Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) (16 page)

Fedorov
immediately knew those had to be Italian planes out of airfields around
Cagliari. The situation was now spinning out of control and it was obvious to
him that the ship was under coordinated attack. Karpov had been waiting
impatiently, an exasperated look on his face. He was about to speak again when
Fedorov cut in quickly with the words he hoped he would not have to speak this
early in the campaign. “Battle stations! Sound general quarters!” The alarm was
sounded, much to Karpov’s relief, and he nodded his head in agreement.

“Mister
Karpov,” Fedorov turned to his
Starpom
, activate our 152 millimeter deck
gun systems and prepare to engage the near contact on my order to fire.”

“At once,
sir!” And Karpov was quick to pass the order to Gromenko, who was now filling
in for Samsonov in the Command Information Center. “Feed your targets to the
CIC, Kalinichev!”

“Aye, sir.
The data is active and we have radar lock.”

Fedorov bit
his lip, very disheartened now but committed. “Prepare to repel incoming
aircraft,” he said quickly. “Expect 20 planes for a low level torpedo attack.”

Da Zara
was also impatient tonight. The
Italian Admiral squinted through his field glasses at the shadow on their
horizon, wondering what he was getting himself into now. One of Italy’s most
capable fighting admirals, he set his flag on the light cruiser
Eugenio di
Savoia
, and was out from the division base at Cagliari to rendezvous with
numerous other ships in preparation for an attack on the British convoy near
Pantelleria the following day. In fact, he had pulled off this very same
maneuver against the last British attempt to relieve Malta, leading the charge
in a fast air and sea action that sent the British destroyer
Bedouin
to
the bottom and heaped misery on the decimated convoy just as it was within
smelling distance of its objective. He planned to do the same this time, until
a priority message from Regia Marina changed everything.

He was
ordered to hold his course and search out a suspected British cruiser that had
been sighted near dusk by the Italian submarine
Bronzo
returning to port
with mechanical problems, unable to take up its post on the inner picket line.
The report was very odd. For a British ship to boldly entered the Tyrrhenian
Sea was one thing that immediately jarred naval authorities. When the sub
sighted it there appeared to be a fire aft. Was it damaged somehow? Thinking
that Naval Aeronatuica already had its teeth into the intruder, the sub captain
simply wired in the sighting and continued on his way.

“One ship?”
Da Zara had said in disbelief when he received the message. There must be an
error, he thought. It could not have come from their main convoy escorts, or
our submarines would have surely detected it long before now. What has Mussolini
been drinking tonight? Could it have sortied from the east as a diversionary
operation? If so, it would be a sly devil to get this far in without being
sighted. But yes, a fast cruiser could do this, particularly since all our
planes, have been piling up out west on Sardinia for the initial round of air
strikes on this British convoy. Who would think to look right here in our own
back yard?

He was soon
encouraged to learn that two squadrons of SM-79 Sparviero “Sparrowhawks” were
already in the air to coordinate with his attack, and that orders had been
given to send out ships from Naples to join him, along with 7th Cruiser
Division at Messina, which would also be leaving early for the planned
rendezvous near Ustica Island. But first, he thought, we deal with this thief
in the night, eh?

“Gobbo
Maledetto!” he said to his gunnery officer. Where are those damned hunchbacks?
We’re too close! They’ll see us any moment if they haven’t already.”

 The ‘damned
hunchbacks’ were the nickname many gave to the SM-79s, with their odd three engine
design and high dorsal hump, it seemed a much more suitable name than ‘Sparrowhawk.’
An old plane that had first been conceived as a small passenger aircraft, it
was converted to a bomber as the war loomed and had served alarmingly well in
that capacity. It was fast for its age, durable in spite of its wood and metal
amalgam frame, and lethal enough if it could get in close for a torpedo run.

Da Zara
stepped out onto his weather deck, his heavy sea coat hood thrown back, his
gold braided admiral’s cap fitted smartly, gloved hands holding his field
glasses. A handsome man, in his day he had been known to make more than a few
prominent conquests, though now he set his mind on little more than his beloved
light cruisers.

“Avanti!” He
called over his shoulder. “Sparare!”

His command
was answered immediately with the bright orange fire and sharp concussion of
his forward deck guns.
Eugenio de Savoia
carried four turrets with two
152mm guns each, and his initial salvo streaked through the darkness toward the
formless shadow on the horizon. His second cruiser
Raimondo Montecuccoli
followed suit and opened fire as well, and the three destroyers in the van
began to fan out to make their torpedo run, accelerating to high speed and
leaving white frothy wakes behind them as they charged ahead.

At that
moment Da Zara heard the low drone of aircraft overhead, looking back to see
flights of the ungainly Sparrowhawks roaring to join the fight in a well
coordinated attack. The smell of the sea and gunfire excited the Admiral, who
had boasted he was the only fighting commander in the Italian Navy who had
bested the Royal Navy at its own game. Now he was eager to make good his claim,
and send this bold intruder to the bottom of the sea.

Fedorov
saw the distant flashes on the
horizon, too close to give him any comfort. His plan to slip past the unknowing
Italians had been foiled. They must have been spotted, by one means or another,
while Byko’s engineers were putting out the fire and seeing to the damage below
the waterline. The instant he saw the distant muzzle flashes he knew the ship
was in real peril.
Kirov
was never built for close in action with well
gunned adversaries. Even though these were only light cruisers, those six inch
shells would cause serious harm anywhere they struck the ship. Only the command
citadels had sufficient armor protection from them. No—the ship’s power was in
standing off and pummeling her enemies from long range, using the speed and
lethality of her anti-ship missiles to decide the conflict before the enemy had
even knew they were there. He had counted on the night, the darkness, and a
witless opponent, and now found himself regretting the decision to wait so
long. They had been spotted and were now under fire, a circumstance that never
should have happened for a fighting ship like
Kirov
.

The first
enemy salvos were short, and laterally wide off the mark, which did not
surprise him. The Italian ships had no radar to speak of, relying on good night
optics to site their guns. And this particular naval gun had a history of
different problems. The lateral dispersion on salvos resulted from imprecise
size and weight in both the main rounds and their propellant charges. Beyond
that, the guns were prone to misfire, as much as 10 percent of the time, and mechanical
faults or delays in loading, insecure breech closure, and problems with the
shell hoists seriously reduced their rate of fire. The gun’s designers had
claimed three rounds per minute, but tonight Da Zara’s ships would do no better
than two.

Fedorov
looked at Karpov, resigned to the fact that
Kirov
had to fight. “Mister
Karpov,” he said quietly. “Deal with those ships.”

Karpov
smiled. “My pleasure, sir.” Then he turned to Gromenko and gave the order to
fire. Now it was
Kirov’s
turn with her three twin 152mm gun turrets, the
same size in real weight as the enemy but with far more accurate fire control
systems with precision round tracking, water cooled barrels, lightning fast
loaders, and ammunition that was state-of-the-art. The guns fired with a sharp
crack, both barrels recoiling to fire again and again. Gromenko had the
interval set at three seconds, and in the long minute while Da Zara’s force was
struggling to load, sight and aim the four forward twin gun turrets on the two
cruisers,
Kirov
unleashed all of twenty salvos, 120 rounds to the 16
shells the Italians finally managed to throw their way. And every round the big
battlecruiser fired was radar guided, streaking across the sea in a violent
storm of steel.

Chapter 11

Before Da
Zara
could get his
field glasses focused on the target to spot his salvo geysers, his ship was
rocked by three direct hits with one near miss, and he was nearly thrown off
his feet.

“Madre de
Dio!” he exclaimed, then he saw
Montecuccoli
erupt with fire and smoke,
shuddering under two, then five jarring hits. Her forward turret exploded,
sending one of the gun barrels cart-wheeling up and away from the ship like a
hot lead pipe. Two of his three destroyers were riddled with fire as well. It
was as if someone had crept up on his task force with a massive shotgun and blasted
his ships at close range! He gave the order to come hard to port, hoping his
aft batteries could get off at least one salvo, but his enthusiasm for this sea
battle was suddenly gone.

As
Savoia
heeled over she was struck three more times, the final round very near the
bridge quarterdeck, sending the admiral down onto the hard cold iron. He
groaned, coughing with the smoke and feeling the heat of fire below. Then he
gaped in awe at what he saw in the skies above him!

Flights of
Sparrowhawks thundered amid a wild display of streaking light and violent
explosions. Fiery trails of orange clawed the dark sky, like molten fire arrows
flung at the bombers, and they were being picked off with lethal accuracy.
Three, then five, then nine, the night shuddering under the intensity of the
sound, the wine dark seas gleaming with reflected fire. He crossed himself,
watching the carnage of his fellow countrymen as they died. Then he reached for
the hand rail, clutching it with a bloody glove and dragging himself to his feet.

He cleared
his voice and shouted one last command. “Avvenire! A tutta velocita. Andiamo
via de qui!” And as his ship lurched about, her aft guns plaintively firing one
last salvo, he shook his head, as much to gather his sensibilities as anything
else. This was no mere cruiser, he thought. It’s a battleship, and it blew my
task force away with nothing more than its secondary batteries! But Madre de
Dio! What was it firing at the hunchbacks? He looked at it one last time as the
cruisers and destroyers made smoke to mask their retreat. The British have
avenged their losses of a few months past, he thought. And now he knew how this
one ship might be so bold as to sail here on its own. It was a behemoth of
vengeance and a devil from hell!

They had inflicted
heavy damage on Da Zara’s squadron,
but it gave Fedorov no real satisfaction when he saw the ships turn and run.
Then the flights of low flying bombers arrived, and he watched how Karpov
coolly ordered the use of the same Klinok medium range SAM system that had
caused the accident earlier, only now he was utilizing silos mounted on the forward
deck. There was no malfunction on this occasion. The missiles were smartly up
from their silos at three second intervals and streaking away towards the incoming
aircraft. Seconds later they heard saw the awesome display in the sky as
missile after missile found targets and ignited in brilliant spheres of fiery
orange on the horizon. It was as if a terrible thunder storm had broiled up
over a dead calm sea.

Karpov had
activated two batteries of eight missiles each, and true to protocol, he had
Gromenko fire the first six missiles in each battery, holding two in reserve.
All twelve missiles found targets, and the shock of the attack sent the
remaining eight SM-79 Sparrowhawks into wild evasive maneuvers, insofar as they
were able for a lumbering tri-engine plane. Four bugged out completely, turning
and diving low on the deck to roar past Da Zara’s burning cruisers while the Admiral
shook his fist at them, the remaining four carried on bravely, three launching
torpedoes and then quickly turning away, the last stubbornly bearing in on
Kirov
.

“What is the
range of those torpedoes?” asked Karpov as he watched the planes on the Tin Man
display.

“Don’t worry
about them,” said Fedorov. They need to be inside two kilometers to have any
chance of hitting us.”

Karpov
considered that, then gave the order to secure the Klinok system and activate
the close in defense Gatling guns. The AK-760 gun system was the latest
replacement for the navy’s older AK-630M1-2 system. It was housed in new
stealth turrets, and still utilized the six barreled 30mm Gatling gun, though
its rate of fire was an astounding 10,000 rounds per minute. Oddly, the under
mount magazine held only 8000 rounds during normal operations, so it was rare
that the gun would ever fire full out. Instead it would bark out short fiery
bursts of HE fragmentation rounds that could shred an incoming missile at a
range of four kilometers. With radar, optical sighting, TV control and laser
lock systems, it was amazingly accurate, and Karpov waited confidently until
the port side guns locked on and then fired two short bursts when the plane
reached the 4000 meter mark.