Altered States – Volume II. Darkest Hour

Chapter 16

July 2, 1940

Kapitan Kurt ‘Caesar’ Hoffmann was brooding as he stared at the rocky Norwegian coastline off Trondheim. Raeder was upset over failure of the operation, and justifiably so. He had been convinced that it would succeed, and it should have been a great victory, until that strange vessel appeared.

“I knew there was something amiss the moment I set eyes on that ship,” he said to the ship’s chief gunnery officer, Schubert. “There was something wrong about it. What ship was that, Schubert? Is the Abwehr so inept that they could fail to notice a ship of that size in the British order of battle? I don’t think so.”

“It is very strange, sir.”

“More than strange! You saw what it did to Gneisenau, eh?”

They were standing on the weather deck, and the grey sky above seemed to lower over the bay, deepening the gloomy mood that was on the Kapitan.

“I have never seen such a weapon, Kapitan. Such speed and accuracy for a rocket is incomprehensible. It must have been a lucky hit, just like that hit we got on that British aircraft carrier.”

“Yes, and we should have sunk that ship, Schubert. That’s another thing that slipped from our grasp. Yes, things have been slipping. I have the odd feeling that we have been denied our rightful victory. We got close enough to the main battle to see the smoke from the fires on that British ship. They tell me it was Hood, and we should have put that ship at the bottom of the sea. Then Lindemann lost his nerve.”

“He was only following orders, Kapitan. You know Raeder made it clear that if our capital ships were in danger of sustaining serious damage, he was to break off.”

“Yes, but we were so close. So damn close. I could almost see us feasting on those fat British convoys to the south, but that’s another thing that slipped away.”

“I’m afraid so sir.”

“You are afraid? Well I’ll tell you the truth now Schubert. I am afraid. If the British have these weapons then our fleet is good for little more than target practice for them. My god, you saw what those rockets did to the Stukas off Graf Zeppelin, and I spoke with Bohmer as well. Thank God his best pilots survived that hell. His squadron leader, Marco Ritter, made it back, and one of his new hot shots survived as well-the fellow that got two hits on the British! All these battleships and the Stukas do the real work. We should have built more carriers. Bohmer says that Sigfrid was not hit by a torpedo as we first thought when we got that report. No! It was another one of those damn naval rockets!”

Schubert seemed very surprised. “I had not heard that.”

“I just heard it myself. It came in on this morning’s unit traffic: Bohmer confirms Sigfrid lost to rocket attack. Single hit amidships.”

“One hit?”

“Well having seen the damage on Gneisenau that does not surprise me. So there, we have lost one of our newest destroyers.” Hoffmann took a long drag on his cigar, and exhaled, clearly upset.

“But sir, Graf Zeppelin was over 150 kilometers to the north. Are you saying the new British ship slipped by and got close enough to fire this weapon without being spotted by our search planes? We saw it well south of our position when we received the order to break off from Lindemann.”

“You were in the gunnery director with your eyes fixed on the British, Schubert, so perhaps you did not see what happened. I was out here on the weather deck and saw everything. When those rocket weapons are fired there is one thing they do with that vapor trail they leave behind them. You can follow the trail like a smoky rainbow right back to the source of the firing ship. No. That enemy ship was nowhere near Graf Zeppelin, and that is what is so astounding about all of this. It hit Sigfrid from a position south of our own just as you say.”

Schubert was dumbfounded. “But that would mean they would have had to fire from a range of 175 kilometers! That’s impossible! How could they even see the target or know where to aim, even if a rocket could travel such a distance?”

“That is what is so astounding, Schubert. But they did see it. They knew the location so precisely that they would have put that rocket right into the belly of Bohmer’s ship. Sigfrid just got in the way. Bohmer tells me they had just sent over a case of beer and sausages, compliments of the Kapitan, to congratulate Graf Zeppelin on their successful strike on the British. They were keeping station just a couple hundred yards from the carrier. Then hell came from the sky. A lot of good men were lost when that destroyer went down.”

“Sir, they must have had a U-boat nearby to spot that ship. Maybe they have some way of sending course corrections via radio.”

“That is my suspicion,” Hoffman nodded. “If Altmark was hit by a torpedo, then that says the British had a submarine lurking nearby. It might be working in cooperation with this rocket cruiser.”

“Rocket cruiser?”

“That’s a good name for it,” said Hoffmann.

“Then what happened?”

“Bohmer launched everything he had, but the initial squadron was cut to pieces. When Lindemann gave the order to break off the engagement, the remaining planes scattered like crows in a cornfield when you put a good 12-gague shotgun to work. They searched the immediate vicinity, but found no sign of an enemy ship. Of course not, I saw where that rocket came from. It was south of us I tell you, and I have told Lindemann that as well, but he did not believe me.”

“Who could believe such a thing?”

“Yes, that puts your finger right on the heart of it, Schubert. We saw things that were completely unbelievable, and yet Sigfrid was sunk, Gneisenau and Bismarck both hit by these rockets, and don’t forget what happened to Altmark!”

“I thought it was hit by a U-boat.”

“Possibly, but did you hear what that oiler man said? Fritz Kurt. We pulled him out of the flotsam after Altmark went down, and I spoke with the man at some length. He says it was a torpedo, though no one saw any sign of a U-boat on the surface or periscope. But what he did see was a big fat battlecruiser, dark on the horizon. The man thought it was our ship, but then it turned away.”

“Then it had to be British, sir.”

“I think it was the same ship that fired those rockets. I’ve had this odd feeling about it since we first engaged those two British cruisers. At least we sent them packing, and sunk one to start things off. Everything was going so well, Schubert. Then the dominoes began falling. Altmark is sunk, we find this strange ship Fritz was trying to describe, and look what happened to Gneisenau! Don’t you see? Everything that went awry had something to do with that ship.”

“Perhaps you are correct, Kapitan.”

“I can feel it, Schubert. I had the feeling something was watching me, watching our ships from a distance, something lurking behind those grey clouds. It was stalking us, nipping at our heels, taunting us, and when we got close, it punched my battlegroup right in the nose. We must find out what this ship is, and then we must sink the damn thing or this new navy we’ve built will be good for nothing. Lindemann should have continued the engagement. Now look at us, stuck in this miserable fiord, sitting here waiting for the British to sneak up with a couple aircraft carriers and launch those damn Swordfish at us again.”

“We’ll get another chance soon, sir.”

“It may be a while. Gneisenau was ordered back to Kiel along with Bismarck. They left Tirpitz at Bergen, but Topp departs for Kristiansand and Bremen tomorrow if the weather is bad. They’re pulling our horns in, Schubert. It’s just us up here now, and a couple destroyers.”

“What about Nurnberg, sir?”

“That light cruiser? What good is that?”

At that moment a signalman stepped onto the weather deck, saluting. “Message from Wilhelmshaven,” he said smartly, and handed off the note to Hoffmann.

The Kapitan read it slowly, shaking his head. “Look here, Schubert. They managed to complete the refit on Admiral Scheer, and they are sending it up here tonight from Kristiansand as a distraction for the withdrawal of Tirpitz south. It’s going to make a run west, as if it might be headed for the Iceland Faeroes gap, then it turns north to join us here.”

“Here sir? What for?”

“Have a look, Schubert.” He handed his artillery officer the message. “Read it yourself. Raeder must be getting curious about this ship we’ve been talking about. One of our U-boats reported a large warship moved north around the cape, and a plane out of Narvik spotted it again. That’s why Nurnberg arrived last night. Misery loves company, eh? Now they are sending up the Admiral Scheer, and Raeder wants to have a look up north. They’re calling it Operation Wunderland.”

Wunderland was conceived to do exactly what Hoffmann had surmised-have a good long look up north to see what the Russians were up to. Naval intelligence had not been sleeping since the abortive engagement with the Royal Navy in the Denmark Strait. Information had been developed that suggested the strange ship reported by Hoffmann and other German assets may not have been a British ship at all! That seaplane out of Narvik got more than a sighting report that day-it got a photograph as well, and naval analysts could clearly discern the Russian naval ensign flying from the ship’s aft mast.

Raeder needed time to consolidate the fleet after their ill-fated sortie-time for repairs, and more importantly time to refuel. The fleet had burned through months of petrol supplies, and the dwindling oil stocks were going to hobble the navy if the storage depots were not soon replenished. He could not afford to send out his big ships now, not with Hitler scheming over Operation Seelowe, the planned invasion of England. So he sent the light cruiser Nurnberg north to Trondheim where there was enough fuel in store to replenish, and now that Admiral Scheer had completed her refit with a new Atlantic clipper bow and a lighter conning tower with new flak guns to give her more air defense, that ship was a perfect choice.

A Deutschland class ‘Pocket Battleship,’ the ship was now reclassified as a heavy cruiser in the shadow of so many other more powerful ships now in the German fleet. Hitler was of two minds on what to do next with his war machine. On the one hand he had Britain on her knees and waiting to receive the death blow. A successful invasion of England would probably decide the war in the West within six months, and the Americans would never get their foot in the door. On the other hand, Orenburg had just joined with Germany, creating a situation where the Soviet Union under Kirov was now badly flanked and already at war all along the Volga.

This, along with the fall of France and Italy’s entry into the war, made it seem that Germany was now invincible, and destined to become the dominant power on earth. Eventually the Americans would have to be dealt with, but they had no army to speak of at the moment, and posed no threat to Germany.

In spite of all this, Raeder was suddenly edgy about the situation. If these reports were true, if this was a Russian ship fighting alongside the British, it could upset all his carefully laid plans. With Europe prostrate at his feet, Hitler had to believe, at Raeder’s urging, that he could crush the Soviet Union any time he wished-but this was not the time.

“Why not now?” the Fuhrer had asked him. “Half the Soviet army is already tied down on the Volga. My Generals tell me they can take Moscow in two months and knock the Russians out of the war!”

“We do not know that for certain, my Fuhrer. The Russians may not capitulate as easily as the French. If there are complications, delays, then we would find ourselves bogged down in a two front war, repeating the mistakes of 1914. At the moment England is reeling from hard blows. Now is the time to finish them!”

Raeder argued that any invasion of Russia now would give England a respite. Could the British regain their balance and dig in well enough to hold out until the Americans came to their aid? This was the real strategic question that hung in the Balance in mid 1940. The issue of Russia could be decided later. Hitler seemed to agree, albeit reluctantly, and turned his thoughts to Operation Seelowe. There might be enough time to finish the job against the British and still invade Russia before the winter set in.

But now this-a Russian ship perpetrating an act of war! Was it true? It could change everything, and Raeder had to know more. Operation Wunderland would be a reconnaissance in force to test the strength of the Russian Navy. Raeder proposed to send the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer and the light cruiser Nurnberg from Trondheim to Narvik, and then around the North Cape. They would make a run for Svalbard, sneak across the upper Barents Sea while the ice was thin. Then they could scout the Kara Sea to see what the Russians might have hidden there.

If war came with Russia, Germany planned to move into Finland to flank Leningrad from the north. To do so Raeder knew that the Russian Fleet would have to be neutralized, and the main port of Murmansk occupied by German troops. Operation Wunderland was the first tentative probe north, a light shove on the shoulder of the Russian state to see what they might do, and to determine if the reports were true about this ship.

Admiral Scheer was capable of facing down anything the Russian Navy had, or so it was believed until this new ship had been sighted. So Scheer would head north, see what this mystery ship was up to, and test the mettle of the Soviets at the same time.

What the Germans did not know was that a ferocious bear was now sleeping in the long Kola Fiord that led to Murmansk, a ship with capabilities that would soon shock and mystify more men than Kurt Hoffmann. Events were now about to unfold that would set the course of the war off in a startling new direction, and as always, the battlecruiser Kirov would have its hand on the twisting gyre of fate.