The Whale Has Wings Vol 2 - Taranto to Singapore (23 page)

The manoeuvres of the two forces during the morning - the German fleet heading south, the British force heading north - had now brought them only 120 miles apart, and while the dive bombers had been closing on the Glorious, the Illustrious and Formidable had been launching their first strike and spotting the second ready to launch. Even before the last of the Ju87's was retiring from the attack, 21 TBR, 18DB and 12 fighters were getting into formation and heading north, a second equally powerful strike warming up on the carrier decks.

To the north, Lutjens was happy about the results of the strike. With the British carrier out of action and almost certainly sinking, his ships could break out into the convoy lanes. It was a shame that the Graf Zeppelins airgroup had been ruined by the effort, but that was why she was there, and now his powerful battleships could do what they had been designed for. Once the carrier had recovered her planes, he would split his force, leaving the Prinz Eugen to protect the carrier while the Bismark and Scharnhorst went on to sink record numbers of British merchantmen.

Unfortunately this plan came apart even as the Graf Zeppelin was landing on her planes. A large echo was picked up from the south - obviously another British strike. The damage to her flight deck made the landing-on a slow process, and the fighters were ordered to intercept the inbound strike rather than try to land. This was a tactic of desperation; many of the planes were low on ammunition after their previous combat and intercepting and engaging the new attackers would likely mean they had to ditch due to lack of fuel. Nevertheless, all eight fighters turned south as ordered.

The inbound attack was intercepted some 10 miles from the German ships (while the Graf Zeppelin had radar, the Germans had not developed anything like the FAA's techniques of combat management, and the fighters were simply sent in the direction of the strike). The SeaLance were already losing altitude for their torpedo attacks. However the fighters sent with them outnumbered the defenders, and as the Me109's started an attack on the torpedo planes they were intercepted and kept away from the attack planes by a dozen Goshawks.

The first planes to attack the carrier were the Cormorants. The Graf Zeppelin was in the middle of the heavy ships, who were adding their firepower to hers, but the AA, while heavy, was not of the intensity that an RN force was used to putting up. All eighteen of the planes were tasked to attack the carrier, to put her out of commission and ideally sunk before the second strike arrived, and only one of the planes was shot down by the defences. As the planes levelled off into their escape, the carrier was reeling from four 1,000lb bomb hits.

Unlike the RN and the USN, the German navy had not really appreciated what a fire hazard a carrier was. The precautions and protection against avgas fires was thus less. In addition, she had managed to strike all nine of her returning dive bombers below. As the attack had been at a fairly short range, this meant she had nine partly-fuelled potential bombs in her hangar. All four of the bombs had penetrated her flight deck easily. Two had exploded in the hangar itself, causing major fires; the other two had sliced through the hangar floor and exploded lower in the ship. Shock damage cut power in the vessel, that and serious machinery damage due to the bomb hits caused the ship to slew to a halt.

Smoke was already billowing from the ship as the divebombers made their escape, and it was only minutes after before a number of secondary explosions shook her as partly-fuelled planes in her hangar exploded like small bombs, causing additional fires and decimating the damage control parties trying to bring the original ones under control. As they watched pieces of the flight deck hurled into the air, the torpedo planes were certain that this carrier at least wouldn't be launching any more strikes today.

While the orders to the first strike were to make certain of the carrier, they did have a problem, in that the carrier was surrounded by three rather large pieces of moving steel, making her quite a difficult target for a torpedo run. In view of the damage already done, the raid leader decided to expend some of his torpedoes on the Scharnhorst, in order to make a clear path to the carrier. Twelve of the SeaLance curved into an attack run on the battlecruiser, while the remaining nine started an attack run behind them aimed at the carrier itself.

As expected, the captain of the battlecruiser really had no choice but to take violent evasive action against the torpedo tracks heading for his ship. Indeed, the Scharnhorst managed to evade ten of the twelve torpedoes, but in doing so the carrier was left completely uncovered against the remaining torpedo planes. The two torpedoes that hit the battlecruiser caused only moderate damage against her heavy Torpedo Defence System, but even so a considerable amount of water entered the ship through the damaged parts of her hull, and her speed was reduced to 24 knots.

The Graf Zeppelin, almost stopped now, could do little to evade the attack. It was a textbook example of how to torpedo a ship - four of the nine torpedoes hit the helpless carrier on the same side. While the attack was somewhat mitigated by her TDS, the damage caused let so much water in that in minutes the ship had developed a list of over 15 degrees, and made it impossible to restore power. As a result, the fires and petrol burning in the hangar (and already starting to leak down deeper into the ship) were obviously uncontrollable, and as yet more explosions rocked the ship the captain had no choice but to give the order to abandon.

The whole attack had barely taken 15 minutes, and as the aircraft headed south, the German force was left trying to recover from the loss of its carrier and the damage to the battlecruiser. Without any destroyers present, the Prinz Eugen came close enough to launch her boats to try and pick up survivors, but the heat from the burning carrier made it difficult to get close enough for effective rescue work. Meanwhile the Scharnhorst was starting to make temporary repairs to the torpedo damage.

Less than half an hour after the attack, with the Graf Zeppelin capsizing into the North Atlantic amid clouds of black smoke and steam, the Bismarck's radar picked up another large echo of aircraft heading towards them from the south.

The second wave of aircraft had no difficulty in finding the German force - the pillar of smoke sent up by the Graf Zeppelin could be seen 50 miles away. It was just as well they had the help, the weather was steadily worsening, the tops of the waves beneath being blown into spray. With no enemy fighters to worry about (the three Me109's who had survived combat with the Goshawks had been forced to ditch as they ran out of fuel), they could take their time to make a deliberate attack. With the carrier gone, their orders were to damage and slow the two capital ships so they would not to be able to evade the British force. The first strike was a combined one on the Scharnhorst; a hammer and anvil attack by twelve torpedo planes while ten Cormorants dive bombed her. While the battlecruiser was slowed by the earlier torpedo hits, she was still fully under control and attempted to avoid the torpedoes. However with a dozen torpedoes cutting in from two directions, it was simply impossible to comb all the tracks. Two more of the aerial missiles struck her on the port side, and she was forced to slow to reduce the new inflow of water.

While she was manoeuvring to try and evade the torpedoes, the dive bombers were making their near-vertical attacks. Armed with 1,600lb AP bombs, they were quite confident of penetrating the ships armoured deck. Faced with the almost impossible task of combing two groups of torpedoes and a simultaneous dive bombing, the battlecruiser was hit three times. One of the bombs failed to explode (although even so nearly a ton of armour-piercing steel did considerable damage to one of the ships engine rooms). Of the two that exploded, one hit her amidships close to the port side, slicing through the deck and exploding in one of the secondary magazines. Not designed to withstand a direct hit of that size, the magazine itself detonated, blowing a large hole in the side and deck of the ship. The final bomb did by far the most serious damage, even though it almost missed. The armour piercing missile cut through the stern of the ship, its fuse detonating it just after it hit the water close to the ships propellers

The Scharnhorst was unusual among capital ships as having three propeller shafts. While a ship with four shafts might have survived being incapacitated by the bomb, the explosion wrecked the starboard and centre shafts. It also severely damaged and jammed the rudder, leaving the huge ship unable to steer, and in fact do anything than curve around in a huge circle.

The other eight dive bombers made for the Bismark. Her AA defence was heavier than that of the Scharnhorst, and this time the dive bombing was not well coordinated with the attack by the torpedo planes. Despite this, they managed one hit and one near miss. The miss did some damage to the ship's hull, but nothing serious. The other bomb was more successful, hitting directly on top of B turret. The bomb didn't penetrate - Bismarck's main turrets had almost 8" of armour protection - but it did disable the turret. The explosion also sent heavy splinters from the bomb across the upper deck, causing the bridge crew to duck reflexively, but more importantly sending a jagged shard of steel straight through the battleships main fire control radar.

The men on the bridge were getting back to their feet when a lookout saw the torpedo planes approaching. Nine planes were left, and they were attacking in two groups to make Bismark spread her defensive fire and to make it hard for her to evade both launches. The rough sea was already causing a problem as the torpedoes dropped. Two of them broached and failed in the rough water and of the remaining seven only one hit the huge battleship. Bismark had a very deep TDS, and while she was slowed slightly by the underwater damage, and started to lose fuel oil from a ruptured tank, no major damage was done.

The planes turned to fly back to the carriers, now some 90 miles to the south, disappointed that they hadn't done more damage to the Bismark. At least the Scharnhorst had been rendered incapable of action, and they looked forward to coming back and doing the same to the Bismark.

On the Bismark, Lutjens was reviewing his options. Scharnhorst was not going to be under control any time soon; either a propeller shaft had to be got back into action so she could steer on engines, or her rudder had to be repaired enough to be useful. Doing either in the worsening seas seemed unlikely. That left him with two heavy ships, the Bismark and the Prinz Eugen. While the battleships radar was, temporarily at least, out of action, the heavy cruiser reported that the raid had also left a couple of watchers. So even if he abandoned the Scharnhorst, it was unlikely he would get away, though there was always the possibility that the cruiser might break free into the convoy lanes. However a cruiser alone was not enough to seriously inconvenience the Royal Navy; most of the important convoys were now escorted by a light carrier or a heavy cruiser or battleship. While the Bismark could handle these, the cruiser could not. He needed some way of dealing with what was obviously a second carrier to his south. His own planes had already sunk one (judging from their reports). If he could sink the second, he had a chance. Especially if the weather kept on worsening, it was possible he could catch her with her planes on board. The weather had deteriorated since the captain of the Graf Zeppelin had been worried about getting his planes off and back again in, and the same would surely apply to the British carrier.

In the end, it was perhaps the thought of at least getting revenge on the British carriers which had done so much damage to the Kriegsmarine over the past year that made him take the decision he did. Leaving Scharnhorst to her best efforts at damage control, the remaining two ships turned south and brought their speed up to 27 knots. It was 1445 on the 28th March, a day that would be remembered in the German Navy.

Back at the British force, the two carriers were still landing their planes (a process slowed by the now quite rough seas) when the aircraft shadowing the Bismark reported two heavy ships heading south in the direction of the carrier force. This posed Admiral Holland a problem. He would have all the planes down in another half hour, in plenty of time to manoeuvre his force to stay away from the German ships and arrange another strike that day. However Glorious was still in poor shape. While all her fires had now been put out, the old ship still had serious damage from the torpedo hit, and in the current weather conditions couldn't do much more than 6-7 knots - preferably in an easterly direction in order to reduce the pressure on the damaged area.

He therefore decided to split his force into three parts. The Glorious, escorted by the cruiser Edinburgh and three destroyers, would make for Iceland in a course intended to keep her clear of the German ships. The Illustrious and Formidable, with their escorting destroyers, would drop back to keep about 80 miles from the Bismark, while readying a full strike. The third part of his force, the KGV, Prince of Wales, Hood and the heavy cruiser Norfolk would intercept the Germans. The carrier's would intervene when they were ready, although in view of his superiority he felt that unless the Germans changed course again his capital ships could finish the job by themselves. He wasn't too concerned about the weather unless it worsened into a full storm; while the carrier evolutions were slowed, they signalled that they saw no problem in getting another strike off in daylight.

The three capital ships and the cruiser turned north, battle ensigns snapping in the growing westerly wind. They were guided by the plane still shadowing the Bismark, the closing speed of the two forces some 50 knots. At just before 1600 a lookout in the crows nest of the Hood confirmed the sighting. Smoke on the horizon to the north. All the ships involved were already prepared and at action stations, the only thing remaining was to see what the surface action would bring. Holland had been informed that the Formidable would be ready to launch in about half an hour; the two carriers were ordered to launch their first strike, but to wait for the target. Depending on how the surface action worked out, he was considering using the strike to finish off the Scharnhorst.