The weather expert said that this was a temporary stage, a transient condition that marked the trailing edge of the storm. Already, they were crossing the boundary between the storm system itself and the clearer weather that followed it. Captain Erich Dietrich hoped the weather forecast was right. If it wasn’t Graf Zeppelin would be in trouble.
“Captain, when can we launch?” Admiral Ernst Brinkmann snapped the question out. It was one that needed an immediate answer. The Scouting Group was supposed to find the convoys that were the objective of this whole mission. The battlefleet was following a few hours behind them to the south and east. They were still laboring through the full force of the storm. When they emerged, not so far in the future, Admiral Lindemann would want to know where his targets were. He was not a man to wait patiently for the information. As if in partial answer, the sun broke through the thin clouds overhead. A weak, watery, indistinct sun, but the sun none the less. Dietrich took this as an omen.
“We can start bringing the aircraft up to the flight deck right away, Sir. They have to be loaded and armed on the hangar deck, and they have to warm their engines up here. That should not take long. I can have a deckload ready to go in.” Dietrich paused, calculating the times needed. “For a scout mission? I can have twelve Ju-87s on the deck, each with a 250 kilogram bomb and two 200 liter drop tanks, ready to fly in 45 minutes.”
“Very good. Communications. Order the Werner Voss to ready a force of 18 aircraft to launch at the same time. Same load. Also to have their remaining twelve Stukas loaded with a 1,000 kilogram bomb for anti-shipping strike. Have them ready six Ta-152s as escort. The Boelcke will prepare eight of her Ta-152s for immediate launch as our combat air patrol. Then she will prepare six Ju-87s and two Ta-152s as her contribution to our strike force. Got that? Transmit it. Captain Dietrich, you will ready an anti-shipping strike of your remaining eight Stukas and four of your Ta-152s. That will give us twenty six anti-ship configured bombers escorted by twelve Ta-152s as a strike while thirty of our Stukas look for the enemy.”
“An anti-shipping strike Sir.” The question wasn’t even hinted at in Dietrich’s tone but the Admiral knew it was there.
“The Amis are out there with carriers. They always have a carrier group covering their big convoys and this one will be no exception. So we need to be able to strike at them before they find us. Carriers are weak, vulnerable. What matters most is getting in the first blow. If we have our strike ready to launch, then we have the edge. We will still have twenty six fighters and four bombers left in reserve. The Scouting Group will adjust course to 270. We need to get clear of this ice as quickly as we can.”
Brinkmann watched from the bridge as the aircraft carrier started to boil with action. Despite the change in course, she was still rolling badly. Up ahead, the Werner Voss was making much easier passage through the seas. On paper, Brinkmann would have preferred her as his flagship. She was larger, more powerful and had much better flag facilities than the Graf Zeppelin, but he couldn’t stand the stink that seemed to permeate every niche of the ship and the infuriating faults in her construction drove him mad. So, he’d made Germany’s first carrier his flagship and put up with her deficiencies instead.
His thoughts were interrupted by the whine as the aft elevator brought the first of the reconnaissance Ju-87s to the flight deck. Its wings were folded; he watched, the flight deck crew started to winch them down. Once, it had been proposed that electrically-folding wings should be installed but that scheme had been dropped along with so many others. It weighed too much and the performance of the Ju-87 was critically inadequate anyway. Still, it was better than the only alternative, a Fiesler biplane. On the deck, one of the wings on the lead aircraft had jammed; something was stopping the hinged joint from working. Brinkmann watched a deck crewman jump up; he grabbed the wing and jerked it down into place. It worked; whatever had been obstructing the movement gave way and the outer wing panel slammed down.
It dropped into place so hard that the enterprising deck crewman lost his grip on the wing and was deposited, abruptly and unceremoniously on his rear. Brinkmann could almost hear the laughter from his comrades as they saw his inglorious reward. The laugh was very quickly choked off for the Graf Zeppelin was rolling and she had started one of her sways to starboard just as the unfortunate crewman hit the ice- and slush-covered deck. Brinkmann had no doubt about hearing the result, the crewman screamed in raw terror as he started sliding towards the deck edge. Two of his fellows tried to grab him; their only reward was to lose their footing and fall also. They were only saved for the same fate by those nearby grabbing them. The stricken crewman was scrabbling, hopelessly, uselessly for a grip as he made his inexorable slide towards the deck edge. Then he was gone, over the side into the gray water below.
“Communications. Man overboard. Order Z-20 to break position and pick him up.” Brinkmann snapped out the orders. Z-16 and Z-20 were the two trailing destroyers, one of them could surely pick the man up?
“Message from Z-20, Sir. He’s already passed. Are they to turn, stop and lower a boat?”
Dietrich spoke quietly. “It’s no good, Sir. That will take them at least five minutes. The water temperature, it’s below one degree. That man will be dead by the time they get to him. If he isn’t dead already. The fall might have killed him, or the sheer shock of hitting water that cold. By the time Z-20 has picked up his body, they’ll be far behind. It’ll take an hour or more for them to catch up.”
Brinkmann nodded. It was a hard decision but a necessary one “Order Z-20 to belay the previous order and hold position. There will be no rescue.”
He went out onto the bridge wing and took the great pair of high-power binoculars, the ones used by the lookouts. He could see the body floating motionless in the wake of the two destroyers bringing up the rear. Seagulls were already gathering to feast on it. They knew that anything floating motionless in the icy water wasn’t living any more. It was just food for gulls. Already the more adventurous gulls were diving down to snatch the choicest morsels from the unexpected meal.
Brinkmann sighed and went back inside the bridge. Work on the flightdeck was going on, more of the Ju-87s being brought up and prepared for launch. Then, he was shaken by a white blot that appeared on the glass. Not more snow, surely? No, it wasn’t. It was a tear-drop shaped, whitish blob with a green-brown center. Seagull droppings. Brinkmann looked up, the gulls were circling Graf Zeppelin as well.
It was a nuisance not being part of the formal carrier airgroup. The detachments, night fighters, radar search aircraft, utility birds, tended to come last on the priority lists. They fitted in after everybody else had grabbed the places and positions they wanted. But, once in a while, the detachments were supremely important. This was one of those times. There was a line of AD-2W Skyraiders spaced out across the sea. Each was dozens of miles from the next. Their job was to find the enemy and report on their position. Then, they were to continue to track that enemy, reporting so the strike aircraft didn’t waste fuel hunting for their targets. Every pound of fuel they saved meant more warload, more fuel saved for the trip home in what could easily be a critically damaged aircraft. Of course, the problem was that the enemy group would realize the significance of the thin line of Adies and send out fighters for them. Just as the American fleet was watching for the equivalent enemy scouting force and send out fighters to deal with them.