John Schettler - Three Kings

Adler was still steaming with the thought that they should have turned and fought this ship the moment it first appeared on the distant horizon. But Lutjens had turned away, and he had received a stiff rebuke when he made an unwise comment intimating that the Admiral seemed to have no stomach for battle. It still bothered him as he felt that presence behind them, and he stepped out onto the weather bridge to have a look through his field glasses.

The night was cold and wet, a light mist on the air that was more than the spray from Hindenburg’s bow. Rain was coming. He had checked with the weather man and knew the pressure was falling. So they would have a storm to shroud their massive steel shoulders soon, and thickening clouds overhead. That would keep the Goeben’s planes on the deck for the foreseeable future, so he could not count on the Stukas driving off this meddlesome British battleship. But here he had the most advanced ship in the German Navy under his feet, its power and mass so evident as it plowed the seas-and they were running!

He shook his head, wishing he could make a sudden turn and rip open the night with those terrible 16-inch guns. That was how he would have handled the matter, but Lutjens had been adamant. They had their feast. Convoy HX-69 paid the terrible price for the meal in ships lost and blood and fire on the sea. Then, at the height of their feeding frenzy, the Royal Navy had appeared, a battleship challenging them off the starboard bow, and the Admiral had turned away, leaving the wrecked convoy behind, along with the prospect of a good battle that Adler knew they would have won if the Admiral had found his backbone. Bismarck took the lead and he had followed, reluctantly, still stinging from the threat leveled at him by Lutjens.

Throw me in the brig, will he? Adler steamed, glad for the cool wet air of the night on his face now. Then he had second thoughts, realizing that his remark had been too much of an insult for Lutjens to permit, particularly on the bridge, in front of the other officers. That realization still burned at the back of his neck, and he knew he had invited the Admiral’s angry reprisal, but that did little to comfort him. He would have to be more careful, he thought, yet he must make his voice heard as well. He was Kapitan of the Hindenburg, a posting any man in the fleet would envy, and not without reason. He was an experienced sea Kapitan, young, with a good fighting heart, a loyal party man. Why else was he here if not to find and fight the enemy? His judgment was sound, and he would have it heard, but he had to be more careful.

Lutjens was not a party man. He was a good, loyal officer, but not one to click heels and stiffen to the salute before the Nazi flag. It was said that when the Fuhrer came to tour the ship before it sailed on this first maiden voyage, the Admiral offered a traditional naval salute, and not the one armed salute that had been adopted by the party. Lutjens seemed to have misgivings about National Socialism, reservations that seemed to manifest as a quiet disdain at times. Perhaps I can use that, he thought, but he put the matter aside.

In the future I will state my opinion in a more direct manner, he thought. No innuendo with a man like Lutjens, but I can have anything I say entered into the ship’s log. If I disagree, then it can be made a matter of record, and perhaps then the Admiral will think twice before he so lightly dismisses the advice of this ship’s Kapitan.

Even as he thought that, he realized how hollow it sounded. This ship’s Kapitan… He was on the flagship of the fleet! Yes, an enviable post, but one that was ever fated to stand as vice Chancellor in the hierarchy of command. There would always be an Admiral on this ship, another man’s shadow ever darkening his chair. He would play second fiddle here-unless he became the Admiral on this ship one day, and that thought set his mind to a more promising compass heading.

They had been running full out for ten hours after their feast on the convoy. Now they had come to a position about a thousand kilometers east of Glasgow, well away from British air cover, though he gave that little mind now with the Goeben along. Marco Ritter had a clutch of good fighter pilots out there somewhere. The escort carrier was steaming with the new battlecruiser Kaiser in escort, another good reason they should have turned and sunk this British battleship.

He sighed, turning to greet an adjutant coming out to see him with a message.

“Fleet communique, sir. Wilhelmshaven reports they have radio intercepts on more capital ships that have joined the chase.”

Adler took the message, squinting at it in the darkness. “What does it say?”

“Sir, they believe the British have at least two other battleships behind us.”

“Anything to the south? What of this Force H we have been brooding about?”

“Nothing sir.”

Adler nodded, putting the message into his pocket. “See that the Admiral is informed.”

The man saluted and went off, and Adler looked over his shoulder again, seeing nothing but the low clouds and gathering rain. Well, he thought, two more battleships-a fair fight now. What could the British possibly have that could keep up with us? The ship behind them now must certainly be the HMS Invincible. That much was evident when it delivered a booming challenge at long range when it first appeared. The shells were well off the mark, but Adler knew the splash of a big gun round when he saw one, and that was a battleship that had fired at them, and not a cruiser. Only their battlecruisers could make thirty knots to keep up with Hindenburg like this, but they were thought to still be in the ship yards after the bruising Graf Zeppelin and Bismarck gave to them in Operation Valkyrie.

That was another aborted battle at sea that they should have fought and won. He knew Lindemann on the Bismarck. The man was not one to turn and run from any good fight. Yet he, too, had exercised caution at the outset when the Royal Navy charged in with more reinforcements-HMS Invincible, the pride of the British Home Fleet. But that was not all… There had been another ship, firing those amazing naval rockets, or so he had heard. He spoke with Lindemann about it, and the man seemed strangely bothered, an uncertain look in his eye that Adler had never seen before. He had also heard what Kurt Hoffmann had said about what happened to Gneisenau, and the loss of one of their newest destroyers, Heimdall, was further evidence that some dark new demon was at large on the seas. But it wasn’t a British ship-it was Russian!

He still had trouble getting his mind around that. How could the Russians have developed such weapons? This was obviously a very secret project, something that had been missed by the intelligence services, which did not surprise him. The Abwehr was a leaky sieve of late. Canaris could not really be relied on for anything of importance. Adler had the lingering suspicion that the man was a double agent, a dissembling obstructionist at best, a traitor at worst, though he knew he could never prove that. Canaris had whined on and on about Franco’s unreliability.

Adler knew how he would deal with Franco-with a good Panzer Korps! It was just the way he thought he should deal with this British battleship behind them, but now there were three… That thought gave him pause. Was the Russian ship with them, the ship they were all calling Fafnir, the dragon of the Nordic seas where it had first made its appearance? It was said it could fire these new naval rockets at very long range, but they had seen nothing of this. Perhaps this was just an exaggeration, he thought, though the reports were very disturbing.

A rocket had come out of the night, high in the sky, then falling like a shooting star to skim over the sea and lance right in at Graf Zeppelin. The destroyer Heimdall had just been in the way, and took the blow that might have gutted the carrier. And the strangest thing about that attack is that there was no sign of any enemy ship on the horizon-no sign at all. Graf Zeppelin was well back from the action, so the rumors about the extreme long range of these naval rockets must be true.