Kirov II: Cauldron of Fire

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.

The pilot of the last brave hunchback was clenching his stick and ready to pull the release on his torpedo when he felt his plane shake violently as the fragmentation rounds ripped off his right engine and half the wing. Low over the sea, his plane went into an immediate and unrecoverable dive, plunging into the water with a huge splash.

Up in the citadel they could hear the sound of the men cheering on the decks below as the last plane went down, and Karpov smiled, giving Fedorov a sidelong glance. “You may secure your gun system, Gromenko.”

Fedorov breathed deeply, his lips tight. He had no real idea how to fight the ship as Karpov did, but he stowed the lesson away. Karpov stepped over to him and spoke quietly. “I know how you feel, Captain,” he said in a low voice so that none of the other officers would hear. “What must be done is sometime very unpleasant. When it comes down to their ships and planes or the loss of ours, you will know what you must do.”

Fedorov looked down, still unsatisfied within, but he nodded, acknowledging what Karpov was saying. Then he straightened up, turning Gromenko. “How many missiles remain for our Klinok system?”

“Sir, my board notes 17 missile fires in the last two engagements, and we now have 79 missiles remaining in inventory on that system.”

“Something to consider,” he said to Karpov. “We have a long way to go before we reach safe waters.” He looked about, noting the time. “Helm—left fifteen degrees rudder and come to course 315.”

“Left fifteen and stead on three-one-five” echoed the helmsman “Speed thirty knots, aye, sir.”

“Walk with me, Captain.” Fedorov had heard Admiral Volsky say and do this, when he wanted a private talk with an officer, and it seemed appropriate for the moment. Karpov grinned, but followed respectfully, and the two men entered the briefing room at the back of the citadel.

“I’m going to take us up to the Strait of Bonifacio,” Fedorov began as he switched on the digital wall map and displayed the region. “At thirty knots we should be there by dawn, roughly six hours. It would be better if we could run the strait at night, but I don’t want to linger in these waters any longer than I have to.” He pointed to the map where the ship’s current position was clearly indicated with a bright red dot, and there were several blue dots north and east of their position indicating other contacts already designated and tracked by their long range radar system. He tapped one of these contacts, well east of the ship.

“This is the heavy cruiser group,” he said, “Bolzano and Goriza— both with 8 inch guns and better armor than the ships we just engaged. There will be another heavy cruiser here, Trieste, and each group will have destroyer escorts. This other group out of Naples will be another light cruiser. By steering 315 I’m taking the most direct route north to get us out of the Tyrrhenian Sea. These cruisers are fast, but I think we can stay well ahead of them at thirty knots and reach the strait before they can pose any threat. And my understanding of the Italians at this point in the war, I don’t think the lighter surface action groups will attempt to engage us without support from more air units or heavier ships. There is considerable air power mustered near Cagliari, and we may remain in range of planes from those fields for some time on this route. But they have a mission against the British convoy as their first priority, and we may simply be an inconvenient barb in their side at the moment. They had a run at us, but with little more than twenty percent of the strength they might deploy in a well planned attack. At dawn, however, we will have to get past the naval base at La Maddalena. And we could also face some danger from German and Italian planes at Grosseto. That airfield would be here, very near the Island of Elba on the Italian mainland. The other route north around Corsica takes us very near the major Italian base at La Spezia. Thankfully, the really dangerous ships are at Taranto. They didn’t move their battleships to La Spezia until later in 1942.”

“No matter,” said Karpov glibly. “If they were there, and they dared to send them against us those ships would get the same treatment.”

Fedorov let that remark pass and simply said: “Well my hope is that we can avoid engagement whenever possible, Captain.”

“Very well,” said Karpov. “I agree that we must conserve our missile inventories, but what about this naval base?”