“Hmm,” was all Jim said. He was pleased with his division’s gunnery; fewer than half the shots fired had missed their mark and they still only had smoothbores, but it wasn’t good enough. At this rate, they’d eventually batter in the forward casemate of that one ship. They might even destroy her. But she no longer led her sisters; the other five had joined her in a parallel advance. When they turned—soon, most likely—they’d present their undamaged sides and all the guns behind them.
“Get on the TBS to Admiral Keje,” he ordered, the thunder of Haakar-Faask’s guns just astern nearly drowning his words. “Tell him we’re doing damage, but the enemy is about to turn on us and it won’t be one-sided anymore. We could get smeared pretty fast. We have to decide right now whether to break off or go all in. Either way, we’re gonna get hurt. If we break off, we lose Madras. All in, we could lose the fleet and Madras.” He shook his head. “Keje has to call this one.”
USNRS Salissa (CV-1)
Keje nodded, blinking, when he heard Jim’s message. From his elevated post high on Salissa’s bridge, he could see it all. The first Grik dreadnaught was taking a beating, but none of the enemy had been firing back for a while. The deadly accurate fire of Des-Div 4 must have gotten through forward and spooked them. They were still coming, though, and must think they had the advantage. They probably did—against Des-Div 4. Keje felt sure he could overwhelm the enemy with all his ships. His had the advantage of speed and maneuverability. But once they got in close, the fire control that had been working so well would be of little use—or would it? If his ships could coordinate their windage adjustments as well as their elevation, concentrate on small areas of the enemy armor, much like they’d been doing, they might punch through. . . . Salissa had 50 thirty-two-pounder smoothbores, and Arracca carried an equal number of fifty-pounders; probably more guns each than the enemy, but their likely hundred-pounders would outrange them and pack a heavier punch. Of course, Salissa, at least, wasn’t constrained to going toe to toe. She had some modern weapons as well. . . .
On a pivot mount forward, under the leading edge of the flight deck, she had a breeched section of one of Amagi’s ten-inch guns that could fire Amagi’s own shells. The two hundred-pound projectiles had been modified for muzzle-loading use, with a reduced-diameter bearing band and a heavy copper skirt to expand into the rifling. But even at the lower velocity the new gun could achieve, he knew the heavy shells would be devastating, and the gun’s crew could put the big bullets on a target the size of a felucca at fifteen hundred tails. Salissa also carried two of Amagi’s 5.5-inch guns, with Japanese ammunition, on her superstructure. These were long-range weapons, more powerful than Walker’s four-inch-fifties, with high-explosive, armor-piercing shells. He knew something about steel now, and there was no way those Grik monstrosities could match Amagi’s armor, no matter how thick their plates were laid on. He made his decision.
“Send to my dear Cap-i-taan Tassana-Ay-Arracca that she and Arracca must remain with the transports and oilers. I will yield to no arguments.” He paused. “Do ask her to keep a pursuit CAP above us all to guard against Grik zeppelins, though. Salissa and the remainder of Des-Div 4 will join the action against the enemy! The ship will be cleared for surface action, and all planes of the First Air Wing but that of COFO Cap-i-taan Jis-Tikkar will proceed to Maa-draas!”
USS Dowden
“They’re turning!” Niaal excitedly echoed the cry from the lookout. The gunnery officer in the maintop was continuously updating range, course, and speed estimates. Jim could already see the aspect change of the enemy battle line through his binoculars. He had no idea how accurate the enemy fire would be at nine hundred yards, but he suspected his division would take some hits—and they’d be bad. The question became, Should he have his ships continue to concentrate on a single enemy, and maybe punch through somewhere? Their own fire would be accurate enough at this range that it would be hard to miss. On the other hand, if they spread their fire among all the ships, they were less likely to do serious damage to any—but they might disrupt the enemy’s gunnery and cause them to rush their imperfect aim. The second alternative might be safer, but the first was more likely to achieve something. He sighed. This one was his call. He decided on a compromise.
“Dowden, Haakar-Faask, Naga, Bowles, and Felts will continue firing on the first target—the Grik flagship, most likely,” Jim ordered. “All others will target their opposite numbers in the line of battle. Maybe we can wreck the one while keeping the others shook up.” Niaal repeated the order to fire control and the comm shack.
“Range eight, fi’, oh! Bearing, tree tree seero! Speed . . . they still turning, but I make it eight knots!” came the report from aloft.
“Match elevations at eight hundred, and fire when ready!” Jim replied.
“Stand by . . . Stand clear!”
“Clear!” chorused the midshipmen, and the salvo bell rattled for a long moment as the ship steadied. Then, with a thunderous jarring that shook the ship, all twelve starboard guns spat fire and heavy shot. An instant later, Haakar-Faask was enveloped in smoke as her guns thundered. Then Bowles, Naga, and Felts all seemed to fire at once. Even while the mighty spheres were still in flight, the rest of the division opened up on their respective targets.
ArataAmagi
Kurokawa was thrown to the deck of his pilothouse when perhaps fifty heavy shot struck his massive ship with an unprecedented, ear-splitting fury. Somewhere aft, deep, it seemed, he heard a terrible crashing and a chorus of shrieks.
“Fire back, you fools!” he roared. “Destroy those ships at once!”
Akera staggered back to the wheel, catching it as it spun, and leaned over the ship-wide tube. “Commence firing!” he cried. “Commence firing!”
“Not all the guns yet bear!” came the tinny reply, “and we took two roundshot through the open shutters—not to mention some serious dents that time! The timber backing has splintered in many places I can see from here!”
“All the more reason to return fire at once!” Akera almost screamed, glancing quickly at the compass binnacle in front of the wheel. He spun the wheel again. “Fire as they bear!”
Kurokawa had regained his feet, and his eyes smoldered. “Have the special comm division contact General Muriname at his aerodrome! I had hoped we wouldn’t have to use him—it will be costly—but we are taking damage, and the enemy capital ships do not seem inclined to engage. Tell Muriname it is time for his ships to come up! He knows what to do.”
USS Dowden
“That had to leave some bumps,” Ellis muttered, staring through his glasses. The target had almost disappeared behind the blizzard of battering, shattering shot that churned the sea around it with splinters of iron. All his division used iron shot now that enough sources had been found to provide it. With so much copper needed for mixing the bronzelike metal for the big guns, and alloying brass cartridges for the new breechloaders and the “old” modern weapons they had, iron had actually become more disposable. Shot-grade iron was crude, high-phosphor, brittle stuff that could be cast quickly—but the process also made nearly perfect spheres that could be pushed at high relative velocities. Velocity was key to smoothbore accuracy. Without the spin provided by rifling, the shot would eventually hook, but the faster it was going, the farther it went before the hook became apparent. Shot-grade iron also hit nearly as hard as copper, but instead of deforming, it sometimes exploded like a ball of glass. That could be handy against wooden ships and enemy flesh. Maybe it wasn’t so good against armored targets, though. . . .
Jim gazed back down the enemy line. All the Grik dreadnaughts had been hit, and the sunlight revealed suddenly mottled, dented armor that had shone smooth just moments before. Dented, but apparently not broken. He frowned. There’d been a few return shots, but none of his ships had reported any damage. How long can that last? he asked himself anxiously. He heard the gunnery officer shout, “No change, no change! Same elevation!” Cries of “Ready!” reached his ears. “A
ll guns report ready,” Niaal yelled in the tube.
“Stand clear!”
“All clear!”
Jim looked back at the target. A mere instant before Dowden’s salvo bell began to ring, he saw the side of the dreadnaught vanish behind its own massive, stuttering pall of smoke. The entire Grik battle line and the ships of Des-Div 4 fired almost simultaneously, but the projectiles that passed one another on opposite trajectories didn’t care. The Allied shot flew faster, but the Grik shot was heavier and retained its lower velocity better—and still had more than twice the energy when it hit naked wood.
It was Jim’s turn to tumble to the quarterdeck when two one-hundred-pound balls crashed through his beloved Dowden amid massive near-miss plumes of white seawater that stood high in giant columns around her. The splashes rocked the ship and left her deluged when they collapsed.
“Damage report!” Niaal bellowed, even as Jim quickly jumped to his feet and studied the results of their own fire. The spray around the target was clearing, revealing a sloping iron side that had begun to resemble the surface of the moon.
“She still looks as invincible as ever!” commented Niaal’s lieutenant.
“Maybe,” Jim replied. “But all those dents are going to start raising hell inside her.”
“Commodore!” Niaal cried. “We’re taking water forward. The balls punched straight through both sides of the ship, and one came out at the port waterline! Damage control is trying to plug the hole, but it is very large.”
“Worst case?”
“It won’t sink us. If it comes to that, we can seal the compartment and the pumps will handle the seepage. But it will slow us down.”
“What of the other ships?”
“Naga and Bowles report damage. Naga’s is much like ours, but Bowles lost her mizzenmast and her engine. I recommend you order her to retire under sail.”
“No,” Jim said firmly. “She stays in the fight until she falls too far behind. Then she can retire!”
“Stand clear!”
“All clear!”
Dowden spat iron once more, and Jim followed the shoosh! of the shot. Haakar-Faask fired, and her smoke passed in front of him, so he couldn’t see their own broadside strike, but did see Haakar-Faask’s hit. Was it his imagination, or did he see plates spin away from the enemy and fall into the sea? Something flashed bright at the periphery of his view, and he redirected his glasses toward the rear of the enemy line. The rearmost Grik dreadnaught had just . . . blown up! There was no way to know what caused it; only Clark had been targeting it. Maybe it was a super lucky shot—or even an accident on the Grik’s gun deck? Whatever the cause, he would take it, and the crew of Dowden cheered and pranced exuberantly as tons of debris splashed into the sea.
“Commodore!” Niaal pointed aft. Haakar-Faask was heeling hard over on her port beam, making a radical starboard turn. Debris was still flying from a massive wound at her stern. Perhaps worse, USS Davis, just aft of Haakar-Faask, looked like she’d just been the target of a gigantic shotgun blast. Her masts and cordage practically sprayed away from her amid a cloud of bright splinters, and steam gushed from her innards. By the extent of the damage and volume of splashes, two Grik dreadnaughts must have targeted her at once, some of the shot pattern catching Haakar-Faask too.
“Jesus!” Jim muttered. “She’s done for! What’s Haakar-Faask’s status?”
“She just report!” Niaal said. Like many ’Cats, his normally good English slipped under stress. “She lose helm control, but still have auxiliary conn. She back in line soon!”
“Stand clear!”
“All clear!”
BaBOOM! SHHHHHH!
Dowden heaved, and Jim felt like somebody hit him in the face with a baseball bat. It didn’t hurt, not really, but his thoughts were scattered. They always say you see stars, he thought, but purple stars? ’Cats scurried around him and he heard shouts and screams, but for a while—maybe a long while—he didn’t feel like he was really there. “Hey!” he finally said, realizing Niaal was holding him up—For how long? The deck around was scattered with shredded corpses and great, jagged splinters. Jim looked down to see a huge gap that had opened not far away, as if an enemy shot had torn his ship from beam to beam. “What the hell?” he murmured, noticing his mouth wasn’t moving exactly right. Hot blood started getting in his suddenly watery eyes.
“We hit bad,” Niaal said, blinking concern.
“How bad?”
“I still waiting on report from the carpenter, but we take maybe six hits that time. Prob’ly bad enough!”
Wet, grimy, coughing ’Cats scampered up on deck from below, followed by a gush of gray-black smoke and the first tongues of flame. Jim Ellis quickly came to his senses and realized Niaal might not have all of his. He grabbed the ’Cat and shook him.
“Get all the ready charges over the side right damn now!” he said. He felt like he was mumbling, and his words sounded weird. “Flood the magazine!”
“Maag-a-zine already flood!” shouted the blood-streaked gunnery officer. “Shot punch right through. Another knock hole in fuel bunker. We sink or burn, but not blow up!”
“I already order ready charges over,” Niaal assured him. “Boilers are secure, an’ we venting steam.”
“But . . . if we can’t move, we’ll be sitting ducks!” Jim managed. He looked at the gunnery officer. “And why aren’t you at your post?”
The ’Cat shrugged and pointed up and forward. The mainmast was gone. All that stood amidships was the shot-perforated, steam-gushing stack.
“My post gone, Commodore. I fall out, land on longboat cover in the waist! Lucky!”
“But . . . well, we are sittin’ ducks,” Jim said. Longer tongues of flame flailed from below, while ’Cats shoveled sand down the companionway from barrels that stood nearby. The ship was nearly dead in the water, her flooding carcass moving only slightly under the foremast sails.
“You gotta sit, Commodore,” Niaal said. “You bleeding—an’ I think you jaw is broke.” The Lemurian was easing Jim aft, toward the skylight above the great cabin/wardroom. He cried for the surgeon—Again, Jim thought. The carpenter appeared, also soaked and grimy. Jim saw him, but darkness was creeping in around his field of view. He felt the hard, raised sill around the skylight under his butt and heard an excited, grim exchange, but the words didn’t make any sense.
“Haakar-Faask is coming alongside to take us off, Commodore,” Niaal said, breaking through the gathering haze with a gentle shake. “We’re going to lose the ship, sir. Nothing we can do. Clark and Felts are taking the survivors off Davis now. She’s goin’ down fast.”
“Dammit!” Jim managed to shout. “Then they’ll be sitting ducks too!”
The gunnery officer looked at Niaal. The commodore had missed a lot.
“Sure, but . . .” Niaal nodded northwest. Jim slowly followed his gaze. The Grik line, the five dreadnaughts and two armored frigates that remained, were already past Jim’s shattered, almost-stationary division, steaming west-northwest. “Ahd-mi-raal Keje’s bringin’ up Big Sal, Commodore, an’ them Griks think they got a bigger duck just sittin’. She gonna sit on their damn heads, I figger.” He looked at Jim with a new flurry of concerned blinks. “Sur, we got the fire under control—most of the bunkers underwater now—but Dowden’s gonna sink. Surgeon’s dead, an’ we gotta get you over to Haakar-Faask! Sur? Commodore!”
CHAPTER 27
////// USS Walker
South China Sea
1240
There was no question about it; that was Hidoiame and her tanker up ahead—unless there was more than one Kagero-class destroyer and accompanying oiler loose in these seas. I don’t even want to think about that, Matt told himself. Both ships were clearly visible to the crow’s-nest lookout when Walker climbed atop the taller swells. All the lookouts had been studying the silhouette drawings they’d been given, and the keen-eyed watcher in the uncomfortable steel bucket high on the foremast was positive.
“I
guess she hasn’t got radar after all,” Matt mumbled. “That, or maybe Okada knocked it out.” He’d been worried about radar. No Japanese ships had it when they’d met before, but it existed. The cruiser USS Boise had it—and took it with her when she was damaged and ordered out of the area, leaving no other radar in the entire Asiatic Fleet either. Aircraft had been the only way to spot distant targets—and only the Japanese had aircraft by then. Here, these Japanese had no aircraft, but those at Matt’s disposal couldn’t fly in this weather. Time had passed “back home,” however, and who knew what kind of ugly surprises Hidoiame concealed?
“What makes you so sure, Skipper?”
“No reaction yet. With radar, they might’ve just avoided us.”
“I don’t think so, Skipper,” Gray said. “Radar can’t be much good in this sea, and now we’ve spotted ’em, that tanker damn sure can’t avoid us.”
Matt nodded. “I guess you’re right. Then the question now is, Do they see us yet, radar or not, and if they do, are they just trying to sucker us in?”
It was raining again, and the pilothouse windows were practically opaque. Matt walked out on the bridgewing and looked through his binoculars until the spray clouded them as well. He caught only glimpses of the enemy and quickly stepped back under cover. A damp towel was draped over the back of his chair, and he used it again to wipe the binoculars and dry his face. His hat and clothes were soaked. At least I can get out of it, he thought. The guys on deck at their battle stations or on the fire-control platform are probably miserable.
“Their lookouts’ll have to see us soon.”
“Range, fifteen-t’ousands!” Minnie cried. “They do see us! Lookout says the Jaap tin caan is turning this way!”
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