by Stuart Slade
Knyaz nodded. His sergeant barked out a string of orders. To one side, Kabanov watched with satisfaction. Now, the ski group had four new Drugs. Even though he was the lowliest of the Brats, their presence meant that he wouldn’t be doing the humblest and most unpleasant details any more. Then he saw something quite unexpected. Under the cockpit of the C-66 was a dark gray maltese cross. A kill mark? In this aircraft? Knyaz had noted it as well.
“Tovarish, you have killed a fascist aircraft?” In this was the unspoken part of the question.
“Aye, my friend. About three weeks ago. Tilly and I were doing a delivery to a Partisan unit when we got hit by this Fokker. Well, the Hun tried to do us in, but we turned inside him and headed for the deck. Anyway, that Fokker followed us down, right down to the deck. I slowed Tilly right down. We were doing about sixty and that gave the Fokker real problems. Every time he tried to hit us, he overshot. We were thirty, perhaps forty feet up when we saw a valley and went down it. That Fokker, he was a real determined bastard. He wanted us dead, no mistake about that. He kept trying and we kept swinging out of the way. Tilly here drove that Fokker mad I can tell you. Couple of minutes into the valley, there was this line of pines, the tall ones. We flew straight at it. The Fokker saw his chance and came barreling in. Last moment, Tilly stood on her wingtip and turned out of the way. That Fokker, he couldn’t match the turn and he plowed straight into the trees. Brass back up top are still arguing about whether it was a kill or not. But Tilly and I are here and that Fokker isn’t, so I know who won.”
Knyaz had lost track of the bulk of the story but he got the essentials. “He was a Fokker D.XXI? That would be an Finnish aircraft then. To kill one of those treacherous fascists is very good.”
Brumby laughed and clapped the Russian lieutenant on the back. “That is as may be, me old mate. But that Fokker was a Messerschmitt.”
Bridge, KMS Graf Zeppelin, Flagship, First Scouting Group, High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic
The weather was changing. The howling wind that had driven the rain in blinding sheets had dropped and with it the seas that had rolled the Graf Zeppelin dangerously close to her inadequate stability limits. That was the good news. The bad news was that the temperature had dropped as well as the wind. That combined, with the movement of the ship north, changed what had been rain to a mixture of rain and slush. It froze into a sheet of ice when it touched anything. Overhead, the gray masts and yards were turning white with ice. Ice was heavy, it weighed tons, and it added weight in the worst possible place. High up, it reduced Graf Zeppelin’s already precarious stability reserve.
The weather expert said that this was a temporary stage, a transient condition that marked the trailing edge of the storm. Already, they were crossing the boundary between the storm system itself and the clearer weather that followed it. Captain Erich Dietrich hoped the weather forecast was right. If it wasn’t Graf Zeppelin would be in trouble.
“Captain, when can we launch?” Admiral Ernst Brinkmann snapped the question out. It was one that needed an immediate answer. The Scouting Group was supposed to find the convoys that were the objective of this whole mission. The battlefleet was following a few hours behind them to the south and east. They were still laboring through the full force of the storm. When they emerged, not so far in the future, Admiral Lindemann would want to know where his targets were. He was not a man to wait patiently for the information. As if in partial answer, the sun broke through the thin clouds overhead. A weak, watery, indistinct sun, but the sun none the less. Dietrich took this as an omen.
“We can start bringing the aircraft up to the flight deck right away, Sir. They have to be loaded and armed on the hangar deck, and they have to warm their engines up here. That should not take long. I can have a deckload ready to go in.” Dietrich paused, calculating the times needed. “For a scout mission? I can have twelve Ju-87s on the deck, each with a 250 kilogram bomb and two 200 liter drop tanks, ready to fly in 45 minutes.”
“Very good. Communications. Order the Werner Voss to ready a force of 18 aircraft to launch at the same time. Same load. Also to have their remaining twelve Stukas loaded with a 1,000 kilogram bomb for anti-shipping strike. Have them ready six Ta-152s as escort. The Boelcke will prepare eight of her Ta-152s for immediate launch as our combat air patrol. Then she will prepare six Ju-87s and two Ta-152s as her contribution to our strike force. Got that? Transmit it. Captain Dietrich, you will ready an anti-shipping strike of your remaining eight Stukas and four of your Ta-152s. That will give us twenty six anti-ship configured bombers escorted by twelve Ta-152s as a strike while thirty of our Stukas look for the enemy.”
“An anti-shipping strike Sir.” The question wasn’t even hinted at in Dietrich’s tone but the Admiral knew it was there.
“The Amis are out there with carriers. They always have a carrier group covering their big convoys and this one will be no exception. So we need to be able to strike at them before they find us. Carriers are weak, vulnerable. What matters most is getting in the first blow. If we have our strike ready to launch, then we have the edge. We will still have twenty six fighters and four bombers left in reserve. The Scouting Group will adjust course to 270. We need to get clear of this ice as quickly as we can.”
Brinkmann watched from the bridge as the aircraft carrier started to boil with action. Despite the change in course, she was still rolling badly. Up ahead, the Werner Voss was making much easier passage through the seas. On paper, Brinkmann would have preferred her as his flagship. She was larger, more powerful and had much better flag facilities than the Graf Zeppelin, but he couldn’t stand the stink that seemed to permeate every niche of the ship and the infuriating faults in her construction drove him mad. So, he’d made Germany’s first carrier his flagship and put up with her deficiencies instead.
His thoughts were interrupted by the whine as the aft elevator brought the first of the reconnaissance Ju-87s to the flight deck. Its wings were folded; he watched, the flight deck crew started to winch them down. Once, it had been proposed that electrically-folding wings should be installed but that scheme had been dropped along with so many others. It weighed too much and the performance of the Ju-87 was critically inadequate anyway. Still, it was better than the only alternative, a Fiesler biplane. On the deck, one of the wings on the lead aircraft had jammed; something was stopping the hinged joint from working. Brinkmann watched a deck crewman jump up; he grabbed the wing and jerked it down into place. It worked; whatever had been obstructing the movement gave way and the outer wing panel slammed down.
It dropped into place so hard that the enterprising deck crewman lost his grip on the wing and was deposited, abruptly and unceremoniously on his rear. Brinkmann could almost hear the laughter from his comrades as they saw his inglorious reward. The laugh was very quickly choked off for the Graf Zeppelin was rolling and she had started one of her sways to starboard just as the unfortunate crewman hit the ice- and slush-covered deck. Brinkmann had no doubt about hearing the result, the crewman screamed in raw terror as he started sliding towards the deck edge. Two of his fellows tried to grab him; their only reward was to lose their footing and fall also. They were only saved for the same fate by those nearby grabbing them. The stricken crewman was scrabbling, hopelessly, uselessly for a grip as he made his inexorable slide towards the deck edge. Then he was gone, over the side into the gray water below.
“Communications. Man overboard. Order Z-20 to break position and pick him up.” Brinkmann snapped out the orders. Z-16 and Z-20 were the two trailing destroyers, one of them could surely pick the man up?
“Message from Z-20, Sir. He’s already passed. Are they to turn, stop and lower a boat?”
Dietrich spoke quietly. “It’s no good, Sir. That will take them at least five minutes. The water temperature, it’s below one degree. That man will be dead by the time they get to him. If he isn’t dead already. The fall might have killed him, or the sheer shock of hitting water that cold. By the time Z-20 has picked up his body, th
ey’ll be far behind. It’ll take an hour or more for them to catch up.”
Brinkmann nodded. It was a hard decision but a necessary one “Order Z-20 to belay the previous order and hold position. There will be no rescue.”
He went out onto the bridge wing and took the great pair of high-power binoculars, the ones used by the lookouts. He could see the body floating motionless in the wake of the two destroyers bringing up the rear. Seagulls were already gathering to feast on it. They knew that anything floating motionless in the icy water wasn’t living any more. It was just food for gulls. Already the more adventurous gulls were diving down to snatch the choicest morsels from the unexpected meal.
Brinkmann sighed and went back inside the bridge. Work on the flightdeck was going on, more of the Ju-87s being brought up and prepared for launch. Then, he was shaken by a white blot that appeared on the glass. Not more snow, surely? No, it wasn’t. It was a tear-drop shaped, whitish blob with a green-brown center. Seagull droppings. Brinkmann looked up, the gulls were circling Graf Zeppelin as well.
AD-2W Skyraider “Eye’s A’Poppin” North Atlantic
It was a nuisance not being part of the formal carrier airgroup. The detachments, night fighters, radar search aircraft, utility birds, tended to come last on the priority lists. They fitted in after everybody else had grabbed the places and positions they wanted. But, once in a while, the detachments were supremely important. This was one of those times. There was a line of AD-2W Skyraiders spaced out across the sea. Each was dozens of miles from the next. Their job was to find the enemy and report on their position. Then, they were to continue to track that enemy, reporting so the strike aircraft didn’t waste fuel hunting for their targets. Every pound of fuel they saved meant more warload, more fuel saved for the trip home in what could easily be a critically damaged aircraft. Of course, the problem was that the enemy group would realize the significance of the thin line of Adies and send out fighters for them. Just as the American fleet was watching for the equivalent enemy scouting force and send out fighters to deal with them.
Unlike the AD-1s, the AD-2Ws were two-seaters. Superficially, they didn’t look like it. The pilot sat under a bubble canopy identical to the AD-1s. The immediately obvious difference was the mushroom-shaped bulge under the aircraft’s belly. That was the search radar, the latest variant in a family whose development had started back in 1942. Then, the intention had been to spot U-boats running on the surface. Over the years, the function had evolved. First to pick out the snorkel heads of a submarine charging batteries while submerged. Then, more added functions, searching for surface ships and monitoring aircraft movements. The radar operator sat inside the AD-2Ws cavernous fuselage, without windows to distract him from his radar screen or to let in light that would dim the displays.
On Eye’s A ‘Poppin, the screens showed the picture the searching Adies were looking for. Over to the east, a jumbled mass of chaotic returns marked the position of the storm that had swept across the Atlantic. Now they concealed whatever was still within it. As it had cleared to the east, another contact had emerged. A hard, distinct contact whose slow movement revealed it to be a formation of ships. Around it were some faint, yet still clear marks; ones moving in an arc that ran from due north of the enemy formation to south west. It was the German’s own picket line. The Germans didn’t have surface search radar, not on carrier aircraft. Only the big maritime reconnaissance birds, the Me-264s and the Ju-390s carried them. Whittling those down had been a Navy priority for a long, long time. The enemy search would be visual.
“We got them boss.” Sergeant Kudrich passed the word up to his pilot. “Surface units, medium sized formation, with air activity. It’s the carriers.” It was the golden strike, the jackpot. Battleships were obsolete, floating targets; it was carrier aircraft that were the center of an enemy fleet. Destroy them and the battle was over. “I’m radioing in the position now.” That was another bit of doctrine. The American carriers were running blacked out; not a light showing, not a radio transmission made. All the communications were to them, never from them.
“Any sign of enemy fighters coming out?”
Kudrich shook his head, then remembered nobody could see him in this black pit. “Search aircraft only. No sign of interceptors. Uh, Boss, there’s a hunter-killer group south of us, they’re in the search arc of the enemy aircraft. Better give them a head’s up?”
“Call Wild Bill on Gettysburg first, then let the hunter-killer group know what’s heading their way. Threat says the Kraut carriers have only Ju-87s for search; they’re not fast enough for a threat to develop that quickly. You know Wild Bill; he gets really upset if he’s the last person to find out what’s going on.
Admiral’s Bridge, USS Gettysburg CVB-43, Flagship Task Force 58
“Sir, message from the scouts. Enemy warship group spotted, 220 nautical miles east south east of our position, Medium sized group with air activity. Scouts believe it is the enemy carriers Sir.”
“Confirmation?” Admiral William “Wild Bill” Halsey was not a trusting soul at the best of times.
“Multiple Sir. Three of the Adies out there got solid radar hits. They’ve spotted the enemy scouting aircraft fanning out. They’re monitoring the enemy formation, undisturbed as yet.”
“Anything else?”
“Sir, a Rivet Joint, an EC-69 out of Keflavik has been picking up a lot of communications. The Krauts are using TBS radio pretty freely. Probably think they can’t be picked up if we’re over the horizon. There’s chatter between the ships in the group the Adies spotted and another location still within the storm line. Traffic analysis and some intel Washington sent us confirms it; the Hun battleships are out.”
“Battleships. Ain’t that just like the Krauts. Bringing their fists to a gunfight. Right. Signal Biloxi to launch a seaplane to TF58.5. They’ll take the enemy carrier group down. They’ve got the moxie to do it by themselves. That way, the Hun main force will think it’s just the group we normally have screening a convoy. The rest of us will get bombed up and ready to go as soon as the battlewagons stick their nose out of that storm. Strike waves will launch at 15 minute intervals from lights-on.”
Halsey knew well how the maths ran. Five carrier groups, two deckload strikes per group, a total of ten waves. The last wave would be on its way two hours and thirty minutes after TF58 switched its radios and radars on and started to launch aircraft. An hour out, 15 - 20 minutes for the strike an hour back and then a few minutes to recover.
It meant that the first wave would be returning just as the last wave of the strike would be on its way. Half an hour to rearm and refuel the survivors of that first wave, push the aircraft too badly damaged to reuse over the side and the whole process would start again. A continuous stream of attack aircraft that would swarm all over the enemy fleet until nothing was left. Once, when Wild Bill had been a child (something his staff refused to admit as a possibility), he had put the stream of water from a hose on a pile of dirt and watched the mound crumple and washed away under the unrelenting jet of water. Now, he was going to do the same thing again; only this time with the dark blue fighter-bombers on his carriers.
At least the weather had cleared. The met guys said the storm would pass to the east and that there would be relatively mild seas in its wake. They’d been right. Aircraft operating weather about as good as it was going to get for the North Atlantic this time of year. Gettysburg was still making heavy weather of it though. She was pitching badly due to her extra length and taking a lot of water over her bows and amidships. Halsey had heard that the second group of CVBs would have a their bows redesigned with the hull plating carried up to the flight deck. It was supposed to be a big improvement.
“Send a courier to Task Force 50.” That was the support group of escort carriers bringing up the rear. Their melancholy job was to supply replacement aircraft and crews to offset the losses from enemy fighters and anti-aircraft guns. “Warm up the replacements. Priority will be Adies, then Mames, t
hen Corsairs. We’ll have to eat our Flivver losses.”
“One more thing Sir. There’s a hunter-killer group, Sitka, south of us. They’re in the enemy search arc. The Adies have tipped them off. They’ll be launching Bearcats to get the enemy scouts.”
Halsey nodded. “Add a warning to all messages. There’ll be gray and white Bearcats around; make sure of target identification before shooting them down. Try to make sure the Corsair drivers realize not everything with straight gray wings is a Ta-152.”
Bridge, USS Shangri-La CV-38, Flagship TG58.5.
“Got it!” The comms Lieutenant was exultant. They’d seen the seaplane land and be recovered by the USS Montpelier. It had been a few minutes before the signal lamp had started to flash and the message it had transmitted had been a long one. “It’s the enemy carrier group. Roughly 180 miles out, bearing 129 true. There’s a wave of Kraut search planes coming this way.”
“Right. Order San Jacinto to launch her dash-sevens to intercept any that annoy us, and any others that they run into of course. She is to get her dash-fours ready for combat air patrol. Boxer and Macedonian are to ready their Flivver squadron and an Adie squadron each for the first wave, Valley Forge, their Flivver Squadron and a dash-4 squadron, we’ll do the same. Second wave. Two squadrons of dash-fours from Boxer and Macedonian. Valley Forge will send both her Adie squadrons; we’ll send both our Mames. That’ll leave us with a squadron of dash-sevens each for CAP and one squadron to assist Sitka. Clear?” Admiral Peter Knudson knew it was a rhetorical question. This was a well-rehearsed drill. The first wave, the Flivvers to sweep any enemy combat air patrol out of the way plus a light strike of fighter-bombers and some Adies to soften up the target. Second wave the heavy strike with fighter-bombers to suppress flak and a heavy punch of Adies and Mames with torpedoes. More than 250 aircraft in total.
