Part VIII: The Third Great War
1. The Bermuda Missile Crisis
In November of 1964, Reichsführer Heydrich stayed awake for the entire collation of the American election results. The military future of the Reich depended on the outcome of these elections, and, when the final totals were submitted, he decided to execute Cincinnatus in January of 1965. The immediate cause for war was the deployment of a peaceful rocket rescue force to the English islands of Bermuda, with the goal of observing and, in an emergency, retrieving members of the Reich's rocket corps who fell in the western Atlantic. The United States chose to view the deployment, announced in late November, as a provocation and deployed a squadron of the United States Navy's Atlantic Fleet to stop the deliveries.
Figure 164: Konteradmiral Hans Langsdorff, commander of the Bermuda delivery squadron (wartime photo, 1940)
Against this squadron, the Reich had a handful of escorts under Konteradmiral Hans Langsdorff, who had commanded the heavy cruiser
Graf Spee during the war years. He had operated in American waters for part of this period, and was passably familiar with the area, and his old-guard naval background made the OKM staff believe he would be more acceptable to the Americans as evidence of their peaceful intentions. Langsdorff had two helicopter carriers - the old
Zeppelin and
Heinkel - and four new missile cruisers. Records indicate that much of the composition of the United States squadron in the area dated back to the same period as the two converted helicopter carriers, but had not been subject to the continuous updating process which the Kriegsmarine had accomplished. Thus, the Americans incredibly still fielded the Great War-era dreadnought
Texas alongside the much newer battleship
South Dakota. This placed the Americans at a significant tactical disadvantage in the coming contest. As a former Navy pilot, President Kennedy was of course aware of this problem, but the construction program which he had pushed had not yet come to fruition. It was also part of President Kennedy's emphasis on naval aviation, and the reason that the modernized American aircraft carrier USS
Lexington was the flagship of the American squadron, under the command of newly promoted Rear Admiral George S. Morrison, one of the key servicemembers behind Kennedy's naval program.
Figure 165: The American commander of the Bermuda blockade squadron, Rear Admiral George S. Morrison (last official photo)
The United States had the additional supposed advantage of air superiority in the area up to a thousand kilometers east of the American coastline. However, the majority of American long-range aircraft during this period were propeller-driven, and the majority of them belonged to the United States Army Air Corps, which had little interest in cooperating with the United States Navy. Against this, the Reich could count on carriers placed in the central Atlantic and squadrons of modern jets operated from the western coast of Europe, refueled mid-Atlantic, and deployed in constant rotation. This was obviously not announced to the Americans, but it was hardly a secret.
All of this primed the Bermuda squadron for confrontation, and confrontation is precisely what happened. At approximately two in the afternoon Berlin time, four days into 1965 and sixteen days prior to President Kennedy's second inauguration, the two squadrons made contact two hundred kilometers northeast of St. George, Bermuda. Admiral Morrison made a public statement, recorded by both Reich and neutral observers, that German interference in North American affairs would not be tolerated, and in pursuit of the American "Monroe Doctrine," he was required to stop and search the German container ships, and to turn them back if they were found to contain military materials. Admiral Langsdorff chose not to reply, but to proceed. At the same time, he requested Luftwaffe support.
Figure 166: The American flagship, the carrier USS Lexington
, in the months prior to her sinking
At exactly fourteen minutes and fifty-six seconds past three in the afternoon Berlin time, the American battleship
South Dakota opened fire on the German squadron. This fire was ineffective, but sufficient to begin an international incident. Langsdorff launched his helicopters, Morrison his fighters, and the Luftwaffe pilots began a beyond-visual-range engagement, the first of its kind in history. Unlike in previous battles, the German fleet made no effort to turn broadside to the Americans; the newest generation of ships relied on missiles rather than gunfire for their effect, and the missiles did not require a broadside launch. The result was slaughter: for the price of one forty-centimeter shell striking the cruiser
Prinz Eugen in its radome, the German fleet sank both American battleships, the two
Essex-class carriers
Lexington and
Bonhomme Richard, and five cruisers in ten minutes. At the same time, the Luftwaffe Staffel assigned to air support descended through the cloud layer and, in a single volley of forty guided missiles, shot down the entire American combat air patrol which had left the decks by the time shooting began.
The German fleet steamed on to Bermuda, while the American State Department lodged an immediate formal protest. Langsdorff detached one of his carriers, flying a white flag, to conduct rescue operations among the American sailors. The rocket men began putting their equipment in place, and both the Americans and Germans began preparing for an immediate war. As will be seen, the German preparations were much closer to fruition.