B00DSDUWIQ EBOK

by Schettler, John

  “What gives JS? What do you make of this? Why they have us all locked up in here?” A couple of Seabees were chewing the fat over the incident, wishing they would be out in time for chow and hoping there was something special on the menu to celebrate the war’s end. Something was on the menu, alright, but no one seemed to know what was going on. It had been a long time since any of them had seen any sign of the Japanese.

  The last JS had seen of them was during an air raid seven months ago. They had three big towers set up, positioned at intervals from one side of the island to another. He was out on the airfield finishing up some grading operations when the sirens sounded, one tower warning another and passing the alert all across the island. Then he saw them, a couple Jap Zeros tipping their wings in the sun and diving in for a strafing run. He had never dug a hole so fast in his life, bare hands scraping at the rough hard packed earth he had just smoothed out with grey coral the last hour, trying to find some way to get low.

  The Zero flashed right down the field, its machine guns rattling as it came, and JS saw the lines of shells chew into the earthen runway bed. They went right by him, to either side, a couple rounds within just a foot of his position. Then the planes were gone, and the blue fighters were after them. It was the last surprise raid the Japanese ever got away with on that island, and JS was proud of telling all his kids that story after the war, all nine of them. Yes, Johnny got busy after he came home from the war, and he told his pups that they all had come within a foot or two of not being born if that Jap pilot had aimed just a little better.

  “You know as much as I do,” he said. “But if you want my money I’ll say it has to do with those new planes that came in for the 509th.”

  Something more than fresh food was on the menu that day. JS had it right. A couple very special planes from the 509th Composite Air Group had been rolled out, and then moved to a secret hanger. A couple days ago one was renamed the Enola Gay. He had a look at it one morning and, the first thing he noticed was that there were no gun turrets, and the bomb bays looked all wrong, but otherwise it looked much like all the other planes in the 6th Bombardment Group, with that big Circled R on the tail. All last month they had been loading big fat “pumpkin bombs” into the plane for runs over Japan. He had no idea that they were ballistically identical to another bomb, and that the Enola Gay was preparing for a very special mission.

  They renamed the plane the other day, which was another tip-off that something was up. JS had seen Alan Karl doing the new paint job, though it ticked off commander Robert Lewis to no end when he laid eyes on it. You don’t go messing with the nose art on someone’s plane! JS was Navy, a Seabee, but even he knew that much.

  There was a special bomb loading pit that the Seabees had to build for the 509th. No one knew why, but no one cared either. They just got the job done and went about business as usual.

  Johnny knew nothing more about it, but he would soon find out. That night the whole base was going to come alive like a swarm of bees, just as if it was another war day, with a big mission to fly. A couple hundred B-29s would take to the air and head north. One of them would be that very special plane, surrounded by so many similar targets that it would be a real crap shoot to get lucky and hit that plane. Odds were that Enola Gay would get through to the target and deliver her bomb…A very special bomb.

  This was how they planned it.

  * * *

  BB-61, Iowa was now point man in the looming battle, her sleek prow cutting through the sea as she sped northeast. Captain Charles Wellborn had the scent and was hot for battle. The enemy had hit the cruiser St. Paul to his north, and though dead in the water, they had been able to report “three ships sighted, SSW our position, estimate speed thirty.” Iowa was just as fast, and on a good angle to intercept now. There was going to be a battle within the hour.

  “The Big Stick” was ready—all nine of them, 50 caliber 16 inch guns among the best in the world. First of her class, Secretary of the navy Frank Knox called the Iowa “the greatest ship ever launched by the American nation.” That was true until Missouri, Wisconsin and New Jersey were launched as well, but as senior ship in the class, Iowa enjoyed a special status.

  Iowa had stood a watch in the Atlantic, daring the German battleship Tirpitz to make a showing that never came. Then she was moved to the Pacific to run with men like Spruance, Halsey and Lee. In all that time the only damage she sustained were a pair of hits from Japanese shore batteries that she easily shrugged off. One seaman had a small cut on his face, but no other man aboard was injured.

  The crew had been elated with the news of Japan’s defeat, and they celebrated with a big feast the day Halsey made the announcement. 2500 mouths to feed took some doing, but on that day the kitchens aboard Iowa served up 240 gallons of cream of tomato soup, 240 pounds of saltine crackers, 2,849 pounds of roast Young Tom Turkey, 18 pounds of cranberry sauce, 6 pounds of sage dressing, 1,500 pounds of whipped mashed potatoes, 480 pounds of buttered peas, 4,500 hot Parker House Rolls, 20 gallons of ripe olives, 20 gallons of sweet pickles, 1,200 pounds of sweet cherries served up in the pies, and then a special treat: 2,800 packs of cigarettes along with 2,800 packs of candy. Ice cream followed—200 gallons of it, and to wash it all down the ship served up 640 gallons of lemonade. They were going into battle well fed and content, with a confidence born of long months at sea and a feeling of invincibility.

  Now the ship was racing towards the biggest fight of its brief career, her long, graceful bow cutting the seas at 33 knots. Her turbines were pushing 52,000 tons of steel at that speed, an amazing feat that no other battleship could match. Considering her speed, tremendous firepower and considerable protection, many considered the ships of this class to be the best ever designed and deployed in the world. She almost got her chance to prove that against Yamato in the Philippines campaign, but now she would face the ship that beat that behemoth, and her enemy was not alone. Word was that there was a small flotilla of fast Russian ships out there, and coming fact. One was a battlecruiser, the others cruiser and destroyer class ships, or so the last signals from St. Paul had described them.

  Iowa would not be alone either. To the north the heavy cruiser Boston was hastening south to this same intercept point, her 8 inch guns ready for action. Destroyer Ingersoll was also nearby, but ordered to render assistance to St. Paul. The high main mast of Iowa would see enemy first. Bert Cook of Waterloo, Iowa would be the first man to see the Russians—three of them, just as the pickets had called it. But they weren’t ships, just odd glowing lights in the sky.

  Then the missiles came.

  * * *

  The Russian flotilla had raced east to pass very near the stricken St. Paul. Karpov watched the ship closely, Kirov’s deck guns trained and ready should it show any signs of life. They passed without incident, the flaming cruiser slowly listing from a big gaping wound in her side where one of the Oniks missiles had blow through her six inch armor. There were two more ships racing to cut them off, one big contact to the south, and a second smaller ship to the north.

  “Shall I order Golovko to fire that second set of Oniks now, sir?” Rodenko was at Karpov’s side.

  “Tell them to target the other cruiser to the north, just as before.”

  “Aye, sir. But that will be the last of their P-800s. They still have another eight P-900s if needed.”

  “I’m aware of the missile count, Mister Rodenko. It is more than adequate. Golovko is to engage that cruiser class unit and then maintain her ASW watch. Orlan will hold fire and concentrate entirely on air defense. As for that bigger contact to the south, I think it will be an American battleship.” He looked Rodenko in the eye. “Fair is fair, Rodenko. That’s work for Kirov.”

  Part XII

  War In Heaven

  “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the Dragon. And the Dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great Dragon was thrown down, th
at ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

  ― Book of Revelation: 12: 7-9

  Chapter 34

  Iowa was still wearing her war paint that day, the only ship in her class to have a camouflage dazzle paint scheme. Its lines were smoother and employed more curves, but their intent was the same. To throw off estimation of her size and speed when viewed by human eyes from a great distance.

  After his duel with Yamato, Karpov was in no great hurry to get a close look at the American battleship. He had argued endlessly that the one great advantage Kirov possessed at sea in any surface action was range. The ship could fight like an aircraft carrier, striking at ranges up to 370 kilometers with her P-900s. But there was only one left in inventory now after his long range attack against the distant American carriers. It had paid off with four ships hit, Monterey and Ticonderoga in the Sprague group, Cowpens and Shangri-La in the Halsey group. Of these, only Cowpens was damaged badly enough to be put completely out of action, taking two missile hits that affected her speed and hydraulics. Monterey was also limping badly after two hard knocks, but the rest of the fast fleet carriers were still alive and well, controlling the damage and edging a little further south to avoid harm. The Captain had no more missiles to expend on them—not with the American battleships bearing down on him now.

  The need to penetrate the American line was going to mean the action would necessarily close to short range at the moment of breakthrough. Karpov wanted to hurt his adversary well before it came to that. He elected to open the battle with the real workhorse of his SSM suite, the deadly Moskit-II. The ship left Vladivostok with her standard loadout of twenty missiles. Three had been fired thus far, leaving him seventeen, and he would begin the engagement against Iowa with a salvo of three.

  The problem with the missile soon became evident. They had gone to sea with the intention of fighting modern ships. None of the missiles had been re-programmed for plunging fire that had proved so deadly against WWII ships. The Moskit-IIs were therefore coming in as fast sea skimmers, and their accuracy actually worked against them, putting them square on the side armor belt of one of the best protected ships in the world.

  That said, the shock of a supersonic fire bomb with an armor penetrating warhead traveling at Mach 2.6 on impact was considerable. The missiles would meet over 12 inches of hardened steel that was designed to defeat a warhead of over 2000 pounds. The Moskits carried nearly a thousand pounds, but they hit with a thunderous impact as substantial reserves of rocket fuel ignited to add fire and hell to the explosion.

  The big ship rocked with the blow, broiling fire cascading up above the gunwales and into the main deck. Three hard body shots came in at ten second intervals and combined to start a huge fire amidships. Alarms were jangling all over the ship. Damage control parties were scrambling to the port side of the battleship, dragging fire hoses to get streams of water flowing on the inferno. The fires were so close to a 5 inch gun battery that one of its twin barrels actually began to melt and droop in the hot fuel driven flames, which reached red heat temperatures approaching 1800 degrees at the height of the fire.

  Yet fire consumes fuel rapidly, and within minutes the worst was over and the hundreds of trained damage control teams were slowly getting the upper hand. From a distance Iowa appeared to be a flaming wreck after one good shot, but there was soon more smoke than fire and, as the stiffening wind blew the pall astern, what was left was a blackened and buckled armor plate that was still intact. Two of the three missiles were defeated, the third struck more toward the long swept bow and a little high where it scudded across the deck in a billowing explosion forward of the number one turret, but the damage was soon controlled and in non-vital areas.

  Thank God for armor, thought Captain Wellborn. We rolled with the punches, like a fighter on the ropes taking it in the gut. There was nothing wrong with those Big Sticks out front now, he reasoned, looking at the massive turrets. If only I had a target! Then he realized the rockets had betrayed the exact bearing of the firing ship. The long smoky contrails pointed out the way. All he had to do was sight down that axis and he would find his enemy in time, but at what range? The horizon was nearly twenty miles away now, the sun lowering as the time passed through 18:00 hours. Sunset was 20:56, plenty of daylight left in these high latitudes. If they kept coming he should see them soon, silhouetted against the gloaming sky.

  Yet Iowa could fire much farther than that horizon. Her guns could lob their massive 2700 pound shells out twenty-four miles. Wellborn was not going to wait for the enemy to come at him again without answering. He ordered his number one turret to fire. They had no firing solution, no target in sight, just a bearing, but the big guns blasted away anyway. Iowa was clearing her throat, and the sheer concussion blew out the last of the flames on her forward deck.

  The sound of the massive guns going off set the ship’s crew to cheering, which is exactly what Wellborn wanted. You don’t lay on the ropes and just take it. You throw punches back, whether you can reach the other fellow or not. In a hot minute some 8100 pounds of metal would plow into the ocean out there. They would see those rounds and know we’re still here and ready to fight.

  * * *

  They did see them. Rodenko called a warning and Kirov tracked the incoming shells on radar as if they were missiles. Amazingly, they came arcing up from the distant curve of the earth and then descended, on a perfect line to their present heading and just a couple thousand meters ahead of the Orlan. The blind haymaker Iowa threw back at them had very nearly grazed their chin. Orlan, out in front, was much closer, and they had a good look at the tall water spouts rising as the big shells plummeted into the sea.

  “Rodenko—I thought we were jamming their fire control radars.” Karpov’s complaint was an obvious one. The shot had been far closer than it should have been.

  “We are, sir. There is no way they can read our position on Radar through the clutter we’re hitting them with.”

  In an instant Karpov realized what had happened. “Helm, come left fifteen degrees,” he said quickly. “They’re firing down our missile wakes. We’ll need to assume a new heading after every salvo. Samsonov, set up three more Moskit-IIs. I want the KA-226 to get me optical images on that ship. I want to see what our missiles did to them in that first salvo.”

  Rodenko was nervously watching at the Fregat system, which was still receiving data from their AEW helicopter. He saw what looked like a signal cloud or weather front to the south, then realized what it was. “Conn, Radar.” He began reflexively, the years at that station honing his reflexes as he reported. “Large airborne contact cloud bearing 190 degrees and approaching at 400kph.”

  “Range?”

  “Ka-226 has the leading edge at 200 kilometers. Fregat should have them in about five minutes. From there it will be another twenty minutes or so before they reach our present position.”

  The Captain’s eyes shifted back and forth, hand on his chin. They had sixteen P-400s left. The rest of their SAM defense rested with the Klinok medium range system, which could not yet engage. The Orlan was the real bulwark of the fleet air defense. That ship still had 152 lightning fast SAMs ready for action.

  “Nikolin, signal Captain Yeltsin to match our new heading and go to air alert one. We’re going to need them soon.”

  How many planes were coming, he wondered? The contact cloud as Rodenko described it was very dense, yet widely dispersed. In spite of his preemptive strike against the American carriers, they got a significant strike wave in the air, and anything that gets through our defense umbrella will arrive right in the heat of my action against this battleship.

  His plan was simple. They might fire a hundred rounds at me to get just a single hit. That was what Fedorov told him. Our ammunition is limited, but we hit them every time we fire. He had twenty-four more SSMs on Kirov, yet he knew each and every one was going to hit and hurt
his enemy. Against a smaller ship they were awesome lances, perfect for blasting the lighter armored cruisers and destroyers to hell. Against the big battleship they were hard punches indeed, but not fatal blows. Look at the punishment we put on the Yamato, and we still could not sink that ship. I can’t waste my valuable missiles on this ship’s heavy armor…

  “Samsonov, we can still program the Moskit-IIs for popup maneuver, can we not?”

  “Yes, sir. That is a simple toggle selection.”

  “Key all three for popup and hold. I suspect our first salvo hit their side armor. We need to be more precise in our targeting.”

  A second salvo from Iowa came in again, very wide now that they had turned on the new heading. This time there were nine rounds falling. Karpov smiled, knowing he had been correct. There was nothing wrong with their jamming. The American Captain was simply firing blind. It was all bluster and no skill, just like the Italians; just like Iwabuchi on Kirishima when he was chasing us in the dark.

  “Activate forward deck guns,” said Karpov.

  “Sir, aye. Guns ready.”

  “Begin firing. Sets of 16 rounds. We’ll show them what precision naval gunnery can really do.”

  It was time to dance and jab.

  * * *

  The first shells landed just shy of the bow, surprising everyone on the Iowa’s bridge. They fell in pairs, obviously from typical twin gun mounts, and from the size of the water plumes Wellborn knew they must be no more than 5 inchers.