A world without battleships, that was something he'd never thought he'd see. When he'd joined the Royal Navy back in the 1920s, the lines of battleships stretched as far as the eye could see. Now they were all gone. The four Japanese Yamato class battleships, and four more Roma class in Italy, were the only ones other than Hood left in commission now. All the others had gone, the American Iowa’s were rusting in the reserve fleet, the rest were either museums or scrapped. The French ships scuttled in port, the German ships blasted out of the water at the Battle of the Orkneys.
That was a question that got asked at staff colleges these days - did the way the Americans destroyed the German fleet at the Orkneys act as an early indicator of the way they would later destroy Germany? Ladone shuddered slightly, the thought of The Big One made his skin crawl. An entire nation, wiped from the map. Much of the world looked on the Americans now as if they were a pack of savage guard dogs; one was grateful for their existence and the protection they provided but one didn't want to have them in the living room.
So, once Hood had finished fuelling and taking on supplies, she would be off on her last cruise. Then, Ladone would be going on to his next posting. A promotion and command of a cruiser squadron. Also ex-British ships, also getting old. One day, one day soon, India would be building her own major warships, her own cruisers and carriers.
Destroyers and submarines she was building already and impressive ships they were. Two of the destroyers were accompanying the Hood on this cruise. Big ships, well-found and mostly Indian-equipped. Eight 4.5 inch guns, in the new Mark VI twin mountings from Australia, and ten torpedo tubes. The torpedoes were weight and space holders, there was a new guided anti-ship missile being developed to replace them but it was a painfully long time coming. The catch was the new ships mostly had all-Indian crews, so opportunities for the British expatriates there were limited.
Still, in retrospect things had worked out well for India. What could have been a sudden and disastrous charge into independence had been slower and allowed an orderly transfer. Fortune had smiled as well, a few people who could have caused trouble had suffered accidents or died from natural causes at opportune moments. To stay with India had been the right decision, Ladone thought. Britain had only a tiny navy, the shattered countries of Europe had taken years to recover from the Second World War and the Great Famine. Europe was inconsequential in the great scheme of things, having been the cockpit of world affairs for centuries, it was sliding into quiet obscurity as a backwater. And, given the hammering they had taken over the last twenty years, who could blame them? By staying in India, he had a good career, a great ship to command and a family a man should be proud of at home. Yes, he had made the right decision.
Flag Bridge, HIJMS Musashi, Kagoshima Bay, Japan.
Admiral Soriva snorted and tossed his readiness report file onto his desk. A battleship division! Who had heard of such a thing in the modern age? What was worse, the Imperial Navy had two of them. Yamato and Musashi in Division One. Shinano and Kwanto in Division Two. So they had the largest guns in the world and what was the importance of that? There were nuclear rounds for the guns in the magazines and who believed these ships would live long enough to get to use them? They'd be blown out of the water by airstrikes long before that.
The Triple Alliance had six aircraft carriers. Two Essex class the Indian Navy had bought from the Americans, the two the Australians had bought and two old British carriers the Australians had inherited from the Royal Navy. The Imperial Navy had twelve carriers but they carried fewer aircraft each than the Essex class. Still, if they could find a way of engaging the Indian and Australians separately, then things would go well.
Splitting apart the Triple Alliance. That was the primary target. It had to be. It was growing stronger all the time. Meanwhile, the China Incident was over but the Japanese Army was [earning a lesson it should have considered earlier. Conquering China was one thing, ruling it was quite another. Simply ruling a country that big required a huge commitment of forces, and that was draining the resources of Japan.
The obvious answer was to recruit Chinese to enforce Japanese rule in China, but that had its own dangers. It seemed as if the Japanese who recruited the Chinese forces, themselves became more and more Chinese each year. Some of the Army officers In China had started quoting one of the Chinese warlords who had been hunted down and killed over the years. The warlord had written a little red book or something like that. It contained a few trite clichés and some mindless platitudes that were being quoted as if they were actually intelligent. Soriva shuddered. Who needed a little red book when Japan had Bushido?
And the China Incident was still draining Japan. That's why the Navy was in such poor shape. Powerful certainly, the second most powerful navy in the world, but there was a long gap between its capability and that of the first. The US Pacific fleet alone had 12 of their large CVBs with four even larger carriers coming. That didn't include the Essex class that were left, they were mostly in the Atlantic fleet now. And the Americans made no secret of their policy - if they went to war, nuclear weapons would be their first resort, not their last.
Anybody who looked at their forces could see they weren't joking. Over the last five years they'd completely reorganized their army into a new structure based around something they called the Pentomic Division. The Japanese Army people had laughed at it, called it small and weak and helpless. Pointed out how its five battlegroups were too small to fight on their own and the span of command too big for proper control. They'd spoken of how a Japanese division would crush a Pentomic with its superior will and dedication.
They'd missed what was staring them in the face. The Pentomic Division was structured to fight with nuclear weapons, so much so that it could only fight with nuclear weapons. And that meant that anybody who attacked a Pentomic Division would be struck by a nuclear counter-attack. One that would leave the country looking like Germany. Pentomic Divisions were a challenge. If one was in front of you, it was time to ask whether what one hoped to gain from a war was worth the total destruction of your country.
No, challenging the Americans was an act of insanity. Perhaps in 1940 or 1941 they might have managed it but not now. They could hurt America, there were submarines off the West Coast now with nuclear-tipped Ohkas, rocket powered and flown by brave volunteers who were the elite of the Japanese “Navy. They could take out California's coastal cities. Perhaps. But the cost would be the annihilation of Japan and everybody in the Government knew it. Japan had to bide its time, absorb China and break up the Triple Alliance. One day, if that all went well, they could build up enough power to surpass America's overwhelming might. One day.
But now, he had a different task. The Army's God Of Operations, Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, had come up with a scheme to break up the Triple Alliance. He was one of those who had been entranced by the theories of that late and unlamented warlord. Quoted them all the time. He was proposing an operation to subvert Burma, to start an insurgency there and eliminate the government. The one he installed would demand “protection” and the Navy would put in a Special Naval Landing Force “to maintain order” and cover it with the guns of Soriva's two battleships. The threat of nuclear shells from their 18 inch guns would prevent the coup from being contested.
Once Burma was taken, Thailand could be isolated and destroyed, thus avenging the Army's defeat in 1949. Thailand was the economic bridge that linked the Triple Alliance and kept it together. Its destruction would leave the “Triple Alliance” two geographically isolated limbs that could be picked off at will.