Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2

[fester]

Murmansk, Soviet Union August 27, 1943

The battleship Archanglesk swung gently at anchor. The transfer had been completed the previous day. Today her Soviet crew was coming aboard. Many of the sailors were amazed at the creature comforts including the ice cream machine that had been fitted to the battleship after a late night raid of a sister ship that had just returned to the fleet from a refit in an American yard. Most of the Royal Navy seamen and officers had left the ship the night before. One hundred men were still aboard to help transition the ship to her new navy and new crew. It would only be a thirty day assignment before they too would board a merchant ship or an escorting cruiser for the long journey back to Iceland and Scotland. After that, they would be given thirty day leaves and re-enter the Fleet's manpower pool.

 

[fester]

Buffalo, New York August 28, 1943

The general manager for Curtiss cursed. He had in his hands another order for the P-40, this time for another eighteen hundred air frames. That was the good news. He had also gotten off the phone with his representative at the War Department. This was likely to be the last Warhawk order. The Army Air Force and Lend Lease coordinators thought that there was little growth left in the old bird's design. A few more months of production and then his company would be building their own designs for the Navy as well as everyone else's designs for the AAF.

 

[fester]

Sapporo, Japan August 29, 1943

The college student stood at attention. A sergeant from the Imperial Army marched up and down the rows of students who previously had draft exemptions. The engineers and physicists were being enlisted for basic training and then redirected into extended technical training. The rest of the students would soon be going through their pre-induction physicals before assignment to training camps.

Two miles down the road, another group of sergeants had begun drilling hundreds of eighteen and nineteen year olds. They too were exposed to conscription for the first time as the draft age had been lowered from the previous limit of twenty.

 

[fester]

Central Luzon, August 29, 1943

Patrick propped himself up on his elbows. Mortar shells were exploding forty or fifty yards in front of him even as machine guns were beginning to fire. His squad leaders were yelling to their men to get the machine guns set up and to start pouring fire into the tree line two hundred yards away. The riflemen in his platoon were already crawling for cover and beginning to take deliberate aimed shots. His eyes shifted left and then right. The entire platoon was attracting the attention of the Japanese position and by the time that the Japanese mortarmen had shifted their tubes to begin to accurately hit his position, the American infantryment were now acting as a base of fire for the rest of the company that had slowly been attempting to infilitrate around the blocking position for the past two hours. He was being successful in his mission even as he heard a private scream as a mortar exploded five yards from his position just as he was lifting his head to take a shot at the Japanese position with his rifle.

Twenty minutes later, a red flare went up and three minutes after that, a battery of 105 mm guns began to fire in support of the rest of the company's attack.

 

[fester]

August 31, 1943, Lake Michigan

The carrier turned back into the wind. An odd looking aircraft with fixed landing gear and wings that looked like they had been designed by over-sugared third graders was at the end of the flight deck. The wind was picking up. The engine whined as it whirled the propeller faster and faster. The flight deck crew took away the chocks and in a minute the pilot, sitting safely in the carrier's island, pushed forward the controls. The first unmanned strike aircraft accelerated down the flight deck, dipped slightly once it ran out of runway and then slowly clawed for altitude. The pilot finally was able to relax once the drone was 2 miles away from the carrier and passed through 2,000 feet. Five lazy circles of the carrier and then the pilot and the testing team was satisfied. The mission was successful, and now the drone could head west to land in Wisconsin.

 

[fester]

Near Strasbourg September 1, 1943

She looked up. There were steady streams of contrails darting from cloud to cloud. Some were paired with another a few meters away as twin engined fighters weaved back and forth. More were single contrails as the primary escorting fighters had left the big bomber formations a hundred miles ago and began a free hunt for opponents. However, the big bomber boxes were streaking the sky back and forth, creating new clouds. Anna Marie looked for another second and then she bent back over and began to weed the rows of tubers. Half a dozen women, foreign laborers mainly, were in the field with her. Two fields over, a trio of Ukrainian prisoners of war were trying to get the large ox to move forward again. They had little success as the ox was done for the morning.

Three hours later the mornings' contrails had blown away in the light and pleasant wind. Anna Marie was still in the field, sweat clinging to her dress when she heard the asynchronous drone of a damaged aircraft approach her family's farm from the east. It was a four engine bomber, American by the looks of it. Smoke trailed from the left hand wing and one engine on the right side was out. It was flying low and slow and she could not keep her eyes off of the aircraft as it stumbled like her father after a good market day. Its nose pitched up as the engines began to cough. One, two and then three parachutes blossomed before the aircraft crashed into a small hill a mile from her house.

She was leaving the field even before the first man landed. A few of the women were beginning to cluster around him. Of the three men, two were more than capable of walking while the last man had a broken leg and a bad back. Anna Marie did not know this. She was already halfway down the small country lane walking the to the Luftwaffe facility. She was half a mile short of the gate when two trucks full of men in gray and armed with old rifles passed her on the way to her farm.

 

[fester]

Naval Air Station, Quonset Point Rhode Island September 2, 1943

The squadron commander put down the phone. He smiled and lit a cigarette. One of the new instructors over at Newport wanted to come over for a combat patrol on Saturday. He would arrive on Friday afternoon and lecture to both the combat crews and the trainees about the experience his squadron had in North Africa and then after a good meal and at least one or to no-shit sea stories leading to a good night sleep, he would be airborne the next morning to see how the American based squadrons were using the newest tools.

His old friend would stick around until Monday night as it was a long holiday weekend and classes at Newport could be delayed by a day.

 

[fester]

Boston, September 2, 1943

The train pulled out of South Station. It was full of commuters from the inner ring suburbs as well as businessmen who had meetings in Providence or Groton or New York and families heading to the shore for the long weekend. The city had slowed down starting in the mid-afternoon. The Red Sox were playing at Fenway. The Athletics were up 5-0 by the time Elaine climbed aboard the train with half a dozen co-workers and friends. They had rented a cottage on Narragansett Bay for three days of relaxation. She needed the time off as the last letters from Patrick seemed to have hinted that he was going back into combat again. She could only wait for either news or a telegram and her mind flittered and fluttered like a hummingbird drinking from fermented sugar water. Her fingers were not as nimble and quick when she was assembling radar components and her essays for the college classes had become less than excellent; still sufficienct to pass and advance, but no longer the top of her cohort. A few days off to eat good food, laugh with the girls, and dip her toes in the ocean could do her well.

 

[fester]

Grand Harbor, Malta September 2, 1943

The all clear was being sent. The anti-aircraft gunners began to restock their ready ammunition and inspect their guns. The barrage balloons were checked again as they hung low over the harbor. The fire brigade was already hurrying to the south side docks. A warehouse containing thousands of tons of milled wheat was on fire. Three destroyers and half a dozen smaller warships were already spraying down a rapidly burning and sinking tanker while smoke billowed into the sky, giving future Italian raiders a clear navigation marker that would not dissipate until the next afternoon.

 

[fester]

Merseyside, England September 3, 1943

The submarine under construction had just received her name. HMS Spearhead, first of her name had been laid down three months ago and construction was proceeding well. The work crews were two days ahead of the revised schedule although delays on diesel engine availability threatened to eat up that cushion and the rest of the slack in the built into the schedule.

Next the submarine were three landing ships that would soon be leaving the construction slips for fitting out alongside the river docks.

 

[fester]

Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island September 4, 1943

The hum and rattle of aircraft overhead barely disturbed Elaine. The umbrella provided some shade and a couple of dimes gave all of her girls a cold Coke. Her ear caught hold of a big bomber coming into Quonset Point. Something was wrong. She glanced up and saw that a Liberator was in the landing pattern with only three engines working. Her eyes then went to the soft, gentle waves of the warm bay which called for her.

Hours later and after a good nap, the entire gaggle of girls primping. The married women had spent slightly less effort than the single girls, but they all were elbowing and jostling each other around the rooms' mirrors. The dress fit nicely, snug where it needed to be snug, and loose to allow imaginations to roam free. One of her friend's uncle owned a small restaurant with a good bar and a better band a mile from the hotel. The plan was simple; eat good food, drink amazing drinks and listen to incredible music.

An hour later, the laughter around the table forced the waiter to ask for their order twice. Elaine looked forward to her strip steak; the entire evening was costing her a day's wage, but it was worth it as her stomach was in pain from all the laughter. Around the eleven women, officers wearing wings or dolphins from three different countries checked out the scenery. A few brave Fleet Air Arm pilots had already gone through the flak trap of married women and suffered severe damage to their egos. One had made an emergency landing at the bar and was firing a flare of Kentucky bourbon in a call for aid.

She tilted her head down and slightly to the right to hear Ophelia tell a story about a sailor and his attempts to conduct a hostile boarding that had him land in the brig before shipping out. It was something almost all of the women had experienced at least once, and most more than once. The boys who thought they were men tried and often failed to convince women of their new self-perceived status. Often it could be played for laughs, but more than one girl had a story to tell after a bad experience.

In the corner of her eye, she saw the door swing open. Five more men came in. They headed immediately to the bar where the lead man with a very familiar looking face held up his right hand, nodded and put down a few bills on the table. The men took one, and then another shot before they started to laugh. She tried not to stare, but the face should not be there. That face should be in Tunisia or somewhere in Italy or Greece by now if she was reading the newspapers right.

Ten minutes later, her efforts to not stare had failed as the man with a familiar face tapped her on the shoulder and handed her a drink.

"Would you happen to know my brother Jack?" he asked.

 

[fester]

San Juan, Puerto Rico September 5, 1943

The U-boat's periscope slipped back under the water. The coastal defense batteries had reacted quickly to the radar return of an unexpected contact. A shell exploded two hundred yards short of the last known location a minute after the contact disappeared.

The next morning a single wooden hull minesweeper was out and about re-sanitizing frequently swept channels. Three hours into the routine, a mine was pulled up and the rifle men began to fire at the steel ball caught in the sweep gear. An hour later, two minesweepers from Roosevelt Roads were given new orders to get underway by nightfall to help resanitize the shipping channels out of the now closed Puerto Rican harbor. Half a dozen still working up destroyers, gunboats and subchasers would be at sea to hunt the for the intruder even as a dozen aircraft blackened the sky.

 

[fester]

Genoa, Italy September 6, 1943

The city was on fire. Several hundred bombers; a mixture of American built and flown heavy bombers and American built, and French flown twin engine medium bombers had raided the city for the seventh time in eleven days. By now, the fighter defenses were a farce and the anti-aircraft batteries were able to fire for mere minutes before the ready ammunition was exhausted. Few shells were available in the local magazines, and the trains and trucks that could conceivably bring in new supplies for the batteries had been shut down. American, British, French and Polish fighter bombers had strafed anything larger than an ox-cart over the past week on any path way into or out of the city. Half a dozen Free French destroyers had dashed in and out on several nights to lay minefields to keep the harbor closed.

Today was the last day of the city's hell. Tomorrow, the raiders would begin a similar assault on Florence.

 

[fester]

Bataan, September 7, 1943

Patrick patted the private on his back. The young man, by now a veteran, relaxed again and the old man leading the platoon scurried to the next fox hole to offer the same re-assurance to more men. In this pit was a trio of replacements. They had arrived at the platoon yesterday afternoon and so far, none of them had been killed. Only one had been lightly wounded by a knee mortar fragment scraping the back of his head. It was a bloody nuisance of a wound. The replacement's head had been wrapped up at the battalion aid station before returning to the platoon this morning. The three of them were alert. One man was scanning for Japanese movement, while the other two stayed ready with their heads below the small parapet of dirt. Tomorrow, Patrick would make sure he remembered their names.

Off to the east, the earth began to shake. Patrick paused and allowed the vibrations to be processed in his mind. Mostly 155s and 105s he thought. There was no heavy thumps of bombers dropping thousand pounders nor the whirl of propellors. He did not need to care too much, just be aware. The battalion commander had ordered that they were to hold their position for at least the morning while patrols from other companies pressed forward.

On the eastern edge of the Bataan Pennisula, two fresh divisions were ready to jump off. Three army tank battalions, two Shermans, one of Grants, were in direct support. In front of the reinforcements was a battalion of the 31st Infantry Regiment. They had spent the past five days clearing out every Japanese patrol and listening post that they could find. The path was mostly open to at least the main line of Japanese resistance. The corps' objective was Valdez with the goal of forcing the Japanese to commit any remaining reserves to a meat grinding campaign of attrition where artillery and air power would dominate.

 

[fester]

Northern Attica, Greece September 11, 1943

The patrol was slowly making its way up the hillside. The twenty five men were strung out and tired from scrambling up and down rocks and from cover to cover for the past four hours in the dark. They were at least lucky enough to have been pulled back after lunchtime for a few hours of rest before being briefed. Someone much higher up than their so far useful replacement platoon leader wanted information from the German and Italian positions as well as keeping them on their back foot. So they were tasked to aggressively patrol and see if there was a pathway past a coterie of machine gun nests and mortar pits that had stopped the brigade from advancing for three days.

A mine exploded, a leg was shredded, and a flare erupted. Seconds later, machine guns started to fire and men scrambled to close the distance until half a dozen more mines stopped the attack in its track. The survivors began to seek anything larger than a pebble for cover.

 

[fester]

Rome, September 11, 1943

The fire brigades were overwhelmed. Several hundred British bombers had struck the capital of the reborn Italian Empire just hours after sunset. The rail yards were an inferno worthy of Dante. A mile upwind of the conflagration , a dozen men committed themselves to being cast into the poet's 9th Circle if they failed left a small townhouse with a plan in place.

 

[fester]

Brooklyn Navy Yard, September 13, 1943

The hull of the USS Missouri entered the dirty waters of the East River moments after a bottle of champagne was broken across her bow. Workers and her crew still had months of labor and then training before the last battleship ever to be accepted into the United States Navy would be ready for battle, but the building slip was needed for more important work. Hours after the ceremony, a landing ship's keel blocks were being arranged. Steel would be cut starting tomorrow for an LST.

 

[fester]

Near Capetown, South Africa, September 14, 1943

The 800 replacements and reinforcements for the South African corps were ordered off the train that was supposed to take them to the docks for embarkation and transportation to Port Said. The former merchant cruiser Hector had struck a mine within sight of Table Mountain and was lost. New options would be found and the journey would be delayed by a week. Until then, the replacements would continue to be trained by the three dozen veterans who had been sent back to recover from their wounds.

 

[fester]

Sicily, September 15, 1943

Everything around him was chaos. It was his job to bring coherence to the complexity. Three days ago, a flare had been sent up at theater headquarters. Yesterday, army and corps headquarters were overrun by amphetamine eating monkeys and now the division was being tasked to get ready for something big. The division had been on a rest, refit, and recuperation cycle with an expectation that the next big operation would not be until late October or early November depending on weather and moon interactions.

The Big Red One was the best division in the entire goddamn United States Army with an incredible core of combat veterans who could scramble on the fly. But the fundamental question was what were they supposed to be scrambling to? Did they need to put down a riot? Did they need to seize Pantelleria? Were they heading to Greece? Were they landing in Marseilles? Were they to conduct a shore to shore assault across the Messina Straits? Any of those missions and three dozen others could be done. Over the past six weeks, preliminary staff work had been done on at least fifty scenarios; most of the planning was for training and teaching purposes of young captains and rapidly promoted majors but at least the sketch of a plan was in place from which the entire divisional staff could bear down on. But what was the mission? Slim Williamson would need to know. He motioned to his driver to get the jeep and headed over to his commanding general. Slim would head to Corps HQ with a couple bottles of whiskey on an intelligence gathering mission. He would be back by the daily pre-dinner briefing.

 

[fester]

Govan, September 16, 1943

HMS Rodney left the dry dock. She had a fresh coat of paint, a hull scraped of all the growth that could accumulate after months at sea, retubed boilers and a new anti-aircraft fit. A pair of destroyers would join her down the Clyde and into the open seas tomorrow for trials before the big battleship rejoined the fleet. Even as the mighty ship slowly made her way downriver to her overnight berth, HMS Iron Duke was being lined up by a quartet of tugs for the dry dock. She would be needed once more for a mission far more important than being an accommodation ship and a bomb magnet in Scapa Flow. Anything of value that did not contribute to either her survivability against mines or air attack would be stripped over the next forty five days. The first great task was the removal of the few remaining main gun turrets. And then the bridge and superstructure was to be cut down. She did not need to be able to fight another Jutland to serve well on her final mission.