Altered States

Chapter 33

Tovey did not know what to make of Admiral Volsky’s last statement. “I’m sorry, Admiral, but I am not quite sure I follow what you mean.”

“Forgive me, Admiral. I do not mean to be coy, but we have been well north of your present position, and gained intelligence that you might find valuable. So it was that we came across the wreckage of your cruiser along our route home. I wonder if you are aware that the Germans will have more than this heavy cruiser at sea to the north.”

“Which is all the more reason for you to consider safer waters to the south, Admiral.”

Volsky took a sip of his gin, then set the glass down. “May I ask Captain Fedorov to speak briefly. He is somewhat of a naval historian, and I think he may be able to shed some light on what I am trying to tell you here. Mister Fedorov?”

Fedorov began to address the officers as if he were lecturing at the academy, looking to Nikolin, who translated skillfully as he spoke.

“From what I have seen, you presently have a strong force assembled. You will be matched, however, by an equally powerful force. Our intelligence indicates the Germans will have Bismarck and Tirpitz, to put against your flagship here and HMS Hood. They will have two battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, to match Repulse, and two heavy cruisers Prince Eugen and the Hipper to set beside your own cruisers. They, too have carrier support, which is somewhat surprising to me, and I think it was also a surprise to you. We have confirmed this through analysis of signals traffic. And they have also brought three large destroyers, more like light cruisers really. To put it simply, sir, and I mean no disrespect, I do not believe you presently command sufficient force to prevail should it come to a major fleet action here.”

Holland raised an eyebrow at that, thinking the Russian Captain seemed a bit too young to be in that position, and here he was telling a pair of Admirals with combined service histories twice his years in age that all their considerable efforts would come to naught. He smiled, politely, but spoke his mind.

“My good man, I should think we will manage well enough if it comes to a fight here.”

“I would hope that you would, Admiral Holland, but we believe this flagship and other escorts were east of Iceland some 48 hours ago, and undoubtedly with the same mindset and confidence. Yet here you are, and we are aware that HMS Renown, once steaming by your side, is not here.”

The boldness of that statement struck through the British officers like a well aimed cricket ball. Flag Lieutenant Villers shifted uncomfortably, but deferred to Admiral Tovey.

“May I ask how you came by this information, Captain?”

“The same way you come by your information, Admiral. We listen to signals traffic just as you and the Germans do, and our ship is highly specialized in general area surveillance. In fact, we can tell you a great many things you may not yet know based on our reconnaissance north earlier today.”

“I see… Do go on, Captain. If you have information that would be pertinent and useful, we would certainly welcome it.”

Fedorov looked first to Admiral Volsky, something Tovey noted and looked on with approval. The young man seemed confident, knowledgeable, yet correctly deferred to senior authority. He watched the Russian Admiral closely as well, still wrestling inwardly with the impossible notion that he knew this man. Volsky spoke next.

“There is something more I will disclose to you now, and that is a decision I have made personally in this situation in consultation with our senior officers. You have said we cruise in dangerous waters here, and this we came to know, first hand. The German ships responsible for the sinking of your cruiser to the north also encountered us. I believe they were attempting to refuel with a replenishment ship hovering west near the ice floes. In any case, as it happened our course ran afoul of theirs, and there was a disagreement.” He folded his arms, watching Tovey to see what effect his words had as Nikolin finished the translation.

“Are you saying you engaged the Germans, sir?”

“Two ships. My Captain here tells me they were battlecruisers, and they did not seem to like the looks of us on their horizon. From our position at the time we were aware of your position as well, Admiral Holland, and it seemed to us that the Germans, after besting your cruiser screen, were now in a very good place to slip by you and gain the Atlantic. I do not have to tell you that would have created a most uncomfortable situation for your merchant marine, as we have also seen the convoy traffic further south. Taking all this into consideration, I made a decision to intervene.”

“Intervene?” Holland again has a bemused look on his face. “Now I mean no disrespect either here, Admiral, and please pardon me if I am as frank and direct as your Captain Fedorov. I have had a close look at your ship in the last hour. Your size and silhouette are quite impressive, a marvel of naval architecture, I would say. However how did you propose to ‘intervene’ with all of six 5.7 inchers on deck? The Twins, that is what we call the two German battlecruisers we are hunting, well…they will outgun you many times over, and I wouldn’t think your ship would survive such an encounter. After all, they bested two of our cruisers with twenty-four 6-inch guns between them. That is four times the firepower I saw on your ship.” Holland folded his hands.

Soft spoken if a bit smug, thought Volsky, but he understood the man’s argument and attitude easily enough. The British cannot see our teeth, and so of course they believe we are toothless. How to convince them otherwise?

“Mister Fedorov, kindly inform these gentlemen as to the decisions we made and relate the action taken.”

“Yes sir. Admiral Holland, while it may not appear from a distance that we carry much in the way of armament, appearances can be deceiving. We are, in fact, a prototype design, and considerably well armed with resources beyond the deck guns you have observed and commented on.” He noted how Holland folded his arms, his body language closed and clearly somewhat defensive at the moment.

“Some time ago we attempted to dissuade the Germans from attacking your cruisers, but did not apply sufficient force. We were uncertain as to what we should do at the time, so we first tried jamming their radar and communications, but they persisted. We did, however use those 5.7 inchers to prompt the Germans to break off their pursuit of the cruisers, whereupon they turned southwest at high speed.”

“You are telling me you drove off the Twins with your deck guns? I find that a bit of a stretch, Captain.”

“We were unseen at the time, Admiral, yet we were able to put accurate fire on the lead German ship. I do not think the German commander was driven off as much as he simply decided that bothering with your cruisers, which he believed to be the source of the fire we put on him, was of no further advantage to him. It was our assessment that the Germans were keen to rendezvous with a refueling ship before proceeding south. Though they had clearly broken through your cruiser screen and positioned themselves to evade your capital ships, the need to replenish was, in our estimation, their Achilles heel.”

Tovey was taking all this in with equal surprise, but with quite a different reaction. The Russians, a neutral state, had willfully violated their own neutrality to intervene on behalf of embattled Royal Navy units that were clearly overmatched by the enemy. He saw in that a ray of hope, but said nothing for the moment, allowing the young Russian officer to continue.

“On Admiral Volsky’s orders, we located their replenishment ship, the Altmark, and sunk it, hoping this might dissuade them from continuing south. It seemed we were wrong, for after rendering assistance to Altmark, the Germans took a heading due south, and on a course that saw them encounter us while we were performing routine maintenance some hours later. The Twins, as you call them, decided to attack. We suppose they believed us to be one of your ships, but we defended ourselves, engaging and damaging one ship, which we subsequently determined to be the Gneisenau. The Germans then broke off their attack and reversed their course. They are now well to the north effecting a rendezvous with the force Admiral Tovey encountered earlier northeast of Iceland.”

Fedorov finished, and the British seemed dumbfounded by what he had told them. Holland looked at Tovey, as if to see whether he believed what the Russians were saying here. It was clear that he had real doubts about it as he summed up what Fedorov had said, an edge of incredulity in his voice.

“You are telling us now that you attempted to aid our cruisers, then found and sunk the Altmark to prevent the Germans from refueling and beat off an attack by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to send them north to look for assistance?”

“That sizes it up fairly well, Admiral Holland.”

“You left one thing out, Admiral Holland,” said Tovey diplomatically. “They also happened upon the wreckage of Birmingham and saved at least fifteen souls there, Captain Madden among them.”

“Here, here.” Captain Bennett, who had been listening quietly, took it upon himself to raise his glass of gin in a toast.

“Well you have been quite busy, it seems,” said Tovey. “I will gladly second your toast, Captain Bennett, and allow me to extend our thanks and appreciation for all these gentlemen have done. You realize, of course, that you have violated the terms of your own neutrality by taking these actions.”

“Admiral,” said Volsky. “Even though my backside has become much more substantial than I would like at this age, I found it most uncomfortable to sit on the fence in this situation. While we sail under the flag of a neutral country, I do not think there is much time for that luxury in this war. We are all going to have to choose sides here, at one time or another. Our homeland has not as yet made that decision, but you have just lost your only ally in Europe with the fall of France, and I can imagine that prospects look fairly bleak to you just now. So I would like to offer you my hand in friendship here, perhaps a gesture that you might see as having some value. I fear that as soon as Hitler settles himself in the house he had lately broken into, he will not rest there. No, he will quickly turn his greedy eyes on the villas up the street. There are only two directions he might take, and we are both his neighbors now, your country and ours. It seems to me our mutual cooperation and understanding would be a great help to you at this dark hour.”

* * *

Lindemann and the others listened as Hoffman and Fein explained what they saw-a rocket, incredibly fast and deadly accurate. It had been fired from a range of at least 18,000 meters and bored in mercilessly, so fast that the eye could barely follow it as it thundered home.

“It maneuvered,” said Hoffmann gesturing with his hand to show how the rocket swooped up from the sea. “I could clearly see the exhaust trail in the sky. It arced up from the enemy ship, climbed, and then dove for the sea, skimming right over the wave tops. Then, at the very last minute, it leapt at the ship’s vitals above the waterline, as if it was deliberately guided to avoid our heavy side armor. The explosion was terrible to behold.”

“The warhead must have been at least 300 kilograms,” said Fein “and it penetrated the superstructure amidships easily. Then came the fires. It was as if someone had sprayed gasoline all over the interior compartments and then tossed in a match, but many times worse. The heat was intense. Every compartment involved was completely immolated, and no one in those sections survived. I lost forty three men there.”

The testimony of these two experienced officers was sobering, to say the least, and there was no more sentiment of jubilant celebration in the room.

“I know we, ourselves are working on this technology,” said Lindemann. “Most of it is top secret and hidden away at the Peenemünde Army Research Centre. There have been proposals for remote controlled aircraft such as Project Erfurt, and men like Goddard in America and our own von Braun have proposed models for rockets as well. They are thinking to send remote controlled aircraft over the channel carrying 1000 kilogram bombs! But it is no more than an idea at the moment, and most senior officers I have spoken with seemed to dismiss it as having no real military applications. How would you control such a plane? A rocket would seem even more daunting. Yes, they have been used for centuries, ever since the discovery of gunpowder, but all current rocket development is unguided and likely to stay that way for some time.”

“Not these rockets,” said Hoffmann, shaking his head. “Unless the aim was flawless, this rocket seemed to have a mind of its own. Remember, we are not sitting there like a toy in the bathtub! We were cruising near thirty knots. The British hit a ship moving at that speed from over 18,000 meters away, and with accuracy that was more precise than our finest naval gun directors and optics. Now, anyone who wishes to see the result is welcome to visit Otto here aboard Gneisenau after this little conference, but the question before us now is how do we proceed?”

Silence. All eyes turned to Lindemann, who folded his hand slowly, considering. “We have heard from Wilhelmshaven,” he said. “I must tell you, Hoffmann, that Raeder was not happy with your decision to engage that ship. It would have been better if you had kept to the plan and simply ran south for the Atlantic.”

“That is what I decided, Lindemann. Then we came upon the ship and thought it was another British cruiser, even though I could not recognize the silhouette.”

“Well, perhaps you should have avoided engagement. That said, here we are. Raeder was not happy that I engaged the British with our carrier aircraft either-until he received the news concerning Renown. Seekrieigsleitung made it evident that they believed my decision to elect the Denmark Strait as a breakout point instead of the more open seaways in the Iceland-Faeroes gap was not what they expected. So we are both in the soup together, Kapitan. Now that we have come here to this rendezvous point at your request, we have considerable power at our disposal. It is no longer a question of trying to slip a raider or two out into the Atlantic as I view the situation. In spite of this rocket you speak of, now we have the power to fight our way through.”

“Raeder has approved this?”

“I made the request. They are undoubtedly scouring the intelligence to see what we may be up against if we do proceed south now. It is either that, or the whole operation must be postponed, and if we turn for home now it will be a long winter before we see these waters again. This is my belief.”

“Then what do you propose, Lindemann?”

“I have conferred with Seekrieigsleitung and Lütjens. You all know that he is a careful and cautious man. Yet even he sees the advantage we now have with our present concentration of forces. This was not what Raeder wanted, but choices we have both made have brought us here. So my request was that we refuel now and proceed south by 18:00 hours this evening. What do the rest of you think?”

Karl Topp, the Kapitan of Tirpitz, spoke next. “I’m an old U-boat man, so you may dismiss whatever I say, but I know what the men our ships are named after might advise. Here we have clenched a hard fist. I say we strike south and bludgeon anything in our path. We will have air cover, Stukas, and the finest ships in the world. We either use them or continue playing hide and go seek with the Royal Navy. This is what I believe.”

That sentiment found immediate support from the two cruiser Kapitans, and Böhmer from Graf Zeppelin. “We have two battleships, a pair of battlecruisers, two heavy cruisers and three destroyers,” he said. “Gneisenau took a hard blow, but there is nothing wrong with the guns, eh Fein? I say we move as Lindemann and Topp suggest.”

“One thing, gentlemen,” said Lindemann. “If we top off our tanks here we will take every drop of fuel Nordmark has. Once in the Atlantic we will be a long way from home, and our control of French ports is tenuous at this point. We have only just occupied Brest, St. Nazaire and La Pallice. Word is that the British took heavy loss at St. Nazaire. We hit a nice fat ocean liner packed to the gills with troops, but it will be some time before the docks and quays, or adequate supplies can be made ready for us there. So we cannot count on those ports being available to accommodate the entire fleet. This means that operations will have to be supported by the tankers remaining in the Atlantic if we push too far south, and we have seen what happened to Altmark here. Lose another tanker, or god forbid two, and we could be hung out like fish on a wire.”

“Logistics will be uppermost in the minds of Raeder and Lütjens,” said Hoffmann. “I will be frank and say that my decision to turn north and refuel was based on this same logic. Yes, we can fight here, but we may need to consider more limited operations.”

“Exactly,” Lindemann agreed. “I suggested that we fight to secure access to the Halifax-Liverpool convoy route, there are a pair of nice fat convoys within easy reach even as we speak. If we can get south in 48 hours, we will have a hundred ships to feast on. That will make Raeder happy. Then we retire north, and not west to France. This is what I proposed to Wilhelmshaven. Now we wait to see what Raeder and Lütjens have to say about it.”

“Have they been informed of the damage to Gneisenau?” asked Fein.

“They are aware your ship was hit, but this business about the rocket sits here between us at this table and has gone no further. Frankly I do not know what they would make of it, and so I suggest we do not complicate the matter trying to explain through signals traffic what Hoffmann has told us here.”

“But be forewarned,” said Hoffmann. “If this ship is spotted again, perhaps your Stukas can deal with it Kapitan Böhmer.”

“True,” said Lindemann. “Perhaps we should assign a code here to alert all the others if we sight this ship.”

Hoffman chuckled at that. “No Kapitan Lindemann, we will not need such devices. If this ship appears again you will all see it with your own eyes, plain enough, and believe me, you will never forget it as long as you live.”