“Well whatever happened, thank God you’re safe,” said Kelly. “I mean, you guys pulled me over ten millennia without a hitch. I should have been able to manage 70 years or so for you. I was scared shitless that I had made some minor error in the calculations, so minor that even the Golems could not bother with it. We had over 99.987% certainty, but I guess you never get to that 100%, not on the level of quantum mechanics at least. And you weren’t helping, Robert, dredging up every last bump in the road we’ve had. You want to program the numbers? Be my guest!” Kelly gestured to the terminal, but Robert extended a hand, placating him.
“Forgive me. I shouldn’t have thrown that broadside at you, Kelly. Let’s just be glad our lost sheep is back in the fold and be done with it.” Then he looked at Paul. “Are we finished?” he asked. “Was Bismarck sunk?”
“Speaking of broadsides,” said Paul. He took a deep breath, folding his arms. “That phase shift was really unnerving, but wait until you hear this…”
Chapter 29
Wohlfarth watched the action with growing distress. He had fired off his last two torpedoes, watching them run true and strike Rodney. One hit full amidships, the other forward. The first torpedo suffered a minor malfunction and became a ‘surface runner’ losing its assigned depth and hitting the ship much too high, exploding harmlessly against her main belt armor, some 14 inches thick.
The second hit struck the thin 1.5 inch forward torpedo armor, breached it, exploded inward through the hull void and introduced flooding in the compartment beyond. Were it not for the presence of a few engineers and officers on the scene, including an American officer who smartly closed off the inner hatches, the flooding would have spread and cause the ship to list. More importantly, the last torpedo room on Rodney would have been put out of action as well. One of her two torpedo doors was already jammed by a shell from Bismarck. This last operational tube was to have a great impact on the events that followed.
Wohlfarth did not know any of this. He simply took heart when he saw his last two fish explode and then looked to Bismarck, watching her guns light up the night sky, the yellow fire rippling across the ragged bottoms of low clouds overhead. While Paul was struggling down into the lower decks aboard Rodney, he was watching the big ship in the distance, cheering her on. In spite of his effort, however, Rodney was still in the thick of the fight. There was nothing wrong with her enormous 16 inch guns, and they were blasting out in regular salvoes, four barrels, then five barrels firing in alternating rounds so as not to shake the ship too violently with a full broadside of all nine guns.
The first two salvos from the British ship were over, the next was a straddle. Bismarck returned fire with three salvos of her own, but only one gun from her Anton forward turret was in operation, along with the two guns in the Bruno turret. The three round salvos fell over, short, then straddled Rodney’s forward segment, where one fell so close that the concussion from the explosion jammed her port side torpedo tube door.
About the time Paul was gaping in amazement at the Elgin Marbles and stacked crates of gold bullion in Rodney’s hold, the British ship scored her first hit, forward on Bismarck’s Anton turret, which put those two guns out of action permanently.
The most devastating blow, however, came from the hidden sting she harbored in her forward bow. As the range closed she used her starboard torpedo tube to fire one fish after another at Bismarck. The first ran true, right before Paul’s wild eyes as he bobbed in the tortuous sea, and it struck Bismarck very near the patched section of her bow, increasing the damage there and blowing off the temporary repairs made by the engineers. The hit forced Lütjens to lower his speed dramatically at a crucial moment in the battle. And that was just enough to change the balance in the fight yet again.
Wohlfarth spun his periscope around, cursing when he saw the arrival of two more British ships, identical in shape, a menacing duo that immediately open fire as they came up on Bismarck’s port aft quarter. Their forward turrets mounted a total of six 14 inch guns each, and this time the guns were ‘well sorted out’ as Admiral Tovey might have put it. The twelve rounds fell heavily on target, surrounding Bismarck with a forest of straddling shell plumes, and two of the twelve scored hits. Her Dora aft turret was temporarily disabled, and out of the action for the next crucial fifteen minutes while the deck crews fought the fire there and cleared away torn metal, the gaping steel flesh of the turret’s damaged side armor that was jamming the turning mechanisms.
Rodney’s ninth salvo struck forward on the German ship yet again, and this time a massive shell hit Bruno turret dead on, exploding furiously and sending a lethal hail of shrapnel, molten metal, and debris careening up and back where it struck the battle bridge like a heavy shotgun blast. Admiral Lütjens instinctively flinched, closing his eyes and raising his arm to shield his face. The forward view ports blew open, shattered, and seconds later he was dead, along with the dour Captain Lindemann and most of the bridge crew. There was only one survivor on the bridge, back in the plotting room where the bulkhead between him and the main bridge was enough to save his life.
The ship was now leaderless. Its various parts continued to do their jobs, engines still thrumming, propellers turning, active guns still ranging and firing, though the cables connecting the radars had been damaged or severed, and two of the mast mounted rangefinders on the upper superstructure were also out of action. Bismarck was near blind in the thickening dark of the night, decapitated, and beset from two sides.
Wohlfarth watched in growing frustration as the aft Caesar turret bravely turned its two 15 inch guns on the oncoming threat from King George V and Prince of Wales. When the two ships turned to starboard to bring their own aft torrents into the fight the Germans were outnumbered twenty guns to two, and eight of the nine 16 inch guns of Rodney still fired their alternating salvos, with two more hits scored on the German ship’s main superstructure when the range began to close to only 9000 yards. Those last hits fell with such thunder on the ship that the Bismarck literally rocked to one side as she absorbed the blows, then shifted slowly back to an even keel. The last thing Wohlfarth saw through his scope was a raging fire amidships, the awful silhouettes of men backlit by the flames, some diving from the ship into the turbulent waters, preferring an icy death at sea to the fiery hell Bismarck was becoming. There was nothing more he could do. For the briefest moment he thought he saw a light winking on and off in the smoky shadows of the ship, as if signaling something in Morse code to the enraged enemy that grappled with her. Then he could look no more.
“Down scope,” he said, a disconsolate, defeated look on his face. He glanced at his executive officer, then at Souvad, the navigator who had urged him not to attack convoy HX-126. “She’s finished,” he said in a low voice, eyes averted now, shoulders slumping, and they knew at once he was not referring to Rodney.
“We did all we could, sir,” said Souvad.
“Not enough,” said Wohlfarth. “I should have listened to you, Souvad. I should have listened…”