Winter Warriors

position, Medium sized group with air activity. Scouts believe it is the enemy carriers Sir.”

“Confirmation?” Admiral William “Wild Bill” Halsey was not a trusting soul at the best of times.

“Multiple Sir. Three of the Adies out there got solid radar hits. They’ve spotted the enemy scouting aircraft fanning out. They’re monitoring the enemy formation, undisturbed as yet.”

“Anything else?”

“Sir, a Rivet Joint, an EC-69 out of Keflavik has been picking up a lot of communications. The Krauts are using TBS radio pretty freely. Probably think they can’t be picked up if we’re over the horizon. There’s chatter between the ships in the group the Adies spotted and another location still within the storm line. Traffic analysis and some intel Washington sent us confirms it; the Hun battleships are out.”

“Battleships. Ain’t that just like the Krauts. Bringing their fists to a gunfight. Right. Signal Biloxi to launch a seaplane to TF58.5. They’ll take the enemy carrier group down. They’ve got the moxie to do it by themselves. That way, the Hun main force will think it’s just the group we normally have screening a convoy. The rest of us will get bombed up and ready to go as soon as the battlewagons stick their nose out of that storm. Strike waves will launch at 15 minute intervals from lights-on.”

Halsey knew well how the maths ran. Five carrier groups, two deckload strikes per group, a total of ten waves. The last wave would be on its way two hours and thirty minutes after TF58 switched its radios and radars on and started to launch aircraft. An hour out, 15–20 minutes for the strike an hour back and then a few minutes to recover.

It meant that the first wave would be returning just as the last wave of the strike would be on its way. Half an hour to rearm and refuel the survivors of that first wave, push the aircraft too badly damaged to reuse over the side and the whole process would start again. A continuous stream of attack aircraft that would swarm all over the enemy fleet until nothing was left. Once, when Wild Bill had been a child (something his staff refused to admit as a possibility), he had put the stream of water from a hose on a pile of dirt and watched the mound crumple and washed away under the unrelenting jet of water. Now, he was going to do the same thing again; only this time with the dark blue fighter-bombers on his carriers.

At least the weather had cleared. The met guys said the storm would pass to the east and that there would be relatively mild seas in its wake. They’d been right. Aircraft operating weather about as good as it was going to get for the North Atlantic this time of year. Gettysburg was still making heavy weather of it though. She was pitching badly due to her extra length and taking a lot of water over her bows and amidships. Halsey had heard that the second group of CVBs would have a their bows redesigned with the hull plating carried up to the flight deck. It was supposed to be a big improvement.

“Send a courier to Task Force 50.” That was the support group of escort carriers bringing up the rear. Their melancholy job was to supply replacement aircraft and crews to offset the losses from enemy fighters and anti- aircraft guns. “Warm up the replacements. Priority will be Adies, then Mames, then Corsairs. We’ll have to eat our Flivver losses.”

“One more thing Sir. There’s a hunter-killer group, Sitka, south of us. They’re in the enemy search arc. The Adies have tipped them off. They’ll be launching Bearcats to get the enemy scouts.”

Halsey nodded. “Add a warning to all messages. There’ll be gray and white Bearcats around; make sure of target identification before shooting them down. Try to make sure the Corsair drivers realize not everything with straight gray wings is a Ta-152.”

Bridge, USS Shangri-La CV-38, Flagship TG58.5.

“Got it!” The comms Lieutenant was exultant. They’d seen the seaplane land and be recovered by the USS Montpelier. It had been a few minutes before the signal lamp had started to flash and the message it had transmitted had been a long one. “It’s the enemy carrier group. Roughly 180 miles out, bearing 129 true. There’s a wave of Kraut search planes coming this way.”

“Right. Order San Jacinto to launch her dash-sevens to intercept any that annoy us, and any others that they run into of course. She is to get her dash-fours ready for combat air patrol. Boxer and Macedonian are to ready their Flivver squadron and an Adie squadron each for the first wave, Valley Forge, their Flivver Squadron and a dash-4 squadron, we’ll do the same. Second wave. Two squadrons of dash-fours from Boxer and Macedonian. Valley Forge will send both her Adie squadrons; we’ll send both our Mames. That’ll leave us with a squadron of dash-sevens each for CAP and one squadron to assist Sitka. Clear?” Admiral Peter Knudson knew it was a rhetorical question. This was a well-rehearsed drill. The first wave, the Flivvers to sweep any enemy combat air patrol out of the way plus a light strike of fighter-bombers and some Adies to soften up the target. Second wave the heavy strike with fighter-bombers to suppress flak and a heavy punch of Adies and Mames with torpedoes. More than 250 aircraft in total.

“Orders going out by signal lamp now, Sir.”

“Very good.” Knudson waited for the ‘message received and understood’ acknowledgments then gave the order he’d been waiting all his professional life to give. “To all ships. Battle stations.”

CHAPTER FOUR: FIRST SNOWFALL

F8F-1 Bearcat Eleanor Over the North Atlantic.

He was hunting reconnaissance aircraft again. This time his prey was a very different type of scout bird with a different mission. The Me-264 he’d taken part in killing earlier had been a maritime patrol aircraft out searching the Atlantic for whatever was out there. Now, he was hunting scout planes from a carrier; launched to find his floating airbase for a follow-up strike. He and the other Bearcat pilots were being steered in by radio from the scouts of Task Force 58 to the north. A professional courtesy, really. Given the number of fighters TF58 had available, a few scout planes were hardly anything for them to worry about. For Hunter-Killer Group Sitka, with a total air group of 32 Bearcats and 22 Avengers split between the two CVEs, even a small strike was a significant threat. More than half those Bearcats were up now, trying to bring down the German scouts.

One scout was below Eleanor. A Ju-87 cruised below the clouds, looking for an enemy task group. It was a reasonable certainty that it was hunting bigger game than a pair of CVEs and a handful of destroyers but that wouldn’t matter too much. Even experienced naval pilots had a hard time telling the difference between one class of a ship and another. There were too many stories of cases of mistaken identity, some amusing, others tragic. The German pilots were skilled and well-trained, but they weren’t naval pilots. To them, one aircraft carrier would look much like another and there would be precious little difference between a destroyer and a battleship. The little jeep carriers and their destroyers would look like much bigger game. So, the Ju-87s had to go.

Pace took his Bearcat down in a long sweeping dive. The Ju-87 crew was scanning the sea below for the tell-tale wakes of the formation. They never saw the threat coming from above until it was almost too late. The rear gunner woke up to the two fighters closing in on him and grabbed his twin machine guns in a hurry. The first streams of tracer went wild, more of a threat to the gunner’s own aircraft than anything else. The second burst was much better aimed. It licked around the two diving Bearcats; tracers passed beside and between them. Pace aligned his pipper carefully, just ahead of the German aircraft’s nose, and squeezed off a burst. To his frustration, just as he fired, the Ju-87 slid to one side and appeared to drop out of the air. It was still as a dive bomber; diving was something it did well. Pace’s burst of fire went wild. A split second later, his wingman laced the air with his .50 calibers as well, equally unsuccessfully. That left only one option.

The Bearcats followed the Ju-87 down. It pulled away from them in the wild dive but no matter how skilled the pilot, there was an absolute limit to how long an aircraft could dive. The German pilot left his pull-out as late as he dared and his plane skimmed the sea surface when he was in level flight. That was the idea of course, to get as low as possible so that the American fighters couldn’t get at him from below and behind. Pace was less reckless about how late he left his pull-out. Since he was going to be coming in from above again, there was no point in cutting things fine. Once again, he lined the pipper in his gunsight ahead of the Ju-87s nose. It was different now, the German aircraft was wallowing in the aftermath of its dive. His tracers stitched into the target’s nose and then