May 2, 1940 HMS Hood Plymouth
She was immobile. Power was flowing through the hundreds of tools civilians and landlubbers brought aboard her. Her engines had been opened up. Thousands of tubes were being replaced by both her crew and the yard workers. Some of the tubes were in fine condition, others had been narrowed by scaled mineral deposits.
Hood needed the month in the yard while her older and weaker sisters,
Renown and
Repulse could hold the line against the sole seaworthy German battlecruiser.
Dunkerque and
Strasbourg were both at sea having joined increasingly powerful fleet committed to the Norwegian campaign.
Work stopped throughout the ship at 1400.
Seventy men, fifty Royal Marines and twenty sailors of the naval landing party had arrived at the gangway. The Royal Marine major requested permission to come aboard and it was quickly granted. The men had returned from Norway after they had landed at Alesund. They had held the small port until relieved by the Army and now they were home.
Hood’s let go three mighty blasts of her whistle as the ships’ company let go with a roar:
“Huzzah, Huzzah, Huzzah”
Within an hour, work had resumed to make her ready for war once again.
May 2, 1940 South of Trondheim
The artillery observer looked through his binoculars. Four thousand yards away in the river valley thirty men were seen hugging each other. The cleaner and fatter soldiers had handed the skinnier and poorly clothed compatriots a few bottles of cheap booze and confiscated cigarettes. The meeting place was only a few hundred yards from a registered target. Six minutes later a battery of 75mm guns sent fifty rounds at the Germans who had celebrated breaking the seige of Trondheim. Four divisions had forced their way up the valley against two brigades, one Guards, one Legion. They had fought hard and they left hundreds of their comrades buried in impromptu graves. The terrain had been their friend in delaying the overwhelming power of the advance but as they retreated up the rail line the front became too much to cover.
The four Allied brigades that were besieging the southern approaches to Trondheim had abandoned their lines overnight. The Norwegian division had moved to the east with the intention that they could demobilize and send as many men home as possible. The French Alpine infantry, Poles and Scottish Territorials were able to hold a line of retreat open over the Gaula River while the Guards and Legion passed through the lines of contravallation.
If the Germans could give the Allies twelve hours to reorganize, a stand could be arranged east of Borsa by a rearguard as the other five brigades continued to march through the snow constricted roads to the ports at the top of the fjord where they could be evacuated.
May 2, 1940 Scapa Flow
HMS Penelope and four Tribal class destroyers steamed smartly pass the boom defense vessels near Flotta. They would head to a patrol box near Alesund as a score of merchant ships and even more fleet auxiliaries moved to evacuate as much of the Norwegian expeditionary force to Bodo.
Seven hundred miles away, the cruiser
Koln left his anchorage with a pair of destroyers. Within an hour they had entered a cleared channel and headed north to Trondheim at 18 knots.
May 3, 1940 Lille, France
The last train pulled out the station. The passenger cars were mostly empty. A few families were leaving Lille for Paris and a company of engineers were being sent to the rear for more training on mine removal. The regular brigades of the 51st Highland Infantry Division had arrived with the main force of the BEF. General Gort wanted to hold the division in general reserve for at least a week to allow it to shake out from the transfer from the central front to the northern front. The men wanted the time to rest and recover. They had been used to working on their own and had some experience in light patrolling east of the Maginot line but their duties were static instead of potentially mobile war.
May 3, 1940 Maastricht
The pretty girl enjoyed the spring day. The sun was up almost as early as she was. The wind flew past her face, her long blonde hair kept down by a kerchief. She had to get her mother some herbs and fish from the market, and after that she had a few hours to herself. As she rode past the bridge over the Maas, the soldiers waved. Fewer soldiers were on duty today than they had been yesterday as three day leaves had been granted for one squad of each platoon. Some of the men had already made it to the train station to head back to the coast, while others were able to catch a streetcar to their homes. A few of the most industrious hired themselves out to work gangs while others decided to find an open tavern.
May 3, 1940 Camp Coëtquidan Brittany, France
The station master was apologetic. The Polish division had left. The last train carrying a battalion of sappers had departed the night before. There was no one left to sign for the cargo of eleven M2A2 medium tanks for the Polish Armored Training School. The tanks had arrived from America three weeks ago in Marseilles. Since then they had been slowly moving north to join the Polish Army. The station master told the bureaucrat that the Poles were on their way to Paris and then to the north. Perhaps the tanks could go back to Paris as well.
May 4, 1940 0815 Near Krokstorda Norway
Draug was back in her home waters. She had returned two days ago and already she had covered one evacuation convoy from the small fishing ports west of Trondheim. The crew was not the same crew that escaped Norway three weeks earlier. Half her officers were now on Royal Navy ships as liaisons. Half a dozen enlisted men were ashore along the Tyne assisting in the reconstruction of the incomplete destroyers that had escaped. Gaps were filled by impressed merchant sailors and a few uniformed men who had been able to avoid the initial onslaught and then made their ways to the Allied cause.
Eleven small ships and two larger ferries were in the convoy. Three destroyers from three nations along with a pair of sloops provided immediate cover as they headed north at seven knots. A minesweeper had been part of the escort until a squadron of Stukas sank her an hour ago. The bombs did their job, killing everyone aboard instantly after a magazine exploded. A pair of Skuas orbited overhead.
Ark Royal and
Furious were covering the evacuation but they kept the Martlets closer to the carriers for their own defense.
Forty miles to the south Force G patrolled. Dive bombers had attacked the light cruiser and four destroyers twice in the past two days.
Afridi had been damaged. A French destroyer was with her halfway across the North Sea as they attempted to rendezvous with a fleet tug.
Neptune had joined
Penelope on the patrol a few hours ago. Her radar had been installed as the repairs from the
Graf Spee action had been carried out. She was south of the main fleet to both strengthen the cruiser patrols and to give the fighters another thirty minutes worth of warning. She had already guided two FAA fighter flights against incoming raids leading to their disruption and half a dozen kills.
May 4, 1940 0200 Detroit Michigan
Eighty five flatbed cars were waiting outside the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel. Custom inspectors were going over the unusual cargo. One man could not believe the manifest. Each tank, however obsolete, was listed as scrap steel. Each would be sold for scrap for $250. If he had known that a tank could be bought that cheaply, he would have bought one or two for himself as a project for his brother’s garage. He would have had the most unique vehicle for the city parade.
Two hundred and fifty twenty three year old light tanks, knock-offs of the French Renaults that won the First Great War were being sold to Canada. The Canadians were in the process of standing up two armored divisions. They had a very simple problem. They had no tanks to either train with or equip their formations. These tanks could be training tanks for large scale maneuver and process building but they were death traps in mobile warfare. Heavy machine guns and light infantry support guns could penetrate the thin armor. They were protected against individual shoulder arms and mortar fragments and little else.
The US Army had stored several hundred tanks without a plan. Another 90 M1917s were being shipped to the Philippines. The Army there wanted to use them as the anchors of a defensive line. The engines had been stripped from the hulls. They would be pushed into place after engineers finished digging positions into the slopes of the Bataan Peninsula as impromptu pillboxes. One cannon tank would be matched with a pair of machine gun tanks in thirty strong points.
The rest of the tanks still in reserve were slowly being reconditioned to give the Army a large number of tanks for initial familiarization training. They were due to arrive at training units by the end of the summer.
May 4, 1940 0900 Along the Leads
Smoke pitter-pattered against the glaring white background of the Norwegian coast. Sharp eyed observers had seen flecks of darkness circle a distant point of grayness on the southern horizon. The men had been at anti-aircraft stations for hours now. A few men scrambled to the main battery turrets while the machine gunners were brought back inside the armored citadel. The three destroyers pushed away from the two light cruisers. Within minutes, they radioed that they saw three warships, one heavy cruiser and two light cruisers heading north at twenty knots.
Ghurka pressed forward until she was within seventeen thousand yards. As she was chasing splashes she radioed that that the Germans were only light cruisers, one larger than the others. A few stray salvos of her forward guns replied at the edge of their range scoring no kills besides an unfortunate dolphin who had chosen that moment to breathe.
Eleven foot seas crested over the bows of the two Royal Navy cruisers as they edged south. Green water broke against the lead turrets as propellers began to turn and push the ships forward at 27 knots. The three Tribals had increased speed and fled from the oncoming Germans. At twenty seven thousand yards,
Neptune’s radar pierced the horizon and had a solid set of contacts. Turrets began to shift and rudders turned slightly so the two cruisers were in echelon, the larger
Neptune two ship lengths ahead of the smaller
Penelope while the three destroyers clung closely to the flanks of the cruiser division. The forces were closing on each other at almost a mile per minute. The Germans began a turn to port as the range closed to under twenty thousand yards and the two smaller ships broke free from the escort mission and began to race across the open sea at thirty three knots.
Penelope opened fire with a ranging salvo against the lead German attacker. The shells arced into the air and between a misestimate of range, an understatement of speed and slightly inferior propellant that had a non-uniform burn, the shells splashed over one thousand yards from their intended target. Neptune waited thirty seconds until she fired on the large cruiser in the rear of the German formation. Four shells ascended into the stormy air until gravity pulled them back down. One shell landed ahead of
Koln while the other three were on azimuth but four hundred yards short.
The Germans returned their fire.
Ghurka was the target of the lead ships. The larger German destroyers forward guns roared and the almost cruiser sized weapons soaked the exposed seamen with water and a few shards of shell casing that cut wiring and scarred bulkheads but did not hit any of the crew.
Penelope’s fire improved in the first few minutes. The seventh salvo was a clean straddle on the leading German destroyer. The three destroyers had closed the range to under 9,000 yards where their lighter but far more numerous guns began to take an effect. The two German destroyers had by now realized they had not run into a destroyer patrol but a cruiser force. The lead ship had been hit three times, once by a six inch shell and twice from the accurate and increasingly rapid fire from
Punjabi. Smoke had started to pour out of the bridge. Smoke, thick, dark, almost impenetrable smoke was puffing frantically from her funnel to hide Koln from pursuit. The smoke screen was thickened by her compatriot who had already started to flee while calling for help from the Luftwaffe.
Koln and
Neptune traded blows. One shell had penetrated
Neptune’s unarmored bow while
Koln had been hit in her radio room. The German cruiser broadside was flashing every ten seconds, nine heavy shells raining towards the British patrol as Penelope had ceased assisting the destroyers, they would fight their own battle of same versus same, three predators against two where one had already been lamed and would need luck to survive the morning, and turned her guns. Three minutes later as
Penelope gained her range, a salvo landing near
Koln every four seconds. Few shells hit as the seas were rough and the range high but every minute, one, two or three shells hit.
Koln’s single forward turret was inoperable, a six inch shell from
Neptune had penetrated the barbette and jammed the training mechanism in place. The upperworks were a perforated as if mice had been given free reign in a cheese warehouse.
Neptune had not escaped without harm. A trio of shells had struck. One detonated in the torpedo station, killing most of the torpedo crew and sending four into the sea wildly as a quick thinking hostilities only man released the firing pins and sent them overboard as he bled out from an leg wound. The torpedoes went their full run without threatening any ship and sank to the bottom of the sea instead of exploding onboard.
Yet the damage
Koln could do from his two rear turrets was empty defiance.
Richard Beitzen had split in half eight thousand yards to the north. The damaged
Ghurka had all of her remaining guns trained on the still floating forward half of the ship as she slowed to make her own repairs and throw life rafts and floats over the side to the five score men in the water. The single operating gun aboard the catastrophically damaged destroyer was quickly swiveled around so it was flush with the centerline and raised to the maximum elevation. That decision was made by the senior surviving officer, a twenty three year old lieutenant who had assumed command after a 4.7 inch shell killed the ship’s executive officer and engineer moments before the aft magazine explosion.
Penelope closed to within three thousand yards with every gun firing as rapidly as possible. Six and four inch shells were flying across the water in fast, flat trajectories while the arcing fires of Neptune crashed into the battered body of
Koln and added blood to the water as his crew still tried to fight. They fought with only Cesar turret operational in local control. In the time for
Penelope’s torpedoes to run hot straight and true,
Penelope was hit twice. A turret was a mangled slaughterhouse as a shell pierced her armor and exploded. The flash protection worked but her forward firepower was now halved. And then the torpedoes hit. Two struck
Koln and detonated, splitting the dying ship into two with a heavy aft third floating while everything forward of the engine rooms quickly dove into the sea.
Punjabi and
Eskimo chased
Theodor Reidel for an hour. The smoke screen had given him time to open the range before the general chase began. Six Stukas ended the chase.
Punjabi was hidden in a series of near misses and her hull had dozens of holes in it from the bomb casings exploding within yards of the wildly dancing dervish of a ship but beyond a broken arm, she took no casualties.
Force G gathered themselves and headed north by noon time. Eleven miles from the main evacuation convoy whose escort they were joining, the French cruisers
Montcalm and
Émile Bertin along with four destroyers blasted a salute for Force G. The French squadron would hold the southern flank as the convoy brought men and material to Bodo and Narvik.
May 6, 1940 0645 near Marby France
Green tendrils of life passed beneath him. The forest was coming alive as spring shook off winter and the trees came into full bloom. Paths and traces that were obvious two months ago were no longer visible except when a trained eye looked for the indirect indications of greater greenery and taller trees that edged along the openings in the forest. Captainde St. Exupery breathed with contentment as his MB.170 cruised above the French screening zone. Cameras were going off. This was a simple mapping mission as the artillery branches wanted to resurvey the impact zones for their guns. There were no fighters to harass him and no anti-aircraft fire reaching up to kill him. Flight was free for the moment and he enjoyed filming the emptiness of the Ardennes. Four minutes later as he approached the Belgian border the rudder kicked out and the plane banked away. The beauty of flight was truly ephemeral and he would enjoy every moment of it before he had to land.
May 6, 1940 0655 Force Z near Bodo
Waves slapped against the hulls of the seven warships. An eighth, an older, smaller destroyer had been abandoned the night before. Torpedo bombers had managed to hit her twice. The first hit would have been enough to justify scuttling the destroyer but the second hit in the engineering space made the decision easy. Royal Navy fighters had arrived to chase off the bombers after they had finished dropping their missiles on the French ships. The five kills were enough to make the fleet safer today and tomorrow but the victories were Pyrrhic at best for the seventy three sailors who had already died.
Death streaked through the water. Four strands of explosives pushed aside the resistance. One streaked thirty meters ahead of
Montcalm’s bow, one failed to detonate as the warhead’s whiskers were not compressed at the off angle strike, one passed meters astern of the cruiser while the final torpedo worked. Men were thrown from the bunkers, steam lines opened up as a thirty by sixty one foot hole opened the cruiser to the sea. Water rushed into the ship as the officer of the deck ordered the ship to slow so as to not cause even more structural damaged.
Thirty minutes later, three destroyers were depth charging a suspected submarine.
Emile Bertin had pulled alongside her slightly younger and larger sister. Pumps had been spread out throughout the ship in an attempt to keep even with the tides of ocean water coming into the listing cruiser. Sailors were chest deep in frigid waters as they pushed wood into holes and struggled to isolate the damage.
By mid-afternoon,
Emile Bertin had
Montcalm in tow. The French force had been joined by half a dozen British cruisers and a dozen destroyers that had been detached from the carrier groups. The carriers were sixty miles to the north and east providing fighter and anti-submarine cover as the damaged cruiser limped home at five knots. Signals were exchanged between the Admiralty and the Marine Nationale. By the end of the night, the Allies agreed that
Montcalm would be repaired along the Tyne with any final touches being completed at Brest as she was not in any condition to make the long journey to the French dockyards.
May 6, 1940 1643 south of Bodo Norway
Eleven thousand feet beneath the deadly ballet, a polyglot Allied Division and most of the Norwegian 4th Division dug in. A regiment was stationed at the impromptu fighter field that supported thirty old Hurricanes and a dozen Gladiators flown by Norwegian pilots. Anti-aircraft guns were being placed around critical points and behind the strategic passes to the port.
All of these thoughts could not pass through the mind of Squadron Leader Barwell. He had nine of his machines in the air frantically climbing for altitude. Spotters had radioed in a large air raid of three dozen Heinkels covered by a dozen twin engine Messerschmitts. The best estimate was the attackers were at 11,000 feet. His squadron had just passed nine thousand feet when a sharp eyed section leader called Tally Ho over the radio --- many bandits one o’clock even.
The Merlins strained to give the Hurricanes the last horse power available. Aviation pool 87 Octane was all that was available so the planes had very little left to give as they arced over at 12,000 feet. The three vics slashed into the formation. The dozen twin engine destroyers in six pairs swarmed the lighter, smaller single engine fighters. Six Hurricanes turned to dogfight the Messerschmitts… one flashed in front of his gunsight and the eight machine guns hammered the port engine of his opponent.. A two second burst was all that could be fired as a string of tracers whipped in front of him. The three Hurricanes dove to create speed and space from the attackers.
One Hurricane and then another were shot down. The second pilot descended on his silk canopy until he was rescued and later ransomed by a platoon of Norwegian militia men. The going rate for a pilot was three quarts of whiskey.
A heavy fighter followed the Hawkers to the ground. Neither pilot survived the night. The last section of Hurricanes managed to slip through the fighter escort and lined up an attack on the last section of bombers in the trailing squadron. Dozens of tracer streams reached out for the nimble fighters. None hit but the morale effect of charging into machine gun fire specifically aimed at you was as formidable for fighter pilots as it was for infantrymen. The men were brave but they let go of their triggers that laced the trailing two bombers with dozens of small holes early and broke off the attack at two hundred yards. They looped underneath the formation and then returned the stolen speed back into altitude for a second pass. This time a bomber lost its wing and four parachutes emerged before the defensive power of the bomber formation could be brought to bear against the skyward streaking fighters.
Four miles from port the furball ended as the Hurricanes dove the for the deck. HMS Curlew and a dozen other warships as well as all of the anti-aircraft batteries the Army had landed opened up. Black puffballs of heavy high angle guns were mixed with steady streams of lighter weapons. Army 40mm guns sent rounds skyward faster and longer than the Navy’s pompoms. Some of the thousands of shells hit their target or at least an aircraft. As the German bombers turned away from the port their mission was a success. Two merchant ships had been hit and
HMS Curlew had underwater damage from a series of near misses. Seven bombers did not return to their base. Their escort was three short as well.
Thirty minutes later, six Hurricanes were able to taxi to the dispersal area. Ground crews hurried over to their machines that they had let the pilots borrow and gasped at the damage. Three planes had at least thirty holes in them. Only the skipper’s mount was not damaged. The seventh plane of the fight had tipped over on landing on the improvised field and had already been hauled to the maintenance area to be stripped of useful parts.
May 7, 1940 0900 Rotterdam
Three ships had arrived from the Americas the night before. One contained high priority civilian goods including four thousand tons of coffee beans and a thousand tons of tobacco. The Dutch naval authorities had been hearing rumors of war and invasion.
Maas would be one of the last ships to arrive with purely consumption goods. In the best of times coming forward, tobacco and coffee would be luxuries found only at high end shops as they would be taxed at three times their value. If war came, they would only be available on the black market.
The other two ships were far important. One had arrived from New York. On board was six more Martin bombers. They would need at least a month to assemble. More importantly than the bombers were the cargo. The Dutch Army Aviation brigades had enough bombs to equip their current Martin bombers for a single sortie.
Stad Schiedam carried six sorties worth of bombs for the entire brigade. The Panamanian flagged companion had left New Orleans with three dozen 105mm guns and twenty thousand shells. She also carried enough mines to make almost any engineer happy. Six bulldozers were also aboard. These ships had been met at sea by
Gelderland the previous afternoon and escorted into harbor.
Stevedores had been conscripted and impressed from all other duties along the waterfront to unload these two ships. Shells and mines were stacked up into a waiting line of trucks while the heavier equipment was being craned onto waiting trains that would have military priority to transfer the supplies to the Lichte division.
May 7, 1940 1200 north of Trondheim
Clang, Clang, Clang
Thirty men sat patiently in the small Lutheran church built in the 1880s. None were visibly praying. A few had wiped their brows more than once. All had the look of men who had been in the field for a month with the weight of command burdening them, responsibility for life and death draining their energy, visions of failure playing across the back of their eyelids when they could sleep for three or four hours straight at night.
Clang, Clang, Clang
They were the command element of the 5th Norwegian Division. At the start of the invasion, they were responsible for almost 6,000 men. Now they were responsible for themselves and only themselves. The rest of the men were gone. Some had been buried in hasty graves, more had been sent home in pine boxes to be buried in family plots. A few had their bones at the bottom of a fjord. More just simply disappeared, their bodies absorbing steel and explosives, their death a relief, their death a failure, their death a burden. Many more were scattered in a plethora of hospitals.
Clang, Clang, Clang
Most however had simply been told to go home. And so they did. A few brought their rifles and some ammunition with them. Most only brought their uniforms and field clothing. The Germans had stopped bombing movement and the guns had fallen silent two days ago when some of the thirty men sitting in the pews arranged a conference with their opponents. Prisoners would have been a burden and a delay. Demobilization and dispersal would be sufficient, a kind mercy for the defeated Norwegians and an aid to the Germans. The Germans wanted the senior leaders of the Norwegian division to surrender, so the thirty men sat in the pews, waiting for the bells to finish striking noon.
Clang, Clang, Clang.
The 5th Division was now no more.
May 7, 1940 1410 North of Kiel
The pride of the fleet was back at sea. Both battlecruisers had repaired the damage they had suffered.
Scharnhorst had only been lightly damaged in April’s fighting; the weather was more dangerous than the enemy.
Gneisenau was not as lucky. She had been shelled, she had been mined, and she had been bombed while under repair. The last raid by twenty Wellingtons had placed three 500 pound bombs in the graving dock. One failed to detonate, a common problem with British bombs. Another destroyed a secondary gun mount. The final bomb was defeated by the turret Anton’s roof armor and exploded along the quay. Repairs had taken longer than originally anticipated due to both the damage from the mines and shells as well as the new air raids. He was ready.
Both ships steamed at twenty four knots in the calm Baltic, working out the kinks, and revising the teamwork that made these battlecruisers so effective. As the ships heeled over to fire their main guns at a towed barge twenty five thousand meters away, the sea exploded. Thick gray smoke hung over the sky and cold water splashed on the deck of
Gneisenau.
An RAF laid mine detonated mere feet aft of the previous mine strike. The battlecruiser was never in danger of sinking but the crew froze and swore and slammed temporary plugs to fill the eighteen by twenty two foot gash in the hull. By the time he arrived at Kiel, twenty six hundred tons of seawater would need to be pumped out and a new condenser would have to be installed.
The next morning
Scharnhorst resumed her exercises with
Hipper.
May 8 1940 House Hearing Room 221B, Washington DC
“General, what have been the greatest impediments to fully manning the Army at this time? As I see it, there are still millions of unemployed young men who should be more than willing to come to the colors for three square meals and a reliable monthly wage, but you’re currently nine thousand men short of establishment. How do you explain that?”
“Sir, over the past year we’ve had to turn away 40,000 men who had approached recruiters to join the Army. Some of those men were common criminals, but most are good, honest, young, hardworking men who want to improve themselves in the Army. However, they are underweight, or missing teeth, or missing fingers, or can’t see without thick corrective lens. Compared to the recruiting in 1928, we have turned away three times as many 18 to 20 year olds for medical reasons in the past year than we did in 1928. The Depression has led to malnourishment and the lack of medical care for this generation of recruits. The proportion of fully capable men of military age compared to the total population of men of military age has declined precipitously and will not improve for several more years.
“I see, has the Army changed their standards?”
“No sir, we have not. We believe we can recruit to full authorized strength within our preferred recruiting pools through the use of targeted bonuses and aggressive outreach.”
“Thank you, now I want to go on about the efficiency of the colored regiments compared to the white regiments….”
May 8, 1940 2100 Finniefjord, Norway
A few men were visible to any observers looking at the pass from the south. A glacier anchored the east flank and an inlet anchored the right flank. A single road led north to Bodo and further north to Narvik. Men walking along the road would take weeks to reach the final destination. Trucks could move men and supplies quicker but an unopposed peacetime run would still take days. The three independent companies had been landed at Mo I Rana the day before. The three destroyers that had brought them over to Norway had left at daybreak to avoid dive bombers. Little heavy equipment beyond saws, shovels and pickaxes could be brought over and not all of it was unloaded. A few crates of dynamite had been unloaded in time.
Seven hundred men with enough heavy weaponry to make a Norwegian battalion feel endowed dug in. Their job was not to stop the German advance. It was to make it difficult. To further that goal, a platoon from the 1st Independent Company commandeered three trucks at dawn and headed south. They had two of the precious boxes of dynamite. Throughout the day as the rest of the men dug in, they heard distant booms that came closer. Finally a single truck came down the road slowly with its lights on. Twenty men were in back, joking and huddling together to stay warm. The rest of the platoon and two trucks were thirty miles south watching a major road cut. They would flee when the Germans advanced in force but they would give the rest of the force time to prepare.
May 9, 1940 1600 Fortress Eban Emal, Belgium
The fortress was overflowing. Men were bumping into each other as the first contingent moved deeper into the fortress. The colonel was rotating the garrison. By dinner time, the veterans who had been in the barracks just north of the fortress would take command of the strongpoint. The reservists and draftees who had been locked underground for the past week would be relieved. They could breathe the fresh air, they could feel the sun on their faces, and they could run with abandon as a crew wide football tournament had already been arranged for Saturday.
May 9, 1940 1800 Alexandria Egypt
The first piece of a convoluted swap was being dragged out of the harbor. A floating drydock capable of holding a thirty thousand ton ship was being towed by six large tugs. Four harbor tugs were also helping the steel monstrosity leave the constricted waters of the port. She would be brought to Malta to support cruiser forces and any older battleships of the Royal Navy and Marine Nationale.
At the same time, Malta’s Grand Harbor had been closed for thirty six hours. The largest Admiralty drydock in the world was being moved from her exposed position. Then tugs, escorted by a pair of destroyers would bring the dock to Alexandria. She could lift a battleship without a challenge. The only ships she could not support were the great greyhounds of the sea, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth.
The switch would be completed by the end of the month. After that Malta could support cruisers and older battleships while Alexandria and Mers el Kebir could support any warship in the Allied fleets.
May 9, 1940 Las Palmas, Canary Islands
The flying boat skipped along the rough seas outside of the harbor. Thirty one hundred yards later, it was airborne with its passengers including six very fit young businessmen. A pretty stewardess waited until the aircraft was above 5,000 until she circulated, more legs and implication than actual flirting with the passengers, a coy smile and eyes that hinted at far more intelligence than a good girl should show as she went through the cabin and made cocktails for her passengers. As she approached the businessmen, they stopped talking. Two bottles of champagne were ordered and charged to the home office as the deal had been closed.
Three hours later as the flying boat was going through a small storm between the Canaries and the Loire, a series of muffled explosions went off in Las Palmas harbor. The German tanker
Corrientes soon flooded and sank to the bottom of the harbor. Sabotage was the only explanation as salvage divers would later find half a dozen explosion holes within twenty feet of her shafts.
May 10, 1940 near Pearl Harbor
Thirty dive bombers, twelve torpedo planes and six fighters, all monoplanes, cruised through the beautiful morning sky at 11,000 feet. They had been launched forty five minutes ago from
USS Enterprise based on the information provided by a Kaneohe Bay based amphibian. The target was
USS Yorktown and her task force 75 miles south of Pearl Harbor. The aircraft were beginning to split up from their cruising formation to an attack formation 30 miles from the last observed position of Yorktown and three battleships of BatDIV3. The torpedo bombers descended to 500 feet, while the fighters and dive bombers gained altitude.
The mock attack went well,
Yorktown’s fighters had been split into two elements. Four Grumman biplanes orbited the fleet in a point defense combat air patrol.
Enterprise’s fighters occupied their attention in a mock dogfight.
The other four Grummans were on a snipe hunt.
Yorktown had received a new CXAM radar but the operators were novices. The flight was six miles behind the strike and three thousand feet below the dive bombers when
Yorktown “sank”.
When the fleet docked at Pearl Harbor,
Enterprise led the victorious BatDiv2 into harbor.
Yorktown trailed after she had been raised from the dead.
May 10, 1940 0800 Scapa Flow
The Fleet was home. The evacuation of Southern Norway had been successful. A pair of destroyers were lost, one to dive bombers and another to a mine. Two coasters were sunk and half a dozen ships had been damaged to some degree but the army was able to evacuate. The fleet was exhausted by its success in covering a retreat.
Penelope and
Neptune were both in dry dock, joining
Exeter. Reinforcements were no longer available from the Mediterranean. The French ships that had been vital in relieving Home Fleet’s battlecruisers had withdrawn.
Strasbourg and Dunkerque stayed in the anchorage long enough to take on fuel and disembark English and Norwegian liaison officers. Now they were steaming through St. George’s channel with an escort of six large destroyers. Their destination was Mers El Kebir.
Resolution was hours behind them as she would join
Malaya as part of the Mediterranean Fleet.
May 10, 1940 1500
The observation post along the Maas was occupied by a squad of Dutch reservists. Nothing unusual was reported.
A small aerial skirmish took place over the triangle of the German, French and Luxembourg border. Six French Hawk fighters were escorting a pair of reconnaissance planes. They were jumped by a staffel of ME-109. The French fighters turned into the attack and allowed their charges to escape at the cost of three fighters. The Germans lost a single plane but had accomplished their mission.
A sentry in the north cupola shielded his eyes. The Belgian Army continued to dig in along the Albert Canal but he saw nothing to the east. To the south, he saw a tankette battalion drill and to the west he caught a glimpse of a few of his compatriots’ sisters working in the greening fields.
The Moroccan private checked his rifle again. His sergeant put him on policing duties because the bolt was not sliding due to a lack of attention and care to his rifle the previous week. He would pass inspection today and get a day’s leave to Lille.
HNLMS Jacob van Heemskerck entered the water for the first time. The small light cruiser had been hurriedly readied for sea. A pair of tugboats had been chartered to stay by the navy yard. The cruiser still had no weapons beyond a dozen rifles and a pair of machine guns expeditiously mounted on her fantail. She had no engines. She was the skeleton of a ship with a barely completed skin and not yet a warrior.
Private Angus MacMahon of the Seaforth Highlanders stretched his arm behind his shoulder. The regiment had completed a fifteen mile march just minutes ago and he had to get a crick out of his back before he tightened up. Once his gear was cleaned and stowed, he needed to write a letter home to his brother. The last letter from him said he was thinking of joining the Navy as soon as he turned nineteen.
All was quiet on the Western Front.
May 10, 1940 1645 Buckingham Palace
King George VI nodded his assent. The resignation of Prime Minister Chamberlain would be accepted and Winston Churchill would be given the first chance to form a new government of national unity. His Navy had performed brilliantly in Norway, the aircraft carriers had received their high performance fighters just in time to give the fleet enough protection to operate well forward in support of the army. It was the army that was the disappointment. Every time the Army made contact with the Germans, they needed to retreat. The Guards and the Territorials of the expeditionary force had been fighting bravely but without enough ammunition, without enough anti-tank weapons, without enough artillery, without enough air cover. These were the faults of the Government of the last years of peace. The British Empire needed a war leader and Neville Chamberlain realized he was not that man nor did he have the confidence of a unified nation.
Within minutes, Mr. Churchill had entered the audience room and received the formal invitation to form a government acceptable to His Majesty.
May 10, 2200 Reykjavik Iceland
Operation Spoon was a success. A battalion of new Royal Marines had been ferried to the island that afternoon by a division of cruisers and seized control. The fiercest resitsance was offered by three dogs by the fishing docks as they refused to give up their meal of offal in front of the harbor master’s office. A can of bully beef was deployed to eliminate the resistance. No U-boats were found to have visited the island; the interned survivors of a German blockade runner had been transferred to HMS Berwick while the German consul was being sent to the United States aboard HMS Gloucester to be repatriated.
The sun’s faint glow still dominated the sky as the town descended into twilight. In the harbor, a pair of British chartered transports were busy unloading a dozen flying boats and half a dozen biplane fighters. The last heavy cruiser of the ferrying force was still tied up at the docks. Her crew was busy trying to unload the pair of field guns that the landing force had brought. The Germans could possibly organize a riposte covered by a bad storm so the Royal Marines wanted their artillery in place as early as possible as they established defensive positions in the capital. A pair of companies would be detached tomorrow to occupy the other landing strips on the island.
End of Part 1