He was soon encouraged to learn that two squadrons of SM-79 Sparviero “Sparrowhawks” were already in the air to coordinate with his attack, and that orders had been given to send out ships from Naples to join him, along with 7th Cruiser Division at Messina, which would also be leaving early for the planned rendezvous near Ustica Island. But first, he thought, we deal with this thief in the night, eh?
“Gobbo Maledetto!” he said to his gunnery officer. Where are those damned hunchbacks? We’re too close! They’ll see us any moment if they haven’t already.”
The ‘damned hunchbacks’ were the nickname many gave to the SM-79s, with their odd three engine design and high dorsal hump, it seemed a much more suitable name than ‘Sparrowhawk.’ An old plane that had first been conceived as a small passenger aircraft, it was converted to a bomber as the war loomed and had served alarmingly well in that capacity. It was fast for its age, durable in spite of its wood and metal amalgam frame, and lethal enough if it could get in close for a torpedo run.
Da Zara stepped out onto his weather deck, his heavy sea coat hood thrown back, his gold braided admiral’s cap fitted smartly, gloved hands holding his field glasses. A handsome man, in his day he had been known to make more than a few prominent conquests, though now he set his mind on little more than his beloved light cruisers.
“Avanti!” He called over his shoulder. “Sparare!”
His command was answered immediately with the bright orange fire and sharp concussion of his forward deck guns. Eugenio de Savoia carried four turrets with two 152mm guns each, and his initial salvo streaked through the darkness toward the formless shadow on the horizon. His second cruiser Raimondo Montecuccoli followed suit and opened fire as well, and the three destroyers in the van began to fan out to make their torpedo run, accelerating to high speed and leaving white frothy wakes behind them as they charged ahead.
At that moment Da Zara heard the low drone of aircraft overhead, looking back to see flights of the ungainly Sparrowhawks roaring to join the fight in a well coordinated attack. The smell of the sea and gunfire excited the Admiral, who had boasted he was the only fighting commander in the Italian Navy who had bested the Royal Navy at its own game. Now he was eager to make good his claim, and send this bold intruder to the bottom of the sea.
Fedorov saw the distant flashes on the horizon, too close to give him any comfort. His plan to slip past the unknowing Italians had been foiled. They must have been spotted, by one means or another, while Byko’s engineers were putting out the fire and seeing to the damage below the waterline. The instant he saw the distant muzzle flashes he knew the ship was in real peril. Kirov was never built for close in action with well gunned adversaries. Even though these were only light cruisers, those six inch shells would cause serious harm anywhere they struck the ship. Only the command citadels had sufficient armor protection from them. No—the ship’s power was in standing off and pummeling her enemies from long range, using the speed and lethality of her anti-ship missiles to decide the conflict before the enemy had even knew they were there. He had counted on the night, the darkness, and a witless opponent, and now found himself regretting the decision to wait so long. They had been spotted and were now under fire, a circumstance that never should have happened for a fighting ship like Kirov.
The first enemy salvos were short, and laterally wide off the mark, which did not surprise him. The Italian ships had no radar to speak of, relying on good night optics to site their guns. And this particular naval gun had a history of different problems. The lateral dispersion on salvos resulted from imprecise size and weight in both the main rounds and their propellant charges. Beyond that, the guns were prone to misfire, as much as 10 percent of the time, and mechanical faults or delays in loading, insecure breech closure, and problems with the shell hoists seriously reduced their rate of fire. The gun’s designers had claimed three rounds per minute, but tonight Da Zara’s ships would do no better than two.
Fedorov looked at Karpov, resigned to the fact that Kirov had to fight. “Mister Karpov,” he said quietly. “Deal with those ships.”
Karpov smiled. “My pleasure, sir.” Then he turned to Gromenko and gave the order to fire. Now it was Kirov’s turn with her three twin 152mm gun turrets, the same size in real weight as the enemy but with far more accurate fire control systems with precision round tracking, water cooled barrels, lightning fast loaders, and ammunition that was state-of-the-art. The guns fired with a sharp crack, both barrels recoiling to fire again and again. Gromenko had the interval set at three seconds, and in the long minute while Da Zara’s force was struggling to load, sight and aim the four forward twin gun turrets on the two cruisers, Kirov unleashed all of twenty salvos, 120 rounds to the 16 shells the Italians finally managed to throw their way. And every round the big battlecruiser fired was radar guided, streaking across the sea in a violent storm of steel.
Chapter 11
Before Da Zara could get his field glasses focused on the target to spot his salvo geysers, his ship was rocked by three direct hits with one near miss, and he was nearly thrown off his feet.
“Madre de Dio!” he exclaimed, then he saw Montecuccoli erupt with fire and smoke, shuddering under two, then five jarring hits. Her forward turret exploded, sending one of the gun barrels cart-wheeling up and away from the ship like a hot lead pipe. Two of his three destroyers were riddled with fire as well. It was as if someone had crept up on his task force with a massive shotgun and blasted his ships at close range! He gave the order to come hard to port, hoping his aft batteries could get off at least one salvo, but his enthusiasm for this sea battle was suddenly gone.
As Savoia heeled over she was struck three more times, the final round very near the bridge quarterdeck, sending the admiral down onto the hard cold iron. He groaned, coughing with the smoke and feeling the heat of fire below. Then he gaped in awe at what he saw in the skies above him!
Flights of Sparrowhawks thundered amid a wild display of streaking light and violent explosions. Fiery trails of orange clawed the dark sky, like molten fire arrows flung at the bombers, and they were being picked off with lethal accuracy. Three, then five, then nine, the night shuddering under the intensity of the sound, the wine dark seas gleaming with reflected fire. He crossed himself, watching the carnage of his fellow countrymen as they died. Then he reached for the hand rail, clutching it with a bloody glove and dragging himself to his feet.
He cleared his voice and shouted one last command. “Avvenire! A tutta velocita. Andiamo via de qui!” And as his ship lurched about, her aft guns plaintively firing one last salvo, he shook his head, as much to gather his sensibilities as anything else. This was no mere cruiser, he thought. It’s a battleship, and it blew my task force away with nothing more than its secondary batteries! But Madre de Dio! What was it firing at the hunchbacks? He looked at it one last time as the cruisers and destroyers made smoke to mask their retreat. The British have avenged their losses of a few months past, he thought. And now he knew how this one ship might be so bold as to sail here on its own. It was a behemoth of vengeance and a devil from hell!
They had inflicted heavy damage on Da Zara’s squadron, but it gave Fedorov no real satisfaction when he saw the ships turn and run. Then the flights of low flying bombers arrived, and he watched how Karpov coolly ordered the use of the same Klinok medium range SAM system that had caused the accident earlier, only now he was utilizing silos mounted on the forward deck. There was no malfunction on this occasion. The missiles were smartly up from their silos at three second intervals and streaking away towards the incoming aircraft. Seconds later they heard saw the awesome display in the sky as missile after missile found targets and ignited in brilliant spheres of fiery orange on the horizon. It was as if a terrible thunder storm had broiled up over a dead calm sea.
Karpov had activated two batteries of eight missiles each, and true to protocol, he had Gromenko fire the first six missiles in each battery, holding two in reserve. All twelve missiles found targets, a
nd the shock of the attack sent the remaining eight SM-79 Sparrowhawks into wild evasive maneuvers, insofar as they were able for a lumbering tri-engine plane. Four bugged out completely, turning and diving low on the deck to roar past Da Zara’s burning cruisers while the Admiral shook his fist at them, the remaining four carried on bravely, three launching torpedoes and then quickly turning away, the last stubbornly bearing in on Kirov.
“What is the range of those torpedoes?” asked Karpov as he watched the planes on the Tin Man display.
“Don’t worry about them,” said Fedorov. They need to be inside two kilometers to have any chance of hitting us.”
Karpov considered that, then gave the order to secure the Klinok system and activate the close in defense Gatling guns. The AK-760 gun system was the latest replacement for the navy’s older AK-630M1-2 system. It was housed in new stealth turrets, and still utilized the six barreled 30mm Gatling gun, though its rate of fire was an astounding 10,000 rounds per minute. Oddly, the under mount magazine held only 8000 rounds during normal operations, so it was rare that the gun would ever fire full out. Instead it would bark out short fiery bursts of HE fragmentation rounds that could shred an incoming missile at a range of four kilometers. With radar, optical sighting, TV control and laser lock systems, it was amazingly accurate, and Karpov waited confidently until the port side guns locked on and then fired two short bursts when the plane reached the 4000 meter mark.
The pilot of the last brave hunchback was clenching his stick and ready to pull the release on his torpedo when he felt his plane shake violently as the fragmentation rounds ripped off his right engine and half the wing. Low over the sea, his plane went into an immediate and unrecoverable dive, plunging into the water with a huge splash.
Up in the citadel they could hear the sound of the men cheering on the decks below as the last plane went down, and Karpov smiled, giving Fedorov a sidelong glance. “You may secure your gun system, Gromenko.”
Fedorov breathed deeply, his lips tight. He had no real idea how to fight the ship as Karpov did, but he stowed the lesson away. Karpov stepped over to him and spoke quietly. “I know how you feel, Captain,” he said in a low voice so that none of the other officers would hear. “What must be done is sometime very unpleasant. When it comes down to their ships and planes or the loss of ours, you will know what you must do.”
Fedorov looked down, still unsatisfied within, but he nodded, acknowledging what Karpov was saying. Then he straightened up, turning Gromenko. “How many missiles remain for our Klinok system?”
“Sir, my board notes 17 missile fires in the last two engagements, and we now have 79 missiles remaining in inventory on that system.”
“Something to consider,” he said to Karpov. “We have a long way to go before we reach safe waters.” He looked about, noting the time. “Helm—left fifteen degrees rudder and come to course 315.”
“Left fifteen and stead on three-one-five” echoed the helmsman “Speed thirty knots, aye, sir.”
“Walk with me, Captain.” Fedorov had heard Admiral Volsky say and do this, when he wanted a private talk with an officer, and it seemed appropriate for the moment. Karpov grinned, but followed respectfully, and the two men entered the briefing room at the back of the citadel.
“I’m going to take us up to the Strait of Bonifacio,” Fedorov began as he switched on the digital wall map and displayed the region. “At thirty knots we should be there by dawn, roughly six hours. It would be better if we could run the strait at night, but I don’t want to linger in these waters any longer than I have to.” He pointed to the map where the ship’s current position was clearly indicated with a bright red dot, and there were several blue dots north and east of their position indicating other contacts already designated and tracked by their long range radar system. He tapped one of these contacts, well east of the ship.
“This is the heavy cruiser group,” he said, “Bolzano and Goriza— both with 8 inch guns and better armor than the ships we just engaged. There will be another heavy cruiser here, Trieste, and each group will have destroyer escorts. This other group out of Naples will be another light cruiser. By steering 315 I’m taking the most direct route north to get us out of the Tyrrhenian Sea. These cruisers are fast, but I think we can stay well ahead of them at thirty knots and reach the strait before they can pose any threat. And my understanding of the Italians at this point in the war, I don’t think the lighter surface action groups will attempt to engage us without support from more air units or heavier ships. There is considerable air power mustered near Cagliari, and we may remain in range of planes from those fields for some time on this route. But they have a mission against the British convoy as their first priority, and we may simply be an inconvenient barb in their side at the moment. They had a run at us, but with little more than twenty percent of the strength they might deploy in a well planned attack. At dawn, however, we will have to get past the naval base at La Maddalena. And we could also face some danger from German and Italian planes at Grosseto. That airfield would be here, very near the Island of Elba on the Italian mainland. The other route north around Corsica takes us very near the major Italian base at La Spezia. Thankfully, the really dangerous ships are at Taranto. They didn’t move their battleships to La Spezia until later in 1942.”
“No matter,” said Karpov glibly. “If they were there, and they dared to send them against us those ships would get the same treatment.”
Fedorov let that remark pass and simply said: “Well my hope is that we can avoid engagement whenever possible, Captain.”
“Very well,” said Karpov. “I agree that we must conserve our missile inventories, but what about this naval base?”
“There will not be much there, a few destroyers, perhaps a few swift boats and other auxiliaries. I think we can get by without much difficulty. But the strait is only 11 kilometers wide and there will be little room to maneuver in the channel. We can expect minefields, and possibly even enemy submarine activity.”
Karpov’s eyes darkened at this. If there was anything that he truly feared at sea, it was an enemy submarine. Yet these were not the fast, stealthy modern American attack subs he had drilled against so often in their training maneuvers. These were old WWII subs, and he took heart in that, his confidence still unflagging.
“The loss of one of our KA-40s was regrettable,” he said. “And I am still concerned about the Horse Tail sonar. That said, I think we have more than enough capability to deal with these old boats.”
“They are diesel, and can run on battery as well,” Fedorov cautioned him. “I need not remind you that we were targeted earlier, and found these submarines difficult to find when they are simply hovering. So I want Tasarov on the sonar when we run the straits.”
“He’ll be there,” said Karpov. “With the best ears in the fleet. And with your permission sir, I’ll check on the status of systems repairs. We have trouble with radar sets, the aft Klinok systems, and the sonar there. Now that we are one helo short, we will need to be more deliberate in the event we encounter enemy forces, particularly undersea boats.”
“You believed I waited too long to engage here?”
“I do, sir, with no offense intended.”
Fedorov nodded. “None taken, Karpov. I know I have much to learn, and I will be relying on you and the other senior officers as well if we have to fight again.”
“Every man will give you their best, sir,” said Karpov. “With no doubt.”
Fedorov paused for a moment, then said something else that had been in the air between them and harbored inwardly by both men. “I know this must be difficult for you, Captain—I mean, being reduced in rank and placed beneath me this way. I am not saying I have earned this position either. I know I have no real experience in combat, or even running the ship, though having been a navigator I can maneuver well enough.”
“I understand your feelings, Fedorov, but I must shoulder my burden now as best I can. I asked the admiral for this post, and he wa
s good enough to give it to me. I may have been wrong, even reckless before, and what I did should not be easily forgiven—not by the Admiral, or by you, or even by the junior officers. Yes, I admit it to you now. I had time enough to think about it in the brig these last ten days. You tried to warn me that the American carrier was no threat, but I had more on my head than I could hold at the time, and I acted… stupidly…”
“Alright, Captain,” said Fedorov. “I’ll make you a deal. You keep me from acting stupidly when it comes to fighting the ship, and I’ll do my best to keep you from acting stupidly.” He smiled, and Karpov clasped him on the shoulder.
“Done,” he said.
An hour later the ship was again brought to action stations when yet another squadron of Italian bombers approached from the southwest. Karpov suggested they break up the formation early with one well placed S-300.
“If we throw a firecracker into their beehive they may just have second thoughts about attacking us,” he said confidently, and he was correct. He had Gromenko fire a single long range SAM at the formation, and it was able to kill two planes and send the remaining eight scattering in all directions. Nikolin could hear the pilots chattering on the radio, clearly distressed by what had happened. Then, one by one, the planes broke off and turned southwest for Cagliari.
“That was just a probing attack,” said Fedorov. “They have much bigger fish to fry later today when the British convoy approaches the Skerki Bank. The history records attacks by 20 aircraft at 08:00 hours, a major attack by 70 planes at noon, and then the real show before dusk with over 100 aircraft. Needless to say, I think we can feel fortunate that they are so preoccupied to the south. Tonight they will still be receiving aircraft from Sicily and the air crews will be getting the planes ready for those operations. They know where we are from that last abortive jab. My only hope is that they do not put us on their target list again in the morning.”
Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) Page 12
