Kirov II: Cauldron of Fire

rockets, lighting fast, with deadly precision. Rockets fired by a dark, dangerous ship that slipped through the night like a phantom.

It was here! This was nothing the French could have imagined or ever put to sea. Strasbourg had 13 inch guns, but this was something else entirely—no ripple of bright enemy fire in the distance; no sign of water splashed as her rounds came in. It was here! This was the ship Fraser had warned him of—the ship that put Repulse in her grave and blotted the side armor of both King George V and Prince of Wales. And now it had stuck its fist in his face and drawn first blood.

His amazement suddenly gave way to a new emotion. Nelson had been a proud but plodding ship in her years of service. She had foolishly run aground on Hamilton's Shoal in 1934, watched fast German cruisers and destroyers dance around her in the North Sea, ever beyond her grasp. She was nearly sunk by three German torpedoes near the Orkney’s, but miraculously spared when all three failed to explode, then she blundered in to a mine off Loch Ewe. Most recently she had been laid up by an Italian torpedo, returning to service only in May of that very year. In all these actions her one great liability had been her ponderously slow speed and sluggish maneuverability. But never had any ship dared to put hands on her as this one just had.

Syfret stood up, no longer amazed, but angry now. He was standing in the heavily armored conning tower, with steel plate over a foot thick on every side, one of the most heavily protected citadels on any ship in the world. Yet he disdained his armored castle and rushed to the weather bridge to see if he could get a look at the damage.

C turret had been knocked about, and the concussion of the hit had probably killed or disabled men on one side of the turret. The barbette was black as tar and licked by flame, which had spread to engulf two lifeboats on the other side of the ship. The turrets leftmost gun of three was inclined upward like a metal finger, still pointing at the smoky contrail of the missile. But the turret was even more heavily armored than his own citadel, a full 16.5 inches thick, and by god, he saw the guns begin to slowly rotate to re-train on the target, its remaining two barrels adjusting their elevation, and he knew there were men still alive and fighting in there, though the heat from the flames that still broiled on one side of the massive turret must be unbearable. He looked astern to see that Rodney had also been struck, a little lower amidships where much of the blow had been taken by her heavy side armor. There was a fire, but it did not look serious and all her guns appeared to be in good order.

“Damn you, sir!” he shouted at the distant, unseen foe, and rushed back into the citadel with an order. “Get the range, by God. Ready on A and B Turrets.”

Down in the guts of the ship men were feverishly receiving optical sighting reports and working the fire control boxes, or FCBs as they were called. They were cranking levers to set elevation, gun deflection, range, gun training, and also sliding precision rulers over tables to calculate wind deflection. There were dials to set the estimated target speed and bearing, gyros to read variations in the roll of the ship, measures to calculate the ballistic height of the target and a line of sight transmitter. Within the box, wires and cables connected all these dials, gauges and levers to try and make sense, though to any untrained eye the contents of the box looked more like the workings of a Swiss watch. There were metal plates etched with millimeter hash marks, azimuth conversion gears, oil motors whirring to move levers and flanges, speed governors spinning, fuze clocks for firing intervals, and even heating elements to dissipate moisture and keep the system dry.

Other men were sighting from their gun director posts and shouting information through voice pipes to the men who worked at the FCBs. The controlling officer manned a telephone to the bridge. Still others were squinting through telescopes and slowly turning hand wheels to fine tune their settings. While it all seemed very precise, it was basically a mechanical guessing machine. It was a team effort, with range takers, line of sight finders, elevation directors, heightfinders, a collective synergy of human eyes, heads and mechanical elements which took a long minute to reach a solution while the crews in the gun turrets were seeing to the loading of the massive shells and propellant charges. It made very well educated guesses in the end, but was wrong more often than not, and by a wide measure.

When Nelson’s sister ship HMS Rodney engaged the Bismarck, she had taken three salvos and fifteen minutes to get her first hit, and that was at dawn, with a range of about 20,000 yards. Here the range was greater, and it was a night action with Syfret’s ships initially relying on forward spotters in his two sheep dogs, Ashanti and Tartar. He knew it would take at least five salvos before they got the range, and perhaps even more, and he hoped he had the time before this demon slipped from his grasp.

“Give them bloody hell!” Syfret yelled at the top of his voice, commanding the whole process from the bridge. “Shoot!”

Seconds later the whole ship shook with the kick of the massive guns. Anything on the bridge that was not riveted down went clattering across plotting tables and rattling to the deck. The last loose shards of glass in the viewports were shaken free and the binnacle rattled and vibrated with the concussion, which was basically just a controlled explosion gripped in the tight steel cylinder of the gun barrel. It did indeed look like hell when the fire and smoke belched from the yawning muzzle of the guns, and the scream of the heavy shells as they went wailing away towards the enemy was frighteningly loud. Now he could just make their adversary out on the far horizon, lit by the fire of their own rocketry as the range slowly diminished.

They wanted a fight, with the Royal Navy, he thought. By God, I’ll give them one!

~ ~ ~

The salvo that had sent Kirov’s P-900 missiles flying was again long, but frightening as the shells whooshed overhead and fell into the sea, sending tall white plumes of seawater up into the air. Karpov saw the missiles strike home, smiling when each one ignited in a fireball, dead amidships.

“Two hits!” he said.

“Come right, fifteen,” said Fedorov. “Begin evasive maneuvers.”

“That will take us right into their last salvo,” said Karpov.

“Exactly,” said Fedorov excitedly. “We have the speed and maneuverability to chase salvos here. They’ll be correcting that long shot based on their read on our heading and speed. Their next shots should fall off our port side and short.”

He wanted to use Kirov’s great advantage in speed to make it more difficult for the British battleships to accurately range on the ship. They saw the night ripped apart by another salvo, a second ship behind it firing as well, and the thought that there were now at least twelve, and possibly eighteen massive shells heading their way gave him a chill. Kirov was a middleweight champion with a merciless jab, a strong right arm, and terrible speed. The ships she was facing were big, bruising heavyweights, lumbering slow but with tree trunk arms and hammers in their fists. They only needed one punch to connect to stagger their opponent and possibly decide the bout.

Karpov’s words returned to him again. What did they have for us after the ball? No, thought Fedorov, the dance is not yet over. We have to move, maneuver, and one glance at his navigation plot told him they needed to do everything possible to get out of range of these guns.

The two salvoes fell in a long line off the port side as he had predicted, better placed now, and ranging nearer. He changed heading quickly, turning into the salvos, the ship’s powerful turbines frothing the sea in her wake as Kirov ran at full battle speed, all of 32 knots.

“Shall I finish them?” Karpov asked, the elation of battle in his eyes. He was leaning over Samsonov, waiting to make his next missile selection.

“Finish them?” said Fedorov. “They’re just getting started, Captain. I’m afraid we only angered those two monsters out there. Speed is what we need now. Speed and a quick hand on the helm.”

“Yes, well I suggest we hit them again, and this time with the Moskit-IIs.”

“Fight your battle,” Karpov. “I will maneuver the ship.”

Karpov nodded, glad to have a freer hand, and turned to Victor Samsonov. “Give me a salvo of four Moskit IIs…” He had suddenly noticed two the secondary contacts edging closer to the ship on Samsonov’s screen. “Those must be destroyers,” he said quickly. “They are at 15,000 meters. Engage them with the 152mm deck guns. Then put two missiles on each primary.”

“Aye, sir!” Samsonov went to work, feeding commands to the ship’s weapons systems. In contrast to the