“When we turn south we will be sailing into unfriendly waters,” he said. “The men need to know what has happened, and that we may be facing combat situations in short order. It needs time.”
So later that day he had gathered his senior officers and junior petty officers and made a formal announcement concerning their situation. It took some time, and a great deal of explanation, but eventually the loyalty of the crew led them to accept what the Admiral was telling them, and believe his assurances that this was not an exercise any longer. Petty officers were told to keep the news quiet in the rank-and-file ratings. “In time we will bring them all to this table,” he said, “yet for now, I rely on you as leaders, and advise discretion.” Anyone with questions or a serious problem was advised to go and see the Doctor.
“When will we be going home, sir?” one man asked, voicing a question that was surely in the minds and hearts of all gathered.
The Admiral was going to say that they would soon find a way back, but he did not. Instead he just took hold of the man by the shoulder, in an almost gentle way, and he said: “I cannot tell you that with any certainty yet. And it may be that we will never see home again. That’s the truth of it, because we still have no real idea how this happened, or why we are here. I owe you all this truth, and I ask you to help me carry it. It is a heavy burden for any one man, but together, if fate is on our side, we will pull through.”
The words had exactly the effect he intended. He gave them the only thing they really had now-each other, strengthening that invisible, yet unbreakable bond that all soldiers and sailors feel for their comrades in arms. It was enough.
As the news began to slowly spread through the ship, some men laughed off the proposition, others sat with distant, fearful eyes, still others lingered a little longer at the officer’s mess hall leaning close in small groups of two or three, whispering with one another. Digesting this was worse than the beef that would come out of a bad tin on a cold winter’s day. Eventually, however the men realized there was nothing they could really do about the situation other than to man their stations and fulfill their daily duties about the ship. Those with doubts about the story quietly hoped time would prove them right. Others were seen lingering over wrinkled notepaper, writing letters that would never be mailed, pulling pictures out of their wallets and staring at the faces of loved ones they may never see again.
Yet when Orlov would make the daily rounds with a couple of pale faced starshina (petty officers) beside him, things seemed much the same as always. For some men the only disappointment was that they weren't turning about to return to Severomorsk, and for others, young starshina fresh out of the academy, the sudden prospect of an Atlantic cruise seemed very appealing. There is a thirst for discovery on most young men, and for sailors that goes double.
Later in the day, Rodenko noted a distant airborne contact headed their way.
“Con, radar reports airborne contact, bearing one-one-zero, range 226 kilometers at approximately 10,000 feet, inbound at 180 KPH.”
“Another of your museum pieces, Mister Fedorov?” said the Admiral.
“More than likely it's another Fulmar, sir. The British will use them to extend their aerial radar coverage out in front of a task force like this. I would not be at all surprised to learn that those carriers have turned about and are now approaching our position. Once the British get wind of something they will be fairly diligent in pursuing it.”
“We should not allow that contact to re-acquire our position,” said Karpov. “We will lose the element of surprise altogether.”
The Admiral sighed, nodding. It was beginning, he thought. Those first rounds from the 100mm cannon on the nose of the ship were just the opening tapping of a drum heralding the overture that was now about to commence. He had been listening to his ship this last day like a conductor might listen backstage to his orchestra as it tuned before the concert. All the various instruments were quietly playing and tuning themselves, still abuzz with the news he had given them. Yet he saw how his officers gathered them into smoothly functioning groups again, like the first violin sounding the ‘A.’ It was not long before the discordant notes soon fell into harmony again, and the ship continued on, carrying out its daily evolutions with smooth efficiency. Now it was time to step on stage. The curtain was about to rise.
“Mister, Fedorov,” the Admiral turned to his navigator. “What is the range of the radar the British would be using on that plane?”
Fedorov had to reach for a well thumbed volume on his desk, quickly looking up the information in the index. “160 kilometers at best, depending on conditions, sir.”
“Will they see us through our ECM jamming?”
Fedorov slapped his forehead, suddenly remembering. “We’ll be jamming all the wrong frequencies, sir! All our equipment is set to oppose modern day radar sets. We’ll have to re-calibrate to lower frequencies…” He had his nose back in the book again, his finger tracing down the fine print. “The wavelength would be around 7.5 meters.”
“Mister Rodenko?”
Rodenko was already working his board. “I’ll need to make some adjustments,” he said quickly. 7.5 meters was at VHF in the range of 30 to 300 Megahertz. Some of his equipment no longer even included dial positions at those wavelengths, as they had not been used for radar signals for many years. Rodenko was working his T-181 data reception unit, and he could see that these adjustments would take some time. He put two men on the job, somewhat angry that they had not considered this probability earlier. “We’ll need some time, sir,” he reported.
“I trust there is nothing wrong with your MR-90 radars?” Karpov was referring to the ships medium range air defense guidance radar sets for the ship’s SA-N-92 Surface to Air Missile systems, (SAMs).
“Of course not,” said Rodenko. “But that SAM will only range out 30 to 90 kilometers depending on the elevation of the target. Can they see us before that?”
“Very likely,” said Fedorov. “That old radar was one of the longest range sets deployed in the war, out to 100 nautical miles. I am sorry we did not consider this.”
“Don’t worry, Mister Fedorov,” said Volsky. “We will adjust the equipment in time. For the moment, however, we will just have to use our long range SAM systems. Perhaps we can discourage this plane with a near miss detonation.”
“We would have seen the plane earlier if we had one of the KA-40 helos up,” Karpov admonished.
“True,” said the Admiral, “but how much aviation fuel do you think we are carrying, Captain? We should use our helicopters judiciously. Remember, we are going to also have to consider the German U-boats. They may think we are a British ship, yes? In effect, we are at war with everybody, the British, Americans and Germans alike. And these U-boats are very quiet, as Mister Tasarov will attest.”
“When submerged and operating on battery power they will be difficult to hear on passive sonar,” said Tasarov. “Even the Americans could not find some of our old diesel submarines on occasion.”
“Very well, we were caught unprepared at the outset, but when Mister Rodenko sorts out his equipment we will neutralize this British radar. For now…”
“Contact range one-eight-zero.” said Rodenko. “We can engage with the S-300s in a few minutes. They range out to 150 kilometers.” These missiles would streak out at a blistering speed exceeding Mach 6.0 and deliver a large 150kg warhead if it got anywhere near the target, sending a hail of withering shrapnel in all directions. They were so accurate that they could even be used against short range ballistic missiles.
If he fired, the Admiral had little doubt that he could shoot this plane down, yet he hesitated, a strange thought entering his mind, the echo of his good friend Dr. Zolkin’s warning. Who was the pilot? Did he survive this war, or was he one of the thousands that perished in the conflict? Was he married? Would he have sons after the war, and who would they be? If he killed this man, how many others might never be born in the years stretching out from this day forward? H
e realized this was war, yet he might not simply be extinguishing a single life here, but whole generations that would follow this man into the future. Yet it was impossible to know any of this, and an agonizing and debilitating torture to consider it all at a moment like this. He had to act.
“Contact approaching 150 kilometers,” said Rodenko. “They’ll have us on their radar soon, sir.”
“Mister Samsonov,” he said quietly. “Activate our long range air defense system and target the contact with a single S-300 and fire.”
“Aye, sir.” Samsonov had not the slightest inkling of regret or recrimination in his mind. He was a naval gladiator, trained to react and fight in the split second time spans of modern combat. It was as if he was no more than a human extension of the ship itself, one that could simply hear and execute the orders he received. He toggled his Air Defense System on, enabled the forward battery and pressed the button to fire a single missile. There was a loud warning claxon, and then they saw the missile fire and streak away, climbing loudly up at an amazing rate of speed to vanish in the low overhead cloud cover seconds later.
Over a hundred kilometers away, Fulmar N4029 of 800 Squadron off the carrier Furious had just noted a contact on their radar set. Lieutenant James Beardsley called it out to the pilot, Lt. Seymour Burke. “Looks like we’ve got her,” he said. “I’ll get a message off.” He began keying in the sighting through his code set… ‘Contact bearing two-nine-two, speed 20, course-’
At that moment the pilot saw something oddly out of place in the gray sky ahead of him, yet before he could even think to consider what it was the object flashed up through a bank of clouds and seemed to leap at the plane. “My god!” His instinctive prayer was cut short, along with his flying mate’s contact signal when the S-300 ignited its warhead and literally blew the Fulmar fighter to pieces.
Burke and Beardsley were dead. They were supposed to have flown off Furious this very day, escorting a flight of Albacore torpedo bombers in to strike the German occupied harbor at Petsamo on the North Cape of Norway. There they were to meet a group of German Me-109 fighters lying in wait and sustain damage that would see them ditch their plane at sea six miles off the coast. They would have been spotted, alive in a dinghy, by one of the Albacores they had been escorting, but they were never seen again, and were listed as KIAs a few days later.
So Admiral Volsky’s worrisome thoughts about them were of no consequence, though he could not have known that when he gave the order to fire. Burke and Beardsley had met their rendezvous with death after all, yet in a way neither of them could ever have imagined possible. All that was denied them were those last cold hours alone together in their dinghy on the frigid Arctic Sea, the hope they may have clung to in those first frantic moments as they struggled to inflate their raft, the words and thoughts they may have exchanged with one another, and the long, freezing death they most likely endured when they finally realized that there was no ship coming for them on that that grim morning. Instead they vanished from the continuum in a flash of violence with scarcely a second to know what had happened to them. Their lives had been checked off as scheduled on the ledger of Fate. Time was balancing her books.
Part VI
Breakout
“…Men still are men and not the keys of a piano.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From The Underground
Chapter 16
August 1–2, 1941
“The message was cut short, sir,” said the signalman. “And we’ve heard nothing more.”
“Nothing more?” Captain Bovell on Victorious considered that for a moment. The plane could have suffered radio failure, or worse, some sort of engine trouble that forced her to ditch. Damn luck if that were the case. There would be no way they could get to the men in time, or even find them now in the wide Arctic seas. And there was no way this plane could have been shot down by the contact-not at that range. He considered the possibility that they may have come upon a German Kondor and exchanged fire, but yet there would have been some notification of that. In the end he decided it had to be a radio outage, and went to inform Admiral Wake-Walker, hoping the plane would find its way home.
“No range was reported on the contact?” asked the Admiral.
“The signal was cut off, sir. But that plane should have been about here when we got this signal.” He pointed to a navigation chart. “And considering its aerial set can range out no more than a hundred miles, on a good day, that would put the contact somewhere here, sir. Perhaps a hundred and fifty miles south by southwest of our present position. That’s well within strike range for the Albacores.”
Designed as a replacement for the older Swordfish torpedo bombers, the Albacore had nearly twice the range of the old “Stringbags” as the Swordfish had been called. With a maximum range of 930 miles, it could strike targets over 300 miles out, using the rule of thumb that an aircraft’s strike range was about a third of its maximum. It was still a bi-plane in design, yet had a metal framework and fuselage and a more powerful and reliable engine.
Yet the Albacores had much to do if they were to ever equal the storied achievements of their older predecessor. The British had used Swordfish in the daring attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto, losing only two planes in exchange for hits on three Italian battleships. A few squadrons of the old Stringbags based on Malta had accounted for 50,000 tons of enemy shipping per month in the Med, and it was a Swordfish off the carrier Ark Royal that eventually put a torpedo into Bismarck’s Achilles heel, damaging her rudders and causing her to steam in fretful circles while the Royal Navy finally closed in for the kill.
“What type of ship was it?” asked Wake-Walker. “I can’t very well send off my squadrons only to find this is a lone commercial steamer.”
“There was no word as to type,” said Bovell. “But we passed it off as a steamer the first time, sir, and Anthony took a punch for that mistake. Thank god there were no casualties.”
The Admiral nodded, thinking that he had been a bit sloppy in this business up until now and wanting to get on top of the situation. He had orders to engage a cruiser, yet only to shadow if this were anything bigger. What was out there? Anthony had been hit by a fairly small caliber gun, enough to warn her off but not enough to do much damage. If this were Tirpitz he could understand why she might refrain from using her big 15 inch guns on a small, fast moving target. If it were Hipper or another cruiser, she might well have fired her 8 inch guns, but apparently did not. Her captain even reported the ship signaled him in English. What was that all about?
The very first report he had on this contact still stuck in his mind. The pilot said he could see no big turrets that would be obvious on a cruiser or anything larger. He did note several smaller guns, and at one point seemed to indicate the ship’s forward deck was covered with cargo hatches. Could this be another fast German commercial raider disguised as a merchant ship? They had been a persistent nuisance, like Raider-C, the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis. That ship looked like nothing more than a tramp steamer until it opened up with its six 5.9 inch naval guns.
On the other hand, the report from Anthony seemed to suggest this was a fairly large ship, and all those descriptions spoke of the threatening nature of her design and silhouette. He had to make up his mind, and decided if this was commercial traffic, all he had to lose by ordering a strike was a little aviation fuel. Yet if this were a German raider, then he stood to lose very much more if he let her slip away.
“Signal Furious,” he said quietly. “Have them spot an Albacore squadron first thing in the morning. We’ll keep steady on this intercept course and close the range somewhat tonight. Grenfell’s fighters can send out two radar equipped Fulmars to keep watch, but I want them at the extreme range of their equipment. Let’s not lose anyone else until we can coordinate a decent strike plan, and for that we’ll better light. Tomorrow morning we’ll get out there and have a look at this contact with something that can settle the matter if this is a German ship.”
Just after dawn on August 2nd, Admiral Volsky had little time to wonder what his weapons might do to successive generations. Rodenko's radars had spotted a substantial incoming contact, twenty four planes inbound at a fairly low altitude.
“It looks like we were too late getting a missile on that first contact,” said Karpov. “They have seen us and this is an obvious strike wave. We should engage it at long-range with the S-300 system as before. They will never know what hit them.”
Admiral Volsky considered that advice, but his thoughts strayed to his ammunition stores. His S-300 missiles were located up front, on the elevated forward prow of the ship, and mounted in vertical launch tubes, sixty-four missiles in all. He had used one to shoot down the enemy radar picket, and if he used the system again now in a normal barrage of sixteen or twenty-four missiles he would expend more than a third of his missile inventory for this battery. Once they were gone the ship would have to rely on its medium-range missile defense, or close in gun systems should they be attacked from the air again.
Modern combat at sea had been compressed into a few violent minutes and seconds where opposing forces would fling their arsenal of missiles at each other, with a decision final enough to end the conflict within the hour. Yet it was not hours, but long days, months, even years ahead for them that he had to think about now. Once these missiles were expended there would be no others to replace them. Yet he could not allow a single one of these planes to launch a torpedo that might have the slightest chance of striking Kirov. Their war had begun in earnest now, and he had little choice but to fire.
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