Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (26 page)

Karpov was quickly on alert, as the
ship was still in the Pandora Passage making a slow ten knots and with no room
to maneuver at the moment. He noted that the KA-40 had just completed its mine
laying operations and was over the ship again, preparing to land.

“Comm Officer. Send to the KA-40.
Belay the landing order and move to a position ahead of the ship to begin ASW
operations, alert level 1.” Then he looked to Fedorov. “Will this sub need to
be in close as the others we’ve encountered?”

Fedorov had been leaning over his old
navigation station working with a junior officer there to make the final course
adjustment to clear the passage. The word submarine jarred him as well, and he
suddenly realized the danger they were in.

“No!” he said sharply. “They may very
well have the Type 95 torpedo. It has tremendous range and this boat could fire
at us the moment he sees us. The closer the better, of course, but there were
instances where Japanese submarines fired from 12,000 meters.”

He was all too correct. Tasarov sat up
suddenly, one hand on his headset, and called out another warning. “Con, I have
torpedoes in the water! One, three, no, make that
four
torpedoes inbound
at over 40 knots!”

“Samsonov, activate forward UDAV-2
system,” said Karpov sharply. “Fire a barrage at maximum range. Now!” Unable to
maneuver the ship, Karpov was going to immediately use the powerful 300kg
rockets to lay down a barrage of fire in the sea ahead of the ship as a
defensive barrier. It was a good idea, the very same weapon they had used to
blast away at the minefields in Bonifacio Strait, and again when they were
fired on by the German U-Boat off Fornells Bay, Menorca in the Med, but it was
ill timed. The explosive barrier had expended itself before the torpedoes
reached the 3000 meter range mark, and they pressed on through the churning
waters, all aimed for the exit of the Pandora Passage where
Kirov
lumbered forward at 10 knots.

If they had been homing torpedoes, the
ship would have be dealt a mortal blow then and there. But these were torpedoes
that ran where they were pointed, with a unique kerosene-oxygen fuel that made
them very reliable and gave them tremendous range. They did tend to wander,
left or right, but no more than 270 yards at maximum range. Kuriyama had fired
all four of his forward tubes to account for wander, and was hopeful that at
least one of his lances would strike home with its big 406 kilogram warhead,
all of 893 pounds.

He was not disappointed.

While the two torpedoes on the outermost
portion of his fan of four were both well wide, the center two were running
true. The left torpedo had the misfortune to scud against a submerged rock, and
the collision sent it wildly off to one side, and well away from the target
before it struck the Ashmore Reef and exploded. The last came in on
Kirov’s
port side, and in spite of a quick 5 point turn intended to evade it, the
torpedo was close enough to the hull and exploded amidships, the powerful
concussion rolling the ship heavily.

Lights winked on the main bridge, and
then went to red briefly until the emergency battery backup systems kicked in
and the electronics sputtered to life again. The sudden loss of power to the
CIC meant Samsonov could not select the next weapon Karpov wanted to call for,
the lethal
Shkval
super-cavitating torpedo that had made a quick end of
the Submarine
Talisman
in the Med as they neared Gibraltar.

But the KA-40 already had dipping
sonar in the water ahead of them, and had enough data from the ship’s telemetry
before they began to prosecute to get a good bearing on the hidden enemy’s
position. It fired back an airborne ASW active/passive acoustic homing torpedo,
the APR-5, with a warhead much smaller than the type 95 at only 76 kilograms.
It was quick to the target with its solid-fuel pump-jet propulsion engine, and
minutes later it found
Ro-33
while the crews in the forward torpedo room
were rushing to seal the hatches on another round of fresh Type 95s.

Kuriyama was allowed that brief moment
of elation when he saw the high water spout of the explosion on the side of the
oncoming ship. Then he felt his submarine shake violently when the APR-5 struck
it right on the nose, exploding and setting off all four of the fresh Type 95’s
there as well. The front of the sub was virtually ripped apart, and every man
aboard quickly met the fate they evaded at the hands of the destroyer
Arunta
,
only three days early.

Mother Time was balancing her books.

 *
* *

Kirov
had almost avoided the hit. The
torpedo actually was triggered by a small stabilizing fin extending
perpendicular from the hull called the ‘UK-134-6’ system, designed to minimize
roll and create a more stable missile firing platform. The reinforced metal
work there actually helped the ship, though they lost the entire port side
stabilizing fin. As it was the warhead did not strike the ship full on, but
detonated near the hull at her widest point abeam, where the 100mm anti-torpedo
bulwark had been built to provide some protection and help deflect and absorb
the explosive power of the torpedo. Behind the bulwark was a void filled with
seawater, another 50mm armor plate and then the inner hull. The 406kg warhead
was powerful enough to blast through them all, ripping an eight foot gash in
the ship and sending a cascade of seawater into two interior compartments.

Flood control alarms sounded all over
the ship as water tight doors were automatically shut and crewmen scrambled to
seal all hatches. Damage control parties were on the move at once in a well
drilled routine that the men never once thought they would have to practice in
reality. Yet reality had a hard bite at times, and
Kirov
was wounded, a
hit far worse than the bomb that had grazed her, and even more threatening than
the incredible damage inflicted by Hayashi’s headlong dive with his D3A1.
Damage below the waterline was the bane of every sea captain for centuries. Two
things could kill a ship faster than anything else: fire above was one of them,
but water below was feared even more.

Directly above the area hit was the
Korall–BN2 module that was integrated with the Combat Information System to
control the P-900 cruise missiles Karpov had just used against
Kirishima
.
It was hit by fragments of metal and put off line. A small boat mounted on the
weather deck also suffered slight damage, but the threat was deeper in the
bowels of the ship, where water had forced its way to a point two bulkheads
away from the reactor core. The crews fought to get pumps active at once while
Byko was coolly directing their efforts. In time they managed to pump most of
the water that had penetrated beyond the outermost compartments, but those two
sections were fully flooded, and it would take divers in the water with metal
hull sealers to close the compartment from the outside before they could hope
to use the pumps again on that area.

It was going to be another long night.

When the news came up to the Bridge
Fedorov knew they had again been very lucky. “Had it struck us full on
amidships the damage could have been fatal,” he said.

“We’re listing a few degrees to port,”
said Karpov. “It’s very slight, but I can sense it. We won’t be able to make
anything much over this speed until we seal that hull breach. So if that
battleship and its hound dog cruisers behind us get close again, I’m afraid
we’re going to have to get serious, in spite of our missile inventories.”

The power stabilized, and the mains
came back on, the quiet hum of the equipment reassuring. Then they heard a
distant explosion, deep and powerful immediately followed by another as if a
Thunder God had struck a great kettle drum in anger. Fedorov’s eyes were drawn
to the Tin Man video feed where they could see the shadowy silhouette of the
Japanese battleship against the sun. It seemed shrouded in mist. Then he saw a
huge column of water rise up near one side of the ship and he immediately
realized that the enemy must be in the mined Prince of Wales Channel, the
narrow 800 meter wide segment where the KA-40 had laid her eggs, the six MDM-3
anti-shipping mines.

“I think that battleship struck one of
our mines!” he said, somewhat relieved. He was wrong.
Kirishima
had run
afoul of
two
of the powerful MDM-3s, both on the starboard side of the
ship, and the combined weight of their explosive power was all of 3000
kilograms, over 6600 pounds! The hull shock factor of the twin explosions was
tremendous. The shock effect to the ship itself was enough to shake it so
violently that the engines and boilers were detached from their iron moorings
and thrown against the bulkheads of their compartments. The crew were flung
madly about, hundreds stunned an unconscious, limbs broken, necks snapped,
skulls fractured. It was as if the hand of God had simply reached down and
smashed a fist against the side of the great ship, bashing a hole in her side
in spite of the heavy armor, and sending in the cobalt blue and aqua green
waters of the sea.

Kirishima
was dying a very painful death, as if
a sleek and powerful shark had been seized upon and slammed down on the hardest
of rocks. On the bridge the supply officer Kobayashi was dead, his spine broken
when he was thrown against the edge of an open hatch. Secondary battery
commander Ikeda would not get a chance to test his gunnery skills if
Kirishima
could have ever managed to get within 18,000 yards. Main gunnery officer
Koshino was below in the damaged forward turret trying to get it operational
again, unconscious but alive. XO Koro Ono had been out on the weather bridge
and was thrown completely off the ship.

But amazingly, one man survived
unscathed, bruised, shocked, but alive and livid with rage. Captain Sanji
Iwabuchi struggled back up onto his hands and knees, gasping for breath. He
could feel the heavy list of the ship, and when his mind cleared he
instinctively called the name Yoshino, his flood control officer. He had seen
no rockets this time. What had happened? His dazed mind would not function
properly, but his instincts told him the ship had been dealt a fatal blow.

Thankfully not every man aboard was
incapacitated, and small parties of white coated junior officers were making
their way to the bridge. The ship was clearly sinking, but she had little more
than seven meters of water beneath her at that moment and not far to go. She
settled quickly, her hard metal hull scudding against the bottom and then
rolled heavily to starboard, her tall pagoda main mast tilted crazily beyond
thirty degrees. With a horrid grinding of metal on stone,
Kirishima
came
to rest in the shallow reefs just south of the main channel, and there she would
lie for a good long while. With most of her port side weather deck and
superstructure still well above the water line. She would never meet with the
US battleships
Washington
and
North Carolina
in the equally
dangerous waters off Guadalcanal, and never founder and sink to the bottom of
Iron Bottom Sound on the day she was appointed to die, November 15, 1942.

When Iwabuchi finally realized what
had happened he reluctantly gave the order to abandon ship. Two of his cruisers
had tried to find passages farther north, leaving the main channel to
Kirishima
.
The last cruiser, the
Tone
, had finally caught up and joined his task
force that evening. She was two kilometers behind the big battleship, ready to
enter the channel, but now her captain ordered all stop, amazed at the
spectacle of the battleship keeling over just ahead.

“I will transfer my flag to
Tone
,”
said Iwabuchi angrily to a nearby officer. “See that the Emperor’s portrait is
handled properly and notify me when it is safely aboard a life boat. I will
follow.”

The venerable battleship would block
the channel completely, and now he knew that the enemy was likely to slip away
into the gathering shadows to the east. But I will follow,
Mizuchi
, he
said to himself, a cold anger in his gut. Yes, I will follow….

Part VII

The Long Night

“Not
the torturer will scare me,

nor
the body’s final fall,

nor
the barrels of death’s rifles,

nor
the shadows on the wall,

nor
the night when to the ground

the
last dim star of pain is hurled,

but
the blind indifference

of
a merciless, unfeeling world.

—
Roger
Waters

Chapter
19

Kirov
moved slowly south into the gathering
darkness, the sun blazoning gold behind her, and the threat of distant storm
clouds fisting up over the shadowy green folds of Papua New Guinea to the
north. They moved south for an hour, then slowed to five knots so Byko could
get divers in the water with acetylene torches and hull sealing plates.