“Roger Sheep Leader. Five or six big flattops, and they’re launching planes! Mother of God… It’s the Japanese!”
Hopping needed no further persuasion, and he wasted no time, passing it on to the Enterprise, where Halsey got the news at 07:00 hours, just as a ward officer was reporting the three battleships had successfully made their simulated bombardment run off Kauai. He was about to give the order to sent the battlewagons home when the news hit him like an electric current.
“Get hold of that crazy cruiser Commander on Lady Lex! Looks like this is no goddamned drill! Then get word down below. I want Bombing Six up on deck in fifteen minutes!”
Those orders were stiffened further in a Fleet Signal, where Halsey ordered all torpedoes to be rigged with warheads, all dive bombers armed with bombs, all fighters to be ready for action, and the destroyer screen was to immediately attack any submarine spotted. The battleships were ordered to load all main guns, for real this time, and ready ammunition was to be moved up from the main magazines. The American ships at sea were to lock and load for action. Halsey had orders that he was to “intercept and destroy” any enemy force encountered, so there was no question that his carriers had been ushered off to ferry planes simply to remove them from harm’s way. Enterprise and Lexington were out there to fight, even if the odds were stacked very high against them.
At 07:10 it was Saburo Shindo’s three Zeroes who thought they saw something out of place in the second wave of planes forming up. There was one stray goose, and it seemed to be edging around the flank of the main carrier fleet, dipping in and out of the few clouds puffing up in the rapidly brightening sky. He banked right, taking his whole Shotai with him to investigate, and was soon surprised to see what looked to be an American fighter!
The word was flashed to Akagi, and then he immediately dove on the enemy, sending Ensign Teaff into a banking dive as he tried to evade. The first air to air duel of the Pacific war saw hapless Teaff pounced upon by three well trained Japanese pilots, and he and his radioman Jinks would become the first American casualties.
Captain George Murray was at the Admiral’s side, worry in his eyes as the ship was jolted into full battle readiness. “Don’t forget those three fat pigs up north of Kauai,” he said. “What’ll we do about them? The Japs will find them sooner or later. Should we have the battleships turn east and rejoin us?”
“All they’ll do is slow us down,” said Halsey. “Yes, the Japs may find them, sooner or later, so I’d rather make it sooner, and ram them right down their throats. Signal Van Falkenburgh on the Arizona. Make sure he got that enemy sighting report, and tell him to get up there and give ‘em hell.”
Murray gave Halsey a look, seeing the fire in his eyes now, the grizzled war face he would become famous for. He knew the Admiral’s order was going to send those ships into harm’s way, and possibly to their doom, and he said as much.
“Well hell, Captain,” said Halsey. “We call them battleships for a reason! If this isn’t the fight they were built for, then what is? That order stands.”
Aboard Arizona, Officer of the Deck, Ensign Henry Davidson handed Van Falkenburgh the signal, who read it silently before handing it off to Lieutenant Commander Samuel Fuqua, the ship’s First Lieutenant and Damage Control Officer, and third in line of command. “Shall we sound battle stations again?” asked Fuqua.
“Better make sure they know it’s not a drill this time,” said the Captain.
Fuqua nodded to Davidson, who went off to sound the wooping alarm signal, and Fuqua was already heading to his station at Central Control in the conning tower. The fate of BB Arizona was going to be much different this time out.
*
Admiral Nagumo was equally stunned by the news signaled by Lieutenant Shindo’s fighters. The breach of radio silence was only permitted in this extreme case, and the moment the breathless Lieutenant rushed in from the radio room, Nagumo knew the worst—they had been discovered. His precious Kido Butai had been certainly spotted now, and radio operators on the Akagi also heard the frantic enemy sighting report go out in the clear. The lines on his forehead deepened with concern, for his orders were to abort the mission should he be discovered here—yet now that was simply too late. The first wave was on its way. To call it back now and attempt evasion would be extremely dangerous. So instead his mind turned to the nature of this sighting. Was this a land based plane searching north off the islands, or could it have come from an enemy carrier?
He remembered the briefing file Yamamoto had shown him, indicating the enemy should be far to the southwest on this day. He did not give it much credibility then, nor would he do so now. If that plane was off an enemy carrier, then that ship had to be within 150 miles. He immediately turned to his Fleet Air Officer, Masuda Shogo.
“The second strike wave is spotted on deck and about to launch, but that plane could have been from an enemy carrier. In this event, should we hold back the planes from Zuikaku and Shokaku?”
“That would weaken the second wave considerably!”
“Yet I am inclined to order this. We have been spotted, and the enemy may be closer than we realize. To set loose all our arrows on Pearl Harbor would mean we have nothing left to defend the Kido Butai.”
“But sir, Genda insists we can organize a third wave.”
“Only after recovering planes that are already in the air,” said Nagumo. “Kusaka?” Nagumo wanted the opinion of his 1st Air Fleet Chief of Staff, who had been in the thick of the planning for this attack.
“The seaplanes off Tone and Chikuma can launch an immediate search to the south and west. And the twelve fighters that were to accompany the planes off Zuikaku and Shokaku can be placed on fleet overwatch at once.”
“And if we do find the enemy close enough to attack us?” Nagumo continued to press.
“We can order the second wave planes from the other carriers to depart on schedule. Those from Hara’s 5th Carrier Division can delay their launch if necessary. Then, if nothing is found, they can either be sent on behind the second wave, or held for the third wave Genda has planned.”
Nagumo had never warmed to the idea of a third wave, but this suggestion achieved his purpose in leaving something in the fleet to strike a seaborne enemy if one was found close at hand. “Very well,” he said. “That will be the order. See that Air officers Wada and Shimoda are informed at once—but by flag signals. Even if we have been sighted, fleet units will continue to maintain radio silence.”.
Quick orders were sent to the fast scout cruisers Tone and Chikuma. They were to mount an intensive air search in a 180 degree arc north, west and south of the fleet’s position. Nagumo would take Yamamoto’s advice to keep one eye over his right shoulder as he continued south, and this caution would begin the first carrier to carrier battle in history. As an additional measure, he ordered his escorting battleships, Hiei and Kirishima to move out ahead of the carriers with an escorting screen of destroyers.
That last ship, the Kiroshima, had a most interesting fate line, for somewhere in the skewed nexus points of Dorland’s time travel theory, it had encountered a strange beast of a ship from another world, chasing it fitfully through the Timor Sea, only to be mined and beached on a razor sharp shoal near the Torres Strait on the 26th of August, 1942. Yet that whole line of causality was now coming unraveled, save one steely thread that would remain strangely entangled with the monster Kirishima had faced. It was embodied in the raging soul of a man named Sanji Iwabuchi.
He had graduated from the Naval Academy several years after Yamamoto, and ended up also serving on the armored cruiser Nisshin for a time before moving on to an assignment aboard Hiei. There his irascible disposition soon saw him sent off to command shore batteries and seaplane tenders, a rather ignominious demotion that he resented for some time. When he learned that there was a secret operation known as Plan Z going on, he wanted in very badly, longing for another at-sea assignment on a real fighting ship.
It was just his luck that the screeni
ng force needed men who were familiar with the two Kongo class battleships assigned to the Kido Butai, and with seaplane operations being planned from the cruisers Tone and Chikuma. Iwabuchi’s experience in both finally paid off, and he was given a post on Kirishima as an aviation liaison officer. The Lieutenant was overjoyed, particularly since his post would put him on the bridge as liaison officer for sighting reports received from cruiser Tone. That was where he had transferred his flag after Kirishima sunk on his ill fated pursuit of Mizuchi, and so the strange bridge that connected the two ships was already being built, and under the surly supervision of Sanji Iwabuchi.
Events were developing rapidly. A signal had been received from Strike Commander Fuchida—Tora! Tora! Tora! In spite of every warning, the Japanese had achieved surprise. The reports were soon coming in from the first wave striking Pearl Harbor where the planes were swooping down on battleship row. The clear skies over the harbor were soon stained with the ugly black smoke of fires from the first hits, and daring Japanese pilots raced in, twenty or thirty feet above the water, to deliver their specially modified torpedoes. Fighters danced above, some sweeping down to ship level where they flashed past the stunned American crews, guns blazing.
The absence of Battleship Division 1 saw the berthings in the harbor changed. West Virginia was berthed where Arizona might have been, about 75 feet astern of Tennessee. The open water off Ford Island where Nevada should have been was now empty, and the Oklahoma, which had berthed outboard of the Maryland, was also gone, exposing the latter ship to the devastating torpedo attack Japan was now delivering. In those first five minutes, 40 torpedoes were launched, and 23 of them scored hits.
All of Pye’s battleships, save Pennsylvania, which was berthed across the harbor on a protected dock, were gutted by multiple hits. The target ship Utah was not overlooked either, and was soon to be logged by the Japanese as a killed battleship. The eager Lieutenants crowded onto the Akagi’s bridge were making notes on every hit being reported, with newly arriving signals stacked up on the clip boards.
And so, as the Kates, Vals and Zeroes continued to tip their wings and dive, Battleship Division 1 turned north with Arizona, Nevada and Oklahoma, into the winds of uncertainty. The crews were ready and standing to arms, while pilots on both Enterprise and Lexington were already climbing up onto their wildcats and SBD Dauntless Dive Bombers.
Far away, across the vast frozen stretches of Siberia, engines on other planes now sputtered to life. They were lined up in long rows on Volkov’s forward airfields at Kochenevo, Shakalovo and Povarenka, just west of Novosibirsk on the Ob River line boundary. The pilots and service crews were German, but the troops now loading onto the planes were the men of Volkov’s newly renamed 1st Guards Air Mobile Division. Miles to the west, well hidden from enemy eyes, the airships of Orenburg hovered low over clearings in the forest, their troop lifts and sub-cloud cars hoisting up the last of the men and equipment of this same division.
The weather had been sour for days, and Volkov thought he might miss the stroke he wanted to time with Japan’s devastating entry into the war. But finally it cleared, and the operation was on. Soon the ships of his fleet would cast their long shadows over the taiga, rising up and up like a pod of great silver whales in the sky, and following the stiff winds at the trailing edge of the winter storm that was now moving east. His men, planes, and airships would soon be the lightning and thunder at the trailing edge of that storm, bound and determined to settle the score at Ilanskiy once and for all.
And just as Admiral Pye’s battleships waited silently that morning to meet their ordained fate, the three airships now standing garrison watch at Ilanskiy hovered in the cold winter air over their mooring towers at Kansk. Off to the northwest, one more was hastening to the scene with all engines full, Tunguska, flagship of the fleet. She had been rigged out with Oko radar panels that were now deployed on the forward nose platform on the brow of the ship, and manned by two engineers Karpov had assigned there from Kirov. Up on the high central platforms, other men stood with needles of death, the secret weapons he had filched from Troyak’s larders. If Tunguska was a formidable ship before, it was far more dangerous now, and standing on the main gondola bridge, his face and eyes set with the grim look of battle he always wore in combat, was Vladimir Karpov, the younger brother, former Captain of the battlecruiser Kirov.
His elder self was also standing to arms, hands clasped behind his back on the bridge of that ship, which had finally freed itself from the wintery grip of the ice in the Bering Strait. Now the monster the Japanese would come to call Mizuchi was racing south at 30 knots into the storm of steel and fire that would soon become the greatest naval conflict of all time.
Karpov smiled, his mind on missiles and mayhem, and just retribution for the Japanese Empire that had dared to set foot on Siberian territory. Even as he did so, his younger self seemed to perceive his state of mind, and that same smile repeated itself on the bridge of Tunguska, a smile that was a warning to all enemies far and wide.
The Saga Continues…
Kirov Saga: Season 3, Book 4
Tide of Fortune
The action continues on both land, sea, and air as the explosive engagements of late 1941 conclude. Operation Typhoon drives on to its high water mark as the tides of war reach the embattled city of Moscow, and the fate of Sergei Kirov is revealed. Further east, Ivan Volkov has planned a third massive attack on the strategic hamlet of Ilanskiy, where Captain Karpov aboard Tunguska is now thrust into the crucible of war. As the desperate fight is joined, his elder brother races south aboard Kirov with a message of retribution and warning to Imperial Japan.
Meanwhile, as Japanese planes begin their attack on Pearl Harbor, Halsey’s ‘missing carriers’ find themselves in a perfect location to launch a devastating counterattack against the Kido Butai. Can they prevail, or at least intervene to prevent the great disaster that Pearl Harbor became? Or will their presence there, badly outnumbered by the Japanese carriers, merely assure the complete destruction of the American fleet?
All these battles explode through the history, while in the deserts of North Africa, Rommel must plan a new defense against a resurgent 8th Army. Even as that battle is joined again, the Axis fleet, now based in Gibraltar and Casablanca, begins a most unexpected attack. Admirals Tovey and Volsky must now join together with Argos Fire to face the storm at sea, and the mystery of Fedorov’s key, delivered to Tovey as promised, opens a strange new door of mystery.
Action from start to finish as the war careens into 1942 in the amazing Kirov Saga!
Discover other titles by John Schettler:
Award Winning Science Fiction:
Meridian - Meridian Series - Volume I Nexus Point - Meridian Series - Volume II Touchstone - Meridian Series - Volume III
Anvil of Fate - Meridian Series - Volume IV Golem 7 - Meridian Series - Volume V
The Meridian series merges with the Kirov series beginning with Book 16, Paradox Hour
Classic Science Fiction:
Wild Zone - Dharman Series - Volume I
Mother Heart - Dharman Series - Volume II
Historical Fiction:
Taklamakan - Silk Road Series - Volume I
Khan Tengri - Silk Road Series - Volume II
Dream Reaper – Mythic Horror Mystery
Winter Storm Page 32