Stormtide Rising (Kirov Series Book 29) Page 11

  These underground warrens were so safe, that something of inestimable value had been crated away in one for a time, the Elgin Marbles, including the Selene Horse, which hid a secret so dark that no one then alive could hope to comprehend it. By this time, those precious artifacts had all been moved to an even safer place, or so it was believed. They had been secreted away in the guts of the battleship Rodney , for shipment to New York, but the warship never got there….

  The sirens wailed, stores, restaurants and pubs began to empty, and soon streams of people were heading for the Tube. It was a common drill, and in spite of the danger, the crowds were very civil, quite orderly, and queued up to use the stairway down into the dark safe underworld beneath the city. Women and children would always get priority, for men were still gentlemen in those days, no matter what their station in life. The Tube close by Victoria Park could hold up to 5000 souls, most everyone living close enough to be using it for shelter that day.

  Then it happened. Well down the stairway, an elderly lady had hold of her granddaughter’s hand, and the little girl stumbled on the stairway, not half a flight from the bottom. The grandmother stooped to her rescue, and then she fell, sending two other women into the people ahead, who also fell. A knot formed in the middle of the stairwell, and then the first sound of the bombs falling could be heard above.

  There came the sound of a hissing roar, so loud that it reverberated down the long stairwell and echoed in the hollow chambers of the Tube. It was a sound that no was accustomed to ever hearing, and so it caused a noticeable push of anxiety—not a panic, but just enough of a jostling push to put unwanted pressure on that knot at the bottom of the stairs. Then, in a matter of seconds, the stairway to heaven became the stairway to hell. The push sent people down, rippling all along the stairway, and the bodies were soon piled one on top of another, with people screaming, being crushed on the stairs, unable to breathe. Some curled into fetal balls and held on, others were pressed against the walls.

  300 would suffer serious injury, and of those, 173 would die, with 60 of them being the smallest and most fragile of the lot—the children. The ‘Disaster at Bethnal Green Tube Station’ had again become the single greatest wartime civilian loss of the war in the UK, eclipsing the death of 107 people when the Germans hit the Wilkinson's Lemonade Factory in North Shields during a raid in 1941. It was the first, and lesser, of two tragedies that would befall that sector of the city that week, merely a harbinger of what was to come. When it was over, the men, tears streaking their faces, would spend half the morning carrying up the bodies and loading them on to lorries. They never forgot the ghastly purple faces of the dead, smothered and starved of air by the crush before they died.

  That night, crews came and washed everything down to cleanse the place of any evidence of the disaster. The papers were forbidden to run the story for two days, and when they finally did print, the name of the station itself, and any mention of the strange sounds of the rockets firing, were ruthlessly censored. The word ‘panic’ was stricken from any accounting of the incident.

  Thankfully, Peter Waller would find his family safe in the cellar of a nearby café, where they had fled when the hiss and roar of those rockets caused the palpable stir on those stairs. In her wisdom, Liz had pulled the children to safety there rather than trying the crush on the stairs to the Tube. He wandered up Old Ford Road that night, close by Victoria Park to have a smoke. It was late, and very dark and foggy, and he must have slipped right through a security line, for he suddenly heard voices.

  “That was nuthin’ this morning,” came the voice of a man. “That was just a recon of sorts. We’d best be ready when those big fat Zeppelins come calling. Some even say tonight’s the night, so get them rockets sorted out and reloaded.”

  “But Sergeant,” came another voice. “Them Zeppelins fly way too high for this lot to get up after them. It’s work for the big Ack, Ack guns, isn’t it?”

  “Well you bloody well don’t think they’ll just float over a few bloody Zeppelins, do ya Cobber? They’ll be bombers too, just like this morning, so step lively when you hear the sirens. No more muckin’ about!”

  Realizing he had most likely wandered into a secure area, Peter Waller put out his cigarette, crushing it under foot, and then made a hasty retreat. Something is up after all, he thought. Something’s got the Ack, Ack boys all rattled tonight. He would soon learn what it was. The sirens were winding up yet again.

  * * *

  Hitler had hoped that the attack could be made on February 1st, and that had been pre-empted by the unexpected bombing of Berlin. Enraged, he ordered an immediate reprisal, but the Luftwaffe urged him to allow time to make a preliminary run over the target area, and test enemy defenses.

  “We must determine the depth and strength of their anti-aircraft defenses, and also determine their response time by fighters.”

  “You told me our Zeppelins can fly higher than their planes. What is the bother?”

  “True, my Führer, but if we wish to deliver our ordnance on target as planned, we must fly lower. Besides, London is under heavy cloud cover and fog tonight.”

  “All the better. That will serve to mask the approach of our Zeppelins. We will have the element of surprise, which you propose we throw to the wind so you can test the enemy’s defenses. No! The attack will be made tonight. Fafnir will be the sole ship assigned, and the other bombers will make diversionary strikes as we have planned.”

  Hitler, as always, would have his way.

  The great silver mass of Fafnir was up high that night; so high that no observer on the ground could have ever hope to see the airship, or hear the drone of its powerful engines. It had flown to Bremerhaven the previous day, under a signals deception cover story that high altitude reconnaissance would be conducted over the North Sea the following day. Bletchley Park picked it up and passed the intelligence along to both the RAF and Admiralty Commands.

  Encouraged by his dramatic glide bomb raid on the Russian fleet the previous month, Hitler had summoned his great sky dragon home for an important mission. He had something, to deliver that day, a very special attack. He would set Fafnir loose upon his enemies, and show them that no Spitfire could ever again protect the British capital from certain destruction. Fafnir would strike a single blow, and it would send chills right on through the mandarins of Whitehall for ever after.

  To further deceive the enemy, three groups of medium bombers would take off from bases in France, hopefully to give the British Radar operators something to chew on. They would vector on targets well south of the Thames, while Fafnir would make its way to the heart of the city, hopefully unseen, and undetected, from the northeast. Even if it was seen, the British Vickers Model 1931 gun only had an effective firing range of 5,000 meters. The QF 3-inch gun would max out at 7,200 meters, and the QF 3.7 had a ceiling of 9,000 meters. Fafnir would be up at 15,000 meters, and not even a QF 5.25 could touch it there.

  The Germans were deploying a few old tricks, and one new one that day. Fafnir would let loose a raft of 1000 kg parachute Mines, the Luftmine B. Released at high altitude, they would free fall until the desired altitude for detonation was reached, when they would deploy a parachute, slowing the descent to about 40 miles per hour. Inside, a clock would tick off the seconds, calculating the altitude and detonating the mine half a minute later. The air burst was much more destructive than a ground bomb, and could take out an entire street on detonation, with a shock wave that could extend a full mile in radius.

  Yet they were just cover for the real attack that night. Fafnir was carrying something else, a jealously guarded secret, the Gift of the Magi. It had been found by Kapitan Heinrich aboard the Kaiser Wilhelm in the deep south Atlantic, almost a year to the day earlier, in February of 1942. It had come home safely to Toulon, moved by rail to Germany, and was soon being studied by the very best minds in Germany.

  It was not long before they realized what they had. The two long needle-nosed rockets delivered by Kapitan He
inrich had been analyzed and studied ever since. Their design would do much to influence and advance German rocketry, thought to be well behind the skills of the Allies. Naval rockets had been Admiral Raeder’s bane for years….

  Yet these rockets, though they were found aboard a derelict ship, were not thought to be the same class weapon that had been used with such terrible effect against the German surface navy. They were, in fact, a kind of long range ballistic missile, and with a most unusual warhead. The German scientists studied it extensively, determining what it was, but could never be certain of what it might do without actually detonating the weapon. Yet they were unwilling to expend one of the missiles to do so, not really understanding yet how to properly aim it and ensure it would strike its intended target. So instead, they kept the rocket safe and sound for further study, and a planned single flight test over the Baltic—but they removed the warhead.

  It was now aboard Fafnir the Great, about to write a new and terrible line into this history as it soon followed those parachute mines down through the grey mist, aiming right for the heart of London. St Paul’s Cathedral had been the aiming point, and a trial flight the previous day during the air raid that caused that crush in the Tube had told the Germans precisely when to turn, what heading to set on approach. So they knew when to release, calculating the glide fall as closely as possible, but even so, the overcast sky made this attack a haphazard affair.

  Yet Hitler had ordered it, and that night, Fafnir would deliver the bomb. It would careen down, on an approach angle of about 45 degrees. The release point was well above Chelmsford, and the bomb would glide some 30 miles to the intended target from that location, passing over Landbourne End, Newbury Park and Stratford. Yet it would fall short of the city center by some 2.5 miles, which was very fortunate. The Museum of London, the Tower, London Bridge, National Theater, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Opera House, Somerset House, Big Ben, and the Palace at Westminster would all be spared.

  Victoria Park and its strange collection of Z-Batteries would not be spared. Those rockets were again whooshing into the sky, in a fruitless search for this single bomb after being stirred to arms by the fall of those parachute mines. One hit the rail line near Old Bethnal Green Road; another fell on Weaver’s Fields. A third fell on Queen Mary’s University, rattling the iconic clock tower there.

  And then the bomb delivered by Fafnir fell, right over Victoria Park where Peter Waller had just stomped out that cigarette and was making his way home.

  He would never get there.

  It was a tiny warhead by design, the American W25, which had originally been developed by the Los Alamos Scientific laboratory as an air defense weapon to be used against squadrons of enemy bombers. It was so small and light, just 210 pounds, that it was designed to be mounted on an air launched missile carried by a fighter. That made it an idea candidate for the little experiment that was to be conducted in the South Atlantic by the Norton Sound , testing the effects of a high altitude nuclear detonation. It was just large enough to produce data, but not big enough to produce widespread undesirable effects.

  It was only a tenth the size of the bomb the Americans would deliver to Hiroshima in one history, which was 15 kilotons. The bomb Fafnir delivered was only 1.7 kilotons, but it was enough to test the weapon and determine its effects. The radius of the fireball when it ignited was just 250 feet, detonating a little over 300 feet from the ground. At that altitude, it delivered an air blast of 20psi to a diameter of about 1,100 feet. Had it struck in a built up area, it would have been enough to severely damage even strong concrete buildings, but in this case, it served to merely flatten and completely destroy those Z-batteries that had been firing so fitfully.

  The thermal radiation extended out 2,500 feet, spanning the whole length and width of Victoria Park, burning every tree, and delivering third degree burns to anyone exposed. Beyond that, the air blast was still as strong as 5psi, three quarters of a mile from the center, which was enough to devastate most residential dwellings. The destruction extended as far as Cassland and Wick Roads to the north of the park, and everything between Old Ford Road and the rail lines near Malmesbury road to the south. Through that entire zone, anyone who survived the blast would receive 500 rems of radiation, with a fatality rate between 50% and 90%.

  That night, anyone who took the chance again when the sirens first sounded, and made it into the Tube at Bethnal Green, was alive and safe. Because of the disaster earlier, many tried to look for other shelter, and remained in the blast zone. So it was that the errant stumble of a little girl on the steps would lead to the death of so many more, who otherwise might have been safely tucked away in the underground Tube that night.

  In modern days, as many as 23,000 might have been killed by that blast, and another 81,500 injured, but London was not so heavily populated in 1943, and the years of bombing had seen many move out of the city. As it was, another 1,217 would die that night, with over 2000 more injured.

  The disaster at Bethnal Green quickly gave up its dark laurels as the single worst loss of civilian life in the UK during the war. In one fell stroke, Fafnir had trumped all other attacks, and then some. The bomb worked! The world it fell into would now never be the same, and fear would stalk the land in every quarter.

  In spite of every effort to hide the effects of the attack from the general public, and the world, information would leak out as to what had happened. Thousands had seen the fireball ignite, all over London, a small second sunrise. Their murmured, fearful whispers spoke of a terrible new German bomb that could come completely unseen in the night, and consume entire neighborhoods. It was but a shadow of what this weapon would eventually grow to be, where the US and Russia would compete with one another to test larger and larger weapons yields, hammering at the increasingly fragile meridians of time.

  While not so great in actual raw damage, the attack drained the blood from faces all throughout Whitehall, the Admiralty, and every nerve and command center of the British government. What had fallen on them? How was it delivered? How many such weapons did the enemy have? When would the next bomb fall? London was never the same after Fafnir’s visit, and hearing the news of the attack in far off North Africa, Churchill made a grim and hasty flight over the Dark Continent, hopping from one small British held airfield to the next until he again reached Gibraltar. From there he flew on to Lisbon before boarding a bomber for the final leg home, his thoughts beset with a legion of angry demons.

  Part V

  Steel Veins

  “ Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil.”

  — Golda Meir

  Chapter 13

  Iraq had been a nominal British Protectorate since order was restored in 1941. At that time, the focus of a little rebellion by Rashid-Ali had been at the British airfield at Habbaniyah. In that action, Fedorov, Troyak, and the Russian Marines along with Argonauts provided by the Fairchild group, had served to rescue the beleaguered outpost until Brigadier Kingstone could arrive with Kingcol, a light armored and infantry force that had formed the nucleus of the unit he still commanded.

  Once secured, Iraq settled down to the typical squabbling among various tribes. Britain sent four Indian Infantry Divisions, and plans were being laid to also secure Iran, though they were never put into motion when the first German incursion into Syria occurred. Now, with this new incursion, Great Britain was regretting that it did not see to the military question concerning Iran.

  “The Iranian Army is substantial,” said Auchinlek, arriving late to the strategy session underway in Damascus with Alexander. Technically, all of what was once called Mesopotamia and Persia was Auchinlek’s watch, while Alexander held down Libya, Egypt Palestine and Syria. “On paper they approach 200,000 men, with light artillery and even tanks.”

  “They have armor?” Alexander was surprised to hear this. “Certainly nothing modern enough to bot
her us.”

  “They made a purchase of about 50 French FT-17’s, some with the 37mm gun, others with only Machineguns. And they also bought another 50 Panzer 38’s from the Germans, with whom they have become quite cozy now. When we lost Turkey, we also lost the good will of Iran, and they’ve been mobilizing.”

  “Are you suggesting they might attempt a military intervention to support the Germans?”

  “We can’t dismiss the possibility. This is why it is imperative that we get our 2nd Infantry Division to Basra immediately, and frankly, we should seriously consider securing Abadan. To hell with Iranian neutrality. Those facilities are very valuable to the Crown, and the Iranians could turn off the tap on a whim.”

  “Agreed,” said Alexander, “but if we do this, won’t that simply invite their interference all along the border?”

  “It might,” said Auchinlek. “And in the short run we shall have to rely on our Levy Battalions to screen that frontier. The bulk of the Iranian military will be down south near Abadan, but they’ll have divisions at Ahwaz, Dezful, and Kermanshah.”

  “A bit of a mess,” said Jumbo Wilson. “The Levy Battalions can buy us some time, but I think it will take British regulars to settle the matter. A lot will be riding on the back of Grover’s 2nd Division, and if it’s tied up down south, then we’ll have to hold Baghdad as best we can with the Indian Divisions.”

  “It’s going to be a difficult situation for some time,” said Alexander. “I agree that 2nd Infantry should act quickly to take Abadan, come what may. If the Iranians come over the border, we may lose Al-Amarah, and possibly even Al-Kut in the short run, but we’ll get them back later. The only thing we have to really protect between Basra and Baghdad are the main road and rail links.”