Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (39 page)

The history of the Pacific war he knew
was already shattered, barely recognizable now, and he was as much to blame as
Karpov or anyone else. He remembered his conversation with the Captain earlier.
Yamato
was nothing more than a dead legend, a broken hulk, a great
Prometheus chained to the bottom of the sea where the fish would eat its liver
day by day. That was the great ship’s fate, but now it was still in its full
glory, all 72,000 tons of it, driving through the quiet night, bathed in the
liquid silver of the moon, her massive prow sweeping up a frothy bow wave, her
crew of nearly 2800 men anxiously at their battle stations, lookouts squinting
through binoculars from the high watch stations on the main mast. Compared to
Kirov’s
incredible situational awareness, the enemy was groping her way forward in the
dark like a blind man with a cane…and three triple barreled twelve gauge
shotguns.

He decided.

“The battle is yours, Karpov. I’ve
informed Admiral Volsky as well. He is down in the reactor room with Dobrynin,
but has told me we are to use our best judgment. Protect the ship.”

“Alright, Fedorov. Let the log entry
read that battlecruiser
Kirov
commenced surface action engagement
against the battleship
Yamato
at 20:18 hours, on the night of August 27,
1942. Anton Fedorov commanding. Tactical officer, Vladimir Karpov.”

A junior Lieutenant called out the
confirmation: “Sir, log entry recorded.”

“Very well.”

Karpov clasped his arms behind his
back and turned to Victor Samsonov, the gleam of battle in his eyes.

*
* *

Admiral
Yamamoto received the news from his
operations chief with much chagrin. “All three cruisers damaged? The entire
squadron?”

“Yes, sir. I have just received a
coded distress signal. The screening force was hit by suicide rockets about
twenty minutes ago. We have lost
Jintsu
, and both
Nagara
and
Yura
are heavily damaged. The destroyers from our escort screen are nearby and
rendering assistance.”

“I see…” Yamato’s eyes darkened, his
brow set with concentration. “So the rumors of this ship are proved true after
all. Iwabuchi was not exaggerating with his stories of flying devil fish
raining fire and hell on his ships. How close are we?”

“Sir, we are just inside our maximum
gun range now, but we have no target. There is good moonlight but even our best
spotters will not be able to report anything until we get much closer. They are
launching more seaplanes now.”

Yamamoto stood up, reaching for his
white gloves and putting them on one after another, a slow, deliberate process
that had an air of gravity about it. It was time to fight, if he could only
find his enemy first. He reached slowly and took up his Admiral’s cap, squaring
it on his head as he turned.

“It’s time we were on the bridge,
Kuroshima. Walk with me.”

As two men left the briefing room
Kuroshima cast a wan look at the map table, noting the tiny wooden ships that
had been moved about as the chase unfolded. In one glance he took it all in,
Mutsu
,
Nagato
,
Tone
, and the rest of Iwabuchi’s cruisers, Hara with his
carriers, and the whole of the entire remaining fleet already limping north to
Rabaul and Truk. They had already lost three fleet carriers, not to mention the
chaos here in the Coral Sea. His entire plan was a shambles, the Combined Fleet
completely unhinged, and all because of this solitary raider, this Shadow
Dancer in the night that could command the darkest kami in the seven hells and
fling them against his ships, which now seemed no more useful than these same
wooden toys, he thought. Our cruisers and carriers have been good for little
more than sport here, and now the fate of the war and our nation and people
hangs in the balance.

What was this ship?
Hachiman
, the god of war?
Mizuchi
, the
dreaded sea dragon?
Susanoo
, the storm god? He
closed the door, his heart heavy as he followed the Admiral forward to the
nearest stair well up. Before they had reached the stairs Kuroshima heard a
distant low rumble, resolving to a louder roar. Then the warning bells were
ringing all over the ship, and the strident calls of the men jarred him to keen
alertness.

He felt the ship move, a thudding
vibration followed by the sound of an explosion. Yamamoto turned, his eyes
bright with fire.

“Hurry, Kuroshima, it has begun!”

*
* *

The P-900
missile had used its solid fuel
propellant to quickly gain altitude before activating its ARGS-54 active homing
radar seekers, sweeping the calm night with microwave energy to locate its
target below. Two short, squarish stabilizing wings deployed with a metallic
rasp. Then the missile settled into approach mode briefly, its air breathing
engines cruising at sub-sonic speed for a time as it made its high altitude
approach. Minutes later the sharp nose of the rocket pointed downward towards
the glistening sea and it swooped low, leveling off just feet above the water
where the low-flying supersonic terminal stage of the missile saw it accelerate
in a dizzying dance of zigs and
zags
at nearly Mach
3. It had been designed to defeat another computer controlled SAM umbrella, but
no such defense was in place.

The men aboard
Yamato
watched
it come with blinding speed, a wild light dancing over the sea aimed right at
the heart of the ship, where it flashed against the heavy side armor with a
roaring explosion. It’s 400kg warhead was enough to buckle and burn its way
through twelve of sixteen inches of hardened steel armor. But it could go no
further, though the ship felt as though a Thunder God had struck it with an
iron hammer.
Yamato
rolled slightly, then easily righted herself. There
was a fire, her port side blackened and scarred, but by and large she had not
been seriously hurt.

When the second missile was spotted in
the sky, officers screamed out commands, their arms stiffly pointing out the
target with batons.
Yamato’s
substantial anti-aircraft suite began to
fill the night with metal and fire as few other ships of her day could. Years
later it would be vastly upgraded to 150 guns to defend against her real
nemesis, enemy planes, but it had nowhere near that number at this point in the
war.

The ship was built like a massive
steel castle. Her huge gun turrets with three 18.1 in barrels each were mounted
two forward and one aft. Her central con tower, main mast, superstructure and
stack were then surrounded by what looked like several concentric circles of
armored gun positions. In all there were twelve more 152mm 6.1 inch naval guns
in four tripled turrets, twelve more 127mm 5 inch guns, eight 25mm triple
barreled AA guns and four more 13.2mm AA machine guns. Most every gun on the
port side of the ship was blasting away now, but it did them little good.

The second missile was too fast to be
targeted and killed by a concentrated stream of AA fire, and only random chance
would see it possibly struck by a round as it made its dancing approach to the
ship at low altitude. The fire control officers watched in awe as the low aimed
gun rounds plowed into the sea—and then before they could think to redirect,
the missile plowed into the ship. The second hit was slightly higher,
approaching the upper weather deck but still catching the side armor, though
the explosion seemed more severe. Part of the 200mm armored deck was ripped up
and sent flailing against the base of the main pagoda con tower, knocking out
the open top twin 127mm gun there, and leaving every man at that station dead.
The rest of the blow fell on the heavy side armor, which again weathered the
hit, charred and bruised, but unbroken.

Instinctively, the ship turned its big
turrets toward the source of the lights in the sky, and the long thin streaks
of smoke that marked their low level approach, luminescent in the light of the
rising moon. But up on the bridge the ship’s Rear Admiral
Takayanagi
had already taken the initiative to turn the ship, steering at an angle to
those long thin ghostly trails. The turn also leaned out his profile if the
enemy was seeking to spot him in the night. It would make little difference,
but at least he now knew where the enemy was. He could see flaring bright light
and luminous smoke on the far horizon when the demon rockets fired, and a few
more degrees off his port side he noted the angry glow of fire, his own cruiser
screen still burning in the distance.

Somewhere beyond the charcoal edge of
night, hiding from the moon and still wrapped in gossamer thin shadows,
battlecruiser
Kirov
contemplated what next to throw at his ship. The
battle had only just begun.

*
* *

“Two
hits amidships,” a watch stander reported, pointing at
the HD video being fed from the Tin Man. The cameras were set to infrared, and
the silhouette of the enemy ship glowed in strange hues of white and green, as
it might be viewed through night optic goggles.

“Range closing fast now,” said
Rodenko. “I’m reading 32,000 meters.” The combined speed of the two ships was
now almost sixty knots as they closed, though the angle they were riding toward
a distant intercept point diminished the range somewhat slower.

“Any change in speed?” Karpov asked.

“No, sir. The target continues at 27
knots.”

“It will take more than a couple hits,
Captain” said Fedorov. “I doubt if we seriously hurt them at this point.”

Karpov thought for a moment. “The
P-900s are not as easy to program for a plunging descent, but the Moskit-IIs
can be altered. We ordered them programmed for either low level attack or
plunging fire, did we not?”

“Sir, I have three available with
altered programs. The remainder were kept on the high speed sea-skimming
setting for use against smaller ships.”

Three may just do the job, thought
Karpov. They’ve obviously shaken those two P-900’s off. “Switch to the
Moskit-IIs. It’s time we poked some holes in their deck.”

“Programming,” said Samsonov.
Kirov
had given the enemy two sharp jabs in the opening round, Now she wanted to
throw a couple of real body punches.

“Those three destroyers are still
bearing on our position, sir,” Rodenko put in. “They are due south at 28,000
meters, just beyond the that crippled cruiser screen.”

“All things in time,” said Karpov.
“First we stop this battleship.”

Karpov spoke as if the result were a
foregone conclusion, but he was soon to find out that there were few
certainties in life, and even fewer in war.

Chapter
30

Lt. Commander
Yasuna
Kozono
was a very enterprising
man. He had been trying to find a way to up-gun his new J1N1-C “
Gekkou
” night reconnaissance fighter for some time.
Dubbed the Navy Type 2 Reconnaissance Fighter, he had a small
shotai
of just two planes at Rabaul, early
deliveries that had not been expected until later that year. One had a
spherical turret behind the pilot’s compartment with one Type 99 20mm cannon
installed there, but the weapon seemed entirely too defensive in nature to him,
and ill suited for taking the fight to the enemy. To use it against a bomber he
would have to creep up on the target from below so the gunner could train and
fire his cannon. It was most unsatisfactory, and it negated the one thing he
most loved about his new night fighter, its tremendous top speed of 330 miles
per hour on attack.

What he wanted was a better cannon on
the fuselage to compliment the six smaller 7.7 mm Type 97 machine guns on his
wings. He was so adamant about it that he secretly set about to install the
guns himself in a field-modified version of the plane, hoping Central Command
would never be the wiser. He would come to call his new model the
Gekkou
, or Moonlight, and it was to be tested in a
very special mission, rising to greet its namesake that night. He had just the
perfect pilot to test his new invention as well, Lieutenant Sachio Endo, a
highly skilled flyer of
Tainanku
T-1.

The navy was chasing a sea dragon, and
had called up to Rabaul to see if they could send any help. As the light faded
they feared their ship launched seaplanes would not be able to keep watch on
the enemy ship, and asked Rabaul if they had a night fighter or two to send in
support. It so happened that they had exactly two, all the planes Kozono had,
and he would send Endo in one, and fly the second himself, eager to convince
the navy that his planes should be rolled into more significant production.
Tonight he would get his chance.

As the sun began to set he fired up
his twin 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engines and slowly taxied down
the palm fringed runway, looking over his shoulder to see Endo right behind
him. The two planes roared into the sky, climbing quickly and banking towards
the setting sun, heading southwest to wait for the moon. It would be a long and
possibly dangerous flight, out to the limit of the plane’s operational range,
though Kozono had been wise enough to request drop tanks to extend his mission
slightly. They would fly down the long curved island of New Britain, then over
the Solomon Sea, tipping their wings to the rising moon a little over an hour
later. Soon they would come to the shadowy folds of Papua New Guinea, crossing
that landform to enter the Coral Sea. It was at least 800 kilometers out, and
his effective combat radius was a little over 1120. That would leave him
limited time on target, and he hoped he would find this enemy ship quickly, and
surprise it if he could.