Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24) Read online

  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 Haruna. 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. Haruna 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 2

  “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 Haruna, 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.”

  Sea of Okhotsk, 20 May ~ 13:15

  “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.”

  Taraika Bay, 20 kilometers south of Port Shikuka

  20 May, 13:30

  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.

  Sea of Okhotsk, 20 May ~ 13:45

  “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.”

  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.”

  Kurita Group, Sea of Okhotsk, 20 May ~ 13:55

  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, continuing south, where he could just make out the scattered formations of planes off Admiral Kakuta’s carriers. 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.

  DDG-180, Takami, Sea of Okhotsk, 20 May ~ 14:10

  “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 3

  Sea of Okhotsk, 20 May ~ 14:18

  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.