Part VI
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,”
Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat,
“we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Chapter 16
July 2, 1940
Kapitan Kurt ‘Caesar’ Hoffmann was brooding as he stared at the rocky Norwegian coastline off Trondheim. Raeder was upset over failure of the operation, and justifiably so. He had been convinced that it would succeed, and it should have been a great victory, until that strange vessel appeared.
“I knew there was something amiss the moment I set eyes on that ship,” he said to the ship’s chief gunnery officer, Schubert. “There was something wrong about it. What ship was that, Schubert? Is the Abwehr so inept that they could fail to notice a ship of that size in the British order of battle? I don’t think so.”
“It is very strange, sir.”
“More than strange! You saw what it did to Gneisenau, eh?”
They were standing on the weather deck, and the grey sky above seemed to lower over the bay, deepening the gloomy mood that was on the Kapitan.
“I have never seen such a weapon, Kapitan. Such speed and accuracy for a rocket is incomprehensible. It must have been a lucky hit, just like that hit we got on that British aircraft carrier.”
“Yes, and we should have sunk that ship, Schubert. That’s another thing that slipped from our grasp. Yes, things have been slipping. I have the odd feeling that we have been denied our rightful victory. We got close enough to the main battle to see the smoke from the fires on that British ship. They tell me it was Hood, and we should have put that ship at the bottom of the sea. Then Lindemann lost his nerve.”
“He was only following orders, Kapitan. You know Raeder made it clear that if our capital ships were in danger of sustaining serious damage, he was to break off.”
“Yes, but we were so close. So damn close. I could almost see us feasting on those fat British convoys to the south, but that’s another thing that slipped away.”
“I’m afraid so sir.”
“You are afraid? Well I’ll tell you the truth now Schubert. I am afraid. If the British have these weapons then our fleet is good for little more than target practice for them. My god, you saw what those rockets did to the Stukas off Graf Zeppelin, and I spoke with Bohmer as well. Thank God his best pilots survived that hell. His squadron leader, Marco Ritter, made it back, and one of his new hot shots survived as well-the fellow that got two hits on the British! All these battleships and the Stukas do the real work. We should have built more carriers. Bohmer says that Sigfrid was not hit by a torpedo as we first thought when we got that report. No! It was another one of those damn naval rockets!”
Schubert seemed very surprised. “I had not heard that.”
“I just heard it myself. It came in on this morning’s unit traffic: Bohmer confirms Sigfrid lost to rocket attack. Single hit amidships.”
“One hit?”
“Well having seen the damage on Gneisenau that does not surprise me. So there, we have lost one of our newest destroyers.” Hoffmann took a long drag on his cigar, and exhaled, clearly upset.
“But sir, Graf Zeppelin was over 150 kilometers to the north. Are you saying the new British ship slipped by and got close enough to fire this weapon without being spotted by our search planes? We saw it well south of our position when we received the order to break off from Lindemann.”
“You were in the gunnery director with your eyes fixed on the British, Schubert, so perhaps you did not see what happened. I was out here on the weather deck and saw everything. When those rocket weapons are fired there is one thing they do with that vapor trail they leave behind them. You can follow the trail like a smoky rainbow right back to the source of the firing ship. No. That enemy ship was nowhere near Graf Zeppelin, and that is what is so astounding about all of this. It hit Sigfrid from a position south of our own just as you say.”
Schubert was dumbfounded. “But that would mean they would have had to fire from a range of 175 kilometers! That’s impossible! How could they even see the target or know where to aim, even if a rocket could travel such a distance?”
“That is what is so astounding, Schubert. But they did see it. They knew the location so precisely that they would have put that rocket right into the belly of Bohmer’s ship. Sigfrid just got in the way. Bohmer tells me they had just sent over a case of beer and sausages, compliments of the Kapitan, to congratulate Graf Zeppelin on their successful strike on the British. They were keeping station just a couple hundred yards from the carrier. Then hell came from the sky. A lot of good men were lost when that destroyer went down.”
“Sir, they must have had a U-boat nearby to spot that ship. Maybe they have some way of sending course corrections via radio.”
“That is my suspicion,” Hoffman nodded. “If Altmark was hit by a torpedo, then that says the British had a submarine lurking nearby. It might be working in cooperation with this rocket cruiser.”
“Rocket cruiser?”
“That’s a good name for it,” said Hoffmann.
“Then what happened?”
“Bohmer launched everything he had, but the initial squadron was cut to pieces. When Lindemann gave the order to break off the engagement, the remaining planes scattered like crows in a cornfield when you put a good 12-gague shotgun to work. They searched the immediate vicinity, but found no sign of an enemy ship. Of course not, I saw where that rocket came from. It was south of us I tell you, and I have told Lindemann that as well, but he did not believe me.”
“Who could believe such a thing?”
“Yes, that puts your finger right on the heart of it, Schubert. We saw things that were completely unbelievable, and yet Sigfrid was sunk, Gneisenau and Bismarck both hit by these rockets, and don’t forget what happened to Altmark!”
“I thought it was hit by a U-boat.”
“Possibly, but did you hear what that oiler man said? Fritz Kurt. We pulled him out of the flotsam after Altmark went down, and I spoke with the man at some length. He says it was a torpedo, though no one saw any sign of a U-boat on the surface or periscope. But what he did see was a big fat battlecruiser, dark on the horizon. The man thought it was our ship, but then it turned away.”
“Then it had to be British, sir.”
“I think it was the same ship that fired those rockets. I’ve had this odd feeling about it since we first engaged those two British cruisers. At least we sent them packing, and sunk one to start things off. Everything was going so well, Schubert. Then the dominoes began falling. Altmark is sunk, we find this strange ship Fritz was trying to describe, and look what happened to Gneisenau! Don’t you see? Everything that went awry had something to do with that ship.”
“Perhaps you are correct, Kapitan.”
“I can feel it, Schubert. I had the feeling something was watching me, watching our ships from a distance, something lurking behind those grey clouds. It was stalking us, nipping at our heels, taunting us, and when we got close, it punched my battlegroup right in the nose. We must find out what this ship is, and then we must sink the damn thing or this new navy we’ve built will be good for nothing. Lindemann should have continued the engagement. Now look at us, stuck in this miserable fiord, sitting here waiting for the British to sneak up with a couple aircraft carriers and launch those damn Swordfish at us again.”
“We’ll get another chance soon, sir.”
“It may be a while. Gneisenau was ordered back to Kiel along with Bismarck. They left Tirpitz at Bergen, but Topp departs for Kristiansand and Bremen tomorrow if the weather is bad. They’re pulling our horns in, Schubert. It’s just us up here now, and a couple destroyers.”