Battle of the Straits

Battle of the Straits
Part of the Second Great War
Albrennian carrier aircraft engage the Songhese carrier Ladjap and its escorts.
Date 23–25 October 1942 Location Western Straits of Qes Result Coalition victory
Belligerents
Albrennia Audonia Amandine Senejor Blayk	Songha
Commanders and leaders
Alexander Ireton Henry Graves Paul-Henri Latour Jacques Montcalm Jean-Marie Rochefort	[naval commander] [land commander]
Units involved
Fleet of the Commonwealth Audonian 2nd Marine Division 3rd Amand Army 7th Armée Sénéjorais Armée de la Démontée	Combined Home Fleet Straits Garrison Command
Strength
~220 ships in total 10 fleet carriers 8 light carriers 7 battleships 30 cruisers 120 destroyers 45 submarines About 1,500 aircraft	~189 ships in total 7 fleet carriers 9 light carriers 14 battleships 22 cruisers 105 destroyers 32 submarines About 970 aircraft
Casualties and losses
~3,000 casualties; 1 light carriers, 1 battleship, 4 destroyers ~200 aircraft	~15,500 casualties; 5 fleet carriers, 3 light carriers 6 battleships, 10 cruisers, 21 destroyers sunk ~450 aicraft

The Battle of the Straits was the largest naval battle of the Second Great War and the largest naval battle in history, with over 400 ships and 180,000 naval personnel involved. It was fought in and around the Eastern Straits of Qes from 23-25 October 1942, between Songhese naval forces and the Albrennian Fleet, which was supported by Audonian, Amand, Senegorese, and Blaykish land forces. The battle's objective was to open the Eastern Straits of Qes, allow Coalition forces access to the Sea of Qes, and pave the way for an invasion of the Songhese mainland.

By the time of the battle, the Songhese Navy had been badly damaged at the Battle of Saint-Baptiste and expelled from Blaykish Mesonesia, and its total strength stood well below not only that of the Coalition navies combined, but also below that of the Albrennian Fleet alone. It rallied almost all of its remaining vessels in an attempt to hold the straits, but was defeated by the Fleet of the Commonwealth, Albrennia's main naval force in the Demontean. The Songhese Navy suffered such catastrophic losses in the battle that it was not able to mount another major operation for the rest of the war.

The battle consisted of three major engagements. On 23 October, Coalition land forces - supported by Albrennian air and naval power - crossed the Eastern Straits of Qes and seized Fort Yungai, securing Songhese heavy artillery positions on both sides of the strait. On 24 October, Albrennian naval forces moved into the Straits in force under cover of Coalition artillery on both shores and Fleet carrier aircraft. Despite inflicting heavy casualties on the Songhese Navy, the Albrennians were eventually forced to retreat toward the eastern end of the Straits, leaving the 34 vessels of Task Force 21 surrounded by Songhese forces at the western end of the Straits. However, seven hours of continuous carrier air attack and artillery bombardment inflicted devastating losses on the Songhese Navy, leaving them unable either to expel the Albrennians from the Straits or to escape to the east without further exposing themselves to attack. During the night of 24-25 October, the remains of the Songhese Combined Home Fleet broke out to the east, into the Sea of Qes, while under continuous air attack. On 25 October, the Albrennian Fleet caught and destroyed most of these survivors at the Battle of Grey Reef.

The battle demonstrated conclusively the superiority of modern carrier airpower and radar targeting over traditional naval tactics based around the big-gun battleship. It established the Albrennian Fleet as the greatest naval power in the Sea of Qes, a status it would retain for the rest of the Second Great War, and paved the way for Coalition amphibious assaults on the Songhese homeland. It remains taught in naval academies across Levilion, and the battle is a major point of national pride in Albrennia, and to a lesser extent in Audonia, Amandine, and Senejor.

Background

The struggle for control of the Sea of Qes was the cause of the outbreak of the Second Great War in the Demontean. The Eastern and Western Straits of Qes, by the 1930s and 1940s, already formed by far the most efficient route for global shipping between Auressia, Idica, Isuan, and Marceaunia. Exclusive control of the Sea of Qes was the central goal of the Songhese project of imperial expansion; only by breaking that control could the Coalition achieve its goals, and open up mainland Songha to large-scale invasion. In order to win the war, the Coalition had to force open the Straits: a deep but narrow waterway about twenty kilometers wide between the Shulin Peninsula to the south and the Ken-ting Peninsula to the north.

By October 1942, the Songhese Navy had suffered serious losses. After running roughshod over the Blaykish Navy and Albrennian Fleet in the first years of the war, it had suffered a campaign of attrition against the Audonian Navy in 1940-41, and it sustained the loss of four carriers and seven battleships at the Battle of Saint-Baptiste in July 1941. Those losses were compounded by unsuccessful naval actions around Blaykish Mesonesia against the Amand Navy. In August 1941, Qhotul Pgoa'-Seung ordered the consolidation of most of Songha's remaining naval assets into the Combined Home Fleet, whose mission was to hold the Sea of Qes against the inevitable Coalition assault. Continued Albrennian carrier air raids forced the Combined Home Fleet behind the Western Straits of Qes by the end of September, ceding the Demontean proper to the Coalition.

Against the diminished but still dangerous Songhese Navy were arrayed three naval powers: Audonia, Amandine, and Albrennia. They were supported by the Blaykish Navy, though this played a smaller role: it had been catastrophically damaged in the first years of the war, and the Palian invasion of Blayk had largely prevented the Blaykish government from rebuilding its fleet. Likewise, while the Senejorese Army would play an important supporting role in the battle to come, the Senejorese Navy had never been tested against the Songhese and was primarily held back in a supporting role.

It was the Albrennian Fleet that would play the decisive role at the Straits of Qes. There were several reasons for this. Audonia, while it had stood valiantly and alone in the Rum Gulf for twenty months, had not yet fully repaired the losses from its war of attrition during that time. The Amand Navy was likewise still largely committed in Blaykish Mesonesia, supporting island-hopping operations against Songhese holdouts that stubbornly resisted the Coalition advance. Moreover, the Albrennian Fleet had already proven that it could defeat the Songhese in pitched battle: it had provided the primary striking force at the Battle of Saint-Baptiste. Rebuilt almost from scratch after the disasters of 1937-38, the Fleet was unique in its systematic adoption of S-band targeting radars and VHF communications: technical innovations that allowed it to coordinate air operations and naval gunnery far more accurately, at far longer range, than other contemporary navies. Both by tonnage and by sophistication, it was the best-equipped of the Coalition navies to face the Combined Home Fleet head-to-head.

First, though, the approaches to the Straits had to be secured. On 25 September 1942, the Audonian 2nd Marine Division made landings against heavy resistance toward the tip of the Shulin Peninsula. They were initially unable to break out of their beachhead, but under Albrennian air cover, Blaykish naval engineers successfully constructed a major artificial harbor in situ at the beachhead. This allowed the 3rd Amand Army and 7th Armée Sénéjoraise to reinforce the Audonians, and together Coalition land forces successfully seized the Songhese fortifications at the extreme tip of the Shulin Peninsula. These fortifications included 18-inch coastal artillery, positioned to enfilade any naval movement through the Straits; ironically, the guns proved too massive for the Songhese to spike before they retreated, and so most of them fell intact into Coalition hands.

The success of the landings clearly telegraphed the Coalition's strategy: rather than focus on Ta-Puia or Songha's southern coastline, the Coalition would attempt to force open the Western Straits and wrest control of the Sea of Qes. Both sides understood that, if that operation succeeded, the Songhese government would likely be forced to end the war within a year. October witnessed a major buildup of land and naval forces in the area of the Straits, as both sides finalized their plans for the decisive battle to come.

Setup for the Battle

Geography made the parameters of the battle to come unmistakably, if brutally, simple. The Albrennian Fleet would have to advance from east to west through the Straits, a confined area of water roughly twenty kilometers north-to-south by thirty kilometers east-to-west. The Combined Home Fleet would have to stop it. Other obstacles to the Albrennians included the fact that the Straits remained laden with naval mines, and the fact that the Fleet would have to sail within range of the Songhese 18-inch coastal artillery at Fort Yungai, at the southern tip of the Ken-Ting Peninsula. But with roughly 200 warships on each side, the most significant problem for both navies was that a pitched battle in the Straits would provide very little room to maneuver: together, the two fleets would fill the roughly 600 square kilometers of water from one shore to the other. It would be nearly impossible for either side to screen its movements, or attempt a flanking maneuver or envelopment. The only choice available, to Songhan and Albrennian alike, was a frontal assault.

Moreover, unlike in most modern naval battles, the destruction of the enemy's fleet power could not be the main objective in itself. Rather, actual physical control of the Straits was essential. If the Songhese suffered greater losses but retained control of at least the eastern opening of the Straits, they would have won: they had denied the Coalition access to the Sea of Qes. Likewise, Albrennian Admiral Alexander Ireton knew that he had to end the battle in possession of both the western and the eastern openings of the Straits, no matter the cost to his own strength.

Both strategic and tactical imperatives guaranteed that the battle to come would be a brute contest of force against force, with little room for subtlety and no possibility of retreat or redeployment short of total defeat. In Providence, Albrennian Chancellor Alfred Temple wrote in his diary: "We will go forward inch by inch, and purchase every yard of water with blood. When we've paid for the whole Strait, we will have won the war."