Tide Of Fortune (Kirov Series Book 20)

by John Schettler

  Now a strange calculus entered his mind, and with it came a shaking realization of what was actually happening at that moment. The two Japanese battleships carried eight 14-inch guns each, but they would be opposed by twelve 14-inch guns on the Arizona, ten on the Nevada, and then another ten on the Oklahoma. The Americans would have a decided advantage, with 32 big guns against only 16 for Mikawa’s force. Nagumo knew it was unlikely those ships were steaming alone. There would be cruisers and destroyers in that enemy task force as well. How could it have been missed? The frenzy of the unexpected carrier attack had overshadowed all else.

  Now the fleet was facing a strong enemy surface action group, with Kaga out there like a wounded bison, and unable to stay in the herd. And here they were with no planes ready to strike these unexpected American battleships. Now he realized Nagumo’s turn to the north, so quietly veiled as instructions to recover and re-arm for further operations, was actually a forced disengagement. The Admiral was preparing to retire, or at the very least he was laboring now to get his carriers as far from those battleships as possible.

  He gave Nagumo one look that indicated he understood everything in his superior officer’s mind, and then went off, sharply issuing the orders that had been given. Nagumo turned again to look at Kaga, his lips tight, cheeks taut. He had no choice, he thought. He had to leave his sister ship behind….

  A single 500 pound bomb, flown and delivered on a single SBD-2 Dauntless, by a singularly motivated pilot who had lost all worries about finding his way home, had now changed everything.

  * * *

  It was a lonesome feeling when the first planes eventually made it back to Enterprise. Halsey was out on the weather bridge watching them come, thinking the main body had to be right behind these early arrivals. Two planes looked like they still had their bombs in place, and he made a mental note to go see the pilots and ask them why… until he saw the planes first after they landed. The damage from enemy machine gun and flak was plain to see. One SBD even had the canopy shattered, the pilot flying in the open air the whole way home, and damage to wings, tail fins and engine cowlings was visible even from his perch above the flight deck. Eleven SBDs made it back, along with three Wildcats and six TBDs. That was all that was left of his wing, just 20 of 53 planes that he had launched only two hours ago.

  To make matters worse, he had already received word of the fate of the Lexington. Newton had abandoned ship, moving his flag to the heavy cruiser Portland, which was also hit, but had managed to control the fires. Chicago had it a little worse, and was still fighting fires amidships. Astoria was gone, along with destroyer Flusser, and the remaining four destroyers in TF 12, Porter, Drayton, Lamson and Mayhan, were circling the stricken carrier trying to get as many men off the lifeboats and out of the water as possible.

  On top of all this, the news came back from Pearl with reports on the heavy damage there. Captain Murray was at his side now, seeing that grim bulldog look on Halsey’s face, only now he seemed a dog without a bone.

  “We got hit real hard today,” said Murray.

  “Don’t I know it,” said Halsey. He was thinking of the men lost now, not the ships. They could, and would, build more ships, but the men could never be really replaced. Fresh faced recruits would soon flood every branch of the service as the startling news of the Pearl Harbor attack rippled across the country. Yet it was all standing force that was lost today, the ships, planes, and men who had been in navy blue and khaki in the years before the war, and Halsey was silently counting the men.

  There were over 2500 out there on the Lexington alone, and now he had word from Van Valkenburgh that his heavy division had sighted the enemy and was preparing to engage. There were another thousand men on each of those battleships, hundreds more on the escort ships. Now he was considering the wisdom of so boldly ordering them north to attack, as was Murray, though he said nothing to Halsey about it at a moment like this.

  “What about the boys off Lexington?” said Murray. “They’ll be running on fumes in another twenty minutes.”

  “Word is they’re inbound now, and god help them,” said Halsey. “I didn’t know where we’d put the damn planes, until I saw what was left of our own air wing.”

  A straggler from the Enterprise group had run into trouble, dived to evade a pursuing enemy fighter, eventually losing it in low clouds. The delay had been very fortunate. By the time he climbed to a cruising altitude, he spotted a flight of planes and heard some loose chatter on the radio that told them they were friendly. It was a group of planes off the Lexington, and they were more than eager to follow him home.

  “They hit us at Guam,” said Murray. “No doubt Wake and Midway will be next. At least those planes we delivered were there in the nick of time, but we haven’t heard anything else for a while. MacArthur ought to be on his toes in the Philippines.”

  “Mountbatten warned me about this,” said Halsey, with a strange edge in his tone. “Remember when we entertained his highness here aboard the Enterprise? He took part in that little destroyer attack exercise when we transferred him to the Balch. Well after that, he told me he was appalled by the poor state of readiness at Pearl. Said the Japanese had a history of starting things by launching surprise attacks, and Pearl Harbor looked like ripe fruit. Well, he was right, wasn’t he.”

  “Admiral… Do you think the Brits knew about this in advance?”

  “If they did, they might have made their warning just a little more official, but that hardly matters now.”

  The real scope of what was happening descended on Halsey like a dark cloud. They had been receiving war warnings for months, whispered intelligence, signals that had been decoded, oddities in the behaviors and schedules of Japanese diplomats in embassies all over the Pacific. Now the storm had finally broken, a raging torrent that would make a misnomer of the name they had given to the ocean this war would be fought on. Yes, they had been hit hard, treacherously hard, but they were already fighting back. This action was not yet concluded. The Admiral wanted to see what was left after the last of the planes came in, and he was keeping his fingers crossed behind his back as he waited on word from Van Valkenburgh on the Arizona.

  Halsey looked at Captain Murray, his brow furrowed, eyes set, and that big jaw jutting forward with sudden confidence behind the anger that was so apparent in what he said next. It is said that history never quite repeats itself, but it rhymes. In this instance it was a haunting echo of a statement the Admiral made when he saw the damage inflicted on the men, ships and facilities at Pearl Harbor.

  “George,” he said. “Before we're done with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell!”

  Murray nodded silently.

  Chapter 8

  Karpov stood on the bridge of the battlecruiser Kirov, the smile barely faded from his expression as his mind now turned to the action that lay ahead. Behind him stood Anton Fedorov, unmasked and newly recruited to the Admiral’s camp, seeing no other way to be relevant in the situation, and realizing that the power he was handed in Karpov’s offer of Starpom would otherwise have to be won by conflict, and possibly even blood on the ship. That was something he was not yet prepared to foment, and the fact that they were now on the edge of momentous events made it even more imperative that his voice be heard at the command level, and without Karpov’s suspicion poisoning their relationship.

  “Well,” said Karpov. “It’s begun, and that damn ice has delayed us just enough to miss the main event. But better late than never, eh Fedorov?” He looked down the long forward bow of the ship, remembering every occasion when those missile doors would open and the weapons would snap up, hearing the soft hiss of the inclination jets fire to aim them before their engines would erupt with bright fire and the billow of hot white smoke. He remembered every target, every kill, and every heated moment when the ship had faced the danger of enemy attack. One by one, those missiles had been expended, Kirov’s power slowly diminishing each and every time it was used, until at one point, t
here in the Coral Sea, they had finally fired the last of their AA missile suite. The ship had been reduced to the level of a fast cruiser, with only a fraction of the power it now held beneath that deck.

  Karpov’s eyes played over the hatches where the S-300s were stored, straying to the long broad compartments that harbored the dreadful Moskit-II. Now he remembered that first tactical briefing after the ship’s arrival. Perhaps only Fedorov remembered it now, as every other man aboard seemed oblivious to all they had experienced and endured before that strange moment of Paradox came upon them. But it was still all clear to Karpov. He could hear Fedorov’s voice in his mind, cautioning him about the need to respect the offensive power of the ships from this era, and telling him that even the 8-inch guns on these enemy cruisers could land fatal blows on Kirov if they ever got close enough to do so.

  They were like the world’s best heavyweight, he thought, fast, lean, with lightning quick reflexes and ring savvy unlike any man to ever put on the gloves. They could dance and move out of harm’s way in half a heartbeat, and when they attacked, they had the most murderous punch ever seen. Yet, for all of that, there was but one flaw they had to live with. Kirov was a heavyweight with a glass jaw. One good punch from their opponent might be all it would take to deliver a knockout blow that would end the ship’s reign as the world champion. Fedorov’s first warning from that meeting was in his mind now…

  “Do you have any idea what a 15 or 16-inch shell would do to this ship if we should be hit? Even an 8-inch shell could easily penetrate the forward deck and ignite the missile fuel and warheads there, and my guess is that this ship would literally be blown to pieces in that event. We are not invulnerable.”

  And he could remember exactly what he had said in response… “But our advantage lies elsewhere. True, we have only armored certain segments of the ship, the citadels, the reactor cores. But we do not have to come anywhere near an enemy ship to deliver a barrage of precision guided firepower on the enemy. Our missiles can fire from a range of 250 kilometers or more! Our cannon can use rocket assisted munitions and range out to 50 kilometers if need be. We can stand off and destroy any fleet we encounter, and they will never even see us. The only equivalent weapon the enemy might deploy is a fleet of aircraft carriers, and we can find them with our helicopters first, and sink them before they become a threat. Should any dare launch an air strike at us, our SAM defenses will be more than enough to protect us.”

  Volsky had chimed in with another warning, and one Karpov knew only too well now. “What you say is true for a time,” The Admiral had said. “It was fortunate that we replenished our primary missile inventory for the live fire exercise before we were able to complete our scheduled maneuvers. We find ourselves with reloads aboard for our Moskit-IIs. But yet there is a limit to what we can accomplish, yes? We now have forty Moskit-IIs in inventory instead of only twenty, and ten each for our other missiles. That means we have a gun with 60 rounds, and after they have been fired, all we have left are the 152mm cannon and a few torpedoes, twenty, to be exact. Certainly no ship in the world can match us now, yet we must be very judicious as to how we choose to actually use the weaponry we have.”

  Very judicious indeed, thought Karpov. Experience can be a very hard teacher. The awful sound of Japanese dive bombers swooping down in a near vertical attack was still fresh in his mind. His own lightning quick reflex for war had saved the ship that time, but it took half the Kashtan close in defense missiles in one massed salvo to do it. Even then, one plane got through, smashing savagely into the battle bridge on the aft segment of the ship, and it was only the 200mm armor on both the roof and deck of that compartment that had saved them.

  That had been a moment of grave peril, and he knew he must heed the warnings long ago expressed by Fedorov and Volsky, and listen also to the voice of his own experience in fighting these many battles. One thing he could also never forget was the sheer determination of the men who fought on the ships of this day and age, and particularly the singular mindset of the Japanese, willing to give all in the moment of attack, embracing death if it could not be avoided, and willing to stop at nothing to deliver harm to their enemy. Look what it took to force Japan to finally surrender, he thought, the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That thought was echoed by the recollection of his own voice as he had answered Volsky that day.

  “You are forgetting one other thing,” he had told him. “We have nuclear warheads aboard.”

  Yes, at that moment they held power that was inconceivable to any generation of men who had ever lived or walked upon this earth or sailed its seas. At that moment they had Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or any other city they might choose, right in the palm of their hand, and all they had to do was clench their fist. Volsky had been quick to rule out use of those weapons from the very first, he thought, but I had them in mind right from the outset. I must admit that my deployment of that awesome power was less than judicious. I was young and brash back then, and believed nothing could harm us. I wanted to show our enemies just what we could do to them unless they fell into line, and yet, expending one of those precious warheads to kill an old American battleship and a few escorts was really a waste. It certainly had a very dramatic effect, but did it stop them? Not for one moment. In their ignorance they fought on, heedless of the danger we posed, but what else could they do?

  Yes, he thought. That is a lesson I found very hard to learn, and I must not forget it this time around. This entire world is at war, and by God, they’ll fight to the finish. The world has never seen anything to rival the sheer unbridled terror of WWII. It makes all other wars pale by comparison. Even the so called ‘Great War’ that preceded it was merely a foreshock to the cataclysm that WWII would bring. Entire cities would be burned and broken, with a hundred thousand or more killed in a single hour—twice the number of dead the Americans experienced over ten years in Vietnam. And it is not just the Japanese who would fight with ruthless determination. The Americans rooted them out of one cave after another, for four long years. They would lose more lives in combat in a single weekend to take one island than they would sacrifice in all those ten years they fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fedorov can give me the numbers.

  So now I hold that pistol again, fully loaded, a gun with 60 rounds, and those three trump card warheads that could be utterly decisive if I use them at just the right moment. Fedorov won’t want to hear that, but hopefully he will not be any further problem.

  “You took Nikolin’s report?” He turned to his new Starpom, and could not help noticing that there was something in the way Fedorov stood there on the bridge that was also decidedly different. Yes, he had been Captain here once. He had settled into the big chair, unwillingly at first, but in the long months at sea, through trial and fire, he had earned his place there. That experience was now quite evident in the man. Even the other junior officers can see it, sense it in him. I could see it from the very first. I knew something was different about him, and would have unmasked him in time in spite of every subterfuge, because no man can truly ever disguise who he really is. He’s going to show his colors, one way or another. Can Fedorov see who I really am now? I wonder…

  “Yes sir,” said Fedorov. “Apparently there has already been a point of departure, and this time we had nothing whatsoever to do with it. That shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose. This world, the history of these events, is already greatly changed.”

  “Your shattered mirror?” said Karpov.

  “Yes, but what does surprise me is how true that image still is in so many ways. From what we’ve been able to determine, the Japanese strike force here, the Kido Butai, was almost identical to the one they sent to attack Pearl Harbor—six fleet carriers at its heart.”

  “But there’s been a big change now,” said Karpov. Nikolin had been closely monitoring radio traffic, along with another mishman who was fluent in Japanese. They had pieced the situation together from that traffic, surmising in time that there had been a carrier action northwest of Pear
l Harbor.

  “What do you make of this, Mister Fedorov?”

  “It’s quite serious, sir. If the reports are correct, and the Americans lost the Lexington, that now leaves them with only one carrier here in the Pacific.”

  “Yet several of their battleships escaped harm,” said Karpov.

  “Nikolin says he is fairly certain there was also a surface engagement involving those ships, but yes, it seems they have survived.”

  “That would be Battleship Division 1,” said Fedorov the Arizona, Oklahoma and Nevada.”

  “Arizona? That was the ship they made a monument of, am I correct?”

  “Yes sir, perhaps one of the most famous ships in history, if only because of the way it died. It came to symbolize the entire Pearl Harbor attack.”

  “That honor will now have to be given to another old battleship,” said Karpov. “And the Japanese? What do you think of that report?”

  “It’s clear they also took hits in that carrier duel. My understanding is that two of their carriers were hit, with Kaga taking the worst of it. Mishman Tanaya says he’s picked up numerous radio intercepts where the Japanese are routing aircraft to other carriers, and away from Kaga. That ship has been detached from the main body, and from the code signals I was able to decrypt, it is being sent to Kwajalein, the closest Japanese anchorage, which tells me the damage must be serious. Otherwise they would have just ordered it back to Japan.”

  “Interesting,” said Karpov. “Then this attack, while different in some respects, leaves the Americans in much the same position they were in the real history.”

  “Except for the loss of Lexington, sir. That by far outweighs the survival of Battleship Division 1. In fact, I’m surprised the Japanese did not go after those ships and finish them off. My guess is that the damage to Kaga, and the weather front building today, compelled Nagumo to retire.”