Keynes' Cruisers

[fester]

January 27, 1942 Central Pacific, USS Enterprise

The carriers and their escorts turned to the south instead of the southwest. Rabaul had fallen and the reinforcements that they were shepherding had been administratively loaded so there was no talk of trying to take the Japanese on the bounce. Messages between Pearl and Canberra had been flowing for the past day.

Finally there was a decision, the two carriers would the occupation of Tuvalu by a company of Marines while the rest of the force headed to Samoa for garrison duty as well as training for amphibious assaults. Australian and New Zealand staff officers were flying to Samoa via Fiji to catch passage back to Honolulu for further planning.


Even as the Enterprise changed course, Josh Jaroschek did not care. He and other Marine Wildcats were covering the task force. In an hour, Enterprise would turn back into the wind and he could have the terror and joy of trying to land on a calm carrier deck.

 

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January 27, 1942 Brest

Two Mustangs roared over the anchorage. Cameras whirled as the scene below was captured. A pair of Spitfire squadrons were circling anxiously waiting for German interceptors to challenge them. The Germans stayed down. There was no need for them to challenge a fighter sweep that would be incapable of damaging the two anchored battlecruisers.

 

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January 28 1942 Scapa Flow 0425

Home Fleet and Atlantic Fleet were leaving Scapa Flow. Six fleet carriers were closely followed by two fast battleship. Twelve cruisers and twenty six destroyers were already at sea. By dawn, the combined fleet had organized itself and started steaming west at eighteen knots. They would refuel in two days and then send the oilers back to port. Once the oilers had departed, the force would split into three units, each with a critical mission to perform.

 

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January 28, 1942 Main Defensive Position

The reserves had been called forward an hour ago. Japanese artillery was focusing on the 1st Battalion of the 11th Infantry Regiment. Infiltrators had managed to get around the inland flank, causing C Company to disintegrate. The only thing that prevented a route was the trio of tanks built in 1918 which acted as bunkers. Their machine gun and cannon fire had forced the Japanese to break off pursuit and deal with the fixed defensive positions. One tank was eliminated by a satchel charge and another had a hand grenade shoved into the cannon’s barrel before exploding. The gun crew was able to escape their position. Two men made it more than twenty yards.

Sergeant Ibling looked once to his left and then once to his right. Everyone seemed to be in position. The company was counter-attacking in support of the last machine gun tank. He could hear the rat-a-tat bursts of three or four bullets and a pause sequence. He could hear the moans of men hit, he could smell the burning of flesh and could only hope that the men had died quickly. The screams that carried over the battlefield showed that not all of the men being roasted had died yet.

He checked his rifle one last time and as the company broke through the last few dozen yards of forest, the new LT ordered bayonets to be lowered and for the men to be ready. The 1st Platoon in the lead stopped just at the edge and the rest of the company slowed and then stopped. The LT nodded to a man next to him. He put a single flare into a flare fun and fired. A green orb drifting in the midday sun. Thirty seconds later, four 60 millimeters mortars began to fire high explosive shells fifty yards in front of the machine gun nest.

With that, the LT blew his whistled, and began a trot forward. No one was running but it was not a walk either. The one hundred and seventeen men of B-Company charged. A few Japanese rifle men started to take pot shots at the counter-attack, but they were often poorly aimed. One man went down due to the rifle fire while another turned his ankle. He started to fire back, two or three shots and then he would roll to a new position a few yards away.

2nd Platoon ran into a squad of Japanese assault engineers. Every man fired. Every man missed on his first shot. A few stopped and tried to work their Enfields’ bolts. Most of the men accelerated into a run and lowered their bayonets. The Japanese fired their pistols and rifles, a few hitting their targets, but not enough lead was sent down range fast enough to break the charge. Twelve seconds later the fighting devolved into hand to hand and steel to steel combat. The 2nd Platoon had four times as many men so one man would often get the attention of a Japanese soldier for a minute while two or three of his mates cut the Japanese down from the side or the rear. That did not always work in time, but it worked well enough.

Within minutes, most of B company was north of the machine gun nest and had started to dig in as Japanese artillery would need a few more minutes to respond to the counter-attack.

 

[fester]

January 29, 1942 Darwin

Back up the gangplank Sergeant Donohue walked. He chivied the rest of his section to stop the horse play. They were a bit loopy having been aboard a ship for a month and a half before getting a week on land. The regiment was traveling light, personal weapons, a few days worth of ammunition and a section of 75 millimeter guns in support. The high command was worried about Timor after the Japanese had quickly pounced on Balikpapen. The American regiment was the closest large reinforcement available and it would be sent in waves as shipping became available. A pair of corvettes and a Free French aviso would escort the troop ships of the first wave while an actual escort was being assembled to cover a future convoy carrying an artillery battalion and the tanks.

The Dutch and Australians were in prolonged negotiations with the Portuguese. The Portuguese were clinging to their neutrality as a tattered hope. A battalion of infantry from Mozambique was on the way, but they were not due until March. Given the speed of the Japanese advance along the eastern islands, March would be too late.

As he stepped back onboard a ship, he smiled, his letters to Elaine had entered the increasingly complex American overseas mail service and eventually they would reach her.

 

[fester]

January 29, 1942 Manila Bay 0420

Lt. Commander Henry Jurado enjoyed the wind spreading his hair and pressing against his face. He was leading the remnants of the Army Coastal Patrol to battle. A pair of torpedo boats patrolling the west coast of Luzon had spotted Japanese preparations to load men and equipment aboard a dozen barges and half a dozen smaller craft the previous evening. He intended to do something about that convoy before they could turn the Army’s flank.

Ten ships were trailing him, the torpedo squadron anxious to open up the throttles. Four patrol boats including his own Davao and seven torpedo boats were the remaining Luzon based strength of the Coastal Patrol. Soon the heavier patrol boats would head west for some sea room. The torpedo boats would continue to hug the shore. The force would separate by 12,000 yards and then resume a northward sweep on a parallel course.

Forty minutes later a lookout spotted a Japanese patrol boat and a minesweeper escorting twenty small craft down the coast.

The four patrol boats accelerated to thirteen knots, the fastest that Palawan could make on her damaged engine. As the range close, both sides turned to expose their limited main batteries to each other. The Japanese patrol craft, an obsolete Momi class destroyer, opened fire at just as dawn’s light broke. The first seven salvos were wild but slowly they began to cluster around Palawan. A 4.7 inch shell hit Palawan near the bridge, smoke pouring out of the center of the ship as she skewed out of line to tend to her damage

At 0514 Davao fired at the minesweeper with her 3 inch gun. The first round was short and eight hundred yards wide. The next eleven rounds edged closer to their target until the thirteenth and fourteenth rounds were a clean bracket. The other two patrol boats were firing on the Japanese destroyer, scoring no hits but near misses were forcing the ship to maneuver and chase splashes.

Eleven minutes into the engagement, Palawan had turned back south at eight knots as she attempted to make it to Bataan or at least an unoccupied spot to beach herself. Samar and Leyte were dueling with the destroyer (post war records showed that she was PB-46). Samar had landed a pair of hits that did little damage. Davao was busy chasing splashes as the minesweeper’s gunnery was exceedingly persistent and accurate.

The force commander wiped the blood from a cut below his eye off his face. He was looking at the sea and saw that the battle was slowly moving closer to shore.. One ship was already heavily damaged, and the other three had been damaged in the swirling fight. A few more minutes and he would need to turn away and return to Bataan as his light ships could not take too much more.

Suddenly the minesweeper ceased firing on Davao. He turned and accelerated towards the shore, and within a minute his forward gun had traversed 100 degrees and was barking at some unseen target.

The torpedo boats had managed to use the patrol boat battle as a diversion and it was only the rooster tails generated by their powerful engines propelling them at 38 knots towards the enemy’s barge convoy that led to their detection.

By the time the minesweeper had spotted the torpedo boats, they were only 3,000 yards from the slow barges. Two minutes later, the torpedo boats were within machine gun range of the lead barge. They slowed slightly and turned with the waves to create a more stable gunnery platform. The lead division opened up with half a dozen .50 caliber machine guns on a barge packed full of Japanese infantry. Some rounds went short, others went wide, but within the first half dozen bursts, the gunners had found their targets and poured the heavy AP and incendiary rounds into the lead barge. Soon the lead barge was a cacophony of screams as wounded infantrymen were faced with the choice of being burned alive in the inferno of a barge or attempting to swim to shore while bleeding in shark infested waters.

The second division concentrated on a pair of motor junks. Wooden hulls and bulkheads slowed down the heavy lead bullets but the splinters were as deadly as the bullets to the landing parties packed tightly on the junks. Some men scrambled to the side and began a steady rifle fusilade against the patrol boats but they were shooting at small, fast targets on an unsteady platform. They scored few hits and caused no casualties but the barges and junks which fought back soon found their tormentors giving them a wider berth as they concentrated on the weak and the lame.

Eleven minutes later the seven PT boats turned and made smoke as they left the battlefield. The two Japanese escorts had arrived and their heavy guns were landing near misses and straddles. Three Filipino sailors were moderately wounded from shell fragments, and another half dozen had minor injuries during the fight. As the last torpedo boat moved out of range of the escorts, they left thirteen landing craft burning or sinking and the rest damaged to one degree or another.

 

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January 30, 1942 Cebu, Philippines

USS Walker sat heavily in the water. She had offloaded a dozen crew members and all of her mine racks. A trio of .30 caliber machine guns had been welded onto hardpoints to provide slightly more anti-aircraft protection. Her captain wished that she had her torpedo tubes back but that would require a complete overhaul in a West Coast yard.

The last sack of rice was loaded, the final crate of .50 caliber ammunition was stowed, the eighty third barrel of gasoline was tied down. Below decks, impromptu stretchers were arranged to drop down as soon as the cargo was unloaded.

The plan was for Walker and Meredith to make their way north to the west coast of Mindoro where they could hide for part of the day. Once night fell, they could make the fifty mile dash to Bataan at high speed and begin unloading supplies by midnight. They would stay in Manila Bay until nightfall at which point they would head south with at least 100 evacuees, a mixture of critical specialists and the moderately wounded. Once they left the cover of the Harbor Defense Command, the two destroyer minesweepers would keep on running until they arrived back at Cebu.

Four destroyers had already made one run through the blockade with success. Renshaw had been lost to a Japanese mine but Sproston rescued her entire crew. They could not keep Bataan supplied to a steady state but the few hundred tons of supplies that a pair of destroyers could deliver slowed down the stockpile drawdown. The evacuation of a few hundred men each run also stretched out how long the rest of the men could be sustained. That cold mechanical logic would be sufficient to justify the risk of running the loose Japanese blockade but the destroyers were a connection to the outside world which insured that the men on Bataan knew that they were not forgotten.

 

[fester]

January 31, 1942 NAS Lakehurst

The big patrol bomber lumbered down the runway overloaded with fuel and depth charges. The Germans had sunk a number of freighters in coastal waters. The bomber was one of eight taking off from just this base. Each was flying a search and destroy mission. They had a patrol box in which no Allied submarines were operating and weapons were free.

Thirty miles out to sea, another coaster was sinking. A shoal of fishing boats out of Tom's River rescued the crew who shook their fist at the Navy bomber that flew over their heads. So far the Navy had been impotent, busy but worthless.

 

[fester]

January 31, 1942 1400 North Atlantic

The fleet split up. The great raid on Brest had been cancelled. The Grumman fighters were incapable of protecting the bombers and the losses taken in sinking Tirpitz had transformed a haymaker into a jab.

Yorktown and Constellation along with their escorts were heading back to Norfolk. Once there, they would quickly resupply and rebuild their squadrons before heading to Hawaii. Furious, Indomitable, King George V along with four light cruisers and eight destroyers were heading first to Gibraltar. From there, Indomitable and two light cruisers would reinforce Force H. It had been a surface combatant force only for the past two months and now it was being brought to full strength as Indomitable would replace Victorious. Furious and the rest of the force would continue around the Horn to reinforce Force Z. Soon Force Z would be renamed the Far East Fleet but the Admiralty was waiting to make that administrative change until all of the first wave of reinforcements arrived.

Finally, Wasp, Washington and Illustrious headed back to Scapa Flow. The few days at sea were primarily training time. Squadrons had been re-arranged and aircraft and their crews cross-decked to bring Wasp’s air group up to full strength excluding the complete lack of torpedo bombers. There had been talk about placing a Fleet Air Arm squadron aboard but that idea was shot down due to logistical and training difficulties. The Americans would backstop Home Fleet until Hood, Rodney and Duke of York were released from the yards.

 

[fester]

January 31, 1942 Ambon Island

Two regiments of Japanese infantry landed at a variety of points on Ambon. The Dutch colonial infantry brigade and the under strength Australian battalion were not severely outnumbered but the Japanese were attacking with well trained troops who were motivated to take risks. Over the course of the next three days, the Japanese overwhelmed isolated strong points by a combination of naval air attacks, heavy naval gunfire, and skilled infantry infiltration attacks. By February 3 , 1942, the last company of Australians surrendered to the Japanese.

The prisoners were decimated within a day of the surrender, and only a third of the Australians who landed on Ambon in December, 1941 would ever see their native country again.

The Japanese now had a foothold in the eastern Indies and Darwin was within medium bomber range.

 

[fester]

January 31, 1942 0630 Singapore

Half a dozen Hurricanes flew overhead. Fourteen merchants ships were in the harbor in various stages of loading and unloading. The new convoy from Bombay had arrived overnight. There were no troop ships, although 1,000 replacements for infantry units had been sent aboard the half dozen merchant ships as well as the escorts. Instead, another twenty tanks and forty guns were to be landed as well as one hundred Tata armored cars and three hundred more trucks to carry the food, fuel and shells an army needed.

On the far side of the civilian section of the port, the three ships that had arrived from Surabaya were almost completely emptied. The rice stockpiles within the colony were low as they had depended on significant imports from Thailand and Burma. Thailand was now at war with the British Empire while the Burmese supply lines were disrupted ever since the Japanese occupied and based bombers on the small airfields on the west coast of the Kra Isthmus. Imports from the East Indies could tide things over even as new supply routes from southern India and East Africa were to be arranged. Now those small ships were being loaded; rubber ingots, tin and manganese and hardwoods were the most common goods that could still be exported. Iron ore had ceased to be mined as the miners and engineers were instead working on building defensive works and maintaining airfields closer to the front. A few other ships had been sailing independently into and out of Singapore and they would continue to do so until their masters thought the risk was not worthwhile.

 

[fester]

February 1, 1942 0600 east of Boston near George's Bank

USS Altoona, Bradenton and Lakewood were arrayed in a line two miles between each ship. They had been pinging and listening on an active anti-submarine hunt for two days now. Bradenton had successfully depth charged a pod of whales. Two carcasses floated to the surface within minutes of the second run.

Thirty miles closer to shore, U-123’s skipper blinked his eyes as he pulled his head back from the rapidly descending periscope. He had been stalking a large tanker for hours and now his target was still moving fat, dumb and happy, backlit against the glow of the coastal lights. In one more minute, the tanker would be six hundred yards away from the submarine. In forty five more seconds, two torpedoes were in the water streaking towards the tanker. They both hit. One hit might have allowed the crew to scramble to safety, but both hits broke the hull. The forward portion immediately began to sink while the engineers were able to lower a single boat and jump in before the rear of the ship joined the forward portion at the bottom of the sea.

 

[fester]

February 1, 1942, 28th Infantry Division Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylania

Eight hundred men maintained a steady pace through the three inches of snow that fell overnight. Sergeants called a cadence and the men responded. Chests no longed heaved and none of the men were particularly tired at the end of the five mile run. Eight minute miles were no longer a fast pace that would have half the men vomiting or gasping for breath. A year ago as the division was being filled out with fresh draftees, that pace resulted in men losing their breakfast. Now it was a relaxing pace, it was enough to stay loose and fit before three days of tromping through Central Pennsylvania in winter tactical field exercises. As the National Guardsmen ate their breakfast and changed into winter clothes, trucks were assembled to take them to the field for more training.

 

[fester]

February 2, 1942 New Orleans

Two small ships headed down the river. Both banana boats had been bareboat chartered by the US Army. Their refits had been completed a week earlier, but the time had been spent loading the ships. Bataan would need .50 caliber ammunition so there was 75 tons on-board. Bataan would need artillery shells, so there were 300 tons of 75 millimeter shells and one hundred tons apiece of 105 and 155 millimeter shells. Bataan would need mosquito nets so there were enough to cover 80,000 men. Bataan would need spare parts and medicine and range finders and radar valves. As much as possible was shipped aboard in the past week.


As Teapa and Masaya exited the Mississippi River and entered the Gulf of Mexico, their engineers were given the order that they wished to hear. All Ahead Full. The diesels roared and soon both ships accelerated to just under 20 knots. Teapa was slightly faster than Masaya but not by much. The half dozen 20 millimeter anti-aircraft cannons mounted on each ship were tested, one hundred rounds fired by each gun. As the sun was coming down, the ships slowed to a steady sixteen knots and headed to Panama and the eventually onto Manila. The third old destroyer converted to banana boat converted to blockade runner had already passed through the Canal the night before.

 

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February 3, 1942 Samoa

Enterprise turned into the wind. The Marine Wildcats flew off without incident. The twenty four stubby fighters had served as emergency reinforcements for the carrier group as the rest of the Samoa force unloaded. An airfield had been prepared for the fighters and that dirt strip would become their home for the next several months.


As the escorts turned to the north, plans to raid Rabaul were being made. Signal intelligence had indicated that the Japanese carriers that supported the capture of the strategic port had turned away and were refuellng at Truk. The intelligence folks could not discern where they were going next; the East Indies or Wake or the Eastern Pacific supply chain were all seen as equally likely. Enterprise and Saratoga could nip in and out of the northern Solomons, hit the base and retreat before the Japanese carriers could respond fast enough.

 

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February 4, 1942 HMS Sealion near Brest

Her periscope retracted. The moonlit night was dangerous for a submarine surfacing as she was more visible for the next couple of minutes to German patrol craft that may have been about than they were to her.

The moment of danger passed as look-outs scrambled to their stations and they searched the dark seas for blobs and movements that were not natural. They saw nothing as the powerful diesel engines started to propel the Sealion further out to sea. Fresh air was drawn into the boat and batteries recharged.

Overhead, a Coastal Command Hudson noticed the surfaced submarine on the ASV radar. If that crew was anywhere else, they would have attacked but the waters around Brest were a no-fire zone without positive visual identification as there were too many friendly submarines around keeping an eye on the port.

Six hours later, Sealion closed her hatches and descended deep enough that the surface turbulence was barely notable. She had seen nothing coming out of the port, so tonight was just another night. Her captain drank his tea and looked at his Jimmy and they both shrugged their shoulders as tonight was when they would have been getting some extra traffic if the carrier raid on Brest had gone forward.

 

[fester]

February 5, 1942, south of Ras Lanuf, Libya

The Commonwealth armies had a simple plan that had worked for them three times. Hold the Italians and Germans attention to the well watered and well supported coastal roads and then slip a force through the desert and into the rear. There were variations upon that play which had moved the front from Mersa Matruh to Ras Lanuf but they were variations only.

A string of strong points and outposts stretched deep into the desert. And at one of them an artillery battery resumed firing at the notch between two dunes even as the battalion’s mortars fired over the dune and attempted to walk shells in on the reverse slope. Machine guns sent brightly colored tracer bullets towards a cluster of enemy infantrymen who had been probing the lines and looking for prisoners.

Artillery could not range in on a small outpost. Friendly soldiers were defending themselves with grenades, bayonets and rifle butts even as the raiders were attacking likewise. A few men crumpled as they were isolated from their mates and overwhlemed by the enemy and a tiny counter-attack of two or three men moving forward from a position of momentary safety failed. Elsewhere in that oupost, those counter-attacks cleared trenches, section by section.

An hour later, wounded men were being brought back to the hospitals in ambulances that were burning precious fuel. The war diaries of Panzer Armee Afrika and the 8th Army both noted that patrolling was active in the southern desert.

 

[fester]

February 5, 1942 15 miles west of Corregidor

The old destroyer minelayer USS Sprosten was twisting and turning wildly. She had delivered 200 tons of food, 484 barrels of gasoline, 2,500 75mm shells and 6,200 pounds of medical supplies to the besieged at Bataan. Smoke came from both the funnels and a small fire on the fantail.

A pair of Japanese destroyers had spotted her twenty minutes ago and had opened fire three minutes later. A single shell had struck the old converted destroyer. A few more minutes might save her as a line of squalls was rapidly advancing from the west. She could disappear there.

 

[fester]

February 5, 1942 2300 Clydebank, Scotland

Duke of York's repairs had taken slightly longer than anyone had anticipated as shock damage was discovered on her radar and it needed to be re-aligned and secured again. Even as the technicians and the dockyard workers were making the battleship ready for sea again, her Captain had her crew running hard through training exercises for the past week. A few men had been lucky enough to be granted five day leave passes. Most of the men did not need to spend their money on beer in the bars near the shipyard as the civilians were willing to cover the tab for the killers of Tirpitz. The sailors did not correct the mis-interpretation of the facts especially if those misperceptions were coming out of the mouth of young or not so young women.

The break to repair the damage from the end of that battle had come to an end. Four Home Fleet destroyers would join the battleship at midnight when she had left the Clyde and then they would head north before entering the North Sea. The battleship would bypass Scapa Flow and head to a temporary anchorage at Hull. The Admiralty was convinced that the two German battlecruisers at Brest could not and would not stay there for much longer. Now that Tirpitz was no longer a concern, more risks could be run with capital units. If there was a reasonable chance of interception, Duke of York would be available to move in support of the Nore Command to close the Channel while Home Fleet would block the North Atlantic Gap.

 

[fester]

February 6, 1942 Colombo

Overhead, a dozen Hurricanes circled. Some of the squadrons had been raided for replacement pilots in early January so new pilots were being incorporated into pre-exisiting holes. A battery of new 40 millimeter Bofors anti-aircraft guns was being placed on a pier. Ceylonese work crews were bringing sand bags forward to provide some splinter and shrapnel protection while other crews were laying down communication wire.


Victorious,and Ark Royal bobbed in the softly swelling seas. Prince of Wales had entered the drydock for a hull scraping and some short term maintenance. She would be available in two more days. An increasing number of ships were gathering at this port. The fleet would be going to sea as soon as the fast battleship was ready for three days of anti-aircraft and anti-submarine drills. After that, a convoy carrying a Territorial brigade to Burma needed to be escorted. As soon as the run to Rangoon had been completed, a large convoy would be ready to depart for Singapore.