“There they are.” Charles Cussans sounded triumphant from his position in the glazed nose of the Maryland. In the gathering gloom, the merchant ships far below were hard to see, but he had managed to spot them. It was, perhaps, symbolic of the rapidly changing fortunes in the Middle East that the Marylands that had been brought in as bombers now spent most of their time as reconnaissance aircraft. The Commonwealth problem now wasn’t beating the Italians; it was finding them, so they could be beaten.
“Get the position.” Relaying it to the fleet was the top priority. In the cockpit, Sean Mannix knew that four cruisers and a round halfdozen destroyers were closing in on that convoy. There were even rumors that they had a battleship along, in case of heavy opposition, and that Andy Cunningham himself was in charge. Even as a long-term, RAF, career professional, he had to admit that the situation had promise.
“Got it.” Cussans read off a string of numbers. They were sent out almost immediately. The message had to go to Cairo, then taken to the Naval section there and retransmitted to the fleet, but that wasn’t going to be a problem. What the numbers essentially said was that the Italian convoy was where it was expected to be.
“They’re firing down there.”
The flash of fire from the antiaircraft guns on the ships down below was almost invisible; the operative word was ‘almost’. Cussans had seen them.
The warning gave Mannix the opportunity for some sudden evasive action. The Maryland bounced from the shell bursts, but none of the explosions inflicted any damage. Below them, the rapidly-approaching night masked the formation of ships. It was time to go home.
“Good job, Cussans. As a special reward, you can natter on the intercom while we head for home.” Mannix smiled to himself. He’d sat in the bombardier’s position on his Maryland and realized just how lonely and isolated it was down there. That was a problem with the Martin aircraft; it was a hot-rod but its fuselage was extremely cramped. The three members of the crew were pretty much isolated from take-off to landing. Chattering on the intercom helped to relieve the isolation. Mannix had written a report for the high-ups drawing attention to the problem and discussing the good and bad points of the American design. He doubted if it would do any good, but one never knew.
He was seeing into the future as well as the nighttime darkness, Admiral Cunningham had no doubt about that. The equipment was crude and its performance needed to improve a lot before it would become an essential aid. More importantly, the Navy would have to learn how to use the tools properly. At the moment, they were still floundering around, trying to get the system perfected. Yet for all that, the radar equipment fitted to Warspite had spotted the enemy convoy and allowed the Commonwealth formation to make its approach unseen. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
“Range to primary target?” The flagship of the convoy was the heavy cruiser Bolzano, presumably along to provide heavy gun cover against a raid.
The covering force, now on its way back to Taranto, was supposed to deal with anything more than a small attack, so a single heavy cruiser was good insurance. Or, so it seemed; Cunningham actually had the gravest doubts about the whole concept of ‘distant cover’. To his way of thinking, the battle would evolve so fast that a ‘distant cover’ squadron wouldn’t be able to react in time.
“Five thousand yards, sir.”
That sounded frighteningly close. The big thing about radar was that didn’t just tell people what was there; it told the lookouts where to concentrate their attention. Technically, lookouts could easily spot a target at this range; on a dark night, with no moon and against blacked-out ships, reality was different from theory. Knowing where to look made all the difference.
“Very well. Open fire.”
What happened next happened so fast and so perfectly that it could only have been the result of long practice and fingers waiting anxiously on firing switches. Warspite’s searchlights snapped on, perfectly illuminating the unsuspecting Italian cruiser. Every detail of her superstructure stood out in the glaring white light. A split second later, Warspite’s four-inch antiaircraft guns cracked out starshells that burst over the cruiser, further bathing her in light. Her eight fifteen-inch guns, already levelled at their target, crashed out, sending the great projectiles slamming into Bolzano’s hull. All eight hit; a spectacular sight that silenced everybody on the bridge. Bolzano staggered under the blows, reeling as they penetrated deep into her. The explosions didn’t just belch orange flame. They sent huge chunks of the ship’s structure spiralling skywards as the blast ripped Bolzano apart at the seams. The cruiser was out of the battle; she would be hard-put to survive.
Down in Warspite’s turrets, a well-ordered drill had started. Hoists lifted the shells themselves and the bags of propellent up to the guns. Rams then pushed them into the breach. As each gun was readied, a green light went on in the fire control room. Tiny realignments shifted the positions of the gun turrets slightly. Then a finger closed the switch; all eight guns fired again. The cycle time had been twenty seconds.
It was only a split second longer than that before the second devastating broadside tore into the dying Italian cruiser. Cunningham saw her gun turrets hurled high into the air by the blast, spinning and spiralling as they flew upwards. Perhaps mercifully, the sight was masked by the sudden shutdown of the searchlights. Bolzano now was only illuminated by the starshells and the red glow of the fires engulfing her.
Cunningham became fixated by the sight. The brilliant glare of the searchlights illuminating a destroyer was a shock. The destroyer seemed to be turning to engage the British battleship. She had been caught by the searchlights halfway through the turn. Warspite’s sixinch secondary battery opened fire. The first salvo straddled the destroyer; the second gave the brilliant red flash of direct hits. The third salvo must have been fired. If it had been, it was lost in the roar of Warspite’s main battery sending its third broadside into the blazing wreck of Bolzano.
“Order the convoy to scatter, immediately.” Rear Admiral Ferdinando Casardi was horrified by the sudden discovery that there was a battleship attacking his convoy. More to the point, battleships never appeared alone. There are cruisers and destroyers out there and they will tear us apart.
“Order the Bande Nere and the destroyers to join us in attacking the enemy and holding them off while the merchant ships make a run for safety.”
“Sir, Grecale has been hit by fire from the battleship’s secondary batteries.”
And so it begins. Casardi realized that a major disaster was already in the making. Bolzano was a pyre of smoke and flame. Even from this range, he could see her disintegrating as the British battleship pounded her with another salvo. Does that make it four or five full broadsides she has taken? Does it matter? She’s finished.