Halsey thought for a minute. “Nan is Able reloaded. Get them off. They started the battle, they can finish it. Then get the Tigercats loaded up for a night torpedo attack. They’ll go in if any of the Germans survive the daylight strikes.” He broke off, another messenger had arrived on the bridge.
“Sir, final report from Ink just in. Two more battleships gone down, total is now five. Confirmed losses are identified as two Derfflinger class, two Bismarck class, one Scharnhorst class. Smaller units wiped out. At least three cruisers and twelve destroyers sunk.
“Very well. Transmit the following message to Washington.” Halsey took a message blank and scribbled a few words on it.
The messenger read the five words and grinned broadly. “Yes SIR!”
One of Captain Becker’s secret vices was that he was a hopeless addict to American cowboy films. He particularly loved the endings where the good guys were holed up, either cavalry in a fort or a wagon train drawn up in a circle, hoping for rescue but determined to sell their lives dearly. That was his situation now, except he knew no rescue was coming. He’d seen the cloud of smoke on the horizon as Seydlitz had exploded. He’d heard the reports as von der Tann and Tirpitz had capsized. Bismarck and Gneisenau had gone as well, they’d just taken too much damage, too many hits, and had foundered. No, there was no rescue coming, that left only selling their lives dearly. At least, Lutzow still had her anti-aircraft guns working. She could still fight.
“Maximum power. It doesn’t matter what the gauges say, get this ship moving.” That was a decisive enough order. There were 16 torpedo planes coming in, already splitting into two groups of eight to catch him in a scissors attack. “Concentrate fire on the portside group. Hard to starboard.” Try and shoot down as many of the torpedo planes on one side as possible, try to take the other group head on.
His anti-aircraft guns ranged in on the formation he’d selected. He was rewarded, first one Douglas erupted into flame and plowed into the sea, then another blew up. Probably a direct hit form his 105s. His 20mm guns chewed up a third, sending it spinning into the sea. The remaining five dropped at perilously close range, then passed overhead. Becker heard the roar of their rockets but his whole attention was focused on the tracks of the torpedoes. Only eight? Two must have broken up or sunk, perhaps a Douglas hit by 20mm fire at just the wrong second? His ship was turning hard, the tracks were slowly drifting aft of him. Seven missed, somehow, the last caught his ship under his rear turret. Becker braced himself for the explosion that never came. A dud?
His relief lasted only a second. Lutzow shuddered as two explosions up forward racked his cruiser. He cursed the bad luck that had brought them. He’d dodged the deadly beam attack that should have raked his ship with hits, only to get hit twice by torpedoes from a bow-on attack, where the book said the chances of getting hit were but slight. He could feel the ship slowing, her movement in the water changing as the buoyancy of the bows were lost. The torpedoes had hit either side of the ship, precisely between the peak of the bow and Anton turret. Now, the whole bow had gone, sheared off just forward of Anton turret.
“Report.”
There was an interminable delay from up front as the damage control crews tried to get a handle on the effects of the hits. Meanwhile Becker looked around at the rest of his squadron. 2-38 and 2-29 were burning, the Douglases must have hit them with rockets as they passed. It looked like they’d hit at least one more of the Ami bombers though.
“Damage control. The forward bulkhead is holding, we’re reinforcing with timbers and sealing off now. We can’t move though. If we get any way on, the bulkhead will split wide open.”
Becket grimaced. Staying here meant death. Then inspiration struck. “You mean we can’t get any forward speed on. No reason why we can’t go backwards.” He flipped to the engine room telegraph. “Full power astern. If we have to, we’ll back all the way home!”
“Nan is making its run now, Sir. It’s the big finale. 58.2 and 58.3 got off four full squadrons of Adies and Mames each. With our group, that’s four squadrons of Corsairs and ten of bombers. More than 200 strike aircraft. The officer checked a tally list, one that was a long, long column of numbers. “Sir, good place to stop, with Nan going in, we’ve launched exactly 1,776 sorties against the enemy fleet.”
Halsey grinned. That was a number that would make headlines. “Our losses?”
“So far, 254 aircraft lost due to enemy action, 186 lost operationally, 48 are badly damaged and will need major repairs. We have just over 1,672 aircraft left operational of the 2,160 we started with. Attrition is 22.6 percent of our totalled air groups.” The aide thought for a second. “I’ve no idea whether this is good or bad. Nobody has ever done what we did today.”
Halsey grunted. “What’s left out there?”
“Main formation has gone Sir. One battleship and a cruiser are left dead in the water, 58.3s Adies are closing on them now. Another cruiser and five destroyers tried to make a break south. The destroyers have gone, the cruiser is crippled and heading south.” The aide laughed. “She’s going backwards, her bows got blown clean off. Nan and a mix of Adies and Mames from TG54.3 are hitting her now. It’s over Sir, Washington got their clean sweep.”
“Any news?” Igrat’s voice reflected the tension that had been building in Washington all day.
“Nothing official. Last I heard, the Rivets are intercepting a lot of communications from the Germans and some from our aircraft. If they’re anything to go by, the Germans have lost a lot of ships and Halsey a lot of aircraft. Phillip says that means we’re winning, we can replace our aircraft a lot faster than the Germans can replace their ships.”
“He would. We can’t replace those pilots though.”
“Have you seen the output of our flying schools Iggie?” Naamah relaxed slightly. It had been a long day and she was tired. “We’re actually training more pilots than we can use at the moment.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. The boys who get shot down, we can’t be picking many of them up.”
“Don’t know. No word on that either. I know we’ve got Mariners and floatplanes out to recover as many of the splashed pilots as we can, but its winter and it’s the North Atlantic. I guess you’re right, we can’t be getting to that many of them. Anyway, we’ll know soon. Got any plans for the weekend?”
“Going up to stay with Mike on Long Island. Going to make it a long weekend. I’ve got a few days leave before we do the next run to Geneva.”
“Be careful with Mike, he tends to be over-emotional.” From Naamah, that was a serious criticism. She regarded Mike Collins as a playboy, essentially a lightweight who drank too much and didn’t keep his temper under control. There was a good reason why Stuyvesant hadn’t tapped him for either the Strategic Bombing Commission or the Economic Intelligence and Warfare Committee. As far as she was concerned, his only redeeming virtue was that he threw good parties. Still Iggie had always liked dancing on a knife edge. At least she never whines when she gets cut.