“Order the gunners to start pounding the crossing points,” he ordered, flatly.
“Jawohl.”
He scowled as he turned his attention to the map, silently contemplating the developing situation. The SS would start counter-battery fire at once, but if he was lucky his shellfire might slow the enemy down for a few additional hours. He’d badly underestimated the SS’s ability to cause trouble behind the lines, as well as their understanding of how his command network worked. They’d missed the command post, thankfully, but they’d sown enough chaos to make it harder for his forces to respond in a timely manner.
“The gunners have opened fire, Herr Generalmajor.”
“Very good,” Gunter said. “And the remaining aircraft?”
“On their way,” his aide assured him. “But their formations are a little ragged.”
Gunter nodded, irritated. Pilots were easier to replace than planes; hell, the Luftwaffe had enough pilots held in reserve to crew the entire air force twice over. But the reservists would still need to be mated with their planes before they could be thrown into battle. He’d expected air superiority over the battlefield, if not air supremacy, but right now even that had been thrown into doubt. The SS, by killing over a hundred pilots, had disrupted half of his contingency plans.
And their own aircraft will be on the prowl too, he thought, grimly. They do not have anything like as many supersonic jet aircraft, but that’s not what they need right now.
“Contact Berlin,” he ordered, tersely. “Give them a status report.”
He cursed under his breath as he sat back in his command chair. German officers – particularly middle-ranking officers – were meant to lead from the front, but there was no way he dared expose himself to enemy fire. The resignations and desertions had torn hundreds of holes in his formation, leaving very few high-ranking officers in position. He’d had to promote hundreds of junior officers to fill the gaps, officers who would have to learn on the job. And who knew how many of them could be trusted? A single officer working for the SS, in the right place at the right time, could do a hell of a lot of damage. Hell, a handful of workers had already done a great deal of damage.
And I’d sell my soul for an American battlespace command management system, he thought, morbidly. He’d laughed when he’d heard about the concept – it was a sign that the American faith in technology as a panacea to all ills had yet to fade – but right now he felt cut off and isolated, dependent upon his subordinates to push reports up the chain. His awareness of the battlefield – his fingertip awareness – was practically non-existent. Right now, I’d be happy with the prospect of micromanaging the men.
He pushed the thought aside, bitterly. There was no time for dwelling on pieces of equipment he’d probably never have, even if he truly wanted them. All he could do now was wait…
…And hope that the plan, thrown together in a flurry of desperate improvisation, would work.
Hauptmann Felix Malguth kept a wary eye on his radar screen, watching for potential threats, as the HE-477 raced towards the river. He knew he didn’t dare let himself get bounced and shot out of the sky, certainly not when there were so few friendly aircraft in the air. The SS would already be on the prowl, he knew, and while he felt the SS pilots couldn’t come up to the Luftwaffe’s standards he had to admit they were pretty good. And besides, there were Luftwaffe bases in the east. Their pilots had probably joined the SS without even being compelled.
He shook his head in grim amusement as he pushed the aircraft forward. He’d worked with the SS a time or two, back in South Africa, and he had to admit the Waffen-SS were good soldiers. They never broke, they never ran… and they were never unappreciative of their CAS aircraft, unlike countless others in the Reich. Indeed, Felix had spent far too much time bloodying his fists while defending the honour of his HE-477 to Luftwaffe jet fighter pilots who thought their ME-346s were shinier and sexier than his workhorse. Perhaps they were, he conceded ruefully, but it wasn’t them who came to the aide of troops cut off and facing annihilation on the ground. Their only role was defending the Reich from British and America intrusions…
Felix had been tempted to resign, when the officer commanding the unit had explained that anyone who didn’t want to fight their fellow Germans could go, with no hard feelings. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d stayed. On one hand, this was an opportunity to test his skills in a far more deadly field of combat – every pilot in his unit dreaded flying into the teeth of multiple SAM batteries – but on the other, the CO was right. They would be flying against their fellow Germans, even if they were easterners. He’d heard some of the pilots joking and laughing about finally showing the easterners what westerners were made of, but Felix knew that such differences hadn’t mattered in South Africa. East or west, Germans were Germans, the Volk united against the world.
And now that unity has been shattered, he thought, as his radar bleeped a warning. And now we’re going to war.
He braced himself, his finger pressing lightly against the firing switch. He was coming up on the bridge… and a number of enemy radars, all far too close to the crossing. If the SS followed doctrine – and he had no reason to assume they would do anything else – there would be at least one or two mobile missile launchers stationed at each side of the bridge, ready to engage any aircraft brave or foolish enough to fly into their sights. They couldn’t afford to lose the bridge, after all. It would make it harder for them to deploy their forces into the west. Maybe they could drive their panzers across the riverbed – some tanks were practically amphibious – but getting the men across in fighting trim would be a great deal harder.
His heart started to race as the bridge came into view. It was a solid structure, built in the days when the Reich had thrust its network of autobahns further and further eastwards. The bridge had probably been designed to take panzers, even though everyone knew that driving a panzer division down an autobahn would rapidly render the road unusable. But the SS didn’t seem to care. An endless line of panzers were crossing the massive bridge, while field engineers worked like demons to extend a network of pontoon bridges across the water; Felix couldn’t help noticing that five of the pontoon bridges were already crammed with troops, advancing westwards. He hoped – prayed – that the men on the ground were ready for the nightmare coming their way.
He jammed his finger down on the trigger, firing a solid stream of cannon shells towards his targets. It was hard to say what his shells would do to the bridge – it was a very solid structure – but he had the satisfaction of watching one of the panzers explode into a fireball as he closed in on his target. That would delay them, at least as long as it took for one of the other panzers to push the wreckage over the side and into the water. And he knew from bitter experience that even the slightest delays could have significant knock-on effects.
His threat receiver screamed a warning as a missile flew into the air, launched by one of the mobile SAM batteries. Felix threw his aircraft to one side, hoping and praying that the launchers hadn’t had time to lock onto his aircraft. Luck was with him. The missile flew past harmlessly and raced into the distance. He sprayed cannon fire over the forces gathered at one end of the bridge – a SAM unit exploded with staggering force – and then altered course, flying away as soon as his cannon was empty. Another missile rose up behind him, but fell back to the ground as he threw his aircraft through a series of evasive manoeuvres. The Reich’s antiaircraft missiles had never been quite as good as the Stingers the Americans had produced and sent to South Africa. Felix knew pilots who had been blown out of the sky by the damned American missiles.