Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2

[fester]

The Clyde, April 6, 1943


The inlet was full. Assault transports were assembling. Merchant ships from America and the entire Empire were waiting for docks to clear so that they could unload. Warships fresh from construction and repair yards were picking up speed as their veteran core crew brought up the hostilities only men to competency.

Two destroyers strove to catch up to HMS Glorious. Her hanger was full of crated Seafires. Metal outriggers kept a small deck park of a dozen aircraft, evenly split between Martlets and Swordfish for self defense and ready for flight. More Seafires were on deck. The three fast warships were low in the water, heavy with fuel. They would make a high speed run to Gibraltar. Then the Home Fleet destroyers would link up with a convoy and give the merchants extra protection for the run to Liverpool before they returned to Scapa Flow. Force H would escort Glorious to Tunis before the Mediterranean Fleet took responsibility for the old carrier's dash to Alexandria. Once there, her hangers would be emptied and her deck cleared. The new, modern, fast fighters would replace the Sea Hurricanes and Martlets from Victorious and Indomitable while the old carrier would again dash home, making the run through the central Mediterranean at a quick twenty five knots.

 

[fester]

Straits of Gibraltar April 7, 1943

HMS Quantock slowed slightly in the morning seas. Her ASDIC was pinging like a perivatin fueled circus clown the night before the train moved to the next town. HMS Hurworth came over the contact and laid down another pattern of depth charges.


The sea roiled. Ugly popped pimples of gray and white water knuckled behind the two ships. Nothing beyond dead fish and shredded sea weeds came to the surface. The ships continued to ping until HMS Quantock had a firm contact. Even as she was entering her attack run, the radio squawked. A US Navy blimp and a pair of Coastal Command bombers were on the way to help prosecute the target.

This attack run was as fruitless as the first three. The sub driver was aggressive in changing his depth and squirting forward and making aggressive turns as soon as the sound of depth charges hitting the sea was heard through his hydrophones. Yet the destroyer skippers were content to force the submarine down. They had all day and they had more then enough depth charges.

Four hours later, five more depth charge runs had been unsuccessful. The gun crews had been called in for a late lunch and an early tea. A third destroyer was only half an hour away. The contact had escaped for fifteen minutes, but Quantock reacquired it soon enough. By now, the sea and air above the hunt was getting congested. The American blimp was circling at a slow forty five miles per hour. Her MAD probes closed the box that the U-boat could be in. The British bombers criss-cross the sky, slow and low as the observers looked for a periscope or a rising mass.

As the day began to turn into night, a look-out shouted a contact off the port bow. Four torpedoes were in the water. The three destroyers twisted and turned. Two of the torpedoes exploded in Quantock’s wake, while the other two missed cleanly. More depth charges entered the water and gun crews were ready for action. And then the submarine broke through the surface. Even before the first German sailor was through the hatch, anti-aircraft guns were already firing while the heavy main batteries were making minor adjustments before firing at near point blank range.

The U-boat stayed on the surface for three minutes before it nosed dive for the bottom of the strait, joining half a dozen other hulks. A third of the crew was rescued by their enemy.

 

[fester]

Vancouver, Canada April 7, 1943

HMCS Prince David left the harbor. She had a long journey ahead of her. She carried two companies of an infantry battalion along with an equal number of replacements and technical specialists needed to supplement Force C for future offensive operations. Her sister had left the harbor two days earlier with the rest of the reinforcing battalion and an equal draft of replacements.

 

[fester]

Singapore, April 8, 1943

USS Raleigh, and USS Richmond led half a dozen destroyer transports down the channel. They were all heavily laden. Soon they eight ships were ready to dash to the advanced base at Riau Island and then they would wait for the rest of the fleet to come out and provide distant coverage.

 

[fester]

North Atlantic, April 8, 1943


Sixty seven merchant ships steamed in columns. The mid-ocean escort force had joined during the morning. By lunchtime, the local escorts had turned back to Halifax to refuel, replenish and to give the exhausted, wet crews a run ashore for laundry and booze. SC-123 was ready for action. A Canadian Liberator flew overhead. One would watch the convoy for the next thirty six hours before an American Privateer took overwatch responsibilities away from its shorter legged sister.
Fifty hours from now, another escort carrier, fresh from working up, and three destroyers would shepherd the flock through the black gap. Avengers and Wildcats would prowl and hunt along the edges of the convoy. This coverage would only be temporary until the Icelandic and Northern Ireland based Privateers, Liberators, Fortresses, Stirlings and Sunderlands could take over.

The crossing continued. Sonars pinged and HuffDuffs listened for the enemy that had taken fearful losses over the past five months.

 

[fester]

Karelia, April 9, 1943


Lumberjacks swung axes. The weather was cold and they were wet, but an ax beat a rifle. Pioneers were busy repairing a trio of bulldozers while tractors waited for a truck lugging fuel cans to come forward. Slowly the road was coming into form. Work had almost ceased during the winter, but as the snow seasons turned to mud seasons, work had resumed. 15,000 men had been building a path from the Murmansk rail head and within another two months, a lifeline to Leningrad would be ready for daily traffic. The trucks would need to go through Finland, and the Finns had extracted significant concessions, Petsamo would be theirs again at the end of the war and they would get one fighter aircraft for every fourteen delivered to Murmansk by the Allies to rebuild their air force. The defenders of Leningrad would be routinely supplied from a secure land route. It would not be enough to engage in a spirited offensive, but it would be enough to prevent starvation and hold the line.

 

[fester]

Singapore, April 10, 1943


The whistle blew. The last men of the wave departed. There was ungainly trampling and bodies bumping into each other as men tightened their gear and made sure their shoes were tied.

The whores relaxed. Another shift was coming in. The American draftees were not particularly hard to please; they paid cash and they paid far better than the local rate. Most of the extra money went to the brothel owners and the rough men who offered “protection,” but some made it into their pockets. Most of the new customers were anxious to become men before they had to storm ashore.

Business had been booming. The girls had been working in shifts for the past week and rumors had it that the boom would end soon enough. Even as they made ready for another round, the house mothers walked up and down the hallway, handing out more rubbers (a requirement from the medical officers who were willing to turn a blind eye to brothels that would keep the men healthy enough) and ordering a few of the girls who had been with too many men to take a break. Replacements scurried from the canteen to the work rooms.

Warring and whoring went together, and soon another whistle blew.

 

[fester]

Messina, Sicily April 10, 1943


Dawn rose from the sea. Alert eyes scanned the horizon for ships and planes. None were seen. Today was just another day.


Early morning battle drill was a constant. Stay alert an hour before dawn to an hour after sunrise. If there was nothing, as there had always been nothing, the Luftwaffe tank soldiers would stand down for breakfast and then resume their normal training as the primary counter-attack force for the Sicilian armies.

 

[fester]

Mers El Kebir, April 11, 1943

Another half a dozen assault ships pulled into the harbor. Over the next twelve hours, each ship was tied up to one of the piers. They were administratively loaded to bring the most cargo from the United States to the immediate area behind the front. None of the ships could be used for an assault just yet.

Work gangs composed mostly of French speaking Arabs and Berbers and American colored troops began their routine. Empty the ships to the keel, move everything to the warehouses and the rail yards and then move most things back on with the most useful and needed things at the the top or the front of the ship. They had been engaged in this logistical ballet for weeks now, and could empty out an LST and reload her in less than three days as long as the officers did not interfere with their brilliant ideas.

Even as longshoremen began their dance, the brand new French aircraft carrier Rochambeau entered the harbor. She had been an American cruiser and was converted on the ways to a light aircraft carrier. Thirty one humongous fighters sat on her deck. Three slots were missing from trans-Atlantic landing accidents. Two French crewed and American built destroyers followed the light carrier to the French navy’s side of the harbor where they pulled in next to the three fast capital ships that had concluded another bombardment mission of the Italian islands.

 

[fester]

Riau Islands, April 12, 1943


HMS Manxman and HMS Abdiel left the harbor with only a few hours of daylight left. Fighters circled the cruiser minelayers while a single amphibian hunted ahead for submarines. The division commander hated to go to sea without a destroyer escort, but none of the available little boys could keep up with the cruisers at thirty knots for the entire mission. Their speed would be their defense against Japanese submarines.


Thirteen hours later, the cruisers turned around. A massive minefield with over three hundred mines was now covering the most common northern approach to the port of Miri. The screws turned rapidly and soon the two ships were heading home at thirty-six knots.


By mid-afternoon, the cruisers were tied up again. Anti-aircraft ammunition was being passed to the half empty magazines. Manxman’s divers were looking at the hull as a near miss buckled some plates. It was only the timely intervention of some Australian Mustangs that kept a bad morning from being a fiasco.

 

[fester]

San Juan Puerto Rico, April 13, 1943

Five aircraft carriers were in port. Two, USS Independence and USS Princeton were ready for war. They had spent the winter working up in the Caribbean. Independence was scheduled to steam to Norfolk and Princeton was on the way to Philadelphia. The two light carriers would spend up to a week in the yard before re-uniting with each other and their escorts before heading to the Mediterranean and points further east.

USS Bon Homme Richard, Cabot and Bunker Hill had just been released from the construction yards. Between the three carriers, half a complete air group was aboard. There were just enough aircraft for flight operations to be conducted and deck crews to be trained. The other ten squadrons were still scattered up and down the East Coast to continue their training. The carriers had pulled in for repairs and liberty after eight to fifteen days of hard trials. Across the harbor, two shiny new heavy cruisers, USS Boston and USS Baltimore were filling their liberty launches. Boston had accompanied Bunker Hill south to work up. They would be splitting up as the gun ranges provided almost no value to the carrier but were the core essence of the heavy cruiser’s existence. Another dozen lesser warships had pulled in and out of the harbor; almost all were still green and fresh from the East Coast yards as the convoy gathering center for the Caribbean was at Guantanamo instead of Puerto Rico. They would soon go to sea for more time shaking down and their slips would be used by the next wave of raw ships that needed their crews to become a single thoughtful organism before they headed off to the Pacific Fleet.

 

[fester]

The River Plate, April 14, 1943


U-178 descended back to the depths. The Kraken slept again. She had six torpedoes left. The rest had claimed five merchant ships for at least thirty five thousand tons in this barely patrolled section of the British imperial trade path.


She slowly moved to the northeast until night fell. As soon as the diesels pumped power back into the batteries, the young skipper changed course to a new hunting ground closer to Brazil.

 

[fester]

The Southern Spanish Coast, April 14, 1943


A battered body washed ashore. The fishermen had seen a flash of light overnight and then a fire on the water offshore. The body had a briefcase handcuffed to his left wrist. Within hours, the local police had called the regional police who had called the national police. This was not just a shipwrecked sailor or a downed aviator washing ashore.

 

[fester]

Saigon, French Indochina, April 15, 1943


French prisoners hauled hoses forward. More men were grabbing axes and buckets of sand. A large fire had broken out in the residential district near the rail marshalling yards. Soon water was turning into steam, and firebreaks were being constructed. By late morning, the barracks of the occupying Japanese infantry regiment had been protected from destruction. Soon enough, another RAF raid would hit the city and the impromptu fire brigades would be back on the streets without enough equipment, training or calories to stay strong.

 

[fester]

Attu, Aleutian Islands, April 16, 1943

His hands were almost frozen shut. Three more turns of the wrench and the weather station’s morning maintenance would be completed. He mumbled curses in at least four languages to himself. If only he had not picked up the Admiral’s daughter he could have been somewhere enjoyable and safe like an explosive ordnance disposal team. But she was willing and he was wanting.

Soon he headed back inside the small metal hut. Three of these huts housed the entire garrison for the island. They housed twenty seven men, four dogs and one cat. Everyone one of them hated being on this island. The cat and a single meteorologist from Minnesota may have been the only somewhat happy creature, but one could never tell with cats.

Hours later, the look-out called in a sighting report. The monthly tramp freighter was coming into the harbor. All of the available men rolled out of the huts and ambled to the docks. Two bags of mail, five crates of scientific samples, and a broken generator needing to be rebuilt were carted down the rickety wooden structure.

By late evening when the light was just diffused instead of overhead, six weeks of rations, three bags of mail, eight film canisters and five crates of pulp fiction had been offloaded. Oil drums were being rolled off the ship one at a time. Along with the supplies five more men had been assigned to the island. Two were mechanics, one was a pharmacist mate, and the last two were just assigned for no specific reason.

As soon as the run reached the horizon, a bottle of beer was tossed to each man. And then the most important question was raised --- why are you here?


“Well, we had some dynamite, whiskey, spare time and a Congressman’s wife in the back of a sedan…..”

 

[fester]

Singapore, April 17, 1943


Seventy nine assault ships were loaded. The last infantrymen had scurried aboard an hour ago. Most men were on the ships that they had been placed on during training exercises. Familiar faces saw sailors who had shown them their bunks before. By nightfall, every landing ship had been loaded, and the soldiers were being led to the mess decks for a hearty meal. Even as the soldiers ate, sailors made final preparations for sea. Boilers were being lit off, the last critical spare parts were being brought aboard, ready ammunition for the guns was being taken from the magazines and hauled up to the Bofor mounts, and charts were being checked.

As the moon lit up the channel, the first convoy left the anchorage. This group would be escorted by Royal Navy ships, the only non-American involvement in the entire operation. By dawn, the second and third convoys had met up with their American destroyer escorts. They all headed north to battle.

 

[fester]

Yokosuka Navy Yard, April 18, 1943


Admiral Kurita never thought he would be the senior admiral afloat for the Imperial Japanese Navy. War accelerated promotions and created new paths for the good or the lucky. At the best of times, promotion happened to the good and the lucky. He knew he was just lucky after the remnants of the Combined Fleet had crawled back to the Home Islands after the massacre in Makassar. Half of the men senior to him had been killed in battle, the rest had behaved with honor after they had made their final reports.

At one day’s notice, Nagato and Ise could be out to sea. Yamato had been undergoing repairs at Kure while Musashi had entered drydock in February and would not be out until at least August. The sole surviving battle cruiser of the Kido Butai had four functional guns and could not outrun most of the British battle line at Jutland. A few cruisers were available in home waters, and an understrength cruiser strike force led by Asama was based at Palau being able to respond to either threats from the east or the south. The carrier strike groups could barely launch one hundred aircraft if they had a favorable wind.

He had nothing. Reinforcements were promised. This fall, Shinano would be ready for working up if there was enough fuel. Aircraft carriers were being promised but the stockpile of high octane aviation fuel was declining fast. The crews that could man those aircraft would be a few survivors of the war in China, another tranche of pre-war veterans and then men who had never seen combat. Their flying time was barely adequate and grossly inferior to the least experienced pre-war men who had taken off from the decks of the six carriers north of Oahu just sixteen months ago.

And now the Americans were on the move. Intelligence had reported a huge concentration of troops, aircraft and warships at Singapore. At least three American carriers were still in the South China Sea. They could expand the offensive up Makassar and eliminate another third of the oil the Empire needed; they could take Saigon or Haiphong and cut off the rice shipments that fed the Home Islands, or they could land in the Southern Philippines to threaten the aluminum that was needed for the reconstruction of the naval air arms. They could do all of that and he could do nothing, at least not yet.

 

[fester]

Cambridge, Massachusetts April 19, 1943

She skipped down the steps. The exam was over. No more integrals, no more abstractions of sums, no more divination of slopes and areas with complex formulas. Or at least no more for another week until another short session started where differential equations would be the challenge in front of her. Half a dozen girls from the radar lab were steps behind her while an older woman from the acoustics lab had reached the landing and was lighting a cigarette before she walked through the rain to the T station.

Elaine did not care about the rain. She was done and she had done well. Cambridge was only an hour from Lowell but it was a lifetime of possibility. She was in college, well not really college as she had not been accepted anyway, but she now had completed nine college credits and would be taking another six over the summer. That was an absurd statement only three years ago. If the war had not come, she would be in a small apartment a few blocks from the mill bundling up at least one, if not two toddlers for the walk to her mother’s house before a shift at the mill. Her Patrick would be with her at the mill gate and they would have a full day of hearing looms slam into each other. Now she would never go back to the mill floor.

He was half a world away and his letters were full of pride as he was responding from Australia three or four months later than her news. He was proud of her work in college geometry and introductory literature from January. He was proud of her moving to the university labs instead of a ship yard. He was proud of her. And she was proud of him. There were secrets he did not need to know, but she was proud of him. As the rain ran down her face, she placed another letter, the third of the week, into the mailbox. A part of her life was now in the hands of the post office.

 

[fester]

Outside of Rzhez, Russia April 20, 1943


Six dozen shells tipped over and raced back to the earth. Timed fuses began to explode. Some burst the shells three thousand feet over the battlefield. Most of those fuses were assembled south of Paris. Some fuses functioned a few dozen feet over the Soviet outposts. Steel fragments scythed the upturned earth. Most of the Soviet field engineers were able to dive into the trenches and behind the revetments that they had been digging. A few shells dug into the red soil before the fuses were crushed. Those shells were mostly made in Czechoslovakia.


Twenty minutes later, the Red Army work gangs continued building up the defensive works.

 

[fester]

April 21, 1943 Bethel Valley, Tennessee


The first shovel bit into the ground. A foot pressed hard and soon the blade was hidden by the rocky soil of the backside of the Appalachian Mountains. Strong shoulders and a broad back pulled the weight of the earth out and flung it into a pile. A moment later, the rest of the work gangs began clearing the space. Most of the men would spend the next two weeks cutting down trees and removing stumps; a few bulldozers and steam shovels had to be moved into place to start digging out a foundation hole while even more men were connecting the isolated site to the main work area of the Clinton Engineering District. The pay was good, the food was better and security was exceptional, so no questions beyond the immediate questions needed to make a major construction project come alive could or would be asked.