by James Philip
“Captain,” a timid voice murmured.
Simon Collingwood turned and smiled, light-lipped at the woman holding a steaming mug out to him. She was ready to flee if he so much as batted an eyelid. The woman was slim, uncomfortable in the unfamiliar – two or three sizes too large – dark blue boiler suit she had been given to replace her torn and soaked kaftan and shawls. She was barefoot, her feet two sizes too small for any of the spare plimsolls the crew wore. Her dark eyes were framed by the scarf concealing her hair. He found himself wishing she would not look at him with such unquestioning gratitude and, unsettling awe. Her name was Maya Hayek and she, her younger sister and three children now occupied Dreadnought’s commanding officer’s cabin. The children, aged five, three and two, a boy and two girls were orphans whom the sisters, aged twenty-three and twenty had rescued during their desperate flight from their home town of Golbasi, twenty miles south of the capital Ankara, to the coast.
All the rescued women had wanted to help with cooking, cleaning, sewing. In truth there was little for them to do except serve meals, hot drinks and look after their children. The boat was operating as silently as possible and movement between compartments was limited.
“Thank you, Maya,” he mumbled.
The young woman lowered her eyes.
Most of the adults they had taken onboard were Muslims although one of the old men was a Christian, but his Catholic Orthodox observance was a mystery to Dreadnought’s crew for it bore little resemblance to anything with which they were familiar. Maya had asked him in which direction Mecca lay, he had pointed to the compass repeater in the bulkhead above his cabin’s single bunk. She had sighed her shy understanding. That was nearest they had come to a conversation since she had been aboard, other of course than the long, slow ‘interviews’ crew members had conducted with the refugees. Those interviews were over, the last fragments of information extracted, distilled and sent back to Malta for dissection and analysis.
Maya backed away and was gone.
“Service with a smile, Skipper,” Max Forton chuckled.
His commanding officer glowered at him.
“Range to targets constant!” Dreadnought’s Executive Officer hurriedly confirmed.
Conventional wisdom suggested that any large scale invasion of Cyprus from Turkey would logically come ashore on the northern coast. There were plenty of bays, coves and sandy beaches and few obvious natural defence lines. But Red Dawn did not do things that way. Red Dawn murdered, burned, looted and raped wherever it went, it set off nuclear bombs in crowded ports, it clearly did not understand the meaning of ‘concentration of masse’ in warfare.
Simon Collingwood had not been remotely surprised when the sound room reported a small armada steaming slowly down the western end of the island. Dreadnought had moved a little to the east and waited. If he had been in charge of the Red Dawn fleet preparing to land its hordes he would have sent out a screen of ships both as an outer picket line of defence against attack and to drive any lurking submarines deep, away from his troop ships. Today his enemy had deployed as if nobody had yet invented the submarine.
Dreadnought had crept into the fold and now the sheep were at the mercy of the apex predator within their midst. The prey seemed to have no inkling of the presence of the two hundred and sixty-six feet long merciless black shark moving in for the kill.
“Flood all forward tubes if you please, Number One!
Tubes One and Two were loaded with Mark XX homing fish; the other tubes with old-fashioned Mark VIIIs with warheads four times the size of the modern torpedoes. Dreadnought had sailed from Gibraltar with a full set of six Mark XXs and eighteen Mark VIIIs.
“Helm! Make your course two-eight-five degrees!”
The invasion ‘fleet’ littered several miles of sea in front of the coast north of Paphos. It comprised big and small fishing boats, a couple of small ferries, a ten thousand ton angular-looking liner, even an old rusty Liberty ship. The escorts, two Krupny class destroyers and three smaller Riga class destroyer escorts were too busy shelling the town and the empty countryside to the north to notice HMS Dreadnought creeping among them.
The Mark XXs took out the bigger Krupny class ships. Single explosions triggered by the magnetic resonance of each hull detonating their warheads directly beneath each destroyer. One hundred and ninety-six pounds of Torpex was amply sufficient to form a rapidly expanding ball of air under its target, lifting and in the process, unnaturally, outrageously stressing the keel. Both Krupnys, their backs broken foundered slowly while Dreadnought began to pick off the other escorts.
Two of the first four Mark VIIIs failed to find a target.
All six tubes were reloaded with Mark VIIIs.
The third Riga class escort tried to hide in the mob of ships that made up the invasion fleet. Simon Collingwood went about sinking any target worthy of a heavyweight torpedo until there was virtually nowhere for the Riga class escort destroyer to hide. By then the day was darkening and the sea was covered in oil, wreckage and bodies. Two burning merchantmen had run themselves ashore. Three miles off shore the stern of the old Liberty ship was still afloat, the rest of the vessel was gone.
The destroyer escort had no idea where Dreadnought was.
She fired salvo after salvo of anti-submarine mortars, several in and around the wrecks or boats and rafts lashed together by the survivors of other ships. Two Mark VIIIs fired at a range of less than eight hundred yards reduced her to scrap. Her shattered carcass sank within seconds.
Every hour or so as the hunt went on Maya had brought Simon Collingwood a fresh mug of tea or cocoa; each time he muttered an embarrassed ‘thank you’ and went back to the killing.
The execution complete HMS Dreadnought ran south at twenty-five knots to resume a blocking position twenty miles south-south-east of Paphos.
Chapter 48
Wednesday 5th February 1964
HMS Talavera, Lazaretto Creek, Malta
A Maltese pilot had come onboard to oversee HMS Talavera’s departure from Sliema Creek, out into the open sea, and through the Grand Harbour breakwaters to her rendezvous with the Royal Fleet Auxilliary oiler Brambleleaf in Rinella Creek. The idea of manoeuvring the destroyer in confined waters still gave Peter Christopher nightmares but already he was beginning to believe it was not perhaps, quite as daunting a job as he had first imagined. Notwithstanding, it remained disconcertingly, exhilaratingly strange and new to be responsible for everything. With her bunkers brimming over the ship had felt and moved much more surely under his feet on the journey out of the Grand Harbour, around Valletta and back into the long, broad Marsamxett Anchorage. Past St Elmo’s Bay to the left where the wreck of the old Tribal class destroyer Maori had been sunk in 1945, past Sliema Creek on the right, all the while steaming slowly under the great ramparts of Valletta on the left, and the ruins of HMS Phoenicia to starboard, he had bled off speed and steerage way beneath the Floriana bastion, before edging stern first into the narrowing Lazaretto Creek where a small tug had nudged and coaxed Talavera’s deadweight until she was able to moor beneath the high starboard freeboard of the fourteen thousand ton Royal Fleet Auxilliary armament support ship Resurgent.
The first man up the gangplank was Lieutenant Alan Hannay.
“Permission to come aboard, sir?” He inquired nervously, as he saluted with practiced crispness.
Peter Christopher welcomed his new Supply Officer with several tersely delivered, somewhat tongue-in-cheek pieces of advice.
“Leave the ordnance to Guns,” he directed as the two men walked towards his day cabin. He could not get used to ‘owning’ the Captain’s day cabin, it seemed wrong. Two months ago he was a junior watch keeper, the ship’s technical ‘whizz’, now he was in command. “Miles Weiss has his department under control and notwithstanding he’s a marvellous fellow, he’ll eat you alive if you step on his toes. He’s also the Executive Officer, so that’s another reason why you don’t want to muck him about. Talk to the Master at Arms and the Chi
ef Petty Officers about whatever we’re short of and what we need as soon as possible. Oh, and don’t ever give the Master at Arms a direct order.”
Alan Hannay frowned, not knowing if his new captain was pulling his leg.
“Er, I don’t understand, sir?” He confessed.
Peter Christopher shut the day cabin door behind them.
“Ask him nicely. Things will work out better that way. You’ve never been to sea Alan. On a ship this size the senior Chief Petty Officer is closely related to God. I can give him a direct order, so can the Executive officer on a good day, and when he’s at home in England Mrs McCann can give him a direct order,” he smiled, “and perhaps, my father.”
“Right you are, sir. I’ll mind my Ps and Qs with Chief Petty Officer McCann.”
As if on cue there was a knock at the door.
“Come!”
Spider McCann and Lieutenant Miles Weiss came in.
“Mister McCann,” Peter Christopher announced, “this is our new Supply Officer and Purser, Lieutenant Hannay. I’d be obliged if you’d detail somebody to show him around the ship.”
The small, chiselled little man eyed the newcomer. His hard, unblinking stare was studiously neutral, forensically intense.
“Welcome aboard, sir!”
“Thank you, er, Mister McCann.”
Miles Weiss put his hands on his hips as he watched the unlikely duo depart.
“Hannay must be mad waving goodbye to a cushy berth at HQ at a time like this?”
“I’m astonished my father let him go, actually.”
“Resurgent has two hundred rounds of four point five inch AP and about a hundred Common. That’ll leave us about a quarter light, sir.”
“We’ll take whatever she’ll give us, Guns. Don’t forget to let our new Supply officer have your wish list.”
“The engineering ‘wish list’ alone is more like a volume of War and Peace, sir!”
“Well, in that case we’ll find out what Mr Hannay is made of sooner rather than later. I’ve got a conference on Scorpion in an hour so I better get my skates on.” The two young men, friends without an obvious care in the World before the October War, exchanged rueful looks. “I’ll leave the ship in your capable hands then!”
They very nearly laughed out loud; neither of them actually believed the Navy would be so stupid as to give them a real fleet destroyer to play with. Not so long ago Miles Weiss had had his guns and missiles, and Peter Christopher had had his smorgasbord of expensive, ultra-sophisticated radar and electronic warfare wizardry; two pigs in shit could not possibly have been happier; now they owned the whole ship!
Aboard HMS Scorpion Captain ‘D’s’ day cabin was crowded. The captains of the other ships of the 7th Destroyer Squadron; HMS Aisne, HMS Oudenarde and HMS Broadsword had each brought their executive officers. Peter Christopher was very aware that in terms of seniority he was significantly junior to the four other lieutenant-commanders in the cabin.
Captain Nicholas Davey called the conference to order.
“After yesterday’s excitement,” he began, chortling. Everybody guffawed. The previous day four United States Air Force F-104 Starfighters had approached Maltese air space without turning on their IFF – Identification Friend or Foe – transponders and the ground controller at Luqa had declared an alert. It transpired that half the air raid shelters had been locked and both Luqa and Ta’Qali had been so choked with aircraft of every conceivable type that it had been impossible to scramble a single additional interceptor to support the existing combat air patrol. Urgent remedial measures were being taken to rectify both issues. Helicopter operations had already been transferred to alternative fields, including Hal Far, which had been largely de-activated when RAF Luqa’s runway was extended, freeing up tarmac space at the two main bases. “Yes, after yesterday’s excitement it seems that things are pretty grim in Cyprus and on the Turkish mainland. One of our submarines sank a whole invasion convoy but HMS Salisbury was sunk by air attack and HMS Decoy badly damaged. Victorious is now close enough to provide minimal air cover for the initial evacuation. I don’t know exactly what that means but at least something is happening and we’re not completely on the back foot. The Big Cats,” the cruisers Lion and Tiger, “are on their way to support the Victorious. Anybody who has strolled along the side of Lazaretto Creek knows that the poor old Sheffield isn’t now going to attempt to catch up with the Big Cats. The latest plan is she’ll offload all inessential personnel and anchor in the Grand Harbour, probably behind the northern breakwater as a floating gun battery. As to our fate,” he grinned wolfishly, “We’re off to greet our American friends in the morning, gentlemen!”
Chapter 49
Thursday 6th February 1964
Tigne Fort, Sliema, Malta
HMS Scorpion was the first of the long, sleek grey hunters to slip her moorings, glide out of Sliema Creek into Marsamxett and point her clipper bow towards the open sea.
Marija had grown up in a household where the men all worked, or were destined to work, in the Admiralty Dockyards. The men of her family, including most of her uncles and cousins were therefore, self-appointed connoisseurs of naval architecture and design. This meant that all she had to do was glimpse a silhouette on the horizon for a split second and she instantly knew the speed, armament, sea going characteristics, machinery layouts and each and every one of the mechanical quirks and foibles of that particular class of vessel. Moreover, ever since Peter had finally followed in his father’s footsteps, his letters had been full of nonsense about advanced and horribly sophisticated electrical, sensing and ‘computational’ – she had no idea what this term meant – devices; she had thus acquired a sound working familiarity with the ships of the Mediterranean Fleet that, had he known about it, any Soviet spy worth his salt would have given his eye teeth to possess...
But of course her brother Samuel had been exactly that hadn’t he?
As she stood beneath the sheltering round tower of antique Fort Tigne on the highest vantage point of Point Dragutt opposite St Elmo’s Bay, Valletta, Marija and her companions had ring side seats from which to watch the departure of the 7th Destroyer Squadron.
Marija’s mind was still in flux, a hopeless chaos of jangling thoughts as she came to terms with the new reality of her life. Peter had seen her at her worst, beaten down and with her face a mess, humiliated beyond measure and all he had wanted to do was hold her in his arms until the bad things went away. She had never wanted him to let her go.
‘I’m sorry,’ he had said all too soon. ‘I have to go. My ship...’
She had understood. Really, she had understood.
‘I thought we’d have more time to get used to things. Talk about the future,’ he had apologised. ‘But things are,’ he had shrugged, ‘strange.’
Marija had nodded her agreement.
The only thing that mattered was that he was here and he was still her Peter.
‘Marry me, please?’ He had asked without further preamble. ‘Marry me and we’ll sort out the rest of our life later.’
Marija had nodded and started crying again.
He had wrapped her in his arms until it was time to go.
‘Yes,” she had said. ‘Yes, yes, yes...’
This morning she needed to rediscover her lost equilibrium. The last few days had been filled with madness and she had to re-find her balance, silence the cacophony of competing voices in her head.
She gazed at HMS Scorpion. She had always thought a scorpion was a bug with a horribly painful sting; but apparently a Scorpion was also some kind of medieval ballista used in siege warfare. Her father had told her this and many other completely useless, oddly fascinating things about the ships he had worked on over the years.
The Weapon class ships were slightly smaller that the Battles which came after them, because at the time – in the middle of the Second World War - the Royal Navy had wanted to use all the available building slips. Both classes were designed, ordered and laid down when su
ch considerations were paramount, according to her father who was the indisputable font of knowledge on these things. One of the reasons the Weapon class ships looked a little unbalanced – rather ugly, actually – in comparison to practically every other type of British fleet destroyer, was that they were the first class to have ‘in-line’ engine and machine spaces. Previously, British destroyers had had a boiler room forward of an engine room. This was fine but if one or other of the ‘rooms’ was disabled in action the ship was dead in the water. The Weapon class had a port and a starboard combined boiler and engine room, one set of machinery for each propeller basically. The Americans had been doing this for years but their ships tended to be bigger, and in order to implement the new layout in the relatively small Weapon class hulls two funnels were required. Hence the stumpy exhaust vents trunked through the lattice foremast, and the peculiar looking stunted ‘pipe’ sticking up amidships between the box-like radar and generator rooms. The Navy had not known what to do with the Weapons after the Second War until a handful of them were converted as Fast Air Detection Escorts along with six of the later Battles. For reasons only known to the Admiralty – Marija’s father speculated that somebody had done the stability sums and belatedly discovered that the Weapons were too small to carry the full radar and sensor suite of the modified Battles – Scorpion and her sisters had only been partially converted and re-equipped for their new role. Unlike the Battles’ double bedstead four-ton Type 965 aerials, the Weapons made do with a single, older single bedstead model. The Weapons had also been left with their original Squid anti-submarine mortars, and refitted with a pale shadow of the electronic counter measures wizardry of the converted Battles. Another oddity of the Weapons was their four-inch calibre main battery; previous classes had carried 4.7-inch guns, and subsequent designs the 4.5-inch semi-automatic naval rifles of the Battles.