Time: 03.43. The flooded side-cargo still clung to her, and its fuse was still active. He’d been manoeuvring her for the past fifteen minutes or so under the oiler’s deep belly, keeping her in its shadow so that if the cargo should suddenly give up and slip away its later eruption wouldn’t be wasted. He’d considered trying to wipe it off by running the midget’s port side against the anchor cable which she’d hit during the approach, but there’d be a risk of raising an alarm – there might also be a limit to the rough treatment to which you could subject a two-ton charge of high explosive.
He was looking up through the viewing port, seeing the target’s propellers and rudder pass slowly overhead again. Gimber had been doing a very good job, considering how clumsy she was to handle with this list on her, and the close confines of the space in which he was having to turn her.
You couldn’t hang around forever, though. Times, distances, firing-periods – and other side-cargoes that might already be lying on the bottom of the fjords with their fuses running – all contributed to a sense of urgency.
‘All right. Listen.’
Heads turned. Gimber’s face like a death-mask, Lanchberry’s drawn but calm, the Bomber’s questioning. He still wanted to go out through the W and D in his diving gear and try to free the side-cargo from the outside, and he didn’t understand why Paul had refused the offer.
Paul told them, ‘Only one way out of this balls-up. We dump the starboard side-cargo here, with a five-hour delay on it. Then we nip over to Aaroy and bottom ourselves under Lützow if by chance she’s there, or otherwise under Scharnhorst.’
Scharnhorst would be a much more satisfying target, but they’d been detailed for Lützow and if she was within reach she was the one to hit.
He finished, ‘Then we abandon ship by DSEA, giving ourselves plenty of time to do it in good order, with the Bomber out first to give us a hand out and shut the hatch behind each man as he emerges. The good side of this is that we make the best use of ourselves we can – in the circumstances – with neither side-cargo wasted. The drawback is we become POWs, instead of getting away, which would have been very nice but I personally wouldn’t have put any money on it.’
Gimber said, ‘Nor would I.’ He nodded. ‘I’d say you’re right, Paul. No option, really.’
Lanchberry nodded. Brazier continued to look puzzled, like a student in class who doesn’t want to admit he hasn’t understood. Paul was troubled for the moment by a new thought. The hope of taking plenty of time over the DSEA escape – it might not be all that practicable. They’d have to get out not too long in advance of the firing period which began at eight o’clock, because abandoning too soon could give Tirpitz time to shift out of her berth and dozens of patrol boats could start dropping depthcharges. One had to think of the other X-craft, not only X-12. He didn’t say anything about this, as it wasn’t strictly necessary at this stage, but he could foresee that waiting around on the bottom under the target until nearly eight, with their own charge set to explode at 08.25 but on its recent showing hardly the most reliable piece of equipment – well, there’d be more comfortable situations.
Even without that thought in their heads, the others weren’t looking too happy. Too many things had been going wrong, and not knowing where their target was didn’t help.
‘Stop the motor. Starboard twenty.’
New technique for turning her in the restricted area. When the screw stopped and she lost most of her forward impetus so that her ’planes ceased to grip the water, her tendency – since Gimber had her trimmed slightly heavy for’ard – was to sink. There was plenty of water between the oiler’s keel and the bottom of the cove, so there was room for this, and there was just enough residual way on her to push her round to the reciprocal of her previous course. You accepted a change of depth and the turn was made in silence – and deeply enough so that any German crewman leaning over the rail up there would be unlikely to spot the whale-like intruder.
Lanchberry said, ‘Twenty of starboard wheel on… Skipper – question?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Why not let the Bomber have a go at shifting the fucking thing?’
He explained. It would take too long and it might not work. It might even explode it. By the time Brazier had gone through the routine of shutting himself in the W and D and then flooding it, equalising internal pressure with that of the sea outside so that he could then open the hatch and climb out, and had then done his stuff with the side-cargo – which might or might not have been effective – and come back inside, drained down the W and D into its operating tank so he could then open up and reappear among them – well, you’d have lost valuable time, possibly achieved nothing at all. He explained also that time was precious because the trip over to Aaroy had to be completed long enough before the start of the firing-period for the job to be done and the DSEA escape completed; it would take between three and four hours at normal dived speed, conserving battery power, or as little as two hours if it didn’t matter what happened to the battery.
‘If your effort didn’t pay off, Bomber, we’d be a lot worse off than we are now. Besides which you might blow us up.’
It was 03.48 now. Twenty-three minutes since he’d activated the firing mechanism on the flooded side-cargo. That fuse now had four hours, thirty-seven minutes to run. If the clock could be relied on… It could be given an extra hour, of course, by increasing the delay to its maximum of six hours, but that would trigger an eruption in the middle of Altenfjord in a ‘safe’ period – just when Don Cameron, Godfrey Place, Henty-Creer and Hudspeth might be withdrawing northward.
‘Main motor slow ahead.’
Gimber wound the hand-wheel clockwise. X-12 had drifted down to nearly fifty feet – to very near the bottom – and also outward, away from the target’s side. You could see its shape up there still but it was no longer black, vague and shimmery-green against surrounding silver.
‘Bring her to two-nine-five, Jazz.’
‘Two-nine-five, aye aye…’
He wondered if this other side-cargo was going to release, now. When one part of the equipment failed, you tended to distrust the rest of it. He edged over to that side, casting a glance over the releasing wheel and the fuse-clock, then looking up through the viewing port at the hardening underwater outline of the oiler as they rose closer and turned in under it.
‘Course two-nine-five.’
And still coming up. Gimber was flooding compensatory ballast into the midships trim-tank as she approached the depth ordered.
‘Forty-five feet will do.’
‘Forty-five.’
Allowing an extra margin overhead so there’d be less danger of scraping or bumping the hull above them. Gimber eased the pump-lever back. The reason she became lighter as she rose was that in shallower, therefore less dense water, the hull expanded enough to increase the volume and weight of the water she displaced. As had been discovered by Archimedes, a body immersed in water experiences an upthrust equal to the weight displaced; so the increased upthrust now – ‘upthrust’ meaning buoyancy – had to be countered by taking in more ballast. Conversely, on her way down he’d had to pump a few gallons out, or the dive would have got out of control. Paul had learnt about the Principle of Archimedes originally in a physics class in Connecticut, USA, then had it driven home to him in the first hour of the submarine training course. This, now, was a practical application of the classroom lesson – under an enemy ship in an enemy anchorage while a timefuse buzzed away the minutes.
‘Forty-five feet.’
She was under the oiler and near enough in the middle – or would be, after a slight drift onward as she turned. He told Lanchberry, ‘Port ten, and steer two-seven-eight.’
‘Port ten…’
He set the clock to the five-hour mark. Gripping the releasing wheel then, staring up through the port at the dark swell of the oiler’s bilge. It seemed to swivel very slowly as the midget completed her turn. And now was as good a time as any. He had to switch on, to activate the clock, then turn the wheel: and if this one didn’t separate either…
But the switch surely wouldn’t fail as well. Unless the whole lot were defective. The other boats – the Tirpitz lot, too? It wasn’t impossible: one of the things nobody had been able to rehearse had been live firings. But if this one didn’t release it wouldn’t make all that much difference, except to the oiler, in which at this moment – 03.51 – a whole crew would be asleep, oblivious of the threat beneath them. They’d be spared and that was the only real difference there’d be; you’d be taking two un-detachable side-cargoes across the fjord instead of only one.
He pressed the switch. The light on the clock came on, and its motor started.
‘Now here goes.’
Lanchberry raised his crossed-fingers hand. Gimber murmured, ‘God bless.’ Bless whom, Paul wondered as he pushed the releasing wheel around. He heard the securing links snap away, then the rip of the copper sealing-strip peeling off; this was a sure indication that the side-cargo was actually separating from the hull, its buoyancy chambers filling to drag it down. He might have imagined it, but it felt as if it gave her a small nudge of encouragement as it went.
Bad luck, for those slumbering tankermen. Really very bad.
‘Port fifteen.’
The course to get her to the south coast of Aaroy but clear of a one-fathom hazard on the island’s southwest corner would have been 110 degrees. But the tide had turned about an hour ago and would now be ebbing strongly. A course of 115 would offset the tidal drift, and still just clear Langnesholm if he happened to be overcompensating: there were no guaranteed-accurate figures for tidal flows available. He thought he’d bring her up in that area – about 3000 yards out from this cove – for a check, but the periscope might have flooded completely by that time and you had to be prepared to make the whole transit blind. And then – well, play it off the cuff.
‘Steer one-one-five, Jazz.’
It would be safer to stay deep the whole way over. If there’d been any alarm raised – one of the X-craft sighted, or submarines’ presence even suspected – there’d be a lot of sharp eyes busily looking for periscopes. He thought his estimates were safe enough to rely on.
‘Course one-one-five. Sir.’
‘What makes you so respectful all of a sudden, Jazz?’
‘Thought you’d like it.’ Lanchberry glanced to his left, at Brazier. ‘Can’t please some people.’
‘Eighty feet, Louis.’
‘Eighty…’
Battery power did not need to be conserved. It went against one’s natural submariner’s instincts to be profligate with it, but these were unusual circumstances. For X-12, they were terminal circumstances. They were going to abandon her with the side-cargo in place, there was absolutely no chance of getting her away to sea now, so it would make sense to get over there fast and have the extra time in hand.
He explained this to Gimber. ‘So we might as well step on it.’
‘Skipper?’
Brazier: his head was lowered, eyes showing their whites under matted brows – the attitude of a bull about to use its horns. ‘Yes, Bomber?’
‘Sorry to harp on about it. But I reckon I could shift it. I’d guess it’s gone like it has because with the weight of one buoyancy chamber flooded there’s been distortion on one or more of the links. If I just prised it away slightly – at the heavy end, whichever that may be—’
‘Depth eighty feet.’
‘Keep her grouped down for the moment, Louis.’ Paul squatted against the slight warmth emanating from the Brown’s gyro. ‘Bomber, the snag as I see it is the time factor. If we dash over there flat-out, giving you the time you’d need for this, then we’d have a flat battery and we couldn’t get away anyhow. If we crossed at economical speed, I doubt you’d have nearly enough time.’
‘Might split the difference? Say group down full ahead? And I’d be all set and ready to go out the minute you got us under here. I could have the chamber flooded before you bottomed her. Half an hour at most – probably much less – and I’m back inside!’
‘Isn’t that somewhat optimistic? It might take you up to – well, seven-thirty. And the firing-period begins at eight.’
‘But,’ Brazier gestured towards the side-cargo, ‘it’s set for eight twenty-five.’
‘Come on… It’s not only ours, Bomber, is it. Hudspeth could be under Scharnhorst this very minute, leaving his two bombs set for eight sharp. We might bottom ourselves right on top of them. How’s that for larks?’
Lanchberry chuckled. Brazier glanced at him, then back at Paul. One large hand passed around the wide, ginger-stubbled face. ‘Well, that’s all true, skipper, but…’
‘Even if Lützow’s there and we go for her, X-10’s charges under Scharnhorst would still blow us to Kingdom Come.’
‘But your time of seven-thirty, skipper – that would be the very latest, absolute limit of it. I’d hope to finish long before that. And once I’m back inside and have the hatch shut, you could be on the move right away. I mean, why should you wait for me to drain down?’
He was talking sense. You wouldn’t need to wait. The wet-and-dry was flooded from, and drained down into, number two main ballast, which was right under it. The operation in either direction was an internal one, with no effect on the boat’s weight or trim.
Paul reached for the chart, to check how far it was from Scharnhorst’s last-observed position to the exit at the island’s eastern end. The answer was a mile or a mile and a half, depending on exactly where she was berthed. That glimpse of her floodlit forepart last night, at a distance of three or four miles, hadn’t exactly pinpointed her. He doubted whether she could have moved since then, either to sea or back into her netted berth in Kafjord, without sight or sound: and the fact was that Brazier’s proposals weren’t all that crazy, after all. If the diving sortie went smoothly, a lot of problems might be removed.
‘You may be right, Bomber. It could work. After you’re back in and the side-cargo’s on the bottom – latest seven-thirty, and set to go up at eight twenty-five…’ he was thinking aloud ‘…but we’d have to be clear away, and really legging it, at that.’
‘Group up, full ahead!’ Brazier’s eyes were gleaming. ‘Run like a rigger for that gap!’
He laughed, out of excitement at the prospect of having his own job to do – and more than a routine net-cutting operation, at that. Paul nodded slowly. ‘Yes… But then we’d have to wait there – in the gap, until 0900. Otherwise – well, if we were out in the middle, the blast even from the one we’ve just planted…’
He was thinking aloud again. Gimber broke in, ‘Must say, I don’t go much on the prospect of barbed wire for the rest of the duration. I mean, if there is a chance we could skin out of it.’
Paul saw Lanchberry nod. And obviously he felt the same way himself. Glancing round, out of habit checking depth, angle of the ’planes, ship’s head… He said, ‘It all hinges on whether you can get the side-cargo off, Bomber. And how long it takes. If it didn’t work we’d be in a hell of a spot – you realise that?’
A nod. But then a grin. ‘I could do it with my bare hands, skipper. There’s no other way that thing could be stuck to us.’
‘Jazz. You know more than the rest of us how the side-cargoes are fixed. D’you agree with him?’
‘I’d say I do. I’d say it’s a good chance, any road.’ He glanced sideways at Brazier. ‘I’d be dead sure of it if it was me doing the job. Instead of a cack-handed bloody ape.’
Brazier murmured amiably, ‘Remind me to put you on a charge, you sod.’
‘Louis.’ Paul had made his mind up. ‘Put main motor to full ahead grouped down.’ He looked back at Brazier. ‘Bomber, how d’you like the thought of breakfast?’
‘Oh, just the job!’
‘Your job, then. Tinned fruit, coffee, biscuits and jam. OK?’
Lanchberry muttered, ‘Bugger coffee, I’ll have tea.’
‘You can bugger the jam too, while you’re at it.’ Vibration increased as Gimber wound her up to full ahead. He added, ‘Marmite, I’ll have.’
Spirits shooting up. Having been rather thoroughly depressed, the upturn was all the sharper.
Off Langnesholm he brought her up to nine feet for a look around. The periscope was fogged internally but he could see enough through it to take rough bearings of Korsnes, Klubbeneset and Aaroy’s left and right-hand edges. He sent the periscope down again and told Gimber, ‘Eighty feet.’ There’d been some fishing-boats rounding Klubbeneset, and what looked like a tug chugging north from the lower end of the fjord, but he couldn’t see anything of Scharnhorst: she’d be hidden, just, by the island’s western bulge. The intersection of his position lines from the bearings he’d taken wasn’t all that neat – he’d known it wouldn’t be, because of the twelve-degree angle on her and also the fogged-up prisms – but he chose the most dangerous position in the spread of the ‘cocked hat’, one from which the present course would just about have scraped her past the one-fathom patch, and played extra safe by altering two degrees to starboard, to 117.
Time now: 04.39. Estimated time of arrival at Aaroy’s southwest corner: about 06.00. But the tidal set out in the middle might be slacker than it had been up here where it channelled into the two sunds. When he was off that corner of the island he’d come up for another check, he decided – navigational, and also because from there he’d have a clear view of Scharnhorst, possibly of Lützow too. He’d have steered farther out from the Aaroy coast – particularly because of the danger of showing periscope so close to land in these millpond conditions – if he’d had more time in hand; but as things were, a shortcut was essential.
Gimber reported, ‘Eighty feet.’ He looked round over his shoulder. ‘How long, to get over there?’
‘Hour and twenty minutes.’
‘And on the fuse-clock?’
‘It’s set for eight twenty-five. Should make – three hours and forty minutes to go.’ He checked it, and found the delay left on it was exactly that. ‘Keeping good time. That’s something.’
Gimber had another question. ‘Supposing we make it – out through that gap – how far to the rendezvous with Setter?’
‘Well. Eight miles to get into Stjernsund.’ He had the distances in his head. ‘Then twelve through the sund, and another thirty to get out and across the minefield.’
‘Total around fifty. Say forty-eight hours’ passage.’
Paul nodded. He’d have to time the exit to coincide with high water, to carry them over the moored mines. He said, ‘You’ll be stir-crazy by then, Louis. If you aren’t already.’
‘Pain in the arse is the only problem at the moment. This bloody chair.’
‘Well, come out of it. I’ll take over for an hour.’
Brazier, aided by advice from Lanchberry, was selecting the tools he’d take out with him, but he took over the steering now so Jazz could ease his chair-cramped muscles too. As well as tools he was going to take a heaving-line, which he’d use for slinging himself down over the midget’s side. At a quarter to six they all changed round again; Lanchberry had made more tea. Then at five minutes to the hour Paul told Gimber, ‘Twenty feet. Slow ahead.’
It was a relief to see her upward movement on the depthgauge. For half an hour he’d been visualising her approach to that rocky coast, and particularly the shallow patch. Having made your calculations you had to trust to them, but flying blind in unfamiliar territory required a certain control of nerves.
‘Main motor’s slow ahead.’
And still nosing up…
‘Are you fit, Bomber?’
Brazier lifted one rubber-gloved hand, from his position in the W and D. He’d got into his diving gear – rubber tunic, weighted boots on wader-type leggings, oxygen equipment harnessed to his back with the distributor in front and the face-mask dangling. The tools were on his belt, which also had lead weights in it for ballast. X-12 rising past the thirty-foot mark, leaning clumsily to port.
‘Depth twenty feet.’
‘Make it fifteen.’
Then ten. And when it was clear he had her in good control, nine and a half. Paul felt for the button in the rubber bag, and pressed it.
Greenish water swirling, with diamonds flashing in it. Then surface flurry and a liquid glare of daylight.
‘Depth?’
‘Nine feet—’
‘Christ’s sake!’
‘Nine and a half. Sorry…’
Aaroy’s rocks loomed alarmingly close to port. He could see them as if he was looking through a glass of water, but one small section of the lens was clearer than the rest. Circling slowly to the right…
‘Wow.’
Scharnhorst. Bow-on, enormous, about a mile away. Maybe more – maybe 3000 yards. She was lying parallel to the shoreline and – as far as he could tell – on a single anchor. If that was the case, one might guess she wasn’t planning to stay here very long. A second thought was far from cheering: when the tide turned, she’d swing with it – away from any ground-mines laid under her.
Wait for the turn of tide? But it wouldn’t be until – seven, seven-thirty.
Bloody impossible, then…
Panic flared. He told himself, Hold on, now. Think it out.
No Lützow. Over against the far shore – the other side of Leir Botn – a minesweeper lay at moorings. And Scharnhorst, of course, might have her stern secured to a buoy, or a stream anchor out. It was wishful thinking, from here you couldn’t see at all, but it was none the less quite possible. Other moorings over on that side were empty. Some small stuff right inshore – motor launches, he thought. There was certainly no target other than Scharnhorst, anyway. He wondered where X-10 might be: Hudspeth could be making his approach at any moment, and Scharnhorst was his target. X-12 was a poacher in his territory.
But they were all poachers. And so far the gamekeepers seemed to be asleep. Scharnhorst’s bearing down here was – 082 degrees.
‘Take down some bearings, Jazz.’
Lanchberry had a pad and pencil beside him. Paul gave him bearings of Aaroy’s edges, of Langnesholm back on the quarter and the mainland point directly south. Four bearings instead of three, to make up for the fact they’d all be distorted anyway.
‘Port ten. Steer oh-nine-oh.’ He squeezed the rubber bag to send the periscope down, and told Gimber, ‘Sixty feet.’
‘Sixty…’
‘Full ahead group down.’ He took a log reading, and told them while he was putting that fix on the chart, ‘Scharnhorst’s at anchor, no nets I can see, about a mile, mile and a half away. We’ll call it two thousand five hundred yards.’ It wasn’t really a fix, in the true sense of the term, more a good indication of their position, and it was as much as he needed, anyway.
‘Bomber, you can relax for a while.’
He glanced at the depthgauge: she was passing fifty feet, and Gimber had the trim-pump working on the midship’s tank. Reporting now, ‘Main motor full ahead, grouped down.’ Paul told them, ‘I’m going to run in one thousand yards by log, then sneak up for another look from broader on her bow. It’s getting towards low water and she may swing with the tide, unless she’s moored aft, which I can’t tell yet. You’ll still have plenty of time, Bomber.’
The last half-mile would have to be covered at slow speed, though, to avoid visible disturbance of the water or sound-levels audible on asdics.
He explained, ‘I can’t afford to wait for the tide to turn. Earliest she’d start swinging is half-seven. Bomber wouldn’t be able to get inboard again by eight, so it’s out of the question. If she’s only anchored for’ard I’ll have to guess at how she’ll lie by eight-thirty, and hope for the best.’
Hudspeth would be facing the same problem, of course. He might already have done so. X-10’s side-cargoes might already be lying on the bottom. Wiser, perhaps, not to speculate on that, when you were going to have to bottom there yourself by and by.
But almost certainly – he saw this suddenly – Scharnhorst did have a stream anchor out, holding her stern. Because she was lying the same way she’d lain last night – and last night when they’d seen her the tide had been flooding, whereas right now it was ebbing!
Except she might not have been at anchor, at that moment. Might have been in the process of anchoring – hence the illuminations?
Brazier asked, ‘What’s the depth there, skipper?’
‘About nine fathoms.’
‘Scharnhorst draws – what, twenty-five feet?’
‘That’s her mean draft. Call it twenty-seven, to be safe. And nine fathoms. We’ll have a clear twenty-five feet of water under her.’
The tidal problem, the single anchor complication, was a snag he hadn’t foreseen when he’d accepted Brazier’s arguments. He studied the chart now, trying to see any others that might arise, now or later. And there was one. The withdrawal – distance, time, air supply – particularly as so much of the bottled oxygen had been used… After the explosions there’d be an enormous hue and cry, charges dropped, and so on; the crossing to Stjernsund would have to be made deep and at slow speed, sparing the battery as much as possible, and it wouldn’t be dark enough to surface until about 08.00… It would mean a hell of a long time shut down. In fact, impossibly long!
He got the answer. Or an answer. Right in that gap between Aaroy and the mainland – or just close to the north of it, near the island’s tapering eastern end – he’d bring her to the surface for a very quick guff-through. Then down again very smartly, with a full load of fresh air. There’d be some cover there, and with luck the Germans would be chasing their tails, at that stage, coping with their destroyed or damaged ships.
But all you could establish in advance was a general intention, a delineation of what was feasible and what wasn’t. When the moment came – each moment, one on each other’s heels – you’d adapt to circumstances. As he’d been realising during the recent hours, nothing was cut and dried.
‘All right.’ He’d checked the log. ‘Twenty feet. Slow ahead.’
He asked Gimber when she was at ten feet, ‘Can you manage a stop-trim, while I take a fast shufti?’
‘Well.’ Gimber’s mud-coloured eyes didn’t leave the controls in front of him. A stop-trim was a state of accurately neutral buoyancy, a trim so good that you could stop the motor and just hang there. ‘Might manage a few seconds’ worth.’
‘That’s all I’ll need. When you’re ready, nine and a half feet, and stop.’
She’d have no way on, or almost none, so the periscope would poke up with no feather, no rippling wake to it even. This close to the target, in broad daylight and with barely a wrinkle on the surface, it was about the only way you’d get away with it. Gimber had made his adjustments to the trim: his right hand moved to the control-wheel and wound it anti-clockwise to its stop, then pulled out the field switch. Paul had the periscope sliding up, trained on the bearing where he expected to locate his target. Snatching the handles down, pressing his right eye against the rubber.
‘Bearing – oh-six-four. I’m thirty on her port bow, and – she has a wire out to a buoy astern!’
He’d squeezed the bag, and the tube was rushing down. Lanchberry muttered, ‘Good oh…’ Brazier clapped gloved hands together. Gimber said, ‘Can’t hold her, she’s so bloody skew-whiff—’
‘Slow ahead. Fifty feet. Come to port to oh-six-four, Jazz.’
Seeing that wire out to the buoy under her counter had felt like one of the best moments of his life. X-12 was already slanting down, trembling very slightly under the slow-speed thrust of her screw. As if she, too, were a little excited now.
Too slow-speed, though. He wanted to be there, now, getting on with it. Then, best of all, getting out.
‘We’ll hang on until we’re really close, Bomber. Five minutes short of bottoming. Otherwise by the time we get there you’d be frozen solid.’
Brazier nodded. It wasn’t going to be any fun in the wet-and-dry chamber, and he knew it better than any of them.
‘Course – oh-six-four.’
Gimber reported, ‘Fifty feet.’
The slow creep of the approach was galling. He was constantly checking the distance by log as the minutes passed, and he could see signs of the tension in the others. The temptation to increase to half ahead was difficult to resist: using up so much time like this, when you knew that once you’d shed the side-cargo you’d need every minute of it, was maddening. There was also – when your head was close to it – the purring fuse-clock on the flooded side: and your distrust of it.
It was six forty-two when he saw Scharnhorst’s huge shadow through the viewing port. The time, and the log reading, checked exactly.
‘Come to oh-six-oh, Jazz.’
‘Oh-six-oh…’
‘Target’s in sight.’ He tapped the glass. ‘Forty feet, Louis.’ There might be as little as eight fathoms where she was lying. Gimber took his eyes off the starboard side viewing port. It wasn’t easy to stop looking – Scharnhorst, one of the most powerful ships afloat, about a hundred yards ahead and at their mercy.
Not that ‘mercy’ would be quite the word for it.
‘All right, Bomber. In you go, and flood up. Don’t touch the hatch until I give two bangs on the bulkhead – then carry on out, quick as you like. Take care you aren’t under the side-cargo when you free it – all right?’
Brazier nodded.
‘Three bangs on the bulkhead would mean emergency of some kind, stop everything and drain down.’ Paul leant over with his hand out. ‘Bomber – good luck, now.’
‘Yeah.’ Lanchberry also reached to shake his hand. ‘Best of British, Bomber.’ Gimber was too far away and too busy for handshaking; he said, ‘Bomber, first night back in Cairnbawn, I’ll buy all your drinks.’
Brazier grinned round at them all. ‘Arf, arf.’ He backed into the W and D, and slammed its steel door, and they saw the clips hinge over. Lanchberry muttered, ‘Dunno what we’re fussed about. He’ll do it on his ear.’
Brazier would have shut and clipped the other door as well, the one leading into the fore end. So he was now enclosed in a space in which he could only crouch with his elbows in contact with both bulkheads and the closed hatch above his head. He’d put on his mask, and start breathing oxygen from the counter-lung strapped to his chest and fed, via the distributor valve, from the bottles on his back. Equipped like this, being the size he was, he’d only just pass through the hatch when the time came for his exit. In preparation for that outing he’d now be setting about flooding his steel cell by pumping water up from number two main ballast tank. He had a pump-lever in there, similar in operation to the trimming-pump control; the first part of its movement opened the valve from the W and D to the ballast tank and also the vent they shared, and the next started the pump, which was a powerful one producing up to fifty pounds to the square inch. By now the water would be roaring in, flooding up around him, deafening him with its noise as the level rose and the pressure increased. He’d adjust his flow of oxygen, the pressure of it in the lung, to balance that rising pressure. The flooding process lasted about four minutes, unpleasant minutes – and more so than usual, here in seventy degrees north latitude, by the fact of it being only fractionally above freezing point. The worst moment came when the inrush of water, having already closed over Brazier’s head, hit the roof of the chamber – the underside of the hatch. At this point the vent lost the battle and pressure jumped suddenly to equal sea-pressure outside. For the diver it was like being slammed against a wall. Brazier would have softened the blow, and saved the counter-lung and his own lungs from being squeezed flat, by stopping the pump just before the chamber filled.
Those controls inside the W and D were duplicated here in the control room. You could do all of it from here, except of course for opening the hatch. That had to be done by the man in the chamber. When the time came he’d reach up, grab the central handwheel above his head and wrench it round so that the dogs would disengage on the rim and allow him to push it up. Brazier wouldn’t be doing that yet: he’d be hunched in there now, enclosed in icy water under pressure, waiting for Paul’s signal.
Paul waited too – watching the shadow fill the viewing port and darken, its wavy edges firming as the midget crept in under it. Scharnhorst was nearly 750 feet long and 100 in the beam; she carried twelve-inch armour on her sides, but the vast expanse of underwater hull now exposed to X-12 had no such protection.
Fifteen hundred men up there inside her. Probably having breakfast.
Rippling silver ended where her great bulk shaded the water under it. The approach had been at an angle of thirty degrees to the battleship’s fore-and-aft line, and the small alteration of course he’d made five minutes ago would have brought them in just about amidships, under that funnel with its rakish cap. It was probably the best place to leave a single charge, he thought. If X-10 had placed – or was placing – her two side-cargoes, she’d drop one at each end, a tactic designed to break the ship’s back. Another in the middle, therefore, would make a real job of it.
‘Stop main motor.’
‘Stop… Motor’s stopped.’
‘Port twenty.’
‘Port twenty.’ Lanchberry span the wheel. ‘Twenty of port wheel on, sir.’
‘Take her down slowly, Louis.’
A nod. Gimber’s left hand moved the pumplever to port, then centred it again. Forty-two feet. Forty-four…
‘Give her a touch astern.’
Gimber put the motor to slow astern for just long enough to feel the screw churn, taking the way off her. Looking upwards through the ports it was as if an enormous steel shutter stopped sliding over them. It was lifting now, going out of focus. Gimber had stopped the motor. The gauge showed forty-eight feet – eight fathoms. At fifty-four there was a bump for’ard: she lurched, bumped again.
Hard. Too hard.
‘Rock.’
As expected. A crunching sound from under their feet lasted for about ten seconds while she settled. The needle was on fifty-four and a half feet, and there was no movement on it at all now. The fore-and-aft bubble was on the centreline, but she was leaning a few degrees to port, canted by the flooded charge’s weight although not as much as she had been when she’d been waterborne. She’d be resting on her heavy, level keel, kept upright by the buoyancy in her compartments and in some tanks.
Paul took a wheelspanner from where it was hanging on the deckhead, rapped twice with it on the door of the W and D. The metallic crashes were startlingly loud. Then he went to the stub periscope, the short bifocal one. He was looking into a dim, shifting haze, water and water-movement distorting the overhead view of Scharnhorst’s bilges extending into what looked like miles, wavery like sinews in it flexing themselves. He couldn’t see X-12’s fore hatch until it opened; it was below the periscope’s field of view, set down in a short well inside the casing. But he saw its rim appear now – a curve of black at the very bottom of the glass; the hatch had been flung back, and that was the top edge of the lid standing open. Now Brazier was rising into view, ungainly undersea creature dramatically emerging, rising and inclining forward – this way, leaning towards and over the stub periscope – hooking black rubber-gloved claws into the casing’s apertures to hold itself down and drag itself aft. Boots loud on the casing’s steel, ringing clangs, and bubbles rising in a thin stream from his breathing exhaust.
Astonishing to think you knew that sinister-looking creature – had talked, eaten and drunk with it.
‘He’s out, and moving aft.’
They’d have known from the fairy footsteps, but he’d forgotten to tell them, in his own fascination with the sight. Lanchberry said, ‘He’ll have it done in five minutes. Anyone want to bet?’
Gimber took him up on it. ‘I say ten minutes. Starting now. Five bob.’
‘You’re on.’
The periscope window went black as Brazier loomed over it. Water displaced by that large body’s passage through it danced mirage-like above him. You could hear every shift of the leadweighted boots; other metallic sounds would be from the tools slung on his belt. Paul checked the time: six fifty-four. Leaving one hour and six minutes to have the job done and get her through the gap to the blind side of the island. It would be all right as long as the Bomber did take as little as five or ten minutes. Paul was at the viewing port, and he could see Brazier handling his line, letting himself down over the side; he’d have secured it to the periscope standard, or thereabouts. Gimber and Lanchberry had both swung round on their seats to watch – or rather, to catch glimpses, which was all you’d get – and Paul stood aside to clear their view. Then Brazier’s body was covering the outside of the port, so there was nothing to be seen at all. Paul had looked round to make some remark to Gimber, when it happened.
An explosion: like a distant rumble of thunder amplified immediately into a deafening clap of it right overhead. Paul’s thought was, Side-cargo…
(He was right, although he had no idea at the time whose or where it was. Later reconstruction from sources including German naval logs make it clear that it was the charge left by X-12 herself in Ytre Koven and which should still have had two hours’ delay left on its clock.)
In the first impact of the shock-wave, Brazier was wiped off the midget’s side. Paul saw him receding into blackness, cartwheeling head over heels; his mask had been blown off and trailed on its pipe. Brazier’s limbs were extended – the legs at any rate in their heavy boots, whirling by centrifugal force as he turned over and over – in an attitude of crucifixion, whirling away. It was more horrible than any of the nightmares, and now X-12 was on the move too, crabbing side-ways, angled over to starboard, at first just sliding but then grating, bouncing, crashing over rock. Paul had been sent flying. Gimber was clinging to his seat but Lanchberry had been ejected backwards, torpedoing head-first into machinery behind his chair. Struggling up, imposed over the sight of Lanchberry’s head gashed and blood streaming in a scarlet curtain over his face was the image still in Paul’s brain of Bomber Brazier in that maelstrom, drowning if the concussion hadn’t already killed him. Which it would have. The boat was on her side, grinding over the rocky bed of the fjord, and the obvious counter-measure – to blow main ballast – wasn’t on the cards, because you’d have been blasting her to the surface under the eyes and guns of fifteen hundred Germans – under Scharnhorst’s guns. Gimber had the pump running on the midships trimming tank; Paul had crawled to the lever to do it himself – acting blindly, on instinct, as it were buried in the noise – and he’d found the lever already over to starboard, Gimber holding it there with one hand and clinging to the hydroplane control with the other. Lanchberry shouted in Paul’s ear, ‘Blow one and three?’ Paul yelled back ‘No!’ He saw astonishment in Lanchberry’s face, and allowed himself second thoughts: you could blow enough ballast out just to get her off the rocks, before she smashed up completely. He’d got himself half to his feet: he shouted ‘Jazz!’ Lanchberry staring at him with a hand to his head and blood still pouring, just about all over him by this time. Paul yelled, ‘Blow one and three, but only one short guff in each!’
The motion was easing: these were only dying residues of blast now, and noise diminished with it. Lanchberry opened the two high-pressure blows, paused for a count of three and then jammed them shut again. X-12’s bow lifting: but not her stern… He shouted, ‘Another guff in three!’
The angle had increased alarmingly. She was bow-up, with an angle of about twenty degrees on her. Her stern, obviously, was still resting on the bottom – you could hear it, the grinding contact with rock – as if that tank hadn’t been blown at all. Lanchberry had opened the blow again: Paul heard the thump and rush of air through the pipe, then the noise of it escaping, whooshing out. Lanchberry heard it too and shut the blow.
‘Stern tank’s holed.’
So it could not be blown. A minute ago, in that deafening cacophony, they hadn’t been able to hear the air escaping.
Gimber had stopped the ballast pump. He saw Paul turn to glance at the position of the lever, and explained, ‘Wasn’t doing any good.’ Pointing at the depthgauge: ‘Seen that?’
The needle was static at 238 feet.
So she’d been washed away from the Aaroy coast into much deeper water. And at 238 feet the pressure would be something like – he forced his stunned brain to work it out – 125 pounds to the square inch. It made the prospect of escape by DSEA somewhat unattractive. But X-12 was stuck here, finished; there was nothing to do except abandon her.
That same sensation swept over him: that this couldn’t be true, couldn’t really be happening – you’d wake up suddenly…
But it was happening. Had happened. And now had to be coped with. He heard Lanchberry mutter, ‘Poor old Bomber.’
The enemy might or might not know there was a submarine down here. It depended on whether those large escapes of air had been seen when they’d frothed the surface.
Gimber said, ‘I suppose the side-cargo’s still attached.’
The time was eight minutes past seven.
There was an intermittent scraping from the stern, where she was grinding her tail on rock, but also – he was noticing it now for the first time – an internal trickling. He saw Lanchberry also listening to it while he dabbed with a handful of cotton-waste at his gashed head. X-12 resting on her tail, snout pointing upward at the surface, Lanchberry and Gimber both in their seats while Paul crouched with an arm hooked round the barrel of the periscope. Lanchberry said, ‘Leaking in aft.’ His thin lips twisted. ‘Be bloody amazing if it wasn’t.’
It would be through some loosened hull-valve, or possibly more than one. It was hardly worth looking for, though, because sooner or later they were going to have to bale out. Sooner, rather than later. But at least with this stern-down angle on her, the water that got in would take a very long time to reach the battery. There’d be no chlorine gassing to worry about, in the short term.
Small mercies… Particularly as there couldn’t be a long term.
‘DSEA then. This depth’s going to create problems, but…’
He’d checked. He’d been about to tell them, We’ll go out through the W and D, one at a time. The first step would have been to operate its valves – its connections with number two main ballast – from here in the control room, in order to drain it down. Then each man would have gone out – Gimber first, then Lanchberry, and finally himself, and each of the first two would have had to shut the hatch behind him before allowing himself to float up to the surface with the rubber apron of his set extended, like a parachute in reverse, to slow the ascent and reduce the likelihood of ‘bends’. But you couldn’t do it – couldn’t use the W and D at all. Because Brazier had left the hatch standing open. Paul remembered it distinctly. It had been only minutes ago, yet already remote in memory – that dream-quality again – but he could see as if he was looking at it now the rim of the open hatch, and then the Bomber like some weird apparition rising out of it, a spectral being from another planet. There was a side thought at this point, a thought within the other one – that the weighted boots and belt would sink the Bomber’s body, hold it down at least for quite a long time… But he’d left the hatch open because he’d been set on doing a quick job out there and getting back inside within minutes.
Paul hauled himself up to the stub periscope, to check this, but of course at such a depth as this there wasn’t any light to see by. Only the roofing shimmer of the surface.
‘What’s the drill now, skipper?’
‘We can’t use the wet-and-dry, unfortunately. Bomber left it open.’
A slow blink, slow enough to be a temporary closing of the eyes. Lanchberry said, ‘Ah.’
Gimber whispered, ‘Shit…’
‘So we’ll have to flood her through the seacocks, and use this hatch.’
‘Christ, how long’ll that take?’
The short answer was too long. For a variety of reasons, none of them hard to see. The system he was proposing just happened to be the only way out there was. They’d strap on their DSEA sets, and start breathing from them when the water got to about shoulder height. Or so high you had to anyway. You wouldn’t use the sets before you had to, because unlike Brazier’s proper diving gear a DSEA set was only meant to support life in a man on his way up to the surface, and the oxygen capacity was quite limited. The flooding process would be complicated, too, by the midget’s bow-up position. At this angle – if she stayed like this, when she’d taken in that great weight of water – and she might, because the stern compartment would be the first to fill – the air pocket would be up against the top of the W and D bulkhead, not under the hatch as would be normal. The hatch, in fact, would be drowned long before the pressures equalised. That was another factor – the pressure would be huge, really killing, increasing as the flooding continued and finally balanced sea pressure so the hatch could be opened.
By anyone who was still alive to open it.
Well – you could open the door to the W and D, at that stage, and use the fore hatch. Easier than having to dive down and locate the main hatch and open it. But exactly the same applied, of course, about equalising pressure. In fact you could open that W and D door now – you could knock its clips off and allow it to fly open with sea at more than a hundred pounds to the inch behind it, and in the second that it opened you’d all be killed by that blast of pressure.
Hardly profitable.
Lanchberry answered his own question. His sweater was soaked brownish with his blood. He’d stemmed the flow, with cotton-waste stuck to the gash.
‘Take an hour, or more. Much as two hours, even.’
Gimber checked the time. Seven-thirteen.
‘Firing-period starts at eight.’ He nodded towards the boat’s port side. ‘And that thing’s set for twenty-five past.’
At 08.00, or at any time thereafter, there could be other side-cargoes exploding. Not that you’d need them, from X-12’s point of view. If she took an hour or more to flood, the three of them would probably be dead from cold long before they’d be in a position to open up and get out. It would have been bad enough for the Bomber in his rubber suit, but without such gear, standing for an hour in ice-water slowly rising until it covered you…
‘How long’s the oxygen last in these?’
Lanchberry was pulling the DSEA sets out of the storage locker. Paul admitted, ‘If she floods that slowly, not long enough.’
Forty-five minutes, he was remembering, on the main cylinder. Then you could switch to the reserve and get another five.
‘Can’t do it, can we.’
‘What we can do,’ he’d just started talking, spouting thought aloud, ‘is get her up to the surface, abandon ship – and she’ll go down again on her own with the hatch open. As she’s going to blow up, there’s no problem about secret equipment in enemy hands, so…’
‘Skipper – how?’
‘Just listen to me, Jazz.’ He leant with a hand on Louis Gimber’s shoulder. ‘First we’ll lighten her as much as we can.’ He pointed at the trimming pump. Gimber interrupted, ‘Pump’s got a hell of a pressure to work against.’ Paul nodded. ‘Sure, it’ll be on the slow side. But we’ll start by emptying the stern trim-tanks and comps, shift that weight to the bow or amidships. It’ll at least help to balance her. Then we’ll blow one and three.’
‘Skipper—’
‘Hang on. We’ll lose air through three, I know, but the blowing will still have some effect, from the air as it passes through. It did start to – remember? Before we heard it escaping and you shut off? Then as soon as she shows signs of stirring, full ahead group up. Planes hard a-rise. Surface. At this angle, and keeping her at full ahead and blowing like hell – well, she ought to get there, and although she won’t stay up for long there’d be time to evacuate… Right?’
‘Ten to one against.’
‘Balls, Jazz. But that’s better odds than we’ve got down here, anyway.’
Gimber agreed, ‘It’s the only hope we’ve got, isn’t it?’
‘Exactly. We can pump out number two main ballast too, Jazz. I was thinking we couldn’t – for some reason… But we do have a chance, you see.’ There was a glint of hope in Lanchberry’s eyes, at last. Paul told him, ‘I’ll take over as helmsman, Jazz.’
‘Yeah?’
Gimber looked surprised too.
‘Because I want to control the blowing myself.’
It would make enough sense – just enough – for them to accept it. In fact he wanted to change places so the two of them would be under the hatch and first out. If she reached the surface. Lanchberry had been near enough right, he thought, with his estimate of the odds against.