Doppelganger (11 page)

Hindenburg
also scored a second hit, this time on the belt of the ship. While the flatter trajectory of the shell gave it much more penetrating power in a side armor hit, the angle of the blow was very small given the fact that the target’s bow was very nearly pointed directly into the line of fire. This caused a glancing blow instead of a more damaging direct hit had the round come in perpendicular. Again, it was the unorthodox design of the ship, and the way Tovey had boldly chosen to fight with it, that made these hits far less serious than they might have been.

The British gunners had also put additional damage on both German ships. The two forward turrets in Connors’ 6-3 salvos had concentrated on
Hindenburg
, and scored yet another hit amidships that smashed a secondary battery and started a bad fire. X-turret also managed to strike
Bismarck
forward on her bow, and very low, with the shell penetrating near the water line in that less protected area, and causing flooding from the wash of the forward bow. A second shell plunged into the water very near this point, struck the ship, but did not detonate, a bit of luck that saved
Bismarck
from serious harm.

The running battle had seen his formation steaming almost due east at about 90 degrees, with
Invincible
coming up from the southwest, steering a jogging course that varied from 30 to 50 degrees. At times the Germans were at 28 knots, and sometimes surged at their top speed of 30 knots, and the angle of convergence was gobbling up the range quickly. Tovey was inside the 12,000 meter range mark in minutes, dangerously close, and he could see the Germans were about to turn to cross his T, which is just what he expected. Now he began to maneuver the ship to prepare for his torpedo launch.

He made his sharp turn to starboard, with the intention of coming quickly around to expose the port side torpedo tubes and fire a spread of four lances at a point well out in front of the enemy ships. It was then that Adler made his first real mistake. He saw the sudden turn, just after that inconsequential hit amidships, but his mind saw much more in the maneuver than Tovey intended.

“Got him amidships!” he shouted. “Good shooting Eisenberg! Look now, he’s coming around in a hard turn. He’s thinking twice about trying to get any closer. We’ve crossed his T and he’s trying to come around and run with us at the broadside. He’s making a bad mistake!”

Eisenberg beamed down from his perch above with the main gun director, and the next three seconds would decide the battle. Adler snapped out an order, thinking he would easily frustrate the British maneuver by turning to starboard himself, using the slight lead he still maintained, and persisting in crossing the enemy’s T. It had never occurred to him that
Invincible
was about to fire torpedoes, and if he knew this was happening, he should have turned hard to port instead of starboard, for now he was maneuvering right into the path of the torpedo spread, and actually closing the range even more.

Adler’s eyes were lost behind his field glasses, intently watching the other ship and seeing his own shellfall straddle the British behemoth yet again. The torpedoes streaked from beneath the waterline on
Invincible
, and then, to Adler’s surprise, he saw the British ship execute yet another sharp turn, this time hard to port.

“What is that fool doing?” he said aloud, looking over his shoulder and pointing. Then he answered his own question. “Ah, he does not want to come to starboard after seeing us turn, because if he comes all the way around he will have to turn his back side to us and all his guns are forward.” In his mind the British now looked like they wanted to steer due north as his own formation came round to the south, so the two sides could run parallel to one another in opposite directions instead of running together. He knows he can run with us and exchange broadsides, thought Adler. It never occurred to him that the enemy ship had turned only to present its starboard side and fire yet another spread of deadly 24-inch torpedoes.

If Lütjens had been alive, he might have seen what the British were really doing. His first command had been aboard torpedo boat T-68 in the 6th Torpedo Boat Demi-Flotilla. He served in these squadrons throughout the First War, and dueled with other British torpedo boats off Dunkirk, as well as French destroyers in his first combat actions at sea. Between the wars he had trained on the pre-dreadnought battleship
Schlesien,
again for torpedo firing exercises. In 1936, Lütjens had been appointed
Führer der Torpedoboote
(Chief of Torpedo Boats), planting his flag aboard the German Destroyer Z1,
Leberecht Maass.
It wasn’t until the outbreak of the war that he eventually transferred to the bigger ships, commanding the covering force for the Norwegian campaign with
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
.

So the old torpedo man at heart might have seen much more in Tovey’s unorthodox maneuvers than Adler, and in that critical moment, he may have certainly turned to port instead of starboard. But Lütjens was dead, and all of that seasoned experience was gone with him.

“Now we will have him badly outgunned,” said Adler, a jubilant edge to his voice. “He cannot trade broadsides with us and hope to survive. Get him, Eisenberg!”

Tovey knew the Germans were not going to be able to come round on 180 for very long. It was only a matter of a few minutes before they would discover their peril, and soon the high mainmast watch on
Hindenburg
shouted out the warning.

“Torpedoes!”

The word shocked Adler, for it was the last thing he expected. In fact, he had no idea that the British ship even carried such weapons, and there had not been a single instance of a battleship using torpedoes since the first world war. The
Hindenburg
had initially included six similar submerged torpedo tubes in her design, but they had been removed in the final construction, thought to be an anachronism. That torpedoes would be used here, in the heat of this intense gun duel, never entered his mind.

Yet now he had to quickly find the danger and maneuver the ship. To do so he rushed outside to the weather deck, where Lütjens body still lay in his unceremonious death, crews only just arriving with a stretcher. Adler had heard the Admiral had fallen, but it was only now that he would see him in his death pose, one arm plaintively extended on the cold metal deck, as if he were desperately trying to point out the impending danger in those oncoming torpedoes.

It was a grizzly sight that shook the Kapitan in spite of the urgency of this moment, for he had to stand on the deck still wet with the Admiral’s blood. He looked frantically to the sea, trying to find the wakes of the enemy torpedoes and finally saw that he had steered directly into their approach. Apparently Lindemann on the
Bismarck
had already seen them, and he took it upon himself to turn hard to port. Adler tried to do the same, shouting the orders at the top of his voice, and watching the heavy bow of the
Hindenburg
cutting the sea with the sudden turn.

It would not be enough. The two salvos off
Invincible
had set loose a spread of eight torpedoes, and two were going to strike
Hindenburg
amidships, a third passing behind the ship and narrowly missing
Bismarck
. The combined weight of the blows sent 1500 pounds of TNT against the underwater bulkhead, which was a tremendous shock.

German ships were sturdy vessels, and they had been built with ingenious armor schemes with one single minded aim—survivability at sea. “Steadfastness” was the primary aim of German ship designers, a combination of strength, durability and survivability. To achieve this they combined an excellent system of armor, both above and below the water line, clever watertight subdivisions all along the hull, and the best trained damage control teams at sea.
Hindenburg
had been struck a hard blow, but it would not be fatal to the ship.

The interval between the outer skin of the ship’s hull and the main torpedo bulkhead was over 5 meters, a design feature that aimed to absorb the explosive shock of the torpedo. The Germans had tested out their design theory by using the old battleships
Kaiser Wilhelm
II
and
Hannover
as torpedo targets. Their work would be so skilled that, in another telling of these events,
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
would easily shrug off numerous hits by 500 pound bombs, and the
Bismarck
would still be floating after being pummeled for hours by heavy guns of British battleships, and struck by no less than nine torpedoes. It would take a bomb weighing over 12,000 pounds, and two of them, to finally sink the
Tirpitz
.

So the mighty
Hindenburg
was not fatally damaged, but the dint to Adler’s psyche was more pronounced. He now found his ship had sustained three 16-inch shell hits, fifteen hits from 6-inch guns and now these two torpedoes. The crews were rushing to contain the flooding, and he did not yet know that the damage would be controllable. The battle he had so ardently sought had not turned out to his liking, and now his thoughts soured.

The desperate turn made by the German ships to port now sent them both off on a heading of about 80 degrees east. Meanwhile, Tovey’s last turn to fire his starboard side torpedoes had taken him around to 270 degrees west. The two sides were now running away from one another at a combined speed of over 60 knots, which increased the range by 1850 meters per minute, taking the interval from about 12,000 meters to just over 17,000 meters in three minutes.

Invincible
then turned hard to starboard again, as Tovey needed to get his main guns into action. The ship swung around in a wide turn until he was heading nearly due north, but the
Hindenburg
ran on to the east still opening the range.

This entire action was still well to the southwest of the position where
Rodney
was foundering, and slowly capsizing into the sea. For another ten minutes, the two sides exchanged fire, with no further hits being scored. During that interval, the range opened another 8600 meters, before the thick smoke of the long running gun duel shrouded the entire scene with heavy haze. The gun directors and spotters could no longer get an accurate sighting, and the last salvo fired by
Invincible
, her 48th, ended the action.

Aboard that ship, a runner came with messages from Captain Patterson. Flag Lieutenant Villers took it and went to Tovey, his expression hopeful. “
King George V
and
Prince of Wales
report they are now thirty miles to our northwest. And better yet, sir, they say they were just overflown by planes off our carriers. Apparently Powers and Tuck are getting close enough to matter.”

He was referring to Captain Gerald Tuck on
Illustrious
and Captain Arthur John Powers on
Ark Royal
. Both these carriers had been following in the wake of the oncoming battleships, and were only now coming in range to get their planes off.

“It’s starting to feel like I’m actually commanding a fleet again,” said Tovey, inwardly relieved that he had come through the mad rush and fire of the battle with relatively little damage. He had been outgunned, yet he fought his ship to take advantage of every innovation in her design, and battled two strong German ships to what must now be considered a draw here. But what to do?

“Radar has the Germans coming around towards 180 sir,” said Villers.

“South?” Tovey seemed surprised. Either the Germans were unaware of what was happening further east with
Rodney
, or Lütjens had some other reason for making this turn. He did not know that Lütjens had nothing to do with the decision, and that Adler had decided to look for the
Tirpitz
.

That ship, along with
Scharnhorst
, had fought another inconclusive running duel with the two British battlecruisers that took them well away from
Hindenburg’s
action, eventually forcing them to break off. Topp had then turned, thinking he might again eventually find the
Rodney
, but soon seeing that his squadron was now well south of her last reported position. He sent a message to the
Hindenburg
advising him of his status, and Adler had a good long while to think things over. He decided to rendezvous with Topp, call in
Prinz Eugen
and the destroyer
Thor
from their rescue mission near the sinking
Graff Zeppelin
, and then proceed to the Bay of Biscay. The loss of most of his air cover, and the report that British planes had been spotted by the few fighters he had aloft from the
Goeben
, both weighed heavily in his decision.

Adler was now looking to get closer to land based air power, and the safety of ports on the French coast. In doing so, he would also be keeping well east of the remaining British battleships, for after his engagement, he did not now relish the thought of four more British heavyweights coming on the scene if he lingered here.

Tovey waited, thinking to shadow his enemy now until the remaining battleships under Patterson and Holland could join him. He soon received a message from the
Argos Fire
that gave him the exact positions of all the German ships, and he was able to quickly see what they were now doing.

“By Jove, I think we’ve beaten them, Villers,” he said with a smile as he leaned over the plotting table. “From the look of these course tracks, I would say they are running for France now.”

“Apparently so sir,” said Villers. “Will we give chase?”

Tovey thought for a minute. The gladiators had met, and fought the good fight in the center of the ring. Both would survive to fight another day, though both had wounds to heal.

“Patterson and Holland have been at sea a good long while.” He said. “A pity those ships don’t have longer legs. They’ll be needing fuel soon, and chasing the Germans into the Bay of Biscay would also neutralize our current advantage with air cover. No. I think if we can get in a few licks with the carriers, all the better, but otherwise the fleet will be needing fuel to continue operations. We’d do better to consolidate and head for our base in the Azores. Then we stand our watch again, and see if Lütjens wants any further argument with the Royal Navy.