Page 2 of Daikon
ONE
“So, Eddie.” Tibbets reached out a hot, clammy hand, smiling to hide the disappointment Houseman knew he was feeling. “It looks like you’re the guy who’s going to end the war. But no pressure, okay?”
“Gee, thanks, Colonel,” Houseman replied with a grin. “That’s just what I need!”
The dark hump of the crew lounge emerged from the darkness.
It was an olive drab Quonset hut like all the others, but some effort had been expended to make it look a little more like home.
Shrubbery and a bit of lawn had been planted, and a sign erected out front, announcing it as Tinian Tavern.
When the beer wasn’t flowing, it was where mission briefings were held.
Two armed guards were on duty outside, standing motionless in the moonlight as Houseman mounted the steps.
The crews were already assembled inside. A murmur rose when Houseman entered and walked to the front.
“All right, listen up.” It was Houseman’s mission voice.
Discipline taking over. “Colonel Tibbets went into the hospital earlier today. Don’t ask me why because I can’t tell you.
But I’m told he’s going to be okay, so there’s no need to worry.
I repeat: the colonel is going to be okay. In the meantime…”
He paused, looking around at the intense faces of the men.
“In the meantime, we’re going ahead with the mission. There’s supposed to be a break in the weather, and if we don’t take advantage of it, we could lose a whole week. So we go tonight. That’s the word. The Gimmick is being transferred to Wicked Intent .”
The Gimmick . Houseman glanced at the weaponeer who had just been assigned to his crew, a cold-eyed commander in the U.S.
Navy named Samuel Filson. They were the only two men in the room who knew the nature of the weapon.
For the rest it was still a mystery, referred to as the Gadget or the Gimmick.
But his own crew would know soon enough.
Houseman would fill them in on the way to Japan.
He was looking forward to it. Well, boys, he would say, it looks like we’re splitting atoms today.
Then he would hit them with that bit about the 20,000 tons of TNT.
He winked at the crew members of the Wicked Intent, the guys he had been training with for six months, getting things to where they could drop a Gimmick on a dime.
There was his copilot, John Morris, a killer at poker; navigator, “Billy” Boys, proud possessor of the foulest mouth in the Army Air Forces; tail gunner, “Pappy” de Gerald, sporting a cud of chewing tobacco in his cheek and spitting into a cup; flight engineer, “Hickey” Hicks; and bombardier, “Cy” O’Neill, who had dreamed up the clothes-snatching caper at the beach that had given them all such a good laugh.
“So that means it’s us, guys,” he said. “We’ll be hauling this thing.”
Houseman turned to the map pinned to the board behind him and got down to business. “All right. Primary target is Hiroshima. Secondary is Kokura. Third, Nagasaki.
“Weather ships.” He turned to the crews of the three B-29s that would precede the strike team to radio back visibility conditions.
“Take off at zero-one-thirty. Use the weather codes on the blue paper. No formation flying. Keep it spread out. You know the drill. Strike team. We go at zero-two-forty-five and proceed to Iwo. After rendezvous, it’s compass heading 327 degrees, altitude 31,000 feet. ”
It took Major Houseman thirty minutes to get through the briefing, displaying the efficiency and focus that had made him the first choice to replace Tibbets in leading the historic mission.
He ended with the synchronization of watches, then led the way to the mess hall for a breakfast he didn’t want.
He always felt queasy before missions, and this time was worse.
He sat as far as he could from the smell of bacon and eggs as he spooned down a little oatmeal laced with brown sugar.
A hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see the flight surgeon.
“I hope you won’t need these,” the man said, handing Houseman a small pillbox. Inside it were ten cyanide capsules, one for each crew member in the event that the plane went down over Japan.
Houseman took the little packet of death and slipped it into his pocket.
He figured the odds were in their favor, but he wasn’t overly sanguine.
In war, things went wrong. Throw a new weapon into the mix, a bomb never before used in combat, and the chance of a mishap became that much greater.
Dummy gimmicks had already malfunctioned twice in practice drops off Tinian in the previous few days, one bomb tumbling unexploded into the sea and another detonating soon after leaving the plane.
There was evidently some sort of fault in the proximity fuze.
Returning to his barracks tent, Houseman took a moment to say a prayer in private, asking God for steadiness and courage, for success in his mission, and for a speedy end to the war so that he could return home to New Jersey.
He wanted to get to know Charlie, who was now nearly six.
He also had a surprise for Marion, poker winnings totaling nearly two thousand dollars that would make a fat down payment on a house.
But first he had to get through this mission.
When the time came, he pulled on his combat coveralls, collected his flight gear, and headed out to Tinian’s North Field.
The breeze in his face on the jeep ride felt good, taking the edge off the heat that the island had soaked up during the day.
Wicked Intent was parked at the west end of Runway Able.
He pulled to a stop under the scantily clad beauty painted on the nose, which would have been so much more lascivious if Billy Boys had his way.
The crew lined up for a photograph, the prickly heat rash in Houseman’s armpits now burning, for he was starting to sweat.
A blinding flash exploded in the darkness.
“Okay, that’s enough,” said Houseman, annoyed. He groped his way up through the hatch and into his seat, a disk of light lingering on his retinas and overwhelming his vision.
Billy’s voice behind him: “Goddamn it, I can’t see a damn thing.”
The stillness of the night was shattered by twelve 2,200-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines coughing to life, the three planes of the strike team.
In addition to Wicked Intent, there was a B-29 that would drop instrument packages to measure the effects of the blast, and a second plane to film and take photos.
Wicked Intent led the way to the end of the runway and turned into the breeze.
Houseman advanced the four engines to full power.
The plane began lumbering down the crushed coral track, past the control tower, past the broken corpses and burned skeletons of B-29s that had crashed at this same moment, on takeoff, and been dragged off to the side.
Finally, with less than a hundred yards remaining, Houseman pulled back on the yoke and eased the behemoth bomber into the air.
Three hours into the mission. The sun was up, a glorious dawn at 8,000 feet, the clouds to the east turning from purple to red, then glowing orange, then full daylight.
Major Houseman was starting to feel hungry.
He took out one of the bologna sandwiches he had brought, along with a thermos of coffee, and tucked in as he gazed down at Iwo Jima below.
It took fifteen minutes to rendezvous with the two observation planes that would accompany them the rest of the way to Japan.
Houseman then led the way onto compass heading 327 degrees—northwest—and began a slow climb.
“We’re going to pressurize now,” he informed the crew, his throat mike conveying his voice through the plane’s interphone system.
This was the signal for Pappy to squeeze into the tail gunner’s compartment, for once the plane was pressurized for high altitude the access door would be sealed.
With Wicked Intent stripped of all its remote-controlled cannons to save weight, Pappy and his tail guns were its only defense.
Another two hours and Japan itself was in sight, Shikoku, one of the four main islands, emerging from the mist up ahead.
Houseman recognized the distinctive arc of south-facing coastline that looked like a bite had been taken out of the island.
The cloud cover could be a problem, nearly 50 percent.
It would be difficult to deliver the bomb with any accuracy if similar conditions were awaiting them over the target.
His headphones crackled: “Okay, I’m arming it now.
” It was the weaponeer, the stranger sent out from Washington, Commander Samuel Filson, his voice taut as a wire.
The arming procedure involved his entering the bomb bay to remove the green plugs from the bomb and replace them with red ones.
This would in turn switch the lights on the monitoring equipment hooked up to the weapon from green to red, indicating that it was live and ready to go.
From this point on, it would be up to the radar countermeasures officer, Clifford Slavin, who should be setting aside his comic book about now, to ensure that enemy radar did not interfere with the signals emanating from the bomb, prematurely setting it off.
The first coded message from the weather planes was received: “Y-3, Q-5, B-4, D-7.” Translation: cloud cover over primary target more than 50 percent.
That meant Hiroshima was out. Houseman felt his stomach tighten. The odds were turning against them.
A second message came in, this one from the weather plane over Kokura: “R-7, S-1, B-2, A-3.” Translation: cloud cover over secondary target less than three-tenths.
A wave of relief. Kokura was a go. Houseman spoke into the interphone: “Okay, it’s going to be—”
A jolt rocked the plane.