Well to the rear, the self-propelled guns of the Royal Horse Artillery were about to increase the tempo and send in a full salvo. Bowers was attached to lead in the Mercian Battalion on this flank, and they had sixteen AS-90s in support. The fireworks were about to begin.
John Schettler
Grand Alliance (Kirov Series)
“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.”
Aboard Argos Fire Captain MacRae noted the initial Russian attack with some interest. Their IFF coding, received from the Russian technicians, was enough to tell him what they had fired.
“Four of their P-900s,” he said to Dean, “The same damn missiles that put Princess Irene under the Black Sea.”
In spite of their newly forged pact with the Russians, he still harbored some resentment and bitterness over that attack. He knew his tankers were fair maritime targets, and that the war was firing up in all the world’s key energy centers. They knew the risks when they first pointed their bows north to the Bosphorus. The Black Sea had been a Russian lake for decades. He expected opposition, and was not surprised when it came on the missiles that struck Princess Irene, but that didn’t make things any easier.
Is that why you said nothing of your Aster-30 missiles, he asked himself. This Grand Alliance we’ve put together here will take some getting used to. The Russian Admiral seemed accommodating, a fair man, but the business end of his battlecruiser was just as deadly as ever. Dean soon informed him that the Russians had scored four hits.
“Batting 1000,” he said. “Well let’s see if we can do the same.” By agreement they had decided to each commit four missiles to the initial barrage, with the Russians beginning. “Now we’ll show them what our Gealbhans can do. Let the sparrows fly, ladies and gentlemen. Four missiles, just like our Russian friends.”
The GB-7 was a new design, produced by Fairchild’s company, and meant to be an upgrade to the British Sea Eagle missile. It was a hypersonic sea skimmer much like the deadly Russian Sunburn missile, and it put the fire into the ship’s name to be sure. The missiles deployed from vertical silos that emerged when the covering deck panels opened like two large trap doors. Then the missiles fired, one canister of four, leaving MacRae another 20 missiles under the forward deck. He would have had more, but expended a number of missiles during the fighting in the Black Sea.
The results would be much the same. All the missiles found targets, with a hit on each of the three leading battleships, and one on the heavy cruiser Pola, which had taken up a position forward of Conte Cavour. Argos Fire was also batting a thousand, in a numbers game that was to be particularly one sided. The Italians saw the missiles coming, but this time no one with eyes could believe they were planes. This was something else, and rumors spread through the Italian fleet as fast as the fire was spreading through Conte Cavour. The battleship lost several boilers when secondary explosions below decks stoked the burning coals. The third hit by a Mach 3 missile blasting into her superstructure had given the ship a hard shudder, and it was steering off the line, speed falling off and in no condition to serve in the vanguard of the fleet.
MacRae waited, as per previous arrangement. They wanted to see if the Italians would still have the stomach for a fight after taking eight hits from an enemy no man among them had even laid eyes on.
Aboard Littorio, Admiral Iachino watched with growing dismay. Those were not British planes. Every report he was now receiving was describing the attackers as a kind of lightning quick rocket weapon. His lead battleship division had taken a fearful pounding, but there was no sign of any enemy ship on his horizon. How could the British have such weapons, and how could they see his fleet to even use them?
Now he dimly recalled the odd rumors of the German engagement in the north above Iceland. He had heard something about naval rocketry, but had given it little mind. Could this be what he was facing here? What else? The Greeks were certainly not out there shooting these amazing new weapons at his battleships. The question now was what could he do about it?
Iachino signaled Bergamini aboard Cailo Duilio for a status report. The ship was fighting bad fires in several places, but the encouraging report was that none of the magazines had been threatened, at least not yet, and all her guns were unharmed. He learned the same from the Captain of the Andrea Doria, which had only taken one hit, on the starboard side aft of the two stacks, and very near the secondary mast. The gun directors there had taken some damage, but the main turret was unharmed.
