Every single man aboard that battlecruiser had a specific duty to perform, and each one was doing exactly that as her six huge main guns roared in anger… everyone except Max Thorne. As he covered his ears with both hands in a rather vain attempt at protecting them from the noise, he seemed to be the only living soul on that ship that had literally nothing to do save for keeping himself out of everyone else’s way.
It was a situation that played heavily on his mind as he was forcibly pummelled from both directions by the shockwave of the six-gun broadside a fraction of a second later, leaving him far too much free time to think about Eileen and the fact that he was currently 1,500 miles away and completely unable to do anything to help her. He raised a pair of large binoculars to his eyes, stared out for a moment or two at the battle raging before him, then signed and lowered them once more to again hang about his neck on a leather strap.
That wasn’t to say that there wasn’t plenty going on right there where he was. The Japanese attacks near Hawaii had occurred at around 1:00am local time, and news had reached Singapore three hours later, arriving perhaps forty minutes ahead of a flight of thirty-four Japanese long-range bombers staging out of Thu Dau Mot in southern Indochina. Reports of heavy bombardment and an enemy invasion force off the Malay Peninsula near Kota Bharu were received at around the same time.
Damage done to the docks and harbour were minimal in the pre-dawn darkness, and almost half of the attackers were shot down either on approach or after the raid by radar-equipped Mosquito night-fighters, however the writing was on the wall all the same that the United States and the Commonwealth were officially at war with the Empire of Japan. Force G, now redesignated Force Z with the addition of further warships already stationed at Singapore, had sortied within the hour and was well out to sea by dawn and steaming at best possible speed along the eastern coast of the Malay Peninsula in response to the Japanese landings.
The invasion force had been expected in any case, and defensive fortifications right along that side of the peninsula had been bolstered and reinforced substantially over the last year and a half in preparation for exactly such a move. Reports so far indicated that the invaders were having a tough time establishing a beachhead against the garrison manning the defences there, with units of the Indian 9th Division aided substantially by a network of trenches, pillboxes and bunkers and some fine support from a detachment of artillery from the British 73rd Field Battery.
Kota Bharu was the base of operations for the RAF and RAAF in Northern Malaya, and was therefore a prime strategic target for the Japanese. A desperate battle had been fought in those early hours before dawn, with machine gun and rifle fire so intense from the fortifications on shore that most Japanese troops were barely able to raise their heads out of the water for fear of being hit. The situation was also exacerbated by quite choppy sea conditions, resulting in the capsizing of several small landing craft and a subsequent number of casualties lost due to drowning.
Three large troopships stood a few miles out to sea during the exercise, braving artillery fire as they disgorged over five thousand men into landing craft heading for shore. Casualties were severe with hundreds killed within the first half-hour, but still the Japanese officers urged their men on, well aware of the importance of their objective. With the aid of bombardment from a light cruiser and several destroyers off shore, the Japanese 18th Division managed to force a beachhead at Bachok, east of Kota Bharu, although the situation would remain on a knife edge during those first few desperate hours.
The battle still hung in the balance as Force Z hove into view of the invasion force some fifteen hours later, having steamed north throughout the morning and afternoon, following the shoreline of the Malay Peninsula under constant air cover from Indomitable. There had been several half-hearted bomber attacks launched from Indochina during the voyage, but none had been pressed home with any great enthusiasm and all had easily been seen off by the carrier’s Sea Furies without any damage to the task force. Force Z’s command group had been concerned by the distinct lack of aerial threat, Thorne particularly, due to his historical knowledge of the ships’ fates during the Realtime war.
The apparent reason for the scarcity of air attacks became far clearer however as they drew nearer to the landings themselves. Although nowhere near the scale of the engagements that had occurred hours before on the other side of the Pacific, a nevertheless quite significant air battle was currently in progress over Kota Bharu. Waves of Japanese fighters were locked in mortal combat with their RAF and RAAF counterparts, each side vying for supremacy as opposing attack aircraft dove, twisted and turned at far lower level, seeking paths through masses of anti-aircraft fire to strike at both defender and invader alike.
Neither side appeared to have the upper hand, with superior Japanese experience and training somewhat dampened by extremely short combat times over the beaches due to an approximate eight hundred mile round trip from their bases across the Gulf of Thailand, in Indochina. Even with auxiliary tanks, the single-engined Navy Zeros and Army Hayabusa were operating at extreme range and were therefore left with only limited fuel with which to engage their opponents.
The defending Sea Furies, Mustangs and Corsairs however were presented with no such difficulties. Although the airfields around Kota Bharu itself had been put out of action by naval bombardment early in the engagement, Jitra and other airfields on the western side of the peninsula were only a hundred miles away or less, leaving Allied pilots plenty of time to engage targets over the invasion fleet. Flak had taken a heavy toll on both sides for all that, and there’d been little real damage done to the Japanese strike force itself, although troops on the ground were still suffering horrendous casualties maintaining their tenuous beachhead.
All that had changed substantially as Force Z had steamed into range. The initial landing force had comprised a number of troopships supported by just one light cruiser and a brace of four destroyers. They’d since been joined by the heavy cruiser Takao and three more destroyers, escorting reinforcements, and all had lent their main guns to shore bombardment in support of the landings.
The warships had been forced to break away from the beach however as warning had come through of Force Z’s impending arrival, and as Indomitable’s fighters joined the fray in the skies above, Rear Admiral Hashimoto Shintarō had immediately ordered his ships into battle. With his force clearly outmatched and outgunned, he bore straight in regardless, sending his destroyers ahead even as the first shells from Repulse’s 15-inchguns began to fall about Takao, Prince of Wales concurrently targeting the light cruiser Sendai.
At about the same time, a spirited destroyer battle was opening up between the two converging fleets involving gunfire and torpedoes. Both sides proceeded to lay smoke screens, none of which had any effect whatsoever on the radar-directed gunfire of Prince of Wales or Repulse, yet it nevertheless served to obscure the battle area badly and ultimately created an environment which produced an as yet unrecognised threat.
A member of the original invasion fleet, the destroyer Ayanami had already taken several hits for minor damage, positioned further east than the rest of her group. As such, she was mostly clear of the smoke being laid behind her and she was afforded a fine view of the enemy forces, particularly the two huge capital ships toward the rear, still at least seven or eight miles away. As Ayanami’s captain looked on, both fired in quick succession, the massive flashes from their main armaments frightening to behold even at that distance.
So far as their fire control officer was able to determine, both vessels were steaming at a steady speed and in a straight line to allow better accuracy for their guns both he and the captain were confident that none aboard those British ships would, at that range, be at all concerned over the danger of torpedo attack. Ayanami was equipped with no less than nine torpedo tubes in three triple mounts. She launched three at each vessel, set rather courageously for narrow spread, and then adjusted aim to fire her last three against both targets. Ea
ch in turn hit the water with a splash, streaking away at fifty knots with estimated run times greater than eight minutes.
Thorne flinched again as the battlecruiser’s secondary batteries on her port side let fly at several targets simultaneously, the twin five-inch turrets belching clouds of smoke and flame. The American-made guns had replaced her earlier weapons during a refit a year before, and were generally considered to be the finest medium-calibre, dual purpose naval gun in existence. Good accuracy and range combined with a blistering rate of fire that was double that of many of their contemporaries made them a dangerous proposition for any would-be aerial attacker, particularly now that most Allied and American warships were equipped with proximity-fused shells.
They were also quite effective against smaller warships, and Thorne had to credit the courage of the Japanese fleet commander. His ships were being torn to pieces by Force Z’s guns and by one or two of Indomitable’s Sea Fury and Corsair fighter-bombers that had elected to seek seaborne targets rather than attacking Japanese troops on the beach.
“It’s turned a bit ugly for them, I’d say,” Mountbatten observed as he stepped out through the hatch from the bridge and moved across to stand by Thorne, taking a few moments’ respite from command now that the battle was clearly turning in their favour.
“It was never going to end well,” Thorne observed in return, raising his binoculars once more and wincing visibly as he was just in time to catch sight of one of Repulse’s 15-inch shells score a direct hit on the troopship Awazisan Maru, basically blowing her apart just a mile or so out from the beach. “Oooh…!” with a sharp intake of breath as he shook his head in sympathy. “That had to fuckin’ hurt…!”
“They’re hurting all right,” Mountbatten nodded with a thin smile. “We’ve just had word from base: the RAF’s intercepted a surface group off to the east that we believe was heading our way: two battleships and a heavy cruiser sunk before they turned tail and ran for home.”
“Rather them than us,” Thorne spat sourly, giving an evil chuckle. “That’ll teach the bastards for trying anything smart. We’ve managed to do a lot in the last twelve months to make sure we were better prepared; they’ll be lucky to even hold a beachhead here.”
“Hard-pressed anywhere…” Mountbatten agreed. “Percival’s ordered Operation Matador to go ahead, and we’ve got troops marching into Siam already, moving to take Songkhla to prevent a landing there. Damn shame about the Americans, though,” he added, utilising that characteristically British penchant for understatement. “With their carriers out of action, it’ll be months before they can get any kind of force back into the Pacific.”
“Weeks, maybe,” Thorne shrugged, thinking the man’s estimates to be somewhat exaggerated. “They’ll not mess about now with the Philippines at stake…”
“Of course, you’ve not heard…” Mountbatten realised, rolling his eyes at his own lack of forethought as he was fixed by a sharp, accusing stare. “Sorry, Thorne; in the middle of all this, I completely forgot… we received word about ten minutes ago: the Panama Canal’s been hit…”
“Jesus, how…?” Thorne blurted, aghast. “How the hell did the Japs get a carrier force so close without detection?”
“It wasn’t carriers, man…” the reply came quickly, the tone filling Thorne with dread. “They’re not sure what it was yet, but it was aboard a merchant vessel from the reports we’ve received so far. The canal’s gone… not just damaged... gone…!” Mountbatten paused and took a deep breath. “Naval Intelligence thinks it was one of the bombs you’ve been chasing…”
“Oh, fuck me…!” Thorne moaned, almost staggering backward to lean against the nearest bulkhead, rubbing his face with both hands. “With the carriers down and Panama out of action, the Yanks just got their balls cut off!”
“Quite,” Mountbatten confirmed, faintly pulling a face over the man’s use of profanity but unable to fault the truth of it.
“Without American carriers to keep ‘em honest in the Pacific, that leaves us that much more vulnerable. Thank Christ we’ve spent the last two years building up out defences in this region…”
“Thanks to you and your unit…” Mountbatten pointed out with a half-smile.
“Don’t thank me just yet,” Thorne growled darkly. “We may have ‘em stuffed here, but they’ve royally screwed us over off Hawaii and at Panama…” He shook his head sadly. “What next…?”
The first of Ayanami’s torpedoes hit Prince of Wales about five seconds later…
The Type 93 Sanso Gyorai (lit. ‘Oxygen Torpedo) was by far the largest weapon of its kind ever fielded by any nation. Thirty feet long and weighing almost three tons, it was capable of speeds of up to 50 knots and – at lower speed settings – ranges of almost twenty nautical miles. Nicknamed the ‘Long Lance’ in post-war Realtime by a prominent US historian, its capabilities were far and above those of its competitors and at that stage in the war, it was completely unknown to the Western powers. During the early years of the Realtime war, warships hit at distances of ten or twelve miles – well beyond the range of their own torpedoes – would on occasion mistakenly assume submarine attack rather than the reality that the weapons had been fired by surface ships at extremely long range.
Just one Type 93 from Ayanami’s first salvo struck Prince of Wales on her port side aft, sending a geyser of water high into the air above her quarterdeck as every man out in the open aboard Repulse turned as one at the sound of the explosion. She was currently steaming in line ahead formation, roughly two miles off the battlecruiser’s bow, and it took perhaps twelve seconds for the sound of the hit to reach them, hard on the heels of what would prove to be the deafening roar of one last, defiant broadside.
At almost half a ton, the warhead of the Type 93 was also far larger than any of its contemporaries and the damage it inflicted on Prince of Wales was substantial. Striking just aft of her Y-turret, it blew a huge hole straight through her armoured belt, destroying her outer propeller shaft on that side and damaging most of its sealing bulkheads right back to her B Engine room, deep in the centre of the ship. Rapid and quite uncontrollable flooding ensued, so fast that she began to list to port in less than a minute. She was struck again a moment later, that second warhead adding to damage that was already severe as the ship almost immediately lost all power to her rear half and all of her damage control systems.
“Holy shit…!” Thorne gasped, both men looking on in horror as the realisation sunk in that they’d just witnessed two torpedo strikes. “Where the fuck did they come from?”
“Oh, Good Lord, there’s more of them…!” Mountbatten howled in fear, pointing out across the water at two thin, bubbling wakes heading straight for them at ridiculously high speed. “Hard left rudder…!” He bellowed loudly, diving back into the bridge. “Sound the alarm and brace for impact…!”
There was no time for anyone to do anything else, and Thorne grabbed for the nearest railing just like all the rest as two of the huge Type 93s lanced in at 50 knots and struck her simultaneously, straddling the battlecruiser between her stacks and her rear turret.
Launched during the First World War, Repulse possessed none of the watertight compartmentalisation or armoured anti-torpedo bulges below the waterline that were built into her more modern contemporaries, and two hits that might’ve been damaging to a newer battleship proved absolutely devastating for the old veteran. A huge tear was rent in her hull below the waterline allowing thousands of tons of seawater to pour in through her shattered port side.
Like many of her crew, Thorne was thrown backward into the air by the explosions with a plaintive, somewhat strangled exclamation of “Fuck…!” that was cut suddenly short as he crashed to the deck once more, striking his head heavily on its hard, checker-plate surface. He staggered to his feet again, swaying heavily and finding it difficult to stand without bracing himself against the railing. In his stunned and possibly concussed state, his mind wasn’t clear enough to realise that the difficulty he was ex
periencing was at least partially due to the fact that the battlecruiser’s deck was already tilting quite dramatically to port, allowing him to stare down at the churning sea below at an angle that was far too pronounced to be at all safe.
Standing… not right… have to… ocean… pretty… bit close though… maybe… shouldn’t…
The voice in his head sounded broken and disjointed, as if coming in garbled from a great distance. He was in no condition to notice how strange it had sounded however as he shook his head savagely in an attempt to clear his thoughts and only succeeded in making himself extremely dizzy and bringing on a splintering migraine. Something warm and wet trickled down the side of his head behind his ear but he paid it no mind, completely distracted as he was by efforts to sharpen his vision and mind.
Swaying at the increasingly-tilted railing, he squinted out toward the continuing battle across the ever-nearing ocean below him. An enemy destroyer blew up violently in that moment, breaking completely in half as a tiny cloud of smoke, flame and water billowed upward amid an expanding shower of debris.
“Smile, you sons-of-bitches…!” He howled hysterically, half-senseless and filled with excess adrenalin as he hung right over the rail and raised an outstretched right hand in a time-honoured, one-fingered salute. “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries…!” He followed that last ludicrous, Pythonesque statement with a barrage of wild, adrenalin-laced profanities, all the while teetering and swaying at the ship’s railing and ignoring a very real danger of falling completely over the side.
The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3) Page 60