The Whale Has Wings Vol 3 - Holding the Barrier (7 page)

The fleet's fighters had suffered at the hands of the Zeros, and the main priority was getting them down on Implacable and getting a new CAP up for protection. While there was nothing on radar, it was still possible another strike would come in before it got dark. Indefatigable flew off her remaining six Sea Eagles, then proceeded to land on the fighters - her own to be struck below deck, the temporary orphans from Melbourne to be kept on deck until they could be returned.

Damage to the Illustrious was fortunately slight, although it had looked spectacular from a distance. The worst loss had been to the flight deck crews, many of whom had been killed or burnt in the fuel explosion and fire. The firefighting team had extinguished the flames, and the red-hot wreckage of the bomber had been pushed over the side. The only damage to the armour plate of her flight deck was a deep gouge caused by the unexpected arrival of the Nell, and her shipwright assured her captain that with some quick-setting cement she would be 'almost as good as new' in a couple of hours.

The Prince of Wales's damage was again fortunately not serious. The TDS had absorbed most of the blast, and although she had lost some fuel and had taken in a few hundred tons of water, she was in no danger, slowed slightly but still able to keep up with the fleet.

The return of the bombers was greeted with great concern by the Japanese. While they knew attacking a fleet was dangerous, the level of losses was staggering. However the reports of the pilots indicated they had achieved good results. One carrier was torpedoed and obviously sinking, a second was heavily on fire, and if not sinking would at the very least be unable to fly off aircraft. A battleship had been hit and had been seen to slew out of line, so would probably be unable to keep up with the rest of the force and be an easy target. The fighter escort reported shooting down at least 40 enemy fighters, maybe more, which meant that the fleet's air defences were probably now minimal, and Admiral Kondo's carriers could make the planned morning strike. While the Nell force was now too weak to be of much use, the Navy still had a force of 27 G4M Betty bombers available for tomorrow. The worry was the lack of fighter cover. Even working all night, the ground crews could only get six Zeros operational. It was assumed that by the morning Admiral Kondo would have sunk or incapacitated the remaining British carrier, so these should be sufficient. Unfortunately, the available torpedoes were all used in the last raid, so the Bettys will have to carry bombs.

As darkness fell, Somerville's next decision was whether or not to make the planned night attack. He was still worried about Melbourne, who despite her captain's protestations was obvious seriously damaged, yet he wanted to do the maximum damage to the Japanese fleet. The final decision was to close to 200 miles of the Japanese force, and strike using every available torpedo plane (while the FAA had used dive bombers at night in attacks on ports, it was simply felt too difficult and dangerous against a mobile target). To maximize the torpedo planes, Cormorants would be used to drop the flares needed for the night attack. Melbourne would fly off her attack planes, after which she would retire at her best speed; the rest of the fleet would catch her up by dawn. In addition, he had signalled Singapore to request additional fighter cover. It had been arranged that if needed a squadron of Goshawks from Singapore would fly to Sinkawang in Borneo to give additional cover. Fuel had been arranged, although lack of their normal ground crews meant they would be operationally limited. As naval planes, he could always recover them directly to his carriers if needed.

The chance of a dawn strike, while still seen as possible, would now only be used in an emergency; the presence of the damaged Melbourne reduced his offensive opportunities, and he wanted her at least to be in range of air cover from the land by the morning. The strike would launch at around midnight, preceded by eight ASV-equipped SeaLance who would locate the Japanese for the strike. The strike itself would consist of eighteen of the new Spearfish (carrying the new, heavier MkXV torpedo), 45 SeaLance and twelve Cormorant dive bombers carrying flares to illuminate the targets. The SeaLance would go in first, the priority targets being the Japanese carriers. If they succeeded, the Spearfish would use their heavier torpedoes against the Japanese battleships. All the planes would recover to the Implacable and the Illustrious, the Melbourne by that point on her way southwest.

For their part, Kondo and his staff were working on their best solution for a surface/torpedo attack on the British fleet. While his two battlecruisers were fast, they were old (originally built in 1915-16, although extensively modernized before the war), and could not be expected to meet the Allied battleships head-on. The solution was of course to go in first with a torpedo attack with his cruisers and destroyers, sacrificing them if necessary to cripple the battleships and open a path for his battlecruisers to exploit. He had six heavy cruisers available (the seventh, the Mikuma, was having her torpedo damage patched up in Saigon harbour ready to return to Japan for proper repairs), as well as fourteen destroyers. He would keep six of his destroyers back to protect his capital ships against possible submarine attack (both British and Dutch submarines were known to be operating in the South China Sea), and the rest would go in with the cruisers to attack with torpedoes. It was his intention to steer southwest during the night; even if, as he thought possible, the British retired west that would put him into a reasonable position to attack. He would send off a strike from his carriers (as well as one from land) as soon as the British had been located, and that should finish off their remaining carrier, allowing him to track them without opposition and arrange his attack to his advantage. While the casualties to the afternoon raid had been high, he had been informed that additional G4M Bettys were available, which with the planes from his two carriers should be ample - with two carriers out of action, the number of defending fighters would be severely limited. In order to maximize the chance of locating Force Z, he would also use the cover of night to advance his cruisers and spread them out in a search line ahead of his main group.

Somerville on the other hand had no intention of reversing course yet - his intention was to so damage the Japanese force that they would be too weak to protect the convoys bringing troops and supplies into Siam, and ideally sink the entire force. He was still closing, and at 2200 was some 220 miles away as he launched his radar planes in a search pattern to locate the Japanese ships.  At 2315, one of the SeaLance reported multiple contacts of large ships, the pattern and speed indicating it was Kondo's force. Orders were given to launch the strike already armed and spotted on the flight decks of the three carriers.

Battle of the South China Sea (the night strike)

At midnight, a full strike was launched into the tropical night by Force Z's three carriers. They had made a number of course changes under cover of darkness, in order to try and evade the Japanese - Somerville was worried that they might have informed submarines in the area where they were (they had, but in fact there were none close enough to intercept a fleet advancing at 18 knots). As soon as her planes had been flown off, HMAS Melbourne turned to head southwest, accompanied by the cruiser HMAS Hobart and two destroyers. The rest of the force would meet up with her at daylight.

Further reports of the contact had been coming in while the strike launched, and in addition to the main body already discovered, another plane had reported a single contact some distance in front of it. The best analysis suggested this was one of (probably a number) of cruisers or destroyers out in front of the main body as a screen. Assuming a normal layout for such a screen, although Kondo's main force was some 180 miles away, it was possible a cruiser could be no more than 50 miles away. Accordingly the remaining search aircraft were ordered to search the area any closer ships would be in, and the force reorganized itself to put the battleships and some of the cruisers on the side of the most likely surface threat, just in case of unwelcome surprises.

While these precautionary measures were being put in place the air strike was approaching Kondo's main body. In addition to the two carriers and two battlecruisers, he had retained the heavy cruisers Mogami and Suzuya as well as eight destroyers as antisubmarine escorts to allow him a secondary striking force in case the unexpected happened. They were also ready to move to support one of the screening cruisers if they discovered enemy ships. No one on the ships was expecting a night attack by aircraft - such a thing was unheard of at sea, and Kondo himself was asleep, getting some rest before what he expected would be an early start and a long day's action in the morning.

The first alarm was given by a lookout on the Kongo, who heard the sound of an aircraft engine in the night. The bridge staff assumed that this was either a plane that had merely strayed over the fleet, or perhaps a reconnaissance aircraft, although it would have had to be a very lucky pilot to find them in the darkness. Maybe someone in the fleet had inadvertently broken the blackout. Since the fleet was currently operating under radio silence in order to remain concealed, the other ships were signalled by lamp, a slow procedure but one that was reasonably secure. Before all the ships could be alerted flares were seen, floating down on their parachutes along one side of the ships and casting long shadows on the sea. At this point the Admiral was woken, while the bridge crew commentated on the fact that the pilot obviously didn't know what he was doing, the flares weren't close enough to properly illuminate their ships. Even as they were agreeing that no Japanese naval pilot would make such a mistake (although an army pilot probably would), the first wave of SeaLance torpedo planes hurtled out of the darkness, aiming straight for the two carriers outlined by the slowly-falling parachute flares from the Cormorants circling high above. The flares not only outlined the carriers, they helped destroy the night vision of the crew, who couldn't help but look at them as they tried to work out what they were for. Indeed, the lookouts were assiduously searching the sea in case this was in fact the warning that they had been discovered by the British fleet, but as a result weren't looking high enough to see the approaching planes, even if they were at the moment well concealed in the dark.

As it was expected (or at least hoped) that the initial attack would have the advantage of surprise, the aircrew had adopted a somewhat different first approach. Instead of the classic torpedo 'hammer and anvil' attack, which would have required full illumination of the ships rather that outlining them against the flares, they had gone for a single heavy strike from one direction, counting on surprise to allow them to overwhelm the carriers. Indeed the first aircraft had almost reached their dropping point before they were finally spotted by a lookout, who had difficulty getting the bridge to realize what was happening. Everyone knew a night strike by planes wasn't possible...

Indeed, it was not only possible but something the FAA had been practicing assiduously for a number of years - the addition of ASV radar being the final piece which made it so effective a tactic. The usual tactic in a daytime strike was for the torpedo planes to attack in groups of three, which made some allowance for the ship attempting to dodge the initial torpedoes. In this case, they had committed eighteen planes to each of the carriers, flying in two groups of three flights each, to get the maximum spread of torpedoes while they still had the element of surprise. The first carrier to be hit was the Zuhio. Even surprised, she had managed to start to turn to comb the torpedo tracks, but with nine torpedoes in the water already, and another nine launched only a minute later, the effort was futile. Three of the first nine fish drove into the side of the carrier, dooming the small ship even before another two from the following planes sent plumes of water over the already heavily listing ship. Zuhio never recovered from that initial roll, most of one side shattered underwater. The carrier simply rolled over, only a handful of men escaping from her into the pitch black waters.

The fleet was by now firing off every AA weapon it had, some of which were even going in the direction of the attacking aircraft. The second wave of SeaLances was already levelling out from their run in as Zuiho was hit for the first time, the target the second carrier Hosho. This ship was even smaller than Zuiho, and with the need to cram as many aircraft as possible into her, even more lightly built. She handled quite adroitly, the small extra amount of warning at least letting her turn in the direction of her attackers, and only one of the first wave of torpedoes hit her, almost on the bow, blowing it off and making her lurch as she slowed quickly. However the second wave had already seen her turning - it was, after all, what they were expecting, and another three torpedoes hit her, two almost amidships, the final one turning her rudder and propellers into useless twisted masses of metal. At least she managed to survive the initial hammer blows for a short time, although it was immediately obvious that she could not handle such damage. The captain ordered an officer to take the Emperor's portrait off,  then commanded the crew to abandon ship.

Admiral Kondo looked at the scene from the bridge of the Kongo in horror. It what only felt like moments, both his carriers were shattered and sinking, brought down by planes that had been barely visible in the night. By now, the cruisers were shooting starshells to illuminate the area. In the light of them, and the flares still falling slowly around his ships, he could see more planes coming straight for him. These were the Spearfish flights; equipped with ASV radar, they had led the other planes into their attack, and then curved off and around to regroup and see if they would be needed to give the carriers the coup de grace. As this was obviously now unnecessary, they instead lined up for the secondary target, the battlecruisers. With the constant dropping of flares, the scene was now illuminated from all directions, and the planes used this to commit to a hammer and anvil on Kongo, silhouetted as she was against flares from a number of directions. The old battlecruiser was still agile enough to handle well, but with nine planes coming at her from two different directions, there was little she could do. Kondo looked on with almost fatalistic calmness, admiring how fast the large planes were as they dropped their lethal loads at his ship. She managed to dodge all but one torpedo from the attack to port, but the one that hit struck her near the bow, wrecking her forward and causing the pressure of water on the unbalanced, ruined steel to slew her sideways, ironically further into the second attack. This time three of the torpedoes hit her on the starboard side. These were the new MkXV fish, only carried by the Spearfish so far - armed with a Torpex warhead and heavier than the older models, the aerial torpedo did almost as much damage as a pre-war 21" submarine-launched weapon. No old battlecruiser, even rebuilt, could handle four strikes of that magnitude. The shock alone had caused the ship to lose power, and she was slowly starting to lean over to starboard as water rushed in, too fast and too much to contain. Much more stoutly built than the small carriers, she settled slowly, and a destroyer moved in to take off first the Lieutenant clutching the Emperor's portrait, then as many of the crew as it could. Kondo was not among them - according to the surviving bridge crew, he ordered them to abandon ship, staying there himself. The only consolation to the crew was that one of the Spearfish had been seen to hit the water just after it had dropped its lethal load, cartwheeling across the surface in a shower of spray before sinking short of the ship.