Turning Point (Kirov Series Book 22)

by John Schettler

  With ‘Winnie’ operating, the Commandos were able to make regular intelligence reports to the homeland, and also receive messages as to when they might expect secret shipments of air or sea dropped supplies. They soon became a band of shirtless bearded rogues, and the bane of the Japanese for long months. When asked if they wanted to be extracted, the men instead simply requested delivery of more ammunition for their Tommy guns. Their choice to fight on alone prompted Churchill to smile and give his own tribute, which would become the official motto of the unit: “They Alone Did Not Surrender.” It would be a long year in the steamy jungles and tortured highlands of Timor before they would finally be pulled off in Fedorov’s history. Yet here, in these altered states, that story would soon change….

  Part V

  A Roll of Thunder

  “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.”

  ― Mark Twain

  Chapter 13

  The Japanese plan for the invasion of Java would be dubbed “Operation J” in this telling of events. With Bali and Timor well in hand, the main thrust for the offensive was now about to begin. It would employ three full divisions, the first being the tough 48th Division under General Hitoshi Imamura coming from the Philippines. Among the best divisions in the army, the 48th had special training for amphibious landings, and had performed as expected on the Philippines, participating in the capture of Manila. It would be further strengthened by the “Sakaguchi Detachment,” a regimental sized gift from the 56th Division in Burma.

  This division would land well west of Surabaya at Kragan, push southeast and attack that city by indirect means, as the Japanese had done at Koepang on Timor. The Sakaguchi Detachment had a special assignment, ordered to drive south through the city of Surjakarta and along the south coast of the island to the port of Tjilatjap. If taken it was thought this would prevent any successful Allied attempt to evacuate.

  The 2nd, “Courageous” Division, was a reserve unit taken from the Sendai region of Japan. As such, the 2nd was not one of the veteran fighting units of recent months. It had seen action on the Siberian front and China years earlier, but after being recalled home, it languished to a point that Prince Mikasa once said it had become the worst equipped division in the army. All that had to change, and quickly, and the man to change it was Yamashita’s confederate planner and master strategist, Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, the man who had cherry picked the best fruit in the army to assemble Yamashita’s 25th Army for the Malayan Campaign.

  The 2nd had once been a “Square division” with two brigades of two regiments each. After its recall to Japan, it was made triangular, leaving one regiment behind to form a nucleus for forces being raised to replace it at home. For this operation it would be made square again by receiving the support of the 230th Regiment of the 38th Division, under Colonel Toshihari Shoji. The “Shoji Detachment” would land east of Batavia on the coast to block the enemy retreat and take a valuable airfield, and the remainder of the division would land west of the city near Merak on the Sunda Strait, and Banten Bay. This main force would send two of its three regiments at Batavia, and loop one further south to take Bandung in the center of the island, the location of the Allied Java Command HQ.

  It was a well conceived plan, and in Fedorov’s history, with only the Dutch and a scattering of Allied units present, it became overwhelming force. This time, however, the entire British 18th Division was on the island, along with a reinforced brigade of Australians, two battalions off the Orcades, the 2nd New Zealand Brigade, and the Gurkhas. Allied strength on Java was now more than doubled.

  It was for this reason that the entire 5th Division had been pulled off of Singapore Island after Yamashita’s departure. Once perhaps the strongest division in the Army after Colonel Tsuji had buttressed it with the best units he could find, it had been badly worn down from the long campaign in Malaya, and the heavy casualties sustained at Tengah Airfield on Singapore. Now it could muster no more than a Brigade strength unit, with six battalions under Major General Takuro Matsui, formed into two regiments, the 11th and 21st. Most of the rest of the division was dead, and the living had been told the enemy they faced at Tengah Airfield had made a cowardly withdrawal to Java, and that now they would have the honor of hunting them down and finishing the battle that had been joined earlier. Now they would avenge their fallen dead.

  Bandung, Java, HQ Java Command, 27 Feb, 1942

  Montgomery had wasted no time taking command from General Sitwell and assembling his senior officers. He had commandeered a car in Batavia and drove immediately to Bandung, entering the city past the long rows of squat houses, their roofs looking like truncated pyramids, the streets lined with small rickshaws left idle in the disconsolate rain. One lone man was walking a main street, seeming a lost soul in the gloom. Everyone else was hidden away, huddled in shelters, fearful that the war was at last coming to their island. The rain seemed an outlier of worse things to come, and now here was this scrawny, determined man emerging from the weathered 1938 De Soto Sedan, a red beret cap and British Army jacket his only protection from the weather.

  Behind him came Brigadiers Bennett, Clifton, and Blackburn, commanders of the ANZAC troops, the last to arrive. They would find Brigadiers Backhouse, Massy-Beresford and Duke of the 18th Division waiting for them in the bungalow that had been chosen on the southwest edge of the town near a once thriving banana plantation. Monty was all business from the very first.

  “Well met, gentlemen, the last of the transports have unloaded and the disposition of the troops is well underway. Now it comes down to our plan for the defense. As I see things, we have two options. We know what the enemy will want here, and we can stand in such a way to deny it to him. That will mean we deploy to defend the key ports at Batavia and Surabaya, and the nearby airfields. Without them the enemy will have difficulty keeping themselves supplied. Unfortunately, these ports are all on the north coast of the island, and it does not seem likely that we will command the Java Sea.”

  “There’s one good port on the south coast,” said Blackhouse, “Tjilatjap. We’ll have to hold that to the last. It’s the only way we can get our own reinforcements and supplies in.”

  “Right,” said Montgomery. “Your battalion is here in Bandung. Why don’t you take it south by rail today and position yourself to control that port. Most of the Dutch garrison here has moved to the eastern portion of the island. They’ll hold Surabaya.”

  “Not for long,” said Bennett. “They’ve very little in the way of good equipment, and frankly, they’re completely untested. If the Japanese hit us there, we can count on losing that port in short order.”

  “Then they’ll need support.”

  “My 2/20 Battalion is at Malang,” said Bennett. “The rest of the brigade is still at Semarang , another port we have to keep an eye on, and Clifton’s New Zealand Brigade has reached Surjakarta. Do you want us to push on to Surabaya?”

  “That’s the dilemma,” said Montgomery. “At Singapore we were able to concentrate our entire force and face down the Japanese along a very narrow front. Here we’re sitting on an island that’s 600 miles from one end to the other. If we try to hold everything, we could find ourselves outmaneuvered. The enemy will be able to choose their landing sites, and we can’t simply sit in a central position and wait for them to come with any hope we can move reinforcements where they’re needed in time. The rail lines here are useful, but they’ll likely be hit very hard by the Japanese air power when this game tees off. So I propose that we select one sector of the island or another, and concentrate there , defeat the enemy landings in at least one instance. The question is where will that be?”

  “Surabaya is closer to Darwin,” said Bennett. That’s where supplies will originate.”

  “We can also expect regular convoys from Colombo,” said Montgomery. “I understand your point, but we’d have to move the 18th Division east rather smartly, and we don’t have sufficient rolling stock, road transport, or pe
rhaps even time. At present, things got rather muddled on the lift over from Singapore. The men are doing a bang up job getting sorted out, but I’ve had to rebuild the brigades as they arrived. Now we’re strung out all along the roads and rail line from here to Batavia, and I propose we stay right where we are.”

  “Hold Batavia?”

  “Precisely.” Montgomery folded his arms. “The airfields here can cover the Sunda Strait, and Batavia is the nearest hop to Singapore. We mustn’t forget Percival, and all those civilians in the city. If we can hold the Sunda Strait, the run in to Batavia under our air cover might allow us to receive supply convoys out of Colombo. If the Japanese take it, then Singapore is as good as lost. The Japanese have already taken Denpasar airfield on Bali, and they’re on Timor as well. So we can’t count on anything coming by air from Darwin, and frankly, I don’t think we can expect much support from there in any case. No. Our line of communications will have to be the sea lanes to Colombo, or down to Perth. That will be Somerville’s watch.”

  “Then you’ll pretty much abandon all the barrier islands from Java to Timor.” Bennett shook his head. “They won’t like that back home.”

  “It can’t be helped,” said Montgomery. “We don’t have the forces to even consider garrisoning those islands. I’ve a mind to see about using the Gurkhas to raid Bali. Word is the Japanese didn’t put much more than a battalion there. If we can take that back, then we at least have a line through the Badung Strait to Surabaya, for what it will be worth.”

  There was silence for a while, then Brigadier Duke of the 53rd Brigade came out with the one obvious element in this plan that had gone unspoken. “You realize that if we concentrate here, then we’re basically leaving the Dutch to wither on the vine out east. You know damn well that if we do hold Batavia, the Japanese will go all out for Surabaya. They’ll have little other choice.”

  “General Duke, the Dutch expected to have to hold this entire island without us. They might be grateful if we at least keep half of it safe. We won’t be abandoning them. If hard pressed, they can fall back on our positions here.”

  The others nodded, and there seemed to be no other dissenting voice. So Montgomery doled out his orders, and the die was cast. Japanese troop transports were already loaded and “on the water,” but the determination of Dutch Admiral Doorman was about to force a brief delay in the invasion.

  Java Sea, 11:40, 27 Feb, 1942

  Regrouping back at Surabaya after the fracas at Badung Strait, Doorman had received intelligence that the Japanese were coming. Another man might have looked at his weary sailors, battered ships, all needing maintenance and repair, and given up the ghost, but not Doorman. Even if he had no business doing what he now set out to do, credit must be given for his sheer audacity. He was going to take out anything he had at hand, and give challenge.

  So it was that Doorman steamed out into the Java Sea, his ships battered and bruised, many old four stack destroyers dating to the last war. His crews had little rest in the last 18 hours, but they stood to their posts, in spite of a general pall of misgiving that had fallen over the little fleet. They had just faced their enemy, outgunning them by a wide margin, with nine ships against four in the Badung Strait, and they suffered a convincing defeat. So nerves were raw as they set out, eyes swollen and tired, some men even falling asleep at their battle stations.

  To make matters worse, it was a much weaker force in this last sortie than the one made by Doorman in Fedorov’s history books. The entire British squadron, cruiser Exeter, and destroyers Electra, Encounter and Jupiter, had steamed off with the Australian cruiser Perth to rendezvous and support the arrival of Mountbatten and the two British carriers. If that weren’t enough, the US cruiser Houston was no longer afloat. Captain Rooks had made his fateful decision to screen the Antietam and Shiloh in the battle of the New Hebrides, and his valuable piece was no longer on the board. So instead of fourteen ships, Doorman had only eight, mostly destroyers.

  To bolster this force, he called on the four American destroyers that had returned to Tjilatjap. They would join the four that had returned to Surabaya, and he would also press the cruiser Sumatra into service, even though it had been laid up with engine problems for some time. So he would end up with a baker’s dozen that day, the fleet limping out of Surabaya at no more than 26 knots.

  The first American destroyer squadron led the way, with Edwards, Jones, Alden and Ford. Then came the Dutch squadron, the cruisers Java, Sumatra, De Ruyter, and two destroyers Witte de With and Kortenaer. Lastly he had the second US destroyer squadron, with Parrott, Pillsbury, Stewart and Pope. It was the last hurrah of what was once called the US Asiatic Fleet, and the final act in the drama the Dutch Navy would play in this campaign.

  The Japanese knew the enemy was out there. Doorman’s fleet had been spotted by search planes off the cruiser Natori, and the fleet was subjected to a probing air strike at 14:20 that afternoon. No hits were scored by the few Japanese planes that came in, and Doorman reformed and pressed on. He was going to meet a different mix of forces this time out, largely from the Western Screening Force led by Rear Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa. He had been well north in the Malacca Strait, but learning of the British evacuation underway from Singapore, he moved quickly south to interfere. Though he had arrived too late to stop Montgomery and his troops from reaching Java, he was now in a perfect position to cover the western segment of the Java landings.

  Ozawa had a fairly powerful group, light carrier Ryujo, 7th Heavy Cruiser Squadron with Kumano, Mikuma, Mogami, and Suzuya; light cruisers Natori, Yura, and Sendai, along with 12 destroyers in three divisions of four each. One division, and all his mine sweepers, stayed with the invasion convoy carrying 2nd Infantry Division. The rest of his covering force was out to give battle.

  Doorman could feel in his bones that he was going to be overmatched that day, but true to his roots in Naval Aviation, he put out a call for air support as soon as the lead formation of Japanese destroyers was sighted. The British still had 36 of the 48 Hurricanes that had been operating from Sumatra. Now they were based at fields near Batavia, and they ran to answer the call. They would join a group of 16 Blenheims, and a few Hudsons and a squadron of Buffalos in an effort to gain air superiority over the Java Sea. Against this force, Ryujo would put up 16 A5M fighters and 12 B5Ns, and there were several squadrons of land based fighters coming from Balikpapan, with 25 Zeroes, and another 11 A3M Claudes in the first wave of Japanese air strength. The drone of their engines tipping over in a dive was the opening overture of the Battle of the Java Sea.

  Chapter 14

  Destroyer Flotilla 3 under Rear Admiral Hashimoto was the first to sight the Allied fleet. He had been steaming as part of a wide screening line of destroyers, his flag on the cruiser Sendai, with destroyers Fubuki, Hatsuyuki, Shirayuki and Shirakomo. Sendai opened the action at 16,000 yards with her 5.5 inch guns targeting the lead US destroyers, Edwards and Jones. The Japanese DD Flotilla then put on speed and charged in at the tail of that column, their guns engaging Alden and Ford.

  Further south, the 5th DD Flotilla under Rear Admiral Hara aboard light cruiser Natori swung up to the northwest to engage the Dutch. Destroyers Asakaze, Harukaze and Matsukaze were in a good position to make a torpedo attack, and they put down a spread of 12 Long Lance torpedoes, firing from 15,000 yards. Behind them came the heavy cruisers Kumano, Mogami and Mikuma, and their bigger 8 inch guns already had the range to begin firing.

  These three cruisers, all in the same class, had been cleverly designed in 1934 with five triple 6.1-inch gun turrets to be classified as a light cruiser. Yet the ships were over 8,500 tons, and 646 feet long as opposed to a standard Nagara Class light cruiser of about 5,300 tons and 534 feet in length. The barbettes for those five turrets were also secretly enlarged so they could accommodate a bigger turret during refits if desired. It was a deceptive little shell game played by Japan early in the treaty years, when they felt snubbed to be allocated fewer ships than the so called “Major Powers
” like the US and Britain.

  So in 1937, these ships all had their facelift, receiving better 8-inch gun turrets to deftly move them into the heavy cruiser class. Later on, the lead ship, Mogami, would be converted to a hybrid seaplane carrier, with 11 planes aft on a long flight deck, and three turrets forward, much like the Tone class.

  Those three ships combined for thirty 8-inch guns, and they were going to wreak havoc on the thin skinned old destroyers. The American Tin Cans charged into the teeth of that fire, making smoke as they came, but visibility was good, the seas steady, and the Japanese aim was dead accurate. In the swirling duel that followed, Edwards, Pope, Alden and Ford would all take damaging hits, with the first three sinking within the hour, and Ford dead in the water. The engineers managed to get the screws turning again, and Ford limped off, fated to run into light cruiser Jintsu and come under the guns of heavy cruiser Haguro as it passed very near the Japanese landing zone, en route to Surabaya.

  The Japanese destroyers lunged in towards the center of Doorman’s battle line, and the Long Lance torpedoes were again in the water, this time from the south. Yet the Japanese had little luck with this deadly weapon that day. One hit would take Dutch Destroyer Kortenaer aft, and the resulting explosion put so much damage on the screws and rudder that she would wallow helplessly for the next 40 minutes, eventually sinking at 18:20.

  The line of three heavy cruisers then engaged Doorman’s force, and the ensuing battle would close to 8,000 yards and see hits on every side. Sumatra was so badly damaged that one of her boilers exploded, and the resulting fires would gut that ship in an hour. The Flagship De Ruyter was pummeled by no less than five hits, and had only one main gun operational thirty minutes into the fight.