“And inform the crew,” he said. It was easy to push confidence into his voice. “The final battle of the Second British War begins today.”
Unbeknownst to Generaladmiral Förste or any of his men, HMS Sealion had been prowling the seas near Denmark when it had caught sight of the smaller German ships advancing through the Kiel Canal. The canal had been expanded several times by German slave labour and was now large enough to allow a Bismarck-class battleship to pass through without any real problems, although it wasn’t something that the ship’s commanding officers cared to do. The German fleet used the canal to allow rapid deployment without having to navigate around the tip of Denmark, where so many German ships had been spotted and tracked by British ships or spies in Sweden. These days, the Swedes were less cooperative when it came to spying, but Sealion and her contemporaries were able to watch for German ships without their help.
Commander McKenzie peered through the periscope as the massive fleet headed west. It wasn’t easy to see them all, but he made out four battleships and at least three carriers. The Germans wouldn’t have risked a battle without all of their ships gathered together in a single overwhelming force, but he couldn’t see the fourth carrier amidst the other ships. The Germans had sent nearly seventy ships to sea, and the destroyers, always on the prowl, kept him back through the sheer force of their efforts to deter any prying eyes.
“Compose a message,” he said after a moment. “Enemy fleet sighted. Composition four heavy battleships, several smaller heavy ships, three carriers and numerous smaller ships. Attach course and speed, and then transmit.”
“Aye, sir,” the radioman said. He worked his pad for a long moment. “Signal composed, sir… and transmitting.”
“Keep us well back,” McKensie ordered. The Germans might not have heard the message — they’d transmitted as short and simple a message as possible — but one thing every submarine commander learnt when they were training was never to underestimate the enemy or assume that the enemy was stupid. Those who didn’t learn that lesson ended up dead. “Prepare for evasive manoeuvres…”
Gruppenkommandeur Albrecht Schmidt took a breath as his jet aircraft raced down the tarmac of the runway before rising up into the sky, moving sluggishly as always with the weight of the rocket pods attached beneath the wings. He had more reason to be nervous lately. In the last few days, there had been a handful of petty attacks by the Norwegian resistance against German military installations, including one nervy attack on an airfield while a heavy transport had been taking off for Denmark. The resulting crash onto a Norwegian town should have been counted as an own goal — it had killed more civilian Norwegians than Germans — but it had been alarming. Everyone had thought that Norway had been reasonably pacified.
Schmidt concentrated as his aircraft approached the flying tanker for a final refill before setting out after the British ships. The German Army had taken a beating on British soil and its reputation for invincibility had been badly dented. It had given hope to the people under the German boot, even the Norwegians who were as close to fellow citizens of the Reich as Schmidt himself was, and there had been a series of incidents right across the Reich. The SS had cracked down hard on most of them, and some of them had been little more than half-hearted anyway, but even so, it was a depressing reminder of just how unstable the Reich could become, if the war went badly wrong.
He checked his compass and set out along the course he’d been ordered to fly, the entire group maintaining radio silence. If they were lucky, the British would never know they were coming. It wouldn’t be like attacking Scapa Flow when the British ships had been effectively stationary and undermanned. This time, the British fleet would be moving, fully manned, and very capable of shooting back with radar-guided weapons. This would be the decisive battle. If they sunk the carriers, the remainder of the British fleet would be easy to deal with…
Assuming that they found it. They knew where the fleet was, they knew its course, but if the fleet broke contact and headed off on a different course, they would waste precious time trying to locate it. They wouldn’t have as much time as they had over Scapa Flow, either. There weren’t as many tankers devoted to refuelling the aircraft this time. Schmidt hadn’t been told why, but he could draw his own conclusions… and none of them were good. The aircraft that would have been intended to refuel them were most likely destroyed.
The hills and fjords of Norway fell away behind them as the flight proceeded onwards towards their target. One way or another, it wouldn’t be long now, not with the spotter aircraft constantly relaying the British course and speed. Schmidt expected them to break contact, but the longer the British delayed breaking contact, the easier it would be for his force to locate and destroy the their ships. The signals kept coming in, however, and as they came in, he allowed himself a smile. There was no hiding place for the enemies of the Reich.
“Admiral, we have a large German force taking off from Norway and flying towards us,” the radio officer said. “The Sealion just updated us with the location of the Germans…”
Admiral Fraser listened to the remainder of the report in silence.
“Order the carriers to launch their aircraft,” he said, once the report had finished. “I want them to target the German carriers first, and then their battleships.”
He waited until that order had been sent. The carriers of the British fleet would be launching already, their crews pent up and waiting for the chance to strike back at the Germans, blissfully unaware of the German flight descending on them from Norway. Fraser hoped that the Germans were unaware that he knew about their attempt at a sucker punch; the message from the spotters at Norway had been carefully disguised as a signal from a German army unit. By the time they realised their mistake, it should be too late to do anything but dance to Fraser’s tune.
“The carriers are launching now,” the radio operator announced. Fraser could hear the nervousness in his voice, even though he didn’t say anything out loud. He’d just stripped the fleet of all of its air cover. The German spotter aircraft would be gleefully relaying that to the German ships, who had kept back their own aircraft to cover themselves from his strike… all the while expecting him to be naked and vulnerable to their strike. “Sir… Force One has relayed its confirmation.”
Fraser nodded.
“No reply,” he ordered, as the radar screens filled with the lights of German bombers. “We’ll allow Force One to carry out it’s part of the mission without being interrupted.”
Schmidt had radar contact with the British ships a long time before he saw them. They were great majestic castles of steel, moving through the water as if they didn’t have a care in the world, showed no sign of responding to his presence. The fleet had launched all of its strike aircraft towards the German fleet… and even if they recalled them at once, the British multi-purpose aircraft would have to be rearmed before they could fight his aircraft, assuming they could have stood their ground. The British carrier-borne aircraft would be no match for his land-based jet aircraft.
He smiled, altering course slightly to locate the carriers in the fleet… and then one of his bombers exploded. The blast shook his plane, the more so because it wasn’t expected, and Schmidt struggled to maintain control. A second bomber exploded, then a third, and for a chilling moment Schmidt wondered if the British had actually found a way to detonate the bombs in their bomb bays, before looking up and seeing…