Tigers East

Chapter 13

It was a strange echo of the real history, for in the waning days of September, 1942, Rommel would return to Germany to meet with Hitler after the Battle of Alma Halfa Ridge at El Alamein. There he had forced his way through unexpected enemy mine fields in his attempt to swing around Montgomery’s defenses, only to abandon his plan for a wide envelopment around the ridge that ran west to east. Instead he had turned early, right for the ridge itself, and found that Monty had sprung a deadly trap on him. AT guns, mortars, artillery and enemy bombs rained down on his tanks and vehicles when they got stalled in soft sand. He lost his nerve and ordered a withdrawal, back through the hard won corridors through the minefields.

Kesselring remarked that the old Rommel would have never done such a thing, and as he left Rommel in the alternate history we are exploring, a warning voice told him that Rommel seemed all too ready to give the British this gateway into Tripolitania. The Italians would scream in protest, seeing another big bite taken out of their last colonial holding in Africa. Mussolini would go to Hitler and demand that Rommel stop his withdrawal and stand his ground. Neither man would grasp the concept of strategic withdrawal, consolidation, the laws of overstretch that would soon constrain the British advance.

In the old history, Rommel had been warmly greeted by Hitler, and given his Field Marshal’s baton. The cameras had been running, news reels proclaiming his achievements, taking the Afrika Korps right to the doorstep of Egypt. On this day in the old history, the cameras would film his hand on the doorknob of the international press room where Goebbels had arranged a press conference. He had used the moment to proclaim that: “we have the door to all Egypt in our hands.”

Then he had gone to tell Hitler he would not give back an inch of the hard won ground he had claimed, now, he would go to tell him he wanted to hand the British half of Tripolitania, and not because he lacked adequate reinforcements, fuel, weapons and supplies, but instead because he had those things in abundance, and now he simply wanted to look for a bigger hunting ground.

Hitler’s reaction at OKW should have been predictable. The Führer had been fussing over the maps again, impatient with the progress being made over the Don in Russia. But something would happen to change his mood, and at precisely the right time.

Far to the west, the American Army had felt its way east in the wake of Kesselring’s slow fighting withdrawal to Algiers. Hitler was noticeably upset with the loss of Morocco, which uncovered the southern approach to Gibraltar when Tangier fell On September 25th. That mad dash by Patton to take Tangier and its small harbor figured strongly in the calculus that led OKW to suggest Spain was now a liability. The Allied plan was now to quickly secure the Rock in the north, while pursuing the Germans east into Algeria in the south.

“They won’t even try to hold Oran if they’re smart,” said Eisenhower.

“The Hindenburg group left that port two days ago,” said Clark. They know it will be under our air power soon enough, but Algiers is another matter.”

Oran was about 275 air miles from Gibraltar, 225 from Malaga on the coast further east, only 125 from Almiera, and 135 from Cartagena. The British were going to get their Spitfires and Hurricanes, and anything else that could pose a threat, to airfields in and around those cities in order to interdict that port. Algiers, however, was over 260 miles from Valencia, and 230 from Cartagena, and those would be the nearest airfields the Allies could use in Spain. It was then over 475 miles to fields at either Gibraltar or Fez, so the Allies would have to count on getting airfields running at Oran, still some 215 miles east of Algiers.

“Trying to support this whole operation from Oran will be tough,” said Clark. “The British still haven’t taken Gibraltar, and we have yet to force the straits. Old methodical Montgomery will probably take weeks sorting out that mess in Spain, even if the Germans are withdrawing through Valencia to France. So in the short run, we could lose air superiority of we go for Algiers too soon.”

“You try reining Patton in now,” said Ike. “He’s got the bit between his teeth—says he can throw the 34th Infantry at Algiers and then swing around the high country and threaten to cut the city off.”

“Right,” said Clark. “Hold ‘em by the nose and kick ‘em in the ass. I’ve heard that speech.”

“He did a good job in Morocco.”

“The Germans were giving us Morocco.” Clark would give credit where it was due, but he thought they had been given a pass by the Germans after the Casablanca landings. “If you want my opinion, they just wanted those troops they had out there in the Canaries. Those are their only air mobile divisions, and they were smart to yank them out of there. The moment we landed, those islands were cut off and heavy fruit for the picking. Have the British moved back in?”

“Not yet. We’ve tied up most of the available shipping, but their 110 Force on Tenerife is planning an operation against Gran Canaria.”

Clark nodded. “Say Ike, did we ever find that missing page from the War Diary Harry Butcher was keeping?”

“Not a trace,” said Eisenhower, “though I don’t suppose it matters much now. It might have had something to do with the fact the Germans had all those mechanized forces ready to move into Spain at the drop of a hat.”

“What was this damn SS unit Montgomery bumped up against there?”

“Some Franco/German outfit. Looks like the SS rounded up all the bad ass Vichy boys and recruited them. Hell, we didn’t even know the unit existed. It even got by the boys at ULTRA. But that doesn’t matter now either. The Germans have pulled it back into France. Intel thinks it was a widely dispersed internal security unit, and they pulled it together on a moment’s notice. But it sure sounds like they had a heads up on what we were planning. We’ve got to tighten down security even more now.”

“Tit for tat,” said Clarke. “If Rommel knew we were reading all his gripes to OKW, he’d have a fit. This ULTRA outfit is top notch. They can tell us what Kesselring had for breakfast this morning.”

“He gets a full breakfast?” Ike smiled. “We must be doing something wrong. All I ever get is a boiled egg and something they’re calling a biscuit. The coffee here is nothing more than sludge.”

“General,” said Clark. “I’m told they make some fine coffee in Africa. All the more reason for us to finish the job down there. Then we can go after that fine Italian and French wine.”

With the withdrawal order given, the Allies finally forced their way south to the doorstep of Gibraltar. Hube had pulled out two days earlier, and his troops were now mostly on the roads and rail lines heading east and then north to Valencia and Barcelona. There were several incidents of rail sabotage, roadblocks and sniping at the Germans, but when Himmler ordered his SS Charlemagne troops to make an example of one town, the resistance waned. Soon his fanatical Frenchmen were back in their own country, dispersing again to aid in controlling the local population during what was now the final “Occupation” of what was once Vichy France.

It would take ten days before Hube had all his troops out of Spain, then the 337th and 334th Infantry took up new posts along the Spanish border, their regiments dispatched to all the key potential crossing points. 15th Infantry moved to Toulon to relieve the German Panzer Divisions there, and Hube took his 16th Division to Marseilles. The Germans then began collecting shipping from all the French ports on the Mediterranean, and additional ships from Italy. They had every intention of making a fight for North Africa, and there were now three Panzer Divisions in Southern France, one of them newly equipped after returning from the Russian Front.

It was therefore decided that von Arnim would take Command of the newly formed 5th Panzer Army, keeping the 10th Panzer Division and Goering’s troops sent by Rommel. The 6th Panzer would remain in France until the security situation was deemed adequate. There it would also continue its refit, and its disposition would be determined by the facts on the ground in North Africa. Rommel was getting the 7th Panzer, with all new equipment.

Patton had moved aggressively to flank the German defense of Algiers, but he was about to run into a much tougher defense than he had encountered in Morocco. There the Germans had delayed his effort south of Casablanca with the timely arrival of the 327th Infantry Division from Fez. After that, Student’s 1st Flieger Division had fought a delaying action, eventually yielding the ground when Kesselring opted to fall back on Algeria. So the Americans were about to be tested as never before as they closed in on Algiers.

The 34th Division had been the last to land, and they had moved up to Tangier, occupying that city and then taking Ceuta opposite Gibraltar itself. German demolitions in the harbors and shore battery installations had been very thorough, but a battalion of artillery was left at Ceuta as the 34th then moved along the coast road. The remainder of the Allied force then followed Kesselring’s retreat from Fez, though they had to do so by truck. When the Germans left, it would be the last train ride from Fez east for some time. They dedicated a special team to tear up the tracks behind them.

So it would be early October before Patton was approaching Algiers, and he ordered 34th Infantry to demonstrate against the town on the open ground to the southwest. Then he moved a strong force, all of 9th Infantry and 2nd Armored, below the rugged Tellien Atlas Mountains, intending to have them take the town of M’sila and then push north to cut the rail line east to Constantine. His intention was to try and compel the Germans to yield Algiers by threatening to envelop and isolate it.

Yet now Kesselring was strongly reinforced, appointing von Arnim as his field commander. He could clearly see what the Americans were attempting to do, and with the veteran 10th Panzer Division in hand, he sent them by rail to a point north of M’sila and them moved south on the narrow mountain roads south to confront the Americans. It was to be the first meeting engagement of German and American armored forces in the war.

Further north, the British had moved their 3rd Infantry Division to Cartagena, where it was refitting and preparing for a planned embarkation to North Africa. The two Brigades of 78th Division would also embark from smaller ports. Air squadrons were moving quickly into bases on the east coast of Spain, mostly at Almiera and Cartagena, with plans to move on Valencia as soon as it was clear of German presence. Gibraltar was under siege, with a stubborn German garrison holding out, the airfield and harbor approaches heavily mined, and tough troops in the tunnels and warrens of the Rock.

The only question was whether the Germans would contest the Western Med approached to Algiers. So in many ways, before the battle for Algiers could be fully engaged and settled on land, it was an argument between the ships and planes that would weigh heavily in the outcome. That battle was shaping up on the night of October 2nd, when Admiral Tovey gave the order to the newly reconstituted Force H to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar, pounding the German shore batteries on the Rock as they did so, and then move aggressively into the Western Med, with their objective being to cover the port of Oran and threaten a further eastern movement towards Algiers.

This move would effectively call Admiral Raeder’s bluff. He would either have to commit his combined battlegroup, or cede the sea-lanes to the British. He decided to fight.

Chapter 14

Captain Gordon MacRae was on the bridge when the contact was first made. Argos Fire was out on point, its radars and towed sonar array alert for any sign of the enemy. A Sunderland out of Cartagena had been looking over the waters some150 miles east of his position, spotting what looked to be a large surface warship a little after mid-day on the 3rd day of October, 1942. Low on fuel, the seaplane had to turn for home, but MacRae knew he had a big fish on the line, and notified Admiral Tovey.

Now in overall command of the joint US-British Naval Forces, Tovey was making a bold bid to seize control of the waters between Oran and Algiers. The former port was needed as the primary supply conduit supporting Patton’s move east towards Algiers, and it was also slated to receive British Divisions that Montgomery was designating for transfer to North Africa from Spain. Hube had withdrawn through Valencia and Barcelona, and was now entering France by rail with the three divisions he had under his command. Spain was a chaotic place, with Franco out of country in Lisbon, no real power center, and the Spanish Army melting away into the countryside for fear of Allied reprisals.

Gibraltar had been sealed off, but not taken, and the Straits had been cleared of mines, the shore batteries on the Rock pounded by the Allied Air force. The German garrison was a lost battalion that was now designated “Festung Gibraltar” By Hitler. They were a fanatical bunch, all SS men, and determined to make the Rock their final resting place, preferring death to surrender. For that reason, after a battalion of the Black Watch tested the defense and found it very potent, Churchill gave an order that no major assault was to be made. The fear was that the Germans would use heavy explosives to collapse the tunnels and caves, ruining years of engineering work. The truth was, the SS did not have such munitions at hand, and what little they did have was used in the town and harbor area to demolish the quays, sub pens, and other dockyard facilities.

“Let them stew,” said Churchill. “We’ll send them a message about gasoline and fire soon enough, and repay the courtesy they extended to our troops by giving them one last chance to surrender before they go up in smoke.”

Another hidden truth to the delay was the mystery that lay beneath Saint Michael’s Cave. It was not known whether or not the Germans had discovered anything there, and Churchill did not want an attack driving the enemy troops deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of those tunnels and caves. Instead, a plan was being devised for a raid by commandos. The British had detailed maps of every passage, gate, door, stair, ladder and tunnel under the Rock. They also knew of special hidden entrances that the Germans may not have discovered. It was thought that if a team of elite soldiers could penetrate the fortress, something might be found and guarded before the Germans ever had the chance to do the same. In this effort, Elena Fairchild was only too happy to offer the services of the highly trained group of Marines she had aboard Argos Fire—the Argonauts.

When she learned of the planned raid, she also requested a private meeting with Tovey to relate some information she had shared with only one other man, Captain MacRae. It concerned the fate of a British Sergeant, discovered in the Port of Ceuta, and not in the time he was born to…. The Raid, as it was now being called, was scheduled for October 15th, and so now the ship and crew had other business, the eyes and ears of Tovey’s fleet, well out in the vanguard.

The U-boat threat was the first worrisome problem. Nothing had been found as Argos Fire passed about 70 nautical miles north of Oran. All was quiet, but that was because the German U-Boat Kapitan Gerhard Feller on U-653 was also quiet. He had been laying low, still and unmoving, waiting for the vanguard of the British force to pass. Once Argos Fire was well to the east, he risked coming to periscope depth to have a look around.

MacRae’s crew had picked up some movement in the sound field, but there were a lot of ships churning up the sea. He nonetheless posted an indefinite undersea contact warning, but it would arrive too late for a doughty British Knight. Sir Galahad was 2nd in a line of three ships, with Sir Lancelot in the van and Sir Percival following. Tovey had grouped these three fast battlecruisers together as his forward scouting force, and their combined thirty 305mm main guns were thought capable of taking on all comers.

They were operating about ten nautical miles behind the Argos Fire, yet the one threat they were ill suited to defend against was a stealthy U-Boat. Feller saw them late in the day, their silhouettes dark on the sea ahead, and he was very close. He put one torpedo in the water to see if he could take the lead ship from behind, but then decided the number two target was better. He could fire from just under 5 miles, a fairly long shot, but within the range of his G7 Torpedoes.

And that is what he did. Three went out. One hit, and Sir Galahad was knocked from the saddle before it had a chance to join the fight. It was not a fatal hit. The fires it caused would put two 76mm guns out of action, temporarily sooting over the Type 275 Radar antenna, and also putting light damage on one of the 152mm secondary batteries. There was flooding, and resulting loss of speed, and so the ship was ordered to make for the Spanish coast, the nearest Allied occupied port being Almeria.

The British had a pair of fast destroyers off the port side of Argos Fire, and they moved out ahead to feel their way towards the contact reported by that Sunderland. At a little after 01:00, Executive Officer on Argos Fire, Commander Dean, took a radar report that confirmed the contact at about 23 nautical miles, due east. Word was passed forward to the British destroyers, Beagle and Brilliant, but there was grave trouble ahead. By the time they got the warning, their own lookouts were sounding the alarm, “Ship ahead!”

The crack of small naval guns soon followed, and the sea began to plume up with small water splashes. Hot fire erupted on the forward deck of Beagle, and then a second hit amidships struck her 21-inch torpedo tubes. The ship wallowed as it turned, still receiving very accurate fire from small secondary guns. Then that fire shifted to Brilliant, and Lieutenant Commander Arthus Poe knew he was in trouble. Whatever was out there, it was more than a match for his four 4.7-inch deck guns, and he immediately turned, sending off a warning message: “Contact with large enemy ship, visibility limited. Under fire.”

Neither destroyer would survive, both going down before 01:30 that dark morning. The signal they got off would then awaken Captain Thomas ‘Sandy’ Sanford on board Sir Lancelot. He was already resting uneasily in his room off the main bridge where he kept a small cot for cat naps. The incident earlier that had sent Sir Galahad off to the Spanish coast annoyed him—now this.

“Somebody picking a fight out there? Quite the bully. Helm, bring us about. Fifteen points to port please. I think we’ll see if they want to pick on someone their own size, eh Mister Laurence?”

Executive officer Laurence was quite stoic, and usually reserved, but this time he asked a question that was veiled with just the hint of a warning. “A night engagement sir? Have we any idea what we might be up against? There was no detail in that message.”

“If it’s shooting at our destroyers, that will be enough reason to intervene,” said Sanford. “Day or night.”

“Very good sir,” said Laurence. “Shall I signal Sir Percival to follow? Misery loves company.”

Sanford thought for a moment. “No, I think we’ll have a look about on our own. Sir Percival is to carry on to the rendezvous point. We’ll rejoin later.”

Laurence didn’t like this at all, a night action against an unknown contact that had just dispatched a pair of destroyers, and the Captain splitting his force, heedless of the risks involved in what he was now ordering. Sanford could perceive his discomfiture, and spoke up.

“Reservations, Mister Laurence?”

“Well sir, it’s just that I’d feel a good bit better if we had Sir Percival behind us. This is obviously a capital ship.”

“And we are standing on the same,” said Sanford. “Percy has other business. We’ll verify this contact, make our challenge, and give the fleet a better look at what’s out there.”

The Captain would get a very good look indeed. Twenty minutes later the first rounds came in off his port bow, small caliber, and when one struck a 76mm AA gun, he was quite perturbed. “Mister Kingston!” he shouted. “No one pushes my shoulder with such impudence. Answer that, and use the main battery.”

Kingston answered with the forward A-Turret, a pair of 303mm guns booming out, the fire and noise shaking the night. They waited, the watchmen barely able to make out signs of the distant shell fall, as the range was over 17,000 yards. Then they clearly saw the horizon light up with orange fire. Was it a hit? It would be rare indeed if that were the case on the first probing salvo. Sanford had been lucky in his engagements thus far, but not that fortunate. Instead his watchmen had seen the enemy ship replying, and that was evident when two heavy rounds came thundering in, quite close, and the sea erupted with white, moonlit water.

The size of the water splashes revealed a great deal, two large caliber rounds, easily 14-inch guns or bigger to Sanford’s eye. “A tap on the shoulder, and now a swing at my chin!” he exclaimed. “That’s no cruiser—not with shellfall that big. Mister Laurence?”

“If it was a single salvo, sir, then it wasn’t a French ship. Their main guns set up four abreast. And it wasn’t an Italian ship, at least not a newer one. They set up three guns per turret.”

“Well then,” said Sanford. “That will narrow it down to the Germans. We know they have ships operating here. Could this be that raider we were chasing in the Atlantic?”

“Possibly,” said Laurence. “Kaiser Wilhelm would throw rounds that big. The only other ship would be the Hindenburg. The Bismarck is still laid up at Toulon.”

Sanford chewed on that a while, his eyes shifting about before he spoke. “The Hindenburg…” The name had the ring of dread about it, and the guns were firing again. “I can see why you proposed we keep Sir Percival at our backside,” he said. “Notify Admiral Tovey. Tell him we’re in an argument here with a large capital ship, twin gun turrets, heavy rounds, possibly Hindenburg.”

He was, indeed, in an argument he should have never started, and ten minutes later, the fires on the starboard quarter convinced him of that. He had taken a direct hit from a 15-inch round, and lost a pair of flack guns to that one. At the same time, he was certain he had scored two hits, possibly three, but the enemy seemed completely unphased. When a message returned at 01:40, he had his marching orders. He was to come about on a heading of 260 and retire at once. Tovey did not want one of his new fast heavy cruisers in a fight with a German battleship. So Sir Lancelot reluctantly turned as ordered, and Mister Laurence was quite relieved.

That course would move the ship towards Tovey with his battleship squadron, where there was enough throw weight to settle any argument, with no quarter given, and none to be asked.

The assumptions made by Captain Sanford and his XO were spot on. The ship that had been pounding the British was indeed the Hindenburg. It was planning to rendezvous with three other battleships in the Central Med, but the British had come much faster than Kapitan Adler suspected. Fredric de Gross was still well south, coming up from Algiers after being seized in that daring raid by the Brandenburg Commandos. It now had a Chief Gunnery Officer from his own ship aboard, and half the crew of Bismarck had joined with other German naval personnel sent over with the reinforcements arriving at Tunis. They were now attempting to man that unfamiliar ship, and Adler had his doubts about its ability to measure up to the task at hand.

Behind him, the Italians had also sent three cruisers and two battleships, the Roma and Impero. How many ships did the Allies sortie with this time? They had three British battleships covering the Lisbon operation, and three more American heavy ships at Casablanca. They also had cruisers and destroyers in good numbers.

We will need the advantage of our land based air power, he thought. Prinz Heinrich has good pilots, but the British never undertake an operation like this without carriers. They will send at least two, and the Americans have more. So I must take this fight into friendly waters. I must either go south to Algiers, or withdraw towards Sicily or Sardinia. If I do the latter, the enemy might decline to engage there, but they most certainly want Algiers. That is where the fighting is now. So south it is, and I must signal all units to rendezvous with Fredric de Gross off Algiers.

I gave them a little taste of what they might have in store. Those two British Destroyer Captains are not going to enjoy their time in the sea. What was that ship we just drove off? The shell fall looked big, and the salvo patterns were very much like a King George V class battleship. They fired a two round spotting salvo, then threw a second salvo of six rounds at me, and by god, they got a hit or two in that little scrap. Yet it was nothing more than a scratch on my chin. This is a sturdy ship, good in any fight where I choose to stand. But for the moment, I will use the night, and speed. I must get down south and meet up with the Italians. Then we get a battle that might decide the fate of naval operations in the Mediterranean for some time to come.

So Hindenburg turned and ran southeast, buying time, and intending to rally much closer to Algiers with the Italians and Fredric de Gross. By dawn the following morning, October 4th, the action would be well underway.

Chapter 15

Vice Admiral Hellmuth Heye Had been languishing on the coast of Rumania, ostensibly the Commander of all German naval forces in the Black Sea, which amounted to very little. Yet after the seizure of the French Fleet, Raeder was looking everywhere for competent officers and trained crews to man as many ships as he could. He had always liked Heye, who had commanded the heavy cruiser Hipper in the Norwegian Campaign, and sunk the destroyer Glowworm there. So Heye got the call, and to a posting he never imagined. They were giving him the captured French flagship Normandie, now flying the German naval ensign under the new name Fredric de Gross.

He had very little time to familiarize himself with the ship, which now had half the crew from the Bismarck aboard, and many men sent over from the Hindenburg. But Heye was a quick study, and he soon realized that if the crew could figure out the equipment, all he had to do was command, sail the ship as he might any other, and that he could do easily enough.

Now he was out as the southern wing of the naval screen covering Algiers. Hindenburg was calling the tune, having made contact with the enemy that night, pounding a pair of destroyers and dueling briefly with a ship Adler called a battlecruiser before breaking off east to rendezvous with the Italian battleships. Heye was now heading 080 to make that same appointment, and off his port side were three captured French Destroyers, all running with reduced crews, a mix of Germans, Italians, and even a few Frenchmen that had sworn continued allegiance to the Axis.

The Vice Admiral thought about the situation as he looked out over that long beautiful bow of the ship. There sat those two quad turrets, each really a pair of twin turrets sharing the same armored castle. He had eight 15-inch guns up front, and four more aft, more sheer throw weight than any other ship in the world. He glanced at the ship’s chronometer, noting the time at a little after four in the morning. In a few hours the sun would be up, and he did not like the idea that all the Axis fleet would be silhouetted. The British, cagey at sea as always, had chosen the time for the main engagement to occur at dawn, when they would sit out west and see the enemy ships starkly silhouetted by that rising sun. There we will be, battleships on either side, like fish in this barrel we call the Mediterranean Sea. Only the fish will be shooting at each other this time.

Well behind the main battle force, a little pre-dawn drama played itself out when the Italian Submarine Emo emerged inside the patrol station of the British carrier Formidible. She had been cruising with destroyers Sikh and Tartar, but when an undersea contact was reported, additional help was summoned, and DDs Gurkha, Matchless and Lightning came on the scene from the north.

After spending months as a training boat at the Italian Submarine school near Pula, Emo had been reassigned to wartime patrols when the Allied landings occurred. Now she was in for a little real time training by the Royal Navy, and these experienced destroyer Captains would be very hard schoolmasters. Destroyer Gurkha, under Lieutenant Commander Charles Lentaigne, was the first to pick up the scent. His ship was living an extended life, having avoided being sunk off Egypt by U-133. Now Emo was trying to get at this Zombie ship, but her first two torpedoes missed, running too deep, right beneath the British destroyer.

Gurkha had been an unlucky name, the third British destroyer to be so designated, with the first two Tribal class ships sunk earlier in the war. This one was an L-Class ship, again renamed Gurkha, and she was quick to lay down her depth charges, her commander elated when he saw obvious signs of damage come to the surface after his run. Just to be sure, he came round for another run, pressing his luck when he shouldn’t have. This resulted in a malfunctioning depth charge, which exploded much too soon and too shallow, putting damage on his own ship! Now he was forced to break off and head for a friendly port in Spain, but he had the consolation of knowing he had taught Emo a lesson when he was informed that submarine had been confirmed as sunk.

Meanwhile, off to the east, Admiral Tovey had given the order for his battle group to slow to 15 knots. He was waiting for the slower American battleships, trailing his formation by 16 nautical miles, and he was also waiting for the sun, which would not rise until 7:45 that morning. He reasoned that in another two hours, his force would be roughly 50 nautical miles due north of Algiers, and very likely in contact with the enemy just before dawn.

But Adler had other ideas, and after effecting his rendezvous with the Italians, he lined up like a steel squall line and headed west at high speed, intending to engage well before sunrise to neutralize the British advantage.

It was not long before Argos Fire reported a group of four contacts due east of Tovey’s position, no more than 18 nautical miles out. That was over 36,000 yards, and well beyond engagement range, but that would close very quickly as the two sides approached one another.

“Send word to HMS Formidible,” said Tovey. “We might want to give those new Barracudas a little night action.”

The two sides were now lining up against one another like two formations of heavy cavalry. On the Axis side, Hindinburg and Fredric de Gross were side by side, separated by a little over two miles. Roma and Impero were two to three miles further south. Tovey allowed the range to close, receiving regular reports from his own Type 274 radar now. At 05:00 he was about 12 nautical miles, or some 24,000 yards northeast of Hindenburg, still holding his fire at that range considering the darkness, but the tension was mounting as both sides came on.

“Mister Connors,” said Tovey. “You may begin finding the range. Target that closest ship.”

“Aye sir,” said Connors. “Type 274 is sending us good numbers. I have the range and bearing dialed in. Rangekeepers should have it in a second or two. The boom of those 16-inch guns was heard soon after. Hindenburg had fired at almost the exact same time, and the big shells passed one another in flight, steel demons of the night, off on their missions of mayhem. The British opening salvo would miss by 500 yards, but Bruno turret on the Hindenburg put its rounds very close, one a little over 100 feet off the starboard bow of the Invincible, which prompted Tovey to raise an eyebrow.

“Come left rudder, and five points to port,” he ordered. “Ahead thirty knots.” He had Duke of York and King George V in line behind him, and now he was turning not only to throw off the enemy fire and complicate their range finding for the next salvo, but also to give those ships a line of sight on the enemy ahead. “We’ll want to do a little better Mister Connors,” he said.

Connors did not disappoint. He was working his table men intensely, ordering them to drop 500 yards, account for the speed and course change. The boom of the guns rattled the window as his second salvo fired. A long minute later they saw the results down range, a hit, which sent the men on the bridge to cheering. That was most unusual this early in an engagement.

Hindenburg’s lighter guns began filling the gaps between main battery salvoes, and the sea was erupting with those smaller caliber rounds, one well inside a hundred feet. The range fell to eight nautical miles, about 16,000 yards, and the main guns fired again. In that interval, Hindenburg landed a few jabs with her secondary guns, but damage to Invincible was light, her heavy armor taking most of the hits and simply shrugging them off.

Soon the thunder of Duke of York was heard aft, as she now had a good fix on the target with her weapons directors, and began to engage. Off to the south, the cruiser Bermuda joined the action, her guns good for harassment if nothing else. Captain Sanford on Sir Lancelot was also there, about a mile and a half behind Sir Percival, and he began weighing in on Hindenburg with his new 10-inch main batteries.

The roar of gunfire rolled over the dark sea, and white smoke billowed in the moonlight. Tovey could feel the speed of his ship, engines making 30 knots now as he angled to port to enable C-turret to get into the action as well. The chink of Hindenburg’s small caliber rounds was sharp on the side armor of the ship as they turned, but the damage was minimal.

“A rain of steel,” said Tovey, exhilarated. The last time he had met this adversary, it had cost the ship, and the Allied cause, dearly. Tovey had that in his mind now, Admiral Volsky’s sacrifice still heavy on him.

So many good men had died that hour, Captain Bennett, the ship’s Helmsman, Executive Officer, Senior Watch Officer, all struck dead. He might have joined them in that silent death, but for the brave actions of Admiral Volsky, who gave his life to save the ship, and Tovey’s along with it. Here was his time to avenge that loss.

He had four ships directing murderous fire at the German warship, while off to the south, the American battleship Massachusetts had come on the scene and was now dueling with Fredric de Gross. That ship had been in a running gun battle with Sir Percival, which had then turned hard to starboard to run south. ‘Percy’ was holding firm, but she had taken one bad hit from those French 15-inch quad turrets up front, and her Captain was suddenly grateful when the enemy ship shifted fire to the Americans.

With the range now closing towards 12,000 meters, Hindenburg took yet another main gun hit, this time from Sanford’s ship, Sir Lancelot. The bold Knight had stuck her with an arrow, and Sanford’s cheeks reddened with the excitement of that hit. Mister Laurence stood stoically by his side, hands clasped behind his back, watching the battle closely. He could see their present course, steering about 100 degrees southeast, would eventually run them right across the bow of the American battleship Massachusetts. He was about to mention this, but then he saw the American ship execute a turn to starboard, and now the two ships were running parallel to one another.

The fire put in by Duke of York was soon augmented by that of King George V, and now the thinking behind the deployment made prior to the battle was beginning to decide its outcome. Tovey had kept his three battleships in a line, advancing like a javelin towards the enemy, and north of the Hindenburg. He then strung out his cruisers, including Sir Lancelot and Sir Percival, south in a front opposing the enemy charge. Massachusetts had come up to bolster that line as well.

This saw all three of Tovey’s battleships engaging Hindenburg, one after another, while Fredric de Gross, Impero and Roma were all locked in gun duels with the Allied cruisers and the US battleship. The German battleship was getting pounded. Both the King George V class ships began to get hits, and soon fires were raging on Adler’s ship, though none of his main guns had been compromised, and he was still running at 29 knots. Yet those fires were serious, and they were going to get worse before they got better.

Seeing what was happening, Adler ordered Hindenburg to come hard to port, wanting to turn south, away from the northerly turn he saw the British battle line making. His thought was to add the mass of his own ship to pile on and get that American battleship, and also escape that terrible fire put on his ship by the British. Then HMS Invincible scored a most damaging hit, penetrating the forward deck, and plunging deeply into the ship to reach the magazine for Anton turret, exploding heavily. It would have been a very bad day for Axel Faust had he been there, but he was now seven miles to the south, aboard Fredric de Gross.

The explosion was so fierce that it literally ripped open the starboard side hull of the Hindenburg, with one round after another going off in a cacophony of raging hot metal, fire and smoke. That one telling blow had achieved the vengeance Tovey had come to bring, and it was going to end the career of Germany’s largest warship then and there. Hindenburg was shipping tons of water, the incoming flood so heavy that the crews could not get the watertight doors shut. The sea surged in, flooding the magazine and stopping the chaos of fire there, but now the great warship was rolling heavily to starboard, down at the bow and swinging into a heavy list. Behind that forward flooding, the superstructure of the ship had been ravaged by fire, though the two rear turrets continued to fire until the heavy list saw their guns unable to elevate.

Aboard HMS Invincible, there was an audible gasp throughout the bridge crew when they saw the great grey mass of the enemy ship roll over. Hindenburg capsized at 05:20, the guns forever silent, and now she lay heavily upon the dark swelling sea, undersides exposed like the belly of a massive whale stricken by some fatal malady and floating on the surface, a lifeless hulk. The hiss of white steam rose above the ship, as the fires amidships were swamped by the sea. Tovey raised his binoculars, taking a deep breath.

At last, he said inwardly. That was for Bennett and Slocum, Harvey and Jones, and more than anything, that was for Admiral Volsky, the man who preserved my life, and the life of this ship to bring me here again to lay heavy hands upon you in the dark. That was for Prince of Wales off Fuerteventura, and for brave Rodney, harboring that bloody key and never knowing it. That was for Renown, broken and sunk in that same battle, and for Repulse on crutches, and likely never to walk again. It was for every ship that went down in that last convoy to Murmansk, and by God, we’ll get to the Tirpitz in time. And if Bismarck ever shows me her bow wash, that bastard will get the same.

Out there in that wrecked hulk of a battleship, he imagined Captain Adler and his men scrambling for survival, and in spite of the hardness on his heart now, he ordered all ships in his task force to cease fire. We’ll not hit a man when he’s down, he thought. For those that can get into the sea and get hold of something to stay afloat, God be with you. As for me, my place was to be the Devil incarnate, demon on the sea, the hot steel hand of retribution.

As for Kapitan Adler, given the command of Germany’s most formidable battleship, his yearning for battle had finally been quenched. He had seen his mentor, Admiral Lütjens die in combat, and now he would join him, shaken by the sudden hammer blow his ship had been struck, and the massive damage that was caused by that magazine explosion. Once he had felt his ship to be invulnerable, and after he had smashed HMS Invincible in the jaw when they last met, and sent the pride of the Royal Navy wallowing to the corner on unsteady legs, he had every confidence that he would prevail. Yet the body punch delivered by Tovey’s ship was so heavy, that Adler’s ship would die that hour, and he would die with it….

There came a lull in the action as Tovey’s three battleships continued their turn to the north. Then they heard the thunder rolling up from the south, where the American Battleship Massachusetts was in much a similar situation as the Hindenburg. Impero and Roma had come on the scene, and now they joined Fredric de Gross, putting in enough fire to force that ship to turn and attempt to disengage. The American ship took five main gun hits, three on her side armor, which held up well, but two on the superstructure, seeing damage to secondary batteries, her seaplane bay and launchers, and lifeboats wrecked and on fire amidships.

Yet the awareness of what had just happened to Hindenburg finally sunk in all down the line, and it prompted Admiral Heye to make a sharp turn to the south. He did not want his ship to be next in the line to receive the attention of those three British battleships. Seeing the American battleship turning to break off, he ordered the same. Roma and Impero saw his ship turn, and they began to come around to keep formation.

Off to their south, the American cruisers Tuscaloosa, Wichita and Philadelphia had come upon three French destroyers, sinking two of them, and sending the last one running for Algiers. Now they turned to come round with the Massachusetts, damaged but still running soundly at 21 knots.

That was the battle. The bang became a whimper, and all that remained on the scene were a flight of six Barracudas, finally making their way in the dark and swooping over the stricken carcass of the Hindenburg like vultures. They could see that ship was doomed, and so broke off to try their luck on Fredric de Gross, but the AA defense on the ex-Normandie was fierce and unrelenting. Four of the six planes would be shot down, the last two breaking off and running for HMS Formidable.

The result of this action would send all the heavy metal on the Axis side back to home ports. Heye would sail for Toulon, the Italians back to La Spezia, and by so doing, the Axis fleet would concede the Western Med to the Allies for the near run, and possibly forever. The convoy then at sea carrying British troops to Oran would arrive in good order, and days later, the US 34th Division near Algiers would get some much needed help.

The battler for Algeria was on.

Raeder took the news very hard. The damnable Royal Navy had triple teamed the pride of the fleet, he thought, and this was a very heavy blow. Hitler would likely go through the roof, and rail on and on about the useless battleships he ordered me to build. If we could have built six of them as originally planned, then the Royal Navy would be weeping tonight. This time the tears are mine, and the bitter dregs. My only consolation was the fact that both our carriers, and Kaiser Wilhelm, were far from the scene of this action.

What was Adler thinking fighting a pre-dawn battle like that? He was worried that the sun would silhouette him, but with that same sun the Stukas and He-111s would have launched in droves from Algiers. He could have fought his battle under good air cover, but now all is lost. Without Hindenburg, holding the Med will be most difficult. And as usual, the Italians were of little help. They reportedly drove off that American battleship, and those new British heavy cruisers, but sunk nothing. Fredric de Gross survived, but now the loss of Hindenburg sends my spirits to their lowest ebb in this war. The Canaries are gone, all my plans there shattered. We’ve lost Casablanca, and the French are gone, leaving us a few good ships we can struggle to man.

Damn, he thought. I will be lucky to retain command of the fleet, and luckier if Hitler doesn’t order all my building programs to halt. Hindenburg is lost, and there will never be another like it, but its brother Brandenburg will soon be ready, only as the finest aircraft carrier the world has ever seen. Will it suffer a similar fate?

We shall see….