Pacific Storm

Chapter 7

The bomb hit near the edge the aft deck, about fifty feet behind the number three 152mm battery, and abreast and below battery number two. It penetrated the upper deck, killing five men in and near a stairwell and then exploded, the force ripping the overhead deck apart and sending a blast of metal fragments, smoke and fire up into the air in a broiling column.

It was a dangerous place to be struck, as the underdeck magazines for two of the ship’s three 152mm batteries were only two bulkheads away, and the outermost barrier had been badly buckled. Kirov’s designers had provided 100mm armor plating around all munitions storage areas, and there was no immediate threat of secondary explosion. Fortunately, the attack had come from the other side of the ship and the angle of descent on the bomb actually saw it driving outward towards the exterior hull, and not inward, so most of the damage was in access corridors and the stair well area, though a fire started that could pose a real danger if not rapidly contained.

On the bridge they felt the ship shake with the explosion, and the Admiral’s eyes darkened with misgiving. Fedorov was quickly to the comm link to get initial damage reports and Karpov was activating the aft Tin Man HD video display to get a good view of the exterior damage. They could see troops of sailors dressed out in their bright yellow vests, with orange helmets and heavy duty mittens rushing to the scene. Unfortunately the bomb had destroyed two of three fire hose mounts in that location, and they were only able to bring one hose to bear on the flames in those early minutes, sending a white jet of water into the breach in the deck, which thickened the smoke and made it difficult to see what was really happening.

“We were lucky,” said Karpov. “It missed both deck guns and was well forward of the Klinok silos on the aft deck.”

A call from Engineer Byko quickly confirmed that the hit was not threatening and the damage could be controlled in twenty minutes. “But we lost men,” Byko finished. “I won’t know how many for some time.”

Fedorov reported this to Volsky while Karpov assessed their present situation. They could still hear the flights of aircraft overhead, though the sound was diminishing. Rodenko’s screens were wavering and generating unclear data, but he was beginning to get close range signal returns again, and could now track the planes that had attacked them.

“Shall I engage them, sir?” Samsonov asked.

“No,” said Volsky quickly. “Hold fire. Rodenko tells us they are headed away from the ship, and therefore pose no immediate threat. We must conserve weapons ordinance whenever possible.”

“They must be headed for Darwin, sir,” said Fedorov. “That’s the only target of opportunity southeast of our position. We shifted into this time frame right beneath them! This could be the Japanese raid on that port we spoke of earlier, though it would mean we appeared here even before we emerged in the Med if that is so.”

“Just our damn bad luck either way,” said Volsky hotly, staring at the thick column of smoke as imaged on the HD video display.

“I would not curse our luck just yet, Admiral,” said Fedorov. The Russian psyche, long accustomed to facing hardship and unexpected setbacks in life, had been inured to the whims of fate and fortune for many generations. A man could never escape his fate, they knew, and the vagaries of chance and sheer luck often played in the balance.

“If I am correct then those planes would have been loaded with incendiary bombs,” Fedorov explained, “not armor piercing. A well placed hit from a heavy armor piercing bomb could have gone right through the bottom of the ship. We’ll have a fire there, but Byko is getting it under control and things could have been much worse. From what I saw we were only attacked by a few planes—perhaps a single squadron. If the others had come in as well…”

Volsky shuddered.

“At least I was not out there on a ladder this time,” he muttered, upset with the smoke and fire aft and the thought that Kirov had been finally struck a hard blow by the enemy. “Thus far much of the damage we have sustained has been self-inflicted,” he said. “We’re missing two helos because of missile misfires and Orlov. But this time they let us know we are in for a fight, yes? They gave us a nice hard kick in the rump to let us know we will find no welcome in these waters.” He shrugged, then looked to Karpov who was huddling with Samsonov.

“Mister Karpov,” he said in a clear voice.

“Sir?”

“Come here, please.” The Admiral waited, a serious expression on his face, and the others on the bridge half turned their heads, thinking Volsky was about to berate the Captain for his actions during the engagement. After all, he had imposed himself, taking control of the engagement as though Volsky were not even there. Karpov stiffened, then approached the Admiral where he now was settling into his chair.

“Mister Karpov,” Volsky continued. “I gave Samsonov an order to engage those aircraft, weapons free.”

“Yes, sir, but I thought—”

“Just a moment, Captain Lieutenant, if you please.” Now Volsky stood up, and reached out, placing his hand on Karpov’s shoulder and speaking in a loud voice. “Look here,” he said “this man intervened in a critical moment, overriding my spoken orders, and he saved the ship just now. My orders were unclear. I specified no weapon system, yet Captain Karpov immediately assessed the situation and selected the only weapon system that could have possibly engaged the enemy given the angle of this attack, and he saved the ship. I have long believed that Captain Karpov was one of the finest tactical combat officers in the fleet. He proved that in the Med, and today he has proved that yet again. I commend him for his action and hereby advance him to Captain of the third rank. Well done, Karpov.” The Admiral broke into a broad smile.

Several of the men turned and congratulated Karpov now, particularly Samsonov, who nodded his head in affirmation, a look or pride in his eyes.

“Thank you, Admiral,” said Karpov, clearly pleased. “ I was only doing my duty, sir.”

“As we all are,” said Volsky. “And something tells me we’ll have a lot more duty ahead of us, so take a lesson from this man,” Volsky shook a finger at the rest of the bridge crew. “Be sharp. Be professional. Think clearly and do your jobs as best you can. With officers like Karpov on the bridge, we are in good hands. And now…” He looked for Fedorov. “We need more situational awareness. Rodenko, does your radar tell us anything?”

“I’m starting to get intermediate range returns now, sir. I have echoes of the Australian coastline south of our position, the island ahead, and I am still tracking that outbound formation of planes. Fedorov is correct. They are bearing on Port Darwin.”

“These planes are from an aircraft carrier, Fedorov?”

“Yes, sir. Japanese naval dive bombers, the Aichi D3A1.”

“Then where would this aircraft carrier be?”

“Most likely northwest of our present position, sir.”

Rodenko spoke up now. “Given their heading I can back trace a probable point of origin if I knew the combat radius.”

“Figure 350 nautical miles,” said Fedorov. “My best guess is that they are cruising southeast of Kupang, right in the middle of the Timor Sea. There would be no urgent need for them to strike at maximum range, so I would put them about here.” He was at the navigation station and displayed a map on the clear Plexiglas wall, the landforms outlined in neon green. “This position would allow them to strike Darwin, with plenty of time on target for the planes. And there would definitely be two carriers, sir. I counted over fifty planes above us and we were engaged by another nine or ten. A single carrier would not have that many dive bombers.”

“Two carriers?”

“Yes, sir. A full carrier division. There may even be a light escort carrier present in the task force, and I must tell you, Admiral, it is not likely they would use their torpedo bombers to raid land based targets unless they felt it absolutely necessary. They know about us now, sir, and those carriers will have twenty or thirty torpedo bombers being spotted on deck by now if I was in command.”

“Wonderful,” said Volsky, “just what we need with that nice black column of smoke hanging a sign for 150 miles in every direction saying: here we are.”

“Byko should have that fire out in ten minutes,” said Karpov.

“I suggest we get north of Melville Island, sir,” Fedorov put in. “We’re too exposed here. There will be screening units associated with that carrier task force, fast cruisers, destroyers, perhaps a battleship as well.”

“Speak of the devil!” Rodenko put in, his eyes fixed on the surface contact radar screen. “Con, surface contact bearing 295 degrees at seventy-five kilometers and now on a heading due east.”

“That would be an intercept course based on our current heading,” said Fedorov.

Volsky looked at the map. They were still cruising due north and he immediately altered course. “Helm, come right to 50 degrees east-northeast. Thirty knots.”

“Coming right to 50 degrees, sir. Speed thirty.”

“I would rather go due east as well, but that channel south of the big island looks a bit narrow. We’ll have to get north of that island, as Mister Fedorov suggests, so it’s going to be another race gentlemen. What do you think our prospects are?”

“It will depend on the composition of that surface action group,” said Fedorov.

“My systems are clearing, slowly now,” said Rodenko, “just as they did before. I read six contacts, one more prominent, two with weaker signal returns.”

“A typical screening force,” said Fedorov. “The larger contact is probably a battleship, the weaker signal returns would be destroyers. Everything in between is likely to be a cruiser class vessel.”

“Will they be able to cut us off before we reach the north cape of that island?” Volsky asked.

“That will depend on the speed of the battleship, unless their commander is determined to engage us, he will likely keep his task force together. If he sends cruisers out in front, they might make thirty-three knots. The destroyers could be even faster.”

“Karpov?” Volsky looked to his new Captain of the 3rd rank for a tactical assessment.

“If they send lighter ships forward our deck guns can outrange them. What is the range of the guns on those cruisers, Fedorov?”

“We don’t know what class yet, but if they are heavy cruisers they will be carrying eight inch guns that will range out to 25,000 meters.”

“We can beat that range with our deck guns,” said Karpov quickly. “If they get too close, say 30,000 meters, we can begin discouraging them with the 152 millimeter batteries.”

“A good plan,” said Volsky.

“Don’t forget the battleship, it can fire at 35,000 meters, though it probably won’t hit anything at that range.”

“We’ve had quite a few scraps with battleships in recent days,” said Karpov. “Our best bet if that ship poses any real threat would be at least one Moskit-II targeting their superstructure, and we must do this before the ship gets in effective range.”

“Agreed,” said Volsky. “I do not wish us to be dancing about in the midst of sea spray from fifteen or sixteen inch shells again.”

“They’ll probably be fourteen inch guns,” said Fedorov, though he realized the difference was negligible when it came to a round of that size impacting the ship.

“Very well,” said the Admiral. “I suggest we prepare to possibly repel another incoming air strike from these torpedo planes Mister Fedorov mentioned. And then we will see if our speed can keep us ahead of this enemy surface action group.” He shrugged. “I’m afraid we’ll have to wait for those island girls a little longer. Stay at alert level one, and please check on the damage control situation, Mister Fedorov.”

“Aye, sir. Alert one, all hands stand ready.” The order was passed over ship’s intercom, though the attack had clearly heightened the crew’s awareness of impending battle. They were in it again, facing off against these impossible shadows from a distant past, but yet the explosion of a 250kg incendiary bomb had made these shadows painfully real.

“Now then,” said Volsky. “What do we do about these carriers? Do you think we are likely to receive another airstrike in the next hour or two Fedorov?”

“I would plan on it, sir. The dive bombers must have been armed with incendiary bombs. They had no business coming in on us like that at all. But the next wave will most likely be torpedo planes, and the Japanese were very skilled at low level attacks. Remember, they have trained for months to make an attack at Pearl Harbor. They will have to be engaged before they get anywhere close to us.”

“How many planes can we expect in this attack?”

“There will be at least eighteen on each carrier, sir. Possibly twenty-seven. I’m going to make a guess that this is Carrier Division Five, with Zuikaku and Shokaku. They were Japan’s newest carriers, big and fast at thirty-four knots. Those ships were active in the East Indies, the Indian Ocean, and the Coral Sea early in the war, though we don’t really know what the date is yet. In any case, the torpedo planes will be carrying the Japanese Type 91. They range out to about 2000 meters after launch. Nothing we want to fool with.”

“Agreed,” said Volsky.

“With Rodenko’s radars operating now, we will see these planes well before they pose any threat,” said Karpov. “For that matter, it would not be difficult to scout the location of these aircraft carriers and send them a message.”

They all knew what he meant.

“It will come down to a choice then,” said the Admiral. “Which missiles do we use, our dwindling anti-ship weapons, or our air defense systems? Diminishing the strength of either inventory is not a happy prospect.”

“I suggest we wait,” said Fedorov. “Let’s see what they throw at us. Only then can we determine what weapon systems would be best. But I think we should conserve our anti-ship missiles at this point and use them only if absolutely necessary.”

Karpov expected this from Fedorov. The young ex-navigator was still cautious, and on one level he perceived that Fedorov was still very reluctant to target ships, planes, and men that had glowed in the soft light of his history books for so many years. Karpov had no such scruples, and looked at the matter solely from a military point of view. If the carriers were threat they could be dealt with, but he decided that they could just as easily handle an air strike as long as their air defense missile systems had ammunition.

“If each carrier has twenty-seven torpedo bombers,” he said. “That will be a big drain on our SAM inventory if they attack in force. I would hate to have to be forced to make that decision when we might use one or two missiles to forestall such an attack. We have only to locate these carriers, and if they are beyond our surface radar range at this juncture we should use the KA-40. That failing, then we can wait and receive the blow, and deal with it when it comes, but we both know that the best defense is a good offense.” He folded his arms having given the assessment that he felt was most tactically sound for the situation. The rest would be up to Volsky.

“I’m not surprised that you both have differing views on this,” said the Admiral, thinking. He took a long breath and then gave an order. “As we do not now know the location of the enemy carriers, we must wait. But I want better situational awareness. I want to know exactly what we are facing, because Fedorov here says we can no longer rely on his books. For that matter we don’t even know what year this is. Is it 1942? 1943? I think Captain Karpov’s suggestion on the use of the helicopter is prudent, and I want the KA-40 ready for immediate operations. Once we know what we’re dealing with I will make a final decision.”

“Very good, sir.” Fedorov gave the orders and the word was soon passed down to the helo bay to prepare for operations. Kirov had again been surprised just at the moment of her arrival in the dangerous and unfriendly waters of the Pacific region. They would not be surprised again.

The ship was going to war.

Chapter 8

Admiral Chuichi Hara received the news of an enemy surface ship with some surprise. He was steaming with Carrier Division Five, his flag aboard Shokaku, and her sleek sister ship Zuikaku was a thousand meters off his starboard beam. Zuiho was in the van, selected to participate in the next strike mission with her CII-3 Datai and 12 fresh torpedo planes commanded by Lt. Commander Kasi Matsua. Five destroyers formed a small fan ahead of the three carriers, a fairly light escort considering the value of these ships to the empire. His heavier ships were already seventy-five miles out in front, screening the approach to Darwin with orders to follow-up the air strikes with a good saturation bombardment—all save one. The heavy cruiser Tone had been left behind to ensure the safety of the carriers from any surface action. Hara had not expected any Allied naval activity in this sector, but was cautious nonetheless, and followed protocols. Now he was surprised to learn that a sizable ship had been spotted by one of the screening submarines, Torisu’s I-63.

What could be out there, he wondered? An Australian cruiser out of Darwin? The initial reports from the first strike wave aimed at Darwin came in soon after. They had spotted what looked to be a large cruiser class vessel steaming north. Strike leader Sakamoto had detached a single squadron of nine dive bombers to deal with it.

The reports were sketchy, but it now appeared that a hit had been scored and the ship was seen to be on fire, a thick column of char black smoke staining the clear blue sky. But Sakamoto’s men had paid a very high price, losing 8 of 9 planes to intense enemy anti-aircraft fire. Squadron leader Hayashi had been the only survivor, but this shame was mitigated by the fact that he had been the only plane to score a hit. The rest of Sakamoto’s planes had continued on to Darwin, being armed with incendiary and HE bombs, not suitable for naval action. Hayashi’s reports on the radio spoke of some new weapon engaging his planes, but made no sense. He was ordered home and told to land on Zuiho instead of his home ship, and ordered to brief the strike wave forming up there even now. It was a not so subtle indication of Hara’s opinion on the strike he had just led. There was nothing of his squadron left now on Zuikaku. He was an orphaned plane and pilot.

Sakamoto was too eager, thought Hara. I would’ve just reported the ship and continued on to Darwin. Doesn’t he remember that I have torpedo bombers waiting here? Angry at the loss of the 8 planes and pilots, he turned and gave the order that everyone on the bridge expected.

“Signal Zuiho. Lieutenant Matsua’s CII-3 Daitai is to be spotted for immediate air strike against this naval target. Arm with torpedoes. We will keep our planes in the nest for the moment. Matsua’s twelve torpedo bombers should be sufficient to handle a single ship, particularly if it is just an Australian cruiser. But tell them to be ready for heavy flak. This may be an AA defense cruiser.”

Lt. Commander Matsua received the news with much excitement and was soon up on the flight deck, pulling on his leather flight gloves and adjusting his goggles and ear flaps. He surveyed the planes already spotted on deck, six from 1st Squadron with the first planes of 2nd squadron already on the elevators. It would be another ten or fifteen minutes before the remaining planes were ready, their pre-flight checks completed and communications with the air bridge underway for takeoff. In the meantime, he watched the slow approach of a plane, which he soon recognized as a D3A1 dive bomber. It was trailing a thin wake of light smoke, and he presumed it was from Sakamoto’s group, a wayward flyer with engine trouble who had been sent home.

He watched as the plane lined up for landing, looking somewhat shaky as it came in, touching down with a bump and then finally hooking up with a secondary retaining line and skidding to a loud stop, its engine spinning fitfully in the light wind. There were no other dive bombers assigned to Zuiho, his CII-1 Squadron was all for air defense operations with twelve A6M2 Fighters. A smaller ship, Zuiho could carry no more than thirty planes. Why didn’t this plane land on its own mother ship?

Flight crews ran to maneuver the plane off the main flight deck to keep it clear for Matsua’s torpedo bombers. Yet as the pilot of the D3A1 slid back his canopy, he could immediately see that something was wrong. He squinted, then noted the plane number and realized it was Squadron Leader Hayashi, an old friend, his face ashen as he eased himself out of the pilot’s seat. There was no movement from the rear of the canopy where the radio man should be, and Matsua had a sudden strange feeling of dread as he watched the flight crews ladder up the plane and climb to assist Hayashi. He rushed to the scene, waiting below as the men brought the pilot down. One man called up to the still open canopy for the second crewman serving as radio operator and gunner, but Hayashi tugged at his sleeve, shaking his head. Matsua could see blood on Hayashi’s flight jacket.

“Hayashi! What happened? How were you hit? Did you come all the way from Darwin?”

Hayashi looked at him, his eyes distant and glazed over with pain. Then he recognized Matsua, and forced a wan smile.

“Matsua…No, we never made it to Darwin. There was an enemy cruiser about a hundred and twenty kilometers off the coast and Sakamoto sent my squadron after it.”

“Yes! Rumors say you scored a hit!” Matsua looked over his shoulder thinking to see the remainder of Hayashi’s squadron coming in for their recovery. “Where are the others?”

Hayashi looked down, his eyes dark with fear and his spirits dampened with shame. “No others,” he said quietly.

“No others?”

Hayashi looked at him, his face almost pleading as he spoke. “I have never seen such a defense,” he quavered. “My men pressed home the attack…Two scored near misses. A third put his bomb right off the enemy’s bow and they ran right over it. Then something came up at us…” He covered his eyes, then composed himself and stared at Matsua, clearly shaken. “It was like we were flying through hell itself, a rain of metal… steel serpents that hissed in at our planes like demons! My men were cut to pieces. I released my bomb and veered away, and when I looked over my shoulder to see the hit on the enemy ship, all the others were gone. I saw the last two go into the sea…”

Matsua waited, allowing his friend the time he needed now. He was buntaicho, Squadron Leader. Sakamoto had chosen him to make the attack, and he was now responsible for the result. The hit he scored was commendable, but in the balance he would come to the briefing room when he eventually returned to his ship and find eight empty chairs where his men should be seated, their cheeks red with energy, faces alight as they readied for battle. He put his hand on Hayashi’ s shoulder.

“We have been ordered to find this ship and sink it,” he said firmly. “We will avenge you, Hayashi. By all Gods and Kami, we will make certain your men died with honor. I swear it, my friend. I will put my Thunder Fish in this ship’s belly! Or die trying.”

Hayashi just looked at him, a longing in his eyes, as if he knew at that very moment that he would never see Matsua again, and perhaps never see many of the pilots who were gathering on deck now, their planes near ready, some up on the wings and climbing into the cockpits, eager for battle. He clenched his jaw, and nodded.

“Good luck, Matsua. Now I must go and make my report. For now…Sayonara…”

“Not so formal, Hayashi,” Matsua clasped his friend’s shoulder with a smile. “Tonight we will drink on it, neh? Mata-ne, my friend. Ja-ne. See you soon.”

Aboard the Battleship Kirishima, Captain Sanji Iwabuchi was scanning the far horizon with his field glasses, well aware that eagle eyed watchmen were doing the same, well above him on the tall pagoda main mast of the stately ship. But he was eager to find this enemy, and bring it under his heel.

Iwabuchi was a hard man, steely in battle, and often cruel, impatient and abusive to subordinates. He was short tempered and too quick to find fault, and he was clearly unhappy with the sudden change of orders he had just received. His guns had all been primed and loaded with HE and incendiaries for the planned bombardment of Darwin. Now he would have to unload his eight big 14 inch guns and reload with heavy armor piercing rounds, but the propellant charge bags were all wrong as well, and getting them out of the breeches safely would take time. He summoned his gunnery officer, Commander Kimitake Koshino and asked him how long the procedure would take.

“We have been ordered to find this enemy cruiser that has been giving Hara’s pilots fits. It is somewhere ahead, and if this ship is not ready for action heads will roll, Koshino!”

“Please excuse me, Captain,” Koshino said politely. “Incendiary rounds use only three powder bags instead of the usual four. We will have to remove all three to get at the shell, then remove it before we reload the new armor piercing round and four more powder bags. Getting the shells and bags into the guns is very fast, sir. Getting them back out is another matter. It could take twenty minutes for all eight guns.”

“Too long!” Iwabuchi’s face indicated his displeasure. “Murajima is out ahead in the float plane looking for this ship now, and if he spots it I want to be ready for battle.”

“Well, sir…” Koshino hesitated, then spoke his mind. “There is one way to speed things along. It could reduce our reload time to just three or four minutes. We need only fire the guns. That will remove the unwanted rounds and powder bags in short order. Then it is only a matter of normal reloading.”

Iwabuchi’s face reddened. He struck the table with his fist, glaring at his gunnery officer. “Very well, Koshino. Fire the guns then, and be quick about it! Notify the cruiser escorts that we will fire ranging salvoes so as not to look like complete fools, neh? Then get those armor piercing rounds in fast, and consider how long it will take you to pay for the rounds and powder we must waste because of your incompetence!”

Koshino knew better than to say anything now. He merely lowered his head, then saluted and rushed off to give his gunnery crews their orders. Moments later they saw the forward turret rotate away from the escorting cruiser squadron and fire. The sound was deafening, and Iwabuchi shouted after it, venting his own anger with the brilliant orange fire from the muzzles.

If this ship is nigh at hand, he thought, then let them hear the roar of our guns, like thunder on the horizon. It is one thing to bat aside Hara’s mosquitoes, but it will be quite another to escape the anger of my guns, neh? He turned to his signalman and gave another order. “Send the cruisers on ahead as a forward sweeping unit. The destroyers will remain with us for the time being.”

Cruiser Division Five had been assigned to his covering force, three fast heavy cruisers, the Haguro, Myoko, and Nachi, all sleek hounds with a strong bite in their ten 8 inch guns.

Kirishima was very fast as well, particularly for a vintage old ship as she was. Her hull was laid down at Mitsubishi Zosen Kaisha’s ship yard on the 17th of March of the year 1912! Venerable indeed. Her design was not entirely the work of Japanese shipbuilders either. Sir George Thurston of the British shipbuilding firm of Vickers-Armstrong had designed both the plans and the guns for this ship, which was built largely in response to the British Navy’s escalation in the commissioning of the armored cruiser HMS Invincible. That ship had eight 12 inch guns and a speed of 26 knots, more formidable than anything in the Japanese navy at the time. So Japan secured plans for a ship that was bigger and faster than Invincible, and the Kongo Class battleships were the happy result.

Kirishima was one of four built, and her eight 14 inch guns, now firing off the last of the troublesome incendiary rounds, would trump Invincible’s 12 inchers, her speed besting that ship as well. Kirishima could run at all of thirty knots if pressed to the task. She was called an armored cruiser when words were bandied about in the naval treaty negotiations, but she was rightfully a battleship at over 40,000 tons fully loaded, and she looked the part, her pagoda style superstructure rising tall and proud above the big threatening gun turrets. She would be overshadowed by many other battleships in time, some exceeding 70,000 tons like Yamato, and there would be many who still called her an up-armored battlecruiser, but she was to prove herself a tough ship before she met her fate. And fate had a peculiar way of placing her in the thick of action, or so it would seem to one given the hindsight of history.

Now she cruised with the last two ships in Iwabuchi’s task force posted on either side, the destroyers Minizuki and Fumizuki, there to discourage any enterprising American submarine commander who might be in the area. A big ship like Kirishima was an inviting and very tempting target for a stealthy submarine captain. In fact, his ship was supposed to have been found by an American submarine, the Nautilus, while Kirishima was escorting Nagumo’s carriers during the operation against Midway that had now been canceled—though Iwabuchi knew nothing of that unlived history. Nautilus would have fired a Mark 14 steam torpedo at the old battleship, eager for a kill, but from a range of over 4000 meters it would miss by a wide margin.

The insult would be answered with a salvo from Kirishima’s forward batteries when the periscope of the Nautilus was sighted, but to no avail. Hunting submarines was work for a destroyer, and the escort Arashi would have been detached to take up the hunt while Kirishima sailed off in a huff. It was once to be a most fateful incident that would cost Japan more than anyone then alive could realize. Arashi was not able to find and sink the Nautilus, and eventually gave up the hunt and turned to rejoin the Japanese carrier force, the fast Kido Butai mobile group that was hoping to savage the American fleet. It was the wake of this very destroyer that would have been spotted by the American commander Wade McCluskey, Jr. in his SBD ‘Dauntless’ dive-bomber, and it would lead the U.S. formation directly to the heart of the Japanese carrier fleet. The rest was all part of the ‘Miracle At Midway’ that would crush the Japanese fleet and mark a decisive turning point in the war….But it never happened.

The battle of Midway was never fought. Instead Kirishima found itself here, leading the leftmost arm of a two pronged attack to the south aimed at isolating Australia, Operation FS. But the ship’s magnetic charm would hold true yet again. It would not be an American submarine that would set the strange chain of events in motion this time, but a ghostly sea demon that had appeared from thin air, to pose the greatest challenge any sea captain of that era could ever face—the battlecruiser Kirov.

Chapter 9

Matsua’s torpedo bombers soon discovered the ship that had put fear into the eyes and soul of Lt. Commander Hayashi. There were twelve planes sent to make this attack, two light squadrons of B5N2s, the plane the Allies would call the “Kate.” The ship was just where Hayashi had reported it, and Matsua wasted no time sending his men in for the attack. Number one squadron would swoop in from the port side with six planes, and he would lead number two squadron to the starboard side with the remaining six. Together they would smash this ship with their Type 91, ‘Thunder Fish’ torpedoes.

The Type 91 was a formidable weapon, having moved through several evolutions in its development to make it a reliable workhorse for the B5N squadrons. They had put three into the USS Lexington three months ago, sending that carrier to the bottom of the Coral Sea. Now they were ready for more. The growl of the planes was exhilarating as they swooped to their low elevation approaches, deploying air brakes to slow the planes down to no more than 160-180kph so they could safely launch their weapons.

What was Hayashi talking about? Matsua could see the dark silhouette of the ship ahead now, perhaps 15,000, meters out, and there was no sign of these serpents rising up to devour his planes, nor any wisp of flak from the target ahead. But he would soon find out what Hayashi meant by a rain of metal, for the low and relatively slow approach of his torpedo bombers were the easiest possible target for Kirov’s lethal close in defense systems.

“Steady, Samsonov,” Karpov whispered. “Any second now.”

They were tensely watching the approach of Matsua’s planes, having seen them on radar long ago. It was Karpov’s first reflex to immediately engage them with the Klinok medium range SAMs at that time, but there were only twelve discrete targets, and he thought he might save those missiles with another tactic. Karpov looked over his shoulder to find their resident historian.

“Fedorov, you say these planes must get inside 2000 meters to make an effective attack?”

“That’s right, and if they can get inside 1500 meters they’ll be even happier.”

“Then I have a proposal to make, but it will take cool heads and more than a little nerve.” He turned to Admiral Volsky now, knowing the final decision would lie with him. “We’ve been debating whether or not to strike the carriers before they launched this attack, but now that is a moot discussion. They are coming for us. The only question now is whether or not we should expend our primary SAM munitions and take them out at long range.”

“Both the Klinok system and the S-300s are running low,” said Volsky. “We have enough in either weapon system to stop this attack, but it will may take twelve missiles to do so.”

“I have another option,” said Karpov. “We can simply hold fire and use the close in defense guns. The AK-760s can range out to 4000 meters. That’s twice the firing range of those planes. We have two on each side of the ship, and we can add in the Chestnuts I used against those dive bombers.” He was referring to the Kashtan ‘Chestnut’ gun system, with its twin Gatling guns thrown into the mix.

“We took out those Italian torpedo bombers easily enough in the Tyrrhenian sea. This should be no different. It will mean we allow them to come in close, but I have no doubt that we can hit these planes before they do us harm.”

“Yet if they get their torpedoes in the water,” said Volsky. “What then? We can dodge one or two by maneuvering the ship, but not twelve.”

“The Captain may be right,” Fedorov put in. “We can hit them well before they enter firing range, but it’s a very brief firing window. One or two bursts should be enough to drop one of these planes. The guns have the accuracy and rate of fire to do the job—at least from what I’ve seen,”

“We can hit anything we target,” Karpov assured him. “That’s the critical difference eighty years of weapons development has made. A single burst can put hundreds of 30mm rounds on a single plane. What we target, we kill. Period. We’ll use both laser and radar tracking for pin-point accuracy.”

“And one more thing,” said Fedorov. “These are Japanese pilots. They will not break formation and scatter when we hit them like the Italian SM-79s did earlier. Shock or no shock, this is the cream of their naval aviation at this point in the war. They will come straight in on their attack runs, unwavering, just as they have trained, and we’re going to have to kill each and every one.”

They sat with that for a moment, a heaviness in the air. As they realized what they were going to do, ambushing an enemy that would have no idea what was going to hit them. It was a feeling that had lodged in the hearts of many other warriors, on both land and sea, while they sat behind their weapons waiting for an enemy to charge, knowing the bravery it took, knowing the fear their foe must feel and yet overcome, knowing they had to kill him.

Or be killed…

And so now they waited, and it was indeed taking cool heads and a lot of nerve as Karpov had warned. The sight of those torpedo planes swooping in with their blue wings glinting in the sunlight was somewhat awesome, and every eye on the bridge was watching out the view screens of the citadel. Admiral Volsky was sitting stiffly in his chair, waiting. The drone of the distant engines increased, and he turned slowly to Karpov, a sadness in his eyes.

“Mister Karpov,” he said quietly. “Kill those planes.”

“Sir…” Karpov turned quickly to Samsonov and nodded his head. “Fire at 4000 meters.”

Matsua saw the first bright muzzle flashes spit fire from the side of the ship. So few guns, he thought, remembering the gunnery trials for the battleship Yamato against simulated torpedo attacks. That ship could literally blacken the sky with its flak guns, but this—”

Then he saw Lieutenant Tomashita’s plane erupt in flame to his left, and felt the rattle of metal strike his own plane. He grabbed the stick, tensely trying to steady his approach. Yet as he looked left and right he gasped to see one plane after another being torn apart by lethal fire, the hot tracers coming out at them as if they had eyes. Every stream of fire found one of his planes, and the heavy rounds were grinding them to pieces—wings shredded, torpedoes blasted from beneath torn fuselages and spinning wildly into the sea, canopies shattered and engines ripped into mutilated fragments, so deadly was the fire.

Now he knew what Hayashi had experienced, and what he was trying to describe to him…and why he had chosen to part with the formal farewell of sayonara.

But Matsua remembered his promise, and knew he would not die without first firing his weapon. He screamed at the enemy ship, firing his wing mounted machineguns even if it seemed a feeble and fruitless reprisal. He was almost there. The visual rangefinder in his pilot’s head told him he was crossing 2000 meters, and so with one final yell he pulled his torpedo release, even as a stream of bright red and yellow rounds found his plane and shook it with terrible rending impact.

Hayashi’s face…his face…his eyes when he spoke that last word!

Sayonara…

Aboard Shokaku Admiral Hara was waiting for reports on the air strikes, expecting good news at any moment. His radio officer, Onoshi, rushed in, jubilant as he reported that the Darwin attack had been a great success.

“Flight leaders report good hits. A destroyer was sunk in the port along with two other cargo ships trying to leave the harbor. Enemy gun positions on the coast were given a real pounding. Yamashita’s men will have no problem getting ashore, particularly after Iwabuchi’s force finishes the initial bombardment.”

Hara seemed thoughtful. “Casualties?”

“Only two planes reporting light damage, sir. The enemy was clearly unprepared.”

“What about the cruiser?”

“Sir?”

“The cruiser that gave Sakamoto’s planes so much trouble. Didn’t you hear Hayashi’s report?”

“I’m sorry, sir. We have no news from Lieutenant Matsua as yet.”

“He should be on his way back by now.” Hara was not happy at the silence from his torpedo planes. It had a tinge of foreboding in it, and he was glad he had signaled Iwabuchi on Yamashiro to alter his course and look for this cruiser before he went in to complete his preliminary bombardment at Darwin.

“Let me know the moment you hear from Matsua. And signal the screening force. They must have some news, neh? Why is everyone so tight lipped?”

“At once, sir,” said Onoshi, heading for the radio room.

No news was never good news, thought Hara. This cruiser had been a stone in his shoe from the moment Sakamoto’s planes first sighted it. It would be another hour before he recovered all the planes he had out on strikes at the moment. He still had plenty of strike capability aboard, eighteen more torpedo bombers on Zuikaku and another eighteen on his own ship. There was no point spotting them on deck now with an inbound recovery operation imminent to bring all the dive bombers home. He would wait and see what the reports from Matsua and Iwabuchi revealed, but he was not happy.

“A very simple operation,” he said under his breath. That was what he had told Yamamoto, but the simplest things have a habit of spinning off in wild directions during combat. Nothing was ever certain. The calm seas ahead were deceptive, he knew. One should always keep an eye over his shoulder.

He turned and look there to see the storm front that had been following them building on the horizon. He would probably recover all his planes before the winds came up. Then he could run before the storm, his mission plan still sending him southeast towards Darwin.

A very simple operation…

Aboard Battleship Kirishima spotters from the high pagoda could see something ongoing to their south, and hear a faint rumble of gunfire. They sent the report down, and Iwabuchi was quick to contact his floatplane to have them investigate.

Fifteen minutes later Lt. Murajima was up in his F1M2 Floatplane, called “Pete” by the Allies during the war. Kirishima carried two on its aft deck for local area search operations exactly like this one. Apparently the torpedo bombers off Zuiho had found a battle to the south, but there had been no details. Cruising at 5000 feet he could see over 80 miles in a every direction before the horizon blocked his view, a pair of good, experienced human eyes standing in for the lack of long range radar.

Just ahead of him he could see the three fast ships of Cruiser Division Five spread out in a wide fan. South there seemed a smudge of gray against the blue sky near the ocean, and he turned to investigate. A few minutes later he found what he was looking for, peering through a pair of binoculars to get a better look. He was on the radio immediately, sending only his name and a coded phrase indicating ‘ship sighted’ and the approximate position speed and heading relative to his own position. He sent one more code: ‘shadowing.’ And then decided it best to gain a little more altitude.

Within ten minutes he smiled to see the cruisers effect a wide turn to starboard, coming around to assume an intercept heading on the contact. Then he saw something in the sky ahead, another aircraft which he first took to be a straggling plane returning from the Darwin mission, yet when he looked through his binoculars he could not make out what it was, moving low and slow, and with no apparent wings! He was going to have a ring-side seat to a most dramatic event.

On the bridge of Kirov Rodenko was now receiving good data from the KA-40 and fine tuning his contact reports to feed the information to both the navigation station and the CIC. The KA-40 had been aloft for some time, and was now on the backward leg of its search pattern, but the telemetry it had been sending, along with HD video footage, was enough to finally paint the picture of what was happening around them.

Fedorov was analyzing the data, reviewing the video footage and looking up references from his books and other materials at navigation while he plotted positions on a digital map. He sat with a perplexed look on his face, as nothing seemed to make sense. When Nikolin reported that he now had clear radio reception and could pull in shortwave signals, they were able to finally establish the date as August 25, 1942.

“We must have lost all the days we sailed from St. Helena to this point,” said Fedorov. “In fact, I think we may have started shifting into this time as early as yesterday. I could feel something was wrong. This is most unusual,” he said as the briefing began.

“That is an understatement, indeed,” said Karpov. “I’m still trying to shake myself awake every time I realize we have been shooting at planes that went out of existence eighty years ago.”

“We may have more yet to come,” Fedorov warned. “The KA-40 has located the Kido Butai for this operation, the main mobile carrier group. It was able to get a little long range HD video footage but was wary of enemy combat air patrols over the target and turned east. It was enough. I studied the footage very closely, and I am certain that a force comprised of the carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku, escorted by another light carrier and the heavy cruiser Tone with five destroyers is here—” He pointed to his navigation Plexiglas board, and then fed the signal to the overhead HD monitor as well.

“The carriers are northwest of our position now, about 175 kilometers out. That is very close considering the combat radius of their aircraft. We are still well within their strike zone.”

“I have already given my opinion on how we should handle the matter,” said Karpov. “Two missiles would be enough to disrupt any further operations against us.”

Admiral Volsky listened, nodding, but saying nothing for a moment. Then he asked about the overall picture painted by the data.

“There appears to be a major operation underway against Darwin,” said Fedorov. “Only it is completely a-historical. It should not be happening. It never did happen, particularly on this date. All the action should be in the Solomons now, at Guadalcanal. But from what I’ve been able to piece together, I believe ‘Operation FS’ is now underway, or some variation of that plan.”

“Operation FS?” Volsky wanted more information.

“It was a plan to isolate Australia by continuing the drive south through the Solomons with the aim of striking New Caledonia, and eventually Fiji and Samoa. Hence the initials F and S for those islands. This attack on Darwin must be a part of the overall plan. It was debated in early 1942, largely opposed by the Japanese Army, and then eventually discarded for the Midway operation. But if it is underway now then I can only conclude that Midway was never fought—or if it was fought, then the Japanese fleet must have been victorious.”

“They were supposed to lose four carriers in that operation, Yes?” asked Volsky.

“Correct, sir,” Fedorov continued. “Yet if they IJN has the capability to launch an operation of this scale and scope, they must have sufficient carrier forces in theater. This bit we’ve sailed into is the sideshow. It was never part of the original FS plan, at least not formally, but it has apparently been added. With two fleet carriers here, then the Japanese must still have their other main carrier divisions intact in the Solomons for the drive south. They could never successfully move troops without strong air cover. As for Zuikaku and Shokaku, they should not be here either. They should be east in the Solomons this month, supporting operations near Guadalcanal. In fact, they were supposed to be dueling with the American carriers Enterprise and Saratoga on Aug 24-25 of this year… but that was only because the other four fleet carriers were lost at Midway. I suppose if that battle was not fought their presence here makes a great deal of sense.”

“I think we can safely say that these facts you refer to are no longer viable,” said Karpov.

Fedorov shrugged, a sullen expression on his face. “I’m afraid I will have to agree, Captain. What we are looking at here is a complete restructuring of the history of the war in the Pacific. Nikolin has been very busy the last two hours. The radio intercepts he has from Allied sources clearly indicate that Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea is also Japanese controlled, which means that Coral Sea was a Japanese victory, or perhaps never even fought. This is a radical deviation from the history we know, and we are right in the middle of a very well stirred bowl of soup now.”

“Yet you say this is 1942,” said Volsky. “What happened to this interval business you were talking about earlier? We did not move forward this time?”

“It was just a theory, sir. I concluded we might move to 1943 if we shifted again, based on our previous displacements, but Nikolin is convinced that this is 1942, so we have been pulled back into the same year we were in the Mediterranean.”

Volsky laughed. “What will Admiral Tovey think if he gets a report about us now? You say we may have started shifting here yesterday? We vanish at St. Helena on August 23, 1942, and then appear here, thousands of miles away, in just a day’s time? That will befuddle the British if they ever hear about it!”

Fedorov considered that, coming to a startling conclusion, but saying nothing about it for the moment, being more concerned about their immediate situation. Volsky caught the glint in his eye, and a flash of trouble there, though he did not pursue the matter, listening intently as his young first officer continued the briefing.

“Given that the Chronology of the War at Sea is of no further use to us in the broad sense, we can only make our decisions now based on the immediate tactical situation. There are two other contacts to report. One is here, about forty kilometers north of our position, a group of three fast cruisers, and they have now turned south. They will be in range in short order. The second is here, about seventy kilometers north, and vectoring east-southeast on an intercept course. We got very good footage on that group. It is a Kongo class battleship with two destroyers—most likely the Kirishima, as that ship had been operating with these carriers throughout this period.”

“Well if the broad strokes of the history are all wrong now,” said Karpov, “what makes you think these details will hold true?”

“I can’t be certain, of course. You make a valid point, Captain, but I can make educated guesses here based on my general knowledge. Our advantage is no longer as precise as it was, but some patterns in the history do still seem to be holding true, like the composition of the carrier division we spotted. Battleships screening carrier forces would need the speed to keep up with them. The Kongo class ships can run at 30 knots. The same puzzle pieces are here, but they just make a new picture now. Those were the same ships that fought the Battle of the Coral Sea, along with another light carrier. The Japanese still seem to be pairing them up like that as they did in the history we know. I am also very sure about the battleship. There was no mistaking its silhouette, and if it is the Kirishima, it may still be captained by Sanji Iwabuchi, a formidable foe. We would be wise to stay well ahead of that ship.”

“We had no trouble with the two Italian battleships,” said Karpov. “And for that matter we kept all the British battleships we engaged at bay as well.”

“True, Captain,” Fedorov returned. “But these are not the Italians. You saw what happened when their torpedo planes came in. They died, yes, but they kept on coming just the same. You can expect this same determination from Iwabuchi. He was adamant. In fact, he fought the very first action where battleships on two opposing sides faced one another in the Pacific. His ship was heavily engaged in a night action off Savo Island near Guadalcanal with the American battleships Washington and South Dakota. I have a document detailing that battle and I have prepared a slide showing the hits sustained by Kirishima.” Fedorov displayed a profile of the ship on the overhead display, and they could see that it was riddled with red and blue dots indicating locations where the ship had been struck by shells.

“Take a good long look at this, and count the large red dots. Kirishima was hit by no less than twenty 16 inch shells, each one with a striking power almost as great as our missiles! Note that most of these hits were at or below the main deck. The lighter blue dots on the upper parts of the superstructure were from the 5 inch secondary batteries, another seventeen hits from those. The ship took damage to her rudder and engine compartments. They had to flood gun magazines due to the fires. Her armor was breeched and she was holed below the waterline, but both the ship and its crew kept on fighting through the whole engagement until her flood control officer was unable to stop her from capsizing….” He paused, letting the image speak for itself, and hoping he had made the impression intended on the other officers, particularly Karpov.

“Kirishima sunk during that battle, in November of this very year. Her captain was pulled alive from the sea and eventually posted to the Philippines. During the final American invasion there, he disobeyed an order to withdraw from Manila and stubbornly defended the city, block by block, leaving it utterly devastated and killing all of a hundred thousand Philippine citizens in the fighting. He died, some say by committing suicide, as the American troops closed in on his last positions. It was later known as the ‘Manila Massacre,’ and the overall commander, General Yamashita, was executed in 1946 though he had given a direct order to abandon the city to prevent this from happening. One charge of war crimes filed against him was that he failed to restrain the subordinate officer who provoked this fight for the city—Sanji Iwabuchi. And that very same man may now be sitting about seventy kilometers off our starboard aft quarter. If he has not heard already, he will soon learn what happened to the carrier planes that attacked us. I have no doubt that he will be ordered to find us, and do everything in his power to sink us.”

No one said another word.

Chapter 9

The cruiser Nachi was leading the charge south as the sun began to drift lower, illuminating the rising grey tops of the thunderstorms off to their northwest. Myoko was a thousand meters to the right, Haguro to her left, both a little behind. The three ships had been reunited again as Cruiser Division Five after Nachi spent some time in the north. Now her Captain Takahiko Kiyota was given overall command of the division, a competent officer, and ready for battle.

Kiyoya’s ships were all of the same class, built in 1927 and 1928, over 660 feet long and just shy of 15,000 tons fully loaded. They had good armament, in an unusual design with a tight cluster of three twin 8 inch guns forward, and another two turrets aft. The forward cluster was only made possible by mounting the number three turret with its guns facing aft, but it gave the ship some extra firepower in the forward arc to about 23 degrees on either side of the ship. Clearly, the ships were ideal for scouting and chasing, built for speed, and fast enough to catch most any adversary, strong enough to hurt them if they did.

Even the two forward stacks had been elegantly inclined backwards in a graceful curve, and mated together as one, with a third smaller stack amidships. When the ship closed on its prey, they could also bring another formidable weapon to the action, the highly effective Type 93 “Long Lance” torpedo, with a range exceeding any other in the world at that time, capable of running all of 40,000 yards before its oxygen based propellant system would be expended. In action, however, the torpedoes would generally be fired inside 20,000 yards, but this was twice the range of similar ship borne systems on most US and Allied vessels.

We will get the first crack at this enemy ship, thought Kiyota. And it would be good if we handled the matter before Iwabuchi gets into it. The last thing that man needs is another feather in his cap. He would signal Captain Mori on Haguro and Yamazumi on Myoko: ‘Assume a heading of 160 on approach and engage with forward turrets on my signal. Torpedoes to launch at 15,000 meters.’ And for the sake of decorum and protocol, he also signaled Iwabuchi: ‘Sighted ship, engaging at15:30 hours.’

Aboard Kirov there was little time to debate. Karpov wanted to engage the nearest enemy task force at once, though the Admiral asked about the possibility of outrunning the Japanese ships.

“Not this time, sir,” said Fedorov. “They can make 34 to 36 knots, so unless you want another gun battle, we must decided what to do at once.”

“We can engage now with our deck guns,” said Karpov. “Rodenko has the range plotted for CIC operations.”

They were racing for the north cape of Melville Island, but the Japanese screening force had used their superior speed to get a slight lead on them and now the cruisers were aiming to cut them off. Volsky decided they had no choice but to engage. The art of waiting in defense had been ably demonstrated when they watched the slow approach of the Japanese dive bombers, this time they had to take the initiative, and let their offensive be the shield.

“Should we use missiles on these ships? Our Moskit-IIs would have quite a shock value.”

“Yes,” said Karpov, “but we have only nine left, and twenty-six total SSMs in all. We must not forget the battleship is still out there. I suggest we use the 152mm batteries first.”

“Very well, Mister Karpov. You may commence your action now.”

Karpov nodded and turned to Samsonov. “You have your targets keyed, Mister Samsonov. Fire at will.”

“Aye, sir.”

They watched the forward turret rotate and train on a still unseen target in the distance. “Range, 37,200 meters, and firing now.”

There came a sharp crack… crack… crack… with both barrels in the turret recoiling as they fired at three second intervals, and the radar guided shells were on their way.

When Nachi’s spotters saw the dark silhouette ahead wink at them from its forward segment, they called out incoming fire. Kiyota was surprised at the range of the action. This must be a battleship to fire at that range, he thought. Could the Americans have a task force here? Yet only one ship? No escorts? Might it be a British capital ship running out of Darwin that we did not know about? That made more sense to him. There was no way the Americans could have slipped through the Coral Sea and Torres Strait. And no heavy cruiser he knew of had guns that could range over 35,000 yards like this. So he had a British battleship, or perhaps one of their fast battlecruisers at hand, and he rubbed his hands with the excitement of the chase. But Kiyota was in for another surprise. He did not expect the lethal accuracy of the enemy rounds.

Two small geysers fell very close to Myoko off his port quarter now. Then he was startled to see that ship immediately struck on its long, sleek foredeck, an explosion just forward of the first turret, a second right on the barbette, and one of the two guns there was canted upward when it exploded. Two more rounds just missed the cruiser on its starboard side.

Two hits on the very first salvo, thought Kiyota? Yet these were small caliber weapons. The small water splashes and the effect of the weapons was not characteristic of a main gun from a battleship. Such range and accuracy! A small gun that could outrange his own bigger 8 inch batteries was very surprising. He decided to give the order to make smoke now, and he could discontinue when they were inside 25,000 yards so as not to hinder his own gunners. Soon artificially induced smoke joined that from the small fires beginning on Myoko, and the whole scene was shrouded in grey. He had to come fifteen points to port so as not to outrun his own smoke, and was pleased to see his division smartly turning on cue, a maneuver that they had practiced many times. The turn would also allow his aft turrets to begin training on the target, yet he was soon discouraged to see the smoke had no effect on the accuracy of the enemy fire. His ships were still being closely straddled. The salvos came in sets of six rounds, with a hit in virtually every set!

This ship could not possibly be using optics, he thought. We are barely showing them our main mast at this range. He made a mental note to make a log entry suggesting that this must be a new British radar controlled naval gun. Then his own ship was struck with a hard thud and black explosion, just below the main superstructure foreword.

“Fire below decks!” said Harada when he receive the report over the voice tube. “Not serious, however.”

Kiyota nodded, raising his field glasses. It would take them another ten to fifteen minutes to close the range on this ship before his own 8 inch guns could even come into play! Before that happened he would stand there, furious to see more and more hits being scored on his cruisers. Myoko had taken two more hits amidships, one on her aft funnel. Haguro was on fire at the bow. He gave the order for the formation to begin a ziz-zag approach, now estimating the range at 32,000 yards, but to no avail. The enemy rounds still found them, dogging their every maneuver. Haguro had just taken another hit forward on her number one turret and it looked like a bad fire there.

Kirov was fighting them like a skilled boxer, at a long arm’s range but with a stinging jab to the face. Finally, in great frustration, Kiyota gave the order to fire before the enemy put more of his own guns out of action. The boom of Nachi’s 8 inch guns sounded the charge: “Ahead full!”

Aboard Kirov the crack of the deck guns punctuated Samsonov’s report, “Target Alpha, two hits—Target Beta, hit.” For the next ten minutes they listened as Samsonov fired a total of sixty rounds, putting 24 directly on targets, with many others reported as ‘close hits.’ It could have been much worse. He was firing at a measured pace and not using the full rate of fire the 152mm guns were capable of.

“Just like the Italian cruisers,” said Karpov. “We’ll riddle them to pieces before they get in range.”

“They are firing now,” said Rodenko. “Rounds inbound… trajectory is short.” They saw a salvo pattern fall very short in the distance, though it was remarkably tight.

“Mister Fedorov,” said Volsky. “Will we have to sink these ships with gunfire?”

“Most likely, sir. They will press home the attack until they at least reach torpedo range. Our rounds are hurting them, but they are not fatal blows.”

“A little something more then, Karpov. Let’s use a MOS-III, shall we? I want to shock them.”

“Very well, sir. Target discretion is yours, Mister Samsonov. One missile please.”

“Aye, sir, firing missile number nine now.” The number ten missile had been used by Karpov to savage the American Task Force 16 in the North Atlantic—with a nuclear warhead. He hit the firing pad and the missile fire warning sounded, the hatch on the forward deck opening and catapulting a sleek missile up, its declination jet firing precisely and the roar of the powerful engine vibrating the deck at it hurtled into the sky. The ‘Starfire’ was the fastest missile on the ship, though its warhead was 100 kilograms smaller than the Moskit-II Sunburns. Samsonov called out the time to target as 18 seconds. They soon saw a brilliant orange explosion on the horizon, and thick black smoke billowed up.

What we target, we hit, thought Volsky, remembering Karpov’s words. He wondered if the enemy would be discouraged, because now their SSM count slipped one more notch to 25 missiles. Rodenko was watching his signal returns closely and reported one enemy ship had reduced speed and was falling out of formation. It was Haguro.

Kiyota saw it coming, first high in the deepening blue of the sky, a long white tail of smoke behind a fiery dart. It moved impossibly fast—faster than any plane he had ever seen, so fast that he had barely time to point at it when he saw it suddenly swoop low, then level off and come thundering in at Haguro on his left. It struck like a hammer, the explosion and fire awesome to behold, right against the forward bow of the ship and just below the triple batteries there, and he gasped to see that it blew completely through the ship, sending fragments of torn metal and fire out the other side.

What demon from a thousand hells was that? It was Raiju, the thunder beast that falls from the sky like a ravenous wolf wrapped in lightning, and with that horrible thunderous roar. Then the magazines for the six forward eight inch guns exploded in a cataclysmic uproar. He saw the entire bow of the ship ripped apart, one of the massive 8 inch turrets hurled up into the sky like a toy. Haguro immediately was swamped at the bow, settling deeply in the water, and he knew she had been dealt a fatal blow.

“Signal Kirishima,” he said. “Tell them this is no cruiser, but a battleship! Tell them we have hold of Mizuchi’s tail, and we have lost Haguro.”

Mizuchi was a legendary and much feared water dragon, in Japanese and Chinese lore. He could now dimly see the enemy ship in the distance, then felt the thud and explosion of yet another round against his side armor. His forward batteries fired again, but the range was still 28,000 yards and he knew it would be long minutes before they had any hope of even spotting their own rounds, let alone doing any harm to the enemy. He saw the ship turn away from him now, running towards Melville island to prevent the range closing. He could probably outrun it, but by how many knots per hour? How long would it take him to get within a decent range? In time the enemy ship would have to turn to port to avoid the island, but how much damage would he take before then? His guns fired again, the rounds still well short as he watched through his binoculars.

There were over 700 men on Haguro, and most would soon be in the water where they might be saved. Should he press on with his attack? Five minutes later he received an order to break off, and steer a shadowing course outside the range of the enemy guns. Iwabuchi was dispatching his two destroyers to the scene for rescue and recovery. He was to maneuver to lead the enemy away from the area or effect a rendezvous with Kirishima, which was rushing to intercept the enemy ship at her top speed of 30 knots.

“Very well,” said Kiyota as he gave to order to turn. “Our big brother is coming, Mizuchi, a fair fight this time, and then we will see how much thunder you have left!”

Rodenko reported the advancing cruisers had altered course, one now dead in the water. Admiral Volsky immediately gave the order to cease fire.

“Thankfully these men were not of a mind to sacrifice themselves for their empire,” said Volsky.

“The maneuver we made turning in towards Melville Island may have helped, sir,” said Fedorov. “They weren’t going to close the range before we reached the coastline and the damage they were taking may have been enough to let them realize they were no match for us.”

“I still have a large signal return vectoring on our position,” said Rodenko.

“And we will have to turn north in ten minutes to get around the headlands soon. I’m taking us right between Parry Shoals and Mermaid Shoals, and up around Cape Van Diemen.”

“What about the battleship?”

“Still vectoring in at 30 knots. It looks like the remaining two cruisers are maneuvering to join it now.”

“How long before it could engage us?” asked Karpov.

“If we could stay on this heading we could keep it astern indefinitely, but we must turn, as Fedorov says, and in that instance I would say they could be within 30 kilometers in shortly after our turn.”

“Fedorov?”

The Starpom did some hasty calculations and then tapped the Plexiglas screen. “They’ll be in firing range here, sir. Just as we round the tip of Cape Van Diemen. I’ll have to take us through Beagle Gulf south of Marie Shoals. Thereafter we can turn due east and run full out. It will allow us to slowly break away from them, though our speed advantage is only two knots and we may be under fire for a time.”

“Due east…” Volsky tapped the arm of his chair. “They are running us out of the Timor Sea! Not a very hospitable welcome.”

“Yes, sir,” said Fedorov. “But if we take any other heading we will have to confront this battleship, and don’t forget the carriers west of our position as well.”

“What happened to the aircraft that were sent to bomb Darwin, Rodenko?” Volsky asked.

“I tracked them northwest and that signal is diminishing,” said Rodenko. “I’m losing the contacts one by one as they descend to lower altitudes.”

“That is probably the recovery operation. It may take them another thirty minutes to an hour, but I would say they could have a new strike wave spotted on deck by 16:40 hours. That’s still enough daylight for them to hit us again.”

“We can stop the carriers from launching just like we hit that cruiser, with a couple more MOS-III Starfires,” said Karpov.

“That may not be necessary,” said Rodenko. “That weather front is moving at over thirty-five Kph now and creeping up on them. It could inhibit flight operations soon.”

“Yes,” said Fedorov. “They will have to turn into the wind if they want to launch, and that would take them right into the storm front. I’m not saying that would dissuade them, but it is something they’ll have to deal with.”

Volsky thought for a moment. “How long can this battleship stay with us?”

“It has long legs, sir. Really quite a remarkable ship, all things considered. Kirishima could steam for 10,000 miles at 14 knots. At high speed that range will diminish, but they will be with us for a good long while if they choose to follow.”

“I think this man you described to us earlier will want us by the throat in short order,” said Volsky. “And from that chart you displayed it will take a little more than a few missiles to dissuade him. And so, gentlemen, we will run. I have no intention of engaging this ship unless we are forced to do so. Soon we will have darkness on our side.”

“We will be entering the Arafura Sea now, sir, but ahead lies the Torres Strait.”

“Another bottleneck,” said Volsky. “Very well. Let’s get up around this cape and see if we can slip by this monster. Then it is into the Arafura Sea, and God only knows what lies ahead once we pass the Torres Strait.”