The following morning December 12th, at a little after sunrise, an aircraft was spotted to the southwest. Captain Lowe hoped it might be his long lost seaplane, but as it lingered just out of reach of the cruiser’s AA guns, he had the sinking feeling that the convoy had been spotted by the enemy.
“That had to come off another ship,” he said to his XO. “Because it sure as hell didn’t come from Fiji.”
“What do you figure?”
“Could be off a Japanese cruiser out here somewhere, or even a French ship. Something tells me we should have waited for the Aussies to get here with their welcoming committee.” He was referring to the one bit of good news they had that day, when word came the Australians had dispatched a flotilla comprised of the cruisers Canberra, Perth and Achilles, sending them out to rendezvous with the convoy.
“Could it be off one of their ships?” asked the XO.
“Not likely. They’d notify us by signal if they were close enough to send that plane.”
Captain Lowe’s instincts were correct, for at that moment, the French Pacific Squadron under Vice Admiral Decoux was already twelve hours out of Noumea, and about 450 miles southeast of the Pensacola, and the French were now about to launch their first ever carrier borne air strike in history.
Aboard the carrier Bearn, the Admiral was watching the planes lining up on the flight deck, small bi-winged PL.7s that could carry a torpedo or a pair of 450 kg bombs. There were only nine aboard, but he also had 15 single seat LN.401 naval dive bombers, the only planes in that line to ever be built. They had decent range at 1200 kilometers, or about 648 nautical miles, and could be armed with 225kg bombs. Those planes would be escorted by four of his ten old Dewotine D.373 mono-wing fighters, each armed with a pair of Hotchkiss 13.2 MGs. All these planes were obsolete by 1941, with the dive bombers being the best of the lot.
Decoux had his sighting report in hand, and steamed another three hours, slowly closing the range. At a little after 12:00, he turned Bearn into the wind and put his fledgling strike wave aloft, with the range to the target at about 300 miles. The planes trundled off the deck, formed up overhead, and then fluttered off like a formation of moths from the last war, about to attempt something that had never been done by the French Navy.
Forty minutes later they had the Pensacola convoy in sight, and alarms were ringing on all the ships, sending the tense crews to man every machinegun they had managed to get out of those cargo holds. The war’s fifth carrier strike was now underway. The Japanese made three in their attack against Pearl Harbor and the Lexington, and the Americans had returned the favor once with planes off Enterprise and Lexington. As soon as Bill heath saw those planes, he knew the jig was up and his war was finally getting started.
He and Cliff Causton were on a machinegun mounted in the bow of the Holbrook, squinting up at the French planes and not knowing what to make of them. Captain Lowe on the Pensacola had other ideas, knowing trouble when he saw it, and he ordered his cruiser to open up with everything it had, which wasn’t much, at 12:10. His ten 8 inch guns were not much good against an air attack, and he had only four 5-inch dual purpose AA guns. Those guns started puffing up rounds, but were not hitting much of anything. He might have been better served sending his float planes up to dog fight with the enemy, or by a few cases of those .50 caliber MGs that were now starting to fire from all the transport ships that had managed to get them rigged out.
The men on the 75s that had been lashed to the decks on the Republic ran their drill, looking as threatening as possible, but with no ammo to fire at the planes as they came in for their attack runs. The dive bombers came first, relatively slow and ponderous as they fell from above, even though the plane looked much faster than it was, with a pointed nose and sleek fuselage and canopy.
The inexperience of the French pilots showed, many with no more than one or two practice bombing drills under their belts. A few bombs fell near the Republic, spraying her decks with more seawater than shrapnel. One more fell right off the bow of Holbrook, and Cliff Causton whooped as he fired off his machinegun in reprisal, missing the swooping plane by an equal margin. He, too, had no training on that weapon. It was all new to the men on both sides, this game of war, and more theater in that first hot hour than anything else.
When the French torpedo planes came in, things changed. The pilots knew enough to come in groups of three so they could put down a spread of torpedoes. They got in low, braving the inaccurate machine gun fire and the 5-inchers on the Pensacola, but they made the mistake of trying to go after that ship instead of the much slower transports. Perhaps it was a point of honor, in that Pensacola was clearly a warship, built for this fight, while the transports seemed innocent victims and bystanders, in spite of the stream of .50 caliber bullets off the Holbrook, and the stream of invectives as the men shouted at the French planes, giving them the middle finger as they came in.
Pensacola was well out in front now, under attack, and putting on speed. One French PL.7 took enough of a near miss from one of those 5-inch guns to force the pilot to abandon his run, smoke trailing from his engine. The other two in the first wave came in off the port bow, with three more off the starboard side, and they were going to get all five fish in the water. Captain Lowe was watching the attack, and decided to give his horse the wind.
“Ahead full!” he shouted, wanting to run right out of the steel V those torpedoes were making as they came at him. A speedy ship, the Pensacola responded quickly, able to run at 31 knots when necessary, as it was at that very moment. She was able to race on through, her aft deck crews cheering when they saw all five enemy torpedoes scudding through the cruiser’s foaming wake. The last three PL.7s tried their luck, with even worse results. They came in on the port side and fired a spread that Lowe easily avoided with a timely turn.
Their teeth pulled, the PL.7s turned for home, while the last of the dive bombers tried to return some of the machinegun bullets being fired at them off the Holbrook. There was a final exchange of fire, with a few enemy rounds tearing up the aft deck and wounding three men there, while the gunners tried to riddle the planes in return, hitting nothing much at all. Then it was over, the French batting zero in their first attack, and all planes heading home save one unlucky dive bomber and that single PL.7 torpedo plane that was downed by Pensacola.
As the men on Holbrook watched them go, they began to hoot and jeer, whistling them off like a tea kettle letting off steam in that tense moment. Bill heath was braving the stench down in the hold to bring up more ammunition in case anything came back. He opened a fresh crate, and to his great surprise and delight, found it was filled with bottles of whiskey instead of ammunition. Smiling broadly, he grabbed an armful and went topside, and he and his mates had themselves a good little celebration after what they considered to be their first victory in the war that lay ahead.
Yet the battle was far from over. When the French planes made it back to the Bearn, Vice Admiral Decoux was most unhappy with the results. When he finally got a full report on the composition of the convoy, he was incensed. Most of his pilots had gone after Pensacola, which sped away, dodging bombs and torpedoes all the while.
“You idiots!” he exclaimed. “We lost two planes, and another three on landing, and we have nothing to show for it. So we attack again, only this time use your heads and go after those transport ships!”
He reasoned he would have plenty of daylight left to rearm his planes and strike again, and the entire task force began to put on speed. This time he would send only the strike planes, leaving his ten fighters aboard, with three flying CAP.
But Captain Lowe had sent out an SOS the moment that first attack came in, and it was heard by Captain James Hansen on the Antietam. His task force had left Davao days ago and swept down the coast of New Guinea, through the Bismarck Barrier and into the Solomon Sea. He pushed down between the Island of Naunoga and Vanua Lava in the French New Hebrides group, intending to approach Fiji from the northwest.
The America
ns were about 300 miles from the action when he got news of the attack, immediately ordering all ahead full. His sleek hybrid battlecarriers churned up the sea, capable of making 33 knots, though he held his speed to 30. The cruiser Houston could easily keep pace, a ship that was to be called “The Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast.” That ship had stayed with his task force, along with the destroyer Alden, while the remaining destroyers escorting the seaplane tender Langley were left behind and bound for Port Moresby to refuel. Alden was supposed to have been in Tarakan on Borneo, lingering there for a little added security, but now it would go rushing into battle with the hybrids.
“Get hold of Gates on the Shiloh,” said Hansen as they passed through the 250 range mark. “Tell him to get ‘em up and turn ‘em over. The Japs must have a carrier out here somewhere.”
Those initial reports had not clarified the situation. Hansen knew Pensacola was under attack, but no mention had been made of the French. It wasn’t until he had his planes on deck, that follow up signals from Pensacola enlightened him.
“So now we’re at war with the French? They’ll have to be coming out of Noumea, and if they hit Pensacola an hour ago, then they’d have to be right about here.” He fingered the map, his index finger falling right on the spot where Admiral Decoux was cursing and organizing his second strike. “Alright, let’s get all 24 strike planes in the air, and half the fighters, that will leave us 12 fighters here on CAP.”
He was going to send 36 planes at the French, twelve SBDs, 12 TBDs and 12 Wildcats. While they were still inter-war models, they were head and shoulders above what Bearn was carrying, and his pilots were much better trained. They were raised and spotted quickly on the small but efficient flight deck, which was angled out slightly so the planes would take off on an angle of about 15 degrees from the bow. The men had heard what had happened at Pearl, and knew the fate of the Lexington. Now it was time for a little payback, though their only regret was that they were not going up against the Japanese.
The strike was up and on its way, arriving near the suspected position of the enemy task force at mid-day, just as Bearn was spotting her refueled and rearmed planes for their second attack. When the warning came in of enemy planes, Admiral Decoux was shocked. Where could they be coming from? He was well away from any island, and from all intelligence, the only American carriers were far to the east at Pearl Harbor, or already at the bottom of the sea.
His disillusionment aside, the French began to put up AA fire just as the SBDs tipped over into their final dive. Down they came, the Wildcats right behind them to look for enemy fighters. One of those planes was being piloted by a man who should have been on the Lexington that day, if it were still afloat. His name was Butch O’Hare, who would get 7 kills early in the war after training with flight group leader Jimmy Thach. He was transferred into Davao when the Antietam needed a replacement pilot, and now he found himself in a perfect place to start notching his belt.
O’Hare saw that there were only a handful of enemy planes up, the old Dewoitine D.371s. The rest were just starting to take off, and he called out to his mates that they had caught the French napping, as usual. The six D.371s up on CAP never even tried to go after those SBDs, fluttering off to the north where O’Hare could get a good crack at them. He was on the tail of one with a good burst that riddled its feathers right from the start. Before it was over he would shoot two of those planes down, needing only five more to equal his wartime tally in Fedorov’s history. It would not be any great accomplishment if you just looked at the numbers. The top American Ace of the war, Richard L. Bong, would get 40 kills, and even this would put him far down on the list, which was largely dominated by German pilots. Eric Hartmann would get 352 confirmed kills, and the Germans would stack nearly a hundred Aces at the top of the heap. But here, in these early days of the war, those two kills O’Hare notched counted for a great deal. They were tiny little victories where they were much needed, grains of sand in the war, but enough to start an avalanche.
Meanwhile, the Dauntless pilots were pushing their SBDs into the final leg of the dive, and one was going to put a 500 pound bomb right on the flight deck of the Bearn, just aft of the tall narrow island. Admiral Decoux stared at the hit, seeing it blow away the central crane for hoisting planes up on deck. The tall white sea spray of several more near misses shook his nerves, and then another 500 pound bomb crashed into the carrier about 50 feet from the stern. That one was the fatal blow, for it would penetrate the thin 25mm flight deck, plunge through the spaces below and start a raging fire that soon threatened to involve the main propulsion shafts.
In the chaos that ensued, the French simply forgot all about their launch operations. They managed to get 9 planes in the air, and the Wildcats were all over them, shooting four more down, and forcing another two torpedo planes to fly so low that they ended up ditching. Three got away. But unable to go back to the Bearn, they simply headed out to sea.
Admiral Decoux would see his days as a carrier commander come to a swift end, and he boiled with anger to think of what had just happened to France’s only carrier. But he still had a significant force in hand, with those cruisers and destroyers. The flak they were putting up was considerable, and enough to drive off most of the 12 TBDs that came in, but not before one got a torpedo in the water that stuck it to the French carrier right amidships. That sealed the fate of the Bearn, and Admiral Decoux knew it when he felt the jarring impact and saw the tall white sea spray wash up and over his flight deck. Try as he might to save her, he would now lose the ship, and be forced to transfer his flag to the nearest cruiser, Jean de Arc.
Then something happened that no one expected at that time and place, not even the French. A squadron of three white winged Japanese Zeroes came diving into the scene, swooping down like falcons to attack the American TBDs as they formed up to make the return leg to their battlecarriers. The First Battle of the New Hebrides was about to enter Round 3.
Part V
Rooks’ Gambit
“No Price is too great for the scalp of the enemy King.”
― Koblentz
Chapter 13
They had come off the light carrier Hiyo, which had been stationed at Truk with her sister ship the Junyo to support planned amphibious landings in the Gilberts and French New Hebrides. They had once been the luxury passenger liners Izumo Maru and Kashiwara Maru, laid down at Nagasaki in 1938, but from their very inception the designers were paid a handsome subsidy to build in features that would allow for an easy conversion to an aircraft carrier. It was all part of Japan’s sleight of hand before the war, a plan to quickly produce even more carriers should they be needed.
With this in mind, they were designed with double hulls, and large internal areas used as dining halls and ballrooms were positioned exactly where the navy might want its hangers and flight deck elevators. As it happened, both were purchased by the Japanese Navy before the war, now commissioned five months earlier than they might have appeared. They were very useful ships for the purpose in mind, a good escort for amphibious task forces where their 25 knot speed would serve well enough, and they could carry 48 combat planes and a number of float planes as well.
Junyo was now far to the north, escorting a Japanese SNLF battalion out to the Gilberts, and Hiyo had been assigned the mission of escorting in the crack Ichiki Regiment under Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki, to Noumea to reinforce the battalion that had landed there on December 4th. The Colonel had his name first entered into the history books as a Major in China, when he had been conducting a night training session with his men firing blanks. The Chinese across the nearby border thought an attack was imminent, fired artillery, and that night one of Ichiki’s men failed to return to the barracks. Thinking the man had been captured, the intrepid Major formed up his battalion and went storming into Wanping, the first hostile act of the war against China that began in 1934.
Now Ichiki was a Colonel, and the men on the transports were not going to be shooting blanks, though this was not
to be an assault mission. He had the 28th regiment of Kuma Heidan, the 7th Infantry, otherwise known as the Army’s ‘Bear Division.’ It was called that because the unit had gained most of its experience in the so called “Siberian Intervention,” occupying Vladivostok and Primorskiy Province and also fighting in Manchuria. Ichiki’s regiment had been moved to Truk for a possible attack on Midway Island, but that was not yet scheduled, and so it was now being sent south to Noumea.
The small task force was comprised of Hiyo, five transports, the destroyers Isuzu and Yura, and the heavy cruiser Chokai. The latter had been pulled from the Malaya operation and sent out to Truk to put just a little muscle into the operations group there, which was otherwise quite lean. They would be operating in waters that would be deemed safe for some time, and so battle was not on the mind of Captain Beppu Akitomo as he took his ‘Flying Hawk’ south to what he thought would be nothing more than a quick ferry mission. He was to offload Ichiki’s troops, and leave most of his aircraft at Noumea as well before returning to Truk to be re-provisioned.
Hiyo had 18 D3A Val dive bombers, 18 B5N Kate torpedo bombers, and 12 A6M Zeroes, with three of them up that day on a wide area search sweep. They heard the radio traffic rising like the unexpected swell of a storm, and homed in to see what was going on. Shotai leader Teneko Tadashi was eager to get into the war, and the sound of a rollicking battle on his radio, with heated calls in both French and English, pulled his planes in like sharks to blood in the water. They saw the American SBDs and fell on them, gunning one out of the sky in that first pass and scattering the rest.
Tide Of Fortune (Kirov Series Book 20) Page 11