John Schettler - Paradox Hour

And from all reports Gneisenau is in very bad shape as well, he thought. So they have a submarine out there calling the shots now, and taking a few for good measure. Loki is already gone. Thor is busy fishing men out of the sea. Now that we are at full battle speed that sub will not be so lucky again. But in one hot hour, half our battlegroup is simply wiped off the sea! Lütjens must be having fits!

“Ship sighted!” came the call from the high mainmast. “I think it’s the Rodney! ”

“Guns Ready! Now they pay the butcher’s bill.” Kurt “Caesar” Hoffmann was hopping mad, and the “Praetorian,” as he was called, was going to war. The ship’s chief gunnery officer, Schubert, was now at the Kapitan’s side.

“We’re ready, Kapitan. Waiting for orders from Tirpitz .”

“To hell with that! Open fire the moment you have the range. This is personal now, Schubert. We’re out for our pound of flesh here.”

Schubert nodded, Getting the range from Lowisch on the upper gun director. “Target at 22,000 meters.”

“Fire!” Hoffman’s voice was hard in the cold morning air, and the guns of Scharnhorst soon followed, their barrels elevated, and bright orange fire blazoning from the forward turret. Shubert fired Anton to gauge the range, with Bruno loaded and ready to fire after his first rounds were spotted. Nearly a minute later they saw the shellfall through binoculars, leading the British battleship and slightly short. Then Hoffman saw the distant flash of gunfire, hearing the loud boom some seconds later, a low, rumbling thunder on the horizon. Rodney was not unarmed.

Under normal circumstances I would never tangle with a ship like this, he thought. That ship may be old and slow, limping from that torpedo hit, but those are 16-inch guns out there…

“Sir, Tirpitz signals for a turn to port!”

“Come left fifteen!” Hoffmann knew that Topp was making his turn to get all their gun turrets into action now. It would be the eight 15-inch guns on Tirpitz , and the nine 11-inch guns on Scharnhorst against those nine 16-inchers on Rodney . On paper the Germans had the clear edge, and they also had a considerable speed advantage, making them much harder targets to train on and hit. By contrast, once they found the range on Rodney , it would be as if that ship was a sitting duck.

Tirpitz fired, a salvo of four rounds, two from each of the forward turrets. Scharnhorst was soon ready for her second salvo, and Schulte decided to fire only his B turret this time, wanting to fine tune his sighting.

“Two degrees down elevation,” he called. “Ready… Shoot!”

Even as he shouted, the first big rounds from Rodney came arcing in well out in front of the German formation, four tall water splashes marking their fall. The battle might now decide far more than the fate of the three ships engaged had finally begun.

MarcoRitter was out on the flight deck of Goeben , raging at a deck crewman to clear some equipment so he could take off. He had heard the news that shook the fleet. Graf Zeppelin had been badly hit, the damage severe, and it looked as though the ship would not survive. Word soon came that their brother carrier had managed to get six Stukas into the sky before the ship endured that last fatal hit from the British rocket attack.

Damn those rockets! There goes the bulk of our air defense here, and most of our Stukas . Only six made it off, and there are three fighters still up on top cover. That makes nine planes off Graf Zeppelin now in the air, and that’s all the eggs we can put in this basket. I need to get up there, and with a full tank to loiter as long as possible.

“Rudel!” he had shouted. “Get your Stukas up. I’m making you the new Squadron leader—your planes and six more off the Graf Zeppelin . Let’s get moving!

The chocks were pulled away, and Ritter gunned the powerful engine on his Me-109T, rolling down the short flight deck and into the amber sky. He was on the radio coordinating with the pilots off Graf Zeppelin at once, and they were now circling about the Goeben , a swarm of angry bees gathering for the attack.

“The target is Rodney ,” he shouted. “All other fighters remain here on fleet defense. The crows follow me!” He put his plane in to a shallow bank, peeled off and led the way, off to the northeast where the action had just been joined by Topp and Hoffmann. They were coming with the six Stukas off Graf Zeppelin, and Hans Rudel had only just arrived with the three strike planes off the Goeben . They all had a bone to pick now, and they put all thoughts of how they might land on the crowded little escort carrier aside.

That would not matter, for the sky was soon to be alight with the hot contrails of Aster 15 rockets. There would be plenty of room on the flight deck of the Goeben in due course…

Nowthe wild scene in the red-orange dawn would suddenly take yet another unexpected turn. Captains on every ship involved were set on battle, their eyes behind field glasses, faces grim, the boom of the guns loud on the morning air. Thick black smoke erupted from the German battleships, the rolling char of cordite so thick that the men could taste it with each mighty salvo fired. The Germans were finally finding the range on the hapless Rodney . There had already been two near misses, when the Anton turret of Scharnhorst straddled the British ship, sending shrapnel into the stacked crates of boiler tubes on her decks.

Rodney thundered in reply, her third salvo very nearly scoring a hit on the Tirpitz . Now on the bridge, Lieutenant Commander Wellings was in a quandary. He had been unable to retrieve the precious key from Rodney ’s hold, and in spite of every effort to steer the ship away from harm, the tall splash of seawater riddled with shrapnel was now the hard reality at the end of all his plans.

Rodney shuddered with the firing of her own guns, four barrel salvoes that shook loose the deck planks and rattled every loose object on the ship. It was the second time Wellings had heard those monstrous guns fire, and the last time he had found himself flung overboard into a wild sea, witness to one of the greatest naval duels ever fought. This time it was not Bismarck out there, but her brother ship, the Tirpitz , and this time the odds were different too. That was a Scharnhorst class ship out in front!

The history here was still twisted and bent back upon itself, and he could see no way this intervention had any chance of succeeding. The only thing now was to get to his designated retrieval point, a position amidships where the project team would be looking to pull him out.

No sooner had he turned to look for the aft hatch and ladder down, when the first telling blow struck Rodney, just forward of her tall coning tower, and right on the number three gun turret there. It was an 11-inch shell flung at them by Kurt Hoffmann, and though the heavy armor at nearly 16 inches was enough to protect the turret from penetration, the shock and concussion was severe. Several packing crates that had been set atop the turret were blown to pieces, and black smoke billowed up, obscuring the bridge with choking cinder.

Wellings heard the drone of aircraft overhead, the scream of the Jericho trumpets, the wild hiss of rockets in the sky. When the smoke cleared he could see the twisting contrails of agile missiles snaking through the thin clouds overhead, seeking out the squadron of German Stukas . Then something happened that no one expected, except Gromyko.