Posted: 2004-07-18 11:40am
by MKSheppard
Chapter Seven - Bills und Blood
[The US Senate - June 11th, 1940]
John C. Stennis stood up from his chair, cleared his throat,
and began to speak.
"Friends, fellow senators and representatives, I would like to talk
to you about the recent naval battle which occured off our coast
between the Soviet Union and the Domination of the Draka."
"As you all know, the Soviet Union lost one of her finest cruisers,
the Kirov in just above a minute, while the Domination had her
flagship rendered into an impotent bulldog, it's teeth pulled for
the moment."
Stennis paused, and took a sip of water from the glass on his desk
before continuing.
"This underscores the need, nay, the imperative to build up the
US Navy for a future conflict which may not come. But as the events
of the past few days have shown, preparation pays off ten-fold."
"We should sacrifice now, when sacrifice is measured in pennies
squeezed from the budget, rather than the blood of our constituents."
"I ask, therefore, that you vote yea on the so-called 'Two-Ocean Navy"
Bill that I and Representative Vinson of Georgia have authored
together, which will authorize the building of one point eight million tons
of warships for our Navy, bringing our first, and most important, line of
defense against foreign aggressors up to a total of three point six million
tons of warships, enough to meet the growing twin threats of both the
Domination of the Draka in the Atlantic and the Empire of Nippon in the
Pacific."
"Thank you. That is all, I will now concede the floor of the Senate to the
Honorable Majority Leader, Mr. Barkley of Kentucky."
[10 Hours later - The Executive Office Building, Washington DC]
Admiral Harold R. Stark, Chief Of Naval Operations, stood before the
massive scale models of the new carriers and battleships the US Navy
had been considering building, and laughed heartily. The Two Ocean
Bill had sailed through both the House and Senate in record time, and
had been signed by FDR hours later.
"Well, all the easy stuff is done with, now we have the hard part; picking
the names," he commented, as he looked at a list of names suggested
for the Navy's new 59,900 ton carriers. Only four would have been built
under the old Eleven-Percent bill, but now with the new bill, the Navy was
looking at fifteen carriers of the same type.
Stark paused for a moment to consider this. Fifteen new carriers, merciful God!
He, along with everyone in the US Navy, remembered the lean years of the
1930s, following the building boom of the 1920s, when the Lexingtons and
South Dakotas had entered service in a never ending stream, and then
the Depression had hit. Not a single new ship had been built until FDR's
second term, beginning in 1937. Not even FDR had the pull to get the
beancounters to allocate more funds, and even then, it was just for more
destroyers and light cruisers; no capital ships at all.
"So what are we going to name them?" asked one of Stark's aides, a
young Captain named Spruance. "Famous ships of the past, like our
current carriers?"
"No, no. These new ships are going to be a total break with the past,
armored flight decks, a airwing of a hundred-forty, and almost
as large as a battleship. No, we need something new, and besides,
we're going to war with the Draka eventually. Let's pick a symbolic
name."
A silence gathered throughout the room, until Spruance again spoke up.
"What about Gettysburg? Largest land battle in the western hemisphere,
and it was the high-water mark of the Confederacy."
"Gettysburg..." Stark rolled the name around his lips. "USS Gettysburg. I like
the sound of it."
"You do realize that the name is still going to be controversial in the southern
states?" added a young ensign whose name Stark couldn't remember, who
was attached to the names committee.
"That's why we name the follow on ship Manassas." added Spruance with
a grin.
[The Next Day - June 12th, 1940 - The White House]
"So Admiral Stark, these are the names that your committee has picked for
our new carriers?" asked Franklin Roosevelt as he played idly with a letter
opener while he read the list with special attention. Once a Secretary of the
Navy; always a Secretary of the Navy.
"Yes, Mister President, we've decided on these names, due to their historical
significance from past wars; I hope they meet with your approval."
"Ticonderoga, Bunker Hill, Shiloh, Valley Forge, Ottawa...Yes, I have to say
this list meets with my approval. You can pass my compliments onto your
committee; they've chosen well."
"On to other matters, Mr. President; in order to meet your 'Neutrality Patrol'
proclaimation, we're going to have to pull a lot of old four-stackers from
mothballs and crew them; I assume I'm allowed to call up the Reserves to
do this?"
"Yes, by all means; do try and integrate the Neutrality Patrol with the requirements
of our Reserves; I can't think of any better training than sending them out to sea,
rather than having them sit in the middle of a river on a rotting hulk for several weeks
every few months."
Stark nodded. "I'll let the Naval Reserve know as soon as possible." As he was gathering
up his papers, and preparing to leave; Stark heard the intercom on the president's desk,
one of those newfangled inventions buzz, and he heard the President's secretary, Lucy
Mercer, say something about "the gentlemen from Consolidated Vultee are here to
see you."
Consolidated, now wasn't that an aircraft company? Perhaps it had to do with the
replacement for the "Sacred Cow" that everyone seemed to be talking about
these days.
[Domination of Draka Embassy; Washington DC - That Same Time]
Diplo-Strategos Robert Faldo sighed as he put the telephone on his desk down.
The latest news from New York was not very good. Apparently the damned Yanks
were delaying as much as possible the repairs to the Proteus and her consorts,
preventing them from going to sea as soon as possible; and because of that,
that damned cripple in the White House was talking about impounding them for
"the duration of hostilities", because of "non-neutral intent" or some schiesse.
Getting up from his desk, Faldo walked past his secretary's desk and into the
smoking room on the third floor of the embassy, where everyone could gather
for a nice puff on a fag every once in a while to let stress out.
Taking a fag from inside his jacket, he lit it and sat back into one of the plush chairs
in the room and let out a long sigh. Far too much bullshit here; dealing with serfs
who believed they were citizens; damned Americans. Had the stupidity to free their
own serfs, and now they kept demanding that the Domination enamicipitate it's
serfs.
Absolute rubbish.
"How's it going, Bob?" asked Paul Mercer, one of the senior officers of the
Security Directorate at the Domination's American embassy.
"Absolute shit, Paul. The damned Americans are causing me no end what with
our ships in New York," replied Faldo sharply.
"It could be worse; you could be one of the poor bastards down in Archona, trying
to decode that Ivan declaration of war for the Archon." Pausing to take a drag on his
own cigarette, Paul let out a deep cloud of smoke before continuing. "Just what the
hell does 'We will Bury You' mean, stuff like that."
Faldo sniggered. "That entire document is nothing but a pile of sniveling serf bravado
masquerading as a diplomatic document."
"Don't be so sure, Bob."
A long pause filled the room as Faldo put down his fag and took a careful look around
the room to make sure no one else but them was in it, before continuing.
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"Exactly what it means. I've seen the estimates of Soviet manpower. We only can raise
at best about seven million citizens, and ten million more Janissaries; we could always
recruit more Janissaries, but past that ten million mark, the security problems involved
grow asymptomatically."
"By contrast, the Soviet Union can raise twenty-five million troops easily, and if they
were seriously threatened, they could raise as much as thirty-six million."
As Mercer watched Faldo's face grow even more pale, he continued. "The Soviets,
worst of all, can raise 1.5 million fresh troops a year simply by their huge population size,
while we can only raise 100,000 a year."
"In short, Faldo, if every single Citizen of ours kills three Ivans, while our Janissaries kill
a single Ivan soldier; the Ivans still end up with a net gain. Are you now comprehending
just how fucked we are?"
"By Freya's breath...how can we even win at all?"
"Three ways, my dear Ambassador; we must one, deny them their oil supplies; which is what
we're doing in the Caucasus now, pushing to take their vital oil ports. Two, grab as much of
their heavily populated areas to deny them that manpower pool; we're not doing that, the
Caucasus is too thinly populated for that. Three, knock them out fast before someone else
joins Krasnov's 'Great Patriotic War'."
"The Ukraine is the key. It contains large amounts of their heavy industry and
population, along with being a vital breadbasket. But we're not doing that now, just
going hey-diddle-diddle-up-the-middle into the most heavily partisanized area of the
Soviet Union."
Mercer put his cigarette into an ashtray and stared at the ceiling for several moments.
"From the reports I'm getting through the SecDi daily circular, what's going on is making
Afghanistan look tame. Nasty business all around." Mercer then paused, and stared
directly at Faldo. "Your job, along with every other ambassador, is far more critical than
those old fogies in the General Staff who sent us blundering into the Caucasus. You
must keep the rest of the damned world off our backs, in spite of ourselves, long
enough for us to capture three of the following four cities in Russia; Astrakhan, Moscow,
Leningrad and Magnitogorsk."
[New York Harbor - DMS Proteus - That Same Time]
"No, no, you goddamned serf! Not like that!" shouted Ingolffson as he watched the
big wop dockworker deliberately drop his welding torch into the the mucky water
of the harbor. Shit, another one of these damnable delays.
"You got a problem with my workers?" came a low rumbling voice from behind
him.
Turning around, Ingolffson came face to face with a bearded man of medium
height. "Yes, Foreman, I have a goddamned problem with your fucking workers."
Dalton listened with feigned shock as Ingolffson poured out his frustrations about
how Dalton's workers kept delaying, or deliberately screwing up their work; keeping
the Drakan ships in port as long as possible.
"Not my fault your people are assholes and keep calling my workers 'serfs', you
fucking snake bastard," growled Dalton. "We might be neutral, but it doesn't mean
we have to enjoy working on contract for you..."
"Remember the contract we signed with you has significant penalties in our
favor if you fail to finish the job in the amount of time specified."
"I'll keep that in mind, boss," replied Dalton in a sarcastic tone of voice. Damned
snakes think they run the fucking world.
As Ingolffson walked away in a huff towards the next point of contention between the
dockworkers and the ship's crew; Dalton bent over the railing and shouted, "Nice work,
Joe! Keep this shit up, and we'll get that fat contract with the Navy for those new ships
they're talkin' about building!"
[0500 hours, June 13th, 1940 - Over Drakan Controlled North Africa]
Lieutenant Bob Whipple listened to the satisfiying drone of his mount's two-stage
Merlins as he watched dawn slowly break over the vastness of the North African
landscape below him. Below, he could see the various fires from the oil refineries
as they burned off excess natural gas, this was one of the most heavily industrialized
'new conquest' areas of the Domination; but he wasn't here to take pictures of the
refineries.
No, British Intelligence had plenty of pictures of that; what they were after was something
far more secret. Apparently no one could get close to the Quattara depression hydroplant
at all, not without security clearance; from what his briefers had told him, the Security
Directorate ran the place now; and had shot a couple of guys who had tried to penetrate
the place to get pictures.
So MI6 had gone to the RAF and bangled out an overflight by one of No. 1 PRU's Recon
Mossies of the facility in question. The plane had been painted in a pink tone, unlike the
sky blue that the RAF's recon planes normally carried; and all the insignas and other
identifying marks had been scrubbed off; which was a joke, Whipple thought. Only one
nation operated the Mosquito, Britain.
Well, enough idle thoughts, the target was coming up fast, time to get to work. As the
Mosquito passed over the Quattara depression plant, the four cameras in it's nose
loaded with special ultra-high speed film began clicking away, two taking visual spectrum
photos, the other two, infrared photos. If one of the cameras bunged up, the other would
ensure that the photos would be taken anyway.
As Whipple turned the Mosquito around for another pass, he spotted the lone fighter
rising in the distance, and recognized it for what it was.
Eagle II 'Special' high-altitude fighter, with the new Atlantis Peregrine 24-cylinder
inline turbocompounds replacing the normal model's Kurenwor 12-cylinder engines.
Fast, speedy, and lots of raw power thanks to the new Atlantis Peregrines; but word
was, the Draka kept having problems with those Peregrines; engine fires out the
wazoo.
Damn, maybe he could use that to his advantage; his Merlin 21s were only 1,400
hp each, compared to those Drakan monster 24s cranking out 2,100 horses. But
he was at the edge of his machine's performance, some 35,000 feet, while the
Snake pilot was down at 12,000 and climbing as fast as his engines could hold out.
Whipple put his ship into a shallow climb towards the coast, and from time to time, he
put her into a short dive around to regain sight of his pursuer, then turned around and
regained his lost altitude. This cat and mouse game continued on for fifteen minutes,
until on the fourth turn-around, he saw the Drakan interceptor losing altitude rapidly,
it's port engine burning heavily.
"That's what you get for trying to match fine British engineering!" shouted Whipple
as he watched the Drakan ship drop like a brick, an engine aflame. Stealing a look
at his map, he saw that it was almost eight hundred miles and over two more hours
in the air before he was home free in Greece.
[165th Interceptor Merarchy Base, Marsa, Province of Egypt]
Pilot Officer Johanna von Shrakenberg jumped out of her burning Eagle II and cursed
up a blue storm, goddamn those fucking incompetents who had designed those
damnable engines!
What fucking moron had come up with the brilliant idea of putting two engines
together and giving it the cooling system of one? Snarling, she stalked away
towards the officers mess to drown her rage in the duty-free port they served there,
leaving her burning fighter on the tarmac for the flight-line serfs to extinguish.
As she stepped into the muggy bar, she found her commanding officer,
Merarch von Lesser, waiting for her at the bar.
"Problems, my dear Johanna?" he asked as he offered her a seat.
"Plenty, von Lesser. First of all, those pigfuckas down at Atlantis Peregrine give
us the shittiest engines of all time and call it an 'improvement' over the old Kurenwors,
and then they expect us to do great things with it, and when we dont, the Air Directorate
down in Archona start screaming at us for 'wasting a fine fighter'."
"Did you get a good look at the intruder? The boys down at Quattara are screaming
into my ear non-stop, demanding to know why my Merarchy, with over thirty-five frontline
fighters, couldn't stop a single intruder. They're mighty pissed; I can't see why...after
all, how the fuck can a power plant for god's sake be a state secret? Damned Security
Directorate weasels."
"All I know is it was twin-engined, and pink. I couldn't get close enough for a positive ID."
replied Johanna as she slammed down a shot of rum.
"Pink?" asked von Lesser incredulously.
"Yes, you heard me, Pink."
Lesser stared at Johanna for several seconds, trying to decide if the heat had finally
fried her brains, before replying. "Well, in the end, it doesn't matter. They want heads
for this cock-up, and you're the citizen on the spot. Sorry. You've been reassigned to
Russia, effective immediately, to a ground attack merarchy."
"Fuck it, isn't that the greatest thing of them all, I'll be going up against the bastards
who dam' nea' butchered my brother!" shouted Johanna as she slammed down her
shot glass and stormed out of the tavern angrily.
Behind her, von Lesser thought about that so-called pink aircraft. This was what, the
second time a pink aircraft had penetrated Drakan airspace in two months; and both
times, it had been damn near uninterceptable. Already, the jokes were circulating through
the Interceptor Merarchies about the 'Pink Panther' of the coast. Damn it, this was not
the best way to endear yourself to the higher ups in Archona, being unable to bring
down a goddamned PINK aircraft. Sighing, Lesser ordered another shot of rum to
try and drown his slowly growing headache in liquor.
[Grevena, Greece]
Slowly, the pink painted reconnaisance Mosquito came to a halt on the runway,
her engines sputtering to a dead stop from simple fuel exhaustion; these flights
over the North African holdings of the Domination were pushing the Mosquito
to it's limits.
As the props stopped spinning, the combined RAF/Greek ground crew ran
forwards and began to perform the post-flight checks while the MI6 contigent
removed the film from the cameras, protected by armed guards. Once the film
was removed, it was placed into several padded cases and walked over to the
RAF transport aircraft which sat on the apron nearby, it's engines spinning for
a fast take-off. Once the couriers were aboard with their valuable cargo, the
engines spun up, their throaty roars filling the small airfield, and everyone watched
as the transport took off for London, where the film would be processed as
soon as it landed in MI6's offices.
[1300 hours, June 13th, 1940 - Yerevan, Province of Armenia]
It was a secure behind the lines mobile hospital, hastily thrown up from pre-fabricated
parts by the auxilliary engineers, but for now it had relatively sturdy wooden walls, and
soft beds with clean white sheets, and fabric metal framed screens that could be put up
for improved privacy.
The main sick room was long, with dozens of beds lining the walls, heads facing the wall
and feet towards the middle of the room, little progress charts attached on clipboards
hanging from the end of each bed, here and there stainless steel drip holders had been
installed to deliver blood or an IV feed to a wounded patient.
The room was clean, very clean, with not a hint of the scent of rot and death that so often
accompanied wound stations in the field, instead there was the smell of medicines and
disinfectants.
Citizen doctors, backed by auxilliary nursing staff and janitors carefully tended to the sick,
though there was little time to sit by their side and hold their hands. "Anotha' buncha'dem
comin' dawn" the cry would go up, and the doctors would rush out to perform triage, and
rush the new patients into the operating room where they'd do their damndest to save their
lives.
Meanwhile in a quiet corner of the main room, two beds sat reasonably close together. On both
of them lay wounded veterans, one of them a hawk faced blonde young man who had lost a leg.
He simply stared at the ceiling while he fingered the unfamiliar hospital garb that they were all
wearing, convenient no doubt, but odd for one who had spent almost all of his life in uniform.
The other was a man much similar, not quite as aristocratic looking, but all of his limbs were
intact. As he turned over, his eyes met with his bedmate, and they shook hands.
"Decurion Walter Heinz, 2nd Airborne Chilliarchy."
Eric grunted as he fought off the sedatives long enough to return the greeting. "Centurion Eric von
Shrakenberg, 1st Airborne Chilliarchy" he replied.
"So how'd they get you?" asked Heinz, eager to strike up a conversation with his bedmate.
"Ivans attacked in force the village we were holding at the pass, about a platoon of Trotskys,
and one ungodly shitload of Ivan infantry."
"Infantry? You were lucky, Eric. At my drop zone, they attacked us with three whole
companies of fucking Cossacks. Tell me, you ever see a man cut literally in half with
a goddamned sword by a mounted horseman? In nineteen-fucking forty?"
Eric grunted noncomittally. "No, can't say I have."
"Well, it ain't a goddamned pretty sight, We lost almost an entire company to those fuckers,
only fifty men out of a hundred sixty walked away from that."
"What kind of moron on the Grand Council decided that an airborne drop far behind enemy
lines in mountainous territory would be a fucking cheery idea? I'd like to damned well know
that!" snarled Walter.
"My father was one of those who thought so," remarked Eric idly.
Walter looked at Eric oddly for a moment before recognition came to his eyes.
"So you're one of those Shrakenburgs."
Eric shrugged. "We don't try to advertise it, unlike some other families. Say, have you
seen this article in Steel Fist? Damned Ivans are giving us a tough fight in Tbilisi."
added Eric as he threw his copy of the army's magazine over to his bedmate, who
coughed as he read the article.
"Freya's tits, can it be that bad?"
"Apparently so, Fifth Army's getting chewed up mighty bad, down to only 70,000 effectives."
replied Eric. "The Ivans are forcing us to go from house to house in Tbilisi and clear it out with
flamethrowers and satchel charges; the Janissaries aren't good enough for that kind of hard work,
they break too easily, so we got to use Citizens."
"Whats this? RPG-1?" asked Walter.
Eric shrugged again. "I don't know any more than what they're saying in Steel Fist,
apparently the Ivans developed it following our clashes in 36 and 37, fires this rocket
propelled shell out to a distance of a hundred fifty meters and has a penetration of nearly
ten centimeters of armor."
"Whyinhell didn't we think of that?" growled Walter.
"Didn't you hear? Those new rifle grenades they gave us right before we jumped off
were supposed to be the answer to those new Ivan tanks, strike the top armor and
shred anyone inside...or so they claimed." At that, Eric rolled his eyes.
"Save us from the damned beancounters back in Archona." moaned Walter as he
read about results of RPG-1 hits on the Hond III in Steel Fist, complete with
graphically accurate photographs of the results. Apparently it wasn't big enough
to penetrate the frontal armor of the Hond III, but more than enough when aimed
at the sides or rear. Hoplite II IFVs were nothing more than dead meat when
faced with the RPG-1s. There were several more pages of suggestions on how
crews could best deal with this new Ivan weapon, such as piling sandbags and
other material on top of the hull to disrupt the HEAT jet.
Groaning, Walter put the magazine down, and stared at Eric.
"Piling sandbags?"
"Another brilliant idea from the people that gave you the method for clearing ten thousand
square acres of lands that had been infected by mustard gas...simply remove the top two
inches of soil!" replied Eric sarcastically.
"Lets hope we don't get sent to Tbilisi...oh wait, you're missing a foot, lucky bastard."
**************************************************************************************
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 7: US CARRIER OOB TO 1940
CV-1 Langley
15,150 tons
520 x 65.5 x 16.5 feet
468 Crew
35 Aircraft
************
CV-2 Lake
19,500 tons
600 x 70 x 17 feet
650 Crew
45 Aircraft
************
CV-3 United States (OTL Lexington)
38,800 tons
850 x 105.5 x 24.25 Feet
3,300 crew
90 Aircraft
************
Yorktown Class
34,800 tons
820 x 93 x 28.5
2,600 crew
100 aircraft
CV-4 Yorktown
CV-5 Enterprise
CV-6 Essex
CV-7 Hornet
************
Carriers added by the Two Ocean Navy Bill
Gettysburg Class
59,900 tons
900 x 113 x 32.75
3,600 crew
137 Aircraft
CVB-8 Gettysburg
CVB-9 Manassas
CVB-10 Ticonderoga
CVB-11 Bunker Hill
CVB-12 Shiloh
CVB-13 Fredricksburg
CVB-14 Vincennes
CVB-15 Valley Forge
CVB-16 Chancellorsville
CVB-17 Vicksburg
CVB-18 Princeton
CVB-19 Lake Champlain
CVB-20 Ottawa
CVB-21 Fredricksburg
CVB-22 San Jacinto
CVB-23 Port Royal
