Altered States

Chapter 18

Carrier Graf Zeppelin ~ Norwegian Sea ~ June 16, 1940

The sighting made by Fleet Air Arm out of Hatston airfield was only half of the story, frightening as it was. Sailing some twenty nautical miles behind the two big German battleships, only now emerging from the edge of the thick cloud deck that hung low over the sea, was the sole operational German aircraft carrier at this point in the war, Graf Zeppelin. Commanded by the former first officer of the Admiral Scheer, Kapitan zur See Kurt Böhmer, the carrier would bring up to 42 aircraft to sea, that would make it the equal of any of Britain’s fleet carriers of the day with the added edge that the aircraft carried were far more capable than those fielded by the British.

Graf Zeppelin would carry modified versions of 12 BF-109Es and up to 26 Stuka dive bombers as the primary armament, with a detachment of four Arado seaplanes to make 42 planes in all. The Messerschmitt fighters were faster and much more agile than the Skuas aboard Ark Royal, and even better than the new Fairey Fulmars just starting to come off the production lines.

This formidable new addition to the German fleet was accompanied by the Schwere Kreuzer Prinz Eugen and three unique new ocean going destroyers, actually called Spähkreuzers under Raeder’s Plan Z. Originally conceived in the 1930s under the name Zerstörer 1938A/Ac, these ‘Atlantik’ type destroyers were further modified to produce the equivalent of light anti-aircraft cruisers. At 6,500 tons they were bigger than typical destroyers of the day, with a combination of diesel and turbine engines to extend their blue water performance. Armed with twelve 4.7-inch dual purpose guns and a suite of lighter 20mm guns, they were ideal for both AA and ASW defense. In true Nordic tradition the three new hounds bore the names Beowulf, Siegfeied and Heimdal. Kapitän zur See Helmuth Brinkmann was in command of this detachment, with his flag aboard the cruiser Prinz Eugen.

Kapitan Böhmer was eager to get back into battle. The time he had spent aboard the Admiral Scheer had convinced him that the new Kriegsmarine was now a force to be reckoned with, and this operation was more ambitious than any mounted since Jutland. His first fighting air patrol was already spotted on deck as the task force sailed for the breakout point, three BF-109 fighters and two Stukas. He would get them out in front of the two battleships in short order, and give the next British recon plane a nasty surprise. Hauptmann Marco Ritter would lead the flight, an experienced airman recruited from the Luftwaffe to join the elite carrier unit.

“Send to Ritter that he is cleared for takeoff,” said Böhmer. “He is to overfly Bismarck and Tirpitz, but let them know we are coming. The only thing they have ever seen in the skies above them are British planes, and all that is about to change.”

The young midshipman hurried to pass on the order while Böhmer watched from the island bridge. Ritter was out on deck. He knew him by the crimson scarf he would always tuck into this flight jacket. As if sensing the Kapitan was watching, he turned and held up a fist, pumping three times as he prepared to mount his Messerschmitt fighter. Then he climbed confidently into the open cockpit, settling into his harness and sliding the canopy closed.

These planes will make all the difference, thought Böhmer. With Graf Zeppelin in attendance we can hold the snooping British Skuas at bay, and chop them to pieces if they get too pushy. And as for the Swordfish, let them try their luck against my Messerschmitts. Then comes the real fun-sending a couple dozen Stukas into battle over their battleships. Yes, this changes everything.

The order he had given was received on the flight deck, and now Ritter was the first to turn over his engine, and would be the first to take off from the deck of a German aircraft carrier on a combat mission, an historic moment. The long nose of the Messerschmitt growled as the prop spun up to a blur. Then the chalks were removed and the Flugdeck flagman began his ritual, finally saluting and then pointing the way with his flag. The plane roared to life, began to gain speed, and then howled into the sky, wings wagging in salutation.

“There you go Marco,” said Böhmer under his breath with a smile. “Good hunting.”

He watched as the remaining two fighters followed Ritter into the sky, then the two Stukas like great black crows, fat wings bent and squared off at their thinning tips. They were ready to follow just in case anything was found that might need their attention. The mission was to scour the skies in the immediate van of the route planned by the battleships.

Minutes later Hauptmann Ritter saw the white wake of the trailing ship Tirpitz ahead, took in its broad beam and trim fighting lines. Just ahead he could see the flagship Bismarck proudly knifing through the grey seas. He led his three fighters down in formation, and, as they flew over the battleships, he could see men on the grey steel platforms and weather decks waving as he tipped his wings again in greeting.

The three fighters flashed overhead, followed closely by the two Stukas, and then all five planes climbed, the fighters fanning out to begin their search sweep to the south. From that moment on they left friendly waters and entered the realm that had formerly been the sole domain of the Royal Navy. It was always their convoys and battlegroups that would ply these waters, their aircraft carriers that would overshadow the fleets with watchful eyes.

Ritter flew on ahead, glad to have clearing skies for his search sweep. He would see no British aircraft up that day, a bit of a disappointment as he had hoped to log a kill on his first sortie. What he did see an hour later and nearly 400 kilometers west southwest of his carrier was the telltale formation of a small task force north of the Faeroes Islands. As he approached he realized he was looking at the two ‘bookends,’ as the Germans called them Nelson and Rodney. The unmistakable configuration of their three big gun turrets all forward of the bridge was easy to spot. There they were, moving ponderously forward in the sea, with what looked to be a cruiser out in front, and three destroyers in attendance.

Not wanting to be seen just yet, he noted the position and quickly climbed for an overhead bank of clouds. He would signal this first sighting at sea, the opening action of the campaign that was now unfolding. Then, his fuel tanks nearing the point of no return, he banked and turned for home, making sure his initial heading was well away from the real position of the German fleet, just in case he had been spotted.

Böhmer received the news with some elation, and quickly passed in on to Brinkmann and then Lindemann ahead of him in Bismarck. At last, he thought. We have the one thing the Kriegsmarine never had before when facing the British-situational awareness. No more waiting on the U-boats to search and scout for us. Now we have eyes in the sky…As long as I can keep this ship afloat. Well, before anything can get within arm’s reach of Graf Zeppelin, they will first have to run the gauntlet of my 26 Stukas, and then face down Bismarck and Tirpitz.

He was feeling very confident that morning, but there was one factor left out of his war equation that no man alive that day could have possibly considered or planned for, a fate that was wholly unaccountable, and yet one that would be decisive in the balance of the scales of time. The mirror of history had indeed cracked, and something had come through that fissure that would soon change everything.

* * *

“Those British ships have turned,” said Rodenko. “In fact they are now moving east on a heading to the Iceland-Faeroes Gap.”

“Perhaps they got wind of the same message Mister Fedorov intercepted.”

“Not likely, Admiral,” said Fedorov, “though the British had other means of intelligence at their disposal. They could have simply sighted the Germans battleships by air search.”

“We do not yet know what this breakout point is, do we Fedorov?”

“No sir, but it does not surprise me the British are turning east. Their first order of business will be to make sure nothing gets through the Iceland-Faeroes Gap. That accomplished, the Germans would have only one route to the Atlantic, and that would be the body of water directly ahead of us, the Denmark Strait.”

“So it looks as though we will not have our close encounter of the third kind with the Royal Navy just yet.”

“There are still two ships to the south maintaining their original heading, sir,” Rodenko warned.

“They may be dividing their force and sending a reinforcement east,” said Fedorov, realizing that he had to guess and conjecture now, and could no longer read the answer in his books. “That will mean they will most likely move the aircraft carrier out of this sector for the time being.”

“Then we will simply continue on this heading, move north, and keep to our plans for a visit to Severomorsk. It is somewhat strange, sailing home like this, is it not? The last time we passed through this strait I was having an extended stay in the sick bay and Karpov was in command. Now the Captain is dead and we are finally heading home, the only hitch is that we're eighty years early!”

Fedorov seemed restless and bothered as Volsky watched him. The Admiral realized what must be running through his young ex-Navigator’s mind. “I know what you are feeling now, Fedorov. None of this is written in your history books. We have hit a crack in your mirror. In fact, perhaps our very presence here has cracked it even further. The British will soon find out that we are not the cruiser we claimed to be, and they will be very curious. For the moment, however, something to the east is of much greater concern to them, and your clever Enigma code application has told you what it was. So do not look so forlorn. You see, in that way you can still read the history, and in other ways we may find that simply sitting back and reading it may no longer be a luxury we have here. We may have to make our own history here soon-at least this is what my instincts begin to tell me.”

Fedorov gave him a half hearted smile, understanding what he was trying to tell him, but still feeling somewhat adrift. “You are very wise, Admiral,” he said. “I do feel like I have lost my compass, and for a Navigator that is a very serious matter.”

“But even if that is so you could still use your eyes and head to navigate by the stars, yes? Like the British, you have other means of intelligence at your disposal.”

“I suppose I could, sir.”

“Then that is what you must do here. Just use that good head of yours, all the knowledge you have stored away up there, and use the eyes in your head to find your way now. I have every confidence in you, books or no books. You have never steered us wrong.”

“Thank you, sir.” He felt better hearing that from the Admiral. They were no longer Gods at sea with omniscient knowledge of all the events to come in a sure and certain order. This was a new world now, strangely familiar, recognizable in so many ways, yet entirely new. It was a kind of déjà vu, feeling like he had been here so many times before in his mind, in the quiet reading he would do each night, lost in days of yore. Yet now he was living in them, and the cold light of reality was more challenging than anything he could possibly have imagined when he thought to place himself in the history he read about so often.

Yes, it was challenging, but also exciting in many ways. He wasn’t reading it now, or watching it like a movie. He was living it! Before he had labored always to keep some impassable barrier between himself and the history, so as not to tamper with it, or contaminate it, tainting it with his greed or wanton actions as Karpov had. He thought he could preserve it, as a kind of sacred ground, inviolate, unchanged, like the reflection of the room as he peered into a mirror, always there, but untouchable. Yet now he knew that was no longer possible, if indeed it had ever been possible. Now he knew what Karpov had embraced from the very first-that if this was the life they found themselves in, they had the power to act and strut boldly onto that stage, and take up their role in the play.

Karpov always wanted to steal the lead, he thought. Was he the villain or the hero? I suppose only time will tell. And what role do I play here now? We have two choices, to flee from the events of these days and cloister ourselves away on some deserted island, hoping the world never finds or bothers us, or to take our role here, as any man alive today might. Yes! That was what he finally understood now. Any man alive today, from the highest to the lowest, always had one thing that Fedorov had denied himself, the power to act, the right to exercise his will and take a stand, one way or another.

I wanted to do that all along, he knew. What was I doing at the railway confronting Surinov and his NKVD thugs? What did I do with that whisper in Mironov’s ear?

He sighed, letting the trouble in his mind go. He could not save the world, nor hold back the tide of fate and inevitable change, and it was beyond his power to ever put this broken world back together again as it was. All he could do was look at this world with the eyes in his head and accept it as it was. He was no different than any other man alive now, a mere mortal after all and not a titan adrift in time. Other men faced the cracks in the mirror of their lives, did they not? Now he knew what that mirror was-a reflection of the world as he wished it could be. Yes, all men carried that, and then came loss, failure, pain, illness, divorce and they shattered the mirror and forever changed the reflection of the world they hoped to live in. To be alive was to be able to face that reality and still act and live, unfettered by the lost hopes and the wish to live in the world he may have inwardly desired.

Yes, he realized. Suffering is not the affliction of pain and loss. No, it is wanting things to be other than the way they are! Now he smiled, keenly aware of this new realization and feeling strangely light. No man’s mirror was perfect. They were all cracked, and the happy men in this world were the ones that knew that, accepting it without regret and living on as best they could.

So here he was. Here they all were, sailing for Severomorsk with the whole of history to live over again in this eternal déjà vu. Now he knew that at least a part of that history was his to determine and shape. Yes, he could make history instead of simply reading about it now. The Admiral, God bless him, was correct.

I have been standing there looking into the mirror to see the reflection of the world around me, he thought, seeing it there but thinking I could not touch it, that it was forever beyond my reach. Now I suddenly realize that I am standing right in the middle of it, the whole of it, and anything is possible.

A bit of an Anglophile all his life, the words of one of his favorite poems, a rhyme by John Masefield, resounded in his heart and soul now.

‘I must go down to the seas again

to the lonely sea and sky

And all I ask is a tall ship

and a star to steer her by…

Yes, now he answered the call of the running tide, wild and clear. Now his was the gull’s way, the whale’s way, a vagrant gypsy life. He breathed in deeply, and the air seemed sweet and cool, fresh and unburdened with his worry and fear. They were here, and yes they just might change things, and that was fine. There would come a day, just a little more than a year on now, when they would have to face the impossible prospect of being here at the very moment the ship was supposed to appear in late July of 1941. At that moment they might face their own annihilation in the all consuming maw of paradox-but that was not today. He suddenly had ‘the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song’ in his heart again, and it felt grand.