“No way he’s spotted us in this light,” Haas muttered sourly through clenched teeth, the tension in his voice building notably. “Anton… Werner… I need you both to get some fire on them and keep their heads down until we’re clear: he must have radar if he knows we’re coming, and we may take some flak. There won’t be much time on target and we’re going in head-on: I’ll keep the nose down as long as I can but there’ll only get a few seconds each for a shot!”
Inwardly he cursed the fact that their unit had been ‘passed over’ for intended equipment upgrades four times in the last eighteen months. Küstenfliegergruppe 406 had been scheduled to receive the latest ‘D-model’ variant of the Sea Dragon for at least a year, with actual receipt of the new aircraft postponed time and again as resources were instead diverted to front line patrol units the Mediterranean and the Baltic.
With a stronger airframe and more powerful engines, the A-138D not only flew faster and further than the model they’d used for over three years now but was also armed with a pair of fixed, forward-firing 23mm cannon that were far more effective when attacking enemy submarines or surface vessels than the pair of turret-mounted 20mm guns they currently possessed.
“Two minutes…! He’s dead ahead: you should be able to see him soon!” The radio operator called out nervously, his own voice quavering slightly with tension as the flying boat hurtled down out of the sky with its engines howling, the airframe shaking as the A-138B pushed slowly beyond its designed maximum speed of 275 km/hr.
“Wasserbomben now live…!” Haas advised as Schilcher ran his fingers across a bank of switches to his right and armed the rack of weapons beneath the aircraft’s inner starboard wing.
“Depth charges…?” Engels, the navigator asked aloud over the intercom, frowning. “What use are depth charges? The Leutnant does know we’re attacking a surface vessel, I assume…?”
“Was ist mit wasserbomben falsch?” Streibel asked blankly from his position at the machine gun position at the rear of the central engine nacelle. A fine engineer and an excellent gunner, he was nevertheless somewhat slow on the uptake, a fact that was often taken advantage of by the rest of the crew in their own good-natured fashion.
“‘What’s wrong with them?’…” Engels repeated as Haas remained silent, both he and Schilcher grinning broadly at the opportunity for a momentary release of tension, “Did I truly hear you ask that question? Our depth charges are for use against unterseeboote: they’re set to detonate forty metres under the water. If you hadn’t noticed, Oskar, we’re about to attack a surface vessel, and if he’s already at a depth of forty metres we won’t need the bloody wasserbomben!”
“Don’t be too concerned, Helmut,” Haas advised finally, concentrating on the ever-closing surface of the ocean ahead as they continued to dive in on their final approach, “I know what I’m doing… we don’t need to destroy our geisterschiff to ruin his day.”
“Sixty seconds...” Engels called out, unconvinced and bracing himself for imminent action as the A-138B howled in out of the sky.
“Be ready boys,” Haas added, calling out a few final words of encouragement as he reached forward and turned a large, rotating switch in one corner of the instrument panel. “All weapons free… activating ‘taschenlampe’… now… now… now…!”
Outboard of the engine and tail-boom on the aircraft’s port side, a small pod was fitted beneath the wing carrying a 90 million candlepower carbon arc lamp equipped with a 50cm ‘spreading’ lens. Aligned perfectly with the nose of the aircraft itself, the Bordscheinwerfer Typ B1 (Airborne Searchlight Model B1) was intended for use in conjunction with radar to detect and destroy surfaced enemy submarines. Capable of illuminating targets at distances of several kilometres, its beam could cover a huge section of ocean across an outwardly-spreading arc ahead.
The extra weight came at a price, requiring the removal of the aircraft’s weapon racks on its port side and leaving the aircraft with just half its normal bombload, however the extra offensive capability the equipment provided was well worth any loss. The flight crews of the Marineflieger had of course coined a nickname for the device: ‘Taschenlampe des Teufels’ – ‘The Devil’s Flashlight’.
In an instant, several square kilometres of ocean directly ahead of the flying boat was bathed in stark, white illumination. Prior to activation, the flying boat itself had been far too small to be spotted from the surface of the water in the grey, pre-dawn light… now it shone like a small, fast-moving star, the brilliant beam far too intense for any onlooker to stare at with the naked eye for more than a second or two less they be temporarily blinded by the glare.
“There he is…!” Schilcher called out excitedly, physically pointing with a finger through the front windscreen to illustrate his warning. “Three thousand metres… ten degrees to starboard and running right across our bow…!”
“Got him…!” Haas acknowledged, his knuckles white with tension as he dragged the stick to the right and took them onto final approach to target. Far ahead in the distance, right at the very edge of their searchlight’s effective range, the fleeing ‘Ghost Ship’ was there for all to see, nose high in the air as it hurtled across the surface of the water at what had to be full throttle and trailing a long, unmistakable wake of shining phosphorescence behind it.
The forward gunner opened fire with his single 20mm cannon at a range of a thousand metres, the long fingers of streaking yellow tracer reaching out in a high, almost agonisingly-slow arc toward the target below. The first burst fell short, peppering the ocean behind the vessel with visible impacts as it powered on, but Anton adjusted quickly and walked his second, longer burst toward the boat below. The approach speed was ultimately too great however and that second burst also missed behind as he desperately tried to turn the turret quickly enough to keep pace with the fast- moving target.
At almost 300 kilometres per hour there was no time to fire a third burst as Haas hauled back on the stick and dragged the shuddering aircraft out of its power dive, their fight against gravity aided by a sudden loss of extra weight as they howled past the nose of the speeding MTB almost at sea level and a trio of depth charges fell away from the bomb rack beneath the aircraft’s inner starboard wing.
The A-138B thundered skyward once more as it banked away, its three engines trailing faint streams of exhaust as it struggled for altitude. Waiting in the rear turret, Werner drew a bead with his own 20mm cannon on the enemy vessel that had suddenly appeared below them, falling away to stern as the flying boat roared past. He was never given a chance to open fire.
Upon realisation the enemy aircraft was turning in to attack, MTB 102 had come sharply about and turned away from its south-westerly heading, instead thundering off to the west-north-west running parallel with the northern coast of Rathlin Island as their speed pushed beyond forty knots.
During her 1940 refit at the hands of the Irish Naval Service, her powerful but thirsty and temperamental V-8 petrol engines had been replaced by a trio of brand new and far more fuel-efficient diesels. A new, American design manufactured by Cummins, they were a marine version of the same turbo-charged 12-cylinder powerplant that powered Thorne’s two prototype main battle tanks. The combined output of 2,400kW was slightly less than that of the engines they’d replaced however any loss of power was more than compensated for by the extended range the smaller, lighter and more economical diesels provided when combined with significant weight savings.
The torpedo boat’s armament had also been stripped and replaced during its enforced refurbishment. She’d originally been fitted with a pair of 21-inch torpedoes, a 20mm Oerlikon cannon aft and a twin-mount for a pair of Vickers .303-inch machine guns forward, something that at the time had been a relatively heavy armament for a craft of her diminutive size. All had been removed during overhaul at Lough Swilly, with the pair of long, heavy torpedoes never to return: there was no use for such offensive weapons in her revised intended role as a transport for covert operations.
T
here was still a need for the crew of MTB 102 to protect itself however and SOE and the Irish Naval Service had again turned to the United States for inspiration in the fitment of a new and quite powerful defensive armament. Aft of the wheelhouse, a powered, open mount was fitted sporting a pair of 15mm rotary guns identical to those used in the M7A1 Sweeper mobile flak. Known as an M-115A in US Navy service, the weapons were a four-barrelled design capable of extremely high rates of fire and the MTB’s rear gunner could manually choose between ‘low’ and ‘high’ settings that fired at combined rates of 1,600rpm (rounds per minute) or 3,200rpm respectively. Fitted on either side of the mount with the gunner seated in the middle, the guns were able to provide a combined rate of fire of over six thousand rounds per minute. Such a high rate made them quite deadly against any attacking aircraft out to ranges of up to 1,500 metres.
The vessel’s primary armament was mounted ahead of the bridge on the main deck. Another new weapon based on the same ‘Gatling-gun’ principle, the 25mm M-111A2 cannon was another four-barrelled design, although this time just a single gun armed the larger but similarly-open forward turret. A substantially longer weapon than the M-115A, it also fired a far larger and more lethal explosive cartridge albeit at a comparatively lower 2,400 rounds per minute (although it was nevertheless still able to send a stream of cannon shells into the sky at a prodigious rate). The M-111A2 was intended for use in a ‘dual-purpose’ role and could perform admirably against air or smaller surface targets, its effective range against either approximately 2,500 metres or thereabouts.
Kelly and his crew knew exactly from which direction the flying boat was approaching however in a time where most anti-aircraft gunnery was still aimed by the original ‘Eyeball, Mark I’, that knowledge was almost useless unless the ship’s gunners could actually see the enemy. Kransky, Lowenstein and the children had been ordered back below decks under much protest, while Seán Michaels had volunteered to stand post forward at the 25mm cannon mount, ready to assist with loading as required.
Every crewman on deck, staring intently in the aircraft’s direction in search of a target, was momentarily blinded as the arc lamp beneath the A-138B’s port wing burst suddenly into life and bathed the speeding torpedo boat in stark illumination against the black water of the Irish Sea. Both weapon stations were able to take aim as the vessel was running on a course that was perpendicular to the enemy’s approach and the gunner manning the twin 15mm guns aft let fly with a long, pointless burst of fire in reflex despite being unable to look directly at the blinding target. The twin streams of tracer streaking from its muzzles arced high into the air, nowhere near the flying boat.
“Hold fire, Francis, for fook’s sake,” Kelly turned his head and bellowed from the bridge, having taken control of the wheel and hanging on for dear life as MTB 102 hurtled across the moderate sea at forty-five knots, the ride far from comfortable as its rising bow slammed through successive waves and knifed across the top of them all, leaving a huge, rolling wake in its path. “You might as well be firin’ straight at the sun for all the good it’ll do ye and you’ve about as much chance ‘o hitting it! All of ye – wait ‘til the bugger’s past us and y’ can send a full broadside right up his Nazi arse!”
“He’ll have blown us sky-high by the time he’s passed,” Michaels howled over the roar of the waves and the engines, staring nervously at Kelly over the forward windscreen of the open wheelhouse. “Who says we’ll get a shot at him afterward?”
“We’re toppin’ fifty miles an hour right now fella and we’re bobbin’ all over this bloody ocean as a result,” Kelly fired back sharply, not angry but dead serious and utterly professional all the same. He knew the boat and he knew his men, and he also knew what they were capable of under combat conditions. “…Even if we could get a clear shot at the bastard wi’out being blinded by that fookin’ light, we’ve fook-all chance ‘o hittin’ anything. As soon as he’s past, we’ll drop the throttles to give us a steadier firing platform and we can give him a proper ‘how d’you do’!”
“Fifteen hundred yards…!” Brendan warned excitedly, the helmsman standing by the radar set and continuing to provide accurate range information.
“Hang on to yer hats, boys,” Kelly howled to anyone who would listen as he struggled to keep the ship on a steady course, noting as the aircraft drew closer that the main spread of its searchlight’s beam was moving slowly ahead of their projected path. To him it seemed a clear indication their attacker was going for a bomb run rather than a strafing attack, choosing a path that would allow the pilot to bracket the boat with air-dropped weapons. “He’s gonna pass close-in off the bow so watch for fire from his gunners and keep to your posts – we’ve been through all this a hundred times in training. As soon as you’ve got a clear shot, let the bugger have it!”
The A-138B roared past a few hundred metres ahead, no more than a few dozen above the surface of the water at its lowest point as it lifted its nose once more and clawed its way back into the sky. Both the fore and aft weapon stations carried a full 360° field of fire and both carefully tracked the blinding searchlight as it drew ever closer, the electric motors that turned their mounts easily capable of keeping pace as the aircraft thundered across their bow. The moment the flying boat had past, the dazzling source of illumination that had made accurate aiming impossible also vanished completely. The brilliant beam of the searchlight instead now served to throw into perfect contrast the black silhouette of the aircraft against its stark, white background.
Both gunners were anticipating exactly that moment and torrents of pink and red tracer instantly burst forth in simultaneous streams, each forming lethal ‘fingers’ of devastation that sought out the departing enemy with merciless efficiency. Werner was first to die as he prepared to fire his own cannon, a storm of 15mm slugs ripping through the rear fuselage and completely shredding his turret in the process. The fusillade of heavy-calibre bullets continued its terrible path of along the bottom of the aircraft’s lower hull, tearing huge chunks from the fuselage that fell away in clouds.
Most of the remaining crew fared little better. The damage meted out by the twin MG mount on the MTB’s afterdeck was nothing compared to the pure devastation the aircraft suffered under the combined impact of dozens of explosive 25mm projectiles. A myriad of bright detonations sparkled across the rear of the aircraft, ripping across the port tail-boom and moving forward across the engine nacelle and the underside of the wing on the same side. The bright flash of a small explosion followed a fraction of a second later, originating within one of the port wing tanks, and the resulting blast was powerful enough to tear away entirety of that wing outboard of the nacelle.
The tail of the A-138B failed at the same time, what was left of the port tail-boom unable to cope with the stress of flight in its damaged condition. Even as the port wing fell away in a cloud of flame, the rear half of the boom on the same side also separated from the rest of the aircraft and also whirled away toward the ocean below, taking a large section of the main elevator with it.
With such a catastrophic failure of the airframe there was no possibility of the flying boat remaining airborne and it was still far too low for there to be any chance of the crew bailing out. What was left of A-138B Flying-Boat K6 + BK “Bruno” of 2. Staffel, Küstenfliegergruppe 406 banked slowly away to starboard, out of control and streaming fire from what was left of its port wing. Haas fought valiantly in an attempt to make the stricken plane level out before it hit the water but he was only partially successful at best.
The aircraft hit the water hard and flat, bouncing once before what was left of its shattered wing struck the surface and dragged the nose around in a spray of foam, the impact at least also serving to extinguish the flames. Smoke rose into the air in thick, black streams as the aircraft settled no more than a thousand metres or so away, water pouring into the shattered hull through dozens of shell holes and rents in its fuselage.
As many of the crew whooped in elation at the de
struction of the flying boat, gunners included, Kelly was far too busy maintaining control over the MTB to share in celebrations that he considered far too premature. While everyone else had been watching the aircraft swoop past, he’d been keeping his eyes fixed on the way ahead. As such he was the only one on board who’d bothered to take note of the three small, dark shapes that had dropped from beneath A-138B’s wings as it had passed by at the zenith of its dive.
There’d been no immediate explosion, suggesting to Kelly that depth charges had been dropped rather than bombs. In those first seconds following the fly-by he almost released a sigh of relief until the reality of what that actually meant finally sunk in.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph…!” He breathed softly, instantly hauling back on the throttles and wrenching at the wheel, sending many unsuspecting crewmen sprawling across the deck as he desperately tried to turn the unwilling torpedo boat hard to port. The vessel didn’t want to turn quickly at full power but the wheel gradually became more responsive as their speed began to fall away. With what seemed like agonizing slowness, the 34-ton vessel finally began to bank around to the west in a wide, ponderous curve.
“Secure all stations…!” He bellowed, calling out one last, desperate warning. “Hold on…!”
The air-dropped depth charge (or Bordwasserbombe) known as BWB Type-F weighed approximately 130kg and carried an explosive warhead slightly less than half that weight. Capable of being set for detonation at depths ranging between fifteen and seventy-five metres, it was based directly on the standard WB Type-F model used on many small Kriegsmarine surface vessels. The three cylindrical weapons that had fallen from beneath the flying boat’s wing that morning had lost their aerodynamic tail-fins as they’d hit the water and from that moment had sunk into the darkness of the Irish Sea at a rate of approximately two metres per second.
They detonated in sequence a few seconds apart as each reached a depth of forty metres, and the combined blast of almost 200kg of high explosive created a huge upheaval beneath the surface that threw a massive wall of foaming water metres into the air in a line that ran dozens metres to either side of the torpedo boat’s original path. The timing couldn’t have been worse for Kelly and his crew as the four hundred metres or so they’d travelled at full throttle in the intervening twenty seconds between the bombs’ drop and detonation placed the ship almost directly above the left edge of the blast area.
Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2) Page 24