It was a tribute to the ship’s engineers that the blast didn’t cause an immediate fire or explosion. The problem that had faced the designers had been to fit the fuel storage and delivery system into the space normally allocated to an 8 inch magazine. Getting the components in had left the fuel delivery system severely compromised. It was contorted; full of bends and misalignments. These had already caused problems. Fuel couldn’t be pumped to the aircraft as quickly as the capacity of the pumps indicated. Given the maze of piping, that level of pressure would cause bursts. The piping wasn’t shock-insulated either. The blast waves from the torpedo hit shattered the maze, burst the pipes and ruptured the walls of the tanks. Oswald Boelcke had used only a small proportion of her aviation fuel. The rest was pouring out of the tanks in Bruno magazine and into the ship’s bilges. It was only a few minutes before the crew in the forward part of the hull started to smell the stench of gasoline.
On the bridge, Ensign Zipstein picked up the ship’s intercommunication system. The strafing from the Corsairs and Skyraiders caused havoc amongst the ship’s officers. Many were dead; more wounded. The Chief Damage Control officer was one of the dead. His deputy had taken an armor-piercing incendiary .50 caliber bullet in the stomach. He wasn’t dead; if he came around from the morphine that had been pumped into him, he’d wish he was. That left Zipstein in charge of damage control when the phone had rung and a Petty Officer had told him of the spreading smell of gasoline.
Zipstein was young and inexperienced; he really shouldn’t have been where he was. However, he was intelligent and quick enough to associate the smell with the torpedo hit forward. Also, he was quick to realize what had happened. He knew that the danger of gasoline vapor was many, many times worse than that of liquid gasoline and a smell that was spreading meant the fuel-air explosion risk was high. That vapor had to be got rid of fast. Zipstein made his decision and ordered the ship’s ventilation fans turned on full power.
“It could have been worse. A lot worse, Admiral.” Dietrich was trying to put a brave face on it. The Ami strike was over, leaving more than a dozen stains on the sea surface where their aircraft had been shot down. The cost had been high; not yet critical, but high. Z-7 had broken in half and sunk. Her sisters Z-6 and Z-8 were burning pyres of smoke and orange flame. It was obvious neither could survive. Z-16 and Z-20 were moving alongside to take off survivors. The light cruiser Koln had been bombed, rocketed and torpedoed. She was a burning shattered wreck, sinking fast. Nurnberg had been hit by rockets from the Corsairs. She had fires but was in good shape overall. Most of the other ships had got off relatively lightly. The strafing had caused serious casualties to their crews but they were otherwise sound enough. It was the carriers that had been hit.
Oswald Boelcke had been torpedoed forward; she’d been slowed and was down by the bows. Graf Zeppelin also taken a single torpedo hit amidships but the torpedo defense system had taken care of it. An engine room had flooded but that was all. The Graffie was a fast ship, the damage wasn’t that worrying. She had a five degree list but, then, her design meant she always had. Now she had a good excuse for it. Werner Voss was in a different category completely. She’d taken at least six heavy bomb hits, dozens of rockets, including some of the big ones fired by the torpedo bombers, and two torpedo hits. She was listing badly; the reports from the damage control crews showed hints of desperation.
Brinkmann drummed his fingers. It wasn’t too bad he told himself. The key factor was the state of the Oswald Boelcke. He picked up the short-range radio, called over and demanded to speak to the damage control officer. Zipstein answered, and called down to the damage control teams forward for the latest reports. As Brinkmann listened to the call being made he had a strange mental picture, a ship’s internal telephone system making the connection, and emitting few minor sparks as it did. In an atmosphere that contained a lethal percentage of gasoline vapor.
Brinkmann didn’t hear the explosion. He saw the shock wave of the fuel-air explosion form into a ball and race outwards. Pieces of steel were hurled hundreds of feet into the air. Others scythed out laterally, lashing at the other German ships. He heard the dreadful hammering as some of those pieces sprayed Graf Zeppelin and decimated her gun crews more thoroughly than the Ami strafing. By the time his senses had recovered from the awesome blast, the shock wave had gone. It had left the Oswald Boelcke no longer recognizable. Above the waterline, she had been reduced to a pitiful shambles of tortured steel. Her plating had been thrown around so that they resembled the scrambled remains of a destroyed city. The damage below the waterline must have been equally bad. Brinkmann guessed that the blast had ripped huge holes in her bottom. She was going fast, rolling over so quickly that even the fires weren’t getting a chance to take hold. It took less than a couple of minutes for what was left of the 13,000 ton carrier to slip beneath the waves. Al that remained was just three figures struggling in the water.
“Another wave of American aircraft approaching fast Admiral.”
The Admiral’s Bridge was crowded for Gettysburg was the Flagship of Task Force 58 as well as Task Group 58.1. She was also the flagship of the Fifth Fleet but, today, that was just an added inconvenience. This was the fast carrier’s battle. Even so, in addition to Admiral Halsey and his staff, Admiral Marc Mitscher and his personnel were vying for the facilities of the bridge. It was fortunate Gettysburg was a big carrier. In fact, the two staffs worked very well together, a legacy of prewar service and more recently the first carrier raids on France and the UK. When Spruance had the Fast Carrier Force, it became part of Third Fleet as Task Force 38. He preferred to command from a battleship. Halsey preferred to be with his carriers.
“First wave report in, Admiral. The pilots are claiming seven destroyers, four cruisers and two carriers sunk; five more destroyers, two more cruisers and two carriers damaged. Eighty enemy aircraft shot down.”
Halsey grunted. “That’s more ships that the Krauts started with. We’ll wait to the camera gun film’s ready. Losses?”
“Twenty Flivvers shot down in the air battle with the CAP Admiral, they’re recovering at 58.5 now. Four more were too damaged to make it home. Knudsen says eight Flivvers are on the hangar decks, too damaged for immediate use. Corsairs, eight down; we don’t know yet how many won’t make it back to the carriers or how many are damaged. Adies, nine down, same comment. Total 41 lost; probably closer to fifty by the time the cripples ditch. Out of Halsey winced. That is getting close to fifty percent casualties. The redeeming feature was that the bulk of the losses were due to the German fighters and they‘d gone. The butcher’s bill should be less from now on.