The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6 Page 9

  “This’ll remove one of your headaches, sir.”

  SECRET IMMEDIATE

  FROM: Admiralty

  TO: CS 39

  REPEATED TO: AIG 311 and SBNO North Russia

  Tirpitz and Scharnhorst are reported to have returned to Altenfjord. Withdraw to the west at your best speed.

  Astonished: reading it over twice … “I’ll be damned.” Glancing round— “Here, pilot …” Then, “Thank you, padre. If you haven’t lunched yet, I suggest you tuck in while the going’s good.”

  “I shall indeed, sir. Soon as my oppo’s back from his repast.”

  By “oppo” he meant Happy Bliss. Nick wondered where the German battleships had been. Up in this area, searching ineffectually for the convoy? Given up, sneaked home again, running out of fuel? Whatever the answers, for the moment you could forget them: and it did simplify the tactical problem. The snag was that as Kidd’s cruisers pulled out westward now, increasing their distance from the enemy airfields, the bombers would feel free to switch their attentions to this convoy.

  He asked Bruce Christie, “How far has CS 39 to go before he’s out of their range?”

  “On his present course, about eighty miles, sir.”

  At fourteen knots, six hours. But Nottingham’s engineers might improve on that, of course.

  A luminous streak underlying the northern haze was a reflection from the ice. Nearly 1230 now. He decided he’d hold this course for about another hour or an hour and a half. Loose ice couldn’t do anyone much damage, and if there was a chance of getting into fog up there it might be a lifesaver.

  The watch had changed at noon, and now with the midday meal finished various individuals came up to the bridge, hung around for a while, wandered off again. Pitcairn, the paymaster commander, came to talk to Treseder about new arrangements for action messing, and the gunnery officer, Keith Spalding, came to confer with Swanwick. At one stage the PMO—Francomb, surgeon commander—brought Nick some quandary about medical stores they were carrying for the so-called “hospital” at Vaenga, the base settlement in the Kola Inlet, the approach to Murmansk.

  As this convoy was destined for Archangel, not Kola, the stores would have to be trans-shipped, and Francomb’s concern was that the Russians shouldn’t get any chance to steal them. The obvious solution, Nick suggested, was to transfer the stuff to one of the four minesweepers, who’d be staying in North Russia, relieving others who’d be returning with the convoy of empties; sooner or later the sweepers would call at Vaenga and be able to slip the stores ashore—surreptitiously, perhaps, to avoid entanglement in Soviet red tape.

  At 1345 Christie suggested they’d come far enough to the north and should alter back to 090. Nick agreed, and a few minutes later the six-milewide block of merchantmen and escorts swung back to point east. It was getting on for three hours since the Dornier had fingered them.

  A lookout’s yell came just after the convoy had settled on the new course …

  “Aircraft, green one hundred, angle of sight ten, closing!”

  He’d beaten the radar to it … All around the bridge binoculars sought and found the oncoming attackers—midge-like objects, a scattering of them approaching from the south.

  They were Ju 88s: nine of them, flying in and out of cloud now, at about 7000 feet. Swinging left, cloud swallowing them …

  Radar and the director control tower were on target—had been, but now only radar held the contact. The tower, above and abaft the bridge with its rangefinder behind it, pivotting this way and that as its crew strained to pick up a fresh sight of the bombers, resembled some seamonster’s stiffly raised head with eyes out on stalks. When it found the target, the guns would follow, pointers in electronic receivers lining-up, with additional calculations thrown into the circuits by the TS, transmitting station, deep in the ship’s bowels where Royal Marine bandsmen and others laboured, locked in a cavern of armoured steel. All guns elevated, ready, and all personnel in this bridge and other exposed positions were in tin hats and anti-flash gear. Close-range weapons—Oerlikons, pompoms and multiple point-five machineguns—manned, sky-searching … An answer from Tommy Trench crackled over TBS: Roger, Thief. Out. Then Trench was calling Tailor and Sailor—meaning Laureate and Leopard—ordering them to take up new stations in the convoy’s rear while Foremost and Harpy spread outward to cover the sectors they’d vacated.

  Nothing to do but wait and watch now. Eyes on the clouds, fingers on triggers, ships plunging, ploughing white furrows in grey-green sea.

  “Bogeys closing from astern, sir!”

  That was a report from the 281, “bogeys” being radar talk for hostile radar contacts. The Junkers would attack by diving from astern. Some might drop a bomb or two through cloudholes overhead, but the main weight of the attack would come from aircraft diving over the convoy’s wakes. Laureate and Leopard had wheeled and were racing back between the outer columns of merchantmen with guns cocked up, bow-waves high, ensigns whipping, the two sleek-looking ships sheeted in foam as they rushed to their new stations. Without them, there’d only have been the two trawlers astern, where most of the action was bound to start. Unfortunately their armament of four-point-sevens wouldn’t be as effective as one would like, since they were low-angle guns and couldn’t elevate enough for overhead attackers. Moloch, one destroyer class later, had dual-purpose guns, as did Calliope with her 5.25s. Those L-class destroyers did have one high-angle four-inch, in fact, and of course their close-range weapons could fire vertically, like everyone else’s.

  Astern, someone had opened fire …

  Three Ju 88s, emerging from cloud and in shallow dives aimed at the convoy’s heart. Almost certainly they’d be going for the oilers—for Bayleaf and the Sovyetskaya Slava. Nick had already passed the order to open fire when ready. Tracer was rising from several of the merchantmen: and now Leopard, almost on her beam-ends in a high-speed turn as she fell into station astern of column two, opened up with her four-inch. Laureate too. Calliope’s two stern turrets joined in, the ship’s steel ringing to the crashes, the entire convoy at it now like a great percussion band with ship after ship coming into it, sound thickening from individual explosions into a solid roar, and the sky around the diving Junkers—two other sections of three in sight now all nose-down and on their attacking runs—pock-marked with brown and black shellbursts, streaked with the garish tracer that seemed to curve as it rose ahead of them then bend sharply to whip away astern. Noise deafening, composed not only of the large-calibre guns but also the Oerlikons’ harsh snarl, pompoms’ thudding, the Bofors’ distinctive barking too, and the metallic clangour of point-fives. Bombs separating, slow-looking, from the first group of planes as they swept over—one with an engine trailing smoke; the trio splitting now their bombs had gone, two banking left and the smoker pulling out southward—the smoke was darkening and the machine looked as if it was having trouble staying up. Bucketing upwards … Gunners’ aim shifting to others, two threesomes merging into one rough echelon of six roaring over the columns at about 2000 feet, everyone deaf by this time, bomb-splashes lifting here and there, destroyers under helm dodging bombs while their guns blared. The merchantmen’s close-range weapons were lacing the sky overhead so thickly that it was amazing any of the attackers could fly through it and not be hit. He saw a near-miss on the Bayleaf. The sight of it—a column of sea leaping right on her quarter, too close not to have done some damage—was frightening: Bayleaf being the one ship you couldn’t afford to lose. The second bomb of the same stick raised a spout on Calliope’s beam, midway between her and the Carrickmore, and two others splashed in ahead, in the space between the convoy and the destroyer screen. Noise diminishing as the last of the attackers droned over; a voice over the wires from the director tower was intoning “Check, check, check …”

  A bomber had nose-dived into the sea ahead; Legend was going out in search of survivors.

  “The Bayleaf’s in trouble, sir.”

  As he’d guessed she would be—but still h
oped … He went to the other side and looked astern. The oiler was falling back, and the rescue ship, Winston, had put her helm over to pass clear. The trawler Arctic Prince was standing by the Bayleaf. There was a lot of smoke right astern, out of his sight from here, and he guessed at a ship on fire on the other quarter.

  “Chief,” talking to the chief yeoman, Ellinghouse, “to Laureate by TBS— report on damage to the Bayleaf.”

  Swanwick told him, “That’s the Springfield on fire astern, sir.”

  The Springfield was next-astern to the Sovyetskaya Slava. One of the bigger ships in this assembly, she had a deck cargo of tanks and trucks, and a between-decks load of explosives.

  But it was the Bayleaf he was most concerned for. She was indispensible—not so much for now, because at a pinch the Russian oiler could serve the destroyers’ bunkering needs, but for the return trip when she’d be the one and only source of replenishment.

  He was waiting for a reply from Laureate. About half a mile astern, she was closing in towards the damaged oiler. Her captain would confer with the Bayleaf’s master by loud-hailer.

  Time now—1417.

  The Springfield had also dropped astern, gushing smoke more thickly than before. The other trawler, Northern Glow, was forging across the convoy’s rear towards her, and Leopard was also there.

  “Rigging hoses …”

  Commentary by Treseder, with his glasses up and muttering to himself. That activity on the destroyer’s foc’sl was hidden as she turned sternto, following the Springfield round. She’d be turning head to wind, Nick realised, because the fire was on or in her after-part and this would make it less likely to spread forward. The Northern Glow was turning to catch up with the convoy. He heard Laureate’s report coming in over TBS: there’d been something, garbled by atmospherics, about a fractured oil-feed and repairs in hand, then the voice broke through the static and he heard clearly, Maximum of five knots for at least half an hour. Over.

  It sounded less bad than it might have been.

  “Tell Laureate to stay with her.”

  Dense smoke drifting from the Springfield hid whatever was happening there. Leopard’s captain would have his hands full with the attempt at fire-fighting, though, and there was no point bothering him with questions. Except perhaps whether he wanted help: and the idea of detaching another escort, when a new attack might develop at any moment, was unattractive. If he wanted help, he could ask for it. Every pair of glasses in Calliope’s bridge was sky-searching: the air-search radar hadn’t been any help last time.

  “Swanwick—what happened to the 281?”

  Legend was reporting she’d picked up two German airmen, one wounded.

  The ADO came over. In the summer of 1939 he’d been starting a career as an actor in repertory at Bexhill-on-Sea; he was a good-looking young man in his mid twenties, but the tin hat with its stencilled letters “ADO” looked too big for his rather narrow head—like the top of a mushroom. He said apologetically, “They tell me the set’s all right now, sir, but—”

  The Springfield blew up. A muffled roar built into a thunderclap: flame shot vertically, snuffing itself out in black smoke through which a second explosion lobbed a fireball—crimson, disintegrating in its turn into oily-looking smoke. Swanwick with his mouth still open, goggling; Nick focussing his glasses on what was now a foggy mess extending for several hundred yards across the convoy’s wakes. He couldn’t see Leopard: but she’d have been right in there, close enough to have been reaching the freighter’s deck with her hoses. A glance to the side showed the Bayleaf well clear and Laureate leaving her heading for the new disaster area. The Arctic Prince was still with the oiler. Then, where the Springfield had been, he found Leopard lying stopped and shrouded in thinning smoke which was coming from the destroyer herself, from a fire on her port side. A seaboat—a whaler in its davits—was blazing, and there were other burning areas, while that side of her bridge superstructure had been blackened by scorching.

  “Chief—general signal, ‘Speed five knots.’ “

  Still no bombers. Everyone expecting them, surprised by every minute that passed with the sky still empty.

  By three o’clock the Bayleaf was back in station astern of the Carrickmore and speed had been worked up to twelve knots. Allowing for the zigzag this gave a true rate of advance of a fraction over ten. Five badly burnt survivors of the Springfield had been picked up and they and eleven wounded from Leopard had been transferred to the Winston—which had a doctor, wards and even an operating theatre. Leopard’s wounded included her captain, and the first lieutenant had assumed command. Her damage was superficial; that whaler and some other upper-deck gear had been destroyed, but very little else. The casualties, suffering from burns and blast concussion, had all been in her bridge and for’ard guns’ crews.

  Column four had only two ships in it now instead of three. The empty billet, which had been the Springfield’s, was astern of the Sovyetskaya Slava and between two Americans, the Republican and the Caribou Queen.

  Worsening visibility on the port side suggested fog might be extending southward. If so, it would be welcome. Binoculars caught the glint of ice as they swept over that sector: but only a suggestion, a gleam underlining the soupy haze.

  The Bayleaf seemed to be all right now. During the half-hour wait when he’d had only her engineer’s relayed promise—therefore no guarantee at all—he’d considered what might be done if they failed to improve on her five-knot speed. One possibility would have been to send her to Spitzbergen, perhaps into Bell Sund in the island’s ice-free west coast where she could have holed-up to work on the repairs and then been picked up again somewhere north of Bear Island in about ten days’ time. An alternative might have been to start her back towards Iceland and request support that would have needed to include another oiler with a destroyer escort. But this would have been tantamount to asking for the moon: Spitzbergen would have been the best answer. Even though you’d have had to leave a destroyer with her … One had to think ahead, be ready with solutions, alternatives …

  He’d put out a signal to the Admiralty—wireless silence being unimportant for a while, with the Luftwaffe knowing all it needed to—reporting the attack, damage to the oiler and the loss of the Springfield. There’d been nothing new from CS 39, and he guessed Kidd’s squadron would be out of range of bombing by this time. Touch wood … But the corollary was that here, soon, one might expect the enemy’s full weight.

  “Cup o’ char, sir?”

  Tomblin had brought tea and biscuits.

  “We’re still at action stations, Tomblin. Where’s your tin hat?”

  “Ah.” A surprised look suggested this was a completely novel idea. “That’s a point, sir.”

  “Fetch it, and don’t appear on this bridge again without it. And antiflash gear, for God’s—”

  “Bogeys, one-seven-five, fourteen miles, large formation!”

  “All quarters alert!”

  Voicepipes and telephones were suddenly busy again. A flag-hoist ran up to the yardarm, drawing other ships’ attention to that bearing. Two minutes later, radar reported a second wave of attackers coming in behind the first. Bearings were unchanging, indicating a direct, purposeful approach. Treseder said, “At least the two-eight-one seems to have pulled itself together.”

  Count your blessings …

  But sparing a thought, another one, for the idiot in Akureyri who’d been so sure PQ 19 would get through unopposed—by way of a let-out, of course, for failure to lay on an escort carrier. Nick would have liked to have had that man here now, to watch—as they all did, a few minutes later—the first group of bombers sliding round astern, high enough to be flying in and out of the lower extremities of cloud, and dividing into three sections of respectively four, four and five aircraft—these were Ju 88s again, thirteen of them.

  “Large formation green eight-oh, angle of sight five, flying right to left!”

  That was the second bunch …

  One quartet of
Junkers had turned, to start their approach from astern. The group of five still circled on towards the port quarter. The third section had climbed into cloud and were out of sight.

  “These are Heinkel 111s, sir!”

  Torpedo bombers … Swanwick had his glasses on them. He added, “I make it two batches of nine Heinkels in each, sir.” They were circling from right to left, out there to starboard, and they’d be likely to attack from the bow either in two waves or all together. Simultaneous attack would be preferable from the convoy’s point of view, and with any luck it was what the Germans would put their money on. But there’d be the Junkers to contend with at the same time, of course.

  The first group of them was droning in now. Looking like bloodthirsty black bats. Not quite as poisonous as Stukas, the Ju 87s, but still foul enough. Quite a distance astern, as yet, and high.

  Nick spoke to Trench over TBS.

  “Tommy—with your armament, Moloch would do better astern. Put the other two up front to frighten the Heinkels?”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Trench added, “Out …” Then he was calling the two astern. He might have thought of this himself: there was barely time now to make the switch before the attack came in. Laureate and Leopard, with low-angle four-sevens, were equipped to counter the low-level torpedo bombers, while Moloch’s high-elevating guns could be used against the 88s. Moloch was already under helm, and before Trench had finished passing his orders the other two were beginning to move up, cracking on full power to pass up between the columns; they’d have been prepared for it by hearing Nick’s call to Trench.

  Leopard seemed to be handled well enough by the first lieutenant who’d assumed command.

  Waiting again. Gun barrels lifted, ready. Eyes at binoculars or over sights watching the enemy deploy for an assault in which they must have known some of them would die. The group of Junkers that had crossed astern was circling back, to swing in behind four that were already on their way in. And there was another group up there somewhere, above the clouds. While out on the bow the two parties of Heinkels had joined up to form a single line-ahead; when they turned to start their attack, there’d be eighteen of them in line-abreast, so you’d have an echelon of thirty-six torpedoes raking in on that bow. But the long straggle of them was still in profile, snaking up … Moloch swept past at about thirty-four knots, all her guns jutting skyward, tin-hatted seamen clustered at each mounting. There was an exchange of waves—and the large bulk of Tommy Trench, towering in the front of that bucking swaying bridge, lifted a hand in salute. Astern, the Berkeley’s high-angle four-inch opened fire, and the “ting” of Calliope’s fire-gongs was just audible before her after guns came in on the act. Her three for’ard turrets and the two after ones could be used and controlled as two separate batteries, when targets proliferated so that a division of her fire-power was needed. Now the racing Moloch’s for’ard turrets opened up. Leopard and Laureate still lancing up to the convoy’s van, one each side, each in a welter of flying foam, and the first black-brown shellbursts opening like puffballs under the diving Junkers’ noses. Oerlikons in action, and pompoms—at an 88 roaring over on a slanting course, diving, coming from the direction of the port bow and bombs already in the air—two, three, four—and another on the tail of that one, two others a few hundred feet higher and coming from right ahead. Calliope’s five turrets thundering: firing, recoiling, firing, smoke belching away and the reek of cordite heavy in the wind. Bedlam as guns of many calibres and types engaged both the attackers from astern and these ambushers, queue jumpers, whom nobody had seen as they’d broken cover, diving out of the cloud-layer more like 87s than 88s—and thank God Swanwick had caught on to it just in time. A bomb whacked in fifty yards off Calliope’s port bow, a second between her and the Sovyetskaya Slava, and the next one hit the Galilee Dawn amidships. Other bomb-splashes leaping: the rescue ship had been near-missed—Nick saw the mushroom of sea dumping itself across her quarter. Every ship in the convoy was using every gun it had: the Galilee Dawn included, on fire but holding on.