The little ship that could.

[1275psi]

29 August
Captain Watanabe raises his glasses to his eyes yet again

he takes in the vista, then turns to the Engineer standing behind him
"take a good long hard look Engines, I don't think we will ever see the like again"
"Hie" The engineer joins him at the bridge wing "I think you are right...........but it still is a beautiful sight, isn't it?"

Beautiful?.........I would never have thought it like that.........powerful, mighty, magnificent..but beautiful?............and it strikes Watanabe, that actually, Engines might be right.
What warrior cannot find beauty in the forlon? in the valiant final stand, the 7 samuri against the numberless hordes?
The fleet is spread in the waters behind them, the great grey mountains of steel, a little rusty now, a little faded.....

But the guns still are hard ney?
And the flight decks are crowded with aluminium.

And Hearts are set.
We go to battle
We seek the enemy one last time.................





If of course, we can get there..............
Watanabe turns to the immediate problem at hand.
'The work below engines?"
He grimaces
"A regular barsted..........if God wanted to stop us sailing he could not have planned it better"


There is a hole in the main steam guard valve to the port main engine, a small hole, a millimetre in diameter , if that, just behind the flange.
A small hole, but plenty big enough to send a lethal stream of steam across the space. A hole that speaks, and warns of poor wartime casting, of crap metals, of potential catastrophic failure

The valve has to be replaced
Until it is Susuzuki is on one engine, speed a max 16 knots
Useless to a fleet with a speed of nearly thirty......................
"'I have good men on it sir, the best. They wont let you down"

"Good"
Engines turns away
The Captain stops him............'It might not be a good thing to let them know that a successful repair will probably sign our death warrant"
The Engineer smiles.................waves in the vcague direction of the battlewagons imperious on the port flank........."No fear, who in the world wants to miss this party?"

[1275psi]

29 August

Chaochow, china south coast, is retaken!

banzia!

[Smoky Stoker]

ORIGINAL: 1275psi
banzia!

[1275psi]

29th August

Takao

Military organisation

many of us, I suppose, would say that there are two totally incompatable words
Military..........organisation

As if................

But the truth to be told is this.............with everything falling apart around them, you can usually depend on things to remain functioning until the very death.
Not unlike a dinosours tail, thinks Ogowa, still swaying side to side hours after the head has become dinner for something bigger...............
Takao still functions

As each of his eagles taxis of the strips, the ground crews swarm about them.
Fuel fills tanks, engine cowlings are raised
Machines vanish into the reverents, and heavens upon heavens, the mess still serves tea.............

Ogowa's eagles do not nearly fill Takao's vast area, but the following flights of bombers, of elderly zeros, the dozens of other types of planes.
The island of formosa groans under the wieght of aircraft flowing in

Ogowa does not care.
His planes are well looked after.
He looks around, spies Diogowa.
Time to find something, he thinks, stronger than tea

[1275psi]

3 helen attack Hong Kong........................................and there are nearly 165 corsairs alone in the skies above Honkers, let alone the wildcats, bearcats, hellcats

Hong Kong houses a beast.
In Japans fleet, far too many fools think it can be slain.

[1275psi]

30 Aug

'Oh for TRUKs sake!, put you back into it!"
Hirate grins. Okano grins back.
The valve has but three studs left to undo. Just three. Nothing a good sledge hammer and a spanner cannot defeat.

Its been a battle.
Valve near the roof of the engine room. Latent heat from recently shut down machinery, only a mere 150 degrees F today.
Not a huge amount of space.
(But plenty if you actually straddle one of the pipes, bend your head so you can fit against the roof, and swing left handed)

The new valve, nearly 120 kilos of it, waits on the steaming plates, another minor victory in itself, literally manhandled down to the engineroom.

Don't ask where it has come from..................thats a story in itself.

Susuzuki's stokers will work in shifts on the defect. They work hard. The pressure is on.

At dusk, battleship Yamato inceases speed to 24 knots
Susuzuki is able to maintain station
Speed available again, 36.

Enough. More than enough.

[1275psi]

ORIGINAL: 1275psi

29 August

Chaochow, china south coast, is retaken!

banzia!

By Japan!

[1275psi]

August 31

The allied fleet approaches Takao, 240 miles due east
Tomorrow every plane in Takao will go aloft

Ogowa , Diogowa sleep easily
Death will come, death won't come
We will find out tomorrow, so let us sleep tonight.

The fleet approaches takao from the east

As night falls, the order comes down, possibly for the last time ever

'All ships"



"Battlespeed one!"

[1275psi]

Dawn

80 miles north west of takao

Overcast, grey skies
Smooth seas
Cloud base, 6000 odd feet, a chance it may break later in the day, an equal chance it may thicken into rain


Captain Owada, Commanding officer Yamato, climbs the short climb to the air combat bridge, places himself firmly at the voice pipe binnacle
He returns the salutes, nestles the helmet upon his head.
The battlewagon is doing 27 knots by the log, up here it feels like 5.
His ship is ready
He is ready

On either flank, zero after zero is climbing from the carriers into the sky, beginning to form a CAP of nearly 300 planes
Three hundred!
Who could have imagined that three years ago?

Yet the enemy are reputed to have just as many in theirs..............

"Signal from Takao sir!"
"read it"
Multiple carrier task forces are due east of your position, range 220 miles. They have turned towards you, and are approaching at high speed"
"that is all?"
"No sir..........a second message, am launching strikes"

The Captain nods. A mere moment passes

"Bridge , radar!..........bogies, bearing o degree true!, range 80 miles...........250 plus!"

So it begins
"Pipe all hands, prepare for AA action.........."
300 zeros.............will even that be enough?

[1275psi]

'Takao lighthouse sir............bearing 190 degree"
Watanabe moves to the bridge wing

Yes, there in the growing light, his Navigation point.
We have made it so far..............

Susuzuki vibrates and rattles beneath his feet, the sea is, thankfully, smooth this morning.
But 34 knots is still 34 knots...

"Come right, new course due east."
"Message from Zuikaku sir.................The enemy have come to give battle, at last. Let us not disapoint them, nor our nation, nor our emperor. Give your utmost, and we will defeat him in final decisive battle"

Watanabe stands still, and absorbs the words.
Then he bends to the voice pipe.
"Engines, there are 6 other destroyers here who claim they can do 36 knots..........do you think that is true?"
And from below, at the gates of hell, comes his chuckle
"Only one way to find out sir"

Watanabe stands straight again
"Signal all ships. "Follow me"

"Full ahead, flank"

[BBfanboy]

A little early in the morning here for this, but ...

[CV Zuikaku]

Zuikaku is still fighting [:D]

[Mike McCreery]

ORIGINAL: CV Zuikaku

Zuikaku is still fighting [:D]

And posting!!

[John 3rd]

I am READY for the 'final fight' of the KAIGUN.

BANZAI!

[1275psi]

Ogowa , Diogowa cease climbing at 11000 feet, and bank gently to the right, commencing the first of many, many circuits
below, but fading out of sight, the trails of 7 destroyers at high speed headed Westward.
The fighters skirt clouds, and from time to time rain spatters the screens.
As the day passes, the clouds will lower, and visibility will worsten.

To the North of them, a bank of clouds.
Many times this day Ogowa will look at those clouds, and feel the impulse to go there, to go and actually look.
But orders are orders
And so they will circle, and circle, and wait for the fleet to appear.

It never does.

To the day he dies, Ogowa wil regret not following his instincts. They circle, his arse goes numb, weariness fills their frames.
And 80 miles away, just beyond those clouds, the greatest furball of the war.

[1275psi]

Japan strikes first

20 betties from the pescadores, escorted by 40 zeros.
The Allied CAP is 400 plus strong

A snowball thrown into a furnace

The japanese carriers also send a token strike. 8 kates, 16 zeros
Incedibly one kate avoids everything, attacks the Wasp, misses (no surprise there!), and will get home

It is just after 9 am, that in the clinical language of the historian, "the allied strike began to develop"

That is not how those subjected to it would describe it.

[1275psi]

sorry guys, this is not deliberate, of to bed, exhausted, and Friday nights are Charity work filled now a days
See you saturday

but a taster:/

Its carnage time.

[ny59giants]

So in the words of the classic 80s show...."Who shot JR" type cliffhanger tease.

Depending on how many Corsairs on the Allied flattops, this could go badly. [8|]

[HansBolter]

DAGNABIT.......I can't find a "nail biting" emoticon.

[1275psi]

And so they come in

100 helldivers
120 Avengers

But not nearly do many fighters.

30 miles out, the zeros pounce.
The killing is immense
But not enough to stop the attack going in
Nearly 100 make it through, and although hunted all the way down to the fleet itself, it cannot be stopped

The sky begins to darken with flAK


One thing, before we begin. remeber this. Fleets occupy space. Wide space
Ships on one flank of Japans fleet can barely discern those on the other. Yes, each carrier, each battlewagon has closely attending destroyers, but in the main, each Capital ship will be on their own, free to manouvre, fight, live and die on their own.
As the attack approaches, it breaks apart, and the battle of Takao straights becomes one of a dozen desperate individual battles..........


Carrier Zuikaku:

Captain Yokokawa, nearest ship to the attack
'All guns , AA action Starboard!"
hard to Starboard!

8 Avengers...a pack of zeros..........avengers falling.........bombs falling.........the great carrier heeling hard, a destroyer hard across the bows, the screaming of bombs, the crash, the mountains of water, the single hole in the flight deck, damage..slight

Battleship Yamato
Captain Owada
A black mountain of fire and flame
Avengers, helldivers, disperesed, harrassed, hunted by the zeros
They miss

Carrier Kaga
Captain Okada, that old dog

hard to port...............and they miss
hard to starboard...............and they miss
Full ahead
And they miss...........

Battleship Musashi
Simply claws her two attackers from the sky............

Captain kato, Carrier Taiho, dodges left, and should have dodged right
The first bomb strikes a 25 mm gun tub, obliterates it and its unlucky crew, passes overboard unexploded
The second slices through the flight deck, the hanger deck, the lower deck, explodes in naval stores number 4, bulges a baulkhead, the lower hanger deck floor, starts a fire.
But slows or impeeds her not a note.

Unryu is missed. Ibuki is missed
Ryuho is struck very hard.........comes to halt, her bridge a gaping cave, a flaming hell

And still they come in

Zuikaku is struck again, a glancing blow, the port fwd boiler room begins to flood

And still they come on in...............