At 0551 Hollendorf, the second navigator, came out of the chartroom at the rear of the bridge. “Sunrise in five minutes, Oberleutnant.”
Max nodded and stretched his arms. Like most men at sea, dawn was his favorite time of day. He watched the line of the horizon until the sun came burning up slowly from the water. It was easy enough to understand how so many pagan tribes had come to be sun worshippers. Even now, Tian, the head laundryman, knelt on the prow of the ship in submission to one of his gods.
Max lit a cigarette and inhaled, drawing the bite of tobacco deep into his lungs. You couldn’t smoke on deck at night for fear of giving the ship away. In Berlin, it was midmorning—Mareth would be living her normal life, twelve thousand kilometers away, not knowing where Max was. Maybe she would be meeting friends at one of the cafés she loved along the Unter den Linden. She couldn’t stand the brew of chicory roots and acorns that passed for coffee in the Reich, so she would drink one of those American Coca-Colas. She loved all things American—movies, magazines, Lucky Strikes, Coca-Cola. Or she might be walking alone in the Tiergarten, the evergreens laden with snow, or perhaps taking a quick walk through the zoo. He imagined her rising late from bed—she kept cabaret hours—and paging through a copy of the Berliner Morgenpost while still in her pajamas, blond hair tousled from sleep. Maybe she was sipping real coffee supplied by the Sergeant Major, her name for Max’s father. Where he obtained the coffee was a mystery he would not reveal even to Max.
A polite cough brought Max back to the present—Rolf, the bridge steward, had appeared with coffee in thick china mugs for the watch and first offered the tray to Max.
Coffee. Strong and hot. Max drank it down. He yawned, rubbed his belly. God, he couldn’t be hungry already.
“Bridge! Two masts in sight, twenty kilometers off the starboard bow,” said the young telephone talker, the one who always screeched, his voice high with excitement.
Max jerked the binoculars to his eyes. Nothing. The lookouts, perched high above the bridge and peering through the range-finder, could see farther. He picked up the metal phone to call the captain, but the telephone talker shrieked again. “Bridge, six masts in sight, twenty kilometers off the starboard bow.”
A convoy! At last—it had to be. Langsdorff answered the phone. “Ja?”
“Captain to the bridge!” Max yelled, too energized to observe formalities. He replaced the phone, seized the red-handled battle station lever, and yanked it upward. The piercing alarm sounded through the ship, the five long bells jolting the crew from their sleep.
“Action stations,” Max ordered the telephone talker, who spoke into his rubber mouthpiece, his words now blaring over the loudspeaker. “Achtung! Achtung! Action stations! All hands to action stations!”
Max picked up the engine room phone.
“Engine room, aye.”
“Ships in sight. Prepare for emergency full ahead.”
“Aye-aye!”
Belowdecks, sailors rolled from their hammocks and ran for their battle posts, struggling into lifejackets and balancing helmets as they went. Engineers cut all unnecessary power and water. Emergency lighting flickered on and off. Petty officers hurried the men to their positions. “Schnell! Schnell!”
The surgeon lieutenant and his medics set up a makeshift operating theater in the officers’ mess, to supplement the ship’s hospital and take over if it were put out of action. Damage control parties stood by, ready to carry lumber and mattresses for plugging shot holes below the waterline. Firefighting parties tested pressure in the water mains. Fire posed a special danger with all the ammunition piled on the top deck to serve the smaller guns. Shells for the larger guns came up directly from the main magazine by automatic hoists. These magazines could be flooded from the bridge at the touch of a button if they were threatened by fire. No ship could survive the explosion of its magazine, so the powder and the heavy shells were hidden in the safest and most heavily armored part of the hold.
As the noise of the battle alarm died away, Captain Langsdorff, cigar in hand, appeared on the bridge. “Report.”
“Six masts in sight, twenty kilometers off the starboard bow,” Max said. “Ship is cleared for action.”
“Make revolutions for full speed.”
Max passed the order and soon the ship’s vibration increased. Had he secured everything in his cabin? He couldn’t remember. Anything left sitting on a flat surface vibrated to the deck when Graf Spee went to full speed.
Langsdorff flipped his cigar ash and smiled. “A convoy, Brekendorf, a convoy—a nice Christmas present for us all. Perhaps we’ll capture some tea. A chest of fine English tea for your young lady.” He grinned and puffed. “Chests of tea all around, Oberleutnant.”
Max grinned, too. Chests of tea and home by Christmas. Nine ships captured plus whatever they sank today. A brass band at Kiel, a hero’s welcome, a spread of color photographs in Signal. No doubt a promotion as well. A promotion and an Iron Cross.
“Left standard rudder,” Langsdorff ordered.
Max leaned over the speaking tube to the wheelhouse. “Helmsman, left standard rudder.”
“Rudder is left standard, sir.”
Standard rudder was the degree of turn needed to take the ship in a circle. Left full rudder put the rudder over by thirty degrees. Emergency left rudder put it over thirty-five degrees, the farthest it would go. Spee heeled to port as the rudder bit. Langsdorff let her swing. “Rudder amidships,” he ordered. “Steady on a new course of two three six degrees, southwest by west.”
Max relayed this to the helmsman, who checked Spee’s turn and brought her steady on course two three six degrees. At full speed, there was no keeping the smoke under control, and it poured thick and black from the funnel. Max smelled the diesel fumes and knew dark particles were staining the scrubbed deck-boards. But it didn’t matter: the fight was on. Langsdorff wasn’t going to skulk around anymore, masquerading as a French battleship. He headed straight for the convoy—a wolf going in among the sheep, Max thought, and to hell with the Royal Navy.
The bridge phone buzzed. Max picked it up, listened, turned to Langsdorff. “Herr Kapitän, gunnery says leading ship is H.M.S. Exeter, heavy cruiser. Six eight-inch guns, fires one-hundred-twelve-pound shells, turret armor two inches—”
“I am aware of Exeter’s defenses. What about the other ships?”
“They can’t make them out, sir.”
Gunnery called again. Max listened. “Herr Kapitän, gunnery officer says there are three ships. Leading ship is H.M.S. Exeter, the other two are destroyers.”
They had to be screening a convoy—a heavy cruiser certainly did not require two destroyers as escorts. Convoy must still be below the horizon. They would sight it at any moment, and those destroyers were nothing to worry about. They couldn’t hold their own in a battle. When heavy shells began to fly, a destroyer could do little except run away or get sunk. Exeter was another matter, but still no match for Graf Spee. Perhaps they would add a Royal Navy warship to their list of ships sunk. It would make their victory even sweeter.
Spee raced in for the kill, leaving a trail of foaming white water in her path. The morning sun warmed Max’s face. He peered through his binoculars at the three British warships, straining for a glimpse of the convoy beyond.
“Convoy must still be below the horizon,” he said to Langsdorff.
“We shall see,” the captain replied. “They may put up a good fight but we shall swallow them.”
For the first six months of the year, they had done nothing except steam up and down the Baltic, performing fire drills, anti-aircraft drills, shooting off so many rounds of ammunition that they had to play the fire hoses onto the barrels of the guns to cool them down. Lowering boats, then hoisting them back up. Stopping ship, then lurching forward at emergency speed. All in preparation for this—to prove the German navy capable of something more than surrendering to the British, as they had at the end of the First War. The handing over of the Imperial High Seas Flee
t to the English still shamed Germany. No one could forget the image of their proud ships steaming from Germany to internment in Great Britain under the guns of the victorious Royal Navy. They had salvaged only what little remained of the navy’s honor by scuttling their ships all at once in the British fleet anchorage of Scapa Flow eight months later.
The phone gave an insistent ring, startling Max. He picked it up and took the gunnery officer’s report. “Gunnery says the two ships in company with Exeter are not destroyers as previously thought, Herr Kapitän. They are light cruisers.”
“Is there a convoy behind them?”
Max spoke into the phone. “Can you see…” He turned to Langsdorff. “Nein, Herr Kapitän.”
The captain made no reply. Max lit a cigarette and drew in the smoke. Shit. Three British cruisers. Three British cruisers out here off the Rio de la Plata, hanging about like street-corner idlers, just waiting for them. Damn the English. Not one of the cruisers could damage Spee, but, taken together, and fighting as one unit, which they would, they had enough firepower to cripple her, perhaps render her unfit for traversing the winter North Atlantic on her run home to Germany. But they had to fight, they had to and damn the odds. Only by sending ships of the Royal Navy to the bottom could they win the war.
Langsdorff peered through his binoculars for a long time before speaking. At last he said, “We’re not to engage.”
“Herr Kapitän? Not engage?”
“We are a commerce raider, Oberleutnant. Our operational orders are to avoid engagement with enemy warships unless we are caught without recourse.”
“I am aware of our orders from the briefing you gave us, Herr Kapitän, but Seekriegsleitung couldn’t have meant us to run away.”
Langsdorff lowered the binoculars and removed the cigar from his mouth, working his jaw slowly back and forth. Orders from Berlin were not to be lightly brushed aside, but the captain did not want to turn around. The ship’s motto—Faithful unto death—was the personal motto of Admiral Graf von Spee.
Count von Spee had been one of the Imperial Navy’s greatest heroes, commander of the German squadron that handed the Royal Navy a stunning defeat at the Battle of Coronel in the First War, sinking two British warships—the first to be sunk in a sea battle in over a century. The British took their revenge a month later, destroying most of the German squadron at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, a thousand kilometers south of Graf Spee’s current position. Admiral Graf von Spee went down with his flagship, Scharnhorst, as did his two sons, both aboard as young officers. He fought to the end with flags flying, firing his guns till the water closed over them. Not a single hand survived. Max had a postcard that showed a defiant German sailor at the Battle of the Falklands waving the imperial ensign as his ship sank out from under him, into the green waters of the South Atlantic. At long last this was their chance to avenge Admiral von Spee’s defeat. “I saw him several times,” Langsdorff, who had grown up in Düsseldorf, Count von Spee’s hometown, once told Max, “walking in the park with his children. I always wished I had spoken to him, but it was long before the First War and I was still a youngster and much too afraid.”
Langsdorff continued his silence. Many of the officers, including Max, urged him to seek battle with a Royal Navy ship before heading home. How could they think of themselves as truly brave when the only ships they had attacked were ships that couldn’t shoot back?
The captain hesitated, binoculars still focused ahead. Langsdorff put the cigar back between his teeth. “We have not yet been fully tested,” Langsdorff said, taking the binoculars from his eyes. “The enemy is here, and we must fight for our honor and the honor of our flag.”
Max snapped off a sharp salute. “Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”
Max and Langsdorff turned again to face the three warships strung out along the horizon.
“Bridge,” screeched the telephone talker, “B-Service reports transmission in the clear.”
“Read it out.”
“Signal from Exeter: ‘Immediate to Admiralty. One pocket battleship zero three four degrees south, zero four nine degrees west. Course two seven five degrees.’”
And so the Royal Navy had found them at last. Max’s stomach muscles tightened.
“Signaling again in the clear: ‘From Exeter, general broadcast merchant ships. One pocket battleship, thirty-four degrees south, forty-nine degrees west, steering two three six. Am engaging forthwith. Stand off.’”
Big brother shooing the flock out of harm’s way. Langsdorff nodded. His face was calm. “Have gunnery begin calling down the range,” he said to Max.
“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”
“And Oberleutnant.”
“Herr Kapitän?”
“Run up the battle flag.”
“Yes, sir!” Max said, grinning as he passed the captain’s order. Quickly the signalman broke out the red, white, and black naval ensign of the Kriegsmarine and hoisted it above the ship. Atlantic wind caught the banner and it streamed out over Graf Spee.
On the navigating bridge stood Langsdorff, Max, a deputy watch officer, and Hollendorf. As second navigator, Hollendorf tracked Graf Spee’s exact position as she began to twist and turn in the coming battle. Also on the bridge stood the four signalmen who would pass Langsdorff’s fighting orders through the ship by phone and voice tube. Four additional messengers stood by to run orders manually if the phones were knocked out. Two sailors manned each of the engine telegraphs. Rolf, the bridge steward, was on hand to provide sandwiches and coffee.
While the enlisted men waited silently at their posts, Max and the other officers trained their binoculars on the charging British cruisers. It seemed unreal to Max, like a practice shoot in the Baltic. In their two and a half months of commerce raiding, nobody had actually fired on them.
One of the bridge signalmen chanted the range as it came in over his earphones. “Twelve kilometers, eleven and three-quarters, eleven and a half…”
The British had the curious habit, left over from the days when all wooden warships looked alike, of flying gigantic battle ensigns. As Exeter drove toward Spee, Max watched the huge red-and-white flags break over the cruiser—two up the radio aerials, two more up the signal masts. If they were hauled down before the end of the battle, it could have but one meaning: H.M.S. Exeter had surrendered. Unlikely, Max knew. A Royal Navy warship had not surrendered in a sea battle for a hundred and fifty years.
Above one of the ensigns flew a yellow signal flag—the classic signal of the Royal Navy: Enemy in sight.
At ten kilometers, Exeter changed course ninety degrees to her left and ran perpendicular to Graf Spee. Now all of Exeter’s guns bore on Spee, while only Spee’s forward guns bore on Exeter.
Alarmed, Langsdorff bypassed Max and stepped directly to the voicepipe. “Helmsman, hard port. Come to new course of one two zero!” Spee heeled sharply to port and began running parallel to Exeter. Exeter’s two comrades then altered course so they, too, steamed parallel to Graf Spee, but in the opposite direction. Max knew the light cruisers would steer a wide arc, cross Spee’s stern, and come up on the other side. They would try to compel Spee to divide the punishing fire of her eleven-inch guns.
Silence again on the bridge. Max felt a tremor in his legs. Only the enclosed portion of the navigating bridge had any protection at all—an inch of steel plate to stop shell splinters. They could pull steel scuttles down over the large portholes, but then they wouldn’t be able to see anything. The open bridge wings had no protection of any kind against incoming fire, just salt air and a flawless view of the British guns taking dead aim.
“Range of Exeter?”
“Nine and a half kilometers now, Herr Kapitän.”
“Commence against Exeter,” Langsdorff ordered, his voice as soft and pleasant as if he were ordering coffee.
Max came to attention. “Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.” He seized the gunnery phone.
“Gunnery, aye.”
“Order from captain: target is Exeter. Repeat
, target is Exeter. Commence main battery fire.”
The firing gong sounded through the ship. The main batteries fired. Max was nearly thrown off balance by the force of the recoil. Black gun smoke lingered briefly over Spee, to be snatched away by the wind. Close to Exeter, geysers of white water shot into the air. “Note to log,” Langsdorff said to Hollendorf, “Graf Spee commenced firing against Exeter at zero six eighteen.”
“Over!” Max shouted.
Orange halos blossomed from Exeter’s guns.
“He’s fired!” yelped the young telephone talker.
“Steady,” Langsdorff said, hands clasped behind his back like a squire looking over his acres.
A half kilometer from Graf Spee the incoming shells struck the ocean and sent up towers of water.
High above the bridge in their directing tower, the gunnery control team peered through their optical instruments, calculating Exeter’s range, course, and speed, sending this data to a mechanical tabulator deep in the armored bowels of the ship. This tabulator computed the trajectory of the shells and automatically trained Graf Spee’s main batteries. The recoil of the naval cannon comprising the main battery also had to be computed since a full broadside by both turrets heeled the ship over by five degrees or more.
In Spee’s armored turrets, the deafened sailors, bundled up in their anti-flash overalls, frantically worked the huge naval cannons, ramming a six-hundred-seventy-pound shell hydraulically into the barrel, followed by a silk-wrapped powder charge. When the gun captain slammed home the breechblock, the ready light blinked on in the gun directing tower. The gunnery officer pressed the orange firing button and an electric current ignited the cordite, blowing the shell from the barrel. The gun crew flung open the breech, blasted the inside of the cannon with compressed air to clear any burning residue, thrust in a long-handled mop and swabbed out the barrel. In with a new shell and cordite charge and they were ready to fire.
An Honorable German Page 7
