“Any more word from the Mad Bomber?” Andy Walker down in the radio compartment sounded genuinely curious. He had been the radio operator on duty when Arthur Harris had sent the squadron a preemptory order to return to Alexandria for service as night bombers.
“Nah, he gave up the ghost. I heard Wavell put him in charge of the Bristol Bombay fleet to keep him quiet. Damned drongo sent them off to bomb the harbor at Tobruk and they didn’t get a bomb within fifteen miles of the place. He’s been quiet ever since.” Alleyne wasn’t particularly worried. There had been a telegraphed set of orders for him in Aden. His government had told him what to do and where to go. More importantly, it told him who to obey and, implicitly, who not to. That trumped everything else. The most valuable part of it had been the simple fact of its existence. It had told him they were still part of something, not forgotten wanderers trying to find a home somewhere.
“You reckon that sub will still be around here? The Huns would have cleared off by now.”
“He’ll still be around. He’ll want a second crack at that cruiser. If he really reckons he hit her, he’ll want to finish her off. If not, he’ll want to try again. Either way, he’s around here somewhere.”
“Boss, I got somethin’.” Chris White was the portside lookout, using the beam machine gun hatch as an observation point. “Three o’clock; right on the horizon.”
“Good on you, Snowy.” There was a long pause while Don Clerk, the starboard lookout, crossed over and checked on the sighting. “Snowy’s right, Boss. Connin’ tower on the horizon; enemy one by the look of it.”
“Stand by for attack. All gun crews ready. Midships crew, open the side ports and wind out the depth bombs. Fuzes set for 25 feet.”
The casual atmosphere had completely vanished from the Sunderland. The two side hatches under the wings were already opening up. In the bomb room, the 250-pound airborne depth charges were fuzed and attached to the racks. The racks were then wound out on rails under the wings. Alleyne already had the throttles forward, pushing the Pegasus engines as hard as was prudent. Aden was a long way from the easy availability of spare parts; stressing the engines would be short-sighted, to say the least.
White’s original sighting had been accurate. It was a submarine. Alleyne quickly put together the recognition details. Single gun forward of a small conning tower; she’s German. Bad luck for her she’s not the one we were lookin’ for.
“You reckon the poor dumb bastards are asleep down there?” The distance was closing quickly and White had an almost proprietorial interest in the submarine.
Suddenly, the submarine was surrounded by spray as she started to dive. In the North Atlantic, the Sunderland crew had become used to rapid dives from German submarines. Alleyne was astonished at how slowly this one was starting to submerge. The conning tower was almost certainly deserted. He opened fire with his nose guns anyway, lashing the submarine with the streams of tracer fire. The submarine was supposed to mount a 20mm cannon and a 37mm gun; there was no trace of return fire from them. Most likely, the German elected to dive rather than fightin’ it out on the surface and thought he had more time.
Alleyne ceased fire as the flying boat slashed over the diving submarine. FFreddie lurched as the four depth charges dropped clear.
“Way to bloody go! Perfect straddle, Boss! Score one for the Hobart!”
The cheer from the midships lookouts was all Alleyne needed to know. He was already curving around, bringing the submarine into his field of vision. Two depth charges had landed just short of the boat. The other pair had landed just over her. They exploded under the submarine, throwing her upwards and breaking her back. By the time Alleyne could see her properly, she was already sinking; her bows and stern raised in the air and her midships section under water.
“Strafe it?”
“Don’t be bloody. Leave her. She’s done for. Radio base and see if anybody can pick up the survivors. If there are anyway.” Alleyne guessed the submarine had been closed up for diving. The chance of anybody getting out, given the catastrophic damage inflicted by the four depth charges, were slight. Still, if there was a chance, it was worth getting the word out. He completed the turn and cruised over the sinking wreckage beneath. The submarine had almost gone; only the point of her bows stuck out of the boiling white stains on the sea surface.
“I hope some of you took pickies of that?” Alleyne had forgotten to order the photography in the rush of the attack, but the evidence was needed if they were to be credited with a confirmed sinking instead of a probable. The sea surface was littered with scattered wreckage, but there were no swimmers that he could see.
“Yeah, I got it. No heads down there I can see.”
“Me neither. Poor drongos. Any idea who they were?”
FFreddie circled the scene of the sinking. Her crew searched the floating wreckage with high-powered binoculars for any sign of survivors. Eventually, it was Chris White who gave the doleful epitaph.
“Nobody got out. All I can see floatin’ down there is a few bits of debris and a stuffed animal.”
The haunting echoes of the ballad echoed backwards and forwards from the ships anchored across Scapa Flow as the heavy cruiser started her slow progress out to sea. Captain Robert R Stewart surreptitiously wiped an eye at the words and the meaning behind them. This was the worst way to end an assignment he could think of. Betrayed.
There was no other word for it. He, his ship and his crew had been betrayed by the government they had come half way around the world to help. The rest of the fleet knew it. The sad dirge was their comment on the way the cruiser had been treated.
“It was originally written about Bonnie Prince Charlie, you know.” Lieutenant Colonel Beaumont spoke softly. “The Andrew always had a talent for knowing the right music.”
Stewart nodded sadly. “This is such a damned shame. We didn’t want ta go home like this. Not with our tails between our legs.”
“Not your fault. At least you were around to give us a lift home. The lads would have paid for the tickets on a liner home themselves rather than stay any longer. After volunteering to help the old country out, being described as ‘useless mouths’ was more than they could stomach.”
“At least we didn’t have ta swallow that.” Stewart veered away from the subject, watching the pilot take HMAS Australia through the boom and down the Hoy Sound. “Just being booted out was bad enough. Ronald, you’d better get your men together for training soon. We’re still at war with Germany and they might reckon of putting a couple of torpedoes into us. Your men better know what ta do if that happens.”
“Aye, I’ll do that. We were half expecting to be bombed in Aldershot but it never happened.” Beaumont looked out across the sound. Two British destroyers were paralleling the Australian cruiser’s course. They weren’t escorting her; they just happened to be close by and going the same way. Under the circumstances, keeping a close ASW watch out was only a reasonable precaution, wasn’t it?