Somerville was not enthusiastic about his chances. He knew that the Japanese were masters of naval air operations involving carriers, and that their planes were in many ways superior to those on his own ships. He had a small outpost at Port Blair on Andaman Island that he hoped to use as a trip wire to alert him to the Japanese attack when it came. When communications were suddenly lost with that outpost, he knew the storm was coming, and gave the order for his squadron to assemble in two flotillas, one fast and one slow.
The fleet footed carriers would be his sword, and the lumbering battleships his shield. He gave some thought to simply sending those battleships west out of harm’s way, to Addu, but discarded it thinking he would need every ship he could get his hands on. If Prince of Wales had met her fate off Malaya as it did in Fedorov’s history, he might have thought twice about sending his fleet out to face the Japanese naval aviators.
But that had never happened….
Chapter 5
That meeting with Yamamoto at Truk had occurred on the 30th of June, and Takami lingered there for several more weeks. Taiho was commissioned, but still cutting her teeth in the waters off the Philippines, working in the new equipment, pilots and planes During this period, Takami sortied once with Carrier Division 1 to help cover a supply run to Fiji. Fukada had hoped they might encounter the Americans, but that operation was unopposed. On the 15th of August, Admiral Hara informed Yamamoto that he was now prepared to head south to rendezvous with the remainder of his new 3rd Carrier Division and other fleet units.
Takami departed for Singapore, arriving there on September 15th after a stop at Davao. They tried to be discreet. Anchoring several kilometers off the island, but the local commander, the irascible General Nishimura, took a personal interest. He had a launch approach the ship, and a message was delivered, inviting the ship’s Captain and Executive Officer to dinner ashore in Singapore. To decline such an invitation would be a serious affront, and knowing that Yamamoto was relying on Nishimura to provide troops for the Ceylon Operation, Harada agreed.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” said Nishimura. “Please excuse the gloomy weather. Yet the cooler summer caused by all that ash and soot in the sky has at least given us some relief from the heat.”
“Thank you, General, you are most gracious.”
“I had hoped to see Admiral Hara at this dinner, but it seems he is still rounding up carriers and battleships. I understand that he will have our newest carrier, Taiho.”
“Yes sir. At least we were told that by Admiral Yamamoto.”
“You spoke with him personally?”
“He was kind enough to brief us and relay our orders.”
“I see… Tell me, Captain, is it true that the Siberians have invaded Karafuto?”
“Yes sir, they have.”
“Most astounding. I’m sure that will be on Yamashita’s plate soon. Let us hope he does a better job than he did during this campaign.”
“Taking all of Malaya in five weeks wasn’t good enough?” Harada smiled. There was something about this man that he did not like, but he kept those feelings as opaque as possible.
“Singapore is part of Malaya, is it not?” said Nishimura. “In fact, it was the only part that really mattered. I took that for the Empire after Yamashita failed. It was no surprise to me when he was relieved here, and I was given command in his place. Now the city is well in hand. I have rooted out most of the undesirables, particularly the Chinese, and things are running smoothly again.”
“Things seemed to be in order,” said Harada, his smile a bit thinner.
“I have also heard you have a most unusual ship.”
“Oh? Not really. It is a prototype heavy destroyer, with our very best new radar sets.”
“And more,” said Nishimura. “Don’t think I have not heard all the talk about rocketry.”
“Yes, those are prototype weapons as well, but if you will excuse me, we are not permitted to discuss them. I’m sure you will understand.”
“Of course.” It was enough for Nishimura that the existence of such weapons was confirmed. Now he wanted to see what this operation would require of him. “Good that you were in the right place at the right time to rescue general Imamura. He still speaks highly of you. Now I understand you will be heading into the Indian Ocean—a very good idea. There isn’t much threat the British can pose now, not with the Air Force posting strike planes here on my airfields. Yet the British cannot be left to ripen out west. Soon the stench will begin to blow this way. It is about time Yamamoto decided to go and prune the tree.”
“Yes sir,” said Harada.
“Then you will attack their bases on Ceylon?”
“Sir, Admiral Hara will have been fully briefed on this operation, and he will have orders for us when he arrives here. I am only a Captain.” Harada thought he had better say as little as possible.
“Well, I am a General,” said Nishimura. “You see, the Navy needs me to provide troops for this operation, and so I already know a good deal.”
“Probably more than we know, sir. Care to enlighten us?”
Nishimura smiled. “Attacking Ceylon is certainly the mission. What else? So I will provide two regiments of my 5th Infantry Division, and hold a regiment of my Imperial Guards in reserve. They were the heroes of Singapore, under my personal command, I might add.”
“Most extraordinary, sir. A lot has been said about them.”
“Oh? What is going around?”
“Why, in the operations up north, the troops of the 7th Division were told to remember what happened here, and how your troops crushed the last of the enemy resistance.” Harada was, of course, buttering the General’s bread, even if none was being served that evening.
“Indeed? Well that is very true.” This one is sly, thought Nishimura. He is clearly trying to say as little as possible about this ship, the Takami, or so I am told. No one seems to have heard anything about such a ship before it appeared. Most interesting. It seems Yamamoto keeps a few flowers hidden in his garden these days. After the loss of so many carriers, he has every need to be cautious.
“So the newest carrier, and your ship, will join our two newest battleships. I was told to expect Satsuma and Hiraga here in three days. Yamamoto must be very serious about this campaign. There is only one thing I cannot seem to understand. Your ship was up north with those battleships, neh? And I believe there were two fleet carriers out to sea with you as well. How is it nothing came of that?”
Harada had no idea where this man was getting his information, or what he might have heard. “I don’t understand,” he said. “We were to cover the transfer of reserve units to Karafuto, and that mission was completed.”
“Yes, but not without incident. Didn’t Haruna take damage in that operation?”
“If I may, sir, how is it that an Army General knows so many things about naval operations?”
Nishimura inclined his head. That skirted the border of impertinence. “It may interest you to know that I am being considered for a higher position on the Imperial General Headquarters. I must therefore keep abreast of more things than the number of Chinese heads I take here each day.” He smiled, but behind it was the tension of a look that said ‘don’t question me like that again.’
“Of course,” said Harada.
“May I ask if you have heard anything concerning this rogue Siberian vessel in the north. The name Mizuchi is being spoken even here, and in fearful whispers.”
“Respectfully, sir, I was told to discourage such rumors by the Admiral.”
“Of course,” said Nishimura, a little mocking echo of what Harada had said a moment earlier. “However, rumors do not compel the fleet admiral to pull all his most important ships out of the home waters, do they? I think there is more to these stories than the wild imaginations of sailors in the bars of Yokohama. Very well, I see that dinner is being served. Let us enjoy the meal, and talk again after. Would you be interested in a tour of the island? I can certainly arrange that.”
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“You are most kind,” said Harada, “but I have pressing business aboard ship.” And no, there won’t be a tour arranged for you there, he thought. That’s what this one was angling for. He’s heard something, and more than he should. Either that, or interests on the Imperial General Staff have contacted him and asked him to go fishing here with this little dinner party. I must be very cautious.
Throughout this exchange, Fukada remained discretely silent, but he could easily perceive the polite thrust and parry in the conversation, and he knew enough to stay out of it. If asked a direct question, he would speak, but otherwise, his was to be a quiet presence, but one without opinions. Deference to the Captain was expected, and he knew how to play the part.
At that moment, and half way through the dinner, there came a quiet but persistent knock on the door. Nishimura turned his head with a look of displeasure. “What is it?”
A man entered, walking quickly up to the General and handing him a slip of paper, which Nishimura read silently. “Well,” he said. “It seems we have an uninvited guest tonight. An enemy submarine has attacked a supply ship in the Strait of Malacca. Kasigi Maru has been hit!”
Harada stood up immediately. Bowing as he did so. “General, I thank you for your hospitality, but it is clear that I have urgent business to attend to. Mister Fukada, we must depart for Takami immediately.”
Urgent business indeed, thought Nishimura. See what you find out there, Captain, because this message was, of course, pre-arranged. I’ve had my time with you, and I see that you are just another tight lipped Navy man, most likely thick with Yamamoto if he entrusts you with this mission. You will find nothing, for there is no submarine, nor any ship by the name of Kasigi Maru. Let us see how you like chasing after ships no one has heard of.
He smiled, then turned to an aid waiting quietly by the door. “Bring my pen and paper. I must draft a special message to go out in a secure pouch on the next plane north.”
That message would be sent to the Imperial General Staff, and was also a pre-arranged code, just a single kanji character that read “Sakura,” the word for Cherry Blossoms. Only one man would understand what it meant—that the ship Nishimura had been told to look for and report on was there at Singapore.
Nishimura was not the only one interested in the doings of that ship. The Imperial General Headquarters was also curious, particularly one Hajime Sugiyama, Chief of Staff. It was a ship, he was told, that had already demonstrated the ability to fire and use rocket weapons similar to the secret ‘Project Okha’, or Cherry Blossom. There was a great deal of rivalry between the Army and Navy, and Sujiyama wanted to know everything he could about the rumors now circulating—of a ship called Mizuchi, of battles fought in the Sea of Okhotsk, and of a ship named Takami that appeared nowhere on the official register of commissioned vessels in the Navy.
Yes, he was most curious.
* * *
When they returned to Takami, Harada and Fukada went straight to the bridge, immediately checking sonar and radar stations for any reports. There was nothing out of the ordinary.
“We have what looks like a small commercial freighter in the Strait of Malacca,” said Ryoko Otani, the Lieutenant on the SPY-1 System. “I’ve tracked them heading southeast around Pulau Sugi, and into the South China Sea.”
“Probably supplies for the forces still at Palembang on Sumatra,” said Fukada. “Those airfields have been abandoned due to the heavy ashfall, but the garrison left there still has to eat.”
“Ensign Shiota,” said Harada. “Have you been monitoring local signals traffic here?”
“Yes sir, but there’s been nothing unusual.”
“No S.O.S. or distress calls of any kind on the military channels? Nothing from a ship designated Kasigi Maru?”
“No sir, nothing.”
“Look that ship up in the WWII ship registry.”
A moment later Shiota reported that there was no ship by that name. “I’ve got a Kasi Maru, Hasuga Maru, Kage Maru, Kasato Maru, but no Kasigi. That oiler that serviced us was the Kuroshio Maru. Could that be it, sir?”
Harada gave Fukada a look. “What do you make of this?”
“The General seems to have been pulling our leg.”
“Yes, but I wonder why? Was he just irritated that I wouldn’t say anything about the ship or the operation?”
“Anybody’s guess, sir. He was a sly bastard, that much was certain.”
“Right,” said Harada. “Finished his little interview and then got rid of us…. But if that is so, the messenger thing had to be all pre-arranged.”
“It seems that way, sir.”
Harada filed that away mentally, with a note to be extra cautious with Nishimura in the future. He thought about reporting the incident to Yamamoto, but it sounded too trivial to bother the Fleet Admiral with something like that. Yet it was clear to him that the General had gone on a little fishing expedition, and that was grounds for some discomfort.
Three days later they picked up two contacts at 18 knots rounding the cape and entering the Singapore Strait, and they were not commercial ships. Two grey sisters emerged from the low rolling fog in the strait, and the bridge crew finally got a close look at the new battleship class they had fought with up north, but never really got close enough to see.
“Beautiful beasts,” said Harada, his eyes lost in his field glasses. “They look a lot like the old American Iowa class in profile, clipper bow, built for speed, and triple turrets.”
“Ships that never were,” said Fukada. “You won’t find them in the WWII ship registry database either. That has to be Satsuma and Hiraga.”
“Then Admiral Hara can’t be far behind with the carriers.”
He arrived two days later, on the 18th of September, in a well escorted group that now hove to in the strait off Bantam Island, about 30 kilometers south of the main city of Singapore. Hara wanted no prying eyes noting his ship types, and planned to transit the Singapore Strait the following day, after the oiler Kuroshio Maru serviced ships needing to refuel. There was Japan’s newest carrier, the Taiho, looking very much like the one that had entered service much later in the war by that same name.
“Strange how the history here rhymes,” said Harada.
“The Great Phoenix,” said Fukada, looking at the ship with equally great interest and admiration. “That one is over 37,000 tons out there, but it could still make 33 knots if this one is anything like the original design. It was supposed to have belt armor up to 152mm, and two armored decks. I just hope they filled those voids around the aviation fuel bunkers. Look at those guns. We’ve got that single 127mm deck gun forward, well that baby has twelve 100mm guns, dual purpose, though they were really there for air defense. And she’s supposed to have over fifty 25mm guns as well, on seventeen triple mounts. That’s a lot of lead when they get to firing.”
“I’ll still put my money on the SM-2,” said Harada. “The enemy plane will be killed long before the pilot gets anywhere near us. I just wish I had a whole lot more than we’re still packing under that forward deck.” They had expended one on that target drone, two more against the American B-17s, and 33 in the battle against Mizuchi. He had 38 left, and 12 more SM-3s. So Takami could take down 50 enemy planes before they would be forced to rely on their close in defense Phalanx guns. Available rounds for those wouldn’t take them very far, and then all Harada’s bets were off, and those fifty 25mm AA gun barrels on the Taiho would be looking pretty good to him.
“Aye sir,” said Fukada.
“Looks a lot like the British Illustrious Class.”
“I think they may have taken a leaf from their book. Remember, a lot of early navy ships were built by the Brits, way back at the turn of the century. Admiral Togo’s ship, the Mikasa, was a modified Formidable Class battleship of the Royal Navy.”
“Those other two smaller carriers must be the Hiyo and Junyo. Can they keep up with us?”
“Hiyo was built on the hull of an old ocean liner,” said Fukad
a. “That’s her there, the Flying Hawk, and it will make a hair over 25 knots, and carry over 48 planes. Junyo there, with the oddly bent stack on the island, was built the same way. The Peregrine Falcon will have roughly the same stats as Hiyo, and these conversions were just finished recently, at least in our history. Looks like Yamamoto is debuting a brand new carrier division here, and herding all the older girls off for his Fiji operations.”
“Seems that way. Well, we’d better look after this bunch. Yamamoto was more than a little edgy over the losses to his fleet carriers. He’s already taken as much damage as the Americans inflicted on him at Midway, and that battle never happened. Isn’t this Indian Ocean raid a little late?”
“It was supposed to have been staged late March to mid-April,” said Fukada, “a little Easter Sunday surprise for the British.”
“You were pretty blunt with Yamamoto, particularly concerning the Taiho.”
“He needs to know what could happen,” said Fukada. “Our presence here, if anything, has to be about steering a course around the icebergs that sunk us.”
“Icebergs? In the Pacific?” Harada smiled. “The only one we really need to worry about is still up north.”
“How can we know that?”
“We can’t, really, but it’s a fairly good bet that this Karpov will continue to cover his Sakhalin Operation.”
“You mean Karafuto,” Fukada corrected. “I guess we’d best be thinking about it from the Japanese perspective these days.”
“Well, Karpov has a few more months to lay in a store of supplies on that island to sustain his garrison there over the winter. From what I can gather, we moved fresh troops there as well.”
“I spoke with Ugaki briefly while we were waiting,” said Fukada. “He says that they’ve been making night runs from Sapporo and Ominato. They run up the eastern side of Hokkaido, reaching Karafuto after dark, where they can unload and slip away. If anything has to go by day, they throw up a fairly thick air cover. Frankly, I don’t think Karpov can really mess with those operations. He can try standing off and using a missile or two, but the Empire has a hell of a lot more transport ships than he has missiles.”
Thor's Anvil (Kirov Series Book 26) Page 5