guess is that they’re not going to try to finish us off and that’s not because they’ve been at great pains not to sink us so far. If they wanted to sink us, one torpedo from the U-boat I’m sure is out there would do the job nicely. Or, if they wanted to sink us from the air, they wouldn’t use a Condor which is really a reconnaissance plane: Heinkels, Heinkel III’s or Stukas with long-range tanks could do the job much more efficiently – and Trondheim is only about two hundred miles from here.’
‘What’s he after, then?’ The Condor was two miles distant now and losing height rapidly.
‘Information.’ McKinnon looked up at the bridge and caught sight of Naseby out on the port wing looking aft towards the approaching Condor. He cupped his hands and shouted: ‘George!’ Naseby swung round.
‘Get down, get down!’ McKinnon made the appropriate gesture with his hand. Naseby raised an arm in acknowledgement and disappeared inside the bridge. ‘Mr Patterson, let’s get inside the superstructure. Now.’
Patterson knew when to ask questions and when not to. He led the way and within ten seconds they were all in shelter except the Bo’sun, who remained in the shattered doorway.
‘Information,’ Patterson said. ‘What information?’
‘One moment.’ He moved quickly to the side of the ship, looked aft for no more than two seconds, then returned to shelter.
‘Half a mile,’ McKinnon said. ‘Very slow, very low, about fifty feet. Information? Shell-holes, say, on the sides or superstructure, something to indicate that we had been in a fight with some vessel. He won’t see any holes on the port side.’
Patterson made to speak but whatever he had to say was lost in the sudden clamour of close-range fire by machine-guns, in the cacophonous fury of hundreds of bullets striking the superstructure and side in the space of seconds, and in the abrupt crescendo of sound as giant aero engines swept by not more than fifty yards away. Another few seconds and all was relatively quiet again.
Jamieson said: ‘Well, yes, I can see now why you told Naseby to get his head down.’
‘Information.’ Patterson sounded aggrieved, almost plaintive. ‘Bloody funny way they set about getting information. And I thought you said they weren’t going to attack us.’
‘I said they wouldn’t sink us. Knocking a few of the crew off would be all grist to their mill. The more of us they can kill, the more they think they’ll have us at their mercy.’
‘You think they got the information they wanted?’
‘I’m certain of it. You can be sure that every eye on that Condor was examining us very closely indeed as they passed by fifty yards away. They won’t have seen the damage to our bows because it’s underwater but they can’t have helped seeing something else that’s underwater up for’ard – our load-line. Unless they’re completely myopic they’re bound to have seen that we’re down by the head. And unless they’re equally dense they’re bound to realize that we’ve either hit something or been hit by something. It couldn’t have been a mine or torpedo or we’d be at the bottom now. They’ll have known at once that we must have rammed something and there won’t be much guessing about what that was.’
‘Dear, oh dear,’ Jamieson said, ‘I don’t think I like this one little bit, Bo’sun.’
‘Nor me, sir. Changes things quite a bit, doesn’t it? Question of the German high command’s priorities, I suppose. A question of alive or dead. Is it more important to them that they take us more or less alive or do they take revenge for their lost U-boat?’
‘Whichever they choose, there’s damn-all we can do about it,’ Patterson said. ‘Let’s go and have lunch.’
‘I think we should wait a moment, sir.’ McKinnon remained still and silent for a few moments, then said: ‘It’s coming back.’
And back it came, flying at the same near wave-top height. The second fly-past was a mirror image of the first: instead of flying stern to stem on the port side it flew stem to stern on the starboard side, again to the accompaniment of the same fusillade of machine-gun fire. Some ten seconds after the firing ceased McKinnon, followed by the others, left the shelter and went to the port rail.
The Condor was off the port quarter, climbing steadily and flying directly away from them.
‘Well, well,’ Jamieson said. ‘We seem to have got off lightly. Bound to have seen those three shell-holes on the starboard side, weren’t they, Bo’sun?’
‘Couldn’t have missed them, sir.’
‘They could be gaining bombing altitude before turning back to settle accounts with us?’
‘He could bomb us from a hundred feet without the slightest bit of danger to himself.’
‘Or maybe he just isn’t carrying any bombs?’
‘No. He’ll be carrying bombs all right. Only the Focke-Wulfs on the big half-circle from Trondheim to Lorient in France round the British Isles, or the ones who patrol as far out as the Denmark Strait don’t carry bombs. They carry extra fuel tanks instead. The ones on shorter patrols always carry bombs – 250-kilo bombs, usually, not the smaller ones that Lieutenant Ulbricht used. The pilot of the Condor is, of course, in direct radio communication with Trondheim, has told them why they’re not hearing from the U-boat any more, but still has been told to lay off us. For the meantime, anyway.’
‘You’re right,’ Patterson said. ‘He’s not coming back. Funny. He could have spent all day – till nightfall at least – circling us and reporting our position. But no, he’s off. I wonder why.’
‘No need to wonder, sir. The Condor’s exit is all the proof we require that we are being tailed by a U-boat. No point in having a U-boat and a plane tailing us at the same time.’
‘Isn’t there anything we can do about that damned U-boat?’
‘Well, we can’t ram him because we don’t know where he is and we can be certain that there’s no chance that he’ll surface because he’s bound to have heard by now – or will hear very soon – what happened to the other U-boat. We can, just possibly, shake him off but not at this moment. Sure, by shutting off our engines and generators we could make him lose contact but that wouldn’t be for very long – he’d just raise his periscope, traverse the horizon and nail us again.’
‘Not at this moment – you mean, after it gets dark?’
‘Yes, I thought we might try then. We lie doggo for half an hour, then steam away on a new course at very low engine revolutions – the less racket we make the less chance there is of our being picked up. Might take us the better part of an hour to reach full speed. At the best, it’s only a gamble and even if we do win that gamble it’s still no guarantee that we’re free and clear. The U-boat will just radio Trondheim that they’ve lost us. They still know approximately where we are and a Condor with a few dozen flares can cover an awfully big area in a very short time.’
‘You do my morale a power of good,’ Jamieson said. ‘Their tactics puzzle me. Why do they have a Condor fly out here, fly back again and then, as you suggest, fly out here at dusk? Why doesn’t it stay out here all the time and have another Condor relieve it. It doesn’t make sense to me.’
‘It
