Tide Of Fortune (Kirov Series Book 20) Page 9

  “You still think you can interest them in an Aleutians strategy?”

  “That remains to be seen, but before those discussions, I intend to make myself useful, and also to put a little fire in the demands I have made of Japan. I have already warned them of severe consequences, telling them exactly what they can expect if they fail to comply. And like our old nemesis Ivan Volkov, I can make predictions as well. I’ve told them I will lay waste to their sea lanes and surface warships unless they begin the immediate withdrawal of their military forces from Siberian territory. The language was not so brazen, but my message was clear, at least on paper.”

  “Then what happens next, sir? You know very well that the Japanese will not accede to your demands. The most you can expect will be delay and obfuscation, requests for negotiations and a better equity in terms of the agreement will certainly be the order of the day.”

  “Negotiations? Yes, that will be quite tedious, as you suggest. You see, Fedorov, like Volkov, I am no diplomat at heart, and I have little patience for such negotiations. But I am a prophet when it comes to deciding what happens to the Japanese Navy now, and when I negotiate, I do not make concessions, but an ultimatum. At 02:00 today I expect to be at war with Japan, and I will not fail to see that they know it.”

  Part IV

  The Lost Convoy

  “There was no moon. The sea was as black as the lowest depths of despair. Far below in the troughs and now on the crest of the waves, little marine creatures flashed their phosphorescence in defiance, like little stars fallen from grace on high. The wind whistled through the rigging like the cry of lost souls. The gates of hell were opened and the devil himself roamed the night…”

  ― Byron Wilhite, War Diary, Pensacola Convoy

  Chapter 10

  After the fuse was lit, the fires of war spread very rapidly throughout the Pacific. In the Philippines, the principle Far East base of the US Military was presided over by a man who inwardly deemed himself another emperor of sorts, General Douglas MacArthur. He had come out of retirement to take the post, and yet, the force he had in hand was really not one to pose a grave threat to Japan, in spite of Japanese planners thinking to the contrary. The Navy had argued the Philippines sat astride the sea lanes that would carry Japan’s soon to be conquered resources back to the empire. That required the Japanese Army to occupy the Philippines, a land area equivalent to the home islands, or even the British Isles in total size.

  Before they could do that, it would be necessary to destroy any offensive capability the US possessed in those islands, and the one force uppermost in the minds of Japanese planners was the United States Army Air Force. It had four squadrons of fighters, and 31 B-17 bombers, the largest contingent of those planes outside the US. Those bombers really represented almost all of MacArthur’s immediate offensive capability against the Japanese, the only way he could participate in U.S. War Plan Rainbow 5. Their target would be the Japanese bases on Formosa, principally at Takao, seeking to preempt and forestall its use as a springboard for further hostilities.

  It was a foolish plan in retrospect, for the Japanese had 117 A6M2 Zeroes at Takao, which was more than enough to neutralize that bomber threat. Yet it became even worse when the American raid, quite literally, never got off the ground. War warnings were telephoned in, messages received of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the only US radar on the islands at Iba Field in the north was spotting possible flights of enemy planes. Rumors were flying through the air crews at the fields, but US aircraft remained mostly on the ground. At one point two squadrons scrambled, with one bomber group, but after flying about over Manila for some time, they eventually were forced to land and refuel. Their timing had been wrong, but the Japanese would get theirs right. Their main air strikes would come in right in the middle of that refueling operation.

  MacArthur had finally given his subordinates the order to strike Formosa at 10:15, and the Japanese struck an hour later, while almost every plane available was still on the ground being serviced.

  Whether those bombers over Formosa would have made any difference has been debated by many historians and dismissed as irrelevant. Notoriously ill equipped to strike naval targets, they were not going to prevent a Japanese invasion of the islands, or seriously interfere with enemy staging operations for such an offensive, because it was already at sea.

  As for the navy, there were two cruisers, the Houston and Marblehead, along with 13 old WWI era destroyers, and 23 submarines that might have made a difference. But US sub tactics could have learned much from the Germans, and the subs that rushed to clear the harbor ended up scattering out to sea on recon patrol duties. No provision in their orders was ever made for defensive mine laying, close in coastal defense of likely invasion sites, or even patrols off enemy harbors likely to initiate offensive operations. Thus those 23 subs were largely squandered as an offensive weapon, or even an adequate defensive naval shield. By the time they would be needing a safe harbor to replenish fuel and ammunition, Manila would be in enemy hands.

  The Japanese invasion of the Philippines was going to come off right on schedule, and there was nothing that Emperor MacArthur, with all his haughty arrogance and inflated self-confidence, could do about it. One brave man had put himself, and his ships, into the fire to attack the enemy in those early days, and his name was Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey. With Admiral Kimmel and much if the senior staff at CINCPAC gone in that terrible conflagration, Halsey would return to Pearl Harbor to find himself the senior officer in the Pacific. He had one lonesome carrier and a pack of fast cruisers to run with it, and that was exactly what he decided to do.

  “Come on, boys,” he said to the harbor crews. “Let’s get this baby turned around and out to sea in 24 hours.”

  When Van Valkenburgh arrived with Battleship Division 1 six hours later, Halsey went over to take his report.

  “How were those live fire exercises?” he quipped.

  “Gave it to the Japs real good,” said the Captain. “These old ladies were as tough as we hoped they would be.”

  When Halsey learned there were a few bloodied Japanese ships out there, he had it in mind to get out to sea as fast as he could and see if he could finish them off. But before he did anything, he got on the phone to Fleet Admiral King in the States and asked for the one thing he needed more than anything else now, aircraft carriers.

  “I’ll give you all the support I can,” said King, “but can you hold there at Hawaii? Should you fall back to the West coast?”

  “Are you serious? We do that and it will add another 2000 miles to every fleet sortie, and it’s as good as planting a ‘For Rent’ sign up on Opana Point for the Japs.”

  “Alright, do you want a battleship division? We’ve got the 3rd and 5th on the Atlantic coast.”

  “Battleships? They’ll only slow me down. It’s carriers I need now, and fast cruisers. Get Saratoga out here from San Diego as fast as she can move, and by God, unless you plan on invading France tomorrow, send me anything you’ve got afloat on the East coast as well.”

  “You can have Yorktown, Hornet and Wasp. That’s the lot of them, but we won’t have the new Essex class up for months.”

  “I warned you about the big Jap buildup in carriers,” said Halsey, the frustration evident in his voice. “Now they’ve just written the goddamned book on how to use them.”

  “We’ll get it fixed, Bill, but for now it’s a come as you are party, and you’ll just have to make do. I’ll send along the 7th Cruiser Division as icing on the cake, and if you need destroyers, we’ve got them in droves.”

  “One more thing, Rey,” said Halsey, using the Admiral’s nickname, “they hit the fuel stocks here pretty hard. We can operate, but we lost Neosho, and we’ll need tanker support as much as anything else. Pecos and Trinity were in the Phils, but word is they made a run for it last night, heading for the Dutch East Indies. We’ve got two more inbound, but most everything else is on the West coast.”

  “We’ll get th
em moving,” said King. “Now what about the Philippines?”

  “You know we wrote that off in almost every pre-war plan worth its salt,” said Halsey. “I never thought War Plan Orange was ever going to float with a battleship sortie to relieve MacArthur, and that’s entirely out of the question now. Admiral Hart knows he’s on a short least now in the Philippines, which is why he’s getting those oilers out of harm’s way. I give MacArthur three months—four at best—but the longer he can hold out, the better. We’ll need time to get off the canvas here and back in the ring. And we’ll need new bases out here, and good anchorages. You’d better tell Marshall that they ought to get on the phone with the French and twist a few arms. Where’s MacArthur going to go to reorganize if the Japs kick him out of the Philippines? The only place I can think of is Australia, and for that to happen, we’ve got to get there before the enemy does. I can’t do that in one long jump from Pearl. I’ll need bases in the South Pacific.”

  Before he sortied again with the Enterprise, Halsey took stock of the damage at Pearl, appalled by the blazing fires that had consumed so much of the precious fuel his ships were going to need. Preliminary reports indicated they would lose 40% of the stocks, but that still left enough for fleet operations. Halsey knew that he’d have more oil when those tankers arrived from the West coast, and if there was no place to put it, they’d just leave it in the ships until it could be off loaded.

  The situation was going from bad to worse as the scope of the full Japanese attack became apparent. In addition to the Philippines, they were hitting Hong Kong, Malaya, and Burma, and Halsey knew the resource rich Dutch Colonies would fall soon after. As he looked at the map, trying to decide how he could possibly operate now, it was evident that he would first have to build some new support structure in the Pacific so he had half a chance at using those oilers to get fuel out west. It was a task made much more difficult than it was in Fedorov’s history, for two big reasons.

  The first was the open hostilities between two former Allies, France and Britain, a sad chapter that both Fedorov and Volsky had seen re-written when Kirov shifted to June of 1940. That month, the fall of France cast doubt on the future status of all French Colonies in Africa and the Pacific. But the outbreak of hostilities between British and French Naval forces at Mers-el-Kebir, and the subsequent British Campaign against French holdings in Syria and Lebanon, had gone a long way towards hardening the attitude of French citizens in all her colonies. That meant that all of North and West Africa was soon hostile ground, and the British were already at war with the French at sea in the Med, and in Syria.

  The French also had colonies in the Pacific, controlling all the New Hebrides island group southeast of the Solomons, which was a very strategic place, and also in French Polynesia. Both holdings sat astride vital sea lanes and lines of communications between the United States and Australia, and this was a development that another man named Ivan Volkov did not fail to appreciate. He was reason two, because Volkov had an embassy in Tokyo as well as Berlin, and he had used it to fill the Japanese war planners with the benefit of his much touted ‘Prophecies.’ His whispered words were going to complicate matters in the South Pacific for Halsey and all others concerned.

  * * *

  The Japanese, with well developed plans for a movement south into the resource rich South Pacific, quickly surmised the value of existing French colonies there, and perceived their vulnerability. As such, Japan negotiated to secure permission to post troops in French Indochina, and set up military bases there.

  This had all happened in the real history before Kirov started its long saga, but in these altered states, a most alarming change resulting from the Anglo-Franco war would now weigh heavily in the scales of the War in the Pacific. Ivan Volkov had been a very busy man with his visits to Adolf Hitler, and then to Japan, where he attempted to strongly warn the Japanese of the strategic necessity of occupying French held territories as soon as possible.

  There was already a sympathetic ear for this strategy among Japanese planners. They saw the French colonies as essential to cutting sea lanes between the United States and Australia, isolating the latter, and attempting to force Australia out of the war. That, plus the fact that Japan already had a considerable commercial presence in the New Hebrides Islands, where 1300 Japanese workers labored at the important nickel and magnesium mines on New Caledonia, led the planners of the Rising Sun Empire to see the successful intervention in French Indochina as a template for what they might quickly achieve in the other French Pacific colonies.

  That was the strategy they pursued, opening secret negotiations with the French and assuring the solidarity of those territories if their security could be guaranteed. To this end, Japan obtained permission to post a small security contingent on New Caledonia to protect the mines, while secretly planning a much more significant intervention timed with the attack on Pearl Harbor. In Late November of 1941, a task force was assembled in the Japanese Caroline Islands bastion of Truk, with a full SNLF battalion to move quickly by destroyer transport to New Caledonia, and specifically, the vital port of Noumea. It was to be followed by a slower reinforcement convoy with an additional full regiment, and basing supplies.

  While the French in that colony had eventually sided with the Free French movement, that was not going to happen in this history, and Japan would gain a most important base in New Caledonia before the Allies could organize forces to prevent that. Further east, in French Polynesia, the Japanese influence was not yet a factor, and, in spite of considerable resentment towards the British, French Colonial citizens on Tahiti eventually opted to attempt to remain neutral.

  Halsey knew he needed new bases in the Pacific, and fast, which is why he bent Admiral King’s ear on the matter. Thankfully, King understood the gravity of the situation, and urged Marshall to join him in a bid to convince Roosevelt of the urgent need for quick negotiations with the French.

  “Negotiations?” said Roosevelt, rising to the occasion. “I’ll read them the Riot Act! If they think they’ve got trouble with the British now, just wait until we show up.”

  Halsey would get his wish, for when pressed heavily by the United States to permit US forces on the French held Island of Bora Bora, they agreed, asking as a concession if the United States would refrain from declaring war on France. Roosevelt had already appointed a Navy man, his good friend Admiral William D. Lehay, as Ambassador to France, and he quickly telephoned him to plan a strategy. It would be said that Germany’s response to the US Declaration of War on Japan would largely dictate the American attitude toward France, but if the French could sweeten the deal now with Bora Bora, the government of the United States would take that into full consideration.

  So it was that Operation Bobcat was quickly conceived and launched, with Bull Halsey leading the charge. It was a plan to send 5000 US troops and service personnel to Bora Bora, which had an excellent lagoon that could only be entered in one place, easy to defend from enemy submarines. There they would set up a naval fueling station and supply center. Known as the “Pearl of the Pacific,” Halsey wanted to crack open the oyster and get that pearl in hand before the Japanese could do anything about it. Thankfully, it was too remote to attract Japanese interest before the war. Halsey hoped that this operation could be concluded successfully without incident, and the American toe hold in French Polynesia might then help to eventually bring all those territories in to the Allied camp.

  Even so, the loss of the New Hebrides was a severe blow to American war strategy, and one that would also strongly impact events as far away as North Africa. Seeing the cordon of Japanese strength slowly encroaching on its homeland, Australia and New Zealand decided that it was absolutely necessary to recall Commonwealth Divisions presently serving in Syria and Libya. This was going to mean that the British would soon lose the able services of the veteran 6th, 7th and 9th Australian Divisions, as well as the 2nd New Zealand Division that had just tangled with Rommel again in Operation Crusader before the outbre
ak of the Pacific war. The vacuum these troop withdrawals would create in the Middle East would soon change the balance of power there again, and give Rommel some very unexpected opportunities.

  Everything was connected, with the tenuous lines of fate and destiny strung across the globe in a web of causality. In the Pacific, particularly at this tempestuous early stage, a single ship sailing along one of those Meridians could cause a change in the course of the war that would have grave ramifications. One major point of divergence had already taken place west of Pearl Harbor, and now Lady Lex was at the bottom of the sea instead of in Halsey’s fast carrier group. Two more such events were now about to occur, one involving a relief operation headed for the Philippines dubbed “Operation Plum,” and another involving a pair of strange ships that were never supposed to be at sea.

  Chapter 11

  Admiral King’s pledge of three more fleet carriers for the Pacific was heartening, but as lonesome as it seemed for the Enterprise now, there was strange company out west that Halsey hoped to make good use of. While the Asiatic Fleet was fairly pathetic, there were a pair of unusual ships there that were part of the fleet that never was in Fedorov’s history books. They had been originally conceived in the 1920s, possibly as a way to circumvent the restrictions on fleet carriers in the Washington Naval Treaty. The Japanese had begun the arms race here with their hybrid Gozo Class Cruiser Carrier, and the Germans answered with the Goeben. But the Americans also had a plan for a similar ship, one that had seen real ink on the drawing boards, but was cancelled before the war Fedorov studied. Here, however, it was another case of altered states putting ships at sea that had never been built.

  USS Antietam, BCV-1, was the lead ship in the class, and it was soon followed by the Shiloh, with both ships commissioned before the war. They were 650 feet long, with a 350 foot flight deck aft that was later extended to nearly 400 feet, and hanger space for 24 aircraft. That left just enough room up front for the conning tower and a pair of triple 6-inch gun turrets, the typical armament of a light cruiser, including eight more 5-inch dual purpose guns, with four on each side edging out that flight deck. The two ships were at Davao in the Philippines when the war started, and Admiral Hart ordered them out to sea, heading south for the Dutch East Indies with those two oilers and the seaplane carrier Langley.