by David Black
Biddle was hunched over, gently moving the big dial on his set.
‘Right, what have you got, Ken?’ said Harry. Him using his first name told Biddle we’re playing now.
‘He turned stern on to us as he dived, sir,’ said Biddle. ‘But he’s come back onto his original course. I think he went quite deep at first, but from the noises in the water, I think he’s coming back up again. But he’s not running, sir. He’s going dead slow, sir… I think we winged him… he is noisier than he should be.’
‘Excellent,’ said Harry, and he leant against the door jamb. Biddle gave him a glance as he called out the target’s new bearing and speed. The captain’s hands were already thrust into his blue drill trousers. Very un-officer-like. And his ratings’ drill work shirt didn’t immediately pick him out as an officer either; only the sets of two wavy rings wrapped round the epaulettes and his favourite bashed watch cap gave the game away. But hey, it was only on board, and nobody gave a bugger here. But his crew gave a bugger; it was great to have the old Harry back.
Harry called the bearing and speed to McCready and Harding as he took the four steps to the chart table to inspect Harding’s updated plot, the pencil lines on it standing out stark in the red light. A scratch of the head under his cap, hands back in pockets. The control room crew couldn’t keep their eyes off him. Oh, it felt good. The skipper was home again.
‘What d’you think the range is now, Mr Harding?’ he asked. ‘After all that up and down and turning?’
Harding tapped the space between Scourge and the Jerry. ‘Twelve hundred yards,’ he said. ‘On the button.’
‘You’re certain?’ asked Harry, smiling.
‘I feel it in my water, sir,’ said Harding, smiling back. A cheeky bugger, thought Harry, who was seldom wrong when it came to his job. Anyway, Harry knew what Harding meant to say: Bearings on a plot never lie.
Harry, mumbling to himself, the crew hanging on every snatched word. ‘He’s thinking if he hangs about, he can bag us as we scoot by, chasing him.’ Then more mumbling, to nobody in particular, just like in the old days. ‘And he’s not deep?’
Biddle must’ve thought Harry was asking him a direct question, because he replied, loud and clear, enough so that Harry could hear the helpless shrug in voice, ‘…I can’t tell with this kit, sir… but he was definitely making a lot of pumping and blowing noises… and one of his screws is “singing”… I’m hearing something… definitely.’
Biddle’s reply was interrupted by stifled snorts of laughter from the wireless cubby next door.
Boxall, thought Harry, thinking smutty thoughts again. He started sucking in his cheeks to stop himself giggling too. ‘Periscope depth,’ he said, finally, but not as an order. ‘That’s where I’d be. What’s the periscope depth of a Type Seven U-boat? They’re about the same size as us, so, what do we say? Twenty-seven feet, keel to surface?’
‘Twenty-seven feet, sir,’ said Farrar.
Harry glanced at the plot. ‘Rig for silent… helm, steer starboard fifteen… engine room telegraph to stop together.’
He stepped back to the Asdic cubby and gave Biddle a reassuring wink, ‘Ken, keep singing out the bearing…’
And so Scourge commenced her slow turn. He was no longer engaging a high-speed target on a tight bearing. The track angle was opening out now, and so was the chance of lining up for a bloody good shot at this bastard.
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Biddle.
‘…and Tom,’ he said, leaning back into the control room to where McCready sat in front of his fruit machine, ‘keep dialling in the plot’s solution and updating the D/A… fast as you like… when I call for a D/A, I’ll want it fast.’
Aye, aye, sir,’ said McCready.
There was utter silence in the control room.
Harry leaned back to the chart table and Harding’s immaculate plot. From there, he told Farrar, ‘Number One. Get on the blower, and tell TGM to set the torpedoes in tubes one, two, four and five to run at twenty-five feet. Fire on my command.’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Farrar.
Biddle called the latest bearing.
Harry watched the little repeater compass behind the chart table showing Scourge’s heading.
A few seconds passed. Biddle called again.
Harding marked his plot deftly. Scourge was steering zero seven nine degrees.
‘I have range seven hundred and twenty yards!’ called Harding. ‘On bearing red one four, speed three knots.’
McCready was next, bare seconds behind with his dialling and solution, ‘D/A is red five!’
‘Asdic!’ said Harry, in his most even tone, ‘Sing out, please, when our chum’s bearing is crossing red five.’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Biddle, calmly reflecting his skipper’s sangfroid.
The Asdic was going to have to be Harry’s periscope for this attack. Because on this attack, there’d be no looking at the target as it steamed past your periscope’s graticule, that you’d set on the director angle to tell you it was time to yell ‘fire one’. Because you weren’t going to be able to see your target if it was submerged like you, were you?
No, Biddle was going to have to sing out the bearings as the target came on until it crossed the magic line…
…and that was exactly what he was doing… until he wasn’t…
‘…target is speeding up, sir! …turning away… bearing red seven now, sir!’
Bugger, bugger and damnation! thought Harry with one part of his brain, while the other collapsed the triangle in his head.
‘Helm, port twenty, half ahead together!’ said Harry, still keeping it calm.
Biddle kept calling out the bearing…
Biddle’s last bearing and Harding’s last best solution, their numbers crunching through the big box in Harry’s head, and Scourge, in there too, in the pellucid water, a gently swinging long, slim shadow. And in his head, a steady pointer coming round until in his head, he knew it must be pointing with mechanical certainty, and then he yelled, ‘Fire one!’
Harry watched closely Scourge’s heading on the little repeater compass, above the chart table, as the torpedo, being blown out, checked the turn slightly, then as Scourge came back, he called, ‘Fire two,’ in a more measured tone. Admirable, since all the certainties of Harding’s plot and McCready’s fruit machine solution had gone out the window the moment Jerry had had the ill manners to move fast to get out of Scourge’s way. From that moment he’d been winging it, all the angles calculating in his head.
Then, in quick succession, ‘…Fire four… fire five.’
Harding had his stopwatch in his hand, saying nothing, his lips mouthing the seconds. The range wasn’t far, then ‘…Aaa-nd… ten seconds to run… five… three, two…’
BUDDUDDUMMM!
The first torpedo hitting…
But Biddle’s voice was echoing in his ears through the crash, ‘One of our torpedoes’s gone rogue, sir. Circling back…!’
‘Zero bubble! Keep one hundred and eighty feet!’ Harry was listening to himself before he realised it was him shouting. But his voice was being all but drowned out by terrible tearing sounds filling the hull. Then through it, came the shrill, dentist-drill whine of their torpedo coming back.
You got down faster if you ordered the telegraphs to full ahead together and the planes on hard dive, but Harry had yelled, ‘Zero bubble!’ He didn’t want their arse up as they went bow down, for their own torpedo to clip it as it went past… and kill them all. He could physically feel Scourge sink rapidly beneath his feet now, on an even keel… and hear their torpedo go over the top… everyone could… its noise setting your teeth on edge, like tearing linen, and then the sound of it disappear again into the steel death screams of the U-boat they had just destroyed.
‘I don’t think anyone’s done that before,’ said Harding, sounding laconic, like he was practising his lounge-lizarding. ‘A submarine, sinking another submarine while they were both submerged.’
Harry
turned and gave him a look, and somewhere, there was the sound of someone being sick.
‘It’s Leading Seaman Smith, sir,’ it was Boxall’s voice from the wireless cubby. ‘I think he’s all right now though, sir.’
And then there was the whining of that damned, bloody torpedo coming back again.
The torpedo circled back twice more in the following minutes, everybody wishing it away, yet still straining to hear the sound of it come taunting back until its fuel must have run out somewhere at the other end of its lethal orbit, and it had sunk without trace.
Scourge surfaced immediately, into the sickly reek of diesel fumes, all that was left of the German submarine and her forty-odd officers and men. Harry, on the bridge, noticed the high haze had cleared and the night sky was a riot of stars again. He ordered the battery charge to be resumed and that the forward torpedo room crew start reloading tubes one, two, four and five.
Boxall, still on watch, was pleased. He wouldn’t have to lie on those bloody uncomfortable tubular torture devices anymore. And Farrar ordered Windass to rustle up a celebratory order of coffee with condensed milk and toasted sardine sandwiches for the entire crew. As they munched and slurped through it, more than a few contemplated those other poor bastards who’d been just like them an hour or so ago – submariners on patrol. Who, if they’d been here now, would probably all have really enjoyed the coffee and sardine sarnies too. Except, now they couldn’t. And wouldn’t, ever.
Radio traffic over the next few days told them the Salerno beachhead was coming under serious Jerry air attack. Harry frequently listened in or read through Ken Dandy’s transcripts. The chatter revealed several ships from the covering force had been severely damaged by Jerries using some new secret bomb device, including the light cruiser HMS Uganda and the battleship HMS Warspite, which had been crippled by one of the damn things and had to be towed back to Malta. The US cruiser, Savannah, that the Scourges remembered from the Western Task Force off Sicily, had also taken a hit from one and had been almost sunk.
Then came the recall order, and Harry ordered Scourge’s bows pointed back towards Malta.
On the way, one of the world news round-ups, broadcast to submarines at sea from the big Admiralty transmitter at Rugby, reported a signal that had been sent to London from the C-in-C, Mediterranean, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham. It had said, ‘Be pleased to inform their lordships that the Italian battle fleet now lies at anchor under the guns of the fortress of Malta.’ Harry had the report typed out by one of the telegraphists and stuck up outside the galley. Everybody gave themselves a pat on the back, especially for the ‘…under the guns…’ bit because they might all be trade on Scourge, but they were still part of the Mediterranean Fleet, and hadn’t they done a good job?
Thirteen
Scourge came to periscope depth an hour after first light. They should have been, by Harding’s dead-reckoning, fourteen miles nor’-nor’-east of Qawra Point. That was their rendezvous point. Harry ordered the main search ’scope up for the usual all-round look, and there she was, less than a quarter of a mile away, right on the starboard bow – a bouncy little Fairmile D Motor Gun Boat, all one hundred lovely feet of her, and that jaunty little white ensign fluttering from her stubby mast: their escort back into Marsamxett Harbour and a reserved berth on one the Lazaretto’s pontoons.
‘Diving stations!’ called Harry, as he stepped back from the ’scope, and for a moment, you could see the sunshine on the surface reflected through the eyepieces onto his face, like some kind of comic mask. ‘Stand by to surface,’ he said, slapping up the ’scope’s handles. ‘Down periscope. Blow all main ballast.’
On the roster, it was McCready’s watch, so Harry let him go up and crack the lid, followed by the two lookouts. There was a whumph and a sudden rush of air upwards that told him the hatch was open – pressure exiting the boat – and then a couple of solid little lumps of Mediterranean came cascading down. ‘Ring for half ahead together,’ said Harry to the rating on the engine room telegraph and then to the fore-end of the control room and the man on the wheel, ‘Steer one nine zero, helmsman,’ then, ‘Pass the word for the yeoman!’
Dickie Bird came barrelling down the passageway, clutching their ensign and their Jolly Roger.
‘Do the honours, Dickie,’ said Harry.
There was a huge bang! aft, and suddenly a gale of wind came down the conning tower hatch; the diesels had burst into life and were now sucking down the pure, clean tang of sea air.
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said Bird. ‘And I thought I’d add a nice little flourish, seeing as that one was a first, according to Mr Harding, sir.’
‘Go on then, Dickie, give me look,’ said Harry, stepping to the yeoman’s side, all curious now. With a little fumble, Dickie folded out the place on the black flag. There, sewn on, was the usual symbol for a U-boat sunk, but above it, there was a thin wavy line of blue thread.
‘Shows she was under when we bagged her, sir,’ he said, grinning.
‘You’re an artist, Dickie,’ said Harry, grinning too. ‘You’ve missed your calling. Up you go and get it hoisted.’
Harry stood aside and ushered Bird up through the hatch. Then he turned, ‘Number One, join me on the bridge.’
There were waves and greetings exchanged with the motor gunboat. ‘Good hunting?’ came a cry from over the water.
‘We got a U-boat!’ Harry called back.
‘I say! Bloody good show!’ they said.
Farrar offered Harry a cigarette, and the two leaned against the bridge wing and puffed away contentedly in the warming sunlight. There were a number of aircraft about, mostly away to the west. Harry told the lookouts only to sing out if they were actually coming at them.
They could see Malta and Gozo clearly now, off the starboard bow, a little ragged tear of white rock above the horizon that was growing by the minute.
‘Two single-engine aircraft, bearing red ten, at two o’clock, approaching,’ said one of the lookouts. Harry turned. They were Spitfires. And they were closing fast, until one, then the other reared up, showing their plan view, their dun-coloured sand camouflage, their big red and blue roundels and the unmistakeable curve of their unique wing shapes. One continued to climb, but the other peeled off and came tearing in not much above the waves. Harry felt his throat tighten, but immediately he could see the Spitfire’s nose wasn’t boring in but pointing to pass. And in an instant, the aircraft was up with them, zooming past Scourge’s bridge at practically the same height. The air was solid with the full-throated roar of its Merlin engine as it went by, waggling its wings, and Harry could plainly see the cockpit hood slid back and a grinning pilot, his oxygen mask un-hooked; grinning and waving right at him. And then he must have hauled back on his stick because the little aircraft suddenly reared up and climbed away, the wings still waggling. Until the two formed up again and banked away to the south-west and were streaking for the horizon again.
Harry and Farrar were grinning too, as they watched them go.
‘It used to be the only things flying about when you were trying to return to Malta were Me 109s,’ said Harry. ‘Makes a nice change.’
Farrar said he was going below to get the casing party squared away and to make sure the clean-up was in full swing. ‘Send Harding up,’ said Harry. ‘And if Mr Petrie’s engines are behaving themselves and he can spare a moment away, tell him he can come up for a goof at the scenery if he fancies.’
Harry was scanning the shore with his binoculars. Comino had separated herself in the channel between Gozo and Malta, and he could see the Qawra Tower clearly. Harding was smoking, and Mr Petrie, looking particularly pale, was gawping at the sea and sky like a schoolchild. He might have cumulatively spent more years of his life at sea than both Harry and Harding put together, but as most of that time had been in a submarine’s engine room, from slipping, to coming alongside once more, being in the offing, heading home, was a sight he’d rarely beheld.
It was what he could just
pick out beyond the Qawra Tower that stopped Harry. He couldn’t make it out for a moment, and when he could, he realised what he must be looking at: a forest of masts. It must be what Cunningham had said in his signal – the Italian battlefleet. They really were ‘anchored under the guns’. And here he was, about to actually see them, close up, not through a periscope, racing away into a spray-lashed night.
‘Pass the word for the camera,’ he said into the voicepipe.
It took an endless time, it seemed, to come up on the mass of warships where you could see them properly, to actually open the bay where they lay at anchor. Not all the Italian battlefleet, however, you could see that right away. At least three of the battleships weren’t there, nor were most of the surviving cruisers, nor any of the flotillas of destroyers and torpedo boats. At the surrender, the Italian Navy must’ve still numbered over two hundred ships, but here was just a half dozen or so. But, my God, didn’t they look impressive! Anchored, fore and aft, bows angled towards the shore, like a long row of half-chevrons.
Harry detailed them off, and one of the lookouts scribbled in a notebook: a Conti de Cavour-class battleship and two Caio Duilio class, two Abruzzi-class light cruisers, a Capitani Romani-class cruiser and the seaplane carrier, Miraglia. And was that some submarines too, trotted up together at the far end of the bay? It was.
And there they lay, beautiful ships, huge, majestic and very real, between the bluff topped by the squat, stone, seventeenth-century St Marks Tower, and to the south, the gun battery next to the coast’s other seventeenth-century watchtower, the Madliena, all presided over by the guns inland at Fort Pembroke. That beautiful, sun-dappled bay that for centuries had been used only by colourful fishing caiques and more recently, the odd ferry to Mġarr, now dwarfed by these great, grey steel behemoths, squatting there like the mobile castles of some conquering horde.
Scourge’s crowded little bridge all looked on, dumbstruck, even the lookouts, unable to take their eyes off what had been the might of the enemy. Harry felt a tumult of emotions in his chest. So this was what victory felt like.
