Winter Warriors

their maximum capacity to keep the flood waters at bay. Captain Becker had organized bucket chains to try and keep the flooding from overcoming them. They were helping a little, not much but a little. They were keeping the survivors of the crew busy and their minds away from the water that was, despite all their efforts, slowly gaining on them.

Off to port, their last destroyer, Z-27, was painfully keeping up with them. She was crowded. She’d picked up survivors from Z-28 after that destroyer had been battered into a wreck during the last, furious, American assault. Becker had been listening as Scheer went down, too crippled to evade the horde of aircraft that had studded her with their torpedoes then drenched her with bombs and rockets. It had been a miracle that Lutzow had survived; a miracle Becker didn’t understand, he could just accept that it had been so.

Then, they’d had another miracle. He’d got the reports from his shattered ship and realized there was no way he could make Norway. It was more than 350 miles away. At his painful 6 knots, backwards, that meant almost three days transit. His ship simply could not stay afloat that long. But, southwest, that was different. He was only just over 130 miles away from Torshaven in the Faroe Islands. Less than a day’s transit and he could make that. Just. So he’d swung his stern southwest and started the long, painful journey. Six hours later, he’d detected a large formation of ships. They were obviously enemy but had crossed his path, some 30 miles behind him, heading east. At a guess, the Amis had detached surface ships to mop up any survivors. He’d read somewhere that was their doctrine; carriers batter the enemy, then surface ships move in for the kill. Only, his change of course for the Faeroes had meant they’d missed him.

“Damage report?”

“We’re holding our own, Captain. The bucket brigades are helping a little and the pumps, well, they’re far above their rated capacity. The old girl is fighting hard, Sir.”

Becker nodded. “And we can save her yet. We can’t get into Thorshavn, but we can beach her outside. Then we can get the crew ashore. If Z-27 makes it, she can probably get into the harbor.” Becker laughed grimly. “It looks like the Faeroe Islands have just acquired a

Navy.”

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

“Sir, aircraft secured, pilots are sleeping it off. We’ve got an initial debrief, we’ll do some more details tomorrow. Our F7Fs are spotted on the deck, ready to go if there’s a need.”

“Any word from Admiral Lee?”

“No, Sir. They’ve done a sweep south and east of the kill zone, they found nothing. Formation Nan must have got the cripples. He’s complaining bitterly Admiral. He says you might at least have left him something for his guns. Oh, and the destroyers have picked up some survivors from the German ships. They’re in a pitiful state Admiral; the cans are doing what they can.” The Exec thought for a second. “Sorry Sir, that was a horrible pun.”

“I’ll forgive it. Any word on our pilots?”

“Mariners picked up a dozen; floatplanes from the cruisers about the same. A few ditched close enough to the screen to be picked up, total of about 30. As for the rest, we’ll have to assume they’re gone Admiral. On board the carriers, we’ve about seventy or eighty with wounds and burns from deck crashes. We’ve got around 400 dead in all. Group Sitka says it’s lost about 200 with the same number wounded. They’re heading west for Churchill and a repair yard.”

“Pass word out to the groups. We’ll pull back; west then south west. All groups to make up a strike wave to hit whatever targets we have listed in the Londonderry area. Since we’re passing, we might as well make use of what munitions we have left.”

The Exec consulted his flipboard. “We’re OK for land attack munitions. Lots of HE stuff, we didn’t use much of that. We’re out of Tiny Tims and rocket bombs, pretty much out of torpedoes and badly down on armor piercing 2,000 pounders, 1,600s and 1,000s. We’ve hardly any 500s. We’re low on chemicals for napalm as well. We can give one set of land targets a good seeing to. Wouldn’t be wise to hang around too long though.”

“Agreed. The courier plane is ready?” Halsey had spent hours writing up a detailed account of the battle. What had gone right, what had gone wrong, the lessons to be learned. It was only a preliminary document. The day’s action would be as closely and avidly studied as any in naval history. There was a naval historian on board, a man called Morison. He would be writing the popular history of the battle, one that would be a rare example of a history written by an expert who had actually seen the events in question. That raised an interesting point. “I guess we have to give a name to this battle.”

He walked over to the chart and looked down. It was smeared and smudged with the notations that had been put on it in the frantic planning that had taken place over the last 24 hours. Halsey wished he could put on his reading glasses but they wouldn’t fit the image, not here on his command bridge. The nearest patch of land was a small group of islands about 250 plus miles south west of them. The problem was that he couldn’t make out the name.

“These islands here. What are they?”

Across the chart table Ensign Zipster glanced at the map. He couldn’t make out the name either, but he was aware of the need for a young Ensign to impress his Admiral at every chance. Anyway, there was only one group of Islands north of the UK wasn’t there? The British had a naval base in them or something. “They’re the Orkneys Sir.” Zipster spoke with authority, tinged with a slight level of condescension that nobody else had known.

Halsey looked at him sharply. He hadn’t missed the inflection in the voice. Still, it was the information he needed. “Very well then, We’ll call it the Battle of the Orkneys.”

Airbase Muyezersky-5, Karelia, Kola Peninsula

Despite the Russian work teams who had been out all night, there was still slush on the runway. Just enough to drag on the wheels and lengthen the A-38Ds take-off run. Captain John Marosy mentally calculated how much the effect was likely to be as he ran his R-3350 engines up. His hands moved, dropping the flaps to the 20 degree setting, while his eyes watched his instruments as the engine temperature climbed. The R-3350 was a temperamental beast with a habit of eating cylinders when it overheated. A valve’s temperature would climb beyond the limits and burn. Then the head would disintegrate and chew up one of the eighteen cylinders. Next, the cylinder would go airborne and chew up the whole engine. At that point the hydraulic fluid would be lost and he wouldn’t be able to feather the prop. It would over-speed and come off, slashing at the fuselage on its way. Usually at that point, the whole engine would seize and twist right off the wing. On the whole, it was better not to let the engines overheat.

He was pressing hard on the brakes but Hammer Blow was still shifting forward. Ready or not, it was time to go. Up ahead of him, the runway clearance crews saw the A-38 start to pick up speed and scattered to clear the way. Most of them anyway, a few took the chance of stopping to clear one last spadeful of slush before jumping clear. Then, the white and gray A-38 raced past them, its twin tail lifted as the aircraft picked up speed. A few waved as he passed but Marosy didn’t respond, not now. His hands were full dealing with the Grizzlies take-off run. Like most over-powered aircraft, its flying characteristics were unforgiving. The torque on its take-off run was as much as he could control. Ground-looping would be a sad way to start a mission. Embarrassing.

Marosy blinked as Hammer Blow rotated and lifted over the snowfield. The storm had past and the air was crystal clear, the early morning sun reflections off the snowfields blinded him. Blinded wasn’t an understatement, snow-blindness was a real problem. That was why the Americans had brought along one of the war’s less obvious secret weapons. Sunglasses; available in huge quantities. They were bringing them in by the millions and distributing them as needed. The wire-framed dark glasses had even become something of a fashion statement back home. Those who could get them flaunted them. Beside him Lightning Bolt had moved into position on his wing. There were supposed to be four aircraft in this formation but Angelina had been one of the aircraft destroyed in the A-4 bombardment while Worst Nightmare had developed engine trouble and been pulled from the flight line. That left just two.

“Where are we going?”

In the back, Sergeant Bressler had his map spread out on the table. Originally, the second crewman on the A-38 had controlled the two twin .50 machine guns in remote controlled turrets. The D-model had those stripped out and replaced them with four fixed guns in the outer wing panels. The reduction in weight had reduced the strain