As reports filtered in, the scope of the disaster became more apparent. Eight of the eleven carriers in the Japanese armada had taken damage, though his own ship was still fully operational. Losses to planes and pilots had been severe, and to make matters worse, they could only confirm that two of the American carriers had suffered hits. In effect. Halsey, Sprague and Spruance had simply clobbered the Japanese fleet, and came out of that fight with very little damage. Bunker Hill was still in business, as Ziggy had signaled, and the only real serious damage was to Lady Lex , which needed some time to repair her hull.
Halsey ordered Spruance to detach Lexington and send it to Pago Pago immediately. Then he told Ziggy to head northwest towards Efate, just in case the enemy got any ideas about intervening there. He would take Taffy 11 northeast, hoping to further cover the Fijis, and that move would present Yamamoto with a most difficult decision.
* * *
When the Admiral got the news from Hara, he could read well enough between the lines. His old warhorse had been defeated. The list of damaged ships was piling up, and it seemed likely that one or two of those carriers, most likely Junyo and Gozo Kiryu , might sink. He was still a full day’s sailing from the chosen landing site at Vanua Levu, with Yamato cruising like a massive iron fortress, surrounded by all those troop ships. One of his transports, the Teisin Maru , was leaking oil and darkening the sea with a wide black stripe. That would lead any spying plane right to his ships. Reports were still showing enemy carriers between 400 and 500 miles to his southwest, and he realized now that he would have no carrier cover if he persisted.
This attack cannot proceed, he realized. I am carrying the entire 3rd Infantry Division, and it will be completely exposed. Even if I did manage to reach the landing site, it would be subject to attack by all the American land based planes, and then those carriers…. The only thing to do now is to turn speedily about, and hope to get north before those carriers can close the range. We have obviously taken a severe tactical defeat here, and now my next order converts that into a strategic loss as well. Yet there is nothing else to do. The invasion fleet must withdraw.
That order was given, and Yamamoto could now thank the weather gods that had so confounded his pilots that day. Hopefully, the thick clouds would cover his retreat. Admiral Nagumo was ordered to leave Gozo Kiryu with a small destroyer escort and take the remainder of his fleet directly to Truk. Hara and Yamaguchi would take their ships back to Rabaul.
Troops suddenly come in great abundance, thought Yamamoto, but this engagement has changed the entire strategic picture if I cannot get them into battle. Our offensive was completely blunted, a dented sword that had to be sheathed before it could even join with the enemy. 3rd Division will now sit on Rabaul, and quite frankly, I doubt that I can cover it for any further offensive operations in the foreseeable future. Operation Suriyoko was over.
The journey home simply got darker the next day, when Yamamoto was informed that the Americans had safely reinforced Efate with yet one more regiment of their Marines, and that Luganville had been struck by carrier planes, the airfield there severely damaged, and the air wing depleted. The brave stand of Vicksburg and Gettysburg had protected 8th Marines, when all of Yamamoto’s fleet could not protect 3rd Infantry and allow it to reach its landing beaches. It would come to be called the Battle off Yasawa, the long string of islands off the Fijis that marked the mid-point between the two opposing carrier forces, and it was a clear American victory.
There would be many lessons learned from that battle, on both sides. The Americans would realize that their new Essex Class carriers had finally achieved parity with the enemy, and now, with so many Japanese carriers reported hit, Nimitz and Halsey would begin to feel that the US Navy was top dog for the first time in the war. The performance of the new F6 Hellcats was deemed to be superb, and the US dive bomber squadrons received commendations for both bravery and newfound skill.
Strategically, Halsey now believed he could defend all the turf the Allies now held in the Pacific, and stop any further enemy offensives. In fact, because of Yasawa, New Zealand felt secure enough to again release its veteran 2nd Infantry Division for deployment to Persia, and that would make a big difference in that campaign. The US had control of southern New Caledonia, and with the delivery of 8th Marine Regiment, they would now outnumber the Japanese on Efate two to one, and with much better troops. Nimitz also still had the entire 1st USMC Division in the bank at Pago Pago, and was slowly mustering the transports to move them. The fact that he had this division in hand, with carriers that could defend its transit to a new objective, put the real fear into Yamamoto.
Yet compared to the catastrophe that was Midway in the old history, this battle was not such a severe blow to Japan. While many carriers were hit and damaged, almost all of them would make it safely to a friendly port, except Junyo and Gozo Kiryu , which both sunk on the 21st of March as they struggled homeward. Perhaps it was to bolster morale, but the Japanese circulated the rumor that the battle had been a draw, claiming they had sunk the Lexington , even though Halsey knew it was safe at Pago Pago, and needed only six days repairs to the hull.
The Japanese had plenty of work to do at pierside. Akagi would need 38 days repair, and some of her damage to the hull and engines was going to eventually require a trip home to Japan. Hiyo would need only 23 days work, as would Tosa when that ship reached Truk. So by the end of March, Halsey had all his carriers intact, save for Gettysburg , which would be laid up at Suva for some time. But the Japanese would be missing two carriers, particularly Junyo , and need to wait into mid to late April to get back Akagi and Tosa .
One lesson that both Hara and Nagumo could agree upon was that the toughness of ships like Taiho and the battle carrier Ryujin made a big difference. Both those two ships took bomb damage, but simply shrugged off the hits and kept operating. It put in their minds that the big fleet carriers they had relied on at the outset of the war were much too fragile, and that they would need to get more ships like Taiho if they were to win this war.
This changes everything, thought Yamamoto. The troops on Fiji are now withering on the vine, two of the best divisions in the Army, and I cannot reinforce there for at least a month, let alone land on Vanua Levu to continue to contest those islands. I will be lucky to cover supply runs to Fiji, Efate, and New Caledonia, and our position on Espiritu Santo at Luganville is now very precarious. The Army will now lord it over me, and berate the navy, saying that their gift of five divisions promised to the South Pacific region is sorely wasted. I suppose they will, at long last, have a point.
Morale will be very low when we return to Rabaul. I must do something to bolster the troops. Perhaps I should arrange a tour of all our bases in the Solomons, for they will most likely become the next front if we cannot hold out in the New Hebrides.
He did not know it, but that idea was a dark shadow that could threaten to end his life. He had died while conducting just such a tour, ambushed by American fighters on the 18th of April, 1943. If time and fate had their way, the Admiral had only three weeks left to live.
Then he received two cryptic messages, right in the midst of all this turmoil. One from Admiral Nagano, as he was surprised to learn that Captain Harada and Takami never arrived at Yokohama. Then, not two hours later, the special communications equipment given to him by Harada lit up aboard Yamato . It was the very man he needed to speak to, and he would receive some most unusual news….
Meanwhile, Yamamoto would not have to worry about resupplying Efate. The two US Marine regiments, and 1st Marine Para Battalion made short work of the 79th Regiment posted there. The Japanese had landed at Havana Harbor in the north, and when they began to push south they ran right into a Marine regiment. Then, news came of the landings on the east end of the island, where the French 2nd and 4th Tonkin Battalions were watching possible landings sites and the one good airfield near Takara.
Colonel Holmes had landed his battalions at Eton Bay and Pang on the east coast. There
they quickly overwhelmed the 2nd Tonkin Battalion, took a small airstrip at Forari, and drove up the coast road through the villages of Lamin and Bong. The Japanese sent one of their three battalions to Takara to stiffen the defense there, but it would not hold against the eventual weight of the entire 6th Regiment.
Colonel Hall’s 8th Regiment had the hardest fighting in the west, scaling the heights of Mount Erskine to root out the enemy, and pushing up “Ring Road” along the coast. The Coup de Grace was when 1st Marine Para Battalion re-embarked to do an end around, storming Havana Harbor behind enemy lines and pushing out the HQ of 79th Regiment there. Exhausted, out of supply, the Japanese holed up in any hillside cave they could find, and the Marines had the bitter taste of the cold soup they would eat in many of these future island battles. They had to burn and blast the Japanese infantry from each cave and bunker, but by the 27th of March, Efate had fallen.
The rapid demise of 79th Regiment put the fear in to General Imamura that his 78th Regiment, from the same reserve line division, would not be able to hold Luganville on Espiritu Santo. Now he regretted the ill-fated sortie to try and seize Vanua Levu, realizing he should have argued for a much more conservative approach, posting 3rd Division on Luganville.
It was now too late for such regrets. The Battle off Yasawa had, for at least the next two to three weeks, paralyzed the Japanese Navy’s ability to impede anything the US Navy would undertake. Nimitz had 1st USMC waiting for transports, and he was going to use those troops as soon as he could.
Half a world away, other events would conspire to cause a dramatic shift in the tides of this war. This time it would not be bold and aggressive moves on the ground, but the sheer obstinacy and foolishness of a single man—Ivan Volkov.
Part III
April Fool’s Day
“ A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress; inquiry, without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends.”
— Arab Proverb
Chapter 7
The incident that triggered the disaster in the Caucasus was a small thing when it began, but that was the way of time and fate. After a complaint that the troops of Orenburg were sitting in their bunkers west of Maykop, and doing nothing whatsoever to aid the battle against Russian forces in the Taman region, the 3rd Orenburg Army was finally ordered to attack. Their line was originally strung out along the Pshekha River, about 10 kilometers west of the mining and oil worker town of Belorchensk. Just beyond the river, the last relatively fresh rifle divisions of the Soviet 44th Army were dug into their positions through heavy woodland. The line stretched south through Aspheronsk and then down to the coast east of Tuapse, which was still held by the Soviets.
Volkov’s troops had been unable to penetrate that line for over a year, and they knew they would not do so now either, but for the sake of putting on a show and silencing German objections, they attacked. Things went predictably bad, with the heavy log bunkers of the Soviets embedded with machineguns and small caliber infantry guns, and surrounded by mines and wire. But then Hansen’s 11th Army, veterans of Volgograd, fought their way through the big river city of Krasnodar on the Kuban, and were soon coming up behind the Russians.
One by one, those positions were reduced from their weak side, and by the 18th of March, the line had largely been overwhelmed. Elsewhere, the fight for Novorossiysk continued, with the tough Soviet Marines putting up strong resistance in that city, but it was only a matter of time. Volkov’s troops had pushed their line another 20 kilometers west of Belorchensk to make their attack, thinking to occupy an outlying oil field near Saratovskaya that they did not think the Germans knew anything about. They would not have known, save for the map Fedorov had sent the German Abwehr, and Hansen had orders to occupy that field before eventually pushing on to Maykop.
Yet now the German complaints had backfired on them. That field was just beyond another small tributary river, the Psekups, which flowed north to the Kuban, and it was there that the 38th Rifle Division of the Orenburg Federation finally met up with the Germans they had heard so much about since the outbreak of the war. Ott’s 52nd Infantry Korps was operating in that sector, and his 339th and 83rd divisions had just swept through Saratovskaya and were approaching that field. It was on a small hill, marked #69 on the German local area maps, but otherwise not noted as the site of any oil development. Ott had simply been told to secure Hill 69, but when his troops got there, they found it already occupied.
With fighting in the area still mopping up the Soviet bunkers, neither side knew that they were not facing their enemies when the first shots were fired. A forward German patrol was spotted and fired on from the top of Hill 69, with one casualty. It fell back, reported the hill to be enemy occupied, and five minutes later, the Germans put in some well-aimed mortar fire. They were only 50mm rounds, for the Germans had been told not to use heavy caliber weapons if they found the Soviets there. After desultory mortar fire, the Germans were surprised to suddenly receive a radio call in the clear asking them to stop. The hill was occupied by troops from the Federation of Orenburg, it said, and the Division Commander sent orders down to impose a cease fire.
A party was sent forward under the protection of a white flag, and a Lieutenant Schubert, who spoke fluent Russian, negotiated. “We regret the friendly fire incident,” he said, but I am told to inform you that our division will now take possession of this hill, and of the village of Saratovskaya to the south. My General asks that you please vacate these positions tonight, and our troops will move in tomorrow morning.”
“That will not be possible,” said the Kazakh Colonel in charge. “I have orders to hold my position here, and our troops have occupied the entire line of the Psekups River as well.”
“But Colonel, we are as yet a very long way from our objective.” In this the Lieutenant was revealing something that was best left unsaid.
“And just what would that be?”
“Maykop. Our Korps is to move there to take charge of those facilities, and you will therefore be free to redeploy elsewhere—perhaps on the Volga.”
The Colonel folded his arms. “Lieutenant, I believe this may be a question that will be resolved well above our pay grade. It is a matter for the diplomats, and not soldiers to decide. In the interest of continued cooperation between our two respective armies, I must ask you to cancel your planned occupation of this hill—at least until such time as I receive orders to withdraw. Would that be acceptable?”
“I will take your request to my commanding officer.”
So it began with a small friendly fire incident, that soon became this exchange of words. But the diplomats were very far away. The Lieutenant went back and passed the news on up the chain of command to eventually reach Generalmajor Martin Ronicke of the 339th Division. He, in turn, passed it on to General der Infanterie Eugen Ott, who kicked it to Hansen for confirmation on what he was to do the following morning. Hansen had been told to secure the port of Tuapse, and then advance through Belorchensk to occupy Maykop. His Mountain Korps was to move into the hills south of the oil center, with the German lines anchored on the coast at the small port of Soche. He repeated those orders to Ott.
“But Herr General, shouldn’t we get clearance from the other side before continuing this operation? This could create quite a lot of trouble.”
Hansen had to decide whether to kick the can one more time, all the way to General Manstein’s HQ at Rostov. It was a most unwelcome call, for Manstein had already received orders from OKW for Hansen to do exactly what he had related to Ott, but he was not happy about them.
Irrespective of Manstein’s opinion on the matter, Hitler would remain adamant. His troops had pushed all the way to the Volga, through the Donets Basin and now into the Kuban to the Black Sea Coast. His armies had burned Moscow, leveled Volgograd, and all while Volkov’s troops had failed to mount a single successful offensive anywhere on the front. He now viewed Volkov as a devious do
-nothing slackard, who had dangled the promise of oil for the last two years, yet always found some reason or another why it could not yet be delivered.
* * *
When Ribbentrop returned with Volkov’s ultimatum concerning the Kuban, Hitler exploded. “How dare that man dictate territorial claims! If he wanted the Kuban, then he should have sent his troops there to take it. We do in one month what his armies could not accomplish in two years! Now he wants to make certain that we are kept well away from all his precious oil, but this will not be tolerated. German troops liberated the Kuban, and all of the Taman Peninsula, and it will be German troops that will control Maykop!”
Now Hitler looked at the map, the anger still reddening his face. “What is this river?”
Keitel leaned over the map, squinting. “The Urup.”
“That makes a good north to south boundary, running due south from Armavir and right along the same line as this one to the north. Send a message to Volkov. Tell him that all his troops remaining in the Kuban bend region must withdraw behind that line. They have 48 hours to begin this withdrawal. If movement is not observed, this continued defiance will be met with German steel. I will order Manstein to continue his advance one minute after that deadline. There will be no excuses—no further delays. This is a Führerbefehl!”
A 48-hour hold was placed on all operations south of the Don, and Ribbentrop was sent with firm instructions to clarify Germany’s position. He met with Volkov again on the 28th of March in a short and tense session.
Ironfall (Kirov Series Book 30) Page 6