The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5

by Alexander Fullerton

  Whether it was one of the Germans’ new deep-diving boats or not, Guyatt would try to sit on top of it long enough for the convoy to pass clear. But with so few escorts that even this small group of attackers outnumbered them, no rational system of defence was really viable. All you could do was keep at them, attack wherever one showed up. “Course oh-three-oh, sir!”

  The Tolworth Tide was abeam: a long, low shape wreathed in white, kingposts like topped tree trunks black against the moon. Half a mile beyond her, moonlight permitted a glimpse of the Coriolanus leading column two … Bearcroft in contact with Astilbe, tipping Graves off about that 271 report: but Graves’s telegraphist came back smartly with a report of their own—they had that one on their screen and were chasing after it, but another as well, broader to starboard.

  Making three in all. You had to keep the picture in mind and constantly updated, the whole moving scene as the convoy ploughed steadily onward and the enemy’s position shifted in relation to it. It was a picture that so far was incomplete, although it did look as if they were moving in now. They might have held off tonight, waited until there were nine of them instead of four, but SL 320 was emerging from the Azores air gap and the Germans would have this very much in mind. They weren’t to know that with the “Torch” convoys to protect and then invasion beachheads to cover the RAF and Fleet Air Arm were going to be stretched to their limits, so that air patrols out here weren’t necessarily to be counted on … Harbinger crashed explosively into a trough, whitened sea leaping to enfold her, swamping her before she recovered, got her snout up and began to climb the oncoming slope, its crest an uneven, toppling horizon with moon-washed cloud behind it. Survival was the objective now: the “Torch” commitment would soon have been completed. He’d kept the U-boats either close to him or ahead—spreading, scouting to pick him up again—and only the last of the assault convoys had yet to slip by astern. The first would have been passing through the Straits of Gibraltar just after sunset this evening: tonight and tomorrow night there’d be a stream of them sliding past the Rock, with darkness hiding them from Spanish and other eyes.

  “Starboard ten. Steer oh-four-oh.” To cut across, now. He straightened from the voice-pipe. “Range and bearing of that contact?”

  Depthcharges rumbled. From Paeony’s direction, and not far off. Perhaps the alleged deep-diver had been less deep than Guyatt’s A/S man had thought.

  “Oh-four-seven, five point two miles, sir!”

  “Steer oh-five-oh.”

  Starshell: on about that same bearing. And TBS calling: Fox—Astilbe—was reporting U-boat on surface, engaging …

  “Starboard ten. Steer oh-eight-oh.” Because Graves had said he had another contact, out somewhere in that direction. Graves was attacking the one in the centre because it happened to be the one in his sights … “Tell RDF to sweep from about oh-five-oh to oh-nine-oh.” Guyatt was still in contact with his German—a fresh outbreak of depthcharging had just confirmed it—and Astilbe had this other one while Harbinger headed eastward to hunt a third. It left one card still wild. The fourth might be slinking in at this moment, unmarked, nothing between it and the slow-moving merchantmen, nothing to prevent it slipping in between the columns and getting at the Burbridge or the oiler, or both … Nothing down there except Stella: and Broad could only be in one place at a time, didn’t have the speed to transfer quickly to meet a new threat developing elsewhere, didn’t have RDF or even an asdic set he could rely on.

  There wasn’t anything you could do: except make do with what you had, and hope for some lucky breaks. This wasn’t a real defence, it was a token one.

  Timberlake asked Chubb, over the depth-charge telephone, “Tell us what’s ’appening, Chubby lad?”

  Chubb hesitated: he loathed that form of address, which was why the gunner used it. Then he decided to ignore it: he said quietly, with one hand cupping the ’phone against his mouth, “Chasing a two-seven-one contact. Paeony’s bollocking one, and Astilbe’s got another on the surface, and—there, gunfire … See it? See that starshell?”

  “Well, I’m not bloody well blind, boy!”

  “Pete’s sake, you asked me, you quarrelsome old turd!”

  He’d told Timberlake earlier this evening, “I got myself a Sheila. Would you believe it?”

  “Not in a thousand years!”

  “Gospel truth. In the Burbridge. In the first dog we were up close—doing the old social round, you know—and what d’you think? Well, I’ll tell you—she blew me a kiss! Tall number, very sexy-looking …”

  “Carrying a white stick, was she?”

  “What’s that?”

  “She’d ’ave to be blind, wouldn’t she?”

  “You’re jealous. Because you’re past it, eh?”

  “And you can kiss me arse.”

  “Ah, well now, I don’t like to offend old men, Guns, but I have to admit I’d as soon not even look at it.”

  He asked Timberlake now—still smarting from being called “Chubby lad”—over the depth-charge link as Harbinger plunged eastward across the convoy’s van, “Cold, is it?”

  “Bloody cold.”

  “You want to wrap it in a sock, then. Or keep it in your hand.”

  He chuckled as he put the ’phone back on its hook. Definitely one up … Carlish yelling, “Surface contact oh-seven-one, three point seven miles, sir!”

  Another version—range and bearing from a different position—was coming in from Astilbe. There’d been more gunfire on the beam, and more depthcharges on the quarter. A starshell from Astilbe broke high to port.

  “Starshell stand by!”

  Warrimer reported, “All guns ready, sir, B with starshell, A and X with SAP.”

  “Contact lost, sir!”

  Meaning it had dived. Hopes nose-diving with it. The German had most likely been alarmed by that starshell from Astilbe, which had been intended to illuminate the other one.

  “Steer oh-seven-three.” The skipper called, “One full pattern Sub, hundred-foot settings, stand by!”

  Chubb busy now: Timberlake too, back aft, preparing for another blind attack, a frightener more than much chance of doing any damage. All you could do was blast a section of ocean and pray the German might be in it. But there was still a fourth U-boat—somewhere …

  U 702 had been forced to dive, by the corvette on this bow of the convoy. Looff had taken his boat down to 175 metres, and started his stopwatch in order to time a slow paddle under the convoy, allowing those juicy targets to chug over the top of him while he pottered gently southward. He didn’t object to having been put down: if anything he was pleased to have pinpointed the position of one corvette. You could guess the other would be at the same distance out to starboard, and the destroyer fussing around between them: it gave him the pattern, the escort commander’s best answer to the insoluble problems he was facing. You could be almost sorry for him: whatever happened tonight, tomorrow would see an end to it.

  The sound of screws in that easterly direction was confused, and covered further by rough conditions, but the general picture was clear enough. He wasn’t sure where the trawler was, but he guessed somewhere astern. The whole thing was a gift, now: he’d assured FO U-boats, in reply to a terse signal from Kernéval, that annihilation or near-annihilation of this convoy was guaranteed.

  The deep-dive capability was a blessing—in terms of tactics, but also to Max Looff personally. It had virtually solved his personal problem, all by itself. He could thank his stars—thank Admiral Dönitz and Flotilla, anyway—for having deprived him of that Berlin leave in order to shift him to this boat. All right, so the effects lingered, he could still wake shaking and sweating, close to screaming, but then he’d remember this—like reaching to some magic touchstone—and his nerves would steady.

  Steady as rock now. And he’d planned this dip under the convoy. He’d have run through on the surface if he’d met no opposition, but this was the alternative he’d had in mind: to duck down, swim under, then surface and at
tack from astern. He grinned at Franz Walther, his scruffy-looking engineer, and promised him, “We’ll have that liner now. And/or the tanker. Tonight, I’ll settle for either or both.”

  “Tanker would be the most useful, tactically?”

  “Escort’s lost contact, sir!”

  He nodded complacently. It was no surprise to him that Drachen One had dived through and out of the scope of the corvette’s asdic beam. It was the beauty of the deep-dive trick. Seen as a diagram in profile, an asdic beam was more or less elliptical; as an escort approached its target, the submarine even at shallow depths was lost to it as it passed out through the sloping near-edge of the beam. This was why an escort making an attack always lost contact shortly before it was in a position to drop charges, and the short interval gave the submarine time to take evasive action in that last minute; it was also why A/S vessels tended to hunt in pairs, so that one ship could hold the contact while the other attacked. But at this depth, to maintain contact the hunting ship would have to stay back at a considerable distance—where it didn’t have a hope of doing you any damage: and on top of this, you were actually below the effective range of their depthcharges!

  Looff checked the stopwatch time. It was going to take a while …

  Depthcharges thundered. The explosions were above them, and out to port. The boat had quivered: the charges had been close enough for her to feel their shock-waves, but not nearly close enough to hurt.

  “Chancing his arm.” Looff shrugged. “And wasting his depth bombs.” He looked up, and called, “Come on, my little dears, waste some more!”

  Smiles, here and there around the control room. This was the Max Looff they admired, the ace they boasted about to their girls!

  The hydrophone operator jerked his head up. Staring at Looff, from his little cabinet. Opening his mouth …

  More depthcharges: eight—nine—ten … The operator looked down, frowning. Having said nothing at all, just shut his mouth again. Reverberations dwindling … Heusinger murmured, “Only about a mile off-target. Silly bastard!”

  A nod or two: a chuckle from the coxswain. Looff was puzzled, though, at the continuing waste of depthcharges. He knew they’d be getting short of them by this time. He noticed that the hydrophone operator had finally decided he did have something to say …

  “Escort’s in contact, sir!”

  Looff continued staring at him. Other faces, too, registered surprise and doubt. “How in hell can—”

  “Not with us, sir. One of the others, it’s got on to.”

  Walther, busy with the trim, muttered “Well, well …” Heusinger sucked in a noisy breath. Looff said, “Must be Pöhl. Ernst Pöhl, for God’s sake, taking the heat off me!”

  Not that there’d been any heat. With this darling of a boat, the real heat might be a thing of the past. But there might be some coming to Pöhl, he guessed. Heat like—that … Another pattern of charges blasting off. Knowing what it was like to be in the middle of a battering of that kind, nobody here envied Pöhl or his crew. Looff was checking his watch again, thinking the convoy should be audible pretty soon. The operator exclaimed sharply, “Sir—would you—listen?”

  He went over, grabbed the spare headset. Puzzled: then grimacing, and eyebrows lifting in surprise … “What the hell is it?”

  “Well—one of ours, sir. Whichever’s getting clobbered.”

  Drachen Six?

  Pulling the headphones off, he remembered that Drachen Six had been hit by a shell from a trawler about a week ago, and how lucky Pöhl had been to have survived it with only exterior damage of a completely unimportant kind. It might be that the damaged after casing had been further loosened by depthcharges, those first ones; but whatever the cause of it was, Pöhl’s boat was making a noise like a brass band now. You’d hear it a mile off!

  It wasn’t a bit funny, either. That corvette could hardly lose him, now.

  Go to his assistance? Attack the corvette while it was concentrating on him?

  Looff held on. More depthcharges booming: and Pöhl was in for a pasting, obviously. But when you’d made a plan and embarked on it, it was best to stick to it. The hydrophone operator confirmed him in this decision—pointing upwards, announcing, “Convoy, sir …”

  Guyatt had reported over TBS, I think I’ve hurt him, sir. Could be a propeller blade.

  That wasn’t likely. If it had been a blade he’d have stopped using that screw. Of course, it could be that both had been damaged—screws, or the shafts bent. It was that kind of racket, and it had to be something the German couldn’t stop, or something external he couldn’t get at. It would be an agonising experience, to know about it, just have to grin and bear it …

  But these characters deserved a few agonising experiences.

  Nick told Guyatt to stay with his target, finish him. The U-boat was running westward on a dead-straight course, and the only uncertain factor was its depth.

  “Chief—call Gannet again, say, ‘I suggest you try three hundred foot settings.’”

  Because wounded and running, the German would be likely to have gone deep. And Guyatt had it in contact at normal asdic ranges, so this was not a deep-dive merchant. He decided he’d give Guyatt his head, for the time being: if there was a good change of reducing the U-boat force by one, it was a chance worth taking.

  Astilbe and Harbinger had both lost their contacts. Nick had told Graves to cover the convoy’s whole front while he took Harbinger round to the starboard side. It was more hunch than science, but it fitted the pattern indicated by those three U-boats’ original dispositions—right, left and centre. And Germans were reputed to have orderly minds.

  Number four, then—astern?

  Harbinger’s course was 180 now, with 180 revs on as well, to give her fifteen knots. Asdics pinging, like a blind man’s stick poking into darkness. On the bow, in faint moonlight, he could just make out the Dongola, leader of column five, smashing black sea into white emulsion with her high, sheer stem. He knew all these ships pretty well, by this time.

  “Surface contact ahead, four-one-five-oh yards!”

  He’d ducked to the pipe: “Four hundred revolutions!” Then over his shoulder to Warrimer, “Starshell stand by!”

  Asdics were out of it now, as speed increased. And this contact just might be Stella, swanning out on her own. Although Broad oughtn’t to be that far out … Nick decided, no, he wouldn’t.

  “Range four thousand, sir, bearing right ahead still!”

  Harbinger was getting into her stride, and the motion was easier on this course. She was still making hard work of it and digging up a lot of ocean, but her lunges were longer and more regular; the guns’ crews would have an easier time of it, if they got to grips with this one.

  “Range three thousand, seven hundred, bearing one-seven-seven, sir!”

  “Steer one-seven-five!”

  Every second counted: because if this was a U-boat and not the trawler, it would be in a position to fire—now—with the whole flank of the convoy open to it, unless Broad’s trawler was there as well, and she might be … But he couldn’t risk waiting any longer. “Starshell, fire!”

  B gun crashed. In the echo of its noise Warrimer passed the order to reload with semi-armour-piercing … “Range oh-three-five, target right ahead …” The starshell ignited, light spreading in concentric halos from the ragged underside of wind-driven cloud. Bearcroft howled, “U-boat dead ahead, sir!”

  “Target in sight! Open fire when you bear!”

  Nick had it in his glasses: and it was turning away. It had been in profile, moving in towards the convoy’s side, but now it was turning away to port. Half-lost in foam: at moments, completely hidden … The light was drifting down this side of it: and he thought the German was diving. One gun down for’ard had fired—B, the greater height of eye from that raised gundeck giving it an advantage over A gun—but it was diving, it was already half under, only the upper part of its tower visible: the sea closed over, piling, just as from the side of the
convoy they all heard the harsh explosion of a torpedo. Harbinger, bow-down, sea sheeting up all round—and a second torpedo-hit … In the nearer column, he thought, with a flood of that sickening sense of impotence that had become familiar lately … As she climbed again, her motion more violent now because of the higher speed, he tried to see which ship had been hit: guessing the U-boat would have been firing as it swung, spreading a salvo across the convoy’s flank when he’d actually had his glasses on it … Another thought was that it couldn’t have been the Burbridge, not from that angle.

  Looff was dieseling up into the rear rank of the convoy, nosing U 702 in between the tail-ends of columns three and four. He’d surfaced her a few minutes ago, having turned her already on to the convoy’s course; then he’d searched for and spotted the trawler—roughly a mile away, close to the convoy’s port quarter, nicely removed and ignorable. So he’d accounted for all the escorts well enough, and he had his submarine trimmed right down, as near invisible as she could have been. His intention was to pass right up between these columns, and there was no reason why it shouldn’t come off. It was a tactic he’d employed successfully before—as indeed had other men before him. He wanted the oiler or the passenger ship. From the point of view of doing maximum damage to the convoy the oiler would take priority as a target, since you’d be depriving the escorts of their fuel supply; but the liner had a strong appeal for him, too. For one thing, it was the biggest ship in the whole assembly, and for another—well, there’d be value in destroying such a target.

  “Steady as you go …”

  One freighter to port, one to starboard. U 702 making only a couple of knots more than they were. This lively sea was ideal cover, but he was still being careful to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.

  “All right as you see it, Oelricher?”

  “Looks very good so far, sir …”

  They’d both kept their voices low. As if thinking they might be heard in those dark, plunging hulks across a few hundred yards of wild sea. Feeling like wolves slinking into a sheep-run.