On Seas So Crimson

by James Young

  “Corpsman!” Jacob barked. A senior chief looked towards him, surprised to see the XO. Just as the man started to come towards Jacob the Houston’s guns roared again, the blast rustling through the bridge.

  “Aye-aye, Sir?!” the man asked.

  “Get some freaking sand up here before someone kills themselves!” Jacob barked. “On the double!”

  “Sir, we’ve got wounded…” the man protested.

  “Unless you want me to toss you off my fucking ship, sailor, you will damn well comply with my order!” Jacob bellowed. “Now move!”

  The sailor moved away, shocked into action. Jacob cast his eyes around the compartment. Looking, he saw a man sitting in the corner, holding his knees to his chest and softly sobbing. The man was covered in blood, but judging from the lack of corpsman attention was otherwise not hurt. Looking, Jacob realized that the man was an officer, likely the Junior Officer of the Deck. Not recognizing him, he realized the man must be a Boise survivor. Moving over to the man, Jacob grabbed him. The officer recoiled away, giving a frightened cry.

  “Ensign,” Jacob said quietly, forcing the man to look at him. “Ensign!” he barked. The officer stopped shaking and looked at him.

  “W-w-we’re all going to die!” the man sobbed. “Oh God…”

  “Listen ensign,” Jacob said quietly and firmly, resisting the urge to slap the man silly. “We’re not going to die. I need you to get up and take the wheel.”

  For a moment it did not appear as if the officer was going to come out of it. Then, catching himself, the man nodded.

  “Aye-aye, Sir,” he said, unclenching himself. Houston’s guns fired again, the vessel starting to come around to port. The heavy cruiser was bathed in the bright light of starshells again, causing Jacob to curse under his breath.

  “Son, what’s your name?” he asked.

  “E-ensign Carlyle, sir,” the stunned officer said.

  “All right Carlyle, let’s get back into this fight—the Limeys look like they could use a hand,” Jacob said calmly.

  The speaker at the back of the compartment crackled, a faint and tremulous voice coming over it.

  “All…vessels. All vessels, this is Admiral Phillips.,” a strained voice said. “Admiral Crutchley is in command. God…save…the King!”

  Jacob looked out towards where Valiant was still burning furiously. As he watched, several salvoes of shells arrived near simultaneously, at least two battleship shells hitting the sinking flagship.

  “Goddammit, those little yellow bastards are pounding her!” someone cried.

  Jacob felt his own stomach do flip flops. The Valiant was obviously finished, the fact that the Japanese were still firing on her demonstrating their foes implacable nature. Then he had no more time to reflect as an enemy salvo bracketed the Houston once more with massive waterspouts.

  “It’d be nice if someone would pick on a vessel their own size!” Jacob muttered. The Houston’s guns barked back in defiance, Jacob sincerely hoping that Sloan was not playing tag with a battleship, new shells or no. There was silence on the bridge, and suddenly he realized all eyes were staring at him because no one was manning the wheel.

  Shit, we’ve go to move or we’re dead! Jacob thought.

  “Carlyle, take the helm! You,” Jacob barked, pointing at a corpsman who was busy pulling a shroud over one of the bridge’s many dead, “are now my talker. First thing, tell Lieutenant Foncier to send me a talker on the double. Second, figure out what Commander Sloan is shooting at.”

  The corpsman quickly dropped the shroud over the corpse he was tending and jumped for the voice-powered telephone. Slipping in his predecessor’s blood, the man’s feet flew out from under him, causing him to slam backwards to the deck despite furiously windmilling his arms to try and regain his balance. The wind obviously knocked out of him, the sailor still managed to struggle into the talker’s chair. Jacob turned away as soon as the man was able to start talking, bringing his binoculars up so he could try and get a feel for what was going on.

  Off the port bow about five thousand yards he could see the Malaya continuing to fire towards the distant enemy battleline. Waterspouts all around the maneuvering battleship indicated that her opposite numbers were firing back, and the rapidly firing 6-inch secondaries meant that there were enemy light forces still about. Beyond Malaya, the Dorsetshire and Exeter were firing at their full rate at a furiously burning target far to their starboard, approximately the same range as the enemy battle line but aft of those vessels. Other than those two vessels, Jacob could not see any other clearly friendly vessels. The radio was eerily silent, and Jacob suddenly realized that the Allied fleet was for all purposes decimated.

  “Sir, we are engaging a heavy cruiser or small battleship,” the man replied. “Commander Sloan reports that the enemy vessels are turning away.”

  Thank God, Jacob thought. I hope it’s the former, as the words ‘small battleship’ are a rather big misnomer. The talk between ships suddenly crackled into life.

  “All vessels, all vessels, scrum, I say again, scrum,” Admiral Crutchley’s voice came from the speaker. Crutchley, an avid rugby fan, had jokingly recommended “scrum” as the code word for all ships retreating. Jacob doubted that the man was laughing now.

  Someone has wisely decided to wait and fight another day rather than immolate themselves on the pyre of sacrifice. Turning to Carlyle, Jacob quickly thought of what course needed to be steered.

  “Bring your helm to course two six five relative, full speed ahead. Order all hands to release rafts and boats for the survivors.”

  “I can’t believe we’re running,” someone muttered. Jacob started to whirl on whomever had spoke then realized he was now the vessel’s master and thus not to be trifled with minor matters like the lower deck’s opinion. After a moment’s pause he realized that someone else was had the same opinion he did.

  “It’s going to be a long war, friend,” the other man’s voice said out of the darkness. “These fuckers have won the first mile, we’ll see how they do over the next twenty-five.”

  “Sir, signal from Prince of Wales—she’s ordering us to retire and put out our fires,” Lieutenant Foncier said, stepping into the bridge. “Lieutenant Morgan has Battle Two,” he spoke before Jacob could ask.

  “Good enough, have a seat over as the talker,” Jacob said. “Corpsman, you may continue getting these bodies out of here.”

  “Sir, you’re bleeding,” Lieutenant Foncier observed.

  “I’ll be all right, damn stitches just opened up,” Jacob said.

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Foncier replied, his voice skeptical.

  “I need a damage report from all division chiefs on the double, and someone tell me when we’ve got that fire out,” Jacob ordered.

  “Aye-aye, Sir,” Foncier said. Houston’s No. 3 turret roared again, the only guns able to bear as the heavy cruiser moved away. Foncier gave a whoop.

  “Commander Sloan reports hit!”

  Unbeknownst to Sloan, he had already struck his target, the Chikuma, three times prior to his current hit. It was the fourth shell, however, that had the greatest effect while simultaneously highlighting the problem with putting a seaplane carrier, albeit a heavily armed and armored one, in the line of battle. The heavy 8” shell performed as advertised, going through Chikuma’s belt like a brick through a plate glass window, passing through the forward bulkhead of the vessel’s generator room, and detonating against her avgas storage. With a whoomp! that was audible aboard the Japanese cruisers forward and aft the seaplanes’ fuel ignited, the brilliant fireball making it seem as if the vessel had suffered a magazine explosion.

  Fortunately for those crewmembers whose action stations were not in adjacent compartments, the explosion was not as severe as it could have been due to the fullness of the tank. While the immolation of the generator room rendered the vessel without electric power and the loss of battery power only exacerbated this issue, the heavy cruiser was still controllable and able to t
urn out of line, heavily ablaze.

  “Sir, Commander Sloan reports target suffered explosion! Looks like a magazine!” Foncier said excitedly.

  The riposte from whatever Japanese ships were firing on the Houston was well astern, the heavy cruiser having finally moved out of the starshell patterns. Simultaneously, Sloan decided to check fire, the Prince of Wales potentially fouling his aim. The British battleship had no such issues, firing her aft guns again at a distant target.

  “Course two six five relative! Speed thirty-one knots!”

  “Fire secured in secondaries, Sir,” Foncier said. “Division chiefs are sending runners with the damage reports.”

  “Corpsman!” Jacob barked, looking for the petty officer whom had begun to spread the just arrived sand on the bridge deck.

  “Aye-aye, Sir?” the man asked from behind him.

  “When you get done with that, tell the surgeon I need a casualty count.”

  “Aye-aye, Sir,” the petty officer replied.

  Jacob turned back to conning his ship, the stiff breeze from the shattered bridge windows hitting him full in the face. Now that the immediate danger was past, he could smell the aroma of burnt gunpowder and blood, the mixture making his stomach turn. He was suddenly thankful for the vessel’s darkened light conditions, as the bridge likely resembled a butcher shop.

  “Prince of Wales is turning back to cover the retreat of our destroyers. She’s signaling for us to hove to and remain in this area as a rally ship.”

  “Signal our assent and bring her around. Where in the hell are those damage reports?”

  The Second Java Sea, like many naval fights, seemed to gradually grind to a stop rather than end. While Jacob’s ultimate prognosis might have been correct, in the short term Malaya’s continued accuracy as well as that of Prince of Wales and the two Commonwealth heavy cruisers gave Admiral Kondo enough of a pause to order his own forces to withdraw in order for the destroyers to reload torpedoes. Disengaging from their spirited fight with their Allied opposite numbers, most of whom would never realize how fortunate they were that the Japanese destroyermen had expended their torpedoes before engaging.

  In turn, the relative inexperience of the newer Commonwealth crews, long range and poor angles presented by rapidly turning destroyers, and the wretched capabilities of the American contingent’s torpedoes meant that Japanese losses were similarly light. Indeed, the only vessel to be hit by a functional torpedo was the Kitakami, and that one of the elderly Mk. 8s. Set ablaze in her engineering spaces, the light cruiser was further flayed by the Malaya’s secondaries but managed to escape into smoke lain by the Japanese destroyer Suzukaze.

  It was this smoke, as well as that from many other ships, that allowed the two sides to extricate themselves with relatively little difficulty. On the Japanese side, this allowed Admiral Kondo to take quick stock. With Fuso and Kongo destroyed, Yamashiro a near wreck, Haruna damaged from the afternoon battle, and the Hiei and Ise having received moderate damage from the Prince of Wales and Malaya respectively, Kondo swiftly determined he would try to further attrit the enemy force with his heavy cruisers and destroyers before bringing his battleline forward again. Barking orders for reorganization, he sent eight of his destroyers forward to determine the situation while the shuffling of the fleet was accomplished.

  These eight vessels returned to the battlefield a little more than an hour after Kondo had given the order to turn away. As they continued pressing south, they found a sea dotted with two cripples, the Devonshire and De Ruyter still struggling for life. Circling around the two cruisers were three destroyers, mostly concentrating on picking up survivors. With sixty-four torpedoes between them, and believing themselves to be undetected, the eight destroyers began maneuvering to deliver a devastating close range torpedo attack.

  Things did not progress much further than preparation as the sky was suddenly lit up over the eight vessels as Prince of Wales fired starshells. Having been detached by Jacob as a hedge against the Japanese battleline returning, Prince of Wales quickly opened fire with her main battery at the eight contacts, causing the destroyers to scatter in evasive maneuvers. The battleship was joined a few moments later by the other undamaged vessels, the fire prompting the eight destroyer captains to determine that discretion was the better part of valor as they fired their torpedoes and turned away. Outside of some splinter damage, the eight vessels managed to escape without being hit.

  Roughly seven minutes later four of these torpedoes ended the hopes of saving Devonshire and De Ruyter, three hitting the former and causing her to quickly sink, one hitting the other and causing her to catch fire. Having watched the Sumatra explode just minutes before, the De Ruyter’s crew did not hesitate in abandoning ship. Twenty minutes later, as the Japanese fleet reappeared at the outer edges of Prince of Wales’ radar screen, the Exeter sank the blazing hulk with a pair of torpedoes. That unenviable task complete, the Allied vessels headed away from the advancing Japanese cruisers and destroyers. Amongst the lost was Admiral Doorman, last sighted on the De Ruyter’s bridge with her captain.

  Finding nothing but open sea and not really having any desire to duel battleships he could not see, the Japanese cruiser commander made a half-hearted attempt to regain contact then rejoined Admiral Kondo’s main force. It was an act of timidity that would earn Rear Admiral Upper Half Gunichi Mikawa a shore billet at Singapore for the remainder of the war, the position coming with the express order that he was not to commit seppuku to atone for his sins.

  Beaten, dejected, and far weaker than when the fight had begun, the Allied forces straggled back towards the circling Houston. It would be well after dawn before all the vessels arrived, but nowhere near that long for all present to realize that the East Indies were now irrevocably doomed. For their part, the Japanese fell back towards Borneo to regroup and prepare to launch the final and decisive assault, that against Java.

  Honolulu

  1000 Local (1530 Eastern)

  5 May

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come to the movie, Jo?” Patricia called from the bathroom. “C’mon, Casablanca won’t be around forever!”

  In the living room, Jo looked up from her pulp detective novel. The paperback was one of her father’s, the twenty boxes of books in the attic running the gamut from the classical to the disposable. Looking at her watch, she shook her head at Patricia.

  “Gee, let me think…why would I want to go down to the middle of Honolulu, in a city that’s getting more and more packed with sailors who will likely ogle, jostle, and perhaps grope me?”

  Not to mention that would mean that three of us were going to a movie, and we all know that’s the definition of a crowd, Jo thought.

  Jo could almost hear the wheels of disapproval turning in her friend’s head. Not hearing anything for a few minutes, she turned back to her book. As she read, a small part of her mind began wandering in idle daydream to the last time her father had walked through the door. Everything had seemed so different five months prior, and she found herself wishing with all her heart that she could return to that time.

  Patricia came into the living room and stood looking down at Jo she put in her earrings. The youngest Cobb was wearing a green blouse and yellow skirt, the latter falling straight and coming to her knee. Her hair was pinned up tight to her head in a hairstyle that appeared to use all of America’s annual production of bobby pins but did well in emphasizing her pretty face, neck, and shoulders. As per usual, Patricia was wearing only lipstick, opting for a soft rouge shade. All in all she was the epitome of understated beauty.

  “You know, we could call Eric if you didn’t want to be an odd person,” Patricia said. Jo gave her a look, causing her to begin stammering. “N-n-ot that I’m saying…”

  “The look was in regard to the ‘odd person’ comment, Patricia, not to your absolutely absurd attempts to set me up with your brother,” Jo said.

  Patricia colored slightly in embarrassment.

  “I think you’
re doing quite well setting yourself up with Eric,” Patricia observed.

  “Like you have a problem with that,” Jo teased.

  “Maybe I do,” Patricia retorted.

  “And I’m the Virgin Mary,” Jo said snarkily.

  “Your name is not Mary, that is most definitely true,” Patricia said teasingly, her voice clearly indicating that Jo’s name wasn’t the only hangup. Jo threw a cushion at her, groaning in disgust. Patricia dodged with a squeak, Jo surprised at the woman’s agility in high heels since she had never seen her roommate wear them.

  “Look, just because some of us had the misfortune to be surrounded by highly sexed and persuasive men our entire life does not mean we should be looked down upon.”

  Patricia smiled sweetly at her roommate.

  “Well, I was surrounded by highly sexed and persuasive men and I didn’t lose my virtue.”

  “That’s because all of them were related to you,” Jo pointed out. “Now, if I’m wrong and Alabama shares more than a first letter with Arkansas, let me know.”

  Patricia let her jaw drop, her mouth forming a perfect ‘O’ of shock.

  “I cannot believe you would even suggest such a thing,” she replied. To Jo’s amazement the woman looked like she was actually about to be ill.

  “I was joking,” Jo said, her own eyes widening. Patricia suddenly closed her mouth and smiled broadly.

  “Gotcha.”

  Jo reached for another pillow just as there was a knock at the door. Patricia wagged a finger at her then turned and went to answer it. Looking through the eyehole, her features broke into a smile. Jo waited until she opened the door, then wound up.