Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2

[fester]

Central Atlantic Ocean, June 9, 1943


The big Privateer circled. Kennedy kept his eyes on the horizon even as his copilot watched the new mine enter the sea with a splash. This was the patrol wing’s first combat drop of the new weapon. The U-boat had been spotted on the radar sixty two miles in front of another troop convoy carrying replacements for the 7th Army and a newly ready infantry division that would be camping down in Algeria until the next campaign. This was the last of the new divisions being committed to the Mediterranean for the summer. There was no where else to train them.

Two minutes later, the surface was broken. A heavily damaged submarine had broached. There was a man size hole near the screws and the bow was increasingly pointed upwards. A dozen men were already in the water, and more were following them every second. Thirty four seconds later, the conning tower was back under water. Forty seconds after that, the last man’s head popped to the surface.


The big patrol bomber circled again. The squadron commander held the four engine aircraft steady and slow and descended to two hundred feet over the calm sea. Red dye markers and smoke floats were dropped along with a life raft. As the bomber climbed back to its patrol altitude, a radio message was sent. Six hours later, a wooden submarine chaser, detached from the convoy, picked up the prisoners.

 

[fester]

Panama Canal June 10, 1943


The locks were empty again.

Three brand new fleet carriers, USS Bon Homme Richard, Cabot and Bunker Hill had shimmied their way through. Two heavy cruisers fresh from their birth yards and two light cruisers along with eleven Fletcher class destroyers had also made their way through the locks. Their destination was first San Diego or San Francisco for any final repairs and then they would be taking aboard replacement Hellcats, Avengers and Dauntlesses from replacement and training squadrons that had been tasked to keep the Pacific Fleet air groups strong.

Bon Homme Richard would be a replacement for the lost Saratoga, while Cabot would substitute for Lexington. Bunker Hill was the only new addition to the fleet strength. And even then, her presence would merely allow for Enterprise or Yorktown to come back to the West Coast for a long delayed and even more needed yard availability period. But the fleet had weathered the storm even as true reinforcements were slowly making their way across the Indian Ocean.

 

[fester]

Portsmouth, England, June 10, 1943


HMS Ramilles anchored near Courbet. Her engines were secured and soon her crew began the task of putting the mighty ship into ordinary. There was promise of leave, there was promise of rest, and then re-assignment for eight out of nine men aboard. They were needed elsewhere, so the old lady would rest.

 

[fester]

June 11, 1943 Singapore

Lt. Kennedy paused for a moment. He adjusted his cap ever so slightly and brushed back the sweat from his brow before he left the temporary officer's quarters ashore. The blockade running squadron was no more. The wooden motor boats had lost half their numbers permanently, and another two would need weeks in the yards before being capable again. USS Gay Corsair had been handed over to a fresh crew four days ago. She was supplying the Palawan offensive by bringing cargo from the unloading zones in the center of the island to the infantry divisions at either end.

Half an hour later, he requested permission to come aboard one of the few assault transports that had not shanghaied for operations off of Palawan or to supply the garrison in Thailand. He was one of the most junior men coming aboard. Captains and colonels, admirals and generals actually paid attention to the young man who had been back and forth to Bataan over a dozen times, each time bringing another day of sustenance to the garrison. One pair of freshly flagged admirals, one American and the other Scottish, cornered him for twenty minutes at the coffee urn. They wanted to know everything about the run-in and then the unloading facilities.

He was saved as a garbled electronic voice called for the assembled officers to head to the mess for the briefing. Once everyone settled, Jack chose a seat in the far back and waited for the presentation to begin. A captain from Alabama stepped to the podium and started to talk. Two minutes later the first slide appeared on the overhead projector. Operation Pedestal would be the first relief expedition to Bataan. Eight LSTs, and four assault transports would be escorted by the slow part of the American battle line to Bataan. They would have thirty hours to unload while Third Fleet and the newly renamed British Pacific Fleet carrier groups would provide air cover.

Six hours later, Jack headed to his new billet aboard the convoy's command ship, an assault transport that would carry seven thousand tons of cargo and two companies of construction engineers. He was the convoy's staff expert on Bataan.

 

[fester]

East of Bucharest, June 11, 1943


The trains started to move again. They had paused when the air raid had been detected. Scores of American bombers were heading north to the Romanian oil fields again. The division of infantry returning to their fatherland from the fighting in Russia hurried to deploy nets, and then the infantrymen found cover off the train. Being caught in the open to unopposed air attacks was a good way to pointlessly die; that was an experience someone who was not a veteran would only assume. These men had lived it often enough along the Don Front.


They were soon heading to the capital again. There they would detrain and be dismissed for weeks. Some of the men were needed for the harvest, others were needed to train replacements while a few lucky men would have uninterrupted leave. After that, the division would be reunified and reinforced before being sent onto anti-partisan or anti-invasion duty in Greece.


Even as the infantrymen were finding their first bar, the first train of carrying the equipment of the Italian Centauro division rolled through the city at full speed. Whistles blew loudly as gates were done and a collision between a train and a truck would delay the train during the safe, blacked-out night. Another seven trains over the next four days were scheduled to carry the rest of the Italian division to Adriatic ports where it could then make its way home. Three more Italian divisions were in queue to follow the Centauro in a quest to make the Italian fatherland a too tough nut to crack.

 

[fester]

Stockholm, Sweden June 12, 1943

A large freighter arrived. It was the fourth one this month that had sailed from the neutral nation of Haiti. Almost all of its cargo had passed through New Orleans, but the doctrine of continuous voyage was not being observed. Machine tools, cutting blades and cotton fabric made up most of the cargo. There was some petroleum but the tanker due three days from now and another one due in fifteen days were slotted to carry the bulk of the nation's oil needs. Every month, small surpluses were being accumulated and stored in reserve against the need to aggressively assert Swedish neutrality.

Across the harbor, a smaller freighter was leaving. It was low in the water with manufactured goods and freshly cut timber. Twenty two hours from now, that small freighter would arrive at Stettin to unload.

 

[fester]

Horne’s Reef, June 12, 1943


The training squadron of lumbering bombers turned to the northwest. They held this course for ten minutes as the lines were redressed, engines accelerated and noses pointed up to gain altitude. The trainees were part of a gardening package that was also a spoof package. Their bulbs had been planted in the coastal waters, and within weeks, two small coasters would be claimed; one Danish and the other German, both carrying coal to Scandinavia.


Two hundred and seventy miles from the useful decoys, Bomber Command’s Main Force was fighting its way back out. The Ruhr had been visited again tonight. Steel works, canal locks, coal barge loading areas had all been hit. Houses had been destroyed, and bodies were mangled and mutilated as well. Night fighters had not found the right stream until the bombers were within half an hour of the flak defenses. A few had claimed a triple handful of kills but the gunners aboard the big bombers had held their own. Fear of death was often enough of a defense until a pilot was able to bring their mount into a cloud for a moment of succor.


There was no succour on the ground. Fire brigades were being sequentially overwhelmed as flames jumped over narrow streets that had been impromptu fire breaks and water pressure had fallen due to new damage to pumps and pipe. As the morning sun rose, thirty five thousand people were now destitute and hopeful that the temporary tent cities growing up outside of the company mill and mine towns could accommodate such a large wave of the demoralized, de-housed urban proletariat and petit bourgeois.

 

[fester]

Messina, June 14, 1943

Khaki clad infantry men chucked grenades as the Bren guns chattered and the newly arrived PIAT gunners blasted holes in strong points that had been first constructed by Phoenician engineers during the Punic Wars. Bullets crisscrossed the street. One strong point down the block held by veterans of Poland, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Greece and the Eastern Front supported the targeted lump of broken bricks and scattered stones that hid and held half a dozen men and one machine gun. This attack was stopped cold. Even as the squaddies consolidated behind the corner of another house that they had taken just hours ago, word was sent back to the safe rear areas that were an ungodly distant four hundred yards away from the front lines for support. An hour later a pair of close support tanks with tremendously powerful short barrel guns arrived minutes ahead of a flame throwing tank. This time the attack would be pressed to the knife.

Two miles away, American infantry took the last building that was the key to a public square. Each yard gained since morning cost three or four Guardsmen their lives and another dozen had headed to the battalion aid stations. Another three thousand yards, and the island would be secured.

Even as the men who would never not have a thousand yard stare smoked their cigarettes and brewed up some foul tasting instant coffee before listening to the sergeants and the few surviving officers who had somehow managed to keep a decent number of them alive brief them on their next assault, three hundred Allied aircraft went over the city. Half an hour later, two hundred and eighty seven crossed back over friendly positions significantly lighter and faster. The far ashore was aflame again even as the corps artillery resumed their steady bombardment of the dock areas.

 

[fester]

Near Palau, June 15, 1943


The forward turrets flung shells as tongues of flames erupted from the high strength, complex alloyed steel barrels. Shells arced towards the tropical clouds that promised perfect weather today. Even before the shells tipped over, all ten guns were ready again. They did not fire as fast as possible. The sailors manning the directors needed time to see the fall of shot and then new plots had to be run. Rapid fire would be wasted. It would be wasted steel, it would be wasted powder, and it would be wasted training. Men could be trusted to be strong, the iron discipline of the Emperor's Navy’s chiefs was not dependent on the industrial might of the battered Empire. They could not be trusted to be immensely skilled at a delicate and precise task that had not been practiced in months. Fuel was too scarce and each shell fired in practice was not guaranteed to be replaced in time for when Asama and her sisters had to stand against the advancing Western fleets.

Her shells finally splashed into the ocean. Two were on azimuth but short five hundred yards. The rest were in a ragged circle eight hundred yards long and seven hundred yards to the right of the towed target. Orders were shouted and new sums were run. Twelve seconds later, the heavy cruiser fired again. The helmsman made a slight turn as if they were in battle, a few degrees difference at a steady and efficient sixteen knots could be enough to throw off the aim of an enemy if the closing course was not immediately observed.

An hour later and twelve complete salvos with the last four finally straddling the target float, Asama turned back to port. She would rest, repair, replenish and prepare for redeployment to either the Central Philippines or Formosa.

 

[fester]

South China Sea, June 15, 1943

The loud speaker called for the main battery to be secured. The decks were to be policed. Three hundred six inch shell casings were to be addressed along with the same number of bronze cartridges from the secondary batteries. The four American light cruisers had fired a full training pattern for the first time in three weeks and then after the gunnery experts had scored the ships, each ship was allowed to go to rapid fire for a mad minute. If the target was anything short of the eighteen inch armed monsters of Makassar Strait, they would be either sinking or on fire and blinded by the blizzard of shells.

Half an hour later, the American cruisers were in formation with their escorting and well drilled destroyer escorts, steaming at a stately twenty eight knots so that the first liberty launches could depart in daylight. Two days of liberty had been promised for the best shooting light cruiser and destroyer respectively and a day apiece for the other six ships. Even as the Americans headed back to Singapore, seven Royal Navy and two Australian ships passed them by on their twenty five knot jaunt to the fleet gunnery ranges for their regular evening and night fighting shoots.

 

[fester]

New Haven, Connecticut June 16, 1943


The chemist twisted. He had found the nickel that he had dropped behind his desk months ago. He had only a few more minutes to pack up his desk. The entire team was being transferred from rubber additives to fuel additives that the Navy wanted for higher performance for their fighters at high altitude. Rubber had been interesting work, but as long as the supply lines from Malaya were open, there was little importance beyond finding ways to dope specific batches for specific properties. James had found a way to improve insulating features while Harry had led a team that created a lighter and more damage resilient self-sealing fuel tank, but they were at best marginal improvements. The chemical engineering team at the GE lab thought there was more promise and more money elsewhere.

The chemist smiled as he put one of his last lab notebooks into the cardboard box. He bent his knees ever so slightly to lift the box and headed down the hall whistling. He had earned himself a Coke from the vending machine on the second floor with his lost and then found nickel.

 

[fester]

Ulrichsville, Ohio June 17,1943


He still could feel her pressed against him, their bodies warm and fitting tightly, her lungs pressing against her ribs and then his, her breath brushing across his cheek. They had shared a moment of three weeks, furtive and clumsy at first, and then confident and overt. They had promised nothing beyond writing but there was a hope in the promise that he would be more than a memory of an awkward boy to her. Leonard adjusted his feet and placed his bag over his seat. He had been drafted two weeks ago along with almost his entire graduating class.

The Navy wanted him and now he was heading to Chicago for basic training. The other boys in his class were scattering throughout the country. A few were staying in Ohio to be trained as replacements as the state’s National Guard 37th Infantry Division was in combat in the Indies at the moment. Other boys, including three freshly married men, were heading to the Army Air Force. One had the summer to himself before he had to report to the Ohio State University for officer education for the 1946 replacement pool. More had orders to move, but they were still in town, baseball and cokes, girls and shifts at the clay pits, movies and laughter filling in the wait until they too had to go to war.

 

[fester]

Off Lofoten Island, June 18, 1943


The Norwegian destroyer Sleipner ceased firing. Her guns had fired for ten minutes. Her sister ship had also stopped firing for a moment until a new target had been called in and her rifles barked again. A German anti-aircraft cannon had been firing at the commandos from a defilade position. They had been pinned down even as the counter-attacking German company came closer to the two dozen men. The Germans were now under cover.


The two landing craft had their bow gates open and the gunners were already sending steel slugs down range as the destroyer shifted her fire and began to fling heavy shells at the Germans. Artillery shells and machine guns were good to create space and time that the veteran commandos knew how to use. Within minutes, the two flat bottomed powered barges were backing up into the cold waves and heading to the waiting destroyer Tor. Cargo nets were over the side and tired men scrambled upwards. The wounded were lifted by stretcher but within twenty minutes, the landing craft had been scuttled and the two destroyers were heading back to the Orkneys at twenty three knots.

 

[fester]

The Admiralty, London June 19, 1943


“Gentlemen, thank you all for attending today’s planning meeting. We will be going to war with the true enemy soon enough. The Treasury has requested requirements for the preliminary 1945 and 1946 building programs. Today, we must determine what we want to have, and what we must have to be laid down in 1945 and beyond. Our current building programs are aligned to support the return of multiple army groups to Europe, protection of trade and the projection of power into the southern Pacific and the Chinese littoral. These are wartime goals. We will incorporate our wartime objectives with the long term peacetime strategy of preserving and protecting the empire and projecting power anywhere in the world at any time. “

Three dozen men spent the day working. A few shouting matches had been started and then calmed down as a debate as to the priority of restarting battleship production versus an expansion of the carrier programs. Advocates for large 9.2 inch or even 11 inch armed cruisers were forced into a corner by those who saw the need for more trade protection cruisers while the advocates of multi-purpose fleet cruisers formed a third faction. The anti-submarine community wanted more of everything.

By the end of the afternoon, a battle plan had been drawn up. A fresh sheet battleship design effort would be allocated a small team of designers to flesh out options with the intention of cutting steel for a pair of ships in either 1947 or 1948 as the unmodernized Queens would be worthless by 1953. Another pair could be laid down in 1949 for the remaining Queens. The R’s would be scrapped without replacement. The battlecruiser squadron would be allowed to run down as the ships wore out. Choices on guns would need to be made by the end of 1945 to give Vickers enough time to make a new system. The carrier program would be frozen. Six new large fleet carriers were on their way to the fleet and fifteen lighter carriers were already partially constructed or authorized. The Japanese fleets had been crushed in Timor, Flores and Makassar. Technology was moving too quickly to lock into an obsolete design for peacetime. A slightly larger team was told to clean sheet a carrier for the jet age. The only limits placed on the designers was that the ship had to fit into current major port facilities.

The Royal Navy and Dominion cruiser squadrons had been worked hard and they would be worked hard for the rest of the war. The Dido and Crown Colonies were wrapping up their construction run. Only three cruisers of the Minotaur class were under construction. Six paper sister ships had been raided for men and materials over the past two years. They had all been cancelled. The flotilla leader mission had been taken over by the Didos while the Crown Colonies and Towns were sufficient for the fleet cruiser role. The trade protection cruisers had been pounded hard early in the war. Four new trade protection cruiser of a simplified but large design were to be laid down in 1946. The Weapon class order was to be stopped. They were merely expedients. The Gallant class would not be ordered. Instead, one flotilla per year of the Battle class follow-on was to be ordered. The 15th War Emergency Programme destroyers were cancelled. The shipyards were still scheduled to be busy for the next two years, but the building plans now were based on preparing for the next war as well as fighting the current one instead of merely fighting this war.

 

[fester]

Northeast of Syracuse June 20, 1943

HMS Manchester and Gloucester secured their guns. The escorting destroyers led by HMS Foresight had ceased firing minutes ago after they had destroyed half a dozen caiqcues that were attempting to run the straits between the boot of Italy and the biggest football in the world. Off to the northwest, army group artillery was still pounding the last few blocks near the docks held by a fanatically motivated SS regiment. The American, English and Canadian infantry regiments had ceased to advance two days ago. They had gone far enough and now it was merely a matter of squeezing the last bits of water and ammunition from the defenders. Time could be traded for blood.

The six Royal Navy ships had spent two hours in the strait. Half the time was spent flinging shells at the far shore, and the other half, smashing any wooden craft that had tried to make the dash in the low light and liver spotted clouds. This was the fourth night where force had made a sweep. The previous three had been more eventful, traffic was down. Even as the warships made for a recently recertified mine free lane, a pair of radar equipped Sunderlands passed overhead looking for business until dawn.

 

[fester]

Port Lyautey, French Morocco June 20, 1943

The squadron commander returned the salute. The squadron's skipper was relieved.

The recently arrived and freshly promoted commander from the states now was responsible for the patrol bomber squadron. He would now be responsible for the hundreds of men including the air crews , half who were anxiously counting their last few missions before they too could rotate to the rear. He was now responsible for a dozen temperamental beasts flying low and slow over empty, open waters almost every day. He was now responsible to write letters to mothers and fathers, to aunts and uncles, and to young wives with even younger children for when an aircraft failed to appear through the fog or when a U-boat managed to turn the ambush back onto the attack. He would feel the loneliness of command starting in a moment when the tall Bostonian's hand reached his hip.

Both hands were on his legs now. The former skipper nodded and wished his replacement good luck. A few pats on the back and a promise to deliver the squadron's mail to the fleet post office in Casablanca were exchanged in the short change of command ceremony. A jeep waited for him, and a seaman barely out of boot camp was in the driver's seat with a carbine tucked in between the two seats. Off he went, feeling every bump in the road. He had been re-assigned to the staff of 10th Fleet in Norfolk but first he would be lecturing to the coastal escort groups before finding a cabin aboard USS Omaha when she escorted a prisoner of war laden convoy back to the United States.

 

[fester]

Mers El Kebir, June 21, 1943


Three fast carriers, four small, slow carriers, three modern battleships and a dozen cruisers flying four different ensigns left the Free French naval base. Six hours later, all the flight decks were overloaded with Avengers, while Corsairs crowded the hangers of the larger, faster ships and Wildcats were fit snug onto the smaller ships. Two days at sea for final exercises under a Free French admiral and then the other, converging task forces would meet with their main covering force as they all advanced to the next objective.

 

[fester]

Palawan, June 22, 1943

The Mustang squadron waggled their wings. Four miles below them, guns were still flashing, grenades were still exploding and men were still dying, but the island had been declared fundamentally secured the previous evening. Three other fighter squadrons were spread out on a thirty mile front. Ahead of the fighters a squadron of medium bombers were acting as navigators and guides for the trip across the sea. Twenty minutes behind the fighters, two medium bomb groups were still assembling into formation.

Seven hours later, the lead Mustang touched down at a recently re-opened airstrip on Palawan. Clark Airfield was last seen ablaze.

 

[fester]

Gronnhave Denmark, June 23, 1943


The fishing boat pulled into the crowded port. The nets had been full from a hard day worth of work in the Kattegat. Within minutes, half the family was unloading the small skiff. Fat, shiny fish were soon being sold to the processing plant. The three best were kept for the family dinner.


The skipper smiled. His boys had been helpful. The oldest was sixteen, and staying at sea kept him out of trouble. The youngest was twelve and this was his first time cutting bait and cleaning lines with his brothers and father. As soon as the boat was secured, and was ready for tomorrow, the boys were given a few coins for their hard work and disappeared into town for a couple of hours of fun. A new crew, cousins and life long friends ambled down to the fishing skiff after dark. Another run to sea was planned, a short journey across the straits to Sweden to pick up some supplies that were hard to find in war torn Europe. It was a risk, but it was a profitable enough risk.

 

[fester]

Off Kuanton, Malaya, June 24, 1943

Lt. Kennedy was amazed every time he looked up. Thin wing fighters roared overhead. Ballets of death and destruction took place three or four miles above him until the directors called for the scene to restart. Twin engine bombers attacked the convoys from above the clouds and from almost beneath the waves. Half a dozen Beuforts had managed to evade the combined defenses as their radio antenna never broached 100 feet above the sea's surface.

Operation Viking was merely training. It was the grandest training he had ever seen. Six American and two British carriers were operating in two task forces. Seafires, Hellcats, and Wildcats were holding their own. Radio intercept officers had begun to place fighter squadrons forty or fifty miles up the threat axis to break up raids while the close escort of half a dozen battleships and two dozen more warships would handle leakers and surprises. Destroyers had been scrambling across the formation to reinforce the anti-aircraft boxes and chase down sonar contacts all day. This was a level of choreographed chaos he had never seen before; even a dozen PT boats in a night action merely had to worry about the occassional collision from an overly aggressive division mate.

Six hours later, the combined allied fleets and task forces turned south. Two days in port to learn the lessons of Viking and then Pedestal would begin.