“Contact bearing starboard zero-five. Range one thousand.”
Closer! More nearly ahead!
Keeling
must be answering her helm better. Victory was nearer than he had thought.
Keeling
was shearing through white water now. She was crossing her own wake, having turned in a full circle.
“Contact bearing port zero-five. Range eleven hundred yards. Opening, sir.”
“Left full rudder! “ roared Krause.
The U-boat had fooled him. At the moment of the previous report she had been turning in the opposite direction. Now she was off on a different track entirely, with
Keeling
still swinging away from her. She had regained her lost hundred yards and would regain more before
Keeling
could come round again. McAlister was spinning the wheel round savagely.
Keeling
lay far over, took in another green sea, and staggered.
“Contact bearing port one-zero. Range twelve hundred.”
The U-boat might be getting clear away. She had made the best use of her superior manoeuvrability, and she had taken full advantage of the necessary time interval intervening between a change of course on her part and the news of it reaching her enemy’s captain. The information reaching
Keeling
was limited and slow; the deductions to be drawn from it could be faulty--we know in part, and we prophesy in part; the U-boat captain was aware of
Keelings
limitations.
“Contact bearing port one-five. Range indefinite.”
“Very well.”
Most assuredly had the U-boat fooled him. She had gained some considerable distance on him and widened her bearing. Three minutes ago he had been congratulating himself upon closing on her. Now he felt fear in case she should get clear away. But
Keeling
was swinging fast.
“Contact bearing port one-five. Range indefinite.”
“Very well.”
With left full rudder
Keeling
was chasing her tail again in the opposite direction. An ignorant observer might think the analogy to a kitten’s behaviour a close one, if he were not aware of the life-and-death battle she was waging against an invisible opponent.
“Contact bearing port one-five. Range twelve hundred yards.”
So that was the measure of what he had lost. If he were fooled a couple more times like this he might well find himself on an opposite course to the U-boat, and the latter would get clear away before he could turn again. The talker was sneezing, explosively, once and then twice. Now everyone was looking at him. The whole battle could hinge upon his mastering the convulsion; the sneeze of one single seaman might change the fate of empires. He straightened himself and pressed his telephone button.
“Repeat.”
Everyone waited until he spoke again. “Contact bearing port one-three. Range eleven hundred yards.”
So
Keeling
was
regaining the lost ground.
“You going to do that again?” demanded Krause.
“No, sir. Don’t think so, sir.”
The talker had brought his handkerchief out from his bundled clothing, but was not attempting to use it with his instrument clamped before his face. If he was going to have further fits of sneezing it would be best to relieve him. He decided to risk it.
“Contact bearing port one-one. Range one thousand.”
“Very well.”
The U-boat had met with a limitation, too. Having gained in distance from
Keeling
she was out on a wider arc so that
Keeling
could turn within her, closing up until equilibrium was again established, for U-boat and destroyer to circle about each other again, like planet and satellite. The equilibrium could only be broken by an extra piece of good fortune on the part of the U-boat enabling her to break off contact altogether--or an extra piece of good management on the part of
Keeling
enabling her to close with her antagonist. And the time factor might incline to either party; if the struggle were sufficiently prolonged the U-boat would find her batteries and her air exhausted--but if the struggle were sufficiently prolonged
Keeling
might find herself so far from her post of duty with the convoy that she would have to turn away and rejoin. A game of catch, a game of hide and seek; but a game with table stakes played for keeps.
“Contact bearing port one-one. Range one thousand.”
“Very well.”
Destroyer and submarine were circling about each other. As long as this particular situation prevailed,
Keeling
had the edge. Time was on her side; the U-boat’s batteries would not last for ever, and the chances were more in favour of
Keeling
closing the gap through unusual conditions than that the U-boat could simply outrun and out-turn her. As with the last time they had circled, it was up to the U-boat to do something about the situation.
“Contact bearing port one-one. Range steady at one thousand.”
“Very well.”
Krause took a sudden decision. “Right full rudder.”
A fifth of a second’s hesitation in McAlister’s reply; the tiniest sharp note of surprise or protest in his tone. It was as if
Keeling
were breaking off the battle. McAlister was spinning the wheel round clockwise;
Keeling
lurched, rolled, shipped a hundred tons of water as her circular momentum was abruptly nullified and then reversed.
Two children running round a table, one in pursuit of the other. It was the oldest stratagem in the world for the pursuer to reverse direction, and run the other way round, for the pursued to run straight into his arms; it was up to the pursued to anticipate that turn and turn himself at the same moment. In this pursuit of U-boat by destroyer it was not possible for the destroyer to attempt the same manoeuvre; the destroyer turned far too slowly and far too wide, reversing her turn would take her far out of sonar range; it would be, as McAlister thought, an abandonment of the pursuit. But that was not all the story. In this pursuit it was up to the U-boat to do something different, for if she maintained her circling course indefinitely she would certainly be caught in the end.
There was really only one change she could make, to turn suddenly and head in another direction, in the opposite direction for choice. She had practised that trick once already with considerable success. She turned faster than the destroyer in any case; and she had the advantage of gaining time. There were the seconds it took for Ellis to note the change in the bearing. There were the seconds it took for that change to be reported to the bridge. There were the seconds it took for new helm orders to be given, and then there were the long, long seconds it took for
Keeling
to alter course. The U-boat could start her turn at her own selected moment, in response to a single order from her captain. It would be half a minute before the destroyer could begin to imitate her, and half a minute on practically reciprocating courses meant a divergence of some hundreds of yards, an enormous gain. The U-boat had only to repeat the manoeuvre successfully a few times to be out of sonar range and safe.
But what if the destroyer anticipated the manoeuvre, and turned a second or two before the U-boat did? Then for those seconds, or longer, until the U-boat realized what the destroyer was doing--and she would be under much the same handicap regarding the translation of information in action as the destroyer had been labouring under--the U-boat would be running straight into the destroyer’s arms, like the child running round the table. A childish stratagem indeed, simplicity itself, like most of the stratagems of war; but, like most of the stratagems of war, more easily thought of than executed. Not only quickness of thought was necessary for the execution, but resolution, determination. It was necessary to make up one’s mind and carry the plan through, to balance risk against gain and to be neither deterred by the one nor dazzled by the other. At the moment when Krause gave the order for right rudder
Keeling
had the U-boat well within sonar range, she was in hot pursuit, and even if she took no radical new action she had a slight chance of closing on her enemy. The turn meant risking all this. If the U-boat simply continued her course while
Keeling
wheeled away loss of all sonar contact would ensue practically for certain. The U-boat would be free to carry out any attack on the approaching convoy that her captain might decide upon. That was the stake that Krause was laying on the table, apparently. But it was not as great as it appeared, for there was the consideration that if he went on circling after the U-boat, turning, tardily, after she turned, he would gradually be left behind, would gradually find himself on a wider and wider bearing and would eventually be shaken off. He was not staking a certainty against a possibility, but one possibility against another.
There was a further consideration that might have influenced Krause; it might have influenced him but it did not. He was handling his ship, so to speak, under the eyes of the battle-hardened crews of the Polish destroyer and the British and Canadian corvettes. They had fought a dozen actions and he had never fought one. They would be keenly interested in the standard of the performance the Yank would put up, especially as mere chance put them under his command, especially as he had called them off from one pursuit already. They might be amused, they might be contemptuous, they might be spiteful. Some temperaments might have given some consideration to this side of the matter. It is a fact that Krause gave it none.
To analyse in this fashion all the tactical elements of the situation, and then the moral factors which led to Krause’s uttering the order for right rudder, would take a keen mind several minutes, and Krause’s decision had been reached in no more than one or two seconds without any conscious analysis at all, as the child running round the table suddenly reverses his course without stopping to think. A fencer’s parry changes into riposte in the tenth of a second, in the fiftieth of a second; that comparison might have additional force because (although it was not often remembered now) eighteen years before, and fourteen years before, Krause had been on the Olympic fencing team.
Keeling
wallowed as she made her turn, shipping green water.
“Contact bearing indefinite,” said the caller.
“Very well.”
In the confusion of the water that was not to be wondered at.
Keeling
was coming round.
“Ease the rudder. Meet her,” ordered Krause.
Keeling
had now completed her turn. McAlister repeated the order, and
Keeling
steadied herself.
“Contact bearing port zero-two. Range eight hundred yards,” said the talker.
“Very well.”
The manoeuvre had met with success.
Keeling’s
turn had anticipated the U-boat’s. She had her enemy almost dead ahead of her now, and she had closed in by two hundred invaluable yards.
“Steady as you go,” said Krause.
The U-boat might still be turning, probably was; if so it was better to let her continue across
Keeling’s
bows, losing more distance.
“Contact bearing dead ahead. Up Doppler,” said the talker.
The U-boat had continued her turn, then, coming still closer into
Keeling’s
power. The Doppler effect indicated that she and
Keeling
were right in line, on the same course; in other words
Keeling
was on the U-boat’s tail and overhauling her at their difference in speed, six knots or so, and less than half a mile behind. Four minutes of this and they would be right over her. There was the temptation to let loose all
Keeling’s
forty thousand horsepower, so as to leap the intervening distance, but that temptation must be resisted because of the deafening effect any increase in speed would have on the sonar.
“Contact bearing starboard zero-one. Range seven hundred. Up Doppler.”
They were overhauling her rapidly. The Doppler effect and the smallness of the change in bearing indicated that she was not turning at the moment Ellis got the last echo. The U-boat captain down there, having swung his boat out of the circle, had had to wait to hear from his own echo-ranging apparatus; perhaps he had not trusted the first report; perhaps he was waiting to see if
Keeling
were turning farther still; perhaps he was taking a second or two to make up his mind as to what to do next, and he was losing time, time and distance. He had turned straight out of the circle, not completely reversing his course, and he must have been astonished to find his adversary’s bows pointed straight at him when he steadied on the course he hoped would carry him to safety. Now he must manoeuvre again; three more minutes steady on this course and he was lost. He could turn to starboard or he could turn to port. Anticipate him once more and he would be close overside. His last turn had been to starboard; were his reactions such that he would instinctively turn to port this time, or would he be more cunning and repeat his previous turn? Krause had two seconds to think this all out, much longer than, when blade to blade, the fencer has to decide whether his adversary is going to lunge or feint.
“Right standard rudder.”
“Right standard rudder.”
At the moment of the reply the talker reported. “Contact bearing starboard zero-two. Range six hundred yards.”
Only six hundred yards between them; not too wide a turn, then.
“Ease the rudder.”
“Ease the rudder.”
And this was the moment to catch the eye of Lieutenant Nourse, torpedo officer and assistant gunnery officer standing in the starboard after-corner of the wheel-house.
“Stand by for medium pattern.” “Aye aye, sir.”
Nourse spoke into his mouth-piece. Krause gulped with excitement. The moment might be very close. It was always true, handling ships at sea, that time seemed to move faster and faster as the crisis approached. Two minutes ago action seemed far off. Now
Keeling
might be dropping her depth-charges at any second.
“Contact bearing port one-one. Range six hundred.”
That change in bearing was due to
Keeling
s turn, uncompleted at the moment when Ellis got his echo. The next report would be the vital one. Nourse was standing tense, waiting. The crews of “K” guns and of the depth-charge racks would be crouching ready to go. As Krause looked back from Nourse to the talker his gaze met momentarily that of a strange pair of eyes, he looked back again. It was Dawson, communications officer, clip-board in hand, come up to the bridge from his station below. That meant that some message--which must be radio-- had come in too secret for anyone to see save Krause and Dawson. Secret and therefore important. But it could not be as important for the next few seconds as the business in hand. Krause waved Dawson aside as the talker spoke again.