Kirov III: Pacific Storm

Give me that last S-300—Now!”

Samsonov’s hands were quick and agile on the CIC controls. “Missile ready!”

“Fire!”

The plane was fast, thought Fedorov, too fast to be a lumbering seaplane. It had to be a strike aircraft of some kind, but from where? It couldn’t be a Nell out of Port Moresby, not at over 450kph. It couldn’t be a Val dive bomber at that speed either. Only an A6M2 Zero could run like that…Unless…

“This is a night fighter,” he said quickly. “Probably out of Port Moresby or Rabaul, possibly even Lae. If so, it’s a long way from home.”

“Don’t worry, it will be in a permanent home soon,” said Karpov, the S-300 will take care of it.”

But there were two planes. Endo had been right on Kozono’s wing, his precision flying ability on display that night as the two planes accelerated and prepared to make their strafing runs. Rodenko’s Top Mast, not truly designed for tactical scenarios, had read both planes as one.

Endo saw something flash up from the dark shadow on the sea they were bearing on, with amazing speed. He reacted on pure reflex.

“Kozono! Bank left, quickly! I’m going right.” And the two planes suddenly veered away from one another, just as the missile was ready to acquire. It now had to choose one of two targets, and Kozono’s luck ran out that night. The S-300 followed his plane and exploded in a bright fiery rain of shrapnel that took off his left engine and half the wing. Kozono was wounded, his hand tight on the stick as his plane began to tailspin down towards the sea.

“Get it Endo!” he said with all the strength that was left in him, and then he knew no more.

Endo saw him die, and his jaw tightened, he was right on target, so close that he could see small AA guns jerking up at him and taking aim. He suddenly swooped low, aimed, and fired Kozono’s two new 20mm cannons full out, the machine guns on his wings rattling out their fire as well. At that very moment he saw the ship belch flame from its own guns, like the baleful breath of a dragon, and his plane shuddered, riddled with 30mm rounds. His right engine was on fire, but he controlled his plane, banking around to try and evade. Yet computer controlled AR-710s could not be fooled by his maneuver. They fired again, and Endo and his plane were shot to pieces. He would not go on to become one of Japan’s leading aces later in that very same model plane, and the pilots and crews of at least eight B-29s would not die at the business end of his skillful trade.

But his own cannons had raked the back of Mizuchi, and the 20mm rounds dug deeply into the tall main mast aft section, where a series of steam vents for the rapidly spinning turbine engine vented up in a cleverly hidden stack. It was perforated, rasping out jets of hot steam, and a small fire started there, adding smoke and flame to the mix. It was not a serious wound, just a scratch really, but it would end up causing more trouble than anyone knew when the damage control teams began to respond to the scene.

Chief Byko put his hands on his hips, shaking his head as he looked up at the steam venting sideways from a dozen holes. “Let’s get to work, boys,” he said wearily. “It’s going to be another long night.”

It was prophetic.

~ ~ ~

She bore the name of ancient Japan, Yamato, an awesome ship, 862 feet long with a 127 foot beam, nearly 72,000 tons of iron and steel, almost as much as the British battleships Rodney and Nelson combined! By comparison the American battleship Nevada that had been on Japan’s target list at Pearl Harbor displaced a measly 27,500 tons. Yamato outweighed Nevada, Oklahoma and a good heavy cruiser thrown on the scales as well, truly a super battleship, and no other nation would ever build anything in her weight class again. 23,000 tons of her weight was dedicated to armor alone. Yet when she launched in December of 1941, just in time for the hostilities planned against the United States, the Americans had no knowledge of her existence beyond veiled rumors of a ship believed to be in the range of 40-50,000 tons. The US would know little more about the ship until they eventually sank it in an enormous air attack with 400 planes, hitting her with twelve 1000 pound bombs and at least seven torpedoes years later, in March of 1945.

A six foot wide gold chrysanthemum crest crowned the sleek construction of her special hydrodynamic bow, which helped Yamato plow through the sea resistance and enhanced her speed. Driven by twelve Kampon boilers and engines that could generate all of 150,000 horsepower for her quadruple three blade propellers, she ran at 27 knots, an engineering marvel for her day. To do so she consumed 70 tons of fuel each hour.

Inside the ship was a maze of passageways and compartments, so complicated that the decks were painted with arrows indicating which direction was forward so her crew of 2800 men could find their way around. There were 1,150 watertight compartments in her hull design to restrict or allow flooding to correct a list if necessary. Even her massive fuel stores could be moved by pumps to special compartments to help correct a list as much as ten degrees.

Now the cranes and catapults on her enormous aft deck were feverishly working to launch two more of her seven seaplanes. One was already in the air, but these two would be tasked with helping gunfire direction by spotting shell falls near the target, as her guns could lob shells well over the horizon. The ship already knew the approximate position of her enemy, and even now the range finders perched atop her hundred foot high main mast were scanning the dark glistening seas ahead to try and pinpoint their sighting. To either side of this point, two flat antennae jutted like squarish black ears, the Model 1 Mark 2 set, which ranged out to 20,000 meters. It would not work that night, as her foe was quietly jamming the 1.5 meter band to render it useless, though it seldom worked at all after the first firing of the enormous guns. The concussion was so great that the radar sets would be shaken senseless.

Yet even without her fire control radars, Yamato had other means of sighting and aiming her powerful guns. The quality of her optical fire control systems were matched only by the Bismarck, and for combat at night, she had no other equal on earth, until Kirov arrived. Yet the actual system used to control and aim her guns was primitive compared to the capabilities of the enemy she now faced.

The Type 92 Shagekiban low angle analog computer used on Yamato was first developed by the Aichi Clock Company in 1932. It was a complex system relying on information from numerous sources outside the computer itself, and the efforts of at least seven operators. A graphic plotter noted the basic heading and speed of the target, and calculated bearing change versus time. A range averaging panel selected out the most likely range by averaging results obtained from several optical rangefinders. The main panel of the device had displays for present range and rate of change, spot correction, the speed of the firing ship and its bearing, wind deflection, a compass card and other functions. It worked in close cooperation with the type 94 Hoiban gun director, and other control systems on the ship, and thus its overall operation could be degraded when any of these supporting systems were damaged or put out of action by enemy fire.

The entire effort of the machine was to produce one vital calculation: future target position. It was, in effect, a time machine trying to peer into the future and see where the enemy ship would be two minutes on. The seven man team saw one man reading range averages and bearing plots, a second slowly cranking a wheel to set the range change obtained by this control officer. Other men adjusted the settings for bearing, deflection correction, ship speed, target inclination, compass course from the gyro, and then the final variable was the all important averaging of the range solutions obtained by different rangefinders. This man exercised his best judgment of the results he received, favoring one or excluding another that he deemed inconsistent or invalid. In short, he was making his best guess of the actual range from a weight of opinion obtained from three to five different rangefinders. As such, the system required a great deal of manual input, and as a gun battle continued, human factors such as fatigue, fear, distraction and other emotional responses all played a part in the final solution obtained.

By contrast, Kirov’s electronic systems were a million times quicker to their solution, and there were layers of possible ways to target the enemy—radar, laser range finding and HD optics as well. The difference meant one thing in the end: Kirov found her enemy in the here and now. It did not have to predict where the target would be at some future time. What Kirov fired at she was going to hit, and virtually without fail. What Yamato fired at she might hit, given enough time and just a little good luck in the mix.