The Battle of Minamitorishima
27 November 1942, east of Minamitorishima
Isoroku Yamamoto feel a sort of irony tracing his recent life. From aircraft carrier captain to deputy minister and to prisoner, and finally back to the captain, but now of torpedo boat. Well, not a bad choice actually. Year of 1942 was cruel for Japanese navy. Destroyers, forced to cover evacuations, protect cargo and troop ships, and to perform a diversionary strikes, were lost one by one. At the beginning of year Japanese Navy had 36 destroyers. Now it had six, all undergoing repairs in Kure. No wonder the damned Americans turned wild..no longer satisfied with capturing outlying positions, now they are going to struck the core defenses of Japan.
- Radar radiation, front hemisphere, multiple stagger! - shouted radio operator
- Anti-shell maneuver, blind part, execute! - the words left the Yamamoto`s mouth before any conscious action. The boat have started a series of sharp turns.
Less then minute later, the shells have started to fall around. Shrapnel hit the roof of Gyo-Hei cabin once, twice..
Gun operator shouted, trying to overcome engine noise and explosions and roar of falling water from nearby shell splashes:
- Hole in forward bottom! S..t, second one! Do not drop speed!
-Steer to splashes. - commanded Yamamoto - Let`s spoil their targeting machines.
The mad evasion has continued for ten more minutes. A couple more holes has opened due hell fragments in the nose, and several ricocheted from the inclined wall of the cabin. But then the gunner, all that time scanning a horizon with binoculars on stabilized tripod, gave out the word.
- Twin tower, at 10 hours. It is floating "Wyoming" or "New-York" class battleship!
- Wait - responded Isoroku Yamamoto. Let`s clarify her course first, and wait an order from squadron commander.
The order to attack come after seemingly endless five more minutes. The splashes around torpedo boat has become visibly more dense and numerous, indicating they are now also within the range of the secondary artillery.
- We cannot hit at this distance at full speed, and under such shelling. Arming module tuning will fail - responded torpedo man.
- Ok, engine forward slow, hard left rudder - the bottom of torpedo boat hit the water, as shell splashes visibly moved forward and right - you have 20 seconds!
The reminder was unnecessary. The torpedo man have started the activation sequence at the moment he heard the first word, amplifiers were pre-heated even before the radar contact, and therefore his hands started to adjust a tiny sliders on stern panel of cabin less than second after torpedoes, still on hangers, turned over the board, into the sea. The training of men and continuous upgrades of arming mechanical computer has done the trick. Torpedo man hand has hit the release button just 16 seconds after the command. By the time a 15-cm shell hit nearby, knocking out the left motor and killing a torpedo man, the torpedoes were already fifty meters away, still accelerating.
- Cycloid evasion pattern, right side ! - ordered Yamamoto - Relay to commander, we are hit and getting out!
P.S. The contribution of the Japanese homing torpedo boats to the disaster which beset the US fleet is still debated, although most historians agree what the role of the torpedo boats was small. Because all of the American ships has towed an acoustic decoys, about third of torpedoes struck decoys instead of ships, despite adequate torpedo operator/acoustic training on Japanese side. Other 28 torpedoes (one torpedo boat of 24 was disabled before launching torpedoes) has sunk immediately 3 destroyers - out of fleet of eight battleships, six aircraft carriers, 18 cruisers and 70 destroyers the US assembled for the "Misericordia" operation. 22 other ships were also damaged, of them "Enterprise" carrier has listed so heavily what it has become unable to launch or receive any aircraft during the most critical part of the battle. But every historian agree what the battle was resolved in the air, when the combined air groups of five aircraft carriers of the US Navy seemingly were able to intercept Japanese bomber formation, tie their fighter escorts and force them to drop bombs and torpedoes aimlessly in the sea. The misunderstanding has cleared soon with devastating consequences, as Japanese development of the "homing naval minefield" concept has come to the complete surprise of the Americans. Simplified, pre-tuned homing modules of Japanese delayed-action aerial torpedoes have resulted in outright panic, as slowly drifting and diffusing homing minefields have reached the area of US concentration, and started picking off the most outward targets one by one. Continued attacks by Japanese coastal artillery, torpedo-bomber and dive-bombers has made stopping engines suicidal as well. Unable to hide from homing mines and avoid the air attack in the same time, the US fleets was essentially annihilated. Only a couple of the most durable South Dacota class battleships and a handful of destroyers were able to limp back to Wake Island. Some historians admit what the defeat location, within the long-range Japanese fighters range from Tokyo but outside of any shore aerial support for Americans, was obvious, and defeat was inevitable even without a technological trump card the Japanese pulled out. Clearly, even if invasion of Minamitorishima would be beaten of with conventional non-homing weapons only, the American losses would be far less.