Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2

[fester]

Near Lemnos, Greece July 9, 1943

The submarine Papanikolis went back under the waves. She would return to pick up the dozen men in two nights.

The combat scouts were in two rubber rafts. Shoulders rippled as their paddles bit into the sea and brought them closer to shore. Two hundred yards from the small beach, three men from each raft went overboard. They would spend the next three hours checking for obstacles and assessing the path to the beach for obstructions, natural and artificial. The other six men would spend the night bringing supplies ashore and setting up basic security before they took soil samples and tested the ground for sufficient firmness to support a tank.

 

[fester]

Scapa Flow, July 10, 1943

HMS Saumarez passed by the boom defense vessel. She was now in the sound. Working up had gone well and the short dockyard period had been quite effective at bringing the new destroyer up to the latest standards and fixing the few problems found by her new crew. Now she would be joining the escorting flotillas that would cover convoys from Loch Ewe and Iceland to Murmansk and Archangel.

 

[fester]

Kars, Turkey July 11, 1943

Another train left the station. The recently delivered American built engine was hauling another infantry regiment from the eastern border of Turkey to positions in Thrace. The journey would take a week before the first rifleman was in a new foxhole north of Istanbul. Even as the train was leaving the yard, another train was coming in from Mersin. A small convoy that had originated in Savannah,Georgia had unloaded non-lethal goods for the Red Army twelve days earlier. The first tranche of those supplies would soon cross the Armenian border to feed the maw of the Russian war machine.

 

[fester]

Homestead, Pennsylvania July 12, 1943


The mighty ladle tipped over. Red steel flowed freely. Gigantic presses began to crush the melted metal with pressures that would only be found miles deep under the earth. Workers, many of them experienced for decades, slowly adjusted the process. This was one of the most skilled tasks in the entire mill. New comers could be tasked to the coke works, or to the steel matting teams, but the press for armor plating required a decade of knowledge to know what was just right versus what was truly dangerous. That was a thin line and it was not a line that a rookie, or even a three year man could be expected to know. Six hours later, the first stage of the process to turn molten metal into a piece of armor over nineteen inches thick. This was the last plate that the Navy needed for their battle line construction program. Another six weeks worth of pours were scheduled to stockpile armor that would be needed for battle damage, but after that, the few parts of the mill that could produce everything up to battleship armor could be diverted. Cruisers and tanks still were being built in great numbers and they needed armor, just nowhere near as much as the battle wagons did.

The whistle blew, and seventeen thousand workers left the Homestead Works in under an hour as another twelve thousand workers came on for the night shift. The bars along Amity Street and 8th Avenue were soon packed as the tired, hungry, thirsty and well paid steel workers congregated to drink an Iron, talk about the Pirates’ surprising season and relax before heading home.

 

[fester]

Christmas Island, July 13, 1943

The flying boat landed in the lagoon. Ten minutes later seven dishevelled sailors from a small merchant ship that should have been scrapped five years earlier but had been kept in service and barely afloat due to the war were safely on the pier. They had been at sea in a wooden life boat for the past three days after their ship was swamped by a large wave in a storm that they had not been able to avoid.

They were the excitement for the month at the rear area base.

 

[fester]

July 13, 1943 Loyang, China

The Japanese patrol was not expecting trouble. The Chinese army was tentative in its patrolling and any contact often became a massacre. The local conscripts were often poorly equipped, seldom armed to a standard that would not have embarrassed the victors of the siege of Port Arthur and scarily thin. The three hundred Japanese infantry men had left their base three days ago on a loot-all, kill-all, burn-all mission. Five men had been wounded. Two had been gored by an ox dragging a supply cart forward when the big beast was surprised, the other three were wounded during a failed ambush near a village that the lead platoons then burned to the ground.

Four hundred yards in front of the point man, a freshly arrived regiment waited. Men waited behind patty dikes, machine gunners shifted slightly as belts of ammunition were held up from the dirt to keep the guns clean and the firing mechanisms working. They were ready. The divisional artillery had been allocated to the regiment. Corps level support had been set to support the attack. Everyone waited as the Japanese advanced.

Twelve eighty-one millimeter mortars and a battery of six eighteen pounders that had first served during the 100 Days and then had served the Indian Army well during the fighting in Burma began to fire. The Japanese patrol was not expecting artillery fire. In any other theatre against any other opponent, the barrages were fairly light, but the shock of actual artillery being used properly in a walking barrage caught the patrolling infantrymen by surprise. Men who should have been on the ground and finding cover before the first shell exploded were scythed. Even as the chaos of the ambush began, the Chinese infantry regiment's riflemen and machine gunners began to fire.

 

[fester]

Rhez, Russia, July 14, 1943


The general drank his tea. Silence had not been heard in over a week, but the pre-dawn minutes were as quiet as the battleground had been since the first German divisions had attacked. They had penetrated the first and then the second belt. Five divisions of Armenians, Russians and Khazaks had been effectively shattered. Trucks full of broken men had only stopped streaming the rear when the trucks that were returning from a run to the hospitals were heading west with more shells for the entrenched guns.

But the third defensive belt held. His men held. Bastions had poured heavy and accurate anti-tank fire into the flanks of the panzers. Ravelins had protected machine gunners who had forced landsers to the ground and into deliberate, slow attacks. Bunkers shielded his flying columns from dive bombers and artillery in between fanatical counter-attacks. His artillery, and the artillery of the Front’s artillery division had fired hundreds of shells per gun per day to break up the German attacks.

The ground in front of his command post was nearly impossible for an advance. Tanks would throw tracks within the first five kilometers. Infantry men would be scrambling through blood soaked mud pits in the first five hundred meters. It would not matter. Seventeen kilometers south of his division, a tank corps was getting ready to launch an assault into the flank of the German attack. An understrength German infantry regiment was the corps flank guard and then the T-34s and self propelled artillery could find maneuvering and operational space. The tankers would buy relief before the front line German formations could attack.


Before they could attack, attention needed to be drawn. The general looked at his watch. Twelve more seconds, and then every working gun in his division and the divisions adjacent to him began to fire.

 

[fester]

Alexandria, Egypt July 15, 1943


Major Jaroschek greeted the replacement pilots with a strong handshake and a curt nod. Fighter squadrons went through second lieutenants like artillery battalions used shells. Five carriers were in the harbor. USS Ranger and Wasp had arrived that morning.

The three British fleet carriers had been training in the Eastern Mediterranean for weeks. They would typically spend a few days at sea working on fighter direction tactics and pre-dawn strikes. Last week they were escorted by HMS Hood and HMS Warspite for a raid against German airfields near Athens where they suffered minimal losses.

A few hundred feet aft of the Marine fighter squadron’s ready room, hundreds of sailors were getting ready to restock the ship’s magazines and larders. The hot sun would beat down on them, but they could not delay the work until nightfall as the captain and the admiral had plans for the task force to go back to sea by late tomorrow morning where they would be covering a troop convoy.

 

[fester]

Perth, Australia, July 16, 1943


Dozens of dolphins were frolicking in the wake of the heavily loaded assault ship. Sergeant Donahue waved at them and laughed at the playfulness. He had enjoyed watching the aquatic mammals during his recovery and since he had rejoined his original regiment, not the Illinois regiment that he had fought and bled with in Timor as a replacement but the regiment he had joined in 1939, he found a moment of displacement from the hub-bub of preparing replacements for combat whenever he had a chance to take a walk along the Swan River’s banks. His dolphins had been with him every time he read a letter from his wife, she dotted it with perfume and he was back in Lowell for a moment even as she had moved to Boston.


His platoon was heavy on replacements. His platoon leader was a ninety day wonder. Patrick had a five dollar bet with one of his compatriots, a fellow veteran over in Hotel Company as to whether or not one or both of their lieutenants would be alive in two days of combat. He had the under. Two of the squad leaders and three corporals had been in the thickest of fighting on Timor and another dozen privates had fought in both the jungle and in the small urban hellhole at the end. Of these eighteen men, only two did not have at least one Purple Heart. Most had at least two. The rest of the platoon were well trained, by stateside standards at least, well equipped, and well fed.


He and the other veterans had six months after the reconquest of Timor to whip the replacements into shape. They had marched, they had shot, they had crawled, they had dug, they had carried their comrades on their back under simulated fire five days a week for the four months. Company and then battalion sized exercises were carried out. He thought that most of his platoon would have a chance for at least the first ten minutes of combat. After that, it would be a crap-shoot.


He flicked his cigarette over the side, and put on his platoon sergeant face as he heard at least three privates slacking off. The assault ship cleared the coastal defenses and the anti-submarine boom just after the three privates had finished their "motivational" push-ups.

 

[fester]

Pearl Harbor, July 17, 1943


Three aircraft carriers, seven cruisers, twenty destroyers, seven patrol boats, four tankers and twenty seven other ships slowly made their way past the hospital and then into the narrow shipping channel. Four hours later, the three Essex class carriers turned out of the wind before joining all the cruisers and most of the destroyers. The twenty seven warships turned to the south by southwest and synchronized their speed to eighteen knots. Tankers had already left Samoa days ago to rendezvous with the new carrier striking group near Naura. Black oil would be sent over the side before the air wings entered combat for the first time with raids against against Rabaul and Bouganville. After that, another refueling opportunity would be taken before the task force joined the 3rd Fleet in the East Indies.

Three destroyers, all of the gunboats and the twenty one non-combatant ships were taking the scenic route to Singapore. A few ships would be detached to Samoa. Two old four-stackers were to be relieved by gunboats. The battered workhorses were due to return to California for a refit. Port Moresby would welcome half a dozen cargo ships but most of the cargo ships and all of the fleet auxiliaries would eventually arrive at Batavia or Singapore.

 

[fester]

Sunda Strait, July 17, 1943

USS Enterprise and three destroyers left the crowded chokepoint. During her stay in Singapore, the damaged carrier had temporary repairs to the torpedo damage on her port side. Now she was heading to the Puget Sound for both repairs and a comprehensive refit. Half her fighter squadron and a single squadron of Dauntlesses were aboard. The fighters were flown by men who had seen some of the most combat out of all the naval aviators in the world who were still alive. They would be the backbone of another three or four replacement squadrons. The dive bombers would stay at Pearl Harbor as part of the Pacific Fleet replacement pool. The rest of the air group had been bedded down in Johor province to serve as replacement aircraft and crews for the five American fleet carriers anchored underneath the British fortress guns.

 

[fester]

Bremerton, Washington July 17, 1943

Arc welders were busy. New anti-aircraft batteries were being installed. Old guns had been tossed over the side during the struggle to keep the old converted battlecruiser afloat after the Battle of Makassar. She had been in the dry dock for four months now. Another month of three shifts, around the clock, six day a week work was scheduled before she could go back out to sea and bring her crew back up to snuff. Only a third of the men who had gone to sea the day before the Pacific Trafalgar were still aboard. A third had either been committed to the deep or to the naval hospital system, and a third had been transferred off the ship to crew the crescendo of new construction emerging from yards. New men, some long service men, but mostly draftees who had been in uniform for less than a year now needed to be forged into a fine blade of the most flexible steel. A brand new air group was almost ready to come aboard. Three squadrons of brand new Grummans and a single very large squadron of Curtises had been built from scratch over the past fifteen months. In another three months, they would be ready with their ship to bring their war to Japan.

 

[fester]

Indian Ocean, July 18, 1943


HMS Cairo led the small convoy. The only other escort was HMIS Indus, a sloop that had fought off of Burma in 1942 and since then had only been active in the deep rear. USS Pecos and Trinity made up the first column, while a Norwegian tanker led the second column whose rear ship was a Royal Fleet Auxiliary. The journey from Abadan had been uneventful and boring, which while it was not the experience that the eighteen year olds wanted, it was what the skippers and convoy commander hoped for. A flag went up to signal a random zig of twelve degrees.


The convoy continued into the rising sun.

 

[fester]

Ventiseri, Corsica, France July 19, 1943


As dawn approached, the new conscripts were running. They were running up a hill and avoiding the construction battalion that was carving a bomber field in the flats near the village, one of the first liberated settlements of occupied France. The new draftees were from the classes that would have been called up since the disaster at Sedan. They had never served and now they would be the first metropolitan replacements for the Army of Liberation; each advance would lead to deeper reserves of manpower transforming the Army from at best a static if not a wasting asset into a growing asset.


Twelve minutes after the men turned around at the top of the hill, a squadron of American built and French manned medium bombers flew overhead. The last of the Italian defenders still needed to be dug out of the positions overlooking the best port on the island.

 

[fester]

Wichita, Kansas July 20, 1943

The apron was crowded. Two dozen super-heavy bombers were parked. None of them were capable of flight today. Two could be ready by dawn if there was a clear priority. There was no priority. Instead, hundreds o of mechanics were tearing apart engines and rebuilding the massively powerful and temperamental beasts. Inside the monstrous factory another six hanger queens were being prepared.

 

[fester]

Salisbury Plain, July 21, 1943


The exercise was coming to an end. The 5th and 6th Armoured Brigades had been in the field for a week working against a fresh American National Guard infantry division. The reservists had won by holding their positions but the Guardsmen had defeated the counter-attack and chopped up two infantry regiments as well as a corp level tank battalion that had been attached. This was the first time that the Guardsmen were in the field with their Crusader tanks. They worked, which was far more than could be safely and politely said about the tanks that had been pulled back to the motor and training pools.

 

[fester]

North of Crete, July 22, 1943

The sun was still sleeping. It was the only thing that was quiet aboard USS Wasp and four other fleet carriers. Pilots had drifted into the ready room at 0315 for coffee and breakfast. By 0400 the final briefings by the meteorologists, mission planners and squadron commanders had started. By 0500, the big engines were spinning massive propellers. Enlisted men who had never gone to sea until the start of 1942 had been working on their part of the incredible production involved in a pre-dawn fighter sweep. Engines had been tinkered with and every box on a checklist had been marked as satisfactory or the engine downchecked for rapid triage. Five aircraft were still below deck in the hanger. Replacements had been brought up to the wooden flight deck. Every big gull winged killer had a full ammunition and internal fuel load. Behind them, the bombers were heavily loaded. They would follow the fighters on both the launch and the strike.

Major Jaroschek clambered into the cockpit and began to check his gauges and dials. He trusted his crew chief, but a lazy pilot was a dead pilot. He had three good reasons to be compliant with the extensive and ever growing book. All was good. He smiled briefly as his thumbs went up and the deck crews pulled the chocks from underneath his wheels and he began the take-off run. Even as he climbed for altitude and waited for another nineteen Marines to join him, the transports that had carried a brigade of paratroopers flew in the safe lane to his right, edging around the fleet's anti-aircraft defense zone. All the Marines were airborne now, and the strike was ready to go in.

 

[fester]

Fort Mills, July 22, 1943

USS Raleigh and USS Richmond made their way through the swept channel. Four wooden minesweepers had made the dash into Mariveles a week ago under the cover a storm and they had been busy since then. Three dozen mines had been destroyed and two channels were now sanitized. The light cruisers converted into blockade runners were deep in the water. They carried enough food to sustain the entire garrison for ten days. Some of it was even fresh and not too salty. They carried enough spare parts to get three truck companies working again. They carried enough shells to make the I Corps artillery commander stop his nervous tic around his left eye whenever a regimental commander asked about pre-planned barrages in support of patrols and probes. They carried enough medicine to give succor to the increasing stream of wounded who were being brought back from the increasingly active front. They carried hope.

Two hours later, the cruisers were beginning to be unloaded. Smoke pots hid the docks from any mid-day Japanese raiders as impressed longshoremen worked quickly. Cranes lifted crates and then sergeants with lists directed the crates to waiting trucks. As Raleigh's bell rang for a short water break, three of the fast destroyer transports left their moorings. They floated high in the channel's water. Soon they skirted to the north, away from Ternate before accelerating to twenty six knots for the run to darkness where they would slow to an efficient sixteen knots for the rest of the journey to Palawan.

As soon as the work gangs aboard the cruisers resumed their work, the rumbling of heavy bombers could be heard. Two groups of Liberators, heavily laden with destruction were being covered by a group of Lightenings and an accompanying sweep of two Mustang squadrons. The rail junction at San Fernando would be shortly ruined.

 

[fester]

Aegean Sea, July 22, 1943

The Greek destroyer Kanaris slowed. Her aft turret fired the last shots at a hillside in her homeland. A small boat was lowered and moments later, strong armed men began to dig their oars into the wine dark sea.

Seven minutes later, Major Jaroshek was standing on the deck of the Greek destroyer. Someone thrusted a mug of dark coffee topped off with a shot or two of something that tasted like the spirits of home; the licorice hints brought him back to the Mon Valley for a moment. He had to lift the mug with his left arm as any movement of his right shot pain through his entire body. The early pre-dawn strike had gone well. The Italian and German defenders had scrambled from the airfields near Athens. The Corsairs and Seafires had numbers and altitude. An eighty seven aircraft furball started even as the Avengers, Tarpons and Dauntlesses pounded the already battered airfields that medium bombers from Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus had been visiting for weeks. He was claiming three kills, his wingman had one more, and the rest of the squadron had even more.

And then as the air cleared, he banked left and brought the diminished squadron on a course for home, trailing the bombers. He was almost out of danger as the Aegean Sea was readily visible in front of him. Suddenly, an anti-aircraft battery flung a few dozen shells skyward. One exploded just in front and slightly below his aircraft. The engine began to fail, and he had no chance to make it home to the carrier. He found the Greek heavy cruiser and her escorting destroyers beginning their bombardment, circled around to seaward, and ditched two hundred yards away from the guard destroyer. At least the water had been warm as he treaded and waited for a rapid rescue.

 

[fester]

Rzhev, Russia July 22, 1943

Another explosion brought down a warehouse. The girders were mangled and the roof was now being lit on fire as the exhausted quartermasters and truck drivers began to toss molotov cocktails at the debris field. A few hundred yards away, the river was being blocked. A seventh barge had been scuttled in the Volga. Another three or four barges would be needed to complete a cataract near the horseshoe bend. The airfield was aflame. The last transport aircraft had left the night before carrying forty three men when it was rated to only carry seventeen in its current condition. Half a dozen fighters and a dozen fighter bombers had flown combat missions since early morning from the airfield just outside the city. The bombers would take-off, fly fifteen minutes to the front, fling their bombs at an advancing Russian column and strafe any exposed infantry. An hour later, they would repeat that mission. Already three had been shot down. The fighters were struggling to provide cover for the retreat.

Seventeen miles south of the city, a battle group built around a company of panzers and the haphazard remnants of a regiment of panzer grenediers reinforced with cooks, drivers and mechanics retreated again. Two full strength Red Army tank brigades had been delayed in a short battle. The Russian artillery had been caught flat footed as they had pounded a perfect position eight hundred yards behind the incredibly imperfect delaying position that the invaders had taken for their stand. A five minute hurricane bombardment went overhead and caused almost no harm when the first anti-tank gun fired. Seven long barrelled Panzer IIIs raked the attacking Soviet column. Eleven T-34s were burning before the first German tank was disabled. Twenty minutes later, the four hundred Germans retreated in reasonably good order with six tanks still working.

Those men were trading their lives for time. The Red Army counter-attack had already ripped apart the northern flank of the 9th Army. One corps had been destroyed during the initial break-in attack, and it collapsed like a wet tissue as two mechanized armies hit it on the seventh day of the offensive. Another corps was barely holding together in front of Rhez. They needed to hold for another day to allow Army Group Center to reset the lines.

Four hundred miles to the south, the theater Panzer reserves were being loaded onto trains. Soon they would re-enter combat to stabilize the situation.