Shakily, Mahan looked back at Shiloh. She was down badly by the bows now and rolling to port, her open forecastle already awash. Her entire forward flight deck had caved in and the opened expanse was burning. Where the Chaplain and Doc Stennis had struggled to save the last few wounded was a sea of burning wreckage, nothing recognizable of the ship's structure.
Yet, a quick look aft showed Mahan something that humbled him. His crane crew were hauling in the wounded and others of his crew were already diving over the side to rescue those in the water. A good ship, now hurt but still fit for duty, a great crew, bloodied but proud and unbeaten. For just a moment Mahan felt he was unworthy of either. Then he looked back to the burning wreck of Shiloh. Men were forming on what was left of her flight deck obviously getting ready to abandon ship. It was immediately apparent that the situation had become that desperate and, for the first time, Mahan believed that they had lost her.
Admiral's Bridge, USS Kittyhawk, CVL-48, Position 46.8 North. 4.6 West
“Captain Madrick, why did your ship just explode?” Admiral Theodore wanted an answer and wanted it fast.
“Sir, we think the cause was the unexploded bomb forward underwater in the evaporator space. This is all guesswork and we don't know if it was on a timer or whether whatever was stopping it exploding stopped stopping it, but it detonated. Two decks above it was a mess space that was being used to assemble Tiny Tim rockets, the big 12 inch beasts, for a strike. Howarth thinks the rockets must have been made sensitive by the heat because shortly after the bomb detonated, the rockets started to cook off. Again, we can't be sure but we think the odds are that one may have been hit by fragments and that set off the rest.
“From there, the most likely path was that they ripped through the ships structure and started fires that cooked off the ready use magazines for the forward port five inch guns. That set off a chain reaction that detonated the magazines for those guns. The explosion destroyed the forward port quarter of the ship, from what we can see, it opened up almost two hundred feet to the sea. The death toll is grave sir, we think more than 900 dead and very many wounded, you know that sir, your hospital and crew must be overloaded. I don't want men trapped below, I've ordered abandon ship for all non-firefighting teams. I want as many people off the ship as we can manage. I'm keeping about 400 men on board sir. We're fighting to save Shiloh, sir, but to be honest, the issue is in the gravest of doubt.”
Admiral Theodore nodded, forgetting that the gesture couldn't be seen over the radio. His signals officer signed him off. Theodore had destroyers in his task group and they had torpedoes. The next step was becoming increasingly obvious. His train of thought was interrupted by a knocking on the door. It was one of the SEALs, Jeff Thomas.
“Admiral Sir, our prisoner wished to speak with you. I think he has a reasonable request sir.” Theodore glowered to himself. The SEALs were beginning to get very full of themselves; yet. they did have a way of doing the impossible.
He waved the group in, the German pilot and his SEAL escort. Lieutenant Wijnand had carefully rehearsed what he was going to say.
“Admiral Sir. I have been held near the sickbay and have seen how many badly wounded men are being brought on board. I was a medical student before being a pilot and was one of the Group's medical orderlies also. I would like to volunteer my services to you for assisting in treating the wounded. I offer you my parole for this.”
Theodore stared at the young pilot. Normally he would have had him thrown out and given the SEALs a tongue lashing for wasting his time but there was something here that stopped him. And his ship was swamped with casualties and more were coming. Instead he asked a simple question. “Why?”
Wijnand thought for a moment. He hadn't really asked that question himself, he just knew it was something he had to do. Haltingly he tried to explain “Sir, I have been a bomber pilot for five years. Today I have seen for the first time what my bombs do. For me now the war is over and it is time to try and make amends for what I have done.”
“Lieutenant, my country has a long tradition of neither giving nor accepting parole. This is because during our Civil War the principle was often abused. But we also have a tradition of allowing our officers to use their judgment and I am going to use mine. I am going to trust you. I will accept your parole and assign you to Doc Ganning to help as best you can. Thomas here will get you some fatigues. Take advice Lieutenant and keep quiet. German bomber pilots are not very popular right now.”
Wijnand thought for a second and looked at the approaching army. A red white and blue flag with stars and stripes waved at its head. “Me German Sir? I am a Dutchman Sir.”
Theodore grinned and waved him out. As the SEAL named Thomas was leaving, the Admiral touched his right eye.
Thomas would watch their..... Dutchman .... carefully. Trust, but verify, the Admiral thought.
NAIADS Command Headquarters, Potsdam, Germany
Field Marshall Herrick was a confused, and very unhappy, man. The plot of the huge American air-raid was still showing it dispersing all over Germany. Each individual section of aircraft was heading straight for a city or large town, more than 200 of them in all. The expected turn to concentrate on a single target just hadn't taken place. By now, it was impossible, time and distance made concentration over a single target out of the question. So what were they up to?
There had been a brief cheer a few minutes earlier when Aachen RCC had reported one of the giants had been shot down. It hadn't lasted, it was the only success scored by the whole system. A quick look at the report showed it had been a fluke, one Me-263 section had managed to be in the right place at the right time and scored. Mostly the giants had evaded the defenses with contemptuous ease. And giants they were, too. They had good data on that now. Ten-engined monsters, six pusher piston engines and four jets. No wonder they were fast and high-flying. They only appeared to have tail guns though, that was a weakness. The Americans must have turned the Azores into one huge airbase to mount a raid this big with such aircraft. But what were they hoping to achieve?
Aircraft that big could carry a bombload greater than anything before them, perhaps even twice as much as a B-29. Herrick had seen a B-29, one painstaking re-assembled from the wreckage of aircraft shot down in the 1944 and 1945 raids. Unflyable of course, but he'd still been impressed by its size and power but thought it was a technology dead-end. The fact that it was what and where it was showed that. But these new bombers dwarfed the B-29. Perhaps the Americans were hoping that three bombers could dump enough bombs on a target to destroy it. Foolishness. It took a lot of high explosive to destroy a factory. Perhaps they were hoping if they scattered bombs lightly over a lot of cities, there would be some sort of morale collapse or political upheaval. If so that was even worse foolishness. Americans weren't foolish though. They were great engineers, the bombers overhead showed that, but poor scientists. Everything they had, jet engines, radar, rockets, aircraft cannon, all had been copied from German technology. But they weren't foolish. So what were they up to? Were the aircraft transports that would scatter paratrooper soldiers all over Germany?