They were almost as long as the Lions but seven or eight feet broader in the beam, with their main armoured deck – protected by a 6-inche shell of Krupp cemented steel – positioned seven feet lower in that wider hull, a thing made necessary because their machinery was supposedly more modern, and therefore lighter than that of the Lions, necessitating the redistribution of weight lower in the hull to thus maintain the optimum metacentric height (GM) – the distance between a ship’s centre of gravity and its centre of buoyancy – to ensure that the ship remained a stable gun platform.
German naval architects tended to aim for a slightly higher GM number – as many as two to three feet higher – than their British counterparts. For the Kaiser Wilhelms the number was between nine and ten feet; for the Lions around six to seven feet when they were fully loaded. This meant that the German ships were stiffer; faster in the roll and less comfortable sea boats in heavy weather, and the British slower to swing back through the horizontal making them intrinsically better gun platforms in any kind of seaway.
In terms of gunnery speed of roll had been the crucial thing throughout most of history, certainly since the first cannon went to sea. Nowadays, it was less so, with gyroscopic gun directors capable of identifying the exact moment the ship was level regardless of the speed of the roll, and electrical fire circuits synchronising salvos and broadsides with that critical ‘moment’.
The King was old-school about these things.
The Kaiser Wilhelms were built to fight in the North Sea or the Baltic, His ships were built to fight in any ocean anywhere in the World in any conditions.
The King mulled this and other questions as he studied the three German monsters moored to starboard of the immensely more ascetically pleasing, if less durable silhouettes of the two Formidable class battlecruisers. The Formidables, with their thin deck armour would be no match for the Kaiser Wilhelms in a stand-up fight despite the fact that they carried comparable main batteries.
The battlecruisers belonged to a bygone age.
He guessed that any of the Lions would be a match for the newer German pretenders. He did not understand why the Imperial Navy had allowed its architects to put that armoured deck so low in their ships. What use was an unsinkable steel raft if most of the men in the ship were on top of it?
It was all academic; the British and German Empires were allies, after all…
Cassandra’s signalling lamp was clattering noisily – the device was a modified searchlight with shutters that banged open and shut with metallic insouciance as messages were exchanged – on the port bridge wing.
The King had briefly been lost in his thoughts.
He blinked back to the here and the now.
“Sorry, my dear,” he apologised, realising belatedly that his wife had spoken to him
“Was that an explosion, Bertie?” She asked with barely contained alarm.
The King – who had been a gunnery specialist in his early naval career and was therefore a little deafer than he ought to be for a man still only in his late middle years – had been staring at the forward main battery gun director position of the Grosser Kurfurst.
He followed his wife’s gaze, past the looming bulk of the Invincible and the Indefatigable towards the narrows where he could just make out the Tiger, the rearmost Lion of the 5th Battle Squadron.
He blinked in disbelief.
There was a crimson flash and a roiling mushroom of grey-black smoke.
And then, distantly, another.
Chapter 22
Jamaica Bay Field, King’s County, Long Island
Alex Fielding had had a good morning. After he got back from taking Albert Stanton over the fleet he had taken to the air with one of the Manhattan Globe man’s competitors and now he had nearly a hundred pounds sterling in his pocket! The last dope had paid him a twenty pounds bonus for taking a detour north over Wallabout Bay so he could snap a few pictures of the Polyphemus lying on her side. From all the activity on the half-submerged hull it seemed likely that they were still trying to get people out of the sunken ship. Just the thought of being trapped in the darkness with the water rising around him gave him nightmares.
He hated confined spaces…
Anyway, somebody else’s misfortune was usually somebody’s opportunity and so it had proved for him. As if he had not already had a good morning when he looked up from refuelling his trusty Bristol V it was to see his next ride getting out of her car. She was almost on time, too. No problem, he had had to go under the cowling to monkey about with the plugs anyway when he had landed.
“I’m the Honourable Leonora Coolidge, Mister Fielding,” the woman announced.
Even if she had not been smoking a cigarette and Alex had not just splashed a pint of 87-octane gasoline down his pants she would have been the sort of woman who made him nervous.
She had turned up in a chauffeur-driven Bentley and she was dressed in the sort of flying leathers and boots only very rich people and strippers wear in public.
Alex took an involuntary step backwards.
“I’d shake your hand but you want to put that smoke out first,” he explained hurriedly, “or we’ll both go up in flames.”
The woman gave him a thoughtful look, then, smelling the petrol vapour in the air, she worked it out for herself.
She took a step back and ground out the cigarette beneath her heel.
“Forgive me. I don’t usually fly in such small aeroplanes,” she informed the pilot.
“Sorry about the way I look. I’ve been up a couple of times already this morning and had to do some work on the engine just now,” he blurted, still a little intimidated by Leonora Coolidge.
She was blond – from what he could see of the hair sticking out of her brown leather flying skull-cap – and willowy, late twenties maybe and her eyes were very nearly cornflower blue.
“Oh,” Alex added, “and you always get gasoline on you when you refuel these kites on your own.”
The woman contemplated the whiplash fit tousled haired man in the oil-stained flying suit, sizing him up. She guessed he was a little older than her, and his face was weathered, had about it a prize-fighter’s propensity to take hard knocks if that was what it took to get the job done.
That said she remained unimpressed by his aeroplane.
It looked like it was made of coarse canvas and held together by cane and cat gut.
The man was reading her thoughts.
“Don’t get carried away by the way she looks,” he chuckled. “This old bird’s a lot tougher than you or me!”
Leonora Coolidge’s driver was standing by his vehicle, ready to open the door so that his ride could get back in.
“Your guy got a name?” Alex inquired, nodding at the man.
“Joe.”
“Once you’re in the front seat I’ll need him to give me a hand pointing the aircraft into the wind.”
“You’re ready to go?”
“Sure. When you are.”
That made up her mind.
Her fiancé had offered to fly her over the review in his De Havilland twin-engined racer – a gilded carriage in comparison with the heap of scrap in front of her now – but they had had a tiff and she had decided that she was going to fly over the Fleet with or without the assistance of that no-good piece of…
Leonora climbed into the machine with no little trepidation.
A single slip and she strongly suspected that she would put her foot through the fuselage and probably fall to the ground!