Wings of Fire: Dragons, Steel, and Pom-Poms

III - Three Moons

>Aboard USS Sampson, US Navy Destroyer, unknown location_

Captain Drake once again found himself standing in the Destroyer's bridge, surveying the horizon with his binoculars. A horizon that, to its credit, was much clearer than it was before they entered the storm.

Which was odd... as the Northeastern Atlantic wasn't exactly known for being clear this time of year. Regardless of whether or not a storm was brewing.

It also wasn't known for being this warm.

It reminded him of his time in the Pacific fleet actually, back when he was a lieutenant on a Heavy Cruiser stationed off Hawaii.

Until Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the US entered the war properly.

Which, somewhat ironically, led to more direct Navy involvement in the battle for the Atlantic.

Which is eventually how Robert found himself in this position, captain of an escort group assigned to protecting a high-value convoy transporting fuel, oil, various vehicles and infantry equipment across the North Atlantic.

One would think that such useful and comparatively expensive cargo would merit a bigger escort group, bigger than a handful of USN and Royal Navy Destroyers, Destroyer escorts, and Corvettes, Robert sometimes mused to himself. But after the sinking of the Bismarck, German surface raider action had seen a drastic decrease.

On top of that, the recent deployment of U-boat hunter-killer groups had started getting results. So the need for heavy escort groups was beginning to diminish.

At least that was the case for convoys like the one that he was protecting, which were not actually that big in the grand scheme of things.

Robert shook himself from his internal musings, there are more pressing matters to focus on.

Such as, for instance, the radio still not working. The techs still haven't picked up on virtually any background traffic. Just ambient static noise coming from space.

Which was concerning to say the least.

While it wasn't unheard of for storms at sea, especially electrostatically charged ones, to interfere with radio transmission, the storm had not only passed, but had dissipated behind them.

They should be picking up on radio traffic, especially since, at their current heading, they should be getting closer to the British Isles.

Or maybe they are a little off course, given the compasses not appearing to be working properly either. But then they would be getting closer to either the Scandinavian or Spanish peninsula. Either way, getting closer to land in general. Thus closer to radio transmitters.

An equipment malfunction was of course possible, but the Sampson wasn't the only ship picking up only static. All of the ships, including the civilian haulers, were reporting the same problem.

So either they were victims to perhaps one of the most statistically improbable malfunctions in history, or something else was afoot.

On a more positive note, however, several ships including his own had reported catching sight of a landmass on RADAR, so hopefully they won't have to wait long to figure out what's going on.

Which is good, Robert though as he glanced back to the various supply ships in tow. Those old wheezers won't run forever.

The cargo ships that supplied the Allied war effort were notorious for being old dilapidated junk-traps as much as the U-boats that hunted them were infamous. Between the hastily-built Liberty ships to the woefully outdated civilian steamers, the merchant-marine vessels weren't much to write home about as far as performance and reliability were concerned.