“That is what is so confounding. They have these rockets—the damage they put on Hindenburg and our other ships was plain to see. Yet they only seem to be in very limited deployment. Raeder may be correct. These may only be prototypes, perhaps limited to a very few ships. They haven’t been seen in use anywhere else. Hell, we took Moscow from the Russians and not one such weapon was ever directed against us. This is quite bizarre, Heinrich.”
“Yes…. It certainly is. Well, good day, Kapitan Falkenrath. I hope we sail together again one day soon. In the meantime, enjoy your medal.”
Heinrich saluted, turned, and walked away, his footsteps sharp and brisk, his mind still inwardly dwelling on those magazine articles. Detmers was the only other man besides Raeder who knew about them. Something told him that the three of them would end up being the only ones who ever really knew. Really knew what? What is it you think you know, Kapitan, he said to himself? Did you stumble across a ship from another time, from the future? Nonsense, just as Detmers said it best.
But deep down, there was a quiet inner mind that would simply not believe that, and this would not be the only time Heinrich would be presented with clear evidence that this impossible notion as presented in those magazines was really truth. And if it was the truth… The faces of those 24 Ministers of the Reich, all lined up in a double spread, were so very haunting.
I wonder what Raeder thinks about that? He’s probably going to wonder a good long while why his own face was not there among that rogues gallery, and why that photo of Döenitz listed him as the Fleet Commander. Yes, he’ll be thinking about that for a very long time….
Chapter 6
Raeder was thinking about it, and it fell like a shadow over his mind, a grim realization that the story being told in that strange magazine was a real possibility. I should be elated with this find, and in one sense, I am. We finally have our hands on prototype weapons that the enemy was undoubtedly testing in the deep South Atlantic. But that entire incident was most unusual, most disturbing.
I have read the log books from each ship, and they simply do not agree. Now I know Heinrich and Falkenrath to be sensible, reliable men. I’ve had my eye on Heinrich for some time now, ever since we lost Admiral Lütjens. He has amassed a most impressive kill record in the few sorties he’s been on, and now this astounding find that no one expected.
What really happened down there? How could Kaiser Wilhelm stumble on an aircraft carrier, hit it, and yet allow it to slip away? The weather must have been very thick. That is the only thing that can account for it. The Goeben actually lost contact with Kaiser Wilhelm for well over an hour, according to the logs there—but those on Heinrich’s ship tell a completely different story. Very strange.
And what about those fabricated reports Heinrich littered my dinner table with—those odd magazines? Why would the Allies concoct such nonsense—to use as propaganda tools? It makes no sense. And what happened to the crew of that ship Detmers brought in—what an amazing find that was. How could something so valuable be abandoned and set adrift like that at sea. Heinrich says the ship was actually underway at about ten knots when they encountered it. Two precious missile prototypes aboard, and all that advanced equipment, on a derelict ship with no Captain or crew….
It’s as if the enemy intended for us to find that ship, which means they intended us to find those missiles as well. Could that be the solution to this puzzle? Are those missiles simply dummies? They know we are aware of their rocket technology, and therefore know we will be stopping at nothing to get these weapons ourselves. So they just leave a few there, on an empty ship. What if they were intended to mislead our technology teams—lead them down false pathways in their research? What if that ship was nothing more than a Trojan Horse? It is clear those rockets can never be fired to prove they even work. Surely the Americans would know that. No. They can only be studied, analyzed, reverse engineered, and there is never any guarantee that our models will work either.
Look how they went to such elaborate lengths to rub our nose in this assertion that Germany loses the war. How very clever—trot out old General Montgomery, reminiscing on his victory over Rommel; line up all the top ministers of state like common hoodlums. Yes, they were certainly giving us the middle finger in those documents. Here they went so far as to date every log and report to the year 1958, as if to say that is how far ahead of us they are with their rocket technology. Then they leave us a pair of poison pills… I wonder…
Yet those were not the naval rockets that have been used against us. They couldn’t be. They are simply too big, and Peenemünde thinks they are multi-stage ballistic missiles, like our own V project designs, yet even more advanced. My god… we’ve got to find a solution for these naval rockets. Look at the damage they have inflicted on the fleet!
We have lost Nürnberg, Prinz Eugen, and watched Admiral Scheer chastened in the far north—naval rockets. The Graf Zeppelin was utterly destroyed, along with destroyers Loki and Siegfried—naval rockets. Gneisenau was sunk by enemy torpedoes in that engagement with the Rodney, presumably by an enemy submarine, and Hindenburg has also suffered three torpedo hits, though I built that one very well. Bismarck sustained so much damage in that duel off Fuerteventura that it will be laid up for at least another nine months.
Thank god we got hold of the French fleet. Their losses are even more staggering: Bretagne, Lorraine, Provence, Richelieu, Strasbourg, Dunkerque, and now Bearn in the Pacific. Their entire battle fleet has been gutted, not to mention the loss of eight cruisers! Yet that entire fleet was always expendable. As it stands now, the presence of the Normandie and Jean Bart, mean a very great deal to our chances at sea now, and their destroyers are worth their weight in gold. Alas, the French Admirals are getting squeamish, though I suppose I cannot blame them.
So many things concerning these new weapons do not make sense. What caused that massive explosion at sea in that earlier Atlantic engagement? What kind of ordnance could the Allies be using? It towered up thousands of feet in that terrible mushroom cloud. Could it have been something like the secret atomic project our scientists have been working on? I was afraid we would see it again off Fuerteventura, but nothing of the kind was used against us there. Could that earlier explosion in the Atlantic have been the deployment of another prototype like the missiles Heinrich found? If so, and these rockets are the real thing, then that Trojan Horse had a real terror within it. What have we taken within our gates by sending those rockets to Peenemünde?
It took some doing, but a Grand Admiral has some clout after all. I managed to get hold of the preliminary assessment by the technical team at Peenemünde. That is how I knew those were not naval rockets, but ballistic missiles. And now I also know that their warheads were most unusual, possibly the same as the weapon that caused that terrible mushroom cloud in the Atlantic. God help us if the Allies have such weapons now—if they ever have them at all! Then the things they taunted us with in that strange magazine would indeed come to pass. Germany could never win this war, and I am well aware of how our ring leaders in the Nazi Party would be regarded. Thank God I am not a Party man. Is that why my picture was left out of that gallery, or was there some other reason?