Fraser’s lips twitched. “That’s good,” he said, watching as the Germans grew closer. Their guns were firing rapidly now — he was almost numb to the sound and fury of the British guns, pounding away at the Germans — and he was grimly aware that it was only a matter of time before the Germans scored a hit on one of the British ships. He studied one of the enemy ships as he saw a flash and smiled as he realised that one of his ships had scored a direct hit, striking the German ship directly on its forward turret.
King George V rang like a bell. Fraser bit off a curse as the deck rolled under him, wondering just where they had been hit; judging from the way the ship had moved, the shell had come down on the starboard armour. Damage control teams rushed through the ship as the Germans scored a second hit, moments before fire from two British ships bracketed the German battle-cruiser, sending it leaping out of the line of battle. Fraser smiled as the Royal Navy paid off an old score. The Scharnhorst had been a pain in the neck ever since the Germans had built it and sent it out on raiding missions. His expression fell as the Germans scored several hits in quick succession on Prince of Wales. Both sides were scoring regular hits now, while their smaller ships dashed around and tried to make torpedo runs or prevent the others from making torpedo runs.
“Signal to all ships,” he ordered, as one of the German battleships was enveloped in a bright light. He hoped, for a second, that they had hit it hard enough to kill it, but the German ship shrugged off the blast and kept coming. “Execute Armageddon in one minute.”
“Signal sent,” the radioman said. There was a long pause, during which the King George V rang again. Smoke billowed from the Prince of Wales. She was taking a pounding, and Fraser prayed that she would last long enough to take part in Armageddon. The timing was important here. In order to bring all their weapons to bear on the advancing German fleet before the enemy could take advantage of his brief moment of exposure, Fraser’s ships would have to execute their turn quickly and efficiently. “All ships acknowledge Armageddon in one minute, sir.”
Fraser counted down the seconds in his head. The Captain barked the order at precisely the right moment and the mighty battleship began turning in the water, bringing all of its batteries to bear on the German ships. It was a trickier manoeuvre than it might seem — there was a very real danger of collision if it wasn’t done properly — but the British Navy had practised it endlessly to iron out the flaws. The battleship shook again, violently, as a German bombardment smashed into the main armour covering the battleship’s vitals, but then the main guns boomed, instantly doubling the amount of fire-power that could be brought to bear on the German ships.
“Sir,” the radioman said, “Prince of Wales is…”
The battleship finally gave up and fell out of line. Her main batteries continued to fire on the German ships, but she had lost her conning tower, her interior seriously damaged by German shells. Fraser found himself praying that the Germans didn’t recognise the ship’s weakness. If they pounded her again, they might punch through to the ship’s magazines and detonate the shells stored there.
Prince of Wales exploded with a fireball that rivalled anything he’d ever seen.
If there were survivors, if some of her crewmen had managed to get out of the ship and into the water, the destroyers would have to pick them up.
The smaller ships were hopelessly out of place in such a crash of the titans. As long as the Germans kept coming forward on that course, they were going to find themselves being hammered twice as hard as they could dish out. They would have to alter course themselves.
The Graf Spee fell out of line and heeled slightly to port. The Germans built very good ships, Fraser remembered, and they didn’t seem to have had the ill-luck of seeing the magazines exposed and detonated. The battleship wasn’t shooting any longer, but was still floating, even if it had fallen out of line. The chaos was awesome, scary in a way that impressed even Fraser. The massive castle of steel was dying, but in its final moments, trying to take down one of its enemies.
And the mad slaughter went on.
* * *
“Come about,” Generaladmiral Förste ordered as he watched the Graf Spee burn. It would only be a matter of time before the ship sank. They couldn’t raise anyone on the battleship, it would have to be assumed lost. They’d sunk one British battleship and seriously damaged two more, but the British were pounding them harder than he had feared.
He barked out more orders as the fleet altered course, moving so that they would head on a parallel course to the British ships, but heading in the opposite direction, widening the range enough to allow him to catch his breath. The destroyers and other smaller craft would distract the British — under the right circumstances, a destroyer could take out a battleship — while his forces completed their manoeuvre, and force them to chase him. A stern chase would be a long one, one that he knew the British would lose. They wouldn’t want to risk coming too close to the land.
“Jawohl, Herr Generaladmiral,” the operator said. The mighty ship shuddered as it altered course; it seemed as if the Tirpitz’s first major action would be her last. “The remainder of the fleet acknowledges.”
If I lose all these ships, my country will not forgive me, Förste thought, coldly. Hitler himself had maintained a passionate interest in the heavy battleships since they had been constructed, although that hadn’t been matched with an interest in actually sending them out to be shot at, something that many in the Kriegsmarine resented. The ships they’d had in 1941 could have ended the war under much more favourable terms than they’d ended up with in 1943. The combined German battleships would have been able to outfight or outrun anything they’d met.
“Concentrate fire on target nine,” he ordered as the fleet completed its long manoeuvre. For a moment, a single British ship was incredibly exposed, and as every battleship in the German fleet poured fire onto her, she broke open and exploded faster than Förste believed possible. The British were altering their own course, trying to come about as they realised what the Germans were trying, but it was too late. “Set course for home.
The battleship came under heavy fire as the British ships struck back. Förste gripped onto his chair and held himself tightly as the battleship vibrated under the impact of the British shells, before one of the shells finally scored a hit on the bridge. Förste died without knowing what had struck him and vaporised his body; while the secondary bridge would take over command of the ship, the German fleet had lost its head.
* * *
“They’re making a run for it,” Fraser breathed as the German ships completed their own manoeuvre, attempting to make their way back to Kiel. The German anti-shipping aircraft had taken a beating, but he would bet good money they were trying to scramble everything they had to save their fleet.
He frowned. They didn’t have long to inflict major damage on the German ships.
“I want all ships to give chase,” he said grimly. The Germans would probably be vectoring in U-boats and other unpleasant surprises. They were supposed to have the entire area heavily mined. He didn’t want to risk his ships if he could avoid it. “Continue firing until the Germans break contact.”
The battleship shuddered again as the German ships fled and the British ships moved in pursuit. Fraser watched as the Germans slowly opened the range. A stern chase was always a long one, and judging from the way the Germans were moving, it was also going to be one that the British would lose. Shells were splashing down around the German ships, sometimes finding a target, but mainly striking the water. The Germans had taken terrible losses, but they still had four battleships and they would remain a threat.
It tore at him to issue the order, but he knew his duty. “Signal all ships. Break contact and fall into line with the flagship to proceed to Scapa Flow.”
“Aye, sir,” the radioman said. The battleship was smoking in several places, but as the reports came it, it became clear that the King George V hadn’t been seriously damaged. The same could
n’t be said for several other ships; the Germans had hammered them badly. Who knew what would have happened if the Germans had sought mutual immolation rather than trying to break contact?
The radioman looked up at him. “The fleet has acknowledged. They have damage reports ready.”
“Later,” Fraser acknowledged wearily. There was one final duty to be done before he could rest. “Send a signal to London…”
Fraser knew just what to say. There would be time for a full report later, one that counted the cost and the gains of the engagement, but that could wait. Churchill had said that London needed good news, and that was what Fraser intended to give them. He would give them the best news possible.
He stroked his beard as he spoke. “Tell them… that we have met the enemy, and he is ours.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Felixstowe, England
“How bad is it?”
Kapitän zur See Christian Wulff winced at Rommel’s tone. He’d found himself without a role after the Hans Bader had been damaged by British shellfire and he had ended up as the Kreigsmarine’s liaison officer to Rommel’s headquarters, on the Felixstowe docks.
Oberst Frank-Michael Baeck would have liked to have supported his friend, but his own mind was reeling. There had to have been a mistake somewhere, surely?
“The British took a beating, but for the moment… to all intents and purposes, the Kriegsmarine no longer exists as a fighting force,” Wulff admitted. “The core of the fleet was savaged by the British, who sank all of the carriers and most of the battleships. The remainder are seriously damaged. The British destroyers and torpedo boats proceeded down the Channel and attacked one of the supply convoys in broad daylight, while their submarines hit other convoys that sailed with reduced escorts because of the demands of the battle-fleet The net result…”
He broke off and controlled his voice with an effort.
“The net result is that we are unable to guarantee the safety of our convoys,” he said. “Until we manage to regain control over the Channel, the British are effectively able to block us from reinforcing the lodgement here and sink anything we send over to resupply you.”
Rommel’s face darkened and replied coldly, “I see. It wouldn’t be the first time that the Kriegsmarine has failed to live up to its promises. Can we rely on the Luftwaffe to make up the shortfall?”
Obergruppenführer Marius Grieger, the Luftwaffe’s representative on Rommel’s staff, hesitated just long enough to earn a glare from his superior. “I have been assured that every transport and fighter in the Luftwaffe will be attached to your force with instructions to haul across everything that you need. The RAF will attempt to interdict the transports, but by the sheer scale of our efforts, we will prevent them from cutting your supply lines entirely.”
“It sounds excellent,” Baeck said carefully. “How much can we get through per day?”
Grieger named a figure. Baeck swore and noted, “Herr Obergruppenführer, a single armoured division needs much more than that each day. We have a stockpile that we built up here over the weeks, but we are going to be digging into that almost immediately and at current rate of expenditure, we are going to be running short of almost everything in two weeks. If the British mount an attack, that stockpile will shrink much faster. I dare say that we couldn’t hold out for more than a day or two before the stockpile runs out completely.”
“We have will and determination on our side,” Hauptsturmfuehrer Grauer Wulfenbach proclaimed. Baeck glared at him and was dimly amused to see Rommel do the same. “We have the right and might to see us through this crisis.
Baeck gave him an icy look. The SS man had recited SS dogma, but he preferred a French doctrine. Fire kills. If the French had paid more attention to that, they might have reshaped the face of Europe instead of the Reich. The SS might boast of how capable it’s soldiers were — and the Waffen-SS was respected by even the regular army — but none of them were bullet-proof, like that American comic book character. Besides, if an eighty-year-old man could shoot down the great Otto Skorzeny, the others couldn’t be all that great. The BBC was still gloating over that incident.
“Once we run out of ammunition, we will be unable to fight,” he said. “We require time and we will not have that time. As soon as the British realise what they have done, they will move at once to attack us and reduce the lodgement to nothing.”
Standartenfuhrer Ludwig Stahl spoke with a lazy precision, “There is a simpler question. How long until the supply lines can be re-established?”
“We need to relocate several destroyers and draw air support from the Luftwaffe,” Wulff answered. “We couldn’t send anything at night, for example, and supply lines would have to be altered at a moment’s notice if one of the British battleships came charging down the Channel. It will take us at least a week to be confident that we could get something across the Channel, and as long as the British are alert, they might take a bite out of it.”
“A week,” Stahl said. “Could we hold out for a week?”
Rommel commented as he nodded. “No German Field Marshal has ever surrendered. We will hold the line as best as we can, but attempt to avoid contact with the enemy as much as possible. If pressed, we will attempt a fighting retreat and hold the armoured units in reserve to seal off any major British penetration of our lines.”
“Good,” Stahl said. “We will keep the British population off the streets.”
Rommel glared at him and Baeck shuddered. Rommel had been furious when the Felixstowe Wives had been killed, and almost apoplectic about several other reprisals that Stahl had ordered, but there was no stopping him now that he had the Führer’s permission. Threatening to kill someone for disobeying orders was fine, and shooting someone caught in the act was fine, but killing people for no good reason was simply not acceptable. The wives, as far as anyone knew — even Stahl had admitted as much — had been innocent victims. How had they merited death? Killing people who had obeyed orders and done nothing to harm the Reich convinced others that they had nothing to lose. There had been a spate of killings, attacks and sabotage directed against the Reich. They couldn’t allow the distraction…
But Stahl had ensured that they would be distracted. Rommel ordered, “You will do it with as little violence as possible. I am calling up half your security force to support Das Reich and you don’t need the distraction.”
Stahl glared at him. “You don’t have the authority to order anything like…”
Rommel said pleasantly, but with an icy undertone of pure threat in his voice. Wulfenbach stared forward and was halted in his tracks by a glare. “It’s already done, Standartenfuhrer. You can complain to the Fuhrer later, but right now I have a war to fight. I will commandeer your men, your equipment, and anything else I need to win the battle against our enemies… or would you like to explain to the Fuhrer how you allowed us to be pushed out of England because you were more concerned about the limits of my authority than his great victory over the British? I allow a certain amount of informality, but even my patience has its limits.”
Baeck’s felt his hand fall to the pistol at his belt as Rommel’s voice hung in the air. He hoped that Stahl would recognise the threat before it was too late. Rommel had plenty of loyal men who would be quite happy to assassinate Stahl and blame it on the British insurgents.
Rommel, as supreme commander, had found a way to limit the damage Stahl could actually do and by assigning the SS men to Das Reich, they wouldn’t even be able to claim that they were being moved away from their own people. The commander of Das Reich would have no time for whining from the security forces.
“We can expect a British attack fairly soon,” Rommel said ignoring the tension in the room. “I intend to meet that attack and destroy it. Towards that end, I want a safe and secure rear area. You will not commit any acts of reprisal without my direct permission, understand?”
Stahl managed to look as if he was humouring Rommel. “Of course,” he said. “Herr Generalf
eldmarschall…”
“Good,” Rommel agreed. He put the map on the table and pointed down at the various defensive lines. “I want the remains of 7th Panzer to remain here, supported by…”
* * *
“That… man,” Wulfenbach burst out, as soon as they were alone together. The fury in his voice was no surprise to his commanding officer. “How dare he speak to you like that?”
Stahl gave him a pleasant smile. “Like what?”
“Like he was in command,” Wulfenbach protested. “No Wehrmacht officer has the right to dictate to an SS man under any circumstances…”
“Be quiet,” Stahl commanded, allowing some of his own anger to show. Wulfenbach would never make field grade unless he learned to be more adaptable under pressure. His only good attributes were an unshakable loyalty towards the SS and a unflinching attitude towards the more unpleasant, but necessary, acts that the SS needed to commit from time to time. “There are political issues here, understand?”
He cut Wulfenbach off before he could make more than a token comment. Wulfenbach continued explaining to his dense underling, “The Reichsführer-SS wanted to ensure that Occupied Britain becomes mainly an SS state controlled by us for the benefit of the SS and the Reich, as what is good for us is good for the Reich. The recent change in the war situation is not necessarily to our advantage. If our illustrious Generalfeldmarschall is unable to prevent the British from stabbing back into our lodgement, the invasion will come to an end and we will be lucky not to fall into British hands.”
“They will not succeed,” Wulfenbach protested. His voice dropped into a brainwashed monotone. “We are the Masters of the Will, and the Will is the Key to Success.”
The Invasion of 1950 Page 46