Against the Tide Imperial: The Struggle for Ceylon (The Usurper's War: An Alternative World War II Book 3)

by James Young

Dammit, finally, Lieutenant Eric Cobb thought, chaos swirling around him. After the Germans nearly kill me, the English make me sit through a surface battle, and the Japanese nearly paralyze me, here I am getting to dive bomb some assholes at last.

  “Thach you son-of-a-bitch, get these fighters off us!” Lieutenant Commander Eric Hitchcock, the squadron commander, shouted over the radio. Eric didn’t hear the response from Commander Jimmy Thach, Fighting Five’s commander, but he could see why Hitchcock was incensed as yet another French fighter slashed through Bomber Squadron Eleven’s (VB-11’s) formation. The Frenchman's slipstream buffeted Eric’s bomber, the wind chill in his face through the Dauntless’s cockpit.

  It’s cold as hell out here. He grunted in amusement at the relatively inane observation in the middle of a battle. Yes, being in a different hemisphere took some getting used to, but he was going to be plenty warm if someone set his Dauntless on fire.

  “Red, Blue flights, we have the heavy cruiser!” Lieutenant Commander Hitchcock, barked, tagging the squadron’s first six bombers to go after the French vessel below. “Green, Yellow, get those damn destroyers.”

  VB-11 planes had lifted off the U.S.S. Yorktown’s deck barely an hour before. As the reserve squadron for Task Force 24, VB-11 had been armed with armor-piercing 1,000-lb. bombs and ordered to stand by for launch orders. According to Commander Montgomery, the Yorktown’s CAG, they were either to be committed against any harbor installations that survived the onslaught from the U.S.S. Enterprise, H.M.C.S. Victorious, and H.M.C.S. Ark Royal’s initial attack against the French naval base at Diego Suarez, or attack units attempting to flee. When reconnaissance aircraft had sighted a heavy cruiser and two destroyers just outside the harbor’s mouth, the latter had clearly been decided.

  “Red One, bogey at your five o’clock!” someone warned.

  “Goddamit Green Four, get the hell back into formation!”

  “Yellow Two is hit!”

  The insanity of VB-11’s squadron net was a distant distraction as Eric looked down at the French heavy cruiser turning wildly beneath them. He dimly heard his tail gunner, Radioman First Class Willie Brown, shout a warning about two of the French fighters coming in from seven o’clock high, but did not break from his preparations. As Brown cursed and opened fire with his twin .30-caliber guns, Eric watched Red flight pitch over into its initial dive.

  Red One was hit, he thought, seeing smoke streaming back from the squadron commander’s aircraft. Lieutenant Commander Hitchcock was a first grade asshole, but Eric had watched enough men die already in this war.

  “Sir, break right!” Brown screamed. Eric reacted instinctively, skidding the laden SBD to starboard. It was not a moment too soon, the roar of an aircraft engine suddenly loud as radial-engined French fighter plunged past their port wing tip. Eric had a brief flash of a spiderwebbed canopy and a red smear on the glass.

  Holy shit, Brown! Bringing his eyes back forward, Eric realized they had overshot his intended push over point.

  Goddammit! Moving quickly, Eric extended the Dauntless’s dive brakes. The metal structures extended from the wings, immediately slowing the SBD just before Eric pushed the nose down. Looking through the windshield, he saw with great relief that the French cruiser had reversed course to throw off Red flight’s dive. Black puffs of smoke burst around the lead three dive bombers, tracers arcing up towards Lieutenant Commander Hitchcock’s smoking aircraft.

  Pull out you idiot!

  As if the man was hearing Eric’s mental plea, the trapeze cradle underneath Hitchcock’s aircraft extended to swing the 1,000-lb. bomb clear of the SBD’s propeller arc. Before the device could finish, a French heavy shell burst just underneath the SBD’s starboard wing. As if smacked by an angry toddler striking his toy, the wing flipped upwards then snapped off, fluttering back in the wind. With the sudden loss of lift on that side, Hitchcock’s Dauntless snap rolled, its bomb arcing off crazily under the forces.

  Dammit! Nausea rising up, Eric ignored the rest of the outcome as he bent to his own bombsight. Manipulating his own bomber’s stick and rudder, he aligned the crosshairs on the French cruiser just as Red Three’s bomb hit its bridge. Debris and what he could only assume were some members of the French cruiser’s crew spewed out of the brown-black fireball. Focusing on the ship, Eric gently manipulated the Dauntless’s rudder to keep the now circling ship within the aim point.

  “Four thousand…” Brown began counting down, looking at the altimeter mounted in his position. “Three thousand.”

  Thank God you’re alive. Eric saw the flashes of the French vessel’s automatic weapons winking up at him. With a sharp crack!, one of the vessel’s 90mm anti-aircraft shells exploded off their port wing. Eric felt and heard fragments pepper the airframe, but did not take his eye off the sight. With minor adjustments to his stick, he kept the aim forward of the now-burning bridge.

  “Twenty-five hundred…” Brown said, his tone clearly indicating it was time to release the bomb. With his aimpoint just behind the French tri-color painted atop the second turret, Eric toggled the bomb release. The Dauntless buffeted slightly as the 1,000-lb. bomb swung out into the slipstream, then lifted as the half-ton weapon was released. Eric immediately hauled back on the stick, vision darkening as the blood rushed from his head.

  The vessel was the French cruiser Suffren. With her captain dead on her bridge, command of the vessel had fallen to her executive officer. Unfortunately, the French officer was not made aware of his new promotion in a timely manner. It was only as the cruiser was taking no evasive action and there was no communication with the bridge that the commander realized the damage that had been wrought forward. By that time, Eric’s bomb was completing its descending arc that terminated between the Suffren’s two stacks.

  The 1,000-lb. bomb had been intended to penetrate a capital ship’s decks. As such, it pierced the Suffren’s decks all the way to the forward fire room before detonating on that space’s deck. Unlike the unfortunate Trento a few hours before, the Suffren’s boilers burst, the vented force adding to that of the American high explosive to burst internal bulkheads and the vessel’s sides. With the cruiser moving at twenty-five knots, the sea’s force flooded the space so quickly that those in the midst of being scalded to death were mercifully drowned by the chilling waters.

  Blue Two’s bomb, released high and early, exploded off the Suffren’s starboard bow. Close enough to shake the cruiser and pierce her hull in the bow, the sum effect was to detract even further from the vessel’s buoyancy via the insidious gradual flooding forward. Blue Three’s weapon had the opposite problem, being released so low its fuse barely had time to arm before hitting the extreme end of Suffren’s stern. Passing through the structure, the weapon detonated between the rudder and middle prop, rendering both useless. Shuddering, the heavy cruiser remained locked in a starboard turn.

  The blue gray ocean seemed to be rushing up towards him until it was lost below the Dauntless’s rising nose. Eric could feel the aircraft still sinking as his sight dimmed, the g-forces of his pull out shoving the blood from his head.

  Oh fuck. Simultaneously with a massive blast that shook the SBD, the dive bomber leveled off a scant twenty feet above the water. Eric quickly closed his dive brakes and shoved his throttle forward as tracers arced above his canopy.

  “Ow! Goddamit!” Brown shouted from behind him.

  “You okay, Brown?”

  “Got some metal landing in the cockpit, sir!” Brown replied. “You hit that bitch right amidships!”

  Eric ignored the urge to turn and look back at the cruiser. Instead, having gained some airspeed, he brought the Dauntless around to the designated heading for rendezvous and checked for his wingmen. Ensign Stanley Van Horn, Blue Two, slid into position on his starboard side, but Blue Three was ominously absent.

  “Blue Three, Blue Three, Blue One,” Eric said, keying his microphone.

  “This is Blue Three!” came the confused voice of Ensign Robert Strange, Yorktown’s
newest dive bomber pilot. “I’m north of the target, Blue One, where are you?”

  Eric started to make and angry comment then stopped himself.

  You were once a scared nugget too.

  “Head to the rendezvous point, Blue Three,” he said sharply.

  Only after he’d confirmed the survival of his men did Eric glance over his shoulder back towards the French cruiser. The vessel was slowing to a stop, her stern ablaze and a long slick of oil trailing behind her. One of the large Fantasque-class destroyers accompanying her was in even worse shape, its forward third a mass of flames. Its sister ship was circling at a distance, Green flight having apparently failed to damage it.

  If that captain hasn’t flooded his—

  The violent explosion was a demonstration of what happened when an out-of-control blaze converted a magazine’s potential energy to a thermodynamic process. The destroyer’s bow, mostly separated by the blast, was severed by the press of onrushing water as the Fantasque-class continued to steam forward. With her bow gone, the vessel quickly began to flood, and Eric watched as it began to settle into the Indian Ocean.

  “All Pegasus units, check in with status,” Lieutenant Commander Scott Brigante called over the radio in his thick New York accent.

  I don’t know why we couldn't just use Haymakers on the radio, Eric thought. That was another one of Hitchcock's dumb ideas.

  “Red Two, one down.”

  “Blue Flight, all accounted for,” Eric checked in.

  “Green Flight, one down,” Lieutenant Drake Ramage, Green One, followed.

  “Form up on me,” Brigante said. “Calling Yorktown.”

  Blue Three slid into his position at that moment. Eric winced as he looked the Dauntless over, seeing several holes in the fuselage and wings. Despite its current resemblance to a colander, the SBD was only streaming a slight bit of smoke.

  Unless he's really unlucky, doesn't look like anything is going to become a more serious problem. Still, better check.

  “Blue Three, you look like the moths have been at you over the winter,” he called. “What’s your status?”

  “The engine’s lost a couple of cylinders and McCannis caught some shrapnel,” Strange reported. “But I can get her back.”

  Not like you have much of a choice. Eric looked down at the seas below, then shook his head. If exposure doesn’t get you, the sharks will. Their Royal Navy counterparts had taken some relish in explaining to the Americans just how shark-infested the waters below were this time of year. While Eric had sensed the Fleet Air Arm officers might have been having a lark, he was in no mood to test the theory.

  Those poor French bastards, there’s about to be a couple hundred of them going for a swim.

  “How many hits did we get on the cruiser?” Brigante asked over the squadron net.

  Well shit.

  “Blue Two looked like he missed close forward, Blue Three right under the stern,” Brown said.

  Guess I’ll take that as the gospel. Eric passed along the report as VB-11’s surviving Dauntlesses slowly climbed back to 14,000 feet.

  “Wonder if our mail will finally catch up with us?” Brown pondered, scanning the skies behind them. Yorktown had left Pearl Harbor in mid-May bound for the South Pacific. Their mail had caught up with them precisely once since departing Pearl.

  Not the mail folks’ fault. I’m kind of amazed her props haven’t fallen off as many miles as we’ve steamed.

  “Probably not until we get back to Australia or resupply catches up with us,” Eric said, continuing to keep his eyes peeled. “We basically fell off the ends of the Earth as far as Pacific Fleet is concerned.”

  Brown chuckled bitterly.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sure if you officer types have noticed, but we’re kind of in the wrong ocean.”

  “We go where the enemy is,” Eric noted, his tone conveying that this wasn’t a conversation he was super interested in holding. “The Frogs and Italians were leaning awfully hard on the South Africans, so we want to remind them the Mediterranean is north of here.”

  “Awfully expensive geography lesson today,” Brown replied, then added a very delayed, “Sir.”

  He was good friends with Hitchcock’s gunner, Eric reminded himself, taking a deep breath to keep from jumping down his gunner’s throat. Movement at their altitude on the northern horizon caused the young officer to grab his stick harder. As the dots closed, he recognized them as an outgoing gaggle of Wildcats, Avengers, and Dauntlesses.

  “Looks like the Brits are going to finish that cruiser off,” Eric said. He recognized the Ark Royal’s squadrons due to the distinctive yellow-chevroned rudders and charcoal gray paint on the fuselage.

  I guess the Commonwealth’s work on figuring out a color scheme we Americans can recognize at a distance is progressing well, Eric observed. There had been some rather ugly friendly fire incidents in the Atlantic between USN and Royal Navy forces, some of which had contributed to the Allies losing the Battle of Iceland as several papers had dubbed it.

  Nothing like 14,000 dead sailors and soldiers to generate some reforms.

  “I hope they put that bitch on the bottom,” Brown muttered angrily.

  “That makes two of us,” Eric replied. The ensuing silence told him it was best to let Brown grieve alone

  I hope we do get some damn mail. I wonder what in the hell Jo and Patricia are up to.

  Dry Dock No. 1

  Pearl Harbor

  1000 Local (1500 Eastern)

  24 July

  Patricia Ann Cobb, a.k.a. “Tootsie" or "Toots" to her four brothers, could feel the dockyard workers’ eyes on her as she followed Vice Admiral Halsey down Dry Dock No. 1’s sides. Taking a breath, she pushed the men’s gazes from her mind and listened to what the acting commander-in-chief, Pacific Fleet, was saying.

  “Your drawings and plans in the flesh, Ms. Cobb,” the older man said, his eyes almost twinkling under his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows. With a grand gesture, he pointed to the repaired side of the U.S.S. Maryland. The coat of fresh paint applied to the battlewagon’s side helped to hide the fact that her repaired section was visibly different in weathering compared to the rest of the plating on the armored belt.

  “Thank you, sir,” Patricia said, feeling color rise to her cheeks. She’d been hired on as a draftswoman a scant five weeks before. In that time, her previous experience helping a local architect when she was a young teenager had translated well to drawing ship repair plans. That, in turn, had helped the dockyard crews figure out ways to more efficiently repair the Maryland’s damage and likely saved several men’s jobs.

  “I think it was a team effort, Admiral Halsey,” her boss, Frances Carter, stated. The short, stocky civilian stood just behind Patricia, his broad bulk straining the coveralls he’d been given. His balding brown hair was plastered with sweat, and his beetle brown eyes were narrowed as he spoke.

  I have the urge to shove this man, Patricia thought, controlling her facial expression. Carter had been over her section for less than two weeks, and already Patricia hated the man. Insufferable, chauvinistic, and with a tendency to not watch where his hands were placed, Carter wasted no opportunity in reminding the four women working for him they only had jobs due to the need for the workshop’s men elsewhere.

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t,” Halsey observed flatly.

  Patricia recognized that tone, having heard it in several meetings. It was a noise as distinctive as a safety being taken off a deer rifle.

  Gotta be easier and less painful ways to commit suicide, Patricia thought, then started to smile at one of her brother Nick’s favorite sayings. The youngest Cobb was…somewhere, she had no idea where. The Plunger had left on a war patrol back in May, then not returned to Pearl Harbor.

  “Something amusing, Miss Cobb?” Vice Admiral Halsey asked, startling Patricia.

  “No sir,” she said quickly. “I was just thinking about my brothers.”

  Halsey’s face softened.

&
nbsp; “I wish I was out there with them,” the man said grimly. “Any of them.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she replied, her draw thick with emotion. “It means a great deal.”

  I’m glad Nick’s fiancée is the Submarine Commander’s secretary, Patricia thought as Vice Admiral Halsey gestured for the Maryland’s captain to lead them on. As I’m pretty sure I’d be the first person she’d tell if the Plunger was overdue.

  “Watch your step, Miss Cobb,” her escort, a young ensign, said as she made her way to the gangplank laid to Maryland’s side. Per Halsey’s orders, the battleship’s crew continued with their feverish repairs, doing their part to make sure the battlewagon was ready to sail as soon as possible. Still, the shrill notes of a bosun’s whistle cut through the air as Halsey crossed to the teak deck. Patricia tried to ignore the rather obvious crimson stains near the deck’s edge, their faint outlines making their origins readily apparent.

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” Captain David Bursa, Maryland’s current master, stated as he came to attention then saluted. A thin man of average height, Bursa wore the khaki duty uniform of an officer overseeing work rather than the crisp dress whites such a visit would usually entail.

  “Thank you, Captain Bursa,” Vice Admiral Halsey replied, returning the salute. “Don’t let us get in the way of anyone’s work.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Bursa replied with a nod.

  The next hour was spent crossing up and down decks as Captain Bursa took the party to the areas where Maryland had caught her two torpedoes during the Battle of Hawaii. In both cases, Patricia was amazed at how smoothly the repairs had been added, with the starboard hole being particularly good work.

  “She’ll be ready when the time comes, sir,” Bursa finished, discussing the additional modifications that had been made to Maryland’s equipment since she was already in dry dock.

  “The time is coming sooner than I’d like,” Halsey replied, running a hand through his hair. Bursa nodded in acknowledgment, realizing his superior was not going to say anything else with Patricia and a couple other civilians present.