The King waved at the smoke-filled Upper Bay.
“Take us up there and tell Guns to blow anything that blinks at us to pieces!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
In a moment HMS Cassandra was surging forward like a greyhound out of the traps.
In the distance HMS Princess Royal was on fire.
Momentarily, it seemed to those on Cassandra’s bridge that the third ship in line, the Queen Elizabeth’s after fifteen-inch guns had fired a salvo but then, when their brains had had time to process the evidence of their eyes they realised that what they had seen was an aircraft crashing into the battleship’s aftermost turret.
There was a huge splash of fire.
An aircraft, a Bristol VI with a silvery fuselage raced past the now charging destroyer heading, obviously for the stern of the Tiger, the fourth ship in the battle line.
The Gunnery Officer’s voice boomed over the bridge speakers.
“ALL GUNS THAT BEAR TO ENGAGE FAST MOVING TARGET BEARING GREEN ZERO-THRE-ZERO! WEAPONS FREE IN LOCAL CONTROL! REPEAT WEAPONS FREE IN LOCAL CONTROL!”
The destroyer reverberated with the recoil of her two aft 4.7-inch guns, shortly followed by the chain-saw rattling of her quick-firing quadruple 0.8-inch cannons.
The 4.7-inch rounds went over the approaching speed boat.
It was already too close for the main battery barrels to depress sufficiently to engage it.
The boat was bright red, nearly crimson and approaching at breakneck speed. Every detail of the onrushing craft was suddenly clearly visible despite the fog of war now hanging over the water like a rapidly spreading evil miasma. It was as if the speedboat was cleaving aside the haze. As cannon shells tore into the water and ricocheted haphazardly yachts and launches were heading every which way desperately trying to escape…whatever was happening.
The quadruple 0.8 cannons, each barrel shooting at a rate of over two-hundred and fifty rounds a minute – ripped up the sea ahead of the blood-red wraith screaming, almost skimming across the waves impossibly fast – until the stream of cannon shells intersected with the frail craft and it disintegrated in a thousand disarticulated, spinning, splashing fragments.
Up ahead the Bristol VI heading doggedly for the Tiger was smoking heavily, clearly on the verge of falling out of the sky. No gun on the Cassandra dared to fire for fear of raking the decks of the battleship.
The King gripped the bridge rail in nameless, impotent rage as the aircraft, trailing a plume of burning gasoline across the smoke fouled air fell onto the quarterdeck of the leviathan and disintegrating, tumbled fierily until it met the immovable armoured obstacle of the battleship’s ‘Y’ 15-inch turret.
And exploded.
Chapter 26
HMS Lion, Upper Bay, New York
By the time the big ships had brought all their light weaponry – essentially, their 1.7 and 0.8-inch twin and quadruple anti-aircraft mounts – into play the sky had cleared of aircraft and every small boat in the bay was running for cover.
Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Packenham drew breath knowing that right now he needed to be the calmest man in New England. His flagship was the only one of the four Lions to have escaped unscathed; and although reports were streaming in from Princess Royal, Queen Elizabeth, Tiger and the cruisers Ajax and Naiad, still guarding Lion’s flanks, none of his big ships had suffered critical damage.
Right at the beginning of the attack – which thus far had lasted some twelve minutes, starting to peter out after about eight – a big speedboat had smashed into Princess Royal’s starboard side abreast her bridge. An unknown number of men who had been manning the rail had perished and many must have been injured as the lightweight speedster had disintegrated against the 13-inch cemented armour plating protecting that part of the hull above and below the waterline.
More serious had been the aircraft which had smashed into the rear of the Princess Royal’s bridge and started a fire which had destroyed a pair of 1.7-inch cannon mounts, wiping out their crews and igniting adjacent ready-use ammunition lockers.
Astern of Princess Royal the Queen Elizabeth had been rammed by two speed boats, and by an aircraft which had crashed between the barbettes of the aft ‘X’ and ‘Y’ main battery turrets. This latter strike had barely scratched the fourteen-inch thick armour protecting the turrets but a large explosive charge in the bow of one of the boats had opened a ten feet wide hole in the less heavily armoured stern plating and about six hundred tons of water had flooded into two compartments initially causing a list to port of slightly less than one degree.
Tiger had sustained a single aircraft strike which had scorched her quarterdeck and damaged the range-finder of her ‘Y’ 15-inch turret.
Ships specifically designed to withstand hits by two-ton 15-inch shells plunging onto, into and around them at supersonic speeds, and one-thousand-pound armour-piercing bombs dropped from aircraft flying at five thousand feet, had not been meaningfully inconvenienced by motor boats displacing at most a few tons ‘bumping’ into their mightily robust and armour-encased sides like explosive dodgem cars, or small, fragile aircraft crumpling up on their decks. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the aircraft involved seemed to have been virtual flying petrol cans – which was a nasty twist – apart from Princess Royal’s problem with ready-use ammunition catching fire, all the resultant fires had swiftly burned out, or been expeditiously extinguished by damage control teams.
Had the Lions not been ‘dressing the side’ with hundreds of men on parade on deck at the outset of the attack casualties would have been minimal.
“Cassandra is hailing us, sir!”
The fleet destroyer had raced into the midst of the action, now with her screws churning astern she slewed to a near halt between the Naiad and the Lion, the signal lamp on her port bridge wing flashing furiously.
In the near distance 0.8 and 1.7-inch ammunition lit off like fireworks and smoke billowed downwind to the south east from the superstructure of the Princess Royal.
Tom Packenham did not wait for a yeoman to call out Cassandra’s signal.
He chuckled to himself.
“WELL DONE EVERYBODY STOP THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY WHEN WE FIND OUT WHO IS BEHIND IT STOP QUEEN AND I STILL IN ONE PIECE STOP I WILL REMAIN ON CASSANDRA UNTIL SITUATION CLEAR STOP GEORGE V MESSAGE ENDS”
The Squadron Commander was about to swap jocular small talk with the Lion’s captain when both men heard HMS Ajax’s quadruple 1.7-inch mounts angrily clatter back into life.
That was when they heard the sound of the two aircraft approaching.
Chapter 27
Upper Bay, New York
Alex Fielding had flown over Bedford Island and on into New Jersey and circled south over Elizabethtown at about three thousand feet. He would have searched for somewhere to land but after what he had just witnessed in the bay an unfamiliar aircraft was liable to be shot at. Fortunately, he had plenty of fuel left in the tank so he could afford to stooge around and wait for things to settle down.
All the other times he had been in the air in the middle of a battle he had had the comfort of knowing he had a couple of machine guns mounted either on his kite’s nose or top wing; so, in the last few minutes he had felt positively naked.
He had no real sense of time passing; he was too busy scanning the skies around him and trying to piece together the insanity of the last few minutes.