The Bonny Boy

by David Black

  ‘How are things, cox’n. With the crew?’ Farrar had asked.

  ‘How d’you mean, sir?’ said Ainsworth.

  ‘How are they settling down, under the new skipper? Enjoying the excitement? Bit of a change from Cap’n Bayliss I should’ve thought?’

  They were both on delicate ground; but then Nick Farrar and Eric Ainsworth had built up a pretty good understanding while Bertie Bayliss had been in command – they’d had to.

  Farrar wasn’t completely sure yet what he thought about Harry, whether he really was a breath of fresh air or was actually a bit of a cowboy who’d just been lucky so far. Him deciding to go tearing off after half the Italian Navy without telling anyone had Farrar twitchy again. But then sometimes a crew had the better perspective on matters like this, and who’d know better than the boat’s senior rate. It was outrageous of course, for Farrar, the Jimmy, to actually ask such a question. And no senior petty officer of Ainsworth’s standing would ever give him a straight answer. But there were hints that could be dropped, asides, things left not said.

  ‘You mean have I noticed anything changed in the boat, sir?’

  ‘Yes, cox’n.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I have, sir. Laughter, sir. You hear the crew laughing a lot now, sir.’

  And the two men looked at each other, knowing what the other was thinking: all the times in the past that they’d heard from an angry Bayliss the same deadening bark, ‘I hope that’s not levity I’m hearing in this boat!’

  The two men smiled at each other.

  And that was when all the radio traffic had started piling in.

  Their senior wireless operator, Leading Telegraphist Grieve, had been rousted out his hammock and put back on the radio. He transcribed each signal as it came in, and one of his other telegraphists, perched next to him, decoded. But as well as all the RN stuff, there was an increasing volume of enemy traffic whose codes they couldn’t decipher – at least not here. That was placed on a separate pile. All of it was bearing from west of Palermo.

  Farrar had found Harry at the wardroom table, de-coding all the “CO-only” stuff coming from (S) 8 and (S) 10 – the Eighth and Tenth Flotillas. He’d already ordered Scourge to slow to a mere three knots while he re-assessed. A picture was emerging; a squadron of Italian cruisers had apparently tried to run the Eighth Flotilla’s patrol line. Two of the boats had loosed off full salvoes.

  And there had been other Italian warships on the move.

  ‘It’s a complete shambles out there,’ Harry told Farrar as he scribbled away feverishly. He had young McCready beside him, collating. ‘It appears two lots of Eyetie cruisers sortied at the same time from Cagliari and Palermo, but the Cagliari lot started yelling they had been attacked by submarines. They’d hit the Eighth’s patrol line. Our boats fired off a couple of salvos but there are no confirmations of hits … and it appears the Eyeties have hot-footed it back to Cagliari. The Palermo cruisers turned tail too. Turbid was waiting, but she missed, and they all made it in. Shrimp’s on the blower to all our boats, trying to get our Palermo blocking position re-established in case the Eyeties sortie again.’

  Farrar had suggested it was time now they alert Shrimp as to just where Scourge was.

  ‘No,’ Harry had told him. ‘The main thing is the Italians don’t know we’re here, and I’ve no intention of telling them by sticking up our radio antenna and blabbing away. Even if they won’t know what we’re saying, the Eyeties will know we’re about and be able to triangulate our position. So we’ll continue to be like dad, and keep mum. Now, sit down Nick. I want to tell you what I think is happening. Tom,’ he added to McCready, ‘go and get the chart and Mr Harding. And tell Able Seaman Windass we all want Ky. Now. And remember to memorise all his grumbles and complaints. We’ll need a laugh while we’re working. Especially if he has any new moans.’

  Windass’ disgruntled inventiveness was one of the wonders of the Trade.

  Harry was looking at Farrar when he started talking.

  ‘Standing orders say I should be on the blower to Shrimp telling him where we are,’ he said. ‘I’m not doing that. The Italians mustn’t know we’re here, because I think we have a chance to sink at least one of their battleships. I know in this little boat we’ve no chance of catching the Italian battleships. They cruise at twenty-two knots and we’re lucky if we can squeeze thirteen knots going flat out on the surface. But none of you can have failed to notice that more often than not when the Italian battlefleet sorties on a certain course, it ends up running back again in the direction it came. I want to be there when that happens.’

  Harry paused to let it sink in. The faces round the table were hanging on his every word. ‘People might say I’m taking a risk by staying silent. Of getting attacked by our own side. After all that’s why Shrimp demands to know where his subs are at all times. But Shrimp doesn’t have any Tenth boats in the Tyrrhenian Sea,’ he said. ‘And the RAF doesn’t have any aircraft with the range to reach this far north. So I’m taking the risk, and anyway, it’s not you who has to worry. It’ll be just me if there’s any music to face. And as I’m sure you all know by now gentlemen, it’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.’

  ****

  Harry had Scourge running nor’-nor’west, directly away from the north coast of Sicily, and into the Tyrrhenian Sea. He was frustrated at her lack of speed, but he needed at least one of her diesels charging just in case. She was still at watch diving but the boat was buzzing as her crew worked to prepare her for the action their captain had told them was to come.

  ‘They won’t risk it,’ Harry had told his officers. ‘Not with the battleships. Not with their cruisers already scattered. The battleships will be withdrawing. I know it.’

  Nobody had demurred.

  ‘But where are they going?’ he’d mused aloud. ‘They won’t be coming this way. I’m sure of it. Not back to the Straits. Messina isn’t the place I’d want to hang about. North, then. All the way to La Spezia is too far. In case another chance arises to get at the Torch beaches. So let’s say Naples,’ and he swivelled the chart towards him and took another gulp of Ky. ‘We need to get in their way,’ he said.

  ****

  It was the fact that Scourge wasn’t running flat out that gave them the warning. At full ahead together, the cavitation their propellers would have made, Biddle wouldn’t have heard the Italian battlefleet above the racket.

  ‘Multiple HE, bearing red zero six zero!’ called Biddle. It was coming to the end of the middle watch; still dark and Harry was on the bridge when the word came up from the Asdic cubby. Harry didn’t bother training his night glasses out to port, he knew it would pointless. The watchkeepers did.

  Harry listened at the voicepipe.

  ‘It’s a long way off, sir,’ said Biddle’s tinny voice through the pipe. ‘Big ships … high speed turns … closing the bearing at a fair clip, sir … drawing right.’

  Harry shot down the conning tower hatch. He was at Biddle’s side in seconds, notepad and pencil in hand. ‘Can you give me a bearing rate yet?’ he asked. That would give him an idea of the target’s speed.

  Harding, who was also at the door of the Asdic cubby, said, ‘Yes, sir. By the bearing rate, their speed has to be twenty knots, maybe a bit more. And Biddle reckons they’re going into a zig-zag pattern.’

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ said Biddle, his face creased in the red light spilling from the control room. ‘Here’s my bearings, sir.’ And he handed up scribbles on the back of signal flimsy.

  ‘Thank you, Biddle,’ said Harry, and nodded Harding to the chart table. He took the parallel rulers and began sketching out the bearings from Scourge’s track. It was a rough estimate, but he could see plainly the targets’ tracks drawing inexorably right. Scourge and the targets were converging, although it was apparent as Biddle called the bearings and he drew the pencil lines that the targets were moving a lot faster. They would soon cross Scourge’s bows and begin pulling away. Harry was in
no doubt now it was the Italian battlefleet, and on this heading, that it was headed for Naples.

  But Harry wasn’t intending to go to diving stations just yet. Too much to do before he got the boat closed up for action. He ordered a turn to starboard. Harding, watching, immediately knew what his captain was attempting: to close the gap between them and the targets’ track before the targets’ superior speed saw them disappear over the horizon. In the dark Scourge was now racing along a course that was little more than five degrees off that track, Harry driving hard for the best firing position he could coax out of her.

  ‘Mr McCready,’ said Harry, ‘Go up and relieve Mr Powell on watch. I need him here.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ and McCready was gone.

  ‘Mr Farrar,’ said Harry, ‘Take a walk through the boat. Tell them we are about to attack the Italian battlefleet, and that they’ve not drift off.’

  The two men smiled at each. ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Farrar, and he too was gone, heading aft, first to the engine spaces where in the deafening roar of the diesels they never heard anything and were usually always the last to know.

  The Italian battlefleet. The Regia Marina had started this war with seven battleships – four were modernised Great War veterans, but of the remaining, the most recent had only been launched in 1940. All were sleek, fast and heavily armed, and together they had posed a mortal threat to the British in the Mediterranean even before the outbreak of hostilities.

  Yet the Royal Navy had never managed to bring any one of them to battle proper. At Matapan and Cape Spartivento the Mediterranean Fleet had brushed up against several of them, but they had escaped. At Second Sirte, one of them, Littorio, had even turned and ran from Rear Admiral Vian’s popgun light cruisers. Harry knew it wasn’t because the Regia Marina were cowards or incapable – you only had to have encountered one of their anti-submarine units to know otherwise. It was the concept of “fleet-in-being”. Up against the Royal Navy in battle, if the Italians were to even lose one of their capital ships, their shipyards could never replace her in time. So they husbanded their main force. Afloat, each was at least a threat: on the sea bed, nothing.

  Only the Fleet Air Arm had had any luck; in November 1940, 21 Swordfish from the carrier HMS Illustrious had sunk one and damaged two of their big ships during a night attack on the Italian’s main fleet base at Taranto. And so far, that had been it.

  The submarine service had come close on a couple of occasions. The nearest had been back in ’41 when Tommo Tompkinson in Urge had hit the Vittorio Veneto with a single torpedo, but all he’d succeeded in doing was blowing a small hole in her bow.

  But tonight, out there in the dark, there were three of them, probably a lot less than 10,000 yards away, and Harry Gilmour in HMS Scourge, with a full load of torpedoes, was closing fast.

  Come on Scourge, said Harry to himself again. Come on girl!

  Biddle had HE on three big ships now. From the revolutions he was counting, their speed was almost certainly 22 knots. He couldn’t make an accurate count on the smaller HE – the destroyers – there were too many of them

  Harry leaned against the search periscope, his face, too, etched in red light, his watch cap on the back of his head, hands plunged deep in his watch jacket pockets, moving only to check the plot every time Harding, hunched over the chart table, marked each bearing change as Biddle called them.

  Farrar returned from his rounds. ‘Well, their danders are up,’ he said.

  Of course they were. Imagine being the boat that finally sank an Italian battleship.

  Harry smiled, then pointed Farrar to the plot. ‘Mr Harding has us at 14,000 yards. They’re running in on a zig right now. We expect them to zag away directly. Which is good. It’ll get us much further down their mean track before we have to turn in to commence our attack.’

  Farrar’s red-washed face peered over Harding’s shoulder.

  ‘Targets under helm, sir … turning to port,’ they heard Biddle call.

  ‘… and there they go,’ said Harry, who waited for Farrar to turn back to him. ‘When you go up to the forward torpedo room, tell Powell it’s going to be a submerged attack.’

  Farrar looked at him, ‘Sir?’

  Harry knew his first lieutenant wasn’t questioning his orders. Let us say, just confirming them. An attack on the surface at night was always going to give them the best chance of success. The targets would be more visible than through a periscope which gathers very little light even in daylight. Also, Scourge would be able to put her better speed on the surface to good use; with her low profile she might penetrate the destroyer screen. Once inside, the destroyers’ lookouts would all be looking the other way, outwards, leaving Scourge to get in closer and making a hit on one of the battleships more likely before the whole cavalcade thundered past them and it was all too late.

  But once inside, once they’d fired, the enemy would be all around them, and escape unlikely. Even if they decided to dive immediately after firing, the noise and jets from the main ballast venting would draw every ship in the screen down on them.

  But Captain Gilmour wasn’t planning on going down that road. He had weighed the risks and decided against, even though some might have said the prize was worth it.

  A submerged attack against targets moving so fast would require luck as well as skill. To have any reasonable hope of success Scourge would have to get ahead of the enemy force, and penetrate the screen by having it run over her. But a casual look at the plot told you Scourge was never going to get ahead of them.

  This wasn’t going to be like when he took on those Italian cruisers in Umbrage, after his captain had gone over the wall, and the number one had come tumbling down the conning tower hatch with a broken shoulder blade, and the enemy really were coming down his throat.

  This time if he wanted to attack he was going to have manoeuvre the boat in from a-beam, probably even from abaft the beam, turning at the last moment as the enemy thundered past no matter what the range or the track angle and having to fire through the screen even as the enemy ships were speeding away, hoping for the best.

  Farrar was watching Harry, wondering what had suddenly made the captain so coy, when Biddle announced he was confident the screen was made up of at least 10 destroyers. Hmmn. That would make anyone coy.

  Harry acknowledged the call and ordered the turn in to port, and then said to Farrar as he was on his way for’ard, ‘And tell Powell to make the depth settings eighteen feet. The destroyers will all have draughts of about twelve feet. I want to make sure our torpedoes pass under them.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Farrar, and then was gone.

  Harry went back to the plot. Harding had the targets still heading in on a 25 degree zig off their mean track. As Scourge turned in, it put the big enemy ships about 30 degrees off her port bow and at a best estimate, of between 6,000 or 7,000 yards range and angling towards. At 22 knots, the enemy would be covering about 700 yards a minute. The last zag, they had run for almost five minutes before zigging again. Scourge was now running in towards them at almost 14 knots. He needed them to turn away again. He also knew his lookouts on the bridge would soon be making the call, ‘Enemy in sight!’; it would be the first outlying destroyer of the screen, ranging out beyond 3,000 yards from its charges, and on a clear night like this, on a calm sea, its shadow should be emerging from the background dark about now.

  He had it all in his head; he didn’t know how he did it, it was just all there. All the moving parts, the changing speeds and angles. He didn’t even have to shut his eyes to see it. The way in, and the way out again.

  But there was also the big picture to consider. It was what Shrimp always said, he didn’t mind his captains taking risks, as long as they were calculated ones. Because every submarine in the Mediterranean right now was a vital strategic asset, and not to be squandered on any reckless dash for glory. And charging in at an acute angle on the surface into a body of ships moving at almost twice his speed, would be just that. He�
�d have more chance trying to run across heavy traffic on the A1.

  When Farrar got to the forward torpedo room, he was back in ordinary light. In what seemed a harsh glare compared to the red light in the control room, Powell was supervising the LTO and his men on final checks of the tubes.

  Apart from the lack of deafening racket, it was just as it had been aft; for these men, Scourge’s crew, they might as well have been out on an exercise on the Solent for all they knew of what was happening around them. They wouldn’t know they were in action until they’d heard the order, ‘Fire one!’ or until the first depth charges started coming down. And yet nobody seemed to care. He’d walked in on a few jokes getting passed between the goofers and the crew actually doing the work.

  ‘… remember, Shug, the curvature of your aperture must always equal the angle of the dangle,’ a reclining rating was advising one of the torpedomen working on the starboard tube drains. A voice from further for’ard butted in, helpfully pointing out, ‘… where the beat of the meat is a constant!’ Shug managed his reply before the Jimmy’s presence shut everybody up, ‘Aye, right! And if ye want to angle over here a bit, I’ll put an aperture in your dangle.’

  It was a crowded, cluttered space, with men not engaged in the work keeping out the way on top of the torpedo re-loads. Nobody could stand up to salute Farrar’s entrance – there wasn’t the room among the pipes, cable runs, tool racks and the men’s stowed kit. So the men all just said, ‘Sir,’ and Farrar responded with a ‘Carry on.’

  Farrar had been a Jimmy long enough to know the difference between couldn’t-care-less and morale. The levity didn’t worry him; he knew this crew was paying attention to its work, even though they were also telling jokes, despite, for all they knew, this skipper they were trusting in might be about to sacrifice all of them on a death-or-glory charge right into the middle of half the Italian Navy, and that in less than an half an hour they would all be dead.