58. Scapa Flow
Seekriegsleitung to Flugzeugträgerschwadron: Ascend Mont Blanc.
SMS Graf Zeppelin
North Sea
0400 5 August 1941
When the signal arrived, Canaris turned to the assembled officers and nodded gravely. "They gave the order." The Crown Prince, troubled as his father had been on a similar declaration of war, merely nodded and looked down at the deck to ensure his planes were spotted as he wanted. Peter Volkmann, though, bolted from the cabin, elated and terrified. His plan was going into execution.
He half-ran, half-stumbled down to the ready rooms one-by-one, slapping the hatches as he came by and ducking his head in. "It's a go!" he snapped at each one in turn, and pilots produced clipboards and fatalistic expressions as he passed. The individual squadron commanders began their briefings, explaining what the plan of action was. For his part, Peter joined Rudel's dive-bomber squadron. For the second time, Peter Volkmann was flying a Stuka onto the battlefield. Rudel, as usual, was unsmiling and serious, and began his briefing with the thoroughness Peter had come to expect.
Peter's plan of attack was simple: the combined air wings of the six German carriers would approach Scapa Flow at wavetop level from the east, aiming for the break between Burray and the mainland. The torpedo bombers, scouts, and dive bombers were to target capital ships roughly in weight order as they found them, while the fighters were rigged with temporary single-bomb payloads to attack any shore-side defenses they encountered, beginning with the naval air station at Matson. The second wave was to focus on the base on Hoy, giving attention to the fuelers. The third wave was provisionally instructed to seek targets of opportunity - if there was a third wave, which depended on the success of the first two. This was the information Rudel imparted, with a final clicking salute and a ringing "God save the Kaiser!" that was dutifully echoed by his pilots.
In the first North Sea prelight, the pilots took to their planes, each occupied by their own thoughts. Peter's were of his wife, probably still asleep and probably spending the day cheering on the Kaiser's every act. Hanna was nothing if not patriotic. He shook the thoughts from his head as he walked around his Stuka, checking every exposed fastener and surface. His designated gunner for the day was a pureblood sailor, a Matrosengefreiter named Speidel. Speidel was Vogt's opposite - Vogt flying off
Peter Strasser as a senior, though not commanding, fighter pilot now. Speidel could not quit talking, and Peter, to be honest, found it tiresome. He knew the youth was just nervous, but he had always been fairly introspective himself. Fortunately, the roar of the engines around them drowned Speidel out, and instead, he focused on the signal officer and his flags, barely visible in the dawn twilight.
The latest intelligence was that between three and eight battleships and two aircraft carriers were at Scapa Flow, plus assorted cruisers. Peter hoped, strictly from years of Canaris hounding him, that one of the "battleships" was
Hood. The rest, he expected, would take care of itself. These were his last thoughts before the flags flashed down and he slammed the throttle forward. He was still not used to the longer deck of the
Graf Zeppelin, and had to fight the urge to pull up prematurely. The Stuka was laden to its limit, and he needed every ounce of speed he could gather.
He glanced back over his shoulder as he took his place in formation, and saw a breathtaking sight - two hundred-odd aircraft, spread out in droning near-silence, their spacing perfect. It was the first time, seeing this assembled force, that he felt with absolute certainty that his plan would work.
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HMS Illustrious
Royal Naval Station Scapa Flow, United Kingdom
0600, 5 August 1941
Mountbatten had risen early, had been on the bridge since the watch change. He looked down at the guards with their Lanchesters pacing the deck against the possibility of sabotage - unlikely, but one could never be too careful - and then back at the ship's stern, where two dozen brand-new aircraft sat with wings folded demurely, in a parade formation that he knew was only useful for showing off, yet here in port, he could not bring himself to stow them away. The Seafire was simply a beautiful plane... and it was
his, by God! He'd even talked his wing commander into allowing him to qualify in it. After all, he was a licensed pilot, why shouldn't he? Perhaps he'd find a way to talk Edwina into going up...
These were his thoughts as he looked out at his ship and beyond, toward the lighthouse on Hoy. His eyes swept along the deck, turning east, toward the sunrise, and he frowned. "I say..." He grabbed the watch officer's shoulder, pointing at the flight of aircraft coming in low over the harbor boom. "Do we have any flights scheduled this morning?" He knew the answer, but he hoped he was wrong. The officer frowned, checking a clipboard, before turning back to Mountbatten. "No, sir." The long face paled, the jaw firmed, and he grabbed the shoreside telephone. "Hello? Hello? Blasted thing, terrible time for the operator to be slack on the job!"
The shapes had by now resolved themselves - gull-winged and unmistakable. Mountbatten thought of Kipling for a moment:
The brides of destruction, seeking the groom - the Choosers of the Slain. Time slowed for him, as if in a nightmare, and he looked desperately down, seeing the mechanics trying to disentangle the Seafires' wings.
Now the dive bombers clawed for altitude, having made their approach undetected. They aimed for three hundred meters, a maneuver they knew they could manage, though it stressed the planes in this short distance. The torpedo bombers separated, spray blowing up from the prop wash, and the fighters peeled away to the north to deal with the air base. Peter Volkmann saw both of the
Nelson-class battleships with their distinctive forward-positioned battery, and swept the harbor hoping to see
Hood. He saw a carrier, presumably
Illustrious-class, with its aircraft parked on deck, contrary to usual British doctrine, and frowned. Was
Hood here?
Yes! There - in the Gutter Sound, adjacent to the shore establishment! He had his target. The Stuka winged over, then went nose-down as
Hood's anti-aircraft gunners came to life. Peter Volkmann cared about none of that, nor about Speidel's nervous silence. He cared about
Hood's swelling fore stack; the bomber's nose was pointed at its base, and he waited for that familiar too-late-now feeling, taking one last sharp breath before releasing his plane's payload. One 250-kilo bomb plunged downward between the funnels, spearing down into the ship's magazine. The four fifty-kilo bombs scattered across the deck, sending lifeboats overboard and flinging crew aside. Peter yanked the stick back, pulling the Stuka level with the
Hood's deck. "Horrido!" he cried, not caring that it wasn't a fighter kill. The boiling, angry shockwave of the explosion told him that
Hood was gone.
Louis Mountbatten had the privilege of watching Hans-Ulrich Rudel at work. Three Stukas rolled and dove at
Illustrious, led by the white-and-black propeller spinner Rudel affected, though Mountbatten had no way of knowing it. The first bomb came in square amidships, plunging down into the armored flight deck and penetrating it to explode in the hangar deck. The four light bombs scattered across the deck, shattering the precious force of Seafires and igniting a fire that scrambling damage-control parties could only hope was not compounded. The second and third bombs cratered near the first, ploughing into the weakened hangar and puncturing into the ship's engine spaces. The explosion belowdecks opened
Illustrious to the sea and she began to take on a list.
On her deck, Mountbatten, blackened and sweating, led the damage-control parties even as he felt the deck start to tilt, and inside a part of him died. His first capital command was being pulled out from under him by the sea. Still they labored on, and the damage-control teams did their best, giving him time to evacuate every sailor not directly engaged in pumping or fire-fighting.
Illustrious still sank, but Mountbatten's dogged determination saved his crew.
Across Scapa Flow, the situation was similar:
Nelson got under steam and grounded before sinking, a great arrowhead lodged in the banks of the mainland. It would be one of the few casualties of the raid that would be fully refurbished, coming off the shore to fight the Japanese and sink in the Bay of Bengal.
Royal Oak, an old Great War battleship in the process of being turned into a floating anti-aircraft battery, was torpedoed and sank in shallow waters, her mastheads still showing. The cruiser
Frobisher suffered almost as catastrophic damage as the
Hood, breaking in half from a lucky hit amidships. The second wave found the destroyer force at anchor, sinking half a dozen and wrecking the shore establishment. It was perhaps the kindest possible blow for Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes; rather than being a live scapegoat, he became a dead hero. His replacement, Admiral Bruce Fraser, arrived on the evening of the day of the raid, rushed from London where he had been Third Sea Lord. When he arrived, the fleet was still burning, the undamaged escorts milling in confusion and expecting a third attack wave. He hoisted his flag aboard the damaged but floating
King George V with the ominous pronouncement, "When this war is over, the German language will be spoken only in Hell."
Peter Volkmann, circling over the anchorage at the end of the first wave's strike, felt absolute elation at his plan's success, tuning out Speidel still, until he felt the sudden vibration of Speidel firing the tail gun. "What in God's name...?" He looked back over his shoulder to see a flight of Hurricanes, the only planes seen today, coming after him, and kicked the rudder over to make a dash for the sea and safety. The plane responded, and the hopeless chase began. Peter made it out to sea, hoping against hope that one of the short-legged Messerschmitts was still in the area to clean this menace off his tail, but there was no great reason for hope: they had been the first aircraft off the target area. Peter's own presence there was pure hubris.
He felt the aircraft shudder and heard Speidel gasp, then felt a sharp kick in his back, air sucking back over his shoulder out the suddenly-shattered rear canopy. Speidel fell slack and the gun fell silent. The Hurricane overshot, and the engine billowed out black smoke as the next fighter in the "vee" made its run. He yanked the canopy back in panic, letting the Stuka roll belly-up as he cut himself loose and fell seaward. He fell and fell and fell... and only when the Hurricanes turned away fully did he pull the chute ripcord, feeling it jerk him upward painfully.
The North Sea was freezing, forcing the air from his lungs as he watched the Stuka's wreckage sink. Teeth chattering, he cut away the parachute shroud and waited to die of hypothermia. Just as consciousness started to fade, he felt a wooden oar bump his numbing arm and a voice call out to him, gruff and surprisingly gentle, "'Ere, Tommy, ve varm you up." He closed his eyes, slipping away, murmuring, "Idiots." Whether his rescuers were offended, he cared little.