Madame Daphne D’Aubigné, sat in the great hall of Chateau’ D’Aubigné crying softly. The faded cloth above the ornate wainscoted walls everywhere contained brighter rectangles of red velvet, painfully reminding her of her missing Rembrants, Manets, Renoirs, Degases, Donatellos, even her favorite Cézanne—all were gone. What more could France demand of her. There was nothing left to sell to those barbarians. However much Alard could get from the Germans would be the last deposit in her husband’s Swiss account unless the chateau itself could be sold.
“Maman?”
“Oui, Étienne,”she said wiping a tear from her eye.
“Don’t cry. You are as much a patriot of France as papa. Tomorrow I will travel and visit our friends. I am sure they too will help keep the fleet from the Boches.”
“No! No son of Philippe D’Aubigné will beg.” The fire in her eyes silencing her son. “If there is begging to be done, I will do it.” Softening she added, “Besides, you must stay with Marie. The birth of your first child is too close for you to be away.”
The dock was finally filled; the special sea and anchor detail was set: and Chris Peterson’s electrician’s mates had completed the transfer of electrical power from the shipyard’s shore power cables to Argonne’s own turbine generators and diesel generators. Not as easy as it sounds, all the coolers and condensers in the Engineering spaces had to be vented inboard until filled with water after the level in the dock had risen high enough. Boilers had to be lit and temperature raised to the normal steaming range for 600 pounds per square inch pressure. Only then could sea water flow be started and vacuum drawn in the turbine-generator condensers and the diesels started.
It was too dangerous to warm the main engines or test them in the dock. One false move on the part of any of the four throttlemen or a casualty to a portion of the complex machinery could send Argonne crashing into the dry dock wall or worse the caisson closing the entry. The main engines would wait until she was clear of the dock but still under the control of the fleet of tugs standing by to assist.
As soon as the water levels both inside and outside the dock matched, the water filling the ballast tanks of the caisson was pumped out. Once afloat the caisson was moved out of the way clearing the opening for Argonne’s exit. Timing was critical. Even though the range of the normal tide was only a little less than 2 feet, since the shipyard was on a river, there could be tremendous variation both in the range of the tide and the timing of slack water. Both were dependent on the rainfall in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The period of slack water was the time that was the goal to get Argonne across the sill. Too early or too late and the tugs would have to fight the river’s full force exerted on the entire nearly 1,300-foot waterline length of the ship crosswise to the river. Every evolution that Argonne needed to accomplish had to be timed to the projected sill time, even Admiral Hamblen’s arrival.
Because of the delicacy of the maneuver to leave or enter the dry dock, Sheppard was not responsible for the safety of his ship. He was a mere spectator, officially, until the ship’s bow crossed the sill outbound. A very experienced officer, normally from the construction corps, assigned by the shipyard, called the docking officer, would be held accountable if Argonne was damaged during the undocking. Fortunately for everyone and her mission of grave importance—she was not.
Clear of the dock at last, the tugs turned the battle cruiser parallel to the Delaware River pointed downstream as the main engines were warmed and tested by the Officer of the Deck with Sheppard’s permission. One long blast of her whistle indicating a change in status to any vessels within hearing distance, and her powerful engines started rotating her four shafts with their new propellers each over 24 feet in diameter. The Delaware River astern of her began to swirl in acres of moving water as Argonne majestically gathered way down river. Standing next to Sheppard and Lieutenant John Hamblen IV was a civilian upper Delaware River pilot. An advisor to the Captain and Conning Officer, who actually issued the orders to the Helmsman and both Lee Helmsmen at the engine order telegraphs, he knew the river better than anyone. Pilots spent their lives learning the vagaries of a constantly changing harbor or a stretch of a river and then assisted ships with their intimate knowledge of currents and shoals to avoid disaster in mother-nature’s ever changing seabed. Argonne would change pilots several times as she journeyed down the Delaware River into the Delaware Bay.
When she finally left the area of the bay where the channel or water depth restricted her motion, it was time for the last pilot, called a bar pilot, to leave the ship. No sooner had he started down the ladder behind the conning station than Sheppard turned to his Officer of the Deck Lieutenant Commander Gerry Archinbald and directed him to, “Prepare to answer bells for maximum speed!” Gerry looked back at Sheppard wondering what was on his mind as he relayed the order via the Captain’s Announcing Circuit or 21MC to Chris Petersen in main control. For a normal underway Argonne only used four of her sixteen boilers, with four more in ‘hot standby’. That was all she needed to drive her at 40 knots. With a clean hull and the new propellers, she might well be able to go 10 to 12 knots faster on all sixteen. Only three men aboard Argonne knew why she would need her best speed and two of them were eight decks below on the flag bridge watching the sights, and casually discussing the mission ahead.
Sheppard observed the bar pilot acrobatically climb down the Jacob’s ladder against the hull to the waiting pilot boat. The ladder was hoisted aboard as the Captain turned to the Officer of the Deck and directed him to secure the starboard anchor for sea. Kept in readiness to drop in the unlikely event of a rudder or engine casualty, that ‘emergency brake’ was no longer needed in open water. Once secured, the regular underway watch was set, and material condition Yoke was established below the second deck. The vast majority of watertight doors and hatches in the spaces below where the crew lived were shut and dogged. If Sheppard’s ship was hit by an unexpected torpedo, Argonne was in the best condition to limit the damage yet still routinely function.
Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Becker called up from the combat information center fourteen decks below just under the heavy armor. “Captain, Combat, no sign of our destroyer escort on radar.”
Sheppard answered on the 21MC, “Roger, Combat.”
Gerry Archinbald’s look of incredulity at taking a capital ship to sea, with the German U-boat offensive in progress off the East Coast, and not having a destroyer escort caused Sheppard to smile.
“Boatswain Bergman, pipe the word.”
“ss-s-s-sssssss,” echoed in every manned space.
Sheppard reached for the press-to-talk switch on the General Announcing System (1MC) squawkbox. “This is the Captain speaking. Argonne is in a race. We have to get to the Mediterranean before Rommel captures the French fleet at Mers el Kébir. There is not another ship in the fleet that can keep up with us. Accordingly, we will make the trip unescorted and rely on our speed alone for protection.”
Sheppard turned to his special sea and anchor detail Conning Officer, Lieutenant John Hamblen. “Let’s get going.”
John gave the order to send them on their way to both Lee Helmsman at the engine order telegraphs, “All Ahead Flank!” As more boilers came on line, Argonne’s speed rose beginning her race with Rommel.
“Heavy screws, Herr Kapitän, bearing two-six-five degrees,” Georg Bachmeier, the sound man on the U-197 reported to his Commanding Officer Korvettenkapitän Conrad Kluge. Conrad had deployed to the Delaware Bay entrance as part of Operation Beckenschlag (Cymbal Crash) in early April. His patrol had been very successful with six merchant ships and one old destroyer to show for his twelve G7e electric torpedoes. Tonight would be his last night on station. He still had thirty-two rounds of 10.5cm ammunition for his deck gun. With luck, he might be able to sink one last merchant before his fuel situation demanded the start of his return to Brest at 0400.
Conrad went to the conning tower of his Type IXB submarine. Raising the search periscope he looked on t
he bearing that Bachmeier had reported. A masthead, silhouetted, against the western sky, a large warship from the looks of what he could see. He slowly swung the periscope around the horizon looking for the escorts. Not surprisingly he did not see any. That only confirmed in his mind that his contact must be a large cruiser or battleship with the escorts too far below the horizon to be seen. Too bad he had used all his torpedoes; here was a contact worthy of his largest salvo.
As Kluge trained the periscope back in the direction of the contact, he could not believe that the superstructure was now visible. What had it been two minutes? No ship could move that fast.
“Achtung, action stations on the double.”
He took an observation on this unusual contact—bearing two-six-eight, range seven-two-hundred meters, angle on the bow starboard five. Course zero-eight-three degrees true, he calculated mentally. He swept around the horizon again—still no sign of escorts. Conrad knew that there was nothing he could do about this contact, but if he got an accurate course and speed, perhaps one of the boats farther to the east could.
He took another observation; bearing two-seven-nine, range two-three-hundred meters, angle on the bow starboard sixteen. No! He had done something wrong. No target could move almost five thousand meters in three minutes. This time he lowered the periscope. Even though the light was fading, he did not want to risk a lookout seeing him. Kluge reviewed his thoughts. He was certain of his classification. It was a Santiago class battle cruiser. He had seen the two secondary triple turrets clearly abreast the bridge. After she passed he would surface and report her to Uncle Karl.
Georg Bachmeier was alarmed. The contact was moving to the right so quickly, there must be a danger of collision. “Herr Kapitän, contact very close!”
Conrad knew that he was six-hundred meters from the track of the battle cruiser, but could not resist the temptation to take one more look at this tempting target. He raised the periscope as his target flew past at what must be close to 50 knots. What a sight! The curl of white foam at her bow reached all the way up to her main deck and as far aft as her forward turret. He could not rotate the elevation of the periscope high enough to see the top of the mast. The battle cruiser covered his entire visible horizon. Awestruck he watched the sight of a lifetime, mentally preparing the message he would send to Admiral Dönitz. Kluge did not realize the danger U-197 was in from the wake generated by the battle cruiser’s over a half-million shaft horsepower.
“Skunk ‘ABLE,’ bearing two-four-one degrees, range two-oh-double-oh yards,” the Sugar George or SG radar operator sang out. Screamed was more like it. Sheppard knew that Argonne had just passed that point without spotting anything. It had to be a submarine sucked to the surface by Argonne’s wake.
He jumped to the 21MC, “Guns track skunk ‘ABLE’ bearing two-four-one—illuminate!”
Lieutenant Commander Gerry Archinbald, now the on watch gunnery officer in the top level of the command tower, began barking orders in response to his 1JC sound powered phone talker. The telephone talker immediately relayed them to the directors and mounts.
“Sky eight, track skunk ‘ABLE’.” “Mount five-two-two load one star shell.” Mounts five-one-three, five-one-nine and five-two-one load high capacity. “Sky eight control mounts five-one-three, five-one-nine, five-two-one, and five-two-two.”
The wisdom of Sheppard keeping two Mark 37 directors and eight of his twenty-two five inch twin mounts manned underway was clear as he ordered, “Commence firing!”
Fifteen decks below in the after anti-aircraft plotting room, the fire-controlman at the Mark 6 Stable element closed the firing key. The gathering dusk was broken by the flash and sharp crack of mount five-two-two’s right hand 5»/54 gun. Gerry immediately passed, “Mount five-two-two load high capacity.”
Sheppard went out on the starboard open conning station and fought the wind to raise his binoculars as the magnesium flare and parachute from the illuminating shell deployed and turned night into day around the exposed conning tower of the U-boat.
No sooner had the illumination round burst, than Gerry ordered, “Continuous Fire, master key!” Now the gun crews in the mounts and the handling rooms that served them raced to load and fire as quickly as they could. The submarine was trying to dive. “Load armor piercing,” Sheppard passed hoping the delayed action of the fuses would allow better penetration of the enveloping sea.
Sheppard ordered the Conning Officer to come left and put the target directly astern in order to unmask mount five-two-zero. Soon he saw the flash of a hit among the water columns of near misses. Then another and another as the operators of the Mark 37 director and the Mark 1 Ford computer refined their solution of the exact course, speed, and range of the target. Within sixty seconds of the first high capacity shells exploding on contact with the conning tower of U-boat, Sheppard ordered, “Cease fire”. The target had disappeared beneath the waves. The burning magnesium flares lighting the spreading pool of burning diesel fuel. That fire might be the only tombstone for forty German sailors.
Sheppard sought protection from the wind created by Argonne’s passage inside the conning station as he breathed a sigh of relief that his ship had escaped the German wakeless torpedoes and just as if not more importantly, hopefully silenced any report of his passage.
“Herr Kapitän, Herr Kapitän!” Steuermann was shouting at him. Korvettenkapitän Conrad Kluge slowly regained consciousness lying on the deck of the control room of U-197. Sea water was everywhere. Above him the hatch to the conning tower was shut and dogged.
“What happened?”
“The conning tower was hit by a shell that ricocheted and split the pressure hull. You fell into the control room, but we had to shut the hatch before Eberhard could be dragged out. The seawater was just coming in too fast.”
“Where is the LI (Leitender Ingenieur (Engineering Officer))?”
“Here Herr Kapitän”, Leutnant Ernst Schwicker said as he turned from the task of fighting to halt U-197’s plunge to hull crushing depths, blowing air into tanks and pumping water to the limit of the pump’s capacity. The motor room was already answering maximum power on the battery as the boat’s underwater log past 6 knots. The depth gage ominously continued to unwind past 100 meters.
“Besides the conning tower is there any other damage?” Conrad asked as he looked about noting the water running down the sides of the two periscopes.
“Kapitän, there were two explosions above the conning tower. We won’t know what happened until we are able to surface.” Finally the depth gage stopped at 145 meters.
“LI, come to 50 meters and we will trim the boat. Bachmeier do you still hear the warship?”
Oberfunkmaat Backmeier put his headphones back on and carefully made a sweep with his hydrophone. “Kapitän the contact has grown faint and is almost directly astern."
Admiral Klaus Schröder was having breakfast with his Chief of Staff when the idea first began to form in his mind. If Raeder and Lütjens would not provide him with ships, then he would have to get some of his own. There was clearly too much political control of the Italian Battle Fleet for him to ever convince the Supermarina to let him command a foray into the Atlantic. That left the French Fleets in Mers el Kébir, Casablanca, and Dakar. Rommel was closest to the one in Mers el Kébir and would capture that one first.
“Fritz,” he began, “how can we convince the French to give up their ships in Algeria without scuttling them or getting them damaged in a fight?”
Fregattenkapitän Fritz Bodermann looked at his Admiral as if the stress of the Battle of Cape Vilan had finally manifested itself in lunacy. “Herr Admiral, surely you don’t think the French would ever consider such a thing—particularly if it was Germany that was making the demand?”
“Fritz, that is just it, what if we could convince them that they didn’t have a choice? What if we could offer something that they would want, to do as we say? Of course, that would not be enough. We would also have to make the consequences of not do
ing it too painful to consider.”
“Herr Admiral, I have no idea what you are contemplating! Beside we are only two men, how are we going to operate a fleet of French warships?”
“I agree, Fritz, there are lots of problems to overcome but first we have to get the ships under our control. Do you think your brother would help us?”
“Herr Admiral, if it meant capturing a French fleet and adding them to the Kriegsmarine, of course.”
“Steuermann, has the sun set?” Korvettenkapitän Conrad Kluge knew that the most important thing to do besides saving his ship was to report the passage of the battle cruiser; whatever her mission, her speed alone reflected its importance.
“Herr Kapitän, the sun has already set and the moon will not rise for at least two hours. I will have to calculate a more exact time if needed.”
“LI, come to 20 meters. Bachmeier make a careful search for any contacts.”
“No contacts!”
“LI, come to 8 meters.” Conrad hoped that he might raise one of the periscopes far enough to see from the control room. If he could not it was going to be much harder to surface safely.
“At 8 meters.”
Conrad tried each of the periscopes but neither would budge as water continued to leak into the control room around their seals.
“LI, surface! I am going to the torpedo room. Let me know when the forward hatch is clear of the water. Have the gun crews standby.
As Conrad went forward the rush of high pressure air into the ballast tanks started shortly followed by the first rumblings of the two MAN diesels. Well at least the induction and exhaust valves are still working.
One of the torpedomen relayed the message from the engineering officer that the forward hatch should be above water. Conrad could see all the members of the gun crew around him except for Eberhard. Then he remembered that the loader was entombed in the flooded conning tower.
Sheppard and the French Rescue Page 8