Kleber's Convoy

by Antony Trew

  Looking into the darkness through a curtain of snow, the high tide of Schloss’s fears receded. For the first time that day he felt moderately secure. The convoy and escorts were miles astern, steaming away from the U-boat, so that allowing for their combined speed, U-0153 was withdrawing from the danger zone at about twenty knots. Through frozen lips he hummed Der Stille Nacht. Emil Meyer coughed deliberately, offensively. Schluss took the hint and stopped.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The buzzer from the radar office sounded on Vengeful’s bridge. Redman went to the voice-pipe. ‘Forebridge-radar. Captain here.’

  ‘We’ve picked up the convoy, sir. Bearing two-four-eight, eighteen thousand yards.’

  ‘Well done, Blandy. Watch for small blips below that range. There may be U-boats trying to get away on the surface astern of the convoy.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir. Lot of wave clutter, sir.’

  ‘Yes. I know it’ll be difficult, Blandy. But if anybody can do it, you can.’ He moved back to the bridge-screen. ‘Put her on two-four-eight, pilot,’ he said.

  Pownall repeated, ‘Two-four-eight, sir,’ and passed the new course to the wheelhouse.

  Redman said, ‘The convoy must have altered to port.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We should be up with it in thirty minutes.’

  Vengeful, coming back from the skirmish with Gruppe Osten off the Skolpen Bank, was steaming into wind at fifteen knots, clouds of spray sweeping the bridge as she dug her bows into head seas. The asdic dome had been raised. At that speed in bad weather A/S conditions were hopeless and the dome which projected from the bottom of the ship’s hull might be damaged.

  Every ten minutes Redman stopped engines, the dome was lowered and A/S operators listened for HE, hoping to hear the propellers of a submerged U-boat. Redman knew that those which had taken part in the surface attack were likely to have submerged astern of the convoy to reload tubes before surfacing to get up-wind for a further attack. But he did not expect to find a U-boat until Vengeful was a good deal Closer to the convoy.

  On the PPI Redman could see four tiny but distinct pips of light ahead of Vengeful. They were ships of the Fifty-Seventh Escort Group, strung out in ragged quarter-line, making for the convoy as fast as they could in response to the Vice-Admiral’s recall. Vigorous was nearest the convoy, Vengeful brought up the rear, with Violent a good two miles ahead of her.

  Somebody arrived on the bridge. ‘Captain, sir,’ came from the darkness.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Redman.

  ‘The doctor, sir.’

  ‘Yes, Elliot. What is it?’ Captains of destroyers usually called their doctors ‘Doc’. Redman studiously avoided this. It was always ‘Elliot’. The doctor wondered about this. Was it an expression of contempt?

  ‘Chaffinch’s survivors, sir. We’ve lost five. Two others are unlikely to make it. The remaining eight should be all right.’

  Redman shivered. It was as if death had touched him with a cold hand. There had been close on two hundred men in Chaffinch. Now only ten were alive. Her captain had gone down with his ship. He was an old friend. Redman said, ‘Anything you want?’

  ‘No, sir. I thought I should let you know.’

  ‘Thank you, Elliot. I’m sure you’re doing everything possible.’

  The doctor made no move to go. He’d heard Redman’s laboured breathing, knew the captain must be close to exhaustion. But he didn’t know what to do. How to get across the message that maybe he could help. ‘Yes, sir.’ The doctor gulped. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘No,’ Redman said sharply. ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ve had very little sleep, sir.’ The doctor lowered his voice so that others on the bridge might not hear.

  ‘So have a lot of other people,’ said Redman. ‘I’m quite fit. Better get back to the sick-bay. You’re needed there.’

  The doctor took the hint and left the bridge. He knew that tone only too well.

  Redman spoke to the asdic cabinet. ‘Stopping now, Groves. Get the dome down as soon as you can and listen for HE. Make it snappy. We don’t want to remain stopped for long.’

  To Pownall he called, ‘Stop engines.’

  Pownall repeated the order to the quartermaster. The telegraph bells tinkled and the destroyer’s hull ceased to vibrate.

  Redman was irritated by the doctor’s remark. Of course he hadn’t had much sleep. Of course he was tired. But no more than any of the others who were in command. Did the doctor imagine there was some idyllic system under which escort captains could get a good night’s sleep? Actually he didn’t feel too bad. He’d taken the Benzedrine tablets earlier in the afternoon and much of the tiredness seemed to have worn off. A bad headache worried him but as he hadn’t emptied his bowels for six days that wasn’t surprising.

  Bowrie the midshipman answered the buzzer from the radar office, and passed on Blandy’s report. ‘R-range of convoy f-fifteen thousand yards, sir.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Redman. He wiped the snow from his eyebrows with a gloved hand. ‘Ugh! Bloody cold. This damned snow never lets up.’

  ‘I think the weather’s moderating, sir,’ said the first-lieutenant with almost offensive cheerfulness.

  ‘Yes. We’re closing the Murman coast. Beginning to feel its lee. But I’d like to see less snow. The wind’s bringing it off the land.’

  Vengeful lost way quickly and her bows began to fall off in the wind. A faint rhythmic sound obtruded suddenly on the medley of water noises coming from the asdic-speaker. The buzzer from the asdic cabinet sounded. Lofty Groves’s calm voice reported. ‘Faint HE on oh-four-eight, estimated range six thousand yards. Radar reports no surface vessel on that bearing, sir.’

  ‘Well done, Groves. I think we can just hear it on the bridge-speaker.’ In the darkness he called, ‘A/S action stations. Start the plot, pilot.’

  Pownall said, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ He didn’t add that he’d given the order while the captain was speaking to Groves. The first-lieutenant had sounded the alarm for anti-submarine action stations before the captain finished speaking.

  ‘Slow ahead together, starboard ten,’ Redman ordered. He was determined to go about this business slowly, methodically and above all quietly. If he rushed it the U-boat would hear the destroyer’s propellers and dive deep. The chart showed average depths of one hundred and forty fathoms.

  ‘Shall I signal the general alarm, sir?’ It was Burrows the yeoman.

  ‘Not yet, yeoman. We don’t want other escorts bounding to our help, frightening this U-boat into going deep. We’ll tail him for a bit.’

  Redman spoke to Groves. ‘I’ll try and get dead astern of him. But we’ll do it slowly. Give you a sporting chance of picking up HE while we’re under way. Let me know if our speed’s too much. Once we’re headed on the bearing we’ll do revolutions for eight knots. The U-boat can’t be doing more than six.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir. Bearing oh-five-oh, moving right. HE very faint. Lot of interference from water noises.’

  Slowing, taking a buffeting from the seas now on her beam, Vengeful came round on to the new course. As the HE bearing moved to starboard, Redman conned the ship round until she was steady on 058 degrees, almost directly downwind. The submarine was running submerged on electric motors, presumably reloading tubes. But he would have expected it to have turned by now to follow the convoy, He would also have expected it to have gone deep to get under a thermal. The operation of reloading would take about an hour and a half. The first surface attack on the convoy had been broken off thirty minutes earlier, so the U-boat was unlikely to surface for another hour. Why was she steering away from the enemy …?

  His thoughts were interrupted by Groves’s report. ‘Submarine blowing tanks, sir. Engine revolutions increasing. She’s about to surface.’ His voice was as near to excitement as the captain had heard it.

  Redman at once said, ‘Cease radar transmissions.’ Bowrie passed the order to the radar office. Once surfaced, the U-boat would pick up radar transmissi
ons on its search-receiver and almost certainly dive again.

  As if nature felt it owed a special duty to U-boats what had been a steady but moderate snowfall intensified, the wind driving blankets of snow before it, swirling and sweeping over the destroyer, reducing visibility to zero.

  Redman realised that the U-boat, up-wind of Vengeful when first heard, would have experienced the snowstorm first. Presumably her captain had come to periscope depth prior to surfacing, or simply to test weather conditions, and had decided the moment was opportune for surfacing and making off down-wind. Maybe he’d only had two or three tubes to reload and having done that he’d surfaced to work round to the westward ahead of the convoy.

  With these thoughts in mind, Redman formulated his plan of attack. It would be based on the tactics used so successfully by the captain of Wolverine, the destroyer which had sunk Guenther Prien, captain of U-47, top German U-boat ace, early in the war.

  From the asdic cabinet Groves interrupted. ‘Submarine running on diesels, sir. Revolutions for high speed. Bearing oh-five-four. Range opening.’

  ‘Good. Now listen, Groves. We’ll hunt this chap on HE. In this sea he’ll work up to fourteen maybe fifteen knots as long as he keeps running down-wind. We’ll have to try and improve on that if we’re to overhaul him.’

  ‘Be difficult to hold his HE at that speed in this weather, sir.’

  ‘I know. But I’ll stop at five-minute intervals and on each occasion I want you to give me a fresh bearing. Then we’ll steam as hard as we can on that bearing for another five minutes before we stop and listen again. We’ve ceased radar and asdic transmissions and since we’re dead astern of him his own propeller noises should mask ours. There’ll be nothing to tell him he’s being followed.’

  Lofty Groves’s hoarse chuckle was followed by, ‘Aye, aye, sir. We’ll do our best.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ said Redman. ‘What’s so bloody funny?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. Just reminded me of something.’

  Redman managed a frost-cracking smile in the darkness. ‘Steer oh-five-four, pilot. Work up the revolutions to whatever she’ll take. I’ll let you know when it’s enough.’ He looked at the luminous dial of his watch. It was 1650.

  With wind and sea astern, Vengeful was able to make eighteen knots without risk of weather damage, but storms of snow and sleet followed each other in monotonous succession, Visibility was seldom over a thousand yards,

  ‘Five minutes up, sir,’ called Pownall.

  Redman ordered, ‘Stop engines.’

  The hull vibrations ceased and the destroyer drifted.

  ‘Quick as you can, Groves,’ Redman was urgent. ‘We don’t want to lose steerage way.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Time passed. The men on the bridge listened compulsively to the sounds from the asdic-speaker.

  Beneath the confusion of water noises the HSD,1 Callan, leader of Groves’s A/S team, heard a faint pattern of sound. He turned the training wheel to port, watching the bearing indicator, and then, as the HE faded, he turned it back to starboard stopping when the volume of sound was greatest. He was a singular man, Callan, with an ability to hear sounds so low in volume that they were inaudible to most people.

  ‘Bearing oh-four-one, sir,’ he said. ‘Range has opened.’

  Groves repeated the information to the bridge.

  ‘I can give you another minute,’ said Redman. ‘See if the bearing changes.’

  The minute passed. ‘Might be a slight movement to port, sir. Very difficult to check under these conditions.’

  ‘Steer oh-four-oh, pilot. Revolutions for eighteen knots.’

  The navigating officer relayed the orders to the wheel-house. Vengeful came alive, her turbines whirred, the propellers began to churn, the bow moved to starboard and she steadied on the new course.

  The first-lieutenant came on to the bridge. ‘I’ve been round the ship, sir. The coxswain’s getting cooks of messes to organise hot food and cocoa for the men at action stations.’

  ‘Good. Hope they’re better at hot meals than Cupido. I suppose the bridge won’t be forgotten?’

  The first-lieutenant chuckled. ‘It’s on its way, sir. May even get here before Topcutt. I think he’s …’

  A voice from the darkness interrupted. ‘Captain, sir. Hot cocoa and a sandwich, sir.’

  ‘My God,’ said the first-lieutenant. ‘He’s beaten the bridge messenger to it.’

  ‘Bless you, Topcutt. You’re psychic.’

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  ‘My mind,’ explained Redman. ‘You read it.’

  ‘Bit nippy up here, sir,’ said Topcutt. Redman could hear the able-seaman’s teeth chattering.

  On the after side of the bridge the yeoman-of-signals moved aside the canvas screen of the signal desk and switched on the shaded light ‘Got the tally so far, Willy?’ Williams, signalman-of-the-watch, said, ‘Here it is, Yeo. All that we’ve received up here. Plus what the W/T office’s given us.’

  ‘Let’s see it then.’ The yeoman took the list and held it under the light. He began reading aloud, slowly, authoritatively, as if checking an inventory. ‘Our losses. One AA sloop. Chaffinch – Christ, poor old Ridley’s copped it.’ – Ridley was Chaffinch’s yeoman-of-signals. – ‘One fleet oiler, Surfol. Three Liberty ships.’ He read out their names. Two US, one British. He coughed, cleared his throat importantly. ‘Enemy losses. Two U-boats sunk by Fifty-Seventh Escort Group vicinity Skolpen Bank. Further U-boat sunk by Eighty-Third Escort Group during surface attack on convoy.’ The yeoman switched off the light and passed the list back to the signalman. ‘Not too bad, Willy. And that’s not to mention the one we got off Loch Ewe. Not bad at all.’

  ‘Think they’ll attack again, Yeo?’

  ‘They likely will, lad. Reloading now. Then they’ll work into the ahead position. We’ve another seventeen hours to Kola. And don’t forget that Skolpen lot. Maybe we’ll be hearing from them later.’

  Williams sucked his teeth loudly. ‘Heard SO Escorts report no sign of any surfaced U-boats. Few minutes back that was. Escorts still hunting two submerged. Finding difficulty holding A/S contact.’

  ‘Yes. Heard that lot meself. Not surprising in this weather. Freeze the balls off a brass bound monkey, it would.’

  ‘Funny the Old Man not letting you give the general alarm for this flipping U-boat, Yeo. And not answering those recalls and all.’

  ‘He’s doing the right thing, Willy. We reported we were investigating an A/S contact at the start. Before it surfaced. If we make a signal now Jerry’ll pick it up right away on his GSR and dive deep. We’d never get him after that.’

  1 HSD – Higher Submarine Detector. The rate given to a leading- seaman who specialised in operating asdic equipment.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  During the first fifty-five minutes after the U-boat surfaced, Vengeful stopped engines on nine occasions. After each Callan, the HSD, was able to pick up HE. Not always immediately. Three times contact was lost and Vengeful set off on a square search at slow speed and somehow Callan picked up the HE again. Each time contact was regained and an approximate bearing established, the destroyer set off along it, quickly working up speed to eighteen knots.

  During those forty minutes Bluebird had recalled Vengeful several times. First on TBS, then on W/T which could now be used since the enemy was in contact with the convoy. But Redman made no reply. Bluebird had his signal made at 1640, Am investigating A/S contact, and would have seen from her PPI that the destroyer had turned back astern of the convoy. If Vengeful was to get this U-boat, silence was imperative.

  He went to a voice-pipe. ‘Forebridge – Plot. Captain here. What’s our estimated distance from the convoy?’

  ‘Just on twenty-three miles, sir.’

  ‘And from the nearest escort?’

  ‘Twenty-one miles, sir. None in radar range now.’

  ‘Good.’ Redman moved back to the forepart of the bridge. The hunt had taken Vengeful further from t
he convoy than he’d realised. It explained why TBS signals had faded and could no longer be heard. He felt suddenly uneasy about his failure to answer the recall signals. On the other hand, he argued, he was in contact with a surfaced U-boat and had a reasonable chance of sinking it … or at least a chance.

  U-0153 had been running on the surface for close on an hour when Gerhardt Meyer answered the call from the control-room.

  It was Kolb. ‘The armature has been replaced. Training gear operating normally.’

  Meyer repeated Kolb’s report to Schluss who said, ‘Das ist gut … that is good.’ It wasn’t what he felt. He’d liked to have run on the surface for hours yet. Now he knew he must turn towards the convoy and give the order to dive to complete reloading. After that his officers would expect him to renew the attack. Well, he thought, we shall see. We’ll not attempt to cross that bridge just yet.

  Meyer seemed to read the captain’s mind. ‘We still have two bow-tubes and a stern-tube to reload, Herr Kapitän.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Schluss testily. ‘You don’t have to tell me the obvious.’ Through the voice-pipe he asked, ‘What is the bearing and distance of the convoy now, Brückner?’

  ‘We are about twenty-five miles astern of it, Herr Kapitän, unless it has altered course.’ Brückner emphasised the we. ‘Convoy’s estimated bearing two-one-eight.’

  ‘We’ll alter course to port, Brückner. I’ll bring her round into wind and sea. When she’s headed on two-one-eight we’ll dive and complete reloading.’

  Schluss gave the order to clear the bridge and U-0153 dived, catching a trim at one hundred metres. Schluss ordered a course of 218 degrees, revolutions for four and a half knots. The convoy would be doing six or seven. As long as the submarine remained submerged it would be falling astern. That pleased Schluss. It was a contribution, however small, towards delaying U-0153’s approach. The time was 1753.