“Looks like they put the fire out quickly enough,” said Fedorov, “but the last few salvos were only from one turret. We may have knocked that forward turret out, at least for the time being. This ship has four twin turrets, so half its firepower is out of the battle as long as they have to pursue us like this. It doesn’t seem like they’re giving up the chase either. The man may have a real bone to pick, Captain. I think we are safely out of range now, and I suggest we cease fire.”
“Very well,” said Karpov. “Secure the 152mm gun systems, Samsonov. I won’t waste any more missiles on this ship for the moment either. The cupboard is starting to look rather empty.”
“We’ll run full out for the Torres Strait, but when we get there we’ll have to slow down considerably to navigate those shoals and reefs properly. We may be in action again sooner than you think.”
It was more than an obvious conclusion, for the unknown history ahead was to send many more surprises their way before night would fall.
Part VI
VENDETTA
“If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, do we not revenge?”
~ William Shakespeare
Chapter 16
Admiral King had been the one to start it all. First King, then Marshall. The feisty admiral had been so distraught over proceedings in the Pacific that he had become all but unbearable. A surly man by nature, King was also never one to be unimpressed by his own intelligence, and seldom believed any other man was his equal, particularly when it came to the complexities of naval strategy. King’s steely eyed look was enough to back down most anyone, but when it came to convincing President Roosevelt, he needed the more reasoned approach of Marshall to help his cause.
What he wanted was action in the Pacific. Not the slow logistical buildup, the slow steady turn of the coiled spring that had been underway since the outbreak of the war. When ‘War Plan Orange’ had been canceled, King brooded that the loss of the Philippines was an insult the navy would have to atone for one day. Yet, in his heart of hearts, he knew the plan itself was drafted in a bygone era when the old battleships formed the backbone of the fleet. Had they sallied forth from Pearl as the plan expected, the Japanese would have had a field day with their carrier fleet.
King was wise enough to realize the day of the battleship was fading. He knew the carriers were already carrying the ball when it came to operations in the Pacific, the problem was, there was all too little forward movement. The U.S. had been on the defensive for a long year now, with little to show beyond Doolittle’s daring raid on Tokyo. The string of Japanese victories had gone unbroken, challenged only once by two American carriers in the Coral Sea when the Japanese pushed for Port Moresby. They had lost his old lady, ‘Lady Lex,’ when she went down in that battle, and it galled him to no end.
The code breakers had been able to penetrate the JN-25 naval code, and warned that a big enemy operation was imminent. It did not take them long to determine that Fiji and Soma were the strategic end points of this planned attack. The Japanese had already put troops into the southern Solomons at Guadalcanal and Tulagi, and had both a seaplane base and an airfield under construction in those islands, though they were not yet strongly held. Now the attack would be aimed at either Espiritu Santo or Noumea, and if either one fell it would put Jap bombers in range of both Fiji and Samoa. Australia would be virtually cut off, and King would have none of it.
The fiery admiral vigorously argued that sitting back on defense and trying to parry the Japanese thrusts would simply not do. “We have to hit the bastards somewhere,” he said hotly. “Stick a boot right where it hurts.” And he fingered Guadalcanal as the perfect place to start. To make sure it happened he pushed on Nimitz to replace the equivocating and fretful Admiral Ghormley and appointed a new commander in theater, Admiral Bull Halsey.
Halsey was a strong proponent of the fleet air arm’s ability to project decisive power through fast, mobile aircraft carriers. The time honored maxim of getting there first with the most men had been applied to army maneuvers since Confederate Cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest first explained his tactics during the Civil War. Halsey applied this same principle to carrier warfare when he said: “get to the other fellow with everything you have as fast as you can and to dump it on him.” In any encounter at sea he was prone to immediately let his planes do the talking with a shoot first attitude.
The few feathers the Navy had at this point in the war were already in Halsey’s cap. He was involved in the Doolittle Raid, and pointed attacks on the Marshalls and Wake Island. The burden of driving these operations soon found him in ill health, and he had been hospitalized for several months before asked to take command of the American counterattack again, arriving in Noumea August 15, 1942, a full sixty days before his arrival date there in the history Fedorov knew.
When outgoing Admiral Ghormley conveyed his misgivings over the planned operation against Guadalcanal, saying it was likely to create another Bataan all over again, Halsey waved it away dismissively. He was a fighting Admiral, and the operation was just what he wanted. He had three carriers in hand now, and he would use them to support a lightning swift attack, right into the heart of the enemy’s forward position in the Solomons.
When cryptanalysts winnowed down the planned attack date for the new Japanese operation as August 25, King argued that the U.S. should be ready, with troops at sea, and hit the Japanese where they might least expect it, at Guadalcanal.
“They’ll expect us to be sitting on our duffs waiting for them at New Caledonia or Vanuatu,” King argued. “Let’s kick them right in the nuts with the 1st Marines!” Halsey agreed wholeheartedly.
It had been a long, uphill fight. Many said that putting Marines in transports with the Japanese carriers at large was sheer madness. It would force the US carriers to shepherd them to their planned invasion beaches, anchor them there for days and yield complete freedom of movement to the enemy as they swept south.
Halsey argued that if the attack were launched at least two days in advance of the Japanese invasion date, it could unhinge the entire enemy operation just as it was getting underway. “It will attract Jap carriers like flies, I know it,” he said, “but we’ll have a fist full of flat tops as well, and we can hit them as they come at us. It’s either that or we just sit at Noumea and wait for them. And what good is that? Let’s hit Guadalcanal and take that god dammed airfield there and put Wildcats and Dauntless dive bombers on the ground. That will give us one more carrier that they can lob shells at all they want and never sink.”
In the end Marshall was convinced to side with King and win approval of the President and authorization for the pre-emptive counterattack, which they called ‘Operation Watchtower.’ The 1st Marine Division went to sea on August 20th, escorted by everything the U.S. had, including the carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Saratoga, twelve cruisers, twenty-one destroyers, and two new additions to the fleet, the superb fast battleships Washington and North Carolina. Notably absent was the carrier Yorktown, which had been transferred to the Atlantic Fleet after the loss of CV Wasp to provide much need air cover over the seas around Iceland. Even as Japanese task forces were forming at both Truk and Rabaul, the Americans were at sea.
In-theater reserves were also substantial for the Americans. They had moved three old battleships to Suva Bay, Fiji: the California, New Mexico, and West Virginia. Too slow to operate with carriers, they nonetheless provided a strong deterrent that could discourage any Japanese surface action group from making a run at the vital US bases in the region. Two light cruisers and ten reserve destroyers were also part of this force, and they were actually using extra fuel bunkered in the big battleships to sustain local operations by the destroyers.
Yamamoto had planned to come at his first target, Espiritu Santo, in a wide pincer attack, like the twin horns of a bull. He was going to take the big fleet c
arriers Kaga and Akagi, with light carrier Ryujo from the great Japanese naval base at Truk and then make a run for the Island of Naru, which would be taken quickly by an SNLF battalion, being largely undefended. In the wake of the fast carriers would come his powerful battleships, Yamato, Hiei, Fuso as the heart of the bombardment group. Six heavy cruisers, four light cruisers and two dozen destroyers would be assigned to this pincer, which intended to deliver elements of the Nagoya 3rd Division to their landing sites on Vanuatu, Espiritu Santo.
The other horn of the bull would originate from the forward base of Rabaul where fleet carriers Hiryu, Soryu light carrier Ryuho would lead the attack, down through the Solomon Sea, escorted by four cruisers and seven destroyers with the second wave troops of 3rd Division. This force was to dip well down into the Coral Sea, then swing up again to come at Vanuatu from the Southwest while Yamamoto’s main group appeared from the northeast. It would also serve as a screen for anything the Americans might sortie out of Noumea. The two moves were to be timed to converge in unison and bring over fifty warships, including six carriers, together near Vanuatu in a massive mailed fist.
The American counterthrust at Guadalcanal would be King’s well placed kick just as the enemy closed these two powerful arms on their intended target, and it worked as planned.
Both Japanese task forces were well out to sea when the Marines set sail, yet too far away to threaten them. By the time the convoy was eventually spotted by a seaplane out of Tulagi, the two prongs of Yamamoto’s navy were widely dispersed, hundreds of miles from one another. He had to make a decision—should the operation go forward as planned, or should one or both pincers be re-directed to blunt the American thrust at Guadalcanal? The outcome of the entire battle would rest on that choice, but the United States 1st Marine Division had much to do with forcing the reluctant Admiral’s hand in the matter. They stormed ashore at both Tulagi and Guadalcanal with such élan, that within a day they had overrun Japanese positions at Lunga on August 25th, where they captured the airfield and were working feverishly to make it ready to receive planes from nearby U.S, airfields and carriers. The “Cactus Air force” as it would come to be called, was about to be born.
The news shook the staff at Combined Fleet headquarters at Truk, and the consensus was that the operation against Espiritu Santo would do nothing more than to create an isolated outpost, over 950 kilometers behind an active battle front at Guadalcanal, and one within range of two other strong American bases at Noumea and Suva Bay, Fiji. If the Americans were allowed to secure and establish a strong base at Guadalcanal, the whole operation would come unhinged. It was therefore decided that the bold attack would have to be crushed, and Japanese control of the Solomons made undisputed. Only then could the next move against Espiritu Santo be contemplated with any hope of success.
Yamamoto considered how to proceed, first thinking to send Admiral Yamaguchi’s smaller Western force to engage and repel the operation, or proceed directly to Guadalcanal on his own. Many officers argued that both horns of the bull should be used in one crushing blow, and Yamamoto was about to make that very decision when he suddenly received some rather startling news from Admiral Hara’s Operations force against Darwin.
Like all dispatches, it began with glowing returns of the successful air raid and surface bombardment of Darwin, and Yamashita’s easy invasion, claiming to control the port and airfield within 24 hours. Then details of a rather unexpected “incident” were related that described the presence of an enemy capital ship that presumably had sortied from Darwin with some very unusual weaponry. The description was terse, with few details, but related intense anti-aircraft capabilities and noted that Hara’s attempts to engage and sink this solitary ship had met with less than satisfactory results. Yamamoto was wise enough to read between those lines, and he immediately sent a signal to Hara asking him to state the present condition of his air strike arm, wondering whether it would be needed in the Coral Sea now, given the American counter thrust.
He received a most disheartening reply. Hara’s 5th Carrier Division had started the campaign with fifty-four D3A dive bombers. They had seven left, and six more in reserve flying in from Kendari. He had all of forty-eight B5N1 torpedo bombers, and only twenty of those remained. Only in his fighter element was there any real strength left. He reported fifty operational A6M2s out of an initial allotment of sixty-six. The losses to the strike planes were staggering! Seventy-three percent! And all this against a single enemy ship that was still reported at large, poised to enter the Coral Sea at that very moment, and being pursued by Captain Sanji Iwabuchi leading a small task force aboard the battleship Kirishima.
The report made no sense. Hara’s force was as seasoned and skilled as any in the fleet. They had savaged the Americans just months ago and assured a victory at Port Moresby. That thought set his mind to that airfield, where he knew several squadrons of G3M2 and G4M1 bombers were mustering. But those planes had only a modest capability against naval targets at sea, particularly a fast moving capital ship as this one was reported to be. It was given the code name Mizuchi, and the word was flashed from one fleet command to another. Where was it heading? Was it merely fleeing for a friendly port, trying to escape the Japanese trap sprung at Darwin, or did it have a darker purpose? How could intelligence have missed its presence in Darwin in the first place? There were too many unanswered questions.
Yamamoto thought hard that night, aboard the massive solid presence of the battleship Yamato. He could send Yamaguchi’s carrier division after this enemy ship, but that would mean confronting the American carriers at Guadalcanal with only his own force under Nagumo. Something warned him not to dilute his naval air striking power, particularly after the loss of the airfield at Lunga. So he made a decision that he believed adequate to the requirements of both tasks before him.
“Send to Yamaguchi. He is to detach the light carrier Ryuho, two cruisers and two destroyers and send them northwest towards the Torres Strait to operate in conjunction with Admiral Hara in pursuit of this enemy ship. The remainder of his task force, including Hiryu and Soryu will proceed immediately to Guadalcanal to coordinate air strikes with Admiral Nagumo’s force. I am taking my heavy units due west into the Solomons and will position the invasion force northwest of Guadalcanal off New Georgia pending the destruction of the American carrier task force covering their invasion. Admiral Nagumo will proceed to Guadalcanal from our present position, and the two carrier task forces will crush the Americans between them. After that is accomplished we can proceed with the invasion of Guadalcanal in force, but this cannot be risked with American carriers at large.”
It was to be a fateful and decisive moment in the newly written history of WWII, a good plan considering the agility with which it had been surmised. The loss of only one light carrier to reinforce Hara’s group seemed insignificant, though somewhat embarrassing considering that Hara already commanded a full fleet carrier division! It would lead to a disaster that was simply impossible for Yamamoto to see in the confident light of his own military mind at that point.
Chapter 17
Novak had to say it was one of the most unusual happenings of the entire war, an informal meeting to review routine photo intercepts from coastwatchers that had blossomed into a major “incident,” as he ended up calling it. The meeting was being held at FRUMEL Headquarters in the Monterey Apartments of Queens Road, Melbourne Australia. FRUMEL itself was an acronym for Fleet Radio Unit MELbourne, one of two major cryptanalysis units still active in the Pacific, the other being Fleet Radio Unit H or ‘Hypo’ in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. There had once been three such units, but the third had been hastily evacuated from Manila Bay as the Japanese closed in on that city in February of 1942. Many of the specialists that once staffed that unit had slipped away on the submarine Sea Dragon, along with 1.5 tons of equipment and materials vital to their operations, and now they served to augment the vital intelligence work here at FRUMEL. Novak was one of them.
The unit occupied mos
t all of the third floor of the posh Monterey Apartments, and he looked lazily out the window at the green lawns and breezy foliage of the trees as he waited for his associate to review the dispatch.
“British have something in the Coral Sea we don’t know about?” The question was tossed across the desk like a piece of loose paper, by Commander Oscar Osborne, another specialist in cryptanalysis called in to review some very unusual photography that morning. Sometimes called “Ozzie” by his associates, or simply “The Wizard” after the popular 1939 movie ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ he had been part of the group ever since the submarine Sea Dragon made it safely away from their old intelligence unit on Corregidor.
“Waters got his hands on that photo yesterday,” said Novak. “He’s one of our boys up at Darwin. God knows what’s happened to him by now. Probably half way to Katherine on that hell of a road if he managed to get out. Lucky for us these photos made it out on a plane. Funny thing about this one…It went right to the very top. A journalist, fellow named Longmore up there on a whim, well he kicked it all the way up to the PM’s office. Looks like he was an old friend of John Curtain.”
“Curtain is an old newspaper man,” said Osborne. “The two were probably thick as thieves.”
“Well good for that. Have you taken a look at that photo?” Novak gestured to the packet that had come in on the morning motorcycle run from the airfield, and Osborne obliged.
“What the devil is that?” Osborne was staring intently now, and looking around for a magnifying glass. “Get the British silhouette book over there.”
Novak smiled. “Don’t bother,” he said. “It’s not British. I went through the whole Royal Navy this morning and even called Perth as well to talk to their liaison officer. They assure me they had nothing at sea on the Kimberly Coast when that was taken—nothing at Darwin either before the Japs hit the place—nothing they know of, that is. This fish is something else entirely.”
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