by Ian Blake
But above the bar, sticking out on either side of the hull, were two small stabilizing fins. Somehow, one of these must have become jammed into a link as he had turned.
Even the links of the anchor chain of a ship the size of the Hoko were not wide enough for this to happen. But lengthways it might be possible. And as the anchor chain at this depth would not be almost vertical, as it was near the surface, but almost parallel with the harbour bed, then he could visualize how it had happened.
It followed that he must be closer to the seabed – and to the anchor – than the depth indicator had showed, and the tilted Welman must be held by its fin at the same angle as the chain. He tapped the depth gauge and the needle shuddered back to zero. Great. That was all he needed.
He turned his attention to the inclinometer on the dashboard and saw that the needle was showing that the Welman had retained the fifteen-degree list that it always took when it was turned to port or starboard.
Despite the loss of the depth indicator he felt a lot better now.
The Welman was listing to starboard. That meant it was between the chain and the carrier, not between the chain and the sea. It also meant that it was pointless trying to go straight forwards or backwards, or up or down. He was going to have to try to move the Welman’s fin sideways. The only way he could do that was to put the rudder hard to port and move the motor to full power while keeping the craft at the same depth. This would drive the Welman anticlockwise round the chain, like a dog chasing its tail, which would swing the ensnared fin away from the link that was holding it. It wouldn’t work immediately because the chain would twist, but if the pressure was strong enough the link and the fin must part company.
He rehearsed the scene once more in his mind’s eye to make sure he had it right and then repeated to himself what he had to do. What he did not know was if the rudder would be effective with the Welman tilted at its present angle. Well, he just had to find out.
He started the motor and gave it full thrust, at the same time putting the rudder hard to port. The Welman jerked forward, taking up the slack of the twisting chain, and Tiller could feel the craft beginning to swing. But then it stopped, the motor whirring. Tiller, afraid he might overtax it, cut the motor back, and he could feel the Welman being moved by the untwisting chain.
The inclinometer’s needle showed that its angle of list had altered slightly and he repeated the manoeuvre. This time the Welman surged forward faster. Tiller swore and shouted at it. The craft twisted, tilted and suddenly came free with a jerk that, if there had been room, would have thrown Tiller from his seat.
The inclinometer needle was on nought now. He pulled the joystick towards him and the needle of the depth indicator suddenly moved round to thirty feet. Jerking the Welman back on to an even keel must have made it operable again. He ran at two knots for ten minutes and then surfaced, keeping the front window just clear of the water. The brightness of the moon made him blink. He scanned the harbour in all directions but there was no movement anywhere. Ahead of him was the harbour exit he had come in by. He set the reverse course to the island on his luminous direction indicator, and dived to forty feet.
As he levelled the Welman off he thought that he had been a mite pessimistic. Perhaps, after all, Hazel-eyes would be waiting for him at Sam’s snack bar.
18
The commander-in-chief of the Eastern Fleet propped his elbows on his large teak desk, placed the tips of his fingers together as if in prayer and pursed his lips in displeasure. Around him was gathered his immediate staff.
‘You mean only one of the four returned?’
Davidson nodded. ‘It seems so, sir.’
Admiral James Manderville sighed.
‘Of course, the others could have been captured, sir,’ Davidson added hopefully. ‘We mustn’t give up hope.’
‘No, we mustn’t,’ Manderville said. The irony in his voice escaped no one in the room. ‘We mustn’t ever give up that, Commander. But, as you and I know, the chances of anyone surviving our Japanese friends in those circumstances must be about nil. The Japanese don’t think highly of anyone allowing themselves to be captured, especially if caught in the act of blowing up their ships.’
Davidson could hear the large ceiling fan above him swishing steadily round, stirring the hot, dank air of Kandy into a tepid coolness.
Manderville leant back, bunched his fingers and banged his fists lightly on the desk. ‘So the carrier is out of action?’
Davidson nodded. ‘No doubt about it, sir. She’s down by the stern. Intercepted signals indicate that her rudder and propellers are very heavily damaged.’
Manderville flicked open a folder in front of him. ‘And your assessment was that without air cover the Kamato would be unable to operate?’
‘Yes, sir. But . . .’
‘No buts about it, Commander. Now we find the Kamato is no longer in Singapore. She has sailed through the Straits of Malacca and is heading, you have deduced, for the Nicobars or the Andamans.’
Davidson nodded.
‘Why there, Commander?’
‘She could operate against our convoys from there, sir, while protected by air cover from Malaya.’
‘And your assessment is that she won’t move beyond that air cover?’
‘She’d be crazy if she did, sir.’
A reddish hue began to suffuse Manderville’s cherubic face, and his ADC, who knew the signs, inwardly blanched. Academics might be clever fellows but sometimes they were incredibly stupid.
‘Crazy, Commander, crazy? Is that the best assessment I can receive from my naval intelligence division: that the enemy’s crazy?’
Manderville, in his ADC’s terminology, was now spitting chips.
Davidson swallowed hard and said nothing. Manderville fiddled with the folder on his desk. The telephone rang. Manderville picked it up and said: ‘I see. Thank you. Keep me informed,’ then put down the receiver.
‘Well, gentlemen, air reconnaissance has just reported that the Kamato, escorted by six destroyers, has been sighted south-west of the Nicobars. She’s heading west, not north, at twenty-seven knots. Now why should she do that?’
Everyone looked at Davidson. The Intelligence Officer wound up his courage. ‘Kamikaze tactics, sir. She’s going to attack Kandy if she can get near enough. Her main armament has a range of nearly twenty miles.’
Manderville looked puzzled. ‘But why Kandy?’
‘The centre of SEAC. The Supreme Commander is here. It would be a grand final gesture. Who knows, they might even hit his headquarters. They might even kill him. They might even kill you, sir.’
Manderville rubbed his chin. ‘You know, I think you could be right, Commander. By our standards they are crazy. By theirs it is a logical thing to do.’
He picked up the telephone. ‘Manderville here. Get me the Supreme Commander, please . . . Dickie? Manderville. I thought you should know that the Kamato has sailed from Singapore and has been spotted heading this way. Yes? Yes. I agree. Suicidal. Without air support, she hasn’t a chance. But I think you’ll agree we should put Kandy on red alert.’
He replaced the receiver and nodded to his secretary, a commander in the Supply Branch, who said: ‘I’ll see to that at once, sir.’
‘So what precautions have we taken so far besides air reconnaissance flights?’ Manderville asked when his secretary had closed the door behind him.
‘We’ve diverted convoy ME-CA, sir,’ said his Chief Operations Officer, ‘and have put a submarine screen in place. Also, there are four squadrons of torpedo bombers standing by. Two on the Tenacious, sir, which sailed at dawn, and another two at Trincomalee.’
‘Anything else?’
The Chief Operations Officer hesitated. ‘And the Americans have put a squadron of Super-fortresses at our disposal, sir.’
Manderville rose from his chair as if he had been hydraulically jacked from it. ‘The Americans. We can’t even defend ourselves without the Americans.’
He swung r
ound, put his hands behind his back and looked out of the huge window that overlooked the Botanical Gardens. Then he turned back and said: ‘And the fleet?’
The vice-admiral in operational command of the Far East Fleet said gently: ‘The cruisers and destroyers are escorting the Tenacious, sir. The battleships have sailed, too, but we’re keeping them out of harm’s way. They would just get massacred.’
‘Massacred,’ muttered Manderville. ‘My God, Jack, I never thought I would live to see the day when the greatest navy in the world has to be rescued by a squadron of American bombers and has to keep its battleships "out of harm’s way", as you so tactfully put it.’
‘We don’t need them, sir,’ the vice-admiral said firmly. ‘And they’re too old to be of any use. The fly boys will do what’s necessary.’
The leonine head was shaken as a great animal shakes its head in its death throes. ‘I know we don’t need them, Jack. I know that. That’s just my point. Well, gentlemen, all we can do is wait. I suggest we go to the operations room, where we can follow the course of the battle.’
The operations room was below ground in another building. As the small group crossed to it the sirens started up, their melancholy, uneven wail piercing the late-afternoon lethargy of Kandy.
The room was new and still smelt of the green and white paint with which it had been decorated. A vast table, whose top was a map of the whole SEAC area, dominated the room. Around it were several groups of naval officers, male and female, and along one wall were a number of radio and radar operators with their equipment. The officers around the table snapped to attention.
‘At ease, everyone, at ease. What’s the situation, Harry?’
A naval captain stepped forward and with a billiard cue pointed to a number of wooden blocks on the table. As he began to speak several blocks were moved around by two WRNS officers with what looked like wooden rakes used by croupiers.
‘Kamato is maintaining her course and speed, sir. Visibility is excellent and sea conditions calm, so air reconnaissance is having no difficulty in keeping track of her. Our battle group is here, sir, ready to intercept immediately Kamato is beyond the range of any land-based air support. She is approaching the submarine screen now.’
‘Hmm. How many have we got out there?’
‘The whole flotilla, sir.’
A loudspeaker connected to one of the radios crackled and a voice resonated from the ether. ‘Mabel One, Mabel One calling Ace Jack Two. How do you read me, Ace Jack Two?’
A clearer, crisper voice replied. ‘Ace Jack Two. I hear you loud and clear, Mabel One. Pass your message. Over.’
‘Mabel One’s the Catalina over the target, sir,’ the captain said in a hushed voice. Manderville nodded.
‘This is Mabel One. One-tenth cloud, visibility excellent, am at cruising altitude of 10,000 feet, repeat 10,000 feet. No hostile flak. Hostile destroyers are peeling off from the main target. Over.’
‘They must have picked up a sub on their asdics,’ said the captain. They waited. Half an hour later a naval rating took a slip of paper from one of the radio operators and brought it to the captain. The captain scanned it and passed it to Manderville. ‘One of the screen has sighted the target, sir, and is making its first run.’
Silence descended on the operations room. The officers waited as the radio operators kept track of the messages flying through the ether, both Japanese and English. Within an hour it was known that the battleship had been hit by two torpedoes, but she was now beyond the submarine screen and was still travelling at close to her top speed.
An hour after that the Tenacious launched her first strike of twelve torpedo bombers. Only two of these penetrated the battleship’s fierce anti-aircraft barrage and only one hit its target. Its torpedo struck near the battleship’s rudder and jammed it.
Excited voices from the ether filled the operations room. ‘Target veering to starboard, repeat starboard . . . oil slick on port side . . . speed reduced to approximate one-fife knots, repeat one-fife knots . . . we’ve got her . . . congratulations, Charlie Dog . . . ’
Those in the operations room now heard orders for the carrier’s second strike to be launched, and the impersonal, measured voice of the air controller marshalling his forces in the air.
The minutes ticked by, then the silence was broken by the leader of the second strike: ‘Target dead ahead . . . estimated speed one-fife knots . . . movement erratic but still moving in a westward direction. Am going in now.’
‘They attack at thirty-five feet above the surface, sir,’ said the captain, referring to the torpedo bombers. Manderville nodded impatiently. He might be a battleship man, but he knew the necessarily suicidal tactics used by his pilots.
The second strike left the battleship dead in the water and listing heavily to starboard. Then the bombers from the Tenacious swarmed in and forty minutes later the Catalina pilot reported laconically: ‘She’s going . . . she’s going . . . she’s gone.’
Manderville stepped out into the bright sun, paused and breathed in deeply. At least they hadn’t needed to call on the bloody Yanks to finish the job for them. Otherwise he felt no particular pleasure or relief – only a sense of weariness at the futility of it all.
OTHER AVAILABLE TITLES IN THIS SERIES
MARINE A SBS: Terrorism on the North Sea
MARINE B SBS: The Aegean Campaign
MARINE C SBS: The Florida Run
MARINE D SBS: Windswept
MARINE E SBS: The Hong Kong Gambit
MARINE F SBS: Royal Target
MARINE G SBS: China Seas
MARINE I SBS: Escape From Azerbaijan
MARINE J SBS: The East African Mission
MARINE K SBS: Gold Rush
MARINE L SBS: Raiders From The Sea
TITLES IN SERIES FROM 22 BOOKS
SOLDIER A SAS: Behind Iraqi Lines
SOLDIER B SAS: Heroes of the South Atlantic
SOLDIER C SAS: Secret War in Arabia
SOLDIER D SAS: The Colombian Cocaine War
SOLDIER E SAS: Sniper Fire in Belfast
SOLDIER F SAS: Guerrillas in the Jungle
SOLDIER G SAS: The Desert Raiders
SOLDIER H SAS: The Headhunters of Borneo
SOLDIER I SAS: Eighteen Years in the Elite Force
SOLDIER J SAS: Counter-insurgency in Aden
SOLDIER K SAS: Mission to Argentina
SOLDIER L SAS: The Embassy Siege
SOLDIER M SAS: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan
SOLDIER N SAS: The Gambian Bluff
SOLDIER O SAS: The Bosnian Inferno
SOLDIER P SAS: Night Fighters in France
SOLDIER Q SAS: Kidnap the Emperor!
SOLDIER R SAS: Death on Gibraltar
SOLDIER S SAS: The Samarkand Hijack
SOLDIER T SAS: War on the Streets
SOLDIER U SAS: Bandit Country
SOLDIER V SAS: Into Vietnam
SOLDIER W SAS: Guatemala – Journey into Evil
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 1: Valin’s Raiders
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 2: The Korean Contract
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 3: The Vatican Assignment
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 4: Operation Nicaragua
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 5: Action in the Arctic
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 6: The Khmer Hit
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 7: Blue on Blue
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 8: Target the Death-dealer
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 9: The Berlin Alternative
MERCENARY 10: The Blue-eyed Boy
MERCENARY 11: Oliver’s Army
This electronic edition published in 2015 by Osprey Publishing Ltd
First published in Great Britain in 1996 by 22 Books, Invicta House, Sir Thomas Longley Road, Rochester, Kent
© 2015 Osprey Publishing Ltd
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