Butterfly Effects and Battleship Defects
The Altered Naval Battles of the Second World War (BATTLE LORE)
Make sure you have read Devil in the Details before reading this post, which goes through the major altered naval battles of the Post-Shift, Pre-Departure Timeline.
We Have Engaged The Boche
Ahead of the planned invasion of Poland, the High Command of the Kriegsmarine (Oberkommando der Marine) dispatched the panzerschiffe (technically large heavy cruisers but dubbed pocket battleships by the press), Admiral Graf Spee, and Moltke to the South Atlantic. As soon as hostilities commence, they attack British and French shipping as individual but mutually supporting raiders.
However, the Allies do not sit idly by, and a game of cat and mouse rages for weeks until the three ships of Commodore Henry Harwood’s Force G—light cruisers Ajax and Achilles, and heavy cruiser Exeter—catch the slower Graf Spee on the morning of December 13.
The captain of Graf Spee, Hans Langsdorf, immediately realizes that his ship is in danger of being run down in an extended chase. He does not have the speed to flee; the British cruisers can skirt around him and fell his command with a thousand cuts. However, the Kapitän zur See has an ace up his sleeve—Moltke is just a hundred miles away. The two ships could kill or cripple the British cruisers without incurring much damage and then escape before heavier Allied units could arrive. Langsdorf signals Konteradmiral Oskar Kummetz on Moltke, asking for aid. The reply is immediate, “I shall close to you, do the same. We shall smash them once joined.”
Moltke and Graf Spee steam toward each other at 30 and 28 knots, respectively, closing the distance in about two hours. The British are none the wiser until a smudge of oily smoke rises on the horizon and the newer, faster, and more heavily armored “pocket battleship” presents itself. The table turns on Harwood in a matter of minutes. His speed advantage is cut in half instantly, and his plan to split the fire of Graf Spee by splitting Exeter off from Ajax and Achilles is made worthless. Harwood’s force is in immediate danger of being overwhelmed and annihilated by the two super cruisers—his only shield is speed, and that is something that the temperamental South Atlantic can take off him in the blink of an eye.
Harwood gambles with the last move left—he plays the same trick that the Germans had played on him and hopes that there would be someone waiting for him over the horizon. He tacks northwest at his best speed. At this point, Exeter is in a bad way, having received multiple hits from the 11-inch shellfire. She is beginning to list as her final operational turret disappears beneath a jet of flame—but she keeps up her top speed as Harwood, aboard Ajax, and Achilles haul around and begin to lay smoke to cover the beleaguered diminutive heavy cruiser. The Panzerschiffe switch fire to the light cruisers, and the dark waters are turned to a froth mix of white columns of churned water as the ships weave between shells at high speed, belching black clouds in the cloudless day.
Just as an 11-inch hit smashes into his flagship, Harwood sees smoke on the horizon. Part of his mind fears that it is yet another German raider. Someone in the crow’s nest shouts, “THANK FUCKING GOD! THEY’VE GOT WHITE PENNANTS FLYING!”
It is Force M—under the personal command of Vice Admiral George Lyons, CINC-South Atlantic—with the large heavy cruiser Defence, heavy cruiser Devonshire, and light cruiser Neptune. They have sprinted to the sound of guns. Defence has pushed her machinery to the very limit, exceeding her trial speed by three and one-quarter knots. The older Devonshire struggled to keep up with the homely “Ten-Year Fool.” The odds have swung sharply again, and now the Germans are faced with stark odds; they can neither outrun nor out-fight the combined might of the two cruiser forces.
Before Kummetz and Langsdorf can act, the massive cruiser steams headlong at the Germans, turning a textbook pursuit into a brutal, bare-knuckle bar brawl. She passes the crippled Exeter hidden by her own gunsmoke. Her first salvo brackets the newer Moltke as Ajax, Achilles, and Neptune begin to rain 6-inch shells upon Graf Spee, with some particularly dreadful shooting by Devonshire mostly providing ambiance. Defence strikes Moltke on her third salvo, beginning a deluge of 8-inch hits from her sixteen-gun main battery. While the other cruisers flit around the panzerschiffe like matadors, the large cruiser draws the attention of both Germans. The overbuilt Defence shrugs off the Germans’ 11-inch replies with ease—taking twenty-six hits, but not a one penetrates her armor.
Kummetz signals a withdrawal to Montevideo after the ugly Anglo super cruiser lands seven hits from a single salvo on his flagship. The British permit the Germans to quit the field. This is no act of mercy; Admiral Lyons merely gives the Germans more rope to hang themselves from—as steaming to his aid is Force K with two battlecruisers (St. Vincent and Renown), an aircraft carrier (Ark Royal), and three more heavy cruisers (Dorsetshire, Cumberland, Shropshire).
Arriving in Montevideo, the Germans take stock of their ships. A hit from Exeter has knocked out Graf Spee’s fuel purification plant. This means the ship cannot process its fuel stores into workable diesel made even worse by the fact her fuel bunkers had been pierced and mostly emptied. There is also the matter of Devonshire's sole contribution—a dud shell that pierced the left gun barrel in Graf Spee’s aft main battery mount. On the other hand, Moltke has not received any significant damage, thanks to her thicker armor. However, she has lost most of her secondary armament and suffered immense damage to her upper works—she enters Montevideo harbor with a scrap heap instead of a superstructure.
The British Embassy in Montevideo immediately starts purchasing all possible spare parts and diesel fuel to deny any resources to the Germans, even before they arrive in the harbor. The Axis ships are notionally limited to 72 hours in the neutral port, but that clock is set back 24 hours by any British or French flagged-vessel departing. The British use this loophole to force the Germans to remain in port. The Embassy also makes liberal use of unencrypted signals purporting to herald the arrival of Force K. Kummetz rejects the intercepts as false. He makes it clear that he intends to fight his way home or die in the attempt; a particularly nasty jibe about using Graf Spee as bait to give him the opportunity to punch through the British blockade sees Langsdorf depart Moltke without another word.
On the morning of December 18, the pair of Germans ships sally from Montevideo. Moltke makes a break for the open ocean and home. Graf Spee, with what fuel she has left, breaks for Buenos Aires, as Argentina would be unlikely to allow the British to pick her apart after being interned, something that could not be said of Uruguay.
They do not make it far.
Just one and a half hours after leaving Uruguay, a flight of five Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers intercept Graf Spee as it limps along. The damaged ship barely has enough fuel to maneuver. One torpedo strikes her port side, which tears a gash into the ship and bursts the hasty patches on three underwater shell-hits from Action on December 13. Things get worse for Graf Spee as she loses steering and beaches on the Uruguayan coast 80 miles west of Montevideo. Langsdorf sees the crew evacuated and oversees the preparations to scuttle the ship. He remains aboard as the ship’s half-emptied magazines are detonated with scuttling charges.
Moltke, on the other hand, steams directly into the greatest concentration of British naval power South of Gibraltar. The battlecruisers St. Vincent and Renown both have the speed to run down the 30-knot panzerschiff and are also armed with the improved long BL 15”/50 Mk II gun. They are backed by three light cruisers (Ajax, Achilles, and Neptune), three heavy cruisers (Dorsetshire, Cumberland, Shropshire), a large cruiser (Defence), and a fleet carrier (Ark Royal). The panzerschiff has less than no chance. It is not a fight. It is an execution. St. Vincent’s third salvo hits Moltke’s forward triple turret twice. The ship disappears from view. Miles away, the crew of the Graf Spee watches another mushroom cloud unfurl upwards to the heavens on the horizon.
First blood in the war at sea had been drawn.
Curbstomp the Bismarck!
On May 18, 1941, the Kriegsmarine launches its largest surface raid of the war, code-name RHEINÜBUNG. Under the command of Vizeadmiral Günther Lütjens, the new battleship Bismarck sorties with two heavy cruisers (Admiral Hipper and Seydlitz), two panzerschiff (Mackensen and Lützow), and an aircraft carrier-surface raider-storeship (Graf Zeppelin).
Seydlitz joins the mission to appease Lütjen’s concerns that the force lacks mass. OKM considers adding the recently returned panzerschiff Admiral Scheer to the force, but it is decided that, like the working-up battleship Tirpitz, she would not be ready in time to deploy ahead of the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation BARBAROSSA. Graf Zeppelin, though notionally an aircraft carrier, joins the raid without any aircraft as a surface combatant armed with sixteen 15cm guns and a storeship. Her aviation fuel tanks are filled with maritime diesel for the panzerschiffe, and her main hangar is filled with two thousand barrels of fuel oil, eight hundred rounds of 15cm and 20.3cm shells in crates, and 150 tons of additional dry stores. What few aircraft were ready to embark aboard the ship—intended for scouting—were withheld by the Luftwaffe after OKM did not think to ask for permission to use the carrier’s air wing personally from Hermann Göring.
The operation starts badly. The older panzerschiff Lützow runs aground while entering Grimstadfjord near Bergen. She is left behind. She is eventually freed a few days later after three failed air attacks by RAF Blenheims and limps back to Kiel for yet another period of repairs. On the same day as Lützow runs aground, May 21, Swedish sources inform the British Admiralty of a Nazi fleet movement: two cruisers and a battleship. Graf Zeppelin and Mackensen were delayed reaching Grimstadfjord and avoided being spotted by the coastal defense ship HSwMS Gotland. At this point, the battlecruisers HMS Hood and HMS Trafalgar, under Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, are already steaming for the Denmark Strait with a half dozen destroyers to reinforce the heavy cruisers HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk, which are patrolling the passage. After the sortie is confirmed, Admiral Sir John Tovey, CINC of the Home Fleet, sails with the main body of the Home Fleet—the new battleship King George V, the refit Nelson-class battleship Drake, the new aircraft carrier Victorious along with five cruisers and six destroyers—further reinforced by HMS Repulse while they are underway. The Royal Navy’s other at-sea assets are put on high alert to cover nearby convoys—especially troop convoys—or join the hunt.
Norfolk spots the German task force on the evening of May 23 and is shocked to find their raiders in the company of a D-class panzerschiff and a carrier. Bismarck engages Suffolk after she ventures too close; both British cruisers retreat to the cover of nearby fogbanks, tracking the Germans via radar. The blast effect from this first engagement knocks out Bismarck’s radar. Lütjens orders Hipper to move ahead of the battleship to give radar coverage and detaches Mackensen and Seydlitz to force away their shadows so the main force can slink into the night.
There is a cat-and-mouse game in the dark as the two German cruisers try to force off their British observers, but Norfolk and Suffolk prove stubbornly difficult to catch or scare off. The pair of British cruisers, on either side of the raiding force, run circles around their pursuers and keep in radar contact as the Germans steam through the Strait.
In the early hours of the Morning of May 24, Hood and Trafalgar, with their escorts, arrive at a chaotic situation. The British cruisers are out of pocket, forced off station by the pursuit of Mackensen and Seydlitz. However, they are pushed right into the arms of the friendly battlecruisers while their pursuers stumble through the dawn’s early light. The British then proceed to stumble onto Bismarck just as Mackensen and Seydlitz cross the horizon to rejoin their compatriots.
There is no grace in the fight.
The British flagship, St. Vincent, assumes the lead ship (Hipper) is Bismarck, targetting her instead of the action battleship; Hood notices the mistake and engages the correct target. Norfolk and Suffolk start to fling 8-inch shells at Mackensen as soon as she and Seydlitz come into range. There is a cruiser melee between the battleship duel under grey skies and rough seas that makes the British destroyer advantage useless.
The British battlecruisers open fire first at 0552. They nominally possess a decisive firepower advantage over the Germans, with 20 large guns—twelve on Trafalgar and eight on Hood—against the German 8. However, due to the approach angle, Hood can only engage with A and B turret. Further, Hood is still armed with the older, shorter BL 15-inch Mark I as the ship had been denied a long-needed refit due to dockyard availability, high demand for fast capital units in the ‘30s, and the Treasury’s tight hold of the pursestring.
The ragged Mighty Hood lands the first hit of the day on Bismarck, and will eventually land two more. This first impact tears a massive hole in the German’s bow and pierces her forward fuel tanks, slowing the battlewagon and making her leave an oil slick. The German lands its first strike on Trafalgar soon after—after a delay caused by Admiral Lütjens refusing to give permission to fire—utterly obliterating one of Traf’s six-inch secondaries and starting a large fire aft.
As Trafalgar maneuvers to allow Hood to open up with her entire battery, a plunging 15-inch shell strikes and penetrates the joint between the face and roof plates of her B Turret. A jet of flame is seen screaming up into the air, towering at least eight stories. A lookout aboard Suffolk, shielding his face from shell splinters from a near-miss by Seydlitz, happens to see what happens next: the three forward magazines of the largest capital ship in the Royal Navy detonate either simultaneously or in rapid succession so as to appear to be one low-single-digit kiloton explosion (estimates vary from 1.5 to 4 kilotons of TNT).
Hood is swallowed by the mushroom cloud rising up from where Trafalgar had been. When she does not immediately sail out from it, Norfolk's horrified executive officer shouts, “My God! That’s got th—they’re both [fucking] gone!” That is taken as gospel by the ship’s captain and cruiser group commander, Rear Admiral Frederic Wake-Walker; both turn to see nothing but smoke and ash. Norfolk accordingly reports the loss of Hood and Traflagar to the Home Fleet.
“TRAFALGAR AND HOOD LOST VERY LARGE DETONATION 6001 HOURS.”
After Hood finally sails out from the mushroom cloud, guns thundering, it takes about ten minutes for another message to be relayed to Scapa Flow, correcting the erroneous report. In the meantime, the first report bolts across the Royal Navy (and the United Kingdom) like lightning. In less than an hour, the news reaches Birkenhead, where the battleship Prince of Wales is being re-outfitted, despite notionally being completed on April 7 after a fault was detected in her aft turret’s shell hoists. Her crew makes her ready to sail—without orders, without the left-most gun in Y turret, and a sizeable complement of Cammell Laird shipwrights still aboard. She gets orders to join the pursuit, “if possible,” as she is pushing off from her berth. She makes a shocking 29.5 knots while catching up to Rodney, who had been detached from convoy duty to join the hunt (damaging her boilers in the process).
Hood, Norfolk, and Suffolk are on the backfoot with the loss of Trafalgar. The mighty battlecruiser receives six 15-inch, five 11-inch, and six 8-inch hits; one 15-inch round wrecks her X (aft super-firing) turret. Suffolk and Norfolk savage Mackensen for only modest damage in return; the panzerschiff’s forward triple turret resembles Swiss cheese more than a gun mount. However, now outgunned and outnumbered, the British lay smoke and withdraw.
With Bismarck leaking large amounts of fuel and Mackensen badly damaged, Lütjens decides to disengage and steam for Brest over the objections of Bismarck’s captain, Ernst Lindemann, who wanted to finish off Hood and head for Bergen. Hipper and Seydlitz detach to carry on the raid. There was some consternation on the battleship over whether to send Graf Zeppelin with the cruisers or keep it with the battleship; Lütjens would make the fateful decision to keep the carrier with Bismarck in the hope that she could used to refuel the battleship in an emergency (something Lindemann believed would be a fool’s errand) and permit her to have a straight shot to the safety of Brest as opposed to try its luck with avoiding the British with the cruisers.
In the intervening hours, Hood prods and engages the Germans a few times before being forced back when Bismarck doubles back and closes to merge—a move to cover the departure of the cruisers. In the small hours of May 25, nine Swordfish torpedo bombers from Victorious, vectored in by Norfolk, make an attack on the battleship. One torpedo hits home on Bismarck, to little appreciable effect, the ship’s torpedo defense system doing its job.
Later that morning, the British lose contact with the Germans, and believing that he is still being shadowed, Lütjens sends a long radio message to OKM updating them on his situation, which the British use to triangulate his approximate position which confirms that he is on course for France.
The Home Fleet continues to close. Tovey's main force (King George V, Drake, Repulse, and Victorious) is reinforced by Rodney and Prince of Wales while Force H sails north from its position off Gibraltar with battlecruisers Renown and St. Vincent—Trafalgar’s sister ship—and the fleet carriers Ark Royal and Agincourt. Hood remains in the pursuit despite the damage dealt by Bismarck. The noose draws close even as the British fuel situation becomes critical; several destroyers are sent home, and replacement escorts are pulled from nearby convoys in a game of musical chairs. Yet, it appears as if the Bismarck might be able to escape as she briefly loses its cruiser shadows until an RAF Catalina spots the battleship.
Ark Royal and Agincourt—the largest aircraft carrier in the world—ready a Hail Mary night strike to sink—or at least delay—the two Nazi capital ships. Ark Royal launches 15 Swordfish, Agincourt launches 25. The first strike almost goes disastrously wrong when the Fleet Air Arm aviators attack Sheffield, the closest Royal Navy shadow. They fail to hit the cruiser—in large part due to the failure of the magnetic detonators on their aerial torpedoes. The two carriers relaunch their aircraft, but this time, Agincourt dispatches 30 of her 36 torpedo bombers. The canvas tide descends on Lütjens in fits and starts attacking in small packets for over an hour.
Bismarck is struck thrice. Two hits have little effect, but one hits astern and jams her rudder. Unobserved by the British, however, is a catastrophic explosion aboard Graf Zeppelin, and the ship goes down with all but 54 of her 1853-man complement. There are two main theories as to what transpired. One, that an errant torpedo from the last Swordfish attack had missed Bismarck and struck the carrier-raider; or two, there was a shell handling incident in the ship’s main hangar set off of the stores located there. The 1987 discovery of Graf Zeppelin by Robert Ballard—during his search for the Bismarck—would reveal a torpedo impact aft and the front quarter of the ship bowed outward by a massive internal explosion, therefore failing to settle the debate.
Bismarck is doomed. The entire British battle force readies for the final kill, including St. Vincent and Renown prematurely breaking off from Ark Royal and Agincourt. Repulse is dangerously low on fuel; her captain continues, fully understanding that his ship is likely to run out of fuel on the way back to port. Hood rejoins the Home Fleet; Tovey is horrified to see her scarred form and the crooked barrels hanging from her X turret.
Lütjens signals Berlin with his situation, “SHIP UNMANOEUVRABLE. ZEPPELIN BURNING AND ABANDONED. MACKENSEN TO PROCEED ALONE. WE WILL FIGHT TO THE LAST SHELL. LONG LIVE THE FÜHRER.”
In the night, British destroyers under Commodore Philip Vian make harrying attacks against the battleship but are confused to find a German carrier burning brilliantly and running in circles. Vian, aboard HMS Cossack, is recounted as saying, “Well, who the Hell did that? Because I’m bloody sure it wasn’t us!” upon seeing the ship blazing like a funeral pyre. Mackensen hobbles away into the night at a stately 26 knots toward France, slipping away from the British, who tunnel vision in on Bismarck. It will make it to Brest, but only after being attacked by several waves of torpedo and bomb-armed Swordfish, suffering several damaging hits on the way.
On the morning of May 27, Bismarck faces her doom.
Vengeance blows across the horizon like a spring storm as the Home Fleet arrives from the west with King George V, Prince of Wales, Drake, Rodney, Hood, and Repulse arrayed into a line of battle, white pennants flying in the morning sun.
Force H joins the action shortly after Rodney opens fire on Bismarck at 0847; Renown and St. Vincent close in from the north at their best possible speeds, nearly 31 knots. At this point, Admiral Tovey is in direct command of the greatest concentration of British naval power since Jutland (and the largest concentration of British capital surface combatants of the Second World War). He signals for Force H’s commander, Vice Admiral James Somerville, aboard St. Vincent to join the main line. Somerville replies two minutes later, still bearing down on the German on his original course.
“I CANNOT COMPLY. I AM ENGAGING!”
St. Vincent earns the sobriquet “St. Vengeance” as she closes to within 7,000 yards of the still operational German battleship. She lands entire 12-gun salvos into the body of the Bismarck time after time. Renown maintains her distance while the Home Fleet rains 15-inch and 16-inch shells on the German. Rodney, within 15 minutes, cripples the German with a single 16-inch hit; the shell impacts the back of Bismarck’s Bruno turret (forward super-firing), knocking it out—the explosion tears through the bridge, killing most senior officers, and knocking out the ship’s main fire control director.
As St. Vincent continues to close on Bismarck—the German shrouded by flames and her own gunsmoke—Tovey is said to have remarked, “Good God, does he intend to board her?!” The British land body-blow after body-blow. The German battlewagon is struck by no less than one thousand shells in less than an hour.
By 0933, the German battleship is burning from stem to stern and is listing heavily to port. She is out of action; her guns lay silent—left as twisted and contorted macabre sculptures of warped steel. Her Dora turret (aftmost) is shattered like a cracked-open skull, her armor plate torn away like tissue paper, and shell hoists exposed to seaspray. Most of her superstructure is completely shot away; what is left is shredded—one can look through Bismarck’s deckhouse by one of hundreds of new windows.
Tovey does not idle; with one last point-blank barrage delivered by St. Vincent and Rodney—including half a dozen 24.5-inch heavyweight torpedoes—he orders a withdrawal. The worst damage dealt to the British in this action has been dealt by their own hands—fratricidal blast effects from Rodney, Drake, and St. Vincent’s guns on their own fittings. The Home Fleet’s fuel situation is beyond critical. Repulse actually runs out of fuel off Devon and has to be towed into Bristol Harbor. Hood has empty fuel tanks when she arrives in Belfast; she remains there for immediate repairs before sailing for Halifax for her long-delayed refit, which will see her reconstructed along the lines of the Queen Elizabeth-class and HMS Renown. German air attacks damage the cruiser Sheffield and battleship Drake, but otherwise fail to repay the loss of Bismarck and Graf Zeppelin.
Mackensen reaches Brest in the small hours of May 28. Seydlitz and Hipper arrive in France on June 1; on their approach to France, the British submarine Pandora would hit Seydlitz with a single torpedo, adding yet another damaged ship to the laundry list of German naval assets bottled up in the French port.
The Bismarck has not just been sunk—it has been smote upon the water.
A Different Day of Infamy
The fateful morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941 finds the skies above Pearl Harbor filled with the aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service. In total, some 428 aircraft launched from the carriers Akagi, Kii, Soryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, Zuikaku, Shōhō, and Zuihō will take part. As for the rest of the IJN’s carriers, the newly commissioned light fleet carrier Ryuhō and the old light carriers Hōshō are with the Main Body, ready to cover the escape of the Kido Butai; while the new conversions Hiei and Haruna and the light carrier Ryujō are sailing south with the 2nd Fleet to cover operations in the Southern Resource Area. The conversions Kongō and Kirishima are outfitting in Kure and Kobe, while the second Ryuhō-class light fleet carrier, Sekihō, has just been launched at Yokosuka.
The United States Pacific Fleet is caught completely flatfooted as swarms of Kates, Vals, and Zekes descend upon them. In a stroke of luck, only a single carrier is at anchor. USS Ranger (CV-4), the world’s largest purpose-built carrier, is pier-side at Repair Basin No. 2, waiting to enter the newly completed Dry Dock No. 2 to fix a damaged screw. The damage would spare another carrier, as USS Enterprise (CV-6), escorted by USS Shiloh (CB-8), had picked up Ranger’s assignment to deliver VMF-211 to Wake Island. USS Lexington (CV-2) with USS Bunker Hill (CC-6) are also on a milk run, delivering VMSB-231 to Midway. USS Saratoga (CV-3) is in San Diego after a refit in the Puget Sound Navy Yard. Yorktown (CV-5), Wasp (CV-7), Hornet (CV-8), and Franklin (CV-13) are in the Atlantic. The other two emergency carriers, Bonhomme Richard (CV-12) and Reprisal (CV-14) are outfitting at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation and Fore River Shipyard, respectively.
There is a bloodbath along Battleship Row. California (BB-44) is sunk by two bombs and two torpedoes. Montana (BB-51), the Monster of the Pacific, is attacked by a mass of aircraft and is struck by half a dozen bombs, but since she is inboard of BB-44, she is spared from torpedo hits and does not sink. Five torpedos strike Oklahoma (BB-37), and she capsizes. Maryland (BB-46) is damaged by two bombs. West Virginia (BB-48) is sunk by two bombs and seven torpedoes. Tennessee (BB-43) is struck by two bombs. Arizona (BB-39) detonates after her forward magazine is pierced by a 1600-pound AP bomb. Washington (BB-47), alongside BB-39, remains barely afloat after two torpedoes and bomb hits; fires from BB-39 spread to the ship, but she remains afloat. Nevada (BB-36) gets underway despite taking six bombs and a torpedo and is beached to avoid blocking the Harbor’s entrance. With Nevada underway, Concord is struck from both sides, taking eight torpedoes and six bombs; with rapid flood from both sides, the battle cruiser avoids capsizing and merely settles on the bottom.
USS Ranger (CV-4), a priority target like USS Montana (BB-51), is swarmed by D3A Vals, which land six bombs on the carrier, but her crew refuses to permit the ship to sink. The Japanese aviators also attack the ex-battleship Utah, capsizing her with two torpedoes and damaging the drydocked USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) with two bombs.
The morning ends with four battleships and one battlecruiser sunk; six battleships damaged (three lightly, three heavily); and one fleet carrier crippled; all for the loss of 34 IJNAS aircraft and five midget submarines. The traditional striking power of the Pacific Fleet has been smashed in just a morning.
Bloody, Bloody Java
With worsening conditions in the Pacific at the end of 1941, the British reinforce their Pacific forces in hopes of deterring the Japanese. To this end, the battleship Prince of Wales, battlecruiser Repulse, large heavy cruisers Defence and Theseus, and aircraft carrier Indomitable are dispatched to Singapore. However, Indomitable runs aground off Jamaica and is delayed by about a month.
The reinforcements arrive in Singapore on December 2, 1941 and on the morning of December 8, the Japanese commence hostilities across the Pacific—including an air raid on Singapore. Later that day, Admiral Tom Phillips, Commander-in-Chief of the China Station and Eastern Fleet, sorties with Force Z to intercept a reported Japanese invasion convoy heading for Malaya despite a lack of air cover. However, Phillips calls off the sortie before the evening of December 9. The British are, fatefully, not spotted by the submarine I-58 on their return. Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburō is left with the impression that the heavy British surface units are steaming to the west toward his planned landing zones. The specialist anti-shipping experts of the Kanoya, Genzan, and Mihoro Kōkūtais scramble, armed with the entire stock of aerial torpedoes in Vietnam. They find nothing but empty seas. Most of the bombers ditch their weapons into the drink. On the evening of December 11, a Japanese submarine finally relays the position of the British ships but it is too late. There aren’t torpedoes for another attack, and the British are able to reach the cover of Singapore before an attack can be mustered anyway.
Force Z survives to fight another day.
With the Japanese invasion force already on Malaya and making startling advances and further air raids on the fleet anchorage, Phillips orders his Singapore Force to Java on December 19. Force Z sets out with the Allied naval units still in the harbor, including 13 destroyers (9 RN and 4 USN), five light cruisers (Danae, Dragon, Durban, Mauritius, and Java), and one heavy cruiser (Exeter). Force S arrives at the main Dutch naval base at Surabaya on December 22, joining Koninklijke Marine’s two prized Italo-British-built battlecruisers Prins Van Oranje and De Zeven Provinciën along with the light cruiser De Ruyter, the destroyer leader Tromp, and seven destroyers.
On January 1, the America-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) is formed, with Philips in overall command. In the following weeks, the remnants of the US Asiatic Fleet begin to arrive in Surabaya: eight more four-stacker destroyers, the heavy cruiser Houston, and the light cruisers Boise and Marblehead.
January is a frustrating month for ABDACOM. Under the protection of airfields seized in the opening offensives, the Japanese methodically march across the Dutch East Indies. Lack of intelligence sees both Force Z and American’s Task Force 5 sent on goose chases against phantom invasion convoys. While the British are deployed against a phantom invasion of Sumatra, Task Force 5 deploys against a Japanese convoy heading for Balikpapan on the east coast of Borneo. Houston and several DDs are reassigned to convoy escort duties, leaving Marblehead, Boise, and six four-stackers for the sortie.
At one point, Task Force 5 passes the bulk of the IJN’s 4th Destroyer Flotilla and is challenged by signal light. The Americans do not reply, but the Japanese do not fire, assuming the ships are friendly. The Americans reach the Japanese transport and open fire first with their torpedoes to maintain the element of surprise for as long as possible. The inner ring of IJN minesweepers and sub-chasers around the transports confuse the American ships for friendly destroyers, the large cruiser Aso and the light cruiser Naka, and do not engage until after the Americans open fire with their guns. The main Japanese escort force is completely out of position, hunting the Dutch submarine K-XVIII, which coincidentally attacked just ahead of the appearance of the Americans, permitting the Yankees to sink 10 of 12 transports before slinking into the night.
In more good news for ABDACOM, the battlecruiser HMAS Tiger, along with the light cruisers HMAS Sydney and HMAS Perth, arrive in Surabaya on January 18. The cruisers immediately get to work escorting convoys, relieving the workload on their sister, HMAS Hobart, who has been in the theater since the beginning of the month. Sydney is fresh out of minor repairs in Ceylon after an engagement with the German armed merchant cruiser Kormoran alongside Defence in November. At the end of the month, ABDACOM is reinforced by the aircraft carriers HMS Indomitable and HMS Hermes, escorted by the light cruisers Hermione and Scylla, and the destroyers HMAS Nestor, HMAS Napier, HMS Paladin, HMS Hotspur, and HMS Fortune. Hermes enters the cauldron—overloaded with ferried RAF Hurricanes and questionably useful Fairey Fulmars and only remains in Surabaya after developing engine trouble. Indomitable brings much-needed air cover with two squadrons of Martlet (Wildcat) fighters and a squadron of Albacore torpedo bombers.
February does not have an auspicious start with miscommunication and concerns of a lack of fuel leading to a task force led by Prins Van Oranje and USS Houston with the light cruisers Java, De Rutyr, Dragon, Danae, Marblehead, and Boise with the destroyer leader Tromp, and three Dutch and four American DDs sortie to intercept an invasion convoy without proper air cover (Indomitable covering a convoy to Malaya). Japanese land-based bombers attack the force in the Makassar Straits, but are repulsed by an immense wall of anti-aircraft fire provided by the D-class cruisers and Marblehead, which were converted into the anti-aircraft ships in the late ‘30s. The battlecruiser Prins Van Oranje is, however, damaged by a single hit and several near misses, and the intensity of the air attacks makes the Allies withdraw.
As a direct result of this failure, there is a cataclysmic showdown between Admiral Philips, Luitenant-Admiraal Conrad Helfrich (Commander of the Dutch Forces in the East Indies), and Admiral Philip Hart (Commander of ABDACOM’s naval forces and the senior USN officer in the region) on Prince of Wales after the strike force returns. It ends with Hart de facto removed from command and Helfrich assuming ABDACOM’s naval billet. The Dutchman immediately goes about gathering sufficient fuel to put the entire force at sea to intercept and destroy the next invasion convoy.
On February 13, the Japanese—with fighting still going on in Singapore—launch a surprise airborne landing against Palembang on Sumatra, knocking out the main concentration of Allied airpower in the region ahead of a naval invasion. The inner defensive ring has been breached. This is the final showdown.
ABDACOM sorties in full force the next day. Helfrich leads the Striking Force from the battlecruiser De Zeven Provinciën, while Phillips once more joins Captain Leach aboard Prince of Wales. The main body consists of the battleship Prince of Wales; the battlecruisers De Zeven Provinciën, Prins Van Oranje, Repulse, and Tiger; the large heavy cruisers Defence and Theseus; the heavy cruisers Houston and Exeter; the light cruisers De Rutyr, Java, Sydney, Hobart, Perth, Boise, Marblehead, Dragon, Danae, and Durban; the destroyer leader Tromp; and 19 destroyers (6 American, 6 British, and 7 Dutch). The carriers Indomitable and Hermes (now with working engines) sortie with six DDs and the light cruisers Hermoine, Scylla, and Mauritius.
Within 48 hours, most of this force will be at the bottom of the Java Sea.
They do not reach Sumatra. The Japanese have come to them—looking for a fight.
With the British radars inoperable due to the climate and ineffective aerial searches, the only signs that things have gone horribly wrong is the appearance of smudges of smoke on the western horizon. In short order, nine shapes (plus escorts) appear and are (mis)identified as five Mogami and six Agano-class light cruisers. As the distance closes, the Allied capital ships unleash their first salvos. Lookouts aboard Repulse spot more smoke on the eastern horizon under the rising sun; the silhouettes are identified as battlecruisers.
It is the bulk of Vice Admiral Kondō Nobutake’s Second Fleet that has made first contact. This includes Kondo’s Distant Cover Force, including the large cruisers Tsukuba, Tateshina, Tsurumi, and Tokiwa, the heavy cruisers Takao and Senjō, the light cruiser Yoshino, and 10 DDs and Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburō’s Close Cover Force with the large cruiser Ikoma, the heavy cruisers Kumano, Mikuma, Mogami, Suyuza, the light cruiser Yahagi, and eight destroyers.
On the other side of the Striking Force, there are the battlecruisers Atago, Ashitaka, Tosa, and Kaga—escorted by the old heavy cruisers Aoba, Kinugasa, Furataka, Kako, the new light cruiser Yoshino, and nine DDs. This is Vice Admiral Mikawa Gunichi’s Fast Screening Force, and they have timed their arrival perfectly.
Kondō has come east, leaving his landing force protected by the cruisers Chōkai and Maya, the light cruiser Sendai, and his remaining destroyers. Mikawa has surged west with the heavy escorts of the Kido Butai—Mobile Force—leaving the carriers Akagi, Kii, Sōryū, and Hiryū in a dead sprint toward Darwin. The Japanese had planned to use the aircraft from the 6th Carrier Division (Hiei and Haruna) streaming down from the north as an opening move, but poor weather forces the Japanese to scratch that plan.
The Strike Forcing had been caught between a hammer and an anvil.
Helfrich is frozen as the IJN pincers close in. Phillips takes charge and overrules his subordinate’s momentary inaction, ordering the battle line to close toward and engage the battlecruisers, while detaching the bulk of the cruiser force to hold off what he believes is an enemy heavy cruiser force. Commodore Irvine Glennie aboard Defence finally comes to the realization that the “Mogamis” he is facing are not light cruisers (as Allied intelligence is not yet aware that the ships had been up-gunned) when they open fire well beyond the range of 6-inch guns.
What was a dangerous situation has now become dire.
Indomitable and Hermes—not yet spotted by the Japanese—scramble their air wings, having yet to even put up the day’s first close air patrol. They turn into the wind, which, luckily, allows them to steam away from the Japanese. The first Martlets from Indomitable hug the deck and attack Ozawa’s Western Force with machine guns, badly damaging the heavy cruiser Senjō when .50 caliber incendiary rounds set off some of her Type 93 “Long Lance” heavyweight oxygen-fueled torpedos.
The 12 operational Albacore torpedo bombers aboard Indomitable are sent off in penny packets, generally attacking individually. One Albacore armed with the nearest weapons to hand—four Mark VII 420-pound depth charges—attacks the destroyer Kawakaze. Two of the weapons impact the ship’s forward 5-inch gun mount (the other two strike the hull), and the resultant explosions blast the destroyer’s bow clean off.
The opposing cruiser forces draw nearer to each other as the battleline slugfest unfurls to their immediate west. 806 Naval Air Squadron commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Charles Evens, while strafing Ikoma, notices—with utter bafflement—the Japanese ship dumping torpedoes into the water at 17,000 yards. In twenty minutes, the 2nd Fleet fires off 267 of the 6,000-pound weapons. Evans tries to alert the cruiser force by radioing Indomitable, but the resulting game of telephone relays to Commodore Glennie that Japanese submarines have engaged his force. The aviator’s report of the range of the Japanese torpedo is dismissed and removed from the battle’s action-after report.
Defence, the vaunted cruiser-killer killer, is targeted by eleven Japanese warships—ninety Long Lances in total. Only one of the weapons hit the ship and it impacts dead center on her torpedo defense system—temporarily knocking out some electrical systems but causing little other damage. However, a few of the other Allied ships are not so lucky—HNLMS Java is struck by a Type 93 and splits in half; two torpedoes find HMS Fortune and reduce the 1,400-ton ship to splinters.
The opening cruiser engagement is a bruising mess with very few gun hits scored as the Japanese focus their attention against Theseus and Defence. The British large cruisers weave in and out of shell splashes without receiving any damage beyond a few splinters. Within moments of each other, USS Houston scores two hits on Tokiwa while HMS Exter is struck by an AP round from Mikuma. The battle changes tone and becomes a slugging match as the forces draw in close, and the Allied cruisers begin to hose down the superior Japanese force with shellfire. USS Boise scores multiple hits on Takao before taking multiple five 5-inch hits from Japanese DDs; Theseus receives multiple 10-inch rounds but knocks out Ikoma’s forward turrets. Defence—designed to eat German 11-inch rounds—shrugs off well over two dozen shell hits from Mogami, Suyuza, Tateshina, and Tsurumi. HMS Exeter is left a burning wreck by brilliantly accurate shooting by Mikuma and tries to limp away, only to be picked apart by Japanese destroyers—though not before the battered cruiser takes down two with her.
Kondō, getting the worse of the fight, deploys smoke and has his cruisers launch the rest of their torpedoes as he opens the range to try to leverage his superior long-range firepower. The Japanese admiral bitterly expresses in his diary a bitter regret that the battlecruisers had gone with the carriers; as if he had even just one, he was certain that he could have held the noose around the Allies neck.
The battleline action is a messy one, with American and Dutch destroyers closing into a brutal melee with their Japanese compatriots—spoiling their torpedo attacks. ABDA Striking Force notionally has an advantage in a number of hulls, but Tiger’s 13.5-inch main battery is of questionable utility against the Japanese fast battleships. As such, the Australian battlecruiser “merely” holds back the old Japanese heavy cruisers while Prince of Wales engages Tosa, Repulse engages Kaga, Prins Van Oranje engages Ashitaka, and De Zeven Provinciën engages Atago.
Prince of Wales gets the better of the Japanese flagship, scoring two hits on her third salvo. Repulse gets incredibly lucky on her sixth salvo; a short shell severs the outer and wrecks the inner port screws of Kaga. The fast battleship sheers out of line, and Ashitaka has to maneuver violently to avoid hitting her cousin. However, unfortunately for the Allies, De Zeven Provinciën receives multiple hits from Atago and begins to lose speed. At 0645, Luitenant-Admiraal Helfrich is killed shortly after the out-of-control Kaga is attacked by the American destroyers under Commander Paul Talbot.
Talbot punches through the Japanese screen under supporting fire from Tiger and the light cruiser HMS Dragon, sinking the destroyer Kagero. At point blank—just two-and-half-thousand yards and under a rain of shells—John D. Ford, Parrot, Paul Jones, Pope, Pillsbury, and Bulmer unleash their torpedoes, a total of 60. Fifteen impact Kaga—but only two detonate and moderately damage the ship. Bulmer is obliterated by a 41cm high explosive shell as the DDs turn away. Repulse switches targets after the torpedo attack, coming to the aid of Prins Van Oranje, who is struggling against Ashitaka.
The surface action continues for another thirty minutes, with Durban destroyed by a catastrophic magazine explosion caused by Tokiwa. Kaga has stopped to make repairs under the protection of Aoba and Furutaka. The weather begins to deteriorate as the winds blow in greying skies and whip up the waves; with the two Allied carriers unable to launch or recover aircraft, the unlucky aviators still in the air make for Java.
Philips knows his force is on the knife’s edge. He is confident that he can win the fight but is acutely aware that ABDACOM will no longer have an effective surface force as he looks at his battered warships—only Prince of Wales, Repulse, Houston, Boise, De Rutyr, and Defence have escaped serious damage.
A lookout aboard the Allied flagship spots shapes on the northern horizon—ships, their exhaust hidden by rainclouds or mistaken for gun or fire smoke from the fight.
The Main Body of the First Fleet arrives in full force, pennants whipping with the storm brewing at their backs. The force includes eight battleships—including the super-battleships Yamato and Musashi—the large cruiser Aso, two Myōkō-class heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and sixteen destroyers under the personal command of Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet.
Philips realizes immediately the battle is lost. His task is now survival—at best. But he has hope that survival is, in fact, possible as the weather grows progressively worse.
At 0745, the lead ship of the Japanese line, the Sado-class battleship Bingo, opens fire. Five minutes later, Musashi and Yamato open fire. Philips orders his escorts to lay smoke and cover their withdrawal, creating a desperate melee of destroyers. The Java Sea is smothered in ashy smoke from burning ships and smoke screens, both whipped up by the winds and peppered by the rain. The Allied formation began to break apart under the strain of attempting to maintain command and control between Dutch and English speakers.
Philips’ order to withdraw is simple but leads to additional confusion: “Striking Force to withdraw to Ceylon if possible or any other Allied port if necessary.”
Making matters worse, the 3rd Battle Squadron—Sado, Bingo, Kazusa, and Iga—makes the best of failing Allied cohesion and cut the scramble Striking Force in half. But after shattering the Allied formation, the squadron gets lost after a phantom sighting of American supercruisers to the west. If to add insult to injury to the Allies, though, it is also at this point—around 0820—that Kondō reappears with his cruiser force. At 0830, with the weather continuing to worsen, Yamato scores first blood of the second battle-line action with a crippling hit on Prince of Wales at about 25,000 yards. The high-angle 18-inch round penetrates the battleship’s deck armor and detonates in her machinery spaces. The British flagship is immediately reduced to 22 knots.
“We are damned,” Admiral Philips remarks to Captain Leach, “Our duty is now to drag down as many of them as we can with us.” Prince of Wales, in the company of De Zeven Provinciën, Prins Van Oranje, and Repulse, signals her intent to stand and fight. The battered and bruised De Zeven Provinciën—likewise without the speed to escape—turns about and joins her fellow flagship. Repulse’s final message to her compatriots is brief and made up on the spot by her signalman, “May thy aim be true. Good luck. Godspeed.”
Repulse and Prins Van Oranje charge into what has developed into a full monsoon into the cruiser action to find Defence in a nine-on-one holding action. The large heavy cruiser is simultaneously engaging seven of the Japanese ships with her main and secondary batteries while blazing like a candle and trailing a thick slick of oil, itself burning in places. Suyuza is burning; Kumano’s superstructure has collapsed forward onto her guns; Mogami is slowing from torpedo hit; Tateshina has multiple gashes in her side, letting in hundreds of tons of water; Ikoma is combat ineffective; Tsurumi and Tokiwa remain in a slugfest with the Ten-Year Fool landing well over a dozen 10-inch hits while taking even more 8-inch hits in return. Repulse sounds her arrival with a salvo of 15-inch shells, which brackets Tsurumi as the cruiser passes the capsized and sinking wreck of De Rutyr. In the meantime, the old light cruiser Dragon has also succumbed to damage along with Napier and Paladin.
Defence progressively loses engine power, but her electrical systems remain active as she slugs it out with the Japanese supercruisers. Kondō is unable to pursue the fleeing Allies before they disappear into the rain. Repulse leads the bulk of the Striking Force to rejoin the carriers in a dash to Ceylon, including Prins Van Oranje, Theseus, Houston, Perth, Sydney, Danae, and four destroyers (two Dutch and two British).
The crippled Prince of Wales and De Zeven Provinciën are outnumbered more than two to one: Yamato, Musashi, Nagato, and Mutsu, plus their escorts. A trio of Dutch DDs—Van Nes, Banckert, and Van Ghent—stand with the wounded battlewagons and die surrounded by Japanese light forces, but not before scoring a killing blow on the light cruiser Naka with their torpedoes. De Zeven Provinciën closes within 13,000 yards of the twins Nagato and Mutsu, trading body blows and receiving so much damage that her command crew ends up fighting the ship from the rear-mounted Littorio-style armored conning tower—the last clearly Italian element of her design. Despite not covering herself in glory in the early morning action, Provinciën lands a murderous flurry of blows on Mutsu. After nearly an hour of brawl-knuckle brawling, the Dutch battlecruiser finally gives up; a 41cm armor-piercing shell from Nagato penetrates her forward super-firing barbette and sets off her remaining shells and charges—breaking her keel in the process. She goes down in just four minutes.
Meanwhile, as De Zeven Provinciën faces the two Nagato-class battleships, Prince of Wales faces both Yamato and Musashi. For two hours, Philips and Leach weave the battleship in and out of squalls in a running battle against the Japanese super-battleships; at one point, they even stumble into the damaged Kaga under tow and opening fire on the wounded battlecruiser and scoring two hits. Leach is killed by splinters at 0917; Philips fights the ship in his place. Prince of Wales lands nine hits on Yamato and seven on Musashi while receiving no less than 80 hits in reply. At her last stand, she is caught and cornered by Yamato, Musashi, Atago, and Ashitaka. Even then, her burning hulk, out of control but underway—steams into the rain and disappears from view. Yamamoto, aboard Musashi, is originally under the impression that they failed to sink her, until the battered ship is discovered adrift in the night after nearly sixteen hours. There was some (brief) discussion about taking the ship as a prize before the cruisers Agano and Myōkō scuttled the flagship—but only after the pair launch a second salvo of Type 93. Even dead in the water, she does not quietly.
The withdrawing force under Rear Admiral Denis Boyd (aboard Indomitable) attempts to use the weather to slink out of the East Indies and into the Indian Ocean. However, in the night, HMAS Syndey, USS Houston, and HNLMS Evertsen lose sight of the other ships in the task force. After spending the better part of two hours attempting to find the carriers, they decide to go their own way. However, by the time they arrive in the Sunda Strait, the Japanese have caught up, and the ships run headlong into battlecruiser Tosa and large cruiser Aso. The two sides misidentify each other until Sydney opens fire at point-blank range. It is a gunfight in a telephone both. In just six minutes, the Allied ships are burning wrecks, and the Japanese ships are left crippled. When the sun rises, the crew of Tosa will count nearly a hundred hit marks across the ship, including three dud 8-inch HC shells embedded in her deck. Aso will spend the next eight months in the yard.
Despite beating the Japanese to the Sunda Strait, Boyd’s newly designated “Force Y” is not home-free. His carriers are stripped of aircraft—just four Martlets and six Albacores on Indomitable and four Fulmars on Hermes. Most of the ships in the task force are damaged; both Theseus and Perth are trailing slicks. Allied luck does not hold; the weather clears, allowing Aichi C6A “Jake” scout aircraft (carrier-based derivatives of the E13A floatplane) from the carrier Zuihō to scour the oceans.
On February 16, as Force Y steams toward Cerylon 170 miles west of Padang, the aviators of the Kido Butai descend upon them. Some 300 aircraft attack over the next eight hours. Repulse manages to dodge nearly a dozen torpedoes from Kii’s expert Kate pilots—the best in the world—but the battlecruiser is slowed by two bomb hits, which allows Kates from Soryū to finish the job with four aerial torpedoes. Prins Van Oranje and Hermes fall to a drumbeat of bombs from Hiei and Hiryū. Indomitable takes over a dozen bomb hits but does not lose power. Theseus has her stern blown off by a torpedo and her B turret destroyed by a 550-pound bomb. The survivors describe the battle as a sky full of vultures eating the flesh off still-living damned souls.
Only Theseus, Perth, Indomitable, Enterprise, Mauritius, and two British destroyers are afloat as night falls. The rest: one carrier, two battlecruisers, three light cruisers, and eight destroyers have been sunk in the frenzy. The seven surviving ships are only able to escape because there was so much smoke and oil that the world’s best carrier pilots assumed that they had killed everything.
However, amidst the stinging defeat there is at least one bright spot: not every ship fled toward Ceylon. HMAS Tiger, HMAS Hobart, USS Boise, HNLMS Tromp, and eight destroyers (five American, two British, one Dutch) divert to Surabaya. After a brief pause to refuel and regroup, they make for Australia. The battlecruiser can just barely make it out of the harbor’s shallow east entrance, coming dangerously close to bottoming out in the process. Once in the Bali Strait, they run into the IJN blockade, the Mogami-class heavy cruiser Tone, the Agano-class light cruiser Sakawa, and four destroyers critically low on fuel.
Sakawa stumbles upon the Allied Force in the middle of a fogbank and challenges the strange ships with its signal lamp. “I AM TIGER,” the Australian battlecruiser replies as it steams ahead at 30 knots. The encounter is at such close range that the Last of the Splendid Cats rams the 7,000-ton cruiser, which snaps in half before it can utter so much as a spoken objection. Tone, oblivious on the far side of the strait, continues her patrol before stumbling onto the burning wreckage after about an hour. Attempts the next day to vector aircraft from the nearby carriers find naught but open water after atmospheric interference scrambles the reported bearing.
The Battle of the Java—and the subsequent sinking of Force Y—would go down in history as the worst defeat the Royal Navy had faced since the Battle of the Medway, an order of magnitude worse than the infamous Battle of Coronel. ABDACOM’s naval power had been wiped out in just 48 hours at a comparatively minor cost for the IJN.
Now I C You
What appeared to be a decisive and elegant Japanese victory had actually been closer to a coincidence. Operation SU—the Japanese plan to defeat ABDACOM—had actually intended to strike the combined command while it was at anchor in Surabaya, a repeat of Operation AI, the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, radio intercepts would alert the Japanese that the ABDA Striking Force sortied, but with poor weather, the Japanese were forced into a rushed search, increasingly worried that the Allied forces would sneak by Kondō’s Second Fleet and sink the Sumutra invasion convoy. With their carrier forces in much better condition than their main body, the Japanese would once again attempt to deliver a knockout blow to an enemy in their harbor by striking the British Eastern Fleet’s main anchorage at Trincomalee.
The survivors from Force Y reach Ceylon on February 20. Indomitable remains in drydock for emergency repairs until March 21, after which she steams for further work in the UK. The much depleted Eastern Fleet is soon reinforced by the arrival of the strike carrier Quiberon, the armored carriers Illustrious and Formidable, the refit fast battleships Warspite and Drake, and the large cruisers Hector and Hercules. They bring with them Admiral James Somerville—new C-in-C, Eastern Fleet.
Somerville knows he is playing with a weakened hand, with almost all of the light forces that should be screening his heavy units at the bottom of the Java Sea. He divides his command into a Fast Force A and a slow Force B. The former includes the carriers along with Warspite, Drake, Hector, and Hercules escorted by the heavy cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall, the light cruisers Birmingham, Mauritius, and Gambia, and five destroyers. The latter is centered around the five Revenge-class battleships escorted by the refit light cruisers Enterprise, Emerald, and Caledon, and six destroyers.
Critically, British signals intelligence intercepts Japanese radio communications and extrapolates the time (April 1) and target (Ceylon) of a Japanese “carrier unit” raid, understanding this to be a force equivalent to an American carrier task force—i.e., two to three carriers escorted by cruisers and destroyers. As the defenses on the island brace themselves for the storm, Somerville develops a simple but daring plan: duck and parry.
Somerville moves the Eastern Fleet base of operations to Adu Atoll in the Maldives, out of harm’s way, and prepares a night counter-attack against the Japanese carriers with his radar-equipped Albacore torpedo bombers. His carrier force is extremely well-suited for this task, Quiberon is a “strike carrier” designed by Cammell Laid with a first strike against Wilhelmhaven in mind, and her aviators are amongst the best night pilots in the world, having taken part in Operation JUDGMENT, the Attack on Tarant in 1940. In total, the British have 92 Albacores—48 aboard Quiberon, 22 aboard Formidable, and 21 aboard Illustrious.
Japanese submarines scouting ahead of the raid fail to identify the new fleet base at Adu, and things are not improved when the scout carrier Zuihō is detached back to Japan to complete repairs after running aground near Palau a month earlier, thereby cutting the Kido Butai’s dedicated scouting capabilities by half.
But there is a profound miscalculation at the heart of Somerville’s strategy: he is, in fact, facing a carrier force three times stronger than he is expecting. He is not merely facing a lone carrier division but the entire Mobile Force protected by heavy surface units. Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi comes west with seven carriers—the six fleet carriers and the scout carrier Shōhō—along with both Amagi-class battlecruisers and the four new Tsurugi-class large cruisers (Tsurugi, Kurama, Ishikari, and Azuma). British intelligence even correctly anticipates the IJN’s timetable—until it is scrambled by American carrier raids against Marcus Island and Lae-Salamaua.
The Mobile Force departs Sulawesi on March 26, instead of March 21 as the British were anticipating. Somerville sorties from Adu on March 30. British defenses are placed on high alert, but on April 1—the expected “C-Day”—Nagumo is nowhere to be found. Somerville repeats his search pattern on April 2, but Nagumo is still 1500 miles away, so the British make for Adu to refuel and rewater (the latter is particularly important for the aging R-class battleships with leaky boiler tubes). Somerville also detaches Dorsetshire and Cornwall back to Colombo as he prepares to begin operations in support of the invasion of Vichy Madagascar.
On April 4, an RCAF Catalina spots the screen of the Mobile Force and is able to relay its sighting of battleships and a single carrier back to Ceylon before being downed by the Japanese close air patrol. Somerville had barely just reached Adu Attoll when the Mobile Force was spotted and had barely begun refueling operations by the time the report actually reached him. He readies his forces to depart as soon as they are ready. Force A sets sail in the night, Force B in the Morning of April 5.
As Nagumo, unaware of the Eastern Fleet’s disposition, spots his aircraft for a strike against Columbo, British scouts continue to make contact with the outer elements of his force. These partial reports, and the first report from April 4, convince the British that the Japanese raiding force has relatively few flattops. Columbo is put on high alert as the six Japanese fleet carriers launch a strike package of 107 bombers (most of the Japanese torpedo bombers are loaded up with semi-armor piercing bombs instead of torpedos) and 43 fighters. British early warning radar fails to detect the incoming Japanese, but an air patrol of Fulmars spots the Japanese and, after briefly confusing them for friendly Hurricanes, raises the alarm. However, time is short and the British are just barely able to scramble their fighters into the air to defend Columbo and the nearby airbases from the incoming horde.
The Japanese are forced to fight their way through to the mostly empty harbor (every ship able to sail was ordered to scatter), where they inflict moderate damages on the port’s facilities and sink the armed merchant cruiser HMS Hector (not the large heavy cruisers) and the destroyer Tenedos. The British lose twenty-four aircraft (including an unlucky flight of six Swordfish ferrying themselves to Ratmalana) while the Japanese lose ten aircraft, with another twenty-two damaged.
While the Japanese are readying for a follow-up strike with their reserve of 63 D3A Val dive bombers—a C6A reconnaissance aircraft from Shōhō spots Dorsetshire and Cornwall as they steam unescorted back to rejoin Force A. Nagumo waffles on whether to follow-up on Columbo or strike the cruisers, he decides for the former; but also orders that his reserve B5N Kates, to be rearmed with torpedoes to deal with the cruisers. The Vals are joined by half a dozen Zeroes. The second strike runs into much better-coordinated opposition from the British, losing six and claiming eight losses. By the time the Kates are ready to prosecute Dorsetshire and Cornwall, the orbiting Jake is intercepted and destroyed by a pair of Fulmars from Formidable; it is downed before it completes an updated report, allowing the British cruisers to change direction and speed. Further searches fail to re-establish contact, and Nagumo estimates that the interceptors were launched from shore, not carriers.
In the early afternoon, Somerville launches eight Albacores on a sweep to establish a fix on the Japanese task force. At approximately 1630, the two scouts from Quiberon spot three Japanese carriers (Shōhō, Akagi, and Kii) steaming southeast just over 100 nautical miles away; though both aircraft somehow fail to spot the other four carriers in the immediate vicinity of the 1st Carrier Division. Zeros manage to down one of the scouts before it can complete its report (relaying location and strength but not speed), but the second aircraft makes a complete report before its radio is damaged by cannon fire.
Somerville has gotten exactly what he wanted and makes ready for a massive night strike. Illustrious continues to put up radar-equipped Albacores to keep a bead on the Japanese task force as the first wave from Formidable and Quiberon is armed with a balanced mix of magnetic and contact fuse torpedoes and as many flares as they can carry. Somerville is still yet to be aware that he is totally overmatched; however, spotty reports from the circling scouts begin to filter in, and he begins to worry that he has caught more than he has bargained for. 48 Fairey Albacores take flight as the sun sinks below the horizon. Nagumo, however, is anxious about the appearance of British scouts but is still unaware that Somerville is out in force and bearing down on him. In fact, Japanese intelligence believes there is only a single British carrier in the region.
The aircraft from 813, 818, 819, and 820 Naval Air Squadrons are vectored in from the south (perpendicular to the Kido Butai’s bearing) by three Albacores, which had been shadowing the Japanese force by radar. The aircraft form up into four lines abreast—a squadron each—and three drop low. The pilots from 818 (the second line) recount that they nearly had their landing gear touching the wave tops.
The Japanese have no warning. They are first alerted to an attack by the sounds of aircraft engines spluttering over the sounds of the Indian Ocean. However, even these noises aren’t taken as a threat, with several accounts first assessing these noises to be late-returning floatplane scouts. The large cruiser Ishikari signals Akagi, asking if they should use their searchlights to help guide the scout in. Before the confused bridge crew aboard the flagship can respond, the first wave of Albacores commence their attack runs. Their arrival is heralded by a dozen dazzling sunburst—aerial flares released by 819 NAS.
819 Naval Air Squadron is flying relatively high (only when compared to the others) to maximize the illumination provided by their flares and draw attention away from the succeeding waves. The air of satisfaction of having successfully gotten the drop on the vaunted Imperial Japanese Navy fades as the light blooms. It is immediately apparent to all of the aviators that someone has gotten something horrible wrong.
“The entire bloody Jap fleet here!” The pilots panic as they see shape after shape of half a dozen capital surface units and another half-dozen flattops. The shocked radio operator in 819 NAS’ commanding officer’s Albacore reports eight battleships and ten carriers in his first report back to Somerville.
Japanese gun crews are woken by calls to general quarters. Sleepy bridge crews begin to maneuver violently as panicked Albacores weave in between their ships. A legend is passed between the IJN that the first shot fired in defense of the First Air Fleet was a half-drunk officer drawing and firing his service pistol from the bridge of Zuikakū.
The textbook air attack devolves into a madhouse as the Japanese anti-aircraft begin to fire wildly. The Japanese lack night-time gun directors and are therefore forced to manually train and engage the swarming Albacores. The FAA aviators, expecting to deliver hammer blow after hammer blow to a small Japanese force, are overwhelmed by the sudden glut of targets arrayed perfectly in front of them. Most freeze and miss their opportunity to make an attack on the first run, forcing the aircraft to circle and come around for another pass.
The first two waves (819 and 813) of Albacores are completely broken up, but the third and fourth squadrons (818 and 820) at least make a better impression.
Nagumo is woken in his cabin by six tremendous thuds—all torpedo impacts, all of which fail to detonate. The pilots from 818 Squadron are exasperated as they see no plumes of water racing up the side of the ship as they pull up and withdraw. One of the hapless Albacores waits too long to release its torpedo, and as it pulls up, its left wingtip strikes the edge of Akagi’s flight deck. The aircraft disintegrates into a red-orange conflagration as it cartwheels down the deck and comes to rest like a strange, impromptu bonfire.
One of the aircraft from 819 clips its wing on the fire control director atop Atago’s pagoda superstructure after it weaves between the large cruiser Kurama and the light cruiser Sendai. It limps back to Illustrious less one-quarter of its lower plane.
The Albacores successfully release 45 torpedoes—two weapons fail to release, and one falls prematurely into the ocean during transit—which score 25 hits, of which six detonate. The scout carrier Shōhō is struck by two Mark XIII Torpedoes, only one of which manages to go off; the battlecruiser Ashitaka, the large cruiser Kurama, heavy cruisers Ashigara and Tone, and the destroyer Kasumi are each struck by a single working torpedo. None of the ships are sunk by the damage, though Kasumi's stern has been blowing clean off. Ashigara suffers the worst damage, coming relatively close to sinking before damage control successfully stems further flooding; however, her engines give out later on April 7, and she has to be towed to Singapore.
If all torpedoes had worked as designed, then Akagi (six hits), Zuikakū (three), Soryū (two), Hiryū (two), Azuma (two), Mikuma (one), Yodo (one), and Kagero (one) would’ve been damaged, with Akagi and Zuikakū in serious danger of sinking.
Three Albacores are lost (one crashed, two shot down), and a further nine are damaged.
Somerville and Nagumo are both horrified. Somerville particularly realizes he has brought his force into a den of tigers. He is also aware of just how close the two forces while Nagumo has no idea of where the British are. Somerville, knowing his orders are to preserve the Eastern Fleet, disengages. Nagumo also orders his fleet to flank speed and to the east.
Somerville deliberates launching a second strike with every available aircraft but decides against it for two reasons: 1) it would just be daylight by the time they reach the Japanese force, which would allow the Japanese to have a close air patrol up and in the air and 2) potentially allow the Japanese to track the withdrawing aircraft back to the Eastern Fleet. Instead, he brings up his fighters and prepares an aggressive air net around the eastern fleet to screen against Japanese scouts.
As dawn breaks, dozens of A6M Zeros take to the air above the Kido Butai, joined by a buzzing swarm of floatplanes from the fleet’s escorting cruisers—but with Shōhō out of action, half of their scouting force is out of action. Nagumo orders a massive strike readied on the decks of his six fleet carriers. The order to launch never comes because the Japanese fail to find the Eastern Fleet.
Somerville’s fighter screen, with fighter interception assisted by the fleet’s radar-equipped ships, keeps the Japanese blind. Nagumo is not helped by the fact that he massively overestimates the range of the British fleet, so several scouts that could have discovered Somerville fail to spot him. Critically, a floatplane No. 2 from Atago launched on a bearing of 140 degrees fails to return, which convinces Nagumo and his staff that Somerville is operating to their south-southeast while he is actually to their west-southwest.
Nagumo spends April 6 and April 7 searching the seas to the southeast of Ceylon for the Eastern Fleet to no avail as Somerville sends Force B to Kenya and Force A to the western coast of India. On April 8 and April 9, Nagumo steams north and finally attacks Trincomalee on April 11. He finds an alert and ready, but overall less dense, defenses. Nagumo launches 132 aircraft at Trincomalee; in the resulting attack against the emptied harbor, the Japanese lose seven aircraft while shooting down 15 British fighters.
Nine unescorted Blenheim bombers manage to sneak up on Nagumo. They pierce the Kido Butai’s air patrol without being spotted, and while Hiryū does spot them as they close in, they fail to report their sighting until after the bombers have dropped their bombs around Akagi. They fail to hit the ship, but splinters from two near misses decapitate the ship’s pilot and wound Nagumo’s flag aid. Zeros swarm the retreating bombers but only manage to down four while losing two of their own. After this and an attack on shipping fleeing from Trincomalee along the coasts, Nagumo withdraws.
On April 8, unbeknownst to Nagumo, the submarine I-7, withdrawing from its patrol off the west coast of India, stumbles upon Force B as it steams toward safe harbor in East Africa. Force B’s escorting destroyers fail to classify the contact as a submarine after mistakenly engaging a pod of whales the day before. I-7 creeps closer, running deep, to a range of just 750 yards, and fires a full spread of six torpedoes. However, the sixth fish slams into a partially open external torpedo tube door and detonates. The submarine is obliterated as all of her remaining Type 95 torpedos cook-off. Three of her Type 95s strike Royal Oak in rapid succession. The battleship sinks in just six minutes, taking 789 of her sailors with her. I-7 fails to report before starting her approach; thus Japanese are not made aware of the sinking of Royal Oak until the AKKOROKAMUI Promethean signals intelligence program in mid-1943.
The Indian Ocean Raid was a fraught and exceptionally close-run fleet action for very little in return. The primary losses for the British were threefold: the loss of Ceylon as a safe fleet anchorage, the loss of merchant shipping, and the loss of Royal Oak. The loss of 110,000 tons of merchant shipping significantly throttled British logistics in Burma and would take over a year to be replaced by new construction. Ceylon would be used intermittently as a fleet base, and the Imperial General Staff would redeploy Agincourt to the Eastern Fleet in preparation for a possible follow-up invasion.
Shōhō would remain out of operation until July. Akagi and Ashitaka would require relatively brief stays in the yard to patch their damage. Kurama, Ashigara, and Tone would rejoin the fleet in September, August, and June, respectively.
Somerville later recounts the battle succinctly in his memoirs: “We scorched the Jap Emperor’s beard and narrowly escaped the tiger’s claws.”
MO Problems
In the aftermath of Operation C, the Imperial General Headquarters agrees to a new course of action: the Navy readies itself for a decisive battle to destroy the American carrier forces in the Central Pacific; while the Army pushes ahead with its offensive into the South Pacific to cut the main sea lines of communication between Australia and the United States by establishing seaplane bases before capturing Port Moresby in the Territory of Papua.
Operation MO is incredibly complex. Five naval task forces are to pinwheel across the Solomon and Coral Sea under the command of Vice Admiral Inoue Shigeyoshi. There is a Tulagi Invasion Force, Moresby Invasion Force, Covering Force, Main Body, and Carrier Striking Force. The Main Body would consist of the old Furataka and Aoba class heavy cruisers, the large cruiser Ikoma (fresh out of repairs), the questionably effective light carrier Ryujō, and the new light fleet carrier Ryuhō. The Striking Force, under Vice Admiral Takagi Takeo, would have the juniormost carriers in the navy, the 5th Carrier Division (fleet carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku), and the 6th Carrier Division (the ex-battlecruisers Hiei and Haruna). The IJN had hoped to send the 6th and 7th Carrier Divisions—all four Kongō-class conversions—but complications prevent this. Namely, repairs to Kongō from an engineering casualty—that occurred while attacking Rabaul earlier in the year and nearly caused a collision with Akagi—prove more difficult than expected while the worker shortages delay the re-commissioning of Kirishima (those workers were instead diverted to repair the higher-value scout carriers Shōhō and Zuihō).
The Covering Force and Main Body will first escort the Tulagi Force to its destination so that it can establish a large seaplane base on the island before sprinting across the Solomon Sea to rejoin the Moresby Invasion Force as it hooks around the tip of Papua toward its destination. All the while, the Carrier Striking Force will cover the other forces as it sails north of the Solomons before entering the Coral Sea from the east.
The Japanese believe it is likely that there is to be at least one American carrier in the area of operations, and is extremely confident in their ability to weaken the US carrier forces ahead of their decisive battle.
The Allies are, of course, reading significant portions of the Japanese Naval Code and aware of their enemy’s plans. However, the US response options are limited. The USN notionally has six fleet carriers in the Pacific, with three more fleet carriers in the Atlantic. However, of the six in the Pacific, Ranger and Saratoga are still under repair from damage suffered during the attack on Pearl Harbor and from the submarine I-6, respectively. Enterprise and Hornet are operational but returning from the Doolittle Raid, leaving only Lexington and Yorktown available for operations in the South Pacific. In the Atlantic, Wasp is running convoys to Malta; Franklin and Bonhomme Richard are providing air cover for trans-Atlantic convoys; and Reprisal is outfitting at Fore River. The Navy’s CV-9 fleet carrier and CV-23 light carriers are under construction but not near completion.
On May 1, Task Force 17 (Yorktown) under Rear Admiral Frank Fletcher is already operating in the area and is reinforced by Task Force 11 (Lexington and the large cruiser Ticonderoga) under Rear Admiral Aubrey Fitch, who have sortied from Pearl Harbor. Ticonderoga is the only fast capital ship available as the battle cruiser Bunker Hill and large cruisers Shiloh and Alaska are with Hornet and Enterprise. However, both task forces need to refuel and TF 17 completes first. After Admiral Fletcher, overall commander, is alerted to the Japanese landing on Tulagi, he decides to detach with just Yorktown and attempt to attack the landings. He orders TF 11 to regroup with Australian Rear Admiral John Crace’s Task Force 44 (a mixed Australian-American cruiser force including the battlecruiser HMAS Tiger) after it refuels.
On May 4, Fletcher launches a total of 60 aircraft against Tulagi in three waves, which sinks a destroyer and three minesweepers but otherwise fails to prevent the Japanese from establishing a seaplane base on the island. Critically, the IJN’s Carrier Striking Force cannot exploit the Americans’ premature reveal as a failed attempt to reinforce Rabual pushes back their timetable by a day and is in the middle of fueling when word of the attack on Tulagi reaches them. Furthermore, the Japanese incorrectly assume the Americans are operating to the east, not the south, of the Solomons, so Japanese aerial recon fails to spot Fletcher as he returns to regroup with Lexington.
On May 5, Fletcher regroups with Task Forces 11 and 44, and radio intercepts informs him that the Japanese intend to arrive off Port Moresby on May 10. Fletcher deduces that the Japanese are likely to have carriers operating in support of the landing force and that they are likely transiting via the Jormand Passage (through the strait between the Louisiade Archipelago and Papau) to Moresby.
In the wee hours of May 6, Takagi rounds the tip of the Solomons and enters the Coral Sea from the west with his four carriers. Later that morning, a flying boat launched from Tulagi spots Task Force 17, but again, Takagi is in the middle of refueling and unable to put the report to use. He detaches his carriers forward under the command of Rear Admiral Hara Chūichi, certain that the next day will be the day of decisive action. Meanwhile, Fletcher is unaware of Takagi’s presence to his northeast as he refuels ahead of his planned interception of what he believes is a combined carrier-invasion force. After he finishes refueling, he detaches the fast oiler Neosho and destroyer Sims to hold station to the south, out of danger. On the night of May 6-7, the two carrier forces unwittingly come within 70 nautical miles of each other before the Japanese carriers turn north to rejoin the rest of the Striking Force.
Fletcher starts May 7 by detaching Task Force 44 to seal the Jormand Passage to prevent the invasion convoy from slipping through to Port Moresby while incorrectly looking for the main Japanese force north of the Louisiade. The Japanese launch an early morning wide area search with a mix of cruiser floatplanes and dragooned B5N Kates. They report finding an American carrier and cruiser to their south-southeast at 0745. A second spotter confirms the report. After confirmation, Hara launches a huge strike—all of his 114 available aircraft.
Just after putting up their strike, a scout plane from the large cruiser Ikoma spots two carriers, four cruisers, and a battleship. Hara and Takagi are confused by this report but piece together that the American carriers might be operating in multiple units.
At 0815, Shortly after the Japanese spots his own force, Fletcher receives a report of “two carriers and four cruisers” operating to his north, heading toward the Jormand Passage. He orders an attack with available aircraft, believing this to be the primary enemy force. Just as the Americans start launching their attack at 0915, the Japanese attack arrives at the reported “enemy carrier” but are confused to find only a destroyer and an oiler operating alone. They break up and begin to search the area for their true target, not yet aware that their scouts had misidentified Sims and Neosho.
Just after the US attack finally is off the decks and heading toward its target, the scout that had relayed the location of the Main Body and Moresby Invasion Force arrives back aboard Yorktown and realizes his report had been transmitted incorrectly, as he had only seen two cruisers and two destroyers. Fletcher does not recall his strike, and that decision is ratified when a report at 1022 from a USAAF B-17 relays the presence of two carriers operating close to the report from earlier in the morning. Fletcher is certain he has found the main Japanese force. He is, of course, wrong.
At 1051, the impromptu scouts from Shōkaku realize they had misidentified Neosho as a carrier. The Japanese now realize that the Americans are between their main carrier force and the invasion convoy, leaving only the limited complement aboard Ryuhō and the token complement aboard Ryujō to protect over 5,000 troops. At 1115, the bulk of the morning’s strike is recalled, save for the 48 dive bombers that are ordered to sink Neosho and Sims. The two ships have no chance and are outright sunk in short order. Sims is hit by four bombs, while Neosho is struck by 11. The oiler is able to make a garbled report of the attack before it loses power.
The American attack spots the invasion convoy at 1040 and finds only a paltry close air patrol up to meet them. Lexington’s air group is the first to arrive, dividing their attention between the two carriers. Ryuhō is hit with three bombs, while the older, slower Ryujō is hit by two torpedoes, one on each side. As Yorktown’s air group arrives Ryuhō is burning badly while Ryujō is steaming ahead, apparently unharmed (actually fatally wounded). The Americans attack the latter and score nine torpedoes and eight bomb hits, with one unlucky A6M Zero on the deck struck directly by a 1,000-pound bomb. At 1210, VS-2’s commanding officer, Commander Robert Dixon, issues the call over the radio: SCRATCH TWO FLAT TOPS! SIGNED BOB. Unfortunately for the Americans, Ryuhō is detached with a pair of destroyers for Truk.
The Americans and Japanese recover their strikes. Believing that the enemy has more carriers operating in the region, Fletcher does not launch a follow-up strike on the invasion force as he will be unable to find and hit the other carriers before it is too dark. He keeps Task Force 17 under cloud cover to provide additional protection against detection. Inoue, back in Rabaul, orders the invasion force to withdraw north after losing both of its escorting carriers and orders Takagi to destroy the Americans.
The Japanese spot Task Force 44, but the floatplane inaccurately reports the presence of two carriers. Inoue vectors land-based bombers against the report, but they fail to deal any significant damage. They report the sinking of two battleships. However, the attack does force Crace to withdraw to avoid future air attacks. The Australian is out of contact with Fletcher, who maintains radio silence to avoid detection. Takagi and Hara, monitoring the traffic between Rabaul and the float-planes, are intent on a final, late-day strike at the alleged carrier force, knowing that it will return after nightfall. They launch more scouts at 1515, hoping to find the Americans.
A strike package of 22 dive and 31 torpedo bombers is launched without fighter escort at 1615, without a clear target. These are hand-picked, the best aviators in the Carrier Striking Force, and include seven D3A Val crews who have just returned from the five-hour marathon mission against Neosho. They are merely sent down a bearing of 280°—a wild goose chase. Unfortunately for the Japanese, they are picked up by the radars on TF 17. Fletcher takes the opportunity to vector 13 F4F Wildcats against the errant formation. The ambush achieves complete surprise, destroying 12 Kates and 5 Vals and scattering the Japanese aircraft. The Japanese strike leaders call off the attack shortly before the sun sets. Several Vals stumble upon TF 17 in the darkness, and they mistake them for their own carriers; they start to circle the flat-tops to land before the American anti-aircraft batteries open fire. Eventually, the surviving 36 aircraft reach the Japanese carriers, but two more are forced to ditch due to damage.
Fletcher heads west while Takagi steams to the north. The Americans ready a 360° search while the Japanese ready a dense search pattern to the south and west. Inoue formally pushes back the invasion of Port Moresby to May 12.
Both sides are determined to find their opponent as early as possible. The Japanese launch a mixed search pattern of 11 B5N Kates from the carriers, three H6K Mavis float-planes from Tulagi, and four G4M Betty bombers from Rabaul. The Americans, operating under Fitch’s tactical control, launch 18 SBD Dauntless.
The inclement weather that had protected the Americans now shielded the Japanese as it moved north. However, at 0820, a Dauntless off Lexington spots the Japanese carriers through a hole in the clouds. Two minutes later, a Kate from Shōkakū spots the Americans. The two forces are approximately 210 nmi apart as they rush to get their strikes into the air. The carriers steam toward each other to shorten the return leg for their attack aircraft. The Japanese launch a strike with 18 Zeros, 49 Vals, and 21 Kates at 0915; the Americans launch separate attacks, with six Wildcats, 24 Dauntlesses, and nine Devastators from Yorktown at 0915 and nine Wildcats, 15 Dauntlesses, and 12 Devastators from Lexington at 0925.
Yorktown’s dive bombers arrive first at 1032 and wait for their torpedo bombers to catch up before launching their attack. The only spot Shōkaku and Hiei—as Zuikaku and Haruna are hidden by a nearby rain squall—and jump them. Despite impressive maneuvering, the aviators score two 1,000-pound bomb hits on Shōkaku. Hiei—slower and less maneuverable than her purpose-built relative—is struck by three bombs and a torpedo. Both carriers are knocked from the fight before Lexington’s aircraft arrive on target. When Lady Lex’s aviators do arrive on the scene, approximately half of her SBDs are unable to find the Japanese through the bad weather. Those who do find the Japanese see two smoking carriers and Haruna running for the squalls. They score two more bomb hits on Shōkakū and two on Haruna, but the TBDs fail to score a single hit. One of the bombs that hit Haruna penetrates the ship’s port wing engine room before detonating, wrecking the space and causing her to lose speed.
TF 17 detects the incoming strike on radar at 70 nmi but incorrectly estimates their approach altitude, allowing the attackers to sail overhead of the CAP picket. Nine B5N Kates target Yorktown, but none of their torpedoes connect; the other 12 attack Lexington and score three hits. 20 Vals line up on Lexington and score two hits; the other 19 attack Yorktown, scoring a single hit and 16 near-misses.
In the span of about an hour, five carriers have been badly damaged, with two out-right crippled and potentially beyond saving (Lexington and Hiei). As the strikes are returning to their carriers, they run into each other—leading to a series of frenetic duels that destroy three more Japanese and American aircraft. Yorktown and Lexington (barely) are able to recover their attack. Zuikaku and Haruna both start to recover until Haruna’s steering linkage fails (one of the original components of the ship that was not replaced when she was re-engined due to time constraints), and the carrier lazily veers out of control.
Fletcher assesses that he has killed one, maybe two carriers, but not all. He is left with two heavily damaged carriers and two greatly depleted air groups against at least one operational enemy carrier. Even worse, with the loss of Neosho, he can no longer refuel at sea. Things are made worse when, at 1247, gasoline fumes in Lexington’s hangar are ignited by an errant electrical spark. The massive explosion rocks the ship and starts a massive fire. Fletcher is informed at 1422 by Fitch of reports of two undamaged enemy carriers. Fletcher makes the decision to withdraw. At 1442, another massive explosion rocks Lexington, followed by yet another at 1525. The fires are uncontrollably by 1538 and the crew begins evacuating at 1707.
Takagi is left with a single operational carrier (Zuikaku) and 37 operational aircraft, the majority of which are fighters (an additional thirty-five aircraft aboard Haruna are available but unable to be launched). At 1210, Shōkaku detaches from the battle and sets course for Japan. Hiei limps in the same direction, but it is not clear if she can be saved. Takagi asks her captain, Komura Keizō, if the ship can be saved. Komura states she can, and she is, eventually, at the cost of 515 of her 1432-man crew. Haruna, while in no danger of sinking, must be towed until temporary repairs allow her to get back under her own power on the morning of May 9. The escorts of the Carrier Striking Force are dangerously low on fuel, some as low as 20%. Takagi informs Inoue that he cannot provide air cover for the invasion convoy, but he has sunk a pair of American carriers. Ryuhō is both condemned and spared by her unpreparedness, as her hangars were filled with unarmed and unfueled aircraft, and thus, she avoids sympathetic fires and explanations and is able to escape destruction. Having spotted Task Force 44, Inoue recalls the transports and the rest of his forces.
The Americans have achieved a major strategic and narrow tactical victory but at a significant cost. The IJN has temporarily lost use of three of its four most advanced aircraft carriers: Zuikaku, Shōkaku, and Ryuhō. Three of these are temporary, and one (Zuikaku) is because of Japanese doctrine on regenerating air group losses. The loss of Ryujō is not materially significant, but the loss of many of her aviators is sorely felt when trying to regenerate Zuikaku’s air group. The Kongō-class carriers have also confirmed their squalid reputations with their meager performance. The price of this American victory is one carrier badly damaged and another sunk. Even in this, there is a silver lining. The failure of damage control practices aboard Lexington will be a lesson learned the hard way and ensuring that no other gas-fume explosions will occur on another carrier. And most important of all, the Japanese will not take Port Moresby. Their drive into the South Pacific is halted and will not resume until July with the landings on New Georgia and Guadalcanal—and the Invasion of Milne Bay.
A Very Different Midway
The Imperial General Headquarters was extremely divided on what to do next in early 1942 as it basked in its smashing successes in Malaya, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies. Admiral Yamamoto put forth a daring strategy to trap and kill the Pacific Fleet and extend the Japanese defensive perimeter further east by attacking a position they could not help but defend. Originally, the target was supposed to be Pearl Harbor but after the March 5 attack on the Hawaiian Islands by two H8K Emily flyingboats (Operation K) failed to achieve much damage and revealed the increased air defenses on the islands, the was revised to Midway Atoll. The operation would also include a feint attack against the Aleutians to conceal Japanese intentions and also prevent the United States from using the island chain to launch attacks against the Japanese-held Kuriles. Admiral Yamamoto would go so far as to threaten his resignation to ensure the operation was initiated. He would get what he wanted on April 16—a decision that would then be ratified by the Doolittle Raid stressing the need for a deeper defensive perimeter on April 18.
The formal authorization would be issued on May 5 with Navy Order No. 18.
The United States immediately notices the considerable uptick in communications traffic around the Home Islands. On May 7, FRUPAC (Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific) decrypts and translates the agenda for a Japanese aviation conference which includes such topics as “obtaining air superiority over a target” and “assisting in amphibious landings.” On May 9, FRUMEL (Fleet Radio Unit, Melbourne) intercepts signals that confirm the creation of a new “First Air Fleet Striking Force” and that a major fleet movement would begin on May 21. All of this would point toward an offensive in late May. On May 22, a deception operation by Fleet Radio Units would confirm that the target “AF” was Midway (though FRUs already had a good idea that AF was Midway). A further code breakthrough allows FRUPAC to pin down the date of the attack to June 4. This gives Admiral Chester Nimitz, CINC-PAC/PAO, ample time to reinforce Midway’s defenses and to prepare his carriers to ambush the IJN’s grand fleet trap.
However, there is first a game of musical chairs in American fleet command. Vice Admiral William Halsey, the seniormost carrier admiral and who Nimitz intended to fleet the forces at Midway, is forced into convalescence; his psoriasis has grown so severe that he could barely sleep, and he has lost nearly 20 pounds during the last six months, which he spent nearly constantly at sea. Halsey would suggest his cruiser force commander, Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, to replace him. However, Nimitz would instead give overall command to Rear Admiral Fletcher—who was both more senior and more experienced in carrier operations. However, Spruance would still be given command of Halsey’s carrier task force.
On May 20, just three hours after leaving its drydock, the scout carrier Zuihō collides with the large ocean liner Asama Maru in Yokosuka Harbor en route to join the First Fleet at Hashirajima. The lightly built carrier comes out the worse of it. Ten of her eighteen Aichi C6A “Jake” long-range scouts are write-offs or fully hurled off the deck. The collision kills four pilots, five other aircrew, six of Zuihō's crew, and four of Asama Maru’s crew. Zuihō is towed back to the drydock she had just left. There are some hopes that she could be patched up and sent off in time to join the fleet, but three bulkheads give way, and her bow collapses down on itself. Both Shōhō and Zuihō, the vaunted Eyes of the Fleet, will miss what is intended to be the most important naval battle since Tsushima. The fleet has enough floatplanes on its capital ships and cruisers to pick up the slack, but those pilots are not nearly as skilled as those aboard the scout carriers.
As per tradition, the Japanese battle force is over-dispersed and unable to mutually support with a peak of eleven separate task forces. This is, at least, in part an attempt to prevent detection—but that is already moot but obviously unknown to the Japanese.
On May 26, the Fifth Fleet (Northern Force) under Vice Admiral Hosogaya Boshirō sets sail for the Aleutians with a heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, nine destroyers, and three transports across two task forces. He is also covered by the Second Carrier Striking Force with the hot-off-the-presses light fleet carriers Jun’yō and Sekihō, along with one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, and three destroyers. Sekihō is so new that she is technically on her shakedown cruiser, having commissioned on May 22. Boshirō will later be covered by the Guard Force detached from the Main Body of the First Fleet with the battlecruiser Tosa, two large cruisers, two light cruisers, and twelve destroyers.
On May 27, the First Fleet sets sail from Hashirajima. It is divided between a Main Body under Admiral Yamamoto and the First Carrier Striking Force under Vice Admiral Nagumo. The Main Body contains eight battleships, one battlecruiser, three large cruisers, the light carrier Hōshō, three light cruisers, two seaplane tenders carrying midget submarines, and twenty-one destroyers. The First Carrier Striking Force contains the 1st, 2nd, and 7th Carrier Divisions (Akagi and Kii; Soryū and Hiryū; Kongō and Kirishima), the battlecruisers Atago and Ashitaka, the large cruisers Tsurugi and Azuma, two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and a destroyer.
Also on May 27, the Second Fleet (Midway Invasion Force) under Vice Admiral Kondō sets sail from both Saipan and Hashirajima. The Midway Occupation Force, with four heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, twelve transports, and ten destroyers, sets sail from Saipan with the 2nd Combined Special Naval Landing Force and Ichiki Detachment of the 4th Infantry Regiment. They are joined by a Seaplane Tender Group with two tenders and a destroyer and the Minesweeper Group with four minesweepers and three subchasers. The Main Body of the Second Fleet has two large cruisers, four heavy cruisers, the carrier Haruna (she was repaired by Kure Naval Yard in just 96 hours), one light cruiser, and ten destroyers.
There is a further screen of ten submarines of the Sixth Fleet’s Advance Force serving as a picket line east of Midway on the approaches from Oahu.
The carriers Zuikaku, Shōkaku, Zuihō, Shōhō, Hiei, and Hiyō miss the battle as they are either under repair, without an air group, or not yet in commission. The battlecruiser Kaga and three large cruisers are also under repairs and are unable to join the battle.
The Imperial Japanese Navy estimates that the United States Navy has two to three operational carriers, erring closer to two after the presumed sinking of both Yorktown and Lexington at Coral Sea. However, Yorktown is not only not sunk she is back and ready for combat duty after just 72 hours of feverish work at Pearl Harbor. While the Japanese leave Zuikaku behind—which is otherwise operational—for lack of an air group, the Americans stitch together a new air group for Yorktown by grabbing whatever squadrons are to hand (plundering Saratoga’s orphaned air group in Hawaii) and even creating a new composite fighter squadron.
Nimitz, however, is acutely aware that he is at a numbers disadvantage. Ranger and Saratoga wrap up their repairs at Bremerton on May 22 and head for San Diego to embark their new air groups and rendezvous with their escorts, including the large cruiser Shiloh. Despite expediting their departure from the West Coast, they are not able to reach the battle area in time to contribute. While suboptimal, three Yorktown-class carriers and the aircraft launched from Midway would give the Americans parity with FRUPAC’s estimate of 4—or at most 5—enemy carriers.
Therefore, the Americans have to play with a weaker hand. Fletcher remains with Task Force 17 and Yorktown with two heavy cruisers, six destroyers, and the battle cruiser Bunker Hill. Spruance’s Task Force 16 has Enterprise and Hornet, along with five heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, nine destroyers, and the large cruisers Alaska and Ticonderoga. Twelve American submarines also form a barrier to the west of Midway with two additional patrol groups with seven other submarines.
Critically, a planned second seaplane mission to reconnoiter Pearl Harbor is scrapped (as the planned seaplane refueling point at French Frigate Shoals was discovered to be covered by USN ships). The submarine picket line is also late on the station, allowing TF 16 and 17 to reach their ambush position at “Point Luck” without being detected. However, Japanese signals intelligence does notice the huge increase in traffic around Midway and can even ascertain that at least one USN carrier task force could be out to sea, but these reports do not reach Nagumo because of strict radio silence.
On June 3, B-17s based from Midway attack the Midway Occupation Force heading from Saipan but fail to score any hits, but a follow-up night attack by PBY Catalinas damages a fleet oiler with a torpedo. To the North, the Second Carrier Striking Force launches an air raid against Dutch Harbor but the raid is disrupted by USAAF P-40s and does little damage.
On the morning of June 4, Nagumo launches his first attack against Midway with 159 aircraft (dive bombers from Akagi, Kaga, and Kirishima; torpedo bombers from Soryū, Hiryū, and Kongō) and puts up a preliminary air search. Not expecting to find anything he launches just eight search aircraft (two B5N Kates from Akagi, six Aichi E13A Jakes from Azuma and Tsurugi). Azuma Floatplane No. 3 is delayed by 30 minutes, with massive consequences. The Americans begin their own searches at 0430 with 10 SBD Dauntless scouts off Yorktown and 11 PBY Catalina seaplanes from Midway.
At 0534, one PBY spots the Japanese carriers and the inbound strike is spotted by another PBY at 0544. Midway’s bombers are sent in without escorts as the fighters remain over Midway to defend the islands. At 0620, the 21 F2A Buffalo and 7 F4F Wildcat fighters intercept the Japanese but have middling performance, destroying just 5 B5Ns and 2 A6Ms at the cost of 15 F2As and 2 F4Fs (and all but two aircraft no longer airworthy once they land). Midway’s reinforced anti-aircraft artillery destroys six Japanese aircraft. In total, the Japanese lose 16 aircraft destroyed and 21 aircraft damaged beyond repair. The strike does heavily damage Midway’s support facilities but fails to knock out Eastern Island’s runway. The attack command reports back to Nagumo that a second strike is needed if the Occupation Force is to land on June 7.
At 0710, the Midway’s attack aircraft begin arriving in penny packets.
The first to arrive are 6 TBF Avengers and 4 B-26 Marauders armed with torpedos. The strike is broken and annihilated, but not before two B-26s get dangerously close to Nagumo’s flagship, Akagi. One Maurader pulls off from an attack run and strafes the carrier, and the other, heavily damaged, very nearly slams into the carrier’s bridge.
Nagumo, against Yamamoto’s standing orders, decides to rearm his reserve aircraft to attack Midway at 0715 as it is clearly the greater threat to his carriers. He reaches this understanding because, by about 0700, most of his scouts had reached the end of the patrol path and had yet to report anything. Vitally, this is only for most scouts, as the delayed Azuma No. 4 was running behind schedule. So, of course, at 0745—about 30 minutes into the laborious process of rearming the strike aircraft—Azuma No. 3 reports ‘SIGHT WHAT APPEARS TO BE TEN ENEMY SURFACE UNITS” back to the fleet. Nagumo immediately countermands his order and has his reserve force re-armed for an anti-surface strike. Thankfully, only half of his B5N Kates would need to be re-armed for a second time, but the spare ordnance is left lying around the hangars of the aircraft.
Shortly after Azuma No. 3’s report at 0750, Spruance’s Task Force 16 launches a strike of 116 aircraft. The Americans’ inexperience and slow launch times actually prove to be a boon to them. They forgo a coordinated attack and just dispatch their squadrons as they launch. Spruance gambles on to hitting the Japanese first, just before they can put up a strike. However, Hornet’s skipper and CAG make a profound mistake, and their aircraft are sent off on the wrong bearing. At least, VT-8 breaks formation and returns to the correct bearing, though VS-8 and VB-8, with their F4F Wildcat escorts, continue on their infamous Flight to Nowhere.
Azuma No. 3’s report notably fails to include the composition of the enemy—it could be carriers or could be oilers. Not only that, but the location of the report is 60 miles off course, which adds to the confusion. Nagumo is faced with a fraught decision: he can either launch a partial-strength strike with his reserve aircraft or he can recover the strike aircraft coming back from Midway. He cannot do both at once. He has 15 minutes to make his decision at 0745, as it would take 45 minutes to spot and launch a strike (start launch before 0800) and 30 minutes to land the returning aircraft (begin landing at 0845 before the aircraft began to run out of fuel at 0915).
However, this is purely hypothetical because, at 0753, 16 USMC SBD Dauntlesses from Midway attack the Kido Butai, targeting Hiryū. The inexperienced pilots fail to hit the carrier. Again at 0810, the next penny packet attack arrives, this time it is 15 USAAF B-17 Flying Fortresses attacking from high altitude. At 0827, the last attack from Midway arrives—11 Marine Devastators, which target Atago, but they also fail to score a hit. Adding to the chaos, the submarine Nautilus makes an attack run against Ashitaka, but the battlecruiser dodges the torpedo, and then the destroyer Arashi is detached to run the submarine.
However, these consecutive penny packets ensure that Nagumo never has a window to launch an escorted strike against Azuma No. 3’s reported target and thus has no choice but to wait and recover the morning strike, lest he start The Decisive Naval Battle™ by having dozens, if not over a hundred, of his combat aircraft ditch into the drink.
At 0820, Azuma No. 3 again reports in, this time confirming the presence of a single carrier. However, it has actually spotted Spruance’s Task Force 16, which has two. At 0906, Yorktown launches her strike with 44 aircraft. Fletcher risks his reserves—the nine spare aircraft of VS-5 who had not launched on morning searches—after a new update from FRUPAC confirms the presence of no less than six carriers. Then, at 0917, in a bewildering move, Nagumo turns northeast onto a closing course with the enemy throwing away his air groups’ range advantage. Nagumo, regardless, just needs one 45-minute window to spot and launch his strike.
He will not get one.
At 0925, VT-8 from Hornet—who made the fateful decision to change bearings and ditch their fellow aviators from CVG-8—make their attack run. They are cut to pieces as A6M Zeroes swarm over them like flies, and the entire squadron is shot down, with only a single survivor. At 0930, VT-6 from Enterprise attacks the First Carrier Striking Fleet, targeting Kii. The 14 TBD Devastators manage to release five torpedoes, none of which hit, at the cost of 10 aircraft (one of which had to ditch on the return leg). Just after Enterprise’s devastators are done, the 12 aircraft of VT-3 off Yorktown begin their own attack at 1000, escorted by 4 F4F Wildcats from VF-3. The American fighters, using the Thach Weave, are able to destroy 4 A6Ms while only losing a single of their own. Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Thach’s flight of fighters allows 11 TBDs to break for Hiryū—the only Americans to spot the carrier as it maneuvers through a rain squall. It also draws the attention of nearly all of the low-altitude CAP fighters, which in turn forces the A6M on high-altitude CAP to dive to intercept the TBDs, leaving the skies above undefended. Five Devastators are able to release their weapons against Hiryū, but again, they score no hits. In total, VT-3 and VF-3 lose 10 TBDs and 1 F4F but take down about 7 A6Ms.
Nagumo’s luck runs out at 1022. 58 SBD Dauntlesses appear overhead, approaching from two different directions, and begin their fateful attack. It is VB-6 and VS-6 under Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky and VB-3 and VS-5 under the command of Lieutenant Commander Maxwell Leslie. It is a miraculous appearance and completely unplanned. McClusky had pressed on for just long enough while running low on fuel to find the destroyer Arashi returning to the carriers at flank speed. Leslie had been following VT-3 but had decided to approach from a different angle. There is nothing to prevent the steel and aluminum jaws of the United States Navy from closing on the neck of the Kido Butai.
McClusky plans to split his squadrons so that one takes Kii and the other takes Akagi, but McClusky violates doctrine, as the leading element should’ve attacked the further target (Akagi), but he instead leads VS-6 against the nearer one (Kii), so both squadrons attack the same ship. Realizing the error, Lieutenant Dick Best, commander of VB-6, takes his two wingmen to attack Akagi. Leslie, likewise, splits his squadrons between Kongō and Soryū. Hiryū and Kirishima remain hidden from view by rain squalls.
At 1025, as the aircraft begin their near vertical dives, a pressure wave followed by a 70-foot tall wall of granite-grey smoke or fog comes screaming across the horizon at an altitude of 2,000 feet. Kii takes seven hits in rapid succession. Dick Best’s flight is hit directly by the pressure wave and fog, which forces one of his wingmen to miss narrowly. Best manhandles his aircraft and puts his bomb dead center through the Japanese flag emblazoned on Akagi’s forward flight deck. VB-3 walks four bombs down Soryū, starting at the island and going back toward the stern. VS-5 clips Kongō with two bombs along her stern and two amidships—in fact—hitting the same place twice.
Four carriers are burning badly as the American warplanes head for home, but the fire and smoke no longer command the attention of those present. Even Admiral Nagumo stands confused on the bridging and gawking at the horizon to the north. American and Japanese alike watch a storm system two-hundred-and-fifty miles away billow up into the heavens. They have no idea what they are seeing. Some think that a Krakatoa-level eruption has occurred. All of the theories are, of course, wrong.
The war has been irrevocably altered. History has forever been changed.
This is the Departure.
The crescendo of tension that leads to the climax of the CTF arriving... *chef's kiss*
Excellent work as usual.
So DEI still fall (DEI as Dutch East Indies)..