Keynes' Cruisers

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February 27, 1941 On the Romanian Danube

“Goddamn it”

The tug boat captain cursed as he looked at his bundle of oil barges he was pushing up the Danube. He did not have far to go as the river was not open all the way to Vienna. Instead, he was moving some of the day’s production from Ploiesti to storage tanks for later transhipment. Or at least that was the plan.

A grain barge was heading down the river in the wrong lane. The tug’s horn blared as the slow motion crash could barely be averted if both clusters of barges moved immediately. The oil barges slowly started to change course. There was no hope that the grain barges would move fast enough.

Moments later the deep draft oil barges ran aground outside of the shipping channel. A minute later, the steel sides crumpled as the grain barges scraped the entire tow.

After the tow captain made sure that every family and crew member was safe, he cursed some more. He had the name of the grain tug boat and knew the man. He would owe him for damages again. The drunk should not be on the river. The offer to take his tug boat and his barges for a bare boat charter in a Turkish port was looking more attractive every day. He had no idea what British would do with his boat and barges in a neutral country but the money looked good.

 

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February 28, 1941 Cavite Naval Yard

She was older enough for young men to whistle at her. Now she was getting cleaned up and fixed for more active duty. USS Marblehead could not undergo a complete overhaul and refit in Cavite. The facilities were insufficient for that. But she could get a make-over. Over the next four months, her engines would be repaired, boilers, retubed, her anti-aircraft fit replaced with modern 1.1 inch quad mounts and a half dozen brand new Swiss 20 millimeter machine guns. The torpedo tubes would be repaired and lightened. Her lowest main guns were useless in a heavy sea and ate up crew that was needed elsewhere. The lower casemate was to be covered with steel.

Four months worth of work on an old cruiser was one of the larger projects in the shipyard. The American supervisors and shipwrights had been growing their teams to support the slwoly growing Asiatic Fleet. Houston was still the pride of the fleet and its flag. USS Raleigh was due shortly from Pearl Harbor to supplement the fleet while Marblehead was unavailable. Thirteen fleet destroyers provided a patrol and escort force while the eight destroyer minelayers led by Walker thickened the defenses of the islands. Finally, the offensive thrust of the fleet was still the thirteen submarines.

Activity was picking up as the Philippines Coastal Patrol had taken delivery of four British built torpedo boats recently and dozens of more lighter coastal combatants were on order and in the pipeline from American shipyards. The yacht Isabel had left harbor the day before to sail to Hong Kong and then Shanghai through the Formosa Straits. She was charged with taking her time and counting all the Japanese ships that she could encounter. It was not a hostile reconnaissance but the information would be appreciated especially if she had engine problems that forced her to seek refuge in a Formosan port for a day or two.

 

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February 28, 1941 Port Said

The cargo ship MV Athena arrived at Port Said from Philadelphia. Onboard were eighteen Wildcats purchased from US Navy stocks in September 1940, and a battalion of 75 mm guns and six dozen heavy machine guns. Ammunition and spare parts were also being carried.

Technicians were on hand to prepare the Wildcats for deployment to Cretan airfields where the pilots could become familiar with their new machines. The artillery and machine guns would proceed to Athens once a convoy was organized.

 

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March 1, 1941 Lakehurst Naval Air Station

The four engine bomber lumbered down the runway. She was the first dedicated Navy patrol bomber that could not take off in the water. The Consolidated Privateer was a departure from normal Navy doctrine where seaplanes and amphibians provided localized anti-submarine and scouting services while lighter than air ships offered persistent coverage. The modified Army strategic bomber had the range to fly from New Jersey to Iceland with only a few strands of hair turning grey on any flight. The single bomb bay could carry half a dozen depth charges or four thousand pounds of bombs. The crew of eight had spent enough time together to know everything about everyone as they slowly flew over the sea looking for something that merely did not look right.

Now they were operational. This first flight was a scouting flight for two cruisers and six destroyers that needed to conduct a gunnery exercise before they headed out to patrol the Neutrality zone. Tomorrow, two of her compatriots would cover Constellation while B-17s exercised against the carrier. The last three exercises of Fortresses against carriers had resulted in the bomber crews buying sailors more beer than they wished to admit.

By May, the new Patrol Squadron would be fully equipped and staffed. By August, they would be ready for oversea deployment if that was where they were needed.

But until then, the pilot concentrated on getting his new plane off the runway and into the air.

 

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March 1, 1941 Sofia, Bulgaria

The red leather bound folder was closed. All of the documents were signed. Bulgaria had joined the Tripartite Pact. Some of it was out of fear of the Soviets, some of it was out of fear of her neighbors, some of the reason for the signatures was the need to hook themselves to the new order in Central Europe, and some of the motivation was to pressure Greece.

German technical advisers were already scheduled to cross the border once a phone call was confirmed. There would be no combat formations, but Bulgarian river ports, airfields and rail yards would be upgraded to accommodate the rapid movement of forces as needed.

 

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March 2, 1941 King George V Hotel Paris

Her toes curled up. A ray of sunshine poked through the window. If she was with her doctor, this would be an ideal day as the only thing she had put on was the radio fifteen minutes ago. The Paris station was playing a symphony that fluttered through the notes and the crescendo. She wished she could put on a jazz station, but a good mistress to a German colonel did not listen to that degenerate music.

Her lover had left for the morning. He had meetings. He would come back at nineteen hundred hours, and want her to fuss over him for an hour like she was his mother or his wife instead of his lover. She would smooth his collar and his ego before he would disappear again for a night of drinking. If she was lucky, she would be asleep and he would be too drunk to care. Last night she was not lucky but she put on a convincing performance of interest during the thankfully short act and then he talked about himself and his importance. He was soon be promoted. He would soon be given a division. That division would be a critical unit in the next big, world changing, history dominating event. And she should not remember his boasts as a good Aryan girl (Alsatians were at least honorary Aryans).

She crawled back under the covers for a few more minutes enjoying the tightness, the security and the warmth of the soft engulfing hotel bed. Once the day started, she had the freedom of the city to herself. She had money, she had travel authorization, she had time. And so she would take advantage of the chance to drink chicory coffee along the Queue d’Orsay, she would watch the pigeons squabble along the Seine and then she would pay her respects at Notre Dame.

As she walked through the occupied city, it was no longer the City of Light. The residents were glum and careful to avoid their occupiers and their collaborators. People saw that she had money, people saw that she had confidence to talk to men in gray uniforms, and people saw that she was smiling for no reason. People gave her either a wide berth or a short conversation whenever they could.

She knew why her countrymen treated her like this. She made it a point to be aloof and quietly arrogant. She had a role and she had a secret and without that secret her role would end in the drama of life and death that she had chosen to be a bit player.

 

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March 3, 1941 Alexandria

“Bloody Hell, mate” the tall Australian rivet gunner shouted as a red hot rivet brushed his shirt for the third time in half an hour

“Watch it.” The rivet man waited a moment until his partner stopped hopping and starting to pay attention again to the Matilda tank. They were almost done with this tank’s repairs. A crew had replaced the engine with a new one earlier in the week. Now their primary responsibility was working on the armor. The tanks of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment had been evacuated from Benghazi almost a month ago. The men were exhausted and the machines were if anything in even worse shape. Troop ships had brought replacements to compensate for the wastage of lives and hopes and dreams of the men in the regiment since Operation Compass started.

And the Delta workshops were full of crews rebuilding the machines that had defeated the Italian army. Some of the tanks were beyond repair. Honey Pot had been salvaged from the fighting near Bardia and her damage was too great to repair. Instead she contributed her parts to seventeen separate tanks. Dust Devil, in front of them, received Honey Pot’s machine gun and two plates of armor.

Several miles south of the workshop where the regiment was being rebuilt for future operations, the New Zealand Division was exercising along the Nile River. They had returned from duty in the East Africa after an Indian division was made available. The three months of combat had toughened the men and shaken out the rot in the command structure. Most of the officers were decent enough but a few were too old, and far too many were unwilling or unable to make the hard choices needed to accomplish their missions. The average age of battalion commanders had already dropped seven years and it was likely to drop even more as the better older commanders were promoted and the ineffective men were shunted to training or supporting commands. The division’s equipment had arrived in fairly decent shape and they would be next in line for repair and reconditioning once the XIII Corps was fully brought back up to snuff.

 

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March 4, 1941 0121 near Wilhelmshaven

The bomber shook. The bomber wiggled. Search lights probed the sky and the pilot dodged where he thought they would be next. Any bomber caught in the light would be hammered by the anti-aircraft guns protecting this critical naval anchorage and be attacked by the night fighters the Luftwaffe had deployed.

A mile in front of the bomber, a sudden burst of flames destroyed the pilot’s night vision. A Whitley was hit by an anti-aircraft shell that detonated and perforat a vapor filled fuel tank. If he had looked at the expanding fireball, he would not see any parachutes. A single man, the co-pilot lived through the initial explosion but stayed with the aircraft as it tipped over and smashed into the Jade.

The pilot blinked and jinked while the bombardier focused. He had his mark in sight and the bomber steadied for the final run. And then the bombs exited the bomb bay and the plane lept as her burden had eased and the propellers bit into the air with refreshed vigor as the pilot banked his baby to the north and away from the city that was starting to burn.

A few hours later, the plane was pushed into its revetment at its home field in East Anglia. London was burning and served as a navigation beacon. The Luftwaffe had raided the docks again and it appeared that they had some success. By daybreak, the bomber was in the skilled hands of the mechanics and the crew had completed their debriefing. The squadron’s central hall was full, every man who left the previous evening was on the base. Four men from A is for Apple were in the infirmary and H is for Hotel would be down for a week but everyone was alive at this station. The older men, veterans at age 23 and 24 knew that this incongruity of faith would not last while the younger men who had only raided Germany a few times celebrated their invincibility.

 

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March 5, 1941 Saint-Nazaire, France

He approached the port like a petty thief in the night. Stealthily his engines hummed, boilers heated by the reserves held for the journey to safety. Lookouts were alert. Their eyes scanned the waters in front of them and the skies above them. Three minesweepers and a patrol boat led the seventeen thousand ton raider along the swept channel. A single RAF mine had been cleared already. Rifle file had produced a deafening orange ball of light and a spray of water that drenched the exposed men on the light escort’s bridge.

Admiral Hipper was home. Or at least he was back to safety. There was no word on how he could make it to Kiel. There was no word on whether or not he would move to Brest or any other Biscayan port. He needed rest. He needed repairs, He needed time to celebrate his victories. The raid was a success. HMS Argus was the most notable kill but thirteen other ships went under the waves while he was at sea. Every convoy was now heavily escorted, tying up critical warships that could have been demolishing the trickle of supply convoys running from Naples to Tripoli. Royal Navy battleships were quartering the ocean and seeing nothing as Hipper and his bigger brothers prowled the waves.

An hour later, the cruiser was tied up and the first sailors were ashore for the first time in months. Mail bags were dropped off, and arrangements to secure prisoners were being made. Letters with crew rosters were sent to the International Red Cross as men who had been missing and presumed lost were now found and bound for camps in Germany. Officers made arrangements to repair and refuel the ship. He took almost no combat damage, a few light shells had scarred his skin but the wear and weariness of steaming had taken its toll. French dockyard workers under the eyes and direction of supervising German engineers would be needed to restore Hipper to his fullest strength.

 

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March 6, 1941 1002 South of Crete

Three liners were being covered by most of the Mediterranean Fleet as they all pushed north at eighteen knots. Cruisers and destroyers could be seen by the men of the 19th Australian Brigade who were smoking on deck or walking around. They had fought hard throughout the desert campaign and now their reward for being veterans was a month’s rest to recover, repair and integrate replacements into the ranks and then a ride to another foreign country to fight the Germans. Sharp eyed soldiers could look up and see, if they squinted hard enough, four Fleet Air Arm fighters lazily circling between the clouds north and west of the convoy.

This was the second convoy to leave Alexandria full of troops. Equipment had already started to be shipped north. Enough American made tanks had already been landed in Athens to equip an independent tank brigade along the Salonika line where their fathers and uncles had died a generation before. Now men were moving north to meet with their equipment to fight the Germans and the Italians again. The veterans were confident to face the Italians, they folded under determined attacks and plentiful artillery. They had not yet seen the Germans and their reputation was stronger and fiercer.

 

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March 7, 1941 1743 southwest of Brest, France

Seventy thousand tons of warships passed the Ile de Sein. They had been at sea for three months with little to show. A single small Canada bound convoy had been jumped. Eleven ships were sunk in an afternoon before a Coastal Command Liberator spotted them. The week after their position was reported was a week of searching for storms and steaming at high speed. Radio intercepts showed that Home Fleet was trying to corral the two powerful raiders into an ever more narrow box of the sea. They escaped without further detection. Post war records would show that Prince of Wales and Furious were, at one point, ninety four miles away but those hunters were steaming through twenty eight foot seas.

Escorts were draped around the two light battleships like a string of pearls on a mistress's neck, languid, long and looping. It did not matter. HMS L26 had hovered on the bottom for most of the day. The thirty seven men aboard were still and silent. Stillness to save their breath and preserve the lingering freshness of the air. Silent to stay alive. The young skipper listened to his hydrophone team’s report once more and glanced at the map. This was only the seventh time he had looked at the chart in the past twenty minutes. The tanks expelled some water and the boat came to periscope depth. One more glance at the chart and the skipper ordered the periscope to rise and poke through the surface.

Scharnhorst was less than a mile away. His brother, Gneisenau, was half a mile further away. They were lazily zig-zagging as they counted on the defensive minefields and local escorts to keep any submarines away. That assumption was wrong.

Four torpedoes left their tubes within a minute. The twenty one inch missiles screamed through the gray water. A sharp lookout who had been dreaming of his wife’s welcome noticed the tracks seven hundred yards away from the ship. The captain ordered increased speed and a turn towards the open ocean. The sharp reaction was almost enough. Three torpedoes passed astern. One exploded in the wake. A single torpedo detonated along the torpedo defense system. The first set of voids filled rapidly, and some water went through a trio of slashes in the armored bulkhead.

Within fifteen minutes, three escorts were shepherding the damaged and slightly listing battle cruiser to Brest while the rest of the escort was hunting for the interloper without success.

By midnight, the submarine had slunked away, thinking it had crippled the mighty battle cruiser. The dry docks at the arsenal were ready to receive the wounded but still capable warrior for months of repair.

 

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The link below is all major warships (11 inch gun or larger or fleet carriers of any size) that have been built or realistically authorized by major combatants

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kboRKVGowl8DYM4moRAq8KicWg98zEwrzdACw-RILbo/edit?usp=sharing

 

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March 8, 1941 0500 HMS Pembroke

The barrack's bell rang and a hundred young men were scrambling out of their racks and assembling before their instructors could send them for careless additional physical training. Today was the last day of the training. Tomorrow, Robert Smith would be an ordinary seaman and ready to be slightly higher on the scale of life than bottom clinging whale dung. He adjusted his uniform shirt so he was neat and proper and prepared for inspection. The seventeen year old boy had tried to join the Royal Air Force but they saw that he was under-aged. The Army would have taken him. They had taken enough of his classmates, but Robert had sworn to himself that he would not dig any more in his life after spending almost the entirety of the previous summer digging along the general stop line near Dover. The invasion never came. The line was still being manned by the old men of the Home Guard but the positions were a waste of time. Instead he had signed up for the Navy a few weeks before the Christmas break. They did not care about his age, there were enough young men signing up in droves that he was just one of a crowd. Conscription would have taken him soon enough so having some choice to join the navy instead of the army was all he cared about.

By midnight, he was exhausted. Today they marched, today, they prepared for their next destination. He would be heading to damage control training with a half dozen members of his class. Most of the soon to be sailors were ordered to join ships that were readying to rejoin the fleet after spending time in the yards or to new construction that still had not worked out. A few men had been selected out for ASDIC training. They were the ones who could sing. He did not care. He was too tired to care. One more day, and basic training would be done. That was all he thought about as his eyes closed for the night.

 

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March 8, 1941 0700 South of Qaminis, Libya

Every man clinched the ground inches in front of their face. The Italian artillery had commenced a rolling bombardment minutes ago. Scouts had been clashing with German and Italian light armored patrols for weeks now. The Lancers and Hussars had conceded ground as they were not strong enough to hold against aggressive probes, they were strong enough to identify when a probe was an actual thrust versus purely information. The 2nd Armoured Division had created a solid line of outposts manned by the Support Group and the recently moved up Guards Brigade. The two armoured brigades were still being held in camps near Benghazi. An Indian infantry division as well as a Free French battalion were further east along the coastal road.

The rifle men and Bren gun teams waited. They knew an attack was coming. The Italian artillery preparation would not be a feint and it was too heavy for harassment fire. As the shells burst to the rear of the forward position, enterprising subalterns and sergeants raised their heads and looked. Some looked to their front first, some looked to their left and their right. Some saw wraiths advancing in the swirling dust. Others saw their men trying to find their courage to expose their eyes and their lives to artillery again. A few were smart and active enough to call for their own artillery to shift from firing at map coordinates of likely assembly points towards actual threats.

A dozen tanks also advanced through the dust. They were trying to curl around the inland flank of the position. Anti-tank guns were being moved quickly to counter this threat.

A Bren gun opened up at a cluster of Italian infantrymen who had broken cover early. Two men crumpled over but soon a mortar section began to search for the Bren team. By mid-afternoon, the entire position was engulfed in sharp, short conflicts as the Italian infantry had locked the British infantry into combat.

By the early evening, the 2nd Armoured Division’s tanks had started to move forward as RAF fighter and light bombers were screaming that a German Panzer force was trying to swing wide of the entire battle. The Valentines and Matilda's stopped and then headed inland towards the German column.

By midnight, both armoured columns had been mauled to mutual ineffectiveness. German tanks were more vulnerable to the heavily armored infantry tanks and their two pounder guns while anti-tank guns claimed more than their fair share of cruiser tanks that rushed forward to chase feinted retreats. No one controlled the land between the armies. The division had not been pushed back substantially. Stretcher teams and patrols bumped into each other as they searched for their friends, their comrades and their enemies. Scottish, English, Indian, Australian teams brought Germans and Italians to the rear while Bavarians and Lombards brought badly burnt yeoman to field stations. Artillery sparked short duels whenever obvious concentrations were seen but the pace of the battle had slowed, the veterans and the soon to be veterans on both sides of the field could feel the blow had been delivered and absorbed.

 

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March 9, 1941 0418 RAF Nutts Corner
The first bomber of the morning took off. Two more bombers were in queue. Those two were twin engine light bombers whose ability to survive in combat had led them to be shunted off to Coastal Command where they just had to worry about the weather and the light cannons that could be found on the occasional U-boat.

The four engine, American built, bomber lumbered down the runway. She could have carried a crew of ten for a mission over the Continent but only five men were in the airplane. The Scottish depot made the aircraft look odd. A bomb bay was sealed. A blister for a quad 20 millimeter cannon cluster was added. The ASV radar had been installed along the top of the fuselage behind the wings.

She carried four depth charges and an additional bladder of fuel in the single functional bomb bay. Her mission was to circle a convoy of forty eight inbound ships from Halifax. The slow convoy had already fought through a small U-boat wolf pack and lost three ships to the sea wolves while the escorts claimed a single kill. As the merchant ships approached British home waters, the danger would increase for another day before dropping. Until last week, no maritime patrol aircraft could reach the convoys. A Liberator had escorted a fast convoy out to about the same point on the previous Tuesday without too much difficulty.

The large bomber’s wheels cleared the runway with plenty of room to spare. Two more of her compatriots were on the flight line and scheduled for the day. Within minutes, the pilot began to concentrate on keeping his large, ungainly aircraft on the leanest and most efficient fuel mixture possible as they had 900 miles to go before they could look for the convoy. The Welsh pilot looked to his right for a moment and saw the American co-pilot alertly watching the engine RPM gauges. The American was both an observer and a trainer for the new bomber. He had three more flights before the American was off of his crew.

image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Liberator_I

 

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March 10, 1941 Washington, DC

“Germany’s totalitarian regime is the critical threat to American security. It is in our interest to ensure that our friends and allies of all free people have the tools that they need to defend themselves and protect themselves from aggression. I strongly support this bill and encourage all of my honorable colleagues to join me. I yield the floor to my good friend from the state of Virginia”

The Senate was in session as the long debate over the Lend Lease Act was coming to a close. Republican opposition was split but Democratic support was not unanimous either. The Senate Majority Leader was sure that he had the votes for the act but he needed to let everyone have their say. Over the past two weeks, the presentations by the Treasury Department and several bankers from New York illustrated that the British cash situation was becoming perilous. Enough Senators had also heard from manufacturers in their district that the flood of British orders were slowing to a trickle that could only be paid for by current British exports instead of through British savings.

The bill would pass. It would pass by the end of the week and then the President would sign it. The flood gate of supplies that were needed for the Allied cause would open up without regard to compensation.

 

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March 10, 1941 San Diego, California

11,000 workers were on the line. Actually there were three major production lines. Two Navy lines. One had a dozen PBY flying boats in various stages of completion. Six were Navy aircraft, the four were Royal Air Force orders and two more were being completed under a Canadian contract. Those last two were due to fly to Vickers Canada as working models for local replication and production. The central line was the Privateer line. Seven US Navy models were being assembled. They looked like first cousins to the three dozen bombers on the last line. They were slightly longer, and their skins were punctured by fewer turrets and defensive ports. But they both had the double tail and the high Davis wing. The Privateer and the Liberators both could fly forever with a heavy load. The Army and Royal Air Force bombers were being optimized for high altitude work while the Privateers had simpler and less expensive engines. They would seldom fly above 15,000 feet in a naval role.

The whistle blew for the shift change. 11,000 workers put down their tools and prepared to hand off their charges to the much smaller second shift of 1,900 workers. The second shift had more experts and technicians as they would have the space to complete delicate tasks. Finally, out in the yard, the engineering department was filing out for a baseball game versus accounting. The engineers were working on the next round of modifications that was being informed by combat experience.

 

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March 11, 1941 North of Al Maqrun, Libya

The Australian infantrymen huddled under whatever cover they could find. Some men were digging rifle scrapes while others found cover in the dips and rolls of an almost flat terrain. Some of the men were hiding behind the bodies of their friends who were either too slow or simply unlucky. Heavy machine guns were entrenched several hundred yards north of the crossroad village that they were supposed to take. The counter-attack had punched air for the first six hours but German and Italian resistance was increasing as the brigade pushed south.

They had been the reserves that stabilized the line on the 9th. They had anchored the 2nd Armoured Division’s courage and logistics when the Germans attempted to turn the inland flank. A melee battle ensued as the heavily armored British tanks took more damage than the Germans but they blunted the sickle that was aimed to scythe the division south of the port of Benghazi. Patrols were set out on the 10th to gain intelligence and a series of sharp encounters with German and Italian patrols had almost escalated into another pitched battle. A single company had lost seventy seven men from a well executed Italian artillery and machine gun coordinated ambush.

They started to move south before dawn, pushing to find the defensive lines of their attackers. The first few hours were almost a walk in the park. A few mines slowed them down slightly. Three or four map fired artillery barrages drove them to cover without causing causalities. They suffered their first air raid mid-morning as half a dozen Junkers attempted to bomb the supply column that was only a thousand yards behind them. So far, no friendly fighters had been seen.

And then suddenly, the open ground that they were crossing before the small village that was their objective became a killing ground. Artillery rolled south to north, machine guns sent beams of tracers eighteen inches off the ground. Mortars searched out for ditches and trenches and the slightest protection of reverse slopes. A dozen tanks from the attack’s reserve moved past the infantrymen. Machine guns chattered out of the steel beasts and their main guns roared. The new tanks still lacked a good high explosive round but their ability to take risks and attract fire heartened the infantrymen as the young officers encouraged, cajoled and threatened their men to close up on the tanks and use their hulking bulk as a shield to continue the advance.

So they did. The men left cover, fearing the disapproval of their mates more than they feared steel shards ripping them apart. Most of them were able to get into the bullet shadow of a tank and they continued to walk forward with their bayonets ready and their backs hunched.

Five hundred yards from the village, several machine guns were already silenced and then friendly 25 pounders began to lay a thick curtain of smoke and high explosive shells between the advance and the defenders. It was not enough. Half a dozen anti-tank guns focused on the lead tank and the seventh hit was a catastrophic hit. The ammunition brewed up and the driver started to scream as the flames licked at his legs and began to consume him. The commander scrambled out of the hatch, while a machine gun that had previously ceased fire started again, spraying bullets bouncing off the tank’s armor.

The attack was losing momentum as another tank stopped after an anti-tank shell destroyed its tracks and a third tank’s turret was jammed.

 

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March 12, 1941 North of the Faroe Islands

Montcalm pressed through the storm tossed seas. Her bow dipped and then raised with the waves. Men had strapped themselves to railings and tables to keep their feet stable and their bodies safe as the ship was tossed. She had been on patrol for a week and would be on patrol for another week. Another large, heavy, long legged cruiser would take her place in the slow strangulation of Germany through blockade. Her crew, almost entirely Frenchmen who had been aboard her in Norway or had served aboard the battleship Courbet which was demobilized in Portsmouth, had seen nothing untowards. She steamed on with eyes open, looking for raiders and looking for blockade runners.

 

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March 13, 1941 Martinique

USS Los Angeles was made secure to the dock with half a dozen thick hawsers bights were wrapped around steel posts. Her propellers ceased to churn the tropical water. Within an hour, two hundred men were ashore to seek women and wine. Their chiefs had been clear that they were not to do anything that would require the chiefs to officially notice. Good behavior was promised on the liberty call.

Los Angeles was due to report to Norfolk after training in the easy, sunny seas of the Caribbean. Yorktown needed escorts. But there was enough time in her movement orders to allow for a short visit to the French fleet in exile. American ships had routinely visited the port. Yorktown and her task force had visited the four French battleships immediately after they transited the Panama Canal. Idaho and Mississippi had done a day of gunnery trials with Dunkerque and Strasbourg. That was the first time the battle cruisers had gone to sea since they had entered exile as surety for the reconstruction of the French armies. The shooting was good considering the under-strength crews and the lack of live fire drills in almost a year. They were still drilling every day as if they could be at war by night fall.


Two days later, every man on the American heavy cruiser had time ashore. The cruiser left the port with a pair of French light cruisers behind her. They were heading to the range established just past the headland. Each ship would fire six salvos at the sea and then spend another six hours working on man overboard drills. The two French warships were slower on the draw as their crews were short and supplemented by men from the other cruisers still tied up in port but their skills were still sharp enough. As Los Angeles turned to the north, a Standard Oil tanker flashed her lights in recognition and respect at the warship. The slow, heavily laden tanker had only a few more miles to her destination. The two light cruisers took station ahead and behind her to lead her into port.