Alarm! Prepare to dive!”
The command, barked from atop the conning tower, caused a disciplined scramble on the exposed deck of the U-boat. The gunners sprang to their weapon in the drifting North Sea mists, capping and securing the long barrel. Picking up their ammunition boxes, they raced back astern around either side of the low tower and ducked down the hatchway. The stern lookout had already vanished below, but Kapitan-Leutnant Schwieger watched the two gunners descend and saw the hatch secured before slinging his binoculars and sliding down his own ladder inside the tower.
Once below, he slammed shut the hatch and levered it tight, then clanged the bell to signal that the hull was sealed.
Instantly, Lanz rang the shrill Klaxon. The raucous noise sent the crew running and jostling to their dive stations, most of them racing forward to weight down the nose of the slim craft.
“Was ist?” Schwieger heard crewmen ask the lookouts. “What is it this time? Prize or peril?”
They knew better than to disturb Herr Kapitan at his periscope. With seawater hissing into the dive tanks, as the daylight through the two portholes dimmed to a frothy-gray, and then a deep sea green, Schwieger wrestled the scope around in the direction of the threat: six British destroyers advancing in a search line—now, there was a menace to contend with. These new small warships, driven by high-speed turbines, could travel at thirty-five knots to head off or overtake any vessel—faster than the twenty-five knot maximum speed of the largest warships and ocean liners, and more than double his own boat’s best surface speed of sixteen knots. Armed with torpedoes and depth bombs as well as medium guns, they were the deadliest of all to submarines.
Schwieger hoped the searchers hadn’t noticed his U-20 yet, and wouldn’t spot it during the nervous moments it took to dive. He watched the nearest destroyer in his attack periscope, then swung the heavy apparatus to glimpse two others before the lens submerged. There was no evident change in their course, so very likely the mists had concealed the low profile of his Unterseeboot.
He wouldn’t dare raise the scope back to the surface anytime soon, much less launch a torpedo. He wasn’t particularly afraid of the enemy’s explosive depth charges, which hadn’t proven effective so far in the war. But if the English knew that he was in the vicinity, they could spread out and wait for his air and battery power to run low. Then if he tried to surface they would ram him, or just scuttle his fragile craft with shellfire. And without mercy—these Englanders weren’t known to accept surrender or take any prisoners from U-boats.
Now the crew sat silent as they settled toward the sea bottom. Listening, they heard the heavy thrashing of a pair of steam-driven propellers overhead, with others churning nearby. The noises reached a peak, then subsided. Strange; it was almost as if the British had known they would be here.
Soon afterward came the slight thump and shock as their own keel grounded in North Sea sand. With electric motors stilled, they listened, hoping—but the churning of the destroyer engines did not cease; it merely changed pitch and frequency. The enemy ships were turning, ending their patrol perhaps, or searching for a known target. There was no telling how long they would hunt the sea lanes off this heavily trafficked promontory, the easternmost tip of Scotland.
What brought his U-boat so far north, halfway to the Arctic Circle, was caution and the harsh necessity of war. In the early months of the blockade, it had been easy to set a course due west from Germany, then dip south around England into the rich hunting grounds of the eastern Atlantic. But of late, with the English Channel heavily mined, chained off with anti-submarine nets, and patrolled by sub-hunting trawlers, the risks were too great. It was necessary to detour farther north, through chillier waters around the desolate tip of the British archipelago.
And now, with anti-submarine warfare heating up the Irish Channel too, Schwieger had half a mind to circumnavigate Ireland as well and pass down the Atlantic side of that island. He wasn’t sure that Fregattenkapitan Bauer back in Emden would entirely approve of the detour. But then, his commander always championed the absolute freedom of U-boat captains to make independent choices.
Schwieger knew he’d better come up with something. The previous day and night had brought them nothing except a load of fish purchased from a passing German trawler. It had all been easy surface cruising, except while sneaking past the approaches to the port of Edinburgh. They had sighted one small steamer there, but the weather was too rough to plot a proper attack.
So now began this tiresome skulking underwater. When the destroyers’ engine noises gradually faded, Schwieger ordered his officers to raise U-20 off the bottom and cruise due north at ten meters depth, going at a mere six knots to nurse his batteries. The rest of the crew he advised to go to sleep and save air. He and his pilot would stay awake and steer the boat through the subsea dangers ahead, past Moray Firth and the Orkney Isles, which guarded the menacing British naval anchorage at Scapa Flow. His mission, after all, was to find and sink troop transports–or, failing that, to choke off Britain’s vital sea commerce by destroying merchant traffic.
Near the day’s end, Schwieger raised his periscope and saw nothing—no targets, no warships. A good thing, with his batteries almost discharged and air depleted.
Surfacing, he went topside and scanned the horizon from the tower. Against the sun’s dying light, he was able to confirm their landfall in the desolate Orkneys. Now it was time to run on the surface and recharge batteries on diesel power, westward and then south, toward the rich hunting grounds along the Atlantic approaches to England.
With the crew wakeful, and without risk of being overheard on the open ocean, he entertained the ship over the loudspeakers by playing one of his favorite gramophone recordings, Die Meistersinger, The Master Singers of Nuremberg, by the national favorite composer Richard Wagner. The music’s vaulting crescendos and plunging descents, reminiscent of the wildly romantic landscape of the Alps, might help to relieve the strain of this long and arduous hunt. And they were particularly well-suited to the heights and depths of submersible voyaging.