The respite from Lutzow’s fire had arrived just in time for Exeter, as the pocket battleship had been consistently finding the range. Staggering to his feet after another exercise in throwing himself flat, Eric looked forward to see just where the heavy cruiser had been hit this time. His gaze fell upon the devastation that had been Exeter’s “B” turret, where a cloud of acrid yellow was smoke pouring back from the structure’s opened roof to pass around the heavy cruiser’s bridge. Damage control crews were rushing forward to spray hoses upon the burning guns, even as water began to crash over the cruiser’s lowering bow.
“Very well then, flood the magazine!” Gordon was shouting into the speaking tube. “Tell the Norfolk we shall follow her in as best we can.”
Looking to starboard, Eric could see the aforementioned heavy cruiser starting to surge ahead of Exeter, smoke pouring from her triple stacks and her forward turrets firing another salvo towards the Hipper.
“We are only making twenty-three knots, sir,” the helmsman reported.
“Damage control reports heavy flooding in the bow,” the talker stated. “Lieutenant Ramses states we must slow our speed or we may lose another bulkhead.”
Gordon’s face set in a grim line.
“Torpedoes reports a solution on the pocket battleship,” the talker reported after pausing or a moment.
“Range?!” Gordon barked.
“Ten thousand yards and closing.”
“Tell me when we’re at four thousand…”
The seas around the Exeter suddenly leaped upwards, the waterspouts clearing her mainmast.
“Enemy battleship is taking us under fire!”
Looking over at Norfolk, Eric saw an identical series of waterspouts appear several hundred yards ahead of their companion.
“Two enemy battleships engaging, range twenty-two thousand yards.”
“Where’s our battleline?” Gordon asked bitterly. “Report the news to the King George V.”
Another couple of minutes passed, the Exeter continuing to close with the turning Lutzow. Four more shells exploded around the Exeter.
“The Nelson is disengaging due to opening range,” the talker replied. “The remaining ships are closing our position to take the enemy battleship under fire.”
Again there was the sound of an incoming freight train, and the Exeter was straddled once more, splinters ringing off the opposite side of the bridge.
“Corpsman!” a lookout shouted from the crow’s nest.
Okay, someone stop this ride, I want to get off, Eric thought, bile rising in his throat.
“Commodore Vian reports he is closing.”
“Right then, continue to attack!” Gordon shouted. Eric winced, convinced he was going to die.
Unbeknownst to Eric, the Bismarck and Tirpitz had only returned to persuade the British battleline to not pursue the Scharnhorst. Finding the two British heavy cruisers attacking, Bey had decided some 15-inch fire was necessary to discourage their torpedo run as well. In the worsening seas the German battleships’ gunnery left much to be desired, but still managed to force the Exeter and Norfolk to both intensify their zig zags.
Unfortunately for the Germans, the decision to concentrate on the heavy cruisers meant that Commodore Vian’s destroyers had an almost undisturbed attack run. Vian, realizing that he would not be able to bypass the aggressively counterattacking Hipper, split his force into two parts. The lead division, led by himself in Somali, continued after the crippled Scharnhorst. The second, led by the destroyer Echo, he directed to attack the Hipper in hopes that the heavy cruiser would turn away.
The German heavy cruiser reacted as Vian had expected, switching all of her fire to the approaching Echo group. For their part, the British ships dodged as they closed, the Echo’s commander making the decision to close the range so that the destroyers could launch their torpedoes with a higher speed setting. Seeing the German cruiser starting to turn, Echo’s commander signaled for his own vessel, Eclipse, and Encounter to attempt to attack from her port side, while the Faulknor and Electra were to move up to attack from starboard.
Discerning the British destroyerman’s plan, Hipper’s captain immediately laid on his maximum speed while continuing his turn towards port. Ignoring those vessels attempting to move in on her starboard side, the German vessel turned her guns wholly on the trio of British destroyers that was now at barely seven thousand yards. With a combined closing speed of almost seventy knots, there was less than a minute before the British destroyers were at their preferred range. In this time, Hipper managed to get off two salvoes with her main guns and several rounds from her secondary guns. Her efforts were rewarded, the Echo being hit and stopped by two 8-inch and four secondary shell hits before she could fire her torpedoes. That still left the Eclipse and Encounter, both which fired their torpedoes at 4,000 yards before starting to turn away. The latter vessel had just concluded putting her eighth torpedo into the water when the Hipper’s secondaries switched to her as a target, knocking out the destroyer’s forward guns.
Pursuing the Hipper as the German cruiser continued to turn to port, the Faulknor and Electra initially had a far longer run than their compatriots. However, as the German cruiser came about to comb the Echo group’s torpedoes, the opportunity arose for the two more nimble vessels to cut across her turn. Hitting the heavy cruiser with several 4.7-inch shells even as they zigzagged through the Lutzow’s supporting fire, the two destroyers unleashed their sixteen torpedoes from the Hipper’s port bow. Belatedly, the German captain realized that he had placed himself in a horrible position, as he could not turn to avoid the second group of torpedoes without presenting a perfect target to the first.
It was the Eclipse which administered the first blow. Coming in at a fine angle, one of the destroyer’s torpedoes exploded just below the Hipper’s port bow. The heavy cruiser’s hull whipsawed from the impact, the explosion peeling twenty feet of her skin back to act as a massive brake. The shock traveled down the vessel’s length, throwing circuit breakers out of their mounts in her generator room and rendering the Hipper powerless. Looking to starboard, the vessel’s bridge crew could only helplessly watch as the British torpedoes approached from that side. In a fluke of fate, the braking effect from Eclipse’s hit caused the heavy cruiser to lose so much headway the majority of the tin fish missed. The pair that impacted, however, could not have been better placed. With two roaring waterspouts in close succession, the Hipper’s engineering spaces were opened to the sea. Disemboweled, the cruiser continued to slow even as she rolled to starboard. Realizing instantly her wounds were fatal, the Hipper’s captain gave the order to abandon ship. The order came far too late for most of the crew, as the 12,000-ton man-o-war capsized and slid under the Atlantic in a matter of minutes.