Strike from the Sea (1978)

by Reeman, Douglas

  Ridgway called, ‘Boat approaching, sir. Senior officer.’

  Critchley said hoarsely, ‘May I go to the wardroom, Bob? I can’t take much more of it.’

  Ainslie watched him go through the hatch. Critchley could always take other people’s disbelief or contempt. But being proved right under these circumstances had almost broken him.

  Ridgway said, ‘Was he right, sir, about these waters being too shallow?’

  Ainslie looked at him calmly. ‘Tell the Chief to make arrangements for fuelling right away, will you?’ He watched the launch slewing round to make for the depot ship’s accommodation ladder. ‘We’ll have to see for ourselves.’

  Three hours later, a sheaf of hastily written orders locked in his safe, Ainslie was again on the move, conning Soufrière back along the course she had just completed.

  The chief of staff had come in person. He had tried to bluster and to maintain his old optimism but, like Singapore’s impressive defences, he no longer seemed to count.

  5

  Found Wanting

  THE THIRTY-SIX HOURS following Soufrière’s departure from Singapore Island were a test for everyone’s nerves. Not because of the prospect of action or immediate danger, but for the lack of it, and the complete sense of isolation. It was even more evident in Soufrière than you might have expected in a smaller craft. In the latter, just to move about the hull you usually had to squeeze past someone or duck to cram yourself through a hatch or watertight door. You were in everybody else’s pocket, part of the vessel herself.

  As hour followed hour, and the big submarine made her way northwards, parallel with the Malayan coast, the tension grew to become something real and personal. Tempers flared, and there were more threats from officers and senior ratings than Ainslie could remember aboard other boats.

  At night, when they surfaced to run on the main engines and charge batteries, they listened anxiously for news from the W/T office. There was very little about the enemy in Malaya, other than reports of skirmishes in the jungles, patrol clashes and other meaningless statements. There was more news of Pearl Harbour, however. Five battleships had been sunk, and many other vessels and installations put out of the war for a long while.

  An American announcer, his voice almost drowned in static, had been heard to say, ‘We will stand by our allies to the end.’ That had brought an ironic cheer from the listening submariners.

  Ainslie rarely left the control room. He was very aware of the tension in his command, the bitterness at the way they had been treated in Singapore. But a real spark of resentment inside the hull would do far more damage. Soufrière might be too large for these coastal waters, but she was the only available submarine. The intelligence department in Whitehall could never have guessed how close their plan to seize the Soufrière had been to failure. At this precise moment, under Japanese or German control, she might be stalking the supply routes from the Cape of Good Hope to South America. If there was any justice in the world, Critchley should be returned to Britain and promoted to a position where he could use his talents to real advantage.

  On the occasion that Ainslie decided to steal an hour’s sleep in his cabin, he had barely laid his head on the pillow when the call came. ‘Captain in the control room!’

  It was automatic, done without thinking. One minute he was shutting his eyes and ears to the vibrations of his command, the next he was running along the gleaming passageway and ducking through the watertight door at the forward end of the control room.

  Ridgway, the torpedo officer, was in charge of the watch. He was a very withdrawn man, with the impassive features of a thinker, someone who might be lost without a problem to solve.

  ‘Well?’

  Ainslie made himself pause by the periscopes, controlling his breathing as he had trained himself to do over the years. It might be anything. Mechanical damage, a leak, a man with some terrible illness with which he would have to deal. Anything.

  Ridgway said, ‘Asdic reports faint hydrophone effect at zero-four-zero, sir. Diesel.’

  Ainslie nodded, trying not to bite his lip as he strode to the chart table and leaned over it, snapping on the overhead light. He studied Forster’s neat calculations and pencilled fixes. Soufrière was steering north-west by north, approximately fifty miles from the Malayan coast. The depth was about average. Thirty to forty fathoms.

  He moved across the steel deck and stood behind the leading seaman who was adjusting and readjusting the hydrophone dial, using one hand to press his headset closer to one ear in case he missed something. Ainslie remembered the man’s name: Walker. A good and experienced operator. No point in speaking until Walker was ready. Let him decide, not insert ideas into his mind for him.

  Walker said slowly, ‘Twin diesels, sir. Bearing steady on zero-four-zero. Closing.’

  Ridgway rubbed his chin. ‘One of ours.’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  But Ainslie’s thoughts were already working out a pattern. The stranger was probably an enemy support ship. He pressed a spare earphone to his head and listened. That was diesel all right. Regular, confident. Like a heart-beat coming through the sea towards him.

  He turned towards the helmsman and saw the gyro repeater ticking slightly this way and that, the depth gauge steady at ninety-six feet. He almost smiled. He was seeing French metres but still thinking in feet and fathoms. Some of Lucas’s sticky labels had started to peel from dials and operating controls, but nobody seemed to need them any more. Sailors were very adaptable.

  Anyway, it was better than steering into nothing.

  He said, ‘Klaxon, please.’ And as the banshee squawk sounded throughout the pressure hull, and men came running to their stations, he returned to the chart. He felt Forster beside him at the plot and said, ‘Alter course. Steer zero-zero-five. We’ll take a look at him.’

  Quinton was by the coxswain and planesmen, his jaw working on the remains of a sandwich.

  ‘Boat closed up at actions stations, sir.’

  ‘Very well.’ He smiled across at him. ‘Probably a false alarm, Number One.’

  Forster said, ‘Starboard ten. Steer zero-zero-five.’

  Gosling rumbled, ‘Zero-zero-five, sir.’

  Walker said, ‘HE still closing, sir. Same bearing. I estimate the range to be about four thousand yards.’

  ‘Very good.’ Ainslie glanced at his watch. ‘Group down. Take her up to periscope depth.’ As the stoker PO’s hand darted out to a lever he said sharply, ‘Nice and easy. Just to be sure.’

  He heard Halliday mutter something to his over-eager assistant.

  ‘Fourteen metres, sir.’

  ‘Silence in the boat.’ Ainslie checked the bearing and looked at the man by the periscope hoist. ‘Very slowly, right?’

  The man bobbed and grinned nervously. ‘Aye, sir.’

  Ainslie bent down and waited as the periscope slid very gently from its well. He snapped down the handles and all but knelt on the deck as he peered through the eyepiece. In his mind he could see the long, greasy bronze tube sliding upwards towards the surface, the clean air. He tensed and jerked his hand to signal the stoker to stop. He was stooping, moving the handles very carefully, watching the picture in the lens changing from distorted blue-green to clusters of tiny bubbles, and then as it broke surface, to an eye-searing glare.

  He swung the periscope in a full circle, the motionless figures and ticking mechanism around him already forgotten. His world was out there, resting on the water. A quick look overhead, his wrist arching round the handle to move his ‘eye’ towards the blue sky. No brief glitter to betray an aircraft or, worse, the terrifying arc of a propeller as a plane dived towards its prey, the roaring engine completely silent in that other world.

  But there was nothing.

  He said, ‘Report target.’

  From the Asdic compartment he heard Walker say confidently, ‘Bearing zero-five-zero, sir. It’s altered course slightly. Revolutions as before. No increase in speed.’

  Ains
lie nodded to the stoker. ‘Full extent.’ He trained the periscope on the bearing and rose with it until it stopped.

  ‘Down periscope.’ He walked to the chart table and said, ‘A small patrol vessel. She’s a Jap all right.’ He felt his words moving out like a breeze on dried leaves. ‘Probably an escort for one of the troopships somewhere.’

  He turned away as Quinton said savagely, ‘If only we knew what was happening! It’s like being blind in a minefield!’

  Ainslie thought of the brief, blurred picture he had just seen. A high bow, a stubby, raked funnel, and quite a lot of shadows below her bridge, probably guns. At two miles it was not easy to see everything, even with the lens at full power. If the sea had been anything but flat calm he would have discovered nothing at all. This early sighting had given him the edge, a very necessary one if he was to prevent the patrol vessel from pinning Soufrière between her and the shore until help could be brought from elsewhere.

  Even submerged, a pre-warned aircraft might soon see her whale shape below the surface.

  ‘Start the attack. Tubes one to four.’

  He watched Ridgway as he turned the switches on his ‘fruit machine’ as it was nicknamed, while he waited to feed into it all the bearings, ranges and running depths required for his torpedoes.

  ‘Up periscope.’

  He moved it very carefully. There she was, almost end-on now, leaning slightly as she executed a slight alteration of course. He could sense the rating who was Ridgway’s assistant peering at the brass ring around the periscope which was marked with the bearings, the degrees of success or failure.

  Ainslie concentrated every fibre on the small silhouette. ‘The bearing is that. The range is – damn!’ He stood back. ‘Down periscope.’ He looked at Quinton. ‘The range is less than four thousand yards. But there’s another vessel astern of her. On tow. I think. Landing craft most likely.’

  ‘Tubes one to four ready, sir.’

  ‘Up periscope.’

  Again the quick search of sea and sky, then round to the target. She was sharper now. More real. So she was not altering course, but swinging to the pull of her unwieldy tow.

  ‘Bow doors open.’

  That was Ridgway. Wrestling with his own particular problem. Soufrière was years ahead of her time, like some of the most recent U-boats. She could fire a fanlike salvo at her target even though she was turning away. In Tigress you had to point the hull at the enemy like a weapon so that you were still heading into danger even as you fired.

  Back to the chart table again even before the periscope was down in its well.

  Forster’s dividers rested on the coastline. ‘There’s an anchorage here, sir. To the south of Pattani. Could be heading for it.’

  Ainslie stared at the chart. If the Japs were that confident and were able to approach the coast without a heavier escort or air support, their advance must be going well. Too well.

  He said, ‘I’ll take another look.’ He waited, trying to relax his neck and back mucles as the tube rose from the well.

  He watched the high bow edge darkly into the right-hand side of his lens, pushing into the crosswires as if to cut through them.

  ‘Stand by.’

  He heard Ridgway’s voice, a fierce whisper almost covered by the snick, snick of the ‘fruit machine’. ‘Ready, sir.’

  ‘Fire One!’

  The hull gave a slight jerk, as if it had touched a floating tree, but nothing to betray the menace of the torpedo as it streaked from its tube.

  Ainslie slammed the handles against the periscope. ‘Down periscope! Carry on firing by stop-watch! Thirty metres, shut off for depth-charging!’

  One by one the little red lights glittered on Ridgway’s panel, until he said, ‘All torpedoes running, sir!’

  ‘Thirty metres, sir.’

  ‘Alter course, Pilot. Steer three-one-zero. Stand by stern tubes, in case we miss him and he comes after us.’

  Ainslie gripped a voice-pipe as the hull tilted to the change of course. He could see the four torpedoes as if he were outside in the depths. Fanning out in a lethal salvo while they worked up towards fifty knots.

  Ridgway looked at his stop-watch, his face set in a frown. Forster was watching him, and Quinton’s fingers were drumming on the back of a planesman’s seat as he stared at the curved side.

  The explosion, followed by two more at regular intervals, was more like a sharp crack than a bang. The fourth torpedo had missed, but under the circumstances Ainslie was satisfied.

  ‘Periscope depth.’

  He saw Ridgway reaching out to pat his assistant on the back and could imagine the sweating torpedomen in the fore-ends, already preparing to reload the empty tubes.

  Walker reported, ‘HE has stopped, sir.’

  When the periscope broke surface Ainslie was just in time to see the patrol vessel’s bow as it started to slide down in a great welter of boiling foam, above it the stain of the explosion hung across the sky as if it would never move.

  Quinton called, ‘Well done, sir. Just like old times.’ They were all grinning like schoolboys.

  A handset buzzed in its case like a trapped bee, then a messenger said, ‘From W/T, sir. Signal.’

  Ainslie beckoned Quinton to take his place by the periscopes. He reached for the handset, finding time to marvel at the petty officer telegraphist who had used his radio receiver while the boat was so near to the surface. Despite the grim preparations and then the explosions he had gone on with his own job.

  ‘Captain.’

  Vernon sounded tense. ‘It was just a garble, sir. Probably a short-range army job.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The Prince of Wales and the Repulse, sir. Both sunk. Just now, while we were doing our attack.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He replace the handset and looked at Quinton and the rest. ‘Force Z has been wiped out.’ He watched their faces freeze, their smiles disappear. Against such a disastrous loss their own small victory was pitiful.

  Quinton was the first to speak. ‘They could be wrong. Some idiot getting his wires crossed.’

  They looked at each other, each knowing in his heart there was no mistake.

  ‘Resume course and depth, Pilot. Fall out diving and action stations.’ Ainslie glanced at Halliday. ‘Your people did well, Chief. Steady as a rock.’ Just words, bloody words. Part of the game. The necessary pretence.

  He moved to the centre of the control room, half watching, half listening. The news Vernon had intercepted would soon be across the whole world. In the twinkling of an eye Force Z had been destroyed. Maybe they had run into a more powerful squadron and had gone down fighting. Whatever had happened the result was the same. The whole balance of naval power had shifted in the enemy’s favour. The essential shield had been found wanting and had paid the full, awesome price.

  Later as he toyed with some food in his cabin he thought of the two great ships. The Prince of Wales was a new one with little history to remember, other than she had been witness to the Hood’s destruction under the guns of the German Bismarck.

  But the old battle cruiser Repulse he did know, as did almost every sailor in the fleet. She had been part of the tradition and the myth, and with her gone it was one more sign, one further threat to their very existence. He sighed and lay down on his bunk, the food congealing on its plate.

  He wondered if he would see any changes when he took the submarine back to Singapore. There might still be time to act, to hold the enemy until the forces in Malaya had been reinforced.

  ‘Captain in the control room!’

  He threw his legs to the deck, his heart beating faster. Here we go again.

  The Soufrière’s wardroom was unusually quiet. Alongside the depot ship once again, and with most of her company on local leave, she gave the impression of resting.

  Lieutenant Farrant, the gunnery officer, was sitting in a corner, utterly engrossed in a month-old copy of Lilliput. Lieutenant Forster, who was officer of the day, was re-reading the letter whi
ch had awaited Soufrière’s return to Singapore. It was from Daphne. A frightening, rambling letter, made worse by the sense of distance and helplessness. She would have to tell her mother about it. And when her husband came home . . . There had been splashes on the ink. He could see her crying as she had penned the last part. If there’s no other way, I shall kill myself.

  Forster looked up desperately. ‘God Almighty.’ He had read the letter over and over again. It got worse, not better.

  Farrant looked over his magazine. ‘Trouble?’

  Across the other side of the wardroom Lieutenant Christie, the RNVR pilot, glanced at the two men with interest. He could smell the tension, like an animal scenting blood.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  Forster dropped his eyes. Angry with himself. He had started to hate Farrant. His smugness, his cock-sure arrogance.

  Like their first patrol which had ended this morning. After the attack on the Jap patrol vessel and her tow, which had since been identified as a landing craft filled with men and stores, they had not seen very much. A few fishing vessels, driven to sea out of necessity, one rusty freighter which the skipper had sunk after ordering her crew to abandon, and the big landing craft.

  Forster had all but forgotten his personal troubles as he had joined Ainslie and the others in the attack. He had watched Ainslie’s face, judged every expression each time the periscope had shot down into its well, listened to the descriptions and reports, checked his plot and marked their progress on his chart. A really big landing craft, Ainslie had said. A fruitless look through a somewhat out-of-date copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships and a more recent collection of silhouettes suggested it might be a tank landing vessel of considerable value.

  She had been moving very slowly, well loaded with vehicles, zigzagging painfully like a giant shoe box on the placid water.

  Forster had seen none of it, but looking back, Ainslie had described every detail with his routine reports, so that now it was like remembering a film or a picture.