Tide Of Fortune (Kirov Series Book 20)

by John Schettler

  “Which is why this coming battle could be decisive,” said Raeder. “We have spotted both Force H from Madeira and the British Home Fleet from the Azores heading south. From this it is clear to me that the British will risk everything here, as we must if we are to succeed.”

  “Then how will you proceed?” asked Goring.

  “I will not sortie with my heavy ships beyond the range of your land based air support. This is why it is essential that we get functional airfields on Fuerteventura and Lanzarote as soon as possible. Those become your new forward fields to support Phase II. Timeliness is a virtue, but the British fleet has short legs. They can only linger here a few days before they will have to withdraw to replenish. In the meantime, Döenitz, if your U-boats spot any enemy supply shipping, make it your primary target, just as we must now do everything possible to protect the few support ships we have. Gentlemen, let us see what the day brings. With any luck, we will have these first two islands secured by nightfall.”

  That was a sound prediction, for the Luftwaffe was now moving in the regiments of the 22nd Air Landing Division, veterans of the Balkans and the campaign in Syria. They had been spared the ravages of service on the Russian Front, as Hitler seemed entirely fascinated with these airborne operations. Volkov’s defeat, a third time at Ilanskiy, gave him pause, but there had been only three German casualties, and the loss of a few planes, mostly for mechanical reasons. He got his Ju-52s back, and a month later, they had moved to French North Africa for this operation. He also got several sets of plans and diagrams, the so called fruits of Volkov’s attack, which were really just information he extracted from his archive. As they all involved the development of jet aircraft and missiles, the Führer was delighted, and excused the military fiasco that had transpired during that operation.

  Now, on the 22nd of January, 1942, the British had been pushed out of Puerto Rosario, falling back to a small enclave around the fishing town of Puerte Lajas on a small bay three miles to the north. Their supplies now in German hands, it would not be long before the remainder of the 36th Brigade would cease to exist.

  Yet all these moves were merely preliminaries to the real contest on the board, infantry pawns being moved towards the center. Now it was time for the heavy pieces to sally forth, because everything would ride on the outcome of the impending naval duel.

  Chapter 32

  “We can’t sit here any longer,” said Tovey. “I’m afraid we will have to take action—either that of the fleet will have to withdraw without making a challenge, and I don’t think that would sit well with our Mister Churchill. I think I must fall back on my original plan, Admiral Volsky, but with one revision. The Germans are relying on these forward airfields, and last night we slipped a pair of cruisers up along the coast from Spanish Sahara to Tarfaya in Morocco. They were able to range on those airfields, and now I want a repeat performance, only with the much heavier guns of my battleships.”

  “Then you believe you can knock those fields out of operation?”

  “That will be the plan. We’ve put men ashore from a submarine yesterday, and they’ve moved into position to call in the fire. Up until now the Germans have operated with impunity. It’s time they learned the Royal Navy was here.”

  It was as good a plan as any, and even though the landward approach through the channel would expose the fleet to air power, Tovey hoped to directly challenge that as he went, taking those southernmost bases out.

  That night Nigeria led the way, racing up the coast to strike at Tarfaya. Behind her came Fiji, Trinidad, Mauritius and Kenya, with the Renown, Repulse and finally Valiant bringing up the rear of Force C, which was also attended by four destroyers. Farther south, Force H and the Home Fleet combined into one massive train of warships. Norfolk, Sheffield and Cumberland led the way, and then came the stolid line of battleships with Invincible in the van, followed by three more heavyweights, King George V, Prince of Wales, and Duke Of York. Five more destroyers escorted this group, keeping a watchful ear and eye for German U-Boats. At the rear of the column Argos Fire escorted the carrier group composed of Victorious, Glorious and the light carrier Argus. These forces would later break off with six destroyers and reconstitute Force H under Admiral Harwood as the carrier force. The escort carrier Audacity was the one missing Gosling, but her story has been told.

  Argos Fire was also using her sonar to find anything lurking beneath the sea, and quickly identified two contacts ahead in the channel. Four destroyers were dispatched to investigate, and near Tarfaya, they encountered U-331, which was hit and sunk, and then engaged U-431 with a hot rush of depth charges rolling into the dark sea. Then Force C followed, and heavy shells began to pound the airfields, catching a good number of Stukas on the ground and causing hellfire and chaos. A 15-inch shell would leave a substantial crater where it fell, and those fields would take days to recover, with some pilots giving up and simply looking for any suitable open ground nearby in place of the graded runways they had been using.

  The cruisers that hit Tarfaya would leave only 26 of 40 Stukas operational, and 21 of 39 Bf-109s. Further south, the much heavier pounding administered by the battlecruisers and Valiant would all but obliterate the German squadrons at El Aaiun. III StG 1 was completely destroyed, with not a single plane flyable from the 40 Stukas that were operating there, though eight would eventually be repaired and flown to safer airfields to the north. Two hours before dawn, the field was out of the battle. Realizing what was happening, Goring ordered his squadrons to get off to northern airfields as best they could. The Stukas made it up to Tan-Tan, and the 109s flew over the channel to the newly captured airfield at Tefia on Fuerteventura.

  The RAF prepared to throw what it had left into the plan for morning air cover over the fleet, but taking Volsky’s advice, they were to be called to the battle only after Argos Fire had its say. There, the ship that had traded its haze grey for dress whites was nonetheless ready for battle. The ship’s all seeing SAMPSON radar set was monitoring enemy air activity, which was reduced to a few night patrols that did not directly threaten the fleet. With that ship on the watch, Tovey would know exactly when to expect an enemy air attack, and his gunners would be well ready to face anything that got through.

  At a little past 06:00, the radar operators reported the first hostile surface contact. MacRae had those seven GB-7 SSMs available, and they had taken on another ten Harpoons that were aboard the replenishment ships anchored in the Azores. He decided to surprise the enemy with a little missile work in the pre-dawn hours.

  Kaiser Wilhelm would take the hit. A single GB-7 missile striking just forward of the main conning tower, and on the port side of the ship. It took out a 150mm secondary battery there, and a twin 20mm AA gun, but did little other damage. The fire that resulted was quickly controlled, and the ship was operational, though the effect on Raeder was most unsettling.

  An early riser, he was out on the weather deck of the Hindenburg after flying out in a seaplane to join the ship. He was watching the arrival of the French Force De Raid when he saw the missile coming. It was just that one missile, its bright tail clearly marking the way south to disappear over the edge of the sea. Somewhere beyond that horizon, the British fleet was coming for battle. The missile surprised him, for all reports indicated the Soviet raider was no longer in the Atlantic. With a sinking feeling he realized the British had to be firing this weapon, which seemed smaller, and lighter in impact than those reported by his other Kapitans in previous engagements. Could the Russians have given that rocket to the British, or was it simply the result of technology they had shared? If the latter, how could the British have developed their own naval rockets so soon?

  These questions were heavy on his mind when the news came of the pounding being received by those southern airfields. The enemy’s intentions were now clear to him. They hesitated to engage us under our air power, he thought, but damn if they haven’t come up with an answer to that. Both El Aaiun and Tarfaya will be inoperable for some time now, which
means the only forward airfields we can rely on for Phase II will be on the islands we’ve occupied. Yet they, too, could be obliterated by naval gun fire if I do not stop the British at sea. What to do?

  He looked over his shoulder, seeing the steel grey shadow of the Bismarck following him. Behind them steamed Richelieu and then the powerful dreadnought Normandie, with those twelve 15-inch guns compared to the eight 16-inchers he had on the Hindenburg. The Toulon group was about 40 kilometers away to the northeast, up the coast towards Tan-Tan. It would bring the battleship Jean Bart, the battlecruiser Dunkerque, with four cruisers and two destroyers. If ever there was a time to fight his decisive battle with the Royal Navy, this was that hour. Unlike Admiral Decoux in the Pacific, he had both the will and the skill to fight at sea, and long years of experience.

  This is what I came here for, he thought. This is why I insisted on accompanying the fleet, not only because we lost Admiral Lütjens the last time we face the British, but to avenge his death. I built this navy, and by God, this is my battle. He knew exactly what he was going to do, turning to Adler.

  “Let us hope that magazine is dry,” he said. “Sound battle stations. Signal Kaiser Wilhelm to lead the way ahead. The fleet will make a 15 point turn to port, and increase to battle speed.”

  “Aye sir!” There was fire in Adler’s eyes, and an equal measure of awe. He had jousted with Lütjens, always seeing his reserve and caution as weakness. In Raeder, however, he thought he recognized a real Fleet Admiral, and now his ardor for battle was back again.

  The Franco-German Fleet turned. Like a long steel snake, the lighter cruisers and destroyers fanning out to either side, and the sea white with bow froth as the ships picked up speed. Taken as a whole, it was a great sea dragon, fuming and frothing its way south with bad intent. And it would meet the Royal Bengal Tiger of the seas, the undisputed master of the Atlantic for generations. Once Tovey had stated as much to Admiral Volsky, in that very first meeting they would have before time rolled back on itself and wiped those days from her roll of fate.

  “I must tell you, Admiral,” he had said once to Volsky. “The oceans wide may appear to be the province of God, and God alone, but at this moment, as I stand here now before you, they are, in point of fact, the domain of the Royal Navy and the British Empire that built it.” Now that Empire was facing its gravest challenge in over a century. Its soldiers had sallied forth from England to the aid of France, only to be rolled up in the Tide of Fortune and swept into the English Channel, a broken and defeated remnant of the troops that had first answered the call to arms.

  The far flung outposts, long held and guarded by the Crown, were all in jeopardy now, Gibraltar and Malta lost, Egypt holding out, though still imperiled, the Levant contested, and naught but a scratch force holding Iraq. In the Pacific, Hong Kong, a British bastion since 1842, was taken by the enemy, and Percival’s forces were retreating towards Singapore, even while Japanese troops crossed the border from French Indochina into Burma, posing a direct threat to England’s greatest colonial holding, India. Now the Japanese were poised to strike at British mandates in the South Pacific, and holdings of allied states in New Guinea, the Solomons and Gilberts. It was one of the greatest empires the world had ever seen, and now it was all burning in the cauldron of war. All the dominions and protectorates of the Crown were under siege, and the one thing that had made this Empire possible was now at stake—the Royal Navy.

  The champions on either side had met before. Tovey had faced down Bismarck and Tirpitz in June of 1940, hounded the Hindenburg later as it broke out through the Faeroes Channel, then led the charge in the Mediterranean with Kirov at his side against the combined Axis fleets. Only the presence of that formidable Russian battlecruiser, and the unseen ally beneath the sea in Kazan, had enabled the Allies to pull through. Then Tovey, boldly rushing to the aid of HMS Rodney, had finally come face to face with Lütjens on the Hindenburg, and the two ships had fought to what might be considered a draw, though a badly shaken Kapitan Adler left the field to Tovey, and ran for the safety of a French port.

  Now here it came again, a capable and dangerous fleet commanded by an experienced and determined German Admiral. Here it came, with old friends of Britain turned to foes at its back, and though the Russian Admiral Volsky was still at his side, he stood empty handed, bereft of his command, and powerless to do anything more than offer his good advice.

  Kaiser Wilhelm had been sent forward, with Prinz Eugen following, out to investigate a morning sighting of a British carrier east of El Aaiun. The course they took would bring them right on the horizon of those four British destroyers that had been out after the German U-Boats. They skewered U-331, seeing its wreckage on the surface, and forced U-441 into an emergency dive, hounding her fiercely thereafter… Until the first points of light erupted from those shadows on the horizon, and deadly accurate German fire plunged into the sea all around them. One ship was hit, the wayward Scot in the L-class group, dubbed Loyal by the Scottish builders that had put the ship to sea. Prinz Eugen was throwing 8-inch shells at the flotilla, but something bigger struck that destroyer, one of the six 15-inch guns on the Kaiser Wilhelm.

  Seeing the fate of Loyal, the other destroyers made smoke and turned away, realizing something powerful was now stalking them, and thinking they would make an easy run to safety with their 36 knot speed. Much to their chagrin, the shadow following them would not be left behind, for Kaiser Wilhelm’s long hull and clipper bow made her the fastest battlecruiser in the world. The ship kept pace, with two forward turrets still firing, and would put another shell so close to Lightning that the shrapnel would kill a watchmen and two junior officers on the bridge.

  They were leading the Germans right towards Force C, and a line of cruisers were soon seen on the horizon ahead, the ships that had just pounded Tarfaya. The first rays of the morning sun were still an hour away, but the skies were already lightening. Kaiser radioed the sighting back to Raeder on the Hindenburg. “SIGHTED FOUR CRUISERS, Bearing 190, my position. No carrier or aircraft seen.”

  Raeder was coming at 30 knots, and so he ordered his lead element, Kaiser and Prinz Eugen, to effect a wide circle, looping away to the west, then north, northeast and around again to the south. That closed the range, for those cruisers were coming on for a fight, but it also cut the distance between Raeder’s heavy division.

  Back on the Invincible, Admiral Tovey was receiving regular position updated from the Argos Fire, and now had the distinct advantage of knowing the enemy position, each and every ship, as it came on the scene. The tall mainmast mounting that SAMPSON radar on Argos Fire could see aircraft out 400 kilometers. It could see and track over 1000 separate contacts at one time, and perform 150 position update tracks per second. In testing, A SAMPSON system in Portsmouth successfully tracked every aircraft arriving and departing from Heathrow, Stanhead, Gatwick, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam, all simultaneously, and without fail. It worked in conjunction with another system, the 3D S1850 radar. These were systems designed to find and track things like supersonic and ballistic missiles, and ships utilizing extensive stealth technology in their design. In this environment, they were infallible.

  Thus Tovey could see the picture ahead fed to him in those signals and updated on his plot table, the line of contacts coming up on those four cruisers, and he immediately ordered them to break south and fall back on the remainder of Force C.

  “At the very least, they’ll need a little help from HMS Valiant now,” he said to Volsky. “It’s time we got Home Fleet up there and into the fray.”

  Tovey could also see the threat to his carriers well before it became dangerous, and gave steering orders to his old protégé, Captain Christopher Wells aboard Glorious. The decks of the carrier division were already crowded with planes spotted for takeoff, for the Germans would not fail to send anything that could reach the scene from their more northern airfields. Stukas based at Tan-Tan could still range out south of Tarfaya, so they would likely be up soon, along w
ith the Do-17 and Ju-88 bombers from other fields to the north.

  The main British force was now coming due north at its best speed of 28 knots. Even though they were burning much more fuel, Tovey was at least comforted to know they were pointed in the right direction. His plan was to sweep up, with Argos Fire holding off the enemy air power as long as possible, and then fight his battle. But to do so he would have to operate for some time in the wide channel between the two long islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote and the African mainland. It would be a hundred miles now before he would find open seas to the west, where he might break to port and head for the Azores. If things went badly, he would not even have the speed to evade his enemy by turning about. Except for Invincible and his two battlecruisers, all the heavy ships on the other side were faster than his battleships. So it was do or die now, and Tovey set his mind on that doing.

  Chapter 33

  Kaiser Wilhelm and Prinz Eugen were effectively acting as Raeder’s scouting force. When they saw the four British cruisers turn to break away, Kapitan Werner Heinrich on the Kaiser smiled. He was an old cruiser man, and he knew that those four ships had turned for a reason. It was not because they feared engagement with the larger German warship. They were ordered to turn, he realized, which meant the main body of the enemy fleet was dead ahead. They were obviously intending to lead me after them into a nice little ambush, but Raeder himself knew what to do, and I would have done the same.

  “Say good bye to them, Schirmer,” he said to his Gunnery Officer. “That aft turret hasn’t cleared its throat.”

  “Aye sir,” said Schirmer, waiting until Kaiser had come round to open that firing arc before he blasted away with his aft turret, pleased to see that he put those two rounds very near one of those enemy cruisers. Nothing came back at them, as the range was out at 28,000 yards, and so he figured those were light cruisers out there, most likely with the British Mark XXIII 6-inch naval gun in triple turrets.