There was no need for a support group at all. The ships should have been divided out between the task groups to add more weight to the triple A. There was no surface threat to face no need to keep the battleships together. Spruance knew he'd been thinking like a battleship admiral still. Keep the BBs as a battle line, even when they were no more than floating AA batteries.
In a brief spasm of gallows humor, Spruance considered defecting to Germany, it couldn't do his career any more damage than his blunders had inflicted. Who would take 5th Fleet now? Halsey had Third. Mitscher, Lee, Fletcher, Newman and Kinkaid were all good men but too junior. Kimmel was the most likely bet. Husband Kimmel. He'd done a fantastic job in the Pacific, shaking up the PacFleet, getting the Pearl base into the modern era. He deserved a fleet combat command now. And he'd have Spruances mistakes to learn from. Now, it was time to rectify what he could. Shift two groups to screen the hurt 57.2 while it sorted itself out, keep pounding France with the other two. And prepare to be fired.
CHAPTER FIVE GETTING HURT
Admiral's Bridge, USS Shiloh, CVB-41. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West.
The bridge looked like a bombed slaughterhouse. It was smashed open, the equipment wrecked and blood splattered liberally around the bulkheads and pooling on the deck. Surgeon-Commander Stennis was working on one casualty, a young Ensign with a massive chest wound while the Ship's Chaplain was administering last rites to a signalman who was beyond saving. Captain Madrick saw some bits that could, he assumed, be assembled into the missing members of the Admiral's Party.
“Good God what happened here?”
Both Admiral Newman and the Chaplain looked sharply at him. “It was some sort of rapid-fire cannon. One of those Henschels put a hundred rounds into the bridge in less than a second. They went through us like a buzz-saw. What's the status of the ship?”
“We've been hit sir, but we have the situation under control. The flight deck is intact except for a 14 inch diameter hole 15 foot from the centerline, just forward of the aft elevator. That was one of the bomb hits sir, I think it exploded on the hangar deck. The deck was almost empty sir. The aircraft there were unarmed and the deck systems sealed down. CAG pushed some loaded Adies over the side, we didn't have time to secure them. It was a good idea sir. Probably saved us from a hangar deck fire. That was the only deck hit we had. The others came through the side. One underwater hit forward, one more above the armor belt. Two more aft. Machinery spaces are intact, our speed is unaffected and we can operate aircraft from the deck. We can hold position in the group sir. All in all sir, we're hurt but working. Our strikes are on the way back, I'd like to bring them on board.
“Belay that. We'll divert them to other carriers. Four can go to Gettysburg. It’s only fair, we shot down their Flivvers. One of them anyway. The other carriers can use the orphans to replace their losses, they've been high enough today. Do you need to slow the group down?”
“No sir, Shiloh can keep running. If we're not going to operate aircraft, I'll establish a casualty treatment center at the forward end of the hangar deck. Stennis, Westover, when you've finished here, please report to the forward hangar deck, you're both needed down there.” Madrick frowned, there was smoke coming from the amidships scuttles underneath the island. Amidships, not aft and on the opposite side of the ship from the bomb hits. Thick, black oily smoke. What was going on down there?
'“I'd like to return to the CIC sir, there are some aspects of our situation I'm not happy about.”'
Captain Madrick descended once more into the bowels of the carrier. It was a long way from the bridge to the CIC, perhaps future carriers should have an elevator or something. There was something wrong with the air too, there was a haze in the air, nothing that anybody could see directly, it was more an uneasy sensation that it wasn't quite right. And his eyes itched. He dropped into a head quickly and flipped the taps to wash his face. Just a trickle came out, water pressure in the system was way down. That was odd. It made a trip to damage control central all the more urgent. The rest of the way to CIC was a record-time trip. He didn't even bother with his command station, instead he went straight to damage control. He could see that something had gone wrong. And the CIC seemed warmer than it should.
“What's the situation DCO? What's happening?”
“Sir, we're getting a better handle on what's happening now. We have a problem sir. Taking it from the top. The bomb that hit us centerline aft? It must have been an armor piercing one because it went all the way through and hit the ship's service turbo-generator room. We're not quite sure what happened yet but it caused a surge in the power supply. You remember we were on emergency lighting for a few minutes -well, that was the power surge. It tripped our circuit breakers and put us onto emergency. Well, the same surge plus the effects of the bomb took out the aft evaporators. They're in the compartment directly aft of the SSTG. We're trying to restore them now. The problem is that, remember that bomb that hit us underwater forward, the one that didn't go off? Well, it’s opened our forward evaporator room to the sea and the bomb is in there. We can't get in to the compartment to defuse it until we have the area contained and can pump the space clear. We can't restart the forward evaporators until we defuse the bomb. That means that we've lost both sets of evaporators. Temporarily at least. Combined with the loss of more than half our electrical power, we've got critically low water pressure throughout the ship.
The DCO leaned back in his seat. Howarth held his present position due to a record of coolness under pressure and a “realistically optimistic”' attitude. But he was worried, much more seriously than he could explain. “Now we have the real problem. That power surge. Mostly it didn't do anything because the circuit breakers tripped but they didn't always. The galleys, scullery and bakery were working; there was a strike due back and the pilots needed hot food when they landed. The power surge didn't trip any of the breakers in that area, the working assumption is that they were jammed with grease or something, we really don't know. But they didn't trip, the electrical equipment in those compartments shorted out and we had a series of electrical fires. The cooks and stewards tried to fight them but they had no breathing gear and there was thick black smoke filling the compartments and toxic fumes. They had to evacuate, sir they left it very late, some didn't make it out. Sir, when you came down from the island you must have passed quite close to the fire area.
“'You see the problem sir? We have an uncontained electrical, oil and structural fire amidships and we've lost the water pressure we need to fight it. We've lost the sprinkler system, we've lost the fog nozzles and we've lost the hoses. And, sir, that fire couldn't be in a worse place. Look at this. Howarth flipped his charts to the general ship's plan. He'd already shaded the burning compartments in red, with pink showing those that were threatened by the fire. “If the fire goes down sir, it takes out our aft three starboard side boiler rooms and the aft engine room. If it goes aft, it threatens a five inch rocket magazine. If it goes forward it threatens the magazine for the forward five inch guns. If it goes inboard, there's a bomb preparation room. If it goes up, it breaks into the hangar deck. If it goes down and inboard there is an avgas store. Thank God we're more than half jet now; if we were all prop we'd have a lot more avgas to worry about. The truth is, whichever way that fire goes, it'll find something we have to worry about.