The Invasion of 1950 (59 page)

“Send a signal to the main strike force in Norway,” he ordered after a moment’s thought. It would be better to conserve the carrier-based strike force for the moment. They would be needed to complete the job and cover the carriers if the British launched their own strike. “Update them on the course and speed of the British ships and order them to launch at once. The targets are the carriers.”

“
Jawohl
,
Herr Generaladmiral
,” the radio operator said. He bent his head to his console, muttering orders into the small microphone that came down from his headphones, one of the most advanced pieces of micro-engineering in the German fleet. Förste had heard rumours of something even more fascinating coming out of some of the
Reich’s
more secretive laboratories, but so far the fleet had yet to reap the benefits. The operator glanced up again, finally. “The strike force acknowledges and is on its way.”

“Good,” Förste said. He smiled thinly. “Order the fleet to turn in pursuit and prepare for an engagement.”

He would have preferred to be on the bridge, but duty, cursed duty, kept him in the Combat Information Centre. They’d spent years training to use the ships as a single fleet, but now he would have preferred to be a Captain again, or even a junior officer, someone who could watch the awesome majesty of combat from a proper vantage point.

“And inform the crew,” he said. It was easy to push confidence into his voice. “The final battle of the Second British War begins today.”

***

Unbeknownst to
Generaladmiral
Förste or any of his men, HMS
Sealion
had been prowling the seas near Denmark when it had caught sight of the smaller German ships advancing through the Kiel Canal. The canal had been expanded several times by German slave labour and was now large enough to allow a
Bismarck-
class battleship to pass through without any real problems, although it wasn’t something that the ship’s commanding officers cared to do. The German fleet used the canal to allow rapid deployment without having to navigate around the tip of Denmark, where so many German ships had been spotted and tracked by British ships or spies in Sweden. These days, the Swedes were less cooperative when it came to spying, but
Sealion
and her contemporaries were able to watch for German ships without their help.

Commander McKenzie peered through the periscope as the massive fleet headed west. It wasn't easy to see them all, but he made out four battleships and at least three carriers. The Germans wouldn’t have risked a battle without all of their ships gathered together in a single overwhelming force, but he couldn’t see the fourth carrier amidst the other ships. The Germans had sent nearly seventy ships to sea, and the destroyers, always on the prowl, kept him back through the sheer force of their efforts to deter any prying eyes.

“Compose a message,” he said after a moment. “Enemy fleet sighted. Composition four heavy battleships, several smaller heavy ships, three carriers and numerous smaller ships. Attach course and speed, and then transmit.”

“Aye, sir,” the radioman said. He worked his pad for a long moment. “Signal composed, sir…and transmitting.”

“Keep us well back,” McKensie ordered. The Germans might not have heard the message – they’d transmitted as short and simple a message as possible – but one thing every submarine commander learnt when they were training was never to underestimate the enemy or assume that the enemy was stupid. Those who didn’t learn that lesson ended up dead. “Prepare for evasive manoeuvres…”

***

Gruppenkommandeur
Albrecht Schmidt took a breath as his jet aircraft raced down the tarmac of the runway before rising up into the sky, moving sluggishly as always with the weight of the rocket pods attached beneath the wings. He had more reason to be nervous lately. In the last few days, there had been a handful of petty attacks by the Norwegian resistance against German military installations, including one nervy attack on an airfield while a heavy transport had been taking off for Denmark. The resulting crash onto a Norwegian town should have been counted as an own goal – it had killed more civilian Norwegians than Germans – but it had been alarming. Everyone had thought that Norway had been reasonably pacified.

Schmidt concentrated as his aircraft approached the flying tanker for a final refill before setting out after the British ships. The German Army had taken a beating on British soil and its reputation for invincibility had been badly dented. It had given hope to the people under the German boot, even the Norwegians who were as close to fellow citizens of the
Reich
as Schmidt himself was, and there had been a series of incidents right across the
Reich
. The SS had cracked down hard on most of them, and some of them had been little more than half-hearted anyway, but even so, it was a depressing reminder of just how unstable the
Reich
could become, if the war went badly wrong.

He checked his compass and set out along the course he’d been ordered to fly, the entire group maintaining radio silence. If they were lucky, the British would never know they were coming. It wouldn’t be like attacking Scapa Flow when the British ships had been effectively stationary and undermanned. This time, the British fleet would be moving, fully manned, and very capable of shooting back with radar-guided weapons. This would be the decisive battle. If they sunk the carriers, the remainder of the British fleet would be easy to deal with…

Assuming that they found it. They knew where the fleet was, they knew its course, but if the fleet broke contact and headed off on a different course, they would waste precious time trying to locate it. They wouldn’t have as much time as they had over Scapa Flow, either. There weren’t as many tankers devoted to refuelling the aircraft this time. Schmidt hadn’t been told why, but he could draw his own conclusions…and none of them were good. The aircraft that would have been intended to refuel them were most likely destroyed.

The hills and fjords of Norway fell away behind them as the flight proceeded onwards towards their target. One way or another, it wouldn’t be long now, not with the spotter aircraft constantly relaying the British course and speed. Schmidt expected them to break contact, but the longer the British delayed breaking contact, the easier it would be for his force to locate and destroy the their ships. The signals kept coming in, however, and as they came in, he allowed himself a smile. There was no hiding place for the enemies of the
Reich
.

***

“
Admiral, we have a large German force taking off from Norway and flying towards us,” the radio officer said. “The
Sealion
just updated us with the location of the Germans…”

Admiral Fraser listened to the remainder of the report in silence.

“Order the carriers to launch their aircraft,” he said, once the report had finished. “I want them to target the German carriers first, and then their battleships.”

He waited until that order had been sent. The carriers of the British fleet would be launching already, their crews pent up and waiting for the chance to strike back at the Germans, blissfully unaware of the German flight descending on them from Norway. Fraser hoped that the Germans were unaware that he knew about their attempt at a sucker punch; the message from the spotters at Norway had been carefully disguised as a signal from a German army unit. By the time they realised their mistake, it should be too late to do anything but dance to Fraser’s tune.

“The carriers are launching now,” the radio operator announced. Fraser could hear the nervousness in his voice, even though he didn’t say anything out loud. He’d just stripped the fleet of all of its air cover. The German spotter aircraft would be gleefully relaying that to the German ships, who had kept back their own aircraft to cover themselves from his strike…all the while expecting him to be naked and vulnerable to their strike. “Sir…Force One has relayed its confirmation.”

Fraser nodded.

“No reply,” he ordered, as the radar screens filled with the lights of German bombers. “We’ll allow Force One to carry out it’s part of the mission without being interrupted.”

***

Schmidt had
radar contact with the British ships a long time before he saw them. They were great majestic castles of steel, moving through the water as if they didn’t have a care in the world, showed no sign of responding to his presence. The fleet had launched all of its strike aircraft towards the German fleet…and even if they recalled them at once, the British multi-purpose aircraft would have to be rearmed before they could fight his aircraft, assuming they could have stood their ground. The British carrier-borne aircraft would be no match for his land-based jet aircraft.

He smiled, altering course slightly to locate the carriers in the fleet…and then one of his bombers exploded. The blast shook his plane, the more so because it wasn't expected, and Schmidt struggled to maintain control. A second bomber exploded, then a third, and for a chilling moment Schmidt wondered if the British had actually found a way to detonate the bombs in their bomb bays, before looking up and seeing…

“What the
hell
?”

North Sea

Admiral Fraser had anticipated what the Germans needed to
do if they wanted to significantly damage his fleet before he engaged the German battleships. The Germans would hold back their carrier aircraft to protect their own fleet  and use land based bombers to go after him. His plan took all of this in account.

The RAF had massed a large force of fighters in Scottish airbases, officially to rest and recuperate after the Battle of Colchester, and those fighters had been launched to shadow the fleet once the German aircraft had been reported. They had slipped up to the German aircraft, which hadn’t expected jet fighters opposing them because neither side had yet managed to launch a jet aircraft from a carrier, and hadn’t been using their radars because they hadn’t wanted to warn Admiral Fraser that they were coming. The inviting target of the British fleet had suddenly become deadly poison.

***

Schmidt grabbed at his stick and yanked his aircraft into an evasive manoeuvre as the British fighters fell out of
the sun. The Meteors had them bang to rights, trapped against the sea and tied to the bombers, but they were directing their fire mainly against the bombers. The German formation was falling to pieces as the British aircraft raced closer, firing down as the Germans scattered, and Schmidt breathed a curse under his breath. 

His plane flipped over, struggling to gain altitude and engage the British jets. There was a long hair-raising moment when he thought the engine would cut out altogether, just before it caught and pushed him onwards towards a Meteor. The British pilot fired at the same instant as Schmidt, blowing a hail of explosive bullets through the British cockpit and blasting the aircraft into a fireball.

Schmidt cast about desperately for some empty airspace, but could find none. Aircraft were blundering everywhere, firing madly. He cursed as a stream of tracer from a German bomber almost took his wing off. He hurled invective at the pilot and the British genius who had thought up the complicated and brilliant scheme with every word he knew. There was no time to think, only to react.

“No,” he snarled as a British fighter made an angry pass at him. He fired back, but missed. The British pilot vanished somewhere within the swirling dogfight. The British tactic was clever; the bombers, scattered, wouldn’t be able to make their own attacks in anything reassembling a coordinated fashion with the British fighters hammering away at them. The German fighters weren't the priority targets, not with the British focused on protecting their vital ships, but even so, it was going to be difficult to reverse the situation. He tried to think, to focus, and cursed again as a British fighter took aim at him and fired a long burst.

“Damn you,” he swore. He concentrated on barking orders into his headset, trying to take control of the battle. The bombers were trying to concentrate for an attack run on the British ships, but the level and accuracy of the flak was an order of magnitude greater than anything they had experienced before. He spit out another curse and fired a long stream of bullets towards a British fighter, smiling grimly as the British fighter caught fire and plummeted out of the air, splashing down into the water. It was just a shame that it hadn’t struck one of the British ships.

The remaining German fighters formed up around him, and he almost cursed again as he realised how many had been lost to the British jets. The British plan was clear now. they had launched their own carrier aircraft towards the German ships, the British knew full well that they were protected by their own land based Meteors all the time. They hadn’t been fooled by the German flight. They’d either known what the Germans were doing or had worked out their own plan that had dovetailed nicely into defeating the German force. For the first time in his life, since graduating from the
Luftwaffe’s
training centre, Schmidt was starting to feel as if he had been comprehensively out-thought and out-gunned