Turning Point (Kirov Series Book 22) Page 18

  It was days before any of them could truly internalize what had happened, but it was only hours after that sighting before they were sitting in the officer’s wardroom with a very uncomfortable question before them. Brigadier Kinlan did not have to deal with this last inconvenience when his 7th Brigade appeared in the Western Egyptian desert. With the help of Fedorov, and the evidence of his own eyes, he had been eased over the line and knew where he could take his place on the battlefield. It wasn’t long before he was sharing a brandy with Churchill over the matter, and there was never any question in his mind like the one now plaguing the officers of the Takami.

  It was something the Russians aboard Kirov had gone round and round with, a very thorny question indeed. If all of this were true, these ships, the men on them, the news on the radio, then they were right in the middle of the Second World War! If it were true, if they were really sailing in the Java Sea of 1942, then who’s side were they on here? They were sitting on a ship with the power to do what Kirov had been about for all these many long months. They were sitting on an Atago Class Guided Missile Destroyer, laid down in 2015.

  The first two ships in the original class, Atago and Ashigara, had been commissioned in 2007 and 2008 respectively. His ship was a new, improved model, state of the art, and arguably one of the best fighting ships in the world when it was commissioned in 2021, just after its sister ship Takari entered service the previous year. Both were in the new 27DD subclass for the Atago Class, that number being the chosen because the first would be launched in the 27th year of the current ruling Emperor Akihito. Takimi was the latest and greatest.

  There was a reason why General Imamura had thought he was rescued by a cruiser, because in spite of the name, that was the real weight class Takami fought in. DDG-180 was over 8600 tons when empty, and was now just over 11,000 tons fully loaded. And aside from her crew and supplies, much of that extra weight was sheer muscle for the mission of modern era naval combat. A variant of the American built Aegis Ticonderoga Class Cruiser, the ship had a sensor suite second to none, with the AN/SPY1D(V) phased array radar, along with the AN/SQQ-89 Sonar system.

  Were they to come on the scene of a typical WWII sea engagement such as that fought recently in the Java Sea, they could not only accurately track the course and speed of every ship, but also of every round being fired, right down to the level of machine gun bullets. The sensors were so good that they could even tell you whether or not an 8-inch shell that had just been fired was going to hit its intended target.

  Primarily an anti-air/fleet defense ship, Takami had two Mk 41 VLS Modules, with 64 cells on her forward deck, and another 32 on the superstructure above the helo bay aft. Those cells could mount canisters of several missile types, mostly US developed systems. There was the RIM-66, also known as Standard Missile 2, (SM-2), which was the ship’s primary SAM for air and missile defense. For ballistic threats, there were cells mounting the RIM-161, Standard Missile 3. These two systems paralleled the British Aster 15 and 30 systems installed aboard Argos Fire.

  For submarine defense, Takami could also fire the RUM-139 ASROC guided rocket torpedo from its VLS cells, and against other warships a separate system mounted Japan’s latest indigenous SSM project, known as the Type 12 Anti-Ship Missile. Weighing 720kgs, it could push a 300kg warhead out to a range of 200 kilometers at high subsonic speeds. It wasn’t as good as anything the Russians had, but it was nonetheless deadly against any modern ship it might hit. The forward deck mounted a Mark 45 (Mod 4) 5-inch naval gun that could range out 56 kilometers, and the ship also had two triple torpedo tube to either side amidships, with the Type 68 (Mark 32) 324mm torpedo.

  For close in defense, the ship had the very latest in weapons development from native Japanese industry, the long awaited JAX-Heisei-27 Naval Rail Gun system, and the combat ready TR-D1 Laser CIWS system to go along with the two older Phalanx gun systems for close in defense. That rail gun was a new evolutionary leap in thinking and application for naval gunnery. Its main role was not to stand in as a heavy anti-ship battery, but a lighter, quick firing anti-air and missile defense gun. It could fire a 23lb projectile at the dizzying speed of Mach 7, and out to a range of 110 nautical miles, or just over 200 kilometers. There was no explosive warhead at all, but at that speed, a projectile of that weight would deliver 23 mega joules of impact energy to any target it hit.

  By comparison, the 16-inch guns on an Iowa class battleship would deliver about 160 mega joules when they hit, so the rail gun was not something designed to go through heavy armor. Against light skinned missiles, planes, or even ships, it could still be lethal, and the round it fired was virtually unstoppable by any other CWIS system of the day. Considering Takami’s brilliant situational awareness in the sensors it employed, the lightning quick efficiency of its computers, the ship was not one any sane sea Captain would ever want to tangle with.

  And there it was, in the Makassar Strait off Balikpapan, in 1942, with cruisers, destroyers and transports of the Imperial Japanese Navy on every side, and a flag fluttering over Takami’s aft gunwale that bore the image of the rising sun.

  Chapter 20

  “Alright,” said the Captain. “We’ve been round and round on this, and nothing any of us have said will change the fact that most every ship we’ve seen out here should have been sunk or scrapped long ago. We can either believe it, or just say we’re all lunatics, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s just assume it is true.”

  The ship’s senior officers were all gathered in the wardroom. First Officer Kenji Fukada sat next to the Captain, a steady figure of efficiency. With a logical mind and calm demeanor, the unsettling nature of the last 36 hours was weighing on him heavily. Many of the men had little or no sleep, and the tension on the ship was wound up fairly tight. The news had been hard for a man of his disposition to swallow, but he nonetheless harbored a secret delight in the thought that the ship models he had doted over as a boy, and still treasured as a navy man, had become real things on the seas not 20,000 meters off their starboard bow—as big as life.

  Senior Lieutenant Hedeo Honjo, CIC Chief, was also in attendance, his implacable presence reassuring. A heavy set, thick necked man beneath short cropped hair, Honjo had a bullish aspect about him, and the temperament of a sumo wrestler. He was a distant relative of Shigeru Honjo, former commander of the Kwantung Army during the Mukden incident that led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and a man who had been a close confidant of the infamous proponent of the “Strike North” strategy, Sadao Araki.

  Junior Lieutenant Koji Nakano was a 22 year old wiry young man watching the Sonars on the ship. No legends surrounded him. He was not ever thought to have the ‘best ears in the fleet’ as Alexi Tasarov was aboard Kirov. He didn’t need the best ears in the fleet, he simply had the best sonar, and serviced radar systems that were second to none.

  Nakano would team up with Senior Lieutenant Ryoko Otani, the senior ranking female on the regular bridge crew, and the eyes behind the screens of that AN/SPY-1 Phased Array Radar. Women in the navy first started exclusively as nurses, then moved to communications positions. A very few reached higher ranks of command, and women still made up no more than 6% of the SDF. Otani represented them well, a bright, intelligent woman who was well liked and often noticed by the other male officers. Her father was a navy Captain on a helicopter destroyer, so they minded their manners, but Lieutenant Otani could fend for herself in the largely male dominated seas, and it was her keen eye and radar systems that led the ship through these waters now.

  Chief Engineer Ryota Oshiro was a pragmatic workman with a penchant for cleanliness and order. He kept his station that way, and prowled the ship’s engineering plants like a schoolmaster, imposing his rigid standard of excellence on all work completed. When the entire ship’s electrical systems went down, he was ceaseless in restoring order, for every light shined with the borrowed light of his energy, and he kept things running with unfailing dedication to his craft—much to the chagrin of the s
ection crews that had to serve under him. Well done was never good enough for Oshiro. It was either done right, with excellence, or it was done again until that standard was achieved.

  Lieutenant Michi Ikida was the ships Navigator. A quiet man, he was always lost in his maps and charts, and often reported directly to Chief Oshiro on plotted courses so the engineering section could gauge probable fuel usage and engine output requirements for the mission. Otherwise he kept to himself, and a few friends he had below decks with the Warrant Officers.

  Lastly there was Katsu Kimura, the sturdy Sergeant in charge of ship’s security. Far from the stern and rock like aspect of a man like Sergeant Troyak, KK was an amiable man, well liked by everyone on the ship. He had a well developed sense of humor that often led him into ill considered pranks. But when it came to managing the Marine contingent, he was all business, all brawn, and the men respected and relied on him, looking up to him as the leader he was.

  Assuming this was all true, everyone there had living ancestors at large in this world now. That was the most unsettling thing to think about. Somewhere, out there, were their grandfathers or great grandfathers for the younger crew, though with no one over the age of 33, their parents would have been born well after the war ended. So there was no chance any of them would ever meet their father or mother here as a young man or woman, but the famous “Grandfather Paradox” was alive and well in their minds. For now, they all had a bigger fish to fry here as they gathered around the wardroom conference table—what were they going to do?

  In 2021 Japan had healed from the convulsions of WWII, coming to terms with what had happened on one level, whitewashing it on another, and with vast segments of Japanese society simply forgetting it all in the neon glow of cell phones and digital wonders. For some it was all a regrettable skeleton in the history of their nation, not thought of any more than an American citizen might bother themselves with dark memories of Wounded Knee, the Trail Of Tears, and the genocidal treatment meted out to native Indians, or the depravity that was inherent in institutional slavery that was a part of American history until the mid 1860s.

  So it was not surprising that official recounting of the history of WWII was presented in softened language, where the Rape of Nanking was referred to as “an incident which led to the killing of many Chinese.” Most accounts of the war were rather dry and emotionless. There were no war heroes to be elevated, no sense of nationalism, no glorification of the military. History books in Japan that crewmen on the Takami had carried around with them in school were not patriotic narratives. For some, the war was seen as a disastrous mistake, and one that was never fully repented. For others it was a war of liberation against Western Imperialism. It was not unusual then, that a cross section of the crew on Takami would find a fairly wide range of opinions on the war.

  But now these men and women were in that war, and they could not escape the inexorable gravity of those momentous days that would compel them to a decision on what they should do about it. Because they could do something about it with the ship beneath their feet. It was not a question of whether or not they could bring themselves to act, but one of how they should act, and it would not be an easy decision.

  “Now we can sit out here on the edge of things for only so long,” said the Captain. “This Imamura fellow down in sick bay will be wanting us to weigh anchor at Balikpapan tomorrow, and the sight of this ship easing into the harbor is going to roll a few eyes, that’s for sure.”

  “We can fly him over,” said Fukada. “Ashfall here is negligible, and the helo can get him over there easily enough with Honjo’s men as a nice little escort.”

  “And they will roll eyes at that as well,” said the Captain. At 33, he was the oldest man on the ship, coming to his new post here that very year, for Takami was commissioned in February of 2021. “What if someone panics and opens fire on the helo?”

  “We can radio ahead,” Fukada suggested. “Tell them we’ve rescued their General Imamura, and that he will be flying in on a very special aircraft. Impress upon them that no one is to fire at this aircraft. We can even give them the exact ETA at Balikpapan.”

  “I suppose that might work,” said Captain Harada. “Now we get to the deeper question in all of this. Is he their General Imamura, or ours as well?”

  There was a silence as the other officers digested that.

  “You’re asking what side we’re on?” said Fukada.

  “Correct. I don’t want to get technical here and cite Article 9 of the Constitution, but this is something we’ll have to decide, and soon. We have no way of knowing if we’ll ever get back to our day… Hell, we still don’t even know how this happened.”

  “The volcano,” said Chief Engineer Oshiro sullenly. “Remember that report we got on the Russians up south of the Kuriles when the other one erupted?”

  “You mean the Demon Volcano on Iturup Island?” said Fukada,

  “Right. That was just three days ago, and we got that SITREP yesterday indicating the Russian flagship and two other ships went down in that eruption. Now this one goes off, and look what happened here to us.”

  “You’re suggesting the same thing happened to the Russians?”

  Oshiro scratched his head. “Well, it might explain the other SIGINT traffic we’ve picked up on shortwave.” He looked at Ensign Hiroko Shiota, the other woman on the bridge at communications. At only 20 years, she had just made the ranks of Santo Kaii, technically a 3rd Lieutenant, or a position the Navy might call an Ensign until she made 2nd LT.

  “Ensign, what is he talking about?” Captain Harada folded his arms, waiting. He had not been informed of any new message traffic.

  “I received a coded signal an hour ago sir,” said Shiota. “It didn’t make any sense, until I realized it must have been transmitted in the Japanese Naval Code of this era. So I programmed that into the computers, and—”

  “You programmed the entire Japanese Naval Code into our SIGINT dBase?”

  “Yes sir. It only took a couple hours. I was going to bring you the results when this meeting was called.”

  “She was still working on the damn thing in the officer’s mess,” said Chief Engineer Oshiro. “I got curious.”

  “I see… Well Ensign, what does this message say?”

  “Ship movement orders for a task force forming in the Sea of Japan. I think it has to do with the Russians sir.”

  “The Russians?”

  “Well sir… I’ve been listening on other radio traffic concerning combat operations underway in the North Pacific. It was mixed in with all the other traffic, but this new code caught my attention. From what I can make of it, that theater is hot now—a shooting war, and there were at least two intercepts referring to the use of naval rockets.”

  “Naval Rockets?”

  “Aye sir. That was the exact phrase used. Ships were to be alert to the usage of enemy naval rockets, and screen capital ships accordingly.”

  “That was in the message stream?”

  “That and a hundred other messages. I’ve been trying to log them all, sir—mostly about operations underway in the South Pacific.”

  “You mean the stuff you gave me this morning.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well when were you planning to get around to informing me of this decoded intel message, Ensign?”

  “Sorry sir, I wanted to make sure I got it right first.”

  Captain Harada rubbed his chin. “Alright… Let’s not jump to conclusions about that yet.” He looked at Chief Oshiro, who then spoke up, focusing the question before them again in a very practical way.

  “Here’s the SITREP from my perspective down in Engineering,” he said. “I’ll make it as plain and simple as I can. We topped off the fuel bunkers when we made Darwin three days ago. After that we transited the Timor Sea into the Indian Ocean, twiddled our thumbs at Christmas Island, and then swung up through the Sunda Straits, and right into 1942, crazy as that still sounds. Since then we’ve eased up here off the
coast of Borneo and finally found clear air. That little trip was about 2075 nautical miles. Now we’re talking about delivering the General down there in sick bay to Balikpapan. Well I tapped Lieutenant Ikida’s shoulder on that one, and that would put us a little over 3000 nautical miles out of Darwin when we get there, assuming that’s what we do. We’ll be at 70% on the fuel bunkers, so in another couple thousand nautical miles, we’re going to dip below the 50% mark and need to start looking for fuel. If we don’t shake hands with a smile at Balikpapan, then the closest port on the other side is back to Darwin, another1330 nautical miles, and by the time we get there again our bunkers will be at under 55%. So I hope they have what we need, because if they don’t, then everything else out here is run by our great grand dads in the IJN.”

  That put a fine point on their situation. Takami was not a nuclear propulsion vessel. The initial two units in the class had exclusively used the high performance GE LM2500 gas turbines, which used a highly refined and somewhat expensive fuel. It was great for quickness and fast acceleration, but produced limited range of 4,500 nautical miles. As a quiet testament to Japan’s thinking about slowly building a more capable blue water navy, the last two ships in the class had been modified to use a Combined Diesel and Gas system, known as CODAG.

  Japan Diesel United Ltd. had pioneered the design of what was regarded as the most efficient prime-mover in the world at their Aioi Works plant. Designed for large container ships, these turbo charged Diesel engines soon came to the attention of the Navy, and a new 6 stroke model was purchased for Takami. At slower cruising speeds, the ship would switch to this engine, which could use regular diesel fuel and achieve much longer ranges. For a high speed burst, they would engage the Gas Turbines. This combination more than doubled the sea range of Takami over the lead ship in the class, giving her a range of nearly 11,000 nautical miles.