Kirov Saga: Altered States (Kirov Series)

by John Schettler

  “We have made considerable progress in our thinking on this issue, my Fuhrer.”

  “Progress in your thinking? It is actions I want, Raeder. Not more thinking and planning. Not more talk. Where are the plans? Are the keels being laid? Show me.”

  Raeder nodded, maintaining his professional composure in spite of the constant jabbing and almost adolescent urgency in the man before him. His perfect uniform gleamed with honors and decorations earned over a long and distinguished naval career--the Iron Cross, The Order of the Red Eagle, The Cross of Honor, the Order of the Rising Sun, and now the Knight’s Cross. He had worked and sailed his way through every rank in the service, from lowly SeeKadett in 1895, through Oberleutnent, Kapitanleutnant, Kapitan zur See in 1919, and on through every rank of Admiral until he assumed his current post as the Grand Admiral of the entire German fleet this very year. He was the first man to hold that rank since the great von Tirpitz himself. He had fought at Dogger Bank, and at Jutland. He had stood face to face with the best that the Royal Navy could sail, his ship’s guns blackened with the anger of their fire in the heat of battle.

  A tall, handsome man with intelligent eyes, he commanded respect effortlessly, his deportment and carriage the perfect image of the command officer. He had labored for years to restore the tarnished honor of the Reichsmarine, slowly rebuilding the fleet within the confining restraints of the Treaty of Versailles, but Hitler wanted more. He repudiated that treaty with an incisive and even belligerent speech.

  This conference today was the end result of that repudiation, and the humiliation Germany had been forced to endure at the end of the Great War. The German Navy was to undergo a new rebirth, becoming a force capable of regaining the honor at sea that had been lost in the clash of arms in Europe. It was the Army that had lost the war, or so Raeder believed. It was lost amid the gas ridden trenches and barbed wire of France, under the thunder of artillery, not on the high seas. The result had been depression, hyperinflation and crushing unemployment.

  Raeder had little doubt that Hitler would soon be putting all those millions of unemployed to some nefarious use. But how could he impose economic reason on this man? How could he tell him that Germany was still struggling to rebuild herself as a nation, and that all dreams must have limits, see careful and well timed planning, build slowly and surely over the years, and be backed by well governed policy and sustainable economics? Germany needed steel. She needed oil. She had only a few working shipyards worth the name, all land locked in the Baltic Sea or accessed via the narrow and shallow Kiel Canal. Yet the Fuhrer seemed to envision the Reichsmarine as a vast global force, plying seas the world over, insurmountable. He wanted nothing less than absolute supremacy.

  Raeder cleared his throat, quietly opening the folio he had carried to this meeting, and seeing Hitler’s eyes immediately gleam with renewed interest.

  “Your battleships, my Fuhrer,” the Admiral said in a low, measured voice. “You are already familiar with our Scharnhorst Class battlecruisers.” He gestured at the line drawings briefly, and flipped the page. “Here we have the next evolution of that design, and both ships will soon be ready for commissioning, the Bismarck and Tirpitz.”

  The sleek lines of the ship diagrams had just the effect Raeder had hoped for, quieting Hitler for a moment as he stared at the documents. Yet a moment later the Fuehrer spoke again, with that same restless urgency in his voice.

  “The guns?” Hitler pointed at the turrets in the carefully drawn schematics.

  “Eight 38 centimeter guns, fifteen inches in diameter, arranged two each on the four heavy turrets. These ships will displace over 50,000 tons, nearly 20,000 tons beyond what we have now in Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and they will be almost as fast at 30 knots, with a range of over 10,000 miles. These are true battleships, fast, well armored, and very powerful. They will stand with anything the Royal Navy has. In fact, they will make the entire British fleet obsolete the very day they sail.”

  As if he had heard nothing that was said, the Fuhrer looked blankly at Raeder and said: “Only two?”

  “We have plans to improve upon this class with further designs,” said Raeder quickly. “This next design will interest you even more… Schlachtschiff H.”

  He turned another page, rotating the folio so Hitler could take in the full sweep of the diagrams before him. In design and form it was much like the Bismarck, only bigger, with a second smokestack and more powerfully drawn turrets.

  “These ships will displace 55,500 long tons or more, and we have improved the main batteries to 40.6 centimeters--a full sixteen inches.”

  “The British have such guns. Why not twenty inches?”

  “Twenty inches? My Fuehrer, the extra weight would require a ship of some 90,000 tons minimum, and we have no harbor that could accommodate a vessel of that size, nor could they transit the Kiel Canal. The draft would exceed the maximum depth there. If ever built, they would have to be kept at off shore anchorages, making supply, maintenance, and repair work very difficult and slow. Nor could they dock safely at most foreign ports likely to come under our control.”

  “And yet they would outclass everything in the Royal Navy by a wide measure,” said Hitler waving his hand. “They would not dare to challenge such a ship, with even two of their existing battleships, eh?”

  “That may be said this very moment of Bismarck and Tirpitz,” said Raeder, convinced of the power of his latest additions to the fleet. “And it will be even more applicable to Schlachtschiff H. Their keels have been constructed from transverse, longitudinal steel frames, and she will have twenty one interior watertight compartments.” He ran his finger along the hull schematic as he spoke. “The design will be immune to torpedo attacks, if a destroyer ever dared to try as much, and this hull design will make Hindenburg virtually unsinkable.”

  Hitler loved the technical details of steel weight, tensile strength, yet all he heard was the name. “Hindenburg?” he said. “Not Hitler?” He smiled.

  “We thought to name this class after the Helgoland series from the last war. One of the ships in that class was the Oldenburg, but as this was to be our H series design, we thought Hindenburg might be appropriate, followed by Brandenburg, Oldenburg, and so forth.”

  Hitler thought for a moment. He had reservations about allowing a ship to have a name too closely associated with the Reich. What if it should be sunk? For the moment however, he was focused on the guns. “Yes, yes, leave it at that. But the guns. Can they be bigger? I want guns that will break the back of a British battleship in one blow.”

  “We have designs for seventeen and nineteen inch guns as well, but the key concept here, my Fuhrer is to mount a gun best fitting the size of the ship. It’s a consideration of weight versus speed. What we want to achieve here is both speed and power. She will have a top speed of 30 knots. Anything that can catch us will surely be outclassed, given the protection we are building into this ship—strong horizontal protection with face hardened Krupp steel belt armor to 320 millimeters, 350 on the command tower, and 385 on the main guns. She will also get better deck armor, 200 millimeters thick, and we’ve added this new feature, six submerged torpedo tubes. They may be useful against convoys as well.”

  “Do not speak to me of armor. I assume as much. It is the guns that interest me. These ships should have guns in the range of twenty inches.”

  Raeder had anticipated this from the Fuehrer, but was unwilling to become bogged down now in a argument over gun size. “My Fuehrer, I have appointed Admiral Fuchs to make a detailed study of this very issue, and he will meet with you to report on his findings in short order.” Raeder had press ganged Fuchs into the battle, wanting him to try and convince Hitler that 16 inch guns would be more than adequate.

  “Very well,” said Hitler flipping the page. “And these?”

  Raeder had detailed out six ships, designs H through M, each with modified armament, armor, engine plants, and other minor details. “Let us consider all these as elements of the H cl
ass we are proposing,” he explained. “Six ships in all. These will form the heart of our main battle fleet. The fast Panzerschiff cruisers I mentioned earlier will be excellent as escorts on the initial breakout, and fine commerce raiders in their own rite. We envision a concept of one or two powerful ships operating in conjunction with the Panzerschiff and squadrons of U-boats. The entire task force will be refueled from tankers at sea and remain capable of extended operations in the Atlantic—up to two months if necessary.”

  “It will most certainly be necessary,” said Hitler. “And the British know as much. They will guard their convoys with battleships, and they will outnumber us in that category and every other category as well. But think bigger, Raeder. This navy must be strong enough to stand against anything the British have. How soon can these ships be built?”

  “Two keels have already been laid—”

  “Build them all,” the Fuehrer said briskly. “Have them at sea in three years—four at the most. We will have to start with what we have now, but these ships will make fine additions.”

  Raeder heard something dark and ominous in that. Start what? He knew the answer to that question even before he asked it. Another war was coming, of that much he was certain. It was January of 1936, and he wondered if they would reach the end of this decade without conflict erupting again. The only question now was time. How long did he have to get the fleet in shape for battle at sea? He decided to ask for a realistic interval, knowing full well what it would take to build the ships Hitler wanted.

  “Give me at least six years, my Fuehrer, and I will deliver a fleet that the nation will be proud of and one that every other nation on earth will learn to fear and respect.”

  “Six years? I built the entire Third Reich in six years, Raeder. You will have to do better than that. Surely you can build me these ships in far less time.”

  Raeder smiled, wondering if even one of the new battleships would ever be commissioned, but he could not say this to the Fuehrer.

  “I will do my utmost,” he said firmly.

  Hitler looked at him, the well of those dark eyes opening, as if to devour his very soul in their inky blackness. “See that you do,” he said in a low voice. “See that you do.”

  Part III

  Glorious

  “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

  ― Benjamin Franklin

  Chapter 7

  HMS Glorious: 16:20 Hrs – 8 June, 1940

  Lieutenant Commander Christopher Hayward Wells leaned on the weather deck gunwale staring at the sea, clear and calm, and almost too placid for these waters. There was something wrong here, he thought. The Norwegian Sea was a tempestuous place, cold, unforgiving, cruel at times, but not today. Today it was smiling and fair, with visibility near maximum, though still cold at just a few degrees above freezing even in the mid-day sun. Yet it was a smile that seemed a cold smirk to him, the twisted grin of fate, and as if on instinct he still kept his gloved hands sheltered in his pockets, collar up against the slightest breeze. He was always cold, it seemed, and he would never be warm enough in spite of his great coat and a good felt lining he had snuck in beneath his cap.

  Yet there was more than the cold on his mind that day. Wells could not seem to quiet the odd feeling of presentiment in his mind. Perhaps it was that gruel of a porridge at the morning mess, he thought. Maybe it was that lump in my bunk last night, and too few hours asleep. Nothing to be concerned about. Yet there was something to be concerned about. He could feel it the moment he emerged from his quarters and stepped on deck, though he could not see what it might be.

  HMS Glorious rode easily in the calm seas, her pace a sedate 17 knots, and steaming on only 12 of her 18 boilers. She was going home, with an easy careless stride, her work done for the moment. The operation she supported was finished, a fight lost, another retreat, just one step back. That was the first thing wrong, thought Wells. Now there is nowhere left to go. Those are the hard coiled ropes reddening the skin of our backs now. We came out fighting at the opening bell and we’ve taken a bloody drubbing. Yet look at Glorious now! You wouldn’t think there’s a war on at all. When you feel those ropes at your back the last thing you do is drop your guard. What’s the Captain doing? We’ve no air cover up!

  HMS Glorious was an odd ship with an odd history, first conceived in the fertile mind of Admiral of the Fleet Jackie Fisher as a fast battlecruiser meant for operations in the Baltic along with her sister ship Courageous. Heavily gunned and with virtually no armor, they were designed as fast bombardment ships to support planned amphibious invasions, and soon became the laughing stock of the fleet, dubbed Uproarious and Outrageous on the docks and quays wherever they berthed. They couldn’t really stand with any decent battleship, and what good was a fighting ship if all it could do was use its speed to run away from the fight? That idea was soon scrapped after the hard experience of Jutland, and both ships were refitted as aircraft carriers, which did little to bolster their standing as proper naval fighting ships. To many is seemed like they were putting on a dress.

  When he first learned of his assignment to Glorious, Wells was crestfallen, his hopes for a position on one of the real battleships dashed. How did I ever end up here, he thought, on this strange mutant of a ship, a hybrid of cruiser and aircraft carrier, with an ex-submariner for a Captain who didn’t seem to have the first idea of what he should do with the planes assigned to the ship? They had just picked up 20 RAF Hurricane fighters from Norway and had another 15 planes already assigned to the ship for self-protection, but they were all sitting below decks in the hangers that morning.

  They aren’t doing us any good there, thought Wells. Though the carrier had two destroyers with her in escort, not a single plane was up on combat air patrol for reconnaissance or defense. Nothing was even spotted on deck in the event of any emergency.

  Wells shook his head inwardly, noting the creamy white wakes of the two destroyers a couple cables off the port and starboard bow of the carrier. Neither one had radar, so why were they in so close to the ship, he thought? You would think one might at least be out in the van as a scout ship under these circumstances. The Captain had the ship in a zig-zag- pattern, so he must be more worried about the U-boat threat than anything else.

  His eyes strayed to the main mast above the island. He had a very odd feeling about it, as though something were amiss, yet everything looked in order. Then he realized that it was what he did not see that set off those inner alarm bells. There was no watch posted there this morning! What in the world was the Captain thinking? Perhaps he was still below decks, or on the hanger deck dressing down the airmen again.

  Glorious was an unhappy ship, he knew, and it was going to stay that way unless they could find a Captain with more sense and some rudimentary understanding of how an aircraft carrier was supposed to operate. The ship had spent some time in the Med in the early years of the war, and had lately come from Malta where Wells had the opportunity to meet the commander of the 7th Cruiser Squadron, Rear Admiral John Tovey. Now there was an officer, he thought, full of dash, yet upright, never brash, commanding respect of the men under him without reference to his rank. That’s the sort we need here, he thought sullenly.

  The longer he stared at the empty crow’s nest the more unsettled he became. We aren’t ready, he knew. Not just this cockamamie ship, but the whole of the Royal Navy. It’s been hit and miss in the early going. All the Germans have thrown at us were a few sorties by those pocket battleships, which we handled well enough. But they have a good deal more in the cupboard, and one day soon they’ll be pouring a very bitter tea. The U-boat threat is one thing, but we’ll get worse if I’m not mistaken. Here they’ve gone and run us right out of Harstad and with it all of Norway. We’ll have no bases of any note in those seas now, and they will have all those ports to serve as replenishment stations for anything they slip out of the Baltic. Something tel
ls me they’ve a good deal more to throw at us than the Graf Spee.

  Wells was not privy to the real intelligence on the Kriegsmarine, but he had heard the rumors. The Germans had been building feverishly since 1936 when they repudiated the limitations of the Treaty of Versailles and launched hulls in rapid succession. It was said they were building better commerce raiders, faster than the Deutschland class ships the Royal Navy had sparred with, and better armored and gunned. It was said they were building battleships as well, aiming to pose a real challenge to the heavy units of the British fleet. It was said they were even building aircraft carriers. That was one advantage the Royal Navy possessed at the moment, carriers that could put eyes in the sky over their battle fleets, and even sting enemy ships with the torpedoes off their Swordfish biplanes.

  Well, maybe the Germans will throw one in the soup, he thought. This one here wasn’t doing any good for the fleet at the moment. HMS Glorious had been teamed with Ark Royal to provide cover for Operation Alphabet, the final evacuation of Norway. Half way out Captain D’Oyly-Hughes, known as D-H in the ranks, had requested permission to steam independently for Scapa Flow where he was eager to get on with the court martial of a senior airman who had refused his orders to fly a mission against land targets on the grounds his planes were unsuited for it and his crews untrained in such operations.

  The man was correct. Swordfish were so named for a reason. Dubbed the “old stringbags” by the airmen who flew them, they were lumbering, slow, yet surprisingly durable as a good deal of the ack ack fire they took would go right through the canvass portions of the plane, leaving the structure largely intact. But for land attack missions they were quite out of their element, particularly if the Germans had any BF-109s about.

  It had been quite a row between Air Commander Heath and the Captain. Heath was all but accused of mutiny and put off the ship. Now the Admiralty had ordered Glorious to return as soon as possible, eager to shuffle her crew off to Plymouth for a long overdue leave and then settle the matter between D-H and Heath. That was the rumor passing round the hammocks and bouncing from one bulkhead to another below decks, but the only part that mattered to most of the men was that they were going home.