by Dudley Pope
He stood back as the lookouts trooped in and pulled on oilskin trousers, coats, and boots, carefully winding towels round their necks.
‘Hey, where did you find those towels?’ Jemmy demanded.
‘Whole locker full in the POs’ mess, sir.’
‘Oh well, too late now. Let’s hope there’s no spray. Right,’ he said to Yon, ‘take her up! Proceed to periscope depth, Oberleutant!’
With that he climbed the ladder into the conning tower, followed by the lookouts.
Yon gave an order which set the electric motors humming and then, watching the gauges, gave another series of orders to the men at the forward and after hydroplanes.
The Croupier took the Triton manual from Ned and nodded towards the wardroom. ‘I’ll go through this slowly, just to make sure I haven’t missed anything, then I’ll begin making the copies.’
Ned waited, fascinated by Yon’s confidence at the control panels. His hands moved back and forth with the skill of a juggler; indeed, Ned thought, controlling this damned boat as it moved in three dimensions was about the same as flying an aeroplane.
The needle of the depth gauge was moving round steadily, and Ned noticed Yon keeping a close watch on the vertical Papenberg glass scale. He seemed to be matching the dial against the gauge; then Ned remembered that the art of surfacing a submarine was to stop her just a few feet below the surface, at just the depth for the commander to raise the periscope for a careful look round and, if necessary, search the sky with the other periscope, and the Papenberg had that kind of accuracy.
Yon moved under the hatch and called up: ‘Periscope clear, sir.’
Ned heard Jemmy’s muffled voice (presumably he was raising the periscope and searching the dark horizon) giving instructions to the lookouts. Finally Jemmy called down: ‘Prepare to surface… Surface!’
And this was the moment when they were most vulnerable, Ned remembered: the conning tower was now clear of the water but everyone in the boat was still blind, unable to open the hatch until the valve had been turned to equalize the pressure inside and outside. There were hilarious stories of what happened to men who opened the hatch with the pressure high in the submarine.
Ned felt a slight pain in his ears, then a sudden flurry of orders from Yon seemed to turn the control room into bedlam: an hysterical hissing showed compressed air was rushing into the ballast tanks to drive out the water, the whining of the electric motors stopped, powerful ventilators began sucking a great draught of fresh air into the boat. Yon was giving instructions about opening diesel exhaust and air vents, and with a massive cough first one and then the other diesel started. As far as Ned could make out, Yon was now using the exhaust gases from the diesels to finish blowing all the water from the ballast tanks.
Now the roar of the diesels seemed to take over the whole boat. Ned crossed over to the chart table and glanced along the shelf above, which held almanacs, lists of lights and radio signals, and finally found the rough log. He began filling it in, guessing the meaning of some of the German abbreviated headings to the various columns. He looked at his watch and, timing the entry half an hour earlier, wrote: ‘Sighted destroyer on port bow, dived to 120 feet, destroyer passed ahead.’ Then, against the present time: ‘Surfaced, proceeded on diesels.’ Not the skilled prose of a submariner perhaps, but it told the story.
What was that? It was hard to hear but Jemmy seemed to be shouting ‘Clear the bridge’ – and yes, the first of the lookouts had just crashed down the ladder and was rolling aside so that the next man down did not land on him. And Jemmy was shouting to Yon: ‘Take her down fast, Yon! Two hundred feet.’ His voice was fainter as he turned to the helmsman and snapped: ‘Hard a’starboard, steer…’
The last few words were lost as Yon ordered the diesels to be shut down, air and exhaust vents closed, the diesel drives disengaged from the propeller shafts and the electric motors started up and connected. The boat would dive in a great curve to starboard.
Ned turned to Hazell: ‘Start passing hydrophone reports.’
The man picked up the earphones, pulled them over his head, and as he turned a wheel which presumably gave the direction his face went white.
Chapter Eighteen
Jemmy scrambled down the ladder after the last of the lookouts and strode straight towards the hydrophone cabin, turning to Ned as he went. ‘Bloody destroyer was waiting for us. Must have picked us up on the radar the minute we surfaced, the cunning sod.’
He looked down at Hazell. ‘Well?’
‘HE approaching fast, green 040, sounds like that destroyer.’
‘Yon, use the Tannoy: warn everyone to close down for heavy depth-charging.’
The Croupier ambled out of the wardroom and, rubbing his eyes sleepily, said to Ned: ‘Permission to transfer to major vessels, sir. I’m temperamentally unsuited to submarines: they’re too noisy.’
‘HE approaching fast, bearing the same.’
The sharp tilt as the U-boat’s propellers pushed her forward and the hydroplanes drove her down now combined with a list to starboard as the rudders swung her round in an arc directly towards the approaching destroyer.
This time, Ned saw, Jemmy was playing a different game: just as the waiting and watchful destroyer had picked up the conning tower on her radar and immediately got under way to head at full speed for the spot where her captain calculated the U-boat would be when their courses intersected, Jemmy had turned the steeply diving boat towards her.
Obviously he was calculating that his sudden jink to starboard at the last moment would not be noticed because as the destroyer increased speed her Asdic would become useless. Which, Ned estimated, gave the U-boat that vital minute or two to dive straight at her so that the destroyer passed overhead sooner than she expected.
So – in theory at least – the destroyer would drop her depth-charges astern of the U-boat, which presumably would continue on the opposite course and gain even more time as the destroyer – after dropping depth-charges – would slow, and then wait for the turmoil of the explosions to die down before resuming her Asdic search.
Ping…ping…ping, and a sound like surf, the distant deep hissing of the destroyer’s propellers. The Asdic signals echoing off the hull were as he imagined Tibetan temple bells would sound across a valley. Then they changed – ping, ping, ping, ping, and at the same time the noise seemed to peck at the U-boat’s plating.
They had the U-boat! Ned remembered the hours he had spent on a destroyer’s bridge, listening to the monotonous ping…ping…ping, and then suddenly everyone’s excitement as the echo came back from a U-boat hull – ping…ding…ping… ding. Then up Asdic dome and a high-speed turn on to the bearing, firing depth-charges to port and starboard and rolling a couple over the stern.
But the destroyer’s pinging had stopped: by coincidence the destroyer’s sudden increase in speed had coincided with the echoes for two or three pings. He could picture the captain’s fury, but the man was committed.
Now came the approaching egg-beater swishing of propellers and he suddenly remembered as a boy standing at one end of a long railway tunnel as the train entered the other.
Jemmy was listening on one earphone and Hazell held the other and twiddled the controls. Suddenly Jemmy let go of his earphone and Hazell pulled off the headset, obviously to avoid being deafened.
‘They’ve let go the depth-charges,’ Jemmy said calmly, walking to the conning tower ladder. ‘We heard the splashes.’
‘Starboard thirty…what’s your heading?’ he called up to the helmsman. Ned did not hear the reply but Jemmy was increasing the turn to starboard so that the U-boat should be sneaking away on the destroyer’s port quarter in the underwater noise and turbulence caused by the depth-charges.
Booo…ooo…ooom. Two exploded almost simultaneously, a noise so powerful that it alone seemed capable of crushing the b
oat. Then two more. Ned was startled to see the control room was exactly the same; the two men working the hydroplanes were still watching their dials, Yon still standing behind them, Jemmy holding on to the aluminium strut of the ladder, the Croupier listening with his head cocked to one side, a quizzical look on his face.
But the steel deckplates had jumped; each explosion was like a giant squeezing the hull; an all enveloping blast of pressure, noise, naked power. How could this narrow cylinder stand the punishment?
‘Take her down to three hundred,’ Jemmy told Yon.
Yon gave the orders to the men at the hydroplane controls and the boat’s bow-down attitude increased with the heel to starboard as water gurgled into the ballast tanks. ‘The builder’s guarantee expires at three hundred feet,’ Yon reminded them quietly. ‘No good asking for a replacement if she caves in.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ Jemmy said, but he was listening. The swishing of the propellers had stopped but Ned could hear the whine from the surface which he realized must be the destroyer’s generators and pumps.
‘She’s stopped to listen,’ Jemmy said. ‘She must have turned to port as well, trying to outguess us.’
Ping…ping…ping…ping…ping…ping… The sound impulses hit the hull as sharp pecks: this is how a termite feels when the woodpecker starts working nearby.
Ned saw Hazell had the earphones on again. ‘HE,’ he began, and then laughed at the unnecessary expression, ‘dead astern, very close. Depth-charges away…one and two, three and four, five and six.’ With that he snatched off the headset.
The first two explosions seemed to squeeze Ned and at the same time kick up through the deckplates, which rattled like a building labourer dropping a hod full of bricks on to galvanized sheeting. The second two were closer and the third pair, he guessed, would end it all. Would the great pressure wave as the hull caved in crush you into unconsciousness, or would you drown in the inrush of water at the pressure of three hundred feet?
Three and four seemed to be touching the hull, and all the lights went out amid the crash of falling glass – and yes, spurting water!
‘Emergency lights…report damage after the last two!’
Jemmy seemed calm enough in the darkness.
Five and six. Definitely exploding on the other side and higher: the destroyer had passed right overhead.
Lights came on, weak, an emergency circuit, and Ned saw gauges had fractured and thin streams of water came out at high pressure. A seaman, seeming unhurried to the point of being casual, reached across and screwed valves shut. The streams died. These submariners – well, Jemmy had chosen well.
Yon called for reports from the engine room aft and listened to the answers, and by then the forward torpedo room was reporting.
‘Nothing significant, sir,’ he reported, to Ned’s surprise. ‘The only leaks forward and aft are valve-seats being lifted, and the packing in the port shaft gland is dripping. We can very easily tighten that.’
Jemmy nodded, his face shadowed by the dim auxiliary lighting. ‘Warn the ERAs not to drop spanners – that destroyer has hydrophones, too.’
Yon did not in fact pass the warning because ERAs serving in submarines – as these two had for years – needed no such instructions.
‘Shut down,’ Jemmy said. ‘No pumps, nothing…’
The electric motors whined to a stop. Ned could hear several different drips. Exploring underground caves must be like this: darkness, unreal silence, the steady drip of water, and not knowing where you were going, though the next step might launch you over a steep ledge.
To occupy his mind, Ned leaned over the chart table and twisted the adjustable lamp so that it lit up the German gridded chart of the Atlantic. Hellfire and damnation. They were well over in the western half. A long way from home.
Now Hazell, headset on, was reporting again in a low voice. ‘HE red zero four, distant…red zero five, distant…she’s stopped.’
‘Having a sniff with her Asdic and hydrophones,’ Jemmy commented.
‘HE effect red four five…Asdic…’
With friends like these who needed…? The hackneyed phrase amused Ned and for a few moments took his mind off the bitter irony of their situation: they had, more effectively than perhaps they deserved, carried out Mr Churchill’s orders.
There was, of course, a way of saving their lives at the risk of losing the Mark III, though they could probably save the manual, but there were other considerations. Jemmy, the Croupier, Yon – everyone must be thinking about it, but to their credit none had said anything. The U-boat could surface and surrender, but… Two ‘buts’, in fact, one lethal and one that ruled it out entirely.
Perhaps he should say it all in as many words to Jemmy and the Croupier and Yon.
‘Officers’ meeting in the wardroom,’ he said suddenly. ‘Can you leave those dials and things for five minutes, Heath?’
The engineer nodded, saying something quickly to the men at the hydroplanes and looking at the two men replacing the broken glasses in the gauges.
Four men in the wardroom meant it was crowded and they had to sit two on each lower bunk. Ned pulled the curtains at either end.
‘This isn’t a council of war,’ he said. ‘I’m not delegating or spreading responsibility, or asking your opinions, but you must be wondering why I don’t surface and surrender to the destroyer and –’
‘Never crossed my mind,’ Jemmy interrupted. ‘I don’t want to get myself killed. We couldn’t surface and surrender – they’d spray us with cannon and machine-guns to kill everyone who got to the upper deck and than ram us, or do us in with their 4.7s. White flag be buggered. If they saw it in the rush they’d think it was a trap. Let’s face it, U-boats don’t surrender.’
Ned grinned and nodded. ‘That covers my first point. We’ve got to get the Mark III on the London bus, along with the manual. But when this destroyer’s finally left us in peace – providing she does – we might later surface and then surrender to the first RN ship we see –’
‘Same again,’ Jemmy said doggedly. ‘Anyone seeing a U-boat on the surface at whatever range is going to get all excited and start shooting, and then depth-charge or ram. Ned, I hate to say it but we have left the Allied fold. We are the clap, Flying Dutchmen, politicians, Typhoid Marys, income tax collectors, enemies of the human race. We can wave white flags like mad, but the first people sighting us are going to start shooting. A U-boat is a U-boat; there’s no way we can disguise it to look like Number Ten Downing Street, or a bunch of gladioli.
‘A Coastal Command Liberator fitted with radar, a Leigh light and depth-charges will jump us at night as soon as we make a blip on his radar screen. Ned, my old mate, nobody (on our side, I mean) trusts a U-boat. Guns, depth-charges, Leigh light – but sink on sight!’
The Croupier carefully traced his eyebrows with a wetted finger. ‘What Jemmy’s trying to say tactfully is that collectively we smell.’
‘There was a second point I was going to make,’ Ned said mildly.
‘Are you still alive?’ Jemmy asked ironically. ‘They sank me with a 4.7 inch shell hit on the conning tower as I waved a pair of Joan’s knickers in a friendly sort of way.’
‘Always thought you were a bit of a pansy,’ the Croupier said unsympathetically.
‘I didn’t know Joan had any knickers,’ Ned said, ‘but listen. If somehow we managed to get ourselves captured and managed to get the cash register and the Triton manual safely on board the other ship, we’ve got another security problem. At the moment only twenty-three of us, chosen men and sworn to secrecy, know we’ve captured a U-boat. Maybe half a dozen of us really know why. None of us will ever talk. The German prisoners will be kept in a special isolated prison camp. So the chances of the Germans discovering that we’ve captured one of their U-boats and thus Enigma Mark III and Triton are nil.
‘But bring a destroyer into it… A hundred men of the ship’s company see it happen, some will take photographs, all will be as proud and excited as hell. I don’t see anyone swearing every one of them to secrecy. Nor do I see all of ’em surrendering camera film. If even one roll of film stayed in someone’s pocket and was developed by a photographer in some market town in the Midlands, people would talk. You can’t mistake a U-boat. So the photographer mentions to his wife and his mates in the pub – in complete confidence, of course – and they gossip… Soon the Germans will get the word: one of their boats – one of the thirty or so missing that month – was captured. And overnight – well, as soon as new manuals can be got to the boats – Triton is replaced, and we are back at square one – which is black-out. They can carry on using the came cash register, of course.’
Jemmy gave a startling series of twitches. ‘Ned, mate, with our wireless transmitter busted, there’s no chance that we can surrender at long range or pass the word to the Admiralty and stop all these people being nasty to us, so it wouldn’t matter if you had Mr Churchill, Roosevelt, the C-in-C of the Home Fleet or Veronica Lake on board; there’s just no way of surrendering to ’em. You’re in a U-boat, mate, and like a wasp at a picnic, if you sit still for a moment you’ll never get a second chance: somebody’ll swat you!’
Ned laughed, conscious that Hazell was again reporting, and said: ‘“Pariahs of the world, unite!” I’d reached all those conclusions in the lifeboat. I really wanted to explain to you why we just can’t surface and surrender.’
‘Oh, we can surface and surrender,’ Yon said. ‘It’s just that we’d never live to tell the tale, eh Jemmy?’