Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (27 page)

This was a new innovation the Russians
had developed in 2018, designed specifically for waterborne ship hulls. It was
a series of panels that could be placed on the exterior hull to cover a gash or
hole. They had elastic sealing edges to eliminate caulking and pre-drilled
joining holes with rivets that could be mounted at specific points along the
existing hull and then secured by durable welds. The panels were four feet by
eight feet, and the wound in
Kirov’s
hull required three to create a
patch that was eight feet high by twelve feet wide. Once in place Byko could
then activate pumps to void the flooded compartments of seawater, and then men
could get inside that area to further reinforce the breach from within. That
work would take considerably longer, but at least the ship could get underway with
the exterior patch in place.

It took the divers over an hour to cut
away jagged metal with underwater torches and prepare the area for the seal,
and then another ninety minutes before the panels were in place. They had the
KA-40 up behind the ship watching for signs of further activity from the Torres
Straits, but the obvious presence of mines in the channels there had forced the
Japanese to wait for destroyers to come up from Hara’s carrier force to sweep
the area before capital ships could be risked again in the restricted waters.
The lesson of
Kirishima’s
fate was evident for all to see, though
Iwabuchi steamed aboard the cruiser
Tone
, angry at the delay. There were
also a thousand men aboard
Kirishima
, in no danger of sinking further,
but marooned on a derelict ship that would be an easy target for allied B-17s
out of Cairns or Townsville. Hara’s A6M2 fighters were up at dusk over the
stranded battleship, until darkness lessened the threat.

In the meantime, the crew of
Kirov
used the time feverishly to complete hull repairs and make the ship seaworthy
for higher speeds. They were making the last of the welds on the hull patch
when Rodenko reported he had something more than storm clouds on his radar at
21:20 hours, a signal out of the east that appeared to be a small formation of
planes.

“Those will have to be out of Port
Moresby,” said Fedorov. “Most likely Japanese bombers, or perhaps seaplanes out
on a search pattern.”

They were, indeed, a squadron of G3M2
twin engine “Nell” bombers that had been sent to look for the enemy ship near
dusk and mark its position. There were twelve in all, and they were flying a
widely spaced search fan out of Port Moresby to the west, grouped in four
shotai
of three planes each. Only one of the three
had been mounted with torpedoes, however, so the threat was not as great as it
first appeared on radar.

Third
shotai
was lucky, or unlucky enough to be on a search vector that took them directly
toward
Kirov
, and Fedorov could see that the other planes were on
headings intended to cover areas north and south of their position. They
considered whether or not to engage at long range, but realized that would
simply reveal their position. So they waited, hoping that the enemy planes
might not find them, but they were soon disappointed. Three planes began to
descend in altitude, obviously getting down to make a possible torpedo run, and
Karpov, with a free hand insofar as tactical defense of the ship was concerned,
decided it would be best take them out with missiles from the Klinok system.
The aft silos were void now but they still had nineteen missiles in the forward
deck silos. He used three, downing all three planes at a range of ten miles.

When Number 3
shotai
 failed to report or return, the Japanese knew they had an approximate
location for the enemy ship they had come to call
Mizuchi
. Yet the
commander on the ground at Port Moresby was unwilling to commit more of his
precious bombers to a naval strike. His squadrons had not been fully trained
for anti-ship operations, and his primary task was to answer the daily bombing
raids being sent his way from Cairns, and to soften up the last enemy outpost
in New Guinea at Milne Bay. For this reason, he reported the probable location
of the enemy ship to Admiral Hara, and let the matter go.

Darkness and rain were welcome friends
that night as
Kirov
completed her hull repairs and eventually got on her
way sometime after 21:40 hours. It was slow going at first, ten knots to test
the integrity of the hull patch. When it held satisfactorily, Fedorov ordered
twenty knots, and then went below to find the Admiral and make a full report.
Karpov turned the bridge over to Rodenko as the ship moved slowly south through
a warm light rain, into the deep blue Coral Sea.

At that time Hara’s carriers had
reached the western approaches to the Torres Straits, and his destroyers were
busy sweeping a channel for their passage. With the main Prince of Wales
Channel closed by the imposing hulk of
Kirishima
, an alternate route was
sought that night. The
Dayman
and Simpson Channels to
the north were too shallow for the 8.8 meter draft of the carriers so it was
decided to risk going south of the large Prince of Wales Island and into
Endeavour Strait near Cape York. The Japanese had good charts of the region,
and the depth of Endeavor Strait was typically between ten and thirteen meters,
enough water to slip the carriers through, though they would come under the
watchful eyes of a small Australia Command Outpost on Horn Island.

There Lt. Commander Fenton’s Horn Island
Detachment was surveying sites for a possible airfield, guarded by a small
militia battalion under Lt. Commander Davies. They got a good look at a small
procession of Japanese ships, five destroyers, the heavy cruiser
Tone
,
light carrier
Zuiho
and then the sleek new fleet carriers
Zuikaku
and
Shokaku
. The two other cruisers
Nachi
and
Myoko
were
able to find passage north of
Kirishima’s
position, their shallower
draft of 6.3 meters enabling them to navigate the waters there better. Far
behind, the large battleships
Mutsu
and
Nagato
would follow the
carriers in time, with another fist full of destroyers.

The men on Horn Island would get a
more than a few rounds that night as the price for their front row seat to the
parade. They hunkered down in slit trenches with field glasses trained on the
glassy sea, sweating it out in the mud and rain as the Japanese fleet moved
slowly through the strait. Something big was obviously up if all these ships
were moving east, and they made a full report by wireless to coastwatchers on
the York Peninsula. Australia Command was soon informed that the Japanese
seemed to be moving heaven and earth to get after a mysterious ship that was
still at large in the Coral Sea—a ship that had managed to sink heavy cruiser
Haguro
,
leave the battleship
Kirishima
a burning wreck in the channel, and beat
off every air strike the Japanese threw at it.

 *
* *

Things
were getting very interesting at
FRUMEL
Headquarters in the Monterey Apartments of Melbourne. Osborne and Novak worked the
whole afternoon, taking phone calls from British liaison officers out of Perth
that seemed to muddy the water more than anything else. In the meantime,
decrypts of Japanese naval signals indicated that the enemy seemed to be
extremely concerned about this mysterious ship they had come to call
Mizuchi
.
Osborne and Novak were equally concerned, as there seemed to be no way to
explain the ship’s presence, until a strange signal was received from the
British near dusk on the 26th of August.

It seems someone had sent a message
all the way from Bletchley Park. It hopped into Gibraltar, went out as coded
signal to Alexandria where it was relayed to Colombo on Ceylon. From there it
was sent to Perth, and then phoned in to Melbourne. The shock was that the British
stated their belief that the ship now being scrutinized by FRUMEL analysts had
been the same one escorted to the Island of St. Helena, arriving there three
days earlier and then simply vanishing.

“Vanishing?” Novak looked at Osborne,
clearly astounded. “They used that exact word?”

“They did.”

“The British actually think this is
the raider they were after in the Med? My, God, Man. It’s thousands of miles
away!”

“7,800 nautical miles, to be more
exact,” said Osborne.

“In 24 hours? The damn ship was
spotted by our coastwatchers on the 24th. The British have had a little too
much brandy, Ozzie. This is nonsense.”

“It came right from Bletchley Park.
Hut Four.”

That was enough to give Novak pause,
but he was still shaking his head. “Look, you and I both know—”

“Some very big names have signed off
on this message, Admiral John Tovey for one. Alan Turing for another.”

“Turing? Well they’ve got it wrong. It
won’t be the first time. They kept insisting the Japanese were going to hit us
at Pearl, but what came of all that? Nothing.”

“No, but they damn well hit us at
Manila, didn’t they, and they’ve been hitting us ever since.”

“That’s another matter,” Novak was
adamant. “No ship can move nearly 8000 miles in a single day. I don’t suppose
this message cares to explain that little detail, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t. But they have their
own name for this ship, this sea dragon the Japanese have been after the last
three days. They call it
Geronimo
.”

“Well they can call it whatever they
like, it can’t be the ship they escorted to St. Helena, and they’re fools if
they think it is.”

Osborne, took a long puff from his
pipe, exhaling slowly, and looking at Novak with a serious expression on his
face now. “I may be going out on a limb here,” he began. “Ever hear that code
name before, Novak?”

“
Geronimo?
Can’t say as I
have.”

“Well I’ve heard it, and it doesn’t
surprise me that neither you or anybody else knows about it.”

“What’s so special about you, Mr.
Wizard? Where did you get wind of it?”

“That would be telling,” said Osborne
evasively. “Let’s just say that the British have held this one close to their
chest for at least a year. You know about that incident in the North Atlantic
last August, eh?”

“Of course. I knew men on the
Mississippi
.
Nazis made a big mistake setting their U-boat fleet loose on that ship. What
did it get them?”

“It wasn’t a U-boat attack,” Osborne
said slowly, an edge of caution in his voice.

Now Novak looked over his shoulder at
the man, suddenly quiet. Then he turned and pulled out a chair, sitting down
and leaning heavily on his elbows, one hand in his dark wavy hair. “Suppose you
tell me what really happened then,” he suggested.

“Can’t say as I have all the dope
myself,” said Osborne. “But I do know it was no U-boat attack. There was a
raider at sea, and the British sortied damn near the whole Home Fleet to go
after it. Seems this ship was using some rather formidable weapons—rockets used
against both ships and planes.”

“Rockets? Well the Russians have been
using them for years. What’s so new about that?”

“The accuracy,” said Osborne slowly.
“The impact. These were not like the Russian RS-82 and RS-132s. Not like the
British 3 inch rockets, or even our own Forward Firing Aerial Rocket project
for ASW work. They were something much bigger, deadly accurate, enough to take
out an incoming strike wave of planes miles before it ever got anywhere near
the firing ship.”

“I see…” Novak was now very
interested.

“Yes, and they had bigger stuff as
well. Anti-ship rockets, incredible range, pinpoint accuracy. They walloped the
British something fierce. Put a couple of their carriers in dry dock and sunk
the
Repulse
.”

Novak’s eyes widened. “You mean to say
Repulse
was sunk by this raider? There was no U-Boat attack there
either?”

“No U-boat attack. It was this ship
they started calling
Geronimo
, the one the US claimed as a trophy after
Mississippi
went down. You read the reports—
Desron 7
was supposed to have taken the
bastard down, though not a single ship survived that attack, right?”

“That’ s the way the official report reads.”

“Well the official report is
bullshit,” Osborne tapped his pipe in the ashtray, picking at some loose
tobacco as he did so. “The whole
Desron 7
thing was nothing more than a
cover story. Now you keep this quiet, Novak,” he lowered his voice, a warning
evident in his eyes behind his dark rimmed spectacles, “but I can tell you this
much. Five destroyers showed up at Halifax twelve days after they supposedly
disappeared during this incident with the raider. You want to know their names?
Plunkett
,
Hughes, Madison, Gleaves
and
Lansdale
—
Desron
7
, or at least the last five destroyers from that group. They told quite a
story too. Said they returned to Argentia Bay and there was nobody there—no
ships in the harbor, no airbase, absolutely nothing. They claimed they searched
the whole area, even put men ashore, but that the whole place was abandoned,
flattened.”