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X-CRAFT DIVER — Part 6

Targets

At the beginning of September, quite suddenly, all leave was cancelled: no-one would be permitted to leave the loch area until further notice, and any outgoing mail had to undergo much severer censorship than hitherto; I have the impression that junior officers were subject to censorship as well as crew. The clamp-down told us something was due to happen soon, and excitement mounted rapidly. Within a day, all the officers forming X-craft crews, both passage and action, were summoned to the wardroom to a meeting behind closed doors. We gathered already well before the appointed hour, finding a place with difficulty; I was surprised to see how many there were of us when all assembled. Don Cameron sat up on a sill by a porthole, filled his pipe with affectionate care, and lit up with his customary look of quiet pleasure. I was standing not far from him, with Geordie Nelson by me.

Bonaventure's senior officers were all there too; even Captain Banks himself from SXII in Rothesay. It was the first time I had set eyes on the four-ringer who was in charge of us all. As he stood up to address us, voices instantaneously hushed. Geordie glanced at me: we knew this was the moment when we would be let into the secret. My heart was thumping furiously with nervous excitement: this was no adventure story I was hearing about from the safety of an armchair. This was reality - and I was involved in the operation, directly. I might, or I might not, return.
'Gentlemen, you will have noticed that all leave has been cancelled for the whole ship’s complement, and that special measures to censor mail have been established. These measures are essential to safeguard the operation on which you are engaged.'
I noticed the use of the present, not the future: we were in it already.
'This operation is, in the view of their Lordships, possibly the most significant naval action of the whole war.'
One or two amongst us stirred to relieve tension; the rest scarcely breathed, waiting for the revelation to be made.
In his light, incisive tones, Banks resumed. 'Gentlemen, our target is the pride of the German fleet: the Tirpitz.'
A great sigh of feeling was expelled: of relief at finally knowing; of huge satisfaction at the scale of the target; and of anxiety at the challenge involved.
'And that's not all: the battle-cruiser Scharnhorst and the pocket battleship Lützow are with the Tirpitz. We're attacking all three.'
We looked at each other in startled pleasure: if we could sink all three, no doubt this would be the biggest single blow that could be wreaked on the enemy. Geordie looked flushed, rapt with attention. Others were turning to their skippers, and smiling, as if to say: 'You knew this all along, you crafty old fox, and yet you were able to keep it from me!'
A buzz of excited talking sprang up, and for a few seconds Banks let it run. 'You're no doubt beginning to wonder how the targets have been allotted. X5, X6 and X7 will attack the Tirpitz, X8 the Lützow, and X9 and X10 the Scharnhorst. We are convinced this distribution will give the greatest chance of success all round. The largest target is given to three midget submarines, the next one in size is to be attacked by two, and the pocket battleship by one only. If X8 fails, therefore, the Lützow gets off unscathed. But it may take two sets of charges to sink the Scharnhorst, and as many as three to hole the Tirpitz fatally.'
Banks paused, to let this reasoning become clear to us. There was no question of any change being made. No doubt there was some disappointment amongst the skippers who were not getting the big one, but they had known this for some time and must have accepted it. The crews, officers and men, would have to do likewise. I felt a twinge of annoyance at not getting the Tirpitz myself: it would be Geordie, Bob and Dickie. I didn't care about the Scharnhorst — anyhow it was the divers I had least contact with who would go for her. But we in X8 had to get through to the Lützow alone. I wondered what kind of nets she had round her.

'Now the best conditions for a successful attack,' Banks resumed, 'are in the spring and autumn. There must be a rough equality between the hours of light and darkness; there should be little moon; and most important of all, the sea must be calm enough for long enough to enable the necessary manoeuvres to take place.'
We looked mystified, and he smiled.
'Let me explain. As some of you may know, the Tirpitz is at present based in the north of Norway, deep in an inner fjord, well over fifty miles in from the main Norwegian coast. Within a few miles of her lies the Scharnhorst, while at the far end of a long narrow fjord some way away the Lützow has her anchorage.'
At once I saw in my mind's eye a dark narrow cleft with high bluffs on either side, so high they prevented the sun from shining on the water surface; my imagination began placing nets across the fjord entrance, and others round the ship. Look-outs placed on shore on the bluffs would at once be able to spot bulges in the lines of buoys supporting the nets, if the X-craft started pressing in on them. But perhaps the fjord was so deep that we could get underneath without cutting ...

'The question arises,’ Banks continued, ‘how are the X-craft to get to the north of Norway? It's much too far for their fuel capacity. They could be re-fuelled at sea, but that's too tricky a manoeuvre to perform, when there is so little freeboard. Moreover, it would take about twelve days at cruising speed to get up to the north of Norway, and by then the crew would be so exhausted that they would be in no fit state to carry out the operation. And to attack large units of the German fleet, you have to be on your toes.'
This registered: it made very sobering sense.
'So we have devised a different scheme, that of using two crews for each X-craft: one for the passage to a point fifty miles off the coast of northern Norway, and one for the operation itself. That's why there are so many of you here today: together you make up twelve crews. The passage crews play an essential role in getting the X-craft to the point where the operational crew take over. That means a transfer at sea; and that manoeuvre can only be carried out in reasonable weather conditions.' Banks paused and looked around.
'What about the fuelling, then, Sir? How does the passage crew get her there?'
'That's where we really had to put our thinking caps on,' Banks said with a smile, seeming to welcome a question having been asked. 'If the X-craft couldn't get there under her own power, then she must use someone else's. We couldn't use a surface vessel, for that would mean unloading X-craft into the water from derricks. Even a slight roll, and the X-craft might smash into the ship's side, and the charges could be damaged. Moreover a lone surface ship might attract the very ships we are trying to destroy - the Lützow at any rate, and perhaps the Scharnhorst too. We're not trying to provoke a naval battle out at sea; we want the Germans to remain in harbour, lulled into a false sense of security, so that they are there when we attack.'
'That leaves subs, Sir?'
'Exactly, but how. Piggyback? Or tow? ... Which would you choose?'

There was a second's pause, then a confused hubbub of voices, and swift thrusting exchanges all over the room. I noticed that Don Cameron and Place took no part, but merely smiled, Cameron with a twinkle and Place superciliously. Banks allowed the excitement to simmer down, and silence to spread into every corner of the room.
'A tow,' he declared quietly. 'There's no other way. Six of His Majesty's submarines have been fitted out for towing X-craft, and will be here in ten days' time to start towing trials, each with its allotted X-craft. Once that's done, the balloon goes up.'
Many of us couldn't restrain a gasp. That was close. Everything would have to be done before the big subs arrived, for we must be towed in battle conditions, with the charges mounted and all our gear on board - or so we presumed. Would the cutters be mounted in time to give us divers the opportunity for cutting the X-craft through the net - at least once? I gulped at the inadequacy of this preparation: surely three goes at the net would be the minimum needed to develop the right skills and degree of cooperation between commander and diver? I didn't like the way we were being rushed onward, but the timing seemed to demand it.

‘When's it for, Sir?'
'The attack on the three units of the German fleet must take place, if it's to take place at all this autumn, between the 2Oth and 24th of September. Say in three weeks from today. Passage and approach will take about a week. That leaves two weeks for everything, repeat everything, to be got ready.'
We sat there stunned. The room had filled with the smoke of cigarettes and of Don Cameron's pipe. All in a fortnight from now!
'Just one other thing, gentlemen,' Banks said in a deeper tone as he gathered his papers. 'Security. Absolute! The operation, and your lives, depend on that.'

The other senior officers accompanied Banks out. The moment they had gone, we turned to each other, and tongues were loosened in a crossfire of question and exclamation, of expostulation and answer. The period of anticipation was over, and our pent-up excitement flowed out in a torrent of conjecture and comment. It felt wonderful to be released from doubt and uncertainty, but at the same time fear had taken on a new dimension of reality. Some of us, I was almost sure, were into the last month of our lives. It could be me ... or Bob … I looked across at him. He had lit up his pipe, and was puffing away, smiling, looking calm and confident. Dickie Kendall was wearing a more mature air than his usual boyish expression, and different again from the dedicated look on his face when he was engaged on his favourite reading 'Soils and Manures'; he said he was planning to be a farmer after the war. Would there be an after for him? How could I know? And what about Geordie? He was already talking to Henty-Creer.

I went up to Buck and Jack.
'Well, Lefty, now you know,' Buck said with a smile.
I nodded. 'The Lützow.'
'Disappointed it's not the Tirpitz?'
I shrugged my shoulders. 'It's all part of the same attack,' I commented. In truth I was still too overwhelmed by the fact of knowing, to have had time to take stock and make comparisons.
Not so Jack, however. 'Rather have the Lützow, Buck. We're on our own with her - none of the other craft frigging around. If we get her, it'll be our doing.'
'We shall,' Buck announced with simple confidence.
'Do we know anything about the nets yet?' I asked Buck.
'Not for sure. We're waiting for air reconnaissance - should be here in a few days. Last autumn the photos showed like some lines across the fjord - nothing very clear.'
Across the fjord … that could mean … 'Did Banks say that she lay at one end of a long narrow fjord?' I wanted to verify.
'Right, that's what I heard.'
'That could mean high ground on either side, cutting steeply down to the water's edge, and making a deep V in the seabed of the fjord.'
'Meaning we might be able to slip under in the middle?'
'Yeah ... provided the charts are accurate enough for that fjord, just there.'
'Well, let's wait and see, when the new photos arrive.'

If the only nets were anti-torpedo, and the Germans had made them like we had, there wouldn't be anything for me to do, as a diver. And it seemed as though Buck only thought of me in that capacity. I began to feel let down, and rather pointless, superfluous. Unless the air reconnaissance - Buck turned to me, a brief exchange about supplies with Jack over.
'We'll be cutting through the nets the day after tomorrow. With dummy charges. Right?'
'What about the cutters?'
'They'll be fitted tomorrow, when X8 is hoisted inboard. And Jack, while she's dry, take a look at the gland round the shaft. And get on to Jock about the rudder housing, it's been playing up. And do some maintenance on ...'
I inspected the cutters the next day, as they were about to be fitted, and was pleased with their size and delighted with their power when I tried them out on a length of spare mooring wire. It only took them a few seconds to crunch their way right through, ending cleanly, without any final strands left uncut - as had sometimes occurred with the lighter power cutters we used on human torpedoes.

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