Altered States -Volume III. Hinge of Fate

Chapter 26

More than one dinner was going to be bothered by uninvited guests that night. Phones jangled in the Admiralty, and alarms leapt over the wires from Whitehall to Scapa Flow. The British already had wind of the operation, the first rising swells of a cold north wind. There was movement in the Norwegian Sea, and reports of much activity on the waterfront and berthings at Kiel. The berth for Germany’s formidable new battleship Hindenburg was reported to be empty from the latest R.A.F. overflight. The Bismarck was also missing, and presumed to be on the move north. Giants were on the loose again, and British Sunderlands took off, flying north of Dogger Bank to scour the sea even though sighting was hampered by thick clouds and fog. the Germans had deliberately chosen this weather as the perfect cover for their operation.

One Sunderland pressed on north towards Kristiansand and got into trouble when a pair of Me-109s found it and riddled the plane with gunfire. The signalman got off a plaintive S.O.S. before he went down into the sea for a forced water landing.

High above, Oberleutnant Marco Ritter banked his Me-109 and came around with a grin.

“Somebody is getting curious!” he said over his short range radio to his wing mate.

“And someone else gets credit for another kill,” came the return.

“Not for me, Heinrich,” said Ritter. “I don’t count fat seaplanes. If you want it you can chalk it up on your account. I’m just counting British fighters.”

Ritter was flying top cover again for the Graf Zeppelin, operating now to clear the airspace around the carrier and its escorts as the ship waited the arrival of her principle battle units, Bismarck and its big brother, the new flagship of the German fleet, the Hindenburg. Admiral Raeder’s heavy chess pieces were on the move. Their mission was to first link up with the carrier, then move at high speed up to Bergen. From there they were to continue north into the Norwegian Sea, eventually turning west towards Iceland.

The two ships that had been reported by the Narva west of Narvik were the battlecruiser Scharnhorst and the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, a bishop and a knight taking up their posts south of Jan Mayen. Kurt Hoffmann led Alfargruppe, and its mission was to demonstrate towards the Denmark Strait in advance of the main breakout attempt by the heavier battlegroup, Jotnargruppe under Admiral Lutjens. It was Raeder’s shadow play, as he called it. With a big operation slated to begin soon in the Mediterranean, he wanted to draw the British Admiralty’s eye north to the cold Norwegian Sea, and thereby prevent any further reinforcement of Force H.

The Kriegsmarine had licked its wounds over the last several months, refueling and repairing ships damaged in the abortive Operation Valkyrie. Of the bigger ships, only Gneisenau was still in the docks, but the Bismarck and Tirpitz were ready for operations again, though the latter was being held in reserve at Bremen. The second aircraft carrier, Peter Strasser, was not yet operational as hoped, and it would be another six months fitting out and running through trials in the Baltic. Graf Zeppelin was therefore out on her second major operation of the war, and Marco Ritter and Hans Rudel, both survivors of the first engagement, were out for blood again.

While both of the older pocket battleships Deutschland and Admiral Scheer were also still under repair, they had been replaced in the order of battle with the addition of two faster new Panzerschiffe class units, the Rhineland and Westfalen, and another even faster new design, the battlecruiser Kaiser, was included in this operational plan. There was one more surprising ship in the flotilla, steaming twenty kilometers to the east in the heavy fog, a secret new addition to the Kriegsmarine that Raeder was now adding to his active ship list, the Goeben. Marco Ritter had a special assignment involving that ship, but it was one he kept under his hat, saying nothing to any of his wing mates until the moment was at hand.

These were the names Fedorov had decoded with his Enigma application, all assigned to a new operations It was dubbed “Operation Fimbulwinter,” a cold north wind to chill the frayed nerves of the Royal Navy on the eve of an even bigger operation planned to the south. Admiral Raeder would show the British his cards, let them see his Ace, King and Queen, and in so doing put as much pressure as he could on the already overburdened Home Fleet.

The movement of his ships would coincide with yet another sortie by the French Force de Raid from their Atlantic African ports. The long month since the action off Dakar had allowed them to make repairs, though their fuel situation was not good, and stores were running down at Casablanca. Yet they had enough to join in the operation now being planned, a strong wind from the south as well. The battleship Normandie would be joined by Jean Bart, two cruisers and four destroyers, again in a feint towards Gibraltar with the aim of keeping Force H well occupied for the real thunder yet to come with Operation Felix.

Now the cold north wind began to blow across the tall battlements of Germany’s newest and most powerful battleship, the Hindenburg. First conceived nearly a decade past, the ship was laid down in late 1935, the first of six planned ships authorized by Hitler in his fateful meeting with Raeder in January of 1936. Hitler first proposed that ships H and J be named after two relatively obscure figures from German history, Ulrich von Hutton and Gotz von Berlichingen. The former was a scholar, poet and leader of Imperial Knights, the latter an iron fisted mercenary who was known as Gotz of the iron hand, literally because he wore prosthetic metal forearm, complete with moveable thumb and five fingers that could be fashioned into an armored fist.

Raeder eventually suggested the name Hindenburg would be more closely associated with the modern era as Germany rose from the humiliation of WWI. Hindenburg was the symbolic heart of Germany’s new rise to power and Brandenburg the province surrounding Berlin itself, the heart of the nation. Hitler fretted over the dark possibility that either ship might be sunk.

“That name is associated with disaster,” he complained, referring to the terrible loss of Zeppelin LZ 129. “And we have already had a ship by that name in the first war.”

Raeder shook his head, his demeanor calm and confident. “My Fuhrer, we are not building another airship here, but the greatest battleship on earth. SMS Hindenburg was the last battlecruiser to be built by the Imperial German Navy, and the last to be sunk when the fleet was scuttled. Now let this new ship be the first of this new era of German sea power, Hindenburg, rising from the ashes like a phoenix, just as Germany rises again under your able leadership. It must have this name! The symbolism is perfect.”

“And what if the ship is lost like Graf Spee? What then?”

Raeder eventually convinced Hitler that this was a trivial concern, and one unlikely to ever happen. We will build it so well that no British ship could ever stand against it,” he crowed, and Hitler finally agreed.

The massive ship was just over 911 feet long, 118 feet longer than Bismarck, and much heavier at 62,600 long tons fully loaded, largely due to extra armor and the weight of the bigger 16 inch gun turrets. Her secondary armament was identical to that of Bismarck, with twelve 5.9 inch guns, sixteen 4.1 inch dual purpose guns and another sixteen 3.7 inch AA guns, and the ship could work up to 30 knots, making it one of the fastest battleships in the world.

Raeder had done much to try and make good on his boast that the Hindenburg would never be sunk. Her double bottomed hull was divided into 21 water tight compartments, and an anti-torpedo bulkhead of Wotan Weich steel was added. Side armor was originally proposed at 300mm, but increased to 360mm at its thickest point, which was 40mm thicker than Bismarck. The turrets were protected with 385mm, or 15.2 inches of steel, compared to 14 inches on Bismarck. And Hindenburg was also better armored on the decks and bow to protect against vertical shell falls, bombs, and splinter damage.

When finally completed, the ship was not the 80,000 ton behemoth with 18 inch guns that Hitler dreamed of, but a far more practical and efficient design, with a perfect combination of speed, power and protection. Only one ship in the Royal Navy could justifiably claim a slight advantage against the fearsome new ship, and that was the G3 class wonder where Admiral Tovey set his flag on HMS Invincible. The British ship was two knots faster, had 13mm more side armor, and one extra 16-inch gun, though Hindenburg had more extensive secondary batteries. It was even money as to which ship might come away the better, and perhaps would come down to seamanship and fate if the two ships ever met in combat.

Admiral Gunther Lutjens was on the bridge of the new battleship in the pre-dawn hours of September 10th, and a rising young protege Kapitan Zur See Karl Adler was at his side. Lutjens was a complex and conflicted man. On the one hand he was proud to see the rising strength of the new German Navy, yet he also harbored deep misgivings about its eventual fate, particularly over Germany’s lack of adequate fuel oil to sustain operations. That prospect had brightened somewhat when the Orenburg Federation under Ivan Volkov had joined the Axis powers. Orenburg controlled the rich oil reserves of Baku and the Caspian region, but there was still the problem of how to get the oil. Soviet Russia under Sergei Kirov controlled all the railroads, and the neutral states in the Balkans and Turkey all the major sea lanes and ports which might deliver that oil to Europe and eventually Germany.

With the Royal Navy prominently based in Alexandria, the Eastern Mediterranean was under their thumb unless Regia Marina could find some way to neutralize Admiral Cunningham’s fleet. So in order for the oil to reach ports in Italy and southern France, Raeder’s Mediterranean strategy would have to succeed, and the British must be driven from Egypt. Another solution might be to invade the Balkans and open ports like Constanta, Varna and Burgas on the Black Sea coast of Romania and Bulgaria, and Mussolini was contemplating such a move. That was, in fact, how most of the oil Germany needed was now reaching the Reich, but the minor powers controlled the rate of that flow, which might be doubled or tripled if Germany could revitalize those rail lines and utilize its rolling stock.

Lutjens was well aware of these strategic shortcomings and, in spite of Germany’s remarkable string of victories, he remained doubtful over the long term prospects for the war. And now, a new shadow troubled him with the news that the Russians had been able to unhinge two German operations at sea with the deployment of advanced naval rockets. He was aware of Germany’s own missile development programs, but shocked to learn that Soviet Russia had leapt so far ahead.

“What do you make of all this talk of rocketry, Adler,” he asked his young Kapitan.

“Rockets? I find it hard to believe, Admiral. Most of this talk comes from Kurt Hoffmann, which surprises me even more. He is not a man given to exaggeration, or one to back down from a fight at sea.”

“Bohmer says he saw the rocket that sunk the Heimdal. Lindemann saw them too,” said Lutjens. “He’s a fighting Kapitan, but elected to terminate Operation Valkyrie when these weapons struck his ships.”

“That was also surprising, sir. He had Bismarck and Tirpitz! Those two ships could have backed down anything the British have.”

“Agreed, but after seeing the damage to Gneisenau, I have come to believe Lindemann was correct to be cautious at the outset. In spite of all the fanfare at the docks when we slipped our berth, we may have to be cautious here as well.”

“Tell that to Axel Faust,” said Adler, referring to the ship’s burly gunnery officer. His name meant “fist” and he was the hard master of the Hindenburg’s real power, and an ex-champion boxer for the navy as well.

“Something tells me Faust will get his chance this time around,” said Lutjens. “We have orders to get down to Saint Nazaire. Raeder wants to make sure nothing bothers that new French aircraft carrier in the shipyards there. I told him the Luftwaffe would provide all the defense he needs, but he insists that we must establish ourselves there to gain access to the Atlantic without first having to fight our way past the British up here.”

“I agree, sir. We will be right astride the convoy routes there, and it will give the British fits. We can sortie at any hour and there is no way they can stop us.”

“Perhaps,” said Lutjens, with far less enthusiasm. “But we have to get there first, Adler. And Axel Faust may be busier than he realizes in a few days time.”

Adler looked at Lutjens, thinking something, but saying nothing. He had come to feel that the Admiral was becoming too sour of mind and heart, and did not think he had the same iron in his backbone that the builders had put into his ships. “Well sir,” he said at last. “Perhaps we may soon be able to call on Gibraltar! The operation is underway on the Franco-Spanish border this moment. Five days from now our troops will be ringing the doorbell there.”

“That would be most promising if we could take Gibraltar,” Lutjens agreed.

“Of course, sir. And if it comes to a fight up here, I do not think Axel Faust will disappoint us. I heard him talking with Hartman down in Bruno turret yesterday. The men are eager for battle. They are tired of shooting up garbage scows for target practice, and want a real British battleship to sink this time around. This is not Gneisenau, sir.”

“True,” said Lutjens, “but may I remind you, Kapitan, that Gneisenau had 350mm on her side belt armor, only 10mm less than we have here. That was a very sturdy ship, and it will be months before we can put it to any use after the beating it received from those naval rockets. Most of the damage was on the superstructure, where the side armor was of no help.”

“Don’t worry, Admiral. With Graf Zeppelin alongside we will find the enemy long before they even know we are close at hand. And he who finds his enemy first also has the option to strike first. This is the difference. Gneisenau was taken by surprise. From what Otto Fein told me, they thought they were steaming up on a slow British man-of-war when it fired those rockets at them. Forewarned is forearmed. We will have air cover over us, and more than sufficient warning of the enemy’s dispositions.”

Lutjens smiled. “That was whatKapitan Bohmer thought aboard Graf Zeppelin last time out. Then the missile found his task force before his planes ever had sight of the ship that fired them. I will tell you one thing, Adler, if that is true then it changes everything. All our ships would be rendered obsolete overnight! So I find myself of two minds. I want to see these rockets first hand and learn for myself what their capabilities might be-assuming they do not sink us first.”

Adler said nothing to that, as he could not imagine it possible. Then Lutjens looked at his watch, noting the time.

“Speaking ofBohmer,” he said, “we had better signal our intentions. Tell him I plan to steer 240 for the next three hours, but then we are heading south. See that Lindemann gets the message as well. Bismarck will be in the lead position.”

“So soon, sir?” That will put us on a course for the Faeroes. I thought we were heading out to Iceland.”

“Not this time,” said Lutjens. “No… This time we are going to be just a little more direct. The British will be thinking we will try the Denmark Strait or Iceland passage again, just as before. We will do everything to strengthen that notion, as Hoffmann has orders to demonstrate there with Scharnhorst and Hipper. Alfargruppe is already operational, but that is just a feint, and this time we play our hand out with an inside strait. I have a few surprises planned for the British as well.”