Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2

[fester]

Mers El Kebir, French North Africa March 29, 1944

USS New York and USS Arkansas had arrived on the morning tide. They had accompanied yet another convoy of flat bottomed landing ships built in Pittsburgh and Indiana and Iowa. The military harbor was almost too full. Warspite, Malaya and Barham had arrived the night before. They were taking on fuel and trading some of their rum and bitter for wine. Lorraine was next to a repair ship. She would be ready for sea in another week if there was no emergency. Her crew could get her to sea, and into combat on a day's notice with perhaps a mild degradation of the secondary fit and a busted condenser.

All along the ports of the Western Mediterranean Sea, Allied naval and landing forces were assembling. Some ports had half a dozen sub-chasers standing down to perform maintenance. Other ports had a dozen destroyers and gunboats going to sea daily for anti-aircraft drills. Cruisers practiced in their new role as fighter direction ships while tens of thousands of men waded through the surf to land on a dozen different beaches from Tripoli to Oran and from Cape Bon to the Gulf of Sagone.

Fighter aircraft wearing a dozen nations' colors scrambled every morning to harrass and occassionally destroy German high speed photo passes. Medium bombers had been seeking out every rail yard within range. Fighter bombers strafed anything with an engine west of Milan. Heavy bombers roamed deep into the underbelly of German industry. Transport aircraft dropped thousands of paratroopers in coordinated practice drops. Black painted transports and old bombers emptied their fuselage of supplies, secret agents, commandos and dummies with firecracker strings attached to their uniforms on a nightly basis.

 

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March 30, 1944 East China Sea
USS Pogy's skipper could only shake his head. The second half of his patrol had been a bust. There were a few junks and sampans at sea. A few fishing boats that would not have been out of place from New Bedford's harbor had been casting lines in shoal waters. Little had been seen that was worth a torpedo. Three coasters escorted by a pair of minesweepers and a patrol boat had made it behind a known enemy minefield before heading to Wenzhou. The patrol was ending with sixteen torpedoes still available. The submarine had been recalled to Guam where a tender would be waiting for her.

 

[fester]

Bandar Abbas, Iran March 31, 1944

The Free French light cruiser left the port. She had needed to both refuel and repair a finicky boiler for the past twelve days. Half a dozen merchant ships followed her as an impromptu gaggle would be following the cruiser through the Straits of Hormuz and into the Gulf of Oman. The cruiser would then pick up speed and head to the Suez Canal. Several Liberty and Empire ships would likely see the cruiser again at Port Said several days later, one tramp steamer was due to head to Bombay, while the rest of the ships would make the long, slow journey to Durban and Cape Town to refuel and replenish for a day or two before sailing independently to Freetown where convoys back to Britain or Norfolk would be dispatched.

By the time the cruiser started to leave the merchant ships in her wake, her look-outs had spotted another three deeply laden ships heading inbound to the port that they had just departed.

 

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Panama City March 31, 1944

The Canal was backed up. LST 34, 242 and 243 waited in their lane on the Pacific Ocean side as the locks cleared for a fleet transit from the Atlantic. Three assault ships had seen action on Saipan and now were needed half a world away in far cooler seas.

 

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RAF Tempsford April 1, 1944

The airbase was busy. Half a dozen aircraft had departed for drops in France. Another flight was on the long, slow, round-about journey to Poland. Two Dakotas were being loaded for a supply drop near Ostend.

Tonight was busy. Last night was atrocious. Tomorrow would be exhausting. Weather and moon would give the squadrons a break soon enough but while the window was open, occupied Europe would be supplied.

 

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Rangoon, Burma April 2, 1944

Another American Liberty ship arrived in the port. Most of her cargo was destined for China as the ever widening maw of men, and supplies for a land war in Asia consumed everything that could be constructed on the Ohio, barged down the Mississippi, loaded in New Orleans, transshipped through the Panama Canal and then routed the long way through the Coral Sea and along the southern edges of the Malay barrier. Two days behind her, another ship was on the way.

 

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Kearney, New Jersey April 3,1944

Two destroyers entered the water for the first time this morning. Each had six dual purpose guns on three mounts and twin rudders. They would be joining the fleet by Christmas. One sister ship's keel was being laid in the now open slip. The other slip would soon be building yet another landing ship. The need for amphibious lift was insatiable. Across the yard, steel was being cut for a repeat and slightly modified version of the Atlanta class flotilla leaders. She would be slightly broader and heavier to add to the stability margin at the cost of half a knot at flank speed. Under the best projections, that still unnamed ship would be in the water by the end of the year and with the fleet by the following Christmas. She might be too late for the war and too small for the peace.

 

[fester]

West of Milan, April 5, 1944

He had made his rounds. The listening and observation post in front of the position was manned with a riflemen acting as a runner for a BAR team. The men were alert enough and awake. They would watch and listen for any movement or threats while the rest of the squad slept. He soon got back to his fox hole. Before he could get under a blanket, the platoon sergeant checked on him. All was well and he relayed his report in a whispered voice. The platoon sergeant moved on as he was working his way clockwise through the platoon while the LT was going counter-clockwise.

A minute later he was asleep. It was not the sleep of a well fed, well fucked young man. His eyes were heavy and closed. His heart rate had slowed. Muscles rebuilt themselves as his body transformed nutrients into structure instead of merely energy. Yet, his ears were still alert. Over the next few hours, he heard and ignored the heavy thumps of a battery of Long Toms. He knew that those guns had no reason to be shooting at anything near an infantry squad pushing the advance. He heard and ignored the squeal of a Sherman loosing a track. He heard and briefly ascended from deep sleep when some chemical mortars fired. They were too far away. They were not firing at his front and no one was shaking him awake. The static bursts of a Ma-Deuce interrupted a short dream. He slept for a good three and a half hours, one of the longer stretches of mostly uninterrupted sleep he had since the offensive started. That, combined with a power nap and a short stretch after nightfall meant he was looking at almost six hours of sleep today.

When he woke to the firm shake of the squad's corporal, he felt as good as he had in a while. He felt better as he cracked his back and wiggled his toes while putting on new, dry wool socks and blood forced him to feel needs in the arches of his feet. He felt good as he counted. Every man who had been with him last night was with him this morning. All were either changing socks or policing their sleep positions. He felt even better when a cup of coffee was handed to him. Ten minutes to eat, drink and piss before he had to get to the LT and find out what the Pennsylvania National Guard was doing today.

 

[fester]

Northern Luzon, April 7, 1944

The radio operator was calling for artillery. Ahead of the small command post, a dozen machine guns, dozens of automatic rifles and scores of Garands and carbines were firing. A trio of mines suddenly detonated and even several hundred yards behind the front line, Ibling could hear the scream of men being shredded. A mortar began to fire. The first shells were star shells, illuminating the battlefield far brighter and broader than the half dozen red and green and white flares that the infantry companies had fired when the Japanese had started their attack. He looked around. He had two rifle platoons in reserve as well as a heavy machine gun squad and most of an administrative support company. The captain in charge of the support elements was already trying to get his men organized. They had prepared for this after other battalions and regiments had reported on Japanese suicide charges. One battalion had two companies completely destroyed and its headquarters overrun before its reserves and more importantly, linked units on its flanks could counter-attack. The clerks, quartermasters, mechanics and cooks would form a second support line in case any of the front lines broke. They would catch the tide and stop it before it became a rout. The combat reserves would push forward once the primary thrust of the Japanese charge could be identified.

Two minutes after the first mortar star shell had burst, one mortar team was steadily replacing the descending illumination rounds while the rest of the mortars in the attached mortar platoon were busy walking fire into a few mostly organized clumps of Japanese soldiers. A trio of knee mortars began to reach out for the 81's in a futile attempt to counter-battery. The old combat veteran could feel the pulse and give and take of the battle. The first wave was being stopped and the Japanese officers had to be restructuring and redressing their lines even as machine guns continued to fire at the Filipino lines to keep heads down.

Where was his artillery. The radio operator had orders to ask for danger close from at least a battalion of 105s. The second assault had started and within moments, the first field artillery rounds were landing behind and to the right of where they needed to be. Corrections were being called and soon, blood and flesh was in a contest of lethality with steel shards.

 

[fester]

Camden, New Jersey April 8, 1944

The shipyard had ordered eight boilers, four shafts, and 150,000 horsepower worth of propulsion gear the previous year. It had been delivered for a sister ship of a ship that no longer had a mission or an opponent. The Navy did not want to waste the long lead items and instead proposed stretching a pair of tanker hulls and making very fast and very large fleet oilers to support the new battle carriers that were being constructed in New York and Norfolk. Today, the keels had been laid for these two experiments.

 

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Near Valras Plage, France, April 11, 1944

The frogmen clambered back aboard the torpedo boat. Beach samples were hurried below decks. Weapons were stowed and the men huddled in the small galley with a hot plate and a boiling vessel where buns and hot drinks were passed around as they debriefed themselves on a mostly successful mission even as the boat headed back out to sea at thirty four knots.

Once the torpedo boat cleared the coast, the two Free French destroyers Panthere and Lynx moved up the coast and bombarded a German observation and communication post for twenty minutes. They had done this half a dozen times already and the Germans knew the game --- they took cover and sent a message back to higher headquarters that would be effectively ignored. Harassment missions did not require a response that involved waking the counter-attack troops nor burning valuable petrol.

 

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South of Iwo Jima, April 12, 1944

All four carrier task groups of the 5th Fleet were assembled. They had topped off their bunkers the day before sprinting into a pre-dawn launch position. The volcanic island was an outpost of the inner ring of the Japanese Empire. Reinforcements had been flowing into the pair of airfields on the island even after it had been hit hard by transiting carrier groups that needed an opposed final training run. Today, strikes that would make the waves that started the Pacific War look small would be taking off every ninety minutes. And then once there was nothing above ground and mobile operational, half a dozen cruisers would empty half their magazines in the evening.

 

[fester]

South of Hainan, April 12, 1944

Four carriers turned into the wind. One carrier had patrol duties and primary CAP responsibilities. The other three ships would be sending raiding pulses all day against the Japanese held islands. Fighter opposition had been worn down by ever increasingly fragile logistics to the Home Islands and routine Free French and RAF raids. The Chinese Nationalist Air Force as well as the Americans operating from bases in Southern China had also joined the cacophony of chaos and destruction. Ruining the airfields, and more importantly, the base workshops would give the Royal Navy a far freer hand in the northern portions of the South China Sea. Once the last Tarpon and Seafire landed tonight, three cruiser minelayers would reseed several gardens near the island before running back to air cover before dawn.

 

[fester]

Dover Castle, April 13, 1944

The colonel smiled. The 33rd US Army Group was achieving its mission. Intelligence reports from a multitude of sources ranging from intercepts, to fighters making photo recon passes, and the French resistance sending back tidbits all agreed on two things. The invasion area was not the primary point of German concern at this time and secondary reserves were being moved within the Northern France theatre to locations out of immediate concern and a division was moving to the South of France as well. The Germans had moved half a dozen divisions out of their central reserve and placed three additional divisions that were rebuilding from their experience in Russia into France since the New Year. But most of them would never be immediately relevant.

He sipped his coffee and then stepped out of his door into the organized chaos of several commands that shared the castle together. His men (and more than a few women) would be busy today as they had to move a pair of corps from Scotland to the Thames Estuary over the next week and the radio traffic needed to be convincing.

 

[fester]

The North Atlantic April 14, 1944

Two Norwegian destroyers that anyone else would call a large torpedo boat took their position on the port flank of the convoy. Three merchant ships had been lost in the past two days. The escorts had claimed an equal number of submarines. In a few more hours, another pair of warships would supplement the escort and the bombers flying out of Iceland would soon hand the convoy off to Coastal Command squadrons based in Scotland and Iceland.

 

[fester]

College Station, Texas April 15, 1944

Across the campus, hundreds of men were opening up official letters. Some were shocked. A few who had been following reporting well and had long conversations with wounded veterans or their brothers were only slightly surprised. They would be allowed to finish up their school year, and then ordered to report to training camps for either July 1 or August 1 for active service and readiness to deploy oversea. Almost all of the men had expected these types of orders for 1945 or 1946 and many expected to commission as officers in the army or at least serve as technical specialists. Now they would be riflemen, machine gunners and mortarmen. The needs of the service outweighed their expectations. By late afternoon, a collective decision was made across campus to find beer.

 

[fester]

Lyme Bay, England April 16, 1944

Seven columns of four ships apiece split apart. Small wooden warships led each quartet of assault transports to their holding area. Even as men from Canada, the United States, Norway and the United Kingdom started to scramble down nets into their landing craft, a monitor and four cruisers began their bombardment of farmers fields. Gunners ashore were shooting 1,000 yard offsets and shells began to splash into the sea before exploding. Mustangs, Spitfires and Thunderbolts patrolled overhead while Mitchells, Mauraders and Typhoons made their bombing runs.

Further off-shore three Polish manned Hunt class destroyers were the close escorts while most of the 10th Destroyer Flotilla along with HMS Spartan and Cleopatra patrolled for any invaders.

By nightfall, the landing parties were ashore. The beach was congested and the umpires had copious notes to distribute. This exercise was mostly a success. Another was scheduled for next week.

 

[fester]

Near Strasbourg, April 17, 1944

Anna Marie brushed the fabric from her skirt. Some leaves were on her thighs. She caught her breath and looked around. She heard men screaming in pain. A truck that had come from the center of village and was heading to an anti-aircraft battery that defended the city was on fire. The screaming stopped when a dozen anti-aircraft shells that had been splashed by gallons of petrol began to cook-off.

She looked up and off to the north. The strafers were now barely visible as they headed back to England.

12,000 yards away from a young woman who had wanted to walk into the village center to pick up some herbs, have a cup of tea with some gossipping friends and perhaps catch the eye of the few young men available, two quartets of Mustang pilots spread out and up. One quartet climbed for altitude to protect the lower group from any German fighters that were looking to bounce crippled aircraft or rookies that had let down their guard. The other four aircraft stayed low and spread out. They had simple orders; strafe anything with an engine in it; preferably trains or planes, but trucks were fine. This secondary mission only ever activated after the bombers had turned for home and at times the squadron would be either bingo or out of ammo well before strafing could commence, but today, the German day fighters were not up for business in their group's sweep.

So they kept up their hunt for anything with an engine until they had crossed the coast on the Franco-Belgian border.

 

[fester]

Near Montpelier, France 0300 April 18, 1944

The heavy cruisers Tourville and Duquesne secured their guns. They had bombarded their homeland for thirty minutes. Only in the last twelve did a pair of German coastal defense guns respond. The defending shells never came dangerously close to the cruisers. They twisted and they chased splashes even as the captains altered speeds from twenty six knots to sixteen and then back to twenty four. Full power went to the screws after the rudders stabilized the ships on their course that was a hair east of due south. Fighter cover was promised at dawn, but the fighters would be most useful for every mile closer to Corisca the cruisers could come. There were very few German bombers left operational in southern France, but the captains and the admiral's staff wanted to minimize the minutes that any German bomber could be uncontested to get lucky.

 

[fester]

Southern France, 0330 April 18, 1944

Jacques checked his Sten. It was loaded and ready with a rag wrapped around the barrel. He looked up and down the line of men. They were ready. Hand signals were raised. In a moment, the column started to move, quietly but not slowly as they were not too concerned about soft noises in the night. The collaborator militias had learned by now that the night belonged to the maquis. The occasional German patrol was still encountered at night, but the risk of clearing the space from a cut phone line was higher than the risk of an ambush in the next hour.