© Max Lamirande, 2025

Published by Max Lamirande

Edited by Eric Roser

© 2025 Saguenay, Quebec, Canada

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or modified in any form, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover image copyrights:

Alamy - 2A2C81N

Invoice number for license: IY05369741

shutterstock_62904190

Order number: CS-0DF03-8251

PROLOGUE

Over the Channel

What the hell is that thing, August 4th, 1943

The flight of American Flying Fortresses (Boeing B-17s) and British Avro Lancasters, commonly known as the Lancaster Bombers, droned above the blue waters of the English Channel on their way to the German-occupied harbor of Cherbourg. The Allied great host included over two hundred bombers, escorted by a cloud of fighters circling them (over three hundred).

From a distance, they looked like a bunch of small black flies to the men manning the aerial defenses of the French harbor. Over the last year and throughout 1941, the Reich had built naval fortifications and formidable air defenses because of the recurring Allied attacks on Cherbourg. Both planes and ships were being attacked at regular intervals.

Their mission was simple. Wreck the port installations to sink as many landing barges as possible and ships assembled in the harbor. Times were desperate for the Allied powers. The Axis forces were assembling troops and ships for the last part of their renewed Sealion Operation against the United Kingdom. The fighting since 1939 had been heavy everywhere in Europe, first in Poland, then in France, then over England (39-40). It then moved to the Middle East and Africa, where heavy battles were fought, with the Axis forces ultimately being victorious across the board.

The rampaging Germano-Soviet forces had been numerous and powerful and eventually swamped the brave forces of the French, Americans, and British, sending them into the sea or toward the heart of the African continent, both in Morocco and Egypt, or else France and the Middle East.

Now, a little over a year later, the Axis forces were poised to finish the fight for Europe by launching an invasion of the British Home Islands. Both sides had produced new weapons and a lot of troops, planes and ships for the final confrontation for the fate of Europe.

The Axis was all-powerful on land as it occupied a good part of Eurasia (except for India, China, and Southeast Asia) and the Middle East. In the same vein, the Allies ruled the waves with their dozens of battleships and aircraft carriers. The matter remained to be decided in the air as both sides were involved in history's biggest aerial slugfest over the British skies.

With both sides' main industrial capability intact (Allies with the USA and the Germano-Soviets in Europe), they produced planes by the thousands and troops to match them as well.

The current situation across the Channel was that the Anglo-Americans needed to try and disrupt the Germano-Soviet preparations as much as possible in order to postpone or else defeat the landing the Axis were so obviously preparing for Southern England.

(…) XIX RAF Squadron (…)

Giles Hayes, a British Ace Pilot of the Royal Air Force, adjusted the last little details on the controls of his Mark IX Spitfire fighter, the newest addition to the English air arsenal. The arrival of the excellent and very fast German Focke-Wulf 190 (mid-1942) fighter had forced the Royal Air Force and Supermarine, the company making the Spitfire, to adjust the frame and the engines on the mainstay fighter for the defense of the UK skies.

The plane was much the same in terms of weapons and maneuverability, but it had a new, much more powerful engine equipped with a two-stage supercharged Merlin 61 engine. The machine did better at higher altitudes and gave a chance to imperial pilots to either outrun the 190s or else catch them.

Before him appeared the outline of the German-occupied French coastline across the Channel. Seeing the coastline was sure to bring a feeling akin to an announcement of ominous dread for many Allied pilots, so Giles braced for what was to come. Without a fault or mishaps, he was certain the damned Germano-Soviets were flying to intercept them. Detecting incoming airstrikes had become routine work for both sides as radar technology was now well-developed. Both sides had a bunch of stations scattered at regular intervals on their respective coastlines. Apart from individual planes flying low below radar coverage, no incoming air strikes could approach undetected anymore.

Giles looked left and then right, seeing more Spitfire IXs but also U.S. Grumman F6F Hellcats (carrier-based) and land-based Vought Corsairs. Watching the great host with a look around his canopy, he found comfort in their numbers. The enemy had similar strength, but he knew they had a chance. In the middle of their formation stood the Lancasters and B-17s, laden with the bombs that would wreak havoc on Cherbourg.

The harbor was one of the main enemy ship concentration areas for what the Allied high command believed would soon be a general assault on the United Kingdom. Giles didn’t know why, but the slow droning of his Merlin engine and the pre-battle silence made him think of the circumstances that brought him near Cherbourg on that day in August 1943. Giles had been part of the 1st RAF Mediterranean Squadron based on Marnia Airfield in Northern Morocco and, as such, had fought the Axis during the long, grueling, and ultimately unsuccessful defense of French North Africa. Then, he was ordered to fly to an airfield on La Palma in the Canary Islands, but this wasn’t his last stop; the archipelago near the Axis-occupied African coast was evacuated at the end of 1942 for the Allies to move forces back to the Azores and the United Kingdom, where the real fighting had shifted.

The overall situation wasn’t stellar for the Allied powers, with the Axis reigning supreme on land in Europe and North Africa. There was nothing they could do to stop Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin for now, as they had too many ground troops, and their war machine produced enormous quantities of war materials. America was doing a stellar job of building up the strength to win back all the lost ground, but for the moment, the enemy still had the strategic initiative.

“Gents,” said Squadron commander Malan, as his voice crackled over the radio. “It will soon be time to earn our pay. Remember to stay close to the bomber. Your job is not to go gallivanting and chasing Axis fighters, although it is to kill them, anyway. Protect our cares.”

“Here they come,” said another officer, this one American and with a heavy Southern USA accent. Giles squinted his eyes and focused in the distance, trying to find the unavoidable black dots the Yankee announcement entailed. It was hard to distinguish flying objects from that distance, with the blue sky, the water, and the dark coastline.

And then he saw them. A large flight of enemy aircraft came at them from roughly the same altitude. Within another minute, tracers started to fill the sky as the most nervous and greenest of pilots on both sides started to fire from long range. A common error of the newest ones was almost always to fire too early, regardless of what they’d been told during their training. Giles spotted one of those nervous youngsters and pulled the Spitfire control stick, his plane responding with a surge in power and climbing in altitude.

Almost instantly, the radio flared to life with men yelling about this or that, to come to their help or just to yell. Malan reminded them to keep the air waves clear and to communicate only for good reason, but it was to no avail. Once the battle was joined, the commander had no control over what his men did in their own cockpits.

The enemy pilot that he’d chosen for his first dance of the day was at the helm of a Focke-Wulf 190 fighter, a very dangerous machine for the Allies. Nicknamed Würger (Shrike), the thing was one hell of a daunting prospect in a dogfight. Appearing in the sky in the middle of 1942, the newest fighter in the Reich arsenal was fast becoming the backbone of the Jagdwaffe (Fighter Force) of the Luftwaffe, flying side by side with the multitude but slower and less performant BF-109s. While super-fast, the enemy fighter was also well-armed, with two 13mm MG 131 machine guns and four 20 mm E cannons on each wing, much like Hayes’ own Spitfire.

All around him and the other fighters, the Anglo-American bombers shelled their enemies with hundreds of machine gunners on the side, top, and rear of the B-17s and Lancasters' fuselages. The sky soon lit up like a Christmas tree, and the first planes started to get hit. It didn’t take much longer for several of them to start falling down, spiral out of control, and burst on fire.

Giles masterfully turned on his opponent, coming up behind his tail as the youngster pilot got busy making a pass over a flying fortress and riddling it with his 20mm cannons. The Spitfire burst out with 20mm and machine gun fire, blazing its tracers at the Focke-Wulf 190.

(…) Jäger Squadron One (…)

"This is not a step forward; this is a leap!"

Generalleutnant Adolf Galland, after flying the Me-262 on 22 May 1943

German ace pilot Gunther Rall smiled as Jäger Squadron One (Hunter Squadron 1) commander Adolf Galland’s words sizzled over the radio waves. He felt the elation of the new power he piloted over, the engine of the Reich’s newest toy humming across the frame like a fine musical tune. The jet engine was like listening to a roaring animal, and it was a hell of a lot more exhilarating than the droning of a propeller-driven plane.

“Remember, now, men,” said Galland. “We make our pass and fire only at the bombers.» Ignore the fighters, as they should not be able to catch you in any case because of your speed.” “Jawol,” said everyone over the twenty-man squadron. The unit was still small because the Reich was still producing the new fighter in small numbers. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be deadly.

Rall pushed on his plane’s stick, and the engine rumbled to life even more, like a roaring lion, and the jet fighter answered in kind with a speed that continued to amaze him even if he’d flown the thing many times before during their training in June and July of 1943.

With blinding speed, he swooped down on the large B-17, seemingly looking like it was just standing still in mid-air, as such was the speed difference, and he unloaded a burst of his four powerful 30 mm MK 108 cannons.

(…) XIX RAF Squadron (…)

“What the hell is that,” yelled the American bomber machine gunner to his mates as they saw something unbelievably fast swoop down on one of their comrades and riddle it with explosive shells. The hits slammed in succession on the top of the B-17’s fuselage, scattering debris and immediately hurting the big American aircraft. “What the hell was that,” repeated the man, soon imitated by most of the gunners who saw the thing blaze by.

Giles Haye’s initial reaction when he saw the weird-shaped plane with no propeller was that his own Spitfire seemed to stand still. However, his experience only made him hesitate for a fraction of a second, and he followed the enemy aircraft into its dive, figuring that at one point, it would have to level off and lose speed.

He swooped down in the thing’s wake, expecting to close the distance within moments, but then it happened; the weird fighter suddenly picked up speed and easily gained distance away from Giles. The British ace opened his throttle to the maximum while the German aircraft lifted and climbed with what seemed an impossible speed until he lost his sight of it in the blinding light of the sun’s glare. Giles rubbed his eyes, not believing what he saw, and then he watched as another enemy aircraft swooped down and leveled, easily outpacing a Vought Corsair like it was just standing still.

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, and he was overtaken in this by his friend Paul Stevenson. “That can't be a prop job; it's got

to be one of those jet things we have been hearing about.” Jet engines were not something out of science fiction and most pilots knew it was possible and that some were under development. But Giles had never thought he would see them in the sky so early in the war or even in his lifetime.

“And here they come again,” said Squadron Commander Malan, seeing the German fighters swooping high in altitude in an instant, only to drop back toward more of the bombers. It was like watching a movie in slow motion. The first pass by the impossibly fast fighters had downed seven bombers, and it seemed several more were damaged.

And thus, the Allies had their first encounter with the amazing and revolutionary Messerschmitt Me 262 1A Schwalbe. The German jet achieved speeds of over 530 miles per hour while the Spitfire's top speed was around 448 miles per hour, the Vought 400 miles per hour, and the F6F Hellcat achieved 417 mph.

The bombers were thus excruciatingly slow that day and were subjected to one hell of a killing. Added with the FW-190s who took their own toll, well over ninety-two bombers were downed or heavily damaged that day, and the raid on Cherbourg was called off.

Summer Palace, Kunming

Office of General Stilwell, Nationalist China, August 1st, 1943

The meeting between Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, the head of the Chinese Nationalist Government of China, and U.S. General Stilwell, the commander-in-chief of all Chinese forces, was held in the American officer’s lavish office in Generalissimo Shek’s official government building, the Summer Palace.

The place had a history, all right, and was over three hundred years old. Built in 1750 by a Qing emperor, the Summer Palace sat on an island in the middle of Kunming Lake. It was built in traditional Chinese style and harbored a large fortified and intricately decorated tower at its center.

General Joseph Stilwell, known as “Vinegar Joe” by many people because of his irate temper, had been a military attaché in China for years in the 1930s when Chiang Kai-Shek named him in command of his forces in 1939.

The office of the General sported an intricate (but dusty) tapestry, Chinese symbols carved on the wall, and a green-tiled floor. The Chinese leader seemed to have grown bored of Stilwell’s presentation as he sat down in one of the room’s plush chairs.

Stilwell sat at his desk, facing mounds of papers and reports. The Chiang Kai-Shek government, known as the Nationalists, was in danger. But he’d been able to organize a sort of defense in the middle of China. The ground in the area was rugged, and he had been able to amass enough firepower to make something work.

While the danger no longer came from the expanding and rampaging Japanese, with whom the Nationalists had made peace in 1940 following the war between Japan and the USSR, it was still very alive. China was divided into two parts, with the northern and western parts dominated by the Chinese Communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong, their fearless and terrible leader.

The bitter civil war between the two sides (Communist Vs. Nationalist) had not really stopped even in the face of a major Japanese invasion. Now that the USSR reigned supreme over all of the Japanese dominions, it had started to heavily support Mao’s forces with weapons, materials, and supplies. There were even reports of Soviet troops involved in fighting Nationalist forces at the border with Russian-occupied Manchuria in the northeast of the country. By 1943, Japan was done evacuating most of its formerly occupied territories. In China, the void they’d left was not always filled with Chiang’s troops. In many instances, especially in the Liaodong Peninsula, Shanghai, and other Pacific coast towns, Mao’s men had taken control of the cities.

“So, as I was showing you, Your Excellency,” the General continued while pointing at a map on a wooden stool beside the table, “the 5th and 6th Armies are fighting a losing battle, and we need to send them reinforcements. The Chinese 15th Army is too strong, and we need more men.” Stilwell stopped for a moment since Chiang was about to talk in his high-pitched voice. The man was not interested in what his American officer had to tell him; that much was obvious. Stilwell knew the man by now. When he yawned and looked everywhere but at him, it meant that his attention was elsewhere or that he was displeased.

“General Stilwell,” started Chiang Kai-shek in a bored voice. The Chinese Generalissimo tolerated the American officers mainly because as long as Stillwell was in charge, the Americans and the British would keep sending him aid. “We’ve been over this before. You asked me for the 5th and the 6th, and I gave them to you. This directly resulted in the loss of territory in Western China to Mao’s forces. Now, you want me to leave other areas open to invasion.” The man paused to stand up. He walked to the stool, putting his hands behind his back, and pretended to take time to look at the military situation on the map. “What I see here is that you are doing just fine.”

Stilwell, who wasn’t known for his nice temper (his nickname was Vinegar Joe, after all), couldn’t hold it anymore. “Your Excellency… You do understand that controlling territory is not as important as defeating the enemy army?” His answer was more of a question—an arrogant one at that. “Furthermore, you do understand that this enemy attack is aimed at our only functioning industrial area, Kunming. Need I remind you that this is where you are sitting right now and that the city is your capital?” The Generalissimo wasn’t used to being talked to in this way. He turned an angry stare at the American. “You should watch your tongue, General. People in China tend to have problems when they are not on my good side.”

Stilwell also stood up to face the Chinese leader. He was at least a foot taller than the Asian man. “Why don’t you go ahead, Your Excellency, and get rid of me? We’ll see what the U.S. government thinks about that and how you fare without me AND without your capital city.”

Shek was taken aback by the American’s answer but was not surprised. The man was an asshole, in his opinion. He took a deep breath before answering. “You are very lucky that I need you, General Stilwell. I wouldn't say I like your approach. I do not like to leave territories to the Communists.” He turned around and decided to leave the room. He opened the door, but before he went through, he turned around. “You have permission to move the 17th and 21st Armies back to the capital. But do not think that I will soon forget this, General.”

And then the Generalissimo left the room, leaving Stilwell alone with his maps. The American officer smiled. He knew how to rattle the bastard and get what he needed. Stillwell sat back down and wrote some notes on the report he was about to send to General Douglas MacArthur in Tokyo. Before this was over the Allies would need the Chinese to intervene and attack the Russians in the back.

The overall plan was to get China fully involved in the war against the Axis powers. Chiang Kai-Shek was not interested in fighting anyone other than the Communists and reuniting his country, and he couldn’t see that he was next on the list. Of course, the Soviets would fall upon him when they were done with the Japs, perhaps even earlier.

Allied troops were assembling in Northern Burma to cross the mountains through the Burma Road, a supply route constructed in the late 1930s to help the Chinese be supplied against the Japs. Now that the Nippon wasn’t an enemy anymore, it could still be used to move supplies and, in the near future, troops. MacArthur’s plan was to launch a powerful counteroffensive through the middle of China toward Manchuria to distract the enemy from its soon-to-happen invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.

Twenty Indian Army divisions were being quietly assembled in Burma, along with two Japanese corps (six divisions) and a couple of U.S. Army armored divisions. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and a few diplomats were expected soon in Kunming to negotiate the entry of China into the war as a full ally. Chiang expected the Americans to come and offer more aid, but instead, it would be he who was going to be under pressure to join the alliance. Anyway, thought Stilwell with an evil smile, he wouldn’t give the bastard a chance to refuse by entangling his forces so thoroughly with the Communists that the only way out would be to call for help.

Flashback 1942

Raid on Aden and Battle of the Gulf, November 1942

After the twin disasters in Egypt and the storming of the Aden Naval base, the British Navy’s Indian Ocean Squadron was forced to rebase to a new location. Mogadishu, in the British Somaliland, was briefly used and also considered for long-term rebasing, but it was decided to make the new base far out of reach of Axis land forces. After all, the Germano-Soviet troops of Erwin Rommel were in the Sudan and attacking the base from there or Aden with aircraft. Furthermore, the Somali city’s situation was much the same as Aden. If the Axis decided they wanted to take it, they could. With the capture of Egypt and for unknown reasons to the Allies, the Axis had not been very aggressive in moving southward into the heart of Africa, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t if the British fleet provided them with a tempting target.

Mauritius, east of Madagascar, was also looked at for a time but considered too far away from the Indian coast (2600 nautical miles) to do anything about an Axis raid on the Indian western coastline. Thus, the decision was taken to rebase Admiral James Somerville’s fleet at the southernmost atoll of the Maldive Islands, a place called Addu. The base was built in 1939-1940 at the height of tensions between Japan and the Western Allies and before Tokyo was at war with the Soviets. The idea of the base was to have a functioning military port totally out of reach of the Imperial Navy.

Port T, as the base was called, was consequently built in total secrecy and remained unknown to the Axis fleet or intelligence apparatus like the Abwehr. Addu was as remote as they got, and thus, Somerville and his battleships could sail to and from there in peace and without fear of being spotted by planes and only by miracle by an enemy sub.

After the bold and epic Germano-Soviet fleet of Admiral Otto Cilliax’s breakout into the Atlantic and arrival in the Mediterranean Ocean, the Axis forces possessed a very strong fleet with which to cause a world of trouble to the Allied sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. Cilliax commanded (after a few months of repairs in Italian drydocks following the damage his escape from the North Sea cost him) three dreadnought battleships (sisterships Bismarck and Tirpitz plus the Soviet battleship Marat), one battlecruiser (the Gneisenau), one old pre-dreadnought battleship (Schleswig-Holstein) a few support ships and an aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin.

The willy German admiral was thus in a position to sail out and cause a world of trouble in the Indian Ocean. A strong British task force was thus assembled to face the threat, including several ships already either in the East or in Mogadishu (Battleships Valiant and Malaya) and also of new builds (carriers Hermes, Colossus, and Glory), plus several cruisers and destroyers.

With Aden and the Gulf near it (all under the control of the Axis), Cilliax moved his ships to the former major British base and started to execute raids south on the Allied sea lanes, creating a hell of a mayhem for the British, who relied heavily on their Indian resources to continue prosecuting the war.

(…) The British Fleet sails (…)

Something thus had to be done about the pesky Germano-Soviet raiders, and Somerville received orders to move in and confront Cilliax and show him the folly of basing a fleet in the Gulf Aden. By November 1942, the Royal Navy had assembled a mighty fleet under the British admiral’s command, with two dreadnought battleships (Malaya and Valiant), three aircraft carriers (Hermes, Colossus, and Glory), four heavy cruisers (Coventry, Calcutta, Cumberland and Kent) seven light cruisers and eighteen destroyers.

The British Indian Ocean Squadron thus sailed out of Addu on the 17th of November 1942, with everything it had, and headed for the Gulf of Aden. Meanwhile, Cilliax attacked and sank a small four-freighter convoy on the 18th.

A few days later (the 20th), the British fleet sailed a hundred nautical miles north of the Island of Socotra at the Gulf’s entrance, where it was detected by a flight of Arado Ar 196 floatplanes from the battleship Tirpitz, as Cilliax returned from his convoy raid, with high morale since his crews had sunk some good Allied ships. The two Bismarck-class warships each had four of them for aerial detection when at sea.  This feeling of good spirits was muted somewhat by his Soviet counterpart having to return to Aden early with problems developing in their main engines which dated back to the days of the Czar and the First World War. 

(…) Bridge of battleship Tirpitz (…)

German Admiral Otto Cilliax was a superstitious man, and that was why he’d kept his flag on the ship that brought him unscathed to the Mediterranean following his epic journey through the northern reaches of the Atlantic, Baffin Bay, and the Davis Strait. He was slowly sipping on his tea and enjoying the view. From his position, he could see the powerful and daunting Bismarck, the battlecruiser Gneisenau, and his lone aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin. The raid against the small enemy convoy had gone well and not a lost man nor any damage was inflicted on his ships. The Allies didn’t have a lot of aircraft in the region, and thus, things were not too risky for him.

This was why he was so surprised by his lookout officer, who suddenly said that his men outside had spotted a couple of single-engine fighters. “Sir, two planes detected coming our way from the East!” Not certain he’d heard properly, Cilliax repeated the last few words of the man. “From the East?” “Indeed, Sir.” A few seconds later, the sailor manning the radio set spoke up. “Admiral, one of Bismarck’s floatplanes has spotted a large enemy fleet coming our way.” Cilliax walked toward the man, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Heading?” “Due west, Sir, putting the fleet on an intercept course with us.” The radioman stopped to put his right hand on his headset to hear the rest of the message. “Sir, the pilot says that the enemy fleet has capital ships and some carriers.”

“Scramble fighters,” answered Cilliax as calmly as he could.

(…) Battleship Valiant, a few minutes earlier (…)

“Sir,” said the Captain of Valiant, Charles Eric Morgan. Like the German Admiral (who had the Captain of the Tirpitz as a COC, Karl Topp), the man was his Chief of Staff, also acting as commanding officer of the ship. “Yes, what is it,” he answered, busy looking at the charts at the plotting table. “The recon planes we have sent west have detected the enemy fleet, sir.” “Well, well,” answered Somerville with an evil-looking smile. The British were aware of the German fleet’s presence because they received the convoy’s frantic calls for help. They hadn’t been able to do anything about it at the time, but he vowed he was going to make these Nazis bastards pay for it.

“Sailor,” he then turned to the radio operator. “Signal Hermes, Colossus, and Glory to send a full strike on the enemy fleet’s last known coordinates.” “Yes, Sir.”

(…) Over the German Fleet (…)

The carrier-based, all-metal Fairey Barracuda torpedo and dive bombers swooped down at the scattered Axis ships below, intent on mayhem, while the British Seafires, the new carrier-based fighter version of the Spitfire, escorted them to fight the incoming BF 109-T fighters that had lifted from the carrier Graf Zeppelin moments before.

The two plane clouds met at 12,500 feet, and their tracer ammunition blazed across the sky in an impressive show of light. Right off the bat, a few aircraft on both sides fell in smoke, trailing long, dark contrails before slamming into the sea. The Fairey Barracudas had been sent as dive bombers for the mission, and they plunged toward the German ships below, who then opened up with their flak gunnery. More planes fell off or simply exploded, but then the British planes let loose their ordinance, and bombs fell toward the Kriegsmarine ships below.

The area around the core of the task force, where the battleships, the battlecruisers, and the Graz Zeppelin were located, was peppered with sprouting water geysers as the bombs slammed on the water, with two hitting home. One exploded on the rear deck of the Graf Zeppelin, setting the carrier’s stern into a blazing fireball, while the second blasted the Gneisenau’s floatplane and catapult in the forecastle in a cataclysmic display of fire.

The dogfight lasted for some time more, and then the British left, only to leave with the appearance of their ship’s silhouettes on the distant horizon. The first salvo from Valiant landed short (range was at 20,000 yards), but soon Cilliax ordered both Gneisenau and Graf Zeppelin to speed for Aden while he turned his battleships for a fight.

(…) The Battle (…)

For the first ten minutes, both fleets exchanged fire, but initially without effect as they jockeyed for the best angle of attack. Admiral Somerville then ordered a course change for his ships with a hard turn to port to present his ship’s broadsides. His German counterpart was of the same mind, and when they got to 14,000 yards, the battleships on both sides settled onto a parallel course and fired their guns with abandon. All the while, the smaller ships (four British cruisers and ten destroyers against the two German cruisers and seven destroyers) move in for the kill as they couldn’t fight from the same distance as the dueling behemoths.

The range continued to close without anyone hitting anything but water and making a great display of catapulting water in the air. When the range dropped to 11,000 yards, the entire scene was an impressive display of firepower as both Kriegsmarine and Royal Navy ship's guns blossomed in red fireballs and billowing smoke. All the while, every vessel’s engines ran at full power.

The subsequent five-gun salvos exchange continued to be without hits, but the Tirpitz, with its excellent and very experienced German gunners, began to surround the battleship Malaya, flooding the rangefinders with waterspouts and damaging the splinter shields and wooden elements, although no direct hits were achieved.

As the battle continued to unfold, the British cruisers got to decent range, and the Kent, Calcutta, and Coventry started to score hits at 7,200 yards. Deutschland was peppered with two armor-piercing shells, while two German destroyers were sunk outright by direct hits. The destroyers continued to close in order to unleash their torpedoes.

Twenty-five minutes into the battle, the entire affair morphed into a brawl of epic proportions. The smaller ships zigzagged between the two main battlelines, and several were smoking or burning from hits on both sides.

Admiral Somerville tried to stay as inexpressive as stone through it all and directed his ships to continue to sail at full speed. On the other side of the battle, Cilliax was not a beginner either, and he ordered skillful maneuverers, with speed adjustments and course changes to impede the Brits from hitting his vessels.

The first big hit of the day was achieved by the Tirpitz firing a full salvo of its 15-inch shells (the battleship had four SK C/34 guns with twin turrets, slamming on the Malaya’s deck, barbette and forecastle with such force that it sent a cascade of sparks, fire, and debris over 110 yards horizontally, which in turn splashed on a destroyer right behind the dreadnought, critically damaging it.

The British were not to be outdone completely in this engagement, as Valiant hit Tirpitz with its main guns on the German ship’s forecastle and another on its forward armored belt. Cilliax and his men were rocked hard, several became unbalanced and fell on the steel deck.

Pre-dreadnought Schleswig-Holstein’s 12-inch guns also boomed with all their might, finally achieving a hit right after Malaya. Two shells hit the left side of heavy cruiser Calcutta below the waterline, tearing it apart at the lower edge of the armor belt. The resulting explosion and damage caused localized flooding of a bulkhead and disabled one of the main guns. But the ship kept steady while thirty-four sailors were killed. The ship soon veered off from the main fight, damaged and battling a major internal fire.

In the next few minutes, the distance continued to decrease between the two battlelines as both admirals adjusted courses to try and overtake the other and cross their T. During the closing of the two fleets, more hits were scored. Heavy German cruiser Deutschland scored a couple of hits on British heavy cruiser Kent, slamming the stern and hitting the engine room, with the result that the boilers exploded, killing the ship’s speed to almost nothing.

Kent was thus soon out of action, tapering to the side. Coventry and Calcutta riddled Bismarck with a flurry of hits from their 8-inch main guns (the two were armed with eight each). While that caliber of shells failed to penetrate the tough German battleship’s armor belt, it did destroy several of its secondary guns and jammed one of its main turrets with a lucky hit.

The destroyers on both sides, now in range to fire their torpedoes, fought their own little battle, tacitly accepting that the big brawlers punched each other while they did the same at their level. The exchange between those ships was pretty lively, as their smaller calibers but quicker rate of fire made for an impressive cannonade. The result after ten minutes of the battle was two more British destroyers sunk or sinking along with two German ones.

The hit of the day was then achieved by Tirpitz, which managed to cripple the Malaya with an impressive seven-hits coordinated broadside. The 15-inch shells plowed through the ship’s main belt like it was a hot knife through butter (the angle of fire was perfect) and detonated. The resulting blasts rocked the British ship to the core, badly damaging its engine room and boilers. It also detonated three of the ship’s main gun high explosive shells and set twelve cartridges on fire. The resulting explosion tore a forty-foot-sized hole in the side of the ship (where the lance of flame exited in a volcanic display) and killed the forward gun's crew. The wall of fire flashed in an instant across the interior of the ship, damaging the internal systems and killing another eighty-four sailors.

Bismarck and Valiant exchanged fire for a few minutes, each damaging the other with waterline, belt, and barbette hits. It was then that Somerville, seeing the extreme damage on one of his precious dreadnought battleships, decided to let Cilliax get away to lick his wounds. He ordered the fleet to raise smoke and to disengage to the East, hoping to catch the enemy with another airstrike.

A few hours later, as both fleets sailed far from each other, the planes from the three British carriers arrived over the German fleet, but this time, the high command in Aden had sent the necessary air cover to make certain Cilliax would get home in one piece. The British air strike was scattered and turned back with heavy losses.

La Perouse Strait, near Northern Hokkaido

56th Rifle Division in action, August 4th, 1943

Both Privates from the 56th Soviet Rifle Division, namely infantrymen Anatoli Batasov and Dimitri Yeregovitch, were well on their way toward the burning island of Hokkaido’s coastline, along with the rest of their section. Both of them raced to the shoreline inside their landing craft. The thing was a makeshift landing boat made in the pure Russian make-do tradition and without any regard for the lives of their cares. It was the early morning (and they still sailed in darkness); the rest of the division was also on its way to the objective, a small Japanese town named Wakkanai at the northern tip of Hokkaido, one of the Japanese Home Islands. The Russians were attempting what only a totalitarian state could order, that is an almost-suicidal crossing of the 20-mile wide La Pérouse Strait between Sakhalin and Hokkaido in the face of overwhelming odds. The 56th Rifle was only but a part of the makeshift craft armada trying to make its way to the other side.

Their craft rocked to the side as the choppy sea was agitated by all the explosions and blasts of fire landing around the poor Soviet soldiers. The night sky flashed bright as the Japanese and American fleets that guarded the strait against the very thing the Red Army was attempting (a landing) and fired with all the might of their guns.

From Anatoli’s perspective, the moment was dire, as water splashed on his face (he was in some requisitioned fishing trawler from the Kamchatka Peninsula that looked like it was already old by the start of the Great War). He held his rifle with his back to the steel side of the boat, murmuring and rocking like a terrified infant. He was drenched with the cold water of the Pacific Ocean and completely terrified. Just a few yards to port, a resounding explosion rocked his world, while the boat that was there a moment before was now a flaming and blazing sinking inferno of dying men and a gutted boat.

From a higher perspective, the scene was a horrific and bloody picture of dozens upon dozens of U.S.-Japanese battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and other crafts shelling like there was no tomorrow at the hundreds upon hundreds of smaller ships, ranging from old, re-floated destroyers to ferry barges that snaked their way across the La Pérouse Strait in the darkness. Their guns and machine guns flashed while their ammo blazed in a terrible crisscrossing of light and awe.

There, several Russian boats were moored to a Japanese light cruiser, its soldiers running amok on the deck and fighting with the Imperial Navy sailors on the deck, the forecastle, and the stern. A thousand yards to the left, the Japanese dreadnought battleship Nagato poured a myriad of blazing shots at a duo of old and very rusty-looking transport ships. Under the unrelenting fire, the two old things covered themselves in blossoming fireballs before they exploded in a cataclysmic display of fury and fire.

In the middle of it all, every Soviet and German sub that could be gathered for the occasion roamed below the waves, firing torpedoes at the otherwise-too-busy-destroyers and other Allied ships that were supposed to hunt them down. They just had too many targets, and Admiral Yamamoto, the commander of the fleet guarding the Strait, had ordered priority to be given to the landing barges. A Soviet foothold on Hokkaido was to be thwarted at all costs.

Everywhere around, Russian makeshift boats streamed southward and through the Allied ships, also firing what they had at the ships. While the U.S. and Imperial navies held complete superiority at sea, the Soviet high command had decided to pull a fast one on them and send so many men and boats that they wouldn’t be able to destroy and sink them all. What Stalin was attempting was utter folly because the cost in lives would be so high that the deed would be remembered through history as one of the worst butcheries on record. But the Soviet dictator was well beyond those preoccupations, as from his point of view, history was written by the victors. Along with his German friends, he thus intended to come out on top of the pile of dead and reshape the world into a Communist utopia where he would be the sole master.

While shitloads of the Russians were dying in droves, even more were making their way across. The landing armada bobbed in choppy, foaming green sea. The entire area around Anatoli’s boat was a maelstrom of white foam, exploding shells, water geysers, and incoming tracer fire. Once in a while, one bigger-than-usual explosion catapulted fire and what looked like debris (it was hard to say because of the heavy, smoky haze covering the battlefield), as they were also blinded by the constant flashes.

Following the Axis victory on the Korean Peninsula by the end of 1941, there had been a blissful downtime for men like Anatoli and Dimitri because there hadn’t been any enemies to fight on the continent. What remained retreated to the Japanese Home Islands for a last stand that promised to be one hell of a campaign. The stakes were high since if the Axis conquered Japan, it would be victorious in the Pacific, leaving only the United States across the large water expanse.

The 56th had stayed idle in Korea for months on end, only doing some training, taking care of new soldier reinforcements, and, quite frankly, enjoying their time as local women were plentiful, and for a few short months, no one shot at them. Then, in the Spring of 1943, orders had come to move to Vladivostok, then to Lazarev on the Pacific coastline. The men were put on ferry boats and crossed to Sakhalin Island. By June, they were in their staging area at the harbor of Korsakov, where boats were brought in great secrecy in the best Maskirovka tradition. Maskirovka was the art of deception the Soviets had brought to a new level of sophistication. The doctrine sought to conceal all information about the location, movement, composition, quantity, and especially the intent of military units. The idea was to make all deployments and troop movements undetectable. The troops were always moved at night, the makeshift boats for the amphibious landing gathered from everywhere in the East brought over on land through rail, while the food wasn’t cooked with open fire. Every one of the local population dwellings, villages, and cities on the route the troops took from Lazarev to Korsakov were emptied to avoid any possible contact or spying.

The Soviets also took their time, moving a few units and boats at a time. Some fake forest canopies were built to avoid anything being detected by Allied aerial recon, and nothing was moved near the coastline to avoid any spotting by enterprising American or Japanese recon vessels.

Finally, by the end of July, the Red Army was ready to go ahead, and the order to get in the transport ships was given, and off they went in the middle of the night. The U.S. Japanese fleet guarding the La Pérouse Strait had been surprised but overwhelmed at the same time since the entire idea of the operation was to send so many small boats and so many units that a bunch of them were bound to make it through.

Which brought lucky soldiers like Batasov to the shore just meters from the Japanese city of Wakkanai. The old trawler bobbed high and low on the waves as the water around them shone bright, with the light of the major fire embracing the area, also reflecting on the surface of the water like a mirror. Bullets whizzed about and pierced the water around them while heavier caliber shells seemed to blaze above. Other landing crafts were hit by bullets, and men died, but Anatoli’s boat was unscathed. Looking up, he saw the arcing shells of the German super-heavy K5 rail guns, brought in pieces and reassembled in Korsakov for the operation.

German K5 guns (built by Krupp) were seventy-one-foot-long gun barrels on a fixed mounting that could only move on rail. The rail bogies supporting the weapons were a pair of twelve-wheel carriages designed to be operated on commercial and military rails built to German standards. The mega weapons had a whooping range of 39 miles, which was long enough for its shells to be fired across the La Pérouse Strait. The K5 main barrel was 11-inch and packed the power of a Great War battleship in terms of hitting strength. While only five of them were moved on the Trans-Siberian Railway from the Reich and then moved from Lazarev to Sakhalin, the things were enough to at least provide the landings with some heavy support.

Moments after seeing one large blazing shot arc above his head, a resounding booming noise crashed beyond toward the city and coastline they were about to land on, creating deafening soundwaves. The heavy rail gun shell exploded, joining the fire maelstrom, continuously feeding it into an incredible frenzy. No one inside the trawler spoke as the deafening explosions, blasts of fire, and everything in between (bullets, flashes, and more) rocked their sanity to the edge of breakdown.

The boat finally slammed on the soft sand of the beach, pushing everyone forward. Then, a flurry of enemy bullets slammed on the steel gate in front. “Get ready!” yelled Sergeant Alexi Priakin, quickly imitated by Lieutenant Kaprisov, the section commander. One of the soldiers in front unstrapped the makeshift steel plate they’d put at the boat's bow to protect them from enemy bullet fire. The thing fell heavily in a splash of water and burbling foam, with enemy fire immediately sweeping the Soviet soldiers about to exit, cutting several down in bloody gore. Some of the men jumped across the boat to the shallow water but were hit by bullets in the process, falling backward in the water in a spray of blood. Anatoli, completely terrified, plunged into the water from the side, rifle in front of him, and he splashed hard into the cold surf.

Soon, he bubbled back to the surface, his head lifting above the water in a maelstrom of bullets impacting all around Anatoli. He waded as fast as he could toward the shore while more men fell as the Soviet soldiers sprinted to get across the beach and to the small hilly elevation they could hide behind.

About a meter to his left, a T-34 churned at full speed in the sand, its tracks catapulting soft sand in the air. Several of the makeshift boats had been large ferry barges, and a bunch were modified to bring tanks across. Many had sunk on the way to Wakkanai, but at least one of them made it, and so Priakin directed them toward it. “Get behind the tank, quick.” As they hit the armored steel of the machine, Japanese bullets ricocheted harmlessly away into the darkness in sharp crackling noise and bright sparks.

The first few minutes were frantic and desperate. Russian soldiers died in droves, but they were so numerous that their numbers eventually began to tell, and they landed in force. From then on, it was time for the Japanese to reel back, as the Red Army continuously landed more and more soldiers on the beach. Already, over 4700 men were ashore, protected by no less than ten T-34s, advancing boldly ahead of the infantrymen and rolling across the few scrawny trenches at what used to be a park on the edge of the water, now transformed into a trench area by the Imperial Army.

(…) Minutes later (…)

After taking a breath and waiting for more men and tanks to position themselves on the edge of the beach and the city, the order to advance was given. By then, the Soviet numbers had swelled to over six thousand, and the landing success was no longer in jeopardy. To Anatoli and his comrades alike, it seemed the worst was over.

The Russian forces all started advancing toward the center of the city, where the burning rubble of what used to be Japanese civilian infrastructure lay. Intelligence had told them in the briefing before crossing that the Japs entertained a major bunker complex in Wakkanai, and it now looked obvious that they had holed up everywhere around to fight until they achieved a glorious death and to kill as many hated Soviets as they could.

Soviet forces were on the ground on Japanese soil.

The leadup to the paradrop

Radar site in the North of Japan the night before

It was not a surprise that an aerial assault was being prepared against the Empire of Japan.  Due to this their ally, the USA, had sent a SCR-270 radar that was previously being used to watch out for the Japanese themselves in the hills over the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, since this was no longer a possibility because they were now allies.

American private Joseph P McDonald was tired after spending another long night trying to train the Japanese soldiers at how to operate their radar equipment.  Having to do so through an interpreter was especially difficult with such a complicated piece of technology.

Suddenly his trainee started speaking in an excited fashion in his native tongue.  Without waiting for the translator Private McDonald looked over at the screen present for the radar.  There was indeed the largest plot he had ever seen that had been picked up coming in from the North.

This appeared to be too large a plot for a returning bombing mission, and the vectors seemed all wrong.  Private McDonald picked up his phone and was quickly connected with First Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, who had just arrived in Japan as part of the American contingent being sent to bolster the defenses against the soon to come attack by the Axis just the day before.

Lieutenant Tyler told the excited Private McDonald “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”  He was sure that what had been picked up was a returning flight of B-17s from a bombing mission over the Germano-Soviet forces.  At the other end of the phone Private McDonald heard more excitable Japanese being spoken.  He turned to look at the radar and saw a two more plots fast approaching his position. 

They looked like they were going right to his location.  He heard a sound much like a passing freight train which was closely followed by an earth-shattering explosion.  The lights and radar flickered off as he regained his footing and went outside to see what was going on.  “Oh shit” was all he managed to say as the second 98 lbs shell fired from the German K5 railguns exploded in all its fury right on top of his radar station.

The night before

Wakkanai Area, 4th Soviet Guards Airborne Division, August 4th

During the interwar years, the Red Army saw the need for extensive development for its airborne force like the Third Reich, envisioning large-scale para drops in the rear of the enemy lines. When the Soviet Union joined the war, it already had five Airborne (203rd, 204th, 218th, 219th, and 220th) that were extensively used in the difficult battle for the Suez crossing. Some were also dropped in Afghanistan during the failed Soviet campaign against India in 1940-1941.

Following a plethora of successes and failures both from the Soviets and the German Fallshirmjagers as the Axis conquered Europe, Africa, and the Middle East whole, it was determined that para-drop operations were very risky and needed a lot more support than was initially thought. Once the men were dropped on the ground, they needed to be supplied and constantly reinforced.

Both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army reacted to the threat in their typical fashion that worked wonders since the beginning of the war. Overwhelm and attack, produce more, send more, and overwhelm again. Several aircraft factories in the Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Moscow areas were dictated to the construction of the main paratroop plane available to the Russians, the Tupolev TB-3. The things could either carry 55 paratroopers or else several tons of supplies. Some bigger versions of the TB-3, which were rare but still existed, could carry small vehicles. They weren't as big as the truly large German Me 323 Gigant, which could bring a tank as big as a panzer III or IV into the drop zone provided the paratroopers captured an airfield.

When the battles for Manchuria and North Africa were concluded, both Berlin and Moscow saw that the next and unavoidable battles would have to be against the British and Japanese Home Islands. The Allies controlled the waters, and even with their heightened production levels as they raced to build up their fleets were not fast or extensive enough to even hope to catch the Allies. They thus went about greatly beefing up their airborne programs by creating a plethora of units and producing planes by the hundreds.

When the smoke cleared and the Red Army was ready for its assault on Japan, it had a staggering total of seven airborne corps and over 380,000 soldiers ready to drop. The Germans provided over 120 Gigant planes to help ferry supplies, heavy guns, and tanks to the landing areas.

While the Germano-Soviet plan for the conquest of Japan involved sending everything they had in terms of airborne forces, they also had to land troops in the more traditional way, with ships of all sizes and shapes. The airborne troop’s job was thus to land in advance of the amphibious attacks in Wakkanai and Shimonoseki to disrupt the enemy defenses as much as possible and to capture an airfield for the “sky train” of Gigants and TB-3s to ferry more troops and supplies.

Hailing from Stupino near Moscow, the 4th Guards Airborne Division was put together in December 1942 as part of the major paratroop surge the Red Army experienced as a result of its need to invade both the United Kingdom and the Japanese Home Islands.

Used for the first time in April 1942 (after two months of intensive training), the 4th Guards received the Order of the Red Banner for its courage and efficient conquest of the small island of Onekotan during the 1943 Kuril Island Chain conquest campaign. It was then dropped again on the next island in the chain (Shiashkotan), where it distinguished itself once more. With the Kuril campaign concluded by May 1943, the unit was moved back to Sakhalin in preparation for the Hokkaido Wakkanai attack, where it received new recruits and joined the 65,000 other paratroopers for the planned attack.

It was now time to earn its pay once more with the attack on Wakkanai. Alexy Matvisvenko, a Private Soldier in the unit, held on so tightly to his parachute harness that his knuckles were white as milk, and his face betrayed his apprehension at what was going to happen. He’d just jumped from the Tupolev  TB-3 moments before to an ocean of darkness, as the plan was to launch the para attack several hours before the landings themselves to help and disrupt the Americano-Japanese defenses as much as possible.

Alexy looked downward toward the ground but only saw the faint outlines of the Sea of Okhotsk and the coastline, as the area they dropped in was, of course, under a curfew. It wouldn’t serve the Allies to keep their lights on at night to give beacons for the Soviet and German air forces to see where to bomb.

Suddenly, the skyline below him lit up like a Christmas tree, with the Japanese flak defenses opening up at them. They had probably heard the drone of the TB-3s above, and some of their spotters had probably spotted the white parachutes clouding the night sky.

The blazing rounds shot upward in great sizzling sounds, and Alexy felt even more dread. He was experienced and had dropped several times during a combat situation, but there was no helping it. It was as stressful as hell, no matter how often he dropped over enemy territory. The feeling of helplessness as you gently descended in the sky was overbearing. Alexy was a little anxious by nature, and that feeling of not being able to do anything about it was quite present during his jumps.

About fifty yards from his position, a parachute was hit by a round, holing it and setting it afire. The poor sod attached to it sank down like a brick in water and was soon lost out of view, the fiery spectacle fading in the darkness.

All around him, more men were hit, some directly but more often than not on their parachutes, which was a ticket for certain death. He murmured a prayer to God. Alexy was a good Communist, and he knew it was forbidden to worship him, but his mother had told him that he just needed to do what he had to do to survive. If God was able to help, it sure helped if you asked him nicely.

The wind slapped at his face and he was thankful for the fact it was August. He remembered his earlier jump in the Spring and it had been very cold on the skin.

The sizzling sounds continued to kill parachutes and men, but he was lucky to drop below their effective range, meaning that the enemy anti-aircraft guns could only fire at a certain height. As he was about to take a breath of relief, small arms fire started to fill the sky, and the rattle of rifles and multiple machine guns filled the dark night sky. More of his comrades died or were injured, but at least it took a lot of bullets to damage a parachute sufficiently enough to crash it down toward the ground, not as many to kill the airborne soldier of course.

A minute later, he started to see the clear outlines of trees and the ground. Thankfully, he was one of the lucky ones and appeared to arrive in an empty landing area since no enemy fire came from the immediate ground below him.

He glided over what looked like a rice paddy, and he took a deep breath, hoping to land as softly as possible. Alexy couldn’t do much before he landed and so prayed since a twisted ankle or broken leg would be his doom.  He picked up a glimmer of water and thought he would be landing in a lake (wasn’t he approaching what had looked like a farm field?). He relaxed his legs a little as he’d been told to before hitting the ground during his training. And then bang, he jolted suddenly and crashed over onto his side in shallow water. Lying there in just a few inches of it, he understood, in the confusion of his landing, that he’d fallen into a rice paddy.  He raised his head and put his hands down into the thick mud.

He lay there dazed for a few minutes and struggled up to his feet after a while. He could hear the sounds of fires burning, bullets being fired, and Japanese soldiers yelling. Not knowing what to do and without any of his comrades near him, he decided that he needed to get out of the area. There was no specific direction, and he didn’t know where to go, but his primal instinct told him to run and run anywhere. He picked up his strapped-to-his-back PPS-43 “Sudayev’s” submachine gun. The gun was a very reliable and simplistic weapon with a 35-round magazine. The success of the PPS-43 relied on its working double-stack magazine, which plagued similar guns like the British Sten and American M3 “Grease Gun.”

Laying down in the water, he waited for more parachutes to land and watched as more and more Japanese which were shooting and yelling were congealing to the area. There would soon be a fight to the finish with the enemy defenses, but Alexy knew from experience that it was better to wait for the safety of numbers.

Their target, a small Japanese airfield just south of Wakkanai, was surely near as they were dropped to capture it. He stood up a little from the brackish water and looked toward the north, where he saw a big light show; the city and the main enemy defenses were apparently busy firing at the sky., probably his comrades from the 2nd and 3rd Guard Airborne Corps. Several more splashes and Russian voices started to fill his ears, and he felt confident that the unit would soon go over to the attack. He fished out his knife and cut his remaining parachute strings, getting ready for some action.

CHAPTER 1

Battleship Yamato

La Pérouse Strait, August 5th, 1943

Grand Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto crossed his arms behind his back as he watched the scene before him. A scene of utter devastation, with sinking boats, smoke, and floating bodies. Above the fleet flew more enemy transport planes, apparently endless.

It had been a long night, and everyone on the bridge of the super-battleship showed it with their worn looks. The main guns fired again, making the ship tilt to starboard as the fire mushroom blossomed out of the 18-inch muzzle, sending hundreds of water ripples before the warship. Every time the great weapon fired, Yamamoto could not help but feel the awe and power as it coursed through the ship’s hull in powerful tremors.

The AA guns blazed at the sky, like every other Allied ship around, their bright tracers climbing high in the sky and sometimes connecting with one of the enemy aircraft. Above flew Tupolev TB-3s, which could be used both for bombing and troop transport missions, along with Antonov A-7s, a light transport plane, and the Gribovsky G-11s, yet another bomber-transport plane. They were sprinkled with grey-looking planes, proof the damned Germans were also flying above with their renowned JU-52 planes.

The paratroopers had landed during the early part of the night, which should have been a warning in itself that the Axis had been planning something tricky. If those reports weren’t serious enough, at about two in the morning, ships in the picket line further out from the fleet’s core where Yamato, Musashi, and other battleships were had reported sinking several small transports and makeshift crafts. Then, half an hour later, they had reported a flood of the things, and soon,  the entire fleet was engulfed in a shooting festival. It was a target-rich environment, and they’d killed countless numbers of Soviet soldiers. But it hadn’t been enough, as the enemy had attempted a crossing with so many ships and barges that they had been able to land at the top of Hokkaido Island in Wakkanai. From there, the paratroopers who had landed during the night joined them in fighting the defenders and fortifications within the city, and there they were, in deep trouble, especially since his battleships couldn’t fire on the enemy as the Imperial Army was now intermingled with Soviet troops.

He watched in the distance, seeing more parachutes opening while above the fleet, an epic dogfight was in full swing. The Axis had concentrated an enormous amount of planes on Sakhalin and neighboring islands and they had local superiority for now.

Imperial intelligence had expected the enemy to try and cross the Shimonoseki Strait between Korea and Honshu, as the Soviets were seen assembling a mighty host at the southern tip of the peninsula. But the enemy commander, that willy General Zhukov, had pulled a fast one on them and landed across in the North.

Not that they were helpless to stop it. After all, most of the Imperial Fleet was patrolling the La Pérouse Strait, and Hokkaido had over 550,000 defenders (mostly Japanese soldiers, with about 34,000 U.S. Army men) entrenched and in fortified areas. The Allies had air parity in the sky (at the very least) and remained in control of the sea, which meant the Soviets would have trouble supplying themselves from the air.

“Orders, Admiral,” said his chief of staff, Admiral Matome Ukagi. Isoroku grunted in frustration since there wasn’t much he could do except what his ships and planes were already doing. “No change in orders. Sink every ship and shoot down every aircraft, with priority given to those big transports.” He paused to change the subject as he pointed toward one of the large JU-52s flying high overhead.

“Any news from Tokyo over the matter,” he then asked Ukagi. “Apart from the earlier message, Sir, no, nothing new. Hold fast; we are sending more planes and troops.” “Very well,” answered the Grand Admiral, thinking about the Imperial Army leaders back in the capital and of American General Douglas MacArthur. They had banked heavily on the enemy attacking Honshu first. And maybe they would, since the Axis didn’t seem to be lacking in troops.

“Send them a situation report and let them know that transport planes and numerous aircraft still roam the skies. The fleet is also damaged to some extent, and we will eventually need more air coverage or have to retire out of range.” “Yes, Sir,” said the chief of staff before bowing and walking away to the radio room.

Yamamoto turned back to his battle watch and wondered what the enemy had in mind next.

The road to disaster

The last year of war and the about-to-tilt balance

Following the terrible and powerful battles of the 1939-1941 period, there hadn’t been anything left for the Allies to defend on land as Eurasia was under the Axis boot except for the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and most of Nationalist China. The brave forces of the French, Japanese, British, and Americans fought tooth and nail for every inch of land, but in the end, they had failed in the face of an overwhelming superiority in numbers. They were thus ousted from Poland, then France, then Spain, and finally Gibraltar in 1940. In the East, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey fell like dominos thereafter, with Romania and Hungary joining the Germano-Soviets.

When the year turned to 1941, Egypt, the Middle East, India, and North Africa were attacked by the powerful and innumerable forces of the Berlin-Moscow-Rome Axis. Victories were won in Suez, India, El Alamein, and the Atlas Mountains. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides, ships sank, and countries were laid bare. In the East, war exploded in its full fury across the Siberian Far East and Manchuria. There again, victories were claimed, Vladivostok stormed, and Soviet armies thrashed in Manchuria. But over time, Axis numbers took over, and the inescapable grind of steady war attrition took hold. The Allies were pushed back toward and then into the Korean Peninsula being steadily beaten back south toward their last redoubts.

However hard they tried, and however many soldiers, planes, and tanks they sent into the burning maw of the terrible fighting, the Allies could not turn the tide of the war as they simply didn’t have enough ground troops and machines of war with which to rival the Axis forces in 1941. It was the classic David against Goliath except that Goliath had won this time around.

And so it was that by the end of 1941, the Axis ran out of lands to conquer and the Allies out of land to defend. In an equal manner, The Anglo-American and Japanese naval forces outrageously dominated the oceans, and thus, it had not been possible for the ship-strapped Axis forces to cross the English Channel or the Shimonoseki Strait to land and finish the job both in Japan and the United Kingdom.

Both alliances thus turned back to the drawing boards to find out ways to finish the conflict to a successful conclusion. The Axis forces turned toward their shipyards and concentrated on building up their navies, while the Allies experienced a serious uptick in plane and troop production. Both sides thus beefed up their machines of war for the confrontation to come. Both Germany and The USSR also looked at the only weapon that could permit them to step over large swaths of sea, the paratroopers, which they both had in ample supply.

While there was still a lot of fighting in 1942 (like the Axis invasion of Sweden and all of Scandinavia), no battle came close to being of enough strategic importance to have a definitive impact on the war. Small naval skirmishes, Allied raids on Axis coastlines, German anti-partisan operations in Yugoslavia, or else gigantic air battles across the Channel and over the Japanese Home Islands unfolded as more and more soldiers, aviators, and sailors died on both sides.

By the middle of 1943, things were changing, and the balance of power was again ready to tilt in one or the other’s favor. The Axis forces, having bid their time and accumulated huge invasion forces for the lunge across and toward both the UK and Japan, were unleashing their fury, while the Allies got ready for a few surprises of their own to show the Germano-Soviets that they weren’t all-seeing and all-powerful. If the Anglo-American-Japanese-French alliance could hold and turn back the rampaging and invading enemy forces, they would gain the initiative back. If not, then the entire world except for the Americas would be Axis.

America was finally in total war mode and churning out weapons, new divisions, planes, and ships by the hundreds and the thousands. Hope was thus on the horizon, provided that the Germano-Soviets didn’t conquer both the British and Japanese home islands. If that happened, America would remain as the sole beacon of liberty, democracy, and freedom.

The Second Battle of England

Radar attack, August 5th, 1943

Ten minutes before sunrise, a formation of Heinkel He 177 Greif (Griffin) bombers, the newest weapon in the Luftwaffe’s arsenal, was dispatched to attack a large radar station in the town of Hastings and the small region of North Foreland, just above the Strait of Dover.

The Greif was a powerful two-engine bomber aircraft with a very large payload compared to the Junker 88s, Heinkel 111s, and Dornier 17s. The mission on that early, foggy morning of the 5th of August was to be the plane’s first operational offensive mission of the war. The 1,000kg bombload plane was also equipped with above-average speed and a trio of cockpit-controlled remote gun turrets with one live gunner in the tail. The remotely controlled weapons thus enabled the Reich’s designers to increase speed, decrease weight and drag, and reach the 1,000 kg payload objective.

The mission was small, only sporting fifty 177s, which represented the entirety of the first production run from the Heinkel factories of Warnemunde in Mecklenburg. They were escorted by the twenty-strong ME262 Schwalbe 1a’s of the Jäger Squadron One, also the first production run of the new revolutionary jet fighter.

Hitler was on a visit at Cape Gris Nez in Pas-de-Calais to watch for the flight of Grief’s and Schwalbe’s, as he was very fond of these new weapons and had asked the local Luftwaffe commander, Hugo Speerle, to have the aircraft fly above the place on their way to their next mission. The Fuhrer’s presence in France was related to a Wehrmacht tour he was doing, along with an inspection of the naval preparations for the crossing of the English Channel.

(…)

New Heinkel 177 pilot Hans Bickell tilted his wings as his bomber thundered low above the Cape Griz Nez’s main gun battery, a monstrous gun that fired shells at the British coastline every day. He was soon followed by the likes of Adolf Galland and Gunther Rall, who also moved their tails left to right, flying above the throng of leather-coated German officers below. The three men couldn’t see the Fuhrer but knew he was down there and thus made a good show of it. Bickell gunned his speed and climbed in a long line, followed by his bomber comrades, while both Galland and Rall made a few high-speed passes above the gun.

Below them, Hitler clapped and smiled, surrounded by the likes of Goering and the men of the OKW, Halder, Keitel, Raeder, and Jodl, all on a visit to France and about to attend an OKW meeting with their Fuhrer. As the aircraft flew away in a thunderous roar reminiscent of a mountain lion, the large Cape Gris Nez Großer Kurfurst 380mm guns fired a round at distant England for good measure and to complete the Fuhrer’s impressive moment. After that, the airstrike left the French coastline behind and was soon detected by a British Radar station on the Dover Cliff.

Hans was back from his eastern adventures into the Middle East, with the fighting having brought him from Yugoslavia to Turkey through the Middle East, Egypt and the Gulf of Aden. Following a serious lack of targets, he was recalled home as a training officer before he was to get a new assignment. Spending most of his time at the Rechlin airfield’s Luftwaffe test facility (sixty miles northwest of Berlin), he'd seen firsthand the jet tests and the birth of the Heinkel 177, on which he finally requested a posting and got one in June 1943.

The unit then trained on their new planes, and once they were proficient enough with the latest toys of the Reich, they were ordered to fly to airfields in the Pas-de-Calais to participate in the bombing missions against the United Kingdom.

(…) Griffin Squadron 1 (…)

Half an hour later, Hans soon found a target and plunged toward the concrete and steel building below. He smiled as it seemed the British fighters were late to the party. The enemy might have radar stations all along the coast, which made any German approach from the air impossible to slip by unnoticed, but they never knew for certain where the German air strike would go and often just flew over London because it was where most of the Luftwaffe attacks went to, attracted to the large and sprawling British capital like moths to a fire.

Their objective, the Hastings radar station, was a new, bunker-protected radar facility that covered the entire northeastern sector of the Dover Strait. While radars could be built rapidly, a station like the one they were attacking took a little longer to construct because they were larger and supposed to coordinate the info and triangulate the readings from the other smaller stations on the coastline. The Reich was thus trying to deplete and or ideally eliminate as much radar capability as possible from the British to prepare for their invasion that was to start soon.

He aligned with the large building and sent a signal to his bombardier in the cargo hold to unload the bombs. His plethora of bombs started to fall in quick succession and caused a multitude of blasts and blinding flashes, soon followed by the ones from the other 177s in the squadron. The flurry of catastrophic blasts scattered debris skyward, showering the area with fire, smoke, and shrapnel.

(…) XIX RAF Squadron (…)

“Gents, watch out for those quick jet planes this time,” said Commander Malan over the radio. This time, they wouldn’t be surprised by the quick planes since now they knew they existed. “Commander, those bombers appear to be something new,” said Lieutenant Frank Devers, one of Giles’ mates in the Squadron. “Indeed, Devers. Everyone watches for the big bastards; we don’t know what they are. They may yet have some nasty surprises in store for us.”

Just as they made their approach, Giles then saw what he dreaded to see. The impossibly fast V-shaped silhouettes of the enemy jet planes. The military intelligence guys had told them the Germans called the things ME262, for Messerschmitt 262. “Incoming bogeys,” he said over the unit’s radio. “It’s those Me 262s again, coming hard at us from eleven o’clock.”

(…) Griffin Squadron 1 (…)

Just above, Hans stared at a large dogfight with the numerous fighters. The British engaged several dozens of their jet escorts. The battle against the radar station was unfolding to the German’s taste as a large secondary explosion racked the radar station, which expanded into a large dirty smoke cloud of debris, proof it was now either seriously damaged or destroyed. Above him and as he followed the commander’s orders to turn their bombers home, he saw many enemy fighters were damaged or tailing dark smoke, proof the ME262s were making a killing. All the while, the ground defenses, mainly a couple of intact flak batteries, blazed with all their might at the sky and ended up riddling one of the 177s with a bunch of 20mm and 30mm shells. The big bomber, mortally wounded, veered sharply left and exploded behind a forested hill, the only proof of its demise being the tall fire mushroom blossoming from above the treetops.

Pusan, Germano-Soviet HQ

Meeting of the OKW, morning of August 5th, 1943

General Georgy Zhukov climbed the steps, giving access to the outside from his new bunker in Pusan, at the very tip of the Korean Peninsula. The Soviet commander held a steaming cup of coffee in his hand and was flanked by his faithful chief of staff, General Vasily Danilovich Sokolovsky, a man who had been with him since the very first battles between the Japanese and the Soviet Union at Khalkin Gol in the very depths of Manchuria and Mongolia. Sokolovsky also had a cup of coffee, something of a luxury in the Red Army and the country as a whole. Communism was a very nice utopia, but when it came to supplying goods considered a little above the bare minimum, it wasn’t very good at it. Coffee was produced mostly in Latin America, and now that it didn’t have access to the shipping lanes because of the war against the Allies, it was very rare in the USSR.

Most soldiers did have coffee, but not of the same kind as these two high-placed men. The dark liquid they drank that morning as they looked at the slowly rising sun was produced in Kazakhstan on a small plantation, with its production reserved only for the elites in the Politburo and the military. The troops drank “ersatz” (a German word for substitute) versions of coffee, which were made with alternative products like dandelion roots, chicory, or acorns.

Zhukov was smiling as he sipped on the scalding hot liquid. “Well, my dear Vasily, it appears the men are on the ground on Hokkaido.” He grimaced as the coffee burnt his lips. “Indeed, Sir, it worked just as we envisioned it.” “I don’t believe that we have an estimate of the total losses yet, but what are the ground reports saying so far?” “Over 60% of the crossing force appears to have been sunk, killed, or scattered, Sir.” The chief of staff paused to take his own sip. The orange glow of the sun was magnificent that morning. “General Alexander Vasilevsky is still in Korsakov, awaiting for the troops to get an airfield for his plane and staff to land on the Japanese island.”

The two men didn’t even flinch at the appalling losses of the night before, as they didn’t really care. The Red Army’s tactics and overall strategy was built around the fact that it had a lot of manpower to use, and that was that. In this, the two generals, or even Stalin, for that matter, weren’t much different than their forebears in the Great War or even before that. The value of life was looked at differently in Mother Russia.

“What of the attack from the Kurils?” The Soviet plan for the invasion of Japan was a three-pronged attack. The first blow was launched at Wakkanai, then the second at the town of Shibetsu, on the northeast of Hokkaido, facing the southernmost (now Soviet-occupied) Kuril island of Kunashir. “It should start tonight,” answered Sokolovsky. The idea there was much the same, but with fewer paratroopers (75,000) and a landing of 120,000 men. The crossing there was even easier, with a paltry 6.3 miles separating the small island from Hokkaido. For the operation, the Soviets had first assembled everything they could find in terms of fishing boats and trawlers, but they had also built a ton of wooden craft over the months they’d been there since it was possible to use them with the short distance they had to sail. With the Japanese attention fixated on Wakkanai, it was thus hoped that the Shibetsu landings would go smoothly and add yet another problem for the Allied defenders.

“You know, General, I can’t wait for the main show,” said Zhukov, taking another sip of his hot beverage. The sun was now fully visible, its orange shimmering glow morphing to yellow. He referred to the main attack, the landing in Shimonoseki, the most ambitious of his three attacks on Japan. The strait was being heavily guarded by a mix of Japanese and American ships, with a heavy air cover to protect them above. The idea there was to engage in the fight a few days into the battle for Hokkaido and to try and win air superiority.

The difficult part of that operation when they planned it was that the Americans and the Japanese had an incredible number of planes, and thus, both the Soviet and Nazi war machines had flown everything they had for the attack. The Luftwaffe had even sent a couple squadrons of what they dubbed their new revolutionary fighter, the Me-262s. Axis production was exploding as the industrial infrastructure of both the Reich and the USSR were gorging themselves on forced labor and almost unlimited resources from their newly conquered empires.

Their combined production was even rivaling the American one by mid-1943. After all, they did control all of the Eurasian continent, and that entailed an unimaginable power by itself. None of their factories were being bombed, and with limitless steel, oil, and unfettered access to normally limited strategic materials, their entire war machine was bulging at the seams and producing like never before.

Zhukov had been husbanding his newfound air strength in order to attack in force when the time came. In this, he hoped to surprise the Allies, who probably thought themselves quite secure in their air numbers.

Over sixty large airfields were built in the Korean interior, well away from prying eyes and in the pure maskirovka tradition to house these new incredible numbers of aircraft. When the time came, MacArthur and the Imperial Army were in for a surprise.

As the Axis controlled the Suez Canal and had the long-range units to do so, the Italian Regina Marina and the Kriegsmarine sailed 114 U-boats and Italian submarines to the Pacific Theater. These units, carefully hidden in faraway harbors like Port Arthur and others along the Korean coast, would surge forth and saturate the Tsushima Strait with torpedoes once the Allies moved in to try and stop the amphibious landings that the Germano-Soviets were about to unleash.

“That sunrise was magnificent,” said Zhukov, signaling to his chief of staff it was time to go back down in the bunker. The large building was constructed only six months ago in Pusan to be the command structure for the invasion of Japan. They’d discovered once they moved into it that the sun was perfectly positioned to hit the frontal part of the HQ in the morning and so they now came up the stairs almost every day to watch the sunrise.

Shimonoseki

Nagato Bunker complex, the morning of August 5th, 1943

Across the strait and with the sun to their backs, two men looked at the water expanse before them that was the Sea of Japan. One of them was American General Douglas MacArthur and the other Imperial Army Commander General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Flanking both were their translators since the two men remained ignorant of the other’s language. Yamashita was starting to get some English, while MacArthur remained stuck at simple words and short sentences in Japanese. The two generals had been fighting together for over two years by then. 

“It appears we are nearing the final battle, my friend,” said Yamashita, quickly translated by his man. “Indeed, General. We are ready, and we’ll kick the bastards back across.” The American general picked up his pipe to exhale a cloud of grey smoke. Both men had become well-accustomed with each other as they’d fought tooth and nail against the rampaging Axis in the Korean Peninsula and even in Manchuria. Their defenses and the counteroffensive they put together in 1941 were a masterful display of generalship, but in the end, the Allies were swamped by Soviet numbers and a greater number of tanks and guns, plus their enemy’s ability to absorb horrific casualties.

“No sign of attack here,” continued the American officer while Yamashita grunted an answer. The view before them was of a mirror-like blue sea, seagulls, and Allied ships in the distance. While the U.S. Navy Fleet and the Japanese ships under the command of Admiral Chester Nimitz were near, they didn’t stay stationary in the Strait. The patrolling was done with destroyers, submarines, and light cruisers, while the main body of the fleet remained in Kure Harbor in Hiroshima Bay (through the Kanmon Straits). “It's coming; that attack in the north is just a feint or a secondary attack,” continued MacArthur. Both men were convinced that if Zhukov wanted to conquer Japan, he could only do it by attacking from Korea, as Shimonoseki was the logical place to move in supplies, men, and materiel. For ages, the strait was the go-to spot for any invading armies either from or going toward Japan.

The city sat at the westernmost point of the Japanese home island of Honshu. It was on the Sea of Japan to the west and the Seto Inland Sea to the south across the Kanmon Straits leading to Kyushu and Shikoku, the two other home islands beside Honshu and Hokkaido. The Asa River flowed from the north to the central area, and the Ariho River flowed from the northeast to the east, flowing southward into the Seto Inland Sea. The town was thus surrounded on three sides by ocean and rivers, the Seto Inland Sea, the Hibikinada Sea and the Sea of Japan.

While Shimonoseki was Honshu’s entry point and the most logical place for the Soviets to invade, it was also a very defensible area for the Allies, who had used the year and a half of time they had following their defeat in Korea to fortify the entire coastline.

The two generals stood on top of the large Nagato bunker complex, named after the name of the ancient province name where Shimonoseki sat, trying to figure out Zhukov’s next move. Both men were more used to the offensive and didn’t like their situation one bit, but it was the one they’d been given so far.

The entire seaboard on the city’s three sides was now ensconced in concrete, redoubts, bunkers, machine gun nests, and gun batteries, either naval artillery or anti-aircraft defenses, just like the Nagato complex. Over 150,000 Japanese soldiers manned the fixed defenses while a further reserve of 1,200,000 men waited to move once the enemy invasion started. In addition to it all, the Japanese had included every large caliber gun they could find across their empire. They came in all sizes and shapes up to 12 inches, mainly from decommissioned World War One battleships, the other dreadnoughts and pre-dreadnoughts they scrapped in the 1920s following the Treaty of Washington.

The defenses on Hokkaido and the other Japanese Home Islands were much the same, with a mix of fortifications and troops held in reserve in the rear in order to quickly intervene at any landing points along the coastline. While the duo of generals led the Southern Command, the military command responsible for the defense of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, General Otozo Yamada, the former commander of the Kwantung Army, led the Northern Command for the defenses of Hokkaido and the Kurils. While Hokkaido wasn’t the last line of defense for the Empire and other fortifications had been built further south in anticipation of a possible and successful Soviet landing (in the Tsugaru Strait), Shimonoseki WAS the last and only line of defense for Kyushu. After the strait, the rampaging Red Army would roll over the rest of tiny Japan. There would still be some fighting but no major obstacles with which to stop the Axis hordes.

“The news from the north isn’t encouraging. The Soviets are across,” continued Yamashita. The fighting was indeed heavy, with the city of Wakkanai being attacked and the thousands of paratroopers dropping the night before having taken control of a couple of airfields. “We’ll just have to trust in your colleague and in his defensive preparation,” countered MacArthur. “My country has sent everything it could to help you guys with planes and a good part of the U.S. Navy.” The United States had indeed given their all to help the Japanese, recognizing that the Japanese Home Islands were the last redoubt of resistance in Asia. “Although I hope Secretary Hull is successful in getting Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek to join the war.” “Surely, the Chinese leader can see that the writing is on the wall when we fall,” answered Yamashita. The two men were speaking about the possibility that the Nationalist Chinese and their four million soldiers joined the war on the Allied side. With the USSR supporting Mao’s Communist troops inside of China itself, it was indeed obvious that they were next once Japan fell. “When is your diplomat due to arrive in Kunming,” countered Yamashita. “Should be ay day, now.” Grunting, the Japanese commander turned without any more words to go back to his duties. There was much paperwork to do today, and he had a visit scheduled to the Imperial Guard Division, positioned north of Shimonoseki, and that would be at the forefront of any counteroffensive if and when the Red Army attempted a landing.

General MacArthur stayed a little longer, watching the horizon to try and divine Zhukov’s intentions. He wondered if Japan was the last place he would fight the Axis and decided that he didn’t have a good feeling about the whole thing. The Axis bastards would need a lot more than a spirited defense to be defeated.

Cape Gris Nez main bunker

Meeting of the OKW, Late on August 5th, 1943

(…) OKW (…)

The Cape Griz-Nez gun battery consisted of four 380-millimeter cannons. The large weapons were normally made to be installed in battleships and other heavy warships’ turrets. Instead, German engineers had designed and built a large bunker to house each gun just like a steel dreadnought turret. The guns had a 360-degree field of fire as they traversed on intricate swiveling systems at the base of the weapons. 

The Großer Kurfurst cannons and many like them across the Pas-de-Calais and the Cotentin Peninsula (Cherbourg and surrounding area) directly resulted from Hitler directive no.16, ordering the Army and Navy to build and install a series of gun batteries to shell southeast England and Dover regularly. In addition to the harassment of Dover, the other gun's primary function was to prevent the Allies from shortening their supply line or sailing their ships too close to the now German-occupied shoreline at Calais or else shelling any ships that would be daring enough to sail across the English Channel.

The building of the gun battery at Cap Gris-Nez wasn’t due to hazard or randomness. It was the narrowest point of the English Channel, with the British coastline only twenty-four miles away. With an effective range of thirty-four miles, the battery could shell the southeastern coast of England at will and without the Brits being able to do much about it. The Allies had sent dozens of air raids, but the heavy concrete bunkers protecting the guns themselves were impervious to attack from the air, and it was thus surmised only a direct infantry attack to storm it would do the trick. As the Anglo-Americans were in no position to do so in 1943 as the Reich was about to invade, hence the place was one of the safest in the entire coastline.

This was why Adolf Hitler and his retinue of generals, admirals, and commanders had decided to meet inside one of the great gun bunker complexes.

The room they were in was well below the structure and looked very austere, being the officer’s mess when the exalted Fuhrer didn’t pay a visit to Cap Gris Nez. The room was square but furbished with several large tables and a bar. The bar was closed for the Fuhrer’s visit as the leader of the Third Reich shunned alcohol, while everyone was sent away, and the room was guarded by several burly SS guards.

Assembled around the central table were Hitler, Hermann Goering (head of the Luftwaffe), Marshall Wilhelm Keitel (Chief of the General Staff and OKW’s boss), Generals Franz Halder and Alfred Jodl, and Grand Admiral Raeder (Kriegsmarine). Every one of the leaders had their deputies or secretaries standing behind them at the tables around to take notes. Hitler had the shadowy and secretive Martin Bormann, while the others had only brought officers from their respective services they often used as staffers for meetings.

“Let’s have it, gentlemen,” said Hitler, spreading his arms and sitting down in anticipation of the men who would give him the rundown on the final preparations for Operation Sealion 1943. The first instance had failed miserably in 1940 as the Luftwaffe was unable to defeat the Royal Air Force, and German just didn’t have enough ships to have any chance of controlling the English Channel.

Things weren’t much different in the last bit of Summer of 1943, with the British and American fleets outrageously dominating the waves and the RAF, now helped by the numerous and powerful American Airforce was far from beaten. In fact, it had already been decided that it wouldn’t be possible to vanquish the enemy air strength and that the invasion plans would just have to take that major difficulty into account, contrary to what Hitler directive no. 16 had ordered in 1940.

The idea now was to swamp the enemy defenses with troops, ships, planes, and everything in between to overwhelm the Allied forces in Southern England. Landings would be done with the full assumption that heavy losses would incur and that unflinching resolve in the face of the unrelenting wall of fire the Allies had prepared for the Reich would be needed.

“Is the airborne force ready, General Jodl,” asked Adolf. “Yes, Mein Fuhrer, they are now all in place and assembling at their jumping-off airfields. The three Fallschirmjager corps, all 64,000 of them, will be dropping over England soon.” The Reich, just like the Soviet Union, had built up its airborne forces in anticipation of the final fight with the British in their fortified islands. The Allies controlled the water, but the Germans would simply hop over it.

“Mein Fuhrer,” added Franz Halder. “I have spoken with Admiral Canaris at the Abwehr, and they have done an excellent job of reconnoitering Southampton and the surrounding areas. The Allies will expect a landing from the Pas-de-Calais.” The German plan included a big, 65,000-man-strong para drop operation in and around Southhampton and then a full crossing with all manner of crafts from the port of Cherbourg. The English Channel could be quite choppy, and many ships could sink as most were not made to go in the open sea. However, in August, there were many days of calm seas. Thus, it could be crossed with barges, shipping trawlers, and other kinds of craft they were normally used for transporting cargo on inland waterways and not designed for extended travel across oceans or seas. Still, the Germans would try with them anyway.

The work done in 1940, with the gathering of 170 cargo ships, 1277 barges, and 471 tugs was repurposed, and over two thousand additional makeshift vessels were gathered during the winter and Spring of 1943. Meanwhile, the Reich engineers delivered on a project they were never able to complete in time and build in sufficient numbers in 1940 with the Pionierlandungsboot 39 (Engineer Landing Boat 39). The purpose-built craft was a self-propelled shallow-draft vessel that had 45 infantrymen, two light vehicles, or 20 tons of cargo capability. The thing could sail across the Channel and have a reasonable chance to stay afloat and could land on an open beach, unloading via a pair of clamshell doors at the bow.

By late September 1940, only two prototypes had been delivered, and when the invasion of England was canceled, the project was mothballed. Following the final victory in Morocco and the ousting of the last Allied forces from French North Africa, the idea of a renewed Operation Sealion rekindled the Pionierlandungsboot 39 project and it was completed by the middle of 1942. In August 1943, the Reich could count on 554 of them, all assembled in the ports in and around the Cotentin Peninsula.

Another project that was never completed in 1940 was the Kriegsmarine project to build a 220-ton Marinefährprahm (MFP) in recognition of the need for a larger craft capable of landing both tanks and infantry onto a hostile shore. Ready and fully designed by April 1941, the naval ferry barge became the largest Axis landing craft to date and a true amphibious vessel. With 700 completed and in position by August 1943, the Marinefährprahm would play a critical role in the battle to come.

After Admiral Raeder listed everything available in terms of landing craft for the amphibious landing near Southampton, an impressed Hitler gave his next question. “How are we going to protect them,” he said, knowing full well that these nice little barges would get massacred by the numerous Allied warships.

47th Infantry Regiment, 21st German Division

Outside of the Cap Griz Nez bunker, Private soldier Marco Peters exchanged his lighter with his two friends, Felix Daimler and youngster-maverick Max Konstantin, as they lounged just near the entrance.

Detailed to guard duty and heightened security to beef up the SS guards tasked with the protection of the Fuhrer wherever he went, the entire 47th Regiment was in the vicinity of the Griz Nez gun battery. It wasn’t that there was a lot of danger and the only real worry was from an air raid (about which Marco and his friend couldn’t do anything).

But it was what it was; the Reich took it’s Fuhrer’s security very seriously. The 21st Division was back in Europe since the end of 1942 when the battle for the Canary Islands concluded with the Allied evacuation of the area. The three friends were heavily involved in the fighting, participating in a landing on the main island (La Palma).

“By the way,” said Konstantin, cigarette hanging between his two lips, smoke billowing around him. “Where do you know the Reichmarshall from?” Marco laughed out loud and then grunted, finishing his first puff of smoke.

As he got into the bunker (after exiting from his black Mercedes), Hermann Goering recognized Marco and walked right up to him. “Peters,” had exclaimed the boastful and smiling Reichmarshall. “I am happy you are still doing well!” How was the fighting down south?” “It was difficult, Herr Reichmarshall.” “I am happy to see you well, Sir,” he had answered timidly. “A man to watch for, Milch,” continued Goering, looking at his deputy, Erhard Milch, as he pointed at Marco. “One real son of the Reich.” The Reichmarshall then entered the bunker to attend the OKW meeting, and that was that.

“When I was in Griz Nez in September 1940, remember I told you about this Felix,” answered Peters as he looked at his other friend. “Ah yes, the time you killed a few British commandos?” “Yeah, well, I sort of was congratulated by Goering himself as he had been visiting the gun battery at the time. He arrived the next day right after the night battle.” Konstantin looked at him with amazement. “Shit, Peters, I didn’t know you fought commandos,” eventually answered the young soldiers after Marco told him the full story.

Their new Lieutenant, Armand Fortmund, eventually walked by and started a conversation with the three soldiers. It was there they learned that once the Fuhrer departed back for Germany, the 21st Division was ordered to transfer to Cherbourg.

The road had been long from Africa to Northern France, but they were ready to fight and finish this war.

(…) OKW (…)

“Mein Fuhrer, we can’t protect them all,” answered Raeder soberly. “There just aren’t enough ships. The trick is to attack as quickly and take over Southampton as fast as possible and inflict so much damage on the Allied fleet that they move out of the Channel.” Hitler grunted. “And how do we do that?”

Raeder looked at Goering, who was ready to intervene as the two men had discussed the matter previously. “Mein Fuhrer, covering the landings will be almost as important as destroying as many enemy ships as possible,” finally said the Reichmarshall. He then looked toward Milch, his deputy. “As the Reichmarshall has just said, Mein Fuhrer, we need to make it too costly for the Allied fleet to stay and block our supply ships. Once their fleet leaves and we push them out of the Cherbourg-Southampton sea lane, we’ll still have to fight them in the air, but some of our ships will get through.”

Keitel took over as he felt he hadn’t spoken enough as the Chief of the General Staff. “Once we get enough troops on the ground and can supply them, Mein Fuhrer, the game will be over as we will keep expanding the beachhead with supplies and troops. The 220 ME323 Gigants we have will also ferry a full panzer division within the first twelve hours. If we take Southampton and chase their fleet away, we have won.” “It will take time,” added Halder, “but indeed, the writing will be on the wall if we achieve those two objectives,” chimed in Halder.

(…) 47th Infantry Regiment, 21st German Division (…)

Outside of the Cap Griz Nez bunker, Private soldier Marco Peters heard the slow droning of incoming aircraft first, but soon, the two friends heard it as well, and the spotter saw the black dots approaching over the horizon.

The plethora of flak gun batteries opened up on the approaching airstrike, sending a flurry of AA rounds into the sky. Marco looked south, and as right as rain, he saw the approaching dots of the combat air patrol that were on alert near the Cap Gris Nez Battery. More fighters (FW-190s) were also overhead and plunged toward the enemy bomber raid.

Soon, all hell broke loose, with a powerful dogfight above, bombs falling everywhere, and explosions blossoming everywhere at once. The three friends dove for cover and went into one of the specially-built trenches and boltholes available all around the site. After all, the place was bombed often.

(…) OKW (…)

The rumble of explosions and battle rattled the walls of the bunker with slight tremors and faraway-sounding noises, feeling like they were privy to a powerful summer storm.

One black-uniformed SS Guard soon entered the room to speak to the meeting participants and especially to Hitler. “Mein Fuhrer, an enemy air raid is underway, but no one here is in danger. Please stay in the room; this is the most secure spot in the building, as we are on the last level below the surface.” Hitler, seemingly unfazed, just nodded and turned back to the assembled men in the meeting.  “I have to go now, Mein Fuhrer,” finished the Colonel, clicking his heels and giving the Nazi salute. He left two SS guards inside the room for added support and security, just in case.

The discussions had turned away from the Battle of England and the details of the renewed Sealion operation, moving on to the Far East.

“So,” continued Hitler, “the Soviets are on the ground in Hokkaido.. Can we say things are going along according to the planned schedule?” A particularly loud banging noise, followed by hard shaking, dimmed the lights in the room. “That one hit the turret above,” said Goering, looking upward as if he could see through the concrete.

Jodl and Halder, who had spoken with General Günther von Kluge earlier in the day, nodded to each other, and Halder spoke up. “Mein Fuhrer, the Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht’s Far East Forces, has reported the Soviets have been successful in getting paratroopers in the city of Wakkanai and also land about 40% of all the amphibious craft they sent from Sakhalin.” “That’s one hell of a casualty rate,” said Goering with a nervous laugh. “Remind me not to piss off Stalin; I wouldn’t like to fight such a foe.”

Once the Reichmarshall was done speaking, Halder continued. They are now about to launch their attack from the Kurils against eastern Hokkaido. Hitler listened to the information, head to the side, with his hands shaking slightly on the table. “What about the K5s?” The leader of the Third Reich had a thing for large artillery pieces and was the impetus behind the large guns the Germans now entertained, like the Gustav 800mm guns. The K5 was a little smaller but nevertheless impressive rail gun, and Germany had sent a bunch to Sakhalin in pieces, reassembled them, and built purpose-made rail lines for them along with bunker protection. The idea had been to provide some form of artillery support to the Soviets when they landed.

“The rail guns are wreaking havoc on the enemy defensive positions near the shoreline, and there are no problems reported yet; the guns have not been detected by the Allied air force.” “Ah, well, that’s something,” answered Hitler, slamming his palm on the table.

(…) 47th Infantry Regiment, 21st German Division (…)

Outside, the Allied attack was unrelenting, with a stream of bombers coming at the bunker complex and planes fighting above like there was no tomorrow. Marco and the rest of the 47th Regiment hunkered down in their hideouts and holes, curling into balls as the ground rocked, the earth blasted upward, and the concrete splintered all around them.

“Look,” said one of the men, pointing at the sky at some form of V-shaped aircraft harboring the German cross. “Those are the jets!” Marco, hiding and not interested in looking outside for fear of getting caught by a piece of shrapnel, decided to look up.

(…) Jäger Squadron One (…)

I would rather have one Me-262 than five Me-109s."

Generalleutnant Adolf Galland during the Second Battle of England in 1943.

Ace pilot Gunther Rall veered his plane left in a quick tumble to avoid the streams of bullets from an American Vought Corsair fighter, and the two planes crossed each other’s path in a thundering roar. He then finally zoomed in on his target, the large B-24 Liberator U.S. bomber that had just opened its bomb bays. He swooped downward, slashing the air like a beam of light, and then came up under the aircraft, firing a stream of his 30mm cannons from both his wings. The blazing streams of shells snaked like a whip of light in the sky as they raced toward his target, and then they connected, slamming in succession at the Liberator’s bottom fuselage, covering the plane with cascading balls of fire and scattering debris.

Hunter Squadron One was on its way back from its second raid of the day on the Hastings radar station in the North Foreland near the Strait of Dover. It had been a good day, and the rest of the squadron’s fighters (twenty pilots in all) looked forward to land and get some rest. Galland’s voice had then sounded over the radio as they approached the coastline, telling them the Cap Gris Nez gun battery station was under attack. He did not need to speak any more words since every man in the unit knew that the Fuhrer was in the bunker itself and needed defending. They’d floored their gas throttles and sped to the area just in time to attack the trailing part of the enemy air raid.

The big B-24 bombers, hit by the flurry of Rall’s shells, sort of veered upward in a climbing maneuver, fire in its belly. Then, an explosion caught one of its un-dropped bombs. What followed was a pure white blast of energy, with an expanding cloud of fire and dark smoke. Then, at the last moment, Rall was able to turn his plane in a quick move of his hand and speed away from the expanding maelstrom, his plane taking the brunt of the structural stress shaking. “Hold on, baby,” he said out loud to the fighter. And then he was through the danger zone and out to the other side.

(…) 47th Infantry Regiment, 21st German Division (…)

“Dear mother of God,” said Konstantin as he watched the big enemy bomber explode in mid-air while the V-shaped Me-262 thundered by in a roar worthy of a mountain lion. Marco’s mouth opened and closed without a word, while Daimler could only say: “amazing, that’s fucking amazing.” Then, a collective cheer went up as more Me-262 Schwalbe 1as blazed by, streaming their shell tracers at the enemy planes.

Speechless, Peters had trouble believing the speed of the planes before him in the sky. The same could be said of the Allied pilots bombarding the Cap Gris Nez bunker complex since the Squadron commander called off the attack, and soon, the enemy aircraft were making their large turn toward home in England.

(…) OKW (…)

Meanwhile, the men inside continued their discussion as they heard the noise and the roof of their room rattled, with some fine dust falling from it. Goering wiped the table with his hand as more and more was accumulating before him.

“The new Tiger tank will be amazing to see in battle,” continued Keitel, who was doing a presentation about the new Panzer VI’s performance. Just moments before, he’d given the rundown on the Panzer V, another excellent tank the Wehrmacht had dubbed the “Panther.” “Indeed, my dear Marshall,” countered Hitler, who was truly enthusiastic about the new machine, having seen it in action at the Henschel tank testing ground at Haustenbeck near Paderborn. “Henchel has done excellent work on this tank. I believe it will be a war-altering weapon when it lands in the United Kingdom and will strike fear which will cause restraint to Stalin, who thinks he’s got the best tanks in the world.” No one commented on the Fuhrer’s words, as they did not understand Hitler’s continued hostility toward their valuable ally, which was the Soviet Union.

“They will be a little more complicated to move into the United Kingdom because many of the barges we have built cannot support their fifty-six tons weight,” chimed in Raeder. “Consequently, Tigers won’t be present in the initial landing waves. But once we secure the sea lanes,” he paused to nod at the Reichmarshall, who was the chief of the Luftwaffe and thus responsible for scattering the Allied fleets out of the English Channel. “We’ll send them and shatter the enemy armored formations. Hitler just continued to speak about how great the tank was, as he didn’t care much about the details of how the tanks would get to England. Once they did, they would shatter everything before them.

(…) 47th Infantry Regiment, 21st German Division (…)

A few hours later, and as the OKW meeting was over, Goering exited the bunker first, eager to get a drink. The Fuhrer didn’t atone any alcohol in his presence, and the Reichmarshall was very thirsty. He looked around for that enterprising soldier Marco Peters and saw him in the fading smoke of the air raid. The ground was pockmarked, and small patches of fire still burned everywhere, with the gun battery itself damaged. The soldier was bunched up with a couple of others, smoking cigarettes.

“Peters,” he said, walking toward Marco and followed by his bodyguards. “Reichmarshall, it’s a pleasure to see you again,” answered the soldier. “Cigaretten?” “Well, yes, thank you, soldier,” said Goering, extending his hand. Daimler lit the cigarette after the Reichmarshall hunched down toward his lighter, and then smoke billowed out of his mouth. Goering then gave them his best smile. “Soldiers, as you know, the Fuhrer shuns any kind of alcohol and smoking in his presence,” stated the head of the Luftwaffe, taking a long drag before speaking again. “Thus, where can a thirsty man like me quench his thirst?”

Marco smiled. “Right this way, Herr Reichmarshall.”

Flashback 1942

The Axis conquest of the Kuril Islands, February to September, 1942

Following their conquest of the island of Sakhalin, the Red Army was only twenty-four miles from Hokkaido, with only the La Pérouse Strait in between the Soviet hordes and the Japanese island. The defeat of the invasion force of General Konstantin Rokossovsky at the northernmost Kuril Island of Shumshu in August 1941 was only a minor setback for the Axis. As their final objective remained the Japanese Home Islands, the conquest of the Kuril Islands chain was a priority, and like every other battle they’d fought since the start of the war, when the Axis put all its weight somewhere, things tended to go their way.

The invading forces in Shumshu were defeated by a combination of Japanese land defenses manned by Major General Ishiro Tsutsumi's 23,000 men and the naval task forces of Admiral Kurita, who moved in the moment the invasion began, destroying everything in his path with his battleships.

But as outlined before, modern naval blockade warfare was not like it had been during the age of sail. Ships could not stay in place anchored in fear of being sunk by submarines or planes. This meant that while the Imperial Navy could and had stopped a landing in August 1941, it didn’t mean it always could because the ships might not get there in time or else be busy doing something else.

After all, the Axis had the initiative and still had the first move. Following the grave defeat of over 40,000 men who attempted a landing, it was surmised by Zhukov and Rokossovsky that an attack could be successful with a mixed force of paratroopers and enough firepower. Then, the landings could take place.

As mentioned earlier, the Red Army underwent a big surge in paratrooper numbers, and thus, several of the new (and also the ones still operational, like the survivors of the Suez battle in 1941) units were moved to the Kamchatka Peninsula, along with enough planes to escort them. Germany also sent a couple of their newest Fallschirmjager divisions, as they needed training for the planned airborne operation in England that the Reich was planning for the Summer of 1943.

By the Spring of 1942, the Americano-Japanese attention was fixated on the Shimonoseki and the La Perouse straits because a genuine invasion could come from there and in force at any time. Korea was in Axis hands, and from there could come the killing stroke on the Japanese industrial centers near and about the central parts of Honshu. The Kuril thus lost importance for Allied command as anyway it was already threatened in two other spots.

Furthermore, a new naval strategy was decided in the north. Grand Admiral Yamamoto, replacing Kurita as head of the Large Imperial Navy Fleet defending Hokkaido, decided in April 1942 to post his ships near and about the La Pérouse Strait to be able to quickly intervene I the case of a Soviet landing operation. MacArthur and Yamashita also concurred with General Otozo Yamada, the newly named commander of the Northern Home Island theater, that it was probably better to beef up Hokkaido and Honshu instead of trying to garrison the Kuril Islands piecemeal since anyway the enemy could attack Hokkaido from Southern Sakhalin Island.

In any case, the Allied commanders did not believe it was possible to defend Hokkaido if the Axis really decided to take it. Some of their efforts thus went to fortifying the Tsugaru Strait (between Honshu and Hokkaido) so strongly that the Axis invasion would not be able to cross into the core of the Japanese Empire.

Thus, with a series of factors playing against him, Major General Ishiro Tsutsumi and his soldiers all across the Kurils braced for impact on the unavoidable Axis attack to come.

The hammer fell on April 4th, 1942, with coordinated airborne attacks on Onekotan and Shiashko-tan (4th Soviet Guards Airborne Division), Matua and Rashua (5th Soviet Guards Airborne Division), Iturup and Urop (3rd Airborne Corps). Finally, Paramushir and Shumshu by the combined forces of the 4th and 5th Soviet Airborne Corps, the 4th and 5th Fallschirmjager divisions, and a 45,000-soldier landing force.

Yamamoto did intervene and sink many of the landing barges across the Kuril chain during the campaign, killing well over 32,000 Soviet soldiers, but at some point in July 1942, it was decided to try and evacuate the leftover troops that were now mostly cut off from any communication with Hokkaido, and thus, out of supply.

The last battle of the Kuril Islands was fought for Kunashir at the extreme south of the island chain, with a combined force of airborne troops and landings. By September 1942, the entire area was under Germano-Soviet control, and preparation started for the final lunge at Hokkaido.

18th Imperial Division

In the Battle for Wakkanai, August 6th, 1943

The powerful explosion shattered the entire top part of the stone building horizontally in a blinding burst of light and fire. The fiery rubble fell down like a hailstorm on the Japanese soldiers below.

Private Soldier Hyeasu Toyakama, a private soldier in the Japanese 18th Imperial Division, dropped to the ground to protect himself, hands on his helmet in a reflex born out of fear. The 18th was stationed along the defensive line just south of Wakkanai, a city in northern Hokkaido. Several concrete bunkers and defenses had been built in and around the strategic spot, and the 18th was moved in at the beginning of 1943, following its return from East Africa.

The 18th Division had gone to Egypt as part of the Japanese expeditionary corps in 1940-1941 to help the British defend against the rampaging Axis forces, along with the 12th and the 7th Imperial Divisions. The unit went back sometime in the past and had a long, decorated history. Raised in 1907, it was involved in the Siege of Tsingtao during the Great War, where it distinguished itself. As one of the best units in the Imperial Army, it was, of course, used in the invasion of China in 1937, where it gained a lot of battlefield experience. The 18th was a well-bloodied division by the time it got to North Africa. Still, under the command of Lieutenant-General Renya Mutaguchi, the unit was now one of the most experienced units in the Imperial Army, its men having fought the Germano-Italians like demons at Ruweisat Ridge near the El Alamein Position. There, they held the Axis forces at bay until the Suez Canal defenses broke in the East, forcing all Allied units in Western Egypt to move out and attempt to escape south.

When he left for Africa, Hyeasu had been a relatively new recruit, having joined the unit as it was brought back to Japan in preparation for the voyage to Egypt. He was from a poor family of fishermen near the Kyoto Prefecture. He’d joined the military because he was tired of being hungry and poor. He was no longer a green soldier now, having killed so many times his memory blurred at the recollection of them all. He was a true fighter and had survived the ordeal of the retreat to the Sudan.

From there, the Division and the other two Japanese units built trenches and defenses in anticipation of an Axis offensive south, which never came. The Germano-Soviets, deciding that for now the heart of Africa was a waste of time and resources, had also built defensive lines in northern Sudan and stayed there, moving most of the heavy and elite units out of the theater to fight in more important battles.

Without enemies to fight and the dire situation in the Home Islands, the Imperial Dai Honei War Council decided to repatriate the three Japanese divisions for the defense of Japan proper. Their experience was welcome, and their elite status beefed up the defenses considerably. While the 12th and the 7th divisions were posted on Honshu, the 18th was moved to Hokkaido, where the fighting promised to be thickest.

The city of Wakkanai was Japan’s northernmost city and, as such, had been heavily fortified because of the enemy presence not twenty-four miles away. The harbor had been the main terminal and go-to place for Sakhalin, and thus, by definition, it was a prime target for the Axis forces.

Several Japanese units were posted to the area, with a further 18,000 American troops. The fight for the city was a day old, and things were already not going very well. The battle had begun during the night of the 4th with numerous airborne attacks in the rear, where the Wakkanai Airfield (6 miles south of the city) was taken by the enemy forces. Rumor had it the Axis were running a non-stop air train of goods, dropping tanks, guns, and troops in the city’s rear. Above, the fight for the air raged, as both sides had no intention of giving up air supremacy without a fight.

Like at Ruweisat Ridge, Hyeasu was one of the four-man squad responsible for one of the Division’s Type 90 75 mm field guns. The weapon could fire high-explosive or armor-piercing shells. Since they had only seen infantry soldiers since the battle started, they were going through their high-explosive inventory but kept a steady stock of the anti-tank shells, for if the rumors were true, they would eventually need them; the enemy was landing tanks at the airfield they captured the day before.

The gun team was ensconced in the broken-down house that had fallen down over their bunker, which was fine with them since the rubble added protection and camouflage. Only the muzzle and a space to look outside were visible from the outside. The enemy troops ran amok in the city as they’d landed with boats and dropped from the air. Thus, there was no real line of battle, and the Captain had detailed a section of infantrymen to protect the gun teams in the bunkers.

Seeing a bunch of brown-uniformed Russians running down the street they faced, Hyeasu adjusted the traverse and lowered the gun by several degrees while the two men responsible for loading put a new shell into the gun and toiled hard to get it in, slamming the gun lid shut. “Ready… Fire!” he yelled. The gun muzzle exploded in fury, and the shell arced brightly toward the poor Soviet soldiers, exploding right in the middle of their group. One moment, they were there; the next, a cloud of smoke and gore replaced the enemy grunts.

The next round was aimed at what seemed to be a fisherman’s store or a warehouse of some kind, where a Soviet machine gun team was spotted by one of the infantrymen defending them. The bastards were setting up their weapons, and Hyeasu had no intention of giving them a chance to try and kill him and his comrades. The round plowed into the white-grey stonewall and exploded. A bunch of white bricks and smoke burst in every direction.

“Okay, guys, let’s see if the damned Ruskies are still alive and kicking or if we got ‘em,” he started, picking up his binoculars in order to figure out what kind of adjustment he needed to make on the gun and if the Russians were still there. He saw that a few of the other gun teams had hit their marks as other building facades exploded in fire and debris. And then, he spotted the bastards. They were still alive.

“Move the gun to the side; let’s fire another round for good measure,” he said with as much authority as he could muster. The men moved with renewed energy as they figured they had a better chance of hitting an immobile target.

Following some adjustments, the Type 90 was ready to fire. And then it spat its shell in anger, a large gout of flame gushing out of the barrel. The round blazed down like an electric arc toward the now crumbled building.

The effect was immediate. The round plowed into the pile of rubble, lifting the entire area where the Russian machine gun team was in a column of pure red fire. The towering lance of flames shot out away into the sky above, and then debris showered everywhere around. “Yeah!” yelled Hyeasu in a shout of joy. They cheered each other and tapped themselves on the back. The fight was far from over, but they had made their mark and were now motivated to continue to pound the rampaging Soviet forces.

Flashback 1942

The Fall of the Canary Islands Part 1, 47th German Regiment, April 20th, 1942

The men of the German 47th Infantry Regiment were not even on land but already felt like it was time to rest. Earlier during the operation (it seemed like hours ago), they had to climb down a rough rope on a large net attached to the side of the ship to get into the landing ships. The things were Italian and called “Motozzattere.”

Made from a German design, (the amphibious ships known as MFP (Marine Faehr Prahm, also being built for the second Sealion Operation), the vessels were forty-seven meters long and seven meters wide, displacing about 170 tons and capable of carrying seventy-two tons. The Motozzattere was equipped with two 76mm dual-purpose guns made for AA defense and which could also be aimed at ground or sea targets.

Built at the Palermo Shipyards ship-yards they were adequate crafts for sea assault, as the Axis forces were in the process of prosecuting the full amphibious invasion of the Canary Islands.

Marco, Felix, and Max were truly nervous as this was their first attack in a boat over the sea. They’d already fought over small rivers on barges but it was the first time in the open seas. They cringed every time they heard the shrills of the enemy shells flying above them and their own ships bombarding the shoreline. The air battle above the fleet had also increased the fearful, difficult time that they were going through.

The gut-wrenching terror of riding the waves to the landing spot was the most hair-raising moment in their short military careers so far, and no one could get used to the dread of not knowing if you would be hit by an enemy shell and sink to the bottom of the sea in a terrible death. Thus, regardless of the fact they were bloodied men and knew how to fight by now, the general mood about the boat was heavily laden with fear. The smell of vomit from scared and seasick marines did nothing to help the ambiance of their free trip to a tropical paradise courtesy of the Reich.

The date was April 20th, 1942, and the Axis forces were making their play at the Canary Islands, the fortified base the Allied forces under the command of American General Clark had fled to after their defeat in Tangier and Morocco.

The fighting had sort of died down at the end of 1941, with the Anglo-American and French forces feeling quite secure in the Canary Islands, their fleets protecting them. But, surely and steadily, the Axis forces brought submarines and a lot of aircraft to Morocco, building airfields and support bases for the next step ahead and the conquest of the Canaries. The idea was that if the Germano-Soviet-Italians booted their enemies out of the only spot where they resisted, any danger to that part of the front would be averted.

In the same vein, the Allies started to look at the Canary Islands as a spot they didn’t need anymore. The defeat in French North Africa was complete, and since the entire reason for fighting there had been to fixate Axis attention elsewhere than Britain, the decision was taken to evacuate essential fleet assets from the islands, keeping only ground forces to give some form of resistance against any enemy attack.

The Allied fleets were thus ordered to rebase in the Azores and toward the United Kingdom, where there was growing fear of a renewed Axis invasion. The Fleets would and could sail to the Canaries from the Azores if the Axis attacked, and it was surmised this would be enough to deter the Axis for a while.

The final run to Tenerife (the 47th Regiment had been tasked, along with other units, to occupy the main island) was the most harrowing, with the landing craft being hammered by crisscrossing machine gun fire, guns, and mortar explosions, splashing the men inside the ships (the landing craft were open-top). Marco could see the high cone of the volcano towering over the island, as it was active, with a stream of smoke climbing to the sky from its caldera. The 76mm caliber guns on each  Motozzattere landing ship countered, hosing the distant and menacing shoreline with their own ordinance. The crisscrossing tracers made for an awesome lightshow, only it wasn’t very entertaining to watch when men like Paters knew how deadly the moment was.

Some of them were killed as they were mostly unprotected and easy to spot. One of their own amphibious ship gunners took a bullet right in the face and was killed right there with his head exploding like a ripe watermelon. “Fucking hell,” yelled Daimler. “Steady, guys,” said Sergeant Trucker, their NCO. The man was a monolith of calm and strength, and Marco wondered how he did it.

This, as much as the battle around, gave the men in the craft a hell of a scare as one of the Lieutenants on board got his brain smashed, and it splashed over them in a great gush of blood and gray matter. If a man like him could be killed, then they could, too. Trucker, steady as a rock, made sure they kept sane. “Fuck this guy, and concentrate on not dying,” he said, yelling over the ruckus of battle. “You need to concentrate on fighting well and surviving today.” He pointed toward the incoming beach. “There is your real challenge, and you will see a lot more gore and blood over there. Get used to it and snap back to your tip-top shape. There will be time for you to think about this day over a good schnapps, but you fucking need to survive first.” The tough NCO’s words seemed to work as the men turned toward their front and toward the Motozzattere ramp, about to slam down on the sand.

Marco, like Max, Felix, and the rest of the squad, snuck his head out of the boat to see where the craft was relative to the beach, and he saw a brown-uniformed officer (probably British) standing defiantly on one of the bunkers waving a pistol, just daring them to come ashore. Beside him was a Vickers machine gun pouring blazing tracers at their craft. While the bullets only sparked and ricocheted off the Motozzattere, the bastards had to be silenced before they hit the beach. Marco moved to go to the .76mm gun with the dead gunner, but Trucker stopped him. “I’ll take care of that, Peters.” “Yes, Sarge,” he answered.

The Italian-made landing crafts struggled shoreward in three long waves, all wading to the shore in a hurry.  The NCO climbed to the top of the Motozzattere and grabbed the 76mm cannon’s handles. He followed by peppering the beach and the enemy position with his shell fire. The rounds thundered down on the beach and clouded the bunker where the Brown-uniformed officer was. Smoke and dust rose in the air, and when it scattered in the wind, with the enemy Captain was dead, shredded like mincemeat.

Many of the soldiers cheered, as it made them feel good. “Now, boys, get ready,” yelled Trucker. “We’re hitting the beach now.” The craft bobbed heavily in the surf, and then a loud boom was heard when the hull slammed on the soft sand. More enemy shells fell near them, lifting golden sand in the air and drenching the men in the water. Then, in a sudden and powerful jolt, the armored plate in front of the Motozzattere dropped down in a clang and a splash of shallow water.

Marco and the other infantrymen started to pour out onto the sand. The man in front of him suddenly jerked, and he was hit by a heavy enemy bullet. His body somersaulted backward in a spray of blood, but Marco barely noticed. Instead, he started firing his gun at the line of bunkers near the La Palma beach.

The German soldiers charged their way off of the beach and onto the log and earthen bunkers the British (Marco was certain they were English by then) had built, and soon, the two sides were mingling together as they started fighting hand to hand. Max Konstantin slid his back-slung long knife out and started slashing at the enemies before him, cutting a terrible injury across one man’s chest. Beside him, his comrades Felix and Marco did the same as more and more Axis soldiers (there were also Italian ones in the invasion force) arrived to fight the Allied soldiers.

Quickly, the assault started to overwhelm the defenses near the beach. Bunkers started to go silent, and Marco felt he didn’t have as many targets firing at him or his comrades. His bayonet-tipped rifle was dripping with blood, and he was in a battle craze, completely berserk and yelling. When the last Brits started running toward the inside of the island and what must be another line of defense, they all picked up their rifles again and poured bullets into their backs, sending them off.

After a while, there wasn’t anything he could fire at without risking hitting German or Italian soldiers. The first enemy line of defense was taken, but the fight was far from over.

Wakkanai Airfield

4th Soviet Guards Airborne Division, August 6th, 1943

The resounding blast rocked the earth near him, showering the area with dirt that slammed onto his helmet and his face. “Reload, you bastards, reload and fire,” said Sergeant Demidov, who stood beside him. “We are, we are,” Alexy heard the men near him mumble, low enough so the man wouldn’t hear him. The 4th Soviet Guards Airborne Division was now entrenched in and around the Wakkanai Airfield they took control of on the 5th of August following their airborne attack. The fight for the place was difficult, but the garrison was overpowered, thanks to the combined forces of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Guards airborne divisions.

Before them was mayhem. Bullets whizzed about, and artillery shells exploded everywhere. The Japanese imperial forces were attacking yet again, and it was one hell of a fight. Alexy and his Red Army comrades were in the middle of a powerful and unrelenting enemy counterattack, as the Allies knew the stakes of leaving the airfield to the Axis forces. Behind them took off and landed big transport planes, who taxied troops, tanks, and supplies in the middle of a battle. Many of the large Me-323s and TB-3s lay burnt to a crisp on the side of the runway because the enemy could fire on them as they came and went. One exploded in mid-air as it was trying to take off, hit by a mortar shell in the middle of its fuselage. The resounding boom the explosion produced basted outward in a large shockwave that flattened everything around it.

But it was what it was, troops and supplies had to be brought to the island if the Axis wanted to have a chance of winning. The airborne troop’s job was to hold on for dear life until such time the new reinforcements tilted the tide of battle, or else the troops landed from Sakhalin in the city of Wakkanai itself broke through and joined them. Thus, men like Alexy just looked at the blast and resumed fighting.

Private Alexy Matvisvenko was doing his best to pour as much bullet fire as possible into the charging enemies. So far, it seemed to be working, and none of the bastards had yet reached their trench. “These Japs are attacking like there is no tomorrow, regardless of the odds,” grunted Sergeant Demidov as he reloaded his PPS-43 submachine gun. None of the soldiers answered, busy as they were in killing enemy soldiers. They’d seen the suicidal tendencies of their Nipponese enemies firsthand in the fight for the Kurils months earlier.

“What are you fucking doing, Comrade Matvisvenko,” said the crusty NCO as he kicked him in the leg. “Reload faster and stop daydreaming!” He was doing nothing of the sort and poured as much fire as he could into the enemy ranks, but that didn’t matter in any way to the bastard. “Yes, Comrade Sergeant. Sorry, Comrade Sergeant!” He fumbled with his 35-count PPS-43 clip but was eventually able to put it in the submachine gun to fire again. The weapon soon rattled its chattering as it recoiled in succession on his shoulder, and Sergeant Demidov put his attention elsewhere for a change.

He spotted a Japanese soldier running with his rifle held at the waist, aimed and fired a burst. His first bullets hit the ground, missing the man, but he kept pouring rounds into the area the Jap was running in, and a bullet grazed the man’s shoulder, blood spurting out of his uniform in a small cloud of red mist. Then, the last flurry of his 35-ammo clip did it, as the enemy soldier was not even ten yards from the trench. It slammed him one after the other into the chest, and the force of the impacts slammed him backward in a somersault worthy of an Olympic gymnast.

With a few bullets left, Alexy looked for a new target, and he found one in a sidearm-brandishing officer who was urging his men forward. He fired but missed on his first shot. He missed again with his second shot, not because his shooting skills were bad, but because an enemy artillery shell had blasted into the earth some distance behind him. With the ground shaking so hard, his aim had erred to the side, and he’d missed. The enemy soldiers were very close now, and he fished for another clip, hoping Sergeant Demidov had not seen him miss. He pushed the clip inside and turned the pin back to its firing position.

While he had been reloading, he’d crouched down into the trench to avoid being killed because he was busy doing something other than looking at the enemy. When he put his gun over the lip again, he saw that the enemy soldiers were almost upon them. There was no time to aim and so many targets that he just rapid-fired a spray of submachine gun. “Knives,” yelled both Sergeant Demidov and Lieutenant Evgeny Shorgatiev, their section commander. He fumbled the blade on the ground, and then it was time to fight. He picked it up and resolved to use it as a short saber. Already, the Japs were jumping into the trench, flooding it with yellow-greyish uniforms. Alexy lunged at the one that was coming right for him, sidestepping and slashing at the same time, mortally wounding the poor man, who landed hard on the dirt.

He slashed hard at another bastard jumping into the trench, slicing his throat in one quick swoop of the hand. Beside him, confusion reigned, with men fighting at close quarters. His uniform was red with blood, and he had the crazed look of a man desperately fighting for his own survival in the midst of a battle craze.

And then, the stream of enemy soldiers jumping into the trench relented, slowing to a trickle. He killed two more enemies, and then it was over; the enemy retreated back to its starting line.

The Soviets were holding the line of defense around the Wakkanai Airfield, and more troops were joining them as soon as they landed. A few Panzer IVs and T-34s from the naval landings were on the ground and started to have an impact on the overall battle. If there was one thing missing in the Japanese arsenal, it was tanks. The U.S. forces had brought some to Japan, but not enough to cover everywhere, and the great majority of Shermans were located on Honshu for the main defense.

56th Rifle Division

In the battle for Wakkanai, August 6th, 1943

Private Soldier Anatoli Batasov put his SVT-40 Rifle on the crumbled wall beside him and removed his backpack to take a little break. Lieutenant Kaprisov, the section commander, had just ordered a quick break before they went into action again. He picked up his water canteen, noticing his hand was shaking. No wonder it was, as the fighting so far was fierce, and he’d had more than one close run-in with death.

The Japanese city of Wakkanai was or at last had been a beautiful little northern Hokkaido town, with its traditionally built buildings mostly made of wood. Anatoli really liked the looks of the sloped, tiled, and thatched roofs.

He found the distinctive curved roofs with crenelated decorations very beautiful. He didn’t know what the enemy called the part of the roof that extended far out, but he really liked it. He figured this was a place he could live in compared to the ugliness of Soviet architecture.

“Where are you, Anatoli,” said Sergeant Priakin, one of the unit’s NCOs. Alexi was a decent man, and Anatoli was happy to have him as a sergeant, as most NCOs were not of the nice type. Their unit was also lucky not to have a political officer for the moment, the last one having been killed in the landing the day before. With the state of affairs (the slow trickle of reinforcements because the Japanese fleet sunk most of the boats trying to cross), he figured it was just as well.

“Just looking at the enemy building’s architecture, Sergeant,” he countered, taking another long sip of water from his canteen. “It's just too bad we’re destroying them all.” “Well, you know, Soldier, there isn’t any other way around it; we gotta smash to conquer for the great Stalin.” Priakin winked at Batasov, and he knew the man was being sarcastic in his own way.

There was no great enthusiasm from the troops for the war in the East. Granted, every man did his duty to the State and obeyed orders, but not many found the idea of the conquest of Japan useful or appealing. But the Soviet Union was not a place for any kind of dissident, and thus, everyone kept their feelings to themselves.

The Red Army was riddled with political officers, men who were supposed to spy on them and report any mishaps or else indoctrinate them in the “ways of Communism.” The Soviet State controlled its population through fear and intimidation. Thus, from the Soviet leadership’s point of view, when the soldiers were let loose, they tended to get a little wilder than the average citizens in other countries. They thus needed control and guidance.

Lieutenant Kaprisov made his way to both men. “Everyone ready for the assault,” he asked Priakin. “The men are, as soon as they are done with their water,” he answered, shooting a glance at Batasov who understood the message, putting back his canteen into his small backpack and then sliding it back on himself.

A trio of Japanese Zero fighters thundered above them, and they briefly caught a glimpse of the three enemy planes firing their 20mm shells at some unseen plane further down toward the shoreline. Kaprisov continued as he looked at the sky. The aircraft were soon out of view, as a large red and white Japanese curved roof blocked their view. “Apparently, we are fighting some kind of Japanese elite division. The 18th Imperial Division or something like that. We captured a few soldiers, and that’s what we’ve been able to garner from the bastards.” “Well, Sir, elite or not, the men are ready for your orders,” answered Priakin like any good NCO would. “The Division is set to move southward in ten minutes; get ready.” “Yes, Sir.”

Kaprisov continued to walk down to get to the rest of the men and let them know they would attack soon.

(…) Twenty-five minutes later (…)

Anatoli pushed hard into the man’s chest, his bayonet making a weird crunching noise as it grated on the bones of the Japanese thoracic cage. The stricken man on the ground exhaled in panic and tried to yell, but only blood exited from his mouth. He twisted his gun, and his opponent died in a spasm. He was in the middle of a melee fight with the men of his platoon, with his rifle in hand.

He leveled his head again and gazed at the battlefield. Several bullets zipped by, and he could see tracers crisscrossing everywhere. A few powerful explosions peppered the enemy line of retreating soldiers. Everywhere he looked, he saw soldiers fighting hand-to-hand and blossoming earth, wood from buildings, and rock churned upward by explosions and blasts that rocked the ground beneath his feet.

The 56th Rifle attack was supported by a bunch of T-34s, who had miraculously survived the crossing of the La Pérouse Strait during the night and mornings of the invasion. The info going around was that 80% of the armored forces that left Korsakov didn’t make it to Hokkaido. While Stalin was not concerned with such trifles, men like Anatoli were and wondered if this whole operation was going anywhere.

Seeing the T-34 near them slam through a broken-down house and then fire its gun at a machine gun position, he had to admit they were useful, as he had not often fought with tanks in support. He marveled as he watched the magnificent machines of war roll over the Allied defenses across the area in the city of Wakkanai. They were also magnificent shields against enemy bullets streaming toward them. The trick was to try and advance right behind them to avoid being hit as the panzer's thick armor deflected most of the shots harmlessly away.

Once they took the large road going from the port to the center of the city, the handful of Russian tanks had been able to intervene. Before that, they had been impeded by large ditches, minefields, and other impassable obstacles. Cities were not, after all, a friendly place for tanks and other armored vehicle. They tended to get bogged down when there were no more roads or else they broke down because of track damage.

The 56th and the other Soviets units were pushing hard on the second line of enemy defense, located roughly in the center of the city. Anatoli had heard that there were four of them before they reached the Wakkanai Airfield, under the control of Soviet Airborne divisions and the stream of troops that were apparently landing from a non-stop sky train of units and supplies. Lieutenant Kaprisov had been very clear. The landings would soon stop, and there wouldn’t be any more supplies or men coming from that way. Their only salvation was to reach the airfield and take control of Wakkanai. From there, the bridgehead would be expanded, and they would soon be joined by a second airborne and amphibious attack from the Kurils.

He put his left boot on the dead soldier’s cheek and pried his bayonet out of his lifeless body. After a quick customary pocket search where he found nothing of value, he spat on the dead man in frustration. His blood was up, and he started running forward to find another injured enemy. Batasov was a survivor, and he’d come a long way from the time he joined the war at the bottom of Heavenly Lake in Northern Korea. After all, there weren’t any medals to be had when you got killed, and thus, he learned that surviving was a combination of good, bad, and whatever deeds you had to accomplish to stay alive. Stealing from the dead was one of them. The more eager soldiers (the young recruits and the sections still watched over by political officers, mostly) were directly in front doing the real fighting – and dying. This is not to say that Anatoli and his comrades were not in a very dangerous area, but their Lieutenant and Sergeant were smart enough to avoid being the very tip of the spear and moved cautiously ahead.

Anatoli was about seventy yards from the forward-most fighting, where the most intense shooting and exploding were happening. “Let’s go, men,” yelled Lieutenant Kaprisov, herding Anatoli and his comrades around forward. “One more push, and we’ve won the enemy’s second line of defense!”

CHAPTER 2

White House

Oval Office, morning of the 7th of August 1943

“Things aren’t going really well, gentlemen,” said President Franklin Roosevelt to the assembled men in the Oval Office on that morning of the 7th. The leader of the United States of America referred to the invasion of Hokkaido that was underway in Japan and the imminent invasion of the British Islands. It was obvious the Axis was about to lunge at the British and try to finish this war. If both islands fell, it meant that only the Americas would remain free, and it would be very difficult to prosecute the war from an Ocean away.

The Allies reeled back from a year and a half of defeats and retreats, and things weren’t looking too rosy for the Anglo-Americans and even worse for the Japanese. First, the Korean Peninsula was lost, and with it, any foothold the alliance held on the Asiatic mainland. Then, only a few weeks later, Morocco was evacuated along with the large Tangier Base to the Canaries, while the same slide to disaster unfolded in the East with the Axis forces piercing the Suez defensive line and forcing the Allied forces to retreat to Southern Sudan. In between, the Aden Naval Base was lost, and with it, the entire Arabian Peninsula. The final act of the disaster was the Germano-Soviet invasion of Scandinavia, completely overrunning the three countries along with Denmark. In their defenses, the Allies had not done badly. They fought well and to the very limits of their endurance; however, in the end, Axis numbers had won the day. The Germano-Soviet alliance, as unholy as it was, had three to four times the number of men and tanks in both Asia and Europe.

The only reason the Axis blitz had been stopped at the end of 1941 was because of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and Allied fleets. In Asia, the combined ships of Imperial Japan and the United States of America blocked the Soviets from crossing the Sea of Japan of the La Pérouse and Tsushima Strait, while in  Europe, the same happened with the North Sea and the English Channel.

“No, Mr. President, things are not going well,” answered Field Marshal Sir John Dill, the man recently appointed as the first head of the British Joint Staff Mission in the United States. Formerly Chief of the Imperial Staff, Dill was replaced in his post by Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke. Churchill had sort of needed a change at the top to instill new confidence and some life into the demoralized British fighting forces following the defeat in North Africa and the fall of the Canary Islands. Dill wasn’t sour about it or anything like that, as he had done his best, and no one had been able to resist the Axis tide so far. He viewed his job in the USA as instrumental in the successful continuation of the terrible war his country was fighting.

“But they are surely going to find that the United Kingdom is a harder nut to crack than what they’ve encountered so far,” continued the British officer. “I dare say they will find the same in Japan,” chimed in General George Marshall, the overall commander of the U.S. armed forces.

The other man in the room was Admiral King, the U.S. Navy commander-in-chief, flanked by French leader Charles de Gaulle, also the de-facto French military commander. The leaders were sitting on the Oval Office couches, around the small table in the middle, and having either a coffee or a tea.

And just like Dill and Marshall were saying, things would not be as easy as the Axis thought they would be. The year was no longer 1940 when the UK was defenseless, and the United States was not geared up for war. The same was true for the Japanese. They had been over-extended in China and Manchuria and had been supplied by a shoestring in Korea. But the Allied forces, both on the British and Japanese Home Islands, were as strong as could be, with millions of soldiers, guns, planes, and everything in between. They’d produced the machines of war to fight the Germano-Soviets, recruited more and more units, and prepared their defenses well.

The Axis forces also had to land and keep their forces supplied while they would not really control the sea lanes. By August 1943, the Allied forces in the southern part of the United Kingdom were ready for an Axis attack and well-entrenched. While Berlin and Moscow still held the strategic initiative, things were far from being won, as their armies had to successfully cross across the sea and keep themselves in the field to fight the millions of men waiting for them both in England and the Nipponese Home Islands.

Overall commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had a little over 1,300,000 soldiers to count on in order to face the unavoidable enemy attack. Eighty percent of the entire troops' strength was composed of Anglo-American soldiers, but men from a plethora of nations had joined in the defense of the last bastion of liberty in Europe, including Canadians (110,000), French (close to 70,000), British Imperial troops (A little over 100,000), and Hispano-Portuguese (60,000). Several of them didn’t have anywhere to go as their home nations were occupied anyway (Spain, France, Portugal). The Allies were well-supplied in tanks, guns, and ammo thanks to the Americans, who were now producing in full gear. They came in their multitudes into the UK by the boatloads and beefed up the already strong defenses to a level the Axis forces did not suspect.

In the north, the Allies were ready for anything, having a little under 500,000 men to defend Scotland and the eastern British coastline. The area was less threatened because it was improbable the Axis would attempt a landing from across the North Sea, but the Allies knew the enemy had beefed up its airborne forces greatly.

All of these ground troops were supplied with over 9,000 aircraft of all types, sizes, and models, again ready to face the Luftwaffe, which had no idea what it was getting itself into. With a year to prepare, the Anglo-Americans and their allies were as strong as they would ever be. The defenses of the Home Islands were then supplemented with a plethora of ships, including over thirty dreadnought battleships, forty-plus aircraft carriers of all sizes, and everything in between.

“The key, Mr. President,” continued Dill, will be to stop the enemy where it lands. If the Axis can establish a bridgehead, we will have to fight one hell of a slugfest with them.” Roosevelt seemed surprised. “Do you mean that if we don’t stop their landing or airborne operation, the battle is lost?” “No, not at all, Mr. President,” answered the British liaison officer. “But it will be a close-run thing, especially if the Axis can somehow supply their troops. Then, we would have a hell of a fight on our hands.” The British liaison officer leaned forward to put a finger on the map, the English Channel. “For example, Sir, if the enemy successfully controls a beachhead in southern England, it will still have to keep the sea lanes open and send as much supply as possible via the air. Our forces, on the other hand, will be right where their supply depots and factories are, and thus, we will be a lot more effective and battle-ready than they will ever be until they can fully control the English Channel. The same is also true in Japan for the La Pérouse and the Tsushima Straits.”

“Can we win this,” continued the U.S. leader. “We can,” said both King and Marshall. They both looked at the other, and the Admiral deferred to his commander-in-chief. “The attack can only happen in the next week to ten days, for this is the last period of favorable tides and weather for the 1943 year. We will soon be fixed on the fate of England, Mr. President. If the enemy doesn’t attack now, then it will be in 1944.” King then chimed some more. “And as Marshall Dill just said, even if they successfully land and control a port, a beachhead, or a part of Southern England, they will need to keep their supply lanes open, and that’s where will lie their Achilles heel.”

“Any news concerning the Secretary of State and his mission to Kunming,” then countered Dill to Roosevelt. The President, seemingly reassured about the fact that even if the Axis succeeded in making an amphibious or airborne assault work, they would not win outright, he answered, ready to change the subject. “At last news, his plane had landed, and he was about to meet with the Generalissimo and General Stillwell.” “Can he make this work,” added Marshall. “If someone can convince Chiang, it’s Cordell, General,” answered Roosevelt.

The Allies had started to move a lot of Allied troops (mainly Indian, but some imperial British and Americans) through the Burma Road and toward Southern China. The idea was to garrison Kunming and help the Nationalist Chinese, but the real intent was to use them offensively, in a coordinated fashion with Chiang Kai-Shek’s 1.2 million soldiers. With the invasion of Hokkaido and probably (soon to follow) invasion of Honshu, the situation was dire, and the Allies were in urgent need of a diversion to get Zhukov to put his attention elsewhere rather than just against Japan. “Let’s hope so, Mr. President; we need this to work,” grunted Marshall.

The Nationalist Chinese were involved in a civil war against their Chinese Communist counterparts, who were helped by the Soviet Union. It was obvious that once the Red Army conquered the Japanese Home Islands, the next target would be Nationalist China. However Chiang was not the most reasonable and logical person and would need convincing to intervene and get into the war against the USSR. Involving his already beleaguered country and military forces against the mighty Soviet Union and its Red Army was daunting, but to not do it now was only delaying the unavoidable.

“Speaking of Asia, any more news of Japan and the Russian landings on Hokkaido?” “Mr. President,” answered King, who was responsible for liaison with the Pacific theater and General MacArthur. “At last news the battle for Wakkanai was in full swing, and the enemy is now also attacking one of Hokkaido’s eastern port cities, a town called Shibetsu, from the Kuril Islands they recently conquered. Things are not looking good for the northern Japanese island, Sir.” King made a sour face (he was not very excited about what he had to report) and then continued. “MacArthur is reporting the fortification for the Tsugaru Strait is going well and that the time being won on Hokkaido should give his men and the Japanese forces enough time to mine the strait and get all the fortifications ready for the attack, Sir.”

“Any attack on Honshu yet from Korea,” asked Marshall. “Not yet, Sir.” “Very well. How is the Emperor and the Japanese leadership doing?” “MacArthur reports that they are pretty reckless but determined. We can say many a bad thing about the Japs, Mr. President, But they are as stubborn as hell and will not surrender,” answered King with a smile.

“General Marshall, whatever happens with the present battles both in Europe and Asia, we need to make sure we keep up the supply train and the new troops arriving both in Japan and the United Kingdom,” countered Roosevelt. “Indeed, Sir, we are doing our best.”

The meeting continued for some time when a few more OSS officers (military intelligence) were invited to get a more extensive portrait of the strategic situation in the British Home Islands and the probable avenues of invasions available to the Axis forces.

Then, the discussion concluded with everyone going about his way and daily routine. Running a war was very demanding both on the military and political front.

Raid over the K5s

August 8th, 1943, 19th Bombardment Group

B-17 pilot and crew commander Henry Samar looked at his instruments one more time as his bomber droned up high at 25,000 feet, piercing the high clouds. The bomber, along with forty-five other units (including twenty-five of the newly-produced Japanese four-engine heavy bombers  Nakajima G5N Shinzan "Deep Mountain"), was flying toward an area just north of the main Axis Harbor of Korsakov on Sakhalin Island.

Military intelligence and photographic reconnaissance had finally pinpointed the area where the Axis was firing at Wakkanai and the northern part of Hokkaido with what was described as “large railguns.” According to the report they’d read and been ordered to memorize before the mission, the enemy had built a large railyard with dedicated bunkers to house a battery of large German long-range heavy guns. The damn things were firing across the 27-mile stretch of the La Pérouse Strait and landed amongst the Allied defenders, and nothing could be done about it except for what the 19th Bombardment Group was about to do.

American heavy bombing techniques and capabilities had grown much since the start of the war, and the United States now had well over six hundred B-17s scattered across the Japanese Home Islands. The last year and a half had been a blur to men like Harry as they flew strategic bombing mission after strategic bombing mission to destroy what was mostly infrastructure and heavy troop concentrations.

The loss of the Korean Peninsula at the end of 1941 changed the tempo of operation for the B-17 crews as they were tasked to destroy port facilities and railyards or else factories deeper inside the now-occupied Manchurian and former Japanese Chinese territories.

The attack on Sakhalin marked the first time they were tasked with attacking a purely military target in the last six months. Their orders were to “Carpet bomb” the area. Carpet bombing was a technique used to offset the lack of bomber accuracy. The idea was to drop a lot of bombs in a very small area, thus saturating it with explosive ordinance.

“We’re nearing the target zone, Captain,” said Harry’s co-pilot, Lieutenant Eric Jackman. He nodded and then turned on his internal radio. “Everyone gets ready. We're nearing the target zone, and I suspect the Yvans won’t like us being there. Expect fighters.” “Indeed, Captain, looking forward to killing some fucking Reds,” answered Dave “Gunny” Saltmore, one of the B-17’s ventral gunners at the head of one of the many .50 machine guns protecting the big bomber.

The large Americano-Japanese formation flew in a tight, condensed group of fighters, and soon, it was almost time to drop the bombs on the target coordinates. It was at that moment that Harry spotted the multitude of incoming, northern-horizon black dots flying toward them.

(…) Mig Squadron no.2 (…)

Soviet ace pilot Oleg Tverdovsky floored his speed to gain altitude and try to bring his fighter to a height he would be able to plunge on the big and lumbering enemy bombers coming up south of the squadron’s position. His plane answered with a loud groan of its engine. The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3 was a good fighter, but only the best could maneuver it to the top of its performance.

As he climbed and his aircraft left a white contrail behind him, he spotted a cloud of smaller dark dots detaching themselves from the main bomber formation. Seeing they were fighters, he prepared for a dogfight instead of an attack on the B-17s.

Facing the Russian interceptors was a flight of Japanese Zero fighters, chosen to escort the bombing raid because of their long-range compared to American models. The planes were light and less sturdy than others but were one of the best maneuverable fighters of the war to date.

A minute and a half later, Oleg was in the middle of a deadly dogfight with a Japanese fighter pilot who was very skillful. But the Russian ace was no pushover either, and he expertly veered his plane into a tumbling dive to send a long burst of every one of his weapons (machine guns and shell cannons) into the Nipponese plane, dodging the two streams of red machine gun tracers arcing toward his Mig. The 20mm cannon shells hit the top of the fighter’s fuselage and opened several holes in it, scattering debris into the wind. As Tverdovsky thundered past his target and entered the enemy bomber formation, he quickly realized that he had not mortally wounded the enemy pilot’s Zero fighter. He continued onward, turning left and right as fast and as madly as possible to be unpredictable in his flight path since his fighter was blasting through the bomber-box formation, and the B-17 gunners were streaming blazing lines of tracer .50 machine gun fire at him.

Dozens upon dozens of American gunners tried to shoot him down. They stopped shooting for him the second he was in the middle of their box, as they would have hit each other. For that short moment in time, everything went still as the sound of explosions and tracers stopped, and he zipped fast through the enemy formation.

With his many encounters with the big bombers, Oleg knew that, on average, it took about twenty hits with 20 mm shells fired from the rear or top to bring them down unless you got lucky and killed its engine, pilots, or some other very rare critical hit. Pilots of average ability pounded the bombers with only about two percent of the rounds they fired, so to obtain 20 hits, the average pilot had to fire a thousand 20 mm rounds at a bomber. Oleg was an ace and thus a mile better than average, but still, it took him a few passes to kill a B-17, especially when one had to fight escorting fighters at the same time.

As he finished his crazy dive through the aircraft box, he eased on the stick to try and right his plane so he wouldn’t crash on the greenery below him. His Mig-3 went into a long, curved arc and zipped just above the Sakhalin tree line below, scattering leaves and scaring some nesting birds at the top of their branches.

He was about to fly straight for a while, then pull up and regain altitude for another pass as the enemy B-17s when a stream of enemy tracer shells almost hit his fighter. The Japanese ordinance shot past and exploded amongst the trees below. Looking through his canopy, he saw that one of the Zero pilots had taken him in his sight. The bastard had approached stealthily, and Oleg had never seen him coming. He went for a quick move right, but his Mig responded sluggishly. He figured the plane’s directional fins were damaged and cursed loudly. With reduced maneuverability, he was in for a rough fight.

The enemy pilot sent another burst at Oleg, almost hitting him. It was too close for comfort and had been mere inches from his left wing. With reduced side maneuverability, he decided it was time for speed. He pushed his throttle to the maximum. The enemy fighter stayed on his tail, and there was nothing to do. His frequent bursts were getting closer, and after half a minute of trying to get away from him, he realized that something drastic would have to be done if he wanted to stay in the air and survive this.

Looking down, he saw the tree line and breathed deeply. He plunged toward the ground at a speed that made it hard to stay conscious as his body took in the g-forces that tunneled his vision and blurred his mind. Not having time to check if his pursuer was on his tail, he counted down from five to zero in an attempt to figure out when to pull up on his stick. The ground approached and was now a mix of twirling browns, grays, and greens.

And then it was time. He pulled up on the stick, veering his plane right to thunder in between two towering trees that ruled over the green canopy. It took him a few seconds to return to his normal senses as blood came back to his head. Looking around through his fighter’s reinforced glass, he didn’t see the Zero fighter. Still flying just above the tree line, he looked further up and saw that the battle against the bombers and the Japanese fighter swarm was still going strong. The B-17s were still disgorging their bombs, and the great formation was starting to veer back south as over three-quarters of them were done unloading their bomb cargo in the large rail yard below.

He sped fast above a large fire in the forest and smiled. His opponent had crashed trying to emulate his maneuver. His smile stopped right after looking at the K5 gun battery. The base was covered in smoke, and a maelstrom of red enveloped it. The damned Yankees had outdone themselves this time. The base was in shambles.

(…) 19th Bombardment Group (…)

“Bombs away, commander,” said the bombardier, a fellow going by the name of Donald Bush. The entire area that was the supposed enemy heavy gun battery below was already engulfed in a raging maelstrom of fire, smoke, and catapulting-in-the-air debris. Sensing his B-17s to lighten from the dropping loads of heavy bombs (for the attack on the K5s, the bombers had been filled with 6,000 pounds of bombs), he then felt the machine go up lightly in the sky. Then, a few seconds later, Bombardier Bush came back up on the radio. “Load’s away, Sir.”

“Very well, boys. Everyone buckle up; we’re going home,” he then answered, starting to move the plane wheel to turn the B-17 back toward a southern heading and back home.

Flashback 1942

The Fall of the Canary Islands Part 2, 47th German Regiment, April 25th, 1942

Located sixty miles off the North African coast, the Canary Islands had been the perfect bolthole for the Allies as they were pushed out of Morocco by the unrelenting offensive of Erich von Manstein.

The main islands were (from west to east) La Palma, El Hierro, La Gomera, Tenerife (where most of the Allied presence was located), Gran Canarias, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and La Graciosa. General Mark Clark, the overall commander of Morocco and then of the Canaries, installed troops on all the major islands with airfields and fixed defenses, but the main prize was Tenerife. On the volcanic mountain-dominated island lay most of the island’s population, the largest airfield, and the biggest Allied troop concentrations.

With a surface of 785 square miles, it was an extensive island dominated by a large and still-smoking volcanic cone called the Teide. Towering at 12,188 feet, it was the highest point in Western Europe. Its slopes were barren, as the soil and the air were often poisoned by the volcanic fumes and eruptions that happened over the years.

It was in this setting that Marco Peters and his two faithful comrades, Max and Felix, were fighting tooth and nail against the Anglo-American-Spanish forces entrenched on the slopes of the rugged mountain and villages of Tenerife. The fighting of the last five days had been reminiscent of the battles they had to fight in the Atlas Mountains, and in some specific instances where they had to storm fortified mountain redoubts (small, fortress-like bases dug in the rock), the fighting had rekindled the terrible memories of the assault on the British Gibraltar fortress in 1940-1941.

The air around them was very dry, as it seemed not to have rained in the last month or so. Their lips were caked with sweat, sores, and flaking off as they looked as dry and brittle as paper. There was a smell of sulfur in the air as they were fighting against an enemy redoubt near a volcanic vent of some kind. The enemy hideout was cleverly dug into the side of a large boulder with a few British 6-pounder anti-tank guns. While there was no panzer with them, the cannons were very capable of killing men, and they had done so for the last few hours.

Peter’s company, along with another, had been tasked with moving up the right flank of the Regiment as it advanced toward the main town called Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It was during their maneuver that they encountered the knot of enemy resistance on the slopes of the Teide.

The invasion was now five days old, and the Axis forces had landed everywhere across the Canary Islands. In the process of being evacuated, the island chain wasn’t protected by the Allied fleet because of the nearby and very strong Axis air presence, having attacked their harbors and ships for months.

The islands of Lanzarote and La Graciosa had already been captured by other Germano-Italian units while fighting still happened in Fuerteventura, Grand Canadia, and Tenerife. The westernmost islands (La Palma, El Hiero, and Lagomera were not attacked yet but would be as soon as Tenerife fell.

“Watch your Six,” said Max, pointing to a sudden burst of fire coming from behind them. The enemy had built several hideouts and only revealed themselves when the Germans or Italian forces advanced. Marco turned to face the new threat, ducking just in time as a spray of bullets slammed on the rock he moved behind, splintering its top part into fragments and fine dust powder. “That was close, thanks, buddy,” he yelled over the cacophony of noises the sudden flurry of crackling rifle bullet fire created in the air. One moment, things were pretty still, and the next, the fighting was in full swing.

A few hand grenades flew in the air, and the enemy position was lifted by the explosion, shattered to pieces. “The coast is clear,” yelled another soldier closer to where the enemy had suddenly appeared.

(…) The next day (…)

Marco continued his advance on the slopes of Mount Teide as he fought along with his comrades for control of Tenerife. The fighting down on the coast was almost over, and the main city was, apparently and according to what he’d heard, about to be stormed.  The Company was snaking its way across the broken, volcanic, and barren landscape, but fewer and fewer enemy troops were being encountered now.

The plan was to approach the mountain’s crest where the last enemy holdout was located according to air recons, along a ridgeline on the right flank, while the Regiment’s 1st and 2nd battalions were supposed to attack frontally to the other side, with the support of a squadron of Stukas and Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero bombers.

A day into their advance upward, they found a small trail of some sort, ensconced into at the bottom of an ancient lava flow, and made their way up for about twenty minutes until they encountered a heavy (and very well concealed) fortified British position. Marco, Felix, and Max had been running point at the tip of the advance along with two other guys when the enemy opened up with two machine guns from their earthen and half-buried empty oil drum bunker.

The three of them zigzagged as they ran forward to a big, jagged rock, throwing themselves flat when they reached it. Bullets kicked up dirt around the rock and sparked on it in wild pinging noises while the two other Germans soldiers with them at the vanguard were cut down like animals. The trio then went through the motions of getting another couple of grenades and throwing them. The things exploded right on top of the enemy structure, while the Brit machine-gunners continued to fire because the rest of the section was moving to flank them. The enemy bullets slammed into the ground, scattering dirt and stones.

“Peters,” yelled Sergeant Trucker, some twenty yards below them and who could see Marco’s back. He turned to look at the man calling for them. “What's up, sarge,” he answered. “Isn't it a lovely day for a stroll on the mountain,” he continued. “Stop gallivanting, Peters,” smiled Trucker, liking his soldier’s bravado under fire. “You guys’ sprint to the right to that large boulder over there, and we move to your position. On the count of ten only, as we will start firing to keep the bastards pinned down.” “Yes, Sarge.”

On the count of ten, a bunch of their comrades below the slope started firing away with their Mauser rifles while others sent grenades on top of or near the enemy position. The deed had the desired effect, the entire area clouding in dust, blazing tracers, and blasts of fire. The English soldiers stopped firing. Max, always the maverick, stood up and started sprinting across the open ground, cutting first one way and then another.

The hail of bullets Marco expected to come at the brave and reckless Konstantin never came, and he made it to the boulder. A minute later, Sergeant Trucker and four more German soldiers moved up to join Marco and Felix. “Seems like that crazy kid is at it again, Peters,” said Trucker with a smile while he put another clip into his MP 40 submachine gun. “Didn’t want to risk it as hard as Max,” continued the Sergeant, referring to the fact that Marco and Felix had not run to the boulder like their younger comrade. “Well, no, Sir, we covered for him.” Trucker just smiled and then moved on to his next set of tasks, as he knew Marco was a brave soldier. Konstantin was just a notch crazier than everyone in the section. “Okay, guys, now, you, you and you,” he pointed to three of the four newcomers, “you lay covering fire for us as we run to join Max over there.” “Yes, Sergeant,” said the three men. “The rest, you follow me.”

A ruckus of covering fire (two of the three soldiers had MP 40s as well) filled the air, and the enemy machine gun position was again covered in sparks and explosions since Max threw two more grenades at the bastards. With a few quick strides, they made it to Konstantin’s hiding place unscathed. “Good to see you, kid,” said Sergeant Trucker, while Marco and Felix just smiled at their friend. Max didn’t seem to acknowledge, as he was concentrated on the objective and on the verge of another of his battle craze’s. “Sergeant, we are just there; we can take them.”

From where he was, Marco could now see the tips of the two enemy machine guns protruding from the bunker in between oil drums and a bunch of red-grey rubble on top, supported by what seemed to be a steel plate of some kind. From where he was, he surmised the enemy would not be able to traverse its nozzle to fire at them because of the angle of fire. “You think there are other guns trained this way,” he asked Daimler, also busy looking around to spot anything amiss amidst the smoky, burning foliage and the broken ground. “Well, my friend, what I see is that it won't matter how many grenades we throw at this position; the top seems to be protected by a thick armored plate.”

Sergeant Trucker listened to their conversation while also making his own assessment of the situation. “Well, the damned English are well hidden in their little hole, aren’t they… Max, you sprint to the left with me while you guys,” the NCO pointed at Felix, Marco, and the third soldier with them. “Cover us with as much fire and grenades as you can smother the target with. On the count of ten,” he finished, starting to lift his fingers to count.

Ten seconds later, grenades flew and again blasted the armored plate and the oil-drum wall of the enemy's makeshift but well-made bunker, slamming it with thumping explosions scattering smoky debris and a flurry of bullet sparks. Marco emptied his PPsh41’s submachine gun, and then when his clip was done, slammed another one and emptied it as well. Meanwhile, both Trucker and Konstantin stood up and ran, this time going around the bend where the bunker was and behind the rocky outcropping housing it.

The British reacted with sprays of bullets, and several of them slapped the rock inches from his head, and he ducked down behind a out of sight. “The bastards have the traverse to fire on us, it appears,” said Daimler, also dropping to the ground, hand on his helmet to keep it on his head. “No shit,” Marco answered.

The enemy bullet flooding lasted for another ten seconds, and then a loud boom was heard, ending the flurry of fire coming at them. Max and Trucker and gone around the enemy position and sent a few grenades inside it to silence the bastards. “All clear,” yelled the NCO as he walked on the metal plate above the oil drums, the bunker below him now smoking with the obvious traces of an explosion that had killed everyone inside it.

The fight for Mount Teide would last for another two days, by which time the Germano-Italian forces along the coastline captured the main city, Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The overall fight for the Canary Islands lasted for another four weeks, during which time the Allies continued to evacuate what could be evacuated out of the chain while the Axis moved across all of the islands to finish the conquest of the area.

The final fall of the island chain was announced on Radio London on the 25th of May, and from there, the war in Western and French North Africa was truly over. The Allies remained in control south of the Western Sahara (south of Morocco), the southernmost (and very remote) parts of Algeria, and Mauritania. Meanwhile, the Axis didn’t try to advance any further into the continent, losing interest for a lack of strategic and tactical objectives.

The Azores, located midway between the Americas and Europe, became the newest Anglo-American-French base to make sure the Axis wouldn’t try to cross the ocean and attack America.

Kunming Airfield

Cordell Hull arrives in China August 6th, 1943

The large Boeing 314 Clipper flying boat, named the “Dixie Clipper,” made its approach on the Kunming Airfield, flying from the south and escorted by a pair of Curtiss P-40 Warhawks from the contingent of American volunteers based in China called the “Flying Tigers.” U.S. and British presence in the Chinese theater was limited due to Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of Nationalist China, trying to avoid angering the Soviet Union too much. Everything that was helping the Generalissimo was considered “volunteers” and harbored Sino military call signs and flags.

The 314 lowered its path, quickly dropping in altitude, and lined up toward the large airfield near the Chinese temporary (southern) capital. The humongous, four-engine Boeing aircraft was a long-range flying boat capable of crossing the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. Twelve Clippers were built before 1938, nine of which flew with an American civilian aircraft company, and when the war broke out, they were all pressed into military service. With an impressive range of 3,500 miles, the clipper transporting U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull was thus able to make the journey from the American West Coast to Hawaii, then to Midway, then to Okinawa. From there (every time it stopped, it was able to either refuel at a Japanese or American base), it stopped in Mindanao, French Indochina, and then made the last leg of the trip to Kunming.

The big flying boat had wheels, and the pilots thus deployed them, touching the tarmac in a great gust of smoking tires. It rolled on toward the control tower, where a long, triple-deep line of Chinese Kuomintang soldiers waited at the ready, weapons raised. Before them stood the leader of China, Chiang Kai-Shek, flanked by General Joe Stilwell and Clarence E. Gauss, the U.S. Ambassador in Kunming (who had organized the meeting between Hull and Shek).

The big plane rolled to a stop right in front of a large steel mobile staircase and a long red carpet. A few minutes later, the side door opened, and after a couple of soldiers exited to the sides, Cordell Hull exited the Being 314. A military band, to the side of the lines of soldiers (right below the control tower), started playing the American national anthem. The Secretary of State walked the distance and was welcomed by a smiling Chiang Kai-Shek and a firm handshake. Followed by the ambassador and Stilwell.

The rest of Hull’s retinue was also introduced, along with the throngs of Chinese military and civilian “VIPs,” and then everyone was shoved into black function cars and driven to Kunming’s Summer Palace. On the way there, Cordell marveled at the beauty of the city and noted that it was also full of soldiers. The frontline was far away, but it was obvious the Kuomintang was preparing for something.

(…) Five hours later (…)

Still feeling tired after his long trip and because of the time difference, Cordell Hull was brought to a large conference room (he was given time to refresh, get some food, and sleep for a couple of hours) where Stilwell, Chiang, the Ambassador and a few other Chinese military Generals of whom of which he didn’t remember their names.

The place was lavishly decorated with colored paper on the walls, a nice Persian rug on the floor, and a large, intricately carved black onyx table. “Mr. Secretary,” said Kai-Shek, walking by him to shake his hand. “Please have a seat.” While Chiang was a little reluctant to join the war, he still recognized the importance of his American benefactor, who supplied most of his fighters, ammo, and guns. Without the USA, the Nationalists would be in a very difficult position. The rest of his people followed and also sat around the large table. Flanking Stilwell was a new General, British commander Archibald Wavell, the overall commander of Indian and Southeast Asian forces. They were quickly introduced and then the meeting began.

“Secretary Hull,” said Chiang Kai-Shek, who spoke very good English. “The Chinese people welcome you to China and hope this visit will see auspicious futures for both of our countries. The same goes for you, General Wavell; your reputation precedes you.” Chiang was referring to the fact Wavell was behind the stellar British victories in Afghanistan and India. Both men gave their heartfelt thanks to the Kuomintang leader, and they began the talks in earnest.

A couple of hours into the diplomatic meeting, a recess was called for refreshments and bathroom time. It was there that Hull decided to go talk to Chiang Kai-Shek one one-on-one. “Can I talk with you privately, Generalissimo,” he said as the Chinese leader stood near a couple of servants who had brought some glasses of wine. “Indeed, Mr. Secretary,” answered Kai-Shek, giving a glass to Hull and signaling him to follow to the large double door giving access to the outside in what looked like a garden.

As he walked, Hull was determined to try and get the message across to Chiang about the state of affairs in Japan and then in Asia as a whole. The last couple of hours had been nothing more than meaningless discussion and beating around the bush.

The large double-windowed door opened to a magnificent garden in full bloom, filled with colors, small Chinese buildings, a stream, and a white wooden bridge. Chiang walked to the bridge and stopped there in the middle of the place. “We are alone now, Mr. Secretary.” “Very well, Generalissimo,” started Cordell. “I would not have said this in front of everyone because we respect you very much, but what the hell are you doing making this difficult? The Communist Chinese are pushing your forces out of Northeast China and all along the Manchurian border. It's more than obvious they have full Soviet support.”

Diplomacy was sometimes best served between the two main characters of a negotiation, and this was just such a case. “Well, Mr. Secretary, since you are so blunt, permit me to be as well,” countered Chiang Kai-Shek with a false smile. The man was difficult, that was certain. “While I do not doubt the support you have given us, and I am very grateful for it, I am not certain you understand the state of our forces right now. We are in no way ready to launch an offensive; my troops are undertrained, hungry, and badly equipped.”

“Well, Generalissimo Shek, I come with the promise of more American support, and we have 200,000 men ready to cross the Burma Road into China to help you with the offensive General Stilwell has been talking to you about.” The Chinese leader seemed surprised. “200,000 men, you say?” “Indeed,” answered Hull simply. “And what kind of additional support are we talking about?” “America is now in full war production mode, and we have much to offer you. You just need to tell us what you want.” “Where are those troops, you say?” “In Northern Burma, Generalissimo, and ready to make the trek to Southern China and then to the frontline.”

Chiang took a sip from his glass of wine, putting his elbow on the bridge’s ramp. “There are many things I want, Mr. Secretary.” “Well,” countered Hull, “let’s start with this. My government is offering you one million dollars in gold, 200 Sherman tanks, five full squadrons of fighters, and four of B-17 bombers, all with pilots, for starters to support the offensive.”

The Kuomintang leader’s eyes widened in greed and surprise but said nothing else more than that it was time to reconvene for the discussion and that the break was over. When they all sat back down again, the negotiations were a lot simpler, and Chiang Kai-Shek was much more amenable to the Allied powers wishes.

The Second Battle of England

The Axis lunge at England, August 8th, 1943

The original Operation Sealion, supposed to take place between July and September 1940, never happened because the Germans lost heart and decided that it was not possible to invade the United Kingdom without mastering the sky and destroying the Royal Air Force.

Besides, they were quite busy with the execution of a full rampage across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, with the Rome-Berlin-Moscow Axis conquering everything before it by the middle of 1942. It was then and only then that Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini thought again about invading and conquering the British Home Islands. Well, only Hitler had thought about it in 1940, but now the three dictators knew that it needed to be done. How could they not, for to win the war, the Axis had to destroy the last bastion of liberty in Europe and the only spot where the Americans could land their forces.

Strategically, things had not changed much by the Summer of 1943, meaning that while the Kriegsmarine and the Soviet Fleet were now bigger because of new constructions, the Allied ones were now completely out of reach in terms of naval strength for the Axis, hopelessly outmatched in every category.

This was why the Germans (without any enemy at the gates), the Soviets (all-powerful and also without any enemy threatening them), along the Italians, now safe in their little Mediterranean domain, proceeded to greatly expand their air and airborne forces. The new plan of invasion did not include full mastery of the sky but more like a plan to land in force near Southampton, control a beachhead, and then reinforce it to seek a decision on land. The Axis may have been weaker in naval terms, but on the ground, it reigned supreme, as it had proved time and again in the big and epic struggles of 1940 and 1941.

The plan, approved at a conference in Warsaw four months before, had taken many deliberations and time to get approved by Rome, Berlin, and Moscow, as both Hitler and Stalin continued to eye each other with the weariness of uncertain friends. Whatever success the Axis was having or had in the field, the two regimes were constantly at odds in political terms. Their soldiers, on the other hand, were hand-in-hand, having fought and died together in the fire of war for several years now.

The Axis plan involved a powerful airborne attack at the main southern harbor of Southampton combined with an almost suicidal amphibious landing with hundreds upon hundreds of barges and other small boats to get as many troops as possible across. Also, all of the Luftwaffe’s strength would be concentrated in the Cotentin Peninsula and the Pas de Calais. The goal was to have so many planes above Southampton and on the water between Cherbourg and the British coast that the Allied fleets that would surely sail to intercept the amphibious landings would suffer greatly from the air attack. Ultimately, the idea was to inflict so much damage on the Anglo-Americans that they would leave the English Channel altogether, giving the Axis unfettered access to supply its landed troops in Southampton. To increase the hitting power of the air strikes, over 900 Soviet fighters and bombers were also included in the attack, combined with the 9,000 or so Axis planes ready for the landing, set on August 8th, 1943, or the day after if the weather didn’t cooperate.

Two more attacks were planned to happen at the same time since the Axis strategy was one of overwhelming the Allied defenses, something that worked well for the Germano-Soviets and Italians since the start of the conflict.

The first one was a landing from the new combined Soviet-German fleet (based in Kiel) to seize the city of Canterbury at the southeastern tip of England. Being just south of London and with over 250,000 men escorted by the pride of the new Kriegsmarine’s battleships and the also recently-built Russian fleet, it was deemed feasible to achieve as the enemy fleets and air force would already be quite busy with fending off the Southampton push.

The last attack was to be launched a few days after the landings in Southampton and the southeast. It was a surprise airborne drop on the fortified naval base of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. From there and if successful, the Axis forces would then be reinforced by the air to cross over into Northern Scotland and move southward.

(…) Cotentin Peninsula, south of Cherbourg, early on August 8th, 1943 (…)

General Erich von Manstein, along with General Heinz Guderian, both architects of the major victory in Morocco and Egypt, were tasked with the successful execution of the invasion of the United Kingdom. Both men were leaning over the map in their plush castle-hq of Le Chateau Ravalet, south of Cherbourg. The building was a magnificent 16th-century construction, being a massive building with circular corner turrets, surrounded by trees and a few magnificent parks. The two men had taken over a magnificent room (called the Blue Room) for their planning, with a tiled map of Europe on the floor, cherubin paintings on the ceiling, ensconced in four green-painted walls adorning magnificent paintings of battles and famous French nobles. The place was now a flurry of military activity and was occupied by a table near the hearth (there was no fire as it was still warm in August), maps were everywhere on wooden bulletin boards, and staff officers surrounding the two men, all going about some business or another. In two of the corners, by the large double window door giving access to the balcony, two large radio sets were set up, their operators quite crazily busy shooting messages left and right.

The room had exploded with action a few minutes before as both men gave the go-ahead for the 1st part of Operation Sealion 43, the airborne and amphibious attacks on Southampton. Everywhere around them, men yelled, shouted, and walked briskly as they executed the long-prepared instructions and the plan they had. It was mayhem, but it couldn’t be helped, as such was often the moment in a headquarters when a new offensive operation was launched.

“Well, my dear friend,” said von Manstein to Guderian, “it’s time to put an end to this war.” Guderian smiled. “Well, it’s hardly the end; it's just the beginning of the end,” he added, and both men laughed. Heinz's joke referred to Churchill’s quote (“It’s not the end but the end of the beginning”) following the British victory in the 1st Battle of England in 1940. The defeat was the Reich’s only real and lasting one, and every soldier in the Wehrmacht longed to correct this stain on their collective honor.

Beside them stood General Rokossosky, the other victorious commander in Africa, as he’d crossed the Suez at the same time as Guderian. The Red Army general just grunted, slapping both Germans on the shoulder. Konstantin Rokossovsky was a good-hearted man who spoke excellent German, and who had developed quite a good working rapport with Guderian during their time in the Sinai and Egypt. Since there were a lot of Russians in the Southampton and Canterbury operations (over 380,000 soldiers, 1,100 tanks, and over 900 fighters and bombers of all makes and sizes), he had been included in the planning and decision-making of the operation.

While the Allies had a lot of troops with which to defend the United Kingdom, the Axis force about to make a play at Southern England numbered a little over 1,400,000 soldiers, including thousands of tanks and, as said previously, over 9,000 aircraft. Some would attack Southampton (based in Cherbourg) while others Canterbury (based in the Pas-de-Calais). The last troops, based in Norway, were tasked with the airborne attack on Scapa Flow.

All Axis units were at full strength, most of them veteran units from the wars in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. “We are as ready as we’ll ever be, gentlemen,” continued Rokossovsky with a loud voice. “We’ll toast our vodka on the ruins of London by the end of the year, I tell you!”

“Not much to do now, my friend; the dies are cast,” continued the Russian General, as their commander’s job was now done for at least the next few hours. Battle needed to be fought, and situations needed to arise for them to have to make decisions again.

The Crossing of the Channel, August 8th, 1943

(…) German 47th Infantry Regiment, August 8th (…)

“This is fucking crazy,” said Max Konstantin, looking at the dark expanse of water ahead of them, with further out the multitudes of flashes and explosion noises like distant thunder. “Well, this must be indeed crazy for good old Max to say it is,” added Trucker, and everyone around laughed out loud. A nervous outburst indeed, as the situation before them was bleak. They were all massed in their cramped 220-ton Marinefährprahm amphibious boat and looked north at the English Channel. The vessel was slowly making its way out of Cherbourg Harbor, and as they watched to the north, the flashing lights of the guns of the Allied fleet firing at their comrades also trying to cross made for a daunting prospect. It was still full-pitch dark since they were ordered to cross the Channel at three in the morning.

The boat they were in was the Reich’s first true amphibious vehicle, capable of transporting both tanks and infantry. The Marinefährprahm was a barge-looking vessel, elongated but low on the water. A hundred and sixty feet in length and twenty-one in beam, it sailed at 10.5 knots, a pretty respectable speed for this type of craft. Armed with two MG-42 Machine guns at the front, it also had a 75mm quad AA gun behind the small bridge tower.

Marco, sitting in the front of the Marinefährprahm along with the Sergeant and his two friends (near one of the hull-mounted MG42 machine guns), tried to listen to the steady drone of the engine while he looked at the multitude of other crafts sliding besides, ahead and behind them. The entire thing was a motley assembly of purpose-built craft ) like the Marinefährprahm and the Italian Motozarette) or else the Pionierlandungsboot 39 (Engineer Landing Boat 39, a small 20 tons landing craft hastily designed in 1940 for the first Sealion.

Further out, he looked at the “gunboat version” of his own amphibious craft, the so-called Artilleriefährprahm (AFP, 'artillery ferry'). It wasn’t much to face the mighty battleships and heavy cruisers waiting for them in the far away maelstrom to the north. But it was something as they were fitted with two 88 mm guns and 2 quad Flakvierling light AA guns. He thought that if enemy destroyers came close, these boats would be able to defend them a little.

“No, but I mean it, Sarge,” continued Max. “How the hell are we expected to survive this.” The young private gestured around him. “This boat cannot withstand one enemy shell.” Trucker, his face turning serious, stood up and faced Max, poking him hard in the chest. “Well, Private Konstantin, it's about time I explain to you that when you signed up for the Wehrmacht, it was to be cannon fodder.” More nervous laughs, but a lot more muffled this time, as the men around the NCO listened to every one of his words. “This is the entire idea, my smart and reckless young soldier. We send so many ships at the bastards that they are bound to miss some.” He pointed at the dark sky and then spoke some more. “When the sun gets up in a few hours, then the Luftwaffe will arrive, and you will be privy to one of the biggest air battles in history. The plan is to sink their fleet or get the buggers to flee, or choose between attacking us or the planes. Now, sit down and enjoy the firecracker show.”

By the time the Sergeant was done speaking, no one else made a sound. The craft armada was making its way toward the storm of fire that was the English Channel between Cherbourg and Southampton.

(…) British dreadnought battleship Barham (…)

HMS Barham was built in the early 1910s, just before the Great War, as part of the Queen Elizabeth-class of battleships. Sailing out of the harbor in 1915, it fought in the famous Battle of Jutland as part of the Grand Fleet. It was minimally modernized in the 1930s and had been a very active element in the fight against the Axis since 1939.

The ship was powerfully armed to fight other behemoths of the sea, with four twin 15-inch  guns, but these were not useable in the fight the battlewagon was fighting on that fateful night of the 8th of August. The ships they had to kill were way too small and sailing way too close for these guns to be lowered enough to be useful. Dreadnought main guns were designed to engage and sink targets at a distance, as their shells were supposed to be fired with some gun elevation. None of them could fire anything in a straight line for a very long distance and even less so downward.

Its secondary armament was also barely useful but did fire in anger as the fourteen 6-inch guns were a little more versatile and could fire at shorter ranges. The best gun that could be used on Barham to fire on the amphibious armada crossing the Channel between the fingers of the Home Fleet was the weapon First Class Sailor Hernest Dalton operated. The gun was a single 3-inch 20 cwt AA gun. Designed to attack air targets (the weapons had been designed during the Great War to fight Zeppelins), it could be depressed enough to attack targets on the water’s surface as well.

Dalton hailed from Liverpool, where he’d grown close to the fleet as his father was a gunner’s mate on a pre-dreadnought battleship (the Hibernia) during the Great War a few years after that. Joining the Royal Navy at 18, he was, by 1943 standards, an old hand on the ship. Over the years, he moved from being a coal stoker to a gunner’s mate on several postings, and in 1941, was transferred to the Barham as he was considered qualified on the 3-inch AA gun, and the ship had had a few casualties following a battle.

His loader, gunner’s mate Henry Maveron, slid the shell ammo casing into the breech block. Hernest pulled the trigger, and the flak gun recoiled and ran forward in succession as it fired its shells at the water’s surface, slamming itself into large spouts of water and slamming home on a small German landing ship. The flashes in the dark made him momentarily blind again, as anyway, his eyes were sore from all the light, dark, flash, light, dark, flash he was experiencing, as guns were firing everywhere around him in the darkness. The poor enemy vessel split in two as if it was folding in on itself, briefly morphing into a bright fireball before sinking in a bulging circle of foamy seawater.

Then, the weapon’s forward motion opened the breech, ejecting the empty cartridge case. With the breech open, ready to reload, Henry slammed another ammo set home. He closed the block, and then Hernest repeated the motion, again sending a flurry of blazing tracers at the dark sea dotted with German craft, some flaming, some going about unscathed.

The scene before the two British AA gunners was pure mayhem and destruction. In full darkness, the Germans had come in their multitudes and were trying to cross to the British Coast. The Royal Navy, indeed on alert for this very sort of attack by the enemy, sailed out of its ports in Southampton and other places. Soon, the Royal Navy engaged the amphibious stream as some had already reached the shore. In the distance, the sailors could see the flashes of battles and explosions on the shoreline.

Above the fleet, flares continuously arced high, illuminating an eerie glow over the zone. German ships exploded all across their vision, some burning, others sinking outright.

“Keep at it, mate,” said Hernest, eager to fire more as the enemy boats kept streaming by. Some of the bastards had pretty potent guns, and he saw a couple of destroyers flare brightly after they received a few hits. “What’s this above,” answered Maveron. They looked up and heard the low droning of hundreds of aircraft.

(…) German 47th Infantry Regiment, August 8th (…)

Forty minutes after they sailed out of the harbor, the armada of amphibious vehicles slid on the water all lights out to try and avoid any unwanted attention. But the soldiers of the 47th Infantry Regiment, like the rest of their comrades trying to cross the Channel, were under no illusions. The shear amount of flares up in the sky, the multitude of searchlights, and the flashes of the guns would expose them to the enemy’s targeting sights, and only luck would save a few of them.

“Steady, now,” said Sergeant Trucker, as the sound of cannon firing and blasting explosions was getting awfully near. Once in a while, they even saw a blazing shell thunder above their ships, fired from one of the battleships, trying to use their main guns from further away. Marco lifted his head to see ahead of the boat and watched as the two Artilleriefährprahm (AFP, 'artillery ferry') opened fire at some unseen enemy in the blinking darkness. Between them stood an old, repurposed French destroyer, found in St-Nazaire and refloated for the crossing. The thing was armed with weapons from before the Great War but had been deemed sufficient for an escort during the Cherbourg-Southampton crossing.

Then suddenly, a cascade of water geysers blasted skyward around the old vessel, and blazing shells raced above it as well. Small caliber guns (probably AA 70mm or something similar, he decided) fired a stream of fiery shells that looked like a red whip in the darkness. The fiery ordnance snaked in the dark sky and slammed on the destroyer’s hull, hitting it in a succession of blossoming fireballs and sparking ricochet explosions. The old French vessel, discovered, fired back, and Marco finally saw the hulking silhouette he was aiming at in the dark. It was the outline of a very big ship, looking large and that then exploded in fire as the mighty British battleship Barham fired with everything it had at the area. Soon, both Artilleriefährprahm started firing at the big ship, their shells barreling down to slam the hull, barely scratching it.

Everyone in the boat was shoved from one side to the other as the amphibious craft captain tried to move them out of the line of fire. As he turned hard to port, a couple of other Marinefährprahm caught fire, hit by other enemy ships firing at them. The engine strained, and the water slammed into the boat. The crossing had been so far pretty quiet, the English Channel being very smooth that night (hence why the Axis had chosen that particular day for its invasion).

(…) British dreadnought battleship Barham (…)

The flurry of 3-inch 20 cwt AA gun shells slammed into the small German warship in an impressive display of splashing fire and sparking lights. First Class Sailor Hernest Dalton was doing everything he could to sink as many Axis ships as possible. He’d already killed several and was amazed at how many more the enemy was trying to sail past Barham and the rest of the Home Fleet. The moment the battleship opened up on the destroyer and the two other small gunboats beside it, the rest of the small barge-looking amphibious crafts had peeled off to port and starboard in an attempt to avoid the fury of god the Allies were raining down on them.

Henry Maveron, while toiling to get the shell cartridges in the breech, couldn’t help but yell over the cacophony. “You gotta give it to the bastards; their plan is working; we can’t kill them all!” And indeed, they couldn’t. But Hernest tried his best.

The enemy destroyer now burning like a floating inferno, he redirected his fire to the annoying gunboats firing at Barham. While their smaller caliber shells could not hurt the ship in any critical way, they could kill him and Henry, as they were exposed outside. The shell the German vessels fired also seemed to pack a serious punch, one of them having hit the central tower above them (their 20 cwt AA gun was located at the base of it, near the center of the ship). “Ready,” yelled Henry, having finished the reloading. Hernest thus traversed the turret and hosed the smaller enemy gunboat, soon flooding it with explosions and water geysers.

(…) German 47th Infantry Regiment, August 8th (…)

Ten minutes later, Private Soldier Marco Peters didn’t know why or how, but they’d survived the gauntlet of ships and blazing inferno put up by the enemy fleet. They sailed past the enemy ships and even exchanged fire with the men on their decks as the guns of the Allies were already busy killing other amphibious barges. They had won the luck of the draw and sailed past the maelstrom of death unscathed. It was just crazy that the OKW and the OKH had decided to send them like this to their deaths. Marco and his comrades were scared shitless, several of them having thrown up, pissed themselves, or shat in their pants. The smell was appalling, but men like Marco didn’t notice, as the combination of fear, recklessness, and adrenaline curtailed all non-essential senses for the moment. Looking up again, he now saw the not-so-distant shoreline. Their objective was the 2.5-mile-long Barton-on-Sea Beach, where many thousands of their Wehrmacht comrades had already landed. Peters could see the flashes of explosions and rifle tracer fire as the German troops fought to get ashore and inland while the Allied forces stubbornly clung to their trenches overlooking the beach.

The two MG42 machine guns opened up toward some unseen position, and Marco wondered for a moment what it was firing at. Then, the stream of tracers blazing into the night snaked their way to a high structure and then slammed on it. A lighthouse! And then the building fired back at them, as apparently, the gunners in the boat knew the enemy had guns in the thing.

They exchanged fire, but thankfully, the 220-ton Marinefährprahm metal skin was strong enough to withstand machine gun fire, and the Allied gunners in the lighthouse only succeeded in covering their boat with sparks. Then, one of the Artilleriefährprahm 88 guns slammed a round right where the enemy gummers were, exploding the top part of the lighthouse in an impressive display of fire.

Thirty seconds later, the amphibious ship slammed on the sandy shore, slamming hard into the ground, rocking everyone behind, sending the German soldiers down to the deck of the ships. Marco, Max, and Felix quickly recovered, and then the order to exit the ship was given. The three comrades jumped out, their fleet splashing into the water. They then waddled toward the shore at knee-high depth, praying to their mother they wouldn’t be hit by the enemy rounds slamming into the surf and foaming ocean all around them.

On the beach itself, where Marco dropped down on his belly and put his face in the sand as he was dead tired from the ordeal of moving from the boat to the beach, the moment was pure mayhem. German soldiers ran forward while more of them lay either bleeding or dying on the ground. Tracer rounds flashed above them, and, once in a while, a large artillery shell explosion catapulted sand upward, often killing or injuring soldiers nearby.

The Germans were on the ground, and Marco had survived.

Down Street Bunker, early morning

Below 10 Downing Street, 8th of August

Winston Churchill was a man who liked to work late, and thus, he often worked well into the night. The British leader was woken up at three fifteen that morning and thus not fully rested, as he’d only gotten an hour or so of sleep. “Mr. Prime Minister,” said one of his female aides as gently as possible. “There has been an attack on Southampton. You need to wake up.” “Hey, what, how,” first bumbled a groggy Churchill. “Sir,” continued the women, “The Axis forces are landing near Southampton.” That last phrase finally connected with the British leader, and he fully stood up, sharp and awake.

He, along with most of the civilian staff and his military people, had been sleeping below 10 Downing Street in the bunker called Down Street. As part of the London metro transportation system, the station opened in 1907 and was linked to the Piccadilly line. In 1932, however, it was closed because no one really used it (it was too close to another station that was a lot busier).

What followed were seven years of disuse, and then it was repurposed into a bunker for the Prime Minister, as the station was near the official residence.

Down Street consequently converted at the start of the German Blitz on London into the new headquarters in case of bombings in the area where 10 Downing Street was. Signage pointed the way “To Offices” and to the “Committee Room” (where Churchill attended his meetings during Axis attacks). The walls remained curved as it was a metro station, but the flooring was leveled, and walls were erected to create office and sleeping quarters, including baths and toilets. Churchill hastily put his light-brown war uniform on, splashing some water on his face (he had a small sink in his makeshift bed chamber), while the aide left the room, closing the door behind her. Winston couldn’t hear any bombing above, as when the Germans bombed London, he heard the distant blasts like rolling, distant thunder.

He remembered the aide had said the attack was in Southampton, and his face fell, knowing it was too far away for him to hear anything and that it wasn’t because London was not under attack or that things were not going down the drain for the Empire.

Located eighty-some miles away, the coastal city was one of the UK’s busiest and most important commercial harbors before the war. Now, while most of the civilian traffic was redirected northwest to Liverpool or Cardiff and Bristol, it remained the biggest Royal Navy base in the English Channel, supposed to act as a watchful guard over the country’s coastline. A good part of the Home Fleet and many of the U.S. ships were based there, with some more in London and Bristol, ready to intervene if the Axis attacked.

Still feeling a little groggy, he exited his room and walked to the committee room to meet with his people. He noticed the bustling activity around the bunker and instantly knew that this was serious. Entering the room where the military commanders and staffers were, he immediately spoke up. “Give me a situation report,” he said to the assembled men, busy going about their meeting, putting information on maps, while radio operators got busy giving them fresh news. Some stopped what they were doing and looked at their leader, but most were too busy or preoccupied to notice Winston’s arrival.

“Mr. Prime Minister,” answered General Claude Auchinleck, the liaison officer with the Allied High Command located in Bushy Park a few miles from the bunker and Downing Street. Churchill walked to the central table, where a full depiction of Southern England was laid on a map, with female aides busy updating the enemy troops' movements and appearance on the battlefield with wooden blocks of various colors (to separate naval, air, and ground units) they pushed with long wooden sticks. The entire thing looked good and gave an as accurate-as-possible display of an otherwise too-large-to-comprehend overall situation.

“The enemy is attacking Southampton with paratroopers and is crossing the Channel with thousands of amphibious crafts and other types of boats to get their troops into England.” “How serious is this, and where is the Royal Navy?”

“The Home Fleet has begun engaging the enemy amphibious forces, Sir; it has sunk hundreds so far, but there are too many, and several of them have gotten through,” continued Auchinleck, who used to be under Dill’s command when he was Chief of the General Staff before being transferred as liaison officer to the United States in Washington D.C.

“The Imperial Army forces on the ground and the Overall Allied Command of General Eisenhower reports there is some very serious ground fighting in Southampton.” “Speaking of the General, what is he doing about it,” continued Churchill, crossing his arms and moving closer to the map. “Eisenhower had just reported that several divisions were enroute to Southampton, but we already have a pretty strong garrison force of over twelve divisions in the area, Sir. Things should hold for now.”

“Did you say paratroopers were attacking as well?” “Yes, Mr. Prime Minister,” countered Auchinleck. “They have seized or appear to have seized RAF Stoney Cross base, twelve miles out of Southampton.” The man paused to look at a paper one of his aides just put right in front of his face, and nodded, the young aide leaving immediately. “More airborne troops have landed at Southampton Beach and into the western suburbs of the city. The battle is already well underway.”

The leader of the United Kingdom and the British Empire grunted, feeling like having a cigar and strong brandy; so bad was the news. A bulging headache was also making itself felt, growing faster and faster at the forefront of his mind. The final battle for England had begun, and this time, there would be no RAF-saving-grace or of Germans losing heart. This was a fight to the finish, and the Allies had to fight the bastards (and defeat them) on the ground.

“Anything else happening elsewhere?” “Not now, Sir, although we suspect the enemy combined fleet in Kiel should move out and for the enemy to attempt a second attack from the Pas-de-Calais.” “Very well,” finally said Churchill, feeling his stomach churn with acid as his anxiety over the beginning of this battle for their very survival.

“I need to speak to President Roosevelt,” announced Churchill with all the seriousness that the tense situation convened.

1st Fallschirmjager Division

Attack on Southampton, August 8th, dark of night

The 1st Fallschirmjager Division was, by August 1943, one of Germany’s most celebrated units as part of the Luftwaffe. The men of the Division had fought in many battles, first in Belgium as they stormed the Eben Emael forts, then in several operations in and around the Mediterranean Sea. The most notable of them was their involvement in the conquest of Crete and the storming of the Maleme Airfield, or else the attack over the Suez during the last campaign at the end of 1941 that won Egypt for the Axis. It was also involved in the invasion of Denmark and Norway and in subsequent operations (1942) when the Axis invaded the Canary Islands and Sweden.

Formed in 1938 by now overall commander of the Reich’s airborne forces, General Kurt Student, it was now the shining example of German military prowess and success since the start of the Second World War.

Private Soldier Anton Bauer sat in his seat right next to his comrades (left and right), everyone waiting on the long bench running parallel along the Ju-52 transport plane’s length. Everyone kept silent as the aircraft bumped, slapped by the winds, and the flak gun explosions that raked the sky.

Anton was a veteran by August 1943, having originally joined the airborne troops of the Reich in 1940 as he turned 18. Originally hailing from a small village south of Konigsberg in Eastern Prussia, he had participated in the Egyptian campaign in 1941 and had been with the division ever since. The unit was moved to Europe in December 1942, where it received new recruits and got more training done to get it up to standard fighting shape. Moved to the Cotentin Peninsula in April 1943; they had been getting ready, training, and preparing for what they were finally executing, that is, their own little part in the gigantic Operation Sealion 1943, the full-blown invasion of the United Kingdom.

“Get ready,” yelled the Sergeant (Axel Meyer), flanking the Lieutenant (Karl Fischer), “we are jumping in thirty seconds.” Everyone stood up, lining one behind the other to get their turn at jumping off the plane.

As he stood up, Anton checked his FG 42 (Fallschirmjäger Gewehr 42) automatic Mauser paratrooper rifle. His weapon was potent, and he was looking forward to using it in real combat. The thing was new to the airborne forces, having been issued and distributed in the Fall of 1942 to the Fallschirmjägers. What he’d seen was that the submachine gun was light, compact, and fairly sturdy. It possessed several nice innovations, like an overall very easy to get used to the general shape, a gas-rotating bolt operation, and an easy-to-make and repair construction. He’d seen it did well even in water and mud and wasn’t’ prone to jamming.

Checking everything around the weapon, he saw that all was in order, like the last twenty times he checked during the flight to the English coastline. “Remember, lads,” said Lieutenant Meyer over the din of noises from the rocking plane, its engine, the wind, and men shuffling around. “Our objective is the RAF Stoney Cross base, twelve miles out of Southampton.”

The Lieutenant continued. “Remember your training. Get rid of your chute in the most efficient way so as to not clog the field for your brothers to land after you. The plan is to capture and hold the airfield for the Luftwaffe to start sending more men and supplies. As during your training, we won’t land on the objective itself. Our LZ (landing zone) is two miles north of the RAF base.” No one spoke, and the light on the top of the door turned green, indicating they were over their projected coordinates (landing zone). “Opening door,” yelled the sergeant. A powerful gust of wind sucked outward as the air from inside and outside the plane balanced itself, leaving a flurry of wind noise. The lined-up paras didn’t feel any of it as they had their jump helmets on and goggles covering their faces.

The first man jumped, then the second, and slowly but surely, Anton got closer and closer to the door, feeling the nervousness of the moment. Twenty seconds later, he was facing the Sergeant and the Lieutenant, nodded to them, and jumped out.

The initial moment out of the aircraft was the usual tumble-confusing roll and pitch until he stabilized himself. As he jumped with his full gear in a combat zone, he had a ruck and his rifle attached to his uniform. A large canvas container also hung from his feet containing the rest of the equipment he would need for the coming fight (ammo, water, and other equipment up to the maximum weight limit for the chute). As he faced downward, arms and legs stretched, he saw the dark patch of ground below him flashing with the unmistakable signs of anti-aircraft ammunition firing upward. Then he started seeing small blasts of fire, reminiscent of exploding fireballs, pepper the sky in and around him, but also above and below. He heard a big blasting noise from above him, and he turned his body and head to look upward. He was horrified to see that one of the Junker-52 transports had been hit in the fuselage and was now an expanding ball of fiery debris and dead paratroopers.

He turned back and positioned himself to ensure his feet were downward for the landing. By then, streams of tracer ammunition climbed into the sky as the landing zone appeared garrisoned by the enemy. His feet slammed on the ground in what appeared to be a farm field, and he tumbled on the ground. He walked backward to let the canopy shroud lines stretch straight and cut the straps to let his parachute fly away. We then unstrapped his rifle, picked up his canvas bag to slide it across his shoulders, and he was ready to fight. All around him, men landed across the field and into the surrounding patches of trees where the enemy fire seemed to come from.

The fight was on, and for Anton, just like the tens of thousands of other German paratroopers dropped in Southampton that day, the battle was only beginning.

General Allied HQ, London

Bushy Park, August 8th, dark of night

Four-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower grunted as he walked by the map depicting Southern England, where the staffers got busy putting some red notes. The map was pinned on the wall and was being updated in real-time as the info came in from the field. “Shit is finally hitting the fan, Ike,” said General George Patton right beside him. “Indeed, George, it is,” countered the Allied Commander-in-Chief.

“The moment we get some light, we should send them everything we have,” continued Patton with his aggressive voice. “We need to pound the shit out of those bastards with everything we’ve got that can fly and drop a bomb.” “Agreed, George, I’ve already given instruction to that effect ten minutes ago. Every airfield in the south and central United Kingdom is mustering its forces for a gigantic battle.”

“Why have you brought me here, Ike,” continued Patton, impatient to drive to the frontline. “Well, you were in the vicinity and I wanted to have a chat with you before you plunged into the maelstrom.” “Well, then, please do; I’ve got a tank army to move and some bastards to kill.”

Eisenhower smiled thinly, still looking at the map and seemingly ignoring Patton’s gaze at his side. The two men were close friends, even if they were not part of the same West Point graduating class. Patton graduated from the top U.S. officer school in 1907, while Eisenhower did in 1915, right in the middle of the Great War then raging in Europe.

Patton fought and made the headlines during World War One, while Eisenhower was stuck stateside and never got to Europe in time to be involved. The two men’s friendship developed during the interwar year period, as they shared a common interest and passion for military strategy and tactics. Both men couldn’t be more different, as Patton’s fieriness was a stark contrast to Eisenhower’s calm, organized demeanor. While George was initially senior to Ike, the latter was the superior of the two now, as Patton’s volcanic temper and way of seeing things had denied him more than one promotion over the years.

“George, I’ve brought you here to talk about the fact that this isn’t Portugal or Morocco anymore.” “No shit, I hadn’t noticed,” grumbled Patton in return. Eisenhower closed his eyes for a moment to avoid bursting into anger at his fiery friend. He then turned to face him. “What I mean by this is that while it's important for you to try to kick the bastards back into the sea, you cannot grind your armored force to the point it’s too depleted. I am removing the 2nd British Armored Corps, the 2nd U.S. Mechanized, and the 3rd U.S. Armored Corps from your direct command, which we will keep in reserve in London.”

“You are expecting another attack elsewhere,” answered Patton calmly, which surprised Eisenhower. “I do indeed, George. The intelligence reports, as you know, indicate that the enemy has large troop concentrations in the Pas-de-Calais and that the Axis fleet is ready to sail in Kiel.” The Allied commander-in-chief tightened his hands into fists. I am pretty certain the Germano-Soviets will attempt to move in with that brand-new little shining fleet of theirs and land somewhere near the Dover Strait. Also, we are also not immune to more airborne attacks elsewhere in the UK. “Very well, Ike, I’ll do what I can with what you give me.”

Imperial General Headquarters (Dai Honei)

Tokyo, Imperial Palace, August 9th

The Imperial General Headquarters (Dai Honei) was the governing body of the military to coordinate the efforts of the Imperial Army and Navy, as both were not very good at cooperating together historically. The Imperial General Headquarters (Daihon'ei) was part of the Supreme War Council. It was founded at the end of the 19th Century. Its goal was to try and make both the Army and Navy work together. The two branches of the military were notorious for not being very cooperative with each other, and thus, discussions were needed to reach agreements on most combined Japanese military decisions.

These conferences and meetings were there to integrate military and political decisions for the Empire, and, since the conflict with the USSR and the alliance with the British and the Americans, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur sat at the table. Being a valuable ally to the Empire, the United States had a lot of troops, planes, and ships in the Home Islands and thus needed to be consulted on matters of strategy, policy, and tactics. Finding a middle ground in military planning was often tricky, and if things had been difficult between the imperial Army and Navy before the arrival of the American General, they had not gotten any simpler with his addition.

The Imperial Liaison Conference was assembled on that hot and humid day in August 1943 as things needed to be discussed at the highest level following the Soviet airborne and naval invasion of Hokkaido. The weather was unusually hot and sticky and everyone was uncomfortable and sweaty as the meeting endured and seemed to continue forever.

Emperor Hiro-Hito was seated in the back, towering over them all as the living god of Japan. His function was to preside over the assembled military men in the room. But in reality, he had little to say or do apart from his approving of their decisions.  That day, only the top three Army men and a naval liaison officer were present. There was the American MacArthur and his interpreter, Marshal Hajime Sugiyama, the Imperial Army’s overall commander, the Minister of the Navy, acting as Grand Admiral Yamamoto’s representative (the man was busy fighting off the invasion in the La Pérouse Strait), Shigetarō Shimada. Finally, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, MacArthur’s counterpart in command of the Imperial troops on Honshu, sat in as well.

The discussions were well into their second hour, as the first part of the meeting had been about the details of the enemy Hokkaido attack. A heated argument had broken out between Yamashita-MacArthur and Sugiyama over the fact the duo of generals believed the Axis was about to attack Japanese northernmost home islands from the Kurils as well as across the Shimonoseki Strait from Korea. Sugiyama disagreed and wanted to send a lot of reinforcements to Hokkaido, while Yamashita-MacArthur were more of the mind to put their trust in the Tsugaru Strait and stop the enemy before it made it to Honshu.

The fight for Hokkaido was not going very well, but the troops were holding in Wakkanai despite the constant and relentless troop landings through an impressive air transport operation based on Sakhalin. Everything was put in place to thwart the air crossings, but it was not an easy matter as the Axis forces had numerous fighters, including a couple of what the Germans called jet fighters, or the Me262s. Admiral Yamamoto had finally defeated the amphibious assault, killing tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers who attempted the crossing, and then moved to the harbor town of Korsakov the night before, shore-bombarding everything in sight and destroying the port facilities, making it improbable the Axis would run more landings from there.

In the air, the battle raged while the Soviet forces and some German ones got ready to attack Hokkaido’s eastern shore in Shibetsu. While all of this was happening, the American Seabee battalions and their Japanese counterparts toiled hard to complete the Tsugaru Strait fortifications on Honshu’s northern shore.

“Our air recon indicates the enemy is preparing to lunge at us from Pusan,” continued the American General. “We propose to move four more divisions to Shimonoseki and to take them from Shikoku Island since it won’t be under any threat unless Honshu falls. We only need minimal defenses there.” Shikoku was Japan’s smallest home island, sitting just off of Honshu. “Agreed,” said Sugiyama, wishing his faithful right-hand man, General Otozo Yamada, was there with him in the meeting. The man used to be the Kwantung Army commander but was now the commander of the Hokkaido defenses and busy fighting. “We also need the two air fleets on Kyushu and to fly the Formosa one back to Honshu in preparation for the attack.” “Again, agreed,” continued Sugiyama. While he wasn’t happy about the two other general’s conclusion that yet another attack was imminent on Hokkaido, he did want to ensure Honshu was safe. After all, if the main island factories fell, the war was over for Japan.

The discussions would continue for some more time as the Allies tried to prepare and defeat the Axis rampage threatening to engulf the entire Japanese Home Islands.

Wakkanai Airfield

4th Soviet Guards Airborne Division, August 9th, 1943

Private Soldiers from the 4th Soviet Guards Airborne Division Alexy Matvisvenko busied himself firing his PPS-43 at the Japs coming up the steep slope, yelling themselves out of their lungs. His flurry of shots hit one of them right in the belly, and the enemy soldier stumbled backward before falling down the steep incline, soon tumbling into a ball and hitting two more struggling soldiers. It was raining hard, and the downpour made it difficult to spot the enemy and even to keep the guns dry. Alexy thought for a moment that it was a terrible place to fight in and that the Japs were stupid to try this attack in the middle of such foul weather.

Besides Johnny, more of his comrade soldiers also toiled hard to kill as many enemies as possible. Now neatly protected by sandbag walls (thanks to great work from the engineer battalion landed at the Wakkanai Airfield they now controlled), some manned light gun positions, while others poured bullets into the writhing Japanese mass with machine guns.

The scene was eerie, almost impossible to comprehend. Masses of men firing bullets at each other with tracer lines zipping from both sides. Explosions dotted the ground, but strangely, there were almost no fires because the heavy rain rapidly extinguished the one that started. It was grey and dull like any large downpour, except that death and destruction added to the scene. The smell of rot and decaying Japanese bodies from previous assaults was overpowering.

The Soviet forces had successfully taken control of the Wakkanai Airfield a few days before and were now busy strengthening their position around the airfield, growing the perimeter they controlled, while the Japs tried to smoke them out. The fighting in the city of Wakkanai north of them was still in full swing, but the Axis forces were in the process of gaining the advantage, with some of the smaller tanks landed earlier at the airfield or the ones that managed to get across the La Pérouse that survived the amphibious landings.

“Keep firing at the slant-eyed bastards,” said Sergeant Matvei Demidov. “You,” the NCO grumbled loudly at a crazy-eyed youngster who looked completely shell-shocked and traumatized. “You Tupitsa,” (dimwit in Russian) reload and fire,” he continued hitting the young soldier on his helmet with the butt of his own weapon. “Y… yeeee.. yeees, Comrade Sergeant, trying my best,” he answered feebly. “Your best isn’t good enough, you little rat,” added the NCO, slapping the kid in the face. “I’ll have your ass hanging out to dry after the battle; snap out of your funk; we all depend on each other here.” Matvei looked at the scene as he reloaded his submachine gun, wondering what the Sergeant hoped to do with the traumatized soldier. Everyone around him who had some battle experience knew that when soldiers reached that state of shell shock, there wasn’t much to do but put them in the rear. But the situation was desperate, and every man, disabled or not, was needed on deck. The Allies were trying to destroy their position, and they would if nothing changed. Of course, Matvei wasn’t in the know, and something was about to change (the second set of landings in Shibetsu east of Wakkanai), and thus, he redoubled in speed and rapidly fired three poorly aimed bullets, hitting the ground and a Jap on the shoulder.

A few minutes after the exchange between the Sergeant and the now quietly sobbing (but at least firing his gun) young soldier, a low humming noise started to mount from the Japanese side of the line. “Here they come, gentlemen!” yelled Demidov at the top of his lungs. And then the low humming noise grew in intensity to become one large Banzai yell. From the enemy’s broken positions of buildings and makeshift trenches, a line of brown-yellow uniforms streamed out, running, slipping on the muddy ground, bayonets on their rifles. They charged under the heavy rain, splashing water and dirt everywhere. It felt like a thundering rumble was coming toward them, and it was hard not to panic. But Sergeant Demidov was there to steady them out. “Comrade soldiers,” he yelled calmly. “You keep firing, and we’ll keep them bastards away from here.” He paused, not hearing much enthusiasm. “By the Great Stalin, do you acknowledge,” he yelled so hard as to startle the men, already pretty busy firing at the Japs coming up the muddy slope. “Yes, Comrade Sergeant!” they all yelled at the same time.

And they redoubled their efforts, pouring fire into the withering mass of struggling Japanese soldiers. After a few minutes, the enemy charge died down, and they started edging backward and back toward the treeline.

Matvei breathed a sigh of relief as they’d once more repulsed the bastards. “Good job, comrades!” said Demidov with his booming voice. The NCO stopped for a moment to look at the young man, now dead with an enemy bullet in the middle of the face between the eyes, and just shrugged his shoulders while Matvei did the same, too busy reloading and making sure there weren’t any more Japs coming at them in the pouring rain.

The Battle of Wakkanai

August 9th-12th, 1943

(…) 56th Rifle Division (…)

The Japanese coastal city of  Wakkanai sat in the so-called Soya Hills, a set of rolling landscapes shaped like a large, gentle ridge. On a clear day, one could see the faraway outlines of Sakhalin Island, and the soldiers from both sides could also see the blue expanse of the La Pérouse Strait, now littered with debris and where the large Imperial Navy fleet of Grand Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto roamed. By the 9th of August, the battle for the city of Wakkanai was reaching a critical point. The Soviet forces (airborne and the ones that were landed before the Japanese ships stopped the flow of troops from Sakhalin) were on the verge of pushing the Japanese and American defenders eastward. The main problem was not that the Allies didn’t have enough troops; it was that they couldn’t reach Wakkanai because the Soviet's airborne assault had stormed the Wakkanai airfield south of the city, and as it was constantly expanding, no supplies or new troops could reach the city and the coast near it. There were talks of organizing a relief effort by sea, but it was not going to be, as the battle would probably end before Yamamoto could get the convoys going.

The morning of the 10th of August 1943 and as the first rays of the sun showed a scene of horror and devastation up on the Soya Hills and the multitude of small ridges dotting the landscape. Hundreds of soldiers from both the Allies and Germano-Soviets lay dead on the ground. Everywhere one looked, pools of blood covered the bare rocks or else the green hills and the destroyed buildings. The stench of death and rotting flesh permeated everything, and the yells of the wounded filled the air. Men cried for their mothers, their wives, and even to the Gods in the case of the Japanese.

The night had seen a horrible battle between both sides. Hand-to-hand combat dominated the battlefield as the Japanese infiltrated the Soviet positions, and both sides gave no quarter. The battle for Wakkanai and the Soya Hills was reminiscent of hell itself for most of the fighters stuck in it. Stabbing with knives, bayonets, and even entrenching tools, firing at point-blank range, fist fights, a grenade thrown mindlessly into the midst of the perceived enemy; it was a confusing mass of soldiers fighting for their very lives.

A very tired-looking General Kiichiro Higuchi looked at the now partially enemy-occupied ridge and sighed deeply. The man was in charge of the island’s northern defenses and had been stuck in the fighting when the Soviets had landed and dropped from the air. He’d signaled General Otozo Yamada, the overall commander of Hokkaido’s fighting forces, that he would fight to the end since it had not been possible to move out of the city. He’d sent everything he had into the battle short of taking a rifle with a bayonet to fight in the dark by himself. No matter how many men he’d poured into the ridge, the enemy still prevailed. “General,” said his main staff officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Yamaguchi. “What do we do now,” said the man. Higuchi knew of only one option. “We counter-attack again, Lieutenant-Colonel,” he answered. The general looked at the battlefield in front of him. Whisps of smoke mixed with fog reigned in the early morning. A gentle breeze brushed his face. He looked gaunt but determined.

“But… sir, the men are tired, and the Soviets are too strong, with tanks, more supplies, and everything in between… We have received over a couple of thousand casualties during the night.” The Nipponese General understood what his staff officer said but also knew that it would not be something he could do. There was no retreat from here. If he failed, it wasn’t only that he would be relieved of command, but it also meant that the damned Russians would stream down south and secure not only the Wakkanai Airfield but perhaps even resume the landings in the embattled city. “You either follow my order, or I’ll relieve you and give it myself. The men need to find a way to retake the ridges, the hills, and the city. The enemy is not solidly implanted; we still hold certain parts of it. Send the order for a general attack.” The lieutenant colonel hesitated. “Now, Yamaguchi,” he said, pointing a gun at the man’s head. That move startled the younger Japanese officer out of his hesitation and fear. “Yes, sir, now,” he said, moving outside the command bunker built on the descending slope of the ridge the HQ was located on. Once he was out, Higuchi moved to the radio operator beside him. “Get me a line to General Yamada in Sapporo…”

(…) Soviet side of the battle, Wakkanai and the Soya Hills (…)

Private soldier Anatoli Batasov had come up himself to the top of one of the Soviet-controlled ridges during the night, fighting alongside his comrades in some of the most terrible hand-to-hand combat he’d seen in his military career. And that said much about the previous night's ordeal.

While the Red Army and its constant flow of supplies from the Wakkanai Airfield and now a couple of others who fell under its control, the battle seemed far from over. He had again witnessed the will of the Japanese Bushido code. Like the great Samurai battles of old, they’d fought like demons, leaving a bloody trail of death behind and ahead of them. In his now long-held opinion, built from a very intimate and close-fighting experience, the Nipponese warrior was superior to anything he’d seen and would see during his lifetime. It wasn’t that they were the most powerful army ever. But their willingness to die for the cause was admirable, bordering on the suicidal. Such things were possible with the Soviet Union, especially when a man was part of one of the dreaded penal battalions, but none of the Russian soldiers forced to do it died with such fervor and fanaticism and willingness as these Japanese.

The 56th Rifle was busy consolidating its position after the terrible battle of the night before. The men were exhausted and had given their all. Anatoli was proud of how he’d fought and how his comrades had pushed the Japanese assault back in bloody gouts of fire and mayhem. After midnight, what had started as a simple incursion on the ridge by a small platoon of twenty enemy soldiers had morphed into a full-blown breakthrough.

Batasov was no general, but he now estimated that he had somewhere close to five thousand men in the vicinity, while the enemy probably had the same numbers. The rest of the Soviet forces were scattered around in the city and the hills, also busy fighting to the death everywhere. From his point of view, the battle was won, and only the Japs didn’t know it.

(…) Two days later, 56th Rifle Division (…)

A tingle of worry crept up Anatoli’s spine as if his sixth sense told him something dreadful was about to happen. The moment was desperate as the Japanese forces were yet again, but for what would be the last time, charging the Soviet position in one final desperate attempt to dislodge the Red Army from Wakkanai.

The beleaguered Japanese troops charged and attacked with abandon. It was more out of desperation than courage, but the result was the same. Men like Batasov just went through the motion of firing into the undulating mass of brown-yellow uniformed soldiers running up and down the hills to reach the Russian lines.

As he recharged his SVT-40 Rifle to fire some more like the rest of his comrades, the loud and welcome sounds of a whistling artillery barrage were heard overhead, and he looked at the arcing shells flying over their position and slamming into the Japanese ranks of screaming soldiers.

“The fucking artillery!” yelled one enthusiastic Lieutenant. “Comrades, it’s the famed Red Army artillery!” The rounds started to land amongst the charging troops, clouding them in dirt, fire, smoke, and dust. The Soviets had finally been able to organize a few batteries of their heavy 152 mm howitzer-gun M1937s with their air convoys and were now using them to finish the job on the Wakkanai enclave and to smash the last bits of Americano-Japanese resistance in the Soya Hills.

(…) The end of the Battle for Wakkanai (…)

August 12th, 1943

The end of the fight for the city and the airfield happened rather quickly compared to the heavy and unyielding fighting characterized by the stubborn Allied resistance. It was due to the news of a second landing on Hokkaido, this time in Shibetsu, a city on the island’s east coast, directly facing the Soviet-occupied Kuril islands. More paratroopers and amphibious landings slammed the small Japanese port city with another few tens of thousands of men and materiel, and from there, everything or anything the Americano-Japanese did was moot with their right flank opened to more attacks from the Axis forces.

While most of the Japanese troops fought to the death in the hills and ridges near Wakkanai, the 7456 U.S. troops that were still alive by the time their frontline broke apart called for a parley and offered their surrender. Within a few days, the entire northern part of Hokkaido (one-third of the island’s land mass) fell into Germano-Soviet hands, the Allies forces retreating south toward Sapporo, the capital city and where most of the Allied forces were entrenched, for yet another round in the fight for Hokkaido.

Hayes-Rall round 10

Battle over Southampton August 8th

The warm morning sun was basking the RAF Northolt Base in glory, creating an eerie orange glow on the water’s surface. British Ace pilot Giles Hayes was walking on the tarmac of the airfield, about to take off to battle once more. The ground crews were all frantically setting up the airstrike, set to launch in another ten minutes. Several planes were lifting off at the same moment Giles was trying to get a sense of calm before he, also, would take to the skies. The XIX RAF Squadron that he was part of was based there, west of London. The night before, the enemy forces had landed and also dropped airborne forces in the southern city of Southampton. The moment was thus critical, for the future of the United Kingdom was at stake. If the Germano-Soviet-Italian forces got a solid foothold in southern England and controlled a harbor such as Southampton, Giles wouldn’t have a lot of trust in the UK’s future. There were reports of gigantic planes landing reinforcements in a couple of airfields the German Fallschirmjägers had taken, with Nazi gliders landing about everywhere it was flat in the area, disgorging more men and supplies.

As his new Mark IX Spitfire fighter was being brought about, he was tapped on the shoulder by one of the mechanics. Giles turned quickly, giving him an acknowledging head nod. He walked as slowly as he could, got to the plane, climbed on its left wing, and then pushed himself into the fighter’s cockpit. He slid the canopy in place and started the engine. The plane began rolling toward the center of the runway. He was almost ready to take off.

All the while, he did all these steps quite mechanically. He’d done it so many times that by 1943, he was doing everything as well as an automaton. His mind, however, was anything but idle. His thoughts whirled between the future of his country if the Allied forces failed to throw back the Axis into the sea and what kind of fight he would find up there over Southampton.

The squadron was tasked with escorting the multitudes of bombers that would soon descend upon the German positions on the airfields north of Southampton and on their beachheads. The idea was to swamp the bastards with ordinance and destroy them before they got too organized. Giles was a realist and knew the enemy commanders had planned for this very reaction, and that meant that the Axis would have a LOT of planes over the target zone, and that the Me262s would be there to attend the party as well.

He was still sort of daydreaming when his plane took speed and launched itself from the tarmac. His task was to climb as fast as possible toward the formation that was hovering above the base in preparation for the strike. As he rolled on the concrete runway, he looked up, finding comfort in the incredible number of aircraft about to assemble and fly toward Southampton.

The radio then suddenly crackled to life. “Attention all planes! Incoming Axis airstrike. All previous orders are canceled, and all planes are to stay over the base and defend. The bombers are ordered north of here until such time you fighter jocks can clear the air”. Giles felt a rush of adrenaline upon hearing the order. In fact, it was a rush of adrenaline mixed with the familiar pang of fear and anticipation before combat. As experienced as a pilot got, the feeling never really abated.

His plane took to the sky, and he floored the gas throttle to climb in altitude as quickly as possible. By the time he pierced the large clouds towering above the  Allied base, he started to hear the frantic calls of the other pilots already up there over the radio.

The fight had already begun before he arrived, but he wasn’t worried it would be over by the time he got to it, given the number of planes involved in the about-to-happen air brawl. At the moment he shot out of the clouds, trailing a long white line of vapor behind him, he faced a maelstrom all around. Tracers from both sides were filling the skies as the epic dogfight raged. He didn’t waste any time making things complicated and just spotted an Italian Macchi fighter who had been busy blazing away at a U.S. Vought Corsair. Adjusting his aircraft on his enemy’s tail and still at full speed, he pulled his fire trigger, sending his large-caliber shells into the skies. His first few shots went above and beyond the Italian fighter pilot, who saw them and reacted immediately, plunging his machine in an effort to shake his pursuer.

Unfortunately for Giles’ chosen target, the British ace had seen this dodging maneuver a hundred times over in training and in real fights since the start of the war. He quickly adjusted his Mark IX Spitfire’s throttle controls with two quick and experienced motions, putting the plane right back into the projected path of the Italian, who didn’t even know he’d signed his own death warrant with his move. In an instant, it was over, the Macchi fighter disintegrating into several flaming parts.

Another win, but Giles didn’t register it as he was busy finding another enemy. And then he saw it. A Me-262’s V-shape turned hard and blazed away at a disintegrating B-25 Mitchell bomber that had just taken off.

And then he saw it. The distinctive yellow-tailed band with a wave inside it. His arch-enemy was back, and he was now in a Me-262! He didn’t hesitate for a second and directed his fighter toward his German target, flying between two streams of blazing shells fired by two other dogfighting planes.  He immediately shot several long-range bursts with no chance of hitting his enemy. He’d wanted to be noticed and get the bastard’s attention. It worked. The attention of one of the greatest German aces of the war, Gunther Rall, was again on him.

Rall, for his part, accepted the challenge with enthusiasm. Both planes flew toward each other, and the Nazi pilot wondered if this man was an ace or just yet another rookie he would kill easily with his wondrous plane.

Following his first encounter a few days before with the new aircraft, Giles had had a lot of time to think about how to face the faster-than-humanly-possible machines. He’d also discussed it with his squadron mates. They pretty much all agreed on the two main weaknesses of the revolutionary plane. First, the reports of the first one destroyed on the other side of the English Channel during raids was that its jet engines were sluggish at best upon landing and taking off. Since this was not the case and the damned ME-262 was speeding before him and at full speed, this did not apply to Hayes’ situation.

The second weakness, according to a man in the squadron who had shot one down over London a couple days before, was the result of its greatest quality, speed. The ME-262 was so fast that it went by his enemies in the blink of an eye. It thus had only seconds to fire. Giles figured that if he could maneuver in a way where he could take advantage of that fact, he could face the fighter in head-to-head combat.

As the German plane turned toward him in a great arc and with unbelievable speed, he turned his plane to face the ME-262 head-on. The combined speed of the two planes was so great that they closed the distance almost too fast. But the fact of the matter was that the British machine was a fraction slower than the German one and had more than a couple of seconds to fire, while Rall only got one burst that overshot Haye’s Spitfire by a very long margin.

The Allied pilot thus hit home with a mighty attack while the German missed. Giles shredded his enemy’s fuselage, but luckily for Rall, that didn’t destroy the plane outright. The jet immediately went into a tumble toward the ground, smoking hard. In seconds, the German pilot was in a fight for his life and disappeared still at great speed into one of the large white clouds. Giles turned around and, for a moment, decided to follow the damaged plane into the cloud, but was soon taken as a target by a FW-190, and he quickly had to adjust his heading and forget about his almost-kill.

Inside his Me-262’s cockpit, Gunther struggled mightily to redress his plane to some semblance of a horizontal flight path and gunned it for home, hoping his damaged machine would make it to the nearest German-controlled airfield across the English Channel.

The Hayes-Rall duelling was not yet over.

CHAPTER 3

Flashback 1943

The Axis fleets, end of 1941 to August 1943

(…) May 17th, 1943 (…)

Every German ship’s sirens boomed their welcome to the large fleet entering Kiel Harbor on that cloudless and magnificent day of May. The vessels gliding inside the expansive German naval facilities were Soviet in origin, and most of them were brand-new.

Kiel was the Kriegsmarine’s main base, as it was where most of its building dockyards were located, with Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft (the main producer for U-Boats), Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (makers of the H-Class battleships) and Deutsche Werke AG (where Bismarck, Graf Zeppelin and Tirpitz were built). Located right beside the now-strategic and famous Kiel Canal, a sixty-mile-long waterway built before the turn of the 20th Century to connect the North Sea (Nord see) to the Baltic Sea (Ostsee). This enabled the Kriegsmarine and its allies to stay in the relative safety of the Baltic Sea while having quick access to the North Sea in the case of an enemy attack on Germany’s northern shores or being needed for an operation.

The Soviet fleet entering the German base was composed of five new dreadnought battleships, the Sovetsky Soyuz, the Sovetskaya Rossiya, the Sovetskaya Ukraina, the Sovetskaya Belorussiya and the Sovetskaya Gruzia. All were of the Sovetsky Soyuz Class of battleships, of which the Soviet state planned to build a staggering fifteen units. Project 23, as it was called, originally wanted to have the ship displacing a whooping 60,000 tons, but practical construction challenges related to cemented armor and Soviet industry capabilities limited the ships to 44,000 tons, which remained very respectable.

Without the most modern range-finding and targeting equipment, they still packed a mean punch with three triple 16-inch guns, six twin 6-inch turret guns, and a plethora of smaller weapons and flak defenses. No one knew their fatal flaw yet, but cemented armor issues would eventually come back to bite them. Next up was the new battlecruiser Kronstadt, also a new design, displaced 35,000 tons and which had clocked its best speed at 33 knots. The ship was armed with three twin 15-inch guns, four twin 6-inch guns, and some second AA defenses and other secondary armament. The six mighty ships were screened by three new Kirov-Class heavy cruisers and eight older destroyers.

The Soviet shipbuilding program and its results to date in 1943 impressed even the Germans, as the Russian state was not generally recognized as a naval power or hadn't been since the days prior to the total annihilation of its fleets during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The USSR was unhindered by war on its soil and spared the bombing of its factories by the sheer distance the Allies had to cross to even think of attacking them. It also had the resources of half a continent and the Middle East at its disposal.

The result was one hell of an industrial juggernaut built for war. Its production levels were nowhere near the American ones, but Stalin, already laden with millions of men and tanks, could build what he wanted. With Axis enemies out of reach of his soldiers, it was an obvious choice for the Soviet Dictator.

Russia did encounter many difficulties in its will to expand its navy, not discounting major steel quality issues, machinery shortages, and skilled workers absence, but as part of the Axis alliance, Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, was able to secure several mutually benefitting trades deals with the Italians (giving them the plans to build T-34s and large shipment of steel) and with the Germans (sending them very large shipments of Tungsten and other special materials they needed for their new weapon developments.)

With the five Sovetsky Soyuz Class of battleships already laid down between 1938 to 1941, it was thus relatively easy for the Russians to increase the allocated resources, find what they needed for their German and Italian friends, and build one hell of a mighty fleet. The result was arriving on that day of May 1943 in Kiel, while the Soviet Union planned to build ten more of these ships in the near to mid-term future.

Admiral Ivan Isakov led the fleet onboard his flagship, the Sovetsky Soyuz dreadnought battleship. Formerly the Minister of the Navy and a member of the Politburo, he was selected by Stalin himself to join the German fleet for the planned Sealion 1943 Operation.

As originally planned, the German naval building plan called  PLAN Z was to be completed between 1946 to 1950, equipping the Third Reich with fifteen battleships, ten battlecruisers, and fifteen “pocket battleships,” along with a plethora of smaller ships and several carriers (five). Up to the middle of 1941, however, the German Navy had the lowest priority for the Fuhrer and the OKW, and both focused on the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, busy conquering Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

A new and revised plan was put in place to adjust to the situation and accepted by Hitler in November 1940. The modifications were proposed by Grand Admiral Raeder, who took into account the limited resources available to him and his shipbuilding industry. The amended Plan Z proposal then included four H-class Battleships (in addition to the two Bismarck Class under construction and the two brand new of the Scharnhorst battlecruiser class), three Admiral Hipper-class Heavy Cruisers, three M-class light cruisers, and some destroyers.

The result of these decisions stood and floated right by while the Soviet ships made their long-awaited, grand entrance into Kiel. Four H-Class battleships (52,000 tons displacement, 32-knot speed, and four twin 15-inch turrets complemented by six 6-inch twin turret guns, protected with the most modern cemented steel and double-layered armor the Reich could make) named the Hindenburg, Friedrich der Große, Olrich Von Huten and Goetz von Götz von Berlichingen.

The shipyards of the Reich also built two Graf Zeppelin Class carriers, with a displacement of 33,000 tons (including the Graf Zeppelin and the Europa) and capable of carrying forty-three of the purpose-built BF-109Ns. While the Graf Zeppelin was already gone and sailed into the Mediterranean during Operation Hyperion (Otto Cilliax’s breakout from Greenland), the Europa stood resolute beside the Hindenburg and ready to sail with the combined fleet out of Kiel. The new Kriegsmarine Navy was completed by the Seydlitz, Admiral Hipper, Lutzow, and twenty-two Spähkreuzer class destroyers.

That day, the Soviet sailors were welcomed like the friends and allies they were, and the celebrations went well into the night in and around Kiel with drunken sailors and happy civilians. The Axis would finally take the war to the enemy in the British Home Islands.

(…) Tirpitz Hafen July 25th, 1943 (…)

Tirpitz Hafen was the name for the military part of Kiel with barracks, naval defenses, and a closed-in protected harbor. This was where the combined Germano-Soviet Fleet was anchored. The place bore the name of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, considered the father of the modern German Navy before the Great War because he was the one who had built it.

The entire area was closed to civilians, and within that area stood the Flandern bunker, a three-floor reinforced concrete and modern bunker built in 1940 to house the Kriegsmarine HQ from attack. Above it stood a continuation of the concrete structure. And it was where Admiral Gunther Lutjens, the German Kriegsmarine operational commander, resided and held office. Lutjens had originally been with the Bismarck as the ship journeyed to the Mediterranean following its breakout into the Atlantic in 1941 but following Cilliax’s arrival in Taranto with the remainder of the then-Kriegsmarine, he was recalled back to the Reich to head the new fleet in being and to supervise its accelerated construction. The result was before him as he stood, arms crossed behind his back, looking outside at the harbor. The fleet he had at his disposal was the most powerful ever fielded by the Third Reich, and with the addition of Russian Admiral Isakov’s ships, it was the biggest and baddest ever put to the water by the Axis. And yet, it dwarfed in comparison to the enormous Allied fleets.

A knock on the door of the meeting room he sat in was heard, and a German Marine soldier appeared in the frame. “Sir, Admiral Isakov is here for your discussions.” “Very well, Marine, let him in.” The Russian commander strode in moments later, smiling and giving Lutjens the military salute. “Admiral,” answered the German, also responding with a salute. “please have a seat, my friend,” he continued.

Both officers were dressed in their best white navy uniforms and met in a white-painted room with an oak table in the center. The afternoon sun was basking the entire place in its magnificent light, making for a pleasant view and ambiance.

“Thank you for meeting me this afternoon, Admiral,” continued Lutjens. “Well, given the nature of the orders we have just received, it's not very surprising,” smiled Isakov. “That’s why we are here anyway.” The previous day, a large task force laden with transport ships from big to small had sailed in Kiel, filled to their brims with Red Army Soldiers. Similar preparations had been done in Kiel itself by the Germans, with over seventy large transport ships requisitioned from across the Baltic for the Operation.

The day before, both admirals had also received their set of orders for the execution of the part they were entrusted with for Operation Sealion 43, the landing of their troops in the Coventry area near the Dover Strait. They were to sail there at the best speed and land their troops while covering their transports and the multitudes of German amphibious boats accumulated in the ports in the Calais Area (Calais, Dunkirk, and others).

“The problem remains the U.S. Fleet guarding the North Sea,” said Isakov. “Indeed, and that is why the Operation on Scapa Flow will go ahead and try to disrupt them as much as possible.” The large American fleet, over six battleships and ten modern aircraft carriers strong, was indeed based in the Orkney Islands and ready to sail at a moment's notice when the Germano-Soviet ships sailed past the Heligoland Bight, the fortified island near Wilhelmshaven on the Northern German coast bordering the North sea.

The Russian commander grunted his displeasure. “There is no such thing as a safe bet, and our orders seem to think this little airborne stunt will disrupt the very resourceful Yankees enough to avoid us or forget about our fleet?” Lutjens smiled with irony. “Well, there aren’t any provisions for anything else in our orders, Admiral. I guess we’ll just have to make do with what we have and chance it.”

Both men didn’t like the plan they were ordered to execute, as they knew the price and amount of work both of their countries had put into building the mighty fleet, yet minuscule in comparison to the American one.

“When do we go and sortie,” asked the still-disgruntled Russian Admiral. “The OKW is waiting for the best weather possible in the English Channel and hopes that the 1st or 2nd week of August will be good enough for the water to be calm for the transport barges and makeshift amphibious crafts to make it across. The attack on Southampton will be our signal.”

“tak i byt,” said Isakov in Russian. “What did you say,” countered Lutjens, who didn’t speak a word of the language. “So be it, my German friend… So be it…”

Herdla Airfield, near the city of Bergen

Norway, August 12th, 1943

Contrary to popular belief, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin did travel to the frontlines many times since the start of the war. Many thought him a paranoid maniac who didn’t like to travel because of the risks, but it was nothing of the sort. He felt at home with the rank and file, reminding him of his adventurous days after the Great War when he was a revolutionary with the Red Army fighting the Whites in the Russian Civil War. This was in stark contrast to the German Fuhrer, who only traveled when planned well in advance and with very heavy security. As a result, the leader of the Reich only moved from one HQ to the next, or else from Berchtesgaden to Berlin and back.

The leader of the USSR stepped out of his large Petlyakov Pe-8 four-engine heavy bomber and onto the tarmac of the large Bergen naval and air base in the Norwegian coastal town of the same name. Produced in limited numbers to date in 1943 (and the only four-engine planes made by the USSR), the aircraft was converted for transport use and was employed in this fashion by the Soviet leaders. A few remained operational and would even be involved in the very operation Stalin had come to see for himself, but it remained limited.

The city of Bergen was one of Norway’s largest population centers and sat at a strategic spot from the sea lanes. It was also, before Germany attacked and occupied Norway, the country’s main naval and air base, with both a small military harbor and the Herdla Airfield. Following the conquest, the Reich expanded the place and sent several ships and planes with everything in between, like radar installations and gun defenses, to make the place into a major Axis base.

But the city’s best quality for the coming operation against the United Kingdom was its relatively close proximity to the Orkney Islands. It stood roughly 300 miles from the main Royal Navy Base and where the U.S. Atlantic Fleet was now based as it guarded the North Sea approaches to the United Kingdom.

Stalin breathed in the clean air of the area, feeling rejuvenated after such a long flight. Two colonels and a general awaited him near the plane’s flight of stairs that brought him down to the concrete runway, and they all stood at the ready, awaiting his signal to be at ease. He let them linger a little, as he liked to make men around him uncomfortable.

A minute in, as he walked around, breathed a large intake of air, and watched the coming and going of dozens of planes, he told them to be at ease. “General Secretary,” finally said a relieved-looking General Klustermenko. “Ah, General, are your men ready to go,” he said, still looking at planes landing. One of them was a Me323 Gigant, probably the biggest transport plane in the world. The thing could even transport a small tank to another airfield or a bunch of guns and or soldiers. “They are, Comrade General Secretary,” answered Klustermenko. The idea with these M323s was to seize the Scapa Flow Airfield and then bring in more troops, just like they were currently doing in Hokkaido or Southampton and would do if and when they succeeded in landing in southeast England near the Dover Strait. “Good, I will want to visit one of these big ones,” he answered before walking to the black car that obviously waited for him. “Of course, Comrade Stalin.”

He stepped into the car, and it drove toward the main HQ building for Herdla Airfield. There, German General Kurt Student waited for him to give the USSR dictator a presentation on the bold plan of attack. Klustermenko was his Soviet counterpart and had planned the entire operation along with the famous German airborne General.

As the car drove past planes, troops, guns, and tanks getting prepped for loading into transport planes, Stalin’s mind wandered far and wide, thinking about the state of the war to date.

Things were going very well everywhere he looked, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, by way of the Mediterranean to the Middle East. The Axis forces controlled the oil and the necessary resources to wage war for a generation or more. The Soviet Union's industrial capability was growing by the day with the impunity of a country unhindered by modern wars and its bombs or wanton destruction.

The USSR now even boasted a fleet to be reckoned with, and it would soon have its baptism of fire in the attack against the British and Americans. Its air force was thousands upon thousands strong, and it had millions of men driven by machines and tanks by the tens of thousands.

Two main operations were going on right now, the first one being the invasion of the United Kingdom, and the second, the same but against the Japanese Home Islands. If the Axis alliance succeeded in conquering both of them, then he figured the war would be as good as over since, however powerful the Yankees were, they could hardly land back and contest Eurasia against such a powerful force.

No things were going well, and everywhere he looked, things looked bright. And yet, there remained nagging thoughts in his mind about what would happen when the Reich and the Soviet Union lacked any reachable enemy. America was too far out of reach for anything to be done about it for years, perhaps even a decade. His thoughts had been recently dominated by the peaceful cohabitation with the Nazis, and he didn’t know how that would pan out. Furthermore, there remained the Chinese Nationalists, now apparently stirring up and plotting with the damned Anglo-Saxons to cause trouble.

Stalin decided to try and get a feel for the Germans while he was in Bergen, and once he got back to Moscow, he would ponder it some more.

The Battle for the Channels, August 9th

(…) In the Bristol Channel (…)

The 32-ton elevator catapulted in the air and disappeared in its own column of smoke and fire, reminiscent of an exploding volcano. The blast rocked the British armored carrier Victorious’s crew off their feet, stunning most of them. The surge of kinetic energy rolled across the hull of the ship, shaking it to its core. Moments before, the first bomb had slashed through the 3-inch armor like a knife in hot butter and exploded below deck in a cataclysmic eruption of fire and death. The Royal Navy vessel was built tough, however, as the English made their carriers more armored than any other nation in the war. Smoking, burning but still fighting, hence Victorious sailed on.

Then, two more bombs splashed the deck and penetrated the hull, atomizing a bunch of sailors in the aircraft hangar below. A wall of fire rolled across its length’s insides, the explosion having started where four torpedo bombers and seven fighters had been ready to fly away, full of gasoline and ammunition. On Victorious’s topside (just above the internal explosion), the anti-aircraft gunners blazed at the attacking Germano-Italian planes when the explosive blast from below created a flash of light — and several of the flak crews and guns were suddenly gone, zapped out of existence by a beam of horizontal and explosive power.

Below deck, men died in droves as fires spread everywhere, and the entire carrier quickly became an inferno. Victorious started to list hard to starboard, its radar gone, the bridge destroyed. The Captain was still alive but pretty banged up, while most of his bridge officers were dead or incapacitated. The Royal Navy carrier presented a terrifying sight to the rest of the British carrier fleet, sailing somewhere north of Bristol. They stared in horror at the carrier became covered in smoke and flame. The men saw the Axis aircraft that had bombed Victorious whiz over their heads and buzz about everywhere. Then, more explosions rocked the carrier as bombs and ammunition exploded in all directions.

All across the British task force, the scene repeated itself many times over. After a furious dogfight over the ship, the devastating Axis airstrike swooped down on their targets. Destroyers fought on as they tried to kill planes, and other ships came to the assistance of the ones on fire that were hit by bombs or torpedoes.

The battle for the English Channel was in full swing a couple of hundred miles away, with British ships trying to fend off the multitude of amphibious crafts trying to cross. Since carriers were more vulnerable and would not have been of great use to bar the Axis landing ship’s way because of a lack of guns and because they were a combination of precious and fragile, Admiral John Tovey had split his fleet in two.

While the majority of his battleships, cruisers, and other surface warships stayed in the Channel to kill and intercept everything that floated, the carriers Ark Royal, Victorious, Argus, Furious, Unicorn, and Glorius were sailed northwest in the Bristol Channel, in order to be in a position to support the fleet with its carrier planes but be out of immediate range of the powerful Axis air strikes pouncing on the British fleet in the Channel. Protecting them were twenty-five destroyers, the battleships Vanguard and Revenge, plus a few light cruisers. But a German Arado recon plane had eventually spotted the task forces as it was impossible to hide such a big force in the open water and so close to a naval battle.

In all, the Axis air strike did not even last twenty minutes. By the time the Germano-Italian pilots turned back toward their airfields on the northern French coast, they’d crippled Victorious, lodged a bomb another carrier, the Argus (wrecking its deck for flight operations), and two squadrons of Savoia-Marchetti SM.84 lodged a total of five torpedoes into Glorious (1), Furious (2)and Unicorn (2).

“Damn Krauts,” grumbled Admiral John Cunningham as he surveyed the catastrophic damage on his beloved fleet from his bridge’s vantage point on the battleship Revenge. “Good thing that our planes had already launched, Admiral,” said his chief of staff. “And also, not bad that we didn’t get hit,” finished Cunningham. “I want a full report on damage assessment within the hour.” “Yes, sir.”

(…) In the English Channel (…)

In the Channel, things weren’t going any better for the beleaguered Royal Navy under the command of Fleet Admiral John Tovey. As its ships barred the way of the armada of amphibious Axis vessels pouring out of Cherbourg, it sank a lot of them, but no amount of air cover could stop the Luftwaffe and the Royal Italian Air Force from pouncing on the vulnerable ships in the Channel proper. They were not stationary but were an easy target to find and attack. With limited mobility (the fleet was bunched up together, and they could not maneuver at will because of all the Axis ships strewn about and sailing everywhere), they soaked up the hits. Besides, the sailors also had to choose between killing ships or else the planes that also tried to kill them.

Battleships like the Duke of York blazed away at the sky with its forty-eight Mk. VIII and its six Oerlikon AA guns, while the ten 14-inch Mark VII and sixteen QF 5.25-inch Mk. I DP cannons fired horizontally to kill ships. The powerful array of eight other battleships was doing the same as the Duke of York and fired their fiery tracers in the morning in an impressive, firework-looking show. The British were giving their all with battleships Nelson, Hanson, Lion, Barham, King George V, Rodney, Prince of Wales, Howe, and Vanguard. Meanwhile, the other ships, like destroyers, either chose to smash ships or else try to defend themselves from the air while heavy cruisers like Norfolk rammed smaller amphibious vessels as they fired their guns at the sky.

The Axis had planned this attack carefully, and their game plan was simple. They wanted to overwhelm the Allies in such a way that they would not be able to stop the landings. The British captains had to choose between the planes attacking them in the air or to try and kill as many of the troops moving to invade their homeland. It was an impossible choice, and the ships were under such danger and pressure that it was bound to break at some point. The final idea for Manstein and Guderian was that the admirals in charge would eventually have to choose between accepting several of their precious capital ships were going to be sunk or else sail away to have them fight another day.

The Germans attacked with Junker 88s, Henkels 111s, Stukas, and their new Heinkel He 177 Greif (Griffin) bombers, escorted by BF-109s, FW-190, and their by-then dreaded Me-262s. The Italians attacked with their four squadrons (100 aircraft in total) of Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero torpedo bombers and added their excellent Macchi C.202 Folgore and Fiat G.50s. The British and Americans responded in kind with clouds upon clouds of fighters to cover their precious ships. Between that and the Axis fighters, the Allies also flew in with their bombers, B-25s, Wellingtons, Lightnings, Handley Pages, Avro Manchesters and B-24 Liberators

Most of the Home Fleet’s ships were hurt in some way or another, either with bombs, torpedoes, or 20mm cannon ordinance. Several others had their bows mangled because they rammed several of the smaller Marinephram or Motozarette amphibious ships. Battleship Nelson was hit by both a bomb and a torpedo that exploded about a minute apart. The ship was rapidly engulfed in a powerful fire vortex and secondary blasts, taking in water amidship on the starboard side and with one of its main guns disabled. Battleship Hanson was raked with FW-190 shell fire, killing many of its AA gunners, and was eventually slammed with a bomb that destroyed its plane catapult. The Lion received a serious armor belt hit, three secondary guns destroyed, and over a hundred wounded or killed sailors, while Barham received major bridge forecastle damage, and also a torpedo hit below the waterline. Not to be outdone, the King George V received a couple of Stuka 500kg bombs on the no1 and 2 funnels, resulting in a major engine explosion, and its forward main gun was destroyed by a brazen Heinkel 177 pilot lodging a bomb in the traverse mechanism.

The same story repeated itself on the battleship Prince of Wales. No less than seven bombs blasted the armored deck and penetrated deep within the ship’s bowels. The resulting explosion, which was nothing short of catastrophic, made the ship open like an expanding ball of steel, followed by a blinding flash. The ship was gone a few seconds later, replaced by a large patch of smoke on the ocean.

The smaller ships were also damaged to various degrees, and within a few hours of the battle for the Channel, seven destroyers were gone, with most of the ships in the Home Fleet damaged to some extent.

The Battle of Southampton

August 9th to August 12th, 1943

(…) 47th German Infantry regiment (…)

The Panzer IV tank rolled across the burning British town of Brockenhurst as tracers blazed about it, bullets sparking on its hull, while Marco and his comrades of the 47th German Infantry Regiment sheltered behind. Above them, a large air battle was underway as fighters crisscrossed high in the clouds, their shells flashing in the sky.

The Axis invasion of Southern England was entering its third day. After successfully landing across the English Channel and dropping thousands of airborne troops to capture a major Allied airfield, the German forces were advancing toward their main objective, the coastal city of Southampton. From their landing zone at the Barton on Sea Beach, southwest of the city and harbor, they fought their way across with blinding speed.

To Marco, the small city was pretty enough, or well, had been, since now it was being systematically destroyed by the fighting, with the Germans having bombed the town the entire night before and now troops and tanks from both sides fought to control it. With red brick houses and neat streets, Brockenhurst was an important area for the Allies, where a couple of divisions were stationed before the invasion to defend it from an Axis attack. Before the invasion, its luxury hotel (the Balmer Lawn) was often used for Allied meetings, away from their headquarters in London when Eisenhower needed to meet with the commanders in the field and to inspect the defenses.

As the Panzer IV tracks rattled noisily on the cobblestone street and the din of explosions permeated the smoke-riddled air, Marco had his weapon trained in the air while Max faced the buildings to the side, Felix facing the other side. The idea was to watch for any and every angle of attack the enemy might come at them from.

There were about fifty soldiers in a long single file to try and get as much protection from the panzer’s hull as possible. The unit was advancing across the main street (Southampton Road was laid right in the middle of it), and the Anglo-Saxons were doing their best to stop them. After all, the troops and defenses were ready, having known the onslaught was coming for a while.

Behind the group of soldiers, more men advanced on the street. A man appeared at the window balcony of a two-story house further down the street, and he spotted him from the corner of his vision. He turned quickly left and fired, his PPsh-41 bursting away at the brown-uniformed soldier who tried to surprise them, splashing the balcony with a spray of bullets and smashing the half-broken window into pieces. The bullets also ripped into the poor man’s chest and upper torso. The Brit then leaned over the low balcony, tilting over the ramp, and fell like a sack of potatoes to the street, dead. The thudding sound he made upon landing was a sickening crunch, but Marco and his comrades were already busy looking elsewhere for more threats.

After all that fighting, he still used the sturdy Soviet weapon. The USSR was an ally, and since many of the Wehrmacht soldiers used the sturdy submachine gun, its bullets, and ammo cartridges were bought from the Red Army by the Reich logistical system and distributed to the Wehrmacht unit's quartermasters. Marco had heard through the grapevine that there was even talk of producing the ammo in a few of the Reich factories.

“Send men into that house,” yelled Lieutenant Fortmudt, and Sergeant Trucker detailed four soldiers to go in and ferret out any more enemies. Marco and his two friends were to continue forward behind the safety of the Panzer IV. “Quick, men, we need to get across this road and storm the large castle a hundred yards ahead,” continued the Lieutenant. There was an old medieval castle in the middle of the town and their company, along with a few others, had been tasked with securing it, as it was probable the Allies used it as a strongpoint. Besides, it was on Southampton Road and thus couldn’t be left to the enemy.

The four men ran toward the door of the house while the tank and Marco continued onward, their leader slamming it with a foot. The British in the street further north saw them sprinting from the tank’s hull protection and shot one of the four soldiers in the leg. The German soldier, a fellow Marco knew well (Eric Hasterhart), clattered to the cobblestone street in a big yelp of pain while one of the other three soldiers dragged him from the armpits and inside as the door was shattered to pieces. More gunfire was heard inside the house, and the soldiers fought on. Marco’s attention was soon attracted back before him as the enemy fire increased; the bright and quick flash sparking and ricocheting noises on the panzer’s steel picked up a few notches.

The 47th Regiment was advancing northeast through Southampton Road because the approaches to the English harbor were not reachable directly by Axis ships. In short, the Solent channel that was lodged between the Isle of Wight and the main British coast and that also snaked all the way to Southampton Harbor was bristling with naval guns and was mined. The Isle of Wight itself was sort of a guardian shielding the entry to the town, and since the landings were already heavily leaning on the suicidal side of things, the Axis plan thus took that fact into consideration and chose the Barton on Sea Beach.

Located some twenty-five miles southwest of Southampton, it was a nice flat piece of land dominated by a long ridge. This was also why Manstein and Guderian had chosen to seize the RAF Stoney Cross base because the large airfield was on the road leading to the city (Southampton Road). The control of the airfield was crucial for the follow-on operation in the United Kingdom. The entire affair depended on the large air train convoys envisioned to supply the troops since doing it by sea would only be possible when and if the Axis air forces chased the Royal Navy away.

The beach itself had naturally been defended with sea mines, pillboxes on the ridges, and obstacles on the sand. Marco’s Marinefährprahm was spared it all through another stroke of luck from the trio of soldiers, charmed as they were since the beginning of the conflict. By the time they got to Baton on Sea, the place was already half-taken by the ships and men having arrived before them, and thus, they were able to rapidly transition inland. After some fighting to expand the bridgehead, the confusion of the landing was sorted, and what was left of the 47th Regiment (it was estimated that the unit lost 35% of its men and material during the crossing) was reformed and sent northeast to capture Brockenhurst and beyond.

All of the 9th of August was spent fighting to expand the bridgehead and across Southampton Road, and by the 10th of August, they were making their way northeast, having even linked with some of the paratroopers who had seized the RAF Stoney Cross base the morning before. The German lead elements were thus only a mere ten miles from Southampton proper and relentlessly advancing. However, the Allies had no intention of letting them just waltz in and poured more and more men into the battle.

General Patton’s counterattack, led by the 1st British Armored Corps, the 1st U.S. Armored Corps, along with the 1st U.S. Armored Division, was now in full swing, and the airborne forces in the airfield were hard-pressed to push them back. Marco had heard that several Tiger tanks made it across on a Marinephram like his own boat and that they would soon be sent into the battle to smash the impudent Allies. He hoped he would see them in action as he had heard much about their invincibility and gun power.

The battle between the two large forces (there were about 80,000 Germano-Italian troops on the ground by the 10th, facing 95,000 men from Patton’s mobile forces and the British 1st Army) encompassed the entire New Forest Area southwest of Southampton. It promised to be one hell of a battle during which time the success – or failure – of Operation Sealion would hinge on.

The night before, more German landing ships got through with more men and materiel, while the captured airfield (and a few fields transformed into landing runways by the German Sturmpioners (combat engineers) landed more soldiers by the hour. Things were going well for the Axis forces as they moved further inland, but the affair was far from won.

(…) 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion (…)

The M18 Hellcat tank killer rolled to a halt at the edge of the forested patch of ground to overlook the large farm field before it. “See anything, Commander,” asked American tank gunner Max Dumont to his officer. “As a matter of fact, Private, I do,” answered Captain James Patrin, briefly posing to look at the matter in more detail with his binoculars. The man protruded out of the M18’s open hatch of the cupola. The tank killer machine was relatively low and slender compared to the Sherman and looked sleeker in design. The idea for the Hellcat was that speed and maneuverability were prioritized over heavy armor. It looked quite different than other American armored weapons to date with angled hull plating and a streamlined design. Painted a deep olive green, it was undistinguishable from the forest from a distance.

The merry band of tankers under Patrin’s command, including Gunner Max, driver Dave Reinbacker, assistant driver Brent Winebarger, and loader John Tortorelli, were now fighting in a brand-new American machine, the M18 Hellcat tank killer, and incorporated in the 1st anti-tank killing unit, the 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion.

Following the extensive tank-to-tank battles in North Africa between the U.S., British, and German forces in 1940 and 1941, it was deemed urgent to find a more potent weapon against the German tanks since the Sherman’s gun and armor had proven somewhat inadequate for the task. The Sherman tank was versatile and could be produced rapidly, and it was fast and well-balanced, but the U.S. high command and men like Patton felt that it was a little light on the tank killing side of things as its gun wasn’t powerful enough. It was thus needed to give it some help. Parallel to this anti-tank initiative, the Sherman tanks were given an upgraded gun (Sherman Firefly), and those would soon start to arrive in Liverpool with the newest Liberty Ship convoys.

Be that as it may, the M18 project was on the drawing board as soon as February 1941, but the design and prototypes were expedited through the design and supply phases in preparation for the unavoidable battle for the survival of the United Kingdom.

Patrin and a bunch of other experienced tank crews from the Western North African campaign were thus transferred to the new machines as soon as they landed in Liverpool on the 17th of May, 1943. The shattered units were first evacuated to the Canary Islands after the defeat in Morocco and Tangier, then moved to the Azores and then to the UK.

The high velocity and elongated 76 mm gun M1 proved to be quite impressive against Sherman armor dummies and other types of tests, and the Hellcats were thus sent right to Southern England to face whatever the Axis would send at the UK during its invasion.

What had not been planned for, however, was the appearance of Tiger tanks, which were a complete surprise to the Allies. The tanks were impervious to the Sherman and most British anti-tank guns. Thus, after getting reports of invincible German tanks killing everything before them, General Patton called the 704th to the New Forest Area. The unit was about to get its baptism of fire (just north of Brockenhurst) against the new and powerful damned machines.

“Radio battalion commander that we’ve got our eyes on three of the new hard nuts,” continued Patrin. The Americans, or the Allies in general for that matter, didn’t yet know the name of the new Nazi tank. The tank Captain watched and saw one hell of a beast and estimated it was at least a 45-ton bastard. He whistled softly since his Hellcat weighed seventeen tons, and a Sherman clocked the scale at thirty tons. While he still observed the enemy panzer riding down the gravel road in a ton of billowing smoke, three more M18s parked beside their own, two to the left and one to the right. The American tank-killers were hidden by the foliage, and if there was a sure thing, it was that they would get the first shot before the Germans spotted them. The radio crackled to life with the order to engage the Tigers.

Patrin quickly coordinated with the three other M18 commanders, and then they closed their cupola’s hatches while their gunners got ready to fie. The three enemy panzers were driving on a road that ran parallel to the wood’s edge, and gunner Max Dumont decided it was a good thing because it would be easier to hit the bastards on the side instead of on the frontal armor, which was probably a lot thicker. John loaded the anti-tank round and tapped him on the shoulder. He pushed the fire pedal beneath his right foot, and the 76mm gun barked, the M18 recoiling backward in a flurry of scattering leaves, dust, and smoke.

(…) German 5th Panzer Battalion, Panzer 124 (…)

Felix Dracks, the tank driver, drove with the frontal hatch closed. The driving was a lot more pleasant when he could put his head out, permitting him to get some fresh air (it really stank in the tank), but alas, it was not possible in a battle zone unless you had a death wish. Everyone inside the panzer was weary, as air recon had reported several enemy tank units in the vicinity. Gerhardt Grubauer, the gunner, periodically traversed the turret left and right, checking for targets, while Hans Bergen, their commander, looked through every porthole to watch for ambush.

The panzerwaffe had invaded England with their usual complement of Panzer IIIs and IVs, but also with the new models of Panzer V and the one they rode in, the Panzer VI Tiger. The new machine was a 50-ton monster protected by the heaviest rolled and cemented armor that the Reich could make. Krupp cemented armor, a technology of rolled armor including a hardened face and more rear elasticity was designed to resist penetration and spalling. It was state-of-the-art for the time.

And it was armed with what would go down in history as one of the best anti-tank guns of all time. The Tiger sported the very powerful  8.8 cm KwK 36 gun, which was derived from the very effective anti-aircraft gun of the same caliber. In tests, the weapon had proven capable of penetrating even the Soviet KV-2 tank armor, which was very thick at 110mm. It could penetrate 140 mm of armor at 1100 yards. At shorter ranges, it was even more powerful. Given that the best armor possible on the Sherman in 1943 was 68mm and that the Hellcat's best was like 25mm, it was not exaggerated to say that one shell hit it would obliterate Patrin and his gang. It could inflict the same dreadful fate on anything the Americans had on their arsenal, for that matter, be it a Sherman or else the British Crusaders and Mathildas.

A powerful blast rocked the air, then a second, then a third. The fourth was for their own tank and slammed right on the turret. The noise the impact made was deafening, and the Tiger swung slightly to the side as it recoiled from the impact. “Grubauer, traverse the turret toward your nine,” yelled Bergen, seeing the Tigers beside them also being hit.

One of the American shells plowed a deep crater and a towering column of dirt in the air as one of the Hellcats missed, but Dumont and the two others were able to slam their shell home. The tiger closing in on the trio was hit on the side, but the shell ricocheted horizontally on the thick armor and went wide in an impressive display of brightness, while the tank in the middle was hit in the track, exploding several of its links to pieces. As the Panzer was in movement, it kept going until the entire thing clattered out and the machine was immobilized.

Panzer 124’s hit also ricocheted away, but upward as it hit the turret at a sloping angle and catapulted forty feet in the air before exploding catastrophically. While the Americans had got the first shot, one thing was certain. The men inside the panzers were banged up but still alive and operational.

(…) 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion (…)

Max watched the three turrets traverse toward them as he urged John to put the other round in. “Come on, Johnny,  hurry the fuck up!” Just as the breech was closed and the gun ready to fire, the enemy’s rear tank and front tank turret barked in anger. Max saw their muzzles flash and closed his eyes for a moment, expecting to be hit. But the two German shells went for other Hellcats beside them. The first shell hit one of the M18s right on the frontal plate and plowed through the thin armor. The hit was so powerful it traversed the insides of the machines (killing everyone in the process) before lodging itself in the rear engine. The entire tank killer detonated from the inside, showering Max’s tanks with fiery debris and rocking them to the side. The second hit was on the left M18, and the 88 sliced through the space between the turret and the main hull, severing the tank in two. The resulting column of flame lanced across the machine and killed everyone inside. The turret lifted up in the air, only to fall back in fiery pieces further down in the small forested patch of ground.

In the smoke, fire, and panic, Max fired his gun, but his shell went wide, his aim fouled by the moment. “Reinbacker, get us out of here,” yelled Patrin out of his panicked lungs.

(…) German 5th Panzer Battalion, Panzer 124 (…)

“Follow the bastards,” ordered Gerben to Dracks, the driver, as two of the enemy panzers were burning fiercely across the trees, starting a fire in the area. Two of the four enemy tanks were destroyed, but the enraged Tigers (one of them was immobilized) were eager to show the impudent Yankees that they were not the kings on this battlefield. The tiger revved to life as the Maybach engine flared to full speed, the machine responding by turning hard to the left and churning the ground into deep gouges. Grubauer pushed the firing pedal again, the gun recoiling hard, but his shot went high. Firing while in movement was difficult, and to his dismay, the tank had lurched upward a little as it rolled over a rock, fouling his aim. Two of the Yankee tanks had backed up to retreat into the foliage, and he now couldn’t see them anymore because of the forest, the fire, and the smoke.

The Battle of the Channels

The fight in the air, August 9th

"Let's go in," called Commander Malan, Giles Haye’s squadron commander. The British flyers were above the Home Fleet of Admiral John Tovey and were called in to protect the ships from the air. The battle had already started below them, and it was one hell of a turmoil-looking display of fire, smoke, crisscrossing planes, and geysers of water. The entire Channel between Cherbourg and Southampton was awash with a mix of everything that a naval battle could produce. Veering his plane to the left in order to see better below and through his canopy, the British ace saw that an impressive number of enemy amphibious ships, barges, and old-looking trawlers were sinking, smoking, or burning fiercely. He could see the white water contrails of thousands of ships sailing across. Looking further south, he saw even more of them coming from the northern French coastline. The hour was dire for the Empire, and the battle for its very survival was at hand. “Good luck, guys,” said Commander Cherterby, the leader of bomber squadron no.4, as he and his bomber swarm continued onward south. The Allies were pouncing on the Axis invaders with everything they had, either be ships as they fought below Giles, planes to fight the Germano-Italians ones trying to kill those same ships, or else bombers sent to attack the amphibious armada as it left Cherbourg. B-17s, B-24s, and Wellington bombers were also bombing Cherbourg and the French coastline around the clock in an effort to disrupt and stop the never-ending flow of small ships pouring troops into England. Behind Giles lay the city of Southampton, where rising smoke columns could be seen from a distance. The Axis also bombed and attacked everything in sight with its own air forces. In short, the entire affair was one hell of a brawl. “Go get ‘em, Harry,” Hayes answered Commander Malan.

Giles’ own XIX RAF Squadron lifted off from its base a few minutes before and cruised at 20,000 feet. Their orders had been to fly over the Home Fleet and engage everything there, either bombers or fighters, as there were plenty of targets to go around. As said before, the fight below them was in full swing. Hayes could see tracers from the fighter's dogfight and what could only be Germano-Italian dive and torpedo bombers heading for the ships below. He hand-signaled his two recruit wingmen, Ensign Eric Easter and Ensign Samuel Nightingale, to head down. They both acknowledged with a head nod. There was no need to use the radio. They flew close to each other and could see themselves through their fighter's canopy. Easter peeled off first, turning his aircraft into a tumble downward, soon followed by Nightingale.

He looked at their Spitfire Mark IX fighters getting further away and picking up speed, thinking for a few seconds that the two young pilots had really improved their skills in the last few weeks. They had survived their first fights and had ample battle experience since the enemy was attacking Southern England relentlessly.

As he pushed his control lever down to also head for battle, he decided that they had now become experienced pilots. He hoped he would not lose them in the coming fight. Looking one last time at the turmoil of battle on the water’s surface, he blanked his mind to be ready and sharp against the damned Axis pilots who would try to kill him soon.

Moments later, his Spitfire reached an incredible speed because of the dive he'd put it into, and he came up right on top of a German FW-190 fighter. German pilots were good, but the ones without a jet fighter weren’t necessarily the best of aces. Anyway, he thought quickly, no fighter could withstand the hailstorm of bullets and 20mm shells he unleashed at the poor Axis pilot, and that gave him an idea that he might be able to engage one of those damned and dreadful Messerschmitt Me-262s in this way, as the gravity-assisted speed he’d just reached was close to what the jet aircraft did when it flew level. His thoughts came back to the enemy right in front of him, and he fired right into the top part of the fuselage, shattering the pilot's canopy and killing him instantly. He smiled as his death was irrelevant; his aircraft was hit so hard that it shattered into pieces.

He came in so fast that he sped through the cloud of falling debris that had been a German fighter. Once he cleared the chaff field, he continued on his dive and checked his altimeter. He was still 6,000 feet from sea level, but the distance was closing in fast. He decided to level his fighter in a long arc so as to avoid being chased by enemy planes. He eventually leveled up his Spitfire and looked to find another target, turning his plane to avoid a couple of lines of AA flak gun shell streams snaking into the sky.

(…) Nearing the end of the evening’s light, later that day (…)

Giles's attention on the fighter he chased was distracted by a large explosion at sea level. It was the cruiser London. A powerful fireball blossomed, and the ship started to sink bow-first in a tumultuous maelstrom of fire. A second later, he saw the battleship Duke of York was hit right on its forward deck, the bomb exploding upward in a column of bright fire. There was no way around it, most of the Home Fleet was getting damaged. The British ace pilot was tired to the bones as he was executing his fourth mission of the day above the beleaguered Allied ships, and there didn’t seem to be any end to the relentless Axis attacks on it and on the coastline. The Germans were ashore and advancing through the New Forest, going toward Southampton, and the amphibious ships continued to try to cross. The enemy pilots felt the same, and he knew that, but he just felt like calling them and proposing to have a sleep and fight only on the morrow.

"Squadron, assemble and follow the retreating German planes.” He looked up and saw that the enemy air strike was over, and then the bastards were going back to their airfields in Northern France. Malan continued to speak all the while. “Our standing orders are to go for their base and smash the fucking places as much as possible."

Giles looked at the sun in the sky and saw that within maybe an hour and a half at the most, darkness would fall. "Sir," he started over the radio, making himself the voice of the group since he knew every one of them thought the same thing. "It will be night soon." There was a pause on the radio wave. "I know that, Hayes," answered Commander Malan. "There will be some crashes when we get back." Another static-filled pause. "That’s just it, Hayes. Our instructions are to attack the enemy airfields when the fucking Germans are trying to land to kill as many of them as possible and then try to make it back to Britain. If we have to ditch our fighters in the sea or else crash land in a field somewhere in Hampshire, so be it.” One final static-filled pause. Malan then had the last words. “For the Empire and the King.” “For the Empire and the King,” everyone answered at the same time on the radio.

(…) 2 hours later (…)

Giles’s fighter engine was coughing up badly as it was starting to run out of fuel. The fuel tank should have been fine in terms of petrol quantity, but he figured he must have been hit by an enemy bullet during the fighting over the Cherbourg airfield base, and he was now losing gasoline fast. He flew in total darkness and wondered where he was. The attack on the Axis airfields across the Cotentin Peninsula had gone well, at least. They’d smashed runways, destroyed over 125 planes on the ground or as they tried to land, and smashed a few fuel depots and hangars. The attack had not been the strongest he’d ever witnessed, but considering the circumstances and the fact that they had attacked at dusk, it was a great result. Their approach was hidden by the growing darkness, and the German flak gunners and combat air patrols over the areas had conveniently lit up the airfield’s lights to help their aviators get back to their airfield without seeing that some of the dots they spotted in the distance were British.

For one rare occasion, there had been no intercepting fighters nor any defensive flak. Their attack had come as a complete surprise to the enemy. They’d attacked swiftly and with abandon. Giles had no bomb, but he’d unloaded everything he had left in his ammo magazines, either bullets or shells. He knew he’d hurt the big bastard of an airplane that he’d attacked. But some bombers were included in the attack as they rendezvoused with the XIX RAF Squadron over the Channel, and the result was truly impressive. They’d won some time for the fleet and for Southern England, as the destruction and disorganization on the enemy airfields was going to take time to sort out.

The engine sputtered a few times and then went completely dead. The propeller stopped working; he was out of gasoline. He looked downward and tried to find out if he was over land, forest, or farm fields. He was pretty certain he was flying above a large, flat expanse, which would be nice for a smooth landing. From this high up, it was difficult to tell if the blackness below was trees or just grass. In order to see better, he needed to drop in altitude, and that was sort of a gamble since once he did so, there was no engine to help him climb back up if he ended up being over a forest. What if he crashed into trees? “Captain Giles Hayes of XIX RAF Squadron to anyone that can hear. I am out of fuel and about to crash land somewhere north of Southampton. Good luck to everyone else.” No answer. He figured he was one of the last still flying, or else the remainder of his mates were out of range.

He let the plane glide as long as possible and dropped his altitude. He squinted his eyes to see better in the dark and was relieved to see that he had indeed lowered his Spitfire over a large expanse of farm field. He powered his landing wheels, and in moments, his fighter slammed on the grass-covered ground, rocking a few times. The moment was tense, but he managed to keep it level. Putting on the brakes, his Spitfire stopped completely. He unstrapped himself as quickly as possible, knowing the plane could catch fire or else topple over as the ground was uneven. He then opened his aircraft canopy, jumped out on the left wing, and then looked around. He dropped to the ground, his face brushed by a gentle, warm August night wind. He was alive.

The counterstrike.

Herdla Airfield, Bergen, Norway

(…) Bergen, late afternoon, August 12th, 1943 (…)

“As I was saying, Comrade General Secretary,” continued Fallschirmjager General Kurt Student, explaining the details of Operation Adlertag, or else the attack on the Orkney Island base of Scapa Flow, “the entire affair should be done within the first twelve hours. We will either fail or succeed in this span of time.” Stalin didn’t answer right away as he waited for the translator to give him the rundown of the German officer’s words.

Stalin, Student, and Klustermenko were meeting in the airfield control tower’s main room on the first floor as the attack on Scapa Flow was scheduled for the next day, or more exactly, for the planes to depart in the night and scheduled to arrive just after midnight over the British base.

“Very well, General. How do we hope to catch the Americans flat-footed? I mean, they aren’t stupid. Also, how many enemy troops are stationed in the harbor?”

“Comrade Secretary,” answered Student. “Frankly, the operation is one of the riskiest I have prepared in my career. It makes the attack on Crete look like a cakewalk, which it wasn’t.” Stalin grunted in approval of the German general’s words. Operation Adlertag was a strategic move, not a tactical one. The entire idea was to disrupt the American Fleet from intervening as the combined Germano-Soviet fleet sailed out to execute the second landing in the south. The airborne forces that would be employed in this attack were thus considered expendable. Their losses would be difficult to bear but not problematic. Their purpose wasn’t to capture Scapa Flow, although if they did, the Axis would be in an even greater position against the Allies.

The issue for Stalin, Student, and everyone involved in the about-to-be-launched attack from Norway, the USA had no intention of just rolling over and waiting for disaster.

(…) Approaching Bergen, U.S. strike group (…)

“Commander, the coastline is in sight,” said the pilot at the head of the strike group, flying a little in front of Lieutenant Commander Richard H. Best, the commander of the Yorktown’s air wing. “Very well, Lieutenant Tibbets,” he answered. “Looking forward to slam one on the bastard’s ass, Commander,” said another one of his men. “Agreed, Lieutenant Armstrong. It’s gonna be good to show them they are not the only ones who can attack and surprise.”

And indeed, it would be. The American Strategic Services, or the OSS, had started to crack some of the German military codes they used for their secure communication. The work of the so-called “Magic Decryption Service” was based in London and done in cooperation with Bletchley Park, yet another cryptology service in the UK. The British had cracked the Kriegsmarine codes in 1940 and then again in 1941, and now both services worked hand in hand to get more codes cracked, including the Soviet ones. While the Allies could not yet read entire Axis messages, they could read enough of them to get an idea of what the Germano-Soviets were about to do.

In the case of the attack on Southampton, there were no advance warnings because the German forces didn’t have to send long-range communication, and most of them stayed in France and Germany, where it was hard to intercept radio signals for the Allies.

But the Axis forces had to send long-range radio signals from Denmark and Europe to Norway, and that was how the Allies intercepted and became aware of the general idea of the Axis plans for Scapa Flow. They weren’t entirely certain where the Germano-Soviet airborne operation was going to land, but they had the good sense of trying to disrupt it before it did.

The U.S. Navy was responsible for protecting the entire North Sea coastline of the United Kingdom with its U.S. Atlantic Fleet, under the command of Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, a very aggressive and competent admiral who was looking for a fight since he had not been very involved in any naval battles since the start of the war.

The man commanded over a truly powerful naval force since the American naval shipyards had been busy since the start of the war and were in the process of completing one hell of a naval building program. Halsey’s fleet included four main fleet carriers (Yorktown, Franklin, Intrepid, and Ranger), four light carriers (Princeton, Bellow Woods, Cowpens, and Monterrey), a whooping six dreadnought battleships (New York, Arkansas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Kentucky) and was flanked by thirty-five cruisers of all sizes and seventy destroyers.

And so, the Axis might have the strategic initiative and a first say in where a battle would be fought, but the Allies had no intention of letting the hammer fall without trying something in return.

Halsey’s naval career began just before World War One, and during the war, he commanded over two destroyers (USS Benham and USS Shaw), where he earned a Navy cross medal. By the time the Second World War broke out, the man was in charge of the 1st Carrier Division in Pearl Harbor.

Transferred to the Atlantic after the U.S. joined the conflict, he was now in charge of a powerful fleet, and his planes were rapidly approaching Bergen on that late afternoon of August 12th, 1943.

By that time, the U.S. Navy primarily counted on its newest carrier-based aircraft, namely the Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters, Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers, and Grumman TBF Avengers torpedo bombers. Halsey's fleet was spearheaded by the newest Essex-class fleet carriers and the Independence class of light carriers. Thus, these aircraft formed the bulk of the air strike approaching Bergen. The 280 planes represented about 65% of Halsey’s available aircraft.

Lieutenant Commander Richard H. Best was aboard a F6F Hellcat carrier-based fighter as he neared the outlines of their target, the German-occupied airfield, when he saw the cloud of dark dots. “Boys, get ready for a fight,” he said over the radio, signaling to his fighter pilots to engage the Axis interceptors while he and the other bombers concentrated on the airfield.

(…) Bergen, late afternoon, August 12th, 1943 (…)

The German and NKVD security guards (Stalin always traveled with about twenty security officers) burst into the room, opening the door without any preamble. “General Student, Comrade Secretary Stalin,” both men said one after the other. “We’ve got to get you to a secure location now.”

Both men opened their mouths and closed them but were unceremoniously shoved by the arms by more and more soldiers, and they went down into the control tower bunker below the structure. “What the hell is happening,” yelled Student, demanding to know why they were shoved down in this way. And then the base alarms rang.

When they closed the door on the bunker, the bombs had already started falling all across Herdla Airfield, and the base was on fire.

(…) U.S. strike group, above Herdla Airfield (…)

Lieutenant Commander Richard H. Best piloted his fighter across an expanding ball of debris left by the Soviet Mig-3 ( The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3) he’d just blown out of the sky. His F6F Hellcat stormed through it, displacing a long line of smoke and fire along on its wings. He veered his fighter to the left and sent it in a twirling dive to avoid the flurry of 20mm cannon shells that were fired at him from the front by a German FW-190 fighter barreling down on him.

Below the American fighter ace, bombs were exploding across the airfield as the Dauntless dive bombers were doing their job. Men were running for cover, flak guns were starting to fire at the sky in long red lines of tracers, and smoke was beginning to prevail over the nice blue sky that had been there before the start of the attack. The Herdla base was getting hammered by over a hundred bombers, and the American planes in the sky outmatched the Axis numbers, who still struggled to lift more planes into the air.

His plane thundered down toward one of the base runways, and then he yanked the control stick to the left, stabilizing his plane, flooring his speed to fly over a line of parked JU-52s. He was being chased by an enemy pilot, but the enemy aircraft were nicely lined up for him just before his targeting sight, and he just sent a long burst, smashing the stranded planes below. Several exploded in fire, others were hit and debris scattered.

The scene was utterly chaotic. Bombs fell, and there was nothing the Axis airmen could do about it, having their hands full with fighting the Hellcats that outnumbered them four to one. As he blazed across the exploding tarmac and the planes he’d just hosed with his 20mm cannon and machine guns, the German pilot on his tail reminded him of his top priority, which was to survive. A flurry of ordnance flooded his airspace, and only luck made the bullets and shells miss. Cursing out loud for letting himself get carried away at the destruction of the transports, he pulled on his control stick to gain altitude, and the Hellcat’s magnificent speed and maneuverability did the rest. The fighter roared upward and into a small white cloud as the Fw-190 kept on its tail, firing its dazzling shells and bullets all around.

Best didn’t recall having fought in so heavy an air battle. It seemed that there were many more enemy aircraft now, as more and more took off, despite the Dauntless bombers pock marking the runway as best they could with their bombs. As he dodged yet another flurry of rounds from the bastard gunning for him, he spotted the path of a diving Dauntless dive bomber and saw it angle back up, its bomb falling to create mayhem below. The U.S. plane was in the last moment of its dive, and Best saw the bomb release from its belly and explode in a great fiery ruckus on what looked like a fuel dump. The resulting volcanic explosion obliterated the two anti-aircraft batteries located near the stricken and exploding hanger.

One of his buddies' voice crackled over the radio. “Lieutenant Commander, don’t divert too much; I am almost on the one tailing you. I’ll save you soon, Sir,” said the voice. It was one of the squadron’s best pilots, an ace (11 victories so far) going by the name of Eric Tankelhart. The American pilot swooped down with his Hellcat, tilting his wings sideways, and fired a long burst of 20mm cannon at the offending FW-190 that got a little too concentrated on his kill to watch for his own hide. The shells lined up in the sky and connected with the German fighter’s tail, snapping it in two. The poor pilot then never had time to eject, with his plane slamming into the ground at high speed, shattering to smithereens about fifty yards from a blazing inferno that had been a hangar moments before. Before Richard had time to thank his savior, another voice crackled over the radio, this time from one of the pilots he’d tasked to stay up in case other Axis aircraft came to the battle from another airfield.

“More enemy aircraft coming from the East, the South, and the West.” Best cursed to himself before speaking over the radio. “Don’t try to do too much; just kill one enemy at a time. We’ve got this, boys; the Admiral is counting on us.”

As Best picked up altitude and looked for another enemy to kill, he spotted a bunched-up group of Soviet twin-engine bombers, busy defending themselves with their machine gunners, their tracer bullets blazing away at the sky toward the buzzing about U.S. fighters. He wondered what the bastards were doing here but figured they must have been scheduled to arrive, and it was just the Russian bomber pilot’s bad luck. They did so right at the moment the American attack started.

He veered his fighter to come from the right angle at one of the bombers, flying eastward on a trajectory out of the battle zone. He didn’t recognize the Soviet models he was about to attack, but the thing possessed a turret on its top fuselage, one in the nose and two in the belly.

He decided to come at them directly from below at a sixty to near ninety-degree angle to get a precious few seconds before the Soviet machine gunners noticed him as they were busy already defending against Hellcats coming from up high. Never losing sight of the damned bomber, he floored his speed to climb as fast as possible, thundering through the haze of smoke created by all the fire and explosions of the battle.

He zipped through the air in a flash and fired a full volley of his 20mm shell cannons. His shots first strayed left, but he quickly adjusted his aim, connecting with the bomber’s fuselage, riddling it with bullets. The hits created what looked like sprinkles of dust, but in fact, they were debris from the multitude of hits as they disintegrated. At the last moment, he veered his fighter left to fly past the by-now fatally stricken Red Army bomber, going down in flames. “One more,” he said with a dark and humorless smile.

(…) Herdla control tower bunker (…)

It was one hell of a battle above his head, and Stalin looked up as if he were trying to see through the concrete, dirt, and steel protection of his bunker. The Soviet dictator brooded in his mind about this bungling of affairs and vowed to find the culprits. He hoped to dear god they were Russians so he could punish them accordingly. He wondered what had happened for the enemy forces to attack the base right at the moment it was about to launch for Scapa Flow, and that made him think that something was amiss. He watched as the German airborne General went about giving orders and trying to figure out what was happening up there and decided that it was what it was. The damn Americans had pulled a fast one of them.

An hour later, as the enemy attack was over and the way was declared clear, they were brought back to the surface, and the spectacle before them wasn’t pretty. The base was gutted, with most of its hangars on fire, planes strewn about in shambles everywhere. Columns of smoke rose into the sky, and infernos burned bright.

Student was beside Stalin, sort of speechless, and wondered what to do. The Soviet leader spoke first. “Well, General, it appears you have a little challenge on your hands now if you want to execute Operation Adlertag. The Luftwaffe officer didn’t answer anything.

(…) Main fleet carrier Franklin, following the raid (…)

“Admiral,” said the communication officer, walking up to him as he looked outside at the magnificent task force he lorded over. His ships were sailing in an easterly direction, and he had a decision to make. “Yes, what is it,” answered Halsey. “Sir, Lieutenant-Commander Best is reporting complete success against Herdla Airbase. The runways are destroyed, and he reports having destroyed over a hundred planes, either through dogfighting or attacking them on the ground.”

The American naval officer smiled his best wolfish grin. “Very well, thank you.” The officer left, leaving Bull Halsey to his thinking. The man was wondering what to do now. From the looks of things, the intelligence was right, and the Axis had been planning something, judging by the numbers of transport planes and the troops on the base the strike had reported seeing.

With two major airborne attacks already underway in Japan and Southern England, Halsey knew what that meant. The Axis had been preparing yet another one here, and that attack would have been headed to the British East coast somewhere. The OSS believed it was either Scapa Flow, Aberdeen, or even Edinburgh. He thus wondered what else he would find if he continued to “explore” the known enemy bases along the Norwegian coastline.

There was also the small matter of the enemy fleet that was hardly going to stay in port during the invasion. According to his latest intelligence, the Germano-Soviet task force had not left port yet, and thus, he wondered if he should order his ships south to potentially intercept them or continue to raid the coastline and disrupt that Axis operations as much as possible.

Crossing his arms behind his back, he pondered about it some more.

The Axis Fleet ventures out of its lair

August 12th, 1943

As it happened, the American admiral didn’t have to think too much and try to divine his enemy’s intentions. The Combined Axis fleet of Admiral Gunther Lutjens and Admiral Yvan Isakov were already sailing past the fortified island of Heligoland Bight. The Heligoland Bight was a bay in the North Sea, forming the southern section of the German Bight. It lay at the mouth of the Elbe River and protected the approach to Wilhelmshaven and the Kiel Canal.

From a bird's eye view, the scene was impressive. The last time such a powerful and numerous fleet sailed forth and out of German ports bound for war in the North Sea had been in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland. There, the mighty Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet and the Kaiserliche Marine High Seas Fleet had dueled inconclusively before the Germans retired back to their base, effectively bottling themselves up in their ports for the remainder of the Great War.

This time, the Reich and the USSR had no intention of retreating or fighting a naval battle. They would if they had to, and by the looks of it, they had no choice, as Admiral Bull Halsey wasn’t going to let them waltz into England without attacking. Their mission was to cover the Dover landings by any means possible, including the destruction of several of its units.

The fleet’s job was to cover the many transports it had within its task force’s core (over fifty), filled with troops and tanks, and to facilitate the hundreds upon hundreds of amphibious barges (Marinephrams and Motozarettes) that were poised to launch for the second landing from the Calais-Dunkirk harbors.

Then, Lutjens and Isakov were to fight their way back into Kiel or Wilhelmshaven. If that wasn’t possible, they were to make for Cherbourg or to any Dutch harbor and hope for the best.

The fleet itself was a long procession of a whooping nine powerful and newly-built dreadnought battleships, a battlecruiser, and close to fifty other warships, including ten heavy cruisers. In the center of the two long lines of battleships lay the transports laden with troops and tanks. The only problem with the Axis plan was that its fleet seemed to be a war too late. It just didn’t have the carriers to compete with the American fleet bearing down on it from the north. With only the Europa, it was hopelessly outmatched. The OKW and the Stavka had chosen to try and offset this discrepancy in forces by mustering a large air cover from their many bases along the coastline. While that would certainly compensate for some of the air strength difference, the Allies could do the same and complement their already powerful 9-carrier fleet (with 400 planes), ready to go at a moment's notice.

Every sailor and officer on the bridge of the battleship Hindenburg, Admiral Lutjen’s flagship, was calmly going about their business. The fleet had sailed. The moment was tense, but every one of them knew their duty. The mission they were undertaking was daunting, for as powerful as they were, they knew the enemy was tenfolds more. “How far are we from our landing zones, Captain,” asked the Admiral to Otto Ernst Lindemann, the man who was his second-in-command. Formerly captain of the Bismarck, he had been transferred to the Hindenburg’s command and also to become Lutjen’s chief of staff in April 1943.

“Sir,” suddenly said a nervous-sounding radio operator. “We have just received a communication from Norway. The Adlertag Air Base has been attacked by what looks like an enemy task force with many carrier-based planes.”

Lindemann looked at Lutjen in worry. “Sir, that means the airborne operation that was supposed to give us some time will not be as effective.” “Indeed, Captain. We have a bit of a quandary here,” answered the Admiral. There was no contingency or retreat permitted in his set of orders, as this was just not on the boards. The priority was the landings in the United Kingdom.

He turned toward the radio sailor. “Inform Soviet Admiral Isakov of the new development and to expect enemy planes over his ships soon. We need to execute this landing as soon as possible if we want to have any ships left when the day’s over.” “Yes, Sir.”

Flashback 1942

The Warsaw Conference, April 1942

Organized by both the Reich, Italy, and the Soviet Union’s foreign Ministers; Johan von Ribbentrop, Italian Count Galeazzo Ciano, and Vyacheslav Molotov, the Warsaw Conference was held in what both Axis powers considered a “middle ground” between them.

Warsaw was a war-torn and devastated city because of the heavy battles of 1939, but it was out of range of enemy planes and prying eyes. It was also because The Warsaw Royal Castle, home to the late Polish Kings before the partition of the country between Prussia, Russia, and Austria in the 19th Century, was the other reason because it was intact and big enough to host the three large diplomatic delegations and the small numbers of Axis allies like the Romanians, Hungarians, and other satellite states the Reich sprung up like Croatia.

The Royal Castle was also the home of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) government before the Reich destroyed it. The building itself was shelled by German artillery as the Wehrmacht moved in to conquer the Polish capital, and thus, the roof and the corner turrets were destroyed. The ceiling of the Ballroom was also smashed open, resulting in the destruction of Marcello Bacciarelli's ceiling fresco. But by 1943, the entire building had been renovated, as Germany was now in full colonization mode for its new Polish territory, a scene happening all across the Nazi empire.

The idea of the conference was to coordinate the direction the Axis alliance was going to take from then on. Following the stellar victories of the end of 1941, there were no more enemies on the ground for the Axis to fight and conquer. What remained of Allied strength and territories were across the water, and the Anglo-Saxons-Japanese controlled the sea with their powerful fleets.

The secondary objective was also for military delegations from the Royal Italian Army, the Wehrmacht, and the Red Army to sit down and plan the next course of action. At that time, the Axis shipyards were busy still building the fleets needed to make these new conquests happen, but planning the attacks on the United Kingdom and the Japanese Home Islands took some real forethought.

The political and diplomatic part of the meeting was particularly rocky, as obvious cracks were starting to appear in the alliance over who owned which part of land and resources. The invasion of Scandinavia had shown how difficult things could be when both the Reich and the USSR considered the territory in question in their sphere of influence. Sweden ended up being partitioned in two based on the lines of occupation, while Norway was confirmed German and Finland Russian. In the Middle East, the ever-growing needs of the Wehrmacht were starting to grow a seed of discord between the two powers, as Germany needed more and more of the precious liquid to feed its rampaging armies.

Discussions between Ribbentrop and Molotov over these two critical matters did not produce anything valuable, and the only thing they agreed on was to keep on griding toward both Japan and the United Kingdom. On the smaller aspects of the agendas, discussions were smoother, with the agreement of an official partition line in Turkey and some concession on the part of the Reich in Moldavia in favor of the USSR. Soviet ships were granted full access through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus Strait, with the right to set up naval bases on both sides of the Straits. More Soviet bases were agreed upon in Morocco, Libya, and Egypt, while the Reich was awarded several spots to make their own bases in the Far East and Persia.

Economic agreements were also signed, with the Reich needing oil, chromium, and other strategic materials, while the Soviets needed more steel and specialized equipment from Germany to modernize their industrial infrastructure. Italy got oil, funds for industrial development, and German leases to produce several German weapons.

The military part, in contrast, went a lot better. The Axis armies, from soldiers to generals, had been fighting together for the better part of two years, and that tended to create a bond that would never be there between diplomats. When you depended upon someone else under fire, that someone else tended to become your friend.

Thus, the planning of both attacks on Japan and the UK was discussed and organized at length between the three armies, with Italy participating a little less as it was tasked with taking over the defense of the Mediterranean theater.

The date for the twin invasions was set for August 1943, and the entire idea of the plan was to overwhelm the enemy with several simultaneous attacks across both the United Kingdom and the Japanese Home Islands.

The conference concluded after seven productive days of meetings and discussions, with the three Axis powers moving back to their respective realms to plan and prepare what they had decided.

The Battle for Hokkaido

The Axis drive to Sapporo, August 13th to August 17th, 1943

By the 13th of August and following the fall of Wakkanai, the airfield, and the Shibetsu landing in the East, the Germano-Russian forces started to completely overrun the northern part of Hokkaido. The never-ending stream of planes arriving from Sakhalin and eventually the Soviet mainland started to tell, and by the 14th of August, over 389,000 Axis soldiers were on the ground. Albeit a little light on tanks, they had heavy air support, and the Me-323 Gigant continued to bring them light tanks like T-70s.

On the 15th of August, a general withdrawal south to defend Sapporo and establish a solid defensive line was ordered by General Otozo Yamada, while the cities of Nemuro (extreme east), Montebetsu (between Wakkanai and the Shibetsu landings) and Asahikawa (center of the island) fell to the Axis forces.

Bowing to the inevitable and facing mounting losses from air strikes and the difficulty of covering his fleet in the La Pérouse Strait because Allied airfields were getting further and further away to help Imperial Navy carrier planes fend off the Axis air attacks, Yamamoto ordered his ships to retire south.

The Japanese ships were, first of all, in dire need of repairs, and second, would be needed when the defense of the Tsugaru Strait for access to Honshu would come into play.

For all intents and purposes, the battle for Japan's northernmost home islands was already halfway through, only a little over a week after it had begun.

(…) 18th Imperial Division, August 15th (…)

Private Soldier Hyeasu Toyakama tried to concentrate on putting one foot forward after the other. It was hard going, as the remnants of the 18th Imperial Division were marching across the Mashike Mountains on Hokkaido’s western shoreline. Below him, he could see the blue snaking shape of the Ishikari River. More Japanese and American troops were down there and moving across toward the south to the new defensive line Yamada had ordered.

He felt like he hadn’t slept in days, and it was indeed the case. Following the fall of Wakkanai on the 11th, when the Division was able to narrowly escape Soviet clutches, the fleeing and retreating Japanese soldiers moved toward the west coast and were lucky enough to find enough transportation to get some distance from the victorious Axis forces. Everything that could be commandeered had been taken into possession. Trucks, cars, horses, and bicycles were thus ruthlessly taken by the 18th Division upon orders from the commander of the unit, Lieutenant General Akira Muto. This was unusual for a defending army to confiscate stuff from its own civilian population, but the Japanese mentality was made of a different sort, and war, honor, glory, and, most importantly, victory took precedence over everything else.

Whistles started to blow again, and the NCOs around him started to bark orders for everyone to scatter and find cover. He snapped awake as adrenalin took over once more, and then he heard the reasons for the alarm. Plane engines and sirens wailing, a sure sign that the enemy air force was again going to attack them from the sky. He ran to a big boulder on the side of the road (they were walking into a mountain pass somewhere in the mountain range and were close to the summits. The road was narrow but had rock outcroppings everywhere; thus, it was relatively easy to hide against an attack from above.

He dove down into a round hole and bunched up in a curl like a baby in his mother’s womb. A few seconds later, he heard the thundering and overbearing noise of plunging dive bombers. The Soviet Petlyakov Pe-2s swooped down, all guns and cannons blazing, and then dropped their bombs on or near the road the Japanese soldiers were sheltering in. The following blasts and explosions rocked Hyeasu’s world, as blasts upon blasts shook the ground like a great earthquake. Rocks fell from above, as the road they were on was a mountain pass, and rockface towered above it.

And then, it was over, the loud droning noises of the aircraft dissipating in the distance. Whistles blew again to give the signal to the men to get out of their hiding place and get back into formation. The scene before him as he moved out of his hiding spot was one of dust hanging everywhere around, and he couldn’t recognize the road. A truck was burning, and several bodies were strewn about on the ground, including men and horses.

By this time in the war, Hyeasu had learned that death was part of his trade, and he didn’t even flinch at the sight. Instead, he noticed one of the casualties had possessed a bicycle, and he thus proceeded to pick it up before another soldier did. Within a few minutes after the wounded were gathered and taken care of, the dead were pushed over the ledge and down toward the river below. The numb bodies tumbled on the side of the rock face in sickening thuds. It was grisly work, but it had to be done; thousands of men walked this road, and it wouldn’t do to have decaying bodies all around.

(…) 4th Soviet Guards Airborne Division, August 16th (…)

Elite paratrooper Alexy Matvisvenko concentrated as he folded the parachute back into its bag. He was surrounded by his comrades of the 4th Soviet Guards Airborne Division as they were tasked to prepare their equipment for the next task ahead. Some of the discarded chutes during the landings had been recuperated to get the airborne unit back to jumping readiness (only a handful of new ones were being brought to the island for now because of limited supply and airlift capability).

All around him lay the waste of war, including rubble, discarded or damaged weapons, impact craters, burnt-out houses, blackened tank hulks (mostly shitty Japanese Ha-go light tanks), and then smoke from lingering smoldering piles all around them. The unit was still at the Wakkanai Airfield after conquering it. In the background, a non-stop ballet of large aircraft landed and took off while more men worked the fields near the main runway to build new ones.

Alexy had heard that supply would get better because the Japanese fleet had retreated from the La Pérouse Strait, enabling the transport ships (the ones that were left anyway) to attempt the run across the 13-mile stretch of water. The Axis transports were not, however, out of danger, as the Allies relentlessly bombed and patrolled the area with aircraft along with subs. Yamamoto’s ships might be gone, but not Americano-Japanese planes.

Nonetheless, ships would get through, and bigger stuff could be brought, like shipments of oil, food, and tanks. Sergeant Matvei Demidov walked amongst them, watching their work. He nodded approvingly when he saw Alexy’s work. Parachutes had to be folded in a certain way to work as intended when it was time. This was not a step that could be glanced over or botched since a paratrooper’s life depended on his ability to land and not crash. Alexy concentrated on doing it the way he’d learned to do it during his training.

Further out, Lieutenant Evgeny Shorgatiev also inspected the soldier’s work but walked beside one of the Red Army’s dreaded political officers, a man with a straight, rat-looking face and a beaky nose. He redoubled his work, not wanting to be spotted in any negative way by the man. Soviet political officers were notoriously difficult and could send you to the gulag or, even worse, to your death on a whim. It was thus best to keep avoiding their evil gaze.

The Division was going to jump again south, they were told, although no additional details were given. They had at least a week or even more to prepare and rest while more replacements were brought from the mainland to bring the unit back up to some semblance of full strength.

Alexy wondered where, how, and who he would soon fight and hoped he would still be alive to refold yet another parachute in a few weeks.

(…) City of Hokuryu, 56th Soviet Rifle Division (…)

“The city of Sunflower,” or else Hokuryu as known to the Russians on their makeshift maps from the late 19th Century, looked like one more-of-the-same Japanese cities for Private Soldier of the 56th Rifle Anatoli Batasov.

“Artillery coming in hot,” yelled Sergeant Alexi Pryakin, and the men near him dove for cover, including Anatoli. Moments later, the loud whistling sounds of the shells zipped over them and went crashing down about a hundred yards further down the line in a plethora of cataclysmic explosions.

The multitude of fireballs soon morphed into clouds of expanding debris and then billowing smoke. Seconds later, more shells landed, setting the entire immediate horizon on fire. It was one hell of a shelling, and it was the Russian steamroller in full action.

The Allies were retreating southward, and it was said they were building a defensive line to defend Sapporo. The 55th Rifles was badly mauled, but now that the ships could cross the strait safely again it was expected that they would receive some reinforcements. Between the suicidal amphibious landings and the heavy fighting for the conquest of Wakkanai, the Division had lost 57% of its soldiers, and now they fought with a jumble of other sections and officers to make a solid frontline and to keep advancing. In fact, Anatoli was lost beyond his own sergeant and lieutenant, their “reformed company” was led by a captain he didn’t know, and several dangerous political officers were brought in to “stiffen their spines” and make sure the hodgepodge of units obeyed orders, regardless of who gave them.

Anatoli was not going to make any waves, as he found the enemy in front of him dangerous enough to not have to worry about the enemy from within.

He rolled upon his back and saw one of the intact sunflowers still standing. They were fighting in some gigantic field filled with plants that were in full bloom, and he decided the place must have been beautiful before the Red Army decided to pay it a visit. The fighting had set the whole area ablaze. Dotted only with small knots of houses and farmhouses, it was now just a spot to fight in, burned-out and with hollowed buildings. A trio of Mig-3s thundered just above in the sky, and he watched them fire their blazing shells at some unseen enemy in the distance. “Advance,” yelled Priakin, and he turned back on his belly to stand up, weapon in hand. The preparatory bombardment was over, and it was now time to capture the town.

The Axis Mediterranean Fleet sails, and the Allies react

Portuguese Coast, August 13th, 1943

(…) Somewhere off the coast of Portugal (…)

German Otto Cilliax sat in his admiral of the fleet’s chair, sipping a scalding hot coffee and looking about his bridge as his people got busy going through the motions of running his flagship, the dreadnought battleship Tirpitz. The German naval commander felt a special bond with the vessel as it was with this behemoth that he broke out with from the North Sea, across the northern frozen expanses of the Arctic, and around Greenland to burst out into the Atlantic Ocean and rally the Mediterranean Sea at the end of 1941.

He had followed that up with several operations in the Indian Ocean in 1942 and a few scuffles with the British Indian Ocean Squadron, and now he was sailing north again to participate in the Sealion 1943 Operation, the Axis invasion of the United Kingdom.

His fleet was completely repaired and sported the two sister ships Tirpitz and Bismarck, both clocking at 41,000 tons of displacements and armed with four twin 15-inch gun turrets. These two mighty behemoths were flanked by the battlecruiser Gneisenau, the old pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein, and the heavy cruiser Deutschland. In the middle of his formation lay his golden prize, the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, and above him flew a large air cover, flown in from the various airfields in Spain and Portugal. The fleet was off the city of Oporto and headed north. “Contact Admiral Iacino to ask for an update,” he said to his radio officer. The German ships sailed with their Italian brothers, their role in the invasion was to sail north and add to the landings or else beef up the naval support in the case of a battle. The entire idea of the new version of Sealion was to overwhelm the Allied defenses by coming from every possible angle of attack.

To starboard, relative to the German fleet, sailed the new and powerfully upgraded Italian Mediterranean Fleet of Admiral Angelo Iacino. The top Italian naval commander walked calmly on his bridge, busy looking up at the planes flying overhead and his two magnificent and brand new aircraft carriers, the Aquila and the Sparviero. He was nervous and was wondering what would happen to his shiny new toys that sailed alongside the Germans in the execution of the attack on England.

Iacino had cause to be worried. The Regina Marina had had its share of blunders and losses since the start of the war, with the Anglo-Japanese raid in Taranto in 1940 and the naval battles it participated in in the Western Mediterranean theater during the conquest of French North Africa.

In this fashion, the Italian Navy had lost battleships Giulio Cesare, Conte Di Cavour, Caio Duilio Andrea Doria, and the Vittorio Veneto, along with heavy cruisers Zara, Fiume, Bolzano, Polan, seven light cruisers, thirty-three destroyers and many submarines. It was a set of disasters from which the Regina Marina should not have emerged, and yet, it proved resilient and resourceful.

Italian shipbuilding had been building more ships and was in the planning stages for aircraft carriers in 1939-1940. The string of Axis victories across the map gave Italy complete security in the sense that the Rome-Berlin-Moscow alliance controlled the entire Mediterranean Sea with the seizure of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. In short, Allied bombers and ships were out of reach of the Roman mainland and its factories were left unmolested for the entire 1941 and 1942 years, and the same was true in 1943. Furthermore, the new conquests provided a flow of resources to the Italian state, helped by generous contributions by the Reich as the Germans were content to see their allies develop their fleet further for their planned attack on the British Home Islands.

The result was before Iacino in all its splendor. Two main fleet carriers, with first the Aquila, a 28,000-ton main fleet carrier embarking 51 planes, and the Sparviero (a converted, 30,000-ton ocean liner and a 46-plane ship) sailed in the core of the task force. Meanwhile, three magnificent new dreadnought battleships, the Roma, Impero, and Littorio, bristled with guns and were ready to fight, along with heavy cruisers Trieste, Pola, Gorizia, and twenty-one destroyers.

The Italian admiral longed for a fight against the Allies to show what the Regina Marina was really made of, and yet, he was wary of the possibility of losing his magnificent new capital ships.

The position of the enemy fleet in the Azores was unknown, as according to military intelligence, it had sailed the day before. To Iacino, it was obvious it was coming for him and his Germano-Soviet allies (the Axis Mediterranean Fleet also included the Soviet battleship Marat under the commander of Admiral Tributs). Looking above at the heavy concentration of air cover, he hoped that these would be enough as the enemy reported strength in carriers as humongous.

(…) 100 miles Offshore Ponta Delgada, Azores (…)

French Admiral François Darlan walked to the bridge of his flagship, the French dreadnought battleship Bretagne, a 25,000 tons and 13.5-inch main gunned battlewagon, and took a deep breath. “Admiral on the bridge,” said the French marine guarding the hatch at the entrance. Everyone stood to attention, from officers to sailors. “At ease, gentlemen,” said François with a small gesture resembling a quick military salute. “Status update,” he then said to the battleship’s captain, Armand le Privain. “Admiral, the fleet is underway and now is in formation,” answered the man, referring to the fact the French battleline battleships Bretagne, Dunkerque, Lorraine, Provence, and Strasbourg) were formed in two columns, flanked by five heavy cruisers (Tourville, Algérie, Aramis, Colbert, and Duguay-Trouin).

“Excellent,” answered the French commander, sitting down in his admiral of the fleet’s chair, located near Le Privain. The French battle fleet had come a long way since the defeat in Metropolitan France in 1940. It narrowly escaped through Gibraltar where it was stuck for a lack of oil for some time. Making it out following a few naval battles and relentless Axis air attacks, it was then involved in the campaign for mastery of French North Africa, transitioning to the fight for Morocco and finally to the Canary Islands. When the islands were evacuated in mid-1942, it was transferred to the Allied-occupied Portuguese territory of the Azores. “Send a message to Admiral Munroe that we are formed up and ready to go,” added Darlan, referring to the American commander of the combined fleet.

The Allies had moved into the Azores the moment the Axis invaded Portugal and had built up the archipelago into a mighty combination of naval and air bases. The Azores had a critical strategic importance for the control of the Central Atlantic and to watch for any Axis fleet venturing out of the Mediterranean Sea. Its airbases were also very useful against the U-boat threat. Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar had also moved his temporary capital to Ponte Delgada to continue the war on the side of the Allies and keep up his people's struggles against the Axis.

The Azores were a knot of islands in the middle of the Ocean (nine in total) resulting from volcanic activity far into the earth’s past.  They sat in the central Atlantic, almost midway between Portugal and the Continental United States, and covered an area of nine hundred square miles. Spread over almost four hundred miles from northwest to southeast, the islands were 930 miles from the Portuguese coast and 2,250 miles from the USA.

Landing on the islands at the end of 1940, the American Seabees and other construction units built up the Ponte Delgada and other island’s port facilities, including facilities for servicing large airfields and a good number of aircraft, like aviation fuel storage, all-weather runways, roads and everything in between this way, the large Lajes Field Base (on Lagens Terceira island) and the Lajes Airbase was created and by 1943 was one of the largest Allied air base outside of the United Kingdom.

In August 1943, the job of the Azores was to ensure the enemy fleets did not sortie to raid convoys in the Atlantic, attack north of South America, and not intervene in an attack against the United Kingdom.

Just ahead of the French sailed the mighty U.S. Navy Central Atlantic Fleet under the command of Admiral William R. Munroe. The American admiral stood over his plotting table, busy watching the lines of potential interception his ships would take to try and get to the Axis fleet that had sortied out of Gibraltar a day before and that his recons had already detected. The Allies maintained several spy coast watchers along the Strait of Gibraltar, mostly on the Moroccan coast, as many soldiers were left stranded there in the rugged terrain and had established resistance and partisan cells with the local Bedouins who didn’t like their new Axis overlords very much.

A large enemy task force, including at least three carriers, was spotted sailing out of Ceuta and then turning north along the coast of Spain and Portugal. With the invasion of the United Kingdom underway and the Battle of Southampton in full swing, it didn’t take a genius to understand where these ships were going.

“So, you think this is the most direct route to intercept,” asked Munroe to the man, busy drawing a line and making his calculations on the map. “Well, Sir, I believe that given the probable speed of the enemy fleet at 25 knots and our own speed, I believe our carriers could be in range at some point here,” he answered, pointing to a spot in the central part of the Bay of Biscay, off the French coast.

With the distance between the Azores and the European continent (900 some miles) and the Axis fleet sailing north, the only possibility Munroe had of an intercept was with his carriers since their planes meant an extra 400 miles of range to try and nail the Germano-Italian forces. But that wasn’t really a problem. The Admiral had his flag on the Wasp main fleet carrier (100 embarked planes) and lorded over two more, the Hornet (72 planes) and the brand-new Essex Class carrier Bunker Hill (100 aircraft). In addition to this mighty aeronaval force, he also had the escort carrier Coral Sea and the light carrier Baffin. If push came to shove and the fleet had to fight a battleship brawl, he had five battlewagons, including the New York, Arkansas, New Jersey, Missouri, and Iowa, the last three being brand-new dreadnoughts of the Iowa Class. With the five French dreadnoughts, the Axis would not be inclined to try and duel with him.

“Very well, transfer this information to the helm and to comm so they can disseminate the coordinates and needed speed to all ships. Let’s make this work, gentlemen,” continued Munroe, walking toward the main bridge viewport to watch the beautiful and powerful array of ships before him.

CHAPTER 4

Moving into position

Lanzhou and Pekin, August 17th, 1943

Following the peace agreement between Nationalist China and the Japanese Empire (when Japan joined the Allies in 1940), Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces started to reclaim Japanese territory as well as keep up the pressure on Mao Tse Dong’s Communists.

The state of war between the two Chinese factions remained in force, but Mao started to slowly gain the upper hand in central and northeast China with increased and strong Soviet support, and the Nationalist forces started to retire and be defeated as they fought their bitter enemies and “volunteer” Russian units fighting in Chinese uniforms.

By August 1943, the hot frontline between Mao and Shek snaked across Qinghai province, with Xining, Lanzhou, and Yinchuan being border towns dearly fought over. Beijing was back in Nationalist hands along with most of the former Japanese occupied territories apart from Manchuria. This line formed the cold frontline, with Red Army units facing Chiang Kai-Shek’s troops.

Following the negotiations between the Americans and the Nationalists, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek decided to intervene and attack the Red Army in Southern Manchuria while he launched a strong offensive from Lanzhou toward the Communist Chinese strongholds in the northeastern Chinese mountains.

The central offensive would be spearheaded by the Chinese 5th and 6th Armies, helped along by the 4th British Imperial Corps (four Indian divisions), while the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Chinese armies moved into position to launch from Beijing, along with the 5th and 6th British Imperial Corps and four U.S. Divisions that had landed a week before in the Liaodong Peninsula to support them.

To ensure success, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur moved several air units into China (south of Beijing) to take control of the skies. The invasion date was set for the end of August, and it promised to be relentless once it started.

The Dover Landings

The gun duel, August 13th, 1943

(…) The defenses (…)

Landing directly in Dover was practically impossible for an invading army because, first of all, the harbor itself was protected by an array of bristling guns, and both sides of the town were flanked by the famous White Cliffs of Dover, ranging in elevation from 290 feet to 425 feet. This made any invading army’s prospect of scaling the sheer stone walls daunting, to say the least. Any landing aimed at conquering Kent country, moving into Dover and Canterbury, had thus to be done east of the cliffs and about two kilometers from the town and harbor.

Of course, anyone who could read a map knew this, and the British were no dimwits. They thus fortified the area early in the 18th and 19th Centuries to ensure some measure of safety and to resist any European-based amphibious invasion.

The fortifications were called the Western Heights of Dover and were a bunch of linked forts and ditches built on the heights towering above the town and its eastern approaches. The British Army and Navy made them to shelter the key port of Dover from both seaward and landward attack; Some in England even said that the Western Heights was the "strongest and most elaborate" fortification in the country.

With the advent of large battleships, gun batteries were built starting in the 1850s. The first one was known as the Drop Battery, harboring eight 8-inch guns. In the 1870s, another battery was added and thus was born the Northeast Line of fortification (stretching south from the main redoubt). In the 1880s, one more battery was built to the southwest called St Martin's Battery, and in 1898, the last one was constructed (the Citadel Battery).

By the time the war came and the Axis menace became a true problem for the United Kingdom, all of the guns in the batteries were obsolete and thus replaced by modern BL 9.2-inch Mk IX and Mk X guns.

Adding to the defensive setup was a series of so-called Dover Strait coastal guns built by the British in 1939 and 1940. These cannons were long-range coastal batteries along the coast of Kent.

First, two beech-loading 14-inch Mk VII guns, affectionally named Winnie and Pooh, were constructed on top of St Margaret's at Cliffe to cover the eastern approaches. Both weapons were naval rifles taken from the stocks supposed to go to the building of King George V Class battleships. Both batteries were well hidden from the sea and shielded from air strikes by flak guns behind and below St. Margaret's.

Due to the worsening situation and the unavoidability of another Axis attack on the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered three new heavy gun batteries built in Dover when things turned truly bad at the end of 1941. In this fashion, three breach-loading 6-inch Mk VII guns, Four breach-loading 9.2-inch Mk X guns, and, last but not least, two breach-loading 15-inch Mk I guns (used for the Queen Elizabeth, Royal Sovereign, and Vanguard battleship classes) named Clem (after Clement Attlee) and Jane (after the pin-up) were built.

In January 1943, the by-then impressive array of powerful weapons was joined by the Lydden Spout Battery, consisting of three more breech-loading 6-inch Mk VII guns. Also, three BL 13.5-inch Mk V naval guns from the Great War (named Gladiator, Scene Shifter, and Peace Maker) were fished out of mothballs and installed on the defensive works.

It was in this setting that the Germano-Soviet Fleet came into range of the British defenses, flanked by its impressive array of battleships, landing barges, and full-on airstrikes.

(…) The Duel (…)

Another gush of water slapped the deck of the German dreadnought battleship Hindenburg as it maneuvered its way across the plethora of guns firing at them from the Dover Strait defenses. The fight was in its tenth minute and was already very intense. In fact, a lot more than Gunther Lutjens and any German naval analysts at Kriegsmarine HQ had expected it to be. The British had built a true fortress to protect the all-important Dover harbor and Kent County from attack, as this was the shortest naval invasion route from Europe.

From the corner of his eyes, the German admiral could see the burning, floating wreck of the heavy cruiser Lutzow. The heavy cruiser had been hit by a very large caliber cannon, one that his own gunnery people estimated to be at least of the King George V size, proving to the Axis fleet the enemy had installed dreadnought guns in batteries along the coastline. The ship burned and was dead in the water, meaning it wouldn’t survive long. Already, several more geysers of water straddled it as the English gunners tried to hit it again.

“What is the status of the other ships,” he asked his second-in-command, Otto Ernst Lindemann. “The other ships are faring better than Lutzow, if that’s what you're asking, Sir,” the Hindenburg captain started to answer in a discouraged-sounding voice. The British heavy defenses were an unpleasant surprise for everyone involved. Lindemann was about to speak when a full broadside of the Hindenburg, Friedrich der Große, Olrich Von Huten, and Goetz von Götz von Berlichingen exploded in fury, sending 32 heavy 16-inch shells at the enemy defenses along the coastline. Moments later, they looked to the result of the salvo, as the entire enemy dispositions was before them. The entirety of St-Margaret’s at Clifffes and the other fortifications gushed high and forth in smoke, debris, and dust, all engulfed by a firestorm of godly proportions. Only then did the Hindenburg’s captain speak again. “We have hit the forts all along the coast with multiple broadsides of shells. The lookouts on the masts estimate we’ve silenced a couple of guns, but more are still active.”

As if answering a call, a large flight of Luftwaffe aircraft thundered just above the Germano-Soviet ships, flanked by a flight of the super-fast and V-shaped Me-262s. “And here comes the cavalry,” said Lutjens as if to answer Lindemann’s ironic tone.

Moments later, the entire area near the cliffs sprouted in more fire and smoke, with debris from the heights falling downward. The German aircraft were soon intercepted by a plethora of American and British fighters, and a furious dogfight ensued.

“Anything else?” “Sir, Soviet battleships Sovetsky Soyuz, Sovetskaya Rossiya, and battlecruiser Kronstadt also managed to hit the forts, but so far, they remain in action. There is another battery,” continued the captain as he pointed to the map they had of the Dover area, “located here at the town of Hougham, the very same one that has smashed Stralsund.” He then moved his finger to the other spot on the map, further inland. “There’s another smaller gun battery here, but we’ve left it alone for now since it seems to be a small caliber compared to the big forts on the northern and southern sides.”

“Firing now, Sir,” said the gunnery officer to Admiral Lutjens. He turned and walked to the observation window just in time to see the awesome power of the combined salvo from the 16-inch turrets blossoming in big mushrooms of fire and rippling the sea in front of the mighty H-class battleship.

The mega shells traveled to their destination in seconds and slammed into the concrete fortifications at St-Margaret Cliffe, exploding in large fireballs followed by expanding clouds of smoke, dust, and scattering debris. “Hit again, Sir. We’re pounding the bastards,” said the same gunnery officer with enthusiasm. For a few moments, they were left hanging, hoping the gun battery on the heights would finally be silenced, but they were to be disappointed. The place soon flashed with the unmistakable signs of large guns firing once more.

(…) Gladiator Battery (…)

“Traverse three degrees to port, elevation half a foot; target speed estimated at twenty-five knots,” said Private Gunner Richard Carleton, one of the men handling one of the two 13.5-inch Mk V naval guns in the battery. The large naval gun started to traverse to the corrected angle and elevation as the men working with him followed his targeting instructions.

Battery Gladiator was independent of other installations, having its own underground ammunition storage area, plotting room, and communications system. It was heavily protected by a meter-thick mix of concrete and steel plates, fit to stand up to any kind of modern battleship gun. Or so the British thought.

Just as Richard was about to finalize his pre-firing sequence, a thunder of cascading explosions rocked the frontal part of the fortifications in a succession of blasting and world-shattering explosions. The fortress walls were solid enough to withstand the shells themselves, but that didn’t mean the concussive blast and the resulting world-rocking explosion could be weathered without a hitch by the gun handlers. Richard rocked backward, shuffled like a leaf by the explosion.

A wall of fire rolled into the fortification and slammed into the handlers. Richard only looked at what was coming for him and blinked once before the power of the wall of fire that rolled across and through him.

The next instant, which was a millisecond later, the ammunition dump below the fort ignited as it was slammed with another shell from the Sovetsky Soyuz. A mighty, volcanic, and blasting skyward explosion detonated as if a few tons of TNT had been blown in one fleeting moment.

(…) Dreadnought battleship Hindenburg (…)

A loud cheer invaded the bridge and the rest of the ship as the mighty explosion skyrocketed upward in a large mushroom of fire and dirt. “Admiral,” started one of the men on the bridge, but Lutjens could see with his own eyes.

Soon, another large geyser of water catapulted into the air near the German battleship, with some of it splashing the Hindenburg’s deck. The loud whistles of the incoming shells, reminiscent of a ship’s alarm, continued to dominate the air as the German ships dodged madly in zigzagging patterns.

“The enemy is still firing, Sir, but it seems we are getting somewhere,” said Captain Lindemann, watching yet again another of the superb Russian broadsides smash the British Dover fortifications. His words were soon answered again by Hindenburg’s full gun broadside, blasting away at yet another of the operational forts. The eight muzzles exploded in fireballs and fury, again creating long ripples in the water around and ahead of the blast.

The shells traveled in no time to their destination and again exploded on a fort, finally silencing it. “Sir,” said the lookout officer, glued to his phone on the bridge and located to the Admiral’s side. “The men on the masts report that less and less enemy guns are firing.” “Well, that’s that, at least,” answered Lutjens, still sore about losing Lutzow.

A large fireball blossomed in the distance, indicating that one of his ships had hit something. “Sir, the Olrich Von Huten has scored a couple of hits on yet another of the forts!” Everyone cheered on the bridge. The German H-Class battleship slammed two of its armor-piercing shells right into one of the large gun embrasures of the Scene Shifter and Peace Maker batteries, destroying all their guns with one lucky shot.

Then, a second fireball appeared. “It’s our turn, sir!” followed by another loud cheer. The Hindenburg’s gunner had found the mark on one of the smaller caliber forts, smashing it to pieces as a large dark smoke and fire mushroom catapulted in the air, annihilating its defenders.

Lutjens smiled as the battle was being won by his brave sailors and powerful vessels. “Order the transport ships to make their approach and to start the landings.”

1943 flashback - The Gloster Meteor

A jet to face the ME262

(…) April 4th, 1943 (…)

Frank Whittle, the president of  Powers LTD, a British aviation company developing jet engines, walked right beside the top man in the Royal Air Force and commander-in-chief of fighter command, Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding. “It’s this way, Lord Dowding,” said Whittle, gesturing in the direction to go with his left hand. Both men were walking the Gloster Aircraft Company factory grounds in Cheltenham, north of the city of Bristol.

While the Third Reich was about to steal a march on the United Kingdom by being the first to develop a jet-powered aircraft and use it in battle at the soon-to-happen invasion of the United Kingdom, it didn’t mean the British were out of the race for good, for this idea was a proven and well-advanced concept in Britain before the breakout of the Second World War. The development of the turbojet engine was the result of a heavy and quite rocky collaboration between the Gloster Aircraft Company and Power Jets Ltd.

Frank Whittle built his first prototype jet engine in 1937, and soon thereafter, the Royal Air Force agreed to fund the project for further development. “Is everything ready for an engine test?” “It is, Lord Dowding,” answered the man flanking the Air Marshall’s other side. The fellow was named Thomas Sopwith and was the head of Hawker Aircraft Limited, which owned the Gloster Aircraft Company. Both he and Frank Whittle had collaborated to make the first operational British jet a reality, helped by many hands from the RAF, into making this project happen.

They finally arrived in a large hangar room filled with engineers, workers, plane parts, and machinery. In the center lay the frame of an aircraft, or more specifically, its engines and the wings attached to them

"So, Mr. Whittle, tell me how things are developing," Dowding said, pointing to a bridge crane that was moving one of the two jet engines on a plane awaiting its assembly on the factory's floor. "The test will be ready soon, My Lord,” answered the British inventor proudly. The trio of men were followed by over ten RAF and Royal Navy uniformed officers, generals, and admirals for the most part. Everyone was excited about the first jet test. All around them, the big factory was bustling with activity. Showers of sparks flew in all directions, for the workers were busy welding and assembling the all-aluminum frames for the future Meteor Jet fighter.

(…) August 10th, 1943 (…)

It had taken a few months following the successful test north of Bristol at the Gloster Aircraft Company factory back in April 1943, but the same people were assembled for the final test flight of the new British jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor. The incredible machine was supposed to rival the Messerschmitt 262 for mastery of the sky, and the urgency of the situation rushed the plane into production a few months earlier than was originally planned. Air Marshall Hugh Dowding had taken a slice off his very busy schedule (the British were, after all, in the throes of the Second Battle of England), as he had ordered the project rushed into production, ready or not. “Testing will have to be done in combat,” said the fiery man a few days before to an incredulous Hawker Aircraft Company executive, Thomas Sopwith. Only a few days before, the first appearance of the now-infamous German jet fighter had rocked Allied command to the core. An equivalent weapon had to be found, and soon.

The incredible aircraft was lifting off gently from the RAF Cranwell Airfield base east of the City of Nottingham, located a few hundred miles north of London, in an area that was difficult to reach for Axis planes. The aircraft’s nose gently lifted off the airfield runway, roaring like a giant tiger, making a very different sound and feel from a propeller-engine aircraft. Then it lifted entirely, and the assembled men on the ground gasped in pleasant anticipation as two lances of blue-red flames shot out of the engine’s rear on both wings. A long roar followed as the jet fighter quickly disappeared and got smaller in the large blue sky. It angled upward and shot high to gain altitude, leaving two small white contrails. The moment was momentous.

The plane left the area in a blur and then came back a minute later, the test pilot making a thundering pass just above the airfield to impress everyone. Dowding whistled loudly as the Meteor grumbled away again into the sky. “These babies sure are fast.” He turned toward Thomas Sopwith. “Have your company make as many of these as possible and as quickly as you can, Mr. Sopwith. I believe we are going to need them before the fight for our homeland is over and if we want to have a chance of winning it.” Dowding then turned to Whittle and put a hand on his shoulder. “Good work, Mr. Whittle; you might have just saved the RAF if we can make these so-called Meteors quickly enough.”

CHAPTER 5

Sealion

By August 13th, 1943

Almost a week into the beginning of the battle, the invasion of the United Kingdom was going well for the Axis, and the Allies were reeling back in confusion and disaster. The onslaught of Axis forces across the spectrum was difficult to bear for the Anglo-Saxons. The Home Fleet, supposed to bar the way of any enemy amphibious force, had already left the vicinity of the English Channel between Southampton and Cherbourg as it was becoming increasingly impossible to stay there without losing an inordinate amount of warships. The relentless Axis air assault ended up being too much, no matter how many fighters the Anglo-Americans put up in the sky. The fleet that retired to Liverpool was battered, bruised, and mostly out of action for the time being. However, this retreat didn’t mean the Axis didn’t lose badly during their suicidal amphibious move. Over 189,000 soldiers, 789 tanks, and countless numbers of amphibious ships, barges, and old vessels were lost to the dire fate of the sea’s bottom.

The battle was by no means lost to the Allies. They still had the ships, the troops, the tanks, the planes, and the industrial might of the United States of America behind them. The Axis forces' landings in Southern England only meant that a new battle of epic proportions (between millions of soldiers, airmen, gunners, and seamen) was underway.

By the 10th of August, the fight moved toward the main Axis objective of Southampton, as supply was improving by the hour with the constant ferrying of men, materials, and ammunition from Cherbourg to Barton on Sea southwest of the British harbor city. It wasn’t nearly enough to sustain the big, 456,000-soldier-strong Axis army (half of it airborne forces) now in Southern England, but it was a start, and it didn’t look like Patton’s counteroffensive would send them back reeling into the sea. The sheer amount of air power that both sides wielded rendered any ground operation quite difficult and morphed what could have been a very fluid situation into a slugfest of epic proportions. This was something Manstein had foreseen during his planning along with Guderian, and it was why they had decided on adding two other operations to the main Southampton landings. Both were devised as diversionary attacks, but ones that could be made into breakthroughs on their own if the Allies didn’t react strongly or quickly enough. They were again seen as high-risk and high-casualty attempts, but the Reich and the USSR could afford to lose a few hundred thousand men to try and win the war.

The two attacks were linked with one another but ended up proceeding along in the opposite way that the duo of Germans generals had envisioned it. Imposing a different timetable to Axis plans, Admiral William Bull Halsey’s surprise carrier strike on Herdla Airfield near Bergen, Norway, changed the order of planned affairs from Operation Adlertag (the airborne attack on Scapa Flow), supposed to be the first of the two to disrupt the American fleet based there to being after the landings in Dover.

The one-time carrier attack, as the American admiral had not wanted to risk his fleet to the scores of land-based aircraft squadrons all along the Norwegian coastline, delayed the airborne operation by a day and a half, during which time the Germano-Soviet fleet under the command of Admiral Gunther Lutjens committed itself as per the plan to the Dover landings. The news of the new seaborne invasion in and around Dover created a great sense of urgency for the U.S. task force, and Halsey sailed southward to intercept the amphibious landings underway on the 13th, with the Axis battleships reported to be dueling with the British coastal defenses in that area.

Meanwhile, seeing that no more attacks came to disrupt his preparations, Student quickly licked his wounds and worked overtime with General Klustermenko to organize the airborne attack. The modified plan was going to be done with reduced forces since the Germano-Soviet lost about thirty percent of their planned transport planes for the operation, but that didn’t matter one bit, as the entire idea of the Scapa Flow move was to further degrade Allied capability to resist and react where it mattered the most, that is in Southampton.

Operation Adlertag Part 1

The attack on Scapa Flow, the morning of the 14th of August to the 21st of August 1943

Over 76,000 paratroopers approached the major British naval base of Scapa Flow in the early morning of the 14th of August. The sky was overcast and the clouds low, and thus, the British defenders only heard the drones of hundreds of engines approaching without seeing them. The famous military harbor was a body of water centered inside a set of islands called the Orkneys, located northeast of Scotland. It was a magnificent and natural harbor flanked by Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay, and Hoy islands. On each of those lay British barracks, port facilities, airfields, oil storage tanks, and naval defenses.

Before the war and up to the middle of 1941, Scapa Flow had been the main Royal Navy base for the Home Fleet, but following the disasters in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere, the bulk of the British ships were moved to Bristol, Southampton, and Liverpool in anticipation of an Axis amphibious invasion. The Royal Navy warships were thus replaced by an American task force under the command of Admiral William Bull Halsey in mid-1943, and things had been like that ever since and until such time that the bold Yankee commander sailed forth to raid Bergen and Herdla Airfield.

The Orkney Islands being such an important place for the Royal Navy, was heavily defended. It was occupied by a plethora of anti-aircraft units, namely the 65th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, the 66th Leeds Rifles, the 81st Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, the 19th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, the 38th King’s Searchlight Regiment,, the 39th The Lancashire Fusiliers Searchlight Regiment, and the 59th Warwickshire Regiment.

The set of islands was also heavily fortified with an ensemble of naval gun batteries (that would, unfortunately, be completely ineffective against an attack from the sky), forts, redoubts, and other bastion-type defenses, some modern, some obsolete.

The multitude of anti-aircraft units listed before also used the best that the British Army could provide in terms of guns and a new strategy they called the Scapa Barrage, a coordinated action to fire a wall of flak shells in order to push the German bombers to fly at higher altitudes and thus miss the targets because they were too far away to be accurate. Boom defenses were also installed, including mines, obstacles, and sunken ships to block several of the approaches against any invading ships.

But all of these defenses amounted to only one aspect of the strength needed to resist an Axis airborne attack. Once on the ground, the Germano-Soviet paratroopers would need to be killed by something else than second-rate soldiers manning flak guns. This was going to be the job of the 4th British Coastal Corps and the 11th U.S. Infantry Division, both forces having been moved to Scapa Flow in March and April 1943 to forestall against just the assault the Axis were about to attempt.

In all, the Allies entertained over 82,000 men in and around Scapa Flow. While not all of them were infantrymen, enough were to have a real contest with the enemy airborne forces.

The flak gunners and most of the soldiers on the base looked up at the blue-gray clouds, trying to divine if the engine noises they heard were bombers or something more ominous. Then, the first white parachute slashed through the vapor, then a second, then a third. By the time the flak gunners moved to their firing triggers and started to go through the process of getting more ammo and the reloading procedure, hundreds of them were dotting the sky above Scapa Flow.

The flak guns opened up in their multitudes, sending hundreds upon hundreds of projectiles into the air to saturate the area above them. By then, thousands of parachutes were slowly descending on them. Next came the gliders, a lot more difficult to target. They swooped in low and through the clouds at a horizontal angle and angled down as fast as possible toward the islands below.

The now-infamous German DFS 230 transport gliders were capable of embarking 10 airborne soldiers (including the pilot) at a time. The men sat on a narrow bench located in the middle of the fuselage, strapped in and ready for a rough landing. Some were even equipped with special landing gears that would enable their pilots to put the DFS down on the water. The glider also had a single MG42 machine gun in the front, and the pilot poured everything the magazine had as he swooped down to land.

The Soviets, for their part, approached with their own Gribovsky G-11 gliders. The aircraft was made of wood and possessed very long wings for better maneuverability and range. The shape of the aircraft was box-like. Its 10-soldier cargo sat on folding benches on each side of the fuselage but had no weapon and this did not impede the brave Russian pilots at their helm to swoop down right beside their German brother-in-arms.

Gliders were very effective during an airborne assault, giving the paratroopers speed and accuracy, giving their pilots the capability to land within sixty feet of their target and even to veer away from hot zones before landing. This was something a parachute couldn’t do.

As the German gliders and paratroopers came down, both Allied and Axis planes arrived to fight it out in the open, and German Heinkel 177s, 111s, and Junker 88s flew in low, slashing out of the clouds to try and make bombing runs before their soldiers landed. The fight soon got very intense, and thousands of paras or men in gliders died.

But most eventually got to the ground, either injured or unscathed, some dead, and then the fighting began in earnest. The battle was particularly heavy near the so-called Ness Battery near Stromness. The defensive structure guarded the western entrance to Scapa Flow, and it was where over 8,000 soldiers of the 4th British Coastal Defense Corps were entrenched, as the site was also the headquarters of Orkney's fixed defenses and where the ground commander (Rear Admiral Henry Edvard Diesen) was located in a big command bunker.

There, the fighting endured for five long days with the Germano-Soviet forces eventually mastered the defenders in the battery and penetrated the bunker, killing everyone inside it.

Hoxa Head battery and Balfour battery were located very close to each other on South Ronaldsay (opposite the Ness Battery on the other side of the harbor), and it was yet another spot where the fighting got truly heavy.

Constructed together before the Great War to work an integrated naval defense, pairs of guns were situated at Hoxa Head and matched with guns on the neighboring island of Flotta and defended the southern entrance to Scapa Flow. The big constructions and cannons supposed to act against battleships or anything heavier than destroyers were supported with smaller guns, machine guns, and flak defenses. There, the fighting lasted four days before the Axis forces, constantly reinforcing their airborne drops, got the better of the American and British troops defending there.

Located a short distance north of the Hoxa, the Balfour battery was equipped with naval guns, but bunkers and many flak defense batteries were built in 1941 and 1942, which were then used to fight the Axis troops on the ground. The battery fell to the invaders after five days of relentless battle.

In the end, the survivors of the battle eventually surrendered to the Axis invaders on the 21st of August. The greatest British Naval base thus fell and this defeat opened a new front in northeastern Scotland.

The final fight for the British Home Islands was in full swing.

The Naval Battle of Dover

Halsey attacks, early morning of the 14th, 1943

(…) U.S. airstrike, Yorktown carrier wing (…)

“Go get ‘em, boys,” said Lieutenant Commander Richard Best, the commander of the USS Yorktown’s part in the large American airstrike on the Germano-Soviet fleet hovering and assisting the second landing in Southern England. Best could see the large and famous white cliffs from his position as the aircraft before him started to peel down one after another to get into attack position.

The entire British coastline was draped in heavy smoke, and he could even see the large battleship shell tracers slashing through the air in long, curving arcs and then blasting into mighty explosions. “As for us fighter jockeys, let’s blast those damned Kraut pilots to oblivion,” he continued, giving the signal to his men to follow the Avenger torpedo bombers and the Dauntless dive bombers toward the enemy fleet. “Is that a fucking carrier out at your eleven, Sir,” said one of his best aces, Eric Tankelhart, as the man angled his plane for a steep dive.

Richard looked in the direction his pilot had just indicated and saw that, indeed, the bastards had a carrier. “Indeed, Lieutenant Tankelhart. This means we’ll have fighters to fight, but leave the ship-destroying part of this battle to our bomber friends, will you?” “Indeed, Sir,” laughed the man in return before sending a spray of bullets at a BF-109s thundering into view.

The sky was quickly shrouded in red tracer fire as the fighters on both sides started blazing away. The Axis pilots were at a disadvantage in terms of numbers because they had been thinned down by a successive series of air strikes sent from the British mainland. When the 289 aircraft of Halsey’s carrier strike arrived, the Axis were in the process of getting new planes, while the out-of-gas and damaged ones had gone back to their airfields in the Pas-de-Calais. The round-the-clock plastering of the B-17s and Wellington bombers on those airfields further depleted the Luftwaffe and Red Air Force numbers, making for a very favorable situation when the Yankees arrived over their intended target zone.

(…) Dreadnought battleship Hindenburg (…)

German admiral Gunther Lutjens watched as yet another enemy airstrike swooped down from the low clouds to the attack. Only this time, the bastards weren’t coming from the mainland but from the northeast. “Sir, the new enemy attack appears to come from the direction of the North Sea,” said the lookout officer, hanging by his internally connected phone and getting information from the men on the masts. “I concur, Admiral,” added the radio officer after just receiving a message from the carrier Europa combat air patrol leader, Hanz von Gamerling.

“Admiral, orders,” said Otto Ernst Lindemann, the battleship captain also doubling as his second-in-command. The man's voice conveyed the urgency and desperation of the situation. The landing in front of the fleet was going well, and already, over 150,000 men were on the ground, disgorging from the long streams of barges, Marinephram, and Motozarette or else the big transports the Germano-Soviet fleet had sailed with from Northern Germany.

But everything else was going down the drain, with a serious lack of aircraft because of the enemy’s relentless and never-ending air attacks.

The Hindenburg had been hit by a couple of bombs on its deck and still smoked from the fire that had just been extinguished a few minutes before, while his beloved and only aircraft carrier Europa was out of action with a holed deck (thanks to a damned British Blackburn B-24 Skua). The Friedrich der Grobe had its funnel on fire following a couple of bomb hits, and its rear spotter plane catapult was destroyed. The Olrich von Hutten was raked by an internal fire (thanks to a torpedo hit slamming one of its magazines), and one of its engines was out of commission. The Goetz von Goltz von Berlichingen wasn’t doing much better, with a plethora of pockmarks across its frame and two out-of-action main gun turrets out of four. One of his three M-class light cruisers was, as he watched, disappearing into the water bow first, and the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper was crippled by three torpedo hits, listed to port, and was shrouded in fire. This did not take into account the damage on the Soviet ships.

Lutjens was not certain he would keep his command after this, as the precious ships were damaged, and he hesitated to give the order to retire. And yet, he needed to because if he didn’t, he would condemn his fleet, and that was if it survived the American onslaught about to slam it with death and destruction. His hesitations were cut short by a message from Admiral Isakov, the commander of the Soviet Portion of his combined fleet. “Sir,” said the radio operator, a man who spoke both German and Russian. “Russian Admiral Isakov is turning his fleet back toward the Scheldt estuary in Belgium.” The estuary was a large waterway laden with harbors and one of the only places the Axis ships could be safe from attack if the Allies decided to press on.

“I guess he is not asking your permission, Admiral,” said Lindemann with an angry voice. “No, he isn’t, but he is right. Let’s do the same before it’s too late.” Leaving the barges and landing zone unprotected would be a disaster in the making for the men invading Kent, but there was no choice since, at this rate, there wouldn’t be a fleet anyway to help them.

Isakov didn’t need Lutjen’s permission to do anything, as he had given command to the German admiral only because of the operational needs for the attack. But his instructions on the matter of his ship’s survivability were clear. The General Secretary did not want the ships to go down in flames to attempt and succeed in what was a diversionary landing anyway.

The Sovetsky Soyuz had received a torpedo below the waterline and listed to starboard, while the Sovetskaya Rossiya had a main gun out of action; its forecastle was gutted and blazing hot with an uncontrollable fire and had a damaged rudder. The Kronstadt, his only battlecruiser, had serious bridge damage, and most of its officers were either dead or incapacitated, with a large internal fire and one gun turret destroyed.

The heavy cruiser Kaganovitch was gone, sunk to the Channel’s bottom by a major magazine explosion following a bomb hit, and was accompanied in death by three of the Soviet destroyers. It was high time the Red fleet made its way out of there.

(…) U.S. airstrike, Yorktown carrier wing (…)

Lieutenant Commander Best turned his plane to the side, having one wing pointing directly toward the water, as he thundered between two enemy battleships, their guns firing at him and his buddies with blazing tracers crisscrossing around everywhere near his fighter. He was so close to the water that the top of his wing disturbed its surface in tiny droplets of vapor. Having slid past the two behemoths on fire, he moved his Hellcat back to horizontal and made a pass over a German cruiser, hosing it with a full 2-second burst of his 20mm cannons. The enemy ships burst into bright sparks and he thought he saw that he smashed one of its flak guns. Then his fighter was past climbing in altitude.

The fight against the enemy escorting fighters had been brief, and they’d scattered the bastards quickly. They were now in the process of emptying their ammo on the ships as they turned back from the landing zone. The bombers had done their work and dropped more bombs, hurting the German and Soviet battleships, and it now seemed the enemy admiral had had enough.

Some of his men now concentrated on killing the landing barges below them, and several exploded before his eyes. But this golden moment without enemy fighters wouldn’t last, and he knew that it would not be good to still be here and out of bullets or shells when the new batch of Axis aircraft arrived.

The order to pull back and return to the carriers eventually came, and Best gathered his men for the short flight back to their home ships.

Operation August Storm Part 1

The Soviet invasion of Honshu, August 18th, 1943

General Georgi Zhukov stood, feet in the water near his Pusan HQ bunker, and looked out east, across the Tsushima Strait. It was a clear day and he could see the coast of Japan in the background, with in the middle the Island that gave its name to the strait, Tsushima. The Red Army commander in the East thought it fitting that such a place would be the place for the main invasion of Imperial Japan. His NKVD guards around him were nervous, as this was a risky place to be; allied planes often patrolled the area, and the small knot of officers could thus be attacked at any time. But Zhukov didn’t care for danger and had told his men to calm down and that everything would be fine.

The sun was dropping over the western horizon, lengthening his own shadow over the water, and he grunted. “Well, Sokolovsky,” he said to his Chief of Staff, General Vasily Danilovich Sokolovsky. “It's now time for the killing stroke.” “Indeed, Sir,” answered the stout and loyal officer, also looking toward Japan and their destiny.

“Is everything ready to go?” “It is, General. The airborne forces are at their airfield and awaiting the final go-ahead, and the amphibious barges and other vessels are ready to go when we give them the order.”

There remained only one attack remaining in the global action the Axis was executing for the success of its twin invasions of both the British and Japanese Home islands, supposed to put an end to the war. The two main sets of islands were where the enemy had its last foothold in Europe and Asia, respectively, and where the Japanese and British industrial bases resided. Without them, the Allies would be very hard-pressed to continue the fight.

The attack was based on the same idea as the four other main landings that were just executed since the Axis didn’t have the ships to compete in any way with the Allies. This was especially true in the Pacific, where the Soviet Union had not even one decent surface ship, its entire Pacific Fleet having been sunk at the start of the war with the Japanese Empire in 1940. The damned Imperial Navy had launched a surprise attack on Vladivostok and destroyed most of the ships at anchor, and the rest were destroyed following a short duel with the Nipponese dreadnoughts.

Much had happened between that moment and that day in August, including a Japanese thrust into Siberia that was beaten back by Heinz Guderian and brave Russian forces, while a war of epic proportions raged first in Manchuria and back-and-forth in a series of difficult campaigns in the Korean Peninsula. But the Axis had mastered them all and had pushed the Allies into the sea. Now only remained the last bastions of hopes for the Nippon and the Yanks in the Pacific: The four main Japanese Home Islands.

“Let’s go back in the bunker and give the final go-ahead signal to the troops,” finally said Zhukov, satisfied that enough darkness now permeated the air for his planes and ships to slip by the enemy defenses.

(…) Three hours later (…)

An epic-looking armada sailed forth from every small inlet along the southern and eastern Korean shoreline, while over a thousand troop transports flew above in the dark of night with the objectives of first invading the island of Tsushima and then seizing the enemy-fortified city of Shimonoseki on Honshu’s southwestern shore.

The Allied fleets soon detected the ships, and a furious battle ensued between them and the defenseless amphibious barges, trawlers, and other makeshift transport vessels. But these weak embarkations were not alone, and a set of over a hundred German, Italian, and Soviet subs launched at the same time to disrupt the Allied fleets from the killing of the helpless transport ships.

By eleven-fifty in the evening, troops were landing all across Tsushima Island, on the shore of Shimonoseki, and across the city as airborne troops rained from above. Over a million Axis soldiers had just launched at the Allies, and while not all of them crossed on the first night, they would indeed be a never-ending stream of men intent on conquest.

The moment of truth had arrived for the Japanese Empire and their American allies.

Operation Osmanthus

The Nationalist Chinese offensive on Manchuria and northeastern China, August 19th, 1943

The Osmanthus flower was a very popular and famous plant in China and Taiwan which bloomed in August. The lively yellowish color was a symbol of Love and Romance. For some weird reason, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek had decided to name his attack on the Reds with this name. General Joe Vinegar Stillwell, the man’s chief of staff who organized the combined attacks of all Kuomintang forces along with well over 225,000 Allied soldiers, just shrugged in annoyance and worked along to make it happen.

Timed with launching all across the Beijing line of demarcation separating the USSR and Nationalist China (The Russians had occupied a lot of Chinese territories and had not shown any signs of giving them back), over a million and a half Chinese soldiers from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th armies moved out of their barracks, trenches and defensive works to attack the Soviet frontline, helped along by their American, Indian, and British imperial allies.

The attack was unrelenting and came as a complete surprise to the Red Army garrisons along the border. It came at night following a powerful artillery preparation, and the moment was grave for the Soviets, the Allied troops moving rapidly across and smashing over 40,000 troops.

Meanwhile, in Central China, another large offensive was launched toward the Communist bastion of northeastern China in a bid from Chiang Kai-Shek to put an end to the dreadful Chinese civil war once and for all. Again, helped by 150,000 Allied soldiers (Americans and Indians), the 5th and 6th Chinese armies moved in for the kill, helped as they were by modern American tanks, guns, and, when the sun went up in the sky, Yankee airpower.

The fight to the finish had begun in Asia.

THE STORY WILL CONTINUE IN BOOK 10 OF THE AXIS ALTERNATE SERIES:

CRUCIBLE

Thank you very much for reading my work.

FACEBOOK PAGE

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558770082344

EMAIL ME AT:

souvorov@hotmail.com

www.maxlamirande.com

THE BLITZKRIEG ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: Blitzkrieg Europa – 2nd Edition

Book 2: Battle Europa 2nd Edition

Book 3: Battle Russia, 2nd Edition

Book 4: Struggle Europa 2nd Edition

Book 5: Deadlock Europa 2nd Edition – Spring 2025

Book 6: Stalemate Europa 2nd Edition – TBD

Book 7: Staggering Europa 2nd Edition – TBD

Book 8: Faltering Europa 2nd Edition – TBD

Book 9: Crumbling Europa 2nd Edition – TBD

Book 10: Falling Europa 2nd Edition – TBD

Book 11: Soviet Europa 2nd Edition – TBD

Book 12: Red Europa 2nd Edition – TBD

Book 13: TBD

Book 14: Climax Europa 2nd Edition – TBD

THE PACIFIC ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: Blitzkrieg Pacific

Book 2: Battle Pacific 

Book 3: Struggle Pacific

Book 4: Staggering Pacific 

Book 5: Burning Pacific

Book 6: Sallying Pacific 

Book 7: Siege Pacific

Book 8: Faltering Pacific

Book 9: Crumbling Pacific

Book 10: Collapsing Pacific

Book 11: Shattering Pacific

Book 12: Overwhelmed Pacific

Book 13: Endgame Pacific – July 2025

THE NAPOLEONIC ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: Austerlitz Alternate

Book 2: Friedland Alternate

Book 3: 1809 Alternate  Late 2025

THE AXIS ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: The Bear and the Swastika

Book 2: World War

Book 3: Axis Triumphant

Book 4: Axis Victorious

Book 5: Axis Overwhelming

Book 6: Stalemate

Book 7: Axis Resurging

Book 8: Axis Siege

Book 9: 1943: Total War

Book 10: Crucible

THE GREAT WAR ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: Schlieffen Alternate

Book 2: Great War Alternate

Book 3: 1915 Alternate

Book 4: Weltkrieg 1915

Book 5: Clash of Empire

Book 6: Schlacht Europa (Spring 2025)

Book 7: All Out War (August 2025)

THE SPACE WAR SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: SPACE WAR, An Empire Divided

Book 2: Invasion (TBD)

Also, from the same author:

Audio Books on Audible.com:

THE GREAT WAR ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: Schlieffen Alternate

Book 2: Great War Alternate

Book 3: 1915 Alternate

Book 4: Weltkrieg 1915

Book 5: Clash of Empires (in progress)

THE SPACE WAR SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: SPACE WAR, An Empire Divided

THE NAPOLEONIC ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: Austerlitz Alternate

Book 2: Friedland Alternate

THE BLITZKRIEG ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: Blitzkrieg Europa – 2nd Edition (in progress)

THE PACIFIC ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: Blitzkrieg Pacific

Book 2: Battle Pacific 

Book 3: Struggle Pacific

Book 4: Staggering Pacific (in progress)

THE AXIS ALTERNATE SERIES

BY MAX LAMIRANDE

Book 1: The Bear and the Swastika

Book 2: World War (in progress)

BLITZKRIEG PACIFIC

The year is 1942.

The world is at war. Almost every major nation has declared for the Allies or the Axis. Europe is occupied by the Third Reich, and the British Islands have been invaded and conquered by the Germans. Metropolitan France has fallen, along with its North African colonies. Spain and Turkey have joined the Axis. The Middle East is Axis. The USA and Soviet Russia are also at war with the Third Reich.

Only one major power is still on the sidelines. Imperial Japan, already busy in its war of conquest in China, dawns on the idea of conquering the Pacific and Southeast Asia following German successes in Europe and the subsequent weakening of the resource-rich Franco-British and Dutch colonies.

The United States, following Japan’s occupation of the French colony of French Indochina in 1940, froze all of Tokyo’s assets, stopped scrap metal deliveries, and is just about to stop delivering oil to the hungry Japanese military machine, a move certain to trigger a reaction from the warmongers in Tokyo.

President Roosevelt’s decision to do so is about to have dire consequences for America. The Imperial Navy has set its sights on the main US base in the Pacific, Pearl Harbor. And all across the Japanese-held islands of the Pacific, the forces of the Rising Sun prepare for a full-scale invasion that they hope will give them control over the resources the country needs to continue on its expansion.

This is the story of the War in the Pacific. 

Also, from the same author:

AUSTERLITZ ALTERNATE

DECEMBER 2ND, 1805

The War of the Third Coalition rages in Europe. Battles have been fought, and Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée sweeps everything before it. After a big victory over an Austrian Army in Ulm, the French occupied Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire.

The Russians entered Austria to come to the help of their Allies and under pressure from the British.  The Austro-Russians and the French are about to clash in a small, unknown town called Austerlitz.

And then everything changes. The French stop trying to retake the Pratzen Heights, and the day's battle ends in a stalemate for both armies. Kutusov, the allied army's leader in the absence of young Tsar Alexander (who fell ill and is still somewhere in Galicia), decides to retire the army northward with the Austrian Emperor's approval. The news galvanizes the Revolution's enemies and the Empire, jealous of Napoleon's success and wanting him gone. The Prussians decide to join the war and move their troops into Austria to link their forces with the two other powers. The German states and other countries like Naples rethink their stances in the conflict. And the French Emperor's internal enemies, ever wishing the old regime's return, start plotting to overthrow the government in Paris.

All the while, the Ottoman Empire, convinced by the French several months earlier to enter the war, has decided to intervene in favor of Bonaparte and invade southern Hungary with an Army. Austria is on the brink of annihilation, but Napoleon's Grande Armée also has a big challenge ahead since it now needs to defeat three major powers simultaneously.

Everything will come down to either Napoleon's genius to overcome the odds and win regardless of the troops arrayed against him or his defeat and the end of the French Empire.

This is the story of the Napoleonic Wars.

Also, from the same author:

SCHLIEFFEN ALTERNATE

Europe, August 1914.

The world explodes into war as Austro-Hungary declares war on Serbia following the assassination of the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Russia follows suit and mobilizes, while Germany supports its ally and declares war on Russia. France then joins the conflict, as it is Russia’s ally.

The British intervene when the Germans execute their Schlieffen Plan and attack through Belgium to outflank the French defenses. And then pandemonium explodes everywhere. The Austro-Hungarians attack in Serbia and Galicia, the Russians invade Prussia, and the Germans smash into France. In the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire declares for the Central Powers, while Italy stays neutral.

The German Army is unstoppable and closes in on Paris as the Allies retreat in disarray all along the front. The fate of the world hangs in the balance as a big battle looms for Paris. However, no gains come without giving something away. While the German Army is busy conquering the French and beating the British Expeditionary Force around, the Russians storm Prussia and roll over the German 8th Army. The Reich has all of its remaining troops fighting in the West and nothing fresh to put in front of the Russian steamroller. Koenigsberg falls and the Austro-Hungarians fail before Belgrade and in Galicia. Something will have to be done, or else Berlin will fall to the Russian Imperial forces.

This is the story of a war that might have been.

Also, from the same author:

THE BEAR AND THE SWASTIKA

The year is 1939.

The World rocks with the news of the signing of the Germano-Soviet pact. A dark veil soon falls on Europe as Poland is invaded and destroyed by the overwhelming forces of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army.

France and the United Kingdom can only sit by and watch the two military juggernauts obliterate the Polish state. No one believes the two totalitarian regimes can agree in the long term as their ideologies completely contradict each other.

Russia wants influence in the Balkans, has eyes on Finland, and wants an opening to the Mediterranean. Germany needs Romanian oil to keep its war machine operational, and Hitler is adamant about not letting the Bolsheviks gain another inch of ground in Europe. At least not more than he has already given out in the treaty of non-aggression signed before the Polish campaign.

The year is 1940.

The French campaign then unfolds with a disaster for the Allies, and the Germans win an incredible victory over the combined forces of the United Kingdom and France. British forces narrowly escape to their island with the remnants of their armies, and France surrenders. Half of the country is occupied by the Germans. It seems that the swastika will conquer the world, especially with the Russian bear watching its back.

Germano-Soviet Axis talks were organized in October 1940 concerning the Soviet Union's potential entry as a fourth Axis Power during World War II. The negotiations include a two-day conference in Berlin between Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Adolf Hitler, and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The two powers will try to agree on a formal alliance to divide the world.

The fate of liberty hangs in the balance.

Also, from the same Author:

BLITZKRIEG EUROPA – 2nd EDITION

September 1st, 1939.

Germany invades Poland, igniting a major European war. A few months later, the French are also invaded, and the Allied armies are utterly defeated. Then the Dunkirk disaster happens, and the United Kingdom loses most of its land army. Soon, the British Isles are also attacked, and the British are hard-pressed with a serious German invasion. The French struggle to resist the Axis forces bent on conquering all of their mainland home country and West African colonies. Watching from its safe shores, America cannot stay still while Western Europe and all of the Mediterranean fall to the forces of the Axis. And when the Afrika Korps plunges over the Suez and invades the Middle East, the Soviet Union finally decides to join.

And through it all, a hero emerges. Erich Walder, tank commander, will have to fight on all fronts and attempt to survive what the enemy will throw at him.

This is the story of the Second World War.

Also, from the same author:

SPACE WAR, An Empire Divided

The Empire built by Haakon the Great is no more. It's 4124, and the Human race has spread to the stars in four different star clusters by discovering light speed and wormholes. A civil war has broken out between the different human enclaves to see who the next Emperor of humanity will be.

The Ptolemy and Hadesian Star Nations are invading Elysium, allied with New America from the Alpha Perseis Cluster. Large battles are being fought in star systems between former comrades of the Imperial Fleet. In space, battleships unload their powerful weapons at each other while giant battle mechas fight for control of the ground.

The opportunity is too great for the evil Cybernetic forces in the Caldwell 14 Star Cluster. Having fought – and lost – a terrible war against the Empire two hundred years ago, they are gathering for a return engagement against humanity.

A thousand years before, Haakon had dreamed and foreseen a terrible time for humanity. The Black Death is coming to consume all, and his Empire will not be there to fight it.