Killer ship, p.2
Killer Ship, page 2
The experiment was risky, certainly. But then his presence in these waters was risky—in war you were surrounded by risks. He said;
“All right, Bob, I suppose it’s dark enough. Get him up here.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Randall answered in his normal voice, and turned to find the bosun’s mate.
The bosun’s mate was not long away. He had, in fact, found his man waiting at the foot of the bridge ladder, as if he had been expecting this call to the bridge. Randall heard the ladder shaking and crossed to its head. He greeted the figure which stepped onto the compass-platform and led him back to Bentley’s shadowy shape against the wind-break.
“Doctor Hindmarsh, sir,” Randall murmured.
Bentley turned, and recognised the lanky, thin length of the man who had come aboard early that morning just before they’d sailed. Now, in his trench coat and rimless glasses, he looked as American as the Statue of Liberty. Bentley tried to keep the impatience out of his voice—this man had a job to do.
“Good evening, Hindmarsh. I imagine it’s dark enough? I don’t want to hurry you, but it’s important that your experiment is conducted as quickly as possible.”
He had not wholly succeeded in making his voice pleasant. The scientist rubbed the side of his long nose with his thumb, and grinned.
“Sure, Captain, I know how you feel. Maybe I might save a lot of talk and excuses if I tell you that on the way out here my ship was torpedoed—off Midway. Once is enough, as the man said I’ll sure be as quick as I can—half an hour at the most.”
Bentley nodded. A clumping noise came from the other side of the bridge. He turned his head and picked out the torpedo-officer—the ship’s electrical chief—busy with what looked like black boxes and yards of electrical leads. Somehow it helped to know that one of his own seasoned officers was mixed up in this thing—Torps, above all would realise the need for speed. His head came back.
“Good, I see Torps is on the job over there. Perhaps you can tell us what all this is about while your gear’s being set up? It might help if we knew ... ”
“With pleasure, Captain.” The American’s voice was friendly and easy. “Maybe you fellers have heard of our Doctor Edgerton?”
“Edgerton?” Bentley shook his head. Randall said;
“What’s his line? Gunnery, bombs?”
Hindmarsh smiled. “Nothing so simple. He’s—well, he’s a photographer, I suppose you could call him.”
“Judging by your voice, he’s a pretty special sort of photographer,” Bentley decided.
“You can say that again, Captain. Edgerton’s my chief back in Massachusetts. His speciality is—or was until Tojo let go—industrial photography. His cameras move so fast that they can photograph a bullet hitting a light-bulb and then leaving the other side before the glass breaks.”
“Shades of my pocket Brownie,” Randall grinned.
“Yeah. Anyway, now he’s on war work, of course. Using his stroboscope. Okay, okay, I’ll make it short,” he said at the puzzled looks on their faces. “Without going into technical details, Edgerton’s developed a flash of light which sorta puts the sun’s light in the candle class. Just for a fraction of a second, mind. But that’s all we need. Now the stroboscopic camera, tied up with this flash of intense light, is as much a part of laboratory equipment as the microscope.”
“Just a minute,” Bentley said curiously. “You mean you’ve got one of those things on board here? You can take an outsize sort of flashlight picture of the ocean at night?”
“Captain,” the scientist smiled, “you should have been a lecturer. That’s exactly what I hope to do. I’m not the only guy working on this thing. We’ve got half a dozen men in different war theatres. Some in Burma, some in Africa, some working with the Air Force in England. Look.” He leaned forward, and his voice became thick and eager. “Just think of what’s happening at this very moment on this dark night all over the world. Anywhere where enemy troops are facing each other. Just imagine the movement that’s going on!”
“Hell!” Bentley said softly.
“Maybe it’s across a river in Burma; maybe it’s a squadron of tanks in France or Italy or Tunisia. Or maybe it’s something lining-up a convoy from Halifax in the Atlantic. All in the dark. Unseen. Just imagine what a help it would be if an aircraft, or a ship, could take a picture of what’s happening in the dark tonight!”
He stopped, and the words hung in the night between them. Each naval man was evaluating the enormous possibilities of this photographic experiment. And, suddenly, its dangers.
“Yes, I can imagine,” Bentley said slowly. “If this light flash of yours is as good as it seems, the idea is brilliant—used in an aircraft. But you’re going to flash this thing from a ship. D’you see what that means? I might as well turn on all my signalling lights, undarken ship and play a brass band as well. Brother U-boats, here I am! Come and get it boys!”
Hindmarsh breathed in deeply. He exhaled slowly, and said;
“Yes, Captain, we’ve thought about that. But the flash is intense, and lasts only for a fraction of a second. Sure, an enemy could see it. But he wouldn’t know what made it—a bomb or torpedo flash, maybe. Opposed to that, the ship that lets off this flash will have a beautiful picture of anything that’s on the sea around him.”
“We get that picture now with radar,” Randall told him quickly.
“Not quite. Things like temperature inversion, grass—I’m telling you?” He grinned briefly before going on. “How about in a heavy sea, with a surfaced submarine’s echo all mixed up with grass echoes from the waves? And then there’s the non-echoing section of a radar blip, just the same as the area of immunity in an asdic beam. Eh?”
“Yes, you’re right,” Bentley agreed. He looked keenly into the thin face before him. “I don’t want to be unkind, but radar and asdic have been proved. Your method, I understand, is still in the melting pot, sort of thing?”
“That’s right, Captain. But maybe after tonight I’ll change your mind.”
“Maybe,” Bentley grinned, “I hope you do.”
He nodded, and the gesture was both dismissal and an injunction to Hindmarsh to get on with it. Experiments to shorten the war were all very laudable, but Bentley had a new ship and two hundred men on his slop-chit.
“All right, Captain,” the scientist agreed, his voice still easy. “My gear’s all up here. I’ll let you know when to turn your faces away from the flash.”
He stalked on long legs over to the torpedo-officer. Randall tugged at his ear. “I’m damned if I know,” he grunted, “sounds a bit screwy to me.”
Bentley secretly agreed. But aloud he said;
“Navy office are behind this. They must have weighed up all the pros and cons. The bloke must have something or else we wouldn’t have been sent out here.”
“No argument,” Randall said, “but why the hell couldn’t he have experimented in harbour? It’s just as dark there.”
“I’d thought of that. Maybe there’s some technical reason. Or perhaps the brass want to know the result in actual action conditions. After all, that’s the only way to test the thing, I suppose.”
“I guess you’re right. Only one thing worries me—why the hell were we the privileged ones?”
“For the same reason,” Bentley smiled, “that we’ve got into all sorts of other strife—because you’re cursed with a junior commanding-officer. The flotilla-leader is at this moment grogging up ashore in Moresby.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” Randall tested the moorings of his ear again. He grinned into his captain’s face. “And if we put on another kettle down in the engine room on the way home we might get in there with him before the bar closes.”
The first-lieutenant was right in one respect—Wind Rode was to use all her boilers. But it was to be a long time before her second-in-command relaxed with a drink.
Chapter Two
HINDMARSH WAS AS good as his word. The destroyer had cruised on not much more than a mile before he crossed to the two officers and told them he was ready.
“I will train my equipment over the starboard bow. Please be sure to keep your heads turned the other way. The flash will not damage your eyes physically, but you won’t see much for half an hour if it catches you. When you’re ready, Captain.”
“All right,” Bentley said. “Any particular speed you want the ship to do?”
“I’d like her stopped. Less vibration.”
The shake of the captain’s head was as vehement as his first-lieutenant’s thoughts.
“I can’t stop her here,” he exclaimed. “That’s New Guinea over ... ” He paused. Why waste time explaining the obvious? “No, I will not stop the ship,” he ended curtly.
Hindmarsh may have been disappointed, but they could not tell from his voice.
“Okay, Captain, she’s your boat. And I suppose I’ll get a more accurate picture of the equipment’s worth if she’s moving. How about this speed then? I’ll get all details of speed and course and weather conditions from you later. Now, about the test. I’m taking two shots, one on either bow. For the first one I’ll give a count-down, say from five. Same for the second one. Er—might I suggest you warn any of the crew on deck?”
“Right,” Bentley juggled the microphone clear. His voice reached throughout the quiet grey ship. “This is the captain. We are about to carry out a scientific experiment. A count-down from five will be given over the speakers. There will be two tests, one on the starb’d bow, the other on the port bow. As from now, all hands on the upper-deck are to keep their eyes averted from starb’d. And from port for the next run. You will be warned when the second run is about to start. There will be a very bright flash of light. That’s all.”
He replaced the microphone and looked over his shoulder at the scientist.
“Ready when you are.”
Without speaking, Hindmarsh stepped across to his equipment. Randall took the microphone and stepped to the rear of the bridge, as far as the lead would allow. Then be sat down on the grating round the binnacle, his back to the starb’d bow. Before he sat down beside him, Bentley was struck with the queer certainty that, for some seconds, his ship would be unprotected on the starb’d side. He consoled himself with the recognition that it would only be seconds before the lookouts and gun-crews resumed their normal nightly vigil. He heard Hindmarsh’s laconic drawl say;
“Stand by for the test.”
The whole bridge was suddenly tense. Though Hindmarsh’s experiment was double Dutch to most of the team, they did not expect any startling bang. But perhaps because the danger to their eyes would be so silent, they were more impressed with the light’s power. They looked strange, huddled there, each man turning his back on the starb’d side as if some huge wave, or some frightful, terrifying force, were about to leap upon them.
Hindmarsh began counting. “Five, four, three, two, one—now!”
Bentley did not have his eyes completely covered; he had his cupped hands on either side of them, and he was staring at the deck, his face turned to the port side, away from the queer-looking gear Hindmarsh had mounted on steel legs against the fore wind-break. Then in an abrupt flash of brilliant light the whole bridge and superstructure of the ship leaped into glaring visibility ... intense, strident, like a shout. Then blackness cut down like a shutter released.
“Jumpin’ jewfish!” Randall gasped beside him. “That was brighter than the sun!”
They hauled themselves to their feet, and Bentley cursed himself for not completely covering his eyes. He could see nothing but a myriad whirling sparks of fire behind his squinted eyelids. He hung on to the familiar binnacle, and gradually the pyrotechnics faded. Hindmarsh’s voice came, calm and factual;
“That was quite good, I think we should have a clear picture.”
“Bully for you,” Randall growled. “If every blasted Jap sub in the South Pacific didn’t get a clear picture of us, I’ll suck a sausage.”
Through the gradually returning dimness of normal night they heard his chuckle.
“I hope no Jap lookout was facing our way,” the American decided. “He won’t be much good for half an hour if he was. Now, Captain, I’ll swing over on the other side and take a checking picture.”
“All right,” Bentley said. His voice was almost a growl, but he had been enormously impressed by the power of Hindmarsh’s equipment. “You’re finished then?”
“Finished then, yes. We can go back to base after this next one.”
“What?” Randall grinned. “All that and no picture? Don’t we see the results? I thought you’d have had your dark-room gear along with you.”
“I have,” Hindmarsh replied, bending to make an adjustment to his big camera. He came upright. “Seeing as you’ve been so cooperative, I’ll let you have a look at what we caught.” He seemed to be enjoying the impression his strobe had gained.
“How jolly,” Randall smirked, “I’ve always wanted to know what a wave looked like at night.”
“Ready?” Bentley cut into the banter.
“Ready, sir. Would you warn the crew again?”
U-221 had half-completed her battery charging. Seaman Klaus was still on the bridge, but Kapitanleutnant Kamenz and Commander Murimoto had gone below. The bridge was now in charge of Oberleutnant Kranzbuhler, the first-lieutenant.
There was little to do. Kranzbuhler knew that Klaus was a conscientious and experienced lookout. The submarine’s radar was operating, ‘mattress’ transmitters secured to the sides of the bridge. Because the four-inch gun was directly abaft the bridge, there was no transmitter fitted there, which meant that the U-boat, over a twenty degree arc dead astern, had a blind spot. Every hour Kranzbuhler would connect up engines and swing her low stern a little, so that one of the mattresses on the side could cover that blind spot.
Radar waves, like light waves, travel in a direct line. When conducting a surface search, even a warship’s radar reaches out not much more than fifteen miles, because in that distance the curvature of the earth’s surface hides a possible target. U-221’s radar range was confined to something less than fifteen miles, owing to her lowness in the water. Kamenz did not have her fully surfaced, not much more than the bridge was clear, so that getting her under would take the minimum time.
If a destroyer or bigger ship came upon them, their radar would warn them in more than enough time to slip under and away; and even if they had just missed detecting a ship from dead astern, the blind spot, in the hour’s interval before he swung her and searched astern, the approaching ship would be either seen by Klaus or else her propellers would be picked up on their hydrophone.
So Kranzbuhler was not worried, just normally alert. He had swung her a few minutes before, and nothing showed on radar, and now he had an hour in which to think.
He wished he had more to report on Kamenz to the Party. Almost two months since they had left Kiel, and there was nothing in his notebook except one or two remarks, the Junker had passed about the swarms of SS men and Gestapo agents who could be better employed in a fighting man’s uniform; and then he had contradicted himself at once by sneering that he would have none of them fighting with him anyway. Then, Kranzbuhler remembered, the captain had looked quickly at him.
Why? the first-lieutenant thought, leaning his close-cropped blond head back against the periscope standard. He would like to have claimed it, but he knew there had been no fear in the captain’s quick look. It had been—to be honest with himself—more like knowledge of his position in the Party, and contempt.
The lieutenant’s fingers balled themselves into a fist. He tapped it slowly against his chin, feeling, recognising, the dislike of Kamenz’s superior Prussian personality welling inside him. That was the sort of thing the Party was supposed to wipe out. He had been a member of the Hitler Youth Movement, faithful and loyal, learning his lessons well, waiting and striking efficiently at the malcontents and unbelievers in dark streets after they had left their anti-Party meetings. And now, after all that, a lip-curling Prussian belonging to a degenerate nobility was in command over him.
And not because Kranzbuhler could not handle the boat just as efficiently. Oh, no—there was some pull somewhere, some probably-bought influence which had gained Kamenz this posting. And that was why he would wait upon the captain’s every word and gesture, noting it, reporting it to the appropriate Gauleiter when they got back.
Kranzbuhler understood his real mission on this cruise well enough. He understood something else—there was no way he could bring Kamenz down except through the Party; indiscipline or disobedience would not be tolerated by Doenitz. Recognition of that sparked his sense of duty and self-preservation. He raised his binoculars and carefully swept the dark sea ahead of U-221’s low-slung bows.
Seaman Klaus was also actuated by self-preservation—preserving himself from his captain’s anger at inefficiency. He had already searched the horizon and sea on either beam and on either side of the bow. He knew the radar’s limitations, and because of them he concentrated again on that blind spot dead astern.
Almost at once he saw a vague shape, nothing more definite than a lighter shade of the surrounding blackness. He subdued his first reaction, which was to shout to the lieutenant. What he had seen might be a wave top, or a trick of starlight gleaming on the black back of a wave. He reached into the pocket of his watertight jacket and brought out a piece of paper. With this he vigorously rubbed the lenses of his binoculars. Then he lifted them again, taking his bearing from the barrel of the four-inch gun.
Klaus was an experienced lookout, a man trained not only to sight alien objects, but to use his common sense in interpreting what he saw. He thought he had sighted a ship, but under these conditions he could not be sure. He knew that if it were a ship out there, behind them, that ship would be moving. He concentrated his sight at the base of the vague grey shape, and then shifted his line of vision so that he was not looking directly at what he expected to see, but a little to one side—a wise and seasoned lookout, Seaman Klaus, who knew that if you look straight at an object at night it disappears.
