Kirov Saga: Darkest Hour: Altered States - Volume II (Kirov Series) Read online

  “All guns trained and ready sir,” came the call.

  “Then let them know we are here. We’ll see how they like our sixteen inch guns. Hoist Blue Five. You may begin, Mister Connors.”

  A bell rang three times, and this time it was Connors finger on the firing pistol, and the guns fired the first ranging salvo, using only the centermost barrel on each of the three turrets. If he was close again he had six more rounds ready to fling at the enemy at once.

  * * *

  Aboard Graf Zeppelin the air crews had completed the recovery of their strike wing and were now feverishly working to re-arm and re-fuel the planes on the hanger deck. Marco Ritter’s Messerschmitt was one of the last to return, his right wing studded with dings where a Fulmar had managed to get a bite out of him. His sub-flight had managed to break up and harass the Swordfish strike from Illustrious, and he labored to note the direction the enemy planes took on their return leg.

  “If one of our seaplanes can swing round and have a good look to the south we may be able to catch their carriers,” he said to one of his pilots, then he spied the young Hans Rudel standing by his Stuka and smiled. My lucky eighteen, he thought, striding over to the man and clasping him on the shoulder.

  “I saw what you did again this time, Rudel! Keep it up! Three more hits and you’ll be in line for your first Knight’s Cross.”

  “Thank you, sir. I did my best.”

  “Yes, and the British know it! You put that egg right in the nest, just like the first time. And where is that stupid Maintenance Chief, eh? He said you could not fly combat missions, but he can eat those words now. Tonight we’ll drink to success, but for the moment, maybe you can get one more hit before Lindemann sinks those ships!”

  “I’m ready, sir. As soon as they patch that hole in my tail, we can go out and hurt them again.”

  Ritter finished his tin of coffee and set it down. “Let’s get up to the flight deck. They’ll serve up your plane in no time.” Together they took the ladder up.

  Graf Zeppelin was a big ship, over 860 feet in length and 119 feet abeam, the ship displaced as much as Kirov would at a full load of over 33,000 tons. 1700 officers and men crewed the ship, which had sortied streikschwere, with a strike-heavy compliment primarily composed of modified Stuka dive bombers. As such, the ship was configured for an offensive role, instead of loading up with fighters and playing defense for Lindemann’s fleet. The decision had paid good dividends, largely due to the discerning eye of Marco Ritter and his discovery of a top notch pilot in Hans Rudel.

  Up on deck Ritter saw they were already finishing the mounting of two BF-109s on the forward catapults, perched right near the ship’s bow. Behind them the main hanger deck yawned open, and the sound of the air crew chiefs shouting orders echoed up from below. High above them the tall yet graceful curve of the black stovepipe funnel darkened the sky. The ship was making speed into the wind, ready to launch. Already the first of the black winged Stukas were coming up on the elevator and being maneuvered aft to their pre launch positions.

  Three planes had been lost in the 1st Squadron, two hit by flak and one caught by the British fighter defense. This left nine there, and two had damage enough to keep them below decks in the maintenance bays. Seven remaining planes were spotted and ready. The twelve planes in 2nd Squadron had all made it back, with eight still serviceable and being armed for action, including Rudel’s plane.

  Ritter offered Rudel a cigarette, but he declined, never indulging in the habit during those rigorous and challenging years in naval flight training school. All he could think of now was getting back in his plane and hearing the thrum of the engine as he pulled away from the deck of the carrier.

  The sleek destroyer Sigfrid was cruising just off their starboard side, and its brother Beowulf was off the port side, effectively screening the ship’s vitals from any possible torpedo attack by a lurking submarine. Both ships were new, the Atlantik class project that had conspired to build a fast destroyer that could run with the carrier and have the endurance to stay at sea. Sometimes called Spähkreuzers, or “scout cruisers,” the ships were larger than any other German destroyer, with a dual propulsion system that used diesel engines for long cruises, and steam turbines for emergency speed.

  The destroyers had six 5.9-inch guns in three twin turrets, a pair of 88s for high altitude AA defense, and a lavish battery of eight 37mm flak guns with another eight 20mm caliber. Ten 21-inch torpedoes amidships finished off this impressive weapons suite for a ship displacing just 5,700 tons. Two depth charge racks were also mounted astern so the ships could also provide ASW defense. Unfortunately their designers could provide no defense for the enemy they would soon encounter.

  Ritter saw it first, thinking he was seeing a shooting star, a fast moving light in the hazy ocher sky. A billow of slate grey clouds drifted across the glowing orb of the low sun, dimming the light and making the contrast of the fire in the sky more noticeable. It was high up, then began to fall rapidly, towards the sea.

  “Look there, Rudel. Are you sure all our planes are back?”

  He thought it might be a fallen angel, one of the missing Stukas that had managed to get close enough to the carrier before eventually being forced to ditch. But no plane could move like that. Seconds later his eyes widened as he saw the light swoop low over the ocean and then accelerate! Its movement was inherently threatening, as it came, heading right for the ship, surging in like a hot star thrown down from the heavens. Then it smashed right into the hull of the Destroyer Sigfrid where it was keeping station two hundred yards from the carrier. The resulting explosion vibrated the air and an angry red fire scored the red twilight. Fire leapt up in a terrible sheet of flame.

  “Mein Gott!” he exclaimed. Then a massive secondary explosion nearly shook them from their feet, and Rudel heard the hard chink of metal on metal as fragments of the ravaged destroyer were flung against the carrier’s hull. He felt a nudge on his foot and looked to see one small piece of shrapnel had scuffed the toe of his boot. The torpedo mounts amidships had gone up in the fire, and the destroyer’s back was broken.

  Graf Zeppelin swept on, leaving the stricken destroyer behind. Ritter looked at Rudel, a stunned expression on his face. “That demon was meant for us, Rudel! It must have been a rocket! Sigfrid was just in the way. Get to your plane. I’ll be damned if I’ll get caught on this deck if another comes in.” he eyed the heavens darkly, as if another star would suddenly shake itself loose from the sable sky and come hurtling from above, like a javelin cast by a vengeful god.

  Ritter threw his cigarette down, tapped his companion on the shoulder, and ran to the forward catapult, making for his fighter. Rudel wasted no time either, his feet taking him aft as shouts of alarm and the signal for air alert resounded through the ship. The growl of the hydraulics on the elevators seemed more urgent now. They were under attack, but he could see no ship near them on any horizon save the foundering Sigfrid and now destroyer Beowulf, which had slowed to render assistance to its fallen brother.

  Stop gawking and get to your plane, he thought. Ritter is correct! The sooner you get aloft, the better. Yet even as he had that thought, he wondered if the carrier would still be there when he returned from this last mission.

  Chapter 5

  “Something has gone amiss,” said Rodenko as he hovered over the radar scope. He pointed to the screen, noting how the contacts they had been tracking had separated, one moving on ahead, and two behind.

  “Any change of speed or heading?” asked Fedorov.

  “No, I still read the primary contact as bearing on eighty true, and look, those look to be aircraft now. I think they are launching.”

  “Could our missile have missed or failed in some way. It’s almost certain they could not have any chance to shoot it down.”

  “No sir, we detected the detonation. I think we must have hit one of the smaller ships. The contacts were very close to one another in that formation—so close that we almost read it as a single contact u
ntil I did some signal processing.”

  “The carrier was probably being screened by those destroyers. If that is what happened then we may be too late to stop them from launching.”

  “I’m reading at least seven aircraft up already, but we can put another missile on them in three minutes.” Rodenko folded his arms, waiting for a decision.

  Admiral Volsky had been listening from across the Captain’s chair, brooding as he watched the dull red sky. “It is clear we must have struck one of those destroyers,” he said.

  Their plan to disrupt the carrier’s launch operation had been foiled by the lucky positioning of the destroyer Sigfrid close off the carrier’s starboard side—lucky for Graf Zeppelin, but not for Sigfrid, which took the P-900 that was meant for its bigger brother right amidships, and died an agonizing death.

  “We might have used the Vodopad system,” thought Fedorov. “But we were just not close enough. The range was well over 200 kilometers from our present position, and the Vodopads max out at 120 klicks.”

  “The same result could have happened, even if we configured it to wake homing mode as you suggested Fedorov. These weapons make a target selection, and it could have run right up the wake of one of those screening ships. Remember, our systems were never designed to fire in isolation at a battlegroup like this. We have always fired in salvos or three to twenty SSMs, enough to completely saturate a modern defense and obliterate the target. If that were a modern American carrier we would have fired with nearly every missile we had. As it stands, one of their screening units was just hit, and now they must be wondering what happened.”

  “Well, we’ve stuck a big stick in the bee hive,” said Rodenko. “I’m reading another eight planes up—make that ten—seventeen planes aloft now.”

  “Are they bearing southwest to the scene of the surface action?”

  “Not yet, but where else would they be headed?”

  Volsky shrugged. “We tried a little surprise attack, just like our late Mister Karpov would have advised, but I think he would have put at least three missiles to this task. We had to be stingy, and now we got nothing for our trouble, and our missile inventory slips another notch.”

  “This means we will have to extend our SAM umbrella over the battle zone, sir.” Fedorov knew that would also have a cost. They wanted to try and be discreet, applying the tremendous power of their modern weapons incrementally to try and affect the outcome here, but it was going to take something more. Beyond the missiles they would have to commit, the visibility of their SAM defense could have unforeseen consequences.

  “Mister Samsonov,” Volsky said quietly. “What is our SAM inventory?”

  “Sir, my board reads thirty S-400 Triumf missiles remaining, and all conversions to full SAM mode have been completed. On the Klinok system we have ninety-eight missiles ready, and our Kashtan system still has fifty missiles available.”

  Volsky thought. “Then if we had to shoot down all those planes Rodenko is now reporting we would use ten percent of our SAM inventory, but after that I think this German aircraft carrier will pose no further threat. If, however, we decide to use an SSM now, it may take several hits to disable that ship, and its planes are already in the air. Very well, secure SSMs. Extend SAM shield over the battle zone, and let us hope the British planes are not so eager to return to the action.”

  “We may not have to shoot them all down,” said Fedorov. “And once we let those missiles fly they are going to turn every head within sighting range.”

  “Well, gentlemen,” said Volsky. “Time for the fireworks.”

  * * *

  Aboard Bismarck, Lindemann was exhilarated with the excitement of the battle, until he felt the hard impact of an enemy shell, the sea erupting as a 15-inch round from HMS Hood plummeted in to strike the ship’s heavy side armor. Seconds passed, then he received the call from Oels, who had gone down to his damage control post. The armor had stopped the shell, and the ship had not been hurt.

  “A little higher and we would have lost one of the secondary batteries, Kapitän. The hit was very close to one of the 5.7 inch gun magazines, but it did not penetrate our side armor.”

  “That is good,” said Lindemann, smiling. But the Kapitän did not have time to savor his good fortune. Hood had found the range, and he immediately altered course ten points to try and throw the British gunnery off. The message that came next was as puzzling as it was disconcerting.

  “Kapitän—a message from Böhmer on Graf Zeppelin. They have come under fire from what appeared to be a rocket of some kind!”

  Lindemann had been too focused on his firefight with Hood, lost in the fire and smoke of battle now, and he had not seen the solitary P-900 rise and fall in the sky as it arced over the scene, racing north another 150 kilometers to where Graf Zeppelin was cruising in the rear.

  “A rocket?” Now Kapitän Hoffmann’s words returned to haunt him. Rockets… fired by a mysterious British cruiser—a battlecruiser—a ship the size of Hood itself. He tried to warn us all that the British had these new weapons. But clearly Hood has nothing of the kind. No. They rely on good artillery, as we do.

  “Was the ship damaged?”

  “No sir. But the weapon struck Sigfrid and Böhmer thinks we may lose that ship.”

  “Sigfrid? Sunk?” This was something else entirely now. Hoffman’s wild story of a fiery tailed rocket striking Gneisenau still seemed unbelievable. He had not seen the damage personally, but if he had, the news might have made more sense to him. Whatever this weapon was, it must have tremendous striking power to be able to sink a ship like Sigfrid in one blow. That was no ordinary destroyer! It was nearly 6,000 tons in displacement.

  Beyond that, Graf Zeppelin was far to the northwest, well over the horizon. There was simply no way the British could have reached it with such a weapon from their present positions… unless… unless the ships to his south were not the only enemy units now vectoring in on the scene of the battle. Nelson and Rodney had been at sea for some time, but he heard nothing from Wilhelmshaven as to their current position. Suppose they continued west, following his own wake north of Iceland, and were even now bearing down on the Denmark Strait from the north?

  His mind was in a whirlwind of possibilities now, and the sound of the battle seemed like a storm of steel all around him, the guns were elevating, firing, belching out their anger in tremendous salvos that shook the entire ship. The sea was a churning lake of fire, with tall geysers jetting up as the ships continued on a slowly converging collision course, the range diminishing by the minute. He had to think!

  Could that rocket have been fired by a plane? Was it in fact a rocket weapon as reported, or might it have been a bomb? Could it have been a torpedo from a submarine, or even a flying rocket torpedo? He knew that Doenitz had toyed with that concept, a rocket that might be fired from beneath the sea to cross a longer distance before falling back into the ocean to approach its target as a torpedo. Naval Intelligence also believed that Italians were trying to develop flying torpedoes that could be dropped by parachute and then activated to circle and search for enemy ships. The roar of Bismarck’s guns shook the ship again, rattling his attention back to the moment with the jarring sound of battle.

  “Ship sighted! Bearing 220 degrees true!”

  Lindemann pivoted to search the smoky red horizon, barely seeing the growing shadow of another ship on the sea. It had been reported earlier by the air units, and now was making its prominent appearance on the horizon. At that very moment Admiral Tovey was sending up his battle ensign and remarking that it bore a lock of Nelson’s hair. Seconds later Lindemann knew that his battle was evolving to something more than he expected. He saw the bright flash of gunfire from the shadow on the horizon, heard the low booming peal soon after.

  That will be HMS Invincible, he thought, perhaps the best ship the British have. He could see the high arc of the shells catching the sunlight, a small spotting salvo to test the range, but he knew this ship would soon follow with a full broads
ide if these shots were close.

  Now his mind raced on. An attack on Graf Zeppelin from an impossible range… Could the British have another battlegroup to the north that he did not know about?

  “Send to Böhmer,” he said quickly. “Ask if he has sighted any enemy ships to the north of our position. That rocket had to come from somewhere. If the British are behind us…” He said nothing further, but the concern was obvious in his voice.

  * * *

  The missiles leapt up from the forward deck of battlecruiser Kirov, the hatches snapping open and the sibilant hiss of the declining jets orienting them to the correct angle of fire. Then the roar of the main rocket engines ignited, and the deadly lances were on their way. One by one the S-400 Triumf missiles rose into the sky, accelerating rapidly and scoring the ruddy sky with their long white tails that seemed almost luminescent in the midnight sun.

  They formed a great smoky rainbow in the sky, arcing up, their tails bright with fire, the noise of their haste a roaring howl that seemed to shake the air itself. They were a weapon that could not have even been conceived in the minds of any man of that day, capable of finding and hitting a supersonic target as much as 400 kilometers away, and doing so with near pinpoint accuracy. And they could reach the mind numbing speed of just over 4000 meters per second, which amounted to 14,400 KPH!

  Aboard the battleship Bismarck, every man on the bridge was staring at the sky. There came a lull in the gunfire, and he knew that the British crews must be equally spellbound. There were three, then five missiles clawing through the sky like shooting stars, high up, and then descending like meteors, bright with fire to explode on the heedless formation of Stuka dive bombers that was fast approaching the scene of the battle. One by one they exploded, then they saw the flaming wreckage of aircraft falling from the sky… one by one…