It was a new trick, and it was being used on a new target. Previous waves of jabos had concentrated on the big ships. Now they were helpless and could be finished off almost at leisure. High overhead, the aircraft in this latest wave were peeling off in the traditional curve of the dive bomber, heading down in chains at the destroyers underneath. It was a familiar enough sight. The German crews had seen it often enough during newsreels of the glory days of 1940 and 1941 when nothing seemed able to stop the German steamroller. Obviously, the Amis had decided it was their turn to suffer. Not that the destroyer men hadn’t paid a grim price already. Seven of the sixteen had been bombed and rocketed. Five had already sunk, the other two wouldn’t last much longer. Those attacks though had been afterthoughts, incidental to the main weight of attack that had been hurled at the battleships. Now the Amis were targeting the destroyers for destruction.
Far away, at the head of the formation, Z-30 vanished under a hail of bombs. The Ami Voughts had gone for her, firing their rockets in the dive; then releasing bombs. Not jellygas, the destroyer men had been spared that horror. It was a grim comment on this battle that the prospect of freezing to death in the icy seas was a mercy compared with burning in Ami jellygas. Would Z-30 make it out of the pattern of bombs that had been hurled at her? She did, but she was burning and losing way. How many bombs had hit her? Three? Four? According to the books the Ami Voughts could carry two 500 kilo bombs each in addition to their rockets. They would make short work of an unarmored destroyer.
A realization hit Becker. Lutzow was the only capital ship left in the formation that was even partly operational. She’d tried to make the break north with Seydlitz and Von der Tann but she’d been too old, too slow, and her diesels hadn’t been up to it. She’d been floundering along, left further behind every minute. Now, there was enough separation between her and the main group that she might, just might, be overlooked.
“Helm, come to course one-six-zero. Maximum speed, hold nothing back.”
“Sir?”
“You have a problem Commander?”
“Sir, the….” The First Officer was trying to find a tactful way of phrasing this. “The Admiral’s last orders were to head on zero-zero-zero straight for the Ami fleet.”
“Admiral Lindemann’s orders died with him. Do you think he survived that?” Becker pointed at the sight of von der Tann, a pyre of black smoke marking a hull that already had more than a thirty degree list. The ship wasn’t recognizable. Both funnels were down. The fore bridge was a mass of burning wreckage. All the turrets were at strange angles, some with their barrels up, others down. If ever a ship was a floating wreck, it was von der Tann. Only she wasn’t the worst off from what had once been the Second High Seas Fleet.
Becker winced as, on the horizon, Z-23 exploded. A rocket bomb? Probably not, more likely a normal five hundred kilo that had punched through the destroyer’s thin plating and touched off a magazine. A split second later Z-25 followed her. The eruption from her magazine formed a strange mushroom-shaped cloud. For a second, Becker shuddered with a cold horror he couldn’t explain. Something much more frightening, on a much deeper level, than the death of a ship and her crew of 340 men could explain. Looking at the cloud marking the magazine explosion that had destroyed Z-25, Becker could only think of the expression ‘somebody had walked on his grave.’ But this was Germany’s fleet that was dying under the relentless air attacks. Did that mean that Z-25 had walked on Germany’s grave?
“One-six-zero, NOW. We are Germany’s last capital ship. As long as we can stay afloat, the fleet still lives. The day is lost, hopelessly, irretrievably. We have a chance to turn around and save something from this disaster. Signal what other ships still can to head for home. Night is just two hours away. If we can survive until then, the Ami carriers will have to wait for dawn. Nobody can fly from carriers at night.” Lutzow answered her helm and her bows swung south, heading for home.
“Sir, over there.” The first officer spoke quietly, apologetically. Across the sea, Scharnhorst and Moltke, probably the last battleships left even partly mobile, were also turning for home. Far behind, Scheer was struggling with her wrecked rudder and single remaining shaft to do the same.
The American tactics changed. Instead of the waves hitting a few ships in concentrated blows, now they were spreading out, finishing off the cripples. Bismarck was down by the bows. Her foredeck was already underwater with the sea lapping around the base of Anton turret. At least what was left of Anton. It was burned out, the barrels, blackened and drooping in the water. None of the other turrets were in any better condition. Bruno was completely off its barbette, lifted into the air and dropped back. For all the world it resembled a blackened shoe thrown carelessly into a pile. The ship was listing heavily to port. The last wave of Ami bombers had put six torpedoes into her port side, adding to the four that had already hit her. Now the port edge of her catapult deck was also level with the water. What there was left of her superstructure had been raked with more bombs. Fortunately none of the rocket bombs since she’d already taken six of those. Just a mix, 500 kilos, 750 kilos, thousand kilos, some high explosive, some armor piercing. They churned her superstructure to scrap. After a while the hail of hits had just been rearranging the wreckage.
It was a mark of how much water the ship had on board that the submerged bow and heavy list hadn’t raised her stern or starboard side clear of the water. Not that the ship still had a stern to expose. An Ami Douglas had put both its torpedoes into the screws and the entire stern section had dropped clean off. A sheer, cliff-like wall now marked the point where the structure had failed. The incredible thing was, with all the holes in the hull and the thousands of tons of flood water that was surging through the battleship’s insides, she was still burning down there. A huge plume of black smoke rose above the sinking ship, half-masking the blood-red sun that was slowly setting in the west.
That sun had masked the aircraft’s approach. Four Corsairs came out of it, in tight formation. Their wings sparkled with the flashes of their .50 caliber machine guns. The hail of bullets swept through the men struggling to abandon ship on the sloping, burned out and wrecked decks, scything them down. The Corsairs dropped their bombs and passed over the fleet to where the settling hulk of Seydlitz steamed in the sea. They lashed her with their rockets and machine guns and were gone. They were probably orbiting round for another pass, that was something else that had changed, the hours when the Amis made a single pass across the fleet and left were gone. Now the ships were defenseless, their flak guns gone, their machinery useless. Their crews could only watch the Americans circled around them, placing their bombs and torpedoes just so. Coming back over and over again until their guns and bomb racks were empty.
Captain Mullenheim-Rechberg felt the battleship shudder under his feet. More internal explosions as the fires down below eat their way towards his magazines. He picked himself up; he’d ducked behind a wrecked anti-aircraft mount when the strafing pass had started. The men who’d been trying to abandon ship were sprawled around on the deck where the Ami jabos had cut them down.