Untimely Designs

by gerald hall

  “So what are we going to do, Sir?” Ted asked.

  “First, we try to win this damned war. After that, we will try to pick up the pieces and do what we can to help people build something worthwhile from the ashes.”

  “You heard about Moscow, haven’t you Sir?”

  “No. I’ve been too busy with all of the various projects that I have been working on, not to mention the long business trip to Europe that I had to make on very short notice. Even my Cavaliers don’t provide a newly printed newspaper on their flights, I’m afraid.

  “The news just reported that the Germans captured Moscow yesterday. They are saying that Josef Stalin and most of the Soviet leadership died during the German assault upon the Kremlin. I haven’t seen any photos yet, but the reporters on the radio broadcasts are describing the whole city being in ruins now, including the grand towers of the Kremlin.”

  Harold thought back to the time in his youth when his father took him along on a business trip to Moscow. The majesty of the tall towers of the Kremlin with their golden, onion-shaped tops was breathtaking. But of course, this was back in the previous timeline when Harold was known as James Stevenson and Russia had not yet fallen back into a neo-Bolshevist, authoritarian government that was all too willing to wage full-scale nuclear war.

  The tragedy of all of that beauty now in ruins filled Harold’s mind for a moment. He wondered if there might have been another way. But then, Harold remembered the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then he visualized all of multiplied ten thousand times over during the Final War. Those same beautiful gilded domes were no less ruined after a dozen nuclear weapons hit Moscow during that short but devastating war.

  Then, Harold told himself once again that he had no choice here.

  German High Command Headquarters

  Berlin, Germany

  December 4, 1943

  The Combined German General Staff met once again to consider the course of the war now that the capital of the Bolshevik state had fallen. The meeting included the senior members of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine as well as the Abwehr military intelligence service. Nearly twenty senior officers sat around a massive rectangular table in the large conference room.

  The discussion began with reports from the Eastern Front concerning the situation there. The fighting against the hardcore holdouts in Russian continued. But now hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers were surrendering in mass to the Wehrmacht. This time, the Germans promised good treatment, especially after so many of the previous Russian POWs that had survived the labor camps found themselves being returned to facilities much closer to home. Their treatment had also improved substantially as well.

  But the fact was that for Germany, the war was still not over yet. This was also where the discussion turned.

  “Now, what do we do about the Englanders?” General Lenz asked.

  “We hold what we have until the Englanders decide that going on the attack would be suicide for them.”

  “It is a damned shame that Field Marshall Model was killed in action during the final assault on Moscow. He was our defensive miracle worker.” General Hans Speidel, Model’s former chief of staff at Army Group B, noted.

  “He was also an ardent member of the National Socialist Party. I don’t think that he was ever comfortable about the official story on the Fuhrer’s death. He would have been a problem eventually.”

  The leaders here of the new German government now spoke more openly about what happened to the late Fuhrer, even if the discussions never left the walls of this room. Everyone here knew what really happened, either before the fact, or shortly afterwards.

  “Given time, we might have been able to bring Field Marshall Model into the fold with the rest of us. But he served the Fatherland well, one way or another.” General Lenz commented.

  “Admiral Raeder, now that our chief threat is to the West, what is the situation in the Atlantic presently?” Field Marshall Erwin Rommel then asked.

  “We certainly cannot sustain U-Boat operations against the Englander supply lines from America and elsewhere at this point. It seems like every Englander convoy now has a small aircraft carrier and a cruiser in attendance. The carriers all have those ugly little fighters that the Australians call ‘Dragonflies’ that drive off our Condors and strafe the hell out of Admiral Donitz’s U-Boats. These ships are also carrying rotary-wing aircraft to hunt our U-Boats with as well.” The Kriegsmarine commander explained.

  “Are you saying that we have now lost the battle for the Atlantic?” General Lenz asked.

  “I wouldn’t say that we have lost it. I just don’t know how we are going to win it without paying an even higher price than we already have. There is only so much that our U-Boat crews can endure. Even with the new design U-Boats, I am not sure what the outcome would be if we renewed our campaign against Englander shipping. We have also started losing submarines in the Atlantic without any explanation at all. Normally, if they were attacked by aircraft or escort ships, we would hear something about it. But these losses are a mystery to us. That is particularly disconcerting to me and my crews.

  Our surface fleet has also been badly degraded over the past four years, while the Royal Navy still has most of its capital ships and a growing fleet of aircraft carriers and other lighter warships. Our construction resources are completely inadequate to replace even a small fraction of our surface ship losses to counter the Englanders.” Raeder answered.

  “We do still have the new weapons that we can use to attack England and even America.” A Luftwaffe general familiar with the V-2 program at Peenemunde noted.

  “Yes, but should we? With the Bolsheviks defeated, we have eliminated the threat from the East and have secured the resources that we need. We have already started the process of establishing allied states to our East that we can trust to work with us. Our actual German territorial ambitions towards the West are nonexistent as long as we are allowed to return to our pre-1918 borders. The French will not be a threat to us for a very long time at this point. We would be far better served to make peace now, before someone manages to convince the Americans to throw their full industrial and military potential into the European theatre. A second intrusion by the Americans into Europe could be enough to overwhelm us even with our new weapons going into production.” Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr calmly explained.

  “What about the Englanders? Will they be willing to make peace with us without having defeated us on the battlefield?”

  “Our initial contacts with their representative indicate that they might. But they do want concessions from us. As far as defeating us on the battlefield, don’t forget what happened in North Africa. Our combined German and Italian force was defeated by the Englanders, their Commonwealth allies and Patton’s damned ‘American Tiger’ mercenaries. Also Prime Minister Churchill is still continuing to try to convince the Americans to actively join the war against us with their full armed forces. Time is not necessarily our ally here, I fear.” Admiral Canaris replied.

  “The Americans have no stomach to send hundreds of thousands of their young men to Europe to fight. They are barely mustering up any force at all against our Japanese allies. They will not help the Englanders either.” General Lenz asserted.

  “But we must remember, the Englanders may not have defeated us as a nation on the battlefield. However, we were not able to defeat their nation either. The Americans have a very curious habit of backing the weaker nation when it suits them.” Rommel replied.

  “What sort of concessions do the Englanders want?” Field Marshall Kesselring asked.

  “The first indications are that they want restrictions on the size of our military. These restrictions are not nearly as severe as those from the Versailles Treaty however. He was even willing to acknowledge our legitimate need for self-defense. The representative for the Englanders was also very interested in restricting certain technologies like war gases and atomic fission.” Admiral Canaris noted.
/>   “Do you think that we should try to hold on to those technologies?” Kesseling asked.

  “I am not certain at this time. If we are going to have peace, we are going to have to make some concessions. That much is clear. After all, our nation started the war in Europe, even if the people responsible for it are all either dead or in prison.”

  “We have to ensure that our borders are secure and that we have reliable sources of raw materials for our industries if we are going to have the security that we need. This is the reason why we are building alliances with so many of our eastern neighbors, especially those that we have recently ‘liberated’ from Bolshevik domination. We can then withdraw our troops and let our new friends deal with those damned Red Army partisans.

  On another subject, do you think that the Englanders will allow us to continue our union with Austria? They are a fellow Germanic people who would continue to fit in well with us as a nation.” Field Marshal Manstein asked.

  “He did not specifically address that. Herr Cavill only said that Germany had to return to its original borders.” The German spymaster answered.

  “We could perhaps offer a political separation, but maintain a mutual defense treaty instead. That might satisfy the Englander’s demands.”

  “We would have to leave that decision to Berlin and the new civilian leadership that is being formed though. The civilians will still have to rely upon the General Staff for guidance for some time to come. Our purpose is to establish a base framework and determine what issues will be a problem for either us or the Englanders. France and the Low Countries will follow along if England accepts our offer. The countries that were defeated early in the war don’t have much of a choice, now do they? The Englanders have earned the right to have some say in the matter at least.” Manstein declared.

  “What about our Japanese allies? If we sign a separate peace with England and avoid a full-scale conflict with America, then the Japanese will have to face them both by themselves. We will have abandoned the Japanese to oblivion.” General Lenz asked.

  “It is much better to have the world focus their rage and retribution on Japan for the atrocities that they have inflicted over the people that they have conquered. Otherwise, they would be focusing on us over what the Nazis did during their reign. The Japanese will have to soon fight this war on their own. That will further bleed resources away from the Englanders and their allies, while we peacefully rebuild our nation.

  Trust me, the Japanese are not going to surrender until their very last breath. So the Amerikaners and Englanders will certainly pay a dear price in treasure and blood while fighting the Japanese for years to come. It is my understanding that even now, our soon to be former allies are preparing to strike back using technology that we have provided to them.” Canaris informed the group with a sly smile.

  IJN Submarine I-400

  100 nautical miles due west of San Diego

  February 18, 1944

  The huge submarine surfaced after her captain first carefully checked the area for any Allied ships and aircraft with his periscope. More than a dozen sailors immediately popped out of deck hatches and began to man the various guns on the massive submarine’s deck in preparation for any American interlopers.

  “Prepare to launch the first missile.” Captain Hiro Yamaguchi ordered after his gunners were all at their stations.

  A massive hatch began to open at the front of the submarine’s superstructure below the sail, revealing the four folded up Baika suicide bombs, powered by copies of the German Argus pulsejet, inside the long, tubular compartment. But these weapons were far different than the V-1 buzz bombs, powered by pulse jets, the Nazis briefly used to bombard London. In the fuselage just forward of the Baika’s pulse jet intake, there was now a small cockpit for a single pilot.

  The four Baika pilots took the time for the preparation of their craft to engage in their preflight ritual. First, they donned the hachimaki headband adorned with the rising sun and a belt of a thousand stitches. This was called the senninbari and had been prepared by a thousand women sewing one stitch each. Then the pilots would each compose a final poem and drink a last cup of sake before climbing into each Baika’s tiny cockpit.

  The first Baika was pushed up to the launch ramp on the I-400’s bow. Then a steel barrier was hydraulically raised to deflect the jet blast of the missile’s pulse jet away from the other missiles waiting to be launched. The pulse jet motor was started just a few moments before the missile’s launch.

  Booster rockets under the wings quickly hurled each kamikaze missile up the I-400’s bow ramp and into the air, where the pulse jet took over for the weapon’s flight to its target. The barrier was quickly lowered for the next missile to take its place on the launch rail, then raised again. Just less than twenty minutes after the first missile took to the air, the submarine was already preparing to submerge after the launch of the last missile.

  Twenty minutes later, the first of the kamikaze Baika missiles approached the US Navy’s base near San Diego. The pilot had been carefully trained beforehand on what to look for. It only took a few moments before he found it, a row of ten submarines anchored closely next to each other near a pier.

  He then took careful aim at the center of the row and dove at full speed. Black puffs of smoke from nearby detonations of American antiaircraft shells began to surround the speeding projectile. But the pilot held steady in spite of the now constant buffeting from the shells exploding around him.

  The Baika glanced off of the deck of one of the Balao-class fleet submarines and hit a second boat directly before the manned missile’s three hundred-kilogram high explosive warhead detonated. Both submarines were completely shattered by the powerful explosion. Immediately afterwards, the wreckage of the two American submarines slammed into their neighbors, badly damaging another four submarines and killing more than two hundred submariners immediately.

  Less than three minutes later, a second Baika sped towards the brand new Essex-class fleet aircraft carrier USS Franklin that was tied up by a pier. Ignoring an increasing amount of antiaircraft fire, the kamikaze pilot steadfastly aimed his manned missile until it struck the carrier’s flight deck near the Essex’s island. The missile’s high velocity allowed it to punch right through the thick teak planking and explode right in the heart of dozens of parked aircraft within the Franklin’s hangar deck.

  A towering fireball erupted in the air above the carrier as the great ship burst into flame. Multiple secondary explosions rocked the carrier as hundreds of sailors attempted to control the fires and save the ship.

  US Army Air Corps fighters attempted to intercept the last two kamikaze Baika missiles. But the manned missiles were nearly a fifty miles per hour faster than any of the pursuing fighters. Before the Americans could mass enough firepower to shoot down the Japanese attackers, the Baika missiles struck another grouping of submarines and heavily damaged a second aircraft carrier, the venerable USS Yorktown.

  By the time the last of the fires had been put out, the death toll was over two thousand sailors and other service members. Five submarines had been sunk or permanently put out of action with another eight damaged. The USS Franklin would be out of the war for at least a year and a half while a second carrier would be under repair for at least six months.

  This was an attack by only one submarine. At very nearly the same time, I-401 launched its Baikas against Pearl Harbor while I-402 fired its weapons at the US Naval base in Bremerton, Washington. Each attack was very nearly as devastating as the one at San Diego.

  Nine other Japanese aircraft-carrying submarines attempted similar attacks upon Haiphong Harbor, Singapore and several targets in Australia. Eight of the Japanese submarines were successful in launching their attacks and safely escaping. But one submarine, I-14 of the AM class, was found on the surface near Derby by one of Harold’s patrolling heavy flying boats. The flying boat had spotted the submarine after the Japanese boat had fired the first of its two Baikas. The flying boat quic
kly dove down and dropped six depth charges that shattered the hull of the Japanese submarine before the submarine could escape by submerging.

  The damage inflicted by these attacks varied widely. But because these targets in the southwestern Pacific had been attacked repeatedly by the Japanese over the course of the war, they were far better prepared. The Coalition defenses were able to shoot down over half of the Baikas before the kamikaze pilots could even begin their attack dives. While several ships were damaged in the attacks, none were sunk or permanently disabled.

  The Baikas fired at Harold’s facilities in Derby fortunately were all either shot down or completely missed their targets. The additional batteries of new six-pounder automatic cannons, gatling guns and 10.5 cm anti-aircraft artillery, all controlled by radar and supported by fighter aircraft proved to be extremely effective. While Colonel Burke was very pleased at this result, he was still concerned that a later attack may be much heavier and successfully overwhelm even Derby’s improved defenses.

  Australian Military Headquarters

  Canberra, Australia

  18 March, 1944

  “We need to start thinking about expanding our naval mine campaign against the Japanese homeland. Using mines, we can bottle up the Japanese navy in port including those big missile-launching submarines. The Americans have already started this, but they are not able to cover nearly as many ports as are necessary because they are almost entirely dependent on their submarines to lay mines.” Newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Harlan Burke explained to the Australian War Ministry and representatives from the other Allied nations in the Far East. Harlan’s success in repelling the Japanese invasion of Australia has given him considerable credibility among the various military leaders there.

  “We would have to substantially increase mine production then at the expense of other weapons.” Admiral Patrick Edwards noted.