Keynes' Cruisers

[fester]

December 22, 1941 in the Celebes Sea

Four torpedoes streaked forward. The Japanese invasion convoy had been lightly escorted. O-19 had been stalking the convoy for hours now and finally the best solution had presented itself. She fired her forward tubes at a large transport and then started to spin so that her aft tubes could bear. Those four torpedoes followed ninety seconds behind the first wave of attackers. They were aimed at a small tanker.

Three torpedoes struck and detonated in the first salvo while the second salvo would only see one torpedo explode. Even before the attack had been carried home, the Dutch submarine dove as deep as she safely could to wait out the inevitable counter-attack. The depth charges that came after her were accompanied an hour later by the transport carrying most of an artillery battalion and a tankette company.

 

[fester]

December 22, 1941 Strasbourg

He could have pulled in a favor from the Luftwaffe unit that had adopted him as their unit doctor. The reservist commanding the odd collection of draftees and technicians would have loaned him a staff car for the evening and even a driver if he was so bold to ask. Yet, the young doctor merely borrowed a neighbor's horse and buggy. He drove the carriage into the town and made sure the horse was well fed and happily neighed as he placed the blanket over her shoulders and tied her to the post.

He went into the train station and waited. He had received Anna Marie's letter a few days earlier, she would be home visiting her parents for a week and she would like to see him. Her train was due to arrive in the early evening and an escort home would be quite welcomed. So he waited and waited with a thin broth soup to warm him after the first hour. Trains were running haphazardly on time, some would make the schedule to the second and others would be delayed by a day due to either air attacks or increasingly more common sabotage. Signals were being ripped out, nails and bolts removed from the tracks, water towers emptied. Very few people were dying from these attacks but sand was being thrown into poorly lubricated gears.

The screech of brakes and the shaking of the ground was heard before he could actually see her train. It was a short train, a dozen passenger cars and another dozen box cars on a run from Paris to Frankfurt. The first half a dozen cars were full of German soldiers. Some were on holiday leave to see their families before returning to occupation duties in France and Belgium, others were in formed units heading to reinforce the Eastern Front. Men hurried off the train and then civilians started to emerge.

Where was she? He looked up and down the platform. Families were looking for the water closet, couples were seeking warm soup and cabs, young men who had some how managed to avoid conscription strode purposefully out of the station. Half a dozen young women in drab overcoats and confident airs walked as a pack. And then a singular young women left the last passenger compartment. He had to look at her until everyone around him looked at him and his gauche violation of discrete etiquette. That could not be Anna Marie, that could only be Anna Marie. He had not seen her in eight months since she had left for Paris and at least two lovers. She was not a girl who had a flight of fancy towards the town doctor who had saved her from shame. She was a woman, a young one, but woman still now, and would he match up to her expectations now that her horizons had widened?

He needed more time to think, he needed more time to process, but he lost that time as she wrapped herself in an enthusiastic and barely acceptable embrace.

"My doctor, I missed you so much"

"My girl, I missed you too" and then they stopped talking as they sought the connection that they had missed for months.

Fifteen minutes later, they were in the buggy and started to head to the countryside. Neither one could stop talking, neither one could stop their hands from finding a resting spot upon the other. Eight months of seperation, eight months of disparate lovers, eight months of danger, and the night was more than that eight months. As they turned towards Anna Marie's parents' farm house, she invited the good doctor in for dinner and a chance to meet her parents.

 

[fester]

December 22, 1941, Dawn Lingayan Gulf

The large Japanese invasion convoys had taken their time in their approach to the beaches. There was little reason to hurry. Fighters continually circled overhead, and they had successfully defended the southern convoy from a flight of B-17s. Two large bombers were shot down and another left trailing smoke yesterday afternoon. A transport had slight splinter damage from a near miss, and a subchaser had been hit by friendly flak, but the air attacks failed. A night attack by a trio of Catalinas managed to torpedo the cruiser Takao. Both torpedoes failed to explode, although the outer skeg was dented by the impact which limited the ship’s speed to 24 knots before vibrations became too extreme.

The major threat to shipping had been mines. A transport with a battalion of infantry was listing and would soon be abandoned as she hit a mine eleven miles outside of the mouth of the Gulf. Post-war records would credit the kill to S-39. The recently laid minefields by Mine Squadron 2 would claim a pair of destroyers and a large stores ship. The minesweepers had been working since sunset to clear three pathways to Agoo, Caba and Bauang

The 14th Army was ready to land the decisive blow and secure the flanks of the new Southern Prosperity Area.

The eight men, an Americans and three long service Philippine Scout regulars along with four reservists providing security, huddled deep in their position near Agoo. They had been hiding for the past three days, waiting for this moment. Ten thousand men and dozens of ships were just offshore, no more than 5,000 yards away, and they were all heading towards these eight men.

“Foxtrot Prime, this is Foxtrot 17, the hens have arrived, repeat, the hens have arrived.”

“Roger that Foxtrot 17, the hens have arrived, do you see any cocks?”

“Dozens of cocks, of all sizes and speeds, they’re crowing”

“Let’s lay some eggs”

With that, the 155mm guns that had been brought up in support of the main body of the North Luzon force and the 26th Cavalry Regiment began to receive fire missions. Eight guns burped explosives into the sea. Seven were long, and one missed the targeted transport by at least 2,000 yards.

“Down 500 right 300”

A minute later, another salvo was fired, the grouping was a little looser from the Corps artillery, and the salvo was consistently short.

“Up 100, right 100” was the call before the Japanese ships started to make smoke to obscure themselves from the spotters that they knew had to be near the beaches. The artillery had not scored a hit yet, but they would soon enough.

The fifth salvo straddled the merchant ship. The next salvo had two high explosive shells detonate just 15 yards from the ship. The first hit was scored on the next salvo. A single shell exploded in the forward hold. A platoon of infantry, lined up like hogs at an abattoir, was destroyed. Five more salvos were fired until the Manishu Maru was burning from stem to stern, a company of infantrymen and three thousand tons of supplies lost to the invasion attempt.

The battery in support of the Northern Luzon Force was quickly hooked up to their limbers and Studebaker trucks as the guns were pulled out of their position before the inevitable Japanese fighter sweep could catch them in the open. Dummy guns were mounted haphazardly in place to attract an attack.

South of the landing beaches, the six eight inch rail road guns slowly traversed. Another spotter had sighted at least a battalion of infantry landing just west of Rosario. Japanese ships were shelling the beaches and ripping up the wires that connected the outpost lines to the artillery positions. The original battle plan would have had the reserve divisions fighting and probably dying on the beaches, but now only a thin crust of observers with enough infantry to allow them to run with some degree of protection was near the shore. Engineers had spent the past week preparing demolitions with the intent of pinning the Japanese to the coast where heavy artillery could pound them day and night while the North Luzon Force would be able to concentrate near the Agno River.

The six rail road guns fired. 1,500 pounds of steel went over the heights of bombers and then tipped over and dove for the beaches. Two shells went long and splashed water harmlessly on Japanese landing barges. Two shells went short and ripped open a stand of palm trees. The other shells landed on the narrow shingle and ripped open lives and took away dreams. The next salvo was even tighter and the final four shells from each gun were clustered almost as if this was school shoot. Even as the last shells were fired, the rail artillery was being made ready to move into well prepared hides. The standing order was for those guns to only fire once every four hours in the daylight so that the Japanese could not pounce on them.

 

[fester]

December 22, 1941 Northwest Malaya

The Japanese attacks had finally succeeded. Or at least they succeeded in taking the forward defensive positions near Jitra. Ten days of heavy fighting had worn down one Indian brigade and made the other four brigades full of experienced veterans. The decision to withdraw had been made by General Montgomery the previous morning as not enough artillery ammunition could be brought forward to the main defensive zone. Japanese fighters and bombers had become quite proficient attacking supply convoys. Plentiful artillery was a critical ingredient in dealing with Japanese infiltration attacks.

By now, the Indian battalions had started to develop a play book. One third of their strength would be held in reserve a few minutes behind the main defensive line. As soon as an infiltration attack was detected, the reserve would immediately counter-attack while the company or battalion called in artillery. Once the counter-attack forced the Japanese columns to deploy for battle, the artillery could chew them up. Experienced gunners from the 5th Division usually had their first shells on target within four minutes of the call for assistance while the best crews in the 11th Division were supporting their infantry within seven or eight minutes.

The last major infiltration was by a Japanese battalion that ran into the reserves of the the Ghurka brigade. A bayonet and khukri charge forced deployment and then every gun in the division pounded the exposed Japanese battalion. The next morning, stretcher and intelligence parties counted over four hundred Japanese bodies.

The 5th Division would cover the 11th Division as it moved south to new positions near Sungain Petani. Once the 11th had re-established themselves, the veteran 5th would retreat as well. There was a promise of a fresh brigade from the 9th Division that would allow for a modicum of rest if there was not an aggressive Japanese pursuit.

Across the battle lines, there was no inclination to pursue. Artillery ammunition was too short, gasoline was too sparse, and the few tanks and bicycle infantry battalions were too few worn out to push through booby trapped grounds that the British gunners had pre-registered. Quiet instead won the day as the Japanese tentatively advanced into the well prepared positions that had stopped them for a week more than they could afford to fight.

 

[fester]

December 22 1941 , 1000 Manila Time, near Agoo

The team was in their fifth observation hole of the morning. Seven ships would never leave the bay due to artillery and mines. Another four 155mm rounds landed on the soft sand of the beach, steel scything at waist height, adding smoke and noise to the battle. An urgent adjustment was telephoned in. The wires were still working as they had been buried under 3 feet of dirt over the past week, arteries of knowledge leading to the heart of the force's firepower. Radios were a somewhat unreliable back-up, but the spotters would rely on the wires for as long as they could.

The Japanese regiment had established a small beachhead on the shingle. Destroyers and gunboats were getting closer and closer to pour their fire in against observation posts near the beaches. Most were empty as the observers and their reservists acting as protectors had fallen back. A few positions were never evacuated as Japanese infantry would pound a position with a combination of knee mortars, anti-tank guns, naval gunfire, and then use whatever cover to flank a the position before rushing them for hand to hand, face to face fighting with cold steel and hot blood. This method had been successful in allowing the Japanese toehold to evolve into a pocket that edged northwards into the town.

The defenders hunkered deeper into the holes when they heard the steady thrum of airplane engines. Japanese fighters and light bombers had been working over their positions every half hour. But this time, it was a flight of two PAF P-26s that roared out of the mountains. Machine guns blazed as they strafed the beach head and dropped a pair of 100 pound bombs apiece. One plane left trailing smoke while the other ran as fast as he could to the airfields south of Manila.

 

[fester]

December 22, 1941 1500 Wake Island

Thirty one bombers were being watched by another dozen carrier based fighters. Eleven Wildcats had climbed for altitude to jump the raid from Hiryu and Soryu. This time, the Japanese fighters had been split into two clusters. Three shotais were five thousand feet above the bombers while two shotais held a close, weaving escort in front of the bombers. The Grummans had a slight number advantage on the high escort but the Zeroes did their job. Four escorts and three interceptors created fiery oil slicks in the north Pacific Ocean even as bombers pressed in. A section of Wildcats dove and flamed a single level bomber before being chased by a trio of the closely escorting Zeros

The freshly reinforced garrison waited. Anti-aircraft fire began to pepper the attacking bomber formations, mechanically fused 75mm shells going off slightly ahead and below the attackers. The lighter machine guns and the battery of 37mm Brownings waited until the aircraft came close.

Within minutes, three dive bombers were in the lagoon, but L battery’s two five inch guns were wrecked, the a previously damaged Wildcat became a hangar queens and half a dozen machine gun positions were smeared with blood.

 

[fester]

December 23, 1941 0700 250 miles south, southeast of Wake Island

The two carriers were steaming hard to the north. The craggy faced admiral was chomping his cigar. Lexington was due to join Saratoga and Enterprise by 0800. Every destroyer had refueled the previous day. The morning search flown by Enterprise’s VS-5 had, so far, found nothing. Wake Island had suffered from another raid by carrier planes the previous afternoon. Captured Japanese air crews had indicated that they were flying from two carriers that had raided Pearl Harbor earlier in the month.

Now where were they?

Was this just a raid, or a preparation for an invasion? The three carriers had eight heavy cruisers and a trio of light cruisers in direct support along with two dozen destroyers. Admiral Spruance aboard Northampton was making plans to forming a surface action group with Cruiser Division 5’s three heavy cruisers and the three light cruisers along with almost all of Destroyer Squadron 6. Enterprise would tuck herself in with Saratoga’s escorts if Task Force 98 was dispatched.

The search pattern was to the a third of the circle between Wake and just south of west of the task force. The Marine fighters had not seen any Japanese carriers within 50 miles of the island. Catalinas flying from Midway had not detected any Japanese forces between Midway and Wake. Odds were that the Japanese carriers were to the north or north west of Wake and this morning’s search would find nothing.
If These were not just raiders but preliminary support for another invasion attempt then the transports had to be somewhere? There would not be enough time to assemble transports from Japan, but transports from Saipan or the Marshalls were possible. The previous strikes in the Marshalls had not seen any concentration capable of supporting an invasion.

Once Lexington had joined the fleet, he would have VS-2 scout 175 miles to the southwest of the task force to look for an invasion convoy. His priority would be enemy carriers but he would take an invasion convoy if spotted.

 

[fester]

December 23, 1941 Coral Sea
Five cruisers, one American, one New Zealand manned, and three Australian, two destroyers and six lesser warships entered the Coral Sea. The polyglot force had been formed near Fiji as the American brigade group in the Pensacola convoy needed an escort once war came to the South Pacific. There had been debate about moving the force to Manila but with the fall of Davao, there was no clean route to bring the force through. Instead, the engineering battalion would be dropped off at Darwin to begin building base facilities while the rest of the force was heading to Timor. The Australian Sparrow Force had recently landed and it was a needed but nowhere near sufficient reinforcement of the Dutch garrison. An infantry regiment with organic artillery and tank support might be sufficient to hold the island and thus keep open the eastern entrance to the Java Sea.

 

[fester]

December 23, 1941

The sun hurt. The entire convoy was now trusty shellbacks and if there was never a chance to inflict the indignity of the ceremony upon new pollywogs, Sergeant Donohue would be happy. The afternoon anti-aircraft and anti-submarine watch was always the longest for the soldiers aboard the transports. Rumors had them going to at least seven places. The best scuttlebutt was that the 182nd Infantry Regiment, Massachusetts National Guard was heading to Rabaul, Brisbane or Manila. So far none of their officers had told them anything besides keep on training.

As the ship's bells rang and the watch changed, Sergeant Donohue sipped some lukewarm water from his canteen. He waited and watched his team hand off responsibility for the .30 caliber machine gun that they had expeditiously mounted two weeks ago. Short report, mechanical checks, ammunition checks and water checks. The team was coming together. Fifteen minutes later, he was the senior sergeant on a platoon exercise as every man was now carrying a 100 pound pack and began a long tour of the ship through the most inefficient set of passages possible. Up and down, to the ground and crawl under steam pipes and then up a ladder and through a hatch. An hour later, legs burning but chests not heaving, a gunsmith from the attached ordinance company began his lecture on field repairs for machine guns.

 

[fester]

December 23, 1941 1630

The single Dauntless dive bomber lugged a single 500 pound bomb. Four combat missions in three days and only a single bomb dropped. The Admiral wanted the scouts to be double and triple checking pieces of the ocean. So far no one had seen nothing.

Off in the distance and slightly to the right a hint of a fading wake was visible. The pilot nosed over and followed the disturbance in the sea. He yelled at his gunner/radio operator in back to get a good fix. Four minutes later, that one wake was seven wakes. The radio operator sent his first message of position and multiple wakes. He then grabbed his binoculars and strained hard as the stubby bomber proceeded up the wake trail.

A dozen ships including at least three ships that could either have been battleships or large heavy cruisers were below. The radio operator put down his glasses and started to pound away another sighting report. Enterprise acknowledged the report of the convoy heading towards Wake at 13 knots. At this speed, they would be arriving just before dawn at Wake.

Three more minutes and another message to Enterprise and Wake was sent. The dive bomber had started a long climb to attack altitude even as half a dozen other scouts had radioed their intention to converge and attack the invasion force. As the single dive bomber passed through 12,000 feet, both men checked their straps one last time just before they entered the range of the defenders' heavy anti-aircraft guns. Shrapnel ripped sky and clouds around the dive bomber, near misses jostled the two men as the pilot tipped over. Seventy degrees was a steep dive but the bomber was pushing itself to almost eighty degrees. Both men grunted as the force of gravity fought with their bodies. The pilot became one and the plane and the brain were a weapon system intent on only delivering a 500 pound steel bomb precisely on target.

Cannon fire began to ripple and machine gun tracers sought to either distract or kill the pilot. He did not know that half a dozen machine gun rounds went through his left wing until after he landed in the dark on Enterprise. 1,300 feet from the sea, the bomb was released and the dive bomber strained to break free of its fall. The pilot pulled up fast and level at 300 feet and began the long run. As the pilot concentrated on coming home, the rear gunner saw a 5,000 foot plume of smoke emerge from the forward turret of a Japanese cruiser.

173 miles away, Admiral Halsey debated his options. He had two carriers ready to strike but between launching and assembling a strike, the attack would not arrive on the invasion force until after sunset. Few, if any, of his pilots were trained for night landings. He would hold them back to strike first thing in the morning. Instead, a signal was sent to Admiral Spruance. His cruiser force would depart at 1800 to intercept the Japanese invasion convoy.

 

[fester]

December 23, 1941 Lowell, Massachusetts

Snow sat on Elaine's eyelashes, and a cat curled in her lap. She would have been happy if she had come to her parents' home after a long day of work at the mill. Her loom unit had just received an order to produce enough cloth to equip a division. Overtime was plentiful this year and the money was flowing into her bank account. She had moved out of the apartment that her aunt and uncle rented to her and Patrick and moved back in with her parents. They had been looking forward to being grandparents and they still were anxious to encourage mischief underfoot but not yet, not after the hemorrhage that had sent her to her knees on the factory floor.

The doctors at Saint John's had stopped the bleeding fast enough and she received two pints of blood. Three days in the hospital and she had enough strength to go home. Now she was sitting on her parent's porch, alone and wanting to hold her husband and be told that everything would be okay. He was not there, he was somewhere on the far side of the world; he did not know where and she could not know even if he could tell her. Instead, she cried into her slowly cooling apple cider as she tried to think through the letter that she would have to write to him. She could not give him the child that they both wanted and the doctors were not sure if she would ever be able to do that for him.

 

[fester]

December 24, 1941 0200 near Brest, France

HMS Sealion stopped her pursuit. Hipper had escaped the Brest Roads for several hours of training and gunnery trials before scooting back into the harbor behind known minefields.

 

[fester]

December 23, 1941 1745 Johnson Atoll

The first navy Consolidated Privateer, a modification of the B-24 with only a single bomb bay, fewer machine guns and engines optimized for lower and slower flying, landed on the recently opened runway at Johnson Atoll. Four more patrol bombers were a few minutes further out.

Six bombers from the patrol squadron that had been sheltered during the Pearl Harbor raid by basing out of Hilo for a training exercise were on their way to Midway. The big, land based bombers would give the Navy longer and faster eyes than those aboard the Catalinas. The bomb bays would be full of fuel instead of bombs so that they could sweep a wider area for the carriers to safely operate in.

 

[fester]

December 24, 1941 0100 near Tripoli

HMS Manxman’s engines roared. The last mine had left the chutes a few minutes ago. Now it was time to flee the contested waters near Tripoli. Another minefield deposited along the Italian convoy routes. A field that she had laid the previous week in the Sicilian narrows had claimed a tanker and a destroyer. This field would mainly claim Italian time and sweat to clear.

Two light cruisers and a quartet of destroyers met her fifteen miles east of the field and they ran back to friendly air cover as fast as they could.

 

[fester]

December 24, 1941 0300 between Sfax and Malta

The captain stepped into the whale boat. HMS Penelope's forward turrets were already at water level. Force K had left Malta to raid the Italian supply routes to Tripoli. The sweep was fruitless as an Italian submarine spotted the cruisers leaving the harbor. Her warning kept a convoy further west than it typically would have stayed.

Eight hours of steaming had been fruitless. Nothing had been sighted until a pair of torpedoes slammed into the small, light cruiser. Damage control reports had made the situation obvious. She was doomed and the question was whether or not the crew would be futilely lost. He had made the decision within nine minutes of the torpedo strike to abandon ship. Two destroyers were depth charging the attacker while another destroyer stopped fifty feet away from the damaged ship. Some men swam across the sea to the destroyer that had let down ropes and nets. Wounded men were ferried across in ships boats. Forty nine minutes after her mortal wound, the captain stepped into the whale boat. She was gone and would take eighty seven of her crew with her.

 

[fester]

December 24, 1941 0530 30 miles south of Wake Island

The six cruisers had been at battle stations for an hour. Double look-outs had been posted since nightfall the previous day. The radar rooms on the cruisers with surface search radars had been fully manned. Coffee was being consumed at a prodigious rate as tired eyes bore holes into cathode ray tube displays. Destroyers were in the van and the rear by division. The force was moving at a steady 20 knots with all boilers ready for action. They had been steaming in an elongated race track pattern since arriving on station.

And so far nothing had been seen. Had the Japanese invasion fleet slipped by the protecting cruisers and edged to the west of the force to land in the face of the coastal defense guns on Wake? So far there had been no word from the island about an impending attack.

Where were the Japanese?

As night slowly became astronomical dawn, every man on Wake Island waited. Some drank lukewarm coffee hurriedly prepared, others just waited in silence. The radar had started to scan the sky at 0500 and nothing had been seen yet. A trio of Wildcats were warming their engines for the dawn patrol. Six other Wildcats were being prepared to scramble in case a raid was detected. The coastal batteries waited. Every look-out squinted and searched looking for bumps on the horizon but there was nothing beyond a troubling line of clouds to the northwest of the atoll.

Where were the Japanese?

One hundred miles southeast of the island, three carriers turned into the wind. Saratoga launched twenty four dive bombers to search for the invasion convoy. Another ten dive bombers from Saratoga and a squadron from Lexington headed north to find the Japanese carriers. Any strike against the Japanese carriers would be a long range strike, assuming that the two Japanese carriers had not closed to suicidally close range against Wake. Enterprise held back her Sunday punch while Lexington had enough of her aircraft to land at least a single haymaker. Saratoga’s responsibility today was scouting and self-defense even as a quartet of Wildcats followed the last scout bomber off the deck. The fighters would fly a patrol over the cruisers until the two forces merged again.

Where were the Japanese?

As dawn’s light started to emerge from the curve of the earth, Northampton slowed for a few minutes. A Seagull was on the catapult and as the ship rolled with the gentle seas, the powder charge fired just as she started on an upswing. The spotting plane scooted down the track and was thrown airborne. As the pilot adjusted to being back under his own control, he took the spotter higher and began to circle the fleet. The other cruisers also launched their own float planes. Within half an hour, the six float planes were airborne. Two would stay on anti-submarine patrol while the other four headed south to scout for the enemy.

Where were the Japanese?

Dawn transitioned into day. Sailors aboard the cruisers were released from battle stations in batches for chow while flight operations continued aboard the three carriers. The alert status on Wake was called off and all nine Wildcats stayed on the ground as the pilots recovered from the days of hectic fighting.

Where were the Japanese? Was this a trick?

They had withdrawn.

Hiryu and Soryu were running low on aviation fuel and their air groups were taking losses on every strike, losses that they could not afford. The news that there were still American carriers in the area made a decisive battle on a tertiary objective a high risk event. If the carriers had not suffered losses to their air group that were approaching fifty percent of their pre-war strength, it may have been a risk worth taking but not now. The American scouts’ attacks on the invasion convoy had damaged Aoba, her forward turret opened up to the sky by the first bomb hit, and Kongo Maru had been sunk by a pair of 500 pound bombs. The invasion force could not bull its way through the American coastal defenses if they were under constant attack by American carrier aircraft. Tokyo had agreed with this diagnosis, and both the carrier force and the invasion force had turned towards safety the previous evening at 20:00.

The American fleet started to steam back to Pearl Harbor on Christmas Day after Wake Island enjoyed a bombless Christmas Eve.

Thus ended the second invasion attempt of Wake Island.

 

[fester]

December 24, 1941 Dawn north of the Agno River

“Steady, steady” Sergeant Ibling placed his hands on the shoulder of a young man who had been in uniform for only a few months. The boy, just a few years younger than the company sergeant, had an aptitude for shooting. He was not a sniper as there was not enough ammunition or range time or expertise to bring him to that level of skill, but he was one of the better shots among the men who had not made the profession of arms their life’s work. That skill had earned him a place in the regiment’s heavy weapons company as an anti-tank gunner. Now he was back with his home company as they waited on the Japanese advance from their beachhead.

His head barely moved but his shoulders visibly relaxed as he tucked the Mauser 13 millimeter anti-tank rifle into the familiar and comfortable spot. That rifle was his rifle, it was a rifle originally made in Germany during the first great war and it was never used at the front as it left the factory a week before the Armistice. A Freikorps soldier fired it a dozen times in street fighting to break up Communist and Socialist barricades. Somehow it had been sold to a Turkish conglomerate during the Greco-Turkish war where it was then lost in a card game to a chief from the Arizona. And it would then sit in the holds of the mighty battleship for almost twenty years before the scrounging teams found her again. The rifle was shipped across the Pacific with a dozen others before half of their shipment was sent to the 11th Infantry Regiment and the other half was snatched up by the 12th Infantry Regiment.

Elsewhere along the line, men waited. They held their Enfield rifles tight or machine gun barrels scanned their assigned sectors. The position had been improved markedly in the thirty hours the company had been there. A single platoon manned a road block while the other two platoons were in the fields holding an L-shaped ambush. Regiment had released a trio of anti-tank riflemen and a pair of Browning .50 caliber water cooled machine guns.

Sergeant Ibling belly crawled to the next position, keeping low to the ground as it rumbled with advancing Japanese tankettes. Contact had been kept between the Japanese advance guard the the scouts of the Northern Luzon Force over the past two days, so few surprises were possible. It was still an artillery versus aircraft battle of American and Filipino manned guns could often fire half a dozen rounds at either observed targets or map coordinates before scurrying for cover. Japanese fighters and light bombers had started to orbit the invasion force as an on-call counter-battery package that would routinely respond within ten or fifteen minutes of the first shell being fired.

He looked down the road. Movement.

Japanese infantrymen were advancing. Most had foliage and cloth breaking up their outline. A platoon was walking ahead of a trio of light tanks while the rest of the infantry company followed the tanks. As they came to a curve in the road and saw the road block, the Japanese infantry entered the fields and spread out. One platoon headed further away looking for a flank while the other two platoons provided local security.

They slowly advanced. Sergeant Ibling wanted to bring his zero-ed out rifle to his cheek and fire. He wanted to start the ambush but he knew it was time to wait. Eleven minutes was the longest and hardest eleven minutes to wait. The Japanese advanced ever so slowly, looking for mines and looking for trouble. The platoon holding the roadblock started to provide them trouble as a BAR team fired on the Japanese three hundred yards away. The tankettes responded with machine gun fire as well. Riflemen started to shoot. Almost no shots were aimed any more specifically than a general direction towards the enemy as men were constantly making the decision to either stay low or to briefly fire.

As the tankettes focused on the obvious blocking position, a red flare fired from the road block. Six 75 millimeter guns three miles in the rear started to fire and the long arm of the ambush started. Each anti-tank rifle fired at the lead tank. The heavy Browning machine guns chose to concentrate on the rear vehicle. The four 60 millimeter mortars assigned to the battalion’s fire support platoon also started to drop shells on the Japanese advance. The first seven seconds of the ambush went flawlessly. The lead tank was penetrated four times including a single round that punched through the femoral artery of the vehicle commander while the heavy machine guns firing a combination of ball and armor peircing rounds punched a dozen holes into the rear tank.

And then the Japanese responded. The middle tank skewed its turret and began to fire. Half a dozen bullets dug into the earth near Sergeant Ibling. He heard the young boy he had just re-assured scream as one bullet slammed into his shoulder and another three went into his chest cavity. He gurgled as he drowned to death on his own blood. The Japanese infantry covering the near flank of the advance began to turn and fight.

Within an hour, the reservists of the 11th Infantry regiment had been forced back from their position, carrying a dozen dead and twice as many wounded. Japanese artillery had started to range on their positions even as more tanks came forward. During the retreat to the main position, Sergeant Ibling carried the heavy Mauser anti-tank rifle and its special ammunition even as he calmed his inexperienced commander and saw to the needs of the company.

 

[fester]

December 24, 1941 Dawn, Central Luzon on the shores of Lamon Gulf

The defenders were regulars, or at least as close to what a regular could be in the cadre pyramid scheme that was the Philippine Army. The men had been volunteers and some had served in the Philippine Scout regiments so they were used to working together as teams, anticipating enemy maneuvers and coordinating their actions with other units. The division was a good division and over the past six months, it had been brought up to full personnel strength and then raided twice to provide cadre and expertise for the eight reserve divisions that were now active. The men were replaced with new draftees and volunteers, but an enthusiastic 19 year old private is no real replacement for a sergeant with ten years of experience.

Equipment was a different story. The division was at full authorized strength in machine guns, mortars, mines, trucks and they had acquired a company of light armored cars. The artillery regiment was in good but not perfect shape with eighteen 75mm guns and eight GCF 155mm guns for heavy work. The field pieces were hand me downs from the American manned Philippine Division when it received new 105mm guns in September,. These guns were amply supplied with ammunition and one of the last convoys had brought in all of the ancillary equipment, including sights, needed for effective indirect fire attacks. They had shot off 100 rounds per gun in practice and the best fire control teams could place rounds on target within 12 minutes of a call for support. They had not practiced anti-shipping work, but they could hit fixed targets well enough.

The division was deployed on the neck of Luzon in a series of company sized outposts covering likely landing zones against Japanese landings from Palau. The third regiment was held back and concentrated as a counter-attack force while the first two regiments were deployed to give the division eyes on too long of a front. This would have been an ideal task for one of the reserve divisions, but the Southern Luzon Force was much weaker than initially planned as two regiments were preparing the Bataan fortifications and one of the weakened divisions was demobilized to provider manpower and equipment to the remaining reserve divisions. The 41st Division and a regiment of Constables were slowly retreating up the Manila railroad right of way in the face of persistent pressure from the Japanese operating out of Legaspi

As dawn was breaking, a series of reports from a broad front were trickling up from companies to battalion headquarters and from there to regimental headquarters. Finally after ninety minutes, the divisional headquarter was informed that Japanese troops in at least regimental strength were landing at Mauban.

There was a company at Mauban, and the rest of the battalion was spread out along 12 miles of coast. They would be disengaging from their watch positions and concentrate outside of the town before either counter-attacking or digging in. The rest of the regiment was pulling back from the coast and forming a blocking position near Lucban. The 2nd Regiment began to refuse its flanks to both the north and south so as to block Japanese attempts to link up with the Legaspi force.

The reserve 3rd Regiment and the entire divisional artillery group would begin moving at 1000 to support the defense of Mauban. They would arrive by 1400 where the heavy artillery wrecked a pair of Japanese charges against the beleaguered battalion defending the outskirts of the town. They had been holding in bloody hand to hand fighting along the eastern edge of the city where the lack of artillery could be compensated for by the liberal use of grenades and mortars. The Japanese had pushed the defending company back fairly easily in the morning, but they never broke as they kept up a continual skirmish line until they were able to pass through the lines of their sister companies at 1100.

The 2nd Regiment contained a secondary land at Sianian. There a Japanese infantry battalion landed through a hail of machine gun bullets and light mortar rounds. A battery of 37mm anti-tank guns was quickly repurposed to be anti-boat guns.. They successfully sank a quarter of the assault boats and damaged another dozen. Once they were ashore, two understrength infantry companies with minimal naval gunfire support was opposed by a well dug-in infantry company that was being quickly reinforced. Every mortar in the regiment made its way to the beachhead over the course of the day and pounded any observed movement. By nightfall, the landing force had suffered 50% casualties. As night fell, the landing force was withdrawn by ship’s boat. The survivors were moved to the main beachhead and landed there the next morning.

Six of B-17s, and two sections of A-20s, all from Del Monte field, attacked the beachhead before sunset. One transport was left sinking, and the logistics of the invasion got significantly worse as twenty 500 pound bombs bracketed the Japanese stevedore company, killing most of the laborers and destroying a pair of lighters.

 

[fester]

December 24, 1941 A small village in Poland

The cobbler pulled his winter coat tight to his face to keep the wind off of his exposed skin. He was lucky today, a friend of a friend of a friend had supplied him with few kilograms of coal and enough bread to keep the pangs of hunger off of his childrens’ lips. His wife had managed to capture a carp that she was cooking for dinner. It was Christmas Eve, and there should have been twelve courses to celebrate, but three or four courses that in good times would have been enough food for a single good course was what he could provide for his family.

As he walked past the Guilensteins’ house, he made sure to shiver enough so that a few lumps of coal would fall out of the bag that he was carrying. It was not much help for his pre-war friends but it was what he could do without endangering his family.

 

[fester]

December 25, 1941 Northwest of Moscow

The lifeline to the rest of the army appeared above the trees. A dozen thri-motor transports slowed as packages were pushed out of the side doors. Some landed in no man’s land while most fell on or behind the German lines. Ammunition, food, and medicine made up most of the supplies that could keep the regiment fighting for another day. The Soviet attack had cut off a road that linked the division to the rest of the northernmost corps of Army Group Central. Daily drops had kept the division intact and there were even plans for a counter-attack with the infantry battalions of unengaged regiment marching throughout the night across the rear of the two engaged regiments to hammer a Soviet cavalry group while a battle group of Panzers pushed north to clear the road.

That attack had been planned for two days now and it would kick off as soon as the Panzers could reliably start in the frigid weather.

Elsewhere on the front, one hundred and eighty three other transports dropped supplies on other regiments and divisions whose tendrils of control and sustenance had been cut off or compressed by the Soviet offensive. Minor counter-attacks were being pushed forward to relieve and rescue over-extended divisions so that a new line could be formed to absorb any more blows that Marshal Zhukov and General Winter could deliver in the upcoming month.