Storm Force to Narvik: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 1

by Alexander Fullerton

  Published by McBooks Press 2004

  Copyright © Alexander Fullerton 1979

  First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Limited

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc., ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

  Cover illustration by Chris Mayger.

  Every effort has been made to secure permission

  from copyright holders to reproduce this image.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fullerton, Alexander, 1924-

  Storm force to Narvik / by Alexander Fullerton.

  p. cm. — (The Nicholas Everard WWII saga ; #1)

  ISBN 1-59013-092-8 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Everard, Nick (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Great Britain— History, Naval—20th century—Fiction. 3. Narvik, Battle of, Narvik, Norway, 1940—Fiction. 4. World War, 1939-1945—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6056.U435S83 2004

  823’.914—dc22

  2004007578

  Visit the McBooks Press website at www.mcbooks.com.

  Printed in the United States of America

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Storm Force to Narvik is a novel about the naval operations off northern Norway between 8 and 13 April 1940. The destroyers Intent, Hoste, and Gauntlet are fictional, as are the events described as taking place around Namsos, but the general framework of the story and details of the two Narvik battles are drawn from history.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gauntlet had opened fire. The port-side lookout had reported it and Nick Everard had seen it too, distant yellow-orange spurts of flame, small stabs of brilliance piercing the blanket of foul weather and dawn’s greyness still lingering under heavy cloud. Part-lowering his binoculars for a moment he looked across Intent’s bridge as she tilted savagely to starboard and bow-down with the quartering sea lifting her from astern, and saw young Lyte with his hand extended to the alarm buzzer, excitement as well as enquiry on his boyish and now salt-dripping face: Nick nodded, and putting his glasses back to his eyes heard the Morse letter “S” sounding distantly but with dentist’s-drill persistence through the ship. “S” for surface action stations. The destroyer was standing on her tail now, stern deep in white churned froth and her bow and “A” gun pointing at the cloud: jammed for support against the binnacle he put the glasses back on Gauntlet and saw her four-sevens fire again, rosettes of flame that bloomed and faded into smudges and were lost in the surrounding murk. The ship herself was almost invisible and her target, whatever it might be, was completely so: visibility was patchy but at the most four miles.

  “Port fifteen.” Acknowledgement came hoarsely from the voicepipe. He added, into the reek of metal polish and cigarette-smoke which not even a Norwegian Sea gale could clear away, “Two-five-oh revolutions.” In normal conditions that would give her about 24 knots; in this sea it was doubtful whether such high revs could be kept on for long. On most courses it would be out of the question, but as she swung to port she was putting the force of the gale right astern; the dangers now would be of her screws racing as they came up into thin water when she pitched heavily bow-down, and of being pooped—overswept by big seas from astern.

  Gauntlet was in action, and alone, and Intent had to get down there and join her.

  “Sub!”

  Sub-Lieutenant Lyte, on his way off to his action station in charge of the after guns, turned back, throwing an arm round one of the binnacle’s correcting-spheres to hold himself in place as the ship stood on her ear: Nick told him, shouting above the noise, “If we look like getting pooped, secure ‘Y’ gun until we’re on a safer course. And tell the first lieutenant I want him up here.”

  The second-in-command’s action station was at the after control position; but until he knew what was happening, Nick wanted him within easy shouting distance. He ducked to the pipe: “Midships!”

  “Midships, sir!”

  Men rushing to their action stations had to grab for hand-holds as they went, staggering for balance while the ship flung herself about. The helmsman reported he had his wheel amidships; Nick bawled down to him to steer 140 degrees. Gauntlet had been just about due south of them and steering north, and she’d been firing to starboard; so this alteration of 40 degrees to port—Intent had been steering south—was intended both to close the distance and at the same time to bring Intent up towards the enemy. Meanwhile communications were being tested, gun receivers lined up, ammunition supply readied, all the set routines of preparing for action being gone through for the second time in an hour. It was only that long since the ship’s company had been piped to dawn action stations, no more than 15 minutes since they’d been sent down again, and the alarm’s buzzing would surely have turned the messdeck air blue with obscenities. The off-watch hands would have had breakfast in mind—not this … Nick saw Tommy Trench, his outsized first lieutenant, oilskins shedding water in streams as he talked over the telephone to Henry Brocklehurst in the director tower, the gun-control position above and abaft the bridge; the tower and its separate range-finder were meanwhile training this way and that over an arc from north-east to south-east— like the raised head of some monster seeking prey.

  “Sir …” Pete Chandler, Intent’s RNVR navigator, former insurance broker and yachtsman, fetched up in a rush against the other side of the binnacle. Tall, pale-faced, hooded in a duffel-coat. “Gauntlet’s wirelessed an enemy report—two destroyers.”

  They’d intercepted her first signal, that she was investigating an unidentified ship to the nor’ard. There’d seemed to be some possibility of confusion then, that she’d been referring to Intent; they’d met at just about that time, exchanged the coloured-light challenge and reply, and then swapped pendant numbers. But the puzzle was resolved now—partly.

  “Tell the first lieutenant. Then see if anything else is coming through.”

  Chandler went slithering downhill to join Trench, who’d now tell Brocklehurst the gunnery control officer what he was supposed to be looking for, and Brocklehurst could tell the guns’ crews over their sight-setters’ telephones. It would be damned uncomfortable down at the four-sevens, and by no means easy to shoot effectively or to handle heavy projectiles on slippery, wildly canting gundecks … It could be argued, he realised—one thought overtaking another—that he should be ordering Gauntlet to wait for him to join her. But if he did, she might lose contact with the enemy. If the Hun wanted to evade contact it would be all too easy in this weather, and if those destroyers were part of an invasion force, part of the expected German attack on Norway, they would want to. The priority therefore was to maintain contact at all costs: not only in order to engage but even more importantly, in the prevailing state of ignorance and confusion, to see what ships were here and then tell the C-in-C about them.

  He focused his glasses again on Gauntlet. He’d picked her up, to his own and his navigator’s great satisfaction, just a short while ago. Dawn, arriving after the four-hour dark period which was what constituted a “night” this far north, hadn’t done more than change pitch black into dirty grey: but suddenly there she’d been, a needle in the North Sea haystack. He stooped to the voicepipe: “Port fifteen. Steer one-three-oh”—because Gauntlet had altered course again, gone round to about 090 degrees, east, which was the bearing of the nearest part of N
orway. And there, in fact at three different points on that distant and of course invisible coast, close inshore, minelaying operations were in progress at this minute. Intent and Gauntlet and half a dozen other destroyers were at sea with the battlecruiser Renown as cover to these operations, in case the Germans tried to interfere with them; but Gauntlet (Lieutenant Commander J. A. Hustie RN) had turned back to search for a man lost overboard, and subsequently Intent (Commander Sir Nicholas Everard, Bart., DSO, DSC, RN) had been sent to find her.

  God only knew what might be happening elsewhere—whether the Hun was about to invade Norway, or whether the British were. Troops had been embarked in cruisers and transports in Scottish ports, but they were just sitting there, waiting. For what? For the War Cabinet to make its woolly mind up?

  And now the Home Fleet had sailed; the C-in-C, Sir Charles Forbes, had brought them out of Scapa last evening. But apparently they were staying out in the middle, not covering the approaches to the Norwegian ports at all. Surely if the Germans were invading that would be the place to find them?

  Usual bugger’s muddle, Nick thought. We haven’t changed. At Jutland nobody knew what the hell anyone else was doing either.

  Twenty-four years ago, Jutland had been. It felt more like last week … At Jutland he’d been a sub-lieutenant, and since then he’d been many different things—including, for about eight years, a glorified labourer on his own land in Yorkshire. The peasant years … If it hadn’t been for that break in his naval service he’d have been at least a post-captain now. He’d been promoted to the rank of commander—the three stripes they’d given him back now—as long ago as 1926.

  Well—it had been by his own choice that he’d left. And in wartime one only needed a bit of luck to make up that sort of leeway.

  “Course one-three-oh, sir!”

  “Flag signal from Gauntlet, sir!”

  Acknowledging the wheelhouse report, he looked round: at the back of the bridge, starboard side, Leading Signalman Herrick had a telescope trained on the tiny patch of colour at Gauntlet’s yardarm. Herrick bawled, “Enemy—destroyer flag—bearing—”

  He’d stopped, unable to read the numerals under that red-and-white bearing pendant. Blowing down-wind the flags were almost end-on, and when both ships were down in troughs between the waves they were completely hidden from each other. But now it ceased to matter: Trench was yelling with the director telephone at his ear, “Director has enemy in sight, one destroyer bearing green one-oh range oh-seven-five!”

  “Open fire!” Nick called down to the coxswain, “Port ten.” To turn her so that the after guns, “X” and “Y,” would bear.

  “Ten of port wheel on, sir!”

  “Steer one-one-oh.”

  It would still be a converging course—with Gauntlet’s, and so presumably with the enemy’s. Nothing about enemy course from Brocklehurst yet. And it was strange that “A” and “B” guns hadn’t started shooting. Nick shouted to Trench to ask what the delay was.

  “Director lost target!”

  He’d got the information at just that moment. Nick cursed, and put his glasses on Gauntlet again. She’d gone further round to starboard. Trench called, “Director reports enemy has turned away eastward, sir.”

  Running away. Gauntlet chasing him.

  “Starboard fifteen.” A sleet-shower was lashing across the bridge. Nick was thinking that two Hun destroyers would hardly be up here in 65 north latitude on their own. They had to be escorting or screening something bigger.

  “Fifteen of starboard wheel on, sir!”

  “Steer one-three-oh.” He was watching Gauntlet, and although the distance between them had lessened somewhat she was becoming harder to see. This sleet didn’t help, but where she was the visibility must have closed in during the last minute … Escorting something, those Huns must be. Troop transports for Narvik, perhaps; or scouting ahead of bigger ships. It would be a normal destroyer tactic to turn away and lead a pursuer into the range of a heavier ship’s guns; whereas it was most unlikely that any destroyer man would lead attackers towards a convoy that was in his own protection. This was the analysis that made sense: and you could add a further detail to the picture of probabilities: in these weather conditions any encounter would take place at virtually point-blank range.

  And consequently, this was the moment when the right decision for him as senior officer might be to call Gauntlet back, not let Hustie press on alone while Intent was too far astern to support him.

  “Course one-three-oh, sir!”

  Wind and sea were just about dead astern again, on this course. He’d acknowledged the coxswain’s report: he called down, “Three hundred revolutions.” If he ordered Hustie to wait for Intent to catch him up and contact with the enemy was lost, in this weather it wouldn’t be regained. Gauntlet therefore had to be allowed to take her chances. Nick yelled at Trench, “Tell Opie to have his tubes on a split yarn. And Brocklehurst to load with SAP and open fire without further orders.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Tommy Trench was a lieutenant-commander, twenty-nine years old, six-foot four in his seaboot stockings, a very experienced first lieutenant who probably saw his dug-out CO as some kind of ancient mariner. Possibly even as a supplanter. Nick had only taken command a fortnight ago and Trench, who’d been first lieutenant under the previous captain, might have entertained hopes of getting the ship himself.

  The voicepipe on the left of the binnacle was the one to the engine-room. Nick called down it to his commissioned engineer, Mr Waddicor.

  “We may need to make smoke at short notice, Chief.”

  “I’ll be ready for you, sir!”

  A Devon man, was Waddicor. Short and rather stout—well, say stocky— and always boisterously happy. Extraordinary … Gauntlet was out of sight, he realised suddenly. In the last few seconds she’d faded, merged into the thick weather, the soupy haze down there where the clouds’ lower edges seemed to be throwing roots into the sea. She couldn’t be more than six thousand yards away, and she’d vanished. He was still searching, expecting her to appear again after being hidden temporarily in a squall—they’d endured rain, sleet, hail, and snow since midnight—when he heard percussions, heavy as thunder only sharper, more clearly defined. From that easterly direction.

  Trench was looking round at him, with a hand cupped to one ear. And there’d been a flash, a diffuse explosive brightness which had flared for about a second and was now extinguished, leaving only drab grey again.

  Big-ship guns …

  “Ask Brocklehurst if he can still see Gauntlet.”

  Trench turned, ducked behind the glass wind-break which topped the forefront of the bridge, taking the telephone down there with him. Perfectly timed: half a ton of green water burst over, missing him as it plumped into the bridge, bursting in all directions and swirling inches deep to the level of the gratings before it drained away. Trench grinned at Able Seaman Hughes, who’d taken it fair and square and looked like an angry spaniel. Trench rose, slamming the hand-set into its bracket: “They’ve lost her, sir!”

  Gunfire had become continuous, had thickened into a solid blast with no gaps in it. If Hustie had run into some big ship at close range his reaction would be to turn and fire torpedoes; and the enemy’s reply would be to let rip with his big guns as the destroyer swung and exposed her vulnerable beam to him. Guesswork: but it was more than that: he could see it happening—with an accompanying thought in his mind that if Intent had been there with her, Gauntlet wouldn’t have been getting all that vicious attention directed at herself alone. She was there alone because he’d let her be … More gunfire: but less intensive, separate salvoes again. Intent pounding, battering towards the sound of them. Scream of the fans competing with that of the wind: different notes blending into a roar of sound punctuated by the rattling and thumping of the ship’s fabric, the battering of the sea.

  “Gauntlet on green two-oh, sir, on fire!”

  Trench, hauling himself over to the starboard torpedo sight, gestured
to the communications number, Hughes, to take over the director tower’s telephone. And Nick had Gauntlet in his glasses. She was coming back, almost bow-on: he saw shell-splashes all around her. The fire was abaft her bridge, he thought probably between the funnels. But now she was beginning to make her own smoke, oily-looking black stuff oozing out and curling away downwind just as another salvo plummeted down and one shell landed on her foc’sl, its flattish orange burst darkening into a red-brown haze with solid pieces flying.

  No enemy in sight still. Gauntlet swinging hard to port though, lengthening and then shortening again as she turned, belching smoke, revealing the blaze amidships, mainmast gone and after funnel shot to ribbons. The wind was pushing the smoke away to port, between Gauntlet and her enemy: her course was something like south now so the German had to be to the east of her.

  “Starboard fifteen.”

  “Starboard fifteen, sir!”

  “Steer one-five-oh.” He added, “Three-five-oh revolutions.”

  The gap had to be closed: the dangers of increasing to full speed had simply to be accepted. And Gauntlet was still visible to the enemy, despite the smokescreen: she’d been straddled again, shell-spouts lifting grandly, the wind blowing their tops off as they subsided. Nick saw Trench throw him a glance back across the lurching bridge with a can’t-we-do-something appeal on his large, squarish face. He looked over at the suffering Gauntlet, waiting for Hustie to turn back behind his own smoke. He would, obviously, otherwise there’d have been no point in laying it: and the turn would bring him back towards Intent, who meanwhile was straining her steel guts and loosening every rivet in her plates by crashing flat-out across a sea in which normally one wouldn’t have attempted more than 12 knots. But she and Gauntlet would be closing in towards each other fast once Hustie made his turn: the rate of closing would be the sum of their combined speeds. The enemy had to be somewhere on Gauntlet’s bow, since that was the only angle from which he could have her in sight. Unless he was seeing her over the smoke: seeing her foretop from his much higher one?