, they found nothing but four massive craters, each one nearly a mile across and a quarter mile deep.
Later on, it would be determined that in all, the twin attacks on Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field/Honolulu had lasted less than ninety seconds.
All of the attacking bombers returned