“Down periscope.” You fiddle with the trim for a minute, then turn again and signal with a movement of your hands for the periscope. It rushes up and you sweep all round with the air-search first, to make sure that while you search the horizon there will be no aircraft diving on the periscope. The sky is clear, and you sweep the horizon, first quickly to check that there is nothing in the immediate vicinity, then slowly, very slowly, so as not to miss the slightest sign of an enemy. And there, on the starboard beam as you head out from the island, there on the horizon in the south, in the direction in which the Nicobar Islands lie, you see a tiny smudge on the horizon. Smoke.
“Captain in the Control Room.” He’s there so fast that you only have time to dip the periscope: it comes up again into his hands. As he looks, the men whose eyes are fixed anxiously on his face see a slow smile twist his lips. They have seen that look before.
“Diving Stations!” As Number One tumbles out of his bunk, he says, “My God – must be the cruiser!”
“Don’t be a silly flipper,” answers Chief. He’s never at his best when he’s woken abruptly. “Cruiser be damned.”
At Diving Stations, the submarine turns and heads towards the smoke. Number One is thinking, after he’s been told that it’s smoke, that it’ll turn out to be either a cloud or a mirage. But the Captain, watching through the periscope, knows better. It’s smoke, and the smoke of a big ship.
“Oh, hell. She’s escorted, by the looks of it.” He’s seen a second, a smaller smudge. Ten minutes pass slowly.
“I can see her, now. Stand by all tubes.” The order is passed for’ard, to the astonished T.I.
“Yes, it’s a cruiser. Two destroyers. Stand by to start the attack.” The Navigator is ready with a stopwatch in his hand.
“Start the attack. Bearing – that! Range – that! I’m fifteen on her starboard bow.”
Sub with his calculating machine, and the Navigator with his track-chart, soon have a picture of the cruiser’s movements. This is the Attack Team in action, the result of many practices on dummy targets in the depot-ship’s “Attack Teacher”, and of many dummy attacks during the “work up” period before they left Scotland. Each man knows that one slip, one inaccuracy on his part, could produce a wrong answer that would leave the cruiser afloat. Only the Captain sees anything but the figures and the track lines on the plotting diagram.
“How long has the attack been going?”
“Eleven minutes, sir.” In his mind Sub sees the cruiser as the Captain passes on the picture in figures. The enemy course and speed have been calculated, checked and rechecked each time a new range and bearing is taken, and added to the picture on the track chart.
“Starboard twenty.” The submarine turns on to her firing course, a course worked out in relation to the enemy’s course so that the torpedoes will approach her at an angle of ninety degrees, on her beam.
“Course two-two-five, sir.”
“Very good. Stand by!”
The order is flashed forward to the men at the tubes.
“Fire one!” Thud and shudder, a hiss and the rising pressure.
“Fire two!”
“Fire three!” Half the salvo is on its way. Saunders says:
“Torpedoes running, sir.”
“Fire four!” God, let them hit!
“Fire five!”
“Fire six! – Flood ‘Q’, a hundred and fifty feet, full ahead together, port twenty-five!”
Now to get out of it: the torpedoes are on their way, and whether they hit or miss is out of anyone’s hands. But the destroyers will be active in a minute.
“Shut off for depth-charging.” The words are hardly spoken and repeated by the man at the telephone when the submarine is rocked by the explosion of the first torpedo striking home into the cruiser, then another and yet a third. Three hits: a certain kill. In the Engine Room, Chief grins at the Stokers.
“Now we’re for it, lads.”
Before the submarine was shut off and the bulkhead doors shut, Sub went forward to be with the T.I. and the torpedo-men. The Officers’ stations for depth-charging were: Sub forward, the Navigator in the Accommodation Space, the Captain and Number One in the Control Room. Each compartment was sealed off by its watertight doors.
Sub grinned at the T.I. “Well, Rawlinson, we sank the bastard. Three hits – not bad, eh?”
“I still can’t believe it, sir. We expecting trouble, now?”
“Expect so. There are two destroyers up there.” As he spoke, they heard one of the destroyers race across overhead. Her propellers churning the water made a noise like an express train going past. The T.I. looked round at his men.
“Now, lads,” he said, “there’ll be some dirt flying in a moment. It always sounds worse than it is.”
“That’s all right, Nursey,” answered Shadwell. “We’ve all ’eard it before. Bring on the flippin’ dancing-girls.”
No charges had been dropped, that time, but a moment later they heard the screws again. They seemed to pass on the port side and fade away ahead. Just before the sound faded, the first pattern of charges went off, a tearing crash that was too close, a sort of zonk effect as the blast bounced off the hull.
“That ain’t no flippin’ good,” remarked a torpedo-man. “’Ave to do better ’n that, old chums.”
“Don’t call those buggers chums, or I’ll do yer,” muttered Shadwell. The second destroyer made her run, evidently across the stern. The explosions seemed to be astern, anyway, but closer than the first lot. The submarine was shaken, and cork chips rained down from the paint overhead.
“Gettin’ warmer,” said Parrot.
“They’re not a patch on the Gerries, or the Wops, are they, sir?” The T.I. was speculating on the relative efficiency of the Axis powers. “Why, I remember once in the Med., off Sicily, we—”
That lot was bad. Sub was thrown across the compartment, landed in a heap with the T.I. and Parrot. The submarine had been rolled over and her stern thrown up by the exploding charges. It wouldn’t have to be much nearer than that. The telephone buzzed, and Sub answered it. It was the Control Room, a message from the Captain: “Report the situation for’ard.”
“Everything’s in order,” said Sub. He put the receiver back and grabbed hold of a stanchion as another pattern deafened them, shaking the submarine as a terrier shakes a rat.
In the Control Room, Number One fought with the trim, bringing the submarine out of a dive at two hundred and seventy feet.
“Two hundred feet,” ordered the Captain. “Port thirty, full ahead together.” Twisting and turning, trying all the tricks, yet the enemy seemed not to be easily fooled. Another pattern exploded, but this time they hardly felt it.
“Rotten shot,” said the Captain. “These Japs are no good.”
The Cox’n muttered: “I don’t think my Mum would like me to be ‘ere.”
The next pattern was a long time coming, a pause of about five minutes, while Saunders reported that one of the destroyers had stopped and that the other was going away. Then he reported, “Bearing drawing left, sir.”
“Very good.” The Captain acknowledged the report.
“Coming towards, sir. She’s turned round.”
“Very good.” The Captain ordered an alteration of course: “Starboard fifteen.”
The other destroyer, stopped, was in contact. They could hear the pings, like a mouse squeaking on the hull.
“Hundred and fifty feet, Number One.”
“Hundred and fifty feet, sir.” The needle was only just steady at the new depth when they heard the destroyer passing close again.
“Starboard twenty.” The helmsman swung his wheel over, his face as expressionless as the bulkhead door. Charges were on their way down, by now. A few seconds passed, and they seemed to explode under their feet, throwing the submarine up like a cork. Men were flung about, those who had unwisely not been holding on to anything. Cork chips spattered on them, and the lights went out. Someone cursed: the emergency lighting glowed feebly, throwing deep shadows in the compartment. At ninety feet, Number One got the angle under control, and they began to get down again. The lights came on.