Kirov (39 page)

Minutes
later that ‘something else’ was again inbound on his position with evil intent.
As before, it came in from above, then swooped down like an evil bird of prey
to skim across the ocean at a scorching speed. This time he saw it, his jaw
slack with amazement as the missile bored in on
Repulse
leaving a long
thin white tail of smoke behind it. “Bloody hell,” he breathed. Then it exploded
again, a little higher and slightly forward of the last hit.

The
ship rocked with the second impact, and fire and smoke billowed up, obscuring
his vision. A single fragment of near molten metal struck and pierced his
forward viewport, shattering the glass there an jarring a nearby bulkhead with
a metallic thud. Thankfully, no one was hit.

“What
in blazes was
that?
” he said to his Executive Officer. His mind reeled,
still replaying the image of the silent, swift approach of the weapon as it flashed
against his ship. Thank god they were hitting us amidships, he thought. Any
higher and that devil would have missed our side armor and run completely
through the ship.

A
com-link phone jangled, and the XO took it up. “Hull breech from that one, sir,
and another bad fire… But well above the water line. No flooding. Burned out
one of the new AA guns above the point of impact. Several casualties.”

“Make
to Tovey,” he said to the signalmen. “Second hit amidships. Not a torpedo, yet
no ship sighted. Weapon appeared to be a
rocket
. Repeat,
not
a torpedo.”
He knew how unusual this would sound. He had heard of experimental rocket
weapons, but had never seen one—until now. It was the only thing that could
possibly explain what he had witnessed and also fit with the reports he had
been receiving from the engineers below. That thing was flying. It came down at
him from above until it hugged the sea before it hit. It was not a torpedo.

Tennant
scanned the horizon with his field glasses, then removed them, squinting up
into the sallow gray sky to look for any sign of an aircraft. There was
nothing. He was like a blindfolded boxer in a ring with the heavyweight
champion of the world. He would never see the punches coming, nor the man who
threw them, but he would surely feel them. He had taken two hard blows to the
gut, and his ship was doubled over with the pain. Yet as he looked about him,
rushing from one side of the bridge to another, the sea was stark, cold and
empty.

~
~ ~

Wake-Walker
was brooding on the Bridge of HMS
Victorious
. He had been delayed while detaching his destroyer screen to
Iceland for refueling and sorting out his remaining planes into one new
squadron. The enemy put on more speed and slipped away, and his radar lost
contact with the phantom raider. Wanting to get back in the chase, he had
planes up that morning spread out in a line abreast in two sub-flights of three
each. One of each group was equipped with radar. The other two were, he
realized, nothing more than decoys. If the enemy fired those damnable long
range rockets at them, chances are they might target the wrong plane and he
could re-acquire his fix on the enemy contact to the south. The planes were
having fits with their radar, however, and his flight leader reported he could
see nothing at all. Reluctantly, he gave the order to bring the ship about,
turning on a heading to best recover his fighters. HMS
Furious
was out
in front, all her planes but two gone now. He would send her off to Scapa Flow
in due course, but for now she was nothing more than a forlorn scout ship.

In
fact, that had been her role when first laid down in 1915. She was one of three
‘oddball’ ships, a light battlecruiser with just two massive guns, one in each
of two turrets mounted fore and aft. But she was soon to lose the cumbersome
weapon up front and have it replaced with a seaplane flight deck that converted
her to a hybrid cruiser-carrier. A year later the aft turret was removed for
another seaplane deck there, and by 1925 both of these decks had been removed
and replaced with a single flight deck that ran nearly the whole length of the
ship. Two other old ships had undergone similar reconstructive surgery, the
Courageous
and
Glorious
, but the former was torpedoed and sunk by
U-20
on 17
Sept 1939, and the latter sunk by gunfire from
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
on 8 June 1940 during the evacuation of Norway.
Furious
was the last of
the oddballs, a strange, anachronism from the First World War bridging the way
to a new era. Yet she was fated that morning to be struck by a nemesis from a time
no man aboard her could imagine, let alone comprehend.

Two
Moskit-II Sunburns arced up into the sky and sped north, accelerating to
lightning speed over the first 90 kilometers, then descending rapidly to skim
just above the sea. They had each been targeted at one of the two British
carriers but, for some reason, both now homed in on the lead contact, hapless
and forsaken, the odd man out of the fleet, HMS
Furious.
Midshipman
Bill
Simpson saw them coming, just by chance when he was out on the flight deck that
morning with Albert Gibson laying lines.

“Look
there, Al,” he pointed, and the two men saw something blur silently in from the
starboard quarter, impossibly fast, then turn with a suddenness that astounded
them and flash in against the ship. There was a thunderous roar as the first
missile struck, blasting through the thinner three inch side armor and flaming
into the guts of the ship as its remaining fuel igniting in a holocaust of fire
and smoke.

The
delay off Iceland had seen the task force fall nearly 200 kilometers behind the
enemy, and that ended up being a bit of a saving grace. The missiles had
expended much of their liquid fuel before they hit home, and there was less to
ignite the fires. Seconds later the other missile struck, literally reeling the
ship to one side as it thundered home and sent both Simpson and Gibson
sprawling onto the deck. Luckily, they were in the aft quarter of the ship, and
when the second explosion blasted up through the thin flight deck, they were
saved from the flying shrapnel, fire and debris. But
Furious
had been
struck a heavy blow, immolating her vacant, empty forward hanger area, with
chunks of twisted steel shot gunned clean through the other side of the ship.
Fire and thick, black smoke were everywhere.

Aboard
Victorious
, Wake-Walker’s head was jerked around as he looked, aghast at
the scene. He had been in the plot room a moment ago, and did not see the
missiles approach. So he, like Captain Tennant on the
Repulse
, surmised
that this had to be a torpedo attack or enemy air strike off the
Graf
Zeppelin
, and he shouted the order for all hands to stand to battle
stations. What was wrong with the ruddy radar sets today? There had been no
sign of aircraft about at all. Then he noticed the strange contrails high in
the distance, two thin tracks from the south aimed right at his ships.

~
~ ~

Thirty
kilometers
behind
Repulse
, Admiral John Tovey knew exactly what Tennant was speaking of
when he sent his frantic messages.
King George V
had been struck in
exactly the same place, dead amidships, and just above the waterline, though
thankfully on the thickest portion of her main belt armor, all of fifteen
inches there, with newer cemented armor that was even more resistant to shock.
While the missiles had managed to storm through the side armor of
Repulse
,
Tovey’s newer ship was jarred, set afire by exploding fuel, but was otherwise
unharmed. The shock, however, was more mental than physical. Both he and his
bridge crew were astounded to think that the Germans could have a weapon of
this speed and accuracy. There was no enemy ship anywhere in sight, and nothing
whatsoever between his ship and
Repulse
, which meant that this rocket
must have been fired from a range of over a hundred kilometers, many times the
range of his big main 14 inch guns. In fact, it had been fired at a range of
130 kilometers, running that distance in just two and a half minutes.

Tovey’s
mind reeled with the shock of the attack, unable to comprehend it. How could
they even
see
his ship to know how to aim and fire such a weapon? He
called to his air watch radar sets and yet no one had seen anything more than
snowy static on their screens. No watchman had reported any sign of a spotting
plane. Then, just as he was getting an assessment of the damage below, another
rocket contrail could be seen overhead, swooping suddenly down to the ocean and
skimming right in over the wave tops to shudder against the side of his
battleship in another thunderous explosion.

The
big ship rocked, then steadied herself, but there was more smoke and fire than
actual serious damage. “God, almighty,” said Tovey. “Thank our lucky stars
we’re taking these on the main belt armor.” His ship had been designed to take
potential hits from the main guns of opposing battleships and survive intact to
keep fighting. In fact, his sister ship
Prince of Wales
had been hit several
times by large 15 inch shells fired by the
Bismarck
weighing all of 1760
pounds. While damaged and penetrated, the ship had remained seaworthy and was
even now at sea ferrying the Prime Minister to Newfoundland.

By
comparison, the missiles fired that morning from
Kirov
delivered a
warhead weighing just under 1000 pounds. This alone was not sufficient to
penetrate the battleship’s main armor when struck full on, though the kinetic
power of the full missile itself when it struck, delivered an incredible shock
that buckled the armor at the point of impact. Yet it held, the strongest outer
wall of the citadel that was the armored shell around the ship’s most vital
inner compartments.

In
her first incarnation
Kirov
had carried an even bigger weapon, the P-700
Granit “Shipwreck” missile that delivered a warhead twice the size of the
Sunburn on a missile that was nearly twice as heavy. These had been removed and
replaced by lighter, faster weapons designed to defeat the real armor of a
modern ship, which was its suite of electronic countermeasures and missile and
gun defenses. The warheads on the new Sunburns would have been enough to make a
shipwreck out of most modern destroyers or frigates with one or two hits, but
they were now striking targets with heavier armor they had never been designed
to defeat.

~
~ ~

When
Samsonov and Rodenko reported a
perfect six out of six hits, Captain Karpov was elated. “That will let them
know we are not to be fooled with,” he said proudly.

“Excuse
me, sir,” said Fedorov. “If our missiles struck as they should have, and hit
the targets amidships, then it is very likely they have not seriously harmed the
battleships. The carriers were probably hurt, and
Repulse
will be damaged,
though I believe she would survive and still be seaworthy. As for
King
George V
, if we hit her belt armor it would feel like a good stiff jab, but
she would shrug it off.”

“What
are you saying?” said Orlov. “The Germans sunk battleships with guided flying
bombs in this war, did they not? Our missiles are much more lethal.”

“Respectfully,
sir,” Fedorov knew he was on thin ice, but he needed to make his point. “You
are referring to the Fritz-X, and yes, they sunk and damaged battleships, from
above
.
They did not strike flush against the main armor belt of those ships as our
missiles would do coming in at just above sea level. They penetrated the deck
armor, which was much thinner. If you want to truly hurt a well armored ship,
then you must reprogram your angle of attack on our missiles and have them
strike well above the hull line, or at a much steeper angle on impact from
above. If you bring them in at sea level, as we would do to defeat modern ship
defensive weapons, they will burn and break armor in places, but will not
penetrate to the interior of a battleship to do serious damage. Our Sunburns
were simply not designed to penetrate this kind of armor. They were built to
penetrate thin hulled modern ships of our day, and that they can do well enough.
Yet we know that at least two hits are thought necessary to disable a modern
American destroyer. Three for their
Ticonderoga
class cruisers, and as
many as five hits for their carriers. Our missiles are powerful, but we need to
hit the ship’s deck and superstructure, not its belt armor.”

Orlov
scowled at him. “You know so much, eh?” But even his own thick skull had been
penetrated by the navigator’s argument. “Samsonov,” he said quickly. “Can we
reprogram the angle of attack?”

“We
can, sir, but it will take some time. I cannot do this while presently engaging
targets. I have two more missiles primed for firing.” He look at the Captain,
waiting.

“Hold
fire, Samsonov,” said Karpov. “Disengage your system and begin reprogramming
for a top down approach to the target. Eliminate the final sea skimming run.
Mister Fedorov is correct. Our Sunburns used as low altitude sea skimmers will
not be as effective as they could be. As the enemy cannot see us, let alone
catch us, we will take the time to make these adjustments. But I want all our
offensive weapons optimized as quickly as possible. Report on your progress in
four hours. For now, secure from battle stations. Mister Rodenko, let me know
what our contact is doing now. Perhaps this attack has at least given them something
more to think about.”