Doppelganger (9 page)

“Yes sir. Of course, sir. I’m terribly sorry. I meant no offense.”

“No offense taken, Tovey. This is simply a matter of decorum.”

“Yes sir.”

“Very good then. That will be all.”

“Sir!”
Tovey saluted and went to leave, but the Captain scratched his ear, adding one last word.

“You were correct in one thing,”
he said quietly.

“Sir?”

“That bit about reliance on speed and armor. I gave it some thought and find it sound advice, depending on the circumstances of course. But just remember that King Alfred is the flagship of this squadron, young man. In that role she will be at the head of her formation and expected to lead the battle line in. So in nine cases out of ten we will not be talking about a single ship broadside, but that of the entire squadron. This is concentration of firepower, Mister Tovey. Don’t forget that.”

Invincible
is the fleet flagship now, thought Tovey, and I should be leading in the full power of the Royal Navy, and using that concentration of firepower. Circumstances simply prevent that at the moment.

 In that first wild engagement, Tovey had
Kent
,
Bedford, Monmouth,
and then the light cruisers
Astraea
and
Flora
with him to form that battle line, a long tail of iron on the sea. Now the Admiral of the Fleet was rushing in alone, but he would stick to the tactics he had so ably argued all those years ago, because his ship had all the power of a broadside no matter which way it was facing. Yes, Captain Baker was correct. Concentration of firepower is always best, at any range, and
Invincible
can give me that every time we fire.

We’ll actually have them nine guns to eight at the outset, he realized. With any luck we can get in our licks before they turn, but no matter what happens, I’m coming at them straight as an arrow. When they do turn their silhouettes will present much bigger targets for Mister Connors.

The ship’s second salvo fired, the noise even louder now as the three guns behind the conning tower boomed out their challenge. Listen to them now, Mister Baker, he thought with a smile. But dear god, give us the hits.

The almighty, and perhaps even Captain Baker, were listening, and smiling back at him that day. The forward watch soon shouted out the news.

“Straddle! Range is good.”

“Black Five!” said Tovey firmly, ordering a flag sent up that was supposed to act as a signal to other ships in this squadron to fire for effect. The flagman looked at him, as there were no other ships in the squadron, and Captain Bennett gave the man a wink and waved him off, knowing his gunnery officer Connors would know what to do. Soon the ship had all nine guns ready, and Tovey knew what was coming, quietly raising two fingers to his ears. Even through that muffled silence imposed by his fingertips, the roar of nine 16-inch guns came thundering through.

* * *

So
now the gloves are coming off at last, thought Lütjens, slowly lowering his field glasses. That was very close. His decks were still awash with sea spray from a row of heavy shells that had raked across his bow. Thankfully, none hit the ship directly, but the rattle of shrapnel clattered on the armor there, and he knew his enemy had found the range.

“Ahead two thirds!” he shouted, and Captain Adler looked at him, hesitating briefly, but wise enough to first relay the order to the helmsman before he questioned it.

“You’re slowing to 20 knots?”

“You saw what just happened, Captain. They’ll be trimming a little range off their last sighting, and if we slow the ship down, and turn slightly, their next salvo should be well short. Use your head!”

Adler took the sting, nodding grimly, and quickly ordering the ship to turn ten points. He finally had his battle, but he realized the Admiral had been correct. He had been so set on getting Axel Faust into action on the main gun turrets, that he was forgetting to maneuver the ship properly. He resolved not to disappoint the Admiral again.

“Oberleutnant Eisenberg!” said Adler tersely. “I trust you have a firing solution. Answer that salvo!”

“Aye sir.”

It was
Hindenburg
’s turn to get her main guns into action, and the insult of those small caliber rounds had finally abated. Now it would be steel on steel, the massive weight and shock of shells weighing over a thousand pounds each, flung into the sky by a massive, controlled explosion, and sent careening over the sea to find a target that was over fifteen miles away. As insane as that seemed, this carefully controlled chaos could be managed so well that the battle was almost certain to see hits obtained on either side. It was nowhere near the precision of the smaller rounds fired by
Argos Fire
, but any hit scored would be much more lethal.

“We must close the range, Adler, and make the best use of our armor. The gunners will do their best work inside 20,000 meters.”

The armor scheme on
Hindenburg
had been conceived by designers who assumed the ship would most often fight in the misty cold waters of the North Atlantic, where visibility was low and range for gunnery duels was often very short. As such, the layout and angle of the armor was designed to repel flat trajectory attacks, as opposed to plunging fire attacks that might be delivered from shells fired at a greater range.

“Sir, I recommend that
Bismarck
move off our wake and run on a parallel course to our ship as we close. That way they can get a clear line of fire.”

“Good, Adler. Now you are thinking like a fleet commander again. Yes, signal
Bismarck
to take station to port, and fire when clear. But mind your signals flags if we have to maneuver.”

Down in Anton turret, Axel Faust was peering through his range finder, the man who had smashed the
Queen Elizabeth
senseless in the Med, with a withering blow forward that broke her jaw. His well muscled arms made him look every bit the heavyweight he seemed, and he was already working up a glistening sweat as they sighted for their second salvo.

“Move smartly, boys,” he shouted, urging his men on. “They already sent us to the showers with that first salvo, and we were lucky it wasn’t a rain of steel. Let’s give them hell!”

The guns were primed and re-elevated, the hum of the hydraulics loud in the confined space. The breach was cleared, lights signaling ‘gun ready.’ Faust waited on Fuchs in the forward gun director, his eyes lost behind the cups of his own optical sighting. They heard the soaring whoosh and fall of more heavy rounds, and knew the enemy’s second salvo was looking for them. Faust could feel the ship’s engines rev down as they completed the loading action, and he hoped the brass on the bridge knew what they were doing. He was not disappointed. He could clearly see the rounds falling short by at least 500 meters. The speed change ordered by Lütjens had worked as planned.

But those bastards would have put those rounds much closer if we had kept on at full battle speed. They’re damn good, and so we’ll have to be better.

Anybody could train for this job, but he was not just anybody. He was Axel Faust, the devil’s adjutant, and the best naval gunner in the fleet. Seconds later the order came down to fire, though he was not quite satisfied with the elevation on his guns. He was going to nudge them up another degree, but he heard the booming report of Bruno turret firing, and knew that Hans Hartmann had beaten them to the punch.

No matter, he thought. “Up elevation! One degree. Quickly! Now Fire!” Anton threw the right cross over Hartmann’s left hook, and they waited eagerly to spot the fall of their shot. Thirty seconds later he saw the target erupt with fire, but he knew it was too soon to be a hit from their own shells. The British had just given them a full salvo, something rarely done, as the big ships were more prone to fire half salvos given the jarring concussion of the massive guns.

Squinting through his optics, he soon saw two clear shellfalls short of the target, and slightly wide. Hartmann’s hook had found nothing but seawater, and a few seconds later his own rounds fell slightly long, but one was very close. He saw the tall plume of water just off the starboard side of the enemy ship, and then noted how they responded by making a slight turn away from the round. He’s jogging left, and then right again—a zig-zag approach. And yet he can still fire all three turrets as he comes. Each time he turns he opens the fire arc of that third turret behind the conning tower. This one knows how to fight his ship. In the meantime, none of our rear turrets can get into action, but that will change soon, if we can close the range without serious damage.

The seconds ticked off, agonizingly slow, and the men rushed through their loading evolutions. Then he saw them, evil white geysers dolloping up from the sea, and walking slowly towards the ship. And they were going to be very close…

Chapter 8

Down
from the heavens came the demons set loose by the work of Elswick, Vickers, Beardmore and the Royal Gun Factory. They had been blasted into the sky by a 108 ton gun that was over 60 feet long, using 50 pounds of TNT and another propellant charge of 495 pounds. These exploded inside it to create a working pressure of over 21 tons per square inch, and fire a shell weighing 929kg, or 2,048 pounds. It would blast out of the muzzle at a speed of roughly 2600 feet per second, taking all of 40 seconds before it surged down at the targets, which were some 25,000 yards distant.

The rounds of A-turret, or ‘Old Elswick’ on the
Invincible
would fall in a line off the starboard side of
Hindenburg
, but those of B-turret would be much closer, with the center gun, sometimes called Vickers Delight by the crew, scoring the first hit of the engagement. At that range, the massive shell might have penetrated 10.3 inches of side armor, not enough to defeat the 14 inches protecting
Hindenburg
. Yet that was academic, because the shell was going to strike the forward deck, right beneath the elevated gun of Anton turret. It was coming in at an angle of 24.6 degrees, and could penetrate 3.9 inches of deck armor at that range, and if it blasted through, the magazines that fed the ardor of Axel Faust and his crew were right beneath.

But
Hindenburg
had a very tough shell. The upper deck on the ship was 3.1 inches of Wotan Hart steel, and this was penetrated, decapping the shell, only to find the main armored decks waiting beneath, with another 4.7 inches of steel. The bow of the ship was very strong, based on German experience at Jutland when the
Lutzow
went down when her bow was riddled with hits. It was ironic that
Lutzow
had engaged and sunk the older British battlecruiser
Invincible
, forerunner of the ship now dueling with
Hindenburg
, and her subsequent demise would lead German designers to give the ship the strong chin it now had. So a kind of rematch was now underway as both navies upgraded their ships to the heavyweight division.

Vicker’s Delight would not get through this time, which was why the Germans were closing to this range. If this same gun had achieved a hit at a much longer range, the steepness of its angle of fall and kinetic shock would have been much greater. At 30,000 yards it might have penetrated 5.1 inches of deck armor, and 6.5 inches at 35,000 yards. Yet those were ranges that almost never saw the guns accurate enough to score hits, so for all intents and purposes,
Hindenburg
’s deck armor was going to shrug off most everything it received inside 25,000 yards in well protected areas over magazines and machinery. In places the decks were even more heavily reinforced by the special new two inch armor plating on hydraulics that Chief Engineer Koenig had rigged, which were now still laying flat, not deployed in their intended position to try and thwart missile attacks. That did not mean the ship could not be harmed, as Axel Faust was soon to learn.

Faust was lucky that hit could not get through to the magazine, but the explosion it caused on the forward deck was so violent that he and his crew were badly shaken up, and the right barrel on Anton Turret was jarred upward so severely, that its training and elevation mechanism gears were badly damaged. Shrapnel flayed the heavy gun turret, but mostly struck the face, which was 15.2 inches thick, and completely impenetrable to anything but a shell fired at near point blank range inside 12,000 yards.

 Faust had managed to stay on his feet, but his ears were ringing from the concussion, and several men were down. He took one look at his number two gun and knew it would not fire again in this engagement, but he still had number one, and enough able bodied men to keep it firing. Yet nothing was coming down from the rangefinder’s station, and Fuchs was silent.

He gritted his teeth, and was at his optics making his own calculations while the crew staggered back to life, driven on by his deep voice. “Come on! Get up and get your back into it. We still have the number one gun. Let’s move!”

He waited, yet no data came from the gun director, and now he was going to have to call the shot himself. They were now inside 22,000 meters by his best judgment, with the range falling closer to 18,000. He knew the Captain would make a turn any minute to get those rear turrets into action, so he wanted to fire before he had to also re-train the gun after that turn. His crew did not disappoint, and they had a ready light in just under 50 seconds. Faust waited, squinting at his enemy through his rangefinder, and then decided.

“Make elevation thirteen degrees! Ready… Fire!”

The boom of the German 16-inch gun shook the turret again, and his vengeance was on its way, guided by the devil’s adjutant himself, and followed soon after by another two round salvo from Hartmann in Bruno. Then, just as he expected, he began to feel the
Hindenburg
turn, and he shouted out the new tracking orders.