“We will use the trunked access. Open the hatch.” The British had built the Werner Voss with trunked access to all her machinery and magazine spaces. An armored tube ran upwards, unpierced and uninterrupted, to an upper deck so the men down below had a chance to escape a sinking ship. The trunking was even lagged with asbestos so it could be used when the decks above were burning.
The access hatch to the escape trunk took only a second to release. Ehrhardt was mildly surprised by that. The Voss had so many sly defects in her construction, he’d half expected the hatch to be jammed. But, the dockyard workers who had built the carrier were men of the sea as well. They wouldn’t deprive a fellow seaman of his last chance to escape from drowning. They wouldn’t leave him trapped deep inside a sinking ship.
“Charges set? Delay five minutes. Everybody follow me.” The charges would blow the valves off the seacocks and open the engine rooms to the sea. The Voss would go down fast after that. There were rungs set in the steel oval that formed the trunked access tube. It would be a long, exhausting climb, but better that the alternative. Ehrhardt took a deep breath and started to climb the trunk that bypassed all the decks in between and eventually would end on the main deck. The escape route.
Halfway up, Ehrhardt heard the dull thud of the charges going off. It was strange how the trunked access tunneled all the noise upwards. That included the roar of water entering the machinery spaces and starting to flood the trunking. He’d ordered the bottom hatch closed by the last man in, but there wasn’t a watertight hatch on the Voss and he didn’t see why that one should be any different. The upper hatch was in reach now. Ehrhardt grabbed the wheel and spun it, undogging the hatch. Then, he pushed up.
The hatch opened a few centimeters. Three, perhaps four, no more than that. Then it jammed. Ehrhardt banged at it desperately but it would not move. Then, he got up close and peered through the crack. There was a metal block welded just so. It prevented the dogs on the hatch from opening properly. There wasn’t much holding the hatch shut, just a centimeter or so of steel, but it might as well have welded the whole hatch closed. He’d been right. The dockyard workers had been men of the sea; they’d known just what to do. A tiny modification, so small that it could hardly be noted, but one superbly designed to punish the men who had taken this ship away from its rightful owners. Ehrhardt was trapped in the trunked access, his men strung out beneath him. They were doomed to die one at a time as the waters rose and drowned them. And he would be last, having had to listen to them die. Ehrhardt wept in frustration and despair. Just for a moment, somewhere tucked away in a buried part of his mind, he thought he could hear a peal of laughter echo through the steel structure of the ship.
The first wave had been bad enough. The second had been hideous. Just as many of the bent-winged jabo-devils as before, but three times as many of the big torpedo planes. Some of them were a new type, one nobody had seen before. They carried an even deadlier load. Two torpedoes each and of the first eight that had attacked Graf Zeppelin, one had put both of its eels into her. They’d hit so close together that the holes they had blasted in her hull had merged into one. The torpedo defense system had failed; and the aft turbine rooms had flooded, bringing the Graf Zeppelin to a shuddering halt. That had done the inevitable. It had attracted the rest of the group and they’d swarmed her the way flies swarmed honey; leaving their attack on poor, shattered Leipzig to turn on the crippled Graffie. Another sixteen torpedoes dropped. This time the Graffie had lost the speed and agility that had helped her survive the previous attacks. Seven hit her, three right aft, three amidships, one in the extreme bow. Two of those torpedoes ruptured the aviation spirit stores and the carrier was turning into an inferno.
Brinkmann looked around at the shattered bridge. Dietrich was dead; most of the bridge crew were dead. The strafing had been ruthless, relentless. Once the jabos had dropped their bombs and fired their rockets, they’d come back to lash the ships with their machine guns and cannon. Even the men trying to abandon ship hadn’t been spared. The jabos hosed them with bullets and shells just the same.
By the end, it had been pure slaughter. The ships’ gun crews were dead; the ships themselves battered and broken by the relentless attack. Voss was going down fast. Leipzig, gutted by bombs and rockets, had already slipped beneath the waves. Nurnberg would follow her soon. Sixteen of the older torpedo planes had concentrated on her and scored two hits. One had blown the bows off; the other opened her engine rooms. Four more of them had dropped bombs on her. Big ones, thousand kilos? At least that. They’d stoved her sides in. Brinkmann was reminded of a street riot back in Dortmund many years before. He and his fellows had cornered a communist. After they’d knocked him down, they’d kicked his ribs in. Now he’d watched the Amis do the same to one of his cruisers. I wonder if Nurnberg cried for its mother while it died, the way that communist had when we left him bleeding to death in the gutter?
The destroyers had suffered badly as well. Rockets had done for them, mostly the big ones from the torpedo planes. Z-10, Z-14 and Z-15 had been hit hard and early. The bent-wing jabos hammered them with 500 kilo bombs and rockets, then the torpedo planes finished them off. Z-16 had been torpedoed. Brinkmann wasn’t certain whether it had been intended for her or whether she’d just caught a stray. It didn’t really matter which, it had broken her in half and sent her down in less than four minutes. He hadn’t seen what had happened to Z-4 and Z-5; they’d been up front but now they were gone. Only Z-20 was left. By a miracle she’d survived with severe topside damage but her hull and machinery were untouched. She was coming alongside to pick up the survivors from the Zeppelin.
Brinkmann looked around again. Sinking ships. Burning ships. Shattered ships. All doomed. The Ami airstrikes were ferocious beyond belief, beyond anything we had conceived. They’d never stopped. They‘d just hammered us over and over, with every weapon they had; no mercy, no hesitation. While they’d had ammunition, they‘d used it. Then, he picked himself up from the deck where he had fallen. The mine stowage aft must have exploded. He was surprised it hadn’t gone earlier. It had been surrounded by fire from the ruptured aft aviation spirit tanks. Odd, I can’t remember the explosion or being thrown down. It had been the last straw though; the Graffie was sinking fast by the stern. Z-20 was coming alongside now, it was time to leave.