Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2

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Portsmouth, England January 7, 1944

The Norwegian destroyer Sleipner slowly made her way across the harbor. She was due for drydock time to update her anti-aircraft fit, clean her bottom and do the thousand and three little tasks any warship needed to stay at peak condition. Behind her half a dozen more American built landing craft made their way to a quay. Their maiden voyage across the Atlantic had gone well enough. Heavy equipment would soon be offloaded and then minor repairs and modifications including the addition of more anti-aircraft guns wherever there was an open space with enough weight margin to take the risk would be made. The last LST slowly made her way past the cut-down superstructures of veteran battleships and cruisers that no longer were fit to stand in the line of battle. Courbet and Resolution were alien-looking even as work gangs were stripping out anything useful from HMS Despatch and HMS Diomedes.

 

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Hamna Voe, Shetland Islands, January 8, 1944

Three fast submarine chasers left the harbor. Aboard each of the 110 foot, diesel powered boats were a merry band of cutthroats, knaves, fools, and pyromaniacs. Two of the boats were heading to landing sites near Bergen. One would land their band on the north side of the fjord while the other boat had three different landing zones to drop off agents south of the port city. Each cluster would meet with different resistance cells where their demolition expertise and gear would be quite welcome.

The last subchaser would land a small assault force closer to Trondheim. The raiders would have a few hours to overrun German observation posts and cause chaos before withdrawing back to the frigid, dark seas.

 

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The North Sea, January 9, 1944

The pilot banked the big bomber that was now lighter by several thousand pounds of anti-shipping mines. A garden plot had been refreshed. The rest of the squadron was ahead of him. He could see the little flickers of light coming from the exhaust of the engines of the bomber he was supposed to hold formation on. He adjusted his throttle and eased the rudder slightly. The bombers of the operational training unit climbed for altitude and then once they had cleared the clouds, the flight back to base was long, slow and thankfully boring.

Over the course of the night, several hundred Main Force Lancasters returned to base after a visit to Berlin. The spoofs flown by OTUs and Mosquitos and the electronic warfare deceptions of 100 Group had worked well enough. Fighter interceptions had been light until almost the initial point. Flak was more dangerous on the run in although there was an hour and half running battle against swarming night fighters, bombers and Mosquitos configured as intruders on the way back to sea.

 

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Southern France, January 10, 1944

Jacques chewed the bread from a can slowly. It was not the bread that he grew up; freshly baked in the village square from flour grown on his family's farm and milled by father of his best friend. This was industrial bread that provided a platform for jam, a sponge for sauces, and calories for sustenance. It had been made in a factory near Boston and dropped by an RAF Halifax to the marquis cell. The cell was spread out on the hill side. A trio of machine guns had interlocking enfilades of the most likely approach. Half a dozen mines had been laid along a path. A pair of two inch mortars were a few hundred yards to the rear.

He waited in ambush throughout the night. A Vichy anti-partisan patrol had been seen in the valley below earlier in the day. They had been sweeping up and down the rail lines that were routinely sabotaged. The German 10th Army depended on the French rail network to sustain itself in Milan. Enough supplies were going through to allow for them to defend but nowhere near enough was arriving for any offensive action. Sabotage and fighter bomber sweeps had slowed traffic within one hundred miles of the French-Italian Alpine border to a crawl during the day. Medium and heavy bombers had paralyzed the rail repair yards. The five new German divisions that had shown up in the past two months were not wiling to sweep their rear clean of partisans, as they had to man the beach defenses; instead they relied on their local collaborators to engage in a civil war.

When dawn was an hour away, the Vichy patrol started their way up the hill. By now, they were fairly skilled at moving quietly as the loudest groups had been routinely decimated. Battle was a harsh teacher. Jacques smiled as he held his carbine loosely and crawled over to the machine gun team that would soon start the ambush. As soon as the first burst was fired, he sent a red star shell into the sky, and the rest of the resistance cell opened fire into the kill sack.

 

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Mers El Kebir, French North Africa, January 11, 1944

The military harbor was full of ships. Some had arrived from Naples and were waiting for escorts to Gibraltar. Others had arrived from Alexandria and would be heading to Corsica and Sardinia. A few had been direct shipments from America and were now unloading stores to support the aircraft, tank and ship repair facilities that had sprung up all along the coast in the growing urban aggolomoration of Oran.

The French Fleet was departing. Or at least most of it; the heavy cruiser Algerie, a trio of light cruisers and a destroyer squadron would remain at the great French naval base. Algerie was currently in a floating drydock repairing minor damage from a grounding. These ships would be the fast core of the French Meditarrean squadron. Two old battleships, Bretagne and Provence would remain as heavy hitters. Most of the striking power of the fleet was raising steam for a journey first to Gibraltar and then to four East Coast ports in America. Rochembeau was heading to Norfolk. Richelieu had a yard period scheduled in Boston. Strasbourg and Dunkerque would see the wear and tear of over a year at war addressed in Brooklyn. Half a dozen cruisers were allocated to the yards on the Delaware River. By mid-summer, the French Indochina Squadron would be ready for action again and by the end of the year, they would be on station.

 

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Batan Island, January 12, 1944

Patrick took a deep breath. He made himself still. His fingers tightened the straps on his helmet. He looked around and sought out the eyes of his squad leaders. They nodded. The platoon was under cover. They had been working to help extend the small airfield. One strip was already open and there were two squadrons of Army P-47s. Two handfuls of machines were in revetments or pushed off the apron and hidden underneath nets as mechanical flaws had kept them on the ground. Half a squadron was flying a sweep near Formosa. The rest of the locally based fighters were in the air as another air raid was detected.

Ten minutes later, the half dozen Bofors and several quad fifties started to bang away at the sky. The Japanese bombers made rapid passes and bombs landed. Some hit the small port. More exploded in the fields around the expanding airfield. A string ripped open a pair of fighters and another sent a five thousand foot pillar of smoke into the sky after several dozen drums of 100 octane fuel started to burn.

As soon as the anti-aircraft guns stopped firing, Patrick rose and ordered his platoon to help with the fire fighting efforts. This at least beat taking out a bunker held by hardcore hold-outs.

 

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41 miles east of Wenzhou, China, January 13, 1944

HMS Porpoise turned to the south. Her propellers pushed her forward at a steady ten knots to keep her wake down. The second minefield was finished. The first minefield was closer to shore near Taizhou to interrupt coastal shipping while this field would be more likely to bag merchant ships heading to either Formosa or the Japanese Home Islands. The skipper wanted to head to the northern edge of his assigned patrol box for three days of hunting. His boat would be the northernmost Royal Navy ship. Anything further north was in the Yankee's submarine battle space.

 

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72 miles southeast of Shanghai, China January 13, 1944

USS Porpoise slowly crept forward. Word was passed to the control room that the four torpedo tubes in the forward room were reloaded. That evolution had been hurried as much as quietly possible even as depth charges exploded several hundred feet behind and only dozens of feet above the boat. The sonar team reported a large ship breaking up after at least two torpedoes exploding on time. The skipper ordered a short sprint at six knots and then a pause at bare steerage where the submarine would attempt to become part of the sea floor as the convoy escorts searched for their assailant.

 

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East of Milan, January 14, 1944

Corporal Jaroshek checked the fighting position. The BAR gunner next to him slowly traced back and forth with his eyes and the gun barrel. He had a clear field of fire to cover a curve in the small hill that the company was defending. The Pennsylvania National Guard had relieved the Texas National Guard's place on the line starting last night. The officers and sergeants of the company had met up with the men who had grown up around El Paso the night before before the Keystone Division moved into position. The Texans had a good basic building situation. The trenches and dug-outs were dry and deep, and the fighting positions were well enough camouflaged and positioned.

Twenty minutes later, the corporal and the rest of his squad were huddled around a camp stove that had a water nearing a boil. As soon as the coffee was warming their cores, the 10:1 ration pack was opened up and a private from Forty Fort took on the duties of the squad cook. He was a replacement but he had shown during his short time with the squad that he could actually make standard issue field rations taste much better than they should taste. Few people asked how that occurred.

 

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Chongquing, China January 15, 1944

The extremely tall data organizer placed a note card in the last folder. The returned the file to the cabinet and locked her office. A dozen members of the OSS were heading to the basketball court behind the building and the men had invited her along as they needed someone who could hit a fifteen foot set shot with some regularity. So far this assignment was not too bad; she was seeing the world and helping her country at the same time.

 

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The English Channel, January 16, 1944

HMS Unison slowly motored out to deeper water at a steady four knots on her electric motors even as she still surfaced. There was little water beneath her keel as she was less than a mile offshore of the French coast. Half a dozen commandoes had escorted the two geologists to the beach where they had spent almost an hour collecting samples. An hour later, her diesels took over to charge the batteries and move the submarine faster before she dove at dawn and crept back to England at a steady two knots in what everyone hoped was a deconflicted travel lane.

 

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Wichita, Kansas January 16, 1944

The big bomber was dragged out of the way. If any of the hundreds of mechanics had the energy to care they would have first cheered unironically and then given a Bronx cheer as this was only the first bomber that could be ready to pass acceptance inspections. There were another eighty seven aircraft in various stages of reconstruction on the frigid ramps and sixty two more bombers ordered and being incorrectly built in the covered factories.

It would not matter, the coffee cart was here and for once the wiring crews would have first dibs on the donuts.

 

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Bay of Biscay, January 17, 1944

HMS Campbeltown crashed through the waves. The nineteen year look-out shifted his feet slightly to brace himself as the old destroyer reached the trough and soon started to climb to the next crest. Cold, green water swept the deck again. The look-out was at least somewhat protected a few feet over the flush deck. He would not be on the work gang that was assembling below and behind him to chip ice for twenty minutes. Above him the antennas kept on listening for German U-boat signals while a Liberator circled off in the distance as it sanitized a path for the convoy that had assembled at Freetown and picked up another two columns and four escorts from Gibraltar. A few more days and the thirty nine ships would be in Liverpool and the old destroyer would head to Belfast for a refit. The look-out looked forward to having money in his pocket and a seven day pass even as he looked across the wave tossed sea.

 

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Central Greece, January 18, 1944

The rifleman peered over the sandbag. There was nothing immediately in front of him. The company of New Zealanders was part of the reserve for the brigade. They had dug in near a crossroad a few hundred yards in the rear. Ahead of them, the three battalions of the brigade were in mutually supporting boxes of boxes. Each company had its own box with anti-tank mines and plentiful PIATS allowing them to hedgehog and receive both cavalry and armor. The reserves would counter-attack from either head-on or from a near hook while the surrounding boxes would counter-attack further up the stem of any penetration.

The rifleman checked his belt. He had all of his allocated ammunition, and quite a bit more. He gritted his teeth as a flurry of German howitzer rounds slammed into the road a few hundred yards behind him. They were firing at map coordinates, hoping to catch the reserves up and moving even as two companies of panzers and several battalions of panzergrenediers advanced along the valley. High above them, Ghurkas and mountain troopers were engaged in a deadly game of thrust and parry. That was a deadly side show as the Ghurkas controlled the heights and would be able to deny the Germans any good observation posts into the corps rear.

Suddenly, the call for cover was issued for the entire company. Twenty seconds later, the rifleman was on his knees and elbows with his hands holding his helmet tight. Every gun in the 2nd New Zealand Division and every gun from the two adjoining divisions fired six shells apiece on a narrow front . The ground shook, his brain rattled as artillery made a snowy morning into a maelstrom of smoke and dust punctuated by the crackle of tanks cooking off and men screaming as they had been scythed. The guns were silent for an eternity or twenty seconds before a second barrage targeted a line a football pitch further to the rear.

 

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Kiel, Germany January 19, 1944

The training U-boat was tied up at the pier. Below decks, petty officers were running several drills on repairing leaks and rapidly reloading torpedo tubes while silent. The officers were supervising and scoring both the instructors and the trainees. The captain and the quartermaster were ashore again.

Today, they were supposed to be at sea. Today, they were scheduled to take men underwater for the first time. Today they were supposed to train look-outs and navigators as they motored about on the surface to and from the training area. However, the squadron commander had cut back diesel allocations again. This current batch of trainees would see ten more days of dry land training and eleven fewer sea days before being sent to the operational squadrons in France, Norway and the North Sea.

 

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New London, Connecticut January 19, 1944
R-09 was secured to the dock. Two of her sisters had arrived just an hour ahead of her after a three day training patrol in Long Island Sound. The skipper, an LT with half a dozen war patrols in the Pacific, confirmed with the chief of the boat who had three war patrols supporting the Allies in North Africa that all was secured. The trainees had done well. They had made errors, but they were correctable errors where the correction would be indelible upon their hippocampus. These men had plenty of time left in their training cycle before they were sent out to the fleet boats, but when they arrived, they would not be lost lambs.

 

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Salisbury Plain, January 20, 1944

The whistle blew. The exercise was over. The umpires were now engaged in the most important pursuit; hot tea followed by education. This was the first time that the Belgian Army in exile had taken the field as a fully integrated combined force. The four brigades that had been garrisoning the south coast for almost three years now had been on an active training schedule since last September. Two rifle brigades in carriers built out of no longer needed M-3 Grant chassis and a tank brigade in American supplied Sherman tanks. The last brigade was still lorry mounted infantry. The Shermans had arrived last September and the Belgian division had received both the modified Grants and the Shermans in November. Mechanics had been getting trained with the American National Guard divisions since August.

Three hours later, exercise write-ups had been started and the short version of deficiencies on combined arms operations, battalion and brigade size maneuvers and communication insecurity had been noted. These messages were passed to both the First United States Army Group and the 21st Army Group. More time would be scheduled on the training ranges in between the National Guard, Territorial Army and regulars who all needed time to work out their own kinks with sweat instead of blood.

 

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183 miles west of the Cape of Good Hope, January 21, 1944

U-178's periscope went down.

Seconds later, two torpedoes were in the water.

The tramp freighter had made this run from Montevideo to Capetown half a dozen times. Each run was nearly the same. Get the engines to a good steam pressure and move independently across the South Atlantic at a steady eight knots. When there was air cover, do not zig-zag, when there was no aircraft nearby, zig-zag every fifteen to twenty minutes based on the roll of the dice that had been placed near the wheel. Until this evening, the most excitement seen in the past year was a diversion to answer a distress call from a ship that had taken damage from a rogue wave.

The look-out spotted the torpedoes. He had no time to do anything useful except yell to brace for impact. One torpedo went twenty yards ahead of the bow. The other slammed into ship's hull a few yards astern of the old triple expansion engine room.

 

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Southern Ukraine, January 21, 1944

Dozens of tanks started to advance. The elite Guards battalion had received new tanks just three weeks ago. The white washed tanks slowly moved through the ice and the snow with their massive new cannon slowly moving back and forth. As the heavy guns boomed and flung shells at machine gun posts and trenches, two battalions of infantry, overwhelmingly armed with grenades and submachine guns filled the gaps between the tanks. The Red Army artillery was striking the second line of German defenses where the anti-tank guns usually were set up. A combination of high explosive shells and smoke cells restricted vision to only dozens of yards past the sand bags and netting that hid the heavy, crew served defenses from easy observation.

Hours later, the tank battalion paused their advance. Half a dozen tanks were scattered along an eight kilometer trail. Three had been lost to mines, another two to a determined 88 crew that had a near perfect flanking angle and the last to a breakdown. Two Studebakers stopped at each tank. A few gallons of diesel fuel, half a dozen high explosive shells, and a box of machine gun ammunition was passed to each crew. Two men reloaded the tanks as the other two made quick repairs. Before the trucks moved to the next tank, hot tea was passed to the tankers.

The advance continued twenty minutes later.