Winter Warriors

intelligence digests through. Triple source confirmed.” Dewey shook his head slightly; he didn’t want to know the sources. The Seer wished he didn’t know either sometimes. The data came from three separate routes. The Geneva spy ring called the Red Orchestra, run by Loki, a second spy net nobody could quite identify called Lucy and an ultra-secret code-cracking operation called Ultra. Between them, they gave a brilliant insight into German strategic plans.

“Mister President, shortly we will be running out big pre-winter convoys through to Murmansk and Archangel. A huge supply convoy, more than 250 ships, that will carry enough munitions, fuel etc. to keep the Kola Peninsula going until spring.”

“A convoy that big? There’s a saying about eggs and baskets.”

“I know, but in this case it doesn’t apply. A given submarine attack can only sink a given number of ships regardless of the number in the convoy. So, a big convoy has proportionally fewer losses than a small one. Also, a big convoy isn’t significantly easier to find than a small one so one big convoy is less likely to be found than the equivalent number of ships in a series of small groups. Mathematically, we’re much better off with big convoys. We’ve got to get this convoy through before winter really sets in. That’s when the ice boundary moves south and pushes us too close to occupied Norway for comfort.

“Anyway, with the main convoy will be a smaller but an equally important one, a troop convoy carrying the Canadian Sixth Infantry Division to Murmansk. We know that the German fleet plans to overwhelm the escorts for those two convoys and destroy them. Simultaneously, they plan to launch a land offensive that will take advantage of the supply crisis caused by the destruction of the convoys to take the Kola Peninsula. With Murmansk gone, Archangel and Petrograd will fall, and the Canadian Army in Kola will be destroyed. That will free up a mass of German resources for the main front.

“Sir, we had planned to cover those convoys with a single carrier group, while the rest pounded northern Scotland. In view of this information, I suggest we use all of the groups to set up an ambush and sucker-punch the German fleet as it heads north. The Germans don’t really understand naval warfare.” Nor do I, thought Stuyvesant, but I know a lot of people who do. “The initiative is with us, we decide when to send the convoys out, we decide when and where the battle will be fought. We wait for good weather, give our carriers every edge we can, and then we turn them loose on the German battleships. We can wipe their fleet out. That’s a pretty valuable goal in its own right, but it’s also the victory I think people need.”

“And how long do we have to wait for the weather we need? Months?”

“The Gods are smiling on us, Sir. We had a rough fall up there, but the weather magicians tell us we’re in for a spell of fine weather. By North Atlantic standards anyway. We can go as soon as possible. Now if we wish.”

“And the land battle?”

“On Kola? If the supplies get through, we can win that as well. Or at least make sure the German offensive goes nowhere.”

Dewey nodded. It made political and military sense. That was a rarity, usually the two demands opposed and contradicted. “Very good, Seer. We’ll make it happen.” Then his face fell again as the image of the ever-lengthening lines of white crosses in the snows of Russia returned to haunt him. “You’re right, we’ve got to win something, somewhere.”

Short-Range Hunter-Killer Group “Oak”, Off the Virginia Coast.

“Pickets in place Sir. We’ve got four PBJs overhead. They’re dropping sonobuoys now.”

Captain Albert Sturmer nodded. That made twelve hunting platforms gathered around the position of the Type XXID that had launched its missiles at Washington. Eight were modified Gleaves class destroyers. They had been stripped of their anti-aircraft guns and three of their five-inchers after they had been phased out of service with the carrier groups. Now, they had three Hedgehogs, a big trainable launcher in place of B gun and two smaller fixed weapons amidships. Between them, the three launchers could put down a devastating barrage of charges. They also carried an array of depth charge throwers aft and big, one-ton depth charges in their torpedo tubes.

If this had been a long-range hunter-killer group, they’d have had at least one jeep carrier with them, a CVE stuffed with Avengers and Bearcats. Instead, the PBJs overhead were the Navy’s version of the Air Force’s B-25J Mitchell. They had sonobuoys and an ASV radar, plus homing torpedoes in their bellies and rockets under their wings. For the endgame, they had their noses stuffed with machine guns; eight in the nose itself, four in packages on the aircraft side. Just in case the Germans decided not to go down with their ship.

The Type XXID had two choices. It could run as fast as it could, and the Type XXI was fast underwater. By doing so, it could clear the area and make the search area much larger. The problem with running at high speed for any length of time was that doing so depleted its batteries. Within an hour or so, it would have to charge them. Even using its snort, that would make the job of finding it easier. Worse still, running at high speed meant it was generating flow noise and that also made finding it easier. That was why the PBJs were dropping their sonobuoys. One of the things the Navy had learned from the experiments with the modified British S-boats in Bermuda was what frequencies to listen for. That and the experience of the first wave of Type XXI attacks during late 1944 and early 1945.

The other choice facing the Type XXID down there was to go slow and try to creep away. That had the advantages of extending battery endurance, to days if necessary, and cutting noise to a minimum. That would make it hard to detect. The disadvantage was that going slow meant going very slow indeed; four knots, barely more than walking pace. The missiles fired at Washington an hour ago had come from here. If the Type XXID that had fired them was going slow, it was still somewhere here, alive and well and with plenty of battery charge. If it had gone fast to clear datum, it was somewhere within a radius of 16 miles with dead batteries.

“Anything from the PBJs?” Sturmer snapped out the request. “Nothing on the buoys, Sir.”

“OK, Sweep the area, active search.” Two destroyers were sitting out on the flanks of the formation, ready to lash the water with their active sonars. The old sonars had been “searchlight” systems with a single beam. They had been fine for tracking the old, slow Type VII and Type IX U-boats but the Type XXI was fast enough to run between the sweep of the tracking beam. The current sonars had been modified and used three beams in an overlapping fan. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a good enough solution until the new generation of scanning sonars left the laboratories and joined the fleet. Whenever that was.

Still, the new sonars gave the Type XXI down there another set of choices. It could accelerate and run between the net of tracking beams but that would deplete battery life and make noise that would be detected by the passive sonobuoys from the PBJs. Or, it could keep going and try to sneak away. A third choice was to try and get to the bottom and sit there. Sturmer paced the bridge waiting for the hunting systems to tell him which choice the U-boat skipper had made.

“Contact Sir. Grayson has picked up something on the bottom.” Option Three, then, Sturmer thought. Gone to ground.

“Set up a line attack.” The waiting six destroyers were already formed into a line and they curved around to the location from their left-hand picket destroyer. They were accelerating to attack speed, a speed that left their own sonars blind. It didn’t matter. They were being coached in by the two pickets that lashed their contact with all the sonar power they had available. Earle shuddered as her Hedgehogs fired. The big bow launcher put down an eight-shaped barrage of the small charges, the two waist Hedgehogs added their circles, overlapping the center of the eight. The other five destroyers in the line laid down their own patterns. The result was a maze of intersecting circles that gave the submarine underneath little chance of escape. Even a XXI couldn’t outrun the carefully planned web that was dropping on it. The same attack pattern had driven old Type VIIs and Type IXs from the sea.

On board Earle the crew waited. Hedgehog rounds only exploded if they hit something hard enough to activate the fuze. The mud of the sea bottom wouldn’t do it. Opinions were divided about that. Some people preferred the heavy Squids carried on the Canadian destroyers, their charges exploded at pre-set depths and gave a satisfying mass of explosions. On the convoys to Russia, American and Canadian destroyers worked together; Hedgehog and Squid complemented each other. That was  why not many German submarines survived to make a second voyage and very few made a third cruise.

Two explosions sent columns of water skywards. The destroyers turned to bring their depth charge throwers into action. The ten-charge patterns went over the side, covering the area marked by the Hedgehog round explosions, then Earle lurched again as her torpedo tubes fired a one-ton depth charge square over the position of the contact.