Keynes' Cruisers

[fester]

September 17, 1941 0124 the Libyan desert

The point man froze. Something was not right. It was nothing obvious, but the veteran of three major battles and dozens of night time patrols knew something gave him the shakes. The rest of the platoon slowed and then went to the ground as they waited for him to make up his mind and advance along the sands that separated the two armies.

He slowly moved his head to the left as that was where the unnatural feeling felt the strongest. One step forward with his toes feeling the ground with more concentration than he felt his wife’s breasts the night before he was shipped to the desert. His toes felt nothing that would make a betraying noise so he stepped forward and waited. The sound of a mechanized army sleeping fitfully filled the night’s air as he strained his ears to listen to the absence of rightness.

Five more minutes and eight more meters, he finally found what was not right. Out of the corner of his eye, a sliver of moonlight broke through the clouds and landed ever so briefly on a too regular curve. There was a helmet sitting on the sand. And if there was a helmet, there probably was a head and if there was a head, there probably was a rifle and if there was a rifle, there probably was an ambush.

The scout began to work backwards to the rest of the patrol. His movements were slow and deliberate as he could feel every single rifle sight focused on his head. As he was about to crest the two meter rise in the ground where the rest of the patrol, a red flare was fired. As soon as the whoosh pushed it into an arc over the sky, a trio of light mortars and a pair of machine guns began to fire. Stealth was no longer needed so he scrambled over the rise to take some protection from at least the machine gun fire. It was the young, replacement officer fresh from training school’s job to figure out how to get the patrol out of the partially blown ambush. Now, the scout just needed to fight.

 

[fester]

September 18, 1941 east of Kiev

Tanks were laagered, guns pointing outwards and crewmen were scanning the horizon for air attack and the ground for infiltrators. The division had been paused on the far bank of the of the Dneiper River for three days. Further west, the infantry armies had almost completed the destruction of the pocket. Every shell, every drop of fuel, every vial of morphine was needed to support the landsers instead of the panzers.

A slow trickle of supplies was still coming forward. By now, the truck companies that would have supported the Panzer regiment and its mostly French and Czech built tanks were down to half strength. Partisans, bombers and artillery claimed their fair share but that share was dwarfed by dust and spare parts. An Renault truck had arrived that morning carrying precious fuel. It was now being stripped for spare parts as its unique transmission seized up. It might keep the remaining half dozen Renaults running longer and moving more supplies to the spearheads than waiting for the right spare part to come forward and repairing only a single truck.

A hundred miles behind the spearheads, Luftwaffe mechanics at a newly captured air base worked hastily on their new machines. The fighter wings had been flying every day. On days with either good weather or desperate need, pilots were in the air several times a day. The fighter wing was at half strength. Anti-aircraft fire claimed a few more kills than rough landings and random operational losses. Only a few ME-109s were lost from air to air combat but the number of days where the wing had as many planes operational the next morning as they had the previous morning were becoming rare.

Replacements had trickled forward. Half a dozen factory fresh machines along with three new pilots had joined the fight the day before. If the wing could stand down for a week, half a dozen a hangar queens would be airworthy again and a dozen pilots would be released from the hospital. Victories were better than defeats, but the pace of combat was exhausting.

 

[fester]

September 19, 1941 Tehran, Persia

Rumors drifted across the city faster than smoke filled the air. The Soviets were coming. The British were coming. The Arabs were coming. The Germans were coming. That rumor came from one of the finer opium dens in the city and no one believed that, the Germans were thousands of miles away while everyone else was just outside of the capital city. The Shah’s palace was empty. He had started to flee into the countryside before the ultimatum expired. He was willing to expel Axis diplomats but he was not willing to hand over every German civilian to the nearest invading army. The British would probably intern them while the Communists would probable inter them. His army had been defeated, and his country had been humbled, but he would not accede to every demand.

The flight to safety only lasted six hours until the small convoy carrying him and his immediate family ran into a patrol from the 2nd Indian Armoured Brigade. The former Shah was soon to be replaced by his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. By afternoon prayers of the next day, the papers had been signed. Iran had become a temporary protectorate and a joint condominium of the Soviet Union and the British Empire until the end of the current war and six months there-after.

 

[fester]

September 20, 1941 Spili, Crete

Horns honked. Brake drums protested by vehemently squeaking. The dozen live goats in the back of the Canadian Pattern truck were tossed side to side. One broke her hip hitting the sharp edge of an ammunition box. The small convoy of a dozen trucks were coming down the mountain and into a small, central valley. They had started on the south coast as the ports were rapidly being built to handle an ongoing stream of large ocean going ships instead of the coasters and fishing vessels that they had served pre-war. This was the first regular supply convoy on the partially built road. The plans said it would be a highway but that was still a dream for the thousands of laborers and hundreds of engineers building it. The track had been improved. It was either paved or gravelled the entire length and a series of switchbacks had been cut into the worst slopes. Yet, in most locations it was barely one truck wide and it would be barely passable in rains heavier than a morning mist. However, the roads were better today than they had been in May when the work started, and they would continue to get better as even more equipment was landed and more mechanical power could be applied to the problems the engineers knew that they faced.


As the convoy stopped for lunch, the decision to roast the injured goat was made. As fresh lavender and thyme was spread on the meat, a southbound convoy of seventeen trucks and five staff cars paused in the town. Soon a soccer game developed and once it was completed, the truck drivers had their fill of the previously annoying goat before continuing their drive to Souda Bay.

 

[fester]

September 21, 1941, Monterey Bay, California

The cruisers, if this was a real invasion, should have been firing by now. The beach defenses were thick and coastal artillery could see the array of attack transports bobbing offshore making bare steerage way. Men with ninety-pound packs atop of their life jackets were trying to scramble down the cargo nets into Higgins boats and ships boats for the transfer of the 3rd Division to the shore. A west wind whipped up the waves. Two privates fell off the net and into the ocean as they had mistimed the jump from the cargo net to the assault craft. One was rescued as he had managed to drop his rifle and most of his gear before he was dragged under. The other man’s body was never found.

Later than planned but sooner than expected, two assault battalions were heading ashore. The training diagrams had the attackers in neat lines with mutually supporting machine guns firing from the Higgins boats as they approached the shore. Reality was different; the more experienced crews were able to bring three or four boats into tight, well-dressed formations while new coxswains and inexperienced ensigns meandered. One landing craft that was supposed to land at the center of the south beach was the first ashore at the northern edge of the north beach. Other landing craft of the first wave did not make it ashore until most of the second wave had assembled and began their final approach to the beach.

By nightfall, two full regiments and an artillery battalion were ashore. They had managed to secure a lodgement seven hundred yards wide and four hundred yards deep against the opposition of a single California National Guard battalion. The umpires called the exercise off half an hour early as enough had been seen. If Gold Army’s tank brigades were released from the central reserve, the beachhead would be crushed.

However, they could try again later in the week as the training exercises for the West Coast corps were not scheduled to end until the 30th.

 

[fester]

September 21, 1941, east of Port Said

HMS Calcutta bobbed in the sea as three destroyers searched for submarines and half a dozen trawlers were acting like bobbies in Piccadilly Circus. Half a dozen ships including a pair of Glen class transports were assembled two miles from the deserted beach. The 50 and 51 Commando were clambering into the LCA’s that had been craned into the sea. Seven minutes later, thirty assault craft were heading inshore at six knots. Half a mile behind them, HMS Misoa and Tasajera kept station before they began their own run to the beach.

Each Commando landed on the beaches. Almost every assault craft was almost on time and almost where they should have been. 51 Commando landed slightly west of their desired target but most of the landing craft were able to lower their ramps and men streamed out in good order. Only minutes behind the infantry, the two tank landing ships ran aground and extended their ramps. Three dozen tanks soon rumbled ashore and began to attack inland.

By mid-afternoon, the exercise had halted. The initial objectives had been achieved and the landing procedures were far cleaner on this, the fourth practice landing than they had been on the first and second tries. Supplies were still arriving on the beach in a haphazard manner but every man had food and water throughout the day and the tanks were able to be fueled five hours after landing.

Trucks collected the landing force and brought them back to the Delta as the Navy policed the beach and worked to reload the transports. By midnight, the force was steaming back to Haifa where the new tank landing ships could be repaired and final changes to the basic operational plan could be completed.

 

[fester]

September 22, 1941, Hong Kong

USS Houston had spent the past week tied up at the Royal Dockyard in Hong Kong. English officers had been ferried over to her every morning as they tried to impart their hard, combat learned lessons to their de facto allies. Some of the advice had been well received as Houston had been stripped of all flammable materials excluding the chaplain’s pulpit. Engineering officers had spent all day Tuesday discussing the best way to isolate and reroute power from damaged pathways. Wednesday and Thursday had the snipes and black gang checking valves, tagging junctions and install by-passes. The British had tried to convince Captain Rooks to repaint the ship to a camouflage scheme but he declined as Houston had already scheduled yard time at Cavite for that job.

Now the heavy cruiser was slowly steaming past Devils Peak. HMS Devonshire was waiting for her fifteen miles outside the harbor for a morning of exercises capped off by gunnery drills.

 

[fester]

September 23, 1941 Seattle

The Soviet freighter Turksib came into port slowly. A pair of tugs helped her pull into the dock. A dozen NKVD guards went to her bottom holds and watched the purser count the primary cargo by value one last time. Stevedores and longshoremen were soon all over the ship unloading a variety of ores. Two days later, the gold was unloaded. It was Spanish gold, Czech gold, French gold, Japanese gold and Soviet gold bars. Some of the bullion had been in Soviet or Russian possession for a century, other boxes had bullion that the Germans had given to the Soviets in order to import oil, wheat and trans-ship rubber and tin from French Indochina. Now all of this gold was heading to American banks to pay for American shells to be fired from American guns by Soviet peasants fighting Germans in front of Moscow.

 

[fester]

September 24, 1941, Clark Field, Luzon

The medium bomber touched down on the hard surface runway at Clark Field. The tour had gone well except for the intestinal distress on the third night. The general was satisfied with the progress of his command. If he had another nine months, they could hold the islands against anyone and if he had a year, the islands would be too strongly defended to be even worth attacking.

He needed time though. He had two professional, American officered divisions. The Philippine Scouts manned one division with three infantry regiments, a cavalry regiment and an allotment of artillery that would make the gunners of Fort Sill proud. Over the summer, convoys had brought the spare parts and the specialized equipment needed for accurate long range indirect fire. His last Scout infantry regiment had been hollowed out to provide cadre. The other division was a composite force of his two long service white American infantry regiments and a Marine regiment that was in the process of being assembled from the combination of base defense Marines, China Marines, and Fleet Marines. All of the white units were a 70/30 mixture of experienced men and fresh recruits as they had also been combed for cadre. An armored brigade with two National Guard tank battalions supported by a truck mounted Army Reserve infantry battalion was his primary counter-attacking force. These professional forces were fully supported with trucks, anti-aircraft artillery, signals and engineers. A freshly arrived anti-aircraft battalion from New Mexico was in the process of digging in around Clark Field even as the general waited for the airplane to stop taxiing.

The Regular Army of the Philippines was coming along. The first division was not as heavily equipped or as routinely trained as his white and Scouts units, but the cadre was strong and experienced and their TO&E was only a bit lighter than the American TO&E. The second division was still a theoretical construct. The national police would form four light infantry rear area security regiments in the time of war. The men were professional and used to being armed and working as a team but their opponents were either guerillas or bandits not an army so their heavy weapons were mortars and machine guns.

His trip had him inspect both types of his reserve divisions. The four Class A divisions had each received a battalion of Scouts as core cadre for the three attached infantry regiments. The 11th Division had slightly more men on the rolls than authorized and training was almost on schedule as the division had been able to arrive at the newly built camps on Sunday and start integrating the reservists into their units by Tuesday. Logistics were still mostly local acquisitions with cash but the men were enthusiastic and well fed. He thought that at least two of these divisions would be the equivalent of the regular Philippine Army division but they held promise and that promise would be realized if they had the time to become fully trained.

The 101st Division on Mindanao was one of six Category B reserve divisions. The cadre was a combination of recently re-activated American Army Reserve officers and less than one hundred professional soldiers from either the Scouts or the long service white regiments. Everything in that division was simplified. The artillery group was a dozen British mountain guns organized into two batteries instead of the standard three batteries of four guns. The heavy weapons for each battalion were six .50 caliber heavy machine guns and four 60 millimeter mortars. A professional battalion could readily defeat one regiment without worry and could outmaneuver the entire division. The division was still waiting for another two tranches of men to fill out the ranks. They looked like the cross between a mob and an army. Each day would hopefully bring that division closer to an army.

He was not going to ask much of his Category B divisions. Their job was to watch the likely landing beaches, hold fortified positions and force the Japanese to make deliberate attacks. While the Japanese were forming up, the Category A divisions, army level artillery and air support would pound the exposed concentrations and conduct local counterattacks. The professional troops were to be used for decisive counter-attacks.

The plan was sound in his mind, now General MacArthur just needed time and supplies to execute. As the plane came to a stop, the general adjusted his cap and strode down the steps as the flashbulbs went off.



USAFFE Artillery Park (Authorized/Available at all/available for use within 24 hours with trained crews)

203 mm Railroad guns 9/8/8

155 mm 48/48/36

105 mm 80/72/56

SP 75mm 48/48/12

75mm artillery 132/148/96

Mountain guns or other 75mm artillery 48/56/12

 

[fester]

September 25, 1941 75 miles South of Pearl Harbor

USS Enterprise turned into the wind. Two dozen Marine Corps Wildcats were lined up on her deck. Behind them a squadron of Marine Vindicators were warming their engines. As the carrier cut through the sea at nearly thirty knots, the flight deck ballet ascended in complexity. A fighter was launching every thirty to forty seconds and then the bombers followed behind them quickly. They started to sort themselves out and flew to their target.

Twenty miles away, USS Billings, a new light cruiser, was towing a large target one thousand yards astern. She was making a steady twenty five knots through the calm seas. Her radar room was keeping the captain informed of the incoming air strike. Her dual purpose guns were fully manned and swiveling towards the incoming dive bombers. Her light anti-aircraft cannons would have been needed to break up a dive bombing attack so they practiced tracking the bombers as they started to tip over into dives and drop 50 pound practice bombs on the target. Direct hits splattered the target with dye while misses colored the sea.

Even as the bombers were still attacking their training target, the Marine fighters turned around and began to descend back into the landing pattern. They would be able to get at least one touch and go for every fighter before the bombers were done. By nightfall, the carrier, her three heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and seven destroyers were heading back to port. The Marine dive bombers had managed to “sink” the target but their accuracy against a maneuvering ship was poor. They would need more practice but first they were practicing low light landings as they had taken off for Ewa minutes before twilight began.

 

[fester]

September 26, 1941, Philadelphia
The new light cruiser, USS Norfolk waited for her big sister, USS Lansing. Both ships had been released from the final post-acceptance repairs that morning. They would pick their way down the Delaware River and into the open sea before heading to San Juan for a month of training and working up. After that, the two new cruisers would use the Panama Canal to join the Pacific Fleet. Lansing was penciled to join the Saratoga task force while Norfolk would join the Battle Force. Ideally her rapid firing six inch guns would allow the battle line to operate without worrying about torpedo attacks from Japanese destroyers in the Marianas or the Luzon Straits. But before they could join the fleet, both cruisers had to wait for the damn tug boats to get them to the main shipping channel.

 

[fester]

September 26, 1941, southwest of Leningrad

Whistles blew. Artillery fired again. This time the shells were mostly smoke with a few high explosive shells intermixed to force the defenders’ heads down. German infantrymen began to retreat through the no man’s land between the edge of the clearing and the start of the city’s freshly erected defenses. Sometimes the infantrymen retired in good order with their rifles ready and eyes probing for a possible counter-attack. Other times, two men used their combined three good legs to help each other to safety. The attack had failed. The panzers were exhausted so the infantry was now being used to pressure the defenders of Leningrad. They had some success for the first part of the morning but just as the lead assault groups were creating a bow in the Soviet lines, a tank regiment that started the war in Murmansk counter-attacked and the line was restored.

 

[fester]

September 26, 1941, the Libyan Desert

The other listening and observation posts that held the line overnight were emptied. The men who were ahead of their compatriots in the main line of resistance had returned and then replaced by new men who would watch for an attack. They were accounted for and once the sergeants were satisfied that every man who left the night before was back under their loving and tender care, the men could eat.

This was true for all of the posts except one. The three men in that hole had not returned. The platoon sergeant informed the lieutenant who informed the captain. As the officers talked, the platoon started to get ready for combat. Within fifteen minutes, the captain had moved his small reserve into the platoon’s main position and the platoon went out into the desert heat.

An hour later, the men worked through their minefields and wires. Three men were carrying a body that had been bayoneted repeatedly. The other two men were nowhere to be found as the observation post was emptied of anything of value and the rucksacks ransacked.

The division sent in the report to Corps that night -- all quiet in the desert.

 

[fester]

September 27, 1941 Suez

Georgio Averoff steamed past the freshly arrived convoy from America. The Red Sea was a low threat area but even still the American light cruiser Concord had escorted the dozen merchant ships from Aden to Port Suez. The ships carried trucks, they carried tanks, they carried boots, they carried lubricants, they carried spam, they carried the million and three items that an army needed. They also carried another ninety crated Tomahawk fighters that would be used as fighter bombers by the Royal Air Force. Crews would be working day and night to unload the American freighters and move their precious cargo to the Egyptian rail network for either shipment to the workshops in the Delta or for transhipment to Benghazi on local coasters. The first supplies might reach the army in a week but most of the mountain of abundance would need a month or more to be used at the front.

The crew of the Greek armored cruiser did not care. They had been assigned anti-raider duties in the Indian Ocean so they would soon start patrolling a triangle of Bombay to Mombasa to Aden.

 

[fester]

September 28, 1941 Rostov, Russia

The city was in chaos. A pair of weapons factories evacuated from Kiev had attempted to set up in the city but even before their trains could be unloaded from the sidings that they occupied, commissars ordered them further east. Those trains continued past the Volga where the depth of Russia could offer some protection. Coastal shipping traffic from the Baltic and the Sea of Azov were tied up next to Don River barges. The port was its normal structured chaos as bulk was being broken left and right and new cargoes were being loaded to bring goods and raw materials into the Russian industrial heartland.

Overhead, a dozen new Hurricanes maintained a combat air patrol. A regiment of fighters had arrived the week before. The RAF had managed to ship one hundred modern machines from their reserves and formation creation stockpiles in Egypt and Palestine to the Soviet Union over the past month. Three dozen RAF technicians and four pilots had accompanied the planes to help the Soviet pilots on their new machines. Most of the Soviet pilots were experienced fliers who had seen their machines destroyed in the first week of the war. Very few rookie pilots were being sent to the front as there were still more pilots than planes.

Far more importantly, three reserve divisions were moving forward to the front. The Germans were pressing forward along the Sea of Azov with two infantry corps and some Romanians. The 9th Army needed reinforcements to hold the line, and these divisions had enough time to integrate survivors from the destruction battles along Dnieper. One division was marching, one division would take a train and the last division was riding in newly arrived Canadian pattern trucks.

 

[fester]

September 29, 1941 Los Angeles

A ship left the harbor. She had three dozens new pursuit planes from North American Aviation onboard. She would be able to drop them off in a month at their final destination. Several miles away, a train left Los Angeles with another three dozen new planes from North American’s plant. They would be shipped to New York and then onto the Clyde.

 

[fester]

September 30, 1941 south of Leningrad

Tatianna took a breath. She slowly chewed on the coarse brown bread that made up most of the rations that the woman’s rifle company could scrounge. She had joined in August as she could carry either a rifle or a shovel. Both could get her killed but a rifle and a shovel meant more food for her than merely a shovel.

German infantry divisions were pushing north again. The trench line was eleven miles from the city center, and she stayed deep in her fox hole waiting for the harassing artillery fire to cease. A company to the south was the primary target. Five minutes later, she was scanning the horizon again and in the distance, she spotted a German officer group huddled, still, underneath a tree. They were eight hundred yards away. Artillery would be ideal but there was no way a private could call in artillery. There was no way for her company commander to call in artillery fast enough.

She nudged her lieutenant's elbow. Her eyes opened widely and gave Tatianna permission to fire. She made herself comfortable against a sandbag and rested her rifle gently.

Everything became one image in her eyes. She slowed her breathing, she calmed herself and lined up her rifle sights at the maximum range and then lifted the the rifle some more. A single German officer became her entire world. She could never tell anyone why the rifle fired at the moment that it fired. She just knew without thinking too deeply that the firing solution was right, that the bullet would go exactly where she intended it to go. The rifle spat out the bullet on a long arcing trajectory.

She missed.

She missed by three inches.

Instead of punching clean through the center of the junction of German officer’s sternum and throat, the bullet ripped through the ribs of the man and tore open the left ventricle of his heart. She did not see her success. Instead, she had already ducked back into the trench and was running fifteen yards to her left as she knew German machine guns were already searching for the single puff of smoke. She knew German mortars would try to reach her.

That night, she was pulled out of the line company and sent to the regiment’s rear to meet with the zampolit and the commander as they were looking for sharp shooters.

 

[fester]

October 1, 1941 Batavia, Java

The Catalina climbed into the air. The three passengers, two naval officers and an Army Air Corps colonel had thanked the Catalina crew for the pleasant flight to the conference with British, Australian, New Zealand and Dutch officers. It was officially a gathering of former Olympians but all of them happened to be serving officers who needed to coordinate plans for the defense of Western possessions in Southeast Asia.

Ensign Ted Sullivan did not care what the pretense was for the flight. It was his first long, overwater flight where he was the sole navigator. And they had arrived on time with only a slight correction needed once the civilian radio stations on Java could be heard. He had done his job. The crew had a night to relax and spend money like slightly buzzed sailors. He had a wonderful evening with the daughter of the gunnery officer from De Ruyter. She had asked for his mailing address and promised that she would write.

Now the Catalina was heading back to Luzon. The weight that had been used for the passengers was now being allocated to quinine tablets. Enough of the foul tasting pills were onboard the flying boat to treat every man that could be mobilized for a week.

Thirteen hours later, the flying boat touched down near the naval base at Subic Bay and by nightfall, the quinine had been off loaded and the crew had completed critical repairs. Tomorrow, they would fly again.

 

[fester]

October 2, 1941 Fort Stotsenberg, Luzon

“Maggots are smarter than you. They stay on the ground no matter what. Private Illababaru you are an idiot, I am surprised that your mother ever trusted you with a spoon. You thought. Privates do not think. Sergeants think and officers order. When you are allowed to think, you will be issued a brain and rockers. Do I make myself clear, private”

The young man tried not to swallow hard as he looked at the bantam-weight sergeant in front of him. His company sergeant had seen him left his hips off the ground when the entire company was supposed to be taking cover during an artillery barrage. It had been several weeks since he had to hold the dead cockroach position from his last screw up but Sergeant Ibling saw everything.

“Sergeant, perfectly clear”

“Go run to the barracks and back, one hundred push-ups at the barracks and one hundred more when you get back”

As the private started his jog to the barracks, he did not see his sergeant’s lips curl slightly in what may have been a penumbra of a smile. The company was coming along better than most of the other company of the 11th Infantry Regiment of the Philippine Army Reserve. Each battalion had a platoon of long service Scouts. The non-commissioned officers of the platoon were scattered and over-promoted. Under normal circumstances, Sergeant Ibling would have been receiving his first squad command if he was on a fast track, more often he would be an assistant squad leader. Now he had been promoted twice and made the first sergeant of an infantry company with a fresh from training lieutenant as the company commander and full of recently recalled reservists.

At least they had time. The first reservists had arrived in early August and the last by September first so the past month had been productive. Later on in the week, they would be going to the rifle range for the first time and the reservists would show what they had learned and what they had forgotten since 1939.

 

[fester]

October 2, 1941 East of Smolensk

The ground shook again. German artillery started to fire. The peasant woman hugged the ground. Her children had survived the German occupation as their mother engaged in the oldest trade in the world but the German infantrymen and artillerymen had been called back to the front. She worried about the counter-battery fire although her newly trained ear did not hear any big Soviet shells coming towards her collective farm. She worried about the new German troops that had concentrated near her village, they did not know her and they had no reason to protect her or her family. She could not worry about the consequences of being a collaborator, that was a future past the week, past the month, past the winter. She once could dream in years but now she only thought in hours, days and weeks.

Thirty miles south of her, the 1st Panzer Army began to advance. The few working French and Czech light tanks were in the vanguard battle group which was attempting to find the forward Soviet positions and bull through the hasty positions and flow around the strong positions. Behind the advance screen, the German built Panzers with supporting mechanized infantry shielded the trucks from seven nations that would supply the advance. And behind those trucks, the leg infantry was still marching forward with horses and oxen bringing their guns to the front.

The war which had been quiet for a few months was now pushing back towards Moscow.