Keynes' Cruisers

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October 4, 1941 near Lake Baikal, Trans Siberian railroad

East bound trains held factories and refugees including hundreds of Jews who were still being let out into the wider world by a helpful Japanese consul. West bound trains were full of reservists and heavy equipment. The first of several divisions from the Siberia, Far East and Transbaikal military districts had received orders to move west to Moscow. A tank division that had crushed the Japanese at Khalkin Gol had finished loading all of its heavy equipment including the repair workshops for its tanks onto flatbed trains and had started moving west. The men were well trained and their officers actually had the time to learn their jobs. The last of the reservists had filled out their ranks in July and some men who had fought the Germans had arrived three weeks earlier to discuss their lessons.

The tanks were still too light and there were not enough radios but the division could fight as a coherent whole if it could arrive in Moscow in time to defend the capital from the new German onslaught.

 

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October 4, 1941 Haifa

The harbor was full. It was full of ocean going merchant ships, it was full of small coasters, it was cluttered with work craft. It was full of the normal commerce that it routinely supported as both a peacetime port and a war port in British Palestine. The inner harbor was also closed to commercial traffic. A dozen assault ships were loading a brigade of infantry. This was the third time that this brigade had been loaded. The previous two times had been for training exercises. Equipment that would be immediately needed on the beach was loaded as far to the front and tops of the cargo holds as possible. Sustainment supplies were secondary and stored deeper in the ships’ holds.

The rest of the task force was loading in Alexandria. Two Royal Marine Commandos would be the lead wave as they loaded on the Glen class assault ships. A regiment of older tanks had gone through the workshops one last time before they were driven back into the holds of the converted shallow draft oil tankers. Soon enough, the two brigade groups would be full loaded onto seventeen assault ships and they would be ready for action.

 

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October 6, 1941 Worcester, Massachusetts

The troop train was leaving the station. An infantry brigade group was aboard the long train. The 182nd Infantry Regiment with the attached battalion of 75 millimeter guns, an engineering company and other support elements were on their way to Pine Camp in upstate New York. There they were scheduled for three weeks of intensive field maneuvers against other national Guard regiments and divisions that were almost due to be certified as ready for deployment.

Sergeant Donohue did not care about the grand plan. He cared that his wife said that she felt different and thought she might be pregnant. They had been trying and if he was tracking her calendar right, she should not know yet, but when he said this to her, Elaine smiled and told him to trust her. He allowed himself another moment for himself before he had to stare at O’Callahan, a draftee and assistant machine gunner as the private looked like he was thinking of playing a joke on another platoon. That would have been fine if O’Callahan was subtle and could cover his tracks, but few eighteen year olds were ever subtle.

Eileen Donohue waved at her husband as the train pulled out of the station. She was smiling and crying. He was leaving but he was coming back at least one more time. The rumors had been that the brigade group was due to deploy somewhere overseas very shortly. They would have one more pass she hoped before nausea dominated her life. As the train went around the bend, she waved one last time and then went to find her uncle who had driven her to the Worcester train station. He was playing cards with a half dozen other men, all veterans of the first war, and they were telling stories about the time that their trains pulled out of the station for the last time.

 

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October 7, 1941 Near Orel

An infantry regiment was in well prepared positions inside of the small village along the main highway to Moscow. Panzergrenediers would bleed and tanks would brew up to take the village from the defenders. However the spearhead was not harmed, they made a seven mile detour into the burned out wheat fields around the defenses. Two Soviet divisions were already in the bag once the leg infantry could catch up with the spearheads. They would eventually need to winkle out the defenders as they would need the road but the defenders could be impotent for several days as the spearheads reached forward to find the main Soviet defensive lines along the road to Moscow.

Even as the spearheads were pushing north, the first tanks were running into their most significant opposition. The fall rains had started to lightly mist along the pathways to central Russia.

 

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October 8, 1941 Kasos, Greece

The horizon was uneven as dawn broke. The Italian sentry could see more ships this fine morning than he had since he had left Milan when he had been conscripted. He raised the alarm as the garrison on the island stood to. Two companies of light infantry and a light field battery covered the beaches northwest of the small port of Fri and the port itself. Another hundred men in a series of small observation posts were scattered around the island.

Three Italian torpedo boats raced from Karpathos to intervene against the British invasion force. Neptune and Orion blasted the pesky mosquito boats away even as the rest of the bombardment and close escort force began to shell the known and suspected Italian positions.

Overhead, six Martlets from Ark Royal flew top cover. A strike containing all of the available TSR bombers from Formidable, and Ark Royal and covered by Eagle’s fighters was hitting the airfield on Karpathos. Two Albacores were shot down, one crashed into the runway and another skidded to an emergency landing three hundred yards from a Royal Navy motor launch that was acting as a guard ship in the congested waters.

Even as the airstrike was coming home, the first wave from the 51 and 53 Commandos were going ashore. Six hundred men were landing on a narrow front. Italian machine guns started to send three and four round bursts at the landing craft. The wooden construction provided the illusion of cover. Some of the rounds punched through the wood and went over the heads of the sea sick infantrymen while others tore their way through one or two men at a time. The Greek destroyer, Vasilissa Olga, pressed close to the shore and engaged one particularly troublesome machine gun nest with all four of her five inch guns as well as every anti-aircraft gun. Within two minutes, she had found the range and proceeded to destroy the position and the seven men holding it.

The Commandos hit the beach. Some men ran straight into mines that ripped them apart, and others were pressed hard into the sands as machine guns and rifles spat bullets at them. Most of the men had landed in places where there was some cover from the few prepared Italian defensive positions. They began to methodically work their way up the beach and cleared bunkers and their protective minefields with Bangalore torpedoes, grenades, satchel charges, and bayonets.

Within an hour of the first landing, a large enough shingle had been secured for the two tank landing ships to ground themselves. Half a dozen tanks soon started to support the advance forward as machine gun bullets deflected off of their steel hides and resistance only served to mark where their attention should be. Even as the Commandos and tanks were clearing the thin crust of defenses along the beach, another two battalions of infantry were landing from the assault transports.

By noon, the island had been secured. The Italian commander had surrendered, he was outnumbered 8:1 in manpower and there was no promise of relief or succor. An Italian air raid of three dozen SM-79 bombers escorted by a squadron of fighters had been intercepted forty miles from the landing beaches by the immediate beach combat air patrol of half a dozen Marlets. They stripped the raid of most of the fighter escort even as Ark Royal, Eagle and Formidable launched another six fighters apiece. The raid fell apart as it was under intense fighter attack for the last ten miles. A single landing barge was destroyed and a transport suffered damage from shrapnel and near misses. In return for losing five Martlets, the FAA claimed thirteen bombers for the fighters and the gunners wanted credit for five more.

As night fell on Kasos, the first battery of 26Cwt 6 inch guns were being dragged into place on the eastern edge of the island. Ranging shots soon confirmed that they could reach the Italian airfield on Karpathos. Harassment fire started even as a battalion of infantry dug in around the guns. Landing craft moved food and shells forward to the outpost even as other landing craft brought wounded men back to the assault ships before they departed for Alexandria and Haifa to deposit the wounded to the hospitals ashore.

 

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October 9, 1941 Mga (near Leningrad)

The wounded keened in the distance. Ammunition was cooking off in burnt out tanks. The ground was furrowed and pockmarked like an pox-scarred face. Medics were running forward to the shell scrapes of the battered militia division. Gangs of men, three, four, five, six of them at a time brought their comrades back to the field hospitals on makeshift stretchers. Artillery was still reaching out to the Soviet positions just south of the railbed and even still killing some of the men who just wanted to be left alone for another hour.

The German attack had been stopped. A company of German infantry supported by a platoon of field engineers had managed to reach the rail bed and destroy one hundred meters of tracks until bayonet charges supported by the divisional mortars devolved into hand to hand fighting for an hour. Shovels were almost as deadly as grenades in that fight. The militia division had been starting to crumple and give even as NKVD encouragement battalions were set up 100 meters to the rear of the front line but a company of tanks supported by a naval infantry brigade had counter-attacked.

Further to the west, along the left bank of the Nasija River, the Germans used the flank cover of the river to shield themselves from any deliberate flanking attacks and reinforced their momentary success as the offensive to continue to isolate Leningrad continued.

 

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October 9, 1941 Off Honshu

Carrier Division 5 struggled to conduct flight operations in the fall seas. The plane guard destroyer Oboro dashed between the two new fleet carriers trying to hold her distance while remaining close enough to rescue any irreplaceable pilots who crashed on take-off and landing. Shokaku was the patrol carrier for this morning’s training scenario. She had six factory fresh Zero fighters orbiting the task force and another six fighters warming up. Zuikaku air wing was on a strike where twelve of her Zeros were escorting her own thirty three dive bombers, including nine tagging along from Shokaku, and thirty six torpedo bombers (two thirds her own, one third from Shokaku). They were hunting for Zuiho and Shoho as they were screening the Main Body. The Main Body in this instance was three fleet auxiliaries as the battleships were swinging at anchor in Nagasaki Bay to save fuel oil. The strike took more time to assemble than it should have if it was being conducted by the experience pilots of the 1st or 2nd Carrier Divisions but the men were winging towards their target 150 miles away soon enough.

Four hundred miles south, the old battleship Setsu continued to use Shokaku’s call sign as the obsolete ship stayed anchored in Tokyo Bay. The most critical message sent was an arrangement to send three promising navy recruits to a regional sumo tournament.

 

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October 10, 1941 Rostov
Cold, gray rain slammed into the faces of the tired soldiers horizontally. Pellets of water hit barely opened eyes and flowed off the hunched backs burdened by moving 122 millimeter shells from river barges to the recently arrived trucks. Some of the trucks were heading to the front, while others were moving shells into stockpiles just west of the town. Two divisions had occupied the critical river port over the past week and everyone remaining in the city was involved in building its defenses. Some men and women unloaded the barges and the Black Sea coasters that carried critical supplies to the defenders and evacuated the young and the lame out of the city. Others moved supplies within the city and towards the front. Most just dug. One anti-tank ditch had already been completed just outside of the city. Another ring was being worked on five miles from the inner ring. Bunkers and dugouts were hastily being built in the mud. Concrete would not set in the rain so steel, dirt and green lumber had to be good enough.

 

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October 10, 1941 0621 Benghazi

The air raid siren ceased wailing. Half a dozen Heinkels had hit the port city before dawn. Their target was the docks. And as the nuisance raids normally did, they achieved little beside disrupting the sleep of the ever growing Commonwealth garrison and logistics operation. A single wooden hoy was destroyed and two lighters were listing from near misses. Two sailors aboard a Polish destroyer were being taken to the hospital after an anti-aircraft gun ashore sprayed the superstructure of their ship with 40 millimeter shells.

General Wavell sipped his tea minutes after the air raid ended. He waited a few more minutes until the morning briefing started. This was a test run by his staff before they had to brief the corps and divisional commanders of the next operation. Sirte would be their objective, but far more importantly, the entire combined Italian-German Army was their objective. His forces were building up while the enemy struggled to maintain their strength.

XXX Corps was responsible for the holding the front near Marsa Al Brega. The New Zealanders were anchored on the coast with the Australian 7th Division in the center and the 4th Indian holding the southern flank. An army tank brigade was the corps reserve to handle any immediate threats. The 3rd Indian Motor Brigade as well as an eclectic mixture of commandos, smugglers, eccentrics and explorers secured the corps flank that hung loosely into the desert. Behind the XXX Corps, the XIII Corps was rested. The 2nd South African Division garrisoned the critical road junction at Adjabiya while the two armored divisions, 2nd and 10th, were in a series of camps south of Benghazi. The 70th, 50th and 3rd Infantry Divisions, an army tank brigade and two brigades of the Sudan Defense Force including a single camel brigade were in the army reserve. These units were mostly in Benghazi. A new corps headquarters was due to stand up at the start of the year but the communications troops had not yet arrived to support that headquarters. Back in the Delta, the 1st South African Division was resting and reconstituting as the theatre reserve.

Supply was good as the port of Benghazi was mostly open and under strong aerial protection. Hurricanes, Tomahawks and the first Spitfires provided aerial cover while a dozen squadrons of light bombers and another dozen squadrons of medium bombers were based along the coastal road between Tobruk and Benghazi. Radar and communication networks had been set up and worked well. Supply dumps were beginning to overflow as shells and fuel were coming forward in increasing quantities. The Italian submarine force was active but the coastal convoys were heavily protected and mainly worried about mines instead of torpedoes.

Across from his army were three corps, two Italian and a single German panzer corps. The two Panzer divisions were at half strength in tanks and two thirds strength in infantry and artillery after the battles that moved the front from Suluq to Marsa Al Brega. German replacements had seldom come forward as tanks and artillery were more urgently needed in Russia than Africa. What strength that had been reconstituted was from the successful cannibalization of a single wreck to keep a dozen other tanks operational and a single ship load of factory fresh tanks that arrived in September. The two Italian corps were in better shape. The mechanized corp of a single armored and a single motorized division was almost at full strength even as their tanks were undergunned and under-protected compared to the new Crusader and Stuart tanks which up the majority of the tanks in the Commonwealth armoured divisions. A line of leg infantry divisions held a series of outposts backed by brigade sized strongpoints across from the XXX Corps. Another leg division was garrisoned in the town of Marsa Al Brega itself. The motorized units, Italian and German, were held in reserve west of the front line.

The enemy had enough fuel to train. A recon Hurricane had spotted most of the Ariette Division maneuvering thirty miles behind the front yesterday afternoon. However their fuel was limited. Special intelligence sources indicated that the Axis African army could maneuver for no more than seven or eight days before facing a fuel crisis. The army had reserves stockpiled in Tripoli but that was almost five hundred road miles away. Smaller reserves were at Sirte where small coastal tankers could dock but even that limited supply entrepot was further from the front than Benghazi. The Axis air forces were skilled as the unskilled had quickly died but outnumbered. They could raid, they could challenge and they could attrite but they could not dominate their own air space. The Italian Navy could and would force convoys through to Tripoli after running a gauntlet of air attacks, submarines, cruisers and minefields deployed and sustained from Malta but they would not push supplies forward in anywhere near the bulk or frequency that the Royal Navy would push to Benghazi.

Once the assault ships were back from Kasos, Operation Misericord would go on the count-down clock. The Polish brigade and the Free French Marines would need two weeks to practice landings and the Royal Navy and allied air forces would need that time to isolate the battlefield and prepare the seas for the next offensive. But as the staffers finished their segment of the briefing, General Wavell asked for another cup of tea as he began his dress rehearsal of the operational concept.

 

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October 11, 1941 Straits of Gibraltar

HMS Marlin and HMS Mackerel arrived at the great naval base after a long slow passage from America. The crews were worked up and ready. HMS Marlin did not know how narrowly she had escaped. U-97 had seen the two American built submarines as he was preparing to be the first U-boat to penetrate into the Mediterranean Sea in over two years. The young skipper maneuvered for a shot but the geometry had not settled when the local guard destroyer had rendezvoused with the two submarines at daybreak. The German U-boat descended and began her penetration into the confined sea with the hope that she could support the army which was under increasing pressure in Libya.

 

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October 12, 1941 Western Russia

“Druken”

Twenty seven men pushed the stuck truck forward six inches. Suction from the water now displaced in the newly compressed mud slowed progress off the road. They pushed again and again until the chain could be hooked underneath the front bumper and wrapped around the tree at the edge of the road. Seven minutes later, the truck was back on mostly solid ground after the two hundred meter mud pit had been crossed. Some of that mud was a natural result of the fall rains on the miserable excuse of a road network but most of the mud was from broken culverts and smashed irrigation canals that overflowed into the village. Every single step further east was more painful and exhausting than the previous one.

The cluster of men had a few minutes to themselves until the next truck started to work its way through the mud. This one made it almost halfway before being stuck. As the work gang forced the truck forward, half a dozen mortars started to fire on them. A band of bypassed Ukrainian infantrymen had been observing the German truck company for the past hour from a copse of trees two hundred yards away. As the mortar shells finished exiting their barrels, a trio of machine guns started to fire. Within seconds, every German soldier was face down in the mud. A few were trying to fire back at the remnant attacking them but mud was already getting into the open bolts of their rifles.

Twenty minutes later, seven trucks were on fire and eleven truckers were dead or dying.

 

[fester]

October 12, 1941 Montmartre, Paris, France

Anna Marie held the flowers in her hand as she walked through the cemetery. The fresh flowers were held together by a simple metal band. Inside of that band was another note on the French train system. There had been increasing problems from the Michelin factories not getting enough raw materials and the Creusot works were now seeing an extra two trains a day loading and unloading materials at the arsenal. The Germans were thinking about moving the airborne division that had been ruined at Smolensk back to France for occupation duties while it was rebuilt. These observations were the most important that she had to send.

Her German lover had humored her this morning when she said that she wanted to visit Edgar Degas’ grave. She had been enraptured by his works at the last museum they had visited together, so they had taken the Metro to Montmartre with flowers in her hands. He watched his young mistress pause for a moment before the grave and place her flowers along the few other bouquets. She said a short prayer and left. As the fall afternoon turned into evening, they walked back down the hill and found a brasserie where they had a warm soup and a barely aged glass of wine. The Frenchmen around her shot her glances of contempt but said nothing to the horizontal collaborator and her German protector.

 

[fester]

October 13, 1941 Tokyo

The heavy gaijan stumbled out of the bar. His head would hurt tomorrow but he did not care. He had sent another round of messages back to Moscow. They had praised his team’s work from the summer and he knew they would be pleased with the current information. Japan had no interest in going north and was highly likely to be heading south instead.

As he stumbled back to his apartment, eight secret policemen grabbed him. Four held him as another man chloroformed the suspected spy. Within seconds, they all were moving the heavy body into a waiting truck. The snatch team delivered their target to interrogation and counterintelligence teams that were waiting to begin identifying the depth of the breach that this man had perpetrated.

 

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October 13, 1941 Valletta, Malta

Penelope and Aurora led the convoy in. Eleven ships had departed Alexandria. Two tankers and a coaster had started the journey two days earlier from Haifa joined the convoy just north of Benghazi. Force K had met up with the close escort force 150 miles east by southeast of the harbor. The six modern cruisers and eleven destroyers were jumped once by a small air raid by Italian torpedo bombers but the Fulmars from Formidable had scored a pair of kills and disrupted the attack. A single 1,500 ton bulk cargo ship had been lost to an Italian submarine and a larger tanker was being towed into the harbor after she struck a mine 17 miles off-shore. By mid-afternoon all thirteen surviving cargo ships were tied up to a pier. Most were under camouflage nets of some sort and the smoke pots were lit around the harbor to obscure the high value targets from any follow-on attacks.

By mid-afternoon of the next day, the close escort of four cruisers and six destroyers were formed up outside of the Grand Harbor even as a dozen motor launches and coastal minesweepers re-sanitized the path to the open seas. Behind the escort ten ships from the late September convoy were ready to head back in ballast to Alexandria.

 

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October 14, 1941, Cavite Naval Yard

The shipyard was busy. Marblehead was in the Dewey Drydock having her bottom scraped while work gangs were retubing her boilers. Houston was loading ammunition as she was due on the firing range the next morning while barges and lighters were ferrying supplies from Cavite to Mariveles to support the submarines and coastal torpedo boat base that has been established there. The magazines had been declared operational the previous week and the hillside tunnels were far more secure than the above ground bunker at Cavite.


USS Walker and three of her sisters were being attacked by a voracious gang of paint locusts. Coolies and sailors were scraping the ships down to the original paint and repainting the fast minelayers into tiger stripe camouflage patterns. The other fast minelayer division had already gone through the process and besides losing some visibility, all of them gained stability as years of paint had disappeared and that lessened the top weight of the ships. Besides looking snazzy, each of the converted destroyers would also leave the refit with a single twin 1.1 inch anti-aircraft mount and four new 20 millimeter machine guns. They had to land the single three inch gun and half of their depth charges to accommodate the anti-aircraft guns but they were not fleet escorts, they needed to only be able to defend themselves.

 

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October 15, 1941 Pusan Korea

The division had spent seven days in the port city. Most of the time was spent refurbishing equipment, repairing worn out trucks, and resupplying the larder that would support the division in combat. The 16th Division had been in Manchukuo for several years and it had expected to face the Soviet Far Eastern armies but their orders had changed. The commanding general and his staff knew that the division was to be part of the great drive to the southwest. Initial plans presented over the summer even as the division was still watching the northern border of the Empire, had the entire division allocated to combat in the Philippines in order to keep the Americans from intervening against the main thrust to supply the Home Islands with the critical raw materials it needed to bring glory and wealth.

However plans had changed. One regiment was still allocated to the Philippine Campaign and it would be staged from Palau. The other regiments were to ship to Hainan as theater reserve for the Malayan Campaign. There was enough shipping to move the division now but they would not be part of the initial stages of the campaign as there were not enough ships to assault land another 17,000 men. Instead they would be part of the second wave to support the 25th Army against the Malayan garrison that was growing stronger by the day. Bushido spirit would be sufficient to overcome the decadent colonialists but reinforcements would make the spirit stronger.

As the companies and battalions were due to assemble at mid-morning, sergeants went through the city’s dens of pleasure and trouble one last time for their own enjoyment as well as finding the predictable knuckleheads who would try to join the muster moments before the their orders.

By nightfall, the first troop ship was loaded and by the afternoon of the next day, the troop ships joined the cargo ships and left the harbor, escorted by a pair of training cruisers. Once the convoy passed Okinawa, it split, one regiment heading east for three days and then south to take it outside of the prying eyes of any American patrol planes and the other heading south by southwest on a direct course to Hainan.

 

[fester]

October 16, 1941 Vancouver, Canada

The last private enjoyed the last moment of his last kiss with the girl that he had met the night before. His sergeant waited somewhat patiently before coughing too loudly to break the private’s concentration and chivvy him along the pier.

C-Force was going to war, or at least they were going to the possibility of war instead of sitting in garrison. One battalion had been in Jamaica and Bermuda since mobilization while the other had guarded Newfoundland. They had been brigaded together with a half strength artillery regiment and light support services. Originally the force had been designated for deployment to the Hong Kong garrison but they were being diverted to Singapore. Before they reached Singapore, the liners would deposit the men in Australia for additional unit training. Their equipment would catch up to them before the final voyage to Singapore.

 

[fester]

October 18, 1941 Rabaul

Six Boeing B-17s taxied on the long runway. This was the third batch through the long southern trans-Pacific ferry route. One plane was still in the hangar. An engine was not working right, or at least well enough to risk the aircraft and the more valuable crew on the journey to Port Moresby.

The single battalion of Australian infantry should have been preparing positions, they should have been training, they should have been caching supplies along evacuation rat lines. Instead they were still fundamentally a labor force building out the airfield and improving the harbor. Three dozen American civilian contractors and half a dozen bulldozers were due to arrive at the end of the month to continue improving the strip. Another American chartered freighter was also due to come with 200,000 gallons of aviation fuel and enough bombs to supply three squadrons of B-17s with two missions worth of bombs. Once the American supplies arrived, perhaps the infantry battalion could train again.

 

[fester]

October 21, 1941 Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia

CV-11 was laid down. Her sister, CV-10 had been laid down in early April. . She was starting to resemble a ship six months into her construction program in the adjacent graving dock.

 

[fester]

October 22, 1941 Colombo, Ceylon

He was finally free of the doctors. They had insisted that he rest and recover for months. They thought he would want to live forever. He just wanted to fly. And now he could. A squadron of factory fresh Hurricanes were now his.

He looked at the eager pilots, most fresh from the Empire Training Scheme. He recognized a section leader from his time in North Africa. Two more men had scored kills over England the previous fall. One of those men had a plastic sheen on his face from the burns his Spitfire inflicted upon him before he could bail out, but he could still fly.

“Gentlemen and pilots… Welcome to your home. We will be flying at dawn, we will be flying at noon, we will be flying at dusk. We are predators. We are hunters. We are aggressors. The Hurricane is a wonderful machine to fly. I have scored fifty kills with an inferior version of it. We will score one hundred kills with this lethal, powerful mount.

In order to be successful, we must know our planes better than we know our lovers’ moods. We must anticipate without thought what will make her temperamental. We must know how to stroke her flank and calm her down. We must know how to elicit the utmost of performance before our enemies can harm us as they fly to the limits of their machines as well.

We must be able to shoot true. We must be able to use our heavy cannons to make a rapid snap shot on a target at high deflection. We must always rely on each other that our brothers have our six.

Fall out and report to the motor pool. We have pigeons to shoot.”

The ready room quickly emptied as the newly rebuilt squadron digested the short message that their famous South African commander had given them. Now it was time to shoot some clays before training started in the morning. By December, they were due to move to Singapore.