The Dive

Dive bomber attack at Midway. Contest entry.

Ensign Jeff Billings had never been so scared in his twenty years of life. He desperately tried to push fear aside and concentrate on flying his Douglass Dauntless dive bomber, but all he could think about was what was coming.

Jeff was part of VB-6 flying off the Enterprise. They had been flying for hours looking for the Japanese, and fuel was getting low. Then their commander Wade McClusky had spotted a lone enemy destroyer moving at high speed. They had followed and it had led them right to the enemy fleet. The good news was there didn’t seem to be any Zeros around. The bad news was they could expect heavy anti-aircraft fire.

They were now coming in at 13,000 feet and the planes ahead of him began nosing over into their dives. All too soon it was his turn. He put the Dauntless into a seventy-degree dive, aimed straight for one of the carriers. He could see the carrier, he was pretty sure it was the Kaga, going into a hard starboard turn.

Black explosions from heavy anti-aircraft guns tossed his plane around. The glowing balls of tracer fire from their twenty-three millimeter guns seemed to drift lazily towards him. He tried to ignore them as he focused on the carrier rapidly growing larger in his bomb sight. He could see splashes in the ocean around the ship as the leading bombers missed. There was a flash as one bomb hit. He quickly checked his altimeter. At 1,600 feet he released his 500 pound bomb and pulled out of his dive, g forces pushing him back into his seat.

“You got it, sir!” his rear seat gunner yelled. “Right on the bridge!”

Jeff turned to starboard and took a look back. Indeed, it looked like his bomb had hit right on the bridge. Smoke and flame were engulfing the forward part of the carrier’s island. He glanced at his watch and realized that from the time he started his dive to the time he released the bomb was only 60 seconds.

It was the longest minute of his life.