Iron Gray Sea: Destroyermen

by Taylor Anderson

  “Okay.”

  “Well, the fellas’ll need fed before we go into action”—Matt always insisted on that, and Stites continued—“and since Juan’s in dry dock, he can’t run the galley—”

  “So Campeti can’t clap Lanier in irons like he deserves,” Matt finished.

  “Yes, sir—I mean, no, sir.”

  “I see.”

  In an odd way, Matt was actually enjoying this. Once again, he might soon be responsible for all their lives, but this . . . complaint harked back to a simpler time, before the war here, before the Squall, before the war back home. Even before the tardy, frantic, prewar readiness exercises when many of his duties involved just riding herd on a shipload of rambunctious . . . boys. He had to stifle a nostalgic smile. He stepped closer to the galley window where he was sure Earl Lanier had been listening.

  “Is this true, Lanier?” he shouted over the sea and the roaring galley furnace inside. Lanier appeared.

  “Not completely, sir, though some folks might’a seen it that way.”

  “Very well. I’ll deal with you at mast. Consider yourself confined to your duty station—the galley—until further notice.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Lanier sulked.

  Matt looked back at Stites. “What else?”

  “Sir?”

  “You said there were two things?”

  “Oh! Mr. Campeti asks if we want any of the black-powder shells in the ready lockers or the lineup, you know, in case the new ones give us fits.”

  “Does he expect any fits?”

  “No, sir, he hopes not.”

  “Then no. The older shells’ll put us in range of those things.” Matt gestured back at the 25 mm guns. “That’s no good.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  Matt looked at his watch again. He’d been gone a little over twenty minutes. If Spanky had decided the target was an illusion, someone would have found him and told him. If it was doing anything threatening, he’d have been called back to the bridge. All the same, whatever it was, it ought to be in sight by now.

  “Carry on, Stites, Jeek. I’ll be on the bridge if any more . . . domestic hostilities erupt. And since we’re liable to be in action before long, the punishment for such acts will increase exponentially. Is that clear?”

  CHAPTER 26

  ////// March 25, 1944

  Battle of Madras 1216

  Admiral Keje-Fris-Ar leaned against the bridgewing rail of his beloved Salissa, staring through his Imperial telescope. Commodore Jim Ellis was leading the battle line with his DDs, under full steam and with all sails set. The crisp morning breeze out of the northwest was giving the graceful frigates an extra two or three knots and they seemed to fly across the purple agate sea toward the looming, smoking behemoths on the horizon.

  Keje wasn’t happy sending Ellis and his Des-Div 4 against the Grik battleships. He feared even its powerful guns might prove ineffective against the enemy’s sloping iron sides. He’d heard how Marines sometimes used angled shields to turn musket fire, and suspected the Jaap Grik had designed their mighty ships with similar principles in mind. Jim was right, however. They wouldn’t know until they tried. All the bombs they’d used had been mere incendiaries with little explosive force. The thirty-two-pounders mounted on most of Jim’s ships would give the enemy the first real battering they’d taken. Salissa and Arracca were more heavily armed—Salissa, in particular, with her captured Jaap guns—but much as he hated to admit it, Jim was right about something else as well: Salissa and Arracca were more valuable than every other ship in First Fleet combined, and they shouldn’t be risked unless absolutely necessary, or there was some chance they might inflict more damage than they received. Besides, if Jim failed, only Salissa, Arracca, and the few DDs Jim had left to screen them would remain to defend all the helpless transports, oilers, tenders, and their priceless crews when they made their break. Reinforcements were on the way, but none could possibly arrive in time to make a difference. Ben Mallory’s P-40s were supposed to arrive at Andaman that day, but to be of any use here, they’d have to land and refuel on Saa-lon. Grass strips had been located and laid out, but there were no facilities, fuel, or ordnance in place yet. Keje sank lower against the railing. No, First Fleet would have to fight with what it had.

  He glanced down at Salissa’s flight deck as the last of her Nancys lofted into the sky. There would be one last airstrike before Ellis made his attack, and the pursuit squadrons still carried incendiaries. There was always the chance they could get them through the antiair cannon ports if the enemy opened them. All the planes still carried hand-dropped mortar bombs, but those relied on fierce but relatively light antipersonnel fragmentation and hadn’t been effective at all against the armored ships. Somebody had come up with the bright idea of having the bomb squadrons’ OCs light fuses on the much heavier naval exploding case shot before dropping it on the enemy. Keje shuddered. The fuses were like little signal rocket motors and would flare fiercely—and possibly disastrously. There was a chance someone might drop one of the improvised bombs down an enemy stack, or a near miss detonating alongside might open seams below the waterline. It wasn’t much to hope for. There were better bombs on the way, but for now, they had to make do.

  Keje sighed and nodded at Captain Atlaan-Fas. “Get on the TBS yourself. Send to Commodore Ellis on Dowden: Attack the enemy at your discretion, and may the Maker above be with you all.”

  USS Dowden

  “What a sight!” cried Lieutenant Niaal-Ras-Kavaat, Jim’s exec, while the 1st and 5th Naval Air Wings swirled around the monstrous Grik battlewagons like a swarm of stingers above a herd of rhino pigs. Incendiary bombs spewed rivulets of flame across the ships and the sea, keeping the antiair cannons from firing, if nothing else, and white puffs, like big cotton balls, blossomed around the ships as case shot exploded. Heavy geysers erupted in the air when the bombs hit the water.

  “What a sight,” Jim agreed, watching through his binoculars. A form of hell was being unleashed on the oncoming monsters, but as far as he could tell, the six dreadnaughts—suddenly, he had to call them dreadnaughts—just shouldered it all aside and kept on coming. One of the ironclad frigates that remained with the enemy fleet suddenly jetted fire from every port and silently disintegrated under a muddy gray pall. It was long moments before the dull crack of the detonation reached them, but it was drowned by cheering. Jim was tempted to silence the crew. The destruction of the smaller ship meant nothing. Instead, he let them enjoy the moment. He didn’t know what size guns those monsters carried, but they were probably bigger than his—and longer ranged. His crew would get a wake-up soon enough.

  He looked aft. Trailing behind Dowden were USS Haakar-Faask, USS Naga, USS Bowles, USS Felts, USS Saak-Fas, USS Davis, USS Ramic-Sa-Ar, and USS Clark. All were newer than Dowden and carried thirty-two-pounders to her twenty-fours, but Dowden was his ship, and would fire the first shots. Suddenly, Jim chuckled.

  “What?” Niaal asked, blinking.

  “Oh, nothing,” Jim said, then shrugged. “There’s six of them—eight, counting those frigate things they have left—and nine of us. Hell, this is the first time we’ve ever had ’em outnumbered!”

  Niaal chuckled uneasily. “Yeah . . . but maybe we should’ve brought the whole division. I’d feel better if we outnumbered them a little more.”

  Jim shook his head, pointing to windward where three more “destroyers” paced them. “They can come up quick enough if it looks like we’re doing any good. No sense wasting good ships and crews if we can’t scratch the bastards!” Niaal nodded, but wasn’t sure he agreed. More ships would disperse the enemy fire between more targets . . . wouldn’t they?

  “Besides,” Jim continued, “if they knock us out, I can’t leave Keje naked. Scott’s the only new DD he’s got back there.” He forced a grin. “Hoist the battle flag, Mr. Niaal!”

  Niaal repeated Jim’s command. Moments later, the oversize Stars and
Stripes ran up the halyard and broke to leeward. As the man and ’Cat watched, every trailing ship hoisted its own big flag, and Jim felt a stirring in his chest.

  Niaal strode to the cluster of speaking tubes by the helm. Rather ironically, and unlike the Imperials who’d adopted an elevated flying bridge amidships, “American” frigates still retained their primary conning station on the quarterdeck, aft. Maybe it wasn’t as practical, but it was more traditional and the helm was better protected behind the heavy bulwarks on either side. The auxiliary conn was aft as well, but belowdecks and tied into the same speaking tubes. “Range?” Niaal cried into the tube that ultimately snaked up the main mast to the fire-control platform in the maintop.

  “Six, fi, double oh,” came the tinny reply.

  Dowden may be older, but like her consorts, and most of the warships in First Fleet, she’d recently been fitted with some relatively simple but fundamental improvements. She had a crude VHF radio telephone, a “TBS” (Talk Between Ships) that, though limited to line of sight, allowed her comm officer to speak directly to his counterparts on other ships. It would come in really handy when they had transmitters small enough for aircraft. More important at the moment, Des-Div 4 also had rudimentary fire control. The guns had to be shifted manually from side to side for windage adjustments, but they could be elevated to fire broadsides—true salvos—at relatively precise ranges determined by the gunnery officer. This was accomplished with new electric primers and a gimbaled switch that would complete the firing circuit when the ship was on an even keel. The new rig wasn’t as good as a gyro, of course, but it was better than nothing. In practice, they could now put nearly every round in a ship-size target at fifteen hundred yards—even with smoothbores.

  None of these improvements had made it to Second Fleet yet, due to the distances involved. There are probably some politics involved as well, Jim thought grimly. On one level, he understood. The Grik were still perceived as the immediate threat by most, including Adar, and though he supported the Imperial Alliance, he, like most Lemurians, considered the Doms as primarily an Imperial problem. What made that attitude gall Jim was the fact that there were Lemurian—American—ships, crews, and troops in the east, and they shouldn’t be deprived of better equipment simply because some thought their fight was less important. Or maybe in this instance, politics had a place. The Empire was still racked by security issues, and it had been drummed into everyone that, crude as it was, the new fire-control apparatus must never fall into enemy hands. The Japanese would probably come up with something similar for the Grik, if they hadn’t already. (We’re about to find out, Jim thought.) But it should remain a major advantage over the Doms for a long time to come—if nobody squealed. Jim shook his head and concentrated on the business at hand.

  “Forty-five hundreds,” Niaal repeated the latest estimate.

  “Very well. Sound general quarters.”

  “Generaal quarters! Generaal quarters!” Niaal shouted at the ’Cat standing beside the alarm bell. “Clear for action!” The heavy bell began to ring and drums thundered in the waist. Jim clasped his hands behind his back and fixed a calm expression on his face. This would be his first real surface action since the Battle of Baalkpan. He hoped it wouldn’t be his last. More important, though, he hoped he wouldn’t screw it up.

  The Grik dreadnaughts churned inexorably closer, their massive, sloping sides rearing high out of the sea. Des-Div 4 had the advantage of the wind, speed, and position, angling to cross the enemy’s projected course. Its first salvos should take the lead Grik ship dead on the bow in succession, and Jim wondered why Kurokawa—It has to be Kurokawa over there, he thought—would so obligingly let him “cross his T.” Was the maniacal Jap really so supremely confident? Jim felt a chill.

  “Three thousands!” Niaal reported. Three huge clouds of smoke blossomed at the forward casemate of the oncoming ship.

  “Kind of ambitious,” Jim muttered. A few hundred yards short, widely spaced geysers erupted into the sky. They looked like the splashes of the eight-inch cruiser guns that had dogged Walker so long ago.

  “Jeez!” Niaal whispered. “Kind of daamn big! Those must be hundred-pounders, maybe bigger!”

  “They’ll never hit us from this range. Grik gunnery has always been crap,” Jim reassured him. Reassured himself. “Keep track of the time between shots.”

  “Maybe they don’t hit us from here, but we gotta get closer,” Niaal reminded. “Quartermaster! You timing the shots?”

  “Ay, sir.”

  “All ships will concentrate fire on that devil up front,” Jim ordered, even as the enemy line began to assume an echelon formation, the dreadnaughts behind starting to ease to the side and increase speed. Soon all the enemy ships would be approaching parallel to one another. Jim suspected they would make a coordinated turn to starboard, exposing their port broadsides when Des-Div 4 entered what the enemy considered his own best range. Niaal saw it too.

  “You sure you want to concentrate on just that one?”

  “Yeah. If we can’t hurt one of them with everything we’ve got, there’s no hope against them all, and we might as well break off. Send it.”

  “Ay, sur.”

  Time passed as the fleets drew nearer one another, and the tension rose proportionately.

  “Two t’ousands!” came the shout through the voice tube.

  “Stand by! We’ll commence firing at fifteen hundred. The gunnery officer will give the command.”

  Three more massive puffs of smoke obscured the target before the wind swept them away.

  “Eight minutes, twenty seconds!” cried the quartermaster.

  “Very well.”

  Two great splashes erupted fairly close astern, and one mighty shot moaned by overhead, snapping a single backstay before it plunged into the sea a hundred yards to port.

  “Starboard baat-tery, match elevations for fifteen hundreds!” the gunnery officer commanded.

  “Elevations matched!” came the replies of the midshipmen, each in charge of a pair of guns.

  “Stand clear!”

  “All clear!”

  Moments later, with only the brief clanging of a bell in the maintop as warning, all twelve of Dowden’s twenty-four-pounders in the starboard broadside vomited smoke and fire with a precision only Walker’s guns had ever shown in combat. The smoke drifted downrange, toward the target, but quickly dissipated as Jim watched the impressively tight cluster of roundshot rise and rise, then plummet toward the target.

  ArataAmagi

  ArataAmagi rattled and shuddered like a tin roof under an impossibly dense onslaught of giant hailstones. Her forward armor was not as sloped as elsewhere on the ship and was therefore the thickest, but shards of shattered iron, from armor and shot, sleeted in through the viewports, killing the helmsman and two others in the pilothouse. Even Kurokawa felt a sting as a sliver of iron clipped his ear.

  “Take the helm, fool!” he screamed at Captain Akera, who seemed stunned by the sound and density of the pummeling ArataAmagi just received. Jerking his head as if clearing his senses, he lunged for the spoked, wooden wheel. “Secure all battle shutters but the three directly in front of the helm!” Akera shouted. “Report all damage!” he added into the ship-wide speaking tube.

  “One of the forward guns has shattered,” came an immediate, coughing reply. They already knew that the gun deck filled with smoke whenever they fired any of the main battery, and the ventilation was poor. “Its crew is dead. Other gun’s crews were wounded by fragments that ranged the length of the gun deck!”

  “Any other damage?” Akera asked.

  “None I can see, Captain,” came the voice. “Perhaps a little buckling in the timbers backing the armor.”

  “Very well,” Akera said. “Pull in the guns and secure the gunport shutters!”

  “Belay that!” Kurokawa screamed. “We must continue firing!”

  “General of the Sea,” Akera pleaded. “We must wait until the enemy is closer and we can unmask
our entire broadside! Clearly they have devised a fire-control system of some sort. I doubt a quarter of their shots could have missed us. Leaving the forward ports open only invites more damage we have little hope of answering!”

  Kurokawa opened his mouth, but before he could speak, ArataAmagi shuddered again under another cacophonous hammering that seemed even heavier than the first. Even through the thick deck beneath their feet they heard the bloodcurdling shrieks of Grik that time.

  “A shot came through the starboard bow port that time!” came the excited, coughing cry of the Japanese gunnery officer. “It killed several, and pierced the forward smoke-box uptake! We have exhaust gas on the gun deck!”

  Akera looked at Kurokawa.

  “Very well!” Kurokawa seethed. “We will close the shutters and endure this insulting barrage as long as we must to come to grips with the enemy!”

  Akera repeated his earlier order, then looked through the slits just in time to see the third ship in the distant line stream white smoke. He ducked down as more hammer blows pounded his ship and more shattered iron sprayed into the pilothouse, tearing jagged holes in the bulkhead aft. Kurokawa was the only one who hadn’t ducked, and he was miraculously spared. The first ship fired again, and after that, the beating became continuous.

  USS Dowden

  “She’s taking a beating, all right,” Niaal said, staring through his telescope. “Her frontal armor looks all dented up—and I think it’s bolted on in layers. We may have knocked a few plates loose, or maybe shattered them!”

  “Hmm,” was all Jim said. He was pleased with his division’s gunnery; fewer than half the shots fired had missed their mark and they still only had smoothbores, but it wasn’t good enough. At this rate, they’d eventually batter in the forward casemate of that one ship. They might even destroy her. But she no longer led her sisters; the other five had joined her in a parallel advance. When they turned—soon, most likely—they’d present their undamaged sides and all the guns behind them.