Submariner (2008)

  Alexander Fullerton was a midshipman at sea at the age of seventeen, and made his first two ‘makie-learnie’ submarine patrols from the 10th Flotilla in Malta when he was just eighteen. For the last year of the war he was Gunnery and Torpedo Officer of HM Submarine Seadog in the Far East, being at that time mentioned in despatches for distinguished service. One might take it that he knew his subject and has used it impressively enough for Submariner – his fiftieth published novel. Alexander Fullerton died in 2008.

  Also by Alexander Fullerton

  SURFACE!

  BURY THE PAST

  OLD MOKE

  NO MAN’S MISTRESS

  A WREN CALLED SMITH

  THE WHITE MEN SANG

  THE YELLOW FORD

  SOLDIER FROM THE SEA

  THE WAITING GAME

  THE THUNDER AND THE FLAME

  LIONHEART

  CHIEF EXECUTIVE

  THE PUBLISHER

  STORE

  THE ESCAPISTS

  OTHER MEN’S WIVES

  PIPER’S LEAVE

  REGENESIS

  THE APHRODITE CARGO

  JOHNSON’S BIRD

  BLOODY SUNSET

  LOOK TO THE WOLVES

  LOVE FOR AN ENEMY

  NOT THINKING OF DEATH

  BAND OF BROTHERS

  FINAL DIVE

  WAVE CRY

  THE FLOATING MADHOUSE

  FLIGHT TO MONS

  STARK REALITIES

  The Everard series of naval novels

  THE BLOODING OF THE GUNS

  SIXTY MINUTES FOR ST GEORGE

  PATROL TO THE GOLDEN HORN

  STORM FORCE TO NARVIK

  LAST LIFT FROM CRETE

  ALL THE DROWNING SEAS

  A SHARE OF HONOUR

  THE TORCH BEARERS

  THE GATECRASHERS

  The SBS Trilogy

  SPECIAL DELIVERANCE

  SPECIAL DYNAMIC

  SPECIAL DECEPTION

  The Merchant Navy Series

  WESTBOUND, WARBOUND

  NON-COMBATANTS

  The Rosie Series

  INTO THE FIRE

  RETURN TO THE FIELD

  IN AT THE KILL

  SINGLE TO PARIS

  STAYING ALIVE

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-748-12517-3

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public

  domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Alexander Fullerton 2008

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior

  permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Also by Alexander Fullerton

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  To Andrew Hewson, with thanks for heaven knows

  how many years of support and friendship.

  1

  Home, sweet home, he thought – might even have murmured it aloud – and it certainly looked a lot less unsweet than it had when he’d last seen it. Distant, still, but in the periscope’s quadruple magnification clear-edged in the evening sun, and a lot easier on the eye than it had been ten or eleven weeks ago when the air assault had been at something like its worst, that image of towering stone walls, ramps and bastions shrouded virtually from dawn to dusk in the smoke and drifting stone-dust of Fliegerkorps II’s virtually incessant bombing. Which, remembering not to count one’s chickens, might be resumed of course, might well … He was searching the air now, the top lens tilted and himself circling, darkly furred forearms draped over the periscope’s spread handles, longish legs necessarily bent slightly at the knees, plimsolls’ scuffed toes against the rim of the well in which the long brass tube lived when it was not in use. A moment ago he’d spotted what he’d guessed would be the promised minesweeper on its way out to meet him, had studied it for a few seconds, confirming this – greatly appreciating it, such unaccustomed pampering – then left it to spend this half-minute on a slower and more concentrated air-search than he’d made initially.

  Clear, empty sky, except for streamers of white cloud. Focusing back on the minesweeper that was fine on Ursa’s bow and truly a most welcome sight – could only be one of the four modern sweepers which as one had heard had somehow managed to sneak through from Gibraltar during the flotilla’s absence, and would have been working flat-out ever since. Mines had been as much of a bloody menace as the bombing, some of them parachuted by night into the harbours and approaches – because mines drifting down on parachutes in daylight were vulnerable to the gunners onshore, whereas at night searchlights had to find them first – and others laid in dense fields offshore by E-boats out of Syracuse or wherever – Syracuse and Augusta, Licata maybe. They’d played as big a part as the Ju 87s and 88s in rendering Malta unusable by the 10th Flotilla.

  Temporarily unusable. Flotilla reassembling, back on the job now, with plenty of catching-up to do. Job being to disrupt the flow of war supplies from Italian ports to Field Marshal Rommel’s Afrika Korps. A week or two ago Rommel in his drive westward had taken Tobruk, then Mersa Matruh; the British Eighth Army were holding him – for the moment – at El Alamein on the Egyptian frontier. Alexandria had been evacuated, being by then in Stuka range from desert airstrips. As it still was. Rommel had in front of him the Canal, the Middle East and its oil, prospects of linking up then with German forces in southern Russia.

  Mike Nicholson pushed up the periscope’s handles, and Ellery, Engine Room Artificer, depressed the lever that sent it hissing down into its well. Ellery – a tallish man, pale, thin-haired, watchful – was the Outside ERA, responsible for all machinery outside the engine-room itself. Like everyone else, he’d actually shaved today, had that odd, spruced-up look about him. Mike said, ‘Stand by to surface’, and Jamie McLeod – first lieutenant, second in command – ordered quietly, ‘Check main vents.’ Familiar routine now: obviously, to blow the water out of ballast tanks the vents in their tops had to be shut, otherwise the air would be blasting through and out into the sea. McLeod – lieutenant RN, same rank as his captain but a few years younger – Mike at twenty-eight looked more like thirty, thirty-two – had his narrowed eyes on the depth-gauges, the bubble in the spirit-level and the positions of the hydroplanes, all indicative of the state of the boat’s trim – weight and balance in the water – which was his responsibility. Glancing at Mike, enquiring, ‘You doing this, sir, or –’

  ‘Might just risk my precious neck.’

  Joke: raising a smile here and there, but only a nod from McLeod – whose query had been whether Mike himself would surface the boat, be first up through the hatch – normal procedure, of course, for a skipper to surface his own submarine – only in question now because since about the start of this year ‘Shrimp’ Simpson’s orders had barred COs from appearing in their bridges unti
l boats were actually inside the harbour. First lieutenants or even third hands were to con them in, wearing tin hats as protection against Messerschmitts and Heinkels who’d taken to haunting the harbour approaches in the hope of catching submarines at their most vulnerable – in the act of surfacing, in those few minutes stopped and wallowing, blind – the Germans diving on them with machine-guns and cannon blazing. It had happened more than once, and submarine COs were too valuable to be put at such risk unnecessarily.

  Admiral Max Horton’s orders to Shrimp Simpson had included the instruction to treat his COs like Derby winners, and Shrimp, a very experienced and successful submarine CO himself, now approaching forty and commanding this flotilla, wasn’t putting them at unnecessary risk if he could help it.

  Things clearly had taken a very sharp turn for the better though, in the course of just ten, eleven weeks. Touch wood: and, according to Shrimp, in Haifa recently. For one thing Fliegerkorps II, who’d been transferred from the Russian front to Sicily with the object of neutralising Malta, were being kept busy in support of Rommel, operating mainly from the desert and from Crete. For another, the RAF now had a substantial force of Spitfires on the Maltese airfields. No fewer than sixty-five had been flown in from the Eagle and the USS Wasp during the flotilla’s absence – and mostly survived, as distinct from being destroyed on the ground within hours of their arrival, which was what had happened to previous consignments. On top of which one now had these minesweepers with their magnetic sweeps – as distinct from just one fairly ancient vessel, the poor old Abingdon, which having been strafed at every daylight appearance had been obliged to do her sweeping – as well as she’d been able, with the gear she had – by night.

  To do her justice, she’d done wonders too. The job had been too much for her, that was all. It would have been too much for half a dozen of her.

  ‘Ready to surface, sir.’

  Vents shut, blows open at the tanks. Lower lid – the hatch, here in the control room – open too. Mike moving to the ladder, with the signalman, Walburton, ready to follow him up. Both in tin hats, and Walburton with a White Ensign and Ursa’s Jolly Roger stuffed inside his shirt, leaving his hands free for the climb and for collecting the six-inch Aldis lamp from its stowage on his way up through the tower. Mike said, with one foot on the ladder, ‘Surface’, McLeod told Ellery, ‘Blow one and six’, and the artificer jerked those two valves open on his control panel, sending bottled air at 4,000 pounds to the square inch ripping noisily to the tanks right for’ard and right aft. Rush of air through one-inch-diameter piping loud in Mike’s ears as he went fast up through the tower – not all that much more than shoulder-wide internally, for him at any rate – and paused under the top hatch, McLeod intoning loudly for his information, ‘Twenty feet, sir. Fifteen. Twelve –’

  He’d taken the cotter-pins out of both clips. Had one clip off and swinging free now, waited with a hand on the other.

  ‘Ten feet. Eight –’

  Second clip off, hatch lifting, internal pressure of somewhat foul air venting, hatch crashing back, a gallon or two of salt water splashing in as he clambered out and into the bridge’s forefront. Ursa wallowing with the sea sluicing down out of her free-flood bridge and casing – at half-buoyancy initially, the other main ballast tanks could be blown when Mike was sure he was staying up. OK this far: all clear all round, in the immediate vicinity, beyond the foaming area of her emergence. Sky clear too. Behind him, clack-clacking of the Aldis, Walburton giving the minesweeper Ursa’s pendant numbers, confirming her identity. Answering flash from the sweeper’s bridge: she had her wheel over, turning to lead them in: you saw the shift in the white flurry at her forefoot, then her low, grey shape lengthening as she swung. Ursa’s diesels pounding into thunderous life, driving generators that powered her batteries, and in the process sucking a flood of clean, sweet air down through the tower. He’d opened the voice-pipe cock meanwhile, called down, ‘Lookouts on the bridge.’ To look out for aircraft, mainly; even with the sweeper and her Oerlikons in close company it would take only one Stuka, one pair of bombs from the bottom of its screaming dive, banshee howl of the kind of which there’d been about one a minute throughout all the daylight hours, day after bloody day from March into early summer. Best of reasons not to have spent a day more than necessary in harbour: safer outside, at sea – at least, arguably so – and Shrimp well aware of it as well as wanting you out there on the Axis convoy routes. Shrimp also wishing, as Mike knew well, that he could have been out there himself – which he could not, on account of his age, forty or near it being too old for submarine command anywhere, let alone in these waters and circumstances. Shrimp would have given his right arm to be out there doing it himself, not to be limited to sending his young Derby winners out, most of them still in their middle to late twenties.

  It was a young man’s job, was all. A very fit young man’s, at that. And in Malta even harbour-time had had its acute anxieties. In fact, that the blitzkrieg should have ended so suddenly wasn’t all that easy to believe, trust in entirely. Possibly not all that wise to either, Mike told himself, so let’s not. He had three officers and twenty-eight ratings in this fairly minuscule, under-armed and frustratingly slow submarine, he’d had her and them out here with him for well over a year – sixteen patrols in that time – or was it seventeen? – and touch wood might not be many months before he took them home again. All of them – the boat intact and her men alive – also, in his own view, bloody marvellous. Despite there having been times that had taken a bit of getting through. They’d stood up to it and learnt from it, that was the thing, they knew their business and were proud of it, weren’t going to let either him or each other down. Ursa could count herself as one of the flotilla’s veterans and top scorers now; there were new or newish boats and faces, and yet newer ones on their way, replacements for those who’d come to grief or – the lucky ones – done their time and gone home for refit, but of the really old guard, the crème de la crème – well, there’d been two grievous losses in very recent times. Not that any loss was anything less than grievous: but David Wanklyn VC and Upholder had been lost at the end of April, on what was to have been his last patrol before going home, and his close friend, the equally successful and well-liked ‘Tommo’ Tomkinson and his boat Urge, a fortnight later.

  Flag Officer Submarines Max Horton was sending replacements all right, maintaining or even increasing the flotilla’s strength, but neither of those two individuals or their crews could ever be thought of as replaceable.

  The lookouts – Barnet, a torpedoman, and Brighouse, stoker – were on the job now at the after end of the bridge, searching the sky bare-eyed, out of long habit and common sense dividing it between them, and Mike had passed the order down to completely empty numbers two, three, four and five main ballast. Walburton meanwhile had the ensign flying from its staff, and was up on the gleaming-wet periscope standard bending on the Roger. Jolly Roger, Ursa’s own record of her successes, a black flag with a somewhat crude white skull and crossbones central, bars in the fly for ships sunk by torpedo, stars under crossed gun-barrels for enemies dispatched by gunfire. White bars for merchantmen, red for warships, dagger symbols for special operations such as train-wrecking and landing /embarking agents or commandos. Ursa had plenty to her credit, and for this last patrol a new white bar that Walburton had painstakingly stitched on last night. Making – Mike had forgotten how many torpedoings. A round dozen, roughly. Tonnage in any case was now over thirty thousand. Thirty-two or -three, probably. It was tonnage you went by: the flotilla’s score was around the half-million mark at this stage.

  He lowered his glasses, stooping to the voice-pipe: ‘Come five degrees to starboard.’

  ‘Five to starboard, sir!’

  Voice of Able Seaman Smithers, gunlayer. Glasses up again: the sweeper calling them up and Walburton, down from the periscope standard, grabbing the Aldis and flashing a go-ahead. Mike read the incoming message for himself: ‘Looks like your Jolly Roger flyi
ng. Good bag, I hope?’

  ‘Tell him, one fair-sized transport, laden.’

  Fair-sized and well laden. Eight or nine thousand tons, at any rate. So how many Soldaten who wouldn’t be joining Rommel – five thousand? Twice that number? Germans, for preference – one dead German being worth ten Italians. Destroyers had picked up quite a lot of them; and one of the destroyers would have gone too, complete with its load of rescuees, if Ursa had had the right torpedoes, the Mark VIIIs she should have had. Torpedoes had always been in short supply, and the shortage had become substantially worse when a U-boat had torpedoed the submarine depot ship Medway on her way from Alexandria to Haifa during the evacuation. She’d had ninety spares in crates on her upper deck; destroyers out of Haifa and Port Said had recovered about forty floaters the next day, but it was still a serious loss. As had Medway herself, of course – actually a shocking loss.

  The sweeper had replied, ‘Well done you.’ Maintaining her distance ahead – Ursa making about ten knots, which was her best surfaced speed. Malta dramatically aglow with the lowering sun behind it: Fort Ricasoli off to port, then the entrance to Grand Harbour darkening in a haze that was not far short of purple, Fort St Elmo’s façade and foreshore more rose-tinted. No red flag flying on the Castile: no enemy aircraft around, therefore. And from there, now training his glasses right – past the St Elmo lighthouse, then Point Sant’Jiermu, less distinct from this bearing and distance – inside Point Tigne was the entrance to Marsamxett Harbour and Sliema Creek. Those two waterways being separated once you were inside by Manoel Island, with Fort Manoel at its eastern end and Lazaretto, the 10th Flotilla’s base, facing directly on to Lazaretto Creek running northwestward out of Marsamxett.

  Visualising it, of course, not seeing it yet – not for about twenty or thirty minutes yet. Actually, looking forward to the sight of it: not home sweet home, exactly, but having been forced out, and returning now – there was a pleasure in that – and anyway with all the memories good and bad, a kind of home – even though last time one had seen it, had been largely rubble.