IF AIR COVER POSSIBLE, WE ARE READY TO PROCEED, Laborde signaled to seal the deal. The plan had been to always operate under the protection of land based aircraft from Sicily, Italy and Greece, but Lütjens was not concerned. German intelligence had also counted the planes on Crete, and they were not deemed a major threat. So they would go hunting, and the fleet turned, riding high seas from the passing storm front, and surged south through the grey squall lines in search of their prey. What they would find, if they stayed on that heading unimpeded, was the flotilla of wounded warriors, Queen Elizabeth, Malaya and the damaged cruisers.
Aboard Argos Fire, MacRae watched the signal returns on the radar change their track and head south.
“They’ve come round to 170,” said Healey as he watched the radar screen. “Speed has increased to 28 knots.”
Morgan gave the Captain a look. “Well it seems we’ve invited more trouble than we needed,” he said.
“Aye, that we have. In for a penny, in for a pound. How many ships in that battlegroup?”
“I’m reading 22 separate contacts, with at least five or six large capital ships based on signal strength and density. They all just executed a well coordinated turn, and they move like silk. I don’t think we’ve seen all the speed they’re capable of yet sir.”
“The ship will come to full battle stations. Signal the British and advise them of the new heading and speed. Let me see the situation on a map, Mister Healey.”
“Aye sir, this is the position of the enemy fleet…” Haley pointed to the digital map screen to the left of his main station. “And this is the British fleet bound for Alexandria.”
“A pair of old battleships, three cruisers and five destroyers, and all of them at 16 knots. Be sure those ships are notified of the new threat.”
“It won’t do them much good,” said Morgan. “I do have good ears still, and I’ve been in on all the signals traffic between the British fleet units. Queen Elizabeth has a problem with her turbines, and she’s lost a boiler due to that bomb hit. Warning or not, that ship isn’t going to make any more speed than those sixteen knots, and I doubt any of the other ships will leave her behind.”
“I don’t like the looks of that,” said MacRae. “The enemy has more than enough speed to intercept the British if they get wind of them.”
And they did.
Chapter 23
There was trouble on the wind that day, swift before the spinning storm as the Franco-German fleet turned south. The long, grey bow of the Normandie was breaking the swells easily, the massive bulk of the ship taming the heavy seas as the squalls slowly dissipated. Admiral Jean Laborde was on the bridge with the ship’s Captain, Charles Martel, a man with a very famous name. He was a tough, disciplined officer, and ready for battle at any time, so it was no surprise that Captain Martel was also quickly given the nickname Le Marteau from his namesake, Charles “the Hammer’ Martel, the man who had stopped the invasion of the Moors into Europe at the Battle of Tours.
Now the hammer was eager to fall on his perceived enemies, the British fleet that had so boldly and ignominiously attacked the French off Mers el Kebir. They had moved south to find the two destroyers that had been detached, seeing that the Vautor was a total loss, with heavy casualties among her crew of 125 men. It was just one more slap in the face insofar as Martel was concerned.
“The British certainly gave the Italians a lesson they will not soon forget,” he said to the Admiral.
“And they will likely sit in La Spezia now for the rest of the war!” Laborde shook his head, his eyes following the rise and fall of the distant silhouette of the Dunkerque. “But I seem to recall that we gave the British a little lesson ourselves off Dakar. Yes?”
“We did indeed, sir.”
“Tell me, Captain. What do you make of all this talk of these new British rockets?”
“Hard to make any sense of it, Admiral. Agile reports it was a rocket, low on the water and very fast, and there is no mistaking its effectiveness. One hit and Vautor was a flaming wreck, or so I was told.”
“How many men were rescued?”
“Sixty-three, most all transferred to the Strausbourg now. She’ll be coming up to take her station on out port side in due course.”
“Naval rockets… Agile saw nothing else?”
“No sir. No sign of an enemy ship on any horizon.”
“Then it must have been a plane. I have heard the Germans are working on weapons like this—radio controlled bombs.”
“They saw no aircraft, sir.”
“Probably ducked into a squall line. How could any ship fire at a target it could not see? Captain Degarmo on the Agile is not blind.”
Laborde could not be faulted for the assumptions he was making. Over the horizon radar was not something that would have come readily to his mind as a possible solution. French investment in radar technology was sparse at best. By 1935 a single French ship had been equipped with a “collision avoidance device,” and on land the French had tinkered with the “barrage electronique.” They had purchased a few radar sets from the British, and one of these was installed on the Normandie, but amazingly, it was disregarded as a useful device, and switched off. Strausbourg had an air warning set installed and operational, but saw no threats.
“There is one thing I do not understand, Admiral.” Captain Martel was adjusting the fit of his gloves. “If the British have these weapons, why is it we saw nothing of them at Mers el Kebir or Dakar?”
“Possibly a new development. It may be limited in deployment, and only available on a few ships. The British flagship is here, or so say the Italians. It was HMS Invincible that caught the Italians as they withdrew, but it used the good old fashioned way of doing battle at sea, those nice big 16-inch guns.”
“Perhaps we’ll get a crack at that ship today, sir. I’ll match our twelve 15-inch guns against her nine any day and come off the better man.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Laborde. “Well with this weather clearing, let’s get spotter planes up and verify the position of this enemy fleet. Notify the Germans that we will launch at 15:00.”
“Very good sir.”
* * *
MacRae was pacing on the bridge, his deliberate, steady movement from one side to the other like the motion of a pendulum.
“Keep that up and you’ll wear a path in the carpeting,” said Morgan, but he turned his head to see that Elena Fairchild had come up to the bridge to see what was going on.
“Greetings, Mum,” he said politely.
“I heard the alarm,” she said. “What were we firing at this time?”
MacRae drifted over, speaking in a calm, quiet voice. “A pair of French destroyers were thinking to get cozy with us a while back. I sent them a message to discourage that thought, but it seems my strategy backfired.”
“In what way?”
“We’ve another 22 ships heading our way now, and here we are between the wolves and the sheep, just one little sheep dog on the watch.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The British are about 20 kilometers south of us, and we’ve taken up the radar and air defense picket for this detachment. They’re heading for Alexandria—the ships that took damage from that air strike.”
“That was unfortunate,” said Fairchild. “Why couldn’t we stop that attack?”
“Oh we might have—that is if you don’t mind my using damn near every SAM we have aboard. The Russians took a bite out of them as well, but it was clear they were trying to husband their missile inventory as well.”
“And what about the destroyers?”
“It looks as though we put one under, and that has the rest of the lot a wee bit bothered. They’ll be on our far horizon in fifteen minutes at the speed they’re making. So I sent down a message to let you know we may have to do some serious shooting, and very soon.”
“Well how are we fixed for missiles ourselves?”
“On the SSMs, we’ve seventeen Gealbhans remaining.”
/> “Seventeen?”
Twenty two enemy ships… Seventeen missiles. The mathematics did not give her any comfort.
“What about the deck guns?” She folded her arms, clearly unhappy.
“Oh, Aye, we’ve plenty of ammunition for those. But Mister Haley there says we’ve a good number of heavy ship sin that formation, and a 4.5-inch gun won’t make much of an impression on their battleships. We can use it to fend off a destroyer rush, should it come to close quarter action like that.”
“A destroyer rush?” She gave him a long look. “Walk with me, Captain, if you please.”
“My pleasure…” The two exited the aft bridge hatch, with several crewmen looking over their shoulders as they went, and Mack Morgan giving one a big grin until he heard Miss Fairchild’s voice calling for him as well.
They moved out to the officer’s wardroom behind the bridge, and Elena closed the door, folding her arms. “What in god’s name are we doing, Gordon?”
“We’re screening the British fleet. That’s what we agreed to do when we took up this post.”
“Where is the Russian ship?”
“Kirov? They’re doing the same for Admiral Tovey’s detachment, off to Benghazi. I can’t say as I like the idea of dividing the fleet like this, but the ships we’re screening all took hits in that air action, so it seems they want to get them safely to Alexandria. It’s really my fault, Elena. I took a pot shot at a pair of destroyers getting nosey, and put one under. Perhaps if I’d waited and used the deck guns I might have driven them off and avoided the situation we’re in now.”
“Perhaps,” said Morgan, “but they may have just come at you all the same. I put him up to it, Mum. I gave him a good nudge in the ribs about letting those destroyers get too close.”
“True enough,” MacRae agreed. “But the responsibility is still mine. I’m Captain of Argos Fire, and it was my decision.”
“Well what about the British?” said Elena. “They have battleships south of us in that detachment, correct? They can defend themselves?”
“Aye, they’ve Queen Elizabeth and Malaya south of us, with three cruisers, and all with damage. They’ll fight if it comes to it, but I think we owe them the benefit of anything we can do.”
“What do you propose?”
“A sheep dog isn’t worth the hair on his back if he’ll cut and run from the wolves, Elena. We started this, I started it, and there it is. I can’t see as though I’d do anything different, except perhaps ask the good Admiral if he’d mind assigning us a carrier. But it seems they deemed the air threat low on this heading. I suppose he was correct, until I stuck my thumb in it.”
“So now what? That doesn’t answer my question, Gordon.”
“So now we fight, Madame. It’s just that simple. A man in a bar got in my face and I gave him a good hard shove on the shoulder. Who knew he’d come at us with half of windy Wales?”
“How many missiles can we afford to use here?”
“I suppose that will depend on how much backbone they have out there. We might hit them, and back them off if we do it hard enough. Then again, they just might get their dander up and come at us with everything they have.”
“That’s what it looks like now,” said Morgan.
“Damn,” Elena swore. “Seventeen missiles? Alright, Gordon. You can use seven. Those missiles are all that stands between us and a re-commissioning of Argos Fire as a cruise liner.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be that bad, but I take your point.”
“What about the helicopters?”
“I was just going to get round to that. We can put Hellfires or Sea Skuas on the X-3s, These are smaller missiles that might hurt their lighter ships if we need them. And they’ve a mean chain gun.”
“Use them if necessary, but keep them safe. Those ships have flak guns, don’t they?”
“That they do, so the Hellfires may not be the best choice here, They range out only 5 kilometers.”
“What about my birthday present?” said Mack Morgan.
“Birthday present?”
“Elena purchased a pair of Hellfire AGM-114N Thermobaric missiles from the Americans. They call them MACs.” He smiled. “They’ll suck the bloody air right out of one of those destroyers.”
“Wonderful,” said MacRae. “Eight kilometer range. No, we’d better use the Sea Skuas. We’ve four for each helo, sixteen in all since we have missile stocks left over from the bird we lost in the Caspian Sea. They’ll range out to 25 kilometers, which will be well outside ship flak defense of this era.”
“Alright,” said Elena. “Two helicopters, with four missiles each. The rest stay in the hold.”
“And so then what’ll we do if the 15 odd missiles you’re giving me won’t turn that fleet around? This is war, Elena. When we fire people over there are going to die, and when they shoot back there’s a chance people will get hurt or killed on our side as well. You brought the ship here, What did you expect?”
“Have the British been warned?”
“Fifteen minutes ago.”
“Alright then…. Seven missiles. Eight on the helos. That’s all we can do for them here. Understand?”
MacRae looked at Mack Morgan, then slowly nodded. “As you wish. I know what’s in your mind. It was a bloody long war, but if we beat these fellows now, we won’t have to face them again later. It takes three or four years to build another battleship.”
“I understand, but we have to be cautious. Signal the British that we will engage, but we’re just one ship, a good ship no doubt, but we can’t win the whole thing for them. They’ll have to understand that.”
Back on the bridge the crew was silent as the three came in. They had seen Miss Fairchild in this mood before, and knew she wasn’t happy. Yet the Captain took his seat and immediately issued orders.
“Mister Dean, send down to the helo deck. I’ll want two X-3s up with Sea Skuas in ten minutes. Ready on the GB-7 system. Two missiles please. One minute delay between shots. Target the center of their formation so the whole lot gets a good look at the results.”
“Aye sir. Ready on GB-7.”
“You may fire.”
Dean looked at his CIC officer and seconded the order. The warning claxon sounded, the missile fired, and the battle was joined at 15:40, with the enemy fleet at 35 kilometers range, not far over the grey horizon.
* * *
“Sir! Mainmast reports a plane on the horizon. Very fast, sir, and dead ahead!”
“Sound General quarters,” said Laborde, looking at his Captain. “A spotter plane? Are ours in the air yet?”
“We’ve only just launched, sir.”
“Shoot the enemy plane down.”
Several destroyers posted well out in the van were already firing, but the effort was futile. They could simply not sight on a weapon moving at Mach 3, or have any chance of hitting it. Their only hope was to throw up such a wall of flak that the missile might run into something, but with only this one target, the threat did not seem to warrant such action. Thirty seconds later Admiral Laborde and Captain Martel saw the new British weapon.
As if the men off the Vautor were cursed, the missile locked on to the ship they had been transferred to after being fished out of the sea, the battlecruiser Strausbourg, cruising off the port side of the Normandie. The missile had been programmed for a popup and dive maneuver, or it might have blasted right into the forward face armor of the A turret. Instead it struck the base of the conning tower, but found a sturdy structure there, with 270mm armor, over 10.5 inches of steel that had been designed to stop a shell weighing many times the 200kg warhead on the missile. The resulting blast and fire were considerable, but the missile did not penetrate that armor. That said, the fire from the fuel and the shock of the kinetic impact were a severe blow to the ship, and on the bridge of Strausbourg, the crew were picking themselves up off the deck and seeing the thick pall of acrid smoke blinding their view forward.
The deadly duel of missile versus armor had begun
.
Chapter 24
It was a battle that Kirov had learned to fight in the crucible of war, the ship’s missiles matched against some of the toughest and most powerful battleships ever built. The Russians had already dueled with ships like King George V, Rodney and Nelson, fought the best battleships of Italy and then slugged it out with the Japanese Behemoth Yamato—all in previous worlds that had now spun into the ether with this latest revision of the history when the ship appeared in 1940. And Karpov had also faced down the American Navy in two eras, with a massive battle in 2021 against CVBG Washington, before displacing to 1945 to confront Halsey, Ziggy Sprague and the most powerful fleet the world has ever seen. There he dueled with the intrepid battleship Iowa, taking the most extreme measures in the struggle to prevail.
In all of this combat, the officers and crew of Kirov had learned hard lessons on the application and limits of their power. They had retuned their ECM jammers to frustrate the enemy radar and communications of this era, and reprogrammed their missiles to rise and strike the superstructures of the ships they targeted, thus avoiding the thick, heavy belt armor of the battleships. For some they had altered the angle of the missile attack to hit from above, to plunge through the thinner deck armor and into the heart of the enemy ship.
All these measures and tactics had made Kirov invincible on the sea, the shock and power of those supersonic SSMs stunning the unsuspecting Admirals and Captains of the 1940s, the searing heat and fire of nuclear warheads becoming the ultimate hammer the ship could wield. In these many duels, Kirov found that the one weapon the enemy had in abundance, and one that posed the greatest threat to the ship’s survival, was air power. It was the dogged, if suicidal attack of Admiral Hara’s carrier pilots that scored the first telling blow against the Russian ship, when Lieutenant Hayashi came screaming down to fly his plane into the aft reserve citadel command bridge of the ship, braving a missile defense that had sent so many of his comrades to their deaths.
Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) Page 20