By the time the first squadron had completed their runs, the whole aft of the superstructure was a mass of flame. Secondary explosions marked the site of the anti-aircraft guns as their ready-use ammunition cooked off. Later pilots found their aircraft bouncing round from the turbulence of the fires so the more thoughtful Corsair pilots held their drops and placed their tanks further forward. As a result, fires spread forward to engulf the bridge and forward guns. One Corsair had the bad luck to be making its run when the torpedo tubes on the Gneisenau exploded. The blast flipped the aircraft out of control, so that it collided with the battleship’s funnel. Its fuel and munitions exploding were barely noticeable in the holocaust swallowing the Gneisenau.
That didn’t worry Webb. In fact he would never know what had happened to the Corsair pilot. Different squadron, different carrier. Just another loss in the list that was growing steadily as the November day ticked past. He had another thought on his mind. Up ahead of him, another battleship had been marked by an explosion, a big one. He didn’t know what had caused it. Whatever it was, he was going to take advantage of it. He lined up on the battleship. It was a big one, with two funnels. The area around the fore funnel was burning from the explosion, no anti-aircraft fire was coming from there. The aft funnel was the center of a fiery mass of flak. He lined up and held his fire to the last second. Then Webb let the gunners have it with his machine guns and rockets.
At last, he was out of the deadly cones of fire and heading home. Webb eased back on the power and watched his instrument panel record the lowering temperatures and pressures. All characteristics that determined the life of his engine. He was heading home, back to Gettysburg. The trail of smoke behind him wasn’t enough to worry about. Spider’s Web had been hit before. She’d be hit again but it didn’t matter. Today, he was going back to his carrier.
In his imagination, he could feel the heat washing off the three burning ships. He knew the damage wasn’t mortal. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t even severe. Napalm would sear the upper decks, incinerate anybody outside the armor but it would burn off. It could not penetrate the heart of the ship. That was the job of the torpedo bombers. Bayonne Beauty had a single torpedo nested under her belly and four Tiny Tim rockets under her wings. Lieutenant Fisher McPherson knew that the objective this early in the game wasn’t to sink ships but to spread chaos and disorder. The birds later in the attack would be carrying two or three torpedoes each. They would be the ship killers.
Still, McPherson wanted to do the best he could. Even if the objective was to break the formations up, professional pride meant he wanted to score a hit. The problem was the torpedo bombers were coming in from astern of the targets, the worst possible angle for a torpedo attack. The torpedoes were consigned to a tail chase, one in which their speed margin over the targets wasn’t that great. He had already decided there were other options, other targets.
McPherson picked his first target; a destroyer running just behind the worst-hit of the three burning enemy ships. Its anti-aircraft fire was flashing round him. That didn’t matter too much, the important thing was to get as close as possible. So close his Tiny Tims would gut her. Anyway, the German destroyers didn’t have dual purpose main guns. The destroyer grew closer, much closer and his rockets slashed across the gap between the Adie and its prey. Three satisfactory explosions; one of the rockets must have misfired. Now it was time for the battleship. He swerved, skimming the sea as he brought his nose around then tried to close the range as much as possible. In a stern chase like this, he had to get as close as possible if his torpedo was to stand a chance of a hit.
His torpedo launched McPherson swung away, heading out from the German ships. The fighter-bombers could indulge in wild rides across the enemy ships, strafing everything in their path. The lumbering torpedo planes were too valuable. They had strict orders. No grandstanding. Drop your fish, come back, get some more, drop those. Come back, get some more, drop them. Keep going until there weren’t any targets left. The crews got the message.
“We’ve lost everything aft of the tower, Captain. There’s nothing left back there.” The young Lieutenant gasped, not from exhaustion but from shock and sickness. He’d never seen what the Ami’s dreaded jellygas had done before. He’d heard stories but he’d dismissed them as soldier’s tales intended to impress the pampered sailors of the High Seas Fleet. Now he knew different. He’d seen the charred husks sitting at the remains of their guns; seen others till writhing as they died. He shook the images from his mind and carried on. “The fires are terrible but they’re confined to the upper decks. The jellygas didn’t penetrate into the ship. Below decks, there’s no damage.”
Captain Christian Lokken was only half listening. His attention was fixed on the cloud of torpedo-bombers that were closing in him from behind. “I want every turn of the screws the engineers can give me. Every one. No holding back. If there are safety margins, ignore them. Today, there is no section of the gauge marked in red. Understood?”
Engines nodded and spoke into the communication system. They’d lost contact with a lot of the ship. The fires had severed the runs in the superstructure. Thankfully, the machinery spaces were still on line. Underneath their feet the vibration picked up as Gneisenau accelerated. Lokken did not take his attention away from the aircraft closing in. The formation split in three. One group headed for Scharnhorst up ahead; another picked Scheer behind. The majority of the planes were coming for him.
“They’re coming at us from behind, Klaus. Poor tactics on their part. A bad angle for torpedoes.” Lokken tensed. There were torpedoes dropping from the Ami bombers. “Port and centerline screws hard aft; starboard screw full ahead.”
Gneisenau’s bow started to swing around as the ship’s machinery screamed in protest at the abuse. She slid sideways through the water, combining her turn with forward motion and sideways shift, all in ways the designers had only dreamed of. Lokken watched the
torpedo planes pulling away. If he timed this right….”All engines, full ahead.”
The screaming shudder stopped. Gneisenau lurched forward and left the tracks from the torpedoes to pass aft, not far aft but enough. As long as they missed, it didn’t matter by how much. Ahead of the battleship, the two surviving destroyers scattered out of her way. When a 32,000 ton battleship hit a 2,000 ton destroyer, it didn’t take any great insight to know who would come off worst.
“Scheer’s been hit.” The First Officer spoke quietly as he saw the tower of water rise from the heavy cruiser. A bad hit; right aft where the hull dropped a deck. That was always a position of great stress. Given the questionable strength of the ship’s stern, she’d be lucky to keep her rear end in place. And there was always the possibility of damage to the shafts. Captain Mullenheim-Rechberg on Bismarck had claimed the odds against a ship getting a crippling hit in the screws was a thousand to one against. That was nonsense of course, simple mathematics said otherwise. 15 percent of the ship’s length was the screws, shafts and rudders. Assuming hits were distributed at random on the hull, one hit in six would cripple one or all of those units. One in six, not one in a thousand.