“‘Shrouded in fog,’” Ingrid said. “Such a lovely term for a warrior to use. Are you a poet as well as a seaman, Herr Kapitan?”
“Finally,” Mahlberg said, ignoring her, “there is the Denmark Strait, the channel between Iceland and Greenland.”
“What’s wrong with that one?” one of the party members asked, obviously bored.
“Pack ice,” Mahlberg said, “thick enough to cut a ship’s hull in two, even Sea Lion. Minefields as well and British patrol vessels. They often keep two cruisers in those waters. But…” Mahlberg paused, hoping that these idiots truly understood the danger. “It is the pack ice that is the greatest threat. In the winter it closes the Denmark Strait. In the summer it reduces the strait’s navigable waters by fifty percent. That means that our room to maneuver is severely restricted.”
“Why, you said yourself that no vessel on earth can stop Sea Lion,” the fat Nazi said.
“That is true,” Mahlberg said. “But why give away the element of surprise before we even begin our mission? How much better to be at our prey’s throat before they realize we exist?”
“The poet is gone. Spoken like a true warrior,” Ingrid said. “Is our prey worth all of this secrecy?”
“You can decide that,” Mahlberg said, tired of the meeting, “when we are under way and the prey is made known.”
Doenitz, although inwardly amazed and intrigued, kept his reply neutral. “This is a remarkable ship, Grand Admiral, but I think it unlikely that she can reach London unscathed.” What was the Old Man thinking? Surely it was not some sort of ill-conceived response to the Bismarck disaster? Hitler had been livid when the great ship went down and vowed that he would mothball all of the Kriegsmarine’s surface vessels rather than see them supply another victory to the British. Doenitz himself had to plead against the notion, gaining Raeder’s gratitude and support, but leaving himself dangerously exposed to Hitler’s revenge should there be another loss of a capital ship.
Raeder began his lecture. “Admiral, consider this: the British have seen each of their allies fall in turn. Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway — France in a matter of days. They saved their army at Dunkirk, but even Churchill admitted that you do not win wars by retreating. Your U-boats are slowly strangling England, the cordon growing tighter every day so that soon she will lie exposed to invasion. London is in flames because the Luftwaffe controls the skies over England’s capital and rains bombs down on her with impunity. So. We remove the last vestige of England’s invincibility. The symbol of the island nation’s stubborn resistance, at least to her people, is Churchill. Destroy him aboard one of the Royal Navy’s greatest vessels and the spirit that is the bulwark of England’s desire to fight evaporates. If England’s leaders are not safe aboard her navy’s vessels, aboard a battleship of the mighty Royal Navy, they are not safe anywhere.”
“That is a formidable argument, Grand Admiral,” Doenitz said, and he meant it. Churchill was the British lion, truly the symbol of Britannica. Kill this one man — kill him in such a way that it shattered the mythology of British naval invincibility — and who could tell what the results would be?
“Everything is in order, Doenitz,” Raeder continued. “The where of it at least. And the how, I should say, is this remarkable ship as you call it. The when is determined by the enemy’s timetable, but we can respond to that at a moment’s notice. We have the Abwehr and Admiral Canaris to thank for the information that sends this vessel on the first of her many adventures.”
Canaris with his military intelligence network, Doenitz thought, was as unreliable as the North Atlantic in winter. He was another self-serving amateur in the army of self-serving amateurs that surrounded Hitler.
“I’m afraid that I can’t say more than that at this point. Orders, you understand. But as it evolves, you shall be duly notified.” Raeder pulled a pipe and tobacco pouch from his navy blue greatcoat, carefully filled his pipe, and turned away from the wind to light it. “And?” he said to Doenitz.
“Grand Admiral?”
“‘And’ how are my U-boats to be involved? Isn’t that what you are thinking?”
In fact he was thinking that a catastrophe lay just beyond the horizon. He had faith in the ship and her crew, and he would lead them, if his heart did not lie with U-boats, anywhere. But half of the weapons available in any country’s arsenal were the decisions made about when and how to fight battles. The most exquisite planning, the most detailed timetable, the most exacting and complex web of logistical support: are all worthless if the admiral’s decisions are faulty.
Doenitz nodded with a smile.
“At this point,” Raeder said, drawing deeply on the pipe, “I can tell you that your U-boats will be involved in two phases of the operation. When we return to Berlin we will meet and I shall give you the full particulars. Doenitz. Listen. This is an opportunity to strike a monumental blow at the enemy. Not only to the head but the body as well. The plan must be fully coordinated and nothing can be left to chance.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now let us go and listen to Mahlberg entertain those asses.”
It was not the entire ship’s company drawn up to greet the various officers, civilians, and other dignitaries as they came on board Sea Lion. The crew inside the dark, damp recesses of Turm Bruno, the second turret from the bow of Sea Lion, fought the idiosyncracies of their temperamental child. Here is where the sixteen-inch guns were located, three across, each in its own cramped compartment so that a hit on one did not destroy the capabilities of the other two guns to do battle. Behind the gun rooms, running the length of the turret like the optical nerves of a ludicrous insect, was the three-position 10.5-meter range finder; one station for each gun. From openings on both the port and starboard sides of the turret, Bruno’s gun layers could call range and inclination. But that role was played only if the main fire control, the haven of the I.A.O., or first artillery officer, was damaged or destroyed. From there the I.A.O. used FuMO 23 radar, a rotating dome with an optic range finder, and his own eyesight from a vantage point almost one hundred feet above sea level to direct fire. The information from any one of the three fire-control stations was fed down through armored communication shafts to the calculation room. The calculation room then fed the information to the appropriate batteries, adjustments were made, and guns were fired. Everything in Bruno, from her huge flat turret to the deep cylindrical well that descended four decks into the vessel and from, which came the cordite and shells to feed the three guns, had been carefully designed by marine engineers. They had created Bruno, but men such as Turm Oberbootsmannmaat Herbert Statz and his crew gave it life.
Bootsmann Max Kuhn, covered in grease and sweat, looked up at Statz from his cramped quarters in the elevating cylinder hold. The yellow trouble light cast a weird glow and cut sharp shadows from the thousand hoses, extrusions, rivets, and pipes that pinned Kuhn in the tiny space.