Bomb splashes to starboard, and Treseder bawling in Nick’s ear having been aft to talk to Swanwick during some flurry of alarm there—“The second wave is another lot of eighty-eights, sir!” Pitching his voice high at a range of two inches and at the same time pointing at the procession of small groups, a total of something like twenty aircraft approaching from ahead. A lull in the action at this juncture was giving an illusion of respite; Nick had his glasses on the convoy, to check on what was or had been happening there, and the guns up ahead were already increasing the density and rate of fire, engaging some Junkers approaching at about 1200 feet from the beam, Radstock’s Oerlikons hosing tracer that curled in coloured streamers past the bombers’ noses as they swept over ahead of her—going for the Earl Granville perhaps—one lot of bombs starting down, but the Berkeley’s guns concentrating on them now and the second German banking away out of it—to starboard, this way, across the convoy’s rear towards Calliope. Northern Glow acting as if she felt this was her bird—but the Earl Granville had been hit, amidships, smoke and a fire there—and the second one had survived the trawler’s attempts to stop it, had swept on over and was aiming at Calliope, close now, nose-down. A wing-tip sparked, became a flaring trail of smoke with glowing objects in it but the bomber extraordinarily holding on dead straight, the dive steepening a little and bombs appearing now …
He knew they’d hit. He was seeing it about to happen, and nothing he could do could prevent it. Too close, too late, too every bloody thing, the 88 smoking and diving, a long incline towards the sea, towards certain death for its crew, while the bombs had started then blurred into the background of pockmarked, smokestained sky. He was aware of the bomber hitting the water close to his ship’s stem but also that those bombs were going to hit. Guns deafening, and a roar of aircraft engines thickening the sound like new instruments joining in the orchestral thunder: it was an 88 flying down the starboard side so low that from this bridge you saw the white crosses on the tops of its wings as it blasted past. Then Calliope’s for’ard funnel split, flamed, blew to pieces, the starboard strut of the foremast tripod kinked, and the launch in its davits on that side was fuelling a fire whose flames shot up the after part of the bridge superstructure. Those had been the visible and immediate effects of one bomb: another—Haselden the engineer commander was telling him about it a few minutes afterwards, over a sound-powered telephone from damage control headquarters on the main deck aft—had burst against the ship’s side below the waterline and abreast the after boiler-room. All he’d known of it from up here had been the crash of the impact booming through her, a jarring thump powerful enough to send men flying and stop her engines—and, just about, your heart.
“It’s very bad generally, I’m afraid, sir. After boiler-room’s filling, and there’s been a lot of casualties—concussion, and steam—”
“The for’ard boiler-room’s still intact?”
But he recognised the sum of it before the engineer had finished his catalogue of damage. Other telephones were buzzing, reports arriving from all quarters while Haselden explained that the flooding aft, result of earlier damage, couldn’t now be controlled for long; and with that boiler-room gone—it was a very large compartment … “Even if we got her going, sir—one boiler-room, one engine-room and probably the port outer shaft—you’d get two or three knots, no more—and not for long, because …”
“All right.” He was right, of course. If you didn’t accept it, all you’d be doing would be throwing away good men’s lives. There were men wounded down there, the survivors of other ships, and you had to work for what could be saved, namely those lives and the convoy …
The broadcast boomed, “Main armament in director control!”
So they’d got those circuits working. The guns hadn’t ceased firing so they must have been temporarily in local control. He told Haselden, “Prepare to abandon ship. Is Treseder there with you?”
“Yes, sir, he’s …”
“Give him that order. And tell the PMO I want his patients brought up right away. Under the foc’sl deck port side, and the launch’s davits can be used for lowering them in Neill Robertsons. But we’ll take this step by step: we can’t abandon yet, and the guns have to be kept working until we’re ready.”
Bombs were separating from that Junkers. And from the other, too. Calliope’s three for’ard turrets pounding at them. What he’d meant in that message to Treseder via Haselden, a point Treseder would take immediately, was that as long as there were living men on board this ship she’d have to be defended against the bombing, and to use her main armament involved the manning of the complete turrets. What was often referred to as a turret was in fact only the gunhouse, the turret as a whole extended deeply into the ship, through upper and lower decks, platform deck and hold deck, with magazine and cordite-handling room in its base, shell-room above that, then the ammunition hoist feeding projectiles and charges straight up into each gunhouse. But when you cleared lower deck in order to abandon ship, all those positions would be evacuated and the guns would be starved of ammunition … The ship was still swinging, wind acting on her superstructure as on a sail. Splashes to port—that Bosch had held on to his bomb too long. He didn’t see where the second load went: Christie was shouting in his ear, “Commander Trench asks do you require assistance, sir!”
The sky over the convoy was heavy with shellbursts and the dirt of battle. The Earl Granville was on fire but seemed to be maintaining her station. The convoy’s tail end—where Northern Glow and Rochdale were barraging over the Ewart S. Dukes, which was putting up a bright canopy of tracer of her own—seemed a long, long way off.
“Tommy. When you can spare her, I’d like one destroyer to stand by me, and if possible a second when things ease off a bit. I intend abandoning ship, then one of them can put a fish in her. Meanwhile the convoy’s in your hands. Good luck, and out.”
Four 88s, one trio and one plane on its own, were boring in on widely separated bearings. Swanwick leaning over from the starboard-side lookout bay and yelling to the Oerlikon gunners down there to engage the enemy coming from that quarter. His telephone links with the close-range had failed, presumably. A voice on TBS now: “Richman, this is Tinker. Stand by Calliope, prepare to take off her ship’s company and then sink her. Over.” It came in the same tone of voice that had passed a thousand other messages: and now Lyric was acknowledging in the same flat tone, as if this were no more than routine or perhaps an exercise. It heightened the sense of unreality, while Nick dealt with dozens of points of detail—just as if these proceedings were real, were actually in progress. Points such as the ship having no motive power or steerage way, so the steering position could be evacuated. The job of OOW had also ceased to exist in practical terms, so Harvey-Smith could be sent down to organise the preparation of Carley floats for launching, also any boats that might be intact, and the davits of destroyed boats to be made ready for lowering wounded men. There was a signal to be coded and transmitted, and Christie was to put his “Tanky” and another couple of spare hands on to the job of destroying all CBs— confidential books—and classified documents. The TS—transmitting station—was to be evacuated too. The kind of gunnery that was called for now was barrage work, and the intricacies of the HA control table were superfluous, so the Marine bandsmen could now be brought up from the steel cell in which for some hours they’d have been listening to the sounds of battle. An 88 roared over, passing it seemed only yards above the bridge, and behind it an explosion and a shoot of flame told of a hit somewhere on her starboard side, somewhere amidships. An object—a ready-use ammunition locker, something that size and shape—rose spinning to more than masthead height. A second bomb splashed in twenty yards clear of the bow to port, and there were three more 88s approaching from ahead; the chief yeoman’s voice bawling in Nick’s ear, “There’s four men ’urt on the flagdeck, sir.”
“Get a stretcher party if you need it, but get ’em down to the foc’sl break port side quick as you can.
You’ll find other wounded there. You plus one signalman will be enough to leave up here, so send all the rest down too. Rig the loud-hailer, will you?”
For talking to Lyric—who was on her way, ploughing northward up the convoy’s starboard side, her guns lifted and in action as she came. There was some distance still to cover: the gap between Calliope and the convoy was wide, now. A line of splashes—from high-level bombing, he guessed, since no enemies were in sight there at the moment—fell near that starboard column, but not near enough to worry anyone. Here, gunfire mounting in intensity again as those three droned in, in echelon’d line-astern and diving … Treseder appeared: “I’ve started the hands coming up, sir, mustering ’em under cover both sides. I’ve put officers and POs in charge of various parts of ship and routes to the assembly areas. All the sick and wounded are up already—and I know exactly which parties are still below, so …”
A bomb burst on the roof of number three turret, which was about thirty feet for’ard of the bridge and slightly below it. Wind deflectors on the bridge’s leading edge deflected the blow-torch flame from the explosion too, but it blistered paintwork on the front of the director tower. Calliope bow-down, rolling to port, but more sluggish now with the huge weight of water in her. A second bomb hit somewhere aft, and splashes went up to starboard. Christie, just back from clearing out the safe for the destruction of CBs, pointed and yelled, “Heinkels, sir!”
Heinkel 115s. And their target was going to be Calliope. They were in loose formation on her bow, spreading themselves outward as they flew in. Slow-looking, moth-like—and tracer was lobbing out to meet them. Calliope’s for’ard turrets shifting target, gun-barrels lowering swiftly as they swung. Lyric had put her helm over; obviously she’d spotted them and decided to meet them head-on, putting herself between them and Calliope, which had been his own earlier tactic and was basically sound enough—to take the offensive, carry the attack against the attackers and possibly even stop them attacking effectively at all—but not such a good idea in present circumstances because in a minute she’d foul the range and Calliope’s own heavier armament would be silenced, for fear of hitting her. Lyric on her beam ends as she turned at high speed under full rudder, half-buried in foam, sea streaming over and away from her on the wind, pendants of clear white against green background. Calliope’s guns were making themselves felt: with any luck Lyric might wake up and see it and scram out of the light. Two Heinkels had swung away, to fly up the convoy’s wake, and one of the others had been hit, trailing smoke. Lyric had put her wheel over the other way—having caught on to the facts of life. Two Heinkels still threatened: and a torpedo dropped, down-slanted, gleaming, splashing in …
Nothing you could do about it, in a ship that couldn’t move. If it ran true, it would hit.
Now the other. A splash, the Heinkel’s wing-tip almost touching the water as it banked to get away. The guns were shifting again—swinging round and lifting swiftly—to meet an 88 coming from the quarter at about a thousand feet, flying straight and level. Lyric’s pompoms and Oerlikons had drawn attention to it—a bit late, with bombs already spilling from the racks—two, three, four …
Moloch’s guns were still at maximum elevation but silent, lacking a target as the last of those attackers climbed away southwestward. She was forging up between columns one and two, overhauling the Tacora, who’d had some of her deck cargo blown overboard. Trench was aiming to pass within half a cable of her; he had his loud-hailer rigged, and a group of tin-hatted men were waiting in the wing of the Tacora’s bridge, watching the destroyer plunging up from astern. Trench talking meanwhile to Poorman, Foremost, telling her captain, Batty Crockford, to join Lyric in standing by Calliope.
From as much as Trench had been able to see, in glimpses during recent minutes and with a lot of other action in all directions, Calliope with Lyric’s support had beaten off an attack by Heinkels, two of which had turned away to make a pass at the Berkeley, Rochdale, Northern Glow and Radstock had blocked this, destroying one of the pair and driving the other away. Only minutes earlier Radstock had been trying unsuccessfully to get in close enough to the Earl Granville to help fight the freighter’s upper-deck fires. The Earl Granville’s crewmen had been losing the battle, by the looks of it; her master couldn’t turn his ship to minimise the effect of the wind without isolating himself from the convoy and its escort—which would have guaranteed the bombers concentrating on him. Moloch had been in the centre of the convoy at the time, practically alongside the Sovyetskaya Slava. Trench using his loud-hailer to talk to the English-speaking woman radio operator. The oiler had had a hole punched in her side by a technical near-miss; she was leaking oil and her speed was down to eight knots, but her captain had been adamant he’d keep going. His ship’s upperworks were filthy from an earlier fire which they’d fought for a long time and finally put out; at that time there’d been comparatively little wind.
Now he had to tell the commodore that the speed reduction was to be permanent. He lifted the loud-hailer: “Tacora, ahoy … commodore, sir!” Moloch pitching violently, Trench swaying on his high seat, long legs wrapped around its struts. Looking astern, seeing Calliope as a grey smudge in whitened sea: binoculars showed that she was down by the stern and listing heavily. She’d lost most of her for’ard funnel, one of her foremast struts had gone and the mast itself seemed to be swaying independently of the ship’s rolling. A single Ju 88 beyond her, flying south, was momentarily in sight between a gap in the clouds.
Insole’s voice came on the wind: “What can I do for you, commander?”
Lifting the loud-hailer again, facing to starboard where the Tacora butted stolidly through the waves, but at the same time throwing a quick glance back to see what might be happening around Calliope—and not wanting to plague Everard with questions over TBS … Attack might be resumed at any moment, the loss of Calliope’s guns and now of two destroyers as well was a serious reduction of the defensive strength: it wasn’t a situation you’d want to prolong if you could help it … He began to tell the commodore about the Soviet oiler’s damage, the need to accept a four-knot cut in speed. This in itself was a serious handicap, increasing by one third the convoy’s period of exposure to attack. It was Everard’s business as escort commander to make this kind of decision, but in the first place there wasn’t much option and in the second it wasn’t practicable to consult him; in any case he’d said, “Meanwhile the convoy’s yours.” The only alternative to slowing the convoy would be to abandon the oiler and sink her: discussing this—Insole agreed that the Russians would most likely refuse to accept that decision anyway—Trench looked back towards Calliope again just as a Heinkel’s torpedo struck her, a pillar of sea shooting vertically on her farther side; in the next blink she was hidden in a rain of bombs.
She’d been hit by three of them while the geyser of upthrown sea from that torpedo had still been hanging in the air, the cruiser making a slow roll to starboard, her stem lifting, and sea flooding across her quarterdeck. Sam Clegg, captain of Lyric, had had his eyes on the foremast as it carried away completely, crashing down in a tangle of wreckage on the other side. He’d thought she was going, there and then; then the bombs fell in a tight pattern—one in the sea, one on the flooding quarterdeck, one (he thought) down the second funnel, but possibly into the boiler-room with a subsequent explosion up through the funnel, and the fourth on her starboard side abreast “B” turret. Clegg ordered, “Away seaboat’s crew. Slow ahead together. Starboard five.” To nose in closer. Lyric already had scrambling nets down, Carley floats ready to be dropped, and parties mustering for rescue work; also medical and other preparations—piles of blankets and hammocks warming on the engine-room gratings, and hot soup in preparation—all of which could help to save men’s lives, if you got any alive out of that freezing water. He’d ordered the whaler to be manned because Calliope’s suddenly worsened predicament had impelled him to do something: but how much use the boat could be, in this sea and with the large number of men
there’d be to cope with, was questionable. But Calliope herself could have no boats: you could see at a glance that her upper deck was a shambles.
“Stop together. Midships the wheel.”
Smoke hung over her, thickest where she was on fire amidships. Her bridge was a scorched mess, but men were moving in it, including one in its forefront who, Clegg guessed, must have been Everard. Stench of burning … He’d brought his ship up in the cruiser’s lee, thirty to forty yards of tumbling sea between them, close enough for survivors to have a chance … Some Carley floats—Calliope’s—were already in the water, and stretchers were being lowered on boats’ falls at the two pairs of davits on this side; men in the floats waiting, handling lines dangling from the stretchers—Neill Robertson stretchers, the kind that strapped around a man’s body, converting him into an object that could be slung around like a stoutly wrapped parcel. There’d been an attempt five minutes ago to use the crane, but electric power must have failed because they’d abandoned it, transferred to the falls. The floats alongside were tossing and crashing about, despite being in the cruiser’s lee: and her side was stripped completely bare of paint all along the waterline, where ice had scraped.
The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6 Page 16
