Commander's Rounds Volume 1

Entry 54-2 Operation Ulysses: Coming to Grips

One of the things that the commander felt he might have to explain to others about the particulars of his duty was the fact that, for all practical purposes, commanding shipgirls wasn't at all like commanding regular blue-water ships.

The way he had considered putting things into perspective was that your average major surface combatant of the old days had a turning radius of five city blocks or more, which meant that where you wanted to turn and where you wanted to be at the end of a turn were very major considerations that required planning ahead, and that's something that hadn't changed all that much, from what he was given to understand.

However, shipgirls in action was something that he had found himself at a loss to describe for years- The best he had been able to come up with was that they were infantry that could maneuver on water at motor vehicle speeds while possessing more firepower and endurance than an actual full-sized surface vessel, and he wasn't sure even that fully captured what he was seeing.

It was something that was actually easier for people to think of in the abstract than for anyone to actually see in action on the "ground".

However, dealing with such impossible comrades was his life. He would say that it's why he was paid the big bucks, but he wouldn't, because he knew how many zeroes were on his paycheck.

The only thing that the Orpheus could do at this point was make some contribution to the anti-aircraft fire that was a necessity of modern warfare on the seas. It was the first round of skirmishing, but Purifier's fleet had managed to sneak in uncomfortably close before starting the engagement, so even without the full benefit of the Siren network's technology, she was able to pull a fast one, but even with that, he was sure his people would be on guard for such things.

The fact that they were able to get close wasn't a surprise- it was the reason heavy guns needed to be in use again in the first place, and just popping up was a feature of fighting the Sirens that was just something expected by Azur Lane and anyone else that had any experience fighting them. He had no delusions that he was entirely safe.

Purifier was forced to fight in the open sea, and her tactics were made to keep escorts busy. The swift, long-range torpedo attacks by lighter ships were coordinated with her force's own attempts at airstrikes in order to divide the attention of the escorts between evading and intercepting enemy aircraft, and the airpower of the carrier groups was working double-time to relieve the pressure. Her plan was to try to keep constant pressure on his forces and give them no time to concentrate- the Siren battleships even staggered the fire of their guns to ensure that there was always something incoming.

He could only observe what was going on from the Orpheus, so he could only imagine what it was like for those on the "ground". One of the things that relieved him was that communications were in better order than expected, so there was a reasonable expectation that orders would get through, at least to ships close to him- but that meant that orders would still have to be passed down the line rather than directly, which would hamper the speed at which they could react to very sudden changes. They'd have to think ahead, if they could.

As always, he had to trust his people.

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On Hornet's side of things, Purifier's sudden attack was making them work double-time on launching and retrieving planes. Hornet was able to coordinate and direct launches from the other ships just fine, but it took all her attention to do so- she was glad that there were so many other pairs of eyes around to keep a lookout.

It wasn't the easiest to keep up with Siren airpower- the Siren carriers had a catamaran design that allowed them to recover planes on one deck and launch them with the other, and at the beginning of battle they tended to use both decks to launch, and it was all they could do to knock down the enemy planes until they could get an opening to smoke the flattops. Managing the airspace was something that took experience to learn, and the commander had to devise some interesting methods to simulate Siren carrier attacks.