Rising Sun

BAEN BOOKS by ROBERT CONROY

Himmler’s War

Rising Sun

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Rising Sun

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Robert Conroy

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Book

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4516-3851-6

Cover art by Kurt Miller

First printing, December 2012

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Conroy, Robert (Joseph Robert), 1938–

Rising sun / Robert Conroy.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4516-3851-6 (hc)

1. World War, 1939–1945—Naval operations, American—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Pacific Area—Fiction. 3. Pacific Area—Fiction.  I. Title.

PS3553.O51986R57 2012

813’.54—dc23

2012033440

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

Printed in the United States of America

eISBN: 978-1-61824-969-2

Electronic Version by Baen Books

http://www.baen.com

Seeing a book published never gets old and it is never done alone. I’d like to thank everyone at Baen along with Eleanor Wood and her crew at Spectrum for all their work and for believing that
Rising Sun
has a future. Of course, my wife and daughter were very positive forces.

And finally, to Quinn and Brennan: Not yet but you’re getting there.

INTRODUCTION

IN JUNE 1942, WHAT REMAINED OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY’S Pacific Fleet after the disaster at Pearl Harbor was on its way to destiny at Midway. With knowledge provided by their top-secret codebreaking efforts, the American commanders know the intent and size of the Japanese fleet. With only three carriers and the garrison of Midway against Japan’s four, America’s only hope was to pull off an ambush. To make matters worse, a powerful bombardment and invasion force was following the Japanese carriers and would launch the invasion of Midway itself. Yet another Japanese task force was en route to attack our bases in Alaska.

The Japanese thought they were in a win-win position. If the American fleet did not show, then they would seize Midway, a base that would threaten Hawaii. If the Americans did rise to the challenge, the overwhelming might of the Imperial Japanese Navy would destroy them.

To get in position, the American forces would have to slip past a picket line of Japanese submarines before they could set up and attack the Japanese carrier force.

In actual history, the U.S. Navy won an overwhelming victory that some have described as miraculous. The Japanese subs were on duty a day late and the proverbial dollar short, and all four Japanese carriers were sunk at a cost of one of ours. In the space of a few minutes, the course of the war in the Pacific was changed forever. Japan’s death spiral to ultimate defeat in August 1945 had begun and she would never again be able to seize the initiative.

* * *

In this tale of alternate history, some of the Japanese submarines are in place when the American carriers attempt to steam by. Enemy submarines attack, unleashing a storm of torpedoes that sink two American carriers. The surviving ships of the American fleet fall back in disarray to Hawaii. The third American carrier is hunted down and destroyed, all without significant loss to the Japanese. Midway is forced to surrender and the Japanese win another tremendous victory.

Victory fever again grips the Japanese and Admiral Yamamoto is not immune. He’d originally felt that the victory at Pearl Harbor would give him a year before the U.S. could react. Now he feels that he can gain at least two more years of supremacy against the United States, perhaps much longer, by devastating America’s West Coast. He hopes that bloody pressure will be enough to ensure a diplomatic peace that will preserve most, if not all, that Japan has conquered.

However, there are those who have doubts. “The fruits of war are tumbling into our mouths almost too quickly,” Emperor Hirohito said in real history and before Midway. Events would prove him right.

* * *

As I did in my previous novels about the war in the Pacific, I’ve conveniently ignored the International Date Line. I’ve also adopted our way of using Japanese names. It’s just easier that way.

Also, while the very real problems with American torpedoes are chronicled in my earlier novel,
1942
, they could not be ignored in this story as they were a significant part of the early war in the Pacific.

Regarding the Battle of Midway, a number of fine histories by the likes of Lord and Prange have been written and I’ve used them extensively. A more recent and very intriguing history of Midway,
Shattered Sword
by Parshall and Tully, was written largely from the Japanese perspective. Along with being well-written and fascinating, it was a great help in sorting out Japanese motives, doctrine, and capabilities.

—Robert Conroy

CHAPTER 1

LIEUTENANT TIM DANE, USNR, COULDN’T SLEEP. GOING TO WAR for the first time will do that to a man, he thought. Maybe it would happen every time. But then he hoped there wouldn’t be a second time. Jesus, what kind of a mess was he in?

Instead of tossing in his bunk, he got up and paced along the flight deck of the aircraft carrier
Enterprise
as she plowed her way through the Pacific swells toward her destiny near Midway Island.

Dane was a very junior member of Admiral Spruance’s staff on the carrier, so he was privy to the basic strategy. By this time, of course, so was every one of the two thousand men on the four-year-old, twenty-five-thousand-ton carrier. The
Enterprise
was like a small town in which there were few secrets. Nor was there any need to keep quiet. After all, who could you tell?

The
Enterprise
was accompanied by a second carrier, the
Hornet
. The two carriers were protected by six heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and nine destroyers. These made up Task Force 16 under the command of Admiral Raymond Spruance. The six heavies were the
Atlanta
,
Minneapolis
,
New Orleans
,
Pensacola
,
Northhampton
, and
Vincennes
and constituted a powerful force by themselves. The light cruiser was the
Atlanta
.

Waiting for the arrival of the two carriers was TF 17, now off Midway with a third carrier, the Yorktown, and her escorts. These ships constituted almost all that was left of the United States Navy in the Pacific after the catastrophe at Pearl Harbor. One more carrier, the
Saratoga
, was reported to be undergoing repairs, probably in San Diego.

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, many naval officers had stubbornly held onto the dogma that the battleship was the navy’s primary weapon, and that the carrier’s role was that of reconnaissance rather than battle. The attack on Pearl Harbor, in which eight U.S. battleships were either sunk or damaged by enemy airplanes launched from carriers, had done much to change that perception, but it had not totally gone away.

Part of the reason for this sense of nostalgia was because carriers weren’t lovely ships. Like all carriers, the
Enterprise
lacked the graceful, rakish silhouette of a cruiser or destroyer, or of the new battleships whose pictures Dane had seen on the wall of the wardroom. The
Enterprise
was frankly a floating block that carried about eighty planes.

Possibly because of a carrier’s lack of glamor or tradition, a number of very senior officers still considered the disaster at Pearl Harbor an aberration caused by the incompetence of those in command of the fleet. Guns would sink enemy ships. Always had, always would.

Since Pearl Harbor, the
Enterprise
had undergone modifications to enhance her ability to fight airplanes. A number of 20mm Oerlikon antiaircraft guns had been added to her arsenal.

TF 16 was on its way to Midway Island to rendezvous with the
Yorktown
in a desperate attempt to stop the Japanese from attacking and taking Midway and using it as a base for operations against Hawaii. Dane knew that not only would the three carriers and their escorts be outnumbered and outgunned by the Japanese, but they had to evade a picket line of Japanese submarines that highly classified intelligence said was going to be established in front of their approach. The enemy subs could either ruin the ambush by announcing their presence, or attack the carriers and possibly do great damage. The men of the
Enterprise
and
Hornet
were as ready as they could be, although many, like Dane, were half scared to death.

Tim Dane, however, did not feel he was ready at all. Like everyone else, he’d tried his hand at looking through binoculars for enemy subs and seen nothing. Enough, he thought. He decided to once more try to squeeze his frame into the small navy bunk he’d been allotted, and maybe he’d get at least a little sleep. He hoped the fleet and Spruance would be lucky and the enemy subs would be elsewhere. But every moment brought them closer to Midway and the Japanese fleet.

* * *

None of the hundreds of pairs of searching eyes could pierce the night and notice the slight feather of water made by the emergence of a periscope less than a mile away. With cruel luck, the Japanese sub had emerged in the middle of TF 16. She was an older boat, a
Kaidai
-class sub with six torpedo tubes in her bow, loaded and ready to kill, and eleven other torpedoes ready to replace the ones fired. She weighed in at just under three thousand tons, and had a crew of ninety-four officers and men. The oceangoing sub had a cruising range of fourteen thousand knots. This meant she could cruise far away from Japan and stay in position, waiting for her prey.

The Japanese sub and two others had arrived a day earlier than American intelligence anticipated. There had been confusion, perhaps even incompetence, among Japanese commanders regarding when the subs would depart and only these three had left on time. With equally cruel luck, the subs had placed themselves directly in the path of the American carriers that were on their way to a rendezvous at what had been incongruously named Point Luck. This night, however, luck was on the Japanese side.

Lookouts on the
Enterprise
didn’t notice the disturbances in the water made by the first of the six torpedoes until they were less than a quarter mile away and approaching at nearly fifty land miles an hour. Screams and alarms were almost useless. Four of the six Type 94 torpedoes fired from the sub hit the carrier. One after another they slammed into her hull and exploded, sending plumes of water and debris high above the flight deck, with much of it landing on the deck. Men were injured and a few swept overboard to their deaths by the sudden assault.

The mighty
Enterprise
shuddered like a large, wounded animal and immediately began to lose speed. Secondary explosions soon followed as fuel and ammo ignited, further damaging the ship and causing large numbers of casualties. Fires raged while valiant sailors braved the flames to contain them.

Dane had been in his skivvies and sitting on the edge of his bunk when the first torpedo slammed into the carrier, hurling him face-first onto the deck. He lay there for a stunned second and then quickly checked himself out. His lip was split and there was something wrong with the top of his head. It was wet and sticky with blood. He was bruised and shaken, but otherwise he thought he was okay.

Dane’s first reaction as he picked himself up was to run and hide, but he quickly calmed himself and tried to gauge what had just happened. And besides, where the hell do you hide on a ship? As a new and minor member of Admiral Spruance’s staff, he really didn’t have any set place to go in an emergency. But he had to do something, he thought as he threw on some clothes. He would be damned if he would run up to the flight deck in his skivvies.

Cramped passageways were filled with men either hastening to their duty stations or fleeing the greasy black smoke that was beginning to clog everything. The smoke was burning eyes and choking throats. Dane grabbed a life jacket and put it on. He would go to the flight deck, then try to climb up to the flag bridge where Spruance would be, which was as close as he could come to having a duty station. He was also horribly conscious of the fact that the carrier had begun listing to port.

Dane had just made it to the flight deck when a series of explosions knocked him down again. This time, the fuel from the planes parked on the stern of the ship was exploding and detonating ammunition, sending more billowing clouds of smoke and debris over the great, terribly wounded ship. A wave of searing heat blew over him. He screamed and covered his face with his hands. His hair and clothes began to smoke. He rolled across the deck to where an abandoned fire hose was thrashing like a snake and spewing water, and put out the flames by rolling in puddles.

Scores of men lay prone on the deck, either dead or wounded, while others were being brought up from below. A priest was going from one mangled body to another, administering last rites. To Tim, the carnage was a scene from hell. Dane’s hands and clothes were covered with something sticky and he saw that it was blood, and that rivulets of the stuff were flowing across the flight deck and over the side.

Sailors with fire hoses tried valiantly to stem the flames, but were in danger of becoming overwhelmed by the size and intensity of the conflagration. Tim saw one man hit by flying debris and fall, leaving a wildly bucking hose understaffed. He grabbed on to help the remaining men who were fighting to keep control of the wild beast.

A sailor glanced at his rank and grinned. “Thanks, sir, it’s appreciated.”

“Just tell me what to do.”

“Hang on!”

Dane anchored the hose while the real firemen played water on the flames. After a few moments, a grimy lieutenant commander replaced him with another sailor. “Nothing personal and thanks anyway, Dane, but you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”

Dane didn’t argue the point. He gratefully handed the hose to a grim-faced seaman and turned to the other officer. His name was Mickey Greene and he’d befriended the bewildered Dane when he’d first come aboard.

“We gonna make it, Commander?”

Greene shook his head, “Beats the hell out of me, Tim. We took at least three torpedoes and water’s still coming in. We’ve got the flooded areas pretty well sealed off, but a lot of things are burning, even though we’re throwing tons of water on the fires. The bad news is that all that water coupled with the torpedo holes is causing us to list, and that means we’re helpless if Jap planes show up because the list prevents us from launching our planes.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah, and if you haven’t noticed, the
Hornet
’s also been badly hit.”

Stunned by that piece of news, Dane looked out across the waves and saw that the other carrier was also burning furiously. The cruisers
Atlanta
and
Pensacola
were alongside her and using their hoses to pour water on her, while destroyers frantically searched for the enemy sub. The
New Orleans
and
Minneapolis
were cautiously approaching the
Enterprise
, and water from their hoses began arching over and onto the wounded carrier. Jesus, he thought, most of what remained of the American Navy after the massacre at Pearl Harbor was being destroyed before his eyes. Two carriers with just under two hundred planes were probably going to sink along with God only knew how many pilots and crewmen. And maybe Tim Dane would be among them. Well, not if he could help it, he thought angrily.