“The North Cape was always a choke point,” said Pound. “The ice forces us south near the Norwegian coast, and under their air power at Kirkenes and Petsamo. And the U-boats love those restricted waters.”
“Yes, well the arrival of Peter Strasser changes all that. Now the Germans can take their air power out to sea, and so we’ll need a second aircraft carrier on this run. Ark Royal is the only candidate, and I propose that we add her to the Home Fleet Squadron coming up from Scapa Flow.”
“Very well,” Pound agreed. “Four battleships, two carriers, eight cruisers…. With these dispositions, I’m prepared to go forward with PQ-17, and Godspeed, gentlemen.”
The convoy was two weeks early in this history, and already on its third day out from Halva Fiord when first contact came. Flight Leutnant Eric Meyers was elated to have been the very first pilot to take a plane up off the Peter Strasser on a bona fide combat patrol. The carrier had rendezvoused with the battleship Tirpitz, which was now 180 nautical miles west of Tromso with Rhineland, Westfalen, and three of the Z-Class Destroyers, Valkyrie, Brynhild and Grimhild. Another 42 nautical miles to the south, Kurt Hoffmann was cruising in the battlecruiser Scharnhorst with the heavy cruiser Hipper and two more of the new destroyers, Gunnar and Sigurd. Once again, the German Navy was now operating in a manner that was quite different. Instead of isolated raiders, those two battlegroups now sailed in close support range, and Peter Strasser had just begun routine recon operations to the west. Meyers soon had an eyeful.
He had come down from the north, ready to make a turn and head back towards the carrier, when the clear creamy wakes of several ships were evident on the calm seas beneath him. The weather had been excellent, and he had come down to 12,000 feet to get a better look at what he now believed was the main British covering force for their next convoy. There was a battleship, a cruiser, several destroyers and a carrier. The battleship was unmistakable, long, sleek and with four twin turrets, not the old fat profile of the Queen Elizabeth class. This was the Hood. Knowing there would most likely be fighters up, he decided to look for his wing mate and head east,
With Ciliax taken ill, General-Admiral Rolf Carls had been given overall responsibility for coordinating the maneuver. When he got the report, he realized that his advanced scouts, the Admiral Scheer and Lutzow, would be very close to that contact, but clearly no match for the Hood. He immediately sent a signal ordering them to turn southwest, thinking that they might best slip by the British to see what may be lurking beyond. At 16:20, however, he received yet another sighting report, this time from KapitänleutnantFriedrich-Karl Marks on U-376. He had taken his boat out from Bergen on June 7th, looking for British merchant shipping coming up from Iceland. This time he saw a good deal more—another British battleship, two cruisers and two destroyers about 140 nautical miles west of the two Deutschland class raiders.
It was now quite clear that something big was up. This convoy had to be very important to warrant the commitment of so many British ships. Then again, Kapitan Topp on the Tirpitz had little doubt that the British had observed the new addition to their own fleet. They had to know Peter Strasser was at sea, and perhaps they intended to try and sink that ship. Would there be naval rockets this time? The old commander of Graf Zeppelin had been fished out of the sea in the Atlantic—Kurt Böhmer. Instead of retiring him in shame, Raeder had put him right back in his old position as Kapitan Sur Zee of Flugzeugträger Nord, a most desirable position. Familiar with the class, Böhmer was getting a second chance now, but he had been told, in no uncertain terms, that he must always operate with a destroyer off each side of his ship. That was a thankless job for the destroyer Kapitans, to realize their ships were there to shield the carrier from rocket attack. Yet it was just one way an escorting ship would stand on defense of its charge.
So there it was, two strong battlegroups on either side, each with an aircraft carrier at hand in what was about to become a classic duel in the north. When Flight Leutnant Eric Meyers found Topp’s battlegroup again, the sky above it was already dark with crows. The Stukas had formed up over the carrier in two squadrons of 9 planes each, and six more Bf-109s were already heading west to engage any enemy CAP that might be up on defense. Meanwhile, at 16:48, U-376 signaled it had positively identified the cruisers London and Shropshire, asking for permission to attack. It was granted.
The long agony that was PQ-17 was about to begin.
Chapter 11
Even though Meyer’s sighting would be over 40 minutes cold by the time they launched, the Stuka pilots would simply head west with every confidence they would find the enemy again. Only a few of the Ju-87 pilots had seen much combat in Russia. Most were specially recruited for the navy, with training on carrier based operations, but not in the grueling mill of close ground suport. As such, few had ever really attacked an enemy ship at sea, but they were now about to get their first real opportunity. The long white wake of HMS Hood was soon spotted by one of the leading fighters, and word was flashed to the strike squadrons to follow his lead.
Victorious had six fighters up that afternoon, in three groups of two, with another two planes spotted for immediate takeoff. The Martlets, as they called them, were really the American F-4F Wildcat, already a proven carrier based fighter in the Pacific. While it was not a match for the Bf-109, it would be good enough in numbers to provide a decent CAP over Holland’s group. They had spotted Meyers earlier, chased him briefly until he sped away to the north, and then lost him. When CAP 2 saw the first BF-109 again, they thought it might be the same bandit still lurking about to try and shadow the battlegroup, but they soon learned the enemy was bringing uninvited guests.
Word was flashed to Victorious, and Captain Henry Bovell immediately ordered up those two ready Martlets as CAP 4. Soon the dizzy fighter duel began, which was just what the Germans intended while the 18 Stukas made a beeline for the enemy ships below. They had two primary targets, that battleship and the carrier, and each of the two squadrons took one ship, screaming down with their Jericho trumpets wailing like banshees. More planes were launching from Victorious even as the enemy came in, the sea suddenly erupting with the tall splashes of the bombs. Most fell very wide, their thunder exploding beneath the surface and sending shock waves against the hull, but Victorious was a sturdy ship, and weathered the blows easily enough. The same thing was happening to Hood, which was straddled but largely missed by the bombs, her heavier side armor shrugging off the shock of two very near misses. Finally, one bomb hit, but it was well forward on the newly armored deck, and caused little real harm.
It looked to be a mediocre showing, until the last Stuka came in and put a bomb right through the flight deck near the island on Victorious. It would reach the hanger deck and explode to take out three Martlets and six Albacores, though fortunately none of those planes were armed or fueled, and so the damage was restricted to the loss of the planes, which was bad enough. For that hit, the best of the lot, the crows lost one plane coming in, and two more were taken down by the Martlets on the way out. But those Bf-109s were also exacting a toll on the British fighters, and five of twelve that eventually got up into the fray would not make it home. It was all over by 18:00 and the planes were heading home to their respective carriers. The long hours of day light in these northern latitudes made for easy flying, but it was still several hours before Peter Strasser had collected all her aircraft again.