“The intercom-” Volsky pointed, moving quickly to reach for the microphone. “Engineering, this is Admiral Volsky in sick bay. Send two men with a spanner and metal cutter at once. Acknowledge…”
He waited, yet no sound returned. Then he looked at the intercom box, his eyes widening as he realized what had happened. There was no red light. It was dead.
It was just past 1800 hours and Fedorov heard the sudden alarm signaling battle stations again. The three sharp bursts signaled the ship to secure for anti-submarine warfare, and he heard the Shkval hunter killer torpedo fire soon after. He wanted to rush to the bridge, but realized he was still technically relieved of his post there. Then he remembered what Doctor Zolkin had whispered to him before he left sick bay…Come back for your prescription at 1800 hours.
At first he had been confused by the remark, for he was healthy and fit, and took no medication of any kind. But the look in the Doctor’s eye spoke volumes, and he knew Zolkin was inviting him to come see the Admiral again, perhaps to voice his concerns over the Captain’s rash engagements and share his perspectives on the history. With no battle station to man, he was suddenly eager to get to the sick bay as soon as he could.
He ran down the long narrow halls and corridors, up a ladder and onto the central deck where Zolkin held forth in his clinic. Usually there would be a line there, but not during battle stations. Fedorov huffed up to the door and pulled on the hatch, surprised to find it was shut tight. Then he heard a voice from the inside, somewhat cautious, yet insistent. It was the Doctor.
“Who is there?”
“It’s me, Doctor. Lieutenant Fedorov. You asked me to come at 1800 hours. If it is inconvenient, I can come another time.”
“Fedorov!” It was the Admiral’s voice. “Look at the emergency hatch latch on top. What do you see?”
Fedorov looked up, shocked to see a small metal padlock slipped through the machined holes in the metal flange to lock the bolt in place. He told the Admiral what he saw, and was ordered to fetch engineers at once with metal cutters or an acetylene torch. What was happening? His mind needed only a few seconds to piece the situation together. It was Karpov, he knew. Karpov and Orlov. They were taking the ship, and god only knew what mischief the Captain had in mind. He had to get to engineering as fast as he could.
Karpov had sealed off the bridge and posted a guard. He checked the hatch latches personally and thumbed off the intercom there to disable incoming calls through the hatch. There was nothing to preclude someone banging on the hatch with a wrench to get attention, but he could ignore it, and it would take time to force the hatch open, even for the ship’s engineers. Time was all he needed now. Tasarov found and killed the enemy submarine, and he realized it must have been a German U-boat.
In fact, it was the boat Fedorov had discussed with the Admiral, U-563, an early arrival with orders to join the Gronland wolfpack forming up south of Iceland, but the boat’s captain had seen something curious that led him astray. He spotted King George V and Repulse hastening west, saw them hit and burning, and came to believe that there must be other U-boats about. Eager to get into the action, he turned west. The British ships were hurt but not sunk, and then made off to the south, but U-563 kept on a course that eventually brought it very near another strange looking vessel, which he tried to engage with a badly planned long shot. He paid for that mistake with his life.
Now Karpov was taking final stock of the situation. He could see that the Americans were getting dangerously close to his ship, yet they did not seem to have very many heavy units in their task groups. He was more concerned about group three on Rodenko’s screen, with at least three battleships, or so he believed. What were the names of the ships? The King, the Prince, and another one. It did not matter. He would sink them all.
“I have been recording signal return characteristics on those units,” said Rodenko. King George V is there again, along with another ship that is nearly identical in its profile.”
“Churchill,” said Karpov, his eyes alight.
“Sir?” Rodenko did not understand what the Captain meant.
“Never mind, Lieutenant.” Karpov decided to engage the heavy British task force he presumed to be the British Home Fleet, ordering Samsonov to fire Moskit-II Sunburns in two missile salvos.
“What about group number one, sir?” Samsonov asked. “It is well inside ninety miles and closing.”
“Those are nothing more than destroyers,” said Karpov. “We’ll deal with them later. For now, target the British-this group.” The Captain pointed at Samsonov’s CIC screen and the weapons officer acknowledged with a deep “Aye, sir.”
The British were steaming with destroyers Icarus and Intrepid, and a screen of three cruisers, Suffolk, Nigeria, and Aurora. Behind them came the battleships King George V and Prince of Wales, with the battlecruiser Repulse at the rear. The missiles would come in on the starboard side of the task force, aiming for its heart.
The first two had been reprogrammed to cancel their terminal sea skimming run, and they plunged down at Prince of Wales, striking her amidships with a thunderous explosion. Her aft stack was blown clean away by one missile, which then went on into the sea in a rain of fire. The second plunged into the heart of the ship, the heavy warhead penetrating four decks and the fuel laden fuselage igniting an inferno at every level.
The next pair fell on Repulse, also from above, where the missiles easily penetrated the thin deck armor, less than two inches at the point of impact. Their heavy 450 kilogram warheads, and the extreme kinetic force behind them, saw both missiles plunge completely through the ship, blowing holes in her hull as they did so. Catastrophic flooding was underway almost immediately. Twenty eight of her forty-two boilers were destroyed in one massive explosion that killed half the engineering crew on the ship. The old battlecruiser floundered to one side, soon settling deep into the water as she began to sink. A massive column of smoke was ejected into the sky above her. Her time had come, but it was nigh at hand in any case, for just a little over four months later she would have met a similar fate, along with Prince of Wales, at the hands of Japanese pilots after having been transferred to the Pacific. The Japanese would not get their chance-with either ship.
Prince of Wales was also wounded and on fire, but still under her own power, with all guns unharmed and ready for action. Yet had the Prime Minister been aboard her at that moment, the Sunburns would have taken his life, striking within a few yards of the state room where he had been quartered. Thankfully, Churchill was hundreds of miles away by now on the cruiser Devonshire, speeding toward his rendezvous with Roosevelt at Argentia Bay.
The next four Sunburns were sea skimmers, again streaking in from the starboard side, and aimed at the vanguard of the British task force this time. One struck the cruiser Nigeria full amidships and blew through her armor causing serious damage. Two more went on through a gap in the formation and struck Prince of Wales, but her heavy fifteen inch main belt was enough protection to save her. The fires amidships, however, were far more severe, and her Captain, John Leach, gave the order to fall off in speed until she was well behind King George V, trailing in her wake near the stricken Repulse. The last of the four missiles struck the destroyer Icarus, which had been leading in the vanguard of the fleet. The damage there was so severe that the small destroyer capsized within fifteen minutes and was floundering in the swelling sea, which became a seething mix of fire and hissing steam as the hot metal hit the cold ocean waters when the ship started to sink.
Admiral Tovey's Home Fleet had been struck a hard blow, decimated by a single barrage of Kirov’s powerful anti-ship missiles. Though King George V and Prince of Wales were still battle worthy, he knew he could not sail on and leave the stricken ships and crew of the Repulse to their fate. The Home Fleet slowed and circled to begin rescue and recovery operations at once while the damage control squads on Prince of Wales desperately fought her fires. If they could be controlled he fully intended to press on with his heavier battleships, though h
e could see now that even a screen of lighter cruisers and destroyers was of no benefit to him. It was coming down to armor now, he decided. This was a job for his fast battleships. But could he get them within range of the enemy before his ships were pummeled again by these infernal rockets? How many more did the enemy have?
Karpov knew none of this, hearing only that he had scored multiple hits, and determining that some must have caused severe damage when Rodenko reported that the speed of several targeted contacts had diminished considerably. Yet he had expended another eight of his precious Moskit-II Sunburn missiles to achieve these results, and now there were only twenty left in the ship's inventory, the crews below already racing to reload the silos that had fired.
This will not do, he thought. This barrage had wounded the British, to be sure, but the blow was not fatal and the two American task forces to the south had not yet even been engaged. When Rodenko reported yet another contact, a new surface action group coming up from the south very near the British home fleet, the odds began to stack ever higher against him.
“Con, new contact, seven ships, fifteen kilometers southwest of original target.”
Seven more ships, thought Karpov. Seven more. He had twenty Moskit-IIs, ten MOS-IIIs and ten P-90 °Cruise missiles left, just forty anti-ship missiles remaining. Once they were fired the ship's power would be diminished considerably, and Kirov would have to rely on her 152 millimeter deck guns in any future ship to ship engagement, a circumstance that would allow the enemy to come within firing range as well. Her torpedoes were best suited to anti-submarine warfare, and they had already been attacked by one German U-boat. He would need them to counter that threat as well. This was no good. It was simply a matter of math now. He had all of forty missiles, and there were at least twenty-eight ships south of them now, all steaming north hoping to be the first to get within firing range for the vengeance that must surely be burning in the hearts of every man aboard.
Were there more behind them? Karpov’s eyes gleamed, reflecting the milky green phosphorescence of Rodenko's radar returns as he leaned over that station in the darkened citadel. He stood up stiffly, looking for Orlov.
“Mister Orlov, I need you.”
The chief was at his side a moment later, his wool cap pulled down low on his forehead over gloomy eyes. “Look at Rodenko’s screen,” said Karpov. “We would have to expend most of our remaining missile inventory to put even one hit on each of those ships and, as we have seen, a single hit is not sufficient to disable their larger capital ships. We hit four of eight ships with our first barrage of eight missiles. Yet many remain active in that surface action group, still operational. I believe we must resort to stronger measures. Do you concur?”
Orlov knew exactly what the Captain was asking him. He rubbed an eyebrow, his eyes uncertain. “What about the Admiral’s order?”
“What about it?” Karpov said in a hushed tone. “The old fool is still in sick bay, where he should have been all along.”
“There'll be hell to pay if we resort to special warheads, Karpov.”
“From who? Are you losing your nerve? There will be hell to pay if we do not,” said Karpov. “The British will most likely stop to rescue survivors of any ship we may have struck, but they will be back after us again in little time. As for the Americans, they have not been persuaded by our last attack on their carrier group and something must be done to strengthen the lesson. One missile could do the work of twenty here. Do you agree?”
“There will be consequences, Captain. Severe consequences.” Punching a man in the face was one thing. Orlov did that a lot. But killing a man was quite another thing, and in spite of his checkered past, Orlov had never been a murderer. He had hurt men, sometimes badly, but never killed.
“Do you agree?” The Captain's voice was harder now, more insistent. Orlov was his strongest ally and he wanted the comfort of a second command level officer to justify what he knew he would order, one way or another.
“We do not have to fight here,” Orlov suggested again with a nervous edge to his voice. “We could turn north and outrun any battleship they have. The Atlantic is a big ocean.”
Karpov was angry now. “Look, this will go on and on, Orlov. If not here we will face the same question again another time, in another battle, and each time we engage the enemy our missile inventory grows thinner and thinner. We must strike a decisive blow! We must convince them the power we possess is unassailable. We could take out a significant portion of their fleet here with a single warhead now, and all the less to bother us later. I will ask you one final time. Do you support my decision?”
Rodenko had been listening to everything the two men were saying, his eyes casting furtive glances at them as they spoke in hushed tones, their voices tense and strained. Karpov looked at his Chief one last time and said, “are you going to let them chase us off, Orlov, humiliate us as they will do for the next seventy years if we let them?”
Orlov shrugged, his eyes laden with anxiety. “Execute your attack, Captain. I’ll back you. But you had better be quick about it.” He looked at Rodenko, realizing the radar man had heard just a little too much in the heat of their discussion. “Keep your nose here, Rodenko.” he tapped the radar screen, as he opened his jacket, allowing a glimpse of the Glock pistol tucked away there.
Some fifty nautical miles to the south, the fast destroyers of Desron 7 under Captain J.L. Kauffman were racing north. The squadron was composed of eight destroyers some old, some new, just joining the fleet from shipyards all over the northeast from Maine to Massachusetts. Kauffman was aboard DD 431, the USS Plunkett and leading in division 13 with Benson, Mayo and Gleaves. Division 14 was on his right with DDs Madison, Lansdale, Jones and Hughes. Six of the small ships were the older Benson class, a little over 1600 tons. The last two were Gleaves class, much the same in design, yet fresh off the dock yards. An evolution of the older Sims class destroyers, the ships were two stackers with a unique new feature that separated the boiler from the engine room so that the ship could not be disabled by a single hit. It was a fast, durable design, capable of a whisker over 37 knots in trials, though top wartime speed would usually be in the range of 33 to 35 knots. And the ships had a range of nearly 6000 nautical miles on one load of fuel, which made them ideal for deployment to the Atlantic.
Now they were racing north through the choppy seas like a pack of hunting dogs sent to flush out prey. Little did they know that the dark panther they were stalking had teeth and claws to defend herself better than any ship in the world. Kirov was three times the size of these ships, though each destroyer carried nearly as many deck guns as the big Russian battlecruiser, with five 5 inch guns each. But their real teeth were the ten sleek 21 inch torpedoes on two quintuple racks amidships. The destroyer’s job was to rush in, fire their torpedo spread, then make smoke and withdraw, a determined harassment that could be deadly to any ship hit by one of their underwater lances.
Kauffman was eager to get into the fray that day. Everyone aboard was equally ready to avenge the loss of Wasp and deliver a sting to the enemy on the carrier’s behalf. The watchmen were out on the bridge, eyes straining through field glasses as the ships surged forward. Every man was at action stations hoping to be the first to fire at the Germans. They would get their wish soon enough.
As the evening progressed Desron 7 was running at high speed, closing on a distant grey horizon. They had seen strange contrails light up the sky there, and Kauffman followed them back to a single point on the horizon and steered his ships accordingly. Word was that the Germans had some slick new rocket weapon, and they had been lashing the Royal Navy pretty hard with it the last few days. Then came the attack on Wasp, and the Americans got a firsthand look at what these new weapons could do. Kauffman realized the danger ahead for them now. Destroyer Walke had taken a single hit from one of these rockets and was nearly blown in two, sinking in short order.
He saw six, then eight contrails streaking across the sky, as if some enraged monster h
ad clawed the serried clouds with fitful anger. His hounds were racing on, hot with the scent of the enemy now, the first sign they had of the Germans at sea since one of his group had lobbed a depth charge at a Nazi U-boat some months ago, the very first action against hostile forces in the Atlantic by a U.S. Navy vessel. The Germans seemed to be firing at something, but the contrails were not approaching his ships. Perhaps he could sneak up on them before his task force was even noticed, he thought.
Piecing together sighting reports from PBYs out of Argentia, he reasoned that his ships were well inside a hundred miles south of where he suspected the enemy raider was cruising. Now they hurried to put on all possible speed, surging forward in the swelling seas, intent on battle. Their engines strained and their stacks belched out thick smoke as they surged ahead, making nearly 35 knots. With Kirov cruising at nearly top speed, the two groups were now approaching one another at over 75 miles per hour.
Desron 7 was closing in. While Karpov had engaged the British fleet, Kauffman’s destroyers ate up the distance as they pounded their way north, the bows of the small tin cans rising and falling, foredecks awash in the churning seas. Some thirty minutes elapsed while Karpov assessed damage to the British Home fleet and engaged in a discussion with Orlov over how to proceed. In that long interval the destroyers had come within 15 miles of the enemy, though they did not know it yet.
Five minutes later a watchman on DD-421, the Benson, spotted something darkening the distant horizon. He stared, wiping his field glasses clean again, and looking a long time. A shadow grew and thickened, resolving at last to the tall silhouette of a large fighting ship. There it was! He called down to the bridge with the news- enemy ship sighted, dead ahead!
Soon the signal lanterns were winking from ship to ship and battle ensigns rose on the halyards, the flags snapping in the stiff headwinds to signal line abreast for attack. Desron 7 had finally found the Germans, or so they believed. The eight ships spread out in a broad line, racing forward as the anxious crews manned their battle stations. What was out there that had given the Royal Navy such a problem? Any man that managed to crane his neck and squint out a look at the distant enemy ship had but one thought in his mind when he first saw Kirov — the devil to pay…
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