“Good,” Förste said. He smiled thinly. “Order the fleet to turn in pursuit and prepare for an engagement.”
He would have preferred to be on the bridge, but duty, cursed duty, kept him in the Combat Information Centre. They’d spent years training to use the ships as a single fleet, but now he would have preferred to be a Captain again, or even a junior officer, someone who could watch the awesome majesty of combat from a proper vantage point.
“And inform the crew,” he said. It was easy to push confidence into his voice. “The final battle of the Second British War begins today.”
***
Unbeknownst to Generaladmiral Förste or any of his men, HMS Sealion had been prowling the seas near Denmark when it had caught sight of the smaller German ships advancing through the Kiel Canal. The canal had been expanded several times by German slave labour and was now large enough to allow a Bismarck-class battleship to pass through without any real problems, although it wasn’t something that the ship’s commanding officers cared to do. The German fleet used the canal to allow rapid deployment without having to navigate around the tip of Denmark, where so many German ships had been spotted and tracked by British ships or spies in Sweden. These days, the Swedes were less cooperative when it came to spying, but Sealion and her contemporaries were able to watch for German ships without their help.
Commander McKenzie peered through the periscope as the massive fleet headed west. It wasn't easy to see them all, but he made out four battleships and at least three carriers. The Germans wouldn’t have risked a battle without all of their ships gathered together in a single overwhelming force, but he couldn’t see the fourth carrier amidst the other ships. The Germans had sent nearly seventy ships to sea, and the destroyers, always on the prowl, kept him back through the sheer force of their efforts to deter any prying eyes.
“Compose a message,” he said after a moment. “Enemy fleet sighted. Composition four heavy battleships, several smaller heavy ships, three carriers and numerous smaller ships. Attach course and speed, and then transmit.”
“Aye, sir,” the radioman said. He worked his pad for a long moment. “Signal composed, sir…and transmitting.”
“Keep us well back,” McKensie ordered. The Germans might not have heard the message – they’d transmitted as short and simple a message as possible – but one thing every submarine commander learnt when they were training was never to underestimate the enemy or assume that the enemy was stupid. Those who didn’t learn that lesson ended up dead. “Prepare for evasive manoeuvres…”
***
Gruppenkommandeur Albrecht Schmidt took a breath as his jet aircraft raced down the tarmac of the runway before rising up into the sky, moving sluggishly as always with the weight of the rocket pods attached beneath the wings. He had more reason to be nervous lately. In the last few days, there had been a handful of petty attacks by the Norwegian resistance against German military installations, including one nervy attack on an airfield while a heavy transport had been taking off for Denmark. The resulting crash onto a Norwegian town should have been counted as an own goal – it had killed more civilian Norwegians than Germans – but it had been alarming. Everyone had thought that Norway had been reasonably pacified.
Schmidt concentrated as his aircraft approached the flying tanker for a final refill before setting out after the British ships. The German Army had taken a beating on British soil and its reputation for invincibility had been badly dented. It had given hope to the people under the German boot, even the Norwegians who were as close to fellow citizens of the Reich as Schmidt himself was, and there had been a series of incidents right across the Reich. The SS had cracked down hard on most of them, and some of them had been little more than half-hearted anyway, but even so, it was a depressing reminder of just how unstable the Reich could become, if the war went badly wrong.
He checked his compass and set out along the course he’d been ordered to fly, the entire group maintaining radio silence. If they were lucky, the British would never know they were coming. It wouldn’t be like attacking Scapa Flow when the British ships had been effectively stationary and undermanned. This time, the British fleet would be moving, fully manned, and very capable of shooting back with radar-guided weapons. This would be the decisive battle. If they sunk the carriers, the remainder of the British fleet would be easy to deal with…
Assuming that they found it. They knew where the fleet was, they knew its course, but if the fleet broke contact and headed off on a different course, they would waste precious time trying to locate it. They wouldn’t have as much time as they had over Scapa Flow, either. There weren’t as many tankers devoted to refuelling the aircraft this time. Schmidt hadn’t been told why, but he could draw his own conclusions…and none of them were good. The aircraft that would have been intended to refuel them were most likely destroyed.
The hills and fjords of Norway fell away behind them as the flight proceeded onwards towards their target. One way or another, it wouldn’t be long now, not with the spotter aircraft constantly relaying the British course and speed. Schmidt expected them to break contact, but the longer the British delayed breaking contact, the easier it would be for his force to locate and destroy the their ships. The signals kept coming in, however, and as they came in, he allowed himself a smile. There was no hiding place for the enemies of the Reich.
***
“Admiral, we have a large German force taking off from Norway and flying towards us,” the radio officer said. “The Sealion just updated us with the location of the Germans…”
Admiral Fraser listened to the remainder of the report in silence.
“Order the carriers to launch their aircraft,” he said, once the report had finished. “I want them to target the German carriers first, and then their battleships.”
He waited until that order had been sent. The carriers of the British fleet would be launching already, their crews pent up and waiting for the chance to strike back at the Germans, blissfully unaware of the German flight descending on them from Norway. Fraser hoped that the Germans were unaware that he knew about their attempt at a sucker punch; the message from the spotters at Norway had been carefully disguised as a signal from a German army unit. By the time they realised their mistake, it should be too late to do anything but dance to Fraser’s tune.
“The carriers are launching now,” the radio operator announced. Fraser could hear the nervousness in his voice, even though he didn’t say anything out loud. He’d just stripped the fleet of all of its air cover. The German spotter aircraft would be gleefully relaying that to the German ships, who had kept back their own aircraft to cover themselves from his strike…all the while expecting him to be naked and vulnerable to their strike. “Sir…Force One has relayed its confirmation.”
Fraser nodded.
“No reply,” he ordered, as the radar screens filled with the lights of German bombers. “We’ll allow Force One to carry out it’s part of the mission without being interrupted.”
***
Schmidt had radar contact with the British ships a long time before he saw them. They were great majestic castles of steel, moving through the water as if they didn’t have a care in the world, showed no sign of responding to his presence. The fleet had launched all of its strike aircraft towards the German fleet…and even if they recalled them at once, the British multi-purpose aircraft would have to be rearmed before they could fight his aircraft, assuming they could have stood their ground. The British carrier-borne aircraft would be no match for his land-based jet aircraft.
He smiled, altering course slightly to locate the carriers in the fleet…and then one of his bombers exploded. The blast shook his plane, the more so because it wasn't expected, and Schmidt struggled to maintain control. A second bomber exploded, then a third, and for a chilling moment Schmidt wondered if the British had actually found a way to detonate the bombs in their bomb bays, before looking up and seeing…
“What the hell?”
&
nbsp; Chapter Fifty-One
North Sea
Admiral Fraser had anticipated what the Germans needed to do if they wanted to significantly damage his fleet before he engaged the German battleships. The Germans would hold back their carrier aircraft to protect their own fleet and use land based bombers to go after him. His plan took all of this in account.
The RAF had massed a large force of fighters in Scottish airbases, officially to rest and recuperate after the Battle of Colchester, and those fighters had been launched to shadow the fleet once the German aircraft had been reported. They had slipped up to the German aircraft, which hadn’t expected jet fighters opposing them because neither side had yet managed to launch a jet aircraft from a carrier, and hadn’t been using their radars because they hadn’t wanted to warn Admiral Fraser that they were coming. The inviting target of the British fleet had suddenly become deadly poison.
***
Schmidt grabbed at his stick and yanked his aircraft into an evasive manoeuvre as the British fighters fell out of the sun. The Meteors had them bang to rights, trapped against the sea and tied to the bombers, but they were directing their fire mainly against the bombers. The German formation was falling to pieces as the British aircraft raced closer, firing down as the Germans scattered, and Schmidt breathed a curse under his breath.
His plane flipped over, struggling to gain altitude and engage the British jets. There was a long hair-raising moment when he thought the engine would cut out altogether, just before it caught and pushed him onwards towards a Meteor. The British pilot fired at the same instant as Schmidt, blowing a hail of explosive bullets through the British cockpit and blasting the aircraft into a fireball.
Schmidt cast about desperately for some empty airspace, but could find none. Aircraft were blundering everywhere, firing madly. He cursed as a stream of tracer from a German bomber almost took his wing off. He hurled invective at the pilot and the British genius who had thought up the complicated and brilliant scheme with every word he knew. There was no time to think, only to react.
“No,” he snarled as a British fighter made an angry pass at him. He fired back, but missed. The British pilot vanished somewhere within the swirling dogfight. The British tactic was clever; the bombers, scattered, wouldn’t be able to make their own attacks in anything reassembling a coordinated fashion with the British fighters hammering away at them. The German fighters weren't the priority targets, not with the British focused on protecting their vital ships, but even so, it was going to be difficult to reverse the situation. He tried to think, to focus, and cursed again as a British fighter took aim at him and fired a long burst.
“Damn you,” he swore. He concentrated on barking orders into his headset, trying to take control of the battle. The bombers were trying to concentrate for an attack run on the British ships, but the level and accuracy of the flak was an order of magnitude greater than anything they had experienced before. He spit out another curse and fired a long stream of bullets towards a British fighter, smiling grimly as the British fighter caught fire and plummeted out of the air, splashing down into the water. It was just a shame that it hadn’t struck one of the British ships.
The remaining German fighters formed up around him, and he almost cursed again as he realised how many had been lost to the British jets. The British plan was clear now. they had launched their own carrier aircraft towards the German ships, the British knew full well that they were protected by their own land based Meteors all the time. They hadn’t been fooled by the German flight. They’d either known what the Germans were doing or had worked out their own plan that had dovetailed nicely into defeating the German force. For the first time in his life, since graduating from the Luftwaffe’s training centre, Schmidt was starting to feel as if he had been comprehensively out-thought and out-gunned
“Form up on me and engage the enemy,” he ordered. The British fighters had drawn apart for a long moment, separating themselves from his aircraft, and then they re-engaged This time, they would have to blow through the enraged German fighters to reach the bombers. The flak was growing more intense as the two sides separated, but as they closed in, the flak reduced; the British wouldn’t want to shoot down their own aircraft.
Schmidt had the satisfaction of seeing a Meteor go down in flames before they punched through the British lines, moving into dive-bombing formations. The heavy bombers were following them, the British abandoning the German fighters to concentrate on the bombers, but too late. He saw the bombs begin falling, targeted on two of the British carriers and one of their battleships. The bombs had been improved following Scapa Flow…
“Scratch one flattop,” someone carolled over the radio as a British carrier disintegrated in a hail of tearing explosions. Schmidt was beyond pity for the crew, but even he admitted that they had died well. “What’s the next target…?”
“The next flattop,” Schmidt ordered, wondering what had happened to the bomber’s raid commander. He was probably shot down along with his aircraft. The precisely organised and comprehensible chain of command had been blown to smithereens; it would have worked much better, he was sure, if he had engaged the carrier-borne aircraft, rather than land-based jets. “All bombers without any bombs; withdraw now and return to base, all others…”
In war, a distraction at the wrong time can have fatal consequences. Schmidt, trying to handle too many things at once, missed the British Meteor until it was too late…and the Meteor put seven bullets through the Messerschmitt's left jet engine. Schmidt reached for the ejector handle, but it was too late. His jet disintegrated around him and he died in a world of fire and pain.
***
Admiral Fraser knew that he no longer had any tactical control over the battle, if indeed he had ever had any at all; there were limits to how much he could command fighter pilots struggling over his carriers. He’d given them all their orders, planned it so they could have the best possible chance at taking a clear shot at the enemy, and now all he could do was wait and see what happened. The reports kept coming in of a carrier being hit – first one of the fleet carriers, and then one of the modified carriers he’d been preparing at Scapa Flow – and then the King George V was struck. He braced himself as the ship shook, but the damage was minor; a German aircraft had crashed into the ship, apparently accidentally. The Japanese had used suicide tactics in the later days of their brief war against Soviet Russia, but it was unlike the Germans to deliberately crash their aircraft into an enemy ship, although he had to admit that it would make one hell of a guided weapon.
“Minor damage,” the Captain reported. Fraser concentrated on appearing calm. Everything was out of his hands now and would remain so until the enemy air assault was beaten off. “The Nelson took a major beating, sir.”
Fraser said nothing. There would be time for them to count the cost later, but for the moment, all that mattered was remaining calm and appearing to be in control, even though he wasn't directing the battle. As the German aircraft finally broke off from their attack, he allowed himself a brief moment of relief. The main body of the fleet had survived the encounter.
“Status report,” he ordered, refusing to seem as if he had been even slightly worried by the battle. “How many did we lose?”
“We lost one fleet carrier and two smaller carriers,” the radio officer said as he tallied up the reports. The remainder of the German air-force was fleeing for home now. The RAF squadrons would have to head back to their tankers soon, before they ran out of fuel and fell out of the sky. “Two battleships were badly damaged. Three cruisers and nine destroyers were sunk, three more damaged.”
“I see,” Fraser said. Truthfully, he’d expected much more damage; the Germans had taken more of a beating than he'd dared to hope. “Is there any report from the CAG?”
“They are engaging the German fleet now,” the radio operator said. “I have no report on progress as yet.”
Fraser hadn’t expected one.
“Good,” he said. He glanced dow
n at the plotting chart. If everything went well, they could put an end to the war in an afternoon. “Inform me the minute you get an update.”
***
As one of the Fleet Air Arm’s most experienced pilots, and one of the handful who could paint a German carrier on his cockpit, Flight Lieutenant Stanley Baldwin and his Gannet was in the lead force of British carrier aircraft approaching the German fleet. The briefing had been clear; the Gannets were to concentrate on the carriers. The older aircraft, armed with torpedoes and other surprises, were to wait until the German carriers had been sunk, or if Baldwin and his squadron mates failed, they were to engage the carriers themselves. Baldwin wasn't particularly surprised at the orders; if the German carriers were sunk, the British Navy would be able to sweep the seas of German ships with ease.
What had surprised him had been the miniature carriers, converted freighters that had been quickly rigged up into tiny carriers something he’d heard about. The designs had been sitting on the back shelf somewhere in the Admiralty, gathering dust, until some of the fleet carriers had been sunk at Scapa Flow. The flight from one of those terrifyingly short decks had been the stuff of nightmares, something that he had never wanted to do in practice; the RAF pilots might think that they had it hard, but anyone who had flown off a carrier’s deck knew that they had the most dangerous job in the fleet. Baldwin would have felt safer standing in a crow’s nest during a battleship duel than flying off one of the tiny carriers – so small they didn’t even have names – but there had been no choice. It was a minor miracle that the squadron had gotten into the air without losing a single aircraft to the drink.
The Invasion of 1950 Page 46
