1944 - Spiral of Destruction

[Calder]

Chapter Forty-One
786th Long Range Bomber Regiment, Kosimovo, Petrograd Oblast.

Markov guessed the raid had been a success by the number of men and women from the base ground contingent who were running alongside the runway trying to keep up with the Er-2s as they landed. The aircraft were coming straight in, no messing round with landing patterns or approaches. That made it a reasonably certain guess that the aircraft were on the point of running out of fuel. Overhead a dozen Navy La-5 fighters were circling to protect the bombers as they touched down. More had flown out to meet them and escort them in. After bombing the Lair of the Beast, it was an all-hands-to-the-pumps exercise to get the surviving bombers home and relatively safe.

The flight back had been marked by a slow but steady improvement in the weather and the ground had been visible, with its landmarks becoming easier to spot as the dawn inexorably approached. Markov had taken a chance by cutting across the corner of the L-shaped flight path they had followed on the way in and used the fuel the reduced distance had saved to switch to contour flight. He had gambled that the early morning light would make it hard for fighters to spot them from above against the green carpet of the ground and the fascist gunners would have no time to catch them in their sights. Only when the Baltic coastline had flashed underneath did his aircraft climb again.

Once they were safely down, Markov saw that there were already quite a few aircraft on the parking area. A quick count showed that so far ten of the 24 aircraft that had set out had returned. As he had suspected, everyone had run short of fuel as well. That did not auger well for the aircraft that had still to arrive. Then, the diesel engines on the Er-2 slowed, spluttered and grew silent. He and Tomasov got out of their cockpit and, in no rush, wearily stretched their muscles, looking forward to falling on the snow-covered grass. They never got the chance. The ground personnel had caught up with them and seized them, tossing them into the air in the traditional victory celebration. Markov couldn’t hear himself think for the cheering and shouting that surrounded him yet when he looked up into the early morning sky, a sky that seemed quiet, endlessly deep and eternal, it filled him with a strange sense of bliss.

The traditional tossing into the air had ended and the party seemed to quieten down a little. Flasks of vodka were being pressed into the hands of the pilots and navigators. Airmen and ground crews were greeting each other as if after a long separation, puffing tobacco smoke and furiously gesticulating, as they discussed the long-yearned for attack on the Lair. Then, behind them, two more Er-2s appeared and touched down. One party ended, and another began as the ground crews ran to escort the newly-arrived and taxying bombers.

“Half of them are back.” Tomasov looked at the aircraft, many showing signs of the battering from fighters and anti-aircraft fire. “More than we expected.”

“Excuse me, tovarish commander. I must see one of our Amerikanskiye brat'ya.”

“The one with the photograph of his girl? Hurry, for we must get to the debriefing.”

Lieutenant Caleb O’Brian was watching the remaining Er-2s approaching. Another one had just landed, one of its engines trailing black smoke and its diesels cut out on the runway from lack of fuel. Markov went to him. “Bratishka, we have your picture safe and sound. We put it right in the nose, where she could see everything that happened.”

“Thank you, tovarish Vladimir Stepanovich. I think that my Melba and our child will rest a little better now. Come, let me share some vodka with you in honor of this great day and in memory of those who have not made it back.”

Arm-in-arm the two men headed off to the canteen. As they did, Markov looked around. He was sure he had heard a woman with an American accent saying “spasebo, tovarish.”

P-47N Thunderbolt "Babydoll", Over the Etatochka Bridges Korovskoye

Foster knew the area around the Etatochka bridges far better than he would have preferred. What had once been a set of fields and open ground surrounded by forests had first become a bleak snow-field and was now just a mass of interlocking bomb craters. The allies had even used the precious 130 octane fuel needed to throw two groups of B-29s at the targets, losing two of the great bombers to fascist jetfighters in the process. Yet that raid had, at last, been a partial success. Sixty B-29s had dumped over 700 1,600 pound armor-piercing bombs on the ice-mounted assault bridges and the effect had been devastating. Using the armor-piercing bombs had been counter-intuitive and only considered because the groups were very short of 2,000 pound and 4,000 pound high explosive bombs. Yet, the sixteen hundred pounders had proved the right weapon for the job. They had penetrated through the ice on the Onega and exploded on the riverbed underneath the bridges. All the force of the bombs had been directed upwards, shattering the ice and hurling the bridges into the air. Two of the four assault bridges had been wrecked beyond hope of repair, the other two had been damaged and needed a lot of work. Before it could be completed, the Americans had come back.

The dive-bombers were already at work on those two damaged bridges. To a casual inspection, they looked like any other Petlyakov Pe-2 aircraft, painted the usually muddy brown and carrying two heavy bombs under the fuselage. Then, the more perceptive observer might note that these Peshkas were painted with white stars instead of red ones. They were flown by American crews, the aircraft supplied under reverse Lend-Lease so that the strain on 130 octane fuel supplies might be reduced. Now, those aircraft were trying to repeat the success of the B-29s by dive-bombing the two surviving assault bridges with 1600 pounders. They couldn't saturate the target with bombs the way the B-29s had done, but the plan was for dive-bomber precision to substitute for numbers. From what Foster could make out over the improvised radio link, it was working. The ice, already critically weakened was breaking up and the bridges were first being thrown up and then the wreckage was sinking into the freezing waters.

"All right, all Pancake aircraft, make your runs. The assault bridges are down. Try and do the railway bridge in this time guys, I'm getting sick of the sight of this place." The plaintive voice of 'Circus', the master of ceremonies, brought a series of whoops from the pilots of the waiting P-47s. They also had a new attack plan and they would be glad to see the end of it.

The problem had been simple; when dive-bombing the railway bridge, the bombs that had actually hit the structure, and there were few enough of them, had wrecked the decking but that had been quickly and easily repaired. To destroy the bridge, it was necessary to wreck the heavy stone piers. That meant hitting them directly with heavy bombs since their structure meant they could not be destroyed the same way as the assault bridges. The planners had decided that the only way to bring down the piers was to fly low, down the river and skip the bombs into the bridge. Unfortunately, that meant the P-47s would be flying through the barrage laid down by the anti-aircraft guns emplaced on both banks of the Onega.

The Grizzlies and Peshkas were already at work strafing and bombing the anti-aircraft positions along the river bank. The good news was that, despite the fact that the bomb group had traded its B-26s in for the Pe-2s only a few days earlier, they had already worked out good combined tactics with the A-38s of the attack group. The A-38s would engage the anti-aircraft guns with their 75mm and keep it pinned down while the Peshkas got into position to dive-bomb the site. The problem was that the fascists were already learning how to avoid the attacks and were holding their fire to the last possible second. The difficulty was spotting them before they opened fire.

"Syrup flight, go!" Foster did a wingover and led the four aircraft in his flight into a long dive towards the river. Underneath him, the streams of fire from the fascist guns were starting to crisscross the valley with tracer fire as the lead element of the P-47N formation made its run. In doing so, they'd revealed their positions to the waiting hunters. It was now a question of timing; could the guns bring down enough P-47s to neutralize the attack before the A-38s knocked out enough of the guns to disable the defenses?

Foster pulled back on his control column, trying to bring Babydoll back to level while skimming a few feet above the frozen surface of the Onega. At the same time, he reached out to his weapons control panel, rotated the 'belly' T-handle clockwise, lifted it and then rotated it clockwise. That had armed the 2,000 pound bomb under his belly. That bomb wasn't supposed to be there; the belly bomb shackle was supposedly restricted to a thousand pounds only. The problem was, the long series of pervious missions at Etatochka had shown that thousand pounders lacked the power to critically damage the heavy brick and stone piers of the bridge. So, base mechanics had made "field modifications" to strengthen the belly shackles enough to carry the heavier bomb. The problem was that the unapproved load was making the P-47 fly badly. Foster could feel Babydoll snaking and rolling as he tried to haul her through the intense flak barrage.

It was the worst anti-aircraft barrage he had ever experienced. Rapid streams of fire from the 20mm guns, slower, more individual shots from the 37mms, even the intermittent blasts from the 88s were all around him. In front, behind, above, below, it seemed as if he was completely enclosed in a box of incandescent orange fire. There were even Hanomags sitting on the bridge itself, the quad-twenties and single-37s streaming shots at his aircraft, providing the walls to the box set up by the guns on the river banks. Already the barrage was claiming its first victims. One P-47 had belly-flopped into the river, bounced off the ice and was spiraling forward leaving a trail of flame from its ruptured fuel tanks. Another was already burning when it curved away from the river and crashed into the high ground east of the river.

Foster couldn't understand why his aircraft was still flying. Ahead of him, seemingly blocked off by the wall of anti-aircraft fire, the railway bridge was approaching fast. Then, his presumption about questioning why his aircraft hadn't been hit was answered by a massive blow aft of the cockpit. It sent Babydoll sliding through the air and threatened to hurl her into the banks. Foster frantically worked the controls, correcting for the impact and the destabilization caused by the overweight bomb under his belly. The bridge ahead seemed to swing violently backward and forwards as the nose of the Thunderbolt oscillated from the impact. Time and space were running out; Foster still didn’t have the aircraft under proper control when the drop point came. He seized the moment when the swings of the nose seemed to have the bomb pointing the right way, at the foot of the central pier, and squeezed with the release.

With the bomb gone, the oscillations of the aircraft faded away. Foster yanked the nose up and strafed the Hanomags on the bridge as he flashed past. Behind him, he saw the blast from his bomb rising from exactly where the pier met the water. Pure blind luck had done for him what his care and attention had failed on previous missions. His bomb had blasted a large bite out of the pier and the damage, combined with the stonework's weight, had finally brought the bridge down. The pier was collapsing sideways, dragging the platform decking with it. To Foster's awed gaze, the collapsing bridge looked like the pictures of Dutch windmills he had seen. The bridge was also being hit by additional bombs, completing the work of destruction.

"Etatochka Prime is down. Say again, Etatochka prime is down. Three piers collapsed, the platform has gone completely. They won’t be fixing this one, guys." Foster looked down counting the smoking pyres that surrounded the bridge. "Looks like we lost seven of the 16 Thunderbolts. All other aircraft are damaged. That was the worst flak I have ever seen."

Parking Area, 404th Fighter Group, Airfield 896, Korovkinskaya

"Out of that aircraft, now!" The order from the ordnance people surrounding Babydoll was close to being hysterical. One look at the underside of the aircraft told Foster why. There was a gaping hole in the fuselage. He scrambled the rest of the way out of the cockpit, slid down the wing, and got clear. The EOD technicians were already at work trying to slide the unexploded shell out. Eventually, they got it clear. To Foster's eyes, he guessed it had probably come from a battleship and was at least 16 inches across. What shook him more was the fact that the EOD team was defusing the shell rather than just taking it away and blowing it up.

"What's going on, Mike?" Foster asked one of the EOD people who was watching the work. He had a pad and was studiously writing down everything he could see and hear. That way, if the shell exploded, there would be a record of what the disposal team had done wrong. Wouldn’t help them but it would the next team who had to do the same work.

"The shell. It's 55mm. We've never seen one of them before so we need to know what the fuse is like and as much about the shell as possible. What the?"

Something unusual was happening around Babydoll. Foster could see that the fuse had been removed and the technicians were crowding around it and the shell body. Others were looking at the damage to the Baby doll’s fuselage. The head of the EOD team waved for Foster to come over.

"Look at this, Sir. It's one of the new 55s, all right. It was wedged underneath one of your fuel tanks, if it had exploded, you’d have blown up in mid-air. The reason why it didn’t? Well. . "

He tipped the shell casing up and a mix of dirt and sand trickled out. "And the fuse is stuffed with cotton waste. The fascists use slave labor in most of their munitions plants. The slaves must have been collecting dirt so they could sabotage as many shells as possible. We know, never mind how, that if the fascists catch anybody doing anything like that, they hang them from the roof supports. Imagine working every day under the rotting bodies of your friends, knowing the same will happen to you. And yet they carry on, trying to do what they can for you."

Foster looked at the sabotaged shell and thought about the unknown slave worker who had risked almost certain death to give an unknown pilot, somewhere, somewhen, a slightly better chance of survival. Suddenly, flying through the anti-aircraft fire didn’t seem so brave anymore.

T3-SE-A4 Tanker Shawnee, At Sea, North West of Norway

Shawnee was running for her life. Her boilers were red-lined, driving the turbogenerators well beyond their rated capacity. The electric motors were spinning faster than they had even done before, driving the ship northeast. She was now at the point of her voyage where she was closest to the fascist airbases in northern Norway. The main convoy had been timed, right from the earliest moment of departure, to run this particular stretch of sea at night. Dusk had seen the convoy entering the zone of maximum danger and the following dawn had seen them leaving it. Shawnee was not so fortunate; she was in broad daylight less than 300 nautical miles from the hostile airbases. To make matters worse, her once-formidable gun armament had been mauled with both the aft five-inch gun and the aft quadruple 40mm knocked out. Her only real defense against an attack from the stern was her speed and Captain Brady was grimly determined to use as much of it as he could. At 26 knots, she was too fast to be engaged by submarines. It was hostile aircraft that was the problem.

And Shawnee was about to have a lot of problems.

Up to that point, the crew of Shawnee had seen only fascist heavy and medium bombers. What was coming at them now was something very different. When word of alone, unescorted tanker within relatively easy range had arrived it had sparked almost unprecedented cooperation between the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine. The Luftwaffe had been planning an attack on Russian positions around Murmansk, a part of the pre-winter line straightening operations. A dozen FW-190G ground attack aircraft had been assigned to that mission but were promptly re-allocated to the new target. The only problem was that their pilots knew nothing of navigation over the sea. However, a Do-217 maritime reconnaissance aircraft had been available and its crew had volunteered to lead the fighter-bombers to their target. With a Kriegsmarine navigator on board, the flight out to Shawnee had gone smoothly.

Now, the Dornier had broken away and was waiting to take the fighters home. The FW-190s had split into elements of four and were closing on the tanker from different directions to split the ship’s anti-aircraft fire. Captain Brady ordered the helm put hard over to turn his bows towards the nearest of those formations. That also had the effect of giving his bow guns a zero-deflection shot against the aircraft. As Shawnee rolled with her sudden high-speed change, of course, Brady was rewarded by the heavy thump of the five incher and 40mm quad in the bows opening fire. Both mounts had hastily-trained crews replacing casualties from earlier attacks but they put up a credible barrage. As the aircraft approached, the heavier guns were joined by the crackle and flickering lights of 20mm cannon fire. One of the Focke-Wulfs exploded in mid-air as a five-inch shell gutted it with a shot that exploded perfectly underneath its belly; another was trailing black smoke and turned away after firing its heavy rockets at extreme range.

The other pair had a hard target. Their Gr. 21 rockets were reasonably accurate for range, but their dispersion was lamentable. All four rockets missed completely, exploding in the sea more than a hundred yards from Shawnee. What the bow attack did achieve though was to focus the mind of the crew on those aircraft, giving the other eight a much less ferocious reception.

As he worked his 20mm Oerlikon, Dougie Young wasn’t thinking about how to defend his ship or bring down the attacking fighter-bombers. They counted nothing in his mind. All he cared about was killing the Germans who flew the aircraft. He was using the term German, one that had almost lapsed into disuse, quite deliberately. He didn't care if they were fascists or Hitlerites or any of the other terms that were commonly used now. He didn’t care who they were or what they believed in. It was Germans who had killed his Darlene and their baby and he wanted all of them dead. He had set himself a target, 100 dead Germans for Darlene, 100 more for the baby. He was firing his Oerlikon with the sole purpose of making a good start on that objective. Only when he had reached it would he decide on what to do next. Start again at the beginning he thought.

His target was a section of Focke-Wulfs coming in from the bow quarter. They had originally been a beam attack but Shawnee’s hard turn had put their angle of approach further forward. Of the five 20mm guns on the gallery, two were firing on the FW-190s coming from directly ahead, the other three were taking on the same targets as Young. They surrounded the aircraft with tracers from the guns, making it impossible for Young to tell whether it was his shots that caused a mixture of flame and brown-black smoke to erupt from one of the four aircraft. He watched the FW-190 break away from the formation and climb upwards, trying to gain enough altitude for the pilot to bail out. He was still debating with himself as to whether this would be a legitimate first entry in the ledger when he saw the cockpit canopy slide back, the aircraft roll on its back, and the pilot drop out.

He realized that was the solution to his moral dilemma. He swung his gun to bear on the pilot whose parachute had now opened and fired a long burst. He saw the man threshing in his harness and the parachute collapse into a white streamer that trailed uselessly above the plunging body of the dead pilot. Filled with exultation at the first entry in Darlene’s account, he ignored the hail of 20mm shells from the strafing FW-190s and the lurching shudder from the explosions as the Gr. 21 rockets hit Shawnee. He was too busy concentrating on firing at the fighters to pay any attention to the pair of hits that damaged the bridge and the additional impact that inflicted further carnage on the aft superstructure. Nor did he pay any attention to the pair of rockets that brought the forward kingpost mast down. He was too focused on trying to bring down another aircraft so he could open the account for the baby he had lost.

Shawnee survived the attack although she had been hurt worse than at any time before. Her bridge was damaged, her radio room destroyed, nine members of the crew had been killed, and her Captain was wounded along with a dozen more crew members. There were some four hours to go before dusk and all the crew was dreading the air attacks that had to follow this opening round. All except Dougie Young. He couldn’t wait for the next wave of aircraft to bring him his chance for another entry in his ‘debts paid’ ledger.

[Calder]

Chapter Forty-Two
Briefing Room, 404th Fighter Group, Airfield 896, Korovkinskaya

"Settle down people. Tovarish Chekist Ivan Mihailovich Napalkov has some urgent news for us all. Ivan Mihailovich?"

Napalkov stepped forward. "Amerikanskiye brat'ya, I have great news for us all. Last night, our long-range bombers found a way through a crack in the fascist defenses and struck at the Lair of the Beast itself! Of the 24 bombers we sent, 18 made it to their targets and released a mixture of demolition bombs and small bomblets. We have received reports from neutral sources that the Lair is in chaos this morning. Bratish'ka, we of the Rodina dedicate this mission to the people of New York! Let this stand as a warning to the Hilterites that they will pay dearly in blood for their crimes!"

He would have said more but he was drowned out by the wave of near-hysterical cheering that broke out in the briefing room. Pilots, ground crews, administrative staff, and the base defense personnel were giving each other bear hugs (several Americans learning that the energy a Russian woman could put into a bear hug was not to be taken lightly), applauding, and giving war whoops that chilled the blood. Those who listened carefully could even hear the sound of Confederate rebel yells mixed in with the celebrations.

Napalkov watched the impromptu celebration with quiet satisfaction. As he had predicted, the raid on Berlin, carefully identified as retaliation for the attack on New York, had bonded the American and Russian people together in a way that few other actions could have done. Looking around, knowing that the same scenes were being repeated at every American base in Russia, gave him the quiet satisfaction of a job well done. The great Russian fear, born of grim experience, was that their allies would always betray them eventually. It was a question of when not whether. Russian political policy right now was to make sure that the alliance with America was so tight and so extensive that such a breakdown was implausible. Many believed that was an objective beyond realistic expectations but others thought that, with care and assiduous attention, it was within reach.

Colonel Campbell waited to let the immediate celebration die down, then picked up the microphone. "People, settle down. The fascists won’t take this laying down. We can expect to get hit up and down the line. Here, that means either bombers, the pilotless aircraft they used on New York or the rockets they used to hit Archangel'sk and the other cities. There's not much we can do about the last of those except to be ready to attack any launching pads that we spot. The pilotless aircraft, we should be able to spot them and shoot them down if we get airborne fast enough. So, I want eight aircraft ready to go, engines warmed up, and pilots in the cockpits. We'll rotate the duty between the squadrons. If the radar net spots bombers, well, we can handle that."

He turned to Colonel Ivan Matveyevich Larin, the Russian commander of the base. He was a veteran pilot from the First War and had been given this command more in respect of prior invaluable service than any expectation he would be doing much. His main role was to reinforce the message that this was a Russian base that the Americans just happened to be using. "Tovarish Ivan Matveyevich, perhaps the anti-aircraft guns could be crewed on the same basis?"
"An excellent idea, Tovarish. I will have it arranged."

Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin

Generalleutnant Herrick had somehow managed to be on time for the meeting he had been summoned to with such unexpected urgency. He was in no doubt what the meeting would be about; news that Russian bombers had somehow managed to attack Berlin had ricocheted around Germany despite initial efforts to deny the attack had ever taken place. There had been too many foreign witnesses in Berlin, too many neutral embassies, and too many ways for the information to spread. The fact that the physical damage was so trivial had mattered for nothing. What did matter was that Berlin had been successfully attacked, by the Ivans of all people. It wouldn't have hurt so much if it had been the Americans; everybody knew of the pride they placed in their heavy bomber fleet and the advanced design of its aircraft. But the Ivans?

Herrick knew something else; the demolition bombs had done little damage. They had been too small, too light and there hadn't been enough of them. It was the little bomblets that had caused problems. No casualties, just . . . problems. There were hundreds of them, all scattered across the city and they were the source of complete chaos. They were the reason why Herrick had been in danger of arriving late for this meeting. Almost uniquely amongst German generals, he liked traveling on trams and had relied on catching one for this meeting but the line he intended to use had had at least one of those submunitions on it. The tram before his had hit it, the bomblet had exploded and destroyed the tramcar killing seventeen people. The line was now closed while it, and indeed the whole city had to be searched to prevent any more disasters like that. So he had been forced to use his staff car after all and, predictably, had been stuck in the blocked streets.

"Herr General?" A Luftwaffe female auxiliary had come out to meet him. "Please come with me."

She took him through the maze-like building to an office, knocked on the door, and then led him in. Herrick stopped in shock when he saw who was waiting for him.

"Herr Reichsmarschall. I did not expect . . ." Herrick snapped out his salute. Herman Goering returned it lazily.

"Come on in, my boy. You made it through the mess out there I see? Of course, you did, or you wouldn't be here. Would you like a schnapps to fortify yourself after the ordeal? I'd join you but I'm not allowed to drink anymore."

The auxiliary poured Herrick a schnapps then made Goering a club soda with a slice of lemon in it. It suddenly dawned on Herrick that the woman's real job was to make sure the Reichsmarschall did not fall back into his old ways. That thought made him look more carefully at the Reichsmarschall. In the 15 months since he had largely withdrawn from his duties in order to cure his addiction problems, he had lost a lot of weight and had obviously been weaned off his dihydrocodeine habit. He was sitting in the chair behind his desk, right arm folded over his stomach, left elbow resting on that arm with his hand cupping his chin. He was looking at Herrick slightly sideways with one eyebrow raised. The calculating stare in his eyes was quite at odds with his jovial behavior.

"Now, tell me, you’re the expert on air defense around here, not that fool Kammhuber. How did the Ivans, of all people, manage it?"

"Herr Reichsmarschall, the Ivans sent their aircraft down the Baltic, using a hole in the surveillance screen caused by the torpedoing of the radar picket ship Togo. She was hit several weeks ago and is still where she was beached. She's iced-in now. There was a second ship to cover against exactly this happening but her engines were in bad condition to start with and they failed completely. She's in the dock in Hamburg. The third ship assigned to that duty has a very low priority and hasn't been completed." Herrick was sweating slightly; what he was saying could very well be considered critical of the Reichsmarschall and that might not be wise right now.

Goering nodded. "We made a mistake there, no doubt about it. So, we left the back door open. How did the Ivan’s get through it?"

"They have a long-range twin-engined bomber, the Yermolayev Yer-2. It has diesel engines that make it slow and limit its altitude but give it extraordinary range. They flew them with only light bombloads, we think only eight hundred kilograms per aircraft. We had a very similar aircraft, the Ju-86 but we found the penalties of diesel engines made them unsuitable for us. They chose a night when the weather was very bad with a severe storm front across the Baltic. They actually flew through it to get to us. Our people were at reduced readiness because the weather over the Baltic was so bad. It was one of those nights when everything worked for them."

"Radar picket ship gone, an obsolete but long-ranged bomber and bad weather. It makes sense." Goering thought back to his days as a pilot. "Courageous thing to do, flying through a storm front like that. I remember that Yermolayev from 1941. I thought they'd all gone?"

"They had, Herr Reichsmarschall, but we think they put them back into production sometime this year."

"So they were planning this for some time. All right, my boy. That's how they got here. How did they get through?"

Herrick had no hesitation in answering that one. "Poorly-designed defenses on our part. The defenses along the coast are a series of small cells, each containing a night-fighter. Each one is independent and does not connect to the rest. The Ivans came through in a stream, each aircraft well-separated from the rest but not so badly spread out that they went into several cells at once. That way, they swamped the defenses in each cell. Some of our night-fighters used their own initiative and linked up into pairs but it didn't help. The Ivans knew exactly where our defenses were and that there was a hole through the coastal screen west of Stettin. They came across the coast there. By the time they started crossing the defensive cells, they were already over our territory and there were multiple paths they could follow. Because the individual cells didn't communicate, we lost track of them. Then, Stettin was bombed and we assumed that was where they had gone. We didn’t realize they had come all the way here until they were sighted overhead."

Goering gave a scornful grunt. "Who came up with that system?"

Herrick held up a hand. "Herr Reichsmarschall, we should give credit where it is due. It was a good system for the early years of the war where raids were small, carried out by low-performance aircraft and were dispersed over a wide area. Against such raids, you remember the ones staged by English Bomber Command in 1939, it was a well-designed defense in depth and it coped with them well. Unfortunately, we never updated it beyond that and we never really exploited the use of radar properly. Even in 1940, the English were far ahead of us in that respect. However, I do not think that we should be too concerned about the Ivans and this raid. It was, what the Americans call, a one-shot trick pony. Everything came together just right and they exploited the opportunity very well. They will not be able to do so again. There is a much worse problem we face."

"Continue."

"The Americans. Next year, when the spring comes and the weather clears, they will send their heavy bombers at us here. Their B-29s can do it and they can carry ten times the bomb load of the Russian aircraft. They have hundreds of them. They will crash straight through the defenses we have, by day or by night. It won't matter to them. The B-17 raids were bad, Tula-Vyksa was the worst the B-17s could do, but full-scale strikes by B-29s will be terrible. If we do not use the winter to reorganize our defenses, we will be in a bad way come spring."

"I wouldn’t say that too loudly my boy. It could be considered defeatist. Even if you're right, especially since you are right. I remember, before I had to take my cure, you had presented a plan for an integrated air defense system. What happened to it?"

"It was decided that it did not have the priority needed for further development, Herr Reichsmarschall."

"Idiots. Explain it to me again, along with any changes you think we must make."

Herrick realized that Goering didn't trust his own memory of the plan and wanted a ground-up description. "We modify the system used by the Jagdgeschwader close to the front. We have a local command position that controls a district. Small, but still much larger than the cells used along the Baltic. They can concentrate fighters against the inbound bomber formations and take on the fighter escort. If we can force the Thunderbolts to dogfight early, they will have to drop their long-range tanks and then turn back. We have already learned that our fighters don’t have the firepower to take on the heavy bombers so we don't try. Instead, we get rid of the fighter escort. Now, behind the first line of defense is a second line equipped with heavy fighters and nightfighters. They have the firepower to bring down heavy bombers but we have learned, from experience that if we fly those against escorted bombers, the Thunderbolts will cut them to pieces. But, using this strategy, we will already have sent the fighters home."

Herrick paused for a moment. The Luftwaffe Auxiliary offered him a club soda and he drank it greedily. "The next part if that we have a third layer, a strategic layer that plots the formations of bombers and moves aircraft from uninvolved sectors to the ones under attack. Also, when the committed fighters run low on fuel, instead of returning to their base, the strategic command centers direct them to any base ahead of the bomber formations so they can rearm, refuel and rejoin the battle. Finally, there are point defense groups around cities and key targets with interceptors that can take on the stragglers and down them. Imagine it being a conveyor belt of fighters that keep the bombers under constant attack all the way to their target and back."

Herrick stopped and looked at Goering who had not changed his position or the focus of his stare. There was silence for a few minutes before Goering spoke. "You will have to organize that defense from whatever we can find. Our forces are thinly stretched as it is. We will have lunch together and we can discuss how to implement your scheme. Helga, what is for lunch today?"

"For you, Herr Reichsmarschall, salt-free carrot soup and poached fish with green salad. And club soda. Herr Generalleutnant, the mess kitchens are serving a lunch of chicken soup, wiener schnitzel with Bavarian potato salad and a white wine."

"If it is possible, Fraulein, I would enjoy poached fish along with Herr Reichsmarschall."

"How very tactful of you." Goering snorted. "Since you will need authority alongside the existing Generals of the Branch for building this system, we had better make you a full General. It'll be recorded tomorrow. You know, my boy, the Ivans may have done us a favor by waking some people up.

Operations Room, 483d Bombardment Group, Airfield 97, Syloga

The air raid sirens broke their usual silence to transmit a wailing howl across the airfield. After a moment's disbelief at the unprecedented interruption to their daily schedule, the Americans on the base started running for the air-raid shelters although quite a few weren't fully aware of where those shelters were or which one they were assigned to. The Russians had taking cover much better organized and they watched with some amusement at the antics of the inexperienced Americans.

The organization of the base defenses was much better though. The scramble for the shelters had barely started as the eight Kingcobras on ready-alert taxied out and made hurried take-offs. They were already off the ground, their undercarriages retracting and their noses swinging west by the time the crews of the anti-aircraft guns had their mounts ready to fire.

In the Operations Room, Colonel William H. Blanchard watched the threat display being posted. A series of red lines was advancing rapidly across the map, eating up the 200 miles that separated Syloga from the apparent launch position to the east. The P-63 Kingcobras were just going up on the situation board but it was obvious that they had absolutely no chance of intercepting the inbounds. In fact, there was nothing between the rockets and their targets capable of offering any kind of effective defense.

"Is there anything we can do?" His question was more in desperation than in hope of any real answer.

The operations officer shook his head. "We've never seen anything like this before."

There was no need to put the last known position of the inbounds on the display. The first of four explosions rocked the operations room, bringing down areas of the ceiling panels and filling the room with dust. The next two were less dramatic but the fourth was very close indeed, near enough to make the entire room shake violently and the operations crew to be knocked off their feet. The four explosions were followed by the sonic booms of the missiles and the loud roar of their arrival. Blanchard found the fact that the noise followed the impact rather than coming before it the most disturbing feature of the attack.

The all-clear had sounded; there were no more missiles inbound, immediately at least. When Blanchard left the operations room, he could see the four pyres of smoke from the impacts. Two of them were indeed a long way away from the main body of the airfield. One though, he was sure it was the first, had struck up by the main gate and devastated the entry area. He was sure there were casualties up there since ambulances were already racing in that direction. The fourth rocket, the last one to impact, had landed between two of the large hangars intended to service the B-33s. Both buildings were badly damaged and one of them was the scene of a major firefighting effort as the base fire crews fought to stop the blaze getting hold. They were losing that battle and Blanchard had to admit that the B-33 inside was lost.

"That wasn't bad shooting." The Operations Officer had come out of the office with a sheet of paper in his hands. The notes scrawled on it were obviously a hurried first report.

"We can't say it wasn't bad shooting. The A-4s we've seen so far have a CEP of 12 kilometers and we don’t know what their registration point was. They haven't had a recon aircraft get through to here since this airfield was built so they can't have had an accurate aiming point. I suspect we were unlucky here."

"We were unlucky enough to lose two bombers and three Kingcobras over in the hangars. The warning was just enough to get the personnel under cover. We've lost five dead and about a dozen wounded. Four of the dead are the Russian guards down at the main gate. They refused to leave their posts." The Operations Officer shook his head. In his opinion, that was one case where dedication to duty had gone too far.

"Tovarish Colonel, you have lost some of your bombers over ground occupied by the fascists. The fascists must have recovered navigation charts from the wrecks or from your people when they bailed out." Colonel Valentin Klementyevich Shorin was the base commander and was deeply concerned for the safety of the guests on his base. Nevertheless, he felt the need to make a point that worried all of the Russian commanders. "That would be enough for them. You really should not carry accurate navigation charts on your aircraft. This is why."

Blanchard felt that, under the circumstances, his Russian opposite number had a point. "I will bring that to the attention of my superiors. Valya, do you have wounded? If so we should visit them and make sure they are receiving all the care we can provide."

Shorin laughed at that. "At the moment our medical orderlies are looking after them. I'm sure the wounded, yours and ours, prefer to have the girls looking after them right now. We can go and see them later, when they are comfortable."

[Calder]

Chapter Forty-Three
Command Detachment, Schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 653, 12 kilometers south of Ponga.

“Lieutenant Joachim Ackermann reporting for duty, Herr Major.” Ackermann was too experienced a man to snap out a salute anywhere near the front lines in Russia. That was something for which Major Otto Carius was profoundly grateful. Russian snipers were too good for their potential targets to take chances.

“And what have you brought me, Ackermann. Please tell me it is infantry?”

“A composite unit, Sir, roughly a company in strength. But, we all have the new assault rifles and a generous allocation of Panzerfausts and Panzerschrecks. Technically we are a panzergrenadier company but we are really a mix of grenadiers, fusiliers and panzertruppe. The latter would really like to be behind armor again if you need them as replacements.”

Carius burst out laughing at thought of tankmen looking at every unit they passed, hoping for a vacancy in tank crew. “We lost a Jagdtiger crew getting here but they took their Jagdtiger with them. So, your discontented tankmen will have to wait before they fill a dead man’s boots.”

“May I ask what got the Jagdtiger, Sir? To kill something that big. Was it an Ivan IS-2?”

Carius shook his head curtly. He didn’t blame Ackermann for asking but the sheer stupidity of the loss still rankled. “A dumb-head moron with a Panzerfaust. Just a tiny hole, just the size of your little finger, but it killed a 75 ton vehicle and everybody inside it. Come with me to the ridgeline, I’ll show you the situation and then we can decide where your unit will do the most good. I don’t need to tell you to keep your head down, do I? And your ass?”

Ackermann shook his head. A lesser man might have been offended by the question but he was acute enough to realize that declining training standards in the Heer made the question quite appropriate and, in fact, Carius was looking out for him. "I can't speak for the infantry skills of the tankmen but the fusiliers and grenadiers are experienced men. They'll keep their asses down."

"Good. When did you reach the front, Ackermann?"

"1943, sir. I was in the north when the Kazan offensive took place. I was pleased not to be part of that."

"1943? And you're still a Lieutenant?"

Ackermann thought quickly. The details were in his record and Carius would find out about it soon enough. "We had captured three of those female Russian nurses and some SS were going to roast them with a flamethrower. I held the men at pistol-point and let the nurses go. There was a serious issue about that but in the end it was dropped. I think only because the SS didn't want to admit that their ubermensch could be dissuaded from doing their anti-Bolshevik duty."

Carius hesitated for a moment while he mulled the incident over. Protecting medical personnel from a brutal murder was enviable, but this was Russia and there was more to the war here than simply defeating an enemy. In the end, he decided it had taken place a long time ago and was best forgotten. "Now, this is the ridgeline we are defending. We've got alternate firing pits dug along it and the mobile Jagdtigers use them at random. You'll note six of our vehicles are pulled back behind the ridge, three are stuck in the pits. They broke down and we can't move them. Their armor has stopped all the hits on them to date but their luck can't last. We'll go into one of the empty pits and use the front edge as cover."

"Do we get much artillery here, Herr Major."

"Some. Four times a day. A good morning when the sun comes up, a Morning Hate about ten to eleven, an Afternoon Hate at around three and a good night at dusk. Obviously if there is an attack, that's extra. No Stalin's Organs yet, thank God. All right. Now, we have marsh and swamp on one side of us, a lake on the other. So far, they've protected our flanks so that the Ivans had to come at us head-on. Take a look at the results."

Ackermann lifted his head carefully over the rim of the gun-pit and looked at the valley in front of him. The sight took his breath away, a scene of acute devastation that was both shocking and encouraging. There was a great island of destroyed Russian armor in front of him; T-34-85s and SU-85s mixed up with the odd IS-2 and other, less identifiable vehicles. They were tangled together, mostly burned out and some blown into unrecognizable pieces. Ackermann could swear that he could see blackened, carbonized figures of men in the turrets, sprawled over the frontal armor or on the ground between the vehicles. The scene looked more like a burned out forest than the wreckage of an armored unit. Some of the vehicles had been destroyed as much as three thousand meters away, none had got closer than fifteen hundred. "Mein Gott. What is down there?"

"As far as we can make out, the cutting edge of an Ivan tank corps. There's lend-lease American half-tracks in there as well. We destroyed them with high explosive of course. Now, can you see the problem that faces us?"

"I can see several, Herr Major."

"Good. . ."

"Firstly, the Ivans have more vehicles than you have shells for your Jagdtigers. If they carry on like this they will simply run you out of ammunition. Getting resupply through is hard enough at the best of times. We can only move at night and even then it is very dangerous." Ackermann remembered the devastating attack by the Night Witches. "And fuel. Have you enough fuel for your Jagdtigers?"

"Not any more. And we are very short of ammunition. Almost out of armor-piercing and only a few high explosive. We have a large reserve of promises though."

Ackermann laughed at that. "Your second problem is that you are holding because the ground forces are being funneled into a narrow killing ground. Only, winter has arrived and when the first blizzard comes, everything will be frozen hard. Then, the Ivans will be able to cross the swamp and the lake with their armor, you will be outflanked and game over. In fact, I believe they are probably close to that point now. They can't come through this way again, its blocked by the wreckage."

"Very good, Ackermann. And?"

"Even if they can't get their armor through, they can still infiltrate infantry through the swamp. They can get at the sides and rear of your vehicles with bazookas and their other anti-tank weapons. Your position here, Herr Major, is fragile."

"It is. I was afraid I was the only person who could see it. Go on?"

"You said it yourself, Herr Maior. Artillery. When the Ivans use guns for real, they park them wheel-to-wheel and drench an area with explosives. They bring up Stalin's Organs and use them. The danger is not just explosive but smoke. If they lay down a heavy enough smoke screen they can eliminate your long reach. I am surprised they haven't done so already. The Amis can turn up with their heavy bombers. They will flatten this whole area. "

"We have had the occasional raid by the Amis. For the last two or three weeks though, they have been conspicuous by their absence. The sturmoviks have come to visit us but they haven’t been able to damage our Jagdtigers. In fact, the men use them as bomb shelters."

"The final factor is that the forces in the north are retreating. You are holding one shoulder of the way out for them but there is a danger you will be surrounded in this position. On the way up, we heard that the Ivans defeated an attempt to reinforce our positions in the north. It is said that they have a new tank destroyer that can kill a Tiger at 2,000 meters."

"A Konigstiger?" Carius was shocked.

"No, one of the older ones. But one of the unhorsed tankmen said the shot went straight through the front."

"That, I did not know. So, where do you think you should deploy, Ackermann?"

"Where we can do most good of course. We cannot stop these armored attacks to your front and the artillery barrages are more dangerous to us than you. Once everything is frozen, we will be depending on you to stop the Ivans. But, if we deploy between you and the marshes we can stop infantry infiltrating your position. I think that is the best place for us right now. That will change when the Ivans close in on you."

Carius nodded in agreement. "Then deploy your men there. And thank you for the update Joachim."

P-47N "Babydoll", Over Verkohye.

"There they are. Two doodlebugs at 11 o'clock, angles three." Lieutenant Bob Henagar in Josie Mae had spotted the first of the Fi-103s coming in from the south at around 3,000 feet. The radar surveillance barrier had spotted the missiles soon after their launch and their apparent course took them near to at least three American airfields. Pancake flight had been airborne on barrier patrol and had been vectored in to meet them. The problem was that at 3,000 feet, the edge on the P-47s performance had gone. They were high-altitude aircraft and at low level they maxed out at 370 mph. That hadn't mattered when they had been flying ground attack missions but it made them some 40 mph slower than the Fi-103. The obvious answer was to dive on the missiles and that was what Pancake section was about to do.

"Acknowledged. Josie Mae, follow me down. You take the one on the left, I'll hit the one on the right. Smooth Operator and Dragon's Tail stay up here and watch for the other two." Foster put Babydoll into a wingover and felt the heavy aircraft accelerating as the long dive took her towards the nearer of the two Fi-103s. The pulse-jet-powered missiles had quickly been named doodlebugs after their appearance, sound and flight pattern. Foster thought that they should be easy kills; after all they flew in a straight line and didn’t shoot back. Ahead of him, the doodlebug was now on the same level as he was and he was closing the range rapidly on the missile. Carefully, he centered it in his gunsight and squeezed the trigger on his eight .50 machine guns.

Incredibly, his entire burst missed. He saw the streams of brilliant tracers floating out before him and passing either side of the doodlebug. Before he could correct his aim, the missile seemed to loom up in front of him and he had to pull an emergency turn to avoid a collision. For a brief moment he thought he had failed to make it but the missile plowed on straight ahead while he missed it by inches. It was so close he could see all the rivets used in its construction and the brush-marks where the hastily-applied green paint had left bits of the underlying metal exposed. Then it was gone, and Foster was climbing away, trying to regain altitude for another pass.

Behind him, Josie Mae was making its pass on another doodlebug. At once, Foster could see what had happened. The P-47 was already close, far too close, to the missile when Henagar opened fire. His first bullets streamed past the Fi-103 but he had the time to swing the nose of his P-47 so that at least some of the armor-piercing incendiaries walked along the fuselage of the missile. For a split second, nothing happened, then the Fi-103 exploded in a massive blast and ball of flame. It enveloped Josie Mae completely hiding it from sight. When it emerged from the fireball, the vertical section of the tail had been blown completely off while the aircraft was leaving a stream of wreckage behind as its airframe progressively fell apart. It was already curving downwards towards an inevitable crash when the cockpit canopy opened and a figure tumbled out. Foster held his breath for a moment and watched until Henagar’s parachute opened up. It was fortunate they were safely over Russian territory.

"You saw that, the damned things are so small, we're a lot closer than we think when we open fire. So we either miss . . . . or that."

Smooth Operator was already diving on the doodlebug Foster had missed. Lieutenant Glenn Carr had learned quickly and opened fire while he was still well out of range. The P-47N had a lot of ammunition stowage though and the premature burst meant that the doodlebug flew through the convergence point of the eight guns. The stream of fire tore it apart and the missile ended its life in another massive explosion. This one, though, was safely removed from the attacking fighter and Smooth Operator made a stately climb back to rejoin the two other surviving members of the flight. By that time the two other Fi-103s had come into sight.

"Dragon's Tail, you take the lead. Stay well back from that damned thing and remember it is a lot closer than you think it is."

"Got you, Babydoll." Lieutenant Ross Blaser in Dragon's Tail did his wingover and started his dive. Perhaps not surprisingly in view of the spectacular fate of Josie Mae, he also started firing early. The difference was that he came in from the rear quarter, forcing him to use a deflection shot but eliminating most of the convergence error that had foiled Foster's attack. It also meant that when he broke off the attack, he was heading in the opposite direction to the doodlebug as it exploded.

"Well done Dragon's Tail, that's the way to do it." Foster peeled over and copied the attack carefully. To his relief he felt only a solid blow when his target finally exploded. "We got them all people, time to go home."

Once back at altitude, he keyed in to the ground control frequency. "Pancake to Plaster, we got them all. Josie Mae got caught in the blast and is down. Pilot bailed safely."

"We know, Pancake. A Russian field laundry unit picked him up and they're bringing him back now. Pilot says the girls were kind enough to wash his pants for him."

Foster laughed and shook his head. A field laundry unit was one for the books. There was a tradition that anybody who brought a bailed-out pilot home was entitled to demand a 'ransom' from the parent unit. He had a suspicion that this time it would be in the form of a still-to-be-negotiated number of parachutes. After all, that silk was a much sought-after item.

Living Quarters, 1077th (Stalingrad) Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Airfield 896, Korovkinskaya.

Maslov parked his jeep outside the living quarters of the 1077th and sounded his horn. It was the standard courtesy extended by a male officer when approaching a barracks occupied by female soldiers - and most of the sixty anti-aircraft divisions in the Russian Army were largely female. The 1077th was different only in that it had the most distinguished combat record of all the anti-aircraft units. In 1942, at Stalingrad, the regiment had been the only force available to stop a fascist tank division penetrating to the Don River. For two days, alone and unsupported, the 1077th had stood its ground, fighting off the tanks with their 85mm and 37mm guns firing their guns over open sights at minimum elevation. While they had been doing so, the machine gunners in the light batteries had held off the Hitlerite infantry with their twin and quadruple 12.7mm guns. Despite being girls barely out of high school and having received training that could only be described as 'sketchy', they had fought like veterans until the handful of survivors were relieved. A few of the women who had made that epic stand were still with the unit and that was why Maslov had selected this particular regiment of the 76th Anti-Aircraft division to receive the next American aid packages to arrive at Korovkinskaya.

He saw the curtains move in the window of the strange semi-circular steel hut the Americans had built and guessed that the women inside would be making sure their accommodation was tidy and everybody was properly, or at least decently, dressed. The steel roof of the building, the Americans called it a Quonset Hut, had been covered with earth and then plants cultivated, making it almost invisible from the air. Now, they were covered by snow, completing the job of hiding them from intrusive eyes. He reached into the back of his jeep and started to unload the two crates of parcels he had allocated to the thirty women who lived in this particular hut.

"Tovarish Deputy Commander, may I help?" Starshina Anna Georgievna Labutina had hurried out to buy a little time while the rest of the women in her unit sorted themselves out. She was wearing her ushanka and had her greatcoat draped over her shoulders as a concession to the cold.

"Tovarish Starshina, I have gift packages from the Americans. There are ten allocated to your hut. Please take the rope handles of the crate at one end and I will take the others. The packages are not heavy but they are awkward." Maslov had another crate of five packages in his Willys but it was earmarked for the members of a laundry unit that were bringing an American pilot back to the base.

Once inside, Labutina produced a pry-bar and opened the two wooden crates to expose the five boxes within each. Ten boxes for thirty women. There will have to be lots drawn for who gets a package. Maslov could read Labutina's mind. "Our Amerikanskiye brat'ya tell us that more will be coming until there is one for each of you. As soon as room can be found on the aircraft. Do with these as you see fit."

Labutina looked at the manifest on each parcel. "Underwear? Underwear!"

There were cheers from around the hut that made Maslov smile. "A few days ago, just before our bombers attacked the Lair, an American magazine published an interview with a medical orderly. The journalist asked tovarish Antonina Stepanovna Rabtsun, what the worst thing she had experienced was. She replied 'wearing men's underwear'. Within hours of the news that we had bombed the Lair in retaliation for the attack on New York, women all over America were bringing packages of underwear to American Army recruiting stations. And, a few hours later, here they are! Now, I will leave this to you. There is a card in each package saying who donated this parcel. Be sure to write a letter of thanks."

With those words, Maslov left to deliver the rest of the parcels. Labutina looked around. "Write your names on a piece of paper and put the slips in a helmet. I will draw ten names out."

It was understood that, while the lucky winners would 'own' a package, its contents would be shared out. As they were opened, it also became apparent that the donors had been sensible enough to put different sizes of underwear into each, so a party-like atmosphere developed as the women tried on the clothes and found the ones that fitted them best. Then, as the parcels were emptied, a sudden silence fell. Included within them were packages of sanitary supplies. In the background, one of the youngest women said quietly to herself "thank God."

"All right, those packages go to the youngest women first, the ones who still need them." Labutina looked around and saw the nods. All the women knew that after six months or less, their periods would dry up but until that happened, the problems they faced were dire. Those young women were quietly crying with relief at the solution that had unexpectedly arrived.

The mood was broken by one of the gunlayer’s who had received a package. "Look, bras!"

That caused another burst of cheering but it faded when the women realized that the bras were too small. A few of the young women found ones that would fit but the older women, in their late teens and early twenties, realized that Russian women were more heavily-built than their American sisters. Trying not to laugh, Labutina poked her breast with a finger and looked up triumphantly. "See! Ours are better!"

[Calder]

Chapter Forty-Four
Ju-188E Yellow-Six Approaching T3-SE-A4 Tanker Shawnee, At Sea, East of North Cape

People who had watched Shawnee leaving her port in New York, what seemed to her crew like several centuries earlier, would have a hard time recognizing her now. Her sleek gray paint was battered, burned and peeling off in large areas, her forward mast and kingpost assembly was a tangle of wreckage strewn over the foredeck, the rear area of her amidships bridge had caved in and was also a tangled mass of debris that contained what little was left of her vital radio room, her aft superstructure was burned black and charred. She was streaming oil from wounds to her hull and cumulative damage had cut her speed to an average of 16 knots. That was still fast by merchant ship standards but there was now no hope of her catching up with and rejoining the rest of the convoy. She was 580 miles from Archangel'sk. That was 36 hours sailing time. The good news was that she was past the point of closest approach to the fascist airbases in Norway and every hour increased the range their aircraft would have to cover before launching another attack. Each hour meant that Shawnee would be that much closer to friendly air cover. By dawn the next day, Russian and American fighters would be overhead while others intercepted fascist aircraft before they could reach the crippled tanker.

It was sheer bad luck that the latest formation of torpedo bombers spotted her. They had been searching for her, certainly, but they had assumed she was holding the same speed as earlier and their search pattern had been too far to the east. Also, one of the hazards of flying this far north was that compass readings were randomly inaccurate and this time the errors had pushed the search pattern even further east. Finally realizing that their compasses had been misleading them and wanting to get back to base before night fell, the crews had taken a short-cut back home. That short cut had led them directly over Shawnee. The bombers had marked the course of the big tanker, carefully estimated her speed and maneuvered themselves into a position for a perfect hammerhead attack. With the sun setting in the west, Shawnee was silhouetted against the dusk while the bombers were coming out of near-darkness.

Hauptmann Jochen Bausch saw the streams of gunfire erupting from the tanker racing towards his Ju-188 and his wingman. They were approaching from the port bow quarter of the tanker and the critical point now was which way the tanker would swing. Going to port would mean that her bows were pointing straight at the two aircraft led by Bausch and would reduce their chance of scoring a hit to negligible levels. On the other hand, that same turn would expose the tanker's beam to the other pair of Ju-188s coming in from the starboard bow quarter and make their chance of a hit very good indeed.

What decided the choice was the bow five inch gun on Shawnee. Bausch saw one of its shells score a near-direct hit on his wingman, Yellow-Nine. The shell exploded almost directly under the aircraft's belly, seemingly separated by a meter or less. It gutted the Ju-188, turning it into an instant comet of fire and disintegrating wreckage that seemed to somersault nose-over-tail before crashing into the sea. It floated there for a few seconds before sinking. Even in that brief instant, Bausch saw one of the streams of 20mm fire form the tanker lashing at the crash site.

The kill gave the captain of Shawnee a simple choice. A very good chance of being hit by two torpedoes was a worse option than an equal chance of being hit by one. Shawnee's bows swung to starboard, facing her bows towards the two approaching aircraft from that direction, but exposing her side to the one coming in from port. Rather guiltily, Bausch blessed his luck as the shape of the tanker began to lengthen. Now, it was simply a matter of using his torpedo sight properly. His aiming point was the tanker's stern, hoping that he could cripple her machinery and leave her dead in the water. He'd set the aiming system for a target speed of 24 knots based on reports from earlier attacks and aligned the prediction cross with the stern. Then, he waited until the correct moment when the two vertical lines on the sight touched the bow and stern and pressed the release.

The torpedo hit the water smoothly and started its run. By then it was already far behind Yellow-Six. The Ju-188 was at the center of crisscrossing streams of tracers from American and German guns. Bausch felt his aircraft staggering as something hit it; my Ju-188 was still flying so it can't have been the heavy guns. Must have been 20mm, ours or theirs. Then, behind him, he saw the brilliant explosion and tower of water that marked the impact of his torpedo.

It was much further forward than he had expected, in fact, the hit was just in front of the midships bridge. Bausch guessed that he had over-estimated the speed of his target, causing the torpedo sight to miscalculate the lead-off on the drop. Nevertheless, he could see the brilliant flare of fire erupt from the tanker's side. As his Ju-188 ran for the enveloping darkness, the blaze was quite definitely spreading.

"We got her!" Bausch's yell of triumph echoed around the cockpit. "Time for home!"

"And make it quick, Herr Hauptmann. We're losing fuel fast. Something must have hit us in the tanks."

Amidships, T3-SE-A4 Tanker Shawnee, At Sea, East of North Cape

The blast from the torpedo was nothing like anything Dougie Young had experienced before. It had plowed into the ships side barely fifty feet in front of his 20mm gun gallery. The vessel heeled over, shook violently, and sent a wall of flame upwards from the point of impact. He could feel the heavy blow of the shockwave from the explosion followed by the vicious shaking from the internal damage. It reminded him of the time he had watched a terrier shaking a rat to death. Shawnee was slowing fast, twisting into the impact as she did so. At the same time she was already beginning to list with the hundreds of tons of water that was flooding through the great hole that had been blasted in her side. Young felt the movement under his feet, knowing it was something he had never experienced before.

For all that, he remained calm, firing his Oerlikon at the remaining bombers as they made their run. It was only when he saw the orange-red spread of fire across the decks that his rage and hatred turned into fear. Not fear for himself but that his self-imposed target of enemy dead would not be met.

“All hands, all hands, fire in the wing tanks five through seven. Firefighting crews to damage control stations. All others prepare to seal perimeter.” The announcement from the bridge was wrong, phrased wrongly and not in accordance with company directives or standard maritime practice but it got men sprinting to the area where the mysterious cargo was spilling out of the ruptured wing tanks and forming a burning patch on the sea. Yet, for all its menace and potential for disaster, the fire did not yet have the roaring deadliness of an avgas fire. In fact, to Young’s eyes, it was already apparent that although the blaze was bad enough, it wasn’t spreading, and the fire parties were already fighting it back with foam extinguishers. Yet, they would have lost the battle had it not been for the massive inrush of seawater caused by the torpedo hit. With its unexpected aid, the fire and rescue teams had the fire out in about five minutes. That left the damage control teams with the task of fixing the damage and getting the ship moving again.

“Gather round, men.” Engineering Officer Gary Tate looked at the men in his damage repair teams and was satisfied with the men he would work with. Most of them were engineers from the machinery spaces, others were deckhands. That made the division of labor obvious. “This is what we have. That torpedo has blown a hole roughly 25 feet by 25 feet in our side and ripped up the deck plating as far as the centerline bulkhead so mind where you put your feet. There may be nothing there when you set them down. Structural cracks and splits are extending five feet under our waterline as far as the pump room bulkheads. Engineers, fixing that and getting the pump room secured will be your job. Perry, you know this ship better than most others, I’m going to be depending on you to take charge of getting the pump room fixed. It’s open to the sea at this point so take it steady. If we were going down we’d know it by now so we have time to do it right and do it safe.

“Right now, the port side wing tank hatches have been blown open and buckled. We have to fix that as well, deckhands, that’ll be your job. The gyrocompass is out of action, meaning that steering from the bridge is no longer possible because the telemotor piping along the deck had been torn apart by the blast. This means we’ve lost all communication with the aft end of the ship, including the engine room. Electricians, would you mind fixing that please, yesterday if possible.”

Tate looked around and appreciated the ripple of laughter that followed his exaggerated politeness. “Just so you know the rest of the picture. The explosion has also blown the shell plating outwards so those buckled and twisted plates are acting like a rudder. We can’t steer any kind of course right now. All we can do is circle to port. If the aircraft come back, we’ll have to hope that’ll be good enough. Now get to work.”

1077th (Stalingrad) Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Airfield 896, Korovkinskaya.

To the Nazi government they were the Vengeance Weapon One, to the Luftwaffe the Fi-103, to the Americans the Doodlebug and to the Russians they were the Malenkiye Der'mo, the Little ****. And so it was that when the sirens went off, announcing an incoming raid, the crews of the 37mm guns were led by Starshina Anna Georgievna Labutina in the charge out of their Quonset Hut who urged them on with the cry of “Get to the guns! The malenkiye der'mo are coming!”

The canvas covers, well-coated with the overnight snow that had fallen in quantity, were torn from the guns and flung to one side. The gun crew folded down their seats and slid into position with the fluidity of long practice. Labutina had the range tables to hand; ones that had been hurriedly amended to allow for targets that came in at 650 kph. The fuse setters were already hard at work, adjusting the 37mm time fuses to the delay necessary to bring the malenkiye der'mo down. Over in the positions occupied by the 85mm guns, the crews were loading something very new; American-supplied proximity-fused shells.

Labutina slipped into her seat on the gun, swinging the weapon upwards and on to the bearing that was being distributed by the radar surveillance system at the base. The briefing notes she had been given said that the malenkiye der'mo came in at about a thousand meters which put them right into the preferred firing bracket of the 37mm guns. It is a bit low for the 85mms, but perhaps those new fuses will compensate.

“Dozen targets inbound, bearing two-three-five. The estimated speed is seven-five-zero KPH. Say again, seven-five-zero kilometers per hour.” Labutina laughed at the way the American had stumbled over the pronunciation of the metric measurement. We should have asked him to give it in MPH.

“Sestri, reset fuses, targets are coming in faster than we were told. Seven-five-zero.” The fuse setters were immediately at work, resetting the clips of 37mm shells to allow for the new speed.

“There they are.” Maryanna Aleksandrovna Fedova was the youngest of the gunners and her eyes were the sharpest. She saw the black dots approaching low and fast from the southwest and gave the alarm. “They are much lower than we were told. Two hundred meters at most!”

“Remember Sestri. To the muzzle!” Labutina shouted out the slogan of the Stalingrad Regiment. During their stand, whenever the fascists had managed to overrun one of the gun positions, the gunners had kept firing until they were dragged from their weapons, then clubbed and hacked down. She could hear the 85mm guns starting to fire and saw the black puffs of the shells exploding around the inbound formation. To her experienced eye, the heavy regiment gunners had gauged the timing exactly right. One of the incoming aircraft suddenly developed a trail of black smoke that quickly grew into a billowing cloud. The stricken aircraft nosed over and dived into the ground still well-short of the airfield. The explosion from its impact was spectacular, a great rolling cloud that seemed to reach skywards.

It was the speed with which the attacking aircraft closed on their target that revealed the truth. They weren't the malenkiye der'mo at all, these were manned jet-engined bombers, probably with jet fighters as escort. Nobody had seen fascist jet bombers before although sightings of the Me-262s had been increasing, slowly but steadily, for weeks. It seemed logical that some kind of bomber would appear as well but Labutina wished they had chosen to appear somewhere else. Then the sky seemed to fill with glowing lines of tracer as the twenty 37mm guns defending Airfield 896 opened fire.

It was an impressive display but almost immediately it was apparent that the barrage was largely ineffective. The black blotches of shell bursts were well behind the jet as they made their runs. The fuse setters were doing their best but nobody had even seen an attack like this before and their tables were crude estimates only. Compensating for aircraft making attacks at 800 kilometers per hour or more was an entirely new world and the old-fashioned system of timed fuse setting simply could not cope with it. That left only one chance. "Sestri. Switch to impact fuses."

By now, the attacking aircraft had split into two groups. The first was the surviving three Me-262s while a group of eight unidentified bombers followed behind them. The 262s were carrying their usual battery of R4M rockets and fired them at the long line of Thunderbolts in their revetments. Labutina watched in sick disappointment as most of the rockets went anywhere other than towards their targets but a few ran more or less true, causing pyres of black smoke to rise from the parked aircraft. The 262s swept on, obviously heading for the anti-aircraft pits that were pouring fire skywards. The heavy 30mm cannon on the fighters were only of dubious value against other fighter aircraft but they were lethal against stationary anti-aircraft positions.

That suited her fine; it meant that she had a zero deflection shot at the one attacking her position. The first few shots were well behind the attacking jet but then the puffs of smoke vanished as the 37mm gun switched to firing impact fused shells. Two heartbeats later there was a brilliant flash from the belly of the 262 as one of the shells bit home. The jet reared upwards, flames streaming from the mortal wound in its underside, and climbed skywards. Then, at the top of its climb, the aircraft rolled on its back and the pilot dropped out.

Labutina swung her 37mm gun to train on him but Maslov's voice behind her said "Not in front of our Amerikanskiye brat'ya, tovarish."

By the time she had swung her gun on to the next wave of aircraft, the unidentified ones, the American flight line had been reduced to a blazing mass of wreckage. The bombers had dropped cluster munitions containing 10 kilogram blast-fragmentation bomblets that had covered the revetments in a rolling barrage of destruction. Labutina was almost in tears at the sight of the aircraft she was supposed to protect burning on the ground. The bombers were dispersing, their work done, but one of them was, by chance or misjudgment, coming close to her position. She led the target by eye, estimating range and speed based on her experience and long hours of practice. Once again, her 37mm gun started kicking out rounds but nothing seemed to happen although the tracers were all around the target. Suddenly, without warning, the bomber exploded in mid-air. Something had hit it, either a 37 or an 85mm but that didn’t matter. One more fascist aircraft had gone down.

The silence once the aircraft had vanished was profound. Fire trucks were racing to the American flight line where Labutina could see what seemed to be dozens of aircraft wrecked and burning. She couldn’t see why they were hurrying since nothing could save the Thunderbolts. The whole scene reminded her of the terrible days in 1941 when the entire Soviet Air Force had been caught on the ground and destroyed.

The bailed-out fascist pilot had landed by the time the all-clear had sounded. He was surrounded by a mix of heavily-armed Russian and American personnel and was learning the truth of the old proverb ‘never bail out over the troops you have just strafed.” Indeed much hilarity was being caused by his attempts to surrender to the Americans rather than the Russians. One of the American’s notorious company clerks had turned up with an armload of paper that he insisted were forms the unfortunate fascist pilot had to complete (in triplicate) before he could be taken prisoner by the Americans. Not to be outdone, the unit Komsomol organizer was insisting that the pilot would have to join the communist party before he could be allowed to surrender to the Russians and was waving 'application forms' under his nose. The fun reached a peak when the desperate Hitlerite tried to bribe the Americans to take him prisoner by offering them his wristwatch.

Maslov decided that after shooting down two jets, Labutina deserved a treat so he ordered her into his Willys and took her over to see the fun. It was with great pleasure that he explained to the infuriated fascist that she had commanded the anti-aircraft gun that had brought him down. The fascist spat something out and Maslov translated it. "He wants to know why you risk your life to defend Americans who would sell you in a second."

Labutina was inspired. "Tell him I don't fight for Americans. I fight for the Rodina. The Americans were just standing on the bit I was fighting for."

Maslov translated the words into German and then English. He and Labutina really appreciated the roar of applause that went up even if they knew it was basically a nervous relief from the stress of the attack. In the background, the captured fascist had lost his cool completely, screaming at the top of his voice and waving his arms at the row of destroyed Thunderbolts. Maslov translated for Labutina. “He isn’t making much sense. He is just shouting ‘what about that, what about that.’ I think he is boasting of the damage he has done. If so, he is very foolish.”

Behind them, the firefighters had damped down the blaze enough to let bulldozers close in and push the wreckage clear of the revetments. The growing pile of mangled wreckage seemed to be very sad to Labutina who thought of the hours American workers and peasants must have put into building those aircraft. She knew that in the Yakovlev and Lavochkin factories, young girls from school were working 15-hour days to keep the production line churning out fighters.

"Tovarish Ivan Vladimirovich, please ask how many American aircraft were destroyed."

Maslov asked the question and then translated the response. "This American pilot is named Foster. I know him well, a good man. He says they lost 22 aircraft but do not be worried because replacements are already on the way down. We will be back to strength by dusk. And his own aircraft, Babydoll was not in the parking area that was hit. He is very proud of the fact that we will be flying missions in less than an hour."

Maslov thought about his reply and realized that he had said 'we will be back to strength' not 'they will be back to strength.' For some reason, the error pleased him. He knew something else, the aircraft being sent down as replacements had been stored near Archangel’sk for some weeks. They had been intended for a new Thunderbolt group but the 130-octane shortage had prevented that group from forming. Those replacement aircraft would be arriving in an hour or less and then the fascist would have the answer to his shouted question. Maslov knew that answer would crush his soul.

[Calder]

Chapter Forty-Five
Igrat's Apartment, 349 Broadway, New York City, New York.

“Ready to go?” Achillea let herself into Igrat’s apartment and called out to let her know she had arrived.

“Yup. The bag’s packed and I’m off to somewhere safe.” Igrat came out of her bedroom carrying an overnight bag slung over a shoulder. “Canberra first, then Bangkok and Ottawa.”

Achillea knew better to ask what Igrat was carrying although it was a fair bet it was details of the missile attack on New York that were too sensitive to commit to normal communications. Instead, she switched the conversation to less sensitive areas. “Dido and Tom Lynch have reported in. They’ve been hunting across all the hospitals in the tristate area to try and find the missing people after the doodlebug attacks. Some of them were in hospitals across New Jersey and Connecticut. They’ve located all the known survivors; the rest, well I guess there is nothing left of them. By the way, there’s a familiar name on the remaining missing list.

Igrat felt her stomach clench. “One of us?”

“No, thank the Gods. But remember that woman we helped out a week or two back? Darlene Young? The one those thugs tried to rob? Her home was the impact point for the Staten Island hit. It’s gone, and it looks like she went with it. Tom and Dido didn’t find her anywhere in the hospitals and she hasn’t turned up to collect her allotment.”

“Oh no. I wonder if her husband knows?”

“I hope not.” Achillea was grimly practical. As usual. “He’s on the fast convoy to Archangel’sk and it's getting a real hammering. I’d wait to see if he gets to Archangel’sk alive before telling him his wife and child are dead.”

Igrat sighed. “That’s a shame. So strange, the husband is out there fighting to survive the run yet it’s the wife at home who gets killed. She seemed nice enough too. That attack has really stirred things up. We're already moving things around to try and make sure it doesn’t happen again. The Army is moving fighter groups to key points along the east coast right now, in the hope that we won’t get caught like that again. Anti-aircraft guns too. Too late, of course, the damage is done.”

“And so the bastards win.” Achillea sounded very bitter. “Our boys need those Thunderbolts in Russia.”

“Not P-47s ‘Lea. We’re getting P-49 Ball Lightning. They’re fast enough low down to catch up with the doodlebugs and nail them. The Thunderbolts aren’t. There are no plans to send more P-49s to Russia yet so keeping them here doesn't change much." Igrat looked around. "The big worry is that we'll get one of those doodlebugs launched with a poison gas warhead. According to father, the disruption that would cause would be all out of proportion to its actual effect. Anyway, do you want to come to Australia and Bangkok? It’s a safe run but you are welcome if you want a break."

Achillea stopped for a second and thought carefully. Igrat's right, the Australia and Thailand run are safe all around, no hostiles at either end and the way things are in the Pacific right now, she could probably go to Japan without hassle. She doesn’t like having company on these runs so either she's just being considerate or she senses something amiss. No point in taking chances. "Sounds like a plan, Iggie. I'd like to have a chat with Suriyothai and with luck she'll spit-roast a pig for us. What's the route?"

"DC-3 from here to Washington, pick up the goodies, then a Constellation from Washington to San Francisco. Flying boat to Australia and another one to Bangkok. Then back via Manila and Wake Island."

"First class I hope?"

Igrat grinned. "Is there any other?"

Outside, Gusoyn was waiting with a nondescript but government-owned limousine. "Good morning Iggie. Idlewild?"

"Teterboro, please, Gusoyn. We've got plenty of time."

"Good to know, Iggie. On our way."

Igrat sat back to enjoy the ride. After a while, she began to notice that Gusoyn was getting worried. "Problems?"

"I am not sure. We have acquired a tail. They have been following us ever since we left your place. Here is the odd thing, though. It is another government vehicle."

“We’re not heading for Teterboro yet are we?”

“Not yet. I can head for Newark AAF. That is plausible because it is used by Airbridge Command. Then I will lose them without seeming to. They will assume we are still heading for Newark and by the time they realize we are not, we will be gone.”

“Sound like we have a plan Gusoyn. Go for it.”

In the back seat, Igrat and Achillea exchanged glances. This situation was one that had to be reported. It could just be an over-zealous official checking on the use of a government vehicle and gasoline. Or perhaps not. Be that as it may, it was enough to make both Igrat and Achillea get the feeling that the latter's presence on this trip wasn't just an excuse for a break.

Ju-188E Yellow-Six Approaching T3-SE-A4 Tanker Shawnee, At Sea, East of North Cape

"How's our fuel status?" Bausch listened appreciatively to the roar of laughter from the other three members of the crew. The previous evening, they had endured a harrowing return flight, believing that their aircraft was rapidly running out of fuel. On landing, they had discovered that the fuel tanks were still almost half full and it was the fuel gauge that had been damaged by flak.

"About three-quarters." Schiffner checked the gauges very carefully and even tapped them to make sure they were working properly. He has spent the last twelve hours being unmercifully teased over the fuel gauge false alarm and wanted to be sure it wouldn't happen again.

"Hmm. Jonas, you'd better go out on the wing and inspect the tanks visually. Take a dipstick out with you."

"Very good, Herr Hauptman. Marcus, come with me on to the wing to check the tanks."

"All right, everybody, target is ahead. The torpedo planes are going in now." KG-2 alternated its aircraft between dive-bombing and torpedo attacks so that the risks of each would be shared out equally. So, this time Yellow-Six would be part of the dive-bombing wave that would follow the torpedo attack. "Jonas, make sure the SC-1000s are armed."

This time, there was no laughter or joking in the cockpit. Schiffner carefully set the arming switches to the 'engaged' position and ensured they were locked in place. Then he looked at the tell-tale lights and saw that both the thousand-kilogram bombs were armed. "Armed and checked, Herr Hauptmann."

"Confirmed." Far below, the three torpedo bombers were making another hammerhead attack. The tanker was moving slowly and very erratically but luck played into her hands. A lurch at just the wrong moment caused the torpedo from one bomber to pass just in front of her bows while the two from the other quarter ran either side, close enough, Bausch thought, to scrape the paint off but too far away to set off the fuse. That left putting this seemingly-invincible tanker down to the five dive-bombers.

Ahead of him, the lead pair Ju-188s nosed over into a long dive. They were coming in from the tanker's stern in the classic dive-bomber's approach. Bausch watched the attack critically, noting the still apparently lethal storm of fire that erupted from the tanker as the aircraft approached. He spotted the mistake early; the lead pilot in the pair had overestimated the ship's speed and it was falling steadily behind the two aircraft diving on her. As she did so, she slipped under their noses until the pilot and bomb-aimer could no longer see their targets. The Ju-188 was limited to a maximum 30 degree dive in its attacks, the penalty for exceeding it being that the aircraft's controls would lock and it would dive straight into the sea. So it was that, when the tanker made a sharp lurch to port and picked up speed again, the SC-1000 bombs dropped ahead of her and off to starboard. Bausch thought that it had been a neat bit of ship-handling.

How neat it had been was something he realized when he led his own section of three aircraft down into their dive. It wasn't just that the tanker was moving slowly, her Captain had waited until the dive bombers had committed to their attack and then slowed down as quickly as he could. More than that, her Captain had put his helm hard over, turning into the torpedo hit from the previous evening. The drag of the torn plating on that side accelerated the turn, dragging the hull sideways through the water. Helplessly, Bausch saw his bombsight cross-hairs moving forward along the hull and off to one side.

There was only one thing he could do. The standard drill for a dive-bombing attack was to release at no more than 1,000 meters altitude. His Ju-188 was at 3,000 meters, far too high for an accurate drop but every second he waited put the tanker further out of his reach. He pressed the release and watched his two thousand-kilogram bombs arc downwards towards the swerving tanker. He was already pulling back on the control stick when they struck. One hit the tanker off to one side and exploded in a ball of fire. The other went into the sea close alongside the hull and went off there, sousing the ship with water. One effect of that was the drenching drowned the fire before it took hold.

Behind him, the other two Ju-188s saw what he had done and why, then copied him. That slight delay meant it was too late. The bombs landed in a very tight pattern that would have blown the tanker in half had they hit and exploded. They exploded but they were in the sea close to the ship's bows.

Bausch was watching something else. Despite the destruction from his own two bombs, a single automatic gun in the gallery that formed the front of the midships bridge was continuing to fire. The gunner had picked one of the Ju-188s out and was tracking it as it turned away from its attack. Bausch saw Yellow-Nine start to burn as the gun pumped shot after shot into is wing and engine, leaving it trailing thick black smoke from its engine and wing root. Only, the gunner didn’t leave the crippled aircraft alone. He continued to fire on it until it belly-flopped into the sea and started to sink. Even then he kept firing, concentrating on the cockpit until Yellow-Nine rolled over and sank.

"That man must really hate us." Bausch's thought escaped from his mouth before he could stop them.

"Look at that tanker, Herr Hauptmann. Her back is broken."

The tanker was stopped. Bausch could see what had happened easily enough. His bomb had hit in almost the same place as his torpedo only on the other side of the ship while the near-miss had pushed the side plating in. Then, the four bombs in a tight pattern of near-misses had pushed the bows sideways, strongly enough to break the tanker's back. She was clearly bent in the middle, just before her bridge, and her bows were already sagging downwards.

"You're right Jonas. She's done at last. Time to go home."

20mm Gallery, T3-SE-A4 Tanker Shawnee, At Sea, At Sea, East of North Cape

The scene on board Shawnee was utter chaos. The attack had been sudden, savage and over in just a few minutes, but the damage it had inflicted was crippling. The single bomb near-miss amidships and the four more up by the bows, had seemed to lift the ship clean out of the water. Shawnee had shaken violently from the near-missed while multiple torrents of water swamped her decks. Severe concussion from those explosions had shaken the circuit breaker on a fuel pump until it tripped, stopping the flow of oil to the boilers. As they died, the steam pressure driving the generators had dropped away and provision of electricity to her motors had also stopped. And so it was that the concussion from the near-missed had saved the tanker from breaking up and sinking.

It was the direct hit that was causing the problems and the SC-1000 had come within an ace of sinking the tanker. The near misses falling close enough to shake the vessel severely had put intense pressure on the tears in her hull and the ruptured deck plating, causing the ship’s structure to start working against itself. With every blast, with every deluge of water, the opening tears in Shawnee’s hull made the ship scream in mortal agony. So, when the 2,200 pound bomb had struck the decks half-way between the midships bridge and the bows, it penetrated the upper deck, passed through a wing passage and exploded between the cargo tanks with a hellish roar that convinced most of the crew that the tanker was done for.

From his position on the 20mm gallery, Young saw that Shawnee’s bows had settled deeper into the water and the ship was now listing as she flooded. He could also see that the rips, cracks and tears in her tortured hull now spread all the way across the deck and deeper into the bulkheads. Around the spreading break, the stress on the hull had buckled and twisted even the areas of plating that had not yet been torn open. The damage extended all the way over to the starboard side. Looking forward, the bow with its guns and cargo-handling kingpost that had been in front of him for so many days was now off to his port. He knew what that meant, the only way a ship could bend like that was if her back was broken and that meant it could not be long before she broke in two completely.

“Dougie, got some breakfast for you. Here you go.” One of the assistant cooks was trying to get some hot food, at least some semblance of it anyway, to the men on deck. He gave Young a bag that was still warm to the touch. He opened it and found a peeled, boiled egg, still warm from the water and a sandwich made from a slice of fried spam and some of the previous-days bread. He pulled the ice-encrusted scarf from his nose and mouth and started to wolf the food down. It was, in his considered opinion, the best boiled egg he had ever tasted.

“Thanks, Charlie.” He got the words out mixed up with stale bread and fried spam. “You’re a prince amongst men.”

The man swelled slightly with pride. The life of a ship’s cook was usually an unappreciated one. “I’ve got some warm coffee as well, just inside the hatch. Hang ‘on, I’ll get you a mug. Have to take the empty away though, we lost most of our mugs when the bomb hit us. Galley’s ankle deep in smashed china right now.”

Boiler Rooms, T3-SE-A4 Tanker Shawnee, At Sea, At Sea, East of North Cape

The shock wave from the direct hit amidships had raced through the ship’s structure, wiping out the lighting throughout the stern half of the ship. By a strange irony, it was the torn rupture in the ship’s hull that threatened to tear her in half that had also allowed the forward emergency generator to keep the lighting in the bows on. Of course, that didn’t help the men trying to work in the machinery spaces aft. The lighting system in the engine room, auxiliary room, and stokehold had failed and the compartments had been left in utter stygian darkness

Engineering Officer Gary Tate had worked fast to issue as many hand-led lamps as he could find so that the essential work of trying to restore some semblance of power to the ship. He had a little early success when throwing a circuit breaker by the boiler room emergency generator had restored some of the stand-by lighting. The problem was that it only affected his boiler room and much of the rest of the stern part of the ship was without any kind of power. To make matters even worse, the bomb that had hit Shawnee had also cut the power to the ship’s fuel pumps. Deprived of their oil, the fires went out and pressure dropped from the boilers. And so, even had the electricity distribution system been on, the turbogenerators had none to supply.

With all the circuit breakers that transferred power to the main and auxiliary electric fuel pumps out of action and inaccessible, Tate was left with very few options. Of those few, the most promising was to get the steam fuel pumps started. They had enough raw power to get fuel to the boilers and start them generating steam. That was the problem of course; fuel had to get to the boilers so they could generate steam to drive the pumps that would then deliver fuel to the boilers. We can’t get there from here, he thought.

That was when light dawned on him. The starboard condenser pump could be restarted and it would generate a small level of negative pressure within the fuel system. This would suck oil fuel that was in the boiler fuel feed system into the burners and give a brief surge of steam pressure in the boilers. It would be just enough to run the steam fuel pumps for two or three minutes. If Shawnee was lucky enough, that brief sure of power would run the pumps long enough to get a trickle of fuel flowing to the boilers and burning that would allow a steady power supply.

Tate had been trained on steam turbine tankers and knew very little about turbo-electric drive ships. So, it was very likely that he had no real idea of how dangerous what he was trying to do was. The one man who could have known, Steve Perry, was in the motor room repairing the damage to the electrical systems there. Even so, Shawnee gave Tate once last chance. Despite coupling the main and auxiliary condensers, fractures in the condenser system prevented the jury-rigged system from achieving the necessary vacuum to draw in the oil fuel. There was just enough to fill the furnaces with a mixture of air and oil fuel vapor. When Tate tried to ignite it, the resulting fuel-air blast blew the access panel open and sent a rolling ball of fire into the boiler room.

It was a flash-fire, gone almost as soon as it appeared but it engulfed Tate and sent his blazing body backwards into the bulkhead. His screams echoed off the metal walls of the boiler room as the rest of the boiler room crew tried to put out the flames consuming him, but it was clearly hopeless. In the few brief seconds of the fireball, Tate’s flesh had been burned to the bone and beyond. A few more seconds later, he was dead.

The sound of the explosion and fireball echoed across the ship. On the bridge, Captain Brady was still on duty despite the injuries he had suffered during the strafing attacks. Now, looking at the shattered ruin of his ship, he knew that she was drifting helplessly without propulsion or power.

“Sir, lookouts report two surface ships closing in on us.”

[Calder]

Chapter Forty-Six
Forward Aid Post, 1st Battalion, 503rd Regiment, 47th Rifle Division, East of Ponga

Despite the heavy frost, Antonina Stepanovna Rabtsun had dragged in a badly-burned tank driver from the meat-grinder that was taking place just a few kilometers away. In fact, the frost had made her work easier since some dehorsed and lightly-wounded tankists were busy building wooden sleds so the medical orderlies could pull the wounded in rather than carry them. Rabtsun had been given one and it slid smoothly over the hardened ice, cutting down the time it took to get her charge to the doctors. She knew very well about the ‘golden hour’ and that every minute she could save improved the chances of the wounded surviving. That was why she had run through the snow dragging her sled despite her exhaustion.

The forward hospital consisted of two half-burned and semi-derelict wooden buildings that had been repaired enough to keep most of the wind out and the heat in. Despite their decrepit nature, they were crowded to overflowing with the wounded. Most were tankists and artillerists who had bailed out of burning vehicles and bore the scars of doing so. Others had the puncture wounds of bullet holes or the great ripping gashes from fragments. Whatever their wounds, the lucky ones still lay on stretchers, others were on the bare floor, or a few handfuls of bloody straw. There were supposed to have been evacuated to more suitable hospital facilities in the rear but there weren’t enough trucks and fuel to evacuate them and the few trucks that were available were overcommitted, bringing up fuel and ammunition for the tanks and assault guns.

“It’s bad, but we will do everything we can.” In fact, there was no hope for the man who had been trapped inside a burning T-34-85 for too long but the Doctor always told the combat medical orderlies that there was something that could be done for the people they had brought back. It would be far too cruel to tell them that they had risked their lives to bring back somebody who would surely die anyway.

At that point, the sound of unfamiliar aircraft engines caused people in the aid station to stop work and look up. Allied air dominance over the battlefield was complete. Faced with Russian Yaks and Lavochkins at low altitude, Russian and American Airacobras and Kobrushkas at medium while American Thunderbolts and Lightings waited at high altitude to swoop down, the fascists had given up sending their pilots to be slaughtered. Luftwaffe ground attack aircraft were conspicuous by their absence these days. Compared with the roar of high-powered fighter engines, the new aircraft sounded more like a very weak motorcycle. So, it was not surprising when a strange-looking twin-engined biplane came over the trees and started to land.

Multiple sets of eyes watched the new arrival warily. They took in the green and brown paint scheme with the light gray belly, the circular markings on the wings and fuselage, the red, white and blue square on the tail. They also noted the name Matilda painted under the cockpit. The strange aircraft seemed to slow down until it was almost standing still in mid-air and then dropped neatly on to the field by the aid station. It rolled forward a few feet and stopped. One man jumped out from the passenger cabin and ran over to where the medical orderlies and doctors were waiting.

"Brat'ya, the aircraft can take six stretcher passengers. Doctors, pick those who need rear-area care the most urgently. Medical orderlies, help load them into the Dragon. Is Tovarish Antonina Stepanovna here?" Alekse Nikandrovich Udovchenko looked around. "Tonya? Ah, there you are. Please get on the aircraft as well. You are being temporarily reassigned."

"But there are so many wounded." Rabtsun looked around at the crowded station.

"Tonya, since the fighting here started, you have brought in 147 wounded soldiers who would otherwise have died. You have done more than your share here but the Rodina has more to ask of you. There is an urgent need for your skills in Archangel'sk." He took her to one side and dropped his voice. "There is a convoy coming in, a big one, but many of the ships have been hit and are badly damaged. Many of their crews have suffered casualties and the ships are filled with badly-wounded men. Bratishka, these man have risked their lives to bring our people food so that they might survive the winter. The very least we can do in return is to make sure the best people we have are there to help their wounded. When they see you, they will know that we have indeed sent the best."

Rabtsun went brilliant red at the praise. Udovchenko looked around and saw people watching. "You deserve this duty and the opportunity to spend some time in the rear. So do the other medical orderlies who daily risk their lives for their comrades. This aircraft will be back and so will others like it. A combat medical orderly must ride with each flight to make sure the wounded are receive proper care in transit. A flight to the rear and a couple of days to rest and regain your strength is a small reward for the sacrifices you make. Now, tovarish Antonina Stepanovna, board the aircraft. Now. It is loaded already and the men aboard need urgent care."

Bridge, T3-SE-A4 Tanker Shawnee, In the White Sea

"Can you make them out yet?" Captain Brady called out the question to the lookouts. There are two surface ships out there and I need to know what they are. If they're friendly, they can take the crew off before Shawnee breaks up and sinks. If they are hostile, I suppose we can put up a fight with our 20mm guns. It might work if they are S-boats or something like that.

"They're hard to see, Captain. The mist is hiding them." There was a long aching pause. "I think they have three stacks, they look like our four pipers the Navy converted to escorts."

"Not fascists?"

"Don't think so, Captain. Wait a minute, they've seen us and are closing. Definitely three stacks. Low bridge." There was another long pause and Brady could imagine the lookout thumbing through the recognition books. That was when he heard a low whistle of surprise over the intercom. "Two guns forward, three aft, all at main deck level. Damn, I think they are Russian."

"Well, that's a surprise." Brady looked through his binoculars at the two approaching destroyers. "There's hardly enough of the Russian Navy left to help out. They're Russian all right. Nobody else uses that crazy gun layout."

The Russian destroyers closed quickly and split apart so that one was on each side of the stricken Shawnee. A light flickered from the bridge of the one to port. Brady was able to read the Morse code clearly. "She's signaling 'Kalinin and Karl Marx, We will stand by you.' Reply. 'This is Shawnee. We have broken back and cannot move. Can you take off crew?"

"She's replying, Captain. The message reads. 'We will stand by you. I think that's a yes,"

"Signal 'back broken forward of the bridge, the main deck fractured. Flooding controlled. Have engine power but cannot use it. We move and the ship will break in two.'"

There was a long pause as the two destroyers held station on Shawnee. When the reply came, it was surprisingly short. "Message reads, 'splint wound.'"

"What the hell does he want us to do?" Brady looked around at his wrecked bridge. He saw a reflection of himself in an unbroken bridge window, wounded from the repeated strafing attacks and the connection between a wounded man and a wounded ship formed in his mind. What does one do with a broken bone? We put splints on the wound. That's what the Russian is telling us to do. "He wants to splint our broken back. He's suggesting we lash one of the destroyers each side of us, alongside where the keel gave. That way, they'll hold us straight and we can use our engines to get moving."

"Can we do that Captain?"

Brady was suddenly full of enthusiasm. "There are probably a thousand way or more we can't and a thousand more why we shouldn't. But, it's up to us to find the one way we can do this and if you want a reason why we should, look at that water. It's cold and icing over. Get me the engine rooms."

"Captain, Mr. Tate is dead. One of the seaman has taken over down there, Perry. He's sailed on diesel-electric tankers and knows more about the motor-room than anybody else we have."

Brady sighed. "All right, call Mr. Perry, tell him he is now officially the unofficial Engineering Officer and to get the machinery ready to start us moving. Now, how the hell do we do this?"

The signal light on the Karl Marx flashed again. "Friends come."

Less than five minutes later, there was a roar of engines and a section of four P-47s flashed overhead. Brady decided that 'flashed' was probably hyperbole since the pilots were obviously at most-economical cruising speed, stretching their fuel as far as it would go. Nevertheless, to a ship dead in the water, they seemed to be moving fast enough. Brady saw the squared-off wingtips that marked the P-47N and the three large drop-tanks they were carrying. Obviously the aircraft were loaded for maximum range. High overhead, eight more P-47s were circling, waiting for fascist aircraft to show their faces.

The sight made him feel a lot better, which, he supposed was what it had been intended to do. "Right. Let's get her back splinted and we'll get the old girl moving. The first thing we’re going to have to do is to stop this drifting. Deck hands are to clear the wreckage off the decks and make preparations to lash the two destroyers to our sides. Machinery crew, disconnect the steering arms and replace them with chain blocks port and starboard sides of the quadrant. That way we can try and move the rudder manually. Get to it, the Russians are watching and we don’t want them to think we’re lazing around out here.”

Thirty minutes later, most of the wreckage that was entangling Shawnee’s decks had been pushed over the side and the way was clear for Kalinin to pass a line to the tanker’s forecastle. It was nowhere near enough to move her and in any case, Brady knew the attempt would break the tanker in two. What the line did mean was that the destroyer was stabilizing the tanker against the drift of wind and waves and limiting her movement. That, in turn, made it safe for Karl Marx to move alongside. It was an agonizingly slow process, but the Russian destroyer was equipped for minesweeping and was able to use her sweep cables to secure herself to Shawnee’s side. The cables were followed by a length of ten inch manila rope taken from the tanker’s well-stocked stores that was run from Shawnee’s forecastle to the bows of the destroyer.

By the time the crews of Karl Marx and Shawnee had finished, the chaotic tangle of wires, ropes and cables stretching between the two ships seemed to defy any kind of common sense yet to Brady’s experienced eye, it was all perfectly logical. The pivoting points of the two ships had been perfectly calculated so that they moved together, closely lashed and with the intact hull of Karl Marx taking the strain. Brady knew that few of his crew spoke more than a few words of Russian and he guessed the crew of Karl Marx knew equally little English yet guided by the shared body of knowledge in the ways of the sea, they had worked together perfectly. Much more importantly, and the constant creaking and grinding of the mid-ships deck plating and bulkheads had diminished noticeably.

As soon as the situation had stabilized, Kalinin made her approach. She was coming in from the same side as the torpedo hit and her Captain had to be far more careful in his approach or the jagged and torn hull plating would inflict mortal damage on his ship. It would not be helpful if Shawnee was to sink one of her would-be rescuers. Kalinin came to a halt a few yards away from the tanker and catapulted over a 20-centimeter Manila line. To Brady’s amazement, it really was catapulted over; somehow the Russians had managed to rig up something that would throw the line without the risks that firing a rocket would pose to a potentially leaking, highly inflammable cargo. Brady watched his crew secure the line and then use it to pull over the cables and ropes needed to lash Kalinin in place. As they did so, they used the same lines to send back their own stock of wire and Manila. Once the connections had been made, Kalinin was carefully warped into place and the process of securing her in place started.

By the time the work was done, the sounds of Shawnee's hull working had almost ceased. On the other hand, Brady could hear the sound of Kalinin's pumps at work and knew that, despite the care that had been taken, the destroyer had underwater damage. Nevertheless, the situation was a whole world better than it had been before the two destroyers had arrived. Now is the time to put this theory to the test. "Engine rooms, how much power can you give us?"

Perry's voice came back over the voice-powered internal comms system. "The flashback that killed Mr. Tate has knocked out our port boiler. However, the old girl was designed with extra capacity in her steam generating plant for this kind of situation. I can give you about sixty percent current from the starboard boiler and turbogenerators and feed that to both electric motors. I can also give you some power for the rest of the ship but we'll lose that amount of power to the motors.

"I need the radar and power for the guns."

There was a silence as Perry calculated the distribution. Brady could almost hear him trying to apply his experience with diesel-electric tankers to this steam turboelectric ship. "I think I can do that. Hold one."

There was a long pause and then the lights on the bridge flickered on. "How's that, Sir?"

At the radar screen, one of the bridge crew gave a triumphant thumbs-up. "Well done Mr. Perry. We have radar. Now some speed would be nice."

Brady heard the laugh that went around the engine room on the telephone. "On its way, Captain. We'll feed through the current now and start to move forward. Recommend we start with 10 revolutions, which should give us two knots. We can take it up in steps from there."

"Make it so. Start to feed the power through in five minutes. I have to tell the Russians what is happening here."

Thirty minutes later, Shawnee had worked up to six knots before the sounds of hull stress had returned. Between them, Shawnee, Karl Marx and Kalinin were leaving the widest wake Captain Brady had ever seen. The bad news was that would lead more fascist bombers right to them. The good news was he knew the strange little convoy would have fighter cover all the way now. And, even at this slow crawl, he was just 40 hours from Archangel'sk.

P-47N "Babydoll", Escorting Shawnee White Sea

The last sight Foster had seen before leaving Airfield 897 was the fascist PoW sitting in the back of a truck, weeping as he watched the replacement Thunderbolts arrive. The damage the Hitlerites had done with their air attack had been fixed in less than forty five minutes. Foster wondered how long it would take the fascists to replace the aircraft they had lost.

At first, Foster had been relieved to be a fighter pilot again. After weeks of flying ground attack missions, it was good for the soul of a fighter pilot to be back doing the work that was properly his. Then, the endless orbiting of the crawling tanker and her escorts, his engine throttled back and leaned out to the point where it was on the verge of cutting out, had started to bore him. After three hours, he was praying for something, anything, to happen just to break the monotony. Yet, he knew he had four hours to go before he could return to Airfield 897. On the other hand, he had a date this evening, once he was off-duty that was. The commander of the anti-aircraft gun that had taken down two of the fascist’s jets had invited him to join her and her gun crew for dinner that evening.

"Little friends, this is a big friend. We have a formation inbound, eight bandits, angels twelve, bearing two-seven-zero, range 30 miles. Probable identification, fascist dive-bombers. Be aware, we cannot maneuver."

Foster noted the exhaustion and fear in the voice of the controller on the tanker. Also, that he was obviously a replacement since he had used the codes improperly. The last five words had been a desperate plea. Shawnee might be moving again but she could sail in a straight line only.

"All right, big friend. We'll deal with them. Just keep those propellers turning."

"Roger that, little friend."

Foster was tempted to take all of his aircraft over and wipe out the entire enemy formation with a single pass. They would be either Ju-188s or 388s, both were fast but very lightly armed and protected. He fought it down and looked at the situation map. The twelve Thunderbolts were in three groups of four, flying in cloverleaf patterns. His was the closest to the inbound formation. He could legitimately take his four aircraft to wipe out the enemy. "Smooth Operator, maintain escort over our big friend with red and yellow flights. Green flight will get rid of the fascists."

"Acknowledged Babydoll. Good Hunting."

The temptation to open the throttles wide and close as quickly as possible was strong but Foster continued to force patience on himself. Fuel economy and the need to maintain a protective screen over the crippled tanker behind him still continued to dictate his tactics. This time, virtue was rewarded. It didn't seem that way at first; it was apparent that the Ju-188s had spotted his Thunderbolts at a distance because they turned and fled westwards, towards their bases in northern Norway. Faced with a fleeing enemy, Foster very nearly gave chase but something was nagging at him. He realized that the aircraft retreating from him hadn't jettisoned their bombload and that strongly suggested they hadn't been carrying any. The implication was obvious, they were decoys intended to draw off the fighters covering Shawnee while combat-loaded aircraft took her out.

With that realization, Foster looked around and saw what he deduced had to be there. A group of four torpedo planes, more Ju-188s, were skimming over the wave-tops. He radioed a warning to the tanker and the rest of the fighters covering her, then led his flight down.

It was a massacre and it took only a few seconds. Each of the P-47s took a single bomber. The defensive fire was puny since the Ju-188s had only a fixed, forward-firing 20mm gun and two flexible 13.2mm machineguns. One was in a turret above the cockpit, the other in a belly hatch. To the Thunderbolts, the single lines of tracer fire were a derisory attempt at defense. The only real question was whether the P-47s would rake the bombers with gunfire starting from the tail and work towards the nose or start with the cockpit and walk the hail of .50 caliber machine-gun fire aft. Both tactics had their proponents; Foster was a firm believer in the second. He sent his target spiraling into the sea with a firm sense of a job well done.

By the time he rejoined Shawnee, she had moved a few precious miles further south. Every hour now put her deeper and deeper into the White Sea. That was further from the fascist bases in Norway but also further behind the Allied fighter squadrons based on the Kola Peninsula. That meant if further fascist air attacks were to take place, the aircraft would have to fly the long way round, north to go around the Kola Peninsula and then south-east down the White Sea, and that would very soon put Shawnee out of their range at last.

[Calder]

Chapter Forty-Seven
SU-100 Yebat’moya Mama, Ukhtinskoye, Onega Oblast

“What really scares you, Vasya?” Praporshchik Nikola Ilyich Demkin was trying to get himself comfortable in the cramped commander’s position of the SU-100. Despite it being bitterly cold outside, the temperature inside of the tank destroyer was tolerable. That was why the crew had elected to try and sleep inside. That and the news that the Partisans had observed the fascists were massing for a big push to try and break through to the Hitlerite forces to the north. Talking about how the Americans had brought down the bridges at Etatochka, isolating the fascist bridgehead on the east bank of the Onega and how the 47th Rifle Division had broken out of the bridgehead at Amosovskaya had led to them reminiscing about their part in the opening days of that battle, now over a month before. And that had led to their present talk in the quiet privacy and relative warmth of their vehicle.

“Burning of course.” Vasily Andreyevich Kaplin named the greatest fear of every tankists and artillerist, that of not being able to escape from a burning vehicle. He was the one crewmember in the SU-100 who did not have an immediate, clear escape route from the vehicle. He had a hatch to use, but either the loader or the commander had to get out first before his path was clear to it. That made his chances of escaping the flames lower than for any other crew member.

“Come out of my hatch, Vasya.” Faina had the most comfortable bed in the vehicle. She had folded the driver’s seatback down so it was horizontal, then padded up her greatcoat and bedroll to make a comfortable mattress. Wrapped up in her quilted winter uniform and a trophy blanket she had ‘obtained’ from a fascist who wouldn’t be needing it any more, she was comfortable and warm. “It’s a clear route through and my hatch is large and spring-loaded. I’m small so if we catch fire I’ll be out of the way very fast indeed. It is Kolya up top who has the problem. Cramped to start with and exposed to machine guns from all over. It was good to know you, Kolya!”

A laugh ran around the snug darkness of the SU-100. “Fainatchka speaks well, brat’ya. What is your fear, Kolya?”

That made Vasily Andreyevich think carefully. “I think it is losing my limbs. I think sometimes of the veterans I have seen who have lost their legs or arms. Or both. To die, even in a burning tank, is terrible but it ends quickly. To be a helpless cripple goes on for many, many years, a burden to oneself, one’s family, to everybody. I think I would rather die than be a cripple. What about you, Fainatchka?”

Faina thought about that. “At first I was frightened by everything, the noise, the fighting, the knives and guns, the way the ground shook when the artillery fires. But all of that faded away. In the end, only one fear remains for me, of being ugly after death. I don’t want my remains to be ugly, to be torn to pieces by a shell or burned to charcoal. I know what it is like, I have seen it happen to girls I trained with when their tanks were hit and burned or when they were caught by artillery. I picked up those pieces. In my nightmares, I see people at my funeral who cannot look at me because what is left is so horrible. What about you, Mitya?”

Mitrofan Sergeyevich Ogarkov was the youngest member of the crew, fresh out of school and the recipient of a few hours of training on how to stuff rounds into the breach of an anti-tank gun. He had received his first taste of action just a few days earlier and he’d been having nightmares ever since. In a strange way, though, the morbid conversation in the SU-100 was having a reassuring effect on him. He realized that he wasn’t the only one who was afraid of the ghastly world into which he had been thrown. Even these hardened and decorated veterans had their fears as well. “I also have a nightmare where we fight hard all day and at the end we get out of our ‘one hundred’ and we find the world is empty. That we are the only ones left alive. That the whole world is dead except us. We are driving around for the rest of our lives, looking for other people but there are none.”

“That is enough to make shivers run down my spine.” Demkin shuddered.

“It is the sort of story we would tell around the campfire at a Young Pioneers night in the forest.” Faina wrapped herself in her blanket a bit more closely and felt the reassuring weight of her track wrench tucked by her driving seat. “There’s a worse one though. What happens if this war never ends? Will we, and our children, and our children’s children be fighting the fascists forever? What if it just goes on and on for year after year?”

At that point, the telephone rang. The laagered SU-100s had been connected by a field telephone system so they could talk but wouldn’t give away their positions by using their radios. Demkin picked up the receiver, listened for a few moments then acknowledged the message.

“That was combrig. The fascists are on the move and the Jagdtigers are with them. We are to get into ambush positions by dawn. This will be a meeting engagement worthy of our talents.”

Headquarters, 1st Battalion, 503rd Regiment, 47th Rifle Division, Ukhtinskoye, Archangel’sk Front

Colonel Alexander Georgiyevich Paramonov was well aware that, since his regiment had moved into its present positions some 24 hours earlier, his men had spent at least 36 of those hours digging in. Or at least that was what it had seemed like. Despite the brutally hard work of preparing obstacles in the frozen ground, they had succeeded in creating an impressive maze of wire entanglements and minefields backed up by carefully-concealed foxholes and defensive weapon emplacements. Every possible means of killing the fascists had been carefully positioned with the infantry entrenchments arranged so that they had 360 degree fields of fire. Every likely avenue of attack had been covered by three, and in places four lines of trenches connected by communication trenches. Never again would the Hitlerites be allowed to roll up defenses the way they had in the first two years of the war.

Yet, for all the preparations Paramonov and his men had made, they knew that they were secondary to the true factor that won battles. The one thing that contributed more than any other single factor to the stubborn and prolonged resistance in the face of a fascist assault was a regimental command structure that maintained its composure, never lost control over its units, and skillfully held its lines until the end of the day. The commanders who kept their nerve, never gave up the fight and continued to maneuver their battalions and companies quickly and efficiently even while all hell was breaking around them, for just five minutes longer than the enemy would contain the attackers and prevent them from breaking through. If each battalion commander did the same, then the Regiment would hold. Averting a full breakthrough in the sector. If every Regiment prevented a breakthrough, then the enemy would be defeated.

That was why Paramonov had spent the night going from one of his fortified zones to the next, inspecting the lines, checking that the fields of fire from the guns interlocked, that the one position could not be compromised by those on its flanks failing to hold. He was ending his tour with the first battalion, the battalion that had already acquired the nickname ‘the fish’ after the way they had swum the Onega in the American amphibious personnel carriers a whole month before. For that achievement they had been awarded the privilege of wearing the blue-striped shirts of the Russian Marines. Despite the withdrawal of the amphibious armored vehicles, the Americans were still here, some of them. One of them was close by, in Russian uniform and in a jeep painted in Russian colors for certain, but that was necessary. To have a green American jeep and a man in American uniform would be a gift to fascist snipers. The jeep had a radio built into its back and was dug in with meticulous use of camouflage. That jeep was just about the most important vehicle he had.

“You are keeping warm, Tovarish?” Paramonov remembered the first year the American Army had spent in a Russian winter and how they had learned that cold-weather equipment that worked well back home was hopelessly inadequate on the Steppes. Fortunately, the necessary equipment had been to hand and the Russians had given as much as they could to their new allies. This second winter, the American equipment was much better, but their troops still went to great lengths to get themselves the furry ushankas and heavy greatcoats. American company clerks and stores sergeants were already busy teaching their Russians equivalents some key lessons concerning the many virtues that could be found in a free market.

“Sure am, tovarish Colonel. Jeep and the radio ware warmed up and we’re ready to go.” Lieutenant Bob Henagar had drawn forward air controller duty after he had been blown up by an Fi-103. It was a demonstrated fact that pilots could steer fellow-pilots on to ground targets much more effectively than non-pilots. So, forward air control was a duty all the pilots in the ground attack groups rotated between them. Henagar had an added advantage that he spoke reasonably good Russian. “We’ll be stacking the air support overhead. P-47s, A-38s and Il-2s in regimental/group strength. We’re burning all the fuel we’ve got for this operation. Don’t sweat it, we’ve more than ninety million gallons of 130-octane arriving right now.”

Paramonov gave a well-hidden shudder at the amount that even the most junior of the Americans knew about what was going on around them. The Russian army had given up trying to persuade their allies that anything somebody did not absolutely need to know was secret and secrets were better kept that way. “When will the aircraft be here?”

“They’re already on their way, tovarish Colonel. They took off a few minutes ago. As soon as we’re past dawn, they’ll be cab-ranked overhead.” Henagar saw the officer was puzzled and that wasn’t good. Puzzled senior officers asked questions and learned things it was better they should not know. “Stoyanka taksi. They’ll be waiting overhead, and they’ll make their runs as soon as we call.”

Paramonov moved a little further along. His regiment had been reinforced with an anti-tank group, a battalion sized unit with six 85mm field guns used as anti-tank guns and twelve 57mms supported by an infantry company heavily equipped with American Bazookas and trophy Panzerfausts. Like the infantry units, their defenses were laid out so that they could defend even against attacks from the rear.

His inspection completed, he knew that the time had come for plans to be replaced by action. Which, as every veteran knew, meant the plans would now be thrown out of the window. He looked around, seeing the troops around him suddenly lit up by a red glow and, far behind them, lightning streaking along the horizon. A few seconds later, the ground started to shake under his feet with the concussion of the Russian artillery starting the process of pounding the fascist assembly and jumping-off areas. The roar of the guns and the howl of the rocket launchers was another few seconds later. If the deductions of the Russian commanders, fed by the information provided by the American reconnaissance aircraft and the observations of the Partisans were correct, the massed bombardment would be striking home just as the front trenches in the Hitlerite lines were filling with assault troops.

Command Detachment, Schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 653, 12 kilometers south of Ponga.

It was apparent to Ackermann that Maior Carius was a very experienced commander of tank destroyers but he had never been in a major combined-arms battle before. He had spent his military career in fire-brigade units, being rushed from one critical point to another. He had fought meeting engagement after meeting engagement but never taken part in a set-piece battle. His very success in the fire-brigade role had meant that he was the go-to commander for such actions, but that same reputation had meant he and his Jagdtigers had been held in reserve to counter Ivan breakthroughs. In these set-piece battles, he, Ackermann was the experienced veteran and Carius was the newbie.

That had been demonstrated when Carius had expected his positions to be hit by some of the deluge of artillery fire that was now descending on the German front line. His men had taken cover, many of them seeking shelter in the Jagdtigers, and that was only sensible but there had been a tinge of excess in the speed with which they had done so. Ackermann had almost been tempted to use the word panic but he had realized it was inappropriate. Apprehension born of unfamiliarity was the better phrase. His own men, the fusiliers and grenadiers, had seen this all before. If this is an Ivan assault, they will start to roll the barrage towards us. That will be the time to take serious cover. If this is a defensive barrage, they'll hold it on our front line positions until we start to move forward.

"What is happening, Ackermann?"

"Ivans hitting our front-line staging points. So far, standard. This is a medium level barrage by their standards." Ackermann looked at the lightning constantly flashing backwards and forwards along the horizon to the north. "They've got what they want right now. An encirclement north of here with a disorganized mass of our troops cut off in it. So, they'll sit tight and defend their gains."

"And another one east of us." Carius had just received the latest reports and knew why this attack was being launched. "The Amis bombed the bridges at Etatochka and cut off a whole corps. The Ivans were blocked here so they shifted their advance eastwards and have taken Korelskoye from the west. Even if the pocket on the east bank gets out, they'll have to leave their equipment behind. We have to relieve them."

Ackermann looked at the sky and saw how the artillery barrage was reflecting off the clouds, turning the whole battlefield bright red. Red sky at night, soldier's delight. Red sky in the morning, Soldier's warning. The old saying ran through his head and he knew it was true. "We won’t make it, Herr Maior. Look at those clouds; there is a snow-storm coming, the blizzard that marks the real start of winter. Everything we have seen to date is just the first few blasts of cold. Once that storm hits, nobody will be going anywhere until the spring comes and the mud returns. That corps is gone. It will surrender or freeze."

"I would not say that too loudly my friend. Especially with some of the incidents on your record." Carius shook his head. Once again, he was having problems with reconciling the thought of a man who had made a simple, honorable gesture towards medical personnel and the fact that the same act was against the very doctrines the German Army had come to Russia to carry out. In front of him, the thunder of the guns, the shock waves from the shells and the red glare from the clouds suddenly died away and there was an eerie silence. Then, after a few seconds later, there was another red glare, a tremble in the ground and the roar of fire. It was an unimpressive shadow of the barrage that had preceded it.

"Not so bad." Carius mused. "The Ivans have exhausted themselves already."

"Herr Maior, that is our own artillery trying to support our attack."

Kampfgruppe Anton, Third Panzergrenadier Division.

Lieutenant Ivan Jaeger had the nasty feeling that somebody was watching him. His tank was one of two platoons totaling seven tanks that formed an armored wedge that was aiming at an Ivan position directly in front of them. They were actually further from that position than they had been the night before but the attack force had dropped back more than two kilometers during the darkest hours of the night. That way, the fury of the Ivan artillery bombardment had spent itself on abandoned positions and missed its target completely. The negative side to that was that the attack now had to cover a lot of extra ground before coming to grips with the defenses.

Ahead of the tank wedge, Jaeger could see artillery fire impacting on the defenses set up by the Ivans. Years of experience had stripped away any misapprehensions he might have had about the barrage crippling those defenses. The truth was that this was the end of 1944 and the Russian Army had grown wise in the ways of war. Once again, he got the eerie sensation that he was being watched. He scanned the probable positions of the Russian defenses, seeing the explosions from artillery and mortars impacting on the most likely defensive points. In doing so, he cursed the narrow field of vision from the Panther's optics. They were great for fighting on the open steps where visibility ranges exceeded two kilometers, but in the broken ground here, the narrow field of vision was a serious problem that had got a lot of Panthers killed from ambush. The feeling of being watched came flooding back with that thought.

He reached out and started to work the wheel that lifted up the hatch on his cupola. Normally, procedure was to keep the hatch closed to prevent fragments and hand grenades from getting in but Jaeger's instincts were shouting too strongly for him to ignore. The hatch slowly opened until it was in what the manual called the 'protected open' position. That meant it was still over the hatchway but was also in a position that allowed it to be rotated to one side. That made for a much faster exit from a burning vehicle.

The ground was changing under their treads. The tank formation had left the undisturbed area immediately in front of their bounce-off positions and was now moving across the wilderness of interlocking shell craters left over from the Ivan's artillery bombardment. The ground was already freezing into its new configuration, leaving the tank treads to cope with the rippling effect of the ice and soil mixture. The Panthers were weaving slightly as the drivers tried to avoid the more obvious of the shell craters that might cause the massive vehicles to bog down. Now less than a kilometer from the Ivan's infantry position, Jaeger saw the flashes of anti-tank guns opening up. They were larger and more prominent than the ones he was used to. There had been reports that the Ivans had a new anti-tank gun based on their 85mm field gun to replace the old 76mm.

If that's true, it's not doing them much good. Jaeger thought as one of the inbound shells hit the tank behind and to his right. He saw the red streak of the anti-tank round streak across the battlefield and strike the sloping front armor of the Panther. There, the shot shattered, spewing fragments all around the target vehicle. He could almost see the tank shaking its head at the shock of the blow, then continuing to move forward. Jaeger now had his job to do. Again, he cursed the narrow field of vision from his optics and wasted precious seconds hunting across the panorama to his front in an effort to spot the anti-tank gun that had fired the shot. He was well-aware that in tank battles, he who fired the first shot usually won and that gave the Ivan gun-crew a significant advantage. Just to drive that point home, the Panther that had taken the first hit was struck again, the shot ricocheting off the upper section of the gun mantlet.

Jaeger had finally spotted one of the Ivan heavy anti-tank guns. It was off to his right, almost in a position to get in a shot to the Panther's vulnerable sides. Dug in, its barrel only a few centimeters above the ground, it had been hidden by scrub bushes until it had fired. "Gunner, anti-tank gun, engage right, oh-three-oh. HE. "

He saw the battlefield swinging around him as the gun traversed to bear on the anti-tank gun. The blast as the long-barreled 75mm gun fired briefly obscured his view and by the time it had cleared enough for him to see what was happening, his leader had another shell in the weapon. The first high explosive round had landed just a little short, throwing up a spray of frozen mud and small stones that had to have disrupted the gun crew's firing solution. Jaeger noted the tiny increase elevation that would put the next round directly on to the target.

That was when all hell broke loose. There was a vicious-sounding shriek as an armor-piercing 100mm round hit the side of his tank, tearing through the armor and into the engine compartment. Jaeger took one look at the situation and yelled out the warning, "scheisse, der panzer brennt." Then he flipped the partially opened hatch above him around to the fully opened position and went out through it. Behind him, his loader had opened his circular hatch in the rear of the turret and went out through there. He only just made it; the engine compartment was already burning and he had to dive through the fire to get out. Fortunately for him, the fire was only just starting to take hold and his overalls protected him from anything more than minor burns. By the time he was clear, the fuel tanks had ruptured and spread burning gasoline all over the engine compartment. Nobody else was going to get out that way.

The gunner tried to go for the loaders' hatch, saw it was blocked by the engine fire and changed his mind. He headed for the open commander's hatch but ran into the driver and bow gunner. Their escape hatches were blocked by the position of the turret and main gun so they were trying to abandon the vehicle through the fighting compartment. That meant there were three men struggling to use the single remaining escape hatch and they were still doing so when the burning fuel set off the ammunition in the spectacular fire and explosion known as 'brewing up'.

Jaeger watched his tank die from a shell-hole a few dozen meters away. A tank that burned was finished; it could never be repaired. That was why tanks that were knocked out but had not caught fire were usually hit again and again until they did burn. When the rolling dark red and black of a fuel fire was replaced by the glaring white pyre of the ammunition cooking off, he knew there was no hope for the rest of his crew.

"How many?" His loader had come around and joined him in the shell hole. That was more difficult than it had sounded; the area was being raked by rifle and machine gun fire very specifically intended to kill any survivors from the Panther crew.

"Just us. We are lucky." Jaeger knew that if his guardian angel hadn't made him partially open his hatch, he would still be in the burning wreck of his tank. The Panther was one of the hardest tanks around to abandon when trouble struck; usually fewer than two out of five men inside survived. "We better get out of here before the Ivans think of dropping some mortar rounds on us."

[Calder]

Chapter Forty-Eight
T3-SE-A4 Tanker Shawnee, At Sea, East of North Cape

The torpedo had come out of nowhere. The first warning the crew had was the massive explosion as the torpedo plowed into the screws. It had thrown the battered ship forward and upwards, tearing off her rudder and blasting both screws into tangled uselessness. Shawnee should have been sunk right there but she was saved by her slow speed and her turbo-electric machinery. The former had meant her screws were rotating slowly while the latter meant that her electric motors were well aft, reducing her propeller shafts to short stubs. A turbine ship moving fast would have gutted herself as the distorted shafts ripped open the shaft tunnels and bearings. Shawnee had escaped that although the blast from the torpedo hit had blown a huge hole in her after peak tank and ruptured the decks in her engineering spaces. Water was slowly bubbling up into her engine rooms, once more putting the ship’s broken back under extra strain. Now, though, with her engines permanently disabled, she depended on her two Russian destroyers for propulsion.

Slowly, as the damage from the torpedo hit was localized and emergency repairs made, the little convoy moved off and built up to a speed of 5 knots Kalinin launched a motorboat that circled the stern of the crippled tanker and then moved slowly along each side. The reports from the crew were ominous. They had seen the stern section of Shawnee slowly but surely settling while the constant creaking and grinding of the mid-ships deck plating and bulkheads had resumed to an ominous level. Kalinin herself reported that she had suffered additional underwater damage from the jagged plating of Shawnee’s hull and was taking on water. Her pumps were coping with the flooding now, but any additional increase would be beyond them.

“Captain Kedrov, commander of Karl Marx wants to know our intentions, Sir.” With the ship’s power gone, the 20mm Oerlikons were the only means of defense left. That made Dougie Young an important member of the crew but Brady was keeping him busy for other reasons. He’d seen the look in the man’s eyes and realized he was on the verge of losing it completely. Brady didn’t blame him, to be surviving this hell-storm of air and submarine attacks while his wife and child had been killed in the safety of New York was too ironic for any man to accept.

Captain Brady thought for a second. “We have to decide now whether we can get Shawnee to port or not. If we can, we keep going but that puts those two destroyers at risk as well. If the old girl is going to go down anyway, there’s no point in doing that. They should take the survivors off and put a couple of torpedoes into her. Since they have as great a stake in this matter as anybody else, we’ll have to involve them in the decision. Signal both destroyers, invite the Captains, Chief Engineers and Chief Officers over to inspect the damage and decide on the future course of action. Ask also if we can borrow some compressor gear. Our own went with that torpedo."

The inspection started with the torn and ripped zone across the hull where Shawnee's back had been broken. The kerosene/diesel-like stench from leaking fuel tanks was everywhere and it was obvious that at least some of her cargo had been compromised. Yet, to the entire party's surprise, once they had moved away from the immediate damage zone, her empty tanks were still dry and intact. Captain Brady suddenly realized that was going to be very important.

"Tovarish Captains, there is something we can do to help the ship. The portside wing tanks have damage from shock and fragments and are leaking. We all smelled that. But these tanks are intact, why I do not know. If we can transfer some of the cargo from the damaged tanks to these ones using the generators on your ships for power, we can both make the cargo more secure and restore some element of buoyancy. Spreading the load may also reduce the strain on the ship."

Brady waited while a naval officer in a bright blue hat translated the proposal. There was a somber, serious discussion which ended with the CheKa officer turning back to Brady. "The consensus is that your proposal is a good one and we will be proud to help you. But, tovarish Captain Kedrov is a graduate of our naval engineer’s school and he sounds a note of caution. He says that in his professional opinion, this ship will sink soon. If he breaks in half, he will go down in twelve hours. If he stays together, he has perhaps twenty four. We can make five knots and we are a hundred nautical miles from Archangel'sk. So, there is a good chance we can bring him in. He also says that if he does break in two, the stern half is beyond saving but the bow half will remain afloat and will be easier to tow. Since it has at least sixty percent of the cargo, much can be saved even if the worst happens."

Brady relaxed. He had been afraid that the consensus would be to take the crew off Shawnee and scuttle her with torpedoes. Now, it sounded as if there was a good chance she would make it in. At least some of her and assuming there are no more attacks. If there are, I think I will lie down on the deck and cry.

Headquarters, 42nd Army, Archangel'sk, Archangel’sk Front

"That is a sight that must fill you with pride, bratishka." General Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky looked out of the window at the harbor full of ships. The warships were anchored out in the bay where their anti-aircraft guns could cover the city yet the wharfs were left open so the cargo vessels could unload. Soon enough, they would have to start the long run back. He watched as a pallet of canned food was swung out of the hold of one ship and carefully transferred ashore. The dockyard workers knew well that they were unloading the cargo that would feed their families during the coming winter. Another ship was unloading her deck cargo of tanks; the new version of the Sherman with the long-barreled 76mm gun.

"We did well." General Lesley J. McNair conceded that the Navy had indeed done a good job, getting ten of the fourteen tankers through with one more limping down the White Sea. Thirty of the thirty eight cargo ships had made it as well. In the distance he could see the unmistakable shapes of the tankers pouring their 130 octane avgas into the Russian supply system. Already trains of tank cars were carrying the precious fuel to units that had been running on short rations for weeks. The number of those trains was a startling demonstration of just how efficient a carrier of fuel a tanker could be. "So have your people on the Onega."

Malinovsky couldn't help looking at the situation map on the wall with pride. What had started as a minor effort to straighten the line and improve the winter shelter for the troops holding it had turned into a significant advance. It had also eliminated a major bridgehead on the east bank of the river. The combined result had been to push the front line away from Archangel'sk, reopen the railway line that joined Murmansk and Archangel'sk and almost double the width of the corridor that joined the Kola Peninsula to the rest of the Rodina. Even better, these results had been achieved despite the 130 octane fuel shortage cutting back on American air support at a critical time.

"The results are pleasing, yes. Our new line is a good one for the winter. Easy to hold, easy to defend and it will force the fascists to winter in areas where there is little or no shelter. Of course, it has taken us nearly a month to advance twenty kilometers. At that rate, it will take us eight and a half years to reach Berlin."

That caused a momentary silence. Both men were skilled professionals who knew that as an advance westwards took place, Allied supply lines would lengthen and those of the fascists would shorten. The rate of advance would slow, not accelerate, and that would mean eight and a half years was a very rosy estimate. It made the prospect of winning the war seem almost hopeless.

As if to emphasize that, McNair felt the ground tremble slightly under his feet. It was another A-4 rocket exploding somewhere in the neighborhood. "Feel that Rodya? How many does that make today?"

Malinovsky consulted the list on his desk, picked up the telephone, and barked an inquiry down the line. Satisfied with the reply, he hung up. "East of the city of course, the deception plan works well. Hit the fields of a Kolkhoz and really frightened the sheep. Seriously, my friend, five have arrived here today but one exploded as it descended. We have three dead and about a dozen wounded enough to stay in hospital. This is not an efficient way of killing people and breaking things."

"It's not the damage they do Rodya, it’s the disruption they cause and the impact on morale. There's nothing we can do to stop those damned things and everybody knows it. Every time one comes this way, work stops for half an hour while people take cover. Those losses from disruption greatly exceed the physical casualties."

"Not any more Leslie. Orders now are to ignore the rockets and keep working. Especially on the docks. We have to get those ships unloaded and on their way out of here. But you are right, I have received the reports from along the front. The fascists are firing about twenty of those rockets each day at us. One in five explodes in mid-air but the rest hit something. Usually nothing of value but once in a while they score a hit on something significant. It would be much worse if the Malenkiye Der'mo were not so vulnerable. Those at least we can do something about."

"Thanks to your fighter pilots." McNair was aware of the quirk of fate that the Fi-103s represented. The Russian fighters were optimized for performance at low and very low altitudes, the American fighters for medium and high altitude operations. So, it was the Yak-3s and La-7s, the fastest of the Russian fighters that were carrying the burden of intercepting and shooting down the doodlebugs. The P-45 Kobrushkas would be joining them now they had enough fuel to operate. "The problem is, if the pattern holds, we'll see the doodlebugs shifting to night attacks. Day bombers always do that when the casualty rate gets to be too high. Then we'll see round the clock attacks; rockets in the day and doodlebugs at night.

"That is not a cheerful thought." Malinovsky could see how that would quickly wear down the morale of the civilian population. "We have no night-fighters that can intercept a Malenkiye Der'mo. We have few enough night fighters of any kind."

"The Navy is introducing one that can do the job." McNair had received the details in a recent briefing. "The Tigercat. It's fast enough and has a wicked armament. Our P-61s are too slow but the Army is experimenting with P-38s and P-49s fitted with radar. They may work as well. And the Night Witches can always add finding and killing the launch pads to their 'to do' lists."

Malinovsky nodded. “Hunting down the bases and destroying the transports that feed them may be the best way of stopping these missile and rocket attacks. But, every aircraft, every bomb, every liter of fuel we use for that is less than is being dedicated to supporting our troops. Either way, the fascists win.”

Command Detachment, Schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 653, 12 kilometers south of Ponga.

“The perfect weapon is the one that you have. Anything else is infinitely less than perfect because you don’t have it.” Lieutenant Ackermann remembered the words from his instructors as his composite infantry unit moved to support the Jagdtigers as they started their assault on the anti-tank positions ahead of them. The Jagdtiger was a long-range tank-killer, intended to pick off the heaviest and best-protected tanks the allies had at ranges no other vehicle could equal. They were not intended to support infantry assaults on positions defended by anti-tank guns. Yet, for want of any other armored vehicles available, that is what they were doing.

The massive Jagdtigers did have their advantages. Their armor was so thick that even the heaviest of the anti-tank shots were either bouncing off or shattering against their unyielding skins. Some of the fusiliers and grenadiers who were closest to the tank destroyers had already been wounded by splinters from the 57mm shots that had shattered against the Jagdtiger’s armor. Those fragments had sprayed across the battlefield in vicious fans that cut down men providing close support for the armored vehicles. However, none of them had abandoned their role of keeping the bazooka crews away from the guns. Added to that, of course, was the knowledge that a 128mm gun firing explosive shells in close support of the infantry was an unprecedented advantage for the German riflemen. They'd all suffered from the devastating fire of the Ivan's JSU-152s and the Jagdtigers were handing out some long-delayed retaliation.

Ackermann was beginning to notice something else though; the visibility in the battlefield area was degrading as the weather closed in, the wind picked up, and the fierce combat that was pitting friendly and enemy tanks and artillery against each other, threw the newly-fallen snow into the air. Ackermann had experienced this before, the growing white-out that turned everything into a formless blend of snow, sky and ground, made fighting any kind of battle truly hellish. He could feel the temperature going down as well. Despite the thick woolen scarf that covered his nose and mouth and the goggles that protected his eyes, the chill was seeping into his bones. It was a shocking sensation to be shivering with cold despite running to keep up with the armored vehicles he was supposed to be screening.

The German formation broke out of the white mist and found themselves almost inside the front line of the Russian positions. The enemy infantry and, especially the submachine-gunners, were waiting for them and opened up with a withering barrage of fire against the advancing Germans. Ackermann saw his men, now all equipped with the assault rifles they had picked up from comrades who no longer had a use for them, respond in kind, hosing down the Russian positions with automatic rifle fire. Almost immediately, fusiliers, grenadiers, sub-machine gunners and riflemen were locked in hand-to-hand fighting as the Germans tried to sweep the Ivans out of their trenches and the Russians grimly fought to hold their ground. Ackermann tried to concentrate on the fighting in front of him and ignore the deafening roar of machine guns and submachine-guns hammering in the foxholes, trenches and weapons pits. Each was the scene of a miniature Stalingrad or Moskva as men thought with every weapon they had to avoid giving ground to a hated enemy. Around them, the ground was heaving with explosions, the air screaming with the fragments from hand grenades, shells and wrecked steel from destroyed machines and the remnants of barbed wire. The white-out was turning a dirty, filthy grey as the snow blended with clouds of choking smoke and soot. All color had gone from the world; even the blood splattering the snow was just a darker shade of gray.

So lost was Ackermann in the bewildering monochrome wasteland that stumbling into an anti-tank gun pit was a shock. He had to drag himself out of the way as the Jagdtigers finally managed to break through to the artillery positions and began crushing the enemy guns under their tracks. The giant vehicles seemed to be berserk with a mechanical fury all of their own as they made figure-of-eight loops over the guns, twisting backward and forwards as they ground their enemies into the frozen ground. One Jagdtiger misjudged a turn and slid sideways into an anti-tank ditch. It was stuck there, lacking the power to get its 75-ton bulk out of the trap, leaving the assault gun a sitting duck.

Ackermann started to organize his men into a defense screen for the stranded vehicle. The driver was obviously panicking, trying to rock the vehicle forwards and backwards on its suspension but the engine power just wasn't there for the vehicle to break free. To make matters worse, Ackermann could see that the two surviving heavy anti-tank guns were already turning their barrels towards the tilted Jagdtiger and were perfectly placed to hit its sides. He was about to organize an attack to put the guns out of action when the enemy infantry mounted an unexpected counter-attack. They had taken advantage of the degraded visibility to let the attacking Germans pass through their ranks so now they were intermingled with their enemies and all semblance of order to the battlefield collapsed. What had been a chaotic but still ordered engagement became a wild brawl around the stranded vehicle, men fighting with bare hands, entrenching tools and anything else that could maim or cripple.

In that fight, hate was as much a weapon as anything else and Ackermann knew the Russians had plenty of that. They were screaming that hate out, not formed words but primeval howls and screams that seemed to echo off the trees and rocks so that the entire land was taking up the fight against the invaders. Stunned by the primal ferocity, Ackermann saw his men begin to retreat, pausing and turning to return fire. He realized that the loss of the captured gun emplacements was imminent if his men were not rallied. He drew his most treasured possession, a long-barreled artillery Luger, used by his father in the First War who had entrusted it to his son for the Second. With the pistol in one hand, he started grabbing the men who were falling back, pushing them back into the fight, interspacing the rally with shots as he fired his pistol at Russians who were getting too close.

"Mattie, throw a grenade, fast!" Ackermann shouted the order at Matthias Krause. A Russian machine gun crew had dragged one of the wheeled, water-cooled Maxim guns up and he knew that if that machine gun got to work it would cut his men down like wheat before a scythe. Krause saw the threat and threw a potato-masher grenade just in time to stop the gun from opening fire. When the smoke and spray cleared, the gun was on its side, the barrel making the snow steam around it, and the crew was scattered in the snow. One of them was still moving so Ackermann fired more shots from his pistol to make sure that the machine gun would not be used.

The explosion of the hand-grenade seemed to shock sense into the rest of his men and the near rout collapsed. Instead, men started taking cover in the pits, ruined trenches, and shell craters, ready to try and repel the next Russian attack. This was the last stand, everybody knew it for they neither had time to organize a proper defense nor to retreat before another rush could overrun them. Even worse, Ackermann could see another gun crew bringing up a second water-cooled Maxim gun, ready to pour fire into his flank from point-blank range. To emphasize the critical position, a series of major blasts rocked the stranded Jagdtiger. The advancing Russians had brought up engineers who had placed satchel charges in the suspension and blown the tracks apart. There was no way that vehicle was going anywhere. Anyway, Ackermann could see there was no point trying. Several of the blasts had been the explosions of bazooka rounds and shots from trophy Panzerfausts. Already, black smoke was rising from the engine compartment and soon, the vehicle would be burning. He just hoped the crew inside had either already abandoned the tank destroyer or were dead inside it. He'd seen and heard too many vehicles burn with the crew alive inside.

The long, raking bursts of machine-gun fire that sent tracers streaking over Ackermann's head were enough to make him think of guardian Angels. Behind him, a second Jagdtiger had turned up and was using its hull-front machine gun and the pintle-mounted anti-aircraft weapon on the back of the superstructure to hose down the area where the survivors of the Russian garrison were assembling with. The concentration of fire wasn't that great but it was enough to abort any possibility of a counter-attack. The threat of the 128mm gun did the rest. The Russians dropped back, Ackermann knowing that they would be reinforcing the second line of their defenses and he would be meeting them soon enough. Then he looked at the bodies strewn over the Russian front line and their anti-tank gun positions and asked himself, 'what with?'

Carius pulled himself out of his vehicle and carefully moved across the ground to where Ackermann was positioned. Neither man was exposing himself; both knew that the Russians might have pulled back but their snipers were still watching and waiting. Carius seemed to be in something close to a state of shock and Ackermann reminded himself that he hadn't seen the results of a close-in infantry assault like this before. His war had been a remote one, one in which the enemy never really got that close to him.

"Is it always like this?"

Ackermann looked across the field. More than thirty of the seventy men he had brought out of the forest only a few days before were now dead in the field. More were wounded. "This was average. I've seen worse."

"131 has gone. Even if it was repairable, we can't tow it out of there. The Ivans did us a favor blowing it up."

As if in protest at the comment, the crippled Jagdtiger finally belched an explosive cloud of black smoke from its engine compartment and started to burn for real. Carius looked around. "The sun is burning off this mist, we'll have to hit the second defensive zone next. It won't be any weaker than this one."

[Calder]

Chapter Forty-Nine
SU-100 Yebat’moya Mama 1435th Self-propelled Artillery Regiment, Ukhtinskoye, Onega Oblast

“There are four of them up there. Three are in pits facing the bottleneck through which our tank army tried to attack. One more is down the reverse slope from them.” Praporshchik Nikola Ilyich Demkin was peering through the wide-angle surveillance sight mounted in his commander’s cupola. “The reconnaissance aircraft reported nine but there is no sign of the other five. Their commander must have split his unit; left these to guard his original position while he took the rest to support the assault on our positions. Splitting his command like that . . .”

Sergeant-gunner Vasily Andreyevich Kaplin was also peering through a roof mounted sight, in his case a periscopic one. It had a narrower field of vision than Demkin’s but it had greater magnification and a reticule sight built into it that gave him a rough approximation of range. He had used it to line the 100mm gun up on the nearest Jagdtiger, the one that was half way down the slope. All that it would need was for the SU-100 to accelerate up the slope and expose its gun, then he could fire his shot. All four rangefinder-equipped SU-100s had been ordered to fire on the exposed Jagdtiger first. It was by far the most dangerous. The other three would have to maneuver clear of their pits before they could even begin to trade shots with the Russian tank destroyers. The time they would take to do that would be fatal for them. All 18 SU-100s of the 1435th would be advancing on them and, once the range had closed so the standard vehicles had the accuracy needed, they’d be keeping up a sustained fire while they did so. Their 100mm guns were capable of driving a shot through the side of even a Jagdtiger.

“Get ready to move, tovarishchi. Our SU-100s were built for the very purpose of destroying these fascist monsters. This is the mission with which we have been entrusted. Our brat'ya in the tanks, in the artillery, in the infantry are depending on us to take those monsters out. Let them never be able to say that the 1435th did anything less than all in its power to aid them!” Captain Pakholkov’s voice over the radio sounded impressive even allowing for the static and distortion.

In the driver’s seat, Faina had the engine idling on minimum throttle with the fuel flow carefully adjusted. She was well aware that sudden acceleration would cause a cloud of black smoke to rise from the diesel exhausts and that would give a few vital seconds of warning to the waiting fascists. So, she had no intention of accelerating sharply. Instead, she would give a powerful but sustained surge from her diesel with the fuel supply carefully matched to demand. That way, she would cross the ridge with a thin cloud of blue smoke, not a thick cloud of black. There was a reason why, in a Russian tank, the driver-mechanic ranked second only to the commander. She reached up, grasped the lever that operated her driver’s hatch and pushed it forward far enough to check that the torsion-bar loaded hatch opened quickly and smoothly. It did.

“Kolya, there is something wrong.” Kaplin sounded very guarded. “I have been watching the fascist vehicles for some minutes now and I have not seen one person moving around them.”

“Perhaps they are sheltering inside the vehicles? Or they are with the other part of the detachment?”

It didn’t matter; the command to advance came over the radio and the four rangefinder-equipped SU-100s surged forward to bring their guns to bear. Kaplin had already switched from his periscopic sight to the coincidence rangefinder beside the main gun. At first, all he saw was the white of the snow-covered ground on the ridge ahead of him. Then, as Faina took her vehicle up the slope, the white was replaced by the gray of a clouded sky and the swirls of the dispersing morning mist. As the SU-100 reached the ridgeline, his line of sight changed again and the sky was replaced by a panorama of the battlefield. The sights were already approximately aligned; it took only a slight adjustment to bring the two images together and a squeeze on the electric firing trigger to send the 100mm armor-piercing round on its way.

He could see the red streak of his round in his eyepiece. It didn’t seem to be moving, suggesting that it was perfectly aligned with the hull of the exposed Jagdtiger. Kaplin had picked his point of aim carefully, remembering the wrecked Tiger II he had had seen on the scrap vehicles train at Yekaterinburg. He had noted the position of the hit that had killed it and tried for the same one himself. He saw the cloud of smoke from the impact, not quite where he had wanted it, but close enough, and the brilliant red flash of his armor-piercing round striking steel. He also saw two other strikes, one on the side of the turret, another on the ground right where tracks touched the snow. Well, one other strike anyway. But perhaps that one broke a track or blew off a roadwheel. The fourth shot had gone way over the top of the target, making Kaplin bless the smoothness with which Faina drove her vehicle.

Two hits, one near-miss, one complete miss with the finest armor-piercing ammunition the Rodina could supply. And nothing had happened. Kaplin couldn’t believe it. Nothing had happened! It wasn’t just that the target hadn’t exploded; often tanks would need several hits before that happened. It was that nothing had happened at all. The Jagdtigers remained silent and stationary. There were no figures running around, no frantic attempts to bring the guns to bear on the attacking SU-100s. There should have been; four fascist tank destroyers faced four times their number of Russian ones. The 128mm gun on the Jagdtigers was slow-firing; it could get out only two rounds for every three fired by the 100mm guns. There should be panic in the Hitlerite position, men desperate to bring their guns to bear while there was still enough time to fire the rounds needed to drive off the attackers. And there was nothing.

Mitrofan Sergeyevich Ogarkov knew his duty. It was simple enough, he had to get the gun ready to fire again as quickly as possible. He hadn’t been told to do otherwise so he slammed another APCBC round into the open breech and watched the semi-automatic mechanism close. “UP!”

The gun crashed again, the breech opened and ejected the shell casing. All four of the SU-100s targeting the exposed Jagdtiger had done the same; one again some shots had struck home, others had missed. And nothing seemed to have happened. The 18 vehicles of the 1435th edged forward, their headlong charge halted, not by desperate resistance but by the eerie silence.

“What the devil?” Pakholkov’s voice came over the radio, his caution evident. “All vehicles, target that exposed Jagdtiger. Snipers hold your fire. We’ll see if arrowheads do any better.”

Kaplin relaxed slightly but continued to watch. The SU-100s without rangefinders had APCR ammunition, full-caliber rounds in which a thin, arrow-shaped penetrator made of hard, heavy alloy was encased in a light metal sheath. It was claimed to penetrate better than APCBC but was less accurate at medium and long range. He saw the red streaks again, saw them striking all over and all around the exposed Jagdtiger. And nothing happened.

When it finally did, the explosion was cataclysmic. The Jagdtiger erupted into a ball of smoke and flame as the explosives planted within it finally detonated. They’d been on a timer and the tattoo of hits from the SU-100s had nothing to do with it. It had broken down and the attempts to tow it clear had only succeeded in ensuring it was hopelessly bogged down. The other three Jagdtigers were in the same straits. Broken down, hopelessly stuck without the spares or equipment needed to tow them clear. Their 75-ton weight and unreliable engines had doomed them as much as the demolition charges that had been carefully placed in their hulls. Their fate had been sealed before the battle had even started by the constant air attacks that had slowly deprived them of their support units. Their crews had been left with no choices other than to strip the vehicles of their fuel, ammunition and anything else that was valuable before starting the timers and leaving.

The SU-100 crews watched triumphantly as the massive fascist vehicles burned and exploded. Sitting in his cupola, Demkin looked at the scene before addressing his crew. “Well, what do you think of that, bratishka?”

Faina summed it up neatly from behind her driving hatch. She had opened it, so she could have a better view of the spectacular sight. Her words were ones that every artillerist in the 1435th agreed with. “Ours are better.”

Headquarters, 1st Battalion, 503rd Regiment, 47th Rifle Division, Ukhtinskoye, Archangel’sk Front

"Tovarish Colonel, Comdiv informs us that the fascists have broken through the first defensive zone and are preparing to attack the second. We are to hold the switch lines Yolka and Mariya and prevent the fascists from expanding the breach laterally. Comdiv says we can expect primarily an infantry assault with only minimal armored support."

"That sounds too good to be true." Paramonov had his maps opened in front of him. The section of front held by his regiment was in the second defense zone with a part of the main defensive positions and the two switch lines. Together they formed a shallow inwards curve with the switch lines linking up with the unpenetrated first defense zone. Although the situation hadn't been explained to him, he could see that the fascist attacks on either side of him had been held, probably by the armored support getting tangled with the anti-tank positions. That probably explains the limited armored support for the fascists coming this way. They got a beating from the anti-tank guns as well but eventually overran them.

“Tovarish Colonel, word from Ringmaster." Paramonov knew that 'Ringmaster' was the airborne control team in a C-47 orbiting well to the rear of the battle area. All the requests for air support went through Ringmaster who allocated the available aircraft according to need and availability. The Ringmaster C-47 also reported back on hostile troop movements and force concentrations. That’s what one of the crew was doing right now. Henagar was simply relaying that information. “Grizzlies and Sturmoviks are attacking enemy armor west of our position. The enemy force is immobilized with numerous casualties. Ringmaster also reports enemy forces north and south of us are hung up in the first defense zone.”

Paramonov acknowledged the information. As if to confirm its accuracy, the air was suddenly filled with the sound of inbound artillery fire. The barrage of shells exploded all over the defensive positions, chewing up the defensive wire and destroying the more vulnerable of the dug-in weapons. The barrage was brief by Russian standards and was sparse by both American and Russian artillery traditions. Once the heavy guns had finished their brief preparations, their fire was replaced by that of 81 and 120mm mortars. Some of them were firing smoke and the gray-white clouds started drifting across the battlefield.

It was not enough to prevent the Russian defenses seeing the fascist infantry pouring out of the woods some 1500 meters away. They were advancing forward in bounds with a half-dozen Hanomags and a pair of StuG-III assault guns in support. Henagar in the radio jeep took one look at patched straight through to Ringmaster. “Ringmaster this is Rodeo, we have major infantry assault in progress. Need support now.”

“Acknowledged Romeo. Assigning two pancake elements. Switch to Channel Matthew.” Henagar glanced at the code book and made sure Matthew was Channel Eight. A flip on the dial and he was through. Air to ground coordination had come a long way since the year before. “Plaster, this is Rodeo. Acknowledge.”

“Hi, Bob. This is Babydoll. What gives?”

“Infantry assault. Coming at us from due west. Make your run north to south. See the circular wood with a dirt track through it? Track runs southeast to northwest. That’s your starting point.”

“Got it, Bob. Gee, you got a lot of not-friends heading your way. Tell your people to get their heads down, it's barbeque time.”

Paramonov heard the snarl of the Thunderbolts approaching from the north and swung his binoculars to look for them. They were easy enough to spot; the early morning sun was reflecting off their silver skins and flashing off their bubble cockpits. He did a quick count; there were eight Thunderbolts coming, in four pairs, those pairs stretched out in a zig-zag line astern. As they approached, his trophy fascist binoculars showed the rockets under the wings but to his confusion, they were also carrying drop-tanks, not bombs. Three large drop-tanks per aircraft. Another strange thing, the Thunderbolts weren’t firing their wing guns. Normally they used their eight machineguns to strafe their targets on the way in before firing their rockets and dropping their bombs. It was almost as if they didn’t want their target to start to disperse.

The lead pair of Thunderbolts was coming in much faster than usual. In complete confusion at the unusual attack pattern, Paramonov watched as they released their drop-tanks. He could only assume that the aircraft had been loaded for a prolonged wait over the battlefield and had extra fuel instead of the usual bombs. Perhaps the Americans are bluffing, trying to persuade the fascists they are fully loaded. He watched as the tanks peeled away from the Thunderbolts, tumbling end-over-end and beginning to yaw from side to side as they fell seemingly in slow motion towards the Hitlerites underneath. Without much hope that the attack would be the salvation his men needed, Paramonov watched while the jettisoned tanks hit the ground.

And then all hell broke loose.

The six drop-tanks hit the ground in a ragged line that enveloped the end of the fascist infantry attack. They started to bounce then exploded as the fuses in the nose set them off. Paramonov watched in awed disbelief as a monster was born before his eyes. He had seen pictures once of giant squids, the great bulbous bodies, the tentacles waving in front of them. Now he saw them forming in front of him, only the giant squids consisted entirely of fire. The body of the squids was rolling along the ground, surrounded by white tendrils of smoke that seemed to spray upwards and outwards before landing on the ground and starting secondary fires. That great, rolling body started as dark-red in color, topped by great clouds of black smoke that seemed to shroud the center of the inferno. As Paramonov watched, the rolling ball of fire changed color, its center going from dark red to orange and then to a brilliant, searing yellow. Ahead of the rolling mass of fire, the burning remains of the drop-tanks arched through the air to land and start secondary fires with anything that could burn. Even hundreds of meters away from the seat of the hellfire, he could feel the heat washing over him, seeming to scorch his skin and drying out his eyes. And the tide of heat never seemed to stop, it just grew more intense and spread. Even though the inferno was almost a kilometer away, he was hard-put to stop his legs from running to the rear, away from the nightmare that was unfolding in front of him.

Yet, it was not the center of the blaze that was most terrifying. The rolling balls of flame threw out great tentacles of fire, arching out in front of the main body before splashing down on the ground and igniting everything they touched. Wet, snow-covered, soaked in water, it made no difference. Whatever the tentacles touched, caught fire and burned with an intensity Paramonov had never seen before. He realized something else; he wasn't just looking at one holocaust of fire, there were many. Even as the tentacles grew and swelled, the remaining fuel turned into additional fireballs igniting within the main bodies and the grasping tentacles. Any expectations he might have had that the fire-monster would quickly fade away vanished as he watched the inferno spreading across the battle area. Ahead of them, the Russian lines were eerily silent and the men in the gun pits and infantry trenches watched open-mouthed at the holocaust unfolding before them.

The most terrible sight of all were the figures that ran out of the blazing mass that had once been the northern part of the infantry assault. They also were figures of fire, men blazing from head to foot, outlined in the yellow-and-red colors of the burning mass, running in circles, waving arms and legs that were streaks of flame, their screams of agony and terror echoing across the battlefield easily penetrating the cacophony of a modern battlefield. They ran, streaming trails of fire behind them, until they fell to the ground and died in agonized hell of their own private funeral pyres.

Overhead, the lead pair of Thunderbolts were climbing away, preparing to orbit around for a pass with their rockets and machine guns on anything that had escaped their fire-bombs. Behind them, the second pair of Thunderbolts had picked the center of the fascist attack and were already dropping their tanks on the men below. The second pair of Thunderbolts had flown through the billowing clouds of black smoke from the still-burning firestorm to drop their loads. The fires underneath them was reflecting off their natural-metal finish, turning it a deep angry red that put Paramonov in mind of the old religious legends his grandfather had told him about demons coming to earth and destroying everything with their fiery breath. Now, he understood what his grandfather had been trying to describe, a sight that had an awesome impressiveness all of its own.

Even after seeing the first wave of tanks hitting the ground, Paramonov couldn't help the shock and awe of seeing more of the great fire-squids enveloping the fascist assault. Then, he saw something that he had never seen before in all his years of experience on the Front. The southern end of the assault line has seen the inferno of fire and death engulf the north and center of the attack, saw the third pair of Thunderbolts heading for them and knew what was about to happen. They started to fall back, at first hesitantly, then breaking into a full run for the rear and its imagined safety. They were throwing away their weapons in a desperate attempt to flee the impending horror. It didn’t help them. The Thunderbolt pilots saw the rout, changed course slightly and dropped their loads on the fleeing men, swallowing them in the great spreading balls of fire.

The fourth and last pair of Thunderbolts didn’t drop their cargo of napalm; there was nothing left to drop it on. By then, the fires caused by the first drop were subsiding at last, leaving a great swathe of blackened ground studded by still-burning trees and the blackened hulks of the armored vehicles that had been caught in the fireballs. The open-topped Hanomags had been completely gutted; the assault guns were stationary and silent, the rubber tires on their roadwheels and the contents of their outside stowage bins still burning. The snow had gone completely, leaving the ground baked hard by the intense heat.

"Ringmaster, this is Rodeo. The assault is gone. Say again, the targets are gone." Henagar sounded subdued, stunned by what had just happened. He had followed the development effort of course but tests were one thing; seeing the product of that program used on people was something completely different. "It works, Holy Mother of God, does it work."

"What has just happened?" Paramonov found his own voice was difficult to make heard, not because of noise for the whole battlefield was enveloped by a strange, eerie silence but because shock was forcing him to whisper his words. It was almost as if he feared speaking would bring the nightmare down on him.

"Tovarish Colonel, it's something we have been developing for a few weeks now. Ever since we saw the Marine flamethrower vehicles at Amosovskaya. We call it napalm. I suspect after today, we'll be using a lot of it."

Paramonov looked at the blackened swathe of ground in front of his positions. He knew that the spectacular success today wouldn't be repeated; the Hitlerites were wise in the ways of war and they would find ways to minimize the success of this . . . . . napalm. Yet, it was still by far the deadliest, most terrifying weapon he had ever seen. It was an equalizer, something that would offset the skills of the fascists on the battlefield. Something that would save at least some of the lives the Rodina was losing every day, every hour, every minute, on the front. He breathed deeply, trying to steady himself while still smelling the heavy, cloying stink of burned petroleum, charred wood and roasted human flesh. The stink made him choke but he still breathed deeply. Then, with tears running down his cheeks, he turned to Henagar who was still speaking quietly into his radio, describing the scene around him.

"Tovarish Lieutenant. God Bless America."

Command Detachment, Schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 653, 12 kilometers south of Ponga.

The storm had arrived and the snow was beginning to fall thick and fast. Even if it hadn't been for the holocaust on the main axis of the attack, that would have ended the battle. Carius had seen the air attack, seen the great burning clouds above the tree lines, known that something unimaginable had happened. That was when he had also seen the surviving infantry running for the rear, disregarding the efforts of their sergeants and officers to rally them. It was something the German Army hadn't seen since 1918. Men had thrown away their rifles so they could run faster in an effort to escape the Thunderbolts and their deadly cargoes. Just to make matters worse, Carius had just heard that the four vehicles he had been forced to abandon had been destroyed by Ivan tank destroyers. That, he had expected, but it also meant that the Ivans had armored forces behind him. If he didn’t pull back now, he wouldn’t get to pull back at all. And I have no ammunition left. What can I do?

"It is time for us to fall back to the main defense line. Get your men on the back of the vehicles. We have space inside for some of the wounded now we have fired off all our ammunition. We'll carry you back to our main line of resistance."

"Thank you, Otto." Ackermann looked around. "What just happened?"

Carius shook his head. "We'll find out. Winter has arrived in full force. We'll have plenty of time to work it all out before spring comes."

[Calder]

Chapter Fifty
Headquarters, 42nd Army, Archangel'sk, Archangel’sk Front

"Let me tell you the secret of American engineering, Rodya." General Lesley J. McNair carefully taped the piece of cardboard they had salvaged over one of the shattered windows. An A-4 rocket had exploded in the center of the city, barely a kilometer from the headquarters. It had killed more than sixty people and shattered the windows of the headquarters, allowing the bitter cold and driven snow to penetrate inside. "If something moves, and it shouldn't. Use duct tape. If it should move and it doesn't, use penetrating oil. Together those two options cover all possibilities."

General Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky got another piece of cardboard and held it in place while McNair secured it with tape. "Fifteen rockets today, making over one hundred since the bombardment started. The fascists must know the convoy has arrived."

"It's that new jet, the Arado 234. It's built in both bomber and reconnaissance versions. We can't catch either with the fighters we have right now. Until we get our own jets into the front line, it can come and go where it wishes. That means our deception over impact points is not going to hold up much longer." McNair was interrupted by a long blast on a ship's siren. For a moment, he thought it was an air-raid warning, probably another A-4 coming in, but the blast of the siren was picked up by other ships in port. Whatever is going on is not another damned rocket. He picked up his binoculars and looked downriver.

Coming up the Dvina was a strange shape, apparently a ship with three hulls. As it emerged from the mist and swirling show, McNair saw that it was a tanker, a battered, blackened and largely wrecked tanker but still a tanker. It had a destroyer lashed to either side, both of which were also obviously damaged. The sight reminded him of three drunks returning from a long session down at a local bar. They were staggering home, supporting each other, steering a rough and erratic course. Separately they would all have collapsed into the gutter but together they kept each other erect. And so it was with these three ships. If they had been separated, they would all have sunk; together they had managed to survive.

And yet, the ordeal was not over. The grimly determined trio had finally made it to the Dvina but they had yet to make the treacherous passage through the narrow, swept channel and the coastal defenses of Archangel’sk. Technically, they could still be attacked by aircraft flying out of Finland although the chances of those aircraft getting through the fighter screens in the Kola Peninsula was tiny. Even if they did manage it, the convoy escorts were still anchored in the deep channel and, with Howe there to control the defenses supported by the land-based guns around the city, the anti-aircraft fire they could put up would be savage. There were also the Doodlebugs and the A-4 rockets, any one of which might score a lucky hit that would blow Shawnee to fragments.

McNair continued to watch as Shawnee and her assistants entered the swept channel to a constantly-increasing number of blasts from the sirens on the ships crowding the port. Small patrol craft, sub-chasers and gunboats were leaving port in a steady stream to protect the wounded tanker by forming an anti-submarine screen to seaward. Following them were tugs and harbor lighters all heading out to offer what assistance they could. All the time, the journey down the Dvina continued, the cross-currents and eddies constantly trying to pull Shawnee off course, out of the swept channel and into the defensive minefields. The two destroyers lashed to her sides were making heroic efforts to keep her on course, the crews shouting instructions, coordinating their efforts, altering engine revolutions and rudder angles in an effort to drag Shawnee into the center of the cleared channel while also easing the remorseless battering taken by the lightly built hulls of the destroyers. The problem was a simple one; the destroyers weighed 1,400 tons, fully loaded as she was, Shawnee weighed 36,000.

That meant the tanker had tremendous momentum and when she started to swing one way, it was hells own job to stop her from swinging too far. The situation was saved by the tugs. As Shawnee and her escorts approached the turn at Maymatska they moved against the bows of the tanker and started pushing to bring her around the 30 degree bend. The blasts of the sirens on the ships already in Archangel’sk seemed to redouble as they cheered the crippled tanker on. Now, as the group reached Khabarkha, it was necessary to turn her another 30 degrees the other way. Once again, it was the tugs that came to the rescue, repositioning themselves so they could act as mobile rudders to swing Shawnee and her consorts round the final bend in the North Dvina.

It was a straight line run now, down to the port and the oil unloading facility. Only one maneuver was left, a final 140 degree swing to port that would line her bows up with the oil terminal wharves. The tanker slowly glided to a halt while the tugs repositioned themselves once more. McNair found himself holding his breath as the water around the sterns of the tugs was churned white as they started pushing the bows around, swinging Shawnee around in three hauls. Each had turned her 45 degrees and that was good enough for government work. By now, McNair could see her clearly and realized that the tanker was on the verge of sinking. He stern was so low in the water that a man lying on deck might trail his hand in the sea. The angle of the deck told him that the stern was barely hanging on to the rest of the ship and that if the structure gave way, not only would the stern section sink but it would take the two destroyers with it.

Once again the tugs closed in, secured tow ropes to the bows of the tanker and started to move her forward. Slowly, painfully slowly, aided by the engines on the two faithful destroyers, she started to move forward. That was when McNair heard a change in the sirens. Instead of the random blasting that had accompanied Shawnee down the Dvina, the ships in port, all of them, were coordinating their tributes. Then, as Shawnee slowly limped past the harbor breakwater, the ships broke into a new salute. Three short blasts followed by a single long one.

“Baah - baah – baah – baaaaahhhhhhh. Baah - baah – baah – baaaaahhhhhhh.”

The triumphant V for victory sound echoed all over the harbor, seeming to pick up strength with each repetition until the windows, desks, even the floor of the headquarters building was shaking with the noise. Standing beside McNair, Malinovsky had tears streaming down his face at the sight and sound. Alongside Shawnee, Karl Marx and Kalinin cast off the lashings that had held them in place for so many hours and made for the jetties nearby. McNair could see the way their sides had been ripped open by the constant grinding against the heavy plating of the tanker. They were in a hurry to get to shallow water in case they too sank. For all that, Shawnee had made it to port, delivering 8.8 million gallons of jet fuel to the allied forces in Russia.

SU-100 “Yebat’moya Mama”, 1435th Self-propelled Artillery Regiment, Moving into Winter Quarters, Amosovskaya

"Fainatchka, we're in!" Faina reached down, carefully put the transmission in neutral, let the clutch up slightly to check it was neutral and then turned off the fuel. The diesel engine died, leaving the building eerily silent. Then, she reached down, got her ushanka, greatcoat and kitbag from its niche by her seat and eased herself out of her hatch. Feet first, head up, just as the book said. The building might look like a barn from outside, but it had enough space to store four SU-100s with adequate room around each for maintenance work. Ahead of her, the doors were already being closed to keep out the blizzard of snow.

Amosovskaya had been rebuilt since she'd last been there over a month before. Since then, the wrecked buildings had been torn down and replaced with American-style Quonset huts for the personnel and garages for the vehicles. Now, the village was providing winter quarters for an infantry regiment and the tank destroyers of the 1435th and was obviously one of the main garrison points on the Onega defense line. Despite that, it was a great improvement on the quarters they'd had the year before.

"Tovarish Faina Afanasyevna? The women have quarters in the third hut as you leave. A section has been partitioned for you all." Evgeni Bessonov had the list of who had been assigned where in his hands. "The rest of you, second hut!"

Faina put on her greatcoat and ushanka and set off to find her winter quarters. Sure enough, the third hut had been partitioned, dividing it equally into two halves. That was slightly unfair since the men's half had its full allotment of thirty men while the women's ‘half’ had less than twenty. Faina looked around, seeing telephone and radio operators, combat medical orderlies and a small group in one corner that included a pair of snipers and their spotters from the infantry regiment.

"Welcome, tovarish artillerist." One of the women, a sapper Captain, came forward. She was obviously the senior officer present. "I am Captain Nina Petrovna Fedotova. Take your pick of the vacant bunks. The air raid shelter is out the back door on your left. And, we have a special welcome for you. We have been given some packages from America!"

She brought over some of the flat cardboard boxes that contained gift packages from America. "Look, underwear! These are all too small for us but you are tiny. See if you can find some that fit."

Faina almost complained that she wasn't that small, but restrained herself. Instead, she opened the boxes and started to look through the contents. Captain Nina Petrovna had been right; the other women had already shared out the larger sized clothes but the smaller ones left suited Faina perfectly. "Spasebo, sestri! Now I will feel human again!"

"Remember to write letters thanking the women who sent us these gifts. Now, soon we will have dinner in peace for once. Tonight, we have spam with our kasha! And fresh-baked bread." Fedotova looked around. Already the women had begun to decorate their section of the hut and even managed to improvise some curtains for their windows. The hut would indeed be a home for the winter.

Faina looked around and relaxed. She had a warm, solid building for her winter quarters, friendly companions, good food, and proper underwear. She found herself giving a little sigh. It appeared that staying in her winter quarters was going to be a real pleasure.

Command Detachment, Schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 653, west of Onega.

Six weeks before, Schwere Panzerjäger-Abteilung 653 had been up to strength with thirty Jagdtigers and a full complement of engineers, anti-aircraft artillery and support vehicles. Now, with the battalion reassembled for the first time since then, less than half the Jagdtigers had survived while the support elements had been mauled to virtual extinction.

Carius and Ackermann were standing beside the sadly-depleted line of vehicles. "I brought ten Jagdtigers to this battle Joachim. Two were destroyed by Panzerfausts, and four we had to abandon when they bogged down or their engines died on us. Six lost out of ten and not one due to battle with enemy armor. Sometimes I wish our leaders would give us captured Ami Shermans. At least they work."

"Talking about the Amis, have we found what happened a few days ago?"

"You mean just before our security personnel started searching the rear areas and hanging those they found without written authorization to be detached from their units? " Carius grimaced at the scenes in question. "The Amis have a new weapon. Some sort of jellied gasoline. It sticks to everything and sucks the oxygen out of the air when it burns. I think we will be seeing a lot more of it when spring arrives. By the way, what is left of your unit is being reorganized and attached to us as our infantry component. You're even getting some new Hanomags."

"They won't help us against jelly gas." Ackermann sounded despondent.

"Joachim, every new weapon is deadly the first time it appears. This . . . . jelly gas will be no different. Already we are beginning to get instructions on how to minimize its effects. We have to disperse so that we don’t give the enemy a massed target to set on fire and we have to get close to the enemy as quickly as possible. Also, we are getting more anti-aircraft guns. Your new Hanomags will have a 20mm anti-aircraft gun as standard and I hear through the grapevine that there is some sort of anti-aircraft rocket coming. We'll beat this one just like we beat every other weapon the enemy throws at us."

404th Fighter Group, Airfield 896, Korovkinskaya, Archangel’sk Front

All flight operations had been grounded due to the storm that was currently hammering the region. Instead, the pilots had been assembled in the briefing room. This was ominous. Colonel Daniel Campbell entered the room and took to the podium. "Settle down everybody. As you may have noticed, winter has arrived in force. Those of you who were here last year know what that means. Weather can close us down completely at almost any time. Also, white-out conditions can develop very quickly and are extremely dangerous. With visibility suddenly becoming as close to zero as makes no difference, you can fly into the ground without any kind of warning. It should go without saying that if there is any possibility of white-out, we do not fly except in grave emergencies. There’s another risk, of course, snow-glare. You have been issued with sunglasses, do not fly without them. In fact, wear them every time you are outside.

"Those of you who were in Kazan this time last year may think you know all about bad weather. You do not, the winter weather up here is much worse. So, we will be flying a lot less. The good news is that fighting on the ground will be dropping drastically as well as the armies on both sides take shelter. We’ve received intelligence that the napalm we used two days ago has been very effective indeed. We’ll be using it a lot more. In addition, armorers from other groups, Russian, Canadian, and American, will be coming here to learn how to make it. Make them welcome.

"So, you may be asking what we will be doing since we can't fly low enough to give ground support and the demand for such operations will be limited? The answer is we'll be transferring back to fighter duties until the weather clears." Campbell heard the whoop of delight from Malcom Foster and the other veterans of the Eighth Air Force. "I thought you might like that. The truth is, we have a problem. The fascists have switched from using their jet fighters against our bomber formations to using them to track down and destroy our reconnaissance aircraft. The photo-Lightnings were already having problems with the latest versions of Me-109Ks and FW-190Ds. Now, they are even more vulnerable when facing the jets. We are losing a lot more of them and our coverage of fascist rear areas is taking a bad hit. At the same time, the Hitlerites are using their Ar-234s as reconnaissance aircraft rather than bombers. The pasting they got from our triple-A here seems to have discouraged them from bombing us. You may have noticed, that we are still getting the odd rocket and doodlebug strike though. The top attack priority is hunting down and destroying their bases.

"Point is, the recon situation has flipped. Two months ago we knew almost everything that was happening in the enemy rear and they knew almost nothing about what we were up to. Now, with the F-5s getting shot down and the Ar-234s being almost immune to interception, it’s the other way around. We'll have to do something about that. We'll be getting some hot-rod P-47Ls soon. Foster, you and the other 8th Air Force veterans will be getting them. Until then we do our best with N-models

"Finally, in seven days, the Army Air Force will become the United States Air Force. You'd better get used to thinking of our P-47s as F-47s. That will be all."

He was interrupted by an imperious hammering on the doors. The two men nearest to them, got up with a puzzled expression on their faces and swung them open. Deputy Commander for Political Affairs Ivan Vladimirovich Maslov, barely was recognizable beneath a flowing white beard and wrapped in ice-blue robes topped by a white Ushanka hat swept in followed by a group of women from the anti-aircraft batteries, all in white dresses made from parachute silk and carrying large bags. Campbell lifted his hands in simulated shock. "Why, it's Grandfather Frost and his Snow Maidens!"

Masloc stepped up onto the podium to shake hands with Campbell while the girls went through the audience distributing small gifts. And, of course, giving each of the pilots a vigorous hug, which caused great merriment and quickly resulted in the briefing becoming a party. The same scene was happening all over the base as 'Grandfather Frost and his Snow Maidens distributed gifts to the American personnel. It was, after all, Christmas day, Unobtrusively, the scene was being photographed and filmed by cameramen who would be sending the resulting footage all across both Russia and America. There, they would do their part to seal an alliance that was already becoming much more than that.

Central Committee Room, STAVKA, Yekaterinburg.

"Major General Viktor Alexandrovich Tomasov, here at your command to serve the Rodina." As he had entered the Central Committee Room, the five members of the Committee already there had risen and saluted him. The reason was very simple, the five-pointed star hanging from a red ribbon. It marked Tomasov as a Hero of the Rodina. Even the lowliest private who wore that medal would be saluted by the highest-ranking Marshal. "I have with me Major Vladimir Stepanovich Markov, my chief navigator."

"Bratishka, you have both served the Rodina well," Zhukov spoke slowly. "And the 786th Long Range bomber regiment has proved itself in combat. Effective immediately, it will be redesignated the First Guards Long-Range Bomber Regiment and be made the lead unit of the new Long-Range Bomber Division. The two American bomb groups equipped with Martin B-33s are being returned to the United States to train on the B-29. They will be transferring their aircraft to your division as equipment for two additional regiments. Your regiment will retain your Er-2s. The Americans have promised to supply us with B-29s as soon as production capacity permits. In addition, tovarish Tupolev's design Bureau is to be granted a license to build B-29s. Your division will receive the new aircraft as soon as they are delivered. Now, train your division in your image and you will continue to serve the Rodina well."

President Zhukov watched the two officers leave. The bombing raid on Berlin, feeble though it had been in reality, had paid off even better than the Committee had anticipated.

T3-SE-A4 Tanker Shawnee, Alongside in Archangel'sk

The opportunity to stay in Archangel'sk, away from the front for a few days, had been a precious gift for Antonina Stepanovna Rabtsun but that didn't mean the work hadn't been hard and exhausting. She had also seen why combat medical orderlies had been brought in to help with the ships. They were experienced at moving dead and wounded men from complicated situations and hardened to the sight of burned and mangled corpses. They also knew enough about medical matters to provide emergency treatment where needed. For days, she and her comrades had been working through the battered ships, finding the casualties and getting them to safety. She had been astonished by how many men wounded in the continuous airstrikes that had battered the ships had survived but the long lines of the dead in the hospital mortuaries told of the price the allies had paid to get the food and fuel through.

Shawnee has been damaged more badly than any of the other ships that had got through the harrowing voyage. She would never set sail again. Her back was broken, her sides ripped open, and her machinery flooded and burned out. Eventually, she had given up the battle to survive and had sunk at her moorings. Yet, her cargo had been pumped out and saved. She was destined to be refloated and then towed a few hundred yards to a vacant wharf. There, she would end her days as a floating storage depot. And yet even then she would live on because of the pictures of her being brought into Archangel'sk, lashed between two Russian destroyers was on the wall of every Russian office, factory, and home. Even the headquarters of the communist party had it up on the wall alongside those of Joseph Stalin and Georgy Zhukov. Back in America, the same picture had been on the front page of every newspaper. From Rabtsun's point of view, she was a tangled mass of wreckage that had caused her many problems as she and the other combat orderlies had found the bodies of her crew and brought them to a safe haven.

Her work done for the day, she was walking through the midship bridge with one of the few surviving members of the ship's engineering crew. Provisional Engineering Officer Steve Perry had watched the men he had set sail with being burned, torn by blast and fragments, and/or drowned as the machinery compartments had flooded. The sights and sounds were carved deeply into his soul and he would never be the same man. He would never be a young man again. From now on, there was a part of him that was already old. Rabtsun understood she had seen identical sights on the land battlefields, and she too had a part of her that was prematurely old. At 19 years old, her hair was already beginning to show streaks of gray. So, she just walked quietly beside Perry, allowing him to come to terms with the simple fact that he had survived. Just as she had to come to terms with the fact that she had survived the battlefield. So far.

Ahead of them, a man was sitting by one of the 20mm Oerlikons, his arms clutched around himself as he rocked backward and forwards with uncontrolled sobbing. Perry looked at him, heartbreaking at the sight of his friend. "That is a friend of mine, Dougie Young. His wife and baby were killed when the fascists hit New York with their doodlebugs. He went mad for a bit but now, he's just heartbroken. All he lived for was his family. Now, his wife has gone, his kid has gone, his home has gone and even his ship has gone. The way he sees it, the war has taken everything he has. He has nothing left."

Rabtsun nodded recognizing that mental wounds were just as critical as physical ones. Every combat medical orderly knew that. Sometimes, just being rescued, knowing that somebody cared about them enough to pull them back to their lines was a better form of treatment than anything a first aid station could do. And so it was that she, quietly, unobtrusively, sat next to Young. When he became aware of her presence through his grief, without realizing quite what he was doing, he put his head on her shoulder. Equally unaware of what she was doing, she put her arm around him and drew him closer to the rough, woolen fabric of her greatcoat.

Eventually, he looked at her and asked one simple question that had a vast multitude of different meanings. "Why?"

Rabtsun stared into the gathering darkness and spoke very quietly. "We are all fighting just to survive, all of us. To live one day longer in this hell. Each day we manage to do that is our own victory. The cost of each such victory is that the Rodina is choking to death on its own blood. How much longer will it be before the rest of the world is doing the same?"