Three Kings

“Yes, I believe so,” said Fraser. “At least we know those planes can match the German Messerschmitts pound for pound, but we have all too few of them.”

“We had an order for 50 Sea Spitfires set to go,” said Pound. “I presume we’ll be calling them Seafires if we ever get them. I will see what I can do to move it along. There has also been some discussion about purchasing the American Grumman Wildcats. We’re calling them Martlets.”

“We already have hold of 81 of these American planes,” said Fraser. “The French had them on order, and we filched the delivery after that apple went bad. More will be coming.”

“All this is well and good,” said Tovey. “Yet we must also look to how we can augment the striking power of our carriers. At the moment it seems to be tit for tat. Our Swordfish may be a bit long in the teeth, but they still get hits, and we have the only torpedo bomber of note in that plane. The Germans have nothing comparable. That said, their seaborne variant of that damnable Stuka has been giving us fits. Those planes are largely responsible for a good bit of the damage that was put on our Battlecruiser Squadron. Our battleships have better deck armor, but even they won’t like 500 pound bombs careening down in the thick of a fight at sea. We must look to a similar design.”

“The Fulmar is being adapted as a fighter bomber,” said Fraser.

“Yes? Well I’m afraid it may not handle either role well enough to get the job done.”

“We’ll also have the Albacore to help out.”

“Another torpedo bomber by trade,” Tovey said quickly. “Yes, they’ve been fitting bombs to the wings, but it will simply not match what the Germans have in that Stuka.”

“Agreed,” said Pound. “We will do what we can on this matter, but tell me, Admiral, what about these naval rockets the Russians have? I understand that they can serve in a dual role, and strike both aircraft and ships. Is that so?”

“I witnessed as much,” said Tovey with a quiet thrum of anxiety. If he could tell Admiral Pound the full measure of what he had witnessed and now knew about the Russian ship… but no, that would be tantamount to talking of gremlins and leprechauns with the man. He was lucky Pound had found the backbone to admit his own meddling when fleet deployments had ended in disaster. Yet he knew there was no way he could disclose what he knew about the Russian ship, and the men who had come here from that impossibly distant future. He could still scarcely believe it himself.

“Well? What about these rockets then?” said Pound. “Might we have a look at similar development?”

“I’m afraid we have no real projects active in that regard,” said Fraser.

“The Russians clearly have them, and you seem rather cozy with them, Admiral Tovey. What about it? Might they share this technology with us?”

“Perhaps, sir, though from all I could learn of this ship, it is a prototype-one of a kind. It’s the only ship the Russians have using these weapons and, as far as I know, there are no similar land based variants.”

“That seems odd,” said Pound.

“I thought as much,” said Tovey, thinking he had to lead this discussion along another path soon. He knew the Russians had a limited inventory of their wonder weapons, and that back-engineering them would take considerable time and effort, if it could be done at all. They had told him the rockets had computing machines in the nose, and radar as well, to guide them unerringly to their targets. He knew that was beyond the capability of Great Britain for the moment, and perhaps any other nation on earth, so he wisely said nothing of this. “It could be these weapons take enormous resources to design and build,” he said. “The Russians may only have this handful allotted to that ship, and nothing more.”

“Well, you might ask about that,” said Pound. “If they are forthcoming, perhaps we could speed things along with their development.”

Tovey smiled inwardly at that, knowing it would be long decades, the better part of a century, before Britain would ever have such weapons, or so he had been told by the young Russian officer, Fedorov. “In the mean time, we should not count on this technology to come on line any time soon. We’ll have to do with good old fashioned guns and steel, and some better aircraft, as we’ve been discussing here.”

“Indeed,” said Pound. “Well, now gentlemen, what to do about this war. We’ve lost Gibraltar. Churchill wants our recommendation as to how soon we can get on with plans for the occupation of the Cape Verde and Canary Islands. I can report that the planned occupation of the Azores went off without a hitch. Operation Alloy has concluded, but we must move quickly. The Germans will have eyes for the remaining islands as well.”