Chapter 330
The sirens wailed all over the Japanese Air/Naval base that lay near the city of Bengkulu on the southern coast of Sumatra. Not that the airbase had much to destroy nor that there were any ships of significance left. The Island was cut off from supply for months now and the Japanese had run out of almost everything.
Unfortunately for the two Canadian Aircraft Carriers small arms and AA-ammunition was not among those things. The natives might be starving, the men might be starving but they would fight. Still, pounding the base served a purpose for it softened up the defences of eastern Sumatra further in preparation for the impending invasion by three Allied Divisions in two weeks time. The Japanese had been cut off from supplies for the most part for months now. In the east the Allies enjoyed total control of sea and air, cruising to and fro at will between Java and Singapore in spite of the best efforts of the increasingly embattled Japanese Squadrons on Borneo, in the west British light Naval Forces out of Singapore and Rangoon made running supplies from occupied Malaya to Sumatra very hazardous at best.
Battlegroup Able-Seven would be cruising back and forth off the southern coast for as long as stores and ammunition lasted, hopefully until after the Army was landed. It would be only Dutch Divisions, not so much for political reasons (though that was a factor) but more because the Australians massed their troops to attack Borneo a week later and the British theirs for the assault on Malaya the same day.
It was hoped that the Allies would be able to evict the Japanese from the Dutch East Indies or at least contain them this summer before the next rainy season so that there could be a three-pronged attack on Japanese-occupied South-East Asia, British and Commonwealth Forces through Burma and Malaya with French, Canadian and British Marines into French Indochina.
But to facilitate this Sumatra at the very least needed to be taken and it was because of this that the British Pacific Fleet was raiding the coastal areas with the RIAF and RAF Lancaster Squadrons bombing the rest of it.
Canadian Barracuda taking off from HMCS Bonaventure
For Bonaventure this was a babtism of fire that exposed the ship and the men to less risk than a full fleet battle and Rear Admiral Shepard was glad for he knew that it would take months to rebuild the Canadian training system that had been savaged to get the Carrier out here this fast. No replacements for a while.
He was standing on the Battlebridge watching the main plot when the telephone rang.
On the other end Captain Adrian Jackson, Commanding Officer of Vimy Ridge and Shepard's Flag Captain.
“Sir, Athabaskan reports ten plus bogeys coming in from 345.”
Jackson had beat the air plotters aboard Vimy Ridge by scant seconds.
“Sir, the SAPs are moving and I have launched the Alert aircraft.”
“Keep me posted, Captain.”
“Aye aye, Sir.”
The Carrier turned into the wind and overhead the eight Seafires of No.101 Squadron on five-minute alert were launched to join their compatriots. Shepard didn't have to see Bonaventure to know she was acting similarly. All the ships of the group were at Action Stations since this morning so if these contacts really did want to attack them they would find the Canadian ships prepared.
It were indeed Japanese aircraft. The last operational Japanese fighters and bombers on the Island, with just enough fuel to make a one-way trip to the Canadian Battlegroup one way or another.
The tactics of the so-called Divine Wind had not yet been formalized into the Special Attack Squadrons that would start to plague Allied shipping eventually but their mission was the same. It had taken almost two weeks to scrape together enough fuel to do this much and the pilots had been made aware that they would enter the afterlife as Warriors worthy of the Emperor. Coming at them were twenty Seafires, the eight alert fighters from each of the two Carriers.
The Japanese group consisted of four Zeroes and six Nells. They were loaded down with bombs that compensated for the missing fuel and they raced in at high altitude.
They did have altitude on the Canadians but the Seafires had the speed advantage and the advantage of being directed by several ship-mounted RDF sets. Athabaskan was merely the closest so for the moment she had the best intercept vector.
The Seafires tore into the Japanese formation, shooting down all but two of the fighters and two of the bombers. The remaining Japanese split apart and each raced for Able-Seven at best speed.
Five Japanese aircraft remained but the two fighters managed to slip through the furball as the Fighter Pilots concentrated on the easier targets of the bombers.
The two Zeroes were only re-acquired when they were almost atop the formation. They expertly dodged the anti-aircraft fire and all three homed in on Bonaventure. The Seafires impotently watched as they stayed out of the AA-fire.
When they realized that something was wrong they followed in anyway but it was far too late.
The first plane slammed into the forward flight deck and spattered burning fuel everywhere, leading to minor damage to the forward elevator. The second one clipped the fuselage and swept a damaged Barracuda along with it's crew and maintenance personnel from the deck before crashing into the sea without exploding. The third and last plane slammed into the centre of the flight deck that, while luckily empty, was still engulfed in a major fire.
HMCS Bonaventure afire.[1]
What saved the Carrier from significant damage was her flight deck. While not as heavily armoured as the one on HMS Ark Royal or other earlier British Carriers the Implacables still had several inches of battlesteel deck armour so that her Captain never even had to consider his ship in serious danger. There was some cratering in the flight deck and of course a great deal of wreckage, but HMCS Bonaventure would be able to operate aircraft again within three hours where any American Carrier might have been in serious peril of sinking.[2]
For the loss of sixteen crewmembers of Bonaventure and another twelve pilots and aircrew through the attacks of the last few days the Battlegroup had annihilated what remained of Japanese airpower on Sumatra (albeit accidentally), destroyed a considerable part of the dwindling supplies in Eastern Sumatra where the Dutch would land soon and had proven to the world that the Royal Canadian Navy could operate on it's own.
But the mission was not over as the group would cruise up and down Sumatra for another three weeks and during that time Japanese Soldiers would learn to fear the Coastal roads as the planes with the blue-on-blue Maple Leaf seemed to be everywhere.
Canadian Barracudas on the prowl
Able-Seven wasn't the only Carrier Battle Group in action. Illustrious and Formidable, Melbourne and Implacable were also conducting operations against Sumatra, two Squadrons of Mosquitoes and one of Beaufighters was operating from Singapore while the rest of the British Pacific Fleet, the Netherlands East Indies Navy and the Marine National Far East Squadron, supported by the Air Forces softened up Japanese Defences elsewhere along the coast of Sumatra. The landing sites had been selected long before the offensive on Java had started but efforts to throw the enemy off the scent by feinting at fake landing places was by now standard procedure for the Allied powers.
Japanese intelligence didn't so much take the bait as totally ignore anything what was going on in Sumatra. Tokyo was concentrating on the mainland and their increasingly successful Submarine campaign against American bases in the central Pacific. It was there that the Japanese Navy sought redemption for the massive loss of face after the destruction of the Yamato at the hand of British Carrier Aircraft.
The Japanese had enjoyed an intelligence coup in this area as well. In January 1943 an American troop ship had become separated from the rest of a supply convoy towards Midway and the ship had been torpedoed by RO-64 two days later. No survivours had been rescued but the Japanese had captured several documents that had corroborated Intelligence gathered by the Signals Department and through the interrogation of captured enemy soldiers.
American Naval Forces were strong, but the fleet train and their escort forces weren't. One of the reasons they had been moving so slowly in 1942 and 1943 had been their inability to deploy major naval forces at long distances for long times.
Now the Japanese 6th Fleet stood poised to hinder the American advance across the Pacific even more.
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Comments, questions, rotten tomatoes?
Up next: What has Igor Sikorsky been up to? And why is the British Army suddenly interested in him?
[1] Yes I know it's HMS Victorious and that she's an Illustrious. Problem is, there aren't many pictures of later British CVs on fire.
[2] Alas, as per HMS Formidable, Bonaventure suffers structural damage that would make rebuilding her after the war (angled deck etc) uneconomical even for the British. But fear not, for as long as there is Canada, there will be Canadian Carriers.