Once Talavera was cruising four hundred yards astern of the fourth ship in the line, her sister HMS Oudenarde, Peter Christopher ordered the bridge talker to open a channel to the ship-wide public address system.
“This is the Captain,” he announced. Goodness, that still sounds odd! He thought he would get used to it faster; and he’d been wrong. He was the commanding officer of one of Her Majesty’s ships and he was engaged to be married! It was too much to take in all at one. “Just to let you all know that the USS Enterprise and the USS Long Beach are approaching at speed from the west. We will be taking up screening positions shortly after nightfall. That is all.”
The plan was to escort the two big American ships through the narrows between Sicily and North Africa at high speed during the hours of darkness to place the super-carrier close enough to Malta to — with the aircraft already based on the island — provide an ‘iron umbrella’ over and around the whole archipelago, thus securing it as a base for offensive operations in the east. Every defensive position needed an anchor, and Malta, as it had been in Hitler’s War, was to be that vital hinge upon which all ‘allied’ operations in the Mediterranean would revolve.
South of Malta the 7th Destroyer Squadron and the two American superships would be joined by the Big Cats, the cruisers Lion an Tiger and their escorts, which had been recalled from their abortive mission to strengthen the now decimated Victorious Battle Group. Meanwhile, HMS Hermes would dock at Malta and hopefully, rectify her ongoing boiler and turbine troubles.
The Enterprise and the Long Beach reduced speed to eighteen knots until the five British destroyers had surged into their pre-arranged screening posts; and then the race to Malta re-commenced. The big ship poured on the power and the Weapon and Battle class destroyers struggled to keep up. When HMS Broadsword was unable to sustain thirty knots she was abandoned in the night as the rest hammered into the darkness.
Watching the huge ultra-modern, somewhat terrifyingly American ships in the fading light before the helter-skelter sprint to Malta began in earnest, Peter Christopher’s spirits had risen, as had those of every man who laid eyes on the newcomers.
The USS Enterprise was like a sheer wall of grey steel rising out of the water, with her flight deck crowded with the most advanced and deadly aircraft in the World. Peter reminded himself that he had seen huge fleet carriers before and when all was said and done, impressive as she was, the Enterprise was just a very big aircraft carrier. Enterprise was twice the size of the Ark Royal or the Eagle, the Senior Service’s biggest, forty-thousand ton floating airfields, and nearly three times as big as the Victorious or the Hermes, but basically, she was still just a huge aircraft carrier.
But so huge…
The USS Long Beach was another kind of beast; a futuristic-looking seven hundred feet long ship that might have been built straight off the page of a science fiction magazine. Instead of an old-style superstructure and funnels the nuclear-powered anti-aircraft cruiser had a single raised box bridge and CIC–Combat Information Centre — located a fraction forward of amidships. This over-sized structure looked out of all proportion to the rest of the ship especially when the Long Beach of was bow or stern on to the observer. The ‘box’ towered well over a hundred feet above the waterline. The ship’s armament was every bit as futuristic as her silhouette: she had Talos surface-to-air missiles capable of hitting targets eighty miles away; Terrier missiles for defence out to a range of thirty miles, ASROC, an anti-submarine rocket system to depth charge submerged targets ten thousand yards distant, torpedo launchers, and two five-inch guns in turrets amidships for surface action or shore bombardment as required. Peter Christopher could hardly imagine what wonders a man might find if he was allowed to roam that amazing ship!
The Enterprise and the Long Beach had left their conventionally-powered oil-guzzling escorts in their wake, one to two days behind; and the big ships’ fleet train was strung out all the way across the North Atlantic. Elements of it might be in the central Mediterranean sometime in the next fortnight but nobody was holding their breath. No man on any of the British destroyers charging into the night in company with their newly reconciled, much bigger friends, doubted the leap of faith, or the sincerity of the unambiguous signal that the presence of the Enterprise and the Long Beach, unescorted in dangerous waters sent for the future. The United States of America was back in the fight with her re-discovered allies. Placing the US Navy’s two most modern and potent assets in harm’s way was the sort of demonstration that no words on any treaty in history could possibly have matched.
“There was an inconclusive surface action between the Mediterranean Fleet and most of the Italian Navy around here in November 1940,” Lieutenant Miles Weiss, Talavera’s boyish Executive Officer said to his captain in the darkness of the open flying bridge as the roaring wind of the ship’s passing buffeted them. “The Battle of Cape Spartivento.”
“Oh, really?” The name rang a very distant bell but Peter Christopher had never been a stickler for knowing the particulars of each and every battle the Navy had ever fought.
“It was the last time the Fleet took a backward step in the Med in Hitler’s War. It was escorting the old Ark Royal so that the carrier could fly off aircraft to defend Malta. Our capital ships, the Ramillies and the Renown, if memory serves, weren’t really a match for the Italians. The old Ramillies was too slow and couldn’t keep up with our cruisers, and Renown only got into the fight very briefly so our cruisers ended up trading broadsides with Italian battleships. After about an hour our chaps set off back to Gibraltar and the Italians let us go. Churchill wanted the admiral in charge, Admiral Somerville, I think it was, cashiered but the Navy wouldn’t hear of it. I think you father might have been on one of the cruisers in that fight, I can’t remember which one. Perhaps, I’ll look it up one day.”
Peter Christopher glanced at the radar repeater and looked out into the blackness of the night to where the great bulk of the USS Enterprise lurked in the darkness.
“Funny old thing history,” he chuckled. “Perhaps, this is the moment when we stop taking backward steps in this war?”
Chapter 55
Captain Simon Collingwood slapped the message sheet down on the Wardroom table with disgust. Around him his department heads and senior non-commissioned officers waited for him to speak, every man sensing his disenchantment.
Only the Executive Officer was absent, on watch in the control room. He and his captain had already chewed over the contents of the offending sheet of paper that now lay malignantly on the Wardroom table.
Simon Collingwood opened his mouth to speak.
At that precise moment two very young children burst into the compartment, the one evidently chasing the other and both toddlers hugely and loudly enjoying their game. Moments later a flustered, very embarrassed young woman pursued the two innocent miscreants.
Maya Hayek grabbed the slightly larger of the infants, a boy by the scruff of the neck and unceremoniously wrapped him in her arms so he couldn’t flee. This completely spoiled the second child’s fun. The little girl contemplated hiding under the table in the forest of legs. Thinking better of it she meekly surrendered to her adopted mother.
“I… Very sorry… Capitan…” The young woman with the limpid brown eyes stammered, horribly guilty and self-conscious.