Altered States

Chapter 25

All over the UK the invasion watch was up, and now the news was filtering in to the Admiralty that the German Navy was at sea in a major operation and had done what no one there had any idea they might ever achieve. HMS Renown was attacked from the skies, with planes flown from the deck of a German aircraft carrier, and they pushed right through the veteran fighter cover of the Royal Navy’s most experienced and capable fleet defender, the Ark Royal.

The British had learned a hard lesson. Their pilots were good, certainly brave and determined, but the plane they were flying was clearly outclassed, and the German fighter pilots were equally hardened by their experience in Poland and France before coming to train for carrier operations. Britain desperately needed a new carrier borne fighter, and the Fairey Fulmar was all they had in the pipeline now, with no replacement in sight for the Swordfish torpedo bomber either.

The stricken battlecruiser survived the attack, but with twenty of her forty-two water tube boilers destroyed and her speed cut to no more than twelve knots. The ship had to be detached from Admiral Tovey’s squadron and sent home with a pair of destroyers cruising to either side for protection against U-boats, and the light cruiser Southampton in the van for additional air defense. Darkness and the onset of bad weather aided her getaway, and she would make it safely home, but now Tovey was in a bind. He had lost six big 15-inch guns and thirty-five percent of his squadron’s fighting power. With only HMS Invincible, the cruiser Sussex and two destroyers left in his force, engaging Bismarck and Tirpitz was now a tall order, particularly if the Germans had more Stukas to throw at them.

Tovey paced in the Flag Plot Room, uncertain, yet determined. We took one hell of a beating today, he thought. The mere sight of a British capital ship used to put ice in the veins of a German raider, but not after this. Holland sends that the Twins have blown through our cruiser screen in the Denmark Strait. Now we’ve lost Renown here, and we were damn lucky the Germans had only two Stuka pilots that seemed to know how to hit what they were aiming at.

There had been several near misses, but aside from splinter damage, neither Ark Royal nor Invincible were hit. Tovey decided the wisest course in the short run was to put range between his fleet and the German carrier. Vice Admiral Carriers reported that they had lost six Skua fighters in the action and four Swordfish trying to find and strike the Germans. Nobody got torpedoes in the water, and now this bloody weather shut the game down. They were just lucky they got most of their planes back safely. Another Swordfish was forced to ditch.

“We’re going to need more air cover, Mister Villers,” he said to his Flag Lieutenant. “Now where can I get it?”

“I can see about Beaufort support from Wick, sir. RAF has Number 43 Squadron there with Hurricanes, 269 Squadron has the American Hudsons we’ve received, and then we have 42 Squadron with Beauforts. No torpedoes yet, but they can rig out as bombers.”

“Beauforts have the range to get out here, but not the Hurricanes, and fighters are what we really need now. We can’t very well fight the German fighters with torpedo bombers.”

Villers hesitated, but ventured to inform Tovey of one other sad fact. “At the moment Wick reports they’ve received no deliveries of torpedoes for the Beaus, sir, but we can have them armed with bombs.”

“No torpedoes? By God, the Germans put BF-109s on the Graf Zeppelin, and here we sit on our thumbs and can’t even properly arm our aircraft! Admiralty will have to take a very hard look at that.”

“The Fulmars will be ready soon, sir. And Hawker Hurricanes are being considered for modification as catapult launched planes as well.”

“Yes, but they aren’t here at the moment, are they? No. We’ll have to play the cards we have, and I’ve just lost a jack in HMS Renown. The real worry now is that the Germans have a bloody pair of kings out there, and a queen back of them with Graf Zeppelin. If we press on and catch up with them, we’ll be outgunned two to one as it is. I need Holland and Hood now, and he’s off chasing the Twins.”

“Sir, if I may, we don’t have to fight here. We can withdraw and effect a rendezvous with Admiral Holland. We’ve taken a knock here, but we’ve done at least one thing. Jerry hasn’t turned into the Faeroes Gap. Our last sighting had them moving west. I think they’re going to run up over Iceland, Admiral. Perhaps the plan is to join the Twins.”

Tovey looked at the map, and thought hard. He had come east to fight and now he had lost Renown without ever getting Bismarck and Tirpitz under his guns! That German carrier out there was changing the rules of the game.

“What do we have at Reykjavik?”

“Sir? Well just two planes, Admiral, a Sunderland and a Walrus.”

“See if we might persuade Wick to send something better. Those Beaus of Four Two Squadron sound enticing, torpedoes or no torpedoes. Damn it, we need air cover, and more than Ark Royal can give us at the moment. Make a request for a Hurricane squadron to be sent to Iceland at once.”

“Most are assigned to homeland defense now, Admiral, but I’ll see what we can find.”

“You say the Fulmars are almost ready? I want them flown out if in any way possible. If they aren’t ready for a carrier landing we’ll pick them up at Reykjavik.”

Then he remembered the aircraft carrier he and Brind had discussed at Scapa Flow before the fleet sailed-Illustrious! He had a perfectly good carrier back home working up on trials, and with new aircraft as well, including these Fulmars.

“Mister Villers, I hadn’t thought to call on her so soon, but I’m afraid we’ll have to enlist the services of Illustrious as well. I know she’s still working up, but the situation appears critical to my eye now, and I want her out to sea and heading our way as soon as possible. And I want those Beauforts and Hurricanes. I know it may take some doing. The airfields on Iceland will have no equipment or service crews, but we must do whatever we can. The Germans can send their Stukas to bomb Iceland all they want, but they won’t sink it, eh? Those airfields are essential.”

“I’ll see to those messages personally, sir.”

“So… now we either shadow the Germans under threat of additional air strikes. Or we turn about and head back west to link up with Holland.” Tovey folded his arms, chin in hand, considering. “Very well, we turn. Come to 230 degrees. Damn good licking and off we go. We’ll turn this watch over to Nelson and Rodney, and it’s down round Iceland for us again. Then we find Hood and Repulse. It’s going to take a heavy fist to win this one, Mister Villers, a heavy fist indeed.”

* * *

18 June, 1940 ~ 08:00 Hrs

The German oiler Altmark was waiting at the refueling point as ordered. One of five ships in its special class, Altmark already had a storied history in the young war, providing able support to the Graf Spee on her sortie, and then causing somewhat of an incident on her return leg home. Sailing in neutral Norwegian waters with nearly 300 British merchant sailors captured by the German pocket battleship in February of 1940, the ship was spotted by an RAF Coastal Command Hudson bomber. Elements of the neutral Norwegian Navy boarded Altmark the next day, but did not search the hold where the prisoners were being held. So the job was soon handed off to Captain Phillip Vian aboard the destroyer HMS Cossack. The signal from the Admiralty was plain and simple: “Altmark your objective. Act accordingly.”

Vian did exactly that, hunting down the tanker in Norwegian waters with a small task force of British destroyers and the light cruiser Arethusa. In spite of a Norwegian protest over the violation of its neutrality, Vian forced a boarding of the German ship, which ran aground while trying to frustrate that operation with an ill considered attempt to ram the Cossack. The British prisoners were found and freed, and Altmark was left with a bloody nose, run aground on the rocky coast. Churchill and Lord Halifax had both weighed in on the incident, which caused a bit of a diplomatic row, and also served as fuel for Admiral Raeder’s argument that Norway must be invaded.

So the tanker had a way of finding itself in the center of the maelstrom, and finding its way to bad luck as well. It was renamed Ukermark and later fated to die in a freak explosion after delivering 5000 tons of gasoline to Yokohama, Japan in 1943. A spark from a cutting tool being used on the dock ignited residual fumes and the ship was nearly blown apart, a total wreck. Thankfully the crew had been ashore at lunch, and only 53 died, but the rest would not escape the bad luck of the renamed ship either. They would be dispatched to France on the German blockade runner Doggerbank, another ship that had been renamed, redoubling the bad luck. Crewman Fritz Kürt would later say that he could feel the black hand on the ship all along, and kept having fitful dreams, seeing the numbers 3 and 43 in his mind and by happenstance on the ship itself as they sailed through the wide lonesome stretches of the South Atlantic.

Doggerbank soon suffered the ignominious fate of being mistakenly torpedoed by a friendly German U-boat-three torpedoes from U-43 on the evening of 3 March, 1943, an eerie twist of bad luck and bad numbers. Fate had its bony hand on the throat of Altmark and her crew, and only one man of 365 would live to tell the tale. They thought they had escaped a fiery death in that explosion at Yokohama, but all they did now was bring their misfortune to the Doggerbank, which went into the sea in the middle of the Atlantic, a thousand miles east of Morocco.

Finally realizing its error, U-43 saw what it thought to be lifeboats, and edged closer to the flotsam of the ship, trying to question the survivors. In the fading light the U-boat could not get through the wreckage and close enough to hear them. So the German submarine turned and left the scene. Days later a single lifeboat was found by a Spanish tanker on March 29th.

There was one man alive there, Fritz Kürt, the last of the crew of Altmark, (then named Ukermark), who told the sad tale that while fifteen men had made it into the lifeboat, including the Captain of the Doggerbank, it capsized and only six were able to scramble back aboard with the ship’s dog. Without food and water they drifted for days, trying to reach South America until one by one the parched and desperate survivors were claimed by death and suicide.

The Captain of Doggerbank had been trying to navigate by the stars, but lost hope and used his revolver to end his own misery. Fritz Kürt, however, had survived sinkings at sea before, and believed he could beat the odds and the terrible jinx that had dogged the crew of Altmark. He resolved to bear the suffering, preferring the last hours of life instead of a quick death. The only man left alive with him was an old sailor named Boywitt, who eventually drank seawater in his agony of thirst when the last of the rainwater ran out. Fritz pleaded with him not to do this, but he could not resist, and was soon delirious and failing fast.

Just after he died the skies burst with rain, providing all the fresh water the men could have needed, but by then it was too late. Only Fritz remained, and a flying fish that landed aboard the lifeboat in a random act of chance provided him with enough nourishment to survive until the Spanish Tanker Campoamor saved his life-the last crewman of that cursed ship Altmark. After learning of the incident where U-43 had sunk one of their own blockade runners, all pages concerning the episode were ordered ripped from the boat’s log and destroyed.

It was an eerie and chilling end to that tale, but that was in another world, and none of it had yet happened. None of it might happen at all this time around. In the altered state of affairs where Kirov now sailed, Altmark was berthed for repairs for three months and then put to use again as soon as possible.

The Germans were considering renaming the ship to help disguise it now that the British had already made its acquaintance. They almost made the same mistake again but sailors have forever said that renaming a ship was a sure way to bring bad luck. So this time Altmark was left with her maiden name intact. As the battle of Norway concluded the ship was provisioned and slipped out to sea again, unnoticed by the British in their frantic effort to complete the evacuation. It would sail to the Denmark Strait and find a nice quiet break in the ice off the ragged coast of Greenland to wait out a humdrum week for Hoffmann’s battlecruiser squadron to arrive. Now, on the morning of June 17, it would soon find itself in another storm at sea-a storm of fire and steel.

* * *

After some consideration and a collective decision by all the senior officers it was decided to investigate the lone contact off near Greenland to verify Fedorov’s hunch. The weather was still bad, and Admiral Volsky did not want to send the KA-40 for closer observation, but Nikolin had been able to intercept coded messages that named the ship and specified the rendezvous time. Fedorov looked it up, the tanker Altmark, and related the strange story of its history to the Admiral.

“This tanker wasn’t even supposed to be here. It should still be in repair for another few weeks, but obviously that history has changed. I know we all hesitate to do harm here but, if it is any consolation, this is a fated ship and crew. Only one man aboard will live two years to see 1943. All were fated to die except a man named Fritz Kürt.” He described the incident at Yokohama and the strange fate of Doggerbank as Volsky listened.

“So he may be out there right now, this man.”

“Possibly, sir.”

“Bad luck seems to have found this ship again.” Volsky sighed, but realized that this alternative was better than directly engaging the German battlecruisers, where much more force might have to be exerted to achieve the result they were hoping for.

“So we will strike this ship, a sacrificial lamb, and become a bit of a wolf here ourselves in the process. I suppose it can’t be helped. We will chose your one missile solution, Mister Fedorov, but are there any better attack options? A missile will certainly reveal our position.”

“We could use a torpedo, sir. Samsonov tells me we have both Vodopad and UGST Type 53s aboard.”

“The Vodopads are a missile torpedo, we could strike with one from this position, but again, we reveal our position with that weapon so I think the Type 53 is the better option here. Those weapons range to 50 kilometers. Get us to the target, Mister Fedorov.

“Aye sir.”

For the next hours Kirov closed the range, steering 250 on a southwesterly course that eventually brought it a little south of the Altmark. The ship’s luck was about to run out again. Admiral Volsky finally gave the order to fire on the German tanker, his heart heavy with the thought that he was going to put men in the sea, and most likely take many lives with this action, in spite of Fedorov’s consolation.