Operation Absolom (Carter's Commandos Book 1), page 25
“It won’t make any difference to us.” Carter said. “So long as the snow is covering the coast the Germans won’t send up any aircraft.
“What’s that then?” Green said, pointing at a dot just above the distant horizon, to the south west of them, almost exactly above the prow of the E-Boat.
“Must be one of ours.” Carter replied. He reached for the big naval binoculars that sat in a custom-made holder within easy reach of the wheel. With the boat pitching and yawing Carter decided to go up onto the flying bridge to get a better view.
On the course that the boat was taking, coupled to its speed, the northerly wind could barely be felt. He leant his elbows on the bridge railing to steady the binoculars, then dropped to one knee so that he could put his eyes to them. Adjusting the focus, the dot took on the shape of an aircraft.
Carter could see that it was a twin engined plane, but it only had a single tail plane, so it wasn’t an Me 110. For the same reason it also couldn’t be a Dornier, but could be either a Ju88 or a Heinkel He111. Carter ruled out the Heinkel, as it didn’t seem to have the ‘greenhouse’ glass nose that made up the front of the German bomber. So it was probably a Ju88 or something British, he concluded. It could be a Beaufighter. He had seen a couple of them quite close up over Kirkesfjord and the shape seemed to be similar.
Whatever it was it must have spotted the E-Boat, because it went into a turn and flew towards them, losing altitude as it came so that it could take a closer look. A couple of minutes later it flew over the boat from fore to aft, at about a hundred feet, it’s RAF roundels clearly visible on the under sides of the wings.
“We’re safe now, Prof.” Carter said. “They’ll report our position and the navy and will come and get us.”
Carter was proven wrong almost before the words were out of his mouth. The aircraft made a tight turn that took it out onto the E-Boat’s beam, giving the crew a side-on shot and came back at them, four twinkling lights beneath its nose indicating that it had opened fire with its cannons. Spouts of water stitched their way towards the E-Boat and something struck the metalwork at the aft of the boat with a loud clang. The aircraft roared over their heads before starting another turn that would bring it back on the other beam to rake its target once again.
“Bloody ‘’ell!” Green said, “If that’s what our friends do, I’d rather take my chances with the enemy.”
“All he sees is a German boat!” Carter snapped. “Where’s the Very Pistol? They must have a flare gun somewhere.”
“Over there. Lucky. By the chartroom door.”
Sure enough, a flare pistol lay on a shelf next to the door, boxes of flares of various colours sitting alongside it. Carter grabbed it, broke it and inserted a cartridge in one smooth movement, snapping it closed once again before he climbed back up onto the flying bridge.
Already the aircraft was back within cannon range and the spouts of water were stitching their way towards the boat. There was another loud bang and the E-Boat started to slew to the right as the starboard engine lost power while the centre and port engines drove it onwards. Green tried to correct the turn by reducing the power on the other two engines, at the same time battling with the wheel to counter the turn with the rudder.
A cloud of smoke was rising from the engine room ventilators. Carter prayed that the designers had seen fit to install automatic fire extinguishers, because there was no hope of either him or Green having the opportunity to get down there to fight the fire.
The aircraft was completing another turn and was on its way back, spouts of water again marking the strikes of the cannon shells on the sea. Carter fired the flare gun and a green light burst above and behind them. But the twinkling lights ceased as the crew puzzled over the meaning of the signal. The aircraft overshot them once again, Carter waving his arms frantically to attract the crew’s attention. The crew were bound to be confident they could resume their attack on the E-Boat whenever they wished.
Carter returned to the wheelhouse door and threw the flare gun to Green. “Keep firing flares. Doesn’t matter what colour, so long as they get the message that we’re trying to communicate.” He slid down the stairs and ducked into the crew quarters. Green gave up the fight to try to control the direction of the boat, instead pulling back on the throttles and leaving them in their neutral position. The E Boast slowed and wallowed in the long North Sea swells.
Carter returned a few seconds later, the bottom sheet from the Captain’s bunk crumpled up under his arm. Taking hold of a signal halyard he knotted one end to a corner of the sheet, then the other end to the other corner. Hauling hard on the rope he sent the makeshift flag of surrender up the mast to the yard arm.
The Beaufighter had just completed another turn and was again heading in for a low pass over the E-Boat. Seeing the white sheet streaming across the port side, blown by the northerly wind, the pilot waggled the aircraft’s wings twice. Message understood.
“That was close.” Green said, dropping the flare pistol back onto the shelf. “With his firepower we were goners.”
“It didn’t occur to me that we would be seen as the enemy.”
Carter opened up the centre throttle so that they could move forward without having to fight the power of an asymmetrical thrust from the port engine. They would be a lot slower now, but with an airborne armed escort Carter was no longer worried about being discovered by German sea patrols.
“What’s he doing now?” Green asked, craning his neck to try to see the Beaufighter. Carter looked back through the wheelhouse door.
“Climbing and circling. I think he’s going to keep us under observation until they can get a boat here to check us out.”
Sure enough, the Beaufighter began to describe large circles in the air above the E-Boat, each circle overlapping the previous one as it edged south west, keeping pace with the E-Boat’s forward motion.
“He’ll get dizzy going round in circles like that.” Green chuckled.
“Prof, can you check out that engine fire, make sure that we’re no in any danger of sinking.”
Green located the hatch down into the engine space. His ears were assaulted by the hammering of the two remaining marine diesels, big engines that could provide the massive amount of power needed to propel the E-Boat through the water at high speed. Either the fire had burnt itself out or there had been automated fire extinguishers. Carter reported back that there was a gaping hole in one of the starboard engine’s cylinders where it had been struck by a cannon shell. The matching hole in the side of the boat wasn’t letting in any significant amounts of water; just the odd slop when a wave struck the side of the boat at the same time as the boat rolled in that direction.
They scanned the dashboard to see if they could make out a control that might switch on the bilge pumps, finding one marked Bilgenpumpen, switching it on and hoping for the best that it meant what it seemed to mean. Carter blessed the fact that so much of the English language shared a common root with German. Or was it that the Germans had borrowed so many words from English?
“You not going for a kip, Lucky?” Green asked after a while. “I’ve got this.”
“Hardly seems worth it. We must be pretty close to Scotland by now and the navy will have patrols out covering Invergorden and Scapa Flo. A ship is bound to be on its way to investigate, so it can’t be long before it gets here.”
The speed indicator was showing ten knots, which was the best they could hope for in the heavy seas and only using one engine. It was frustrating for them after having travelled at between thirty and forty knots before that. Carter did try opening up the port engine once again but found the strain of having to keep steering to port to counter the thrust was too much and he shut the engine down again.
“Well, if you’re not going to sleep, we’ve got time for something to eat.” Green dropped a heavy-handed hint.
Carter took the hint and headed down into the tiny galley. He found a store cupboard filled with tins. None had labels, but they did have their contents printed on their tops. Carter chose two that said Hühnersuppe. He had no idea what a Hühner was, but suppe had to be soup. He opened them up and poured them into a large saucepan. It turned out to be chicken soup.
Once hot he took the saucepan, two large bowls and two spoons back to the wheelhouse and served up their first hot meal for twenty four hours.
After about an hour the aircraft dropped down to about five hundred feet, flew across the E-Boat’s bow and waggled its wings, before climbing once again and heading off to the west.
“Where’s he off to?” Green asked.
“On his way home for tea and medals, I would think. He’s either short of fuel, in which case we can expect another escort aircraft soon, or he’s seen the navy and knows he’s not needed any more.”
Green picked up the powerful marine binoculars and scanned the horizon from south to west. “I can’t see anything.”
“From down here we probably can’t yet. If there’s a ship there he’s probably still below our horizon. But from up where the aircraft was he would have been able to see further.”
“So we don’t know if help is close or not.”
“Not for certain, but the aircraft crew would have been under orders to make sure we don’t slip away, so he must feel confident that wouldn’t happen.”
“I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we could actually see a ship.”
“I’ll go up to the flying bridge. Maybe the extra height will help.”
Carter left the wheelhouse and climbed the ladder to its roof, the binoculars hanging from their strap around his neck. As the boat reached the top of a swell he raised them to his eyes and scanned the horizon. Still nothing.
He turned to descend again and something caught his eye. Returning to the top deck he raised the binoculars to his eyes again, braced himself against the rolling motion of the boat and scanned the eastern horizon. Nothing.
He shook his head, worried that he was starting to imagine things. But better safe than sorry. He raised the binoculars again. Just as he did so, a tiny shape appeared on the crest of the swell, so narrow he wasn’t sure if he was seeing it or not. It disappeared again, but was replaced by a second shape, slightly to the left of the first.
They could be British MTBs, Carter mused. They were so far away it was difficult to make out their shapes. But equally they could be E-Boats like the one on which he was standing. All he could say for sure was that they both had white bones of frothing water in their teeth, indicating that they were travelling at considerable speed.
Carter threw himself down the ladder and back into the wheel house. “We’ve got more company, two boats going flat out. At their speed they’ll be up with us in minutes.”
“I take it they’re not friends.” Green said.
“I’ve no idea. The trouble is, we can’t afford to wait until they’re close enough to find out. If they’re E-Boats they’ll have us outgunned and we can’t outrun them on two engines. They’ll split up, which means we can’t turn, so there’s only one way we can go.”
Carter threw the port engine throttle wide open and the boat at once speeded up, at the same time as it slewed to the right. Green fought the turn, the tendons on his neck standing out as he strained to the hold the E-Boat on a south westerly course. Their only hope lay in reaching the coast or, better still, running into a Royal Navy patrol.
“I’m taking that sheet down.” Carter said, leaving the wheelhouse. While he was happy to surrender to the RAF, there was no way he was going to surrender to the Kreigsmarine. He untied the signal halyard and let the sheet fly overboard on the wind, where it settled onto the surface of the sea.
“OK. Do you want to go on the machine guns again, or shall I go this time?”
“I’ll let you go, Lucky. Not being rude or anything, but this wheel is pretty hard to hold onto and I’m a bit stronger than you.”
Not wanting to get into an arm wrestle to prove Green wrong, Carter dropped down to the deck and made his way to the centre of the aft deck where the two 20 mm machine guns stood behind their flimsy armour. The deck felt terribly exposed. Ammunition belts trailed from boxes mounted next to the guns. A quick check revealed that they were three quarters full after Green’s defensive fire, when they had been navigating clear of Ålesund.
He scanned the deck, looking for ammunition lockers but couldn’t identify anything that looked as though it might contain bullets. Perhaps the ammunition was stowed below decks.
Spare torpedoes were lashed to the deck on either side of the boat and the thought did cross Carter’s mind that they were probably the best way of countering this new threat, but he had no idea how to arm, aim and launch them. The machine guns would have to do the job.
The boats were clearly visible now, about two miles distant. Still too far away to open fire. He wasn’t sure what the range of the machine guns was, but two miles seemed too long. Besides, the Germans weren’t yet firing and they would know the range of their weapons. He returned to the flying bridge and viewed the boats through the binoculars once again. There was no doubting their identity now. Their profile was recognisable, but through the binoculars Carter could also see a red flag with a black cross, a swastika in the middle, that flew from the top of each boat’s mast, blown across to Carter’s right on the northerly wind. There would be a second one flying from the jack staff at the rear of the boat, but that was obscured by the superstructure of the boats.
The Germans had been really lucky to find them, Carter thought, or he and Green had been very unlucky. But then again, had they been?
The Beaufighter had been circling above them for an hour, acting like a beacon for any surface vessel in the vicinity. Perhaps that was what had given away their position. The two boats wouldn’t have wanted to attract the attention of the aircraft, for exactly the reasons that Carter and Green had experienced, but if they had hung back, sitting as low on the horizon as they could, waiting for the aircraft to leave, that would explain their arrival now. It was a little bit coincidental otherwise and Carter didn’t believe in coincidences.
The Germans were the first to fire, the left-hand boat sending out a stream of machine gun fire from its single forward gun. It fell well short. Carter peered through the binoculars once again, now able to make out the pale white blobs of the faces of the gunner and his loader. He raised the glasses slightly and made out the crew on the flying bridge. Two figures stood, wearing thick white jumpers as a protection against the cold. One wore the peaked cap of an officer while the other wore the brimless navy blue hat of a sailor. From the accommodation below the decks of their own boat, Carter estimated that there were between twenty and thirty other crew members that he couldn’t see.
But the E-Boats were closing fast, their three engines able to deliver considerably more thrust than the two remaining engines on Carter’s boat. The left hand boat fired again, this time getting some strikes in, sending splinters and paint chips flying.
Carter returned to the main deck and made his way back to the twin machine guns. He tucked the butts of the two guns into his shoulders and placed his hands on the triggers. These weren’t weapons of great accuracy, the pitch and toss of the sea prevented that, but put enough bullets into the right area and you were bound to hit something, Carter concluded. He squeezed the triggers and the weapons leapt under his hands, sending a twin stream of bullets skimming across the surface of the sea, whipping small spouts of water from the surface. He raised the elevation of the guns a little and tried again, aiming at the figures on the bridge. He must have hit something because the two figures dived for cover.
Tracking downwards he picked out the gunner and let loose another stream of bullets. Sparks danced from the metal deck but the German gunner continued firing.
More rounds were hitting Carter’s own E-Boat now and the second German boat had joined in the action. They hadn’t yet got close to him, seeming to concentrate their fire on the wheelhouse. Green was vulnerable up there.
A bullet pierced the flimsy armour of his gun mounting, wrenching the guns to one side on their swivel. Green wasn’t the only one who was vulnerable. What the fuck was he doing here? Carter wondered. He was a soldier, a commando, he should be somewhere where he could put something solid between him and the enemy. Something like a house, or a rock or even a blade of grass. Instead he had a quarter inch of metal plate in front of him which was about as much use as a bully beef can. The armour didn’t even protect his legs properly.
Settling the circular sight of the machine guns on the bridge of the left hand boat once again, Carter fired another burst. Again he saw sparks striking off metal, but he had no idea if he was doing any serious damage.
Switching his aim, he poured a stream of fire into the right hand boat. It started to turn, pulling away to one side. At first Carter thought he had done enough damage to cause the boat to slew, but then he realised that the two boats were splitting up. Once in position they could pour fire into the E-Boat from both sides, but Carter could only fire on one boat at a time.
Carter was startled to hear the sound of a tearing sheet above his head. Instinctively he looked up, but there was nothing there. A boom echoed across the water. At the same time a great gout of water was flung up from the sea in front of the right hand E-Boat. The boat ploughed straight through the middle of it, emerging in a cloud of spray.
It took Carter some time to work out what was happening and it was only when a second tearing sound, followed by another boom, assaulted his ears that he realised that he was hearing artillery fire; rather it was naval gunfire. And, more importantly, it wasn’t being aimed at him, which made it friendly naval gunfire.
The right hand E-Boat disappeared in another cloud of seawater and when it re-emerged it was already slowing. Smoke billowed across the water, evidence of a serious wound. At once it began to fall behind as Carter’s own E-Boat continued at the same speed. It took the rattle of bullets hitting the hull of his own boat to remind Carter that the stricken boat hadn’t been alone.
