that they had no idea what they had encountered. Not one had reported seeing any ship, or any enemy aircraft. Several claimed they saw something streaking in at their planes from below until the whole formation was torn apart by one explosion after another. It was as if the Germans had them bore sighted all along, and were picking them off with some lethal new gun system. Yet not even the fearful eighty-eight millimeter dual-purpose gun could fire seventy-five miles!
What was happening? What in the name of heaven was he stalking now on the gray Arctic seas? As soon as he had recovered the strike wave he went down to the flight deck himself to get first-hand reports from the pilots. The men were still shaken, and he sent them off to the briefing room where he later learned that they had seen nothing whatsoever, nothing except the strange sets of white contrails clawing through the sky. It was as if a great dark Panther had reached out with its paw and gored them, swiping his planes out of the air. His aircraft hangers would be twelve planes short now, and there were a lot of empty chairs in the briefing room. He heard the men trying to explain, yet unable to sort it all out.
“We saw them streaks in the sky, sir,” one said. “Then it was as if we flew right into a storm of steel. Explosions and shrapnel everywhere. The formation was nice and tight, sir, and most of the lads up front were gone in seconds. Blew the hell out of the lead planes, it did. I saw two had their wings cracked right off and bang away they went down into the sea. After that we was all diving for cloud cover and looking for the ship. But there was no ship, sir! I was damn near down on the deck after our dive, and there was nothing I could see in any direction. Maybe it was a submarine, I thought. Could the Germans have some type of new U-boat with flak guns mounted up top, sir?”
“And no sign of enemy aircraft?” the Admiral asked his weary, frightened men.
“No sir,” said Stewart-Moore, the 827 Squadron leader. “No sign of enemy aircraft at all. What could they possibly have out that far anyway, sir? We were well beyond the range of German fighters from Norway, and there’s no Me-109 I ever heard of that could chop us up like that in one pass-not ten of them.”
“Could the Germans be using a rocket, sir?” Captain Bovell knew something of the new rockets being used now in artillery divisions of many armies.
“That’s it!” said Langmore, the leader and odd man out surviving the blast that had devastated his 828 Squadron. “Rockets! They looked for all the world like incoming rockets, but they moved like lightning. Came right in on us as if the damn things had eyes. I was well up above the main body when they hit. Just lucky I suppose, or I’d be in the drink along with all the others. It was horrible, sir.”
The Germans must have some awful new weapon, thought Wake-Walker. Bovell was right. There was no question that it wasn’t a plane, and there were no German flak subs that he had ever heard of. Only a rocket made sense as he pieced together the descriptions from the others. Yet they were still seventy five miles from the contact Grenfell’s Fulmar spotted on radar as the planes turned for home. Seventy five miles? What rocket could travel that distance, and strike with such precision? Could the Germans be experimenting with rocket systems aboard one of their cruisers? He resolved to get word off to the Admiralty as soon as possible.
When this intelligence did come in, it created quite a stir. The Admiralty passed it on to Bletchley Park, and asked them to see if they could ferret out anything more on the matter. Then they set their minds to working on exactly what this new weapon could be. Too many cuff stripes around the same question at a table often created what Tovey like to call an “Admiral’s Stew.” When he finally got word of the fate of 828 Squadron off Victorious, he couldn't imagine what the Germans might be up to.
Home Fleet was a day out of Scapa Flow, steaming west and ready to make their turn northwest to come up on the southern outflow of the Denmark Strait into the Atlantic. It was here that Admiral Holland had stood his fateful watch with Hood and Prince of Wales when Bismarck ran through. And it was here that Tovey would take up his patrol as well.
“Bletchley Park says they think the only ship the Germans might have operational at this time would be the Admiral Scheer,” he said to Brind. “Eleven inch guns? That I can deal with. Rockets with the range and accuracy of this nature? Clearly impossible.”
“Somewhat bewildering,” said Brind. “But consider, sir, most of the German fleet is laid up for refit or repair right now. Suppose they're all getting fitted out with this new weapon system?”
“My god, Brind. We would've heard something about it. Yes, we've known the Germans have had an interest in rocketry for years. If these reports are accurate, and this German ship was able to swat down Wake-Walker’s Albacores at a range of seventy-five miles, then this speaks of a highly sophisticated detection system as well. Think of it! The ship would need to spot the incoming squadrons well before they fired. They would have to track them with absolute precision to be able to hit anything at that range. Why, it would be like a sharp shooter knocking a man's hat off at a range of ten miles! How the world could they make advances of this nature without us knowing about it?”
“The German radar must be better than we realize, sir.”
“That's well over the horizon, Brind. They would have to have aircraft up with long-range radars to see out that far.”
“Our own type 279 radar is good up to 100 miles under decent conditions. Admiralty suggests they may have a pair of spotter planes up to either side of the ship setting up kind of triangulation. That would improve accuracy considerably if they were reading three signals and somehow managing to coordinate them.”
“Yes I suppose that's possible, but guiding the rockets in like that? Almost every rocket in use today is unguided, like the Russian Katyushas. This is something altogether new. It changes everything. We’ll have to throw out the book and completely reevaluate the way we operate with our carriers now. If they can cut our torpedo squadrons to pieces like this before they get anywhere near the target, then ships like Victorious and Furious are practically useless as an offensive threat. We can use them as radar pickets and scout detachments, or to provide air cover over our own fleets, but not for very much else. Trying to throw Swordfish torpedo bombers, or even these new Albacore at the enemy is just throwing lives and planes away, not to mention the torpedoes.”
“Then again this could have been the lucky hit, sir. And if Wake-Walker had vectored in his squadrons from different approaches, the Germans might not have been able to track them as well, particularly if they are using some sort of triangulation system.”
“Good point. I suppose only time will tell. But for the moment, it's beginning to look again like this bloody business is a job for the battleships. They can fling all the ack-ack rockets they want at King George V and they won't put a scratch on us.”
Brind had another thought. “This may be a wild shot, sir, but what about Graf Zeppelin? It was a converted cruiser, that long forward deck reported on this contact might've been a landing strip, it explains how Jerry could have airplanes up triangulating like this, and the biggest gun reported to be on that ship is in the range of the weapon that struck the destroyer Anthony.”
Tovey considered that for some time, and then said: “You might be onto something there, Brind. We've heard nothing about Graf Zeppelin, yet we know the Germans have her in the works. You might pass that one on to the Admiralty and see what they think of it. In the meantime, Graf Zeppelin or not, my fourteen inch guns may have something to say about it soon enough.”
Chapter 17
August 3, 1941
Kirov raced south into the Denmark Strait, and behind her a dark, rolling front of bad weather surged in her wake. The British had been chastened, but not put off in the chase. They saw no further aircraft squadrons vectoring in on their position, but did note a single plane popping on and off their screens, a little under a hundred miles out. Admiral Volsky sent up a KA-40 helo to assist their over horizon coverage in the face of the oncoming storm, and they noted the British task force was still bearing on their heading, matching their speed knot for knot. As if anticipating their course, the angle of the enemy approach had change earlier, however, and they managed to cut twenty-five miles off the lead Kirov had for the moment.
They rounded the northernmost headlands of Iceland, and continued southwest, paralleling the distant icy coast of Greenland. With the KA-40 up, Rodenko had a good fix on the shadowing British task force, noting that it
