At War With The Wind – David Sears (1)

And if it did, Yoshitake’s Ki-51 might just have the advantage with its low-level, low-speed maneuverability. Yoshitake might also reach the island, land safely, and, yes, live another day. Yoshitake jinked his aircraft close to the wave tops, his mind racing with options for evasion and escape, when suddenly his cockpit collapsed in an implosion of shattered glass, debris, dust, and smoke spiced with the aroma of aviation fuel.

As instantly as it began, the fracas shifted to silence, except for the rush of wind. The tormented Ki-51 engine had died. The plane crash on Caldwell triggered at least one explosion when the Zeke’s undercarriage bomb flew forward, richocheted off Caldwell’s No. 2 gun, and detonated close to No. 1 gun. Meanwhile, bombs from another aircraft were seen straddling Caldwell, and one may have reached the ammunition handling room just below No. 2 gun.

The room contained an assortment of projectiles, some with proximity fuses, others packed with WP—flakes of incendiary white phosphorous for shore bombardment use. Several proximity warheads exploded, raking the forecastle and bridge with shrapnel. The WP warheads leached fumes and intense heat. The effects of the blasts carried all the way to the flying bridge where Vaughn Adjemian, 22, Caldwell’s assistant gunnery officer, was knocked off his feet and briefly into unconsciousness. When he came to and collected his wits, Adjemian worked his way down to the bridge where he found Caldwell’s skipper George Wendelburg.

Wendelburg was still in command, but seriously wounded and clearly in pain—a piece of shrapnel had entered the palm of one hand and propelled its way well up into his forearm. Explosions and fires chased many crewmen aft, including most of the forward damage control party. This left Mel Cratsley, Caldwell’s damage control officer, and Wesley Wadsworth, its Chief Electrician’s Mate, as the only two fighting fires and helping survivors.

Cratsley was a mechanical engineering graduate of Carnegie Tech where, at six feet four, he was a star basketball player. Wadsworth, a 28-year-old Iowan, had joined the Navy in 1937. Both were trained in damage control and in handling WP. Now they teamed up to suppress fires, steer wounded toward battle dressing stations, isolate damaged electrical circuitry, and jettison some two dozen projectiles still loose in the wreckage.29 Caldwell’s fatality count quickly spiraled to 25, including virtually all its radio personnel and many from the forward gun crews.

Forty more, including Wendelburg and Adjemian, were wounded. Nine men missing in action were all but certain to be dead.

Portents: Cole and Lindsey Part One – THE WAR OF BEACHHEADS Chapter 1 – The Alligator and the Bull Chapter 2 – Dark Waters Chapter 3 – Green Hells Chapter 4 – Forager, June and July 1944 Chapter 5 – The Big Blue Blanket Chapter 6 – Clearing Skies, June 1944 Chapter 7 – Returning Chapter 8 – Narrow Straits, October 1944 Part Two – THE KAMIKAZE BOYS Chapter 9 – Becoming Young Gods, October 1944 Chapter 10 – To Get In and Get Aboard, November 1944 Chapter 11 – HI-RI-HO-KEN-TEN, November 1944 Chapter 12 – Target Paradise, November 1944 Chapter 13 – Suicide at Its Best, November–December 1944 Chapter 14 – The Far Side of Leyte, December 1944 Chapter 15 – The Shadow of Lingayen, December 1944 Chapter 16 – Uncompensated Losses, December 1944 Part Three – THE CRUELEST MONTHS Chapter 17 – Corpses That Challenge the Clouds, January 1945 Chapter 18 – From Hot Rocks, February 1945 Chapter 19 – To the Great Loochoo, March 1945 Chapter 20 – Far from Ordinary Skies, 1 April–6 April 1945 Chapter 21 – A Perfect Day for What Happened, 6 April 1945 Chapter 22 – “Delete All After ‘Crazy,’” 7 April–13 April 1945 Chapter 23 – Wiseman’s Cove, 13 April–30 April 1945 Chapter 24 – The Same Tooth, May 1945 Chapter 25 – Short of Home, June and July 1945 Epilogue – Movies on Topside, August 1945–Present Notes Glossary Sources and Acknowledgments Citations Roll Call Copyright Page Notes 1kitap1.com/en Portents: Cole and Lindsey A great trial in your youth made you different—made all of us different from what we could have been without it.

—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES On 12 October 2000 the Cole (DDG-67), a U.S. Navy 8,600-ton cruise- missile-firing destroyer, entered the Yemeni port city of Aden for a routine fuel stop. The Republic of Yemen, a Persian Gulf state, had the reputation of being a safe haven for terrorists. Yemen’s troubled history included ties to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Cole completed mooring in the harbor at 0930 local time and refueling began an hour later. Sailors wielding automatic weapons were posted as sentries on Cole’s decks, but rules of engagement were precise and strict: no firing unless directly fired upon or unless permission had been obtained from the ship’s skipper or a duty officer.

The rules would be of little use in what followed. At 1118 a small skiff suddenly approached the Cole’s port side. As the skiff drew alongside, its passengers smiled and waved at watching crewmen. Then, just as suddenly, the boat exploded, blasting a jagged 40- by-40-foot hole at the ship’s waterline. The explosion mangled Cole’s engineering and crew mess spaces and set off fires and flooding.

It was evening before Cole’s crew had the damage under control. Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 were injured in the blast. Many corpses lay snared in mazes of twisted steel and wire.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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