B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (34 page)

Now
the ship was racing towards the biggest fight of its brief career, her long, graceful
bow cutting the seas at 33 knots. Her turbines were pushing 52,000 tons of
steel at that speed, an amazing feat that no other battleship could match.
Considering her speed, tremendous firepower and considerable protection, many
considered the ships of this class to be the best ever designed and deployed in
the world. She almost got her chance to prove that against
Yamato
in the
Philippines campaign, but now she would face the ship that beat that behemoth,
and her enemy was not alone. Word was that there was a small flotilla of fast
Russian ships out there, and coming fact. One was a battlecruiser, the others
cruiser and destroyer class ships, or so the last signals from
St. Paul
had
described them.

Iowa
would not be alone either. To the north the
heavy cruiser
Boston
was hastening south to this same intercept point,
her 8 inch guns ready for action. Destroyer Ingersoll was also nearby, but
ordered to render assistance to
St. Paul.
The high main mast of
Iowa
would see enemy first. Bert Cook of Waterloo, Iowa would be the first man to
see the Russians—three of them, just as the pickets had called it. But they
weren’t ships, just odd glowing lights in the sky.

Then
the missiles came.

* * *

The
Russian flotilla had raced east to pass very
near the stricken
St. Paul.
Karpov watched the ship closely,
Kirov’s
deck guns trained and ready should it show any signs of life. They passed without
incident, the flaming cruiser slowly listing from a big gaping wound in her
side where one of the
Oniks
missiles had blow through her six inch armor.
There were two more ships racing to cut them off, one big contact to the south,
and a second smaller ship to the north.

“Shall
I order
Golovko
to fire that second set of
Oniks
now, sir?” Rodenko
was at Karpov’s side.

“Tell
them to target the other cruiser to the north, just as before.”

“Aye,
sir. But that will be the last of their P-800s. They still have another eight P-900s
if needed.”

“I’m
aware of the missile count, Mister Rodenko. It is more than adequate.
Golovko
is to engage that cruiser class unit and then maintain her ASW watch.
Orlan
will hold fire and concentrate entirely on air defense. As for that bigger contact
to the south, I think it will be an American battleship.” He looked Rodenko in
the eye. “Fair is fair, Rodenko. That’s work for
Kirov
.”

Part
XII

War
In Heaven

“Now
war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the Dragon. And the
Dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated and there was no longer
any place for them in heaven. And the great Dragon was thrown down, that ancient
serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world –
he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

―
Book of Revelation: 12: 7-9

Chapter 34

Iowa
was
still wearing her war paint that day, the only ship in her class to have a camouflage
dazzle paint scheme. Its lines were smoother and employed more curves, but
their intent was the same. To throw off estimation of her size and speed when
viewed by human eyes from a great distance.

After
his duel with
Yamato
, Karpov was in no great hurry to get a close look at
the American battleship. He had argued endlessly that the one great advantage
Kirov
possessed at sea in any surface action was range. The ship could fight like an
aircraft carrier, striking at ranges up to 370 kilometers with her P-900s. But
there was only one left in inventory now after his long range attack against
the distant American carriers. It had paid off with four ships hit,
Monterey
and
Ticonderoga
in the Sprague group,
Cowpens
and
Shangri-La
in the Halsey group. Of these, only
Cowpens
was damaged badly enough to
be put completely out of action, taking two missile hits that affected her
speed and hydraulics.
Monterey
was also limping badly after two hard
knocks, but the rest of the fast fleet carriers were still alive and well,
controlling the damage and edging a little further south to avoid harm. The
Captain had no more missiles to expend on them—not with the American
battleships bearing down on him now.

The
need to penetrate the American line was going to mean the action would necessarily
close to short range at the moment of breakthrough. Karpov wanted to hurt his
adversary well before it came to that. He elected to open the battle with the
real workhorse of his SSM suite, the deadly
Moskit-II
. The ship left
Vladivostok with her standard loadout of twenty missiles. Three had been fired thus
far, leaving him seventeen, and he would begin the engagement against
Iowa
with a salvo of three.

The
problem with the missile soon became evident. They had gone to sea with the intention
of fighting modern ships. None of the missiles had been re-programmed for
plunging fire that had proved so deadly against WWII ships. The
Moskit-IIs
were therefore coming in as fast sea skimmers, and their accuracy actually worked
against them, putting them square on the side armor belt of one of the best
protected ships in the world.

That
said, the shock of a supersonic fire bomb with an armor penetrating warhead traveling
at Mach 2.6 on impact was considerable. The missiles would meet over 12 inches
of hardened steel that was designed to defeat a warhead of over 2000 pounds.
The
Moskits
carried nearly a thousand pounds, but they hit with a
thunderous impact as substantial reserves of rocket fuel ignited to add fire and
hell to the explosion.

 The
big ship rocked with the blow, broiling fire cascading up above the gunwales and
into the main deck. Three hard body shots came in at ten second intervals and
combined to start a huge fire amidships. Alarms were jangling all over the ship.
Damage control parties were scrambling to the port side of the battleship,
dragging fire hoses to get streams of water flowing on the inferno. The fires
were so close to a 5 inch gun battery that one of its twin barrels actually
began to melt and droop in the hot fuel driven flames, which reached red heat
temperatures approaching 1800 degrees at the height of the fire.

Yet
fire consumes fuel rapidly, and within minutes the worst was over and the hundreds
of trained damage control teams were slowly getting the upper hand. From a
distance
Iowa
appeared to be a flaming wreck after one good shot, but
there was soon more smoke than fire and, as the stiffening wind blew the pall astern,
what was left was a blackened and buckled armor plate that was still intact.
Two of the three missiles were defeated, the third struck more toward the long
swept bow and a little high where it scudded across the deck in a billowing
explosion forward of the number one turret, but the damage was soon controlled and
in non-vital areas.

Thank
God for armor, thought Captain Wellborn. We rolled with the punches, like a fighter
on the ropes taking it in the gut. There was nothing wrong with those Big
Sticks out front now, he reasoned, looking at the massive turrets. If only I
had a target! Then he realized the rockets had betrayed the exact bearing of the
firing ship. The long smoky contrails pointed out the way. All he had to do was
sight down that axis and he would find his enemy in time, but at what range?
The horizon was nearly twenty miles away now, the sun lowering as the time
passed through 18:00 hours. Sunset was 20:56, plenty of daylight left in these
high latitudes. If they kept coming he should see them soon, silhouetted against
the gloaming sky.

Yet
Iowa
could fire much farther than that horizon. Her guns could lob their
massive 2700 pound shells out twenty-four miles. Wellborn was not going to wait
for the enemy to come at him again without answering. He ordered his number one
turret to fire. They had no firing solution, no target in sight, just a bearing,
but the big guns blasted away anyway.
Iowa
was clearing her throat, and
the sheer concussion blew out the last of the flames on her forward deck.

The
sound of the massive guns going off set the ship’s crew to cheering, which is exactly
what Wellborn wanted. You don’t lay on the ropes and just take it. You throw
punches back, whether you can reach the other fellow or not. In a hot minute
some 8100 pounds of metal would plow into the ocean out there. They would see
those rounds and know we’re still here and ready to fight.

* * *

They
did see them. Rodenko called a warning and
Kirov
tracked the incoming shells on radar as if they were missiles. Amazingly, they
came arcing up from the distant curve of the earth and then descended, on a
perfect line to their present heading and just a couple thousand meters ahead
of the
Orlan
. The blind haymaker
Iowa
threw back at them had very
nearly grazed their chin.
Orlan
, out in front, was much closer, and they
had a good look at the tall water spouts rising as the big shells plummeted into
the sea.

“Rodenko—I
thought we were jamming their fire control radars.” Karpov’s complaint was an obvious
one. The shot had been far closer than it should have been.

“We
are, sir. There is no way they can read our position on Radar through the clutter
we’re hitting them with.”

In
an instant Karpov realized what had happened. “Helm, come left fifteen degrees,”
he said quickly. “They’re firing down our missile wakes. We’ll need to assume a
new heading after every salvo. Samsonov, set up three more
Moskit-IIs
. I
want the KA-226 to get me optical images on that ship. I want to see what our missiles
did to them in that first salvo.”

Rodenko
was nervously watching at the Fregat system, which was still receiving data from
their AEW helicopter. He saw what looked like a signal cloud or weather front
to the south, then realized what it was. “Conn, Radar.” He began reflexively,
the years at that station honing his reflexes as he reported. “Large airborne
contact cloud bearing 190 degrees and approaching at 400kph.”

“Range?”

“Ka-226
has the leading edge at 200 kilometers. Fregat should have them in about five minutes.
From there it will be another twenty minutes or so before they reach our
present position.”

The
Captain’s eyes shifted back and forth, hand on his chin. They had sixteen P-400s
left. The rest of their SAM defense rested with the
Klinok
medium range
system, which could not yet engage. The
Orlan
was the real bulwark of
the fleet air defense. That ship still had 152 lightning fast SAMs ready for action.

“Nikolin,
signal Captain Yeltsin to match our new heading and go to air alert one. We’re going
to need them soon.”

How
many planes were coming, he wondered? The contact cloud as Rodenko described it
was very dense, yet widely dispersed. In spite of his preemptive strike against
the American carriers, they got a significant strike wave in the air, and anything
that gets through our defense umbrella will arrive right in the heat of my
action against this battleship.

His
plan was simple. They might fire a hundred rounds at me to get just a single hit.
That was what Fedorov told him. Our ammunition is limited, but we hit them every
time we fire. He had twenty-four more SSMs on
Kirov
, yet he knew each
and every one was going to hit and hurt his enemy. Against a smaller ship they
were awesome lances, perfect for blasting the lighter armored cruisers and destroyers
to hell. Against the big battleship they were hard punches indeed, but not
fatal blows. Look at the punishment we put on the
Yamato
, and we still
could not sink that ship. I can’t waste my valuable missiles on this ship’s heavy
armor…

“Samsonov,
we can still program the
Moskit-IIs
for popup maneuver, can we not?”

“Yes,
sir. That is a simple toggle selection.”

“Key
all three for popup and hold. I suspect our first salvo hit their side armor. We
need to be more precise in our targeting.”

A
second salvo from
Iowa
came in again, very wide now that they had turned
on the new heading. This time there were nine rounds falling. Karpov smiled, knowing
he had been correct. There was nothing wrong with their jamming. The American
Captain was simply firing blind. It was all bluster and no skill, just like the
Italians; just like Iwabuchi on
Kirishima
when he was chasing us in the
dark.

“Activate
forward deck guns,” said Karpov.

“Sir,
aye. Guns ready.”

“Begin
firing. Sets of 16 rounds. We’ll show them what precision naval gunnery can really
do.”

It
was time to dance and jab.

* * *

The
first shells landed just shy of the bow,
surprising everyone on the
Iowa’s
bridge. They fell in pairs, obviously
from typical twin gun mounts, and from the size of the water plumes Wellborn
knew they must be no more than 5 inchers.

“Who
the hell is shooting at us?” he bawled, thinking one of the destroyers had come
on the scene and misidentified his ship as the enemy. But there were no reports
of any ships sighted on any quarter. They seemed completely alone on the sea, and
the skies above were clear as well. It was as if the shells were dropping from
heaven.

“Watchmen,
any contacts?”

“Sir,
weather deck. My watch is clear—”

“Belay
that! Main mast reports ship sighted, bearing 340!”

Wellborn
couldn’t see anything, and the next rounds came in with a dull thud and jarring
explosion. The ship had been hit by a small caliber round. A twin Bofors mount was
ablaze on the port side, and more rounds were falling astride the long raked bow.

“Navigator,
range to horizon—quick! Helm. Starboard ten.”

The
Captain saw an explosion forward again, right on the number one turret. The smoke
cleared and he took heart. They had 500mm of armor there, all of 19.7 inches.
The turret shrugged off the small caliber rounds like nothing had happened.
There passed a tense moment, with Wellborn half looking over his shoulder as he
waited on his navigator.

“Sir
I calculate horizon from main mast at 19.5 miles.”

It
was not possible, the Captain thought. He could still see nothing on the horizon,
but the top of
Iowa’s
main mast was 150 feet above the water. Add that
to the height of any distant contact and you could peg the range to horizon.

“Give
it to me in yards, damn it!”

“Sir,
aye, sir. Range to horizon…three, four, three, two, zero.”

The
Captain was close by the view ports now, binoculars up, and focused intently on
the far horizon, then he thought he saw a slight blemish on the clean edge of the
sea.

“Gunnery
officer. All batteries to bear on target at three-five-zero degrees. Make your range
33,000 yards and commence firing.”

Another
explosion told him they had been hit yet again by a small caliber round. He knew
he had this one brief moment. The fleeting moment of first contact where a general
calculation of the range to horizon would give him the range. He knew optical
sighting crews were working the problem now as well, but the Big Stick would get
something in the air while they were still calculating. That ship could turn
away at any minute and they would lose both bearing and range.

Then
the big guns blasted away, the deafening sound ripping the air with fire and concussion
so great that it flattened the waves out a hundred yards from the ship and
literally sheared away the rising water splash of two more enemy rounds. White
smoke rolled out behind the fire as Wellborn looked north, squinting to see if
he could still see the enemy contact. Those were naval guns, he thought,
smiling inwardly. They had come to rely so much on radar that it was going to
be one hell of a crash refresher course for the optical sighting crews. Get it
right, boys, he thought. Get it right.