John Schettler - Kirov

Maughan was dead, and Kindell reflexively pulled his torpedo lever just as the Gatling gun targeted his plane and fired. The torpedo fell away and his plane, lightened by a considerable measure, surged up causing the rain of lethal rounds to shoot right through the gap where both plane and torpedo had once been. His torpedo hit the waves and began its run in toward the enemy ship as he banked away, elated, his mind bent only on getting home now. Yet the Gauntlet’s 30mm gun adjusted quickly, jerked to re-aim, and fired another burst, striking the plane as it turned and tearing off both wings on the left side. The Swordfish flopped down into the icy sea with a hard splash that knocked the pilot and his mates senseless. Five seconds later the deadly gun system had extinguished Sinclair’s plane as well. But Kindell’s torpedo ran true.

“Torpedo in the water!” a crewman shouted aboard Kirov.

Karpov ran to the forward view screen, seizing his field glasses and jerking them up to try and spot the torpedo wake, but he could see nothing in the churning seas.

Of all weapons ever directed against a ship at sea, a torpedo was the most feared. It’s lethal silence as it vectored in, largely invisible beneath the sea, and its considerable power to penetrate and tear open a ship’s hull made it a fearsome foe. The British Type XII fish was eighteen inches in diameter with 388 pounds of TNT for a warhead. It was running at just under 40 knots speed, but its intent was not to strike the ship’s hull. Instead it sank to its assigned depth of 32 feet to run beneath the target ship where its Magnetic Pistol, called a Duplex Coil Rod, would detect the enemy hull and explode the torpedo beneath the ship’s vulnerable bottom. The detonation was capable of lurching the ship violently upwards and literally breaking its keel.

Karpov was frantic when he could not see the torpedo’s wake. “Countermeasures!” he yelled, and Samsonov fired a barrage of decoys, hoping to spoof the torpedo. But it was too dumb to be fooled. It was not homing on the target with any active detection capability, but merely running on the course it had been given when launched. It ran true, right at Kirov, and Karpov’s eyes widened when he finally saw the telltale ripple of surface bubbles approaching dead amidships. It was too late to take further action.

“Brace for impact!” he shouted, seizing hold of the vertical steel beam near the view screen. The torpedo ran right under the battlecruiser, and continued on without its magnetic pistol firing at all. Whether it was due to the special anti-magnetic quality of Kirov’s hull, or to the inherently faulty and unreliable performance of the British Magnetic Pistol, Kindell’s desperate attack would count for naught. Samsonov had ceased firing his Gauntlet missiles, and the only sound now was the final deep growl of the system’s 30mm Gatling gun as it tore apart the last of the Swordfish. Falkner, Walthall and Waters were dead as well, their torpedoes never finding the sea.

The cold water roused Kindell from his stupor, and he struggled in the wreckage of the plane, seeing his gunner and mate shot through and slumped lifelessly in the rear seats. For one brief moment he caught a glimpse of Kirov before it ceased firing, saw the last four rockets roaring away with tails of fire, heard the deep snarl of the Gatling gun that had cut his plane to bits. It was not a carrier, but something vastly more threatening in design and shape. Its sleek prow sliced through the kelp green sea as it sped away, its battlements crowned with odd shaped domes and moving concave disks, gleaming with luminescent lights. It seemed, for all the world, like a great mechanized behemoth, with death and destruction as its only aim.

“What are you?” he rasped out with his final breath. “What in bloody hell are you?”

August 3, 1941

Admiral Wake-Walker was listening to the strident calls of his pilots on radio as the squadrons went in. When the fighters out in front pushed on through to close to within 50 kilometers of their target, he hoped the Germans had been unable to react in time to coordinate their defense. Yet just minutes later they were engaged by the new enemy rocket AA barrage, and with deadly effect. Two, then three Fulmars were downed, the others broken up and maneuvering wildly to avoid the barrage of rocketry thrown up by the enemy. What was this new weapon? How could it range out so far from the mother ship like this? He was astounded, yet placed all his hopes on the low flying torpedo bombers, thinking they would get through for certain now that the Germans had taken the bait and fired at the overhead fighter cover instead.

Seconds later he heard his own 827 Squadron yelling out a warning, and it was soon clear that they were fighting for their lives. They called out warnings, cursed and exclaimed, their voices laced with an emotion he could only describe as awe. And they were dying. One by one his Albacore were lit up by the enemy rockets and taken down into the icy sea. When the same frantic calls came in from 817 Squadron off the Furious, Captain Bovell, tensely at his side the whole time, could bear it no more.

“For God’s sake, get them out of there!”

The Admiral’s jaw was set, his emotions tightly controlled. For a moment it sounded like the 812 Squadron was breaking through to the target. He heard one pilot call out the charge with a ‘Talley ho!’ but all was chaos after that. He toggled a switch and sent an order down to the strike controller in communications. “Abort, abort! Get the men out!” Yet he was too late. Kirov’s missiles and Gatling guns were finishing off the last intrepid flyers of 812 Swordfish Squadron, and Kindell’s torpedo, the only weapon fired at the target, was already running out to sea, an errant lance gone astray until its propellant was exhausted and it slowly settled to the bottom.

An hour later he got confirmation from the returning planes. They had again flown into a hailstorm of enemy rocketry, and of the forty-three planes he had massed for the attack only eleven returned: five Albacore and six Fulmar Fighters that had been following behind and bugged out early after that first rocket salvo. The Admiral signaled that all planes should land on his flagship, Victorious.

When finally recovered, the survivors gathered in the briefing room with their heads low, faces drawn and strained, the shock of the battle still on them. None of the Swordfish came home, yet one of the Fulmars, miraculously spared by the enemy fire, described the gallant, wave-top charge they made at the distant enemy ship, cheering them on as they went in, yet seeing them blown to pieces, only one getting close enough to launch its torpedo. With other yellow white tracks of rockets arcing up in his direction, he turned sharply and dove, eventually running home at low altitude to escape.

“Same as last time, sir,” said a rear seat crewman. “Before you could say ‘knife’ they were cutting us to pieces. We never got a fair crack of the whip at them, sir.”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Wake-Walker, shaking each man’s hand. “Damn bloody business, this. Yet that was the bravest thing I think I’ve ever seen, and this was entirely my fault. You did all that could possibly be expected of you, and more.”

An hour later he got a signal off to the Admiralty informing them that his air strike had failed, with heavy casualties. “New enemy air defense system too formidable,” he sent. “Will shadow and attempt surface engagement, if possible.”

Admiral Tovey got the news from his Chief of Staff Brind at mid-day on the 3rd of August. He was steaming due west aboard the veteran battleship King George V, on his best course to intercept the enemy raider should they hold their present course and speed. The news that Wake-Walker and his carriers could not even close on the target was somewhat disturbing.