Keynes Cruisers

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December 17 Montevideo, Uruguay
HMS Ajax left the port. She had pulled in two days ago to give her crew a run ashore. Since the destruction of Graf Spee, the South Atlantic patrol had become almost tranquil. A pair of German merchant men had been captured as they attempted to break out. More interestingly, most of the German merchant ships in South America had been sold to a Yugoslavian concern that then reflagged the ships with South American flags of convenience.

Two German ships were left. Achilles was currently keeping an eye on them in Buenos Aires. Soon, the rumor had it, Ajax and Achilles would be recalled to home stations for repairs and refit. Older cruisers would be sent down to work in the now boring backwater.

 

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December 22, 1939 Washington DC

There was an active debate in the Bureau of Ships about what to do with the eight twin eight inch gun turrets that would soon be available from Lexington and Saratoga. Guns and fire control equipment were a critical path component of most new heavy ship construction. A faction of BuShips had been arguing that these eight turrets would allow for the rapid completion of two new heavy cruisers for the Fleet. The turrets could be refurbished and modernized to allow for longer range fire. A modified light cruiser hull could be used replacing each triple six inch gun turret with a twin eight inch gun turret. Two modern heavy cruisers could be available in under twenty months once a keel had been laid.

The opposing faction did not see the value in diverting the very scarce design resources towards producing an inferior heavy cruiser to the new designs with three triple turrets that would soon be ordered. The guns should go to coastal defense purposes in the Pacific where they would become someone else's problem and not the Navy’s concern.

 

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December 25, 1939 Bristol Channel

The merchant ship Stanholme was almost done her journey from Halifax to Bristol carrying general cargo, bauxite and wood pulp. A young seaman’s apprentice had watch. His eyes squinted through the spray as his right hand wiped the cold water from his brow. He looked right, he looked left and then swivelled his head again. His eyes missed the mine as the ship bore forward at a steady eight knots. A U-boat had laid a thin field. Minesweepers had cleared all but two mines. One sank and would not be discovered until a mine hunting unit found it with a side scan sonar during training two generations later. The last one’s horns were a few feet below the surface. One horn touched the hull, and then another. That was enough to trigger a blast of hundreds of pounds of high explosives.

Water poured into the hull as the breach ripped through the forward cargo bulkhead. A berthing compartment was torn apart along with the five men trying to sleep. Four died instantly, one drowned minutes later as she quickly went down by the bow. Most of the crew was able to escape to their two working life boats.

December 25, 1939 Northern France

Private Angus MacMahon wiped his face as a spot of gravy was on his chin. His company had been called in for Christmas lunch an hour ago and they would soon go out of the large hall to allow the rest of the battalion to eat. His belly full of good food and a government supplied beer. Mail had been distributed earlier in the day and his three letters from Edinboro were tucked into his jacket pocket. The company was released back to barracks for a few hours until the movies were scheduled to be shown that night.

Training would resume tomorrow.

 

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December 25, 1939 North Karelia

The seven men paused. The Finnish skiers had paced the Red Army patrol for three hours now until they had arrived at a nice ambush position forty minutes ago. The lead man adjusted his skis and then his pack. Each man had braced themselves against a tree. The Russian point squad was pushing back trees, breaking branches, and generating noise that the veterans could hear. They thought they were being quiet but it was obvious to the still Finns that these men were new to the front.

The rifle was pulled snug into the patrol leader’s shoulder. He exhaled slowly, a cloud of ice forming underneath his nose. The rifle’s sights filled with the body of a machine gunner. He waited three more breaths as the patrol moved through the thigh high snow. The trigger had slowly been squeezing itself until the sight picture was full in his eyes. Crack, and then a half breath later, the other six men in the patrol fired as well. Within three seconds, another two volleys were fired.

The point squad was destroyed. A few men had started to scramble for cover but the snow slowed them down. Rifles fired and a machine gun sent a dozen rounds thirty feet over the heads of the ambushers. They were already leaving, heading deeper into the trackless woods.

Fifteen minutes later, a battalion of artillery lashed out at the ambush position, churning the ground and breaking trees. The ski patrol was two miles away as they headed back to a warm hide.

 

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January 2, 1940 Mare Island Navy Yard

The keel of USS Altoona was laid down without ceremony. The workers and management of the shipyard were too busy with a light cruiser almost ready to launch and four more destroyers almost ready to be released to the fleet. Altoona and her seven sisters were derivatives of the Erie class gunboats and Treasury class cutters of the Coast Guard. Eventually she would be a 2,000 ton ship with three single 5”/38 guns, three twin 1.1 inch AA guns, and four depth charge racks. There had been debate about adding torpedo tubes or a seaplane but the Navy wanted a basic escort that could be easily built and more importantly easily manned. Aviation elements would have complicated the entire design and bitten into the hard to fill pilot and ground crew pools.

If everything went well, she would join the fleet in the Spring of 1941.

 

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January 5, 1940 Philadelphia

The small freighter creaked as the current of the Delaware River pushed against her. The longshoremen were busy. Two dozen artillery pieces were due to be craned aboard today. One man had already broken his foot when a chain broke. A wheel landed on him crushing every toe. Another man was sitting down after his bell had been rung when a 75mm barrel swung hard after an unexpected gust. The freighter had finished loading general cargo yesterday. The guns and a few dozen crates were left. She would depart for Brest on the morning tide tomorrow.

 

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January 6, 1940 near Seattle

The twin tail bomber was steady in her approach. She and three of her mates had started their flight from just outside of San Francisco . The early testing regime for the new Consolidated products showed a lot of promise and just as many defects that needed to be corrected. Today’s flight was a quasi-operational demonstration of the capability of the new craft. Twelve thousand feet below the four bombers laid Seattle and just outside of the city was the target, a collection of large assembly sheds and an airfield. The Boeing plant was the home of the B-17 manufacturing facility and it would be targeted by the Consolidated bombers. As the initial point passed the bombardier focused on his bomb sight, waiting until the lights went green. One thousand gallons of blue dyed water were released on the Boeing facility from their friendly competitors in California.

After the four bombers landed at Hamilton Airfield, the company’s engineers almost pushed aside three of the flight crew as they were too slow to get out of the airplane. They wanted their data and they wanted to see how their bomber had performed in its first operational trial.

 

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January 7, 1940 near Suomussalmi Finland

The battle was ending. A regiment of NKVD infantry had given itself up after three human wave attacks failed to take a bridge held by a reinforced regiment of Finnish infantry. Machine gun and artillery fire had hit half the men in the regiment. Motivated officers and sergeants, the glue to any unit, took disproportionately heavy casualties as they were the ones whose heads were up and about, vulnerable to both the random death of artillery shells exploding and the targeted death of aimed, deliberate rifle fire from both snipers and line infantrymen. The last charge had almost taken the bridge until the final line of mines twenty meters from the forward trenches broke the momentum of the shock troops.

Further east, the battle had slowed as well. Most of a division raised in the Ukraine was in the process of being destroyed, surrendering or breaking out through the boreal forests to wade through hip deep snow back to the border. A battalion of rested ski troops had taken off to harry the escapees and drive them north into the great wilderness instead of towards the Red lines. The snow and the cold would finish them off allowing the Finns to save their ammunition.

Finnish work parties were split into three groups. The first was guarding cold prisoners; few clothes and blankets were available to protect the broken men from the cold, but as much hot tea as possible was being made as quickly as possible before the men were marched back to the town they had set out to capture. The second work party was collecting bodies of the Soviet dead and occasionally bringing the still alive but almost frozen bodies of severely wounded men to aid stations. Burial would need to wait until the spring as the ground was rock hard. The final work party was inventorying the massive array of material that they had captured. At least forty tanks were still in good working order, and another twenty could be cannibalized for parts; seventy artillery pieces including half a dozen heavy guns along with enough machine guns to re-equip a full corps were captured. More importantly, ammunition, medicine and petrol were captured in large quantities. Once the supplies could be shipped south, it would give sustenance to the Finnish armies like three ships had docked from their long voyage from America.

 

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January 9, 1940 Liverpool England

The reefer SS Doric Star left the swept channel of the port in the company of a west bound convoy. Captain Stubbs was displeased at how long his ship sat in port, empty and not earning any money while the rest of the convoy assembled. The escort was a pair of old destroyers, a few trawlers and an anti-submarine sloop. A single armed merchant cruiser would join them tomorrow to provide the illusion of protection against raiders. Once the reefer made it six hundred miles from port, she would turn to the south and head solo back to Auckland for another load of meat and wool.

 

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January 10, 1940 Gaocheng China

The 29th Army of the Republic of China had finally captured the heights above the town. Exhausted men had already started to dig in as the inevitable Japanese counter-attack would come rolling out of the river valley soon enough. Companies used to be battalions, regiments used to be divisions. Supply trains that were inadequate at the start of the offensive would have been adequate for the forces now available if they had not moved from their depots but the steady advance had stressed the quartermaster units hard. The only good news was the Soviet volunteers had kept the Japanese hold on the air contested. Bombers attacked both sides’ positions instead of Chinese units being the sole recipients of aerial attention.

 

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January 10, 1940 aboard HMS Cossack northeast of the Faroe Islands

Heavy waves crashed over the forward gun mount. The crew cursed as they stomped their feet and attempted to keep their fingers flexible and hands tactile despite the cold water bashing into them with a disturbing regularity. Three of the four mounts were manned. The Y mount was unmanned as the captain had assembled an armed boarding party to take the tanker that refused to stop. She was only seven hundred yards away and continued to struggle through the waves despite the four warning shots already fired and the eight shells that penetrated the rear of the ship near the engine room.

The range closed quickly as the 8,000 ton steamer floundered in the waves.

Three hundred yards and the heavy anti-aircraft suite tracked the weather decks of the tanker.

Two hundred yards and the quad machine gun mounts fired bursts near the superstructure.

One hundred yards and the forty heavily armed sailors on Cossack split into two parties. Twenty men went forward while twenty men streamed out of the superstructure and headed starboard and aft.

The heavy machine guns ceased fire as the ships were twenty yards away. One more wave and then the captain ordered a slowing of his engines and a gentle turn. Lines were thrown with monkeys’ claws attaching the destroyer to the merchant ship whose scuttling charges had failed and whose sea cocks had barely allowed any water into the hold.

“Away boarders” the tannoy bellowed.

Men scrambled up the high sides of the German steamer whose journey had started on a bleak and stormy night in the South Atlantic a six weeks ago and would now end in the North Atlantic when home was so close. The first six men in each party carried shotguns and American Thompson submachine guns, and then the two officers followed. Three were wise, they had their service pistols in their hands and ready to fire as soon as they had their feet re-established on the blockade runner’s deck. The last man, a young lieutenant who had an amazing enthusiasm for torpedoes and heavy guns but abhorred the feel of his sidearm brandished his cutlass. They ran forward, one party to seize the bridge, the other worked their way to the engineering spaces to see if they could save the ship.

Within twenty seconds, the rest of the boarding party followed. No resistance was offered except by a single rusty hatch. Two men slammed into it with their shoulders until it gave way. Cold sea water poured through the hatch until a foot of water covered the bottom of two compartments. The team that headed to the engineering spaces closed seacocks as they passed them. Six men worked to close it. The explosive scuttling charges were never armed as one of the 4.7 inch shells had killed the three men who had been ordered to blow the bottom of the hull out.

Twenty minutes later, the ship had been secured and Cossack transferred two portable pumps. The boarding party was now the prize crew. Both ships would make their way to Rosyth.

 

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January 16, 1940 Abadan Persia

Another thousand tons of refined aviation spirits left the port aboard the Dutch tanker Africa Shell. She was bound for Durban, South Africa where the slowly expanding South African Air Force needed more aviation fuel for their swarm of training aircraft and the few squadrons of patrol bombers that endlessly flew over the boring waters near their homeland.

 

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January 19, 1940 outside of Helsinki

Arne Elo cursed at the cold inside the dispersal airfield’s ready room. It was really just a lean-to of fresh cut pine logs with an iron stove in the corner burning greenwood in a failing attempt to warm the room to a level that could be described as comfortable. Two layers of long johns, a wool sweater and pants, mutluks, a hat and gloves with hinged fingers allowed him to work. Six Brewsters were at this temporary airstrip twenty five miles from the squadron’s main base. They had dispersed three weeks ago when three days of steady raids and strafing runs had destroyed seven fighters on the ground and killed thirty critical ground crew and two irreplaceable pilots. A blizzard stopped the attacks and allowed an evacuation. Four to six planes were at each of the expedient landing strips carved out of the woods west of the capital. Another dozen airfields had mock fighters hidden, some skillfully and others with a deliberate bit of laziness to attract attacks. One dummy base was plastered yesterday, but the early warning system allowed all of the ready stubby American fighters to get altitude and dive on the SB-2 bombers, scoring seven kills without loss before fleeing from the increasingly disciplined escorting fighters.

“Sir, #5 is ready, fueled and good to go” The crew chief jostled his elbow. #5 had missed the fight yesterday as her oil pump had failed during warm-ups. A replacement was found from one of the destroyed fighters. She needed a quick hop to confirm the fix, twenty or thirty minutes max. The Finnish pilots were exhausted. Arne had volunteered to fly the check hop to allow the combat crews to sleep.

Half an hour later, he was eight thousand feet above the snow covered forests, alone, and enjoying the steady hum of the engine stolen from a transport. The sun was shining bright and the cloud cover was intermittent. As he was ready to report that #5 was as good as she would ever be, he spotted three biplanes at his 1 o’clock a mile below him. They were coming in from over the sea. The pre-flight check had confirmed there would be no friendlies within forty miles of the airfield, so these were probably Red intruders.

He officially was not in Finland, he officially was not flying a fighter. He officially was not pointing his nose over to dive to a point where his three heavy machine guns (as the Finns discovered four made the plane handle like a drunk pig) would be able to send a steady stream of rounds into the lead intruder. He was a ghost, a predator that no one could know about. The radio stayed silent as he screamed in against the biplanes.

In under a minute, the first intruder had crashed, a two second burst slammed into the pilot and his slumping body pushed the plane’s nose down. The other two biplanes broke formation. They jinked and they dodged. One attempted to turn inside of him, but he ignored an invitation for a turning fight, instead zooming back to six thousand feet before pitching his nose back over, gaining the speed he lost and loosing three bursts of a second apiece into the less aggressively flown plane.

Climbing again for altitude, his eyes scanning over his shoulder as he flipped the fighter so its belly face the sky, he corkscrewed down. The last remaining bi-plane was two hundred feet above the pine forest, jinking and juking. Two bursts from the 7 o’clock position missed but the Soviet pilot was aware of them as the stream of tracers screeched by. Another burst missed by mere feet over the pilot’s left shoulder. He flinched, and brought the stick down and jammed his rudder pedals for a tenth of a second. It was a mistake that he did not have the altitude to recover from. The biplane clipped a tall pine tree and the sudden imbalance flipped him over three times before the plane began burn in a small clearing. The pilot escaped but the bitter cold would kill him from exposure before a militia patrol could pick him up.

Arne breathed out, his heart rate almost returning to normal. He was an ace now.

Ten minutes later, he landed at the temporary airfield and the ground crews hitched the horse teams to bring the fighter back under cover.

That evening, Arne, the unofficial ace, enjoyed the three celebratory shots of vodka, one for each kill.

 

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January 20, 1940 near Strasburg

Her stomach emptied itself out. There was nothing left so only bile came out. Anne Marie Jeanne d’Orlong wiped her mouth with a rag. She was late and it was that Scottish piper’s fault. He had looked so stunning in his kilt and his fingers played her like he was playing Alba an Aigh. That night in November was amazing, but he said he would pull out, and he did but evidently too late. That bastard. She was not one of those girls, but she knew enough people to know who could help her.

She had a piece of bread with some jam on it for breakfast and headed off to school, hoping that her mother had not noticed the morning sickness.

 

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January 25, 1940 Oslo, Norway

The winter’s hold deepened. Stevedores wore wool coats and exposed as little skin as possible to the bitter wind. Twenty four Curtiss Hawks were being unloaded from the two ships tied up to the pier furthest away from prying eyes. Another four dozen planes had just been ordered and they would be shipped in a few months. Curtiss had finally found their production stride. Orders were being delivered almost on time and almost to specification. These Norwegian Hawks were not ready for combat. The government aircraft factory would need a month to install machine guns, gun sights, calibrate radios and the eighty three other tasks necessary to transform the aircraft from pleasure craft to warcraft.

Half of them would then be fitted with skis. Two would be fitted with experimental floats to see if they could operate from the fjords of the nation. The rest would be used to train pilots. Four squadrons were due to be equipped with the American fighters by the end of the year, but only twenty five pilots had spent any time on the Gladiators that made up the cream of the current fighter force.

 

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January 26, 1940 0645 Northern Karelia

The small pilot’s hands weaved and jabbed through the air as he mouth moved as fast as his aircraft could at full military power. Hundreds of vehicles and columns of troops were marching back over the border and heading to their supply depots. The Soviets were withdrawing and bringing their forces out of the trackless forests and towards the main front.

 

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January 26, 1940 1402 Oslo

The Lufthansa DC-2 landed at the Oslo airport. She had suffered a radio failure that had necessitated three wide circuits around the Norwegian capital that coincidentally included several sensitive defensive sites including the fortress in Drobak. Seven passengers disembarked. Fourteen tickets were sold for the trip back to Kiel but the radio problem had required a pair of technicians and all of their tools to get on board the aircraft, limiting carrying capacity to seven embassy staffers and their spouses. The remaining ticketed passengers would be flown back to Germany tomorrow but they would be put up at Oslo’s third best hotel for the night.

 

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January 27, 1940 New York City

HMS Glorious departed New York Harbor with her hanger and flight deck covered with almost eighty Martlet fighters.

Ark Royal, Glorious and Furious were being allocated a sixteen plane fighter squadron with initial operational capability in early spring. Eagle and Illustrious would get a squadron later on in the summer while the rest of the new armored flight deck carriers would have a Martlet squadron when they joined the Fleet. Argus would return to New York to pick up another tranche of fighters at the end of March. She and Hermes were deemed to be too small and too incapable to handle high performance aircraft. She could train Fleet Air Arm pilots but not use the fighters in combat while Hermes would receive Sea Gladiators to supplement her Swordfish as she escorted a myriad of troop convoys around the globe.

 

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January 29, 1940 Oslo, Norway

The British naval attaché was dismissed from the Norwegian Navy headquarters with a friendly wave and an offer to call a cab. He declined as he already had a car waiting for him outside. Several blocks away, the British ambassador was also politely dismissed from the Foreign Ministry building. His driver was also waiting for him.

Both men had delivered warnings to their peers that British intelligence had detected signs that the Germans were preparing for a spring invasion of Scandinavia. A neutral Norway was not enough for Germany. The Royal Navy currently held the Germans prisoner to the coastal waters of the North Sea and the expanses of the Baltic. No supplies in any reasonable quantity could arrive from the great seas. The trap was locked by a line of merchant cruisers and World War 1 veterans who patrolled the Orkney-Shetland-Norway gap, stopping most if not all traffic, inspecting neutral shipping and detaining any German ships and any suspected blockade runners.

The trap ran tighter than that. The U-boats had to traverse several layers of defenses before they could break into the open sea. The journey from Kiel to the Western Approaches took time away from their maximum endurance. Taking Norway would break the gate open, releasing U-Boats and Flying Corps X to the open sea where there were few defenses. Raiders could swarm outwards while a trickle of shipping could return to Germany.

These messages were expected by the Norwegian government. Very little could be done. The country was poor; the army small, the navy insignificant and the air force an after-thought. Preparations were being made, patrols sent out to assert neutral rights on neutral waters but Oslo was open to bomber attack, none of the ports could be defended against battleships. It would only be distance and inconvenience that could protect Norway from her avaricious southern neighbor.

Patrols might be strengthened and reservists recalled for a few critical points like the approaches to Oslo but general and public mobilization was a fraught political question that might actually invite invasion instead of deterring it. Very little could be done, but the kind warnings were appreciated.

 

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January 31, 1940 San Francisco

Legs and bodies were scattered across the table, the flesh sucked out and streams of melted butter congealing between the table and a dozen bottles of beer and half a dozen shot glasses. The crab vanquishers were smoking their first state-side cigars, as the transport Henderson had made landfall that afternoon. A month at sea meant a month where their pay accumulated with little to spend it on. The four infantry captains along with an artilleryman and a pursuit pilot decided to solve the problem of having too much liquidity by finding all places of liquid refreshment on the waterfront. They were successful in the mission.

One of them excused themselves from the group to relieve himself. Slowly, he navigated the treacherous obstacles and traps of a somewhat crowded restaurant. Young women took a step back, older men nodded as he staggered pass. He reached his objective and commenced the primary purpose of the operation.

As Captain Josiah “Boomer” Hershbergman zipped up his fly in this dump’s restroom, he turned his head slowly, making sure the floor was moving at the same pace as the wall a new man entered the room. He too had just arrived in San Francisco. His ship had completed a long route from Panama to Oahu and then to the Golden Gate. He commenced his business and as soon as etiquette allowed, both men looked at each other.

Recognition was instant. The communication was loud.

“Boomer”

“Squirt”

Both men were shocked, their roommate from the 1933 graduating class at West Point was staring at them. The last time Boomer saw Squirt was back in 1937 when he was travelling from Fort Benning to San Francisco to deploy to the Phillippines. His train stopped in Fort Bliss so they had a great night on the town as Squirt was finishing up his time at Fort Bliss before shipping down to Panama.

“Let’s grab a drink”

They went to the bar and waved Boomer’s travelling companions a fond farewell as they sought whiskey and women.

“So what you doing here”

“Just got back from the 31st Infantry, heading to General McNair’s Umpire School, not sure what that is”

“Hope you’re a better umpire than a hitter, still can’t handle a curve ball and my knuckler is untouchable still.”

“You, last I hear, you were with the 14th Infantry. Shouldn’t you still be there?”

“That is the puzzling thing, most of my group still has another six months in the Zone but me and four other guys got orders back to the states right before Christmas. I’m supposed to head to IX Corps HQ, working with a bird colonel Issenhour. This is odd… I’m just a young captain, why does IX Corps want me?”

Both men by now had another beer and they started talking about their time overseas. Very quickly both men drained their beer and ordered another. Soon they talked about their time in the field as the past nine months had them spending more time in the field and using more ammunition than they had during their first five years commissioned combined. The overseas regiments were being brought up to speed. Names were named about whose tours were cut short. The good sergeants and the officers who they wanted to fight with were all coming stateside early. Five more beers led to the conclusion that they were too drunk to walk back to their hotel so a cab would be a good idea, and that the foreign regiments were the mobilization engines for the Army as a whole. What they learned overseas would be taught to the home forces once tomorrow’s hangovers’ subsided.