The Sun Also Rises
3. The Pacific Adventures of the Royal Navy
July - October 1942
The decisions that led the Royal Navy to the deployment of the Eastern Fleet--especially when the Home Islands were under such a threat as the Kriegsmarine--are largely lost to history. The burning of almost all documents during the darkest hours of the first successful invasion of the British Isles since the First Glorious Revolution of 1688 placed a large damper on subsequent academic research, but broad conclusions can be drawn.
With the accession of Japan into the war, suddenly altering the nature of the war from being a strictly European conflict into a global one, the Royal Navy faced a dilemma. Without the resources being brought in on her merchant marine, and without the protection to stop the predations of the Imperial Japanese Navy on the British holdings abroad--and especially preventing access as much as possible to the Indian subcontinent, Australia and New Zealand--the British empire would rapidly crumble, and the resistance to any threats would cease. Further surface action against the Kriegsmarine were proving too costly, the great bulwark once expected of the Royal Navy in any case was virtually annihilated. The decision was to rely on the Royal Air Force and the Army to confront any attempt on the Home Islands, but what remained of the Royal Navy was needed abroad to deter or defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy. Indications that the Kriegsmarine or the Abwehr had broken British codes sent Whitehall into a zealous demand for secrecy, with official orders only being transmitted by courier, handwritten in Welsh or Gaelic as an added layer of security. Preparations could not be hidden from the reconnaissance of the Wehrmacht, but between the false radio traffic indicating a sailing to remote bases in the Americas or Africa and a lack of image intelligence, the German intelligence community either drew the wrong conclusion about the Royal Navy’s intentions, lost interest in the Royal Navy while planning other operations, or knew about the planned deployment and failed to alert their nominal allies.
To this end, the massive task force assembled consisted of the aircraft carriers
Ark Royal,
Courageous and
Hermes; the battleships and battlecruiser
King George V, Hood, Malaya, Ramilies and
Resolution; the cruisers
Orion, Galathea, Cardiff, Calypso, Curlew, and
Danae; 34 of the
Daring- (17 flotillas), 16 A- (4 flotillas), and 24 V-class (6 flotillas) destroyers rounded out the escorts. Despite the presence of two fleet carriers and a light carrier, only three air groups could be assembled for the voyage out of the five total which the FAA could muster, though given the small size of
Hermes, this was quite possibly the limit of aircraft that could be carried. The Eastern Fleet was trailed by six flotillas of transports and ten amphibious landing craft groups which were conducting a sealift of the 1st and 5th Royal Marine divisions to bolster the defenses of Australia. By 25 July, the force had made it across the Atlantic; by 5 August the forces were heading for New Britain to base out of Rabaul. The massive airlift of the 1 Airborne division to Singapore had been routed through Rabaul, and remnants of the garrison of Rabaul a few days prior led to several additional members as the 1AB flew on.
While those forces were en route, the Imperial Japanese Navy was exerting as much effort into isolating their target islands from interference in the landings which were occurring. In July and early August, the entire Royal Australian Navy was smashed in several engagements, largely around New Ireland and New Britain. Locations such as Nabuto Bay, Indispensable Strait, Ringdove Passage and Cape Saint George all featured heavily as the Australians tried in vain to support their few ground forces in the area. Their efforts were invalidated by Task Force Hibiscus, which was centered on the battleships
Nagato and
Mutsu, light carrier
Zuiho, heavy cruiser
Nachi, and 20
Fubuki-class destroyers. Task Force Chrysanthemum was also in the area centered on the carriers
Soryu,
Akagi, and
Kaga; escorted by the heavy cruisers
Haguro,
Ashigara, and
Atago; light cruisers
Natori, Kinu, Yuru, Abukama, Mogami, and
Mikuma as well as four
Kagero-class destroyers of 25 Destroyer Squadron.
This was not the only region seeing action; British vessels which had not been recalled from the Indo-Pacific at the start of the war were being caught up in the Singapore Straits as well. Seven separate engagements in the July to August timeframe saw continued use of Task Force Orchid (battleships
Ise, Hyuga, Fuso, Yamashiro, light cruisers
Yahagi, Hirado, Naka, Kitikami, 18 DESRON) to engage destroyers and merchants in the area. Losses to the Royal Navy during that time included the
Columbo and
Coventry, Destroyer Groups 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60, and 62, and three groups worth of merchantmen and four groups worth of landing craft.
Those areas were merely sideshows, of course. On 8 August, Task Force Hibiscus believed that it was chasing down a report of a small group of destroyers in the area of New Hanover which had been relayed by their aviation assets. The task force commander, Rear Admiral Nobutake Kondo, was operating without the benefit of radar, as the battleships had not had time to complete the refit to bring them up to the Type 32 standard and
Nachi’s radar was malfunctioning. The lack of intelligence about the arriving Eastern Fleet had caught Kondo in a bind: his forces were dispersed to blockade and support the landings of a division in New Britain, not confront a massive enemy carrier task force. Thus, when the aircraft of
Ark Royal appeared overhead, the Japanese were not prepared. Furthermore, the group did not have the benefit of the long combat experience enjoyed by the
Ark Royal’s aircrews, which forced the group to try and recover to a formation that could concentrate more of their anti-aircraft fire. This order and the air attacks had most of the fleet looking up, and thus when the five battleships and battlecruiser opened fire, the British enjoyed rapid successes scoring hits on most of the destroyers of the 11 and 14 Squadrons as well as some of the transports attempting to bring the Special Naval Landing Force division ashore. Unable to retreat fast enough to the relative safety behind the guns of the battleships, an entire Japanese SNLF division drowned when their vessels were sunk by the combined efforts of the battleships and aircraft of the Eastern Fleet or were killed in their action ashore.
Mutsu was the first Japanese battleship able to respond to the vicinity joined by
Nachi, scoring a few hits on Malaya and forcing her to withdraw with her aft turrets out of action, but
Ramilies and
Hood took the pair under fire and within two hours had converted the Japanese battleship into a burning wreck;
Nachi took a hit on her torpedo armament from
Hood which caused the cruiser to disappear in a massive explosion. Without sufficient escorts remaining, Kondo was in a four-on-two battleship knife fight at only 10,000 yards, and it cost him the battleship
Mutsu.
A nearby task force, Task Force Sepik Blue--commanded by Admiral Ryozo Nakamura and centered on the battlecruisers
Kongo and
Haruna, leading the light carrier
Hosho, and a motley collection of four
Fubuki IIIs (DESRON 15), three
Hatsuharu-class (DESRON 16) and five
Shiratsuyu-class (DESRON 19) destroyers--responded to the Kondo’s call for assistance. While close, the force managed to arrive with enough time to assist in covering the retreat of what remained of Task Force Hibiscus. Their path took them past the retreating
Malaya, which was sunk by gunfire from
Kongo, but not before significant damage was inflicted upon
Haruna among other vessels. The sudden appearance of such a large Royal Navy task force caused serious consternation amongst the leadership of the IJN, especially with the much-maligned intelligence sections. Orders flew out of Tokyo demanding that the long-range patrol bombers based from Truk and Eniwetok conduct bombing raids on any suspected locations supporting the Eastern Fleet. Japan ran their carrier aircraft ragged in a vain attempt to whittle down the British, which led to the sinking of
Hood on 12 August off the coast of Put put. The IJN, getting desperate with the upset plans about how they would have handled the American navy, immediately ordered Task Force Chrysanthemum to the area.
With nearly two hundred aircraft between them, this force should have been able to do significant damage to the Eastern Fleet. Bad weather hampered their operations, and at one point, a task group composed of the two heavy and four of the light cruisers attempted what should have been a specialty of the IJN: a night torpedo attack. Failing to recognize that there might have been comparable forces arrayed against them, and not being aware of how effective the British radar was aboard
King George V, the cruisers were bracketed within three quick salvoes. Much like their sister ship
Nachi, hits amidships near the torpedoes caused them to detonate and broke the ships in half, taking their crews with them to the bottom. As TF Chrysanthemum withdrew, Task Force Camellia, centered on the fleet carriers
Ryujo,
Shinano,
Amagi, and
Hiryu, light cruisers
Kumano and
Suzuya, as well as fourteen
Kagero-class destroyers in three squadrons, began their own attacks and alternating with TF Chrysanthemum, but a combination of bad weather and excellent operational moves by the Eastern Fleet kept the British from taking much in the way of damage.
By mid-August, Admiral Yamamoto was furious. His best carriers had been unable to do anything like worthwhile damage, and despite what seemed like the carrier air groups of the British having been largely slaughtered, enough remained in reconnaissance to keep them from tapdancing into any serious scraps. With their premier battleships having been smashed and their refurbished battlecruisers taking damage, Task Force Orchid was ordered to the area. Admiral Tanaka, cognizant that other admirals had tried and failed to smash the enemy fleet, went a different route: trying to lure the enemy into a trap. Using the intelligence of the Royal Navy’s underway replenishment cycle, Tanaka managed to place his ancient battleships roughly parallel with the resupply vessels. The three remaining British battleships,
King George V,
Ramilies, and
Resolution formed up and began connecting to their oilers at dawn. Silhouetted against the rising sun, they were perfect targets for the flashes that stabbed out, and the three British ships were assaulted by the forty-eight 14” guns aboard the super-dreadnaughts. With shots falling all around them, the British were lucky that they were able to extricate themselves from their support vessels, but the delay cost them.
Hyuga managed to land a near-perfect salvo just short of
Resolution which went through the bulge and just under the belt armor.
Resolution heeled over and did not recover, sinking sideways. Shifting her fire,
Hyuga found the range on
King George V and when combined with her sister
Ise, the effect of twenty four guns on one vessel rapidly reduced the British vessel to a wreck.
Ramilies might have escaped, but a sudden engineering casualty from such a workload as having cruised to the far side of the planet, far from home and proper maintenance facilities, caused her to shear away.
Ramilies was quickly taken under fire, but resolutely remained afloat, leading to the
coup de grace being delivered from the light cruiser
Kitikami by way of torpedoes.
The Imperial Japanese Navy was by this time almost completely exhausted. Recalled to Japan, the forces were realigned. At least one entire carrier air group had been demolished, and while the battleships and battlecruiser had been dealt with, and a few destroyers and submarines sunk here and there, by and large the Eastern Fleet remained intact through mid-October. Yamamoto had conducted repeated amphibious attacks to drive the Eastern Fleet out of the Pacific, stepping island to island to deprive the Royal Navy of places to hide. Another clash was imminent. The Eastern Fleet had withdrawn to Fiji, and the FAA had ceased to exist as a fighting force entirely[*]. Recognizing the dire straits that the Eastern Fleet found itself in, Admiral Jarvis began to plan how to extract the bulk of his forces from the theatre. Using a tactic employed by his compatriots against the Germans, Jarvis set a lure: the HMS
Courageous and HMS
Orion would remain in the area and generate the fleet’s radio traffic, while small boats lashed together would form the “fleet” for the inevitable Japanese reconnaissance efforts. It worked: the bulk of what remained of the Eastern Fleet (
Ark Royal,
Hermes,
Danae,
Galathea,
Calypso,
Curlew, 22 destroyer groups, and 3 transport groups) was able to escape, but
Courageous would be sunk by aircraft from
Kaga and
Orion was credited to
Akagi.
Thus ended what remained of the Royal Navy in the Pacific. A gamble--a reckless one at that--which had flashes of brilliance and the only forces which managed to sink enemy capital ships through much of the first part of the war. The ground war continued through this period, but at this point, Australia and New Zealand were on their own.
*****
[*] - the British were out of CAGs.
Author's Note: Unfortunately, I guess because of the fact that I'm using not-my-normal computer, I cannot upload images to Imgur which means my normal use of images is...
nonexistent. I intend to correct this as soon as possible, but I figured I could at least get the update out there... and I apologize for the wall of text but I was trying to make sure that my paragraphs had some heft to them.
Both add additional elements which can be added to a division, some of which are battalion size - HPP does this as well, though not nearly as extensively. It's neat, but a far cry from being able to construct every sub-divisional unit out of individual battalions - for example, the difference between a British INF brigade (3x INF battalions) and a USA INF regiment (3x INF battalions plus multiple support companies) could be modeled, offering a more interesting division-building experience than the everlasting 2x/3x INF debate that vanilla HoI3 offers.
I do enjoy it, and wish that I could acquire the system for my own AAR mods.
(BICE also suffers, my opinion, from "choose which historically-accurate element you don't want in your division!" syndrome, although this is a better problem to have than Paradox's "choose only one!" approach)
I do not mind "wishing" away certain things (Bicycle infantry?
No need, kind sir...) but do wish that units were a bit more modular with regards to things like transport (though HPP and BICE as far as I'm concerned to a fairly good job representing this, I'd prefer it not to require new units).
I do think HoI4 has a battalion-based division builder, but we, ah, don't talk about that flaming garbage scow of disaster "game' here...
Quite.
Now that is a nifty piece of customisation work. You can outfit and make up a battalion however you want, no matter how stupid. Heavy towed artillery and bicycle infantry all the way.
I wonder if there was ever a study of the various bicycle infantry units' effectiveness in combat in the getting-to/away or what have you. I sincerely doubt that bicycles (especially of the time) were at all capable of getting the average joes into the fight faster or anything.
I've already done that one on Pip's. Twice. TTL and OTL.
Well, I've both beaten you to the punch this time,
and graciously allowed for future discussion material on the matter!
It seemed the gentlemanly thing to do.
Again I thank you, though as we've seen, I was dangerously close to having something ready for the top of the page.
