“We have what looks like a small commercial freighter in the Strait of Malacca,” said Ryoko Otani, the Lieutenant on the SPY-1 System. “I’ve tracked them heading southeast around Pulau Sugi, and into the South China Sea.”
“Probably supplies for the forces still at Palembang on Sumatra,” said Fukada. “Those airfields have been abandoned due to the heavy ashfall, but the garrison left there still has to eat.”
“Ensign Shiota,” said Harada. “Have you been monitoring local signals traffic here?”
“Yes sir, but there’s been nothing unusual.”
“No S.O.S. or distress calls of any kind on the military channels? Nothing from a ship designated Kasigi Maru?”
“No sir, nothing.”
“Look that ship up in the WWII ship registry.”
A moment later Shiota reported that there was no ship by that name. “I’ve got a Kasi Maru, Hasuga Maru, Kage Maru, Kasato Maru, but no Kasigi. That oiler that serviced us was the Kuroshio Maru. Could that be it, sir?”
Harada gave Fukada a look. “What do you make of this?”
“The General seems to have been pulling our leg.”
“Yes, but I wonder why? Was he just irritated that I wouldn’t say anything about the ship or the operation?”
“Anybody’s guess, sir. He was a sly bastard, that much was certain.”
“Right,” said Harada. “Finished his little interview and then got rid of us…. But if that is so, the messenger thing had to be all pre-arranged.”
“It seems that way, sir.”
Harada filed that away mentally, with a note to be extra cautious with Nishimura in the future. He thought about reporting the incident to Yamamoto, but it sounded too trivial to bother the Fleet Admiral with something like that. Yet it was clear to him that the General had gone on a little fishing expedition, and that was grounds for some discomfort.
Three days later they picked up two contacts at 18 knots rounding the cape and entering the Singapore Strait, and they were not commercial ships. Two grey sisters emerged from the low rolling fog in the strait, and the bridge crew finally got a close look at the new battleship class they had fought with up north, but never really got close enough to see.
“Beautiful beasts,” said Harada, his eyes lost in his field glasses. “They look a lot like the old American Iowa class in profile, clipper bow, built for speed, and triple turrets.”
“Ships that never were,” said Fukada. “You won’t find them in the WWII ship registry database either. That has to be Satsuma and Hiraga.”
“Then Admiral Hara can’t be far behind with the carriers.”
He arrived two days later, on the 18th of September, in a well escorted group that now hove to in the strait off Bantam Island, about 30 kilometers south of the main city of Singapore. Hara wanted no prying eyes noting his ship types, and planned to transit the Singapore Strait the following day, after the oiler Kuroshio Maru serviced ships needing to refuel. There was Japan’s newest carrier, the Taiho, looking very much like the one that had entered service much later in the war by that same name.
“Strange how the history here rhymes,” said Harada.
“The Great Phoenix,” said Fukada, looking at the ship with equally great interest and admiration. “That one is over 37,000 tons out there, but it could still make 33 knots if this one is anything like the original design. It was supposed to have belt armor up to 152mm, and two armored decks. I just hope they filled those voids around the aviation fuel bunkers. Look at those guns. We’ve got that single 127mm deck gun forward, well that baby has twelve 100mm guns, dual purpose, though they were really there for air defense. And she’s supposed to have over fifty 25mm guns as well, on seventeen triple mounts. That’s a lot of lead when they get to firing.”
“I’ll still put my money on the SM-2,” said Harada. “The enemy plane will be killed long before the pilot gets anywhere near us. I just wish I had a whole lot more than we’re still packing under that forward deck.” They had expended one on that target drone, two more against the American B-17s, and 33 in the battle against Mizuchi. He had 38 left, and 12 more SM-3s. So Takami could take down 50 enemy planes before they would be forced to rely on their close in defense Phalanx guns. Available rounds for those wouldn’t take them very far, and then all Harada’s bets were off, and those fifty 25mm AA gun barrels on the Taiho would be looking pretty good to him.
“Aye sir,” said Fukada.
“Looks a lot like the British Illustrious Class.”
“I think they may have taken a leaf from their book. Remember, a lot of early navy ships were built by the Brits, way back at the turn of the century. Admiral Togo’s ship, the Mikasa, was a modified Formidable Class battleship of the Royal Navy.”
“Those other two smaller carriers must be the Hiyo and Junyo. Can they keep up with us?”
“Hiyo was built on the hull of an old ocean liner,” said Fukada. “That’s her there, the Flying Hawk, and it will make a hair over 25 knots, and carry over 48 planes. Junyo there, with the oddly bent stack on the island, was built the same way. The Peregrine Falcon will have roughly the same stats as Hiyo, and these conversions were just finished recently, at least in our history. Looks like Yamamoto is debuting a brand new carrier division here, and herding all the older girls off for his Fiji operations.”
“Seems that way. Well, we’d better look after this bunch. Yamamoto was more than a little edgy over the losses to his fleet carriers. He’s already taken as much damage as the Americans inflicted on him at Midway, and that battle never happened. Isn’t this Indian Ocean raid a little late?”
“It was supposed to have been staged late March to mid-April,” said Fukada, “a little Easter Sunday surprise for the British.”
“You were pretty blunt with Yamamoto, particularly concerning the Taiho.”
“He needs to know what could happen,” said Fukada. “Our presence here, if anything, has to be about steering a course around the icebergs that sunk us.”
“Icebergs? In the Pacific?” Harada smiled. “The only one we really need to worry about is still up north.”
“How can we know that?”
“We can’t, really, but it’s a fairly good bet that this Karpov will continue to cover his Sakhalin Operation.”
“You mean Karafuto,” Fukada corrected. “I guess we’d best be thinking about it from the Japanese perspective these days.”
“Well, Karpov has a few more months to lay in a store of supplies on that island to sustain his garrison there over the winter. From what I can gather, we moved fresh troops there as well.”
“I spoke with Ugaki briefly while we were waiting,” said Fukada. “He says that they’ve been making night runs from Sapporo and Ominato. They run up the eastern side of Hokkaido, reaching Karafuto after dark, where they can unload and slip away. If anything has to go by day, they throw up a fairly thick air cover. Frankly, I don’t think Karpov can really mess with those operations. He can try standing off and using a missile or two, but the Empire has a hell of a lot more transport ships than he has missiles.”
“Right,” said Harada. “His primary threat is to important capital ships the Navy needs to sustain operations. That’s why Yamamoto pulled all the best ships south. He was counting on us taking Mizuchi out, and when we let him down, that was his only smart option.”