Winter Storm (28 page)

“Take a
good look,” said the officer with a grin. “Our Panzers cannot do as much as
this little wonder can. It will penetrate 200mm of frontal armor! More than our
88 flak gun! Yes, the range is very short, but it makes each and every one of
you a
Panzerfaust,
an armored fist against the enemy. With these we no
longer retreat in the face of enemy armor, even if they manage to knock out all
our AT guns. With these we hold our ground, just like that man there in the
slit trench. Let them come, then leap up from your defensive positions and kill
them! Now each and every infantry company will have the killing power of a
Panzerabwehr
Battalion. We are all hunters now,
Panzer Jaegers
, and let the British
beware!”

At that
moment, all the history of the see-saw fighting in North Africa was about to
change again, for behind those crates the whole of the 10th Panzer Division was
soon assembling in Benghazi, and its Panzer Regiment was now comprised entirely
of the newest German tanks off the assembly lines. In a single stroke, Rommel’s
fortune had suddenly risen higher than he even knew at that moment. He had just
been handed a weapon that made his infantry a sturdy, implacable shield. And he
had just been given a sharp new sword in 10th Panzer Division to go with it,
arriving 9 months earlier than it had in Fedorov’s hiostory. Unfortunately, he
had also been given a new general to take over operational level control of the
Panzer Korps, General Ludwig Crüwell, whose thinking was quite different from
Rommel’s.

Operation
Crusader was going to be the proving ground for these new weapons in the
desert, only this time, it was the British who were in for a surprise. The seed
of perdition had fallen on good ground at Palmyra, and now it would bloom with
deadly thorns.

Part X

Crusader

“…Men unsheathe their swords
and kill one another. They have invented gods and challenge each other: ‘Discard
your gods and worship mine, or I will destroy both your gods and you!’”

―
Fydor Dostoyevsky
,
The Brothers Karamazov

Unlike
the Germans, the British were slow to learn the lessons
they already had in hand with the marvels possessed by Brigadier Kinlan’s
Brigade. The General had spent long hours with Wavell, explaining that it would
simply not be possible for the industries of that time to produce a tank
anything remotely like his Challenger IIs. The lighter Scimitars might provide
useful models to aid British arms designers, but the Challenger’s exotic Chobam
armor could never be replicated at that time. Nor could the precious main tank
rounds be duplicated, as they also contained alloys and materials that British
industry in 1941 simply could not create.

They
looked hungrily at the Rapier Air defense rocket system until Kinlan explained
that its computers, electronics, radar sets and propulsion systems, and even
the metals used in the skin of the missiles, could not be duplicated. Yet
seeing that it could work to shoot down an aircraft was most encouraging, and
the British did set their minds on advancing rocket technology of their own.
The engine itself in the missile gave some guidance to the fledgling rocket
designs then under development, and one man in particular, Sir Frank Whittle
with a company known as Power Jets Limited, was given much more attention than
he had ever hoped he might receive.

Sir
Frank had a design that was soon to receive full funding and support from the
Crown, a jet aircraft that he called the Meteor. His diligent work, now aided
by information that was provided by Kinlan’s engineers and technical
specialists, would soon result in an aircraft that would set all new records
for speed, endurance, and rate of climb for a fighter aircraft.

On the
15th of May, 1941, Gloster Aircraft company had partnered with Whittle to
produce a single engine prototype, the E28/39. His concept proved, and now with
full financial support from the Crown, Whittle and Gloster quickly advanced
their design to a twin engine model under the project code name
Rampage
.
The plane was to be called the
Thunderbolt
, until they learned the
American P-47 had already been given that name. So with its novel new engines,
Meteor
seemed an appropriate handle, and development was hastened along. The planes
were nowhere near ready for actual production and deployment, but the concept
and commitment to jet aircraft was now cemented into British strategy from that
day forward.

One
other idea that stuck hard with all the British Generals was the use of armored
personnel carriers to move infantry rapidly to the place they were needed in
combat, and with much more security than they could ever hope to have in trucks
or on foot. Yet in their eyes, the Warrior AFV was every bit a tank, with a gun
as large and powerful as any on their other armored chariots. The thought that
its true role was that of a fast infantry carrier that was also a powerful fire
support weapon became lodged in their minds, and it would set their designs
back home on a most interesting path.

Elsewhere,
in the areas of regular arms production, the British were still relying on the
old models that had been in the pipeline for some time, with none of the
innovative thinking that was now driving German tank designers, who mistakenly thought
themselves far behind their enemy. Hitler did not yet know the British would
never produce another Challenger II tank for the duration of the war, and would
be limited to the single brigade that was now in the Western Desert. All they
could do to preserve that advantage, was possibly find some way to create a
good high performance armor piercing round, and in this Kinlan’s technical
people were very helpful.

In the
main, the British were quietly told by Kinlan that they had the means to deal
with anything the Germans would ever build. The 17 Pounder gun with APDS shot
was fully capable of knocking out virtually any German tank, but the British
were going to have to get serious about putting that gun on a tank of their
own.

“You’ll
end up putting them on American Shermans,” he told Wavell and Montgomery in a
very private meeting. “Eventually you’ll get them onto a forerunner of my own
tanks, the Cruiser Mark VIII Challenger, but you never built enough to matter.
You’ll also put one on a Valentine chassis and call it the Archer, a self
propelled AT gun of sorts. There will be another model called the Achilles, a
variant on the American M-10 Tank Destroyer.”

“You
have the plans and designs of these vehicles?” asked Montgomery.

“Someone
in my crew here is likely to have them all. For my money, I can show you
information on a tank you’ll call the Comet. It will have a good 77mm high
velocity gun to rival performance of the 17 Pounder, and it has decent all
around performance and protection. Get busy, gentlemen. Let your people back
home know the score. These are the tanks you need to build, and in great
quantity! Rattle around here in these old Matildas and the new little Crusaders,
and you’ll soon see the Germans in Cairo. Thankfully, I’ll have something to
say about that, but I can’t be everywhere, or even stay in one place for very
long. Gentlemen, I’m your ace in the hole, but you’ll need to improve your hand
a good deal if you want to beat Rommel, and that quickly. It took you until
December of ’44 to get Comets delivered to the 11th Armored Division. You’ll
have to do much better than that.”

Thankfully,
it would not take much to convince Churchill of the need to radically improve
British armor, and so with Kinlan’s help, and the advice of his people, the
British stopped trying to build endless variations on the cruiser tank idea,
and discarded dead end models like the Valiant. They focused on getting a
better main gun, decent protection, and good mobility, but it was going to take
them a great deal longer to achieve results. For the moment, Operation Crusader
was going to be a come as you are party, launched with the vehicles the British
had in hand at that time.

They
would field about 275 Infantry Tanks, mostly Matilda II and Valentines. And
then they would rattle around with another 467 cruiser tanks of every stripe,
with the bulk being the new Crusader. To these the American Lend Lease program
had delivered a light cruiser tank, the M3 Stuart, which the British came to
call the “Honey.” Combined with the light Mark VI Tankettes, they finally had good
quantity in the armored category, with a little over a thousand AFVs in the Western
Desert, but they would be facing some very stiff new competition.

Rommel’s
15th and 21st Panzer Divisions still had all the older models. He fielded the
Panzer III-H and III-J, along with a few of the long barreled Panzer IV-F1 and
F2 tanks. The newly arriving 10th Panzer Division would have all new armor,
with 48 Löew-55 Lions, 48 Leopards and 48 of the up gunned Panzer IVs, and
there were Leopards assigned to various other units in a supporting role. All
in all, Rommel would have only half as many tanks available, with 536 in North
Africa when the operation started. To these he could add 18 Sturm III assault
guns, and 16 of the new Marder self propelled AT guns to run with his panzer
divisions.

So
while he would be outnumbered in tanks nearly two to one, he possessed a clear
edge in tank quality, and also had received a lavish allotment of 88s. Germany
had built and deployed about 5500 of the powerful 88s by late 1941, but
amazingly, although he was instrumental in using them as tank killers, Rommel never
had more than a handful of them, just 24 to 36 guns. Now he had quite a few
more, about 60 of them on his Gazala line, with more in the pipeline. These,
combined with an increasing number of PaK 50s replacing the older PaK 37s, and
some captured Russian 76mm guns, were going to give the Germans a lot of
stopping power against the abundant British armor.

And then
came the new
Panzerfausts
, enough to equip every battalion with at least
24 Panzer Jaeger teams. The British were heading for much more trouble than
they realized, and their hubris, born of the fact that they had Kinlan behind
them, not to mention Churchill nipping at the heels of his Generals, was going
to make them just a little more reckless than they might otherwise be.

The
British also had numerous commitments throughout the Middle East which would
hamper their ability to muster a strong offensive force in the Western Desert.
5th Indian, and both the veteran 6th and 7th Australian Divisions were still in
Lebanon and Syria, enough of a force to hold what was left of the Axis troops
there in check, though not enough to clear them from Northern Syria. To worsen
that situation, an increasingly nervous Australia was worried about Japan, and
with good reason. It was likely that both Australian Divisions would soon be
called home to fight in Southeast Asia, which would force the British to find
troops to replace them.

One
such Division, the 70th Infantry, had already arrived as a permanent garrison
force at Tobruk. For this revised operation Crusader, the British had managed
to cobble together two armored formations, loosely grouped with available
brigades, the 2nd and 7th Armored Divisions. To these they were able to find
four infantry divisions to support the attack, the 9th Australian recalled from
Syria, the 4th Indian, 1st South African and 2nd New Zealand Divisions. The
Polish Carpathian Brigade was assigned to Tobruk.

Monty’s
XIII Corps had the bulk of the infantry, with 2nd New Zealand, 9th Australian
and the British 70th Infantry at Tobruk. The 22nd Guards and 22nd Tank Brigade
were his reserve. O’Conner’s XXX Corps had 2nd and 7th Armored Divisions, with
the motorized 4th Indian Division in support. The 1st South African Division
was held as 8th Army reserve to support either Corps as needed. It was an order
of battle that was slightly different from the original Crusader plan, and all
the British could muster. Whether that force would be enough to push Rommel off
his Gazala line and start the retreat to El Agheila was the question at hand,
and Wavell had his doubts.

“Rommel
still has two Panzer divisions and good infantry,” he said. “That alone will
match either of our two Corps, and then some. Then we still have the Italians
to deal with, easier to manage, but numerous nonetheless.”

“That will
likely be work for Monty on the peninsula,” said O’Conner. “We’ll have to break
the Germans with the armor in XXX Corps, and I’m just the man to do it. Don’t
forget, I know this ground well. I ran all the way to Benghazi in 1940, and I
can do it again.”

“It all
depends on the tanks,” said Wavell. “Don’t forget what Kinlan warned us about.
See to your maintenance on those new Crusaders.”

“I
will, sir. I’m assigning a support truck to every company with spare parts,
extra fuel, the works. Lord, how I’d love to lead with Kinlan’s Brigade, but we
just have to shoulder the battle ourselves now, and hold his troops in
reserve.”

*

General
Crüwell was a big man, nearly a head taller than Erwin
Rommel, the man he now came to meet as he took the reins for operational level
command of the Panzer Korps. The General had come from the 11th Panzer
Division, now in Russia clawing its way towards Moscow. He was promoted to
General
der Panzertruppe
a little early, fresh blood in the operational arm of
Rommel’s ill fated army, and ably assisted by Fritz Bayerlein, his Chief of
Staff.

Bayerlein
had also come from Russia, right from a position in the HQ staff of Guderian’s
Panzergruppe
2.
While Crüwell was taller, with short cropped sandy hair, Bayerlein was a
round faced man, broader in the shoulders, with dark hair parted right down the
middle, a fair complexion, soon to be well tanned by the desert sun, and dark
eyes. Both men were ‘fresh off the boat’ and eager to get on with their new
assignments. Anything would be better than the misery of the winter in Russia.
The two men were waiting in the field tent, expecting Rommel at any moment.

“How
was it back there?” said Crüwell, and Bayerlein knew exactly what he meant.

“Guderian
has been pushing hard,” said Bayerlein, but he’s on the wrong road—much too far
from Moscow, and with a major river to get over.”

“The
only place he can do that is at Serpukhov,” said Crüwell.

Bayerlein
nodded. “Yes, and after that it will be another 100 kilometers to Moscow. That
may seem like nothing to us here. It’s that far from our secondary port at
Derna to the forward depot at Gazala. But in Russia, you fight for every step
forward you take. Either it’s the mud, or the Russians. Soon it will be the
snow. Hitler has made a mistake in attacking Moscow.”

“What
about Hoepner? He was much closer.”

“Hung
up on the inner defense ring around the city. The last I heard they were going
to try and reinforce his drive with 12th Panzer. It was fighting at Mozhaysk,
and they are sending it north. Yes, if anyone does get through, it will be
Hoepner, not Guderian.”

“Thankfully,
the winter for us here will not be so harsh,” said Crüwell. “Unless we let
these British tanks get the better of us again.”

“10th
Panzer has arrived at Benghazi,” said Bayerlein. “They have some of our own new
tanks, and I saw them in action on the road to Serpukhov. The British are in
for a little surprise this time. The Russian T-34 was difficult for our Panzer
IIIs, but not for our new Lions!”

“Yes?”
Crüwell inclined his head, raising a finger like a school master. “Well it
seems the British have lions here too. I can hardly believe the after action
reports I read. They went right through 15th Panzer Division with this new tank
of theirs, and rolled right over a well prepared minefield to do it! I’m told
they cleared the mines using some kind of new munitions, and a fearsome
engineering tank.”