A Cherry Blossom Falls – 1970
Nakajima G11N Fugaku-kai 21-63, 45,000 feet Over the Pacific Ocean, 1970.
The roar of the turboprops, and vibration from the propellers they drove, were causing circular ripples to disturb the tranquil surface of the Sake in its delicate porcelain cup. Here, in the aft crew compartment of the Fugaku-Kai bomber, Sub-Lieutenant Toda Endo delicately took the offered cup and drank down the sake in the approved ritual manner. It was heated to perfection as befitted an occasion of this solemnity. He gravely returned the cup to the airman who bowed deeply as he accepted it, Toda returned the bow, then took the white Hachimaki from the small table attached to the bulkhead. He lifted it, resting it on top of both hands, before tying it around his forehead, being sure that the rising sun was exactly centered over his eyes. By the time it was properly in place, the music playing from the tape recorder had ended.
Ceremony completed, Toda took the helmet for his pressure suit and fastened it carefully in place. This compartment was pressurized as was, theoretically, the tunnel leading to his Ohka and the cockpit of the little missile. Better not to take chances, a warrior was supposed to have supreme disregard for death but to die as a result of a stupid equipment malfunction was, well, stupid.
The hatch that led to the tunnel was opened by the airman who had served him his sake. As befitted a warrior on his way to mortal combat, Toda ignored him completely as he swung his legs into the tunnel beyond and eased himself onto the little trolley inside. It was an uncomfortable position, but it was the only way a man could get through the meter-wide tunnel that lead through the bomb bay. Over his head was a cable. Toda reached up and grabbed hold, pulling himself through the tunnel, hand over hand. After a few meters, the trolley stopped. There, below him was the cockpit of his Ohka. He slid forward, easing himself off the trolley, down the drop, into the cockpit, feeling it enfold him. There was but little space in the aircraft. It was engines, fuel tanks, and a nuclear warhead, little more.
The straps of his harness were all around him. Toda pulled them tight, then jerked them tighter still. Then, a deep breath and a final jerk to make sure the harness was absolutely tight. It would not do to knock himself out evading a fighter because his straps were improperly tightened. His harness secure, Toda reached up and drew the cockpit canopy closed, hearing the squeak from the rubber seals as it settled into place.
"Ohka 21-63 manned." His words were quiet and remote. Over his head, the access tube retracted, clearing the Ohka, allowing it to fly when it was launched. Toda went over the pre-launch drill, flipping systems to ready, activating the power supply, and setting the two turbojets slung under the wing roots so that they could be started when the Ohka dropped clear.
"Ohka 21-63 ready." Even as he finished the words, the darkness turned to glaring light as the bomb bay doors on the Fugaku-Kai opened. His Ohka was exposed, ready to go. Launch. His words were still quiet and contained. There was a rattle above him, the safety lines and service cables disconnecting and retracting as they fell free of the Ohka. It was on internal power, on its own save for the clamps holding it to the rails in the belly of the Fugaku-Kai. Then, a lurch, and the blue-gray Ohka was truly on its own, falling from the bomber overhead.
Toda reached down, flipping the switches that started up his turbojets. This was the crucial bit, if his engines failed him now, he would be condemned to abort the mission, to return in shame with a failed launch to mar his record. Not this time though, he could feel the vibration under him as the turbojets spooled up, the slight snaking because no matter how much the maintenance crews tried, they could never get both engines to fire at exactly the right moment. He glanced in the mirror fitted to the front frame of the bubble cockpit, already the Fugaku-Kai was falling behind him, unable to match the dazzling acceleration of a 4,000 kilogram airframe driven by 6,500 kilograms of thrust.
The sun was brilliant, the clouds below formed a perfect backdrop to the scene. Toda checked again to make sure that the Fugaku-Kai was well-clear of him, then pulled the stick back to put his aircraft into a gentle climb. Up high, the air was thinner and that meant less drag and more speed. The pale blue-gray paint scheme of the Ohka was a perfect match for the sky and he guessed that the launch aircraft was already losing sight of him. That was the first great edge of the Ohka, it was small and hard to see. Much of its hope of survival rested on not being found, not being seen.
Toda checked his fuel status, he had a range of 500 kilometers in theory, in reality, with good fuel management a skilled pilot could stretch that to 600 or even 650. It was the same with speed, the Ohka-70 was supposed to be capable of 1,400 kilometers per hour, but well-flown Ohkas could beat that by 50 Kph or even more. Toda ran his eyes over his instruments, he was holding dead on course, estimated time of arrival over his target was in exactly 20 minutes. Altitude 12,000 meters, still climbing. His cruise altitude would be set to 15,000 meters. Not as high as the American bombers but still enough to evade most defenses.
The Ohka leveled off at the set altitude and started to accelerate. Toda eased the throttles back when the true airspeed equaled 960 kph. That was the best for fuel economy, he would hit it up to max when he had to penetrate the defenses that were waiting for him up ahead. The Americans designed their air defense system with all the skills they'd gained from 20 years of experimentation and development and all the funding the world’s largest economy could supply. Missiles, fighters, everything needed to prevent him from getting through to his target. He had no real idea what would be waiting for him up ahead, he’d find out soon enough. There were 15 minutes to go.
On his instrument panel was a large circular display, right in the middle of the board, above the big red button that marked the end of his mission. It had been dark up to now but suddenly, a red dot had appeared almost dead ahead. In the outer circle of the display, that meant it was a long-range search radar. The games were about to begin. Toda reached out, taking a key from its pouch and turning it in the slot on his instrument panel. The red button was activated now, pressing it would initiate the nuclear warhead carried in the nose of his Ohka.
The dim light turned bright red, it was tracking him. More precisely, the ESM system fitted to the Ohka had measured the strength of the radar pulses hitting his aircraft and decided they were above the thresh-hold for detection. Two more dim lights had appeared on the scope, both outer-ring, both long-range search radars. The defense system ahead of him was coming to life.
Toda pushed his throttles all the way forward, feeling them hit the stops at the end of the travel. That meant they were running at full power, blasting the Ohka up to full speed. He was surging through the scanning radars, the problem with long-range search radars was that they had to have a low pulse rate in order to avoid second-time-around problems. The antennas rotated slowly, putting a long time between each successive paint, by accelerating now, Toda hoped that he would be moving fast enough to slide between the sweeps and evade detection.
No such luck. The screen was lit by two more dots, one off his nose to port, the other off to starboard. They were bright to start with and were flashing. That meant they weren't scanning for him, they were tracking him with steady illumination - and that meant there were missiles on the way. A quick scan of the instrument panel showed he reached 1,420 kph, penetration speed. The little Ohka had slipped through the sound barrier with hardly a shudder. Now to increase it a bit, Toda dipped the nose slightly, trading some altitude for speed. The speed indication crept up, to slightly over 1,500 kph.
Now to use another system, the Ohka was equipped with an electro-optical surveillance system that could pick up the infra-red flare of a missile heading his way. Sure enough, there they were, four of them, two coming in from the port, two from starboard in a hammerhead attack. They were slightly out of position; his sudden acceleration had fooled the missileers slightly. That might give him the edge.
Toda swung to starboard, watching the red course indicator on his compass slide away from the center. It was the finest inertial navigation system Japan could buy, as long as that red bar was in the center of his compass display, he would be pointing straight at his target. The missiles were coming in fast, he dipped the nose a little more to pick up as much speed and energy as possible then jerked the nose back and kicked the rudders over.
The Ohka did a beautiful wingover, flipping around so that it was suddenly heading at an angle of about 135 degrees from its previous course. The inertial navigation system on his panel went crazy as it tried to calculate the position of the target relative to the new course. The two missiles from the port were in a tail chase, it was pretty unlikely they could catch him before they ran out of fuel. It was the two that had come from starboard that was the problem, they were head-on and closing very fast. Toda pulled another wingover, this time bringing the Ohka up in a wide barrel roll, spraying chaff from the launchers in his belly to confuse the tracking radar. That took him around the outside of the missile’s radar tracking scan, just as he reached the top, he rolled hard and spun off in the opposite direction. With luck, given the maneuver and the chaff, he would have dodged the missiles.
There was no message coming through, he hadn't been shot down so he must have been outside the lethal radius of the missiles. Toda had a suspicion that he had been thoroughly dosed with radiation from the blasts but it didn’t matter, his time-to-target indicator told him that he had only twelve minutes to live anyway. He brought his Ohka around again, turning until the red bar of the navigation system was dead centered over his compass display. Once more, his Ohka was heading straight for its target.
Toda felt a certain degree of satisfaction, he was through the missile shield that was supposed to pick off attackers and break up the formations that were trying to attack the sacred soil of America. That meant there would be fighters up ahead. Once, in Japan, there had been a discussion of why it was necessary for the Ohka’s to have a human pilot, why could they not be piloted by a machine? The navigation systems showed that autopilot was more than possible for the Ohka, why fly it? Toda knew he had just proved why only a human pilot could evade defenses the way he had done, a machine would have flown straight into those surface-to-air missiles. But, deep inside himself, he knew there was another reason.
It would be dishonorable, and demeaning to deliver a nuclear weapon that would kill millions by means of a robot. It would be an insult to all those who would die. A man, an honorable man, would lay down his own life delivering such a weapon as a sacrifice to honor the victims of such killing. Toda guessed that was why the Americans flew manned bombers to deliver their weapons, their crews were offering their own lives as well in payment for the destruction they delivered. If they escaped, of course, that was the will of the gods, but they were making the offer. To use soulless robots to deliver nuclear warheads was debased and degraded. Toda grinned quietly to himself, that was probably why the Army used them.
Anyway, everybody knew that shooting down ballistic missiles was painfully easy. The Americans had proved it repeatedly.
More threats on the electronic monitoring system, fighters coming up. Doctrine was that there would be long-range fighters armed with nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles first, point defense fighters later. These would be the long-range ones. The art of beating them was to get in as close as possible, as quickly as possible. Do it right and it would even be possible to get the defending fighters to shoot each other down. Toda pushed the nose of his Ohka down a little bit more, watching the speed build up, reaching 1,650kph. That was pretty much the maximum that could be allowed for an Ohka, any more than that and the structure would start to fail.
After another quick glance at his electro-optical system, he could see the heavy fighters out in front of him, some 40 kilometers away. Even as he looked, he saw the black billow of smoke from either side of their nose and the missiles tearing away, going up and out as they climbed for altitude. Toda reached down, turning on the deception jammer mounted in the fuselage. It was receiving the radar transmissions from the fighters and rebroadcasting them, a little shifted in timing and frequency. If he was doing it right, if the equipment was working the way it was supposed to, the apparent track of his Ohka would be diverging from its real track, and with a little luck, the missiles would head for the wrong target. Another quick check on positions, the two fighters out to port were out of position, they couldn't make the turn in time.
That just left the two ahead of him. Toda had no idea of where their missiles were, they didn't have active radars for his ESM system to pick up and his Ohka had no radar of course. He quickly visualized the situation, his mind plotting the position of the inbound missiles, obviously high overhead and swooping down on him. His instincts told him it was time.
Toda pushed the stick hard over, rolling the Ohka on its longitudinal axis. Its tiny trapezoidal wings and high-authority controls gave the little flying bomb a fabulous roll rate. As his wings went vertical, Toda pulled the control stick into his stomach and punched the chaff release button, sending clouds of silver foil into the air behind him. The Ohka made a tight turn, so tight that Toda’s vision almost blacked out and he felt his pressure suit constricting, trying to force the blood back from his legs. He had no idea what the G-force in the turn was, it didn’t really matter. He was already a dead man; he had been ever since his Ohka had dropped from underneath the belly of the Fugaku-Kai.
He'd already crossed the enemy coast as he had dived under the two heavy fighters defending against him. Now he was behind them and running across the country, descending rapidly. Only the short-range interceptors left and he would be free of the defenses. His Ohka was slowing, the air thickening around him was dragging his speed down. On a normal aircraft, it would be critical, the thick air would mean airframe damage and that would cripple them. It didn't matter for the Ohka; the flying bomb was intended to last for just long enough to get its nuclear weapon to its target. It didn't matter if the airframe was wrecked in the process. As long as it kept flying long enough.
He was down to 4,000 meters and now he pushed the nose down still further, not diving to gain speed but to get where his Ohka was faster than the defending fighters. He was just five minutes from his target doing 1,350 kph. Just 100 kilometers out. The point defense fighters were curving in to intercept him, but the series of rapid turns he had pulled to get through the screen of missiles from the long-range fighters had put them slightly out of position. Altitude 1,000 meters and diving. The Ohka was shaking with the vibration from turbulence. Flying at a low altitude lacked the serenity of 15,000 meters and yet he had to go lower still. He leveled out at 200 meters, his nose pointing dead at his target. Behind him the point-defense fighters were falling behind him, he saw them firing their missiles but he had an answer for that.
Two answers, in fact, another roll, this time throwing out flares rather than chaff, a quick 90 degree turn and then a reversal that put him back on course. Then, thumb the button on top of his control column and feel the slam as the trio of rockets in the back of the Ohka ignited. A last surge of power, a last increase of speed to leave the missiles and fighters behind him.
Target 30 seconds away. Toda recognized the terrain, the countryside, despite the way the houses and roads were flashing below him. Their occupants would have seen him pass and know that another of Japan’s warriors was on his way to strike a deadly blow and lose his own life in the process. He'd studied pictures of this target, studied them so hard that he literally saw the target in his dreams. It was right in front of him, growing large with incredible speed. With the exultation that only a true Samurai could know, Toda punched the red button on his instrument panel, initiating the 375-kiloton nuclear warhead in the nose of his faithful Ohka.
"Confirm target destroyed."
The words echoed through Toda’s earphones. Ground control had confirmed that the telemetry sent when he had punched the button meant the nuclear device had initiated right over the target. He had won, the target had been destroyed.
Toda eased back on the throttles, climbing upwards and setting course for the base that was just a couple of minutes flying time away. Around him, the eight fighters he had evaded during his attack had formed up to escort him in. In front, he could see the dark strip of the runway emerging from the ground mist. He changed course slightly, angling over so that the oddly-shaped quadrilateral became a perfect rectangle. A quick glance at his ESM display showed that the radar beacons were perfectly lined up ahead of him. They dropped away one by one as he passed their position. Then, as the last one neared, he reached down and pulled the lever under his seat.
Ahead of him, he heard the whine and thump as the nosewheel extended. The training Ohka he was flying had an undercarriage that replaced its nuclear device and some of its fuel. That undercarriage was down, ready for landing. He lined up, perfectly, checking his wings were level and dropped the Ohka neatly onto the end of the runway. It was gentle, the impact hardly noticeable, as his wheels touched. It would take time to slow, he could not brake too hard lest he dig a wingtip into the ground. Still, the Ohka was slowing and as it did so, the ground staff in trucks had emerged from either side of the runway and were keeping pace with him.
Then, it was all over. The Ohka came to a halt, perfectly balanced on the two double wheels that formed its undercarriage, a perfect landing for a perfect attack. The ground crew was putting supports under the wings, making very sure they avoided the razor-sharp edges of the wings. Others opened his cockpit canopy and moved the steps up beside the little aircraft. Toda released his harness and got out of his seat, stretching luxuriously as he climbed out of the cramped cockpit and onto the steps down. He took his position carefully, helmet under his arm, the Hachimaki around his head proudly displayed.
In front of him, the staff of the base had formed two lines, a pathway between them. Toda walked down that pathway, as he passed each pair of men, they dropped into a deep bow, holding it as he moved down towards the platform at the end of the line. There, the Admiral waited, silently.
In some other countries, there would have been a bombastic speech or congratulatory address. This was too important, too solemn for that. The Admiral simply held out a cushion, on which was something very simple, a small strip of white silk with the Rising Sun in the middle and a small gold cherry blossom in the center. Toda unzipped his pressure suit, exposing his uniform jacket underneath. Then, the Admiral took the white strip and carefully pinned it to Toda's jacket, right at the top. No matter what other decorations Toda was awarded in his career, the insignia of the Falling Cherry Blossom would always rank above them. If Toda was ever granted the unimaginable favor of an audience with the Emperor, the Falling Cherry Blossom would be the only decoration he would wear. For, once a man had been awarded that distinction, there was nothing else that anybody needed to know about him.
The Admiral drew himself to attention and saluted the Sub-Lieutenant standing before him. Toda returned the salute and then turned to the lines of men behind him, still holding the bow they had adopted when Toda had passed. Now, he returned the bow, dedicating himself to them and by extension to all of Imperial Japan. He had completed his training and qualified as one of the Falling Cherry Blossoms, the elite corps of pilots who flew Japan's nuclear-tipped Ohka missiles. He straightened, watching the men in front do the same at last. Then he turned again to face his Admiral. There was an envelope on the platform, his posting. To a submarine-based unit? Or back to one of the bomber-carried flights? It didn't matter because this day was his. Nobody could ever, ever take it away from him.