“There,” he said starkly. “What are these ships doing, Mister Fedorov, delivering milk?”
“That will be the carrier Wasp and her escorts. They should be turning about soon and heading south. They pose no threat, sir.”
“They most certainly will pose no threat when I have finished with them,” said Karpov.
“But, sir, you cannot attack these ships! Remember what the Admiral said? What if the Americans react by entering the war early?”
“Mister Orlov…” Karpov turned to look for his dour Chief of Operations. “Please escort Mister Fedorov from the bridge. He is relieved.” Karpov had other plans for the Americans. Whether they entered the war now or four months from now was no longer his concern. He would see to it that they never reached the Rhine River before Russian troops got there first. This was only the beginning.
“Aye, sir.” Orlov’s looming presence was a shadow over Fedorov a moment later, and though he knew the Captain was about to make a terrible mistake, there was nothing more the navigator could do. Orlov would make a point of making his life miserable for the next month, he knew, if any of them lived that long. He gave the Captain a long, sullen look, then started for the rear hatch of the bridge citadel, receiving a not so gentle nudge in the back by Orlov as he went. The Chief looked over his shoulder, grinning at the Captain. “I’ll send up Tovarich,” he said. “He’s not so talkative.”
The 33rd Pursuit Squadron was a part of the larger 33rd Fighter Group defending the East Coast of the United States. Its pilots proudly wore the shoulder patch of a blue shield with a flaming sword above the moniker, “Fire From the Clouds.” Yet they were to encounter exactly that as they flew in formation, when the barrage of eight S- 300 missiles suddenly clawed through the morning sky in front of them. 2nd Lieutenant Joe Shaffer saw them first, calling out the sighting on his radio.
“Hey, what’s that coming up at twelve-o-clock?” It looked for all the world like a flaming sword, long, sleek and burning in the sky with a fiery tail and fuming exhaust. He only had a second to think this, however, for the high speed missiles closed the distance at a frightful rate and soon the sky ignited with fire and a hail of lethal metal fragments ejected from a series of tightly packed metal rods in the exploding warheads. Shaffer was dead before he could say another word, his plane riddled with shrapnel. So were Dunks and Bailey, his two wing mates. His sub- flight of three planes extinguished by a single missile.
Far back in the formation, Lt. Commander Boone watched with amazement and horror as six more violent explosions took down the old P-40s as if they had been flies swatted from the sky. Six, then eight more were flaming their way down towards the sea, Meeks, Hubbard, Walker, Huntsdorf and Freeman dead as they fell; Bethel, Bradley and Riggen all unlucky enough to still be conscious as their planes crashed. The Warhawks, the famous planes of the Flying Tigers, were falling.
Boone’s only instinct was to push hard, open the throttle, and put the plane into a sudden dive. There was no way he would ever out climb the fiery streaks that had devoured his fellows, so he would get down as low as he could. Only those who had the same idea in those frantic first few split seconds would survive. Anyone who thought to bank left, right, or to put on power and climb was caught up in the wild spray of searing razor-like shrapnel that had gutted the heart of the formation, just as the missiles had skewered the planes off Furious. At least then, the British pilots may have had some expectation that they were flying into danger. For the Americans, their sunny morning, after having had the thrill of taking off from an aircraft carrier, was suddenly transformed into a blazing nightmare.
Eighteen planes were destroyed by the missile salvo, with six others damaged so badly that they also went down into the sea. Of these only one man would be rescued. The remaining six, who had thought to dive hard to the deck along with Boone, were the only planes to make it back to the carrier Wasp. Not knowing what was ahead of them, they wisely turned back towards the naval Task Group, shaken with fear and alarm, and careening low over the wave tops. Boone had the presence of mind to get on the radio and shout out the only warning Wasp would receive. “Mayday! Mayday! We’re under attack!”
Along the way back there was one last harrowing moment when he looked over his shoulder and saw yet another fiery contrail streaking in toward his position, high overhead, yet it went on by, ignoring the tiny fighter planes below, intent on other prey. Another followed it, then a third, and when he and his hapless comrades finally saw the distant silhouettes of the task force he could see the anger of fire and smoke darkening the horizon. What had happened? His mind had no reference point for the things he had seen in the sky that morning, and as he drew near the task force and began to pull up to gain altitude, he could see that the cruiser Vincennes and destroyers O’Brien and Walke were spitting out flak from every gun they had-at him! A moment later he saw why. Behind them the carrier Wasp was a mass of broiling flame and smoke.
“Hey, lookout you navy rats!” he shouted into his radio set. “We’re friendly!” The navy was taking no chances, he knew. They had been hit, saw incoming aircraft, and they were sending up a wall of flack in reprisal. The destroyers were up at high revolutions, dropping depth charges in their churning wakes, but Boone knew this was no U-boat attack. The cruiser was lighting up the sky with all of her eight. 50 caliber machine guns, two 37mm AA guns, and even her 5 inch secondary batteries, which doubled as AA guns, were getting into the fray. Friendly or not, he wasn’t sticking around.
Boone banked sharply away, a few of the other planes tailing after him, and he headed away from the navy ships until cooler heads could prevail. He’d get on the radio and find out what to do later. He reasoned he could head west and reach the coast of Greenland soon enough, or just ditch his plane later near a friendly ship if it came to it. One look at Wasp told him he wasn’t going to get a chance to complete his carrier qualification ticket and make a landing there. He looked over his shoulder and saw the ship heeling over to one side in a bad list, and thought he saw men jumping from her flaming decks into the sea.
God almighty. It wasn’t the Japs, and it certainly wasn’t the Brits that had attacked them. It had to be the Germans, but with what? When he had gained a little altitude he saw them again, angry red sharks streaking in and diving for the navy ships. One came in on the deck, accelerating to an impossible speed, another just dove in from above, both knifing into the cruiser Vincennes with pinpoint precision, igniting a shuddering explosion.
He watched the orange fire ignite amidships on the cruiser, a black fist of smoke punching up into the sky above her. What was the enemy firing? It looked like torpedoes were streaking through the sky, but this was no U- Boat, he knew. He had never seen anything like it in his life.
“God Almighty!” There was nothing else he could say.
His presence over the ships was a cause for much alarm and confusion. The sailors thought they were being attacked by enemy planes until one finally spotted a white star on the wings of the last plane high tailing it off after Boone.
“Hey, that’s one of our P-40s,” he said. “Hold your fire!”
Fifteen miles to the southwest, Task Force 16 plodded along at a sedate 15 knots, a fan of five destroyers out in a wide forward arc followed by the cruisers Quincy and Wichita. Behind them came the lumbering hulk of the old battleship Mississippi leading four other steamers in columns of twos, the transports bearing equipment and supplies for the newly established garrison on Iceland. Mississippi led her four steamers on like a fat mother goose, not realizing that what they would come to call a deadly “Nazi raider” was moving south like a bad weather front, bringing the rumble of thunder, lightning and war with her. The men on the bridge had heard the frantic radio calls of the P-40 pilots. Now they looked anxiously forward, scanning the horizon until they saw a pillar of dark smoke, far too large to be coming from a ship’s stacks.
“Sound General Quarters,” said the Captain. “That’s a ship on fire ahead. Better get the destroyers revved up. There could be U-Boats about.”
Captain Jerald Wright had tipped his hat to the new light carrier Wasp when she pulled away some time ago, and now he looked through his field glasses to see the carrier burning on the near horizon, a long column of charcoal smoke staining the sky ahead. Whether they knew it yet or not, the Yanks were at war.
Part IX
