Even as the other two squads were coming under a hail of heavy fire to the east, three-section opened up on the exposed Germans near their positions with complete surprise. A hail of .30- and .45-calibre slugs ripped through the ranks of paratroops, killing and maiming with murderous efficiency. The airborne invaders were at first confused and unable to determine the direction of the incoming fire as their comrades fell about them, but it wasn’t too long before telltale muzzle-flashes against the blackness of the tree line betrayed the British position.
A single rifleman began to return fire in the correct direction, quickly joined by several others and a squad light machine gun, while 40mm grenades also began to fall close to their position. A few moments more, and an entire squad of fallschirmjäger managed to reach the cover of the trees to their left in an attempt to flank the British position. Although still without casualty, their position was quickly becoming untenable, and their sergeant made the decision to also withdraw. They made a clean break from the engagement, eluding the attempted flanking manoeuvre, and made their way back to the rendezvous point with what was left of the rest of the platoon, having inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy of more than fifty dead double that injured.
Howell fell back a hundred metres or so to a point where a narrow bridge crossed the canal to the north-west of West Hythe, and had three section set up positions on the opposite side, protecting the western approaches to the town. He then took the rest of his unit back along the southern side of the canal to the West Hythe Bridge at the intersection of Royal Military and West Hythe Roads, with the intention of preventing a crossing of the canal at that point also. They solidified their positions and waited as the lieutenant sent a second messenger back to barracks with an update on the engagement. In that fashion, the most significant battle of the Twentieth Century began with a single, desperate firefight in darkness, just before dawn.
The 1st Fallschirmjäger wasn’t the slightest bit interested in taking West Hythe, and instead moved northward as their numbers grew, pushing through Lympne and taking the town without a single casualty as they caught the Home Guard garrison there completely by surprise. The airfield on the western outskirts of the town was also captured quickly, the RAF defensive units stationed there quickly overrun and overwhelmed under the first rays of morning sun.
The moment the strip was secured, several T-1A Gigant transports began to drop supplies from low level, using a system known in Realtime as LAPES — Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System. Each aircraft would come in at extremely low level — as low as two metres off the ground in some cases — and retain as high a speed as was possible in order to present a harder target. As each roared past above the flat, open expanse of the runway, a large parachute would billow out from the open rear loading ramp and catch the slipstream, dragging out the attached cargo in the process.
Stores dropped in this fashion were predominantly food and ammunition, however three light artillery pieces, four anti-tank guns and six P-1F Wiesel light tanks were also delivered to provide useful fire support. It was known that the First London Division was dug in just a few kilometres away toward Smeeth, and the added firepower of the guns and the tanks’ light cannon would be vitally important should a counter-attack materialise.
Further west along the south coast, the 3rd and 5th Fallschirmjäger dropped on the Brighton and Portsmouth areas respectively, wreaking similar havoc to that erupting in Kent, and by first light, the parachute divisions had taken control of substantial areas close to the coast stretching between Brighton and Bognor Regis, and were digging in as they awaited the arrival of Strauss’ IX Army. The landings near Brighton progressed well in those early stages, although the British 50th Division and 21st Tank Brigade, both equipped with new, Hindsight-inspired weaponry, were giving the 5th FJ Div an extremely hard time further west, near Portsmouth.
Home Fleet Naval Anchorage at HMS Proserpine
Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands
News of the invasion reached Scapa Flow within thirty minutes of confirmation being received at Whitehall, and things happened very quickly from that moment on. Klaxons rose up in protest all about the base, and on warships anchored out on the dark waters of The Flow, similar battle stations alerts roused their tired and frightened crews and sent them heading for their assigned posts as every vessel prepared to put to sea. So much closer to the Arctic Circle, it’d be another hour or more before dawn broke over the eastern horizon across the cold expanse of the North Sea, and it’d be a long cruise at full steam ahead for the Home Fleet as it headed south along the coast of Britain in a desperate race to interdict German invasion forces.
Thirty-six warships in line-ahead formation were currently steaming out into Pentland Firth in the early morning darkness, the fleet comprised of two battlecruisers, four battleships and one aircraft carrier being escorted by three cruisers and twenty-seven destroyers of various classes. There’d been no reported sightings of enemy warships or landing craft as yet, but as he stood on the bridge of HMS Nelson, Rear-Admiral Henry Harwood was under no misconception regarding their enemy’s presence heading for English beaches, somewhere to the south. Reports of fighting against parachute troops coming in from all over Kent, Sussex and Hampshire were a clear enough warning that the main invasion force they’d been expecting was finally on its way.
At fifty-two years of age, Sir Henry Harwood KCB OBE had joined the Royal Navy in 1904, and had served in the First World War aboard HMS Royal Sovereign. Something of a ‘natural’ officer, his broad, almost affable features and trusting smile concealed a fine naval mind and able tactician. In command of a cruiser squadron at the outbreak of WW2, he’d been promoted to rear-admiral for his ships’ successful efforts in hunting surface raiders in the South Atlantic during that first year of war. Three months ago, he’d joined the Home Fleet to take command of Nelson, and had since turned an already excellent crew into a superlative one.
Lead ship and namesake of her class (Pennant Number 28), HMS Nelson, along with her sister-ship, Rodney, were the most heavily armed battleships of the Royal Navy. Laid down at shipbuilders Armstrong-Whitworth at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1922, she was launched almost three years later and commissioned into service on September 10, 1930. With a displacement of thirty-four thousand tons, she’d been designed to conform to the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922: an agreement that was perhaps the world’s first serious attempt at strategic arms limitation.
The Royal Navy was forced to scrap twenty-eight capital ships as part of its requirements under the treaty, and was also subsequently forced to look at more novel approaches to shipbuilding and design to produce new battleships that remained powerful and were well-armoured that also met the upper tonnage limit of 35,000 tons. Nelson and Rodney were the initial result, their short, truncated sterns as unusual as her layout of three triple 16-inch turrets, all mounted forward of the bridge, with ‘A’ and ‘B’ turrets superimposed and able to fire directly across a 300-degree frontal arc, while ‘X’ turret could fire in broadside only, at angles of traverse between 60- to 120-degrees to port or starboard.