Pacific Storm

Chapter 16

Admiral King had been the one to start it all. First King, then Marshall. The feisty admiral had been so distraught over proceedings in the Pacific that he had become all but unbearable. A surly man by nature, King was also never one to be unimpressed by his own intelligence, and seldom believed any other man was his equal, particularly when it came to the complexities of naval strategy. King’s steely eyed look was enough to back down most anyone, but when it came to convincing President Roosevelt, he needed the more reasoned approach of Marshall to help his cause.

What he wanted was action in the Pacific. Not the slow logistical buildup, the slow steady turn of the coiled spring that had been underway since the outbreak of the war. When ‘War Plan Orange’ had been canceled, King brooded that the loss of the Philippines was an insult the navy would have to atone for one day. Yet, in his heart of hearts, he knew the plan itself was drafted in a bygone era when the old battleships formed the backbone of the fleet. Had they sallied forth from Pearl as the plan expected, the Japanese would have had a field day with their carrier fleet.

King was wise enough to realize the day of the battleship was fading. He knew the carriers were already carrying the ball when it came to operations in the Pacific, the problem was, there was all too little forward movement. The U.S. had been on the defensive for a long year now, with little to show beyond Doolittle’s daring raid on Tokyo. The string of Japanese victories had gone unbroken, challenged only once by two American carriers in the Coral Sea when the Japanese pushed for Port Moresby. They had lost his old lady, ‘Lady Lex,’ when she went down in that battle, and it galled him to no end.

The code breakers had been able to penetrate the JN-25 naval code, and warned that a big enemy operation was imminent. It did not take them long to determine that Fiji and Soma were the strategic end points of this planned attack. The Japanese had already put troops into the southern Solomons at Guadalcanal and Tulagi, and had both a seaplane base and an airfield under construction in those islands, though they were not yet strongly held. Now the attack would be aimed at either Espiritu Santo or Noumea, and if either one fell it would put Jap bombers in range of both Fiji and Samoa. Australia would be virtually cut off, and King would have none of it.

The fiery admiral vigorously argued that sitting back on defense and trying to parry the Japanese thrusts would simply not do. “We have to hit the bastards somewhere,” he said hotly. “Stick a boot right where it hurts.” And he fingered Guadalcanal as the perfect place to start. To make sure it happened he pushed on Nimitz to replace the equivocating and fretful Admiral Ghormley and appointed a new commander in theater, Admiral Bull Halsey.

Halsey was a strong proponent of the fleet air arm’s ability to project decisive power through fast, mobile aircraft carriers. The time honored maxim of getting there first with the most men had been applied to army maneuvers since Confederate Cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest first explained his tactics during the Civil War. Halsey applied this same principle to carrier warfare when he said: “get to the other fellow with everything you have as fast as you can and to dump it on him.” In any encounter at sea he was prone to immediately let his planes do the talking with a shoot first attitude.

The few feathers the Navy had at this point in the war were already in Halsey’s cap. He was involved in the Doolittle Raid, and pointed attacks on the Marshalls and Wake Island. The burden of driving these operations soon found him in ill health, and he had been hospitalized for several months before asked to take command of the American counterattack again, arriving in Noumea August 15, 1942, a full sixty days before his arrival date there in the history Fedorov knew.

When outgoing Admiral Ghormley conveyed his misgivings over the planned operation against Guadalcanal, saying it was likely to create another Bataan all over again, Halsey waved it away dismissively. He was a fighting Admiral, and the operation was just what he wanted. He had three carriers in hand now, and he would use them to support a lightning swift attack, right into the heart of the enemy’s forward position in the Solomons.

When cryptanalysts winnowed down the planned attack date for the new Japanese operation as August 25, King argued that the U.S. should be ready, with troops at sea, and hit the Japanese where they might least expect it, at Guadalcanal.

“They’ll expect us to be sitting on our duffs waiting for them at New Caledonia or Vanuatu,” King argued. “Let’s kick them right in the nuts with the 1st Marines!” Halsey agreed wholeheartedly.

It had been a long, uphill fight. Many said that putting Marines in transports with the Japanese carriers at large was sheer madness. It would force the US carriers to shepherd them to their planned invasion beaches, anchor them there for days and yield complete freedom of movement to the enemy as they swept south.

Halsey argued that if the attack were launched at least two days in advance of the Japanese invasion date, it could unhinge the entire enemy operation just as it was getting underway. “It will attract Jap carriers like flies, I know it,” he said, “but we’ll have a fist full of flat tops as well, and we can hit them as they come at us. It’s either that or we just sit at Noumea and wait for them. And what good is that? Let’s hit Guadalcanal and take that god dammed airfield there and put Wildcats and Dauntless dive bombers on the ground. That will give us one more carrier that they can lob shells at all they want and never sink.”

In the end Marshall was convinced to side with King and win approval of the President and authorization for the pre-emptive counterattack, which they called ‘Operation Watchtower.’ The 1st Marine Division went to sea on August 20th, escorted by everything the U.S. had, including the carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Saratoga, twelve cruisers, twenty-one destroyers, and two new additions to the fleet, the superb fast battleships Washington and North Carolina. Notably absent was the carrier Yorktown, which had been transferred to the Atlantic Fleet after the loss of CV Wasp to provide much need air cover over the seas around Iceland. Even as Japanese task forces were forming at both Truk and Rabaul, the Americans were at sea.

In-theater reserves were also substantial for the Americans. They had moved three old battleships to Suva Bay, Fiji: the California, New Mexico, and West Virginia. Too slow to operate with carriers, they nonetheless provided a strong deterrent that could discourage any Japanese surface action group from making a run at the vital US bases in the region. Two light cruisers and ten reserve destroyers were also part of this force, and they were actually using extra fuel bunkered in the big battleships to sustain local operations by the destroyers.

Yamamoto had planned to come at his first target, Espiritu Santo, in a wide pincer attack, like the twin horns of a bull. He was going to take the big fleet carriers Kaga and Akagi, with light carrier Ryujo from the great Japanese naval base at Truk and then make a run for the Island of Naru, which would be taken quickly by an SNLF battalion, being largely undefended. In the wake of the fast carriers would come his powerful battleships, Yamato, Hiei, Fuso as the heart of the bombardment group. Six heavy cruisers, four light cruisers and two dozen destroyers would be assigned to this pincer, which intended to deliver elements of the Nagoya 3rd Division to their landing sites on Vanuatu, Espiritu Santo.

The other horn of the bull would originate from the forward base of Rabaul where fleet carriers Hiryu, Soryu light carrier Ryuho would lead the attack, down through the Solomon Sea, escorted by four cruisers and seven destroyers with the second wave troops of 3rd Division. This force was to dip well down into the Coral Sea, then swing up again to come at Vanuatu from the Southwest while Yamamoto’s main group appeared from the northeast. It would also serve as a screen for anything the Americans might sortie out of Noumea. The two moves were to be timed to converge in unison and bring over fifty warships, including six carriers, together near Vanuatu in a massive mailed fist.

The American counterthrust at Guadalcanal would be King’s well placed kick just as the enemy closed these two powerful arms on their intended target, and it worked as planned.

Both Japanese task forces were well out to sea when the Marines set sail, yet too far away to threaten them. By the time the convoy was eventually spotted by a seaplane out of Tulagi, the two prongs of Yamamoto’s navy were widely dispersed, hundreds of miles from one another. He had to make a decision—should the operation go forward as planned, or should one or both pincers be re-directed to blunt the American thrust at Guadalcanal? The outcome of the entire battle would rest on that choice, but the United States 1st Marine Division had much to do with forcing the reluctant Admiral’s hand in the matter. They stormed ashore at both Tulagi and Guadalcanal with such élan, that within a day they had overrun Japanese positions at Lunga on August 25th, where they captured the airfield and were working feverishly to make it ready to receive planes from nearby U.S, airfields and carriers. The “Cactus Air force” as it would come to be called, was about to be born.

The news shook the staff at Combined Fleet headquarters at Truk, and the consensus was that the operation against Espiritu Santo would do nothing more than to create an isolated outpost, over 950 kilometers behind an active battle front at Guadalcanal, and one within range of two other strong American bases at Noumea and Suva Bay, Fiji. If the Americans were allowed to secure and establish a strong base at Guadalcanal, the whole operation would come unhinged. It was therefore decided that the bold attack would have to be crushed, and Japanese control of the Solomons made undisputed. Only then could the next move against Espiritu Santo be contemplated with any hope of success.

Yamamoto considered how to proceed, first thinking to send Admiral Yamaguchi’s smaller Western force to engage and repel the operation, or proceed directly to Guadalcanal on his own. Many officers argued that both horns of the bull should be used in one crushing blow, and Yamamoto was about to make that very decision when he suddenly received some rather startling news from Admiral Hara’s Operations force against Darwin.

Like all dispatches, it began with glowing returns of the successful air raid and surface bombardment of Darwin, and Yamashita’s easy invasion, claiming to control the port and airfield within 24 hours. Then details of a rather unexpected “incident” were related that described the presence of an enemy capital ship that presumably had sortied from Darwin with some very unusual weaponry. The description was terse, with few details, but related intense anti-aircraft capabilities and noted that Hara’s attempts to engage and sink this solitary ship had met with less than satisfactory results. Yamamoto was wise enough to read between those lines, and he immediately sent a signal to Hara asking him to state the present condition of his air strike arm, wondering whether it would be needed in the Coral Sea now, given the American counter thrust.

He received a most disheartening reply. Hara’s 5th Carrier Division had started the campaign with fifty-four D3A dive bombers. They had seven left, and six more in reserve flying in from Kendari. He had all of forty-eight B5N1 torpedo bombers, and only twenty of those remained. Only in his fighter element was there any real strength left. He reported fifty operational A6M2s out of an initial allotment of sixty-six. The losses to the strike planes were staggering! Seventy-three percent! And all this against a single enemy ship that was still reported at large, poised to enter the Coral Sea at that very moment, and being pursued by Captain Sanji Iwabuchi leading a small task force aboard the battleship Kirishima.

The report made no sense. Hara’s force was as seasoned and skilled as any in the fleet. They had savaged the Americans just months ago and assured a victory at Port Moresby. That thought set his mind to that airfield, where he knew several squadrons of G3M2 and G4M1 bombers were mustering. But those planes had only a modest capability against naval targets at sea, particularly a fast moving capital ship as this one was reported to be. It was given the code name Mizuchi, and the word was flashed from one fleet command to another. Where was it heading? Was it merely fleeing for a friendly port, trying to escape the Japanese trap sprung at Darwin, or did it have a darker purpose? How could intelligence have missed its presence in Darwin in the first place? There were too many unanswered questions.

Yamamoto thought hard that night, aboard the massive solid presence of the battleship Yamato. He could send Yamaguchi’s carrier division after this enemy ship, but that would mean confronting the American carriers at Guadalcanal with only his own force under Nagumo. Something warned him not to dilute his naval air striking power, particularly after the loss of the airfield at Lunga. So he made a decision that he believed adequate to the requirements of both tasks before him.

“Send to Yamaguchi. He is to detach the light carrier Ryuho, two cruisers and two destroyers and send them northwest towards the Torres Strait to operate in conjunction with Admiral Hara in pursuit of this enemy ship. The remainder of his task force, including Hiryu and Soryu will proceed immediately to Guadalcanal to coordinate air strikes with Admiral Nagumo’s force. I am taking my heavy units due west into the Solomons and will position the invasion force northwest of Guadalcanal off New Georgia pending the destruction of the American carrier task force covering their invasion. Admiral Nagumo will proceed to Guadalcanal from our present position, and the two carrier task forces will crush the Americans between them. After that is accomplished we can proceed with the invasion of Guadalcanal in force, but this cannot be risked with American carriers at large.”

It was to be a fateful and decisive moment in the newly written history of WWII, a good plan considering the agility with which it had been surmised. The loss of only one light carrier to reinforce Hara’s group seemed insignificant, though somewhat embarrassing considering that Hara already commanded a full fleet carrier division! It would lead to a disaster that was simply impossible for Yamamoto to see in the confident light of his own military mind at that point.

Chapter 17

Novak had to say it was one of the most unusual happenings of the entire war, an informal meeting to review routine photo intercepts from coastwatchers that had blossomed into a major “incident,” as he ended up calling it. The meeting was being held at FRUMEL Headquarters in the Monterey Apartments of Queens Road, Melbourne Australia. FRUMEL itself was an acronym for Fleet Radio Unit MELbourne, one of two major cryptanalysis units still active in the Pacific, the other being Fleet Radio Unit H or ‘Hypo’ in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. There had once been three such units, but the third had been hastily evacuated from Manila Bay as the Japanese closed in on that city in February of 1942. Many of the specialists that once staffed that unit had slipped away on the submarine Sea Dragon, along with 1.5 tons of equipment and materials vital to their operations, and now they served to augment the vital intelligence work here at FRUMEL. Novak was one of them.

The unit occupied most all of the third floor of the posh Monterey Apartments, and he looked lazily out the window at the green lawns and breezy foliage of the trees as he waited for his associate to review the dispatch.

“British have something in the Coral Sea we don’t know about?” The question was tossed across the desk like a piece of loose paper, by Commander Oscar Osborne, another specialist in cryptanalysis called in to review some very unusual photography that morning. Sometimes called “Ozzie” by his associates, or simply “The Wizard” after the popular 1939 movie ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ he had been part of the group ever since the submarine Sea Dragon made it safely away from their old intelligence unit on Corregidor.

“Waters got his hands on that photo yesterday,” said Novak. “He’s one of our boys up at Darwin. God knows what’s happened to him by now. Probably half way to Katherine on that hell of a road if he managed to get out. Lucky for us these photos made it out on a plane. Funny thing about this one…It went right to the very top. A journalist, fellow named Longmore up there on a whim, well he kicked it all the way up to the PM’s office. Looks like he was an old friend of John Curtain.”

“Curtain is an old newspaper man,” said Osborne. “The two were probably thick as thieves.”

“Well good for that. Have you taken a look at that photo?” Novak gestured to the packet that had come in on the morning motorcycle run from the airfield, and Osborne obliged.

“What the devil is that?” Osborne was staring intently now, and looking around for a magnifying glass. “Get the British silhouette book over there.”

Novak smiled. “Don’t bother,” he said. “It’s not British. I went through the whole Royal Navy this morning and even called Perth as well to talk to their liaison officer. They assure me they had nothing at sea on the Kimberly Coast when that was taken—nothing at Darwin either before the Japs hit the place—nothing they know of, that is. This fish is something else entirely.”

Osborne was looking at the image closely now. “Good size ship,” he said in a low voice. “Not much in the way of big guns.”

“Well this tale becomes quite a riddle, Ozzie,” said Novak. “This ship isn’t British, but apparently no one bothered to tell the Japanese that. They’ve been after the damn thing hammer and tongs ever since they spotted it. Those are Jap torpedo planes in those photos. It seems the ship ran afoul of their operation against Darwin. Coast watchers have had the show of a lifetime up there. They say the Japs hit this thing with every plane they had. One report says he counted over sixty planes attacking this ship, and there was a hell of a lot of fireworks.”

“I see…” Osborne kept staring at the photo. “Did they sink it?”

“They hit the damn thing, but it slipped away. So the Japs went after it with their screening force for the Darwin operation. Coastwatchers reported a surface action too. Japs have a fast battleship and several cruisers out after this ship, and it’s running for the Torres Strait, should be there tonight and into the Coral Sea if it managed to survive. Radio intercepts have picked up a name that seems to repeat every time they reference this ship, so we think it’s a convenient handle, or code word they’re using for it: Mizuchi.”

“What does it mean?”

“Sea dragon.” Novak smiled, the reference to the submarine by that same name that had brought them all here obvious and glaring.

“Sea dragon?” Osborne allowed himself a smile, then looked closely at the photo again. “Well it’s not a British ship.” Osborne finally realized the importance of that simple fact. “It’s certainly doesn’t belong to the U.S. Navy either, that much I can tell you from this photo alone.”

“I followed up on that one too,” said Novak. “You’re correct. And the Dutch haven’t got anything in the area either, in fact they haven’t got anything that big at all. It’s every bit a battleship from the looks of it.”

Osborne raised his eyebrows. Every so often the tedious routine of radio intercepts and decoding actually morphed into something really interesting. But this was more than that. It had an air of downright mystery about it, and a thrum of excitement stirred in him as he looked at the photo. Then he recalled something he had gotten wind of through channels…something about a ship that had given the British fits just days ago in the Med.

“Say Novak…” he was reaching to recall the information. “I heard talk about a ship in the Med that raised quite a ruckus last week. It seems everyone and their mother was after it. Italians tangled with it up near Bonifacio Strait, and then it ran west for Gibraltar.”

“Yes I caught that rumor too,” said Novak. “It had to be something out of Toulon. A French ship, more than likely.”

No, thought Osborne. It wasn’t a French ship, though he kept that to himself for the moment, not sure of what Novak may have known. There was much more to that incident than they first thought. Yes, official word was that a disaffected French battlecruiser had made a run out of Toulon as Novak suspected, and it eventually surrendered to the British at Gibraltar for internment at St. Helena. But Osborne had heard a few other things about it, that Bletchley Park had been very wrapped up in the matter…that the British Admiralty was throwing a thick, black overcoat over the whole incident…that someone was supposedly en route to FRUMEL HQ at that very moment to brief them on the matter. The Brits were apparently willing to share a few secrets with their friends after all.

“Mizuchi,” said Osborne. “Japs are out after a sea dragon, eh?”

“Yes, and mad as hell about it from the sound of the radio traffic.” Novak scratched his head. “I decrypted some traffic this morning in that batch we sent over to Halsey. The operation against Guadalcanal must have caught Yamamoto flat footed. They’ve had to improvise on their planned attack against Espiritu Santo.”

“You mean they’ve re-targeted the whole thing at Vandegrift’s 1st Marines on Guadalcanal.”

“Exactly. But I caught one odd order in the mix—a small detachment, light carrier and a few cruisers and destroyers. They sent it north from their Western task force.”

“North? What for?”

“Take a look at that photo again, Ozzie. North to the Torres Strait, eh? They want a bite of this sea dragon too. ”

“I’ll be damned,” Osborne breathed.

Then the phone rang and the lives of Novak and Osborne were about to get much more interesting that morning. Mystery was not half a word for it.

Kirov raced east for the Torres Strait, and behind her, chastened but undeterred, the enemy task force kept doggedly on their heels. The senior officers traded shifts on the bridge, each snatching an hour or two for some much needed sleep. Fedorov ran the ship at thirty-two knots for three hours, and managed to extend their lead by another twelve miles to just over twenty-seven nautical miles, or about 55,000 yards. Then, as they approached the reef infested waters of the strait, he was forced to slow the ship to twenty knots. If the enemy kept on at the twenty-eight knots they had been making, they would get into firing range again in an hour and forty-five minutes.

The Torres Strait was a very hazardous body of water, and shipwrecks littered the seafloor there as silent testimony to the dangers hidden beneath the aquamarine sea. In centuries past, the local natives on the islands in the strait had a nasty habit of massacring stranded sailors, so the place had a dark and well justified reputation as being perilous. It was, in fact, one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world. With strong tidal currents and a five-meter tidal range on the eastern side, navigation was a slow, careful affair, and Fedorov knew he would soon have to reduce to ten knots or less.

“These waters are very shallow,” said Fedorov. “No more than thirteen meters and our draft is just over nine meters. Ahead one third and I want sonar active for the next hour Mister Tasarov, lookouts to port and starboard, please. There are no pilotage channels designated here for us, as in our day.”

“Aye, sir,” said Tasarov. “Going to active sonar now.”

“I’m taking us through the Prince of Wales Channel, just north of Hammond Island. It’s only 800 meters wide at its narrowest point. And has strong tidal surges. I’ve spent the last half hour working out our tidal window for a draught of nine meters, and we won’t have much water beneath us when we transit.”

“My radar propagation is also being affected by this sea mist,” said Rodenko. “But I’ll still have decent returns on any aircraft.”

They knew this would be a perfect place for enemy aircraft to make a strike, but thankfully, the scope seemed clear of air contact for the moment. They navigated the narrow channel without incident at ten knots, then Fedorov steered the ship for the North East Channel towards Bramble Cay to enter the Coral Sea through Bligh Entrance. The passage was slow going, past many hidden shoals and submerged reefs and rocky outcrops, and the time ticked away.

Soon they could clearly see the pursuing enemy ships on HD video fed by the aft Tin Man, and when the range had closed to under 28,000 meters again, they heard a distant boom of thunder and then the whine of incoming shells.

“Damn annoying,” said Karpov when the first two rounds fell off their aft quarter, short by at least a thousand meters.

“We’ll have to maintain this slow speed for some time yet,” said Fedorov. They were approaching Burke Islets, with the Warrior Reefs off their port side. “Once we get past York Island ahead I can probably increase to fifteen knots up to Bligh Entrance.”

A second salvo of two rounds came in, this time corrected nicely, and 500 meters closer. The blue dye was evident now in the tall waterspouts.

“This is getting dangerous,” said Karpov. “Mister Samsonov, ready on the P-900 system.” He looked at Fedorov. “With your permission, sir.”

“Granted,” said Fedorov. The sight of those tall geysers was enough for him to realize that they had to hit this enemy battleship harder.

“Very well,” Karpov stood taller, his arms locked behind his back, eyes on the overhead HD video. “Two missiles, Mister Samsonov, and I want them on the superstructure, please. Use your laser rangefinders and HD video for in-flight targeting.”

“Aye, sir. Missiles seven and six ready in silos and firing at five second intervals.”

“Fire.”

The sound of the warning claxon was loud on the forward deck, and Karpov turned to watch the hatch flip open. The missile ejected, declining and igniting its engine flawlessly. Seconds later it was followed by the second missile. They had put one 450kg warhead on the target earlier with a Moskit-II; this time Karpov would hit them with two 400kg warheads on the cruise missiles. Samsonov was now using an HD video display, and designating his target with a light pen on the image itself. In effect, he was using his own eyes to fly the missile to the point he wanted, the tall pagoda main mast of the ship making for an inviting target.

They saw the enemy fire a third time just before the first cruise missile hit home, striking low on the pagoda with a distant roar. Seconds later the second missile hit higher, right into the heart of the tower, and the ship was soon masked in flame and smoke.

Executive officer Koro Ono saw the missiles first, gaping at their fiery tails and thin vapor trails. “Enemy fire!” he shouted, and Captain Iwabuchi instinctively braced himself near the binnacle. The slower approach of the P-900s was spellbinding, and then they began a wild evasive dance, low over the sea, and every man on the bridge stared out the forward viewports, one junior officer shirking just as the first missile came driving in at the base of the tower. There was a shuddering explosion, two men thrown from their feet, then the second missile struck even higher on the tower, just below the bridge itself.

Ono was thrown back as the windows shattered and a violent spray of broken glass and shrapnel flew in. Iwabuchi clutched the binnacle, managing to stay on his feet, but three other men were down, and Tokono Horishi, Ikeda’s second officer for the light gunnery detail, was also wounded.

Ono lay stunned on the deck as black smoke billowed in through the broken windows. The men were coughing, shielding their eyes, and groping for bulkheads to steady themselves. Through it all Iwabuchi stood stalwart, a light of fire and anger in his eyes, a streak of blood on his cheek where glass had cut him. He screamed out the order to fire, but the forward guns did not answer. The first round had struck the number two turret, and it was put out of action, the concussion enough to stun the men inside, their ears bleeding from the shock. Even for a slow missile, the P-900 packed a hard wallop. Designated the P-900 Kalibr-NK missile by the Russians, it was called the SS-N-27 “Sizzler” by NATO when it was first introduced in 2012. It weighed over 1700 kilograms, adding a strong kinetic attack in addition to the 400kg explosive warhead.

Kirishima was shaken and hurt, with fires below the bridge and around number two turret, but she was in no danger of sinking. Enraged that he could not return fire with his forward guns, Iwabuchi gave the helm an order to turn north so he could bring his two aft turrets into action. He had not yet come to the Torres Strait itself, so there was plenty of sea room for him to maneuver. But by the time he had effected the turn, and the fire control parties had lessened the thick black smoke shrouding the ship, Mizuchi has slipped north as well, out of the narrow channel and into more open waters beyond.

Koro Ono was back on his feet, clutching a bleeding right arm where he had been grazed with shrapnel. “Sir,” he said. “Those rockets must be piloted. It is the only way they could dance over the sea like that and then turn to hit us so accurately! The channel ahead is too narrow to fight here. We will have to slow to ten knots or less to navigate the strait. If they send more…”

“Don’t bother me with navigation,” Iwabuchi batted the remark away. “Koshino! Are the aft batteries ready to fire? What is taking so long?”

“The smoke has made it difficult to plot the range, sir.”

“Fire anyway. Fire both turrets at once! Then do your spotting, you fool!”

“Aye sir.” Koshino rushed to a voice tube and gave the order to fire, the aft turrets answering soon after with a mighty roar.

Iwabuchi smiled when he heard the guns, and his eyes found Ono’s. “We must let them know they have not hurt us,” he said darkly. “You say the British must be piloting those demon rockets? Yes, it seems so, though I find it hard to believe. Where are Hara’s planes now? Let his pilots show the same bravery and smash this ship. This is a perfect time to strike from the air while they are at reduced speed in these restricted waters.”

Ono blinked away the smoke, coughing. “Hara’s planes are mostly at the bottom of the sea, sir, as we may be if you do not proceed with more caution here. I remind you that we must sail these same waters if we are to continue this chase.”

Iwabuchi turned on the man, a rage in his eyes, but he said nothing. His body language was enough.

“That hurt them,” said Karpov. “Those fires will make it very difficult for their gunnery officers.”

They watched yet another salvo, this time four shells, but it was very wide, the rounds falling well beyond the Warrior Reefs to their port side.

“I have an idea,” said Fedorov. “Do we have any mines in the magazine, Captain?”

Karpov’s eyes lit up at the suggestion. “We may have some MDM-7s. Good Idea, Fedorov! I must be slipping. I should have thought of it myself. Let me call down to Martinov and I will see about it.”

The MDM-7 was a ship launched mine that could be dropped in their wake, activating two minutes later to give the ship time to avoid its own weapon. It could be rigged to explode by contact, or by acoustic trigger, which was a preferred method, and the large 1500kg warhead was a powerful explosion that could cause severe damage if it detonated anywhere near a ship. In the narrow channel, they could prove a perfect weapon against the pursuing enemy ships.

Martinov called back minutes later. They had ten MDM-7 mines and six older MDM-3s, which were an air dropped version. “Let’s lay some eggs,” said Fedorov. “I want the KA-40 up at once, and have them lay all six MDM-3s in the Prince Of Wales Channel. We can also drop five or six MDM-7s around these islets as well.” It was a perfect defensive strategy, and it would mean they would not have to use any more missiles if the enemy ships chose this same route.

“Once we reach the Bligh Entrance ahead we’ll be turning south to take the Outer Channel past the Portlock Reefs to Pandora Passage. We’ll drop the last of the MDM-7s there. It’s the last narrows before we get out into the Coral Sea.”

“Pandora’s Passage,” said Karpov. “What are we sailing into there, I wonder?” The ancient warning concerning ‘Pandora’s Box’ was in his mind, the jar that contained all the evils of the world.

“That jar was opened long ago,” said Fedorov. “Just look at this war we’ve been sailing through these last weeks. We crossed the whole of the world and still it finds us. But there was one thing left at the bottom of the jar after Pandora opened it,” he smiled at Karpov now. “Elpis, the Spirit of Hope. We will have to hold fast to that once we Get into the Coral Sea. Work out the mining operations, Mister Karpov. I’ll have to keep my eyes on these navigation charts for the next forty minutes to an hour.”

Chapter 18

Pandora had yet one other thing in the bottom of her jar, the Japanese Kaichu Type submarine Ro-33. She was a double hulled sub, K-5 class and she packed a dangerous sting with four forward torpedo tubes firing the deadly Type 95 torpedo, the submarine variant of the dread ‘Long Lance.’ Ro-33 was a prototype model, 960 tons, with a large planned rollout, but only two boats were ever built in the K-5 series, the Ro-33 and her sister Ro-34, though there were twenty K class boats in all, mostly designated the K-6 variant. The sub could make nearly twenty knots with her two diesel engines on the surface, and 8 knots when submerged on two 1200 horsepower electric motors. Only one of the twenty would survive the war.

Her number was the same as the year of construction at the Kure naval yard when she was laid down on August 8, 1933. Seven different men commanded the sub in her early pre-war years, and she was eventually designated the flagship of SubDiv 21 in May of 1941.

To date number 33 had had little luck in the war. She had been involved in patrols supporting the Malay campaign, and in the Java Sea earlier that year. Out in the Indian Ocean she took a shot at the destroyer USS Whipple when she came up on it involved in a rescue mission for a damaged oiler Pecos, but the nimble destroyer evaded her lance. Some months later she was instrumental in scouting out the Russell and Deboyne Islands for anchorages prior to Operation MO and the successful seizure of Port Moresby.

Lt. Commander Shigeyuki Kuriyama took over the boat after that operation and on August 6 he was out on the fourth war patrol for Ro-33 when he happened across the Australian merchant ship Mamutu off Murray Island. The shallow waters and reefs in the area prompted her to surface and start a merry chase, using her 3 inch deck gun to hunt down the hapless 300 ton motor vessel, and she immediately scored two hits, one silencing the radio room and the second killing the ship’s Master. A half hour later Mamutu was listing in the water, easy prey, with many of her 108 passengers already in the sea. Kuriyama was merciless, ordering his boat to sail past the burning ship and machine gun the survivors, killing many passengers as he went by. It was the only notch in the sub’s belt after four long patrols, and the crew was eager to put their torpedoes to better use.

They got their chance in the early evening of August 26th, 1942 while they were hovering just off Pandora’s Passage. A coded message bearing the name Mizuchi had come in three hours earlier, and it ordered the boat to leave off its defensive patrol near Port Moresby and make haste for the Torres Strait. A big enemy ship was running the gauntlet of reefs and shoals there, and attempting to break out into the Coral Sea. Ro-33 was to assume a blocking position and wait for the beast, and she was in position well before the looming silhouette of Kirov was sighted by her commander, his eyes alight with the first opportunity to fire on an enemy warship in nearly six months.

Three days from now in the history Fedorov might have read in his Chronology of the War At Sea, Ro-33 was supposed to have been in the Gulf of Papua west of Port Moresby where she would spot the 3300 ton merchant ship Malaita escorted by the Australian destroyer Arunta. She would put a torpedo into the Malaita, but later be found ten miles southeast of Port Moresby by the Arunta and hit with Mark VII depth charges, sinking the boat and killing all of her 70 man crew. Yet fate had ordained that she would not make that appointment on the 29th. The Australians had lost Port Moresby and neither the Malaita nor the Arunta were anywhere near the area now. Instead Ro-33 was three days early to the grinning smile of death, where he waited for her on a ship the like of which Kuriyama had never seen. But with torpedoes that could fire at a very long range, he would not go down without a fight that evening.

Four Type 95 torpedoes were in the tubes before Tasarov found the sub, hovering silently, some 15,000 meters off the exit to the Pandora Passage. He had been just making ready to cease active sonar when his well trained ear caught a return that sounded much different from the echoes of rock and shoal he had been processing for the last hour. No…This was different, and it had a sinister edge to it. He immediately announced possible submarine, confidence high, and designated the contact Alpha One, feeding targeting information to Samsonov.

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….