Kirov Saga: Altered States (Kirov Series) (29 page)

“But you just expounded on the virtues of this German armor, Fedorov.”

“Neither
Scharnhorst
nor
Gneisenau
will be the targets, Admiral. If I am correct and that last contact Rodenko spotted is a German oiler, then all we have to do is put our missile there, or even some good long range gun fire. Sink that tanker and the Germans will not have the fuel to proceed.”

Part IX

Altmark

“Sacrificial animals think quite differently from those who look on:
but they have never been allowed to have their say.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Chapter 25

All
over the UK the invasion watch was up, and now the news was filtering in to the Admiralty that the German Navy was at sea in a major operation and had done what no one there had any idea they might ever achieve. HMS
Renown
was attacked from the skies, with planes flown from the deck of a German aircraft carrier, and they pushed right through the veteran fighter cover of the Royal Navy’s most experienced and capable fleet defender, the
Ark Royal.

The British had learned a hard lesson. Their pilots were good, certainly brave and determined, but the plane they were flying was clearly outclassed, and the German fighter pilots were equally hardened by their experience in Poland and France before coming to train for carrier operations. Britain desperately needed a new carrier borne fighter, and the Fairey
Fulmar
was all they had in the pipeline now, with no replacement in sight for the
Swordfish
torpedo bomber either.

The stricken battlecruiser survived the attack, but with twenty of her forty-two water tube boilers destroyed and her speed cut to no more than twelve knots. The ship had to be detached from Admiral Tovey’s squadron and sent home with a pair of destroyers cruising to either side for protection against U-boats, and the light cruiser
Southampton
in the van for additional air defense. Darkness and the onset of bad weather aided her getaway, and she would make it safely home, but now Tovey was in a bind. He had lost six big 15-inch guns and thirty-five percent of his squadron’s fighting power. With only HMS
Invincible
, the cruiser
Sussex
and two destroyers left in his force, engaging
Bismarck
and
Tirpitz
was now a tall order, particularly if the Germans had more
Stukas
to throw at them.

Tovey paced in the Flag Plot Room, uncertain, yet determined. We took one hell of a beating today, he thought. The mere sight of a British capital ship used to put ice in the veins of a German raider, but not after this. Holland sends that the Twins have blown through our cruiser screen in the Denmark Strait. Now we’ve lost
Renown
here, and we were damn lucky the Germans had only two
Stuka
pilots that seemed to know how to hit what they were aiming at.

There had been several near misses, but aside from splinter damage, neither
Ark Royal
nor
Invincible
were hit. Tovey decided the wisest course in the short run was to put range between his fleet and the German carrier. Vice Admiral Carriers reported that they had lost six
Skua
fighters in the action and four
Swordfish
trying to find and strike the Germans. Nobody got torpedoes in the water, and now this bloody weather shut the game down. They were just lucky they got most of their planes back safely. Another
Swordfish
was forced to ditch.

“We’re going to need more air cover, Mister Villers,” he said to his Flag Lieutenant. “Now where can I get it?”

“I can see about
Beaufort
support from Wick, sir. RAF has Number 43 Squadron there with
Hurricanes
, 269 Squadron has the American
Hudsons
we’ve received, and then we have 42 Squadron with
Beauforts
. No torpedoes yet, but they can rig out as bombers.”

“
Beauforts
have the range to get out here, but not the
Hurricanes
, and fighters are what we really need now. We can’t very well fight the German fighters with torpedo bombers.”

Villers hesitated, but ventured to inform Tovey of one other sad fact. “At the moment Wick reports they’ve received no deliveries of torpedoes for the Beaus, sir, but we can have them armed with bombs.”

“No torpedoes? By God, the Germans put BF-109s on the
Graf Zeppelin
, and here we sit on our thumbs and can’t even properly arm our aircraft! Admiralty will have to take a very hard look at that.”

“The
Fulmars
will be ready soon, sir. And Hawker
Hurricanes
are being considered for modification as catapult launched planes as well.”

“Yes, but they aren’t here at the moment, are they? No. We’ll have to play the cards we have, and I’ve just lost a jack in HMS
Renown
. The real worry now is that the Germans have a bloody pair of kings out there, and a queen back of them with
Graf Zeppelin
. If we press on and catch up with them, we’ll be outgunned two to one as it is. I need Holland and
Hood
now, and he’s off chasing the Twins.”

“Sir, if I may, we don’t have to fight here. We can withdraw and effect a rendezvous with Admiral Holland. We’ve taken a knock here, but we’ve done at least one thing. Jerry hasn’t turned into the Faeroes Gap. Our last sighting had them moving west. I think they’re going to run up over Iceland, Admiral. Perhaps the plan is to join the Twins.”

Tovey looked at the map, and thought hard. He had come east to fight and now he had lost
Renown
without ever getting
Bismarck
and
Tirpitz
under his guns! That German carrier out there was changing the rules of the game.

“What do we have at Reykjavik?”

“Sir? Well just two planes, Admiral, a
Sunderland
and a
Walrus
.”

“See if we might persuade Wick to send something better. Those Beaus of Four Two Squadron sound enticing, torpedoes or no torpedoes. Damn it, we need air cover, and more than
Ark Royal
can give us at the moment. Make a request for a
Hurricane
squadron to be sent to Iceland at once.”

“Most are assigned to homeland defense now, Admiral, but I’ll see what we can find.”

“You say the
Fulmars
are almost ready? I want them flown out if in any way possible. If they aren’t ready for a carrier landing we’ll pick them up at Reykjavik.”

Then he remembered the aircraft carrier he and Brind had discussed at Scapa Flow before the fleet sailed—
Illustrious!
He had a perfectly good carrier back home working up on trials, and with new aircraft as well, including these
Fulmars
.

“Mister Villers, I hadn’t thought to call on her so soon, but I’m afraid we’ll have to enlist the services of
Illustrious
as well. I know she’s still working up, but the situation appears critical to my eye now, and I want her out to sea and heading our way as soon as possible. And I want those
Beauforts
and
Hurricanes
. I know it may take some doing. The airfields on Iceland will have no equipment or service crews, but we must do whatever we can. The Germans can send their
Stukas
to bomb Iceland all they want, but they won’t sink it, eh? Those airfields are essential.”

“I’ll see to those messages personally, sir.”

“So… now we either shadow the Germans under threat of additional air strikes. Or we turn about and head back west to link up with Holland.” Tovey folded his arms, chin in hand, considering. “Very well, we turn. Come to 230 degrees. Damn good licking and off we go. We’ll turn this watch over to
Nelson
and
Rodney
, and it’s down round Iceland for us again. Then we find
Hood
and
Repulse
. It’s going to take a heavy fist to win this one, Mister Villers, a heavy fist indeed.”

* * *

18 June, 1940 ~ 08:00 Hrs

The
German oiler
Altmark
was waiting at the refueling point as ordered. One of five ships in its special class,
Altmark
already had a storied history in the young war, providing able support to the
Graf Spee
on her sortie, and then causing somewhat of an incident on her return leg home. Sailing in neutral Norwegian waters with nearly 300 British merchant sailors captured by the German pocket battleship in February of 1940, the ship was spotted by an RAF Coastal Command Hudson bomber. Elements of the neutral Norwegian Navy boarded
Altmark
the next day, but did not search the hold where the prisoners were being held. So the job was soon handed off to Captain Phillip Vian aboard the destroyer HMS
Cossack
. The signal from the Admiralty was plain and simple:
“Altmark your objective. Act accordingly.”

Vian did exactly that, hunting down the tanker in Norwegian waters with a small task force of British destroyers and the light cruiser
Arethusa
. In spite of a Norwegian protest over the violation of its neutrality, Vian forced a boarding of the German ship, which ran aground while trying to frustrate that operation with an ill considered attempt to ram the
Cossack
. The British prisoners were found and freed, and
Altmark
was left with a bloody nose, run aground on the rocky coast. Churchill and Lord Halifax had both weighed in on the incident, which caused a bit of a diplomatic row, and also served as fuel for Admiral Raeder’s argument that Norway must be invaded.

So the tanker had a way of finding itself in the center of the maelstrom, and finding its way to bad luck as well. It was renamed
Ukermark
and later fated to die in a freak explosion after delivering 5000 tons of gasoline to Yokohama, Japan in 1943. A spark from a cutting tool being used on the dock ignited residual fumes and the ship was nearly blown apart, a total wreck. Thankfully the crew had been ashore at lunch, and only 53 died, but the rest would not escape the bad luck of the renamed ship either. They would be dispatched to France on the German blockade runner
Doggerbank,
another ship that had been renamed, redoubling the bad luck. Crewman Fritz Kürt would later say that he could feel the black hand on the ship all along, and kept having fitful dreams, seeing the numbers 3 and 43 in his mind and by happenstance on the ship itself as they sailed through the wide lonesome stretches of the South Atlantic.

Doggerbank
soon suffered the ignominious fate of being mistakenly torpedoed by a friendly German U-boat—three torpedoes from U-43 on the evening of 3 March, 1943, an eerie twist of bad luck and bad numbers. Fate had its bony hand on the throat of
Altmark
and her crew, and only one man of 365 would live to tell the tale. They thought they had escaped a fiery death in that explosion at Yokohama, but all they did now was bring their misfortune to the
Doggerbank
, which went into the sea in the middle of the Atlantic, a thousand miles east of Morocco.

Finally realizing its error, U-43 saw what it thought to be lifeboats, and edged closer to the flotsam of the ship, trying to question the survivors. In the fading light the U-boat could not get through the wreckage and close enough to hear them. So the German submarine turned and left the scene. Days later a single lifeboat was found by a Spanish tanker on March 29th.

There was one man alive there, Fritz Kürt, the last of the crew of
Altmark
, (then named
Ukermark
), who told the sad tale that while fifteen men had made it into the lifeboat, including the Captain of the
Doggerbank
, it capsized and only six were able to scramble back aboard with the ship’s dog. Without food and water they drifted for days, trying to reach South America until one by one the parched and desperate survivors were claimed by death and suicide.

The Captain of
Doggerbank
had been trying to navigate by the stars, but lost hope and used his revolver to end his own misery. Fritz Kürt, however, had survived sinkings at sea before, and believed he could beat the odds and the terrible jinx that had dogged the crew of
Altmark
. He resolved to bear the suffering, preferring the last hours of life instead of a quick death. The only man left alive with him was an old sailor named Boywitt, who eventually drank seawater in his agony of thirst when the last of the rainwater ran out. Fritz pleaded with him not to do this, but he could not resist, and was soon delirious and failing fast.

Just after he died the skies burst with rain, providing all the fresh water the men could have needed, but by then it was too late. Only Fritz remained, and a flying fish that landed aboard the lifeboat in a random act of chance provided him with enough nourishment to survive until the Spanish Tanker
Campoamor
saved his life—the last crewman of that cursed ship
Altmark
. After learning of the incident where U-43 had sunk one of their own blockade runners, all pages concerning the episode were ordered ripped from the boat’s log and destroyed.

It was an eerie and chilling end to that tale, but that was in another world, and none of it had yet happened. None of it might happen at all this time around. In the altered state of affairs where
Kirov
now sailed,
Altmark
was berthed for repairs for three months and then put to use again as soon as possible.

The Germans were considering renaming the ship to help disguise it now that the British had already made its acquaintance. They almost made the same mistake again but sailors have forever said that renaming a ship was a sure way to bring bad luck. So this time
Altmark
was left with her maiden name intact. As the battle of Norway concluded the ship was provisioned and slipped out to sea again, unnoticed by the British in their frantic effort to complete the evacuation. It would sail to the Denmark Strait and find a nice quiet break in the ice off the ragged coast of Greenland to wait out a humdrum week for Hoffmann’s battlecruiser squadron to arrive. Now, on the morning of June 17, it would soon find itself in another storm at sea—a storm of fire and steel.