Winter Warriors

prepare eight of her Ta-152s for immediate launch as our combat air patrol. Then she will prepare six Ju-87s and two Ta-152s as her contribution to our strike force. Got that? Transmit it. Captain Dietrich, you will ready an anti- shipping strike of your remaining eight Stukas and four of your Ta-152s. That will give us twenty six anti-ship configured bombers escorted by twelve Ta-152s as a strike while thirty of our Stukas look for the enemy.”

“An anti-shipping strike Sir.” The question wasn’t even hinted at in Dietrich’s tone but the Admiral knew it was there.

“The Amis are out there with carriers. They always have a carrier group covering their big convoys and this one will be no exception. So we need to be able to strike at them before they find us. Carriers are weak, vulnerable. What matters most is getting in the first blow. If we have our strike ready to launch, then we have the edge. We will still have twenty six fighters and four bombers left in reserve. The Scouting Group will adjust course to 270. We need to get clear of this ice as quickly as we can.”

Brinkmann watched from the bridge as the aircraft carrier started to boil with action. Despite the change in course, she was still rolling badly. Up ahead, the Werner Voss was making much easier passage through the seas. On paper, Brinkmann would have preferred her as his flagship. She was larger, more powerful and had much better flag facilities than the Graf Zeppelin, but he couldn’t stand the stink that seemed to permeate every niche of the ship and the infuriating faults in her construction drove him mad. So, he’d made Germany’s first carrier his flagship and put up with her deficiencies instead.

His thoughts were interrupted by the whine as the aft elevator brought the first of the reconnaissance Ju-87s to the flight deck. Its wings were folded; he watched, the flight deck crew started to winch them down. Once, it had been proposed that electrically-folding wings should be installed but that scheme had been dropped along with so many others. It weighed too much and the performance of the Ju-87 was critically inadequate anyway. Still, it was better than the only alternative, a Fiesler biplane. On the deck, one of the wings on the lead aircraft had jammed; something was stopping the hinged joint from working. Brinkmann watched a deck crewman jump up; he grabbed the wing and jerked it down into place. It worked; whatever had been obstructing the movement gave way and the outer wing panel slammed down.

It dropped into place so hard that the enterprising deck crewman lost his grip on the wing and was deposited, abruptly and unceremoniously on his rear. Brinkmann could almost hear the laughter from his comrades as they saw his inglorious reward. The laugh was very quickly choked off for the Graf Zeppelin was rolling and she had started one of her sways to starboard just as the unfortunate crewman hit the ice- and slush-covered deck. Brinkmann had no doubt about hearing the result, the crewman screamed in raw terror as he started sliding towards the deck edge. Two of his fellows tried to grab him; their only reward was to lose their footing and fall also. They were only saved for the same fate by those nearby grabbing them. The stricken crewman was scrabbling, hopelessly, uselessly for a grip as he made his inexorable slide towards the deck edge. Then he was gone, over the side into the gray water below.

“Communications. Man overboard. Order Z-20 to break position and pick him up.” Brinkmann snapped out the orders. Z-16 and Z-20 were the two trailing destroyers, one of them could surely pick the man up?

“Message from Z-20, Sir. He’s already passed. Are they to turn, stop and lower a boat?”

Dietrich spoke quietly. “It’s no good, Sir. That will take them at least five minutes. The water temperature, it’s below one degree. That man will be dead by the time they get to him. If he isn’t dead already. The fall might have killed him, or the sheer shock of hitting water that cold. By the time Z-20 has picked up his body, they’ll be far behind. It’ll take an hour or more for them to catch up.”

Brinkmann nodded. It was a hard decision but a necessary one “Order Z-20 to belay the previous order and hold position. There will be no rescue.”

He went out onto the bridge wing and took the great pair of high-power binoculars, the ones used by the lookouts. He could see the body floating motionless in the wake of the two destroyers bringing up the rear. Seagulls were already gathering to feast on it. They knew that anything floating motionless in the icy water wasn’t living any more. It was just food for gulls. Already the more adventurous gulls were diving down to snatch the choicest morsels from the unexpected meal.

Brinkmann sighed and went back inside the bridge. Work on the flightdeck was going on, more of the Ju-87s being brought up and prepared for launch. Then, he was shaken by a white blot that appeared on the glass. Not more snow, surely? No, it wasn’t. It was a tear-drop shaped, whitish blob with a green-brown center. Seagull droppings. Brinkmann looked up, the gulls were circling Graf Zeppelin as well.

AD-2W Skyraider “Eye’s A’Poppin” North Atlantic

It was a nuisance not being part of the formal carrier airgroup. The detachments, night fighters, radar search aircraft, utility birds, tended to come last on the priority lists. They fitted in after everybody else had grabbed the places and positions they wanted. But, once in a while, the detachments were supremely important. This was one of those times. There was a line of AD-2W Skyraiders spaced out across the sea. Each was dozens of miles from the next. Their job was to find the enemy and report on their position. Then, they were to continue to track that enemy, reporting so the strike aircraft didn’t waste fuel hunting for their targets. Every pound of fuel they saved meant more warload, more fuel saved for the trip home in what could easily be a critically damaged aircraft. Of course, the problem was that the enemy group would realize the significance of the thin line of Adies and send out fighters for them. Just as the American fleet was watching for the equivalent enemy scouting force and send out fighters to deal with them.

Unlike the AD-1s, the AD-2Ws were two-seaters. Superficially, they didn’t look like it. The pilot sat under a bubble canopy identical to the AD-1s. The immediately obvious difference was the mushroom-shaped bulge under the aircraft’s belly. That was the search radar, the latest variant in a family whose development had started back in 1942. Then, the intention had been to spot U-boats running on the surface. Over the years, the function had evolved. First to pick out the snorkel heads of a submarine charging batteries while submerged. Then, more added functions, searching for surface ships and monitoring aircraft movements. The radar operator sat inside the AD-2Ws cavernous fuselage, without windows to distract him from his radar screen or to let in light that would dim the displays.

On Eye’s A ‘Poppin, the screens showed the picture the searching Adies were looking for. Over to the east, a jumbled mass of chaotic returns marked the position of the storm that had swept across the Atlantic. Now they concealed whatever was still within it. As it had cleared to the east, another contact had emerged. A hard, distinct contact whose slow movement revealed it to be a formation of ships. Around it were some faint, yet still clear marks; ones moving in an arc that ran from due north of the enemy formation to south west. It was the German’s own picket line. The Germans didn’t have surface search radar, not on carrier aircraft. Only the big maritime reconnaissance birds, the Me-264s and the Ju-390s carried them. Whittling those down had been a Navy priority for a long, long time. The enemy search would be visual.

“We got them boss.” Sergeant Kudrich passed the word up to his pilot. “Surface units, medium sized formation, with air activity. It’s the carriers.” It was the golden strike, the jackpot. Battleships were obsolete, floating targets; it was carrier aircraft that were the center of an enemy fleet. Destroy them and the battle was over. “I’m radioing in the position now.” That was another bit of doctrine. The American carriers were running blacked out; not a light showing, not a radio transmission made. All the communications were to them, never from them.

“Any sign of enemy fighters coming out?”

Kudrich shook his head, then remembered nobody could see him in this black pit. “Search aircraft only. No sign of interceptors. Uh, Boss, there’s a hunter-killer group south of us, they’re in the search arc of the enemy aircraft. Better give them a head’s up?”

“Call Wild Bill on Gettysburg first, then let the hunter-killer group know what’s heading their way. Threat says the Kraut carriers have only Ju-87s for search; they’re not fast enough for a threat to develop that quickly. You know Wild Bill; he gets really upset if he’s the last person to find out what’s going on.

Admiral’s Bridge, USS Gettysburg CVB-43, Flagship Task Force 58

“Sir, message from the scouts. Enemy warship group spotted, 220 nautical miles east south east of our