now work against them. There were eight 6-inch guns, all mounted aft behind the funnels, but it would be much more difficult to open up firing arcs for the bigger turrets. X-turret would be completely blind dead aft, unlike a similar rear mounted turret in a more classically configured ship design. To get it into action, the ship would again have to withdraw in a zig-zag, allowing the X-turret to fire at an angle of at least 15 degrees. The two forward turrets would need at least twice that to look over their shoulder and stay engaged. The ship was never meant to run from a fight.
These were all things running through Tovey’s mind as Invincible kept on with its charge. If I turn, he thought, they’ll have all their guns available to sight on our full silhouette. For those minutes, the ship will be much more vulnerable, and when we run we can’t hit them as hard on those rear firing arcs. What I miss now is a good pack of hunting dogs! Fighting here without a destroyer escort was a clear liability, but there was no way they could trail along through the Med. I counted heavily on the Russian ship standing with me, and now our entire battle squadron has been scattered.
If I turn here, what will Lütjens do? Will he follow and give chase, or merely take his shots and come round to finish Rodney? Why should I give him any choice at all? No. All our teeth are right up front, and thinking of the destroyers, I’ve another little surprise, a legacy of the era that saw this ship built, so let it roll.
“Mister Bennett,” he said to the Captain. “Steady on, and make ready on all torpedo tubes.”
The Captain raised an eyebrow, yet he knew what Tovey intended now. They were going in, hell bent, and the Admiral aimed to make this a fight to the death. The Invincible had a pair of submerged torpedo tubes forward of the A-turret, and carried eight massive 24-inch lances that were driven by oxygen enriched air. They had two speed settings and were already in range of the enemy ships. At 35 knots they could run out 15,000 yards, and at 30 knots that extended to 20,000 yards, the interval that now separated the two sides.
Other ships had them from that era, including Rodney, which saw them become the liability that rent her hull open when the Tirpitz struck the torpedo magazine. Other ships would normally fire from the broadside, but Invincible had a rotating torpedo mount below decks, and could alter the angle of the tubes by up to 15 degrees. This gave him a little flexibility, and the innovation would allow him to fire as he continued to close the range, which was exactly what he intended to do.
Tovey had no intention of turning full broadside. He was running all out, his forward silhouette still presenting a much more difficult target for the enemy as his bow was aimed right at them. All he had to do was make five or ten point zigzags to allow X-turret to fire, and with his slight speed advantage he was inexorably closing on his enemy. He was making a battleship sized torpedo run, as any destroyer might, only he had nine 16-inch guns to use on the way in.
“Set torpedoes to mode one. Speed 35.”
That was an obvious choice, as Invincible would literally outrun her own torpedoes at the longer range setting. Yet to use mode one, Tovey knew he needed to get well inside that 15,000 yard range marker to give the torpedoes any chance. So it was all or nothing now, and the Admiral was pushing all his chips out onto the table.
The Germans were trying to cross his T, but at the last minute, he would swing hard to starboard to aim his nose at a point well ahead of the enemy formation, and then send four lances out at 35 knots, each one tipped with nearly 750 pounds of TNT. Then he would come hard to port and add four more torpedoes to widen his spread. Unless the German formation turned radically off their present heading, he knew they would face the prospect of taking a deadly hit. Captain Adler had insisted on coming to the ball, and soon, in that wild minute when the watchmen shouted out the torpedo warning, he and his ship would have to learn to dance.