The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6

by Alexander Fullerton

  You could only sit and wait now. With a fair idea of the likely pattern of the next fourteen hours. It would start quite soon, he guessed; the bomber squadrons would almost certainly be lined up and ready, they’d only need to get the snooper’s signal and take off, fly 300 miles … One thing you could do now was get that signal away.

  The first attackers appeared at 0728, and the red air-warning flag, which had been bent-on and ready, rushed to Calliope’s yardarm. Radar tracked bogeys coming in dead straight from the southwest, obviously knowing exactly where they were going, this time. By the time they came in sight the bearing was shifting to the right; it was a force of a dozen Ju 88s and it was deploying to attack from astern, as usual.

  Cloud-cover was patchy, wind-driven at about 6000 feet. The ships were rolling heavily, bedded in foam, the destroyers in particular finding the going hard. Bombers like black insects against the patchwork of grey and blue; they were flying in and out of cloud, which was widespread enough to provide them with cover but not so thick as to impede their frequent viewings of the convoy.

  They’d be chatting among themselves. Schultz and Muller go for the cruiser, Schmidt and Braun take the oiler … Guns like pointing fingers following them round, gunners’ eyes slitted through the white cotton antiflash masks under the rims of tin hats.

  Nick used his telephone to the control officer in the tower, to remind him not to waste ammunition. “Shoot at incoming aircraft only. This is likely to be a very long day.” He hung up. Glancing round astern, checking that all ships were in station: and they were, Commodore Insole had his mob well disciplined. The view had some of the quality of a panorama in oils: the bright colours of the day, the warships’ slim lines, plunging hulls and waiting guns, and the stolidly advancing merchantmen. There was a look of doggedness about them: they were ignoring the approaching enemies, simply getting on with the job that mattered, the delivery of their cargoes.

  The leading pair of Ju 88s were turning to come up astern.

  “Attacking, sir …”

  “Tell radar to keep all-round watch.”

  There’d be more coming behind these. Probably some already on their way. The best you could hope for would be reasonably good intervals between assaults—time to draw breath and tidy up. Off Crete, he remembered, there’d sometimes been no intervals at all; the enemy bases had been so close that the Stukas had run a shuttle service—some attacking, others flying back for new bomb-loads, the fresh waves always coming in. Dayround bombing: Crete had been about as bad as it could get.

  Except, as Treseder had said the other day, the water had been warm enough to stay alive in.

  Moloch opened fire, at two 88s coming in at about 2000 feet with their snouts down. Two more behind them, doubtless attempting to slip in unopposed while those front-runners drew the flak. Another pair, higher and farther back, banking round to tag on to the queue … All the rear part of the convoy was in action by this time, the sky dirtying rapidly with shellbursts and the haze from disintegrated bursts, tracer soaring red and yellow through it. A lot of that was the sweepers and the trawler, who were very close to the rearmost ships—Moloch crossing astern of them, weaving and with her four-sevens cocked up and spitting. The Berkeley had opened up: she’d be barraging over the Russian oiler. Now Lyric and Legend from the beams—with the Junkers down at about 1500 feet, one slightly astern of the other and both going for the centre, straight into the defensive barrage over the Sovyetskaya Slava.

  Bombs starting, in slow-motion …

  The one astern flared like a match being struck. Pieces flew off: then it was a black nucleus plunging seaward, trailing smoke and flame: the sea on the Berkeley’s port side received it in a sheet of foam. Bombs were going in astern of the Russian and off her bow and abeam of the Galilee Dawn. First brush, and so far the only blood spilt was some of their own. Second pair coming and a whole day of it stretching ahead, about as forbidding as a day could be.

  “Captain, sir …”

  Bridge messenger: red-faced, about eighteen, the look of a farm-boy, tin hat seemingly resting on his ears. “Yes?”

  “From the ADO, sir—new formation two-three-oh, sixteen miles!”

  He was looking up at two Junkers flattening from their dives over the rear of columns one and two: they were wing-tip to wing-tip, and their bombs were falling away together, twisting slowly as if suspended on elastic but then accelerating so you quickly lost sight of them; two more attackers were in their shallow-dive approach paths. A bomb smacked in within yards of the stem of the Earl Granville—so close that she was steaming on into its splash, a shower of white rain sprinkling her deck cargo. The second exploded on the Plainsman’s stern: he saw the flash, flame and smoke in the split second before another went in amidships and she blew up—splitting open, gushing skyward, flame and smoke and a thunderous roar from the explosives that had been packed into that midships hold. The Earl Granville vanished into the wide mess of it and came out again on this side: she’d have had no room even to put her wheel over, she must have scraped past as much of the American as was left—no more than wreckage, burning still, while the sweeper Radstock nosed in to look for survivors. Not that you’d expect any. Legend tearing in, barraging with her close-range weapons in the face of another German slanting over from the quarter.

  “Aircraft green six-oh, angle of sight ten, closing!”

  This would be the second wave. The Luftwaffe would be determined to make a job of it now, make up for the day they’d lost while PQ 19 had been hiding in the ice. And there was to be no pause this time. The fellow coming over now was, like his recent predecessors, going for the Russian oiler. Oilers were always priority targets, coming second only to escort carriers … Calliope’s guns thundering as she rolled from beam to beam under a sky plastered black and brown and that 88 banking away, baulking at it, nose coming up and the pilot getting the hell out, funking—but the bombs coming, too—less aimed than ditched. Nick was wanting to turn away to look at the new formation coming in, see what they were and how many. But with those bombs in the air and every ship in the convoy shifting target to greet the next comer—from astern again, this one straight and purposeful …

  The first of the stick of four randomly sprayed bombs went into the sea abeam of the Tacora, a second farther out, a third off Calliope’s port quarter, and the last—Harpy.

  It hit amidships. Seeing it was like feeling it: a kick in your gut, or brain. He saw a flash, a gout of smoke breaking out with things flying in it: as she rolled back to starboard he thought the hit had been in her engineroom. But—she’d broken in half. The urge to get over there was countered by the need to stay exactly where he was, where Calliope’s guns in combination with the Berkeley’s were of the greatest use, barraging above the merchantmen. Harpy was hidden in what looked like smoke but was more likely steam: the bomb-burst had been in her belly and it would have been a boiler exploding that had torn her apart, he guessed. Calliope barraging over the Tacora and the Sovyetskaya Slava as this 88 levelled at about 1200 feet and its bombs began to fall away in a straight line right over the middle of the convoy. Looking back at Harpy again he saw the bow section on its own and the Carrickmore swinging inward to pass this side of it; beyond was Laureate, like everyone else ceasing fire as that last enemy swept over, roaring over astern of Calliope and banking right, beginning to climb but with smoke coming out of its starboard engine. He was aware of a fleeting prayer in his heart for the damage to worsen, flames to spread, engulf, fry … Astern of Carrickmore the bow section of the wrecked destroyer was vertical in a blossoming of white foam: he could see figures still clinging but others leaping off, and Laureate’s whaler in the water, Laureate herself within yards and stopped, Legend passing on her far side—and the Earl Granville, rolling ponderously and with a large area of empty sea ahead of her where until about eight minutes ago the Plainsman would have been. Moloch was moving fast across the Earl Granville’s stern and engaging another bomber: a bomb-splash went up to star
board of the commodore, and that attacker was removing itself, now, climbing, Calliope therefore shifting target—Berkeley too, at an 88 peeling to starboard to go for Laureate. Moloch coming to help, Tommy Trench having seen this danger, his ship under full rudder, on her beam ends as she turned at flat-out revs, all her guns blazing …

  Time: 0804.

  In the second wave there were only seven aircraft—Ju 88s again—and they’d gone by 0830, leaving one of their number in the sea. There was a lull then, and by 0900 there was still nothing on the radar screen. Nick had taken the chance of relaxing his ship’s company from action stations; it was a chance that might not come again all day, and therefore worth taking. Not that “relaxing” was quite the word: you watched the minutes crawl by, knowing that the enemy would be back, and soon. Every minute that passed meanwhile was of value, not only recuperative, but a fractional erosion of the long hours of strain that lay ahead.

  Five survivors of the Plainsman had been picked up by Radstock, and Laureate had fifty-three on board from Harpy. There was too much of a sea running now for wounded men to be transferred from ship to ship and all those five in Radstock were in bad shape, so Legend had put her doctor into the minesweeper by seaboat. Laureate had taken Harpy’s position on the convoy’s bow, Legend had moved up and Radstock had joined her on that port side.

  A signal had gone out to Admiralty, repeated to AIG 311 and to the rear-admiral in North Russia, reporting the new losses. It would also alert the rear-admiral to the possibility of delay in making the proposed dawn rendezvous with locally-based escort forces.

  The Plainsman’s master had been vice-commodore, the man who’d have taken over as commodore if Insole in the Tacora had come to grief. Insole had appointed Captain Hewson of the Carrickmore to replace the American, who’d been lost with his ship.

  0910 now. It felt more like noon. Nick wished to God it had been noon.

  Visitors, taking advantage of the lull, came up to the bridge for various purposes. Surgeon Commander Francomb, the PMO, was one of them, reporting on the state of the wounded men among the survivors who’d been transferred into Calliope two nights ago from the trawlers and from Moloch; they were survivors in fact from the Winston, the Papeete and the Caribou Queen. Francomb had had to operate on one American, a radio operator from the Caribou Queen, to remove a piece of metal from his ribcage, and the patient was apparently in good shape.

  Next came Mr Wrottesley, Commissioned Gunner.

  “Ammo state, sir.”

  He accepted the piece of paper. “Thank you, Mr Wrottesley.”

  “Not much to give thanks for, sir.”

  Studying the figures for ammunition expended and remaining, and knowing these levels would apply equivalently in the other ships, was like considering a list of unavoidable expenses for which you didn’t have the cash in hand. If attacks continued at this rate, by dawn tomorrow there’d be very little to fight back with.

  He passed the list to Treseder, and told the gunner, “We’ll last out, I expect.”

  “I expect we better, sir!”

  Pink, smooth face, freshly shaved. Small, bright eyes, and a nose like a dab of putty. Mr Wrottesley was president of the warrant officers’ mess, and he was always dapper, brushed and polished. Nick guessed he’d have shaved specially for this visit to the bridge. Asking now, “Four of ’em downed, was it, sir?”

  “Three and—”

  “Bogeys bearing two-four-oh, eight miles, sir!”

  “—and a probable, Mr Wrottesley.”

  Eight miles was very close for the radar to have picked up a new attack. He glanced at Treseder: “Action stations.”

  “Radar lost contact, sir!”

  Treseder, with his mouth opening to pass that order and one hand simultaneously reaching to the alarm push-button, hesitated, looking back at him; Nick nodded, and the commander shouted “Action stations!” That was for the Marine bugler, whose station was at the back of the bridge near the tannoy broadcast system; the buzzer duplicated the urgent message and also specified the nature of the emergency by sounding repeatedly the morse letter A, standing for air attack. Nick meanwhile guessing at the reason for close-range detection and then immediate loss of contact—they’d be lowflying aircraft, most likely torpedo bombers, approaching under the radar loop, with one or more of them climbing for a better view when they’d known they were somewhere near their target. Having spotted the ships, dipping down again—and the next contact, as likely as not, would be visual.

  All hands were rushing to their stations, putting on anti-flash gear and tin hats as they ran, climbed or flung themselves down ladders, the ship’s rolling adding to the hazards. The red warning flag was hoisted, and an Aldis lamp was clashing, to flash a message to the commodore: a loudspeaker boomed over the general racket of the process of closing-up, “Director target! Torpedo bombers, true bearing two-six-oh, range seven miles, angle of sight zero, flying right to left!”

  He picked up the telephone. That broadcast system was an emergency way of overriding the routine communications links, which tended to be cluttered at moments such as this one, to alert all quarters to a new threat.

  “What are they?”

  “Heinkel seaplanes, sir—one-one-fives. About fifteen of them.”

  “Right.” Decision took about two seconds. “When they start to turn in, I’ll take her out to meet them.” He hung up. He’d try to break up the attack before it got in close. “Pilot, give me the TBS.” He told Treseder, “Fifteen Heinkel one-one-fives, this time.” Then: “Tinker, this is Thief. Captain to captain. Over.”

  Moloch piped up: Trench here, sir. Over.

  “Tommy, these are Heinkel one-one-fives—now green sixty-five, range about five miles. When they show which way they’re coming from, I’m going out to head them off. Whatever birds get past me will be yours. You’d better come up this way now. Out.”

  “Ship is at action stations, sir.”

  “Aircraft green six-oh, seaplanes, angle of sight zero!”

  That had been a lookout’s yell, and Nick had his first sight of them at about the same moment. Studying them, he realised that unlike yesterday’s 111s these would have only one fish each. They were slower too, and should be easier to hit.

  The loudspeaker warned, “Enemy turning towards! Bearing green five-eight!”

  Time to move out, then … “Three hundred revolutions. Starboard ten.” He’d scrape out under Foremost’s stern.

  “Ten of starboard wheel on, sir. Three hundred revolutions passed.”

  Moloch was pounding up between columns two and three, passing in a welter of suds between the Republican and the Sovyetskaya Slava as Calliope swung to starboard, heeling as she pitched bowdown, her foc’sl buried in the sea, for’ard turrets lashed by the flying spray: then her bow was rocking upwards and her four propellers, gripping in deeper water, thrust her forward. He shouted back to Harvey-Smith, “Midships—steady her on two-three-oh!”

  The sad-looking, greyish face dipped to the voicepipe: “Midships …”

  From the Heinkels’ cockpits Calliope would be just one grey fragment of a jumbled crowd of ships. In these sea conditions she wouldn’t easily be distinguishable from a destroyer, at that distance and to a flyer’s untutored eye, so until she’d passed astern of Foremost and pulled herself right away from the convoy they wouldn’t know what was being prepared for them.

  “Course two-three-oh, sir!”

  She’d cut through Foremast’s wake about thirty yards astern of her. Christie had checked that the destroyer’s bearing was changing, drawing left, so the anxious look on Harvey-Smith’s face was hardly justified. He wasn’t a destroyer man, of course—and Nick was handling Calliope like a destroyer now. Not getting much of a view of the seaplanes at this moment because of the sheets of spray that she was flinging up … Cutting astern of Foremost now: the destroyer’s X and Y guns’ crews and depthcharge team huddled in shelter, watching the cruiser race by: she’d be quite a sight, too. He put his g
lasses up again. Not wanting to open fire too soon and waste shells, nor leave it too late either. Thinking of the ships lost in that first torpedo attack, the sense of defeat he’d suffered from then, and also remembering the experience of the previous convoy, PQ 18, in similar circumstances: in one assault by Heinkel 111s, out of seven ships in the two starboard columns six had been hit—and sunk—and another two in the centre of the convoy as well. It wasn’t a form of attack to be treated lightly. His tactic now was to leave the convoy well defended by its destroyers and at the same time carry the attack to the enemy at some distance from it.

  He’d adjusted the course to 225. The convoy was well astern now, and the Heinkels in plain sight ahead. Low, wave-hopping, looking like clumsy birds with legs down ready for a landing. Torpedoes ready between those legs …

  “Open fire, sir?”

  “Yes. Open fire.”

  The gongs chimed: and the for’ard turrets roared, Calliope quivering from it as she plunged. Rising—and another salvo, smoke and cordite fumes rushing over. With his glasses on the attackers and the three turrets falling into a rhythm of steady barraging he saw the bursts opening, seaplanes bucking as if to bounce over the stuff exploding in their faces. Guns in faster rhythm and in triplicate—fire, recoil, fire, recoil—alternatively left and right barrels in each turret. It was having its effect too: he saw two bombers collide and a third in the sea on its nose, tail up and somersaulting over. Some were turning away and another, pouring smoke, light glinting on its torpedo dropping askew, before the seaplane burst into flames and went into the sea. About seven were still coming—three of them circling away to their left. The guns were still concentrating on the larger group: of which another had gone down …

  “One-four-oh revolutions!”

  Sea flying, wind whipping, familiar stench of battle acrid in eyes and nostrils. High speed was no longer necessary or desirable; slowing down would reduce the pitching and make the gunners’ job easier. There were four attackers still coming, that he could see. One of them turning—another’s wings slanting as it banked to follow. Three had split away earlier on their own, but Trench would be taking care of them. Nick was deaf, by now, from the guns’ noise: Treseder’s shout came so faintly that it might have been from fifty yards away instead of six feet: “Convoy’s altering to starboard, sir!”