Karpov nodded. “Thank you, Mister Fedorov. Kindly send the order in to have the ship go to condition one alert. I think we’ll have a better have look around.”
Chapter 36
That was now what was on the mind of Admiral Kurita—get up north and have a look around. With the ice retreating, the Sea of Okhotsk was now open, and it was his charge to give challenge to the enemy by taking his task force north. Lieutenant Kobayashi reported to the bridge of the battleship Hiraga with the latest message from Takami. It was asking him to do exactly what he had in mind. Captain Harada was taking up a position in Taraika Bay up near the port of Shikuka, old Poronaysk under the Siberians. He had requested that Kutaka’s carriers move well west into the Tatar Strait and await a signal to then launch a strike wave and fly east to his position before being vectored north. Now Kurita was being asked to move north, up the east coast of Karafuto, towards the ongoing ground battle there.
Admiral Yamamoto asked me to cooperate with this Captain, thought Kurita, and as his mind and my own are in accord here, I will accommodate this request. Our troops up north will undoubtedly appreciate the sight of my battleships and cruisers off the coast.
For all his bravado, Kurita did not really have any idea what he was now going to be up against. The fledgling radar set that had been installed on Hiraga was incapable of ranging out to find the enemy ahead of him, or ever really effectively tracking its missiles. Kurita’s squadron was, in effect, like a group of near blind men with shotguns, huddled together and needing to get within close visual range of a target to fire at it. That was all they could represent, a possible close range threat against a modern ship like Kirov. They would not even know that ship was there, unless Takami fed updated position and ranging information in via that secure radio set.
Kurita had no conception of this. In his mind, he was aboard one of the finest battleships in the world, and the verbal admonitions of Yamamoto could not convey the danger he was now sailing towards. The inspection of the damage on Mutsu, however, had been quite sobering. He spoke with crewmen and officers from that ship, who told him of the lightning fast rockets Yamamoto had warned him about.
“You will see them easily enough,” said one man. “They claw the sky like Raiju, more terrible than the sky demon Itsumade. Yes, you will see them when they come, but there will be nothing you can do to stop them. Look how the fires consumed our ship!”
“Did you fire back at them?”
The man smiled. “There was nothing to shoot at. We never saw the enemy ship—only these terrible rockets.”
That gave Kurita pause, but he steeled himself. “Then they are cowards if they refuse to face you in battle.”
“That may be,” said the officer, “but here sits Mutsu, a burned wreck, and the enemy still commands the northern sea.”
“We shall see about that.” Kurita put on an outward face of bravado, but even the smell of the charred metal on old Mutsu haunted him for some time.
So now he sailed north, his watchmen straining to see through the misty dawn, his men ready for anything that might come. Yet he and his entire task force were merely bait, meat being thrown to the wolf. The officers of Takami were trying to get the attention of their adversary, and had asked Kurita to pose a threat, and then to withdraw upon their signal.
But that is not what would happen…
At the moment, Takami was sitting with its SPY-1D in silent mode. The system was unmatched insofar as radiation control in that stealthy listening mode. Those sensitive ears could detect and to some extent track contacts by receiving the target’s own RF emissions and also by receiving echoes from other third party sources that would reflect off the target. This was why Captain Harada had asked all the conventional strike elements to be very free with radio communications on their approach to Kirov’s suspected location, for even simple FM band radio could bounce off a target and be detected by passive radars listening for such a signal.
For much more precise tracking of a contact, the system would have to actively radiate its own radar pulses to illuminate the threat, but in doing so it would also give its own position away. Yet once clearly fixed on a target, the lightning fast chain of electronic reflexes would quickly pass information to the ship’s Command Decision System, (CDS), which evaluated threats and sent the data directly to the Weapons Control System, (WCS), all in a heartbeat. There was no handover to a separate targeting fire control radar, which made AEGIS so quick and reliable on defense. The system was extremely robust, as technology injections had kept it right on the leading edge of what was possible, and the Japanese had upgraded to the AN/SPY-1/D(V) incorporating improvements in eliminating ground and background clutter.
“Kurita looks to be in position,” said Harada. “They should spot him before noon.”
“Should we get the helicopters up?” asked Fukada. “We’re not going to see anything over the horizon like this. All we’ll get is a general location on the target, and we already know that much now.”
“We need him to come south. Maybe they’ll take the bait.”
“Why should they?” said Fukada. “They have over the horizon strike capability. What makes you think they’ll come south? And I don’t like our position here. We’re bottled up in this bay, and can’t maneuver north. Your entire plan rests on the assumption that they’ll come to us.”
“You have a better idea?”
“I think we should backstop Kurita—move into his wake. If he gets too far north, then we can’t cover him with our SAM umbrella. We should get out of here and move east and north immediately.”
Harada thought about that. “Honjo?” he said to his CIC officer.
“He’s right, sir. We’re stuck here, and I can only throw the SM-2 about 75 klicks north of our position. If Kurita gets any farther north, he’s hung out there on his own.”
“What about our ERAM 174s?”
“I only have half a dozen, sir. Everything else is SM-2 unless you want me to use the SM-3.”
“No, keep them in the basket.” The Captain took a long breath, rubbing the back of his neck. “We need a better fix on their location, but if we sent up a helo we’ll give the game away.”
“Playing possum here won’t even get us in the game at all if he hovers up north,” said Fukada. “That’s what I’d do. His mission is to protect his troop convoys to North Sakhalin, and control the lines of communication back to Magadan. Our mission, now that our own troops have landed safely, is to interdict the enemy operations. We just can’t do that here.”
Harada nodded. “Alright. I hear you. Let’s notify Kurita that we’re moving east into his wake. As for the carriers and land based strike planes, they can continue to hold until we give the word.”
It was that fleeting signal to the radio set on Hiraga that woke up Nikolin again that morning. He had been sitting, a bit bleary eyed, and wishing he had found some stronger coffee instead of tea that morning. But the COMINT profile module he had set up to listen for specific types of radio signals traffic was as wide awake as ever. The red light soon indicated that he had another fish in his net.