Winter Warriors

into the fight. Now, they would see if they had enough air defense assets to survive.

Combat Information Center USS Stalingrad, Hunter-Killer Group “Sitka”

“Sitrep?” The question was a grunt. The truth was that Captain Alameda was getting worried. The little jeep carriers had somehow got themselves mixed up in the middle of a fleet action and they hadn’t been designed for that.

“Inbounds are 35 minutes out Sir. We estimate between forty and fifty aircraft. I’m vectoring the fighters we have up to take on their escort. The one’s we’ve just rearmed and launched can take on the bombers. Oh, I’ve advised COMFIFTHFLEET of our situation. TG58.5 is sending a squadron of Corsairs down to help us out. They’re burning sky to get down here in time but it’s a toss-up whether they’ll make it or not.”

“One squadron? I’d have thought Wild Bill could have spared a few more than that.”

“I guess he’s tied up Sir, TG58.5 is engaging the enemy carrier group and the Kraut main force will be sticking its nose out of the weather any minute now. Anyway, the Corsairs will be dealing with the rest of the scouts. They’re converging on us as well. That’ll add another twenty of so Stukas to the raid but they’ll be arriving in ones and twos. Those that survive that is.

Alameda nodded and gazed at the plot again. It was almost like a lightening flash. In the middle were the enemy carrier group and Hunter Killer Group Sitka, about a hundred and sixty miles apart. To the south and east of the enemy carrier group, forty to fifty miles further out was the enemy main body, the High Seas Fleet. And to the north and west, the long line of five American carrier task groups, TG58.1 through to TG58.5. That long line of carrier groups was the formation known throughout the Navy as “Murderer’s Row.”

F4U-4 Corsair Switchblade Over the Scouting Group, North Atlantic.

The 32 Corsairs from Valley Forge and Shangri-La had moved ahead of the Adies. That was the plan. The job of the F4U-4s was to suppress anti-aircraft fire and soften up the German defenses. That process was about to start. The Corsairs were cruising at medium altitude. The ships below were small lines at the end of the white streaks of their wakes. As formation leader of one of the eight four- plane sections making up the wave of fighter-bombers, it was the job of Lieutenant Calvin James to give the signal. He rocked his wings, then rolled his F4U into its long dive. As he did so, the sky erupted into a maze of black flowers. The anti-aircraft guns on the ships had opened fire.

It was a pretty mediocre display by U.S. Navy standards. The Navy philosophy was to fill the sky with so many shells that if they didn’t hit the inbound aircraft, the inbound aircraft would hit them. The German barrage was thin by those standards but it could still be deadly. James watched one of the Corsairs from Valley Forge develop a thin stream of black smoke. It thickened and spread until it had swallowed the whole rear of the aircraft. Then, it tumbled and fell from the sky. Another Corsair lost a wing. The aircraft seemed to fold up on itself, the aircraft’s remaining wing wrapped around its fuselage. Then it came apart in mid-air. There may have been more, James guessed there were, but now he had other things to do.

The F4U-4 wasn’t a dive bomber. It couldn’t manage the screaming, near-vertical dives of the old SBD. James was bringing his aircraft down in a 45 degree dive, still steep enough by any standards. It made his wings tremble with the onset of the dreaded compressibility. He’d picked his target already. His dive had been left a little late for a destroyer, but there was a larger target off to his left. As it grew in his sights, he took in the details. Two triple turrets aft, one forward, a light cruiser. There was something odd about her, the aft turrets weren’t center-lined, they seemed pushed out to the ship’s side. Most of the heavy anti-aircraft fire was came from the area just in front of them so James ran the red dot of his sight to coincide with the area. Then, he gently squeezed one of the firing buttons on his joystick.

Six five inch rockets streaked out ahead of him, leaving the Corsair standing still in the sky. Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of his wingmen firing almost simultaneously. The rockets headed down leaving trails of black smoke that wreathed the dark blue Corsair. The rockets wobbled and weaved as they closed the gap between the F4Us and the cruiser underneath. Nobody would ever accuse the American five inch rocket of being accurate. James saw his six vanish in orange flashes and clouds of smoke. At least two had hit the ship, the rest had either hit or gone off alongside. A split second later, the cruiser’s bridge vanished under more orange flashes and clouds of black smoke.

James’ fingers moved slightly. He squeezed the firing button for his .50 caliber machine guns. All six roared. The brilliant streams of tracer lashed at the center-section of the cruiser. Now was the dangerous bit. Pulling out. All too many pilots got so intent on lashing their targets with gunfire and rockets that they forgot to pull out. Not James. He timed his pass to perfection. By the time he was in level flight, he was skimming barely a hundred or so feet above the sea. Behind him, the cruiser was covered in smoke, some from the rocket hits, more from its own guns. There were bigger flashes on her as well. James guessed that some of the Corsairs that had followed him in had dropped their 1,000 pound bombs on her. If so, she would be hard put to survive. Early in the war, before Halifax had pulled his treasonous coup, a group of British dive-bombers had sent a German light cruiser down with just three 500 pound bombs. How many thousand pounders had hit the one behind? Two? Four? Plus all the rockets of course.

James looked ahead. The sheer sides of an aircraft carrier were approaching frighteningly fast. Anti-aircraft lashed out from the gun positions down her sides but they were manually-swung weapons. They were hard put to track the racing Corsair. James stared at his bombsight intensely, his fingers shifting again on the control column. This would take timing but if it worked, the effects would be deadly. His machine guns fired again, raking the anti-aircraft positions. More black smoke trails from rockets shot past. Some of his wingmen must have held their rocket fire on the cruiser in order to drop bombs on her instead. Now those rockets tore into the carrier’s anti-aircraft guns amidships. The streams of fire slacked as the gun crews were cut down.

Any second now. James held his breath and pressed the bomb release. Two one thousand-pound high explosive bombs arced down towards the sea below. James guessed the Germans might be sighing with relief at that point. The bombs were falling short, they’d hit the sea not the carrier. He hauled the stick back, leapfrogging over the deck of the ship. His machine guns burst back into life, peppering the bridge with fire. Then he felt the blast of his two bombs. They’d hit the sea all right but had bounced off it and slammed into the ship’s side. Skip bombing, the way all good fighter-bomber pilots attacked ships. He saw the explosions rising behind him. It wasn’t mortal damage but that wasn’t the point. The two bombs had landed in the anti-aircraft mounts that lined the port side of the carrier.

There was another carrier, off to his right. Its guns pumped out fire at the Corsairs that were raking the formation with their bombs and rockets. James felt his aircraft lurch as something struck home, with a dull ringing noise. Whatever it was, it wasn’t lethal, Switchblade was still flying, carving her way through the German ships towards a destroyer. Off to his left, another Corsair suddenly erupted into flames. It rolled over onto its back and was still rolling when it hit the water and vanished into a cloud of spray.

James thumbed the button that controlled his machine guns again. The tracers floated out and lashed the platform between the funnels. If the pictures they’d trained on were right, that’s where the quadruple 20mm guns were. The Germans had two light anti-aircraft guns. The 37mm was pathetic, a slow firing, short ranged, weapon. It was nowhere near the lethality of the American Bofors guns. The other was a 20mm. It was bad as a single mount and hideously dangerous when installed as a quadruple, as most of them were.

The enemy ships were behind him at last. He’d made his pass across the formation and it was time to take stock. As James climbed out from the attack he could see the German formation scattering. It was breaking under the sledgehammer blows of the fighter-bombers’ strafing passes. James laughed quietly to himself. If the Krauts think that was bad, they should see what the Adies can do. They won’t have to wait long.

German Destroyer Z-7, High Seas Fleet Scouting Group, North Atlantic.

It came as a complete epiphany to Commander Micael Riedel. His ship, his Z-7, was obsolete. The logic was quite inescapable. His main guns were useless. They could only elevate to 30 degrees and couldn’t even begin to fire on the bent-wing demons diving on him. His 20mm quadruple mounts amidships and aft couldn’t bear on them either. The Ami jabos were coming in from ahead. All he had to defend himself was a single 20mm gun that had been mounted in the bridge wings. Its fire was pathetic in reply to the