Authors: Anthony G Williams
THE FORESIGHT WAR (40 page)
The Kapitan checked the information for the umpteenth time,
then
gave the command: ‘periscope depth’.
The Type X angled gradually upwards from the depths where it had been lurking, safe from detection, for the past eighteen hours.
He grasped the periscope, spun a quick circle to check for trouble,
then
returned to focus on the vessel heading towards them.
He grunted.
‘Precisely as advertised.
Load torpedoes.’
For this special mission, the torpedoes had been kept out of the tubes for as long as possible so they could be carefully checked over before firing.
The power loading system would make short work of the task.
He looked again at the ship; a large passenger vessel, travelling alone at well over twenty knots, relying on speed for defence.
Normally, this would be safe enough, but the xB-Dienst had somehow acquired key information about this particular vessel: not just details of its route and timing but also that it was carrying some valuable cargo.
Perhaps there were some important people on board?
The Kapitan shrugged mentally.
He had been sent out for this specific mission and knew what he had to do.
He settled down to concentrate on the task.
The Heinkel 219 of Nachtjagdgeschwader 3 clawed its way up into the night sky, powerful Jumo engines straining under the high boost level, wide, paddle-bladed propellers flailing to find enough grip in the thinning air.
The Oberstleutnant watched the dials carefully.
The aircraft had been rushed through its development as a top priority project, and as always had its fair share of teething troubles.
He glanced up through the thick glazing of the pressurised cockpit; nothing was visible but a sprinkling of stars.
He checked the gauges again.
Boost pressure steady, oil pressure steady, temperatures steady.
Of the engines, anyway, he reflected wryly.
Outside, it was well below zero and dropping fast.
The Horchdienst had issued a warning of a raid tonight, and initial reports indicated that a large force of bombers was heading towards central Germany.
The pilot recalled his visit to an operations bunker, a massive building with a bombproof roof five metres thick.
Rows of seats, raked as if in a lecture theatre, faced the huge translucent map on which Luftwaffenhelferinen used light projectors to indicate the air situation.
The chief operations officer was stationed near the rear of the stalls, the broadcast officer on his right.
In front sat the fighter liaison officers who kept in telephone contact with the airfields.
Things will be buzzing in there now, he thought.
Behind him, the radar operator was looking around, enjoying the few minutes of relaxation before he would have to glue his face to the screen surround, trying to follow the elusive, flickering contacts through the haze of enemy jamming devices, gripping tightly to the set as the big Heinkel raced and slowed, climbed and dived, after their quarry.
The new centimetric radar was capable of leading the night-fighter to within a few hundred metres of the target, but after that, visual contact was required for an attack.
There were rumours that radar gunsights were being developed which would enable the fighters to open fire without even seeing their targets, but the Oberstleutnant would believe that when he saw it.
There were even rumours of the new jet aircraft being prepared for night fighting, but for now day fighters had priority.
At least they were well equipped to deal with the British bombers, the pilot thought with grim satisfaction.
Nestling in the belly of the plane was a pair of the massive new high-velocity Rheinmetall-Borsig MK 103 cannon, each capable of firing seven of the big three-centimetre rounds per second.
These guns could outrange any conceivable defensive armament a bomber could carry and just a few hits would bring down the target.
Behind the radar operator was a pair of the compact, fast-firing, low-velocity three centimetre MK 108s from the same maker, angled to fire upwards at fifty-five degrees in the ‘Schräge Musik’ installation, with an extra gunsight in the cockpit roof for aiming them.
The ‘Schräge Musik’ was particularly effective, partly because the bombers offered a bigger target from below and were usually more visible as they were silhouetted against the stars, and partly because the night-fighters themselves were much less visible, lost against the dark ground.
The pilot looked again at the altimeter.
Past ten thousand metres, and still climbing.
They would need another two thousand to reach the usual altitude of their high-flying targets.
He settled back to wait.
Geoffrey Taylor sighed appreciatively as he settled back to enjoy the precious brandy.
‘Now that was a much better meal then I expected.
What’s all this talk of shortages and hardship, then?’
‘Oh, that’s real enough,’ countered Mary.
‘We are privileged to enjoy some luxuries, but you go out to see what ordinary people eat and you’ll soon see what the problem is.
How would you like a dinner of reconstituted dried egg powder, alternating with Spam and, for a special treat, some whale meat?
Then of course, there are sausages – but
it’s
best not enquire what’s in them – and cheese; the ration is all of two ounces a week, the same as for tea.
Most luxuries are just unobtainable.
I heard of someone who was given a banana by an American the other week.
She was so delighted she gave it to her child as a special treat.
The trouble was, the child had never seen one before and tried to eat the lot, skin and all!’
Once the laughter had subsided, Peter Morgan put his glass down carefully.
‘Well then, Don, what happens next?’
Don looked around the table at his friends, all together again for the first time in months.
Peter Morgan and Geoffrey Taylor, both still tanned from their stints in the Far East, were in other ways as contrasting as ever.
The RAF man was still slim and boyish but with grey appearing in his fair hair and lines of strain on his face.
Geoffrey’s powerful figure had thickened but his brown moustache still bristled as he puffed at his pipe (‘I know, I know,’ he had responded to Don’s dire warnings, ‘but when you consider all the other ways I’m likely to die in the near future, smoking is a minor threat’).
Harold Johnson had thawed in the couple of years since joining the group but was still quiet and reflective, his underlying intensity only apparent at times of stress.
Charles and Mary appeared least changed, he thought, Charles as ever looking
so
ordinary as to be anonymous, only careful study revealing the watchful intelligence in his brown eyes.
‘Well, let’s recap.
Russia is somehow still fighting on despite being driven far to the east’– ‘not surprising when you consider the alternative’, muttered Geoffrey – ‘and we’ve managed to keep Finland out of the fighting by threatening to attack them from Norway.
This has helped keep Murmansk and Archangel available, despite the best efforts of the Germans to isolate them – of course the Russian defence has been helped by the winter and by support from some of our forces – which is just as well as the convoys from our ports and from America, via the North Cape or Vladivostok, are basically what’s keeping the Russians going.’
Don paused, his demeanour taking on what his friends privately called his ‘professor’ look, and sipped some more brandy.
‘We’re sending them the best equipment we can: the latest versions of the Brigands and Herefords, the new Churchill tank with the seventeen-pounder high-velocity gun and so on.
As long as they can hang on, we can retain the initiative because Hitler will have no time or resources for any other adventures.
So the ball is in our court; what do we do next?’
He looked enquiringly around the table.
‘Do what we did in your time,’ offered Harold, ‘launch an invasion of Italy from North Africa.’
Don grimaced.
‘That’s Churchill’s favourite theme.
Partly because he’s obsessed with achieving something worthwhile in the Mediterranean, partly because he’s worried about the risk of an invasion of France and determined to avoid the sort of losses we suffered on the Western Front in the last war.’
That seems a reasonable concern to me,’ commented Geoffrey, ‘and assuming that we somehow manage to get the Americans on board at some point, an assault in the Mediterranean would have the advantage of giving their green troops some battle experience before throwing them across the Channel.
So why not plan for that?’
‘Let me guess,’ said Peter with a small smile.
‘Avoiding a diversion of effort, is that it?’
Don nodded.
‘Partly.
The fighting in Italy absorbed a tremendous amount of resources and dragged on for years.’
‘But the Schwerpunkt theory only holds true if you are able to concentrate your forces,’ argued Charles.
‘While the Battle of the Atlantic is still undecided there is a practical limit to the forces which can be gathered and sustained in Britain.
We need almost all of the shipping capacity just to keep the country going.
There’s also a limit to the effort we can make in the Far East, simply because of the distances involved and the amount of shipping that it would tie up.
So we might as well deploy the surplus elsewhere, where they can do some damage to our enemies and distract Hitler from his assault on Russia.’
‘What are our other options?’ Mary asked.
‘It seems to me that either we just sit tight and rely on bombing or we divert more forces to Russia to engage the Germans directly.
With Norway in our hands, the journey isn’t as hazardous as the terrible Arctic convoys Don’s told us about and they would arrive at a friendly port and not have to fight their way ashore.’
‘Whatever we do, we’re faced with the logistics problem,’ Don said.
‘The sea lanes are like pipes which limit the flow of men and material along them, the size of the pipe depending on the shipping available – and of course the efforts of the Germans in blocking the pipe.
Fighting a campaign anywhere in the world means not just delivering masses of men and equipment but being prepared to keep them supplied indefinitely.
That takes such a huge shipping effort that we have to judge very carefully how we can make best use of the resources.
Unfortunately, there is no simple right answer.’
‘It seems fairly obvious to me,’ declared Peter.
‘We have the means in Bomber Command to bring the war home to Germany in a way that nothing else can.
We can really hurt them directly, and they have to divert fighter squadrons from Russia to counter our bombers, not to mention all the effort they
are having
to put into flak batteries and the like.
And we can do this at a risk and cost which is very low in comparison with an invasion.’
‘But that kills innocent civilians, women and children,’ Mary objected.
‘How can that be justified?’
‘That isn’t the main purpose, but in any case, are there any such things as non-combatants when a whole nation is at war?’ countered Peter.
‘The work those civilians are doing is supporting the war economy which is keeping Germany fighting.
Drive them out of the cities through the fear of bombing and you badly damage Germany’s war effort.’
Don nodded.
‘I don’t like it either, but that’s the argument that’s won the day so far.
For the time being, at least, bombing it will be.’
‘Alles nach Bär!
Alles nach Bär!’
The urgent voice of the fighter controller crackled in the headphones.
The Oberstleutnant acknowledged briefly and banked the big Heinkel onto a new course.
‘It’s
He thought back to the control centre again, where the staff would have at last sorted out the main raid from the various decoys which had been dropping Düppel to confuse the big Freya surveillance radars.
The local fighter control would now be taking over, the Fighter Control Officer hunched over the horizontal glass-topped Seeburg table, on which the locations of various radar targets were indicated with points of light.
The radars were accurate enough to guide the Nachtjägers to within three hundred metres of the target, well within the range of their on-board detection systems.
The voices of other pilots came thick and fast over the Reichsjägerwelle, the fighter broadcast frequency, as their pilots all set course for the capital.
The hunt was on!
The Flight Lieutenant in the Pathfinder Mosquito was concerned.
The preceding weather plane had warned of continuous cloud cover over
The Pathfinders would have to use sky markers to indicate the target to the following bombers, and that was never as accurate.