by gerald hall
Sitting in overwatch behind the militia defensive positions were several mobile antiaircraft guns, including a couple of the latest designs to come out of Harold’s assembly plants. This would be their first real test in combat.
The first Japanese landing barges finally found a relatively undefended piece of beach near Molina Island just after dusk on the first day of the invasion. Hundreds of soldiers poured out of the landing barges and quickly began to move inshore to try to find cover. They were followed by troops from several damaged transports that had beached themselves nearby rather than sink. A handful of these landing barges each carried a Japanese light tank.
A militia observer, hidden on a nearby hilltop, saw this and quickly reported it via wireless to Major Burke.
The militia commander then picked up the phone to call Harold. One of the things that Harold had done at the behest of Major Burke was to connect every single underground facility via telephone line. Major Burke insisted too that all of the telephone lines be buried so that they would be much less likely to be damaged by vehicles or by enemy fire.
“We’ve just had a report of Japanese tanks having landed near here. You wouldn’t happen to have a few off of the production line ready for use, would you, Mister Cavill?”
“I’m afraid that we have very few of our own tanks here at the moment. We shipped out virtually everything that we had produced to our customers in French Indochina and to North Africa for Commonwealth use against the Nazis. So we are going to have a hell of a hard time getting enough troops or firepower over to where the Japanese have landed, I suppose.”
“Well, not exactly Sir. You forgot about our cavalry and bicycle-mobile units. They will be ready to get into the fight in less than an hour from. You gave me the task to get your militia prepared for anything. Now, you get to see just how good they are with the tools that you have given us. Still, it would have been nice to have had a few of those fine tanks of yours to help us.” Major Burke said with a shrug.
“Whatever we have, you will receive as quickly as possible.”
When the first reports came in of the impending Japanese attack, Major Burke had all eight of the operational militia torpedo boats move out into their camouflaged dispersal areas near Lachlan Island at the northeast corner of the sound. There, they waited for the order to attack.
Once the sun set, then the torpedo boats came out from their hiding places to go hunting enemy shipping. The eight large torpedo boats broke up into pairs after getting into open water north of Sunday Island. Each pair would be working together to attack a single target.
The torpedo boats built in Harold’s shipyard had recently been rearmed with near-copies of the American Mark 13 air-launched torpedo. The reduced weight of the Mark 13 compared to the torpedo originally designed for use on the torpedo boats allowed for additional guns to be added. The forecastle torpedo tube doors had also been sealed as part of the modification of the boats. The torpedoes were simply launched over the side of the boat.
Now the boats were even more lethal in spite of the need to get somewhat closer to their targets due to the shorter range of the Mark 13. The boats were now all armed with the new automatic six-pounder dual-purpose cannon in place of the original Bofors forty millimeter cannon mounted on each boat’s stern. A belt-fed twenty-five millimeter automatic cannon was mounted in front of the bridge while twin fifty-caliber heavy machine guns were mounted aside each boat’s armored bridge.
The first task that the torpedo boats had to accomplish was to penetrate the Japanese defensive screen formed by their destroyers. The torpedo boat commanders first used the elements of stealth and surprise to try to slip in as close as possible without being detected.
The lookouts aboard those Japanese warships were also highly trained and very capable at their jobs though. They knew how to find enemy ships in the blackness of the night using their high-quality binoculars to search for any telltales that would reveal the presence of a ship. Eventually, the Japanese did spot one of the torpedo boats. Searchlights instantly came on, followed by the rattle of automatic weapons and the roar of heavy cannons.
Lieutenant Carl Winton and his crew of eighteen instantly went into action. Lieutenant Winton ordered his boat to full throttle and turned directly towards the closest Japanese destroyer, presenting the enemy gunners with the smallest target possible. The fifty-caliber machine guns and the forward automatic cannon fired at the destroyer’s searchlights and upper decks to try to destroy the lights and suppress enemy fire.
Winton’s torpedo boat continued to close with the enemy destroyer, now identified as a Fubuki-class vessel. Winton could already see that this enemy ship had been damaged earlier by heavy machine gun fire from an aircraft strafing run. The torpedo boat took advantage of the damage to the destroyer to get even closer without taking any effective return fire. Then, at the last second, the torpedo boat fired a Mark 13 and turned to bring its heaviest guns to bear.
A fusillade of shells from the torpedo boat’s six-pounder slammed into the side of the Japanese destroyer, reaping havoc within her engineering spaces even as a Mark 13 sped towards her. The water around Winton’s torpedo boat churned as the Japanese frantically fired every gun that they had at her. Fortunately, few of the Japanese shells hit Winton’s boat. Those that did hit inflicted only minor damage.
But the Fubuki-class destroyer Sagiri was hit amidships by the torpedo, finishing the destruction of her engine rooms. This caused the loss of all power, eliminating the crew’s ability to control the flooding. The captain was forced to order the crew to abandon ship as a result of the damage inflicted by Winton’s torpedo boat. Sagiri sank in less than fifteen minutes after the torpedo hit.
Four of the other torpedo boats attempted to make a coordinated attack upon the battleship Yamashiro. By the time that the boats got into torpedo range, the Japanese gunners had been alerted and were firing rapidly at the approaching torpedo boats. A couple of the boats had been seriously enough hit to be forced to withdraw under cover of a hasty smoke screen. But the other two boats continued to press their attack. Within a few moments, eight Mark 13’s were on their way towards the huge battleship. Three of the torpedoes scored direct hits on Yamashiro, two on her port side and one starboard.
The Japanese battleship immediately began to slow down and take a list to port. This prompted the torpedo boat commanders to make another attack at the wounded giant. This time, the torpedo boats hit with two more torpedoes. But two of the boats took direct hits from several five and six inch shells fired by the battleship’s secondary batteries. The crews of the burning boats were forced to abandon ship just as their target was trying to stay afloat herself.
A pair of the surviving torpedo boats spotted the light cruiser Nagara and approached it at high speed. The light cruiser has already been damaged in an earlier air attack but remained in the fight.
The torpedo boats raced in from opposite sides of the damaged Japanese cruiser, forcing her to choose which boat to maneuver against. The torpedo boats only had one torpedo left each, so they had to make them count.
Both torpedo boats braved intense Japanese fire to get within point blank range before firing their Mark 13’s. The boats then immediately turned and ran away, firing their stern-mounted six-pounders as fast as possible in the few seconds before the torpedoes both hit Nagara, one of each side. The Japanese light cruiser immediately lost power and began to sink.
Torpedoes expended, the surviving torpedo boats retreated back to base to replenish their weapons, refuel and make necessary repairs. Dawn was coming soon. The militia’s other weapons would then take center stage once again in the daylight.
In the morning, contrails once again filled the skies above. There were noticeably fewer of them than on the first day of the invasion however. But Harold knew from the numbers that he had received that most of the aircraft flying overhead today were friendly. The confirmed losses of Japanese aircraft guaranteed that.
Two companies of milit
ia met the Japanese invaders at the new beachhead. The fighting was fierce as the Australians used every weapon at their disposal to repel the hundreds of charging Japanese soldiers that they encountered. The militiamen stopped all of the Japanese that they saw on the beaches. But they didn’t see all of the invaders that had made it onshore.
At the main militia command bunker, Major Burke resumed directing the fight against the Japanese invaders after having a couple of hours of badly needed sleep.
“Major, Sir. We’ve just received a report of hundreds of Japanese troops near the town of Kimbolton.” An aborigine dispatch runner quickly explained after arriving at the main militia command post.
“How the hell did they get there? We thought that we had stopped all of their vehicles from getting inland. There is no way that they could have gotten that far on foot.”
“There were no motor vehicles with them, Sir. They do have machine guns and light mortars though.”
Major Burke stopped and thought for a few moments. If this force succeeded in turning the militia’s flank, they could catch them in a deadly crossfire and cut Derby’s primary defenders off from their source of supplies. Even with Harold’s careful preparations, ammunition supplies were running low for the forward troops.
But Harlan Burke had one more weapon left to throw into the fray. He turned to one of his radiomen.
“Call the truck factory and have them send those two light tanks that they have been working on out to Kimbolton. They will need some support too. Get as many gun trucks as we can spare to send with them. The same goes for any militiamen who are not currently fighting. Send them out too. They can ride on the trucks if necessary.
Do whatever you have to do. But stop those troops from going any further.”
Quickly the orders were sent out. Less than two hours later, the two light tanks arrived right in the middle of a firefight between the Japanese and a couple of platoons of lightly armed militiamen. These militiamen were aborigines who had literally just walked in from walkabout, grabbed their automatic rifles, a couple of ammunition pouches and ran out to fight the Japanese.
As soon as the tanks arrived where the Japanese had been reported, the vehicles became the focus of every Japanese machine gun. Thousands of rifle-caliber rounds were soon bouncing off of the tanks’ armor, leaving streaks of lead all over the exterior of the armored vehicles. But the tanks’ turrets spun around, spitting fire from their twenty-five millimeter automatic cannons and co-axial machine guns and inflicting a terrible toll upon the Japanese force.
A Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go light tank that had somehow managed to survive the beachhead trundled up into the fight and attempted to engage the two militia light tanks with its 37mm gun. But the militia tanks rapidly reduced the Ha-Go to scrap metal with armor-piercing rounds from their automatic cannons.
Shortly afterwards, the gun trucks with their twenty-five pounders arrived and began raining high explosive shells upon the Japanese. The combination of the tanks and the mobile artillery absolutely decimated the force that had threatened Kimbolton.
“We’ve got several damaged Japanese transports still trying to beach themselves so that they can offload their troops and cargo before sinking.” The fire control tower observers reported over in a telephone call to the militia’s command post where Major Burke and Harold had recently relocated to that afternoon.
Harold thought for a few moments before responding, much to Major Burke’s surprise.
“Go ahead and let them. I have no question now that we are going to defeat this landing attempt also. Once we do that, we can salvage the cargo on those transports and use it ourselves. What ships we can’t refloat and refit, we will just dismantle in place. I can always use the scrap metal for my steel works.”
“Mister Cavill, we’ve still got the problem with where all those Japanese aircraft are coming from. They obviously aren’t flying them all the way from the Philippines. That means that there are several aircraft carriers not too far away from here. While we have shot down a lot of Japanese aircraft, the ones that remain are still making it difficult for us to maintain air cover over the landing zones.
We don’t have anything left to find and attack those carriers except for a few Beaufighters. They won’t be able to get through to those carriers, I know.”
“Maybe we do have something that can get through to the Japanese carriers. We just finished doing the first flight and weapons drop tests of that new long range bomber.”
“Yes, I remember. You based that bomber loosely upon the Cavalier flying boat. But it is only one bomber. How can it strike at least two Japanese aircraft carriers at the same time? The Americans have tried to attack ships with entire formations of their Flying Fortress heavy bombers but had little success.”
“Don’t you remember my mentioning something about six months ago about radio controlled bombs? This aircraft is designed to not only carry a significant payload of conventional bombs, but is also fitted to be able to drop guided bombs as well.”
“How accurate are these radio controlled bombs? I’m afraid that I wasn’t able to keep up with their development due to all of the other tasks that I was involved in, Mister Cavill.”
“With a trained operator, we can place a twelve hundred kilogram bomb within a twenty-five meter circle from an altitude of fifteen-thousand meters. Our heavy bomber can carry four of these weapons in a single mission. One limitation is that the operator can only control one bomb at a time.”
“Can it hit a moving target like a warship?”
“With a trained operator, certainly. However, we have only produced a few of these guided bombs.”
“How many do we have available?”
“We have nine bombs in the warehouse right now. We won’t have any more for at least a couple of weeks.”
Major Burke grimaced when he heard how few of these weapons were available. He was accustomed to the idea of hundreds of bombs being dropped on just one target like what Lancaster bombers had been doing over German cities each week. Still, if Harold Cavill thought that this was some sort of wonder weapon, Major Burke was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Harold had managed to build a rather impressive militia largely out of his own purse with weapons that frequently gave it the edge.
“I hope that you have a very good person aiming those bombs, Sir.”
“I guess that we will find out soon. He has been the man who has dropped all three of the prototype bombs so far.” Harold explained, eliciting another grimace from Major Burke who was now silently praying for a miracle.
Derby Airfield
Derby, Western Australia
April 23, 1943
The large bomber had flown south to another airfield out of the range of Japanese fighters when the first word of the impending attack came in. Now the bomber was sitting at the Derby airfield again as mechanics and armorers worked feverishly to refuel and arm the aircraft in the middle of the night. This would be the first combat mission for the six-engine bomber named the Cavill Cassowary for the large flightless bird found in New Guinea and northern Australia. But this Cassowary was far from flightless and, like the large bird, could easily inflict fatal injuries upon interlopers.
The Cassowary used the engines, tail and modified wing from the maritime patrol version of the Cavalier flying boat. But the bomber used an entirely new fuselage that was longer and more slender than that used by the Cavalier. The highly streamlined fuselage was supported on the ground by two pairs of bicycle landing gears fore and aft of the bomb bay. Lightweight outrigger wheels extended out from the outermost engine nacelles to steady the aircraft while taking off and landing.
For a Commonwealth bomber, the Cassowary was very heavily armed. It had three turrets and a tail gun position, each armed with a pair of Browning fifty-caliber heavy machine guns. Two guns were located in a streamlined chin turret while the rest of the bomber’s armament was located in a dorsal turret behind the cockpit and in a retractable belly turret similar
to that used by American heavy bombers. The Cassowary could carry up to six thousand kilograms of bombs and other ordnance inside of its bomb bay and on its two wing hardpoints. The wing hardpoints could also be used to carry external fuel tanks if necessary
Because the Cassowary was designed to operate at very high altitudes, the crew compartments were pressurized with a main compartment forward for the cockpit, bombardier, navigator and gunner positions and an aft compartment for the tail and belly gunner. A slender pressurized tube connected these two crew compartments.
With a top speed of over three hundred knots and a maximum operational altitude of over nine thousand meters, the Cassowary would be very difficult to intercept by any Japanese fighters. Harold and Major Burke were both counting on this since they would not be able to spare any fighters to escort the large bomber on its mission to find and attack the Japanese aircraft carriers.
The Cassowary lifted off from the Derby airfield just before dawn. The bomber carried four guided bombs. Two of the bombs were inside the bomber’s cavernous bomb bay. Two other bombs were also carried, one on each wing’s hardpoint located between inboard engine and the fuselage. A handful of Whirlwinds flew escort for the bomber for the beginning of the flight. Once the bomber reached five thousand meters altitude, the fighters turned away and raced back to Derby to engage the latest Japanese air raid. After that, the Cassowary was on its own.
Captain Edgar Cowens was at the controls of the Cassowary as the bomber continued to climb higher into the skies north of Derby. With him were four gunners, a bombardier, a navigator and the Cassowary’s co-pilot, Lieutenant Phillip Mills. The Cassowary would not carry a dedicated radio operator or flight engineer on this mission. The gunner for the dorsal turret would have to act as the radio operator when not occupied with shooting at enemy fighters. Lieutenant Mills would also be pulling double duty as flight engineer as well.