ten degrees at the double quick. Move!”
* * *
HMS Invincible was coming on, and right into the thick of that last German salvo. Axel Faust beamed when he saw a single round strike the ship, and he knew it must be his.
“Got the bastard!” he beamed. “We’re counterpunching off the ropes! Let’s give them another.”
His own 16-inch shell was the biggest on any ship in the German Navy, from the 40.6cm SK C/34 gun, screaming out of Axel’s turret at over 2600 feet per second. The shell was heavier than the British round, at 1,030 kg. If the turret had not found its way to the Hindenburg, it would have ended up as “Battery Lindemann” on the French coast, in honor of the Captain of the Bismarck who was supposed to lose his life this month. Yet that history was now on the scales of time and fate, and Lindemann was still very much alive, and more than happy to cede the turret to Axel Faust.
Invincible was equally well armored, with all of 8 inches on key deck areas, 14 inches at the belt, and 17.5 inches shielding her massive turrets. But Faust was going to hit the much smaller 4.7 inch AA gun mounted right to the starboard side of the conning tower, and it would be completely demolished, and all its ready ammo also fed the explosion, sending off a series of jolting reports, like fitful firecrackers. The shrapnel took a heavy toll on the deck crews near the second 4.7 inch twin gun mount, but when the smoke of the initial blast cleared, the fire there was not serious.
So right at the outset, both sides had landed good punches, and now Tovey saw the German ships begin to angle into a turn. He might have one, or possibly two more salvos where he actually outgunned both enemy ships combined, but they would soon double their firepower.
“Now or never, Mister Connors,” he said, and the boom of the guns answered with the ship’s fourth salvo, this time four barrels, quickly followed by the remaining five. Of those nine shells, Connors’ luck would hold long enough to see one of them strike the Hindenburg, and it would be a very telling blow.
Yet even while those shells were in flight, Bismarck had put in a good shot with its third salvo, and Tovey felt the hard thunk and explosion of a side armor hit.
“No worry there, gentlemen,” he said calmly. “That was on the main belt, and our hide is as thick as they come.” The King George V class actually had slightly heavier belt armor, but what it added there in protection, it had lost in much needed speed.
“Range?” asked Tovey.
“I make it a tad under 22,000 yards sir,” said Connors.
“Let’s make good use of it,” the Admiral replied. “We’ll be inside 20,000 in little time .”
* * *
Lütjens had seen the hit on Invincible, and wanted a better look. He was outside on the weather deck off the Admiral’s bridge when it happened, the luck of Mister Connors, and the single shell of the nine he had fired that struck a fatal blow—not for the ship, but for the man standing on that weather bridge, the Admiral himself. Lütjens had just raised his field glasses to have his curiosity satisfied.
Let’s see what we’ve done here, he thought, and that was the last thing to run through his mind before the shrapnel came. When Connors’ round struck the heavily armored conning tower, protected by 14 inches of Krup Cemented Steel, and with a roof nearly 8 inches thick, the cruel metal splinters suddenly swept the field glasses from the Admiral’s hand, and smashed into his right temple, killing him instantly.
For a brief moment, the Admiral’s legs still held strength, then his body slumped to the deck, his life’s blood bleeding from a catastrophic head wound. In those dark, dangerous seconds, Johann Gunther Lütjens stopped being something the universe was doing, and the process that had begun on the 25th of May, 1889, now ceased, just a few weeks shy of his 52nd birthday. Every experience of his life, and memories recorded in his long distinguished naval career, came to a sudden and absolute end. He would never know what happened to him, how he would die, or have even a single moment to contemplate his fate. One moment he was there, in the fullness of his prime, calmly assessing the damage his guns might have inflicted on the distant