The crew of Shch-307 were not disappointed and it seemed all four torpedoes found their mark.
Onboard B-29, things were more subdued. The young Starshina was popular, but no one could deny his guilt and that he had placed the whole crew at risk.
The senior midshipman had the stopwatch and looked confused when explosions started to hammer through the water.
“The other boat, young Alexandrov, the other boat.”
Nodding his understanding, the midshipman returned to his task, using his fingers to bring the count down from five to impact.
His countdown came to naught.
Repeating the process, he was again unrewarded.
Rybin remained poker-faced but inwardly seething.
Third time lucky, and the midshipman’s effort was rewarded with a deep rumble, which sound filled the boat and eased the tense situation.
Two more followed in quick succession, but the final fish failed to hit home.
None the less, three hard hits had been achieved and reloading was already underway. B-29 could be back in the attack very soon.
Rybin went to the chart table and looked again at the scenario, trying to find out what went wrong with the attack and the waste of three valuable fish.
The scared sonar operator’s shouted warning rose above the hubbub in the control room, and immediately the submarine was thrown about by a pair of explosions close by.
‘Aircraft dropped depth charges,’ stated the clinical part of Rybin’s mind, which also knew the answer as to how they had spotted B-29.
‘That idiot Mutin.’
After the attack, the XXI had gone deeper and manoeuvred back around to head east, trying to stay in an attack position.
Quickly mapping out the scenario, Rybin ordered a further dive and turn to port, heading in towards the escorts and his previous targets.
More explosions followed as the attacking Sunderland put the rest of its depth bombs on the money. It could not really miss, seeing as the enemy sub was dragging a large white fender with it wherever it went.
Actually, it wasn’t Mutin’s fault at all. Fate had dealt badly with B-29, conspiring to catch a floating fender’s line with the periscope and causing the submarine to pull it along, leaving a very obvious mark on the sea for the Sunderland crew to follow.
Bulbs shattered and joints burst as the vessel was engulfed in the pressure waves. Shaken from stem to stern, the vessel screamed in indignation as German engineering was tested to its fullest degree. Limbs were broken and flesh was torn, as men were dashed against unforgiving surfaces.
However, the XXI refused to die, and its crew rushed to their damage control duties, intent of keeping the sea at bay.
The young Starshina Mutin was saved from his courts martial, his neck broken when he was dashed against a watertight door.
Elsewhere in the boat, two others had been crushed to death when a torpedo was shaken loose during the reloading; others were injured in the desperate fight to stabilise the weapon.
A fire in the engine room had been quickly extinguished, partially by the prompt action of the 2nd Engineering officer, and partially by the inrush of seawater, which leak was serious and already being attacked by the engine room staff. Willing hands removed the badly burnt and screaming Starshina to the sick bay where he died, even as his engine room crew triumphed over the leaks.
The sole serious casualty in the Control room was Rybin. The unconscious commander was on the deck, flopping about with the movement of his craft, a very visible crescent of blood on his forehead where he had impacted a control valve at speed, the shape precisely mirrored in the wound, down to the serrated finger grips on the outer edge.
Grimacing from the pain of a broken finger, Senior Lieutenant Chriakin took command and dived, also turning back 180°. Unknown to him, the manoeuvre also dragged the fender below sea level, removing the marker that the now toothless Sunderland was using to call down the vengeful destroyers.
B-29 would live to fight another day.
Kalinin, as per his usual practice, manoeuvred away rather than inspected, and only raised the periscope when he felt secure.
A swift rotation of the scope yielded the unforgettable image of dying leviathans, the Aquitania ablaze and attended by smaller vessels, seemingly intent on saving life. The USS Ranger was low in the water, so low that her flight deck seemed almost a continuation of the water that was about to claim her.
Intent on leaving the area as safely as possible, Kalinin ordered a course to northwest, removing ShCh 307 from the scene at best speed.
Who hit what would actually not become clear until the end of hostilities, but Kalinin felt sure he had a piece of both vessels, in which he was absolutely correct, none of his torpedoes having been fired in vain.
His first two had struck the Aquitania on her port side, one amidships, the second fifty feet before her stern. Either might have been fatal to the venerable liner, but in tandem, they ensured her end, the resultant fires inhibiting the evacuation of her crew and passengers.
His last two torpedoes had struck the USS Ranger forty feet short of her bow and amidships, the former being right on a bulkhead division, causing the loss of the bow section to flooding. Damage to the next bulkhead meant that the vessel then hastened her own end as momentum drove her forward, causing weight of water to rupture the damaged bulkhead, flooding a further compartment and giving the aircraft carrier a pronounced nose-down aspect.
The latter strike failed to explode, but still penetrated the skin of the warship, permitting the sea to make more steady inroads.
B-29’s torpedoes had condemned the carrier to the depths, flooding her engine spaces and denying the power to drive the fire fighting mains. When Kalinin had looked, he saw little smoke coming from her, but had not realised that below decks the blazes were running out of control.
B-29’s third torpedo, the first one to detonate, had struck a RCN Corvette fussing round its charges, which corvette had vanished beneath the waves in less than a minute, taking every soul on board with her.
As both submarines now moved away, the sonar operators became the only point of contact with the battle they left behind them.
Sounds of a large vessel sinking beneath the surface were interpreted as the carrier, and both crews claimed her as their own.
It was USS Ranger that succumbed first, the Captain abandoning ship reluctantly, the delay in abandoning ship costing more men their lives as she rolled over and nosedived to the bottom, three hundred and fifty-six of her crew still entombed in the hull. The sinking vessel took an important cargo down with her; one hundred and twenty-one replacement aircraft for the European War.
Around Aquitania, the efforts of fire fighting and rescue went on for many hours. The big liner resisted, and all the time more lives were being saved as she remained stubbornly afloat. Her passengers consisted mainly of US and Canadian air force personnel returning to the ETO from their mother countries, and many had been lost in the explosions and fires. But thanks to the Herculean efforts of the escorts, and the reluctance of the old ship to die, many were saved to fight another day.
Her killer was too far away to hear when the SS Aquitania slipped grudgingly beneath the water at 0914 hrs.
At least five hundred and thirty air force personnel perished in the tragedy, along with one hundred and ninety-seven crewmembers. Over the next few hours, the escort vessels put the survivors ashore in Northern Ireland, one thousand five hundred and fifty-one trained personnel having been saved from death by their excellent efforts; one thousand five hundred and fifty-one aircrew and ground staff who now possessed a very clear hatred of submarines, and all things Russian.