Grand Alliance

Chapter 28

The helos landed with deck crews ready to service and re-arm the X-3s, though they were waiting on orders from the bridge. It was there that Captain MacRae was taking final stock of the situation noting that the enemy destroyer group targeted was badly disrupted. Three of the five destroyers had reduced speed dramatically, their officers frantically radioing the flagship that they had been attacked by rocket fire, with heavy damage. While most of the ships were still seaworthy, two had been struck aft and had fires that were threatening the powerplant and boiler rooms. A third had a holed hull very near the water line that would force it to seek a friendly port. These ships could no longer run at the speeds necessary to fulfill their mission. Half the French destroyers in the fleet had now been largely taken out of the fight.

“Those Sea Skuas are good for something,” said MacRae. “A pity we didn’t bring more along.”

That was their real dilemma now. They had left port in 2021 with ample munitions to carry out their expected mission to the Black Sea, but somewhere they had crossed an unseen border to this new mission, and there had been no time to replenish the ship’s stocks. They had hit a battlecruiser and the French flagship, but with uncertain results. Both vessels were still on an attack heading and making 30 knots. They had hit a light cruiser and five destroyers, but the core of the enemy fleet remained intact.

The Captain huddled with Miss Fairchild, Mack Morgan and Mister Dean, and the look on MacRae’s face spoke volumes. “So it’s come to this,” he said. “With the last four missiles you’ve authorized for this fight, we might put some serious hurt on at least one of their capital ships, but I think we’d have to use them all.”

“That would even the odds a bit,” said Morgan, but they’ll still outnumber the British fleet nearly two to one.”

“Aye. It’s either one good blow like that, or we wait for this bar fight to actually begin and then break a bottle or two over the heads that seem to be doing the most damage on the other side. Mister Dean?” MacRae looked to his XO for an opinion.

“It will be a rough go for the British,” he said. “The enemy will have a tremendous speed advantage, and the weight of superior firepower. Yes, we might take one out if we use four GB-7s in a tight attack salvo. That’s going to put 800kgs of high explosives and a lot of excess fuel for the fire on one ship out there. That will likely take it out of the fight. But that will also still leave them four capital ships to the two British battleships, and from the intelligence report these are some tough fellows out there, The Normandie alone has enough throw weight in firepower to take on both the older Queen Elizabeth class battleships with a good chance of winning that fight.”

“So do we hit that ship now, or wait and see what develops.”

“I’ll say this much,” said Morgan. “If we hold until the action opens we can still hit them with one good shot, or jab at them as you suggested. And at least they’ll see us fighting. Fire now and we just have to tell them we’re done and wave goodbye.”

MacRae nodded. “Miss Fairchild?”

“I like Mack’s angle on this. Let’s see what they actually do and then, when the action opens, you do as you see best, Captain. But I’ll have to hold the line on that missile count. God only knows what lies ahead, and those missiles could save this ship in a difficult situation, and everyone aboard.”

“Understood.” MacRae took a long breath. “Inform Captain Barry on Queen Elizabeth. Tell them we’ve hit seven enemy ships, but they’re still coming at them like banshees on the fen. We’ll stay in the fight, but they need to stand to arms and be prepared for a tough battle here.”

So it was decided.

Aboard the Hindenburg a final signal was flashing out to Bismarck—‘take position ahead.’ and Kaiser was ordered to stand off with Goeben. The Germans had decided to commit just two ships to the fray, the heavy battleships that now moved to cooperate more closely with the French Squadron. Lütjens had seen the missiles in the sky again, and saw the flaming descent of one seaplane spotter after another.

“That air defense is too precise and effective against a small number of aircraft,” he said. “So I am ordering Goeben to stand her air crews down. No sense sending those planes and pilots up to be blown out of the sky by these rockets. Any word from the Luftwaffe?”

“Goering was none too happy with the losses reported by the Tenth Fliegerkorps, sir. Fiebig wants to husband his planes on Sicily. That said, Eighth Fliegerkorps has planes massing for the planned attack on Crete. They have promised us support, and by the time we catch up to the British they may be close at hand.”

“Good then. Let them provide the primary air threat and we can save the handful of Stukas we have for better use.”

“One of Ritter’s young new pilots has been making quite a name for himself — Hans Rudel. He’s the same man who hit the British battlecruisers up north.”

“Oh? Well if the air situation looks promising I will order them up. For now they stay in reserve. How long before we can sight the British?”

“At the rate we are gaining on them, no more than an hour.”

“Good. That will be enough time for me to address the crew. We have not had our chance against the Royal Navy, but now we test our guns and armor, Adler. Now you get the battle you’ve been waiting for.”

The Admiral spoke to his crew, telling them not to fear the new weapons of their enemies, and to rely on their skill, and the guns and armor that made their ship the finest in the world. Axel Faust, the brawny commander of the ships Anton Turret, was listening with a smile.

“Hear that boys?” he said. “Now we get to earn our keep. Let’s hope Wolfgang has sharp eyes today. We’ve waited a long time to get our hands on the British.” He was referring to the forward gun director where Wolfgang Fuchs would be sending him his targeting data. His job was to see that the turret was properly trained and sighted, the guns elevated to make the appropriate range, and the big shells properly chambered for firing. Faust was the best in the fleet, scoring more hits in gun trials in the Baltic than any other turret, or any man before him. He had put a good many target barges under the sea, and now he wanted to test his hand against a real enemy ship. Pounding the airfield on the Faeroes was nothing more than a throat clearing operation, as far as he was concerned.

The red light glinted off the dome of his large bald head, for he never wore his cap when it came time for action, and he often removed his coat, particularly when things got hot in the turret during a fast paced gunnery trial. He had served aboard Bismarck when that ship went through trials, but was glad to be selected to this prominent post aboard Hindenburg. He and Hans Hartmann in Bruno Turret were the forward might of the battleship, and would most likely be the first to fire given the approach they were making.

High above in the bridge, Klaus Jaeger was watching his radar for any signs of the enemy fleet, and he was soon able to report his first contact.

“Radar contact, bearing 140, south by southeast at thirty-five kilometers. Hydrophone confirms.”

“Bismarck sees it as well, sir,” said Adler looking at a message just handed to him by a breathless signalman. The other ship was alongside now, moving ahead to take the vanguard of the two ship German group. About two kilometers off their port side they could see the shadowy silhouettes of the French ships. The heavy cruiser Colbert was leading, followed by Strausbourg, Normandie and Dunkerque in the main battle line. Another heavy cruiser, Algerie, cruised with the light cruisers Marseilles and Jean de Vienne off the forward port quarter of this line, and three fitful cats, Lynx, Tigre and Panthere were fanned in front of this formation as a destroyer screen.

There were two other ships in the French Fleet still unscathed by the missile strike. Destroyer Aigle was attending the wounded light cruiser La Galissonniere, which was still struggling to put out fires and retiring to the nearest German controlled port in Greece, along with the survivors of the X-3 missile attack. The last ship was one of the five superb large fast destroyers, Indomitable, which were really a light cruiser class vessel given their size. Capable of 45 knots, it was the fastest ship ever built, and had been assigned to assist as a screening ship for the German carrier Goeben.

“We should sight them soon,” said Lütjens. “You may signal Bismarck and tell Lindemann that he has a free hand and may fire at his discretion.”

“You will not reserve the honor of the first salvo for Hindenburg?” Adler gave Lütjens a searching look.

“Kapitan Adler, it is not the first salvo that matters, but the last.”

The Admiral tipped his officer’s cap, then strode out onto the weather deck to use his field glasses. Soon he heard the watch on the mainmast call out the alarm, ship ahead, and he knew a fateful hour had come. This ship was conceived and designed long ago, built over many years by artisans from all over Germany. It had the latest guns, the best Krupp steel armor that the nation could provide. Then it spent months working out in trials before making its daring breakout at a place the British least expected. All that comes down to this hour, he thought. We build these ships at enormous cost, invest them with as much national pride as anything else. They steam and sail and we proudly thump our chest. But when it comes to the bottom line, it is a single hour like the one before me now that really matters.

It is surprising to me that I even find myself here at this moment, in the Mediterranean Sea! Kurt Hoffmann did his job well, he thought. The British have learned to fear the Twins, and as soon as they got wind that Scharnhorst was at large and heading for the Denmark Strait, they reacted just as we expected and moved their heavy ships too far west. That allowed me to stride right through the Faeroes gap, shelling that airfield as we went. By the time the British realized what was happening, they could only get one ship south after us, HMS Invincible. That is the one ship I must be wary of. It matches me in armor, firepower, and even betters me in speed. Is it out there today?

They were running with the wind at their back, which was always good, thought Lütjens. He studied the enemy fleet as the ships began to appear on the horizon. They must be the old WWI battleships the British have patched up and kept floating all these years. No wonder we’re closing on them so quickly. He saw the battle ensign hoisted on Bismarck’s mainmast and knew the time had come. The roar of his lead ship’s forward guns cracked like thunder and he saw the bright orange yellow fire ahead. A full salvo, he thought. Lindemann means business. Time I was back on the main bridge.

“Kapitan Adler,” he said with a proud smile. “Fight your battle!”

“Aye sir!” Adler was quick to get reports from his gun directors, and his senior artillery officer, Lutz Eisenberg called out the opening range at 28,000 meters. Bismarck had come ten points to starboard to continue closing while allowing Hindenburg an unobstructed line of fire.

“Helmsman,” said Adler. “Follow Bismarck’s wake. Fire when ready!”

Eisenberg was ready, and then the guns of the Hindenburg shook the wind with their power, the only 16 inch guns in the fleet. The waters seemed to burn red with the reflection of that blast, and the glow was soon masked by the deep brown smoke of the guns, billowing out like a pyroclastic flow from some wrathful volcano, as tall as the ship itself and many times its beam in width.

Down in Anton turret, Axel Faust was moving from one station to the next, receiving information from the gun directors and checking to see that all was well. He could also use optical sights in his turret in the event communications with the director were ever interrupted, and he had the good habit of always using them to compare his reading to the information he had from the director. Now he was watching for shell fall, and Bismarck had correctly waited for Hindenburg’s rounds to register on the distant targets before firing again. Faust smiled when he saw the rounds fall very near the enemy ships, and he could tell they were short when the upwelling of white water was superimposed on the long dark silhouettes of the ships. If the two formations had been running parallel, he might add 200 meters to his next salvo, but they were closing the range at nearly fifteen knots, and so the calculation was much more complex.

He waited until the next target data came down. “Elevation thirty,” he said in his deep throated voice. “Bearing 152. Range 26,500.” Then he took one last look in his optics and grinned. “Make it twenty-six four! Fire!” Anton was going to fire the long end of a 400 meter bracket salvo aimed at the heart of the enemy formation. Hans Hartmann in Bruno would fire the short end. They would therefore have two points of reference to adjust subsequent fire.

“Attention…” came the voice of Eisenberg over the intercom from the main gun director. “Shellfall!… Bruno short; Anton Straddling!”

Axel grinned. That extra hundred meters had done the job. That was a good long shot for a straddle on the second salvo. Now he knew what he had to do as Eisenberg’s voice sent down the next bearing and elevation to announce his settings. “Adjust, adjust!” Faust shouted at his gunners. “Track two degrees right, and steady on elevation!” At any minute they would get the order he was waiting for: “Rapid fire!” Eisenberg’s voice called out, and Faust clenched his fist as Anton’s guns boomed again.

“Nobody hits anything at this range,” said gunners mate Albert Lowe.

“Think like that and you never will,” said Faust. “Scharnhorst hit that British aircraft carrier at this range, and we can do better!”

They did do better, but just barely. The next salvo, the third from Anton, was right near the lead capital ship they had been targeting, and the bright orange fire that Axel saw through his rangefinder was not the enemy guns returning the insult. They had scored a hit, and he knew it was his, because Bruno had fired five seconds later and he now saw both those rounds fall right after his own. He could feel it in his bones. They had beaten Scharnhorst’s record for the longest hit ever obtained by a battleship at 26,465 yards, which was 24,200 meters. HMS Invincible had also bettered that mark when it scored a telling long shot against the Italians, but no one knew these things in the heat of the action. They would only be calculated later, once the after action reports were all typed up and compiled… and by the men who survived.

Chapter 29

Queen Elizabeth was struck forward, right near her number one turret, and the resulting damage was plain to see when a large secondary explosion blasted from the gunwale, obscuring everything forward of the conning tower with a heavy black smoke that was so thick it defied the wind.

The 16-inch shell had penetrated the deck, just missing the heavier 11-inch side armor on the turret and striking the upper portion of the barbette instead. Here the armor was much thinner on this older class ship, between four and six inches above the main belt armor where the penetration occurred. It was a design flaw that had been corrected in the newer King George V class, which had barbettes with twice that armor thickness at 12.75 inches, but that did not comfort the stately Queen at that moment. The round had detonated one of the four magazine areas where the powder bags were stored, and with near catastrophic results. The bulkheads between the magazine and upper shell deck were blown apart and every man there was killed instantly. The working room just beneath the upper gunhouse was devastated, and the side of the ship itself was rent asunder with the blast.

On the bridge, Captain Barry struggled to keep his footing, instinctively flinching and raising an arm to shield his face when fragments of shrapnel flayed the conning tower. The ship shuddered and rolled with the force of the secondary explosion, and then the heavy black smoke obscured all. The sound had been deafening, and now he could barely hear the hoarse shouting of a man on the voice tube. He felt a warm wetness on his neck, and reached up to the side of his right cheek, his fingers wet with blood trickling from his ear. In spite of the shock he shouted an order, his voice seeming a bare whisper in the chaos of that moment. “Starboard twenty!” He was turning his wounded bow away from the heat of the action.

Captain MacRae saw the sea erupting around the British ships, heard the booming report of their guns, and was taken with the savage power of a close quarters battle at sea. His was a ship that had been designed to fight an enemy it should never see, except in the digital traces on the radar tracking screens. The sight of the smoke and fire, the resounding crack of the big guns, the brilliant orange flame blooming from the distant silhouettes when they fired, were all as exhilarating as they were terrifying. Then he saw the result of the hit Axel Faust had guided home on Queen Elizabeth.

“That looks bad,” said Mack Morgan when they saw the huge eruption of black smoke on the horizon ahead.

Argos Fire was well behind the main British formation, thinking to lead the enemy ship off their pursuit, but the enemy had not been fooled. They kept to an intercepting course against the main body, slowly turning to run parallel, and then converging by small five or ten point turns to gradually close the range. At that moment they were still behind the British, and just barely on the horizon from the perspective of Argos Fire. The enemy was closing the range on the British with their 15 knot advantage in speed, and there was no way the fleet would escape from the battle that was now being joined.

Queen Elizabeth was making no more than 14 knots, her forward hull opened very near the water line to allow the heavy swells to surge in. It had the saving effect of flooding the whole region, and preventing further explosions, but the ship would soon be down at the bow, a wounded water buffalo, and the wolves were rushing in to finish her off.

Malaya was directly behind when the explosion occurred, but did not match the turn made by the other ship, her Captain Arthur Pallister instinctively knowing it had been a near fatal blow. Three cruisers and three destroyers were ahead of the Queen, and carried on as the battleship fell off the line to the starboard side. The cruiser Berwick, behind Malaya, followed in her wake, but one of the two trailing destroyers turned to attend to Queen Elizabeth.

“That was quick shooting,” said MacRae, “Who’s the culprit, Mister Haley?”

“Radar traced shellfall from the number two ship in this formation here, sir.” Haley was fingering the Hindenburg.

“Well, we’d better answer that. No one raises their hand against the Queen on my watch, by god. Target that ship with a GB-7. Let’s see if we can get their attention.”

“Aye sir.” The missile was keyed and away, making a lightning swift run to the target that seemed only brief seconds, still accelerating to its top speed when it struck home and exploded, right amidships, but on the heavy belt armor of the ship. As with the hit on Normandie, the missile would not penetrate the 360mm armor, over 14 inches thick, but the large excess fuel reserve would cause a fire.

“That looks worse than it probably is,” said Morgan.

“I don’t think we can penetrate the armor on these ships, sir. We can’t fire in Mode A. If we don’t hit the superstructure, these ships will simply shrug off our missiles and put out the fires.”

MacRae nodded, inwardly kicking himself for firing without thinking this through. The GB-7 was a sea skimmer, defaulting to that attack profile unless reprogrammed for a popup maneuver. They had to strike above that belt armor.

“Reprogram the next three to mode B,” he said. “Two missiles — same target.”

The whine of a heavy shell headed there way sent a chill up his spine. They watched as two neatly spaced geysers fell about 500 meters ahead of the ship, much too close for comfort.

“Come right thirty degrees and ahead full,” MacRae said quickly. “We’d best slip back over the horizon.”

A minute later they returned fire, the missiles arcing up, then diving for the sea to make the run in to the target, over 25 kilometers away. This time they would pop up just before the attack, and plunge into the heart of the ship. One would strike a 5.9 inch gun turret there and do serious damage, the second would plunge into the superstructure, blowing through the outer wall and three bulkheads, but in a section of the ship that was largely empty at the moment, the starboard side crew’s quarters, forward of the number one stack and behind the conning tower. The fire there thickened the smoke already streaming from the stack as the ship raced on at 30 knots. It was a hard blow, and Hindenburg bled from the enemy lances, but it was not fatal. Crews were already scrambling to get water into the blazing compartments. A launch mounted just above the point of penetration could not be saved, and the secondary gun director had to be abandoned due to the heavy smoke, but otherwise the ship was still functioning and capable of staying in the fight.

“Well,” said MacRae, seeing shells still falling in his wake as Argos Fire sped away at its top speed of 32 knots. “We won’t be able to take a peek at the damage, but something tells me that wasn’t enough yet, Mister Dean.” They now knew that they were not going to sink their target, or even drive it off, unless they were willing to throw considerable more firepower at the enemy.

“I’ve one arrow left,” said MacRae. “We’d be better off putting that on one of their cruisers or destroyers.” He gave Elena a sidelong glance, but said nothing more.

They were now well off the starboard side of the British fleet, and drawing closer to those ships. MacRae could see them firing, Berwick’s 8 inch guns blasting away, but even those shells, with much heavier throw weight than the missiles, would not seriously harm or deter the Hindenburg.

Aboard Queen Elizabeth the situation was going from bad to worse. The forward turret was inoperable, and the flooding had spread through gaping holes on the innards of the ship to begin swamping the lower decks of B Turret as well. When they most needed it, the ship had lost half its firepower. The two aft turrets had been firing at the lead ship in the German formation, and the bridge crew took heart when they saw they had scored a hit there. It was well forward of Anton Turret on the Bismarck, holing the deck and plunging through the bow section, but on an angle that saw it cut through the ship and exit to the sea.

Queen Elizabeth was slowly falling behind, and was on a divergent course away from the rest of the formation. Up ahead Captain Barry saw the Malaya bravely carrying the fight to the enemy, but now the French ships had joined the action and the Normandie was taking aim at that ship while the other two battlecruisers targeted the Calcutta and Coventry, outmatching them with their heavier guns and armor.

He saw three destroyers angling in on his position, their bows white with the haste of their charge, and he knew they were thinking to put their torpedoes into his ship and end her reign on these waters. Then he marked the fall of shells off the bow of one destroyer, and the flash of a hit there by secondary armament.

“Good show,” he breathed. “One of our 4.5 inchers has found the mark. He was correct, but the gun was not aboard Queen Elizabeth. Argos Fire had seen the enemy ships maneuvering on radar and began using both her single barreled 4.5-inch turrets to put deadly accurate fire on the onrushing destroyers. The radar guided shells were finding the mark, and the sheepdog bravely tried to hold off the wolves, or in this case the big cats prowling to get at the battleship’s flanks

The French destroyer Lynx was the ship Barry had seen, hit three times in as many minutes, and burning forward. He saw the defensive fire shift to the second destroyer, Panthere, but then the urgency of the ship’s condition pulled him away.

“Sir, we’re starting to list to port side, and the bow is down five degrees.” A harried young Lieutenant reported, his face blackened with the smoke from that first massive explosion.

“Counterflood,” said the Captain, though he knew that by trying to correct his list he was only going to worsen the flooding problem. It was only a matter of time, and there comes a moment in the heat of battle when a ship’s Captain realizes this, and thinks of his men. He could order them into the life boats, try and save as many as he could, or he could stay in the fight as long as possible, hoping the time might by him a hit on the enemy ships.

“Signalman! Notify Malaya we’re foundering forward and not likely to correct the problem any time soon.” It was a hard message for the young ensign to bear, but the man saluted, and was off at the run to the W/T room.

Then Queen Elizabeth shook again with the heavy jolt and explosion of another big round. This time it was Bismarck that had laid its hands upon her, a 15 inch shell plunging into the ship near the funnel. The explosion batted the long cantilevered seaplane catapult away at an odd angle, flames licking the steel trellis as it moved with the roll of the ship. Shrapnel from the explosion struck a ship’s bell, and the sound rang out, a mournful note of pain.

It was then that Captain Barry saw something in the western sky, bright fiery lights with tails of smoke high up, but diving for the sea like meteors. He watched, spellbound at the scene as they pulled out of the dive, coming low over the restless sea.

Argos Fire saw them coming as well. The radar had identified the missiles as Russian P-800 Onyx systems, a weapon that was not on the IFF list given to him by Admiral Volsky. So the old man was keeping something under his hat as well, he thought with a smile. The missile warning was sounding loudly, and he gave a sharp order to terminate the alarm. Argos Fire wanted to get after the missiles with her Sea Vipers, but MacRae kept a firm hand on the reigns.

“Belay that Air defense system,” he said with a growl. “That has to be the Russians. Where are they, Mister Healy?”

The Lieutenant looked over his shoulder, the surprise in his face plain enough. “I don’t have them sir. No other surface vessel on that heading within range of our SAMPSON system.”

“Then he must have better eyes than we thought. Mister Dean, what’s the range of those missiles?”

“Sir… I’m reading them as SS-N-26, the Russian P-800 Onyx—eight missiles — range 300 kilometers for high altitude flight profile, 120 for low altitude trajectory. But sir, Lieutenant Healy has radar tracks and the point of origin is no more than fifty kilometers west of our position.”

“What’s that you say? Fifty klicks west?”

“Yes sir. We should be seeing the Russian battlecruiser on SAMPSON, but he’s just not there. I have no contacts on that heading whatsoever.”

“Well fancy that,” said MacRae, watching the missiles screaming in towards the enemy ships. “Who the hell is firing those missiles?” He looked at Morgan now, instinctively eyeing his intelligence master as if he had the answer to everything on a note pad in his shirt pocket, and only had to look.

“Beat’s me,” said Mack. “But it reminds me of a lady I was courting once. My cab was late on our first date, but she turned up late too, and that’s when I fell in love with her.”

“Missiles report target lock, sir,” said radarman Yevgeni Gorban. “They should be down on their terminal run now.”

The Captain ran a hand over his close cropped hair, eyes looking up as though he were seeing it all through the hull. Gromyko had fired, and instinct serving him well, he had quickly maneuvered off his firing axis, diving as any submariner would.

Kazan had been a long time coming, all the way from the Cape of Good Hope where they had rendezvoused with Kirov. It was a long, silent journey, passing several convoys which they identified as British ships, but making no contact. Admiral Volsky had told him to keep his presence here a secret as far as was possible, and with a submarine as stealthy as Kazan, that was an order Gromyko could easily fill.

The boat had sailed right through the British operations aimed at the Cape Verde and Canary Islands, moving like a silent murmur in the sea. It was not until they had reached the Western approaches to the Strait of Gibraltar that Gromyko spent some time consulting his charts. He had entered there many times before, drifting silently through the channel, and always at night. He found the strait was patrolled by three French Destroyers that were now operating from Gibraltar, but they had not heard a whisper of the quiet passing of Kazan. Once in the Alboran Sea, Gromyko increased speed to make for his assigned patrol post off the Sicilian Narrows, over 1400 kilometers to the east.

By the time he reached that place the Franco-German fleet had already decided to make their transit at Messina, and even as they emerged to drive off the British Fleet, Gromyko decided to move east between Malta and Sicily and see what he might find. He had been ordered to maintain operational silence, and communicate only in the event he found it necessary to use his weapons.

As he approached the scene, his sonar man Chernov painted the picture for him. The British fleet had split into two groups, one on a course to Alexandria, the other heading south with Kirov. The enemy fleet he had been told to find did not seem interested in either squadron, moving east until something happened that surprised Gromyko. Chernov thought he heard a very familiar sound as he monitored the seas, and when he put his profile computer to work on it he was proved correct — a Daring Class destroyer!

That report sent Gromyko’s head spinning. What was going on here? Had they slipped again in time? Were they back in their own miserable war again? That was quickly disproved by Gromyko’s report.

“No sir,” he said, “I still have a firm hold on the ships we’ve been tracking. This new signature joined the British Squadron heading for Alexandria.”

“Daring Class? You are certain of that?”

“It sounds a little different, sir, but all my data points are very close. Give Lieutenant Gorban an antenna and he could verify.”

“Make it so,” Gromyko said to his Executive Officer Belanov. “The boat will come to periscope depth, and ahead one third.”

They had raised an antenna, and Gorban confirmed that he had readings for a SAMPSON radar on his IFF board. “It’s a British Type 45, sir, at least from the radar it’s using. And from the looks of things it’s hot in the thick of a good fight. What is this all about, Captain?”

“Signal Volsky on the secure channel,” said Gromyko, and he soon had his answer. The British ship was to be considered friendly and the Admiral was now asking Gromyko to do whatever he could to lend support.

“Do whatever?” Gromyko smiled, crumbling the message in his fist. He had his boat at a good depth for missile action, and had no worry that he might attract the attention of a deadly American attack sub. He also had sixteen supersonic Onyx missile’s ready, the system he had retained after lending Kirov the bulk of his P-900s. So he did the simplest thing he could think of — he picked his targets and fired.

Better late than never, he thought, realizing he had just become an active combatant in the middle of the Second World War.

Chapter 30

Gromyko was going to fight this battle as he had fought the Americans in the Pacific. Kazan had been part of the three boat missile barrage that Karpov had ordered against the Washington battlegroup, and had been the only sub to escape after taking that daring risk. Russian naval tactics knew the importance of getting in the first blow, the struggle for the first salvo, and when they fired against a modern adversary, they meant business.

Now he decided that the size of the enemy battlegroup ahead needed a good strong salvo here as well, and so he committed nearly half his remaining missiles to the attack. The eight air breathing P-800s were fast at Mach 2.0. closing the range to the target in brief minutes. Nearly nine meters long, the missiles weighed 3100 kilograms, a good portion of that from the T-6 kerosene fuel, and packed a 250kg warhead. At this range the monopulse active/passive radar locked on, hopping from one frequency to another as if it were trying to spook enemy ECM jamming that would not exist for decades.

The Russian word for the missile meant “Ruby,” the red gem of wrath, and the formation of eight missiles were carrying a combined warhead weight of 2000kgs, over 4400 pounds on eight times that in the weight of the missiles themselves. With range out to 300 kilometers, they were only going to use a small portion of the kerosene fuel to reach their targets, and the remainder was going to ignite a holocaust on any ship it struck. It was a lightning fast salvo of heavy armor piercing fire bombs.

The watch on Hindenburg called out the alarm, seeing the missiles arc up in the sky and then dive for the sea like a formation of dragons. Some of the men stared in awe as the formation came in, and then slowly fanned out as the missiles began to acquire specific targets. One missile in the salvo was acting as leader, ruling on target acquisition like the chairman of the board. It had been programmed to allow no more than two missiles to lock on to any single ship. Gromyko wanted to spread the joy around.

Hindenburg and Bismarck would both take two hard hits, right amidships on the squadron flagship, with one missile very near the bruised and blackened armor from the GB-7 strike from Argos Fire. The roar of the missiles thundered in, and the hour that Lütjens had mused on now became a crucible of searing fire. The kinetic shock of the missiles were tremendous, as they were many times the weight of the GB-7. Nearly fifteen inches of cemented, face hardened Krupp steel stood in their way. The armor scheme 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, like the one the missiles were delivering, as opposed to plunging fire attacks that might be delivered from shells fired at a greater range.

Like MacRae on the Argos Fire, Gromyko had not had the benefit of the long trial and error that Kirov had, and there had been little time to brief him. So the missiles would strike the ship at its strongest point, a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The face hardened armor was dual density, with the bulk being ten inches of very hard steel that was meant to blunt the nose of an incoming projectile, de-capping the shell and therefore reducing its penetrating power. The inner four or five inches were of softer density, designed to prevent the armor from fragmenting and producing shrapnel splinters that could wreak havoc inside the ship. The slope of the armor itself further increased its resistance to penetration, an ingenious design that would make the ship all but invulnerable to full belt armor failure from a flat trajectory attack — or so the designers believed.

Two blazing battering rams struck at the hardened citadel of the ship that day, the place where Hindenburg’s defense was meant to protect the machinery, boilers, generators, power switchboards and the gun plot rooms. It was struck with a combined warhead weight of 500kgs, but had been designed to resist single shell hits twice that heavy, in the range of 800 to 1000kgs — but not shells moving at Mach 2 driven by a 3000 kilogram rocket! The armor would de-cap the warheads, and they would fail to penetrate, but the tremendous force behind the attack would buckle the steel and blast it with massive heat and shock. The fire that erupted from all that excess kerosene was terrible. Men anywhere near the point of impact literally had the oxygen sucked from their lungs, and the ship was scalded with searing heat. Most of the damage control crews that had been fighting, and slowly suppressing the fire from the GB-7 hit, were now simply immolated by the attack, and Hindenburg burned, a fierce, raging fire that enveloped the entire starboard middle segment of the ship, with flames so hot that the gunwales above the point of impact literally melted.

Amazingly, the armor held, just as it was designed, for in fact, it would have taken an 18-inch gun from the Yamato at near point blank range to fully penetrate due to the ingenious scheme against flat trajectory rounds. It would be the damnable fire that would eventually rule the hot hour Lütjens had come to. He could feel the ship roll with the punch, and he also saw that Bismarck had taken two hard hits as well, one slightly aft and a second amidships. One look at the fires that enveloped the ship told him what was happening now on Hindenburg. Unless these fires were quickly controlled, they might spread and do damage that could put both vessels in the repair docks for a very long time.

“Starboard twenty,” he shouted. “Come about!”

The helm answered, and the ship turned, the wind fanning the flames and driving the heavy smoke past the bridge viewports.

“We are turning?” Captain Adler had been watching Bismarck with his field glasses. “What are you doing, Admiral?”

“One look at those fires should tell you that. Signal Bismarck to follow.”

“Then you are breaking off? We must continue! There is nothing wrong with our guns.”

“There will be if those fires reach a magazine. Look at them! Look at Bismarck!” Lütjens was pointing at the raging smoke and flame, and the desperate struggle to get more damage control parties to the scene, but Adler’s eyes were trained with the big forward turrets of Hindenburg. Bruno turret fired, the power of the volley shaking the ship.

“Look at that fire,” he said. “We can crush the British!”

“Those flames are nearly as high as the bridge, Captain. If they aren’t controlled soon we may not be able to even breathe here, let alone have these nice little arguments in front of the men.” He paused to let that sink in, but Adler had the heat of the battle on him now, and propriety was the farthest thing from his mind at that moment.

“Sir,” came a report from a young officer, “Main gun director reports the smoke is too heavy for accurate sighting.”

“Because you have turned to starboard,” said Adler, “right into the wind and everything is blowing across our beam!” The Captain was clearly unhappy.

“Kindly look to port, Mister Adler. A turn in that direction would have put us right across the bow of the Normandie. No, we will come about as I have ordered. If these fires cannot be quickly controlled, then this battle is over. I was not given this ship to see it burned to a blackened hulk. The Führer would never forgive me.”

Down in Anton turret, Axel Faust had felt the blow and knew the ship had taken a hard hit, though he had not seen the rocket attack. His turret was still trained on the British battleships, but no data was coming from Eisenberg or Fuchs.

“Trouble with the gun directors!” he shouted, settling in behind the optical gun sights available in the turret itself for just this contingency. “Elevation twenty, five degrees right. Fire!”

The turret roared, and the men leapt to their evolution, human sinew in the workings of this vast machine. The breech opened, the shell loading bogie slid into position and the massive shell was rammed home. The five seconds for the rammer to return seemed like an eternity to Faust now. The gun had to be moved off elevation while the loading progressed, then elevated again and re-trained with the sighting data. Faust saw the fall of his shells and knew the shot was close enough for rapid fire, but he suddenly felt the ship turning.

“Track right! Five degrees! More… one degree more… Hold! Elevation eighteen point five. Steady… Fire!”

The German ships had turned to disengage, but were still firing, with no damage to their turrets beyond the loss of director control. It was Axel Faust that made the difference now, his well schooled eye at the turret optics making good on the reputation he had earned as the best gunner in the fleet. His last salvo had been right on the mark, and Queen Elizabeth would not survive the hit he scored, with the heavy round plunging in behind the funnel. The ship’s recent refit had improved her deck armor over machinery sites to 2.5 inches, but the 16-inch shell from Hindenburg would penetrate twice that at the range fired, and it gutted the ship, exploding three decks below the point of impact, destroying two more boiler rooms.

Down seven degrees at the bow and still listing, it was now only a matter of time before the ship sunk. Captain Barry knew the worst when his chief of engineers reported that damage from that last hit could not be controlled. A fire had reached ready ammo store for one of the secondary batteries, and a second explosion rocked the heart of the ship. With a heavy heart he signaled all fleet units that he was forced to abandon ship. The crews were ordered to any boat they could deploy, but he knew that many men were going to die here today. Axel Faust had signed their death warrants with the guns of turret Anton.

The heavy missiles off Kazan had done more to turn the action than anything else. A British Harpoon weighed only 691kg with booster, and the GB-7 was in that same class. The Onyx missile was nearly five times heavier and three times as long. The shock and fire they delivered was many times that of the British missile, and the results were plain to see. Both German ships were burning badly and now turning away from the main action.

Strausbourg had been slightly ahead of the Germans, firing with her twin quadruple turrets that were ideal in a pursuit scenario like this. But that ship had been struck twice as well, beneath the forward A turret and again much closer to the bow, which was more lightly armored and was rent asunder by the heavy blow. Her fires were not as bad due to the location of the hits away from the main superstructure, but the damage to the bow was causing severe flooding forward and the ship turned, falling out of the battle.

The cruiser Colbert got the worst of it. At 12,700 long tons she had only 20 % of Hindenburg’s displacement. And no more than 60mm armor on the belt. The two supersonic missiles blasted clean through this, erupted in a massive fireball of ignited fuel and broke the ship in two.

Admiral Laborde watched in horror as Colbert died an agonizing death, well out in front of his ship. The Normandie had been screened by the two German battleships, and thus had not been targeted. His ship had taken one GB-7 hit, a close straddle from Malaya, but his gunners were slowly finding the range with the two forward turrets, and at a little under 20,000 meters he raked Malaya with a spread of 15-inch shells, finally getting a hit. He gave an order to turn ten more points to port, away from the Germans, and was soon able to run completely parallel to the British line, and bring all twelve of his guns to the action.

Malaya was wreathed in heavy smoke, and the cruiser Berwick had interposed itself, and now had the misfortune of becoming the new target. The twelve guns roared and scored a hit. The next salvo would log two more, and the cruiser, already damaged by a 500 pound bomb, was suddenly penetrated to magazine level and exploded. It would sink in the next ten minutes.

In other action the three remaining French cruisers had pounded the Calcutta to a smoking wreck, but Coventry and Orion had scored enough hits to discourage their closer approach to the scene. The French cruisers broke off, but the heart of their battle fleet, Normandie and Dunkerque, remained undamaged, and undaunted.

Dunkerque had been in on the action against Calcutta, scoring at least one good hit there before turning the battle over to the cruisers and looking for bigger prey. Now the battlecruiser joined the action against Malaya, adding another eight 12.9 inch guns to the heat of that engagement.

It was then that Admiral Laborde saw the streaking tail of yet another missile pierce the heavy pall of drifting battle smoke, and lance into the heart of the light cruiser Jeane de Vienne. The resulting explosion told him the ship had taken heavy damage. The missile had popped up and come down on the 38mm deck armor, plunging deep into the ship and nearly exiting through the bottom hull.

Damn these naval rockets! Look what they’ve done to the German battleships. He was receiving reports from every ship in the fleet, keeping a mental tally of his losses. Of his ten destroyers, Mistral, Orage and Vauban had been sunk, with damage to Tempte, Tornade, Lynx and Panthere that had forced them to retire. He had clearly lost the heavy cruiser Colbert, and the same might now be said for Jeane de Vienne. The hits to Strausbourg were serious, and the ship was struggling to control bad flooding as it shrunk from the fight. Both German battleships had turned away, though their aft turrets were still firing.

He had two good ships in hand, his flagship hit but undaunted, and Dunkerque was practically the only ship in the engagement that had come through without so much as a paint scratch. Queen Elizabeth was clearly a lost cause for the British, and he could stay here and pound the Malaya senseless if he chose to do so, but how many more of those rockets might find his ship? The fires he could still see burning on the Hindenburg were enough to convince him that this engagement had run its course.

The Franco-German fleet had been hit with fifteen supersonic missiles and eight more of the lighter Sea Skuas. They had also faced the gunnery of the British fleet, which had scored many hits in the battle to cause further mayhem. It had been a terrible hour, and one of the most costly naval engagements in history when the final tally was registered on both sides. Considering the losses that had been sustained by the Italians, the Axis fleet had taken a severe mauling.

It was then that the sole surviving spotter plane sent in a report that another squadron of enemy ships was approaching, seven ships in front at high speed, another six ships, and aircraft carriers among them that appeared to be launching planes. That was enough to convince La Borde that he had tarried here too long. He gave the order to break off, just after 18:00, and the heavy smoke soon obscured all view of the enemy as the Normandie began its turn. Now he looked to the skies, sending orders that the fleet should regroup on a new heading and prepare to defend against enemy air attack. In all this time, he thought, where was the air cover he had been promised by the Germans?

The Luftwaffe would come, but far too late to make any difference in the action. His column reformed, beat off one half hearted attack by British Swordfish torpedo bombers, and then the skies began to darken with the growl of the German planes. It was a formation of thirty Bf-110 twin engine heavy fighters, more than enough to discourage any further air action off those carriers. As it was soon determined that these planes were no direct threat to the fleet, both Kirov and Argos Fire preserved their SAMs, and the action slowly dissipated.

When he learned the enemy fleet had diverted from its easterly course and turned south, Tovey had turned about with Invincible and all his cruisers, leaving Warspite to escort the carriers with a few more destroyers. Argos Fire saw them coming on radar, the ships appearing on her screens just after that missile strike by Kazan. The formation had come upon the scene too late to take any decisive action, but its sudden appearance had been the last factor compelling La Borde to break off.

It was better late than never for Tovey. The damage had already been done. The British were going to lose two battleships that day. As that terrible hour ended, the stately Queen Elizabeth finally rolled to one side, bow down and slipping beneath the tempestuous sea. Only 728 men would be saved from her crew, and Captain Barry would not be among them. He knew the life boats would only take a portion of his men to safety, and had given the order to abandon ship, remaining on the bridge.

The men in the boats could hear the crewmen still on the ship singing ‘Hail Britannia’ as the battleship rolled over, the chorus quashed by the heavy swells as men made that last desperate leap into the water to try and save themselves. The arrival of Tovey’s ships would save many that might have otherwise died, and four hours later the fleet turned for Alexandria, bloodied, bruised, and missing Queen Elizabeth, Berwick, Calcutta, and the destroyers Marne, Ledbury and Echo.

Malaya was still afloat, and taken in tow, but the ship was so beaten and battered by the Normandie that it would never see action again. The enemy had lost the Colbert, with enough damage on La Galissonniere, and Jeane de Vienne to take them out of the war for the next year. Both Hindenburg and Bismarck eventually controlled their terrible fires, as the fuel sustaining them had burned itself away. Their armored sides were bent and blackened by the missile hits, but their propulsion systems and guns were all operational and they would fight again.

One other ship remained unseen beneath the sea, slowly following in the wake of the retiring enemy fleet. Gromyko had fired his missiles, and now began to look for wounded ships that would be easy prey for his torpedoes. The German ships sped away at good speed and evaded, but he came upon the Strausbourg, wallowing behind the main French fleet as it labored for Taranto at 18 knots.

It would never arrive.