Altered States -Volume III. Hinge of Fate

Chapter 28

Convoy HX-69 was making good time, though it was just a little late embarking from Halifax for the long journey to Liverpool. Now it was three days out from its destination port, and though the sailors could almost smell the scent of home in the tang of the rising wind and sea, this was one of the most dangerous legs of the voyage.

It was 23 ships when it first set out from Halifax on the 28th of August, under command of Commodore J. S. Ritchie of the Royal Navy Reserve, aboard the Dutch steamer SS Ulysses. Nine more ships joined the odyssey at sea two days later, and another 15 ships on September 1st to swell the ranks to 47 ships. Ulysses was a stately looking merchant steamer, with a long black hull trimmed in white at the gunwales and a tall single stack amidships. There had been no suitable British ship available at Halifax, and so the Commodore gratefully accepted Ulysses as his convoy flag. The Dutch crew was smart and efficient, though Ritchie noted they were a bit loose in maintaining steady revolutions on the turbine. The ships speed might vary between seven and ten knots, but maintained a good average over time.

Captain Jugtenberg and the other Dutch officers were excellent navigators, taking regular measurements with compass and sextant, and there was easy cooperation between Ritchie’s staff officers and the Dutch crew. The convoy was carrying a wide range of minerals and supplies-iron ore, bauxite, steel, lumber, diesel oil, gasoline, sulfur, and other general cargo.

Commodore Ritchie had been pleased to have had a fairly uneventful crossing until they encountered heavy swells on September 3rd. One sheep, the SS Condor fell astern with engine trouble, but managed to catch up in time for the planned emergency turn maneuver executed on September 5th. Ritchie remarked that the station keeping and overall speed of the convoy was the best he had ever seen. On the 7th, however, the sea increased at midnight, with a fresh gale force wind from the northwest frothing up rough seas at dawn the following morning. Fimbulwinter was upon them, though no man in the convoy knew it just then.

The ships were spread out in lines of nine abreast, with Ulysses in the number five position on row one. Seven of the ships were newly arriving escorts, sent out to bring the convoy home on this final three day run. They included older Admiralty Class destroyers like HMS Arrow and Winchelsea, the Canadian destroyers Saguenay and Assinboine, and corvettes HMS Heartsease, Clarika and Camelia.

Ritchie felt fairly well protected to have seven sheep dogs escorting his flock now, but the wolves were about on the wild sea that day and they would have more work than they expected. Arrow was part of the Western Approaches Defense Force based at Greenock. Commander Herbert Wyndham Williams, had her out in front of the convoy, nervously sniffing the waters for any sign of the U-boats that made this place a favorite hunting ground. He was supposed to have been destined to take a promotion to the light cruiser Birmingham one day, but that would not happen in this timeline. The Germans had already put that ship at the bottom of the Denmark Strait.

HX-69 was also supposed to have completed its run into British ports without incident, but that history was about to change as well. Williams had already seen evidence of wolves on the prowl when he stopped to pick up survivors of Poseidon, a Greek ship that had been torpedoed a few days ago. Now he was feeling just a little ill at ease, the cold wind biting, with the promise of a hard winter to come in the months ahead.

At 09:00 a signal came in that a periscope had been spotted off the starboard side of the convoy. HMS Winchelsea was on the watch there, and was quick into action churning up the choppy seas even more with a burst of speed. Commodore Ritchie ordered the convoy to make an emergency turn to port, away from the attack but he was too late. A torpedo wake was sighted and within a minute the oiler Charles F. Meyer exploded in an angry red fireball and was soon enshrouded with acrid black smoke.

U-99, a Type VIIB boat under Kapitan Otto Kretschmer, had just taken the first bite out of HX-69. When he saw the massive explosion in his periscope, Kretschmer smiled, thinking his good luck was holding after a shaky start. On his first patrol, he was returning to Bergen with a medical casualty when he sailed into the path of the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst. An eagle-eyed Arado pilot thought he was seeing a British submarine and swooped into attack. Before he reached port the submarine was attacked a second time by German aircraft, and six days later he had to make another emergency dive when a German plane dropped three bombs on his position, sending him all the way to the seabed where he bumped his nose with a hard knock.

Those days were over, and he had settled in to three more good patrols since that time. He logged 22,700 tons on his second patrol, bettered that with 57,890 tons on his third patrol, and already had over 18,000 tons up on this patrol with another two weeks left to hunt. Kretschmer already had one Knight’s Cross for his work, and he was aiming to get his oak leaves this time around, and destined to be the number one U-boat ace in the Kriegsmarine.

“That had to be in oiler,” he said quietly to his First Watch Officer, Leutnant Klaus Bargsten. “Come right twenty degrees. Emergency down bubble, and make your depth 150 feet. There's a pesky destroyer up there looking for us.”

Winchelsea would have no luck that day, because Otto Kreschmer was a fated man. Bargsten nodded with a smile, not knowing at that moment that his own personal fate would be destined to become entangled with that of a mysterious unknown ship. In one telling of those events, Bargsten would command U-563 withorders to join the Gronland wolfpack forming up south of Iceland in August of 1941, but the boat’s Captain would see something in his periscope lens that pricked his curiosity. He spotted what looked to be two British battleships, which were in fact King George V and Repulse hastening west. Both ships were hit and burning, and Bargsten came to believe that there must be other U-boats about. Eager to get into the action, he turned west, and eventually came very near another strange looking vessel, which he tried to engage with a badly planned long shot. He paid for that mistake with his life, because the long shot he took came in a moment of great tension on the bridge of the battlecruiser Kirov.

At that time Captain Vladimir Karpov had just seized control of the ship in the North Atlantic, intending to force a decisive engagement with the Allied fleets that were hunting him. The strident warning called out by Tasarov, torpedo in the water, set Karpov off like a time bomb, and before the incident ran its course, the massive angry mushroom cloud of a nuclear weapon would blight the Earth for the first time in human history.

In so many ways, Bargsten was the match that lit the fuse to begin the great unraveling of the history that had taken so many centuries to weave. His was but a single errant thread, yet, when pulled upon, it precipitated chaos in the loom of fate and time. And there he was again this day, huddled in the conning tower of U-99, smiling at his Kapitan, taking silent lessons as he watched how easily Kreschmer commanded his boat-the devil’s apprentice.

Kreschmer would hit 46 ships in his brief career, under the emblem of the lucky golden horseshoe painted prominently on the sail of the boat. A quiet, methodical man, Kreschmer had earned the nickname ‘Silent Otto’ as he worked his craft. His motto was ‘One torpedo… one ship,’ and he demonstrated that with the swift kill he had just logged against the oiler Charles F. Meyer. He would always say that his mission was to sink ships, and not men, and would render assistance to any survivors he ever could, but this time the close proximity of the British destroyer forced him to evade. But he had his kill, on his way to become the tonnage king of the U-boat service sinking over 273,000 tons.

One day I will get my chance, thought Bargsten as he watched his Kapitan with admiration. He would end up sinking less than one percent of Kreschmer’s unmatched tonnage, just 22,171 tons in the five kills he would log in his career, but the last torpedo he would fire would shatter the history of the world.

“We’ll linger here for a while, then creep up on them again tonight,” said Kreschmer. He was famous for his night attacks, firing from the surface, but with the moon waxing, the weather would have to stay clouded over for him to risk that tactic. He would end up getting one more ship later that day, a vessel carrying sugar and rum called Traveller, much to the chagrin of sailors back in Liverpool who were expecting the rum. That kill convinced Commodore Ritchie that he was in infested waters here, which prompted him to make a fateful decision.

“We’ll get no mercy from the wolf pack,” he said to his first mate. Let’s alter course just after sunset and come fifteen points to port.”

The convoy would execute the maneuver smartly on command, and it would take the remaining 45 ships right into the path of another great wolf, the Lord of the Manor, flagship of the German Navy, battleship Hindenburg.

Tovey was back aboard HMS Invincible when he got the news that a scout plane out from the fledgling air base on the Faeroe Islands had failed to return. What he first took to be trouble with the thickening weather soon became cause for alarm. A message was received saying the plane had been engaged by German fighters, and shot down. That could only mean that the German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was on the prowl somewhere near those islands, as they were too far from Bergen to be bothered by fighters based at that location.

This led Tovey to reconsider his deployment of the other two battleships. They had been steaming northwest all day, and were now in a position some 200 miles west of the Faeroes. What if the Germans shunned the more distant coast of Iceland and turned south near those islands instead? He immediately sent a signal to the Admiralty, and Captain Patterson on King George V, suggesting this possibility, and advising the cruiser Kent should investigate. Admiral Pound sent back a contrary opinion. Tovey was handed the message ten minutes later. “Admiralty and First Sea Lord do not concur. Continue on your original posting. HMS Kent to remain on station with Illustrious.”

This was his fate now, he realized, to be shadowed by the meddlesome Admiral Pound, second guessed, with his orders countermanded at every turn. This was the price he was paying for the hospital bill he had handed the Royal Navy on his first major engagement- Hood, Renown and Repulse all laid up for repairs.

When the next message was brought in, it was a sad vindication in seeing his worst misgivings confirmed. R.A.F. Vagar in the Faeroes, the place where he had learned the startling truth concerning the Russian ship and crew during his meeting with Admiral Volsky, was being shelled!

“R.A.F. Vagar under large caliber naval gunfire at 23:20 and taking heavy damage. Three planes destroyed and base no longer operational. Casualties.” He read the message slowly to Captain Bennett. “By God, they’ve snookered us! The Germans are running the inside passage! Large caliber naval gunfire-that can only be from a capital ship, and here I am nearly 600 miles to the west watching the back yard while Hindenburg is skulking right past the front gate!”

He was over to his plotting table at once, scratching his forehead as he eyed the position of Captain Patterson’s battlegroup. “Send to King George V,” he said to a Watch Officer. “Tell them to come about and steer 190 and come to full speed. The Germans will have to steer that course to get down round Ireland… And my God, look here, Captain Bennett. That’s HX-69 there, bound for Liverpool.” He fingered a spot on his chart, right in the path of the oncoming threat.

“We’d best inform the Admiralty,” said Bennett, “and have them scatter that convoy, dangerous as that may be in those waters.”

“Agreed,” said Tovey. “Make it so. He placed two rulers on the chart now, laying one along the suspected course of the German squadron, and another from his own position to a point about 500 miles east of Glasgow. An equilateral triangle formed between the Faeroes, that point, and his ship.

“We could get back into it,” he said glancing quickly at Captain Bennett. “I could turn now and put on thirty knots. Certainly the Germans will do the same, and they’ll have to steer this course until they reach this latitude. Only then can they turn south around Ireland.”

“Right through the Bloody Western Approaches,” said Bennett. “Damn bold maneuver, wouldn’t you say?”

“That so,” said Tovey. “Well, we must make them pay for that.”

“What about Patterson’s group?” Captain Bennett eyed the position of King George V to the north.

“He’ll make 28 knots at his best speed. The Germans have a slight speed advantage, only two knots, but that means they’ll slip away unless we stop them.”

“And what about our watch here?” Captain Bennett stated the obvious, and Tovey gave him a look that seemed to see right through him, his mind obviously fixed on some solution.

Schettler, John

Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series)

“I’ll be in the W/T Room,” he said. “Come about to take that course and go to thirty knots at once.”

“Aye sir, off we go.” Bennett gestured to a Watch Officer and the order was passed to the helm. HMS Invincible was heading south.

“Well Fedorov,” said Admiral Volsky. “It appears we have not worn out our welcome yet.” He had just received the message from Nikolin. Admiral Tovey had sent a code on a special channel they had arranged and was requesting that Kirov resume the Watch on the Denmark Strait for the next 24 hours.

Fedorov had seen all the other message traffic, and put the puzzle together. “I guess we can tell Narva they will not be seeing anything north of Iceland,” he said. “The Germans have just announced themselves at the Faeroes!”

“That they have. What do you think this is, Fedorov? Could it be a diversion?”

“In once sense it is,” said Fedorov. “They showed us Alfargruppe just north of the Denmark Strait first. Now we know that is comprised of only two ships, and I think that is the real feint here. This business at the Faeroes, that is Jotnargruppe, the giants, and from the list of ships we decoded in that Enigma signal it will be Bismarck and Hindenburg. Yet in my opinion, this is also a diversion.”

“Oh? What else can the Germans throw at the British? Hindenburg is their biggest ship. Yes?”

“They can throw three crack regiments at Gibraltar, sir. I believe this is a ruse aimed at keeping the British Home Fleet well occupied for Operation Felix.”

Volsky sighed heavily, folding his arms.

“Correct, Fedorov. The only question I have now is this: what should we do about it?”