achieve such range from what must be a five or six inch gun?
Now he began to have a deep feeling that something was very wrong here. The British had stunned and amazed them with the sudden shock of their naval rocketry—now this! How could they be seeing us? Could it be some highly advanced form of new radar?
The hard crack and explosion of yet another round on the lower deck shook the ship again. This time they lost a secondary battery to a direct hit. His mind went on and on… Rommel… The man had reported the British had a massive new heavy tank in the desert. He had dismissed it at first, but now he began to re-think the rumors and talk he had heard about it—twice the size of the old Matildas, and with armor that was impervious to a direct hit from an AT gun, even from the vaunted 88. How could they be so far ahead of us? Why… it’s as if these weapons have come from another time, a generation or more ahead of anything Germany had developed. Yet, at the same time, the British still flew off those old Swordfish biplanes from their carriers, still fought in their lumbering Matildas. It made no sense.
These new weapons have appeared only in very select places. Goering sent wave after wave of our bombers to smash London. One would think that a prime target for the British to defend with the very best weapons they have. Yet there was not a single instance of any of these rocket weapons that have proved to be so lethal to our planes. That Stuka attack put in by the last planes off Graf Zeppelin was shot to pieces in five minutes! Those anti-aircraft rockets are so deadly that I had to order the Goeben to stand down and break off to the west. No use throwing those last three Stukas away. I see this, astonished, and yet the British let us pound London without firing a single rocket. Something is not what it seems here. Something is very wrong. In the meantime, how much more of this must we endure? Thankfully we should be coming in range of the Tirpitz in due course.
MacRae’s deck gun had been more than annoying that morning. There was damage on both Bismarck and Hindenburg, small fires that were controllable, but the casualties had mounted up. On the Hindenburg, they lost a secondary battery, a gun director, had lifeboats blown to pieces, and an Arado seaplane exploding amidships with a direct hit.
The action between Tirpitz and the British battlecruisers had shifted well away from the foundering Rodney. There the Scharnhorst had taken one hit forward near the Anton turret, And Tirpitz suffered a hit on her heavy side armor, shrugging off the blow. Renown had not been so lucky. Topp’s gunners had straddled that ship on their fourth salvo, and the next one put a 15-insh shell right through the forward deck, with Scharnhorst hitting the ship amidships for good measure.
“Adler!” Lutjens shouted. “It’s now or never. Drive off those battlecruisers!”
Captain Adler was only too happy to comply, the frustration of taking all these secondary battery hits had been mounting for the last fifteen minutes, and now the enemy would hear the roar of the Hindenburg, like a great elephant wielding its mighty trunk and trumpeting in anger. At long last, he had something to shoot at.
The British battlecruisers saw the arrival of Hindenburg and Bismarck, and knew their time for battle had run out. They began to angle off to starboard, still firing, yet edging away and opening the range to prevent the new German ships from engaging.
All the while the plumes of small caliber rounds were still falling around Lütjens squadron, and the Admiral had a very keen eye. He was watching the enemy battlecruisers very closely with his field glasses, and could clearly see their main batteries firing, and mark the fall of those heavier 15-inch rounds.
Yet they aren’t even using their secondary batteries, he thought. And there is no way these shells could be fired by the Rodney. Our Arado reported that ship to be listing over and sinking. So that narrows down the list of suspects. The British had destroyers with the Rodney, yet they were reported to have broken off with that fat troop ship liner. They would be well east by now. There was also a cruiser said to be approaching Rodney, most likely to render aid and