Japanese soldier standing at the site of a massacre of Chinese civilians committed by the Japanese Army in Shanghai.
CHAPTER 5 – THE SHANGHAI INCIDENT
09:42 (Shanghai Time)
Saturday, June 25, 1932
French passenger ship S.S. ANNAM
Moored at the Quai de France, Whangpoo River
Shanghai, Republic of China
“DAMN IT, MONSIEUR LECLERC, CONTROL THAT CROWD BETTER! THIS SITUATION IS TURNING INTO A NEAR RIOT!’’
The poor Third Officer, a young merchant navy ensign with only four years of experience at sea, having only a handful of sailors and Shanghai Municipal Police agents with him to help keep order in the large pack of fearful people trying to embark on the S.S. ANNAM, could only show the hundreds of people pushing each other on the quay to Captain Jean Foucault.
“I’M DOING MY BEST, CAPTAIN, BUT I NEED MORE MEN!’’
“WE DON’T HAVE MORE MEN! JUST MAKE SURE THAT THEY DON’T SWAMP MY SHIP.’’
Mentally recognizing that the poor ensign was doing his best but still grumbling to himself, Captain Foucault returned inside his enclosed bridge to review the status of his engines. His ship, a fairly small passenger liner with a maximum normal capacity of 240 passengers, normally served short to medium routes around the South China Sea, with its port of call being Haiphong, in French Indochina. Three days ago, a representative of the French Governor of Indochina had called and requisitioned his ship to help in the emergency evacuation of thousands of French citizens trapped in the French Concession of Shanghai by the advance through the city of Japanese troops. While the Japanese had declared war only on China, they had been very clear about the fact that they were going to take and keep the whole of Shanghai, including the French and International Concessions. Many French residents of Chinese descent or of dual Chinese-French nationality were understandably fearful of what a Japanese occupation would bring to them. Foucault thus fully expected to have to accommodate well over his maximum capacity for this trip to Haiphong.
Some 250 meters away, in the middle of the Whangpoo River, the French gunboat DOUDART DE LA GRÉE was watching the evacuation proceed while covering the approaches to the S.S. ANNAM. In that the captain of the gunboat justly had big worries, as no less than two Japanese destroyers, one gunboat and one light cruiser were slowly cruising up and down the river, always staying in direct line of sight of the ANNAM and of the gunboat. The Japanese government had been declaring for two days now that a number of what it called ‘Chinese terrorists’ were hiding inside the French and International concessions and had warned the French, British and American Consuls in Shanghai to immediately hand over those ‘terrorists’ on request. Undoubtedly, some of those now trying to get aboard the ANNAM were probably part of the list of ‘terrorists’ alluded to by the Japanese. As the captain of the gunboat was looking at the nearest Japanese destroyer through his binoculars, he saw it suddenly veer and accelerate towards the S.S. ANNAM. Understanding at once that the Japanese destroyer was going to try to block the passenger liner at quayside by taking a station close to it, the captain started shouting orders around at his crew.
“THE JAPANESE ARE GOING FOR THE ANNAM! GUNNERS, LOAD YOUR WEAPONS AND BE READY TO FIRE ON MY COMMAND! ENGINES FULL AHEAD! HELM, STEER TWENTY DEGREES TO PORT AND BLOCK THE PATH OF THAT DESTROYER! NAVAL INFANTRY SQUAD, PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS!’’
As his men hurried to obey him, Commandant Henri Giffard stepped next to the helmsman, his expression resolute and ready to give more orders as needed. Inside his brain, he knew that, however this ended, his boat would probably not survive this day. His orders had however been clear: to show restraint but also to protect the S.S. ANNAM and the French citizens on it at all cost if they or his own gunboat were fired upon by the Japanese. To do this, he had a 21 year-old, 54.4 meter-long river gunboat displacing close to 200 tons, with a maximum speed of fourteen knots. Its armament, which had been modified from the original one in 1917 and again in 1928, now totaled one old 75mm gun, two modern 25mm automatic cannons on pedestals and four 8mm Hotchkiss machine guns. Thankfully, his 75mm and 25mm guns were provisioned with Metallex-filled shells that gave them significant extra punch, something that could soon prove vital. He also had aboard a squad of nine naval infantrymen, hurriedly shipped to him from Haiphong as reinforcements only two days ago. With those men and their modern automatic weapons, Giffard was hoping to be able to turn away any attempt at boarding by Japanese soldiers or sailors.
It soon became apparent to Giffard that his gunboat was going to lose the race with the Japanese destroyer, which was nearly three times as fast. Grabbing the lanyard activating his boat’s horn, he blew two long whistles to signify to the Japanese destroyer to turn around. Not surprisingly, the Japanese captain ignored him and kept running towards the S.S. ANNAM. As things went right now, the DOUDART DE LA GRÉE was going to miss hitting the stern of the Japanese destroyer by a good thirty meters if Giffard kept his present heading. Clenching his teeth, he patted the shoulder of his nearby helmsman.
“Give me the wheel, Sailor!’’
“Yes, Captain!’’
Stepping behind the steering wheel, Giffard turned it, sharply increasing his turn to port and pointing his gunboat ahead of the destroyer’s bow. He may not be able to cut his path now, but with luck he would force the Japanese captain to turn away in order to avoid a collision. What helped him now was that the distance between them and the S.S. ANNAM was now quite short and the Japanese would have no choice but to slow down soon, on pain of smashing into the Quai de France. The response from the Japanese destroyer was to open fire with its four, turret-mounted 120mm guns. At such a short range, it should have been nearly impossible to miss, but three of the four shells actually did just that and flew across the top works of the DOUDART DE LA GRÉE: the range was so short and the French gunboat so low on the water that the Japanese guns, themselves mounted relatively high atop the destroyer’s hull and superstructures, didn’t have sufficient depression angle to hit it. As for the fourth shell, it went through the top aft corner of the gunboat’s deckhouse but, the deckhouse being made of fairly thin wooden planks and beams, the shell simply flew through it without exploding, continuing on and ricocheting on the surface of the river. Adrenaline now flowing through him, Giffard had a mean smile before shouting an order: he now had his casus belli!
“ALL GUNNERS, FIRE AT WILL ON THAT DESTROYER!’’
His 75mm gun, set on his bow, was the first to open fire, closely followed by automatic bursts from the two 25mm cannons, firing at a cyclic rate of 220 rounds per minute. The first 75mm shell, filled with 3.6 kilos of Metallex, an extremely powerful explosive invented by Tasha Lenoir in 1912 that had over three times the detonating power per gram of TNT, pierced the port side of the Japanese destroyer’s hull and exploded inside its port machinery room, when it hit one of the massive boilers. The blast tore open the machinery room of the destroyer, sending hot fragments all around, knocking out half of the ship’s power plant, as well as the main electrical feed to the ship’s systems. The two 25mm cannons, on their part, started sweeping the decks of the destroyer with their high explosive-fragmentation rounds, aiming in particular at the 120mm gun turrets with the hope of quickly silencing them. The French sailors manning the four 8mm Hotchkiss machine guns of the DOUDART DE LA GRÉE and the nine naval infantrymen added their fire to that, shooting up the superstructures of the destroyer and aiming at any Japanese sailor or officer visible to them. The one machine gun on the destroyer that had a clear line of sight on the gunboat replied as best it could, supported by a few sailors armed with bolt-action rifles, but the French small arms fire was overwhelmingly superior in volume and the gunners of the lone Japanese machine gun were soon shot down in quick succession.
On the S.S. ANNAM, Captain Foucault watched with horror that mortal fight happening barely 150 meters from his ship: that was most likely liable to attract Japanese retaliatory fire on his liner and its passengers. Realizing that this was going to end badly, he then did the only thing left that he could do.
“RADIO ROOM, TRANSMIT THE FOLLOWING AT ONCE AND IN CLEAR: GUNBOAT DOUDART DE LA GRÉE ENGAGED BY JAPANESE DESTROYER JUST OFF THE QUAI DE FRANCE. SEND TO THE NAVY HEADQUARTERS IN HAIPHONG AND REPEAT THE MESSAGE UNTIL YOU GET AN ACKNOWLEDGE!’’
‘At least now, we won’t simply be sunk with nobody in France knowing what happened here.’ Thought Foucault. Praying that the other Japanese warships would show at least some restraint and not fire directly at his ship, he looked again at the furious firefight between the DOUDART DE LA GRÉE and the MINEKAZE-Class destroyer. To his utter disbelief, it appeared that the much smaller gunboat was actually winning that fight, with all of the main guns of the Japanese destroyer now silent and with the much larger warship on fire. Understanding that the window of departure opened by the brave fight of the gunboat would not stay open very long, Foucault went out on the open bridge wing and shouted down at his men controlling the access to the ship from the quay.
“STOP ALL BOARDING IMMEDIATELY AND RETRACT THE GANGWAY! UNTIE ALL MOORING CABLES! WE ARE DEPARTING NOW!’’
Thankfully, the loud noise of the fight between the gunboat and the destroyer, plus the whizzing over their heads of a number of stray bullets, had made the crowd disperse in panic away from the quay, something that gave the chance to Ensign Leclerc and his few sailors to withdraw at a run to the ship, while other sailors cast away the mooring cables of the S.S. ANNAM. With its decks crammed with refugees, the small liner soon started moving slowly away from the Quai de France, foregoing the help of tugboats at the price of a screeching noise as its hull plates rubbed against the quay for a few meters. By that time, the burning Japanese destroyer OKIKAZE was slowly sinking while developing a severe list to port, while the wily little DOUDART DE LA GRÉE, damaged but still fighting, used the bulk of the destroyer to mask itself from any possible gunfire from the other three Japanese warships in sight. As the ANNAM started taking speed, passing by the damaged gunboat, Captain Foucault went out on the open bridge of his ship and solemnly saluted the gallant little boat and its crew. He saw at least one officer aboard the DOUDART DE LA GRÉE return his salute, while sailors kept manning their weapons or tended to their wounded. Using the bridge intercom, Foucault then called again the radio room.
“Radio room, have you received an acknowledge from Haiphong yet?’’
“Affirmative, Captain! They replied two minutes ago.’’
“Then, send a second message to Haiphong: Gunboat DOUDART DE LA GRÉE successfully fought off Japanese destroyer OKIKAZE when the latter tried to cut off our escape route and fired on our gunboat. OKIKAZE on fire and sinking. Our gunboat still afloat and fighting. Have just left the Quai de France with over 400 French citizens aboard. Will attempt to sail out to the open sea. Out! Send in clear and ask for an acknowledge.’’
“Understood, Captain!’’
Foucault had just finished his call on the intercom when a weak noise of engines overhead made him look up at the sky above. He then saw a large, four-engine aircraft approaching at medium altitude, some six kilometers to the Southwest. Grabbing his binoculars and pointing them at the aircraft, he felt relief on recognizing the distinct colors of an Air France plane: it must be the scheduled Air France flight from Hanoi, which was supposed to help in the evacuation of French citizens from Shanghai this morning. Unfortunately, with all that had just happened in the last fifteen minutes, he doubted very much that the Japanese would let that plane land and pick up refugees.
Aboard the Air France CIGOGNE II turboprop aircraft, the pilot excitedly pointed down to his copilot the burning Japanese destroyer.
“MERDE! THINGS ARE GOING BADLY DOWN THERE!’’
His copilot, a beautiful French-Vietnamese woman close to forty, clenched her teeth on seeing the burning destroyer and the nearby French gunboat, along with the three other Japanese warships now closing in.
“We will never be able or even permitted to land on the river with this naval battle going on. It would be suicidal for us to even try.’’
Captain Georges Meudon nodded his head at the remark from Trung Ti Hoa, who had started her Air France career nineteen years ago as a simple stewardess.
“You are too right about that, Hoa. You better go aft to warn our two passengers about this.’’
“Got it!’’
Undoing her seat harness first, Hoa then got up from her copilot’s seat and went aft to the First Class Cabin, where their sole two passengers were. She went directly to the French Foreign Ministry official sent from Hanoi with one naval officer as aide.
“Monsieur Legardeur, I have some bad news: our gunboat in Shanghai that was escorting the liner S.S. ANNAM apparently got into a fight with one Japanese destroyer approaching the ANNAM. Somehow, our gunboat seems to have won that fight, with the Japanese destroyer now burning. However, three more Japanese warships are closing in. I am afraid that it will be impossible for us to land on the Whangpoo River in the present circumstances.’’
“Damn! What about the ANNAM?’’
“It just slipped off the Quai de France and is heading down the river.’’
“I’m going to the cockpit to see things from there, Monsieur Legardeur.’’ then said the naval officer, a commander, making the diplomat nod his head once.
“Please do, Commander Barnabé! Report the situation to me after that.’’
“Will do, monsieur!’’
Grabbing first both a pair of binoculars and a still camera, the French Navy officer then followed Hoa back to the cockpit, where he looked down towards the Quai de France, now two kilometers away. It didn’t take long for his trained eyes to judge the situation on the river.
“Merde! The ANNAM will be lucky if the Japanese let it sail to the open sea after this. As for our gunboat, it appears to be still in fighting trim. I better take some photos of all this now.’’
He then executed himself, taking eleven pictures as the CIGOGNE II overflew the Quai de France and then started to circle slowly at medium altitude over the ANNAM and the DOUDART DE LA GRÉE. Barnabé then saw something that made him swear violently.
“BON DIEU DE MERDE! THAT JAPANESE LIGHT CRUISER JUST LAUNCHED TWO TORPEDOES AT THE ANNAM!’’
“WHAT?!’’ exclaimed in disbelief the pilot, who banked his plane to have a better view of the cruiser and of the liner ship. He effectively saw two torpedo tracks coming from the Japanese cruiser and heading straight to the liner. Commander Barnabé took the time to photograph the torpedo tracks as they were getting near the ANNAM, then looked at the navigator-radio operator of the CIGOGNE II, giving him an urgent order.
“Radio the following at once to Hanoi: our gunboat fought off a MINEKAZE-Class destroyer while protecting the S.S. ANNAM. The Japanese light cruiser YURA just launched two torpedoes at the ANNAM as it was leaving quayside. Transmit now and get an acknowledge!’’
“Uh, right away, Commander.’’
Barnabé then just had time to turn around to look down again, in time to see the two torpedoes make direct hits against the port side hull of the ANNAM, with their explosions raising huge geysers of water.
“Damn! The ANNAM will never survive such hits: it is not built to resist battle damage.’’
A muffled ‘WHOMP’ then shook the aircraft, following which the pilot shouted in alarm.
“THE JAPANESE ARE SHOOTING AT US! WE HAVE TO LEAVE, NOW!’’
“NOT YET! LET ME TIME TO PHOTOGRAPH THE ANNAM ONE LAST TIME.’’
“OKAY, BUT MAKE IT QUICK! JACQUES, SEND TO HANOI: ARE BEING FIRED ON BY JAPANESE CRUISER YURA.’’
“On it!’’ said between clenched teeth the navigator-radio operator as he worked frantically his Morse code key. One minute later, with Barnabé done taking pictures, the pilot of the amphibian airliner turned towards the Southwest, taking a return heading to Hanoi. As he did so, Hoa shouted a warning.
“TWO AIRCRAFT APPROACHING FROM TWO O’CLOCK! THEY ARE FAST ONES!’’
“THEY ARE JAPANESE FIGHTER PLANES!’’ said Barnabé after a quick look out of the cockpit’s windows. “GO TO YOUR MAXIMUM SPEED!’’
Not waiting for her pilot’s directives, Hoa immediately pushed all the way forward the throttles of their four powerful turboprop engines, each of which developed up to 2,500 horsepower. The sudden acceleration nearly made Barnabé lose his balance as the amphibian quickly accelerated gradually to its maximum speed of 610 kilometers per hour. The two Japanese fighters, apparently unable to match such a top speed, gradually fell behind, with no chance to shoot once at the heavy amphibian. Barnabé, seeing them recede in the distance, blew air out in relief.
“Thank God that the Japanese Ki-25 fighter can’t fly faster than 435 kilometers per hour.’’
He then turned to face the navigator-radio operator.
“I believe that it is now time for us to send a detailed radio report to Hanoi, François.’’
17:55 (Paris Time)
Sunday, June 26, 1932
Élysée Palace, 8th Arrondissement
Paris, France
Vice Admiral Georges Durand-Viel, Chief of Staff of the French Navy, had been waiting impatiently outside the Council of Ministers’ meeting room of the Élysée Palace, the official residence of the President of France, for a good hour now. He jumped on his feet as soon as Vice Admiral François Darlan, the Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of the Navy, Georges Leygues, emerged from the room.
“So, have they decided on what actions we will take in response to the outrage committed by the Japanese in Shanghai?’’
“They are still discussing about how strong our reaction should be, but the ministers have at least agreed to send as much reinforcements to Indochina and the South China Sea as we could spare, to prepare for anything that could happen there. Minister Leygues is thus ordering us to send as quickly as possible to the South China Sea a strong squadron centered on the aircraft carrier GLOIRE. He also wants to send in advance a few fast units, which will be tasked to do an area reconnaissance in advance of our squadron. Concurrently, the Army is to send troop reinforcements by sea to Indochina, to protect our colony there, while the Air Force will move a number of combat squadrons to the airfields in Indochina.’’
“And what kind of rules of engagement are we expected to follow?’’
“That is still being debated, but the President of the Council, backed by the President of the Republic, are giving our ships the right to fire at any approaching Japanese ship or aircraft that will refuse to turn away. Also, any Japanese warship that will try to approach within a hundred nautical miles from the coasts of Indochina will be warned first, then sunk if it refuses to turn away.’’
Durand-Viel blew air in relief on hearing that: he had feared that, like typical politicians, the ministers would endlessly squabble while taking no firm decisions, leaving the French forces in a straightjacket of restrictive orders.
“I can live with that. You are staying here for the moment, to keep following the ministers’ discussion?’’
“Yes!’’
“Then call me at Navy headquarters the moment that they take more decisions: I am going back to the headquarters to start preparing and moving our ships.’’
Durand-Viel then turned around and walked away at a fast pace, letting Darlan return inside the meeting room. His mind was in turmoil as he started mentally reviewing what he could send quickly to the South China Sea. Thankfully, the last ten years had seen a number of ultra-modern new warships of revolutionary design enter service into the French Navy, all equipped with the latest technologies that the Lenoir Industries Consortium could provide. The Japanese fleet may be much superior in numbers to the French fleet, but it didn’t know about many things that could be found on the newer French ships.