Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (40 page)

He opened the throttle a bit cruising
at 300
kph
. Three hours later he would find what he
was looking for, strange lights on the sea, wild arcing trails in the sky,
something moving at a blistering rate of speed far below them, explosions, the
light and fire of a battle at sea.

“Endo,” he called on his short range
radio. “Do you see that? What is it?”

“Must be a plane in a fast dive,” said
Endo. “Let’s get down and find out for ourselves. There! At three o’clock.
That’s a ship! It must be the one we are looking for. Let’s give them a little
more moonlight!”

*
* *

“That
sea plane is getting very close,”
Rodenko said again as Karpov conferred with Samsonov.

The Captain looked up, frowning. “How
close?”

Rodenko squinted at his scope. “Speed
increasing to over 450kph. Bearing on our aft quarter now. Range 35,000 meters
and closing.”

Fedorov turned suddenly, his face
concerned. “Over 450kph? That’s no seaplane!”

“Sound air alert one!” Karpov was
quick to react. “Move Samsonov, forget the battleship for the moment. Give me
that last S-300—Now!”

Samsonov’s hands were quick and agile
on the CIC controls. “Missile ready!”

“Fire!”

The plane was fast, thought Fedorov,
too fast to be a lumbering seaplane. It had to be a strike aircraft of some
kind, but from where? It couldn’t be a Nell out of Port Moresby, not at over
450kph. It couldn’t be a Val dive bomber at that speed either. Only an A6M2
Zero could run like that…Unless…

“This is a night fighter,” he said
quickly. “Probably out of Port Moresby or Rabaul, possibly even Lae. If so,
it’s a long way from home.”

“Don’t worry, it will be in a
permanent home soon,” said Karpov, the S-300 will take care of it.”

But there were
two
planes. Endo
had been right on Kozono’s wing, his precision flying ability on display that
night as the two planes accelerated and prepared to make their strafing runs.
Rodenko’s Top Mast, not truly designed for tactical scenarios, had read both
planes as one.

Endo saw something flash up from the
dark shadow on the sea they were bearing on, with amazing speed. He reacted on
pure reflex.

“Kozono! Bank left, quickly! I’m going
right.” And the two planes suddenly veered away from one another, just as the
missile was ready to acquire. It now had to choose one of two targets, and
Kozono’s luck ran out that night. The S-300 followed his plane and exploded in
a bright fiery rain of shrapnel that took off his left engine and half the
wing. Kozono was wounded, his hand tight on the stick as his plane began to
tailspin down towards the sea.

“Get it Endo!” he said with all the
strength that was left in him, and then he knew no more.

Endo saw him die, and his jaw
tightened, he was right on target, so close that he could see small AA guns
jerking up at him and taking aim. He suddenly swooped low, aimed, and fired
Kozono’s two new 20mm cannons full out, the machine guns on his wings rattling
out their fire as well. At that very moment he saw the ship belch flame from
its own guns, like the baleful breath of a dragon, and his plane shuddered,
riddled with 30mm rounds. His right engine was on fire, but he controlled his
plane, banking around to try and evade. Yet computer controlled AR-710s could
not be fooled by his maneuver. They fired again, and Endo and his plane were
shot to pieces. He would not go on to become one of Japan’s leading aces later
in that very same model plane, and the pilots and crews of at least eight B-29s
would not die at the business end of his skillful trade.

But his own cannons had raked the back
of
Mizuchi
, and the 20mm rounds dug deeply into the tall main mast aft
section, where a series of steam vents for the rapidly spinning turbine engine
vented up in a cleverly hidden stack. It was perforated, rasping out jets of
hot steam, and a small fire started there, adding smoke and flame to the mix.
It was not a serious wound, just a scratch really, but it would end up causing
more trouble than anyone knew when the damage control teams began to respond to
the scene.

Chief Byko put his hands on his hips,
shaking his head as he looked up at the steam venting sideways from a dozen
holes. “Let’s get to work, boys,” he said wearily. “It’s going to be another
long night.”

It was prophetic.

*
* *

She bore
the name of ancient Japan,
Yamato
,
an awesome ship, 862 feet long with a 127 foot beam, nearly 72,000 tons of
iron and steel, almost as much as the British battleships
Rodney
and
Nelson
combined! By comparison the American battleship
Nevada
that had been on
Japan’s target list at Pearl Harbor displaced a measly 27,500 tons.
Yamato
outweighed
Nevada, Oklahoma
and a good heavy cruiser thrown on the
scales as well, truly a super battleship, and no other nation would ever build
anything in her weight class again. 23,000 tons of her weight was dedicated to
armor alone. Yet when she launched in December of 1941, just in time for the
hostilities planned against the United States, the Americans had no knowledge
of her existence beyond veiled rumors of a ship believed to be in the range of
40-50,000 tons. The US would know little more about the ship until they
eventually sank it in an enormous air attack with 400 planes, hitting her with
twelve 1000 pound bombs and at least seven torpedoes years later, in March of
1945.

A six foot wide gold chrysanthemum
crest crowned the sleek construction of her special hydrodynamic bow, which
helped
Yamato
plow through the sea resistance and enhanced her speed.
Driven by twelve Kampon boilers and engines that could generate all of 150,000
horsepower for her quadruple three blade propellers, she ran at 27 knots, an
engineering marvel for her day. To do so she consumed 70 tons of fuel each
hour.

Inside the ship was a maze of
passageways and compartments, so complicated that the decks were painted with
arrows indicating which direction was forward so her crew of 2800 men could
find their way around. There were 1,150 watertight compartments in her hull
design to restrict or allow flooding to correct a list if necessary. Even her
massive fuel stores could be moved by pumps to special compartments to help
correct a list as much as ten degrees.

Now the cranes and catapults on her
enormous aft deck were feverishly working to launch two more of her seven
seaplanes. One was already in the air, but these two would be tasked with
helping gunfire direction by spotting shell falls near the target, as her guns
could lob shells well over the horizon. The ship already knew the approximate
position of her enemy, and even now the range finders perched atop her hundred
foot high main mast were scanning the dark glistening seas ahead to try and
pinpoint their sighting. To either side of this point, two flat antennae jutted
like squarish black ears, the Model 1 Mark 2 set, which ranged out to 20,000
meters. It would not work that night, as her foe was quietly jamming the 1.5
meter band to render it useless, though it seldom worked at all after the first
firing of the enormous guns. The concussion was so great that the radar sets
would be shaken senseless.

Yet even without her fire control radars,
Yamato
had other means of sighting and aiming her powerful guns. The
quality of her optical fire control systems were matched only by the
Bismarck
,
and for combat at night, she had no other equal on earth, until
Kirov
arrived. Yet the actual system used to control and aim her guns was primitive
compared to the capabilities of the enemy she now faced.

The Type 92
Shagekiban
low angle analog computer used on
Yamato
was first developed by the
Aichi Clock Company in 1932. It was a complex system relying on information
from numerous sources outside the computer itself, and the efforts of at least
seven operators. A graphic plotter noted the basic heading and speed of the
target, and calculated bearing change versus time. A range averaging panel
selected out the most likely range by averaging results obtained from several
optical rangefinders. The main panel of the device had displays for present
range and rate of change, spot correction, the speed of the firing ship and its
bearing, wind deflection, a compass card and other functions. It worked in
close cooperation with the type 94
Hoiban
gun
director, and other control systems on the ship, and thus its overall operation
could be degraded when any of these supporting systems were damaged or put out
of action by enemy fire.

The entire effort of the machine was
to produce one vital calculation: future target position. It was, in effect, a
time machine trying to peer into the future and see where the enemy ship would
be two minutes on. The seven man team saw one man reading range averages and
bearing plots, a second slowly cranking a wheel to set the range change
obtained by this control officer. Other men adjusted the settings for bearing,
deflection correction, ship speed, target inclination, compass course from the
gyro, and then the final variable was the all important averaging of the range
solutions obtained by different rangefinders. This man exercised his best
judgment of the results he received, favoring one or excluding another that he
deemed inconsistent or invalid. In short, he was making his best guess of the
actual range from a weight of opinion obtained from three to five different
rangefinders. As such, the system required a great deal of manual input, and as
a gun battle continued, human factors such as fatigue, fear, distraction and
other emotional responses all played a part in the final solution obtained.

By contrast,
Kirov’s
electronic
systems were a million times quicker to their solution, and there were layers
of possible ways to target the enemy—radar, laser range finding and HD optics
as well. The difference meant one thing in the end:
Kirov
found her
enemy in the here and now. It did not have to predict where the target would be
at some future time. What
Kirov
fired at she was going to hit, and
virtually without fail. What
Yamato
fired at she might hit, given enough
time and just a little good luck in the mix. The one remaining factor was this:
did
Kirov
have enough warheads left to put damage on the target
sufficient to ‘mission kill’ or sink it before
Yamato
obtained that one
lucky hit that could cripple its enemy?

With the sudden appearance and attack
by the Japanese night fighters concluded, Karpov now returned to Samsonov,
intent on his principle target.

“Reset range to target data feeds,” he
said his breath now controlled as he imposed calm on himself.

“Target at 32,300 meters and closing.”

“We’ll continue with two Moskit II
missiles now. Give me one for low level attack but key elevation at the number
two strike setting. Then I want the second set for plunging descent. Clear?”

“Aye, sir, missiles keyed to targets
and ready.”

*
* *

Admiral
Yamamoto arrived on the bridge just
in time to see them coming, two bright lights in the sky, faster than any plane
he had ever seen. It was astounding! One came surging in at sea level, and the
second fell from the sky like a flaming meteor, a bolt of lightning thrown from
the Gods above. The sea skimmer hit first, rising ten feet just before it hit
the ship to just barely clear the main weather deck and strike amidships,
twenty feet to the left of the fire still raging from the P-900 attack. Seconds
later the ship was rocked again and the plunging missile came down from above,
falling on the aft section where it struck right atop the armored six inch gun
turret mounted just behind the main guns, penetrating with its tremendous
kinetic impact and a 450kg warhead. The smaller turret was a total loss, and a
large secondary explosion blasted against the back of the more heavily armored
number three turret, shaking it badly, though its massive armor was not
compromised.

Only the armor on that six inch turret
had prevented the missile from plunging deeper into the ship, and while the
secondary explosion was serious, it was not fatal with the much smaller rounds
stored beneath the turret in a well protected magazine. It was only the ready
ammo that had already been lifted higher into the turret itself that detonated
in the second explosion. Elsewhere, the sea skimmer took out two 127mm
batteries on the port side of the ship, then struck the main superstructure
behind them, and flailed the tall inclined smoke stack with tearing shrapnel.
Kirov
had scored a powerful reprisal to the damage done to her own engine ventilation
system, but the fires aboard
Yamato
were now much more severe.

Undaunted, the battleship charged
ahead toward her enemy, and Admiral Yamamoto spoke in a firm controlled voice.
“We will not allow this to go unanswered. Fire your main guns, Captain. Fire at
once!”

Thirty seconds later they heard the
bugles sounding over the roar and commotion of the firefighting effort aft.
They were a warning for all crew members that the massive main turrets were
about to fire their guns in anger at an enemy ship for the very first time.
Yamamoto saw the two forward batteries elevate their barrels, rotate a few
degrees to port, and then the night was ravaged by the enormous blast of six
18.1 inch guns. Any man who had not heeded the brave bugle call in warning was
thrown from his feet, some knocked unconscious by the tremendous concussion.