Submariner (2008) (20 page)

Wishful thinking again, with knobs on. But they were here for
something
. So was
Ursa
– even if it might be to sink a destroyer with a crew of something like a couple of hundred men. Or say
two
destroyers,
four
hundred men: nice spread of four fish across the pair of them.
Double
wishful thinking.

‘Slow ahead both motors.’ Then – ‘Thirty feet, Number One.’ Because twenty-eight would be a
little
tricky with the surface turbulence. Small movement of the hands, instant upward shimmer of the periscope. To Fraser – ‘Destroyers
bearing?’

Slight pause while rechecking, then: ‘Green three-oh, sir – moving right to left – 210 revs –’

‘Two in line ahead?’

‘Yessir – I
think
–’

‘All right.’Three miles clear, even four, six to eight thousand yards. Bright, flickering light in his pupils while making
another air-search. The Cant hadn’t been anywhere near them but it could be by now – or another could. Anyway, not observably.
Back on as much as he could see of the destroyers – which were
Navigatore
class, he thought. Bigger than yesterday’s
Folgores
or
Dardos
, and really nothing like them – two funnels apiece, for a start. Not a hope of getting at them as things were right now –
range minimally 6,000 yards and opening, and smallish, fast-moving targets. Would have been a lot better if he’d been inside
the gulf, ahead of them, rather than trailing them in like this.

Realistically, get one of them on its way out maybe. If for instance they’d been deployed in connection with the Gib convoy,
calling in here on their way back now, maybe for bunkers.

‘Slowing, sir – revs 150 –’

No great surprise in that: only that if their intention was to enter Castellammare, with still a few miles to go, you wouldn’t
have expected them to reduce speed this soon.

‘One-three-five revs, sir.’

Maybe did
not
intend docking. In which case back to the guesswork, hope that lurked more or less eternal … Head back from the ’scope and
pushing its handles up, telling Ellery, ‘Dip.’ Meaning duck it under and bring it smartly back up again: standard precautionary
dodge when using a lot of periscope – some Wop pilot supposedly telling himself he’d only
imagined
having seen one. Right up again now anyway: and Fraser with a new surprise – ‘
Stopped engines
, sir!’

‘
Have
they, now …’

Because if
Ursa
could be got in there, into something like point-blank range, undetected,
might
get the pair of them. Forty feet, say, group up, half ahead, be in a firing position within about thirty or even twenty minutes.
Two fish for each of them. No – one each: stationary targets, God’s sake – one each, retaining the other pair for whatever
else might show up.

‘HE in short bursts like, low revs, sir –’

‘All right.’ In order to stay put, no doubt watching shore bearings. Not
likely
they’d sit there for as long as twenty minutes, but – get in there anyway, give it a go. Knock one or both of them off, alternatively
some other, more important target, whatever they were here for. But sinking two Navigatores in one afternoon wouldn’t be anything
to be exactly
ashamed
of.

He’d checked the line of sight, told Smithers, ‘Come three degrees to starboard.’

‘Three degrees to starboard, sir. One-seven-three …’

‘Down periscope. Forty feet. Group up, half ahead together. Diving stations.’

‘Diving stations!’

To have her settled and in trim, ready for action before it started. Clang of the telegraphs, hydroplane indicators tilting
to put angle on her, motors reacting in no more than a hiccup as the LTOs back aft broke and re-engaged the big grouper switches.
Ursa
beginning to tremble under the increased thrust. McLeod had passed the diving-stations order over the Tannoy broadcast and
the rush was already three-quarters over, the control-room team’s eyes as ever curious, expectant, hopeful. Danvers stooping
over the chart as if he’d never left it, Jarvis blinking like an owl, McLeod reporting while still adjusting trim, ‘Both motors
grouped up, half ahead, sir.’

‘Course one-seven-three, sir.’

Needles slowing in their movement around the gauges,
dive-angle coming off her. McLeod’s flat ‘Forty feet, sir.’Time, 1142. Mike reached for the Tannoy microphone: ‘Hear, there?
Captain speaking. Present state of affairs is we’re motoring into a bay – gulf, Golfo di Castellammare – Castellammare being
a dockyard port on the bay’s southern shore. Two Italian destroyers have steamed in ahead of us and stopped engines in the
middle. Take us about twenty minutes to get in there – either clobber them or go for whatever they’re waiting to escort away.
If we go for the destroyers I’ll aim to put one fish in each – if they’re still lying stopped, that is – but you’d better
have all four tubes ready, TI.’

He switched off, hung the mike up. Depth-settings on the fish would have to stay at fourteen feet no matter what, those now
in the tubes being Mark IVs, not VIIIs. In general, though, play it off the cuff. There’d been no Intelligence that he recalled
of any major target currently repairing in Castellammare;if there had been, Shrimp would have touched on it in his briefing.

1147 now. Give it until 1210. Quizzing Fraser meanwhile with a raised eyebrow, and the HSD shrugging: ‘No change, sir. Short
bursts at low revs.’ Face changing in that moment – a hand jerking up to the headset. ‘Sounds like E-boats – Mas-boats, sir.
Like them other three –’

First full day on the billet, off Palermo when he’d been waiting for the cruiser to come out, they’d raced off westward around
Cape Gallo – reasons best known to themselves … ‘Bearing?’

‘South, sir. One-six-five, right to left. One-seven-five, one-eight-oh. Confused – not
close
, it’s –’

‘Beyond the destroyers?
They
moving?’

Shake of the head. ‘Inshore of ’em, but no, sir –’

‘All right.’

Eye on
that
ball, ignore distractions. 1152. Another thirteen minutes, say.

‘Sir – getting under way. Destroyers. Lost them others, but –’

‘Slow together. Group down.’ He’d restrained the curses. It had been a spur-of-the-moment, odds-against chance anyway – worth
taking,
might
have come up trumps, but –

‘Both motors slow ahead grouped down, sir.’

‘Thirty feet. What’s new, Fraser?’

‘Milling around, sir, low revs. One moving left to right, revs increasing –’

‘Mas-boats?’

Beginnings of a headshake – but uncertain, hunting this way and that with his receiver without answering. Then: ‘Still inshore
I think, sir.’ A catch of breath: ‘New HE – reciprocating –’ Counting revolutions, scowling in concentration: ‘One-eight-oh
revs – reciprocating, freighter I’d say. Destroyers more like 240 – moving right …

‘Thirty feet, sir.’ Periscope slithering up, Mike’s hands ready for it while a tentative picture part-formed in his mind –
how that lot
might
be sorting itself out. Asking Fraser, ‘New target’s bearing – and the destroyers’ still shifting left to right?’

‘All around 170, sir. 165 to 175 – yeah, seems range opening –’

‘All right.’ Periscope right up and his eyes at the lenses: initially, as confused visually as acoustically. ‘Twenty-eight feet,
Number One!’

‘Twenty-eight –’

‘Steer one-seven-oh.’

Destroyers carving great mounds of white. At this moment, damn-all else, but – Cant, to the right of them at less than a thousand
feet and flying east. Ignore
him
, for now – or get bloody nowhere, wasting time. Between the destroyers though – could be a mile back, into sight just in that
moment and now out of it again – still
had
to be there, darn it!

‘Bearing of the new one, Fraser?’

‘Can’t rightly say, sir, it’s like –’

There
. And as big as a house, in all that schemozzle – dazzling haze, dark centre to it, stuff flying in sheets.
Battle-wagon
, bow-on? No – nothing of the bloody sort, optical illusion – no fighting-top, only masts – at least,
a
mast – and yard, funnel smoke spiralling in the wind, certainly not helping – clearing again, thank God. Low, squat funnel:
funnels, side by side and rectangular cross-sectioned?
There
, all right, solid, almost clear-cut image hard to make sense of but – training right quickly, and no problems in finding
both destroyers well out on that side, three-quarter buried in the stuff
they
were ploughing up. Making say twenty knots and right into it. Just seconds on this assessment, then into air-search to find
that Cant. In which no joy, so the hell with it, it’d be blind in the confusion of this seascape anyway – touch wood – and
back in surprisingly greater clarity on what he’d called the new one – blocky, specialist transport of some kind; and if it
was worth an escort of two Navigatores, Mas-boats and a Cant it had to be worth sinking. Banging the handles up, and a nod
to Ellery: ‘Dip.’ When routine precautions didn’t cost you anything, why not take them? Telling himself, snap-attack while
the escorts are both conveniently out of the way on the San Vito side of it. Whatever the hell it is. Big, and probably in
ballast, making say eighteen or twenty knots. Periscope back up: surprising them all then as he double-checked the whole assembly
– including a sight of the Cant –
a
Cant, could be others – limping seaward out beyond the plunging Navigatores – before settling back on the heavyweight, surprising
them with ‘Start the attack. Target a large steamer, bearing
that
.’ CERA McIver gnome-like behind him to read it off. ‘Range
that
.’ Basing it on a 65-foot mainmast, which was about how it looked. Guesswork, instinct. ‘Set enemy speed eighteen. I’m twenty
on his port bow. Stand by numbers one, two and three
tubes. This’ll be a close-range snap-attack.’ Head back, and to Ellery, ‘Dip.’

Close-range snap attack before the target put its helm over to fall in astern of its escorts – or they shifted over, or the
whole outfit altered course – whatever. Periscope back up, his eyes at the lenses and its top glass
in
the froth as much as over it. Wondering about the Mas-boats, telling McLeod ‘
Half
ahead together. Keep her up, Christ’s sake. Depth now?’

‘Twenty-nine feet, sir, sorry. Half ahead both motors.’

‘Bearings of all HE, Fraser.’

Because of the possibility of Mas-boats, a surprise appearance on this side. Having certainly vanished, but having to be
some damn place. Ignore them for now anyway, get
this
sod. Ignoring also the stuff Fraser was giving him, having the main elements of it visually in any case, as far as the sea-state
permitted. Further data for the attack team meanwhile: ‘Bearing
that
. Range
that
. I’m – oh, thirty-five on his bow.’

Enemy course therefore –

They had it – Danvers on his plotting diagram and Jarvis on the Fruit Machine – over and above which, Mike realised in a sudden
clearing of memory, he
knew
this bugger! German tank-transporter
Sassnitz
, sister-ship to the once much-targeted
Ankara
– which
Ursa
as well as several other 10th Flotilla boats had in their time gone after and failed to get. She’d become known as ‘the unsinkable’
Ankara
, until eventually sunk by mines laid from
Rorqual
– then under the command of – oh, old Lennox Napier. While
this
one,
Sassnitz
–

It was going to be a ninety-degree shot at a range of about 1,100 yards. Blocky, square-built and
obviously
in ballast, that high in the water. One of the T-class from the 8th Flotilla had claimed her, seven or eight months ago,
but she’d then been spotted in Castellammare docks by a Maryland recce flight from Malta and reportedly destroyed next day
in a raid
by Blenheims. After the sinking of the
Ankara
she’d been the only Tiger tank transporter the Germans had had, so her alleged removal from the scene had been something
to celebrate.

Repaired now, after all that, en route maybe to Naples for a load of Tigers – which please God Rommel wasn’t going to get?

‘Stand by one, two and three tubes.’ By the telephone to Coltart in his tube space. McIver here doing his stuff, holding one
on the DA – periscope angled out to port by that number of degrees providing aim-off. Heavyweight thrusting forepart of the
Sassnitz
steadily approaching the vertical hairline. Close shot on a ninety track, almost unpremeditated and mostly those stupid bloody
escorts’ own damn fault.

So don’t waste it. Chance in a bleeding million – coming up
now
…

‘Fire One!’

McIver must have been sucking Fisherman’s Friends – or something worse. Target’s stem-post passing the crosswire,
Ursa
reacting to the thump of discharge, jump of pressure in one’s ears, and from Fraser, ‘Torpedo running, sir!’ Crosswire by
this time on the target’s midships section: ‘Fire Two!’

‘Both running, sir.’

And not
far
to run. Hence the short intervals between shots. Stay up, in the Navigatores’ continuing absence,
see
this before going deep. Hairline passing over the ship’s raised after-part, and ‘Fire Three!’ Third jolt and pressure-rise,
Fraser confirming, ‘Three running, sir.’

Gift from the gods, it felt like. Twelve-twenty: less than an hour since McLeod had told him, ‘Some kind of activity ashore,
sir’ and he’d responded with a laconic ‘Well, best have a dekko …’

Hit
. The hard-knocking thud, metallic
clang
in it, and a second later the eruption in her forepart, fountain of debris
and smoke, gush of flame. That one hit would probably have been enough, with the sea rushing to fill those empty tank-decks.
He stepped aside, told McIver, ‘Quick shufti, Chief’ – Ellery considerately lowering the ’scope by about a foot for him –
and a second hit – amidships. Cheers, or the start of a few, here and there, Mike displacing the engineer in order to check
on the Navigatores’ reactions – the nearer under full helm, by the look of it reversing course, practically submerged in doing
so, the other one much the same but beam-on to it, steering to cross the stricken
Sassnitz
’s bows – the
Sassnitz
stopped, shattered, unquestionably on her way down. McIver staggering clear had gasped, ‘Fuckin’ gonner,
she
is!’but with Fraser’s howl of ‘Fast HE port quarter!’ mostly drowning that. You heard it too – heard
them
, Mas-boats, E-boats – close and closing, crescendo of racing screws over Mike’s shout of ‘Flood “Q” full ahead, sixty feet!’
Periscope rushing down too – those things at forty or fifty knots being perfectly capable of wiping it off, if not smashing
into the standards or the tower itself – whether or not the bastards had known they’d been right on top of you, they bloody
had
been. And
might
have been charges coming. Weren’t – if there had been they’d have been set shallow and you’d have known it by now.
Ursa
in her plunge passing fifty feet but with the ’planes now hard a-rise to check it, Mike telling McLeod, ‘Blow “Q” – group
down – slow both when you can’ and Smithers, ‘Hard a-starboard, steer oh-four-oh.’Then into the Tannoy, ‘Shut off for depth-charging.
Silent running …’