Altered States

Chapter 30

Kapitan Otto Ernst Lindemann stood on the bridge of the Bismarck, staring at the message he had just been handed, his beady eyes narrowing, lips taut to give him a bird like, hawkish aspect. Tall and thin, his ears jutted out like a pair of gun directors on the main mast of the ship.

Enamored of the sea ever since he heard the stories of steamers on the wide Pacific that his uncle would tell, Lindemann was fortunate to come from a family that could afford the steep tuition for his years in the naval academy. Academically gifted, he was somewhat slight physically, and was almost disqualified from active service due to troublesome lungs from a bout with pneumonia as a youth. The condition meant that service on a U-boat was out of the question for him, but when World War One came he was gratified to be assigned to the battleship Lothringen commanded by the famous Admiral Reinhard Scheer.

Assigned to patrol duties, the ship saw little combat, and Lindemann’s position as a Wireless Telegraphy Officer seemed inglorious enough to him in any case. But his luck soon saw him drawing high cards where ship assignments were concerned. He moved to the newly commissioned battleship Bayern in 1916, then the most powerful ship in the fleet, and he stayed with her through the sad end of the war, one of the last 175 crewmen to sail with her during the ignominious surrender and internment of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919.

His heart was heavy as they sailed, and he was glad that he had been ordered back to Germany before the final end, when the entire fleet was scuttled right under the noses of the British. When he got word the ships were gone, however, he had to fight off the tears. “Hindenburg was the last to go,” a friend had told him, and it left him feeling bereft and sallow inside.

He stayed with the new Kriegsmarine, one of only 15,000 men allowed in the service by treaty until Hitler tore it up and began to rebuild the navy. At one point he served on the Staff of Admiral Raeder, and came to know the man and appreciate his mind for strategy on the high seas. “The German Navy may never again be large enough to seek open battle with the British,” Raeder had told him, “but we can build ships that will teach them to fear us, fierce raiders that can ravage their convoys if war should come again. So work hard, Lindemann. One day you may find yourself on one of them, a real battleship again!”

So Lindemann left off staff work and telegraphy and studied naval gunnery, eventually lecturing on the subject at the Naval Gunnery School in Kiel. Soon he did find his way onto one of the new ships, as First Gunnery Officer of the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, one of the fast raiders the Admiral had spoken about. The ship served briefly in the Spanish Civil War, and they even showed it off to the British at Gibraltar. Having been educated in England as a youth, Lindemann was able to speak English, and jousted with the British Admiral Somerville there.

“They call it a pocket battleship,” he said, “and it will give your heavy cruisers fits, Admiral. Yes?”

“That it might,” Somerville had said diplomatically, “though I don’t think you would bother a real battleship with those guns. Touché.” Somerville smiled at him, but Lindemann had taken his point well enough. A real battleship… That was what he found himself standing on now. What would Admiral Somerville say if I should sail Bismarck into the harbor at Gibraltar to pay him another visit?

The British were fond of queens and ladies of the sea. All their ships were old women, he thought. Well Bismarck will be referred to as “he,” and that will make the difference plain enough. When he got the ship as his first real command at sea he swelled with pride. As Germany’s most experienced gunnery expert, he was eager to see what the new 15 inch guns could do, and show the British what a real battleship truly was. It was a miracle that Raeder managed to get these ships in fighting trim in time for the outbreak of war. We have dawdled away most of this year, but now we begin.

He felt the sheer, raw power beneath his feet as they plowed through the storm in the vanguard of the fleet. The ship was riding the heavy seas well, and they had sailed right into the face of an oncoming weather front late on the 17th of June. The viewports were thick with rain, however, and the inclement weather had grounded all operations from Graf Zeppelin. Visibility was so low that Bismarck and Tirpitz had to turn on their search lights, aiming them at each other to allow for safe station keeping and prevent an untimely collision.

Yet Lindemann had heard the forecast earlier from the weather officer. The storm would be brief and they would soon break through to clearing weather, with cold white clouds drifting like vagrant seafarers low on the water. The weather ship posted to that area had sent that heavy fog was forming behind the front, typical for this time of year.

Hoffmann had been out of contact for some time, then the message came, confounding him when he received it. Now he was huddling with his personal adjutant, signals officer Second Leutnant Wolfgang Reiner and Fregattenkapitän Paul Ascher, a staff officer assigned to bridge operations on the battleship. Asher was another gunnery officer, having served aboard the Graf Spee during her spectacular but ill-fated sortie. He had personally directed the gunfire that damaged the British cruisers Exeter and Ajax at the Battle of the River Plate, and had escaped internment to return to Germany.

“What is the meaning of this? Hoffman has withdrawn north?”

“Apparently, sir,” said Reiner. “They broke through a British cruiser screen and attempted a rendezvous with the Altmark. When they got there they found the ship had been sunk.”

“Sunk? There were no details?”

“No sir, only that it was believed to be a torpedo. Then Hoffmann’s group was engaged by a battleship or battlecruiser and Gneisenau sustained damage amidships with speed down to 24 knots. Hoffmann broke off and turned to find Nordmark.”

“Was the enemy ship identified?”

“No sir. And there was one other detail. I don’t know quite what to make of it-something about naval rockets.”

Lindemann turned his head, a disgusted look on his face. “Rockets?”

“That’s what the message says, sir. ‘Gneisenau struck by rocket, Severe fire amidships. Number four boiler down. Speed off 8 knots. Proceeding to discretionary rendezvous point to refuel and repair. Beware.”

“Beware?” That didn’t sound like Hoffmann. Lindemann knew the man. Yes, he had orders to evade British capital ships. Lindemann had read them again just that day, realizing that the situation might dictate new orders at any moment.

‘The objective of Scharnhorst amp; Gneisenau is not to defeat enemies of equal strength, but to tie them down in a delaying action, while preserving combat capacity as much as possible, so as to allow Bismarck and Tirpitz to get at the merchant ships in allied convoys. The primary target in this operation is the enemy's merchant shipping; enemy warships will be engaged only when that objective makes it necessary and it can be done without excessive risk.’

Hoffmann obviously found the engagement necessary, but it appears he got more than he expected. Yet Lindemann was bewildered by this notation concerning rocket fire. What was that about? Hoffmann was clearly attempting to warn him, but he could make no sense of it…unless the notation was metaphorical. That did not matter in the end. The reality of the situation was that Gneisenau had sustained damage, and Hoffmann’s force was now withdrawing north to the discretionary rendezvous point. That would be the tanker Nordmark. There had been no sign of pursuit by the British after the successful strike made by Graf Zeppelin. Then came the weather front they were still plowing through, which provided him good cover to make his breakaway to the east.

The weather officer had predicted that they would see clearing skies on the morrow, but this was not good. Fog would follow, hopefully by the time he reached the strait. With the sun up all day at this latitude, the lighting will be favorable all night for sighting his ships. If he could not have darkness as a cloak, then heavy fog would do. It would hobble his air units off the carrier, but also hamper the British planes as well.

During their bold attack, the pilots off the Graf Zeppelin had indentified two British heavy warships, and one was the Invincible, her unique configuration impossible to mistake. A pity the Stukas did not put their bombs there. That ship is one of the few I need to respect, he thought.

Subsequent searches indicated the British had broken off and were no longer pursuing him north of Iceland. Now the planes were down with the weather, so the British might still be there, hiding behind the rain squalls like a shadow of death. His-B-Dienst team, a special Marine signals intelligence unit serving aboard battleships to try an intercept and decode enemy communications, had no real information for him yet. The British were being tight lipped. He knew it was Admiral Tovey out there hunting him, new to command, perhaps breaking in new staff as well. Yet he did not know enough about the man to anticipate how he might react to the attack on his force today. It was all just educated guesses at the moment. There was no word from Wilhelmshaven either.

Where were the British now, he wondered? If they are not following, then they certainly know where we are headed and they must have moved south of Iceland. The Royal Navy clearly had cruisers watching the Denmark Strait, and now capital ships from this report. He correctly surmised that the British were now consolidating their battle fleets in an attempt to find and stop him there-in the Denmark Strait.

So what was waiting for them? He had already left the older battleships Rodney and Nelson behind him, and they were of no concern. That left few candidates in his mind, and he now began to suspect that the British had assigned their faster ships to this operation, Hood, Renown, Repulse and the fleet flagship, Invincible. We may have taken one out of the equation with that air strike. That leaves three more to deal with, and the usual entourage of cruisers and destroyers.

Well, I have a substantial force here, and with Hoffmann’s flotilla we are more than a match for the British this time around. But those orders from Raeder and Lütjens nagged at him… The primary target in this operation is the enemy's merchant shipping; enemy warships will be engaged only when that objective makes it necessary and it can be done without excessive risk.’

I have already violated that mandate when I sent those planes out. Raeder may not be happy about that, but the results should serve as a consolation. Two hits on a British battlecruiser! That may stiffen Raeder’s resolve. It is obvious that I cannot fulfill my primary orders unless I first gain the Atlantic. To do so I may have to either face whatever the British oppose me with and prevail, or else evade them completely. Unless we get good concealment in the fog, evasion may be the more difficult thing to accomplish. With Graf Zeppelin along I have options that no other German commander at sea has ever exercised, and I have already used them to good effect to put off the initial chase. But the Royal Navy learns quickly…too quickly. They will now do everything possible to neutralize the advantage I have just demonstrated with Graf Zeppelin. In many ways that carrier is now the most valuable ship in the Kriegsmarine, and for an old gunnery officer like me to admit that says much.

So I am to attack the convoys, but avoid fighting the British toe to toe in order to get there. Now that our planned diversion by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau has failed to break out, the Royal Navy will be gathering like a flock of seagulls in the Denmark Strait. Do I fight my way through under these circumstances? Even as he asked himself that question he knew he would have to send to Wilhelmshaven and Naval Group North headquarters for the answer.

“Make to Wilhelmshaven, Leutnant Reiner. They undoubtedly have the message you have just handed me from Hoffmann. Now what do they propose I do? Tell them that I expect the whole of the British Battlecruiser Squadron to be waiting for me in the Denmark Strait. All Scharnhorst and Gneisenau have done is ring the bell at the police station! If presented with the possibility of a major engagement, what is Admiral’s Raeder’s pleasure? Does he want his ships to fight here? If not, I welcome his advice on the matter. That is all.”

* * *

Hoffman was in his flag ready room, sitting at the table, a cigar in one hand and a ruler in another. His orders folio was open beside him, and he was checking on the position of Nordmark and plotting the ship’s coordinates. He picked up a compass and pen and quietly stepped off intervals along the lines he had drawn on the map. They had been making 24 knots, which was more than he expected after he saw that rocket strike Gneisenau amidships. The fires were out now, no longer marking their presence on the horizon, and that damnable jamming of his radars and communications had finally dissipated once he got north away from the last British contact.

So his instincts had been correct. There was another ship in the Denmark Strait, watching, waiting. It wasn’t an ice ghost, frigid bergs piled on drifting floes from the glaciers that were often sighted and mistaken for ships in these waters. It wasn’t a mirage of hoarfrost or snow swirling over the icy coast. No. It was well out in the center of the strait. He had seen it with his own eyes, taken in the long dangerous lines, felt the odd aura that seemed to be about it, as if it was something wholly unaccountable, beyond his experience and perilous in a way he could not yet comprehend. Then came that flashing attack, precise, deadly, the destructive power and reach of the weapon shocking with its accuracy. A rocket…so well aimed that it bored in unfailingly on the target and seemed to leap at Gneisenau like a sea demon, finding the vital superstructure of the ship and not the heavy side armor.

Something told him that this might be some new vessel, a command ship, lurking on the scene, vectoring in the enemy battlecruisers, jamming his communications to leave him blind. It had to be dealt with, and he passed a moment of regret that he did not allow his gunners the time to find the range.

Yet orders were orders. With Gneisenau burning, the extent of the damage as yet unknown, the nature of the enemy a mystery itself, his instinct had proven to be the wisest course. Fall back, consolidate, refuel and allow time for Gneisenau to effect repairs. Wait for Lindemann.

He took a long drag on his cigar, exhaling slowly, thoughtfully. Then he called in Huber. “Make to Bismarck and Lindemann. Request rendezvous and Kapitan’s meeting at the alternate refueling point. Tell them we can be there tomorrow by 14:00 hours.”

“Very good, Kapitan.” Huber hesitated, the hour late, the ship quiet after the long day, yet still with a restless edge about the men as they hastened north. They had seen what happened, and were no doubt wondering what this sudden course change north would mean. Were they beaten? Was the mission to be called off? Then he turned and asked the question that had been on so many of their minds.

“What was that ship out there, Kapitan?”

Hoffmann took another long drag on his cigar, thinking, his eyes holding a distant look. “I don’t know.”

That answer seemed heavy with portent, and Huber knew that something had happened that had upset all the careful planning by the naval staff adjutants at Wilhelmshaven…. something big. It seemed as though some dark impending shadow now hovered over them, like the shadow of death, and it brought an unwelcome chill in the silence between the two men.

Huber saluted and started for the wireless room.