"FOR HX204 CONTACT REPORTS SENT 1803 APX 05 AT 093 AND 1807 APX 09 AT 046 FROM YOUR 1630 LOCSTAT RECOMMEND REINFORCE REAR SCREEN VESSEL CLYDESPR SENDS NW"
"FOR CLYDESPR CANNOT REINFORCE REAR SCREEN REMAINING ESCORTS TOO SLOW TO REJOIN VIPEROUS SENDS"
The Old Man read the new signals in the dim glow of the hooded binnacle light and pencilled two crosses on the chart. Two more contact reports, showing a pair of U-Boats in a rough north-south line. They'd be on the surface now, running east at full speed to catch the convoy. With the merchantmen making a steady twelve knots it would take them over three hours to close in, and another hour or two to get into attack position, so the convoy would be in danger from about midnight. If HMS Leven, idling in the convoy's wake, could delay them for six hours then dawn would be approaching before they were in position and they'd have to break off or dive; dived, they would steadily fall behind and the convoy might lose them before night came again.
The Old Man made his decision. "Warm up the radar and stand by to activate. First Lieutenant to the bridge and get a can of cocoa or soup up here, too." The radar didn't have a long range but the sea state was quite good, a low rolling swell with no choppy seas or whitecaps, and they should be able to spot a surfaced U-Boat as much as ten miles away. Of course if these U-Boats were fitted with radar detectors they'd instantly pick up the searching beam, but that would force them to dive and that, too, would delay them. It was the best he could do. As Viperous had told Clyde Approaches, both Compass Rose and Wallflower were too slow to rejoin the convoy if they came back to reinforce him; each hour they fell behind would take them three to catch up.
Stanbridge, the First Lieutenant, was on the bridge in less than three minutes. Buttoning his duffel coat as he leaned over the chart table, he listened carefully to the Old Man's instructions then nodded his understanding. "Very good, sir. I'll call you immediately we get a contact."
The Old Man nodded. "Thanks, Number One. Keep the ASDIC warmed up too; we'll need it in a hurry if we spot anything. And the Coxswain and Yeoman aren't to be woken except with my permission." The First Lieutenant acknowledged, and the Old Man crossed the bridge to his sea bunk, crawled under the filthy blanket and closed his eyes. Exhausted as he was, he was asleep in seconds. His body hunched against the cool September night and the constant light spray from the bows. In his dream he stepped from a small boat onto a wooded island, and he carried a laughing girl in a long white dress.
- X -
The Submarine Plotting Room was a storm of activity with, in the calm at its eye, the great Plot itself. Desks and map boards lined three walls and Wrens and Naval ratings bustled between them, handing over message slips and marking charts. Messengers flowed constantly in and out, telephones rang and the teleprinter in the corner chattered every couple of minutes. Every piece of information that was generated about the Atlantic - radio intercepts and direction finding, sighting reports from ships and aircraft, weather forecasts, even the hush-hush Ultra messages - was sucked into the Submarine Plotting Room, studied, evaluated, analyzed and finally slotted into the huge jigsaw that was the Plot. Forty feet long and twenty high, it covered an entire long wall of the room and showed the whole North Atlantic. Scattered across it were magnetic markers showing the location of every convoy and roving escort group at sea, and the estimated positions of the U-Boats. Every new piece of the jigsaw was finally approved by the Staff Officer Operations, written on a log slip and handed to a Wren, who'd roll her ladder into position, climb up and move a marker to its new location. Now she shifted one, marked HX-204, six inches to the east. Where it had been she placed a solitary metal stud holding a slip of paper on which one word was scrawled - Leven. An inch from it she added a black circle to the two that were already there.
The Staff Officer Operations scowled at the amended Plot, then picked up her pen and opened the signal message pad.
- X -
"FOR HX204 CONTACT REPORT SENT 1840 APX 2 AT 132 FROM YOUR 1800 LOCSTAT ADVISE NOW THREE CONFIRMED UBOAT CLOSING FROM ASTERN CLYDESPR SENDS NW"
Stanbridge digested the signal and marked the new contact on the chart. If the two previous contacts were overtaking the convoy on the surface that now made three in line abreast, spread out across about twelve miles. The southern two should be close to radar range by now. He glanced at the sleeping figure by the ASDIC hut, briefly considered waking him then decided against it. Let the Old Man sleep; he'd asked to be woken when they found something and they hadn't, yet. Stanbridge picked up his dividers and bent over the chart for a few seconds, then gave a quiet helm order and flipped open the bridge log. As he began noting the order Leven increased speed from three to six knots and turned northwest.
He woke slowly, reluctantly. For a moment his exhausted body tried to drag him back down into sleep, but his mind wearily asserted itself and recognised the importance of the hand on his shoulder. He pulled the blanket off his face and propped himself up on one elbow. "What's up, Williams?"
"Radar contact, Sir."
The Old Man studied the chart. Radar had held the contact for five minutes before he'd been woken, long enough for Stanbridge to be sure that it wasn't a whale or a sudden swirl of turbulent water. It was running almost due east at a touch over 16 knots, it was seven miles northwest of them and it was small. Out here, that meant it was a U-Boat. "Well done, Number one. Coxswain and Flags to the bridge, get King on the ASDIC and make sure the set's warmed up. Pipe to quarters, all weapons closed up and have the four-inch loaded with starshell. Come round to 330 and ring for full ahead. This one doesn't know we're coming." They'd held the contact for five minutes, after all, and it hadn't dived. It had no radar detector. The first warning the U-Boat would have of Leven's arrival would be the bursting starshell.
- X -
"FOR CLYDESPR HAVE PROB UBOAT ON RADAR 54 39N 29 42W AM ENGAGING LEVEN SENDS JW"
She scrawled the log slip and handed it to the Wren. The markers for the frigate and the U-Boat were moved to their new locations, a thousand miles away in the black Atlantic. Watching, she felt the familiar fear creep up on her.