Cauldron of Fire

Chapter 28

It began a little after 23:00 hours the 13th of August, 1942. Kirov had raced south, undiscovered, and was now making the turn Fedorov had planned to run due west to Cabo de la Gata. They would take the 60 mile run in two hours. Reaching the cape by 1:00 AM. But as midnight approached they saw three planes coming up from the south flying obvious search patterns.

“These must be off the carriers,” said Fedorov.

“Shall we shoot them down?” Karpov had returned to the bridge, rested and ready for action.

Fedorov thought a moment, and shook his head. “Why bother. If we do kill them, that act alone will give the British our approximate position, and immediately mark us as hostile. I want to see if we can try our ruse as a French ship. It might buy us just a little time.”

So they watched the search planes grow ever closer, the nearest no more than four kilometers out before they all turned, heading south again. It was not long before Nikolin perked up, adjusting his headset and waving for Fedorov’s attention.

“A radio message, sir. In English, and right in the clear.”

Nikolin put it on the speakers and they listened, eyes drawn to the overhead grill, brows raised as Nikolin translated.

“Ship heading two-seven-zero, latitude thirty six degrees, forty two minutes, longitude negative two, please identify yourself.”

Fedorov smiled. “Someone is ringing the door bell. They must have some good men in one of those planes. Those coordinates are very close to the mark.”

“What shall I do, sir?” asked Nikolin. “Should I ignore them?”

“No, Mister Nikolin, now you get to practice your English a bit. But if you can sound more like a Frenchman, that would be even better! Tell them we are battlecruiser Strasbourg, and that we have broken out of Toulon, fought off two Italian battleships that tried to intercept us, and that we are running for Free French ports in Equatorial Africa to join Admiral Darlan.”

“Very well, sir.” Nikolin translated, his big brown eyes moving from his microphone to Fedorov and back again, excited. Time passed, and then they heard the reply Fedorov expected.

“Sir, they want us to reduce speed and come to a heading of 255 degrees. They say they will escort us to Gibraltar and that we may arrange passage south from there.”

“Very well. Tell them we are coming around on that heading at twenty knots and will send up signal flares in thirty minutes.”

“You’re going to do what they say?” Karpov has a bemused look on his face.

“Of course not. Helm, steady on 270 and ahead full battle speed. Now we’ll see how cagy the British are. If they wanted us on 255 then they should alter course to near zero degrees north to effect a rendezvous from their present position. Any course they take west of that will mean they aren’t taking any chances and are maneuvering to make sure they can cut us off. Even if they do think we’re Strasbourg they would know we can run up to thirty knots. Let’s see what they do.”

They had their answer shortly when Rodenko, now back on radar, indicated the contact had altered course to 302 degrees northwest and increased speed to near twenty knots.

“A careful breed, these British.” Karpov seemed restless, arms clasped behind his back. “They made that course change before they even gave us a chance to come round on 255.”

“They’ll probably move something that direction, but I don’t think they are buying our apples today. They didn’t make the claim that Britannia rules the sea lightly,” said Fedorov. “They know Strasbourg would not easily prevail over two Italian battleships. This is the one heading they should have taken if they wanted to intercept us on our old reported course and speed. Very well… we’ll play the game a bit. In a few minutes I want a missile rigged with a star shell and fired right here, where we should be if we had turned on the heading they requested. They’ll most likely loop those planes back to shadow us, but this may prove a distraction.”

“We can just fire one of the UDAV batteries,” said Karpov. “A single rocket timed to explode in the air should suffice.”

They waited out the interval, and fired their rocket at maximum range. All the while Rodenko noted the steady approach of another aircraft. It was clear that the British were taking no chances with them at all. The plane diverted briefly to the location where they had fired their missile, then quickly turned northwest on a heading to intercept them.

“Are they seeing us on radar?” asked Karpov. “What’s wrong with our jammers, Rodenko?”

“Nothing wrong, sir. I have the all their bandwidths snowed over.”

“They are just experienced and efficient men,” said Fedorov. “That man is flying by the seat of his pants out there, but he knows enough to get his plane northwest where we would be on our old heading.”

“At his present speed they will re-acquire our position in approximately ten minutes,” said Rodenko.

“Let them. They won’t learn anything they don’t already suspect. Our ruse is over, and now we run the gauntlet. Very well, rig the ship for black. We should reach the cape at zero one hundred hours. I’ll want the ship at battle stations by then, and we’ll alter course fifteen degrees to port to avoid the Almeria sea transit lanes. There are good thermals along the coast, and they make for excellent cruising stations for submarines. We’ll avoid them if we can, but by 01:thirty we may be engaged. I suggest we take whatever time remaining to check the weapons systems. I don’t want a repeat of that accident we had with the Klinok missiles. We’ll need every round we have.”

Aboard HMS Nelson Admiral Syfret had made the early assessment that this was a renegade French battlecruiser, on one side of the French coin or another, and nonetheless maneuvered to get his battleships in the best possible position to engage if they did not comply with his request. He had separated his force at 18:00 hours earlier that evening, sending the three carriers under Rear Admiral St. Lyster on Victorious some forty miles south on a parallel course to his own, along with his last remaining cruisers and an escort of five destroyers. It was also necessary to detach the wounded destroyer Ithuriel, and he sent her off south with DD Quentin. This left him with his two battleships and six more destroyers, more than enough, he reasoned, to run this Geronimo to ground. When they got within gun range, he would signal Captain Troubridge on the carrier Indomitable to launch his Albacore II torpedo bombers for good measure. He’d get his battleships right astride Strasbourg’s line of advance and then have one last word before he let his 16 inch guns do the talking.

They were running W/T silent, but he imagined that Admiral Fraser had forsaken his role as an incognito observer on Rodney and was now on the bridge there. He signaled his intentions by lamp to his sister ship, asking her for her very best speed. When the lights winked back saying they would not be late for tea, he knew his hunch about Fraser on the bridge had been correct.

What was all this fuss and bother about, he thought. We’ll have the matter in hand in two or three hours. No need to cancel major operations and send Home Fleet rushing off like a chicken with its head cut off. Yet what about this sighting report coming over from Indomitable’ s 827 squadron. He did not know what to make of it.

Sub Lt. William Walter Parsons, Fleet Air Arm Observer, 827 Albacore Squadron off Indomitable was the lucky man who spotted Kirov that day, and the sight of the ship gave him the willies. As fate would have it, he had been up north with Force P a year ago for the planned raid at Kirkenes with this very same 827 Squadron on Victorious at that time. The appearance of a strange new German raider had forced Wake-Walker to cancel the mission and enter that long, ill fated hunt. Oddly, the history once recorded that he was to be shot down over Kirkenes and captured by the Germans, but all that changed when this mysterious ship appeared in the Norwegian Sea, though he never knew it.

The cancellation of the Kirkenes mission meant that he would not spend those hard years in a cold German POW camp, or make that torturous long march from Sagan, forced to push a wheel barrel for several hundred miles on those frozen ice-gutted roads. His favorite ring would not be warped by his gripping the arms on that wheel barrel, and it still fit his finger snugly where he wore it every day—his lucky ring. Lucky indeed, for his squadron had been hit particularly hard chasing after that raider, losing some very good men. He was one of the very few that made back alive. He still remembered the faces of the men who died, McKendrick, Turnbull, Bond, Greenslade, Miles… And the awful memory of those rockets in the sky, like a wild pack of voracious sharks swerving and swooping in on the planes…awful…

One look at the ship below, knifing through the dark sea off the Spanish coast brought all this back with the sureness of an old memory that might be summoned up by a sound, or a smell. And with it came a sense of dread and foreboding. He was to shadow this ship, but something forced him to pull on the yoke and put the plane into a turn, and get himself as far away from this place as possible. He made his report and, some minutes later, he got hold of himself, realizing he would have to circle round and re-acquire the target.

“What’s gotten into you?” he said aloud to himself. That ship, he knew, that’s what’s done it! I’ll not be a shirker, but I’ll be damned if that’s a French battlecruiser. No sir. That looks all the world like… But it couldn’t be here, could it? it couldn’t be…

It was.

Thankfully the fuel gauge on Parson’s plane allowed him to slip away with a little dignity, and he soon turned south for Indomitable. He had the odd feeling that he had been following a shadow, a nightmare, and the farther away from that demon he got the more he felt his old self again. When he landed on the carrier they would want him in the briefing room bang away. What should he tell them? He reported to his Squadron Leader, Lt. Commander Buchanon-Dunlop, and he spoke his mind.

“You weren’t with us back then,” he concluded, “and lucky for it. But this ship out there looks for all the world like the one we fought in the North Atlantic last August. Put most of my mates into the sea and stuck a fire bomb into Victorious as well.”

Admiral Syfret eventually received the opinion through proper channels, but didn’t weigh it too heavily. Men get spooked on these night operations, he knew. A case of the jitters before combat was normal. At least the man knew his duty, held on to his contact, and got a good read on her course and speed.

Parsons never knew that Fedorov had spared his life that night by declining to fire on his plane. So he would go on to survive the war, become a school teacher, and have grand children one day. Yet many in his 827 Squadron would not. They were already in the briefing room while the flight engineers worked the torpedoes onto the planes below decks. He would not be tasked to fly the strike mission, but would probably be up for battle damage assessment later on that night. So he caught one of his mates as he came out of the briefing room, tugging at his flight jacket.

“Have a care, Tom,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t bunch up on this one. Get down real low, and spread your flight out nice and wide. Stay down real low, and find any cover you can on the approach.”

It was the best advice Thomas Wales was to receive in his life.

Force Z pushed on, their course aiming for a point some thirty nautical miles southwest of Cabo de la Gata. The latest sighting reported that his quarry was moving extremely fast. At midnight they were some thirty-two nautical miles apart, or sixty kilometers, and closing on that same distant point. He sounded battle stations and the ship was trimmed for action, her big guns loaded, the heavily armored turrets slowly turning toward the direction they expected their adversary.

It was time for one last effort at settling the matter amicably, and he had his radioman broadcast a demand to reduce speed at once and prepare to be boarded by a British liaison officer. There was no response, and so he folded his arms, shaking his head and had the signalman wink a message to Admiral Fraser: “Contact will not heave to. Will commence firing as soon as practicable. Please join in.”

The men in the crow’s nest with their high powered binoculars would have the next say, and it would be a difficult sighting. Radar seemed all fouled, and the operators reported they could get no signal returns from any ship in the formation. So it would come down to the old fashioned methods, he thought, a pair of sharp eyes behind the glass and well trained gun crews. So be it. He had his quarry just where he wanted it, penned up against the Spanish coastline and with little room to maneuver to their starboard side. He knew he would not have the speed to get much under 20,000 meters as they approached, but he could engage well before that. The target was fast, but it would have to run for nearly an hour under his guns. The crescent moon had set five hours earlier, so it was very dark. The French had picked a perfect time to make their run, but if they could spot the enemy, he was confident his gunners would do the rest.

He looked at his watch and gave an order. “Very well. W/T silence lifted. Time to get a couple of watch dogs out in front to look for this ship gentlemen. Send Ashanti, and Tartar. We’ll hold the remaining escorts for the time being.” He wanted a couple of fast destroyers to flush this rabbit out for his big guns, and the two ships soon broke formation off his starboard quarter and accelerated rapidly. It was a little after one in the morning when word came back that a ship had been sighted to their northeast. Range was well out, but it was clear that something big was sailing just southwest of Cat’s Cape, and moving too fast to be commercial traffic. Syfret decided to send a more forceful message to this recalcitrant French ship. He knew his first salvo would be well off the mark, but it would serve him well as a proverbial shot across the bow before open hostilities ensued.

He selected A and B turrets, his foreword most guns, and opened fire with just the centermost barrel in each turret. There was something to be said for courtesy, even if this was war and deadly earnest business. And the thought that he was giving them his middle finger amused him as well. If the French returned his warning shots with a salvo of their own, then the bar fight was on, and he had little doubts as to who would come out the better. He noted that HMS Rodney had not fired, her dark shape tall and threatening some 5000 yards in his wake. He waited, calm and confident, until spotters on his lead destroyers caught the distant wash of white where his shells had fallen. They radioed back to report all shots wide off the bow and long by several thousand yards. It had begun.

Fedorov heard the first shells rushing overhead and their distant impact on the dark swells of the sea. He noted the time—01:10 hours in the early morning of August 14, 1942. A sea battle was about to be fought that never should have occurred. Men might die, perhaps on both sides, who might have lived. It was a maddening thought. The whole notion of war itself was a maddening thought, but here they were. His ship wanted sea lanes where another ship forbade him to pass. He briefly considered turning about and heading back to the Balearics, but knew that would only postpone this inevitable engagement. There was nothing left to do but fight.

In Karpov’s mind the equation was simpler. One side or another must give way, and it would not be Kirov. He looked at Fedorov, saw him waiting, an anguished look on his face, and then said. “I believe we are under attack, Mister Fedorov. We’ve had our dance with Varenka and your Operation Gauntlet has now begun. Let’s see what they have for us after the ball.”

Fedorov caught the reference to the famous short story by Tolstoy where a man had been bemused at a ball by the beauty and charm of a lovely woman named Varenka. Later that evening he walked alone and stumbled upon a military discipline where an escaped Tartar was being forced to run the gauntlet, and the punishment was being administered by Varenka’s father, a colonel in the army. It was cruel, and merciless as the soldiers were ordered to beat the man ever harder, and it shook his faith in human compassion so completely that he lost his ardor for the man’s daughter. He claimed this chance encounter had changed his life forever, and something died in him with each withering blow on the poor renegade’s shoulders and back.

Now Kirov was the renegade, a fugitive Tartar about to run the gauntlet of fire and steel. For the next hour the ship would be in the gravest danger, well within range of those lethal 16 inch guns. A chance encounter, a planned encounter, it mattered not which. In the end it was a madness at sea that would change the lives of every man present forever.

“Mister Fedorov?” Karpov prodded him again.

“That was just a warning shot,” he said quietly.

“Yes, well it would be nice to reply in kind, but I don’t think we can afford to waste the ammunition. I suggest we lock weapon systems on the target and give them a more direct warning. We have fourteen Moskit IIs remaining. Six should do the job.”

“These are not the Italians,” said Fedorov, deflated but coming round to the realization that this was a choice he had made hours and hours ago. Now the time was here, and they had to fight. He turned to Karpov and gave an order. “I want to put one P-900 on each of the two battleships immediately following their next salvo.”

“P-900s? They are very slow.”

“Yes, but I want them to see the missiles coming. See them clearly.” He had asked for the sub-sonic cruise missiles instead of the more lethal supersonic Moskit Sunburns. The P-900s were slow, but still dangerous with a 400 kilogram warhead and pinpoint accuracy.

“Very well—Mister Samsonov, ready on the P-900 system, two missiles, target your primaries.”

Samsonov could clearly read the positions of the two big battleships on his display. He moved a light pen, tapped each one, then selected his weapon system and keyed “ready.”

“Sir, two P-900 missiles keyed to targets and ready.”

They waited in the stillness. The satin of the moonless night seemed to flow in all around them, enveloping them with a suspended sense of profound uncertainty. Their faces were illuminated by the green luminescence of the radar screens, eyes searching the black silky night, as if they thought some horrible beast, a sleek panther, might leap upon them from the darkness at any moment. Then the distant horizon seemed to explode with fire and violence. Seconds later they heard a loud boom, thunder-like in the distance.

Nelson and Rodney had fired in earnest.

Fedorov shrugged, then looked at Karpov, a grim expression on his face. “Give them a little shove on the shoulder, Captain.”

“Aye, sir.”

Chapter 29

Syfret had never seen anything quite like it. The darkness lit up with distant flame and smoke, far off on the edge of the night. He could see something bright in the sky, arcing up, and then he heard a low, distant growl.

“What do you make of that?” he said to a Senior Lieutenant, pointing at the fiery light, which grew more prominent, and closer with each passing second. The slow approach had exactly the effect Fedorov wanted. Every man on the bridge seemed transfixed by the oncoming glow. They had seen burning planes plummeting into the sea at night, but this was nothing like that. It had a slow, purposeful movement, rising up and up, then leveling off to begin a gradual descent. Down it came, a bright burning tail behind it illuminating a trail of ghostly smoke. It was a plane, some thought—poor bloke going into the drink at last. Probably one of our search planes that got in too close.

But it wasn’t a plane… It wasn’t a plane! It suddenly seemed to leap at them with a mighty roar, a fiery dart aimed right at the heart of the ship. The P-900s had ignited their ramjet afterburners to make their final run into the target at mach three, but by that time every crewman with eyes out to sea had been transfixed by the spectacle.

In they came and Syfret to one step back, his hand reaching for a rail to steady himself as the fire in the sky came thundering in and crashed right below the tall armored conning tower of his ship. The concussion of the explosion shattered every window on the bridge, sending glass showering over the deck, but it had not struck high enough to cause any real damage there. Instead it came in low and rifled into the number three C turret where it had exploded with terrible flame and smoke.

It was all the Admiral could do to remain standing. Two midshipman were thrown to the deck. Black smoke poured in and choked every man among them and Syfret instinctively crouched on his haunches, as much to steady himself as to find better air.

“Mother of God!” he coughed. They hit us on the first bloody shot! But with what? Then all the rumors, and sailor’s stories he had quashed as nonsense for the past year came home to him—rockets, lighting fast, with deadly precision. Rockets fired by a dark, dangerous ship that slipped through the night like a phantom.

It was here! This was nothing the French could have imagined or ever put to sea. Strasbourg had 13 inch guns, but this was something else entirely—no ripple of bright enemy fire in the distance; no sign of water splashed as her rounds came in. It was here! This was the ship Fraser had warned him of—the ship that put Repulse in her grave and blotted the side armor of both King George V and Prince of Wales. And now it had stuck its fist in his face and drawn first blood.

His amazement suddenly gave way to a new emotion. Nelson had been a proud but plodding ship in her years of service. She had foolishly run aground on Hamilton's Shoal in 1934, watched fast German cruisers and destroyers dance around her in the North Sea, ever beyond her grasp. She was nearly sunk by three German torpedoes near the Orkney’s, but miraculously spared when all three failed to explode, then she blundered in to a mine off Loch Ewe. Most recently she had been laid up by an Italian torpedo, returning to service only in May of that very year. In all these actions her one great liability had been her ponderously slow speed and sluggish maneuverability. But never had any ship dared to put hands on her as this one just had.

Syfret stood up, no longer amazed, but angry now. He was standing in the heavily armored conning tower, with steel plate over a foot thick on every side, one of the most heavily protected citadels on any ship in the world. Yet he disdained his armored castle and rushed to the weather bridge to see if he could get a look at the damage.

C turret had been knocked about, and the concussion of the hit had probably killed or disabled men on one side of the turret. The barbette was black as tar and licked by flame, which had spread to engulf two lifeboats on the other side of the ship. The turrets leftmost gun of three was inclined upward like a metal finger, still pointing at the smoky contrail of the missile. But the turret was even more heavily armored than his own citadel, a full 16.5 inches thick, and by god, he saw the guns begin to slowly rotate to re-train on the target, its remaining two barrels adjusting their elevation, and he knew there were men still alive and fighting in there, though the heat from the flames that still broiled on one side of the massive turret must be unbearable. He looked astern to see that Rodney had also been struck, a little lower amidships where much of the blow had been taken by her heavy side armor. There was a fire, but it did not look serious and all her guns appeared to be in good order.

“Damn you, sir!” he shouted at the distant, unseen foe, and rushed back into the citadel with an order. “Get the range, by God. Ready on A and B Turrets.”

Down in the guts of the ship men were feverishly receiving optical sighting reports and working the fire control boxes, or FCBs as they were called. They were cranking levers to set elevation, gun deflection, range, gun training, and also sliding precision rulers over tables to calculate wind deflection. There were dials to set the estimated target speed and bearing, gyros to read variations in the roll of the ship, measures to calculate the ballistic height of the target and a line of sight transmitter. Within the box, wires and cables connected all these dials, gauges and levers to try and make sense, though to any untrained eye the contents of the box looked more like the workings of a Swiss watch. There were metal plates etched with millimeter hash marks, azimuth conversion gears, oil motors whirring to move levers and flanges, speed governors spinning, fuze clocks for firing intervals, and even heating elements to dissipate moisture and keep the system dry.

Other men were sighting from their gun director posts and shouting information through voice pipes to the men who worked at the FCBs. The controlling officer manned a telephone to the bridge. Still others were squinting through telescopes and slowly turning hand wheels to fine tune their settings. While it all seemed very precise, it was basically a mechanical guessing machine. It was a team effort, with range takers, line of sight finders, elevation directors, heightfinders, a collective synergy of human eyes, heads and mechanical elements which took a long minute to reach a solution while the crews in the gun turrets were seeing to the loading of the massive shells and propellant charges. It made very well educated guesses in the end, but was wrong more often than not, and by a wide measure.

When Nelson’s sister ship HMS Rodney engaged the Bismarck, she had taken three salvos and fifteen minutes to get her first hit, and that was at dawn, with a range of about 20,000 yards. Here the range was greater, and it was a night action with Syfret’s ships initially relying on forward spotters in his two sheep dogs, Ashanti and Tartar. He knew it would take at least five salvos before they got the range, and perhaps even more, and he hoped he had the time before this demon slipped from his grasp.

“Give them bloody hell!” Syfret yelled at the top of his voice, commanding the whole process from the bridge. “Shoot!”

Seconds later the whole ship shook with the kick of the massive guns. Anything on the bridge that was not riveted down went clattering across plotting tables and rattling to the deck. The last loose shards of glass in the viewports were shaken free and the binnacle rattled and vibrated with the concussion, which was basically just a controlled explosion gripped in the tight steel cylinder of the gun barrel. It did indeed look like hell when the fire and smoke belched from the yawning muzzle of the guns, and the scream of the heavy shells as they went wailing away towards the enemy was frighteningly loud. Now he could just make their adversary out on the far horizon, lit by the fire of their own rocketry as the range slowly diminished.

They wanted a fight, with the Royal Navy, he thought. By God, I’ll give them one!

The salvo that had sent Kirov’s P-900 missiles flying was again long, but frightening as the shells whooshed overhead and fell into the sea, sending tall white plumes of seawater up into the air. Karpov saw the missiles strike home, smiling when each one ignited in a fireball, dead amidships.

“Two hits!” he said.

“Come right, fifteen,” said Fedorov. “Begin evasive maneuvers.”

“That will take us right into their last salvo,” said Karpov.

“Exactly,” said Fedorov excitedly. “We have the speed and maneuverability to chase salvos here. They’ll be correcting that long shot based on their read on our heading and speed. Their next shots should fall off our port side and short.”

He wanted to use Kirov’s great advantage in speed to make it more difficult for the British battleships to accurately range on the ship. They saw the night ripped apart by another salvo, a second ship behind it firing as well, and the thought that there were now at least twelve, and possibly eighteen massive shells heading their way gave him a chill. Kirov was a middleweight champion with a merciless jab, a strong right arm, and terrible speed. The ships she was facing were big, bruising heavyweights, lumbering slow but with tree trunk arms and hammers in their fists. They only needed one punch to connect to stagger their opponent and possibly decide the bout.

Karpov’s words returned to him again. What did they have for us after the ball? No, thought Fedorov, the dance is not yet over. We have to move, maneuver, and one glance at his navigation plot told him they needed to do everything possible to get out of range of these guns.

The two salvoes fell in a long line off the port side as he had predicted, better placed now, and ranging nearer. He changed heading quickly, turning into the salvos, the ship’s powerful turbines frothing the sea in her wake as Kirov ran at full battle speed, all of 32 knots.

“Shall I finish them?” Karpov asked, the elation of battle in his eyes. He was leaning over Samsonov, waiting to make his next missile selection.

“Finish them?” said Fedorov. “They’re just getting started, Captain. I’m afraid we only angered those two monsters out there. Speed is what we need now. Speed and a quick hand on the helm.”

“Yes, well I suggest we hit them again, and this time with the Moskit-IIs.”

“Fight your battle,” Karpov. “I will maneuver the ship.”

Karpov nodded, glad to have a freer hand, and turned to Victor Samsonov. “Give me a salvo of four Moskit IIs…” He had suddenly noticed two the secondary contacts edging closer to the ship on Samsonov’s screen. “Those must be destroyers,” he said quickly. “They are at 15,000 meters. Engage them with the 152mm deck guns. Then put two missiles on each primary.”

“Aye, sir!” Samsonov went to work, feeding commands to the ship’s weapons systems. In contrast to the labor of the British at their gun directors and FCBs, Kirov’s systems were lighting fast computers integrated with their 3D radar. Seconds later they saw the forward 152mm battery rotate, its twin gun barrels elevate slightly, and then a crack, crack, crack, as the guns fired, both barrels recoiling in perfect unison with every salvo. One of the two aft batteries joined the fray as Samsonov targeted each of the two advancing destroyers with one battery.

Then the forward deck hatches flipped open and up leapt the Sunburns. They would fire at three second intervals at a range of 28,000 meters. In a matter of six seconds they would accelerate rapidly to mach three, over 3500 kilometers per hour or about 1000 meters per second. They would strike their targets in just twenty-eight seconds! By comparison the muzzle velocity of the British 16 inch guns was 766 meters per second. The missiles were actually faster, designed to defeat the lighting reflexes of American Aegis class cruisers, and they were a hundred times more accurate than Nelson’s guns. They were going to hit whatever they were aimed at, almost without fail, and they were going to hit hard.

While the British heavyweights swung their heavy arms, sending metal haymakers Kirov’s way in wide arcs, it was as if the Russian ship calmly reached out one hand to steady their foe’s chin, then rammed a strong right hand right to the face with thunderous speed. And the only way they were going to knock these ships out was by a head shot. Their armor was simply too thick to give them body shots. Karpov was again targeting the ship to be hit well above the water line, hoping to strike the superstructure. The Moskit-IIs each carried a 450KG semi-armor penetrating warhead, and tons of fuel for their propulsion system which would ignite when they exploded. The whole missile weighed over four tons. They were basically a hypersonic armor piercing fire bomb, and fire had been the nemesis of ships at sea for centuries.

Syfret had ordered Nelson and Rodney to give their enemy hell, and seconds later it came rebounding back at them with a fury. The missiles flashed in on the battleships and blasted into the center of the ships with terrific force. They exploded in huge massive fireballs of broiling heat and molten shrapnel, almost as if two miniature suns had ignited their angry fire at the heart of each vessel. One warhead smashed into the armor plating at the base of Nelson’s citadel but was frustrated by twelve inches of hardened armor there. Seconds later the second hammered against C turret again, this time immolating the guns with its terrible impact and fire. The armor withstood the impact, but not the men inside, who were killed almost instantly by the terrible concussive force generated by the velocity of the missile.

A column of torrid fire and smoke mushroomed up from the ship, and this time Admiral Syfret was thrown from his feet, his head striking the bulkhead and knocking him unconscious. For her part, Rodney suffered equal harm, struck slightly aft of the main conning tower where the range finders, gun directors and FCB controllers were feverishly working up their next salvo. They had fired just as the first missile came in, however, and the second Moskit was caught in the tremendous blast of six huge guns, adding its exploding fury to their tumult and shock, which rocked the ship violently. Pipes burst all over the ship. Chairs went flying in the mess halls, hand rails quavered, equipment was shaken loose from its bolted moorings and, aft of the citadel where the armor was thinner, the warhead came on through the outer bulkheads and blasted into the metal chambers beyond.

Had these been modern ships, those hits would have utterly destroyed both targets. But here, though rocked and damaged, burning fiercely and shaken almost senseless, neither Nelson nor Rodney had been dealt a fatal blow. Men scrambled up from below, some aghast to see the hard pine wood main deck planks contorted and bent by the concussion of their own guns alone. Dazed and tired, they reacted by reflex, fetching fire hoses, grabbing crowbars to move loosened shards of mangled steel, and then set about fighting the terrible fires. Some tried to get to the back hatch on Nelson’s stricken C turret but were amazed to find the hatch wheel was melting when they fought their way to the scene with fire hoses!

From Kirov’s perspective the scale and violence of the explosions seemed decisive. Karpov folded his arms, satisfied that he had smashed their enemy, and that the ship would now be free to sail on, but he was wrong. He was looking at Fedorov, a smile on his face when he caught the young Captain’s eye, and just as he was about to crow they heard yet another explosive salvo fire in the distance. Karpov thought it was a secondary explosion from his missile strike at first, until they heard the dreadful wail of the shells overhead, mostly long this time, though one fell short, no more than a thousand meters off their starboard bow.

“Con — Air radar contact. Multiple readings at one-eight-zero degrees. Range forty kilometers and closing on our position at 200kph. Altitude 15,000.” Rodenko has spotted the squadrons of Albacore II torpedo bombers off the British carriers. There were nine each from 827 and 831 Squadrons off Indomitable, and another twelve with the whole of 832 Squadron off Victorious. A flight of six Sea Harriers from 800 Squadron escorted them in, some thirty-six planes in all.

“Those will be torpedo bombers,” said Fedorov. “They are biplanes like the ones we faced earlier. Helm, come hard left twenty degrees.”

“Aye, sir. Coming left full rudder on a heading of two-six-zero.”

“I can see the carrier task force on radar,” said Rodenko, looking at Karpov.

“Let’s discourage any further air strikes. Give me one Moskit-II, Mister Samsonov. Put it in the center of that task force.” He knew there were three carriers south of him, but did not want to commit three missiles. Perhaps if he lit a fire on one carrier the others might relent, or scramble to recover her aircraft, which would disrupt further offensive operations. It was thinking that failed to consider the measure and mettle of his opponent, but he soon turned his attention to the Klinok SAM system, ordering both forward and aft silos activated to deal with the incoming tide of planes. The 152mm batteries stopped firing, and he clutched his field glasses, seeing the two smaller British destroyers that had been rushing at them both burning and nearly swamped. Ashanti was listing to port, and Tartar was a burning wreck. But he was soon surprised to see four more ships on his port side. The British had released the hounds.

They want to make a coordinated air/sea torpedo attack, he knew at once. Four destroyers and thirty six planes! He rushed to Samsonov, noting the inventory readouts on his missile panel. The missile he had ordered against the carriers fired and surged away to the south, and the readout on his Moskit-II inventory now reduced to nine missiles available. He also had eight more of the slower P-900 cruise missiles and nine more MOS-III Starfire missiles, blistering fast, yet with slightly smaller warheads. Kirov had just twenty-six ship killers left. He had put three missiles into each of the British battleships and still he saw their guns booming in the distance, the range still agonizingly close for a ship accustomed to firing at adversaries up to a hundred kilometers or more away.

“Fedorov! What is the range of the torpedoes on these ships and planes?”

“A maximum range of about 11,000 meters, but they will probably try to fire much closer. Remember the torpedoes will not track us. They run true as aimed. The destroyers may fire at long range just to harass us, but I don’t think the planes will fire much beyond three or four thousand meters.”

That was welcome news to Karpov. His Klinok’s would deal fiery hell to this air strike, and now he ordered all three 152mm batteries to engage the destroyers.

Some 15,000 meters to the south, on came the British hound dogs. Lookout was leading the way, Lightning just a five hundred meters off her starboard quarter. Behind them came Intrepid and Matchless. As Karpov stared at them he had bad memories of those final hectic moments on the bridge when the American Desron 7 had come charging in while he struggled to fire that devastating MOS-III missile with its powerful nuclear warhead. With a flash he remembered how he had ordered Martinov to also mount a warhead on the number ten cruise missile as well! Was it still there, he wondered, or had the missile crews replaced it with a conventional warhead? That did not matter. He had no missile key around his neck, and he was not the same man now. Those frantic memories seemed to come to him from another life, but the heat of battle was on him, and his adrenaline rushed. They had been engaged for over thirty minutes now, much more time than he thought it would take to stop the British battle force. He had wanted this fight, and the British were giving it to him.

“Aircraft descending rapidly,” said Rodenko. “They are dropping down low and dispersing on a wide front.”

The crack of Kirov’s deck guns shuddered in the air, a sharp head-pounding staccato. Fedorov again maneuvered the ship, even as the distant battleships blasted yet another salvo. How could they have weathered those missile hits? The heavy rounds came wailing in, much closer, and then one fell terribly close off Kirov’s port side, exploding in a violent upheaval of seawater and shaking the ship so hard that he could feel it roll from the force. The concussion was enough to buckle the hull slightly, but it did not break. Yet splinters of metal had showered that side of the ship near the impact, and there were many men down, blood staining their bright yellow life preservers where they manned their posts.

“Come right, twenty degrees hard!” shouted Fedorov, still maneuvering the ship in fast evasive turns. Nelson had found the range on them at long last, but Rodney’s salvo fell well off their port side. That was close he thought. That was oh, so very close. Then he heard Karpov shout the orders to engage the incoming air strike, and Kirov’s decks were soon awash with fuming white smoke as one missile after another popped up from the decks, like wet barracudas, and then went streaking off to the south. This time there were no misfires.

Chapter 30

The four destroyers raced forward, their sharp bows cutting smartly through the calm seas, their commander’s eyes riveted on the distant silhouette of the enemy ship ahead. Lookout made the grievous mistake of trying to illuminate their adversary with its searchlights, and was soon given the primary attention of Kirov’s deck guns. The armor piercing rounds piled into the ship and riddled her with five successive hits and one near miss. She was burning forward and aft, with two of her four 4.7 inch guns now blazing wrecks.

As the other ships fanned out to set up for their torpedo runs their crews could hear the distant drone of the Albacore IIs, right on cue. Then they saw the alarming missile fire from Kirov, gaping at the wild rush of black darts in the sky, driven by fire and steam. The missiles rose and veered in swift jerking motions, like a school of angry fish seeking prey. And they found the lumbering Albacores with little difficulty, blasting one after another from the sky as they descended to make their torpedo runs.

Aboard the destroyer Intrepid, Lieutenant Commander Colin Douglas Maud stood squarely on the bridge, his stout frame and thick black beard making him look for all the world like an old pirate captain of old. All he needed was an eye patch and scarf, but instead he wore a woolen black beret instead of his hat, one hand grasping a long blackthorn walking stick which he tapped on the deck as they made their torpedo run, almost as if to urge his ship on just a little faster.

He had joined the Royal Navy in 1921, with two years on the old Iron Duke before eventually coming to serve with the destroyers. He had killed two U-boats earlier in the war, and was out with several other destroyers in the hunt for the Bismarck, over a year ago. It was his ship, Icarus, that had first come upon the flotsam of HMS Hood’s tragic sinking, ropes rigged on her sides and ready to pull men out of the water, but they found only three souls alive that day.

He had also been out with Tovey’s fleet a year ago, screening Home Fleet as it closed on another fast German raider in the North Atlantic. His was one of two ships that suffered badly when the enemy used rockets to strike the fleet at long range, and Maud’s luck ran out when his destroyer, Icarus, was struck amidships and sunk. Thankfully, he was pulled out of the water and saved, but lost many shipmates, and his beloved bulldog Winnie as well. The loss of his ship was a shock that took some time to get over, but he recovered, steeled himself, and immediately asked Home Fleet for another destroyer. They gave him the Intrepid.

The Malta convoys had been his lot of late, but this was something different, and he growled out commands to the bridge crews, full of pluck and vigor as the ships sped forward. He had seen the rockets that struck the battleships, his mind frozen with the memory of those awful moments in the North Atlantic, the terrible explosion and fire, the bone chilling cold when he went into the sea. Yet this was what a destroyer leader lived for, he thought, not the slogging drudgery of escort duty, nor even the prowling measured hunt for enemy U-boats. It was the mad dash he loved most, even if it meant he might rush again into fire and death. That was the thing that gave its name to these ships—Lighting, Intrepid, and as he urged his men on his heart also burned with the thought that he was now bringing vengeance to the ship that had taken Icarus from him. He would get in close and fire his torpedoes at the monster, or he would die trying.

“Come on, lads,” he shouted at the torpedomen as they worked to get the tubes ready on both sides of his ship. “Get yer backs into it!” He was well lined up on the enemy ship, some 9000 yards out and cruising at his top speed. By god, this ship was fast! It was running over thirty knots and his 36 knot destroyer was laboring to close the range. He would have to come left to lead the ship by a good measure if he was to have any chance of hitting it, and that would make his ship a fine target when he turned.

Above them the black night was being ripped open with blazing fireballs and the hideous streaks of the enemy rockets. As he stared at the enemy ship it seem a seething medusa, with each missile contrail a winding, hissing snake with venomous death in its fangs. Lookout was swamped and on fire, falling off to their stern, Lightning was battered by enemy gunfire, straddled and hit amidships, where one of her torpedoes exploded, breaking the ship near in two, yet Intrepid plowed on. And when the enemy guns began to range on him, the first round blackening the forecastle off the starboard side, he bellowed out the order to fire. He would bloody well get his torpedoes in the water, come what may.

The other three destroyers had been pounded into submission by the incredible rate of deadly accurate fire from the enemy deck guns. They were turning away, some making smoke, others burning so badly that that would have been a needless afterthought. It was Intrepid that still carried the charge forward the only ship that got her fish into the sea.

Captain Maud watched the torpedoes go, looking to see a subflight of three Albacores come right up the wakes of the destroyers, roaring in over the wave tops on his starboard side as they veered to attack. He raised his blackthorn and shook it at his comrades with a hearty cheer. “Go on and get the bastard,” he shouted. “Get your bloody teeth in ‘em, boys!”

It was Tom Wales of 827 Squadron and two of his mates. They had put their planes right on the deck, just feet above the water and came roaring down the wakes of the four destroyers, shielded by the ships until they came under that deadly shell fire.

“Stay down real low, and find any cover you can…” That was what Parsons had told him outside the briefing room.

As Kirov’s shells found their marks on the destroyers, several Klinoks did not see the three Albacores running up behind the destroyers, and they selected other targets at higher elevation. The planes veered at the last minute, emerging from behind the ships and roared on past, like flying fish that had come up from under the sea, their fuselages and wings wet with spray. It was the most daring thing Maud had ever seen, and he continued to wave his blackthorn walking stick high overhead, his deep voice urging the planes on. Then he saw a burst of fire from the dark enemy ahead, and heard a grinding rattle.

Samsonov had seen the planes at the last minute, so close now on his targeting radar, and he immediately activated the ship’s close in defense Gatling guns. There were three guns on each side of the ship, with six rotating barrels and sinister looking housings that looked like looked like soldier’s helmets. The barrels whirled and bright fire burst from the guns, sending a hail of steel toward the oncoming planes. Two were hit, riddled with shells and careening wildly, end over end, as they hit the water, but Tommy Wales pulled hard on his torpedo release and he got his fish in the water. Immediately veering behind the burning mass of Lightning just ahead on his left, he was shielded from the withering fire of the Gatling gun that had targeted his plane.

He would be the only man that would return from 827 squadron that night. The rest had all been taken by the SAMs. Three of nine men survived in 831 Squadron. They had pulled their levers early and then dove for the deck, but their fish were not well aimed and they went wildly astray. 832 Squadron off Victorious lost eight of her twelve planes, and only because Kirov’s missiles had broken up the squadron as it descended and scattered it so badly that the remaining four pilots bugged out. They had never seen anything like the terrible fireworks this ship had flung at them, and they hoped they never would again. They had flown bravely threw enemy flak, dodging the mindless rounds as they puffed and exploded in the sky around them. But these things came at you as if they knew your name. They were death in a steel cased shell with wings on it, and frightening beyond belief.

“Torpedoes in the water!” shouted Tasarov on sonar. His system immediately went to active rapid pulse detection mode, beeping in ever shortening intervals to indicate the closing range of the oncoming threat. “I have three contacts.”

“Come right, thirty degrees hard!” shouted Fedorov.

The ship heeled over with the high speed turn, but Karpov could see that they would easily avoid the barbs Intrepid had hurled at them on this course, yet that turn would put them dangerously close to the last torpedo, the fish that had fallen from Tom Wales Albacore II.

“Shkval!” said Karpov reflexively.

The fast rocket torpedo was fired, acquiring a target in seconds and racing with impossible speed to destroy it. Karpov looked back out the port view panes and saw the explosive dome of seawater slowly subside, and the threatening streaks of two more torpedoes leaving cold white wakes behind them. Then the scene grew quiet again, and there was only Kirov’s churning wake, and the distant glow of fire on the heavy British ships. Tasarov signaled that all was well.

The ship had turned on a heading of 292 degrees northwest now, still running at full battle speed. They had raced past the Almeria bay in the last forty minutes, coming around past another flat headland that jutted south into the Alboran Sea. Ahead Fedorov could see the wrinkled shadowy highlands rising from a rocky coastline and climbing steeply to heights up over 1800 meters. The ship was heading straight for them on this course, in spite of the danger posed by submarines that might be lurking near the coast. It was the only sea room they would find off their starboard quarter for a while, and he knew he would soon have to come left again to get round Cabo Sacratif looming in the distance. Yet they had finally pulled well ahead of the British battleships, and the range was now increasing with each passing minute.

They saw one last bright orange belch of fire from their pursuers, and then the British Guns fell silent. Nelson was still burning badly, with her smoke so thick that the entire conning tower was engulfed in the black plume and the ship had to turn to get the prevailing wind off angle so the weary bridge crew could get air and function. Rodney had hurled one last vengeful salvo at them, and now the rounds came soaring in from her A turret and fell in a tight spread so close to the aft section of the ship that they could feel their rump jostled by the near impact. She would not find the range again.

The British ships knew that the sea devil they had been chasing would now escape them. Kirov was opening her lead steadily, and there was no way they could possibly catch up. The intercept course they had wisely chosen allowed them only this brief window for engagement. So now they turned thirty points to port, the command of the battle squadron falling to Admiral Fraser on Rodney. Syfret had been hustled off the bridge of Nelson, alive but still unconscious below decks. Fraser also got word from Admiral St. Lyster that Indomitable had been hit by one of these rockets, and took some heavy damage below the fight deck amidships. They couldn’t stand to lose any more carriers. Eagle was enough, so he wisely decided to turn his battered ships southward to cover the carrier force. Most of the destroyers were fairly well beaten up, except for Intrepid, who came out remarkably unscathed, though she had gotten in closer to this devil than any other ship.

Slowly the rumble of guns and roar of the missiles subsided, and the night once again settled heavily over the scene. The ‘Battle of Almeria Bay’ had been fought for well over an hour and was now concluded. Though Rodney and Nelson had clearly taken the harder blows, they would say that they were not the first to turn from the heat of battle, and that their enemy had fled into the night, breaking off with her superior speed to escape the grasp of their 16 inch guns. It was an old story for the Nelson class battleships. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had escaped them in the past, and they were not fast enough to chase either Bismarck or Tirpitz until the former was stopped by planes off the Ark Royal so Rodney could catch up. Their day had come and gone, and they survived to be eventually folded into laborious convoy escort duty later in the war, still a stalwart threat, but well past their hour of glory.

When the destroyer attack failed and the air strike suffered such grievous losses, Fraser knew his men had suffered enough for one night. They had all done their best, and a good many DSOs would be awarded for this action—but too many of them posthumously. As destroyer Intrepid led the remnant of the flotilla south, he gave the order to turn and effect a rendezvous with the carriers. Then he tramped listlessly into the wireless room to get a message off to Tovey. It was just three short words, and they would carry the whole of what his men and ships had striven for and failed to win in the end.

‘Geronimo… Geronimo… Geronimo…’

Submarine Talisman had been lying quietly in the cool still waters off the coast of Adra, her Asdic operator listening to the churning sea battle above. Lieutenant Commander Michael Willmott had drifted the boat up to periscope depth. He had come to this boat in time to get in on some exciting North Atlantic patrols. His boat had hunted for the cruiser Prince Eugen and was also engaged in the hunt for Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and thought he had them in his sights on March 12, diving to begin his attack. But as he lined up on the targets he suddenly realized he was looking at HMS Rodney and King George V! He made the best of an embarrassing moment and used the situation as a drill for a practice attack before surfacing and signaling his presence to the battleships.

Now he was listening to the rumble of Rodney’s guns off to the southeast, their massive report still audible at this shallow depth, a dull boom resounding through the sea. The old girl still has a temper when she wants to, he thought. He was glad he had not stupidly fired on her those months ago. It seemed his boat had been fated to run afoul of his own side far too often in this war. A year ago he had fired on what he thought was an enemy submarine and later learned it was Favell’s boat, HMS Otus. Thankfully all his torpedoes missed. Most recently he had been stalking a U-Boat in the Bay of Biscay, and when he surfaced to get up some speed he was quickly pounced upon by a British Sunderland and depth charged!

Talisman was knocked about quite a bit, and put in to Gibraltar for repairs on the morning of 13th of August. Operation Pedestal was in full gear and he was gratefully spared that duty while the engineers worked feverishly on his boat at the docks—a little too feverishly, he thought. He remembered pulling a mate aside and asking him what all the haste was about.

“Can’t say as I know, Lieutenant,” the man said. “We were just to have this boat seaworthy by sunset, and that’s all I know.”

“By tonight? Well look at her—look at that hull buckling there.”

“Don’t worry none sir, we’ll patch her up nice and good… But I’d keep to shallow water if I was you, sir. None of that deep diving and such.”

Willmott was flabbergasted, but he had orders in hand by 15:00 hours that afternoon and was told to get out into the Alboran Sea and lurk in the coastal waters off Spain to look for a renegade French battlecruiser. And here he was, at a little before 04:00 hours on the morning of August 14th.

At least it was a little excitement. He could be stuck in an office in the bowels of the Rock answering a raft of tedious questions about that Sunderland incident. Now he had a shot at another fast capital ship, and by god, there the bugger was! He spied the threatening silhouette of what looked like a battlecruiser, the ship his Asdic operator had been listening to for the last half hour, and she was running fast and furious right in his direction. All he had to do now was fire.

“Down scope! Load tubes one and four. On the double quick!”

The crews rushed to battle stations and he had his fish ready to fry in record time. He raised the periscope again to check his alignment. There it was, still barreling in at high speed, some 3000 meters out. He could take a long shot, or he could wait silently in the shallows until it came just a little closer, he thought. While he was considering his options his luck ran out. Something came out of the murky depths with lightning speed and found his boat first. He felt a massive explosion well aft, the terrible sound of metal wrenching apart, then the rush of seawater raging in. The tail of the sub had been blown clean away.

In one last moment of life he looked at his dazed Executive Officer, eyes wide and said: “My God, Johnny. I think they’ve buggered us!”

They were the last words spoken by any man on the boat.

An interval of uneasy calm ensued, and the men aboard Kirov eased back in their posts, breathing a little more calmly after the Shkval had killed the sub. Tasarov again signaled all clear and Karpov visibly relaxed, his shoulders slumping, face drawn with fatigue. They had been running the gauntlet for the last three hours, evading the heavy blows of the enemy with everything their skill and the amazing technological advantages of their ship could deliver.

Fedorov looked at the position of the enemy surface action groups on radar and he knew they had broken through. He consulted his navigation board and settled on a course of 250 degrees southwest. They were still 240 miles east of Gibraltar, and when Byko called and asked him to slow the ship down so he could check on some possible damage aft, he reduced to twenty knots for a time and changed his heading slightly west to an area where he thought the thermals would not provide any acoustic cover for another lurking submarine.

At the time he knew nothing of the codeword that had been flashed from Fraser to Tovey indicating that he had escaped the grasp of Force Z and was headed west. He knew nothing of Home Fleet as it made its steady approach, now well past Lisbon and churning its way south. His only thought was that they were now out in front of Force Z, out of range of those terrible 16 inch guns, and not likely to be caught again. He intended to get back up near thirty knots at his earliest opportunity, and to make Gibraltar by nine or ten in the morning for the slog through the straits.

But the best laid plans of mice and men, have oft gone awry.