Under False Flags

by Steve Anderson

  The ship flashed and erupted with a colossal crack. Direct hit!

  A red flare soared up from the ship but its searchlights sputtered, overwhelmed by flame.

  Captain Hanssen shouted orders through the voice tube: “Now go! All full ahead, rudder hard to port!”

  Frings steered them sharply aport as Kammel telegraphed the captain’s throttle-up order to the engine operators below. They roared away at close to forty knots behind the lead S-boat before them, its wake foaming up, its bow rising high, a mirror image of their own boat in two-by-two Rotte formation—Frings’ boat following as the “slave boat.”

  All deck crew scanned the sky, the horizon. Frings peered out the double-glass windows, his heart thumping, his life vest pressing at the wheel handles. The rest of the English Channel remained dark and void of silhouettes, rising and falling, surging and swelling. Frings didn’t miss seeing the Cliffs of Dover tonight. After so many hell runs that white wall had come to remind him of a hull-busting glacier, that or some freezing tidal wave never to be outrun.

  The ship behind them burned. Shock waves pulsated the water under their boat, from the splitting, bursting hull, imploding steel and men.

  As captain, Oberleutnant zur See Hanssen conned from the open bridge right on top of Frings’ wheelhouse. “It’s a bloody miracle, make no mistake, we’re blessed tonight,” Hanssen was panting through the voice tube. Two in the morning neared along the Southeast English coast near Dover, a dim night, cloudy, the wind from the northwest. Even before they had reached their assigned quadrant, no enemy had come to tear holes in them. Such fortune was as rare as could be. For the last couple years the Tommies had seemed to know where they lurked even before they did themselves, and the S-boats had become the sitting ducks like the convoys they used to prey on. The Normandy invasion of June 6 had only tightened the vice, plunging them into a meat grinder. Frings had seen America and what it could reap straight off the assembly line. This now was the big harvest. The invasion fleet kept coming, flowing from England across to France, the peaks and shapes of so many ships like a city skyline, as if London and New York themselves were being stretched across the Channel. The Allies defended it all with an iron perimeter of patrol ships and boats, mines and air cover and intensified radar, always the radar. Over the last couple weeks Frings’ fellow S-boats had kept pricking this giant. It only got more of them killed. They were on track to lose at least twenty boats by the end of the month, more than the previous year total and almost half of this year’s. Between four flotillas alone, only 13 of 31 S-boats running at the invasion had remained afloat. Finally the FdS, the S-boat flotillas’ Commander-in-Chief, had sent them back north—here to their old stomping grounds along Southeast England. At least they had a chance here.

  The lead boat began turning back around. “Rudder starboard ten, new course three-fifty,” Hanssen shouted down to Frings, ordering him to follow suit. “It seems we’re going to take a look.”

  Frings circled around to face the flaming wreck as it submerged, bow first. The wheel gave him different vibrations now, shudders, creaks and cracks, drones and groans. He couldn’t hear the screams but he felt the familiar ache in his chest. Next time it might be them sucked under in such a fury, swallowing sea and getting swallowed up forever. They had twenty seamen aboard his S-boat—short for Schnellboot, the War Navy’s fast torpedo craft. He was the “Number One,” also called Schmadding, the nickname for the longest-serving, most experienced ranking seaman. His actual rank was Obermaat, a Petty Officer. The varieties of S-boat differed slightly but their boat was a retrofitted mishmash—just short of 35 meters long and five at beam, top speed nearly forty knots, torpedo tubes enclosed in the raised forecastle, with two extra eels on deck midships. They had a new armored bridge, a “skull cap” made of a special alloy called Wotan, and did they ever need it. For mine-laying sorties, bulky mines replaced their extra eels and launched off the stern. 2cm guns midships, fore and aft. Daimler-Benz diesel engines. She was patched up and cobbled back together, defying the odds that had demoted other worn boats to training flotillas or the scrap dock but had sent most to the bottom.

  The lead and slave S-boats sat about five hundred meters apart. The sea burned before them, a mammoth bonfire reflecting off the oil on the waves, expanding and illuminating like a sun surfacing from underwater.

  “All slow ahead,” Hanssen said, following the lead boat. Frings and Kammel made the boat ease forward, the diesels whirring below. As a craft the S-boat was long and narrow, but she could lumber and flounder in the wrong hands—or when following a careless lead boat. Conning the lead boat as always were their flotilla chief, Kapitänleutnant Schirakow, and its captain, Baum. Now it appeared Baum and Schirakow were going to have them check for survivors. This wasn’t the policy. Late in 1942 Grand Admiral Dönitz had ordered that no enemy would be saved, responding to an incident in the Mediterranean whereby a German U-boat tried to collect the survivors of RMS Laconia, an armed merchant cruiser also carrying civilians and German prisoners of war. In the chaos, American planes had attacked. Losses were heavy all around. Younger officers like Hanssen welcomed the admiral’s policy, for Allied planes were also bombing German cities and with little regard for civilians. Hanssen had lost two sisters and a grandfather in Hamburg air attacks. Most on board had lost someone back home, not to mention on the front. German bombers had hit Allied cities too, but that wasn’t the point. Frings had to agree with Hanssen. Seeking out survivors like this was only inviting another trip through the meat grinder.

  The sea fire burned so bright that Frings donned sunglasses. They crept forward.

  “Survivors spotted,” radioman Hahn said, relaying the word coming over their ultra-short wave set. The sighting had come from Baum’s boat, but Schirakow hadn’t given further orders.

  Hanssen kept Frings on a steady course. Black forms appeared against the blinding conflagration. Life rafts. Loads of them, their silhouettes crowding the heaving crests of sea.

  “Germans!?” Kammel shouted—Baum himself was on the radio, so loud the little speaker crackled: “We think we hear German survivors out there,” Baum was saying.

  German POWs? If this was a troop transport, it was entirely possible.

  “Lead boat wants to check it out,” Hanssen said. “Hold on tight.”

  “Shit,” Frings muttered, and felt Hahn and Kammel tense up behind him. “Easy, boys,” he said, giving them the hard eye of the Number One.

  Hanssen ordered, “rudder starboard ten.” They drifted toward the life rafts coming at them. On Frings portside, Baum’s boat was doing the same. They did have some support—two other pairs of boats from their flotilla lurked less than a nautical mile away, searching for more of the convoy.

  The bow rose and fell as they idled along. Frings felt the heat of fire through the double-glass, the heat stretching the skin on his cheeks, and smelled the black smoke passing over their boats. The life rafts neared. Frings heard shouts and felt stomping above on the open bridge—Hanssen and the watch officer were moving around to all sides, directing the crew to ready safety lines and ladders. Frings peeked out windows and through the hatch to the starboard bridge wing skirting the wheelhouse. All deck crew wore rifles and machine guns slung, bulky figures in their denims and oilskins, lifejackets and helmets. Their three double-two guns were manned and ready.

  The ship’s flame died as the vessel went under, bringing a veil of darkness like a sack pulled over their heads. Their searchlights and flashlights arced and flicked around.

  Over at Baum’s boat the life rafts clustered at the hull, the survivors’ faces ashen. More swam up. They neared Frings’ boat too, the rafts’ rubber slapping and sloshing at their hull. Frings saw soldiers in the rafts. Their uniforms were American. Amis.

  Up above him Hanssen had the megaphone: “Any Germans here?” he shouted in German to the rafts.

  “Help us!” men shouted back in English, the accents American. “Take us aboard!”

 
“I say, any Germans out there?”

  Frings heard a survivor scream: “What does it matter, you kraut bastard—” Other survivors silenced the man.

  He looked over to Baum’s boat. The silhouettes of the crew and those of the rescued Americans mixed and fluttered on deck, as if in a crazed dance. Some men fell back overboard into their life rafts, the water churning and frothing, the men flailing away. Others swam up, grabbing at life rafts and lines and ladders.

  Pops of gunfire flashed on Baum’s boat, so unreal it looked like firecrackers, sparklers. Men wrestled each other on deck. One survivor had a weapon. The man fired at the bridge from midships. Return shots sent him tumbling over the portside railing.

  Frings pivoted around, checking his windows, hatches. Survivors had made it aboard his boat now, all enemy, Americans. Some dropped to the deck in exhaustion. Others fought with his crew, hand to hand. A man went overboard, then another.

  A survivor rushed into the wheelhouse screaming. He rushed Kammel and Hahn, plowing them into the corner. Frings locked arms with the intruder, so close Frings could smell his fear, a gamy sweat. Frings kicked him back out the hatch and pinned him to the bridge armor. A seaman grabbed the man and heaved him overboard.

  Hanssen shouted orders from the bridge while the enemy survivors shouted at their own to stop. But life rafts kept coming. Men fought out in the water, some in life jackets and some not, arms pinned on one another in ghastly wrestling matches, holding each other under, strangling each other, screaming. Oil on the water reignited, consuming them.

  “Warning shots!” Hanssen shouted to all gunners. “Fire at will!”

  Both boats fired. The salvos pounded like giant hammers, flashing flame from bow, midships, stern, rocking their boat. Shots hit life rafts and men out in the water.

  “Cease fire!”

  Dead men bobbed, body parts floated. A few men groaned out in the water, dead already. The burning sea oil crept toward them, engulfing them too.

  Another survivor showed in the wheelhouse hatch, sopping with oil. The man had a knife. “You butchers,” he hissed. Kammel had grabbed an MP 40. He fired so close the flame spewed right into the man, who flew back, bounced off metal and rolled away down the deck as ricochets pinged around.

  Hanssen shouted: “Number One! The wheel!”

  The oil fire neared them, the blazing water gurgling with debris and air pockets. They drifted toward Baum’s boat. Frings grabbed the handles, correcting, spinning the wheel.

  Reds and greens lit up the sky—enemy flares. Searchlights hit them. Yellow darts shot past, tracers of bullets. British MTBs—motor torpedo boats—charged for them portside at right angles. The fast boats kept firing and salvos hit them like massive chains crashing against the boat.

  Baum’s boat headed off, pumping out diversionary smoke from its stern canisters.

  “All full ahead! Rudder starboard ten, new course one-fifty!” Hanssen shouted and, “Smoke now, smoke now!” and the fake fog gushed out behind them, rolling across the waves.

  The MTBs turned and followed.

  “Return fire, all fire!” Frings heard Hanssen screaming at their gunners. Baum’s boat fired away, his bow high, the surging wake reflecting flashes. Spray lashed at the windows as Frings wheeled into a zigzag pattern on Hanssen’s command, the smoke laying down a wall of fog behind them. The MTBs couldn’t keep track. Their salvos flickered from within the fog but dimmed, withered.

  Baum sped onward, Frings falling in line astern. He clenched the handles and let out a scream, bearing his teeth.

  0400 Uhr: Two hours later. Somehow the two S-boats had evaded the Tommies. The rest of the flotilla only found them for the return march after having lost them to radio static. They had taken too many hits and holes again. Both boats had some rust, and rust did not like hot bullets. They cruised along at slow ahead while the specialists below made sure nothing more was about to burst or conk out. Frings’ boat had lost one man, a new assistant gunner—a round had ripped through the sailor but his oilskins had somehow kept his shredded chest inside the thick leather. A few seamen had wounds and contusions and were brought below where the salt mist couldn’t sting in their wounds, but they had to keep the dead sailor on deck because the mess was simply too much. Meanwhile, any dead Amis had gone off their open-ended stern.

  Three survivors remained on Frings’ boat, all Americans. The Amis were wounded severely, their bodies blackened with smoke and oil. Two were too exhausted to speak. Because of his English, Frings had the job of interrogating the one able to speak. Two seamen hauled the man, a young soldier, to the wheelhouse hatch. Frings shouted from his wheel at the American, which made Kammel and Hahn snap their heads his way—few crew knew Frings had been on merchant ships speaking English. The Ami was too shocked to curse them. He said their LST was packed with troops and jeeps—they were replacement soldiers, infantry. And the man passed out. Hanssen ordered the three survivors kept around the main compass mounted amidships behind the wheelhouse, had blankets brought up for them, then a tarp over that when it began to rain. He posted a seaman to train an MP 40 on them.

  Baum’s boat had two men killed and their wheelhouse was shot up, their engine sputtering. The flotilla had lost another boat from a mine, fire on board, three dead, two burned so bad the partner-boat radioman could hear them screaming through the short wave.

  Engine telegraph Kammel and radioman Hahn had apologized for getting caught off guard, and Frings told them: “If I ever catch you two mucking up like that again, you’ll be scraping rust in the North Sea,” but he wouldn’t report it. All had seized up at some point. “Besides, you made up for it,” he told Kammel. “Just watch those goddamn ricochets.”

  Frings held the wheel tight and peered into the darkness, trusting the water, the lookouts, Captain Hanssen, and the lead boat only because he had no choice. He slid his pipe between his lips, wanting to light it. And shivered. June had turned cold, but that wasn’t what made him shudder. The water had taught him many rules in life, yet in the last four years those rules were under constant attack. He did all he could to make some kind of order out of it. On an S-boat, the Number One supervised all the seaman duties—there were watches to manage, cleaning and restoring, disputes, and discipline, and morale, right down to picking a lineup for a football match when a patch of bad weather kept them in their pens. Meanwhile, the specialists below deck dealt with the motors and fuel, the torpedoes and the grub (their cook was also a torpedo-man, in fact). Frings hadn’t expected to become a Navy sailor, yet he had been left with little choice. He had done a good ten years in the merchant marine, but by 1940 the merchant work had all but dried up for Germans. War meant he’d be drafted sooner than later, so why end up in the mountain corps, an airplane or a trench? He could survive on the water. He’d grown up in Cologne on the Rhine River like his father and his father’s father. He had helmed a river tug for the first time before he was twelve. In what was renamed the Kriegsmarine—the War Navy, a sailor could choose a technical career path or serve as a regular seaman. He chose the latter; he would do his time, then get back home.

  If he survived at all. Those first trying months on an S-boat seemed like a happy stroll now. Back then it was simple. Flotilla command would send them to a quadrant, say, near the mouth of the Thames or close to the Dover coast. There they sat in Rotten, in pairs ready to prey. Back in 1940, they sunk French and British destroyers off of Dunkirk. He remembered summer nights speckled with endless stars, like confectioner’s sugar sprinkled over the world. Not that simple meant easy. In winter, the sea spray was so cold it froze right on deck, railings, glass, all. Torpedoes malfunctioned. They had to grease every moving part exposed to air and water. Whether in summer or winter, their engines could conk out, or boats collided, or were rammed on a run. They never had enough boats, but they always had a chance. In about 1941, the enemy started knowing exactly where they ran. Radar was to blame. Radar changed everything. Radar let the Brits pinpoint them but they, in turn,
could not know if the Beefs knew. It made the most routine stroll terrifying. The enemy always had a bead on them, sometimes reaching their positions before they did. Things only got worse into ’42, ’43. Some improvements came. They had dampeners for their exhaust. They had the armored bridges that could stop light flak rounds but little else. They had bigger guns, supercharged engines, so-called smart torpedoes that only crapped out on them. They tried out new tactics but these were based on unreliable radio monitoring or haphazard Luftwaffe sightings. The Luftwaffe’s lame warnings had become a pantomime farce, while the enemy spotters seemed to have a direct phone line to every bomber pilot. And still the radar never came. Even when German technicians developed their own Funkmess radar devices, the S-boats never got them. They were all like helpless little forest creatures—untold beasts of prey swooped down on them whenever they dared pop their heads out of their burrows. By ’44 they were losing boats faster than new ones arrived or the repaired ones came back. Replacement sailors got younger, greener. Captains and flotilla chiefs pleaded for radar. The Allies were now intercepting their radio transmissions, and had surely figured out their secret codes. Yet no one up high would consider the possibility, Hanssen had told Frings. Meanwhile the enemy had become an iron boot, crushing them into particles. And now the Allied invaders were sure to break out of Normandy soon and charge east as their bombers kept pounding German cities.