At the same time, those three u-boats had surfaced to disgorge their platoons of commandos, all in black uniforms and slipping into the sea on dark inflatable rubber boats. They paddled silently through the relatively still waters, glad that the tides were quiet. Behind them was one other very special unit. A group of Kriegsmarine crewmen that had been pulled off the Hindenburg when it was at Gibraltar, and flown out by seaplane to rendezvous with a fourth U-boat in the Med. They were gunners, all highly trained in the operations of heavy naval armament, and their leader was none other than Axel Faust, the strong arm of Anton turret on the Hindenburg. They would follow the Brandenburgers in, waiting just off the harbor until a lantern signal ordered them to proceed.
The commandos slipped up to the wide armored flanks of the Normandie, taking to any netting or ladder they could find, where several small boats had been moored along the belly of the beast. Their movement was so stealthy, that it was as if the shadow of night had rolled gently in on the evening tide, lapping against the steel of the battleship. Up they went, the silence thick as the dark.
It was not long before they had reached the main weather deck, where it was knife work at first, until one wary sentry shouted the alarm. Soon after, the snap of pistol fire cut through the night, and a burst of submachine gun fire interrupted the meeting in Admiral Laborde’s stateroom. There, Konen and two supposed staffers had, indeed, produced a letter from Admiral Raeder, and Laborde had been reading it, with growing alarm as he scanned the lines.
“Admiral, it is with great regret that I must now convey to you the news that you are herewith relieved of your command aboard the Normandie, which will shortly be taken as a prize of war…”
Laborde heard the machinegun, men shouting and running on the decks below, a bell ringing, and he instinctively reached for his pistol, only to see he was already covered by three others. Colonel Konen reached quietly for the weapon, removing it, and then saluted. He then ran to the nearest port hole, eager to see what was happening outside in the harbor.
The next ten minutes would be crucial, as there was still a destroyer in the harbor, well within the protected area encompassed by the Jetee du Nord and the large breakwater where the Normandie was moored. Furthermore, there was a battery on the Jetee du Nord that could turn and cover the moles and quays. There had been three destroyers earlier that day, but two had been lured out to sea hours earlier by a false distress call from a steamer, where they were now attempting to take on what looked to be tired and wet crewmen, all well infiltrated with Brandenburgers. It was hoped that the third destroyer would have also responded, but it still remained in the harbor, and it could be a problem.
The key was getting those naval gunners and Axel Faust aboard the Normandie as quickly as possible, and the Brandenburgers had made the forward main gun turret a primary objective, racing down the deck past B turret to the massive armored hulk of A turret beyond. Faust’s men arrived, scrambling up netting thrown down by the commandos. They had already seized the turret compartment, sending men down into the bowels of the magazine itself, and herding any French sailors they found before them. At one point, the French got onto a light flak gun three decks up, and began turning it about, trying to depress the gun to fire on the lower deck and turret. The Brandenburgers saw them, and sprayed the exposed gun mount with automatic weapons fire.
Axel Faust and his men were soon up and rushing to the open side hatch of the massive turret. Once inside, they had command of an armored fortress, with four 15-inch guns armed and pointed directly at that destroyer where it was berthed near the railroad station quay. Faust felt right at home, looking the equipment over, and instinctively knowing what he would have to do here. It was just another A turret, only the had twice as many guns to load. A message would be sent by the commandos telling that destroyer Captain that his ship would be blown to pieces the first sign of steam or any hostile action with its deck guns. To underline the point, Faust soon had the turret rotated and guns trained on the destroyer, their barrels lowering with a hydraulic growl.
By this time, the full company was aboard ship, disarming the small contingent of French Marines, and ordering any crew they encountered up onto the main deck. They were fortunate to find that a good percentage of the ship’s compliment had been ashore that night.
So it was that the element of surprise, and the training, skill and determination of the Brandenburgers, would take the pride of the French Fleet in its mailed fist of steel that night. It was essential that men go down to prevent the sea-cocks from being opened, and forestall any attempt to scuttle the ship. At that very same moment, in the Harbor of Toulon to the northeast, the units of 7th Panzer Division which had been deployed all over the harbor area to supposedly be loaded for transport to Oran, were instead seizing the French Naval units there.
Ironically, it was Admiral Jean de Laborde who was at Toulon in the old history, and it was he who gave the final order that the French fleet should be scuttled. He had sailed to Algiers aboard the Normandie to meet with General Mast and plan how they might deliver Algiers to the Allies at an appropriate time. At that moment, with the war front far to the west in Morocco, and no hope of any Allied intervention until those battle lines had swept into Algeria, Neither General Mast, nor Laborde, had been in a position to take any decisive action. Their intention had been to use the time that remained to ascertain which units in French North Africa they might turn at an appropriate time, and these plans were only in the early stages of development before they were pre-empted by Manteuffel, Konen’s Brandenburgers, and the daring German plan.
Come sunrise on the 29th of September, Germany would have a new super battleship, and Manteuffel would be in control of most of Algiers Harbor, including the graving docks, moles, petroleum storage depot, machine shops, port offices, and the seaplane base in the southwest quadrant. There were several French units well outside the city that had not been accounted for, some of them more determined Senegalese Regiments. They rallied when the shock of what was happening finally sunk in, and began forming up their battalions to push into the city with the aim of re-taking the harbor. But more German troops would soon arrive by rail, the leading edge of some really tough fighting men in the Hermann Goring Division. Behind it, Fischer’s 10th Panzer Division had moved to disarm the French Division at Constantine, and the French defenders of Tunis were meeting more unwelcome guests that night as well. A stream of transport aircraft were landing at the airfields, bearing the leading elements of the 334th Infantry Division. One Battalion of the 10th Panzer Regiment was also just outside the city, having been dropped off there for just this purpose. Its armor proved very persuasive. By dawn, ships would arrive with the Italian Superga Division, a Bersaglieri Regiment, and more German units, including the first company of the 501st Schwere Panzer Battalion.
That day, peremptory fighting would continue in and around Algiers, but it was a fire that the rapidly arriving Herman Goring Division would quickly put down. Further west in Oran, KG Koch had four more veteran Falschirmjaeger battalions to seize that vital harbor, only this time the battleship out in the bay was the Hindenburg. It had been necessary to take out the shore batteries at Ain el Turk and others on the eastern coast, but the 16-inch guns of Hindenburg made short work of that task. Its imposing presence, and the threat the Germans made of leveling the city with those guns if the French attempted to resist, was enough to quell the ardor of the garrison there. This was reinforced by planes off the German carriers, which were up like a swarm of hornets come first light, with the Stukas silencing shore batteries further east along the coast.