“Oberleutnant Eisenberg!” said Adler tersely. “I trust you have a firing solution. Answer that salvo!”
“Aye sir.”
It was Hindenburg’s turn to get her main guns into action, and the insult of those small caliber rounds had finally abated. Now it would be steel on steel, the massive weight and shock of shells weighing over a thousand pounds each, flung into the sky by a massive, controlled explosion, and sent careening over the sea to find a target that was over fifteen miles away. As insane as that seemed, this carefully controlled chaos could be managed so well that the battle was almost certain to see hits obtained on either side. It was nowhere near the precision of the smaller rounds fired by Argos Fire, but any hit scored would be much more lethal.
“We must close the range, Adler, and make the best use of our armor. The gunners will do their best work inside 20,000 meters.”
The armor scheme on Hindenburg had been conceived by designers who assumed the ship would most often fight in the misty cold waters of the North Atlantic, where visibility was low and range for gunnery duels was often very short. As such, the layout and angle of the armor was designed to repel flat trajectory attacks, as opposed to plunging fire attacks that might be delivered from shells fired at a greater range.
“Sir, I recommend that Bismarck move off our wake and run on a parallel course to our ship as we close. That way they can get a clear line of fire.”
“Good, Adler. Now you are thinking like a fleet commander again. Yes, signal Bismarck to take station to port, and fire when clear. But mind your signals flags if we have to maneuver.”
Down in Anton turret, Axel Faust was peering through his range finder, the man who had smashed the Queen Elizabeth senseless in the Med, with a withering blow forward that broke her jaw. His well muscled arms made him look every bit the heavyweight he seemed, and he was already working up a glistening sweat as they sighted for their second salvo.
“Move smartly, boys,” he shouted, urging his men on. “They already sent us to the showers with that first salvo, and we were lucky it wasn’t a rain of steel. Let’s give them hell!”
The guns were primed and re-elevated, the hum of the hydraulics loud in the confined space. The breach was cleared, lights signaling ‘gun ready.’ Faust waited on Fuchs in the forward gun director, his eyes lost behind the cups of his own optical sighting. They heard the soaring whoosh and fall of more heavy rounds, and knew the enemy’s second salvo was looking for them. Faust could feel the ship’s engines rev down as they completed the loading action, and he hoped the brass on the bridge knew what they were doing. He was not disappointed. He could clearly see the rounds falling short by at least 500 meters. The speed change ordered by Lütjens had worked as planned.
But those bastards would have put those rounds much closer if we had kept on at full battle speed. They’re damn good, and so we’ll have to be better.
Anybody could train for this job, but he was not just anybody. He was Axel Faust, the devil’s adjutant, and the best naval gunner in the fleet. Seconds later the order came down to fire, though he was not quite satisfied with the elevation on his guns. He was going to nudge them up another degree, but he heard the booming report of Bruno turret firing, and knew that Hans Hartmann had beaten them to the punch.
No matter, he thought. “Up elevation! One degree. Quickly! Now Fire!” Anton threw the right cross over Hartmann’s left hook, and they waited eagerly to spot the fall of their shot. Thirty seconds later he saw the target erupt with fire, but he knew it was too soon to be a hit from their own shells. The British had just given them a full salvo, something rarely done, as the big ships were more prone to fire half salvos given the jarring concussion of the massive guns.
Squinting through his optics, he soon saw two clear shellfalls short of the target, and slightly wide. Hartmann’s hook had found nothing but seawater, and a few seconds later his own rounds fell slightly long, but one was very close. He saw the tall plume of water just off the starboard side of the enemy ship, and then noted how they responded by making a slight turn away from the round. He’s jogging left, and then right again—a zig-zag approach. And yet he can still fire all three turrets as he comes. Each time he turns he opens the fire arc of that third turret behind the conning tower. This one knows how to fight his ship. In the meantime, none of our rear turrets can get into action, but that will change soon, if we can close the range without serious damage.
The seconds ticked off, agonizingly slow, and the men rushed through their loading evolutions. Then he saw them, evil white geysers dolloping up from the sea, and walking slowly towards the ship. And they were going to be very close…
Chapter 8
Down from the heavens came the demons set loose by the work of Elswick, Vickers, Beardmore and the Royal Gun Factory. They had been blasted into the sky by a 108 ton gun that was over 60 feet long, using 50 pounds of TNT and another propellant charge of 495 pounds. These exploded inside it to create a working pressure of over 21 tons per square inch, and fire a shell weighing 929kg, or 2,048 pounds. It would blast out of the muzzle at a speed of roughly 2600 feet per second, taking all of 40 seconds before it surged down at the targets, which were some 25,000 yards distant.
The rounds of A-turret, or ‘Old Elswick’ on the Invincible would fall in a line off the starboard side of Hindenburg, but those of B-turret would be much closer, with the center gun, sometimes called Vickers Delight by the crew, scoring the first hit of the engagement. At that range, the massive shell might have penetrated 10.3 inches of side armor, not enough to defeat the 14 inches protecting Hindenburg. Yet that was academic, because the shell was going to strike the forward deck, right beneath the elevated gun of Anton turret. It was coming in at an angle of 24.6 degrees, and could penetrate 3.9 inches of deck armor at that range, and if it blasted through, the magazines that fed the ardor of Axel Faust and his crew were right beneath.
But Hindenburg had a very tough shell. The upper deck on the ship was 3.1 inches of Wotan Hart steel, and this was penetrated, decapping the shell, only to find the main armored decks waiting beneath, with another 4.7 inches of steel. The bow of the ship was very strong, based on German experience at Jutland when the Lutzow went down when her bow was riddled with hits. It was ironic that Lutzow had engaged and sunk the older British battlecruiser Invincible, forerunner of the ship now dueling with Hindenburg, and her subsequent demise would lead German designers to give the ship the strong chin it now had. So a kind of rematch was now underway as both navies upgraded their ships to the heavyweight division.
Vicker’s Delight would not get through this time, which was why the Germans were closing to this range. If this same gun had achieved a hit at a much longer range, the steepness of its angle of fall and kinetic shock would have been much greater. At 30,000 yards it might have penetrated 5.1 inches of deck armor, and 6.5 inches at 35,000 yards. Yet those were ranges that almost never saw the guns accurate enough to score hits, so for all intents and purposes, Hindenburg’s deck armor was going to shrug off most everything it received inside 25,000 yards in well protected areas over magazines and machinery. In places the decks were even more heavily reinforced by the special new two inch armor plating on hydraulics that Chief Engineer Koenig had rigged, which were now still laying flat, not deployed in their intended position to try and thwart missile attacks. That did not mean the ship could not be harmed, as Axel Faust was soon to learn.
Faust was lucky that hit could not get through to the magazine, but the explosion it caused on the forward deck was so violent that he and his crew were badly shaken up, and the right barrel on Anton Turret was jarred upward so severely, that its training and elevation mechanism gears were badly damaged. Shrapnel flayed the heavy gun turret, but mostly struck the face, which was 15.2 inches thick, and completely impenetrable to anything but a shell fired at near point blank range inside 12,000 yards.
Faust had managed to stay on his feet, but his ears were ringing from the concussion, and several men
were down. He took one look at his number two gun and knew it would not fire again in this engagement, but he still had number one, and enough able bodied men to keep it firing. Yet nothing was coming down from the rangefinder’s station, and Fuchs was silent.
He gritted his teeth, and was at his optics making his own calculations while the crew staggered back to life, driven on by his deep voice. “Come on! Get up and get your back into it. We still have the number one gun. Let’s move!”
He waited, yet no data came from the gun director, and now he was going to have to call the shot himself. They were now inside 22,000 meters by his best judgment, with the range falling closer to 18,000. He knew the Captain would make a turn any minute to get those rear turrets into action, so he wanted to fire before he had to also re-train the gun after that turn. His crew did not disappoint, and they had a ready light in just under 50 seconds. Faust waited, squinting at his enemy through his rangefinder, and then decided.
“Make elevation thirteen degrees! Ready… Fire!”
The boom of the German 16-inch gun shook the turret again, and his vengeance was on its way, guided by the devil’s adjutant himself, and followed soon after by another two round salvo from Hartmann in Bruno. Then, just as he expected, he began to feel the Hindenburg turn, and he shouted out the new tracking orders.
“Right ten degrees at the double quick. Move!”
* * *
HMS Invincible was coming on, and right into the thick of that last German salvo. Axel Faust beamed when he saw a single round strike the ship, and he knew it must be his.
“Got the bastard!” he beamed. “We’re counterpunching off the ropes! Let’s give them another.”
His own 16-inch shell was the biggest on any ship in the German Navy, from the 40.6cm SK C/34 gun, screaming out of Axel’s turret at over 2600 feet per second. The shell was heavier than the British round, at 1,030 kg. If the turret had not found its way to the Hindenburg, it would have ended up as “Battery Lindemann” on the French coast, in honor of the Captain of the Bismarck who was supposed to lose his life this month. Yet that history was now on the scales of time and fate, and Lindemann was still very much alive, and more than happy to cede the turret to Axel Faust.
Invincible was equally well armored, with all of 8 inches on key deck areas, 14 inches at the belt, and 17.5 inches shielding her massive turrets. But Faust was going to hit the much smaller 4.7 inch AA gun mounted right to the starboard side of the conning tower, and it would be completely demolished, and all its ready ammo also fed the explosion, sending off a series of jolting reports, like fitful firecrackers. The shrapnel took a heavy toll on the deck crews near the second 4.7 inch twin gun mount, but when the smoke of the initial blast cleared, the fire there was not serious.
So right at the outset, both sides had landed good punches, and now Tovey saw the German ships begin to angle into a turn. He might have one, or possibly two more salvos where he actually outgunned both enemy ships combined, but they would soon double their firepower.
“Now or never, Mister Connors,” he said, and the boom of the guns answered with the ship’s fourth salvo, this time four barrels, quickly followed by the remaining five. Of those nine shells, Connors’ luck would hold long enough to see one of them strike the Hindenburg, and it would be a very telling blow.
Yet even while those shells were in flight, Bismarck had put in a good shot with its third salvo, and Tovey felt the hard thunk and explosion of a side armor hit.
“No worry there, gentlemen,” he said calmly. “That was on the main belt, and our hide is as thick as they come.” The King George V class actually had slightly heavier belt armor, but what it added there in protection, it had lost in much needed speed.
“Range?” asked Tovey.
“I make it a tad under 22,000 yards sir,” said Connors.
“Let’s make good use of it,” the Admiral replied. “We’ll be inside 20,000 in little time .”
* * *
Lütjens had seen the hit on Invincible, and wanted a better look. He was outside on the weather deck off the Admiral’s bridge when it happened, the luck of Mister Connors, and the single shell of the nine he had fired that struck a fatal blow—not for the ship, but for the man standing on that weather bridge, the Admiral himself. Lütjens had just raised his field glasses to have his curiosity satisfied.
Let’s see what we’ve done here, he thought, and that was the last thing to run through his mind before the shrapnel came. When Connors’ round struck the heavily armored conning tower, protected by 14 inches of Krup Cemented Steel, and with a roof nearly 8 inches thick, the cruel metal splinters suddenly swept the field glasses from the Admiral’s hand, and smashed into his right temple, killing him instantly.
For a brief moment, the Admiral’s legs still held strength, then his body slumped to the deck, his life’s blood bleeding from a catastrophic head wound. In those dark, dangerous seconds, Johann Gunther Lütjens stopped being something the universe was doing, and the process that had begun on the 25th of May, 1889, now ceased, just a few weeks shy of his 52nd birthday. Every experience of his life, and memories recorded in his long distinguished naval career, came to a sudden and absolute end. He would never know what happened to him, how he would die, or have even a single moment to contemplate his fate. One moment he was there, in the fullness of his prime, calmly assessing the damage his guns might have inflicted on the distant enemy. The next moment he was simply gone, the flame of his consciousness blown out, and never to shine again.
At that instant, the overall command of the battle had quickly passed from the calm and calculating mind of Lütjens, to that of his eager, yet less experienced Kapitan Adler. Fate had tapped the shoulder of one key player that had been slated to go into the void of death that very month, though there was an entire ship’s crew aboard Bismarck that was once destined to die as well. Whether that would happen this day remained to be decided by this terrible contest of guns versus armor.
The blast and shock of the hit shattered glass in the wind screen of the conning tower, ripped away shutters on a nearby signals platform, and shook loose a voice tube on the bridge, sending it gyrating back and forth in a noisome clatter against a nearby bulkhead. Three men were also shaken off their feet, and Adler took a white knuckled grip on the binnacle.
By the time he realized what had happened, and the bridge crew got sorted out, he had allowed the range to continue to close until it was now inside 18,000 meters. The turn he had made was aimed at exposing the rear firing arcs of his ships to bring another eight guns into the deadly calculus of this battle. Yet in the heat of the action he had foolishly forgotten Lütjens last remonstration. Bismarck still ran on a fast parallel course, and was now interposed between the Hindenburg and the oncoming British ship, still charging boldly into the fray, all guns firing.
The sudden news in the discovery of Lütjens death had also served as a distraction, and no flag signals had been sent to order Bismarck to take station behind. Fortunately, Kapitan Lindemann saw what was happening and cut speed to fall off on Hindenburg’s wake, but not before Invincible was able to put another full 9-round salvo right into the formation. This time it was Bismarck suffering the hit, and at this range the 16-inch shells striking the belt could penetrate just over 13 inches of armor, which was just enough to do the job. The penetration was not serious, but jets of fiery steel shot through the minor breach to lacerate the inner hull.
“Range at 17,300 meters,” shouted Eisenberg. “We’ll do better at 20,000, Kapitan.”
Adler folded his arms, almost protectively, and still somewhat shocked by the suddenness of the Admiral’s demise. His ship had already been riddled by at least fifteen smaller caliber rounds from the harassing attack put in by Argos Fire. Now he could finally see his enemy, still bemused to think this ship could have put those lighter hits on them while still over the horizon. Yet Hindenburg had also received two hits from heavy guns off the Invincible, and Lütjens was dead.
What
was Eisenberg trying to tell him? Open the range! They were letting the British run in too close. Inside 15,000 meters these monstrous guns could blast right through his belt armor, penetrating 14.4 inches of steel. Both ships had nearly that, and yet both would now be vulnerable. He did not know that to a certainty, not with the cold measurements of a ruler, but he could sense the rising danger as the enemy ship loomed ever larger, and the warning was evident in Eisenberg’s statement.
“Helm! Come left fifteen and ahead full battle speed! Signal Bismarck to follow.” This time he remembered his signals flags, though he knew that if the British ship persisted in its daring approach, it would now be very difficult to really open the range. He finally had his battle, yet the smell of blood was on the wind, tainting the dark rolling soot and smoke with a tinge of added danger.
* * *
“A hit sir!” Connors exclaimed. “Well up on the conning tower. That had to shake them up.”
“Nothing like putting one right on the noggin,” said Tovey. “Good show, Mister Connors. Look, they’re all in a jumble with that turn. And that lead ship has a broken finger. Give them all nine guns!”
Connors was only too happy to comply, as he could now see the aft segments of both ships light up with gunfire, and knew Invincible was going to be outgunned fifteen to nine. That was a considerable margin, and if they had to turn and attempt to break away, the very same gun configuration that made Invincible so deadly as it charged, would now work against them. There were eight 6-inch guns, all mounted aft behind the funnels, but it would be much more difficult to open up firing arcs for the bigger turrets. X-turret would be completely blind dead aft, unlike a similar rear mounted turret in a more classically configured ship design. To get it into action, the ship would again have to withdraw in a zig-zag, allowing the X-turret to fire at an angle of at least 15 degrees. The two forward turrets would need at least twice that to look over their shoulder and stay engaged. The ship was never meant to run from a fight.
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