“That would have to be the heavy cruiser Tone,” Fedorov confirmed. It’s moving ahead of those other cruisers we faced earlier. It looks like we have a bit of a foot race on our hands now.”
“But where are we going, sir? This course will take us back up to the Torres Strait.”
“Leave that to me,” Fedorov was squinting at his charts. “There’s plenty of room in the Coral Sea for the moment. We’ll give them a run for their money.”
“But what about those other two battleships, Captain?”
“Mutsu and Nagato? They cannot match our speed. They won’t get anywhere near us, but I plan on running in their direction until I’m forced to turn on another heading. Hopefully that will keep us well ahead of these other two faster groups to the east and south, and buy time for the displacement to kick in.”
“Are you sure it will happen again, Fedorov?”
“Who can be sure of anything? We’ve stumbled on a possible trigger point for this madness, and I can only hope it will work for us one more time.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
Fedorov gave him a long look. “Then we fight, Rodenko. We fight—what else?”
They ran on that heading for two hours, but Fedorov calculated a predictive plot that showed the cruiser Tone getting uncomfortably close if he persisted on 292, so at 17:00 hours he turned north again, running away from the cruiser and nervously watching the ship’s chronometer, counting the time since the reactor maintenance had been completed. There had been no signs of anything unusual for the last two hours. The sea was calm, Nikolin’s airwaves were steady, Rodenko’s radar was functioning without interference, and the Japanese were still following, bearing in on him from multiple headings. Three pesky seaplanes were marking Kirov’s position steadily now, growing a bit bolder and venturing nearer as they shadowed the ship.
“Damn,” said Karpov, “I miss those five S-300s we wasted on Orlov.”
“They may have been well spent, Captain,” said Fedorov, “but I understand what you mean. It feels a bit naked knowing we can’t do much of anything against an aircraft unless it gets in close now. At least we still have some punch on the main missile deck.”
“Twenty-two missiles,” said Karpov. “That was more than the original load for the first Kirov. The old ship carried the big P-700 Granit missiles back then, but only twenty of them. They were slower, big fat missiles weighing over 15,000 pounds, but they had twice the range of our Moskit-IIs, and a huge 750kg warhead. The only problem was that they made too good a target for enemy SAMs, but I wish I had a few of those as well. Lob one on these Japanese cruisers and we could sink a ship with one shot. Our NATO friends called them the ‘Shipwreck,’ and it was a good name for them.”
Karpov folded his arms, gazing out the forward viewports. “The sea is so calm,” he said. “Stare at it for ten minutes and you could almost forget we’re in the middle of the greatest war ever fought on this earth.”
“At least the greatest one we know of,” said Fedorov. “Something tells me it wasn’t the last world war. We’ve seen aftermath of the next one first hand.”
“You think it started in 2021 then? Here in the Pacific?”
“Those newspapers seemed to indicate as much, one of our cruisers got restless and took out that American sub. A trigger point like that could have cascaded into a big crisis in the Pacific, and then the Chinese got into the act over Taiwan. The Americans hit their carrier, they hit back and sunk the Eisenhower. On and on it goes. Both sides were just playing the same old game all along, a slow escalation of tension that can lead to no good. What do you think we put to sea for? Live fire exercises. They were getting ready for a war they saw coming, and we were the tip of the sword.”
Karpov nodded solemnly.
“Then perhaps our presence here in the past hasn’t really done much harm after all. Have you lost your fear of disturbing the history, Fedorov?”
“Yes, Captain, I think I have, though it still bothers me. Nations have put men in trenches, ships at sea facing off against one another for centuries, but now I see what it comes down to in the end. Very few fought for God or even the Rodina. They fought for the fellow next to them in the line.”
“And to save their own damn skin,” Karpov agreed. “Well, if we don’t move again, in time, then I’m going to have to put some serious harm on anything that gets close enough to threaten us.”
“And you want to know what I’ll think of that, yes?”
“It crossed my mind, Fedorov. After all, if what you have told us is true, Admiral Yamamoto is out there this time. He’s a bit of a demigod in your history books—his ship a legend as well.”
“He was…” Fedorov had a distant, empty look in his eyes. “Yes, the ship was a legend once. In our day it was a broken wrecked hulk, 1200 feet below the sea. That’s where legends end up all too often, Captain, and the world forgets. This war practically destroyed all of Europe and Asia, and yet they still build the ships and planes and missiles in our day. The world forgets.”
Karpov nodded, a sudden melancholy coming over them now, a taste of bitter toska, the old Russian yearning for a better day. “I wonder if they forgot about us as well,” he breathed. “I mean Severomorsk, Suchkov, the navy, the whole stinking mess of a country we set sail to defend. From their perspective we simply vanished that day. I suppose they blamed it all on that accident with Orel.”
“Most likely,” Fedorov agreed.
“Mighty Kirov,” Karpov smiled. “We take on all comers, the British, Americans, Italians and now the Japanese. And they probably don’t have the slightest inkling about us.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Fedorov. “The British learned a great deal when the Admiral met with Tovey. If word of our presence here has gotten back to the Admiralty by now, it will give them the last clue they needed to come to the only conclusion that could possibly explain who and what we are.”
“Clue? What clue?
“We vanished on August 23, 1942, Captain. And then we reappeared just a day later, but over seven thousand miles away. A ship doesn’t move in space that distance in a single day. If they do spot us here, and put two and two together, then they could only conclude one thing—that we moved in time. And they have a few people there in Bletchley Park who are quite good at math, Mister Karpov. Quite good indeed.”
“Hard to believe,” said Karpov. “This whole affair.”
Fedorov looked at his watch. “Why don’t you get some food and rest, Captain. Something tells me we’ll be very busy by sunset.”
Karpov gave him a knowing look.
“Fedorov…” he started, then paused, thinking. “I never did tell you how wrong I was before. I thought you were a wet nosed school boy, and I was…well, I was very stupid.”
“Forget about it, Captain. We all make mistakes. We live and we learn. I’ve learned a great deal watching you these last weeks, and one thing you have taught me is this: a man is always bigger than he thinks he is, bigger than the burdens he carries that would want to crush him, even bigger than his fear. Your service here has been something to admire, and we are all grateful for it.”
~ ~ ~
An hour later, at 18:00 it was clear that the two Japanese battleships to the north, Mutsu and Nagato, were now on a good course to intercept. Kirov had opened the range on the Yamato group to 150 kilometers, but the fast screening force out in front of the battleship was now inside 112 kilometers. His earlier turn had frustrated Captain Iwabuchi aboard Tone, which was now left just over 200 kilometers to the south. But the slow approach of the two big battleships forced a difficult choice on Fedorov. He could either turn west now, out into the Coral Sea, in which case he would likely have to engage both battleships and the fast cruisers of Iwabuchi’s force, or he could turn and run east, which would put Yamato in a good position to try and cut him off as he approached Milne Bay.
The odds seemed even no matter which way he turned, but something pulled at him from deep within. If he turned east he might just lay
eyes upon the greatest battleship the world has ever seen, the ship he had studied and admired for all these many years. Be careful what you wish for, he mused. He couldn’t say that thought decided things for him, but the fact remained….
He turned east at sunset, following the night, the sky a brilliant smear of red and orange behind him. The ship’s new heading was 68 degrees northeast, running for the southern coast of New Guinea. The dogged seaplanes would have difficulty following the ship after sunset, but they caught the course change in time to get warning to Yamato. Some minutes later Rodenko reported that the battleship had altered course to 45 degrees northeast, and Fedorov kicked himself for not waiting until well after dark before he changed his heading.
He looked at the ship’s chronometer, biting his lip. When would they move again in time? The last change had taken only a few hours, but it might be a long day before anything happened. He now concluded that if Yamato was cagey, and her cruiser screen agile enough, they might be able to catch Kirov somewhere south of Bona Bona Island on Orangene Bay, the south coast of New Guinea. Yamato would be right behind the cruisers. Karpov returned from his rest period two hours later, clear headed and ready for battle, and he did not have long to wait.
“Those cruisers are getting very close now,” said Rodenko. “I make it about fifty kilometers. They’re moving at 36 knots, and there’s a small group of three ships about ten klicks behind them at 33 knots.”
“Most likely a destroyer group,” said Fedorov.
“We can take them out now with missiles,” said Karpov, raising an eyebrow at Fedorov.
“Would that be your recommendation, Captain?”
“Our ability to strike at range is a great advantage,” said Karpov. We should use it now and thin out the odds. Otherwise it will be work for the deck guns in another hour, and they may get those long range torpedoes in the water you talk about.”
Karpov was correct. The first factor in the engagement was going to be range, he knew. Kirov could find, target, and strike its enemy anywhere inside a 200 kilometer radius of the ship. The cruisers would need to get inside 20,000 meters, just as before, and that was the decisive difference.
Yamato had to first close inside the 45,000 kilometer range of its main guns, and even then it would not be likely to obtain any hits until it got inside 26,000 meters. It was Ali vs Frasier. Kirov could put one hard jab after another on the lumbering hulk of her enemy, like a fast, lean champion dancing around her foe. Yamato had to simply tuck in its chin and drive in for a body shot, and in this instance, with the coast of New Guinea to the north, she was hoping to eventually pin her elusive enemy to the ropes.
Unlike Ali, Kirov did not have the armor to take much punishment. There would be no ‘Rope a Dope’ strategy if that happened. So Fedorov was maneuvering east to avoid the land mass to his north, but in doing so he would soon be skirting the effective range of Yamato’s big 18.1 inch guns. It would then come down to how long the battleship could stay in any kind of effective firing range, for time was a factor in obtaining a hit, in a very convoluted process that relied on the successful coordination of numerous elements to get just one good result. One thing Yamato had in her favor was durability. Her armor would let her take hits and keep fighting as long as the Japanese had the will, and Fedorov would never underestimate that factor.
“Very well,” he said. “Engage the cruiser screen at long range. These are lighter ships. Their belt armor is little more than sixty millimeters.”
“Then any of our missiles will hurt them badly. I suggest we start with our smaller warheads and see if we can break their speed advantage by lighting a few fires. Mr. Samsonov…”
“Sir!”
“Sound alert level two. Secure for missile combat. Activate MOS-III missiles, a bank of three, please.”
“Aye, sir. Activating missiles seven, six, and five. System reports ready.”
The warning claxon sounded, and Samsonov keyed his missile prime toggles, waiting for targeting information to be sent to his panel. A battle that had been talked about, ruminated, argued in forums and naval colleges the world over was now about to begin, for the cloak of darkness would prove to be only a thin veil of protection for Kirov that night, and a clash of titans was now almost inevitable—the most powerful ships of two different eras facing one another in a final confrontation that would decide the fate of nations and perhaps humanity itself.
Yet none of this entered the minds of Fedorov, Karpov, Rodenko or the other men on the ship. Their only thought was whether this battle would see them through to a good breakfast the following morning. The world and time could wait. For them it was simply a matter of surviving yet another day.
Chapter 29
They saw it light up the night, a bright fire against the dark, climbing up and then arcing slowly down, growing more prominent with each passing second. The watchman on the light cruiser Jintsu pointed to his mate, eyes wide, then called out a warning. It looked like a distant plane on fire, plummeting down to a watery death in the sea, but as it fell it suddenly leveled off and seemed to skim right over the water, brighter, closer, impossibly fast! There was a second fire in the sky, then a third following the very same path.
Jintsu was the second of three Sendai type light cruisers, commissioned in 1925 and intended as fast destroyer flotilla leaders. She had four stacks venting the steam from ten Kampon boilers and four shaft Parsons geared turbines driving her at just under 36 knots. Her seven 5.5 inch guns were waiting silently in their turrets, her four 610mm torpedoes sleeping in their tubes. They would never get the chance to fire at the enemy the ship was stalking that night, nor would those on the two ships following her, Nagara and Yura, both fast three stack light cruisers with similar armament. The supersonic missiles would find them some fifty kilometers away, and come boring in on their side armor, a 1.5 ton missile with a 300kg warhead flying at Mach 5, one of the fastest missiles in the world Kirov had come from.
The damage was immediate and near catastrophic. Jintsu was struck amidships, her armor easily penetrated and the missile smashed through four of her ten boilers before exploding, blowing away two of her four stacks in the process. She reeled with the hit, her side ripped open, severe fires amidships and thick black smoke choking the life out of her crew. The ship immediately fell off in speed, slowing to under twenty knots and taking water fast.
Nagara and Yura received equal treatment, their side armor simply too thin to stop the missiles from penetrating to do severe damage deep within the ship. Of the three Nagara came away the best, and she had turned to avoid the chaotic scene of Jintsu ahead, and the angle of the missile that struck her saw it scudding along her side armor, detonating outside the ship, and buckling her hull badly, right at the water line.
Karpov had used three, fast lethal darts to skewer the cruisers, and they were suddenly out of the equation as serious threats, their speed reduced, crews frantically struggling to fight the fires and flooding. Jintsu would not survive the hour. Over 120 of her 450 man crew were dead after the missile impact, and the remainder would be in the sea soon after when the ship keeled over in a rasp of steam and smoke, her guts flooded with seawater hitting the hot boiler fires. She sunk in twenty minutes. Yura was little better off, her fires threatening to consume the ship. Nagara stood by, calling for help from the three destroyers in the wake of the cruisers. There were too many men in the sea for her to contemplate continuing in the hunt.
So it was that the lighter screening forces Yamamoto had sent to find and harry his prey came to a desperate fate. The destroyers would help in the rescue operation, and then bravely turn to seek the enemy again, but they were of little concern to Kirov now. She had bigger fish to fry, a 72,000 ton behemoth still bearing down on an intercept course that Fedorov did not think they could evade. Yet the Russian battlecruiser still had nineteen ship killers under her forward deck, more than enough to deal with a single adversary, or so he thought.
The chronometer read 20:10, just an h
our after the waning gibbous moon rose, a hair off full, casting her pale wan light on the sea. Rodenko reported the fast screening force had been decisively stopped, at least on radar, and Karpov breathed a little easier.
“This shark still bites,” he said. “The MOS-IIIs did the job well enough. Are there any other targets close in, Rodenko?”
“There’s a seaplane getting a little too nosey,” he said, “it’s been following our wake for some time, most likely calling out heading and speed estimates. I now have a faint reading on those other two battleships. They look to be just under 200 kilometers due west of us, and they are losing ground. I make their speed no more than 25 knots, but without the Fregat system up these are only approximate readings. There is another fast contact southwest at 36 knots and closing slowly. It has turned on a course that will take it very near the cruisers we just hit.”
“We probably put a lot of men in the water just now,” said Fedorov. “They are vectoring in assets for the rescue operation. I think we can leave it be for the moment. It’s Yamato I’m more concerned about.”
“That ship has now increased to 27 knots and is on an intercept heading, about fifty kilometers off our starboard bow.”
“You said this ship’s main guns can range out to 45,000 meters, Fedorov? Then it could fire on us any minute now.”
“Don’t worry,” Fedorov held up a hand. “They have to spot us first. Under good light conditions they might see us at twenty-eight kilometers, but not at night like this, even with the moon nearly full. We have some time yet. I’m looking up information on her radar sets now. It looks like Yamato had only one tactical surveillance radar. It operated on a wave length of 1.5 meters with an average range of twenty kilometers.”
“Then they are blind,” said Karpov. “We can hit them right now and perhaps put enough damage on that beast to give it second thoughts.”
Fedorov hesitated… battleship Yamato… Admiral Yamamoto. What was he about to do here? This ship and its Admiral had glowed in his mind for many long years of blissful study and research. He had built a model of it in his youth, admiring the sleek, powerful lines, the massive guns, the tall proud superstructure. It was his love of great ships that had seen him join the navy, and work diligently to gain his post on Russia’s very best, the new battlecruiser Kirov. In those quiet hours alone at his desk he had often imagined Yamato dueling with the American Iowa class, and contemplated how the course of the war might have been altered if Yamamoto’s plane had not been caught by those American P-38s and sent to a fiery death. And now he had to order the death of the thing he so loved, and the demise of all these fond memories, realizing in the end that this was war in its most cruel demeanor.
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