by David Black
His first patrol as skipper of Nonpareil, back at sea and back at war in an operational boat, had been a dismal affair. Their first patrol billet, handed them by the Tenth Flotilla’s Staff Officer, Operations had been a dud. Not even a fishing smack crossed their path.
It was reassuring in a funny sort of way, how a lot of things hadn’t changed since he’d left Malta after his last epic, hellish patrol aboard Nicobar.
The Captain (S) was still the old “Shrimp” Simpson, and the old book of railway warrants he used to scribble a boat’s orders out on still signified Captain Simpson’s attitude to paperwork: Patrol sea area between Straits of Messina and Aeolian Islands, signed Captain S10 – valid until … and then he’d rubber stamp the date, like a ticket inspector.
After a week of nothing, Shrimp had ordered them away from the Lipari Islands, westward to the approaches to Cagliari in southern Sardinia, usually a busy transit port for Axis convoys preparing to make the dash across to Tunisia. And busy it was, except that with every target that presented itself, Nonpareil was always too late, or just too slow. Harry only ever got close enough once to a big fat freighter to fire any torpedoes – and both of them missed. After three weeks out, they had slinked back to Malta with eight torpedoes still in their tubes, and their Jolly Roger still folded in the signal locker.
The intelligence had been a bit more specific this time, however: two freighters and a tanker with escorts unknown, sailing from Palermo, time and date supplied. All they had to do was get to the interception point on time and wait; and now they had. Harry took one last look around the dim, dark horizon where behind him a subtle paleness was creeping up from the sea.
‘Clear the bridge!’ he called, and the two lookouts, followed by Prosser, shot down the conning tower hatch. As he stepped to it himself, he hit the klaxon twice to dive the boat, glancing at his watch. All dives were to be against the clock; he’d made that clear soon after assuming command. He wasn’t trying to be a martinet; getting down fast was something that had been drummed into him since he’d first set foot aboard a submarine. It was what you did – for obvious reasons. And the more you did it, the faster you got. However, he’d been impressed how fast Nonpareil was; her best time since he’d come aboard had been 14 seconds, which was pretty good. He could hear the roar of her venting tanks and feel the boat fall beneath his feet as he jumped down and pulled the hatch shut, calling, ‘One clip on, two clips on!’ before sliding down the ladder and landing on the control room deck plates with a thud.
‘Keep thirty feet,’ he said.
‘Keep thirty feet,’ the Outside ERA repeated as his hands fluttered over the diving board, adjusting the flood on the ballast tanks that would take Nonpareil down to just below her periscope depth.
Harry looked at his watch, and as he did, the wrecker called, ‘Thirty feet!’ Just over 16 seconds. Acceptable.
‘We’re on course two seven zero, grouped down, speed three knots, sir,’ reported the number one, standing by the diving board too. The outside wrecker might be the man who twiddled the knobs, but it was the Jimmy’s responsibility to keep the boat’s trim – in other words, to make sure there was just the right amount of water in all her ballast tanks, fore and aft, that she held the depth she was supposed to, and did it on an even keel.
‘Carry on,’ said Harry.
He was used to the routine of command now; everyone reporting to him, calling him sir, not acting until told to and never assuming, although it had taken some time for the novelty, and the sweaty palms to wear off. Being confronted constantly by the fact it was you in charge was an unsettling experience even for the most confident of new skippers. In fact it was a distraction that could be downright dangerous for the CO of an operational boat on war patrol.
It was however, something their lordships understood, and was why every new skipper spent his first few months in command tootling around the Firth of Clyde in an old H boat, playing clockwork mouse to working-up convoy escorts and being chased by Fleet destroyers in need of a refresher course.
Harry had served his time as a clockwork mouse, and been grateful on a couple of counts. As well as getting the hang of command, there’d been domestic matters he’d wanted to deal with, and leave was easier to come by when you weren’t operational and home was never further than a paddle steamer ride across the Firth.
His next set of orders had suited him even more.
After several weeks in charge of H57 he’d been appointed to command a new S class, HMS P268, still under construction at Scott’s Yard in Greenock. The little dockyard hut that he’d occupied there was even closer to home – and to Glasgow. Until the Luftwaffe had brought his career in that direction to an abrupt end, and he’d ended up back with the Tenth as a replacement skipper, and on Nonpareil for his first operational command. What was it they said? If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.
Harry stepped over to look at the plot, which Prosser had bang up to date. The navigator was a slight young man, with slicked down blond hair cut rather old fashioned, and a serious face that always looked like he was concentrating.
‘When are we to expect our visitors, Mr Prosser?’ Harry asked.
‘The window opens in one hour thirty … seven minutes, sir,’ said Prosser.
‘Number One,’ said Harry, ‘Stand everyone down. Go to watch dived. We’ll go back to diving stations in … thirty …’ Harry looked at his watch, ‘… six minutes!’
They might already be submerged, but then the order “Diving stations” in the Trade meant so much more than the name suggested. You didn’t call Diving stations just to get the boat down, or up again. It also covered going to “Action stations!” Action stations! might be the standard order aboard Royal Navy surface ships for engaging the enemy, but not on submarines. The reasoning was that diving a submarine was a far riskier enterprise than merely preparing to engage the enemy, one that required every crew member to be at his station, ready for any and every emergency. By sounding the diving stations klaxon, you pretty well had every contingency covered – including going to “Action stations!”
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ said number one.
Nonpareil’s first lieutenant was Robert Blake, another regular RN officer, and at least three or four years older than Harry. He was taller too, and unlike most officers in the Trade, not in the slightest bit wild. In fact, in his demeanour he reminded Harry of the classic English butler, which at once made him think he and the Honourable Ferneyheugh must have made some team.: the comic killers. That Blake was a good officer, and an even better number one had quickly become apparent. So why Blake hadn’t been through his Commanding Officers’ Qualifying Course by now had at first seemed a mystery. Until Harry thought about it. Good number ones were hard to find, and Blake had been with Ferneyheugh since Nonpareil had been commissioned. It was after he’d learned that, that Harry realised Blake was always going to have to wait until the boat was posted back to Blighty for refit before he’d be released to do his Perisher, because Ferneyheugh wasn’t going to let him go before then. Harry went off the idea of jolly squire Ferneyheugh after that; only an absolute rotter would block his own Jimmy’s promotion, especially if the Jimmy was a career officer, and was gentleman enough to regularly sport a cravat as part of his sea-going rig.
Blake ran his fingers through his thinning hair, gave his customary self-deprecating smile, and announced he was, ‘off for a stroll’, which meant he was going to do a round of the boat to make sure everything was ‘tickety-boo’.
Harry stepped to lean over Prosser’s chart table again, a tiny wooden shelf attached to the corner of the control room, squeezed between the fruit machine and the hull. He wanted to make sure, for the umpteenth time, that their box search covered just the right area of sea for them to keep ahead of any convoy when it came round the corner of the Egadi Islands. A rating handed him a mug of steaming wardroom tea – stewed to the point of being soup, and sickly sweet with swirling clouds of condensed milk. It was d
isgusting in a comforting, familiar sort of way, and he drank it just the same.
They executed their first turn, then the next, bringing Nonpareil onto 090 degrees, and after a 20-minute run they were about to turn again, when a voice called out from the Asdic cubby, ‘Multiple HE bearing zero zero five degrees! … quite aways off, sir, but definitely coming our way.’
Harry hit the general alarm, and sent them to diving stations.
The coxswain and his second went slipping into their places on the dive planes, and the boat’s nominated diving stations helmsman, Bob Bullock squeezed himself for’ard to take over the boat’s wheel. Good old Frank, the outside wrecker, was already manning the myriad valves and gauges that flooded or vented Nonpareil’s ballast tanks. Frank Lansley, Harry’s old shipmate from the now sunk Pelorus, and the one friendly face to have greeted him when he’d first dropped into Nonpareil’s control room.
‘HE drawing aft, sir,’ came the voice from the Asdic cubby, ‘Targets’ bearing is now one zero zero degrees, abaft our port beam. I’m picking up three heavies, almost certainly transports … and two light. Escorts. And a couple of what sounds like MAS-boats.’
It was their visitors, as advertised.
‘Port thirty,’ Harry said, ‘Bring me onto three zero zero. As Nonpareil completed her turn, Harry ordered her to periscope depth, and as she rose, he crouched down to open the ’scope’s handles as it came up, and using it’s bezel, put it on the targets’ estimated bearing; now 10 degrees off the starboard bow. He was practically kneeling when the main periscope’s head broke surface. It was a bright, sunny day with high scattered clouds, and a slight chop on the water, which was good. On flat calms, the wake feather a periscope trailed even at dead slow could often be seen from quite a distance; and the ominous long dark hull of a submarine could frequently become all too visible to any passing patrol plane in the bright clear water of the Med, even when she was at depth.
The targets were where they should be, but he had to raise the periscope high out the water to see them; – higher than he would’ve liked. He did a quick all round look none-the-less: nothing. Then, back. It took him bare seconds to take in his quarry. ‘Bearing is that!’ said Harry, and the leading seaman who had stepped in behind him, read, ‘green seven three,’ off the bezel. Harry twisted one of the handles on the ’scope and the image of the lead transport split horizontally. He lowered the top image down until its waterline touched the masts of the bottom image, and called, ‘Range is that!’ The leading seaman read off a reading in minutes of arc from a little panel on the periscope’s body above Harry’s head, ‘Thirteen minutes!’
The lead transport was a good 7,000-tonner, with lots of deck space crammed with cargo, and a cargo-passenger central superstructure with a modern, raked single funnel; Harry reckoned from experience the mast height would be about sixty feet. By subtending the minutes of arc by that height he would arrive at the range, more or less, so he did the sum in his head and he called it, ‘Range four thousand five hundred yards … down periscope,’ and the big tube slid out of his hands as he collapsed its handles. It had been above the waves less than 20 seconds. ‘From the bow wave, I’d say speed was twelve knots,’ he said over his shoulder to the boat’s “fourth”, a young RNVR sub-lieutenant, just like Harry’d once been – although Harry never remembered being that young. Leslie was his name, and he diligently dialled the figure into Nonpareil’s fruit machine as he’d done all the others.
From the angled line of the masts on the transports, Harry’s eye told him he was about 70 degrees on the target’s port bow making the enemy’s course about 260 degrees, which made sense. He called the estimated course too. He’d correct that each time he took a look. Meanwhile his eye rested on young Mr Leslie as he dialled that figure in too. The lad’s slight frame was almost lost in one of those ubiquitous, huge, shapeless white roll-neck pullovers, and his ears stuck out from a brown fuzz of stubble where his hair should’ve been. Harry noticed the lad was biting his lip to help him concentrate. Funny the things that catch your eye at times like this, he thought, right about the time he was saying to himself, God help us!
‘Start the attack,’ said Harry, ‘Keep sixty feet.’ As the boat angled down, he ordered, ‘Group up!’ And then he stepped for’ard and rang the engine room telegraph for full ahead together.
Shrimp’s intelligence brief had said to expect three transports, and three transports there were, in column, line astern; the biggest was the cargo-passenger ship, behind her was one of those typical Mediterranean freighters, probably built in the 1920s, with a tall natural draught funnel. Big for her type though, reckoned Harry; maybe 3,000 tons. Last in line was a tanker; modern, a 4,000-tonner at least. They were all deep-laden, but the tanker; she was loaded to the gunnels with the sea practically lapping her cargo decks.
Leading the column were two Italian Navy escorts. Harry recognised them immediately; they were Spica class torpedo boats, beautiful ships, with long, raked lines, over 270 feet in length, just under 1,000 tons, and known to be capable of 35 knots with the throttles opened. They also packed a nasty punch: three four-inch guns, 10 Breda 20mm cannon and as many .50 calibre anti-aircraft machine guns as they could cram aboard, as well as up 40 depth charges each if they removed the three torpedo tubes they’d been built with.
Harry described what he’d seen to the control room, then added, ‘The two Spicas are holding station like they were outriders either side of the column, practically a-beam of the lead transport, and a lot closer in than usual. Bloody too close. We’re going to have to fire past them, and that’s going to be a bugger. Because there’s at least two MAS-boats this side of the column, dashing about all over the place as usual, and a shagbat, keeping low. Although she’s ranging far ahead right now. She’s a big bugger too … a Cant 506 … one of those tri-motor seaplanes.’
The older hands could read between the lines: submarine skippers usually liked to sneak inside any escort screen because that meant the escort lookouts would all be looking outward when they fired, and so unlikely to see their attack until it was too late. But if the screen was tight and escorts were hogging the sea room close in to the convoy, that meant Nonpareil would be forced to fire from a greater distance. And with a “shagbat” and MAS-boats milling about too, that was a lot of eyes on the water – all the easier to spot a tell-tale torpedo wake, and alert the transports to turn away. It also meant it was more likely they’d see where the submarine had fired from, which made it far easier for them to home in on the patch of sea where you’d likely still be.
Every eye in the control room was on Harry right then, even if they weren’t actually looking at him; and every crewman aboard was wondering the same thing: how was the new boy going to perform? Harry knew what they were thinking. How could he not? He was thinking it to. Because every time a submarine put to sea, let alone went into action, it always came down to the same thing: the old Trade contract between skipper and crew – it was all about trust.
In no other branch of the service was a captain’s power so complete. He was the only one who looked through the periscope, the only one aboard on whose judgement and skill all their lives depended so totally. Yet he could do nothing unless every man behind him did his job, to the letter. And that was the trouble with these replacement skipper berths: nobody had time to get to know each other, to build the mutual confidence the contract required. Everybody was left wondering; and if you were wondering, you weren’t concentrating on doing your job properly. It was all just another good, old fashioned Royal Navy lash-up, with good old fashioned naval discipline left to take the strain – again – which made it all a bit of a gamble, especially considering all the things that could go wrong aboard a submarine – fast.
Harry stepped over to look at the plot again. Prosser had it all marked up, immaculate: Nonpareil’s position at the start of the attack; the convoy’s bearing, range and track, with the line projecting out so as Harry could immediately see where Nonpareil was on cour
se to bisect it. Harry looked at his watch again. How far had they run. He was doing the sums in his head when Prosser marked their position now. Harry didn’t know whether to be impressed or irritated. And this was the trouble: he shouldn’t have been feeling either; he should’ve been concentrating.
Because he was in charge.
From when he’d first went to sea he’d often wondered what it would be like to command; he thought of all the confident little scenarios he’d play out in his head, and the decisiveness he’d demonstrate every time – the swagger that comes all too easy when what you’re facing is all in your head and reality isn’t forcing you to weigh any consequences.
Lately, he’d become less and less cocky the more he’d seen of what it took to be a good skipper. But none of that reflection had prepared him for the real thing when it had actually hit him; the first time his first lieutenant on H57 had called him, ‘Sir,’ and then had stood in respectful silence waiting for orders. And even that seemed a long way away now, seen from here.
He fixed the plot in his head and got ready for the three-dimensional chess match. At least he knew he was good at that. All the other noises fell away and before he knew it he was in the box again. He looked at his watch. He was closing the leading enemy transport’s track too fast, and in danger of getting to his ideal firing point before her.
‘Group down,’ he said, and he heard his order repeated; then he rang himself for ‘slow ahead together,’ on the engine room telegraph. He felt Nonpareil beneath the soles of the sea boots he’d taken to wearing, now the weather was getting chillier. ‘Asdic, what’s the targets’ bearing now?’ he said, then added, ‘What’s the picture you’re getting?’