Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History by Peter Tsouras Page A

to pull the German fleet northwest away from the convoy. Hamilton now knew that Tovey was approaching quickly with the Home Fleet, but it would be a good four hours before he could arrive. Hamilton had no choice but to attack with such force as to compel the rest of the German ships to engage. If he had followed his orders and not engaged, he would never have lived down the shame of leaving the convoy to the mercy of the German surface ships.
    First though he had to get through Lützow and Scheer, and that problem was emphasized as strikes from their 11-inch guns began to splash around his cruisers. They outranged his 8-inch guns by several thousand yards. Although he had four ships to these two, his would have to cross this beaten zone in which the German guns could hammer them before they could reply.
    The Wolfssehanze, East Prussia, 3 July 1942
    Clouds of mosquitoes hung about the woods throughout which the buildings and huts of the Wolfsschanze were scattered. As Goring got out of the staff car that had brought him from the airstrip, a cloud of the tiny tormentors, attracted by his heavy cologne, fell upon him with more fury than his own Luftwaffe over Rotterdam or London. He fled inside Hitler’s headquarters waving his baton as if it would drive the mosquitoes away. Goring joined Hitler and soon puffed himself up as the reports came in of the Luftwaffe’s success in striking the convoy. He reminded Hitler that another strike force was now in the air and a third waiting to follow. Goring could see that Hitler was also pleased, but he was pacing back and forth nervously. ‘All well and good, Goring, but what about the enemy aircraft carriers?’
    He was prescient. While Hamilton charged, dive- and torpedo-bombers from Victorious and Wasp were taking off for a strike at the Germans. They formed up and headed out in separate formations so as to come in from different directions.
    Dönitz had also taken his Führer’s anxiety on board. He had directed that U-boat Flotilla 10 screen Carls’s ships far to the west. One of these boats reported large air formations heading northeast. The flotilla commander ordered his boats to head in the direction from which the planes had come.
    Three miles northeast of Bear Island, Barents Sea, 3 July 1942
    The convoy was leaderless when the second Luftwaffe strike force attacked. There had hardly been time for command to pass to the next senior officer, captain of the British destroyer escort Offa, as the dive- and torpedo-bombers swooped in. With Palomares and Pozarica gone, a huge hole had been left in the air defences of the convoy, which the Germans were quick to exploit as the convoy’s formation began to break down.
    There were victims enough for both aircraft and U-boats though the submariners were all too often angered when a carefully lined up target was taken out by the Luftwaffe. One such was the 5,400-ton American Pan Atlantic, with its cargo of tanks, steel, nickel, aluminium, foodstuffs, two oil stills, and a great deal of cordite, which was about to take a pair of torpedoes from Kapitänleutnant Bohmann’s U-88 when a Ju 88 swooped down and hit it with two bombs. They struck the cordite hold blowing the bow off the ship. Water rushed in through the gaping hole, and down it went its stern hanging in the air, its propeller still turning as it disappeared beneath the waves. The 7,200-ton John Witherspoon, loaded with tanks and ammunition, next took a spread of four torpedoes from U-255. A 200-yard cloud of smoke rose from the ship as it seemed to drift away. The crew were barely able to escape in lifeboats before the John Witherspoon broke in half and sank. 20
    By now the convoy had completely come apart with merchant ships running their engines to speeds the builders had never contemplated just to flee from the slaughter. The British Earlston fled north with its cargo of explosives and crated aluminium. Several Ju 88s followed and dropped their bombs but missed. A third