Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series) (35 page)

A
sleek, dark ship came surging ahead of the main German force, its battle ensign
snapping stiffly in the breeze as it took the lead position in the formation.
It moved so quickly that the British thought it was a fast light cruiser, but
it was something quite more, the new German battlecruiser
Kaiser
. At
35,400 tons, it was as heavy as a
Revenge
Class British Battleship, yet
could work up to the amazing speed of 36 knots. Designed like a pocket
battleship, it had two twin-gun turrets forward and a third aft. Originally
meant to be an improved
Deutschland
Class ship, it was supposed to get
the same 11-inch guns, but soon evolved into something better when Raeder
proposed they use the same turrets that had been designed for
Bismarck
,
with a total of six 15-inch guns assigned to the ship.

Raeder
had originally planned to build twelve Panzerschiffe, each with 11-inch guns,
but the larger weapons simply proved to be much more effective, and the
shipyards could not build out the whole Kreutzer program. Only two had been
built,
Rhineland
and
Westfalen
, and they were now escorting
Graf
Zeppelin
home. But
Kaiser
had been born of the same litter, bigger,
faster, more powerful, and it was the ship that broke the back of HMS
Winchelsea
with one smashing 15-inch round.

When
Commodore Ritchie saw the destroyer blow up, he knew the fate of his convoy was
sealed. HMS
Arrow
launched herself bravely at the oncoming German ships,
but soon got pummeled by the combined fire of forty 5.7 inch guns between the
three German warships. Ritchie gave the frantic order for all ships to scatter
at once, and the feeding frenzy was on.

Kaiser
began blasting away at the slow merchant ships, striking
the British ships
Barrdale
and
Martland
soon after the
Arrow
went down. Then came
Bismarck
, next in the line with her eight 15-inch
guns feasting on the gasoline tankers
Tornus
and
Pontfield
, and
ripping them apart with raging fire consuming the ships when they were hit.
Finally came the Lord of the Manor, looming up like a massive steel castle, the
mighty
Hindenburg
.

Now
16-inch guns were turned on the convoy, blasting the steel carrier
Penrose
,
and three other merchant ships. Tall columns of thick black smoke rose into the
grey sky, as the carnage continued. They died in great numbers,
Beaverdale,
Roxby, Bridgepoole
, blasted away and keeling over in fiery wrecks.
Lord
Byron
would not make its appointed delivery of grain to Methil, and the
Benzene in
Dosina
was burning on the sea.

Commodore
Ritchie watched in horror as one ship after another came under those fearful
guns, blown up, burned, their cargo and crews scuppered into the sea. As the
heavy rounds began to fall near
Ulysses
, he called out in desperation.
“Where’s the bloody navy! God help us!”

A 5.7-inch
round struck his ship, jarring the bridge. Another gave the ship a hard thump
amidships, and a bigger 15-inch round fell just twenty yards off his port side,
the blast enough to rock
Ulysses
with its heavy swell and splinter the
weather decks with shrapnel. The W/T room was still sending out its frantic
S.O.S when another round silenced the radio, killing every man there.
Ulysses
was burning, and tears streaked the face of Commodore Ritchie as he watched his
flock cut down, ship by ship.

Kaiser
had put on speed to get down near the last ranks and was
busy sending the crude oil tanker
Taron
to its fiery doom, and the sulfur
on
Olympos
would never reach Belfast, nor the fuel oil on
Tricula
.
It would be the greatest single tonnage lost for cargo ships in the war thus
far, with 28 ships lost before Commodore Ritchie spotted even more misery
bearing down on them. Another dark silhouette was on the horizon, coming up
behind the German ships, and he saw the glow of fire from them as well. To his
great relief and surprise, the shells they fired were not aimed his way, but at
the German battleships instead!

All
that night Captain Patterson’s task force had been laboring through the heavy
seas, and the long hour of agony when the Germans slowed to feast on the convoy
had given him just the break he needed.
King George V
and
Prince of
Wales
were on the horizon, and the Royal Navy was coming to fight.

Aboard
battleship
Hindenburg
, Lütjens had been watching the carnage unfold, not
unmoved by the plight of the men he was putting into the sea, but this was what
he had come here to do, the hard edge of war. When the first rounds came in
they were well short, but he turned and studied the fall of the shells. Very
strange, he thought as he saw the close pattern of four shells abreast. Two
twin-gun turrets would almost never land their shells with such precision in a
single line like that. He first thought he was dealing with the older British
Battleships in the Revenge Class, but the British ships were getting closer, and
coming much too fast. He turned to Captain Adler with a question in his eyes.

“These
look to be something new, would you agree?”

“They
do, sir. Most likely the new British
King George V
class ships we’ve seen
working out on trials. Shall we turn and give battle?”

“Those
ships have twenty 14-inch guns,” Lütjens considered.

“And we
have fourteen 15-inch guns with
Bismarck
and
Kaiser
, and our
eight 16-inch guns will make all the difference,” said Adler.

“Possibly,”
said Lütjens, “but our orders were to get after the convoys, and this we have
done. Look, Adler! There must be thirty ships burning and sinking out there.
No. We have done enough for one day, and a fight with the Royal Navy here is not
part of our operational plan. Come to 220 and give me thirty knots at once.
Signal all ships to follow.”

“But
sir!” Adler’s eyes were sharp and on fire as well, his dark hair and aquiline
features grim and set. He wanted to sink his talons into something more than a
merchant ship, and saw great advantage here. “We outgun them!” he complained.
“We should fight!”

“Yes,
we certainly do, but you do not outgun
me
, Captain, unless I have
miscounted the stripes on my jacket cuff. Second my order! We are moving south
into the Atlantic.”

Adler
stiffened under the polite but pointed rebuke, and turned to his Executive
officer. “Come to 220 and thirty knots. A pair of British battleships has the
Admiral worried he might miss his tea.”

Lütjens
turned slowly, eyeing the Captain with an unfriendly look. “It may interest you
to know that there is more going on here than a Sunday jaunt through this
convoy. There is a war on, Captain, and a major operation is getting underway
even as I take the time to explain myself here. We have a part to play in that
campaign, and that is exactly what we will do. And if you ever make such a
remark to me again, particularly on this bridge, I will have you sent down to
the brig for insubordination!”

Adler
raised his chin, lips tight, but knew better than to say anything else.

“I beg
your pardon sir, I only meant—”

“We
both know what you meant, Adler. Don’t worry, something tells me you will get
your battle with the Royal Navy soon enough.”

Part XI

The Rock

“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock,
perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the
hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last
blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

—Jacob August Riis

Chapter 31

The
Spanish called it Jebel Tariq,
the name of the
imposing limestone mountain that stood as one of the Pillars of Hercules, and
to the rest of the world Gibraltar had long been called “the Rock.” It had been
Britain’s impregnable fortress for generations, honeycombed with miles of
tunnels packed with supplies, and capable of withstanding a siege for months. It
had withstood fourteen sieges since the 11th Century, with walls,
fortifications, bastions and more modern gun casemates studding the craggy
limestone rock on every side. But in spite of this venerable reputation as an unconquerable
fortress, British war planners knew the invincibility of Gibraltar was
certainly a myth now in modern times, and they saw it as highly vulnerable to
any concerted attack.

To
begin with, it had only one airfield at the far north of the five kilometer
peninsula, dominated by a prominent limestone mountain, and this field lay on
exposed ground that could be easily brought under enemy guns on the other side
of the Spanish frontier and put out of action in a matter of hours. In 1940 Spain
did not permit offensive planes there, and so the British had no fighters or
bombers to speak of beyond those assigned to reconnaissance roles, and a few
Sunderland seaplanes floating in the harbor anchorage. This also left the Rock
open to bombing missions, though it endured these with surprising ease, the
latest being a 64 plane raid mounted by the Vichy French in reprisal for the
attack on their fleet. The French managed to sink a tug and coastal lighter
docked in the harbor but did little more than this.

Companies
of Royal Engineers still drilled through the innards of the rock, with
quarrymen and Artisan Engineers still tunneling to create a warren of
underground rooms that could shelter thousands of troops, unfortunately the
garrison was not that large in 1940. At the outbreak of the war only two
battalions were in the garrison, the 2nd Battalion, King’s Regiment and the 2nd
Somerset Battalion. These were augmented by two more battalions by August of
1940 with the arrival of the 4th Devonshire Battalion and the 4th Black Watch
Battalion. These troops, plus an assortment of 3 inch and 3.7 inch AA guns,
including ten 40mm Bofors were all that manned the labyrinthine tunnels, with
one battalion holding the lonely frontier near the airfield, and three farther
back in the town and fortress Rock.

The
strength of Gibraltar did not lay in its sheer limestone cliffs or gun batteries,
like the old 9.2 inch naval guns that covered the straits, nor did it rest in
the sinew of the four battalions deployed there. The powerful Royal Navy units
of Force H that used the harbor as their primary base were the real strength of
the Rock. A battleship that might risk the 9.2 inch shore batteries and run the
strait with impunity would not dare to even contemplate such a move while ships
like
Rodney
and
Nelson
were anchored with guns that could range
out all the way to Spanish Morocco. As Sir Alexander Godley once stated: “With
His Majesty's ships controlling the harbor we may rest assured that this
important jewel of the Crown is in safe hands.” Thus if Gibraltar were to be
taken, the Royal Navy would first have to be forced out to sea.

 This
was the task handed to Goering’s Luftwaffe, a task he believed he could
undertake with every chance of success, for there were no squadrons of
Spitfires
and
Hurricanes
waiting to oppose his bombers. So it was that the
Luftwaffe became the real spearhead of the attack, while the army assembled its
substantial force of two full corps staged on the Spanish border near Bayonne.
The ground element would cross the frontier even as the first bombers assembled
at French airfields for their preliminary raid, with six squadrons of Ju-88As
flying from Bordeaux to target British vessels anchored at Gibraltar.

* * *

Lieutenant
Douglas Dawes
had been up
on
O’Hara’s battery most of the day, taking in the spectacular views of the bay
while he served as supply liaison officer for the Royal Artillery. A relative
newcomer to the Rock, he was “fresh off the boat” as the old sods would say,
and still given to walking about in his officer’s jacket. A tall, handsome man,
he had come to the service the easy way, through connections that were well
established in the convoluted British aristocracy. Now Dawes was making his way
down the weathered stone steps, his duty here finished as he was turning over
the clipboard to a new young Lieutenant and heading to a new post the next
morning.

I’ll
miss the view from up here, and the nice cool breeze, he thought. Tomorrow he
was going down to the harbor to report for a stint as Duty Officer on the North
Mole. At least he’d get a nice close look at the battleships, he thought. From
way up here they looked like toy boats in a bathtub, but he expected they would
be quite impressive once he got right down on the water’s edge.

That
night he took a last meal at Bleak House, the Officer’s Mess on Europa Point at
the southern end of the Rock. “Off to mingle with the cuttlefish?” said another
young officer. They were often given to hang names like that on the rankers,
the enlisted men or throngs of sailors that would come ashore when the big
ships came into the harbor. That was one thing Dawes never got the hang of
himself. Yes, he was an officer, and accustomed to certain privileges that came
with his Lieutenant’s bars. There was nice fine linen on the tables here.
Decent wine was served with the meals, and brandy after. The rankers would get
none of this when they lined up in the mess halls aboard those ships, but Dawes
was not one to lord his position over any other man.