Bridge of Battleship Maryland

  400 Miles off Los Angeles, August 11th, 1942

  “Repeat that sailor,” was all that Nimitz could usher out of his mouth in a barely perceptible voice. The radio operator, unsure now if he wanted to repeat it seeing his Admiral ashen face, hesitated for a second. “I…. Report from San Diego, Sir. A large Japanese airstrike has just been executed on the Boeing Factory in Seattle. Major damage reported.” “Well, ill be damned.” The American Admiral didn’t know what else to say. The freaking Japs had pulled a fast one on him. Just as he’d thought he had things under control with that codebreaking of theirs at the OSS. “Get me some damage assessments or something more, sailor,” Nimitz added before turning to Admiral Fletcher, his newly minted chief of staff. “Frank, tell me this isn’t happening.” “I’m afraid it is, Admiral,” responded the man that and recently been commanding Nimitz 2nd Taskforce before Admiral “Bull” Halsey retook command (he had been in the hospital for a few months).

  “Admiral.” It was the radio operator. The man seemed to have received more information. “Over fifty fighters lost, and the Boeing Factory is on fire, damage assessment to be confirmed; fires are engulfing the facility.” “How many did they get,” asked the commander. “Between twenty and thirty Jap aircraft, Admiral.”

  Nimitz was not the sort of man to go down on the mat and stay there. He always rose to the challenge, like an invincible boxer asking for more punch and wanting to give some. “Frank. We need to find those damn Japs and make them pay. If they struck Seattle, it means they are far away from their base and that they’ll have to come back at it at one point. There isn’t any option to do otherwise. I want to get them.” “Yes, Admiral,” answered Fletcher in his clear voice. “I’ll get some course-plotting and options for you within the hour.”

  At that, Nimitz walked the distance from the bridge to his cabin, to think for a moment while his chief of staff worked over where the fleet would sail to try and intercept the enemy. The fucking Japs had done it. They’d caught him with his pants down. King would be furious. The President would be furious. Hell, he was beyond furious.

  He was dead tired of the Imperial Navy dictating the pace of the war. He resolved to intercept Yamamoto on his way back, and if that didn’t do the trick of sinking all the Nipponese ships, he would have a go at Pearl Harbor at the earliest possible time.

  He wondered if he could also try to catch the enemy admiral wrong-footed. The inklings of an idea started to form in his mind. The Japanese commander expected Nimitz to dumbly come at him like a bullfighter and attack in Hawaii.

  So now he knew what he would do. He would attack Hawaii, and then he would surprise that supposed Grand Admiral strategic mastermind of theirs where he didn’t expect it…

  Somewhere in the Pacific vastness

  The fleet sails to battle, August 13th, 1942

  Sun-Tze, the military sage of ancient China, wrote in the eleventh chapter of his immortal analects:

  (…) The skillful tactician may be likened to the shuai-jan. Now the shuai-jan is a snake that is found in the Chang Mountains. Strike its head, and its tail will attack you; strike at its tail, and you will be attacked by its head; strike at its middle, and you will be attacked by its head and tail both. (…)

  In August 1942, Admiral Yamamoto’s Combined Fleet was deployed for the first time in a manner of the Shuai-Jan. Its head was the Nagumo task force (Kido Butai). The body and the tail were the Grand Admiral’s battleship squadrons and other powerful surface ships.

  The American had raced north for the last two days, spotted by a few Japanese submarines to intercept Nagumo’s fleet that was also detected and shadowed by Allied long-range Catalina planes. Yamamoto’s plan unfolded as he’d envisioned it. The carriers and their escorts were due north, midway between Seattle and Hawaii.

  The Japanese dreadnoughts and their smaller but mighty brothers were located 500 miles south, sailing eastward to intercept the Yankee forces on the flank and initiate the battle that the Imperial mastermind sought: the battle of annihilation was at hand for the Rising Sun.

  The Grand Admiral planned that by the time that Nimitz and Nagumo were ready to launch their carriers, the Nipponese surface force would be near gun range. The recon report on the enemy battleship strength told of a number of dreadnoughts superior in number to the Imperial Navy: American battleships South Dakota, California, Maryland, Colorado, Georgia, and West Virginia, with the addition of two French ones (a strategic surprise to the Japanese): The Lorraine and the Bretagne, freshly arrived from the Atlantic fleet.

  The American Admiral, knowing that the Japanese big guns lurked in the area, decided that it was time for a confrontation and that he would also seek it. After all, his report talked of only six Nipponese dreadnoughts to his eight. He had fewer carriers, but he believed he would not have better odds if the Japs stayed holed up in Hawaii.

  In all, the fight that loomed large somewhere in the Pacific between Hawaii and the US Mainland would be one of the most extensive to date in 1942.

  THE TWO OPPOSING FLEETS:

  JAPAN

  In Pearl Harbor - combined fleet

  Grand Admiral Yamamoto

  CVL Hosho

  BB Yamato

  Ca Tone

  10 light cruisers

  CVL Chiyoda

  BB Nagato

  CV Akagi

  BB Hiei

  CA Myoko

  27 Destroyers

  CV Shokaku

  BB Kongo

  CA Chikuma

  CV Zuikaku

  BB Mutsu

  CA Maya

  CV Hiryu

  BC Amagi

  CA Kinusaga

  CV Soryu

  ALLIES

  U.S. Pacific Fleet San Diego, Admiral Chester Nimitz

  CV Wasp

  BB South Dakota

  CA Atlanta

  10 Light cruisers

  CV Yorktown

  BB California

  CA San Juan

  19 Destroyers

  CV Hornet

  BB Maryland

  CA Juneau

  CVL Long Island

  BB Colorado

  CA Vincennes

  CVL Bogue

  BB West Virginia

  CA Wichita

  BB Georgia

  Free French Fleet San Diego - French Vice-Admiral Émile Muselier

  BB Bretagne

  CA Duquesne

  BB Lorraine

  CA Tourville

  CA Foch

  Extract of Tameichi Hara’s book Teikoku Kaigun no Saigo 1967

  Inglorious escorting, August 5-14th, 1942

  After we got back from the successful Port Moresby operation, where the battlefleet destroyed the Allied base, we were ordered back to Truk as escort for a few transport ships that were eventually to sail to Japan with other destroyers waiting for them there.

  We would have just left them to their own devices in normal circumstances as they were perfectly capable of sailing to the Carolina Islands base by themselves. But the Allied submarine threat, which was growing ever more troublesome, forced Navy command to make sure the ships were escorted by anti-submarine ships.

  Once we arrived at the beautiful atoll, we stayed there for a blessed five days. The place was paradise on earth, and the war had not reached it yet (American bombers were out of range and had other fish to fry at that time).

  On the 9th of August, we were again tasked to escort a few oil tankers bound to Rabaul. I remember the state of mind of the crew during the execution of this task. Merchant vessel escorting duties were not the most glamorous job in the Imperial Navy. In fact, it was considered one of the lowliest and never tended to attract much attention.

  Only after the Allies forced high-command to address the problem did some escorts start to protect the unarmored civilian transports. But even then, and throughout the whole war, Japan never truly got any good at protecting its merchant ships. Our stupid honor code compounded us to want to fight, not escort and drop depth charges at submarines. Every Imperial sailor dreamed of its own Tsushima and the glory of it all.

  In short, Japan didn’t believe in logistics. Instead, we all believed in one crucial lesson of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”:

  (….) Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of one's own, and likewise, a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one's own store. (…)

  After all, the Empire had trudged along with this maxim for the entire length of its history up to that point. It worked for Sun Tzu, and it had worked for Japan because it was split up into many small warring states, for which military rations could be found literally anywhere.

  Consequently, when we made war in China and Korea, we did the same thing and pillaged the populace. In a battlefield where it wasn’t available, like at Khalkhin Gol against the Russian in 1939 in Manchuria, the Imperial Army got clobbered. So, of course, when the war started, we allocated destroyers to escort our precious battleships, not merchant's vessels. The idea at first didn’t even appear to our brave and smart military strategists.

  They didn’t know submarine stealth was made for attacking shipping lanes. Hell, even our antisubmarine capabilities relied on the fact that submarines were loud (while Allied submarines made sure they stayed silent and were designed as such). So, we never could really fight the kind of antisubmarine warfare that would have been required to shield our merchant shipping, which would have given the country a slight chance against an industrial giant like the United States. Instead, we grumbled every time we had to do it, and our commanders never gave it the attention it so desperately deserved. Only after the war did we understand the extent of the disaster for the Imperial forces and how bad we performed at it.

  In addition, the general belief in Navy command was that Americans could not use submarines. One must wonder why this brilliant idea was hatched in the command circles. Well, we can thank Satou Kenryo, Director of the Military Affairs Bureau and one of Tojo stooges. He considered himself the foremost expert on the USA because he had been a military attaché to the United States, and he decided that:

  (…) “American soldiers are unpatriotic. They chew gum, go to dances, watch movies and can’t even march in a straight line.” (…)

  His view pervaded the Japanese military because nobody else had the credentials to provide an opposing viewpoint, and doing so would have put them under suspicion of treason anyway - how could anyone exaggerate the competence of Japan’s enemies?

  With the next step in this logic, we indeed went out of our way to come to a stupid conclusion. Apparently, if the Americans couldn’t endure the hardships of marching in a straight line, how could they manage the hellish conditions of living and fighting in a submarine?

  Our brave and intelligent leaders certainly didn’t believe that was possible, and thus we expended little effort to antisubmarine warfare. As we simple sailors were limited to our own little scope of the war, we never truly learned of the extent of the problem until it was over.

  The Yunnan offensive

  18th Imperial Division on the Nu River, August 15th, 1942

  The new border between Chinese and Japanese forces, the Nu River, was a sizeable rocky expanse bordered by lush forested areas that both sides used to dig their defenses. The river rested in the middle of a wide riverbed because it flooded often. Several small trees and bushes dotted the otherwise boulder-rich landscape. The river itself wasn’t too deep as many fording areas were available to cross it on foot.

  Ishiro had been told by one of the sergeants that sometimes the river bulged to great size because of the monsoon season. That was why the trenches on both sides were far removed from the river itself, for there was always the risk of sudden flooding.

  The Japanese forces, exhausted from their campaign in Burma and the conquest of the Burma Road, had settled into positional warfare for the last few weeks. The concept was fine with Tanaka, as supply had finally caught up with them. The campaign in Northwestern Burma to cut the supply road to China (Burma Road) had been long and arduous, so he didn’t mind a little positional warfare.

  He’d heard rumors of an offensive toward Chungking and had seen the trickle of reinforcements that gave fuel to those rumors. According to a couple of guys in the squad, they’d overheard lieutenant Togun talk to another officer about the attack that would be launched soon. But Ishiro wasn’t so certain. The Army lacked the bare necessities, and, frankly, they didn’t eat enough and only had maybe one good battle’s worth of ammo. After that...

  So, he decided that the attack would only be when they were fully resupplied. The following day, Togun and the yelling sergeants roused him up, like the rest of his comrades. “Get your gear and suit up. We’re going across the river.” Tanaka and his comrades thought this was the stupidest of decisions, as the 18th was far from combat-ready. Well, it could fight; it just remained to be seen for how long and how well.

  As artillery shells started to whistle above their heads, to go crash down in great blast and booming sounds toward the Chinese lines, he gathered up his gear and his new paratrooper Arisaka rifle. That brought up a thin smile since he really liked it and decided that at least he would be able to try it. He started walking from their squad’s makeshift bunker to the trench line overlooking the river. Their “bunker” was a protection they’d build for themselves, accumulating boulders on top of each other and installing a makeshift roof with the trees they cut down from the area. They added a nice large tarp making the thing waterproof. At least it protected them from the rain that came almost every day. The damned monsoon season was in full swing, and it seemed that the sky was like a pierced bucket. Water literally poured on their heads several times a day and every night. Everyone in the 18th was wet and miserable. So, their little “bunker” was perfect; at least they could get away from most of the damned humidity for a few hours between their duties and whenever the officers and sergeant weren’t watching them.

  They’d been told that they were lucky, as usually, the monsoon started in June, but the 1942 summer had seen it arrive in late July. Tanaka wondered how in hell they would be able to fight properly in this weather while hungry and with scant ammunitions. He guessed that, as usual, it wasn’t the officer’s problem. It would be up to the soldiers to find a solution. He grumbled his whole way toward the trench, like all his comrades. They were all in a foul mood.

  In the grand scheme of things, the 18th Division and their grumblings were only part of the Imperial Army Grand plan to attack its Chinese enemies. Not necessarily a lot was expected from the soldiers on the Nu River apart from focusing the Nationalist’s attention and resources while another big offensive was launched in China proper. The conquest of the Burma Road and the entry into West Yunnan province would threaten Chongqing, Chiang Kai-Shek's capital, while the real offensive with dozens of divisions would be launched in central China.

  Ishiro finally arrived at the trench and saw the opposing side, which was blossoming with blasting mounds of earth and debris. The Nationalists were getting a hell of a beating from the Imperial artillery. Some of the machine-gun nests also fired at the Chinese, proof being the hail of tracer bullets landing toward the trench on the other side. The officers waited a few more minutes, busy herding their charging “cattle” to the frontline, rousing them up and slapping a few into obedience.

  As they were about to charge, the clouded sky, which had been menacingly proposing rain again, decided that it was a good time to drop it on the miserable Japanese soldiers. It started to pour heavily. And then it poured so hard that it was hard for Ishiro to see on the other side, so thick was the falling rain.

  The whistle was heard across the line, and everyone stepped up over the trench. The river was passable, but Tanaka, along with several of the men, looked nervously to the west, where the river flow came from. The damned Nu normally bulged rapidly when it rained. “Banzaiiiii” was the guttural sound they all made, charging and running into the knee-deep water. Bullets buzzed-about Ishiro as several of his comrades on each side of him fell to Chinese fire. There was no time to help the wounded or fallen, and he for a moment felt a little bad about the injured that would just drown into the water, but it couldn't be helped. They needed to cross the thing as soon as possible, for the Nationalists were murdering them with their withering fire.

  After a couple of minutes, Tanaka and the rest of the men, exhausted and panting, arrived at the base of the Chinese defensive trench. The officers pushed them on, and Togun slapped Tanaka with the flat of his sword to urge him onward. The officer’s gesture brought a malicious look to the soldier’s face. The lieutenant didn’t know it, but he was already dead. Over the last few days, he had been on Ishiro’s case and had even tried to confiscate his new Arisaka. Only the timely intervention of a sergeant who was afraid of what Ishiro could do (there were rumors around the unit on his tendencies for shooting in the back…) saved his rifle from Togun’s clutches.