Turn Left for Gibraltar

by David Black

  Harry already had the lead ships on the TBT. ‘Range five thousand yards,’ he said. Then he called the course, adding, ‘Unable to estimate speed. Angle too acute.’

  The lookout called, ‘Targets zigzagging . . . to their port, Sir!’ Harry, glancing down at his watch, said, ‘Right on the pattern, Sir!’

  Carey smiled at Harry’s back, still crouched over the TBT. Then he raised his binoculars and turned his attention to watching the enemy ships, advancing in two columns. Just like the plot had said they would be, coming up on what must have been another waypoint on their course, and now turning in sequence. And as the convoy’s columns turned, further to port, swinging wide, another destroyer came into silhouette. And the instant he saw it, Carey saw his opportunity.

  This was Nicobar’s time, her moment. The port-side destroyer was way out, maybe six thousand yards off the convoy’s beam. Nicobar had to get inside. But if the destroyer saw her, and opened fire, she’d have to dive. And the convoy would escape.

  Carey stepped to the bridge’s little binnacle and took a quick bearing. ‘Bring us on to two-one-seven,’ he said down the pipe, ‘full ahead, together. And Mr Mundell, a puff of air in one and six.’ And Nicobar, came up, her decks just clear, no more washing, turbulent drag of water around her three-inch gun mount and around the base of her conning tower, so she could now surge forward into the widening gap between the turning convoy, and its slower-turning outside escort.

  If you looked around you on the bridge, it was still pitch dark, but in the sky rising out of the horizon, the black was turning blue, and lightening all the time.

  The three big liners began to blank out the horizon: big slab-sided beasts, towering out of the blackness of the sea, creaming wakes running down their flanks, while beyond lay the three other ships. As their two columns advanced, Harry could see quite clearly the lead cargo vessel beyond the liners, easily two thousand tons of her. But he was aware he was also watching the cargo ship disappear. The leading liner – by her size either the Lombardia or the Toscana – was pulling ahead. Even though the liners were on the outside of the turn, their more powerful engines were moving them faster, and the convoy was moving out of step. Harry, still bent over the TBT, called the bearing to the lead liner again, then flipped the stadimeter and dropped the top image on to the lower ship’s mastheads.

  ‘Range two thousand eight hundred yards,’ he said. Then as he watched the white wake along the lead liner’s hull diminish, as she slowed to let the cargo ships catch up, he realised he was being handed their speed by this manoeuvre. ‘Troopships’ speed estimated fifteen knots,’ he said.

  ‘Concur,’ said Carey, binoculars still stuck to his face. ‘There is an enemy destroyer closing on our port bow, Mr Gilmour. Range and bearing, please?’

  Harry spun the TBT to the destroyer now. She was now almost bow on to them, and Harry could see clearly the white, foaming bow wave curling from her stem. Harry was sure she was a Navigatori-class. These bloody things were practically light cruisers. Over 2,500 tons and 350 feet long, they were armed with six 4.7-inch guns and all the usual depth charge racks and throwers. And they were bloody fast, he remembered that – over thirty-eight knots! He also remembered their draught: eleven feet six inches. And that all Nicobar’s torpedoes had been set to run at twelve feet. Which was good, because they weren’t after any destroyers. Harry had experience of how handy it could be if you could shoot your torpedoes under an escort. That had been how his first boat, Pelorus, had bagged the Von Zeithen.

  He flipped the stadimeter again. ‘Range to enemy destroyer, bearing red-five-zero, is three thousand six hundred yards!’

  Carey lowered his binoculars and banged the lip of the bridge with both hands, willing his boat faster. ‘Come on, Nicobar, old girl!’ They were charging into the gap between the destroyer and the liners, and then they were through the screen. Carey said to Harry, ‘Start setting up the troopships now, Mr Gilmour. Range and bearing on each one, and let’s get a picture set up.’

  Harry began taking bearings to the other liners. The Sovrana dei Mari was the middle ship; she was so bloody big she was easy to spot. He did the sums in his head for what they were planning. They were now on a track angle of twenty-seven degrees to the liners as they ran out along their zig.

  He spun back on to the destroyer. They were inside her turning circle now, between her and the charges she was supposed to be protecting, and still no one had spotted them. He called, ‘Enemy destroyer . . . range, two thousand six hundred!’

  Then back to the lead troopship, to check. ‘Bearing red-fifteen, range one thousand seven hundred!’

  It was time. Right now.

  Carey flipped open the voice-pipe. ‘Starboard, thirty, half ahead, together!’ Then he leaned over and picked up the bridge mic and waited, as Nicobar began to slow, and to heel in towards her prey. Harry, doing little steps, as though he was shadow-dancing with a midget, taking bearings on all three troopships now, calculating the director angles for a ninety-eight-degree track.

  ‘Midships!’ Carey called down the pipe, and then into the mic said, ‘Bridge, torpedo room. Open bow caps!’

  He’d had to wait until now to order bow caps open. Nobody wanted fifteen knots’ worth of water tunnelling into their tubes, spinning the arming props while the torpedoes were still in there, and anyway, they couldn’t fire them going at that tilt, without the torpedoes tumbling out of control the instant the compressed air had ejected them into such a torrent of on-rushing sea.

  And suddenly they were all bathed in the sodium-hard glare of a searchlight, pointing directly at them.

  Harry scrunched his eyes tight shut, but the light had got in. A ship’s siren whoop rent the air, so close.

  In his ear, Harry heard the order to ‘Cycle main vents!’ And then two phwoffs, a way off . . . Was someone firing starshells or flares? An Eyetie’s code for alerting the convoy to the presence of an enemy sub? But they weren’t flares. They were the reports of guns firing. Old guns. Then there were two more loud reports. Yes, definitely cannons, but not modern, quick-firing jobs. They must be deck guns on the troopships. He opened his eyes in time to see two pillars of water rise abaft their beam, falling around the Navigatori as she was heeling into a high-speed turn, coming around to run them down. And then tracer fire arcing out from the Sovrana dei Mari, and when he followed it, he watched the heavy rounds go way wide of them, and then start sparking off the Italian destroyer’s superstructure. Two more reports, in quick succession; now the lead troopship was firing. Deck guns. They sounded like three-inchers, and they were aiming at their own destroyer escort too.

  What were they thinking? Were they just shooting at anything they could see? They surely couldn’t see Nicobar, down now, decks awash again and still inside the line of shadow, only her conning tower above the waves. But then nor could they really see the destroyer: she’d just be a dark shape, moving fast in the night. But they were really pouring fire into it anyway – into their own escort! Maybe they thought her dark shape was Force K or F, coming back again from Gib. The Eyetie destroyer was certainly coming from the right direction for that. And every Italian merchant sailor would know by now, what Royal Navy surface units were capable of, if they ever got among your convoy.

  Then his astonished reverie was broken.

  ‘You’re on, Mr Gilmour,’ he heard Carey say. Harry knew immediately what he meant – he needed to start firing their torpedoes now, right now, before the destroyer fired a starshell and showed her charges they were shooting at the wrong target.

  He bent back to the TBT; they were now on their track angle of ninety-eight degrees. Perfect. He dialled the range into the TBT; he didn’t need to call it, but he did anyway: ‘Eight hundred and twenty yards!’

  The TBT had calculated the director angle for him and as he laid it on the target’s track, he watched the lead troopship’s bow edge over the line on his viewfinder, and called, ‘Fire one! Commence the turn, Sir!’

  ‘Fire
one!’ Carey said into the mic, then he leaned to the voice-pipe and said, ‘Port, five.’

  Nicobar rose, as if upon a steeper wave, and they all saw the telltale torpedo wake stream out from her bows. When Harry watched it go, he knew; he could see: it was going to hit. He could even guess where – just abaft the troopship’s bridge.

  He began counting the seconds, but before he could call it, Carey did. He could do sums in his head too; the troopship’s length, her speed, the time it would take for their torpedo to run.

  ‘Fire two!’

  Harry shouldn’t have looked up. It took him too many seconds to align the second ship, the Sovrana dei Mari. He rushed it as Nicobar continued her turn. ‘Second target. On deflection angle, red-two-zero . . . Now!’

  ‘Fire three!’ Carey called into the mic, and the next bubbling trail shot out towards the enemy. Harry imagining the sums going through Carey’s head; the range to the second target closing to eight-fifty yards; the time taken for a 45-knot torpedo to travel it, and the distance the target would travel in the seconds now counting; and then he called, ‘Fire four!’ Once their last bow shot had cleared, Carey said into his mic, ‘Right, Mr Napier, aft, pronto!’ And as he said the words, there was the deafening, reverberating . . .

  BUDDUMMMNN!

  The detonation of their first torpedo as it tore into the first troopship. Harry looked up to see the huge pinnacle of water begin to cascade down again. He’d been wrong, it hadn’t hit under her bridge, it had hit right under her fore funnel, right in her forward engine room.

  ‘Port, thirty!’ Carey was yelling into the voice-pipe, amid the din: the echoing of their torpedo hit, and the persistent clattering of the machine-gun fire still going on over their heads, and from more deck guns, opening up now, from the Sovrana dei Mari, and the other troopship astern of her. All battering away at their own escort! When Harry looked back, the big bridge wing signal lamp on the enemy destroyer was flashing furiously back at her assailants, and two coloured flares went up, obviously recognition signals, but the troopships’ gunners were too busy, bent to their guns, to recognise that the target they were shooting at was friendly.

  More tracer continued to lace the sky above them, and as Nicobar turned away from the liners, when Harry looked back he could see the sun was up enough now that the giant troopships were no longer lowering slabs of shadow. Details were beginning to emerge: their lines of boat decks, figures on their gun platforms, fore and aft; figures on the bridge wings. And their immediate victim’s name could be picked out on her bows: Toscana.

  She had fallen out of the line, and behind her, the Sovrana dei Mari began turning in to dodge her crippled comrade, turning into the path of the destroyer, which in turn suddenly began to slew away from the giant troopship, and from Nicobar.

  It was then that their second torpedo struck home.

  Harry saw Toscana’s stern leap, and a great gout of water rise up under it. But before the noise and the shock wave of the detonation hit them, a terrible rending scream filled the air, like a madman leaning on the whistle of a hurtling steam train, and above the crippled troopship, a jet of roiling white was shooting out of one of the vents on her forward funnel into the sky, its eddies and billows now catching the light from the rising sun.

  ‘One of her boilers has gone,’ said Carey, looking back in horror, his voice all but lost in the noise of the escaping steam and the reverberations from their second torpedo detonating, both he and Harry not wanting to imagine what it must be like in her engine room at that moment, and the men cooking in there.

  And all the while, torpedoes three and four were still in the water, running toward their target, the Sovrana dei Mari.

  The mic on the bridge crackled to life. ‘Aft torpedo room, bridge. Tubes five and six flooded, stern caps open!’

  It was Napier.

  This was always going to be the trick shot; firing the stern tubes at the third troopship. Harry couldn’t use the TBT; couldn’t train it aft far enough for the shot. He was going to have to use the periscope, and he was already in the conning tower hatch, hands on the ladder’s uprights, sliding down on to the control room, feet not touching a rung until they hit the deck plates.

  Everything speeded up now. Fast, confused. Harry hears the two klaxon blasts, Carey is diving the boat. But then there’s a voice: the sound of a lookout yelling, ‘Destroyer closing fast! Starboard beam! Red-one-zero-zero!’

  It’s the convoy’s back stop, coming up fast from astern.

  Harry has the attack periscope up, and is training aft as the lookouts come tumbling down behind him. Bang! Bang! Their feet hitting the plates, and them running, clearing for’ard, first one, then the next and then Carey shouting, ‘One clip on, two clips on! Hatch secure! Twenty-seven feet!’ Calling periscope depth, as Nicobar drops beneath Harry’s feet. Yeo is at the fruit machine. Butler’s calling, ‘High-speed HE, bearing red-one-zero-zero. Closing fast!’

  In the back of Harry’s mind is a thought: What’s happened to their third torpedo? Then they hear and feel it. It’s a hit on the Sovrana dei Mari, and he calculates: three seconds until the fourth torpedo takes her. But a Leading Seaman is already behind Harry, ready to read the bezel as he searches for the already veering third troopship, the Lombardia.

  He finds her. ‘Bearing is . . . that!’ calls Harry, and the rating calls, ‘Green-one-sixty!’

  As Yeo cranks it in, Harry calls, ‘Range is that!’ The rating reads the minutes from the periscope, and calls them. Harry does the sums, and says, all calm now, ‘Range, one thousand two hundred yards’, before his voice gets louder. ‘. . . She’s turning away. Bugger! Speed is twenty knots! Make the speed twenty knots!’ He’s called it but he doesn’t know that for sure, but he has to fire, so he has to guess.

  Nicobar is at periscope depth now. Harry, eyes still on the target. He knows the destroyer’s coming up fast, but he doesn’t know how fast or how close now; but he can’t check because he can’t afford the seconds it would take to look; and his periscope has been above the choppy surface too long. Where’s his bloody director angle?

  ‘Target is turning too tight!’ he calls. The solution is unravelling. There’s no time for Carey to take over, or to confer. He has to act.

  He calls over his shoulder to the Cox’n, ‘Port, five! Slow ahead, together!’ and a beat, and then he takes his big leap in the dark, as Nicobar’s stern comes around and the angle becomes ever tighter. He’s doing it by eye now, by the seat of his pants, as the submarine and the troopship diverge. He’s out of opportunities: either he fires now, or he doesn’t. ‘Fire five!’ but before he can shout ‘Fire six!’, the whole sky lights up; a huge flash; a supernova of light, just out of the periscope’s line of sight, to the south; and then the whole world feels engulfed in the roar of a cataclysmic concussion. They hear it through the hull, and in another beat the whole boat is shaken by a shock wave. He’s already called ‘Fire six!’ without realising it. He has no idea what has happened. He takes his eyes from the periscope, is so shocked he forgets to send it down, but the rating does it for him. Harry’s eyes meet Carey’s in mutual incomprehension.

  ‘Something close has just blown up,’ calls Butler from the ASDIC cubby, and Harry and Carey start to laugh. It’s just hearing the bloody obvious being stated again, it just seems so funny, and then the realisation on Carey’s face. ‘Torpedo four missed the big boy, and hit the tanker in the other column. She must’ve been carrying aviation spirit or petrol,’ he said.

  The laughter stops as they contemplate their luck . . .

  BARRRUUMMMN!

  And that had been the sound of their last torpedo, detonating. The Lombardia. They’d hit her.

  Then, amid all the crashing noise in the sea around them; the tearing metal and the noise of secondary explosions, timid things now by comparison to what had gone before, comes an all too familiar sound . . .

  Ricka-chicky-Ricka-chicky-Ricka-chicky-Ricka-chicky! . . . and the destroyer goes down their port
side, mere tens of feet away, so close, they hear the splashes as the depth charges are rolled into the water.

  ‘Two hundred feet!’ yells Carey. ‘Everybody hold on!’

  Six depth charges caught Nicobar as she dived, three of them came very close indeed. The boat was hit as if by a series of express trains; every item of crockery in the galley shattered and nearly every light in the boat too; they were plunged into total darkness that lasted over a minute before the first emergency light appeared. All the glass facings on the gauges had disintegrated and deck plates jumped out of their seatings. High-pressure air lines sheered, as did the hydraulic lines to the bow planes, and most of the valves on the trim board were sprung.

  Where the closest charge had gone off, mere feet from the senior rates’ mess, several rivets on the pressure hull sheered, and a severe leak had opened where one of the hull plates had sprung.

  When the concussions stopped, and the boat stopped jumping, nobody could hear for the screaming of ruptured air lines; but they could all feel Nicobar falling away beneath their feet. Harry and Yeo, and Mundell’s Stoker began hanging emergency lights, and an eerie coven glow came into the control room, where the air was already thick with cork dust.

  Carey, right away, could see no gauge was functioning. He didn’t know what depth they were at, but he knew they were rapidly going deeper. He grabbed a sound-powered phone: ‘Captain, engine room. Full ahead, together!’ Then he bent and yelled in the planesmen’s ears, ‘Planes on maximum rise!’, only to be told the bow planes were not responding. ‘Aft planes, then, please,’ he said with arch calmness. Then he turned to Mundell. ‘Blow all main ballast tanks. And then get someone for’ard to hand-turn the bow planes. Maximum rise. Now. And . . .’ And Mr Mundell interrupted, ‘. . . and shut off these HP lines!’ He didn’t need telling.