Kirov III-Pacific Storm (Kirov Series) (42 page)

“We’ve been attacking this ship’s
superstructure since the hull is so heavily armored. But there’s another way to
pierce the hull—what about torpedoes? We have torpedoes, don’t we?”

“Why… Yes,” said the Captain. “Yes we
do! The Vodopad system has UGST-2 torpedoes.” The weapon was a highly adaptable
modular system, allowing for different propulsion and warhead options, hence
the “U” for its universal capabilities. The ship carried tubes on either side,
the ports opening on the hull itself.

“What’s their range?” asked Fedorov.

“Over 35,000 meters,” said Karpov with
a smile.

The ‘Vodopad’ or ‘Waterfall’ system
was an apt description for the way the torpedoes would eject from the side of
the ship, a waterfall of steam and gas in their wake, rolling down off the side
of the hull. The torpedoes were capable of using nuclear warheads, though
Kirov
had none of these in inventory on this mission. After ejecting it would dip
into the sea, propelled several hundred feet out before the tail fins and
control elements would flip out and the pumpjet propulsor engine would
activate. It was one of the first torpedoes to use an onboard digital computer
and had wire guided control options, as well as a dual channel homing and
detonation for either acoustic or electromagnetic operation. It also had
integrated sonar that could detect ship wakes and follow them to the target. In
effect, it was the Long Lance on steroids, and with all these redundant control
systems, it was not going to miss a ship the size of
Yamato
, no matter
what their captain did to try and avoid it.

Perhaps it was his distaste for
submarines and torpedoes that had prevented Karpov from selecting the weapon
earlier, his mind on the missiles, and pleased with the results he had been
getting with them. Yet
Yamato
was as hardened a target as the ship would
ever fire upon, and even now they saw her fourth salvo blast at them in the
distance, as if to shout back that they were hit, but not hurt, and their guns
were still seeking them in the night. These rounds would fall much closer, the
Type 92
Shagekiban
fire control
‘computer’
slowly walking the big shells to a point where they were now of some concern.
The range had fallen to just under 22,000 meters.

“Ready on Vodopad system, Samsonov.
Starboard side tubes.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Two torpedoes please, and you may
fire when ready.”

Karpov was being stingy. His impulse was
to fire the entire battery in a spread of five torpedoes and end this battle
there and then. But the empty SAM silos and the rapidly diminishing missile SSM
inventory was moderating his choices. He wanted to hold on to as much combat
capability as he could. The torpedoes swished into the water and went streaking
away, their wakeless propulsion system making them stealthy on top of the
already lethal nature of the weapon.

 “That may
not be enough,” said Fedorov. “Yamato took seven American torpedoes before she
sank, and that took an hour and a half.”

“Very well,” said Karpov. “One more
for Mister Fedorov.” He looked at Samsonov with a smile, convinced they now had
the battle well in hand. There would be no way the enemy ship could evade those
torpedoes. They were carrying a 425kg warhead, and they were going to hurt
anything they struck, and badly.

Then something happened that no one
had counted on, except perhaps Lieutenant Commander Hayashi when he bravely
dove his crippled Val dive bomber into
Kirov’s
aft battle bridge. That
strike had occurred right above the Vodopad system, and only the second barrier
of the citadel floor there, 200mm thick, had prevented it from going deeper to
ignite the torpedo magazines. But there had been a fire, a very serious one,
and not all the damage had been discovered and repaired in the brief time since
the plane had flamed into the ship. Control cabling for the number three UGST
torpedo had been burned, its wiring exposed, and when the fire order was given
the tube itself also had a slight warp from concussion when the ship had been
shaken with Hayashi’s hit.

The intrepid Japanese pilot who had
first put a 250kg bomb on the aft quarter of the ship before riding his plane
to death with a second hit was now reaching out from the grave to strike at his
enemy once more.

Chapter
32

The number
three torpedo failed to eject, jutting
like a broken finger from the side of the ship, jammed in its own firing tube,
yet its firing cycle was still active. The preliminary propulsion jet was
trying to engage, and yet the system fed a fault signal to the unit’s computer
brain, and internal backup systems were ordered to kick in after a five second
delay.

“Misfire on the number three torpedo!”
Samsonov shouted, his voice loud and deep.

“Abort!” Karpov’s order was obvious,
but Samsonov had already thumbed the abort switch. The torpedo’s propulsion
system shut down and its engine was stilled, yet now there was no way they were
going to use the remaining tubes on that side of the ship until crews could get
in and clear the misfire and check for further damage. That was not going to
happen in this engagement, but at least
Kirov
had two
torpedoes
out and running true, two long sleek Moray eels in the water driving on at 40
knots, a little over twenty meters per second. Even at that speed their time on
target was over seventeen minutes away. In that time
Yamato
was likely
to get in many more of her main gun salvos, and now the range was falling to
21,000 meters. Ninety seconds later the big battleship fired again, the rounds
falling no more than 800 meters off
Kirov’s
stern, leading her now.

“What I wouldn’t give for a few more
SAMs” said Karpov. “Those seaplanes are feeding back shell fall corrections to
that ship. Nikolin, can we jam all normal radio frequencies they might be
using?”

“I’m sure we can, sir.”

“Then do it! Wide area jam. Ready on
Moskit-II system again, Samsonov. Two more missiles please, the same as before.
We can’t wait for those torpedoes.” Karpov looked at his watch, then gave the
order to fire. Two more Sunburns ejected and roared away at five second
intervals, one sea skimmer and the last of those reprogrammed for plunging
descent.
Kirov’s
missile count now slipped to eleven.

*
* *

Yamamoto
had felt his proud ship taking one
blow after another, yet she fought on. The bridge crew was intense at their
stations, the gunnery officer shouting out encouragement through the voice
tubes to the men below. The ship’s commander stood tall by the binnacle,
bracing himself each time the bugle call gave the five second warning before
firing. The spotters were eagerly watching through binoculars and longer range
optics, looking for the huge white water splashes glistening up in the
moonlight.

When the two brave night fighters out
of Rabaul had come streaking in, the men on the bridge cheered, then saw them
blown to pieces by the demon ship they were stalking. Now the Admiral stood by
Kuroshima, in awe as he watched the dark horizon light up again, first hoping
his guns had struck home, then realizing that more rockets had been fired at
his ship. What was this enemy? If the British could build such weapons then he
knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the war was lost for certain. There
was no defense against them, no answer but to doggedly close the range and
endure one punishing blow after another, his ship on fire, men dying, thick
smoke choking the open topped gun stations amidships.

Here they came again, one rocket
blazing in just above the surface of the water while a second climbed high up
into the sky to fall like thunder and lightning on his intrepid ship and
crew—and they never missed. Surely they must be piloted as Kuroshima suggested,
but now his hands were as white as his gloves on the nearest hand rail, body
stiff as he braced himself for yet another series of hits. How much more could
the ship take?
Kuroshima’s
words haunted him as the
missiles came in. This ship was more than it seemed. It was Japan’s very best,
the pinnacle of their naval engineering. Every man in the navy coveted a
posting to
Yamato
, and not simply because of the relatively plush living
conditions and better food. It was the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
If he were to lose it here… All this passed through his mind in the barest
instant, and then the thunder came.

The first missile struck just above
the weather deck, slamming right into the heavy barbette of the forward main
gun turret with a brilliant explosion that shattered two windows on the bridge
and sent one junior officer careening against a bulkhead. The barbette
withstood the blow, but the damage was sufficient to impede its easy rotation
until crews could fight the fire and clear debris. In the meantime, the gun
could not properly train on the target, and relief crews rushed inside to
replace wounded men and re-man their positions. Five seconds later the second
missile plunged down on the ship about 300 feet forward of that position, on
the broad and relatively empty deck of the bow. There it smashed through the
armor and burned into the ship’s interior, plunging through two more decks and
igniting yet another major fire.

The ship now had fires from bow to
stern, yet her speed was unimpeded and she turned slightly to allow the two
functioning guns of her aft turret to join the battle. The next salvo came only
from the number two forward turret, an angry reprisal that managed to drop
shells short, but within 500 meters of the enemy ship. Spotters on the high
main mast eagerly shouted out the news to their officers, who then relayed the
information to the fire control station, and the crews hastily fed in
corrections to make their next best guess at where
Kirov
would be in a
hundred and twenty seconds.

*
* *

Anton
Fedorov did not want to make that
rendezvous with an 18.1 inch shell. He gave the order ahead two thirds and
starboard twenty, slowing and turning in towards the enemy ship.
Yamato
was now clearly visible in the distance, her massive silhouette illuminated by
her own fires. He knew the enemy would correct their shortfall by firing longer,
presuming he would maintain his old speed. By slowing and turning he hoped the
next salvo would be long and well ahead of the ship. He was correct.

Three more rounds fell in a tight
pattern, this time about 700 meters off his forward port side. Elated with his
success, he turned to the helmsman and gave his next order. “Port twenty and
ahead full!” He was chasing salvos, but now he saw what looked like three
explosions near the aft quarter of the enemy ship. Both of Karpov’s torpedoes
hit home with a vengeance. The third explosion was
Yamato’s
aft turret
firing, and the officer in charge had not corrected based on the last salvo
from the forward guns. He was using stale data, but it proved to be remarkably
fresh when the spotters saw the results. To compound matters, when Fedorov
called for renewed speed, it was not there. The damage worked by that small
twenty millimeter round had forced Dobrynin to feed in much more cooling to the
reactors, and they were slowly losing power.

 Two rounds came withering in
towards the ship, the sound of their approach magnified greatly. God, no,
thought Fedorov.
God help us, no!

The first round came hurtling towards
the main mast, just a little high, but so close that it sheared away the Top
Mast antennae as it screamed by and plunged into the sea off the ship’s port
side with a massive geyser. The second round fell just shy of the ship’s
starboard side sending a huge column of water up beyond the height of the main
mast, which cascaded down onto the weather deck in a great fall of seawater.
The ship rocked from the wave action generated by the titanic rounds, careening
through the falling spray and pressing on.

Fedorov finally released his breath. A
straddle! The enemy had finally found the range and the ship had just come
within a hair’s breadth of annihilation. Twenty or thirty feet in either
direction and those  rounds would have broken her back.

Karpov was leaning over the radar screen
with Rodenko when his monitor quavered and then went entirely black on the Top
Mast system.
Kirov
had just taken a head butt and a hard thumb to the
eyes. The Fregat system was still off line, and now they had lost their other
long range weather and general surveillance radar. She was blind.

“I’ve lost Top Mast,” Rodenko
reported. “The entire system is down. Attempting to Cross circuit to the
MR-212B system….No luck, sir. I’ve got yellow fault lights all through the
navigation radar sets as well. The Active Phased Array is presently offline,
and in reset diagnostic mode. I can give you short range returns with
individual system fire control radars, but we have no effective long range
coverage at the moment.”

That was not all. Byko called up to
the bridge and indicated the emergency hull patch had been jarred by the near
miss and was again leaking. They were taking seawater amidships. Dobrynin
seconded the matter by confirming he could only give the ship twenty knots
while he worked to control his reactors. Events were stacking up like good
cards in the enemy hand, and Fedorov could only think that
Yamato
was
now about to play an Ace at any moment.