Kirov (31 page)

Wilkenson,
Baker and Cross were out in front, and soon they saw what looked like a distant
shadow on the far horizon. Eager to spot the possible target, Cross pulled his
Swordfish up to gain some altitude, and it was only that unwise maneuver that
enabled the young Lieutenant Yazov to get a fix on the Swordfish group.

Aboard
Kirov
, Yazov shouted out a sudden warning. “Con, new contact, 10
kilometers out and closing! Feeding target to CIC.” He had been so busy
tracking on the other contact groups that he had not seen the signal winking in
and out of resolution on his screen—the old Stringbags flying low and slow, and
scarcely noticed in the heat of his very first live combat trial.

Samsonov
had been firing his underdeck missile modules in pairs, with four missiles each
for a barrage of 8 as Karpov had directed. Yet he knew that, within minutes,
this new contact would be inside the minimum acquisition range of his system,
and so he quickly redirected one module at this new threat. The missiles barely
had time to turn and acquire after being catapulted out of their vertical
launch tubes, inclining and igniting their engines to rocket away from the
ship. Only two of the four found targets. Knocking down Jones and Heath. The
other planes forged on until they had closed to three kilometers range.

“Tally
ho!” Shouted one pilot over his radio when he spotted the ship ahead. Yet it
looked nothing whatsoever like an aircraft carrier. As Maughan, Kindell and
Sinclair steered their flight of three Swordfish in,
Kirov
responded
with a lethal new evolution of its air defense system.

A
unique feature of the new Gauntlet system was its close integration with a 30mm
Gatling gun mount adjacent to each missile bank, one on each side of the aft
quarter of the ship. This system automatically engaged and locked on to the
oncoming Swordfish when missile lock was not obtained. The computer controlled
barrels swung around to bear on the targets, jerked up and down briefly, then
rattled off a withering burst of 30mm shells that literally tore the first
plane to pieces. It was as if a kite had been blasted by buckshot at close
range, riddled with so many holes that it could no longer have any structure.

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?”

Chapter
18

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.

“They’ve
pulled a fast one on us, Brind,” he said. “This new rocket AA defense could
change the war. It’s put Wake-Walker and his carriers right on their back foot.
My God, thirty-one planes down in under ten minutes time! They got off one
bloody torpedo, but no hits were observed. Walker says his boys were in it up
to their hatbands and barely got out alive. If the Germans manage to mount
these new rockets on their fighter planes do you realize what they could do to
our bombers?”

Brind
nodded, his face etched with concern. “Wake-Walker’s carriers are not much good
to us now, sir. He’s consolidated what was left of his Squadrons on
Victorious
,
and is detaching
Furious
to sail for Scapa Flow. We’ll get her another
air wing, but I can’t see that it will do us much good under these
circumstances. They can serve as scouts, provide fleet air defense, lay mines,
but as offensive weapons they are pretty much a liability now.”

“Odd
thing about this…” Tovey was obviously perplexed. “I’m sure it must have been
bandied about at the Admiralty as well. If Jerry has this new weapon system,
and can mount it on a warship like this, then why haven’t they used it anywhere
else? It could be set up for airfield defense, port defense. My God, they’ve got
over a thousand AA guns protecting Brest, and we send Coastal Command and RAF
squadrons in there week after week against high value targets like
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
with nary a whisper of these new rockets.”

“Perhaps
it’s still in the offing, sir,” Brind suggested. “This may be the first
application of the technology.
Graf Zeppelin
may be the test run for
naval systems, and we could very well see it deployed, as you point out, for
land based defense as well.”

“God
help us if that turns out to be the case,” said Tovey. “It would completely
neutralize Bomber Command. In the meantime, rockets or not, I’ve got ten 14
inch guns on this ship. Our task now is to bring this rogue to heel, just as we
did
Bismarck
. Any developments?”

“Wake-Walker
is still trailing the contact, sir. Apparently the Germans loitered in the
vicinity of Jan Mayen for a few days before they put on speed and ran south for
the Denmark Strait. Its all of a thousand miles from their first reported
position near Jan Mayen before they get down and out into the Atlantic. That
delay allowed Wake-Walker to get back in the game, sir. Though given what has
happened to his squadrons, I’m sure he’s had his regrets about that. At the
moment, he’s got his destroyers out in front creeping up on Jerry, but if they
can’t catch up soon they’ll have to make for Reykjavík to refuel. The rest of
Force P is with the carriers, cruisers
Suffolk
,
Devonshire
, and
one destroyer. Those ships might be able to deal with
Graf Zeppelin
, but
they can’t catch her if she keeps on at 30 knots. So we’ll have to be ready to
intercept her after she transits the Denmark Strait. We’ve moved Vian’s group into
the Faeroes Gap with two cruisers and two destroyers, designated Force K. They’ll
be northeast of our position by now and keep watch there if the enemy turns in that
direction. If the Germans keep on their present heading, however, then we may
have something to do for your big guns in another…sixteen hours or so.”