The plane began to cartwheel and Amelia Earhart knew she was going to die. She whimpered as the sea drew closer. Her last thought as the plane struck the water and exploded was the fervent hope that at least some of her body would be found so her parents could give her a proper funeral.
MacArthur’s detractors in the small American Army, Luke included, might have considered him arrogant or pompous, but he wasn’t a coward. His actions at Vera Cruz a few years earlier had proven that. Yelling and screaming, he charged into the Germans. Luke fired into the chest of a German only a few feet away, wheeled and stuck another in the gut with his bayonet. He tried to pull it out and it stuck. The German howled and tried to grab the rifle.
Luke fired, killing the Kraut and freeing the bayonet. He slid in a fresh clip and continued firing. More Americans had joined what was now a brawl. Suddenly, the rifle was knocked from his hands. He pulled his pistol and looked for someone to shoot.
A middle-aged man was staggering in front of him. The man looked confused and disoriented. He also looked important. Luke grabbed him by the lapel and jabbed the pistol under his chin. “Surrender or I’ll blow your fucking head off,” he said and then repeated it in German.
The man looked startled. His eyes were glazed. He raised his hands. “Bitte, bitte,” he said, please, please. As he did, other Germans began to do the same thing.
A younger German officer approached tentatively, his hands open. “My name is von Richter. It’s over. Let me help my general.”
Luke’s mind whirled. General? What the hell had he just gone and done? “Great, but who is this guy?”
Von Richter smiled wanly as the sounds of battle faded into unnatural silence. “Please let me present General Oskar von Hutier.”
Hipper was outraged and frustrated. A tiny plane had dropped something on the Bayern’s rearmost turret and now the damn thing was burning furiously. Damage-control parties were working hard to contain the blaze lest the flames reach the ammunition in the turret or, God forbid, an ammunition magazine and cause a catastrophic explosion. His beautiful ship, the Bayern, was damaged and one quarter of her weapons were out of action.
Little planes, like little bugs, swarmed around the ships, sometimes flying so low they couldn’t be seen and sometimes flying between ships so guns couldn’t be fired for fear of hitting another German ship.
The little planes, gnats he thought, were wreaking havoc. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be funny. Everyone knew that planes couldn’t bomb warships and do much damage, but everyone had assumed the bombs would be explosive, not flammable. How wrong could they have been?
Many of the little gnats had been blown from the sky, swatted like the bugs they were. Perhaps dozens had fallen, but there were still so many that the ships’ guns couldn’t kill them all. In a corner of his mind, Hipper made the mental note that future warships would have to have many, many more antiaircraft guns as everyone would soon know of this despicable trick pulled by the Americans. Also, seals around turrets and hatches would have to be tighter. He wondered if he would live long enough to transmit this information.
Two other of his battleships, the Koenig and the Thuringen, were burning badly. As he watched, the front turret of the Koenig exploded, sending wreckage into the air. The turret itself lifted off the ship and fell into the ocean with a mighty splash. The Thuringen ceased moving and men began throwing themselves off the burning wreck and into the relative safety of the bay. Some of the German sailors were themselves on fire and Hipper allowed himself a moment of pity before he realized what he had to do.
“Sortie!” Hipper screamed. “All ships sortie!”
To hell with formation and to hell with dignity, he thought. He had to get the remainder of his fleet out of this death trap. He’d entered with ten battleships and was now down to six, and the remainder all damaged to some extent. The Koenig and the Thuringen might not even make it to sea. The German Navy had won its honor but had just been defeated by a most unlikely and improbable enemy.
“Full speed,” he ordered. The Bayern raced through the channel and out into the ocean.
His great ship shuddered. Something was erupting in the stern where the fire raged. He was afraid to look. The ship shook again and a shock wave passed over and through the Bayern. D-turret had exploded.
Kirsten ran to where she could see what was happening in the bay. Earlier, she’d watched in dismay as the mighty German fleet hammered its way in. She wondered if this was the end of it. Would San Francisco fall to Germany despite all their efforts to defend it?
Curiously, the flow of wounded to the hospital had slowed to less than a trickle. There was a great battle raging to the east, but those wounded were cut off from her hospital facilities because the bay was now controlled by the Germans. There was fighting to the direct south and that concerned her deeply, as it did Elise who was with her. Both Luke and Josh were down to the south, and the fighting was close enough for them to discern the sound of small-arms fire.
But the chaos in San Francisco Bay was beyond belief. Elise had told her what the Fireflies were, and what they were going to attempt to do. Kirsten and thought it a hopeless endeavor and one that would result in many needless deaths.
But now she’d changed her mind. Not only were the damned Hun ships withdrawing, but the little fireflies had caused significant damage. Two German ships were burning furiously and dead in the water. They would never leave the bay.
All of the German ships were hurt and burning to some extent. Fire was the great fear of men on ships and she’d been told that firefighting was practiced constantly. Once out of the bay and out of the range of the fireflies, the flames would be brought under control and the German ships saved.
However, the flames on the largest ship, the Bayern, were not yet under control. It looked like the metal stern of the ship was so hot it was glowing, perhaps melting. As she was thinking that, the Bayern’s rearmost turret exploded, sending debris high into the air. People in the crowd around her gasped as shock waves shook the battleship like it was a toy.
The German fleet, now down to six battleships, moved out to sea. The handful of cruisers that had also made it into the bay made their own escape, largely ignored by the Fireflies and the few shore batteries.
Splashes suddenly appeared around the German ships. Geysers lifted higher than the superstructures themselves. What was going on? Kirsten and the other spectators had been so transfixed by the German ships that they’d ignored the horizon. Three grey silhouettes were moving and circling slowly and firing their guns. The Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada had arrived.
Elise smiled. She had been privy to the great secret. “Admiral Sims had them hiding only fifty miles north of here. They were already on their way when the Fireflies attacked.”
Sims had taken a great chance. If the Firefly attack had failed, the American ships would have had to run for their lives. Again.
It was difficult to follow, but it seemed like the Arizona was focusing on the damaged Bayern, while the other two American battleships attacked other foes.
Yes, Kirsten concluded, the Arizona and Bayern were dueling. The two great ships moved closer to each other until it seemed like they were fighting a battle from the War of 1812. The Bayern had lost one turret, but her six remaining fifteen-inch guns were larger than her opponent’s, and she inflicted damage on the Arizona, which itself began to burn.