Kirov Saga: Darkest Hour: Altered States - Volume II (Kirov Series) (2 page)

“Right away, sir!”

Wells walked briskly off the bridge
until he was out of the Admiral’s sight. Then, seeing he had a clear ladder
down, he hastened away at a run. Tovey heard the man’s footfalls echo from the
open hatch and smiled.

* * *

Lt
-Cdr. Williamson was
leading in 815 Squadron with two sub-flights of three
Swordfish
each,
and his planes were lined up well on the target ahead. They were coming in on
the aft quarter after descending from 4,000 feet to make their attack run. Lt.
Scarlett was ready on the rear gun mount, and fussing about with his W/T
headset.

“Signal the lads, Mister
Scarlett. Target ahead. Sub-flight B to the right. We’ll swing round the other
side.”

Scarlett was fated to win a
Distinguished Service Cross later that year over the Italian Navy at Taranto,
and Williamson would be admitted as a Companion of the Distinguished Service
Order, but instead they would get their medals early for the events that were now
about to unfold. John Scarlett thought he heard something in his headset,
tapping it again and thinking he had a dodgy wire. Then a voice came through
and his eyes widened. At that same moment, Williamson saw two flares go up, an
expedient measure that was seldom used by a warship in combat, as it would
clearly mark its position. He counted them, one… two… three… blue! “What the
hell? Hold on, Lieutenant. Belay that order! That’s Royal Navy up ahead!”

Scarlett looked over his
shoulder, saw the flares, passed a fleeting moment thinking the Germans may
have worked out their signal sequences, but he had heard a frantic voice in his
earpiece, right in the clear.
“Lookout ahead! HMS Invincible!”
The
message came in just as the planes were beginning to swerve off to make their
attack approach. “They want us to fly on zero-four-zero, sir. It’s HMS
Invincible
up ahead!”

“Good of them to introduce
themselves,” said Williamson. “Thought we had already passed the Fleet Flagship
long ago! If this is
Invincible
, what was that ship we left in our wake,
Johnny?”

“Might have been
Sussex
or
Devonshire
, sir. They’re both off to the southwest.”

“What about those other ships up
ahead at ten-o-clock?” Williamson had spotted two more dark silhouettes on the
horizon.

“The message says our target is
on 040, sir.”

This was the first combat mission
Illustrious
had been handed, and just three days after she had finished
initial trials on air wing operations. There seemed to be ships everywhere, and
the men had not had enough time over the fleet to drill on ship recognition
profiles, or anything else. He would have seen what was in front of him in
time, as
Invincible
had a profile that was impossible to miss, but they
had been coming in on the ship’s aft quarter, making identification more
difficult. He took a long look at the contact at 10:00, thinking it had to be
German ships, but orders were orders and so he steered 040.

Several sub-flights had already
fluttered off to their attack headings, as per training, but Lieutenant
Scarlett was quickly signaling them to reform. Sub-Lieutenants Sparke and
Macaulay were quick to respond and maneuvered off either wing. Lieutenants
Kemp, Swayne and Maund were already down at a thousand feet, but he saw them
nose up to rejoin. The last two sub-flights in his squadron were well back and
got the message before they broke to attack. A few minutes later Williamson had
his eggs in the basket again and the
Swordfish
came up and then veered
right to bypass
Invincible
, wings wagging in salutation. Thankfully not
a single round came up for them, but it was a near run thing.

“Did Hale get the message?”

“Right, sir,” said Scarlett. “819
Squadron is coming up behind us and will follow our heading.”

High overhead a sub-flight of
three
Fulmars
surged ahead. They were accompanied by six
Skuas
of
824 Squadron under Lieutenant Commander Charles Evans, off to sweep out in
front in case the Germans were waiting with more Messerschmitts, though no sign
was seen of enemy planes.

The whole formation veered right,
roaring away toward the spot on the horizon where
Invincible
hastened to
join the battle, and within seconds they saw the smoke and fire of battle.
Zero-four-zero it is, thought Williamson. Now that we’ve sorted out our target
heading, let’s hope the lads can remember how to make a decent attack. This
time the Germans won’t be shooting off flares.

Chapter 2

Aboard
Bismarck
,
Captain Lindemann knew he was not firing flares. The 15-inch guns had opened
the action at a little over18,000 meters, with both his own forward turrets
firing along with Anton turret on
Tirpitz
behind him, the first spotting
salvos to see if they had the range. True to form, the shots were very close,
good enough to begin firing for effect with only minor adjustments.

“Port ten and steady on,” he
ordered, swinging around a bit to allow his aft turrets to begin training on
the targets. “Looks like our
Stukas
had the first dance,” he smiled.
“That second ship is already burning. What do you make of it, Mister Oels?”

Fregattenkapitän Hans Oels was
the Executive Officer aboard
Bismarck
, making ready to go below decks
when Lindemann turned to him. Tall and straight, he was a man of few words, but
a strict disciplinarian and not one to cross in the line of duty. Oels stepped
up and took the field glasses Lindemann handed him.

“Hood,”
he said calmly.
“And trouble with one of their forward turrets from the look of it.”

“There’s another battlecruiser
leading her,” said Lindemann.

“It would have to be
Repulse
.
Werner says
Graf Zeppelin
drove off
Renown
and its back in Scapa
Flow by now.”

“There’s no way it could be out
here then. Excellent! Two battlecruisers. Good guns but they haven’t the armor
to stand with us in a fight like this. Today we prove what the Kriegsmarine can
do, Oels. It looks like Schneider already has the range.” He was referring to Korvettenkapitän
Adalbert Schneider, the ship’s First Artillery Officer.

“Good shooting, sir,” said Oels.
“I had better get down to the Damage Control Center.” Oels action station was
the central damage control command post, deep in the bowels of the ship. If
anything happened on the bridge he could have an overall view of the situation
by reading the lights winking on the damage control panel, and he could command
the ship from there if necessary. It was, in effect,
Bismarck’s
equivalent of a reserve bridge.

“Don’t worry, Oels, I won’t keep
you busy.
Hood
is already burning!”

The roar of
Bismarck’s
second salvo punctuated his remark, rattling the bridge with its power. Oels
was not there to see the results a short minute later when Lindemann saw the
tall water splashes straddle the target. “A hit!” he said jubilantly. “Right on
the conning tower! That will give them a headache or two, and let them know
just who they are dealing with.”

Now we get our chance, he
thought. I have the two finest ships available in the German navy. When
Hindenburg
is ready we will be even stronger, but at this moment we are more than a match
for
Hood
and
Repulse
. The
Invincible
is another matter. If
that ship is close by, as I believe it is, then the odds will be even. So we
must reap every advantage while we can just now. Schneider has the range. Let
us sink these ships before the British can do anything about it!

“Watch reports aircraft bearing
two-one-zero, Kapitän.” It was Korvettenkapitän Kurt Werner, the ship’s
Intelligence Officer, who had just come up from the signals deck. “Low
altitude, sir. Most likely
Swordfish
.”

“Then they must have another
carrier nearby,” said Lindemann. “Signal the fleet to repel air attack. It
would be nice if
Graf Zeppelin
had left a few fighters over us.”

The Kapitän would get his wish,
for Marco Ritter had lingered after the
Stuka
attack and still had two
wing mates with him of the seven fighters that had broken up much of the strike
wing off
Ark Royal.
There they had tried their hand against the veteran
British pilots, but now the wing from
Illustrious
was tasting combat for
the first time. Lindemann saw what looked like a flight of falcons drop out of
a cloud bank and come swooping in on the low flying
Swordfish
, their
wings lit up with machine gun fire. Trails of thin smoke bled from the tails of
two British planes, then he saw that a Squadron of enemy fighters came on the
scene from above and the German planes were soon in a swirling dogfight.

The flak guns were firing now,
filling the sky with dark grey puffs of smoke as their rounds exploded, but the
Swordfish
were so lumbering in their approach that it actually threw off
the sighting mechanisms on the German guns, which had been calibrated to oppose
more modern aircraft flying much faster. He saw six, then twelve planes coming
right in at the center of his battle line, and on their right another ragged
line of planes appeared, slightly behind, all flying low on the deck as they
began their attack run.

Bismarck
was heavily
provisioned with anti-aircraft defenses. The ship had sixteen 4.1-inch guns
arrayed in eight twin turrets, another sixteen 3.7-inch guns, and twelve more
20mm flak guns, which were perhaps the most effective guns against the
Swordfish
.
The 3.7s were only semi-automatic, with a fairly slow rate of fire. If they hit
a plane it would probably knock it down, but those hits were few and far
between. By contrast, the 20mm guns could rattle out a good stream of lead, the
tracers clearly marking the firing path to allow the gunners to get a better
aim. With
Tirpitz
in her wake, all this fire was doubled, and
Prince
Eugen
had also opened up with everything she had. Many of
Bismarck’s
bigger 5.9-inch secondary batteries joined the fray, and the sound of all these
weapons firing at once was deafening, a crescendo of doom punctuated by the
enormous roar of the main turrets as they fired their third salvo.

The German gunners had some
success, particularly against Lieutenant Commander Hale’s 819 Squadron where Lt.
Lee and Sub-Lt. Jones went down after luck favored the Germans and they took a
direct hit from a 3.7-inch round. Diving into their attack, Lieutenants Wellham
and Humphreys were found by the 20mm guns off
Bismarck
, which set them
afire and caused severe aileron damage. Wellham struggled with the yoke, the
aircraft out of control for a time, but he managed to kick his tail around and
straighten out.

“Let’s get that fish in the sea!”
he yelled to his mate, and they dropped the torpedo at about 900 yards aimed right
at the
Bismarck,
but it was clearly too late and bound to miss, running
into the ship’s wake. Wellham kicked himself for aiming directly at the ship
and not leading it properly, but in the heat of the moment, struggling for
control on the yoke and stick, it was the best they could do. As he banked
away, his plane received further wing damage from AA fire and it was only good
fortune that allowed him to get his heavily damaged
Swordfish
back to
Illustrious
in one piece.

The Squadron Leader, Hale, could
see several of his pilots had fired much too soon, doing exactly what Wellham
had done and taking aim at the broad side of the big leading German ship. They
would have to be in at 500 yards to have any chance of a hit, he thought, the
bloody idiots. So he pressed on through the flak, determined to get his torpedo
in the water at the last possible moment and get that second ship in the line.
Lieutenants Hamilton, Skelton and Clifford followed him in, but Morford and
Sub-Lt. Green in plane L5Q
developed engine trouble and had to abort,
dropping their torpedo to gain altitude and limp off to the south.

It was Hale’s group of four
planes and an equal number of intrepid pilots from 815 Squadron on their left
that got the right idea and bored in to take aim at the gap between the two big
German battleships. The flak gunners got two of eight planes in this sector,
but the remaining six all got their torpedoes away and they were well aimed,
right ahead of
Tirpitz
, which was running on at high speed.

Lindemann looked to see
Tirpitz
make a hard emergency turn to port, her bow frothing up the sea, the blood red
water awash and gleaming on her forecastle. The ship turned smartly, but her
forward momentum was too great to allow it to get inside the line of enemy
fire.

Topp’s only chance now was to see
if he could run with the torpedoes, thought Lindemann.
Tirpitz
was
surging along their same bearing to present a slimmer target. In doing so he
was dangerously exposing his turbines and rudder to the line of fire, but in
this case he was lucky enough to avoid damage there. It was the great beam of
the ship, 118 feet wide, that ended up being his downfall.
Tirpitz
was
right between the wakes of two torpedoes after making the turn, and the gutter
between them was too narrow for the mighty ship to avoid the deadly lances.
Both torpedoes hit, one on either side of the ship, but Lindemann saw only one
tall water splash on the starboard side indicating a successful detonation. The
second torpedo had failed to ignite on contact, scudding off the side of the
ship and angling away off to the left.

Lieutenant Commander Hale got
credit for the hit, just below B turret but in a place that saw
Tirpitz
well protected by the anti-torpedo bulge and good armor. The second torpedo
from Williamson’s 815 Squadron struck well aft, on the port side in a much more
vulnerable spot, but had no teeth. Hale’s planes veered right, taking murderous
fire from
Bismarck
in reprisal that saw Skelton and Clifford’s planes
shot to pieces. The other two planes, including Hale would make it back to
Illustrious
alive. Williamson’s Squadron banked left over the broad frothing wake of
Tirpitz
and had only the lighter flak fire from
Prinz Eugen
to deal with. They
would all make it home alive.