He thought to himself at that moment that it was a shame they’d not gotten into position a little sooner: the second ship in line had been easily identified by her three forward turrets as HMS Nelson, sister-ship to the battleship Rodney that he himself had sunk outside Scapa Flow back in April. The Knights Cross he’d been awarded that now lay at his throat meant as much as the almost 40,000 tonnes the sinking had added to his total tonnage and ship tallies.
“Open outer doors… flood tubes one to six…”
“Open outer doors… flood tubes one to six…” The repeated orders again went out in a hush, and for the first time in an hour, the faint hum of the sub’s electric motors was drowned out by a different sound: the rumble and hiss of hull fairings sliding back to allow U-1004’s torpedo tubes to bear on her target. Within moments, the fire control officer informed that all six tubes were cleared, flooded and ready to fire.
“Set torpedo depth to six metres… speed to thirty-five knots…” Kohl continued, his mind continually active as he took in everything he could see through the scope. The draught of a battleship (the depth below the waterline) was far greater than that of a tanker or merchantman, and as such they could allow a greater torpedo running depth, greatly reducing the danger of ‘broaching’ on the surface. They’d require greater speed in return however, as warships could also steam much faster than commercial shipping. All of the U-boat’s torpedoes used electric propulsion and therefore produced almost no visible wake, leaving no warning of their approach.
Kohl made another defensive sweep of the seas around them – he’d survived that long as a U-boat commander by being careful rather than reckless, and 44 other officers and men also owed their lives to that fact.
“Bearing ten degrees… range eighteen hundred metres,” Kohl stated after a few more moments, releasing a deep, calming breath. “Tubes one to three… narrow spread… match bearings… and shoot!” That order was relayed instantly, and within seconds the correct target information had been transferred to the automatic gyroscopes within the torpedoes themselves. The whole ship shuddered faintly as three torpedoes hissed from their tubes one by one and immediately altered course onto their preset trajectories.
Kohl turned the attack scope to the fourth ship in the line – another battleship – and began to check bearings in preparation to firing his second salvo. The first three torpedoes had the better part of two minutes running time before impact, and that’d easily be enough time to acquire and fire on the second target. He was about to call out the first range and bearing reading as the boat suddenly and rather unexpectedly lurched sideways as the a nearby explosion shook them savagely. All thoughts of his second target vanished as they came under attack, probably from an unseen aircraft. Kohl almost gave the order for a crash dive, but suddenly remembered the shallowness of the surrounding waters and decided against it.
“Depth twenty-five metres! Set course to forty-five degrees, all ahead flank!” A crash dive would run the risk of hitting the bottom of the North Sea and leaving them stuck fast as a result… or worse. Instead, he lowered the periscopes and turned the boat to the north-east at full power, hoping their high submerged speed would fool any destroyers now turning in on the position of the attack.
Henry Harwood was still standing on the bridge as a warning reached the fleet that a U-boat had been sighted by one of Ark Royal’s air patrols. The enemy sub had been close to the formation – dangerously close – and the effectiveness of German U-boats was well known: that effectiveness could easily have crippled Britain and brought the country to its knees in a relatively short period of time, had there been a few more of them in service. The fighter bomber had spotted the grey shape of the vessel at periscope depth, faint but still visible in the dark waters of the North Sea, and had dropped a bomb on it but couldn’t confirm a hit. A subsequent fly-past could detect no debris or evidence of damage, nor could it find any further sign of the U-boat itself.
Harwood knew Admiral Tovey would be torn over what course of action to take next. A hundred kilometres south, the 2nd Cruiser Squadron had already reported smoke on the horizon – enough to suggest the presence of a large enemy fleet – and as such they couldn’t afford to break away from their current course or waste time in pointless manoeuvring at the whim of U-boat sightings, confirmed or otherwise. Destroyers Intrepid, Inglefield and Active were already turning in toward the area of the sighting at full speed, one of those vessels equipped with ASDIC; which might at least scare the enemy off, if not locate him and enable his destruction.
He was still waiting on the Admiral’s orders as two torpedoes struck Malaya amidships, the next ship in line behind Nelson. The impacts sent huge geysers of water spraying up her sides and superstructure. Fire broke out across her decks above the first of the impacts, thick black smoke pouring into the air as her captain began to cry for damage reports and she started to take on water through holes torn in her armour belt below the waterline. Her speed began to slow dramatically.
Reports from Kent, leading the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, confirmed the presence of an enemy battle fleet to the south at that same moment; a fleet comprising at least three capital ships and numerous smaller vessels. That new information basically decided the issue, and Tovey gave orders for the fleet to carry on, while two destroyers remained behind to protect the stricken Malaya. The veteran battleship would be forced to fall behind and make repairs on her own, and if that could be done quickly enough, she might still take part in the upcoming battle… if she could rejoin the rest of the fleet in time.
Hindsight emergency airstrip ‘Alternate’
Eday, Orkney Islands
Alec Trumbull sat above the cargo area of the C-5M, surrounded by the empty seats of the transport plane’s passenger deck. Eileen Donelson was in the cockpit, using the Galaxy’s radios to maintain contact with Whitehall and Home Forces GHQ in an attempt to keep abreast of the ongoing battle in the south. Particularly of interest was the main battle raging in Kent that represented the largest established Wehrmacht beachhead: also the area of fighting into which Thorne, Kransky and Ritter had flown hours before. Thorne had taken a belt radio, and they’d received sporadic reports relayed via Whitehall, but the last of those had been over an hour ago, and the message had been brief. It’d been little more than a notification the Swordfish was on the ground, and that they’d joined a convoy of fresh troops moving toward the front. There’d been no further word since then, and the strain was starting to show on all their faces. Then there’d suddenly been a new, direct communication from Thorne himself, patched through a number of radio relay links along the long axis of the country. Trumbull hadn’t been able to pick out the exact nature of the conversation that had transpired between Thorne and where Eileen sat beyond the bulkhead leading to the Galaxy’s flight deck, but the Commander’s voice was raised by the time it had finished, and she’d clearly been left in a poor mood.
“The man’s a pig-headed bloody idiot…!” She snarled angrily, stomping out of the cockpit in disgust as Trumbull rose to his feet instinctively. Eileen caught his concerned stare and forced herself to calm down a little. “He’s got Ritter there, with Richard to keep an eye on him, and still Max refuses to get out of there until he’s sure they’ve got the bugger back to his own lines!”
“Surely he realises the risk to himself!” Trumbull observed with mild disbelief. “He can’t endanger himself like this!”
“Tell him that, Alec,” she shook her head and gave an angry half-growl of exploding breath. “He takes no bloody notice of me!”
“The longer he waits, the harder it’ll become! Even after dark, enemy night fighters will make the flight back almost suicidal!”
“I told him that…!” She moaned plaintively. “I told him all that, and it made no bloody difference! I might as well…!” She was cut off as another transmission from the radio beyond the hatchway caught their attention, this time with further news of the invasion.
Alec remained standing as Ei
leen dived back onto the flight deck and received the new information. He was torn in a number of directions by the news… torn between his natural instincts, and the conditioning of his military service regarding orders given by a superior officer (Max Thorne, in this case). Almost subconsciously, his fingers reached up and touched at the T-shirt showing at the neck of his flight suit. It was the ‘Somewhere In Time’ shirt Thorne had given him as a remembrance of his ‘jump’ in the Lightning that had signified his officially joining the Hindsight team. The T-shirt had come to mean a great deal to him – more than he’d have thought possible in his days before coming to Hindsight – and the significance of it, and what Thorne had done for since, hadn’t gone unrecognised. Not the least of that was the fact that the man had saved his life so many weeks ago over The Channel.
He suddenly found the confines of the passenger deck quite oppressive, and Alec made his way down the access ladder and out into the main cargo bay, a brisk wind whipping past as it channelled through the open nose of the Galaxy and out the lowered rear ramp. The rain they’d experienced during the morning had eased off, but there was still the noticeable feel of moisture in the air, and the dark clouds above threatened more at any moment. He shuddered a little at the cold before making his way down the nose ramp and out onto the concrete runway. Before him lay a makeshift tent camp that was now home to the remains of Hindsight as they waited in anticipation of take off.
The F-35E was also there in the foreground, fuelled, armed and ready for a quick departure. Several makeshift patches of unpainted alloy were clearly visible against the grey paint scheme covering the rest of the aircraft, welded over the holes blown in the aircraft’s tail from Thorne’s battles with the Flankers. Jack Davies was leaning into the forward cockpit, standing on a set of metal steps pushed against the fuselage and seeming to be more interested in swearing softly at the instruments than actually accomplishing anything. As he spied Trumbull’s emergence from the camouflage nets, he dragged his attention away from the Lightning’s cockpit and jumped to the ground.
“Any news…?”
“Only that he’s refusing to stay out of trouble,” Trumbull replied as he reached the American’s side. “Max claims he’s not going to get out of there until he’s sure Ritter has made it back to his own lines.”
“The boy does know there’s an invasion going on, doesn’t he?”
“Luftwaffe fighter sweeps across Southern England are blowing the RAF out of the sky wherever we take off,” Trumbull nodded angrily, “and it’s a miracle he managed to get that Stringbag in there in the first place. Lord knows how he’s going to get out again!”
“Five hours’ flight time back in that thing, with the invasion in full goddamn swing? Jesus…!” Davies shook his head. “Getting the guy back to his own lines means he’ll be a whole lot closer to that front line himself! The Krauts are moving fast wherever they push forward, and he’s really risking the chance of ending up POW!”
“No prizes for guessing how much interest the SS would pay in him if that happened!” Trumbull observed sourly, unimpressed by the thought.
“Shit, they’d have electrodes on his balls faster than you could say ‘Jawohl Mein Herr!’!”
“I should think Reichsmarschall Reuters would make sure any interrogation was more than thorough,” Trumbull mused, and his eyes unconsciously fell on the F-35E over Davies’ shoulder, “which would put Ritter in a particularly difficult position.”
“That’d waste one hell of a lot of the work that Max himself put in here,” Davies added, his eyes also straying back over his shoulder toward the Lightning. He gave a half-smile as he returned his gaze to Trumbull and they both reached the same conclusion simultaneously.
“It’d be rather poor form of someone with the power to right that situation not to do something about it, I’d warrant,” Trumbull observed innocently. “Thorne has one of those radios with him, doesn’t he?” He inquired.
“Yes… yes, I believe he does,” Davies smiled lightly. “Don’t know how much use they’d be, but I believe the gun pod’s fully loaded, and there’s some Sidewinders in the weapons’ bays...” He leaned in toward Trumbull, as if about to reveal some vital piece of classified information. “I’ll let you in on a little secret… if you get close enough, those heat-seekers can lock onto ground targets too! Mightn’t carry a big enough warhead to kill a main battle tank, but it’d probably disable one, and they’d sure as hell take out anything smaller… never know when that might come in handy.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “I think… I’ll go… and have a chat… with Eileen…” Davies stated rather slowly and deliberately, taking care to make sure Trumbull caught every word. “I may be a while…” And with a silent nod, the agreement between them was made. As Davies turned and walked off toward the C-5M, Trumbull called over two of the Lightning’s ground crew.
200km east of Sunderland
Dogger Bank, North Sea
Admiral Gunther Lütjens watched from the bridge of Bismarck as Kriegsmarine Schlachtflotte-1 steamed north at full speed across the Dogger Bank, the rest of the fleet’s capital ships – Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau – stretched away behind in an impressive display of line-ahead formation. Radar-equipped patrol aircraft had been shadowing the Home Fleet for several hours as it travelled down the east coast of the British Isles, its position constantly updated for the benefit of any U-boats in the area, and the enemy’s order of battle was well known to Lütjens by the time the two fleets drew near in the middle of the North Sea. More U-boats were racing to intercept the enemy’s approach following Kohl’s attack in U-1004, and the attack aircraft of TG186, Graf Zeppelin’s carrier air wing, were also being readied for take off armed with bombs and torpedoes.
The carrier’s aircraft had been participating in support of the invasion with raids on Bomber Command coastal airfields in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and many of the RAF’s heavy and medium bombers had been destroyed on the ground. The few that survived had been quickly shot out of the skies by massed Luftwaffe fighter sweeps before they’d even come close to the invasion forces. Losses among the aircraft of TG186 had been negligible, and as they now turned north to engage the Royal Navy that afternoon, they were being refuelled and rearmed in preparation for battle with the Home Fleet.
Graf Zeppelin was the lead ship of the largest class of warship in the world. With a full-load rating of more than 73,000 tonnes, she and her sister ships were fleet aircraft carriers built up from the hulls of the huge Bismarck-class ‘superbattleships’. The term überschlactshiffe (‘superbattleship’) had been coined by Reichsmarschall Reuters himself in reference to that new class of ships, their dimensions and tonnage so much greater than that of a ‘normal’ battleship that the conventional title hadn’t been considered sufficient to do them justice.
Bismarck’s hull design was also quite suitable as the basis for a matching class of fleet carrier, of which Graf Zeppelin was the first. She was more than 260 metres long, almost 40 metres across her beam, and a long, ‘island’ superstructure rose amidships on her starboard side above her broad, steel flight deck. Her large, single funnel rose from the rear of that island, and at each end of the superstructure, a pair of superimposed triple turrets mounting three 128mm guns apiece, providing her with heavy flak and some close-in defence against lighter enemy vessels, should one manage to draw within range. Those heavy turrets were complimented by forty light emplacements spread around the edges of that long flight deck, the smaller mountings boasting equal numbers of twin 37mm or ‘quadruple 23mm flakvierling’ flak guns fitted into turrets almost identical to those of the Wirbelwind self-propelled AA vehicle.
Trägergeschwader 186 called Graf Zeppelin its home, the mixed air wing comprised of one gruppe of fifty J-4B naval fighter-bombers and one of S-2C Seelöwe attack aircraft. Each gruppe consisted of two staff aircraft and four staffeln of twelve, and the carrier also kept within its huge, 170m-long hangar bay five anti-submarine/reconnaissance helicopters. T
hat air wing was now preparing to launch in response to the approach of the Home Fleet as Graf Zeppelin turned into the wind to begin flight operations with her trio of escorting destroyers, thirty kilometres astern of the rest of the fleet.
Schlachtflotte-1 powered north at best possible speed, eager to engage the British warships. Lütjens had released the First Cruiser Division, and the smaller warships, commanded by Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff in Admiral Graf Spee, had driven ahead upon sighting a corresponding British cruiser force to the north of the Dogger Bank. The two groups were now just twelve thousand metres and had commenced the firing of ranging shots. The powerful optics of the warships’ fire directors and those of the lookouts atop the main masts could make out the closing cruiser forces beneath the grey skies, although visibility was too poor to make out any real detail. The smoke on the horizon and the images on their radar screens however were clear indications that a larger fleet was definitely drawing near.
A pair of helicopters from Bismarck and Tirpitz were already circling the action, remaining well out of range of enemy AA guns as the spotters on board provided an excellent, first-hand account of the developing engagement to both Lütjens and Langsdorff. On paper, the presence of heavy cruisers Kent, Exeter and York and the light cruisers Ajax, Galatea and Achilles were for the most part an even match for the Kriegsmarine ‘heavies’ Blücher and Prinz Eugen, and their lighter support from München, Essen and Vienna, however the German warships had two major factors in their favour.
England Expects (Empires Lost) Page 86