Armageddon

Chapter 9

The action opened at 13:20 hours when Kirov began firing its 152mm batteries at a range of 18,000 meters. This time there were no pleasantries or warnings on the telegraph. In Karpov’s mind he had clearly stated the terms he was operating under, and now battle would decide who’s word would prevail. The guns could fire for effect as far as 30,000 meters out, and had a small inventory of 200 rocket assisted rounds that could extend that range over the horizon to 56,000 meters, but none had been used. Karpov was satisfied to close to 18,000 meters, more out of curiosity as to the enemy’s capabilities than anything else. He knew he may be navigating restricted waters ahead in the Tsushima Straits and he wanted to test the accuracy and range of the enemy guns.

Kirov’s first radar assisted rounds straddled Kamimura’s new flagship immediately, and the Japanese Admiral ordered the armored cruiser Tokiwa to quickly make a five point turn to port, thinking to avoid the next salvo. There was no way he could conceive of guns being controlled by unseen electromagnetic radar energy that could feed data on his ship’s course, speed and exact location relative to the firing weapon. Yet the second salvo quickly repeated the hard experience he had suffered in his first engagement with this Russian dreadnought. The Izumo was laid up in port, riddled by the shock of eight direct hits from 6 inch shells.

Two 152mm rounds smashed into his armored bow just at the waterline and sent columns of sea spray up to wash over the forward deck. The distant silhouette of the enemy ship was looming like a storm cloud on the horizon, its flanks lit by gouts of fire that seemed to ripple fore to aft as Kirov fired its three turrets in sequence. Each salvo sent 18 rounds, and they came in three sets of six, with the sharp thunder crack of the guns rolling over the sea.

Kamimura felt his ship shudder again, and heard the hard chink and roar of an explosion as the conning tower was struck dead on. The armor was heavy enough to stop the round penetrating, but the concussion threw two junior officers to the deck and prompted him to drop his field glasses and seize a nearby rail to keep his feet.

A sturdy ship, Tokiwa was one of six armored cruisers ordered from the British shipbuilder Armstrong Whitworth after the Sino-Japanese war. Just seven feet shorter than the fleet flagship, the battleship Mikasa, the cruiser cut a silhouette very close to that ship, with twin turrets housing 203mm 8 inch guns mounted fore and aft and seven 6 inch guns in casements on each side of the ship. She had twin funnels just like Mikasa as well, though the beam was much narrower. Tokiwa’s name meant “Evergreen,” and she was destined to be one of the longest serving ships in the Japanese Navy, converted to a minesweeper and sunk in 1945 at the end of WWII by air attack.

“What is the range?” Kamimura shouted over the roar.

“At least 17,000 meters! How can they hit us like this?” His gunnery officer was sitting at the Barr amp; Stroud naval rangefinder, built by a pair of Scottish professors and now installed on all Japanese warships. It looked like a long telescope, only the lenses were mounted on the sides of each end and the eyepiece was dead center on the tube. The ‘processor’ used to align it on the enemy ship was the human eye and cerebral cortex, as the instrument was stereoscopic, and when the operator aligned the images sent from each lens into one picture, the range was reported on a readout by means of triangulation. A telegraph operator sitting beside the equipment would signal the range to the turrets below, and it would also be called out through voice tubes, written on chalk boards, and eventually denoted by moving hands on the face of a clock.

“Just as they hit us before, Lieutenant Hachiro. But we must answer with our forward main gun.”

“It can fire no more than 13,000 meters, Admiral.”

“Even so, the enemy must see us return fire. I will not be pockmarked with shot and shell again without answering!”

Hachiro sent the signal for maximum elevation via telegraph and then ran to a voice tube and shouted down the order to fire. They heard the hoarse throated shouts of men repeat the order with bull horns below and, down on the forward deck, a young officer ran to the open back hatch on the armored turret housing.

The big guns answered soon after, belching a distinctive yellow fire. The shells were loaded with Lyddite, a derivative of Picric Acid discovered by a Mister Woulffe in Britain when he sought to use the substance as a dye and found it was also very explosive. On impact the shells would emit a haze of yellow gas, the very same dye property Woulffe was trying to harness. The two rounds swooped out, falling all of 5,000 meters short in the sea between the two ships. That distance and the fact that Kirov had the speed to maintain it at Karpov’s whim, would be the deciding factor of the engagement.

Tokiwa was again being hit, the 152mm rounds possessing much more explosive power and penetrating ability than the same caliber gun of 1908. Before it could fire its third salvo the front twin turret on the cruiser was dealt a severe blow when a round smashed into the 5.9 inches of armor and nearly blasted clean through. The jet of molten steel it sent into the turret space killed three crewmen and badly burned another. Men rushed through the back hatch to drag the bodies out and re-crew the guns, but a second hit jolted them from their feet and now a fire started on the deck just aft of the gun, the raging sheets of flame licking at the open hatch door.

Thick smoke billowed in, and a crewman reached to the hatch handle, screaming as his hands were burned by the heated metal, yet still desperately pulling the hatch shut to keep out the smoke. Men were already choking inside on the fumes, and now the sailor’s valiant effort only sealed them in a metal tomb. Another 152mm round struck the turret, and they were knocked senseless by the concussion.

But amazingly, the range was rapidly closing. The enemy ship had turned five points to port, and by 13:30 hours Hachiro yelled out 8,000 meters. “We can now answer with our 6 inch guns!” he shouted, and Vice Admiral Yamimura was quick to order a new heading change.

“Captain Yoshimatsu! Come left thirty degrees to port! All guns fire!” He was turning to present his starboard side where there were seven 6 inch guns in casemates along the upper hull. Now the range was fixed on the clock face, with the shorter hour hand set at number 8 and the longer minute hand set at the number 2 to indicate 8,200 meters. As soon as they fired, however, the Russian ship turned ten points to starboard to prevent the range from closing any further.

Now the difference in accuracy was murderous. Kirov’s radar controlled guns were riddling the cruisers with armor piercing rounds, gutting funnels, snapping the tall conning masts, blasting into the hull and exploding on the superstructure of the ships to ignite fires fore and aft. Firing at their extreme range, the Japanese guns were still unable to find the enemy ship, most falling short by two or three hundred meters, churning up the sea in a futile reprisal.

Yakumo and Asama were soon both on fire, and Yamimura turned to see that Iwate and Adzuma had rushed up on his port aft, turning to run parallel just ahead of his own line of three cruisers. The Russian dreadnought now turned its attention to them, blasting with those infernal deck guns that could shoot with amazing rapidity and accuracy. The Japanese fought bravely for another ten minutes, but by 13:40 hours all five cruisers were damaged and burning, and the Vice Admiral saw Iwate turn sharply to port and run due south for the narrow channel between Dozen and Nakanoshima Islands.

“We cannot prevail,” he said grimly.

A ray of sunlight pierced the grey cloud and smoke and gleamed on the water creaming at the sleek bow of the enemy dreadnought. At this range Yamimura could finally see how massive the ship was, easily twice the length of his own cruiser and over three times its displacement. His gunners had scored a few near misses, but had not damaged the enemy ship in any way. To fire with effect, he would want to get in much closer, closing the range to 5,000 meters, but the enemy speed now prevented that. As he watched the big ship maneuver, he realized it had been within their power to open the range any time they chose.

Rounds shuddered against his conning tower again with deafening impact, and only the heavy 14 inch armor had saved the Admiral and his staff from certain death. They hit us at least ten or twelve times, he thought darkly. Look at my cruiser division! This single enemy ship has shattered it, and now our only hope lies with the battleships.

“Signal Tango and Mishima. Tell them to move due west now!”

The order was passed by telegraph, and ten kilometers away, Nikolin was listening on his headset, trying to hear the dots and dashes in Kana Code over the sharp report of Kirov’s guns.

“Captain, they are signaling a course change to two-seven-zero west.”

“What’s that, Nikolin?” Karpov beamed as he was watching the action through his field glasses, preferring them to the overhead Tin Man display, even if it would not give him as sharp an image. “They are most likely going to run and hide behind that island. Very well. Cease Fire, Samsonov. They’ve taken quite a pounding.”

“Sir, securing deck guns, aye.”

“What do you think now, Rodenko?” The Captain smiled at his Starpom. “Still worried about changing history? Well, it’s begun. We put enough damage on those five cruisers to send them all into dry dock for lengthy repairs. I could linger here and sink them, but the damage we’ve inflicted has already done the job. I doubt any of them will be serviceable in the months ahead.”

“Their effective range appears to be well under 8,000 meters, sir.”

“Correct. I read this in Fedorov’s books, and so I had little fear closing to 8,000 as I did. They got a very good look at us through their field glasses, and that image will now be burned in their memory. A little fear will be a strong ally for us in the days ahead. They will learn to feel it quicken in their chest when they see us darken the horizon.”

“How many rounds did we expend, Samsonov?” Rodenko turned to his CIC officer to determine what they had left.

“Sir, I fired thirty-six salvos with all three batteries, expending a total of 192 rounds. This leaves us with 2,508 standard rounds and 200 rocket assisted rounds for the 152mm batteries.”

“Down from a full magazine of 3,000 rounds,” said Rodenko, looking Karpov’s way.

“A small price to pay for the wrecking of five enemy cruisers,” said Karpov. The range was too short for a test of our re-programmed SAMs, but we’ll let that sit for the moment.” He watched as the last of the burning enemy cruisers disappeared behind the long peninsula of Dozen Island.

“Congratulations, men,” said Karpov. “You have just logged your first victory of the second Russo-Japanese war at sea! It will not be your last.”

But the Captain had spoken too soon. The young radar operator had been jubilantly nodding at his mates when he turned and suddenly saw a distinctive blip on his screen.

“Captain. Radar. I have a contact…no sir, two contacts bearing one-eight-zero south, speed 16 knots and on a heading of two-seven zero. Range 10,000 meters!”

A distant boom rolled like thunder and they saw the second enemy ship brighten with the glow of its main batteries. The ship was Mishima, formerly the obsolete Russian battleship Admiral Seniavin, built as a coastal defense ship in 1894, and she was firing 10 inch guns that elevated fifteen degrees to produce a maximum range of just over 13,000 meters. With better elevation they would have ranged much farther but, as it was, the confining space of the turrets would only permit those fifteen degrees, and the same liability would plague the ship following in her wake, the former battleship Poltava now renamed Tango.

At range she appeared to be just another armored cruiser, actually shorter than Vice Admiral Yamimura’s battered flagship Tokiwa at only 396 feet, though much wider abeam. Yet that beam of 70 feet gave her the girth to mount two much larger turrets fore and aft of her twin smokestacks and conning tower, and now they lashed out in the second surprise attack the Japanese had staged in this hot, frantic hour. The Krupp 302mm 12-inch forty caliber guns on Tango were the mainstay of the Russian pre-dreadnought battleships. Not to be upstaged by Mishima, they deafened the scene with their sudden roar, but the ship had fired too soon. The effective range was only 7,200 meters given the maximum thirteen degree elevation of her guns, even more restricted within their turrets due to their larger size.

Both battleships had been lying in the shallow bay formed by three islands. On Yamimura’s signal they sailed due west through the narrow mile wide channel and remained masked by the sweeping curve of hilly Nishinoshima, the westernmost of the Oki Island group. So it was that they were not picked up on radar until they were already in line of sight and with good range to open the action.

The opening rounds from Mishima actually sailed well over Kirov with a long descending whoosh and fell heavily into the ocean behind the ship. Karpov looked at the tall geysers with some alarm, thinking only of the fate of Admiral Golovko and Rodenko’s warning. Here they had blundered into another surprise hidden away in those damnable islands! Red anger flushed his face as he realized the ship was suddenly in jeopardy. The memory of Rodenko’s words now taunted him… “battle often presents the unexpected, sir. I don’t think Captain Ryakhin expected his ship would be hit at that range by a random shell, but it was, and we both saw the result.” A haphazard round could deal them a severe blow.

“Those are heavy rounds. These must be battleships,” said Karpov, “and we’ve stumbled right on them without a whisper on radar!”

“It’s those damn islands, Captain,” said Rodenko.

“Yes, well we should have scouted them with the KA-40! This is sloppy work, but I will make an end of this nonsense at once. Samsonov, activate Moskit II system! Put one missile on each ship. Now!” The second salvo from Mishima was already whining in on them and fell much closer as the Japanese began to adjust the range. Tango was also firing, but the big 12-inch rounds were still well short.”

“Sir, keying Moskit II system and targeting now!”

The missile warning claxon sounded the alarm and the forward deck hatches sprung open. Up leapt the sleek daggers their noses quickly inclined towards the enemy ships. Then the engines roared and the Japanese would see what looked to be two demons from hell soaring in like fiery dragons over the sea, impossibly fast as the powerful engines accelerated to devour the distance to the target in just twelve seconds. When they struck they were still accelerating, though already moving at well over Mach 2.

The first heavy 450 kilogram warhead blasted against the side armor of Tango, which was almost 12 inches thick, hardened Harvey armor, an older cemented armor method developed in the United States before processes by Krupp made it obsolete. It had a brittle exterior, and more pliant inner segment all melded into one plate, but it was not enough to stop a missile weighing over four tons moving at over 3000 KPH. The side of the ship buckled and was blown completely inward, and the huge store of missile fuel, largely unexpended, exploded in a massive fireball.

Mishima got even worse, when the missile that struck her amidships came in at deck level and smashed into the ship’s superstructure, penetrating easily to immolate everything in its path. It blew completely through the ship, destroying every compartment just beneath the conning tower, which now began to collapse as the entire ship heeled to port with the thunderous impact. Mishima keeled over, but her conning tower shuddered down into the raging flames amidships, killing her captain and all staff officers on the bridge.

Tango wallowed to one side with the body blow she had taken, and then rolled heavily, flames licking the sea as water careened in through the breach in her hull. Then thick black smoke masked the scene, and Karpov stared with amazement at the awesome power of the missiles.

Aboard Tango bulkheads were shattered, water tight doors blasted open, and a torrent of raging seawater was swamping the ship. It rolled to starboard, the crewmen falling on the wet decks and sliding through cinder black smoke into the fire, which had spread to the sea itself, set aflame by the tremendous fuel explosion. Men leapt from the forward gunwales into the ocean, and secondary explosions began to rip through the guts of the ship as the magazines from many of the smaller casement side batteries began to explode with shuddering thunder. Smoke belched from both stricken ships, bludgeoned by a weapon of inconceivable power.

There was no more fire coming from the Japanese battleships, and both would capsize and sink within the next thirty minutes. Japan had taken them from Russia, but now Russia had taken them back, and given them to Davey Jones, who waited with greedy arms to receive them on the sea floor below.

The Oki Island engagement was over.