Against the Tide Imperial: The Struggle for Ceylon (The Usurper's War: An Alternative World War II Book 3) Read online

  Against The Tide Imperial

  James Young

  Contents

  Pictures

  1. To the Shores of Madagascar

  2. God (and Lion) Save the Queen

  3. The Nightmare Slips Its Moorings

  4. The Feinting Gargoyle…

  5. …With A Striking Castle

  6. Chaos Dawn

  7. The Neutrality of Electrons

  8. A Diminished Riposte

  9. Drowning Dragon

  10. Restitution and Remnants

  Afterword

  About James Young

  Also by James Young

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Against the Tide Imperial

  Text Copyright © 2020 James L. Young Jr.

  Images Copyright Held by Author As of 2020

  ISBN:

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For Kevin Wohler. Friend, author, and shining example of how to face adversity with dignity.

  Pictures

  Standard Ship Diagrams

  To the Shores of Madagascar

  Who will remember, passing through this Gate,

  The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?

  Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate—

  Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones

  Siegfried

  U.S.S. Houston

  0345 Local ( 2045 Eastern)

  Mozambique Channel

  23 July (22 July) 1943

  Murder was never one of my strong suits, Captain Jacob T. Morton, skipper of the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Houston, thought. But damn if I’m starting to get the hang of it.

  “Contact One continuing on course oh four zero true,” the talker said, his voice seemingly loud in the gloom of the Houston’s bridge. “She continues to be followed by Contacts Two through Twelve, range holding steady at twelve thousand yards.”

  “Contact One” was the first of two large blips on the U.S.S. Houston’s radar. Jacob did not completely understand the new fangled rotating antenna mounted on the heavy cruiser’s superstructure. What he did understand was that it allowed Lieutenant Commander Willoughby, his gunnery officer, to lay the heavy cruiser’s guns on the correct bearing and greatly assisted in guessing a hostile vessel’s speed. With visibility just below eight yards, the Houston would have to wait to fire once positive identification was made.

  Totally oblivious, and clearly used to the Indian Ocean being their bailiwick since the war resumed. Well, we’re about to change that. The Italians had inherited several of Great Britain’s colonies in the aftermath of the Treaty of Kent. While some considered that document to have ended what had been deemed the Second World War, Jacob had problems with that terminology.

  The fact that the Brits lost the Second Battle of Britain and some asshole seized his niece’s throne doesn’t mean it’s not the same conflict. I’m sure as hell not fighting to put some teenager back in Buckingham Palace.

  “Destroyers should be going in anytime now, Captain Morton,” Commander Osborne Farmer, Royal Navy, stated. The officer was staring intently at the stopwatch in his hand. “I have faith you’re about to be made a prophet.”

  I don’t know if he’s being facetious or is actually hopeful I’m right, Jacob thought, nodding at the Commonwealth officer’s comment. A tall, gaunt man with a scarred face thanks to a German shell, Commander Farmer was a liaison officer from Her Majesty’s Commonwealth Ship (H.M.C.S.) Repulse. The older battlecruiser, flagship of Task Force (TF) 24.2, was eight hundred yards behind Houston in the pre-dawn haze. Following the Repulse at similar intervals was the H.M.C.S. Exeter, and then the U.S.S. Nashville. Six destroyers, the Commonwealth Garland, Griffin, and Hasty, along with the American Porter, Phelps, and Winslow, had surged forward into the mist to launch torpedoes. Four more DDs, the U.S.S. Farragut, Dewey, Monaghan, and Preston, continued to maintain an anti-submarine screen around their larger charges.

  I didn’t expect anyone to actually read that tactics proposal for our next combat operation. Nevermind attempt to carry out.

  “Sir, lookouts can see Contact One,” the talker stated, his voice rising a couple of octaves.

  “Bloody hell, those torpedoes would not have arrived yet,” Farmer muttered as Jacob brought his own binoculars up. The ever present haze prevented him from getting a good visual on the contacts, but he could just make out two shapes similar in size to the Houston.

  “How much longer?” he asked.

  “Probably two to three minutes,” Farmer replied anxiously after glancing at his watch.

  “We don’t have time to wait,” Jacob stated, then turned to the talker. “Tell guns he may engage Contact One.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” the talker replied quickly. As the man relayed Jacob’s orders, the Houston’s captain brought his binoculars back up just in time to see one of the darkened shapes starting to signal the approaching American cruiser.

  Well, we’re about to answer that signal in a way you’re not expecting. Tall and wiry, Jacob had been nicknamed “The Stork” due to his gangly physical appearance. As many a boxing opponent had found out, his frame’s awkwardness belied a relentlessly aggressive nature. The vessel currently sending a lazy query towards the Houston was about to find out just how much Jacob had ingrained “hit hard, hit fast, hit often” into the crew since he had become the vessel’s captain.

  The Houston’s searchlights illuminated a vessel roughly her own size with all four turrets trained fore and aft. From her lines, Jacob recognized she was Italian, not British, and felt slightly less guilty at what was about to be a brutal shock.

  My God, they don’t even have their turrets manned. His observation was immediately followed by the brilliant flash of Houston’s No. 1 and No. 2 turrets unleashing six 8-inch shells.

  The unwitting target of the Houston’s ire was the Italian heavy cruiser R.M.S. Trento. A contemporary of the Houston, the vessel was similarly armed with four pairs of 8-inch guns, faster, and roughly two thousand tons greater displacement. Unfortunately for her crew, her designers had never foreseen a situation where the vessel would be caught flat-footed, at night, and with the crew not even at battlestations. Even worse, in order to gain her impressive speed, those same designers had skimped on her armor protection.

  For all these reasons, Lieutenant Commander Willoughby’s opening salvo was particularly devastating despite hitting with only two shells. The first punched into the Trento’s superstructure and exploded in the captain’s day cabin, killing him and several other other personnel manning her anti-aircraft batteries. The second hit stabbed into the cruiser’s forward boiler room, causing a great gout of steam that broiled the space’s engineers as the ocean poured in.

  “Starboard thirty degrees,” Jacob barked. “Signal the Repulse and let Vice Admiral Godfrey know that we are engaging Contact One.”

  As the talker acknowledged his orders, Jacob quickly stepped into the compartment aft of Houston’s bridge. Previously part of the captain’s day cabin, the yard workers in Sydney had converted the compartment
to house the new radar equipment. Jacob had ordered the Houston’s operations department to also install a temporary plot that he could quickly reference in the midst of battle without departing too far from the bridge.

  Jacob quickly took in the developing situation while the Houston jumped again from another full broadside. If the group followed his proposed action orders, Repulse would likely take Contact Two under fire, leaving Nashville to engage destroyers or other escorts.

  “Make sure guns knows where our destroyers are,” Jacob said, then ducked back onto the bridge as the main battery thundered again. This was followed by the secondaries firing starshells and the Houston’s searchlights winking out. The reason for the latter decision became readily apparent as four shells landed roughly five hundred yards short of the heavy cruiser.

  “Helm, zig zag, standard pattern,” Jacob ordered, bringing up the binoculars again. The roar of the Repulse’s 15-inch broadside was audible aboard the Houston, and he watched the large shells head downrange towards their target. To his dismay, he saw the that Repulse was also engaging the Trento.

  Goddammit, he thought, even as two of the battlecruiser’s hits wrecked the Italian cruiser’s forward turrets in a massive fireball. So much for distribution of fire.

  The Trento’s crew would have had much more unfavorable things to say about the Allied’ vessel’s gang tackle. Lt. Cdr. Willoughby, having found the range with half of his second broadside, had put another five 8-inch shells into the cruiser’s hull. The onslaught had killed many of the crew as they were stumbling out of their berths and trying to respond to the general quarters alarm, smashed the rudder machinery, and set the cruiser’s aviation fuel storage afire. With the Repulse’s assault setting her forward armament ablaze, the Trento was rapidly becoming an inferno from stem to stern.

  The focus on the Italian vessel had saved her companion, however. The H.M.S. Arethusa had joined the convoy after carrying a new ambassador from King Edward’s London to Pretoria. Appalled at the escort commander's lackadaisical attitude, the Arethusa's captain had maintained much better readiness than the Trento or the the five Italian destroyers accompanying her.

  Recognizing the massive waterspouts indicated the presence of at least one capital ship, the Arethusa’s officer of the deck immediately put his helm hard about and began making smoke. By the time her captain made it to the bridge, the light cruiser’s crew was mostly to battle stations, her 6-inch turrets had swung out, and the vessel's torpedo tubes were at the ready. Passing down the far side of the three merchantmen and tanker that made up the Italian convoy, the light cruiser waited for clear targets. As the U.S.S. Nashville opened fire with her fifteen 6-inch guns, the American cruiser's lack of flashless powder outlined the vessel’s form.

  “Nashville is engaging Contact Seven, possible destroyer,” the talker shouted over the din of Houston’s main and secondary armament. Before Jacob could respond, the destroyers’ initial torpedoes finally began to strike after their long runs. Before his eyes, two Italian destroyers erupted, their acceleration and turn towards the Allied force having carried them into torpedoes intended for the convoy. Jacob, looking at the clock, was briefly shaken to realize it had been barely ten minutes since radar had first detected the convoy.

  “Repulse is ordering a forty-five degree turn to starboard to allow the destroyers to close,” the talker relayed. “Formation will turn when we do.”

  “Acknowledge,” Jacob said. “Helm, starboard forty-five.”

  “Training pays off, sir,” Commander Farmer stated, his voice conveying the same awe that Jacob was feeling.

  Jacob nodded his assent. Admiral Hart, Commander-in-Chief of the Southwest Pacific Area, had initiated a vigorous training regimen in the aftermath of his vessels’ performance during the Dutch East Indies Campaign. His immediate subordinate, Admiral Victor Crutchley, Royal Australian Navy, had ruthlessly enforced the standards Hart had set forth. Vice Admiral Godfrey, Her Majesty's Commonwealth Navy, in turn made Crutchley seem like a kind, benevolent soul.

  Three relieved captains and people realized the man was serious, Jacob recalled. Getting most of one’s navy destroyed will do that for–

  “Sir, the Nashville is taking fire!”

  Jacob rushed out to the starboard bridge wing, looking down the Houston’s length to where the Nashville continued to lash out at a flaming vessel on the horizon. Starshells were drifting down around the light cruiser as a group of splashes was just subsiding. Another salvo arrived around the Nashville’s stern, and Jacob watched as the vessel’s turrets stopped firing. After a moment, they began to orient towards very faint, distant flashes on the far side of the Italian convoy. As two shells hit forward along her hull in a flurry of sparks, the Nashville’s own stern turrets belched a bright retort towards her assailant.

  What in the hell is out there? Jacob was still considering that question when, with a bright fireball, one of the convoy’s vessels exploded in flames.

  “Repulse is ordering all large vessels to retire to the northeast,” the talker stated.

  “Acknowledge,” Jacob repeated, then gave the necessary orders to the helmsman. As the Houston’s bow came around, Jacob was treated to a better view of the Repulse as the battlecruiser turned to follow the American heavy cruiser.

  Whatever fired at Nashville clearly thought better of that plan.

  The Arethusa’s captain, after briefly engaging the Nashville, had indeed determined that discretion was the better part of valor. Setting a course due south, the light cruiser quickly accelerated to her top speed. Remaining unsighted by the southernmost division of advancing Allied destroyers, the vessel vanished into the gloom.

  The other escort vessels were not so lucky. The Euor and Pegaso, after blundering into the salvo meant for the convoy, to torpedo impacts with heavy loss of life. Their compatriots aboard the R.M.S. Carlo Mirabello and Augustus Riboty, initially saved by virtue of being on the far side of the convoy, had been illuminated by the Nashville attack on a hapless collier and the burning Trento. That had been enough for the Garland, Griffin, and Hasty to engage. The subsequent arrival of the Porter, Phelps, and Winslow had sealed the two destroyers’ fate, the Italian crews barely getting off a handful of salvoes before both vessels’ guns were silenced. As they were pounded into helpless wreckage, first the Mirabello, then the Riboty burst into flames.

  With the escort dispatched, the destruction of the remaining merchant vessels was simply a matter of firing a shot across their bow. After pointed discussion with signal lamp, each merchantmen’s crews took to their boats as prize crews boarded each vessel from the Allied destroyers. Moving quickly and surely, these men lay scuttling charges on each Italian vessel, then returned to their destroyers. Ten minutes later, over 50,000-tons of shipping was headed for the bottom of the Mozambique Channel.

  The destroyer crews were returning to their parent vessels when the Trento’s fires reached the heavy cruiser’s forward magazines. The brief inferno that followed the fireball was swiftly quenched as the heavy cruiser plunged bow-first into the depths. As her flaming stern slipped beneath the waves in the rolling cacophony of shattering bulkheads, sizzling decks, and escaping steam, the crews of the Porter and Phelps could hear survivors crying out in the darkness. Hurried consultation with the bridge and Repulse led to the two destroyers cutting free rafts and floatation nets for their Italian counterparts, but the pair of destroyers soon joined the rest of the Task Group in heading northeast.

  “Sir, the Repulse is signaling for all vessels to set course for point Wideawake,” the talker said, his words slurring slightly with fatigue as the adrenaline began wearing off.

  That was intense and violent. I hope the flyboys do as much damage to the French when the sun comes up in a couple hours.

  “Officer of the Deck, I’m going to look at the plot,” Jacob said. “You have the con.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Lieutenant Mitchell, the current OOD, replied.

  “We didn’t quite manage to
follow your plan, Captain Morton,” Commander Farmer observed as he entered the darkened compartment a few moments later. “Still, I’d say that your theory about letting the destroyers attack first would probably have worked if the rest of the task force had been slightly further away.”

  “Well, to be fair, we weren’t facing an enemy with radar,” Jacob replied. “But yes, if I was writing the suggestion again, I’d recommend 10,000 yards’ range along the line of advance, 15,000 yards lateral separation might work better.”

  Farmer pursed his lips.

  “The risk of getting confused as to who is who increases a great deal at that range,” the RN officer pointed out. “Doesn’t do much good to get torpedoes off if that’s immediately followed by one’s own heavies blasting you to smithereens.”

  Jacob nodded at the man’s words.

  “Well that’s always the risk, isn’t it?” he observed grimly. “I do wish we’d had time to engage whomever fired upon the Nashville.”

  “I am reasonably certain we do not want to be in this channel come daylight,” Farmer said. “Those two squadrons of bombers in Mozambique could make us rather uncomfortable with the carriers busy striking Madagascar.”

  Blue One

  VB-11

  40 Miles North of Diego Suarez

  0710 Local (0010 Eastern)