Jesse chuckled. "Handy, though, isn't it?"
"Yup. For me even more than her, as often as not. But the point is-yes, we have excellent intelligence in Hamburg. More than that, in fact. The CoC is prepared to cut the chain for us. I don't know the details, but Simpson's been in touch with them and seems confident they can manage it."
Jesse grimaced. "That's likely to get tough on them, after the ironclads pass through."
The expression on the prime minister's face lost any trace of humor. "No, it won't, Jesse. The CoC has a lot of people in Hamburg by now, enough to hold off the garrison for a day or two. And that's all it'll take. Torstensson's personally leading eight regiments to Hamburg. They started marching five days ago-they'd already been pre-positioned at Lauenburg-and by tomorrow evening should have reached the airfield. They'll set up camp there. At which point you'll fly back here and be ready to fly me to Hamburg."
"Ha. The negotiator with a big gun. Walk softly and carry a Sequoia. You're not fooling around, I take it."
"Nope. And Gustav Adolf sure as hell isn't. If Simpson has to blow his way through Hamburg, that city's authorities just lost whatever trace of goodwill they still had in the emperor's account. Which wasn't much to begin with. They'll register a flaming protest to him, and the gist of his answer will be: 'If you think that was bad, heeeere's Torstensson. Or you can cut a deal with Mike Stearns.' And I'm going to be a real hard-ass."
"I'm not sure eight regiments are enough to storm the city, Mike, if they balk. Hamburg's got pretty damn good fortifications, by all accounts."
Mike's cool smile came back. "Not after the admiral goes through them, it won't."
The Elbe, near Hamburg
"That's the final readiness report, sir," Lieutenant Chomse said.
"Good." Admiral Simpson nodded in satisfaction. Franz-Leo Chomse was as conscientious and efficient an aide as he could have asked for. In fact, in most ways, he was far more satisfactory than Eddie Cantrell had ever been. He was certainly more attentive, and he carried around none of Eddie's impossible to eradicate "smartass attitude," for want of a better word. And yet, however little he was prepared to admit it to most people, Simpson found himself deeply regretting Eddie's absence.
It wasn't the first time that had happened. Simpson often wondered if Eddie was as surprised by the turn their relationship had taken as he himself was. Or, for that matter, if Eddie was actually fully aware of that turn. It didn't really matter one way or the other, of course, but as the inspiration behind the squadron's construction, Eddie should have been here to see it go into action for the first time at last.
And if he were here, he'd undoubtedly be busy comparing this to running the batteries at Vicksburg, or possibly Farragut's attack on New Orleans. Simpson shook his head. Unbelievable. I'm actually missing the chance to hear him rattling on about it!
"Admiral?" Chomse said, and Simpson realized he'd allowed his smile to surface for at least a moment.
"Nothing, Lieutenant." He shook his head again. "Just a passing thought."
He accepted the folded message slip from Chomse and glanced over it. It contained no surprises. Commander Wolfgang Mulbers, commanding the timberclad Ajax, was a stickler for detail. Simpson had expected his readiness report to come in last, given Mulbers' attention to every little thing, just as he'd expected that report to announce Ajax's complete preparation for battle.
Not that Ajax should have all that much to do, the admiral reminded himself.
Ajax and her fellow timberclads had turned out to be even more resistant to seventeenth-century artillery than he had anticipated. He'd known the weight of shot and muzzle velocity of contemporary artillery was substantially below that of even the eighteenth century, far less the nineteenth-century Civil War artillery the progenitors of his current ironclads had faced. As a result, he'd anticipated that the forty-eight-inch wooden bulwarks he'd used to "armor" the timberclads would be effectively impenetrable by the sort of relatively lightweight field artillery which was likely to be deployed against them along river banks.
Instead, he'd discovered that that much timber was invulnerable even to heavy shipboard guns-or what passed for them in 1634, at any rate-at any range beyond sixty or seventy yards. It simply absorbed the impact of the hurtling shot-when the shot in question didn't just bounce off, that was-while the ships it protected got on about their business. Their decks were completely unprotected, of course, which meant they would always be vulnerable to plunging fire, delivered from above, but other than that, they had turned out to be remarkably capable of standing up to any weapons that might be employed against them.
Unfortunately, their armaments were far less powerful than those of his ironclads. Wooden hulls were much more massive and heavier, strength for strength, than iron hulls, and the same was true of wooden armor, when compared to iron armor. A timberclad simply could not mount as many or as large guns as an equally well protected ironclad of the same displacement, and their reliance on bulkier, less fuel-efficient steam power plants only put an even tighter squeeze on their internal volume. That was why the timberclads like Mulbers' ship carried only carronades, not the massive, long-ranged ten-inch muzzleloaders which were the ironclads' true teeth.
Ironically, that was going to make the timberclads even more effective than the ironclads in ship-to-ship engagements. Their weapons were fully adequate to deal with any down-time warship, and they were also much more rapid-firing. Constitution and her sisters mounted three carronades in each broadside, themselves, but the timberclads mounted six, plus two of the mitrailleuse-derived navy version of the army's volley guns. They were designed for close-range, rapidly firing engagements that would usually be over, one way or the other, quickly.
The ironclads, on the other hand, were designed for sustained slugging matches against the heaviest prepared defenses and fortifications here-and-now could produce. That was the true reason for those enormous ten-inch guns. They were far heavier than anything that would ever be required against a wooden seventeenth-century warship… but just the thing for drilling straight through little things like the fortress walls protecting Hamburg.
As the good, cautious, pigheaded, ass-covering burghers of Hamburg were about to discover.
At noon, Thorsten Engler did a final walk-through down the whole length of the field, using every man in his battery to check for any small stones or other obstructions that might have been missed. The four military engineers attached to Fey's company went with him.
He didn't expect to find much. Between the farming equipment they'd "borrowed" from two of the nearby villages and the equipment the engineers had brought themselves, they'd been able to prepare quite a good landing field. So, at least, the engineers assured him-and all of them had experience at the work. That was to a large degree why they'd been selected.
"Should do fine," one of them said, once they reached the far end of the landing strip.
"It's better than the one they started with in Wismar," added one of his partners. He pointed off to the side, where soldiers had erected large, crude sheds to provide shelter for the two planes. They'd demolished two nearby barns for the materials. The farmers hadn't even objected too strenuously, since they'd gotten paid more than the structures had really been worth.
"Even that's a better hangar than they had in Wismar, at the beginning."
Thorsten had no idea if they were right. He'd seen the airplanes, any number of times, but only up in the air and at a great distance. But since they seemed so confident on the matter, he saw no reason to worry much about it.
His only real concern had been the soil itself. The spring melt was underway, and everything was a bit soggy. Not too bad here, though. They were a half mile from the river and the engineers had picked a field that was slightly elevated to begin with. By the time they were done preparing the field, the strip was still a bit on the moist side but nothing you could actually call muddy. And by the time the planes arrived, several hours later in the afternoon, the sun would have dried everything still further.