John Schettler - 9 Days Falling, Volume I

Admiral Fraser, Commander of the Royal Navy Pacific Fleet, got word of an incident late on the 15th of August, 1945, and something in the reports raised his hackles. He was a recent arrival, setting his flag on Duke of York on August 6th and taking her up to join the British TF.37 that was one of four allied fast carrier task forces operating off Honshu and Hokkaido late in the war. TF.37 had recently cooperated with the Americans in those raids, including Sprague’s group. It was now in the Sea of Japan and preparing to send a good number of its ships back to the British base at Manus Island due to fuel shortages in the British replenishment tankers, but something in these reports gave Fraser pause, and he countermanded those orders.

“Are you sure?” he asked his warrant officer looking over the message. “They used the word rockets?”

“Plain as day, sir. Shouted it out just before they went down. We just got word a few minutes ago in this wire.”

Fraser’s eyes had a distant look in them now. “Very well. Signal Captain Schofield on King George V and tell him I’d like his ship to remain on station. The same for all carrier commanders. That will be all.”

“Sir.” The messenger saluted and started back for the telegraph room, stopping quickly when the Admiral called after him. “One more thing. Send to the Yanks Admiral Halsey,” he said. “Tell him I’d like to have a chat with him again as soon as possible…And make sure it’s well coded.”

“At once, sir.”

Fraser watched the man go, getting up from his desk in the Flag Command Room aboard the battleship Duke of York. He walked slowly to the window, staring out to sea to watch the other ships in his task force riding smartly in formation.

Nimitz and Halsey will think I’m keen to make arrangements to attend the surrender ceremony planned for next week, he thought. But there was something about this incident report that struck a nerve. More information was filtering in on the wires. Apparently a small American task force under Admiral Brown had a scrap with a hostile force up in the Kuriles and lost ships and men there. That alone was surprising enough, given the fact that the allied navies had pounded virtually every Japanese ship known to oblivion. Now details of that engagement were starting to touch on a black memory.

Rockets… The American Admiral Brown had finally filed his report and claimed his ships were hit by fast moving rockets. Fraser knew the Japanese had been experimenting with a rocket assisted suicide glider, and every other navy was also toying with one prototype or another. The Germans certainly had a number of rocket weapons, and the Royal Navy was also using rocket powered munitions against U-boats. Similar weapons had blasted the invasion beaches from Sicily to Normandy. Late in the war Britain also deployed a new weapon they called the ‘Stooge,’ a radio-guided missile with a range of about nine miles. It reached a top speed of 500 mph and carried a 220lb warhead to attack incoming Japanese Kamikaze flights. He still had several of the weapons here with his carriers, and the Americans had something even more advanced called the “Bat.” The British had learned many hard lessons, the legacy of harrowing experience from earlier in the war that was still highly classified.

Rockets guided by radar…What was the world coming to, thought Fraser? If he hadn’t seen the damn things himself flashing in on Rodney and Nelson that night in the Mediterranean he would find it all too much to believe. Now he saw something darker in this report than appeared on the surface. The American Admiral Brown’s scouting force on patrol in the Kuriles had run into trouble and several of his ships were hit and sunk. The word ‘rockets’ was on their lips when they died.

Not again, he thought. Not now, when we’ve finally won this thing and are ready to put this insanity to rest. He had the quiet distinction of being the last carrier force in the Pacific to fly combat sorties when Seafires off the Implacable shot down 8 Japanese planes on August 15. But what if his darkest misgivings were true? Now they were saying the hostile ships in this latest incident had been reported as Russian! That little piece of the puzzle completed a picture for him that the Americans might not yet see. The British had shared some of what they learned with the Americans after that first disastrous engagement in the North Atlantic, but they didn’t know everything. They didn’t know about Tovey’s little chat with this rogue Admiral, or anything of what happened off St. Helena soon after. And they didn’t know about the Watch just yet, though they would have to be brought in on the matter soon.

The damn ship keeps coming back, he thought. It found us in the Med in ’42 and then gave us the slip and wound up in the Pacific! That was, in part, why he had been given the assignment here, for he was one of the very few in the Royal Navy who was now fully briefed on ‘the ship,’ as it was simply called. The code word to be used upon confirmation of an actual sighting of this mysterious vessel was something else, and he hoped he would never have to hear it again—Geronimo.

Now he looked out the side port and saw the fast carriers riding the waves: Indefatigable, Formidable, Implacable , and a ship all too familiar with the Geronimo raider, Victorious . Just off his port side another proud veteran of those engagements steamed close by, King George V. Tovey had her in the thick of it on more than one occasion. It’s a pity, he thought quietly. Old Rodney and Nelson were too damn slow that night and the monster slipped west to Gibraltar. But then Tovey had four new battleships at hand in the Western Approaches, surely enough raw steel and firepower to settle the matter once and for all, and instead he decided to parley with the Admiral of this strange nemesis.

And the man was Russian… The ship and crew were Russian! Russians and rockets at sea…rockets shooting down aircraft. He could feel it, sense it, a growing sense of presentiment and dire warning setting off a thrum of anxiety in his chest. Could it be happening again?

Here I thought it was all over but the pomp and circumstance. I was out here to invest Fleet Admiral Nimitz with the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and award Halsey the Order of the Knight of the British Empire. Always proper to express our appreciation to the Yanks after all they’ve done for the Crown. Then it was on to the surrender ceremony—now this.

Another look at his carriers gave him heart. Beyond the four fleet carriers and two battleships here, he also had six cruisers and sixteen destroyers with him in TF.37, and this was only one of several similarly sized formations in the region. The Americans had four such task forces at sea now, all eager to gather at Sagami Bay near Tokyo next week and put an end to this madness.

Put an end to it all….

Well, he thought. If the worst comes about, and this is another ‘incident,’ we bloody well have the ships and planes to do exactly that. If this damn ship appears again we’ll make scrap metal of it soon enough.

Then he remembered what Admiral Tovey had told him about that first engagement in late 1941, and what had really sent the American battleship Mississippi to the bottom of the sea—an atomic bomb. A flicker of doubt crossed his eyes, then resolve renewed there like hidden fire.

I’d better get over and see Halsey again as soon as possible, he thought. Forewarned is forearmed. The Yanks had a good fighting Admiral going up to have a look at this business and confirm these reports. Sprague was as good as they came, but he was not in the inner circle—he didn’t know about the rockets, let alone the atomics. Fraser realized that things would be quite different now if it came down to a real fight. We’ve got the damn things too, he thought, and I’ve seen enough of this war to know one thing if it comes down to real trouble here—we’ll use them.