Kleber's Convoy (11 page)

Kleber's arithmetic was good. Twenty minutes later
Aus-feld
reported asdic
pings.
Soon they could be heard without difficulty in the control-room.

‘Take her down to one hundred and forty metres, chief.'

‘One hundred and forty metres,
Herr
Kapitän.'

The submarine tilted bow down as the men on the hydroplanes responded to Heuser's orders.

Kleber called Ausfeld. ‘Let me know when the
pings
are lost.'

The eyes of the men were focused on the dials, gauges, tell-tales and valves which reflected the subdued light in the control-room. The only sounds apart from cryptic orders and reports were the low hum of the electric motors at slow speed, the faint scratch of instrument styluses, the dripping of water which had condensed on the inside of the hull, and the
pings
which came at regular intervals like the tick of some sinister metronome. Ventilating fans and other auxiliary machinery and instruments not needed had been switched off.

At a depth of 130 metres the
pings
faded and were lost. The. destroyers' ranges were estimated at between 1500 and 1800 metres. Kleber knew that the submarine had passed under a temperature layer which was deflecting the asdic beams. He knew too that the destroyers would
depth-charge
the estimated diving position and at once took steps to get away from it. ‘Emergency full ahead together,' he ordered. ‘Hard-a-port.'

The hum of the electric motors rose to a higher pitch and the boat heeled over as her bows swung to port,

‘Steer zero-two-zero,' said Kleber.

The temperature layer not only deflected asdic beams but
muffled the sound of the enemy's propellers so that bearings and ranges became difficult to obtain. But Ausfeld's
hydrophone
operator was able to give them very approximately and this was of some assistance.

Three minutes later the first depth-charge explosions were heard astern and to starboard. Not long afterwards a slight hammer effect was felt as compression waves struck the submarine.

‘At least eight hundred metres.' Kleber's confident smile reassured the men in the control-room. ‘
Die
Tommies
mussen
es
schon
besser
machen,
wenn
sie
uns
die
Angst
eintreiben
wollen
… the Tommies will have to do a lot better than that if they want to worry us.' He decided to keep U-0117 on her course and maintain maximum submerged speed for
another
ten minutes.

For the next half-hour depth-charging occurred at irregular intervals. They were single, sometimes double explosions. The closest was estimated at 500 metres. Kleber knew that the destroyers had lost contact and were depth-charging at random to keep him submerged while the convoy altered course. He imagined it would have made an emergency turn away from his reported position. As each depth-charge exploded, Dieter Leuner plotted the approximate position given by the hydrophone operator. When the explosions ceased Kleber looked at the chart, considered the various possibilities and made his decision.

Fifteen minutes later he took U-0117 above the
temperature
layer to 50 metres. Before long Ausfeld had again picked up propellers' noises. They were to the north-east, estimated range 9000 to 10,000 metres, opening. Kleber realised the destroyers must have abandoned the search soon after the last depth-charge explosion. Now they would be returning to their screening positions in front of the convoy. When the propeller noises could no longer be heard, Kleber brought U-0117 to the surface.

The course steered by the destroyers, estimated by Ausfeld, suggested that the convoy's emergency turn had been to port. Kleber set course to the eastward to overtake, keeping to windward.

Once again U-0117 was running at high speed on the surface. The moderate south-westerly gale blew now from
astern. Conditions on the small horseshoe bridge were
incredibly
uncomfortable as the submarine slithered and
wallowed
through heavy seas. Snow and sleet storms followed each each other with monotonous regularity, and despite the feeble Arctic twilight of forenoon, visibility was rarely above five hundred metres.

It was almost two hours later that Ausfeld reported faint radar impulses fine on the port bow. Kleber at once reduced speed. With diesels throttled back to seven and a half knots, U-0117, astern and up-wind of the convoy, settled down to shadowing, her search-receiver just able to hold the
multiplicity
of distant radar impulses at maximum range. Kleber counted on the submarine's silhouette, trimmed well down, being too small a target for the escorts' radar in those seas.

At 1017, having established the approximate course of the convoy, Kleber made his sighting report to the Naval High Command. It was an unusual signal in some respects. When Whitehall intercepted and deciphered it, it appeared to be a weather report, albeit with curious features.

The signal evidently gave the U-boat's position co-ordinates but in a new style cipher group, and the name or word KLEBER in plain language appeared before the penultimate group which gave the time of origin. The message ended with XXXX instead of the customary cipher group
representing
the U-boat's call-sign. Though of a minor nature, these were departures from the standard form used for weather reports by German U-boats. Cipher officers in Whitehall could not decide the significance of the variations, and the four Xs defied rational explanation. The cipher groups thought to be the position co-ordinates could not be broken, but they were presumed to be based upon bearings from German radio beacons along the Norwegian coast.

In all other respects the message's form and content, and the transmission frequency, was that normally used for weather reporting by U-boats. Whitehall had, of course, no means of knowing that this
ruse
de
guerre
was an essential part of Plan X, agreed by Kleber with the Flag Officer, U-boats, Group North.

As soon as Kleber's message was received in the operations room at Trondheim, Plan X was put into operation. In
accordance with custom, the convoy was, for reference purposes, named after the U-boat commander who had sighted it.

Thus JW 137 became known to the German High
Command
as
Kleber's
Convoy.

The brass-rimmed clock on the bulkhead of
Vengeful
's HF/DF office showed 1017 when Leading-Telegraphist Blades, the operator on watch, heard a ground-wave signal transmitted by a U-boat. His hands flew to the tuning controls of the receivers in front of him and with almost imperceptible movements he amplified the signal, checked its frequency and read off the bearing. That done he immediately broadcast to all escort vessels by TBS – remote controlled from his desk – the bearing and series number of the B-Bar message.

For every second of every hour of every day since leaving Loch Ewe, Blades and his fellow operators – there were three of them – had sat in the minute office under the quarter-deck taking turns to watch their receivers and listen for a ground-wave transmission on the frequencies used by U-boats. They had done this in conditions of the utmost discomfort but they had been trained to identify such signals instantly, for speed was imperative. A U-boat's sighting report took under thirty seconds to transmit. Now, at last, one had come.

At the twenty-third second after picking up the signal, his vital task completed, Blades pressed the buzzer which sounded on the bridge, in the chart-room beside the plotting table, and in Lieutenant Sunley's cabin. All who heard it knew that
Vengeful
had picked up a B-Bar message from a U-boat.

Within minutes escorts had exchanged HF/DF bearings and plotted the submarine's position. They did not, of course, know that this was U-0117, commanded by
Kapitänleutnant
Johan August Kleber, though they suspected that KLEBER was the captain's name. Nor did Kleber know that his boat's position had been plotted for its message had
been transmitted on an ultra-high frequency: one which the Germans believed the British could not use for direction-finding purposes, a belief which persisted until the end of the war.

Once the U-boat's signals had been deciphered, the U-boat tracking-room in Whitehall lost no time in passing its
contents
to the Vice-Admiral in
Fidelix.
Describing it as
appar
ently
a
weather
report,
Whitehall drew attention to its unusual features. The Vice-Admiral did not acknowledge the signal because he intended maintaining wireless silence until the position of JW 137 was, beyond all doubt, known to the enemy.

In
Fidelix
's operations-room the Vice-Admiral discussed the signal with his staff-officer-operations, Rory McLeod, and the navigator, Lieutenant-Commander Cockburn.

‘What are the facts?' he asked, proceeding at once to answer the rhetorical question. ‘This morning
Vengeful
and
Violent
closed to within five thousand yards of a radar
contact
, classified submarine. At that range they lost contact. The submarine had dived. The time was 0820. No A/S
contact
was made so the U-boat was presumably sitting under a temperature layer or conditions were too bad for A/S.'

The Vice-Admiral leant over the plotting table where a stylus scratched the flagship's course on to a moving sheet. He turned to the radar displays. Pips of light glowing and fading showed the position of the ships in the convoy, the cruiser, the oiler, the corvettes and frigates of the close escort, the Home Fleet destroyers inside the close screen, the escort destroyers and sloops of the outer screen, the little rescue ship astern and the host of merchant ships … an abstract picture of JW 137 plodding through the long Arctic night, rolling and plunging on its way to the Kola Inlet.

‘We completed the wheel to port soon after 0840. That left the U-boat to the south-west of us.' The Vice-Admiral pulled at his chin with forefinger and thumb. ‘About two hours later – at 1017 to be precise – a B-Bar message was picked up which puts the U-boat there.' With his thumb he indicated the position on the plot. ‘Because they were nearest the bearing, and since they can steam upwind faster than any
of the other escorts, we detached two Home Fleet destroyers to put him down. But they failed to make contact. Radar or otherwise. The U-boat must have dived immediately after transmitting the B-Bar.'

‘Standard practice, sir,' said Cockburn. The Vice-Admiral eyed him keenly wondering what innuendo lay behind the remark. It was not for nothing that the navigator was called ‘Cocky' in the wardroom.

‘Sensible chap,' said Rory McLeod. ‘He wants to stay alive.'

‘Confounded nuisance not being able to operate aircraft in this weather.' The Vice-Admiral growled his annoyance. ‘Then we get this.' He held up the Whitehall signal giving the contents of the B-Bar message. ‘They describe it as
apparently
a weather report. It describes the weather we're experiencing with considerable accuracy – and we know that U-boats do transmit weather reports. But it has these unusual features. KLEBER could be the name of the commanding officer, I suppose, or a code name for the U-boat. But the four Xs? Any ideas, gentlemen?'

Cockburn shook his head. Rory McLeod said, ‘They may have some cipher significance, sir. An indicator group, perhaps. Who knows?'

‘Quite,' said the Vice-Admiral. ‘I, for one, don't. Nor does Whitehall. And now the sixty-four dollar question. Is this weather reporter the U-boat that
Vengeful
and
Violent
put down earlier, or another fellow?'

Rory McLeod said, ‘From the plot I would think it's likely to be the same boat, sir. It has travelled in our general direction between its 0820 and 1017 positions.'

‘In that case one would expect the B-Bar message to have been a sighting report not a weather report.'

‘Yes, sir,' said the navigator. ‘Unless …'

‘Unless what, Cockburn?'

‘Unless the U-boat was unaware of
Vengeful
and
Violent
when it dived at 0820. Could be a U-boat on passage to Kola, making routine dives and transmitting weather reports.'

‘Unlikely,' said the Vice-Admiral, shaking his head. ‘Even in this weather, if his search-receiver was in trouble I'd have thought his hydrophones would have picked up propeller noises.' He paused to gather his thoughts. ‘We've not altered course since the B-Bar message because the one we're steering
is taking the convoy away from the U-boat. I believe that to be a sensible decision. And in favour of your point, Cock-burn, we do know that a weather report has been made but apparently no sighting report.'

‘I take it, sir,' said Rory McLeod, ‘that when and if a sighting report is made there'll be the usual W/T chatter between the German High Command and the U-boats on the Kola patrol line. They'll acknowledge as they always do, and we'll get huff-duff bearings and plot their positions.'

‘Yes,' said the Vice-Admiral, who'd been about to say the same thing. ‘Thank heavens for their tendency to chatter. When they do we shall have something to go on. Now, gentlemen, I think I'd like to get back to the bridge.'

The fifteen U-boats on the patrol line outside the Kola Inlet were disposed along a shallow arc, its highest point south of the Skolpen Bank, its extremities opposite Vardo Point in the West and Voroni Rocks in the East. The arc was a little over one hundred miles long and its average distance offshore ranged from thirty to fifty miles. The U-boats which manned it were about seven miles apart.

The Murman coast was particularly suitable for
Schnorchel
boats and the three U-boats not on the surface when the High Command's XXXX signal was made at 1020 were submerged and schnorkelling. Since a radio antennae was raised with the
Schnorchel
mast all submarines on the patrol line read the signal.

U-0153 was one of three submerged at that time. Her captain, Willi Schluss, was more than ready to accept the discomfort this entailed in return for the security offered by fourteen metres of water over the submarine. Conditions in the boat were unpleasant, and though they were in the lee of the land the weather offshore was decidedly rough. On top of the usual misery of a dark, dripping and humid interior, the
Schnorchel
float which controlled the air-intake valve was at times covered by seas which closed it. The shutting off of fresh air resulted in the diesel intakes sucking oxygen from the interior of the boat, creating a sudden vacuum which made men gasp for breath, suffer severe headaches and attacks of nausea.

Hugo Kolb, the engineer-officer, was one of those who did little to conceal his contempt for the captain's tendency
to
Schnorchel
when the boat could have been surfaced. ‘
Er
will
wohl
ewig
leben
… he wants to live for ever,' said Kolb, a Nazi zealot with pale blue eyes and a bullet-shaped head. Obermaschinist Zeck, his second-in-command, nodded in silent agreement.

‘God knows how he ever became captain of a U-boat,' said Kolb.

Ivory teeth and the whites of large eyes against a
grease-stained
face gave Zeck the appearance of a white man made-up to look like a black man. ‘We get killed pretty quickly these days,' he said. ‘The young and inexperienced have to be used.'

Kolb frowned. ‘Youth and inexperience cannot be helped, but Schluss is a coward.'

Zeck, who took a realistic view of life and longed for a peace which would take him home to his wife and children in Westphalia, said, ‘Well, if he succeeds we too will live for ever, so why complain,
Herr
Ingenieur.'
Having said that he smiled discreetly to indicate that the remark was not meant seriously. He knew Kolb would not approve and had no wish to offend him.

Kolb's eyes flashed. ‘That is not the point. We are here to fight the enemy. To serve the Fuehrer and the Reich. Not to see how long we can survive. The chances of making a sighting are good on the surface. There we can make proper use of the search-receiver. Maybe even see something in the semi-twilight. But submerged with the
schnorkel.
' He spat expressively.

‘You are right,
Herr
Ingenieur.
But Kapitänleutnant Schluss commands the boat. His orders must be obeyed.'

‘We shall see,' said Kolb darkly. ‘Wait until we get back to Trondheim.'

‘Falls
wir
zurückkommen
… if we get back,' murmured Zeck to himself. The obermaschinist had his doubts.

As Willi Schluss read the High Command's 1020 signal he shivered and his intestines knotted painfully. It was not
unexpected
. U-0153 had already intercepted Kleber's 1017 weather report. It had caused Schluss the greatest anxiety. The four Xs and the use of the commander's name in place of the submarine's call-sign meant that a convoy had been sighted. Now the High Command was ordering the attack.
Worse still, it was to be led by Kleber. Schluss was an imaginative, apprehensive young man, on his first patrol in command. The high rate of mortality among U-boat crews had necessitated more and more men like him who had neither the experience nor the courage and resolve for the job, being given command of new construction.

Because he was intelligent and quick to learn he had done well in training flotillas in the Baltic and in Oslo Fjord. It was on his performance there that he had been given
command
of U-0153. But his lack of aggression, his uncertainty and nervousness had soon become apparent to the crew, and the morale of these young men, themselves sadly lacking in experience, had suffered. Tension between the captain and Kolb the engineering officer, an older and more experienced U-boat man, permeated U-0153. She was an unhappy boat.

Schluss, small, dark, bookish, introverted, came from Karlsruhe. He had been studying economics in Berlin when war came. An intellectual liberal with compassion for peoples of all races and creeds, he had long believed in the futility of war. To find himself involved in one was a traumatic experience. His dislike of a dogmatic Hitlerised father, a minor party official, had not helped. Willi Schluss, at home on leave, or in barracks or afloat, was an unhappy young man with no belief in the justice of the cause he was obliged to fight for. Originally trained for surface vessels, he had spent most of his time in the
Gneisenau,
first in Brest and afterwards in Kiel and the Baltic. Later when the decision was made to run down the crews of surface ships he had, with thousands of others, been drafted into the submarine service. There he had done his best, but it was an
impoverished
best. His heart was not in the job.

After he had re-read the High Command's signal for the third time, Schluss opened the safe in which the confidential books were kept. From it he took a bundle of envelopes marked ‘
Streng
geheim
… top secret'. They were held
together
by an elastic band. He thumbed through these until he came to one marked
Plan
X.
In the small nook off the control-room which was his cabin he pulled the curtain and with trembling fingers opened the envelope. As he read his fears increased, his mouth dried, and he suffered an attack of dizziness. He had not until that moment known the details of
Plan
X
.

It involved a concentration of submarines in a surface attack at high speed: the old
Rudeltaktik
… ‘wolf-pack' tactic long-since discarded because of crippling losses inflicted on these packs by enemy escort forces after mid-1943.

‘It's incredible,' he mumbled to himself in subdued hysteria. ‘These Russian convoys are the most heavily escorted ever known. A pack attack on the surface … Why … it's … it's asking us to commit suicide. It's mad. That's what it is.' His eyes filled with tears. He fought them back, dried his eyes and concentrated once again on the secret orders.

Plan
X,
read in conjunction with High Command's 1020 signal, required the eight U-boats on the western arc of the Kola patrol line to concentrate on the shadowing U-boat – Kleber's in this instance – the position of which was given. The concentration of
Gruppe
Kleber,
as it was now known in the operations-room at Trondheim, should be completed by 1530.