Chapter 862: Luck

“Bridge! Bridge! This is the forward lookout, no sign of American ships!” a Japanese naval rating in the crow’s nest of the mast called out, lowering his binoculars. The waters around the Marshall Islands were always warm as spring, and the sea breeze felt comfortable on his face.

While the U.S. Navy was busy learning from the advanced combat experience of the German Navy, installing high-tech gadgets like radar on their cheap, workhorse destroyers, the Japanese Navy enjoyed no such luxury. The Japanese “electric probes”—their term for radar—were the size of a truck, barely able to be mounted on a heavy cruiser. A smaller warship like a destroyer had no hope of being so fortunate.

Moreover, this radar was not very effective and was incredibly expensive. Japan had only managed to produce a few working sets in total, all of which had been reserved for their battleships and new aircraft carriers. There were none to spare for small ships like destroyers.

And so, while German destroyers were already enjoying color radar screens, and the U.S. Navy was beginning to replace human lookouts with radar, the sailors of the Japanese Navy could only stand high on their masts, scanning the vast ocean with binoculars.

On the destroyer’s bridge, a Commander, the ship’s captain, lowered his own binoculars and gave the order to his first officer for a slight course correction. Ever since the U.S. Navy had seized the strategic initiative, the days for the Japanese Navy had gone from bad to worse.

The Kongō-class battlecruisers had been recalled to the home islands for radar refits, robbing the Combined Fleet of three capital ships for no good reason. Due to a shortage of naval aviators, the carriers Sōryū and Hiryū of the Second Carrier Division had been forced to withdraw to Taiwan to reform. The current Combined Fleet could not even muster half of its peak strength.

Marshal Yamamoto Isoroku had gone from aggressively sitting watch over the Marshall Islands, constantly seeking a decisive battle with the U.S. Navy, to being bottled up, struggling just to avoid a confrontation. He himself didn’t know what had happened to make the situation collapse so quickly.

“Maintain alert! The American fleet has been increasingly active in these waters. We must be cautious!” This destroyer captain was also the commander of a destroyer division. He was in charge of three destroyers patrolling this sea area, to prevent the U.S. Navy from getting too close to the Combined Fleet’s anchorage in the Marshalls.

As he said, the U.S. Navy had indeed been frequently provocative of late. Because the balance of power between the U.S. and Japan was now approaching parity, Nimitz, Spruance, and the fierce Admiral Halsey were no slouches. They had identified the Japanese Navy’s vulnerability during its transition period and had decisively changed their strategy from turtling to preparing to seize a better position whenever possible.

The war in Europe was no longer looking optimistic for the American high command. The situation in the Middle East was on the verge of collapse. Attacked from both flanks by Turkey and Egypt, the American forces in the Middle East were in a dire state. Even with Britain’s last remaining assets, it was not enough to deal with Rommel’s relentless pressure.

And the aid to the Soviet Union had not produced the expected results either. On the German-Soviet front, the Soviets were losing city after city, suffering one defeat after another, causing the American high command to have some reservations about Roosevelt’s war strategy. It was precisely because the United States was feeling somewhat powerless on the German front that the Roosevelt administration hoped to regain its lost confidence in the Pacific theater.

This was also the latest strategy put forth by the United States—”Pacific First, Europe Second.” The central idea of this strategy was to first eliminate Japan, the real threat to the United States, and then to turn back and deal with the gains and losses on the European and Middle Eastern fronts.

The emergence of such a strategy showed that the German army had basically achieved its strategic objectives: to use a series of victories to dissuade the United States from interfering in Europe and the Middle East, forcing the U.S. military to avoid a decisive battle with the German army in an unfavorable region.

However, in fact, the United States had not completely given up on interfering in the German-Soviet war. Calculated from the data, the United States was at this moment providing the Soviet Union with three times the strategic materials it had at the beginning of the war, including more tank targeting systems, more steel raw materials, and more advanced machine tool equipment. Many American engineers had even gone to the Soviet Far East to help train Soviet technical workers.

In the Far East, the reason the Soviet army had dared to transfer 30 divisions to the west was also because the United States had provided a full 20 divisions’ worth of arms and ammunition, helping the Soviet Union to form 20 new American-equipped divisions in the Far East. Although these units were all new recruits and their combat effectiveness was not reliable, they had indeed helped the Soviet Union solve the problem of insufficient equipment.

But one thing was absolutely beyond doubt: the United States had shifted its strategic focus to the Pacific, and this shift had indeed brought rich rewards. The U.S. military had retaken the initiative in the Pacific theater, and a series of victories had given Roosevelt and the group behind him a chance to breathe. At least on the surface, America’s war prospects were looking bright.

“Signal the other two destroyers! Tell them we are adjusting course and to follow our lead,” the destroyer captain added another order. Suddenly, for some reason, his heart began to feel inexplicably agitated, making his whole person feel uncomfortable.

He turned his head, looked at the two destroyers sailing on his flank in the distance, and then said to his deputy, “I don’t know what Marshal Yamamoto’s purpose is in having us patrol this sea area so frequently. Without carrier aircraft and radar, it’s impossible for us to spot the Americans first.”

As if to confirm his complaint, or as if to explain his sudden agitation, the telephone connected to the lookout on the mast suddenly rang shrilly. The first officer walked over and picked it up. The Japanese lookout screamed a frantic warning, “Straight ahead! Straight ahead! Enemy warship! Very fast! Closing on us!”

“What? What’s going on?” the Japanese captain demanded with a frown.

His first officer quickly reported what was happening. “Commander! American naval warship sighted! Specific model cannot be determined! Please give the order for battle, sound the general quarters alarm.”

Because the destroyers of the Japanese Navy were very well trained, and as a naval power, Japan had always attached great importance to destroyer tactics, and the oxygen torpedoes developed by the Japanese Navy were very advanced weapons in World War II, the Japanese Navy had never suffered a major loss in one-on-one combat with American destroyers.

In several small-scale clashes, the Japanese destroyers had always won against the odds, sinking a number of American destroyers. Although they had also suffered heavy losses, they had never been defeated. This was one of the reasons why Yamamoto Isoroku had dared to send his destroyers out on reconnaissance.

However, the speed at which the U.S. Navy was building destroyers was much faster than Japan’s. So even if the Japanese Navy had won in the destroyer duels, they could not afford such a huge rate of attrition. This was one of the major reasons for Yamamoto Isoroku’s frustration.

“Sound the general quarters! Fleet, adjust speed! Close the distance!” As the commander of this reconnaissance fleet, the Commander immediately gave the order for battle. There was no need for him to retreat. In such a contact, it was usually the American warship that retreated first, or was defeated. As a naval commander of the Great Japanese Imperial Army, he still had the confidence that he could defeat his American counterparts.

As time passed, the U.S. Navy showed no intention of avoiding a fight this time. The two sides headed towards each other, and the distance was rapidly closing. At this moment, the Japanese Navy’s lookouts discovered a problem, and he sent back a very important piece of intelligence: “Report to the bridge! The American warship is large, it should be a large cruiser or a heavy cruiser! Not a destroyer!”

This was worth careful consideration. Although the Japanese Navy was confident in a duel between destroyers, the Commander himself felt that he lacked the certainty of victory if he were to use a destroyer to fight a cruiser. What’s more, the opponent was not just one cruiser, but a cruiser with several destroyers.

“Signal the other two destroyers. Tell them to adjust course 30 degrees to port and prepare for gunnery and torpedo launch!” After much deliberation, the Commander decided to be prudent. While giving the combat order, he also gave an order to report to the Combined Fleet. “Send a telegram to the main fleet! Tell them we have spotted an American cruiser fleet and are preparing to engage! Have them respond in time and send reinforcements!”

“Hai!” The first officer nodded at attention and hurried to carry out these tasks. Just as this first officer was going to carry out the captain’s orders, a large-caliber shell suddenly landed in the sea near the destroyer’s flank, throwing up a huge column of water. The captain was stunned by the scene before him. He had no idea why the Americans would open fire from a distance of fifteen kilometers, and with such accuracy.

“Bakayaro! Do these American bastards’ shells have eyes?” the Commander cursed, his face pale as he looked at the column of water from the explosion on his flank. What he didn’t know was that the American Navy opposite was also stunned by the miraculous shot they had just fired. They were cheering wildly, preparing to fire their even more miraculous second shot.

BOOM! With a loud roar, the 203mm main guns of the American cruiser, on their second shot, accurately hit this Japanese destroyer. The shell struck the forward gun turret, and in an instant, had wiped out the forward turret and more than half of the Japanese crew on the bridge.

“Calling Yukikaze! Calling Yukikaze! We’ve been hit! Captain is dead! Requesting assistance!” On the collapsed bridge, the first officer, his face covered in blood, cried out.

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