Night Sky (56 page)

The technician nodded. The young commander turned away and went to the chart table, to give himself time to recover. He’d almost made a fool of himself.

He turned on his heel and climbed purposefully back up the conning tower.

On the bridge the men moved aside in deference. The young commander stepped forward and stared purposefully ahead. It was darker now. He looked up. The cloud cover was much thicker: both the moon and the stars had disappeared. Good! This darkness was safer and more cocoon-like.

Suddenly he began to feel more optimistic.

‘Radar bleep, Herr Oberleu.’

The young commander nodded.

‘Another radar bleep.’

Automatically he searched the sky, but there was nothing.

There was tension on the bridge now, as everyone waited for another bleep. If they came at regular intervals, then it might be an aircraft …

‘Interference on Metox … Permanent signal.’

The young officer gripped the coaming. The cursed thing was really playing up. Useless. It was quite useless. It was said in the Officers’ Mess that the device worked well only when the enemy were making their final run-in. That gave just enough time to alert the gunners and fire a few bursts on the 20 mm’s. Not enough – but better than nothing at all.

‘Metox functioning. No signal.’

He relaxed a little and looked out into the night.

Five minutes passed. There were no further reports from the control room.

There was no aircraft then.

The pilot was just beginning to think it wasn’t going to be his night.

Then it came. ‘Radar to Skipper. Target twenty miles to starboard. Angle ten degrees.’

The familiar excitement clutched at him. He gulped involuntarily and said, ‘Stop scanner. Radar aft.’ He switched the controls to manual and banked the aircraft to port, automatically beginning the manoeuvres that would bring them into position down-moon.

‘Radar to Skipper. You don’t want the H
₂
S scanner off too, do you, sir?’

‘Is it picking up the target?’

‘Loud and clear, sir. Only one that is. I had nothing on the old set at all.’

Of course. The range had been twenty miles: the old set had rarely managed that. He said, ‘Leave it on then.’

They flew north-west until Radar gave the target bearing due east. Then they flew north-east until the target was bearing due south. Now the target would be in the path of any moonlight that might be filtering through the cloud. They turned for the final run-in.

So far so good. The U-boat, if it was one, hadn’t dived.

‘Captain to Radar. Keep it dead on the nose now.’

‘Roger.’

‘Still a good target, is it?’

‘Oh, loud and clear, sir!’

It was too good to be true. Despite the cold, the pilot’s hands were sweating as they gripped the stick.

‘Radar to Captain. Range four miles. Dead on the nose.’

A minute and a half to go then. The pilot took her down to four hundred feet and they broke through the cloud base.

‘Radar to Captain. Target three degrees to starboard.’

The pilot made the necessary course alteration. The target was moving west then: outward bound. The Wellington was down to three hundred feet.

‘Radar to Captain. Target dead ahead. Range three miles.’

‘Roger. Captain to Navigator. Bomb doors open.’

Normally they switched on the Leigh light at two miles. But with this much certainty the pilot decided to wait.

Hell, but it had better be a U-boat and not a bloody fisherman out after hours!

‘Radar to Captain. Target dead ahead. Range two miles.’

‘Roger. Call distances at every half mile now.’

‘Will do.’

‘Captain to Navigator. I want the Leigh light on at
one
mile, and, Co-pilot, keep shouting my height, will you? Yell if it gets too near a hundred feet.’

‘Right-ho, sir.’

‘Radar to Captain. One and a half miles, dead on the nose.’

The pilot peered into the murk ahead, but there was no moonpath. No sea, nothing. He was at a hundred and twenty feet now. He could feel the sweat running down his body and his heart hammering against his chest. God, but it had better be a U-boat!

‘Radar to Captain. One mile and dead on the nose!’

Navigator to Captain. Leigh light
on
!’

The powerful beam sprang out from the starboard wing, carving a path of light far into the night ahead.

For a moment the pilot could see nothing.

Bloody hell! Where the devil—!

Suddenly there was a yell. ‘There!’

And there she was.

Black. Sleek. Long.

A great big beautiful fat U-boat, a perfect target – just for them.

The pilot grunted with excitement. He knew, even before he released the depth charges, that nothing could save her. They had the beautiful black beast absolutely cold.

The young officer felt drained. He hadn’t realised how tense he had been. Presumably it was something one got used to.

He rubbed his eyes.

When he opened them again he thought for a moment his sight had gone. He was almost blinded by light …

There was a scream from his right. ‘Enemy starboard ninety!’

He spun round.

A massive light was blazing out of the sky, a great ball of white fire which dazzled the eyes. The entire submarine was covered in a bath of vicious cold light. The young officer wanted to order the light away so that they could slip back into the darkness and hide …

Simultaneously he heard the whine of approaching engines.

He began to scream, ‘Fire! Fire! Fire all guns!’ Even as he screamed the guns opened up, their staccato
rat-tat-tat
tearing into the eerie silence. The tracers wove their way up towards the blinding light.

But still the light came.

He yelled, ‘Get the light! The light!’ And then realised it was far too late for all that.

The light was so close, so dazzling, it filled the sky. The ominous drone of the engines grew to a higher pitch.

Behind the circle of light the dark shape of the plane was visible. Large. Like a bird of prey.

And still it came inexorably nearer. The young man was filled with blind rage.

He screamed, ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ as if his words would travel through the air and extinguish the terrible light.

Then the noise was a great roar, and the plane seemed to lift up and up, and suddenly its black belly was swooping over them and he raised his fists and cried, ‘No-o-oooo!’

The plane was gone. There was an instant when the engine noise was receding and the darkness was descending round the U-boat like a protective blanket – an instant when he felt a flicker of hope.

Then, a brief moment later, he knew with awful certainty that there was to be no escape after all.

The boat gave a great shudder and the deck lurched under his feet.

There was a slow rumble which grew into a thunderous boom. The shock hit his ears and buffeted his body.

The young commander realised with astonishment that the deck was continuing to fall away under his feet. He looked up and saw the boat rolling slowly, almost leisurely, to port.

The deck lurched again, violently, and there was another roar, much closer. The blast threw him against the side of the bridge and he heard his head meet the metal with a dull thud. Then water was in his eyes, in his mouth, pouring down his face. He spluttered fiercely and gasped for breath.

He suddenly thought: I must tell them.

He got to his feet and, pulling himself up the slanting deck, gripped the coaming and shouted, ‘Abandon ship!’ But his voice was weak and there was too much noise. Men were running and screaming. Even if they heard, it would make no difference.

He almost shouted again, but his eye was caught by the astonishing sight of the bow, just visible in the darkness. It was out of the water.

As he watched he realised with amazement that it was rising slowly but remorselessly up into the sky.

There was another explosion, this time from deep within the boat. Then another. The boat staggered, then continued her terrible climb into the sky.

It was only when he saw the sea rising up towards the conning tower that he realised she wasn’t climbing at all, but sliding … backwards, deeper and deeper, backwards …

There was frantic activity on the forward deck. Some men were trying to release the rafts. They were tearing at the hatch covers with their hands. The hatches would not open. A man began to scream …

The young commander felt water round his legs. He noticed in vague surprise that the sea was pouring into the conning tower. The sight made him desperately sad.

When the water reached his neck he swam for a while, thinking of his home and his parents and how much he loved and respected them, and crying because he had failed them so completely, and because he was so terribly afraid to die.

Then the waves were breaking over his head and he was swallowing water and it was incredibly cold and he knew it wouldn’t be much longer.

It was twenty minutes, in fact. But he lost consciousness before he drowned and there are worse ways to die.

The streets of Berlin were dark and almost deserted. Rain and sleet were falling in a cold flurry, whipped sideways by the icy northerly wind. The roads were slippery from the long winter freeze and the staff car went slowly, the driver peering nervously through the windscreen at the unlit road ahead.

The weather had been bad for weeks. One storm after another, snow, Arctic temperatures. Doenitz reflected that even the elements seemed to be against them. Stalingrad was under siege, the Army was in retreat; at sea the U-boat crews were achieving remarkable results under terrible conditions. It seemed that the winter would go on for ever.

He could do nothing about the weather.

But he could and would fight against the other problems besetting the Navy. Like complete lack of air cover and reconnaissance for his U-boats. Like lack of steel for the building programme. Like the usual continental-minded attitudes of the leadership, Hitler still had not grasped the fact that he had to win the war at sea to win the war on land. Always the same problems.

Tomorrow Doenitz would get Hitler to approve the steel allocation. And he was slowly winning on the matter of air cover, too. Goering had actually been pleasant to him the last time they met at Fuehrer Headquarters, and Hitler had pressed Doenitz rather than Goering to stay to breakfast. Promising signs.

Doenitz fingered the gold bands on his arm. How much difference power made!

He had been Commander-in-Chief of the Navy for three weeks, ever since Raeder’s sudden resignation. Raeder had resigned over Hitler’s decision to lay up the battleships, which the leader dubbed ‘useless’. Doenitz, on taking up his new post, had also fought the decision – and won. Since then Hitler had treated him with the greatest consideration and respect. Strange justice!

The trouble was, it might all be too late. The worst mistakes had been made and were difficult to put right.

Like the business of this radar.

Schmidt had requested an urgent meeting to discuss ‘a radar problem’. Even Goering was going to be there. It must be something serious.

The car drew up outside the Chancellery. Doenitz got out and climbed briskly up the steps into the first of the vast halls, his two staff officers on his heels. The meeting was in one of the smaller conference rooms. Originally the meeting was to have been held in Goering’s ostentatious Air Ministry building, but early the day before a bomb had fallen nearby and shattered all the windows. And it was Goering who’d promised that Allied bombers would never reach Berlin!

The others were already there. As Doenitz entered everyone except Goering got to his feet. Goering was sitting at the head of the table, his massive weight wedged into a large ornate gilt chair. He smiled benignly at Doenitz. Doenitz carefully sat at the opposite end of the table, in an equally grand chair. He nodded at Goering and noticed that the man’s eyes looked rather odd. It was said that Goering took drugs: that would account for it.

The meeting began. Schmidt was sitting on Goering’s right, looking unhappy, his eyes firmly on the papers on the table in front of him. Hesitantly he started to read from what Doenitz realised was a carefully prepared statement.

After a few seconds Doenitz felt his hackles begin to rise. Schmidt was saying, ‘… the enemy aircraft was shot down near Rotterdam on the night of February 12th 1943. Routine examination of the wreckage by Luftwaffe personnel revealed a box which was badly damaged and covered with blood. However the box was sufficiently intact for it to be confirmed that nothing similar had ever been seen before. Superior technicians were called in but were unable to guess at the function of the box. The only clue was the words “Experimental 6” written in pencil on the side.’ Schmidt turned a page and went on, ‘Luftwaffe Headquarters ordered the box to be dismantled and brought to Berlin for closer examination … The Rotterdam Apparatus, as we decided to call it, was then examined by my staff in our laboratory. However …’ Schmidt paused and looked even more unhappy ‘… two days ago, the RAF scored a direct hit on the laboratory, killing some of my staff and destroying parts of the apparatus. My staff climbed into the ruins of the laboratory and retrieved what they could. We are now trying to reconstruct the apparatus, using the parts which are left to us.’

‘Herr Schmidt now has the use of the best possible laboratory,’ Goering interrupted. ‘It is properly fortified so that this cannot happen again.’ The Luftwaffe staff officers nodded. Doenitz waited. He wanted to hear the rest.

Schmidt looked to see if Goering had finished then returned to his notes. ‘With the components now in our possession it is impossible for us to reconstruct this apparatus to the point where we can make it function. We cannot therefore report on the performance, range or characteristics of the device – not unless we obtain another apparatus, more or less intact, from a crashed enemy bomber. However, it
is
possible to draw two basic conclusions: one, that it is a form of radar – a form that we have never seen before …’ Schmidt’s voice was down almost to a whisper. He had his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, so that his face was hidden. ‘And two, that it works on very short wave, possibly as little as ten centimetres.’