Three Kings

Chapter 16

The plan had been called “Hercules” in the history Fedorov knew, but it had emerged in the minds of the German war planners much earlier in this world, and blossomed here in the same energy that was giving life to Rommel’s movement to North Africa. Now it was seen to bloom like the sunflower Rommel’s operation was named for, and so Keitel’s entire plan was folded into Sonnenblume, and would become an essential component of its success. The loss of Gibraltar had indeed put a keen focus on the Mediterranean as the next theater of war. Hitler’s naval liaison officer to the Italians in Rome, Vice Admiral Weichold echoed the sentiment of many others when he wrote his final report on the matter and delivered it directly to the Führer.

“Malta is the stumbling block of Italy’s conduct of the war at sea. If the Italian navy is to fulfill its main function, which is to keep open sea communications with Libya, then — from the purely military standpoint — it must take action immediately and forestall the British by eliminating Malta and capturing Crete. Both of these operations, if carefully prepared and launched without warning, have excellent prospect of success, though the latter would certainly entail a greater degree of risk. I strongly recommend that Malta be given the highest priority, and if not taken by the Italians in December, it should become a primary focus of German military action with the new year.”

The voices and heads were now lining up on the issue of Malta, Raeder, Keitel, Jodl, Halder, Kesselring, and Rommel all in unanimous agreement that it should become the next target, and to this chorus the secret whispers of Ivan Volkov continued urging Hitler to do exactly this were enough to tip the balance. Watch your enemy, Ivan Volkov had whispered. What does he covet? Look how he stubbornly holds on to the island of Malta. He knows the value of that place, even though it is far from Alexandria and can no longer be supported from Gibraltar.

Kesselring was consulted by Hitler and calmly told the Führer that Malta would be far easier to take than Crete, agreeing with Raeder that the opportunity to do so was ripe at this very moment. “Look how easily we took their precious Rock of Gibraltar,” he said. “Malta will fall like a plum, right into our hands with no trouble.”

As further inducement, he produced an old volume containing Napoleon’s plan for the capture of the island in 1798, an item that Hitler found most interesting and persuasive.

For his part, Rommel could see that if the Luftwaffe pursued the Italian strategy of trying to bomb the island into submission, all those planes that might be supporting him in the desert would be tied up for months. Better now than later, he said of the plan when he finally heard that Keitel had formally proposed the operation to Hitler. He even offered to go and lead the attack himself, but yielded to Student as being more versed in airborne operations. It was now unanimous.

In spite of his worries over the threat Crete posed to the oil fields of Ploesti, Hitler was finally convinced to attack Malta first. “Crete can be taken after we conclude operations in the Baltic,” the generals and Admirals assured him. And with his grudging approval, the history of the war had come to its second major point of divergence.

The Germans planned to introduce their air strength first, with the aim of extending the Italian effort there and neutralizing the air defenses of the island. Once the defense had been suppressed, then Student would get his day in the skies, and his Fallschirmjagers would launch their daring attack. Italy would participate by providing shipping necessary to move one full regiment of German mountain troops, augmented by a battalion of the Italian San Marco Marines, a token force to allow Mussolini a scrap of honor in the situation that again saw the Germans taking the primary role from an otherwise inept Italian military.

The Germans had learned some valuable lessons in watching the British operate with their navy. They had finally come to realize the great value and importance of sea power as a guarantor of the lifeline of supply. This had never been necessary before in German operations, which had always been lines of communication on land. Now, however, with Germany contemplating a significant projection of power into the Eastern Mediterranean, a secure supply line by sea was essential. They were finally beginning to perceive the strong connection and relationship that sea power had to operations by the Luftwaffe. In this, the performance of Graf Zeppelin had opened many eyes. If anything, it was lack of adequate shipping that had forced the cancellation of Operation Seelöwe, that and the fact that Goering had not delivered on his promise of defeating the R.A.F. Without dominating the skies over the English Channel, the Royal Navy then became a dangerous counter to any plan to invade England.

This hard lesson was now applied to the situation in the Med, and even Hitler began to see how things had changed after the capture of Gibraltar. The Germans now understood that to fight here, they had to control the airspace first, and then introduce naval forces of sufficient quality and number to hold the formidable power of the Royal Navy at bay. The war at sea would be an essential prerequisite to winning any battle on land. That was one salient point that arose in all those discussions at OKW with Admiral Raeder.

Admiral Lütjens and Captain Karl Adler aboard the Hindenburg would soon have some most interesting orders, and a formidable fleet would be assembled in the west as the naval covering force for Sonnenblume. It would be a combined operation, the first of the war between the French Navy and the Kriegsmarine. While there was still little love between the two forces, and much resentment against the Germans, the ill will the French sailors held towards the British after Mers-el Kebir and Dakar was more raw. The Germans proposed to bring two powerful ships, first to Gibraltar where they would briefly enjoy the fruits of the recent German victory there, and then into the Mediterranean itself. The entire German battlegroup that had managed to reach French ports would be involved, but it had to again slip past the watch of Admiral Somerville’s Force H.

The German intelligence soon indicated that the British had further designs on Dakar, and that they had even retained forces in Freetown that could be used in another operation there. So the Germans convinced the French that the place was simply too far away to adequately defend, and that Casablanca was a far better location for their Atlantic Force De Raid. It was only 180 miles south of Gibraltar, protected by German infantry now crossing into Spanish Morocco, and covered easily by German air power.

In spite of its utility as a knife in the gut of the British convoy routes into the South Atlantic, Dakar was another 1500 miles to the south and would have to be supplied by sea, under the constant threat of interdiction by the Royal Navy. The French finally agreed, moving their big ships out of Dakar, along with all the gold they had hidden away in an operation they called “Terme de l’or,” the Gold Run to Casablanca. This left Dakar deliberately open to British attack, and the forces that had been languishing at Lagos and Freetown were soon put to good use in a second attempt to seize that place. In doing this the Axis traded this valuable port, and the threat it represented, in the interest of furthering their own plans.

Admiral Somerville had moved Force H south of Casablanca to cover the seizure of the Cape Verde Islands, and now Dakar. Churchill was clucking when all these operations went off unopposed by the powerful French Navy, which seemed content to sit in its new nest at Casablanca. The British took The Azores, Madiera, the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, and Dakar was the icing on that cake. But while that operation was underway, Admiral Lütjens got new orders from Raeder.

On a foggy night in mid January, the boilers were fired up on the big German battleship Hindenburg at Saint Nazaire. It slipped into the fog, soon to be joined by Bismarck, the battlecruiser Kaiser and the light escort carrier Goeben. While the cat was away with Force H to the south, the mice would play. German intelligence covered the move by deliberately producing false battle orders indicating that the ships were to be recalled to German ports. Bletchley Park picked up the messages, decoded them, and the Germans learned an interesting thing that day. The British were reading their Enigma messages, for their Home Fleet began to immediately work up steam, deploying to the Irish Sea in a good blocking position to intercept any German move into the Atlantic or English Channel.

Ivan Volkov had told the Germans the British had unlocked the secret of their Enigma machine, but they did not believe that possible. Now they began to suspect it was true, and made arrangements to introduce an entirely new code. It was a move that would have dramatic consequences, for the information war was one great conflict the British had won early on, and it led them to many other victories on the ground.

Just as Dakar finally fell into British hands, and Churchill was about to make the announcement in the House of Commons, the news came that one of the three French battleships at Casablanca had put to sea with an escort of cruisers and destroyers, and that both the formidable German battleships had turned south, for Gibraltar, where both forces were soon in a fist of threatening steel. French forces at Toulon were put on short notice that fleet action was imminent, and the Italians were asked to perform a service as well by getting up steam in the battleships they had at Taranto.

This activity had yet another major consequence. The British plan for a surprise raid on Taranto was suddenly foiled by the imminent movement of the Italian fleet. Admiral Cunningham was given the news and told instead that he must make the fleet ready to oppose possible enemy operations at sea. The enemy intent was not yet clear, but one thing was — the Italian battleships would not be found as easy targets at Taranto. They were putting out to sea.

All these naval forces were about to maneuver into the Mediterranean, and they would set up a titanic battle that would decide who controlled those vital sea lanes, and by extension, who controlled the whole coast of North Africa — all the way to Alexandria and Suez beyond. Yet even as the British were trying to sort out these naval maneuvers and determine what to do about them, events were to transpire that would figure prominently in what was now to become one of the largest naval battles in history. And as has been the case so many times before, it would be the fate of a singular ship to find itself at the heart of the matter, the battlecruiser Kirov… And Kirov was not alone. Another steel gladiator was gliding stealthily through the sea, unseen, unknown, as the Russians concluded their rendezvous off the Cape of Good Hope.

The Italians moved with more resolve now, the lead tanks of their newly arrived Ariete Division rattling up the weathered paved road of the Via Balbia, intent on reclaiming lost honor as much as any ground yielded in their bitter retreat from Egypt. This time, however, they were not alone to face the whirlwind advance of the British. This time a tough, professional force was on their right flank, screening them from the sudden appearance of O’Connor’s tanks, the stolid Matildas that had proven so indomitable in the past. Two battalions of medium tanks were in the van, one with M13/40 tanks, the other with M14/41s.

Five men were huddled inside each tank, three below in the hull where the driver, radio man, and a machine gunner were positioned, with the commander and main gunner in the turret. Together they shared an armored space a little over seven feet wide and just under eight feet long, crowded with levers machine gun belts and over a hundred rounds of ammunition in the desert heat. It was a place of heat, intense noise, and the smell of battle mixed with the adrenaline of fear. No more than two inches of steel protected them from incoming enemy rounds, and if one penetrated, the explosive fury of the round would set off fuel, ammo and fill the tiny space with choking fumes and fire for any who survived the explosion.

And yet, of all the forces now arrayed in the desert, these men at least had that steel between them and the enemy, and their own heavy weapon in the 47mm main tank gun. An infantryman might have only the bare desert scrub and sand, along with his rifle for protection, so the tankers had a feeling of invulnerability relative to their supporting infantry, and the privilege of having a ride through the desert in their armored chariot, no matter how arduous the venture was.

The force they met on the dark desert road that morning was the British 1st Royal Tank Regiment of the 2nd Armored Division. The regiment was not a strong force that day, largely composed of 18 aging Mark VI light tanks, which were really little more than thinly armored machine gun carriers. There were three Matildas with them, the backbone of the regiment with their heavy armor and much stronger main gun, but only three. The two Italian battalions put 35 tanks each in the field, and behind them the road was crowded with more fighting vehicles as the remainder of the division piled up on the narrow way, an armored snake hissing and snarling its way forward in the pre-dawn light.

The encounter was brief, violent, and then burned out quickly as the Italian 47mm main guns knocked out the three lead Mark VIs. The rest fanned out, rattled out streams of machine gun fire, but were soon withdrawing up the road to a point on a low ridge where the three Matildas waited. They could see they were overmatched, what amounted to a light scout detail against a much stronger armored force. But the odds would soon even up, for there, coming up behind them, was a brigade of the 6th Australian Infantry Division, three battalions ready to dig in and meet the coming onslaught from their sandy slit trenches behind the escarpment. As the men hurried forward, harangued by the yammering calls of their Sergeants, they could also hear the clatter of metal tank treads and the growl of trucks off on their left, out beyond the stony wadis in the desert. Some larger force was moving there, like a panther on the prowl ready to pounce.

It was the opening act of the next phase of what would become a long and bitter struggle in the deserts of Libya and Egypt. O’Connor’s men thought they were renewing the heady offensive that had rudely ejected the Italians from Egypt, and chased them all the way across the wide jutting peninsula of Cyrenaica. The British had taken Tobruk along the way, and reached Benghazi on the west coast of that peninsula, where other troops were fortifying that place. The withdrawal of the 4th Indian Division for duty in Sudan had sapped away all O’Connor’s motorized infantry support until the Australians arrived. Now he was ready to move again, with the promise of more troops coming from far off Egypt, as the British gathered men and equipment from every corner of their empire.

What O’Connor did not know was the character and temperament of the man leading this sudden enemy advance. He was well back when the action began, making ready to move forward to 2nd Armored Division and get the lads moving. When the initial reports came in he set aside his maps and clip boards of reports on anticipated supply deliveries, and huddled with his radio operator, listening to the fighting as it began to take shape and form. It was something he would often do — just listen to a battle, as a man might stand in the quiet hush of an oncoming storm, waiting for the thunder. He would hear things in the seemingly routine radio chatter, in the sound of distant gunfire, the movement of troops and trucks. All these sounds would give him subtle clues, the murmur of an army on the move, feeding that inner sense he had about what was happening on the battlefield, and he did not like what he was hearing that morning.

“What’s that?” he said cocking his head, and scratching the back of his neck as he listened.

“1st RTR, sir. It seems they’ve run into something bang off, just as they were moving out to the west.”

O’Connor listened, hearing more in the chatter of the radio traffic than his operator realized. He could pick out the sharp crack of the British 3-inch mortars firing, and then he heard something else, the radio traffic around calls for artillery fire support from a unit further back. It told him the one thing he needed to know just then, and the one thing he did not wish to hear — his attack had stopped, even before it was really underway. The units were on the defense!

The calls for artillery he was hearing were going out to the 16th Australian Infantry Brigade, second in the line of march. If the vanguard wanted supporting fire so soon like this, then they were under attack, no longer advancing as they should be. Now that feeling of restless anxiety came over him, as he recalled the latest reports he had received from Wavell.

He could sense something on the wind, hear it, feel it, and he had the odd notion in his head that it was more than the fate of the troops he commanded now at stake, or even the nation they served. His own personal fate was somehow rolled into the growing rumble of the battle out there, and it was a haunting, eerie feeling.

Chapter 17

The Germans were here. Rommel. Tanks and infantry had arrived some weeks ago in Tripoli, where Rommel had put on a show for any prying eyes who might want to report on his sudden appearance. As the tanks were off loaded, he set them to march, making a little theater along the broad streets near the bay. Then he had the lead units turn off on a narrow side street, double back, and begin the march anew, a circuitous display meant to fool anyone who might be hidden away in the white adobe buildings counting his tanks. They would get an eyeful that day to be sure.

Rommel. The man had been ordered to take up defensive positions, or so the first reports from Bletchley Park had claimed. The code breakers had listened in on the German General’s orders, and were confident he was there to place a screening and delaying force between the British advance and Sirte. But the reports were wrong, and not because of any failure on the part of the code breakers. They were wrong because Rommel himself simply decided to disobey his orders.

He had no intention whatsoever of fighting a defensive battle here. Not Erwin Rommel. Not the man who had dashed across France with his Ghost Division, confounding the French and British at every turn. He had the whole of the 5th Light Division in hand, right next to the Italian Ariete Armored division in the van of his own long column, and he was heading east. He knew it was risky to be so heedless of an order from the Führer, but he was determined to show him he had made the correct choice for this post. By so doing he hoped to not only catch his enemy by surprise, but also snatch a few quick headlines of his own for the newspapers.

He had studied the aerial reconnaissance photos well, in spite of the clever deceptions the British had been erecting in the desert. Planes had overflown what looked to be an unusually large cluster of Bedouin tents just south of the roads near the British outpost airfield at Antelat. They had been sent to bomb the field as a prelude to this attack, but found that their efforts on bombing this site had resulted in little more than a scattering of wood crates over the shifting sands.

Rommel thought the site was perhaps hiding British tanks and vehicles inside those tents, but the deception was even more devious. The “tanks” were nothing more than clever dummies made of old supply crates. He did not know it then, but they were the clever and innovative work of a man named Dudley Clarke, a charming yet devious man that would become a bit of a magician with his sleight of hand in the desert war.

A master of the art of visual deception and camouflage, Clarke knew that one of the primary tools the enemy might use to glean intelligence was the evidence of their own eyes. Trying to disseminate false information was one thing, but building false information became a special art and craft of Clarke, and he was the undisputed master of deception.

He began by first taking to the air, to look at the marks and tracks that had been left in the desert after the movement of O’Connor’s force in his whirlwind campaign against Graziani. He came to recognize the patterns that tanks and trucks would leave while conducting various operations, the signature of rising columns of dust they would kick up as they moved, and realized that all these things could be mimicked.

The desert, after all, was very much like a great sand sea. In fact, some thought it might have been the exposed remnant of an ancient seabed from eons past. Fighting on this sea of sand was therefore much like a naval battle, where turreted metal tanks stood in for ships and maneuvered in formations like squadrons and flotillas on the sea. And he knew that like ships in an age where radar was still in its infancy, aerial reconnaissance was crucial to obtaining a good overall situational awareness.

Clarke began to develop ways of cleaning up after the movement of tanks and trucks in the desert, a way of minimizing their signature or footprint there. At the same time he would labor to create telltale markings elsewhere, taking a few Bren carriers and trucks and having them run about in a well choreographed series of movements to literally paint a picture in desert sand, as if a brigade had assembled there. Beyond this, he would create elaborate deceptions like the one that had been found and bombed by the Germans south of Antelat.

Clarke was hard at work as O’Connor prepared to move on Tripoli. He had created false headquarters, observation posts, and dummy supply depots, complete with scarecrow figures standing about to mimic the soldiers that should be seen there, and small details that were given the risky duty of loitering about to add added realism. He had even constructed a fake rail spur leading away from the real railhead, complete with a dummy train that was powered by a slow moving captured Italian truck rigged out to look like a locomotive, with smoke produced by an army kitchen stove!

Yet now he was plying his craft against another magician of sorts, Erwin Rommel. When he received word from the Luftwaffe that they had apparently bombed a cluster of dummy vehicles under those tents, Rommel decided to order a single plane to return and deliver one more bomb — a wooden bomb that fell with a dull thud into the sand, a wry smile to the British to let them know he was on to their game.

Then Rommel had a few games and deceptions of his own to play. Using damaged vehicles that he towed to the scene, he ordered his recon battalion to rig up what looked to be an assembly of armored cars south of the main coastal road, and near enough British positions that it might be discovered by a patrol that night. Befriending the local Arabs, he learned that it had indeed been discovered. Then, knowing his enemy would note it as a fake, he cleverly moved real armored cars to that very spot, and had the dummies towed away. The next British patrol in that sector got a rude surprise, and did not report back that day.

Yet for all their utility, bogus maneuvers would not win wars, Rommel knew, only the real bold strokes on the field of battle aimed at unhinging an enemy position and putting it to rout. In the desert that often meant finding a way to use what was thought of as inhospitable or impassible terrain to go where the enemy did not expect you, and take him by surprise or on the flank. O’Connor had ably demonstrated these tactics against the Italians, and now he learned that he was not alone in his understanding of how to achieve surprise and create shock as an element of his attacks. In this, Erwin Rommel was also a grandmaster.

Two days before his planned offensive, Rommel set up units to create a lot of fake radio traffic, all with the Italians. He also sent bogus messages to Tripoli lamenting the fact that it was taking too long for his division to reach the front, and stating that now he had insufficient forces to stop the British if they moved. The next day he indicated he would be making a reconnaissance in force as a spoiling attack to try and buy time for his division to arrive, and cover his withdrawal to Sirte — all this while the bulk of the 5th Light Division was already there, the units mixed in with those of the Ariete Division, and some even re-painted in Italian colors and divisional markings. Two could play the game of deception.

The next night the Italians would begin their attack, while the German units peeled off from their column, swinging out on another axis to begin their envelopment, which was the real attack. The Desert Fox was now on the prowl.

Rommel was right in the vanguard with the main body of his division when it moved, making sure that his orders were actually happening on the ground in a well coordinated way. Tonight the dance would begin. He was going to throw a battlegroup of Italian tanks right up the main coastal road at the point of the British column he knew was assembling there for a move west. At the same time he was going to take his own division south, then east in a wide envelopment maneuver, and turn north to cut the British lines of supply.

Even this simple maneuver was something that had never been successfully executed by the Italians before, and therefore it carried an inherent element of surprise. The key was speed and well coordinated movement, and Rommel would ride about to assure proper deployment of the units in the dark, and round up any stragglers or misdirected columns. When he came up on a unit of armored cars parked by the narrow road he got out of his vehicle and angrily asked the Leutnant why he was stopping. The men were squinting at a map, their eye goggles high on their foreheads, and Rommel simply pointed.

“There!” he said firmly. “That way. Don’t bother with the maps, follow your nose! Find the edge of the battle out there and get round its flank. Now move!”

He was pushing his men and machines hard, like a rider giving the horse the whip at the opening bell, and he was out in a fast armored car, racing from unit to unit to make certain the division was finding its stride and working up a good lather. In this he was very much like his British counterpart, circulating on the battlefield to make his presence felt, and galvanizing any unit he found that was not making a purposeful advance.

But even though O’Connor could not see the Germans coming in the darkness, he could hear them. The longer O’Connor listened to the battle, the more he realized it was something much more than a chance meeting in the desert. No. This was a well planned enemy advance, and he could hear it spilling out to the southern flank, as columns of armored cars, motorcycle infantry, tanks and trucks began to raise dust that soon caught the early rising sunlight and cast a strange red hue over the whole scene. He ran to his own armored car, an older Marmon Herrington that he had taken a fancy to, and rapped loudly on the steel siding with his riding crop as he leapt up onto the sideboard.

“South!” he yelled. O’Connor was doing the one thing any good cavalry officer could do by instinct — ride to the sound of the guns.

It did not take long for him to realize what he now had on his hands. The sounds of the battle seemed to stretch out for miles from his position at an insignificant crossing of barren desert tracks called Gieuf el Matar, and all the way west to the coast where his column had been set to advance, over forty kilometers away.

The tactics of his adversary had shaped the battlefield. Rommel had the bit between his teeth and, after throwing the Ariete Armor division right up the Via Balbia at the point of the British column, he had taken his own 5th Light Division on his flanking maneuver, where they now surged north to try and surprise the British.

Instinctively, or perhaps more by necessity, the brigades of the 6th Australian Division behind the leading armored units had begun to break out of their road columns, dismount their infantry, and deploy in a series of hastily established positions to cover that long, exposed flank. A battalion driven by a more aggressive Lieutenant would get to some decent ground, perhaps no more than a series of undulations in the terrain, dappled with scattered scrub, and the companies would begin to dig in. One by one, the other battalions of its brigade would come up to one side or another and do the same. A Staff Sergeant would wrangle away a 6-pounder anti-tank gun and post it any place that offered reasonable cover to support the infantry.

The troops were digging in the dry earth and sand, their kit shovels battling with the parched stony ground in places, and mortar teams were setting up their tubes, fixing sights, now that they finally had them, and firing a few test rounds for range. Little by little the line of men and guns extended east behind what was once the point if O’Connor’s column. The men could sense that this was something more than a chance engagement as well, and they were getting ready for it, like men sand-bagging before a storm.

It was not long before that storm turned to find them, and one column after another in the German flanking move began to probe north. The British line kept extending east, and the instant O’Connor realized what was happening he sent up orders that the armored point of the column should disengage and fall back through the defensive positions of the Australian 16th Brigade astride the main coastal road.

In truth, his armor was not the sharp tip of the spear that it had once been. The bulk of the 7th Armored division had been sent east a week ago to refit near Alexandria. In their place was a makeshift “Brigade” of the 2nd Armored Division. Even this replacement unit was cobbled together with whatever he could still keep running. The tanks were short of petrol, and the regiments even shorter on tanks. One unit was completely equipped with Italian M13/40 tanks that had been taken by storm in the lightning advance weeks earlier. There were no British tanks to replace those that had been lost or broken down in the chaos of that battle. Another unit, the 4th Hussars, had no tanks at all.

At dawn, air units were up over the battlefield to see what they had on their hands. O’Connor was soon listening to the bad news they had for him. The column of enemy troops and trucks extended in a long line for miles, all the way back to Sirte, but they were not pointed west, but east. This was no mere probe, or even a spoiling attack aimed at unhinging the British advance. It was a major counteroffensive.

This was no good. His own column was now being flanked and was deploying defensively to a position that only increased its vulnerability. Quick to act, the British General gave orders that all units equipped with faster cruiser tanks should pull off the line and gather at Agadabia, well behind the thickening front. He wanted some fast, mobile reserve in hand, a foil to counter the swift armored jabs of his daring opponent. As for the Australian infantry, he knew he had to get it north as fast as possible. They could not stand and fight here. If there was any place for the infantry, Benghazi would be the only location worth holding.

There was one thing that Rommel did not know that day, and that was that a young officer aboard a mysterious Russian battlecruiser had been in contact with a very important man at Bletchley Park. Admiral Tovey had confided that Alan Turing was “in the know” and the only other man to be so privileged as to the true nature and origin of their ship. Fedorov and Volsky had decided that Turing would provide them with the perfect conduit to feed information about the present and future course of the war, information that they now assumed was already coming to the Germans from Ivan Volkov.

It was tit for tat. Fedorov knew that the sudden massive reinforcement of Greece was one thing he had hoped to prevent. It would later be noted in history as Churchill’s blunder, a reinforcement undertaken for political reasons that would leave the Western Desert open to the attack that was now underway. Wavell had been ordered to send off 30,000 troops, including much needed armor, in a fruitless defense of Greece, and Fedorov hoped he might forestall that mistake. If he could, Erwin Rommel would find himself attacking into a much stronger defense, and all that was about to be tried now in this new iteration within the crucible of war.

The British Terrier and the Desert Fox were going head to head, but events about to get underway just under 500 miles to the northwest would have more to do with deciding the outcome of the battle than any of the tank battalions now churning forward in the sand.

Chapter 18

The vapor war. That was what Rommel would come to call it. The advance went off without a hitch. His columns swung out just as he had devised, and raced east to out flank the enemy column of march. Yet, as units probed north, particularly from the Italian Trieste Division on Rommel’s immediate left, they were encountering surprisingly light resistance.

The Ariete Division had run into a few tanks on the main road, pushed them aside, and was astounded and delighted to see there was nothing but the dust of retreating British forces behind them. It was a much needed boost to the flagging morale of the Italians, and they charged boldly on, heedless of the possibility that they might be running into a trap. The same thing happened to German troops as Rommel’s envelopment extended itself eastward. Units assigned to flank security turned north at their assigned milestone intervals, but they found very little defense in opposition. There was a brief firefight where a section of three British anti-tank guns had deployed on good ground to engage the oncoming forces, but it was no more than a bone thrown to the dogs, a simple delaying action.

The vapor war… Rommel pressed on for another day, and then decided to get into his Storch reconnaissance aircraft and go up to have a better look at what was happening on the ground. To his surprise, he soon determined that the British were in full retreat. The infantry that had been shaking itself out into defensive positions had been ordered to get back to their lorries and head north to Benghazi at all speed. As for the tanks of the 2nd Armored, O’Connor had moved them east along the very same track that had been used to unhinge the Italian control of Cyrenaica. Rommel’s troops were pressing forward, but he was basically attacking into thin air.

The British Terrier had decided to fence, and his first move was to lean back and away from the bold thrust of his enemy. O’Connor had heard all he wanted to know when he listened to the attack — the Ariete Division, the Trieste Motorized Division, the 5th Light Division, and behind it something even more ominous, what looked to be an even stronger German formation that was later identified as the 15th Panzer Division. There he was, all set to probe up the road towards Sirte with a single armored brigade and the tired Australian 6th infantry. Now he thanked his lucky stars that he had the foresight to insist that every loose truck he could get running, much of the equipment captured from the Italians, was given to the Aussies to motorize that division. Those trucks would save it now from almost certain destruction.

Behind these four mobile units in the vanguard of the enemy attack, there were at least six leg infantry divisions, all Italian, but enough fodder to throw on any fire Rommel could get started if he could find and grapple with his enemy. Knowing that he was outnumbered this badly, O’Connor radioed the situation to Wavell at Alexandria, and the information came in at a most opportune time, right in the middle of a meeting that had been arranged to decide future operations in the Med. Wavell ordered O’Connor to get on a plane and fly to Alexandria, and that simple order was going to change a good many things.

They watched as the ship moved slowly through the canal, starkly silhouetted by the bare desert backdrop and clear blue sky. A thousand eyes were on the tall battlements and strange rounded domes, transfixed by the sleek, powerful lines, yet mystified, as so many others have been, by the lack of any heavy armament to speak of. Kirov looked like the world’s largest and most threatening destroyer, but nothing more, and many shook their heads wondering why in the world the Russians would waste so much metal and effort to build a destroyer of that size, carrying only three small twin gun turrets and an even smaller single barrel bow gun.

Then the crowds stirred again, seeing the next ship coming through, just as big, just as threatening, yet proudly flying the flag of Great Britain, HMS Invincible.

“Now there’s a battleship if I’ve ever seen one,” said a Lieutenant from one of the Canal Zone garrisons. “Those are guns! I reckon she’d make short work of that Russian ship, eh?”

“That she would,” said a nearby Sergeant, “and short work of anything else that crosses her bow, sir. Just you let the Italians get word the fleet flagship is here, and watch them get to scurrying back to port.”

“The Russian ship has a fine cut,” the Lieutenant conceded. “Sharp crew as well.”

Admiral Volsky had turned out the ship’s personnel in dress whites, and they lined the decks in smart ranks, the men standing tall and proud, unborn souls each and every one in this day and year, phantoms from a distant time, refugees from a holocaust whose roots were fixed in the soil tilled by the iron spades of war.

Volsky was on the bridge with Fedorov, smiling as he heard the crowds cheer the arrival of the fleet flagship. The distant strains of a military band struck out with “God Save the King,” which was suddenly interrupted on the bridge with a furtive look towards Rodenko by the young watchstander at the main radar station.

The Starpom eased over, inclining his head to take a brief look at the screen, and immediately noting what was happening. “Mister Chernov,” he admonished quietly. “I don’t care if we are all sitting at a table dressed out in white linen and about to toast Admiral Volsky on his birthday. When you see a contact on that screen, you damn well sing out and report it.”

Chernov swallowed hard, then did exactly that. “Con, Radar. Airborne contact at seventy kilometers, Bearing 280. Fifteen aircraft, sir. Elevation low, at 8,000 feet.”

Volsky looked over, seeing the half smile on Rodenko’s face. “Well,” he said. “Someone seems eager to greet us here. Mister Nikolin, kindly inform Admiral Tovey that we are about to have uninvited guests.”

“Aye sir.”

“Mister Samsonov, Klinok system please. What is our remaining inventory?”

“Ninety-seven missiles, sir.”

“Very well, salvo of three, please. Track and be ready to fire on my command.”

“Here sir?” Fedorov gave the Admiral a look.

“Wherever we find this ship under threat, Mister Fedorov. We obviously cannot maneuver while we’re in this narrow channel, and I will take no chances that one of those planes gets through the British air defenses, in spite of the display a missile firing will make here. Radar will call out the range interval at twenty kilometers.”

That mark was just minutes away, for the contact was a squadron of Italian SM-79 bombers that had been based on the island of Leros, a little over 500 miles away. The Italians had indeed, gotten word the fleet flagship was arriving, and they thought they would make it a nice fat target. With over 1500 miles range, the planes were attempting to sneak in and make a raid on the canal, possibly warned of this ship’s arrival by prying eyes still lingering in Somalia when the formation entered the Red Sea. It was to be a well timed surprise attack and, in spite of the early warning given by Kirov, the British were slow to respond.

Eventually they heard the distant drone of air raid sirens, and a restless murmur stirred the crowds lining the shore, eyes now searching the skies above for any signs of enemy planes. Three Hurricanes scrambled from the nearby airfield at Ismalia, and climbed into the clear blue skies, heading north. The officers on the bridge of Kirov noted their progress, and had Nikolin relay the exact coordinates of the enemy bomber formation to Admiral Tovey, who in turn passed it in to the R.A.F. Air Defense Officer for the Canal Zone. It was a most unusual message, as the thought that one could even have information that precise was most unusual, but the British radio officers sent it out to the fighters anyway.

There ensued a brief battle, wherein two of the SM-79s were downed by the fighters, and four others damaged enough to force them to turn back, but the remaining planes continued to press on with uncharacteristic determination. These were the same plane type that Kirov had faced when it found itself cruising in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Sparrowhawk, an outstanding medium bomber used by Italy throughout the war.

Inside twenty kilometers Volsky pursed his lips, waiting to see if the fighters could turn the enemy planes back, but it appeared that at least nine were going to get through.

“Three fighters seems a fairly thin fighter defense here,” he said to Fedorov. “Mister Samsonov, sound air alert one. Target the enemy formation and fire at ten kilometers.”

“Aye sir, locked on targets.”

The warning claxon for air alert sent the crews in their dress whites in motion, as the missiles would come from the long forward deck where many had assembled. They cleared the area in little time, many now donning bright orange life preservers and blue helmets. Fire parties assembled in the unlikely event the ship might be hit, and a minute later, Samsonov was ready.

The thronging crowds had already begun to dissipate, but now the Lieutenant and Sergeant, and many others who had been shaking their heads at the Russian ship, were stunned to see what looked like an explosion on the forward deck, but it was only the launch and ignition of the first missile. It roared up, a brilliant white streak in the sky that arced up, adjusted heading, and then bored in relentlessly in on the enemy bomber formation.

“What in God’s name?” The Lieutenant looked at the Sergeant.

“A bloody rocket of sorts, sir.”

“Quite so…”

Then there came the bright flash and sound of a distant explosion, and the second and third missiles fired. The astonished reaction of the crowds brought a smile to Volsky’s face.

“I realize we have let the cat out of the bag in this defensive fire, but it could not be helped. Stand ready on close in defense systems in the event any of those planes persist.”

Only two did, for three had been destroyed outright by the Klinok missiles, and three others damaged by shrapnel, turning away in shock and dismay. Had it been an S-400 salvo the damage would have been even more severe, but there were only 25 of those missiles left in Kirov’s magazines, and Volsky did not want to use them unless absolutely necessary.

Of the nine planes that got through the Hurricane defense, only two were bold enough to press their attack home. One dropped its bombs early in a badly aimed attack that served honor but posed no threat to the ships. The plane then banked swiftly away as its bombs missed the target and fell in the desert east of the canal. The pilot wanted nothing more to do with this attack. The last was more determined, and Admiral Volsky ordered the AR-602 system to swat it from the sky three kilometers out with a flash of lethal 30mm fire.

This, too, slackened the jaw of the Lieutenant as he clearly saw the single, brief burst of rattling fire, and noted how the tracer rounds found the plane with a precision that was astounding. One burst of fire — one plane down with a shattering explosion as the central nose engine on the three engine craft was blown apart with over thirty hits. Then it was over, and the light desert breeze slowly elongated the missile trails, smudging them into the azure blue sky as if nothing had happened.

The crews of HMS Invincible had also rushed to battle stations, but the guns barely had time to be manned and sighted before Kirov had settled the matter. The Lieutenant gave the Sergeant a wide eyed look, but was speechless.

An hour later Kirov was back in the Mediterranean, the Cauldron of Fire where they had fought the very same navy that now welcomed and embraced them. That had been in 1942, at a time when the British were desperately trying to sustain their embattled outpost in the Central Mediterranean at Malta. Kirov had tried to skirt the edge of Operation Pedestal, but was inevitably drawn into the battle as the ship tried to race for the bottleneck of the Alboran Sea near Gibraltar.

It was here that Volsky had been wounded just as the ship appeared in the Tyrrhenian Sea, and Fedorov had been so suddenly thrust into the position of command, the only man Volsky could trust at the time. It was here that Vladimir Karpov had tried to redeem himself while serving as Tactical Officer and Starpom under Fedorov when they were forced to fight their way out in a duel with the battleships Rodney and Nelson. And it was here that Admiral Volsky had made the surprising move to seek a parley with Admiral Tovey, the meeting that had spawned those haunting images that somehow found their way into this world, well before that time ever came in the war, even as they seemed to leave a subtle impression on Tovey himself — an unaccountable feeling of déjà vu, blooming in the strands of his memory.

That was a mystery that had not yet been explained, and Fedorov was still thinking about it, and what it might mean. Now, however, they were soon thrust into the important meeting being convened here with the Theater Commanders, General Wavell, and Admiral Cunningham of the Easter Mediterranean Squadron.

They reached Alexandria, with more cheers and fanfare as the ships entered the harbor, this time with a gaggle of Hurricanes up on overwatch in the event the Italians had any more surprises planned. Volsky could have told them to save their fuel, for his radars would see any planes long before they could become a threat.

The meeting was to be held aboard HMS Invincible, at Admiral Tovey’s request, and when Admiral Volsky, Fedorov and Nikolin returned to that ship, they were escorted first to the officer’s ward room. There they found Admiral Tovey waiting to have a private chat before Wavell and Cunningham arrived.

“Well that certainly opened a few eyes,” said Tovey.

“It could not be avoided,” said Volsky. “Yet, the rumors of our weapons and capabilities may stand as a shield here now. I think the Italians will be more cautious should they contemplate another attack.”

“I understand,” said Tovey. “A most convincing display. I should dearly like to have a few of those rockets at hand myself.”

Volsky smiled. “Though we cannot give you missiles and bombs, we do have one other weapon that we are willing to freely share with you now, Admiral — information.”

Tovey nodded. “That would be most welcome.”

“Mister Fedorov here has a particular concern at the moment, as he believes that events are now coming to a head in North Africa. Fedorov?”

“Yes sir. It concerns the planned reinforcement of Greece. I must tell you that in our history this was seen as a great blunder that almost cost you the loss of Egypt. The campaign in Greece is a foregone conclusion. The Germans will apply overwhelming force there and defeat any effort to save the country. Anything you send will be evacuating within 30 days, and this also radically weakens your defense here to a point where Rommel will drive all the way to El Alamein within weeks.”

Tovey raised an eyebrow. “I’m told the Germans have already begun an offensive, but do not have any details.”

“We must find a way to convince General Wavell that Egypt should now be your primary concern, because we fear your enemies have already heard this same advice, and from another man who knows the full outcome of this war as it was once fought — Ivan Volkov.”

“Don’t worry,” said Tovey. “I hold some cards as well, and I have a lead that will likely convince Wavell to follow suit. The Germans led right into it by playing those two trump cards in Bismarck and Hindenburg. They slipped them into French ports, but things have changed, gentlemen, and I have a plan that I think will convince General Wavell to stand fast in the Western Desert.”

Tovey smiled. “That said, it is a rather dangerous plan, and I am grateful that you, and that fine fighting ship of yours out there, are with us.”