On Seas So Crimson

by James Young

  “Likewise, XO,” Captain Wallace replied, extending his hand. The two men shook, then Jacob turned to make his way gingerly to sick bay. Beneath his feet he felt Houston’s engines starting to accelerate once more, followed by the bugle call for General Quarters, then Air Action. Deciding his leg could wait, he headed aft to Battle Two, barking for a report as soon as he was through the door.

  “Sir, Prince of Wales is reporting two air contacts relative bearing one eight zero, course one seven nine,” Foncier reported as he stepped in.

  “Understood,” Jacob said coolly.

  Well, if this is to be the last time I’m aboard this vessel, the Japanese are at least making it memorable, Jacob thought.

  The two aircraft, flying in trail, were the harbingers of Admiral Kondo’s forces returning to the fray. Unfortunately for them, it was not quite yet dark enough for all the Allied aircraft to depart the area. Guided by the Prince of Wales’ FDO, four Australian Whirlwinds reversed course from returning to Surabaya. While not as polished as his compatriot on Australia, the Prince of Wales’ FDO was pretty darn good. Bringing the four fighters in from the east so their opponents would be silhouetted against the lighter western sky, the FDO set the stage for a brilliant interception.

  Neither Jake had a chance, the two crews being immolated within seconds of one another by the two Australian section leaders. Having succeeded in poking out Kondo’s eyes, Admiral Phillips came north in what he intended to be a complete evisceration of the Japanese main body.

  Watching the flaming comets fall from altitude, Jacob was once again struck by the wonders of the new device, this “radar”.

  Like a damn magic lantern, Jacob thought. An all seeing eye that gives us one hell of an advantage over the Japs.

  Darkness at sea level had arrived with its customary suddenness, and Jacob was startled to see Battle Two was steeped in the usual gloom of blacked out operations. The Allied Fleet was still short of its night time dispositions, the ragged column being held up by the Dutch squadron and the last two destroyers that had been searching for Renown survivors. The Houston was still being trailed by the Exeter, Repulse, then Prince of Wales, the battleship having slowed to twenty-three knots to ease the pressure on her torpedo wound. Behind her the slower Valiant, Ramilles, and Malaya were slowly gaining ground, roughly five thousand yards behind their faster and younger relative. The remaining Commonwealth and Dutch cruisers were just starting to reform into a loose column eight thousand yards off the Houston’s port quarter, Hobart in the lead. Once that column was formed, the Houston was to break off from her position, steam down the starboard side of the battleships, then form up behind the tail of the cruisers, but that was still twenty to thirty minutes off.

  “Sir, Prince of Wales reports multiple contacts bearing two six nine relative, range twenty-eight thousand yards,” Dewey reported.

  Yeah, definitely an all seeing eye, Jacob thought, looking out to the Houston’s port side. The skies were still partially cloudy, obscuring a portion of the moon’s light. If he had to venture a guess, and knowing the general range to the barely visible Prince of Wales, Jacob would guess naked eye visibility at just over twelve thousand yards. He could see several other shapes as other vessels moved to join the column, but he could not have identified them if his life depended on it.

  “Prince of Wales requesting permission to open fire,” Dewey stated breathlessly.

  There was silence over the Talk Between Ships (TBS) circuit. Jacob, looking at the ship clock, watched as two, then three minutes passed.

  “Permission denied,” the speaker crackled. “Friendly vessels fouling range. Destroyers free to conduct torpedo attack, all other vessels clear for action.”

  What vessels is he talking about? Jacob asked, moving to the plot board. There shouldn’t be anything out there…oh, wait.

  Twenty thousand yards to Prince of Wales’s port, the destroyers Express and Encounter were steaming pell mell back towards the Allied squadron. Having heard the Prince of Wales sighting report and realizing that meant there were enemy vessels less than nine thousand yards astern, the destroyers were literally running for their lives. Their decks full of Renown survivors, both vessels were clearing for action as well as they could. To a man, their complements could still hear the sounds of the men they had been forced to leave behind in the water. Straining their eyes abaft, the two vessels’ lookouts peered into the darkness desperately looking for signs of enemy vessels.

  The men could have saved their eyes, as death stalked them from the shadows. Realizing that tying his own light vessels to his relatively slow battleline would be suicide, Admiral Kondo had conducted reorganization of his battered light forces as he came up. In the end, his force had been disposed into two columns of light vessels with the battleships in line abreast in the center.

  The port, or easternmost, column was led by the light cruiser Oi. Behind her were thirteen of the large Japanese destroyers with their heavy gun armament and torpedo tubes. To starboard, or west of the battleline the Kitakami, Oi’s sister ship and similarly modified with an extensive torpedo battery of forty 24-inch tubes, led the damaged Naka then also thirteen destroyers. In the center, the Hiei was the furthermost battleship to port, then came her two sister ships, then the Fuso, Yamashiro, Ise, Hyuga, Mutsu, Nagato, then the eight heavy cruisers that made up the remainder of the force.

  VAdm. Kondo’s plan was simple in concept. The light forces would make contact with a night torpedo attack, eschewing their guns until they had fired at least one torpedo salvo. Once this attack was made, these same vessels would illuminate the enemy fleet as they reloaded their torpedoes, allowing the battle line to bombard from a distance with impunity. While battle losses and other needs had meant his force was a hodgepodge of different squadrons, this operation had been practiced so many times in tough, realistic pre-war maneuvers Kondo had no doubt it would succeed. Ships had collided and sailors had died to ensure the IJN’s proficiency, an investment that he fully intended to reap in the next few hours.

  There were two things the pre-war maneuvers had not counted on. The first of these was free-floating, hastily laid Dutch minefields. So recent that they had not been known to Admiral Phillips, these would have surely led to disastrous results if not for Allied turn away from Japanese torpedo water. Drifting with the currents, the weapons were now squarely in the path of Kondo’s westernmost squadron. With no minesweepers, Kondo’s forces had no idea of what lay before them.

  The second oversight had of been the Royal Navy’s aggressive nature. There was no excuse for this lapse, as the Imperial Japanese Navy’s own traditions were based on those of her former allies’. Admiral Phillips, not considered to be in the Nelsonian mold by many of his contemporaries, rose far above his diminutive stature in his bold order to dispatch the destroyers. Whilst if he had known the relative disparity in light forces his decisions may have been different, Phillips’ aggressive maneuver had meant that both sides’ light forces would meet far in advance of the battleships.

  Thus, as the Oi ran pell mell into three of the Dutch mines and burst into a mass of flames, the Allied destroyers were already charging forward to conduct their torpedo runs. Initially stunned by the sudden explosion of their flagship, the thirteen Japanese destroyers behind quickly reacted by throwing their helms to starboard and simultaneously hurling a monkey wrench in Admiral Kondo’s plans.

  “Holy shit!” Jacob heard a lookout shout, the bright explosions and mass of flames far closer than he would have expected. Bringing up his night glasses, he focused on the furiously burning pyre and could see shapes elongating and turning broadside in the darkness. In the next instant, he was nearly thrown off his feet as Houston suddenly turned to starboard, her engines changing in pitch as they went full astern.

  “Shoal water dead ahead!” Seaman Dewey reported, his feet braced as the heavy cruiser listed away from her turn.

  “What?!” Foncier, Jacob, and Chief Roberts asked in unison.

&nb
sp; “Message from the De Ruyter,” Dewey said sheepishly.

  “Nice of her navigator to suddenly look up and do his job!” Jacob muttered, even as he turned back out to port.

  The message had completely discombobulated the Allied formation, the Hobart having also initially turned to starboard, a course that would have taken her right in front of the swiftly turning Repulse if both vessels captains hadn’t reacted quickly. Like a rippling whipcrack, the subsequent avoidances caused vessels to heel out of line or, even more dangerously, stop. Only the nimbleness of the smaller cruisers and the relatively slow speed of the battlewagons prevented any collisions, and only at the cost of preventing all but the Dorsetshire and the Exeter from getting off any salvos for three critical minutes.

  The Japanese had no such issues, the discovered port column opening fire with starshell at their approaching counterparts and the milling battleships and cruisers beyond. Aboard the Houston, Jacob suddenly found himself bathed in a glare so bright he could have read by it without straining his eyes. Shielding his eyes from the glare, he saw that the majority of the Allied battleline was similarly outlined.

  Not good, not good at all, he thought, even as he saw similar sunbursts exploding over the Japanese port wing destroyers. Then the night became a cacophony of exchanging tracer rounds as the destroyers began engaging one another.

  The Express and Encounter, already being tracked by both sides of Japanese vessels, were the first to suffer. Having heard Phillips order, the two vessels had been reversing course back towards the radar contacts even as Oi was impaling herself in the Dutch minefield. While an example in British bravery, with both decks full of survivors both ships might have been better served in continuing south to join their rapidly advancing comrades.

  The starboard wing of Japanese light forces, still stealthily approaching, held their gunfire and most of their torpedoes, only the Harusame and Kawakaze firing their forward quad tubes at the two turning destroyers as they presented their broadsides. The eight torpedoes missed behind the speeding two vessels, hurtling into the darkness back towards the unaware Japanese battleline, already starting to execute their simultaneous turn to form line ahead. While it would have been extremely perverse if the Long Lances had found the sides of friendly battleships instead of their intended prey, Fortune gave the IJN her first favor of the night.

  The port wing, with starshells already bursting over their heads, had no reason to maintain their stealth. Indeed, several of the destroyers went so far as to illuminate the Express and Encounter with searchlights, the hapless destroyers finding themselves the focus of at least six enemy vessels at under ten thousand yards. Even as the former engaged the Fubuki and the latter the Yugumo, the Japanese were already straddling the wildly maneuvering destroyers and threatening to cross their ‘T’ as they finished reversing course. Porting their helms further to port, the two vessels adopted a near parallel course with the retreating port wing, the range a brutal seven thousand yards.

  As neither vessel’s master nor any other officer for that matter survived the subsequent fight, the next five minutes would remain the subject of historian conjecture for years. The citation for Lieutenant Commander Morgan and Cartwright’s Victoria Crosses would simply read ‘intrepidly maneuvered their vessels in such a manner as to cause maximum damage to the enemy’. These were staid and subdued wording for the act of throwing ones vessel against incredibly superior odds and likely saving many of their comrades at the cost of their own, for the two destroyers’ launched such a valiant counterattack, guns and torpedoes blazing, that they further threw the port wing into chaos.

  While it was not known what went through most of the crew’s minds in those moments, what was known was the damage they caused. Equipped with four quick-firing 4.7” guns, both vessels were capable of firing a salvo every eight to ten seconds with their well-trained crews. While their own wild maneuvers initially threw the guncrews off, as the two light forces sped westward the Encounter landed a hit on the Yugumo with her fourth salvo, the round severing the destroyer’s steering cables as it detonated. Express did even better, hitting the Fubuki with a shell that started an intense fire in that vessel’s fire room. Hard hit, that vessel began rapidly slowing and started to turn away, a maneuver that would normally have had little effect except the Yugumo was the next vessel behind her. The collision was terrible, the Yugumo slicing into the Fubuki abaft of her ‘Y’ turret as that vessel turned and nearly severing her stern.

  Spying the opportunity, Encounter fired eight torpedoes at the stopped ships. It would be her last act, as a ‘Long Lance’ from the Nowaki arrived at that moment. Hitting the destroyer in her boilers, the torpedo’s warhead snapped her keel. The subsequent force from the vessel’s forward movement finished the destruction, ripping her in half at her forward funnel. For a few moments the stern half surged forward, almost passing the bow before stopping then tilting up and plunging into the sea. Due to the suddenness of the sinking, the destroyer’s depth charges had not been set to ‘safe’. The fifty or so men who had been on the vessel’s deck and survived the torpedoing, to include a large proportion of Renown survivors bitterly complaining about their second dunking, had just enough time to begin looking for debris to cling to when the explosive canisters began detonating with terrible results. Fortunately for those on the bow section, itself following two minutes later, all the explosions had ceased by the time it was their turn to enter the water.

  Having seen the demise of her sister ship aft and realizing that thirteen to one odds were insane, the Express had just started to turn away when it seemed as if all of her assailants got the range at once. Having just fired her own torpedoes as she started to turn away, the Express was hit by twelve shells within the space of thirty seconds. One of these found her aft magazine, with the results to be expected, the other hits merely hastening her sinking.

  Sighting the white wakes of the incoming torpedoes, those Japanese vessels that could avoid quickly turned to comb the tracks, the maneuver simultaneously putting them bows on with the other rapidly closing Allied light forces. The unfortunate Fubuki and Yugumo, in effect one large target even as they separated, each collected a single torpedo. Unlike their American cousins, the British torpedoes had been extensively tested for function during their development. While not as impressively fatal as the Long Lance, the 21” torpedoes made more than a large enough hole to see off a destroyer. The maelstrom of battle continued even as the two vessels foundered, their depth charges’ detonation increasing the night’s body count.

  “Enemy cruisers, bearing oh three oh!”

  “The Express and Encounter have sunk!”

  “John Paul Jones reports enemy battleships sighted!”

  Jacob suddenly felt himself overwhelmed by the shouted orders and general cacophony of battle. The Houston, her path of fire now cleared, was steadily seeking targets in a sea that seemed full of them. The vessel’s aft turret had changed orientation at least three times that Jacob could notice, the Lieutenant Commander Sloan obviously unable to clearly discern prey. Judging from the numerous shell splashes, none fortunately closer than two hundred yards at the moment, that sea full of targets seemed to also be seeking her.

  I hope Sloan stops acting like a damn teenage boy at the town social and picks someone out, Jacob thought, because I sure don’t hear the…

  As if the gunnery officer was reading his mind, Houston’s forward turrets erupted. Jacob could not see the target the shells were aimed at, but he could see that they weren’t the same ones being illuminated by the 5-inch guns. Not wanting to question Sloan’s judgment, he attempted to pierce the gloom, something hard to do with yet another starshell bursting overhead.

  In the next instant he suddenly had help as the area Houston had been shooting at became alive with dim flashes. Fixing on the location, Jacob could make out dim shapes, shapes that were beginning to turn away. Houston’s guns roared again, the nine waterspouts just visible in Jacob’s field of view as Slo
an was slightly short, failing to account for the enemy’s change of orientation. As the enemy ships’ shapes began to change, the series of flashes began once more, the maneuver starting to trigger some sort of memory in Jacob’s mind.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the freight train sound of incoming ordnance, the ripping canvas incredibly loud and extremely close. As in the earlier fight, his veteran’s instincts saved him and most of the crew of Battle Two, the space once more swept with splinters and, alarmingly, spray. Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob could see that the towering waterspouts were far higher than any he had ever seen, a development that could mean only one thing: battleships.

  “Oh fuck!” Chief Roberts cried. Turning, Jacob could see that the man’s abdomen was a mess of goo, the blood black in the harsh light of the starshells. In light of Battle Two’s seemingly magnetic attraction for shell splinters, Lieutenant Sharpe had determined placing a corpsman in the space would be prudent. Jacob cast around looking for the medical professional and saw the man already tending to a sailor that had collapsed in a heap at the port entrance to Battle Two. Jacob started to take a step towards Chief Roberts and was cut off by Lieutenant Foncier.

  “I got it Sir, keep in the fight!” Foncier shouted. Jacob realized the wisdom of the younger officer’s words as the Houston started to heel over.

  I have no idea why we’re turning and that’s not good, he thought, the ship vibrating as her guns fired again.

  “Status report!” he shouted at one of the talkers. The man did not hear him, continuing to look at Foncier tending Chief Roberts. Jacob took two quick strides and hit the man atop his helmet, the sailor looking at him in shock.

  “Status report, dammit!” Jacob roared. He could hear the radio squawk box behind the man, the device a babble of ships talking as chaos reigned in the Allied fleet. The talker, shaking himself out of his shock, began listening to his headset. Jacob was almost ready to throttle him when there were two distinct explosions, one of them forward the other quite close to Battle Two in the vicinity of the secondaries. Turning away from the sailor, Jacob sprinted to the port side of Battle Two to try and look down the Houston’s length towards her bow. His view was obscured by the horrifically bright blaze burning on starboard #1 secondary.