‘Diver out’
‘The Takao held no interest for us, other than the need to blow her up.’
—Lieutenant Ian Fraser, HMS XE-3
Max Shean had a problem; or, rather, he had two problems, and two possible but problematical solutions. The XE-4 could not continue submerged indefinitely. The electric motor would eventually use up all the battery power and stop. Together, the two big batteries gave the boat a maximum range of about 80 miles.1 Secondly, the air inside the submarine, though scrubbed with Protosorb canisters, would eventually grow toxic enough to suffocate and kill the crew.
The solution was obvious – surface the boat. On the surface the XE-craft commander could start his diesel engine, which would simultaneously recharge the electric batteries and the compressed air canisters. He could also air the boat, replenishing the atmosphere and reviving the crew with fresh salty air from outside. But Shean, lying just off Japanese-occupied Saigon, could not safely do either of these things, as there were too many local fishing vessels around. There was also the risk that the XE-craft, though very low in the water, could be caught on enemy radar or that the noisier diesel engine could be picked up by underwater hydrophones mounted on Japanese patrol vessels. One mistake could mean death, and so far Operation Sabre had gone very well indeed. Taking needless and dangerous risks at this stage would be foolhardy in the extreme.
But there was another option. It was risky and very challenging for a tired crew, but was really the only course of action available to Shean. Lying on the submarine’s deck was the air induction trunk, which could be raised and lowered from inside the XE-craft. It was a primitive schnorkel device that theoretically allowed a submarine to remain submerged but able to run its diesel engine, charging the batteries, airing the boat and allowing for an increased submerged speed useful in confrontations with enemy surface craft.2
The trunk could be used when the submarine was sailing at periscope depth, ten feet below the surface. The planesman had to watch the depth gauge very carefully because if the schnorkel’s head dipped beneath the waves water would rush into the engine compartment. The engine would continue to burn air, but from the atmosphere inside the submarine, causing the air pressure to fall steadily. The effect on the crew was alarming, with their eardrums popping painfully. Once the schnorkel head emerged from the sea, the engine would resume sucking in air from above, causing the air pressure to dramatically rise again. If this happened too often, it caused nausea and pain among the crew.
If the helmsman was not fast enough in shutting the air valve when the schnorkel head dipped below the water the submarine could flood and sink like a stone, drowning everyone on board.3 Shean and the other XE-craft skippers had tried schnorkeling during practice sessions in Scotland and Australia, with mixed results, and none of them wanted to do it unless no other option was available. The Admiralty had actually told commanders not to attempt it. For Shean and his crew, however, it was their only chance.
‘Stand by to raise the induction trunk,’ ordered Shean after bringing the XE-4 up to periscope depth. The crew exchanged concerned glances. Shean made doubly sure that Ben Kelly and Ginger Coles were completely ready at their positions before he ordered the schnorkel to be engaged.
On the ocean’s calm surface the small British schnorkel left a minimal white wake as it cut through the water.
‘Half ahead, group down,’ ordered Shean, cautiously running the diesel engine at half speed.4 After a few minutes the superheated atmosphere inside of the boat began to clear, a blessed relief for the five men crammed inside its fetid interior. Shean made constant sweeps with the attack periscope, checking for dangers and taking bearings off landmarks.
*
Aboard the XE-3 in the Johor Strait, the time to use the limpet mines had arrived. Tich Fraser watched through the night periscope as the W&D compartment hatch clip slid round. It was 3.30pm. As the hatch came open it was clear that there was not enough room for Mick Magennis to get out, the hatch clanging against the underside of the Takao.
Magennis, unfazed by the narrow exit gap, decided instead to make diving history. Working quickly inside the flooded W&D, he took a deep breath and deflated the DSEA bag that was strapped to his chest until it was as flat as possible. Magennis then wriggled through the gap, unable to breathe until he was clear of the hatch. Once outside of the submarine he quickly reinflated the DSEA, dragging heavily on the mouthpiece before giving Fraser a thumbs-up.5 Fraser was speechless. It was the first time that a diver had ever voluntarily stopped breathing underwater. Fraser shook his head slowly in disbelief, feeling a tremendous surge of pride in his diver.
Magennis could feel the one-knot current running against him as soon as he left the submarine. The water was cool and intensely refreshing after the XE-3’s furnace-like interior. The water visibility was extraordinary – he could see far along the Takao’s keel towards her bow and stern. But he was also struck by a feeling of loneliness engendered by such a sudden change in environment. One minute he was stuck inside a tiny overheated submarine with three other sweating men, now he was free in a vast expanse of cool water that stretched away beyond the limit of his vision. It was unsettling.
Vision was becoming a problem. A trickle of small bubbles was emerging in a constant stream from Magennis’s breathing set and passing in front of his face. It could only mean one thing: a leak. Looking closely, he found the leak in the join between the oxygen cylinder and the reducing valve. The bubbles quickly rose up into the weeds hanging beneath the Takao’s dark keel.6 Perhaps he had damaged the set when he dragged himself through the W&D hatch? This was dangerous. If he moved to the side of the warship the bubbles would rise to the water’s surface. This was why commando frogmen used a rebreather, to prevent telltale bubbles being seen on the surface by vigilant enemy lookouts. Magennis could go back inside the submarine and change his DSEA over, but that would take some time to accomplish and he knew that Fraser wanted to get the job over and done with as quickly as possible and be on his way.
As he was operating in shallow water, making it an easier dive than it otherwise might have been, Magennis decided to disregard the leak and get on with his job. Shutting the W&D compartment lid with a solid clang, Magennis swam over the starboard side of the submarine towards the limpet carrier, out of sight of Fraser who was watching through the night periscope. Fraser too had noticed the leak in Magennis’s equipment, and it concerned him, but he had no way of communicating with the Ulsterman now that he was outside the XE-3. With typical stoicism, Magennis had decided to press on when a lesser man would have returned to rectify the fault.
*
Pat Westmacott aboard XE-5 glanced at his watch. He still could not shake the feeling of being the last guest to arrive at the party. His submarine was still on its way to Hong Kong. The unfortunate 24-hour delay to Operation Foil forced Westmacott to face an uncomfortable reality. The XE-5 would shortly begin the 30-mile final approach to the West Lamma Channel. But Westmacott knew that by the time his submarine arrived on station in the vicinity of the submerged telephone cable, he would have to impose another agonising delay. It would be dark, or very nearly so, and his two divers could not work at night. So the XE-5 would have to remain off the target area, waiting for the dawn. This was very dangerous, because loitering inside enemy waters unable to get on with their assigned mission could have disastrous results. The longer any of the British XE-craft spent in Japanese waters, the slimmer the chances that they would all remain undetected. And the waters off Hong Kong, like those off Saigon, were busy with native fishing vessels and trading junks. This consideration meant that Westmacott would have to keep the XE-5 submerged for long periods, further adding to his men’s exhaustion. All in all, Operation Foil was turning out to be the hardest mission of the lot from the standpoint of human endurance.
The New Zealander sighed in frustration and tried to stretch his 6ft frame inside the narrow confines of the tiny submarine. He announced that operations to begin dragging for the two cables were postponed until first light on 1 August.7 His crew looked at him with hollow eyes and said nothing.
*
Jack Smart dragged his aching eyes away from the attack periscope for what seemed like the hundredth time in as many minutes and ordered another slight course adjustment. Since deciding to abandon attacking the Myoko in favour of taking out his secondary target, Smart and the XE-1 had been slowly and carefully approaching the Takao, meeting some of the same problems that Tich Fraser and the XE-3 had experienced. There were a lot of Japanese surface craft about, making it perilous to constantly take bearings off the Takao using the periscope, but it had to be done. In spite of this, Smart felt buoyed up. He should be able to reach and mine the Takao leaving plenty of time to exit the boom gate before darkness fell, and should be well away from the scene of the crime when he and Fraser’s explosives went up. But he couldn’t get out of his mind the fear of approaching an already mined ship. He would have to exercise extreme caution during the run-in. In front of his crew he continued to exude confidence and they reacted well to his feigned insouciance.
‘Right, up periscope, please,’ Smart ordered once again. ‘Range?’
‘One thousand seven hundred yards, skipper,’ replied Beadon Dening.
‘Four hundred and fifty revolutions, if you please, Mr Greenwood,’ said Smart to the engine room artificer.
‘Aye aye, sir, 450 revolutions.’
The corner of Smart’s mouth turned up in a crooked grin as his fork-bearded face continued to press against the periscope viewer. It was the almost vulpine leer of a pirate who had just spotted a particularly juicy target on the horizon.
*
Fraser expected Magennis to take about 30 minutes placing the limpets on to the Takao’s bottom. For the time being Fraser had nothing much to do. Charlie Reed and Kiwi Smith were also temporarily unemployed. Fraser kept watch through the night periscope but only caught the occasional glimpse of Magennis moving about.8
After all the excitement of creeping up on the Takao, and getting stuck, this was rather an anticlimax. None of them inside the XE-3 could really rest, as they had to be ready in case Magennis came back earlier or some other problem arose, so they were relegated to staring into space at their positions, clock-watching and drinking cold and very satisfying tins of American orange juice out of the Freon container. The juice was a welcome refreshment, helping to stave off dehydration as the XE-3 sat with her motor switched off on the seabed. Fraser had also been forced to switch off the air conditioning, as they couldn’t afford to make any noise. But this meant that the temperature inside the boat, already high, had by now climbed into the high 90s. It was like sitting inside a sauna, each breath hot in the back of the throat. Their shirts were drenched in sweat and beads of perspiration constantly ran down their faces or trickled off their chins, slapping on the metal deck with tiny plops. They panted like exhausted dogs, mouths open. Conversation was practically non-existent.
Every so often the three crewmen inside the XE-3 heard a dull thump or a metallic clang on the outside of the casing. It was the sound of Magennis removing a limpet mine from the carrier.9 The noise sounded more serious than it actually was, but at least it meant that Magennis was still alive and well. The men inside the submarine tried not to think about the vast amount of high explosives that Magennis was playing with just a few feet from where they sat. He had emplaced plenty of practice mines during training in Scotland, Trinidad and Australia, but live ones were another matter entirely. Make a mistake with one of those and it would be your last.
*
Mick Magennis was soon struggling. The dense marine growth hanging down from the Takao’s bottom danced and swayed in the current like a forest in the wind. Looking at it, Magennis knew that the magnetic mines would not adhere to such a dirty surface. He had no choice but to manually clear patches to expose the Takao’s steel hull plates in order to give the weapon’s magnet something to stick to.10 He reached down and pulled out his large diver’s knife from its scabbard strapped to his left leg and wearily began hacking and scraping at the dense growth like some bizarrely dressed horticulturalist weeding a vast upside-down garden. His arms soon ached from the effort of cutting and slashing at the weeds. Breathing hard, the trail of bubbles leaking from his defective apparatus soon became a torrent. This meant that he was using up his precious oxygen much faster than normal and that the Protosorb tin inside the breathing bag would gradually become less and less successful at scrubbing the air clean for him to breathe again.
Whenever Magennis cleared a patch of weeds, he then had to scrape off dozens of barnacles and other shellfish that cratered the steel surface beneath. His hands were soon bleeding from numerous cuts and scrapes as he laboured, little crimson tendrils seeping into the water from his fingertips. He tried not to think about sharks.
After approximately twenty minutes of hard labour, Magennis had managed to clear a good-sized patch of the Takao’s hull. He was going to clear another patch some distance away and then secure the limpet mines in two groups of three, one group in each patch.
Returning to the XE-3, he pulled out the first mine from the starboard carrier. It was a heavy, rectangular thing with carrying handles and most of the XE-men thought that they were badly designed. Hauling this ungainly object into position, he pressed the mine’s magnetic plate against the Takao’s hull, hearing it connect with a muffled thump. So far so good, he thought. Magennis successfully emplaced three mines into the first patch. But then his eyes widened with alarm as the mines started to slide slowly upwards towards the surface as if under their own power. Magennis immediately swam after them, shepherding them back into position. But just as he prepared to gather the other three limpets from the carrier, the first three mines started to move again. The problem was the mines’ design. The magnetic plates that held each mine to the ship’s hull were too weak, and the explosive charge inside the mine had positive buoyancy. This combined to make the mines crawl along the hull plates towards the water’s surface like large metal crustaceans. Left to the laws of physics, the mines would eventually emerge at the waterline and be clearly visible to any moderately alert Japanese sailor.11
Thinking quickly, Magennis came up with a plan. He cleared another patch on the opposite side of the Takao’s keel from the first one, and then swam back over to the XE-3. He squeezed into the tight gap between the bottom of the Takao’s keel and the top of the XE-3, noticing that the space seemed to have shrunk slightly, opened the W&D compartment hatch, deflated his breathing lung and clambered inside. Once inside he quickly re-inflated the DSEA, collected a length of coiled rope, gulped a few lungfuls of air, deflated his rebreather, and wriggled through the gap. Once outside he laboriously re-inflated the DSEA using the valve. It was an extraordinary display of diving skill and courage.12
Magennis swam over to the first three mines, gathered them back together and then tied them to the rope. He then returned to the submarine and over the next few minutes emplaced three more limpets in the second cleared patch of hull 45 feet away on the opposite side of the ship, attaching the rope to these mines as well. The rope ran underneath the Takao’s keel like a harness, preventing the mines from creeping towards the surface.13 It was a brilliant piece of improvisation and indicative of what Captain Banks’s X-craft training programme had tried to instil in its recruits – the ability to think for themselves under pressure without reference to instructions from higher command. Such ability was, and remains today, the hallmark of all properly trained Special Forces personnel.
Magennis was by now completely exhausted. He had been outside the submarine longer than he had anticipated and oxygen poisoning was starting to set in. Ignoring the telltale tingling in his hands and lips, Magennis now had to arm the mines. He carefully pulled the cotton triggers on all six, starting the detonation timers. But he only managed to arm three of the counter-mining devices that prevented enemy divers from interfering with the limpets. In twenty minutes’ time the counter-mining protective sleeves would withdraw on these three mines, meaning that any bumps would set off the explosives.
By now, Magennis was dragging poisonous breaths into his lungs, rasping like an exhausted carthorse. He had just made history for the second time, becoming the first diver to mine an enemy ship using limpets. But whether this registered with Magennis in his current state was unlikely. The onset of narcosis was slowing his thought processes, confusing him. All he wanted to do was to get inside the submarine before he passed out.
Gripping the XE-3’s hull he climbed slowly up to the W&D compartment hatch. But getting inside was not going to be easy. The gap between the W&D hatch and the bottom of the Takao’s keel had shrunk even further as Magennis had worked on placing the mines. The tide was falling rapidly. If everything had gone according to plan, the XE-3 should have arrived beneath the Takao at around 12.00pm, when the tide was at its highest. But Fraser was by now seriously behind schedule. The tide, which had a range of eight feet in the Strait, was ebbing fast. The XE-3 rested in a 30ft depression beneath the Takao’s hull, but with each passing minute the Takao slowly closed this distance as the tide went out.
Peering through the night periscope, Fraser, tension steadily increasing inside him, watched Magennis. Fraser was anxious to get away from the Takao as quickly as possible – the falling water levels in the Strait were seriously concerning him. Magennis gave him a slow thumbs-up gesture and wearily went through the process of deflating his DSEA apparatus once again so that he could drag himself back inside the W&D. Fraser watched the hatch close tight and the clip rotate 120 degrees and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Diver in,’ he announced to the crew, Smith jotting down the time.
‘Right, chaps, let’s release the side cargoes and get the hell out of here,’ announced Fraser as Magennis was in the process of draining down inside the W&D.
‘Arm port charge,’ ordered Fraser, now all businesslike and coldly calm.
Smith and Reed immediately jumped into action.
‘Arming port charge,’ replied Kiwi Smith as he reached over and began to unscrew the small wheel that started the side cargo’s fuse mechanism. The little wheel spun effortlessly in Smith’s hand until it stopped with an audible click.
‘Charge armed, Tich,’ reported Smith. The port charge, a huge black detachable box-like structure containing two tons of Amatol high explosive, was now live. In effect, the XE-3 had just become a floating bomb.
‘Flood the charges,’ ordered Fraser, and Reed immediately began to unscrew a larger wheel. It was 4.05pm.14
As Reed unscrewed the wheel, a Kingston valve opened in the bottom of the charge, flooding the port side bomb until it was negatively buoyant and therefore unable to float. The now empty limpet mine carrier, the starboard side cargo or ‘charge’, was also flooded by Reed’s action. The last turn of the wheel would cause both charges to drop clear of the XE-3 and fall to the seabed below.
The port charge detached perfectly. The crew heard it bump several times down the side of the submarine on its journey to the bottom. But the limpet mine carrier refused to budge. Fraser went immediately to his contingency plan. An additional wheel had been provided to help detach the charge in the event that it got hung up. The operator would turn the wheel out as far as it would go, the idea being to physically push the carrier off the submarine. Smith wound the wheel out to its maximum and they all heard and felt the bottom of the flooded limpet carrier come away, but the top remained stuck fast to the XE-3.15
The crew now had a very serious problem. The submarine had two tons of dead weight fastened to its starboard side. The boat’s trim characteristics would be shot to pieces. It would be like trying to drive a car with both of the tyres on the right-hand side replaced with concrete wheels. If they couldn’t remove the limpet carrier they might not be able to get out from under the Takao, and if they didn’t hurry up the ebbing tide would bring the weight of the warship down on top of them.16 They would be trapped while six limpet mines containing a total of 1,200lbs of explosives ticked down to destruction above their heads and a two-ton bomb did the same right beside them. If they didn’t get away, in less than six hours they would perish along with the Takao.
For a few seconds the crew all looked at each other silently. No one said it, but it was beginning to look as though the mission was unravelling before their very eyes.