Against the Tide Imperial: The Struggle for Ceylon (The Usurper's War: An Alternative World War II Book 3)

by James Young

  Of course, he doesn’t realize that his sailors aren’t quite as circumspect about keeping their mouths shut, she thought. Jo could probably tell us all the exact date the Intrepid is due into port, when the Maryland will be floated out of drydock, or that the King George V and Nelson are expected to arrive from the Panama Canal any day now.

  Whether all that information was accurate was, of course, another matter. That it was even being discussed raised Patricia’s hackles.

  “Well that’s enough of us being in your hair, David,” Halsey stated. “I will see you at captain’s call tomorrow morning.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Captain Bursa replied. “Ensign Devereaux, if you’d be so kind as to take Mr. Carter and Miss Cobb topside?”

  Devereaux nodded, came to attention, and saluted. Captain Bursa and Vice Admiral Halsey both returned the gesture.

  Probably want to talk about the state of the hull, Patricia mused.

  “If you’ll follow me,” Devereaux said, his tone clearly indicating it was not a request.

  The bright Hawaii sunlight actually hurt Patricia’s eyes as they returned to the Maryland’s deck. Blinking away the brightness, she looked down towards Battleship Row…and saw a strange, broad-beamed vessel steaming slowly down the channel towards Ford Island. Patricia did not need to see the large, white ensign fluttering from the warship’s mast to know it was a Commonwealth battleship.

  Damn thing looks like an oil tanker, not a battleship. All of its turrets forward like that seems to make no sense. Still, glad to see another battleship.

  “Well, looks like the Royal Navy has arrived,” Carter said snidely. “How nice of them to…”

  “It would probably be best for everyone if you did not finish that thought, mister,” the ensign said lowly but firmly. Patricia fought to hide a smirk as she heard Carter take in a deep breath as about to argue, only to find the young officer regarding him with a hard set face.

  “One of my brothers got to spend some time aboard their vessels,” Patricia observed, studying the new ship intently. “I believe that one’s the Nelson?”

  “Or Rodney,” the ensign stated. Patricia could see the man was being purposefully obtuse.

  At least someone here understands security.

  “How did your brother end up on some Limey ship?” Carter asked derisively. “Is he a damn monarchist like our president?”

  “Eric got shot down by the Germans,” Patricia stated flatly. “When the King got killed.”

  Carter snorted.

  “Seems like we’re going through a whole lot of discussion to settle which pair of buttocks get to sit on a throne in London,” the man muttered lowly.

  Patricia saw her escort’s face color.

  “Ensign Devereaux, perhaps it’s best if we take our leave,” Patricia said. To her surprise, Carter ignored her.

  “It appears we have a difference in opinion on this war’s usefulness, Ensign,” Carter continued.

  Devereaux smiled.

  “I think that my opinion is irrelevant. Congress has declared war in response to unprovoked attacks against us.”

  “Unprovoked?” Carter asked. “We basically gave the English all the weapons they could carry, provided them with the boats to carry it with and, if the papers are to be believed, conspired with Great Britain on how to go about killing Germans, all the while loudly proclaiming our neutrality.”

  Where in the hell did Captain Bursa and Vice Admiral Halsey go? Patricia thought, glancing around in a near panic.

  “That’s quite enough,” Ensign Devereaux barked, causing several nearby sailors to pause in what they were doing to watch. Carter, realizing he had pressed things a bit far, shut his mouth and stared back at the young officer.

  Is this how people are seeing the war now? Carter was correct in what the mainland papers were saying. In the aftermath of the USN’s twin defeats off Iceland and Hawaii followed by the loss of the Philippines, Guam, and Wake, many were questioning how the United States came into the war. The bombshell that the Roosevelt administration had been apparently conducting secret talks and strategic planning with Her Majesty’s government as far back as 1940 had led to an uproar.

  Senator Lindbergh is calling for hearings, Patricia thought. The Republicans just might have the votes to force them in both houses.

  “Let us go, Miss Cobb,” Carter said after a long moment. “Would hate to disturb Ensign Devereaux from his delusions.”

  Patricia moved towards the gangway, the speed of her passage causing her dark chestnut hair to fall out of its bun. Muttering as she walked, she reached up and grabbed her tresses before they attempted to stream like their own pennant behind her. When she crossed onto the edge of the dry dock, she paused to finish fussing with her hair while Carter crossed far more slowly behind her.

  “Tell me, Miss Cobb, do you support this war?” Carter asked as they walked towards the waiting automobile.

  “I have four brothers and my fiancé fighting in it, Mr. Carter,” Patricia said, barely keeping her tone civil. “I don’t really have the option of not supporting it.”

  Carter looked at her with a cool air of assessment.

  “I was brought out here to Hawaii from a lucrative job in California,” Carter said after a moment. “I was next in line to be a foreman at Mare Island when my bosses determined I would be more valuable correcting inefficiencies in the shop out here.”

  I cannot imagine whatever would make your boss send you all the way out here, Patricia thought wryly.

  “I am telling you this so you understand that I mean every word of what I am about to say,” Carter continued. “If you ever interrupt a discussion I’m having with someone again, I’ll fire you on the spot. No one will question it, no matter how much Vice Admiral Halsey seems to have taken a liking to you. Understand?”

  Well fuck you, Mr. Carter. Patricia did her best to keep the anger from her face and tone as she responded.

  “Yes.”

  Carter looked at her with a raised eyebrow. Patricia continued looking at him in her best airhead debutante.

  “I’d always heard Southerners were raised with manners,” he said finally. “But no matter. I also understand that my predecessor, before he got sent to Australia, had you come in at nine o’clock. Your hours are now six to four, with an hour lunch break. As you know, there’s a war on.”

  IJNS Akagi

  Singapore

  1200 Local (0030 Eastern)

  25 July

  The pounding of rain on the carrier’s flight deck was audible as Vice Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi stood on the vessel’s bridge. He fought the urge to smile, but his heart filled with joy as he looked at the long, flattopped shape easing its way into the harbor.

  Shokaku, it has been so long since we have seen each other. At last the Kido Butai is complete once again. Then, after a moment, that reflection sobered him. Well, as complete as numbers make us.

  Zuikaku, the Shokaku’s sister ship, had been lost at the Battle of Hawaii. Hit first by American submarine torpedoes then finished by a squadron of their Flying Fortresses, the carrier had gone to the bottom of the Pacific with many of her aircrews. Shokaku had been struck by the same submarine that had holed her sister. Due to being able to maneuver, however, she had managed to evade the B-17s’ attentions. Instead, the larger carrier had received multiple bombs from the U.S.S. Hornet’s air group shortly before the rest of the Kido Butai had put paid to that vessel as well.

  Hawaii went almost perfectly for carriers attacking an alerted enemy. Hornet, Lexington, and Saratoga sunk along with several of their battleships. He gazed out once more towards the open ocean beyond Singapore’s breakwater. So why do I feel like a man about to be overwhelmed by an incoming tide?

  He did not question how their German allies got their information. However, it had been accurate for the most part, so he had no reason to disbelieve that his force had landed a heavy blow upon the Americans. Coupled with the losses that the Imperial Japanese Navy had inflicted
during the Dutch East Indies campaign, Vice Admiral Yamaguchi and his peers had run amok for a little over three months.

  Perhaps it is the news that an enemy task force is on the loose in the Indian Ocean and I am just now confident that I could deal with it. Intelligence had stated that there were at least two, and possibly as many as four, Allied carriers running amok near Madagascar. Given that Yamaguchi had placed three on the bottom of the Pacific and had to strain to keep air groups for six fully operational, it was astounding how quickly the Allies were recovering combat power.

  I cannot sink them quickly enough.

  “You seem very reflective, Yamaguchi-san,” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto observed beside him. “I believed you would need to be restrained from running up and down the flight deck in joy now that Shokaku and Taiho have joined you.”

  “I am merely doing math, sir,” Yamaguchi allowed. “The enemy will probably react strongly to our Ceylon operation.”

  “I can only hope so,” Yamamoto stated. “So far we have split the honors with your counterparts.”

  I think the first fight off Ceylon was a victory, Yamaguchi silently disagreed with his superior. I’d have traded Shoho for just about any other carrier in this war, and we definitely sank the Furious. Yamaguchi had seen the camera footage of the British carrier rolling over to starboard after taking three torpedo hits in quick succession.

  “With the Yorktown, Victorious, Enterprise and Ark Royal confirmed to be on other side of the Indian Ocean,” Yamamoto said, “I am sorely tempted to send you south to see if you could convince the Illustrious to come out and fight.”

  “I have enough pilots fighting land-based aircraft, sir,” Yamaguchi said stiffly. “I don't need to go picking a fight in Australia."

  Yamamoto smiled as his subordinate continued.

  "We have spent the last three months scraping together air groups, and one carrier would not be quite enough to justify that fight. Ceylon will bring them all out, then we will kill them."

  Yamamoto nodded at Yamaguchi's proclamation.

  "It is a shame that the refineries in the Dutch East Indies were so damaged," the senior admiral stated. "Otherwise we would not care about Ceylon."

  "I was shocked at how much oil the Germans gave us from the Persian Gulf oilfields," Yamaguchi noted. "It would be nice to have access to that oil again."

  "Instead we have Ceylon cutting that off like a fish bone in our throat," Yamamoto noted. "No matter. Hopefully this will end things in the Indian Ocean for the British."

  It would have been easier if we could have persuaded India not to lease Ceylon, but there’s no way we could replace the British grain shipments. How India was going to feed herself after the Japanese seized Ceylon was not Yamaguchi’s problem, but he still felt a slight tug at his conscience.

  “The Army still has delusions of invading northern Australia,” Yamamoto stated, changing the subject.

  “I shudder to think of the problems we would have if those idiots were still in charge,” Yamaguchi spat. “In some ways, the Soviets did us a favor.”

  Yamamoto gave his subordinate a sideways glance.

  “I think there are several thousand soldiers still missing who would disagree with you,” he observed, then held up his hand before Yamaguchi could protest. “This, of course, versus the million or so that would still be stuck in China as snakes trying to swallow an elephant.”

  Snakes that would be, in turn, consuming far more resources than they produced. At least the Southern Operations will eventually begin to pay for themselves once we get the Americans to accept the new world order.

  “Ozawa-san believes that we should split the Kido Butai,” Yamamoto said, referring to Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa.

  “Of course he does,” Yamaguchi replied sarcastically, then bowed slightly. “Sorry, sir.”

  Yamamoto smiled knowingly.

  “It is as if I knew another admiral who once complained loudly about a superior’s inability to effectively control this very force,” he observed drily. "Hopefully Ozawa will never be proven as prescient as that officer was."

  Yamaguchi nodded, keeping his mouth shut. Yamamoto, seeing that his point had been gently made, continued.

  “Ozawa is concerned what will happen if the Americans counterattack again towards Wake," Yamamoto said. "We cannot trust in our submarines managing to sink a pair of battleships every time.”

  Dammit Ozawa. Ozawa had a point insomuch that the carriers remaining with part of the battle line had never been intended for a general fleet action. However, Yamaguchi knew there was a significant difference in what he could do with four aircraft carriers versus six, especially with Allied forces in the Indian Ocean.

  “Never fear, Yamaguchi-san,” Yamamoto said after a few moments. “I reminded him if he had not let Ark Royal get away from him off Ceylon the first time, you would not have to worry about numbers so much.”

  That had to sting a little bit.

  "I pointed out that, with Ryujo being out of dry dock much earlier than anticipated, he will have plenty of airpower to keep Ceylon suppressed if we follow the plan."

  The hard rain continued to rattle against the Akagi’s bridge windows, the wind starting to pick up as well. As he watched the tugs take over maneuvering the Shokaku, Yamaguchi was glad that he did not have that thankless job.

  “Ugaki-san is driving the staff hard to finish the planning for Operation I,” Yamamoto said, gesturing towards the battleship Musashi roughly a half mile away. “His assumptions include that you will need time to work Shokaku back into your force.”

  “We can work her back into operations on the way to Ceylon,” Yamaguchi said. “I know that every day we wait, the Americans grow stronger. I would prefer that we help them see the error of their ways before the giant grows robust enough to simply smother us with his size.”

  Yamamoto nodded.

  “It is sometimes hard explaining to people who have never seen their factories just how much potential the Americans have,” Yamamoto stated soberly. “I will tell Ugaki to plan on this force initiating operations in a week rather than three.”

  Well, here’s to hoping that my gamble is correct, Yamaguchi thought. For if I am wrong, I may truly regret this decision.

  "With six carriers to their five, plus Ozawa-san's flight decks, I like our odds," Yamaguchi said. "Especially if we can capture airfields on Ceylon before they can react."

  Bremerton Naval Shipyard

  Washington State

  1100 Local (1400 Eastern)

  26 July

  “Well, I suppose it beats flying them aboard,” Major Adam Haynes, United States Marine Corps, observed drily as a crane lifted the last of his squadron’s FM-2 Wildcats aboard the escort carrier U.S.S. Chenango.

  Got birds just in time to put them on a ship and catch a ride to Pearl Harbor. His squadron had been without aircraft for much of the previous three months.

  “I think it’d be easier with her than some other vessels,” Captain Samuel Cobb, his squadron deputy, replied grimly. Converted from an oiler hull, the Chenango was actually a fairly long vessel as escort carriers went. Although not even an untrained eye would mistake her for a fleet carrier, Adam could appreciate that the Navy wasn’t sending his squadron to the Pacific in one of the “floating coffins” that he’d watched depart for parts unknown two weeks before.

  I think both the Cobb brothers would have mutinied if they had, Adam thought, glancing sideways up at Sam. Which would be a whole lot of man to try and force on a vessel.

  Sam and his twin brother, David, had been formerly assigned to VMF-14. Their unit had been almost completely annihilated when a Japanese I-boat torpedoed the U.S.S. Long Island. Although both of the large men were putting on a strong front, Adam had the feeling neither was pleased about returning to Hawaii.

  Of course, I’m not pleased about having to land on a damned postage stamp in the middle of the ocean. The Navy had initiated a crash course for he and any other Marine who had not qua
lified on carrier landings during their induction process. As a man who had been in his fair share of combat and then some, landing on a carrier was still the most terrifying thing Adam had done.

  “Are you still planning on giving the squadron three day’s liberty?” Sam asked. The question startled Adam, as Sam had struck him as someone who did not care much about such things.

  “I imagine I will, yes,” Adam replied. “You and your brother going somewhere?”

  Sam laughed.

  “I guess he didn’t tell you yet,” Sam said. “Sadie has finally arrived in Seattle.”

  Adam face broke into a broad smile.

  “About damn time,” he stated flatly. “I thought I was going to have to get you brother out of jail if personnel had screwed up his dependent paperwork one more time.”

  “Can’t really blame them given that those idiots in Honolulu screwed up the marriage certificate,” Sam allowed. “Not that I’d tell David that to his face.”

  David and Sadie Cobb had gotten married just before the two brothers were bundled off to the West Coast at Vice Admiral Halsey’s explicit direction. Realizing that it had only been dumb happenstance that three of the four Cobb brothers had not been slain in less than thirty days, Halsey had clearly believed sending the twins on a war bonds tour through Washington State was a way to keep them safe. Sam and David had short circuited that plan by accosting Adam in a restaurant

  “Wise plan,” Adam observed. “I still remember the suicidal moron who was flippant about her not being on the President Coolidge.”

  Sam chuckled, and the sound was surprisingly dark. The Coolidge had been carrying the first load of dependents from Hawaii when she pulled into Bremerton. Due to wartime secrecy, Sadie had not been able to inform Sam that she’d been bumped from the vessel due to her paperwork not being in order. The Navy lieutenant in charge of the manifest had basically implied that maybe the newest Mrs. Cobb had gotten cold feet and decided not to join her husband after all.

  “Only reason there wasn’t a murder was we were raised not to hit a woman,” Sam stated. “I still think that nurse had probably never received such a thorough butt-chewing without a single word of profanity.”