The Americans had even done the impossible; they’d rammed a railway through Afghanistan to feed munitions directly to the Russian troops fighting in the South. Oh, Brinkmann knew that the newsreels had shown the Afghan railway being built by the Indians alone. They’d shown tens of thousands of Indian laborers digging their way along the rivers and through the passes to build the tracks but he didn’t believe it. An engineering feat like that had to be the Americans; the Indians just didn’t have that ability. An uneasy thought stirred in his mind. If the Indians had built the Afghan Railway by themselves, if they did have that ability, then what did that say about Germany’s claim to Aryan supremacy? He squashed the thought down, even having such ideas was dangerous.
“They’ve seen us. Get the strike off now. Tell the pilots to head out on course 270, find the enemy and attack. Once the strike is off and our decks are clear, get the reserve fighters up and off.”
“Sir, we don’t have time. If the enemy have spotted us, they must be launching now. They’ll be with us within the hour. By the time we’ve launched our strike, got the fighters up on deck, warmed up their engines, and started to launch, they’ll be right on top of us. If
we’re caught with armed and fuelled aircraft on our decks….”
There was no need for Dietrich to complete the thought. Fire was the great fear of every aircraft carrier. German newsreels had been full of the U-boat’s greatest score. The American aircraft carrier Enterprise had been torpedoed almost within New York harbor itself. The pyre of smoke from her death-blaze had towered over the city. Great propaganda but also a terrible lesson. Fire killed carriers.
“Then launch them cold.”
Dietrich’s face froze. Launching the aircraft with cold engines meant that some wouldn’t make it. They’d lose power at the wrong moment, go into the sea and be ran down by the carrier they’d just left. The order to launch the aircraft with cold engines meant condemning some of their pilots to death. “But Sir….”
“Not buts. Launch them cold.” Brinkmann softened; he knew what he was asking. “There is an Ami task group out there. Four carriers, almost 400 aircraft. We have to get our blow in first. We also have to have every fighter we can up. If our fighters are not up in time, they will be destroyed in their hangars. Launch them, Erich. We must have them up in time to meet the Americans. Whatever it costs.
“What are the plans if it all goes wrong Admiral?”
Captain Charles Povey had every reason to be concerned. There was no pretence about the situation out here. Troop Convoy WS-18, Winston’s Special 18, was bait. Only part of the bait, that was true. The main portion was supply convoy PQ-17, no less than 250 merchant ships packed into a box 16 ships wide by 16 deep. Not all the ships in that box were merchantmen. There were two battleships in there, Arizona and Nevada. PQ-17 was a slow convoy; it could afford to have the battleships along. WS-18 was a fast convoy, very fast by merchant ship standards. The five liners, carrying the 40,000 Canadian soldiers that were the whole reason for the convoy, were holding a steady speed of 25 knots. That was fast enough to give even the German Type XXIs a very hard time. Only, that meant no battleships as escorts, only cruisers and destroyers.
“We scatter the convoy of course. The liners will run for it, they’re faster than the battleships anyway. Then, we take Quebec and the destroyers to attack the German fleet. Buy the liners time to get clear. God willing, it won’t come to that. Not with all the carriers and planes the Yanks have waiting.”
It sounded hopeful; it was a reasonable hope. The Americans had their entire carrier striking force moving into assault the German fleet. If nothing went wrong, if the strikes found their target, the German ships would never see either of the two convoys. Even if they didn’t, the Germans would run into PQ-17 and its battleships first. Not that those two ancient battlewagons would stand much of a chance against the German monsters. They’d die fighting, just like WS-18’s escort would die fighting, if they had to.
Ontario had a score to settle. She’d started life as HMS Kenya and had ran for Canada as part of the Great Escape. There had been two sister-ships for the Canadian Navy building in British yards, neither complete enough to make the run. The original Ontario had still been on the slips at Harland and Wolff: she’d been very thoroughly blown up. The original Quebec had a more unusual fate. She’d been fitting-out at Vickers-Armstrong’s Tyneside yard when the Germans seized her. They’d fussed around her for a few days while the dockies carried on with their work.
Then, the Germans had ordered them all off; apparently intending to tow her to Germany for completion. She’d left under tow. A few hours later, she foundered, sinking beyond any possible recovery given the resources available. Nobody knew officially what had happened. She’d been in the hands of a prize crew who had supposedly secured her for sea. There had been courts-martial over that. The rumor was that the rivets fastening the hull plating under her engine rooms had been drilled out, replaced by soap and painted over. As the ship moved, the paint peeled away, the soap dissolved and a large section of the bottom of the hull had dropped off. It was only a rumor of course.
Anyway, the Royal Navy had offered the Canadian Navy Kenya and Fiji to replace the lost ships. The Canadians had accepted; the Royals had too few men to provide them with crews. But there was a strange air about Kenya that her Canadian crew had noticed as soon as they had taken her over. The ship had an atmosphere of bitterness; as if she knew of tasks left undone. Ontario was a good ship. She seemed pleased to put to sea, reluctant to return to port. Povey just hoped he wouldn’t have to take his ship in to fight the whole German battlefleet. Finishing off a few destroyers, or pounding a German cruiser to scrap, that would be good. Perhaps it would make Ontario feel better.
Admiral Vian looked at the five stately liners plowing through the waves behind him. If everything did go wrong, he would have to come up with a battleplan that gave two light cruisers and a dozen ASW destroyers a fighting chance against the whole German Navy. That was a interesting professional challenge.
The last of the German fighters never really made it into the battle. They were still climbing after launch, their cold engines laboring with the effort, when the American FV-2s slashed into their formations. The American pilots had already firewalled their throttles. In terms of initial position, they had the speed and height advantage. The price they paid was that they were fighting with one eye on their fuel gauges. The gas-guzzling jets had nothing like the endurance of the piston-engined birds. The Shooting Stars were designed to carry wingtip tanks, the FV-1 had small ones that actually made a slight improvement on the performance of the aircraft in addition to the fuel they carried so the pilots had kept them on when dogfights started. Range was still too short though; so when the FV-2 had arrived, the smaller tanks had been discarded in favor of an improvised “Thule Tank.” Those had twice the fuel capacity but its length and weight over-stressed the wings. So the American aircraft had dropped their tanks as they approached the German ships. That left them short on fuel compared with the Corsairs but there were plenty of those bent-wing, piston-engined birds following behind. They’d finish the job if the Flivvers left anything behind them.