The navigator did not look up when he and his First Officer joined stepped to the table. If they continued on a straight line they should find their target but in these shallow waters one could never really just creep along the bottom. Too many wrecks, too many sandbanks. And the maps were half a year out of date. In the Gulf of Finland that counted.
The minutes crept along at a painfully slow pace.
‘At destination Kapitän’ The navigators voice was barely a whisper.
‘Up scope’ and do it slowly !’
Heller pressed his eyes against the viewfinder even before the periscope broke the surface’. Stop Underwater he circled slowly scanning for any visual sign of trouble.
‘ Any sounds …
None close Kapitän most at least 2 kilometers’.
Close enough to kill us if we get this wrong thought Jürgen’
Slowly he signalled the First officer to raise the periscope to break through the water’s surface.
There they were ! There was something to be said for night vision. Rudimentary as it was the periscope gave the user an advantage. Lined up in front of U 793 lay a series of warships. Jürgen wasn’t sure whether they were destroyers or something else. There was so much improvisation in the Soviet Navy. But this was only one of the targets. Somewhere to the left and partly behind the line of warships lay a major part of the Red Banner Fleet’s repair facilities. They were the other objective.
He leant back and motioned his First Officer to take a look. Cautious as ever, Helmut Jung slowly swung the periscope around in a full circle before settling in on the target. A quiet nod. They had arrived.
Jürgen hoped to God that the rest of the plan had worked as well so far. The Kriegsmarine had never attempted anything like this before simply because the odds had seemed to high. With the Red Banner Fleet largely immobilised during the siege of Leningrad, the Germans had after 1942 actively held back from bombing the stranded fleet in order to keep its sailors within the besieged city, adding nearly 30 000 mouths to the long list of those to feed. Now with the siege broken the Red Banner Fleet, now renamed the Baltic Fleet was out in force harassing German troops holding their positions close to the Baltic Sea and pinning down considerable Kriegsmarine assets. Now the table were about to be turned.
U 793 slowly surfaced and even before the water had completely drained from the command tower her gun crew was already scuttling towards the 10.5 cm gun on her bow. This was not standard issue for the experimental sub but had been taken from another U-boat and welded onto the little 250-ton vessel. Ten shots Jürgen had promised himself. Fired in quick succession was all he was willing to risk. That would give his Weapons Officer enough time to acquire targets for himself. There was surprisingly little noise in the night which made the first shot from the 10.5 sound all the louder. The bombardment lasted barely two minutes, aware of the danger the gun crew took less than 10 second to reload aim and fire. Five seconds later two torpedoes left their tubes. Jürgen watched for a few seconds while the gun crew scuttled back into the boat which was already sinking. So far so good.
Four hours later at near maximum speed, the motor gave way but he finally allowed himself to relax. They passed Kronstadt and were almost back in Finnish waters where the problem of Soviet interference was reduced. They had delivered their pinprick and they had made it.
What they did not know was the Kriegsmarine had delivered a series pinpricks to the Soviet Union that night. Every major harbour within Kriegsmarine reach: Murmansk in the Artic Sea, Sevastopol, Odessa and Nikolajew in the Black Sea all had visiting U-boats. The plan called operation Beeswarm, had been von Witzleben’s idea. With a certain degree of smugness he had announced the availability of six U-Boats not yet recalled to German bases. These formed the assault force in the Black Sea. The rest crept up the Baltic Sea and into the Artic Sea. The aim was simple to divert Soviet attention from the real attack – Operation Wintererwachen, the offensive into Byelorussia and Poland.
Four of the boats in the Black sea operation were lost either to Soviet countermeasures or their inability to get back to their Italian bases. The damage they did was minimal although Jürgen’s torpedoes and those of Vollmert’s of U-23 in Sevastopol sunk a destroyer and crippled a mine layer. Only the naval yards in Murmansk took any real damage. The real impact was psychological and here they achieved success. The amount of Soviet resources deployed within days to protect their naval bases dwarfed anything the Kriegsmarine could have hoped to pinned down by other means. It also shook the Red Fleet’s grip on the initiative in the war at sea and opened the way to the last major naval encounter in the Baltic Sea.
5am
October 10th
West of Byalstock
Byelorussia
Skorzeny’s tugged at his gear for the tenth time in as many minutes just like everyone else in the DFS-230 glider. Behind him, on the central seating rail that ran the length of the glider, the men of SS Fallschirmjaeger Battalion 600 all quietly did things to occupy their minds and hands as soldiers do before going into battle. For all his nervousness, Skorzeny was elated. His encounter with Stauffenberg had not only led to a realist exit option for his men, it had led to a debate that had changed the plan. 3rd and 5th Parachute Division, originally intended to form part of the ground attack had been redirected to support the airborne landing on Kaunas and Byalstock. With neither town more than 70 kilometers from the front, every available transport had been scraped together to form two groups of two regiments each. Coming in at dawn, to minimize Red Air Force interference, they were to establish blocking positions around the two towns and hamper Russian logistics so that the Panzers could get through.
As the first rays of sun crept over the horizon, the glider force came in silently. Taking advantage of every open field in their zones, 80 DFS gliders skidded across the wet morning grass to the north and east of Kaunas, while another, slightly smaller force descended on the fields to the west of Byalstock. Neither met any opposition although the Kaunas force took over 100 prisoners when they roused a Russian supply convoy bringing artillery shells forward. Forty minutes later the parachutes of 3rd and 5th Parachute Divisions opened over the secured fields. With about 1000 men on the ground at each location, the final wave comprised of the Messerschmidt Me 321 Gigant gliders, each carrying 100 men plus a LG 40 10.5 cm recoilless gun – called Leichtgeschuetz by the Germans. The Gigant’s arrival could hardly be hidden but at a strength of 2500 men at each drop plus some heavy weaponry, the initial attempts by Russian rear echelon units to dislodge the attackers were unsuccessful. Most of the road connections to the east of the two cities were blocked and the newly-repaired rail lines cut.
By evening Skorzeny, who had come down in the first gliders at Byalstock, could be satisfied. Although they had taken some casualties when a group of Russian T-34 tanks had unexpectedly arrived, they had held. Now it was up to the Panzers to do their bit. The towering Austrian also knew that he and his men were to some extent a diversion. Russian-speaking members of the Wehrmacht’s special forces unit, the Brandenburger, had flown ahead of the German airborne attack force in six DFS-230s which were unleashed by their Heinkel He 111 transports halfway between Vilnius and Minsk. Wearing Soviet uniforms and using Russian equipment their objective was to create chaos deeper behind enemy lines than even the most paranoid Soviet officer could anticipate. Silently, in the darkness of the cloudy night they descended, landing without incident and unobserved. For three hours the 12 men of the unit laboured to assemble the three jeeps and disassemble and hide the remnants of the gliders. Then they set off in their vehicles towards the Vilnius-Minsk road.
8:20am
October 10th
Northeastern Poland
Whosh! Woll's Tiger suddenly stopped as if it had ran into a concrete wall. A second later flames popped from every orifice. Accompanied by a series of crackling noises like giant fire crackers going off. Through his vision slit Michael watched helplessly. His face white 'Woll !!!'. For a seco
nd there seemed among the flames billowing out of the bellowing flames of the commanders hatch a hand raised to the sky. Michael blinked . It was gone. No-one had got out alive. Woll had been with him since the day he took over his first Tiger. Another one gone. Where would it end ? could it end? Now only he and Höflinger remained from the original team. Would the war only be over when everyone on of them had met a fiery death. The Russians just kept coming just as they had in 41 when their inexperience had made life easy for the experienced Panzer commanders. Then they had died by the thousands. Now they died by the hundreds. They died but so did the Panzers. Soon there would be none left. Was Germany doomed ?
Orders Kommandant ' ... the driver yelled over the headphones. Wittman at first didn't hear him. Unaware that he had screamed and by now everyone in the squad knew that Woll and his crew were dead.
Orders Kommandant' from somewhere far away the voice called.
Wittman was not answering. Something had snapped briefly in the Tiger Ace. A hump in the ground rocked the Tiger as it passed over it bouncing Wittman back into his seat. He hit his head on something hard. The pain returned him to the cramped cavern of the turret. Through the cordite he found the gunner staring at him. The man's look was part serious, part panic. 'Are you all right sir. ? A hail of machine gun fire drummed against the Tiger's thick hull, sounding like distant hail on a thin tin roof.
Wittman thrust his face against the visor, immediately the familiar, framed field of vision returned. He scanned the fields and the village searching for an objective. They needed to reach the village before the Red Air Force caught them out in the open. Among the thirty or so wooden structures smoke whirled up from where the artillery had done its job. On the road lay the bodies of Russian soldiers who had been caught out in the open. The tank that had drawn them out into combat stood smashed at the village entrance small flames dancing over its engine compartment.
Where was the anti-tank gun ? It had to be there somewhere. Wittman knew it. Woll's Tiger had not hit a mine. That had been a Ratschbum the standard Russian 7.62 cm anti-tank gun. Its high muzzle velocity making it second only to the legendary 88mm in killing capacity. What was it waiting for. They were out in the open racing over the half a mile of open ground that separated the forest from the village. Now was the time to strike.
Michael held his breath as they closed the distance to the village. Somewhere among those little houses sat death in the form of Russian guns. What were they waiting for. The first Tiger closed the distance, cautiously crawling along the single street of the village, turret traversing left to right. The Russian gunner waited until the last second and at point-blank range fired his shell against the tigers flank. Luckily for the Panzer, it was turning at the instant of impact and the shell screeched harmlessly off at an angle. Furiously reversing the tiger back between two houses and waited for the infantry to catch up and clear the area.
With all his Tigers stationary along the houseline, Wittman waited for the sound of small arms fire to subside before opening the hatch. A lanky NCO, with a small scar along his cheeks came jogging along and gave him the all clear sign. It was time to move forward. As he did so he saw that the short German artillery bombardment had wreaked considerably more damage than could have been hoped for. Surprise seemed to have been complete at this strongpoint and in the faces of the small group of Russian soldiers standing with their hands on their heads along the side of the road, he saw only shock and surprise. It was clear that the overstretched Russian advance units had not expected this.
12:00, October 10th
East of Königsberg,
East Prussia
While the A4 salvos had proved a mixed bag, Flak Regiment 155 Wachtel had more success with the Fieseler 103, or as Hitler had called it, the V1. Accepting that the flying bomb would not be particularly accurate General Wachtel, commander of Flak regiment was given the task of hitting the Russian held towns closer to the front – Wilna, Gradno, Bialystok – or areas known to hold major Soviet troop concentrations. His orders specified that he was to fire his weapons only in daylight in order to distract Soviet airpower. Rommel and Dietrich still smarting under their Normandy experience of complete Luftwaffe absence doubted that German planes would win even temporary air superiority for their Panzers and insisted that anything be done to help. Wachtel, aware that the Soviets had no experience with the flying bomb and were therefore unlikely to know what to do about it had just shrugged. But he was determined to make his mark. On June 15th - the day of the largest V 1 attack on England - his regiment had managed to launch 244 flying bombs over a period of twelve hours. Now with just over 2100 weapons stockpiled before Speer’s order had curtailed production down to a trickle, he sent 196 flying bombs on their way during eight daylight hours available to him. He did manage 192 the next day.
History never formally recorded whether they made an impact on the Red Air Force but they had a demoralising effect on the Russian supply systems who had been become accustomed to seeing only their own planes. Under the hammering from Skorzeny’s commandoes, the impact of the flying bombs and the attacks of German jet planes, Red Army logistics in Byelorussia and northeastern Poland crumbled. Already stretched to the limit by the Red Army’s advance, Soviet logistics staggered under the pressure of the German Panzer attack.
1:15 pm
October 10th
Northwest of Kaunas,
Lithuania
Ivan Borzov and his driver heard the planes coming but had no time to react. Much quicker than should have been possible, three shapes with V-shaped wings screeched overhead flying at no more than 300 meters. They caught the Katyusha trucks on the open road, with the sheltering forest half a kilometre away. The sixteen vehicles had no time to turn or disperse before the earth erupted around them.
Borzov screamed and instinctively brought up his hands as the earth around his truck erupted. But the fact that he was at the head of the column saved his life. Travelling at high speed the German pilots did not immediately acquire their targets. They missed his truck and the second one but the next six trucks just disintegrated as dozens of 30 mm shells ripped through them. Two or three fuel tanks ignited while another shell struck a rocket. Then they were gone.
For a few seconds Ivan and the driver just sat in shock, then training took over. Both leaped out of the truck to inspect the damage and to help their comrades. The crews of the vehicle behind him did the same. But a few steps took them close enough to see that there was nothing left to do. No-one had got out in time. His driver was about to circle around the wreckage to see how the rest of column had fared when Borzov realized that the roar of the jet airplanes was not fading but rising. They were coming back! The men barely had time to throw themselves to the ground before the fire erupted from the sky once more. Even before they heard the explosions that tore their comrades in the remaining trucks apart, the three camouflaged shapes screeched past.
300 meters above the burning trucks, a Luftwaffe major spoke into his collar microphone: That’s enough gentlemen. Resume course there are still more Red cans that we can open.” And with that the 3 Messerschmidt Me 262 jet fighters banked and sped eastwards again.
Only five serviceable trucks remained, one of them gratefully the ammunition truck. But before they could resume their march towards the front, Russian infantry appeared, disorganized and heading east.
“The fascists have broken through the line with a massive tank force. They are just on the other side of that forest. We were resting. They are less than two kilometres away.” A middle-aged, bespectacled lieutenant saluted Borzov’s senior rank and made a passable attempt at coming to attention. Around him his troops were dirty and dishevelled, quite a few sporting bandages or supporting wounded comrades.
Borzov quickly surveyed the scene. This man was no veteran and the spirit of these men was broken, the remains of a shattered battalion he guessed. Less than 200 hundred men. Around him the land was open grassland and flat all the way to the patches of forest th
at surrounded them on almost all sides. This was no position that he could hold against tanks even if he had had a full-strength unit. The Katyusha was an inaccurate form of artillery and of zero use against tanks. His mind was made up in a few seconds.
“Lieutenant, get your wounded on the trucks. Let’s get them to safety and find a defensible line.” They were still moving out in the open when the first Panther tank crashed through the tree cover behind them and fired. The shell flew harmlessly overhead and the German decided not to waste another shell. Less than a minute later the trucks, with frightened infantry hanging on for dear life rumbled between the trunks of pine trees, heading eastward along the forest track they had come westward on just an hour ago.
Behind them the Panzer commander, for the moment, did not pursue. He too had no desire to be caught out in the open. Despite the Me 262s, the Luftwaffe did not rule the skies.
10:40pm, October 10th
Rommel’s HQ
Rastenburg, East Prussia
Speidel made the last marking of the evening on the map and pushed it across to Rommel. “A good start and time for us to get a few hours’ sleep.”
They had organised Wintererwachen force into four corps-size groups each of which was given a numerical designation. The first two had burst eastward across the frontline, ripped up what appeared to be a Soviet infantry division and charged off into the direction of Kaunas. The other two were on their way to Bialystok. The Panzers were leading, and the infantry securing the ground as they went. If things kept going like this they would reach their targets and the areas secured by the airborne attacks possibly with 48 hours. So far so good.
The Valkyrie Option Page 48