When Commodore Ritchie saw the destroyer blow up, he knew the fate of his convoy was sealed. HMS Arrow launched herself bravely at the oncoming German ships, but soon got pummeled by the combined fire of forty 5.7 inch guns between the three German warships. Ritchie gave the frantic order for all ships to scatter at once, and the feeding frenzy was on.
Kaiser began blasting away at the slow merchant ships, striking the British ships Barrdale and Martland soon after the Arrow went down. Then came Bismarck, next in the line with her eight 15-inch guns feasting on the gasoline tankers Tornus and Pontfield, and ripping them apart with raging fire consuming the ships when they were hit. Finally came the Lord of the Manor, looming up like a massive steel castle, the mighty Hindenburg.
Now 16-inch guns were turned on the convoy, blasting the steel carrier Penrose, and three other merchant ships. Tall columns of thick black smoke rose into the grey sky, as the carnage continued. They died in great numbers, Beaverdale, Roxby, Bridgepoole, blasted away and keeling over in fiery wrecks. Lord Byron would not make its appointed delivery of grain to Methil, and the Benzene in Dosina was burning on the sea.
Commodore Ritchie watched in horror as one ship after another came under those fearful guns, blown up, burned, their cargo and crews scuppered into the sea. As the heavy rounds began to fall near Ulysses, he called out in desperation. “Where’s the bloody navy! God help us!”
A 5.7-inch round struck his ship, jarring the bridge. Another gave the ship a hard thump amidships, and a bigger 15-inch round fell just twenty yards off his port side, the blast enough to rock Ulysses with its heavy swell and splinter the weather decks with shrapnel. The W/T room was still sending out its frantic S.O. S when another round silenced the radio, killing every man there. Ulysses was burning, and tears streaked the face of Commodore Ritchie as he watched his flock cut down, ship by ship.
Kaiser had put on speed to get down near the last ranks and was busy sending the crude oil tanker Taron to its fiery doom, and the sulfur on Olympos would never reach Belfast, nor the fuel oil on Tricula. It would be the greatest single tonnage lost for cargo ships in the war thus far, with 28 ships lost before Commodore Ritchie spotted even more misery bearing down on them. Another dark silhouette was on the horizon, coming up behind the German ships, and he saw the glow of fire from them as well. To his great relief and surprise, the shells they fired were not aimed his way, but at the German battleships instead!
All that night Captain Patterson’s task force had been laboring through the heavy seas, and the long hour of agony when the Germans slowed to feast on the convoy had given him just the break he needed. King George V and Prince of Wales were on the horizon, and the Royal Navy was coming to fight.
Aboard battleship Hindenburg, Lutjens had been watching the carnage unfold, not unmoved by the plight of the men he was putting into the sea, but this was what he had come here to do, the hard edge of war. When the first rounds came in they were well short, but he turned and studied the fall of the shells. Very strange, he thought as he saw the close pattern of four shells abreast. Two twin-gun turrets would almost never land their shells with such precision in a single line like that. He first thought he was dealing with the older British Battleships in the Revenge Class, but the British ships were getting closer, and coming much too fast. He turned to Captain Adler with a question in his eyes.
“These look to be something new, would you agree?”
“They do, sir. Most likely the new British King George V class ships we’ve seen working out on trials. Shall we turn and give battle?”
“Those ships have twenty 14-inch guns,” Lutjens considered.
“And we have fourteen 15-inch guns with Bismarck and Kaiser, and our eight 16-inch guns will make all the difference,” said Adler.
“Possibly,” said Lutjens, “but our orders were to get after the convoys, and this we have done. Look, Adler! There must be thirty ships burning and sinking out there. No. We have done enough for one day, and a fight with the Royal Navy here is not part of our operational plan. Come to 220 and give me thirty knots at once. Signal all ships to follow.”
“But sir!” Adler’s eyes were sharp and on fire as well, his dark hair and aquiline features grim and set. He wanted to sink his talons into something more than a merchant ship, and saw great advantage here. “We outgun them!” he complained. “We should fight!”
“Yes, we certainly do, but you do not outgun me, Captain, unless I have miscounted the stripes on my jacket cuff. Second my order! We are moving south into the Atlantic.”
Adler stiffened under the polite but pointed rebuke, and turned to his Executive officer. “Come to 220 and thirty knots. A pair of British battleships has the Admiral worried he might miss his tea.”
Lutjens turned slowly, eyeing the Captain with an unfriendly look. “It may interest you to know that there is more going on here than a Sunday jaunt through this convoy. There is a war on, Captain, and a major operation is getting underway even as I take the time to explain myself here. We have a part to play in that campaign, and that is exactly what we will do. And if you ever make such a remark to me again, particularly on this bridge, I will have you sent down to the brig for insubordination!”
Adler raised his chin, lips tight, but knew better than to say anything else.
“I beg your pardon sir, I only meant-”
“We both know what you meant, Adler. Don’t worry, something tells me you will get your battle with the Royal Navy soon enough.”
Part XI
“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
Chapter 31
The Spanish called it Jebel Tariq, the name of the imposing limestone mountain that stood as one of the Pillars of Hercules, and to the rest of the world Gibraltar had long been called “the Rock.” It had been Britain’s impregnable fortress for generations, honeycombed with miles of tunnels packed with supplies, and capable of withstanding a siege for months. It had withstood fourteen sieges since the 11th Century, with walls, fortifications, bastions and more modern gun casemates studding the craggy limestone rock on every side. But in spite of this venerable reputation as an unconquerable fortress, British war planners knew the invincibility of Gibraltar was certainly a myth now in modern times, and they saw it as highly vulnerable to any concerted attack.
To begin with, it had only one airfield at the far north of the five kilometer peninsula, dominated by a prominent limestone mountain, and this field lay on exposed ground that could be easily brought under enemy guns on the other side of the Spanish frontier and put out of action in a matter of hours. In 1940 Spain did not permit offensive planes there, and so the British had no fighters or bombers to speak of beyond those assigned to reconnaissance roles, and a few Sunderland seaplanes floating in the harbor anchorage. This also left the Rock open to bombing missions, though it endured these with surprising ease, the latest being a 64 plane raid mounted by the Vichy French in reprisal for the attack on their fleet. The French managed to sink a tug and coastal lighter docked in the harbor but did little more than this.
Companies of Royal Engineers still drilled through the innards of the rock, with quarrymen and Artisan Engineers still tunneling to create a warren of underground rooms that could shelter thousands of troops, unfortunately the garrison was not that large in 1940. At the outbreak of the war only two battalions were in the garrison, the 2nd Battalion, King’s Regiment and the 2nd Somerset Battalion. These were augmented by two more battalions by August of 1940 with the arrival of the 4th Devonshire Battalion and the 4th Black Watch Battalion. These troops, plus an assortment of 3 inch and 3.7 inch AA guns, including ten 40mm Bofors were all that manned the labyrinthine tunnels, with one battalion holding the lonely frontier near the airfield, and three farther back in the town and fortress Rock.