by D. A. Rayner
Patrolling at night, alone in a far reach of the Atlantic, the destroyer Hecate’s radar picked up a small echo. Was it a fishing boat, hopelessly off course, or a vagary of the instrument itself, erratic in the heavy weather? Or was it a U-boat? Dawn revealed the truth; and the Hecate began a grim pursuit.
The Enemy Below is permeated with the smell of the sea, the tension of warships in action, the prolonged suspense of a duel between two resourceful enemies, so evenly matched that no one could foretell the outcome.
The Enemy Below
Copyright © 1957 by D.A. Rayner
All rights reserved.
Holt first edition
March, 1957
Printed in the U.S.A.
Published by
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc.
Author’s Note
The tale told in this book is entirely fictional, and any similarity of names or parallel of episode is entirely coincidental.
Those who have no experience in antisubmarine warfare might contend that my tale is “too good to be true.” To them I would answer that they simply do not know because, as far as I am aware, no British destroyer of the Western Approaches Escort Force ever had a prolonged single-ship action against a U-boat.
In such an action, fought with the Escort destroyers and U-boats of World War II, the odds were rather more in favor of the U-boat. She would have one or more chances of sinking her adversary by torpedo; while if she were to be forced to the surface and then should decide to carry on the action by gunfire, the target she would present would be infinitely smaller and less susceptible to damage by this weapon than that of the surface craft.
Below the water a single U-boat, pitted against a single destroyer, could turn so much more quickly that it was very difficult indeed to damage her hull by depth charges—always provided that she was handled with sufficient skill and was confident that no other surface vessel was near at hand to join her assailant. As soon as the U-boat knew for certain that two ships were present, or even thought that another ship or aircraft could be expected to join, her captain was at once forced on the defensive. The battle that I have imagined would then have run another course. For this reason I have set the scene in a very empty part of the great oceans so that both my captains are fully aware that no interference can come from a third party, and that only their own competence can decide the result.
Skill of course is the crux of the matter, and just because this is so I have postulated commanding officers of equal art and determination.
Now let us see where we get to.
HIS MAJESTY’S Destroyer Hecate climbed the side of each wave as it swept down upon her starboard beam, hung poised on the crest, and then slithered down the far side.
Once the motion became familiar it was no longer unpleasant. If a landsman would have thought the dizzily swaying cage to be the last word in discomfort, the two officers wedged into positions of purposeful repose in the Captain’s sea cabin considered themselves to be quite at ease.
Between them on the bunk, jammed between two pillows, was a chessboard. The chessmen, that were kept in place with little pegs, had been a present to the Captain from his wife. The two officers, Captain and Doctor, played together each evening—provided always that the enemy was not expected. Of late he had been quiet on the convoy routes: now that the convoys were accompanied by the small “flat-top” escort carriers, his chances of making a successful attack were so diminished that he was almost sure of meeting a strong counterattack if he tried to force his way through the combined screen of ships and aircraft. The game of chess had therefore been an almost nightly occurrence for some months.
Leaning forward, the Captain took a white bishop with his queen. The Doctor, after due thought, lifted a knight and waved it vaguely over a square whence it would threaten the black queen.
A telephone buzzed above the Captain’s head. Reaching out, he grasped it and carried it to his ear without taking his eyes from the chessboard.
“Captain’s cabin,” he spoke into the mouthpiece.
Both officers could hear the tinned voice of the officer of the watch: “Radar Office reports a small contact green seven-oh; range ten thousand.”
“Get the plot onto it, Mackeson, and let me know its course and speed.” He hung up the receiver and turned again to the game.
“It can’t be a sub out here,” the Doctor remarked.
“But it is!”
“How do you know, sir?”
“I’m sure of it—feel it in my bones. You know, Doc, it’s a funny thing. I’ve often had contacts that on every evidence ought to be U-boats. I’ve treated them as U-boats. I’ve even claimed they were U-boats—either sunk or damaged. But every time I’ve had a contact that’s made me say, ‘I feel it in my bones,’ it’s always proved beyond a shadow of doubt to be a U-boat. More correctly, I’ve always known when there’s been a mind matching my own at the other end of the asdic or radar beam. I feel that now. Go on. Your move, man.”
The Doctor, puzzled by his Captain’s passivity and desperately anxious to see his own ship in action, moved the piece he held without thinking.
The Captain’s hand flicked across the board.
“Checkmate,” he said.
“Damn it, sir, it’s not fair. If that is a U-boat . . .”
“Whether it is or isn’t, I can still beat you—if you let your mind wander.”
“But the radar contact!”
“Was twenty degrees forward of the beam and five miles away. It was reported as a small surface echo—not an aircraft. It can’t get that far away.” The Captain was busily setting the chessmen back in their correct lines at each side of the board. “I wouldn’t like you to whip my appendix out if you can’t keep your mind on the immediate problem.”
When he had finished he picked up the bridge handset.
“Mackeson, has the plot reported back yet?”
“Not yet, sir. I’ll ask them.” The Captain held the set to his chest. Soon it was talking again.
“Plot reports target’s course approximately one-eight-oh; speed fourteen knots. Radar says the blip is quite definite, sir.”
“Thank you, Mackeson. I’ll be up soon. Negative zigzag.” He hung up the handset and turned to his companion. “The plot will have more chance if our course is steady.”
“If it is a Ube—what in the world is it doing out here?”
The Doctor had voiced the Captain’s own thoughts. “Dunno,” he said as he rose and took his oilskin and sou’wester from their hook. “Let’s go and ask it, shall we?”
“May I come, sir?”
“Of course, if it amuses you. I don’t suppose I’ll be sounding the alarm bell for some time. It’s dead upwind and sea of us, and going away at fourteen knots. I doubt if we ourselves can make much more than sixteen into this weather, so it will take us some time to get there. Come on.”
He went out into the dark, leaving the Doctor to shut the door behind him. Inside the cabin there had been only a dim red light. The necessity of living in red light, if his invaluable night sight was to be retained, was one of the Captain’s main reasons for taking to the chessboard for relaxation. To read in red light somehow destroyed the pleasure that he could derive from a book.
The wind, warm, moist, and friendly, caressed his face as he came through the blackout flap onto the forebridge. Feeling his way to the compass platform, he acknowledged the salutes that were sensed rather than seen. Mackeson and the officer of the watch were grouped round the standard compass. The dim blue light under the swinging card was just sufficient to reveal the outline of their faces and nothing at all of their oilskin-clad figures, so that the masks, etched with deep shadows, hung bodiless in the windy night.
The bridge was alterna
tely sheltered as the Hecate rolled her slim length away from the wind’s onslaught, and then all at once filled with the warm tropical wind as she rolled toward the weather. Almost invisible above and behind them, the high foremast swept the starless night. Even the greater mass of the funnels could hardly be seen, except when silhouetted against the fret of the ship’s own wake—a disturbance of the sea that was continuously erupting with livid flashes of phosphorescent light, as weird balls of blue-green fire clung tenaciously to the ship’s path. Each fluorescence faded slowly into her wake but was always replaced by its fellow—newborn of her passage.
“Where is it now?” the Captain asked.
“Green oh-eight-five; range steady, sir,” Mackeson answered.
“Bearing?” the Captain asked.
“Two-one-oh, sir.”
“Bring her round to two-one-oh.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He heard the orders given as he moved to the voice pipe that led to the plot, and felt the ship heave as her bow was brought around to head into the waves. Up she went, as if she were climbing the roof of a house. Looking aft, he could see the funnels, black against the wake. A trail of smoke from the forward one made him think that it was fortunate for the stoker on watch that it was dark. Otherwise Mackeson would have been clamoring on the engine-room telephone, and the engineer officer too would be sure to have seen it.
He bent to the voice pipe. “Forebridge—Plot.”
“Plot—Forebridge.”
“Captain here—what’s the target doing?”
“Course about two-one-oh, sir. Speed about fourteen knots. Range has been steady.”
“Who’s the plotter?”
“Andrews, sir. Sick-berth attendant.”
“Very well, Andrews—sure you can handle it? I don’t want to go to action stations until we know more.”
“Yes, sir, sure.”
“Good lad.”
Then, after dropping the flap cover of the voice pipe, he turned to the Doctor, who he knew was still close behind him. “Doc, after the navigator, that Andrews of yours is the best plotter in the ship.”
“I’m glad he’s better at that than his master is at chess.”
“Does it still rankle?” The Captain laughed.
The Doctor’s age was twenty-nine, and that made him, with the exception of the Captain and the elderly commissioned engineer, four years older than any other officer in the ship. Being only three years junior to the Captain, he was closer to his commanding officer in many ways than any of the others—even the excellent First Lieutenant. Consequent on their friendship a certain lack of formality existed between them.
“Sure, it rankles like hell.”
The Captain crossed to the compass platform in the center of the bridge, whence a voice pipe led direct to the Radar Office.
“Forebridge—Radar.”
“Radar—Forebridge.”
“Who’s on the set?”
“Petty Officer Lewis, sir.”
The Captain wondered how Lewis had got word that something was happening. He should not have been on watch until action stations had been sounded, for he was not normally a watchkeeper. His duties were to keep the set functioning properly and to man it only in action. Already the Captain guessed that the whole ship knew that they had a suspicious radar contact. The ship, when men were keyed to intense awareness of a cruel and able enemy forever on the lookout for them, was a most efficient sounding board. He was glad Lewis was there. Not because he was a good petty officer—he was not. Untidy himself, and incapable of maintaining discipline, he owed his promotion entirely to his ability to maintain and work his set—and in this he had few equals.
“What’s it look like, Lewis?” the Captain asked.
“Small, sharp blip, sir. Just about right for a U-boat, sir.”
“Thank you. I’m going to increase speed now. Press the bell if you find that the extra vibration is spoiling your reception on the set.” He raised his face from the pipe. “Mr. Mackeson, increase to two hundred revolutions.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The Captain went to rejoin the Doctor who, without an oilskin to protect him, had pressed himself up against the front of the bridge and was sheltering behind the thick plate-glass screens. Now that her head was to the sea, the screens were slashed with runnels of spray; and only the two fast-revolving discs of the Kent Clearview Screens gave them an easy view ahead.
The engine-room ratings answered the Captain’s call, and as he came up beside the Doctor he felt the deck beneath his feet begin to throb with ever faster pulsations. The Hecate heaved her body half out of the water—a body in whose forepart were crowded over a hundred and forty human beings. Those off watch swung in their hammocks that hung, like monstrous cocoons, from the deckhead and swayed largely sideways and slightly back and forth in fantastic unison as the ship moved. The hammocks were indistinguishable in their similarity—only the names stamped on their bottoms were different. It was curious that in the identical cocoons the individuals were so unlike.
Now the ship was plunging downward with the powerful drive of her propellers forcing her into the next sea. A wall of water, pale gray in the blackness, flooded over her bow. She shuddered, paused as a horse will do to gather its haunches beneath it, and then shot skyward once more; and the wave top, running aft along her length, burst against the forward screen. Clouds of water, salt-tasting and very wet, were flung over the bridge. The sea cascaded in arched bands of foam from the rising bows. There was a moment when she was swept only by the wind—when only the drops of glistening water were wind-whipped away. Then she was going down again, down into the next sea’s flank—cutting it, shivering with the strain.
“It’s too much,” the Captain shouted to the Doctor. “I’ll have to ease her down.” And to the officer of the watch, whose water-glistening oilskins caught the wild light from the phosphorescent waves: “Ease her down to one-five-oh, Mr. Mackeson.”
The shuddering ceased as the speed was reduced. The clicking of the pitometer log fell in sympathetic rallentando. The bell from the Radar Office buzzed angrily.
“Forebridge,” the Captain called.
“Fair shook the set up that last one, sir.”
“All right, Lewis. I’ve eased her down—I won’t increase again until the sea moderates. Still holding contact?”
“Yes, sir. Target’s still there. Dead ahead now, sir, range nine thousand.”
“Thank you, Lewis.” Back to the Doctor: “I’m dead sure it’s a U-boat. Don’t ask me what it’s doing—but I’m sure it is one. It’s too small to be anything but that, or a fishing boat; and there are no fishing boats in this deserted piece of ocean, and none that can steam at fourteen knots into this sea. I do believe it’s going to give me just what I’ve always wanted. A single-ship duel between a U-boat and a destroyer without any chance of anyone interfering.”
“What odds would you lay?”
“So near ‘evens’ that I’d really have to know the other captain, Doc. As far as the ships are concerned, I’d put my money on the U-boat.”
“But you reckon you’ll win?”
“Of course. Both of us will think that. The Hun and I. We’ve got to think like that—otherwise we’d crack. If he’s the man I hope he is, we’ll have a wonderful hunt.”
“In this weather?”
“The sea will have gone down before dawn. This little gale is very local. These subtropical areas are full of them. The one we are enjoying at the moment is a rather large one of its kind.”
“Captain, sir.” A new figure had joined them.
“Hullo, Number One, have we got you out of your bunk?”
“Just turning in, sir, when you altered course. Thought I’d come up to see if you wanted me. I’d hardly started along the iron deck when you increased speed, and I had to dodge back mighty quick.”
“We’ve got a possible radar contact on a U-boat. We’re chasing dead up his tail, and he’s four and a half miles ahead. I
don’t think I’ll get any closer until the weather moderates. It will anyway by dawn, and we’re running out of it at fourteen knots. Nine o’clock now; nine hours until dawn at fourteen knots. A hundred and twenty-six miles to the southwest when dawn comes—if he doesn’t spot us before.”
“He’s almost certain to do that. He’s got radar too.”
“But no radar mattress aft. He’s got to swing his ship if he wants to get a bearing on anything that’s right behind him. If we keep station on him—always there—always in station, it’s my bet his radar operator will think it’s a ghost echo. We’ve had them ourselves so often. If we were to go playing about—closing up on him, or drawing off to one side, then he’d know us for what we are. Am I right?”
“Sounds very foxy to me, sir. But I see your point. If we scare him and put him down in this sea, our asdic will be pretty useless, and he’ll probably give us the slip.”
“Exactly, Number One.” And to the officer of the watch: “Mr. Mackeson, I want to keep station exactly ten thousand yards astern of the target until four o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Take station ten thousand yards astern of target, sir,” Mackeson repeated.
“Better get your head down, Number One.” The Captain addressed his First Lieutenant.
Willis, the yeoman, was hovering around the three officers, his signal pad in his hand. He coughed to announce his presence.
“Yeoman,” the Captain said, “are you itching to make a signal? I don’t think it’s necessary until we know for sure. We can signal then.”
“We’ll be a long way off our proper course by then, sir,” the First Lieutenant reminded him.
“Almost one hundred and thirty miles,” the Captain agreed. “But we’ve got a hell of a fast ship. If we’re wrong and our friend turns out to be a Brazilian fishing boat that’s gone gaga, we can slip back easily without anyone being the wiser. No, Yeoman, sorry to disappoint you. No signal yet.”
“Good night, sir,” the First Lieutenant said.
“ ‘Night, Number One.”