Free The Whale Has Wings Vol 3 - Holding the Barrier by David Row Page B

aircraft. The second wave of SeaLances was already levelling out from their run in as Zuiho was hit for the first time, the target the second carrier Hosho. This ship was even smaller than Zuiho, and with the need to cram as many aircraft as possible into her, even more lightly built. She handled quite adroitly, the small extra amount of warning at least letting her turn in the direction of her attackers, and only one of the first wave of torpedoes hit her, almost on the bow, blowing it off and making her lurch as she slowed quickly. However the second wave had already seen her turning - it was, after all, what they were expecting, and another three torpedoes hit her, two almost amidships, the final one turning her rudder and propellers into useless twisted masses of metal. At least she managed to survive the initial hammer blows for a short time, although it was immediately obvious that she could not handle such damage. The captain ordered an officer to take the Emperor's portrait off,  then commanded the crew to abandon ship.
     
    Admiral Kondo looked at the scene from the bridge of the Kongo in horror. It what only felt like moments, both his carriers were shattered and sinking, brought down by planes that had been barely visible in the night. By now, the cruisers were shooting starshells to illuminate the area. In the light of them, and the flares still falling slowly around his ships, he could see more planes coming straight for him. These were the Spearfish flights; equipped with ASV radar, they had led the other planes into their attack, and then curved off and around to regroup and see if they would be needed to give the carriers the coup de grace. As this was obviously now unnecessary, they instead lined up for the secondary target, the battlecruisers. With the constant dropping of flares, the scene was now illuminated from all directions, and the planes used this to commit to a hammer and anvil on Kongo, silhouetted as she was against flares from a number of directions. The old battlecruiser was still agile enough to handle well, but with nine planes coming at her from two different directions, there was little she could do. Kondo looked on with almost fatalistic calmness, admiring how fast the large planes were as they dropped their lethal loads at his ship. She managed to dodge all but one torpedo from the attack to port, but the one that hit struck her near the bow, wrecking her forward and causing the pressure of water on the unbalanced, ruined steel to slew her sideways, ironically further into the second attack. This time three of the torpedoes hit her on the starboard side. These were the new MkXV fish, only carried by the Spearfish so far - armed with a Torpex warhead and heavier than the older models, the aerial torpedo did almost as much damage as a pre-war 21" submarine-launched weapon. No old battlecruiser, even rebuilt, could handle four strikes of that magnitude. The shock alone had caused the ship to lose power, and she was slowly starting to lean over to starboard as water rushed in, too fast and too much to contain. Much more stoutly built than the small carriers, she settled slowly, and a destroyer moved in to take off first the Lieutenant clutching the Emperor's portrait, then as many of the crew as it could. Kondo was not among them - according to the surviving bridge crew, he ordered them to abandon ship, staying there himself. The only consolation to the crew was that one of the Spearfish had been seen to hit the water just after it had dropped its lethal load, cartwheeling across the surface in a shower of spray before sinking short of the ship.
     
    The action was not yet quite finished. The SeaLance force still had nine planes which had not yet dropped their torpedoes, and there was still a battlecruiser sitting there as a tempting target. The three flights broke up to attack the Haruna from three different directions. This time the AA fire was more accurate, and two of the torpedo planes