Ex-German battleship SMS KRONPRINZ WILHELM (renamed MARNE in French Navy service)
CHAPTER 7 – NAVAL POWER
08:05 (Japan Time)
Friday, July 29, 1932
Small fishing village on the west coast of the island of Ko-Jima
290 kilometers south of Tokyo
“MOTHER! MOTHER! COME AND SEE!’’
The Japanese woman in her thirties, who had been busy feeding the chickens her family kept in cages at the back of their small wooden house, looked up at her six year-old son, who was running towards her.
“What is it, Hiroki?’’
“Big ships, lots of them! They just arrived!’’
The woman couldn’t help feel some apprehension at once on hearing that: anything out of the ordinary in and around their small fishing village could be a sign of possible bad news. Putting down her basket of feed grains, she followed her son, walking around her house and going to the side facing the sea. There, she had to slow down and stop, struck by what she could now see: over a dozen large gray ships were effectively visible mere kilometers off the coastal village. In comparison to them, the few fishing boats which were at sea and catching fish looked minuscule.
“By the Kamis! There is a whole fleet of them!’’
“Are they Japanese ships, Mother?’’ asked little Hiroki.
“Uh, I don’t know: I know nothing about ships. They must be Japanese warships, since they are this close to the mainland.’’
08:19 (Japan Time)
CIC of the guided missile battleship ARDENNE (ex-SMS KÖNIG)
Anchored off the island of Ko-Jima (290 kilometers south of Tokyo)
“ We are firmly anchored in place off Ko-Jima and have established with the best precision possible our present position, using the northern tip of the island as a visual point of reference, Admiral.’’
“Good! Put our verified position in the fire control calculator and calculate the fire solution for our missiles. Make sure that we do this with the utmost exactitude: the precision of our shooting will depend on it. In the meantime, I will climb back up to the bridge.’’
“Understood, Admiral!’’
Leaving his gunnery officer to take care of the firing calculations in the CIC, Rear Admiral Gensoul used the elevator cage linking the CIC with the bridge to go up. In view of his age, he was most grateful for the fact that, when the ship had gone through an extensive overhaul and modernization program at the Kruger Marine Shipyards near Marseilles, someone had thought about adding an elevator cage to the ageing ex-German battleship, thus saving him today from having to climb up a total of five flights of stairs. However, that refit program had done a lot more than just add an elevator cage. The old, coal-fired boilers and steam turbines had been completely removed, along with the middle ‘Q’ main gun turret, opening for other uses an enormous volume of internal space amidships. Part of that volume had been used to install six ultra-modern Kruger Marine geared gas turbines, which had then been connected to the three propeller shafts. Apart from taking less than a third of the volume of the original propulsion machinery, the new gas turbines delivered nearly three times as much power, saved thousands of tons in weight and also made it possible to switch to liquid distillate fuel, which was a much more efficient fuel than coal and was a lot easier to store and move around the ship. All that, along with the rebuilding and slight elongation of the bow, which now included a bulbous bow under the waterline, had boosted the top speed of the battleship from 21 knots to 31 knots. Even better, all that extra space had made possible to add larger fuel compartments, boosting the cruising range from 8,000 to 12,000 nautical miles. As for the space previously taken amidships by the ‘Q’ turret, with its two 305mm main guns and its thick armored barbette, it had been used to house in a heavily armored box a total of a hundred vertical launch silos, sixty for heavy surface-to-surface missiles and forty for medium surface-to-air missiles, enough to more than compensate for the loss of the two 305mm guns, of which four twin turrets were still installed on the ship. The installation of those missile silos had of course been accompanied by a complete rebuilding of the ship’s superstructure and the addition of numerous radars and other modern electronic systems to control and guide those missiles. After all that had been done, some of the space saved by the change in machinery still remained, which had then been used to greatly enlarge and improve crew accommodations, something that had done a great deal to improve crew morale. Finally, the anti-aircraft gun armament had been completely revised and greatly reinforced, while space had been found for a landing platform and a hangar for two SUPER COLIBRI VTOL aircraft. With the two sister ships of the ex-KÖNIG and the four ex-German battlecruisers in French service since 1915 having received a similar modernization and rebuilding program, like in the case of seven French-built battleships, the French Navy now possessed a battle fleet second to none in the World. Today, its awesome firepower was about to be unleashed for the first time, against Japan.
08:19 (Japan Time)
Fishing village on the west coast of the island of Ko-Jima
Keiko, Hiroki’s mother, had returned to feeding her chicken after looking at the big ships for a moment. Since her house was between her and the ocean, she jumped up in surprise when a loud, thunderous noise rolled in from the sea. That noise, instead of resonating for only a few seconds, continued on, shaking the wooden huts and houses of the village. Running around her house, Keiko arrived in view of the sea in time to see something that left her mouth open ajar in shock: rising fast and in quick succession from the ships moored offshore were dozens of large, pencil-like objects trailing long plumes of flames and smoke. Accelerating upwards at the vertical for the first couple of seconds, the objects then lowered their trajectory to fly northward, all apparently heading in the same direction. Keiko, like the other inhabitants of the village, could only stand and watch for the four minutes during which the ships fired off 270 MJOLNIR4 heavy surface-to-surface ballistic missiles. Only at the end did Keiko realized that the objects were heading directly towards Japan. Her heart filling with dread, she looked at the ships, now partially covered by a large cloud of drifting smoke, with a mix of anger and fear: anger at an enemy that would come this close to Japan; fear at the sight of the titanic amount of firepower just demonstrated by that enemy.
08:27 (Japan Time)
Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Headquarters
Ichigaya Heights, Shinjuku District
Tokyo, Japan
Field Marshal Prince Kan’in Kotohito, Chief of Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army, threw a jaundiced look at the colonel who had just given him his first briefing of the day.
“That’s it? Our whole invasion fleet, along with the Fifth Infantry Division, vanished around Formosa a week ago and the only thing that we know is that it was attacked by French planes? Have we at the least sent some reconnaissance aircraft to find out what happened to our fleet?’’
The graying colonel from the Operations Department apologetically bowed to Kotohito while answering him, watched by the other staff officers assembled with the Prince in the main briefing room of the headquarters.
“We did, Your Highness! A total of nine reconnaissance planes were sent, but only one returned…full of holes. The pilot of that plane said that a French fighter plane of the SUPER FRELON type attacked him while he was exploring the waters of the Formosa Strait. Before he was attacked, he had time to spot a large field of debris and floating oil on the surface of the ocean.’’
“And do we know where that French plane came from? Was it using Hong Kong as its base?’’
“We don’t know, Your Highness. However, we know that the SUPER FRELON does not have the range needed to fly from Indochina and get to the point where our reconnaissance plane was intercepted. Our Intelligence Department thinks that the French plane possibly came from the aviation cruiser REDOUTABLE, which is known to be part of France’s Indochina Naval Squadron.’’
“So, French warships may be roaming around Formosa, or possibly even nearer to us. What does the Navy intend to do now, Colonel?’’
“Uh, to be frank, Your Highness, I am not sure that the Navy itself knows what it will do next. When I last visited the Navy Headquarters, the staff there was in a near state of shock after losing their battleship and carrier forces.’’
“Hum, maybe I should go there and boot the ass of Prince Fushimi, to wake him up. However, whatever the Navy decides to do, we will certainly not stay idle. I want to make the French pay for this. How many chemical bombs filled with mustard gas5 do we have in storage that our bombers could drop on Hanoi?’’
“I would have to check on that, Your Highness, but I am certain that we have at least 400 tons of mustard bombs in stock.’’
“Good! After this briefing is over, I want our bomber force to prepare a chemical strike mission on Hanoi, using our stocks of mustard gas. I doubt that the French will be expecting that. As well, contact our China Army headquarters and tell them to get rid of the French hostages held by us in Shanghai and Nanjing.’’
“HAY!’’ Replied the colonel while bowing again to Kotohito. “Do you wish that to be made publicly, as an object lesson to the French, or discreetly, Your Highness?’’
Kotohito only thought about his answer briefly before speaking.
“Make it a public mass execution: we don’t care one bit about the sensibilities of those Gaijins6 around the World who may be offended by this. None of them had the guts to even declare their support to France up to now. Also, since we hold some American and British citizens, that may reinforce our message…’’
BAOUM
A powerful blast wave suddenly blew in all the windows of the briefing room, projecting razor-sharp shards of glass around the room and shredding its occupants to pieces, on top of having the pressure wave make them fly off their feet, to crash violently against the wall opposite the windows. Having instinctively turned away from the windows as his first reaction to the blast, Prince Kotohito avoided being disfigured by flying glass shards but instead had dozens of shards stab his back and neck before crashing face-first against the nearest wall. He was barely conscious and in great pain when the second of the thirty MJOLNIR heavy missiles aimed at the Army General Staff Headquarters made a direct hit on the building housing the headquarters. Its 1,500 kilo Metallex-filled concrete-piercing warhead, which had the equivalent in explosive power to 2,640 kilos of TNT, detonated after a short delay, long enough for the warhead, diving at a speed of 4,000 kilometers per hour, to dig its way to the basement levels before exploding. Over half of the large headquarters building was instantly destroyed, its debris flying high in the air before falling in a deadly rain around the Shinjuku District, where the building was located. The rest of the headquarters was gutted by the blast wave, with all of its occupants killed at once.
However, that was only the start of four minutes of sheer terror and destruction for the inhabitants of Tokyo as the 270 MJOLNIR heavy bombardment missiles fired by the French First Strike Fleet rained down on six distinct targets around the city. While those missiles didn’t have the kind of high precision terminal guidance systems which were going to be used in 21st Century weapons, their inertial guidance systems made them able to hit within 300 meters of their calculated target position, and this up to their maximum range of 350 kilometers. Being more precisely classified as an area bombardment missile, the MJOLNIR was meant to destroy large ground installations, like industrial plants, shipyards and military bases, and its employment doctrine called for the firing of at least six or seven missiles against a point target in order to ensure good chances of a direct hit. In the case of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Headquarters, it suffered no less than four direct hits, completely obliterating it and leaving four huge craters in its place. The flying debris from the building, along with the 26 other missiles aimed at the area, turned much of the Shinjuku District into a field of smoking ruins, something worsened by the fact that the nearby Army Ministry building was itself targeted by thirty more MJOLNIR missiles. Each of the other targets around Tokyo and nearby Yokosuka were targeted by a minimum of twenty heavy missiles, with the all important Yokosuka Naval Arsenal receiving fifty MJOLNIR missiles and the nearby Yokosuka Japanese Navy Academy being targeted by twenty missiles. The one vital point in Tokyo that was not targeted was the Imperial Palace, and this for political reasons.
As the missiles from Rear Admiral Gensoul’s First Strike Fleet devastated the Tokyo area, the seven guided missile battleships of the French Second Strike Fleet, split into two widely separated groups, fired a total of 220 MJOLNIR missiles at five targets around Kobe, Nagoya, Maizuru, Kure and Sasebo, missiles which started to hit and spread death and destruction at about the same time as the missiles fired at Tokyo. Then, after five minutes of pure hell for those either working or living in the targeted areas, the explosions stopped, leaving behind huge craters, blown buildings, houses crushed by falling debris and tens of thousands of dead and wounded Japanese. The survivors, left shell-shocked by the series of powerful explosions, slowly crawled out of the ruins of their houses and workplaces as the smoke and dust gradually dissipated, revealing a landscape of utter destruction. While the French High Command had expected heavy civilian casualties from those bombardments, that prospect had been judged to be acceptable, in view of the main goal, which was to destroy as much of the Japanese military command infrastructure, aircraft factories and naval bases and shipyards as possible and at the same time killing as many as possible of the militarist leaders who were the cause of this war. As the French military saying went: ‘On ne fait pas dans la dentelle!’ (We don’t deal in lacemaking). More would soon come to put even more weight in that saying.