“On the sea I am a coward,” Doenitz heard Hitler say. The Fuehrer did not understand ships or sailors and he thought, and told Raeder often, that the huge warships that cost Germany so much, and gave back so little, were obsolete weapons.
Doenitz watched as Raeder wrestled with the suggestion. The grand admiral’s face reflected his turmoil, his indecision, and Doenitz chose that moment to launch his attack.
“Grand Admiral,” Doenitz said, “my U-boats are in position.” He wasn’t certain that they were, but neither was Raeder that they weren’t. “Prince of Wales will be forced to turn south. Sea Lion’s current position places her in the ideal location to move rapidly against the English flotilla. All that is left to the English is to send heavy elements of the Home Fleet out of Scapa Flow against Sea Lion.”
“How do you know this, Admiral?” Raeder said. “Are you quite certain that your U-boats are on station? My concern is that any move by us, at this point, might be premature and result in confusion.”
He’s losing his nerve, Doenitz realized, losing his nerve at exactly the worst time. He is a sailor of the last war, over whelmed by the complexities of a modern war. He is as obsolete as the grand ships that he loves. “Your pardon, Grand Admiral. That is precisely the goal of Operationsbefehl Umkreis: to benefit from the enemy’s confusion. The Home Fleet will sortie out in response to the danger. Prince of Wales cannot outrun Sea Lion, and she is now forced to turn south because of what the British perceive as a gauntlet of U-boats facing her. No matter how many cruisers and destroyers that accompany Prince of Wales, she cannot outgun Sea Lion. Soon she will be out of range of air protection. Now is the time, Grand Admiral. Let us move forward with vigor.”
“I will not tolerate another Bismarck,” Raeder said in an anguished tone. “Do you hear me, Doenitz? I will not tolerate another such defeat for the Kriegsmarine.”
More turmoil, more indecision, Doenitz was rapidly growing weary of the old man’s fears. Finally, Raeder came around. “Very well. I’ll notify the Luftwaffe to stand by. We’ll need to keep a very careful eye on Scapa Flow.”
“Yes,” Doenitz said. “Grand Admiral,” he added in a reassuring tone, “the pieces are moving across the board precisely as we had envisioned. Soon there will be no doubt as to who is the hunted and who are the hunters.”
Admiral Bimble, as passive as a Buddha, watched his staff scurry around the conference room erecting maps and huge corkboards burdened with blowups photographs that as of yet held absolutely no interest or meaning for him. Hawthorne, always at his side, leaned over and whispered something of a procedural nature to him. Bimble waved it off, certain that Hawthorne would make it right.
Commander Elwes began the briefing with: “If it pleases you, Sir Joshua,” and from there launched into a minute-by-minute — as much information as they could piece together from garbled radio communications — account of the battle. “Captain Prader forwarded this information, as little as it was, prior to closing with the enemy.…”
Bimble leaned an ear toward Hawthorne, who discreetly reminded him: “Not much of a sailor, all machines and mechanisms.”
“What would possess this captain to take a cruiser against a battleship, if it were indeed a battleship that he saw?” Bimble mused to himself. He looked up to see Elwes waiting to continue with his report. “Well. Go on.”
“From Prader, ‘Encounter this time, this date, with German battleship. Estimate sixty thousand tons, twelve sixteen-inch guns. Accompanied by destroyers. Severe damage to Nottingham…” Elwes dropped the flimsy on the table. “He goes on to give details. Nottingham’s not been heard from since. It stands to reason that her communications have been lost. Or…” Elwes paused. “She has.”
“Sixty thousand tons?” a rotund commander said. “Surely that is a mistake.”
“Quite,” Bimble said sharply, silencing the outbreak. “What else?” he said to Elwes.
Captain Macready spoke instead. “There are two inbound convoys, HX456 and HX117, and one outbound convoy, LZ621, which, at their present course and speed, would pass very near the enemy vessel’s last known position.”
“Does this beast have a name? Do we know anything about it other than what Nottingham learned by bumping into her?” Bimble said.
“No, Sir Joshua,” Macready said. He returned to the immediate subject. “We can turn these three convoys hard south and take them out of danger. Their escorts consist of one cruiser each and five to seven destroyers. Of course, there is a complication.”
“Of course,” Bimble said dryly. “There is always a complication sucking at the teat of any simple dilemma, isn’t there?”
“U-boats,” Elwes said. “In fact a level of U-boat activity that we have never seen before.” He swept the pointer that he was holding in a gentle arc across a map of the North Atlantic. “U-boats, perhaps as many as ten or fifteen, have been in constant contact with Goliath, apparently reporting their positions, generally corresponding with these positions.”
“You’ve employed two words that I don’t care much for,” Bimble said. “‘Apparently’ and ‘generally.’”
“My apologies, Sir Joshua, but it can’t be helped. The messages are short, rather blunt, and we can’t hope to triangulate the U-boats’ locations. They’re rattling pots and pans and we can’t make anything from it. Their W.T. traffic is very aggressive but in content hardly substantial.”
“Indeed,” Bimble said. He shot Hawthorne a glance.
The secretary rose, opened the conference room door, and peered up and down the hallway. He shut the door and nodded at Bimble.
“Gentlemen, for your ears only,” Admiral Sir Joshua Bimble said. “Our prime minister is at this very moment aboard Prince of Wales and on his way to the United States. He will be meeting President Roosevelt for very high-level discussions that will determine the fate of this empire. We have a responsibility to those convoys, as well as every other ship under the flag of the United Kingdom, but our primary responsibility is to prevent that enemy vessel from engaging Prince of Wales. The prime minister was informed about the danger of this unnamed threat steaming down from the Denmark Strait and his response, in typical Churchillian fashion, was, ‘You sank Bismarck, sink this one as well.’ I was moved beyond measure by these stirring words,” he said dryly, “but the truth of the matter is we know little about what she is and where she is.”
“Sir Joshua?” a voice came from the far end of the table.
Bimble noted Commander Harry Hamilton.
“Harry? You’ve something to add?” Hamilton wasn’t the type of chap to speak up unless he felt it worthwhile.
“A couple of my lads chanced upon a large camouflage complex in the Kattegat. We did several photo reconnaissance flights over the past little while but were unable to uncover the purpose for this site. One of the lads, an impetuous American, even went so far as to commandeer a Hudson and make the trip himself. They got close enough, he tells me, to raise a hornets’ nest of antiaircraft fire and German fighters, but to no avail. Whatever was under that thing, if ever there was, was gone.”
“A camouflage complex, you say? How large a complex? Big enough for a battleship, Harry?”
“Perhaps that, indeed, Sir Joshua. Understand that we have nothing but circumstantial information to work with. None of our flights returned anything of substance.”