The asdic team was closed-up and could see nothing. But their sets operated, for other things beside aircraft could have been sooled on to this massed target. In the engine-room and boiler-rooms they waited, a full head of steam in the big boilers, knowing that when the order came for increased speed it would be only a moment before the guns crashed or the bombs fell.
In the armoured director Lasenby was staring through his large monocular sight; he had the leading aircraft resting on his cross-wires like a fly in a spider's web. Outside, the spiny radar aerial had its electronic fingers laid on the same target, un-impassioned, efficient.
Subconsciously, Lasenby felt the ship begin to shudder as she increased speed to gain manoeuvrability-she might need to whip round like a cat. He glanced at a range dial, returned his eye to his sight, and said quietly: "Shoot."
"Shoot!" repeated the phone-number down to the transmitting station, and the phone-number there pressed a brass button and spoke into his headpiece.
At all mountings the fire-buzzers hooted twice and the waiting phone-numbers bellowed: "Commence, commence, commence!" On the bridge Bentley heard the hooter and heard the shouts-he snatched a quick look astern, and saw with relief that the cruisers were racing away from the beach, thrusting to seaward, and that the destroyer flotilla was already well out. Sainsbury must have acted at once on Bentley's signal and forgone his bombardment runs. It was a pity the admiral had not as much gumption, Bentley thought savagely.
The roar of the forrard guns opening fire washed back over the bridge in almost solid waves of sound.
With a well-drilled crew Wind Rode's dual-purpose guns could get away sixteen rounds a minute each. They were well drilled. They worked their guns in a smoothly-running cycle of top-rate efficiency, loading, firing, loading again, keeping always clear of the hot recoiling breeches. Salvo after salvo crashed out, with the hot cordite fumes catching their throats, the blast of each broadside setting their heads ringing, the ammunition numbers slipping and sliding on the hot cylinders.
So fast did they slam them in that two or three salvoes were in the air on the way up before the first one burst. It ended its run and its purpose in six black flowers of smoke, each one lit in the centre by a vicious flick of flame. They burst a little ahead of the leading aircraft. Watching, the gunner's lips tightened in appreciation-and hope. The next salvo exploded directly in front of the aircraft, and the next flowered and shut her from sight.
All that came out from the leading edge of those smoke balls were pieces of silver, glinting in the sun as they fell and turned and twisted. And something else. One crew-member managed to jump. They saw his parachute burgeon, brilliantly white against the canopy of blue. He released it too soon. As he fell he dragged it down past the burning fuselage. The silk caught and flared like a struck match. The black body, trailing now only thin strips of black and shredding wisps of smoke, plummeted straight down and met the waiting sea in a brief splash.
Lasenby shifted target and went on controlling his shoot. But he was thinking-this is fantastic gunnery! Anti-aircraft fire is not as accurate as surface shooting because of the magnitude of the problem which has to be solved. The target is travelling at 300 knots or upwards, is at both an angle and a height from the firing ship, and can turn and alter course much more swiftly than an enemy ship. Shells take some seconds to get up to twenty-thousand feet, and you have to predict the aircraft's future position for the time when they do get up there. Correct fuse-setting is of paramount importance, and if the loading-number, once the fuse is set on the shell, takes two seconds too long to get his projectile into the gun and fired-a 400knot aircraft can go a long way in two seconds.
So Wind Rode's initial success was a combination of superb equipment and immaculate drill. And it would have been seen by the Fleet, out of range itself but still in sight of the lone ship's fight against her swarming enemy.
For a few minutes the disciplined bomber formation ignored her apparently lucky shot; it was much more important that they remain compact than that they should blast a single destroyer. But when Wind Rode's guns, firing under ideal conditions-flat calm sea and a massed, steady-course target-continued to burst their messengers amongst them in tearing slivers of white-hot steel, sending another bomber down in a long, graceful curve of smoke, an order went out to the fighter protection.
Bentley had expected this, and it was the main thing which had been worrying him. The massed fire-power of the Fleet seemed suddenly very desirable. No matter what the accuracy of his guns, he could not hope to stand up against a concentrated attack on his own. But two fighters... they would see.
"Fighters breaking off," Randall reported from under his glasses. Bentley did not answer, but picked up the little black microphone. His voice reached throughout the ship.
"We have shot down two bombers. They have detached two fighters to attack us. Main armament will remain in action with the bomber formation. Stand-by oerlikons and pom-poms. I want both fighters engaged at once. Open fire when in range."
The crisp voice clicked off.
With this new threat heading for them, the ship seemed strangely quiet, even though the ship shook every few seconds with the angry blast of her big guns. Her engaging of the formation was long-range, remote-what was heading for them was ferociously intimate.
"Kanga" Johnson-so-called because he had been a kangaroo-shooter in Queensland before signing up to have a shot at Tojo- was sitting on the layer's seat of the Bofors gun. Kanga's mouth was tight and dry-not with fear, but with knowledge of the responsibility now reposing on him. The oerlikons were not much use against armoured fighters; the pom-pom was more efficient, with its four fast-firing barrels and two-pound shells; but his coughing Bofors, firing a much bigger shell, would be the fighters' deadliest threat. His mounting was radar-controlled, fitted with a set which, once on, "locked-on" to the target and dragged the gun round with it, as though it were attached to the enemy fighter with invisible wires. Kanga, who had not quite sold his gunnery soul to this new-fangled idea of electronic aid, hoped it was working all right.
It was. The fighters came in at them from different sides to divide their fire. But Wind Rode's men had not joined yesterday-their drill allowed for this, and the big pom-pom trained round to starb'd, while Kanga lined-up his sights on the port threat and then felt the mounting jerk as radar took over. All he had to do at the right time was press his firing pedal. According to the drill-book, radar would do the rest.
It did. It was, in fact, ludicrously easy. Perhaps the fighter pilot was eager to regain his formation, for the bigger game ahead; perhaps, because Wind Rode looked smart from her height, he expected little more than target practice with his wing-cannon. He bore in at rightangles to her course, coming very fast, and the oerlikon opened. The fleeing red tracer arched beneath him-the layer had not allowed enough elevation for the target's speed.
Kanga saw this through his own sight. He waited. One shell out there at this range would not do much harm-he wanted to see his fighter close in, with fifty or sixty shells. The pilot should have been swerving, taking evasive action, but his reception from the oerlikons emboldened him to get in and finish the job. He came on straight as a die-and before he could turn and avoid it was hit abruptly with a viciously-exploding steel flail from the Bofors.
The aluminium fuselage was lacerated. The perspex cockpit cover smashed before the pilot's eyes and his face turned instantly into reddened pulp. Even as he died his hands jerked convulsively on the control-wheel. The fighter whooshed over Wind Rode's funnel and dipped towards the sea the other side. It hit, and bounced, and headed briefly skyward again, a flame- streaming torch. Then it lost impetus and stalled. The tall plume of water marking its grave lifted from the sea a little in front of the second fighter spearing in.
The pom-pom opened fire.
A machine-gun's bullets do not "stick", as in popular fiction. They fling out in a cone of fire. Wind Rode's pom-pom had four barrels, and so there burst all about th
at aircraft four interlocking cones of exploding shells. It was like ramming through a brick wall, for the explosive force of 120 shells a minute from four barrels is considerable. Certainly enough to fling the fighter sideways in a steep bank of white in the blue. At that speed the water had the frictional effect of concrete. The aircraft swung right round and the next second had buried its snout in the sea. There was neither time nor thought for a possible survivor.
With the fighter threat eliminated, Kanga had time to look and listen. It was only then, so tensed had he been, that he realised the big guns had ceased firing. He lifted his head and saw that Wind Rode's object had been achieved. The bombing formation was almost over the Fleet now, but it had been broken into small units, and thinning bursts of black smoke amongst them gave the reason.
Kanga leaned backwards and supervised the reloading of his hot gun.
With the bombers past him, Bentley turned his ship and headed at top speed for the Fleet. The bridge team stared in appreciation at what was happening five miles ahead. Either Rear-Admiral Palesy was proving a doughtier fighter than they thought him, or he had been sensible enough to take the advice of his battle-wise captain. The fleet was in its earlier rigid formation, the cruisers inside the screen of destroyers. All ships were firing to a concerted plan, the cruisers' sides almost solid sheets of flame-they were putting up a tremendous barrage. Bentley made a quick calculation, and decided that there were just under 70 large-calibre guns firing at that bomber mass: guns larger than those fighting the Battle of Britain.
Where before Wind Rode had put six bursts at spaced intervals among the aircraft, now the whole sky around them was dirty, like a smoked ceiling. The Fleet was protected by an umbrella of bursting steel. From this aerial hell a flaming shape would drop, and from about the speeding arrowhead of ships great columns of dirty water would leap abruptly from the sea. The sound of gunfire and exploding bombs beat against their ear-drums with almost physical violence.
There was no question that it would be a damned sigh healthier to remain where they were, in calm, unruffled water. Bentley nodded brief agreement when Randall growled to this effect, and kept Wind Rode's swooping bow aimed at the destroyer screen. They got through unscathed, but only just. She was heeling on the turn to place herself in position at the rear of the right-hand V of the screen when the whole ship seemed to heave bodily from the water. They felt the blast slam against her plates and they felt the sharp sting of spray flung by the bomb into their faces. Then she came upright and they were in position.
It lasted for a further ten boiling minutes. Forcedly calm in the holocaust of burning planes and bursting bombs, Bentley realised worriedly that at this tremendous rate of fire the Fleet would empty its magazines in another ten minutes. He realised also why the bombers were ignoring the transports and assault craft and concentrating vengefully on the Fleet. Taking advantage of the bombers' initial concentration on the warships, the commodore in charge of the landing had sent his assault boats waving into the beach, and before the Jap bomber-leader had woken up to what was happening the great majority of troops had reached, and flung themselves across, the shell-torn sand. There was now no point in sinking empty transports-the warships were a much more valuable prize.
They got the destroyer immediately ahead of Wind Rode. One second she was an ordered ship, tight and compact and firing fast and accurately: the next under the destructive impulse of a stick of bombs, she had resolved into nothing more concrete than a towering, boiling tombstone of smoke. The blast of her magazines exploding beat into their faces with the effect of a thunderclap. Unable to alter course in time, Wind Rode ploughed through the acrid smoke and falling debris. But there was nothing alive she could have hurt.
The signal yeoman, eyes everywhere as usual, was the first to see the cease-fire signal flying from the flagship. He bellowed, and Bentley looked, then leaned forward and pressed a brass button hard. The shrill clangour of the bells beat through the ship. Reluctantly, the guns fell silent.
The din of that barrage had been so great that it was some minutes before the normal sounds returned to their consciousness-the whine of the wind in the rigging, the soft slither of waves down her sides, the creak of her ribs as she leaned, the distant throbbing of the engines.
After that their first reaction was to look about them. So far as could be seen, the Fleet was intact except for what was under the black smoke pall thinning out astern, and a destroyer up near the flotilla-leader which was burning aft, but still steaming in position. Sainsbury's ship, Bentley noted with relief, seemed unhurt.
He turned his head back and made to speak to Randall. What happened then was so startling that it killed the words in his mind. The T.B.S. (talk-between-ships) radio-telephone speaker on the bridge was switched on, in case the admiral wanted quick order passed that way. As Bentley opened his mouth to speak the loudspeaker cleared its throat and a sharp staccato command issued from it. Every head on the bridge turned as if activated by the one wire- the commanding voice was Japanese.
Instantly Bentley jerked his head skyward. But the thwarted aircraft formation was heading back to its carriers, dwindling in size almost with every second he looked at it. Randall grinned and said:
"We must be on their intercom wavelength. That sounded like some Nip Johnny getting hauled over the coals."
Bentley relaxed and agreed with him.
It was Lasenby, still alert and ranged on the departing aircraft, who disabused their relieving minds. His voice came through the director phone, crisp and terse.
"Bridge? One bomber has detached from the formation and is heading back. Range ten miles, speed three-fifty."
Without trying to sight the aircraft, Bentley spoke into the microphone. The tired gun-crews, their faces black with sweat and cordite fumes, closed-up at the guns.
It was not long before they could see the aircraft plainly, and realised that his intentions were hostile. Twin-engined, thick-bellied, the plane flew an undeviating course for the last cruiser in the line. Surprising though his return might be, the pilot's choice was understandable-the ends of the destroyer V did not extend back to cover the third cruiser.
The big ships had opened fire, not in barrage but using time-fused shell, and their shells were bursting behind the oncoming plane. As he watched him, refraining from firing himself because his ammunition was half gone, and the cruisers should be able to handle the lone attacker, Bentley found himself struggling with a memory. The aircraft was coming in too straight; it was making no attempt at evasion whatever, when a sudden change of course or height could have thrown the British gunners off, if only temporarily. The memory kindled at the back of his intent mind, and then it burst through to the forefront of his consciousness in blinding revelation.
He was sure now. The aircraft was a suicide-bomber!
He did not wait to wonder why it had not attacked during the height of the fight-perhaps its crew had entertained no suicidal tendencies when they had first taken off from their carrier; perhaps that staccato voice they had heard from the speaker had been the leader's request for a suicide mission, some gesture to ease the ignominy of being beaten off by the enemy fire with only one small ship sunk. Whatever the reason, here was the fact-surrounded by shell-bursts, boring in with malignant intent at the desperately-firing cruiser.
Bentley grabbed the director phone.
Ready, Wind Rode opened fire almost as soon as the order was passed. She was too late. The aircraft was in so close that its range was altering by hundreds of feet every second; only the pom-pom or Bofors could have got her, and she was too far off for them. Fascinated by the terrible courage of the pilot, helpless to avert its effects, they watched the plane bore in.
It happened in a flash. The heavy bomber smashed itself into the cruiser's foremast and slewed across the bridge, trailing a curtain of high-octane petrol. Its bombs exploded the lot in a searing wrap of flame which killed the captain, navigator, four officers and a score of men. Still blazing, the w
reckage of the bomber fell on top of B-turret and then bounced into the sea.
Bentley did not wait for orders. He swung Wind Rode in a fast circle and headed back to the burning cruiser-and received Sainsbury's orders to do just that as he was straightening her up to come alongside. He was not sure what he might have to do, but the obvious help was ready-the fire-hoses had been run out before the engagement commenced, and now fearnought-suited men were standing-by them.
But there is not much to burn on a warship's copper sided bridge. The flames of the ignited petrol had been fierce, but by the time Wind Rode was surging alongside fifty yards clear, the fire had exhausted its fuel. Coils of oily smoke rose from the blackened superstructure, and a capless head poked over the edge of the bridge to stare at them. Bentley took up the microphone of the loud-hailer. His magnified voice rang across the whitened gap of sea between the ships.
"Can I help?"
"Yes, get to hell out of here!" the head called back in a rough voice. And added: "Thanks for coming. We're all right."
Grinning with relief-there was no humour in the scorched something they could see half-draped over the windbreak-Bentley gave his orders and Wind Rode swooped light as a gull away from the high side above her. Looking back, he saw a light begin to flicker from the burned bridge, and answered from the flagship. The cruiser, it seemed, was half-roasted, but not nearly done.
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