The muscular Petty Officer had jumped up to stand astride the mount. He started bawling orders and men magically appeared from under cover.
“Let out the fucking clutch or whatever you do to free up the movement on this fucking thing!” He bellowed at Joe Calleja.
The mount began to swing to the left.
Joe checked the board. Mostly green lights!
“Nobody stands behind the tubes when we launch!” He screamed.
The Mark VIII 21-inch torpedo weighed over a ton-and-a-half and needed a great deal of persuasion to eject itself from a firing tube. On a submarine the job was done using a blast of compressed air; on the mount that Joe Calleja was sitting on it required a small explosive charge to ‘impel’ each fish on its way.
There was a meticulously choreographed drill for launching a torpedo off the deck of a moving ship for the very good reason that the exercise was inherently fraught with difficulties, and very dangerous to everybody involved. However, to do the job safely and without the risk of a major disaster, like a fish catching fire in the tube or worse, exploding, the execution of the well-practiced, precision ‘drill’ pre-supposed the presence of a trained and competent crew of about a dozen men. On this spring afternoon the destroyer’s ‘torpedo crew’ comprised a concussed dockyard electrician, a petty officer who’d never had anything to do with torpedoes until that day, and a motley collection of — mostly walking wounded — Royal Marines and seamen who had happened to be fighting fires, or sheltering in the vicinity of the tubes.
Marshalled by Jack Griffin the tubes swung ponderously.
“That should do it!” He shouted, grinning broadly.
The destroyer bucked as she was hit twice more.
Somebody was barking orders with a megaphone from the bridge above their heads.
Jack Griffin slapped Joe Calleja on the back.
“Wind up the fish!”
“They’ll catch fire if they run too long in the tubes!”
The red-headed and bearded Petty Officer thought this was the funniest thing he had ever heard anybody say in his whole life; in other circumstances he might have rolled around on the deck laughing until his ribs cracked or he pissed himself.
“Start them up, Joe!” He shook his head. “The moment we turn we’ll show the bastards our whole broadside and they’ll probably blow us out of the water anyway!”
Joe Calleja was acting like an automaton by then.
It was all a dream.
He was not really sitting in the exposed director chair on an open deck while two huge ships with very big guns tried to kill him. It was easier to let his mind move outside his body and to watch what was going on from a distance. His hands fumbled the controls and the mount began to vibrate, shake and rattle as the torpedo motors ran up. Time telescoped, everything became fast and slow in the same instant and suddenly, the young Maltese dockyard electrician and trades union activist was completely unafraid.
The destroyer heeled into the turn.
Jack Griffin’s hand slapped down on his shoulder.
“FIRE ONE!”
The mount bucked as there was a muted WHOOF and Tube One spat out its long silver merchant of death.
Joe had been so preoccupied watching the lights on his director board that until then he had had no time to steal a glance beyond the side of the ship. Now he was momentarily transfixed by the sight of a great grey ship belching enormous clouds of pitch black coal smoke. Talavera was so close to the leviathan that he could almost have reached out and touched the Yavuz.
“FIRE TWO!”
At the moment the torpedo exited the tube the whole length of the Yavuz disappeared behind a wall of fire.
There was no time for Joe to shut his eyes before the storm of metal and high explosive passed over HMS Talavera. Or at least, mostly passed over the shot-riddled destroyer. There were clangs and crashes all around him as smaller rounds came inboard, and a ripping, rending thunderous express train roar as the battlecruiser’s main battery broadside cleaved the heavens asunder barely feet overhead.
Afterwards there was a peculiar silence before Joe’s ears again registered sounds; the asthmatic rushing of the blowers, the sea coursing down the ship’s sides, men calling out and the staccato the pumping of the 40-millimetre cannons thirty feet away. Further aft at least one of the twin 20-millimetre Oerlikons was pouring fire directly onto the deck of the seemingly impregnable wall of steel in front of him. He saw the sparks of the small rounds travelling along the battlecruiser’s main deck, and a stream of 40-millimetre shells bursting on the dreadnoughts stumpy, ugly bridge and conning tower.
“FIRE THREE!”
That was when a giant fist punched HMS Talavera amidships. The destroyer sagged, attempted to lurch forward. It was useless, the blowers died and she began to coast to a water-logged stop.
“FIRE FOUR!”
Chapter 65
Although nobody was inclined to move far from the entrance of the bomb shelter, everybody had edged cautiously out into the smoky afternoon sunshine. The small crowd watched in horror and awe as the great thunderstorm tracked to the north across the distant sea battle. The sound of guns and great explosions rolled onto the land, whispers of the war. Giant tridents of lightning stabbed jaggedly into the fog of battle. It was like a distant glimpse of Hades.
Marija Christopher and Rosa Calleja had stumbled to the top of the ridge where they stared at the two sleek grey American destroyers creaming north so close to the shore that it seemed that they must surely run aground any moment. The gun in each ship’s fo’c’sle turret fired every two seconds, the smoke of each shot instantly whipped away by the rushing wind.
The bombardment of Valletta and the interior of the main island had stopped several minutes ago, while out at sea to the north-east fires flashed, sparkled and were swallowed in the haze and smoke. The young women were silent, holding each other’s hands; appalled and fascinated, knowing they were watching the most terrible of things and yet sadly, hypnotically utterly enthralled.
Valletta was burning. The airfield at Luqa and all the surrounding villages burned. Senglea, Cospicua, Birgu were on fire. She could hardly imagine what carnage the rain of shells might have wrought in the dockyards of French Creek, Dockyard Creek and elsewhere in the Grand Harbour, the surface of which was now vilely fouled with leaking bunker oil. There was far too much smoke to tell if Marija’s new married home still stood in Kalkara. Beyond Valletta there were big fires in Gzira and Sliema. The whole island was fast disappearing beneath a growing pall of smoke, dust and ash.
Unconsciously, Marija put her free hand over her abdomen.
Some things in life were meant to be.
“Sister?” Rosa asked anxiously.
Tears trickled down Marija’s cheeks.
“What is it?”
Marija forced a tight-lipped smile.
“Nothing. It is nothing. Whatever happens we must have faith in the future.”
Rosa stared at where her sister rested her free hand.
Marija met her gaze, and tight-lipped, shrugged.
Chapter 66
Commander Peter Christopher staggered to the bridge rail. His ship was dead in the water, shrouded in smoke from her fires. In his dazed, half-deafened, shocked state he had trouble piecing together the events of the last few minutes. There had been no time to take in anything while it was going on but now, in this surreal lull the temporary absence of madness allowed numbed minds to come to terms with realities that were like ghastly nightmares.