Authors: Anthony G Williams
Churchill grunted.
‘We’re working on it.
The truthful answer is that Portugal will decide to abide by our ancient treaty when she sees that Germany can’t win.
That’s not likely before the Americans come in.’
‘I worry about that,’ admitted Don.
‘Hitler’s declaration of war against the USA was so quixotic and counterproductive that I simply can’t see him making the same mistake again.
And if he doesn’t, the Americans may ignore Europe altogether and concentrate on beating the Japanese.’
Churchill’s expression was grim.
‘I know.
But you can be assured that I will be using every ounce of my influence with the President to avoid such an outcome.’
‘Any indication of the range, yet?’
The Hauptman was beginning to sound impatient as they reached the most dangerous part of the mission.
A sprinkle of bomb flashes and the red glow of fires were visible to port through the thin cloud as the Junkers Ju 188 sped in a shallow dive towards the Mersey estuary.
Liverpool and Birkenhead docks were receiving their usual pasting but, also as usual, the defenders were hitting back.
A vivid mid-air flash followed by a cascade of sparks marked a bomber’s fall.
It wasn’t the searchlights and flak that worried the Hauptman, however.
Outside the flak zone, danger lurked.
‘No indication yet,’ responded the navigator.
The Y-Gerät was an experimental, frequency-hopping version of the radio guidance and ranging system which was supposed to be immune from British interference.
The problem was that it was far from fully proven in action and the Hauptman and his crew regarded it with justifiable suspicion.
The fast new bomber plunged through the cloud and emerged into gloom.
With no lights and no moon, their chances of locating the correct spot without Y-Gerät were minimal.
The tension grew as the Junkers slowly approached sea level, crew straining for the first sighting of land or sea.
‘Still on course,’ reported the navigator.
‘No range indication yet.’
‘Naxos warning!’ shouted the pilot, the plane lurching as he pushed down the nose and opened the throttles.
The gunner in the dorsal turret tensed, peering through the reflector gunsight.
Below and behind him, the other rear gunner crouched behind another MG 131.
The new radar warning receiver was able to pick up the latest British centimetric radar and its alarm sounding in the pilot’s headphones meant only one thing; a night-fighter was on their tail.
The Hauptman levelled off at an indicated 100 metres altitude, not daring to go lower.
He didn’t want to take evasive action, either, if he could help it; they were too close to the target to stray from the Y-Gerät beam.
‘
Naxos
strengthening!’
The BMW radials howled as the Junkers sped at 500 kilometres per hour through the night.
The fighter on their tail had to be a dreaded Mosquito; nothing else was so fast.
Red streaks suddenly flashed past the plane from behind; the gunners instantly responded, the 13mm heavy machine guns drilling fifteen rounds per second at the muzzle flashes of the Mosquito’s cannon.
The Hauptman cursed and yelled ‘cease fire!
’,
hauling the bomber round in a violent curve to try to throw the night-fighter off his track.
No point in trying to fight four 20 mm cannon with a pair of machine guns.
With luck, the tracers of the return fire might have distracted the crew long enough to break contact.
He held the nose of the Junkers up, compensating for a potentially fatal loss of altitude in the turn.
‘Tell me when we’re back in the beam!’
He turned through a full 360 degrees, hoping this would return him to his track, only behind the night-fighter.
At a yell from the navigator he levelled off, breathing hard.
‘On target!’
The Hauptman dropped the plane lower and at last spotted the faintest gleam of whitecaps below.
‘Bombs gone!’
The Junkers lurched upwards as the deadly pressure mines slipped into the sea; if all went to plan, into the narrow shipping lane leading into the Mersey.
The Hauptman immediately hauled the bomber into another tight turn, this time of 180 degrees.
Climbing slowly, he headed for home.
Don Erlang stood on the roof of the
At first, it did not seem credible that any practical use could be made of the port, but on closer inspection he was able to make out frantic activity around the merchant ships in Princes Dock below him.
‘It may look a mess, and at times we’ve only had a dozen berths in service out of a hundred and forty four, but you’d be amazed at the speed with which damage is repaired and the berths made workable again.
The Port Emergency Committee is doing a terrific job.’
There was a distinct note of pride in the voice of the officer from the Liverpool command centre based in the building.
‘Where are the warships based?’
‘The main naval base is much further north at Gladstone Dock in Bootle.
I expect you’ve heard of the Flotilla Club there; it’s like the Windmill – it never closes!
Smaller warships – minesweepers and the like – are mainly across the river in Wallasey and Morpeth Docks, but some use Albert Dock just to the south of us.’
Don took a final breath of air, even at this height polluted with the unmistakable tang of wet, sulphurous soot from the many fires doused during the night, then turned to go below.
‘I’d better get to Western Approaches Command.
They’re expecting me.’
‘I’ll show you the way.’
Once out of the building they walked up
All around them workmen laboured to clear the streets of rubble fallen from the great holes torn into the massive office buildings; incongruously, Don noticed a desk and chair, still perfectly placed, poised on the edge of a sheer drop.
They stepped over lines of six-inch steel piping crossing the road, ‘the water mains have been badly hit,’ commented his guide, ‘doesn’t help the fire-fighters’, then negotiated a crater in the road, some twenty feet across; ‘looks like a two-fifty kilo job’.
‘What effect is the bombing having on transport to the docks?’
‘It’s pretty bad.
Most of the roads have been closed after the worst raids, and we’ve had a lot of unexploded bombs to deal with, which effectively puts more areas out of action.
We’re keeping on top of it though; the Luftwaffe won’t close us down.’
‘What about morale?’
His guide became more cautious.
‘We’re having some problems with rumour-mongering.
We suspect the IRA are behind a lot of the alarms, with stories about trainloads of corpses being shipped out for mass burial, the introduction of martial law, food riots and so forth.
We’re doing our best to counter their propaganda.’
They turned left down
‘Here we are; Derby House.’
Don thanked him and walked through the stone-faced archway.
He was met by a Wren who led him down to the lower ground floor, past massive blast walls constructed the year before when the Command had transferred from Plymouth.
He was shown into an office with a huge window overlooking a wide, double-height room below.
The walls of the large room were completely covered with painted charts of varying scales covering the North Atlantic and the seas around the British Isles.
Wrens climbed up and down moving ladders in front of the charts, marking the changing positions of every ship, convoy and known enemy vessel.
The scene was at the same time familiar and strange; he remembered in his past life visiting this very room in the early 1990s, shortly after its restoration.
Then, smaller paper charts had been stuck onto the walls and there seemed to be differences in the furniture layout which he couldn’t quite pin down.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’
Don smiled and turned, recognising Harold Johnson’s voice.
‘Very.
The nerve centre of Western Approaches Command.
What wouldn’t Hitler give to drop a bomb into the middle of this
lot!
’
Johnson shrugged.
‘Temporary hitch.
We have an identical set-up ten miles away in Knowsley if this is destroyed.’
‘I’m sure that thought is a great comfort to the staff here,’ Don said drily.
‘How many are there now?’
‘Around a thousand, mostly Wrens, but we also have the HQ of Fifteen Group Coastal Command based alongside the naval staff to ensure the best possible co-ordination.
They include squadrons based in places from the Outer Hebrides to Ireland so they cover all of the Western Approaches.
And that’s not the only example of cooperation; there’s a joint navy/air force anti-submarine school at Londonderry.’
Johnson turned to the door.
‘I’ve arranged a meeting in another room so you can be brought right up to date by the intelligence staff.
We can’t stay here; it’s the C-in-C’s office!’
They climbed back up to a conference room on the ground floor.
Don was introduced to Squadron Leader Blackett and Captain Swinton, senior officers from the Coastal Command and Navy intelligence staffs.
At first he was slightly surprised by their age; he had become used to the idea that war was primarily a young man’s business.
Afterwards, he learned that they had been recruited for their experience in commanding ships and squadrons involved in the battle.
‘The key to the battle is information, of course,’ commented Blackett.
‘We get a pretty good service from Bletchley but every now and then the gen dries up for a while.’
Don had a momentary vision of the codebreakers slaving over his computer, trying to keep up with the ever-changing German Enigma codes.
‘The information isn’t precise or topical enough for us to locate particular U-boats but we are often told about wolfpack concentrations in time to divert convoys around them.’
‘Less often now, of course,’ commented Swinton.
‘The new electroboats stay underwater and hunt alone.
Unlike the old tactics, they keep radio communications to an absolute minimum – just a high-speed burst transmission whenever they locate a convoy – so they’re very difficult to track by huff-duff as well.
Fortunately, they haven’t yet realised that they can be detected when listening for directions; their receivers give out local oscillator radiation.’
Don nodded.
High-frequency direction finders were a valuable aid to escort warships in pinpointing U-boat locations as they communicated with their base.
‘How are tactics developing?’
Blackett grimaced.
‘As soon as we perfect one technique, the Germans alter theirs so we have to begin again.
One thing is certain: only the electroboats stand any chance of survival now.
They use schnorkels to operate submerged virtually all of the time, switching to battery power only when they’re preparing to attack.
Even with the new three-centimetre radar which is just being introduced, a schnorkel is very difficult to pick up, especially if there’s any sort of sea running.
Aircrew are almost as likely to spot it by eye, especially if it dips underwater; that often sends a plume of smoke into the air.’
‘Fortunately a schnorkeling sub is noisy,’ commented Swinton, ‘so we’ve developed the technique of sending a destroyer or two well away from the convoy to stop and listen.
We’re trying to develop better hydrophones.
Unfortunately most emphasis prewar was on Asdic, but that has a much more limited detection range.’
Blackett nodded.
‘We’re experimenting with sonobuoys – floating microphones which can radio back the sound of submarine engines to attacking aircraft – and a magnetic anomaly detector which works in the same way as a magnetic mine fuse, indicating when there is a large mass of metal under the surface.
There are big technical problems, though.’
‘What about the relative success of methods of attack?’
The intelligence officers looked at each other.
‘Confirmed U-boat sinkings are approximately evenly divided between ships and aircraft,’ responded Swinton.
‘The combination of Squid with depth-finding Asdic is still very effective, but the electroboats are so fast underwater that the corvette captains have to be very sharp to hit them.’
‘Aircraft are at less of a disadvantage than you might expect.
Because the submarines stay submerged their field of view is limited to what periscopes can provide and they often don’t realise there’s an aircraft overhead until the depth charges detonate around them.
As for more deeply submerged boats,’ Blackett paused and smiled rather mysteriously, ‘the new mine is very promising.’