Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (12 page)

Hayashi just looked at him, a longing
in his eyes, as if he knew at that very moment that he would never see Matsua again,
and perhaps never see many of the pilots who were gathering on deck now, their
planes near ready, some up on the wings and climbing into the cockpits, eager
for battle. He clenched his jaw, and nodded.

“Good luck, Matsua. Now I must go and
make my report. For now…
Sayonara
…”

“Not so formal, Hayashi,” Matsua
clasped his friend’s shoulder with a smile. “Tonight we will drink on it, neh?
Mata-ne
,
my friend.
Ja
-ne.
See you soon.”

*
* *

Aboard
the Battleship
Kirishima
, Captain
Sanji Iwabuchi was scanning the far horizon with his field glasses, well aware
that eagle eyed watchmen were doing the same, well above him on the tall pagoda
main mast of the stately ship. But he was eager to find this enemy, and bring
it under his heel.

Iwabuchi was a hard man, steely in
battle, and often cruel, impatient and abusive to subordinates. He was short
tempered and too quick to find fault, and he was clearly unhappy with the
sudden change of orders he had just received. His guns had all been primed and
loaded with HE and incendiaries for the planned bombardment of Darwin. Now he
would have to unload his eight big 14 inch guns and reload with heavy armor
piercing rounds, but the propellant charge bags were all wrong as well, and
getting them out of the breeches safely would take time. He summoned his
gunnery officer, Commander Kimitake Koshino and asked him how long the
procedure would take.

“We have been ordered to find this
enemy cruiser that has been giving Hara’s pilots fits. It is somewhere ahead,
and if this ship is not ready for action heads will roll, Koshino!”

“Please excuse me, Captain,” Koshino
said politely. “Incendiary rounds use only three powder bags instead of the
usual four. We will have to remove all three to get at the shell, then remove
it before we reload the new armor piercing round and four more powder bags.
Getting the shells and bags
into
the guns is very fast, sir. Getting
them back out is another matter. It could take twenty minutes for all eight
guns.”

“Too long!” Iwabuchi’s face indicated
his displeasure. “Murajima is out ahead in the float plane looking for this
ship now, and if he spots it I want to be ready for battle.”

“Well, sir…” Koshino hesitated, then
spoke his mind. “There is one way to speed things along. It could reduce our
reload time to just three or four minutes. We need only fire the guns. That
will remove the unwanted rounds and powder bags in short order. Then it is only
a matter of normal reloading.”

Iwabuchi’s face reddened. He struck
the table with his fist, glaring at his gunnery officer. “Very well, Koshino.
Fire the guns then, and be quick about it! Notify the cruiser escorts that we
will fire ranging salvoes so as not to look like complete
fools
, neh?
Then get those armor piercing rounds in fast, and consider how long it will
take you to
pay
for the rounds and powder we must waste because of your
incompetence!”

Koshino knew better than to say
anything now. He merely lowered his head, then saluted and rushed off to give
his gunnery crews their orders. Moments later they saw the forward turret
rotate away from the escorting cruiser squadron and fire. The sound was
deafening, and Iwabuchi shouted after it, venting his own anger with the
brilliant orange fire from the muzzles.

If this ship is nigh at hand, he
thought, then let them hear the roar of our guns, like thunder on the horizon.
It is one thing to bat aside Hara’s mosquitoes, but it will be quite another to
escape the anger of
my
guns, neh? He turned to his signalman and gave
another order. “Send the cruisers on ahead as a forward sweeping unit. The
destroyers will remain with us for the time being.”

Cruiser Division Five had been
assigned to his covering force, three fast heavy cruisers, the
Haguro
,
Myoko
,
and
Nachi
, all sleek hounds with a strong bite in their ten 8 inch guns.

Kirishima
was very fast as well, particularly
for a vintage old ship as she was. Her hull was laid down at Mitsubishi Zosen
Kaisha's ship yard on the 17th of March of the year 1912! Venerable indeed. Her
design was not entirely the work of Japanese shipbuilders either. Sir George
Thurston of the British shipbuilding firm of Vickers-Armstrong had designed
both the plans and the guns for this ship, which was built largely in response
to the British Navy’s escalation in the commissioning of the armored cruiser
HMS
Invincible
. That ship had eight 12 inch guns and a speed of 26
knots, more formidable than anything in the Japanese navy at the time. So Japan
secured plans for a ship that was bigger and faster than
Invincible
, and
the
Kongo
Class
battleships were the
happy result.

Kirishima
was one of four built, and her eight
14 inch guns, now firing off the last of the troublesome incendiary rounds,
would trump
Invincible’s
12 inchers, her speed besting that ship as
well.
Kirishima
could run at all of thirty knots if pressed to the task.
She was called an armored cruiser when words were bandied about in the naval
treaty negotiations, but she was rightfully a battleship at over 40,000 tons
fully loaded, and she looked the part, her pagoda style superstructure rising
tall and proud above the big threatening gun turrets. She would be overshadowed
by many other battleships in time, some exceeding 70,000 tons like
Yamato
,
and there would be many who still called her an up-armored battlecruiser, but
she was to prove herself a tough ship before she met her fate. And fate had a
peculiar way of placing her in the thick of action, or so it would seem to one
given the hindsight of history.

Now she cruised with the last two
ships in Iwabuchi’s task force posted on either side, the destroyers
Minizuki
and
Fumizuki
,
there to discourage any enterprising American submarine commander who might be
in the area. A big ship like
Kirishima
was an inviting and very tempting
target for a stealthy submarine captain. In fact, his ship was supposed to have
been found by an American submarine, the
Nautilus
, while
Kirishima
was escorting Nagumo’s carriers during the operation against Midway that had
now been canceled—though Iwabuchi knew nothing of that unlived history.
Nautilus
would have fired a Mark 14 steam torpedo at the old battleship, eager for a
kill, but from a range of over 4000 meters it would miss by a wide margin.

The insult would be answered with a
salvo from
Kirishima’s
forward batteries when the periscope of the
Nautilus
was sighted, but to no avail. Hunting submarines was work for a destroyer, and
the escort
Arashi
would have been detached to
take up the hunt while
Kirishima
sailed off in a huff. It was once to be
a most fateful incident that would cost Japan more than anyone then alive could
realize.
Arashi
was not able to find and sink
the
Nautilus
, and eventually gave up the hunt and turned to rejoin the
Japanese carrier force, the fast
Kido
Butai
mobile group that was hoping to savage the American fleet. It was the wake of
this very destroyer that would have been spotted by the American commander Wade
McCluskey
, Jr. in his SBD ‘Dauntless’ dive-bomber,
and it would lead the U.S. formation directly to the heart of the Japanese
carrier fleet. The rest was all part of the ‘Miracle At Midway’ that would
crush the Japanese fleet and mark a decisive turning point in the war….But it
never happened.

The battle of Midway was never fought.
Instead
Kirishima
found itself here, leading the leftmost arm of a two
pronged attack to the south aimed at isolating Australia, Operation FS. But the
ship’s magnetic charm would hold true yet again. It would not be an American
submarine that would set the strange chain of events in motion this time, but a
ghostly sea demon that had appeared from thin air, to pose the greatest
challenge any sea captain of that era could ever face—the battlecruiser
Kirov
.

Chapter
9

Matsua’s
torpedo bombers soon discovered the
ship that had put fear into the eyes and soul of Lt. Commander Hayashi. There
were twelve planes sent to make this attack, two light squadrons of B5N2s, the
plane the Allies would call the “Kate.” The ship was just where Hayashi had
reported it, and Matsua wasted no time sending his men in for the attack.
Number one squadron would swoop in from the port side with six planes, and he
would lead number two squadron to the starboard side with the remaining six.
Together they would smash this ship with their Type 91, ‘Thunder Fish’ torpedoes.

The Type 91 was a formidable weapon,
having moved through several evolutions in its development to make it a
reliable workhorse for the B5N squadrons. They had put three into the USS
Lexington
three months ago, sending that carrier to the bottom of the Coral Sea. Now they
were ready for more. The growl of the planes was exhilarating as they swooped
to their low elevation approaches, deploying air brakes to slow the planes down
to no more than 160-180kph so they could safely launch their weapons.

What was Hayashi talking about? Matsua
could see the dark silhouette of the ship ahead now, perhaps 15,000, meters
out, and there was no sign of these serpents rising up to devour his planes,
nor any wisp of flak from the target ahead. But he would soon find out what
Hayashi meant by a rain of metal, for the low and relatively slow approach of
his torpedo bombers were the easiest possible target for
Kirov’s
lethal
close in defense systems.

*
* *

“Steady, Samsonov,” Karpov whispered.
“Any second now.”

They were tensely watching the
approach of Matsua’s planes, having seen them on radar long ago. It was
Karpov’s first reflex to immediately engage them with the Klinok medium range
SAMs at that time, but there were only twelve discrete targets, and he thought
he might save those missiles with another tactic. Karpov looked over his
shoulder to find their resident historian.

“Fedorov, you say these planes must
get inside 2000 meters to make an effective attack?”

“That’s right, and if they can get inside
1500 meters they’ll be even happier.”

“Then I have a proposal to make, but
it will take cool heads and more than a little nerve.” He turned to Admiral
Volsky now, knowing the final decision would lie with him. “We’ve been debating
whether or not to strike the carriers before they launched this attack, but now
that is a moot discussion. They are coming for us. The only question now is
whether or not we should
expend
our primary SAM
munitions and take them out at long range.”

“Both the Klinok system and the S-300s
are running low,” said Volsky. “We have enough in either weapon system to stop
this attack, but it will may take twelve missiles to do so.”

“I have another option,” said Karpov.
“We can simply hold fire and use the close in defense guns. The AK-760s can
range out to 4000 meters. That’s twice the firing range of those planes. We
have two on each side of the ship, and we can add in the Chestnuts I used
against those dive bombers.” He was referring to the
Kashtan
‘Chestnut’
gun system, with its twin Gatling guns thrown into the mix.

“We took out those Italian torpedo
bombers easily enough in the Tyrrhenian sea. This should be no different. It
will mean we allow them to come in close, but I have no doubt that we can hit
these planes before they do us harm.”

“Yet if they get their torpedoes in
the water,” said Volsky. “What then? We can dodge one or two by maneuvering the
ship, but not twelve.”

“The Captain may be right,” Fedorov
put in. “We can hit them well before they enter firing range, but it’s a very
brief firing window. One or two bursts should be enough to drop one of these
planes. The guns have the accuracy and rate of fire to do the job—at least from
what I’ve seen,”

“We can hit anything we target,”
Karpov assured him. “That’s the critical difference eighty years of weapons
development has made. A single burst can put hundreds of 30mm rounds on a
single plane. What we target, we kill. Period. We’ll use both laser and radar
tracking for pin-point accuracy.”

“And one more thing,” said Fedorov. “These
are Japanese pilots. They will not break formation and scatter when we hit them
like the Italian SM-79s did earlier. Shock or no shock, this is the cream of
their naval aviation at this point in the war. They will come straight in on
their attack runs, unwavering, just as they have trained, and we’re going to
have to kill each and every one.”

They sat with that for a moment, a
heaviness in the air. As they realized what they were going to do, ambushing an
enemy that would have no idea what was going to hit them. It was a feeling that
had lodged in the hearts of many other warriors, on both land and sea, while
they sat behind their weapons waiting for an enemy to charge, knowing the
bravery it took, knowing the fear their foe must feel and yet overcome, knowing
they had to kill him.