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CHAPTER 1
Memorial Stadium at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, erupted with throaty cheering as eight hundred newly graduated midshipmen sprang to our uniformed feet and flung hats — covers, in Navy parlance — high into the air. It was a tradition at the academy; tradition in the U.S. Navy is a tradition itself. The storm of caps caught the June sun above Chesapeake Bay like a roiling summer cloud.
Midshipmen hats rained back to earth to be claimed by younger siblings, girlfriends, and proud parents, who snatched them joyfully out of the air for keepsakes or, in the case of younger siblings, for the traditional dollar or two tucked into their linings. Warren S. Parr Jr. and I made our way toward the stands where his family had joined mine and were all on their feet with the rest of the noisy stadium. At twenty-one years old, I was probably topped out to my max height at six-four, which meant I towered over most of my peers in the graduating class of 1949.
My roommate Parr was several inches shorter, with eyes almost black, an aftershave shadow he had to scrape down to blood in order to pass inspection, and a perpetual mocking grin. Twenty-six years earlier, my dad and Parr's had undergone this same rite of passage when they graduated from Annapolis. Hamilton Sr. and Parr Sr. had been roommates in 1923. Old blocks and chips, Parr Jr. called us.
Commodore William Hamilton Sr. was a pioneering naval aviator and a squadron commander in the South Pacific prior to and at the beginning of World War II. He was pulling a command tour at Fleet Air Wing in London when Ambassador Joe Kennedy's aviator son, Joe Jr., was shot down in a bombing mission over Germany. It was Dad's duty to inform the ambassador of his son's disappearance. Dad was still in England when the dropping of atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.
In the stands someone had caught the cap with my name in it. I had tossed it in the direction of my little brother, Frank, who was sixteen. He finally ended up with it after an exchange of prisoners. As Parr Jr. and I made our way toward our families, I tried to consider what Dad might be thinking were he able to be here today.
Three things I had grown up with, being the son of a seafaring man — war, the sea, and Dad's frozen seawater countenance. The Navy had made us a gypsy family. I barely got settled in one school when the old man got orders for somewhere else. Even before I reached high school, I attended grammar schools in Coronado, Norfolk, Long Beach, Jacksonville, and Cristobel in the Canal Zone.
I completed my last two years of high school at Greenbrier Military Academy, a boarding school in Lewisburg, West Virginia. It was the longest period I had ever spent at any one school.
"Where do you want to attend college?" my old man had asked.
I didn't have to think about it. The old man had already made up my mind for me. "Annapolis, the Naval Academy," I said.
Dad nodded solemnly the way he did. Mom looked concerned. "Are you sure that's what you want to do, honey?"
All through my growing up, Dad was that stern stranger who seemed to pop up from time to time between sea duty. He was a good man, I knew that, even perhaps a great man. But it was Marjorie, my mom, who reared us kids, who taught me how to swim, how to cook, reviewed our report cards, and dished out punishment when rambunctious boys deserved it.
More than Frank, I took after Dad in looks and temperament. When I made up my mind about something, I was bound to do it, come hell or high water.
"Yeah, Mom. I'm going to Annapolis."
I graduated Greenbrier at sixteen, too young for Annapolis. Dad sent me to a one-year Naval Academy prep school at Bullis in Silver Springs, Maryland, where I chased girls, played football, earned my "Bone" nickname, and generally got into mischief. The only thing that saved me was good grades and Mom's urging school officials to "crack down" on me.
I left Bullis for the Naval Academy in 1945, just as Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were committing suicide in a Berlin bunker and nuclear tests were being conducted in Nevada preparatory to dropping "the Bomb" on Japan.
"There will always be wars and rumors of wars," Dad predicted. It was in the Bible. "A military career is always a good bet. Wars will be different but also the same — only getting more brutal with time and technology."
That stuck with me — the part about wars getting more brutal with time. Perhaps even to the point that technology like the atom bomb would wipe out humankind.
Somewhere along the way between childhood and early youth, I developed a fascination with the emergence of what was known as "guerrilla warfare." Perhaps the old man planted the seed with his talk about Tito's guerrillas in Yugoslavia, American major Bob Lapham, who led guerrillas against the Japanese in the Philippines, General Wingate's exploits in Burma. ... "Men will have their wars," Dad said. "But we don't have to wipe out whole cities and kill everybody back two generations in doing it. What we can do is choose up sides and send guerrillas out to some godforsaken place nobody wants anyhow and let them kill each other off for us."
"Like Roman gladiators?" I said.
"And may the best men win."
Between the school year while I was still at Greenbrier, I landed a summer job helping construct the foundation for a radar tower from which to spot German U-boats that prowled the Atlantic coast off the United States. Whenever I took a break to wipe sweat and arch my aching back, I gazed out to sea across the rollers marching in from the Gulf Stream. I scanned for periscopes or sharklike shapes lurking beneath the surface.
Once when Dad came home on leave from fighting in the South Pacific, he told me about new units called Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs) and swimmers who referred to themselves as "Frogmen." I read an account from the American Civil War about a man who must have been the first American Frogman. On the night of October 23, 1864, Navy Commander William Cushing led a daring commando raid to sink the Confederate ironclad CSS Albemarle, which dominated the Roanoke River. Raiders sent the ironclad to the bottom, although they blew up their own boat in the process. Two of Cushing's men drowned and eleven were captured. Cushing swam ashore and hid out until he was able to steal a small skiff to complete his escape.
Why couldn't commandos also be used against submarines? It was a far-out idea, I conceded that, but still, there had to be unconventional methods of dealing with conventional threats.
At Annapolis, my mind turned down other avenues while my classmates pondered conventional naval tactics of position and counter-position, beach assaults and mass fleet tactics. I read about Merrill's Marauders, the Swamp Fox and Leathernecks of the Revolutionary War, Devil's Brigade, the OSS, and, of course, the Alamo Scouts, Rangers, and UDTs. I imagined small bands of trained "special warriors" able to command earth's elements — sea, land, air — as they infiltrated enemy positions, rescued POWs and hostages, blew up enemy command posts, sank enemy submarines, assassinated terrorists. ... Any damned thing.
"Bone? Bone?"
Parr shook me. We were at our desks that evening studying when I found myself staring into space.
I looked at him. "What do you want, asshole?"
That was how best buddies talked to each other.
"So the Prodigal Son is dreaming of launching himself into the world to seek adventure, fame, and fortune? Bone, you know you're sometimes more like Don Quixote than Admiral Farragut?"
"You're saying I'm jousting windmills thinking they're giants?"
"All that's missing is the Lady Dulcinea and a fat man on a jackass."
"That makes you either the fat man or the jackass."
So now fresh ensigns were leaving Bancroft Hall to meet the challenges of the fleet. World War II and the Great Depression were over, the Cold War began after Winston Churchill dubbed the Soviet Union's communist isolation an "iron curtain," and America was on a roll. The economy was booming and folks were ready to kick up their heels and get back to the good times like in the Roarin' Twenties.
President Harry Truman and his "Fair Deal" Program were in the White House after President Roosevelt died in office. In this year of 1949, the first Volkswagen Beetle arrived in the United States, the B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II made the first nonstop around-the-world airplane flight, NATO was formed in Europe, and the "Red Scare" unsettled the nation.
Albert the Monkey became the first primate shot into space, "Tokyo Rose" was convicted of broadcasting propaganda for Japan during the war, Hopalong Cassidy aired on NBC-TV as the first western, Los Angeles received its first recorded snowfall, the last American troops from World War II pulled out of Korea, and Grady the cow got stuck inside an Oklahoma silo.
Over below the bleachers at Memorial Stadium, a group of graduates minus their covers struck up "Navy Blue and Gold," the Naval Academy's alma mater.
Four years together by the bay where Severn joins the tide,
And by the service called away we scatter far and wide.
But still when two or three shall meet and old tales be retold,
From low to highest in the fleet, we'll pledge the Blue and Gold.
The Hamiltons and Parrs waited for Warren and me in the bleachers, Mom wiping her eyes and Frank waving with both hands, one of which clutched my cover. Dad would have been proud of me, whether he was here or not. I could almost see the softening of the lines in his face that made all my academic efforts worthwhile.
As Parr and I worked our way through the wildly celebrating cadets to join our folks, the heavy thunder of an aircraft engine stopped us. Out over the bay, the Academy's N3N open cockpit seaplane labored low over the water, its gray-blue fuselage and wings gleaming in the sun. The Academy used it in aviation familiarization for midshipmen inclined toward becoming pilots.
"I suppose you're following your old man's webbed feet into naval aviation?" Parr said. "You're going to be a flyer, right?"
The seaplane dropped a wing and turned back toward the upper end of the bay. I watched it until it swept out of sight.
"Yeah," I said. "Time to give up the windmills and go to work in the real world."
CHAPTER 2
As requested on my "dream sheet," I received orders on June 30, 1949, for preflight training at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. Parr elected to go with the fleet. The next time I saw him he would be riding a destroyer off Korea in 1952.
By this time, the Cold War, the standoff between communism and what we in the West termed the "Free World," was into its fourth year. The USSR called off its blockade of West Berlin in May 1949, after nearly a year — during which time the only access the U.S. had to the divided city was by air. America might be on a roll, but the rest of the world was jittery, as though countries were anticipating something dark and uncertain lurking in the future.
"It won't be long until the Russkies have the Bomb," the Admiral predicted. Dad had his sources. "We should have listened to George Patton and taken out the Soviets while we had the upper hand. We wouldn't be in the crap we're in now if we'd dropped Little Boy on Moscow."
In August 1945, I was a first-year plebe at Annapolis, a tall, gawky kid with big ears and blue eyes exactly one week away from my eighteenth birthday when the world entered the nuclear age. A senior engineering instructor came into the classroom wearing dress whites, gold braid, and a constipated expression.
Warren Parr leaned across the aisle toward me. "Maybe Commander Murdock ought to loosen his tie and his belt," he whispered.
Rumors had been circulating through Bancroft Hall since early that morning. It seemed Commander Murdock was about to confirm them; he was dressed for a formal announcement. The classroom fell dead silent as the commander unfolded the morning's New York Times and, without preamble, read a statement issued by President Harry Truman:
Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare. ...
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. ... We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. ... If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.
I called Mom as soon as I could; it took me about an hour to get through to Norfolk. All the lines were tied up by relatives of sailors, soldiers, Marines, and airmen telephoning around trying to pick up some news about their loved ones in the Pacific.
"Your dad is in London, last I heard," Mom reported.
"He wasn't flying?"
"I rang Buck at the Pentagon. He told me there were no reports of U.S. casualties. Don't worry, darling. Your dad's a tough old bird. You'll be just like him."
Japan announced her surrender after one more bomb and my eighteenth birthday. Germany had capitulated on May 8. World War II was over. The Admiral and all the other "boys" would be coming home.
I later looked upon the construction of the atom bomb and its employment against Japan as a major influence in developing my viewpoint on limited war. Dropping "the Bomb" was necessary in order to save American lives that would be lost in an invasion of Japan, including possibly the life of my own father. Still, as the Cold War advanced into a bomb-rattling standoff between the "Iron Curtain" countries and the "Free World," I began to consider the threat of nuclear war too awful to contemplate.
"There must be an alternative," I insisted to Parr and some of our midshipmen buddies. "There has to be."
Parr shrugged. "Like the super warriors you're always talking about?"
"So the alternative is for nations to go around killing off each other to let God sort 'em out?"
Call me a softie, but I was profoundly touched by accounts of how children, women, and the elderly suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombs killed about 130,000 people, a toll almost incomprehensible in only two explosions. A piece I read about Toshika Saeki personalized that number, brought it down to where you could imagine something like that happening to your mother or your aunt, your girlfriend, sister, or wife if circumstances had been reversed and Japan and Germany got the Bomb first.
Toshiko Saeki lived on the outskirts of Hiroshima with her children while her husband, like husbands in the United States, was away fighting. She looked up and saw two enemy airplanes flying so high over the city that no anti-aircraft guns fired on them.
"There came a flash of light. I can't describe what it was like. ... I lay flat on the ground, trying to escape from the heat. I forgot all about my children for a moment. Then, there came a big sound, sliding wooden doors and windows were blown off into the air. I turned around to see what had happened to the house, and at one part of the ceiling, it was hanging in the air. At some parts, the ceiling was caved in, burying my sister's child and my child as well."
Thirteen of her family members were killed instantly.
"I couldn't identify people by their faces. Trying to find my family, I had to take a look at their clothing. ... I couldn't find any of my family, so I went to the playground. There were four piles of bodies and I stood in front of them. ... If I tried to find my beloved ones, I would have to remove the bodies one by one."
Reaction in America to the devastation was mixed. Most accepted it as necessary, a human anomaly that ended the war, saved lives, and would never be used again. Others became frightened and uneasy about their personal fortunes and mankind's ultimate fate.
"It looks as if humanity is moving inexorably toward Armageddon and into the limbo of forgotten things," they said. "An oblivion of our own making ... and this time destiny plays for keeps."
Others were more optimistic. "This menace can turn into the most powerful deterrent to future wars of aggression."
No one was even thinking of such consequences in October 1941, two months before Pearl Harbor, when President Franklin Roosevelt approved a crash program to develop an atomic bomb. Scientists had already discovered the secret of fission and the power it unleashed. Roosevelt appointed Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. director of what became known as the Manhattan Project. Groves in turn selected a brilliant theoretical physicist from the University of California, Berkeley, to head the project's secret weapons lab. J. Robert Oppenheimer was thirty-eight years old, emaciated at 125 pounds, and had a chronic cough.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Night Fighter"
by .
Copyright © 2016 William H. Hamilton Jr. and Charles W. Sasser.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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