The Sunderland circled slowly, as the signal lamp blinked out the message to the men below.
“Skipper, message sent.”
“Roger Dagga. Right, now let’s find the bastards who did this.”
Generally speaking, one bit of ocean looks much like another, but the piece of the Atlantic they had just flown over and now drew them back displayed something special.
Fuel oil.
On one of the southbound legs of their search pattern, Dagga’s sharp eyes had seen the long, thin, glistening streak on the surface below.
Cox gave the matter some thought.
“Pilot. Witty. Pop across to the palace will you.”
Within seconds, Flight Sergeant Witt arrived from his navigating station behind the flight deck, or palace as it was known.
“Witty, get a bearing on that slick and plot it in relative to the Canadian sinking will you. I’m going to deviate off our pattern and I want a bearing down which to fly ok?”
The Navigator understood immediately and, with a modest acknowledgement, disappeared.
NS-X was flying south-south-west on a course of 192 in search of whatever it was that was littering the ocean with fuel oil. Three more distinct glistening marks had been found, all on a heading of 192, vindicating Cox’s hunch.
Whatever they were tracking was hurt.
B-31 had been rushed to sea and that sort of haste never paid with submarines. However, the former Type XXI had easily manouevred into a killing position on the Canadian Corvette, without the surface vessel having the slightest idea that it was about to die. The XXI’s quality sonar systems had identified the approach of the warship, whereas the Canadian system was built for submarines less advanced than the XXI.
As the computer-guided torpedoes had approached, the corvette’s captain got his men moving to action stations and fired off a hasty contact report before two warheads ripped the heart from the small craft.
Forty men died in the twin explosions and the RCN London Pride was doomed, listing immediately.
Off the starboard beam, the B-31 raised its periscope for a fleeting look at the sinking vessel.
A single shot, hastily aimed, left the barrel of London Pride’s 4” main gun, thumping into the sea forty yards over target.
The corvette turned turtle before a second shot could be fired, holding on the surface for a few seconds before surrendering herself to the inevitable and disappearing from view.
B-31 dropped her periscope and proceeded at fifteen knots, moving swiftly away from the sinking, south-south-west on a heading of 192.
The 4” shell had missed but there was sufficient water hammer from the explosion to seek out two items of faulty workmanship. The first effect was to shake loose an electrical coupling in the ‘Bali’ radar detector apparatus. The FuMB Ant3 Bali was used to detect incoming radar signals, and the B-31 had now lost the capability.
The shockwave also slightly unseated one of the fuel intake valves, which intake also lacked a properly functioning non-return valve. All of which meant that the B-31 occasionally vented modest quantities of fuel oil into the ocean as she sought to evacuate the area.
It was not until two hours had passed that the Engineering Officer noticed the fuel discrepancy and reported it to the submarine’s commander.
The excellent sonar system showed no threat’s nearby, the Bali was clear, and so it was decided to quickly ascend to assess what was happening.
B-31 blew her tanks and rose to the surface of the Eastern Atlantic at precisely 1303hrs.
Dagga fired off an excited report.
“Fuck a rat! Submarine dead ahead, Two thousand yards, just surfacing!”
“Pilot to crew. Action stations. Action stations. Surfaced Submarine ahead.”
Controlled pandemonium ensued as all the crew, except Miller, prepared for combat.
“Identify it someone!”
The pilot accompanied his request with a controlled turn, in order to not overfly the submarine.
“Not seen one like that before, Skipper. Not on my list.”
Dagga was referring to an illustrated list of submarine outlines that the crew used to identify types. It was not unheard of for aircraft to send friendly vessels to the bottom for lack of correct identification.
RAF Coastal Command’s printing and distribution service had decided to send the full Northern Ireland allocation of the latest intelligence manuals to RAF Belfast, from where they could be easily distributed. That flawed decision, as it was not made clear to those who received them they should be sent on, was about to bear terrible fruit.
NS-X passed on the submarine’s port side at eight hundred yards distance, a few figures now obvious on the submarine’s wet hull and in the conning tower.
Magic Malan piped up.
“That could be the latest German type XXI they never got to deploy, Skipper. Very streamlined, no gun mounts. It fits.”
“Anyone else?”
Rolf Pienaar, the mid-upper gunner chipped in.
“I think Magic’s right, Skipper.”
The intercom went silent as Cox considered his options.
“I am identifying that as an enemy submarine. It’s not an Amphion Class, which we were told was in the area. Agree?”
All those who had examined the sleek vessel agreed.
“Skipper, definitely, definitely, not Amphion Class. Conning tower all wrong… no gun mount forward. Bow section’s wrong too.”
Magic had put his book alongside that of Erasmus the Flight Engineer for comparison.
“Roger, Sparks, get a message off. Attacking confirmed Soviet submarine. Get the location and send it.”
“Best you stay here, Arsey. Just in case.”
The Sunderland swept around and took up a stern approach position. Cox upped the throttles and adjusted the aircraft’s height.
“Pilot. Crew. Attacking. Good luck fellahs.”
Onboard S-31, the appearance of the large amphibian caused a near-panic. The Soviet Captain called his men to order, knowing that he could not dive without letting the Sunderland attack unmolested.
So he did all he could, which was fight back.
The Sunderland crew’s knowledge of the Type XXI was incomplete. German U-Boats had traditionally sprouted AA guns all over the conning tower, the more as the war went on and German submarine losses to aircraft climbed.
The XXI stepped back from that, anticipating its superior submersible qualities would keep it out of harm’s way most of the time.
However, putting a submarine to see with no close defence would have been mad, and the designers of the ElektroBootes were not in that category.
In sleek sponsons, fore and aft on the conning tower, sat twin 20mm automatic weapons, easily missed by those who had studied the U Boats of the previous war or, in the case of the crew of NS-X, had seen snaps of such things at anchor.
The rear sponson hammered out a steady stream of cannon shells that slowly rose into the air until it seemed that the giant aircraft consumed them.
The Sunderland overflew the B-31, its rear guns lashing out and wiping men off the deck and into the sea where some died before the waters overtook them.
The depth-charges stayed in the racks and the aircraft adopted a steady southerly course.
20mm cannon shells are unforgiving things and NS-X was mortally wounded.
Dagga was dead, his position chewed to pieces by explosive shells, his guns silenced without firing a shot.
Also dead were Sparks and Jason Witt, in pieces, along with much of their equipment.
Flight Sergeant Peter Malan had lost his radar but had not been touched by any of the storm of steel that had swept through the Sunderland.