“Good enough Hans. I’ll get you a medal for that one.”
“Keep it,” said Rudel. “Just get the other boys down after those ships.”
Two other Stukas were already in a dive, both straddling that same lead ship and shaking up Sandy Sanford’s teacups on the officers dining table. They had been left there abruptly when the sighting came in, and now Sanford was on the bridge, dismayed when he suddenly found his cruisers under enemy air attack.
“Mister Laurence! What’s happened with that hit amidships?”
“A ruddy fire sir. Engineers say it took out both seaplane catapults, and they’re trying to keep it off the torpedo mounts.”
“Launch all Torpedoes,” said Sanford. “Can’t take the chance they’ll go off in the tubes, for then we’d really have a problem amidships. Any threat to the engines?”
“No sir, we’re running well at 33 knots. In fair seas we’d be at 35, but it’s this weather, sir.”
“Good, good. Well mister Kingston, that damn aircraft carrier is launching everything it has at us here. Get after it with the guns!”
“Range is 16,200, but we don’t seem to be closing Captain. They’re running sir.”
“As well they should. Then get busy with them. There’s nothing wrong with our guns.”
Sanford was not happy. Why hadn’t the enemy chosen Sir Galahad for their parlor tricks? Now his nice new cruiser was burned and charred amidships, though reports indicated the crews would get the fire under control in another twenty minutes. His bloody gunners were firing, but they hadn’t yet scored a hit, which was most aggravating. The Captain was somewhat of a busybody, and he was hovering around the fire control station like a mother hen, watching the men work. He knew it would be difficult shooting. The seas were still high, and the pitch and yaw of the ship was going to make for a most unstable and changeable gunnery platform.
It was that, more than the brave but largely fruitless effort of the German pilots, that served to frustrate the British gunners. They managed to put rounds very near their quarry, putting some splinter damage on the Goeben’s hull, but the carrier then slipped into a bank of low clouds and the action was down to Ack Ack fire at those bothersome planes. Five of the six Stukas had dropped their bombs, but only Rudel had scored a direct hit. The last, flown by Hansen, came very close to putting a bomb right in front of that quad turret on Sir Galahad, but the seas conspired to move the ship out of harm’s way.
Captain Sanford saw them wing away to the northeast after a final strafing run by a speedy Messerschmitt. The bullets snapped off his conning tower armor, and one round shattered a glass pane, which prompted him to shake his fist at the enemy. Then the last of the fighters banked away, and a calm fell over the scene. To Sanford it was a most unwelcome calm. He had his mind set on fighting his gun battle with that carrier, though not one single enemy round had been fired back at the two cruisers for the hundred rounds they sent Goeben’s way without scoring even a single hit.
That was par for the course. One or two percent would be a typical hit ratio for gunnery under these conditions, but Sanford was not at all happy.
“Radar? Do we still have them?”
“Contact at 18,000 meters, but they’re slipping away sir.”
“Mister Laurence, are we running full out?”
“Aye sir, engines all ahead full.”
“Well my lord, that’s a fast ship out there, but to my mind they were running low on fuel. Otherwise what would they be doing here with that tanker?”
“A fair assumption, sir.”
“Yes… Well let’s keep after them. Keep after them. Mister Kingston, keep nipping at their hind quarters. Fire by radar while we still have a link on them.”
Kingston knew that was mere fist shaking at this range, but he nonetheless ordered B turret to put out two rounds to satisfy the Captain. A moment later they lost that radar contact, and the Goeben had broken away, off over the grey, uncertain horizon.
“Damn,” said Sanford, stroking his chin. “Now they might turn anywhere. They could turn south and we’d run right by them, wouldn’t we. Then again, I doubt if they’ll go south if they have a fuel problem. No, they’ll want to get north and then northeast, right in the wake of those planes. Where in blazes are those planes off to?”
“Africa, sir,” said Laurence. “It’s clear they won’t make a landing on that carrier under these circumstances.”
“Right you are. Then this carrier will want to get to the African coast as well, so what we’ll do is stay inshore of the little demon, and keep ourselves in a good position to cut the bastard off at the knees if he tries to slip by us. But we’ll have to do better than that on the gunnery, Mister Kingston. We’ll have to do a good deal better. I want the first hit to go to Lancelot. After all, we took the first enemy bomb. That will only be fitting. Is Galahad still firing?”
“No sir,” said Laurence. “They’ve secured main guns as well,”
“Oh we haven’t secured ours, Mister Laurence. No sir. We simply have nothing to fire at. Crews will remain at action stations., and now we’ve a difficult decision here. If we stay together, we’ll be putting both our chips on the same number. If we split up, we might have a better chance of one or another making contact again.”
“A sound assessment, sir.”
“Yes, but we’ll be halving our firepower.”
“Yes sir, that we would, but I’d say either one of us can handle that carrier out there. Particularly now that the crows have flown.”
“Right. Well then, order Galahad to make a 30 point turn to Starboard. They’ll look for that devil up north. We’ll carry on this heading for a while, and see what we find.”
It was as good a move as Sanford might make, trying to cover as much seascape as possible, and sending his ships into different segments of the compass rose. But high overhead, one of the crows was still lingering. Marco Ritter had loitered for a time to see that the British would do. He saw the maneuver made by Galahad, and then radioed Captain Falkenrath.
“Sorry we couldn’t get you more hits,” he said. “You’ll have one ship on your present heading, just over your horizon. The second has come about 30 points to starboard. They’re splitting up. You’ll know what to do.”
Kapitan Falkenrath smiled. “Come left full rudder. We’re swinging off to port. Assume a heading of 180 true south. We’ll run on that for 20 minutes ahead full, then go ahead one third. That damn cruiser will run off west thinking he’s still on our hind quarters, but we’ll be well south. Then we’ll double back and ease on up to the northwest. Any plane that hasn’t taken off will remain aboard. We may need them later.”
The flight and fate of the Goeben was still in the wind, but as for Kapitan Heinrich on the Kaiser Wilhelm, he would make an easy run up north that day under considerable escort from flocks of JU-88s and Heinkels. By dawn the following day his battlecruiser would slip into Casablanca, and he would make his report to Admiral Raeder. The German navy had a naval rocket! And it had a load of complicated looking radar equipment and antennae that had been stripped from the Norton Sound. It also had something that neither man would be aware of for some time, a small, fully functioning atomic warhead sleeping quietly in the tip of that missile.
The Grand Admiral had flown to Casablanca to be there when Kaiser Wilhelm arrived, and he was elated. When he first set eyes on that rocket.
“Shall we have it moved ashore, sir?” Heinrich suggested.