Knight's Move (Kirov Series Book 21) Read online

  “True, but that does not mean the forces remaining there are without capability. The Japanese Army was practically unbeatable at this stage of the war. If you want my real opinion, I believe this operation will fail. You’ll have the best chance at Kamchatka, as that will be their least defended frontier, with second line garrison troops, and it will be difficult for them to support or reinforce. Sakhalin Island may also be feasible, at least the northern sector, but they’ll fight hard for the south, and I don’t think you can push all the way up the Amur River from the coast as you have planned either.”

  “We shall have to see, Mister Fedorov. War is not a certain enterprise. I realize there are risks in this operation, or any other. Ivan Volkov certainly thought he had everything planned on the last attempt to take Ilanskiy. My brother showed him otherwise. In like manner, the Japanese may believe they can easily stop me, but I may show them otherwise. It is all a question of will, Fedorov, fortitude, perseverance, and determination.”

  “You may soon find your enemy has all of those qualities as well. And if they do stop you, Admiral, what then? Are you going to reach for a hammer?”

  There was a moment of silence, for both men knew that Fedorov was referring to the one weapon Karpov possessed that could trump any army deployed against him.

  “Well Mister Fedorov, I will tell you that I have no intention of being the nail in this endeavor. They may be asking themselves just what exactly happened to that aircraft carrier I sunk. Well yes, I can make them wonder about so very much more if I so desire. I am not saying I have this in mind, but do not think I will hesitate to deliver a decisive stroke where one is needed. Now, in the beginning, I have exercised great restraint. It will be small moves, a pawn here, a knight there. Yet there is always an endgame in anything I do, and I intend to obtain one thing, and that without fail—checkmate.”

  At that moment a mishman came running from the radio room, a message in hand, and the look on his face was one akin to a man at the edge of tears. He saluted, handing off the message to Fedorov, who read it quietly. Then he took a long, deep breath, and whispered something to the man, who nodded with another salute before he was off. Karpov turned his head, curious, but Fedorov walked slowly out through the port side hatch to the weather deck, where he stood alone a very long time. His curiosity getting the better of him, Karpov finally went out through the hatch.

  Fedorov heard him coming, but said nothing, turning to hand him the message. As Karpov read it, some inner sense told him this was not a time for words. He met Fedorov’s eye, a silent acknowledgement passing between them, and then he slowly folded the message and slipped it into the pocket of his service jacket. They stood there, side by side, each man thinking, remembering, and watching the steady rise and fall of the sea.

  Part II

  Banzai!

  “Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy’s unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions.”

  ― Sun Tsu: The Art of War

  Chapter 4

  General Yamashita was on the move, his single minded obsession—the British bastion at Singapore. The Jewel of the East was the symbol of British power in the Pacific, just as Gibraltar had been in the Mediterranean. Like the Rock, it also had a reputation as being unassailable, at least from the sea, and no commander alive had ever seriously considered it would fall to an army that would first have to seize the entire Malay Peninsula before it could deliver the coup de grace. There on the edge of the great trans-Pacific trade routes, a thriving, exotic yet modern metropolis had grown up out of the jungle, and it was now a waystation and trade center for nations all through the resource rich Southeast Asia.

  This enormously valuable bastion of British power had enough sea room in its harbor to hold most of the British fleet, with a pair of 50,000 ton dry docks for repairs. The island alone had four airfields, a naval base, stores and munitions to support 100,000 men. It simply had to be taken, and then made into Japan’s principle supply base for this segment of the new Co-Prosperity Sphere. But how?

  There were imposing fortifications on the southern shore, five 15-inch guns, two in the Buona Vista Battery and three in the Johore Battery. One of the latter three had started its life as a 14-inch gun, but was re-bored to a 15-incher. The other two were the last remnants of guns taken from British battleships during refits, like teeth pulled from a steel shark. One was taken from Barham and another from the ship that had only just met her fate in the Atlantic, the battleship Valiant. The battleships were dead, but their old guns would still fire in anger, a last hollow roar from the bygone era in which they were forged and rifled. Alas they had only armor piercing shells, which would be of little use if they could be turned around.

  To these the British also added six 9.2-inch guns, and eighteen more 6-inch naval guns, not to mention the five additional twin 6 pounder batteries around the harbor. To service those guns, there were hundreds of gunlayers, spotters, magazine crews, and an enormous stockpile of 10,700 shells of all calibers. Yet in Fedorov’s history, no more than 10% of that ammo stockpile would ever be fired in defense of this highly prized and invaluable outpost.

  The question to be asked now was why weren’t they turned around by this time in the war, and why were the fortifications there so unprepared for an attack from the landward side? Fedorov had warned Churchill how Singapore would fall many long months ago in their desert meeting, but nothing had been done. Churchill did, in fact, send communications that the batteries should be prepared to turn about and be used in defense of the city. Many had the ability to traverse 360 degrees, and even those that could not manage that could still range on many targets to the north. Yet no one took the matter seriously. Defense against what, they thought? They had all of III Indian Corps watching their back, and 700 miles of impregnable jungle, or so they believed.

  Before they entered the war, Japan sent agents posing as visiting businessmen to wander through the city, and then take small boats into the harbor to study it all from the sea. They quickly concluded the same thing the British believed, that it was simply unassailable from the sea. So the only way to take Singapore was from the landward side, by first doing another thing the British deemed impossible, seizing all of the Malay Peninsula.

  When the Japanese proved how porous Percival’s defense really was, the shock was lasting and profound. No matter how ‘unsporting’ their tactics were, they worked, and that was all that mattered in war. A good General had to know that, and there had to be in him a measure of ruthlessness that real warfare demands of its true practitioners. Unfortunately, the man commanding Fortress Singapore was not ruthless, nor was he up to the task that was now before him.

  On the other hand, General Yamashita had something to prove in this campaign. He had fallen out of the Emperor’s favor during the unfortunate “February 26th Incident,” where a group of Army rebels planned high level assassinations in a self-styled coup. At first Yamashita was sympathetic, but later he ended up as an intermediary attempting to resolve the crisis. In any case, the Emperor, and Tojo, had turned a cold shoulder to him ever since. So he had set his mind on capturing Singapore and handing it to Hirohito like a gift on February 11th, the anniversary of the founding of Japan by the Emperor Jimmu in 660 BC.

  The first phase of his landing in the north had gone off without a hitch. He had stormed ashore, seized the vital British airfields at Alor Star and Khota Baru. To do so, he had taken his 25th Army right through neutral Thailand, some parts coming overland, and most others landing by sea. Speed was of the essence, so much so that one of the chief planners in this campaign, Masanobu Tsuji, personally went forward with a small detachment of 300 men and a few light tanks to keep the spearheads of the Japanese columns moving.

  A man with a brilliant tactical mind, Tsuji had been nicknamed “the God of Operations” for his skill in planning. He had a unique ability of cutting through red tape, and was also a strong believer of taking matters into hi
s own hands when necessary, the peculiar brand of Japanese initiative that was called gekokujō, “leading from below,” a kind of loyal insubordination that had led to numerous incidents of rebellious behavior in the past. It was the mentality that had triggered the war in China at more than one place, where enterprising young officers deliberately sabotaged a Japanese controlled railway as a pretext to blame the act on the Chinese and begin reprisals.

  Tsuji had also instigated several “incidents” along the Siberian border, one provoking a combined Soviet-Siberian force that had been deployed along the Khalkhyn Gol River. That sparked a major battle, which backfired on Tsuji when another master strategist took charge of the fight, a man named Georgie Zhukov. The Japanese were taught a valuable lesson in that battle, and learned a healthy respect for the fighting ability of their northern neighbors.

  Now, however, Tsuji’s fortunes would be found here on the so called “Southern Road,” and the segment he was walking now would lead through Malaya to Singapore. Nor would he be facing a brilliant mind like Zhukov. Instead, the chief opponent for Yamashita and Tsuji would be Lieutenant General Arthur Ernest Percival. No stranger to war, Percival had fought at the dreadful Battle of the Somme where he earned a Military Cross, and later, a Distinguished Service Order that specifically noted his “power of command and knowledge of tactics.”

  No matter how well schooled he was, the Lieutenant General was about to meet his match, and then some, when Yamashita and Tsuji brewed up their own styled brand of Banzai Blitzkrieg. Percival had studied his situation and came to conclude that the enemy might do exactly what Tsuji had planned one day—land in Thailand and “burgle Malaya by the backdoor.” He noted that the fortress of Singapore might be impregnable from the south seaward approach, but that vulnerabilities presented an enemy with opportunities to attack from the north, through Malaya. He had laid out the plan his enemies might follow, almost chapter and verse, yet when it finally came at him, he seemed entirely powerless to stop it.

  A kind of lassitude born of overconfidence had settled on him, a complacency born of misapprehension. If the enemy came, he thought he would simply meet and defeat them in Northern Malaya, and his faith in the invincibility of Western arms and military forces would be rudely abused.

  At one point the British sent up a small mechanized column, with armored cars and Bren carriers. Tsuji was at the point of contact, quickly ordering the British defensive line to be enfiladed through an abandoned rubber plantation, where he personally captured a valuable map of the peninsula, detailing all the key British positions. He went to Yamashita, jubilant with his find, and the two men decided the strategy they hoped that would bring them victory.

  “They will defend here, along the Jitra River,” said Tsuji, his balding head and round eyeglasses catching the light. “The British were kind enough to build us those airfields, and also that lovely coastal road. Now we will use both against them. They hope to block our advance down that one good road along the west coast, but we will foil them. Our tanks will punch through, but the main attack will be a flanking maneuver by our infantry through the plantations to the east.”

  “Can they move fast enough through the jungle?”

  “They will with these…” Tsuji had shown Yamashita the special bicycles that the troops would take to battle, assembled in the field and used to literally ride right through the jungle, over terrain no one thought any force could easily penetrate. Forsaking trucks in his plan, he would bring 6000 bicycles for each division instead, and use man portable mortars instead of heavier artillery.

  “The British have plenty of trucks there for us to use,” he boasted. “Why bring our own when we can simply capture theirs?”

  “What about the rivers?” Yamashita had asked. “What if they blow all the bridges?”

  “The infantry will not need bridges to cross those rivers. And there are plenty of saw mills along that road, with good lumber to rebuild anything the British destroy.”

  It was a masterful economy of thinking—why burden the army with things the enemy would provide? The bicycles would allow his men to stay right on the heels of the British as they withdrew, giving them no rest or means of consolidating in a new defensive position. And since Japan had exported this same model to other Asian nations for years, Tsuji said there would be no problem finding spare parts for the bikes. Everything they needed for their advance was already there. All they had to do was make use of it.

  When the Japanese landed in the north, the Governor of Singapore, Sir Shenton Thomas, simply shrugged his shoulders and remarked to Percival: “Well, I suppose you’ll shove the little men off.”

  It was typical of the attitude the British held towards the Japanese, a grave underestimation of their war fighting prowess. The little men would soon show the British Army what they were made of, moving with such speed, ferocity, and determination that plodding Percival, who stated the enemy has “rather less than a division ashore,” was soon seeing his Indian Brigades breaking and being swept south before the rapid tsunami of the Japanese advance.

  In truth, the Japanese had rather more than two divisions, the elite 5th, which had led the Siberian Intervention years ago, and 18th Division, one of the units that had been part of the murderous rampage through Nanking. Behind these the Imperial Guards would come, though their name belied their real inexperience when it came to battle. The real fighting troops were in those first two divisions, and they would get the job done easily enough against the 9th and 11th Indian Divisions. Only the tough Australian 8th Division would give them a fight, but without the Indians to hold on their flanks, they became a rock in the stream.

  The tactic the Japanese would use was called Kirimoni Sakusen, a driving charge with the armor leading in the vanguard, and the light footed infantry on either flank to infiltrate and encircle points of resistance. It was the charging bull that Percival thought his men would parry in his Operation Matador, but in this case it was the matador that was skewered and gored, his cape trampled and lances broken and scattered.

  “They boasted they could hold their vaunted Jitra line for three months,” said Tsuji. “We went through it in 15 hours, and with no more than 500 men! And we are advancing so quickly that we capture the British forward supply dumps before they can even evacuate them. As I said earlier, the enemy will provide us with everything we need, trucks, fuel, food. We can even use their rail road and captured rolling stock. It is all there. We have merely to take it from them.”

  And that they did. The Japanese advance outpaced the British withdrawal in places. At the Slim River defensive line, Yamashita executed a daring flanking maneuver using landing barges along the coast that Tsuji thought would end with disaster. If caught by British planes, the troops would be sitting ducks, but only a few came and made one ineffective strafing run. The maneuver was a resounding success, and it was followed by an equally bold armored thrust.

  The Japanese call their tanks sensha, or “battle wagon,” and it was their doctrine to assign small battalion sized units to operate with the infantry. A column of 20 Type 97 medium tanks, with 57mm main guns and two 7.2mm machineguns, was led by the intrepid Major Toyosaku Shimada. He decided to attack at night, which caught the British defenders completely by surprise.

  The scattered defenders of 5/2nd Punjab Regiment managed to knock out four tanks, one from artillery fire, two others to a Boys AT rifle, and one to mines, but the remainder pushed around them and on through the Indian troops. A survivor ran with a breathless warning to perhaps the best unit on the position, the British 2nd Battalion, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. They had just arrived to put some backbone into the defense, but hardly had time to look over the ground when they saw four Bren carriers approaching along the main road.

  “Look here,” said a Lieutenant. “Who’s that rushing about like this after dark?” He collared a Sergeant and sent him off. “Kindly get hold of that lot and tell them to quiet down. The enemy will hear that racket for miles.”

&
nbsp; The Sergeant would soon learn the supposed Brens were actually Japanese tanks, which barreled right on through the British position, leaving astonished Majors and Lieutenants holding evening tea in unsteady hands and looking at one another as if someone had just committed an unpardonable breach of decorum.

  That was the attitude that sunk the British in Malaya, from Percival’s initial underestimation of the enemy strength, and right on down through the ranks. Officers were too regimented in their thinking, and adhered too often to the rules of war where each side would line up and “have a go” at the other. One did not ride off around and behind his opponent’s lines on bicycles, and one did not attack up a road with armor after dark… except Yamashita.

  The “Tiger of Malaya” was teaching his stodgy rivals that war was not a game of cricket. The unorthodox tactics Tsuji and Yamashita devised would unhinge one defensive position after another. Those four tanks would soon be backed up by the rest of the column, and the infantry of Colonel Ando’s regiment of the 5th Infantry Division. They would race ahead to the vital railway bridge, and Major Shimada would have the satisfaction of personally leaping from his tank, drawing his samurai sword, and cutting the carefully laid demolition cables.

  “Not very sporting,” would come the British reply from a captured officer in the 2nd Argylls. “I mean what do you mean by attacking us at night like this when we weren’t prepared to meet you? And what do you mean by using tanks on a narrow road and all? It’s really quite frustrating. When we hold the coast, you come at us out of the jungle. When we dig in on good ground, you come at us from the sea. If you take a position, you don’t consolidate it and wait to bring up reserves, but just rush about like madmen on those bicycles. One can’t sort out exactly what you seem to be doing here, which is most disconcerting. If you had made a proper attack after sunrise, I’m certain we’d have stopped you.”