“It’s no use, Rudi, I can’t hold her straight!” he yelled. “Bomben los!”
The co-pilot pulled the bomb release and the missiles fell away to explode harmlessly in the sea. At the same moment, Meister pulled the bomber up into the cloud layer where he levelled out, testing the controls cautiously. The Focke-Wulf was still flying, but only just. He didn’t give much for their chances of reaching Bordeaux.
Behind him, O’Day’s Beaufighter flight headed for home, low on fuel. On the bridge of the cruiser, a signal lamp winked at them as they departed, flashing ‘well done’ in Morse.
A few hours later, the surviving ships of Convoy HX121 rounded the northern tip of Ireland and entered the North Channel, sailing on through the Irish Sea and into Liverpool Bay.
Shortly after dropping anchor, one of the escorting corvettes offloaded a pitiful cargo: three German airmen, picked up some time earlier off the north coast of Ireland, where the tides and currents had carried their life-raft. They had been drifting for two days and nights and were in a dreadful condition, more dead than alive. But it would be a long time before they knew just how lucky they really were.
Chapter Ten
German Naval Staff Headquarters, Berlin — 1 May 1941
The view from the broad, high windows of the building in the Wilhelmstrasse hardly portrayed a capital city at war. In fact, had it not been for the uniforms in the streets, there was nothing to indicate that Germany was in a state of conflict. Nothing, that was, except for a little bomb damage here and there, caused by those infernal British bombers.
The first British air raid on Berlin, in retaliation for an attack on London in August 1940, had come as a shock to the citizens, especially since the Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief, Hermann Goering, had assured them that no enemy aircraft would ever fly over the territory of the Reich. The raid itself had been laughably ineffective, destroying nothing more than a wooden summerhouse and slightly injuring two people. Most of the bombs had fallen well clear of the city into the agricultural land that supplied most of Berlin’s fruit and vegetables. “Now the Tommies are trying to starve us out,” the Berliners had jested.
There had been little to joke about on the night of 23 September 1940, however, when over 120 British bombers attacked railway yards, power stations, gasworks and factories in the city. The Moabit district of Berlin, the working-class area that was the equivalent of London’s East End, was badly hit, with many people killed and injured. News of the raid was subjected to heavy censorship, and consequently very few people living outside Berlin knew about it. The Berliners themselves, for the first time, began to feel some apprehension, wondering if this was only a foretaste of things to come. But as the months passed, and Berlin was attacked very infrequently by only small numbers of bombers, the apprehension turned to relief, and Berlin went about its normal routine business without interruption.
In any case, Berliners reasoned, the War would soon be over. Britain was isolated, and would soon be starved into submission by the German Navy. In North Africa, the British were reeling under the onslaught of General Rommel’s Afrika Korps; and in Europe, the swastika flag flew over conquered territories from Norway to the Balkans. All that remained unvanquished was that damned, stubborn little offshore island…
*
A dozen men sat around the polished oak table in the Naval Staff HQ. Presiding over them was Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy. Not all were naval officers; among them was Oberstleutnant Martin Harlinghausen, the recently appointed Fliegerfuhrer Atlantik — Air Commander Atlantic — at Lorient.
The officers, all of senior rank, listened intently as an Intelligence Officer briefed them on the current naval situation. Raeder knew it already, of course, but it was important to bring the others completely up to date. A slide projector, operated by a senior naval rating, threw an image of the Atlantic Ocean onto a large screen.
The Intelligence Officer began with a summary of U-boat operations in the Atlantic during April, using a long pointer to indicate various areas of ocean.
“At the beginning of the month,” he stated, “a patrol line consisting of eight U-boats was formed here, south of Iceland, to intercept a convoy bound for Britain. The engagement began on the second of April, and in the next two days they succeeded in sinking eleven merchant ships. Unfortunately, one of our submarines, Leutnant von Hippel’s U-76, was also lost, believed sunk by a destroyer. On the thirteenth, Kapitanleutnant Scholtz in U-108 sank the British auxiliary cruiser Rajputana, a vessel of over sixteen thousand tons, in the Denmark Strait.”
There were murmurs of approval. Since the beginning of the War the British had lost thirteen of these vessels, which were fast merchant ships converted for war duty as an answer to Germany’s commerce raiders. Without armour protection and under-armed, they were no match for the vessels they were supposed to catch and destroy. In fact, the Rajputana was the second auxiliary cruiser to be sunk in April; a few days earlier, the Voltaire had been destroyed in the central Atlantic by the raider Thor.
“A further patrol line,” the Intelligence Officer continued, “was established south of Iceland on the eighteenth, comprising four U-boats and four Italian submarines. A convoy was twice sighted by the Italians, but they failed to direct our U-boats onto it, or to attack it themselves.”
There was a snort of derision from one of the naval officers at the table. The Italian boats had been transferred to the French Atlantic ports some months earlier, at a time when the German Navy did not have sufficient U-boats to operate effectively in the Atlantic, and at first they had scored a number of successes; now they were more of a hindrance than a help.
“Finally, towards the end of the month, our submarines and aircraft operated against a convoy bound for England from Nova Scotia and succeeded in sinking a number of vessels, although the air attacks did not go as planned.”
“Explain, please,” Raeder interrupted sharply.
“If I may be permitted, sir?”
Raeder looked at Harlinghausen, who had just spoken, and nodded. The Luftwaffe commander rose and addressed the assembly.
“The plan,” he said, “was for the convoy to be attacked by four Kondors from Bordeaux. They were to fly to Stavanger, having attacked another, smaller convoy en route, and then strike at the main convoy on their return flight. Unfortunately, something went wrong and one of the aircraft was lost in unknown circumstances on the outward journey. The other three remained at Stavanger for two days, then set out to attack the main convoy as it approached Ireland. It appears that they were intercepted by British fighters: two were shot down and the third — the group commander’s aircraft — barely succeeded in reaching Bordeaux with severe damage to its tail unit and a dead gunner.”
“Where exactly were our aircraft when they were intercepted?” Raeder wanted to know. Harlinghausen went over to the screen and pointed to a spot roughly 200 miles north-west of Ireland.
“So,” Raeder said thoughtfully, “for reasons of range, that would seem to rule out the possibility that the British fighters were Spitfires or Hurricanes.”
“Yes, sir. The crew of the Kondor that got away identified them as twin-engined, and said that they were heavily armed. They can only have been Bristol Beaufighters. This is the type which is replacing the Blenheim in the RAF’s night-fighter force,” Harlinghausen explained.
“Could this have been an accidental interception?” Raeder asked. The Luftwaffe officer shook his head.
“We don’t think so, sir. We think that the British somehow learned of the Kondors’ mission, and laid a trap for them.”
“Very well,” Raeder said, “we shall return to this matter later. Thank you, Harlinghausen.” He ordered the Intelligence Officer to continue with his briefing.
“Here are the dispositions of our major warships,” the Intelligence Officer went on. “The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are still in Brest, where the latter is undergoing repair; the approaches to the harbour have been hea
vily mined by the enemy, which is causing us some concern. Of the others, the battleships Admiral Scheer and Lutzow are in Kiel, together with the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. The other heavy cruiser, the Prinz Eugen, is in the Baltic, conducting exercises with the battleship Bismarck.”
The Intelligence Officer spent several more minutes talking about the current state of the German Navy, giving details of the estimated tonnages of Allied shipping sunk in April 1941 by submarines, warships and aircraft and concluding with some information which, to at least some of the assembled officers, had alarming indications for the future.
“Some time ago,” the Intelligence Officer said, “our embassy in Washington informed us that the United States Government was about to implement a neutrality patrol in the Central Atlantic, operating from Bermuda. This has now been established, gentlemen, and the force deployed consists of an aircraft carrier, two cruisers and two destroyers.”
He turned to the projected image of the Atlantic and traced a line down it with his pointer.
“What this means, quite simply, is that any U-boat which attacks the shipping of any neutral country, including the United States, anywhere in the Western Hemisphere beyond this line — Longitude thirty degrees west — is itself liable to be attacked by the United States Navy.”
He paused and turned to face his audience again. “And there is more. It appears that during the second week in April, a directive was issued to Headquarters, United States Pacific Fleet, for the transfer to the Atlantic of a further aircraft carrier, three battleships, four cruisers and a number of destroyers. When this transfer will take place we do not yet know, but I am sure you will agree that it is an ominous development. We obviously do not want an armed confrontation on the high seas with the United States of America.”
“I agree with you, Riecken.” Admiral Raeder rose suddenly, flexing his shoulders to ease a twinge of rheumatism, and moved across to each window in turn, pulling the cords that opened the Venetian blinds, which had been closed to dim the room. He opened a window, letting in the warm afternoon air, sniffing the scent of the blossom that rose from the trees in the broad street below him.
Abruptly, he strode back to his place at the head of the table, but remained standing, his hands clasped behind his back. The 65-year-old Grand Admiral bore himself proudly, and there was justification in his pride, for he was the architect of the Third Reich’s mighty navy. He believed that powerful surface ships, including aircraft carriers, were the key to victory on the high seas, and in this he was at odds with his subordinate, Admiral Karl Doenitz, who favoured ocean-going submarines as the primary means of attack. Well, Raeder thought as he surveyed the officers at the table, his own ideas were about to be vindicated.
“Gentlemen,” he said in a high, clear voice, “I have excellent news. In exactly three weeks’ time the most powerful warship afloat, the Bismarck, will leave the Baltic and enter the Atlantic Ocean, accompanied by her consort, the Prinz Eugen. In due course they will be joined by the Scharnhorst and, once the repairs to her are completed, the Gneisenau. Never before, in the history of naval warfare, will the world have seen such a mighty concentration of firepower. Supported by our U-boats, these ships will tear Britain’s convoys to shreds. They will sink her best and most modern warships. In short, they will bring Britain to her knees. Within a few months at the outside, the stubborn British will be begging for peace.”
If anyone at the table wore a doubtful expression, the enthusiastic Grossadmiral never noticed it. And it was perhaps as well that he was not clairvoyant, for had he been able to peer only a week ahead into the future, he might have seen the gigantic spanner that was about to be thrown into the workings of his operational plans.
*
South of Iceland — Friday, 9 May 1941
It was the second seriously unhappy moment in Kapitanleutnant Julius Lemp’s career as a naval officer. The first had been on 27 September 1939, only three weeks after the outbreak of war, when he had sailed home to Wilhelmshaven in submarine U-30 to find that, instead of sinking an armed merchant cruiser some 200 miles west of the Hebrides, his victim had been the liner Athenia, which had gone down with the loss of 112 passengers and crew out of 1,400. To make matters worse, twenty-eight of the dead were Americans, and it had taken an intense flurry of diplomatic activity between Berlin and Washington to prevent the United States from plunging headlong into the War on Britain’s side.
Now, in the third year of the War, Julius Lemp was a leading U-boat ‘ace’, in command of U-110. For two days he had been closing on a British convoy and at length had successfully engaged it, sinking two ships, but had immediately been forced to the surface following a damaging depth-charge attack. Lemp and his crew were picked up unharmed after a few frightening moments when a British destroyer came charging down on the U-boat, apparently intent on ramming it; the destroyer had sheered off at the last moment, her captain having decided to attempt taking the crippled submarine in tow.
What was troubling Lemp was one simple fact: in the rush to abandon the U-110 the procedure for scuttling the boat, and for destroying the secret equipment on board, had not been carried out. And now, as Lemp and his crew huddled miserably below decks on the destroyer, HMS Bulldog, a British boarding party was at work deep in the bowels of the submarine, seeing what they might salvage, painfully conscious that hidden explosive charges might send them to oblivion at any moment.
What they found was to alter the course of the bitter conflict that was fast becoming known as the Battle of the Atlantic. Inside the submarine, with its associated code books, was an Enigma encryption machine. Discovering the code machine was not in itself significant, because the British already possessed a couple, passed on in 1939 by a Polish crypto-analyst. What was significant was that on the machine there was a signal, already set up for transmission. This, together with the code books they also found in the little radio operator’s office opposite the captain’s quarters, would — for the first time — enable British experts to read at least part of the German Naval Enigma code, which was called the Home Waters setting.
Britain’s Government Code and Cypher School now had access to the secrets of the Kurzsignale, the short signals in which the U-boats transmitted their sighting reports and weather information. In the weeks to come, the specialists would be able to read all the German U-boat signals traffic, which could be deciphered with only a few hours’ delay.
The Home Waters setting of the Enigma cypher, which was changed daily, carried 95 per cent of the German Navy’s radio message traffic. The information it yielded, together with that of other enemy high-grade cyphers, became known as Ultra. The whole operation was so vital to Britain’s survival that even the name Ultra was classified top secret.
The breakthrough of May 1941 was to move the whole war against the U-boats into a new dimension. The codebreakers and the Admiralty Submarine Tracking Room now had an insight into the whole operational cycle of a U-boat, and although many months were to pass before the Tracking Room could claim to know more about the U-boats’ deployment than Admiral Doenitz’s own staff, the summer of 1941 was the point at which the Government Code and Cypher School moved the process out of the realms of guesswork. From now on, this knowledge of U-boat movements and positions, derived from Ultra, would enable the Admiralty to reroute convoys to avoid the U-boat packs.
The wolf-pack tactics employed by the U-boats called for the transmission of sighting reports and homing signals between boats so that they could concentrate and attack on the surface at night in areas beyond the range of shore-based aircraft. Convoys were virtually defenceless against these tactics, but their success depended on tightly centralised control by U-boat Command and the transmission of a stream of tactical orders, patrol instructions, situation reports and so on. This made them vulnerable to Ultra and to high-frequency direction finding. Also, Ultra provided huge quantities of valuable background information that included such details as the exit and approach routes from and to the U-bo
at bases, frequency of patrols and the rate at which new boats were being commissioned. It also revealed operational characteristics such as the speed, diving depths, endurance, armament, signals and radar equipment of the various types of U-boat, and the current operational state of boats at sea.
Admiral Doenitz’s U-boat offensive in the spring of 1941 had been launched in the expectation that the previously high rate of merchant ship sinkings could not only be maintained but decisively increased as more submarines were deployed. In this way the German Naval Command hoped to neutralise Britain before help arrived from the United States in significant proportions.
In Whitehall, as the offensive got under way, the outlook was bleak. At the beginning of 1941 food stocks in Britain were dangerously low, and they were severely rationed. There was enough wheat for fifteen weeks; meat for only two weeks; butter for eight weeks; margarine for three weeks; and bacon for twenty-seven weeks. There were no longer any stocks of imported fruit. All this added up to the grim fact that, unless merchant ship sinkings could be reduced, Britain would starve before new merchant vessels could be built fast enough to maintain imports at the level needed for her survival.
The Ultra breakthrough had come only just in time.
Chapter Eleven
Sunday, 4 May 1941: Dawn
It had been a weekend of terror for the city of Liverpool. The attacks of the two previous nights had been bad enough — 48 tons of bombs and 112 canisters of incendiaries had fallen on the city in the first night of May, dropped by 43 German bombers, and on the following night 65 more bombers had caused massive destruction in the city centre.
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