Heavy rain is approaching, and the waters of the East Korean Bay are in a scene of dark clouds hanging down and waves rolling. On the sea more than a hundred nautical miles offshore, the Soviet Navy's large cruiser "Kirov" is a single figure. On its towering bridge, Colonel Stepan Kucherov, 40, stands side by side with Major General Mitchell Kane, 56. The former is the supreme commander of this Soviet warship, known for his quick thinking, bravery and good fighting, while the latter is employed by the Soviet Union.

The government's special adviser is the highest-ranking foreign personnel who serve in the Red Navy and the richest command experience. This lord served under John Tovey and Andrew Cunningham, and participated in four naval battles in the Battle of the Azores. He served as the commander of the large cruiser "Brave" in the later period of the war, mainly in the North Sea and Barents waters. In four months, he achieved outstanding results of sinking five enemy ships and capturing four.

As early as the end of 1941, this large ship with excellent performance joined the Soviet Northern Fleet and the Baltic Fleet to join the Pacific Fleet with Vladivostok as its home port. During the few months after arriving in the Far East, Colonel Kucherov and his "British partner" worked tirelessly, often taking patrol ships and intelligence ships, and gained a good understanding of the geography and hydrology of the Sea of ​​Japan.

Unlike the Japanese base camp who looked forward and was confused, the Soviet Union began to formulate a detailed combat plan after the First Battle of Halaha. Based on the huge gap in strength between the Soviet Pacific Fleet and the Japanese Joint Fleet, their maritime strategy was the same as the positioning of the British local fleet during World War II. It used attack ships and submarines to conduct maritime harassment operations, threatening the maritime transportation between the enemy's homeland and the war zone. As one of the two major attack ships of the Pacific Fleet, the "Kirov" has taken three attacks since the Soviet government declared war on Japan, and each time it sailed no more than four days. This way of fast in and out makes it difficult for the enemy to go in and out.

Prevention. After three voyages, this large Soviet cruiser encountered two Japanese convoys and two Japanese ships sailing separately. With the assistance of Major General Kane, Colonel Kucherov took advantage of the advantages of "Kirov" in terms of range and speed to win consecutive battles, and achieved a total of three Japanese ships and injured 5 Japanese ships, leading the other Soviet attack ship "Gorky" to sink two ships and injured two ships, forcing the Japanese joint fleet to dispatch multiple combat squadrons to hunt, which greatly disrupted the combat deployment of the Japanese Navy and forced the Japanese army to strengthen the escort force of the transport fleet, thereby reducing the efficiency of the Japanese maritime transportation.

Returning to the port of Vladivostok for a short rest for two days, the Kirov began its fourth combat attack under the command of Colonel Kucherov. With the cover of night, it sailed through the mine formation in Amur Bay and disappeared in the depths of the vast sea at full speed. It had entered the waters of the East Korean Bay in the early morning. Due to the effective combat range of the Soviet Navy and Air Force, Japanese military transport ships and civilian ships have no longer entered this area since the war started. In addition to patrol ships often appearing, they are more Japanese fighter jets taking off from the Korean Peninsula. In view of this, the sailing Kirov activated its air defense alert system, and anti-aircraft cannons spread across the deck were erected like spikes. After modifications before and after the outbreak of the war, the initial limited air defense force was strengthened exponentially, with 6 single-mounted 100 mm

The secondary gun was replaced with a dual-mounted 85mm anti-aircraft gun, 10 single-mounted 37mm and 45mm air defense guns were replaced with 4 dual-mounted 37mm guns and 4 quad-mounted 20mm guns, and 6 12.7mm large-caliber machine guns were deployed in every corner of the deck in a casual manner. It is worth mentioning that after the Ice-made ship-based radar was installed, the air defense efficiency of this warship was greatly improved compared to purely manual observations, but neither the Irish, the Germans nor the Americans were willing to sell their fire control radar to the Soviet Navy, which made the Soviet and Russian warships still use traditional inefficient fire control systems. The Japanese Navy, which was troubled by night wars in the Pacific War, completed the practicalization of fire control radar as early as 1940. Once the warships on both sides encountered them in night wars, the Russians obviously would not have any advantage.

"Attention! An enemy plane was found in the southwest! Issuing the battle alarm!"

In people's impression, such alarm sounds should come from the lookout post at the top of the mast. However, on this Soviet attack ship, the first to issue the alarm was the radar room at the base of the bridge, and its early warning time was several minutes ahead of the era of simple visual alertness. This time seems difficult to achieve, but it is very valuable for well-trained sailors. Before the enemy's fuselage appears on the sea, they can make full use of these few minutes to prepare for the enemy: adjusting personnel configuration, checking and controlling artillery, reserve temporary ammunition, etc.

About five minutes later, a Japanese fighter jet painted in lead gray appeared in the sight of the crew.

Holding a high-power telescope for a moment, Major General Kane said: "It is a Japanese twin-engine bomber with an effective combat radius of more than one thousand miles, and can carry aviation bombs and aviation torpedoes. The maximum speed of missile flight is only 200 miles per hour."

Colonel Kucherov could speak English, but it was limited to simple communication. After Major General Kane finished speaking, he said half-jokingly: "It's a pity that I'm not very good at converting units. How many kilometers does a mile count?"

As a scheming British man, Major General Kane replied seriously: "One mile is equal to one thousand six hundred and nine meters, which is about 1.5 romies."

Colonel Kucherov raised the corner of his mouth as usual and showed a bad smile. Although the air defense alarm was sounded on the ship, a mere land-based Japanese twin-engine bomber could almost not pose a substantial threat to his "Kirov". Its role should be a large-scale maritime reconnaissance here is three to four hundred kilometers away from the nearest Japanese base. Although ordinary single-engine aircraft can fly so far, their endurance is not enough to support them in large-scale air searches. Heavy bombers with long range and high-power radio stations are undoubtedly more suitable for such tasks.

Before the enemy planes approached, the 100mm secondary gun on the Kirov made a pre-sounding sound. This unique carrier-based artillery unique to the Soviet Navy has the characteristics of long-range and powerful. As an anti-aircraft gun, although the chance of hitting the target at a long distance is very small, it can form a flaky barrage, disrupting the flying formation of the enemy aircraft group and causing damage to some enemy aircraft.

The Soviet Russian warship opened fire early, and the Japanese pilot knew that the other party had made sufficient preparations, so he gave up his attempts to close reconnaissance, lingered twice at a higher flight altitude, and then flew towards the direction of the Korean Peninsula. During this period, the "Kirov" intercepted the radio signal sent by the enemy plane. From the call sign, it was a combat aircraft affiliated to the Japanese Army Aviation Corps. If nothing unexpected happened, the Japanese Navy should have received this information several hours later.

Based on this judgment, Colonel Kucherov ordered the warships to sail north at full speed, and in the afternoon, heavy rain began to drift on the sea. Although the crew had to endure the bumps of wind and waves, it was a good weather to cover up their whereabouts for the warship commanders who did not intend to return empty-handed. So the "Kirov" turned again and sailed westward at a speed of 22 knots along a route roughly parallel to the northern coast of North Korea. After nightfall, the warship adjusted its course again and headed towards the busiest port in the eastern part of the Korean Peninsula and Wonsan Port, which is also one of the Japanese bases.

On rainy nights, the Japanese second-class destroyer "Su" and the sea defense ship "Qingjin" that were cruised out of the sea swaying and undulating in the waves. The so-called second-class destroyer is a small destroyer built in the early days. It is subject to the range and test sailing performance and usually undertakes medium and close patrol and alert tasks. The sea defense ship is second to second-class destroyer and is generally equipped with small caliber naval guns.

Such a small patrol fleet was not the search combat power sent by the Japanese Navy to learn that the Soviet Kirov cruiser sailed to the East Korean Bay waters, but the anti-submarine cruise ships sent by the Yuanshan Port Guard Command as usual. As before, the "Su" was in front and the "Qingjin" was behind, and the two old ships were slowly traveling eastward at a speed of only 12 knots. In order to search for enemy submarines, the two ships sometimes sailed with lights off and sometimes turned on searchlights to search the sea. The sailors on duty were like wild cats, staring their eyes wide and pricking their ears in the dark, but no one expected that the one who finally broke into their patrol area would be a behemoth much larger than the submarine!

At dawn, the Kirov arrived in the northeastern waters of Yuanshan Port and encountered a weak but unnegligible Japanese patrol fleet here. Major General Kane's suggestion was to use radar to avoid them and carry out long-range artillery bombardment on Yuanshan Port from 20 kilometers away, so as to achieve the purpose of destroying Japanese ships in the port and destroying port facilities. Then, use the cover of the rain curtain to quickly retreat, allowing the Japanese Navy to dispatch a large number of fighter jets and ships to conduct futile searches.

Colonel Kucherov also had this idea at first, but the communications soldier quickly intercepted the encrypted telegram taken by the enemy ships, but unfortunately he failed to interpret the content, which made him very worried that the Japanese ships were equipped with radar warning aircraft. If so, when their ship-based radar detected them, they had already noticed that the situation was bad. In this way, even if they used their speed advantage to forcibly bypass them, they would become a stumbling block for the "Kirov" to attack Yuanshan Port after attacking Yuanshan Port. After weighing the trade-offs, the colonel decided to fight quickly, kill these two Japanese ships, and then use the advantage of naval gun range to attack Yuanshan Port, and shock the Japanese navy with such strong actions. In addition to restraining Japanese aircraft and ships, the best result is to let the Japanese military suspend maritime shipping between the mainland and the Korean Peninsula.

So, the Kirov, whose displacement was nearly 10,000 tons, rushed straight towards two Japanese ships with a total displacement of less than 1,500 tons. At more than 500 meters away from the enemy, the Kirov suddenly turned on the searchlight and locked the Su and Qingjin on the sailing with a sharp light column. The two Japanese ships were at a loss at this time. During the battle lasting about 10 minutes, they were both torn to pieces by the fierce artillery fire of the Kirov...
Chapter completed!