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.
KMS Bismarck, High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic 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.
“Why? Why? Couldn’t they see we are sinking, that the crew are abandoning ship?”
One of the junior officers was almost hysterical. For a moment Mullenheim-Rechberg had sympathy for him. He’s barely more than a boy and this wasn’t what anybody had expected. But panic and fear were contagious and had to be crushed quickly. “Get a grip on yourself. You are an officer, act like one.”
“Sir, Von Der Tann has gone! She just rolled over and went down.” That wasn’t surprising, she’d taken at least ten torpedo hits and twice than many of the heavy armor-piercing bombs. She was the first; but she wouldn’t be the last, Seydlitz and Derfflinger were as bad. Behind Bismarck, Tirpitz was shattered and sinking fast. That didn’t surprise him, by the time the last Ami bombers had finished with her, she’d taken a total of 13 torpedoes and a dozen heavy bombs. She would not last much longer.
Captain Mullenheim-Rechberg staggered as another internal explosion racked his ship, sending a fireball upwards out of the smashed ruin of her superstructure. She was rolling over more quickly, settling lower all the time. It was only a question of what would get her first, a massive explosion as her magazines went or flooding eating up what was left of her buoyancy. That decided him. There was one thing left he could do for the Bismarck. He cupped his hands around his mouth and put all the power in his lungs into the shout. “Scuttle the ship!”
Then, he turned to the young officer beside him, a supercilious smirk on his face. “Now the Amis can’t claim they sank her.”
AD-1 Skyraider Clementine Ninth Wave, Over the High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic. The great German battleship rolling over had been a spectacular sight; her red belly contrasting with the black-gray sea, the tiny figures of men running down her hull trying to avoid the inevitable and fatal plunge into the ice-cold seas. Their efforts were futile, the ship’s stern vanished beneath the waves and she had slipped under, leaving them floundering in the water they had dreaded. Marko Dash circled the sight for a minute, then felt his aircraft rock savagely. A second German battleship had exploded. The fires must have reached her magazines although there were rumors that the Germans weren’t too bright when it came to storing fused shells in their magazines.
Clementine circled the sight below again. Two of the German battleships had gone. Another was at the last edge of extremity. He watched her slip under, faster and faster. He knew the mechanism, as the hull sank deeper, the pressure driving water through the holes in her hull increased and the flooding rate increased. Then, as the ship sank deeper, more holes in her hull became submerged and they too added their contribution to the mass of water that was sinking her. Finally, the shattered and riddled superstructure let the air out, leaving nothing to save the ship. That battleship, and the one behind her, were doomed.
