Submariner (2008) (12 page)

‘Some way east of us.’ From the Gib flotilla, on loan to the 10th and currently about a hundred and fifty miles east, top
end of the Messina Strait. Shrimp had mentioned her in his briefing. Mike spread the flimsy sheet on the table’s glass top
and read the brief message in Lazenby’s blue-pencilled copperplate. Telegraphists for some reason
always
used blue pencils.

To: Ursa, repeated Captain (S) 10, Vice-Admiral Malta, C-in-C Med and Admiralty
:
Italian light cruiser believed Garibaldi class with escort of two destroyers off Cape Milazzo 2050/23 course 270 speed 25
. Time of origin, 2105.

Time now, just short of ten. A Wop cruiser off Cape Milazzo approx. one hour ago, split-arsing due west, i.e.
this
way. The stuff a submariner’s dreams were made of. Except the bloody thing might stop off in Palermo. Might be its destination,
or might put in there to fuel. If it had come out of the Messina Strait – as one could assume it must have – and somehow evaded
Swordsman
– CO Dan Gerahty – who’d either failed to get in an attack or done so and missed. Anyway, reaching for the tools – parallel
rule and dividers – conscious already that if Palermo
was
its destination, at twenty-five knots – less than four hours anyway –
Ursa
wouldn’t get anywhere near it tonight at any rate. But staying in that port how long, had to be the question. He called,
‘Number One – check what we have on Garibaldi-class cruisers?’

Provoking interest and speculation all round – here in the control room, and as always spreading instantly through the boat.
Starting close at hand with Jarvis’s ‘
I’ll
get it!’ Meaning, get out
Jane’s Fighting Ships
. Italian section. Mike in the meantime plotting the cruiser’s track at twenty-five knots on course due west, noting that
she’d be off Palermo in three hours, not four. Reducing speed then for the channel between those minefields – down to ten
knots, say – might be anchored or
berthed by – oh, half an hour after midnight – holing-up then for the night at least, possibly several days. As likely as
anything, though, only calling in for fuel. All guesswork, this, but guesswork being all you had to work on – backed of course
by logic, what seemed
likely
, then such petty details as times, speeds, distances. If for instance her destination was Cagliari in Sardinia – even if
she
wasn’t in need of fuel, her destroyers might be. Twenty-five knots for – well,
how
long? Might have started from Taranto, even. So – OK, assume it was simply a bunkering stop, in and out of Palermo then back
on course for Cagliari. Whereas one’s own intentions this far had been to dive at 0430
here
, five miles northwest of Cape Gallo. Wouldn’t do, now – not if the programme
was
Palermo and then Cagliari, as did seem likely. Shrimp’s surmise – Wops anticipating a Malta convoy from the west, Cagliari
an obvious place in which to lie in wait for it. Could be other units there already, and/or more to come. But this Garibaldi
and her escorts (a) could have fuelled and got on their way again before 0430 – the time by which one did
have
to dive, for daylight, should do so therefore as near as possible to whatever would be her track and (b) would be more likely
to set a course of something like 280, he thought. Turning on to that course ten miles north of the port, outer end of the
swept channel. From ten miles north
east
of Cape Gallo, therefore, working up to full speed on – well, maybe not 280, maybe 275,278 … Pencilling a 278 track on, anyway:
guessing they might be on it by about 0600. While
Ursa
, diving at 0430, then an hour and a half at four knots on due north, might reach that track at – well, about six, too.

Might improve on that. Be on it by 0500, say. Early bird maybe not seeing the worm for an hour or two – or longer, depending
on how long they spent in Palermo – this
was
plain guesswork, not much else, but –

Could do it anyway, by altering at once. Calling it ten p.m.
now – actually five-past, the watch had been changing around him while he was immersed in this – alter
now
to – something like 050 would do it. Or – 055. Alteration of fifteen degrees to port. And still dive at 0430 – with the box
well up, and touch wood near enough to the Wop’s track to hear them coming. All right, her track as it would be
if
she was bound for Cagliari via Palermo. There was a strong alternative that he’d had in mind since starting on this, and
was going to have to work on now, but what he liked about
this
scenario was the ‘have-your-cake-and-eat-it’ element –
Ursa
in the Italians’ 0500 position, then steering the reciprocal of their guessed-at course of 278 – reciprocal 098 degrees –
so that if they’d stayed put in Palermo, which they might well have, the top end of that swept channel was where
Ursa
would end up anyway. Getting there at about – well, at the battery-conserving dived speed of four knots, and distance forty
miles – early afternoon.

McLeod was hovering, dressed ready to go up and take over the watch from Danvers.

‘
Jane’s
is on the wardroom table, sir. Two ships in that class.’

‘And a fair chance we might meet one of them. When you get up there, alter course to oh-five-five. Look here, though – I’ll
give you a quick run-down …’

He ran over it. Starting with
Swordsman
’s sighting report and his own view that the course of 270 suggested Palermo as at least the Wops’ initial destination. The
rest of it then – 055 as
Ursa
’s course from here to intercept, thence 098 to back-track them to Palermo.

McLeod nodded. ‘Any luck, meeting them along the way.’

‘But suppose she’s heading straight to Cagliari, from Messina. Course’d be more like 280 than 270, one might’ve thought. Although
ten degrees this way or that in a sighting report’s hardly conclusive, is it? And in somewhat restricted waters there, might’ve
wanted to clear Vulcano by more than
a mile or two, before settling on 280 or thereabouts. So – could come down to
this
.’

The straight-line course from Cape Milazzo to Cagliari.

‘At twenty-five knots they’d be here at 0200, here 0300, and we could intercept by steering due north and increasing to revs
for seven knots. Dark hours interception on the surface. Only thing is – if we went for this and it’s the wrong guess – well,
diving at four-thirty, we’re out in the deep field and they could be passing ten or fifteen miles to the south of us.’

‘Yes. Yes, I suppose …’

‘I’m going for the Palermo option. Come round to oh-five-five.’

The two cruisers of that class were the
Giuseppe Garibaldi
and the
Duca degli Abruzzi
. Both completed in 1937, displacement under full load 9,000 tons, main armament of ten six-inch guns, speed 35 knots; the
Abruzzi
was said to have made 38 on her trials. And what mattered most from the point of view of torpedo attack was that they drew
seventeen feet.

Set the fish to run at fourteen feet. Too deep to hit a destroyer – the Aviere-class for instance drew only ten or eleven
– but
Ursa
’s target was the cruiser, not her escort, and the aim would be to sink her, which was best achieved by hitting her a fair
distance below the waterline.

Ursa
on course 055 now, making five knots and of course battery-charging. Danvers at the chart, at Mike’s suggestion making his
own assessments of possible enemy routes and timings. Mike thinking, while conscious of the aroma of Manoel Island Bunny –
Chef Cottenham’s name for his rabbit stew – about that cruiser getting past
Swordsman
as it had. Visualising it: the cruiser coming out of the narrow bottleneck of the Messina Strait at say twelve or fifteen
knots, then abruptly shoving her wheel hard over and cracking on the revs. Gerahty
sweating blood in an effort to get into position for even a long-range overtaking shot; but with that lot’s speed, and the
distance from which he might have made the sighting – might well have been several miles to the north of them, in fact – his
only chance of getting in an attack being if
they
’d held on northward – Naples-bound, for instance – so he’d have had no chance at all. Another thing, though – they might
not have come
through
the Strait, maybe only
out
of it, might have been in Messina itself. Smallish port, but room enough for a light cruiser and two destroyers all right.
The eight-inch cruiser
Bolzano
had been in the dockyard there for months after
Triumph
– W. J. Woods – had blown her screws off. But that would answer one other niggling, back-of-the-mind concern, namely whether
the bastards mightn’t also have got past
Ultra
– Jimmy Ruck, whom Shrimp had stationed off Cape dell’Armi in the Strait’s wide southern entrance.
Ultra
would have been on that billet two or three days now.

Better bloody well not get past
Ursa
, was all. He called in the direction of the galley, ‘Anyone seen our rabbit?’

He was on the bridge soon after midnight, an extra pair of eyes in the starboard for’ard corner, Jarvis as officer of the
watch necessarily on the port side where the voice-pipe was. Friday now.
Ursa
trimmed low in the heave of dark, white-streaked sea, with ‘Q’ flooded, only 1 and 6 main ballast
not
full. Battery density rising as it should have been, and in the after ends they’d had the compressor running, building up
reserves of bottled high-pressure air. It was darker than the last two nights had been, with quite a lot of cloud, stars visible
only in clear patches here and there. Not a lot of wind, but with the change of course what there was of it was for’ard of
the beam, so that even at these low revs she was kicking the stuff up a bit.

Visualising the Italians smashing through it – while drying the front lenses of his glasses on a wad of periscope paper –
seeing the cruiser and her consorts racing westward. In
Jane’s Fighting Ships
there was a photograph, taken evidently from a low-flying aircraft, of the
Abruzzi
at what must have been her flat-out speed: calm sea, and the rather beautiful, immensely powerful ship carving her way through
it. Mountainous bow-wave, brilliant spreading wake, guns jutting skyward.

Racing
this
way – please …

Glasses up again: sweeping slowly across the bow from right to left, circling slowly back clockwise as far as about forty,
fifty degrees on the starboard side, covering the sector in which they
might
appear. If for instance they were hugging the Sicilian coast, for some reason – intending to turn the corner either inside
or outside Marettimo, making for the North African coast?

Could
be. None of this was anything more than guesswork.

Sweeping left again – for maybe the thousandth time. Allowing himself the privilege of watching just this sector, while Jarvis
and the lookouts covered the whole three-sixty degrees of surrounding sea and sky. One o’clock now. If one’s guess had been
wrong and the Italians were on their way directly to Cagliari, they’d just about have passed Ustica, would be something like
thirty-five miles northeast, crossing
Ursa
’s line of slow advance at right-angles:such a rapid change of bearing that when she dived at four-thirty they’d be more than
sixty miles north
west
– in other words,
gone
. He had his own chartwork clearly in mind, was aware that in those hypothetical circumstances the nearest they’d get to each
other would be at about 0200 – twenty miles apart then, on a bearing of about due north. From then on, range opening.

OK.
Could
be. As well to recognise it, be prepared for it
– while still actually reckoning on their being either en route from Palermo or still there, snoring in their bunks. Which
would be perfectly OK. Not as good as running into them at say five, six or seven a.m., but in the long run – a day, two or
three days, a week, even …

At 0330, near enough, Cape San Vito would be abeam to starboard, distance about twelve miles. One might assume they were
not
coast-hugging or corner-turning: for one thing because it was unlikely – where would they be making for, after all – Tunis,
Bizerta? – and for another, the light on that cape might have been switched on for them, if they’d had any such intention.
The Italians did often enough switch on coastal lights during movements of fleet units, and San Vito would have been the most
useful one in those circumstances.

Maybe wouldn’t light the place up for just one cruiser, though.

Danvers had the watch now. Lookouts were Llewellyn and Brighouse, a stoker who came from St Austell in Cornwall and was known
to his mates as ‘Snozzle’ – nothing to do with his nose, which was in no way spectacular, but from the way he pronounced St
Austell. He was on the short side, with long arms – which was noticeable when he had binoculars at his eyes.

Three-thirty
now
. Even fewer stars visible than there had been earlier. And one hour to go. Danvers’ watch would end at four-fifteen, and
as before Mike would tell McLeod to stay below, dive her himself at half-past. Or maybe stay up a bit longer than that, depending
on the light.

Red watch lookouts took over at four, Mike sent Danvers down at a quarter-past and the lookouts ten minutes later: had the
bridge to himself then,
Ursa
at the point where her 055-degree track intersected with the Italians’ theoretical 278.

There was a slight greying in the clouded eastern sky, but no discernible horizon as yet. Wind about force 3, west-northwest.
The overcast was, as he’d guessed, making a considerable difference – no good reason to dive, as things still were; if there
was going to be anything to see you’d see it a lot better – and sooner – from up here, fifteen feet above the surface, than
you would through a periscope only a couple of feet above it.