Last Lift from Crete: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 2

by Alexander Fullerton

  Wishart had mentioned the hunt for Bismarck, too. The entire Home Fleet was at sea, and so was Force H from Gibraltar. Hood had to be avenged. Britain and the Empire were fighting the war alone: the German propaganda machine under Dr Goebbels was going full blast—Bismarck was unbeatable, cock of the oceans, and where was the Royal Navy? The world sitting on the sidelines had to be shown Bismarck destroyed and Goebbels answered. Here and now as Tuareg and her consorts zigzagged towards Crete and prepared to receive the Stukas, the job was to get Glenshiel’s troops ashore in Plaka Bay: but at the back of one’s mind there was also a picture of the bleak Atlantic weather and the great ships dipping through it, searching for a needle in that enormous haystack.

  The Stukas didn’t come until half past six. When they opened the attack, which was to be non-stop from that time on, the ships were about one hundred and forty miles from Scarpanto and the same distance from their destination. The first sign of the ordeal that was coming was not the usual cloud of dive-bombers but, on the starboard bow, a single twinengined aircraft which Houston identified as a Heinkel. It came in to a range of about six miles, flew parallel to their course for a few minutes, then swung away and dwindled towards Crete. Nick sent the ship’s company to action stations, knowing what must be coming.

  “We’ll get the full weight now.” Pratt said it, behind Nick, to Ashcourt. “Unless they’ve also found Ajax and Dido, perhaps.”

  Ajax, Dido, Kimberley, and Hotspur, heading for the Kaso Strait and about two hours astern of this force, would be on the quarter to starboard and roughly sixty, seventy miles away. From the Scarpanto Stukas’ point of view one target might be about as attractive as another, since both would be at about the same radius from their base. They’d more than enough aircraft to take on both targets, anyway.

  Nick saw them first, ordered the red warning flag to be hoisted and alerted Houston to that bearing—fifty degrees on the starboard bow, about due north and the direction of Scarpanto. A cluster of black specks, high, crossing an area of clear blue. About a dozen, he thought. But after about a minute Houston called down his voicepipe to the bridge that there was another bunch not far behind that first one.

  And there was another behind that, although it wasn’t visible yet. Ten minutes later, by which time it was obvious that the action was going to be continuous until darkness came, no one bothered with the reporting of new formations as they came into sight. The Stukas were coming in a constant stream, a dozen or sometimes eighteen or twenty at a time, with only a few minutes’ flying time between waves.

  Nick guessed how it was going to be. He slid off the seat and went to the binnacle.

  “I’ll take her, Pilot.”

  Pratt made room for him. The navigator’s tin hat was green with a red-and-yellow unit flash on it; it had been left behind by some pongo in one of the Greek rescue operations.

  All the ships’ guns were poking skywards and on the bow, waiting.

  “Red barrage—load, load, load!”

  Nick heard, from “X” gun, the clangs of the first fused rounds dropping into the loading-trays and then the thuds of the trays as they were swung over to the guns’ breeches.

  “Signal most immediate from Glenshiel to C-in-C repeated Ajax, sir: Stukas approaching in large numbers from Scarpanto. My position 160 Kupho Nisi 95.”

  “Very good.” He called up to the tower, “Harry, if this becomes as fraught as it looks it might, you’ll probably be better off with the after guns in local control.”

  “Aye aye, sir. May I see how it develops?”

  “Up to you entirely.”

  But dividing the fire-control would make it easier to ward off more than one attacker at a time. Otherwise Houston would need eyes all round his skull and two separate brains. Nick glanced at Pratt: “D’you agree with Glenshiel’s position?”

  “Near enough, sir.”

  The last time Lorrimer had sent such a signal, the reply had come in the form of three Hurricanes. You couldn’t hope for anything of that sort here, though, so much farther from the desert. That signal had been only to let ABC know what was happening, and to warn the cruisers who were heading towards Kaso.

  Tuareg was rolling now as well as pitching. It didn’t take much to make a Tribal roll, on account of the rather high centre of gravity. He could hear the sea’s drumbeats slamming against her stem, the rush of water heaving and thumping against her sides as she drove through it, the roar of the ventilator fans and the wind’s howl in the foremast rigging. Within seconds these familiar sounds would be drowned in the noise of battle.

  “Signal flying from Glenshiel, sir—Negative zigzag.”

  “All guns follow director. Red barrage: stand by—”

  “Signal’s down, sir!”

  Tuareg was on her mean course at this moment. He told Habgood, “Stop the zigzag, Cox’n. Steer three-one-oh.” The Stukas, a squad of them in four flights of three, were bouncing about in the wind. He watched through his binoculars as they rose across the sky, in and out of whorls and streaks of fast-driven cloud.

  At 7:40, Glenshiel was hit for’ard. The assault had been continuous, with bombers overhead all the time and no moment when planes weren’t diving to attack, bombs in the air and others bursting in the sea.

  Glenshiel’s forepart was in flames. The ship’s course into the wind had helped the fire to take hold, and now it was expanding it, driving the flames aft. Bunting was running to her foreyard: Whiffen, with his glasses on the flag-hoist, bawled through the noise of gunfire, “Red oneeight, sir!”

  An about-turn. To give Lorrimer’s people a chance to get that blaze under control, of course. Then they’d turn back, press on towards Crete. Turning stern to wind would confine the fire to the for’ard end of the ship, where it could be got at with foam and hoses. He saw the string of flags drop: Whiffen saw him see it, which saved him the effort of making himself heard again above the din. Two Stukas were diving on Glenshiel and one on Tuareg: but there wasn’t anywhere you could look in the sky without seeing at least one yellow nose. As he bent to the voicepipe he felt the jar of a bomb exploding in the sea somewhere abaft the beam: he called down, with his mouth inside the wide funneltop of the pipe, “Starboard twenty!”

  All the ships were under helm, reversing course. A “red” turn was a turn on your heel, an immediate about-turn instead of the follow-myleader kind that would have been ordered with a blue pendant. The figures one-eight meant 180 degrees, right round. Tuareg and Afghan would find themselves astern of Glenshiel now, with Highflier and Huntress roughly on her beams. Tuareg rolling like a bottle as she turned broadside-on to the sea: a bomb plunked down on the quarter, raising a mound of erupting sea so close that her stern almost swung into it before it collapsed. All the guns were firing, and their barrels would be about red-hot by now: four-sevens, pompoms, point-fives, and the new Vickers GO too: those Vickers pans had been loaded with one tracer bullet to every five others, which were a mixture of armour-piercing and incendiary, and the tracer made their double streams of shot easy to identify. It also allowed the gunners to “hose-pipe” their shot on to the targets.

  “Midships!”

  “Midships, sir …”

  Habgood’s tone in action became so calm that he sounded like a man drifting into sleep. Nick told him, “Steady on one-three-oh degrees.”

  “Steady on one-three-oh, aye aye, sir.”

  Pratt was talking into the plot voicepipe, telling Sinclair, the CW candidate, to get the ARL plot-table going. Then he’d be able to adjust his dead-reckoning position by however much this course alteration put them off the track. A Stuka had gone straight into the sea, between Tuareg and Huntress. Huntress had a three-inch AA gun mounted where her after set of torpedo tubes had been removed, and she was making good use of it. There was already less smoke coming from Glenshiel’s fire: with any luck they’d be able to get back on course quite soon. To be going the wrong way like this felt like conceding victory to the Stukas, and any delay to the schedule
would mean that tomorrow morning the force would be in range of the bastards for longer than they need have been. And by tomorrow morning ammunition might not be all that plentiful. A bomb was coming down from a Stuka that had broken off its dive high up: Nick had done a deep knees-bend to the voicepipe. “Port twenty-five!” Another yellow-faced horror up ahead, half obscured by shell-bursts and just tipping over now into its dive: Tuareg swinging hard a-port, listing and rolling violently, swinging halfway back then rolling again to starboard so far over you’d imagine she’d turn turtle. The bomb had raised the sea off the starboard bow and the other Stuka had corrected the direction of its dive: coming from the bow, screaming in as the first swept out of it, low to the surface of the sea … “Midships. Starboard twenty-five.”

  Flags on Glenshiel: it was the same hoist as last time, red one-eight. They’d beaten the fire, then.

  “Executive, sir!”

  Tuareg already had full starboard rudder on as she fought round across wind and sea, sheets of water flying as she turned, to head in towards the diving Stuka. “Midships!” That dive was close to the vertical. Any steeper, the pilot wouldn’t be coming out of it. Come on, just a little more … Pratt’s mouth was opening and shutting as he pointed: all one could hear was gunfire and sirens, the fast booming thuds of the pompoms and the higher racket of point-fives: the Stuka which Pratt was pointing at was coming in a shallow dive straight towards the bridge. Pompoms switching their attention to him now: and the German’s machine-guns spitting yellow flame …“Starboard twenty-five!” One bomb was falling from the Hun he’d been trying to push into a vertical descent: he hadn’t pushed him far enough, unfortunately; the hideous thing with its black-cross markings was pulling out, arcing upwards and away through woolly-looking shell-bursts. The other one almost on them now, pompoms and other close-range weapons blazing right in its face and Tuareg turning fast right under it: Pratt lurched sideways, cannoning into Nick then throwing his arms around the binnacle, sliding down on to his knees. There was blood all over Nick’s left side. “Midships.”

  “Midships, sir.”

  Pratt had toppled, gone over on his back; half his face was missing. Nick saw that Ashcourt was at the voicepipe to the plot, which was the way to contact the doctor or one of his first-aid parties. PO Whiffen was kneeling in Pratt’s blood. Tuareg’s swing was easing too fast, and he ordered ten of starboard wheel to get her round to the course of threeone-oh. Glenshiel wasn’t much more than halfway round: he saw a bombsplash go up very close to the big ship’s starboard side, and the Stuka, breaking away over the top of Huntress, burst into flames. Tail down, stalling, about to fall into the sea. Several more overhead, one in its dive above Glenshiel and the next wave coming up from the direction of Scarpanto.

  “Steer three-one-oh, Cox’n.”

  “Three-one-oh, sir …”

  They were taking Pratt down on a stretcher. Gallwey, with “MO” stencilled on his tin hat, was standing in the middle of the bridge, swaying against the roll and pitch, staring up at the weaving Stukas with his mouth open. Nick shouted, “Go on down, Doctor!” and Gallwey turned, only half hearing: Nick was already busy again with another attack developing, a Stuka starting into a dive from right astern. “Port twenty-five!” The doctor was moving away, still staring upwards as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing: and the Stuka pilot had shifted his aim, hauling his machine to port as he saw the start of Tuareg’s swing. Waiting now, counting seconds, to get the timing right … Quick glance away towards Glenshiel: there was one going down on her too: but nothing else, only this one immediate menace to his own ship that he could see. The after guns were shooting at it, while “A” and “B” barraged over the assault ship.

  “Midships.”

  “Midships, sir …”

  “Starboard twenty-five.”

  “Starboard twenty-five—”

  “Bring her back to three-one-oh, Cox’n.”

  Gallwey had left the bridge. Pratt’s blood was everywhere. The Stuka attacking Glenshiel was through the layer of exploding AA shells, and the other one’s bomb had missed to port of Tuareg by about twenty yards as she swung hard a-starboard. That one on top of Glenshiel, though—he saw its bomb fall away, the first slow-looking moments of its drop, the Stuka itself roller-coastering up and away on the other side. Lorrimer had put his wheel over, but the broad-beamed assault ship wasn’t as manoeuvrable as a destroyer was …

  “Course three-one-oh, sir.”

  A sort of cloud—like the dust from a beaten carpet—rose over Glenshiel’s foc’sl as the bomb plunged into her.

  Waiting for the explosion, eruption deep inside her. Glancing round: no other immediate dangers. There’d still been no visible explosion. Men were running for’ard along the assault ship’s upper deck: her forepart was already blackened from the earlier fire. Tuareg’s guns and all the other destroyers’ guns as well were barraging at Stukas circling and dodging high overhead: seven or eight of them, but nothing diving at the moment: then he saw two of them push their noses downward. Farther back, another squad was approaching from the north-east. Darkness was the only hope of an end to this, and darkness was still the best part of an hour away.

  “Yeoman!” Whiffen saw him beckon and hurried across the bridge. “By light to Glenshiel: Are you all right?” Silly question, he thought: still, let it go … He saw Ashcourt, and beckoned him: “Sub, you’re navigator. Get the DR up to date from whatever Sinclair can tell you.” He saw a Stuka on the bow tilt over, pointing its nose down at Tuareg, and as he bent to the voicepipe the thought flashed into his mind that it was no wonder ABC had recalled Glenroy and company yesterday … He waited with his face down at the pipe, staring up under the rim of his tin hat at the down-rushing bomber, and not liking it all that much.

  “Starboard twenty-five.”

  “Starboard twenty-five, sir …”

  “Reply from Glenshiel, sir—” Whiffen bawling into his ear—”One in forepeak failed to explode. Hold your breath while we perform extraction.”

  The Stuka was angling off, adjusting its aim to Tuareg’s use of rudder. Nick ordered, “Midships. Stop port. Port twenty-five.” He nodded to the yeoman of signals, looked back at the Stuka and saw its wings tilt again: he thought it was because it was coming in a comparatively shallow dive that it could keep adjusting its aim like this: perhaps he’d passed the port helm order a bit too soon. Reaching for the telephone to the ACP: “Number One, can you shift the pompoms to this fellow on the bow?” He’d hung up without waiting for an answer. “A” and “B” guns couldn’t have elevated enough to reach it, and if he checked the swing again he’d have been playing into the German’s hands: with one screw stopped she was fairly whizzing round, heeling hard over. Pompoms suddenly: and point-fives, and the distinctive tracer-streak of the starboard Vickers GO. The Stuka was diving right into those converging streams and he was being hit, smoke and flames gushing suddenly, bomb released and falling short, the pilot trying to level out … “Midships. Half ahead both engines.”

  “Midships, sir … Half ahead both, sir. Both telegraphs half ahead, sir. Wheel’s amidships, sir!”

  “Starboard fifteen.”

  “Starboard fifteen, sir.”

  “Steer three-one-oh. How are you doing down there, Cox’n?”

  “Fifteen of starboard wheel on, sir. Steer three-one-oh. Happy as larks, sir …”

  A Stuka was going for Glenshiel, who at the moment was on Tuareg’s quarter, but Dalgleish had shifted his guns to it. The local-control arrangement seemed to be working rather well, Nick thought. He saw some men on Glenshiel’s for’ard well-deck: putting his glasses on them he saw they were bringing out a Neill-Robertson stretcher, the kind you could strap a wounded man in to pass him through hatchways or down into a boat. They were taking it to the ship’s side: tipping it over, letting the whole stretcher go … He realized they must have had the unexploded bomb in it. He looked up and around, at a sky still full of Stukas, smoke, shell-bursts; two more
87s were diving towards Glenshiel: there were others higher, circling, watching for openings, he supposed. Ammunition ought to last out until sunset, with luck, but there’d be precious little for any sustained action of this kind tomorrow. One Stuka above Glenshiel had let go its bomb high up, but the other in contrast was pressing its attack right home, diving straight into the umbrella barrage and through the streams of close-range stuff: and still intact, still diving …

  Bomb released. The Stuka was pulling out rather gradually: scared perhaps he’d tear his wings off.

  A spout of sea leapt up, right against Glenshiel’s starboard quarter. Its blast flung one of the landing-craft upwards, wrenching the for’ard end from the davit: what was left of it dangled from the after davit, and the ship’s side was blackened, its paintwork scorched and smoking. There’d almost certainly have been some damage done inside, from that one. Now there was another Stuka diving at Tuareg from astern: Nick was at the voicepipe, watching it come down … A minute later, when the bomb had thumped into the sea and Habgood was bringing the destroyer back to her course, he found Glenshiel out on the quarter, much farther away than he’d expected. At the second glance he realized her speed had been cut by half.

  “Starboard fifteen.”

  To close in, get back to her. A light began to flash from that high bridge; this would be a crucial signal. He had one eye on that fastwinking lamp and the other on the Stukas. Leading Signalman Mason was at the starboard ten-inch, taking the message in. A Stuka right in the sun was tilting into its dive, and the fresh team, refuelled and bombedup in Scarpanto, was just arriving.