Convoy (16 page)

All of which had little to do with finding out how U-boats attacked from inside convoys. Yet in a way it did; cheating seamen (any servicemen for that matter) out of their pensions, laying down arbitrary bureaucratic rules from Bath or some such safe evacuation centre, going on strike as the dockers had done, refusing to unload the cargoes brought in by the merchant ships, were things that were kept secret yet were none the less shameful. The next of kin of those in the ‘dead’ and ‘missing’ columns might wonder for what their men died, while those disabled and even now lying in bed in some hospital, missing an arm or a leg, an eye or whatever, while doctors and nurses tried to mend them, must at times wonder whether they would have been wiser to volunteer for some safer wartime task, same clerkship in the Ministry of Fuel and Power, some post in the Ministry of Food. The best thing if you were of military age and likely to be called up was, of course, to stand for Parliament: Members of Parliament were not called up. By some strange logic (an instinct for self-preservation?) it was considered to be war service, and several sturdy young men with MP after their names making stirring speeches about the conduct or misconduct of the war were duly reported in the newspapers. No one turned round and said that with more than 600 Members of Parliament, the task of the political government of the country could be left to the older men – many of whom, ironically, had volunteered or were on active service. The younger Members were obviously intent on building up reputations that would secure their political advancement after the war, although the way the Battle of the Atlantic was going (if the pile of dockets was a true indication) it would be hard to find a bookie who would give even reasonable odds about the ‘after’.

The fifth docket was of a thirty-one-ship convoy from Freetown to Liverpool. There were many pages of paper which were simply epitaphs to eight of its thirty-one ships sunk by a single U-boat inside the convoy. Once again he sketched out a diagram and saw the eight ships had all been in the centre. Again, no pattern – although perhaps the attacks in the centre ought to be regarded as a pattern.

Eleven ships in this convoy had crossed the south Atlantic to Freetown from various South American ports in a small convoy and not seen an enemy. At Freetown they were joined by four American, two Norwegian, one Swedish and three Dutch ships: a cosmopolitan bunch carrying every sort of cargo from frozen meat to palm nuts, with several of the ships which had passenger accommodation (usually for a dozen or so people) bringing back Service officers or, in the case of the ships from South America, men and women volunteering for the Forces. Four such ships had been sunk; of fifty-two passengers, only eleven had survived. Forty-one had died before seeing the shores of the Britain they intended to help defend.

He read through the reports referring to the eight ships and noticed that five of them had each been hit with two torpedoes while the other three had been hit with singles, so the U-boat had certainly fired a total of thirteen.

Yorke picked up his diagram and walked over to Jemmy who glanced up and combined a twitch with a grin when he saw who was standing beside him. ‘Solved the riddle, Ned?’

‘No, I just want to peer into the devious mind of a submariner. Look, eight ships sunk by the same U-boat. Five are each hit by two torpedoes, but three others get singles.’

‘Ten fish expended on five, plus three, makes thirteen fired. Any misses seen?’

‘No, not one. No phosphorescence.’

‘Thirteen…and a U-boat carries fourteen, so either he missed with one fish that no one sighted, or he kept it in reserve for the trip home. Or one was defective. What do you conclude from all that?’

Ned shrugged his shoulders. ‘That convoy was like all the rest of them: when the U-boat joined in he had a full outfit of torpedoes. Which means, I suppose–’ it hit him like an almost physical blow, ‘–yes, that it’s definitely not chance that puts a U-boat into the middle of a convoy. Every U-boat up to now has had a full outfit of torpedoes. So old Doenitz is planning it in Lorient. Kernevel, rather – or wherever he has his headquarters.’

Jemmy’s eyes narrowed and he seemed to be staring at a far horizon. ‘Ned, keep on talking…’

‘Well, I’m not too sure of that, come to think of it. Most of these convoys are homeward bound, which means they’re loaded down and also sailing from places thousands of miles from Lorient. Halifax, Nova Scotia, New York, Freetown and so on. Each convoy I’ve checked so far was attacked by a U-boat which fired at least a dozen torpedoes. That makes me wonder whether each of these U-boats sighted a convoy by accident, as it were, and somehow got into the middle and attacked until all its torpedoes were used up, or whether the U-boat was there with a full outfit of torpedoes to attack a particular convoy: whether it was sent out from Lorient full of fuel and fish with orders to wait for convoy number so and so in a certain position.’

‘You mean, the Teds know when our convoys sail. Or at least the ones that are attacked. Is that likely, Ned?’

Yorke shrugged his shoulders again. ‘I’m only thinking aloud. But isn’t it too much of a coincidence that the first five “insider” convoys I check were all attacked by U-boats with full outfits of torpedoes? If you command a U-boat what would you reckon on your chances of sighting a particular type of convoy before you’d fired any torpedoes?’

‘Pretty good,’ Jemmy said. ‘After all, most attacks are on convoys, not single ships. But the chances of staying with that convoy are not so good, so I might then find a second convoy with only half my torpedoes left. But Ned, keep thinking on these lines…this last convoy: the chances of a U-boat with a full outfit of fish picking it up just after leaving Freetown does seem a hell of a coincidence. There are so many single ships running along the West African coast – between Freetown, Takoradi, Accra, Lagos, Calabar, Port Harcourt – that…well, it’s surprising, to say the least.’

‘And the ships hit with two torpedoes, Jemmy?’

‘That’s either definite orders from U-boat Headquarters or this particular Ted captain thinks a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Well, you have fourteen torpedoes. In theory you should be able to hit fourteen merchant ships. In fact we know from experience and radio intercepts that usually a U-boat is lucky if it sinks four ships on each trip, even when part of a pack. That probably means ten fish missed. Most captains dread running out of fish – they’re sure the enormous target of a lifetime will loom up the moment they’ve used the last one. So even though a captain knows he should fire two fish at every target – which could give him seven ships sunk – he usually tries to get away with firing one. So the Ted attacking your convoy was either acting under orders or he was a realist, an experienced skipper who knew it was better to be certain of one ship for every two fish rather than gamble on one for one. Sensible chap.’

‘What would you have done?’

‘What I always did, Ned my lad: if it is worth the risk of getting into a firing position, which means farting around at periscope depth, dodging escorts, it’s worth firing two fish to make certain of one sinking – after all, you’re risking your whole boat and crew. Mind you, occasionally you find a target where all the conditions are perfect and one fish is enough: your Ted found three like that in this convoy, but he wouldn’t gamble on the other five.’

Yorke took back the diagram and said ruefully: ‘All we’ve learned from that lot is that a U-boat usually has a barrowload of fish when it meets a convoy.’

‘That a U-boat going to attack from
inside
has a barrowload.’ Jemmy corrected.

‘I’m beginning to dislike submarines and submariners,’ Yorke grumbled. ‘Why don’t you tell me all about ’em? Ted ones, I mean.’

‘Right,’ said Jemmy, ‘grab a notebook and make some notes while I deliver my “Meet the Ted U-boat” lecture. I start off with this gesture–’ he gave a thumbs down sign ‘–which means: “We who are about to be torpedoed say ta-ta to the tarts in Trafalgar Square.”

‘Now, at the moment we reckon Doenitz can keep between 200 and 250 boats at sea at all times. His headquarters are at Kernevel, which is a small town near Lorient. His Atlantic boats can refuel at six places – Brest, St Nazaire, Lorient and Bordeaux, La Pallice and La Rochelle.

‘Now for the boats themselves. Various types, so I’ll describe the latest we know about. Commanded by an
Oberleutnant
(occasionally a
Kapitänleutnant
) with a first lieutenant (responsible for torpedoes and gunnery), a second officer (radio and ciphers) and an ensign (similar to a sub-lieutenant) who is the navigator. The engineer is a lieutenant.

‘There are signs that Doenitz is getting very short of really experienced captains – we reckon we’ve sunk about a hundred boats in the last twelve months. We captured Kretschmer, and two of the other aces, Schepke and Gunther Prien (the chap who sank the
Royal
Oak
), have been killed. Still, Doenitz has the pick of the German Navy’s men, even if he has to promote ’em fast to keep up with new building and losses.

‘A typical boat – well, 770 tons, 75 metres long, six metres diameter. Twin diesels, of course, which give it nineteen knots on the surface and charging batteries at the same time. Generally they have to recharge every twenty-four hours. Submerged speeds? Well, according to the information we have, they can make a maximum of nine knots submerged for an hour; after that their batteries are almost flat. Or they can chug along submerged at one or two knots for three days – by which time the air is nearly solid.

‘Depths? Again, it varies with the type of boat, but the latest we know of can dive safely to 120 metres, which you can call sixty fathoms, or more than 400 feet. The newest boats can probably double that by now.’

Yorke sensed that Jemmy envied and admired the German boats. ‘What armament?’

‘Fourteen fish, with electric drive, so there’s no trail of compressed air bubbles to give ’em away. You’ll only spot tracks when they go through patches of phosphorescence. Four tubes forward and one aft. They can fire four in quick time. They’re discharged by compressed air, so on the surface in daylight you might spot a few bubbles. Enough to say “Boo” to. So much for fish. In the bang department they have an 88 mm gun – that’s the flat trajectory job that’s bashing up our tanks in the Western Desert – and a couple of 20 mm cannon for anti-aircraft stuff.’

Yorke finished scribbling notes and then said: ‘I know British and German subs are different, but use your imagination and describe what it’d be like in a Ted submarine while she’s making an attack. What the skipper is thinking, what happens if she’s depth-charged. I want to try to get into the skin of a U-boat commander. Maybe that’ll help me working out how he thinks.’

‘I can do that,’ Jemmy said, ‘and better than most because I’ve been in a U-boat. It’s secret that we’ve ever captured one, so keep your mouth shut, but it’s one of the reasons why I’m on this zigzag diagram lark: I’m supposed to be a specialist in Ted submarine tactics.

‘Okay, then. You could get the next bit from the Croupier, but I know it and he’s busy, so I’ll give it to you. You’ve seen the big gridded chart he’s got. The Teds don’t use ordinary ocean charts with latitude and longitude – for U-boats, anyway. The charts are gridded, letters of the alphabet in pairs one way and numbers the other. This system probably changes a lot. Anyway, our U-boat surfaces for its night’s battery charging and picks up a radio transmission from U-boat Headquarters at Lorient. The message might be something like: Emergency, All U-Boats With Torpedoes Proceed Full Speed To Grid Square AB 64 Where Convoy Expected Pass Six Knots On Course ESE.

‘That signal would come over in cipher and the second officer would be called to crank it through the cipher machine. If we had torpedoes and if we could reach AB 64 within a reasonable time, we’d go up to full speed on the surface. If we picked up the signal soon after darkness on a winter’s evening, don’t forget we can be more than 200 miles away by dawn.

‘Once we get to AB 64 we search and if we sight the convoy we might try a daylight attack if we are in the Black Pit, outside the range of Allied planes. Most probably we’d shadow at extreme range until before nightfall, and making sure we’re in good attacking position by then.

‘We’d shut down the diesels and go on to the electric motors, diving and rigging the boat for silent running. Four fish loaded in the forward tubes, one in the after tube. Motors turning at something between sixty and eighty revolutions. We’d have plotted the convoy’s course and speed by now and I’d have had a guess whether they’re on the leg of a zigzag or not. I’d be watching the sea water temperature gauges, too, looking for cold water layers. The Teds were lucky. When they captured French warships at the fall of France they captured the Royal Navy’s biggest secret – one we should never have shared with the Frogs. They found our Asdic… The magic ping that bounces off the Ted boats and comes back up and registers as a bearing. They also found what we’d long known and kept secret – that the ping won’t go through a layer of cold water. All this you know well enough, but I’m like a gramophone record, I have to start at the beginning and go on until the end.

‘Anyway, I’d be watching the gauge to see if there’s a convenient cold water layer around in case I want to hide underneath it, like a bomber dodging under a cloud to hide from a fighter above, with the difference that the fighter can’t come down through the cloud!

‘I’d pop up to periscope depth for a few moments every now and again, just to check the convoy hasn’t zigged and to try to plot where the escorts are. One might even come towards me and I’d dive deep and shut off everything and no man would move. We’d hear the ping of the Asdic impulses, high-pitched, like a wasp sending dots in Morse. We’d all be breathing shallowly – pure nerves. Then maybe the escort would think she was getting an echo on the Asdic. She might stop, so her own turbines didn’t interfere with her hydrophones. If she stops reasonably near we’ll be hearing the ping-ping-ping of the bloody Asdic, and the whine of her auxiliary motors and pumps – fantastic how sound travels through water, and anyway our ears are working overtime.