Ground controllers had heard the frantic calls from the pilots, and they had already learned what had happened to the Italian SM-79s. General Fiebig was coordinating the attacks, and was considering calling off his second wave, until he was informed that the Italians were mounting yet another effort, eager to avenge the beating their fleet had taken.
“Well,” he said. “If the Italians can take losses like that and still be brave enough to fly, so will we. Get everything we have into the sky, before that weather front makes further operations impossible!”
Everything they had was another twenty Stukas with an equal number of JU-88s, thirty operational BF-110 fighter bombers and seven more Heinkel-111s. Fiebig would put a second wave of 77 planes in the sky, and the Italians had another mixed bomber formation of 48 planes. So just as the brave survivors of the first wave were finally over the British fleet, the long range radar sets were reporting another 125 planes inbound. By sheer attrition, the enemy would wear its way through the SAM defense.
80 planes were over the fleet now, and among them the five planes that had risen from the deck of the light carrier Goeben. They were a little late into the game, and on the extreme northern edge of the attack, and so had managed to avoid the worst of the missile shoot.
“Look at that!” Ritter called. “Amazing! We had better get our business done soon, boys. We’re losing a lot of good men out there today.”
The five planes would go in together, Ritter leading in his Bf-109 in case the British had any fighters up, and the other four planes were Stukas being flown by some of the best pilots available, Rudel, Heilich, Hafner, and Brendel. They found the main British fleet and dove relentlessly on the battleships and cruisers of Cunningham’s squadron. Heilich put his bomb right into the guts of the heavy cruiser Berwick, still seeing missiles in the sky aimed at other planes to his far left. Hafner’s bomb missed, but closely straddled the Malaya. Brendel was a little better, staying in his dive through blistering flak and feeling his plane shudder with a shrapnel hit. But he scored his hit on Malaya’s foredeck, very near A Turret. It was Hans Rudel that would again strike the most grievous blow, coming down right on top of Queen Elizabeth in a screaming dive and putting his 500 pound bomb right behind her large trunked funnels.
Captain Claud Barry had just ordered hard a port and ahead full, but it did not fool Rudel’s deadly aim. As the turbines of the big battleship spun up to maximum rotation, there was an audible clatter, as though someone had thrown a spanner in the works.
They had.
Queen Elizabeth had spent time at Fairfield’s Works, Glasgow, and there was a man there who was working for the other side. During that maintenance overhaul, he had dropped not a spanner, but a long metal file into the enclosure. It was a miracle the problem was not discovered for 18 months, and the British would only trace the sabotage to Fairfield’s Works when another report was filed by the cruiser Suffolk, with turbine damage on that ship as well. It also had maintenance there, and the Admiralty became suspicious. Once the turbines were closed and sealed off, they were almost never opened while in regular operations. The file had been there, but caused no noticeable problem beyond occasional odd noises, but that was because Queen Elizabeth had had a rather sedate start in her deployments, and she never really pressed her engines to top speed. Now, with the seas rising and her turbines running full out, the metal file raised havoc.
That problem and the bomb which penetrated to one of her boilers, saw the ship quickly slow to 16 knots and fall out of Cunningham’s formation. With the air duel still thick about them, the Admiral ordered Queen Elizabeth to turn about and make for the safety of open sea. He would detach a pair of destroyers with the ship, but now would have to face the wrath of the combined Franco-German fleet one battleship light.
The action remained hot and furious over the fleet for another ten minutes, with three more British ships taking bomb hits, and Malaya taking a torpedo from a daring attack by a low flying He-111. Only twelve of an initial twenty Heinkels had survived, but those that did accounted for two hits. Calcutta, Coventry, Orion all took bomb hits from the remaining Stukas. Invincible was spared serious harm, as was the light cruiser Ajax and both Kent and York sailing close by. Of the 12 destroyers, Echo was unlucky enough to run right into the path of a torpedo and the ship was a total loss.
When the action finally cleared, and the ragged formations of enemy planes turned for home, they took stock and realized they had come off better than might be expected. Being well behind the action with the carriers now, neither Kirov nor Argos Fire were found or attacked, and Eagle and Hermes were able to recover their own strike planes unmolested.
