England Expects (Empires Lost)

by Jackson, Charles S.

  He couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it officially for a variety of reasons: he had a great deal of respect for Thorne, and whatever was destroying the man’s soul was surely powerful indeed. Kransky had seen his share of nightmares over the years, and still kept enough of his own ‘demons’ at bay to know how fine the line was. He didn’t seek solace in alcohol these days, or the other stupidities such as opium or morphine, but he knew how close he’d also come to going under in his time. So far, Thorne’s illicit nocturnal wanderings hadn’t caused any undue difficulty, so he let the man be.

  Luftwaffe Airbase at Stavanger

  Sola, Southern Norway

  Last minute changes to mission orders were always problematic at best, and Carl Ritter had been more than a little unimpressed with the sealed orders he’d received from local HQ late on Thursday afternoon. The staff flight and I Gruppe of ZG26 was to be temporarily reassigned to Luftflotte Five and transfer immediately to Norway to become part a large-scale air assault scheduled for that weekend. Chaos had reigned as his staff flight and I Gruppe – barely returned to St Omer following completion of flight conversion to the new aircraft – underwent complete upheaval once more, with overnight bags packed and aircraft readied and equipped with extra fuel tanks for the long trip ahead. Departing early on the Friday morning, a four hour flight had taken the unit almost 1,000km north to Stavanger Airbase at Sola, Norway.

  Stavanger was the country’s second oldest airport and had been opened personally by the King of Norway in May of 1937. It was a modern facility right from the beginning, and was the second airport in all of Europe to have a concrete runway installed. Fallschirmjäger from the 7th Flieger Division attacked on April 9 of 1940, and the ensuing battle lasted no more than an hour. The installation was now the Luftwaffe’s Norwegian headquarters, and was in the process of significant upgrades and construction which had already included the extension of the main runway – runway 18/36 – out to almost three kilometres in length.

  Runway 11/29 was also now being built, cutting across the southern section of 18/36 at an oblique angle, and around both of these were placed numerous taxiways, hardstands and revetments to provide shelter for the multitude of aircraft that currently called Stavanger home. The units assigned to Luftflotte-5 included sections of KG26 and KG30, a gruppe of fighters each from ZG76 and JG77, and a variety of lesser types assigned to reconnaissance and coastal patrol units. Added to all that were a further collection of ‘visiting’ aircraft that’d been collected for the mission at hand.

  First and foremost were the bombers of the newly-formed SKG1. The B-10A ‘Amerika Bomber’ was a huge aircraft, with four radial engines of the same type that powered the S-2D. Thirty metres long, and with a wingspan of over forty-three metres, the B-10A mounted eight 13mm machine guns in two dorsal and two ventral turrets, remotely-controlled by gunners aiming from Perspex sighting ‘blisters’ protruding from above and below the central section of the aircraft. Two 23mm cannon were fitted to a manned tail turret that provided its gunner with some added ‘sting’ against any enemy fighter attempting an attack from directly behind. The spacious bomb bays could carry up to 9,000kg of bombs, and do so out to a range of 5,000 kilometres or more at altitudes where most fighter aircraft would have trouble reaching them. The sight of fifty-six of the huge aircraft at one time, spread about the periphery of the airbase, was an impressive one indeed.

  Then there was the arrival of I/ZG26 and the entirety of JG54, its J-4A fighters flown in to provide top cover for the heavy bombers and for Ritter’s aircraft. With an entire geschwader of the B-10A strategic bombers already assigned, the Oberstleutnant had wondered why Luftflotte HQ would bother adding a single gruppe of S-2Ds to the mission, but an experienced pilot operating in the real world quickly gave up questioning the logic of higher authority. An assault by more than fifty heavy bombers would leave little of any base standing, and Fliegerkorps presumably wanted to make sure the base was out of action and nothing more. A low-level, follow-up flight could confirm what damage had been done by the heavies, even if there’d most likely not be much left for his aircraft to actually attack.

  Despite following the general planning of the coming air raid on the Scapa Flow anchorage, Reichsmarschall Reuters was completely unaware that it now also involved part of Carl Ritter’s unit. Zeigler, true to his word, had spoken to Herman Göring and had indeed convinced the Chief of the Luftwaffe to issue surreptitious extra orders for Ritter’s inclusion in the attack. It hadn’t been difficult in truth, as there was some personal involvement in the issue for the OdL also.

  Never realising how close to the mark he actually was, Herman Göring always felt Kurt Reuters had ‘stolen’ the rank of Reichsmarschall that should rightfully have been his. That Zeigler had made it clear… or at least implied… that the loss of Oberstleutnant Carl Ritter would significantly hurt Kurt Reuters was more than enough impetus for the Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe to make the appropriate calls.

  Göring was also one of few men in Germany who actually knew the truth regarding the New Eagles, their origins, and their ultimate goals; and as a result, he was also aware in a vague sense of the existence of Hindsight. Although not clear on what futuristic aircraft or equipment the enemy possessed at Scapa Flow, this fighter ace of the Great War had enough of an understanding of what he’d seen of the Sukhoi strike aircraft New Eagles had fielded to recognise the risks involved in attacking the Hindsight unit were great indeed. He had no problem whatsoever in assigning Ritter’s Staff Flight and I/ZG26 to a secondary assault of the base at Scapa Flow.

  Zerstörergeschwader 26 carried out final pre-flight checks in the cold Norwegian darkness of early morning; Ritter, Meier and the rest of I Gruppe watching as ground crew milled around their aircraft, loading fuel and weapons. There were new types of bombs being loaded beneath each wing of these new aircraft, outboard of a fuselage-mounted 600 litre auxiliary fuel tank. Each S-2D was being fitted with four long, sleek 500-kilogram bombs (the instructor at Orly had called them ‘low-drag’), and along with them were two tank-like canisters of a strange substance the pilots had never before experienced outside the bombing range. A mixture of gasoline and naphthalene flakes, the end product was a lethal incendiary substance able to lay fiery waste to whole areas. Even the name was strange and non-explanatory: napalm.

  Ritter and Kohl waited patiently as their own maintenance staff completed the necessary pre-flight checks. There was little of interest to look at outside, other than the work going on around their aircraft: most of the airfield itself was still invisible in the pre-dawn darkness, and Ritter’s short experience of Stavanger during daylight hours the day before suggested that the presence of sunlight wouldn’t have helped matters all that much, being autumn and freezing cold... it was Norway after all. Ritter’s disdain for the country was based primarily on the upheaval the transfer had caused to his unit and his personal situation, rather than any real dislike or knowledge of the country itself.

  He looked down for a moment and stared a small black and white photograph fixed to one side of his instrument panel. Within the image were captured the smiling faces of Maria and Antoine, with the stunning backdrop of the Eiffel Tower behind. She held the sleeping baby in her arms, and the natural feel of the picture could’ve been a depiction of any normal, happy family.

  He smiled faintly as he stared down at the photo, but there was also a vague sense of pain and longing as he felt the separation from his beloved wife and the new-found family they’d now tasked themselves to protect. The days in Paris had been the most wonderful he could remember in far too long, but the requirements of military service were never far away, and in the end he’d of course been forced to return to his unit and to active duty. It was this that left more of a bitter taste in his mouth than any disruption of the unit’s normal daily routines.

  He checked his instruments once more – the tenth time in half an hour – and reassured himself everything was in order as the crew outside fin
ally gave him the all clear.

  “All set, Wolff?” He called to his rear gunner over the intercom as he kicked the S-2D’s huge radial engine over for the first time. “Ready to head ‘once more unto the breach’…?”

  “Ready for a few more hours’ rest, sir thanks all the same,” Kohl replied with a grin. The joke was an old one: that the rear gunner was only ever needed over the target, and as such could catch some extra sleep during the early parts of any long flight.

  “With any luck, the ‘big boys’ will have taken care of the opposition by the time we get there and there’ll be no need to wake you at all.”

  “That would be just wonderful, Mein Herr: if you could have a word to the bomber crews about, that it would be a huge help.”

  “I’ll see what I can organise,” Ritter chuckled, feeling better already as the ground crew finally removed his wheel chocks and he moved his throttle forward, slowly at first as the Lion began to move toward the middle of the long taxiway they were using as a secondary airstrip.

  Not long after 0300 hours that morning, Staff Flight and I/ZG26 staggered woozily into the air, twenty-six aircraft sharing between them close to eighty tonnes of offensive hardware. The flight formed up loosely in the darkness at 5,000 metres, pilots navigating by instruments and keeping pace with each other by carefully watching the pale formation ‘strip’ lighting fitted to each of the aircraft’s wingtips and fuselage sides. At their best economical cruising speed, they were the slowest of the aircraft by far, and although the heavy bombers would ultimately arrive first over the target at the end of their 600 kilometre journey, the B-10A’s were only beginning to taxi out to the flight line for take off as the Lions flew on. Scapa Flow lay two hours away, and there’d be plenty of time for ZG26 to form up properly in daylight with their fighter escort before they reached their distant destination.

  Hindsight Training Unit, HMS Proserpine

  Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands

  He checked and rechecked his equipment several times as he prepared himself carefully for the morning ahead. A final, coded radio message the night before had been quite clear in its instructions, and he’d follow orders regardless of the fact that he’d not be likely to survive their execution. With a little good fortune and a good deal of planning, he might at least survive long enough to carry out all of the aspects of his mission: after that, he’d happily let the cards fall where they may.

  Originally a German-born British citizen, Kristof Klein was also a dedicated and fanatical Nazi. He operated under a different identity of course, in his undercover role as a British Army officer within the Hindsight base, but he’d grown up in the Realtime late 20th Century as a rabid anti-Semite, and idolised Adolf Hitler as if the man had been a god. As a young man, he’d trained with the British SAS and had served well for several years before an anonymous report had alerted his superiors to several racial hatred articles posted on his Facebook page.

  He’d been summarily dismissed – the Europe of the 21st Century took an exceedingly dim view of anti-Semitic or racially-based hate propaganda – and had spent a year or two in unemployment limbo before being ‘found’ by the New Eagles. The group had seen his training and personal ideology as perfect to fulfil their requirement for a sleeper agent to be infiltrated into 1930s British society, join their officer corps and become a ‘model citizen’. For an angry young man suddenly lacking in direction, the offer of an opportunity to not only fight against Judaism but also become a part of the creation of Hitler’s greatest dream of Grossdeutschland was a dream come true, and Klein had leaped at the chance.

  The aftermath of the previous air attack had resulted in doubled guards at each of the four radar units around the island, and a pair of armed men also stationed outside the control room itself. The partially-buried bunker was sunk into open ground between the Hindsight airfield and the main base at HMS Proserpine, on the north-east coast of Hoy Island. A crooked line of zigzagged slit trenches ran north and south from the entrance, and it was thereby possible to enter from some distance and approach unobserved. Klein checked his watch for the third time in ten minutes as he crouched by the far end of the southern trench line. It was 0523 hours: few personnel were out and about at such an early hour, and dawn itself was still just barely threatening the eastern horizon.

  He slipped into the trench line and made his way between the hardened earth walls at a crouch to ensure his head remained unseen below ground level on either side, silently glad the weather had remained dry so far, and that there’d been no rain to turn the ground around him to mud. As he neared the last turn leading to the bunker entrance, he could hear the soft conversation of the pair of guards stationed outside, and paused to draw a silenced Walther PPK from within the folds of his bulky combat jacket.

  Drawing a deep breath of preparation, he cocked the hammer and waited another moment as he checked to ensure there were no sounds of anyone else nearby. Stepping quickly around into the next trench, he raised the pistol before either guard could react. Their first thoughts were that the man who’d appeared before them was a familiar and trusted superior officer, and it was far too late by the time they also realised there was a pistol in his hand. The Walther was barely audible as he fired a pair of ‘double-tapped’ shots into each man’s forehead without a moment’ hesitation, and the thud of their lifeless bodies against the hard floor of the trench was far louder than the suppressed gunfire that had caused their deaths.

  He quickly exchanged the weapon’s magazine for a full one taken from his jacket, wasting no time checking for signs of life that he knew wouldn’t be present: the sound of the bodies falling would’ve been audible from within the bunker, and although the cause of the commotion would be a mystery, those inside would nevertheless be alert. Holding the weapon behind his back, he opened the closed wooden door and stepped inside. As it closed behind him once more, the only sound remaining was the soft rustle of the surrounding grass in the cool morning breeze.

  Rifle and pack at his shoulders as always, Kransky squatted at the water’s edge and ignored the biting cold that morning as he watched the ships cruise past at good speed. From his vantage point on the beach at South Walls, near the southern entrance to the anchorage between Hoy and South Ronaldsay, he couldn’t fail to be impressed by the grand sight as the Home Fleet steamed out. The battleships Malaya, Warspite, Queen Elizabeth and Nelson and the battlecruiser Renown were leaving under full steam, accompanied by a support force of cruisers and destroyers. In line-ahead formation, they stretched over quite a few kilometres as the ships headed out and turned off to the east, the battleships in the van and the destroyers forging ahead to screen the fleet as they reached open waters.

  It was a sizeable surface force – most of the Home Fleet – and Kransky knew where they were bound. As security chief he worked closely with his opposite number at HMS Proserpine and was therefore privy to classified information that most weren’t cleared to know. There’d been a full alert some time before dawn following word that a British submarine had reported a large enemy surface force heading north-west off Jutland. The sub had lost contact soon after in heavy patches of low-level fog off the Norwegian coast, but there’d been sufficient time to note the presence of at least one battleship and possibly also an aircraft carrier.

  That’d been more than enough information to warrant mobilisation of the fleet that was now steaming past before him through the Pentland Firth: with heavy fog predicted across large sections of the North Sea, it was unlikely the Luftwaffe would be able to prevent the Royal Navy’s attempt to interdict a Kriegsmarine ‘breakout’ into the North Atlantic. An aircraft carrier that couldn’t launch its aircraft was a juicy target indeed, and was well worth the risk of sending the Home Fleet into battle.

  Kransky was still watching as a Daimler Dingo armoured car powered over a low rise to the west and slid sharply to a halt a dozen metres away. He turned and rose to his feet, instantly spotting Sergeant Drews, one of his primary security team, at the con
trols. The expression on the man’s face clearly told him something was seriously wrong as he jogged across to the vehicle.

  “The radio at the command bunker was… out of action, sir, so I thought it best to come and get you directly…” He began, almost breathless.

  “What’s up, Neil?” Kransky demanded as he drew up beside the car.

  “There’s been an ‘incident’, sir… I think it’d be best if you had a look for yourself. I’ll give you the details as we go…” He insisted, and Kransky was inclined to take his word for it based on the man’s expression.

  Kransky had no easy time fitting himself, his pack and weapons into the vehicle, but it was finally accomplished, and a moment later the Dingo was roaring away at close to top speed, the unevenness of the gravel track making both men feel every single one of its eighty kilometres per hour speed.

  Warrant Officer Harold Clarke lay against the inside wall of the command bunker as Kransky, Drews and two SAS troopers – one of them Corporal Evan Lloyd – stood there no more than five minutes later, surveying the scene in stunned silence. Neither Clarke nor the two guards lying on the floor beside him could tell the others what had happened, but they gave silent evidence well enough in death. A pair of dark, bloody bullet holes in each man’s forehead made the situation clear enough. Clark’s issue Browning pistol lay secure in its holster, and the guards submachine guns were unfired: it was clear there’d been no warning whatsoever.