For their part, the airmen off Eagle and Hermes were unable to get a hit on Iachino’s remaining fast battleships, but two flights found the main body, and bravely charged in to put another two torpedoes into Conte Cavour, and one more into the foundering Caio Duilio. The Italians would lose more than half of their battlefleet that day, with Caio Duilio, Conte Cavour and Andrea Doria all going down with the stricken heavy cruiser Pola. Two cruisers vainly tried to tow away the Littorio, but her rudders were so badly damaged by the Vodopad torpedo hit that the ship could not be steered. The British fleet was soon on the horizon again, and rather than suffer an ignominious pounding at the hands of the enemy. Iachino sullenly ordered the ship to be scuttled, saving as much of the crew as he could.
He made for the safety of the Strait of Messina, and half way there he was overflown by flights of dark winged German Stukas. The action was now drawing within the circle of their combat radius, but he shook his fist at them with anger.
“Where were you an hour ago!” he shouted at the planes. “Where was Regia Aeronautica?”
It was a catastrophic defeat for Italy, and a victory that gave the British Mediterranean fleet back everything they had lost in the aborted attack at Taranto. Only Roma and Veneto escaped, attended by a flock of cruisers and destroyers. Iachino himself was sacked upon his return to Naples, and he was so humiliated that he left the service of the navy, disappearing from the pages of this cruel alternate history, never to be heard from again.
Yet the battle for Tovey and Cunningham had only just begun. Another powerful fleet had been making its way south through the rising waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Russian Submarine Kazan had hoped to find it in the Sicilian Narrows, but instead the fleet went by way of Naples and Messina. Now the line of steel grey ships was emerging to greet Iachino’s battered flotilla as he reached that place.
The sleek hulled new battlecruisers Strasbourg and Dunkerque led the way, with an escort of the lightning fast French super destroyers. Behind them came the pride of the French Fleet, the battleship Normandie. And after they led the last of their escorting cruisers through the narrow channel, another shadow darkened the waters, the storm clouds licking the steel flanks of the ship as it emerged-the Bismarck. Behind that formidable ship came an ever greater shadow, the hulking mass if the mighty Hindenburg, the battlecruiser Kaiser in her wake with the light carrier Goeben.
There the decks were awash with the cold sea, but the Germans were still making ready to launch. Marco Ritter was waiting near his BF-109, and when he saw the Stuka formations overhead he shouted out to his young protege, Hans Rudel.
“Come on Hans! Can’t you see the crows are on the wing!”
Ritter smiled, pointing to the dark formations overhead, riding the tops of the gathering storm clouds.
It was far from over.
Argos Fire saw the planes on radar, forming up over the southwestern cape of Sicily, dark and threatening, like the storm clouds behind them. In spite of the impending bad weather, the Germans decided to strike while they could, and the force they were sending was considerable.
Goering had been building up German air strength on Sicily for the Malta campaign for some time. By January of 1941, Fliegerkorps X had 80 Ju-88A4 bombers in LG1 and 12 Ju-88D5 reconnaissance planes at Catania. These were augmented by 80 Ju-87R1 Stuka dive-bombers of StG 1 and StG 2 at Trapani on Sicily. This model was a special long range naval strike variant that would prove a formidable foe, with two 300 liter drop tanks on the wings that more than doubled the fuel and improved the range to just over 960 kilometers. They had been pounding Malta for some days, but now would get their first crack at the Royal Navy. These planes were joined by another 27 He-111H6 torpedo bombers of KG 26 at Comiso, and 34 Bf-11 °C4 fighters of ZG 26 at Palermo, with another 24 Bf-109s from Gr 12.
60 of the Stukas were up that day, soon to be joined by the small contingent of Stukas from the Goeben. They would be joined by 40 JU-88s, 20 He-111s, and covered by all 24 Bf-109s, and a dozen Bf-110s. In all, this came to 125 strike planes protected by 36 fighters, more than twice the size of the Italian air strike. The preliminaries were over, and the main event was now about to begin.
“That’s one hell of an air strike coming our way,” said MacRae.
“The Russians are firing now, sir,” said Dean.
