Kleber's Convoy (14 page)

‘One awkward case, sir. AB Farley. We can stand him over until tomorrow if you wish. We'll be in harbour then.'

The first-lieutenant groaned. ‘Not him again. What's he been up to this time? Peeing into a messmate's seaboot last week, wasn't it. Taken short in the night and hadn't time to make the heads.'

‘Yes, sir. That's what he said.' The coxswain's expression conveyed his disbelief of Farley's defence. ‘Bit more difficult this time, sir. He's come up against Petty Officer Tanner again.'

The first-lieutenant frowned, ‘Petty Officer Tanner charged him last time. You don't think …' He hesitated. ‘You don't think Tanner has it in for him, do you?'

‘No, sir. Loot'nant O'Brien is Farley's divisional officer. He'll bear me out, sir. It's just Farley. Got a chip on his shoulder, sir. Looks for trouble.'

The first-lieutenant sighed. ‘I expect you're right. Tanner's a good petty officer. What happened?'

‘Well, sir. It begun Monday. Down in the seamen's mess-deck. Petty Officer Tanner tells Farley to get a bucket and scrubber and brighten up the mess-table.'

‘Farley was cook of the mess that day, was he?'

‘Yes, sir.' The coxswain shuffled the papers in the file and cleared his throat. ‘Well, then, sir, Farley doesn't say anything. Just makes this objectionable noise.'

‘What sort of objectionable noise, coxswain?'

‘Passes wind, sir.'

‘In other words, Farley farted.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘But that's not an offence, coxswain.'

‘The way he did was, sir. There were witnesses. Men on the messdeck. Watch below. Long and deliberate, they said it was.'

‘I don't really see how anyone can decide that a fart is deliberate, coxswain. Even if it's long.'

‘That's not all, sir.'

‘After the first one, sir …' The coxswain looked pained. ‘… after that Petty Officer Tanner says, “Watch it, Farley. I'm not standing for that.” Farley doesn't answer. Just lets off another long one again, sir.'

‘Must have had a lot of wind stored up somewhere, coxswain.'

‘Must have, sir. He does it twice more after that. Four times in all. Bach time Petty Officer Tanner speaks to him. Deliberate, sir. Doesn't say a word. Just passes wind.'

The first-lieutenant was thoughtful. ‘Remarkable achievement. I must talk to the doctor about it sometime. What's he charged with, coxswain?'

‘Well, sir. Petty Officer Tanner laid a charge of dumb insolence.'

The first-lieutenant shook his head. ‘Won't wash, I mean
he wasn't exactly dumb and anyway that was scrubbed from K.R. and A.I.
1
years ago. You know that, coxswain.'

‘That's what I told Petty Offices Tanner, sir.'

‘So what's the charge?'

The coxswain thumbed the file of papers, swaying from side to side to counter the movement of the ship. ‘Conduct prejudicial to the maintenance of good order and …'

The end of his sentence was drowned by the action alarm bells.

The echoes became blurred and faint, the extent of target grew rapidly and then faded until there was nothing. From the asdic cabinet Lofty Groves reported, ‘Shoal of fish, sir.'
Vengeful
's action alarm had turned out to be, like so many before, a false one.

Redman said, ‘Resume normal sweep,' adding for the benefit of no one in particular, ‘Damn and blast the bloody fish.' To the yeoman he said, ‘Inform
Bluebird
that the contact was non-sub.' He turned to the first-lieutenant. ‘Secure, Number One. Resume normal war cruising stations. See that all hands get a hot meal as soon as possible. We've a busy time coming.'

The first-lieutenant said, ‘Aye, aye, sir,' but he thought, for God's sake – as if I hadn't already thought of that.

To Pownall, who was officer-of-the-watch, Redman said, ‘She's yours, pilot. Take her back into station.'

Pownall said, ‘Aye, aye, sir,' and went to the compass platform.

Redman stood at a clear-view screen gazing into the darkness ahead. Not that he could see anything, but he could think. He was nearer to exhaustion than he realised. Lack of sleep, attacks of bronchial asthma and a nagging headache were wearing him down and his thoughts were a confusion of reality and fantasy.

To get back into station
Vengeful
had to steam into the
gale. Solid seas came over her bows and broke against the fo'c'sle breakwater and ‘hedgehog', clouds of spray sweeping the bridge, the heavy elements sluicing away the snow which lay everywhere, the lighter freezing where they fell.

Redman stood with legs straddled, mittened hands on the bridge rail, steadying himself against the movement of the ship. He scarcely noticed the scream of the wind, the slap and roar of the sea, but his subconscious registered each
ping
of the asdic, every word relayed by the TBS bridge-speaker as escorts spoke to each other. It did so while odd unrelated thoughts drifted through his mind-like the fact that he'd not changed his clothes for eight days, that he was acutely conscious of the odour of his body, that a rash had developed inside his thighs – ‘Captain's Crutch' they called it – that JW 137 was due at the Kola Inlet at 1000 the next morning: time now close to 1300: twenty-one hours to go. What would they bring?

Ahead of the convoy lay the Skolpen Bank and the minefield. With heavy-lidded eyes he peered into the darkness and on the screen of his mind saw fourteen U-boats driving through the gale towards the Bank. Conditions on the small bridges above their conning-towers would be appalling – worse than on
Vengeful'
s – but that would not deter them.

His thoughts switched to the enemy's signals. The German High Command in ordering U-boats to concentrate for an attack on a convoy invariably used the name of the U-boat captain who was shadowing it as a reference. Yet there had been no B-Bar signals other than the
KLEBER
weather reports. Was the weather reporter the shadower? The latest High Command signals had referred the
Gruppe
Osten,
and HF/DF bearings of the fourteen U-boats acknowledging indicated that they were making for a position to the northwest of the Skolpen Bank. It was all too much for his tired mind, but he decided the weather reporter must be the shadower. Somewhere to windward, then, within ten or twelve miles, in steep seas and howling wind, hidden by darkness and blizzard, a surfaced U-boat was shadowing them. On the bridge there would be men, among them Kleber, the captain. He, too, would be peering into the darkness, but down-wind, towards the convoy, knowing that he would see nothing but impelled always to look towards
the sector from which the radar impulses came.

Redman moved across to the PPI and watched the sweep of its arm as if, among all those pips of light, he might see the shadower far to the south-west. But he knew it was not possible in that weather. Conditions for both radar and asdics, were bad, and with so much wave-clutter on the screen there would be no hope of isolating the momentary blip of a distant trimmed-down U-boat. While he watched the PPI he tussled with the insistent question … which Kleber? Could it be Hans? No, it couldn't, he would reassure himself. The coincidence was too remote. Then doubt would return, and with it misery.

Pownall's voice broke into his thoughts. ‘We're back in station, sir.' Redman checked the display on the PPI. ‘Good,' he said. ‘I'm going below.'

In the sea-cabin he took off his mittens and gloves and hung them up with the night glasses, dusted frost and snow from his anorak, turned back its fur-lined hood, and lay on his bunk. His eyes focused on the lump of red ice. It was so close to his face that each time he breathed a cloud of
condensation
formed and drifted across it.

An old problem worried him. When should he take them?, He loathed the whole idea of using drugs to keep awake, and though the doctor recommended Benzedrine under certain conditions, Redman rarely resorted to it and then only towards the end of a journey. If one started too soon they caught up with you. Sleep couldn't be bought off indefinitely. In the end it was an account which had to be settled.

But there were fourteen U-boats ahead and there was going to be an attack on the convoy. For that he must be alert, on the top line. He made his decision. He'd take two tablets the next time he was called. He turned on his side, pulled up the damp, body odorous blankets and closed his eyes, trying to blot out the pictures which chased across his mind.

Over the years he'd found that if he was very tired it helped to shut and secure an imaginary steel screen between his eyes and his brain. The screen was a sliding one, very solid like the door of a vault. He always moved it from left to right, slowly, steadily, shutting out the images bit by bit
until there was nothing but the door – then, when it was shut right across, he would screw down the cleats which secured it.

At 1300 Kleber made his second shadowing report. Like its predecessors it appeared to be a weather report. Again it included position co-ordinates in the new code. It was followed at 1315 by a conventional operational signal from High Command ordering all U-boats of
Gruppe
Osten
to report their positions.

In accordance with
Plan
X,
each of the seven U-boats responded by reporting its position twice, once on receipt of the High Command signal and again within the half-hour. The eight U-boats of
Gruppe
Kleber
making for U-0117's position and maintaining radio silence made no report.

Once again the position of all reporting U-boats was plotted in the U-boat tracking-room at the Admiralty, in
Fidelix,
and in the HF/DF equipped escorts. The plots revealed that during the two hours which had lapsed since they'd last reported, six of the ‘fourteen' U-boats making for the Skolpen Bank had already reached its north-western extremity, while eight had varying distances to go, the furthest being twenty-five miles. In those two hours the U-boats had made good an average distance of about twenty-five miles. Rather more than the Vice-Admiral had predicted, whereas the convoy's speed of advance had dropped to six knots. In
Fidelix
's operations-room this was attributed to the current in the Barents Sea setting more strongly to the west than usual.

In the U-boat tracking-room at the Admiralty there was some surprise at the time lag between some of the U-boats' responses to the High Command's request for positions since this was not normal practice. But nor was the use of weather reports for sighting and shadowing signals and both were presumed to be new procedures. The latest developments, however, confirmed the conclusion reached in
Fidelix
and at the Admiralty that
KLEBER
the weather reporter was in fact a shadower. The Vice-Admiral promptly dispatched two Home Fleet destroyers from the close screen to put
KLEBER
down few the third time that day.

The latest positions of the ‘fourteen' reporting U-boats
caused the Vice-Admiral and his staff to revise their earlier predictions. They now estimated that by 1530 the convoy would be twenty miles from the Skolpen U-boats … the outer screen would then be only twelve miles from them. On the basis of these estimates the Vice-Admiral decided to order a major alteration of course to the southward at 1500 – away from the Skolpen Bank and towards the Murman coast west of the Kola Inlet – at which time he would detach the outer screen to deal with the Skolpen U-boats. This would put the enemy astern of the convoy and he had every confidence in the Fifty-Seventh Escort Group's ability to keep them down while the convoy made off to the southward. He would at the same time move the close screen of Home Fleet destroyers six miles ahead of JW 137 on its new course, to form a temporary outer screen, and re-dispose the close screen – the corvettes and frigates of the Eighty-Third Escort Group – so that most of them would be on the convoy's eastern flank, the side on which the Skolpen concentration lay.

The Vice-Admiral conveyed these intentions by TBS to the commodore of the convoy and the escort commanders. Kleber's shadowing report at 1300-transmitted as a weather report – and the High Command's signal at 1315 were, of course, read by the U-boats of
Gruppe
Kleber,
though they maintained radio silence.

The position co-ordinates in Kleber's signal, deciphered from the special code attached to
Plan
X,
enabled them to determine the courses to steer and distances to go to reach him, since each knew its own position by means of cross-bearings of the German beacon stations on the Norwegian coast.

For the third time that day U-0117 had to dive under a temperature layer. This time to avoid the two Home Fleet destroyers detached to put the U-boat down. Again the area was subject to random depth-charging while U-0117 maintained the last-known course of the convoy at high submerged speed. Kleber knew that any U-boats of
Gruppe
Kleber
close to him would be doing the same thing.

He surfaced again at 1415 and made off in pursuit of the convoy. Soon after 1430 Ausfeld reported contact. Kleber made a course correction to put the convoy on U-0117's
port bow and reduced speed.

By 1430 three U-boats of
Gruppe
Kleber
were within a mile or so of U-0117 and were themselves receiving radar impulses from the convoy's escorts. They, too, had turned on to parallel courses, keeping station abaft the beam of the convoy. Since radio silence had to be maintained, these boats were not in direct communication with each other, nor was there much likelihood of U-boat sighting U-boat in the darkness and bad weather prevailing.

By 1500 concentration was virtually complete, all but one of the boats of
Gruppe
Kleber
being in touch with the convoy. The exception was U-0153, Willi Schluss's boat. Still two miles to the south of Kleber, it would have been a great deal farther but for Kolb, Meyer and Brückner who had fought, cajoled, threatened and cheated to such an extent that Schluss's efforts to delay the approach had been of little avail.

Kleber had no means of knowing if the concentration was complete, though one U-boat had been sighted close astern and visual signals had been exchanged by shaded lamp. Kleber found this comforting. He was pretty confident that other U-boats of the
Gruppe,
though hidden by darkness, were not far away.

He knew that the convoy commander would soon have to decide whether to pass north or south of the Skolpen minefield. Both contingencies had been provided for. The U-boats in
Gruppe
Kleber
would remain in their present position relative to the convoy if it went north of the minefield, and they would in that event be reinforced by
Gruppe
Osten.

If the convoy went south it would be turning towards Kleber, and his
Gruppe,
up-wind of the convoy and on its starboard bow, would be in an ideal attacking position.
Plan
X
was based on the probability that the convoy
would
go south of the minefield to avoid
Gruppe
Osten
whose boats had been making their presence known to the enemy by reporting their ‘fourteen' positions to High Command and by direct radio chatter to each other since 1430.

Soon after 1510 the voice-pipe buzzer sounded on U-0117's bridge. It was Ausfeld. ‘Radar impulses increasing in strength, bearing changing from left to right. Already we hear language messages in English between the convoy and the escort force.'

‘Good, Ausfeld. Can you make anything of them?'

‘They use many code words but it seems they make a major alteration of course towards us.' Ausfeld spoke good English.

‘Ausgezeichnet.
Sie
gingen
in
die
Falle
… splendid. They walk into the trap.' Kleber slapped his thigh and excitement showed through his normal composure. ‘Let me have frequent reports.'

‘I will,
Herr
Kapitän
.'

A few minutes later Ausfeld reported, ‘Signals still gaining in strength. The convoy has evidently altered to the south. The bearing moves steadily from left to right. Estimated range eighteen thousand metres. Closing fast.'

Kleber immediately altered U-0117's course to intercept. He would approach the convoy on its up-wind flank. The starboard columns would come under attack first and because of the diversion caused by the Skolpen concentration he expected to find few escorts to starboard. The remainder of his
Gruppe,
familiar with
Plan
X,
would, he knew, be reacting in the same way to the radar signals coming into their search-receivers. Telling Rathfelder that he would be back soon, Kleber handed over the bridge watch and went down to the control-room.

Dieter Leuner, the navigating officer, had plotted the estimated position of JW 137 on its new southerly course. Kleber looked at the chart. ‘So the convoy has altered course perhaps ninety degrees or more to starboard.'