secret meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill. Perhaps he thinks he can go there and negotiate, but that is like trying to divide the pelt of a bear before you have killed him. We are going to kill the bear first, Orlov-you, me, and Comrade Glock.”
Chapter 30
August 7, 1941
Secrecy was soon found to be in short supply. Too many men had seen the attack on Wasp, or heard about it, or suffered from it, and one of them was a civilian reporter aboard Mississippi sent out to cover the occupation of Iceland. Somehow, word on the attack leaked out, passing from pilot, to able seaman, and over cables and airwaves to eventually reach the U.S. The headline in the New York Times that day, August 7th, was bold and pointed.
GERMANS ATTACK! CV WASP SUNK! HEAVY LOSS OF LIFE Fearsome New German Raider Still At Large
Roosevelt To Convene Emergency Session Of Congress.
The article referenced some of the events that had transpired, though it was noticeably fuzzy as to where the attack had happened, what German raider had attacked, and even more vague on just when the president would convene this emergency session of congress and in fact where the president even was.
Reporters quickly stormed the White House briefing room, but were held at bay and given no further information. The president was consulting with his Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was said, but nothing more was revealed, particularly the fact the Roosevelt was not even in the country, and was quietly slipping into Ship Harbor in Argentia Bay aboard Augusta by the evening of that same day.
Aboard King George V, Admiral Tovey was listening to a shortwave radio broadcast out of New York when Brind came in from the radio room, a decoded signal in hand and a puzzled expression on his face.
“I’m afraid I’ve given you some bad advice, Admiral,” he began. “Admiralty says they’ve spotted the Graf Zeppelin near Stettin.” The implications were obvious, and he said nothing more.
Tovey rubbed his brow, troubled. “The cat is out of the bag,” he said. “The story had leaked out to the press and the Americans are outraged. It’s to be expected, I suppose, but we still have no idea what this ship is, and that I find difficult to swallow.”
“Well, an American PBY out of Reykjavik spotted the German ship a few days ago, sir, and they got some photos.”
“Photos? It’s bloody well about time. What do they show?”
“I’m afraid the song is the same, sir. Bletchley Park says it’s a large cruiser, very large, probably a battlecruiser in size. They were able to spot a crewman on a foredeck and worked out the scale. The damn thing is all of 900 feet long, and nearly a hundred feet abeam.”
“My god, what a monster. That’s a bigger ship than King George V. In fact, it’s bigger than anything in the fleet. It’s even longer than the Bismarck! ”
“Yet no sign of anything but a few small secondary guns, and a curiously empty foredeck covered with a series of what looks to be cargo hatches. Given what we’ve learned about this ship’s capabilities, they’ve come round to the conclusion that these rockets must be stored there; possibly brought up on deck for launching, or even fired from below decks through these ports.”
“Amazing,” said Tovey. “I knew the Germans were developing a weapon of this nature, but all our intelligence indicated it was to be an air dropped bomb.”
“Yes,” Brind nodded. “The Fritz-X, or so the boys at BP call it. That was also mentioned in the Admiralty report.” He glanced at his signal and read: “Consider Naval deployment of guided Fritz type ordinance or possibly more advanced Henschel Hs 293 guided rocket.”
The Henschel 293 was a development led by the brilliant mathematician and aircraft designer Herbert Wagner, Germany’s answer to the Bletchley Park genius of Alan Turing. Wagner, along with notable physicists Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and designer Wernher von Braun had been involved in the development and testing of new German wonder weapons for some time. The Fritz-X radio controlled glide bomb had been in development since 1938, and the Henschel 293 was a new approach that was intended for use against British convoys. The Germans were already building training and refit bases for the rocket at Cognac and Bordeaux on the south Atlantic coast of France, in addition to numerous facilities around Hamburg and Kiel, and bases at Bergamo and Foggia in Italy. It began as a glide bomb, like the Fritz, then migrated into a liquid fueled rocket. As far as Bletchley Park knew, however, it was still in the testing phase, unless this was to be its coming out party, a deadly ship mounted version that could strike with alarming accuracy and power.
That was the one thing that still bewildered the British intelligence arms. How could the Germans have achieved this level of accuracy and range on the weapon? Everything they had been able to learn about the program indicated that it still relied on a human operator, a man able to see the target and aim or guide the missile in flight. And much of its expected range was delivered by the aircraft that carried it, large German bombers. It’s actual range after firing was very limited, yet this was contradicted by every report gathered thus far from the ships that had been targeted. There had been no sign of any German aircraft near the targets. The reports from ships at sea indicated that the enemy was seeing and targeting them from well beyond the range of optical or even long range radar detection!
Eventually they came round again to the initial sighting of airborne contacts near the German ship in the first days of the encounter. It was then suggested that the Germans might be launching sea planes of the type often carried by cruisers and battleships, and then using these as platforms to spot and vector the weapons in. Bletchley Park suggested they had only to fire the rockets in the general heading of the target, and perhaps the Germans had then rigged some kind of homing device, even a small radar set in the nose of the missile, that would enable it to hit with such precision. It was a remarkably accurate assessment, but equally shocking to think the Germans had made these advances while similar Allied programs remained at rudimentary levels of development.
“We thought that from the very first,” said Brind. “But I’ll be damned. None of our pilots have managed to get a look at these German planes… except for that odd report we got from the weather station on Jan Mayen.”
“You mean that helicopter report?” Even the word sounded odd to Tovey, let alone the concept of a plane without wings. Yet ideas about helicopters had been around since the time of Leonardo da Vinci, and he admitted to the possibility that the Germans had again stolen a march on them and put such an aircraft into service.
Tovey sighed. “First we get news that Tirpitz is on the loose, then Bletchley Park tells us it’s Admiral Scheer, then we think this ship is Graf Zeppelin, and now this… We’ve run out of German ships, Brind. What do we call this one? We don’t miss something on the order of a new ship design. I can excuse the rest. These rockets could have been developed in underground facilities, and kept very hush, hush. But a ship? To have anything like this at sea now the Germans would have had to lay her keel years ago, and you and I both know they only have so many dock yards capable of building a cruiser class ship.”
Brind was clearly perplexed. “There were two ships originally planned in that German carrier program, sir. Ship “B” was contracted, but her hull was never completed. The Germans halted construction on that one and scrapped her just after the war began in September of 1939. We’ve had some inkling they might be trying to convert a cruiser or even a civilian ocean liner to a carrier, but these photos put an end to that speculation. The odd thing is that there hasn’t been a whisper out of Berlin about this business either, sir. You would think they would crow about their engagement with us, or perhaps make some statement regarding this attack on the US task force. I may be climbing out on a limb here, and I apologize for leading you up the bridle path about Graf Zeppelin…”
“Don’t worry about that, Brind. Speak your mind, man.”
“Well sir, this might not be a German ship at all…”
Events were running on, as the ships, American, British and from parts unknown plied through the sea on courses that all seemed to be converging on Newfoundland. The British were worried that the raider would simply turn east and head out into the Atlantic, but a small fishing trawler out of Newfoundland spotted a lone ship on a course due south of the location where Wasp had sunk. Apparently this German captain seemed convinced of his invulnerability, and came boldly on, albeit at a more cautious rate. The trawler estimated the contact speed at twenty knots.
