“At once, Mein Herr...!” Nehring answered immediately. “They have good maps – those boys will know what to do.”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” Reuters agreed, well aware of the levels or training and initiative Skorzeny had raised in his elite units, then added: “There may be a convoy of trucks and light armour in the lead – tell Witzig to avoid their panzers if he’s able and concentrate on the ‘soft’ targets: that should bring Thorne running straight into any ambush he cares to set up.” Another pause, then: “Also... advise Luftflotte HQ that all ‘no-fly’ restrictions are hereby rescinded! I want all unassigned aerial assets committed to locating the Hindsight group and vectoring 1FSK onto target. Whatever the cost, they must not be allowed to slip through our net...” he thought for a moment, glancing about at the particle-ridden air surrounding them, then continued “...On second thoughts, perhaps its best I speak to Kesselring personally... there’s something else he may be able to assist us with while we’re about it, and there may not be much more flying time left the way this bloody wind is building…”
“Jawohl, Mein Herr…!”
None the wiser in the world outside that command car, the 132nd Armoured Division Ariete, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler and elements of the 21st Panzer began to move off eastward to mount their full assault. A few kilometres to the rear of the assault force, several batteries of SPGs and conventional artillery pieces opened up, this time sending their barrages of 150mm shells high into the air and then down once more to earth on top of the enemy front lines.
At several airstrips that were part of the Axis marshalling yards near Cairo, two squadrons of helicopter gunships were given the orders they’d been waiting all morning for and staggered woozily into the air, their stub wings laden with rocket pods as they collected into a long, loose formation and turned away toward the east and the brilliance of the rising sun. Medium bombers and ground attack aircraft also started their engines as final checks were commenced in preparation for take-off. The word was out, and finally they would all be able to join the battle their fellow soldiers and pilots further north had already began at sunrise that morning.
Ain Sokhna lay on the western shores of Gulf of Suez, approximately 50km south of Port Taufiq. In Arabic its name meant ‘hot spring’ and was so called in reference to a sulphur spring at nearby Gabal Ataka, the highest peak in the Eastern Desert. The Egyptian settlement there wasn’t large – there was no real industry there, and no real reason for many to live in that area considering its proximity to the far greater attractions of employment and entertainment in nearby Suez.
There was, however, a small refuelling and maintenance facility that had been set up by the Royal Navy. It was little more than two long and narrow jetties (solidly constructed all the same) that projected out into the waters of the gulf more than five hundred metres. Beneath the wooden planking of their walkways, steel pipes carried fuel oil to thirsty warships from several large, partially-buried fuel tanks on shore.
A scattering of anti-aircraft emplacements – both medium and heavy – guarded against air attack, but activity there had generally been scarce: the Luftwaffe and the RAI had – generally-speaking – preferred to concern themselves with far juicier targets around Port Taufiq or in Suez itself.
German aerial reconnaissance of the facility had revealed little in recent weeks. Important targets such as the aircraft carrier Formidable or her attendant cruiser and destroyer screen usually stayed well out to sea where radar was far less susceptible to the effects of ground clutter and there was far better warning of enemy aircraft approaching. Most of the images returned to their intelligence units in Cairo showed only a few tugs and small tenders – tiny ships against which it was barely worth the bother of launching an attack.
Something those same reconnaissance aircraft had never seen was the long, deep trench the RN had also dredged into the sand on the opposite side of the two jetties, far away from the huge fuel tanks. Cutting 500m up the beach at right angles to the shoreline, construction of a dry-dock facility had been started prior to the outbreak of war and had continued at a slow pace ever since. Everything had ceased after the fall of Cairo, but the trench itself remained nevertheless, along with an unfinished framework of metal on either side originally intended for dockside cranes and various other pieces of large lifting and repair equipment.
Huge sections of sand-coloured camouflage netting covered it all now, forming an excellent defence against the prying eyes of high-flying German aircraft, and although the water-filled trench would never see use in its intended purpose as a site for the repair of British warships, it had nevertheless found a different, final use in those last, dark days of British occupation in Egypt.
Laid down at Walker-on-Tyne in 1913 by the huge British manufacturing company of Armstrong Whitworth, HMS Malaya was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship that had seen action in both World Wars. With a length of 197m and a beam of 27.5m, she displaced over 33,000 tonnes and carried a main armament of eight fifteen-inch (380mm) rifled guns in four twin turrets. Malaya had fought against the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland, taking eight hits and suffering major damage and casualties.
She’d served with distinction in the first year of the Second World War, hunting for German surface raiders all over the North Atlantic, and had been one of only two ships of the British Home Fleet to survive the day of the German invasion of Great Britain of September 11, 1940. Damaged by U-boats while enroute to interdict invasion forces on that first day, she’d been forced to withdraw and subsequently avoided the destruction by the Kriegsmarine superbattleships Bismarck and Tirpitz that had been the fate of the rest of the Home Fleet in what later became known as the Second Battle of the Dogger Bank.
Damaged and out of effective combat, Malaya had been ordered back across the North Atlantic as the German Army poured into England, sweeping all aside before them. By the time of the surrender of British Home Forces at the end of that same year, the venerable old battleship had already been laid up the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for repairs and a major refit as a ‘guest’ of the neutral but sympathetic United States’ Government.
The HMS Malaya that had sailed out of her camouflaged sanctuary at Ain Sokhna that morning, upon first news of the Axis attacks, was a very different beast to the vessel that had steamed up the Hampton Roads for repairs two years earlier as England’s fate still hung in the balance. Her 15-inch guns remained, but the rest of her previously obsolescent secondary and tertiary armaments had all been stripped away to be replaced by new and far more effective weapons of American design.
Even then, the four huge turrets that housed her main armament had also been redesigned to make them more efficient and to allow greater elevation to improve range. Newer and better radars had been installed, along with a suite of Bell Labs analogue fire control computers to aid gunnery. The battleship that had cruised north-east toward Suez that morning as dawn broke across the gulf was a markedly different beast to the vessel that had squared up against the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland in 1916.
There’d been little use for Malaya prior to these final assaults on Suez. Even with improvements to her gunnery and ammunition, her armament couldn’t range more than perhaps forty kilometres or so inland and there’d therefore previously been no targets within range of her eight huge guns.
That had all changed now however as the huge ship cruised as close into shore as her captain dared off the beaches of Al-Adabiya on the south-western outskirts of Suez. Three anti-aircraft destroyers shadowed her, standing further out to sea so as to remain out of range of enemy fire from the nearby shoreline. Rebel bands by all accounts controlled great swathes of the city and the huge majority of the tens of thousands of refugees surrounding Suez, if not actively aiding the uprising, certainly weren’t raising a hand to prevent it.
Intermittent rifle fire and the occasional rocket-propelled grenade did indeed reach out toward Malaya as she motored slowly along at little more than seven or eight kno
ts, a few hundred metres off shore. Rifles and machine guns were worse than useless against her armoured hide however, and even rockets – those few that were in fact fired with enough accuracy to actually hit the ship – weren’t powerful enough to penetrate an armoured hull of hardened steel that was in places up to thirty-five centimetres thick.
Any fire directed against the battleship was also answered in no short order by her secondary 5-inch gun turrets and by the multitude of 76mm and 40mm light batteries mounted around her superstructure – firepower that was more than adequate in dealing with any direct threat she was likely to encounter from the rebels on shore. After ten minutes or so of firing away at Malaya to no great effect and receiving a punishing bombardment in return, those that were left quickly chose discretion as the better part of valour on that particular occasion and the battleship was subsequently left well enough alone.
Her main guns had remained silent up until that point, but those four huge turrets turned almost in unison now as coordinates for her first fire mission were relayed across from the command centre on Formidable. The hitherto undetected assault force McTavish and Jones had discovered west of the Agruda defences was well within range and its reported size had been deemed more than worth the risk of revealing the ship’s existence. Five minutes after the first report had come through, the starboard gun of her A-turret rose almost to full elevation and discharged a single 870 kilogram, fifteen-inch high explosive shell.
Hurtling into the air at well over 700 metres per second, the huge shell reached a height of nine thousand metres at the zenith of its ballistic arc before gravity finally took hold and began to draw it back down to earth. Even as it reached the halfway point of its ninety-second journey however, radar fitted above Malaya’s turrets had already tracked the path of the projectile and passed the data on to the battleship’s new gunnery computers. That same huge gun barrel, having lowered completely to reload, returned to a slightly lesser angle of elevation a moment later as the other seven rose quickly to match it. Another second or two and the mighty Malaya released a full broadside to port, clouds of black smoke and orange flame rolling away from the muzzles as eight more high explosive shells hurtled into the clear blue sky.
The sight of a battleship firing was a sight to behold indeed – one that initially drew cheers from some rebels watching on the shoreline as they mistakenly believed the ship to have blown up. They soon realised their mistake upon hearing the deafening ‘ripping linen’ sound of shells passing overhead on their way to the north-west, and those few who’d been thoughtless enough to break from cover under that misapprehension were quickly shown the error of their ways by the gunners manning Malaya’s lighter batteries.
The command vehicles hadn’t advanced with the rest of the assault force. They were in direct communication with the unit commanders in any case via radio link, and there was no great requirement to expose the Reichsmarschall or any of the other high-ranking officers present to any unnecessary danger. The group had instead prudently moved off a few kilometres to the north, deeming the relocation sufficient to avoid any return fire that might’ve been sent their way. The units moving forward, it was reasoned, had now put enough distance between themselves and their original position to also reduce any threat of casualties. As was often the case in modern warfare however, that particular plan didn’t survive ‘contact’ with their enemy.
Neither the command staff working aboard Formidable nor the officers of Malaya could ever have been considered fools. There was no doubt in their mind that whatever force had been spotted by McTavish and his wingman shortly before their own presumed destruction would have had good reason to assume that surprise had been lost and that there was therefore a very good likelihood of some kind of reaction aimed at supporting the Agruda defences.
Working on the assumption that this would most likely result in the Wehrmacht immediately launching a full assault, the coordinates McTavish had provided were quickly discarded as being no longer relevant. Instead, Malaya had fired her initial ranging shell intentionally short, aiming for the broad, featureless expanses of ‘no-man’s-land’ along the Cairo-Suez Road that stretched from the Genaiva Road intersection in the west through to the Allied Lines near Agruda in the east.
Reuters, Schiller and Nehring were again outside standing outside that same Marder communications vehicle as it stood parked at the crest of a small sand dune, and were currently surveying the advance through field glasses as the mass of tanks and armoured vehicles moved inexorably eastward, collectively sending a huge, towering plume of dust high into the air. They all immediately spotted the thundering detonation as that first 15-inch shell struck – albeit from a safe distance – and they all also felt the ground shudder beneath them as earth and rocks were thrown many metres into the air around the point of impact.
It was short – markedly so – and their initial reaction was one of minor relief that very suddenly and quite emphatically turned to fear and surprise as eight more shells slammed into the desert perhaps a minute later across a wide arc, all of them landing far closer to the leading echelons of tanks and IFVs. The concentration of the enemy’s guns was intentionally quite open – the 2nd Corps was spread across a front several kilometres wide after all – but the power of any one of those 15-inch shells could be devastating indeed.
“Very clever,” Reuters growled softly, grudging in his concession to the intelligence of the commander on the opposing side. “They’ve no forward observers close enough to give them accurate reports on fall of shot, but they don’t really need them… if we’re attacking, we have to come through their fire to attack, maybe suffering heavy casualties in the process... the only other alternative is to break off the attack, and either way, they score a victory of sorts against us.”
“What shall we do, Mein Herr?” Nehring enquired carefully, reluctant to make any overtly autonomous decisions with the commander of the entire Wehrmacht standing right next to him.
“What shall we do…?” Reuters repeated coldly as a rhetoric question, fixing the man with a hardened stare. “We shall continue the attack. We have three divisions moving forward out there… more than thirty thousand men … and our opponent – at best – has no more than a division facing us: a poorly-equipped one at that. They do not have the air power to seriously trouble us, nor do they have any effective artillery to throw against us either – other than the heavy guns we see in action presently.” He gave a faint shrug that belied the concern and guilt he inwardly felt regarding the German lives he was about to knowingly sacrifice. “We will lose some men, it’s true, but nowhere near enough to interfere with victory here or anywhere else along the front: … the assault continues…”
“Jawohl, Mein Herr…” This time, the response form Nehring was decidedly less enthusiastic.
“How many shells does a battleship carry for its main guns?” Schiller mused beside him, mostly speaking to himself.
“Hundreds…” Reuters replied in sombre tones, some of his real feelings showing through then. “Enough to continue firing for at least an hour… if we allow it...” His tone suggested that was something the Wehrmacht would indeed try to prevent.
“We can only hope Herr Kesselring can do something about that.” Schiller observed, raising his eyebrows.
“General Kesselring will be hoping he can … for his own sake …!” Reuters snarled softly, staring out through the field glasses once more.
Gaetano Cafarelli flinched as another monstrous salvo of 15-inch shells landed some distance away, reacting first to the shudder of the earth beneath the vehicle and then again, a few seconds later, as the roar of their impact reached his vehicle at the speed of sound accompanied by the gusting heat of dissipating blast waves. Even though the closest strike had been over a kilometre away, the sheer force of it was staggering as eight huge fountains of earth, stones and debris were thrown high into the air to rain down once more across a wide area.
The fire wasn’t accurate; that much was cle
ar from the haphazard way in which the bombardment had been moving toward the assault’s lead elements. The tanks and armoured vehicles pushing forward were completely in the open and would therefore have been perfect targets for artillery under the control of any forward observers that might’ve been present. This terrifying bombardment however had landed its first shots into no-man’s-land, well short of the assault, and although it was obvious the intention was to ‘walk’ fire back into the German advance, it was also easy to deduce that had there would’ve been no need for such a practice had there been reliable contact between Allied troops at the front and the British battleship – with shells this large being fired, it had to be a battleship.
The next salvo struck the advancing forces fair and square, but initial casualties were relatively light for all that. The Wehrmacht that had invaded Britain two years before had been mechanized to some extent – more so than most of its adversaries, that was certain – but it nevertheless had still been forced on occasion to rely on foot soldiers and even horse-drawn vehicles (particularly in rear echelon areas where combat was unlikely).
The Axis forces now operating in North Africa however were almost entirely mechanized, and combat units were generally a mix of panzers and infantry fighting vehicles backed up by armoured cars and self-propelled artillery. There were still examples of ‘conventional’ towed artillery pieces in use but numbers were growing smaller and smaller as newer, mobile replacements continued to bolster the Afrika Korps in ever-growing numbers.
That fact certainly formed some moderate advantage for the advancing German and Italian forces at that moment as the huge shells began to detonate amongst their ranks. Certainly a panzer or Marder IFV would still be destroyed by a near- or direct-hit, however any armoured vehicles operating outside that devastating primary blast zone – which in truth was actually relatively small – was still able to carry on mostly without disruption. By comparison, troop formations travelling on foot or in unprotected trucks would have been decimated at far greater ranges by blast and shrapnel.
Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2) Page 70