Winter Warriors

by Stuart Slade

  “Very good. Take one of our Corsair groups and the remaining Adie squadron, and the CAP Corsairs from Essex, Franklin, Hancock and Bon Homme Richard. That’ll give us a strike of six groups. Formation Key. All Corsairs, they’re to carry Tiny Tims. If anybody’s running low, 1,600 pound APs instead. The other groups are to use the groups they’re holding on deck for CAP when their turn comes up. CVLs as well. We’ll use the surviving Flivvers for CAP. That’ll buy us another two hours to rearm and refuel. Then Able goes in again. Clear?”

  “Clear, Sir.”

  Wild Bill Halsey looked over the sea again, south to where his prey was lurking. And to the west, the sun was beginning to sink towards the ocean. At dusk the carriers would turn north, away from the German fleet, if it still existed. And, in case it did......

  “Admiral Lee is forming the Battle Line?”

  “Sir, it’s assembling now. The battlewagons are detaching from the Task Groups as per your orders. Uhh,” the officer was about to risk the legendary wrath of Wild Bill. “The Large Cruisers Sir? Should they go too?”

  Halsey shook his head. “They stay with us. They’ve no place in a gunnery duel.” He looked out again. Is it my imagination or has the sun sunk a little more already? Time was the enemy, he realized that, but how little of it he had scared him. The constant stream of fighter-bombers and torpedo planes from his carriers could sink the German fleet. Of that, he was confident. As long as they had enough time.

  AM-1 Mauler Conestoga. Third Wave, Over The High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic

  The Germans had made a catastrophic mistake. In maneuvering to avoid the torpedo planes, their formation had started to break up. Their anti-aircraft fire had lost its cohesion, it was wild, uncoordinated, ineffective. The FV-1s streaked straight through it, unloading rockets and machine gun fire into the lead pair of battleships. Those gray monsters staggered under the blow and their defensive barrage faltered under the rippling wave of rockets. The pilots off the Randolph and Bunker Hill were some of the most experienced in the fleet and their tally of missions over France and England had paid off. None of the jets had been hit. They’d curved away at the end of their runs, leaving their targets nicely softened up for the Corsairs and their napalm.

  Lieutenant-Commander Raymond Searle absorbed the position as he saw the superstructures of the two leading battleships in front of him erupt into flames. The Corsairs swung around slightly and made their runs from directly ahead of the four huge battleships. It cost them. The anti-aircraft fire from the lead ship had been degraded badly by the flak suppression runs but the following ship had not. Two Corsairs were nailed as they passed over the lead ship and tried to make their runs at the one behind. Ten Corsairs had deluged the German battleship’s superstructure with 3,000 gallons of napalm, sticking to everything and everybody.

  Searle watched and reflected grimly that, in this case, antiaircraft fire dying had a very literal meaning. For a brief second he had a picture of the nightmarish inferno on the decks of the stricken battleships. Then he swept it from his mind. They were Germans, who cared what happened to them? Searle’s younger brother had been one of the prisoners murdered at the Battle of the Kolkhoz Pass. That made hammering the German fleet personal.

  The Maulers were making their runs a lot higher than the previous aircraft. There was a good reason for that. Searle had named his aircraft Conestoga for a reason; it could lift loads no other single-engined aircraft could equal. There was a lot of rivalry between the Adie and Mame squadrons. Mame was a bit faster than the Skyraider and it could carry more. On the other hand, Adies were easier to fly and had shown an incredible ability to survive damage. Searle had seen Adies that had no right to be in one piece, let alone still flying, bring their pilots back alive before finally giving up - after landing on the decks of the carriers. Both planes were new; both had their problems. It was the Adies that had won the pilot’s trust.

  The Mames had something new for the Germans to chew on. They carried a 2,000 pound rocket-boosted armor-piercing bomb under their bellies, another one on the inner hardpoint under their wings and ten 200 pound parachute-braked fragmentation bombs under the outer hardpoints. Searle flew ahead of the battleships, then swung to run down their length. Errors were usually in range, not bearing. This plan would minimize the effect of range errors. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his squadron dropping into place. The formation had been worked out to maximize the number of bombs hitting the target. His eyes flipped down to his bombsight. Through its lens in the bottom of the fuselage he could see the sea. He changed course slightly and the bow of the lead German battleship appeared. His cross ran along it. The forward turret appeared, then, as the second turret eased into view, Searle dropped his entire load. As soon as they saw him do so, the other pilots released simultaneously.

  Searle swung away and headed north. His pilots were behind him. 11 of the 12 Maulers in his squadron had survived. Beneath and behind him, he could see the Adie torpedo planes hadn’t been so lucky. The two German battleships at the rear of the formation had concentrated on them. Three planes down? That’s what it looks like.

  Behind and beneath him, the 2,000 pound bombs dropped by the Maulers worked as advertized. Each was equipped with a parachute and, as they’d been dropped, a lanyard opened that chute, effectively stopping the bombs dead in mid-air. The weight of the bomb under the chute swung the assembly down to vertical. As the bomb passed 80 degrees, a simple inclinometer fired the six 5 inch rocket motors welded around the outside of the bomb. They boosted it to speeds far beyond anything a normal bomb could achieve. Pre-war analysis had been based on the assumption that, to gain any degree of penetration, a bomb had to be dropped from high enough to pick up speed on the way down. The higher the altitude, the faster the bomb descended and the greater the thickness of armor it would penetrate. That applied all the way up to terminal velocity. Beyond that, the rate of descent stabilized and wouldn’t cause any further increase in penetration. Of course, the higher the bomb was dropped from, the less the chance of it hitting the target. If the thickness of armor was such that a bomb of given weight had to be dropped from a height where the chance of it hitting the target was negligible, the needs of protection were served.

  The rocket-boosted American bombs didn’t need altitude to accelerate. The rockets drove them. The bombs dropped from 2,000 feet up were moving far faster than terminal velocity by the time they hit the decks of the ship. They were still accelerating even after they had punched through the thin steel of those decks. That was something the Derfflinger’s designers had never anticipated. Nor had any other battleship designer, but it wasn’t their products that were under attack.

  Nine of the bombs hit Derfflinger; ten hit Moltke. More hit the sea alongside the two ships, diving deep underwater before they exploded. In a way, those near misses did more damage than the direct hits. The shock waves pummeled the two ships, springing plates and bursting open welds. The armor piercing rocket bombs were something even the battered German ships had never experienced before.

  Two of the direct hits were from Connestoga. One hit B turret. It sliced through the 130mm armored roof and scythed down the long steel barbette. The bomb’s delayed action fuse was initiated by the impact and methodically counted away the milliseconds before the time came for it to destruct. The fuse designers had forgotten to allow for the fact that the bomb was still accelerating even after it had passed through the turret armor. As a result, the bomb had passed below the shell and charge magazines before it exploded.

  That oversight and the small charge carried by the heavy-cased bomb saved Derfflinger. Fragments from the explosion ripped open the fuel tanks under the barbette and opened the ship’s bottom to the sea but they didn’t detonate the magazine. Earle’s other hit, on the deck in front of and to port of A turret, also failed to cause a magazine explosion. The explosion there blew the ship’s side out where the six bow torpedo tubes were installed. Derfflinger lucked out again, the water rushed through the r
ipped open side and extinguished the fires before the torpedoes could explode.

  Compared with the wrath of the armor-piercing bombs, the two torpedoes that hit the battleship seemed almost insignificant. A few minutes earlier, the towers of water beside C and D turret would have been cause for alarm but the ship was still reeling from the bomb hits. The torpedoes defeated the torpedo protection system and ripped open the side of the ship. That was where Derfflinger’s luck ran out.

  A few seconds earlier two rocket-boosted bombs had sliced through the ship’s side beside C turret, just inboard of the torpedo bulkhead. They’d exploded in the area between the bulkhead and the ship’s C turret magazine, reducing the maze of relatively insignificant compartments to a tangled mass of wreckage. The water from the torpedo hit just a few feet away burst through the shambles and flooding started to spread throughout the whole area. A split second later, the second torpedo hit another area beside D turret, one that had also been mangled by a bomb hit. The two torrents of water mixed and merged as they raced through the wreckage, spreading uncontrollably as they did so. It took the water only a few seconds to find flooding paths through the ship and into C and D turret magazines.

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

  Lindemann picked himself up from the deck, stunned by the blasts. The sight had been incredible. B turret had been lifted clear off its mounting amid smoke from the explosion underneath that formed almost a perfect ring. The turret was now sitting drunkenly across its barbette. The damage reports were coming in but Lindemann didn’t need them to tell how bad the situation was. He could see the bow ripped off by one of those parachute rocket bombs, He could feel the ship slow and begin to list. The word penetrated his senses somehow.

  “One machinery room has gone, Sir. Direct hit. We’ve lost Bruno, Caesar and Dora turrets. I think Anton will flood soon. Stern’s been hit. We’ve lost steering and the port and centerline screws. We’re trying to restore power to the starboard screw but we’ve, the gearing has, it’s all a wreck back there. Those damned bombs went straight through our armor deck. We’d probably have been better off without it. All it did was set the damned things fuses working. There are fires down below but they’re under control. It’s the flooding. The bombs smashed us up inside, the torpedoes opened up holes to let the water in. Admiral, Sir, the flak guns, they’re gone. Those little parachute bombs exploded just above the decks, what the jellygas didn’t finish off, they did. The crews in the open mounts, they were already dead, we only had the enclosed 105s. Fragmentation bombs did for them.”

  “Message from Moltke, Sir.” The Signals officer was reading from a piece of paper, his face white with shock. “Ten hits, all from bombs. Anton and Dora took direct hits, they’re gone. One bomb hit beside Dora, it’s blown the whole side out there. She took three hits dead aft, their whole stern section had detached, she’s dead in the water. Bow’s gone, she took four hits forward of Anton. She’s flooding freely up there and settling by the bows.”

  Lindemann shuddered, Derfflinger and Moltke were already slowing, Seydlitz and von der Tann overhauling them. “Signal Z-28 to come alongside. I must transfer my flag. Order Von Der Tann to be ready to take command of the fleet. How long to the next wave hits us?”

  “Ten minutes Sir. At most.”

  Incredibly their air search radar was still working. Ten minutes gave him just enough time to shift his flag to Z-28. Then, he could transfer to Von Der Tann in the next gap between waves. That raised the obvious question. “Any more waves of Ami aircraft joined the attack.”

  “Oh yes, sir. One more in the last few minutes. They’re holding steady launch rate by the look of it. One wave every fifteen to twenty minutes. No sign of it ending.”

  Boiler Room, KMS Gneisenau, North Atlantic.

  They were coming under attack again, Rheinbeck knew it. Orders came down on the telegraph, for every tiny fraction of steam that could be forced from the boilers. The violent changes in machinery orders; the canting of the deck. Rheinbeck had heard it all before. Only an hour ago. He still remembered the screaming protests of the boiler plant forced far beyond its capacity; the reversing and full ahead orders following in bewildering succession. The swerves as the battleship tried to dodge the weapons launched at her. Captain Lokken had worked wonders that time, dodging torpedo after torpedo. Then Rheinbeck had heard the crash and felt the ship shake as one of the Ami torpedoes had struck home. The torpedo defense system had held. Gneisenau had survived.

  That had been an hour before and now it was starting all over again. Rheinbeck wondered what is happening up there, what is happening to the rest of the fleet. Are our guns bringing down the Ami bombers as the officers had so confidently predicted. An hour since the first attack and we havn’t been struck again. It has to be going well doesn’t it? So why are we being hit now?

  If a needle could be bending against the stop mark on the gauges, the ones on the steam pressure indicators were. 52 kg/cm atmospheres pressure, 450 degrees centigrade in theory, the Good Lord alone knew what the temperatures and pressures in there were really like. The piping was already groaning as it was forced beyond its capacity. Then, the deck under Rheinbeck’s feet canted and he knew the attack was coming in for real. Captain Lokken was on the bridge, fighting for them all again, maneuvering his battleship as if it were a destroyer.

  The vibration in the boiler room was intense, yet even through it Rheinbeck could feel the shattering effect of the hit aft. A rocket-powered 1,600 pound bomb slashed through the roof of Caesar turret. It plunged down the barbette and exploded in the ammunition hoist. It was empty. The flashtight doors to the magazine were closed and that ruled out a catastrophic explosion. The blast from the bomb’s detonation went downwards, rupturing the centerline shaft tunnel and bending the middle of Gneisenau ‘s three shafts. The bend wasn’t that great but it caused the long, racing cylinder to rip open the tunnel and its seals. Water surged in from the sea and started to spread through the stern quarter of the ship.

  The hammering of the bent shaft against the seals in its tunnel told Rheinbeck Gneisenau’s luck had run out. The second bomb hit told him just how badly. It punched straight through the 80-millimeter thick armor deck and exploded in Rheinbeck’s boiler room. The armor-piercing bomb had a low explosive charge. It didn’t disintegrate into a hail of small, man-killing fragments the way a high explosive bomb would have done. Instead, it split up into a small number of large chunks that crashed into the over-strained machinery in Gneisenau’s port boiler plant. That started a chain reaction that caused the whole installation to disintegrate. The boilers themselves were finally stressed beyond their physical limits and erupted. Pressure surged through the steam pipes, causing them to rupture also.

  A few men were in the direct path of the fragments. They were the luckiest ones; the flying lumps of steel crushed the life out of them. Others were standing in front of the boilers when they flashed back.

  They were less lucky. They were instantly incinerated and died where they stood. For the rest of the boiler room crew, hell was just about to start.

  Rheinbeck was one of the unlucky ones. He was immersed in a scalding cloud as the ruptured boiler plant filled the compartment with superheated steam. He’d never felt anything like it; never in all the years he’d worked down here in the bowels of the ship. Searing agony as raw steam saturated the air. It filled his lungs and eyes, blinded him, ripped at his throat and nose. He ran, staggering for the hatches that lead out of the scalding hell that now surrounded him. There was something, someone? Between him and the way out. A figure already with his feet on the rungs that were the way to escape. Insane with pain, Rheinbeck grabbed him and threw him out of the way. His only idea was to find a way out, up to where there was no steam, where the pain would stop. He climbed up, three, then four rungs. Then he was seized around the waist and thrown to one side. He felt himself slipping, he tried to hang on but a boot crushed his fingers. He fell, back down
to where the superheated steam was condensing into near-boiling water on the deck.

  He could see again, slightly, as if he was peering through a dense fog. Thankfully, the pain stopped. The burns from the superheated steam had finally penetrated deep enough to sear the nerve endings in Rheinbeck’s skin. He was dying but he didn’t know that. All that he did know was the pain had stopped and he could see the struggling men frantically trying to escape upwards, out of the boiler room that was killing them. He crawled across the deck, leaving glove-like imprints of skin stuck to the steel. He never made it back to the way out. One of four torpedoes that slammed into Gneisenau ‘s side burst open the torpedo defense system and let a flood of blessedly ice-cold water into the boiler room.

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

  Captain Lokken knew that Gneisenau was done for. He’d pulled every trick he knew but it hadn’t been enough. There had been too many Ami jabos. They’d picked him out and concentrated on him. Two torpedoes dead amidships finished the work that the bombs had started, destroying his machinery plant and leaving him dead in the water. The stern was a mess. Another torpedo back there had mangled his screws and rudder. A fourth torpedo plowed into Gneisenau between Anton and Bruno turrets, penetrating the torpedo protection system and forcing him to flood both magazines. That meant everything had gone, machinery, heavy guns, flak batteries; everything that made Gneisenau a warship. It was over.

  That applied to more than just Gneisenau alone. This wave of Ami jabos concentrated on the destroyers that had been with the tail of the ‘thirty eights’. The Voughts had come in just above sea level and fired their rockets into the destroyer hulls, slowing them down for the Douglases to finish off with their heavy rockets. Four of the screening destroyers had caught the attack. Two had already gone down, the other pair wouldn’t last long. That, Lokken thought, applied to Gneisenau and Scheer as well. They were being left behind, Scharnhorst was struggling to keep up with Bismarck and Tirpitz despite her torpedo damage. Gneisenau and Scheer were virtually dead in the water.