It was better late than never for Tovey. The damage had already been done. The British were going to lose two battleships that day. As that terrible hour ended, the stately Queen Elizabeth finally rolled to one side, bow down and slipping beneath the tempestuous sea. Only 728 men would be saved from her crew, and Captain Barry would not be among them. He knew the life boats would only take a portion of his men to safety, and had given the order to abandon ship, remaining on the bridge.
The men in the boats could hear the crewmen still on the ship singing ‘Hail Britannia’ as the battleship rolled over, the chorus quashed by the heavy swells as men made that last desperate leap into the water to try and save themselves. The arrival of Tovey’s ships would save many that might have otherwise died, and four hours later the fleet turned for Alexandria, bloodied, bruised, and missing Queen Elizabeth, Berwick, Calcutta, and the destroyers Marne, Ledbury and Echo.
Malaya was still afloat, and taken in tow, but the ship was so beaten and battered by the Normandie that it would never see action again. The enemy had lost the Colbert, with enough damage on La Galissonniere, and Jeane de Vienne to take them out of the war for the next year. Both Hindenburg and Bismarck eventually controlled their terrible fires, as the fuel sustaining them had burned itself away. Their armored sides were bent and blackened by the missile hits, but their propulsion systems and guns were all operational and they would fight again.
One other ship remained unseen beneath the sea, slowly following in the wake of the retiring enemy fleet. Gromyko had fired his missiles, and now began to look for wounded ships that would be easy prey for his torpedoes. The German ships sped away at good speed and evaded, but he came upon the Strausbourg, wallowing behind the main French fleet as it labored for Taranto at 18 knots.
It would never arrive.
“Take chances, be crazy. Don’t wait, because right now is the oldest you’ve ever been and the youngest you’ll ever be again.”
All that week the British planes kept coming in to harass the retreating German columns. Even though German air cover was good, some planes inevitably would get through to make attacks. They seemed to select one segment of the front each day and concentrate their effort there. One day they would attack between Agheila and Agedabia; and on another between Agedabia and Benghazi, particularly against thin skinned vehicles, the vital trucks that would move supplies and petrol needed to sustain operations. Other times they would strike the long roads from Benghazi to Derna where the slower Italian infantry divisions that had been investing Tobruk slogged along on foot. The attacks were not heavy, but nonetheless effective.
British Hurricanes were now able to land at Tobruk and El Adem as good forward refueling bases, and conducted low level strafing attacks, always against moving columns, as it was learned that stationary vehicle parks would put up much heavier AA defense. The doughty Blenheim twin engine fighter bomber was very useful in the latter role. While it could easily carry 250 to 500 pound bombs, the air crews had modified it to use racks of much smaller bombs as light as 20 pounds, with HE fragmentation loads that would be thick on shrapnel in the hopes of penetrating any containers being used to transport fuel. Particular attention was given to the port of Benghazi, where strings of small incendiaries would be used against ships.
The supply situation was far from satisfactory, thought Paulus. Tripoli is all of 1100 miles behind the front, the distance from Hamburg to Rome! Benghazi is of limited use, as the British themselves learned when they held a brief lease on that port after O’Connor’s first successful advance. Concentrated attacks there by enemy aircraft made it unsuitable as a functioning supply port. Now that we have it, it seems they have decided to return the favor, and Benghazi is visited day and night by enemy bombers. Until these interdiction campaigns were dialed up, the port had been useful for delivery of between 1500 and 1700 tons per day, and the engineers believed they could improve facilities and operations there to increase this to 2000 tons per day. I am aware of the Fuhrer’s order to hold this port, just as the British stubbornly held on to Tobruk. At its root, the order underscores the need for viable port facilities to move supplies, but Rommel believes any attempt to hold Cyrenaica is foolish, and said as much to me when I came to assess the situation.
