Now, Mackeson thought, it would start to become real. So far, he’d felt like a spectator. You were in the middle of it all, part of the vulnerable target, but it had all been happening at a distance and on the periphery. Like being in the middle of a bar-room brawl and for some odd reason no one hitting you … But now, matters were about to change and involve one personally: of those five separate threats spread over an arc of about a hundred and eighty degrees some, surely, would get through. They were Savoia Marchettis, he thought. This whole effort seemed to be Italian: and the air bases in Sardinia were Italian, of course. Any Germans that showed up, like those Junkers, would be from the Sicilian bases. He remarked to Humphrey Straight as he passed behind him to take a look out on the other side, “Nothing but Eyeties, we have now.” Straight squirmed his facial muscles as if he was about to spit, but that was as far as it got. Destroyers all round from the port bow to the starboard quarter were engaging the on-coming torpedo-bombers, and so were the big ships astern. The inner screen, the Hunts, were staying in close to the block of merchantmen; they had their guns trained out on their own sectors, ready to engage any of the Savoias that got in this far.
Straight had steadied his ship on the new course. On the quarter smoke still blew thickly out of the ship that was on fire. On the starboard bow the secret-weapon-dropping had finished. It would be very annoying, Mackeson thought, to the backroom boffins and others on the Italian side to see the convoy simply stepping round the fruits of all that labour. And they’d surely have meant all the different kinds of attack to go in at once: he guessed that the Fleet Air Arm had probably disrupted their co-ordination for them. But five attacks were on their way in now, and that was enough to be going on with. Gunfire was thickening and spreading as the action drew inexorably in towards the centre, the merchant ships and their cargoes which formed the bull’s eye of the target.
Devenish touched his arm, and pointed. Ahead, high against clear sky, were—he got his glasses on them—more Junkers 88s. At first he saw only one small bunch of them, but then he realized there was a wide, loose scattering of such groups, threes and fours and sixes; and above them, fighters.
One torpedo-bomber had got through the fleet destroyers’ barrage on the port bow of the convoy. Suddenly it was inside the screen, an enemy at close range and determined. Humpbacked, thick-bodied, ugly, low to the sea and being shot at now by the Hunts on this side and by the Mauritius-class cruiser which was fine on the Montgovern’s bow. Beale and Withinshaw were on their toes at the guns, catching slit-eyed glimpses of it through shell-bursts, watching it over the sights of their oily-black, wicked-looking weapons. If it kept coming, at that height, it would be lovely for the Oerlikons.
Paul saw it lift as its torpedo fell away, tilted tail-down and flopped into the sea. By the time the splash went up the aircraft was already well ahead of it. The commodore’s siren was shrieking for yet another emergency turn—and none too soon, with at least one torpedo in the water. To his right, on the bow, Paul saw a second attacker trailing smoke from one engine but still coming, low and deadly. The cruiser was blazing away at it: and the first one was hauling away to the right, nose up as it banked, and tracer from a Hunt’s Oerlikons seemed to lick its belly. Beale saw his target escaping before he’d had a shot at it, and he tried one burst that didn’t have a hope of hitting. Paul yelled in his ear, “Watch out for that Hunt!” The Hunt destroyer had been moving up, engaging the bomber with everything she had, and as the convoy swung to port she was about to pass across these Oerlikons’ field of fire. Beale might have raked her bridge with his twenty-millimetre explosive shells before he’d known what he was doing. He’d ceased fire now, and Withinshaw hadn’t fired at all.
On the bow, the aircraft that still had its torpedo under it blew up. Bits of plane and torpedo sang over, ringing off the Montgovern’s steel and peppering the sea with splashes. Obviously the torpedo’s warhead had exploded. The echo of it was still ringing when the second crash came: deeper, softer-sounding. Paul’s eyes or mental eye still registered the fire-ball of the exploding bomber as he swung round and saw the Garelochhead hit—a torpedo-hit, that first one probably, the one he’d seen launched. The Garelochhead had been next astern of the Montgovern but after two emergency turns to port she was on the beam now. A spout of seas shot up across her foc’sl; but he wasn’t looking at her now, he was remembering what he was here for and doing it, looking round for new attacks. He heard Withinshaw yell at Beale, “Let’s go ’ome Ron!”
“Which ’ome?”
Wally Short had shouted that. Everyone except the fat man was laughing. The volume of gunfire was decreasing: there was still some action somewhere astern but the torpedo attack, at least, seemed to have played itself out.
Then he saw bombers: high up, and to starboard. He thought they were 88s. You got used to recognizing each different type without consciously looking at the details of its shape: it became like looking at a face, you just glanced at it and knew it. He hadn’t realized this before, and he had to look back at them to check that his quick impression had been right. Siren blaring: the commodore was turning his convoy back to starboard. At present it was ninety degrees off course, steaming directly towards Sardinia, with wind and sea consequently fine on the starboard bow, the ship rolling as well as pitching, a ponderous corkscrewing motion that wasn’t violent but still made you take care of your footing and hold on to things. He’d drawn Beale’s and Withinshaw’s attention to those bombers, and now he was free to look around, take stock.
Earlier on, there’d been a bomb-hit on one of the ships in column four. It had started a fire and there was still a lot of smoke back there. But one ship in each of the outer columns made a total of four casualties so far, although the ship on fire was still keeping up—so far as he could see. Turning, now. The Garelochhead was out of sight, lost among the crowd of freighters astern. As the convoy swung back towards its easterly course she’d be somewhere between columns two and three, and then she’d slip out astern as the rest of them forged on. So—three drop-outs, one burning; and now—gunfire from the cruisers ahead reminded one—the Junkers 88s were about to make their effort.
The bombers were coming over high and in their separate groups. He thought there were fewer than when he’d last looked at them. All the warships firing steadily, surrounding them with shell-bursts which the wind quickly tore to shreds. They were at ten or twelve thousand feet: you got the impression, from their appearance of remoteness, that they were only passing—like migrating geese … Mick McCall was beside him, staring up at them. Paul hadn’t noticed him arriving.
“Fleet Air Arm gave their mates a clobbering. There were half as many again, before they got stuck in.” He jerked his head. “We get a good view of things, up top.”
“Shot them down, you mean?”
“Just broke ’em up. You could see the bomb-loads going, and they’d skip out of it. They’ve got the legs of our lot when they put their noses down.”
The bombers were still flying southwestward. It was the rearmost groups that the cruisers and battleships astern were shooting at now, and one was turning away to port, an engine smoking … Wally and McNaught cheered, and McCall said, “Every little helps.”
Paul said, “Going down in Tunisia, I suppose.”
“Maybe.” McCall told Short, “Don’t want to cheer too soon. It’ll get worse before it gets any better.”
Withinshaw muttered, “Be ’appier if we was carryin’ wheat.” Paul asked why. The fat man said, “Keeps you afloat, like.” McCall explained, “Wheat expands when it gets wet. So if you get holed when you’re carrying it in bulk it’s like having your ’tween-decks full of kapok.”
“It don’t explode, neither.”
“There.” McCall sighed. “Buggers are turning. They’ll be at us now.” He asked Withinshaw, “Had a load of wheat on that Atlantic trip, did you?”
“Aye. Out of Halifax. Laffin’, we were.”
“Does a lot o’ laffin’, does
our Art.” Beale glanced round at McCall, then back at the 88s. “Won’t be laffin’ when they catch ’im, though.”
The bombers were circling astern, maintaining the separate groups. Paul asked McCall, “A ship on fire, is there, back there?”
“The Neotsfield. Last ship in column four. Her skipper reckons they’re getting on top of it, though this wind can’t help.”
“How about the one that was astern of us?”
“Garelochhead. All we know is she was holed and flooding for’ard. She won’t be coming on with us, that’s for sure.” He nodded, with his eyes on the bombers. “Here we go. Here I go.” He told Beale and Withinshaw, “Shoot ’em all down, lads. Wait till you see the whites of their eyes, then plug ’em up the arse.” He went to the ladder and rattled down it, on his way back to the midships Bofors. Paul checked the time: it was 1:35. Beale said, “Stand by, Art.” Up astern, from something like ten thousand feet, the first of the 88s were putting their noses down, aiming their dives into the centre of the convoy.
You waited. There was always such a lot of waiting, Paul thought. In submarines there was a lot of it too. They sent you to patrol an area or a position where it was hoped targets would appear, and you sat and waited for them. Just as submarines on this convoy’s track would be waiting now. But they’d know something was coming, they couldn’t doubt it, whereas sometimes you could wait for two or three weeks,
the whole duration of the patrol, and see nothing. They called those “blank” patrols.
Here, now, you waited for bombs. For bombers diving, with men his own age at their controls. He wondered what it felt like and looked like from up there. But for those Germans the wait was over, the attack had been launched and time-fused shells were exploding in their faces.
Withinshaw was narrow-eyed, open-mouthed. You could see his thick torso heaving as his breath came and went in short gasps. Paul wondered if it was true about his double life. He walked behind him, passing between Wally Short and the ammo bin, to the rail on the port side; he leaned out over it, looking astern. A freighter had closed up in the place of the Garelochhead, and that one and the Montgovern were now the only two ships in column one. Firing was heavy astern: battleships’, cruisers’ and carriers’ AA guns all plastering the sky with highexplosive, dark smoke-flowers opening in tight bunches that quickly loosened and smeared, disintegrating while fresh clutches of them appeared like magic under the noses of the diving bombers. He was back in his place between the guns. That was Mackeson out in the bridge wing, staring aft, up at the approaching aircraft. If Beale or Withinshaw got careless they’d wipe old Bongo off his perch. Gosling was there too, and the signalman. A stockier figure behind the glass-enclosed front of the bridge could only be Humphrey Straight.
Gunfire spreading as well as thickening. The close escort of Hunts had joined in, and Bofors from ships at the tail-ends of columns two and three. It was one roar of noise but you could pick out the different elements in snatches of solo sound: the harsh rattling stabbing fire of Oerlikons, the measured thump-thump-thump of pompoms from the Hunts and the distinctive Bofors bark, and over all of it the hard thunder of four-inch.
Explosion astern. It had sounded like a bomb hitting. Then before he’d expected, like great black bats howling across the sky—
Oerlikons jumping, pumping their din into your skull. Tracer soaring, and the sky a mass of shell-smoke. Withinshaw a jellyfish shaking from the pulsing of his gun, shaking like a fat woman in a slimming machine, and used shell-cases cascading. The sea rose hummocking on his left—to starboard—with the top streaming off it like confetti, and a second later, as a separate stick came down, the back end of the Castleventry’s bridge went up in a sheet of flame.
There were three—four—bombers over the convoy, all just about finishing their dives, pulling out, sea leaping in mounds between ships and columns, and the bone-jarring crash of another hit somewhere on the quarter. Paul wasn’t looking at the Castleventry but that huge gush of fire was still blinding, brain-scorching, as the belly of a Junkers 88 obscenely exposed itself, black crosses on white panels and one of its engines smoking, a lick of bluish flame from the wing behind it and smoke colouring with fire all out along the wing. It was Beale’s gun hitting, Beale screaming joy, and Withinshaw’s tracer arcing to another one, fire-beads curling away behind its tail as it roared over, lifting out of the mess of bomb-bursts and gun-smoke. Half a dozen separate streams of tracer were converging on it but it still rose, banking to port across the Empire Dance. Beale shouted, “I got ’im! See me get ’im?” The first one, he meant, and Paul nodded and gave him a thumbs-up sign, but he hadn’t seen it. He’d seen Beale hitting and the machine in flames; he didn’t doubt that it had crashed but he hadn’t seen it. There were some moments now in which to breathe, look around, confirm that this ship was still intact, still plugging on: it was simultaneously reassuring and surprising. The noise had lessened and there were no enemies for the moment within Oerlikon range; ships astern were barraging at the next flight as it started down but here in the convoy there was a surprising pause. The Castleventry was out on the quarter, several cables’ lengths away. He was looking at her, at the flames enshrouding her superstructure and right back as far as the after well deck, when she blew up. The heat as well as the shock-wave of the explosion hit them solidly, from a distance of about half a mile. Then the Empire Dance and the Blackadder and the freighter who’d moved up into the Castleventry’s station all opened fire. Some of the merchantmen had Brens and other light machine-guns mounted in their bridge wings and flying bridges, as well as Bofors and Oerlikons. Withinshaw had opened up, but Beale’s gun had jammed as soon as he’d pressed the trigger, and he and Short were working to clear it all through that attack. They were still at it, cursing, when the third bout started. Another Junkers had gone flaming into the sea ahead, and the Hunt-class escort who’d been standing by the Castleventry and must have had her paint blistered in that explosion had ranged up close to port of the Montgovern, adding her own close-range weapons to the protective barrage. Two tin-hatted sailors on her foc’sl were ditching what looked like wreckage—probably bits of the Castleventry blown on to her. Paul could see her guns’ crews and bridge staff—busy, smoke-wreathed, somehow like parts of the ship herself, men and weapons and ship forming one live creature. He was reminded of destroyer action of his own, of the smell and sound of it and the sudden transition to swimming with a half-dead man on his back, then swimming alone, realizing he didn’t know whether he was swimming towards the shore or away from it. He’d lost his sense of direction but after an initial surge of panic it didn’t seem to matter much … He grabbed Withinshaw’s thick shoulder, and pointed. Withinshaw swung round like a heavyweight ballet dancer twirling, old twinkle-toes himself. He had his sights on the underside of the Junkers as it flattened and its bombs thumped into the sea somewhere in the middle of the convoy. The gun began its fierce clattering roar, Withinshaw a-tremble with it as he slid his thick body round, hose-piping with the tracer. Then a shell from the Hunt burst under the bomber’s tail and it was a cloud of out-flying debris around the bright nucleus of its exploding petrol tanks.
Mackeson said, “Not so good, that shemozzle.” Humphrey Straight, who’d been adjusting engine revs to maintain station on the commodore’s beam, only glanced at him and sniffed. Devenish, who’d moved up front in case the master wanted him to take over the conning of the ship now that bit of action had finished, muttered, “And we’ve got tonight ahead of us.”
Tonight they’d be turning down into the Skerki Channel, towards the Sicilian Narrows. And before dark—apart from whatever might be thrown at them in the interim—there’d be the evening, sunset performance.
Mackeson thought, And we’re lucky, at that. Because the Castleventry people, amongst others, did not have an evening or a night ahead of them.
The destroyers were busy with a submarine contact out on the convoy’s bow. Three of them had converged there, and they’d dropped two
patterns of charges. The escort commander had sent his two reserves—Hunt-class ships which he’d stationed ahead of the cruisers for this purpose—to fill the temporary gaps in the screen.
Gunfire from ahead. Mackeson raised his binoculars. It had come from destroyers, but it had already stopped. He caught a glimpse of a single aircraft, flying low to the sea and coming in towards the convoy. He’d tensed, but relaxed again when his signalman said, “Fulmar, sir.”
“You’re right.” Devenish had his glasses on it too. “And it’s in trouble.”
It was trailing smoke, and struggling to stay airborne. But if it went down now, a destroyer would get the pilot out, with any luck—unless he was badly wounded. Quite a few of the fighters returning from intercepting enemy formations had been in difficulties, struggling to reach their carriers. And when they did make it, since this last fracas they’d found they all had to get down on just one of them, because the other had had a bomb on her flight-deck. It was an armoured deck and the bomb hadn’t penetrated, but it would be a while before that carrier could operate normally. A side-effect was that the other one would be so overcrowded that her flying operations would be hampered too.
“He’s going in.”
All the Drowning Seas: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 3 Page 16