Next in our series of previews for The Day After Ragnarok are the details of President Truman’s fateful decision to enact Operation John Henry, in a bid to save the world from the death curse of the Third Reich. The “rope of the Norns” had been broken with Patton’s death, and the Anenerbe, under the direct command of Reichsmanager Wolfram Sievers, made their last, desperate move, performing the ritual that fevered research and foul experiments had enabled. From the text:
Montgomery swept into Lübeck, and Bradley’s armor growled closer to Nuremberg, and Zhukov smashed across the Oder, and the sun of July rose over a prostrate Reich. Wagner’s Götterdämmerung played on Berlin Radio night and day, and the smoke blotted out the stars. And then it happened; the whole world heard the howl of Garm, and the moon was eclipsed in blood. The head of Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, 350 miles across, breached the surface of the Arabian Sea and rose up into the troposphere. Its first lunge destroyed three troop convoys and their escort carriers, swallowed in one bite 100 miles south of the Azores. A coil of the Serpent now stretched across Africa from Mogadishu to Morocco.
The Allied response was swift. Operation John Henry represented the last, the only, chance to stop the Nazi-unleashed horror of Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods. From the text:
When the head reared up again off Vigo Bay, it gulped down the U.S.S. Essex and TF 24, and paused to splinter a few hundred thousand tons of shipping. President Truman gave the go-ahead, and a lone B-29 took off from Iceland. Its original target had been Berlin, but Captain Joseph Westover had new orders. He, and the crew of the Strange Cargo, were to seek out and engage the Midgard Serpent with the Trinity Device. On July 21, 1945, spotter planes for “Operation John Henry” zeroed the Strange Cargo in on the Serpent, its head 20,000 feet above Oslo and moving southeast at 80 knots. Captain Westover was an ace pilot, capable of flying a plane through something much smaller than a snake’s pupil 500 yards across.
Click the image at right for a glimpse at the fateful order dispatching the Strange Cargo on it’s last flight.
Tomorrow: Serpentfall.
2 Responses to “Foreshadowing Ragnarok #2: Operation John Henry”
You know, at first glance I find it weird for Nazis to be seeking to bring Ragnarok, but then it all fits so wickedly well.
By Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler on Mar 25, 2009