As they neared the Kent coast, sixteen kilometres and two minutes from their target, the pilot of the first Gigant activated the red ‘ready’ light inside the cargo bay. At that moment, the senior NCO loadmaster opened the access doors at the port and starboard rear of the aircraft, and all forty of the paratroops inside stood as one, clipping their static lines to the rails running the length of the bay on either side. In tense silence, they made final checks of weapons and equipment and waited patiently. They’d been training for this moment for months, and that training had been intensive: all that was left now was for them to prove themselves in battle.
Many of them were veterans of the campaigns in Poland and Western Europe… some, like Witzig, had seen action at Eben Emael. A greater majority were newer recruits that were part of a huge expansion of the force in preparation for Operation Seelöwe. All of them were highly trained and highly motivated all the same: the continuing existence of the Fatherland rested on their shoulders, and it was up to them to do their duty and ensure the security of the Reich. None of them would ever know how true that belief actually was.
The lead pilot saw the landing flares from several kilometres away, and instantly increased his altitude to five hundred as he activated another switch that caused the red light in the cargo bay to begin flashing, signalling that the jump was imminent. Increasing his flaps and dropping his airspeed slightly to ensure a slightly smoother ride, the pilot noted the wind direction revealed by the lines of smoke trailing away from the flares. He banked momentarily, placing his aircraft in a more suitable position, and waited until the nose of the aircraft drew level with the trees where Witzig waited below.
The jump light inside the cargo bay changed to green, and there were screams of “Go!” from the loadmaster as paratroops began streaming from the open access doors on either side of the aircraft. It was all over in just sixty seconds, all forty troops had left the aircraft, and the crew were dragging in the static lines before closing the doors once more. The moment he was given the ‘all clear’ from his crew chief, the pilot activated his navigation lights and went to full power, banking away to the north. A thousand metres behind him, the second pilot in line watched his squadron leader’s tail and wing lights began flicking faintly and readied his own aircraft, knowing the first drop was complete.
Lieutenant Clement Howell of the West Hythe Home Guard yawned as he and his platoon trudged tiredly along Royal Military Rd, the condensation of their breath swirling around them in the pre-dawn darkness. Howell was a small, bookish man who, at fifty years of age, had served in the Great War as a junior officer in a supply unit, and had spent his civilian life as an accountant with a small firm in Hythe. Their unit was one of many around the country, garrisoned in smaller communities like West Hythe, with the duties of providing observation of any enemy activity and of local defence in the case of an invasion.
With the current hysteria concerning imminent invasion over the last few months, Howell’s unit had been kept quite busy at all hours of the night and day, and had frequently been sent traipsing all over the local area in recent weeks in search of spurious parachute sightings, reported by excited night piquets and nervous civilians alike. One such report had reached their barracks within the last hour from a local farmer, who swore blind he’d heard a multi-engined plane come over his farmhouse just after midnight, and had seen parachutes coming down nearby.
So Howell and his platoon had been dragged out of bed, and had ventured out into the chilly early morning to investigate and reconnoitre the area, crossing the canal at the West Hythe Bridge and immediately turning left down Royal Military Rd. They’d personally observed no unusual activity so far, and it’d been the third night in succession they’d been called out for what had previously turned out to be wild goose chases. Howell was close to ordering his men to pack it all in and head back to barracks when a member of his three-man advance squad – an experienced corporal who’d seen combat in France during the First World War – appeared out of the darkness ahead in a rather agitated state.
“We’ve got something, sir!” He panted seriously to the great surprise of all, shifting the weight of his Tommy gun from one hand to the other. “There appears to be some kind of force in section strength, setting up flares about five hundred yards away near the ruins of the Roman fort.
“Very good corporal,” Howell replied nervously. “It might be best if we…!” He was cut off by the sound of aircraft off to the east, and they all looked skyward but were initially unable to see anything at all. As the sound passed overhead however, they clearly spotted the small, blossoming flowers of open parachutes in the pre-dawn sky, and a moment later the transporting aircraft’s navigation lights came on as it powered away at the same time that a second aircraft’s approach became audible.
“Quickly…!” Howell snapped, turning to a lance corporal beside him. “Jones… get back to barracks immediately and ring through to HQ Twelve Corps! Give them our position and tell them to broadcast Codeword ‘Oliver’! Make sure they’re clear that we’re reporting ‘Oliver’ and not ‘Cromwell’: make sure they understand we’ve seen parachute troops!” The report of such a sighting would send command centres all over England wild with activity, and as the junior NCO saluted and disappeared quickly back the way they’d come, Howell turned back to the corporal who’d first approached him. “Lead the way, man… let’s see if we can get a better look at these cheeky buggers!”
The platoon spent fifteen minutes trying to approach the landing area without being detected. Howell had kept two squads with him and had headed directly through the trees for what was clearly becoming the greatest source of audio and visual activity. Three-section had been sent off to the left flank, with the intention of setting up a crossfire against the enemy from cover along northern edge of the canal. Howell had been given enough training regarding the engagement of parachute troops to know their enemy was at their most vulnerable in the moments directly following a landing, while they were still trying to gather together and organise into coherent units. With every minute that passed, more of them would reach designated rally-points, dig in and become far more difficult to attack.
They were within two hundred metres of the nearest German lookouts when one of Howell’s riflemen stumbled, accidentally discharging his weapon into the ground. It was as if hell itself had opened up against the British soldiers in the moments that followed. Tracer instantly arced in at them from several directions as enemy light machine guns began to lay down suppressing fire, and a parachute flare ignited above their heads, illuminating their area and casting weird, swinging shadows as it floated slowly earthward trailing smoke.
Half-a-dozen rifle-grenades detonated nearby fired from under-barrel, and six of Howell’s men were killed instantly, with another three severely wounded. Their screams mingled with the cacophony of gunfire as greater numbers of automatic rifles added their weight to the already considerable fire pouring into Howell’s position. Two successive gunners manning one-section’s old Lewis gun were killed outright, with a third injured while trying to return some kind of heavy fire, and Howell was forced to order a withdrawal after just ten hectic minutes. Just eight fit men out of twenty remained, dragging another four wounded with them as they retreated to a position of relative safety.
By complete contrast, three-section was able to reach a more secure position in a lightly wooded area, a few hundred metres further west, without any opposition whatsoever, and the NCO in charge immediately set up a broad firing line as they prepared to attack with his Thompson SMG, one battered old Browning BAR, and a brace of bolt-action .303 rifles of various models. From their flank position, they could clearly see the activity of several hundred fallschirmjäger out in the open fields before them, in the process of collecting their equipment and organising into units as dozens more continued to fall from the sky.
Even as the other two squads were coming under a hail of heavy fire to the east, three-section opened up on the exposed
Germans near their positions with complete surprise. A hail of .30- and .45-calibre slugs ripped through the ranks of paratroops, killing and maiming with murderous efficiency. The airborne invaders were at first confused and unable to determine the direction of the incoming fire as their comrades fell about them, but it wasn’t too long before telltale muzzle-flashes against the blackness of the tree line betrayed the British position.
A single rifleman began to return fire in the correct direction, quickly joined by several others and a squad light machine gun, while 40mm grenades also began to fall close to their position. A few moments more, and an entire squad of fallschirmjäger managed to reach the cover of the trees to their left in an attempt to flank the British position. Although still without casualty, their position was quickly becoming untenable, and their sergeant made the decision to also withdraw. They made a clean break from the engagement, eluding the attempted flanking manoeuvre, and made their way back to the rendezvous point with what was left of the rest of the platoon, having inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy of more than fifty dead double that injured.
Howell fell back a hundred metres or so to a point where a narrow bridge crossed the canal to the north-west of West Hythe, and had three section set up positions on the opposite side, protecting the western approaches to the town. He then took the rest of his unit back along the southern side of the canal to the West Hythe Bridge at the intersection of Royal Military and West Hythe Roads, with the intention of preventing a crossing of the canal at that point also. They solidified their positions and waited as the lieutenant sent a second messenger back to barracks with an update on the engagement. In that fashion, the most significant battle of the Twentieth Century began with a single, desperate firefight in darkness, just before dawn.
The 1st Fallschirmjäger wasn’t the slightest bit interested in taking West Hythe, and instead moved northward as their numbers grew, pushing through Lympne and taking the town without a single casualty as they caught the Home Guard garrison there completely by surprise. The airfield on the western outskirts of the town was also captured quickly, the RAF defensive units stationed there quickly overrun and overwhelmed under the first rays of morning sun.
The moment the strip was secured, several T-1A Gigant transports began to drop supplies from low level, using a system known in Realtime as LAPES – Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System. Each aircraft would come in at extremely low level – as low as two metres off the ground in some cases – and retain as high a speed as was possible in order to present a harder target. As each roared past above the flat, open expanse of the runway, a large parachute would billow out from the open rear loading ramp and catch the slipstream, dragging out the attached cargo in the process.
Stores dropped in this fashion were predominantly food and ammunition, however three light artillery pieces, four anti-tank guns and six P-1F Wiesel light tanks were also delivered to provide useful fire support. It was known that the First London Division was dug in just a few kilometres away toward Smeeth, and the added firepower of the guns and the tanks’ light cannon would be vitally important should a counter-attack materialise.
Further west along the south coast, the 3rd and 5th Fallschirmjäger dropped on the Brighton and Portsmouth areas respectively, wreaking similar havoc to that erupting in Kent, and by first light, the parachute divisions had taken control of substantial areas close to the coast stretching between Brighton and Bognor Regis, and were digging in as they awaited the arrival of Strauss’ IX Army. The landings near Brighton progressed well in those early stages, although the British 50th Division and 21st Tank Brigade, both equipped with new, Hindsight-inspired weaponry, were giving the 5th FJ Div an extremely hard time further west, near Portsmouth.
Home Fleet Naval Anchorage at HMS Proserpine
Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands
News of the invasion reached Scapa Flow within thirty minutes of confirmation being received at Whitehall, and things happened very quickly from that moment on. Klaxons rose up in protest all about the base, and on warships anchored out on the dark waters of The Flow, similar battle stations alerts roused their tired and frightened crews and sent them heading for their assigned posts as every vessel prepared to put to sea. So much closer to the Arctic Circle, it’d be another hour or more before dawn broke over the eastern horizon across the cold expanse of the North Sea, and it’d be a long cruise at full steam ahead for the Home Fleet as it headed south along the coast of Britain in a desperate race to interdict German invasion forces.
Thirty-six warships in line-ahead formation were currently steaming out into Pentland Firth in the early morning darkness, the fleet comprised of two battlecruisers, four battleships and one aircraft carrier being escorted by three cruisers and twenty-seven destroyers of various classes. There’d been no reported sightings of enemy warships or landing craft as yet, but as he stood on the bridge of HMS Nelson, Rear-Admiral Henry Harwood was under no misconception regarding their enemy’s presence heading for English beaches, somewhere to the south. Reports of fighting against parachute troops coming in from all over Kent, Sussex and Hampshire were a clear enough warning that the main invasion force they’d been expecting was finally on its way.
At fifty-two years of age, Sir Henry Harwood KCB OBE had joined the Royal Navy in 1904, and had served in the First World War aboard HMS Royal Sovereign. Something of a ‘natural’ officer, his broad, almost affable features and trusting smile concealed a fine naval mind and able tactician. In command of a cruiser squadron at the outbreak of WW2, he’d been promoted to rear-admiral for his ships’ successful efforts in hunting surface raiders in the South Atlantic during that first year of war. Three months ago, he’d joined the Home Fleet to take command of Nelson, and had since turned an already excellent crew into a superlative one.
Lead ship and namesake of her class (Pennant Number 28), HMS Nelson, along with her sister-ship, Rodney, were the most heavily armed battleships of the Royal Navy. Laid down at shipbuilders Armstrong-Whitworth at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1922, she was launched almost three years later and commissioned into service on September 10, 1930. With a displacement of thirty-four thousand tons, she’d been designed to conform to the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922: an agreement that was perhaps the world’s first serious attempt at strategic arms limitation.
The Royal Navy was forced to scrap twenty-eight capital ships as part of its requirements under the treaty, and was also subsequently forced to look at more novel approaches to shipbuilding and design to produce new battleships that remained powerful and were well-armoured that also met the upper tonnage limit of 35,000 tons. Nelson and Rodney were the initial result, their short, truncated sterns as unusual as her layout of three triple 16-inch turrets, all mounted forward of the bridge, with ‘A’ and ‘B’ turrets superimposed and able to fire directly across a 300-degree frontal arc, while ‘X’ turret could fire in broadside only, at angles of traverse between 60- to 120-degrees to port or starboard.
Nelson was third in line at the head of the formation as the ships steamed out into the North Sea at twenty-three knots (the highest speed all ships present were capable of). The battlecruisers Hood and Renown led the fleet, the battlecruisers less armoured than their colleagues, but also capable of a higher speed and able to forge ahead to scout the way if necessary, flanked by an escort of cruisers and destroyers. Nelson followed, and behind her came the rest of the battleships: Malaya, Warspite and Queen Elizabeth respectively.
All three remaining battleships were of the same Queen Elizabeth-class, and were veterans of the First World War. All three had given sterling service against Germany twenty-five years before, and were now ready to provide good account of themselves once more. All were also armed with the same tried and true ‘Mark’I’ 15-inch guns (eight apiece, in four turrets) that also armed HMS Hood (also four twin turrets) and HMS Renown (three twin turrets). Powerful and supremely accurate, the weapon was probably the best large-calibre gun ever fitted to a Royal
Navy warship, and although nearing obsolescence by the beginning of the Second World War, it could nevertheless pack a heavy punch under the control of skilled gunners and fire directors (of which the British were the best trained in the world). Following up the rear and protected by a cluster of destroyers, the carrier Ark Royal cruised with the fleet, ready to fly off her aircraft in support should the enemy be located.
Harwood shivered against the cold that managed to bite at him despite the long, heavy woollen coat he wore over his uniform, and lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. An almost-full moon struggled to cast any illumination through a layer of low-level cloud, but the dark outline and winking navigation lights of Renown were nevertheless faintly visible eight hundred metres ahead through a soft, misting rain that quickly coated everything it touched in a damp sheen. His body shuddered a second time, this time in recognition of the task laid before them. Currently aboard his flagship, HMS Hood, Admiral Sir John Tovey had been more than clear in his assessment of the situation, and Harwood and the other commanders knew the how bleak that situation was. They also knew there was no chance of the RAF stopping the Luftwaffe, or keeping the skies clear over England or The Channel, let alone finding spare aircraft to interdict the Kriegsmarine invasion forces. That left the bulk of the task to the Royal Navy, and as such The Home Fleet – their fleet of just thirty-six warships – was the only major force within range that had any chance of slowing or halting the enemy’s movements across the Channel.
For all that, Nelson was in the company of some fine veterans. Of the other capital ships present, only Hood had been completed too late to see service in the Great War, and both Warspite and Malaya had served twenty-four years before at Jutland (a battle the Germans knew as Skaggerak). In that greatest of naval battles of the First War, Admiral Jellicoe had mustered no less than two dozen battleships to face the High Seas Fleet in an engagement that saw both sides proclaim themselves to be the victors once the smoke had cleared. At Jutland, Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet had intended to trap and destroy their German counterparts, and thereby ensure British dominance of the waves and freedom of the sea lanes between the Britain, the United States and the rest of the Empire.
England Expects (Empires Lost) Page 81
