Sea of Fire

Chapter 40

Now they reap the whirlwind, thought Fedorov. He had seen this all before, just after they manifested in this very year in the Pacific, when the Japanese raid on Darwin had first looked down to see a lone Allied cruiser running out to sea. Down they came, thinking to quickly dispatch the ship and get on with their mission. For Kirov, it was a sudden and unexpected shock, and they were fortunate that Karpov was on the bridge at that time, knowing exactly what defensive system to activate, and how to use it.

This time they get the surprise, he thought, but he was very wrong. The Japanese knew exactly what they were doing now. The pilots had been briefed, and told they would be looking for the mysterious ship that had been attacking the navy, Mizuchi. They were more than willing to try and find it, and also headstrong enough to think they could take hold of it like a cat by the tail and kill it. Yes, they expected a few scratches, knew that planes and men might be lost in any combat sortie they flew, but this was no ordinary cat.

Kirov was a lethal beast that was entirely beyond their comprehension, a tiger with claws that would soon rend their way through the sky with their slashing anger. They really had no idea what was about to hit them, thought Fedorov, feeling a spasm of guilt. Then he remembered how they came at the ship, engines wailing, the cold whistle of deadly bombs falling, the hiss of the defensive fire and the rattle of the 30mm chain guns on defense—and he remembered the battle bridge. One man had been so driven in a later attack, that he put his plane right into the ship. Had he aimed for the open deck, smashing into the missile armed vertical silos beneath it, the results could have been catastrophic.

“S-300 system ready sir,” said Samsonov.

Grilikov was sitting right next to him, his eyes narrowed as he watched the other man work on a bank of equipment that seemed entirely confounding. One thing caught his eye, the winking red lights, a bank of eight, and Samsonov had told him they each corresponded to a missile ready for launch. The ship could have carried as many as 96 S-300s at one time, the missile the West called the SA-N-20 Gargoyle. It was an older system by 2021, replaced on most ships with the new S-400F system. In its second coming, this Kirov had a mix of missiles, some old, some new. There were 36 S-300s, as the Navy still had them and wanted to use them for the live fire exercises Kirov was to have conducted in the Norwegian Sea. A second bank carried the ship’s current long range defense system, the S-400F.

Behind those, the ship possessed another formidable inner air defense shield, a missile of many names. It was the Kinzhal, or dagger, a variant of the land based Tor system that the West now called the SA-N-9 Gauntlet. The Russians also called it the Klinok—blade—and it was very sharp indeed. They were stored in clusters of 8, on rotary VLS modules. First introduced in 1989, this was a much improved version of that missile, with updated electronics and a much longer range, out to about 80 kilometers to move it from its roots as a short range missile to medium range defense. There were 128 of those missiles hidden beneath the decks.

The innermost defensive ring was the province of the Kashtan system, a short range missile that fired in conjunction with two 30mm Gatling guns that sat like the heavy black arms of a robot mounted beneath the missile tubes. This deadly combination could produce kill probabilities of over 95%, and it was further assisted by several single 30mm gun mounts elsewhere on the ship.

For anything to get through those three concentric circles of fighting steel would be a very daunting prospect, particularly a slow, easily tracked aircraft like those in the skies now. The 15 contacts to the west were Nakajima Ki-43 Fighter bombers, the Peregrine Falcon to the Japanese, but dubbed by the far less complimentary name of “Oscar” by the Americans. They were each carrying two 250kg bombs, a heavy payload of over 1100 pounds.

“Target speed at 230 knots,” said Rodenko. “These nine contacts to the south are slower, about 175 knots.”

“Most likely G4M medium bombers,” said Fedorov. “That’s a plane the Americans called the Betty, a level bomber, and not much of a threat in terms of accuracy. The others are probably land based fighter bombers. They’ll be the main threat here.”

“If you can call that a threat,” said Karpov.

Fedorov gave him a quick look, as if to remind him of what had happened to them before. They were the only two men on the bridge that remembered that, as Orlov was below decks on his rounds that morning.

“Do we have the battle bridge manned?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Karpov, but that is no more than a formality for Air Alert One.

“Nice to know it’s there,” said Fedorov, again with a knowing glance the Admiral’s way.

Karpov gave him a flat grin. “Mister Samsonov, salvo of four S-300s. Target the group of fifteen planes and begin firing.”

“Aye sir.” Samsonov was only too eager to comply.

“Sir,” said Otani. “Sierra One has detected missile fire, bearing west towards Sakhalin. They must be firing at our land based aircraft.”

Takami had been watching and waiting, cruising silently in EMCON about 40 kilometers south of Kurita’s surface action group. They had deployed a single helo, Sierra One, low and slow at first so as not to arouse undue suspicion, and it was loitering at about 2000 feet, a hundred kilometers to the northwest.

“So much for that dangling left jab,” said Fukada. “Those have to be S-300s, or even the newer S-400s. We could warn those planes to disperse. It might give them a ghost of a chance out there.”

“We’d have to blab that in the clear, or relay it through Kurita on the secure comm link. Neither case would matter much. Those missiles are too damn fast. I’m afraid they were too quick to get up there. We’re still too far south to use our missiles, and the naval air strike isn’t even on our screens yet.”

“Trying to coordinate this in EMCON is going to be like herding cats,” said Otani.

“True, but the more we say in the way of any radio traffic, the more chances they have to intercept a signal that gets their attention.”

“Let’s just hope they don’t give our Sea King the same treatment when they finish off those planes,” said Fukada.

“I doubt they’ll target that. They have to think it’s a seaplane, just a lone slow contact to their southwest. It’s no threat unless it comes with in visual range, and even then why would they care? Notice they haven’t thrown anything at Kurita either. But they have a helo up too, and so they know he’s there. Hell, they probably have us on the contact board as well, but as far as they are concerned we’re just another surface ship of this era. So far they’re acting as if they don’t know a thing, which is how we need to keep it until we get inside 120 klicks.”

“Then what?” said Fukada.

“Then we go active and throw everything we have at them.”

“What about Kurita?”

“What about him? You know damn well that Kirov won’t let him get anywhere close enough to use his main guns. As far as I’m concerned, it’s as if those ships weren’t even there. I think the Russians will take down any air threats, but probably make Kurita’s surface action group a second priority target.”

“And if they go after them with those Sunburns?”

“Then we have a choice to make. We have Kurita under our SM-2 umbrella. We could go active, get a fix on their missiles and fire.”

“That gives up the game from that point on.”

“Right,” said Harada. “The other choice is to do nothing, let Kurita take one on the chin and see how much iron he has there. We keep on north, fast and quiet, and get as close as we can to those bastards before we fire.”

“This is going to get ugly,” said Fukada, “and real fast. This ship was built for defense. Our entire loadout is based on that. Yet here we sit, trying to creep up and get inside on these guys with one good right hand. You realize that after we throw that punch, we’re done.”

“So we have to hope we land it,” said Harada. “After that, we could still use the SAMs in an anti-ship role. If nothing else, it might keep them off balance.”

“We should use the rail gun.” Fukada folded his arms, eyeing the Captain. “We should use it the moment they put lead on any of Kurita’s ships. We fire that while our Type-12s are outbound, and before we do that, we have to take down their helicopter. That’s job one.”

“Agreed,” said Harada. “At least on the helo. As soon as we fire anything, the jig is up and we go to full active sensors. Then I’ll put an SM-3 on their helo and take out their eyes. That way they won’t pick up our SSMs until they get much closer. As for the rail gun, I’m not so sure it will do us any good, but we might get lucky.”

“It has them in range right now,” said Fukada.

“Right, but we don’t even have a hard fix on their location with all our sensors passive like this. If we fire it now, we just give them something to chew on if they pick up incoming rounds on their radar.”

“They may see them, but they’re too fast for them to do anything about it. That gun fires at Mach 7!”

“Correct, but that will sure prickle their curiosity. No. The less they know, the better. I want to sit tight until we’re ready to take our shot. After that, anything goes.” He looked at Hideo Honjo now. “Lieutenant, crack your knuckles and warm up those hands. We’ll be busy with the SM-2s as soon as they figure out what’s happening.”

“Ready sir,” said Honjo. “We’ll knock down anything they throw our way.”

It was all cat and mouse at this point, only the question remained—which one was the mouse? Kirov was a very big cat to be sure, with very sharp claws and teeth. Taking that cat by the tail was going to be very dangerous, and Harada knew that Kurita’s two battleships and three heavy cruisers would be nothing more than secondary targets. They could contribute nothing at all to the offense here, which would have to be carried by any aircraft they could shepherd to the target. He looked at his watch, wondering what was holding up the naval air strike. It was a sallow and cold thing to think now, but they needed to put as many targets into the air as possible. Kirov was already going after the land based planes, and he was beginning to have a very bad feeling about this whole setup.

Just let me get close enough to get the first punch in, he thought. In modern naval combat, it was always the struggle to get off the first salvo that mattered. His missiles were much slower than those Sunburns, so he needed to fire first, before he had to go defensive. That would be the best they could do, get that salvo in the air before the Russians figured out what they were up against. All it would take is a single hit, on either side, to decisively shift the balance here. Harada was praying for all he was worth that Takami would be the one to get that first hit.

The battleship Hiraga was in the number two position that morning, following in the wake of Kurita’s old ship, the heavy cruiser Mikuma. As one of Japan’s most modern ships, it even had radar installed, the Mark II, Model 1 Shipborne Air and Surface Search Radar, capable of seeing planes out to 90 kilometers, or ships at sea 18 kilometers away. Unfortunately, it was found to be useless that day, a clutter of static under the routine jamming Kirov was putting out on frequencies known to be used by the enemy at this time. Kurita’s ships would have to rely on another system, a highly refined sensor that was directly connected to a fairly complex computer, more complex, in fact, than any computer aboard Kirov that day.

It was installed on every mainmast in the task force, carefully searching the distant horizons in every direction. That system had come to be designated by a most iconic name in modern navy circles—the Mark 1 Eyeball, dual mounted on a swiveling platform called a head, and the complex computer it was connected to was the brain of the watchman inside that head. That was all Kurita had, the watchful eyes on his mainmast, their binoculars, their brains. Everything else was jammed and down, but the trusty Mark 1 Eyeball would see a good deal more than any man expected that day.

They had closed to about 42 kilometers from the estimated position of their adversary, still well over the horizon, and unseen. But the morning sky was soon alive with the hot long contrails of the S-300s, one following another, scoring the mid-day sky. Heads turned, eyes saw, brains reacted and the shouts of alarm soon followed—Rockets!

That was the word Kurita had been waiting to hear, and now he rushed out onto the weather deck off the bridge to put his own Mark 1 Eyeball into operation. There they were, those long ghostly contrails in the sky, but they were not aiming for his ships. Instead they were moving west towards the dark mass of Karafuto, and their speed was amazing.

The planes they were after were well beyond his visual range, but seeing those missiles was enough. “Watchman! Report this sighting to the radio officer. Tell him to transmit it to Takami.”

Kurita shook his head, a disdainful look on his face. Radars were useless. This cruiser was supposed to be scouting for the presence of the enemy here, but instead it was lagging well behind. How could it see anything there? I am told it has better radars than we have, but surely they could see nothing. Now we have the irony that my watchmen are the first to see and report contact with the enemy—out there, somewhere. Let us see if we can find him today. I will be the first to see and fight this Mizuchi.

That was an honor he might want to shirk from if he could have taken the real measure of his enemy. But even so, it would not have stopped him from pressing on to attack. He had good ships here, fast, well armored, the best in the fleet. Rockets or no rockets, he was going to attack.

Some minutes passed, and then the watchmen called out yet another sighting, this time a bright fire high up in the sky, descending rapidly like a falling plane might, but much faster. It plummeted towards the sea, commanding the attention of Mark 1 Eyeball systems throughout the task force, and then, to their great amazement, it suddenly pulled out of that dive, leveled off, and came streaking in towards Hiraga. Kurita watched, spellbound, seeing a naval rocket now aimed for his ship for the very first time.

The words of Admiral Yamamoto whispered at his ear: “…they are fast, lethal, and have a very long range. They can strike your ships from well beyond the range of your battleships’ biggest guns, and well over the horizon—and from what we have seen, these rockets have deadly accuracy—they never miss their targets.”

The alarm was sounding, a harsh claxon of warning. Men were rushing to their battle stations, soon manning their twin 25mm AA guns. Even if the men could ready those guns, swivel them toward the threat, sight and fire, the rounds would be traveling at 1126 feet per second, about the speed of sound. The Sunburns were moving at twice that speed on their low terminal approach, and the gunners wouldn’t get a single round anywhere near that missile before it thundered home.

The explosion rocked the ship, and though the side armor held, the fragmentation, shock and fire, were going to take out the secondary 127mm gun battery nearest to that hit, about 150 feet aft of the main conning tower and bridge. Kurita felt the sibilant rush of hot shrapnel rush past his ear, and he had come within half a foot of being killed at that moment. Hiraga rocked, then righted herself, the ship now wreathed in heavy smoke. A hot fire was burning.

Now images of all he had seen aboard Mutsu returned to haunt him…. “You will see them easily enough,” the officer there had said to him. “They claw the sky like Raiju, more terrible than the sky demon Itsumade. Yes, you will see them when they come, but there will be nothing you can do to stop them. Look how the fires consumed our ship!”

“Did you fire back at them?”

The man smiled. “There was nothing to shoot at. We never saw the enemy ship—only these terrible rockets.”

“Then they are cowards if they refuse to face you in battle.”

“That may be,” the officer had told him, “but here sits Mutsu, a burned wreck, and the enemy still commands the northern sea.”

“We shall see about that.”

Kurita remembered how he put on an outward face of bravado, but now the smell of the charred metal on old Mutsu that had haunted him after that visit was the smell of the burning flesh of his own ship—a horrid, gasoline smell, as if an entire bunker of aviation fuel was burning, burning….

Chapter 41

“That was just a warning shot,” said Karpov. “Strong advice that if they persist on this course they will get more of the same.”

The four S-300s Samsonov had fired each caught a Shotai of enemy fighters, shattering those three plane formations and taking down seven of the 15 planes. Three more persisted, and he allowed them to come within range of the Kinzhal /Klinok system, putting a missile on each one to end the threat. The other five were wandering aimlessly off bearing, and it was deemed that they would pose no real threat. They eventually made it back to their base, with a tall tale to tell of fast moving dragons that devoured planes.

As for the nine Betty Bombers, two S-300s were used to break up that formation, downing three with their heavy fragmentation burst, and damaging three others. They had not heeded the advice to fly a dispersed approach pattern, their training to maintain a close formation becoming their undoing. The expenditure of six S-300s and three medium range Klinoks had therefore parried the dangling jab, and Takami was not yet ready to attempt a missile strike. Still unaware of the true nature of the enemy they were facing, Karpov then had Samsonov deliver a sharp punch to Hiraga, a warning shot as he called it, with fire and steel.

“That won’t stop them,” said Fedorov.

“Perhaps not, but it will certainly get their attention. I will not tolerate any interference from the Japanese Navy.” Karpov raised a finger as he spoke.

“Then you may have to deliver a much harder punch.”

“Easily done. At the moment, however, those ships do not appear to have the speed to close the range if I come about. Unfortunately, I have no desire to come about until this matter is concluded. We will hold this course, and deal with them if they persist. That’s the only way to assure they pose no threat to my transports further north. And just in case they have more land based aircraft forming up, I want the second KA-40 airborne and heading west towards Sakhalin immediately.”

“Aye sir, I’ll send down the order.”

“Kurita just took a hard blow,” said Otani. “Missile impact on lead formation ship.”

“We might have stopped that missile,” said Fukada.

“Yes,” said Harada, “but the next one would be headed our way, and we aren’t in position to fire.”

That was the real problem Harada faced. The U.S. Navy in the early 21st century was built like a very intricate puzzle. Each ship was a piece of that puzzle, and to see the real picture of the power it could project, one had to look at the task forces and battle groups that made up that segment. No single ship had ever been designed to operate alone, except perhaps the stealthy submarines carrying ICBMs. A typical US battlegroup would be centered on a single aircraft carrier, which was then accompanied by one or two AEGIS cruisers and three to five destroyers, with one or more attack subs patrolling as well.

DDG-180 was just one small piece of that puzzle, a ship that had been designed to operate with other vessels, and one that sang in the chorus of their combined voices at sea. Takami should have been at sea with at least one more AEGIS capable destroyer, several DE class destroyer escorts, and one of Japan’s DDH class helicopter destroyers, quietly being adapted to perform a strike role with the addition of the F-35 Lightning. The ship was never designed to make a solo performance.

In the modern American Navy, the carrier aircraft trumped the longer range of Russia’s excellent SSMs, able to strike with a wide array of air delivered weapons from its planes. The best way to defeat those powerful Russian missiles was to see that they were never even launched by first destroying the ship that carried them. Here, in 1942, the air arm of Japan’s offensive capability was orders of magnitude weaker. Kirov had just casually brushed aside the first wave of land based planes, and it would take considerably more aircraft to pose any real threat.

By herself, Takami had very limited offensive capability in those eight Type 12 SSMs, and to use them, the ship had to close inside 120 kilometers, which was well within the range of all the SSMs Kirov could deploy. To make matters worse, the Russian missiles were much faster. If Kirov got off the first salvo, Takami would have no choice but to go defensive, for even one hit would be fatal and doom the ship. Harada knew this, which is why he was hastening north now to get into missile range with some trepidation. He was going to rely on the cover and distraction provided by planes off Kaga and Tosa, and that alone was a dear coin to spend. Those planes would be flown by some of Japan’s best pilots, a commodity that was precious and slow to ever be replaced. But where were they?

“This whole attack is mistimed,” said Fukada. “We should have brought in the naval strike planes first.”

“They were ordered to get airborne an hour ago, and we’ve finally got them on our screens to the west,” said Harada. “How long before they get here?”

“Sir,” said Otani. “Given their present cruising speed, I make it about 20 minutes before they have a visual on our position if they keep to the flight plan we sent them.”

“Mister Ikida,” Harada said to his navigator. “How close are we going to be in twenty minutes?”

“About 140 kilometers out sir.”

“So we send those planes north and carry on. Let me know the instant we have the range on that bastard.”

“Aye sir.”

Kaga was the first of the two carriers to form up its strike squadrons and head east. Lieutenant Commander Kakuichi Hashiguchi was chief Air Officer and Strike leader for this mission, and he had been very pleased with the new forward deck extension for the ship. Now his planes were well on their way, leaving the carriers behind where they cruised in the relatively safe waters of the Tatar Strait. They had crossed the long land mass of Sakhalin and were now over Taraika Bay, thinking to find the guide ship there as promised.

Though Harada had signaled Kurita that he was moving out of that bay into his wake, he just assumed he would have passed this information on to Admiral Kakuta commanding Carrier Division 2, but the word had not been passed. So when Hashiguchi’s 15 B5Ns reached the bay, they saw nothing but clear open waters there. Patches of low clouds grazed over the sea, with light rain falling from their flanks. He searched for some minutes, then heaved a sigh and made a decision. They were to have turned northeast at this point, but the ship they were to pivot on was not there. So he turned northeast anyway, chattering on his short range radio to inform the other squadron commanders. Lieutenant Ogawa and Ibuki followed with their D3A dive bombers, and so common sense corrected for the error and kept the planes headed in the right direction. Behind them came another 30 planes off the Tosa, all D3As, a total of 60 aircraft in this first wave.

They soon crossed the narrow isthmus that framed out the eastern edge of the bay, and then they were over the Sea of Okhotsk. Lieutenant Otani had them on radar, informing Harada that they were off their assigned heading but still in the game. The Captain scratched his head, not wanting to send more encrypted HF traffic to Kurita and hope it might eventually reach those planes. So instead he took a low tech approach, ordering Hiroko Shiota at communications to find and use the standard radio frequency the Japanese should be on, and use Kana Code Morse to signal those planes.

It worked.

Otani was soon pleased to report they had turned fifteen points and assumed the proper heading, and with no suspicious signals emissions that might draw any undue interest from Kirov. So far the plan was still on track, in spite of the fact that the land based planes had moved to engage too early, failed to properly disperse, and paid the price for that.

His Sea King, Sierra One, was well to the northwest keeping an eye on Kirov by using passive sensors only. The second Sea King, Sierra Two, had also been launched and moved northeast of the enemy’s presumed position. In this way, Harada hoped to bracket and frame the contact with overlapping radars when he went active, nailing down its position quickly and then getting his missiles in the air as soon as possible. His hope was that Kirov would perceive no threat from those two airborne contacts, and he was correct.

“This contact here,” said Karpov. “It appears to be loitering.”

“A seaplane off that command ship. I tracked it heading north, and its hugging the coast, moving in and out of the coastal ranges.”

“It’s not a threat now,” said Karpov, “but I don’t want it heading up that coast line to observe our amphibious operations. If it gets 100 klicks north of our position, I want to know immediately.”

“Aye sir.”

It was then that feeds from the KA-40 began to light up Rodenko’s screen. “More contacts sir, bearing 225 southwest, speed 180 knots. I’m reading it as a contact cluster at the moment, but experience tells me this is probably a full squadron of 12 to 15 planes. And there’s another cluster sir, right behind the first.”

“They must be coming from airfields near Poronaysk,” said Karpov, referring to the main port on the bay that the Japanese now called Shikuka. It was as good a guess as any, for the KA-40 could not see beyond Sakhalin island into the Tatar Strait, and so the presence of the 2nd Carrier Division remained unknown to them.

“Well they persist with this nonsense, and they’ll pay the same price the others did for that. Mister Samsonov, ready on the S-300 system. Salvo of eight missiles, two groups of four. Target the lead group Rodenko feeds you, and fire at 200 kilometers.”

The timing of that little show was going to give Admiral Kurita a front row seat. Hashiguchi’s planes would be approaching his surface group from the south, using it as their second navigation aid. He had spent the last half hour receiving reports on the damage inflicted by that missile, and was pleased to see that the fires were finally being controlled. Yet his shiny new battleship had just endured the first scars of war. The secondary battery he thought was lost soon reported that it could still function, and new crews were assigned. That didn’t matter, as the ship would never get close enough to Mizuchi to fire its guns, but Kurita did not know that. The war would be fought well over his horizon now, and it was the province of planes and rockets….

And there they were, high in the sky again, arcing up and moving like sky demons, so terribly fast. His pulse leapt to think that his ship would soon come under attack again, but these rockets stayed high up, none diving to the water’s edge as before. He craned his neck, watching them pass overhead, and continue on south, where he could just make out the scattered formations of planes. That had to be Admiral Kakuta’s carrier planes. Surely those rockets could never find and kill such nimble aircraft.

What he saw next was most disturbing, the sky suddenly blossoming with bright orange fireballs as the rockets swerved and fell on the planes. He saw two burning as they fell to the sea, and others swirling as if they thought to dog fight the rocket demons, but to no avail. One by one the rockets exploded, and more planes fell, nine in all, with three others turning away, most likely with damage that was forcing them to abort.

That would be the fate of Admiral Kakuta’s planes that day, veteran pilots all. The long reach of the S-300s was going to find them well south of Kirov’s position, giving Harada fits as he raced to get into firing position while that action was still underway. The first eight S-300s had ruined Hashiguchi’s 15 torpedo planes. Another four behind them tore into the D3As, which were now scattering in all directions as per their orders should they encounter enemy rocket fire. That reaction was going to raise the stakes for Karpov, forcing him to push more valuable missile chips out onto the table of war if he wanted to take those planes down at range.

“Sir,” said the Navigator, “we should have range on them now. I make our position at 110 klicks from presumed enemy position. If we go active, I can nail that down to the meter for you.”

There it was, the moment of truth for Harada and Takami. He had eight archers with a single arrow each, and if he fired them now there wasn’t anything but the rail gun behind them at this range. He doubted he would get inside the range of his deck gun, and discarded that weapon in any case. The carrier based planes were already being engaged. It was now or never. He looked to Fukada, and Hideo Honjo a the CIC, and decided.

“This is it, gentlemen. Time to hit the dance floor. Lieutenant Otani, the ship will cease Silent Alpha and secure from EMCON. All radars will go active immediately. Lieutenant Shiota, signal both Sea Kings and order the same. Then advise Admiral Kurita that it might be best if he withdraws.”

Fukada was quick to repeat those orders, and soon the considerable power of the ship’s active radar was coming on line. The Sea Kings would go active as well, and feed their telemetry to Takami. In a matter of minutes their overlapping coverage would serve to pinpoint the location of Kirov. It was then that Harada played his ace, hoping it was good enough to take the hand.

“Mister Honjo, let’s throw some lightning—full salvo—all eight missiles.”

Claxons sounded, the missile warning hounding the nerves of the officers and crew, as it was designed to do. You never saw the enemy you were firing at, only the milky green phosphor of their presence as seen by electronic eyes. Yet you could see them in your mind’s eye, sitting before their technology, just as you were, watching, thinking, waiting.

The Vals and Kates off Kaga and Tosa were out there taking the heat from Kirov’s S-300s, but now eight fast arrows would lance out at the unseen enemy, and with them the fate of the campaign in the North Pacific would likely be written into this torn and shattered history that never should have been.

Chapter 42

Rodenko was the first to feel the edge of the sensor shock wave when it lit up his board. He stared at the red light, blinked, his Mark 1 Eyeball seeing, yet not believing for that brief instant. Then he inclined his head, reached for a diagnostic switch, and nudged the system briefly to see that all was well. The judgment was in a few seconds later, and so he decided to report the mystery to command.

“Con… Very odd sir. I’m receiving a signal from the KA-226 indicating their Oko radar panel is being jammed.” That was the first indication that something was amiss. Takami’s ECM systems were singing over the frequencies identified as active for the Oko Panel, and it had called home to report the offense.

“Jammed? Not possible,” said Karpov, giving Fedorov a sideward glance. “How could they possibly have anything that could bother our systems?”

That was a short lived assertion, no matter how true it might have been at one time. After Krakatoa, the Japanese suddenly had plenty to bother a ship like Kirov, and now, to Rodenko’s amazement, systems and electronic reflexes that had been idle for months suddenly perked up and began reporting an alarming train of information. Light after light began winking out new signals data, and the internal profiler was analyzing and reporting.

“What in God’s name? Sir, I have emissions profiles on I/J band frequencies… Analyzing…. This is impossible. It’s reading AN/SPG-62! And look here sir, we’re getting S Band emissions and the system is profiling that traffic as AN/SPY-1D, and I have three other signatures.”

“What are you saying?”

“This is crazy, sir, but That’s the emission profile for an Aegis class destroyer or cruiser. We’re being painted by long range target illumination radar!”

“An AEGIS destroyer? Nonsense. Here? Now?” Karpov looked at Fedorov. “Could we have shifted?” That was the first thing that came to his mind as his own internal systems sought to analyze and profile this impossible emissions traffic report. Clearly none of those emissions could be happening here in 1942, but the ship had a long history of pulsing—moving in time, and sometimes with little fanfare or sign that they had even shifted.

Fedorov looked around them, his eyes scanning the horizon, eyes narrowed, thinking. “Do we still have the helos?”

“Aye sir,” said Rodenko. “The 226 is still being jammed, but the KA-40 we just launched is clear, and I have a good telemetry link. That has to be the feed on these signals emissions, and I’m making the contact right here, just south of that surface action group we hit.”

“The goddamned command ship,” said Karpov. “But it’s clearly something much more. Fedorov? Sun and moon still where they should be? Anything amiss?”

“Not that I can see,” said Fedorov. “We’ve still got a line out to both our helos, and that surface action group is still hot and strong on the board. So my guess is that we haven’t shifted.”

“Rodenko,” said Karpov. “Could our system be malfunctioning, reporting false positives?”

“I’ve run diagnostics. With one errant signal, I might take a second look, but I’m now picking up five separate radar systems, and the KA-40 is pretty sure what it has by the tail out there. Look here, sir.” He read aloud now from his board data logger: “Bear 6 has been classified as DDG 180, Improved Atago Class. Admiral sir, this is an AEGIS equipped destroyer, JS-Takami, and the contact is hostile. Range, 80 nautical miles; bearing 180 true.”

That was all it was going to take for Karpov. Mystery or no mystery, he was all business now. The impossible could wait for further analysis in the after action report. Something was out there, jamming a modern day Oko class radar set on the KA-40 and writing its name all over the microwave frequency spectrum. If this was a system error, he could call himself stupid later. Now was the time to act. If it was an error, all he would lose were the missiles he fired now. Every instinct in his body tensed up and told him he should barrage that target with no less than ten missiles, and make them hot. The one strident protest within him that refused to believe this could be happening gave him brief pause, and he lowered the missile count.

“Rodenko! Activate all offensive and defensive ECM systems at once—Bell Bash, Bell Nip, Bell Thump, Wine Glass—light them up! Samsonov. Put the S-300 system on full automatic, weapons free on any missile contact reported. Then put four Moskit-IIs on that contact immediately!”

“Aye sir. Four missiles ready and targeting Bear 6 now.”

“Fire!”

Takami had put all eight Type-12 missiles in the air, but traveling at just under the speed of sound, they would only get half way to their targets before Karpov’s anger found its way south on the hot tail fire of those four Moskit-IIs. Out on the weather deck of Hiraga, Admiral Kurita had been watching the dizzy display of fireworks high up as Kirov’s S-300s had leapt upon the incoming air strike. Now the watchman called out another sighting, and he looked to see more rocket trails, this time coming from the south! How could this be possible? Were there two enemy ships, another behind him? Then he realized that these must be weapons fired from Takami, and that thought lifted his spirits.

He recalled his briefing with Admiral Yamamoto. “Scout well,” the Admiral had told him, “and to aid that effort, I am attaching a very special ship to your task force, the cruiser Takami… a very secret ship, something entirely new. Do not think that the Siberians and Russians are the only ones who have developed this new rocket technology… it was designed as a fleet defense ship. Most of its rockets are meant to be used against enemy aircraft, or against the rocket weapons this Mizuchi flings at your ships.”

Better late than never, thought Kurita. Those rockets must be trying to catch and kill the enemy rockets, but from what I can see, they move much too slow, and they are too low on the sea.

He watched them move in a stately trail one following another, eight in all, their tails bright with fire as they passed his ships and continued north. Then like a train coming in the opposite direction, he saw more missiles from the north, one, two, four in all. The two groups passed very near one another, yet had no argument.

They continued on about their deadly business, passing one another, with bigger fish to fry. It was then that Kurita realized these must be after exactly that—bigger fish. His own ship had already been targeted. Now Takami had fired eight rockets at the enemy, and four enemy arrows were moving swiftly away to the south, undoubtedly aimed at this secret new cruiser Yamamoto had told him about. These ships are fighting one another! Mizuchi hurls its fire at Takami this time, and it is terribly fast, much faster than our rockets. Yet how can they even see one another? My horizon is completely empty in all directions, except for those rockets. There is nothing on the sea at all. Is Takami simply firing blind? Surely it can have no idea where the enemy is now.

“Vampire! Vampire!” yelled Otani. “Multiple contacts inbound—I read four missiles. Range, 20 nautical miles and closing fast.”

“Hello,” said Harada. “Well, the interval of surprise is over, gentlemen. They obviously know enough now to get serious. Stand up the SM-2 system and engage those contacts. Set all laser and Phalanx systems to full automatic, weapons free.”

Only four, he thought. I’d have doubled down on that salvo. But they have more in the cupboard than we do, and will likely fire again soon. For now, we had better just hope we can stop those four vampires.

“Lieutenant Otani, what are we firing at?”

“SA-N-22B sir—Sunburns. We should be seeing them any minute now.”

Twenty nautical miles, thought Harada. That is too damn close. Now he waited, the tension mounting second by second as his forward deck was awash with defensive missile fire. The SM-2s would go out one by one, with two assigned to each target, and AEGIS carefully watching the results to retarget any missile to a new Vampire if needed. He saw something bright flash like lightning to the north, and realized the Laser system had already taken a shot. This was just too damn close for comfort.

“Call the tune, Lieutenant.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Otani’s voice carried the emotion of the moment, the adrenaline carefully controlled, the effect of all those many hours training at her station in drill after drill. This time the weapons were free, hot, and this was no drill.

“Laser Reports a Miss—recharging. SM-2 has locked on lead target and detonated. Splash Vampire 1! Wingmate is redirecting to new target… attempting to lock on… No good, sir. Wingmate has missed, but missile three has the target and is tracking true. Hit! Splash Vampire 2.”

They had fired eight SM-2s in defense, but they were not all needed. They had two misses, and four kills in the first six off the deck. The last two ran blind, saw nothing more to argue with, and self-destructed as programmed.

“They just took down all four of our SSMs,” said Samsonov with a sheepish look on his face. “I have no telemetry on any missile.”

That removed all uncertainty from Karpov’s mind. Whatever doubt that remained was crushed. All the puzzle pieces fit to paint a nice clear picture.

We got strange signals intelligence from Nikolin on HF transmission bands that could not be read. Something was capable of jamming our Oko Panels on the helos, and Rodenko’s contact profile tells me exactly what it is—a ship also capable of shooting down a Moskit-II moving at well over Mach 2 on terminal approach. There was a modern day AEGIS class destroyer out there, and I have no doubt that we are now under attack.

There’s no time to wonder how it could have happened, he thought. Perhaps it was just as Fedorov suggested when he gave me that quiet little warning. So if they are out there, and this is still 1942, then we had better get serious. If that ship went to active sensors, it was because he wanted to fix our position to fire. In fact, he probably fired some time ago, well before I let those Moskit-IIs go.

“Mister Samsonov,” he said, his voice leaden, and deadly serious. “What is that ship carrying in the way of offensive missiles?”

“Sir, if it is standard loadout, it would have either eight Type-90 SSMs, or perhaps the newer Type-12.”

“Weapon characteristics…”

“Sir, the Type 90 is a high subsonic cruise missile with low angle approach—a sea skimmer, sir. Range 150 kilometers, with a 225kg high explosive warhead. The Type 12 is similar, but with extended range. Both use inertial guidance systems and deploy active radar on terminal approach.”

“Very well, please tell our S-300 system we’ll be expecting bad company any minute now.”

No sooner had Karpov said that when Rodenko’s board sounded the alert. “Missile warning! I’m now reading eight contacts inbound at 20 nautical miles. Top Plate, Top Pair and Round House TACAN confirm. Range now 17 nautical miles and closing.”

“Sir, S-300s firing now!” Samsonov would not have been quick enough to toggle and tap out orders for sixteen S-300s to get out after those missiles. The system on full automatic was far faster, and it was already doing its job. Hatches opened on the forward deck, and the long deadly missiles were up and on their way, one after another. On Rodenko’s radar they fed out from the ship like a long string of pearls, but this time the targets would not be so easy to hit. Kirov’s SAMs had been the terror of aircraft in this era, finding them without fail, their radar cross signatures simply too huge to miss, their speed so feeble that tracking and killing them was almost a certainty. This time, however, the targets were coming in very low, and relatively fast, with much smaller radar profiles, and all in an environment that was now suddenly alive with the harassment of ECM systems on both sides.

The first two S-300s were going to miss, but the third scored a hit, taking down the lead SSM. The odds of a hit were about 80% against a modern day SSM like this, and now they were further reduced by the sleek target profile, its inherent stealth, and the environment in which the engagement was taking place. The once infallible killer was now a hit and miss defensive system, but then it knew that, and its computers had been programmed to dish out ordnance required to saturate the barrage with defensive missiles. S-300s continued to answer its call.

The fourth missile scored the second hit, and its three underdeck cell mates took out one more. The first eight missiles had scored three hits the first time through the lineup, a good day for a baseball team, but not for a ship when 225kg warheads were being thrown at your head. You had to get each and every one of those missiles, without fail, and so the system opened yet more cell hatches on that long forward deck, and let the S-300s fly. Twenty missiles would go out in this defensive volley, two each assigned to the two contacts Rodenko now could ID as helicopters, their radar signatures giving them away in the clutter of other incoming Japanese planes. The other sixteen missiles would all go after those incoming SSMs.

It was going to be very close. They took down three more, and the last two were now penetrating inside close defense circles. It was coming down to the last two missiles against two defensive SAMs, and those odds were not good.

Karpov had been watching the whole engagement play out on Rodenko’s screen. “Get them,” he said, his teeth clenching. “Get the damn bastards.” He was slowly raising his hand, preparing to order Samsonov to switch to the Klinok system, where he had enough missiles to make those two intruders look like a porcupine when he was done with them. It would not be necessary.

Missiles 18 and 19 ran true, and each would log a kill that day. By the time they did, the sky south of the ship was a broil of contrails and explosive red orange roses as each S-300 detonated, either on an enemy missile, or by committing seppuku for the dishonor and shame of having missed its assigned target. The booming reports were heard far to the south by Kurita where he watched on the weather deck of Hiraga. He was much closer to the action, but remained in doubt as to the outcome of the battle. Aboard Takami, however, they knew in with that last explosion that they had risked everything, and failed. They had stalked the tiger, achieved surprise, taken Kirov by the tail, but now they were about to learn something they could learn in no other way.

Takami’s SSM bays were empty.

Kirov’s were still full.