A survivor of the attack later wrote: ‘To us the searchlights appear like fingers of death. Sharply cut against the darkness they grope here and there over the water. For a moment they touch our mast tips in brilliant light, then wander on. Are we too small to be seen?’ Apparently not, for as the terrified German looked up he saw a destroyer churn out of the blackness. ‘The thing is right in front of us,’ he continued. ‘A dark shadow high as a church tower. The searchlights flash out again, drenching our tiny vessel in light as bright as day. `Everybody overboard!’ As we leap into the water the first salvoes crash into us like a tempest, sending showers of wood and debris about our ears.’

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For 2 1/2 hours it was a turkey shoot. Then the warships broke off and retired, leaving the shattered remains of the flotilla dead in the water to drift northward toward Greece. Cunningham estimated that 4,000 Germans had been killed. In fact, just over 800 had died, and at dawn Axis forces mounted a massive rescue effort. A second convoy, carrying the 2nd Battalion of the 85th Mountain Regiment, was sighted that same morning but escaped back to the mainland with a British flotilla hard on its rudders.

Developments along the entire eastern seacoast would soon turn the tide in the bloody battle for Crete. For several days Luftwaffe combat squadrons had been massing at newly captured airfields on islands in the Aegean Sea, at the Peloponnesian cities of Argos, Mycenae and Molae, and to the north in central Greece. The British lost the destroyer Juno to German aircraft on May 21, and on May 22 reconnaissance patrols pinpointed the locations of British naval units throughout the battle zone.

Cunningham was aware of his vulnerability to air attack and had accordingly refrained from drawing too near the combat areas. However, the Luftwaffe bomber units had been so preoccupied with supporting their beleaguered paratroops that they had so far virtually ignored the British fleet. Perhaps this lack of attention deceived the admiral into overconfidence.

On the night of May 21-22, Cunningham sent 14 of his cruisers and destroyers to positions off the island’s north coast to continue the blockade. It was these vessels that the German reconnaissance flights noticed. Soon after first light, hundreds of German bombers and fighters roared into the sky.

The first to lift off were the Junkers Ju-87B dive bombers of Stukageschwader 2, commanded by Lt. Col. Oskar Dinort. Twenty-five miles north of Crete they found targets — two cruisers and two destroyers. Screaming down from 12,000 feet, the Stukas ignored blistering anti-aircraft fire and unloaded on their marks. Under full steam and rudder, the ships zigzagged desperately as heavy bombs exploded so close that their decks were doused with seawater from the blasts.

The light cruisers Gloucester and Fiji were slightly damaged, while destroyers Greyhound and Griffin emerged unscathed. After 90 minutes of virtually fruitless attack, the Stukas returned to their airfields for rearming and refueling while the quartet of British vessels fled to rendezvous with the main fleet 30 miles off Crete’s west coast.

To the east the British were still pursuing the second troop flotilla when they were assaulted by twin-engine Junkers Ju-88 dive bombers. The Allies were already learning to fear these versatile planes, which combined speed, diving ability, bombload and accuracy to a devastating extent. In this attack, however, the initial wall of flak thrown up by the targets apparently so unnerved the German assailants that only two ships, the cruisers Naiad and Carlisle, were moderately damaged before the flotilla scattered and made good its escape to the west.

Cunningham was dismayed by this maneuver. He was convinced his vessels stood a better chance if they closed with the troopships and destroyed them at close quarters while the pilots, who he thought would be fearful of killing their own men, buzzed helplessly overhead. Also, he considered destruction of this reinforcement-carrying convoy worth any price. But by the time his order of ‘Stick to it!’ arrived from Alexandria, his task force had already retired.

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