Submariner (2008)
| Submariner (2008) | |
| Fullerton, Alexander | |
| (2008) | |
| Tags: | WWII/Navel/Fiction WWII/Navel/Fictionttt |
Malta, 1942. Lieutenant Mike Nicholson commands Ursa, one of the 10th Submarine Flotilla’s boats who, in their time, destroyed more than a million tons of war supplies shipped from Italian ports to Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Western Desert. German Intelligence has recently warned Berlin that unless drastic measures are undertaken, the Mediterranean and Middle East will be lost to them.But Ursa is a lucky submarine, and Mike is the flotilla’s top scorer. He also has problems of a more personal nature: before leaving England about two years ago he was heavily involved in an affair with the wife of another submariner, who’s now bringing his own new U-class boat, Unsung, to the flotilla . . .
'His action passages are superb, and he never puts a period foot wrong' OBSERVER 'You don't read a novel by Alexander Fullerton. You LIVE it' SOUTH WALES ECHO 'The research is unimpeachable and the scent of battle quite overpowering' SUNDAY TIMES
Alexander Fullerton is the author of The Nicholas Everard series and the SOE series. He served with distinction as a submarine officer in the British Royal Navy during World War II.
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.
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
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
To Andrew Hewson, with thanks for heaven knows
how many years of support and friendship.
Home, sweet home, he thought – might even have murmured it aloud – and it certainly looked a lot less
un
sweet 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
until 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.