Lions at Dawn

Chapter 10

The Allies wouldn’t get to Tunis any time soon, but a few brave men would try, and with a most unusual device. It looked like a typical 533mm, 21-inch torpedo, except there was a dual metal saddle on its back that could be mounted by two British Frogmen. The British got the idea from the Italians, who had enjoyed spectacular success slipping into British harbors on similar contraptions they called their “pigs.” Two British submarine officers, Commander Geoffrey Sladen and Lt. Commander William “Tiny” Fell, came up with the design and the means to carry it to the target area on the deck of a submarine in a special container. Looking for a better name, they called their design a “Chariot,” and sought to use these self-propelled torpedoes to aid in the interdiction of enemy ports in Sicily and North Africa.

Strangely, Sladen had been aboard the submarine Trident in Nordic waters, and once had the distinct honor to meet and transport a very prominent Russian Admiral back to the UK—Volsky himself. That man no longer existed, but a shadow of his being had been resurrected aboard yet another submarine, one that the men of the T-Class boats could scarcely comprehend. Now Sladen set his mind on perfecting his Chariot design, hoping it could bring fire and destruction to the enemy’s most protected harbors.

It was not a suicide ride like the Japanese Kaiten manned torpedo, for the Chariot itself was never rigged to explode. It was merely meant to transport those two divers, and the nose of the torpedo had a detachable 600 pound warhead that would be removed and mounted on the hull of a target ship like a Limpet mine. The Chariots could ride on the surface, and also submerge to move underwater by battery power, not at the swift speed of a torpedo, but at a sedate four knots over a four hour period, giving them a range of 16 nautical miles. Slowing down to three knots could extend this another two miles. With the first Chariots delivered in June of 1942, the British had attempted an attack on the Tirpitz in the heavily defended base at Nordstern, but rough seas swamped the tiny craft, and they had to abort.

Now eight more Chariots had arrived at Algiers harbor, along with the submarines Trooper and Thunderbolt. In the real history, they had mustered at Malta for ‘Operation Principal’ against Palermo on Sicily. Here they would stage at Algiers to target Tunis and Bizerte. The big Allied ground push was aiming to seize both those ports, and they wanted to prevent the Germans from sinking ships to block those harbor entrances. That operation would be dubbed “Welcome,” but it would be the last attempted, at a time when Allied ground forces were poised to take those ports. Before then, any shipping in either harbor would be fair game for the daring British frogmen.

Trooper was only four months old, commissioned in August of 1942, a little over 1500 tons and capable of 9 knots when submerged. The boat was led by a man with a most interesting name. Lt. John Somerton Wraith moved to Trooper from the submarine Upright in June of 1942, and was assigned to support operations in the Med. Tall, aristocratic in aspect and demeanor, Wraith was eager to put the new devices to good use. His crew and boat had spent the entire month of December training to deploy the Chariots, and they were finally given their first target, not Palermo, but Bizerte.

Life aboard his sub was no easy matter. Conditions were smelly and cramped, the food terrible, fresh water scarce, the air stale, and danger ever present. Now ‘The Wraith,’ as he was called, would have a pair of strange contraptions on his deck, and four extra men to fit into the crowded interior space of that sub. The daily ration of rum was a small consolation under such conditions, but the men bore up and endured. Many would not choose to be anywhere else, for there was something about the undersea service that was strangely alluring. Sixty men would go out on Trooper; another sixty on Thunderbolt. They would put their grubby service to the task at hand, eager to do something strangely different this time out. The two boats had worked out together in the Clyde for two months before sailing to the Med. Now they were ready for some action.

The cylindrical containers on the outer decks were 24 feet long, and about five and a half feet in circumference. Lieutenant Wraith could immediately feel the difference in the way his boat handled when the chariots were slipped inside and he put to sea, burdened like a mule. He had to keep his speed down, and be cautious with course changes, so as not to rattle his deck cargo and give his position away. The two subs crept along the coast, stopping briefly by night to approach the small port of Bone for a little periscope reconnaissance. As dawn approached they stayed submerged, wary of being spotted by German air patrols. There was very little sea traffic between Bizerte and Bone, for the Germans were content to land their supplies at the two major ports and move them overland by truck. Yet the sea was far from empty.

Somewhere out there, the Italian sub Dandolo was hunting off Algiers, for 39 merchantmen were due into the harbor, escorted by TF-33 with five US Destroyers. U-73 under Oberleutnant Deckert was also on the prowl. He had Helmut Rosenbaum’s old boat, a man that had been fated to get the carrier Eagle on his last sortie with U-73. That had been during the ill-fated Operation Pedestal, an operation that was shadowed by a strange intruder that had appeared in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Yet that was history that had already been re-written on this meridian. The Germans took Malta, so there was never a reason to mount such a relief operation as Operation Pedestal, and the mighty Kirov had sailed north around the top of the world to the Pacific in this Second Coming. In spite of that, Rosenbaum had enough success in the Med to warrant the transfer to the Black Sea, where he was now organizing a small flotilla of U-boats to neutralize the Soviet Black Sea Fleet at Novorossiysk.

Horst Deckert was on the conning tower of U-73 that morning, his Iron Cross, 1st Class, hanging prominently beneath his left shirt pocket, a cigarette dangling between the thumb and fingers of his right hand. His officer’s cap was ruffled from too much use, and he looked tired, yet his eyes were searching the still grey waters, looking for any sign of trouble. He was feeling flush, for on New Year’s Day, he had caught the last US Convoy, UGS-3, and put two torpedoes into the Liberty Ship Arthur Middleton. He had hit her right on the bow, the explosion so spectacular that he knew he must have ignited a part of her cargo. He could clearly see portions of the hull plate careening up into the sky, followed quickly by a sheet of roaring flame. The damage was so severe that it nearly blew the bow right off the ship, which immediately began to sink, taking 81 crewmen with her, and only three of those men survived.

Harry Cooke was among the dead, a man who had applied for a position as an officer in the US Navy in 1942. While he waited for news on that, his mother harangued him for idling about Boston while so many others were serving dutifully. So he signed on to the Arthur Middleton to bide the time and get a little experience at sea. He was just a Junior 3rd Mate, and right before setting sail from New York he wrote home to his mother to say he had been given the high honor of taking charge of the ship’s cat. His mother would get two more letters, one announcing the sinking and his tragic death, the second arriving weeks later, congratulating him on his acceptance as an officer in the USN.

There were a hundred stories like that written every day in this war, lives, hopes, dreams, memories, aspirations all packed onto ships to venture out on the high seas, and the dark U-boats lurking in the shadowy depths were out there waiting for them. Harry Cooke was just one of those little stories, and there were 77 more on the Arthur Middleton that night, all letters that would soon reach the states with their dark news of Deckert’s accomplishment.

It was a strange thing that put metals on a man’s chest for such an endeavor. Deckert already had three, and he had just added 7,176 tons to his account. They counted the weight of the ships they killed, not the lives of the men who sailed in them. Perhaps that was a way of maintaining some thin moral distance from the act of ordering those torpedoes into the water. At least Deckert always thought that way. He was killing ships, not men.

A year later, he would take that same boat out from Toulon to prowl off Oran for a repeat performance. Another convoy was lining up to enter the harbor, and Deckert would line up on the Liberty ship John S. Copley. He would again put a torpedo into that ship’s starboard side, just forward of the mainmast. Flooding and an eight degree list ensued, and the crew was put off, but the damage was later found to be light enough to save the ship. Deckert would be hounded by the convoy escorts for his trouble, and destroyers Woolsey and Trippe would rush to the scene, force him to submerge with gunfire, and then put depth charges on his boat. There were 34 survivors, Deckert among them, but he would receive no more medals for torpedoing Liberty Ships, and spend the rest of the war as a P.O.W.

This day, however, he would be caught up in a comedy of errors as he hovered off Algiers, making ready to return home soon. It was then that his sharp eye spotted a periscope, and he quickly flicked his cigarette overboard and hastened below. His 1st Warrant Officer, Heinz Bentzein was there to greet him.

“No fresh air for you, Heintz,” said Deckert quickly. “Take us down. There’s another boat out there, and it’s very close. Come right ten degrees and dive!” Deckert had spotted the Trooper, leaving port submerged with her secret little cargo on deck and easing out to sea. The next minutes were very tense, and Deckert slowed to a near crawl after he was submerged, wanting to be as quiet as possible.

“Close call,” said Bentzein, “but I don’t think they’re on to us. Let’s get out of here.”

“What’s the hurry?” said Deckert. “That has to be a British sub, and you know damn well where they’re going—Bizerte, or perhaps even Tunis to lay off the harbor and wait for our next convoy.”

“Why do you say that?” said Bentzein, stroking his full beard beneath hair that was slicked back tight on his head with gel, gleaming in the wan light. He would not get his own boat until November that year, U-425 up north in the Arctic. And he would be one of the hungriest U-boat commanders ever to put to sea, mounting nine war patrols over 211 days and failing to sink a single ship before being sunk off Murmansk by the British sloop Lark and corvette Alnwick Castle. The events of the next 48 hours would be the most excitement he would experience in the entire war.

“They could be going to Palermo, you know,” he suggested.

Deckert was not deterred. “Bizerte,” he said. “That’s where the action is now, and we might as well get in on what they’re up to before we head home.”

“What? We’re due back at La Spezia in just a few days. We don’t even have any torpedoes left.”

“We’ll get there,” said Deckert. “What do you say Fritz? Shall we see what they’re up to?” He looked at his young 2nd Warrant Officer, Detlev Fritz, just 22 years old, a fresh faced lad who had been bothered by bad dreams of late. Fritz had served with Rosenbaum in this same position, and each night while he slept, his mind filled up with visions of a ship, long and powerfully built, its battlements towering up and crowned by strange antennae and rotating radar sets. He was seeing things that once were, but events that had not survived the rudder turn Kirov made after its second coming to this war. A few of the other crewmen were also bothered by those dreams, but few talked about it, except Fritz, and so the memories remained hidden, silent vestiges of another life.

“Maybe you’ll get a chance to spot that battleship you keep talking about,” Deckert said with a wink. So it was decided to wait until things settled down, and then head east towards the friendly port of Bizerte. By day they would travel submerged, but as soon as darkness fell, they would surface to get that fresh air, and could cruise all night on the dark waters, relatively safe from air attack.

For his part, Lieutenant Wraith had seen the German U-boat, but he was under orders not to engage unless his boat was directly threatened. He lowered his periscope, laid low after a course change, and then resumed course for Bizerte, not knowing that the enterprising Deckert was snooping about in his wake. The following day, Deckert was close enough to spot the Trooper as it surfaced, seeing the odd silhouette of the enemy boat in the distance briefly before it submerged again.

“Strange,” he said. “They have something on deck, very bulky—some kind of container.”

“Probably full of mines,” said Bentzein, arms folded, and still clearly unhappy to be off on this wild goose chase. That was perhaps a reason why Deckert would get nearly 40,000 tons before he was hit himself, and Bentzein would wander the northern seas day after day with nary a kill to his name. “What are we doing here?” he complained. “Just wasting time and fuel oil. You can’t do anything about them.”

“Oh yes we can,” said Deckert. “If we can stay on their trail, then we can call in the Luftwaffe.”

“Who’s to say they won’t attack us?” said Bentzein, ever cautious.

The other boat angled off into the shadows, and hovered, listening with his sonar operator for some time, but they could not get enough information to locate the enemy’s position. So he just followed his hunch, continuing on for Bizerte, low and slow.

The following evening, just after dusk, the two British subs reached the vicinity of Cap Blanc north of Bizerte undetected, or so they believed, and unaware that a silent shadow had been stalking them all the way from Algiers. They spotted a periscope under the moonlight, thinking it was the third member of their little mission Unruffled, which had been assigned as a rescue submarine. That boat was running very late, and was still 50 miles from the scene, but they had no message stating that.

It never occurred to Lieutenant Wraith that he had just spotted a German U-boat instead of the one he expected to meet there, Unruffled. So he gave the order to proceed with the operation. Half an hour later they surfaced briefly, and the divers began to mount up their Chariots. Lt. Rodney Dove and Leading Seaman James Freel had the first launch on Chariot #16, and Lt. Richard Greenland and Leading Signalman Alex Ferrier would saddle up and take in Chariot #22. A mile off their starboard side, the Thunderbolt was launching two more Chariots, but it would be Trooper’s little contingent that would have all the luck that night.

They had launched a few miles east of Cape Blanc, just where the headland dipped down towards Bizerte. All the Chariots had to do was follow the long dark coastline south to find the harbor, a journey of no more than four miles. Cruising at their top speed, they would make that in an hour. They would find the small breakwater that capped off Avant Port, the outer harbor, and then figure some way to penetrate the anti-sub netting. That could be tricky, and the crews off the Thunderbolt immediately ran into trouble. The battery failed on one Chariot, with a minor explosion under water that forced the two divers to try and surface to try and sort things out.

It was a chaotic moment when it happened, the dull pop underwater shaking the Chariot, and Petty Officer John Miln was thinking they had been hit by gunfire. He could see Boatswain’s Mate Simpson roll off the saddle behind him, clutching his leg, a stream of dark blood in the water. He reached for the man, but saw him disappear into the depths. Unsure of what had happened, and alone in that wild moment, Miln realized that his Chariot had lost all power, and that he would now have no recourse but to abandon it and hope he could make it to the shore. It was simply too far to try and swim north to look for their subs again. He looked in vain for Simpson, but never found him, eventually pulling himself ashore near Andalucia Beach north of the harbor, wet, tired and disheartened. He would soon become a prisoner of war, but there were still three other Chariots out there, hoping to succeed where the first one had failed.

Chapter 11

Unfortunately, the other Chariot off Thunderbolt would also have problems, not with their torpedo, but with one of the men riding it. Lt. Cook had guided his Chariot quietly towards the south entrance, beyond the long breakwater. The men submerged to try and find a way through the anti-submarine netting, but the ride thus far had left Cook in some distress, his inner ear conspiring to give him a bad case of seasickness. With his stomach queasy, he now had to breathe underwater through his mask, and was struggling to keep his meager breakfast down, when a sudden ill-timed move near the netting saw it snag his suit and cause a bad gash. Seaman Harold Worthy was behind him, and he turned to show him his badly compromised suit, then rubbed his stomach and pointed to the surface. He got there just in time to rip off his face mask and heave out his guts. A few seconds later, Worthy bobbed to the surface beside him on the Chariot.

“What’s wrong?”

“Sick to my bloody guts. You’ll have to go on without me.”

“And then where does that leave you?” said Worthy.

“Go on, I can tread water out here until you get back.”

“Not on your life,” Worthy couldn’t just leave him out there like that. “Get back in the saddle, and I’ll at least get you to shore. Then I’ll have a go.”

They did that, making it south to Rimel Beach at a little spit of land that jutted out to allow Worthy to keep the Chariot from going aground. He figured he still had two hours of battery power left, which would be enough to make a run for the harbor, and then get back here to recover his mate. Keeping as quiet as he could, he struggled to get the Chariot turned around again and pointed out to sea.

It was after midnight now, and a heavier swell started to work its way through the channel. Worthy got the Chariot out to sea again, intending to move north before turning left to make his approach to the southern harbor entrance. As he went, it became more and more difficult to manage the Chariot, which had really been designed to be operated by two men to keep it stable in the water.

Without Cook in the saddle behind him, his backside was too light, and the swell kept batting the tail about, which would force him to strain to correct it. He soon found himself veering off in one direction, then laboring to turn his craft, only to see it veer off again. He was too long at sea, and near exhausted before he realized he could simply not maneuver the damn thing against the swell. The only thing to do would be to try and get back to Cook and see if he might have recovered enough to lend a hand. So he turned about, this time the swell working in his favor to help carry him along, but when he reached the coast where they had been, he could find no sign of his mate there at all.

Cursing his bad luck, he now knew he had to get back out to sea to ditch his Chariot in deeper water so it would not be taken by the enemy. He managed that, and then had no choice other than to swim for the shore again, hoping he might find Cook this time and that the two of them could find some place to hide and work up a plan to reach one of the submarines. It was not to be. When he finally reached the shore again, it wasn’t ten minutes before an enemy patrol found him, and he would soon discover that they already had a very miserable and unhappy Lieutenant Cook as well.

Thankfully, Trooper’s Chariots would have better luck. Lt. Richard Greenland and Leading Signalman Alex Ferrier took in Chariot #22 to reach the netting protecting the north harbor entrance, and found a way through after the application of a good pair of bolt cutters. Once they got into the dark harbor, they could see there were very slim pickings. A single cargo vessel was tied off on the long central jetty, but there was also a good sized warship at hand, and that got their attention immediately.

“Not much in the cupboard,” said the Lieutenant. “But it looks like we’re here first, so we’ll have a go at that cruiser over there. Let’s dive and make our approach.”

The warhead was 600 pounds of Torpex, and they spent some minutes under water, slowly and carefully working it off the nose of the Chariot. They were down near the bottom of the ship’s hull, completely undetected, and elated to have a real warship at hand to attack. It was a very new ship, and one that seemed fated to make their acquaintance.

Built at Palermo, the light cruiser Ulpio Traiano had been named after the Emperor Trajan, and was only commissioned in November of 1942. She was in the Capitani Romani Class, about 5,500 tons full load, a sleek, beautiful ship that was faster than a gale force wind at 41 knots. At trials, this ship had even bettered that, and made all of 43 knots, which made her a very useful ship in a tight spot, with eight 5.3-inch deck guns, another 16 small AA caliber guns, and eight 533mm torpedoes. She could race in to deliver those lances with that dashing speed, or leave a trail of up to 70 mines bobbing in the water behind her.

That was the very same ship these two men had attacked at Palermo on the old Prime Meridian, but the cruiser had moved here to Bizerte on a supply run, planning to leave a few hours before dawn for the run back to Palermo. Fate seemed a dogged shadow that night, and Greenland and Ferrier would get that ship no matter where it was berthed. At sea, with a full head of steam up, the cruiser would have been invulnerable to such a cumbersome attack, but there, tied off quietly at the jetty, she was a proverbial sitting duck.

Now another torpedo of sorts was hugging her hull in the depths of the shadowy harbor, while the two men struggled to get that warhead attached, and then make as stealthy a withdrawal as possible. Even as they worked, neither man knew that Chariot #16 off the Trooper had also made it through a gap in the netting, and they were going after the same ship until they spied the other team and Chariot in the murky water and turned about. Instead they would have to try their luck on the Capo Pino, an old French Merchant cargo liner that had been commandeered by the Italians.

Lt. Rodney Dove and Leading Seaman James Freel piloted Chariot #16, fixing their charge and then finding that they could not get the motor restarted on the Chariot to maneuver out of the harbor. Knowing they could not hitch a ride with their comrades on the other side of the harbor, they resolved to try and slip ashore and lose themselves in the city. That plan did not work out, and they were captured by an alert guardsman patrolling the quays.

“Just what do you think you’re doing here,” he managed in reasonable English. “Spies, are you?”

“Spies?” said Lieutenant Dove. “Not at all. Just doing a bit of sightseeing, but there isn’t much here. Take that ship there,” he pointed. “You won’t even have that to look at soon.” He looked down at his watch. “Another minute, I should think.”

That minute passed, and the British frogmen started to think their charge had failed when there was a sudden explosion across the harbor, and they saw the Italian cruiser literally lifted out of the water, the 600 pound charge breaking her back with perfect placement. A few seconds later their own charge went off, and after shirking with the explosion, Lieutenant Dove just gave the guard a sheepish look, seeing the man had leveled his rifle at them.

“Come now,” he said. “War is war. We’ve done our job here, fair and square, and we’re your prisoner. I can assure you, if the situation were reversed, you would get fair treatment from us.”

“Move along!” the man said gruffly.

As for the crew of Chariot #22, they were just approaching the netting when their charge went off with that rollicking explosion. Realizing that the alarm would be up all around the harbor in seconds, they simply poured on the power and rammed the netting, the weight and force of the Chariot pushing right on through. Now all they had to do was get back north to look for one of the submarines.

They found one, seeing a light winking at them in the dark swells of the channel. So they made for it with renewed determination, elated to have taken out that warship, and glad their comrades had also scored a hit that night. As they eased up to the sub, Lieutenant Greenland shouted up. “Never more glad to see you! A tin of Bully Beef is going to go down quite nicely after this romp.”

Men were out on the deck of the sub, a rope thrown over for the two divers to grasp, but as they climbed, Greenland looked up to see a man holding a submachinegun on him. It was the number two Warrant Officer off U-73, and minutes later they were hauled up and led below, soon eye to eye with Oberleutnant Deckert. He was quite pleased at the little fish he had caught with his due diligence, and eager to interrogate these men.

“You see, Bentzein,” he said to his Number One. “Now we have one of their underwater torpedoes, and we’ll just tow it into the harbor and drop these two off. Let’s hope the Luftwaffe can get out after that enemy submarine we tailed at first light.” He looked at the two bedraggled divers, and he spoke in the King’s English.

“We knew you were up to something,” he said. “I spotted you yesterday off Algiers, and there was something very odd about the silhouette of your sub. How many are you?”

“Come now,” said Lieutenant Dove, “you really don’t expect us to answer that.”

“No, but it never hurts to ask.” Deckert smiled at him. “I admire your gall,” he said. “They say the British are always too busy drinking their tea to get busy with this war, but this little caper was quite imaginative.”

“The Degos have given us fits with much of the same,” said Dove. “Turnabout is always fair play.”

“I suppose it is. So why don’t you tell me where your submarine is so I can go up and put a torpedo into it. If you wish, I’ll strap the two of you aboard before I fire, since you enjoy riding those fish so much.”

Both men knew that was nonsense, and Dove just gave his mate a look and shrugged. “You might want to be very careful about that,” he said by way of warning the other man. “Our boys in the undersea service may not get the press you do in your U-boats, but we know what we’re about.”

“I have little doubt,” said Deckert. “Very well, Fritz, take them aft, and find them some tea. They deserve it.”

The two British submarines waited off Cap Blanc for some time, lurking quietly in the depths. At a pre-designated hour, each one put up a periscope to have a look about for the others. They were to wait no more than three hours before pulling out, as they needed to be as far west towards Algiers as possible before daylight the following morning. By that time, word of the raid would have spread and the enemy would be certain to have air patrols up looking hungrily for any sign of the enemy.

None of the three subs spotted any of the diver teams. They had all ridden their Chariots of Fire into the breach of war, and were now considered expendable, just like all the men on the ships they killed that day in the harbor. Lieutenant Wraith sighed, looking at his watch. He had let his spirits go, and none came back. Then he gave the order to come about.

Trooper and Thunderbolt would return empty, and the rescue boat, Unruffled, would also see nothing for some time. Then, just as they were making ready to depart, the sub’s commander saw what looked like another sub on the surface ahead. Lieutenant John Stevens was sure it wasn’t either Trooper or Thunderbolt, and it looked like it was towing something.

“Load tube one and three,” he said quietly. “I think we’ve got a line on a U-boat out there.”

“Loading tubes one and three!”

“Come right five degrees and steady at four knots.”

“Aye sir, coming right and steady on.”

“Sir!” came the word from the sonar listening station. “High speed props! I think a destroyer has gotten wind of us.”

Lieutenant Stevens, spun about, swiveling the periscope as he moved, and peering through the cupped lens. “Damn,” he swore. “Come right ten degrees and dive!”

The crew could hear the dull pop of naval gunfire, and the woosh of the rounds coming, but when they heard the first explosion, Stevens thought it must be wide off the mark. It was.

The Freccia class destroyer Saetta, was an older ship, launched in 1932 and now commanded by Lt. Cdr. Enea Picchio. When the alarm was raised, he had been at the edge of the harbor at Tunis to the south, ready to begin his morning patrols. Receiving a radio call about the attack underway at Bizerte, he fired up all three boilers and sped north.

Saetta had a pair of twin 120mm (4.7-inch) deck guns and two 40mm pom-pom AA guns that were also firing, but not at Lieutenant Stevens’ boat. They had seen U-73 on the surface instead, and it was clearly towing what looked to be a small mini sub or diving torpedo of the same sort the Italians would use. Thinking it was a British sub, he heartily engaged, firing first, and thinking to ask questions later.

Deckert heard the rounds coming in, shocked to see he was now under fire by his own side. He could either try to run up his colors and try to signal the destroyer, but he had no idea whether they would heed such a call, nor could he say anything in Italian. His other choice was to do what any other submarine commander might under fire, and dive.

“Cut that damn think loose!” he yelled. “Dive!”

Deckert was lucky that the gunners aboard Picchio’s destroyer were a little groggy eyed that morning. He got his boat down before the Italian destroyer could get rounds close enough to matter, and then went steaming off to the northwest, his feathers well ruffled, and his 1st Warrant Officer Bentzein shaking his head dismissively.

“I told you!” said Number One. “If those crazy Italians don’t get us first, then it will be our own Stukas in another ten minutes. We should be well up into the Tyrrhenian Sea by now.”

“And miss out on all this?” said Deckert with a wink. “Don’t worry, Bentzein. I’m a slippery fish. They won’t get me that easy.”

That would hold true for Deckert, until the 16th of December, 1943, and he would spend the next Christmas with the British. Bentzein wasn’t aboard when that happened. He had slipped off in November of 1943 to report to Kiel for his first command, U-425, and on the 17th of February, 1945, he would meet up with Lark and Alnwick Castle, meeting his maker soon after.

Chapter 12

Fafnir and Fraenir were up early that day, greeting the new year’s sun as it gleamed off the massive swelling silver canvas of the airships. They had a rendezvous to make, eager to join their two new brothers.

In the last months of 1942, production had been steady on the airship fleet. Hitler had ordered twelve ships, and two more were now ready to join the fleet, Aegir, ruler of the sea in Norse Mythology, and Asgard, named after the land of the Gods. They had all been ordered to Berlin for a grand air parade over the city for Hitler’s delight. Then they would be off on their real mission, flying southwest over Poland and along the border of the Ukraine to Odessa, climbing high to escape the eyes of curious bystanders, and enemies who might ask what they were about.

Each ship had been specially modified to carry a very special cargo, fruit that had been ripening on the tree of German research and development for some time. Like the cleverly modified torpedoes that had become Britain’s Chariots of Fire, this one might have been mistaken for a torpedo as well—until the two stubby wings were mounted. Hitler called the new secret weapons his Schwarzkrähe, Black Crows, and they were all painted jet black to advance this image in his mind. They would be testing the latest model of Germany’s new Argus pulsejet engine, a simple gasoline powered design.

The whole project had been masked with a phony code name, the Flakzielgerat 76, which would roughly translate as the “Flak aiming apparatus.” It was referred to as the FZG-76, and began initial air launched flight testing over the Baltic Sea near Bornholm Island, a site very close to the development nest at Peenemünde. The British knew where it was on the Baltic coast as early as 1941, when a Norwegian engineering student was able to pass a detailed description of the facility to British intelligence. In May of 1942, a Spitfire photo-recon mission was sent to investigate, and several suspicious external features were spotted, one of which was “Test Stand VII” for the secret V-2 project launches.

But the Schwarzkrähe had nothing to do with that. They were, however, the younger cousin of the dangerous V-2, and soon the world would come to know them as the V-1 Buzz Bomb. They had been produced as a way of showering the skies over London with flying bombs, the world’s first real cruise missiles, and they were arriving much sooner than they did in Fedorov’s history. Hitler had Ivan Volkov to thank for that, part of the way he repaid the Führer for the use of all those JU-52 transports he had borrowed for the ill-fated and final raid he made on Ilanskiy. With Volkov’s guidance, Germany had been able to produce weaponized prototypes of the V-1 a full eight months sooner.

Plans had been made to launch the craft from special catapult ramps on the French coast, but also to carry them on modified He-111 bombers for air launched attacks that might reach far deeper into British homeland territory. Then Hitler pointed to his two new airships, for he had always envisioned them as long range strategic bombers, and so modifications were made for the great airships to each carry three V-1s.

The Führer had come to realize the futility of ever trying to throw Goring’s overstretched Luftwaffe against the British homeland again. The Blitz had been a costly failure in 1941. It had taken 90,000 sorties to deliver a little over 61,000 tons of bombs over a long year in action. That campaign had cost the Luftwaffe the loss of 3000 planes, and 7500 pilots and crewmen on the bombers. They had damaged or destroyed over 1,150,000 structures in England, and caused over 92,000 casualties on the ground.

By contrast, when the V-1 campaign was finally launched in the original history, it flew only a whisker over 8000 sorties, delivering only 14,600 tons, but still damaged or destroyed 1,127,000 structures, almost the same damage score at the Blitz, and all in less than 90 days. The kill ratio of bomb tonnage to casualties was identical at 1.6, and not a single Luftwaffe plane or pilot had been lost.

Strategic missile bombing was therefore a much more dangerous and effective way to strike his enemy, and now Hitler thought he had the means to deliver his wrath from the skies with utter impunity.

The airships could fly so high, over 50,000 feet, that the British Spitfires could not reach them. The Spitfire Mark VB could only reach 36,500 feet, and later models would climb to near 45,000 feet, but those planes had to be specially modified. The American P-38 could reach that height as well, but would still be 6000 feet below the massive airships, which were bristling with AA guns from all those lower gondolas. So Hitler was on to something when he decided to mate his Black Crows with the Zeppelin fleet, and now the first real combat test would be launched from Odessa.

The target was Novorossiysk, the home of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. The very existence of that fleet posed a grave threat to any German plans to cross the Kerch Strait for landings on the Taman Peninsula. The Soviet fleet consisted of a single old battleship, still named Sevastopol in this retelling of events, with twelve 12-inch guns that could wreak havoc on any troop transport flotilla. There were also five cruisers, three destroyer leaders, fifteen other destroyers and 44 submarines. Numerous mine ships and 84 motor torpedo boats made this fleet a formidable obstacle to any German aspirations in the Black Sea.

Thus far, that fleet had been opposed by no more than six German U-boats, a small group of fast E-Boats, and a few old destroyers taken from the Romanian Navy. Hitler now saw his four Zeppelins as powerful ships at sea, immune to fire from their enemies, but capable of delivering fearful weapons on the attack. He had been both alarmed and fascinated by the use of naval rocketry against ships like the valuable Graf Zeppelin, and now he wanted a weapon that could do the same thing to the Soviet fleet at anchor in Novorossiysk.

Operation Sturmkrähe, or Stormcrow, was born.

The four great Zeppelins had been modified at the undercarriage of the main airframe between the central and aft gondolas. A kind of trap door was installed, lightly armored, and it would open to allow the cruise missile to slip down a ramp into the air and freefall. A radio command would ignite the engine, and these models were to be radio controlled to attempt to serve as precision strike weapons.

The development of the Fritz-X radio controlled glide bomb was also to be tested in this attack, and those would be carried on the Dornier-217 bomber. In the real history, this weapon had been used to damage the Italian battleship Italia after it was captured by the Allies in 1943. It also sank the battleship Roma, severely damaged the US cruiser Savannah and British cruiser Uganda, and put enough hurt on the British battleship Warspite to send it to the repair yards for six months.

In development since 1939, Volkov had shepherded the project along for Hitler, and now it was ready. A flight of six Do-217s would be up with the Zeppelins to help launch Germany’s version of Pearl Harbor at Novorossiysk. It was something the Russians never expected. The port had been the target of traditional German bombers flying from Sevastopol, but when this attack came in, it looked like nothing more than a recon mission. The bombers were seen on the rudimentary Soviet radar, and the airships as well, but then the operator indicated the planes seemed to be turning and retiring.

They had already delivered their ordnance, and now an operator in one of the Zeppelins guiding them in towards the harbor. Fafnir had already lowered its launch ramp and had the honors of sending the first three V-1s into action that day. It then descended to a lower altitude to become the guide ship for the six Fritz-X bombs.

The entire forward gondola had been cleared to mount the equipment in the nose area of the ship. There, two rows of operators sat at the viewports, each with a high powered telescopic range finder, and radio controls operated with a small joystick. The first three V-1s would broadcast on a specific frequency, and each one had its own operation to guide it in. Meanwhile, the remaining three Zeppelins dropped their V-1s from a higher altitude at phased intervals, allowing the operators to pick up their signals, with an illuminated yellow light on their equipment indicating the handshake had been made. They would then turn a frequency dial toward the position of that yellow light on a circular display, and that would lock them onto that particular missile. The light would turn red, and the operator could then guide that missile in towards the target area.

On the morning of January 5, 1943, history would be made as these Chariots of Fire fell inexorably towards their targets. Down they came, like the dark crows they were named for, streaking right past the first flight of six La-7 Soviet fighters that had been scrambled on alert. The pilots saw them flash by at over 400 MPH, not knowing what these dark fighters could be. The Do-17s had already turned to run for the protection of German fighters up in escort, so the Soviet pilots had their eyes fixed upwards on the great mass of Fafnir. It had descended to under 30,000 feet to control the bombs, which was well within reach of the Soviet fighters.

When they made their approach to Fafnir, however, they were suddenly greeted by a hail of gunfire. The German 20mm cannons were mounted on the gondolas, sides, and top platforms of the Zeppelin, and they put out a withering fire. Three of the six planes that made attack runs were blown from the sky. One got in a burst from its own two 20mm guns, the other two were simply driven off by the intense AA fire and dove away, hoping to wait for more support before trying their attack again.

Meanwhile, the twelve V-1s descended inexorably towards the harbor, where the bulk of that Black Sea Fleet rode at anchor. The Soviet sailors heard the air raid alarm, and they were only just rushing to their action stations when the first three V-1s off the Fafnir came in.

Two overflew the harbor and went crashing into the city, sending twin fists of dark smoke rising up when they exploded. The third had been expertly guided, right towards the high mainmast of the light cruiser Chervona Ukraina. A near perfect hit, it struck the 8400 ton cruiser right amidships, its 850kg warhead smashing through the superstructure to explode deep within the ship. That was a very heavy blow for a sip to endure, nearly 1900 pounds of explosive Amatol-39. The short range of the attack also saw a lot of that 600 gallon gasoline fuel tank ignite with the blast, and like the Russian missiles that had so plagued the Kriegsmarine, Hitler now had his own flying firebomb to use against enemy ships.

In came the six Fritz-X glide bombs, which had much smaller warheads at 320kgs, but they were all armor piercing. Two would splash harmlessly into the sea, sending wild geysers of seawater up into the morning air. One struck the hull of the destroyer Bezposhchadny (Merciless), ripping through to gut the ship with its fire. The fourth hit that same pack of destroyers, moored side by side, and hit the forecastle of Sposobnyi, (Capable), killing everyone on the bridge and striking with such force that it plunged right on into the lower compartments, nearly piercing the bottom hull before it exploded. The destroyer’s sides were ripped open by the blast and it began to sink.

The last two Fritz glide bombs were near misses on the cruiser mooring station, but now the last nine V-1s were falling in eerie silence, their engines cutting out unexpectedly, even though they remained on target as guided by Fafnir above. Down came the black crows, with five smashing into the harbor facilities on land, one striking a main quay, another blasting into a fuel tank farm, a third merely blasting warehouses by the wharves.

Of the last four, two would miss, falling into the bay, but two were on target for the big squat shape of the Sevastopol. The first would strike the forward deck, the heavy warhead easily penetrating the 50mm armor and plunging deep into the ship. The explosion sent raging fires right through the open door to the magazine of the forward turret, and there was another large secondary explosion.

The second, and last V-1, plunged into the sea just four feet from the hull, and the explosion was severe enough to buckle the sides of the battleship and send seawater careening in through three shattered hull plates. It was that first hit that had done the real damage, and within ten minutes, Sevastopol was down at the bow, shipping water and doomed to go nose first into the silt and mud of the harbor bottom. The long column of heavy smoke billowed up into the clear sky, and the crewmen aboard Fafnir cheered with elation.

Now, high above the city, the other three Zeppelins hovered at high altitude. Soon their aft mounted bomb racks opened, and down came a rain of traditional unguided bombs. They might have delivered all of 8000 kilos of bombs, but the 2000kg weight of each of those three V-1s had reduced this final bomb drop to just 2000kg. Yet that was going to send eight 250Kg bombs down from each of the three airships, mostly directed at the harbor area of the city. They had been modified to carry incendiary warheads, and now the whole harbor began to explode with fire, the smoke darkening and thickening as the bombs fell.

It was nowhere near the devastating blow that Japan had delivered at Pearl Harbor, but on that Tuesday morning in the sleepy cold city, it was enough to severely shake the enemy with the shock of what these new weapons could do. The Germans believed they had just announced that turnabout was fair play, unaware that their Soviet enemies had never designed or deployed the devastating naval rockets that had gutted the Graf Zeppelin—at least not in 1943.

So the Germans had the ironic satisfaction of seeing their own aerial Zeppelins deliver vengeance for the carrier that had been named for one of their ancestors. Fafnir, Fraenir, Asgard and Aegir had struck a fateful blow, sinking Sevastopol, damaging the cruiser Chervona Ukraina so badly that it was out of the war, and gutting those two destroyers. Hitler was elated when he got the news that his new wonder weapons had actually worked, and when he was handed photo recon images of the burning harbor, he smiled.

Fat Hermann Goring was at his right arm, his baton tucked under one arm, beaming. Hitler turned to him, a fire in his eyes, as if he was seeing something far away, but now so near that he could grasp it in his right hand.

“Build more,” he said. “Double the production budget for your Zeppelin program immediately. I want all the first twelve to be ready for service by June of this year, and another dozen by year’s end. Do you know what this means, Herr Reichsmarschall? With those Zeppelins I can deliver seventy-two Sturmkrähe to the heart of London like one mailed fist, right in Churchill’s face. If I can do this to one harbor with only four such ships, imagine what two dozen Zeppelins could do to New York! Build them, as fast as you possibly can.”

“I will do so,” said Goring. “But there will be an issue with helium. Our supplies are very limited.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Hitler. “I am told where we can find all the helium you will ever need, and I have already taken steps to secure it. I intend to redouble efforts to secure the Caucasus, so we will get to Maykop and Baku soon. We already have a rail line linking up to Volkov’s oil production sites near Astrakhan and the Caspian Basin. But now we will take all the rest.”

“All the rest?” Goring raised an eyebrow.

“The oil!” Hitler exclaimed. “That was the whole point of all our Armeegruppe South operations in the first place. I was on to the right idea long ago when I sent troops into Syria, but we were unable to support a large enough force logistically at that time. I have corrected that deficiency. Now I can support Armeegruppe Irak over the improved Turkish rail lines, and we are already positioning troops for the invasion.”

“Syria? Again?”

“Where else? The first units have already assembled at Aleppo. My Brandenburgers put the light garrison there to flight in a half a day, and the city is ours. Now we move south into Syria, and more, we move east to Irak—to Baba Gurgur, where we can get all the helium we require.”

Hitler had his Amerika Bomber, and now he was going after the helium and fuel oil he would need to sustain that Zeppelin fleet. Twenty-four this year, he thought, then we double production again next year. I will burn London, New York, and Boston. My Black Crows can fly, and they will wreak havoc when I let them loose over those American cities. They want war with Germany? I will give them one, because there is one more arrow in my quiver that they know nothing about. Yes, that strange ship that Kaiser Wilhelm delivered… and so much more….