July 1, 1940
France signed an armistice with Germany. All of the Atlantic Coast in a strip twenty miles deep along with the entire country north of the Loire at Orleans would be occupied by the Germans. They would also seize a strip of land forty miles from the pre-war German border including all of the Maginot forts. The Italians were given economic concessions in the south as well as the coastal town of Menton. The active and Series A divisions would be marched to German prisoner of war camps and agricultural labor regions.
The fleet was to be frozen in place for the next fifteen days unless there was a drastic and obvious possibility of loss.
July 2, 1940 London
Too many missions and not enough ships. That was a common enough complaint going back four hundred years for the Kings’ Admirals. Despite the historical support for their worries, the Royal Navy was stretched as invasion could be imminent as soon as the Germans re-organized their armies on the continent. Britain was at her most danger since Trafalgar. The campaign in Norway had smashed the German surface fleet but at a cost; one light cruiser was sunk as well as eight destroyers lost since April 10th. Dozens more ships had been damaged or run hard and needed yard time.
At the same time, the Mediterranean Fleet needed to be reinforced.
Ark Royal, Hood, Rodney and
Repulse all had departed Devonport for Gibraltar and points beyond. The Atlantic convoys were weakly protected as distance had been their primary guardian. U-boats and long range bombers would soon be based on the French Atlantic coast and beyond the major defensive lines that had bottled them up in the previous war.
Finally, light forces had to be kept close to destroy any potential invasion. There were no good choices, only a variety of bad choices with various consequences.
One of the first choices would be to eliminate the possibility of a threat from the remnants of the French Fleet.
Strasbourg and
Dunkerque were due to arrive in Martinique within a week.
Lorraine was still in dock at Alexandria while
Courbet and two dozen lesser warships were tied up in Portsmouth. They would be kept there. Once the battlecruisers were under American supervision, Operation Catapult would be initiated.
July 4, 1940 Canobie Lake Park, Salem New Hampshire
She leaned in against him, her body warm and willing as he squeezed her tight against him. They were forty feet over the midway the ski lift bench chair that traversed the entire park. Other young couples were eating peanuts, laughing at little jokes they told each other and drinking and playing games beneath them.
In his pocket rested a small ring, it was all he could afford as he had been saving all of his National Guard pay for the past four months. He would give Elaine his heart and his hope at the end of the night as the guys down at the Armory were telling him that the division would soon be mobilized and they would not allow mere privates to be married while in service.
Until then, Patrick held Elaine tight to him as the fireworks started to go off over the lake.
July 5, 1940 Martinique
The harbor was full.
Two battleships, two battle cruisers and four cruisers had arrived from the metropole. An American battleship,
USS Texas, along with a pair of cruisers were paying a port visit.
Normally one or two avisos would have been a full harbor. The American admiral was making arrangements for a routine rotation of fleet visits of lighter American vessels who needed tropical training. There was also talk about starting a supply route from New Orleans to the French colony for industrial supplies and naval stores as the ships came across the Atlantic with only what could be hurriedly loaded into their larders.
July 5, 1940 0800 Pelham, New Hampshire
She said yes, and then yes again, and again and again. Patrick Donohue was now a man and wedding plans had started to be made in the small cottage that a friend owned halfway between Salem and Lowell. Elaine was hoping for a January wedding, but Patrick wanted to act sooner, maybe by the end of the month.
July 8, 1940 1300 Malta
Four Gladiators landed. Five had scrambled to intercept the most recent Italian raid. The biplane fighters were outnumbered by the escorting Italian monoplanes and they had been jumped which evolved into a massive furball. Three of the pilots were claiming kills but no Italian wreckage was found on the island. One of the last bursts of machine gun fire caught the tail end Charlie’s pilot in the chest and he tipped over and crashed into the sea near a motor launch.
Twenty four bombers released their loads from 11,000 feet. Two fields east of the the primary fighter base were severely damaged. Few potatoes would be grown there any more. A string of bombs lit an empty hanger on fire. This was the third raid in seven days and the weight was increasing.
Thirty minutes after the bombers left the area, three seaplanes came in for a landing. They had flown a harrowing mission and laid a dozen mines at the tip of Calabria. None of them had ever been more than three hundred feet from the clear blue water of the middle sea. The mines had been laid, and they rested and waited until the fate of war, luck and statistics would determine their actions.
July 9, 1940 0800 Ramsgate
The motor yacht
Sundowner sailed past the the breakwater to resume her patrol a few miles off-shore. A few miles out to see a single destroyer shepherded a dozen coasters around the Kent promontory.
Sundowner had rescued half a dozen sailors from a motor trawler that the Germans machine gunned and sank earlier in the week.
In the port itself, most of the rapidly re-organizing 2nd Belgium Infantry Division was digging in and preparing defenses. 100,000 Belgian soldiers had evacuated. They were the ones who told their commanders that they did not want to surrender to the Germans. They were from elements of eight divisions. The ferries and the large hull merchant ships had been able to pull off enough heavy equipment to England to re-equip five brigades to their full authorization. Three brigades were digging in as a hard crust along the coast while the other two brigades had been given bicycles to form a mobile reserve a few miles away. The soldiers today were mainly filling sandbags to reinforce their gun pits. An engineering officer was consulting with a gang of laborers on the best way to create impromptu bunkers out of the houses that dominated street corners. The village was becoming a hard point.
As the
Sundowner started to bob in the open sea, the old master waved at the 47mm anti-tank and anti-boat section sandbagged at the end of the breakwater. His mission was simple. He needed to give these exiles enough warning to defend his home. That warning would be bought with his life but time had to be paid for somehow.
July 10, 1940 0600 off of Mers El Kebir
Captain Kirk had no reason to be on-board
HMS Hood He was the American naval attache to London. There was no good reason for him to be with a battle fleet in the Mediterranean. But here he was as his friend and colleague, Admiral Somerville had asked him to come. He was a warrior who could perhaps avoid war, a killer looking to not spill blood, a commander without a command but a man whose responsibility called to him. And most importantly, he was a friend to Commander Owenson who had followed the French Fleet to Africa right before the Armistice.
It was a far weaker fleet today than it was only three weeks ago. Two battleships with 13 inch guns and a squadron of destroyers was now the largest concentration. Another battleship was in Alexandria, and a fourth, the oldest and weakest of the lot was tied up in Plymouth. A spattering of cruisers were scattered around the Levant and North African littoral. It would be nice if they were off the board but not critical. Cruisers could be contained. It was the battle fleet that worried the Lords of the Admiralty.
A steward came by and took Captain Kirk’s coffee cup and collected Admiral Somerville’s tea cup. He disappeared as efficiently as the four battle wagons and two aircraft carriers of Force H moved through the sea. He looked across the tossing sea at
HMS Ark Royal. Eight Wildcats were on her deck, the US Navy was very happy with the performance of their new fighter in the hands of the Fleet Air Arm. One of the comments that the Brits had been making was the need for more machines. Norway was at the end of the German supply line and it was a secondary theatre. But even there, twelve or sixteen Wildcats were quickly committed to all missions. Operations in the Mediterranean would need more fighter protection as it was now a central theatre near Italian supply sources. More machines were needed but the question was how to get them aboard. Admiral Somerville came over and looked at his friend. He drew in his breath as a Swordfish took off from
Argus. It dipped and then barely recovered itself feet over the waves. The pilot struggled to get his craft airborne and start his anti-submarine patrol.
“Alan, I thought about what you said last night. You’re right, we should both go ashore. Civility and respect costs us little”
An hour later Force H rounded the headlands of Oran. Twenty minutes after that, the admirals’ barge departed
Hood. They had a message for the French commander and a set of choices.
The message had been worked and reworked and then reworded once again. The final text gave Admiral Gensoul, the commander of the heart of the French fleet numerous options, none of them good. Captain Kirk hoped that he could use the influence of the United States to achieve an outcome that would not be disastrous.
"It is impossible for us, your comrades up to now, to allow your fine ships to fall into the power of the German or Italian enemy. We are determined to fight on until the end, and if we win, as we think we shall, we shall never forget that France was our Ally, that our interests are the same as hers, and that our common enemy is Germany. Should we conquer we solemnly declare that we shall restore the greatness and territory of France. For this purpose we must make sure that the best ships of the French Navy are not used against us by the common foe. In these circumstances, His Majesty's Government have instructed me to demand that the French Fleet now at Mers el Kebir and Oran shall act in accordance with one of the following alternatives;
(a) If you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans or Italians unless these break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews to some French port in the West Indies such as Martinique - where they can be demilitarised and entrusted to the United States and remain safe until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated.
(b) Sail with reduced crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews would be repatriated at the earliest moment.
(c) sail with us and continue the fight until victory against the Germans and Italians.
If either of these courses is adopted by you we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war or pay full compensation if they are damaged meanwhile.
If you refuse these fair offers, I must with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within 6 hours.
Finally, failing the above, I have the orders from His Majesty's Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German or Italian hands."
The message was delivered. For the next hour, the small party of an admiral, two captains and an aide from Force H waited. They waited as the rest of Force H steamed within sight of the French coastal batteries. They waited as a flight of Curtis Hawks took off from the nearby airfield. They waited as Martlets intercepted the Hawks and both showed their claws without slashing each other. They waited as signals went back and forth between Oran and Toulon. They waited as signals were sent to London and replies were drafted before transmission. They waited.
Finally, Admiral Gensoul’s aide motioned for them to come into his chambers.
He was a proud man. He was at the top of his profession of arms. His brothers had fought and died in defense of his country. His navy had lost a battleship already and placed the pride of his fleet in hock to the Americans. His honor was being questioned by his allies or former allies.
He offered his interlopers a drink and they sipped in silence.
Finally, the silence broke.
“Captain Kirk, your Commander Owenson has promised that my men and ships will be treated well in Martinique. Can you confirm that as official American policy rather than the smooth words of an incubus?“
“Yes, the United States Navy guarantees that your forces will be treated with utmost respect and honor in these difficult times”
“Admiral Somerville, my ships are not yet ready for an oceanic voyage. We will depart on the morning tide of the 12th for Casablanca and then Martinique after we refuel. Will that be sufficient for your needs?”
“Yes, my friend, that will be more than sufficient”
Two hours later, the admiral’s barge was hauled up on
Hood and Force H turned north to disappear over the horizon. They did not steam too far as a Swordfish maintained a watch over the harbor entrance and the fast ships of the battle line could cut off any break-out but honor had been satisfied.
Throughout the Atlantic and Mediterranean, the French fleet had been neutralized.
Courbet had been seized in Plymouth,
Lorraine was in drydock in Alexandria. She would either stay there or go through Suez to anchor at Reunion. Only two squadrons of heavy cruisers and half a dozen light cruisers were not scooped up.
https://www.combinedops.com/mers el kabir.htm
July 12, 1940 0322 RAF High Wycombe
The air in the bunker was stale. A few men had left to get fresh air in between radio checks and phone calls from the air fields. Most of the men and the few young women who were moving the papers and thus the information that the hard men needed to make decisions had not left the headquarters since dinner. Cheap cigarette smoke filled the air as plotters moved wooden counters over a variety of maps and writers wrote in mirror script with grease pencils the status of the squadrons.
Tonight was a moderate effort for Bomber Command. Seventeen Whitleys from two squadrons were bombing the docks of Emdem. Three squadrons of Battles had been tasked to bomb the docks at Boulogne . The first squadron of Battles had dropped flares and pamphlets urging civilians to find cover. Then a steady spattering of bombers in one by one and occasionally in gaggles of two or three dropped their bombs. The engineers had done their best to wreck the port before the evacuation ended but the bombs would continue the job. Forty bombers were in the air tonight. If all went well, they would drop 50 tons of bombs on the Germans and claim a few ships, a few barges and give the crews some experience on fighting the only offensive war that Britain could wage right now.
By dawn, thirty six bombers were on the ground. One more was known to have been lost in the Channel, and its crew rescued by a motor gun boat. Opposition was light over Boulonge, a few light anti-aircraft guns while Emdem was well protected by heavy anti-aircraft guns, barrage balloons and smoke generators. Three bombers and eleven men were lost without a known cause.
The staff emptied out of the command center and headed for breakfast. They would eat and then they would read and then they would talk through the raid before ordering another round of attacks for the next night.
July 14, 1940 a village near Strasbourg
Anne Marie bit into the soft buttery bread lustily. Her family was around the table. Her older brother had been lucky. His division had demobilized several days before the Germans arrived to march the men east. The officers and sergeants stayed but the common riflemen were allowed to run. He had seen almost no combat. A flight of bombers dropped a string of bombs half a mile from his position, but the interval divisions of the Maginot Line had an easy war compared to the mobile forces. His was easier than most as his division held the southernmost portion on the line and abutted Switzerland.
The farm demanded all of the family’s effort. Wheat was growing well in the field and the dairy herd bellowed to be milked every morning. Normally, they would have hired a few Italian or Spanish farm hands but this year there were no migrants, there was no help and even in the villages, there were very few young men whose backs were strong. So the family worked hard. Anne Marie was up every morning a few hours before dawn to milk the cows as mamere prepared breakfast, more grains and vegetables now than meat as her father and brothers worked the fields. A milkman still came by every morning for the buckets of milk that he brought around the village and shipped into the half empty city of Strasbourg. Only the people who wanted to be Germans were in the city now, refugees had left months ago and few trickled back.
Today, in any other year, usually would have been a holiday but the German army made sure that everyone knew that today was just Sunday. The family had gone to Mass in the morning after the farm had been tended to and now they were enjoying their great meal of the week.
“So what do we do?” Anne Marie asked her family. Conversation stopped. Everyone deliberately put food into their mouths and waited for the pregnant silence to break. Her father, a veteran of Verdun, a soldier who fought with Premier Petain and held a high opinion of the man, put his knife and fork down after he finished chewing on his sausage. He looked at his adventurous, rebellious, beautiful and naive daughter with apprehension.
“Right now, we eat, and then we relax this afternoon. Tomorrow we’ll start working on putting in a potato and roots garden while I’ll talk to the butcher about slaughtering a few of our older cows. But beyond that, we’ll do nothing else. If you must do something, you should just watch to know how to avoid attracting attention Anna Marie. ” Her father’s pronouncement ended the conversation
As Anna Marie washed the dishes, she resolved to watch, to see, and then to speak in whispers to people who could act on her eyes.
July 19, 1940
The United States Congress passed the 2 Ocean Navy Act authorizing the expenditure of $8,500,000,000 for the expansion of the United States Navy over and above the expansion that was authorized and funded in June. The US Navy would be able to build 18 more fleet carriers, 7 more battleships and 33 cruisers of various sizes. It also contained funding for an additional fifteen squadrons of destroyers and three squadrons of long-range ocean escorts of a new design. Aircraft consummate with a fleet of this size including sufficient reserves and training establishment stocks were funded as well.
The Navy was split as to how they wanted to use the cruiser authorization. For several years there had been rumors of a super cruiser design in Japan with either six or eight 12-inch guns. The German Panzerschiffes were an interesting concept as well. The bill would allow for a US response.
The loss of
Graf Spee was being spun by advocates and opponents of a super cruiser design in diametrically opposed fashion. Advocates noted how many ships the British needed to hunt down a single fairly slow armored cruiser. In their view, hunting groups of three or four Treaty cruisers would be replaced by a single large cruiser, so the total tonnage and manpower devoted to a hunt would be far less even as the tonnage and manpower was more concentrated. Opponents noted that a large, over-gunned cruiser was overwhelmed by three lighter ships that were then available for three distinct missions. If there was a need for fast heavy gunships, the
Iowa design was available to be repeated at only slightly more cost and that ship could stand in the line of battle. The opponents could not find a unique mission or role that was not better filled by more traditional fleet elements.
BuShips was split.
The Navy decided to conduct a series of design and utilization studies on a wide variety of cruiser designs ranging from repeating
Baltimore, to enlarged
Baltimore with twelve 8-inch guns, to fresh designs with 11 or 12 inch guns in twin, triple or quad turrets, to true battle cruisers with two triple 16 inch turrets. A final decision on the large cruiser design direction would be made in the spring of 1941.
July 16,1940 Alexandria
Three battleships, an aircraft carrier, half a dozen cruisers and double that many destroyers were preparing to leave harbor. Nine merchant ship, including the recently impressed
Doric Star were waiting to be escorted to Malta. The fast convoy of three ships would run at thirteen knots while the slower convoy of six ships would run in at nine knots. After the merchant ships unloaded, they would all be taken back to Alexandria and accompanied by merchant ships that feared to leave port without an escort.
July 16,1940 Fort Stotsenburg, Philippines
“Enough”
A hand slammed down on the desk. The room went silent. A half dozen squabbles and one fight that had yet to happen froze in place as the quartermaster general for the entire Philippines garrison. Brigadier General Drake looked at his senior leadership quarreling like little boys fighting over a new bag of marbles with a mix of amusement and disgust.
The past year had been an unusual year for the Philippines Department. Typically, this was the last place where supplies landed as officers knew that they were not destined for great things when they received their orders to report to San Francisco for transport to Manila. But in the past year, the division had been brought to full strength, a new cadre of Philippine Scouts had been raised and they were in the field.
It was an odd week when there was not at least a battalion in the bushes or on a range. The quality of the battalions was increasing rapidly as American officers cycled in and out of these units with a ferocious rapidity. One draft of eighty new officers had arrived in early January to replace the best officers who had been pulled back to the States mid-tour. Since then, new drafts arrived and even more officers were being sent home with a promotion and a new command. The officers were raw, but the men were becoming quite proficient in the field.
If he was an infantry officer or an artilleryman, this would be a source of pride. However, he was a quartermaster. The supply situation on the islands was becoming difficult. The War Department had ordered over the objections of General MacArthur, routine live fire training from the rifle men up to the field artillery. That used up shells and stockpiles and spare parts at a prodigious rate. They had used five years’ worth of training ammunition in the last six months. More importantly, they had discovered that the ammunition that they did have on hand was unreliable and ineffective. He and his men needed to find more ammunition and more of everything.
“Yes, I agree that we need everything. We need rifles, we need machine guns, we need artillery shells, we need land mines, we need anti-aircraft guns, we need lubrication oils, we need lathes, we need oil filters, we need boots, we need uniforms, we need Vaseline, we need salmon, we need bread. We want everything. Our job is to prioritize between wants and needs.
In the infinite wisdom of Congress, the President and the War Department, there is now money available for us to spend to bolster the capabilities of the Philippine Army. This means anything we buy with the new money must support their capabilities. If the item can also be used by US Army forces that is all well and good, but this is not a pool of uncommitted funds. We must be wise stewards of these funds and find ways to maximize the combat effectiveness this infusion will purchase for us.
We will assume that ammunition and other consumables will be funded by regular Army appropriations. Your mission is to find ways to sustain a rapidly mobilized army in the field for as long as possible. So that means we will not be requesting new coastal defense artillery. We will not be requesting the purchase of a new pursuit group. We will not be requesting a destroyer division for the Philippine Army Offshore Patrol. Think smaller and think more creatively.
Gentlemen, I want an initial plan on my desk by the end of next week.”
With that, the room transitioned back into an uproar.
July 17, 1940 Central Mediterranean
Sixty nine Italian bombers had successfully dropped on the fleet over the course of the afternoon. The three Gladiators, the only carrier capable fighters in the Eastern Mediterranean claimed a single kill and the heavy anti-aircraft guns of the battleships and cruisers claimed two more. Thankfully, the Italians had neither mastered the lesson of mass nor the art of dive bombing. The attack was from 12,000 feet and the level bombers attempted to shotgun the battleships.
Malaya took minor damage from a light bomb that exploded thirty yards from her bow.
Gloucester was drenched by a stack of bombs that missed her by half a football pitch. Freshly repaired
Neptune was damaged yet again as a bomb exploded between her B turret and the bridge. Twenty seven men died instantly, another sixty were wounded. She left under her own power with a single destroyer as her guide back to Alexandria. Darkness provided cover as the merchant ships and their close escort continued onto Malta.
Admiral Cunningham had been told by the Admiralty that a major Italian force was at sea so he took his three battleships,
Eagle, and five cruisers north to hunt for the enemy and closely engage them. He intended to place his force between the Italian base at Taranto and the direct sea route to Benghazi. He intended to catch them coming or going.
July 18, 1940 0930 Off of Dover
The destroyer twisted and turned. Funnels of fire erupted from her machine guns. Her single pom-pom flung steel upwards. The German dive bombers were not deterred in their first major thrust across the Channel since the evacuations that they could not prevent. They had claimed a battleship and now they were claiming half a dozen barges. RAF Spitfires were furiously turning and clawing at the escorting Messerschmidts while a squadron of Hurricanes ripped through the second squadron before they dove on HMS
Venetia.
Her defenses were not enough. As the last dive bomber pulled up and raced for home four hundred feet over the waves, her bow was broken and her bridge was on fire from the three hits she had taken. Some men had been able to scramble over the sides of the ship and into the waters of the Channel but not many as her aft magazine exploded when the last Stuka was eight miles away from her sudden grave.
The Battle of Britain had begun.
July 18, 1940 1300 off of Calabria
The cruisers had stormed into each other and then backed off, throwing shells out of guns elevated at forty and fifty degrees. They danced between water spouts and shook as metallic hail pinged across their decks. Radios were blaring their location and more importantly the location of their enemies. They were fighting, they were willing to die and deal death to their enemies but neither the Italian nor British cruisers were the main event. They were a necessary preliminary as the battle wagons converged.
Warspite plowed through the seas at twenty three knots while her unmodernized sister,
Malaya trailed behind her as she strained to make twenty knots. Behind her
Royal Sovereign tried to clear eighteen knots. She would hold that speed for a few minutes and then ease back to seventeen knots. As the cruisers spat shells at each other, the supporting battleships closed.
Three Swordfish from
Eagle circled the battleship. One biplane spotter per battleship and they talked to confirm their communication. The observers could see the battle spread out beneath them. A cruiser action had started when the six inch gun cruisers of the Royal Navy had crossed the T of a heavy cruiser division. The first three minutes of heavy fire had scored a pair of hits on the lead Italian cruiser before they were able to turn and present their broadside. Since then both squadrons had been content to hold the range open to seventeen to nineteen thousand yards with the hope of a lucky hit crippling a single opponent. But off to the south, three battleships were converging on the Italian cruiser course. Two were old veterans of the First World War, under-armed and armored but fast as the battlecruisers of Doggers Bank. It was the last ship that was the greatest threat,
Littorio was coming to the engagement.
Nine Swordfish bore in on the most dangerous threat. 37mm cannons spat out defiantly at the low and slow torpedo bombers that had to ride through the Balaclavan valley of flames. First one, then another and a third torpedo bomber hit the water before they could launch. Six planes pressed closer. As they came to within thirteen hundred yards, the squadron leader’s craft nosed down into the water as a 37mm shell pierced the engine and then his torso. Five torpedoes entered the water. One hit just forward of the bridge, barely slowing the battleship as most of the warhead’s power was dissipated by the torpedo defense system. The other four missed.
Warspite continued to speed ahead of support. She turned when her fire control shack said the range to the closest battleship was twenty eight thousand yards. All four turrets shifted slightly and the forward two erupted as the first ranging salvo reached for
Giulio Cesar. They missed but not by much. The second half salvo from the rear turrets were again misses, slightly short and forward.
By the time the second full broadside had been fired,
Giulio Cesar returned fire. Her shells were short but on azimuth. They traded salvos for four minutes without success when
Littorio turned and began to close the range on
Royal Sovereign and
Malaya. As the new, freshly worked up battleship trained her 15 inch guns on
Malaya,
Warspite scored her first hit. An armored piercing shell went through
Giulio Cesar’s armored deck and exploded near the forward engine room. Two boilers had their flames extinguished and the light battleship slowed to nineteen knots.
Warspite could not move in for the kill as her sisters were endangered. 100 foot shell splashes coated the veteran of Jutland’s decks.
Malaya fired at
Littorio when the Italian behemoth had closed to twenty seven thousand yards. Her guns roared back at the extreme edge of their range, her shells falling short by a mile. As
Warspite turned and closed, her rear turrets peppered
Giulio Cesar with near misses. Her forward guns paused for a moment and then a minute and then two more as
Malaya dodged the heavy fire that targeted her.
Warspite roared. Four 1,938 pound shells arced skyward towards
Littorio. As they arced,
Malaya shuddered. An Italian shell hit her deck forward of the turrets. It exploded three decks deep and Malaya shook as smoke came through her deck.
Littorio could not pursue her kill.
Warspite first salvo missed. However the miss was near enough as the shells landed in a tight circle two hundred yards in front of the battleship. She had already taken a torpedo and
Warspite’s guns could penetrate her deck from long range.
As she turned and presented her strength to
Warspite, another two salvos landed near
Malaya. Eighteen shells landed and three straddled but most went long.
Warspite’s batteries were firing rapidly at
Littorio to no avail as her enemy opened the range. Pursuit was not pursued for both the pragmatic reason that
Littorio had far more speed to flee than
Warspite had to chase and her sisters were too weak and vulnerable to
Littorio.
Gulio Cesar edged west behind the shadow of protection offered by her more modern sister.
Instead,
Royal Sovereign and
Malaya formed up on
Warspite and they pushed north to support the cruisers in action. As their heavy guns began to begin the process of ranging in on the Italian heavy cruisers, Italian destroyers laid down a thick smoke screen and the cruisers turned away. Two heavy cruisers had suffered moderate damage as
Glouscester had an excellent string of salvos that placed half a dozen six inch shells into
Trento while
Liverpool opened up the rear of
Zara with a pair of hits.
Orion’s boats were smashed after an eight inch shell destroyed one of her anti-aircraft guns.
The two fleets prodded at each other for the next twenty minutes before the Italians turned to the northwest and declined to continue the action into the evening.
July 20, 1940 over Kent
Robert Smith looked up at the sky. A string of contrails showed the course of a massive air battle going on over his head. He dreamed of being a pilot, he dreamed of defending his home in the cockpit of a Spitfire. He dreamed of being anywhere other than sixty feet from a small bridge that crossed a stream with a shovel in his hand. His class, thirty five fifteen and sixteen year old boys who normally would have been on holiday at the shore had been called back to school by their headmaster three weeks previously. They were being volunteered to assist the army in digging a set of stop lines between the coast and the Thames. So the boys dug in the morning, stopped for tea and then dug again throughout the afternoon. On good days, someone would throw a ball onto a field for an hour of cricket for the boys who still had some energy after digging all day.
“Bobby -- stop dreaming, and keep digging.” He looked down and placed his foot against the shovel and dug into the chalky earth. The anti-tank position was coming together far better now that he and his class had experience in digging in correctly. He dreamed of never needing to dig again as the steady rhythm of shovels lifted by boys who believed that they were young men establish a rhythm to beat the sheer boredom of a long afternoon away.
July 20, 1940 Alexandria
Neptune was already in the floating dry dock. She would be there for another week before her repairs were completed.
Orion would be repaired along the pier while
Malaya waited for the dry dock to be emptied before allowing the engineers and ship fitters to remove her from the water to inspect her hull and repair any unobserved damage from the action. The fleet had returned from the indecisive clash that morning. Admiral Cunningham was disappointed. He had equal numbers and thus should have had superiority over the Italian fleet but he really was outnumbered as only
Warspite was a first class unit.
Eagle was useless as her fighter complement was down to two biplanes this morning as one piston ring broke and the engine needed to be replaced from Fleet stores. A long cable had been sent to the Admiralty requesting reinforcements of modern units including more heavy cruisers and at least one fast fleet carrier, preferably two, both with Martlet squadrons aboard.
July 27, 1940 1117 In the North Atlantic
HMS Whitley heaved as another pattern of depth charges exploded one hundred feet beneath her and two hundred feet behind her. This was the third attack run. Her ASDIC operators thought they had a firm lock on a U-boat. The captain had been maneuvering hard to keep the beams on the target for as long as possible until the attack run had to be committed to. So far there was no indication of damage. No strange noises, no bubbles, no oil slicks. The old destroyer turned over and slowed for a moment as the active ASDIC beams searched for the predator that they were hunting.
There he was again. Another run would start soon. The ships in convoy OB-188 continued past the U-boat.
Nine hours later, the destroyer turned and accelerated to rejoin the convoy at twenty four knots. She was down to only eight depth charges. The U-boat had been driven down although the captain wanted to claim the kill, there was no evidence. A Coastal Command bomber had arrived an hour ago and would circle the contact datum until the light failed.
Eighty miles to the rear of the convoy,
U-34 waited until the screws of the persistent British escort could no longer be heard. He waited some more until the darkness settled in. His captain looked through the periscope and saw nothing in the darkening skies. He brought her to the surface and all hatches opened up to refresh the stale, putrid, fetid air that is generated by fifty men breathing in fear for a day. Within minutes, the diesel engines were recharging the batteries that had been drawn down to emergency levels as the submarine had to sprint, twist and turn all day to avoid the determined destroyer. A radio message was sent on to Kiel to report the convoy that had gotten away.
July 28, 1940 Norfolk, Virginia
Two battleships, the aircraft carrier
Wasp, four cruisers and nine destroyers left harbor to escort sixteen British merchant ships to Halifax. These ships were officially carrying “scrap metal”. Unofficially, they were carrying 900 75mm field pieces, 120 155mm guns, 200 37mm anti-aircraft guns, 120 37mm anti-tank guns, one hundred and twenty thousand rifles, three thousand machine guns and 15 million rounds of .30-06 ammunition. This was the first round of supplies to re-equip British formations that were expecting an invasion attempt from conquered France.
There were plans in the work to send “scrapped” Twin Wasp engines, “scrapped” motor launches, and even “scrapped” advanced trainer aircraft. So far the lawyers had not able to not laugh when someone suggested selling
Arkansas as scrap to the Royal Navy so she was safely part of the fleet for another week.