by Hall, Gerald
“I’m surprised that we have any physicists at all with all of the talent that has been recruited by the Australians for their nuclear programs.”
“It is true that we have suffered delays in our program due to the losses of specialized personnel both during the war and after the Armistice. But the people that we are kept are loyal, I assure you. But, we will need to fill in the gaps that we currently have in our nuclear energy technology base.”
“So you want me to ask our military to employ the Abwehr to obtain information from other nations?
“Yes, exactly so.”
“The Americans are doing some work on nuclear energy, but they are barely more advanced than we are. They have so much wealth in other energy sources like coal, oil and hydroelectric power that they simply do not wish to invest very much funding towards it. America wishes to go back to where they were twenty years ago, especially now with their new President Stevenson in charge of their government.”
“We should let America sleep once again. Whenever they have gotten involved in a European war, Germany has always paid a terrible price in blood, treasure and honor.
Where do you propose that we go to seek out the fruits of the labors of those scientists and engineers, Herr Klein?”
“Very quietly, of course. We are already setting up a network of Abwehr agents in several nations that had belonged to the Allies during the war. They will be looking opportunities to obtain the technology that we need from other nations, even they are not aware of it.
This network will also be employed in other tasks as well. The terms of the Armistice have limited our weapons development in several areas. We can secretly built some of those weapons in our underground factories. However, we must develop other venues where we can test our new weapons without the Englanders or the Amerikaners realizing that we now possess them.”
“There are certainly enough active battlegrounds still in the world. That should give us many opportunities to test our new weapons and find customers for them at the same time.”
“True enough. But our agents will also be employed in obtaining resources for our industries. We suffered from shortages of critical materials during much of the war. We must build up sufficient reserves of these strategic materials to sustain us in the event of another conflict or if the tide of international opinion should turn against us once again. We will need to be able to sustain our production in the event of a boycott or embargo for an extended period of time.”
“We have several other nations within Africa and elsewhere that we have started attempts to exploit their resources. The most important of these new opportunities is within South Africa.”
“Are they not still part of the British Commonwealth?” Armin asked.
“Yes, but the ties for many parts of the old British Empire have become far less rigid. We are discovering one other problem concerning our attempts to obtain mineral rights in Africa and elsewhere. The Australian company, Cavill Industries, has managed to obtain some of those mining franchises ahead of our agents. I do not know how they have done this, but Cavill Industries has continued their record of extraordinary success in finding the most lucrative mineral deposits in every region that they have explored.”
“The Cavill family seems to have been a thorn in our side for decades now, Herr Colonel.”
“I would have to agree. First, it was the company’s founder. Now, it appears that his children have inherited his business and technical acumen, in spite of their young age. In fact, they have become the world leaders in nuclear technology. The Australians have many of the most talented nuclear scientists and engineers from around the world working for them now. But the Cavill’s have very publicly declared that their nuclear power technology has absolutely no weapons applications at all.”
“You don’t believe them?”
“Even though I work in developing our nation’s economic and industrial policies, I do not pretend to know enough nuclear physics to determine if these liquid nuclear fuel reactors can produce byproducts capable of being used in a weapon. There are scientists still in Germany who could perhaps answer this question. But I am not one of them, I’m afraid, Herr Colonel.”
Chapter Forty-Seven:
Cavill Shipyards
Derby, Western Australia
March 4, 1958
Captain Adrian Westover had just been allowed to pass through the security gate into the shipyards. He was the new liaison from the Royal Australian Navy to Cavill Shipyards, the largest producer of warships for the RAN since the beginning of the Second World War. The last time that Adrian had been to Derby had been nearly ten years earlier, just after the end of the Pacific War. The yards were a lot busier back then with all of the post-war demobilization as well as ongoing combat repairs on the warships that the RAN had decided to keep in service.
There were four Australian warships docked at the Cavill piers now undergoing refits and modernizations. Accompanying them were seven other ships, most of them commercial vessels. But two of the docked ships were larger vessels that were equipped with flight decks. These two ships were still substantially smaller than the two RAN aircraft carriers, HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Australia.
At one of the large drydocks, a large rocket was under construction or being refitted there. The massive cylinder of the rocket dwarfed virtually every other ship at the shipyard.
Adrian had been directed to park at a lot near one of the naval construction shed. Shortly after he parked his sedan, Adrian saw an older man dressed in the same grey coveralls that most of the workforce there wore. The latter was talking to several other shipyard workers before beginning to walk towards a covered construction yard. Adrian quickly recognized the man as Alexander Portman, the chief naval architect for the shipyards.
“G’Day, Mister Portman. I was hoping to be able to catch you today. My name is Adrian Westover. I’m the new guy from the Admiralty’s liaison office.” The naval officer said as he reached out his hand towards Alex.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Captain Westover.” Alex said after seeing the rank insignia on the naval officer’s uniform and firmly shaking his hand.
“I was hoping to take a look around here at all of the work that you are doing here for the RAN today if you don’t mind, Mister Portman.”
“Of course, Captain. After all, the Australian Navy is our biggest customer for shipbuilding and refits. I do have quite a few of our workers now working on building rockets for our Aerospace division though.”
“It is a very awe-inspiring object, isn’t it?” Adrian said, a sense of wonder clearly evident in his voice.
“Captain, what is much more important to me is that constructing these rockets is keeping my people employed and practicing most of their normal skills like welding. Otherwise, the only work they would have had was scrapping warships that the Admiralty considered no longer needed. It was really sad to see all of our surviving cruisers come here for the last time only to be broken up for scrap metal.
We really could have done so much more with them. We already had plans drawn up to upgrade those cruisers to remain viable for another twenty years. But now, that is all for naught.”
“I understand, Sir. We’ve all had to make decisions that we didn’t want to make. The post-war economy has also meant that a lot of people have been looking for new jobs to replace the ones that they had been doing to support the war effort.”
“I know. But it is still a damned shame that we couldn’t convince the Admiralty to keep any of our cruisers in commission after the war ended. I know that they all have plenty of battle scars after seven years of war. But we could have made any necessary repairs to put them back to rights during the course of refitting them.” Alex sadly noted.
“The Admiralty in Canberra was just not interested in spending money on upgrading cruisers, much less the costs of manning them. They just wanted destroyers to hunt submarines and screen our carriers. Our aircraft carriers were to be the offensive arm of the fle
et along with our submarines.”
“The problem with that approach is that unless you have a carrier in close attendance, you don’t have any long-range defenses against enemy aircraft, Captain. A destroyer just isn’t large enough to carry even one of our CMS-2 missile launchers.”
“I understand that you have been replacing some of the guns on our destroyers with a lighter antiaircraft missile system, Mister Portman.”
“Yes, we have. That is what we refer to as the CMS-3. But it is much shorter ranged and has a far smaller number of available missiles. That is why wanted the Australian Admiralty to save a couple of cruisers so that we could refit them with our longer-ranged missile system. Hell, it’s even a pretty tight squeeze putting a CMS-2 launcher aboard a light cruiser. We are working to develop a smaller launcher for the CMS-2 that can possibly fit aboard a destroyer. It would have only a single missile launching arm and a smaller missile magazine versus a standard CMS-2 twin-arm launcher. We are attempting to make up for that through a faster reloading cycle though.”
“What if you are hit by a mass raid? Won’t you have to worry about being overwhelmed by having too many targets and not enough missiles that you can fire?”
“Yes. That is very much a worry. That is why we are encouraging the Australian Admiralty to never deploy these ships by themselves in a high threat area. Destroyers always work better in teams. After all, we wouldn’t send our aircraft carriers anywhere by themselves, would we?”
“No. I don’t think so.” Adrian admitted.
“We don’t think so either. But if destroyers, cruisers and carriers all work together as a team, then they can benefit from their strength and help compensate for their weaknesses. Not having the cruisers will make it harder to compensate for those weaknesses. Hopefully, we will be able to upgrade enough destroyers to make up in numbers what we lack in individual capability.
Of course, if someone were to ask for a new construction cruiser to be built, I’m sure that we could design something quite extraordinary for the Australian Navy that could be tailor-made for using our new missiles and other weapons. That would be even better than refitting the old cruisers. We could give then new engines, new guns and the latest in radars to go with a full kit of defensive and offensive missiles. ” Alex replied with a confident smile.
“Fair Dinkum, Mister Portman. The problem is convincing the penny pinchers in Parliament of the value in investing that much money into new cruisers.”
“We are trying. The politicians might think that peace has broken out now that the Axis has been defeated. But I’m afraid that there will continue to be wars and rumors of wars out there. They won’t ignore us either.”
“Is that why the engineers at your Automotive Division are testing a new tank design?” Adrian asked.
“You know about that, huh? We are going to have to work on our security a bit more perhaps. Still, we really haven’t tried all that hard to hide what we have been doing.
Anyway, tank designs continue to advance even if there are no major conflicts were massed tank armies are facing each other. . The Americans, Germans and several other nations have already started designing and producing a new generation of combat vehicles. Eventually, Cavill Industries had to do the same. The Echnidna II tank is frankly aging now and is being outclassed by tanks being developed by the Germans and the Americans. So we are developing a new tank.”
“Is there anything that you can tell me about it? I know that you usually don’t design or build anything that doesn’t spin off into the other divisions of Cavill Industries.”
“That’s true. Here’s what I have been told. What our designers have done is create a new armored vehicle chassis that will be the basis of a variety of different combat vehicles. We will be going away from the Christie suspension system for a new torsion bar suspension with six smaller road wheels. The chassis will be several tons heavier than that used by the Echnidna as well.
The chassis is being tested to be used as an armored personnel carrier, a self-propelled 120mm mortar carrier, a self-propelled antiaircraft gun carrying the 25mm gatling gun and an armored engineer vehicle that is also used to recover damaged vehicle. Finally, it will also be used with a new high velocity 9cm main gun. Like the original Echnidna, the engine is still mounted in the front of the hull with the fighting compartment in the rear.
The new tank gun is loosely based on an existing Italian gun. It is going to also possibly be a new dual-purpose gun for our lighter naval surface combatants. In the latter role, the gun will be fitted with an automatic loader to greatly increase the rate of fire.”
“I would really love to see that in action. It sounds very promising indeed.” The Australian naval officer opined.
“Perhaps you will have the opportunity to see it in action sometime. We are already in the process of modifying one of the naval militia’s large patrol craft to carry the gun.” Alex said with a smile.
Chapter Forty-Eight:
Cavil Aerospace Rocket Launch Center
Kalumburu, Western Australia
March 28, 1958
James, Judith and Beatrice flew into the airfield that serviced the Cavill Aerospace’s land-based rocket launch facilities. This was also the location of Doctor Werner von Braun’s rocket design bureau. The Cavills had deliberately separated von Braun’s design bureau from the rocket design team at Derby. The Derby rocket design bureau was in charge of the heavy launch vehicles and advanced satellite designs.
The new turboprop-powered Aeropacket ‘flying boxcar’ transport plane that brought the Cavills in also brought in nearly five tons of supplies meant for the remote facility. There was always a need for certain supplies to be flown in because they were perishable like foodstuffs or because of other rush requirements.
“Hopefully, we will get our rail line extended to our facilities here at Kalumburu sometime next year. That will end up saving us a tremendous amount in transportation costs in the long run.” James noted as they walked past one of the transport’s twin tail booms as a forklift arrived to retrieve the pallets from the aircraft’s cargo compartment.
“I thought that you liked to fly, James?” Judith asked sarcastically.
“I do. But I prefer being in the cockpit’s front left seat, not sitting in the back of a cargo plane on folding nylon webbing seat designed for paratroopers. Besides, it still doesn’t make my statement about extending the rail line out here any less relevant. We still have to continue working to reduce transportation costs for our operations out here. We are barely breaking even with the revenues from our communications satellites that are being launched from here, even with the recovery and reuse of the rocket’s first stages.”
“The new contract with the United Kingdom for communications and imagery services after the Hong Kong incident should make us far more profitable however. Then we can afford some real seats to ride in.” Beatrice said with a smile.
“So, what has IDA said about our proposed modification to the Sea Dragon rocket?” James asked his oldest sibling. The original AI expert program had continued to be employed by the Cavill children to help them handle the utilization of the contemporary technology for the desired applications. IDA had also helped uncover other technologies that could easily be incorporated into existing designs to improve their performance.
“She has made a couple of additional changes. They should increase the efficiency of the main engine by another two percent. We just have to slip them in to the engineers and convince them that they were their idea once again.” Judith answered with a knowing smile.
“We have become very good at making such ‘suggestions’ to our engineers, Judith. Hopefully, they will be able to make the next logical step without any additional hints from us.” Beatrice replied.
“Yes, just as long as we don’t end up being pushed into weaponizing those advances outside carefully managed applications. The last thing that we want is for long-range ballistic missiles to be built that will be able to carry a nucl
ear weapon. That’s how Father’s future ended.” Judith cautioned.
“Speaking of ballistic missiles, we will need to see Doctor von Braun at some point while we are here, you know. He has got to feel at least a little resentment with all of the resources that we have devoted to the Sea Dragon program compared to his rocket designs. We do not want to lose him with all of his knowledge. If Werner were to leave us to work someplace else, he might end up being pushed back into the ballistic missile business, whether he likes it or not.” Beatrice replied.
“Well, let’s go then. I’m sure that he knows that we are here by now.” Judith told her siblings.
The tall, well-dressed man walked out of the small building that served as the main administrative office for the rocket test facility. He smiled and waved as he saw Judith and her siblings walking up.
“Guten Tag! Fraulein Cavill. I am very pleased to see all of you here today.”
“We are very happy to be here as well. It is unfortunate that we are unable to travel here more frequently. Our late Father’s business interests are very time consuming. We have many demands on our time. We are still quite young too, so we have much to learn along the way also.” Judith responded with a smile of her own.
Werner laughed for a few moments before responding.
“For people who are as young as you, your ability to manage such a large business and even help your engineers design complex machines is utterly amazing. I am honored that you are able to take any time to visit my installation at all.”