“Yes, sir,” the helmsman said. “Steer at will along a general line of two-three-zero, until further orders.”
“Good man,” Trunburrow said. He stepped over debris out to the starboard bridge wing. There was a fog bank five miles ahead; refuge, safety, life, five miles ahead. He got the other members of the bridge party back to their stations, except those whose wounds prevented further service.
“Sir?”
It was Wells with a young midshipman cadet … what’s his name? Westfield, Westmore … what was his name?
“Warrant Officer Arthur has a supply party on the telephone exchange. He says that he will have it out in five minutes if …”
“Yes? Go on.”
Wells appeared uncertain about delivering the rest of the message. “If he has to ‘use teapots and soup bowls.’”
“Yes,” Trunburrow said. He glanced at the midshipman cadet. “And you?”
“Westlake, sir.”
“Westlake. Of course.”
“Lieutenant Ames sent him forward from engineering, sir,” Wells said. “He thought that you might need someone to assist you.”
“Yes,” Trunburrow said. “The first thing that you can do is contact engineering and have them stop all smoke. It stands out like a sore thumb against this mist. Is there any damage aft or to the ventilation system?”
“No, sir,” Westlake said.
“Very well. Contact the aft fire-control tower. See if they can locate that beast. I must know where they are and what their course is. Wells, get some of the medicos up here and remove the bodies.”
“Sir,” Wells said apologetically, “they’re all dead.”
The news had no impact on Trunburrow even though they were men that he knew. “The forward supply party then. We should tidy up a bit.”
Damage reports began to come in from the supply parties. The radar scanners and wireless/telegraph were inoperable—so they were blind. The fire direction room and the plot room were destroyed as were the torpedo office, sick bay, and for’ard galley.
Trunburrow took them into consideration, standing amidst the carnage in what was left of the compass platform. Nottingham was badly damaged, that much was obvious, but had the shell that struck just aft of the chart house been armor-piercing and come down in a plunging manner instead of a relatively flat trajectory, it would have buried itself deep in Nottingham’s gut before exploding. It would have been Hood all over again except no one would have survived.
From the aft fire-control tower came the unexpected message that the enemy ship appeared to be changing course. It was very difficult to tell; the distance was great and a thick fog hung close on the calm sea.
Trunburrow found a fog bank and turned Nottingham into it. W.T. reported that they could have the radio cobbled together given another hour and a bit of luck. Trunburrow needed to contact the Flow about this behemoth let loose in the North Atlantic, so he told Wireless/Telegraph to fix it and be quick about it and never mind the luck.
And then he hung up the receiver and took the binoculars handed him by Westmore, or Westport, or whatever that child’s name was, and scanned the limited horizon provided him by the fog. So this was what it was like, he thought, as he trained the binocular lenses through the shattered windows of the compass platform. This was how soldiers and sailors felt when they performed those deeds that others sought to honor them for; action by which they received medals and ribbons, and toasts all around. None of that meant anything to Trunburrow.
The single thought that he settled on as the most important of those myriad considerations was: so this is what it is like to be without fear.
Then he heard the rumble again and looked out the shattered window of the compass platform. Another salvo was coming, maybe three shells or six; both of the enemy’s forward turrets firing. But their foe couldn’t see in the fog, so these were shells tossed almost as an afterthought. Perhaps they were quickly sighted, or ranged based on a guess, or the gunnery officer simply wanted to clear his guns.
It didn’t make any difference because two shells landed on Nottingham.
The first shell struck her stern just aft of what had been the aft searchlight platform. It plunged into the wireless room and exploded, blowing out the hull of the ship on the starboard and port sides from the waterline up in a massive fountain of flame.
The second shell is the one that destroyed Nottingham and killed everyone aboard her not already dead. It struck amidships, forcing its way into the torpedo stores. It should have exploded on contact as any High Explosive shell was designed to do, and if it had done so, Nottingham and a few of her crew might have had a chance. But the fuse was defective and the shell penetrated three decks before exploding and cutting the ship in half.
Her stern, burning fiercely from the first shell, quickly drifted away from the bow, which began to fill with water and in minutes, was jutting thirty degrees out of the frigid ocean like a tombstone. This section quickly filled with water and rolled over slowly, tossing screaming sailors into the dark sea. If they lasted minutes in the water that sucked the heat from their bodies they were lucky. If they were killed instantly they were luckier still.
The bow slid into the darkness easily, without giving any indication that it marked the resting place of several hundred men. All that remained of Nottingham were bits of nameless debris that covered the iron-gray water, corpses of dead sailors, and a thick coating of black fuel oil that, when any light managed to break through the clouds and fog, shimmered demurely.
Chapter 17
Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine, Berlin, Nazi Germany
As a young officer, Doenitz had always considered Grand Admiral Raeder the perfect Kriegsmarine officer: tall, sophisticated, resolute, kindly to his subordinates, and unwavering in his loyalty to his superiors—even Hitler. Perhaps a bit old-fashioned and certainly far too enthralled with the presence of big ships and big guns, but he was a product of the old Imperial Navy and that was to be expected. For that matter, Doenitz was pragmatic enough to recognize that his position on U-boats was that of a quiet zealot. He knew that they, not the great, lumbering targets, were Germany’s true salvation.
So, knowing Grand Admiral Raeder as Doenitz knew him, and respecting him as he did, he was very surprised to enter the plotting room to find Raeder in the middle of what one would definitely describe as a tantrum.
“What has he done? What was in his mind that he has done this?” Raeder said, his tone a mixture of frustration and barely suppressed anger. He caught sight of Doenitz, who had just handed his gray kid gloves and cap to an orderly. “The arrogance of the man!”
“What is it?” Doenitz said, approaching the large plotting table in the center of the room. He felt suddenly superior to Grand Admiral Raeder; the cool subordinate, ready to take charge and put everything back in order. A twinge of guilt accompanied his thoughts about the older man, but it was momentary—his own ambition prevented him from feeling more.
“Mahlberg has taken Sea Lion in pursuit of an English cruiser,” Raeder said.
Doenitz studied the table. Each wooden ship was marked with a little paper flag. Male and female Kriegsmarine personnel—Bootsmanns, Bootsmannsmaat, and other ranks and ratings scattered about, and to make sure that all functioned as it should, a Stabsoberbootsmann with a Leutnant overseeing the activity. It was a flurry of movement and sound; sailors speaking quietly into mouthpieces, pressing W.T. headsets against their ears, hovering steadily around the table to sail the tiny vessels with wooden rods that ended in graceful hooks.
“Everything jeopardized for a cruiser,” Raeder said as Doenitz reviewed the latest messages from Sea Lion. Mahlberg reported that he was being followed by a British cruiser and planned to sink it before it reported him. More likely had already reported Sea Lion’s presence. Mahlberg simply wanted to try out those big guns on an enemy vessel.
“Where is Prince of Wales?” Doenitz asked.
“Here, Admiral,” one of the Stabsbootsmann said, i
ndicating the British vessels with a rod.
“Distance from Sea Lion?”
“Approximately six hundred kilometers.”
“Course and speed?”
“Estimates only, Admiral. Three-one-zero at twenty knots.”
Doenitz locked his arms across his chest in thought. “The damage is not irreparable,” he said, trying not to sound condescending. “Although it does create difficulties.” He held up the message from Sea Lion. “Why did Mahlberg wait so long to report?”
“He didn’t,” Raeder said. “The one thing that he did correctly was report immediately. You know weather conditions in the Strait—it took us this long to pick up and decode the message.”
But Doenitz wasn’t listening to the grand admiral—he was considering the options he had left to him in the position of the U-boats spread out across Prince of Wales’s path. What Mahlberg did was not as catastrophic as Raeder thought. He would certainly have been detected by the British patrol vessel anyway—the Straits were far too narrow for Sea Lion to pass unnoticed. And the fact that he took on the cruiser meant little unless he took an inordinate amount of time to destroy the enemy. That was not yet known.
What was surprising and a stroke of good fortune for Sea Lion and the operation was that Prince of Wales was not farther along.
“Are we certain of Prince of Wales’s position?”
An Oberbootsmann clicked his heels. “Yes, Admiral. We are tracking her radio transmissions.”
Her escort is slowing her down, Doenitz thought. Without them she could easily add another five knots to her speed. “Grand Admiral, I propose that we send to Sea Lion immediately to break off action at once and proceed on the mission. I also recommend that her escorts return to base.”
“Return to base? That’s a full day ahead of time, Admiral,” Raeder said. “I am not comfortable with that suggestion. We are not yet certain that your U-boats are on station.”
“Yes, Grand Admiral, I understand, but the British vessel cannot hope to match Sea Lion’s maximum speed. We yet may be in a better position than we realize. If we had difficulties receiving radio transmissions, who is to say that the British did not as well?”
Raeder saw that the idea had merit. “They may be as blind as we.”
“A perfect time to add another level of confusion,” Doenitz said.
Raeder shot Doenitz a troubled look. “You want to begin Operation Funker?”
“Yes.”
“I must give this matter much thought before I consent to this suggestion.”
“With your permission, Grand Admiral,” Doenitz began calmly. “Funker will confuse and distract the British even more so. They are aware of Sea Lion and perhaps they are aware of what she is capable of doing to her ships. They will be distracted. The increased W.T. transmissions will create more confusion. We can immediately follow Operation Funker with Operation Umkreis. The British will never consider their Home Fleet the object of an attack. Not virtually within sight of Scapa Flow.”
“We must be cautious,” Raeder said hesitantly. He nodded, confirming his own uncertainty. “Careful consideration.”
He is afraid, Doenitz thought. Bismarck had taken away his courage and replaced it with doubts, and yet that was understandable. If Sea Lion failed, which was to say if Sea Lion were sunk, it would be more than a missed opportunity to kill Churchill.
Britain’s Home Fleet might escape, and Germany’s war effort would suffer another psychological blow. The vast resources that went into building Sea Lion and launching this operation would have been a waste. But the U-boat’s reputation would remain unscathed.
Hitler tolerated the U-boat service because those vessels cost very little to build and yielded great results in comparison to their size. If a U-boat failed to return from patrols, it was seventy men lost—less than an infantry company.
“On the sea I am a coward,” Doenitz heard Hitler say. The Fuehrer did not understand ships or sailors and he thought, and told Raeder often, that the huge warships that cost Germany so much, and gave back so little, were obsolete weapons.
Doenitz watched as Raeder wrestled with the suggestion. The grand admiral’s face reflected his turmoil, his indecision, and Doenitz chose that moment to launch his attack.
“Grand Admiral,” Doenitz said, “my U-boats are in position.” He wasn’t certain that they were, but neither was Raeder that they weren’t. “Prince of Wales will be forced to turn south. Sea Lion’s current position places her in the ideal location to move rapidly against the English flotilla. All that is left to the English is to send heavy elements of the Home Fleet out of Scapa Flow against Sea Lion.”
“How do you know this, Admiral?” Raeder said. “Are you quite certain that your U-boats are on station? My concern is that any move by us, at this point, might be premature and result in confusion.”
He’s losing his nerve, Doenitz realized, losing his nerve at exactly the worst time. He is a sailor of the last war, over whelmed by the complexities of a modern war. He is as obsolete as the grand ships that he loves. “Your pardon, Grand Admiral. That is precisely the goal of Operationsbefehl Umkreis: to benefit from the enemy’s confusion. The Home Fleet will sortie out in response to the danger. Prince of Wales cannot outrun Sea Lion, and she is now forced to turn south because of what the British perceive as a gauntlet of U-boats facing her. No matter how many cruisers and destroyers that accompany Prince of Wales, she cannot outgun Sea Lion. Soon she will be out of range of air protection. Now is the time, Grand Admiral. Let us move forward with vigor.”
“I will not tolerate another Bismarck,” Raeder said in an anguished tone. “Do you hear me, Doenitz? I will not tolerate another such defeat for the Kriegsmarine.”
More turmoil, more indecision, Doenitz was rapidly growing weary of the old man’s fears. Finally, Raeder came around. “Very well. I’ll notify the Luftwaffe to stand by. We’ll need to keep a very careful eye on Scapa Flow.”
“Yes,” Doenitz said. “Grand Admiral,” he added in a reassuring tone, “the pieces are moving across the board precisely as we had envisioned. Soon there will be no doubt as to who is the hunted and who are the hunters.”
Admiral Bimble, as passive as a Buddha, watched his staff scurry around the conference room erecting maps and huge corkboards burdened with blowups photographs that as of yet held absolutely no interest or meaning for him. Hawthorne, always at his side, leaned over and whispered something of a procedural nature to him. Bimble waved it off, certain that Hawthorne would make it right.
Commander Elwes began the briefing with: “If it pleases you, Sir Joshua,” and from there launched into a minute-by-minute—as much information as they could piece together from garbled radio communications—account of the battle. “Captain Prader forwarded this information, as little as it was, prior to closing with the enemy… .”
Bimble leaned an ear toward Hawthorne, who discreetly reminded him: “Not much of a sailor, all machines and mechanisms.”
“What would possess this captain to take a cruiser against a battleship, if it were indeed a battleship that he saw?” Bimble mused to himself. He looked up to see Elwes waiting to continue with his report. “Well. Go on.”
“From Prader, ‘Encounter this time, this date, with German battleship. Estimate sixty thousand tons, twelve sixteen-inch guns. Accompanied by destroyers. Severe damage to Nottingham …” Elwes dropped the flimsy on the table. “He goes on to give details. Nottingham’s not been heard from since. It stands to reason that her communications have been lost. Or …” Elwes paused. “She has.”
“Sixty thousand tons?” a rotund commander said. “Surely that is a mistake.”
“Quite,” Bimble said sharply, silencing the outbreak. “What else?” he said to Elwes.
Captain Macready spoke instead. “There are two inbound convoys, HX456 and HX117, and one outbound convoy, LZ621, which, at their present course and speed, would pass very near the enemy vessel’s last known position.”
�
�Does this beast have a name? Do we know anything about it other than what Nottingham learned by bumping into her?” Bimble said.
“No, Sir Joshua,” Macready said. He returned to the immediate subject. “We can turn these three convoys hard south and take them out of danger. Their escorts consist of one cruiser each and five to seven destroyers. Of course, there is a complication.”
“Of course,” Bimble said dryly. “There is always a complication sucking at the teat of any simple dilemma, isn’t there?”
“U-boats,” Elwes said. “In fact a level of U-boat activity that we have never seen before.” He swept the pointer that he was holding in a gentle arc across a map of the North Atlantic. “U-boats, perhaps as many as ten or fifteen, have been in constant contact with Goliath, apparently reporting their positions, generally corresponding with these positions.”
“You’ve employed two words that I don’t care much for,” Bimble said. “‘Apparently’ and ‘generally.’”
“My apologies, Sir Joshua, but it can’t be helped. The messages are short, rather blunt, and we can’t hope to triangulate the U-boats’ locations. They’re rattling pots and pans and we can’t make anything from it. Their W.T. traffic is very aggressive but in content hardly substantial.”
“Indeed,” Bimble said. He shot Hawthorne a glance.
The secretary rose, opened the conference room door, and peered up and down the hallway. He shut the door and nodded at Bimble.
“Gentlemen, for your ears only,” Admiral Sir Joshua Bimble said. “Our prime minister is at this very moment aboard Prince of Wales and on his way to the United States. He will be meeting President Roosevelt for very high-level discussions that will determine the fate of this empire. We have a responsibility to those convoys, as well as every other ship under the flag of the United Kingdom, but our primary responsibility is to prevent that enemy vessel from engaging Prince of Wales. The prime minister was informed about the danger of this unnamed threat steaming down from the Denmark Strait and his response, in typical Churchillian fashion, was, ‘You sank Bismarck, sink this one as well.’ I was moved beyond measure by these stirring words,” he said dryly, “but the truth of the matter is we know little about what she is and where she is.”
Between The Hunters And The Hunted Page 16
