Seizing the Enigma (24 page)

The target was the Lofoten Islands. This archipelago lies above the Arctic Circle just south of where the Norwegian coast turns east to top off Europe. From north to south the strip of mountainous islands angles away from the cliff-sided coastline, leaving a bay, Vestfjord, in the shape of an inverted V. Scattered near its apex were the fishing towns with the fish-oil factories. Around the tip of the southwesternmost large island swirled the Maelstrom. Though this was not the giant fatal whirlpool of legend, with Edgar Allan Poe’s “smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water,” its powerful currents did endanger ships. Indeed, strong currents and strong winds made sailing difficult and dangerous throughout the Lofotens.

Task force
REBEL
, after refueling in the Faeroes, reached what it called Point P, some 600 miles north of Scapa, at 1:30
A.M.
on Monday, and turned almost due east for the 320-mile march to Point Q, at the mouth of Vestfjord. The weather favored the trip: the winds were gentle and the sea moderate to flat. The sky was overcast with low clouds, and snow showers reduced the chances of detection. The daily German meteorological flight did not spot the ships. Occasional breaks in the cloud cover permitted astronomical position fixes, which were confirmed by radio bearings taken on signals emitted by the Royal Navy submarine
Sunfish
, stationed near Point Q.
REBEL
passed Point Q a little after midnight on March 4, swung northeast, and moved up Vestfjord. At 4:30
A.M.
the task force reached Point C, on the west side of the inverted V. Fifteen minutes later the light had grown strong enough for the lookouts to see the coastline. The wind was a light breeze, the sea calm, the temperature in the low twenties.

The previous morning a German weather flight had spotted a northbound force of one cruiser and five destroyers off the waist of Norway, some 200 miles south of where
REBEL
then was. The
Kriegsmarine
’s Admiral Polar Coast had ordered “increased watchfulness”
for all coastal observation stations, patrol boats, and batteries. But coastal navigation lights were not extinguished.

By between 5:30 and 6
A.M.
, the Royal Navy ships heading for three of the ports to be attacked had reached their stations. The
Somali
, another destroyer, and one of the troop carriers continued on to the fourth and most northeasterly of the ports. They crept by the 921-foot-high hump of the island of Skraaven, to their left. Only then, in the twilight, were they seen by lookouts there. The Germans raised the alarm. The commandant of the Narvik Sea Defense Zone was warned. Coastal batteries were alerted. The Luftwaffe was asked to send bombers. A minesweeping unit that was about to go to sea was stopped. Navigation lights were belatedly turned off. Messages came in about the other destroyers. The harbor captain of Svolvaer, the principal port of the Lofotens, reported, “Destroyer in harbor; we’re leaving.” But he was captured anyway, and the Luftwaffe never arrived.

Aboard the troop carriers, the commandos readied their equipment and climbed into their landing craft. They were to go ashore at 6:45. At 6:10, after assuring himself that the troop carrier that the
Somali
and another destroyer were escorting had almost reached its position for the attack, Caslon swung the
Somali
around and headed south to check on the activity at the other ports. Again she had to pass mile-long Skraaven, this time on her starboard. Once past the island, she could look over the water toward Svolvaer. And coming from that direction she saw, at about 6:20, a whaling trawler that had been converted into a patrol vessel by the mounting of a small gun in her bows and a heavy machine gun aft. It was the
Krebs
(“shrimp” in Norwegian, “crab” in German), commanded by Lieutenant Hans Kapfinger. Her usual function was probably to prevent Norwegians from sailing from the Lofotens to the Shetlands, where they could escape the occupation and join the fight against the Germans. But now, summoned by the alert, she was bravely coming out to do battle with the vastly superior forces that had invaded her domain. Caslon trained his guns on the little ship, then a little under 2 miles distant, and opened fire.

His first shots were high and did little damage. Then, with what Warmington thought was “all the guts in the world,” the
Krebs
fired back at the British warship. None of her three rounds struck the
Somali
, but one holed a flag flying from the destroyer’s forearm, which angered Caslon. His next three shots devastated the trawler. One detonated the ready ammunition; one burst in the wheelhouse; the third exploded in the boiler room. Smoke issued from the vessel, which appeared to have gone out of control. The
Somali
ceased fire. Survivors were seen in the water, and the destroyer went to rescue them.

The
Somali
’s No. 1, or executive officer, the second in command, was Lieutenant Henry A. Stuart-Menteth, a career officer of the Royal Navy. His former destroyer, the
Hunter
, had been sunk in 1940 during the Norwegian campaign; Stuart-Menteth had been wounded in the leg in the action and was unconscious when the Germans pulled him from the water. He didn’t know where he was when he came to in a hospital, but the pictures of Hitler quickly brought him to his senses. Still, he remained grateful to the Germans for having saved his life—and for leaving him behind when they temporarily quit Narvik in the face of British attacks. Now, seeing the Germans swimming in the icy Vestfjord waters and watching one man in particular struggle, he reminded himself, “They hauled me out.” He clambered down the net thrown over the ship’s side and pulled the man aboard.

The
Krebs
had stranded on a low, flat, rocky islet south of Skraaven named Flesa. So the
Somali
left the helpless trawler there. As she steamed off, a wounded German stoker climbed onto the trawler’s deck. In the engine room he burned some of the secret papers and cipher material. Unable to help the two petty officers and two sailors who lay wounded above deck, he jumped onto Flesa.

At 7:10 Caslon permitted radio communications, which, thanks to Warmington’s preparations, functioned excellently. Contact was immediately established with all four landing parties, and they reported that they had come ashore without opposition and were carrying out their allotted tasks. They destroyed the Lofotens Cod
Boiling Plant and the Moller Medicinal Oil Plant and destroyed oil and kerosene tanks, setting fire to their contents and sending great pillars of black smoke into the clear Norwegian sky. At the same time, the other destroyers and naval demolition parties were sinking ships and taking Germans prisoner.

The cod run in Vestfjord from February to April, and during this period thousands of fishermen come to the islands. They had left port that Tuesday morning before the extent of the British operation became clear, and as they came to see that the attack was directed against the Germans and not them, they cheered and waved Norwegian flags on the hundreds of little fishing smacks and puffers that dotted the waters around the ports.

The
Somali
stood off the most southerly of the ports for a while to observe operations, then turned back to Svolvaer. As she passed Flesa, she saw that the
Krebs
had refloated and, still burning, was drifting to the center of the fjord. The
Somali
approached and saw a white flag being waved.

Warmington, who was on the bridge, thought that the
Krebs
might have some useful documents and that this was a rare chance to board an enemy ship. He knew that Caslon was concerned about being tied down, so he appealed to his superior’s compassion: he proposed boarding the
Krebs to
save the sailors. Caslon assented.

To save time and retain the maximum freedom of movement, Caslon decided against lowering his own boat or coming alongside. Instead he summoned the commandos’ Norwegian interpreter. Second Lieutenant Leonard M. Harper-Gow, a tall, imposing former member of Scotland’s Ayrshire Yeomanry, had learned the language during summers in Norway. He was below, sulking because he had not been allowed ashore for the action; the communications were excellent and it was better for him to be at sea and mobile than fixed on land. Topside, he hailed a Norwegian fishing boat with “Halloo! Halloo!” When it came alongside, he explained what he wanted it to do. The skipper agreed, and at 9:10 Warmington,
Harper-Gow, and another officer, Major A. R. Aslett, were ferried over to the
Krebs.

She was still smoldering. In the wreckage of the wheelhouse, they found four or five bodies, including that of the captain, Kapfinger, next to the wheel. Five sailors cowered on deck; two were badly wounded, one having lost a lot of muscle in his arm, the other hit in the head.

Aslett flourished his service revolver and Warmington his own cocked Belgian pistol (the navy did not issue regulation handguns). The five men offered no resistance. Warmington put his pistol into the duffel coat he was wearing and hastily looked around. He found no signal books or codebooks and no cipher devices; evidently they had been jettisoned before the
Somali
’s shell struck the wheelhouse. He did find a pair of binoculars, which he liberated. Harper-Gow kept Kapfinger’s cap; someone pinched the range finder. The
Krebs
was still burning below, and no one could enter the engine room or the forepeak. But in the captain’s cabin Warmington found the
Kriegsmarine
’s gridded chart of European waters from Iceland to Norway, some personal papers, and a variety of documents, some of which appeared to be secret. All these he swept up. The other two Britons grabbed other papers. Then, in going through the drawers, Warmington found one locked.

“If it’s locked,” he said to himself, “there must be something there.”

He pulled out his pistol to shoot the lock off, as he had seen it done in movies. He cocked the gun, aimed it at the lock, looked away, and pulled the trigger. The gun fired; the lock fell apart. Warmington pulled open the drawer. Inside was a wooden box about 9 by 5 by 3 inches. He took it out and opened it. There, unharmed, lay two black disks about the size of hockey pucks, with electrical contacts and letters around the circumference and an indented flange. He had never seen anything like that before—the Royal Navy used codebooks and he knew nothing of the Enigma machine—but he recognized that
they had to be for ciphering. He closed the box and looked about the cabin a bit more.

He did not have time to search the wireless office before the
Somali
flashed for them to return. They had been aboard the
Krebs
for forty-five minutes, and Caslon may have been worried about air attacks. Warmington handed the charts and other papers to Aslett but kept the rotor box as the three officers got the five prisoners onto the Norwegian vessel that had ferried them over. The
Somali
rewarded the Norwegian fishermen with cigarettes and food. Once back on the
Somali
, Warmington gave the box to Caslon, who glanced at the rotors, understood what they were, and sent the box directly to his sea cabin, the room just beneath the bridge where destroyer captains spent most of their time at sea when not on the bridge. Warmington never saw the box again: Caslon was very security-minded. Aslett gave Caslon the papers the three had collected.

As the action on land continued, the
Somali
sought to sink the
Krebs.
It was not easy. Whalers were built very sturdily to withstand the ice of the northern seas. Twice the destroyer steamed past the
Krebs
and dropped depth charges near her; the charges shook the British warship and sent her cutlery flying but left the
Krebs
undisturbed. Then the
Somali
fired a broadside: the
Krebs
rocked but stayed afloat. The gunfire finally took effect, and at 10:30 the
Krebs
sank, taking with her the eighteen bodies of her twenty-four-man crew.

By this time the commandos were reembarking. They had sunk 10 ships, destroyed 18 fish-meal and oil factories, and set afire 800,000 gallons of oil. They took with them 12 quislings and 213 German servicemen, civilians, policemen, and merchant mariners. A Norwegian trawler escaped to the Faeroes. At 1:30
P.M.
, the destroyers and the troop carriers assembled and, in day cruising order, set course at best speed down Vestfjord, leaving a pall of smoke over the scene of the day’s operations. At 4
P.M.
, Caslon radioed the success of the mission to the Admiralty, but said nothing about the cipher wheels or the other documents.

As it turned out, these included nothing less than the Enigma key tables for February: the inner and outer settings and the plugboard setting. Upon his return to Scapa, Caslon forwarded everything to the director of naval intelligence. From there the cipher material went to Bletchley Park.