Knight's Move (Kirov Series Book 21) Page 20

  Mutsu once had the distinction of serving as the Emperor’s flagship during the naval maneuvers of 1927, but aside from that, the most notable event in her early career was a bump on the nose with her sister ship Nagato in a minor collision. With fighting already underway in China, and plans brewing in Japan for more conflict, Mutsu got a major overhaul between 1934 and 1936, all new boilers, a better torpedo bulge, more armor, a taller pagoda style mast, more secondary guns.

  In August of 1941, Captain Kogure Gunji came over from the heavy cruiser Chikuma to take command of the battleship, and he was about to become part of a most interesting entry into Time’s new ledger of events for this history. Word of the Siberian invasion of Kamchatka had rattled the Japanese, eventually reaching Yamamoto himself in Tokyo, where he was conferring with Admiral Nagumo after the Pearl Harbor operation. The two men had been planning their next moves into the South Pacific, eyeing Rabaul as the beginning of a land bridge to their vital, yet isolated stronghold at Noumea on New Caledonia. The Siberian attack was completely unanticipated, but of course the Navy was immediately expected to intervene and put a stop to it.

  Initial accounts were scattered and incomplete, with the heavy weather impeding reconnaissance operations, but it was eventually learned that the Siberians had actually pulled off an amphibious landing on the southwestern coast of the peninsula, just beyond the limit of the ice pack. It had come out of the only port that still remained ice free in that region, Magadan, and soon reports were also coming in of air lifted troops landing all along the single road that led through the mountain valleys to Kazantochi, the port on the Pacific the Russians called Petropavlovsk.

  With most of the fleet already tasked with operations to the south, only units in home waters were available, and among them were the battleships Nagato and Mutsu. It was determined that Mutsu would form the heart of a small task force and investigate the Siberian landing, putting a quick stop to it all with those big 16-inch guns. Her new Captain’s old ship, the Cruiser Chikuma, would also join the task force, along with the destroyers Yugumo, Kazaguno, and Makinami.

  Mutsu’s last assignment had been the inglorious duty of towing the old Italian built armored cruiser Nisshin, so that Yamato could enjoy some target practice with her massive 18-inch guns. That ship had already been sunk once in such trials, but like a man beaten to the floor in a bar fight, it was raised and floated again only to be pounded to oblivion by Yamato. After that, Mutsu was on standby alert status at Hashirajima in the Inland Sea, and was now called to join what was known as the “Kita Joyaku Naval Group.”

  Captain Kogure rubbed his hands at the opportunity, finally getting a respectable wartime operation under his belt. He led Mutsu out to sea on the night of February 11th, while all Japan celebrated the founding of the Empire, and General Yamashita gnashed his teeth on Singapore. It was a long 1200 nautical miles to the lower Kuriles where he met the remainder of the task force coming out of Sapporo on Hokkaido at mid-day on the 14th. They would then sail together to the Musashi Naval base on the southern tip of Paramushir, escorting transports necessary for the movement of troops north to Kazantochi.

  While that operation was being prepared, the task force would depart and sail north to see what was happening on the western coast of Kamchatka. They set out on the foggy night of February 17th, expecting to reach the scene of the Siberian landings sometime after dawn on the 18th. It was there that they would meet the whispered legendary beast that had reportedly hunted Admiral Nagumo’s carriers after Pearl Harbor—Mizuchi.

  Chapter 23

  Kirov had left Magadan to cover the landings, and was standing off the coast in the ice free zone when Rodenko picked up the contact. Fedorov was on the bridge that morning, starting his shift very early.

  “Five ships, sir,” said Rodenko, “bearing almost 180 true, and about 120 kilometers out. Tunguska is still up over the landing zone, and they just relayed the data from their Oko panel. They want to know whether they should investigate.”

  “Investigate? No, tell them to move well inland. We’ll handle the matter, and inform the Captain.”

  Karpov arrived minutes later, somewhat bedraggled, the circles dark under his eyes. “Five ships? Any further data.”

  “Sir, Tunguska wanted to investigate, but I advised them to stand off and move inland. I’ve taken the liberty of sending the KA-226 out to have a look, It should be close enough to feed us imagery in about five minutes.”

  “Good,” said Karpov. “Yes, there is never any need for Tunguska to confront enemy surface ships, which is what I assume this contact to be. What else? They certainly aren’t transports, or fishing boats. What is the speed of this contact?”

  “Sir,” said Rodenko, “18-knots steady, and presently at 112 kilometers.”

  “Already inside our missile range for the Moskit IIs. The ship will come to battle stations. Mister Samsonov, ready on 100mm forward deck gun, and heat up the Moskit II system.”

  “Aye sir,” as always, Samsonov was all business.

  Nikolin soon advised that they now had a telemetry feed from the KA-226, and put it up on the overhead HD panel. “What are we looking at, Mister Fedorov?” Karpov folded his arms.

  “That large ship is certainly a battleship… two twin gun turrets forward, two more aft… tall pagoda mainmast, single stack, clipper bow… That rules out Ise or Fuso class, as they had more turrets, and the aft turret configuration means it cannot be Kongo class—the guns are too closely spaced. Captain, I believe this is Nagato class, either that ship or its sister ship Mutsu. Those are 16-inch guns, and they’ll have an effective firing range of about 30,000 meters.”

  “Very precise, Fedorov. See what a good team we will make? You identify the targets, and I’ll kill them. But I’ll be diplomatic about it. Mister Nikolin, send out a warning—in the clear please—and tell those ships they are violating Siberian controlled waters, and they are to withdraw immediately or be fired upon. Use that kana code you’ve been fiddling with. That should impress them.”

  “They won’t respond to that,” said Fedorov.

  “I’m aware of that, but the history will record that they were duly warned off.”

  “You’re concerned about how this gets recorded in the history?”

  “Why not?” Karpov smiled. “Since I am now personally re-writing the history of the Pacific War, these appearances matter. The history will record that we did not attack them without warning—not that it matters all that much. They had no qualms with the Americans, and should not expect any different treatment, but I’ll give them this one chance to turn away.”

  * * *

  Captain Kogure would certainly not take that chance, or even perceive his present danger. He had no idea that his task force had even been detected, the low rolling fog and mist reducing visibility as they approached the coast. He was back on a battleship, one he had been assigned two twice before as a younger officer, but Mutsu felt and looked quite different to him now. In recent years he had moved from target ship Settsu, to cruiser Chikuma, to his present command, and now he was finally getting into the war.

  “Warned off?” he smiled. “By the Siberians?” His deep laugh was shared by all the officers on deck. “Do not even answer that ridiculous message. We will answer it with our guns. The ship will increase to 24 knots. Signal Captain Komura on Chikuma to take station ahead. The destroyers will follow our wake. There will likely be no more than transport ships ahead, and they will make for good target practice. Mutsu’s guns could use a little work. They have been silent for too long.”

  It was then that the first whine of an incoming shell was heard, Karpov’s warning shot across the bow with two rounds from the 100mm bow gun on Kirov. He had allowed the range to close to 50,000 meters, the maximum range of that weapon with extended rocket assisted shells. For the sake of decorum, he put two such rounds out, and they fell well short of Chikuma as the cruiser took the vanguard of the task force.

  The Japanese Captain was surprised,
yet he still had a wide grin on his face. He had no idea how they had been spotted, but their gunnery was certainly nothing to be concerned about. He sent lamp signals to Chikuma ahead—return fire—and though Captain Komura had no sighting in the heavy overcast, he nonetheless complied, firing a single salvo from a forward 8-inch gun turret. A most unusual ship, Chikuma was the only sister of the Tone class, a seaplane tender aft, and a heavy cruiser forward where she had all four of her twin 8-inch gun turrets ready for action. A sleek looking ship, with twin funnels the kissed one another in a backwards swoon, the cruiser had a prominent swept bow, and could run easily at up to 35 knots. She had been a scout ship for the Pearl Harbor attack, and was therefore available with those seaplanes to investigate the situation at Kamchatka—a situation that was now about to spin wildly out of control.

  Minutes passed with no sign ahead. The watchmen strained at their posts, eyes puckered against the low clouds, waiting. Then a bell rang from the high pagoda, and the watch shouted down—aircraft ahead!

  “Aircraft?” the Captain did not expect anything of the kind. He rushed out onto the weather deck, seeing what looked like a plane on fire, climbing slowly up, and visible as a dull red-yellow glow in the sky. The movement was deceptive, for the missile coming at him was just in its boost phase, now about to tip over and come roaring down, so fast that it would outrun the sound of its own engines three times over, and seem a silent arrow of death, flung at them from some wrathful God of fire above. It was a sleek 10,000 pound lance of inertial radar guided chaos, and firing at this short range it was carrying a heavy load of highly flammable fuel.

  Up it went, the silent fire in the sky. Down it came, cutting the stillness, piercing the low clouds and then spearing down onto the forward deck of Chikuma in a massive explosion. Karpov had reprogrammed the missile to make this top down attack, and were it not for the fact that it struck one of those four 8-inch gun turrets, it might have plunged right through the thin 36mm deck armor at that point. Instead it plunged through the roof of that gun turret, only 25mm thick, and the explosion obliterated everything within, detonating ready ammo, and sending its raging solid rocket fuel fire deep into the inner shell of the barbette.

  The heat was terrible, and the ammunition already on the hoists to be raised up to the guns exploded, along with all the charge bags, and then the violence of that chaos ignited the magazine itself, blowing what was left of the turret completely off the ship.

  The Captain stared in utter disbelief. There had not been a sound before that hammer struck, for the missile was too far ahead of its own engine noise, and when it exploded, it drowned all that out. Yet now the Captain thought he heard a low, residual growl, as if the dragon that had belched this awful fire at them was out there somewhere in the rolling mist. For the briefest moment he thought he saw the smoky shoulders of some great beast, but it was only the heavy black smoke from the fire that was now devouring the innards of that heavy cruiser.

  A secondary explosion raged out again from the stricken ship, for the close positioning of all four turrets on that forward deck meant there were four gun magazines beneath that long bow. The same thing might have happened to Kirov had the Japanese flung one of their massive shells up into the sky to strike her forward deck. All those tightly packed missiles, their heavy warheads and nearly 200,000 pounds of missile fuel in the weapons would have literally ripped the battlecruiser to pieces.

  Gunji Kogure raised his arm as if to fend off the destruction he was witnessing, then instinct prevailed and he spun about, wide eyed, and shouted an order to turn the ship hart to port. The officer of the watch relayed the order, and the helmsman was hard on the wheel. Slowly, the heavy bow of Mutsu turned, and then, to the despair of his soul, the Captain saw two more glowing coals in the darkened sky. They rose up, side by side, like a pair of smoldering eyes, the withering regard of Mizuchi, the terror of the seas, come to burn and break and kill.

  Mutsu would now feel the demon’s wrath, a pair of the heavy Moskit II missiles, again plunging down from above like angels of death. Fiery the angels fell, bringing deep thunder in the deafening roar of their own demise. One would strike the conning section and end all thought and fear in Kogure’s terrified mind, the second fell very close to the tall pagoda mainmast, the explosion shearing away the supporting legs, the fires raging , smoke broiling up and up.

  Then the massive metal structure began to fall, guy wires, cables and halyards snapping, the ship’s ensigns immolated, the seething wreck collapsing down. Chaos without, the rage of fire within, this was the vengeance Karpov delivered that day, and now old Mutsu, bereft of command, her conning section blasted and burned, continued round in that wide 30 point turn, reeling like a headless knight that had been pierced by the fiery lance of its unseen foe. Much of the conning tower structure remained completely intact, protected by heavy 365mm armor, but it was all engulfed in that fire, killing every man there, devouring the oxygen in the air like a rabid jinn.

  Neither ship would sink that day, though both were so badly damaged that they were definitely mission killed insofar as this operation was concerned. The fires would rage for an hour before exhausting themselves, leaving a charred and blacken hulk of most of Mutsu’s main superstructure, and the ship had to be steered from the emergency engineering section. The forward deck on Chikuma was so badly damaged that she barely made it south to Musashi Naval base on Paramushiro Island, and they were forced to ground her there to prevent the ship from going down. Both were also effectively out of the war for a good long while.

  The Captains of the three destroyers trailing in the wake of the bigger ships saw what happened, but could simply not believe it, and that day, the name Mizuchi was branded on their souls.

  * * *

  Aboard Kirov, Karpov was literally watching the effect of those missile strikes by using the telemetry camera feeds from his KA-226. It was hovering beneath the cloud deck, an unseen speck, running dark as it watched the scene from a distance.

  “Well Fedorov, what do you think of your battleships now? That top down attack profile has certainly proven to be most effective. Look at those fires!”

  “Yes sir, most effective.” There was no enthusiasm in Fedorov’s voice, and little excitement. It was clear to Karpov that the fire of battle was not burning in his Starpom’s heart, and he thought he was most likely still grieving the loss of Volsky.

  “I realize you may take no pleasure in all of this, particularly after what happened to the Admiral.”

  “There are men out there burning to death in those fires,” said Fedorov.”

  “Correct,” said Karpov. “And there are men facing death and freezing cold in Soviet Russia, millions of them. There is fighting in the streets of Moscow even as we speak, and the casualties will dwarf what is happening here. There are men dying in the Atlantic, their merchant ship torpedoed, sides ripped open and sunk a thousand miles from any friendly shore. The Germans have taken half the Canary Islands, while here, the Japanese run rampant in the Pacific. Who’s going to stop them? The Americans are still trying to extinguish the oil fires at Pearl Harbor. Those fuel tanks have been smoldering for weeks now, and they are in no position to mount any offensive operation yet. But we are. We are ready, and with clear and important objectives here. This is war, Fedorov, and so you had better get used to this, and the sooner you harden your soul to the necessity of taking the lives of our enemies, the better. You, of all people, know what the Japanese will do in this war, and the merciless ferocity with which they will prosecute it. Their naval officers may still slip on white uniforms and gloves, but beneath them, their hands will be stained with the blood they have already shed. Understand?”

  Fedorov gave him a grim nod, though he still felt burdened with the war, with the inevitable destruction and chaos it would unharness, with the loss of every life it would consume, just like those raging fires on Mutsu.

  “I may be a reluctant warrior in your eyes, Captain, but that is only because my conscien
ce has not yet died here. Yes, I see the necessity of what we now do, but I don’t have to like it, or embrace it. This war will be terrible, and in many ways it is only just beginning now, but one day it will be over, and I want there to be a man left alive in side me when we finish. Understand?” He handed Karpov back the same word, and the Captain gave him a thin lipped grin.

  “You may think I relish all this violence, or even take pleasure in it. I assure you, I do not. I see it only as a means to an end, and that end must be achieved. It will be victory, Fedorov, victory. Only then will we restore our lost homelands, and perhaps even see the re-unification of the Soviet Union. I plan on having a great deal of influence in that. You know, they tried to kill Sergei Kirov, which does not surprise me. Tyrenkov tells me he survived, and he’s out there somewhere right now, planning the defense of what remains of Russia, and the counterattack against our enemies. That is all I do here, and its end will be victory. Keep that in mind, and those fires out there will be easier to stomach. That ship was coming here to do the very same thing to us if it could. You know that as well as I do.”

  “You realize this isn’t over yet,” said Fedorov. “You have shocked them here. They will not have expected this setback any more than they expected your attack in Kamchatka. You caught them off guard, and while most of their navy was operating in the south, but now they will have to respond. We must anticipate that their next move will be equally bold, and much stronger, both by land and sea.”

  “Then help me get ready to face it,” said Karpov. “Help us win.”

  Fedorov gave him another nod of his weary head. “What else can I do, Captain? The prospect of defeat is too bitter a cup to contemplate now. Yet that does not mean the taste of victory here is sweet to me just yet. It may come some day, but for now, it is a sour cup alongside the one we force our enemy to drink here, and for me, the dregs of victory are still bitter.”