Post #13: Never bring a battleship to a knife fight
Yellow sea, Japanese flagship Hashidate May 2nd 1895 1400
Itō Sukeyuki coughs a wad of bloody phlegm into his sleeve.
The gunnery officer on the Zhenyuan had been entirely too competent, successfully getting one salvo ftom his big guns across to his two, and a scattering of individual barrages in the brief minutes before their initial course and the Fog had broken up contact between their ships.
The fog is nearly gone now, but steam from ruptured pipes makes visibility difficult and he stumbles over the corpse of his exec as he navigates his way off the ruins of his bridge.
One of the enemies shells had landed entirely too close for comfort, the shock catapulting him into the deck, and breaking his ribs. In spite of his disadvantageous position, with the Qing vessel exposed only to his foreguns at the engagement's beginning while his own foredeck lay athrawt his enemies broadside, his better trained and faster reacting gunners had scored more hits. Unfortunately, none seem to have had much effect on the enemy ships thick armor plating.
"Damage report?"
Worse, the captain of the Zhenyuan had shown all too much agrresiveness, turning his ship to cut across the tail of his own, and signaling other ships in the Qing fleet to do the same. He had been forced him to do the same to avoid placing his undergunned rear athrawt the enemy fleet broadside yet again, leading, in effect to the fleets to chase each other's tails.
"We've lost four more turrents and are leaking off the starboard bow!"
It is a maneuver which should have favored the swifter, better coordinated Japanese fleet. Except, of course, that the fog had made any coordination near impossible, as well of robbing him of the advantage of possessing the enemy code books (1). While the fleets had largely followed the initial course set by the lead ships they failed to maintain formation as they engaged, and sought to evade or improve their position Vs the enemy ships they encountered. Instead of the well coordinated battle of maneuver he envisaged the naval enagagement had degenerated into a general melee, a cat and mouse game in the fog between single ships.
"The fog is nearly gone- how is the rest of the fleet doing?"
It is a game in which his crew's training, bravery and skill, and the superior armaments of his ship, had given him a crucial edge against the slower and older Qing cruisers. Few of them showed the same aggressiveness or skill as the Battleship he first encountered. But there were many of them and it was impossible to maneuver his ships to gang up on strays and avoid being mobbed. Twice he found himself firing and being fired upon from both starboard and stern, and once from starboard, stern, bow and aft in close succession.
"Chiyoda, Hiei and Akagi are gone sir."
The older, smaller ships. They could not expect to do as well in this knife fight as the newer vessels.
"The others?"
" Fusō is listing badly. And Takachiho's engines are gone- they are barely containing the fires. All the others seem to have taken damage, but non quite as bad as ours."
"The troop ships? The transports?"
" Hiei and Akagi seem to have sacrificed themselves to screen their withdrawal. I can see a few wrecks, but not many. Perhaps three quarters of them slipped away to the southwest."
Which means one quarter hasn’t. That's 3000 soldiers lost at sea without the chance to fight back. Half again the army casualties so far on land, and all dead. How many more, if he were defeated or broke off to the North? The transports were too slow to avoid dedicated pursuit by the enemy cruisers.
Still, he had no doubt that his fleet could have hunted down the more numerous enemy cruisers like a pack of wolves amongst a herd of caribou if it weren't for the enemy's twin Battleships. Their massive guns had accounted, he suspected, for well over half of the damage wrought upon his fleet, scouring the ocean like a pair of ravenous Levanthians. Worse, they seemed impervious to the Japanese guns, even the heaviest. While they were afloat he could not disengage, not without leaving those of his ships whose speed had been compromised by damage to be slaughtered, perhaps even captured as prizes if their captains prized the lives of their sailors above their duty to the emperor. No doubt the enemy admiral had the same considerations- which left them both trapped in a fight neither could abandon.
Which was why he had risked engaging the enemy flagship when he chanced across it, seeking to repeat the tail chasing maneuver he had unintentionally performed with its twin. For the past twenty minutes he had managed to keep it engaged without exchanging much in the way of effective fire- and thereby freeing his other ships from its threat, and allowing them to clear the seas of the enemy cruisers. Maintaining contact with the enemy flagship had additional advantages when one possessed their naval codes of course, advantages which would manifest now that the Fog had cleared.
"Admiral! Their flagship is signaling the Zhenyuan to assist in finishing us off, and is the cruisers to withdraw and form a line of battle around it! It's also instructing two of their sloops to pursue the transports!"
Better than half the enemy cruisers and sloops were flaming wrecks, of course. And the Jiyuan, hit by a lucky torpedo, is reduced in speed though still mighty in armament. Just as his own ship, retains it's speed for now but has lost too many of it's turrents to present an effeive broadside.With the Qing battleships still intact they might yet force the less damaged Japanese cruisers to abandon the field- as well as their comrades, admiral included. With the core of the Qing fleet intact, the Japanese fleet cut down by half, many transports lost, and further reinforcements to Gunsan, or perhaps even Busan, Forthcoming the Qing admiral might well count this engagement a great victory in spite of his losses.
[/I
]Unless….
"Japan expects every man to do his duty…" he mutters.
"Admiral?"
"Signal the fleet and the Yoshino that Tsuboi Kōzō is now in command of the fleet. Set course hard a starboard"
"Sir? That course will…"
"Quite so. Japan expects every man to do his duty and this is ours."
Yellow sea, Qing ship Zhenyuan May 2nd 1895 1410
"What in God's name is he doing?" Muttered acting captain McGiffin.
Lin Taizeng, whom he had actually grown to respect, had been killed in the initial salvo by a freak shell fragment leadving him and command. It was a command that he felt in all humblness to have discharged admirably. His command has been in the thick of the fighting, scattering the Japanese ships before him and accounting for the destruction of the Chiyoda. He had taken damage, of course, but had inflicted far more.
Not nearly as much as he would have liked though. The Celestial sailors did not perform nearly to Yankee standards. But then, again, he himself was not up to Yankee standards. Had his Anapolis grades been better he might have won a berth aboard one of the newly launched Battleships. But they weren't and even if they had been where would he be now? The most Junior ensign amongst a multitude?
Instead he was here, commanding a battleship! And what were his chances of seeing real combat in the American navy anyway? The United States had been at peace since the end of the civil war and had faced no foreign navy worthy of the name since the war of 1812. Once this war was done, and his achievements recognized he had no doubt press coverage would ensure him of a place in the real navy, and not as a mere ensign. No sir!
But this was no time to indulge in fantasies of the future. The enemy captain, the same one whom he had run into at the beginning of this nightmarish engagement, was trying to break out of being bracketed by the two Qing Battleships by cutting across his bow.
And he was going to fail. He was slowly, but perceptibly, losing speed. No doubt the earlier damage inflicted on him had led him to take on water.
What he was going to do was present his own bow to the Zhenyuan's broadside so long as he timed it… just… right.
The broadside should have devastated the Japanese vessel had it not shifted course at the last possible instance. Which makes no sense at all since it is bringing it into a collision course with his own vessel.
It takes him a moment to realize that this is, in fact the intended aim of the Japanese captain, and a moment more for the helmsman to respond to his mispronounced command.
It is still enough, barely, to avoid a collison. For a moment his eys meet those of the enemy captain, sweeping alongside his ship. He has a moment more to ponder the serenity within them before his world ends.
Yellow sea, Japanese flagship Hashidate May 2nd 1895 1415
Itō Sukeyuki closes his eyes as his cruiser passes alongside and below the Qing Battleship, too close for the enemy heavy guns to train upon him. He thinks, for a moment, of his wife, daughter and newborn granddaughter in the ancestral home in Kagoshima, surrounded by Cherry blossoms as they pose for the family portrait.
“If only we might all fall Like cherry blossoms in the spring — So pure and radiant !” he whispers.
And then he pushes the switch.
The explosion of the cruiser's Magazines tears it apart in an instant. The fireball engulfs the starboard side of the neighboring Battleship and the pressure wave crumples it's armored sides into a wreckage of blood spattered steel. For an instant the Battleship reels like a drunken man… before it's own Magazines are pierced and Ignite.
The resulting blast scatteres creates a min-tsunami sufficient to nearly swamp the Jiyuan, closely in pursuit and severly disrupt the forming Qing line of Battle. Debris are scattered across a 20 mile radius, causing some additional damage.
It's effect on morale is more dramatic. The surviving Nanyang ships are first to turn tail and flee northwards. The captain of the Jiyuan, disregarding the orders of his frentic admiral, soon follows and the Qing fleet breaks apart and scatters, with the Japanese halfheartedly pursuing the larger clumps.
(1) Wireless telegraph has been invented in 1895 but not yet implemented. Communication is still by signal flags.
,who is China fighting?