by David Black
In between the short, sharp needles of noise you could hear the breathing in the control room. Eyes looked up. But the enemy weren’t acquiring them; their primitive sound beams were being directed beyond, and out to sea, not to down to where Scourge lurked.
And suddenly they heard it. Coming out of nowhere, loud to start with and getting louder like an approaching express train.
Ricka-chicky-ricka-chicky-ricka-chicky!
It sounded like they were right overhead, but they weren’t. According to Biddle, they were passing down the starboard beam. But then to the naked ear, sound in water behaved like it was coming from everywhere at once. And then the sound was fading; the demented, runaway sewing machines, the noise of which curdled your guts worse than rending linen.
Harry stepped over to glance at the plot, and then he ordered Scourge up to periscope depth.
Action. Something to do.
It broke the skein of stuff that had filled the control room, like they had all been in aspic – like the gluey impotence that you feel in nightmares.
And as they worked, they thought about this odd-looking tank transporting tub they were hunting, and her cargo. Panzers. Even the word got your dander up.
And they thought of Tommy Atkins out in the desert, having his brew-up, and Rommel suddenly sending all those fucking panzers charging over a sand dune and right into Tommy’s bivvy. I mean, what a right bloody sickener that’d be. But get this one right and there’d be no fucking panzers. It was what they were here for, after all; it was what they’d signed up for – so Tommy could have his tea in peace.
Harry ordered up the attack periscope. The yeoman placed him on the last bearing called by Biddle, and Harry began his liturgy of chants … ‘The bearing is, that! The range is, that!’ … raising and lowering the periscope a few inches every time, pausing, taking another all round look, then back again to, ‘the bearing is… the range is…’
‘Ready tubes one, two, four and five!’ said Harry. And Powell, in the forward torpedo room, ordered the TGM to his final checks.
On the dive board, Farrar and the wrecker, watched the bubble for the tiniest wobble in the trim, hands on valves for finest adjustments. Ainsworth manned the forward planes, and his second, PO Colin Puttick, the aft planes; their eyes didn’t move from the depth gauge needles, hands on their wheels ready to adjust for the tiniest flicker; each man knowing how vital it was to hold Scourge on this depth, to keep a steady platform for the periscope as Harry popped it up and pulled it back, it’s stick-thin head travelling little more than six inches each time. If it were spotted now the attack would fail.
Scourge and Atilla were closing at an angle that was steadily increasing; the range narrowing every second. As the big transport crossed Scourge’s bow, Harry would order a turn to starboard to bring her onto the 95 degree track angle, and that would be when he’d call for the DA and begin firing the salvo. McCready’s hands were sweating, and his throat was tight as he sat at the fruit machine, praying to whoever was the God of war these days to make him dial the numbers in fast and right and give the reponse in time before Atilla was past the angle and running away from them.
‘Steer zero one five,’ said Harry, ‘down periscope … stop.’
Ten seconds … twenty seconds … ‘Up periscope,’ it was whisper. Let me not get the speed wrong, Harry intoned to himself. He noted the target’s bow wave – the time it took her bow to mask random objects he could see on the land behind her. He began calling the bearing, the range, and then what he estimated to be the target’s speed … ‘Fifteen knots’ … the yeoman read the numbers off the periscope bezel and McCready cranked the dials.
Harry did another quick all-round look. To port, another of the torpedo boats, one of the escorts that had been following Atilla down the swept channel, was coming off the mean track, a wave building under her bow; she was speeding up, moving up to screen Atilla’s beam, coming directly at Scourge.
‘Director angle is red two zero!’ called McCready, his voice slightly shrill with tension.
Harry didn’t notice. He was doing sums in his head. If Atilla was doing 15 knots as he’d guessed, then the torpedo boat must have cranked her speed up to 20 knots at least, to overtake her. He estimated she was a good 1200 yards away, but if he was right, she was coming at Scourge at over 700 yards a minute. Spica class torpedo boats drew almost nine feet of water; Scourge’s main periscope standards, supporting the attack ’scope he was looking through, would be just under 10 feet below the surface. One and a half minutes to loose the torpedoes and get down and out the way of that damn torpedo boat. It should clear them as it went over, but he was buggered if he was going to risk it, hanging about to find out. There was such a thing as pushing his luck.
He didn’t remember telling the yeoman to put him on the DA, but he must have, because he was aware of Atilla’s bow wave pushing towards the graticule on the periscope’s sight; she couldn’t have been much more than 650 yards away now.
The bow crossed the little wire before his eyes, and just as if he was saying ‘when’, to whoever was topping his scotch up with soda, he said, ‘Fire one!’
Scourge hit the bump as the first torpedo left its tube, tearing away at 45 knots, heading for that point in the water where all his ranging and bearings said Atilla would be. He’d ordered Powell and Gooch that it was to be a tight grouping – three seconds between each shot. Fire on the stopwatch. Torpedo two was fired, bump … three, bump … four, bump …
Just over 20 seconds for the first torpedo to hit. Just over a minute for the Eyetie torpedo boat to run over them. A minute, thought Harry, was a long time. Enough time for the Eyetie bridge lookouts on that torpedo boat to spot those shots he’d just fired, see the explosions of bubbles bursting to the surface right in front of him as each torpedo’s engine burst to life and their wakes began to paint across the surface. And their calls of alarm to send their torpedo boat to action stations. They were in for it now. He’d known they would be. Unless his little plan for getting the hell out the way worked.
‘Torpedo two is turning, sir!’ It was Biddle, calling from the Asdic cubby. They had a rogue!
Even as he was hearing it, Harry called, ‘Keep two hundred feet! Group up, full ahead together. Full dive on the planes, please! Maintain heading!’
Harry’s plan was to dive under the ship he’d hopefully just torpedoed, and head inshore where his presence would hopefully be masked to the enemy’s hydrophones and echo-sounders by all the sound clutter reflected from the rocky bluffs that jutted out from this coast of the Gulf. Right now they were headed straight for Cape Boi, where the chart said there was 40-odd fathoms of water.
Buddudummm!
The explosion, even though expected, rattled through the boat like the crack of doom. The echoes of it lingered and reverberated through the hull, masking some serious clanking noise.
‘Torpedo two still circling, sir,’ came Biddle’s voice out of the cubby.
Harding, still bent over the plot, was already counting back for the next torpedo, even though he knew number two had gone rogue and wasn’t going to hit. ‘Three, two one … nothing, sir … two, one, noth—’
Buddudummm!
Torpedo three, a hit! Harding started counting for torpedo four: ‘Three, two, one … one plus, two plus …’ He got to five plus and then stopped. Torpedo four had missed, astern. ‘Two hits,’ he said. Harry gave his open palm a couple of quick punches. But he was looking at the depth gauge.
‘It’s bedlam up there,’ said Biddle. ‘Lots of HE going in all directions. Internal explosions … not big … lots of clanking …’
‘It’s probably the target’s cargo rolling about,’ said Farrar to no-one in particular. ‘Imagine what all those untethered tanks must be doing to Fritz’s interior décor.’
Everybody had a little laugh at that, above the confused noises they could hear around them in the water. Apart from Harry, still looking at the depth gauge. ‘Getting ready to catch the trim,
Number One?’ he said, reminding Farrar what he was supposed to be concentrating on.
‘Sir,’ said Farrar, turning back to the board. But before he could issue any orders to slow Scourge’s descent, there was another buddudummm!
‘That was our rogue, sir!’ Biddle called. ‘It’s hit something.’ Then, a moment later, ‘Sir! High-speed HE closing, bearing red seven zero.’
And then suddenly everybody was on their arse.
A huge thump, rather than a bang, had shuddered its way right through the fabric of the boat; several lamps shattered, and the glass face on the second cox’n’s depth gauge crazed. Scourge had come to an abrupt halt; everybody could feel her twin propellers, still at full ahead, shaking the hull as they raced.
Harry dragged himself to his feet and rang, ‘All stop’ on the engine room telegraph.
‘I thought you said we had over forty fathoms here,’ he snapped at Harding. They’d hit the sea bed. Everybody knew it, immediately. Harry stepped over and looked at the chart, where Harding’s plot showed Scourge’s approximate position. Right next to his “X”, the chart said 38 fathoms – almost 230 feet. Scourge’s depth gauge said 195 feet. The chart was wrong. What a way to find out.
A pattern of depth charges went off in a cascading roar of six explosions – but they were some way off. Why wasn’t Biddle calling out what the damned enemy escorts were up to upstairs? Harry stepped back to Biddle’s cubby. The leading seaman had his headphones draped round his neck and he was slumped, hands gripping the back of his head, with its fore-end resting on his console.
His pose was so abject that it was almost as if Harry was noticing him for the first time. Biddle was regular Royal Navy, the sort you took for granted because he was always there, and so the job always got done. What Harry saw now was an older man, skinny in his white pullover, with a big, bony head covered with tight, dark black, scouring-pad curls, cut into the wood at the side, but grippable on top. He was tending to jowly now; you could see it the way the flesh of his face hung in his posture of absolute despair. Then he sat up, and looked at Harry as if just realising he was there; his pouchy eyes looked as if he’d been stunned. And then he was in control again.
‘Set’s working, sir … it must be the head …’ he said, without Harry having to ask. Harry knew what he meant: their retractable Asdic dome, or head, that was raised and lowered through the boat’s keel up for’ard, right now must either be buried in the sand or the mud or whatever the sea bed was made of around here; or worse, it had been snapped off. From now on Scourge was going to be profoundly deaf; unless the sound was close enough to echo through their hull, they wouldn’t hear a thing – no hydrophone effect from an approaching propeller; no telling how many ships might be hunting them, or even just passing by; no guessing at the type from its engine noises; and no direction of threat.
Harry turned to Farrar.
‘Forward spaces report no damage to the hull,’ said Farrar. ‘And Mr Ainsworth reports the forward planes appear to be still functioning.’
Harry nodded, and lifted the sound-powered phone. ‘Gooch,’ he said, ‘Captain here. Clear all the forward spaces. Bring everyone back aft. Quietly. Do it now.’
He re-dialled. ‘Mr Petrie,’ he said addressing the warrant engineer, ‘Captain here. As you probably have gathered, we’ve buried our bows in the sea bed. No leaks, but we’re stuck fast. I’m lightening us up for’ard … sending the men back your way. Stow them in the stokers’ mess and let me know when they’re out from under your feet, then we’re going to go full astern together, on the motors and get ourselves off.’
Harry wasn’t going to start blowing main ballast tanks right now, not with all that enemy traffic milling about, there to see all the bubbles that would come up like “X” marking the spot for that effing British submarine – the one that’d just sunk your precious tank carrier. Talking of which. He’d hit it with two torpedoes; it should’ve been enough to sink a 4,000-ton transport. But there had been none of the noises you get when a ship breaks up on the way down – and they always do. What the hell. Two torpedoes were enough anyway to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere soon, and that Rommel wasn’t getting his tanks, which was the main thing.
A long daisy chain of tiptoeing ratings, and the four prisoners, wound its way through the control room. Everyone was quiet: no banter. No-one wanted to make any sound that might attract another depth charge pattern. It also meant no-one had to mention all the other submarines they’d heard of that had hit the bottom and never got off. It had even happened to a boat on a practice dive in the Firth of Clyde when Harry had been up there on his Perisher; the boat, stuck in the mud somewhere, had never been found.
‘Lay me a good course out of here, Mr Harding,’ said Harry, smiling at the Vasco who looked thunderstruck, tucked into a tiny corner by his chart table, obviously blaming himself. ‘When we come off I think it better we vacate this vicinity with alacrity.’
Harding nodded, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’
They waited. Mr Petrie came through on the sound-powered phone to report the crew ‘stowed’. Harry ordered the engine room telegraphs to, ‘Full astern, together.’
****
The metallic creaking sound started quite suddenly. Harry knew what it was right away, and supposed all the other experienced submariners in the boat knew too. It was an unmistakable sound, of steel under terrible strain, of a ship breaking up as she sank. And it sounded like it was right above them. But then sound in the water did that, didn’t it?
When he’d ordered full astern, all it had achieved was to bring down two more depth charge patterns. How long ago had that been, twenty minutes? It felt more like twenty hours. The first pattern had been close and as a result there was now a lot of broken glass and paint flakes on the deck plates – the glass from light bulbs and gauge faces; the paint flakes, well, there always seemed to paint flakes every time there was a bang. The second pattern had been further away. He could imagine the escorts on the surface, following a line they thought an escaping submarine might take, because no sub skipper would stay in the same place if he was under attack. They couldn’t know Scourge was still stuck fast to the bottom.
The rending of steel stopped again. And in the silence, out of the sudden gloom they’d been cast into because of all the broken lights, came the figure of one of the leading seaman from up for’ard, clutching a pot and what looked like an unlit candle, like some demonic Wee Willie Winkie. He stopped to lift the deck plate above the number 2 battery space, and bent in. It was one of the torpedomen, and the unlit candle was a hydrometer; he was systematically checking all the battery cells for cracks, and the bilges too. Because any time a boat took a rattling like they just had, the glass cells were liable to crack, and battery acid leaking through a crack and into the bilges would react with the salt water and the next thing they’d know was they’d all be breathing chlorine gas.
Harry hadn’t ordered the checks. So much was happening, it hadn’t occurred to him. But then he hadn’t needed to. Because every time the boat took a pounding, his petty officer LTO knew to send a rating to check the batteries and the bilges. It didn’t matter that there they were, stuck on the bottom, not knowing whether they were ever going to get off or not, the routine continued; the safe, efficient operation of the boat always came first. That was the way you did it in the Trade. Nobody needed telling. It was your boat and your responsibility. Always.
Watching the torpedoman, Harry suddenly felt the most contented he’d remembered feeling in a long time, of an overwhelming feeling, despite everything going on around him, of being exactly where he belonged.
Somewhere above them the tearing of steel started again. If anything it sounded closer this time. Every eye went up. The noise was very loud now, an excruciating sound.
It was obviously the Atilla, the whole disintegrating wreck of her. She was breaking up as the sea rushed in and the strains and pressures of the water twisted her hull and tore at her bulkheads.
Lo
oking up through the hazy gloom that shrouded the control room, Harry imagined the doomed ship’s canting decks, the weight of her massive machinery straining against restraining bolts, and the bolts shearing, boilers tearing loose, engine blocks snapping free of their bases, even the tanks she’d been carrying, breaking loose and running free inside her flimsy steel shell.
When he looked down again, it was the faces he saw that chilled his guts as much as the noises still screaming in his ears,, all the ‘this-can’t-be-happening’ clenched rictuses – the raw fear and the realisation that this was it. Of all the timelines of chance and circumstance, of the entire vastness of the ocean and the tiny space occupied by their own boat, that the thing up there should have picked this spot for its death plunge – it was just not possible!
Scourge had dived under her, thinking it was a smart way to hide their escape. Except Atilla hadn’t sunk immediately, and Scourge hadn’t escaped. But now Atilla was sinking, sliding down through the pellucid waters of the Mediterranean, and it sounded like she was coming right down on top of them.
For an ironic moment in the midst of the whole, dread impotence of their looming fate, Harry wondered whether it was the brisk wind he’d been so grateful for earlier, ruffling the surface of the sea and hiding their approach from the circling shagbats that had all the while been blowing Atilla’s wreck over them, stuck in the sand, so that in her death throes, the crippled transporter might take her killer with her to share a grave.
And then it stopped. What had been an all-enveloping, entombing universe of noise, suddenly ceased, so that only the minimal machinery sounds were heard now, humming away in the gloomy background. Harry could even hear his own breathing, and that of the control room crew – panting really, like everyone was not daring to hope that the broken transport had passed them by, and come to rest somewhere else; and not just that its breaking up had ceased because there was nothing left to break, and what was left was still, silently on its way to bury them. And then too much time had passed. If it had been going to get them, it would have got them by now. There were final, deep exhalations of men suddenly reprieved, heads slumped forward, or back.