THE FORESIGHT WAR (37 page)

‘You’re one of the English fliers, right?’

The voice jarred him and he cringed inwardly, bracing himself to confront the naval officer.
 
I’m sorry, he felt like
saying,
I did what I had to.
 
He stared in confusion as the American’s grim, smoke-blackened face broke into a tired smile.

‘Thanks,’ he said simply.
 
‘If it weren’t for you guys we’d have been slaughtered in our beds.
 
You did a great job.’

Numbly, Morgan shook the proffered hand and watched as the man walked away.
 
The final irony, he thought.
 
Judas becomes a hero.
 
He walked slowly back to his temporary quarters at Hickham Field in order to complete his report for London.
 
No doubt Churchill would be pleased.

‘Gunner, fire!
 
Reload canister!’
 
The Captain’s voice was barely audible over the hailstorm of machine-gun fire drumming against the Humber’s armour.
 
With scarcely a pause, the gun jerked backwards in its mounting, blasting hundreds of steel balls into the surrounding jungle.
 
Taylor waited as the spent case was automatically kicked from the breech, then dragged another cartridge from the rack and slammed it into the hot gun.
 
He swayed as the turret swivelled rapidly, co-axial Browning hammering.
 
Another shell.
 
And another.
 

Taylor was half-deafened, cramped, exhausted.
 
The battle for Singora seemed to have been going on forever, after that reckless dash through the night, tyres slithering on the switchback mudslick that passed for a road.
 
The Humbers had taken the lead, among them some AA versions, the deep roar of their twin Oerlikons occasionally heard as they scythed through the trees.
 

Following on behind were the six-wheeled APCs, each carrying a section of infantry.
 
Still, as Taylor gathered from the brief reports he heard in his secondary role of Wireless Telegraphy Officer, the British column had hundreds of troops to fight thousands.
 
Reinforcements were on the way as fast as the roads permitted.
 
Meanwhile, the column had to hold on, to prevent the Japanese from securing a bridgehead.

‘Dawn’s breaking.’
 
The Captain’s voice was hoarse.
 
‘Now at least we can see the little bastards coming.’
 
There was a brief lull.
 
‘My God, there are thousands of them!’
 
The Captain’s voice had risen sharply.
 
Anything else he might have said was suddenly drowned out by a rippling blast of explosions which rocked the Humber, followed by a whining snarl.

‘Beauforts!
 
You beauties!
 
The Navy’s here!’

But that was only the end of the first phase.

The Captain of
HMAS Canberra
anxiously scanned the northern sky.
 
The eight-inch gun heavy cruiser, along with her sistership
Australia
and the six-inch gun
Newcastle
and
Glasgow
, the light aircraft carriers
Manchester
and
Frobisher
, and a screen of frigates and destroyers, was heading north into dangerous waters.
 

Their route from Singapore had taken them around the
Anamba
Islands
to avoid a reported minefield and they were now making a steady twenty-five knots to the area to the east of the Singora invasion beach.
 
It was a risky gamble – Japanese submarines were known to be in the area, a naval covering force was lurking somewhere and Singora was within reach of enemy air cover – but risks had to be taken in order to prevent the Japanese from reinforcing their hard-pressed invasion force.

Far ahead, a lone Beaufort scouted for targets or enemy warships.
 
Closer to the small fleet, two more aircraft flew anti-submarine patrol.
 
High overhead, a quartet of Beaufighters provided top cover.
 
Numbers were critical; the two small carriers, converted from cruiser hulls, could only carry a couple of dozen aircraft each, only half of which were fighters.

The Captain lowered his binoculars, feeling a little self-conscious.
 
He was fully aware that the airborne radar of the Beaufort, and then his ship’s on-board systems, would pick up any danger long before the human eye.
 
Furthermore, the low cloud, rain showers and misty conditions that were helping to conceal them from prying eyes also blocked
his own
vision.
 
But habit was hard to break.

By the route they had taken, Singora was some 600 nautical miles – twenty-four hours steaming – from Singapore. They had left at nightfall on the 8th and it was now
midday
on the 9th.
 
About six hours to go.
 
The Captain fervently hoped that the RAAF planes at Alor Star and Kota Bharu were ready to support them.
 
He knew that the Eastern Fleet, separated from him by the
Malayan
Peninsula
, had left the area and was steaming rapidly southwards towards Singapore.
 
Reinforcements from that quarter would arrive far too late.

The commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-57 counted the ships carefully as they passed by him at extreme range.
 
At their speed they were maintaining, together with their frequent changes of course, he reluctantly estimated that a torpedo attack was unlikely to be favoured with success.
 
However, that was not, in any case, the main reason for his presence.
 
With equal care, he composed his message.

‘Urgent signal from the Beaufort recce plane, sir.
 
A cluster of ships spotted on radar two hundred miles north, heading two-forty degrees.
 
It must be the second wave of transports!’

‘Very well.
 
Steer three-forty degrees and maintain speed.
 
Let’s hope they haven’t spotted the plane. I want to catch this lot napping.’

Assuming that the invasion fleet was travelling at 12 knots, the ships’ courses were converging at a combined true figure of over 30 knots.
 
Less than seven hours to contact; it would be dark when action was joined.

The Aichi E13A seaplane skimmed the surface of the sea at 120 knots, keeping below the clouds and, did the crew but know it, below the searching radar beams.
 
The plane had been out for six hours already and would soon need to turn back to find the parent cruiser, a part of the screening force under Rear-Admiral Kurita.
 

A shout from the pilot jolted his two crew-members into full alertness, and they spotted the tell-tale wake of a big ship as the floatplane swept past.
 
The pilot banked the Aichi round to follow up the track, while the radio operator prepared to make contact.

The Beaufort’s radar operator cursed as the image in the cathode ray tube flickered and died.
 
They were meant to remain on station a hundred and fifty miles ahead of the British fleet for several more hours, and the shortage of planes was such that a replacement flight would not be ready for some time.
 

After a brief, agonised discussion among the crew, the reconnaissance plane dropped to a lower altitude and started a visual search pattern.

The mixed force of Mitsubishi G3M and G4M bombers from the Genzan, Kanoya and Mihoro Air Corps Attack Groups had taken off from Saigon and Tu Duam airfields in the cloud and rain of the early afternoon.
 
The message relayed from the floatplane had led to an adjustment in the course but much anxiety as to whether or not they would be able to find the reported British fleet.
 
As evening approached, the skies began to clear and excitement aboard the planes rose sharply.
 
Surely it would not be long before they found their targets!

‘Action Stations – Repel Aircraft.’
 
The bugle call echoed over the tannoy systems throughout the fleet as the radar reports came in.
 
The carriers immediately changed course and increased speed, ready to launch aircraft.
 
The first four Beaufighters were already warming up, ready to support the combat air patrol cruising at 15,000 feet, while the sweating deck crews heaved more fighters into position or stood ready to pull them off the lifts as they emerged.

The first attack wave consisted of over thirty of the older G3Ms, lining up a high-level bombing run from 10,000 feet.
 
They never saw the first Beaufighters until they stooped like hawks, cannon hammering.
 
The Mitsubishis had tremendous range, gained in part by savings on armour plate.
 
The Hispanos’ high-explosive and incendiary 20 mm shells glaringly revealed the downside of that particular compromise as the leading bombers exploded and burned.

By now, nearly all of the defending fighters had been launched but most were still climbing at full throttle.
 
The battle that followed was a running one, each flight of Beaufighters attacking in turn as they reached the rapidly disintegrating bomber formation.

Twenty minutes later, the fighters broke off their attack as the remaining handful of bombers reached the fleet.
 
The 4.7 inch guns of the frigates opened fire at 15,000 yards.
 
The Japanese high level bombing attack required aircraft to cluster in close formation, flying straight and level before dropping their bombs simultaneously on a signal of the leader.
 
This also made them beautiful targets for the naval AA gunners.
 
No ships were hit and very few aircraft survived.
 
The Beaufighters were pursuing the remnant of the Japanese force when the fifty low-level torpedo bombers arrived.

The
Canberra
’s captain watched the Mitsubishis closing in with mounting anxiety.
 
He was well aware that a prewar study had revealed that the success rate for airborne torpedo attacks was only ten percent at 1,250 yards but increased to fifty percent at 750 yards and an alarming eighty-five percent at 600 yards.
 
The aircraft had to be stopped at maximum range.

The cruiser held steady as the Mitsubishis approached at 100 feet, scarcely troubled by the few fighters able to reach them in time.
 
Five thousand yards, four thousand, three.

‘Now we’ll see if it really works,’ the Captain muttered.
 
The big Australian cruisers had just emerged from a controversial refit which had seen all of their old 4 inch secondary armament stripped out and replaced by the new water-cooled 57 mm Bofors guns in eight stabilised twin mountings.
 

The starboard battery opened fire as one, the combined rate of fire of sixteen rounds per second creating a massive roar of sound.
 
The sky filled with smoke trails as the day-tracers ignited, streaking towards the Japanese planes.
 
The Mitsubishis wobbled perceptibly as the tracers flashed past, then one after another exploded or crashed as the six-pound shells struck home.

‘The
Frobisher
’s been hit!’

The Captain swung round and cursed as he saw the old carrier swinging, slowing,
listing
.
 
A column of water rose from the side as a second torpedo struck home.
 
He knew immediately that she would never recover.

‘Tell two of the destroyers to pick up survivors.’
 
He was scarcely aware of his First Officer translating his command into specific orders.
 
Half of his air cover was sliding beneath the waves.
 
And they were six hundred miles from Singapore.

He became aware of cheers and cat-calls around him and turned to survey the scene.
 
The attack was over, the remaining aircraft escaping into the gathering dusk.
 
Reports came to him.
 
The
Newcastle
had also been torpedoed but the much newer cruiser would survive, albeit with reduced speed.
 
The returning Beaufighters were crowding the
Manchester
’s flight deck as they came in to refuel.
 
Launching any aircraft from that ship would take some organising.

‘Radar contact, sir.
Several ships, dead ahead, range fifteen miles.’

The Captain swung round in surprise.
 
To have arrived so soon, the Japanese ships must have been travelling much faster than he had assumed.
 
A dreadful possibility grew in his mind.

‘What speed?’

A few minutes silence as his officers calculated the rate of change of distance and bearing.

‘Twenty-four knots, sir.’

The Captain cursed under his breath.
 
Those weren’t transports – they were warships.
 
And they were hunting him.

The atmosphere in the War Room was tense with excitement.
 
Churchill was in his element, poring over maps and charts of the Asian theatre and consulting the latest intelligence reports about naval deployments and military progress.

‘So the rest of the cruiser force made it back to Singapore and has joined the Far East Fleet there.
 
We now have the most powerful naval force in the area.
 
The question
is,
how to use it to the best effect?’