Against the Tide Imperial: The Struggle for Ceylon (The Usurper's War: An Alternative World War II B by James Young (story reading txt) 📕

Well, glad we both dodged the bullet of a dusk strike and possibly getting jumped in narrow waters.Now let's see what fresh hell awaits us this morning.

“I swear to God, I am never bunking with another one of you damn dive bomber pilots again,” Lieutenant (j.g.) Adam Seward of VT-11 stated. The two men had been shuffled together in the most recent shift in bunking after the Battle of Mogadishu.

I get that the CAG thinks having people sleep alone after their roommate gets whacked is a morale issue, but I’m about to stab this son of a bitch while he's out, Eric thought.

“Well, the way this war’s been going for torpedo pilots, I think one or the other of us won’t have to worry about that problem after today,” he returned angrily.

Seward rolled over and fixed Eric with a hard glare.

“Before you say a single word, I want you to consider who started this conversation,” Eric snapped, buttoning up his shirt. “I don’t like getting up early any more than you do.”

Now that he was fully awake, Eric could hear the sounds of planes being moved about on the hangar deck. The bustle had a definite air of urgency.

Something big is in the offing. Maybe I’ll get a chance to avenge those ‘lads’ on the Victorious soon after all.

“Quite frankly, you might as well get up,” Eric said. “Beat the line to the head.”

“Go to Hell,” Seward said, rolling back over.

Suit yourself. He quickly visited the head to brush his teeth and do his morning business, then headed up to VB-11’s ready room. To his surprise, he was the first section leader to arrive.

Brigante looks like he hasn’t slept a wink.

The ashtray next to the squadron commander already had several butts in it, and Eric was reasonably sure that was not the first cup of coffee Brigante had consumed since lights out the previous night.

“Grab your plotting board,” Brigante said by way of greeting. He pulled out his battered pack of Lucky Strikes and offered one to Eric.

“No thank you, sir,” Eric said.

“You sure?” Brigante asked, fishing out his own cigarette. “I feel like now would be when I point out a condemned man should smoke them if he’s got them.”

“I’ll wait until I see who’s in the firing squad, sir,” Eric replied. “Maybe they’re all cross eyed.”

Brigante gave him a small smile at that as the other sections leaders filed in.

“We can only hope to be so lucky,” Brigante said, then turned to the gathered foursome.

“I’ve been up since oh two thirty,” Brigante stated to the gathered group. “I intend to be sleeping warm in my bunk by fourteen hundred after a good day’s work. I hope that you will all be doing the same.”

With that, Brigante put his plotting board on the table in front of him.

Holy shit.

Eric noted that there were a series of locations moving inexorably northwards for most of the night. The positions then suddenly turned eastward away from Yorktown, then back southwards as it grew closer towards dawn.

If we keep coming southeast at our current speed, we’ll stay barely two hundred miles apart when the sun comes up.

He did the math in his head again as he realized Yorktown and her compatriots had sped up over the last six hours.

No, we won’t even be two hundred miles. Barely one hundred and fifty.

“It appears whomever is left in charge of the British fleet remnants is either a fool or has a noisy walk from his brass balls clapping together,” Brigante said. “These position reports have been broadcast in the clear, followed by authentication in code, for the last eight hours.”

“What?” Lieutenant Ramage and Lieutenant Dale Connors, White One, both asked simultaneously.

“Radar, gentlemen,” Brigante replied after checking the hatch was closed. “The British have fully embraced it, and it appears the Illustrious has been keeping a steady relay of aircraft in contact with the Japanese using it.”

Brigante took a puff of his cigarette.

“Which means, more than likely, they are going to die today,” he continued. “Since as you can tell from the last position report, the Japanese have turned to swat the mosquitos behind them. I suspect they intend to launch a strike as soon as they figure out where the British force that’s chasing them is located.”

The British are insane. Unless the Ark Royal is in better shape than the scuttlebutt said, it’s Illustrious versus four Japanese carriers.

“Kinda like chasing the gang that burned your house down and murdered your family into the night, isn’t it?” Lieutenant Connors noted.

“With a lantern and while screaming at the top of your lungs,” Eric replied with a grimace. “What has Admiral Fletcher’s staff decided we’re going to do?”

“It will be a predawn launch,” Brigante replied. “We’re throwing everything into the punch in the hopes we’ll catch them looking south at the British carrier rather than at us.”

“Are we forming up with the rest of the carriers?” Eric asked.

“Staff thinks that will be too hard in the darkness,” Brigante replied. “So no, we’re all going to go as we launch.”

“Helluva a penalty for whomever’s the quickest carrier,” Lieutenant Ramage observed.

Before Brigante could reply, the Yorktown’s loudspeakers blared with reveille.

Hope Seward enjoyed his twenty extra minutes. Might be the last night’s sleep he ever gets.

“I just pray the boys from the Atlantic Fleet haven’t changed doctrine since we came out here,” Brigante observed. “From what I understand talking to Vice Admiral Fletcher’s staff, their little kerfuffle with what Admiral Kimmel calls the Usurper’s Navy led to some second thoughts about how to do business.”

This could get chaotic over the Japanese fleet. There won’t be all that time to coordinate like there was over the Italian one.

The Pacific Fleet had developed certain rules for potential carrier battles for just such a situation as this. Things like which air groups attacked which targets, the priority of ship types, and rendezvous points had been discussed several times prewar.

Well, too late now. We got to the fight with whatever we have right