From the left, warm yellow light streams out of the windows of the workshops, carpenter shops, smithies, machine shops, torpedo, artillery, and periscope shops. Under this concrete roof a whole shipyard has been installed.
The Commander turns back. The sudden flaming of a welding torch illuminates his face with bluish light. Blinded, he squints. When the noise lessens for an instant he shouts at the Chief, “Did anything special turn up in dry dock?”
“Yes. The starboard propeller—bent blade.”
“Aha, that was the singing noise we had at silent run!”
“New propellers—we’ve got brand-new propellers, Herr Kaleun!”
“Noiseless? Does the hydroplane work?”
“Yes, sir—the gear—took it apart—replaced the wheel—rusted places—cogwheel—everything in order!”
In the pens to the right lie wrecks, disabled boats with patches of rust and red lead showing. Smell of rust, paint, oil, putrid acids and burned rubber, benzine, seawater, and rotten fish.
Beyond the flooded pens are the dry docks. Far below, inside one of them, a boat lies with open belly, like an eviscerated whale. A whole crowd of dockyard men are at work on it—small as dwarfs, insects around a dead fish. At the moment large pieces of the outer skin are being cut away with blow torches. The damaged hull shows its jagged edges in the light of the flames. Compressed-air hoses in thick bundles and electric cables hang out of the boat’s interior. Vitals and entrails. The round steel cylinder of the pressure hull is laid bare for the whole length of the foreship. Over the diesel room there is an opening. Yellow light streams from the inside of the boat. I can look deep into its guts. The huge blocks of the diesel engines, the tangled mass of pipes and conduits. Now the hook of the crane descends over the boat. A new load is attached. It looks as if the boat were to be completely emptied out%
“They went through a heavy depth charge attack,” says the Chief.
“Sheer miracle they got back with that bombed-out tub!”
The Commander leads the way to a concrete stairway descending into the dry dock. The steps are smeared with oil; running down them are insulated cables in thick bundles.
Again the hissing flame of a welding torch leaps up, plucking part of the flooded bunker out of the half darkness. Farther back in the pen more welding flames, and the whole boat is caught in their flickering light. These are not the familiar stylish lines of surface vessels; from the flat sides the forward hydroplanes extend like fins, amidships the hull is distended. Thick rolls curve out to the right and left from the belly—the buoyancy tanks. They are welded onto the boat like a saddle. Everything is in a circular curve: a completely sealed and rounded-off creature of the deep, with its own special anatomy. The ribs here are closed rings.
Along one side of the bow a steel plate moves, opening up a dark slot. Slowly the plate moves farther back, enlarging the hole. It widens into a gaping mouth: an uncovered torpedo tube.
Two dockworkers try waving their arms in order to communicate above the racket of the pneumatic hammers.
The torpedo tube cover closes again.
“Looks worse than it is. Pressure hull—still perfectly good—all in order!” roars the Old Man.
I feel someone grasp my arm. The Chief is standing beside me, his head cocked to one side, He is looking up over the rounded belly of the boat.
“Fantastic, isn’t it?”
From above, the guard looks down, his machine gun over his shoulder.
We clamber over piles of scaffolding toward the stern. The ground plan of the boat can be seen quite clearly. The extended steel cylinder encloses the power plants, the batteries, and the living quarters. This cylinder together with its contents is almost as heavy as the water it displaces. It is a VII-C boat, like ours. I remember: length 220 feet; width 20 feet; displacement 1,005 cubic yards on the surface and 1,138 cubic yards submerged—a very small difference. The boat simply has very few parts that rise above the surface. Draft on the surface 16 feet—an average figure, for actually the draft is variable. One can alter it inch by inch. The draft corresponds to the displacement of 660 tons of water when the boat is on the surface.
In addition to our type, there is also Type II with 275 tons and Type IX-C with 1,100 tons on the surface and 1,355 tons submerged. The VII-C boat is the fighting craft best adapted to the Atlantic. It can dive quickly and has great mobility. Its range of operations is 7,900 nautical miles on the surface at 10 knots, 6,500 nautical miles at 12 knots. Submerged, 80 nautical miles at 4 knots. The maximum speed is 17.3 knots on the surface and 7.6 knots submerged.
“He got it in the stern too. Rammed by a sinking steamer!” the Chief yells in my ear.
Here and there Jupiter lamps stand on tripods. Plates that have been dented are being hammered into shape again by a crowd of dockyard workers. Not serious: this is only a part of the outer skin, which is not pressure-resistant.
Of the true cylindrical core of the ship, the pressure hull, only a portion is visible amidships. Toward stern and bow this hull is covered by a thin outer skin, which camouflages the inflated deep-sea fish as a low-lying surface vessel when it comes up for air. Along the entire length of the boat the outer skin is pierced by holes and slits for flooding so that water can penetrate into the spaces between it and the real pressure hull. Otherwise the light disguise would be crushed like a cardboard box by the weight of the water pressing on it.
The weight of the boat can be precisely controlled with the trim tanks and the ballast tanks. Through a system of cells placed partly outside and partly inside the pressure hull, the boat can be raised high enough in the water for surface operation. The fuel tanks also lie outside the pressure hull.
On the underside of one of the ballast tanks I catch sight of the flooding hatches, which stay open when the boat is on the surface. The ballast tanks, like air cushions, keep the boat floating. If the air escapes through the valves in the top of the tanks, the water can rush in through the flooding hatches. The lift disappears, the boat dives.
I let my eyes roam along the boat: the thick bulge is the fuel oil tank. The hole over there is the cold-water intake for the diesels. Somewhere here must be the submersion cells. They are pressureresistant, as are the trim cells and the ballast tanks.
A worker begins to hammer furiously at some rivet heads.
The Commander has gone farther toward the stern. He points upward: the boat’s propellers are completely concealed by wooden scaffolding.
“He really got it,” says the Old Man.
“Propeller shafts—getting—new lignum vitae bearings,” roars the Chief. “Probably making noise—depth bomb pursuit.”
Directly above the propellers, the cover for the stern torpedo tube. Halfway up, the flat surfaces of the stern hydroplanes grow out of the curve of the side like stunted airplane wings.
A workman spattered with paint from head to foot almost knocks me over. He has an enormous brush on an extra-long broom handle. While I’m waiting for the Old Man, he begins to paint the belly of the boat dark gray from underneath.
When we reach flooded Pen Six, the Commander once more turns aside toward the boat moored at the right of the pier. “Here’s the boat that took a direct hit from a plane—Kramer’s!”
Kramer’s story is still in my ears. “Just as we’re getting to the surface I see a plane. The bomb doors open, down comes the bomb straight at the bridge. I jerk my shoulder back for fear the bomb will hit it. The thing actually crashes into the bulwark of the bridge—but a little bit askew, not head on. And instead of blowing up, it just flies to bits. A dud.”
The Commander inspects the conning tower from forward and aft, the bizarre strip of rolled-up metal that the bomb has torn from the covering of the tower, the broken cutwater. A sentry from the boat, bundled up against the cold, advances and salutes.
“By rights, he should have been flying around in a white nightgown for a good week already,” says the Chief.
The basin of Pen Eight is also
flooded. Reflections shiver and intertwine on the surface.
“Our boat,” says the Chief.
In the semi-darkness of the bunker the hull is hardly distinguishable from the water. But against the pale wall the outlines rising above the low pier are more clearly defined. The upper deck lies only a bare yard over the oily brackish water. All the hatches are still open. I explore the entire length of the boat with my eyes as though to imprint it on my mind for all time: the flat wooden deck that reaches forward in one uninterrupted sweep to the bow; the conning tower with its squat, bristling, anti-aircraft guns; the gently sloping stern; the steel cables of the net guards with their interlaced green porcelain insulators slanting forward and aft from the conning tower. Everything of the utmost simplicity. A VII-C boat, the most seaworthy of ships.
I catch a crooked grin on the Commander’s face, like an owner before a horse race.
The boat is ready for sea. Its tanks are filled with fuel oil and water—cleared for departure. And yet it isn’t throbbing with the quivering, high-pitched hum of a ship ready to sail; the diesels aren’t yet running, although the wharf crew with their heavy gloves stand ready with the hawsers.
“The official farewell takes place in the channel,” says the Commander. “With all the idiocy that goes with it.”
The crew is drawn up on the upper deck behind the tower. Exactly fifty men. (And me.) Eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-yearolds. Only the officers and petty officers are a few years older.
In the semi-darkness I can’t really make out their faces. Roll is being called, but their clearly enunciated names escape me.
The upper deck is slippery from the fog that pours in through the bunker gates. The grayish misty white is so dazzling that the outlines of the exits are indistinct. The water in the basin is almost black and looks as turgid as oil.
The First Watch Officer reports, “All hands present and accounted for except control-room assistant Backer. Engine room ready, upper and lower decks cleared for departure!”
“Thanks. Heil UA!”
“Heil, Herr Kaleun!” resounds throughout the pen above the wailing of machinery.
“Eyes front! At ease!”
The Commander waits until the shuffling has subsided.
“You know that Backer’s had it. Bombing raid on Magdeburg. A good man—what a mess. And not even a single score on his last cruise.”
Long pause. The Old Man looks disgusted.
“All right then—not our fault. But let’s make sure we do things better this time. Buck up.”
Grins.
“Dismissed!”
“A fine speech,” the Chief murmurs. “My respects!”
On the long, narrow upper-deck, fenders, cables, and new hawsers are still lying about. Warm steam pours out of the open galley hatch. Cookie’s face appears. I hand my things down to him.
Noiselessly the periscope rises. Polyphemus eye turning in all directions, it rises to full height on its gleaming silvery mast, then sinks down again and disappears. I climb onto the conning tower. The paint is not yet entirely dry and comes off on the palms of my hands. The torpedo supply hatch on the upper deck is already closed. Aft, the galley hatch is now sealed. The single remaining entrance to the boat is the conning tower hatch.
Below, disorder reigns. One can move nowhere without pushing and shoving. Hammocks bulging with loaves of bread swing to and fro. Everywhere in the passages boxes of provisions, piles of canned food, sacks. Where is all this stuff to be stowed? The last inch of space is already full.
The designers of our boat have dispensed with the storage rooms that on surface vessels are normally many and capacious—just as they have dispensed with washrooms. They have simply built their machines into this war tube and have persuaded themselves that, given the most sophisticated deployment of the jungle of pipes and huge propulsion engines, there would necessarily be enough nooks and crannies left over for the crew.
The boat has taken on fourteen torpedoes. Five are in the tubes, two in the upper-deck torpedo holders, and the remainder under the floor plates—both aft and in the bow compartment. In addition, 120 shells for the 8.8 millimeter cannon and a quantity of anti-aircraft ammunition.
The navigation officer and the bosun—Number One, in nautical language—have their hands full. Number One is a powerful fellow called Behrmann, who towers by a head over most of the crew. I already know him: “You bright-eyed little fawn, I’ll get you …”
Still a half hour to sailing. I have enough time to take a look around the engine rooms—an old love of mine, the engine rooms of ships cleared for sea. In the control room I sit down for a moment on the water distributor. All around me pipes, ventilators, hand wheels, manometers, auxiliary engines, the confused tangle of intertwined green and red electrical connections. In the half-darkness I recognize the hydroplane-position indicators, one electrical and one mechanical—almost all the systems are duplicated, for safety. Above the hydroplane station with its push-button controls for electrical underwater steering, I can just make out the trimming scales, one approximate and one exact. The Papenberg—a depth indicator between the round dials of the depth manometers with their clocklike hands—looks like a huge thermometer. During precise maneuvering it shows the depth for periscopic observation to within three inches.
The control room has pressure-resistant hatches fore and aft that can withstand greater pressure because of their half-spherical shape. The boat can be divided into three compartments by these two hatches.
There is not much advantage for us in this, for if one of the three compartments is flooded, the boat is no longer able to float. The designers probably had shallow waters in mind, like those of the Baltic.
The forward compartment has the torpedo supply hatch as the emergency exit, the after compartment has the galley hatch.
The engine room—my goal—lies aft of the galley.
All doors have been opened.
I painfully work my way aft over chests and sacks through the petty officers’ quarters, where I am to sleep, and on through the galley, which has not yet been cleared up either.
Our engine room cannot compare with the engine rooms of big ships, those lofty halls usually extending from the top to the bottom of the whole craft, with their many stages of gratings and stairways glistening with oil, leading from story to story in a luster of polished copper and shimmering steel beams. Ours, on the contrary, is a narrow cave in which the two mighty diesels with all their auxiliary machines have to crouch like cowering animals. Around them, no small corner amid the welter of pipes is unused; there are cold-water pumps, lubrication pumps, oil separators, compressed-air starting cylinders, fuel pumps. In between are the manometers, thermometers, oscillation gauges, and every possible kind of indicator.
Each of the two diesels has six cylinders. Together they develop 2,800 horsepower.
When the hatches are sealed, the public address system is the only link with the control room. During battle, the floor here in the narrow gangway between the mighty diesels is especially tricky, for the diesel room holds most of the outboard plugs, the most vulnerable points in the pressure hull.
The two master mechanics are still hard at work. Johann is a tall, quiet, very pale, high-cheeked fellow who always looks calm and resigned; he has wretched posture, is blond and almost beardless. The other, Franz, is square, dark, and has a beard. He too is a chalk color, and stoops. He looks bad-tempered.
At first I assumed that they were both called by their first names. Now I know that Johann and Franz are family names. Johann’s first name is August, and Franz’s is Karl.
Farther aft is the motor room. The E-motors are run by batteries, which in turn are charged by the diesels. The E-motors develop 750 horsepower. Here everything is as clean, cold, and hidden as in a power station.
The housing of the motors rises only a little above the gleaming silvery floor plates. On both sides of the switching boxes are black signs and a mass of ampere meters, output gauges, and v
oltage controls. The motors work without drawing any air from outside. They are direct-current machines which during underwater navigation are attached directly, without gears, to the driving shafts behind the diesels. During surface operations, when the diesels are running, they also serve as dynamos to charge the batteries. At the after end of the room is the floor breach-lock of the rear torpedo tube. Left and right of it stand the two compressors, which supply the compressed air for emptying the diving tanks.
I wrestle my way back into the control room and clamber up through the hatch.
In line with the stern post our boat is being drawn out of the bunker by its E-motors and emerges into a mother-of-pearl brightness that makes the damp deck shimmer like glass. The Typhon, our signal horn, emits a hollow groan. Once, twice. A tug replies on an even deeper note.
In the diffused foggy light I see it glide by as if it were a black cardboard cutout. A second tug, heavy and powerful, pushes by so close I can make out the line of automobile tires it wears as fenders, the way Viking longboats carried their shields. A stoker sticks his ruddy face out of a porthole and shouts something to us, but in the sudden howl of our Typhon, I can’t understand him.
The Commander himself is giving engine and rudder orders. He has propped himself up well above the bulwark of the bridge so that he can survey the boat from bow to stern for the difficult maneuvering through the harbor narrows.
“Port engine stop! Starboard engine slow ahead! Rudder hard to port!”
Cautiously the boat swings yard by yard into the mist. It’s still cold.
Our pointed bow sweeps past a row of vessels lying close together. Small fry—harbor defense craft, a patrol boat among them.
The harbor water stinks more and more of tar and refuse and seaweed.
Over the fog banks now, individual steamer masts begin to appear, followed by a mass of derricks. The black filigree of the cranes reminds me of rigs in an oil field
Das Boot Page 5