There was another carrier, off to his right. Its guns pumped out fire at the Corsairs that were raking the formation with their bombs and rockets. James felt his aircraft lurch as something struck home, with a dull ringing noise. Whatever it was, it wasn’t lethal, Switchblade was still flying, carving her way through the German ships towards a destroyer. Off to his left, another Corsair suddenly erupted into flames. It rolled over onto its back and was still rolling when it hit the water and vanished into a cloud of spray.
James thumbed the button that controlled his machine guns again. The tracers floated out and lashed the platform between the funnels. If the pictures they’d trained on were right, that’s where the quadruple 20mm guns were. The Germans had two light anti-aircraft guns. The 37mm was pathetic, a slow firing, short ranged, weapon. It was nowhere near the lethality of the American Bofors guns. The other was a 20mm. It was bad as a single mount and hideously dangerous when installed as a quadruple, as most of them were.
The enemy ships were behind him at last. He’d made his pass across the formation and it was time to take stock. As James climbed out from the attack he could see the German formation scattering. It was breaking under the sledgehammer blows of the fighter-bombers’ strafing passes. James laughed quietly to himself. If the Krauts think that was bad, they should see what the Adies can do. They won’t have to wait long.
It came as a complete epiphany to Commander Micael Riedel. His ship, his Z-7, was obsolete. The logic was quite inescapable. His main guns were useless. They could only elevate to 30 degrees and couldn’t even begin to fire on the bent-wing demons diving on him. His 20mm quadruple mounts amidships and aft couldn’t bear on them either. The Ami jabos were coming in from ahead. All he had to defend himself was a single 20mm gun that had been mounted in the bridge wings. Its fire was pathetic in reply to the murderous hail of heavy machine gun fire from the Ami carrier planes. Four of them had picked Z-7 and were diving on her. Their machine guns lined their wings with fire. His lovely Z-7 was nothing more than a target, a loose end waiting to be tied.
Riedel’s position was suitable for an epiphany. He was sprawled on the deck of his bridge in a desperate attempt to escape the hail of bullets that were scything down his crew. Anybody not behind armor was doomed by the blast of bullets. That included his antiaircraft gun crews. For some inexplicable reason, the flak mounts didn’t have shields or splinter protection. The murderous strafing had slaughtered his crews as they fought their guns.
The hail of fire seemed to slacken slightly. Had one of the Ami fighters been shot down? He chanced a quick look over the edge of his bridge plating. Ahead of him, Z-6 was surrounded by towers of water and explosions. The cruiser Koln was in far worse state, belching black smoke and already listing hard. She was slowing down too, losing her position in the formation. Riedel winced at the sight. That will be fatal, her pitiful state will draw the Ami jabos the same way a crippled stag draws in the wolves. Then, a hand grabbed him and hauled him down again. It was just in time. Z-7 rocked and threshed viciously as a quartet of explosions added to the deafening noise of gunfire, high-powered aircraft engines, gunfire and the demented screams of the rockets.
The explosions left Z-7 feeling wrong, a soft, squirming sensation in the water. The sounds faded away as the formation of jabos swept past to give the Oswald Boelcke the benefits of their fiendish attentions. There was a smoking mass in the water off to one side of Z-7. Obviously one of the jabos had been shot down but who had done it? Riedel guessed that nobody would ever really know. Then he looked back at his ship. The midships section was a tangled mass of wreckage, strafed, rocketed and bombed. It looked wrong as well as felt wrong but Riedel couldn’t work out why. Then it sunk in on him; the stern was moving separately from the bows. Not much but it was definitely shifting from side to side.
“Sir, Sir, we must abandon ship!”
“How dare you! Order damage control crews to work immediately. Abandon ship indeed.”
“Sir, it’s no use. We took a single direct hit on the aft funnel but that isn’t what has killed us. There were three near misses, very close but alongside. One to port, two to starboard. Right beside the engine rooms. The welding is failing. The ship’s back has broken. Can’t you see how we’re losing speed? In a few minutes we will break in half and nothing can stop it. Can’t you feel it?”
The tone was insubordinate but Riedel knew the speaker was correct. He could see the ship was sagging in the middle; the bow and stern rising as the center section flooded and sank. He knew what would happen next. The motion and sagging would increase until the stress levels in the metal passed critical levels and the structure failed. Then, his Z-7 would indeed break in half and go down, probably very fast.
“Sir.” Another officer was speaking. “We can’t abandon ship. The strafing has destroyed the life rafts and ship’s boats. The water is so cold, the men will only last a few minutes if they go in it. If somebody can’t take us off, we’ll all…”
The thought was unfinished but Riedel knew how it would end. The water is too cold to allow us to survive. The ship’s life rafts have been destroyed. Even if they weren’t they are no guarantee of survival. U-boat crews report that American aircraft will strafe life rafts in the water if they can.
Once, there had been talk of how the Americans were weak and soft, how they couldn’t stand the horrors of war. Perhaps that talk had been in the mind of the fool who had machine-gunned the crew of a torpedoed Coast Guard cutter. Then, at the Battle of the Kolkhoz Pass, the Army, or the SS, nobody knew whom, had massacred a large group of American soldiers who had been taken prisoner. Rumor was that it was an SS commander, who had wanted to stop any of his men surrendering to the Americans. Whatever the reason, that act and many more like it, had finally added cold hatred to rage. The old expression ‘reaping what one had sowed’ passed through Riedel’s mind. Why had nobody understood that somebody else could watch German displays of Schrecklichkeit and turn the doctrine on its creators?
If his crew stayed on board, they would drown. If they abandoned ship they would freeze. The only option left was for another ship to come along side and take the survivors from Z-7. Riedel looked out to port. Racing in above the waves was another formation of forty or so Ami aircraft. Larger ones, coming in with the low steady pass that branded them as torpedo bombers. No, no Captain will hazard his ship by slowing down in the middle of a torpedo bomber attack. Z-7’s crew had only one chance. Their ship had to hold together long enough for the torpedo attack to pass and that another destroyer would come back for them. If that didn’t happen, Riedel thought, then the Ami jabos would have killed them all.