The number-three engine was blazing now. The sudden loss of two engines, both on the same side, had thrown the plane over until it was standing on one wing. Working in unison, Dennings and Stromp struggled with the controls, fighting the dying aircraft to an even keel. Dennings pulled back on the throttles, leveling out but sending the bomber into a flat, sickening stall.
Stanton pulled himself to an upright position and popped open the bomb-bay doors. “Hold it steady,” he yelled futilely. He wasted no time adjusting the bombsight. He pushed the bomb release button.
Nothing happened. The violent twisting motion had jammed the atomic bomb against its tight quarters.
White-faced, Stanton struck the release with his fist, but the bomb stubbornly remained in place. “It’s jammed!” he cried. “It won’t fall free.”
Fighting for a few more moments of life, knowing that if they survived they must all take their own lives by cyanide, Dennings struggled to ditch the mortally wounded aircraft in the sea.
He almost made it. He came within two hundred feet of settling the
Braving the winds and spray, Captain Arne Korvold stood on the open bridge of the Norwegian Rindal Lines passenger-cargo liner
She seemed to have a ten-degree permanent list but rolled to twenty as the swells smashed into her exposed port broadside. The only sign of life was a wisp of smoke from her stack. Korvold grimly noted that her lifeboats had been launched, and a sweep of the restless sea failed to find any sign of them. He refocused the binoculars and read the English name spelled out beneath the Japanese characters on the bow.
She was called the
The radio operator shook his head. “Nothing. Not a peep wince we sighted her. Her radio must be closed down. Impossible to believe they abandoned ship without a distress call.”
Korvold stared silently through the bridge windows at the Japanese ship drifting less than a kilometer off his starboard rail. Norwegian by birth, he was a short, distinguished man who never made a hurried gesture. His ice-blue eyes seldom blinked, and his lips beneath the trimmed beard seemed constantly frozen in a slight smile. Twenty-six years at sea, mostly in cruise ships, he had a warm and friendly disposition, respected by his crew and admired by the passengers.
He tugged at his short graying beard and swore quietly to himself. The tropical storm had unexpectedly swung north onto his course and put him nearly two days behind schedule on his passage from the port of Pusan, Korea, to San Francisco. Korvol had not left the bridge for forty-eight hours and he was exhausted. Just as he was about to take a welcome rest, they sighted the seemingly derelict
“Permission to take a boarding crew across, Captain?”
Korvold looked up into the sculpted Nordic face of Chief Officer Oscar Steep. The eyes that stared back were a darker blue than Korvold’s. The chief officer stood lean and as straight as a light pole, skin tanned and hair bleached blond from exposure to the sun.
Korvold didn’t immediately answer but walked over to a bridge window and gazed down at the sea separating the two ships. From wave crest to trough the waves were running three to meters. “I’m not of a mind to risk lives, Mr. Steep. Better wait until seas calm a bit.”
“I’ve taken a boat through worse.”
“No hurry. She’s a dead ship, dead as a body in the morgue. And from the look of her, her cargo has shifted and she’s taking on water. Better we leave her be and search for her boats.”
“There may be injured men over there,” Steen persisted.
Korvold shook his head. “No captain would have abandoned ship and left injured crewmen behind.”
“No captain in his right senses maybe. But what kind of a man would desert a sound ship and lower boats in the midst of a sixty-five knot gale typhoon without sending a Mayday signal?”
“A mystery all right,” Korvold agreed.
“And there’s her cargo to consider,” Steen continued. “Her waterline indicates a full load. She looks capable of transporting over seven thousand automobiles.”
Korvold gave Steen a shrewd look. “You thinking salvage, Mr. Steen?”
“Yes, sir, I am. If she’s totally abandoned with a full cargo, and we can sail her into port, our salvage claim should be equal to half her value or better. The company as well as the crew could share in five or six hundred million kroner.”
Korvold considered for a few moments, a tantalizing thought of greed wrestling with a deep feeling of foreboding. Greed won out. “Pick your boarding crew, and include the assistant engineer. If there’s smoke from her funnel, her machinery must still be in working order.” He paused. “But I still prefer you wait for the water to settle.”