Three Kings

“Signal Big Red. We return toKaa-Chem. But we will take a roundabout course to throw off Volkov’s spies, and navigate there tonight under cover of darkness.” He was looking at his map as the operation concluded, well satisfied.

“Yes Bogrov, war is war. You can either be the one on the delivering end of an attack like the one you just witnessed or you will one day end up on the receiving end. War is war, and we do what we must. But doing it first is the best way, before your enemy gets his stinking hands on your throat. We could have fought a hard defensive battle here. An opposed river crossing would have been very costly for Volkov’s troops. But the best defense is a good offense, and I have just demonstrated that clearly enough.”

“Aye sir,” said Bogrov. “That you did.”

Part II

Strategy

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

Michael E. Porter

Chapter 4

Far away to the north, other men were hidden away in tunnels as they pondered the fate of Gibraltar, weaving the tangled web of war. The lights burned late at Whitehall. In the Admiralty bunker, the lights had first been turned on 27th of August, 1939, and they would burn continuously with their own stalwart glow of resistance for six years, until finally turned off on the 16th of August, 1945. Admirals Pound, Tovey, and Fraser were present that day. As Tovey seated himself at the table, he had the fear that he might soon be scapegoated for the disaster of Convoy HX-69, and the escape of the German battlegroup that had slipped past his guard. To his great surprise and relief, Admiral Pound took full responsibility upon himself for the debacle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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