by Stuart Slade
“Who commanded the Corsair group?” Halsey’s voice was pure ice and acid.
“Lieutenant Commander Kellen, Sir.”
“Tell Mister Kellen I wish to see him the moment his aircraft has landed. Find out who is the best replacement as commander for that particular group.”
A shudder ran around the bridge at those words. Halsey scowled. He’d given specific orders that the fighter pilots were to beware of the Bearcats operating around the two CVEs. Then he dismissed the task of eviscerating the Lieutenant Commander until later. There were more important things to be done.
“Any sign of the German main body?”
“Came in a few moments ago, Admiral. The scouts have them on radar. They’re clear of the weather front now, about 200 miles almost due south of us. We can launch any time you give the order.”
Halsey grinned. “Lights on. Break EMCON. Radio and radar as needed. All carriers to swing into the wind we’ll launch as planned. 58.2, 58.3 and 58.4 to follow suit as ordered. 58.5 can miss the first wave strikes, give them time to catch their breath.”
There was a gentle rumble under their feet as Gettysburg picked up speed and swung into the wind to launch her contribution to the waves of strikes that would soon be heading south.
Bridge, KMS Derfflinger, Flagship, High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic
“Any word from the Scouting Group?”
“No Admiral. Communications have been trying to raise them for the last thirty minutes. Ever since we came out of the storm. The last message we had was that they were engaging the American aircraft carriers.”
“What does that fool Brinkmann think he’s doing? His orders were to use his aircraft for scouting, not to go charging off after the enemy. He’s left us blind. We need to know where the convoys are.”
“He did find the enemy task group, Sir. It’s to the west of us. And if the transmissions we’re picking up are true, he’s got at least two of their carriers.”
“Two carriers? Out of five. And he’s lost his aircraft doing it? That’s no excuse. Even if he has finished them.”
“Sir. Message from destroyer Z-20.” The Comms Lieutenant’s face was white.
“From Z-20?”
“From Admiral Brinkmann, on Z-20.” If ghostly bells had started to toll at that point, the message couldn’t have been clearer. There was only one reason why an Admiral would be reporting from a destroyer. Nothing larger was left afloat.
“What has he to say for himself.”
“He regrets to report, Sir that all three carriers, three cruisers and nine destroyers have been sunk by American air attack. He says the attacks were ferocious. They were carried out by very large numbers of aircraft and were sustained until the attacking aircraft ran out of ammunition. All his aircraft are gone, either shot down or ditched in the sea when they ran out of fuel. He repeats his claim of two carriers hit in retaliation and over two hundred American aircraft shot down. That’s all Sir.”
Lindemann felt like hurling his cap to the deck. The Scouting Group was the heir to the famous battle cruisers of World War One. Now it has gone without telling me where the enemy convoys were. All it had achieved was, possibly, weakening the screening group. Still, it was possible that they’d depleted their air groups and carriers without aircraft were helpless.
Two carriers, if they were Essex class, and there isn‘t any reason why there should be others would make 200 aircraft. Their air groups could be so badly mauled that they couldn’t fight any more. That would make it possible to hunt for the convoys with the spotter planes from the battleships. He had enough of them, more than 30. They were a trump card to hold for later. Lindemann linked his hands behind his back and stared forward. The convoys have to be up there to the north somewhere. The troop convoy was fast, it could slide right across our nose. That thought decided him.
“Order all ships, full speed, course due north.”
He resumed his position, feeling the vibration build up under his feet as Derfflinger accelerated. He barely noted the disturbance on the bridge behind him. The gasp that followed it did gain his attention.
“Admiral, Sir, enemy radars. Long range air search sets.” The report from the signals officer cracked slightly. “It’s the radars on their carriers.”
“Where are they? Make a proper report, damn you. Bearing and number”
“Due north Sir. Metox is picking them up all along the northern horizon. Sir, there are dozens of them. The Americans must have their whole fleet out there.”
Lindemann stared at the officer. He was about to ask for confirmation but shook his head as he changed his mind. There was no need for confirmation, the intercepts of so many radars couldn’t be ignored. Suddenly, he was seized with a desire to turn, to head south, but there was another shake of the head as that plan was negated also. If there were that many carriers up there, their aircraft could easily outrun my battleships.
“Are we being tracked?”
“By airborne radars. There are at least twenty, in an arc, north to west of us.” That decided it. If my ships are already being tracked there was no point in running.
“Maintain course, the radars mark the convoys. We will head straight for them.” Nobody has ever sunk a battleship at sea with carrier aircraft before.
The last piece of the puzzle fell into place. A radar contact. Long range certainly but positive. A large formation of aircraft heading straight at the battle fleet.
FV-3 Shooting Star Bolt From The Blue, First Wave, Over The High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic
The German flak barrage was incredible. The great battleships seemed to be outlined in fire as they hurled shells at the incoming formation. The first wave of American aircraft, from TG-58.1, hadn’t known about the German formation’s turn north until mid-way through their flight. The news had made them make a swift change of course. Now, they were coming in from behind the German force, hitting it in the left rear quarter. The two FV-3 squadrons dropped their tip tanks and hit full throttle, streaking ahead of the rest of the formation. They had the speed to duck the worst of the anti-aircraft fire, so it was up to them to clear the way for the piston-engined aircraft
Lieutenant Alan Bolte saw the gray shapes stretched out before him. The destroyers surrounding the back of the formation could be ignored. Their 20mm quads were lethal only at short range and the German destroyers lacked the fire control necessary to handle crossing targets. The ship at the back of the line seemed smaller than the rest. As Bolte closed on her, he could see her triple turrets. That meant a cruiser, German cruisers had triples, German battleships had twins. According to the briefing, the battleships were top priority. Bolte was a man who believed in obeying his orders. The next ship up the line had a single twin turret aft. It filled his gun sight as he raced towards the formation. Bolt from the Blue shuddered as the flak shells exploded around him. Right above the big twin guns was an antiaircraft mount, Bolte could see the gunners loading and firing as he closed on it. They‘II do.
He’d already closed to close range for his five inchers. Bolte thumbed the button that sent the black smoke tails streaking out before him. The anti-aircraft mount was blotted from sight as the explosions from the warheads rippled around it. There wasn’t time to do much more, the German battleship, it had to be either Scharnhorst or Gneisenau, swelled up in his gun sight. He lifted the nose a little and squeezed the trigger of his six nose-mounted .50 caliber machine guns. The stream of tracer swept across the aft superstructure, bounced off the crane in a spectacular display of ricochets, then tracked across the three portside 4.1 inch twin mounts. He could see the crews working their guns, then being scythed down.
The battleship was still passing him. Its gray structure flashed past to his right. Bolte left off the burst for a second, then resumed as a group of 20 millimeter mounts, some by B turret, others on the turret itself, swept into view. Another long burst, the tracers slashed at the crews at their open mounts. Incredible! The Germans didn‘t give their anti-aircraft gu
nners shields? Had they never heard of strafing attacks? Or did they really believe they were the invulnerable supermen their propaganda claimed?
Bolte flew past the smaller battleship. He still had no idea whether it was Scharnhorst or Gneisenau. Ahead of him were the monsters in the other column. When dealing with a poisonous snake don’t stamp on its tail, crush its head. Bolte angled his Bolt from the Blue for a run on the lead battleship in the second column. To his surprise, the flak from the bigger ships was no worse than the mass he’d already flown though. Every American ship that left the building yards had more anti-aircraft guns than its predecessor. Another odd thing about the German fleet. Perhaps they thought everything should be standard and identical. Just by ze book ja? Bolte thought to himself as he emptied his .50 calibers into the superstructure of the German ship. His eyes took in the details quickly, the 4.1s were in turrets, not the open mounts that had got their crews slaughtered. So, his .50s wouldn’t be taking them out. No matter, he’d done his best. The Corsairs and Skyraiders had better tools to handle them. He flashed in front of the German ship, almost on a level with its bridge, and ran for the clear sky beyond. As he did so, he saw an explosion lighting up the portside of the ship he’d just strafed. A secondary explosion? Just what did I hit with my machine guns?
Admiral’s Bridge, KMS Derfflinger, Flagship, High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic
“Scheisse.” Admiral Lindemann breathed the word in appalled fascination as the reality of the chart sank in on him. Four waves of Ami aircraft were coming at him. More seemed to be added every few minutes. Raid count, more than 200 aircraft each. Just how many aircraft had the Amis got? More than two thousand, the words sneaked into his mind as his eyes glazed over. He’d heard from the Army and Luftwaffe what happened when the Ami carriers came calling. They swamped the battlefield with their aircraft, they shot up and destroyed anything that was in the area. If anybody tried to move reinforcements in or fly them in from other bases, they’d run into a mincing machine. A dark blue wall of death that swallowed everything thrown against it. He shook himself. That was no way to think. The Amis were people, humans, men. Another treacherous thought spilled into his mind. Men who used steel and machines to fight flesh and blood. Waves and waves of those machines were coming his way and there seemed to be no end to them.
“They’re here Admiral! They’re coming from behind.” Lindemann looked out. Once, when he had been a youngster, he’d heard some of the neighborhood children challenging another to throw stones at a beehive. Lindemann hadn’t known quite why, but he’d turned away and started to run. The challenged boy had thrown the stones causing a cloud of bees to set off in pursuit of their attacker. Lindemann had got away safely, but the boys who’d shouted the challenges had been badly stung. The boy who had so foolishly responded had been stung to death. For the second time in a day, Lindemann wanted to run. He knew that running was the only wise course of action. The American aircraft descending on the rear port quarter of his fleet looked just like that swarm of bees had done.
He’d hoped the first wave would miss him, pass aft of his formation, but they’d turned and slammed into the rear of his group. Good tactics, come in from an unexpected angle. He could see one group of aircraft pulling ahead of the rest. They had to be the jets, using their speed to dodge the worst of the antiaircraft fire. It was working too, most of the bursts were behind them. For a brief second, he thought his gunners were cutting them down. He saw black smoke and flames, but it was only their rockets. They’d seemed to have concentrated on the rearmost three ships of the line; Scheer, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The latter seemed to have been worst hit. Her superstructure almost vanished beneath the rippling mass of explosions. The rockets the Ami jabos carry can’t really hurt an armored ship. They’d have been effective enough against the destroyers but the Ami pilots had ignored them.
“We got two Sir.” The gunnery officer’s voice was subdued and grim. Two out of more than thirty! The dark blue jabos had strafed three of the ‘Thirty Eights’ and were coming for the ‘Forties’. Anti-aircraft fire still largely ineffective, Lindemann noted. The jets were just too fast. One of them was streaming black smoke; dense black smoke from its fuselage that spread even as Lindemann watched.
He won’t be getting back to his carrier, he ‘II go down somewhere in the bitterly cold North Atlantic. Then, Lindemann hit the deck as a hail of machine gun fire showered the bridge. The armor plated screens took most of it as the jets swept over. Lindemann chanced another look. The burning jet he’d seen a split second before was huge. In that split second, Lindemann knew that the pilot realized he couldn’t get his jet home and that his chances of surviving the crash were tiny. So, he’d made a different decision.
The FV-3 Shooting Star slammed into the anti-aircraft batteries that lined Derfflinger‘s side at more than 500 miles per hour. The aircraft had fired its rockets and machine gun ammunition. It didn’t matter, the sheer kinetic energy and more than 50 percent fuel load in the jet made for a devastating impact. Lindemann felt his flagship reel under the impact and saw the explosion of fire amidships. That was bad, his anti-aircraft firepower had been cut badly and the column of smoke from the flames would attract more aircraft in to hammer the wounded prey. Then, he looked through his binoculars. His wasn’t the only ship that had problems with fire.
F4U-4 Corsair Spider’s Web First Wave, Over the High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic.
Lieutenant David Earnest Webb had his R-2800 engine pushed well into the red zone. War emergency power it was called and he guessed this classified as an emergency. He was wrecking his engine and he knew it. What the heck, the Navy wasn‘t short of R-2800s. He couldn’t catch up with the FV-3s that had gone ahead, but that didn’t matter too much. By the ripples of explosions that had covered the three ships at the rear of the formation, they’d done a good job of drawing the enemy’s fangs. Or so Webb hoped. The flak coming up still looked terrifying.
He had something terrifying under his belly for the Germans. The whole point of the early strikes was to kill the German flak crews. That would leave the ships defenseless against the heavily-laden Adies and Mames that were following the fighter-bombers. They, in turn were trying to break up the German formation with their torpedoes so that the ships would be on their own against the Navy fighter-bombers. The later waves could send them to the bottom at leisure. Break the formation, that had to be the key. To do that they had to kill the flak gunners. That was why Webb’s Corsair was loaded the way it was. He carried the usual eight five inch rockets under the outer wing panels.
Under the inner panels, where the cranked wing sloped sharply upwards into the fuselage, nestled two 150 gallon tanks of one weapon the Germans hated above all others. Napalm. It had never been used against ships before. There was always a first time for everything.
Three ships had been hit by rocket fire. Their anti-aircraft concentrations were spotty at best, reduced to just a few streams of fire from areas the rockets had missed. Webb held his own rockets; he had another target in mind for them. In any case, the orders for the napalm runs were very clear. Come in from the stern of the ship, along its length. Drop so the tanks bounce along the superstructure not over the side and into the sea. Those orders put his best line in the middle of the three ships that had been softened up. Streams of fire from the ships arced up at him from both sides. He was passing ahead of one, behind another. Time to turn. He pulled the nose around. Sure enough, he lined up just about right. The twin turret was ahead of him, the smashed wreck of a 4.1 inch twin mount above it.
Just perfect. He lifted the nose a little, then squeezed the release. The tanks under his belly wobbled clear. They arced down, tumbling end-over-end on the short trip between Spider’s Web and the German battleship. They hit, burst and engulfed the hangar on the German ship in a rolling ball of orange and black fire. The napalm didn’t spread the way it did on land. The ship was a mass of obstructions that trapped the jellied gasoline into pools. Instead they saturate
d their area of impact. The flames ran down the decks as the sticky gel adhered to everything and everybody in its way. Webb’s first tanks had set the area around the aft mast ablaze., The tripod stuck out of the inferno that had erupted around its roots. The other Corsairs flashed past, adding their tanks to the blaze.
By the time the first squadron had completed their runs, the whole aft of the superstructure was a mass of flame. Secondary explosions marked the site of the anti-aircraft guns as their ready-use ammunition cooked off. Later pilots found their aircraft bouncing round from the turbulence of the fires so the more thoughtful Corsair pilots held their drops and placed their tanks further forward. As a result, fires spread forward to engulf the bridge and forward guns. One Corsair had the bad luck to be making its run when the torpedo tubes on the Gneisenau exploded. The blast flipped the aircraft out of control, so that it collided with the battleship’s funnel. Its fuel and munitions exploding were barely noticeable in the holocaust swallowing the Gneisenau.
That didn’t worry Webb. In fact he would never know what had happened to the Corsair pilot. Different squadron, different carrier. Just another loss in the list that was growing steadily as the November day ticked past. He had another thought on his mind. Up ahead of him, another battleship had been marked by an explosion, a big one. He didn’t know what had caused it. Whatever it was, he was going to take advantage of it. He lined up on the battleship. It was a big one, with two funnels. The area around the fore funnel was burning from the explosion, no anti-aircraft fire was coming from there. The aft funnel was the center of a fiery mass of flak. He lined up and held his fire to the last second. Then Webb let the gunners have it with his machine guns and rockets.