John Schettler: Three Kings

“I must first apologize to you, Admiral Tovey, and to all present, as it was my insistence that Home Fleet deploy west in the Iceland passages that was largely responsible for what happened. Had I permitted the Commander of Home Fleet to decide his course of battle and dispose accordingly, we might have caught the German movement well north of the convoy. It was my feeling that our newly established air base on the Faeroes would provide sufficient coverage of the inside passage, and yet the Germans were able to run heavy ships right up to those islands and shell our boys senseless. I realize you did your best when the alarm rang, rushing HMS Invincible to the scene and shadowing the bandits as they fled south.”

“That we did, sir but with King George V and Prince of Wales unable to catch up, I thought it unwise to engage the enemy with my single ship.”

“The responsibility is entirely mine,” said Pound, “and I am prepared to place my own head firmly on the chopping block this time, and will fix blame nowhere else.”

“If I may, sir,” said Tovey. “We’ll have need of every head at our disposal in the weeks and months ahead. Your assumption that R.A.F. Vagar might provide us with adequate warning of any German movement near the Faeroe Islands was entirely sound-save for one factor-the Graf Zeppelin. That single ship has changed the equation considerably, and we have not given it adequate consideration. It was fighters off that ship that blinded our air search effort fromVagar. Now that it has happened once, we must take every precaution to assure it never happens again.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” said Pound. “Yet it was also my bull headed order that you move both Illustrious and Ark Royal well west. Had they been closer perhaps we could have put up a challenge to this German carrier.”

“Perhaps,” said Tovey. “Our pilots are certainly capable and determined, yet we must get to work to give them a plane that can match what the Germans have aboard that ship. Their Bf-109 is superior in every respect to our Skuas, and even the new Fulmar may not be able to match it.”

“Agreed,” said Admiral Fraser, pleased at the gracious and diplomatic manner in which Tovey had eased the First Sea Lord down from the hangman’s scaffold. He was correct. They were going to need every head they could bring to the task now, and there was no longer any margin for error in these deliberations. “What we need is a plane like the Hurricane or the Spitfire. Mister Fairey proposed he could build a carrier-borne Spitfire a year before the war, and we were fools not to listen to him then.”

“It was Churchill who skewered that project,” said Pound. “He thought it would impede production of the land based variant and, as it stands, we’re barely able to keep production on those up to hold off the Luftwaffe. We do have the Fulmars coming on line now, though they are few in number. Yet, for the time being, they will have to suffice. At the same time I will listen to my Home Fleet Commander on this matter, and make every effort to see what we can do about a seaborne Spitfire or Hurricane. We already have a few Hurricanes modified for use on carriers. I believe those went to HMS Furious, did they not?”

“Yes, I believe so,” said Fraser. “At least we know those planes can match the German Messerschmitts pound for pound, but we have all too few of them.”

“We had an order for 50 Sea Spitfires set to go,” said Pound. “I presume we’ll be calling them Seafires if we ever get them. I will see what I can do to move it along. There has also been some discussion about purchasing the American Grumman Wildcats. We’re calling them Martlets.”

“We already have hold of 81 of these American planes,” said Fraser. “The French had them on order, and we filched the delivery after that apple went bad. More will be coming.”

“All this is well and good,” said Tovey. “Yet we must also look to how we can augment the striking power of our carriers. At the moment it seems to be tit for tat. Our Swordfish may be a bit long in the teeth, but they still get hits, and we have the only torpedo bomber of note in that plane. The Germans have nothing comparable. That said, their seaborne variant of that damnable Stuka has been giving us fits. Those planes are largely responsible for a good bit of the damage that was put on our Battlecruiser Squadron. Our battleships have better deck armor, but even they won’t like 500 pound bombs careening down in the thick of a fight at sea. We must look to a similar design.”

“The Fulmar is being adapted as a fighter bomber,” said Fraser.

“Yes? Well I’m afraid it may not handle either role well enough to get the job done.”

“We’ll also have the Albacore to help out.”

“Another torpedo bomber by trade,” Tovey said quickly. “Yes, they’ve been fitting bombs to the wings, but it will simply not match what the Germans have in that Stuka.”

“Agreed,” said Pound. “We will do what we can on this matter, but tell me, Admiral, what about these naval rockets the Russians have? I understand that they can serve in a dual role, and strike both aircraft and ships. Is that so?”

“I witnessed as much,” said Tovey with a quiet thrum of anxiety. If he could tell Admiral Pound the full measure of what he had witnessed and now knew about the Russian ship… but no, that would be tantamount to talking of gremlins and leprechauns with the man. He was lucky Pound had found the backbone to admit his own meddling when fleet deployments had ended in disaster. Yet he knew there was no way he could disclose what he knew about the Russian ship, and the men who had come here from that impossibly distant future. He could still scarcely believe it himself.

“Well? What about these rockets then?” said Pound. “Might we have a look at similar development?”

“I’m afraid we have no real projects active in that regard,” said Fraser.

“The Russians clearly have them, and you seem rather cozy with them, Admiral Tovey. What about it? Might they share this technology with us?”

“Perhaps, sir, though from all I could learn of this ship, it is a prototype-one of a kind. It’s the only ship the Russians have using these weapons and, as far as I know, there are no similar land based variants.”

“That seems odd,” said Pound.

“I thought as much,” said Tovey, thinking he had to lead this discussion along another path soon. He knew the Russians had a limited inventory of their wonder weapons, and that back-engineering them would take considerable time and effort, if it could be done at all. They had told him the rockets had computing machines in the nose, and radar as well, to guide them unerringly to their targets. He knew that was beyond the capability of Great Britain for the moment, and perhaps any other nation on earth, so he wisely said nothing of this. “It could be these weapons take enormous resources to design and build,” he said. “The Russians may only have this handful allotted to that ship, and nothing more.”

“Well, you might ask about that,” said Pound. “If they are forthcoming, perhaps we could speed things along with their development.”

Tovey smiled inwardly at that, knowing it would be long decades, the better part of a century, before Britain would ever have such weapons, or so he had been told by the young Russian officer, Fedorov. “In the mean time, we should not count on this technology to come on line any time soon. We’ll have to do with good old fashioned guns and steel, and some better aircraft, as we’ve been discussing here.”

“Indeed,” said Pound. “Well, now gentlemen, what to do about this war. We’ve lost Gibraltar. Churchill wants our recommendation as to how soon we can get on with plans for the occupation of the Cape Verde and Canary Islands. I can report that the planned occupation of the Azores went off without a hitch. Operation Alloy has concluded, but we must move quickly. The Germans will have eyes for the remaining islands as well.”