Knight's Move (Kirov Series Book 21) Read online

  It was a difficult situation, but yet not all gloom and doom. We hurt them as well, hurt Bismarck badly enough to see that ship off my list of nightmares for a good long while. Who knows how bad the damage was to Hindenburg, but I mustn’t lower my guard on that account. The trouble now is those raiders that slipped away while our back was turned. Our men in Gibraltar and Casablanca say every German ship was accounted for except two, the Kaiser Wilhelm and the light hybrid carrier Goeben.

  That’s the immediate problem for me, because by all accounts, both those ships can run like the wind. Argos Fire might help us keep an eye on them… Yes, that would be quite a little game of cat and mouse, only which side is the cat? Those ships can fight well. That German battlecruiser can stand with a pair of our heavy cruisers easily enough, and outrun most every ship we have. By god, it’s nearly twice as fast as our older battleships. We shall have to address the issue of speed in every new ship we commission. And here we sit with 40,000 men at sea in convoy WS-15, all heading south to Freetown and beyond, and just where this raider might be prowling.

  It’s a new game now. The heavy pieces have sallied forth and fought it out in the center of the board. The exchanges were many and hard, strong Rooks falling, and the Queen in jeopardy right from the outset. Lord knows they almost toppled our King, and perhaps they did. Losing Admiral Volsky was the hardest blow of all. The knowledge of future days in his head was invaluable, but at least we still have the Argos Fire, Miss Fairchild and all her lot, so all is not lost. It isn’t as dark as I feel it to be. I must seize the day and carry on.

  Yet what about that key that was entrusted to me. Here I’ve gone and lost it, and Volsky would be alive in Murmansk now if he hadn’t fulfilled his charge to bring it to me. The men have searched everywhere, but god only knows. It might have been blown into the sea, lost just like the key on old Rodney. A fine game I’m playing here. Damn sloppy.

  A fine game, and yes, a very different game now with so many battleships licking their wounds on either side. It’s time for the lighter pieces to dominate the board, slashing bishops in my fast cruisers and carriers, squadrons of destroyers, the intrepid pawns on the board, always loyal, always ready to sacrifice themselves, and with the hidden power to be much more than they might seem at first glance. Yes… Now it is time for the Knights to sally forth. Thank god for the cruisers. We’ve still got most of those in good order, and they’ll have to really shoulder up now with so many of the battleships needing repairs. The new Knight class ships are just about to graduate to sea trials, and they could not have come at a better time.

  From the day he first conceived the concept of the battlecruiser, Lord Jackie Fisher had thought they should replace every cruiser of the line then in service. Yet the Washington Naval Treaty would classify them as heavy capital ships, and so very few had been built when that vital category could see a battleship designed instead. Limits for cruisers were set at 10,000 tons and 8-inch guns, though there was much wrangling over those numbers, and even more cheating.

  The Americans slipped ten 8-inch guns onto their Pensacola class cruiser, and British designers had also seen the sleek ten gunned heavy cruisers of the Japanese Navy. Myoko, Takao and Mogami class ships all ended up with ten 8-inch guns. The Germans had also fudged the treaty limits with their Hipper class, which weighed in at 14,000 tons. Then came the cruiser killers, Germany’s pocket battleships with 11-inch guns, Japan’s Amagi class super cruisers with 12.2 inch guns, the American Alaska class with nine 12-inch guns. When Germany brazenly produced a ship like the Kaiser Wilhelm, with six 15-inch guns, a new arms race was again underway.

  While pretending to still adhere to treaty limits, the British had also quietly pursued their own designs for such ships. So after the King George V class battleship was conceived, the naval architects had carried the same design concept on down to the cruiser class. What they wanted was a ship that could stand with these new designs from Germany and Japan, and what they got was Sir Lancelot, a dashing new Knight in shining armor. It would mount ten 250mm, 10-inch guns, which outpunched the ten gun 8-inchers on the Japanese designs, and also significantly outgunned the German pocket battleships, which had only six main guns. They were mounted in the same design as King George V, with a four gun turret fore and aft, and the kicker being that superimposed twin gun turret forward.

  Might they have the same problems as the quad gun turrets on the King George V class, Tovey wondered? From initial testing, the lighter guns seem to be performing much better, with reliable hoists and hydraulics this time around, and a much smoother loading mechanism that will give these new ships a formidable rate of fire.

  Yes, they are just what we’ll need now, thought Tovey. They will be fast at 34 knots, well gunned, and with decent protection for their class. Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad will get the sword over head and shoulders next month, the first two commissioned into the fleet. Behind them comes Percival, Baudwin, and Pelleas, then Gawain, Ector and Bors if we can ever get them built. It was always said the Knights of the Round Table would return in time of greatest need. To hell with sea trials. I’ll need those first two ships here immediately, and they can joust while on active duty.

  So the order of the day will be to screen the most likely sortie routes for the enemy, with heavy cruisers backed by a single carrier. What battleships I can float will only be deployed once we can find and shadow our enemy, and plot a good intercept course. Again, Argos Fire would be most helpful with that wonderful radar set. She’ll be the eyes and ears of the fleet, basing from the Azores. I would dearly love to have our own naval rockets, but I’m afraid that day is too far off to matter in the heat of this moment. So it will have to be up the big guns.

  He rubbed his forehead with his good hand, feeling the throb of pain again from his left shoulder. Then his hand rested on the bundled coat, feeling the loss, his eyes heavily on the stain of blood there. So many good men, all gone into the shadow, that long final valley of death.

  What is this, he thought suddenly? His finger had struck upon something hard within the tattered bundle of Admiral Volsky’s jacket. Probably a faded gold coat button, or perhaps a medal, he thought, but it was something else. When he probed deeper, finding a hidden seam that had been opened, his finger touched the thin cold metal of the key, and when he pulled it out, his eyes were alight to see it again. He knew it had gone missing, and practically turned the entire bridge upside down when he ordered repair crews to search the rubble there, but it was never found.

  Yet here it was again! Volsky must have taken it from my pocket when he came upon me, probably thinking to keep it safe, bless the man. So there it was, unblemished, without any sign of trauma or damage, and he resolved, then and there, that he would get to the bottom of the mystery that had taken the Admiral’s life to bring it here, the fate that had seen him standing there on the bridge of Invincible, when the ship would suffer the worst harm any enemy had ever flung upon her.

  “My good man,” he said aloud to the bundled coat. “How can I thank you again? And how can we ever replace you?” Yes, they would build new ships, fill out the ranks on the roster, and they would fight on. But this man was unique in all the world, never to stand on one of those ships again.

  Or would he? Tovey wondered. He narrowed his eyes, looking out the port side window of the stateroom where he still sat aboard Invincible, staring at the wide empty sea. What had happened to that other ship, Geronimo, the ship that bore the man he had come to know so very well? Was that Admiral Volsky out there somewhere, still standing a silent watch at the edge of some infinite sea?

  I wonder…

  Chapter 2

  When the fight was finally over, the big ships all withdrawing to find safe waters, Admiral Raeder had flashed a defiant order to the Kaiser Wilhelm, a code word that cut her leash and sent her out into the Atlantic: Rösselsprung, Knight’s Move. It was time to make a daring leap, and the chaos after the battle was the perfect moment for the fleet footed German ship to slip
away.

  Goeben was sent right alongside, both ships still capable of making 36 knots, a fast raiding group with very long sea legs that could see them operating for months if they could manage a secret rendezvous with German oilers. They hugged the African coast, speeding south under cover of German land based bombers out of Agadair. Once clear of land based aircraft the British might still have on the islands, the little raiding group waved goodbye to a low flying Kondor, and saw its wings wag in return. Then Captain Heinrich turned to starboard, heading out to sea.

  The other German carrier, Prinz Heinrich, had all her planes up from the airfield at Tefia on Fuerteventura, but they had been well to the east when King George V said goodbye to that field, providing a last umbrella of defense over the remaining Axis fleet, which steamed off to Casablanca. Some of the better pilots flew off to make a secret rendezvous on the Goeben as it fled south, bringing that little 12 plane squadron to full strength. Marco Ritter and Hans Rudel were there, and the group was now composed of six fighters and six Stukas, with one reserve plane of each type.

  Admiral Raeder now took stock of his situation, soon finding himself alone on the sea in the flagship of the German fleet. Bismarck was too badly hurt to move any further, and Admiral Raeder decided to leave the ship at Casablanca to see if repairs could be made before moving it to Gibraltar. That was where he took Hindenburg, leaving the carrier and destroyer Thor behind to serve in the aviation fuel transport role he had devised for Prinz Heinrich.

  Prinz Eugen was gone, yet he realized things might have been much worse. They had hurt the Royal Navy badly, and could not expect to do that without taking losses of their own. All in all, he had fought them to a standstill, and sent them limping off to the Azores. That had been his mission, and his plan, for without those heavy battleships present near the Canary Islands, Phase II of the plan could now proceed.

  The French still had a good strong group that had come late from Toulon. The battleship Jean Bart, and battlecruiser Dunkerque, still had a good provision of ammunition, and they would now take over the role of covering force for the next step in the plan. The British still had those carriers nearby, and a good number of cruisers and destroyers. Yet they would be matched by the French battlegroup, and it could outgun any line of cruisers that would dare to stand on their horizon.

  So Raeder had every hope that his daring plan here might succeed. Now he set his mind to the matter of logistics again, for he needed to round up supplies, get them shipped down from Casablanca, and secretly move those Siebel Ferries along the coast under the watchful eyes of the Luftwaffe. It would be another 48 hours before Phase II could begin, enough time to work on those damaged airfields, rest the airborne troops, and get the JU-52s out to Fuerteventura and Lanzarote for the next jump. He rubbed his gloved hands together, confident that he could make a good account of this action to Hitler, in spite of the loss of Prinz Eugen.

  I still have authorization to build out the destroyer program, he thought. I must be certain to impress the need for those ships upon Hitler now. If the French destroyers had stayed close, they might have been the ones to take that rocket fire. As it was, they raced about like unleashed dogs, and to no avail. Destroyers…. Yes, we need them in droves, good speedy destroyers, with decent torpedoes and engines that can give me 36 knots or better. That is what I must set my mind to in the dockyards—that and the remaining conversion projects for carriers.

  He smiled. Now our forces are widely scattered, but there is a virtue in that. I’ll have Kaiser Wilhelm and Goeben raising hell in the South Atlantic soon. Hindenburg will make repairs and pose a good threat from Gibraltar. That hydraulic armor plating came in very handy when those naval rockets came in. I must congratulate Kremel on that idea. They absorbed most of the damage in two of those three rocket hits we took, but without them, Bismarck’s superstructure was hit much harder. It will be a good long while before I can even risk moving that ship to Gibraltar, but I think it will eventually have to go to Toulon for extensive repairs. As for Hindenburg, thirty days should see us back in fighting trim, and woe betide the waters from here to the Azores!

  He was already dreaming up operations for the mighty battleship, coordinating with Doenitz and his U-boats, which would hopefully find new bases in the Canary Islands soon. The strategic windfall of success there was incalculable at that moment, but Raeder believed it would pay good dividends.

  If we win through here, he thought, then we set the template for a further move south. We’ll take back Dakar, and then it will be on to the Cape Verde Islands.

  Even as he thought that, a shadow fell on him. What about the Americans? How long would they take to get into the war? Would they confine naval operations to areas near their own homeland, or venture out? What will the British do if we take these islands? Whatever they may have planned, they will surely need the Americans in on the effort. So soon it may be time to speak with Halder again concerning Plan Isabella. That will need more ground troops in Spain, and he will not want to hear about it, but eventually the allies will force his hand, and that of the Führer as well.

  Yes, he thought. Even if I do drive them off now, they will be back. The British will have another pair of new battleships soon to replace the two we just sunk. I will have nothing but the cards I presently hold… The Americans have two battleship divisions in their Atlantic fleet, unless they send ships to replace their losses at Pearl Harbor. Yes, we will still be badly outnumbered, but we can control the coast of Northwest Africa for some time now. Yet for how long? How will they attack when they come? Will it be here, in these islands again, or further north, perhaps in a bolder attack through Portugal? All that lies ahead, but for the moment, I will use what I have as best I can.

  Tirpitz and Scharnhorst are still up north, and I also have the two new Panzerschiff there, Rhineland and Westfalen, not to mention the two older pocket battleships, Deutschland and Admiral Scheer. Then we’ll have two new carriers there soon, Peter Strasser, and the big surprise for the Führer, my Brandenburg conversion project. The last two projects at Brest and Saint Nazaire might also help out. Weser and Hannover will rise on the old hulls of Seydiltz and the captured French cruiser De Grasse—a pair of medium carriers, just like Prinz Heinrich.

  Then come the destroyers. That was the missing element of the fleet. How things have changed! I was always a battleship man at heart. All I could think of was building them bigger and bigger, to please the Führer with his dream of an invulnerable battleship that could destroy the Royal Navy single handedly. 100,000 tons! What good would it do me now if such a ship existed? As we have seen, no ship is invulnerable. Every ship dies one day, either by fire and brimstone, or storm and sea. What I should have built were more fast ships like Kaiser Wilhelm, more little battle carriers like the Goeben, and many more destroyers. I once thought aircraft carriers were good for nothing more than gasoline tankers.

  He smiled, for he had decided to employ Prinz Heinrich as exactly that, but for very different reasons. It was an old concept he had embraced long ago when he argued that the fleet must have long legs. He built endurance into his heavy ships, and then went further with the Dithmarschen class fleet replenishment ship, seeing it as a way to extend the capability of the raiders he would use to overtax the resources of the Royal Navy all over the world. Altmark was lost, but he still had Nordmark, Franken, Ermland, and Havelland. Another was planned, the Westerwald, a replacement ship for Altmark. Now they glowed in his mind’s eye, for he appreciated their use and capability even more.

  Now I finally see what is necessary for the real projection of sea power—ships that can create and defend a sound logistical chain. Now I see what aircraft over the sea can do. Now I finally understand what the Japanese, and the British, and the Americans seem to have known all along. No navy can control the sea unless it can also dominate the sky above it. I am a different man now, and the navy I must build will also be different.

  So we will get more carriers, and yes, I will build those
destroyers. The battleships I still have can pose just enough of a threat to keep the British spread thin, and then I will sail right through the holes in their defense, and ravage their convoys. But I will need destroyers. Those smaller ships are very useful. They can lay minefields, stand guard on ports and coastlines, hunt enemy submarines with depth charges. They can serve as escorts for all our logistical support auxiliaries, and for the heavy ships too. Their lighter guns are also perfect to compliment fleet air defense, and with good torpedoes they can even pose a threat to a battleship. Look what those two impudent British destroyers did to Prinz Eugen in that last hour.

  The list goes on and on. They can serve as fast troop transports, or provide close in fire support for troops ashore in operations like Condor. With better equipment, they can serve as scouts and radar pickets. They can be used in so many roles, reconnaissance, replenishment, fleet defense, Seejagers, hunters and trusty sheepdogs.

  Yes, the British have them in droves now, thanks to the Americans. We are woefully short on good ocean going destroyer classes. Only three of the five ships in the Beowulf class remain, but the last three in that group will be ready with Peter Strasser. Next come all the refit projects. My little troop of dwarves will soon be ready to run with the fleet: Durin and Dain, Regin and Rhandir, Fafnir and Frey, Galar, Glitnir and all the rest. Those eight are nearing completion, conversions from our older existing destroyers that were deemed obsolete.