The Prize Rules Ch. 06

He waited, almost wishing for some technical issue to crop up which would prevent what he was about to do. But all that came to him were the quiet confirmations that the fish had been set as he'd requested.

Flood tubes 1 and 2."

When the acknowledgement reached him that the tubes were full of seawater – as well as the torpedoes already inside of them waiting, he sighed.

"Open outer doors, 1 and 2.

I guess that I knew that this night would come, eventually," he said to his Executive Officer, "Here in this place, I suddenly feel like a weasel who has found his way into the henhouse."

He looked through his binoculars once again and began the next part of the night's mantras.

"Match bearings and lock. Torpedo Officer confirm.

XO, you may fire when matched."

"Matched," the voice came back up the voicepipe.

Helmut took a deep breath and after letting it out, he only nodded.

"Fire One."

There was a hiss and then his torpedo room acknowledged, "Tube Number One fired."

"Fire Two," Weisenkopf said quietly.

Another hiss and he was told that the second torpedo was away. At this range, barring a defective torpedo, this was a pretty sure thing.

"Close outer doors," Ullmann said, as he motioned for Helmut to unfasten the master Sight from it's mount and take it below as he went. As Weisenkopf left, Ullmann began to work on their exit.

"Ahead one third, come port to bring us around to 280 degrees."

He added, "Aft Torpedo Room; stand by for orders. Forward Torpedo room; begin reloading tubes.

Diving Officer, settle us so that our decks are awash. Tell the XO when he gets there to turn on the navigation lights and we'll be ready to leave."

–––––––––––––––––––-

The scene in Robert Kirkwall's office was tawdry indeed. Cora Lee had attempted to decline the advances of her superior and now sported a bruised lip, though it was hard to discern for all of her ashamed weeping into her hands.

But Sabine was no fool and promised Cora Lee that she had nothing to fear for telling the truth and Cora Lee was bright enough to be able to discern what was being asked of her, so she complied.

The governor was suitably under-impressed with his future ex-son-in-law and was in the middle of expressing his thoughts on the matter when the interior of the room was lit up rather brilliantly by what was happening in the harbour below and the concussive sounds of the explosions rattled the windows a second afterward.

–––––––––––––––-

The torpedoes crashed into their targets one after the other and the harbour was lit eerily by the rising flames a few moments later.

As if on cue, Bucher was beside Hans-Joachim, already questioning his actions.

"Why are we leaving? We should surface fully and begin to shell the dockside works. Why are we leaving on the surface, of all things?" Bucher wanted to know.

Ullmann reminded himself that he was also tasked with some of Bucher's education so he bit back what he'd thought to say.

"In the first place, they are not exactly defenceless here. I did point out the shore batteries to you on the way in, did I not? Look there," he pointed quickly, "there, there, and over there. I have no idea why they don't seem to be manned, but that can change in a moment and we are out here with our trousers down.

Also, there is the excellent chance of running aground out here – or have you forgotten us telling you that it is shallow here once you are out of the boca – as we must be in order to turn around, Wilhelm. We can't turn around if we're submerged.

Calm down and don't worry. We'll be back, I'm almost sure of it. We're on the surface so that we can leave."

Bucher was incredulous. "But you've ordered the running lights turned on!"

Ullmann sighed as he pointed, "Lower your voice and look around you. We're masquerading as a fishing boat heading out a few hours early. U-boats are long and thin, Wilhelm. Everybody knows that. I'm just hiding the long and thin part, that's all."

A minute or so later, they were leaning against the rail of the conning tower as the confusion and pandemonium truly began. Both freighters were settling and burning merrily at their pilings with the flames spreading rapidly and more importantly, no one was shooting at them.

"I almost can't believe it," Bucher said.

"Yes well, be prepared to make a quick run downstairs in case somebody sees through our ruse, just in case," Hans-Joachim said, "We'll be diving once we're out of the harbour. We can only expect this game to last so long, ja?"

––––––––––––––––-

Two days later, there was a shout from the deck watch as they approached the coast of Grenada just after sundown. They crash-dived and when Ullmann brought up his periscope, there was a tanker out there, a good way off and approaching at 6 knots.

After lining them up for a shot at the side of the thing, Hans-Joachim called for the electric motors to be stopped and they waited.

Half an hour later, he fired one torpedo and the tanker settled slowly.

–––––––––––––-

23 February, 1942

Hans-Joachim looked up from his dinner.

"Smoke on the horizon, Herr Kaleun," the watch officer said.

"How are we for daylight?" Ullmann asked.

"Thirty minutes to sundown," came the reply.

Ullmann nodded, "Give the helmsman a course to steer, Weisenkopf. If we are in the clear, then surface the boat and let's chase her for a little while."

It turned out that the wisps of smoke were from a freighter westbound all alone running at ten knots. It was ten in the evening when they drew a little close and Ullmann ordered them under for a time.

"Are they blind or just not paying attention?" he asked Weisenkopf who shrugged in reply.

"Very well," Hans-Joachim decided, "Surface the boat and close at flank speed."

By eleven o'clock, they were still scratching their heads.

"They must be able to see us from here," Weisenkopf said, "The moon is against us. We're lit up like we're passing the revue stand. I don't understand it."

Ullmann thought about it for a moment. "Pull away and put some distance between us, Helmut. Let's keep them just over the horizon as we pass. Have there been any course changes from them at all?"

Weisenkopf shook his head, "Either no one is standing watch or they don't know what we are."

"Have the navigator put us ahead of them, one to two kilometers out. We'll wait for them a little farther on."

As it happened, the freighter was most accommodating, taking only one torpedo to sink and even then, it settled so evenly that Ullman could watch as all of the lifeboats were lowered and the crew got off in plenty of time. He shook his head, still wondering at how easily it had gone.

"They acted like we weren't even there. I wonder that they even noticed that they were sinking at all."

––––––––––––-

26 February, 1942

Eden was getting used to life aboard the cutter. In an effort to keep busy, she'd noticed that half of the running lights weren't working, so she spent a fair bit of her time climbing the masts and looking for easy ways to get at some of the burnt-out ones. It was slow work, but she didn't mind it.

She was also striking up a bit of a friendship with a young sailor, just because she found him helpful. Gerry MacLauchlan was an Engineer rating and he answered all of her pointed questions honestly, telling her all that he knew of the state of things on CG-4995. He hadn't spent much more time aboard than she had, but he knew what he was looking at in a patrol vessel. He was easy to talk to and not as stuck up as the rest were in her opinion. As well, she liked his simple boyish charm just because she found it refreshing.

Gerry had been the one who'd come to her with the reports that had been heard over the command network of the successful attack on Port of Spain harbour. She almost wondered why she should have felt surprised after all. As far as she was concerned it would take a personal visit by Adolf Hitler himself to wake Robert up to what she'd always felt was a little obvious.

But then, she guessed that even such an event would likely not merit much more from Robert than a sleepy nod or two. After that, Eden couldn't wait to get home, not that she could have done any good by then.

From Gerry, she learned that they'd need to either spend a bit to get even a basic working ASDIC set or they might as well just rip out the depth charge racks altogether and add more life preservers and be done, since as a submarine hunter, the cutter was less than useless without a decent working ASDIC set.

The trip from Florida so far had been unexciting but pleasant nonetheless. The only issue had been a slight knock in one of the engines as they'd entered the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti.

As they motored along and as time went by, Eden saw the slightly worried look on Gerry's face and asked.

He shrugged, "That blasted knock on the port engine. I'm not sure, but I'm coming to believe that it's slowly getting worse. I'm just not sure about it yet. We'll have to see, I guess."

"What if it is getting worse?" Eden asked and he shrugged again, "I've got parts, Ma'am. It's not as though we'd be stuck. We'd just have to go slower on the other one while I overhaul the noisy one, that's all."

Eden nodded. She said nothing, though inwardly she wondered if it was possible to go any slower, now that she wanted to get home so badly.

–––––––––––––––

The crew of U-161's next victim were not so fortunate.

On March 7th, they torpedoed a tanker which didn't settle anywhere near so well. Instead, it exploded and as far as they could tell, there were no survivors. Ullmann felt himself coming close to the breaking point with Bucher, who crowed about it, since Ullmann had given him the opportunity to run their attack.

Ullmann pulled him aside. "You need to think about what we're doing here," he said, "This is war, but out here, we're not locked in the glorious combat that you seem to want with other men at arms, are we?

This is the shitty side of things. All we're doing is causing our enemy's war effort some hardship by removing materials which they need. In doing that, we're also killing regular sailors, not in anybody's war navy, Wilhelm. We're doing this because it's our orders, that's all. There's no glory in it – not that I've ever found.

The only reason that this is working so well is because the antisubmarine assets here are spread pretty thinly, to be honest. But that will change soon enough.

The Americans are not stupid. They'll tighten things up very soon. We'll see how proudly you boast after six hours of being hunted by destroyers after not even getting a clear shot at a freighter."

–––––––––––––––

The evening of March 10th found them huddled around the course plotting table as they sat submerged outside of Castries harbour in St. Lucia.

"The harbour here is even more shallow than the one at Port of Spain," Weisenkopf said grimly, "We'll need the kid gloves again, I'm afraid. I'm not even really sure that there is a good way in and out at all."

"At least there isn't a barrier net," Hans-Joachim said, "I don't know why there isn't, but after two days of careful peeks, I haven't seen any evidence of one. We watched the ships come and go for hours and nobody had to wait while the submarine net was lowered for them."

Bucher wondered aloud why they were even there, "It's just a harbour on a little island. There were more targets in Port of Spain."

Ullmann bit back the thought which rose in his mind. Instead, he wondered how it was that the admiralty was giving idiots command positions.

"It's not the number of targets," he said quietly, "It's the nature of the targets. We weren't assigned the cream of the pickings, Wilhelm. Von Rosensteil got them; the Lake Maricaibo oil tankers. He just has to sit still and every day or so a slow fat tanker full of Venezuelan oil will almost nudge him out of the way, asking for a torpedo up the snout.

I don't know what part of the month is the busy few days in Port of Spain, but I can tell you that if you go back there now, you'll have your pick of deciding which fishing trawler to sink. We're not here to kill the people who want to buy some fish for dinner, are we? How is that going to hurt the Allied war effort?"

He pointed as though they were standing next to a window, "Out there, right out there, there are freighters so heavily laden that I wonder if they have wheels underneath in case they drag on the bottom of the harbour.

I want those freighters, the ones which arrived today. I know that the Americans are building bases out here. There has to be materials aboard those things for that purpose. If we don't sink them, things will get a lot hotter for us around here the next time that we come because the sky will be full of patrol bombers.

That's why we're here."

––––––––––––––––––

As it happened, there was only one way to get into the harbour and their approach was a very tense one, since they went in long after sunset on the surface.

They weren't being brazen about it, but there just wasn't the depth in the channel for anything like they'd done in Trinidad. So they waited and then eased in slowly, completely blacked-out and on their electric motors almost silently. The place seemed to be eerily quiet and after a look around, Ullmann ordered a slow turn to bring his stern tubes to bear.

There, tied up to the docks, they found the two large freighters and from their obviously deep draughts, they hadn't been unloaded yet. Hans-Joachim ran his attack from the conning tower bridge and got in solid hits on them both.

That seemed to wake up the shore defenses, but they were only heavy machine guns. U-161 ran out of the harbour at flank speed on her diesels.

Four days later, they were submerged with Bucher staring through the periscope.

"They're Britishers," he said flatly.

Hans-Joachim shook his head, "No. Look again."

"I have looked," the bellicose Bucher said, his tone rising. "They're flying the British flag and all."

Hans-Joachim looked up from cleaning his nails, "Then clean your glasses, Wilhelm. For Christ's sake, if you can't see worth shit, just say so and quit trying to annoy me.

I'll give you a clue. They believe that they've still got an empire to run, right? Most of their colonies and former colonies fly that flag – but with slight differences. Now look again."

Bucher was turning purple. "That's the damned British flag they're flying!"

He looked over at Weisenkopf who only smiled as he worked over their course for home, "No it's not, Wilhelm. That's the Canadian flag."*

"The same damned thing!" Bucher roared.

"Don't tell them that," Ullmann grinned as he got to his feet. "Get away from that periscope. If you don't at least know who it is that you're shooting at, you've got no business behind a periscope."

It wasn't a large freighter, but even so, they wondered just what it had been carrying a few minutes later. One torpedo amidships and the vessel was gone from sight within thirty seconds after impact. No time to put out lifeboats, nothing.

The whole thing was just ... gone, as though it had never been there in the first place. Ullmann couldn't believe it as he stared through the periscope. He looked around quickly and then ordered the boat onto the surface.

They were no wiser five minutes later. The whole bridge watch was up there looking. Not one single swimmer to be seen at all.

"ALARM!" The cry went up as one lookout saw the patrol bomber far above them, turning as it began it's dive for the attack.

U-161 crash-dove and clawed for deep water as the diesels were shut down and the electric motor switched in. "I want 150 meters as soon as you can give it to me," Ullmann called over to the diving officer, "Never mind the fine china."

They turned southward and a little surprisingly, there were no explosions. But Hans-Joachim knew what this was.

"They've figured out that all of this – Operation Neuland – isn't just a string of lucky incidents by a few isolated submarines."

He looked around the control room at the faces there looking back at him. "So the game begins again, neh?"

––––––––––––––-

1942 south of Haiti

The knock in that one engine had gotten worse, a lot worse, and they began to look for a place to heave to so that Gerry could get started on the repairs. There were no known weather systems predicted and under other circumstances, they'd have just stopped or crept along slowly on their good engine.

But the radio had been full of news the last week or so with reports of ship sinkings and U-boat sightings all over the Caribbean Sea and so they turned back to look for a quiet part of the Haiti shoreline.

"There's a wide bay along the southern edge," Harris said, "with a few quiet little bays that we can tuck into while we get ourselves fixed up. We'll head there."

*****

* - The present Canadian flag was adopted for use back in around 1965. Before then, the flag was a red field overall with a small Union Jack motif in the upper left corner.

O_o