John Schettler - Kirov

Force P, Norwegian Sea, 122 Miles south of Jan Mayen Island

28 July, 1941

Rear Admiral Sir Frederick Wake-Walker stood on the bridge of HMS Victorious, watching the slowly rising seas. Just off his port bow, a second light carrier, HMS Furious cruised by his side. The two carriers were the heart of Force P, escorted by two heavy cruisers, Suffolk and Devonshire, along with light cruiser Adventure, and seven destroyers. His force was slowly creeping up to the Norwegian Sea, intent upon striking two bases supporting German mountain troops in the far north. The flight crews of his two light carriers would strike Petsamo and Kirkenes in 48 hours, and the pilots were already receiving their briefings below decks.

Wake-Walker was a stolid, competent, and cautious man, well experienced at sea and thought highly of by the commander-in-chief of the home fleet, Admiral John Tovey. At 53, his thinning hair was well receded, and combed tightly back lending him the impression of a proper British schoolmaster. Like most men who had reached his rank, he had a long and distinguished naval career dating back to the First World War. Just sixty days ago, he had taken part in the harrowing chase of the battleship Bismarck. Wake-Walker had been steaming aboard the cruiser Norfolk, finding and shadowing the great battleship, and then assuming command of Holland’s shattered task force after the tragic sinking of the Hood.

Well after the encounter, the intrusive First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound, had thought to bring Wake-Walker up on charges for failing to reengage Bismarck with his two cruisers and the wounded battleship Prince of Wales. Yet John Tovey would hear none of it. He vigorously supported Wake-Walker, threatening resignation should any such charges be brought. The Admiral was vindicated, and his decision to shadow and maintain contact with Bismarck, rather than re-engaging at that time, was upheld.

Now that the enormous threat the German raider represented had been dealt with, the Royal Navy was in the early stages of organizing lend-lease relief convoys to Murmansk. The first such convoy, codenamed Dervish, was scheduled to depart from Reykjavik in a little over three weeks time. Force P was now conducting a mission to pave the way. They hoped to strike and neutralize German airfields and ports at Petsamo and Kirkenes in northern Norway, and thus remove them as potential threats to the newly planned convoy route to the far north.

Yet that evening something had emerged from the distant weather front to the northeast, a great disturbance reported by a weather ship several hundred miles from their position. The message had been garbled when received, and then cut off altogether, and they heard nothing further from the trawler. Now, from the look of the far horizon, he sensed a rising storm bearing down on his planned route to the North Cape area.

The Admiral was about to detach HMS Furious to accompany the cruiser Adventure on ‘Operation EF’ to deliver a shipment of mines to the Russian port of Archangel. Furious would then rejoin his main task force for the planned airstrike. Force P was skulking up slowly, hoping to surprise the Germans, yet the long hours of daylight at this latitude would make their mission quite hazardous. He stared out the starboard screen on the bridge, watching HMS Furious riding in the distance.

A curious ship, Furious was laid down in 1915 as a battlecruiser, but was later converted to a light carrier with the addition of a flight deck and removal of her main bridge superstructures. She carried three squadrons, nine old Swordfish torpedo bombers, nine newer Albacore torpedo bombers, and nine Fulmar II fighters. The torpedo bombers were older biplanes, slow and cumbersome, yet effective enough once they closed with the target. The Fulmars had proven themselves as capable air defense fighters, and the carrier also had a flight of four more modern Sea Hurricane fighters as well. The Admiral’s flagship, HMS Victorious, had another 33 planes aboard, giving him a total of 64 planes to make the strike.

Yet what to do about this odd report from the weather ship? What little they could decipher of the message indicated turbulent seas, and chaotic atmospheric conditions. While the slate gray horizon seemed to threaten, there were no signs of such violent weather as yet. But the Arctic waters were fickle and could change on a moment’s notice, he knew. Best to get Furious and Adventure on their way as soon as possible. He was checking the squadron manifest, noting pilots assigned to the operation, when the signalman reported an odd contact to the north.

“Visual sighting, sir. Aircraft of some type.”

The Admiral raised his field glasses, scanning the distant horizon where he soon noted what looked like a small, yet odd looking aircraft. It hovered over a bank of low clouds, well within sighting distance of his task force, and he swore under his breath, wishing he had had a couple of Sea Hurricanes up for air cover. This contact was most likely a Do-18 flying boat, a German reconnaissance plane out of Tromso. It was the only thing with the range to patrol this far out, and now that he had been spotted, the news would put the enemy on alert.

He had hoped to get much closer to the coast before being discovered, and this news would now force him to reconsider his options here. Should he detach Furious and Adventure as planned, or keep the ships in hand for a quick run in to the coast in the hopes of getting off the strike as soon as possible? He squinted into his field glasses a second time, but the contact had slipped into the low clouds and was gone.

“Better notify Home Fleet,” he said to his Chief of Staff. “And have Mr. Grenfell come to the bridge.” Grenfell commanded his 809 Squadron of twelve Fulmar II fighters, and ten minutes later he was discussing the situation in the plotting room off the rear of the bridge.

“The contact was visual,” said Wake-Walker. “Strange that we didn’t get a look at it on radar first with this odd interference the last few hours. We might have had time to get your boys airborne.”

“Right, sir,” said Grenfell. “I’ve heard the antennae have been a bit rattled today.”

“Well, the thing is this. If Jerry is on to us, and we make a run at the coast now, we’ll need more vigorous air cover over the task force.”

“I can split my squadron in thirds, sir,” suggested Grenfell. “We could put four planes in the air and rotate the duty en-route, then muster the lot of them for the raid.”

“Good suggestion,” said the Admiral. “See too it, will you? And I should like to have the first flight up immediately, if you please.”

“Right, sir. Will we be keeping to our planned course?”

The Admiral considered for a moment. “Unless we hear anything to the contrary from Home Fleet, I’m inclined to maintain our present course. However…I’m cancelling the mine delivery to Archangel for the time being and keeping Furious with the task force pending further developments. In this light, you may wish to coordinate with Furious and extend your air cover with the addition of her fighter planes as well.”

“Very good, sir. Lt. Commander Judd’s four Sea Hurricanes would come in handy. I can have my first flight up in fifteen minutes.”

The Admiral was satisfied that he would not be spotted without air cover again. Yet now he turned his thoughts to the mission ahead. There was little real surface threat, as all the Germans really had in the vicinity at the moment were a few destroyers. They may have been able to slip in a Hipper class cruiser, but with Bismarck gone, the only real formidable threat the Kriegsmarine could mount would come from the battleship Tirpitz, and she was laid up at Kiel for the moment if the Admiralty's intelligence was correct.