fire torpedoes, and if he knew this was happening, he should have turned hard to port instead of starboard, for now he was maneuvering right into the path of the torpedo spread, and actually closing the range even more.
Adler’s eyes were lost behind his field glasses, intently watching the other ship and seeing his own shellfall straddle the British behemoth yet again. The torpedoes streaked from beneath the waterline on Invincible, and then, to Adler’s surprise, he saw the British ship execute yet another sharp turn, this time hard to port.
“What is that fool doing?” he said aloud, looking over his shoulder and pointing. Then he answered his own question. “Ah, he does not want to come to starboard after seeing us turn, because if he comes all the way around he will have to turn his back side to us and all his guns are forward.” In his mind the British now looked like they wanted to steer due north as his own formation came round to the south, so the two sides could run parallel to one another in opposite directions instead of running together. He knows he can run with us and exchange broadsides, thought Adler. It never occurred to him that the enemy ship had turned only to present its starboard side and fire yet another spread of deadly 24-inch torpedoes.
If Lütjens had been alive, he might have seen what the British were really doing. His first command had been aboard torpedo boat T-68 in the 6th Torpedo Boat Demi-Flotilla. He served in these squadrons throughout the First War, and dueled with other British torpedo boats off Dunkirk, as well as French destroyers in his first combat actions at sea. Between the wars he had trained on the pre-dreadnought battleship Schlesien, again for torpedo firing exercises. In 1936, Lütjens had been appointed Führer der Torpedoboote (Chief of Torpedo Boats), planting his flag aboard the German Destroyer Z1, Leberecht Maass. It wasn’t until the outbreak of the war that he eventually transferred to the bigger ships, commanding the covering force for the Norwegian campaign with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
So the old torpedo man at heart might have seen much more in Tovey’s unorthodox maneuvers than Adler, and in that critical moment, he may have certainly turned to port instead of starboard. But Lütjens was dead, and all of that seasoned experience was gone with him.
“Now we will have him badly outgunned,” said Adler, a jubilant edge to his voice. “He cannot trade broadsides with us and hope to survive. Get him, Eisenberg!”
Tovey knew the Germans were not going to be able to come round on 180 for very long. It was only a matter of a few minutes before they would discover their peril, and soon the high mainmast watch on Hindenburg shouted out the warning.
“Torpedoes!”
The word shocked Adler, for it was the last thing he expected. In fact, he had no idea that the British ship even carried such weapons, and there had not been a single instance of a battleship using torpedoes since the first world war. The Hindenburg had initially included six similar submerged torpedo tubes in her design, but they had been removed in the final construction, thought to be an anachronism. That torpedoes would be used here, in the heat of this intense gun duel, never entered his mind.
Yet now he had to quickly find the danger and maneuver the ship. To do so he rushed outside to the weather deck, where Lütjens body still lay in his unceremonious death, crews only just arriving with a stretcher. Adler had heard the Admiral had fallen, but it was only now that he would see him in his death pose, one arm plaintively extended on the cold metal deck, as if he were desperately trying to point out the impending danger in those oncoming torpedoes.
It was a grizzly sight that shook the Kapitan in spite of the urgency of this moment, for he had to stand on the deck still wet with the Admiral’s blood. He looked frantically to the sea, trying to find the wakes of the enemy torpedoes and finally saw that he had steered directly into their approach. Apparently Lindemann on the Bismarck had already seen them, and he took it upon himself to turn hard to port. Adler tried to do the same, shouting the orders at the top of his voice, and watching the heavy bow of the Hindenburg cutting the sea with the sudden turn.