Lokken paid no attention. “Starboard, centerline screws hard aft, port screw all ahead.” Gneisenau screamed again as her bows were hauled through the sea. It was a desperate turn to try and avoid another group of torpedo planes that had caught up with her before dropping. The white streaks in the water were closing on her, getting dangerously close. Then an intercept course slowly turned to parallel and then to diverging. Gneisenau had turned inside the torpedoes.
“That makes at least twenty misses. The Ami’s need some practice.” Then the First Officer cursed his words. Two columns of water rose from Scharnhorst. One was way forward, between the bows and the foremost turret, the other level with the aft mast.
Lokken still ignored him. His mind was consumed with the picture of his ship surrounded by the torpedo bombers. He was fighting desperately to survive the hail of torpedoes launched in his direction. Another salvo was coming in, this time from in front. The bombers had worked around him. Now they were attacking from both sides, eight off the port bow, four off the starboard. Lokken visualized the geometry and knew it was over. That’s why this attack was called the Hammerhead. To avoid one group he had to expose himself to the rest. Well, better four than eight. He swung his bows to starboard. “All back full.”
With a little luck the sudden reduction in speed would throw the Amis off. Gneisenau threaded the spread of eight torpedoes. They raced past either side of him. It was close, the nearest wobbled as it entered his wake and was almost drawn into his screws. But, it wasn’t, it was just a fraction too far out. The other four were racing towards her. As Gneisenau slowed, Lokken saw them. The first was passing well in front of his bows, the second much closer. Lokken cringed. The third slammed into his ship in almost the same place Scharnhorst had been hit just a few seconds earlier. Slammed home, but no explosion. Whatever had happened, the torpedo hadn’t exploded. Fuze failure? Lokken didn’t know. Another hit, right between Anton and Bruno turrets. That one did explode and Lokken felt his Gneisenau shudder from the hit.
It was over. Their bolt shot, the torpedo planes were leaving. Scheer was in deep trouble, listing and slowing down. Scharnhorst was also slowing but she seemed far less hurt. Lokken guessed it was the hit forward more than anything else. Gneisenau seemed unaffected by the blow she had taken. Lokken didn’t need the damage control report to tell him what he already knew. The torpedo defense system had taken the hit, the damage was superficial at most. Just some minor leakage inboard. He took the opportunity to look around. Derfflinger hit and burning. And another blue cloud just about to descend, this time on the head of the formation.
Reprisal and Oriskany had just rejoined the fleet after a major refit. They had the latest radars, the new 3 inch L50 anti-aircraft guns in place of the quad forties, the lengthened bow and an improved island. They also had new airgroups with the least experienced pilots in the Fifth Fleet. They hadn’t even flown their first strike over France or the U.K. yet. That was why nobody had asked them to do anything clever. They had simply been steered straight at the German squadron. As a result, they were hitting it head-on.
Lieutenant Commander Bob Price knew his job. He had to assess the enemy squadron while streaking in to do the flak suppression run, then assign his aircraft to the most valuable targets. It had been a lot to do when the strike leader had ridden on an Avenger with three crew members on board. Asking a single pilot to do it while flying a Shooting Star jet fighter was placing too great a load even on an experienced man. Experienced, Bob Price was not. Well trained, talented, skilled yes, but he was asked to do a job that was way beyond him.
And yet he tried hard. It didn’t help that the Germans had built their Hipper class heavy cruisers to the same general plans as their battleships. From dead ahead, telling the difference between the ships was a matter of judging size. To those who sat in armchairs and sermonized on the minute differences between classes, distinguishing between a heavy cruiser and a battleship was easy. So much so that failing to do so was a matter of derision. For a young, inexperienced pilot moving at over 500 miles per hour through an intense anti-aircraft barrage, it wasn’t such a sinecure. Nor did it help that the American ship recognition instructors had hammered home the lesson. Twin turrets meant battleships, triple turrets meant cruisers. Price saw the shape, saw the twin turrets and his mind said battleship. He saw the single ship leading both columns of battleships and made a simple, honest, decision. That ship must be the flagship. An admiral always lead his fleet didn’t he?
“All aircraft concentrate on the lead ship.” The order sounded authoritative, crisp and sharp, exactly the way an order should sound. As a result, 32 FV-3 Shooting Stars and more than 60 F4U-4 Corsairs converged on the heavy cruiser Hipper. Behind them, the Adies swept down on the hapless cruiser.
Once, when he’d been in Austria, Lindemann had seen an avalanche engulf part of a small village. The memory raised an urgent question in his mind, just what in hell did the Amis have against the poor old Hipper? Lindemann asked himself the question in appalled amazement as he watched the tide of Ami jabos sweep down on the heavy cruiser. Had she done something to personally offend the Ami Admiral? Was there a special order out that the Hipper was to be sunk at all costs? Did they know something about the Hipper that I don’t? Throwing more than a hundred aircraft at a single 20 centimeter cruiser seemed very excessive somehow.
Lindemann winced as the victim of the onslaught seemed to vanish under the rippling blaze of rockets from the jets that lead the assault. Attacking from the front like that had its costs though. Five of the Ami jets went down to the fleet’s concentrated anti-aircraft fire. Two of them exploded in mid air as 105mm shells scored direct hits. By coming in from the front like that they were running straight into a crossfire from the two lines of battleships.
Derfflinger’s steel armor rang with the ricochets of the .50 caliber machinegun fire that hosed down her decks. The ship’s center section was beginning to look like a slaughterhouse. Blood from the flak gunners ran down the deck and mixed with the soot from the fire caused by the crashed jet. It was odd, Lindemann had expected to see the burned out tail of the aircraft sticking out of the superstructure when the fires cleared but there was nothing. The sheer force of the impact had smashed the jet to fragments.
He swung his binoculars back to Hipper. Her flak guns were silent. She was burning from the Anton turret back to her stern where the infernal jellygas was soaking her. Lindemann had the reports from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to confirm jellygas wasn’t a ship-killer the way torpedoes and armor piercing bombs were. In fact it did very little damage at all to the ship since the fires were superficial and didn’t bite deep. But the word from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau was that jellygas massacred the flak gunners and left the victim defenseless against the aircraft that did carry the ship-killers. Lindemann got the impression though that the pilots in this wave lacked the deadly precision of those in the first group. A lot of the rockets and jellygas tanks had missed completely, He watched two clumsily-dropped jellygas tanks bounce off the ship before exploding harmlessly in the sea alongside her.