Cummings had answered a call on the radar voicepipe. He reported, his voice pitched high over the racket of ship and sea, “Radar has three surface contacts, oh-two-one to oh-three-seven, six point five miles, sir!”
Trench leant against a supporting pillar, doing his one-handed pipestuffing act. He told me, “They could only be Germans, of course, split off from the bunch who’d been in action with Legend and Leopard, I presumed. I had them—John Ready’s two ships—fine-ish on the bow, on the radar screen and liable to come in sight any moment if the visibility lifted. They’d lost contact with their Germans at that point. I was trying to get some more detailed information out of radar when John piped up on TBS; he was in action again, with two destroyers who’d appeared out of a snowstorm ahead of him, crossing his bows—steering something like south, in fact. So it was obvious this enemy force had divided. And there were still some who hadn’t shown up at all. My guess was they’d be screening Lützow, and I had a nasty premonition: half the enemy destroyer force, Lützow with them, attacking from the south with nobody except Foremost and those tiddlers between the convoy and annihilation, I and my lot having been lured away northward, distance between us increasing every minute … But the enemy were here, you see, and what’s more at least one group of them was steering south towards the convoy, very clearly couldn’t be ignored. I had no evidence of attack coming in from any other quarter, remember: in fact I still reckoned Lützow was somewhere up on this side … Anyway—two lots of Germans, Legend and Lyric sparring with one team, and the other—radar now informed me, or the plot did—also steering south. I did about the only thing that seemed to make sense and answer obvious requirements—told John Ready to drive his pair away from the convoy, close the range and either sink them or force them to turn away but for Christ’s sake not to let them work round to the south of him and get at the convoy—and I turned away to starboard to intercept the others. In fact I turned my three ships into line abreast—a Blue turn, happened to be a convenient way of doing it, and also put me in a position to attack with torpedoes if these contacts should happen to include the Lützow—which seemed possible, even likely, in view of that earlier report from Leopard. Radar range had come down to something like eight thousand yards, we were closing fast and I knew we might suddenly find ourselves looking right up the barrels of those eight-inch guns.”
Tubes were turned out and ready, with depth-settings of sixteen feet on the torpedoes. In each of the three British destroyers one quadruple mounting was turned out to port and one to starboard, allowing for immediate reaction either way, depending on when and where the enemy appeared. All three ships beam-on to the swell, and rolling—Trench said—“like buggery.” Guns as well as tubes were ready—shells in the loading-trays, layers’ and trainers’ pointers following the director’s. Below, in the transmitting station they were waiting for information from the director tower and radar, figures for enemy course, speed, range and inclination; one’s own ship’s course and speed were fed automatically into the computing system, and already in it were such factors as wind direction and velocity, atmospheric pressure and temperature, all the things that complicate the problem of translating the sighting of an enemy into straddling him with your shells.
Trench observed—breaking into my mental reconstruction of a scene he’d just lightly sketched—“All be over by Monday. As you’ll have noticed, only a very few haven’t kitted yet.”
We were talking about minks again. It took a moment to readjust. I said, “They seem very efficient, reproductively. Don’t you ever get any that are sterile?”
“Well, they get weeded out, you know. But ninety per cent of it’s simply a question of diet. And at mating time every female gets covered twice, by two different males.” He shut that box, withdrew the shield, and marked the mother’s card.
“Your records have to be kept very accurately, I suppose—which ones have bred with which, and so on?”
“Certainly.” He turned, and moved on down the aisle; a big, shambling figure, ears apparently tuned to the squeaks even when he was talking. But it was only the cages with unmarked cards that caught his attention, I realised. He told me, pausing again, “When I was just starting in this business, an old mink hand told me that if a pair of his animals didn’t react too enthusiastically to each other, his method was to put ’em together in a sack and whirl it round his head for a minute or two. When he let ’em out, they’d be at it hammer and tongs.” He checked a card, put it down again. “Don’t know if that’s ever been tried on human beings. For impotence or frigidity, what have you.” He glanced round at me as he started off again between the ranks of boxes and cages. “Where were we?”
We were in the Barents Sea.
“Visibility opened up as suddenly as drawing curtains, and we were about three thousand yards short of a line-ahead formation of Narvik-class destroyers steering south at about ten or twelve knots. Three of them. No sign of Lützow, of course. We opened fire and turned to starboard, parallel to them—I’d no thought of wasting torpedoes on such a chancy target as destroyers, even big blighters like these, when I had reason to believe there was much bigger game in the offing, but it must have looked to those Krauts like a torpedo attack, and they turned away and increased to full speed. At least I imagine it was torpedoes they were scared of. They heeled away, cracking on full power and opening fire a few seconds after we had. Our first salvoes were only from A and B guns, of course, and one reason for turning was to open the A-arcs, get X and Y guns into action. The range was close, and I saw a hit almost immediately on one German’s stern; I was told afterwards there’d been two or three, just from the for’ard guns before we’d got ourselves round. Most of the enemy’s splashes went up short—very large splashes too, compared to our own—but I heard a few whistle over, and Laureate took a direct hit on her A gun. It wiped out the gun’s seven-man crew and of course wrecked the mounting. Those fiveinch bricks played hell with a destroyer’s light armour—as we were to see demonstrated much more clearly very soon afterwards. But it was over almost as soon as it started, this phase. The Narviks could easily have out-run us, and they were running, and I wasn’t prepared to be drawn any farther away from my convoy. I was in the process of turning my three ships back, then, when Batty Crockford of Foremost came up on TBS rather excitedly to tell me he was in action against another four enemy destroyers who’d come belting up from the southeast. Very close to that premonition I’d had, you see. Except no Lützow—this far. I was still expecting her to show up at any moment, and the likely place for her to appear now seemed to be in the south, behind these newcomers. I remember thinking I should have backed that hunch … Anyway, Claypoole had turned the convoy ninety degrees to starboard, now. Back to its original course, in fact. Foremost was laying smoke and from time to time nipping out through it to loose off a few shots at the enemy—one of which might even have been Lützow, for all I knew, and in that bad visibility. As you’ll know yourself, in conditions of that kind and the mild confusion one tends to get when a number of ships are in action here and there, reports have to be,” he shrugged, “sorted out, interpreted … But Crockford was actually talking to me on the radio-telephone when Foremost was hit by one of those five-pointones. He turned back into his own smoke—they had his range, and they’d surely have finished him in the next few minutes if he’d held on as he was. They were holding off, for the moment, presumably wanting to eliminate him so they could then move in unopposed to do a thorough job on the convoy. Rather typical of their tactics, actually. But—well, my three ships were under helm, turning south—our little fracas being over, those three Huns high-tailing it into the sleet, and the convoy under close, immediate threat. Foremost, too. Which as you can imagine was very much in my mind. I told John Ready in Legend to get himself and Leopard down there fast—if by this time he wasn’t otherwise engaged—and there we were, split-arsing south.”
“This must have been about four o’clock?”
Trench consid
ered it: then nodded. “Something like that.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
. . .
Time: 0343. The flooded side-cargo still clung to her, and its fuse was still active. He’d been manoeuvring her for the past fifteen minutes or so under the oiler’s deep belly, keeping her in its shadow so that if the cargo should suddenly give up and slip away its later eruption wouldn’t be wasted. He’d considered trying to wipe it off by running the midget’s port side against the anchor cable which she’d hit during the approach, but there’d be a risk of raising an alarm—there might also be a limit to the rough treatment to which you could subject a two-ton charge of high explosive.
He was looking up through the viewing port, seeing the target’s propellers and rudder pass slowly overhead again. Gimber had been doing a very good job, considering how clumsy she was to handle with this list on her, and the close confines of the space in which he was having to turn her.
You couldn’t hang around forever, though. Times, distances, firing-periods—and other side-cargoes that might already be lying on the bottom of the fjords with their fuses running—all contributed to a sense of urgency.
“All right. Listen.”
Heads turned. Gimber’s face like a death-mask, Lanchberry’s drawn but calm, the Bomber’s questioning. He still wanted to go out through the W and D in his diving gear and try to free the side-cargo from the outside, and he didn’t understand why Paul had refused the offer.
Paul told them, “Only one way out of this balls-up. We dump the starboard side-cargo here, with a five-hour delay on it. Then we nip over to Aaroy and bottom ourselves under Lützow if by chance she’s there, or otherwise under Scharnhorst.”
Scharnhorst would be a much more satisfying target, but they’d been detailed for Lützow and if she was within reach she was the one to hit.
He finished, “Then we abandon ship by DSEA, giving ourselves plenty of time to do it in good order, with the Bomber out first to give us a hand out and shut the hatch behind each man as he emerges. The good side of this is that we make the best use of ourselves we can—in the circumstances—with neither side-cargo wasted. The drawback is we become POWs, instead of getting away, which would have been very nice but I personally wouldn’t have put any money on it.”
Gimber said, “Nor would I.” He nodded. “I’d say you’re right, Paul. No option, really.”
Lanchberry nodded. Brazier continued to look puzzled, like a student in class who doesn’t want to admit he hasn’t understood. Paul was troubled for the moment by a new thought. The hope of taking plenty of time over the DSEA escape—it might not be all that practicable. They’d have to get out not too long in advance of the firing period which began at eight o’clock, because abandoning too soon could give Tirpitz time to shift out of her berth and dozens of patrol boats could start dropping depthcharges. One had to think of the other X-craft, not only X-12. He didn’t say anything about this, as it wasn’t strictly necessary at this stage, but he could foresee that waiting around on the bottom under the target until nearly eight, with their own charge set to explode at 0825 but on its recent showing hardly the most reliable piece of equipment—well, there’d be more comfortable situations.
Even without that thought in their heads, the others weren’t looking too happy. Too many things had been going wrong, and not knowing where their target was didn’t help.
“Stop the motor. Starboard twenty.”
New technique for turning her in the restricted area. When the screw stopped and she lost most of her forward impetus so that her planes ceased to grip the water, her tendency—since Gimber had her trimmed slightly heavy for’ard—was to sink. There was plenty of water between the oiler’s keel and the bottom of the cove, so there was room for this, and there was just enough residual way on her to push her round to the reciprocal of her previous course. You accepted a change of depth and the turn was made in silence—and deeply enough so that any German crewman leaning over the rail up there would be unlikely to spot the whale-like intruder.
Lanchberry said, “Twenty of starboard wheel on … Skipper—question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why not let the Bomber have a go at shifting the fucking thing?”
He explained. It would take too long and it might not work. It might even explode it. By the time Brazier had gone through the routine of shutting himself in the W and D and then flooding it, equalising internal pressure with that of the sea outside so that he could then open the hatch and climb out, and had then done his stuff with the side-cargo—which might or might not have been effective—and come back inside, drained down the W and D into its operating tank so he could then open up and reappear among them—well, you’d have lost valuable time, possibly achieved nothing at all. He explained also that time was precious because the trip over to Aaroy had to be completed long enough before the start of the firing-period for the job to be done and the DSEA escape completed; it would take between three and four hours at normal dived speed, conserving battery power, or as little as two hours if it didn’t matter what happened to the battery.
“If your effort didn’t pay off, Bomber, we’d be a lot worse off than we are now. Besides which you might blow us up.”
It was 0348 now. Twenty-three minutes since he’d activated the firing mechanism on the flooded side-cargo. That fuse now had four hours, thirtyseven minutes to run. If the clock could be relied on … It could be given an extra hour, of course, by increasing the delay to its maximum of six hours, but that would trigger an eruption in the middle of Altenfjord in a “safe” period—just when Don Cameron, Godfrey Place, Henty-Creer and Hudspeth might be withdrawing northward.
“Main motor slow ahead.”
Gimber wound the hand-wheel clockwise. X-12 had drifted down to nearly fifty feet—to very near the bottom—and also outward, away from the target’s side. You could see its shape up there still but it was no longer black, vague and shimmery-green against surrounding silver.
“Bring her to two-nine-five, Jazz.”
“Two-nine-five, aye aye …”
He wondered if this other side-cargo was going to release, now. When one part of the equipment failed, you tended to distrust the rest of it. He edged over to that side, casting a glance over the releasing wheel and the fuse-clock, then looking up through the viewing port at the hardening underwater outline of the oiler as they rose closer and turned in under it.
“Course two-nine-five.”
And still coming up. Gimber was flooding compensatory ballast into the midships trim-tank as she approached the depth ordered.
“Forty-five feet will do.”
“Forty-five.”
Allowing an extra margin overhead so there’d be less danger of scraping or bumping the hull above them. Gimber eased the pump-lever back. The reason she became lighter as she rose was that in shallower, therefore less dense water, the hull expanded enough to increase the volume and weight of the water she displaced. As had been discovered by Archimedes, a body immersed in water experiences an upthrust equal to the weight displaced; so the increased upthrust now—“upthrust” meaning buoyancy—had to be countered by taking in more ballast. Conversely, on her way down he’d had to pump a few gallons out, or the dive would have got out of control. Paul had learnt about the Principle of Archimedes originally in a physics class in Connecticut, USA, then had it driven home to him in the first hour of the submarine training course. This, now, was a practical application of the classroom lesson—under an enemy ship in an enemy anchorage while a time-fuse buzzed away the minutes.
“Forty-five feet.”
She was under the oiler and near enough in the middle—or would be, after a slight drift onward as she turned. He told Lanchberry, “Port ten, and steer two-seven-eight.”
“Port ten …”
He set the clock to the five-hour mark. Gripping the releasing wheel then, staring up through the port at the dark swell of the oiler’s bilge. It seemed to swivel very slowly as the midget comp
leted her turn. And now was as good a time as any. He had to switch on, to activate the clock, then turn the wheel: and if this one didn’t separate either …
But the switch surely wouldn’t fail as well. Unless the whole lot were defective. The other boats—the Tirpitz lot, too? It wasn’t impossible: one of the things nobody had been able to rehearse had been live firings. But if this one didn’t release it wouldn’t make all that much difference, except to the oiler, in which at this moment—0351—a whole crew would be asleep, oblivious of the threat beneath them. They’d be spared and that was the only real difference there’d be; you’d be taking two un-detachable sidecargoes across the fjord instead of only one.
He pressed the switch. The light on the clock came on, and its motor started.
“Now here goes.”
Lanchberry raised his crossed-fingers hand. Gimber murmured, “God bless.” Bless whom, Paul wondered as he pushed the releasing wheel around. He heard the securing links snap away, then the rip of the copper sealing-strip peeling off; this was a sure indication that the side-cargo was actually separating from the hull, its buoyancy chambers filling to drag it down. He might have imagined it, but it felt as if it gave her a small nudge of encouragement as it went.
Bad luck, for those slumbering tankermen. Really very bad.
“Port fifteen.”
The course to get her to the south coast of Aaroy but clear of a onefathom hazard on the island’s southwest corner would have been 110 degrees. But the tide had turned about an hour ago and would now be ebbing strongly. A course of 115 would offset the tidal drift, and still just clear Langnesholm if he happened to be overcompensating: there were no guaranteed-accurate figures for tidal flows available. He thought he’d bring her up in that area—about 3000 yards out from this cove—for a check, but the periscope might have flooded completely by that time and you had to be prepared to make the whole transit blind. And then—well, play it off the cuff.
The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6 Page 32