Kure Naval Arsenal, November 20th 1943
Vice-Admiral Kurita had been summoned to a meeting with Minister of the Navy Admiral Shimada. As he waited for the minister to arrive, he pondered the reason for his being here. He doubted they had taken this long to fire him for anything he had done, so it was probably a new assignment of some kind. He had heard whispers of using the remaining capital ships in a sort of "naval banzai" to try and take the American fleet with them, he hoped his legacy wouldn't be such a foolish operation.
Finally the Admiral entered, and after pleasantries were exchanged, he got to business. "As I'm sure you already know, oil tanker losses the the South China Sea are continuing to climb." Kurita nodded "We've been sending out as many of the new destroyers as we can, but these American submarines are like ghosts. If this keeps up, what fuel the army leaves us may not be sufficient for us by six months from now. So here's what I'm thinking, I want you to take command of the Kongo and Haruna, as well as a few light cruisers and destroyers. This force is going to escort a fleet of about two dozen oilers and other cargo vessels to Borneo and back home. Many of these ships are too slow or undefended to make the trip alone, and without a serious escort the convoy will just get eviscerated by the American submarines. The fleet you're getting will hopefully be deterrent enough for them, and barring that they may soak up torpedo's that the supply ships can't.".
Kurita asked "Do we even have the storage capacity for that much crude oil in such a short amount of time?" "We should manage to find it, and baring that we can always just store it in the ships themselves until space opens up. and if nothing else, it gets the men some seagoing experience, it's not like the Americans are going to charge Formosa at a time like this. What's more, we need to seem useful while the army is getting all the glory down in the Marianas, Nagumo didn't help the navy's reputation.". Kurita thought on that. The situation in the navy had improved little over the last few months. He decided to change the subject, "How is the shiden production turning out" "Not terribly" Shimada replied "we're already prepared to equip the first kokutai with the planes, The plan is to fit them out from Manilla. It's a good place for them to get experience flying them in combat. And the newer models are going to be ready sooner than expected, they should enter service by June."
Kurita left to place his flag aboard Kongo, his worries were still on the honor of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the same as most of his peers.