Kirov Saga: Altered States (Kirov Series) (39 page)

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Lindemann
and the others listened as Hoffman and Fein explained what they saw—a rocket, incredibly fast and deadly accurate. It had been fired from a range of at least 18,000 meters and bored in mercilessly, so fast that the eye could barely follow it as it thundered home.

“It maneuvered,” said Hoffmann gesturing with his hand to show how the rocket swooped up from the sea. “I could clearly see the exhaust trail in the sky. It arced up from the enemy ship, climbed, and then dove for the sea, skimming right over the wave tops. Then, at the very last minute, it leapt at the ship’s vitals above the waterline, as if it was deliberately guided to avoid our heavy side armor. The explosion was terrible to behold.”

“The warhead must have been at least 300 kilograms,” said Fein “and it penetrated the superstructure amidships easily. Then came the fires. It was as if someone had sprayed gasoline all over the interior compartments and then tossed in a match, but many times worse. The heat was intense. Every compartment involved was completely immolated, and no one in those sections survived. I lost forty three men there.”

The testimony of these two experienced officers was sobering, to say the least, and there was no more sentiment of jubilant celebration in the room.

“I know we, ourselves are working on this technology,” said Lindemann. “Most of it is top secret and hidden away at the Peenemünde Army Research Centre. There have been proposals for remote controlled aircraft such as Project Erfurt, and men like Goddard in America and our own von Braun have proposed models for rockets as well. They are thinking to send remote controlled aircraft over the channel carrying 1000 kilogram bombs! But it is no more than an idea at the moment, and most senior officers I have spoken with seemed to dismiss it as having no real military applications. How would you control such a plane? A rocket would seem even more daunting. Yes, they have been used for centuries, ever since the discovery of gunpowder, but all current rocket development is unguided and likely to stay that way for some time.”

“Not these rockets,” said Hoffmann, shaking his head. “Unless the aim was flawless, this rocket seemed to have a mind of its own. Remember, we are not sitting there like a toy in the bathtub! We were cruising near thirty knots. The British hit a ship moving at that speed from over 18,000 meters away, and with accuracy that was more precise than our finest naval gun directors and optics. Now, anyone who wishes to see the result is welcome to visit Otto here aboard
Gneisenau
after this little conference, but the question before us now is how do we proceed?”

Silence. All eyes turned to Lindemann, who folded his hand slowly, considering. “We have heard from Wilhelmshaven,” he said. “I must tell you, Hoffmann, that Raeder was not happy with your decision to engage that ship. It would have been better if you had kept to the plan and simply ran south for the Atlantic.”

“That is what I decided, Lindemann. Then we came upon the ship and thought it was another British cruiser, even though I could not recognize the silhouette.”

“Well, perhaps you should have
avoided
engagement. That said, here we are. Raeder was not happy that I engaged the British with our carrier aircraft either—until he received the news concerning
Renown
. Seekrieigsleitung made it evident that they believed my decision to elect the Denmark Strait as a breakout point instead of the more open seaways in the Iceland-Faeroes gap was not what they expected. So we are both in the soup together, Kapitan. Now that we have come here to this rendezvous point at your request, we have considerable power at our disposal. It is no longer a question of trying to slip a raider or two out into the Atlantic as I view the situation. In spite of this rocket you speak of, now we have the power to fight our way through.”

“Raeder has approved this?”

“I made the request. They are undoubtedly scouring the intelligence to see what we may be up against if we do proceed south now. It is either that, or the whole operation must be postponed, and if we turn for home now it will be a long winter before we see these waters again. This is my belief.”

“Then what do you propose, Lindemann?”

“I have conferred with Seekrieigsleitung and Lütjens. You all know that he is a careful and cautious man. Yet even he sees the advantage we now have with our present concentration of forces. This was not what Raeder wanted, but choices we have both made have brought us here. So my request was that we refuel now and proceed south by 18:00 hours this evening. What do the rest of you think?”

Karl Topp, the Kapitan of Tirpitz, spoke next. “I’m an old U-boat man, so you may dismiss whatever I say, but I know what the men our ships are named after might advise. Here we have clenched a hard fist. I say we strike south and bludgeon anything in our path. We will have air cover,
Stukas
, and the finest ships in the world. We either use them or continue playing hide and go seek with the Royal Navy. This is what I believe.”

That sentiment found immediate support from the two cruiser Kapitans, and Böhmer from
Graf Zeppelin
. “We have two battleships, a pair of battlecruisers, two heavy cruisers and three destroyers,” he said. “
Gneisenau
took a hard blow, but there is nothing wrong with the guns, eh Fein? I say we move as Lindemann and Topp suggest.”

“One thing, gentlemen,” said Lindemann. “If we top off our tanks here we will take every drop of fuel
Nordmark
has. Once in the Atlantic we will be a long way from home, and our control of French ports is tenuous at this point. We have only just occupied Brest, St. Nazaire and La Pallice. Word is that the British took heavy loss at St. Nazaire. We hit a nice fat ocean liner packed to the gills with troops, but it will be some time before the docks and quays, or adequate supplies can be made ready for us there. So we cannot count on those ports being available to accommodate the entire fleet. This means that operations will have to be supported by the tankers remaining in the Atlantic if we push too far south, and we have seen what happened to
Altmark
here. Lose another tanker, or god forbid two, and we could be hung out like fish on a wire.”

“Logistics will be uppermost in the minds of Raeder and Lütjens,” said Hoffmann. “I will be frank and say that my decision to turn north and refuel was based on this same logic. Yes, we can fight here, but we may need to consider more limited operations.”

“Exactly,” Lindemann agreed. “I suggested that we fight to secure access to the Halifax-Liverpool convoy route, there are a pair of nice fat convoys within easy reach even as we speak. If we can get south in 48 hours, we will have a hundred ships to feast on. That will make Raeder happy. Then we retire north, and not west to France. This is what I proposed to Wilhelmshaven. Now we wait to see what Raeder and Lütjens have to say about it.”

“Have they been informed of the damage to
Gneisenau?”
asked Fein.

“They are aware your ship was hit, but this business about the rocket sits here between us at this table and has gone no further. Frankly I do not know what they would make of it, and so I suggest we do not complicate the matter trying to explain through signals traffic what Hoffmann has told us here.”

“But be forewarned,” said Hoffmann. “If this ship is spotted again, perhaps your
Stukas
can deal with it Kapitan Böhmer.”

“True,” said Lindemann. “Perhaps we should assign a code here to alert all the others if we sight this ship.”

Hoffman chuckled at that. “No Kapitan Lindemann, we will not need such devices. If this ship appears again you will all see it with your own eyes, plain enough, and believe me, you will never forget it as long as you live.”

Part XII

The Witching Hour

“Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.”

― William Shakespeare ~ Hamlet

Chapter 34

Tovey
sat with the latest dispatch from the Admiralty, his mind heavy with foreboding. Operation Ariel, the final evacuation from France had just been dealt a heavy blow. The old Cunard steamship liner
Lancastria
had been crowded with both civilian and service and support troops, one of the last to leave St. Nazaire as the Germans closed in. With a stated capacity of 1300 passengers and 300 crew, the ship had packed in over 8000 souls, ready to sail for England. The Captain of the escorting British destroyer
Havelock
urged them to get out to sea, but a U-boat warning caused her Captain, Rudolph Sharp, to delay. It was a fatal decision.

At a little before 4pm the previous day, June 17th, the Germans sent in the Luftwaffe to attack the desperate flotillas attempting to flee the continent. JU-88s from
Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 30
scored three direct hits on the lumbering steamship, causing her to list and then quickly turn over. One bomb had penetrated her fuel bunkers, and the sea around the stricken ship was soon black with oil. As if this heavy blow were not enough, the JU-88s made additional strafing runs, killing many as they struggled for life in the water and setting the fuel afire where thousands of desperate men and women were now adrift on the dark oily sea, burned and drowned in an agonizing death of fire and water. It was a brutal act of cruelty masquerading as a wartime operation, the most severe loss at sea ever suffered by a British ship.

 “Most secret – Not to be disclosed or disseminated below flag level,”
he read aloud, then lowered his head, sitting down, his hand covering his eyes. The loss was more than twice that suffered during the sinking of the Titanic, and it would account for a third of all casualties suffered by the British Expeditionary Force on the continent. Fearing news of the disaster would cut home morale to the bone, only the most senior officers were advised, and a blackout concerning the incident was imposed on all press and media.

It was one damn catastrophe after another, thought Tovey. France and Norway gone, the fate of the powerful French fleet still hanging in the balance, the threat of imminent invasion of the homeland, and now this. On top of it all we are now facing this powerful formation of German ships, easily a match for us, and who could foresee such a thing coming to pass? God help us if they do win through the straits and get at those convoys. I must immediately request HX-50 and HX-51 either re-route south or return to Halifax, and there can be no further sailings from that port until this issue is decided. There are ninety ships between those two convoys, and I also have TC-5 to worry about, another nine ships there, with the
Empress of Australia
carrying over 3700 troops. It’s another bloody disaster in the waiting, and all that stands between those ships and the bottom of the sea is Home Fleet.

At least that last convoy has some escort.
Revenge
is presently on station with TC-5. There’s another eight good 15-inch guns there that I could dearly use right now, but she can make only 23 knots and is too far south and east to matter now. Admiralty has already pulled
Devonshire
off of convoy duty to escort
Illustrious
. There simply isn’t anything left, and something tells me the Germans are coming in force this time. We’ll just have to face them down with what we have. But if we lose this fight…He did not want to contemplate the consequences.

The offer of friendship and support extended by the Russians seemed more inviting now, though he knew the matter would have to be sent on to the Admiralty first. What could they do, really? He had taken their testimony concerning the engagement with the Twins with a grain of salt. But being diplomatic, he had thanked the Russian Admiral, saying he believed his government would be most interested in further discussions on their mutual cooperation. In the end, however, he had to urged him to remain well south of the action he anticipated soon in the Denmark Strait. Their young Captain seemed troubled, still believing that this was a battle we might not win, but there is little help the Russians could offer us. As imposing as this new ship appeared, Holland was correct to point out it had only half the firepower of a small British light cruiser, in spite of their claims to the contrary. He was of a mind that the Russians had spun out a bit of a bender, stretching the truth concerning their engagement with the Germans.

Yet, as he stood on the weather deck watching the Russian ship haul in its massive anchor and slowly make way, that haunting feeling of
déjà vu
returned to him. He felt certain he had seen this ship before. It was completely irrational. There was no reason why he should feel this way, but he could not deny the clear sense of anxiety he felt to look on the long lines of the cruiser, easily as big as
Hood
or his own flagship.

So he issued his orders. Admiral Holland, with
Hood
and
Repulse
would continue to operate together and take up a position on the right. Tovey would take
Invincible
and the destroyers
Fortune
and
Firedrake
in the center, steaming some 18,000 yards west of Holland’s position. Vice Admiral Wells with the two British carriers would hold down the left flank, escorted by the heavy cruisers
Sussex
and
Devonshire
, with destroyers
Tartar
,
Javelin
and
Jackal
in escort, led by the redoubtable Lord Mountbatten aboard
Jackal
. This force would steam west-southwest of Tovey’s position, with the cruisers well out in front.