“Visual sighting, sir. Aircraft of some type.”
The Admiral raised his field glasses, scanning the distant horizon where he soon noted what looked like a small, yet odd looking aircraft. It hovered over a bank of low clouds, well within sighting distance of his task force, and he swore under his breath, wishing he had had a couple of Sea Hurricanes up for air cover. This contact was most likely a Do-18 flying boat, a German reconnaissance plane out of Tromso. It was the only thing with the range to patrol this far out, and now that he had been spotted, the news would put the enemy on alert.
He had hoped to get much closer to the coast before being discovered, and this news would now force him to reconsider his options here. Should he detach Furious and Adventure as planned, or keep the ships in hand for a quick run in to the coast in the hopes of getting off the strike as soon as possible? He squinted into his field glasses a second time, but the contact had slipped into the low clouds and was gone.
“Better notify Home Fleet,” he said to his Chief of Staff. “And have Mr. Grenfell come to the bridge.” Grenfell commanded his 809 Squadron of twelve Fulmar II fighters, and ten minutes later he was discussing the situation in the plotting room off the rear of the bridge.
“The contact was visual,” said Wake-Walker. “Strange that we didn’t get a look at it on radar first with this odd interference the last few hours. We might have had time to get your boys airborne.”
“Right, sir,” said Grenfell. “I’ve heard the antennae have been a bit rattled today.”
“Well, the thing is this. If Jerry is on to us, and we make a run at the coast now, we’ll need more vigorous air cover over the task force.”
“I can split my squadron in thirds, sir,” suggested Grenfell. “We could put four planes in the air and rotate the duty en-route, then muster the lot of them for the raid.”
“Good suggestion,” said the Admiral. “See too it, will you? And I should like to have the first flight up immediately, if you please.”
“Right, sir. Will we be keeping to our planned course?”
The Admiral considered for a moment. “Unless we hear anything to the contrary from Home Fleet, I’m inclined to maintain our present course. However…I’m cancelling the mine delivery to Archangel for the time being and keeping Furious with the task force pending further developments. In this light, you may wish to coordinate with Furious and extend your air cover with the addition of her fighter planes as well.”
“Very good, sir. Lt. Commander Judd’s four Sea Hurricanes would come in handy. I can have my first flight up in fifteen minutes.”
The Admiral was satisfied that he would not be spotted without air cover again. Yet now he turned his thoughts to the mission ahead. There was little real surface threat, as all the Germans really had in the vicinity at the moment were a few destroyers. They may have been able to slip in a Hipper class cruiser, but with Bismarck gone, the only real formidable threat the Kriegsmarine could mount would come from the battleship Tirpitz, and she was laid up at Kiel for the moment if the Admiralty's intelligence was correct.
If Hipper showed its face, he had two cruisers here to deal with her. Even if he was spotted, the Germans wouldn't have much to throw at him out here. Oh, the Do-18 might return again and attempt a bombing or torpedo run, but with two Royal Navy aircraft carriers present, it was more than likely the Germans would use these planes to keep a distant, wary eye on the British fleet's movements. U-boats were another consideration, however. The Germans would likely vector in anything they had in the area, but his task force was well protected with all of seven destroyers.
All things considered, he had little reason to think of canceling this mission, though he was comfortable with his decision to keep both carriers together for the time being. Perhaps an opportunity might arise in the days ahead to let Adventure complete her delivery, but for now she would stay with the main fleet. He watched the takeoff of Grenfell’s Fulmars with satisfaction, noting that Furious had also spotted and launched two of their Sea Harriers. The planes circled the task force once and then sped off into the distance.
Moments later the Admiral was interrupted by his radioman.
“An odd message, sir.”
“Home Fleet?” He turned, expecting to be handed a decoded signal, yet his radioman was still at his post, listening on his headset as if monitoring a live transmission.
“It’s in the clear, sir,” he said incredulously. “I think you had better hear this, Admiral.”
“Well, put it on the loudspeaker then.”
The radioman flipped a switch and they heard a clear hailing message, in English, yet the speaker had just the hint of an accent that was immediately apparent to the Admiral.
“Force contact at latitude seventy degrees, forty-two minutes, forty-five seconds; longitude zero degrees, forty-six minutes, forty-eight seconds; speed fifteen knots, please identify-over.” The message repeated.
“Someone is out of his bloody mind,” said Wake-Walker. “Breaking radio silence like this? What, has he given out our position and speed as well? Captain Bovell, if you please, sir!”
“Admiral?” The ship’s Captain was at his side immediately, returning to the bridge from the plot room. The Admiral inclined his head to the overhead loudspeaker, and waited as the incoming hail repeated.
“Damn sloppy,” said the Captain. “What do we have out there, sir, some imbecile in a fishing trawler?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Wake-Walker. “How could a trawler be quoting our position chapter and verse like that? Blast! First we get this sighting by a Jerry reconnaissance plane, now this! If that transmission is intercepted our entire cover will be blown. Anything from the watch?”
“No one has reported any surface contacts, sir. Grenfell’s Fulmars are up now, and we can have a look around. I'll check the watch and advise them to be on the lookout for any commercial shipping.”
The hail repeated.
“Very well, Mister Sims. Turn that damn thing off.”
The radioman pursed his lips, again looking at his Admiral, wondering if he should bother the man as the open band hail began to repeat again. Before he could speak, however, a message came over the speaker tube from the radar room.
“Air reconnaissance reports a strong surface contact north by northeast, approximately 40 miles out from our position. No contacts on the ship’s surface radar.”
Admiral Wake-Walker raised his thin brows, surprised. A surface contact? He turned to Captain Bovell to assess the situation. “What do you make of that, Captain? Have we found our fishing trawler?”
“Probably a stray steamer, sir. Could even be a German supply ship, though I can’t see that they would be broadcasting a message like that in English. More likely Norwegian traffic, though we have no notifications of commercial shipping from the Admiralty. Yet this could be our loose cannon. Can’t imagine how they may have spotted us, though. Shall I have Grenfell vector in one of his planes to overfly the contact?”
“That would be prudent,” said the Admiral, and Bovell gave the order to the radioman at once, who seized upon this opportunity to relate the recurrence of the hail he had been receiving. “They just keep repeating it sir, and the operator sounds somewhat edgy, if I may say.”
“Edgy?”
“Might it be a distress call, sir?”
“Perhaps, yeoman. We’ll see to the matter. Carry on then.”
“Aye, sir.”
Minutes later Kirov would activate her forward missile array and paint Admiral Walker’s ships with their targeting radars, yet the British would be entirely unaware of that. Kirov was well outside the range of their own rudimentary surface contact radar, and had no equipment aboard capable of detecting and analyzing the radar signals being beamed at them in any case. In effect, Kirov was squaring off and shouting at a deaf man. When one of their fighters finally spotted something on its radar set, they naturally vectored that plane in to have a closer look.
As the plane approached Karpov, seemed more and more ill at ease. Walking to the forward view screen, he turned and wagged his finger at the Admiral. “You could be making a serious error,” he said. “One we may not live to reconsider!”
Admiral Volsky felt the gesture strayed very close to insubordination, yet he was too preoccupied in the intensity of the situation to deal with that for the moment. Rodenko's timing had been very accurate, and soon they looked to see a distant mark on the gray horizon that was apparently the silhouette of an inbound aircraft. Somewhat relieved, Volsky was gratified that he would finally have the evidence of his own eyes to throw into the
