“All ahead two-thirds.”
Ritter’s escape-and-evasion plan was simplicity itself. If he could break contact with these three warships, the rest of the estuary was clear all the way out into the North Sea. He had the endurance at medium speed to reach open water, where the British would have a very hard time finding him.
Argyll’s helicopter was his undoing. The submarine’s high-speed burst, although only a minute long, created a wake in the shallow water — a wide vee shape streaming away from the fleeing U-boat. Even as U-32 slowed, the Lynx flashed over Chatham at masthead height and dropped two depth charges just in front of the point of the vee.
The depth charges splashed into the water, sank rapidly, and detonated a fraction of a second later. One was just ten meters away from the German submarine’s hull, the other only five. Caught by two bubble pulses of explosive shock and gas,
U-32 tumbled and shook. The twin shocks tore equipment loose from its mountings, bounced the crew off the bulkheads, and even deformed the pressure hull. She lost half her batteries and her AIP engine shut down — badly damaged. Even her fire control system went dead in a shower of sparks and fused circuit boards.
Chatham, cued by the hovering Lynx, heeled over — coming round in a tight, high-speed turn to attack the crippled German submarine. Her active sonar found and fixed U-32 at almost point-blank range. A Stingray torpedo plunged into the water.
Inside U-32, the crew worked desperately to restore her propulsion and her fire control systems. But the British frigate’s sonar pulses were already deafening and growing louder.
Screee.
Panicked faces turned aft, toward the new noise in the water.
“Torpedo! Bearing two four five!” The sonarman’s shouted report was redundant.
Ritter ran his eyes over the plot one last time and then looked at his haggard men. They were finished.
U-32’s damage was too great, and the British ships were too close. There were only twenty-three men in U-32’s crew, but they were as close as brothers. He would save what he could by surrendering. “Blow all tanks! Emergency surface!”
Chatham’s Stingray barely had time to steady up before its active sonar found U-32. The submarine, unable to dodge, lay right in its path.
The British torpedo slammed into the U-32 just as her conning tower broke the surface. The Stingray’s shaped-charge warhead, intended to kill much larger vessels, hit aft and exploded, obliterating the sub’s engineering compartment. With her hull ripped open, U-32’s ballast tanks could not keep her afloat. Only five of her crew, all sailors stationed in the conning tower, managed to scramble out before she slid downward in a maelstrom of bubbling foam, oil, and wreckage — joining her victims at the bottom of the estuary.
In a reluctant concession to the war raging across the Channel, the soldiers stationed around London’s famous public buildings and government offices wore combat gear instead of their colorful, full dress uniforms. Bearskin caps and scarlet coats had given way to Kevlar helmets and camouflaged body armor.
Admiral Jack Ward strode out into the Defense Ministry’s inner courtyard between sentries who snapped to attention. Lieutenant Harada, his flag secretary, followed right behind. Their ride out to Heathrow, a tiny British Army Air Corps Gazelle helicopter, sat on the pavement with its rotor already slowly turning. A U.S. Navy Grumman COD — carrier onboard delivery plane — was waiting on the tarmac at the airport, ready to take them back to sea.
He bent low to clear the Gazelle’s rotor blades and hauled himself inside, taking a seat on a narrow folding bench behind its two crewmen. Harada squeezed in beside him and pulled the helicopter’s side door shut.
The admiral leaned forward to speak to the warrant officer piloting the helo. “Anytime you’re ready, mister.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll just be half a tic.” The sandy-haired warrant officer grinned round at him. “We’re only waiting for our clearance from those Nervous Nellies in Air Defense Command. Right, Tony?”
His copilot looked up from flicking switches and nodded. “The bloody Frogs and Jerries are at it again, Admiral. Over Southampton this time. It’s a right mess, they say.”
Ward grimaced and sat back impatiently. He couldn’t afford to get stuck ashore under enemy air attack — not now. Events were moving too fast.
The sudden surge in French and German attacks against British airfields and harbors had come as a very unpleasant, though not wholly unexpected, development. Stymied in every attempt to sink Ward’s juggernauts, his three carrier battle groups, the EurCon high command had apparently decided to concentrate their air and naval resources against the weakest link in the sea line of communications to Poland — the United Kingdom itself.
Cost-cutting and the end of the cold war had slowed the U.K.’s efforts to rebuild its long-neglected air defenses. The RAF’s E-3 Sentries, a few, overworked squadrons of Tornado interceptors, and Patriot missile batteries could knock down some of the attacking aircraft, but they couldn’t stop every incoming raid — not when EurCon planes based in France were only minutes’ flying time from targets in southern England. There were too many potential targets and too few fighters and SAM batteries available to protect them.
As a result, Ward knew, EurCon’s first attacks had been disturbingly effective. The Mirage raid on Brize Norton had killed nearly one hundred soldiers and airmen. Hundreds more were wounded, many seriously. Later raids on other bases had inflicted similar losses. The initial enemy air and submarine attacks had also destroyed a number of transport planes and cargo ships that were worth their weight in gold.
EurCon’s leaders must be hoping that expanding the war to British soil would throw the United States and its allies off balance. Certainly the losses they’d inflicted would slow the movement of British troops to Poland. And they probably hoped the Combined Forces air commanders would strengthen the U.K.’s defenses by diverting some of the American F-15 and F-16 squadrons now bombing installations inside France and Germany.
Of course, by demonstrating just how vulnerable the United Kingdom was to any enemy attack, the EurCon raids had helped spur Washington and London into approving drastic retaliatory and preemptive measures. The men in both Paris and Berlin were about to relearn the law of unintended consequences, Ward thought dourly.
He had been summoned to London from midocean late the night before — forced to endure a bumpy, low-altitude COD flight to arrive in time for this morning’s meeting hosted by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Although it had cost him a badly needed night’s sleep, a stiff neck, and a bruised backside, the show had proved well worth the price of admission.
For all his three stars, the admiral had soon realized he was a small fry in a very select group. Aside from a number of very silent junior officers present as aides, the active participants had included Britain’s Prime Minister, the heads of the British Army, the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, the U.S. Navy’s chief of naval operations, and the U.S. Air Force general who served as vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
The Prime Minister’s first words had ended any idle speculation that they were there for a simple update or get-acquainted meeting. “I’ve just come from a secure-line conference call with the President and the Norwegian Prime Minister, gentlemen. You now have a new mission — one you will accord an equal priority with our resupply and reinforcement operations for Poland. Beginning immediately, you will exert every effort to eliminate the French tactical and strategic nuclear arsenal.”