Kretschmer paused for a second. His eyes focused on the stuffed animal that he had been given just a few minutes earlier. Making a rendezvous was deadly dangerous for an auxiliary cruiser. Somehow this one had leaked out. How else had a cruiser been on scene?
“We should even this match up a bit. Prepare Tubes One to Four, target is…. range two thousand meters, bearing one-three-five, speed twenty six knots. Course one hundred. Fire One…”
Howden watched Hobart’s aft sixinch guns fire, inflicting yet more damage on the already-battered raider. That was when he saw the white streaks on the water, heading for his ship. The first two passed ahead of him. The second pair were running straight and true. Despite the frantic effort to turn into them, it was too late. The range was too short.
The two torpedoes slammed into Hobart with almost surgical precision. One hit just forward of “A” turret and near the ASDIC compartment. That was the weakest point on the ship’s hull. It ripped a hole in the side that extended down below the ship’s spine. Her bows started to break off and angled down.
The other torpedo hit the screws, mangling the shafts and jamming the rudder hard over. Hobart veered hard to port, completely out of control.
For a moment it looked as if the Australian ship was trying to ram the raider. It was an illusion, since Hobart was already out of control. The torpedo hit aft jammed the two stern turrets in train. With her forward turrets already mangled wreckage, her main armament was theoretically useless. Yet, somehow, the crew in the forward turrets managed to keep firing. They thumped their last shells into the hull of the burning raider.
It was merely a gesture of defiance and Howden knew it. His ship was shattered by the torpedo hits. Her bows were on the verge of separating and his machinery was useless. His ship was going down. As soon as the bows went completely, she would slide under the water. There was only one thing left to do.
He took a look at the raider whose torpedoes he believed had created this havoc. She was dead in the water as well, burning furiously and had ceased fire. That, at least, was a small mercy. Hobart continued to limp away from the scene of the battle, out of control and unable to change speed or steer. Howden sighed and gave his final order as her commander.
“Abandon Ship.”
“Sir, main machinery is out of action. The firefighting system has failed, and the fires are out of control. The temperature in the mine storage compartment is rising steadily and we can do nothing to stop it. The ship is going to blow up.”
Rogge looked at his ship. Atlantis was belching black smoke all along her length and listing severely. She was also dead in the water. That settled the matter for him. She was finished.
“Very well, Lieutenant. Order the men to abandon ship. Get the wounded into the life rafts and launch as many lifeboats as we have left. Spread the men out between them and put officers within each.”
He looked at his ship again, and then across the sea to where Hobart was limping away. She was sinking as well; there was no doubt of that. The two torpedo hits that had come from nowhere left her with bows that were moving separately from the rest of the ship and clearly working free. Her course was erratic as her wrecked screws and rudder interacted. Rogge could see the surviving crew beginning to abandon ship. One question kept running through his mind.
What have we done?
Almost three hundred of his crew survived the battle. They managed to pull clear of the burning wreck that had once been Atlantis and survived the great explosion that had sent her down. Dusk was beginning to settle when the first patrol plane from Trincomalee turned up. A Short Singapore flying boat, it circled the column of lifeboats on the sea for a few minutes, obviously radioing the position of the little convoy to surface rescue ships. Then, it flew away. Rogge saw it starting to circle another area of sea. The survivors of the cruiser, he guessed. He looked over the other men in his lifeboat and shook his head. It had not been a good day.
As the MP’s settled in after lunch, the Honorable John ‘Sol’ Rosevear surveyed the chamber with a good deal of satisfaction. There was no doubt this was their time. Labour was ascendent; the Tories in utter disarray. Even if the Government rested on a wafer thin majority, they were as safe as houses. No one was in the mood for another change of government so soon after the fall of Menzies.
If there was one fly in his soup, it was purely factional. The hard Left of the party was in control. If that didn’t sit to well with Rosevear, it had put him in the speaker’s chair as a sop to the Labor Right. Things could have been a good deal worse. We can get some bloody good work done here; opportunities like this don’t come along too often, thought Rosevear to himself. If Red Johnny doesn’t make a mess of it.
“The House recognizes the Honorable Prime Minister.”
John Curtin grinned up at the Speaker as he stood confidently and strode the few paces to the Government dispatch box like a man walking on air. “Mister Speaker, in light of yet another royal abdication of responsibilities and recent events in Europe, and Canada well known to the House, the Government has prepared a draft bill that we believe will address the most pressing issues facing this Commonwealth…”
There was a bit of hubbub around the benches as the Prime Minister droned on, some pleased, some not, but mostly surprised. By any standards, this was quick work; to lay a bill before the house within hours of the BBC broadcast. To those so inclined, such decisiveness spoke well of a new Government itself hardly settled in to office. Amid the Opposition, initial skepticism at such haste grew to outright alarm as the PM concluded introducing the bill and immediately began to read the contents out in full, punctuated by increasingly frequent interruptions and objections.
He’d been expecting Curtin to come out swinging this afternoon, and no one could ever say Solly Rosevear was shy of a good fight. Even so, this was turning out to be even hotter than he’d anticipated. The struggle to maintain order, and even more to retain any illusion of impartiality, grew harder as the Points of Order mounted and were stuck down by his gavel. After the preamble and first few sections of the bill had been tortuously ground through, Rosevear was starting to regret the Labor Party’s principled rejection of the Speaker wearing robes. Rumor had it some Speakers had sat in nothing but a singlet under their robes. It was warm day to start with. The chamber was getting hotter by the minute and Solly was sweating like an alcoholic sponge in his sauna of suit, vest and tie.
Down on the floor, Curtin bore the mounting temperature with the same tolerant smile he gave to all the raucous objection and procedural insult. Discretely studying the House over his spectacles as he read, or gazing about more frankly during the frequent interruptions, to Curtin it was all poetry set to life. Sweetest was the dismay across the room. The coalition shattered and leaderless in the wake of Menzies’ departure now clucked about like headless chooks as the tidal wave of Labour victorious crashed over their privileged ranks. The faint mutterings of dissent from his own party only served to confirm his judgment of the situation. Every ship had its rats; and so long as he knew where they lay, Curtin was confident in his grip. A consummate party politician, he had his numbers locked down tightly. With the support of the Party Caucus and Trades Hall, he had nothing to fear from a few grumpy backbenchers and lukewarm supporters.