John Schettler: Devil's Garden

The situation was going from bad to worse. The Germans were lapping at his defensive positions like a rising tide. They had paid dearly for the small advanced they had made, but from Dobrynin’s report the force building up outside the town was at least a full regiment. Thus far the superior rate of fire from their AK-74s had been a real force multiplier in the defense, and their missiles had stopped the German planes and tanks. But the enemy was moving up their Schwere heavy weapons teams, and one of the PT-76s had been hit by an 88 millimeter round. He had to give orders to plant demolition charges, as they had planned in the event any of the APCs were hit and immobilized. They would incinerate it beyond recognition, and leave nothing usable behind.

They were running out of time. His little invasion force had bravely defended the town, but their primary objective was still not accomplished. Damn it! Where are you Orlov? You must know we’re here for you? What in God’s name are you doing?

50 miles south east of Hokkaido, 1945

Captain Yeltsin, stared at the rising mushroom cloud, amazed on the bridge of Orlan . He would not have believed it if he had not seen it with his own eyes. It was the first time he, or any of his bridge crew, had witnessed such a thing. They knew they carried the weapons in the belly of the ship’s magazines, but had never seen what they could really do when fired in anger. Everyone gaped at the horizon, awe struck.

His destroyer was alone now, Orlan , the sea eagle, alone on the rising swells of doom. She was the first of the Project 21956 class stealth destroyers delivered just before the onset of hostilities. Yeltsin had been proud to sally forth from Vladivostok with the fleet flagship, yet now there was no sign of Kirov , and the distant, black hulk of the American battleship Iowa was the only thing on his horizon, rolling like a stricken whale.

They built them very tough in this day, he thought. No ship of our era could have survived that blast. He remembered that the Americans had dropped a pair of atomic weapons on fleets anchored off Bikini Island to see what the effects were. Many ships survived the blast intact like this, sinking in time from slow leaks and hull damage. That battleship will undoubtedly sink as well. It is little more than a hunk of floating mangled steel now, and God go with the men who died there today.

Yet when it was over he was amazed to see that a second wave of aircraft was still coming in from that same heading, the planes sweeping around the tall mushroom cloud as it cauliflowered up into the gloaming sky. And further out to the west there came another large group. Karpov had ordered him to cease fire so the P-900 carrying the tactical weapon would arrive safely on target. What was he planning now? Was he going to swat these remaining planes from the sky with another tactical airburst, or were they to resume conventional SAM defense? The question was moot, as the Fleet Commander was nowhere to be seen.

He steadied himself, shaking the horror of the moment from his mind and ordered his radio man to see if they could contact Kirov for further instructions. Perhaps the ship had veered off and was lost in the haze. Yet they had nothing on radar but those damn American planes. There was no initial response but the hail continued, sounding more and more plaintive with each repetition… “Orlan to Kirov. Come in, Kirov. Requesting battle orders. Over. Orlan to Kirov. Please respond. Over. Where are you, Kirov? Please come in. Orlan to Kirov. Where are you?…

Frustrated and knowing the enemy planes were just minutes away, Yeltsin stepped out of the enclosed armored citadel of the bridge and onto the weather deck, binoculars in hand. They had been steaming about two kilometers in front of the big battlecruiser, but when he scanned the sea in his wake, there was no sign of the ship. Kirov was gone! What had happened?

Yes, they had felt the harsh wind from the explosion, the shock wave and swell from the sea, but even his much smaller ship rode it out easily, and there were no enemy planes in close. Could Kirov have suffered the same fate as Admiral Golovko , struck by a late fired round from the stricken American battleship? No, there was no sign of an explosion aft, and Kirov was a very big ship. If there had been an incident, or even an accident aboard the ship itself, he would have seen something. Yet what was that strange glow on the sea? He would not have time to investigate further.

The hard seconds ticked away, and now it struck him that Orlan was alone, and soon to be faced by a massive air attack. Time was running out. He rushed back into the bridge.

“Air alert one! Resume SAM defense! Ready all close in defense systems!”

The klaxon howled out the alert, and within seconds the first sleek SAMs were ejecting again from the ship’s forward deck, streaking wildly into the sky to seek and destroy the American planes. The roar of the missiles continued, one after another, the skies streaked by ribbons of smoke as they sped away on hot white tails. Then he heard the low, distant drone of many engines, saw the blue specks in the sky drawing ever nearer amid the roiling explosion from his lethal SAMs

Perhaps a hundred planes massed above Iowa had been swept to oblivion by that detonation, but there looked to be another hundred behind them, veering left and right around the angry mushroom cloud and still bravely bearing down on his ship.

“How many missiles do we have remaining?” He shouted over the growing noise of the oncoming planes.

“Sir, I read 96 SAMs still remaining and ready to fire.”

But there was a second group of aircraft off their starboard side, the planes off Ticonderoga and the remainder of Sprague’s carrier group, at least 160 or more contacts. He was now being attacked by nearly 280 enemy aircraft, three planes for every missile they had on the primary SAM system. They had 56 more missiles on the Kashtan system, and 8700 rounds on the 30mm Autocannons. If it came to that things will be very bad, he thought. Very bad indeed.

Sheer mass and brutal determination had been at the heart of war fighting in this era. In the beginning the Germans danced and maneuvered, running armored rings around their sluggish opponents. Four years later the allies were a massive juggernaut, virtually unstoppable, and relentlessly grinding down their enemies by the sheer weight of massed fire and steel. The Americans had beaten down the Japanese by simply out-producing them, building hundreds of ships and thousands of planes. And when Japan finally sent her last armored gladiators out, Yamato and Musashi , the Americans simply swarmed over them with relentless air strikes, like bees against a lion. Yamato was hit by eleven torpedoes and six bombs before her magazines exploded sending a mushroom cloud six kilometers high that was seen over 90 miles away in Japan. Musashi was even tougher, and took 19 torpedo hits and 17 bombs before she finally capsized and sank.

Any ship could be sunk, Yeltsin knew. Look what happened to Admiral Golovko when the Americans scored just one lucky hit-more a fortunate miss, as they probably never even saw the stealthy warship. They had been firing at the much larger silhouette of Kirov , and simply missed, the rounds falling short to strike Golovko by sheer chance. It will only take one or two hits to do the same to us…