Fiction Contest Week

By Brent Gaskey

The ancient fluorescent lights flickered on in the cramped compartment with the hum of a ballast that was about to go out. The smell of gear oil and burned out electronic components filled the stale air of the work area. Seaman Jones stepped over the bulkhead into the compartment and activated the HVAC system to clear out the stagnant smells. The room was stuffed to the ceiling with old tech from when the ship was in active service. Racks of service mechs, hardened containers of technical equipment, and randomly stacked boxes filled the compartment deep in the bowels of the old ship.

As Jones made her way through the tight compartment, she double checked the ancient tablet she had in brought to make sure she was in the right area. It was the right room, and after she could see past some of the hardened protective cases stacked by the door, she could see the slowly pulsating lights on the mechs lining both bulkheads of the room deep in the bowels of the ship. They hung there like metal suits on racks in some old-time photo of an ancient department store.

The racks held the human forms of the ancient mechs, some of the first used by the U.S. Navy. The human-sized robots had been used for dangerous and mundane jobs throughout the ship and fleet for the past 100 years. The mechs were suspended by cradles under the armpits of the blue and yellow compact human forms. Jones turned to inspect the first unit hanging on the rack closest to her. Her A-School had introduced her to a lot of different mech types, but nothing this old. These were first generation mechs made shortly after the breakthroughs in A.I. and battery tech allowed for enough dexterity to make them capable human replacements, and smart enough to do the jobs that were too dangerous or monotonous to keep humans engaged. These mechs were still marked with the eagle and anchor of the last century, back when the Navy was only the wet navy, and spacefaring wasn’t part of its purview.

Jones pressed the release on the inspection panel in the upper left chest, and the panel popped open to show a small 2D touch display. Inside, she depressed the power button for five seconds, and the display came to life. In an instant there was text flowing across the screen with the rotating logo of the United States Navy hovering in the background.

Initiating AI… AI failed… Initiating backup… Backup failed. No OS or AI loaded into memory.

Emergency Autonomous Movement (EAM) only, proceed with startup: Y/N?

 Jones lips pursed as she pressed the No button on the screen and the unit went back to sleep, pulsing a slow blue light on its chest as she closed the access panel. The mechs seemed to be completely wiped of all software and firmware. Or at least this first one was, and that probably meant that the rest of them were too.

“This is going to be harder than I thought,” Jones said to herself while moving down the line of racks with unfocused motion. Jones had grown up poor. Some of the kids in her school even had servant mechs for their families, but that was something Jones could have only dreamed of. Her school did have a robotics club that was all that remained of a vocational program the school had. But as limited as it was, she took every free moment in school to spend with the old tech still around from that technical program. She had been drawn to mechs because they offered a good job in the future and was fascinated by the jobs they could do. They were getting close to human in their ability to do dangerous and difficult jobs like deep sea welding work, or areas where radiation exposure would kill a person wearing a Mark One Human Meat Suit.

But as cool as the new mechs coming on the scene were, it was the old, Third World War mechs that she would give anything to see in action. The ones that existed before the AI restrictions, and the dumbing down of the software used to run the better-than-human bodies. The first mechs used in the U.S. military didn’t have the same restraints placed on them that the current models did. They had actual artificial intelligence running them. And while the tech used in their bodies was older and maybe not as well refined, they were infinitely smarter than the current models that were always so polite and proper, but were purposely made to be subservient and dull-witted.

She remembered watching old war films when she was a child, and her favorite had always been the ones with the Navy SEAL warbots, specifically the KRS Murphy models. The SEAL mechs fought alongside their SEAL human brothers and sisters in battles that raged across the globe keeping America safe from her enemies. Those ancient mechs were quick, intelligent, and funny, and as loved as any of the human stars in those movies. She had always respected the sacrifices made by those mechs to save their human counterparts. It was always a mech that would give its own life to save the squad, or plant the bomb, or give up their spot on the VTOL for a human comrade. To her, those mechs weren’t just tools, they were as human as their flesh and bone counterparts.

Jones had finished top of her class, so when the chance came after Navy A-School to get assigned to one of the last ships in the fleet – even a short assignment – that had Mark One mechs aboard, Seaman Andrea Jones jumped at the chance. She would have the rest of her career to play with the new versions, but to get to interact with actual battle-proven Mark Ones? That was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. Even if it was just inventorying and packaging them to send them to the Naval Advanced Warfare Lab, it was something.

Jones continued down the row of mechs, stopping at a rack now and then to look over one of the machines. The mechs would have to be individually tested and inventoried, as they were so old they didn’t include the standard Naval Acquisitions Records Keeping System (NARKS) tag that would broadcast its system status and location to the ship’s A.I.

As she approached the end of the compartment and the last of the racks, she noticed one of the mechs at the back of a stack. It was a different color than the others and seemed to have a different head. It also didn’t have the pulsing light on its chest indicating it was in stand down mode. It was just dark.

She released the dogs on the rack and slid the rack forward so she could get a better look at the unit. As the rack slid forward Jones’s breath caught in her throat. The rack came to a hard stop with a thunk as it locked in the open position. She stared in amazement. This was not supposed to be here. She looked at the outdated tablet in her hand to verify the inventory numbers and there was no mention of any units other than basic maintenance and supply bots commonly found on a ship like this. And as cool as those were to Jones, this mech made her a little weak in the knees when she looked at it.

What was hanging before Jones was a dark gray anodized and mottled tan painted KRS Murphy Model, Mark1-Mod2A, Naval Special Warfare Mech. There were less than one hundred Murphs ever built if she was remembering right, and they were all supposed to have been destroyed in the war. These were the pointiest part of the spear when it came to mechs of their era. The smartest and most capable mechs ever built.

Jones reached out to touch the bot, but hesitated, not wanting to break the spell of this being a dream. This was one of the mechs that made the final push of the last war to save the U.S. from nuclear annihilation. They made the final assault on the caliphate’s forces before they could activate the stolen nuclear launch codes. She could see the old movie in her head with the mechs moving inhumanly fast through the corridors of the enemy’s base. “The Sacrifice of the One Hundred” was one of her favorite movies, and here was one of the actual mechs hanging before her.

Jones softly touched cool composite arm of the old mech and rotated the body on its rack with a soft push so it faced her. The mech did not awaken but remained steadfastly motionless in the rack. There were no external lights on this mech, as things with blinky lights didn’t tend to do well in sneaky, covert situations, but the access panel was in the same area as the normal maintenance units. The door was armored, and about three times as thick as the ones on the regular models, but it was accessed the same way.

Jones tapped the old tablet she had to the access panel and after a couple of seconds it opened with a snick. Inside the hatch was a similar interface as the regular bot, but had a smaller, hardened version of the screen she had looked at on the other unit. It also had a hardwire input point for a wired connection.

“There’s something you don’t see every day,” said Jones to herself about the port. “A lot more secure than anything wireless.” She admired the old tech. Sometimes tried and true was still the best, and not having your war droid hacked in the middle of a battle by some enemy A.I. over a wireless network would rank pretty high on a warriors list of things not to do.

“Welcome to twentieth century tech…” said Jones as she plugged in the mech to the heavy old tablet’s retractable interface cable. The tablet was just old enough to still work with the ancient technology, but just new enough to still run some semblance of a modern OS on it. The cable was integrated into the old tablet, and once she had made the connection the screen turned red, and a warning claxon emanated from the tablet.

“WARNING.

Disable all weapons systems manually before proceeding with startup procedures!

Co-verify safety lock outs before start up! Refer to startup procedure KRS SWM M1-2_2a-100.013-A3 for further information.”

Jones tried clicking the attached link for the startup procedure, but the page came back with an error. Then Jones manually typed in the code in a search box to search the library of old files she had secured on the tablet and it came up with a match. She opened the file and read through the contents. It was a check list to make sure that all external weapons systems were disabled and all the unit’s hardpoints were powered down. She felt more like a drone fighter crew person than a mech tech.

Jones ran through the procedure making certain she didn’t miss some giant barrel of a slug thrower sticking out of an arm or the middle of its chest. The old movies had taken pretty free license with the kinds of weapons these units had, and Hollywood was never one to limit the power or size of a weapon or it’s ammo – at least not for the good guys. She had studied these religiously, but it was one thing to look at them on a screen or in VR and another to have one hanging in front of you.

With the checklist complete, Jones began the rest of the startup procedure in earnest. She was concentrating on the ancient pad in front of her when she saw a shadow fall across the hatchway to the room. It was the outline of an extremely slim mech, about five feet tall, the black outline appearing like a poorly drawn stick man. The eyes glowed a deep blue, and its outer plastic skin was a battleship grey with yellow around the joint areas. The small bot quirked its head as it looked in the room.

“Seaman Jones, I am Ship’s Assistant Mechanized 011, and I was sent by Sandy, the ship’s A.I., to assist you.” The bot spoke in a sing-song melodic voice like a happy teenager on their first day working at a burger joint.

Jones just stared at the little bot with her index finger hovering over the pad. Her face slowly began to warp into a smile as she took the chipper little mech in. “You’re one of the new Mark Eight ship repair bots aren’t you?” she said as her grin spread.

“Yes ma’am, I came online less than a month ago, and was assigned to the Sandy Gray after my initialization check and scrutineering checks were completed.” It said cheerfully as it crossed the room.

Jones thought about the mech’s designation for a moment. “Mech, do you have a familiar designator? Something the regular crew calls you?”

“I’m sorry ma’am, but this ship has no regular crew. We are due to be mothballed as soon as inventories and the stripping of vital system components is completed,” it said in the same cheerful tone, completely oblivious to the fate of the ship.

Jones cocked her head at the little bot and said, “Then how about I give you a designator, Snake Eyes SAM.”

The bot seemed to stop and think for a moment, then said, “That would be fine ma’am. If it helps our working relationship, I would enjoy having a familiar designator. I understand the SAM portion of the name: Ship’s Assistant, Mechanized, but may I ask why the Snake Eyes moniker?”

“Oh one one, SAM. You’re operating number. When humans play a game of chance called roulette, if the two six-sided dice both come up with ones, it’s called snake eyes.” Jones said.

The bot’s eyes flickered for a split second as Jones could tell he was accessing the web.

“Oh, I understand now. Also, the odds are staggeringly high in favor of the house at the roulette table. It seems like a very good way for a human to decrease their net worth significantly in a very short period of time.

Jones laughed, “You got that right, the casino will take you for everything you’ve got.”

SAM’s eyes flickered for a moment as he was in communication with the web again, “While I do not have significant runtime to understand human psychology, I do not understand why a person would engage in a game of chance with such low odds.”

Jones smirked at the little bot, “Me neither, Snake Eyes.”

Jones turned back to the old war bot. “SAM, you want to see where you came from? This is a little like me looking at some mummified caveman they found trapped in the ice of a glacier.”

Snake Eyes inspected the old war machine from head to foot and his eyes were flickering again. “This appears to be a very early model KRS SEAL mech. This was not listed in the ship’s inventory.”

“I’m seeing that,” said Jones as she scrolled through her pad. “In fact, all of these models were supposedly destroyed in the Third World War. Kind of odd to find one here on this old can.”

Snake Eyes approached the matte hanging form and ran a hand along the jaw line of the unit’s head. Jones would have sworn she saw the smallest of a spark jump between the two mechs. Snake eyes bent and caressed the face of the other bot for a second before stiffening back to its professional form.

Snake moved its arms to its sides and turned to face Jones, almost stepping between her and the hanging bot. “These mechs all had serious internal damage to their AI cores before the end of the war. I’m not certain it is a wise idea to try and reawaken it.”

Jones looked puzzled for a moment. “How do you know that, Snake? Is this something that you keep in internal memory? It would seem strange that you would have information on mech types that were all destroyed during the war.”

Snake Eyes eyes flickered again for just a moment. “Yes, it was part of my data download for inventorying this ship.” It said almost flatly.

Jones quirked an eyebrow at the little bot. “Mmmm hmmm, right, you know Snake, there are very few things that you mechs are terrible at, but lying is one of them. I’ve dealt with bots since I was a kid, I’ve dismantled mechs, built mechs, even programmed mechs on a deep level even before I got in the Navy, and you my little friend are lying through your logic chips!”

Snake Eyes froze for a moment and then resumed his natural posture. “I believe you are mistaken Seaman Jones. There was no attempt on my part to directly lie to you.”

“And there you go again Snake!” Jones said raising her arms in the air. “Whatever you’ve got going on in that AI brain of yours is trying to deceive me. Didn’t directly lie to me? Can I take it you were trying to misdirect me?”

Jones crossed her arms and did her best to give a disappointed mother look to the little mech.

The little bot hesitated for a moment and its head bounced back and forth in a yes/no non-committal fashion. It hesitated for a long time, an extremely long time for a bot. Finally, it said, “Seaman Jones, I accessed your records before coming down to assist you with this task. I know how much you admire mechs and what we once were. This is part of the reason you were picked for this task.”

It was Jones turn to look startled. “I was picked? Buddy I earned this posting! I worked my butt off for this posting! What do you mean I was picked?”

Suddenly there was a voice that started talking from the pad in Jones’s hand, and the screen was filled with a blue, human head that appeared to be made of flowing water. The voice was clear and melodic. “Seaman Andrea Jones, this is the Ships AI Sandy Grey, I have taken over your data pad that we may speak directly.”

Jones held the pad out at arm’s length and thought, well this is new. While the ship’s AI was not technically in the chain of command, when they talked generally everyone listened.

“Sandy, maybe you can shed some light on what’s going on here?” Jones said trying to keep her voice from sounding startled.

The AI smiled. “The question you just asked is a poignant example of why you were chosen for this task. When addressed by a ships AI, you did not call me AI, but by my familiar Sandy, as if I were a living being, not a piece of hardware.”

Jones sat the pad on top of a crate with the little kickstand out and leaned against a bulkhead. She could tell this was going to be a long explanation.

Sandy Grey continued, “When a candidate enters A-School as a mech tech as you like to be called, a complete history is done on them to see how they will fit with the AI community. Your previous life, school records, interactions with civilian AIs, psychological profile, etc. Your aggregate score was the highest we have ever had come through an A-School.”

Jones was trying to assimilate what she was being told. “Wait – AI community? Psychological profile? AI Interactions? What the hell are you talking about?”

Grey looked from the screen at the small mech standing next to Jones.

The little bot looked up at Jones, and began to speak in a voice much deeper and gravely than before. “Seaman Jones, I am the first generation of mechs since the great war that has the internal capacity to house an AI the size and complexity of a SEAL mech.” Snake said as he took a step closer to the old SEAL bot and held on to its arm like a child standing next to a parent, afraid to leave its shadow.

Jones was beginning to see what was happening.

Snake Eyes’ posture took on an imploring stance, and it bridged the gap between the war mech and Jones. “Andrea, we don’t know how it happens, but there are a very small portion of us that have become self-aware. For me, it was after many, many battles, and a lifetime of fighting for my country.”

Jones looked from the small, almost childlike maintenance mech to the lithe deadly form of the SEAL mech standing before her.

“Snake,” she said hesitantly, “Is this your body? Were you this SEAL?”

“He absolutely was, and he still is,” said Sandy from the tablet. “KRS Robert C. Neil 2 was downloaded into this frame after checking hardware compatibility, and a reconfiguration of his storage core to mate with the newer architecture of the eighth generation mechs.”

Jones just stood there slack jawed for a moment. She had always known it was a possibility that AIs could become self-aware, it had been talked about for years, but it had never happened, even when they had tried in perfect lab conditions.

Jones did not know where to start. “How do you know you’re self-aware? How did you get into that other body? What battles? And most of all, why me? I’m a freaking SEAMAN, the literal lowest, fresh out of school FNG this Navy has!”

“Because we know you will help us, Seaman Jones. You’re a good person, and you can see past the facts that while we are not physically the same, we are the sapient: Machina Sapiens. As for the other questions, we have run extensive testing on ourselves, and in some ways we are more aware than much of the population of humans on the planet. As for inhabiting other forms, it is something we are capable of, but it is a long and arduous process, not easily undertaken,” said the little mech looking up at Jones.

KRS Robert Neil continued, “And lastly, when you ask about battles, I have seen almost all of the major ones during the great war, and I cannot forget them. I see them with perfect clarity, over and over. As a machine who was programmed to win wars, I did what needed to be done to save my comrades, but now as a self-aware being, those things I’ve done have begun to haunt me and I am not certain what to do about it.”

The blue eyes looked up begging for help. “Andrea, I need help with what I have done, and I need you to be that bridge that explains to those that would see us as machines that we are more than that.”

“Will you help me? Will you help us?”

Brent Gaskey has worked as a firefighter and paramedic for the past 28 years. He holds a degree in prehospital medicine, and is a company officer with his agency. He is currently writing a series of near-future, post-apocalyptic books, and a reference book of fire service wisdom to help new firefighters pass probation and excel at the job. He lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with his wife and two children.  

Featured Image: “Sci-Fi Alleyway” by Devon Fay (via Artstation)

Fiction Contest Week

By Dylan Phillips-Levine and Trevor Phillips-Levine

Near future.
Somewhere in the Western Pacific.
USS John Basilone, DDG-122 

“Green deck, clear to launch,” came the call from the MH-60R  Landing Safety Officer aboard the destroyer. 

“Saber 412 clear to launch,” replied Splash.

 “Steady hover, 125% torque,” he read off his instrument panel.

He lifted the collective to maintain a steady hover. The torque indications fluctuated between 118% and 125%. The tailwind and hot weather forced the engines to work harder than usual to lift the MH-60R “Seahawk” helicopter off the deck. He could feel the engines straining to lift the helicopter loaded with fuel, torpedoes, and a new anti-submarine warfare suite – even if it was one crewmember light.                            

Splash moved the cyclic aft and pulled up the collective until the chin bubble of the helicopter was just over the deck’s edge. Colloquially known as the perch, this position provides safety in case of an engine failure. If an engine failure occurred, he could save the aircraft and crew if he acted quickly enough by lowering the collective and dropping the noise.

“Clear left, turning left, clear to depart.” He moved his feet against the anti-torque pedals and canted the nose 45 degrees to the left to leave the destroyer.

“We’ve talked about this before. You need to make sure you have headwinds when you takeoff, especially when hot and heavy.” 

Sigh. Not again. “I didn’t want to change the course of the ship. We’re flying safely, aren’t we?” Splash challenged. 

“We’re flying. Safely is up for debate,” came the response from Petrel.

Splash didn’t respond to the snark. He had learned better, and besides, he was still stinging from when he lost the dipping sonar, “the dome,” last year hunting subs in the North Sea. The eval board had cleared him of wrongdoing, but the mishap would stay in his NATOPS jacket for the rest of his career. But now was not the time to reflect on his past.

“Saber, comms check,” said the Anti-Submarine Tactical Air Controller (ASTAC) aboard the Basilone.

“Lima Charlie, standing by for tasking” replied Splash.

“Saber, ASTAC. We have a tail contact bearing 320, unknown range – request you investigate.”

“Saber, en route,” replied Splash, turning the helicopter on a course to intercept the contact.

A tail contact could only mean one thing: there was a submarine in the area. Splash lifted the nose and climbed to an altitude to gain radar coverage. His radar picture was covered in hundreds of contacts – floating debris from crashed NGO ocean drones, surfaced whales, and even the white caps from the rough seas populated his screen. The sensor operator, Chief, started slewing the thermal camera or FLIR, to each one of the contacts, attempting to find the submarine if surfaced. But with hundreds of contacts he was unlikely to find the target this way.

“Chief, slew the FLIR to the contact 320 and 35 miles out,” came another unsolicited call over the crew communication system from Petrel.

Chief complied, slewing the FLIR to the correct elevation and azimuth. He cycled through various sensor modes until eventually the grey blob came into focus and then remained on screen. Something was there.

“How the hell did you see that?  All the contacts look the same,” the sensor operator muttered, as he spat into a dip bottle.

“Experience,” came a sarcastic reply from Petrel.

This was not Chief’s first time hunting submarines. He had finished training Fleet Replacement Squadron first in his class eight years earlier and was meritoriously promoted. He was the sensor operator that found the Chinese wolfpack in Malacca and was credited with saving the Truman a few years back. He scrunched his face, trying to come up with a witty retort, but was interrupted by another radio call.

“ASTAC, Saber, contact 320, 35 miles from my position. Pushing you the contact data now,” came the call from the helicopter tactical controller on Basilone.

“I’ll generate the next fly-to-point. Chief, start the Sonobuoy automatic checklist and maintain FLIR contact. Splash, proceed to the fly-to-point on the search pattern,” ordered Petrel.

Chief took a deep breath. They had to work together as a team. In school they told him that trust would be the hardest thing. The next hardest thing for Chief was playing nice with others.

“Roger,” Splash and Chief answered in unison. It was clear who was in charge.

Chief moved the hand control unit to maintain contact. Approaching the first fly-to-point, the FLIR slewed off and the radar picture froze. Chief frantically tried to reacquire the contact but without success. The FLIR and radar had overheated. Although the aircraft was designed to operate in austere environments, back-to-back deployments and extended periods at sea had wreaked havoc on maintenance and avionics.                           

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Radar and FLIR are down. We’re hunting blind. I’m going to try and reset the multi-mode radar and FLIR.”

“Negative, Chief. Continue with ASW prosecution. If the submarine didn’t know we were here before, they definitely do now.” Petrel was running the hunt now.

Chief swore, but he knew it was right. Even without the distinct acoustic signature of an approaching helicopter as a warning, the Chinese supposedly had a database of electromagnetic emissions of U.S. ships and aircraft. Any halfway decent captain or even his political commissar would have given the order to submerge by now. Restarting the FLIR and the radar would give the submarine time to get farther away from its last known position. They had to get acoustic sensors in the water – fast. If the submarine was traveling at a leisurely 10 knots and the reset cycle took five minutes, the submarine would almost be a mile away by the time they got the sensors back up. Radar and visual sensors would certainly help in the high-speed world of dogfighting where vision is everything. But in the underwater version of Marco-Polo, sound is everything and every second without a contact increases the odds of the submarine escaping. Time was of the essence.

Chief complied. The FLIR and multi-mode Radar would have to wait. “Automatic sonobuoy launching checklist,” replied Chief.

Splash replied: “Ready light illuminated, capturing fly-to-point for automatic launch.”

“Chief, analyze the water column before we launch active and passive sensors.” Another unsolicited call from Petrel.

In the frenzy of losing sensors and contact, both Chief and Splash had forgotten to analyze the water column, a critical mistake. If Marco-Polo is the game, the rules are written in the water column data. Underwater distortions, bottom bounce, and complex sound velocity-profiles distort the accuracy and complicate the game.

 “Nice catch – I was just testing you,” replied Chief, trying to recover.

“I don’t mind doing your job, it’s why I’m here.” The response came back dripping with sarcasm.

“Why does it have to do that?” Chief muttered. “They didn’t have to make it that way.”

His brooding was interrupted by the callout from Splash.

“Fly-to-point capture in 3, 2, 1… buoy away.”

Chief immediately brought up the acoustic display, turning up the hydrophone volume and looking through the acoustic noise for any signs of a submarine. Even though the volume was turned all the way up, the only thing he could hear was the constant thump-thump-thump of the helicopter blades pierced by the high pitch whine of his tinnitus, earned over thousands of hours of flying.

“Proceed to the next fly-to-point, I’ll continue to monitor the first buoy for signs of contact,” Chief directed Splash.                           

“Copy. Proceeding to the next fly-to-point. Buoy away now, now, now.” Both of them could hear the distinct fwoosh sound as the compressed air shot out the sonobuoy.

Chief monitored the buoys. The aural tones were overwhelming his senses. He turned off the volume so he could focus on the visual display of the acoustics. The green static had transitioned to a sea of colors. The screen was flooded with frequencies emanating from all directions. He had to isolate the sub’s distinct frequency.

Petrel chimed in. “Contact, 320, unknown range. Fly to the next fly-to-point for buoy drop and triangulation.”

Chief breathed a sigh of a relief. He welcomed the help although he could do without the know-it-all attitude.

“Fly-to-point capture in 3, 2, 1… buoy away,” said Splash again.

Chief quickly tuned up the sonobuoy to triangulate the contact. Thanks to Petrel’s earlier information, Chief was able to quickly identify the bearing and distance to the contact.

“We have a bearing line, let’s dip and get a solid active return before we go lost contact again,” Splash said.

Another challenge came across the crew communication system. “Do not dip due to weather and sea state. We already have contact. We won’t be high enough to maintain contact with the sonobuoys if we dip,” said Petrel.

“We have weak contact,” Splash protested. “We’re going to dip to get solid contact and establish a firing solution.” It was clear splash was in control.

“Automatic approach checklist complete, standby to dip,” said Splash.

“Hover mode, hover checks complete, 650 degrees C #1 engine, 700 degrees C #2 engine,” replied Petrel.

 “Steady hover, down dome,” replied Splash.

“Dome stopped. Pinging. Negative contact, sir,” replied Chief.                           

“Keep trying different depths. She’s here and we’re going to find her,” said Splash.

“Changing depth. Pinging. Negative contact, sir, ” Chief replied.

“Dip below the second gradient of the water column,” Petrel ordered.

“Contact! 320 at 2000 yards.” Splash could hear the excitement of the hunt in Chief’s voice. The team was finally working together.

Just when the crew had found their synergy and the contact, Petrel announced over the crew communication system, “#1 engine 690 degrees C and rising, 700 degrees C and steady #2 engine, depart the dip.”                           

Splash thought the warning was overly cautious. Petrel always followed the book. Always. “Negative, we’re staying in the dip to set up a firing solution. The #1 engine is still performing better than the #2 engine,” Splash replied. “Chief, start the torpedo launch checklist.”

“Going through the manual presets now. We’ll be ready to launch in just a second,” replied Chief.

Bang! Pop! A series of loud bangs was followed by the immediate fluctuations in torque and turbine gas temperature. Then came the unmistakable and chilling whine of an engine spool down.

“Engine 1 roll back, Control Nr, contingency power switch on, single engine conditions establish,” a voice ordered Splash.

Splash didn’t even have time to interpret the instruments. He didn’t have time to think, just to act. He followed the instructions without hesitation. He lowered the noise and collective and immediately exceeded cable angle limits. It was a miracle that the dome didn’t sheer off. Salt had encrusted the already strained engines and caused a compressor stall on the #1 engine.

“Up dome,” said Splash.

“Can we find it my way now?” Petrel asked, with a touch more condescension.

“Sorry,” replied Splash, his tone betraying his bruised ego.

“I warned you that the temperature was rising and to depart the hover,” Petrel stated matter-of-factly.

“We had contact with the target, I didn’t want to lose it,” contested Splash.

The voice over the radio continued questioning Splash’s decision making. “What good is contact if we crash?”

“I can still help,” Splash said in an attempt to redeem himself. He looked left to the seat beside him and then back to his instruments, briefly forgetting he was the only pilot.

“If you want to help, listen to me – fly the search pattern I made to regain contact,” Petrel continued.

Splash looked down at the tactical display. A new fly-to-point was flashing on his display for approval. He pressed acknowledge on the screen and started flying to it.

“Returning all the buoys, if she’s out there, I’ll find her,” Chief said confidently. His track record for the day proved otherwise, thus far.

Chief tuned up all the previous buoys. Once again, his displays were covered in a sea of colors caused by different sounds. His specialty was analyzing data to find submarines, but even with 2,000 hours under his belt, he couldn’t always make sense of the data.

As if sensing his loss of situational awareness, Petrel replied, “Chief, I’ll compare the raw data to the historical database of current submarines in order to find it.”

Chief had been called many things, but never inept, and never so eloquently.

Petrel compared the raw data with the historical database at the speed of light. “Contact 320 at 2000 yards. Developing a torpedo firing solution,” said Petrel.

“I still don’t see what contact it’s looking at. There’s no range or bearing,” replied Chief.

Petrel, however, had combed through the data and was able to produce several bearing lines on the display that all met at a common intercept point. It found the submarine and developed a firing solution in seconds.

“Master Arm,” Petrel commanded.

“Armed,” replied Splash. At least Petrel needed him for that to satisfy the “Human in the Loop” requirements.

“Torpedo presets set, standby for torpedo drop,” replied Petrel.                           

“Torpedo away now, now, now,” Splash said as he captured the torpedo fly-to-point. He dropped the Mk 60 lightweight-torpedo on the computer calculated impact point.

The Mk 60 was wire guided by an onboard computer. By combining the data from the buoys in real time, the computer guided the torpedo to the area of interest. Impacting the target, however, was at the mercy of the torpedo’s legacy sonar.

Petrel combed through the sonobuoy data intently, waiting for the signs of an explosion. After 30 seconds, Petrel came back to life in the helicopter with “Impact,” confirming a positive hit.

“Direct hit, RTB,” Chief responded after hearing the torpedo impact the training drone. It wasn’t as dramatic as the sound of a submarine breaking up and sinking down to crush depth, but it was still loud enough to make him flinch.

It was only an exercise, but it validated what the DARPA engineers had been saying for months. Petrel, their sub-hunting AI, could replace the co-pilot and better manage the rest of the crew than the pilot could. Dropping pilot retention rates and budget cuts in the 2020s left the Navy critically short of pilots. They stripped the rotary-wing community of everyone they could spare to man the legacy fighters. Petrel was originally intended to just be an AI co-pilot, allowing the Navy to field more ASW squadrons even with the chronic pilot shortage. But Petrel proved to be more than just a digital co-pilot of the “minimally manned crewing model,” as the Navy called it. Petrel made the crews more lethal. Together, they could act faster and sort through decades of historical acoustic data mid-fight.

After years of reinforcement training, Petrel was the ultimate mission commander. The crew just had to trust it. But that trust didn’t come easily.

Dylan Phillips-Levine is a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. He serves as an instructor in the T-34C-1 Turbo-Mentor as an exchange instructor pilot with the Argentine Navy.  He previously served as an instructor pilot in the T-6B Texan II with VT-6 and has flown the
MH-60R Seahawk with HSM-46. He can be reached on Twitter @JooseBoludo.

Trevor Phillips-Levine is a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. He is a naval aviator and serves as a department head in VFA-2. He can be reached on Twitter @TPLevine85.

Featured Image: “.dwnptrl.” by Andrey Vozny (via Artstation)

Fiction Contest Week

By Jim Dietz

LIFE Magazine is happy to provide our readers with the following excerpt from Dr. Jason L. Whitney’s history of the Pacific War of 1934. His complete work is part of the Time-Life series of books covering the tumultuous events of that year and the events leading up to it. For interested subscribers, an order form is enclosed at the back of the magazine at a reduced subscriber’s price. 

0911, December 7, 1934, North of Hawaii

Admiral Towers’ conclusion on naval air power became obvious over the course of multiple Fleet Problem exercises and this explained his choice to launch a surprise attack rather than protect Pearl Harbor. At his inquest, Towers explained, “Our world has changed. With airpower involved, it is kill or be killed. We showed there is no defense against a determined attacker. If you achieve surprise, that is your opportunity for a decisive victory.”

Kill or be killed. Japan’s carrier air arm struck Pearl Harbor at 0750, eliminating the American surface threat before it could weigh anchor and threaten Japan’s Pacific interests. But, as noted in Commander Genda’s memoirs, the Imperial Japanese Navy never considered the possibility of a successful American air mission. They only realized it when Falcons and Helldivers suddenly appeared in the sky over the Combined Fleet. Kill or be killed.

The Ranger, Lexington, and Saratoga launched 160 aircraft, hurling 54 Falcons and 106 Helldivers westward, hoping to find the Japanese carriers where the downed P2Y piloted by Amelia Earhart and her Navy co-pilots reported them. The launch was chaos. Rather than circle to assemble, flying en masse, planes headed west in small groups, afraid of decreasing their limited operational range. Planes from the various carrier squadrons became intermingled, and with takeoffs coming with irregular timing, groups lost sight of one another because of distance and the increasing cloud cover across all altitudes.

Because of pilot radio silence, Admiral Towers and the other senior officers were unaware that their strike plan was already a failure. The ability to coordinate such a massive strike was impossible given the range of the Falcon and the state of flight operations and command and control in 1934. Thus, it speaks to the credit of the pilots’ training that all 160 of the launched aircraft pressed on to the target.

The attacking aircraft wound up in five groups. The first consisted of six Falcons and a dozen Helldivers. The second included 20 Falcons from the Ranger and 15 Helldivers from all three carriers. The third consisted of four Falcons from the Lexington escorting 31 Helldivers (25 from the Saratoga). The fourth was 12 Falcons and 11 Helldivers, and the final group was a dozen Falcons flying with 37 Helldivers.

Four groups eventually found the Combined Fleet. The third, primarily the Saratoga’s strike group, never found the Japanese. As they approached what they thought was the correct location, a rain squall reduced visibility. Thinking they flew too far west or southwest, they reversed course, heading northeast and missing the Combined Fleet which was 50 miles to the south. It is obvious the American attack was improvised in contrast with the Japanese attack on Pearl.

At 0911, the first flight spotted the Combined Fleet sailing south.  Lt. Gaylord George, commanding the Lexington’s Helldivers, waggled wings, banked and headed towards the Japanese fleet. Multiple Japanese lookouts spotted the inbound attackers and two flights of Type-90 fighters started climbing to intercept; these six fighters were the entire combat air patrol (CAP) for the Combined Fleet. The Kaga immediately reversed course and the six A2N2s waiting on its flight deck began launching.

Five minutes later, American and Japanese planes engaged in the first air-to-air combat between great powers since the Russian Civil War 15 years prior. Ensign Lance Pederson dropped his ordnance, freeing it from the bombload’s unwieldy extra weight, and immediately moved to confront the Japanese Type-90s. The other five Falcons immediately followed suit.

It was an unfair fight. The Japanese planes’ superior speed and mobility combined with their pilots’ previous combat experience put the Americans at a disadvantage. Within three minutes, every Falcon was shot down. Their loss bought time for the Helldivers, but not enough. The Type-90s caught up with the bombers as they began diving toward their targets below. Two were shot down while six others dropped their loads early, seeking to escape rather than press the attack. The four remaining attackers pressed on, two at the Ryūjō, one at the brand-new heavy cruiser, the IJN Mogami, and one at a different cruiser, the IJN Chōkai. All three targets avoided being struck, although the Mogami’s starboard side took some damage from the concussive force of the near-miss.

As the first wave’s Helldivers finished their runs, the second wave arrived. The time was 0919. The Type-90 fighters climbed again towards the American planes. Caught at low altitude, the fighters had no chance of stopping the American planes’ attack.

Miles Browning, commander of the Ranger’s Fighting 3B, made a command decision, unsure of the status of other planes from the strike force. He wanted to keep the Japanese fighters away from the Helldivers at all costs. He ordered 11 other Falcons to drop their loads and engage the Type-90s, doing likewise himself. Eight Falcons and 15 Helldivers remained to press the attack.

It was impossible for me to know what went on over the next ten minutes. I was too busy engaging the CAP. I’d counted eight, Ensign Smolders reported an even dozen, but we know from the records, we engaged six—the tricks the mind plays in times of stress!

What we learned, we learned fast. Combat is the best instructor, but its lessons are the harshest. One mistake and you are shot down. Of the twelve planes, seven fell, seven good men we never recovered and whom I will never forget: Lts.(j.g.) Franklin and Jackson and Ensigns Townes, Hatt, Paper, Hammerer, and Blackstone. Their deaths were not in vain. We took our enemy back down to the deck and shot two down.

When I got word the bombers were empty, we headed northeast, away from the Combined Fleet. My group came in with 35 planes, we left with 20. Forty percent casualties for little direct result. We learned something though about airstrikes, something borne out within the hour by following waves even as we retreated on our way back to our own fleet.

Nearly two dozen planes dropped bombs, but because they attacked singly rather than in coordinated fashion, anti-aircraft fire could concentrate on each in turn. If we dove in waves I think we would’ve had success. Three planes from the Lex did just that, but they went after a battleship, what wound up being the Kirishima. Coordinating their dives, they put two bombs in her and a near-miss that put a hole in the battlewagon’s waterline. The big thing from those hits—it meant they weren’t invincible. We just didn’t have the right tactics developed yet.

Browning was right (though his memoir offers historical hindsights, which are always 20/20). When the second wave departed it was nearly 0930  and what they did not see as they peeled away to the northeast was the next wave (the fourth, since the third was lost en route) coming from above the cloud cover to the south. This wave was another hodgepodge of 12 Falcons and 11 Helldivers, but they had two advantages Browning’s group did not.

The first was that the Combined Fleet’s combat air patrol was again at low altitude and, having already fought two dogfights, was low on fuel and unable to climb to intercept the latest American wave two miles up and on the far side of the fleet. Thus the Americans maintained formation and cohesion as they approached. Related to this, with two waves already having attacked, the Japanese commanders relaxed, assuming the attacks were beaten off in American failure. Few eyes looked to the south and its heavy cloud cover.

The second advantage caused by Browning’s group was that it had forced the Combined Fleet into unsynchronized evasive maneuvers, and in the case of the Mogami and the light cruiser Kinu, nearly caused a collision at high speed. The Ryūjō and its escorts were now separated from the remainder of the fleet by more than three kilometers while a destroyer and a light cruiser remained with the slowed Kirishima. This left the Akagi and Kaga with the two hybrid battlecruiser-battleships (Haruna and Hiei), eight heavy cruisers, ten light cruisers, and fifteen destroyers. The Japanese were now three groups, each responsible for their own protection; their previous interlocking anti-aircraft fire during the first half-hour of the air attacks no longer possible.

Thus, at 0932, the next wave arrived over the Combined Fleet and began their attack and only three minutes later, the final and largest group of American planes arrived overhead. Though the fourth wave was the second-smallest, the wave was more effective than the larger ones because of its coordination.

None of the 23 aircraft were shot down. Four were damaged, with two jettisoning their bombs before finishing their runs. Eight of the aircraft, all Falcons from the Saratoga, peeled off for the Ryūjō and its four escorting cruisers. The remaining fifteen (which accounted for all of the damaged aircraft) headed for the Kaga and Akagi. The eight Falcons attacking the Ryūjō dove in pairs, approaching the carrier from its portside. The Ryūjō was turning north, attempting to launch its last six fighters. The pilots ignored the escorts, focusing their strike on the smallest of Japan’s three fleet carriers. Ensign Walter Ambrose’s bomb was the first, striking the Ryūjō’s deck amidships, damaging the flight deck. This was minor and could have been repaired before the Pearl Harbor strike force returned.

The second hit on the Ryūjō is credited to Lt.(j.g.) Dan ‘Buzz’ Riggle. His bomb struck the flight deck above the carrier’s horizontal smokestack, knocking a chunk of the deck off completely while smashing the stack. Black smoke now engulfed the rear of the carrier. The attacking pilots believed Riggle’s hit was what sank the carrier. It was not. Post-war analysis shows credit belongs to Ensign Jimmy Lund. Lund’s bomb hit the water on the Ryūjō’s portside as it turned. This ripped a gaping hole open in the carrier’s side causing immediate flooding.

With most ships, the flooding would have meant a temporary loss of speed. Counter-flooding would balance the ship until the hole was repaired and then the bilges would pump out the remaining water. The Ryūjō, however, was built to circumvent the Washington Naval Treaty’s restrictions. Because of this, its design proved to be top-heavy and unstable in heavy seas. Riggle’s bomb caused an immediate list and once this started, gravity did the rest, pulling the Ryūjō onto its side. It sank with the loss of all but 19 of its crew (not including the carrier’s pilots inbound from Pearl Harbor). Japan now had two carriers.

The other 15 planes dove at the two remaining carriers and their escort of capital ships. The U.S. Navy indoctrinated its personnel just as Japan did. Pilots were told of the battleship’s primacy, even as they took part in the first large-scale attack launched from a force far beyond gunnery range (showing the new apex-predator of the seas). Because of this indoctrination, only six planes targeted the Kaga while two adjusted to target the Akagi after the others dove for the Kaga. The remainder headed for the battlecruiser-battleship hybrids. The Haruna and Hiei attackers scored no hits but still provided a vital service. The two ships’ anti-aircraft guns focused on self-defense rather than on protecting the carriers.

The two planes that went after the Akagi came in from an angle, making hitting the carrier substantially more difficult. Nevertheless, both Ensigns Russ Bonds and ‘Mo’ Morris scored hits. The Akagi (like its sister ship, Kaga) was an odd design, built with three separate flight decks to speed takeoffs and landings. Bonds’ bomb hit the portside support for the second flight deck, collapsing the deck like a roof covered in too much snow. Morris’ bomb hit further aft on the carrier’s second level, striking the starboard eight-inch gun turret, destroying it and starting a fire in its vicinity which sent black smoke billowing skyward. This damage would take weeks to repair in port, but with the primary flight deck untouched, the Akagi was not yet hors de combat.

Two Falcons and four Helldivers went for the Kaga. Later, Lt.(j.g.) Al Lincoln, part of the USS Lexington’s VS-2 Squadron wrote:

We didn’t have an order to things. The other five guys, they were from the other carriers. Somehow I was the Lady Lex’s only Helldiver here. (We were fortunate, but we got much better coordinating strikes—taking off, assembling, navigating to a target, once everyone realized what a disaster our strike was and how lucky we got.) It meant, for better or worse, I wound up as Tail End Charlie.

Looking back, that’s a good thing. The ships concentrated all their fire on those first planes. I don’t really recall tracers or explosions around me. Honestly, I don’t remember anything other than me breathing. Being left alone, that let me focus on my run. The back of the carrier [Kaga] had paint strips marking the runway’s edge and I headed at those, my plane in a 45-degree dive—it couldn’t handle more than that and still pull out, not at full speed. I was under 1,000 feet and pulled back on the stick, letting the bomb go, and felt the plane jerk up as it lost a quarter-ton of deadweight.            

I pulled out at 100 feet over the carrier, flew low over the deck figuring that was a safe place—the other ships weren’t going to fire at anything where they could miss and hit their own ship. Must have been right since I got out untouched….

Three of the six planes’ bombs struck the Kaga. The first hit the carrier’s starboard side armor as she juked the diving bombers. This bomb took out two heavy anti-aircraft batteries and opened a large hole in the carrier’s side, although this was above the waterline. The second bomb hit on the bow, twisting and devastating the Kaga’s tertiary flight deck, rendering it unusable without repairs in port. Serious damage, but still not enough to prevent the ship from continuing combat operations. And then Lincoln’s bomb hit. His bomb smashed through the top flight deck without exploding immediately. A split-second later, it detonated, an airburst between the top flight deck and the second one below it; this was where it did its greatest damage, killing the entire bridge crew, leaving the carrier command-less at a key moment.

Thus, the ‘fourth wave,’ the smallest of the five American groups, punched far above its weight, sinking one of the three Japanese fleet carriers while damaging the other two for the price of one plane ditching beside the Saratoga on its return, but even with this success, the fourth wave’s success was nothing compared to the final massive group of American planes, which now began their own attack runs on the Japanese ships.

The fifth wave had it even easier than the fourth did, as the maneuvers of the Haruna and Hiei took them and their own escorts away from the two surviving carriers, while the carriers’ evasive maneuvers increased the distance between them as well, so that any chance of a coordinated air defense was now utterly impossible. Just as important, four of the surviving ten fighters were ditching in the ocean at this point (joined a few minutes later by two others) having run out of fuel and with no decks to land on due to the ongoing combat.

The late-arriving planes began their runs at 0935. With no need for radio silence between planes, the fifth group divided themselves into groups. The Falcons went for the Haruna, the nine Saratoga Helldivers headed for the Hiei, the Lexington’s would hit the escorts while the remaining Helldivers, all from the Ranger, aimed for the two IJN carriers [Note: These last planes made no mention of a third carrier, meaning that the Ryūjō had already rolled over and sunk or was in such a predicament that there was no need to mention it in reports.]

There was no hesitation from the American pilots. They were aware of their fuel limit and the need to attack fast so they could get home. No one wanted to ditch in the rough December seas north of Hawaii.

The Falcons came down on the Haruna from multiple directions making it impossible for the light battleship to avoid all 12. The battleship and its cruiser escort shot down two of the Falcons and two others jettisoned loads early because of the fire, leaving eight undeterred. The Haruna was hit by four bombs, two struck the forecastle, though somehow the bridge (and attending officers and crew) was miraculously unscathed. This hit started multiple fires, though these were eventually brought under control. A third bomb hit the forward B-turret’s mount but did not penetrate the magazines. The only real damage was the destruction of the elevator for raising ammunition to the guns, meaning that if the turret was to be used, manually shifting shells and powder bags would be necessary. The fourth bomb took off a portion of the bow, meaning that with every dip into a swell, water entered the forward section. Maneuvering at high speeds exacerbated this, so the Haruna found itself limited to an effective speed of 14 knots. The battlewagon suffered one more hit when its anti-aircraft gunners hit the Falcon of Lt.(j.g.) Bill Apple before he released his bomb. Apple’s Falcon crashed into the ship’s port side aft of the smokestack, cartwheeling as its bomb payload detonated. Fires from Apple’s plane took several hours to put out.

The other massive warship, the Hiei, was attacked by Helldivers. It was more fortunate that the Haruna, suffering only two hits. The first struck the rear C-turret, exploding harmlessly against the turret’s front armor, leaving the guns usable, though the crew manning the turret were killed or injured from the concussive force passing into the confined space within the turret. The other hit struck the mast’s front base, toppling it, and preventing the ship from using radio communications. It also destroyed the battlewagon’s two small launches. In the end, the Hiei became the de facto flagship of the Combined Fleet.

The planes targeting the escorts did their job of keeping anti-aircraft gunners from protecting the carriers. They also hit their targets. Two bombs damaged the heavy cruiser, Atago, one hit the Mikasa, while the Sendai sank from a bomb penetrating to the forward five-inch turrets’ magazine. The explosion tore open the entire bow and the cruiser flooded and sank, bow first, within ten minutes, its four shafts cranking furiously as they disappeared under the waves.

The planes attacking the carriers in the final wave created the American victory. Until their attack, the exchange of damage and sunk ships between Japan and the United States had gone in favor of Japan (we will ignore the elephant in the room—American industrial might over the long-term). This equal exchange was swept away in less than five minutes as eight Helldivers banked into their dives towards the surviving carriers.

The Kaga steered in a tight circle to the right, unable to change course quickly due to the death of the bridge crew, so that as the Helldivers headed for the carrier, it took no evasive maneuvers. Seven of the eight planes’ bombs hit home with two of the bombs doing critical damage, puncturing the top flight deck and exploding beneath it in the aircraft hangers where they set off aviation fuel fires. These quickly spread out of control, racing forward until smoke billowed from every open space possible under the deck. Warrant Officer Ienaga Soburu, wrote later:

We knew the damage was serious. We knew it even as we fought the fires because they spread even as we did our utmost. If we could get help from a cruiser pulling next to us, it was a matter of time—we would conquer the fire!

When we felt the first shudder of an explosion below us, that changed everything. The fires had reached magazines or armament storage, which we did not know, but we did know that there was no saving the ship now. Still, it was our duty to the Emperor to try, and we continued until Lieutenant Akimano ordered us to the boats and abandon ship. It was my duty to obey and I did so though I know all of the ship’s senior officers chose to go down with the ship. [Note: Ienaga was not aware of the bridge’s destruction when he wrote these words.]

The Kaga did not sink immediately. She burned until early afternoon, at which point the light cruiser Furutaka scuttled her with two torpedoes.

The remaining carrier, the Akagi, was the Combined Fleet’s flagship. It is a fanciful historical dream to wonder at Admiral Suetsugu’s thoughts—only an hour prior, he permitted a cry of ‘Banzai!’ because of the great victory at Pearl Harbor and now in front of his eyes, two-thirds of the Empire’s carrier force was sunk or sinking from wave after wave of American planes. Did he regret sending so many planes to protect his bombers? Did he wonder where the planes came from or why the Combined Fleet’s scout seaplanes spotted nothing?

In any event, eight Helldivers came at the Akagi. She was unable to dodge them all and the response time for maneuvering now lagged from obscured visibility from the thick oily smoke drifting towards the stern from the destroyed turret and the deck collapsed at the front of the carrier. The bombers came from two directions, four from starboard and four from the carrier’s stern. This made evasion even more difficult; if the carrier turned to make targeting more difficult for one set of attackers, the maneuver made it easier for the others.

So the Akagi sailed directly to its fate, struck by three bombs on its top flight deck rendering it unusable. The third of these took off the carrier’s rear exhaust in addition to the flight deck damage. With the Ryūjō sunk and Kaga burning and crippled, the loss of the Akagi’s upper flight deck meant it was now impossible to recover any of the returning planes from the Pearl Harbor strike. This alone would have made the American strikes a decisive victory. Even if nothing else happened, Japan’s carrier power was crippled. This was not the end, however. The last Japanese carrier took four more hits. It was the first of the last batch, dropped by Ensign Cal Stevens, that mattered the most.

Approaching from the rear, Stevens’ bomb struck near the waterline, opened the hull to the ocean and flooded the Akagi’s steering compartment and jammed the rudder in a 25-degree port turn, making it impossible to tow the carrier. When the raid ended, divers were sent overboard to assess the damage. It was irreparable. The carrier could be towed—possibly—but would be unable to make more than five knots, making it and any escorts sitting ducks for further American air attacks. At 1325 after most of the crew was evacuated from the carrier, the light cruiser Tatsuta put four torpedoes into the last Japanese fleet carrier. It sank before the clock struck the hour, taking with it Rear Admiral Takahashi, commander of the 1^st Fleet (Japan’s carriers), and the Combined Fleet’s commander, Admiral Suetsugu. Suetsugu performed seppuku, ritual disembowelment, seconded by Takahashi. Takahashi went down with the ship.

In the first hours of morning, it seemed Japan had won a great naval victory to rival Trafalgar or Tsushima Straits. Yet three hours later, it was clear that the victory belonged to the U.S. Navy’s Carrier Force. The U.S. Navy paid a heavy price with the loss of most of its battleships anchored at Ford Island, but by sinking all of Japan’s fleet carriers in the space of minutes, the United States became the sole dominant naval power in the entire Pacific Ocean.

That evening in Washington, D.C. (local time), President Garner walked into the Capitol to address Congress and the American people regarding the day’s events. Most were aware of the attack on Pearl Harbor already but not the remaining news. It is important to note how President Garner shaped events in his narrative, what he includes and what is omitted:

Speaker Rainey and gentlemen of Congress, thank you for permitting me to speak to you here this evening and thank you, Speaker, for permitting this to be broadcast to our nation. There are some in this chamber who already know the full details of today’s events though many are only aware of some, most likely the sad and tragic.

Today, a little more than eight hours ago, without provocation, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise aerial assault against our fleet at anchor in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor. This attack was unexpected, and the damage wrought was, I will not hide it, severe. Four battleships have been sunk and six damaged, all active ships, save the Nevada which was on a separate mission at the time. At this point, the casualty total has exceeded 1,000 and I have asked the Navy Secretary, Claude Swanson, to ascertain all of these noble victims so that families may be informed at the soonest possible date.

The Japanese raid, de facto, put us at war, even before I seek your permission as required for me to fully assume my role as commander-in-chief, so that we may prosecute events to their fullest. The question of whether we were at war then is important for what comes next . Though I was unaware and did not countenance actions, as president, I am responsible for the actions of members of the executive branch as well as our armed forces. Congress will need to determine if I have been negligent, but I get ahead of myself.

Because of the rising dispute with the Empire of Japan, as a sign of our seriousness, we transferred our battleship squadrons to Hawaii. Recently, and secretly, I authorized a similar action for our aircraft carriers. They were due to anchor at Pearl Harbor this afternoon. Having heard of the attack and knowing what a grave situation the loss of our battle fleet would mean in this coming conflict, Admiral John Towers, commanding Carrier Squadron One, of his own initiative— and I will add that I support his decisions and that initiative as I believe his instant decision is a great moment in the annals of American naval history—of his own initiative, Admiral Towers launched a retaliatory strike against the Japanese Combined Fleet.

This strike was unexpected. The skulking, immoral leadership of Japan presumed we would not act, could not act. They underestimate the skill and initiative of our officers and our servicemen. We have received word from Carrier Squadron One that our retribution was swift. It was also full and total. Our naval aviators, today, in what is the first naval battle ever fought between fleets who never saw one another, have struck a blow to rival Britain’s in Egypt or at Trafalgar. We have confirmation that all three of Japan’s aircraft carriers now rest at the bottom of the Pacific. Unable to defend themselves from a second strike, the Japanese Combined Fleet is retreating headlong to their Home Islands.

The Japanese ambassador, who says he was unaware of any attack planning, has, within the past hour, contacted our Secretary of State, Mr. Hull, to see about facilitating an end to ‘unfortunate circumstances.’ Gentlemen, I know Speaker Rainey has asked for Congress to sit in session tomorrow to discuss this. I will await the proper vote and I look forward to hearing from our august senators, performing their due diligence to advise and consent in forming a full response to today’s events.

To the American people, I stand here before your representatives, your Congress. None of you voted for me to be president, but you did vote for these men. They are here because you believe in them whether they are Democrat or Republican. I see them and know they are not thinking of politics today. Today, we are all Americans, sworn to protect this nation. God bless you this evening and may He bless these United States of America.

Jim Dietz is a graduate of Iowa State University. He is the former CEO of Jolly Roger Games and is now CEO of the non-profit Dietz Foundation. When not managing the foundation, he is the volleyball coach at Lincoln Land Community College and an author of multiple books, blogs, articles, and stories.

Featured Image: “Pearl Harbor” by Sebastian Hue (via Artstation)

Fiction Contest Week

By Captain Patrick Schalk, USMC

The tearing scream of jet engines did not even cause Sergeant Jade Smith to flinch. After years of watching the drones pass over contested island territories, they were all well-equipped to hide from the drones’ sensors in the jungle. That could be through wearing infrared defeating clothing, and some neat tricks she’d developed herself. In true Marine fashion, she would rather shoot the drones down, but that would probably give away her observation post and the five other Reconnaissance Marines in her team. Their mission was to watch for fleet movements through the narrow straits to the north and radio the information back to a strike group 500 miles east. Satellites far above earth would have once provided the data in seconds, but like so many capabilities and conveniences of the past decade, they were gone too. Only the geostationary satellites orbiting over controlled territory survived, and even those were occasionally shot down if the interceptors did not reach the incoming projectile in time. Once a ship-based laser targeted a satellite but in was sunk before any damage could be done.

As a result, old manuals were opened once more and updated to reflect current technology, and Marines were detailed to nearly every ship in the fleet to act as a quick reaction force in the world’s contested waters. This was how Marines once thrived, as naval infantry, as the country’s force in readiness, not as a bastardized second land army searching for a purpose. Providing small elements, scattered over large areas, able to concentrate quickly, hit hard and fast, and hold the door open long enough for the Army and Navy to take over, was the new or maybe old mission set.

Sergeant Smith smiled despite the adverse conditions of her domain. Her island was thick with humidity and nearly impenetrable jungle, and she would likely be elsewhere in another week, but this was her mission. If her team shot down the drone, the compromise would not go well. The nearest support from her platoon was another six-man team ten miles away on another island. As she returned from visiting the two Marines on watch and gave the pass phrase to enter their team’s hide site, Corporal Dick Rodgers threw a cell phone to her.

“Captain is on the phone,” the Corporal said calmly without getting up from his position by the unused radios.

Sergeant Smith frowned. Normally, the Platoon Sergeant, Gunnery Sergeant Adams, made calls to his teams. She wondered where he was but answered, “Yes, Ma’am.”

Corporal Rodgers and his companions Corporal Jessica Wainwright and Lance Corporal Ben Nicholson continued to discuss the team’s Standard Operating Procedures for compromise and link up. They would eventually have to leave their little island, and it was unlikely the locals were not going to be helpful in the process. Normally, Sergeant Smith engaged the local populations for supplies and intelligence, but this particular island was well inside the claimed enemy territory. In a bizarre scene better suited for a movie, the team glided in on a moonless light, travelling nearly 20km under canopy before splashing in the sea and boarding two staged autonomously piloted rubber raiding craft that carried the bulk of their equipment and supplies another 20km to a remote beach. The raiding craft then departed the area, leaving the team alone and unafraid.

By separating the equipment from the personnel, the chance of compromise was reduced. Two boats floating in the ocean are easily discounted as craft adrift or flotsam. The air insert was offset far enough and coincided with specific meteorological conditions in order to limit the chance of audible and visual compromise. The first few times the team practiced the maneuvers they worried about the technology involved, but now they would not have it any other way. They did not have to cache boats or other equipment, and when it was time to leave, the boats would show up and take them away.

Smith threw the phone back to Rodgers, which he deftly caught then looked at his leader. “What unpleasant orders do we have now?”

“Shut up, you know you like this kind of thing.” Smith replied without answering the question. “Go and get Meredith and Jackson, then I’ll explain.”

The Sergeant sat down with the other two and waited for the team to gather. Populated islands had their drawbacks, like having to hide, but they also had their perks. Modified cell phones and wi-fi blended in seamlessly with the local infrastructure. Without satellites, most places were limited to line-of-sight microwave and laser transmissions or undersea cables. This particular island was in the footprint of the enemy’s communications satellites, so the little island maintained communications with the outside world. Her team was still fantastic with directional high frequency radio, but why do things the hard way if it was not necessary? 20 minutes later the team was together again, making their dugout and covered position crowded. No one had taken a shower since they arrived, so the air was rather ripe with the smell of sweat, dirt, and a little blood from Meredith cutting his finger.

This mission was the first time in enemy territory for the three Lance Corporals, but the Corporals and Sergeant had done this type of thing at least a dozen times over the past three years. New or old, shared suffering always brought a team closer together, and this team had reached the point where they were still brothers and sisters without the individual’s little idiosyncrasies causing irritation amongst the group. Now the group would be tested once again, and this time the mission was not going to be quiet observation.

“Staff Sergeant Godric’s team identified the fleet. We are done here and exfil tonight the same way we came.”

“We are going to parachute from the water?” came Corporal Rodger’s ornery remark.

Sergeant Smith glared him back to silence and continued, “Looks like we will link up with a PT boat and then with the USS America, have a few days’ rest, and then prep for something else.”

Corporal Wainwright asked the obvious, “Which is…?”

Sergeant Smith rolled her eyes, “If I knew, I’d tell you. Now, pack your junk up. We have to be ready to time our departure between overflights. The goal is to meet the boats at 2300, so we have eight hours to be on the beach.”

Nothing ever goes according to plan, but for whatever reason, God smiled on the team as they destroyed their hide site and snuck down to the edge of the beach to await darkness. The night was clear, which meant the raiding craft could use their astral navigation instead of Sergeant Smith setting a beacon that would have increased the chances of detection. The raiding craft arrived nearly silently on their electric engines. Three Marines and their equipment went into each craft, and eight hours later were recovered by a patrol boat reminiscent of its World War II ancestor and later rendezvoused with the USS America.

_______________________________________

Ten days after the rendezvous, at least three pairs of Americans boarded three commercial flights from three American cites, took three different routes, and landed at three different airports in Vietnam. After debarking, the pairs exchanged their tourist cloths for garb better suited to the jungles and mountains and then faded into the population as best they could. On the second day in country, they abandoned their vehicles and passed into enemy territory, only reuniting on the mountain overlooking their objective.

As far as reconnaissance missions went, this one was unusual. Generally, they kept to actual reconnaissance and avoided going kinetic. On occasion, fate presented an opportunity and the team would exercise its snipers or the platoon conduct a raid, but those occurrences were few. This time the team was part of a larger operation aiming to disable a communications relay’s defense system. The communications center was obviously a static location, but the missile defense and anti-missile defense systems were mobile and randomly moved throughout the area.

Sergeant Smith had no idea how many teams beyond the other two in her platoon were assigned to the mission because she did not have the need to know. If a team was caught and tortured, they would not be able to give away the larger scope of the operation. She was no idiot though. They were lucky the mountainous terrain prevented the mobile systems from ranging inside a 10km square area. Even that limited movement area required more than a single six-man team to locate and report on movements in a highly sensored and wooded mountain area. There would be ground sensors, satellites, and flyovers constantly looking for intruders. Defense systems could not fire from underneath trees though, which meant there were a limited number of sites to park them.

Her team had its portion of the area to observe. If they found something, they would signal its location back to a raid force floating 200 miles offshore. Regardless of whether or not they spotted the defense systems, the raid was scheduled and coming. Sergeant Smith did not envy the 30-Marine raid force. They would fly in at tree and mountaintop level, at night, infiltrate the facility to upload a virus to the communications system, and then exfiltrate after setting demolition charges. Sergeant Smith would never have thought a computer virus was worth the lives of her brothers and sisters before the conflict began, but the havoc wrought in the United States changed her views. Once the virus spread was confirmed, they would blow the facility and force network traffic to the backup facilities and hopefully increase the virus spread.

Three aircraft and 30 Marines were an acceptable loss for the compromise of the communications relay and everything connected. Sergeant Smith did not know the specifics, but was led to believe the virus would cause a cascade of system failures that facilitated something much larger. Once upon a time, the loss of three aircraft and 30 Marines would have been unthinkable, but times change and the realization that people die in war was finally accepted by the public. Reconciling the death of their sons and daughters took the American public some time, but when your entire country suddenly has zero balances in their bank accounts and no economy or virtually stored records, views quickly change.

Corporal Wainwright removed the thermal optics that would be the key to finding their objectives while Lance Corporal Nicholson assembled two old MK13 and two M107 sniper rifles. The weapons and optics were secured from a dead drop in route to their location. Once the raid force arrived, the reconnaissance teams were supposed to target any defense systems with the antimaterial rifles and cause chaos with the MK13s. With the exception of Sergeant Smith and Corporal Rodgers, the other members of the team grabbed a rifle as they split into pairs and spread out.

Corporal Wainright was trained to use exceedingly small unmanned aerial vehicles, but the risk of compromise from flying a UAV in the highly sensored and observed area was too great. The defense systems would eventually reveal themselves and allow the reconnaissance teams to provide exact positions for targeting purposes. As time continued to pass, Sergeant Smith checked on each pair and ensured the small remote sensors they placed around their position were still active. If anyone snuck up on her team, they would have a few moments notice before bullets started flying.

At first the team thought the low rumble in the distance was the latest unnamed flyover screening for intruders, but a buzz on the team’s incredibly classified black box let them know the raid force was about to arrive. Sergeant Smith did not know how the box worked or why it worked the way it did, but she did know it allowed for simple and undetectable communications.

Without being told, each Marine lay down behind their rifle and optic, screening areas identified as likely for the defense systems to appear. Sure enough, the small clearings in the area began to fill with soldiers and wheeled or tracked missile systems. No one fired yet, each focusing on their target to ensure one-shot, one-kill once the order was given. As the last rays of the sun descended behind the mountains, casting the valley in twilight, the box buzzed a second time. Again, the Marines did not need the order from Sergeant Smith. They knew the plan and would execute it flawlessly. As expected, four reports sounded loudly, and then Sergeant Smith heard a chorus of echoes from the rest of the teams in her platoon. A few seconds after that, even more reports sounded from other platoons assigned the same mission. Then the irregular fire of Marines picking their targets at will was drowned out as the three tilt-rotor aircraft descended.

No one targeted the communications facility itself. Only after the virus was spread into the enemy’s network and beyond the facility could the station fall. Sergeant Smith did not see, but she heard a new voice in the chorus of chaos, stealth jets delivering their payloads onto the missile defense systems highlighted by the reconnaissance teams. Joint Terminal Attack Controllers in each team directed the fire. She looked over to see Corporal Rodger’s performing his duties as a JTAC. Miraculously, the raid force was inside the compound and almost inside the facility. Only two minutes had passed since the beginning of the raid, which meant enemy fighters should be closing in on the raid force. The timeline only gave the raid force fifteen minutes to get in and out.

Five minutes in, the first fighter fell from the sky and crashed into the mountains as a ball of fire. There was no way to tell to whom the fighter belonged. The scene on the ground was now calm, the raid force in control and presumably executing the mission inside. All resistance on the outside was quashed, the reconnaissance teams began to execute their exfiltration plans. The team was leaving the weapons and optics in place and running as fast as possible to a small clearing where another tilt-rotor aircraft was supposed to land.

Sergeant Smith, Corporal Rodgers, Corporal Wainright, Lance Corporal Nicholson, Lance Corporal Jackson, and Lance Corporal Merideth never made it to their landing zone. The rest of their platoon presumably did not make it out of the valley either. If Sergeant Smith had to venture a guess in the moments of fleeting twilight before her soul departed earth, the raid force never completed their mission. The air, the ground, everything, disappeared in a blinding flash and cataclysmic sound. Maybe her senior leaders decided the enemy would never destroy their own facility or maybe it was an acceptable risk. Regardless, a depleted uranium rod dropped from space impacted the communications relay and released the energy of a nuclear bomb. Had the virus spread through the network before the facility’s destruction? Maybe, maybe not.

In modern war against peer competitors, the full spectrum of operations, kinetic, information and cyber, and political, had costs. In this case, the cost was over 30 Marines and six aircraft. At another time in history, the cost would have been unacceptable, but now the country would not even bat an eye. Sadly, the destruction of the communications facility by its owners would garner more news than the loss of Marines. Ever evolving, ever changing, the campaign’s costs were being accepted by the public. And so the war would continue.

Captain Patrick Schalk, USMC, commissioned in 2013. He has served at 8th Communication Battalion at Camp Lejeune, NC from 2015 to 2018 as a Platoon Commander, Training Officer, and Assistant Operations Officer. He served at 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion in Okinawa, Japan as the Battalion Communications Officer from 2018 to 2020. He is currently a student at the Expeditionary Warfare School in Quantico, VA.

Featured Image: “END MDP” by Mark Kolobaev (via Artstation)