There should have been another ‘T’ as well. One on fire, one that had been standing by it.
‘Not unless they’re blanked-off behind that one. But there’s another a degree or two to starboard—right ahead, almost—range 900 yards—’
‘All right, Sub.’ Furneaux, unruffled at hearing of an enemy right ahead at less than half a mile. It would be the one he’d known was there, of course, the M-class sweeper on this inshore side. Engine-noise was down to a murmur, comparatively speaking—revs for only twelve knots, and Dumbflows engaged. Noisy, battering sea… Furneaux called down to Flyte, ‘Tell Davies watch that T-class and sweep for the R’s and another T we seem to’ve lost track of.’ He took a quick look out to starboard, saw the other two—that they’d cut their revs and were still in quarterline—and swung back, glasses up to look for this closer enemy, the M-class minesweeper.
‘Port wheel, Cox’n. Steer north twenty-five west.’
‘Port wheel. North twenty-five west, sir…’
Closing throttles a bit more. Revs for about ten knots. Not having been spotted yet, despite a somewhat noisy arrival. Operative word, yet.
White water helped, of course. Searching ahead, from five or ten degrees on one bow to the other. The enemy units were all a great deal bigger than an MTB, you’d be ashamed of yourself—and as likely as not pay for it too—if you didn’t see them before they came anywhere near seeing you. The burning ship was only a distant flickering, way out there to starboard, had no relevance to this picture. The night’s second burning ship, in fact: the earlier one—unidentified, unexplained—had disappeared. Sunk, maybe. One’s mind shrank from the thought of that one having been Mark Newbolt’s 563. Possibly—with a lot of wishful thinking—it might have been something he’d run into… The one now in sight, though, was just as well out of it—seeing that you had in any case to cope with two T-class—or three—as well as two ‘M’s and—somewhere, they couldn’t have vanished into thin air—two Raumboote as well?
‘There.’ On the bow to starboard. ‘Ship’s head, Cox’n?’
‘North twelve west, sir. Fifteen. Twenty…’
On green two-zero, one M-class sweeper. Furneaux pointed it out to Lyon. ‘That’s the M. Target’s got to be somewhere the other side of her.’
‘Course north twenty-five west, sir.’
Rolling hard. In the past half-hour the wind had come up quite a bit. Chisholm and Heddingly would be on their own now, acting independently; they’d have seen his own alteration to port in order to pass ahead of the ‘M’.
‘Bridge!’
Lyon leant to the voicepipe, reaching at the same time to hang up the gunnery telephone—having ordered Markwick, Wiltshire and Garfold to close up at their weapons…
‘Bridge.’
‘The T-class is about right ahead, sir, range two thousand yards. Still no R’s.’
‘Very good.’ Straightening, he called towards Furneaux, ‘That Torpedoboot, sir—’
‘I heard.’ With his glasses on the ‘M’ again. Bearing about forty on the bow, now. His problem being to pass ahead of it and then swing right-handed towards the target, at a distance from the ‘M’ that wouldn’t be actually suicidal but still getting round under starboard wheel before actually rubbing noses with that bloody ‘T’. He’d given the others the easier approach—at least, what should logically be the easier—passing astern of the sweeper with no other escort on this side to complicate matters for them. They could pass as far astern of the bastard as they liked.
Unless the ‘M’ astern of the target divined what was happening and moved up to intervene.
But that, now, was the Heilbronne.
First sight of her. Star of the show, reason for being here at all—a darker mass separating itself to the left of the ‘M’. Two funnels, and quite a lot of ship. 4,500 tons, allegedly. You’d have thought all of that, maybe more.
Anyway. Another ten degrees to port, maybe, to pass rather more safely ahead of this inshore ‘M’. Not that ‘safe’ was really a good word for it… But with a sixty-degree turn to starboard, say, immediately after crossing his bows, and you’d still be seven or eight hundred yards short of the ‘T’. In on the target’s bow—by that time probably—well, surely—being shot at—on a course obliquely towards the target, then hard a-port and fire maybe on the swing. At an ideal range—something like 400 yards.
Touch wood. Having still to watch which way any of these cats jumped. The other two MTBs might get in first; and whether the Heilbronne was hit or missed she’d surely be taking avoiding action.
‘Steer ten degrees to port, Cox’n.’
‘Ten degrees to port, sir.’
Starshell. Sixty on the bow and a mile to the north—mile and a half, maybe. Yellowish, British-type starshell for a change. Actually illuminating rockets, fired from a gunboat’s forward six-pounder mounting. Not bad, actually, neither the timing nor the placing—giving the devil his due.
Poor old devil. But he was still a darned good man at sea. At home, he bored the pants off her, she’d said. He’d commented, smiling at her across a table in the Savoy Grill—three weeks ago—‘One way of doing it, I suppose’, and she’d murmured, ‘On the whole, Mike, I prefer your way.’ Shaking his head, shaking all that out of it. Thompson reporting the course as north thirty-five west… The Heilbronne looked as big as a house, with the starshell-glow behind her. Course and speed—south seventy west, he estimated, and sixteen knots looked like a better bet than seventeen. He set the torpedo sight—optimistically—for a ninety on the bow shot. Glasses up again, then, seeing that the M-class sweeper was much clearer in outline too. One of the later, ’37-40 batch: the main differences being size and that she’d have two four-point-ones instead of only one. Training the glasses right: there was that other ‘M’—to the right of the near one but a lot further away, probably astern of the Heilbronne by four or five hundred yards. From that position it could crack on speed to come up on either side, when its CO saw an attack developing. Chisholm’s and Heddingly’s worry, though—for the moment, anyway. He left it, swung his glasses left, passing over this nearer ‘M’ and the Heilbronne to check again on the Torpedoboot.
There. Identifiable by the two widely-spaced funnels and unusually low freeboard aft. While another rocket fizzed up and bloomed. Good for old Bob… The ‘T’ was turning, though—away, to port. Furneaux swivelling back to the ‘M’—having to watch all the cats at once, knowing he couldn’t afford to take his eyes off any of them for more than a few seconds—muttering in his brain Some bugger’s got to spot us, damn it… And at that moment, too damn right, some bugger had—starshell, green starshell, burst almost slap overhead. 560 floodlit: men’s faces greenish too.
He’d pushed the throttles shut. Telegraphs to stop. To lie doggo, engines cut. Even under that green glow they didn’t have to see you.
‘Ready both tubes!’
Chisholm—562—had seen the green starshell out there to port, realized instantly what it meant—or roughly so—and cracked on speed. The time to attack being now—escorts distracted by Mike F. and lighting him up, poor bugger, while at the same time one had the benefit of Bob Stack’s illuminants hanging in the sky, a palely yellow backdrop throwing the ex-banana boat and her consorts into ebony relief. Chisholm peering ahead through binoculars, shouting to PO Dan Martin, ‘Five degrees to port, Cox’n!’
To aim initially at that M-class sweeper’s stem, not to detour to starboard and then turn in astern of her as Mike had proposed, because (a) there’d be very little room for manoeuvre there inside her, (b) the ‘M’ was overhauling the target—obviously to fend off Mike’s attack. If one had been there now—instead of in about fifty or sixty seconds, which was roughly the time it was going to take to get there—you’d have been as near as damnit ninety on the bow.
Might still be—touch wood. Might. Things could change within seconds, though—relative velocities being entirely relative…
‘Tubes ready, sir.’
&
nbsp; David Eden, sub-lieutenant. No relation to Anthony. Chisholm caught his arm. ‘Tell the guns, no shooting without orders, not even returning fire.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Close season, I’ll tell ’em.’
Fine time for smart-arse jokes. He’d taken the latches off the torpedo firing-levers. Left hand on PO Martin’s shoulder, right arm pointing ahead. ‘See him?’
Leaning forward over the wheel, peering…
‘Yeah, blimey—’
‘The target—with an escort overlapping her forepart on this side. Steer for the escort’s bow—see?’
Five hundred yards, say, to that sweeper—which was plainer to see now as another of Stack’s rockets broke open up there—and then maybe another four hundred to the target. If one fired just short of the ‘M’, therefore—which admittedly was begging a few questions, but if one did—torpedo running distance might be say five hundred. He let his glasses hang while he set the torpedo sight. Enemy speed—seventeen. And—eighty on the bow, say… He swung the sight-bar over so that it clicked up against the stop at the seventeen-knot mark. A glance to starboard then at 564: abaft this boat’s beam, distance about 150 yards. Heddingly sticking close: but he could take a wide swing at it, if he wanted.
When the moments came, though—one’s own, then Heddingly’s—you’d be playing it off the cuff. Heilbronne might be either stopped and sinking, or taking violent avoiding-action, or—whatever…
There were also one or two other escorts as yet unaccounted for, remember.
‘Escort astern of the target’s moving up, sir.’
Swinging his glasses right: just as the tracer came—blinding—from that other ‘M’, forging up from right to left—to come up between oneself and the target, probably… Couldn’t be certain—darkness, distance, and the blinding effect of that tracer to the left: guesswork had to be part of it, but—
‘Oh, damn!’
Green floodlighting, from overhead. Lit up, and blinded, and tracer thickening, homing-in from more than one direction now…
‘Hard a-starboard, Cox’n!’
To break off, get out of it, then try again.
Furneaux warned Lyon, ‘Gunners hold their fire.’ So as not to give the enemy an aiming-point before he had to: or before they spotted him anyway. He was closing in again: had been lying cut, feeling like something on a brightly-lit stage, but in fact they hadn’t spotted him under their bloody starshell: there’d been a second one, and that had fizzled out now. The Torpedoboot which had fired the things hadn’t in any case been turning towards—as he’d feared, for a tense half-minute or so; it was completing a full turn, reversing course to lead this pack back westward—having assumed the position of centre-forward, so to speak, and probably thinking in the course of the turn that he might have seen something, put up a couple of starshells on the off-chance, and drawn blank.
His taking up that station in the lead rather suggested that the R-boats whose presence one had been suspecting didn’t have to be any part of this assembly, might only have happened to have been in company with the ‘T’ at that time—could by now be anywhere. But where in hell were the other Torpedoboote, for Pete’s sake?
Tracer off to the right. A lot of it. 560 rolling more than pitching on this course and at low revs with wind and sea on the beam. Another rocket-starshell—only a mile or so to the north. Stack and his boys still at it. Ears flapping for the sounds of torpedo-hits, no doubt…
Thinking—about the missing T’s—that one should bear in mind their existence—as wild cards, so to speak—but not waste time worrying about them meanwhile. Them or the R-boats. Also, that it might be only a matter of time before the M-class which was preoccupied at the moment with either Chisholm or Heddingly, or both, woke up to this other alien presence: especially as in the next half-minute 560 would be crossing its bow. Not really a very healthy prospect. In fact one began to wonder—suddenly, a new angle on the situation—whether if the odds were weighed against one rather too heavily here—the closest threat being that Torpedoboot, but the ‘M’ as well—he might hold on, cross ahead of the Heilbronne and attack from seaward before either she or the escorts on that side knew he was there. Might be a good alternative. There wasn’t going to be a hell of a lot of elbow-room whatever happened, and if the ‘M’ moved up, for instance, between him and the target, he’d be shut out—and stuck between these two, with no option then but to get out of it double-quick with nothing achieved. He’d dropped his glasses on their strap, had his hands on the telegraphs. Thinking about Chisholm and Heddingly: deciding that far from fouling things up for them, it might do them a good turn—taking enemy attention from that sector. They’d been told to disengage to starboard, nobody’d be getting in anyone else’s way.
Telegraphs to full ahead. They’d see you now—any bloody second, anyway… Throttles…
Hadn’t been a bad guess, that, either—a stream of tracer was coming lobbing from the ‘T’—which was on the port bow by this time, and travelling from right to left—and yet another green starshell had lit up, somewhere up behind his shoulder. Everyone wanting light… ‘Oerlikon return fire to port, point-fives starboard!’ Lyon’s shout of acknowledgement: 560 tucking her stern down and tilting her bow up, dark sea splitting and that sickly green tinting the spread of white. Explaining in a shout to Lyon as she gathered speed, ‘Going through there.' An arm flung out, pointing. ‘Shift the point-fives to this one when the time’s right—if they’re coming anywhere near us—OK?’ Gunflash from the sweeper’s foc’sl—a four-point-one, that would be, quite possibly not the first: an opening burst of tracer too, either 20-mm or 37-mm.
‘Port wheel, Cox’n—’ He’d grabbed his arm, to get his attention, shouting close to his ear—‘then constant helm, weave twenty degrees each side.’ Four-point-one shells were definitely to be avoided. Acknowledgement was inaudible but the tone would have been calm and level and all the way from Huddersfield. Gun-flashes at regular intervals now from the M’s foc’sl—whoever it had been persecuting before must have high-tailed it, he guessed, leaving 560 as the sole object of its attentions now. Criss-crossing tracer was thickening from both directions: but it wouldn’t be like this for long—forty knots wasn’t a bad speed at which to run a gauntlet. And weaving as well… Well up on the plane, a steady-enough platform for her own gunners—whose function was primarily to discourage the opposition, encourage their gunners to keep their heads down. Main purpose in life now being to get by and into a position to use torpedoes. Nothing else. The point-fives were shifting target, joining the Oerlikon firing in bursts at the Torpedoboot’s stern—roughly abeam at this moment, range about 500 yards and—he saw this now, having half-expected it—under helm, turning to port: to bring its guns other than the stern ones into action. Had expected him to have gone to starboard: turning this way he was stern-to again, so that to gain the advantage he’d been after he’d have to continue right around—which would take him dangerously close to the bows of the sweeper and/or the Heilbronne as they ploughed on westward. Would also take him out of station in the convoy’s van. Incomprehensible, but all and any such misjudgements were entirely welcome. The end-on shape on the other beam now was the Heilbronne, and she was herself in action, tracer streaming out in all directions. The other two attacking, obviously: hadn’t attacked yet, he hoped—there’d been no torpedo hits. Any moment now… 560 had effectively outdistanced the sweeper—in any case it would have been impeded by having the ‘T’ in its line of fire in the last minute or so—and it was probably tied-up in that other fracas now, around the Heilbronne. Effectively, therefore—worst over, through the gauntlet? Heilbronne was abaft the beam to starboard—tracer and gunflashes in that sector still blinding when you looked back at it—the last starshell from the gunboats had faded and had not been replaced—and the Torpedoboot, still turning, was roughly beam-on. Still shooting, and 560 still weaving: there’d been a pause in the action but it had opened up again as the ‘T’ came on round in that tight turn. 37-mm with
red tracer in it, four-point-one flashes too.
Hopes of having made it had been a little premature, in fact…
Hits then. He’d felt them, a rapid succession of what must have been 37-mm shells blasting up the port side from aft to for’ard as she’d swung that way: two seconds earlier he’d seen that stream of tracer arcing in closer, the gunner steadily correcting his aim before the turn just seconds ago.
The Oerlikon was out of it now. Only point-fives shooting back.
‘Hard a-starboard!’
‘Hard a-starboard, sir…’
To circle in—actually putting the wheel over sooner than he’d intended—and close in on the Heilbronne’s starboard bow. Well aware that she might be taking avoiding-action by the time one got there, but reckoning to get into torpedo-firing range anyway—and with any luck lose this bastard in the course of the turn. He yelled at Lyon to cease fire—to reduce the boat’s obviously excessive visibility—but Lyon had gone down to check on and/or deal with the port-side damage, and it was Perrot, who’d told him this, who jumped to the forefront on the coxswain’s left and jammed a thumb on the cease-fire button.
‘Midships!’
Thompson acknowledging, taking the rudder off her: Furneaux easing the throttles back: again, to reduce one’s conspicuousness. Spotting another Torpedoboot out there—out on the Heilbronne’s beam, roughly. One of the wild cards located… She was no immediate threat, that far out. Might have been out there to ward off the gunboats, the starshell firers. Starshell incidentally having ceased now… That one did seem to be returning towards the centre—he thought. Not easy to make out. In fact very difficult, confusing… But—he swung his glasses back to the nearer ‘T’, which had just opened fire again: and was turning inside 560’s own wider turning-circle, putting himself right in there—precisely where one didn’t want the bastard…
Tracer was again blinding. He’d thought to have been out of it by now.
The German was only chancing his arm, though. Browning, more or less. None of it was any cause for anxiety, at this stage.
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