Men of War (2013) (26 page)

The
U-24
of the Second World War was another ship entirely, a small Type IIB
boat commissioned in 1936. Unlike her ancestor, to date
U-24
had little
to brag about. The boat had only one kill, the merchant steamer
Carmarthen
Coast
hit off the shores of the UK on 9 November, 1939, and that by a mine,
just as Czygan had scored his hit on the hapless
Duero
. Since that time
three other commanders had taken their turns behind the periscope with no
success, and by May 1940 she had come to be thought of as an unlucky boat, and
was soon retired as a “School Boat” for training with the 21st Flotilla. Then
in late 1942,
U-24
had been secreted into the Black Sea by a very
devious route, and transferred to the 30th Flotilla there under the command of
another U-Boat Kapitän who had been caught up in this bizarre web of fate,
Werner Rosenbaum, formerly of
U-73.

Kapitän
Rosenbaum had just earned his Knight’s Cross in the Mediterranean while in
action against the British Operation Pedestal. He was one of the very few
German U-boats to claim an aircraft carrier for a kill when he sunk the
HMS
Eagle
, and after a strange run-in with another large enemy ship that he had
never been able to identify, Rosenbaum sailed home to La Spezia and was soon
transferred to Constanza on the Black Sea Coast for a new mission—command of
the 30th Black Sea U-Boat flotilla, Hitler’s “lost fleet” in the inland waters
of southern Europe.

In
an ingenious and daring operation, the Germans had partially disassembled a
flotilla of six Type IIB Coastal U-Boats at Kiel, removing their conning towers
by oxyacetylene torches before they moved them overland on the most powerful
land haulers and tractors in Germany. They eventually reached the Danube where
they were packed in pontoon crates and then made their way slowly by barge to
the Black Sea. Originally scheduled to arrive there in October of 1942, they
were two months early, and the young twenty-five year old
Oberleutnant
zur See Klaus Peterson would serve under Rosenbaum and be privileged to go out
on some of the 30th flotilla’s very first patrols.

He
was excited about the prospect of suddenly surprising the enemy here, who had
not seen a whisper of a German U-boat even in their dreams throughout the war.
Peterson had trained under another well known U-Boat commander while he was on
U-14
,
Herbert Wohlfarth and remembered the story that man had told him of how he had
witnessed the tragic loss of the great battleship
Bismarck
. Wohlfarth
had been there, watching the final battle through his periscope, yet with no
torpedoes to make good his pledge to keep the great battleship safe from all
harm. He had used his last torpedoes on a couple of old cargo ships days
earlier, and bitterly regretted the choice for the rest of his life. Peterson
never forgot the story.

Life
and fate had a very strange way of crossing life lines and making odd
connections like that. For Wohlfarth trained Peterson, and now he would serve
under Rosenbaum, a man who was only alive now because Anton Fedorov has
recalled the KA-40 that had spotted Rosenbaum’s sub where it hid like an eel in
Fornells Bay, Menorca. Fedorov’s avid interest in the Second World War had
brought the men who fought it to such life in his mind that he could not bring
himself to strike Rosenbaum down. His act of mercy was to have dramatic and far
reaching consequences, the first of which was instilling a moment of restraint
in another man, Vladimir Karpov. When Karpov had come on duty and learned that
Fedorov spared the sub, his first instinct had been to go back and kill it, but
he, too, stayed his hand. It would not be the first time he spared an enemy
submarine.

So
Rosenbaum lived. He took command of the secret 30th U-boat Flotilla in the
Black Sea a few months earlier than he might have, and he sent out a hungry
young U-Boat commander named Klaus Peterson in a boat that was straining to
make its first kill since 1939. It would get its chance against another very
fated ship that night, the Russian minesweeper trawler T-492.

The
sun had been down for three hours and it was a dark and quiet night on the
still waters of the Black Sea. Peterson’s
U-24
had made the long journey
from Constanza, leaving several days ago and angling southeast to the Turkish
coast to look for small Russian craft that used that route to avoid German air
operations. At 19:00 hours it was very dark, as the moon would not rise until
22:30, and even then it would only be a slim morning crescent, so conditions
were perfect for a U-boat to be riding on the surface in search of unwary prey.

The
325 ton Type-II U-boats were among the very first new boats built by Germany
after the repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles, with twelve being built in
secret pens. From the first they were conceived as small coastal boats, just
140 feet in length and thirteen feet wide. With a crew of only twenty-five men
and limited range they were only useful for training or deployment in
restricted waters like the Black Sea. In the open ocean they would roll too
heavily, and came to be called “dugout canoes,” but in quieter inland waters
and coastal zones their agile maneuverability and rapid diving speed of thirty
seconds made them very effective. The Type IIB could run 1800 miles at 12
knots, more than enough endurance for operations in the Black Sea. The boat had
three 21 inch bow tubes for a load of six torpedoes, but that night
Oberleutnant Klaus Peterson had only three left, having fired unsuccessfully at
a couple of lighters along the Turkish coast the previous day.

At
19:18 hours his lookouts spotted what appeared to be a small tug or barge
tender well off Poti, and Peterson silently turned his boat, aiming the nose to
fire. More often than not, a U-boat might fire its torpedoes on the surface
like this, and the young Oberleutnant was eager for a kill on his first patrol
here. He was from the well known “Olympia Crew” of 1936, taking that name from
the Berlin Olympics held the year they graduated, and Peterson hoped to win a
medal or two before he was through tonight. The ship ahead did not look like
much of a prize, yet he would take what he could get without complaint.

“I’m
lined up perfectly, Otto,” he whispered to his Executive Officer. “Fire tube
one!”

The
G7e torpedo was away with a quiet swish, running true and right at the unwary
Tszcz-492 where Gennadi Orlov dozed in a hammock below decks under the casual
watch of two NKVD guards. Then a man shouted from above and the thump of heavy
soled boots was hard on the wooden deck. Orlov was jostled awake, hearing men
yelling out an alarm.

The
two NKVD men were up and running for the ladder, foolishly leaving Orlov alone.
He heard the word torpedo, then submarine, and the boat master was shouting for
men to man the forward 76mm deck gun that had been well concealed under a heavy
tarp. In that brief moment of uncertainty, Orlov’s eye fell on
Kamkov’s
haversack, and he moved, almost without thinking,
rushing over and fishing about to get at the diplomatic pouch. There it was! He
had the looped string open in a heartbeat, and groped inside, finding the earbuds
and then quickly securing the pouch again and putting it right back where he
found it.

He
heard the sound of something warbling in the water, then a high pitched hum
that he knew was a torpedo, and his heart raced to think these might be his
last moments alive. But the unlucky history that had plagued
U-24
since
it dared assume the mantle of its illustrious WWI predecessor would continue to
plague Klaus Peterson that night. The shot was perfect, dead center on the
small ship ahead, which was actually a Soviet mine sweeper trawler, but the
torpedo depth was wrong for the target’s shallow draft, and it ran right under
the boat!

Orlov
heard it pass and sighed with relief. He considered trying to sneak on deck but
he did not know where the trawler was and the prospect of diving into the sea
was less than appealing. So instead he waited in the noisy darkness, hearing
the grind of metal above as the deck crews worked the 76mm gun. Then he heard a
loud boom, as they fired their first round back at the enemy sub, and something
in him pulled for the Russian crew, not only because his life depended on it,
but because they were his countrymen, distant ancestors of the nation he had
left, but countrymen nonetheless.

Oberleutnant
Peterson was surprised by the gunfire, hearing the round soar in and splash
heavily in the water off his starboard side. “Damn! We were dead on and the
fish was too deep! And that’s no tug boat, it’s a minesweeper! Dive the boat!”

The
harsh claxon sounded and men scrambled from the tiny conning tower above.
Thirty seconds later
U-24
had slipped beneath the wine dark sea and
turned fifteen points to port. Peterson heard another round come in above them
but it thankfully missed, and so now he wiped the sweat from his brow and
struggled to calm himself. His first pounce had failed to catch his prey, so
the deadly game of stalking would now begin. He angled away, thinking the best
thing to do now was make the enemy think they had driven him off while he
slowly circled to see if he could line up on the target again. First he needed
to get well away from the place he had taken his first shot. A periscope here
would only invite trouble.

He
did not know that fate and time were now watching his every move, inscribing it
all in their ledgers, and that one man, Gennadi Orlov, was now about to steal a
peek at the books.

Chapter 20

Aboard
T-492, Orlov had a sudden thought. He looked at the earbuds in his palm and
slipped one into his right ear, clicking the collar button to activate his
Jacket Computer, grateful and amused that the British had been too stupid to
make any connection between the earbuds and his jacket. He would see what he
could find out about this incident, if anything had been recorded about it, and
the Portable Wiki of 2021 did not disappoint. Svetlana was in his ear with a
little story in no time:

“…19:18
hours, off Poti, Georgia: U-24 fired a G7e torpedo at Soviet M/S trawler T-492
which passed beneath its target below the bridge. The trawler then forced U-24
to dive with gunfire.
”

How
convenient, thought Orlov, smiling. He could sit there and learn what his fate
would be, and whether he had to make a run for it and hit the water if this
damn ship was going to be sunk that night. Now he understood why Fedorov always
had his nose buried in his books and computer data while they were up in the
Atlantic, and he remembered how he would advise both Volsky and Karpov on the
history. He smiled, whispering “continue” and listening to what Svetlana would
tell him.

The
next line sent his pulse up, but he soon smiled…
“U-24 scored a hit at 21:37
hrs…”
Orlov continued listening, hearing fate breath her mandate in his
ear, and then he put the earbud away in a hidden pocket of his jacket, turned
the system off, and was up on his feet to go above.

The
tang of the sea was sweet in his nostrils as he stuck his head up through the
ladder hole, climbing on deck. He saw men standing tensely at the watch, field
glasses pressed tightly to their eyes, and heard a third round fire from the
deck gun. He was up, moving forward along the gunwale past the pilot house when
one of the NKVD men saw him.

“What
are you doing up here? Get your ass below!”

“Fuck
you,” Orlov shot back at him. “Those bastards are trying to kill me!” He
pointed along the line where the deck gun was sighting. “You think I want to
sit down there and take a fucking torpedo up my ass?”

The
NKVD man smiled, relenting, but decided to keep an eye on Orlov, watching the
easy way the big man moved on deck, the sureness of his footing, and how he
shifted his weight and balance when the boat rolled. He knew at once this man
was navy, an old salt of the sea. The men were still excited on deck, and the
boat’s master was shouting orders. Kamkov was in the pilot house with him, and
when he saw Orlov he waved for him to come inside.

“Bastard
snuck up on us,” he said. “It’s so damn dark we couldn’t see him before he got
that torpedo off. Lucky for us it ran too deep.”

“He
won’t make that mistake again,” said Orlov quietly, reaching in his pocket for
a cigarette.

“You
think he’s still out there?”

“Of
course! You surprised him as well. I don’t think he expected that deck gun.
Probably thought this was just a fishing trawler.”

“The
bastard must be pretty damn hungry to waste a good torpedo on a ship this size.
I wonder if it was German. How could they get the damn thing in here?”

“It’s
German,” said Orlov matter of factly. He had asked Svetlana a follow up
question before he put his earbuds away, and he knew all about
U-24,
and
how it came to find itself in the Black Sea. Yes, the Germans were crafty
little shits. This boat was no different. Its captain must be very good if he
could put a torpedo right amidships on the first shot…and scored a
hit
on the second!

“What
time is it?” Orlov asked, looking for the moon that was still not there.

“19:30
hours, or thereabouts. Getting sleepy again, Orlov?”

The
Chief smiled. He still liked Kamkov, and hoped he would not have to kill him
soon. There was still plenty of time, he knew, but the action would begin again
in about an hour. Duels like this were not like the fast wild frenzy of a
surface action. The minute the U-boat submerged successfully, it became a game
of cat and mouse. The only question was this: which boat was the cat?

There
was no doubt in Klaus Peterson’s mind that he was in charge of the engagement
now. He had been in charge of it all along. He caught the enemy by surprise,
and soon he would angle in and line up on the target one more time. He decided
to risk a look through the periscope on this moonless night, and soon saw that
his quarry had put on speed, but was foolishly circling instead of making a
beeline for the coast as he thought it might. What are they doing? He wondered?