Landfall (8 page)

Chambers said: “Yes, sir. I took a copy of it in my notebook.”

Rutherford said: “I don’t see how it could be made much shorter than it is.”

The captain said mercilessly: “In what way was the notice that you saw different from this sheet, Mr. Chambers?”

The young man said: “It was the same, I think, except for these first sentences.” He pointed to the typescript.

The wing-commander said: “I think that’s right. We left out that for secrecy.”

The naval captain stared at him for a minute. He was about to say that he was not accustomed to his orders being hacked about, but he thought better of it. Instead, he said to the pilot:

“Was the notice that you saw intelligible to you, Mr. Chambers?”

The flying-officer hesitated. “I understood that no attacks were to be made in certain areas at certain times,” he said. “I didn’t know why.”

The commander from the submarine depot leaned forward. “You didn’t know that one of our submarines was coming in, then?” he said kindly.

The boy turned to him gratefully: “No, sir. I didn’t know that.”

There was a tense, pregnant silence for a few moments. Then Captain Burnaby said: “Well, the Court of Enquiry will go into that, no doubt.”

He picked up another paper from the table. “The signal from T.383 gives 1541 as the time of the attack, in Area SM/TM.”

Chambers interposed. “It was definitely in Area SM, sir.”

“That is what I want to hear about next, Mr. Chambers. If she was in Area SM you were clearly within your rights in attacking, subject to reasonable care. In Area TM you could not attack at all.”

The boy said: “No, sir. But she was in Area SM all right.”

The naval captain eyed him keenly. “How did you establish that?”

“I set out the course and distance run from my last known position, on the chart, sir. She was a good two miles inside Area SM.”

“Have you got the chart here?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

The sour-faced young lieutenant-commander spoke up. “How far away was your last-known position?”

The pilot turned to him. “I made it about twenty-six sea miles.”

Lieutenant-Commander Dale raised his eyebrows slightly higher. “Two miles drift wouldn’t be much of an error in the sort of navigation that you do, would it? I don’t see how you can be so sure about the area.”

Chambers said: “I wasn’t two miles out.”

Dale shrugged his shoulders. “The trawler doesn’t seem to be so certain, or she wouldn’t have signalled Area SM/TM.”

Burnaby turned to the pilot. “I take it that you plotted the position carefully upon the chart?”

The boy hesitated awkwardly. The three naval officers sat staring at him. At last he said: “I didn’t pencil the position in. You can’t do that when you’re flying the machine.”

The captain said: “I understand you have a second pilot.”

“I hadn’t got a second pilot today, sir. He’d gone sick.”

Lieutenant-Commander Dale spoke up again. “How did you do the chart work, then, if you couldn’t leave the helm?”

“I had the chart on the seat beside me. I laid off the course and distance run with a parallel ruler.”

The young naval officer’s upper lip curled slightly. “Working with one hand?”

“Yes.”

Dale turned to Captain Burnaby. “I don’t see any proof of the position here, sir,” he said sourly. “You might be anywhere, working like that.”

The captain said: “I quite agree with you.”

There was an awkward silence. The pilot stared at the glass ash-tray on the green-baize tablecloth flushed and miserable. He began to feel that they were all hostile to him; their minds were made up. He knew his navigation methods hadn’t been according to the book, but he had faith in his position. He was used to rapid chart work under difficulties.

He tried to explain to them. He said: “I really don’t think I was two miles out in the position, sir. I made decent landfalls all through the patrol.”

The young lieutenant-commander raised bored eyebrows slightly higher. Rutherford, from Fort Blockhouse nodded, but said nothing.

Captain Burnaby said: “Well, the trawler buoyed the place, so we shall know before long where it actually happened. Now, Mr. Chambers, will you tell us just what occurred, from the time when you first saw the submarine until the moment when she sank.”

The boy said: “I saw her first about two miles away. It was beginning to get dark. I couldn’t make out any
detail—just that there was a submarine there. Then I went straight up into the cloud.”

They sat staring at him, silent, as he told his story.

The lieutenant-commander, Dale, listened with all the overbearing confidence of youth. He had little knowledge of the Air Force, or of anything outside the Navy. He had entered at the age of fourteen and had lived in, and lived for, the Navy ever since. He was efficient. He hated inaccurate, slovenly work. He never made mistakes himself: they were unnecessary, beastly things. Only damn fools made mistakes. Here was this blushing, stammering young ass who had the insolence to say that he could work out a position accurately, working with one hand upon a chart that was sliding about on a seat cushion. The result was that he had made mistakes—not one, but a whole flock of them, and one of them had caused the
Caranx
to be sunk. He listened in a cyncial cold rage.

Rutherford listened sympathetically. He was closer to the disaster than the others. He knew all the officers of
Caranx
intimately, had messed with them for months. Most of his service life had been spent in submarines and he had known several disasters. He had come to realise this one only an hour before, but already he had accepted with a numbed acquiescence that never again would he meet Billy Parkinson, or play a round of golf with Stone, or drink a beer with Sandy Anderson. Presently he would have to write the letters to Jo Parkinson and Dorothy Stone, and to Anderson’s mother at Dairy. From his experience he knew how these things happened. Good men, honest, competent chaps, made a mistake—a hatch had been left open one time. As a young lieutenant he himself had very nearly sunk his own submarine by doing the wrong thing with a lavatory flush. If it were true that
Caranx
had been lost by this young pilot’s mistake, the fault was rather in the
system that put such power into the hands of inexperienced young men. There was no blame in his mind for Chambers. He had been older than that when he had had his trouble with the lavatory.

Captain Burnaby listened with a mind overlaid with policy. Throughout his service life the strategy and tactics of reconnaissance had been his speciality. He had been in destroyers for much of his time, and had risen to the command of a flotilla. Now he was in this shore job and in intimate liaison with the Royal Air Force. For the first time in his life he drew reports from a service that he did not control. He felt like a horse in blinkers. He could not reach out quickly and pull in his information as he had done all his life; he must ask another service if they would get it for him, and they would only do so if they had the time to spare, or so he felt. He was perpetually maddened and infuriated with the restraint. He believed, with all his heart and soul, that the existing system was totally wrong, that the aeroplanes patrolling the narrow seas should be under naval control, staffed by the Navy, part of the Fleet Air Arm. Most of the Admiralty, he knew, agreed with him. Dual control was inefficient, and mistakes were bound to happen. One of them had happened now, and a valuable unit of the Navy had been sunk by this young fool. Perhaps after this the Cabinet would listen to the Admiralty case. The
Caranx
was a bitter and a serious loss, but if, through her, the Navy were to gain control of its own air service, she would not have been lost in vain.

Dickens sat warily watching, sitting on the fence. He knew all that passed in the simple, direct mind of Captain Burnaby; he realised the political aspect of the matter to the full. He could not help his pilot and he did not much want to. If Chambers had really sunk the
Caranx
it was a bad show, a piece of inefficiency discreditable to the Royal Air Force. The pilot would
have to suffer, as a matter of course. It was much more important that the relations of the Navy and the Air Force should not be impaired; in time of war there must be no internal quarrels. He knew the Navy wanted their own coastal patrol: he believed that they had too little experience of aeroplanes to take it over, especially in time of war. Dickens sat quiet, watching the naval officers and their reactions, biding his time.

They heard him to the end in silence; only from time to time the captain prompted him. He finished and sat staring round at them unhappily. “That’s all I can remember,” he said at last.

Captain Burnaby said: “I take it, then, you never saw the letters on the conning-tower at all?”

The pilot said: “No, sir—I didn’t. I never bothered about them once I saw that there was no identification marking on the hydrovanes.” He paused, and then said: “I did look for them once, but there was smoke all round the conning-tower.”

The captain said: “Didn’t you think it worth while to make certain?”

Chambers said: “I was certain, sir. It never entered my head that it could be a British submarine. We’re usually told when our own submarines are in the Channel.”

Rutherford said kindly: “You get notices about our own submarines pretty frequently, do you?”

The pilot turned to him. “Almost every other day. That’s why it never occurred to us that this had anything to do with our own submarines. It wasn’t in the usual form.” He paused, and then he said: “I’m quite sure this was a German. There was definitely nothing on the hydrovanes.”

Lieutenant-Commander Dale said: “I wish I could be as sure as you are. You said that one of the hydrovanes washed clear as she was going down?”

“Yes—it was free from foam.”

“But it was clear—out of the water, I mean?”

Chambers said: “It wasn’t dry, of course. There was water on it, but there were no bubbles—no white foam.”

“How deep would you say the water was upon it? Five or six inches—or more?”

The pilot strained his memory to recall the instant flash that he had seen in the last stages of his dive. “Not so deep as that. There might have been an inch of water on it.”

“It was getting dark, though, wasn’t it?”

“There was light enough to see the colour of the paint.”

“Even under water, seen obliquely as you saw it?”

The pilot hesitated. “What I saw was grey paint.”

There was a short silence. Burnaby said: “Well, we shall have to leave that point.”

Rutherford leaned forward. “May I ask him a few questions, sir?”

The captain leaned back in his chair. “By all means.”

The submarine officer turned to Chambers. “Did you notice how many jumping-wires she had?”

“That’s the wire that runs from bow to stern over the conning-tower, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. Did she have one or two?”

The pilot stared at the ash-tray in concentration. Then he raised his head. “I can’t say, sir,” he said. “I didn’t notice.”

The commander pushed a paper and a pencil over to him. “Draw us a picture, showing what she looked like, broadside on.”

They leaned across the table and watched him intently as he drew. When it was finished, Rutherford pulled the sketch towards him and examined it critcally.

“The one gun forward fits with
Caranx,”
he said pensively, “but so it does with most types. Are you sure
this prolongation of the conning-tower towards the stern was there?”

The pilot hesitated. “I think it was like that.”

Captain Burnaby said: “Is that similar to
Caranx
, Rutherford?”

The submarine officer shook his head.
“Caranx
goes like this.” He sketched a line upon the drawing; the modification was not very great. He turned to Burnaby. “Unless you know submarines, they all look much the same,” he said. “This doesn’t look like
Caranx
—but then, who can say?”

Burnaby said: “I’m afraid we’re rather wasting our time, Commander. A sketch like this would only be of use if it showed something definite—two guns instead of one, or something like that. The rest of the evidence is overwhelming.”

The man from Fort Blockhouse nodded slowly. “One more question, sir.” The captain inclined his head. “What colour was this submarine you sank? Was she light grey or dark grey?”

The pilot said: “She looked very much like any of our submarines—about the same colour. She wasn’t very light grey, like a battleship that’s been out in the Mediterranean. She was a sort of medium grey—on top, that is to say. She was all rusty underneath.”

The commander leaned forward. “She was what? Rusty?”

“Yes, sir. When she put her nose up, just before she sank—the bottom was black paint all streaked with rust.”

Rutherford turned to the captain.
“Caranx
was only docked six weeks ago,” he said. “She shouldn’t have been rusty after six weeks.”

Burnaby stared at the pilot. “Are you quite sure of that?”

“Yes, sir. She was definitely rusty underneath.”

The captain turned to the commander. “Is that very unusual, Rutherford?”

“It is, rather, sir. They go rusty very quickly in the tropics, of course. I’ve seen it happen in home waters when they’ve had electrical defects—you get electrolytic action sometimes. But it’s quite unusual to have a hull go rusty in so short a time. They’re just like ordinary ships.”

“I don’t see that we can get any further with this point, Commander. Have you any other questions?”

“I can’t think of anything else, sir.”

Dickens looked up. “May I raise a point?”

“Certainly, Wing-Commander.”

“Somebody said that
Caranx
didn’t answer any signals after two o’clock. That’s an hour and forty minutes before she was sunk.”

Rutherford said: “That’s right. At two o’clock she reported herself off Departure Point.”

“When did she fail to take a signal?”

The submarine officer glanced at a paper in his hand. “She was sent a signal asking her estimated time of arrival at the Gate, at 14.13. There was no reply to that one. The last signal received from her was sent at 1403 reporting her position.”