Yamato was going to suffer again, but even as the sleek missiles leapt up and declined to their aiming points, the men on the bridge saw the night horizon ripped open yet again as the enemy guns sought them in the darkness. The bright backwash of the missile firing lit the ship up, and the sharp eyes aboard the crow’s nests tuned their superb night optics another few points to the good.
Yamato’s second salvo would also miss; Kirov’s would not. The Sunburns struck the ship aft again, one slamming directly into the massive rear turret this time, and the second plunging down on the broad fantail where it hit one of the huge cranes and exploded before its armor piercing warhead could strike the 200mm deck armor. The deck was still buckled downward with the explosion, and the missile fuel now ignited another fire aft, right in the midst of the seaplane tending operations. No more spotting planes would rise to search for the enemy, and two that had been spotted on the catapults were immolated.
As for the aft turret, it had been turned to face the distant unseen foe, and the missile struck just beneath the leftmost gun barrel, flush against its hardened faceplate of 26 inch steel. The gun barrel was jerked upwards by the explosion so violently that the gears used to elevate and depress it were broken and made inoperable. The crew inside the turret took a fearful pounding, and new fires were raging outside their massive armored shell, but the armor held. Seven men had been knocked senseless, yet others were crawling up from the depths of the huge magazines below, to take their place. Two of the three guns could still be fired. The turret was still in the fight.
Damage control chiefs shouted reports to the bridge. The first fire amidships had been quelled, only to be restarted again when the Sunburns rekindled it. Thick black smoke still poured up from the heart of the ship, adding darkness to the night as the angry fires burned. Now desperate crews were rushing to fight the fires aft, where one of the two seaplane catapults, which would have been the height of a five story building if stood on its end, now jutted at a near 90 degree angle from the ship, bent and twisted.
Aboard Kirov, Fedorov skillfully maneuvered the ship as a fan of eight torpedoes approached, and when the danger had passed he returned to a heading of 67 degrees. The three Japanese destroyers would not get a chance to fire their second torpedo salvo. Now all three of Kirov’s accurate 152mm guns were pounding them. Hamikaze was dead in the water. Maikaze was burning amidships, her captain dead. Nowaki fared a little better, making smoke in a futile attempt to screen the other ships. Her decks were already crowded with survivors from the cruiser Jintsu, and her Captain Kora thought the better of pressing his attack under these circumstances.
“Those destroyers have been stopped at 20,000 meters,” said Rodenko. One is dead in the water, the others are withdrawing.”
“Well enough, secure deck guns,” said Karpov. “Any speed change on the primary contact?”
“No, sir. They are still making just under 27 knots.”
“As are we,” said Karpov. “Helm, I thought we were at full battle speed.”
“Sir, my indicator is ahead full.”
“But the reading is 27 knots,” the Captain turned to Fedorov, raising an eyebrow. “You are correct about this ship,” he said. We’ve put six harpoons in this whale and still it comes undaunted. But our speed is off, and that is a matter of some concern.”
“I’ll see about it,” said Fedorov.
“We’ll hit them again. Another round, Samsonov. Same as before. One above, one below.”
“Just a moment, Captain,” Fedorov interjected. “Hold up, Mr. Samsonov.” His mind had been on evading the Long Lance torpedoes the enemy sent his way, then it suddenly occurred to him that they had Long Lances of their own!
“We’ve been attacking this ship’s superstructure since the hull is so heavily armored. But there’s another way to pierce the hull—what about torpedoes? We have torpedoes, don’t we?”
“Why… Yes,” said the Captain. “Yes we do! The Vodopad system has UGST-2 torpedoes.” The weapon was a highly adaptable modular system, allowing for different propulsion and warhead options, hence the “U” for its universal capabilities. The ship carried tubes on either side, the ports opening on the hull itself.
“What’s their range?” asked Fedorov.
“Over 35,000 meters,” said Karpov with a smile.
The ‘Vodopad’ or ‘Waterfall’ system was an apt description for the way the torpedoes would eject from the side of the ship, a waterfall of steam and gas in their wake, rolling down off the side of the hull. The torpedoes were capable of using nuclear warheads, though Kirov had none of these in inventory on this mission. After ejecting it would dip into the sea, propelled several hundred feet out before the tail fins and control elements would flip out and the pumpjet propulsor engine would activate. It was one of the first torpedoes to use an onboard digital computer and had wire guided control options, as well as a dual channel homing and detonation for either acoustic or electromagnetic operation. It also had integrated sonar that could detect ship wakes and follow them to the target. In effect, it was the Long Lance on steroids, and with all these redundant control systems, it was not going to miss a ship the size of Yamato, no matter what their captain did to try and avoid it.
Perhaps it was his distaste for submarines and torpedoes that had prevented Karpov from selecting the weapon earlier, his mind on the missiles, and pleased with the results he had been getting with them. Yet Yamato was as hardened a target as the ship would ever fire upon, and even now they saw her fourth salvo blast at them in the distance, as if to shout back that they were hit, but not hurt, and their guns were still seeking them in the night. These rounds would fall much closer, the Type 92 Shagekiban fire control ‘computer’ slowly walking the big shells to a point where they were now of some concern. The range had fallen to just under 22,000 meters.
“Ready on Vodopad system, Samsonov. Starboard side tubes.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Two torpedoes please, and you may fire when ready.”
Karpov was being stingy. His impulse was to fire the entire battery in a spread of five torpedoes and end this battle there and then. But the empty SAM silos and the rapidly diminishing missile SSM inventory was moderating his choices. He wanted to hold on to as much combat capability as he could. The torpedoes swished into the water and went streaking away, their wakeless propulsion system making them stealthy on top of the already lethal nature of the weapon.
“That may not be enough,” said Fedorov. “Yamato took seven American torpedoes before she sank, and that took an hour and a half.”
“Very well,” said Karpov. “One more for Mister Fedorov.” He looked at Samsonov with a smile, convinced they now had the battle well in hand. There would be no way the enemy ship could evade those torpedoes. They were carrying a 425kg warhead, and they were going to hurt anything they struck, and badly.
Then something happened that no one had counted on, except perhaps Lieutenant Commander Hayashi when he bravely dove his crippled Val dive bomber into Kirov’s aft battle bridge. That strike had occurred right above the Vodopad system, and only the second barrier of the citadel floor there, 200mm thick, had prevented it from going deeper to ignite the torpedo magazines. But there had been a fire, a very serious one, and not all the damage had been discovered and repaired in the brief time since the plane had flamed into the ship. Control cabling for the number three UGST torpedo had been burned, its wiring exposed, and when the fire order was given the tube itself also had a slight warp from concussion when the ship had been shaken with Hayashi’s hit.
The intrepid Japanese pilot who had first put a 250kg bomb on the aft quarter of the ship before riding his plane to death with a second hit was now reaching out from the grave to strike at his enemy once more.
Chapter 32
The number three torpedo failed to eject, jutting like a broken finger from the side of the ship, jammed in its own firing tube, yet its firing cycle was still active. The preliminary propulsion jet was trying to engage, and
yet the system fed a fault signal to the unit’s computer brain, and internal backup systems were ordered to kick in after a five second delay.
“Misfire on the number three torpedo!” Samsonov shouted, his voice loud and deep.
“Abort!” Karpov’s order was obvious, but Samsonov had already thumbed the abort switch. The torpedo’s propulsion system shut down and its engine was stilled, yet now there was no way they were going to use the remaining tubes on that side of the ship until crews could get in and clear the misfire and check for further damage. That was not going to happen in this engagement, but at least Kirov had two torpedoes out and running true, two long sleek Moray eels in the water driving on at 40 knots, a little over twenty meters per second. Even at that speed their time on target was over seventeen minutes away. In that time Yamato was likely to get in many more of her main gun salvos, and now the range was falling to 21,000 meters. Ninety seconds later the big battleship fired again, the rounds falling no more than 800 meters off Kirov’s stern, leading her now.
“What I wouldn’t give for a few more SAMs” said Karpov. “Those seaplanes are feeding back shell fall corrections to that ship. Nikolin, can we jam all normal radio frequencies they might be using?”
“I’m sure we can, sir.”
“Then do it! Wide area jam. Ready on Moskit-II system again, Samsonov. Two more missiles please, the same as before. We can’t wait for those torpedoes.” Karpov looked at his watch, then gave the order to fire. Two more Sunburns ejected and roared away at five second intervals, one sea skimmer and the last of those reprogrammed for plunging descent. Kirov’s missile count now slipped to eleven.
* * *
Yamamoto had felt his proud ship taking one blow after another, yet she fought on. The bridge crew was intense at their stations, the gunnery officer shouting out encouragement through the voice tubes to the men below. The ship’s commander stood tall by the binnacle, bracing himself each time the bugle call gave the five second warning before firing. The spotters were eagerly watching through binoculars and longer range optics, looking for the huge white water splashes glistening up in the moonlight.
When the two brave night fighters out of Rabaul had come streaking in, the men on the bridge cheered, then saw them blown to pieces by the demon ship they were stalking. Now the Admiral stood by Kuroshima, in awe as he watched the dark horizon light up again, first hoping his guns had struck home, then realizing that more rockets had been fired at his ship. What was this enemy? If the British could build such weapons then he knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the war was lost for certain. There was no defense against them, no answer but to doggedly close the range and endure one punishing blow after another, his ship on fire, men dying, thick smoke choking the open topped gun stations amidships.
Here they came again, one rocket blazing in just above the surface of the water while a second climbed high up into the sky to fall like thunder and lightning on his intrepid ship and crew—and they never missed. Surely they must be piloted as Kuroshima suggested, but now his hands were as white as his gloves on the nearest hand rail, body stiff as he braced himself for yet another series of hits. How much more could the ship take? Kuroshima’s words haunted him as the missiles came in. This ship was more than it seemed. It was Japan’s very best, the pinnacle of their naval engineering. Every man in the navy coveted a posting to Yamato, and not simply because of the relatively plush living conditions and better food. It was the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. If he were to lose it here… All this passed through his mind in the barest instant, and then the thunder came.
The first missile struck just above the weather deck, slamming right into the heavy barbette of the forward main gun turret with a brilliant explosion that shattered two windows on the bridge and sent one junior officer careening against a bulkhead. The barbette withstood the blow, but the damage was sufficient to impede its easy rotation until crews could fight the fire and clear debris. In the meantime, the gun could not properly train on the target, and relief crews rushed inside to replace wounded men and re-man their positions. Five seconds later the second missile plunged down on the ship about 300 feet forward of that position, on the broad and relatively empty deck of the bow. There it smashed through the armor and burned into the ship’s interior, plunging through two more decks and igniting yet another major fire.
The ship now had fires from bow to stern, yet her speed was unimpeded and she turned slightly to allow the two functioning guns of her aft turret to join the battle. The next salvo came only from the number two forward turret, an angry reprisal that managed to drop shells short, but within 500 meters of the enemy ship. Spotters on the high main mast eagerly shouted out the news to their officers, who then relayed the information to the fire control station, and the crews hastily fed in corrections to make their next best guess at where Kirov would be in a hundred and twenty seconds.
* * *
Anton Fedorov did not want to make that rendezvous with an 18.1 inch shell. He gave the order ahead two thirds and starboard twenty, slowing and turning in towards the enemy ship. Yamato was now clearly visible in the distance, her massive silhouette illuminated by her own fires. He knew the enemy would correct their shortfall by firing longer, presuming he would maintain his old speed. By slowing and turning he hoped the next salvo would be long and well ahead of the ship. He was correct.
Three more rounds fell in a tight pattern, this time about 700 meters off his forward port side. Elated with his success, he turned to the helmsman and gave his next order. “Port twenty and ahead full!” He was chasing salvos, but now he saw what looked like three explosions near the aft quarter of the enemy ship. Both of Karpov’s torpedoes hit home with a vengeance. The third explosion was Yamato’s aft turret firing, and the officer in charge had not corrected based on the last salvo from the forward guns. He was using stale data, but it proved to be remarkably fresh when the spotters saw the results. To compound matters, when Fedorov called for renewed speed, it was not there. The damage worked by that small twenty millimeter round had forced Dobrynin to feed in much more cooling to the reactors, and they were slowly losing power.
Two rounds came withering in towards the ship, the sound of their approach magnified greatly. God, no, thought Fedorov. God help us, no!
The first round came hurtling towards the main mast, just a little high, but so close that it sheared away the Top Mast antennae as it screamed by and plunged into the sea off the ship’s port side with a massive geyser. The second round fell just shy of the ship’s starboard side sending a huge column of water up beyond the height of the main mast, which cascaded down onto the weather deck in a great fall of seawater. The ship rocked from the wave action generated by the titanic rounds, careening through the falling spray and pressing on.
Fedorov finally released his breath. A straddle! The enemy had finally found the range and the ship had just come within a hair’s breadth of annihilation. Twenty or thirty feet in either direction and those rounds would have broken her back.
Karpov was leaning over the radar screen with Rodenko when his monitor quavered and then went entirely black on the Top Mast system. Kirov had just taken a head butt and a hard thumb to the eyes. The Fregat system was still off line, and now they had lost their other long range weather and general surveillance radar. She was blind.
“I’ve lost Top Mast,” Rodenko reported. “The entire system is down. Attempting to Cross circuit to the MR-212B system….No luck, sir. I’ve got yellow fault lights all through the navigation radar sets as well. The Active Phased Array is presently offline, and in reset diagnostic mode. I can give you short range returns with individual system fire control radars, but we have no effective long range coverage at the moment.”
That was not all. Byko called up to the bridge and indicated the emergency hull patch had been jarred by the near miss and was again leaking. They were taking seawater amidships. Dobrynin seconded the matter by confirming he could only give the ship twenty knots while
he worked to control his reactors. Events were stacking up like good cards in the enemy hand, and Fedorov could only think that Yamato was now about to play an Ace at any moment.
“Helm, port twenty and all the speed you can give me!” The young captain wanted an immediate course change, this time in the same direction he had turned earlier instead of a ziz-zag back to starboard. He wanted to get the ship off the range line that now must surely be plotted by the enemy.
“There was a second contact bearing on our position from the southwest,” said Karpov. “We were looking at it just before we lost the radar scan.”
“Sir….” Tasarov spoke up now. “I can hear it on sonar.” He had been listening closely to the battle, both his equipment and inner ear sorting out the chaos in the sound field. When the big rounds came in so close he thanked God that his system was capable of detecting and muting sound spikes to protect his ears. It was state of the art, and among the best surface sonar systems in his world of 2021. Kirov’s own screws were a loud wash over everything, but Tasarov had that signature well profiled and he was filtering it well. He also had a good read on the deep thrum of Yamato’s screws, but there was a third contact, faint but growing louder, higher in pitch, more distant, with a unique signal pattern, and he had been listening to it for some time now.
“That will be the heavy cruiser Tone,” said Fedorov.
“I last marked it at about a hundred kilometers and closing fast at the angle we’ve been running on.” Tasarov confirmed the estimated range, then noticed something more.
“The screw pattern for the Yamato contact has changed significantly, sir. I think they’re slowing down too.”
Tasarov had very good ears.
* * *
The torpedoes found their target easily enough after their long seventeen minute run. One activated its wake homing mode, easily profiled the big ship’s frothing footprints, and rode them right into the rightmost screw, demolishing it with its powerful explosion. The second followed, slipped a few hundred feet wide and then detonated to damage the ship’s hull very near the end of her underwater torpedo bulwark protection. There was an immediate hull breach and Yamato started shipping water across three compartments. The ship also reeled to starboard, her rudder batted violently by the explosion of the first torpedo, and also damaged.
Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) Page 29
