“Request permission to fire,” the gunnery officer said, but his voice was calmer. He’d gotten control of his emotion and perhaps that was what Mahlberg was waiting for.
“Permission to fire.” It was the Kapitan’s voice, as calm as if he were ordering a beer. Statz prepared himself. In the fire-control station were three sets of lights: lock, ready, and shoot. One set for each of the three guns in Bruno. Lock enabled the guns to be loaded, ready signaled the gunnery officer that the guns were loaded, and shoot… A yeoman standing to the right of the gunnery officer placed two fingers from his right hand and one from his left on the three lit buttons marked shoot, and pushed.
There was the brief ring of the firing bell and then it was like being in the center of a thunderstorm. The cannons roared as the two-and-a-half-ton projectiles exploded from the barrels, and the guns slid back in recoil. They immediately returned to full extension and the gun layer dropped the guns to five degrees for loading.
Statz swung the breech open and the spanning tray was dropped into position. As his crew loaded the next shell, they listened. The shell’s flight was being timed, and the gunnery officer had the target locked in the stereoscopic range-finder, tracking its course and the results of the Sea Lion’s shooting.
“Attention,” the speaker said. “Fall.” The shells should impact at that moment.
“Three questionably right.” It was the gunnery officer speaking. Statz knew that the officer’s forehead was pressed firmly into the black foam support of the range-finder, as his eyes sought out the target. “Three wide right, questionably over.” The information was being fed into the gunnery computers in the two fire-control centers deep within the ship: range, bearing, deflection — they could do everything except load the guns.
The powder hoist operator, Matrosengefreiter Scholtz, pulled open the hoist door and rolled two powder bags onto the spanning tray. Statz signaled for the ram operator, another Matrosengefreiter named Wurst, to push the bags into the gun’s breech, but he was listening to the speaker announce firing corrections as well.
“Ten more left.”
Statz knew the gunnery officer was recalibrating the range-finder. That sort of work was too fine for the gunner; it was the sort of thing that educated men did, men who kept their hands clean.
“Down four,” the speaker said.
This was it.
“Full salvos good rapid.”
His men let out a cheer as the last of the bags went into the breech. Fire away. Load and shoot as fast as you can. Bracket the enemy vessel and then walk the shells up until there is nothing left but an oil stain and debris coating the water.
The breechblock slammed shut and the breech screw spun, locking it into position. Statz turned to his men and shook his fist at them.
“That is the way it’s done in the Kriegsmarine! We grab them by the snout and kick them in the ass.”
He heard the training gear engage and felt the turret move as the gun began to elevate. He heard the fire bell ring and he grinned broadly, white teeth and shining eyes in a black-powder-covered face.
Kapitan zur See Mahlberg lowered his binoculars and turned to Kadow, expecting an answer.
“She’s the Nottingham,” Kadow said. “Harrogate is far to the southeast. She can’t come to Nottingham ’s assistance in less than two hours.”
“We’ll have to break off action very soon, sir,” Korvettenkapitan Balzer said. He was Sea Lion’s chief navigator, a man to whom time and distance were the only true language of sailors.
Mahlberg looked at Kadow. “You see that Balzer wants to hinder our practice. I gave our first artillery officer thirty minutes, Balzer.” Mahlberg studied his Tissot wristwatch. “He has five minutes left to him.”
“The Prince of Wales, sir,” Balzer reminded Mahlberg.
“We’ll have time,” Mahlberg said as another salvo shook the ship. The acrid, black cordite cloud rolled over the bridge. “Time us, Balzer. Five minutes. No more. Kadow? Nothing from Wilhelmshaven?”
“No, sir,” Kadow said. They had sent three encoded messages to Naval Group Command North but had received no reply. This far north and nearly out into the North Atlantic, ships and radio waves were often at the mercy of the weather. Mahlberg was anxious to report his progress and his first contact with the enemy. He fully expected to be reprimanded for engaging the cruiser because it delayed his rendezvous with Prince of Wales, but not by much. His little excursion in no way endangered the plan laid out by Grand Admiral Raeder and the Seekriegsleitung — the Supreme Naval Staff. Crafting the plan was all very calm and systematic; old men studying the position of little carved wooden ships on the plotting table. But the old men shuddered mightily when you deviated from the plan, rubbing their hands together as they contemplated the disaster that might befall their beloved wooden ships.
Another salvo erupted again and Mahlberg focused his binoculars on the distant target. It was almost impossible to see anything. The sky and sea were gray and patches of fog hung close to the water.
“Balzer?” Mahlberg said.
“Three minutes.”
“Kapitan?” Kadow said. “Forward fire-control station reports, enemy vessel appears to have been hit.”
They were running away. They could not fight a battleship, not without help, and the German’s range-finding apparatus had them trapped no matter which way they turned.
Nottingham had been struck several hundred times by shell splinters that punctured her superstructure, and hull and supply parties were making their way to every deck to fight fires or stop leaks.
Then the shell struck.
The others had been near misses, throwing tons of water on the decks or razor-sharp splinters through the steel plate. This one was different.
There was a thunderous bang and the ship shook violently as if she had struck a rock at full speed. Smoke, heavy with the foul stench of smoldering metal, filled the air.
Trunburrow watched, as Prader seemed to collapse with indecision. His orders were confusing and frantic. He was truly frightened.
“For God’s sake, Number One, get some chaps on that fire in the marines’ mess deck. It’s too close to the magazines. Something must be done. Somebody must do something.”
“The aft supply party is on it, sir.”
“Do they need more men? Should we detail more men?”
“They’ll call if they need more, sir.”
Trunburrow was no longer afraid. A new calm had come over him, a sense of purpose and place, which he could not ascribe to any action of his own. He gave orders to steer the ship to port or starboard, to present as small a target to the enemy as possible. Nottingham responded beautifully, seemingly unaware of the danger just a few miles away. Trunburrow wanted her to weave through the ocean like a drunkard. No consistency in movement, no repetition in course, anything so that the Jerries couldn’t anticipate your next move.
“We are making smoke, aren’t we, Number One?” Prader said, moving to the port window. “I distinctly remember ordering someone to make smoke.” His head and upper part of his torso were exposed when the shell struck.
There was a tremendous blast and all the air was sucked from the world of the compass platform. Trunburrow felt himself thrown against the bridge bulkhead. He knew that he was burned all over because he felt the heat and saw the clouds of flames envelop him — he marveled at the fact that he did not die. He was lying on his side on the deck, a cast-off form on the geometrically precise gray and red linoleum blocks, and across the bridge he could see some sort of bundle that couldn’t have been human because there was no head or shoulders. That dark shape, and several others, littered the deck of the compass platform. They rested on and amid pieces of equipment, insulation, charts, binoculars, and life vests, helmets… things that had all neatly been stowed in designated locations until the shell made a mockery of order.