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Since it eats fancy replies when I enter them, only Dutchie gets an in-depth answer. The Netherlands survives the Treaty of Wilhelmshaven in vastly reduced form, which is more than can be said of Belgium. The Bock Plan is essentially a modernized Schlieffen Plan, as Manstein has used most of his professional capital empire-building the Garde-Panzerkorps to the point that it's the size of two normal corps.
Realistically, there is no one single battle I can point to as the breaking of the Royal Navy, and, indeed, at war's end, the Royal Navy was still a credible fighting force, outgunning the Marine Nationale which had, ironically, done much of the fighting in the North Sea, but postwar historians would doubtless look at the fall and winter of 1941 as the beginning of the end for the British fleet.
Realistically, there is no one single battle I can point to as the breaking of the Royal Navy, and, indeed, at war's end, the Royal Navy was still a credible fighting force, outgunning the Marine Nationale which had, ironically, done much of the fighting in the North Sea, but postwar historians would doubtless look at the fall and winter of 1941 as the beginning of the end for the British fleet.
57. The Bock Plan: An Overview
Germany's international situation at the beginning of the Second World War was significantly better than at the beginning of the First. The Soviet Union was still in the midst of a comprehensive overhaul of its military beginning with Stalin's extermination of his own leadership and culminating in the resurrection of Trotsky's dream of exporting the Revolution. Thus, Germany was not forced to fight a two-front war. Second, Germany had secured, either by alliance or non-aggression agreement, both her own southern and southeastern flanks, and France's Pyrenees border. German diplomacy had, at the very least, muddled the situation in the Baltic to the point that the Scandinavian nations were convinced that neither Germany nor Britain had their best interests at heart; while this might seem a weakness, it meant that Norway and Sweden chose a policy of armed neutrality, a wait-and-see stance that shut them against both combatants, effectively shielding Germany's northern frontiers as well.
Thus, Germany was free to concentrate on the task at hand, the reduction of France and the problem of Britain.
As War Minister, Fedor von Bock had devoted considerable time to considering the failures of the Great War. The first failure he identified was one of mobility: the front had been allowed to stabilize, and when it had stabilized, both sides had wasted considerable effort on attacking strongpoints head-on rather than indirectly. Like many in the General Staff, Bock blamed this bogging-down on the failure to execute Schlieffen's original vision and on Moltke's weakening of the right wing.
He saw his solution in the armored forces. Their role would be to force a breach in the Low Countries, then scythe around the massive fortifications on the Maginot Line into Flanders and Normandy. He explicitly instructed them to bypass hardened defenses, such as Brussels and Amsterdam, to focus on wreaking havoc behind the enemy's lines. The cities were to be reduced by a combination of air and shellfire. The guns used for this purpose came from nine specially-equipped infantry divisions with attached heavy-artillery brigades, equipped with Krupp's K5 280mm rail cannons. These ponderous guns, organized into batteries of two, were tied to rail lines, and therefore their advance was slower than the main infantry advance; they were therefore tied to the southern half of the advance, while the northern end was equipped for a rapid advance across the Netherlands with bridging units and combat engineers enjoying a preeminence not seen since their pathfinding duties in the Great War.
To this battle, Bock brought a hundred and two divisions of infantry, two divisions of mountaineers, three divisions of parachutists, eighteen armored divisions, five mechanized divisions, fifteen motorized divisions, and the six divisions of the Guards as a separate force. In addition Germany fielded its four "Stahlhelm" divisions and its three-division cavalry force to keep Poland pacified, a front many viewed as equally likely to erupt in violence. This faced a French force of approximately seventy infantry divisions and three armored divisions, plus twenty Belgian and Dutch divisions. No British forces were arrayed on the Continent as of the declaration of war. Bock therefore had both numerical and tactical superiority, as he could concentrate rapidly against the Belgians and the Dutch while the French were committed to a defense of the Maginot Line and could commit only limited forces to the defense of the Low Countries.
Bock brought another weapon to this battlefield that had not been present in Poland: the Luftwaffe. Much of the work General Goering had put into maturing this force had finally come to fruition, with the Luftwaffe deploying sufficient close-range forces to blanket the battlefield. The workhorses of this force were the Ju 88A4 "Schnellbomber" medium-range bomber, the Ju 87D "Stuka" dive-bomber, and the Fw 190A3 "Würger" fighter. The RLM insistence on standardized engines across these aircraft paid off: by 1941, the only design in service with the Luftwaffe that did not use a BMW radial engine was the aging Stuka, and consideration was being given to re-equipping Stuka squadrons with bomb-equipped Fw 190s. This greatly simplified maintenance, and the rugged aircraft were all generally considered excellent for the unimproved fields likely to be common on campaign. The Luftwaffe had undergone a comprehensive overhaul in the months leading up to the war, with younger, more ambitious officers being put in command of units than had been the norm prior to 1941, part of General Grauert's overall plan for his service, since so many Luftwaffe generals were Great War veterans. Thus, men like Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders, whose combat experience was in Spain, commanded whole fighter groups.
The expected contribution of the Luftwaffe to the ground war was, astonishingly, scrubbed at the last moment. Weather over the Low Countries was splendid, and two operations were conducted, to secure the Belgian fortification at Eben-Emael and a series of glider landings to seize the control structures on flood-prevention dykes throughout the Netherlands. Some of these succeeded; some failed. Overall, enough of the polder fields were kept dry to allow the Reichswehr passage. Instead, the Luftwaffe's three airborne divisions, trained to a fever pitch, launched one of the early war's few combined operations: a battalion of marine infantry under Hauptmann Wilhelm Henningsen and an airborne corps under Generalleutnant Kurt Student, in concert with the three Deutschland-class pocket battleships, assaulted neutral Denmark. The reasons for this assault were, legally, the German claim on Schleswig, and, realistically, fears that a neutral Denmark would allow physicist Niels Bohr to flee and join with French researchers such as Joliot-Curie. A high-level meeting was held to discuss the importance of this one man, and as a result of this meeting, prompted by a major-general of engineers named Volkmann, Denmark was reluctantly drawn into the war, overrun almost as soon as Student's parachutists made their first jumps from the new Arado Ar 232 "Tausendfüssler" transports. Student's men, trained to leap from airplanes, instead found themselves, as in Poland, cadging every rail-car and truck they could find to rush from Copenhagen to the real fighting.
This had an unexpected side effect, in that the Danish fleet sortied to attempt to escape. They were engaged in the first surface battle of the war, and by eight in the evening on the fourth of August, all three ships had been sunk by uncannily accurate gunnery from the "Kaiserjacht," Deutschland herself. Legitimate casus belli or not, first honors of the war went to Germany.
The last element in the German plan was the Kaiserliche Marine. Secretive and uncooperative with the other services, Admiral Raeder nevertheless had a decisive blow planned, and had ordered his submarines to sea as soon as the Rath case had broken publicly. The submarines had a simple initial task: locate all elements of the British Home Fleet and the French Atlantic Fleet as completely as possible, verify what, if any ships, were at the main fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow, and report this data by Enigma dispatch immediately. In the meantime, the main battle fleet and the carrier fleet sortied, fortunate in their lack of global mission in that they could be quickly and easily recalled to Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, fueled, and sent back to sea faster than the Home Fleet could concentrate. The surface fleet, divided into two squadrons, fast and slow, prepared for a gunnery engagement with the Royal Navy.
This was not to be, however. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and the Kaiser's six carriers sped north toward Scapa Flow to execute a plan Canaris had spent years lovingly crafting with an entire generation of aviation officers. It was to be the first great blow in a war of great blows.
Germany's international situation at the beginning of the Second World War was significantly better than at the beginning of the First. The Soviet Union was still in the midst of a comprehensive overhaul of its military beginning with Stalin's extermination of his own leadership and culminating in the resurrection of Trotsky's dream of exporting the Revolution. Thus, Germany was not forced to fight a two-front war. Second, Germany had secured, either by alliance or non-aggression agreement, both her own southern and southeastern flanks, and France's Pyrenees border. German diplomacy had, at the very least, muddled the situation in the Baltic to the point that the Scandinavian nations were convinced that neither Germany nor Britain had their best interests at heart; while this might seem a weakness, it meant that Norway and Sweden chose a policy of armed neutrality, a wait-and-see stance that shut them against both combatants, effectively shielding Germany's northern frontiers as well.
Thus, Germany was free to concentrate on the task at hand, the reduction of France and the problem of Britain.
As War Minister, Fedor von Bock had devoted considerable time to considering the failures of the Great War. The first failure he identified was one of mobility: the front had been allowed to stabilize, and when it had stabilized, both sides had wasted considerable effort on attacking strongpoints head-on rather than indirectly. Like many in the General Staff, Bock blamed this bogging-down on the failure to execute Schlieffen's original vision and on Moltke's weakening of the right wing.
He saw his solution in the armored forces. Their role would be to force a breach in the Low Countries, then scythe around the massive fortifications on the Maginot Line into Flanders and Normandy. He explicitly instructed them to bypass hardened defenses, such as Brussels and Amsterdam, to focus on wreaking havoc behind the enemy's lines. The cities were to be reduced by a combination of air and shellfire. The guns used for this purpose came from nine specially-equipped infantry divisions with attached heavy-artillery brigades, equipped with Krupp's K5 280mm rail cannons. These ponderous guns, organized into batteries of two, were tied to rail lines, and therefore their advance was slower than the main infantry advance; they were therefore tied to the southern half of the advance, while the northern end was equipped for a rapid advance across the Netherlands with bridging units and combat engineers enjoying a preeminence not seen since their pathfinding duties in the Great War.
To this battle, Bock brought a hundred and two divisions of infantry, two divisions of mountaineers, three divisions of parachutists, eighteen armored divisions, five mechanized divisions, fifteen motorized divisions, and the six divisions of the Guards as a separate force. In addition Germany fielded its four "Stahlhelm" divisions and its three-division cavalry force to keep Poland pacified, a front many viewed as equally likely to erupt in violence. This faced a French force of approximately seventy infantry divisions and three armored divisions, plus twenty Belgian and Dutch divisions. No British forces were arrayed on the Continent as of the declaration of war. Bock therefore had both numerical and tactical superiority, as he could concentrate rapidly against the Belgians and the Dutch while the French were committed to a defense of the Maginot Line and could commit only limited forces to the defense of the Low Countries.
Bock brought another weapon to this battlefield that had not been present in Poland: the Luftwaffe. Much of the work General Goering had put into maturing this force had finally come to fruition, with the Luftwaffe deploying sufficient close-range forces to blanket the battlefield. The workhorses of this force were the Ju 88A4 "Schnellbomber" medium-range bomber, the Ju 87D "Stuka" dive-bomber, and the Fw 190A3 "Würger" fighter. The RLM insistence on standardized engines across these aircraft paid off: by 1941, the only design in service with the Luftwaffe that did not use a BMW radial engine was the aging Stuka, and consideration was being given to re-equipping Stuka squadrons with bomb-equipped Fw 190s. This greatly simplified maintenance, and the rugged aircraft were all generally considered excellent for the unimproved fields likely to be common on campaign. The Luftwaffe had undergone a comprehensive overhaul in the months leading up to the war, with younger, more ambitious officers being put in command of units than had been the norm prior to 1941, part of General Grauert's overall plan for his service, since so many Luftwaffe generals were Great War veterans. Thus, men like Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders, whose combat experience was in Spain, commanded whole fighter groups.
The expected contribution of the Luftwaffe to the ground war was, astonishingly, scrubbed at the last moment. Weather over the Low Countries was splendid, and two operations were conducted, to secure the Belgian fortification at Eben-Emael and a series of glider landings to seize the control structures on flood-prevention dykes throughout the Netherlands. Some of these succeeded; some failed. Overall, enough of the polder fields were kept dry to allow the Reichswehr passage. Instead, the Luftwaffe's three airborne divisions, trained to a fever pitch, launched one of the early war's few combined operations: a battalion of marine infantry under Hauptmann Wilhelm Henningsen and an airborne corps under Generalleutnant Kurt Student, in concert with the three Deutschland-class pocket battleships, assaulted neutral Denmark. The reasons for this assault were, legally, the German claim on Schleswig, and, realistically, fears that a neutral Denmark would allow physicist Niels Bohr to flee and join with French researchers such as Joliot-Curie. A high-level meeting was held to discuss the importance of this one man, and as a result of this meeting, prompted by a major-general of engineers named Volkmann, Denmark was reluctantly drawn into the war, overrun almost as soon as Student's parachutists made their first jumps from the new Arado Ar 232 "Tausendfüssler" transports. Student's men, trained to leap from airplanes, instead found themselves, as in Poland, cadging every rail-car and truck they could find to rush from Copenhagen to the real fighting.
This had an unexpected side effect, in that the Danish fleet sortied to attempt to escape. They were engaged in the first surface battle of the war, and by eight in the evening on the fourth of August, all three ships had been sunk by uncannily accurate gunnery from the "Kaiserjacht," Deutschland herself. Legitimate casus belli or not, first honors of the war went to Germany.
The last element in the German plan was the Kaiserliche Marine. Secretive and uncooperative with the other services, Admiral Raeder nevertheless had a decisive blow planned, and had ordered his submarines to sea as soon as the Rath case had broken publicly. The submarines had a simple initial task: locate all elements of the British Home Fleet and the French Atlantic Fleet as completely as possible, verify what, if any ships, were at the main fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow, and report this data by Enigma dispatch immediately. In the meantime, the main battle fleet and the carrier fleet sortied, fortunate in their lack of global mission in that they could be quickly and easily recalled to Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, fueled, and sent back to sea faster than the Home Fleet could concentrate. The surface fleet, divided into two squadrons, fast and slow, prepared for a gunnery engagement with the Royal Navy.
This was not to be, however. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and the Kaiser's six carriers sped north toward Scapa Flow to execute a plan Canaris had spent years lovingly crafting with an entire generation of aviation officers. It was to be the first great blow in a war of great blows.
And yes, I know that "dry" and "polder" don't actually go together; the soil actually stays at saturation, which is really interesting, given that polder soils are by definition still undergoing consolidation, and can have high organic contents, which makes them... interesting... as a construction material. The fact that the majority of those levees have traditionally been made of sand or organics is, to say the least, mindblowing. It's amazing they don't have much more severe piping problems, it's an incredibly well-built flood control system.
In German Yacht is written as....Yacht! 
Now for actual feedback: The French stand even less of a chance ITTL. OTL they had Numbers as well as tank vs Tank Superiority, TTL all of that is on the German side. They better start issuing white flags.
Now for actual feedback: The French stand even less of a chance ITTL. OTL they had Numbers as well as tank vs Tank Superiority, TTL all of that is on the German side. They better start issuing white flags.
So, a surprise attack on a helpless neutral country, and the turkey shoot destruction of their three little dinghies at the hands of a modern battlecruiser counts as "honor" nowadays?
You can tell, Germans are on the march again, frothing at the mouth at the chance to exercise "legitimate" brutality on helpless countries. Doesn't everyone in Europe look forward with tremors to their idea of "honor".
You can tell, Germans are on the march again, frothing at the mouth at the chance to exercise "legitimate" brutality on helpless countries. Doesn't everyone in Europe look forward with tremors to their idea of "honor".
In German Yacht is written as....Yacht!
Now for actual feedback: The French stand even less of a chance ITTL. OTL they had Numbers as well as tank vs Tank Superiority, TTL all of that is on the German side. They better start issuing white flags.
The fact that they don't have to gamble on the French doing nothing while they do something else doesn't hurt. As for "yacht" - this is what I get for trusting Leo.
So, a surprise attack on a helpless neutral country, and the turkey shoot destruction of their three little dinghies at the hands of a modern battlecruiser counts as "honor" nowadays?
You can tell, Germans are on the march again, frothing at the mouth at the chance to exercise "legitimate" brutality on helpless countries. Doesn't everyone in Europe look forward with tremors to their idea of "honor".
As opposed to the British Raj, or the puppeted governments along the south end of the Arabian peninsula, or Churchill's proposed occupation of Norway in this timeline, or the US getting snippy any time a foreign country invests in the Caribbean...
You want an AAR where everyone is smiling and friendly, play a different game. It's a WW2 simulator. I've already made quite clear at this point that Germany's territorial ambitions include countries which are both neutral and more trouble to invade than they're worth to own.
Probably not, though in every single HoI game I ever play, I lag behind in the encryption/decryption techs.
a map!
Yes, a map. Ironically, it should've gone several posts ago.
I must admit I do get a feeling these excuses do come a wee bit too easy here. Assassinations/attempted ones whenever the Reich is about to go to war. IRL the Germans had to make those excuses up, here they are given on a plate. Unless you're planning to reveal later on that it's all been machinated by the more hawkish factions of the government, of course...
Btw, what is the exact in-game strength of RN in comparison to that of yours?
Btw, what is the exact in-game strength of RN in comparison to that of yours?
Every time I do a quoted reply at work, it breaks, so here goes the quickie version:
I had figured that I was pretty clear about some of these incidents; some of them are indeed false-flag operations, some of them aren't. Ernst vom Rath was, as possibly in OTL, a victim of his own indiscretions. The Czechs, though, are pure, out-and-out victims.
Naval comparisons... the Royal Navy kept two battlegroups as part of the Home Fleet, either one of which was close to a match for the assembled Hochseeflotte. Germany had an absolute edge in carriers (six to two in the North Sea, even worldwide), trailed woefully in battleships (don't know the exact numbers, but it was bad), led in battlecruisers (since I use them as CAs), trailed in actual heavy cruisers, and was miles behind in escorts. Submarines were a different matter entirely.
With the addition of the Marine Nationale, the situation became significantly more favorable to the Allies, as they had a 30-ship task force centered around the Bearn wandering around Iceland that kept causing problems.
I had figured that I was pretty clear about some of these incidents; some of them are indeed false-flag operations, some of them aren't. Ernst vom Rath was, as possibly in OTL, a victim of his own indiscretions. The Czechs, though, are pure, out-and-out victims.
Naval comparisons... the Royal Navy kept two battlegroups as part of the Home Fleet, either one of which was close to a match for the assembled Hochseeflotte. Germany had an absolute edge in carriers (six to two in the North Sea, even worldwide), trailed woefully in battleships (don't know the exact numbers, but it was bad), led in battlecruisers (since I use them as CAs), trailed in actual heavy cruisers, and was miles behind in escorts. Submarines were a different matter entirely.
With the addition of the Marine Nationale, the situation became significantly more favorable to the Allies, as they had a 30-ship task force centered around the Bearn wandering around Iceland that kept causing problems.
58. Scapa Flow
SMS Graf Zeppelin
North Sea
0400 5 August 1941
When the signal arrived, Canaris turned to the assembled officers and nodded gravely. "They gave the order." The Crown Prince, troubled as his father had been on a similar declaration of war, merely nodded and looked down at the deck to ensure his planes were spotted as he wanted. Peter Volkmann, though, bolted from the cabin, elated and terrified. His plan was going into execution.
He half-ran, half-stumbled down to the ready rooms one-by-one, slapping the hatches as he came by and ducking his head in. "It's a go!" he snapped at each one in turn, and pilots produced clipboards and fatalistic expressions as he passed. The individual squadron commanders began their briefings, explaining what the plan of action was. For his part, Peter joined Rudel's dive-bomber squadron. For the second time, Peter Volkmann was flying a Stuka onto the battlefield. Rudel, as usual, was unsmiling and serious, and began his briefing with the thoroughness Peter had come to expect.
Peter's plan of attack was simple: the combined air wings of the six German carriers would approach Scapa Flow at wavetop level from the east, aiming for the break between Burray and the mainland. The torpedo bombers, scouts, and dive bombers were to target capital ships roughly in weight order as they found them, while the fighters were rigged with temporary single-bomb payloads to attack any shore-side defenses they encountered, beginning with the naval air station at Matson. The second wave was to focus on the base on Hoy, giving attention to the fuelers. The third wave was provisionally instructed to seek targets of opportunity - if there was a third wave, which depended on the success of the first two. This was the information Rudel imparted, with a final clicking salute and a ringing "God save the Kaiser!" that was dutifully echoed by his pilots.
In the first North Sea prelight, the pilots took to their planes, each occupied by their own thoughts. Peter's were of his wife, probably still asleep and probably spending the day cheering on the Kaiser's every act. Hanna was nothing if not patriotic. He shook the thoughts from his head as he walked around his Stuka, checking every exposed fastener and surface. His designated gunner for the day was a pureblood sailor, a Matrosengefreiter named Speidel. Speidel was Vogt's opposite - Vogt flying off Peter Strasser as a senior, though not commanding, fighter pilot now. Speidel could not quit talking, and Peter, to be honest, found it tiresome. He knew the youth was just nervous, but he had always been fairly introspective himself. Fortunately, the roar of the engines around them drowned Speidel out, and instead, he focused on the signal officer and his flags, barely visible in the dawn twilight.
The latest intelligence was that between three and eight battleships and two aircraft carriers were at Scapa Flow, plus assorted cruisers. Peter hoped, strictly from years of Canaris hounding him, that one of the "battleships" was Hood. The rest, he expected, would take care of itself. These were his last thoughts before the flags flashed down and he slammed the throttle forward. He was still not used to the longer deck of the Graf Zeppelin, and had to fight the urge to pull up prematurely. The Stuka was laden to its limit, and he needed every ounce of speed he could gather.
He glanced back over his shoulder as he took his place in formation, and saw a breathtaking sight - two hundred-odd aircraft, spread out in droning near-silence, their spacing perfect. It was the first time, seeing this assembled force, that he felt with absolute certainty that his plan would work.
---
HMS Illustrious
Royal Naval Station Scapa Flow, United Kingdom
0600, 5 August 1941
Mountbatten had risen early, had been on the bridge since the watch change. He looked down at the guards with their Lanchesters pacing the deck against the possibility of sabotage - unlikely, but one could never be too careful - and then back at the ship's stern, where two dozen brand-new aircraft sat with wings folded demurely, in a parade formation that he knew was only useful for showing off, yet here in port, he could not bring himself to stow them away. The Seafire was simply a beautiful plane... and it was his, by God! He'd even talked his wing commander into allowing him to qualify in it. After all, he was a licensed pilot, why shouldn't he? Perhaps he'd find a way to talk Edwina into going up...
These were his thoughts as he looked out at his ship and beyond, toward the lighthouse on Hoy. His eyes swept along the deck, turning east, toward the sunrise, and he frowned. "I say..." He grabbed the watch officer's shoulder, pointing at the flight of aircraft coming in low over the harbor boom. "Do we have any flights scheduled this morning?" He knew the answer, but he hoped he was wrong. The officer frowned, checking a clipboard, before turning back to Mountbatten. "No, sir." The long face paled, the jaw firmed, and he grabbed the shoreside telephone. "Hello? Hello? Blasted thing, terrible time for the operator to be slack on the job!"
The shapes had by now resolved themselves - gull-winged and unmistakable. Mountbatten thought of Kipling for a moment: The brides of destruction, seeking the groom - the Choosers of the Slain. Time slowed for him, as if in a nightmare, and he looked desperately down, seeing the mechanics trying to disentangle the Seafires' wings.
Now the dive bombers clawed for altitude, having made their approach undetected. They aimed for three hundred meters, a maneuver they knew they could manage, though it stressed the planes in this short distance. The torpedo bombers separated, spray blowing up from the prop wash, and the fighters peeled away to the north to deal with the air base. Peter Volkmann saw both of the Nelson-class battleships with their distinctive forward-positioned battery, and swept the harbor hoping to see Hood. He saw a carrier, presumably Illustrious-class, with its aircraft parked on deck, contrary to usual British doctrine, and frowned. Was Hood here?
Yes! There - in the Gutter Sound, adjacent to the shore establishment! He had his target. The Stuka winged over, then went nose-down as Hood's anti-aircraft gunners came to life. Peter Volkmann cared about none of that, nor about Speidel's nervous silence. He cared about Hood's swelling fore stack; the bomber's nose was pointed at its base, and he waited for that familiar too-late-now feeling, taking one last sharp breath before releasing his plane's payload. One 250-kilo bomb plunged downward between the funnels, spearing down into the ship's magazine. The four fifty-kilo bombs scattered across the deck, sending lifeboats overboard and flinging crew aside. Peter yanked the stick back, pulling the Stuka level with the Hood's deck. "Horrido!" he cried, not caring that it wasn't a fighter kill. The boiling, angry shockwave of the explosion told him that Hood was gone.
Louis Mountbatten had the privilege of watching Hans-Ulrich Rudel at work. Three Stukas rolled and dove at Illustrious, led by the white-and-black propeller spinner Rudel affected, though Mountbatten had no way of knowing it. The first bomb came in square amidships, plunging down into the armored flight deck and penetrating it to explode in the hangar deck. The four light bombs scattered across the deck, shattering the precious force of Seafires and igniting a fire that scrambling damage-control parties could only hope was not compounded. The second and third bombs cratered near the first, ploughing into the weakened hangar and puncturing into the ship's engine spaces. The explosion belowdecks opened Illustrious to the sea and she began to take on a list.
On her deck, Mountbatten, blackened and sweating, led the damage-control parties even as he felt the deck start to tilt, and inside a part of him died. His first capital command was being pulled out from under him by the sea. Still they labored on, and the damage-control teams did their best, giving him time to evacuate every sailor not directly engaged in pumping or fire-fighting. Illustrious still sank, but Mountbatten's dogged determination saved his crew.
Across Scapa Flow, the situation was similar: Nelson got under steam and grounded before sinking, a great arrowhead lodged in the banks of the mainland. It would be one of the few casualties of the raid that would be fully refurbished, coming off the shore to fight the Japanese and sink in the Bay of Bengal. Royal Oak, an old Great War battleship in the process of being turned into a floating anti-aircraft battery, was torpedoed and sank in shallow waters, her mastheads still showing. The cruiser Frobisher suffered almost as catastrophic damage as the Hood, breaking in half from a lucky hit amidships. The second wave found the destroyer force at anchor, sinking half a dozen and wrecking the shore establishment. It was perhaps the kindest possible blow for Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes; rather than being a live scapegoat, he became a dead hero. His replacement, Admiral Bruce Fraser, arrived on the evening of the day of the raid, rushed from London where he had been Third Sea Lord. When he arrived, the fleet was still burning, the undamaged escorts milling in confusion and expecting a third attack wave. He hoisted his flag aboard the damaged but floating King George V with the ominous pronouncement, "When this war is over, the German language will be spoken only in Hell."
Peter Volkmann, circling over the anchorage at the end of the first wave's strike, felt absolute elation at his plan's success, tuning out Speidel still, until he felt the sudden vibration of Speidel firing the tail gun. "What in God's name...?" He looked back over his shoulder to see a flight of Hurricanes, the only planes seen today, coming after him, and kicked the rudder over to make a dash for the sea and safety. The plane responded, and the hopeless chase began. Peter made it out to sea, hoping against hope that one of the short-legged Messerschmitts was still in the area to clean this menace off his tail, but there was no great reason for hope: they had been the first aircraft off the target area. Peter's own presence there was pure hubris.
He felt the aircraft shudder and heard Speidel gasp, then felt a sharp kick in his back, air sucking back over his shoulder out the suddenly-shattered rear canopy. Speidel fell slack and the gun fell silent. The Hurricane overshot, and the engine billowed out black smoke as the next fighter in the "vee" made its run. He yanked the canopy back in panic, letting the Stuka roll belly-up as he cut himself loose and fell seaward. He fell and fell and fell... and only when the Hurricanes turned away fully did he pull the chute ripcord, feeling it jerk him upward painfully.
The North Sea was freezing, forcing the air from his lungs as he watched the Stuka's wreckage sink. Teeth chattering, he cut away the parachute shroud and waited to die of hypothermia. Just as consciousness started to fade, he felt a wooden oar bump his numbing arm and a voice call out to him, gruff and surprisingly gentle, "'Ere, Tommy, ve varm you up." He closed his eyes, slipping away, murmuring, "Idiots." Whether his rescuers were offended, he cared little.
SMS Graf Zeppelin
North Sea
0400 5 August 1941
When the signal arrived, Canaris turned to the assembled officers and nodded gravely. "They gave the order." The Crown Prince, troubled as his father had been on a similar declaration of war, merely nodded and looked down at the deck to ensure his planes were spotted as he wanted. Peter Volkmann, though, bolted from the cabin, elated and terrified. His plan was going into execution.
He half-ran, half-stumbled down to the ready rooms one-by-one, slapping the hatches as he came by and ducking his head in. "It's a go!" he snapped at each one in turn, and pilots produced clipboards and fatalistic expressions as he passed. The individual squadron commanders began their briefings, explaining what the plan of action was. For his part, Peter joined Rudel's dive-bomber squadron. For the second time, Peter Volkmann was flying a Stuka onto the battlefield. Rudel, as usual, was unsmiling and serious, and began his briefing with the thoroughness Peter had come to expect.
Peter's plan of attack was simple: the combined air wings of the six German carriers would approach Scapa Flow at wavetop level from the east, aiming for the break between Burray and the mainland. The torpedo bombers, scouts, and dive bombers were to target capital ships roughly in weight order as they found them, while the fighters were rigged with temporary single-bomb payloads to attack any shore-side defenses they encountered, beginning with the naval air station at Matson. The second wave was to focus on the base on Hoy, giving attention to the fuelers. The third wave was provisionally instructed to seek targets of opportunity - if there was a third wave, which depended on the success of the first two. This was the information Rudel imparted, with a final clicking salute and a ringing "God save the Kaiser!" that was dutifully echoed by his pilots.
In the first North Sea prelight, the pilots took to their planes, each occupied by their own thoughts. Peter's were of his wife, probably still asleep and probably spending the day cheering on the Kaiser's every act. Hanna was nothing if not patriotic. He shook the thoughts from his head as he walked around his Stuka, checking every exposed fastener and surface. His designated gunner for the day was a pureblood sailor, a Matrosengefreiter named Speidel. Speidel was Vogt's opposite - Vogt flying off Peter Strasser as a senior, though not commanding, fighter pilot now. Speidel could not quit talking, and Peter, to be honest, found it tiresome. He knew the youth was just nervous, but he had always been fairly introspective himself. Fortunately, the roar of the engines around them drowned Speidel out, and instead, he focused on the signal officer and his flags, barely visible in the dawn twilight.
The latest intelligence was that between three and eight battleships and two aircraft carriers were at Scapa Flow, plus assorted cruisers. Peter hoped, strictly from years of Canaris hounding him, that one of the "battleships" was Hood. The rest, he expected, would take care of itself. These were his last thoughts before the flags flashed down and he slammed the throttle forward. He was still not used to the longer deck of the Graf Zeppelin, and had to fight the urge to pull up prematurely. The Stuka was laden to its limit, and he needed every ounce of speed he could gather.
He glanced back over his shoulder as he took his place in formation, and saw a breathtaking sight - two hundred-odd aircraft, spread out in droning near-silence, their spacing perfect. It was the first time, seeing this assembled force, that he felt with absolute certainty that his plan would work.
---
HMS Illustrious
Royal Naval Station Scapa Flow, United Kingdom
0600, 5 August 1941
Mountbatten had risen early, had been on the bridge since the watch change. He looked down at the guards with their Lanchesters pacing the deck against the possibility of sabotage - unlikely, but one could never be too careful - and then back at the ship's stern, where two dozen brand-new aircraft sat with wings folded demurely, in a parade formation that he knew was only useful for showing off, yet here in port, he could not bring himself to stow them away. The Seafire was simply a beautiful plane... and it was his, by God! He'd even talked his wing commander into allowing him to qualify in it. After all, he was a licensed pilot, why shouldn't he? Perhaps he'd find a way to talk Edwina into going up...
These were his thoughts as he looked out at his ship and beyond, toward the lighthouse on Hoy. His eyes swept along the deck, turning east, toward the sunrise, and he frowned. "I say..." He grabbed the watch officer's shoulder, pointing at the flight of aircraft coming in low over the harbor boom. "Do we have any flights scheduled this morning?" He knew the answer, but he hoped he was wrong. The officer frowned, checking a clipboard, before turning back to Mountbatten. "No, sir." The long face paled, the jaw firmed, and he grabbed the shoreside telephone. "Hello? Hello? Blasted thing, terrible time for the operator to be slack on the job!"
The shapes had by now resolved themselves - gull-winged and unmistakable. Mountbatten thought of Kipling for a moment: The brides of destruction, seeking the groom - the Choosers of the Slain. Time slowed for him, as if in a nightmare, and he looked desperately down, seeing the mechanics trying to disentangle the Seafires' wings.
Now the dive bombers clawed for altitude, having made their approach undetected. They aimed for three hundred meters, a maneuver they knew they could manage, though it stressed the planes in this short distance. The torpedo bombers separated, spray blowing up from the prop wash, and the fighters peeled away to the north to deal with the air base. Peter Volkmann saw both of the Nelson-class battleships with their distinctive forward-positioned battery, and swept the harbor hoping to see Hood. He saw a carrier, presumably Illustrious-class, with its aircraft parked on deck, contrary to usual British doctrine, and frowned. Was Hood here?
Yes! There - in the Gutter Sound, adjacent to the shore establishment! He had his target. The Stuka winged over, then went nose-down as Hood's anti-aircraft gunners came to life. Peter Volkmann cared about none of that, nor about Speidel's nervous silence. He cared about Hood's swelling fore stack; the bomber's nose was pointed at its base, and he waited for that familiar too-late-now feeling, taking one last sharp breath before releasing his plane's payload. One 250-kilo bomb plunged downward between the funnels, spearing down into the ship's magazine. The four fifty-kilo bombs scattered across the deck, sending lifeboats overboard and flinging crew aside. Peter yanked the stick back, pulling the Stuka level with the Hood's deck. "Horrido!" he cried, not caring that it wasn't a fighter kill. The boiling, angry shockwave of the explosion told him that Hood was gone.
Louis Mountbatten had the privilege of watching Hans-Ulrich Rudel at work. Three Stukas rolled and dove at Illustrious, led by the white-and-black propeller spinner Rudel affected, though Mountbatten had no way of knowing it. The first bomb came in square amidships, plunging down into the armored flight deck and penetrating it to explode in the hangar deck. The four light bombs scattered across the deck, shattering the precious force of Seafires and igniting a fire that scrambling damage-control parties could only hope was not compounded. The second and third bombs cratered near the first, ploughing into the weakened hangar and puncturing into the ship's engine spaces. The explosion belowdecks opened Illustrious to the sea and she began to take on a list.
On her deck, Mountbatten, blackened and sweating, led the damage-control parties even as he felt the deck start to tilt, and inside a part of him died. His first capital command was being pulled out from under him by the sea. Still they labored on, and the damage-control teams did their best, giving him time to evacuate every sailor not directly engaged in pumping or fire-fighting. Illustrious still sank, but Mountbatten's dogged determination saved his crew.
Across Scapa Flow, the situation was similar: Nelson got under steam and grounded before sinking, a great arrowhead lodged in the banks of the mainland. It would be one of the few casualties of the raid that would be fully refurbished, coming off the shore to fight the Japanese and sink in the Bay of Bengal. Royal Oak, an old Great War battleship in the process of being turned into a floating anti-aircraft battery, was torpedoed and sank in shallow waters, her mastheads still showing. The cruiser Frobisher suffered almost as catastrophic damage as the Hood, breaking in half from a lucky hit amidships. The second wave found the destroyer force at anchor, sinking half a dozen and wrecking the shore establishment. It was perhaps the kindest possible blow for Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes; rather than being a live scapegoat, he became a dead hero. His replacement, Admiral Bruce Fraser, arrived on the evening of the day of the raid, rushed from London where he had been Third Sea Lord. When he arrived, the fleet was still burning, the undamaged escorts milling in confusion and expecting a third attack wave. He hoisted his flag aboard the damaged but floating King George V with the ominous pronouncement, "When this war is over, the German language will be spoken only in Hell."
Peter Volkmann, circling over the anchorage at the end of the first wave's strike, felt absolute elation at his plan's success, tuning out Speidel still, until he felt the sudden vibration of Speidel firing the tail gun. "What in God's name...?" He looked back over his shoulder to see a flight of Hurricanes, the only planes seen today, coming after him, and kicked the rudder over to make a dash for the sea and safety. The plane responded, and the hopeless chase began. Peter made it out to sea, hoping against hope that one of the short-legged Messerschmitts was still in the area to clean this menace off his tail, but there was no great reason for hope: they had been the first aircraft off the target area. Peter's own presence there was pure hubris.
He felt the aircraft shudder and heard Speidel gasp, then felt a sharp kick in his back, air sucking back over his shoulder out the suddenly-shattered rear canopy. Speidel fell slack and the gun fell silent. The Hurricane overshot, and the engine billowed out black smoke as the next fighter in the "vee" made its run. He yanked the canopy back in panic, letting the Stuka roll belly-up as he cut himself loose and fell seaward. He fell and fell and fell... and only when the Hurricanes turned away fully did he pull the chute ripcord, feeling it jerk him upward painfully.
The North Sea was freezing, forcing the air from his lungs as he watched the Stuka's wreckage sink. Teeth chattering, he cut away the parachute shroud and waited to die of hypothermia. Just as consciousness started to fade, he felt a wooden oar bump his numbing arm and a voice call out to him, gruff and surprisingly gentle, "'Ere, Tommy, ve varm you up." He closed his eyes, slipping away, murmuring, "Idiots." Whether his rescuers were offended, he cared little.
Memories from Pearl Harbour comming to my mind.
Congrats for such a promising beginning!
Trekkie, don't read this, for Hood's sake!!!!
Congrats for such a promising beginning!
Trekkie, don't read this, for Hood's sake!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
*assumes fetal position on floor*
At least she died proving the concept of the Aircraft Carrier, so it wasn't as pointless as in the Denmark Strait.
Ahem. Well, Royal Oak is already gone, so U-47 needs another target methinks.
*assumes fetal position on floor*
At least she died proving the concept of the Aircraft Carrier, so it wasn't as pointless as in the Denmark Strait.
Ahem. Well, Royal Oak is already gone, so U-47 needs another target methinks.
Yes, for my next move I'm invading the Netherlands, then to make sure I alienate my entire commentator base, I'll declare war on Spain and nuke Barcelona.
Well, a CV has more potential to do damage to the KM than an old WW1 BB. (Note: This definition does not include Warspite, Queen Elizabeth and the other modernized Queens.)
Yes, for my next move I'm invading the Netherlands, then to make sure I alienate my entire commentator base, I'll declare war on Spain and nuke Barcelona.
Erm...
May I suggest that you declare war on Spain (all right there) and nuke Madrid? There will be more alienated readers then, trust me.
Erm...
May I suggest that you declare war on Spain (all right there) and nuke Madrid? There will be more alienated readers then, trust me.
Nah, in reality, drawing Spain in is important to my (as in me, the player) goal of humiliating France and breaking them for the foreseeable future.
British casualties -
Illustrious, CV
Nelson, BB
Royal Oak, BB
Hood, BC
Frobisher, CA
Suffolk, CA
Southampton, CL
Gloucester, CL
The majority of the N-class destroyer flotilla, consisting of:
Noble, DL
Napier, DD
Nizam, DD
Nestor, DD
Norman, DD
The majority of the L-class destroyer flotilla, consisting of:
Laforey, DL
Lance, DD
Lively, DD
Legion, DD
Lightning, DD
German casualties - lost org on the CVs, which probably means less than 10% pilot casualties but pilots land on whatever ships they can find.
EDIT - I should point out that due to a bug in Mod33, many of these ships are floating around in two versions, Name and Name*. I haven't looked through the event files to figure out what's going on there, but I think that the * names indicate a modernized, updated version of the ship. This is why some of them, like Nelson, are later sunk by the Japanese. But not the Italians. "ABC" Cunningham, to steal Vanilla Ice's words, slices like a ninja and cuts like a razor blade.