Tubbs was taking his position as second-in-command seriously, was looking for ways to be useful.
“Well done. We shall see you as lieutenant commander with your own station in no time, Tubbs.”
“Unbelievable, sir! The family will be irate, of course.”
“Why? I would have thought they would be delighted at your success.”
“The youngest brother has no business being senior to his two elders, sir. That is not the correct way of doing things.”
“If we ever get leave, Tubbs, do you intend to go home?”
“Not bloody likely, sir! I have a respectable allowance on top of my pay and I have had no chance to spend any of it. If we get a week, then it’s up to London and see what might happen!”
“If the day comes, I will give you the name of an acquaintance of mine, one of Lord Lancing’s daughters. I am sure she would make sure you enjoyed a leave.”
Peter was fairly sure that Charlie would be kind to the lad, at minimum introducing him to one of her friends. She was a big-hearted lass, among her other attributes.
The mind-numbing routine of patrols commenced; within the week they were praying for rain. Two patrols of eighteen hours followed by three of twelve then start again with no break. Hours of staring out at an empty sea, nothing in sight other than the occasional fishing smack or drifter and the rare sighting of the surface ships also on patrol. The Channel looked small on a chart; it was one hundred miles wide from Normandy to Portland and two hundred and fifty from Polegate to Ushant. Thousands of square miles of sea for a submarine to be lost in.
Staying awake was the greatest problem. The blimps almost flew themselves at cruising height, making few demands on the pilot. The second hand sat up front had even less to do, physically. Scanning the sea, brain active, examining every change of colour that might be a distant submarine – it was too easy to fall into a daze, the brain failing to register what the eyes saw.
“Thirty minutes, sir! Next leg.”
Fanny Adams was in charge of the course, noting the time of each change in his log. It helped keep him alert, gave him something to do.
Peter responded, bringing SS9 slowly round onto the new track.
“North northwest, sir! Eleven o’clock. Something on the sea, sir! Distant maybe two miles.”
Binoculars up on the bearing given and all fatigue forgotten.
“Sighting report, Fanny! Time and position, ‘surfaced submarine. Attacking’.”
Down in a hard, turning dive, bringing the blimp bows on, reducing the apparent size of the balloon, hopefully harder to spot. Throttle full open and fins at maximum elevation, the blimp bouncing and juddering against the sudden tug on the cables.
“Report made, sir. Submarine has guns, sir. Something like a twelve pounder deck gun – a three inch perhaps. Looks like a machine gun mounted in the conning tower, sir. I can see a number, sir… U 38, I think – it’s a bit faded. No flap in the conning tower yet, sir. They haven’t spotted us yet… Acknowledgement from base, sir.”
The sighting report was in and the destroyers would be working up to something close to thirty knots; they might be sixty miles distant.
“Ready on the Lewis, Adams!”
Peter saw the boy stand and tuck the rifle butt of the Lewis Gun into his shoulder, working the cocking lever.
They were at a thousand feet and it was time to start persuading the blimp to level off – she changed attitude and course very slowly. He knocked the crab pot to an oblique setting, reducing the intake of air into the ballonets and changing the shape of the nose to assist in bringing the dive under control.
“Seen us, sir! Out of range yet.”
A few more seconds, Peter waiting to see the foam as air was expelled from the submarine’s tanks in a crash dive.
“Two men on the machine gun, sir. Opening fire, sir.”
He heard the hard, fast rattle. No tracers, he had no idea where the rounds were going; hopefully neither did the submarine. Less chance of setting the gas afire with common rounds.
“Inside one thousand yards, sir.”
The theoretical range of the Lewis was set at five cables, half a nautical mile or thereabouts. Its accuracy was limited over one hundred yards and the pan held only forty-seven rounds.
“Hold!”
Machine gun fire sprayed across the nacelle, scattering splinters.
“Effing Hun bastards! I’ll effing well get you for that!”
“Adams! Mind your language!”
Peter was genuinely shocked – he did not expect to hear those terms from a young officer.
“Sorry, sir.”
He pushed hard against the throttle, hoping for another few revs, even the tiniest increase in speed.
The machine gun came back on line, hitting the envelope, dropping, rounds ranging across the nacelle.
“Fire, Adams!”
The boy emptied the pan in a sustained burst, heaved the empty clear and slammed a replacement onto the breech, working the cocking lever and firing again.
“Got the bastards, right into them, sir!”
He changed the pan again, looking back to see Peter slumped over the yoke, heaving himself upright.
“Are you hit, sir?”
“Keep on your gun!”
Peter swore, very quietly so Adams would not hear him; he must not sound the hypocrite. He stretched across to the bomb release, tugged on the lanyard and snatched at the water ballast cable close to it.
The bomb fell and SS9 shot upwards, losing nearly five hundred pounds in weight in the one second.
“Close alongside, sir. Towards the stern. Machine gun is out of commission, sir. She’s submerging. Under control.”
“Make your report, Adams.”
He heard the key rattle, started to assess his own condition.
Wounds to both legs, no more than a crease to the right calf, painful but trivial; left leg broken just above the ankle. Bleeding heavily, pieces of white bone in sight. He fumbled for the medical kit, pulled out a dressing and slapped it in place and almost fainted as he bent forwards. A few seconds to recover, the gauze already saturated, and he leant over with a bandage, tugged it tight, stopped the bleeding, cut it to a dribble, at least.
His belly hurt as well. Pulling his flying coat open he saw a long gash, no deeper than a fingertip, running from left hip upwards for nearly six inches. That was a lucky one, fractions of an inch from opening up his guts. He used up the remaining gauze pads to make a cover, keep the wound clean.
They were at three thousand feet, rising only slowly, the fins set for a dive still and countering the weight loss.
“Course for nearest English naval base, Adams?”
“Either Portland or Plymouth, sir. Pretty much equal and about sixty miles distant. Portsmouth is another half hour, sir”
“Plymouth has better facilities than Portland.”
“Due north, sir.”
Peter turned the balloon’s head, fighting the lassitude of blood loss. Adams took to his binoculars again.
“Sir, there’s an oil trail on the sea, sir. The sub’s leaking!”
“Inform base.”
An instant response.
“Orders to track the sub, sir. Remain in contact. Surface craft at fifteen miles, sir.”
Half an hour, at least.
“Track her for me, Adams. I cannot stand to see.”
“Come port ten degrees, sir. Slow down now… We are nearly over her, sir. Oil still coming up, sir. Might be we cracked a diesel tank, sir, just a trickle which they don’t know about.”
“Diesel? What’s that?”
“It’s a sort of petrol, sir, used for some different type of internal combustion engines. So they told us at Dartmouth, sir. We are wandering off course, sir. Can you reach your Thermos, sir? A hot drink might help.”
“Too far down. I can’t stretch that far.”