Winter Warriors

by Stuart Slade

  At last, he was out of the deadly cones of fire and heading home. Webb eased back on the power and watched his instrument panel record the lowering temperatures and pressures. All characteristics that determined the life of his engine. He was heading home, back to Gettysburg. The trail of smoke behind him wasn’t enough to worry about. Spider’s Web had been hit before. She’d be hit again but it didn’t matter. Today, he was going back to his carrier.

  AD-1 Skyraider Bayonne Beauty, First Wave, Over the High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic.

  In his imagination, he could feel the heat washing off the three burning ships. He knew the damage wasn’t mortal. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t even severe. Napalm would sear the upper decks, incinerate anybody outside the armor but it would burn off. It could not penetrate the heart of the ship. That was the job of the torpedo bombers. Bayonne Beauty had a single torpedo nested under her belly and four Tiny Tim rockets under her wings. Lieutenant Fisher McPherson knew that the objective this early in the game wasn’t to sink ships but to spread chaos and disorder. The birds later in the attack would be carrying two or three torpedoes each. They would be the ship killers.

  Still, McPherson wanted to do the best he could. Even if the objective was to break the formations up, professional pride meant he wanted to score a hit. The problem was the torpedo bombers were coming in from astern of the targets, the worst possible angle for a torpedo attack. The torpedoes were consigned to a tail chase, one in which their speed margin over the targets wasn’t that great. He had already decided there were other options, other targets.

  McPherson picked his first target; a destroyer running just behind the worst-hit of the three burning enemy ships. Its anti-aircraft fire was flashing round him. That didn’t matter too much, the important thing was to get as close as possible. So close his Tiny Tims would gut her. Anyway, the German destroyers didn’t have dual purpose main guns. The destroyer grew closer, much closer and his rockets slashed across the gap between the Adie and its prey. Three satisfactory explosions; one of the rockets must have misfired. Now it was time for the battleship. He swerved, skimming the sea as he brought his nose around then tried to close the range as much as possible. In a stern chase like this, he had to get as close as possible if his torpedo was to stand a chance of a hit.

  His torpedo launched McPherson swung away, heading out from the German ships. The fighter-bombers could indulge in wild rides across the enemy ships, strafing everything in their path. The lumbering torpedo planes were too valuable. They had strict orders. No grandstanding. Drop your fish, come back, get some more, drop those. Come back, get some more, drop them. Keep going until there weren’t any targets left. The crews got the message.

  Captain’s Bridge, KMS Gneisenau, High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic

  “We’ve lost everything aft of the tower, Captain. There’s nothing left back there.” The young Lieutenant gasped, not from exhaustion but from shock and sickness. He’d never seen what the Ami’s dreaded jellygas had done before. He’d heard stories but he’d dismissed them as soldier’s tales intended to impress the pampered sailors of the High Seas Fleet. Now he knew different. He’d seen the charred husks sitting at the remains of their guns; seen others till writhing as they died. He shook the images from his mind and carried on. “The fires are terrible but they’re confined to the upper decks. The jellygas didn’t penetrate into the ship. Below decks, there’s no damage.”

  Captain Christian Lokken was only half listening. His attention was fixed on the cloud of torpedo-bombers that were closing in him from behind. “I want every turn of the screws the engineers can give me. Every one. No holding back. If there are safety margins, ignore them. Today, there is no section of the gauge marked in red. Understood?”

  Engines nodded and spoke into the communication system. They’d lost contact with a lot of the ship. The fires had severed the runs in the superstructure. Thankfully, the machinery spaces were still on line. Underneath their feet the vibration picked up as Gneisenau accelerated. Lokken did not take his attention away from the aircraft closing in. The formation split in three. One group headed for Scharnhorst up ahead; another picked Scheer behind. The majority of the planes were coming for him.

  “They’re coming at us from behind, Klaus. Poor tactics on their part. A bad angle for torpedoes.” Lokken tensed. There were torpedoes dropping from the Ami bombers. “Port and centerline screws hard aft; starboard screw full ahead.”

  Gneisenau’s bow started to swing around as the ship’s machinery screamed in protest at the abuse. She slid sideways through the water, combining her turn with forward motion and sideways shift, all in ways the designers had only dreamed of. Lokken watched the

  torpedo planes pulling away. If he timed this right.....”All engines, full ahead.”

  The screaming shudder stopped. Gneisenau lurched forward and left the tracks from the torpedoes to pass aft, not far aft but enough. As long as they missed, it didn’t matter by how much. Ahead of the battleship, the two surviving destroyers scattered out of her way. When a 32,000 ton battleship hit a 2,000 ton destroyer, it didn’t take any great insight to know who would come off worst.

  “Scheer’s been hit.” The First Officer spoke quietly as he saw the tower of water rise from the heavy cruiser. A bad hit; right aft where the hull dropped a deck. That was always a position of great stress. Given the questionable strength of the ship’s stern, she’d be lucky to keep her rear end in place. And there was always the possibility of damage to the shafts. Captain Mullenheim-Rechberg on Bismarck had claimed the odds against a ship getting a crippling hit in the screws was a thousand to one against. That was nonsense of course, simple mathematics said otherwise. 15 percent of the ship’s length was the screws, shafts and rudders. Assuming hits were distributed at random on the hull, one hit in six would cripple one or all of those units. One in six, not one in a thousand.

  Lokken paid no attention. “Starboard, centerline screws hard aft, port screw all ahead.” Gneisenau screamed again as her bows were hauled through the sea. It was a desperate turn to try and avoid another group of torpedo planes that had caught up with her before dropping. The white streaks in the water were closing on her, getting dangerously close. Then an intercept course slowly turned to parallel and then to diverging. Gneisenau had turned inside the torpedoes.

  “That makes at least twenty misses. The Ami’s need some practice.” Then the First Officer cursed his words. Two columns of water rose from Scharnhorst. One was way forward, between the bows and the foremost turret, the other level with the aft mast.

  Lokken still ignored him. His mind was consumed with the picture of his ship surrounded by the torpedo bombers. He was fighting desperately to survive the hail of torpedoes launched in his direction. Another salvo was coming in, this time from in front. The bombers had worked around him. Now they were attacking from both sides, eight off the port bow, four off the starboard. Lokken visualized the geometry and knew it was over. That’s why this attack was called the Hammerhead. To avoid one group he had to expose himself to the rest. Well, better four than eight. He swung his bows to starboard. “All back full.”

  With a little luck the sudden reduction in speed would throw the Amis off. Gneisenau threaded the spread of eight torpedoes. They raced past either side of him. It was close, the nearest wobbled as it entered his wake and was almost drawn into his screws. But, it wasn’t, it was just a fraction too far out. The other four were racing towards her. As Gneisenau slowed, Lokken saw them. The first was passing well in front of his bows, the second much closer. Lokken cringed. The third slammed into his ship in almost the same place Scharnhorst had been hit just a few seconds earlier. Slammed home, but no explosion. Whatever had happened, the torpedo hadn’t exploded. Fuze failure? Lokken didn’t know. Another hit, right between Anton and Bruno turrets. That one did explode and Lokken felt his Gneisenau shudder from the hit.

  It was over. Their bolt shot, the torpedo planes were leaving. Scheer was in deep trouble, listing and
slowing down. Scharnhorst was also slowing but she seemed far less hurt. Lokken guessed it was the hit forward more than anything else. Gneisenau seemed unaffected by the blow she had taken. Lokken didn’t need the damage control report to tell him what he already knew. The torpedo defense system had taken the hit, the damage was superficial at most. Just some minor leakage inboard. He took the opportunity to look around. Derfflinger hit and burning. And another blue cloud just about to descend, this time on the head of the formation.

  FV-3 Shooting Star Sweet Chariot, Second Wave, Over The High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic

  Reprisal and Oriskany had just rejoined the fleet after a major refit. They had the latest radars, the new 3 inch L50 anti-aircraft guns in place of the quad forties, the lengthened bow and an improved island. They also had new airgroups with the least experienced pilots in the Fifth Fleet. They hadn’t even flown their first strike over France or the U.K. yet. That was why nobody had asked them to do anything clever. They had simply been steered straight at the German squadron. As a result, they were hitting it head-on.

  Lieutenant Commander Bob Price knew his job. He had to assess the enemy squadron while streaking in to do the flak suppression run, then assign his aircraft to the most valuable targets. It had been a lot to do when the strike leader had ridden on an Avenger with three crew members on board. Asking a single pilot to do it while flying a Shooting Star jet fighter was placing too great a load even on an experienced man. Experienced, Bob Price was not. Well trained, talented, skilled yes, but he was asked to do a job that was way beyond him.

  And yet he tried hard. It didn’t help that the Germans had built their Hipper class heavy cruisers to the same general plans as their battleships. From dead ahead, telling the difference between the ships was a matter of judging size. To those who sat in armchairs and sermonized on the minute differences between classes, distinguishing between a heavy cruiser and a battleship was easy. So much so that failing to do so was a matter of derision. For a young, inexperienced pilot moving at over 500 miles per hour through an intense anti-aircraft barrage, it wasn’t such a sinecure. Nor did it help that the American ship recognition instructors had hammered home the lesson. Twin turrets meant battleships, triple turrets meant cruisers. Price saw the shape, saw the twin turrets and his mind said battleship. He saw the single ship leading both columns of battleships and made a simple, honest, decision. That ship must be the flagship. An admiral always lead his fleet didn‘t he?

  “All aircraft concentrate on the lead ship.” The order sounded authoritative, crisp and sharp, exactly the way an order should sound. As a result, 32 FV-3 Shooting Stars and more than 60 F4U-4 Corsairs converged on the heavy cruiser Hipper. Behind them, the Adies swept down on the hapless cruiser.

  Admiral’s Bridge, KMS Derfflinger, Flagship, High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic

  Once, when he’d been in Austria, Lindemann had seen an avalanche engulf part of a small village. The memory raised an urgent question in his mind, just what in hell did the Amis have against the poor old Hipper? Lindemann asked himself the question in appalled amazement as he watched the tide of Ami jabos sweep down on the heavy cruiser. Had she done something to personally offend the Ami Admiral? Was there a special order out that the Hipper was to be sunk at all costs? Did they know something about the Hipper that I don’t? Throwing more than a hundred aircraft at a single 20 centimeter cruiser seemed very excessive somehow.

  Lindemann winced as the victim of the onslaught seemed to vanish under the rippling blaze of rockets from the jets that lead the assault. Attacking from the front like that had its costs though. Five of the Ami jets went down to the fleet’s concentrated anti-aircraft fire. Two of them exploded in mid air as 105mm shells scored direct hits. By coming in from the front like that they were running straight into a crossfire from the two lines of battleships.

  Derfflinger’s steel armor rang with the ricochets of the .50 caliber machinegun fire that hosed down her decks. The ship’s center section was beginning to look like a slaughterhouse. Blood from the flak gunners ran down the deck and mixed with the soot from the fire caused by the crashed jet. It was odd, Lindemann had expected to see the burned out tail of the aircraft sticking out of the superstructure when the fires cleared but there was nothing. The sheer force of the impact had smashed the jet to fragments.

  He swung his binoculars back to Hipper. Her flak guns were silent. She was burning from the Anton turret back to her stern where the infernal jellygas was soaking her. Lindemann had the reports from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to confirm jellygas wasn’t a ship-killer the way torpedoes and armor piercing bombs were. In fact it did very little damage at all to the ship since the fires were superficial and didn’t bite deep. But the word from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau was that jellygas massacred the flak gunners and left the victim defenseless against the aircraft that did carry the ship-killers. Lindemann got the impression though that the pilots in this wave lacked the deadly precision of those in the first group. A lot of the rockets and jellygas tanks had missed completely, He watched two clumsily-dropped jellygas tanks bounce off the ship before exploding harmlessly in the sea alongside her.

  By the time that had registered, the bent-wing jabos had passed over Hipper. They left her blazing in their wake. Their course took them through the deadly crossfire from the battleships and over Moltke. The same infernal ripple of rockets swathed her superstructure and her flak guns faltered. Still, four of the bent-wing bastards, Lindemann was surprised at how much venom was in his description, had crashed, their wreckage staining the sea.

  It was the Ami torpedo bombers that suffered worst. Slow and lumbering, they were easy prey for German gunners who took the opportunity to exact revenge for the hellish jellygas. They got the bombers in their gunsights early as the torpedo planes closed on Hipper. The cheers grew as the score mounted and redoubled when it reached double figures. Twelve out of thirty plus torpedo planes had been sent into the sea by the time the survivors got to drop on Hipper.

  Lindemann recognized the perfectly-executed hammerhead torpedo attack. Even with her decks saturated with fire, Hipper swung hard to port. She was trying to dodge the torpedoes closing on her but it was hopeless. Lindemann knew that and grimly counted the long columns of water shooting up from the ship’s side. Six in all, four to starboard, two to port, far more than a heavy cruiser could be expected to take. One torpedo struck right forward and ripped the bows off. Another struck under Bruno turret, a third under the bridge, two on opposite sides of the ship in the engine rooms, the last right aft in the screws. The effects were almost immediate. She started to roll over, the big cruiser slipped onto her beam ends, exposing the two great holes ripped in her port side. Even if she’d stayed afloat, she wouldn’t have been going anywhere. Her screws and rudders were tangled wreckage, her stern almost severed from the ship.

  Lindemann swung his binoculars around, looking for survivors in the water. How men could have saved themselves through decks coated with jellygas he did not know. The he saw something he had missed when he’d been concentrating on the fate of the poor

  Hipper, Z-31 and Z-39 were going down fast, their sides ripped open by the big rockets the Ami Douglases carried as a secondary weapon. The torpedo planes that had survived the hammerhead attack had been almost perfectly placed for a rocket attack on the destroyers and they’d done their deed well. It was then that the significance of the second attack overwhelmed him.

  The American tactics were brilliant, simply brilliant. Their first wave had focused on the rear of the formation. They’d chewed up the ‘thirty eights’ and damaged the ships. They’d forced them to slow down and hindered their movements with damage. The second wave had been their youngest, least experienced men. They’d been given the easiest attack runs, straight at the head of the fleet, but also the most dangerous. Brilliant and ruthless, the Amis had thrown the pilots they’d miss least into that deathly dangerous run right into the crossfire. By blasting Hipper and her screen, they’d created a
mass of sinking ships in front of the battleships. The ‘thirty eights’ were swinging to port and the ‘forties’ to starboard in order to avoid the wrecks. The Americans had sacrificed their youngest pilots but they’d pried apart the German formation. The two lines of battleships were no longer mutually supporting. Now they would have to fight on their own.

  Brilliant, simply brilliant tactics. The American Carrier Admiral, was it Halsey or Spruance, was a genius. Time to be encouraging and put on a brave face. “Two waves gone, only two left. And they have only sunk the Hipper. Soon, we’ll have them under our guns.” No need to mention Scheer, her screws smashed, her stern hanging off, limping along behind the formation. Waiting for the Amis to finish her off. Just don’t mention her, hope everybody will forget that she was a dead ship.

  The Signals Officer spoke, his voice shaking. “Admiral, Sir, it’s not just four waves. At least three more have joined the plot. There are five waves at least more to come.”

  Admiral’s Bridge, USS Gettysburg CVB-43, Flagship Task Force 58

  “Sir, Formation Able has reported in. Claiming a heavy cruiser and two battleships hit and seriously damaged. They’ve lost at least 11 aircraft, have 13 more with varying degree of damage.” A signalman rushed up with another message flimsy. “Formation Baker, Sir. They claim a battleship sunk, another one seriously damaged and four destroyers sinking.” The lieutenants voice became grim. “Baker has lost more than 21 aircraft shot down, Sir. We’ll be recovering Able in 40 minutes, Baker in an hour.”

  Halsey nodded, absorbing information. The days up here were short. It was already past noon and we are racing against the setting sun. “TG-58.3 launching?”

  The Flag Lieutenant nodded. “Message just in, Sir. Formation How is on its way; 58.4 will be launching Formation Ink in 15 minutes. We’ll be recovering Able while 58.5 launches Formation Job.”