The crack of small naval guns soon followed, and the sea began to plume up with small water splashes. Hot fire erupted on the forward deck of Beagle, and then a second hit amidships struck her 21-inch torpedo tubes. The ship wallowed as it turned, still receiving very accurate fire from small secondary guns. Then that fire shifted to Brilliant, and Lieutenant Commander Arthus Poe knew he was in trouble. Whatever was out there, it was more than a match for his four 4.7-inch deck guns, and he immediately turned, sending off a warning message: “Contact with large enemy ship, visibility limited. Under fire.”
Neither destroyer would survive, both going down before 01:30 that dark morning. The signal they got off would then awaken Captain Thomas ‘Sandy’ Sanford on board Sir Lancelot. He was already resting uneasily in his room off the main bridge where he kept a small cot for cat naps. The incident earlier that had sent Sir Galahad off to the Spanish coast annoyed him—now this.
“Somebody picking a fight out there? Quite the bully. Helm, bring us about. Fifteen points to port please. I think we’ll see if they want to pick on someone their own size, eh Mister Laurence?”
Executive officer Laurence was quite stoic, and usually reserved, but this time he asked a question that was veiled with just the hint of a warning. “A night engagement sir? Have we any idea what we might be up against? There was no detail in that message.”
“If it’s shooting at our destroyers, that will be enough reason to intervene,” said Sanford. “Day or night.”
“Very good sir,” said Laurence. “Shall I signal Sir Percival to follow? Misery loves company.”
Sanford thought for a moment. “No, I think we’ll have a look about on our own. Sir Percival is to carry on to the rendezvous point. We’ll rejoin later.”
Laurence didn’t like this at all, a night action against an unknown contact that had just dispatched a pair of destroyers, and the Captain splitting his force, heedless of the risks involved in what he was now ordering. Sanford could perceive his discomfiture, and spoke up.
“Reservations, Mister Laurence?”
“Well sir, it’s just that I’d feel a good bit better if we had Sir Percival behind us. This is obviously a capital ship.”
“And we are standing on the same,” said Sanford. “Percy has other business. We’ll verify this contact, make our challenge, and give the fleet a better look at what’s out there.”
The Captain would get a very good look indeed. Twenty minutes later the first rounds came in off his port bow, small caliber, and when one struck a 76mm AA gun, he was quite perturbed. “Mister Kingston!” he shouted. “No one pushes my shoulder with such impudence. Answer that, and use the main battery.”
Kingston answered with the forward A-Turret, a pair of 303mm guns booming out, the fire and noise shaking the night. They waited, the watchmen barely able to make out signs of the distant shell fall, as the range was over 17,000 yards. Then they clearly saw the horizon light up with orange fire. Was it a hit? It would be rare indeed if that were the case on the first probing salvo. Sanford had been lucky in his engagements thus far, but not that fortunate. Instead his watchmen had seen the enemy ship replying, and that was evident when two heavy rounds came thundering in, quite close, and the sea erupted with white, moonlit water.
The size of the water splashes revealed a great deal, two large caliber rounds, easily 14-inch guns or bigger to Sanford’s eye. “A tap on the shoulder, and now a swing at my chin!” he exclaimed. “That’s no cruiser—not with shellfall that big. Mister Laurence?”
“If it was a single salvo, sir, then it wasn’t a French ship. Their main guns set up four abreast. And it wasn’t an Italian ship, at least not a newer one. They set up three guns per turret.”
“Well then,” said Sanford. “That will narrow it down to the Germans. We know they have ships operating here. Could this be that raider we were chasing in the Atlantic?”
“Possibly,” said Laurence. “Kaiser Wilhelm would throw rounds that big. The only other ship would be the Hindenburg. The Bismarck is still laid up at Toulon.”
Sanford chewed on that a while, his eyes shifting about before he spoke. “The Hindenburg…” The name had the ring of dread about it, and the guns were firing again. “I can see why you proposed we keep Sir Percival at our backside,” he said. “Notify Admiral Tovey. Tell him we’re in an argument here with a large capital ship, twin gun turrets, heavy rounds, possibly Hindenburg.”
He was, indeed, in an argument he should have never started, and ten minutes later, the fires on the starboard quarter convinced him of that. He had taken a direct hit from a 15-inch round, and lost a pair of flack guns to that one. At the same time, he was certain he had scored two hits, possibly three, but the enemy seemed completely unphased. When a message returned at 01:40, he had his marching orders. He was to come about on a heading of 260 and retire at once. Tovey did not want one of his new fast heavy cruisers in a fight with a German battleship. So Sir Lancelot reluctantly turned as ordered, and Mister Laurence was quite relieved.
That course would move the ship towards Tovey with his battleship squadron, where there was enough throw weight to settle any argument, with no quarter given, and none to be asked.
The assumptions made by Captain Sanford and his XO were spot on. The ship that had been pounding the British was indeed the Hindenburg. It was planning to rendezvous with three other battleships in the Central Med, but the British had come much faster than Kapitan Adler suspected. Fredric de Gross was still well south, coming up from Algiers after being seized in that daring raid by the Brandenburg Commandos. It now had a Chief Gunnery Officer from his own ship aboard, and half the crew of Bismarck had joined with other German naval personnel sent over with the reinforcements arriving at Tunis. They were now attempting to man that unfamiliar ship, and Adler had his doubts about its ability to measure up to the task at hand.
Behind him, the Italians had also sent three cruisers and two battleships, the Roma and Impero. How many ships did the Allies sortie with this time? They had three British battleships covering the Lisbon operation, and three more American heavy ships at Casablanca. They also had cruisers and destroyers in good numbers.
We will need the advantage of our land based air power, he thought. Prinz Heinrich has good pilots, but the British never undertake an operation like this without carriers. They will send at least two, and the Americans have more. So I must take this fight into friendly waters. I must either go south to Algiers, or withdraw towards Sicily or Sardinia. If I do the latter, the enemy might decline to engage there, but they most certainly want Algiers. That is where the fighting is now. So south it is, and I must signal all units to rendezvous with Fredric de Gross off Algiers.
I gave them a little taste of what they might have in store. Those two British Destroyer Captains are not going to enjoy their time in the sea. What was that ship we just drove off? The shell fall looked big, and the salvo patterns were very much like a King George V class battleship. They fired a two round spotting salvo, then threw a second salvo of six rounds at me, and by god, they got a hit or two in that little scrap. Yet it was nothing more than a scratch on my chin. This is a sturdy ship, good in any fight where I choose to stand. But for the moment, I will use the night, and speed. I must get down south and meet up with the Italians. Then we get a battle that might decide the fate of naval operations in the Mediterranean for some time to come.