H.M.S. Ulysses Part 55

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

SUNDAY MORNING.

THE Stirling died at dawn. She died while still under way, still plungjng through the heavy seas, her mangled, twisted bridge and superstructure glowing red, glowing white-hot as the wind and sundered oil tanks lashed the flames into an incandescent holocaust. A strange and terrible sight, but not unique: thus the Bismarck had looked, whitely incandescent, just before the Shrops.h.i.+re's torpedoes had sent her to the bottom.

The Stirling would have died anyway-but the Stukas made siccar. The Northern Lights had long since gone: now, too, the clear skies were going, and dark cloud was banking heavily to the north. Men hoped and prayed that the cloud would spread over FR77, and cover it with blanketing snow. But the Stukas got there first.

The Stukas, the dreaded gull-winged Junkers 87 dive-bombers, came from the south, flew high over the convoy, turned, flew south again. Level with, and due west of the Ulysses, rear s.h.i.+p in the convoy, they started to turn once more: then, abruptly, in the cla.s.sic Stuka attack pattern, they peeled off in sequence, port wings dipping sharply as they half-rolled, turned and fell out of the sky, plummetting arrow-true for their targets.

Any plane that hurtles down in undeviating dive on waiting gun emplacements has never a chance. Thus spoke the pundits, the instructors in the gunnery school of Whale Island, and proceeded to prove to their own satisfaction the evident truth of their statement, using A.A. guns and duplicating the situation which would arise insofar as it lay within their power. Unfortunately, they couldn't duplicate the Stuka.

"Unfortunately," because in actual battle, the Stuka was' the only factor in the situation that really mattered. One had only to crouch behind a gun, to listen to the ear-piercing, screaming whistle of the Stuka in its near-vertical dive, to flinch from its hail of bullets as it loomed larger and larger in the sights, to know that nothing could now arrest the flight of that underslung bomb, to appreciate the truth of that. Hundreds of men alive today-the lucky ones who endured and survived a Stuka attack-will readily confirm that the war produced nothing quite so nerve-rending, quite so demoralising as the sight and sound of those Junkers with the strange dihedral of the wings in the last seconds before they pulled out of their dive.

But one time in a hundred, maybe one time in a thousand, when the human factor of the man behind the gun ceased to operate, the pundits could be right. This was the thousandth time, for fear was a phantom that had vanished in the night: ranged against the dive-bombers were only one multiple pom-pom and half a dozen Oerlikons-the for'ard turrets could not be brought to bear-but these were enough, and more, in the hands of men inhumanly calm, ice-cool as the Polar wind itself, and filled with an almost dreadful singleness of purpose. Three Stukas in almost as many seconds were clawed out of the sky, two to crash harmlessly in the sea, a third to bury itself with tremendous impact in the already shattered day cabin of the Admiral.

The chances against the petrol tanks not erupting in searing flame or of the bomb not exploding were so remote as not to exist: but neither happened. It hardly seemed to call for comment-in extremity, courage becomes routine-when the bearded Doyle abandoned his pom-pom, scrambled up to the fo'c'sle deck, and flung himself on top of the armed bomb rolling heavily in scuppers awash with 100 per cent octane petrol. One tiny spark from Doyle's boot or from the twisted, broken steel of the Stuka rubbing and grinding against the superstructure would have been trigger enough: the contact fuse in the bomb was still undamaged, and as it slipped and skidded over the ice-bound deck, with "Doyle hanging desperately on, it seemed animistically determined to smash its delicate percussion nose against a bulkhead or stanchion.

If Doyle thought of these things, he did not care. Coolly, almost carelessly, he kicked off the only retaining clip left on a broken section of the guard-rail, slid the bomb, fins first, over the edge, tipped the nose sharply to clear the detonator. The bomb fell harmlessly into the sea.

It fell into the sea just as the first bomb sliced contemptuously through the useless one-inch deck armour of the Stirling and crashed into the engine-room. Three, four, five, six other bombs buried themselves in the dying heart of the cruiser, the lightened Stukas lifting away sharply to port and starboard. From the bridge of the Ulysses, there seemed to be a weird, unearthly absence of noise as the bombs went home. They just vanished into the smoke and flame, engulfed by the inferno.

No one blow finished the Stirling, but a mounting acc.u.mulation of blows. She had taken too much and she could take no more. She was like a reeling boxer, a boxer overmatched against an unskilled but murderous opponent, sinking under an avalanche of blows.

Stony-faced, bitter beyond words at his powerlessness, Turner watched her die. Funny, he thought tiredly, she's like all the rest. Cruisers, he mused in a queerly detached abstraction, must be the toughest s.h.i.+ps in the world. He'd seen many go, but none easily, cleanly, spectacularly. No sudden knock-out, no coup de grace for them-always, always, they had to be battered to death... Like the Stirling. Turner's grip on the shattered windscreen tightened till his forearms ached. To him, to all good sailors, a well-loved s.h.i.+p was a well-loved friend: for fifteen months, now, the old and valiant Stirling had been their faithful shadow, had shared the burden of the Ulysses in the worst convoys of the war: she was the last of the old guard, for only the Ulysses had been longer on the blackout run. It was not good to watch a friend die: Turner looked away, stared down at the ice-covered duckboards between his feet, his head sunk between hunched shoulders.

He could close his eyes, but he could not close his ears. He winced, hearing the monstrous, roaring hiss of boiling water and steam as the white-hot superstructure of the Stirling plunged deeply into the ice-chilled Artie. For fifteen, twenty seconds that dreadful, agonised sibilation continued, then stopped in an dnstant, the sound sheared off as by a guillotine. When Turner looked up, slowly, there was only the rolling, empty sea ahead, the big oil-slicked bubbles rising to the top, bubbles rising only to be punctured as they broke the surface by the fine rain falling back into the sea from the great clouds of steam already condensing in that bitter cold.

The Stirling was gone, and the battered remnants of FR77 pitched and plunged steadily onwards to the north. There were seven s.h.i.+ps left now-the four merchantmen, including the Commodore's s.h.i.+p, the tanker, the Sirrus and the Ulysses. None of them was whole: all were damaged, heavily damaged, but none so desperately hurt as the Ulysses.

Seven s.h.i.+ps, only seven: thirty-six had set out for Russia.

At 0800 Turner signalled the Sirrus: "W.T. gone. Signal C.-in-C.

course, speed, position. Confirm 0930 as rendezvous. Code."

The reply came exactly an hour later. "Delayed heavy seas. Rendezvous approx 1030. Impossible fly off air cover. Keep coming. C.-in-C."

"Keep coming!" Turner repeated savagely. "Would you listen to him! 'Keep coming,' he says! What the h.e.l.l does he expect us to do-scuttle ourselves?" He shook his head in angry despair. "I hate to repeat myself," he said bitterly. "But I must. Too b.l.o.o.d.y late as usual!"

[It is regrettable but true-the Home Fleet squadron was almost always too late. The Admiralty could not be blamed, the capital s.h.i.+ps were essential for the blockade of the Tirpitz, and they did not dare risk them close insh.o.r.e against land-based bombers. The long awaited trap did eventually snap shut; but it caught only the heavy cruiser Dawn and daylight had long since come, but it was growing darker again.]

Heavy grey clouds, formless and menacing, blotted out the sky from horizon to horizon. They were snow clouds, and, please G.o.d, the snow would soon fall: that could save them now, that and that alone.

But the snow did not come-not then. Once more, there came instead the Stukas, the roar of their engines rising and falling as they methodically quartered the empty sea in search of the convoy-Charlie had left at dawn. But it was only a matter of time before the dive-bomber squadron found ffie tiny convoy; ten minutes from the time of the first warning of their approach, the leading Junkers 87 tipped over its wing and dropped out of the sky.

Ten minutes, but time for a council and plan of desperation. When the Stukas came, they found the convoy stretched out in line abreast, the tanker Varella in the middle, two merchantmen in close line ahead on either side of it, the Sirrus and the Ulysses guarding the flanks. A suicidal formation in submarine waters-a torpedo from port or starboard could hardly miss them all. But weather conditions were heavily against submarines, and the formation offered at least a fighting chance against the Stukas. If they approached from astern-their favourite attack technique-they would run into the simultaneous ma.s.sed fire of seven s.h.i.+ps ; if they approached from the sides, they must first attack the escorts, for no Stuka would present its unprotected underbelly to the guns of a wars.h.i.+p... They elected to attack from either side, five from the east, four from the west. This time, Turner noted, they were carrying long-range fuel tanks.

Turner had no time to see how the Sirrus was faring. Indeed, he could hardly see how his own s.h.i.+p was faring, for thick acrid smoke was 'blowing back across the bridge from the barrels of 'A' and 'B' turrets. In the gaps of sound between the crash of the 5.25s, he could hear the quick-fire of Doyle's mids.h.i.+p pom-pom, the vicious thudding of the Oeklikons.

Suddenly, startling in its breath-taking unexpectedness, two great beams of dazzling white stabbed out through the mirk and gloom. Turner stared, then bared his teeth in fierce delight. The 44-inch searchlights I Of course! The great Scharnhorst and not the Tirpitz. It never caught the great s.h.i.+p. She was destroyed at her anchorage in Alta Fjord by Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force.

Searchlights, still on the official secret list, capable of lighting up an enemy six miles away! What a fool he had been to forget them, Vallery had used them often, in daylight and in dark, against attacking aircraft. No man could look into those terrible eyes, those flaming arcs across the electrodes and not be blinded.

Blinking against the eye-watering smoke, Turner peered aft to see who was manning the control position. But he knew who it was before he saw him. It could only be Ralston, searchlight control, Turner remembered, was his day action station: besides, he could think of no one other than the big, blond torpedoman with the gumption, the quick intelligence to burn the lamps on his own initiative.

Jammed in the corner of the bridge by the gate, Turner watched him. He forgot his s.h.i.+p, forgot even the bombers, he personally could do nothing about them anyway, as he stared in fascination at the man behind the controls.

His eyes were glued to the sights, his face expressionless, absolutely; but for the gradual stiffening of back and neck as the sight dipped in docile response to the delicate caress of his fingers on the wheel, he might have been carved from marble: the immobility of the face, the utter concentration was almost frightening.

There was not a flicker of feeling or emotion: never a flicker as the first Stuka weaved and twisted in maddened torment, seeking to escape that eye-staring flame, not even a flicker as it swerved violently in its dive, pulled out too late and crashed into the sea a hundred yards short of the Ulysses.

What was the boy thinking of? Turner wondered. His mother, his sisters, entombed under the ruins of a Croydon bungalow: of his brother, innocent victim of that mutiny, how impossible that mutiny seemed now!-in Scapa Flow: of his father, dead by his son's own hand? Turner did not know, could not even begin to guess: clairvoyantiy, almost, he knew that it was too late, that no one would ever know now.

The face was inhumanly still. There wasn't a shadow of feeling as the second Stuka overshot the Ulysses, dropped its bomb into the open sea: not a shadow as a third blew up in mid-air: not a trace of emotion when the guns of the next Stuka smashed one of the lights... not even when the cannon sh.e.l.ls of the last smashed the searchlight control, tore half his chest away. He died instantaneously, stood there a moment as if unwilling to abandon his post, then slumped back quietly on to the deck. Turner bent over the dead boy, looked at the face, the eyes upturned to the first feathery flakes of falling snow. The eyes, the face, were still the same, mask-like, expressionless. Turner s.h.i.+vered and looked away.

One bomb, and one only, had struck the Ulysses. It had struck the fo'c'sle deck just for'ard of 'A' turret. There had been no casualties, but some freak of vibration and shock had fractured the turret's hydaulic lines. Temporarily, at least, 'B' was the only effective remaining turret in the s.h.i.+p.

The Sirrus hadn't been quite so lucky. She had destroyed one Stuka-the merchantmen had claimed another-and had been hit twice, both bombs exploding in the after mess-deck. The Sirrus, overloaded with survivors, was carrying double her normal complement of men, and usually that mess-deck would have been crowded: during action stations it was empty. Not a man had lost his life-not a man was to lose his life on the destroyer Sirrus: she was never damaged again on the Russian convoys.

Hope was rising, rising fast. Less than an hour to go, now, and the battle squadron would be there. It was dark, dark with the gloom of an Arctic storm, and heavy snow was falling, hissing gently into the dark and rolling sea. No plane could find them in this-and they were almost beyond the reach of sh.o.r.e-based aircraft, except, of course, for the Condors. And it was almost impossible weather for submarines.

"It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles." Carrington quoted softly.

"What?" Turner looked up, baffled. "What did you say. Number One?"

"Tennyson." Carrington was apologetic, "The Captain was always quoting him... Maybe we'll make it yet."

"Maybe, maybe." Turner was non-committal. "Preston!"

"Yes, sir, I see it." Preston was staring to the north where the signal lamp of the Sirrus was flickering rapidly.

"A s.h.i.+p, sir!" he reported excitedly. "Sirrus says naval vessel approaching from the north!"

"From the north! Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d!" Turner shouted exultantly. "From the north! It must be them! They're ahead of time.... I take it all back. Can you see anything, Number One?"

"Not a thing, sir. Too thick-but it's clearing a bit, I think...

There's the Sirrus again."

"What does she say, Preston?" Turner asked anxiously.

"Contact. Sub. contact. Green 30. Closing."

"Contact! At this late hour!" Turner groaned, then smashed his fist down on the binnacle. He swore fiercely.

"By G.o.d, she's not going to stop us now! Preston, signal the Sirrus to stay..."