“The convoy system is stiffening up now, sir,” said Admiral Pound. “We hit a poor patch while Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were at sea, but they’re both holed up in Brest at the moment.”
“Where I hope you’ll keep them, First Sea Lord,” said the Prime Minister. “And that being the case, we should be able to get this convoy handed off to Force H without much worry. And from Gibraltar you can send out the whole battle fleet to get them safely ashore in Egypt. Then I shall have the satisfaction of knowing I’ve quieted General Wavell, at least for the moment, until he dreams up some other reason why he cannot yet undertake offensive operations worthy of the name. If nearly 300 new tanks will not compel him to move, then nothing will, by God.”
“Assuming the tanks reach him safely, sir.” Pound admonished. “I may ask the question, and I’ll withdraw it if you deem it impertinent—what will General Wavell do with his Matildas if they’re lying at the bottom of the sea?”
“Come now, Sir Dudley, that is an outrageous notion. You have Renown, Repulse, Queen Elizabeth—more than a match for anything the Italians can sail. Cunningham has the battleships Barham and Valiant as well. And you’ll have the Ark Royal along with them to provide air cover.”
“I mean no disrespect, sir, but the Ark Royal cannot put anything into the air to effectively oppose the German Tenth Fliegerkorps. They’re flying the old Swordfish, sir. The Old Stringbags, along with a few Fulmar fighters.”
“And carrying fifty new Hurricanes, I might add,” said the Prime Minister. If you move at good speed you’ll be under our own land based air cover as well—and all the more reason to get this convoy through with those Hurricanes for the air wing in Alexandria. Look here—the men of our 7th Armored division have had a rough go of late. They’ve been sitting on their thumbs, without tanks, and for an armored division that is a fairly sad state of affairs, wouldn’t you say? Now, I have the greatest respect for you, sir, and your opinion has been duly weighed here. Yet I must concur with Admiral Cunningham and believe we can push this convoy through. We’ll call it Operation Tiger then, shall we? Ride the tiger’s back!”
The Prime Minister clenched his fist, as if to hearten the spirit of his First Sea Lord, though he had determined he would insist on this operation if it came to it, and make it a matter of utmost importance. If he ever wanted to convince the Americans to weigh in and stand to arms for Britain, then it was incumbent upon him to first prove the British army could do more than organize a miraculous retreat. Rommel had landed his Afrika Korps in Libya a month earlier, and chased the British army all the way to the Egyptian border, with a good portion of the army cut off and besieged at the fortified port of Tobruk on the Libyan coast.
Though the threat to Alexandria was now very real, the Prime Minister had received an Ultra intercept of a report concerning Rommel’s condition at this time. It described the German position as weak, lacking adequate fuel and supplies, and strongly advised no further push into Egypt. But Churchill was not going to tell his First Sea Lord about it for the moment. He wanted to create as much urgency as possible on his side of the discussion, and relieving Tobruk was uppermost in his mind. He had to get Wavell moving! He needed a victory, and he was determined to have one before summer’s end.
“As you wish, Mr. Prime Minister.” Admiral Pound deferred. It was still against his better judgment, but he was unwilling to make an issue of the matter. “We’ll have to keep our trousers neatly folded on this one, sir,” He said quietly.
“Neatly folded and in the drawer,” said Winston. “If word gets out on this, Jerry will spare no effort to insure those tanks do end up at the bottom of the sea.”
“We’ve stood watch on Brest most of April, and it does appear that the two German battlecruisers are laid up for repairs.”
“Perhaps the Royal Air Force can pay them a nightly visit,” said the Prime Minister.
“Without doubt,” said Admiral Pound. “Tried to get at one with a low level torpedo attack a few weeks ago, but there was just too much flak. So I suppose we’ll have to rely on night bombing by the RAF at higher altitudes. ”
Churchill smiled. “Tell Admiral Somerfield at Force H that he’s done a bang up job, and wish him God speed. We’ll be running the convoy his way behind the screen you have already set up on Brest, and he may expect their arrival at Gibraltar by the 6th of May. It will come in two parts, 8A and then 8B sometime after.”
“Very well, sir. The German ships are holed up for the moment, but the situation may change.”
Churchill fixed him with a steady eye as he nodded to leave. “Situations always change, my good man. There’s nothing more certain than that.”
When the Prime Minister had left him Pound sighed heavily. “That they do,” he said aloud. Tiger Convoy indeed, he thought for a moment, then decided. We’ll designate this one Convoy WS-8A. The WS stood for “Winston Special.”
Chapter 9
Kapitan Otto Fein was finally a happy man again. He was putting out to sea, and this time without Admiral Lütjens in command. The admiral had guided the ships on the last sortie with Scharnhorst, but now he was preoccupied with the planning of another operation farther north, the inaugural cruise and breakout of the more powerful battleship Bismarck. Fein had orders to get to sea by any means possible, and head out into the Atlantic to wait for her big brother. Until then he would have free rein to attack any undefended convoy he might encounter along the way. By launching this arrow early, the Germans also hoped to draw off British assets that might be used to oppose Bismarck.
Lütjens will be sticking his thumb in my pie soon enough, he thought. But perhaps I can pick a few berries before that happens.
A man of 46 years, Fein had entered the navy in 1914 and made his way steadily up through the ranks from Radio Officer, to Watch Officer on minor ships until he was finally made Navigation Officer on his first decent fighting ship, the heavy cruiser Koln in 1934. It had been a long twenty years, but his persistence soon landed him in positions of increasing responsibility, an able Chief of Staff at the Naval Station of the Baltic Sea, a stint in the Naval Academy as advisor to OKW just before the war, and then another Chief of Staff position in Naval Group North. Yet his itch for combat command was finally satisfied when they gave him Gneisenau in August of 1940. Since that time he had made good use of her!
In his estimation he was already too late getting away this night. It would have been better if he had slipped out five days ago when the moon was still young, but the combination of unusually clear weather that week and pesky British air raids had prevented him from leaving. Now the clouds were heavy overhead, assuring the RAF would not be visiting, and the low lying coastal fog was thickening up nicely. He could not even see the crescent moon, which was a good sign.
Just after midnight, his ship was finally ready to pull up anchor and slip out of the harbor, the blackout curtains pulled tightly shut on every window, her speed low so as to quiet her engines as well. One never knew who might be watching on the coast, though he found it hard to believe the British naval intelligence would not soon learn he had departed. All able seamen and sailors who should have been roiling about the pubs and brothels of the city that night were discretely missing, a fact that any careful observer would not have failed to note.