Steel Reign (Kirov Series Book 23)

by John Schettler

  “Explain,” said Yamamoto, arms folded, and very curious as to how two ships with these new weapons might fight one another.

  “Sir, in our day the element of first contact is very important, even as it is now. In this, we may have a slight edge on the enemy radars. They are good, but I believe our equipment is superior. Once detected, missile salvoes are fired in a relatively large group to maximize the chances of obtaining a critical hit. Any hit, in fact, will do great harm to the enemy, or to our own ship should we fail to stop each and every incoming missile.”

  “Interesting,” said Yamamoto. “Then you cannot sustain hits and still continue fighting, as this ship might easily do?”

  “That will depend on what we were hit with, but these missiles are very deadly. I believe you already know that from the damage inflicted on Hiryu. Our ship would fare no better if struck by a missile.”

  “I see… Thus in many ways, Takami might be thought of as an aircraft carrier, but one with a very small squadron of offensive strike planes, and a large number of fighters. Am I correct?”

  “The analogy is good,” said Fukada.

  “Yet you will have the element of surprise this time.”

  “Possibly,” said Fukada, hedging his bet. “The enemy will not expect our presence here, but they still have the capability of detecting our electronics. Their ship has the ability to detect and analyze electronic emissions, and even relate them to existing ship types that might utilize such equipment.”

  “So you are saying they might hear your ship, if that analogy is correct, and then determine who and what you are by simply listening?”

  “Correct sir, but they will first have to believe what their ears are telling them. In that interval, between their interception of a signal, and their conclusion about it, lies our chance for surprise.”

  “And the enemy ship… They have more missiles than Takami?”

  “If this is a standard loadout for a Kirov Class battlecruiser, then they will have at least 20 SSMs—a designation we give to ship killing missiles. Some of these have already been used to strike our ships, but let us assume they will have at least 16 remaining.”

  “Twice as many as your ship.”

  “Correct sir, and it might be fair to say that the Russian missiles are quite good—perhaps better than our own SSM design. Yet we will have at least 70 fighters to stop those 16 strike planes, to continue with your analogy. I believe our chances are very good.”

  “And can they stop your missiles?”

  Fukada took a deep breath. “Sir, their chances are also very good in that.”

  “I understand,” said Yamamoto. “Of course, the God of Chance must always have his say. Things in war seldom go as we might expect.”

  “There is one other consideration sir,” said Fukada. “If we do lock horns with this Mizuchi, then it may be necessary to expend a considerable portion of our missile inventory to do battle effectively.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well sir, please realize that we cannot replenish or replace any weapon we use. Once these planes are launched, these missiles fired, they go to their sure and certain death, much like our Kamikaze pilots.”

  “Kamikaze? Ah, yes, I read of this in your ship’s library. I suppose that is a very good analogy.”

  “I mention this because the aid we can provide is therefore limited. We could surprise and put serious damage on these last remaining American carriers. Or we might successfully protect this operation planned for the north, but as you have said, we cannot throw a stone in two directions.”

  Yamamoto nodded. This man wants to go south, he realized. He would prefer the clear superiority his ship has against forces from this time. He believes the surprise and shock his ship could deliver to the Americans might be decisive… But I prefer to handle that myself. The Americans I can face on equal terms, and then, may the better man win. This Mizuchi… it is a demon from hell, and I would only waste my forces in trying to find and oppose it. That is a task their ship was designed for, and so that is what they will do. He did not waste any further breath explaining this to Fukada, but simply repeated his orders, an air of finality evident in his tone.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “You sail tonight. Join Admiral Kurita’s Cruiser Squadron. Protect the fleet. Stop this Russian ship… And may the Thunder Gods go with you.”

  “Very good sir,” said Harada. “We will do our best.”

  The only question in the Captain’s mind was whether their best would be good enough. He could see what Yamamoto was doing here, his mind grasping the same logic that the Admiral had run down in his own thinking. Takami was born and bred to do what Yamamoto was now ordering, in this era or in their own time.

  He had listened to Fukada’s explanations, and was satisfied with them. The best we might hope for up north is a stalemate, he thought. But even that would be good enough to complete the mission the Admiral is handing us. We signed on to protect and defend Japan? Well, I’ll admit I had reservations before when it came to cutting down the Americans from this era. It just seemed so underhanded, though this Karpov certainly had no qualms about turning his missiles on our ships.

  Perhaps I can use that—the other fellow’s hubris could be something I can take advantage of. We will have that single edge in this thing—the element of surprise. Yet they have a lot of muscle on that battlecruiser, and a man at the helm that had no reservations of his own when he faced down the US 7th Fleet… My God, that was just a few weeks ago, but now it won’t happen for eighty years—if it ever happens at all. Everything we do here is shuffling the card deck. Our own future history may not look anything like the time we lived in. Thinking about that is somewhat frightening. Have they considered any of this? If they have, it hasn’t stayed their missile fire orders. I’m going to have to be just as tough in this situation.

  The Captain was thinking he had a fairly good chance in the fight up north. Yet neither he, nor his executive officer, had any idea that Kirov had departed Severomorsk with her magazines burgeoning with reloads. The ship had intended to use live ordnance for those exercises in the Norwegian Sea, and then still have a full bar after the party was over. But they had never fired those rounds off, and so Fukada’s math was just a little off that day.

  Kirov had better than a two-to-one advantage in SSMs. In fact, instead of 16 SSMs as Fukada had explained, the ship was carrying 37 of the dread Moskit IIs, with 20 of those crated in a deep interior magazine. It also had seven more P-900s and another ten MOS-IIIs. Kirov would therefore enjoy a six-to-one advantage in ship killing missiles, but Fukada did not know that. To make matters worse, the ship possessed another 20 torpedoes, twice as many as Takami had. On defense, the Russian ship still had 61 of the superb S-300 long range SAMs, 127 of the Klinok Gauntlet type missiles, and 64 of the short range Kashtan system missiles, a three-to-one advantage in SAMs. Kirov was, without any doubt, the undisputed champion of the world when it came to a surface action ship. Fukada had said nothing of another weapon deep within the maw of Mizuchi, a breath of fire and destruction that had not yet been seen in this half of the world. Kirov had nukes…

  Yet as Yamamoto had warned, the Gods of Chance must have their say, and there were also weapons and systems aboard Takami that the Russians were not aware of—and the fact that they would never expect that ship to be present in 1942 would also go a long way towards balancing the odds.

  That night, Takami departed Rabaul as ordered, cruising with Admiral Kurita, who was now deemed their nominal superior officer. They had joined the Japanese navy to protect and defend Japan, and that was what they were now setting off to do.

  Chapter 24

  Eager to get in to the action after joining the Halsey Group, the Wasp went south immediately, joining in on the strikes made against the Japanese lodgment. On the 28th of April it was detached to rendezvous with a tanker and refuel, temporarily reducing TF-16 to only two fleet carriers. After having pounded the facilities lost to the Japanese at Nandi, t
he powerful US battlegroup also withdrew east to Pago Pago, more to replenish ammunition than fuel. Halsey kept station north of Viti Levu, but coastwatchers and PBY sightings soon confirmed that the Japanese carriers were again heading south.

  “Thanks for taking the basket ride over here to see me,” he said to Captain Marc “Pete” Mitscher from the Hornet, conferring with him aboard the Enterprise. Mitscher was a tall, lean man, with a well weathered face and a career dating back to 1910 in the Navy. Halsey wanted to run a few things by him, and share some intelligence.

  “Pete, this will be the big one. We either toe the line here or they’ll push us all the way back to Samoa. The only question I have is whether we should cut Reeves and the Wasp loose to operate independently, or keep all our carriers together in one group.”

  “Easier to coordinate our strikes from one group,” said Mitscher. “Also more planes available for CAP.”

  “True, but they’ll find us out here one way or another, and we can expect to be hit. So it’s a question of how many carriers they find at one time. If I team Shiloh with the Wasp, they would have to split any strike to get at all our flattops.”

  “You’re assuming they’ll operate in one group?”

  “That’s been their MO in the past. They call it the Kido Butai, and word is that that big battlewagon they have is running with the carriers—the Yamato. All six carriers were together when they hit Pearl, though they broke the four they had into two groups in the Coral Sea when they hit Fletcher.”

  “All it took was one group to put Sara and Yorktown down,” said Mitscher.

  “I’ll give them that,” said Halsey. “They know what they’re doing when it comes to carrier operations. But our boys are gaining experience and confidence day by day. The Doolittle Raid we pulled off did a world of good for morale, not only here but back home as well. Now I want to deliver a good punch to this Kido Butai if it shows up, and then dance the late rounds if they still have any fight in them. But we may do things a little differently here. This is going to be combat in fairly restricted waters. There are a couple hundred island scattered through this area, and coral reefs everywhere.”

  “Alright, you want to split the group, I’ll support that. But Shiloh carries only 24 planes. We might at least think about operating within close supporting distance of each other. That way if one or another group gets targeted, the other might lend a hand.”

  “That’ll be the order,” said Halsey. “I’ll detach Shiloh at 12:00 and have her link up with Wasp. A pair of cruisers and five destroyers should be enough to flesh that group out. We’ll designate it TF-17.”

  “That was Fletcher’s old handle before he merged it into TF-11,” said Mitscher. “The men get spooky about things like that.”

  “Alright then, make it Taffy 18. I like the even numbers anyway.”

  “How you figure to hit them?” asked Mitscher. He knew they called Halsey “Bull” for more than one reason, but chief among them was his propensity to be aggressive as a commander, so what he heard next came as a surprise.

  “I’ve had a lot of traffic from Nimitz at Pearl,” said Halsey. “He wants me to play a different game down here. Yes, I’d go right at them if we still had Fletcher’s group out there. But the loss of those two carriers is starting to sting. I’m sitting here with the only maneuverable strike element we have in the US Navy now, and we just flat out can’t risk losing it. We’re getting the Essex sooner than we expected, but it still won’t be available until September, so it’s occurred to me that we have another carrier at hand that can serve us equally well in this fight—The USS Suva. Nimitz suggested it, and the more I think it over, the more I tend to agree. So I’m going to transfer in fighters and strike aircraft from the carriers to that base. I’ll want one strike squadron from each of the fleet carriers—your choice when the hat gets passed to the Hornet. Then we’re going to sit up here on the other side of Vanua Levu, so we can have men down there reporting anything they see coming our way. Our mission is to preserve and defend that airfield at Suva, feed in planes, and hammer their own field at Nandi, and any troop or supply convoys they try to bring in.”

  “What if the Japs swing around the main islands looking for a fight?”

  “Then we swing too, but in the other direction. Now you know me, Pete. You’re a fighting fool just like I am, and you know I wouldn’t run from the devil himself. But the idea here is that we keep the island between us and them, which means they have to overfly anything we have at Suva to get at our carriers. They’ve got an Army Pursuit squadron there with Air Cobras. If we can put enough Wildcats in to back them up, those fighters could break up Jap strike formations aimed at us—but the inverse won’t be true when we go after them with our strike planes.”

  Mitscher nodded. “Sounds damn interesting. I like it. In fact, what we need now are a couple good battalions of Seabees and more airfields all over this island group.”

  “Damn right, and the planes and pilots to put those airfields to good use. Nimitz says he’s looking to scrape up anyone he can find with experience. Some of the flyers are mustering out of China, and he’s asked for them.”

  “The Flying Tigers?”

  “The very same—only this time they won’t have to paint those big white teeth on an Army P-40. The Navy is getting a new fighter, the F4U Corsair.”

  “I’ve heard they wouldn’t be ready for months. Hell, I’ve been asking for them since Pearl.”

  “Sorry Pete, you got passed over. We all did. They only had one squadron available, so they sent it out to Pearl last week. We were at sea, so it ended up on the Shiloh—nine planes. More will be coming soon, but the next bunch goes to the Marines.”

  “The Marines? What the hell?”

  “That’s where these Tiger pilots moved, right into the USMC. So they’ll have a squadron ready with these new fighters inside a week, but it won’t be enough.”

  “Well, we can ferry in planes and set up a de-facto task force of unsinkable aircraft carriers out here on these islands. Sure they can hit those airfields, but if we shadow box them like I think you have it figured, then we can hold our own. It’s a hell of a lot easier to bulldoze over runway craters than it is to build one of these aircraft carriers.”

  “That’s the way Nimitz put it, and that’s the way we’ll play it.”

  “Intel thinks they sortied with some heavy ships again.”

  “More than likely,” said Halsey. “But we’ve got that fast battleship squadron down here now, and I’ll damn well put it to good use. This is becoming a bit of a chess game, and that base at Suva is a good solid pawn, right in the middle of the board. We’re the Knights and Bishops, and we protect that pawn, hold the center, and win through in the endgame with those Marines. Patch and Vandegrift have their marching orders. While we play it cagey out here, the Army and Marines won’t be sitting on defense any longer. They’re going to attack.”

  * * *

  Halsey’s first order of business was to get down and hammer the Jap airfield at Nandi. He did exactly what he planned, advancing in two task forces to hover north of Vanua Levu. What he wanted was a real one two punch, with his SBDs going in first to sweep the Japanese controlled fields with a series of good crisp jabs, then the big right hand haymaker, with the Battle Fleet composed of North Carolina, Washington and South Dakota. The Black Shoe Admiral that had seen his carriers shot out from under him in the Coral Sea was back. Fletcher had transferred to the cruiser Portland, and brought that ship back towards Fiji with the Pensacola and Astoria. The five destroyers he had were also in tow.

  With most of his experience running surface ships, Fletcher felt he was finally playing in the correct league. He had been shaken by the sudden defeat that killed the Saratoga and Yorktown, but there would be no time to brood over the loss. Halsey gave him the battleship squadron, and ordered him in to get some payback by hitting the Japanese at Nandi.

  There were only two squadrons of enemy planes reported there, both flown in fr
om Noumea where they had been transferred off the light carrier Hiyo some months earlier. There were 12 D3A Dive bombers for a small strike element, and 12 more A5M Fighters. When Halsey’s planes hit the new airfield near Tavua in the north, those “Claudes” as the Americans called them all scrambled to defend the main field at Nandi. One of the Vals out on patrol had spotted the approach of Fletcher’s battleships, and radioed back to his squadron mates. They got into the air and on their way just ten minutes before the SBDs off the Halsey Group came thundering in to start their attack.

  Battleships had long been the apple in the eye of a Japanese pilot, and when those D3As saw them they were delighted, and even more enthused by the fact that there were no American fighters up over them. A formation of 10 planes came in to attack, but Fletcher had spotted them on radar, and his ships were rough and ready, his gunners soon filling the skies with flak as the enemy began their diving runs.

  AA Cruiser San Juan was in escort, an Atlanta Class light cruiser with 16 Dual Purpose 5-inch guns that could elevate 85 degrees with added mounts for rounds with special AA fuses. It would come to be considered the very best dual purpose gun in its class, if not the world, and those big rounds were quick to darken the sky over the task force. In spite of that, it was often necessary to fire off at least 100 rounds to get a kill, but good crews could get off over 20 rounds per minute with those guns, so the next five minutes were going to be hot. San Juan would get two of those Vals with that flurry of AAC Mark 49 flak shells that afternoon. Two more would fall prey to her Bofors 40mm guns, 14 in all, and she also had 13 more 20mm Oerlikon AA guns.

  Both the Washington and North Carolina had 20 of the same 5-inch guns that made up San Juan’s primary battery, and another 16 of the 1.1-inch AA guns. South Dakota, being one step newer, had 16 of the 5-inchers, but was beefed up considerably when it came to air defense, as that ship had been built with the idea of it being a Fleet Flagship. It was given no less than 68 Bofors 40mm guns, and 76 of the 20mm Oerlikon AA guns. Her 5-inch guns also carried a very special new round designed for air defense. That was the ship that put those Vals down for the count, getting four more as they came in, with another taken down by the North Carolina. But that left two that got through, and their aim was true. One of the dying planes had also got its bomb off before being hit, so the Japanese got just a little reprisal for the loss of that squadron. They put two one bomb on the North Carolina, and two more on the San Juan.