“If I may Sir.” One of the young lieutenants was speaking very tentatively. “I was training to be a naval architect before I was for …. signed into the Navy. There were many doubts about the Z-23 class even then. That big turret forward is a lot of weight; too much for the structure of the bows. Worse, there is a large compartment underneath the turret. That makes the whole bow structure extremely stressed. Finally, the trunk for the turret is too close to the hull sides. Gunnery was told, Sir, but they insisted on that twin turret forward. I think when Z-24 dug her bows in, the weight of the wave pressing down combined with the bow rising up was too much for the structure. I think her bows just tore off forward of her bridge. A battleship or cruiser, they might survive that Sir, but a destroyer won’t. Her own engines will drive her under and there is nothing to stop the flooding. Nothing at all; she probably sank in less than 20 seconds.”
Lindemann stared at the young officer who flushed and turned bright red. “I’m sorry, Sir.”
The Admiral slowly shook his head. “There is no need for apology. You had information I needed and gave it to me as was your duty. Communications, send a message to all the destroyers. They are to abandon efforts to hold station and maneuver as necessary to avoid damage.” Lindemann raised his binoculars to his eyes again and looked at the patch of sea that had claimed Z-24 with so little warning. For the first time, he had a very bad feeling about this operation.
“The German fleet is out.” The young torpedo-bomber pilot made the remark with complete confidence.
“How do you know, George? The German High Command in your pocket? Giving you tips?” The other pilots on the gallery were jeering. The Adie pilot had an air of smug, condescending confidence that set people’s teeth on edge. Coming from a family with money could do that.
“That’s the fifth pallet of torpedoes that’s come aboard in the last half hour. There’s five-inch rockets and 12-inch Tiny Tims coming aboard from the aft station. We’re offloading 500 and thousand pounder HEs and taking on sixteen hundred and two thousand-pound armor piercing. We had a lot to start; now we’ve got more. We’re going to be taking on other ships for once, heavily armored ones. So, that’s the German fleet. They’ve got be coming out.”
Although the other pilots hated to admit it, he had to be right. They watched as Kearsarge swung another pallet of the massive Tiny Tim rockets on board. At the same time, a pack of 22.4 inch torpedoes was being hoisted over to Intrepid. Between the two carriers, the ammunition ship Firedrake was working to keep the stream of anti-ship munitions flowing. A day earlier, it would have been impossible; the storm had still been at full force. Now, it had passed in the night and the weather was fine, as good as it was ever likely to be in the North Atlantic in November.
Not far away, the aircraft carriers Reprisal and Oriskany were bombing up from the ammunition ship Great Sitkin. The carriers were helpless, their decks were cleared, their aircraft struck below or parked forward, out of the way. Riding guard was the fifth carrier in the group, the light carrier Cowpens. She was the guard carrier, responsible for providing air patrols over the group with her three squadrons of F4U-7s. Five carriers with over 400 aircraft in this task group alone, and there were four more groups just like it. Well, not quite like it, Task Group 58.1 had the new CVB Gettysburg in place of a light carrier. That gave the group more than 500 aircraft. No wonder “Wild Bill” Halsey had made that group his flag.
Lieutenant George Herbert Walker Bush looked away from the flat-tops, towards the other shapes in the weak, gray sunshine. The biggest of them were the battleships New Jersey and Wisconsin, then the heavy cruisers Albany and Rochester. There had been three but Oregon City had suffered bad storm damage and been forced to head back. There were bad whispers about the ‘Orrible Titty.’ Some said she’d been built wrong, her spine twisted. Four light cruisers, Fargo, Huntingdon, Santa Fe and Miami. Eighteen destroyers filled out the group. They were DDKs, Gearing class ships whose job was to hunt and kill submarines. Protecting the carriers was the job of all those other ships. They shielded the carriers while the carriers smashed everything they took a dislike to.
And there were four more carrier task groups just like this one. Then there was the battle line, the support groups, the munitions groups. The ASW hunter-killer groups. All intended to keep the carriers safe and fighting.
Below them, another pallet of torpedoes swung onto the flight deck. The munitions men down there swarmed over it, striking the extra torpedoes down to the magazines. Up on the Goofers Gallery, the other pilots had to admit Bush was right; this many torpedoes, this many rockets, this many armor-piercing bombs meant they were going after the big ships of the German Fleet.
“I’ll tell you this guys. When we find the Huns, I’m going to get me a battleship.”
It was too much. With one accord the pilots started beating the young Lieutenant over the head with their caps. Eventually they paused for breath and the ring-leader of the attack pushed his battered cap back on. “Yeah right, George. And one day you’ll get to be President, won’t you?”
“Ready for launch.” Lieutenant Pace braced himself for the slam in the back of a catapult launch. The Stalingrad had two F8F-1 Bearcats ready to go. Not far away, her sistership, the USS Moskva had two more. They’d fly as two pairs towards the contact one of their picket destroyers had spotted. If the analysis of the target’s flight pattern was right, Hunter-Killer Group Sitka had hit golden paydirt. For today, anyway.
“Target is cruising at Angels 26, speed 200. Bearing 135 degrees. Range 165 miles” The situation report was as complete as possible to cut down radio transmissions after the fighters were launched. If this was one of Germany’s few remaining Me-264s, they wanted to give it as little warning as possible.
Ahead of him, one of the deck crew made a winding-up motion with his hands. Pace pushed the throttle forward; the R-2800 engine picked up power, making the Bearcat shake. There came the expected thump and he was hurtling down the deck as the catapult fired. He cleared the Stalingrad’s bows and pushed the nose down. One always traded altitude for speed; no matter how little of the former one had, the latter was worth more. Underneath him, the undercarriage doors thumped closed. He sank below deck level, then he soared upwards. The Bearcat was in its element again.
The cruise out took a little under an hour; time for the target to move roughly 200 miles in any direction. Fortunately, the German pilot was doing the north-to-south leg of a sweep. Probably checking to see what was following the storm front. It was an open question if he’d seen Hunter-Killer Group Sitka. Probably not; German radar wasn’t that good and surface search conditions were still pretty bad. He hadn’t deviated from his course yet. He, almost certainly, didn’t know the Bearcats were coming.
“You’re on top of him.” The fighter controller’s voice from Stalingrad was cold, unemotional. The pair of Bearcats from Moskva had already peeled away, they’d gone to full power and moved to get between the Me-264 and its base. “There are RB-29s operating. Make sure of target identification before opening fire.” With its smooth glazed nose and four radial engines, the Me-264 looked a lot like a RB-29. It was whispered that there had already been some unfortunate accidents.