by James Philip
The President of the United States of America, for better or worse, his Commander-in-Chief had ordered all US Forces to back off. Curtis LeMay still hadn’t figured out which part of ‘back off’ CINCLANT hadn’t understood.
Even the Army understood that if you didn’t know which of your units was loyal and which ones were rogue you locked everything down until you could tell the difference. You didn’t get high and mighty or proud about it, you just fucking did it! Every air base in the continental United States was closed to flight operations unless he – personally – trusted the commanding officer. So what was the fucking Navy’s problem?
Hopefully, the President was on the line to CINCLANT putting the useless prick right on the chain of command and how he, CINCLANT was about to find himself cleaning latrines in New Mexico if he didn’t get his finger out of his arse and get a grip of his people.
‘What do you want me to do?’ the Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet had objected angrily when LeMay had asked him what the fuck he was doing allowing the USS Enterprise to launch two Grumman S-2 Tracker anti-submarine birds each carrying two live torpedoes to ‘support the USS Scorpion’ to, and this was the truly bizarre admission, ‘harass and maintain contact’ with the British nuclear boat HMS Dreadnought. The story coming out of Norfolk was that one of the S-2s had gone after Dreadnought after ‘she manoeuvred aggressively to threaten the Scorpion’ and that subsequently, the Scorpion was missing. Not wanting to miss the fun the second S-2 had subsequently gone after the British submarine; explosions had been observed but the S-2 had no way of telling if it had made a kill because it had already exhausted its inventory of sonar buoys.
‘I want you to disengage,’ the Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had repeated, wondering if he ought to spell the operative word ‘disengage’ to Admiral Vincent Gray, the numbskull the Navy had appointed CINCLANT in January that year.
‘I can’t let my boys go up against hostiles armed with no more than a firm manner and the Navy’s best wishes!’
The mystery to LeMay was how, in the same year the Navy had put thousands of well-paid, highly qualified and rigorously trained offices on the beach, it was possible that so many high-ranking retards had remained in positions of authority?
He watched as the Attorney General and a greying man in a Navy Uniform stepped off the first Sea King. The Navy man must be Brenckmann; the guy looked like he’d just seen a ghost so somebody had to have told him about the Scorpion by now.
The Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shook his head in near disbelief and suppressed the urge to kick something or somebody. Jesus! Those arseholes at CINCLANT must have shit for brains! Maybe the British sub had taken out the Scorpion like they were claiming. Or maybe not. Fuck it! If you hunt another country’s submarine in international waters with S-2s and a pair of Skipjack boats for several days and get so close to it you could reach out and touch it – if it wasn’t under water – how did those Navy pricks think it was going to end? As for the Brits taking out the Scorpion? Curtis LeMay was reserving judgement on that one. All CINCLANT knew for sure was that the A-2s had put four homing fish in the water; it still wasn’t clear exactly why they’d done that, and once the first two fish had detonated all that was left of the USS Scorpion was a single distress buoy. HMS Dreadnought had gone deep and tried to outrun the last two homing fish. The S-2s hadn’t been able to find her again after that so the British submarine was probably down, too.
Not content with having started World War III the fucking Navy was out to start World War IV!
Curtis LeMay marched towards the first Sea King.
He walked straight past the Attorney General, who blinked at the big man as he shouldered through the crowd of Marines and Secret Service men. The Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff went directly to Walter Brenckmann and took him by the elbow.
The former Naval Attaché’s grey-green eyes fixed on LeMay’s face.
“My boy wouldn’t have wanted this to turn into the next war, sir,” Walter Brenckmann said in a steady, resolute voice.
Curtis LeMay nodded, released his hold on the other man’s arm and patted his shoulder. The Navy man had lost one kid in the October War and now it looked like he lost another because those fucking idiots at CINCLANT had screwed the pooch. Again!
“What do the Brits know?” He asked tersely.
“What we’ve told them,” the Navy man replied flatly. “But they don’t believe it and frankly, sir,” he added, grimly, “neither do I.”
The first Sea King was talking off; the next would race in within minutes carrying the British Prime Minister and his senior advisors. Overhead the sky was full of the roaring of the F-4 Phantoms riding herd on the VIP choppers as they skimmed low across the tortured city.
“Why not?” Curtis LeMay demanded.
“I’m no submarine man, sir.”
“You’re more of a submarine man than I am, Captain!”
Walter Brenckmann shrugged. He’d never met the famous Air Force general before and couldn’t help but compare the public persona, the great American legend with the flesh and bones man whose scowling face impatiently awaited his answer. If he’d tried to envisage this encounter five minutes ago he’d not have factored in the apparently genuine, man to man, tenor of the quick fire interrogatives flying at his head.
“They say Scorpion manoeuvred so close to HMS Dreadnought that the two boats almost collided shortly before the shooting began,” Walter Brenckmann replied, thinking his thoughts out aloud. “Maybe her skipper worked out what the S-2s were about to do and believed that if he placed his vessel between them and Dreadnought, or simply manoeuvred in close order with the British boat then the S-2s would back off.” The smaller, shorter man shrugged with the weariness of a grieving father. Scorpion was gone and with her over a hundred men including his eldest boy. He didn’t really care about the reasons why as the numbing emptiness of loss began to consume him like some debilitating virus for which his body had no natural immunity. “I don’t know, General,” he confessed. “Not a lot makes much sense lately. Just ask yourself why the skipper of the British boat would start a fight with boat with exactly the same capabilities as his while the water all around him was full of air-dropped sonar buoys? I mean, he’d have to know how a fight like that was going to end. Our sub skippers know we’ve got another twenty nuclear boats; the guy commanding the Dreadnought knew that Dreadnought is the Brits’ only nuclear submarine. With respect, sir,” he concluded, “CINCLANT’s version of events is probably as reliable as its version of what happened last year to the USS Beale.”
The Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff let this bitter accusation – for ‘accusation’ was what it was – go unremarked.
“You’ve got to hold yourself together, Captain.”
Walter Brenckmann said nothing, allowing the dull irritation in his eyes do the talking.
Curtis LeMay was used to dealing with men who weren’t, at some level, afraid of him. Brenckmann was beyond being afraid of any man. He didn’t give a dam about anything the Acting Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces could do to him. Where’s this guy been hiding? If he was in my air force he’d be major-general commanding a Bomb Wing, not wasted on Embassy chores as a lowly four-ringer...
“You and I need to talk to the President,” Curtis LeMay decided.
Chapter 42
Wednesday 11th December 1963
HMS Hermes, 32 miles WSW of Cadiz
The single-engine fighter that narrowly avoided crashing into the stern of the aircraft carrier looked exactly like a Second World War era Messerschmitt Bf 109. The iron bomb it had been carrying detonated in the big ship’s wake as the fighter hit the sea. A great, ugly plume of white water rose briefly above the stern and was gone.
HMS Hermes’s 40-millimetre Bofors anti-aircraft cannons pumped continuously, and on the sponsons below flight deck level and from the bridge wings Royal Marines manned heavy machine guns.
High above the leaden Atlantic overcast Hermes’s seven serviceable Sea Vixens and three of her five newly arrived Blackburn Buccaneers – low-level strike bombers rather than fighters – were engaging in a surreal battle with scores of antiquated Spanish copies of the aircraft that Hitler had employed to conquer Poland and France two decades ago. Neither the Sea Vixens or the Buccaneers had guns – the former had taken off with the carrier’s last Firestreak short-range air-to-air missiles, the Buccaneers with the last half-dozen Sidewinders – and for all that they were faster and were in every respect more advanced, capable and superior to their foes they were outnumbered and basically, not designed to refight a Second World War style air battle. Inevitably, now and again one, two or three enemy aircraft broke through to the Battle Group. It had been a gamble coming in so close to land, especially as the fleet was known to be under surveillance by at least one Spanish submarine. However, there had been no choice. The Spanish had started lobbing artillery shells onto Gibraltar from the Andalusian hills to the north and across Algeciras Bay from the west, and then the entire Spanish Air Force, minus its small but potent American-supplied modern component – P-80 Lockheed Shooting Star and North American F-86 Super Sabre fighters – had risen in a large disorderly gaggle over Cape Trafalgar and, albeit slowly, attacked en masse.
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Christopher and his ‘steward’, Leading Electrical Artificer Jack Griffin, had arrived on the carrier minutes before the radar pickets ten miles off the Spanish coast had first detected the aerial armada forming thirty miles north-east of Cadiz. The Battle Group had closed up at Air Defence Stations One, he and Jack Griffin had been handed flash gear – balaclavas and gloves – and told to ‘keep out of everybody’s way’. This they’d achieved by finding a viewing perch at the bottom of Hermes’s island mast, a great steel structure like that on their beloved Talavera that seemed infinitely smaller and more consistent with the scale of the carrier than it ever had on the old Battle class destroyer. But then Hermes was ten times the tonnage of their former ship.
“I wondered if I’d find you fellows back here!” Declared the Battle Group Commander’s flag lieutenant, a bearded man of Peter Christopher’s own age. “It looks like the first wave is turning away. We’ll be trying to recover our aircraft in a few minutes. Buggered if I know what we’re going to give them to shoot with but never mind, what?”
Peter’s gaze had fallen on HMS Duchess, a Daring class destroyer that had ranged up alongside the carrier and was holding position almost exactly to starboard of the bigger ship at a range of around three hundred yards. A frigate, HMS Plymouth, Talavera’s saviour newly arrived from Oporto was manoeuvring to assume station on the other side of the Hermes.
“Goalkeepers!” The junior officer exclaimed cheerfully.
Hermes’s Bofors guns had fallen silent.
The manoeuvring bell clanged
“You two are to come with me. The Admiral wants to say ‘hello’.” When Jack Griffin hesitated he went on: “Come on, you too!”
Rear-Admiral Nigel Grenville was bent over the chart table on the flag bridge. The ‘flag bridge’ was situated half-way up the carrier’s island superstructure. The space was crowded; radar repeaters and tactical plots were crammed onto bulkheads and most of the windows were screened with heavy steel blast shutters. Hermes didn’t have the full ABC – atomic, biological and chemical warfare - ‘lock down and wash down’ facilities of the Tiger class cruisers and some of the new frigates coming into service, but notwithstanding her twenty-five thousand tons of bulk, she was a relatively small ship in which to accommodate modern jet aircraft, helicopters and all the technology required to support them. Practically ever operational space on the carrier was cramped and the flag bridge was no exception.
Peter Christopher presented himself to the C-in-C Hermes Battle Group.
“Welcome aboard, young man.” Grenville was in his late forties, a small, hook-nosed man with piercing faded blue eyes. “You must have had a rough old time on the Talavera? How are you bearing up?”
The younger man was a little taken aback by the transparent and hugely public friendliness of his reception by a man who was, after all, in the middle of a major fleet action.
“Raring to go, sir,” he blurted.
“Like father like son!” Guffawed Admiral Grenville, sliding a glance at LEA Jack Griffin who was doing his best to lurk, unseen behind Peter Christopher’s shoulder. “We’ll have a proper chinwag once we’ve seen off the Spanish Luftwaffe,” he promised, turning back to the younger man. “In the meantime you and PO Griffin can make yourself useful in here.”
Jack Griffin was bemused.
He opened his mouth to speak as the manoeuvring bell clanged again and the big ship began to heel into a southerly turn.
“STAND BY TO RECOVER AIRCRAFT!”
Peter Christopher didn’t have time to explain to his ‘steward’ that his days – or rather his day – of ‘stewarding’ was already over. He suspected that Jack Griffin’s promotion was one of many being liberally and possibly, not very judiciously handed out among warrant officers and leading rates from the Talavera and the Devonshire. He saw his father’s hand in that. His ships were suffering damage, he was losing good ships and men at an unsustainable rate, so he’d promote from within the body of the survivors and ensure that not one scintilla of irreplaceable battle experience was wasted.
In reality there was very little that Peter could actually do to make himself ‘useful’. He didn’t know the ship, or any of its people. He was unfamiliar with Hermes’s electronic warfare and radar systems and had absolutely no practical experience of carrier operations. He and Jack Griffin were worse than spare parts, they were a positive menace. Both men found corners of the flag bridge where they weren’t directly underfoot and could observe the quiet, unflustered, methodical business of the Battle Group Staff.
The first returning aircraft, a Buccaneer thumped down onto Hermes’s deck with a reverberating thud and a scream of jet engines. The moment the aircraft’s landing hook caught on one of the four arrester cables the pilot shut the throttles and hit the lever to fold the big beast’s wings. A glance astern found the small dark silhouette of a Sea Vixen on final approach as the Buccaneer rolled onto the forward flight deck. Fuel lines were already uncoiling.
Peter Christopher might have been unfamiliar with carrier operations but he knew that the one thing the Captain of any carrier would never, given the choice, do was fuel returning aircraft on deck in the middle of a battle while recovering other aircraft. If anything went wrong or the enemy showed up at an inopportune moment the consequences might be catastrophic. He glanced again at the two escorts holding station on each side of the Hermes, each presenting a defiant physical barrier with their unarmoured, paper thin hulls; and knew in that moment, not that he’d ever doubted it, that the spirit of Admiral Lord Nelson was alive and well in the post-cataclysm Royal Navy.
Chapter 43
Wednesday 11th December 1963
Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre, Mdina, Malta
Vice-Admiral Sir Julian Christopher hesitated before he picked up the phone in his sparsely furnished and equipped new office in what until a week ago had been the RAF Officers Club located within the ancient citadel of Mdina. For a moment the steely calm which had characterised everything he done since his arrival in the Maltese Archipelago had threatened to desert him.
“Christopher speaking,” he said. Realising that his flag lieutenant, Alan Hannay was hovering in the doorway he waved him away. The boy was a marvel but this was one conversation he didn’t want him noting, or given his other skills, memorizing for future reference. Even the C-in-C was allowed a little privacy sometimes.
The line was surprisingly clear, presumably routed via the GCHQ eavesdropping facility at Oakley. There was a low background hiss; no spitting and clicking.
“Sir Julian!” The melodic soprano tones cried with barel
y concealed pleasure. “It seems an age since we said our farewells at RAF Cheltenham. I know that was less than a week ago but so much has happened in the last few days!”
Julian Christopher didn’t think that Margaret Hilda Thatcher ‘gabbled’ very often. He was touched that she was apparently so happy to hear his voice that she was unashamedly ‘gabbling’ now.
“The feeling is completely mutual, Home Secretary,” he replied. He didn’t know who was listening in at her end of the line and didn’t want to do or say anything which might risk causing her embarrassment. A woman in a position of power was so much more vulnerable to the sniping of her male peers and detractors than a man. It was best not to offer hostages to fortune. “My staff assures me that this line is secure at my end. May I speak freely?”
“Yes,” the Angry Widow rejoined, sobering a little. “I am also assured the line has been appropriately ‘scrambled’ by the technical people. I think we may speak freely. I am given to understand by the First Sea Lord that our ships have survived a major air attack in the Straits of Gibraltar?”
The man smiled to himself.
Business before pleasure would always be this woman’s hallmark.
“Sir David is probably better informed of the details at this time than I am,” Julian Christopher confessed. “We lost a couple of aircraft unfortunately and several units of the Hermes Battle Group suffered superficial damage. One aircraft, a single-engine C-4K, that’s the Spanish version of the old German Messerschmitt Bf 109 which they call the ‘Buchón’, apparently carrying a large iron bomb may have attempted to dive into HMS Hermes’s flight deck. That apart, only a handful of aircraft got through the Hermes’s outer screen. If our Sea Vixens and Buccaneers hadn’t run out of air-to-air missiles we’d have wiped out the attacking force which was comprised of entirely old World War Two type vintage aircraft. Admiral Grenville reports that ‘even the bloody Sea Cats work against Heinkels and Dorniers if the blighters get close enough’.” Julian Christopher decided he was sounding too triumphal. That was the effect this woman seemed to have on him; it was a very long time since a woman had so seized him. “Actually, it is a bad business all round. The Spanish haven’t employed any of their more advanced aircraft. They don’t have that many but if they wheel them out tomorrow we will be in trouble. As for the poor brave fellows they’ve been sending against us in their Luftwaffe hand me downs and copies,” he groaned at the thought of so many obviously courageous men dying for nothing in such a perverted cause, “I think we all feel for them. Our pilots take no pleasure in shooting down men who have no real chance of defending themselves, let alone fighting back. I think it is different for the men on our ships. They have no espirit de corps with the enemy airman and a bomb from a Heinkel or a Dornier or a Junkers makes just as big a hole in their decks as one from a modern jet like a Skyhawk.”
