Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) (12 page)

Rodenko raised an eyebrow at this, but said nothing more.

They steamed almost due south now, slowly approaching the Japanese
mainland, and the ship was preparing to send up the KA-40 for a general survey
when the Fregat radar system made contact with a small detachment of surface
ships near the Oki Islands.

“Con. Radar. Contact bearing One-Five-Zero degrees. Three surface
ships. Speed twenty. Range 28,000 meters. Designate Alpha One. Second contact
bearing One-Seven-Four degrees south. Two surface ships. Speed twenty. Range 30,000
meters. Designate Alpha Two.”

“Feed data to the tactical board,” said Karpov. “Twenty-eight thousand
meters? How was it they got this close without the Fregat system picking them
up earlier?”

“They were probably behind those islands,” said Rodenko as the
data began to wink on the tactical board. “Yes, the Alpha One contact would
have been masked by Dogo Island. They’ve just come into our line of site now.
The Alpha Two contact was probably behind these smaller islands here.”

“Give me a Tin Man feed. High resolution please, and magnification
level four.”

Nikolin activated the robot-like camera system and fed the data to
the wide panel display. The familiar silhouettes of Japanese armored cruisers
appeared on the screen, chugging forward and leaving a column of darkening
smoke that was now clearly evident in the skies above them.”

“Why didn’t we see their smoke earlier?” Karpov was not happy.

“Well, sir,” said Rodenko, “our men are here with the faces poked
into these computer terminals, not out on the weather decks looking for smoke
on the horizon.”

 “I don’t like surprises, gentlemen. There’s no excuse for us not
picking up these ships before they were in our line of sight like this.”

“Yes, someone should have seen their smoke long ago. It can only
mean that they were lying in wait, sir. Perhaps they came to all-stop and had
their boilers fired low. That might control smoke emissions, and the horizon is
quite hazy as it stands.”

“Are you suggesting they
knew
we were here? How would they
know we were approaching? We make no visible steam at all. Get that KA-40
ready, Rodenko. I want better situational awareness. In the meantime…Mister
Samsonov!”

“Sir!”

“The ship will come to battle stations. Activate 152mm batteries
and prepare to engage Alpha One. Helm, battle speed. Thirty knots and steady as
she goes.”

“Sir, aye, ahead thirty and steady on.”

“Captain,” said Rodenko. “If you’re going to engage here then
perhaps we should launch the KA-40 once the action concludes. We have two
batteries aft that will be tossing shell casing all over the place back there.”

“Well enough, the Fregat system will do for the moment. We’ll let
the range close another 10,000 meters, Mister Samsonov, then I’ll want all
three 152mm turrets to engage Alpha One. I guess these impudent little men did
not get enough of a beating last time they stuck their noses into our business.
We just blasted their lead ship earlier. Now we’ll let them know what they’re
dealing with.”

But Karpov did not entirely know what
he
was dealing with
here either. Vice Admiral Kamimura was back on his assigned station at the Oki
Island Group, and he was well aware of the approach of the large Russian
warship. He had no 21st Century radar systems, but human eyes on the northern
coast of Dogo Island had seen the ship darken the horizon long ago, and signal
fires were lit that soon spiraled up in thin, dark columns of smoke.

It was happenstance as much as anything else. A sea lion was
gliding through the cobalt blue waters off the island, veering toward shore to
chase a passing fish and missing his quarry. The rocks near shore beckoned and
offered a warm place to sun himself, and that he did, braying with satisfaction
as he climbed out of the sea and wallowed up onto the rocks.

The hunter Karpov imagined sitting at his mid-day meal was actually
a coastwatcher named Nakai Yozaburo. He had made a lucrative business out of
hunting sea lions on those islands, and other small islets further north called
Dokdo and Ulleung-do, and the call of a sea lion had interrupted what he hoped would
be a nice nap that day. Driven by his greed, he thought instead to get up and
have a look from the watchtower and see if he could spot the sea lions. What he
saw instead set in motion a series of events that would cascade through the
decades ahead, knocking one down after another.

Far out to sea was the threatening silhouette of a large warship!
Had it not been for that sea lion’s call he would have missed it. Or perhaps it
was the greed in his heart, but he ran to light his signal fire as a backup,
and then he would transmit the sighting via telegraph as well.

Soon after, the Japanese fed more coal and fire to their furnaces
to quickly build up steam for action. The cruisers were indeed lying in wait,
just as Rodenko surmised, and now they rushed boldly into the narrow strait
between Dogo to the northeast, and Dozen and Nakanoshima Island about ten
kilometers southwest. Five cruisers charged forward to engage the Russian foe
in a bold surprise attack.

And there was one more thing that Karpov had not seen, nestled in
a shallow bay at the heart of the three smaller islands southwest of the
channel. Had the KA-40 been up with its
Oko
panel it would have easily detected
them, but as it was, the battleships
Tango
and
Mishima
were
neatly masked behind the hilly islands around them, and the shovels were quickly
feeding coal to the fires on those two ships as crews hastily began to prep the
guns for action.

Deception, not discretion, was now the better part of valor, and
the Japanese had pulled their first surprise on the seasoned Russian Captain. Now
it was time to fight.

Chapter 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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