“Can’t we counter those S-300s?”
“We’d have to use the SM-3s. Face it, the Russian missile tech is second to none. That S-300 is damn fast. Later versions can get to 5000 meters per second velocity, and that is well beyond the capability of even a missile like the Patriot for an interception. Perhaps our only solace will be the fact that they will have that missile in limited numbers, but even their mid range SAMs can fire out at least 80 kilometers. They’ll fire in large salvos, and we won’t be able to stop them. Our best bet is to use our own SAMs to stop any SSMs they direct against our ship or the carriers we’re defending. Their P-900s will be easy to catch—they’re subsonic until terminal mode. The Moskit IIs only haul at Mach 3, and we should handle them as well.”
“So we play defense for those carriers against the SSMs,” said Harada. “But we can’t really help them get through Kirov’s SAM defense, not unless we throw every SSM we have at them at just the right time.”
“It will be difficult to predict that outcome,” said Fukada. “But if we do go offensive, I’d use our Type 12s against other shipping. That’s what they were originally conceived for. Our 5th Anti-Ship Missile Regiment at Kumato was going to use them to target Russian Amphibious vessels.”
“That means we’d have to be within 120 Klicks of the target. Getting that far north with Takami could be a problem. They won’t be landing down south.”
“No argument there,” said Fukada. “And we won’t want our carriers up that far either. My thought was that we could take this loaf in slices. Stand east of Korsakov for phase one operations. That will put us in a good position to interdict any move the Russians make towards our reinforcement operation.”
“What about the carriers?”
Fukada shook his head. “Frankly, we’d be better off on our own. If Kurita moves up there with us his carriers will just be a magnet for Russian missiles. We won’t attract too much attention alone if we stay passive on the electronics. We lie in wait….” Fukada had a strange look on his face, as if he was trying to see the battle that was coming. “They won’t expect us here, and they’ll likely be radiating like there’s no tomorrow. Otani will pick them up, and then we get a very brief window to decide what to do. What we need is for someone to wiggle a left jab in their face. Then we hit them with a good right cross—all eight Type 12 missiles—all or nothing.”
“So you’ve changed your tune about using them against the transports.”
“You were right—we’d never get that far north without being detected and challenged, and we don’t want Kurita up there.”
“Who wiggles the jab?”
“We have to have some air power in lower Sakhalin. Once we locate Kirov, we vector them in. A nice little bomber strike would be enough to fix their attention west toward the island. Then we launch all eight Type 12s in sea skimmer mode. I just wish the damn things were faster. The Type 12 runs just a whisker below the speed of sound. If we fire at anywhere near our maximum range, and we’ll want to, then we’re looking at five minutes to target on those missiles.”
“Right…. And the Russian Moskit IIs move at Mach Three. So while we’re sitting here looking at our watches and waiting out those five minutes….”
“I get the picture, but I don’t see any other option. Five minutes sounds like an eternity when the other fellow can throw back something that fast. Who knows, maybe they’ll get stupid and counter with their P-900s.”
“Don’t bet on that,” said Harada. “This Karpov knows what he’s doing. No. All we have going for us if we attack is those few minutes of shock and uncertainty. They won’t know what’s coming at them, unless they have some kind of wizard on their sensor suite. So I’m betting on that little interval of confusion while they try and convince themselves that the Japanese of 1942 suddenly have a near speed of sound missile.” The Captain shrugged, his arms folded, thinking. “All or nothing. We let that punch fly and see if we get lucky.”
Fukada nodded. The great risk they were taking here was very apparent to him now, but even as he felt this, another idea occurred to him, though he said nothing about it to Harada. All or nothing…
Chapter 32
It was an odd place for a crucial turning point in the war to be found, and few who worked there knew that the project they were now undertaking would become one of the most secret and most significant of the entire war. There, at the new Applied Physics Laboratory of Washington's Carnegie Institution, a team of scientists and civilian workers were attempting to solve a frustrating problem for the military—how to defeat enemy aircraft.
Since the end of WWI, the modern aircraft had been the bane of military defense planners and the chosen method of first strike on offense. Swarms of bombers, dive bombers, and fighters would lead any major assault on land. For the Navy, the hard lesson that control of the sea depended on control of the skies above that sea was taught over and over, from Pearl Harbor to the carrier duels that preceded the struggle for vital Pacific island outposts. It was the aircraft that was the true King of the battle space, not the lumbering battleships, and the value of a carrier rested solely in the fact that it could bring those aircraft to the fight.
For the last year there had been rumors throughout the US defense establishment of a new weapon that now threatened to upset the long steel reign of the military aircraft. Though the British had been very closed mouthed with intelligence on the matter, word had leaked through about the efficacy of rockets as an AA weapon.
Up until that time, rocketry was an arcane science, the province of physicists and engineers like Robert Goddard in the United States, who built liquid fueled rockets as early as 1926, achieving 34 successful launches before America’s war began in late 1941. Like Germany’s Wernher von Braun, Goddard was a true pioneer in the development of rocket technology. As a young boy Goddard had first dreamed of designing a device that could take humanity into space, as far away as Mars, all in the muse of his young 17 year old mind while he was staring at the skies from the top of a cherry tree in 1899. He called it the moment of his first great inspiration, and celebrated it every year as a kind of anniversary on October 19th.
So when rumors began to fly that the British had a rocket weapon that could track and hit a speedy flying aircraft, the matter eventually found its way to Goddard’s design table. In Fedorov’s history, the Army had not come calling on physicists and aeronautical engineers until 17 August, 1944, when they issued a memorandum asking for a radar guided missile that could shoot down enemy strategic bombers. Bell Labs would take up the challenge, which would soon become the Nike Ajax Rocket project, but it would be seven long years before the first successful interception of a drone occurred in 1951.
The little demonstration witnessed by Admiral Yamamoto in Davao Bay was therefore quite ground breaking, and did much to shock him into embracing these two strange officers that had come to him, seemingly out of nowhere. Now he had sent these men, and their amazing ship, off to defend his northern fleet against the demonic powers of yet another interloper with awesome new weapons of war, the ship they called Mizuchi.
Rocketry was already plying its deadly craft, right there in the 1940s, in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Despite that fact, little was really known about the ships that used these weapons, and what was known was kept in the closely guarded circles of military intelligence organizations. Even as work began on this idea of hitting an aircraft with a rocket, the technical challenges were seen to be truly daunting. First they needed a stable and effective rocket, reliable and consistent performance, an engine that could propel it to desired altitudes, and a means of tracking and guiding it to the target. While history would record that all these challenges would be overcome, it would take time to accomplish that, and enormous resources.