Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2

[fester]

Syracuse, Italy April 22, 1943


It was almost midnight. The moon was bright. Low clouds were splotchy like an old man’s liver spots on his hands. The sergeant who had been wounded on the Eastern Front last winter near the Don checked on the half a dozen conscripts who were awake and holding this watch. None of them were more than thirty miles from their home. Half the squad was sleeping. The other half manned both machine guns in the concrete bunker overlooking a sandy beach. Two more days of high alert until the moon made landings less likely and then they could sleep better.

Off in the distance, a steady drone could be heard. Aircraft engines were faintly carrying over the sounds of crashing waves. Little flickers of flames were soon visible. A moment later, the sergeant cursed as only a sergeant could and he sent one men to wake up the rest of the squad and the another man back to the platoon leader. The sergeant figured he would lose the man going back to the officer fresh out training. Odds were that he would be sent back to the captain and then back to the colonel. Who could run all day? Yes, the tall skinny man who was also adept at picking fresh lemons from trees whose branches overhung stone fences.

Even before the conscript left, the sergeant saw the eleven men getting ready. Six machine gunners manned the two machine guns. The other five men were heading outside, rifles ready and ammunition secured. Even as they entered the fighting positions that overlooked the beach, he was cranking a siren to alert the other forward fighting positions that the enemy was approaching.

Four minutes later, three dozen C-47s that had taken off from airfields near Tripoli crossed the coast. A few hundred feet above the sergeant, the lead aircraft slowly banked to the right. It continued inland. The rest of the twin engine transports followed. Machine gunners near the battalion command post started to fire. A single battery of heavy anti-aircraft guns were being directed to the most likely landing zone. Before the heavy shells could start exploding, dozens, and then hundreds of parachutes filled the night sky.

Minutes later, small arms fire could be heard in the olive and lemon groves behind the city. Tracers began to fill the night sky. Trucks were heard leaving camps and barracks filled with infantrymen responding to the surprising assault. The sergeant held his men steady and ready. Two men watched the rear of the hardpoint while the rest watched the sea. The rear was someone else’s problem and surviving meant worrying only about what one could change.

Thirty miles to the south, USS Arkansas and USS New York began a bombardment. The heavy guns boomed. The sergeant could see flashes of great power that put to shame any bombardment the damn commies had assembled. The flash, and then a bang and then a rumble. It would have been a comforting pattern if he could not imagine the destruction happening. His bunker would not hold against one of those mighty shells.

The two American battleships fired for thirty minutes. Each one fired a single salvo per minute, their heavy shells arcing inland and slamming into an airfield and a regimental barracks. A few coastal defense guns responded. Arkansas was hit twice. She was not penetrated. A small fire was quickly extinguished. Even as the two American battleships and their five escorting destroyers turned to the open seas, two Royal Navy Queens began a bombardment forty five miles west of the old American warriors. They too would only shoot for half an hour before withdrawing.

The sergeant kept his boys awake for the night. The platoon leader gave almost no news. He knew nothing of importance besides constant admonitions to stay alert. As daylight rose, there was still nothing to see. A few patrol boats were leaving their harbors and they would establish a line at the bottom of the strait, but there was nothing beyond a beautiful morning. The attack was a ruse. The paratroopers were dummies with firecrackers. The battleships were bombarding opportunistically. All of that was true, except for a few dozen men were mixed in with the dummy paratroopers. They were ordered to meet with their families, blood and criminal.

 

[fester]

Warsaw ghetto, April 23, 1943


Her brother was gone.


He had been laughing a moment ago.


Now he was silent.


Blood poured out of the right side of his neck. The German anti-tank gun shifted slightly. The German soldiers in great wool coats worked quickly. Another shell was slammed into the breech and they fired. It went over her ahead by less than a meter and slammed into a wall a dozen meters behind her. She was lucky, the fighting had already destroyed most of the house, so only the interior walls were standing. A few shards of steel scratched her back and her shoulders. She did not care. The German gun crew was working quickly. She stood up from behind the barricade and sprayed half a magazine from the crude submachine gun in the general direction of the Germans.


The killers of her people were professionals. They had been keeping up steady suppressive fire from a light machine gun, but as soon as they saw a head pop up, almost every man fired. Most missed, but not all.


Soon the barricade was taken, half a dozen defenders of the Ghetto laid there. Some were still bleeding and barely alive, but they received no treatment nor concern. Their deaths were pre-ordained, it was a matter of how and where. As the young girl died, she knew that she at least was able to choose when she had almost no other choices.

 

[fester]

Leningrad, April 24, 1943


More guns fired. She could not hear any incoming rounds, or at least none that were close to the mess hall. Her comrades shuffled forward, bowls out, utensils ready. Sloppy piles of stew were scooped in battered aluminum ladles before skinny chefs filled her bowl. It smelled good. It was not quite what her momma made when she was younger, but there was actual meat, some canned pork product from America that had arrived from an Arctic convoy which had unloaded at Murmansk and then shipped down the rail line before trucks took it through the Karelian region, around the lake, into Finland and then back into the Rodina.


Meat meant an offensive was coming. Good food to strengthen the infantry, good food to raise morale, good food to build courage. She knew the routine, but now there was actually enough food to hold her weight. She had lost twenty kilos since the fascists invaded. She had not had a period in over a year. In the past month, she had put on a kilo. She would not worry about the future yet. Her spotter had found a seat, and she headed over to join her friend and comrade. They would eat, and then soon enough, they would be needed to sneak forward and scout out the German lines.

 

[fester]

Larissa, Greece, April 25, 1943


The observer counted quietly. Forty seven flat bed cars on this train. Forty two of them carried medium tanks with big black crosses on them. If he had his binoculars out, there was a chance that he could see regimental or divisional markings. The bright sun kept the glasses hidden as he could not risk the reflection. His compatriot jotted down the notes and another report was coming together.

The Sacred Band commandos had counted eleven troop and tank trains over the past three days. All had gone through Larissa. By now at least one full Panzer division and elements of a rifle division were in Southern Greece. Other men and women had their ears to the ground and coins to share with the whores. They too knew that reinforcements were flowing from the German theatre and strategic reserves. The marshaling yard workers in Thessaly were told to expect to continue to work around the clock for another week as another infantry division had to pass through from its garrison near Danzig.

The commandos stayed in their hide for the rest of the day. The five men counted another three trains heading south. It would have been easy to place a few pounds of explosives under a track or in a culvert but their orders were to watch, count and wait as German reinforcements flowed to the Peloponnese.

 

[fester]

Palawan, April 26, 1943


The midnight moon provided a sliver of light. The wooden blockade runner was riding high, her hold empty. Lt. Kennedy looked at the sounding lines again. There was at least twelve feet under him, more than enough. The engines began to send power to the screws, and the boat backed away slowly. The run-in had been safer today than the journeys to Bataan. Since January, three blockade runners had been lost. Two at least were able to radio distress while one left the besieged camp and never returned.


Along the beach, Captain Ibling looked over the twenty five new arrivals. They were well fed, well equipped and well clothed. They were not veterans. But they were trained. Already, some men were placing explosives on trees and others were setting wires between generators and control boards while most of the men were rolling speakers above the high tide lines.


The guerilla bands were pulling security on three beaches, two on the west side of the island and one on the east side. Each beach was empty and far enough away from Japanese occupied fishing villages and airfields that combat was unlikely. The freshly landed men just had to make it look like the Americans were coming here. If they were successful, they could hold a regiment of third line troops in place or have them march fruitlessly up and down the island while naval aircraft pounded their columns and battleships destroyed the crossroads.

 

[fester]

April 26, 1943 South China Sea

The two aircraft carriers turned out of the wind. The last Albacore and Sea Hurricanes were on the flight decks. Soon work gangs were bringing the planes to the hangers for overnight maintenance.

HMS Jamaica and HMS Liverpool were leading four destroyers to bombard the bomber fields near Brunei. There was little Japanese opposition. RAF bombers had been making frequent runs over the occupied British colony for months now, and the two aircraft carriers’ fighter squadrons had swept the air of Japanese opposition in three strikes from dawn until dusk.

Even as the light cruisers were clearing their decks of the hundreds of shell casings that had been used to render the bomber strip unusable for the next forty eight hours, dozens of captured defenders were being beheaded as the Japanese garrison commander thought an invasion force was coming in the morning. He could not spare the men to guard prisoners.

By dawn, the Far Eastern Fleet had turned away to meet up with the oiler and replenishment group.

 

[fester]

Palawan April 27, 1943

An orgy of chaos was happening. Dozens of assault ships were anchored. Assault barges, landing craft and self-propelled armored vehicles were circling in the water waiting for ninety day wonders to lead them to the beaches. Some battalions were still well organized, companies clustered with their assault platoons forward and a reserve platoon just five minutes behind. Other battalions had lost companies. One of the assault battalions should have been able to hit a stretch of beach four hundred yards wide with eight hundred men in under ten minutes. When they landed, only two hundred men were on the correct portion of the beach. Most of the rest of the battalion merely landed half a mile to the south although one platoon was marooned a mile to the north.

Further off-shore, USS Arizona and her division mates waited for the first tendrils of Apollo. As soon as the horizon hinted orange, heavy naval rifles started to fire. Two older cruisers joined the Pearl Harbor veterans. They were all firing at map coordinates initially although they quickly shifted to directed fire once the airborne spotters could see worthwhile targets of opportunity. Destroyers were being held in reserve for immediate reaction when the ground commanders ran into trouble and needed to be bailed out.

Overhead, a dozen Wildcats circled warily. They were waiting for the inevitable counter-attack on the beachheads. Forty miles south of the lightly defended beaches, Enterprise and Yorktown bomber squadrons pounded an airfield while to the north Essex’s air group hit a hardened bomber base. The escort carriers were sticking tight to the transports to provide point defense fighter coverage and immediate air support for the grunts.

By mid-morning fourteen thousand men, eighty tanks and sixty field guns were ashore. Even as another wave of LSTs were preparing to beach themselves, USS Richmond, USS Raleigh and six destroyer transports left the protection of the invasion fleet. The ships increased speed to twenty five knots and headed to the northeast. The fast carrier groups trailed these eight ships for three hours, the gap slowly increasing as flight operations took the carriers back to the south and west, but the converted cruisers and destroyers were covered by fighters until the late afternoon at which point they were on their own.

By nightfall, both divisions were ashore. Engineers were already busy bulldozing a plantation and moving steel matting. Within a week, fighters could operate, at some hazard, from a brand new strip. Infantry men were walking slowly up the road while tank companies laagered for the night. A few Japanese observation posts were overrun; a timber bunker filled with second string garrison troopers and a single light machine gun could annoy and harass a battalion of infantry backed by a double handful of M-3 tanks. The tanks were covered by infantry and then the heavy 75 millimeter guns chucked high explosive shells at the defenses. Occasionally, combat engineers and their satchel charges and flamethrowers were needed, but the route to destroy the main Japanese garrison was opening up.

As American infantrymen waited for medics after clearing another squad sized hard point, the guns of Fort Mills in Manila Bay tracked eight potential targets. Eagle eyed men soon smiled as heavy shells were removed from the guns. Relief was not here, but these ships were promise that it was coming.


End of Volume 5

 

[fester]

Palawan, April 28, 1943


Birds had stopped singing hours ago. Predators were afoot. Most had fled from this patch of forest bordering the coastal road. A few had nowhere else to go besides up a tree and into silence.

Captain Ibling fingered his rifle. He had not fired a shot in combat in over a year, and that streak might well be broken today. The guerilla band had taken position overnight and now they were well dug-in and nearly invisible to anyone who would not take an hour to walk two hundred meters. Their lives depended on it. A yard behind him, a radio operator was resting back to back with a naval fire observer. His battery operated kit was ready. They waited as a Japanese infantry battalion was being paced by the scouts along the coastal road. The captain nodded, and the radio operator began to send the critical message requesting fire.

Eleven miles off-shore, Bosun Swanson wiped his forehead and adjusted his steel helmet. This battle had been the first time USS Arizona fired her main battery in anger. His boys had worked hard even as the crew had almost completely turned over since Pearl Harbor. Three other chiefs were there that day, the chief engineer had been an assistant engineering officer and a pair of ensigns were now JG running their own turrets. He was on his third skipper since that morning of infamy. It would not matter, they had trained, and trained hard. Yesterday they maintained a steady fire for twenty minutes to cover the assault waves. Now they were about to attack targets of opportunity.

The landings had been only lightly opposed as the two Japanese divisions garrisoning the island were spread too thin to defend everywhere. A few bunkers, numerous minefields and more obstacles and a single battery of mountain guns supported a battalion of third string infantry on the beaches. The heavy battleship shells and near constant bombing broke a company that held the southern beach, while a regiment from the 7th Division had to wait until the support tanks could land to clear the Japanese defenders of the northern beach. Flame throwers, satchel charges and medium velocity high explosive rounds were a good combination.

The turrets aboard Arizona and Pennsylvania shifted ever so slightly. Shells were now being loaded. Final adjustments were being made deep in the armored citadels. And then the solution was there. A single gun from A turret fired. The shell reached for the height of a heavy bomber before tipping over. Almost a ton of steel and dozens of pounds of high explosives crashed into the earth.

Captain Ibling was a mile away. His stomach felt the impact. He knew it was coming, as the guns of Fort Mills had broken up several Japanese attacks along the Ternate shore and the evacuated survivors had shared the experience of seeing battleship breaking shells fall danger close. The forward observer called for a correction as the shell was quarter mile short and a little wide.

Aboard Arizona, another gun fired. The chief waited for the radio call and then smiled. All the turrets slightly shifted and then a full broadside was sent reaching out for the Japanese battalion. Most of the counter-attacking column was on the ground, elbows bracing their head, knees digging into the tropical earth, torsos and pelvises slightly elevated for whatever incremental protection that offered them.

The next ten minutes was the longest lifetime for the survivors as two battleships fired their main batteries on a metronome. Arizona on the minute and Pennsylvania on the half minute. Trees that had reached four stories into the sky before the bombardment were now scattered toothpicks, the road was a battered obstacle course impassible to the ox drawn carts that hauled the heavy weapons. Even if the carts could be hauled forward, most of the oxen were dead, a few were bellowing with pain until their drivers could give them a mercy shot. And just as the bombardment lifted, the guerrilla band started sniping at any Japanese soldier who showed either courage, stupidity or bravery.

As the two battleships secured their main battery, a pair of destroyers detached themselves from the screen and moved closer to shore. Fletcher and Jenkins moved to almost point blank range of the coastal road and would stay there for six hours until their magazines held only enough shells to defend against one substantial air raid.

 

[fester]

Alexandria, Egypt April 29, 1943


Two carriers turned out of the wind. The last fighter was aboard. The flight deck crews scrambled to tie down the narrow legged aircraft and bring the half dozen machines that had landed hard down below to the hangers for overnight repairs. Since the carriers had arrived from the Far East, the experienced fighter squadrons traded in their obsolete Sea Hurricanes and their older Seafires for factory fresh machines. Three crates and a pair of pilots had already been written off due to landing accidents.

Forty miles south of the carriers’ training box and two miles inland from the great port, almost the entire complement of the 13th Army rested. Seventeen officers, fourteen sergeants and one hundred and seventy three men of other ranks along with four hundred civilian contractors (mainly truck drivers, painters and set designers) had been called to Alexandria for a briefing. Forty men were still sending radio messages to each other in eleven division and three corps headquarters. The largest of these sites was a pair of almost new Ford trucks. The men had been briefed on the next phase of the Army’s mission. And then they had been released to a night on the town before they headed back to the extensive training ranges occupied by the components of this mighty, false army.

 

[fester]

Kennedy Township, Pennsylvania April 30, 1943


“Have another one”

The bar tender passed a free drink down the polished oak bar to one of his quasi-regulars. Victor Jaroshek showed up every Tuesday and Friday and had anywhere from two to three beers. Tonight he was on his fourth. And more unusually, his wife was with him and working on her fifth.

They were exuberant and depressed at the same time. She had pictures of her newest grandson. Margaret had the child and both mother and son were doing well enough. Little Edna was a very proud big sister as she was trying to snuggle and strangle little Jonathan. This was their celebration. Their family was bigger.

They also had received a telegram saying that their second youngest was wounded and would be coming home again. His letters had stopped in late December. He had hinted that something big was going to happen and given that he was a Marine, that probably meant something near Makassar, but then there was nothing. He had written but the ship holding a month’s worth of mail had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Coral Sea. The telegram was short and non-specific, at least it was meant he was alive. Enough mothers had keened in the hollows and flats of the Ohio Valley already.

So they drank to celebrate, and they drank to forget their fear.

 

[fester]

Mers El Kebir, April 30, 1943


In the dank, dark bar, fighter pilots gathered. Americans were sharing Kentucky bourbon with Frenchmen who offered wine while the Englishmen wanted gin.

Josh grinned as he could not understand a goddamn word that one of the French pilots was saying except ME cent neuf but he was speaking the language of all fighter pilots --- his hands were zooming back and forth, his thumb tilted upwards and then inwards before swooping to the ceiling. The excited pilot’s hands slowed as he came onto a merge after an inverted roll at the top of a loop. His middle finger was pointed ever so slightly ahead of his left hand. A perfect solution to the problem.

The Frenchies flying P-40s had a busy few weeks over Tunisia. The German machines were closer in performance and design philosophy to his mount than the Japanese. Their engines were bigger and more powerful which meant that the slow speed ballet of a Zero could be ignored. His Corsair could roar, zoom and slash but the Germans could match anything that he did. The Japanese were playing a different game but the Germans had to play by the same rules. The Marines had trained for months to beat the Japanese at their game but now, the squadron aboard USS Wasp had to forget some of their training and learn from the pilots who had survived fighting in Europe.


“Another bourbon for me, and whatever he wants” Josh shouted as he started to maneuver his hands to show the French pilot how he got out of the chaos of Pearl Harbor.

 

[fester]

Leningrad, May 1, 1943

There had been weeks when she had not fired a shot. She crawled, she compressed, she waited and she watched. This was not one of those weeks.

Off to the south, the ground shook. Her veteran ear and her veteran fingers felt the air rent and the ground rumble. A tank army was slamming into a German panzer division. An artillery division was firing a week’s worth of shells in a morning. The German siege lines were being pressured by a potential relieving force. Already, at least one infantry battalion had been pulled back. Now she was waiting for the lines to thin out, and reserves to make themselves visible.

Seven hundred meters away, a German captain swore. His company needed to expand their position to cover the left flank of the regiment. They were already on the edge of responsibility and had been loosely linked to the next regiment to the north. Now his frontage was being doubled as the bordering regiment was being pulled back into reserve to replace a regiment in reserve that was countering the current Red Army thrust. The division was sending a battle group from their reserves to fill the gap, but he needed to move. He looked at his men and closed his eyes for a moment as he took in the readiness of each of sub-officers. Heinrich and his men could move from reserve to the new positions.

She watched the segment of the trenches and strong points. Here and there elements of helmets came over the dirt lips before re-submerging. A private was not worth a shot, at least not now. In the middle of battle, a machine gunner could be worth her exposure. She waited as her spotter cataloged the moments.

And then there was movement. A helmet popped up at the end of a communication trench. And then another, and another. Almost forty men were soon movement, dashing from cover to cover. The officer in charge was in front and alert. He had to be the target instead of the under-officers. The incompetent, young, and glory seeking officers weren’t her priority targets, they could be far more effective at getting their units killed if they lived. She brought the rifle to readiness and then waited for the wind to steady. Soon he would enter the sight picture, and she had to guess where he would be as he stopped and staggered in an anti-sniper weave. Finally, she was sure, and then her fingers took on a life of their own as the trigger went past the action point and a bullet left the barrel of her rifle.

Tatianna could not look, she did not look. Instead she was crawling to a new position. A few seconds later, a machine gun started to fire. The string of German bullets was tightly clustered and close enough, twenty yards to the right and thirty yards short, to keep her moving. Mortars would soon be seeking her out.

 

[fester]

Constanta, Romania May 2, 1943


Two Romanian destroyers left the docks. They slowly made their way to the edge of the breakwater. A trio of coastal minesweepers past them as the small ships re-entered the port after re-clearing a corridor to the sea. It was their constant duty as both the Royal Air Force and the Red Air Force liked to warm up their less experienced crews with mine-laying missions off the Romanian coast.


An hour later, half a dozen coasters and three tugs pushing a pair of barges apiece joined their escort. Soon they assembled in three columns. One destroyer took the lead while the other roamed ahead of the convoy looking for Soviet submarines. Today was scheduled to be a milk run bringing oil, ammunition and thousands of tons of flour to the German armies on the southern flank of the entire theatre. Once they were past Sevastopol, the escort would be reinforced and the air cover would thicken, but now they had to plow forward.

 

[fester]

Outside of Hamburg, May 3, 1943


Dawn was almost there. To the north, fires were lighting up the horizon. The RAF had hit the port city again. The airfield supporting a night fighter group was busy as the ground crews waited. Three fighters had already come down. One was damaged from a machine gun burst. Another had come down with engine problems. The third had landed with eleven bullets left and the claim for three kills. The hunters had almost no moon to work with tonight. Everyone honed in on their targets by the voice in the ears and then the little specks of light from engines and finally by finding the points of the sky that were too dark on an already dark night.


As the sun came up, the other five fighters that had risen in defense of the port city came back. One man was all smiles. The young pilot who had been with the squadron for only three months held two fingers up. He was now an ace and this simple fact meant he now had priority on maintenance and choice of patrol boxes. His skill was good and now the support meant his chance of living for another month increased dramatically.

 

[fester]

Warsaw Ghetto, May 3, 1943

There was silence. There was smoke. There was destruction. There were no inhabitants of the ghetto any more.

Any one over the age of fifteen and under the age of fifty had been shot, burned, hung, or field tortured to death. Everyone else was being sent to the train yards where waiting cattle cars would take the young and the old to camps. Warsaw was quiet again.

Even as a train took thousands south along the Vistula to their final destination, another set of trains were coming through the city at high speed. Seven thousand German soldiers of the 17th Panzer Division along with the fifteen percent of their authorized tanks and artillery that needed depot or factory level maintenance were moving to the strategic reserve. The veterans would be given a month to see their homes or to get blind drunk before they were reconcentrated to rebuild the division with new recruits and factory fresh equipment. If all went well, the division would head back to the Eastern Front in six months, rested and far more powerful then compared to now.

 

[fester]

Rizal, Palawan, May 4, 1943

“Everyone back, everyone to cover"

The engineers were almost all under cover already. Heavy equipment was 1,000 feet behind them working on building the drainage system for the runway that was being quickly hacked out of the forest a few hundred yards inland from the South China Sea on the long island’s west coast. Nothing besides perhaps a Piper Cub flown by a quasi-suicidal butter bar could land yet, but progress was being made.

The platoon leader looked up and down. There was no one in the blast zone.

5..4...3….2...1…. "FIRE IN THE HOLE"

He pressed down on the plunger sending electrical impulses through the wires. The current split into a dozen different streams before splitting again and again. Another twenty yards of forest were cleared. Trees had been cut with composite B as close to the ground as possible. Labor gangs would soon start dragging the lumber away. The best material would be kept for the saw mill that was still under construction, the rest would be dragged to the side by bulldozers.

Even as the Seabees started to work clearing the last few hundred feet of the first fighter strip on the island, the air raid siren went off. Raiders had been seen crossing the 6,000 foot central spine of mountains and the radar crews expected to see the strikers soon. Men put down their tools. They all put on their helmets. Some went to the slit trenches, a few went to bunkers and more just double timed away from the airfield’s exposed fuel dump and truck park. They would find cover in the woods.

Seven minutes later, the first 37 millimeter gun started to bark. It was joined moments later by the rest of the dozen guns in the defensive batteries protecting the airfield. Half a dozen single engine fighters swooped down. They nosed up for a brief moment, flinging a single underbelly bomb apiece. Three landed harmlessly on the runway. Another knocked down some trees that were blocking a future apron. One destroyed half a dozen trucks while the last bomb demolished some of the recently assembled platform tents where the Seabees slept. The attackers slipped away. The anti-aircraft guns went silent, claiming no kills nor damage this afternoon.

Soon enough, the engineers were back at work. The faster they could complete the strip to minimal viability, the faster they would have fighter cover.

 

[fester]

Crete, May 5, 1943

P-38s circled the airfield. The fighter group had been in support (not escort as that would be an absurd violation of doctrine, but support) of three heavy bomber groups. The bombers had targeted the arsenal at Kazanlak in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian air force had attempted to oppose this strike. Twenty three Me-109s of a type that were obsolete in 1941 had risen from a pair of airfields and had attempted to slash into the bomber boxes. One squadron of the twin boomed fighters led by Major Evan King jumped nine of the single engine fighters that were five thousand feet below them and thirty miles from the bombers. A single pass led to only four Bulgarians surviving. Those survivors were chased for eighty miles by the supporting Lightning squadron. All the pilots made it back to base, three of the aircraft had branches and leaves breaking up the smooth airflow. The other group of Bulgarian fighters made a single head on pass, their heavy cannons claimed a trio of Fortresses. The fire from the defensive box drove the fighters away. Many of them had left the battlefield trailing smoke.

Twenty miles to the west of the fighter field, the RAF and RHAF medium bomber squadrons were warming up. Another strike was planned for just after nightfall. This time, the rail marshaling yards in Athens would be the target. Six Mosquitoes configured as intruders would give the five squadrons cover against any German night fighters based in Southern Greece.

 

[fester]

Bataan, May 6, 1943

General Wainwright gripped the rail of the cruiser’s gangway. USS Raleigh had unloaded, her engines were making steam, and her captain was ready to leave in an hour. She had left half a dozen additional powered barges and landing craft. Her gunners had fired a quarter of her magazine at a pair of multi-squadron air raids. They had unloaded half of the remaining shells that morning. The raiders managed to sink USS Waters, thankfully after she had landed her cargo of artillery ammunition and medical supplies. One hundred and twenty tons of food went to the bottom of the bay. Divers and fishermen would soon enter the water to recover what they could.

The general had been aboard for an all-night planning session as well as a chance for a hot meal of fresh food and a scalding hot shower. The luxury was incredible. His command would no longer be losing men to disease and evacuation. Instead, they would hold steady in numbers and critical specialists, including four dozen men who had already started surveying several large, reasonable flat and firm areas on the western edge of the peninsula, would be run into the siege camp.

Relief would not be tonight. It would not be this week nor next. It would not be in June, but relief was coming. The defenders of Bataan just needed to be supplied and they could hold long enough to serve as an anvil upon which the Japanese could be hammered flat against.

As his he came ashore and collected his balance once again, half a dozen staff officers who were intimately familiar with the corps and the corpus of men defending the peninsula waited, snapped a salute and then hurried aboard. They carried little besides papers and plans as their personal luggage could be fit into third of a duffel bag. The Navy would dress the Army from surplus stores.

Relief was in sight.

 

[fester]

Gibraltar, May 7, 1943


The Rock was an American bay today. USS Independence and USS Princeton had arrived just after lunchtime. They were the most powerful American ships in the Rock’s lee, but they were joined by half a dozen cruisers, two dozen destroyers, destroyer escorts and gunboats, fifty subchasers and patrol craft that were good mainly at keeping submariners scared and submerged and over one hundred merchant ships and assault vessels.

The Royal Navy had left two days ago. Two old battleships, a pair of escort carriers, and almost a gross of lesser ships had cleared the anchorages. The bars had a chance to clean up and restock before the liberty boats with young sailors with cash and minimal supervision descended along the waterfront. Something big was almost ready to happen but no one quite knew where and no one quite knew when, so those who could relax within the moment did so.

 

[fester]

Wake Atoll, May 7, 1943

USS Wahoo entered the narrow, swept lagoon channel. At her mast was a broom. Painted on her sail were her claims from her fifth war patrol. Five merchant ships and a training cruiser had been sunk. Her skipper was ecstatic, for the first time in the war, he was returning without any torpedoes, and, more importantly, for the first time, they worked. All twenty four torpedoes had left the tubes without a problem. Twenty two had run hot, straight and normal. Thirteen of them had hit a target, and twelve of them actually exploded. The fixes from both Newport and the tenders had finally given him a working weapon.

An hour later, the submarine was tied up next to the tender. She would be fourth in line for repairs behind her sisters that were soon to depart for their own patrols, but her crew was second in line for ice cream, hot showers and steak dinners behind only USS Silversides who had returned from a bust of a patrol near Truk an hour earlier than Wahoo.