Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) (34 page)

There
were two other ships in the French Fleet still unscathed by the missile strike.
Destroyer
Aigle
was attending the wounded light cruiser
La
Galissonniere,
which was still struggling to put out fires and retiring to
the nearest German controlled port in Greece, along with the survivors of the
X-3 missile attack. The last ship was one of the five superb large fast
destroyers,
Indomitable
, which were really a light cruiser class vessel
given their size. Capable of 45 knots, it was the fastest ship ever built, and
had been assigned to assist as a screening ship for the German carrier
Goeben
.

“We
should sight them soon,” said Lütjens. “You may signal
Bismarck
and tell
Lindemann that he has a free hand and may fire at his discretion.”

“You
will not reserve the honor of the first salvo for
Hindenburg?”
Adler
gave Lütjens a searching look.

“Kapitan
Adler, it is not the first salvo that matters, but the last.”

The
Admiral tipped his officer’s cap, then strode out onto the weather deck to use his
field glasses. Soon he heard the watch on the mainmast call out the alarm,
ship
ahead,
and he knew a fateful hour had come. This ship was conceived and
designed long ago, built over many years by artisans from all over Germany. It
had the latest guns, the best Krupp steel armor that the nation could provide.
Then it spent months working out in trials before making its daring breakout at
a place the British least expected. All that comes down to this hour, he
thought. We build these ships at enormous cost, invest them with as much
national pride as anything else. They steam and sail and we proudly thump our
chest. But when it comes to the bottom line, it is a single hour like the one
before me now that really matters.

It is
surprising to me that I even find myself here at this moment, in the
Mediterranean Sea! Kurt Hoffmann did his job well, he thought. The British have
learned to fear the Twins, and as soon as they got wind that
Scharnhorst
was at large and heading for the Denmark Strait, they reacted just as we
expected and moved their heavy ships too far west. That allowed me to stride
right through the Faeroes gap, shelling that airfield as we went. By the time
the British realized what was happening, they could only get one ship south after
us, HMS
Invincible
. That is the one ship I must be wary of. It matches me
in armor, firepower, and even betters me in speed. Is it out there today?

They
were running with the wind at their back, which was always good, thought
Lütjens. He studied the enemy fleet as the ships began to appear on the
horizon. They must be the old WWI battleships the British have patched up and
kept floating all these years. No wonder we’re closing on them so quickly. He
saw the battle ensign hoisted on
Bismarck’s
mainmast and knew the time
had come. The roar of his lead ship’s forward guns cracked like thunder and he
saw the bright orange yellow fire ahead. A full salvo, he thought. Lindemann
means business. Time I was back on the main bridge.

“Kapitan
Adler,” he said with a proud smile. “Fight your battle!”

“Aye
sir!” Adler was quick to get reports from his gun directors, and his senior
artillery officer, Lutz Eisenberg called out the opening range at 28,000
meters.
Bismarck
had come ten points to starboard to continue closing
while allowing
Hindenburg
an unobstructed line of fire.

“Helmsman,”
said Adler. “Follow Bismarck’s wake. Fire when ready!”

Eisenberg
was ready, and then the guns of the
Hindenburg
shook the wind with their
power, the only 16 inch guns in the fleet. The waters seemed to burn red with
the reflection of that blast, and the glow was soon masked by the deep brown
smoke of the guns, billowing out like a pyroclastic flow from some wrathful
volcano, as tall as the ship itself and many times its beam in width.

Down in
Anton turret, Axel Faust was moving from one station to the next, receiving
information from the gun directors and checking to see that all was well. He
could also use optical sights in his turret in the event communications with
the director were ever interrupted, and he had the good habit of always using
them to compare his reading to the information he had from the director. Now he
was watching for shell fall, and
Bismarck
had correctly waited for
Hindenburg’s
rounds to register on the distant targets before firing again. Faust smiled
when he saw the rounds fall very near the enemy ships, and he could tell they
were short when the upwelling of white water was superimposed on the long dark
silhouettes of the ships. If the two formations had been running parallel, he
might add 200 meters to his next salvo, but they were closing the range at
nearly fifteen knots, and so the calculation was much more complex.

He
waited until the next target data came down. “Elevation thirty,” he said in his
deep throated voice. “Bearing 152. Range 26,500.” Then he took one last look in
his optics and grinned. “Make it twenty-six four! Fire!” Anton was going to
fire the long end of a 400 meter bracket salvo aimed at the heart of the enemy
formation. Hans Hartmann in Bruno would fire the short end. They would
therefore have two points of reference to adjust subsequent fire.

“Attention…”
came the voice of Eisenberg over the intercom from the
main gun director.
“Shellfall! ... Bruno short; Anton Straddling!”

Axel
grinned. That extra hundred meters had done the job. That was a good long shot
for a straddle on the second salvo. Now he knew what he had to do as
Eisenberg’s voice sent down the next bearing and elevation to announce his
settings. “Adjust, adjust!” Faust shouted at his gunners. “Track two degrees
right, and steady on elevation!” At any minute they would get the order he was
waiting for: “Rapid fire!” Eisenberg’s voice called out, and Faust clenched his
fist as Anton’s guns boomed again.

“Nobody
hits anything at this range,” said gunners mate Albert Lowe.

“Think
like that and you never will,” said Faust.
“Scharnhorst
hit that British
aircraft carrier at this range, and we can do better!”

They
did do better, but just barely. The next salvo, the third from Anton, was right
near the lead capital ship they had been targeting, and the bright orange fire
that Axel saw through his rangefinder was not the enemy guns returning the
insult. They had scored a hit, and he knew it was his, because Bruno had fired
five seconds later and he now saw both those rounds fall right after his own.
He could feel it in his bones. They had beaten
Scharnhorst’s
record for
the longest hit ever obtained by a battleship at 26,465 yards, which was 24,200
meters. HMS
Invincible
had also bettered that mark when it scored a
telling long shot against the Italians, but no one knew these things in the
heat of the action. They would only be calculated later, once the after action
reports were all typed up and compiled… and by the men who survived.

Chapter 29

Queen
Elizabeth
was struck
forward, right near her number one turret, and the resulting damage was plain
to see when a large secondary explosion blasted from the gunwale, obscuring
everything forward of the conning tower with a heavy black smoke that was so
thick it defied the wind.

The
16-inch shell had penetrated the deck, just missing the heavier 11-inch side
armor on the turret and striking the upper portion of the barbette instead.
Here the armor was much thinner on this older class ship, between four and six
inches above the main belt armor where the penetration occurred. It was a
design flaw that had been corrected in the newer
King George V
class,
which had barbettes with twice that armor thickness at 12.75 inches, but that
did not comfort the stately Queen at that moment. The round had detonated one
of the four magazine areas where the powder bags were stored, and with near
catastrophic results. The bulkheads between the magazine and upper shell deck
were blown apart and every man there was killed instantly. The working room
just beneath the upper gunhouse was devastated, and the side of the ship itself
was rent asunder with the blast.

On the
bridge, Captain Barry struggled to keep his footing, instinctively flinching
and raising an arm to shield his face when fragments of shrapnel flayed the
conning tower. The ship shuddered and rolled with the force of the secondary
explosion, and then the heavy black smoke obscured all. The sound had been
deafening, and now he could barely hear the hoarse shouting of a man on the
voice tube. He felt a warm wetness on his neck, and reached up to the side of
his right cheek, his fingers wet with blood trickling from his ear. In spite of
the shock he shouted an order, his voice seeming a bare whisper in the chaos of
that moment. “Starboard twenty!” He was turning his wounded bow away from the
heat of the action.

Captain
MacRae saw the sea erupting around the British ships, heard the booming report
of their guns, and was taken with the savage power of a close quarters battle
at sea. His was a ship that had been designed to fight an enemy it should never
see, except in the digital traces on the radar tracking screens. The sight of
the smoke and fire, the resounding crack of the big guns, the brilliant orange
flame blooming from the distant silhouettes when they fired, were all as
exhilarating as they were terrifying. Then he saw the result of the hit Axel
Faust had guided home on
Queen Elizabeth.

“That
looks bad,” said Mack Morgan when they saw the huge eruption of black smoke on
the horizon ahead.

Argos
Fire
was well behind the main British
formation, thinking to lead the enemy ship off their pursuit, but the enemy had
not been fooled. They kept to an intercepting course against the main body,
slowly turning to run parallel, and then converging by small five or ten point
turns to gradually close the range. At that moment they were still behind the
British, and just barely on the horizon from the perspective of
Argos Fire.
The enemy was closing the range on the British with their 15 knot advantage in
speed, and there was no way the fleet would escape from the battle that was now
being joined.

Queen
Elizabeth
was making no more than 14
knots, her forward hull opened very near the water line to allow the heavy
swells to surge in. It had the saving effect of flooding the whole region, and
preventing further explosions, but the ship would soon be down at the bow, a
wounded water buffalo, and the wolves were rushing in to finish her off.

Malaya
was directly behind when the explosion occurred, but did
not match the turn made by the other ship, her Captain Arthur Pallister
instinctively knowing it had been a near fatal blow. Three cruisers and three
destroyers were ahead of the Queen, and carried on as the battleship fell off
the line to the starboard side. The cruiser
Berwick
, behind
Malaya
,
followed in her wake, but one of the two trailing destroyers turned to attend
to
Queen Elizabeth.

“That
was quick shooting,” said MacRae, “Who’s the culprit, Mister Haley?”

“Radar
traced shellfall from the number two ship in this formation here, sir.” Haley
was fingering the
Hindenburg
.

“Well,
we’d better answer that. No one raises their hand against the Queen on my
watch, by god. Target that ship with a GB-7. Let’s see if we can get their attention.”

“Aye
sir.” The missile was keyed and away, making a lightning swift run to the
target that seemed only brief seconds, still accelerating to its top speed when
it struck home and exploded, right amidships, but on the heavy belt armor of
the ship. As with the hit on
Normandie
, the missile would not penetrate
the 360mm armor, over 14 inches thick, but the large excess fuel reserve would
cause a fire.

“That
looks worse than it probably is,” said Morgan.

“I
don’t think we can penetrate the armor on these ships, sir. We can’t fire in
Mode A. If we don’t hit the superstructure, these ships will simply shrug off
our missiles and put out the fires.”

MacRae
nodded, inwardly kicking himself for firing without thinking this through. The
GB-7 was a sea skimmer, defaulting to that attack profile unless reprogrammed
for a popup maneuver. They had to strike above that belt armor.

“Reprogram
the next three to mode B,” he said. “Two missiles—same target.”

The
whine of a heavy shell headed there way sent a chill up his spine. They watched
as two neatly spaced geysers fell about 500 meters ahead of the ship, much too
close for comfort.

“Come
right thirty degrees and ahead full,” MacRae said quickly. “We’d best slip back
over the horizon.”

A
minute later they returned fire, the missiles arcing up, then diving for the
sea to make the run in to the target, over 25 kilometers away. This time they
would pop up just before the attack, and plunge into the heart of the ship. One
would strike a 5.9 inch gun turret there and do serious damage, the second
would plunge into the superstructure, blowing through the outer wall and three
bulkheads, but in a section of the ship that was largely empty at the moment,
the starboard side crew’s quarters, forward of the number one stack and behind
the conning tower. The fire there thickened the smoke already streaming from
the stack as the ship raced on at 30 knots. It was a hard blow, and
Hindenburg
bled from the enemy lances, but it was not fatal. Crews were already scrambling
to get water into the blazing compartments. A launch mounted just above the
point of penetration could not be saved, and the secondary gun director had to
be abandoned due to the heavy smoke, but otherwise the ship was still
functioning and capable of staying in the fight.