Returning to the cockpit, he stopped and chatted with Byrnes, who was running through a schematic of the bomb’s detonation circuits. Every so often the ordnance expert glanced at a small console mounted above his lap.
“Any chance of it going off before we get there?” asked Dennings.
“Lightning strike could do it,” answered Byrnes.
Dennings looked at him in horror. “A little late with a warning, aren’t you? We’ve been flying through the middle of an electrical storm since midnight.”
Byrnes looked up and grinned. “We could have gone up just as easily on the ground. What the hell, we made it, didn’t we?”
Dennings couldn’t believe Byrnes’s matter-of-fact attitude. “Was General Morrison aware of the risk?”
“Better than anyone. He’s been on the atomic bomb project from the beginning.”
Dennings shuddered and turned away. Insane, he thought, the operation was insane. It’d be a miracle if any of them lived to tell about it.
Five hours into the flight and lighter by 2,000 gallons of expended fuel, Dennings leveled the B-29 off at 10,000 feet. The crew became more upbeat as the dawn’s orange glow tinted the eastern sky. The storm was far behind them, and they could see the rolling swells of the sea and a few scattered white clouds.
A young and inexperienced pilot, Okinaga was one of the lucky ones. Out of his recently graduated class of twenty-two, who were rushed through training during Japan’s desperate days, he and three others were ordered to perform coastal patrols. The rest went into kamikaze squadrons.
Okinaga was deeply disappointed. He would have gladly given his life for the Emperor, but he accepted boring patrol duty as a temporary assignment, hoping to be called for a more glorious mission when the Americans invaded his homeland.
As the lone aircraft grew larger, Okinaga didn’t believe what he saw. He rubbed his eyes and squinted. Soon he could clearly make out the ninety-foot polished aluminum fuselage, the huge 141-foot wings, and the three-story vertical stabilizer of an American B-29.
He stared dumfounded. The bomber was flying out of the northeast from an empty sea, 20,000 feet below its combat ceiling. Unanswerable questions flooded his mind. Where had it come from? Why was it flying toward central Japan with one engine feathered? What was its mission?
Like a shark knifing toward a bleeding whale, Okinaga closed to within a mile. Still no evasive action. The crew seemed asleep or bent on suicide.
Okinaga had no more time for guessing games. The great winged bomber was looming up before him. He jammed the throttle of his Mitsubishi A6M Zero against its stop and made a circling dive. The Zero handled like a swallow, the 1,130-horsepower Sakae engine hurtling him behind and beneath the sleek, gleaming B-29.
Too late the tail gunner sighted the fighter and belatedly opened fire. Okinaga squeezed the gun tit on his control stick. His Zero shuddered as his two machine guns and two twenty-millimeter cannons shredded metal and human flesh.
A light touch of the rudder and his tracers ate their way into the wing and the B-29’s number-three engine. The cowling ripped and tore away, oil poured through holes, followed by flames. The bomber seemed to hover momentarily, and then it flipped on its side and spun toward the sea.
Only after the choked-off cry of the tail gunner and his short burst of fire did the
Dennings shouted into the intercom as he fought to level the plane. “Stanton, jettison the bomb! Jettison the goddamn bomb!”
The bombardier, wedged against his bombsight by the centrifugal force, yelled back. “It won’t fall free unless you straighten us out.”