Submariner (2008)

by Fullerton, Alexander

  ‘Twenty-eight feet, sir. Both motors slow ahead grouped down.’

  Mike glanced at Ellery, opening his hands: periscope rising to them like a well-trained animal. And on target: smoke no more than a distant haze-effect, but masts and a single funnel-top that was leaking slightly: more of that funnel than he’d thought though, maybe even most of it – on her stern, growing out of a clutter of deckhousing and he guessed ship’s boats shiny grey and low to the sea: and amidships or thereabouts what looked like a fairly massive bridge and accommodation block – ‘island’ as they called such features. Masts with cross-trees above lengthy well-deck spaces – tank-tops, of course; and a short, raised foc’sl with her foremast at its break, the after end. Ursa being say thirty degrees on the tanker’s port bow, which would make its course at this moment about 190 degrees. Training right now, though, to get the rest of it – two destroyers or torpedo-boats on diverse courses screening the target on this bow, and – slowly back across her – another … No, two others, one thirty to forty on that bow and the fourth much broader, some distance out to starboard. In fact, from the present dispositions of that team he guessed the tanker might be on the port leg of a zigzag: in which case its mean course might be more like 210 than 190 or 180. But then, there were zigzags and zigzags. While to identify the escorts – training back to the nearer ones for a clearer view – well, identical, each with a single funnel set close up to the rear of the bridge superstructure: also a stubby-looking foc’sl giving a somewhat dated look. Might be Folgores or Dardos, he thought. Speed – well, the bow-wave thrown up by one which happened to be in three-quarter profile at this moment suggested something like eighteen or twenty knots.

  So give the tanker fifteen. In which case at one’s own first-sight estimate of range – ten thousand yards, five miles – allowed about fifteen minutes in which to get it all cut and dried. He pushed the handles up.

  ‘Port fifteen, steer two-nine-oh. Forty feet. Group up, half ahead together. Stand by tubes.’

  Periscope thudding to a stop, quiet acknowledgements of those orders, Ursa already responding to her rudder as well as nosing down. Motor room confirming grouped up, half ahead. You felt it – the deck’s tilt and the screws’ thrust that would give her six, seven knots.Full ahead grouped up would give her nine. Meanwhile, for the enlightenment of a dozen or so intently watching and listening persons, ‘Target’s a tanker southbound, escort of four destroyers. Large tanker – could be twelve thousand tons.’ OK, all they needed; he nodded towards the stopwatch in Danvers’ hand, told him, ‘Start the attack. Six minutes like this. Range provisionally ten thousand, bearing was 339, enemy course south but may be zigging. Give him fifteen knots.’ To Cottenham – on Smithers’ left, telephone headset adorning the narrow, tonsured head – ‘Tell the TI depth-settings fourteen feet, and I’ll be firing four torpedoes.’

  Full salvo – and Mark VIIIs, thank God. A twelve-thousand-ton tanker deep-laden with oil and/or petrol for Rommel’s tanks and Stukas being you might say what torpedoes were bloody well for. Taking a glance at the embryo plot as Danvers straightened from it: target at zero minutes /seconds range 10,000 yards and on that north-northwesterly bearing, making fifteen knots, Ursa doing her six and a half or seven on this course a little north of west: closing the range, cutting across pretty well at right-angles to the enemy’s probably mean course, putting himself where he could then jump either way, depending on how things turned out in the next few minutes. But the Wop wasn’t going to turn east, for Christ’s sake, you could count on that … Fraser giving tongue suddenly from the asdic set – because Mike had glanced at him – ‘Confused HE starboard side, sir. Trying to sort it, but –’

  ‘We’ll be easing down in two shakes, HSD. Target’s all of four miles from us meanwhile. Heavy reciprocating, probably about 150 revs, four destroyers’ turbines between us and him.’ Leaving Fraser with that much, turning to Jarvis who’d ceased fiddling with the Fruit Machine for long enough to get out the Talbot-Booth book of merchant-ship profiles. At the tanker section: ‘This a match, sir?’ Quick look – checking the time then, less than two minutes to go – then back to it, forefinger stabbing at a profile on the facing sheet: ‘More like this.’

  ‘Alessandria. Fourteen thousand tons.’

  ‘Spitting image.’ Checking the time – ignoring murmurs of enthusiasm, asking Jarvis whether the book provided a masthead height – which it didn’t, but as a more or less standard proportion of the ship’s length might be taken as ninety or a hundred feet. The vertical angle on any known masthead height being measurable in the periscope and providing range.

  Which by now would be less than half the originally guessed-at 10,000 yards. He told McLeod, ‘Group down, slow together.’

  Easing off in order to minimise disturbance before gliding up for a preliminary shufti using the small attack ’scope. He moved that way: ERA Ellery’s hand shifting in readiness to the other lever. Power coming off her, the hum of it fading and the motor room reporting grouped down, motors slow ahead. Mike’s eyes meeting those of PO Tel Lazenby in his W/T office doorway, and beyond him, on the engine-room’s steel step, ERA Coldwell’s narrower gaze. Both intent, questioning – with every damn reason to be, too – thirty-two good men, one pair of eyes, 50 per cent chances of survival and mostly dependent on how you personally functioned …

  Back to Fraser: ‘Well?’

  ‘Reciprocating HE on green – hundred an’ sixty revs – and fast turbine HE green 05 and –’ twiddling the knob, finding that other one – ‘green 30, sir. Then there’s others –’

  ‘Far side of the target.’

  A nod of the yellow head. ‘Confused, there. All right to left, mostly –’

  ‘Stick to the target and whatever’s closer. Any change, sing out.’ To Danvers and Jarvis then at plot and Fruit Machine respectively, ‘Set enemy speed sixteen. Target bore 318 then, right?’ Needles travelling slowly in the gauges – ’planing up, no adjustments to trim, noises of pumping or flooding or any other, in any case Ursa was expecting to go deep again shortly for another spurt: but so far, so good. Gauges showing 35 feet – 34 – 33: a glance at Ellery and the small-bore periscope’s jerk as it began its upward slide, Mike crouching to take charge of it as the head of it rose clear of the hole it lived in: he had it trained within a degree or two of where the target ought to be before getting his eyes to the lenses and the monofocal top glass broke surface – greenish-blue crystals dancing, then clear …

  ‘There.’ Pirouetting fast then, and back on it – fine on the bow. Destroyers potentially in the bloody light, but – to the attack team, ‘I’m forty on his bow.’A nod then: ‘Down.’ Small periscope hissing down, big one slithering up. McLeod’s ‘Thirty feet, sir’ and Mike’s quick ‘Twenty-eight. Bearing is that, and –’

  Chief ERA McIver, close behind him, read it off the bearing-ring, lower part of the deckhead gland – where the periscope passed up through the pressure-hull well above Mike’s head, therefore several feet higher than the diminutive Glaswegian could easily read even when on his toes. Straining to do so and somehow succeeding – having to, this having evolved as the CERA’s job during torpedo attack and if deprived of it he’d likely have cut his throat. Mike taking a range now on the basis of masthead height 90 feet: ‘Range – that.’ Another one for McIver – used immediately by Danvers in his plot and Jarvis in the Fruit Machine – which you fed with enemy course, speed, range, was linked to the gyro compass so already had all of Ursa’s own data in it, and gave its operator in return an item known as the DA, Director Angle, meaning aim-off. Holding both Mike and the periscope from wavering off the DA when the time came to be aiming and firing torpedoes, waiting for the sights to come on, was yet another of the Chief’s tasks – a purely physical one, for which his arms weren’t anything like long enough. He was an extremely competent engineer as well as a thoroughly decent character, under that crusty surface, but –

  ‘Damn.’

  Having dipped the periscope
– standard precaution against over-exposure – in recent seconds, then brought it back up – circling, in air-search – and – Cant. Mosquito-like, port beam roughly, approaching at something like a thousand feet. Well, all right – back into surface-search for another quick range and bearing, then – no, damn it again – zigzagging, tanker’d put its damn wheel over, a turn-towards … As in fact one might have expected, in fact had half-expected, a zig to port – since it must have made one to starboard while he’d been deep, getting over to this side. Now back to the zig’s port leg – tanker’s length shortening as she swung, destroyers’ helms over too, the screen still screening, formation not greatly changed.

  Periscope shooting down. Standing back from it, telling McLeod ‘Sixty feet’ and the other two ‘Zigging towards – thirty-degree alteration’ll put him on 105, I’ll be ten on his bow.’ At the plot, showing Danvers: ‘Must’ve altered away at about this point. Distance between alterations therefore –’

  ‘Four thousand yards.’ Instant measurement with dividers: follow-up by mental arithmetic no less fast – ‘Seven and a half minutes.’

  ‘And the last range was 3100 – call it 3000 –’

  ‘Sixty feet, sir.’

  ‘Starboard wheel, steer oh-eight-oh.’

  To open the range – the target’s turn-towards having averted the need for another short high-speed dash with the aim of closing it. As Danvers and Jarvis could see for themselves, see the shape of it developing as well as he could – in essence, that one might expect to be firing at a range of two thousand yards or less in five, six minutes. Being safe enough time-wise for seven, in terms of the zigzag. As for the Cant – for now, forget it. Had had the ’scope up for maybe thirty seconds after spotting it – accepting the odds – evens maybe, at best, but having to be accepted. You played safe when you could, but –

  Fraser blurting out bearings on both target and escorts that were satisfactorily comprehensible and with which Danvers was embellishing his plot.

  ‘– on three-five-two, sir – and nearest destroyer –’

  ‘Target’s revs still 160?’

  Affirmative. From Danvers then a reminder, ‘Four and a half minutes, sir. Enemy course looks more like one-one-oh than –’

  ‘Set one-one-oh.’ Jarvis doing so. Mike construing that the course for a ninety track – torpedoes approaching squarely on the beam, best chance of scoring – would be 200 degrees. Shortest distance-off-track, shortest running-time for the Mark VIIIs. Time just about up now anyway. Go for a ninety track, he thought. Telling McLeod, ‘Forty feet’ and helmsman Smithers, ‘Starboard fifteen.’To McLeod then across both their acknowledgements, ‘Stop starboard, half ahead port.’To tighten the turn, push her round, save about a quarter of a minute. There’d as likely as not be more than one Cant over the top by now, watching over such an important target in its approach to the strategic Marettimo corner, so obvious a locale for submarine ambush. Ursa with a couple of degrees of list on her from the tightness of this turn: he told Smithers, ‘Steer two-zero-zero.’ McLeod reporting, ‘Forty feet, sir’, and Fraser giving them a bearing on the target of 338 degrees – Danvers putting that on the plot, Jarvis on the machine – the HSD adding, ‘Destroyers between 330 and 345, sir.’

  Think about them later. When you have to, when you’re up there and you can see the bastards. They weren’t transmitting anyway, weren’t a present danger. A nod to McLeod: ‘Slow both motors, Jamie.’ She was already most of the way round: Smithers leaving the rest to her, letting the wheel run through his fingers as the rudder centred itself. To McLeod again therefore, ‘Thirty feet.’

  ‘Thirty feet, sir.’

  ‘Target bearing, Fraser?’

  He was ready with it: ‘Two-seven-eight, sir.’

  Big change since the last one – but logical, in keeping with the fact one was in at comparatively close quarters now. Depth-gauges showing 33 feet, 32 … At the attack ’scope, for a very quick look-round – destroyers, for instance, could be right on top of you. Smithers reporting, ‘Course 200, sir’, Mike nodding to that: crouching at the after periscope, unfolding upwards with its business end, a sunburst in his eyes as the top glass broke surface: ‘Bearing that. I’m – seventy on his bow. And – damn –’

  Handles slammed up, ’scope on its way down, eyes for a moment on the curve of deckhead – actually to the surface thirty feet above that as he moved to the search ’scope and a destroyer’s screws thundered over close. For a second or two he’d had the speeding Folgore in close-up, actually looking up at it from his waterline perspective: the rush of sound was potentially as unnerving as the sight – not in fact right over the top, only as near to that as – well, as his own all-over sweat and doubled pulse-rate told him it had been. Over and gone, anyway, not having wiped off either the ’scope or standards, the big ’scope coming up fast into his waiting hands and the Folgore’s HE rapidly diminishing. He’d waved down Fraser’s startled apology, aware that with HE all round and concentrating primarily on the target he couldn’t be held responsible for – well, a destroyer at twenty knots, when there were four of them, that one actually the port wing ship of the screen which Ursa was now inside. Mike with his breathing back to normal, fairly sure he had it made now: ‘Stand by all tubes. Twenty-eight feet. Christ’s sake hold her there, Jamie. Bearing is that. I’m – seventy on his bow. Range is – that.’ McIver the gymnast doing his stuff, the peak of his performance to be expected in just moments now, Mike asking sharply, ‘What’s my DA?’

  From Jarvis – metallic clash as he lined up own and target’s outline images in his machine’s display and called the answer: ‘DA green 24, sir!’ Mike glancing up at the bearing-ring, checking ship’s head steady on 200, shifting the periscope to aim-off 24 degrees to starboard and bloody hold it there. ‘Keep me on it, Chief.’ Hands like iron clamps on his wrists on the ’scope’s spread handles, a grated nicotine-flavoured ‘Aye’ so close to the back of his neck he felt the draught of it on his ears. Vertical crosswire anyway held rigid: tanker driving at it from the right.

  Quarter of a length to go. Slow, steadying intake of breath, and – ‘Fire One!’

  ‘Torpedo fired, sir!’

  Thud of compressed air blasting it out, sharp jump in internal pressure from sea water flooding into a compensating tank to balance the lost weight and HP air from the now empty tube venting back into the submarine. Fraser having reported ‘Torpedo running’, and Mike with the tanker’s stempost about to cross the wire.

  ‘Fire Two!’

  Same thud and jolt of pressure. Fraser’s ‘Both running.’ Tanker’s bridge, all that midships superstructure, about to pass the mark: Mike’s ‘Fire Three!’ Three running: distance-off-track, from Ursa’s stem to the tanker’s iron side thrashing past ahead, 1,700 yards. One to go – and coming up now, black-topped funnel slightly aslant from the vertical of the crosswire …

  ‘Fire Four!’

  Folding the handles up, Ellery sending the ’scope shooting down, McIver shambling clear. Mike to McLeod, ‘Eighty feet. Group up, full ahead together.’ Cracking on speed plus some depth for safety before the Wop escort woke up to what was happening, had happened, and reacted to it. Danvers with the stopwatch in his palm, estimating ‘Eleven seconds, sir.’ Eleven more – on top of those that had passed already. Mike’s eyes drifting over the crowd around him as the ’scope comes to rest in its well, Ursa bow-down and her motors fairly singing – shaking her …

  Those eleven seconds gone, all right. Damn sight more than –

  Hit. Burst of drowned thunder with a metallic clang in it, reverberations echoing away. Relief – well, joy – as the reality of it grips. A quiet cheer or two: despite wanting more than one hit, which though better than missing altogether was not anything like necessarily a kill.

  ‘Eighty feet, sir.’

  ‘Half ahead both.’

  Danvers with the watch in his hand and torpedo running-time at 45 knots as the basis of his reckoning has embarked on a mutter
ed count-down: ‘Five, four, three, two, one –’

  Second hit. It’s not a surprise exactly, but there’s cheering, laughing. General happiness. Jarvis challenging, ‘Any advance on two?’

  Mike thinking, maybe not. If those two hits have stopped her – not all that improbable – then number four –

  Third hit! And an almost startled renewal of applause … Own thoughts however – well, main body of thought, probably – centring on the inevitability of now getting it in the neck.

  8

  ‘In contact, sir …’ Fraser – sadly, as the provider of bad news – all the worse for coming after a longish run of the other kind. There’d been more than an hour now – hour and a half, in fact, Ursa creeping west then southwest, Mike and the rest of them in her control room having in mind throughout that time how suddenly this kind of situation could change, fall flat on its face.

  As it had now. All hearing it, with no need of headphones. High-pitched squeaks – asdic pings, changed in character by distance – Italian-type asdics fingering Ursa’s hull. Ursa on course 230 and one motor slow grouped down; watertight doors between compartments shut and clipped, auxiliary machinery stopped and some personnel dispersed. Chief McIver aft to his own domain, for instance, young Jarvis for’ard with his torpedomen. Time – five forty-eight. Had fired the last of that salvo at four-eighteen, and since then enjoyed – without really counting on its continuance – ninety minutes’ grace. In the latter stages, to be honest, even beginning to feel one might get clean away with it.

  Could happen – had happened, on occasion, but hardly to be expected when your target’s escort was numerous enough to take care of picking up survivors and seek reprisals in the form of your destruction. Mike shrugging and getting to his feet: like others who didn’t have fixed positions for their diving stations – asdics, helm, hydroplanes – he’d spent the past hour squatting on the corticene-covered deck.