The radio compartment was situated aft of the control room and Hamilton glanced up at the clock as he entered. It was 3.55 a.m.
‘What’s this report you say you’ve picked up?’ he asked the operator brusquely.
Murray slipped off his headset and put it down on the bench alongside the radio. ‘I was searching around the medium band about five minutes ago, sir.’ He looked a little sheepish. ‘To be honest I was trying to find some late night dance music. And someone suddenly broke into the programme to say the Japs were landing.’
‘Where was this◦– Singapore?’
‘No, sir,’ Murray picked up a small book and pointed his finger to the top of the opened page. ‘According to the station call-sign it was Kuala Lumpur.’
‘Tune into Singapore and see what you get.’
Murray obediently twiddled the knobs and through the crackle Hamilton could hear the measured tones of the station announcer repeating instructions to the civilian population regarding blackout regulations and air raid precautions. After a few minutes, he repeated the initial news reports of the Japanese landings in the north.
Hamilton glanced at Mannon. ‘Sounds genuine enough and if Murray’s already heard similar reports from KL I’d say we’d got all the confirmation we need.’
‘Shall I call up Singapore base, sir?’ Murray asked.
‘No! Maintain strict radio silence until we know what the situation is. Keep tuned to the Admiralty transmitting station and send me a resume of the signals every fifteen minutes. But call me if you hear something urgent.’ He turned to Mannon. ‘Alistair is due off watch in a couple of minutes, Number One. Get up on the bridge and take over. I want to discuss our course with him. I’ll be up to relieve you as soon as we’ve worked something out. Then you get some shut-eye. We could have a busy day on our hands tomorrow.’
Back in the control room, Hamilton opened the small scale map of the South-East Asia area and stared down at it. Kota Bharu was approximately fourteen hundred miles away and Singapore seemed even further. Running at ten knots to conserve fuel, Rapier could not possibly arrive off the Malayan coast for at least five days and, even if he gambled on the oil supplies and steamed at maximum speed, it would take all of seventy-two hours to cover the distance. If only Layton had recalled them earlier. The presence of the two Japanese invasion convoys must have been known to the Singapore staff for some time. Surely someone could have made an intelligent guess!
He looked round as Scott came down from the bridge to join him and he moved to one side so that Rapier’s navigator could see the chart.
‘Shall I lay off a course for the Malayan coast, sir?’ Scott asked. ‘Or should we move up into the Gulf of Siam so that we’re across their lines of communication?’
Hamilton stared at the map thoughtfully. Scott’s suggestion of turning north into the Gulf of Siam was good◦– but until they had cleared the Indo-China coast they would have to continue westward. If they tried to reduce the distance by closing the coast and cutting towards the Mekong delta, they stood a good chance of being hunted by Vichy French patrols operating out of Saigon. No◦– far better to hold well to the south of Indo-China. The decision to move north could be made when the battle situation was clearer. And that could be another seventy-two hours.
‘I’ll decide our patrol area later, Pilot. Meanwhile, I want you to give me a course for the invasion area following a line about two hundred miles to the south of the Mekong.’ Leaving Scott to carry out his instructions, Hamilton made his way back to the bridge to tell Mannon what he had decided. The night was still fine and the sea smooth. A phosphorescent glow from the bows was a silent reminder that Rapier was in the tropics.
‘Is it Malaya, sir?’ Mannon asked.
‘At the moment, yes. But it’s my guess the Japs will move into Hong Kong fairly soon. It would be the logical thing to do now that they’ve shown their hand.
‘And if they do?’
‘I’d be inclined to turn back.’
Mannon raised his glasses and surveyed the horizon in silence for a few moments. It wasn’t his place to remind the skipper that they were under the C-in-C’s personal orders to return to Singapore. But Hamilton was right in one respect◦– if they returned to Hong Kong immediately they would be in time to strike the enemy during the critical initial stages of the attack. It made more sense that arriving at Kota Bharu several days too late.
‘It’s a pity we can’t call on the Yanks to help us out◦– their Pacific Fleet would make mincemeat of the Japs.’
‘I wouldn’t underestimate the enemy, Number One. Even the Americans could have a fight on their hands. But, to be honest, I can’t see Japan taking on the United States at this juncture. Once they’ve disposed of us, and perhaps the Dutch, and secured their oil supplies from the East Indies, they might attack the Philippines. But I doubt it. Tokyo knows it can’t defeat America so why invite a hiding for nothing?’
As Hamilton picked up his binoculars and examined the dark rim of the starboard horizon, he was unaware that five thousand miles away, Admiral Nagumo’s carrier strike force was treacherously closing in on its unsuspecting target.
In less than four hours, a sequence of tragic events were to prove the fallacy of his misplaced optimism….
As eight bells signaled the end of the morning watch, Rapier’s officers assembled in the overcrowded wardroom for Hamilton’s council-of-war. Only Villiers, the new fourth hand, who had joined the boat at the last minute after Bruce had gone down with malaria, was missing. And at that precise moment, he was standing nervously on the bridge discovering the awesome responsibilities of watch-keeping under the benevolently paternal eye of Coxswain Blood.
Despite his natural misgivings about the new sub-lieutenant’s lack of experience, Hamilton had been forced to throw the young reservist in at the deep end so that all of the submarine’s regular officers could attend the meeting. Not that he was seeking their approval of his proposed course of action. But if he was going to disobey orders, he at least wanted them to understand his reasons.
‘We have received no further reports of any significance during the morning,’ he told them briefly. ‘The Japanese are apparently well ashore in the Kota Bharu area and are enlarging their bridgehead. From the signals we’ve picked up they appear to have seized a number of advanced airfields.’ He turned to a large chart of South-East Asia which was hanging by a piece of string from a convenient deck head pipe. ‘It’s only guesswork, but it seems the Japs are using French Indo-China as their staging post for the invasion. With Vichy approval no doubt,’ he added bitterly.
Mannon stared at the map. ‘It seems a bit odd they’re only attacking Malaya, sir,’ he said voicing his doubts. ‘The RAF reconnaissance reports indicated only a small escort force with the troop convoys◦– where’s the rest of the Japanese Navy?’
‘A good question, Number One. I’ve been asking myself the same thing.’
‘Well, we’ve got plenty of options,’ Scott broke in cheerfully. ‘They could be going for the Dutch Indies or even Australia. If you want my opinion, sir, we ought to head for Singapore◦– then we can move in whichever direction is needed. If we go north to Kota Bharu, we’ll be too far away to be of any use to anyone. After all, the Malayan landings could be purely diversionary.’