“Not Tirpitz?” Bimble said in a monotone.
“No, sir,” Commander Elwes, his chief of intelligence, commented. “Bismarck’s twin sister hasn’t moved.”
“Who is she?” Harland wondered out loud, wanting his voice to be heard as worthy of note.
“Quiet,” Bimble said, damning Harland for his obvious attempt to gain attention. “Continue,” he said to Macready.
“At 0934 Nottingham reported that the enemy ship was engaging her. Nottingham reported that they were speedily, his expression exactly, trying to disengage but that the enemy appeared to be intent on a fight.”
“We shall have to get some Very Long Range aircraft up there immediately,” Bimble said.
“Yes, sir,” Elwes said. “Unfortunately the area is socked in. Low cloud cover. Coastal Command had to call their chaps back several hours before all of this happened.”
“Well,” Bimble said, stroking the gray beard that earned him the nickname Father Neptune. He was no Jellicoe of Jutland and there were some reports that he and Winston, when Churchill was the first sea lord, had disagreed on nearly everything including the color of the sky, but he was imperturbable. “Give him his pipe and a cup of tea,” one member of his young staff had said, “and he is quite willing to face Armageddon.”
“I’ll have them up and that’s that. You must tell the fellows at Coastal Command,” he said to Elwes, “that we have a mystery on our hands. As you gentlemen know, I don’t fancy mysteries.”
Harland kept quiet. He felt that he’d given the old man too much of an opportunity to make a fool of him as it was.
“Captain Harland.” Bimble’s voice caught him off guard. “You shall be my eyes and ears at Scapa Flow. Nottingham is telling them and then they are telling us, but I don’t like getting my information secondhand. I trust that you’ll get me everything that I need.”
Harland felt his stock rise a hundredfold. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”
“Macready,” Bimble said, “we need to know who this is. She can’t have materialized without someone being aware of her. Track her down, find out what you can of her. Find out what she is about and how we can destroy her.”
“Yes, sir,” Macready said.
“Thank you, gentlemen.”
The officers quickly left the conference room, knowing that Bimble used those three words to close every meeting. When they were gone, Bimble leaned over the back of his chair and looked at his secretary. Hawthorne finished his notes and returned the admiral’s glance.
“Mr. Churchill,” Hawthorne said.
“Yes,” Bimble said. “That bloody old fool is out there. I shall have to let Their Lordships know about this latest development. The prime minister, despite his belief in his considerable capabilities, does not control the German navy.”
“Sir Joshua,” Hawthorne said, “there is something else. Perhaps totally unrelated to either the German ship or Mr. Churchill’s voyage.”
“Yes?”
“Morning dispatches highlighted increased U-boat activity. U-boat radio transmissions indicate that something out of the ordinary is happening.”
“That’s all that we have, Hawthorne?”
“Yes, indeed, Sir Joshua. At the moment there aren’t any more details to pass on. U-boats are on the move and they’re being most vocal. That is all.”
“Have you an opinion?” Bimble said, prompting his secretary.
“None worth sharing. Nothing can be done until we gather more information. I suspect, however, that we must be quick about it.”
“Of course,” Sir Joshua said sourly. “In other words, we wait until we know more.” He turned back around and gathered the briefing notes left by his place at the conference table by his staff. “I’ll meet with Their Lordships immediately. It irritates me that I have very little to tell them, but what little there is, is troubling.”
H.M.S. Nottingham
Prader watched as the first shells from the distant ship landed far off the starboard quarter of H.M.S. Nottingham. Giant columns of white water, tinged with yellow dye from the High Explosive shells, erupted out of the sea, hung above the base of their own creation, and slowly fell away.
The huge shells sounded like locomotives when they came over—an unnerving, heavy, chugging roar that seemed to draw the air out of a man’s breath. Certainly fifteen-inch guns. Perhaps sixteen-inch guns. Whatever they were and whoever mounted them, H.M.S. Nottingham could not match them with her puny eight-inch guns.
“Masthead reports,” Trunburrow said. “Unable to determine class. Large ship, four turrets times three.”
Prader slipped his binoculars to his eyes and grunted in response. “She may be powerful but we are fast. Revolutions to thirty knots, Number One. Take evasive action, stand by to make smoke. Inform Harrogate that we are under attack. Contact the Flow—”
Another rumble filled the air and the gray-green sea to port and starboard of Nottingham exploded in towering geysers seventy feet high.
Splinters from the high-explosive shells peppered Nottingham, beating an angry tattoo, nearly ripping off the main fire-director tower and antiaircraft tower. They sliced through her thin skin into the for’ard galley and sick bay, and wiped out the for’ard searchlight station.
They stripped Nottingham of her wireless antenna. She was deaf and dumb.
“My God, they’ve got us straddled!” Prader shouted. “Starboard thirty. Where is my smoke? I must have my smoke.” As if his voice commanded the ship itself, huge volumes of black smoke erupted from the cruiser’s twin stacks, rolling down over her superstructure and then up again, masthead height. She had to get the smoke between her and the enemy vessel; she had to make a place for herself to hide in the rolling swells of the gray waters.
The W.T. telephone rang and a yeoman of signals answered it. “Captain, sir,” the yeoman said. “W.T. reports they have no signal, sir. They can’t raise anyone.”
“What?”
“The antennas must be down, sir.”
“All of them? That’s impossible. Have them checked. That can’t be.”
Trunburrow watched the flashes of light in the dark bulk of the distant enemy ship. Those were shells coming his way—the battleship would kill them with impunity.
D.K.M. Sea Lion
Turm Oberbootsmannmaat Statz knew himself lucky to be in Bruno. Anton was lower and closer to the bow and she leaked every time a wave rolled over the Atlantic bow and exploded against the breakwater. She had no independent sighting system because water came into the range-finder housing on either side of the turret. Statz thought little of Anton.
But Bruno was a different matter and now she was proving it.
“Enemy cruiser in sight at twenty degrees,” the loudspeaker in the turret blared. “Range …” The rest of the message was distorted—probably a short in the speaker wiring. No matter; the range was not important to Statz. He knew that the enemy was many kilometers away and probably running as if the devil himself were after her. “Course two-four-oh degrees,” the loudspeaker said.
Statz and his crew could see nothing. They depended on the loudspeaker to tell them what was happening. He could tell from practice how the turret trainer was moving the turret and about where she was pointed to port or starboard. He knew from the gun’s breech when she fell or rose how many degrees the gun layer had plotted in. But for everything else he had to depend on the loudspeaker encased in a heavy steel cage behind a protective steel grid to tell him what was happening outside.
“Enemy making smoke,” the speaker said.
“They’re afraid of us,” Hoist Operator Matrosengefreiter Manthey said. “They’re running away.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Steiner said.
“Request permission to fire,” the speaker said. That was the gunnery officer in the forward fire-control tower. Statz could hear the excitement in his voice. There was no reply from the Kapitan. What was he waiting on? Let’s get this thing over with.
“Request per
mission to fire,” the gunnery officer said, but his voice was calmer. He’d gotten control of his emotion and perhaps that was what Mahlberg was waiting for.
“Permission to fire.” It was the Kapitan’s voice, as calm as if he were ordering a beer. Statz prepared himself. In the fire-control station were three sets of lights: lock, ready, and shoot. One set for each of the three guns in Bruno. Lock enabled the guns to be loaded, ready signaled the gunnery officer that the guns were loaded, and shoot … A yeoman standing to the right of the gunnery officer placed two fingers from his right hand and one from his left on the three lit buttons marked shoot, and pushed.
There was the brief ring of the firing bell and then it was like being in the center of a thunderstorm. The cannons roared as the two-and-a-half-ton projectiles exploded from the barrels, and the guns slid back in recoil. They immediately returned to full extension and the gun layer dropped the guns to five degrees for loading.
Statz swung the breech open and the spanning tray was dropped into position. As his crew loaded the next shell, they listened. The shell’s flight was being timed, and the gunnery officer had the target locked in the stereoscopic range-finder, tracking its course and the results of the Sea Lion’s shooting.
“Attention,” the speaker said. “Fall.” The shells should impact at that moment.
“Three questionably right.” It was the gunnery officer speaking. Statz knew that the officer’s forehead was pressed firmly into the black foam support of the range-finder, as his eyes sought out the target. “Three wide right, questionably over.” The information was being fed into the gunnery computers in the two fire-control centers deep within the ship: range, bearing, deflection—they could do everything except load the guns.
The powder hoist operator, Matrosengefreiter Scholtz, pulled open the hoist door and rolled two powder bags onto the spanning tray. Statz signaled for the ram operator, another Matrosengefreiter named Wurst, to push the bags into the gun’s breech, but he was listening to the speaker announce firing corrections as well.
“Ten more left.”
Statz knew the gunnery officer was recalibrating the range-finder. That sort of work was too fine for the gunner; it was the sort of thing that educated men did, men who kept their hands clean.
“Down four,” the speaker said.
This was it.
“Full salvos good rapid.”
His men let out a cheer as the last of the bags went into the breech. Fire away. Load and shoot as fast as you can. Bracket the enemy vessel and then walk the shells up until there is nothing left but an oil stain and debris coating the water.
The breechblock slammed shut and the breech screw spun, locking it into position. Statz turned to his men and shook his fist at them.
“That is the way it’s done in the Kriegsmarine! We grab them by the snout and kick them in the ass.”
He heard the training gear engage and felt the turret move as the gun began to elevate. He heard the fire bell ring and he grinned broadly, white teeth and shining eyes in a black-powder-covered face.
Kapitan zur See Mahlberg lowered his binoculars and turned to Kadow, expecting an answer.
“She’s the Nottingham,” Kadow said. “Harrogate is far to the southeast. She can’t come to Nottingham ’s assistance in less than two hours.”
“We’ll have to break off action very soon, sir,” Korvettenkapitan Balzer said. He was Sea Lion’s chief navigator, a man to whom time and distance were the only true language of sailors.
Mahlberg looked at Kadow. “You see that Balzer wants to hinder our practice. I gave our first artillery officer thirty minutes, Balzer.” Mahlberg studied his Tissot wristwatch. “He has five minutes left to him.”
“The Prince of Wales, sir,” Balzer reminded Mahlberg.
“We’ll have time,” Mahlberg said as another salvo shook the ship. The acrid, black cordite cloud rolled over the bridge. “Time us, Balzer. Five minutes. No more. Kadow? Nothing from Wilhelmshaven?”
“No, sir,” Kadow said. They had sent three encoded messages to Naval Group Command North but had received no reply. This far north and nearly out into the North Atlantic, ships and radio waves were often at the mercy of the weather. Mahlberg was anxious to report his progress and his first contact with the enemy. He fully expected to be reprimanded for engaging the cruiser because it delayed his rendezvous with Prince of Wales, but not by much. His little excursion in no way endangered the plan laid out by Grand Admiral Raeder and the Seekriegsleitung —the Supreme Naval Staff. Crafting the plan was all very calm and systematic; old men studying the position of little carved wooden ships on the plotting table. But the old men shuddered mightily when you deviated from the plan, rubbing their hands together as they contemplated the disaster that might befall their beloved wooden ships.
Another salvo erupted again and Mahlberg focused his binoculars on the distant target. It was almost impossible to see anything. The sky and sea were gray and patches of fog hung close to the water.
“Balzer?” Mahlberg said.
“Three minutes.”
“Kapitan?” Kadow said. “Forward fire-control station reports, enemy vessel appears to have been hit.”
H.M.S. Nottingham
They were running away. They could not fight a battleship, not without help, and the German’s range-finding apparatus had them trapped no matter which way they turned.
Nottingham had been struck several hundred times by shell splinters that punctured her superstructure, and hull and supply parties were making their way to every deck to fight fires or stop leaks.
Then the shell struck.
The others had been near misses, throwing tons of water on the decks or razor-sharp splinters through the steel plate. This one was different.
There was a thunderous bang and the ship shook violently as if she had struck a rock at full speed. Smoke, heavy with the foul stench of smoldering metal, filled the air.
Trunburrow watched, as Prader seemed to collapse with indecision. His orders were confusing and frantic. He was truly frightened.
“For God’s sake, Number One, get some chaps on that fire in the marines’ mess deck. It’s too close to the magazines. Something must be done. Somebody must do something.”
“The aft supply party is on it, sir.”
“Do they need more men? Should we detail more men?”
“They’ll call if they need more, sir.”
Trunburrow was no longer afraid. A new calm had come over him, a sense of purpose and place, which he could not ascribe to any action of his own. He gave orders to steer the ship to port or starboard, to present as small a target to the enemy as possible. Nottingham responded beautifully, seemingly unaware of the danger just a few miles away. Trunburrow wanted her to weave through the ocean like a drunkard. No consistency in movement, no repetition in course, anything so that the Jerries couldn’t anticipate your next move.
“We are making smoke, aren’t we, Number One?” Prader said, moving to the port window. “I distinctly remember ordering someone to make smoke.” His head and upper part of his torso were exposed when the shell struck.
There was a tremendous blast and all the air was sucked from the world of the compass platform. Trunburrow felt himself thrown against the bridge bulkhead. He knew that he was burned all over because he felt the heat and saw the clouds of flames envelop him—he marveled at the fact that he did not die. He was lying on his side on the deck, a castoff form on the geometrically precise gray and red linoleum blocks, and across the bridge he could see some sort of bundle that couldn’t have been human because there was no head or shoulders. That dark shape, and several others, littered the deck of the compass platform. They rested on and amid pieces of equipment, insulation, charts, binoculars, and life vests, helmets … things that had all neatly been stowed in designated locations until the shell made a mockery of order.
Trunburrow tasted cordite and black, acrid smoke burned his eyes, but for some reason there was no sound. Not a bit
of it.
He pulled himself to his feet; he was trembling uncontrollably, and looked around for the captain. Then he realized that he had been staring stupidly at the mass of flesh and cloth on the deck and that obscene bundle could only be Prader.
He tried to move and bumped into a sublieutenant named Wells. The sublieutenant’s mouth was working frantically and his eyes were wide with horror and his face was an odd combination of blood, grime, and deathly pale skin. He was obviously asking Trunburrow some sort of question, but Number One had no idea what he wanted. Ask the captain, you silly little boy, Trunburrow thought, but then he looked down and saw the captain at his feet.
“… house blown away,” finally came through, as clearly as if the sublieutenant and he were sitting in the wardroom chatting.
“What?” Trunburrow said, suddenly aware that his head hurt horribly.
“The asdic cabinet and chart house have been carried away.”
“Yes,” Trunburrow acknowledged. “What else?”
“The searchlight control position, the captain’s shelter and cabin.”
“The important stuff, man!”
“Heavy fires in the telephone exchange and the stokers’ mess deck.”
“Right,” Trunburrow said. “Get a supply party down to the telephone exchange immediately.” He whistled into the voice tube leading to the wheelhouse. It was just aft and one deck below the telephone exchange. It was bad enough to have the exchange go out—if Nottingham lost the wheelhouse as well, it reduced her chance of escaping the enemy vessel. She could be steered from the engine room, but it was a cumbersome and time-consuming process.
“Wheelhouse.”
“Compass Platform here. We’ve taken a brick just aft of the bridge on the port side. There’s fire in the telephone exchange. How are you?”
“A bit of smoke, sir. She’s still responding well.”
“Right. Now, Helmsman, I’m going to be busy up here and the captain’s dead. I want you to take her all over the bloody ocean but keep a general course of two-three-zero, until I order you to stop. Understand?”
Between The Hunters And The Hunted Page 15
