Keynes' Cruisers

[fester]

March 14, 1941 Hong Kong

Lamotte-Picquet eased herself out of the crowded roads of Hong Kong. HMS Thracian dipped her colors to the light cruiser. She had received permission to bring a convoy of four ships from Haiphong to Osaka. These ships carried rubber, tin, lead, and rice to the Japanese Home Islands. After a three day port visit, the cruiser called on her former allies in Hong Kong and then was scheduled to spend three days at Macau. Half a dozen foreign observers had disembarked in Victoria Harbor. They had seen the French-Thai war and half were reporting back to the British high command and the rest were booking passage to Manila. The Thais were using Japanese advisors so there would be something worth learning.

Days steaming south, her sister ship entered the Johor Strait. She had been damaged in the fighting. The Royal Navy offered the Marine Nationale access to the new dockyards for Primauguet. She would be indisposed for three weeks before she had to return to Cam Ranh Bay.

 

[fester]

March 14, 1941 1542 Valletta, Malta

The mother clutched her child to her chest. Her other children were playing games in the corner of their basement. This was the fourth time today the family had hidden in the basement. They had reinforced their stairwell with wood and steel and sand bags creating a narrow, deep bomb shelter. Over the past nine months, they had used the shelter several times a week. Over the past week, they spent more time in the shelter than out of it whenever the weather was good enough for aircraft to fly. The mother prayed , her fingers gently touching the smooth wooden beads of her rosary. She prayed for safety, she prayed for a storm, she prayed that her youngest child could finish teething. She prayed that the bomb that everyone could hear screeching down from the belly of a bomber would either miss the town or be a dud.

She prayed.

Twelve thousand feet above her, a twenty one year old pilot prayed. His depleted squadron of Hurricanes had risen in defense of their base yet again. They had bounced a small bomber force before their escorts could respond. But once the ME-109s started the chase, time lost all meaning as a second was an eternity. He juked, he skidded, he slewed. An experten had gotten on his tail and only the intervention of another Hurricane breaking out of a furball saved him. His left wing had a dozen holes in it. A single machine gun bullet entered the cockpit and sliced his thigh open. Three minutes of combat was a lifetime as he found a high cloud to hide in. He took his belt and squeezed it tightly around his thigh to stem the loss of blood.

He prayed he would not be spotted.

He prayed that his landing gear would work.

He prayed that his plane would stay together long enough for the ground crew to pull him out.

He prayed that he would walk again.

 

[fester]

March 15, 1941 at a cafe in Izmir, Turkey

“Let me pay for the coffee, it is the least that I can do”

“It is all that you have done”

The anger in that retort was quiet, but strong. The Iraqi Army officer had been dispatched to Turkey to continue discussions with German officers for the support of the planned revolt against the British. They needed arms, they needed, supplies, they needed advisors, they needed everything. Great Britain deigned to embrace the fiction that Iraq was its own country but the Empire controlled the bases, the Empire controlled the exports and imports into Basra, the Empire had too much influence at court. Iraq was merely an appendage to the Empire, free in nothing but name.

The Golden Square were feeling out their options. The Italians had proven themselves weak and useless. British prestige rebounded after they destroyed the 10th Army. German counterattacks in Libya had barely changed the front line. The Greeks were strengthening. The Turks had looked at the situation and decided to pay no attention to the possibility of a regime change in Baghdad. This meeting was to suss out the level of support Germany could give.

There was little they could do. The supply lines were feeble. Vichy airfields in Lebanon and Syria would be under British surveillance and passive resistance. There were no rail lines that could move bulk supplies. Paratroopers could not be staged through Bulgaria or Romania to Mosul without violating Turkish airspace. The Germans could promise little beyond moral support even as the flow of well trained infantry brigades into the theatre from India and England increased.

The discussion soon turned as acidic as the coffee. There was no hope of external support.

 

[fester]

March 16, 1941 2349 Southeast of Iceland

HMS Roxborough slowed dramatically. Her sonar was pinging frantically as her lookouts had sent her chasing down the bubble track of a German torpedo run. Finally, they had a solid contact, a submarine that had fired early as the eight escorts were patrolling the perimeter of the forty four ships in convoy HX-112. One ship was lost the previous day, a tanker had been torpedoed and was escorted to Reykjavik. The rest of the convoy had pressed on.

Her stern skewed, the captain guessed his target would try to sprint to port. Depth charges rolled off the rails and sank rapidly. A corvette was coming to support the old destroyer in her attack. White flower petals of water bloomed as the depth charges went off. Nothing came up from the first attack. The corvette Bluebell waited for the water to settle and the destroyer to regain the fix. The corvette followed the directions of the destroyer and rolled a full pattern of depth charges to 125 feet. One depth charge exploded seven feet from the dive planes of U-99. A screech of twisted metal and turbulent water flows was heard by the hydrophones onboard both escorts. Roxborough twisted and turned in a wide circle. She stabilized and with guidance from Bluebell, another pattern of depth charges landed within yards of the target. U-99 soon started to make an emergency blow to rise to the surface. Seven men were rescued by the escorts. Another two men froze to death in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. The rest of the crew drowned.

Twenty seven miles and three hours closer to Liverpool, HMS Vanoc claimed another kill. U-100 had been caught between Vanoc and HMS Walker when she had surfaced to repair depth charge damage. Vanoc’s bow sliced the small submarine in two.

A single Liberator from 120 Squadron arrived over the convoy at 0655. As the lumbering bomber circled the forty three surviving ships, a sharp eye observer saw a flutter of white spray move against the direction of the waves eleven miles in front of the point ship of the escort. Walker accelerated to chase the contact but her engines were insignificant when compared to the four powerful piston engines aboard the Liberator. She banked and dropped in altitude, her co-pilot focusing and directing the pilot’s attention on a spot of the ocean where they were sure they had seen something unnatural. Two depth charges set for 50 feet tumbled of the bomb bay. One missed U-110, the other detonated feet from the turning propeller.

Walker trained her guns at the disturbed sea as she began to ping. A solid contact was made, and a pattern of depth charges released. A minute later, U-110 began to crest through the waves. Every gun aboard Walker started to fire. The main guns punched through the submarine’s sail and pressure hull while anti-aircraft pom-poms and machine guns swept the deck to keep the German gun crews away. A single white shirt, the cleanest piece of laundry aboard the submarine was soon being waved. Fire ceased. A boat was lowered into the sea and soon the wounded survivors were being hustled below deck on Walker and then soon Vanoc arrived to assist. The healthy men left the submarine last, a prize crew aboard her. The senior officer of the prize crew was the chief engineer of Vanoc. He ordered a rapid inspection of the boat to determine if a tow was worthwhile. There was too much damage and too much danger.

Instead, the seventeen men of the prize crew had an hour to strip the submarine of anything valuable. Three men ransacked the radio room, grabbing books, stuffing papers into waterproof bags and most importantly taking the complex coding machines. By lunch, every man was off the submarine. Walker cast off and fired a pair of torpedoes at her prize. One exploded by the conning tower and the submarine dove for the last time. The young skipper ordered twenty four knots to catch up to the convoy that had zig-zagged away from the confrontation and the capture.

Four days later, Convoy HX-112 arrived with Liverpool having lost a single ship sunk and two damaged. Three submarines were confirmed kills and an Engima machine was captured.

 

[fester]

March 16, 1941 Berbera, British Somaliland

The boats moved closer to shore. The seas were relatively calm. The boats were full of Punjabi infantry. They were huddled, heads low to minimize their exposure to the machine guns that they knew that they would have set up on the beaches but had not fired yet. Out to sea a pair of cruisers waited. Their guns tracked targets. A single Walrus amphibian loitered overhead ready to call fire on any Italian resistance.

By noon time, the Italian infantry brigade tasked to defend the port had surrendered. A few strong points held out but they were isolated and thus easily flanked and destroyed as their peers and compatriots could not and would not support them. By nightfall, the newly taken prisoners as well as pioneers from Aden had started to clear the port and open up the supply lines. Berbera would be the new nexus of the East African campaign where ships would be the key to logistics instead of battered trucks and ornery camels moving down smuggling tracks.

 

[fester]

March 17, 1941 Alexandria

Bells clanged. Birds dipped down to find fish, offal and garbage floating near the warships of the Mediterranean Fleet. Three battleships were behind torpedo nets. Half a dozen cruisers were resupplying and attending to the hundreds of minor and not so minor repairs that warships needed. A dozen destroyers were tied up to the piers. One had her entire aft third ripped open as workmen repaired bomb damage. The rest were getting ready. They would be heading to sea soon.

The entire fleet was not in port. Two destroyers and half a dozen motor launches were escorting a coaster convoy to Benghazi to supply the army. Shells, fuel and rested men were going forward. Damaged trucks and exhausted men were coming back to the Delta.

Formidable and Eagle were at sea north of Port Said with a light escort. The old carrier had repaired the damage she suffered during the raid on Taranto. Now she was had new air wing. Twelve Martlets and fifteen Swordfish were assigned to her. Another dozen Martlets were ashore along with spare pilots. She was supposed to have received Sea Hurricanes, but the first batch had not been released for general deployment in time. Instead, the American fighters would have to do. The Hurricanes with the Merlin XX and the 20 millimeter cannons would join the fleet sometime in the early summer once enough had been added to the next Winston Special. Formidable’s airgroup had been reinforced as well. Her two Albacore squadrons had twenty one machines on the establishment. Two fighter squadrons of twelve Fulmars and twelve new, folding wing Martlets were also on board. The forty five aircraft made the ship tight even with the folding wing Americans taking up less space than their predecessors. By now, she was used to operating with a small deck park as the defensive gains from more fighters easily outweighed the liability of maintenance and slower launch cycles.

The two carriers steamed throughout the day in a lazy box as shore based planes kept a tight anti-submarine vigil. The carrier crews knew they would be needed soon, so they trained together as a team for the first time and shook off the rusty edges of solo operations.

 

[fester]

March 17, 1941 Washington DC

President Roosevelt signed the Lend Lease Act. This act authorized the President to transfer to Great Britain or any other nation involved in a conflict when the President determined the transfers improved American national security. American and British technical experts had arranged a long series of meetings to determine which goods would be subject to Lend Lease and the relevant trade clauses and which goods would be purchased. Within days, dozens of contracts were signed and arrangements were made to ship vitally needed goods around the world. Included in the early orders were another 150 Martlets for the Fleet Air Arm.

 

[fester]

March 19, 1941 Groton, Connecticut

The two Mackerel class submarines would be transferred via Lend-Lease to the Royal Navy. Once construction was completed and the crews had been trained on the ships, they would sail for Gibraltar to reinforce the U-class flotillas operating against the Italians in the Mediterranean. Another nine WWI veterans were also on the list to be transferred. Those old, obsolete death traps were destined for coastal training duties.

 

[fester]

March 20, 1941 1900 Near Strasbourg

“Mama, I love you”

“I love you, I’m just sad and happy, and proud, and worried and everything else as my baby girl is growing up faster than I could ever think possible!”

“Mama, don’t worry, I’ll only be in Paris. I have a job with the railroad administration. They need girls to file repair reports. I have some friends there, they’ll watch out for me. I won’t get into trouble….”

“My dear, you should try to get into a little bit of trouble. Not too much of course, but some. If there is no trouble, then why live in the city? I always wanted to see Paris,. We never could, the farm would not wait for us. Go my dear, go”

Anna Marie wiped tears from her eyes. This was easier and harder than she ever thought it could be. Her parents took the news that she wanted to move to Paris better than she thought. They actually supported her. They knew that a dairy farm was not where their daughter wanted to be. They did not know that their daughter had been asked by the good Doctor to go to Paris. They did not know that their daughter’s lover (who they knew about and decided to take the wise parental course of deliberate ignorance) had arranged for his mistress to ask one of his colleagues for a job as a clerk and as a mistress. They did not know those details. But they knew their daughter needed to see the world.

As she hugged her mother, her father, grave, stern, and loving but distant tried to hide his approval for her. He could not cry in front of his daughter. He could only go to a cupboard in his bedroom and remove a bottle of wine that they had stored since the day they knew that Anna Marie was to be expected. He had thought this would be a wedding gift, but today, he felt it was appropriate. His daughter, his beautiful, smart, vivacious daughter was launching herself into the world. She was barely an adult, he could remember how she fit in the crook of his elbow as her mother and him had played cards around the table after a day of work. He remembered the pride he had when she came home from school with exceptional marks in math. He remembered her smile when she helped a cow, a prime milker, give birth for the first time. He was proud of her. And now she would go.

“Papa, I will write. “

“I know you will my dear, I just worry about finding out that you’ll forget us here at the farm”

“Never papa, never mama….”

 

[fester]

March 22, 1941 Wake Island

Four hundred and seventy three Marines, one hundred and ninety one sailors, and three hundred civilian laborers arrived at Wake Island to supplement the Pan Am waypoint crew and the current six hundred and seventy civilian construction workers who had blasted out a packed coral fighter strip, and a clear passage through the coral into the lagoon where a dozen ships could now tie up at the new but rickety wooden pier.

The lead elements of the 1st Marine Defense Battalion would install their three assigned coastal defense batteries of 5”/51 caliber guns taken from Standard battleships which had been refitted with heavier anti-aircraft defenses at the expense of their anti-destroyer defenses, and six anti-aircraft batteries. Over the next three months, they would pour seven thousand tons of concrete, bury thirty eight miles of telephone wire, and begin to make Wake a strong shield for the fleet from the roving patrol planes the Japanese had based in the Marshalls.

The one hundred and ninety one sailors had three missions. The first group of thirty sailors were deployed in direct support of the Marines. Eighty three more sailors were assigned to the two large eight inch gun turrets removed from Lexington and shipped across the Pacific. These turrets with their twin eight inch guns would be placed, camouflaged and armored with as much ingenuity as possible. The remaining sailors were used to begin building a small fleet support facility that could accommodate a patrol squadron, a division of mine layers and a squadron of submarines.

The new civilian labor force was used to accelerate the construction of the base infrastructure and their heavy equipment, most notably the seven bulldozers and four backhoes would prove to be amazing time saving devices as the Marines were able to dig positions in a day that would have taken weeks if they had to only use shovels

 

[fester]

March 25, 1941 Stranraer, Scotland

The ungainly amphibian finished its taxi to the concrete pad. She was the last new flying boat that 209 Squadron would receive. Over the past several weeks, the squadron had stood down from flying patrols with the Lerwick as they re-acclimated to flying the new Consolidated Catalinas. These planes were a joy to fly compared to the Lerwicks. The old aircraft, unfortunately, were not being scrapped. They were being sent north to Glasgow for research and evaluation flights.

Along with the new aircraft was a bevy of Americans. This time they were not even disguising the fact that they were Americans instead of Canadians with atrocious accents. Half a dozen American naval officers were attached to the squadron until June. Another dozen mechanics and engineers from Consolidated were also present. Operational flights routinely had men from four countries on a given sortie. So far they had not seen anything of value besides an out of place oil slick north of Coleraine but the time they had spent circling convoys and hunting for raiders seemed to have done enough work to keep the German submarines down and the raiders cautious when they entered the observable area for land based air patrols.

 

[fester]

March 25, 1941 Vienna, Austria

The celebratory dinner was quiet. No one who was enjoying the fine beef laid out on the plates. Instead the diplomats and the generals poked and prodded at their food on their plates, occasionally having a bite as ennui and muscle memory reminded them that they should eat. It should have been a day of celebration. Six months of hard work had been completed. Yugoslavia had signed onto the Tripartite Pact. Germany and Italy guaranteed her borders and would not station troops in her territory. Over the long run, she would gain access to the Aegean.

The Yugoslav diplomats had a success. Their primary foreign sponsors had been defeated and could not back her. This was a deal they did not want to make, but it was a deal that they had to make. Despite this desperation, it was not a bad deal as long as the peoples in the readily fracturable country could back the deal with cold-hearted reality.

 

[fester]

March 26, 1941 Norfolk, Virginia

Bump, bump. The tug boat nudged HMS Illustrious against the dock. The dry dock was closed as Idaho needed two more days to clear the dock as the refit was behind schedule because a new gang of ship fitters had managed to make a new and creative mistake on the port shaft. The carrier looked, at first glance, to be in good shape. She sat slightly deeper in the water than Constellation and her island structure looked odd when docked next to the Atlantic Fleet’s carriers. It was only when one could look down on her from above and see the rushed repair job on her deck. It was only when one looked closely at the repainted hull that they could see the scars that had been fixed in Durban. It was only when one smelled the air in the hangar deck that the miasma of burnt gasoline and incidental incineration of sailors in the temporary crematorium of the hangar deck that one could tell that she was damaged.

Her journey to Norfolk was slow. She had spent weeks in Durban fixing the worst of the damage that would have endangered her journey to America. She had waited two weeks in Freetown for an escort across the Atlantic. She had emptied herself of all useful supplies and large bodies of her men who had called her home as the Fleet needed all the trained men that they could find. She brought with her a third of the pilots who survived the journey back to Alexandria. They would be shipped around America for a few weeks. After their journey, they along with graduates the Empire Air Training Scheme and trained crews from the Fleet would congregate in Virginia and Maryland to rebuild Illustrious’ squadrons. The veterans were the core of the new squadrons that would be designated as successors to the squadrons that were still flying in the Nile Delta and defending Malta.

There was an active debate as to whether or not Illustrious would receive American torpedo planes or if Albacore torpedo bombers would be shipped across the ocean for the new squadrons. Once the pilots and engineers had further discussions with the US Navy and Grumman about the new Avenger torpedo bomber, that decision could be made. Illustrious would be equipped with only Grumman Marlets. The fleet had started to receive the folding wing fighters. There was a chance of being able to fit two reinforced squadrons on board. A carrier could survive a determine air raid if she had radar, good fighter interception direction, sufficient fighters and a bit of luck. She was living proof of what happened without enough luck, but the concept was proven. She would embody the hard and bloodily discovered truth once the shipwrights of Norfolk rebuilt her hangar, rebuilt armored her deck and updated her with all of the electronics that had become critical in only the short time that had passed since she had first joined the Fleet.

 

[fester]

March 27, 1941 South of Crete

Forty ships were moving north. The carriers and battleships of the Mediterranean Fleet were slightly south of the main body. A dozen transports and cargo ships were moving the last echelon of Lustre Force to Athens. Around those ships a division of cruisers and a squadron of destroyers aggressively patrolled looking Italian submarines and German snoopers. Overhead Eagle maintained a combat air patrol of two sections of Martlets. Formidable was holding her squadrons in reserve to either strike or defend. A single twin engine bomber lazily scouted ahead looking for submarines. So far none of the troop convoys had been successfully attacked as they moved a corps to Greece, but no chances were being taken with the last one.

Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, and Valiant were anxiously waiting for a spotting report. They were ready, and their captains and crews knew that they were the best battleships still afloat in the theatre. The Italian main fleet had seldom sortied since Taranto. Instead of seeking to interdict the flow of reinforcements and supplies heading to the Greek Army, they were content to protect the entrance to the Adriatic and harass shipping heading to Malta while covering their own convoys to Tripoli.

The look-outs looked at the horizon. Some men strained their eyes. Others put their hands on their foreheads to shield their eyes from the sun’s glare. More men looked at a phosper glowing screen deep in the hulls of the guardians. There was nothing to see even as every man whose mission it was to look looked hard. The ships cut through the waves of the wine dark sea and continued to bring succor and relief to Greece.

 

[fester]

I needed this to keep track of where units are so I don't invent divisions for story purposes

Order of battle for the British Commonwealth in the Eastern Meditaraean

Lustre Force/Greece

6th Australian Infantry Division (3 Brigades)

2nd New Zealand Division (3 Brigades)

Polish Independent Carpathian Brigade

1st Tank Brigade



Crete Force

14th Infantry Brigade (lacking transport)


Palestine Force

1st Cavalry Division (3 Brigades with minimal transport) (plans to convert to 10th Armored Division )

North African Littoral

XIII Corps

9th Australian Division (80% transport available)

2nd Armored Division (mechanical availability is high)

4th Indian Division (fully mission capable)

3rd Indian Motor Infantry Brigade (arriving) (lacking 50% transport)

1 battalion Free French


Delta

50th Division

3rd Division (5%, rest to arrive mid May)

7th Armored Division (reconstituting )

7th Australian Division (training but available for moderately complex tasks)


East Africa Campaign

5th Indian Division

11th East African Division

12th East African Division

1st South African Division

Briggs Force+Brigade d'Orient (Reinforced brigade)

British Somaliland Force (weak brigade)

 

[fester]

March 29, 1941 Belgrade, Yugoslavia

The baker hummed.

He had walked to to work at 3:00 in the morning as he normally did. The streets had been prenaturally quiet since the treaty had been signed. A few trucks, with Army and Air Force markings, full of men in the beds, careened around the corner of his quiet, sedentary neighborhood moments before he unlocked his shop door.

He did not care. One oven bay was full of rapidly browning bread. Another needed his attention to pull out pastries to cool. As they cooled, he swayed to the jazz on the radio, not thinking about the music, not thinking about the sugary drizzle that he was preparing to lay down on the treats for children and decadent adults to enjoy in only a few hours.

As the bustle of the bakery increased as his shop clerk entered through the back door, the smells wafted through the air. He had never become immune to the pleasure of smelling freshly baking bread in the morning, the roasted yeasts and wheat toasting to a firm crisp made him happy as he hummed and danced through the crowded and complicated steps of baking bread for his neighborhood. A few more minutes and the shop would be open. A platter of rolls was placed under the glass case, and several loaves of bread were cooling a few more minutes before being placed on the wooden racks for the early grandmothers to inspect.

The music on the radio stopped. A somber voice announced a critical announcement was to come. The baker stopped humming.

The voice of the young Crown Prince, Peter, broke on the radio as he announced that the government of Prince Paul had come to an end and that a new government of national unity would be formed.

Within hours, tens of thousands of people were on the streets of Belgrade. The Serbs among them were the loudest, yelling that they wanted war rather than a pact and graves rather then slaves. The baker dismissed the young hotheads. He had fought at Caporetto and Piave and he limped slightly due to a bullet that broke his leg in the first week of November 1918. He had seen too many of his friends in graves. He did not say much, as he made bread throughout the day and his shop was constantly busy as the crowds looked for food and the murmurs said that the shop down a side street in a quiet neighborhood had some amazing bread.

 

[fester]

March 30, 1941 1450 Boston Harbor

HMS Glorious arrived in style. She had made a high speed run across the sea for her own safety but the speed was invigorating as she was no longer tied to the battleships of Home Fleet. Most of her air wing had been left in Scotland for more training. She had just four Martlets, and six Swordfish for self defense. One of the Martlets killed a Luftwaffe bomber that was searching for convoys. No other planes fired except out of boredom and training.

She had been scheduled for three weeks in the Boston Navy Yard for a quick bit of work. Her known defects would not be cured, but her engines would be tuned, her hull scraped, and a dozen new Swiss machine guns would be installed. Most importantly to her men, an ice cream machine had been promised. Before work could begin, she needed to unload her cargo; two hundred new Merlin engines. A squadron of Hurricanes was waiting for their aircraft which had been delayed due to the diversion of engines.

Once ashore, the Fleet Air Arm pilots were whisked away to South Station where they were put on a train full of American naval pilots. Two cars full of fighter pilots, steaks and whiskey were a learning experience for both the pilots and the railroad. By the middle of next morning, most of the men would have recovered from their hangovers and the naval airfields near Norfolk were busy scrambling new fighters in the air for tactical instruction.

 

[fester]

March 31, 1941 Tulagi, Solomon Islands

The tramp steamer was heavy in the water. She had dropped off six hundred tons of tools, food, clothes, spare parts and fuel for the plantations. In return, she had picked up a significant portion of the coconut crop. Most of the coconuts had already been pressed down for their oil but some raw coconuts had been taken aboard for consumption in the cities of Australia.

A single Royal Australian Navy officer and three enlisted men had disembarked. They were to conduct a local survey of the southern Solomon Islands before returning to Sydney on the next tramp steamer that pulled into the wonderfully protected but woefully underused sheltered harbor of Tulagi and Florida Island.

 

[fester]

April 1, 1941 Near Cape May, New Jersey

She was sleek. She was powerful. Nine sixty foot long barrels emerged from three turrets, two forward and one aft. She was broad boned and strong limbed. She was intended to be fleet. USS North Carolina was lumbering in the gentle seas.

Below decks, Seaman Apprentice William Jaroschek, could not see his captain’s face furrow. He could not see the engineers cluster together. He was working only in his skivvies in the ship’s scullery, cleaning hundreds of plates and thousands of utensils with two other fresh from basic training seamen. The posting to the scullery was an ugly, hot, exhausting job, it paid an extra $5.00 per month. Furnace #3 at Edgar Thompson was hotter. Mine #2 was far more dangerous. This was not a pleasant job, but it beat being an infantryman, and it beat being a submariner. He had wanted to avoid the mine and being locked up in an underwater mine would have been too much.

The mighty battleship was supposed to have opened up her engines for a measured mile. She had started the run twice and then slowed. Each time she neared 20 knots, the ship shook, the vibrations rattled unsecured items, and the engineers grew worried that the delicate transmission system of power from the boilers to the screws would be destroyed. The civilian representatives from the builder’s yard had huddled and asked the captain for one more test, a very slow acceleration from steerage to ten knots and then another slow acceleration from ten to eighteen knots. They needed to set some monitoring equipment first but then the mighty battleship slowly crept along the measured mile.

By nightfall, she had pulled back into the docks at the building yard. Engineers, naval and civilian, were the first men off the ship as they hurried to the drafting room to discuss the vibration problem.

 

[fester]

April 1, 1941 Keren, Eritrea

A streaky plume of dust clouds mixed with petrol smoke rose in the air. Six Wellesley bombers arced away. A dozen American built light tanks advanced. Three battalions of Indian infantry supported the tanks and then a battalion flowed right and up the hill that pinched the key to the entire Italian defensive position.

Four regiments of field artillery bombarded the Colonial brigade that was targeted for the breakthrough. Another regiment of heavy guns reached to find the most likely Italian counterattack pathways. Shells arced forward to keep the reserves fixed or dying.

By mid-morning, the Punjabi battalion on the left had taken the objective along the Falestoh Ridge. Five tanks were destroyed in supporting the assault, but it worked as their firepower dominated the Italian machine gun nests. As soon as blood soaked bayonets were cleaned and sheathed, artillery observation parties looked down. They could see the protected havens of Italian reserve formations and supply dumps. They could see the scramble of a retreat. They could see victory in their grasp even as a last ditch counterattack was being organized. A regiment of guns were called to break up the disciplined Italian soldiers. It scythed and exacted a toll but they still advanced until hand to hand fighting along the ridge line stopped them.

By nightfall, the town of Keren had fallen. All roads were open in all directions The Italian position in the colony was now untenable.