Raptor's Moon

By: James Philip

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The war in the Pacific has reached a crescendo of violence as it laps fierily at the very shore of the Japanese home islands. Battered by two days of massive Kamikaze, Divine Wind attacks the northernmost of the three British naval task forces operating off the east coast of Japan is about to confront the whole might of what remains of the Imperial Navy.

Absent from the final battle for the homeland for so long, the Imperial Navy is coming out to fight.

Six battleships, including three 70,000-ton behemoths with 18-inch guns capable of hurling a 1.5-ton shell 25-miles down range, and a battlecruiser accompanied by two cruiser divisions and a pack of destroyers is about to emerge from the Tsugaru Strait between Honshu and Hokkaido to engage in what the Imperial Navy hope will be the Kantai Kessen (Decisive Battle) of the war.

For the Japanese the fate of their empire hangs on this one battle; against them are the two old battleships and a pair of heavy cruisers of Task Force 83.32, under the command of the redoubtable ‘Fighting Admiral’ Bertram Lancelot ‘Bertie’ Holland seemingly the thinnest of naval blue lines is all that stands between the Japanese battlefleet and the Kamikaze-battered carriers of Task Force 83.3 farther out to sea.

In rising seas, the climactic battle of the war in the Pacific is about to take place while back in distant New England, the end of the war can only unleash tensions long suppressed in common cause.

The decisive battle of the war in the Pacific is upon us.