Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) (21 page)

He made for the safety of the
Strait of Messina, and half way there he was overflown by flights of dark
winged German
Stukas
. The action was now drawing within the circle of
their combat radius, but he shook his fist at them with anger.

“Where were you an hour ago!” he
shouted at the planes. “Where was
Regia Aeronautica?”

It was a catastrophic defeat for
Italy, and a victory that gave the British Mediterranean fleet back everything
they had lost in the aborted attack at Taranto. Only
Roma
and
Veneto
escaped, attended by a flock of cruisers and destroyers. Iachino himself was
sacked upon his return to Naples, and he was so humiliated that he left the
service of the navy, disappearing from the pages of this cruel alternate history,
never to be heard from again.

Yet the battle for Tovey and
Cunningham had only just begun. Another powerful fleet had been making its way
south through the rising waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Russian Submarine
Kazan
had hoped to find it in the Sicilian Narrows, but instead the fleet went by way
of Naples and Messina. Now the line of steel grey ships was emerging to greet
Iachino’s battered flotilla as he reached that place.

The sleek hulled new
battlecruisers
Strasbourg
and
Dunkerque
led the way, with an
escort of the lightning fast French super destroyers. Behind them came the
pride of the French Fleet, the battleship
Normandie
. And after they led
the last of their escorting cruisers through the narrow channel, another shadow
darkened the waters, the storm clouds licking the steel flanks of the ship as
it emerged—the
Bismarck
. Behind that formidable ship came an ever
greater shadow, the hulking mass if the mighty
Hindenburg
, the
battlecruiser
Kaiser
in her wake with the light carrier
Goeben
.

There the decks were awash with
the cold sea, but the Germans were still making ready to launch. Marco Ritter
was waiting near his BF-109, and when he saw the
Stuka
formations
overhead he shouted out to his young protégé, Hans Rudel.

“Come on Hans! Can’t you see the
crows are on the wing!”

Ritter smiled, pointing to the
dark formations overhead, riding the tops of the gathering storm clouds.

It was far from over.

* * *

Argos
Fire
saw the planes on radar, forming up
over the southwestern cape of Sicily, dark and threatening, like the storm
clouds behind them. In spite of the impending bad weather, the Germans decided
to strike while they could, and the force they were sending was considerable.

Goering had been building up
German air strength on Sicily for the Malta campaign for some time. By January
of 1941, Fliegerkorps X had 80 Ju-88A4 bombers in LG1 and 12 Ju-88D5
reconnaissance planes at Catania. These were augmented by 80 Ju-87R1
Stuka
dive-bombers of StG 1 and StG 2 at Trapani on Sicily. This model was a special
long range naval strike variant that would prove a formidable foe, with two 300
liter drop tanks on the wings that more than doubled the fuel and improved the
range to just over 960 kilometers. They had been pounding Malta for some days,
but now would get their first crack at the Royal Navy. These planes were joined
by another 27 He-111H6 torpedo bombers of KG 26 at Comiso, and 34 Bf-110C4
fighters of ZG 26 at Palermo, with another 24 Bf-109s from Gr 12.

60 of the
Stukas
were up
that day, soon to be joined by the small contingent of
Stukas
from the
Goeben
.
They would be joined by 40 JU-88s, 20 He-111s, and covered by all 24 Bf-109s, and
a dozen Bf-110s. In all, this came to 125 strike planes protected by 36
fighters, more than twice the size of the Italian air strike. The preliminaries
were over, and the main event was now about to begin.

“That’s one hell of an air strike
coming our way,” said MacRae.

“The Russians are firing now,
sir,” said Dean.

“Let’s hope they still have a few
arrows in their quiver….” MacRae thought for a moment. He had 50 Aster-30
missiles that could join the long range air defense, but he had said nothing of
these to the Russians, and had not sent them any IFF data on those missiles.
Now, seeing the obvious threat coming at them, he felt foolish. The Russians
were out there with the Naval Ensign flown by Nelson himself on their mainmast.
They were fighting right alongside the Royal Navy, and the thought that he held
on to the enmity between Britain and Russia in the 21st Century now seemed an
embarrassment.

I’d best let that go, he thought.
No sense dragging that war into this one. If the Russians are willing to square
off against the Germans, then by god, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

“Mister Dean… Have Haley contact
the Russians. Tell them we are prepared to cover intermediate air defense zones
out to 100 kilometers. We can fire after they conclude their initial barrage.”

“The Aster-30s sir?”

“I’ve a feeling we’ll need them.
All hands!” He raised his voice now. “Prepare to oppose incoming air strike.
Ready on all systems. We begin with Viper-30.”

* * *

Volsky
got the message
just after he had fired his initial salvo of 12 missiles from the Klinok
system. They had seen the incoming strike on the Fregat system as soon as it
emerged from the storm infested cloud cover over Sicily. Apparently many of the
formations had formed up over the mountainous terrain there, and they were now
moving at good speed to make their strike.

“I was afraid of this,” he said
to Rodenko. “They were probably forming behind the mountains, getting up just
ahead of that storm front.”

“Agreed, sir. That’s why we
didn’t see them earlier. The terrain on Sicily provides them with lots of dead
zones in the radar coverage, but I have over 150 contacts now.”

“Then we had better get busy. As
before, Mister Samsonov, but give me six S-400s, wide dispersal please. I want
to give them something to think about. Perhaps they heard what happened to the Italians.
You may fire at once.”

There was a tense expression on the
Admiral’s face now. Air power… It was the one factor in this whole situation
that could change everything. If the British fleet could not be protected, then
everything they won against the Italians might soon be lost. The problem he
faced was evident in the strength of the incoming attack, but more than that,
he was worrying about their SAM inventory now. Then, shortly after the first
missiles were up and on their way, he received a message from the
Argos
Fire.

“Ah,” he said to Rodenko. “It
seems this Captain MacRae has decided to come clean and empty his pockets after
all.” He smiled.

“Sir?”

“That ship is a refit of a
British Type-45 destroyer, Mister Rodenko. That class carried both Aster-15 and
Aster-30 missiles. The British made no mention of the latter, did they.”

“No sir, we only received IFF
data for their Aster-15. You knew they had these missiles?”

“It was a very educated guess. So
now it appears they’ve had a better look at the situation and suddenly
remembered they have the number 30 missile under their forward deck as well.
Good enough. We’ll be forgiving. Mister Nikolin, signal the
Argos Fire
that they may now cover for long range fires. We will resume inside 80
kilometers with our Klinok system. You may designate it the SA-N-92 in your communication.”

They watched as the first six
missiles exploded in the midst of the enemy formation. The naval engagement
with the Italians had opened at about 275 kilometers east of Sicily, but moved
within the 240 kilometer range before it was concluded. Now the enemy air
strike was coming from the vicinity of Syracuse and Catania, with planes spread
out over an arc that was 50 kilometers wide. The six S-400s had found a segment
of that arc infested with Ju-88s from Catania, about 220 kilometers out, and Rodenko
soon reported nine kills and three other planes aborting. They had traded the
six missiles for twelve German planes, but now there were only 14 more S-400s
in the magazines. One of Germany’s most successful aircraft, they would build
16,000 JU-88s before this war ended…

* * *

“Looks
like the Russians
are getting stingy with those long range missiles,” said Dean. “They only fired
six.”

“Aye,” said MacRae, “which tells
me they must be running thin. Alright then, we fire at 100 klicks. Full cell
salvos of 4 missiles each. Ready on cells one thru six. Target that formation
coming in here.” He tapped the thick cloud of radar contacts approaching from
Syracuse, and a minute later the missiles began to fire.

Aster-30 was a very capable
system, the very same one that Kinlan’s air defense battery had used to get up
after those incoming MIRVs from a Russian ICBM, though he had been using a
special Block 2 version designed for that kind of defense. The missiles aboard
Argos
Fire
were a derivative of the Aster PAAMS system, developed to seek and
destroy incoming enemy missiles. As such they were very fast, agile weapons
even when hurtling at their top speed of Mach 4.5. They could target virtually
any kind of airborne threat with a high probability hit to kill ratio. During
the “end game” when it would close for the kill, it had a lateral thrust pulse propulsion
mode that allowed it to make incredible turns to get after an evasive target.
It also used what was known as a directional blast warhead, where larger warhead
fragments are directed towards the target on detonation. In short, it was going
to get hits and kills, though the ratio was going to be closer to 1 to 1 than
the Russian S-400, which had a very wide fragmentation radius when it exploded
near a target.

The German
Stukas
of StG 1
were the unfortunate crows to be hunted down that day. They saw the incoming
streaks in the sky, remembered the warning that had passed to them from the pilots
off
Graf Zeppelin
, but no warning was good enough to protect them from
what was coming at them. The reality of being hunted by these fast, lethal
missiles was something no pilot would ever forget. The
Vipers
began to
explode, sending the remaining
Stukas
wheeling in evasive maneuvers. The
planes were chased by the hot fire of the missiles, and one by one they went
down. Of the 30
Stukas
in that formation, sixteen were killed with
direct hits, and the missiles also got six Bf-109s that had vainly tried to
swoop into the swirling engagement, their guns blazing on defense. Two more Ju-88D5
reconnaissance planes that had been assigned to fly point on this mission also
went down. StG 1 had been all but destroyed, though it still had fourteen brave
pilots in the sky, and they were slowly trying to reform after the attack,
cursing and calling to one another on their headsets.

It was a hard lesson of war, but
in the end the success or failure of this attack would come down to only one
thing—how many missiles were
Kirov
and
Argos Fire
willing to use?

Chapter 18

The
planes came on, pressing
through the 80 kilometer mark after 24
Vipers
had smashed the initial
formation of
Stukas
. Now the Klinok system on
Kirov
would come
into play, the missiles rising to the challenge to strike at targets throughout
the incoming arc.
Kirov
had only 82 of these missiles left, and so Volsky
determined to fire 20 in two salvoes of ten missiles each. One salvo would find
the JU-88s again, with nine kills and one plane there taking two missiles. The
second salvo would take a significant bite out of StG 2
Stuka
Squadron,
and get eight kills there. The remaining two missiles found escorting fighter
planes.

Disorganized and shocked by these
deadly attacks from lightning fast rocket systems, the Germans struggled to
regroup as they passed the 50 kilometer mark. Now Admiral Volsky had a
difficult decision to make.

“That lowers our medium range
defense system to 62 missiles,” he said to Rodenko. What is the status of this
incoming strike now?”

“Sir, the situation is confused, but
we’re still reading about 116 air contacts inbound.”

“More than all our remaining
medium and long range SAMs,” said Volsky. We cannot engage further. I will turn
the defense over to the
Argos Fire
and see what they can do. Who knows
what we will be facing after this?”

Now he wished Fedorov were here
with facts and figures on the German and Italian air strength they might be
facing in the days ahead. Yet Volsky knew they could only do so much. He could
hurt the enemy further, but at what cost to his future operations capability?
So they waited, switching over to their Kashtan system, reserved solely for
close in defense. The only missiles they would fire now would be aimed at any
aircraft that managed to penetrate the final British defense and target
Kirov
.

The
Argos Fire
had topped
off its ready ammo bank on the Viper-15 class missiles. MacRae had 48 in the
silos now, and began firing just inside the 30 kilometer mark. They would hit
nine more JU-88s, twelve more
Stukas
and three fighters with the first
two salvos of twelve each. But the strike was coming in at speeds of 450 to 500
KPH and would be over the fleet in no more than 5 minutes. Firing cells of four
missiles each,
Argos Fire
was lighting up the sky with missile tracks.
They got eight Heinkels and four more Ju-88s, and then Dean announced a new
contact on his long range radars.

The Germans had launched their
second wave.