The Laconia Incident Read online

  Also helping to bond the five of them was that they were on the same watch-stander list, and were thus able to go ashore for liberty together—not that Malta was all that great a port for liberty. Aside from those residing on the four streets immediately adjoining the base, the native Maltese were not all that friendly toward their British defenders. But those four streets had all a young sailor could ask for: food, booze, female company, and rooms that conveniently rented out by the hour. For those unwilling to waste time wining and dining one of the local Maltese lovelies, there was also the choice of either of two brothels.

  First, aboard Drake, and later reinforced at quarters aboard Valiant, Robby and his mates had been thoroughly schooled in the probable dangers to their health and well-being, literally embodied by the available local females. That message had not been lost on Robby and Ralph, and their mates, Charlie and James. But Arthur considered himself a ladies’ man, and cheerfully gave in to whatever temptations presented themselves. And those always took the form of both booze and women, and always in that order. They had also been schooled in the necessary precautions to be taken should they fall prey to temptation, but Arthur had apparently missed, or had slept through, that portion of the lecture.

  At home, and especially in Glasgow, Robby (despite having been born a Catholic, and knowing it was a mortal sin) was only too eager to bed any girl willing to have him. But the vivid posters, and the grainy black-and-white films that the Navy showed all their young recruits, had put the fear of God into him. So Robby decided it was perhaps time to take his religion seriously, avoid sin, and confine himself to just the beer. And so, also, and for whatever other reasons beyond fear of venereal disease, did all his other mates. Or they did, at least, for the brief time they were in Malta. All of them, that is, excepting Arthur.

  Between the afternoon air raids and the quality of Maltese liberty, Robby was understandably happy to hear the news that Valiant was leaving Malta for Crete. The Germans had invaded Greece and were threatening Crete, and Valiant was getting underway en route to Suda Bay, Crete. Now, he reckoned, perhaps air raids would not be a daily occurrence.

  “Well,” Robby said to McLoughlin on hearing the news, just after they had stood down from yet another Italian air raid, “at least now maybe we won’t be getting shot at every day.”

  McLoughlin laughed. “Hold that thought, Minnow. I think you may be in for a bit of disappointment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  * * * * *

  In Suda Bay, true to McLoughlin’s prediction, Robby was indeed disappointed. He again saw air action, and this far more intense than at Malta. But this time, at least, they were firing at the invading Luftwaffe. At last, Robby thought, I get to shoot at Germans!

  Robby got his chance to shoot at Germans, all right. In Malta, one could almost set his watch by the Italian air raids. Weather permitting, the Royal Italian Air Force could be depended upon to show up between one o’clock and one-thirty in the afternoon, and to depart the area forty-five minutes after arrival. And the Italians never attacked on a Sunday.

  The Luftwaffe in Crete held to no such schedule. Air raids could be expected at any time of the day or night, and Robby spent many a night dozing off while at his station on mount 31, only to be nudged awake by Jim McLoughlin, or another of his mates.

  During two of those nights, at least, Robby got a smell of victory. In the wee hours of Thursday, 30 October, and again, on Wednesday, 5 November, mount 31 was given credit for splashing two Focke-Wulf 200 “Condor” bombers.

  “At last,” Robby crowed to McLoughlin and the others, “we killed us some Germans, we did! We showed them Nazi bastards!”

  “No need to go all cock-a-hoop, Robby,” McLoughlin chided. “Plenty more of those buggers got through, dropped their bomb loads, and returned to base without a scratch. And they’ll be comin’ back tomorrow, and again the next day, and the next. They do their bit and we do ours. Just goes on and on.”

  But Robby refused to have his enthusiasm dampened.

  Because the air raids could be expected at any time of the day or night, there was no liberty in Suda Bay whatsoever.

  Valiant stayed moored in that port for what was, for Robby and his mates, a busy and sleepless seventeen days before retiring to safe haven: Alexandria in Egypt. Robby’s reaction to the move out of Suda Bay was mixed. He was happy to be standing down for a while, and not getting shot at, but he had in no way sated his need for revenge for what the Luftwaffe had done to his family at Dalmuir. He had, after all, joined the Navy to kill, and get even with, Germans.

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  4

  HMS Barham, November, 1941

  Valiant got underway from Alexandria in company with the battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Barham, and a screen of cruisers and destroyers, to join up with a larger fleet. It was the last week of November, 1941. Their mission: to intercept two Italian convoys en route from Messina, Italy, to Benghazi, Libya, in Italian East Africa.

  The Italians had invaded Ethiopia in 1935, and had defeated and annexed the country into Italian East Africa in 1937. Now, the British ground forces, sweeping west out of Egypt, had driven the Italians back to Benghazi. The beleaguered Italian army was desperately short of supplies, hence, the convoys out of Messina en route to provide succor to their hemmed-in forces.

  Now, a British battle fleet combed the Mediterranean in an effort to locate, intercept, and destroy the Italian supply ships.

  * * * * *

  Oberleutnant zur see Hans-Diedrich von Tiesenhausen, in command of the type VIIC German submarine U-331, couldn’t believe his luck. Just over an hour earlier, while cruising on the surface, his lookouts had spotted a number of masts, hull down, on the horizon. But as he drove his boat forward, and the masts drew closer, he thought his luck had left him. The way the masts were moving, their bearing shifting sharply left, there was no way he could get his boat in a position to attack.

  “They’re moving away from us,” von Tiesenhausen observed to his first officer. “Damn!”

  “Perhaps not, Kapitӓn,” his first officer observed. “The bearing drift appears to have slowed. They are zigging, either away, or toward. Time will tell. If the masts draw closer, and they have zigged toward us, we may still be in luck.”

  And draw closer, they did.

  By the time the ships heading toward U-331 were identifiable, it was already dusk. But, despite the failing light, it was clear to von Tiesenhausen, that a British battle fleet was bearing down upon him. Even after nightfall, the oncoming destroyers were clearly illuminated by the first-quarter moon behind them, bright in the clear, virtually cloudless, night sky. And the British had not yet spotted the low silhouette of U-331 in the slate-colored, choppy waters before them.

  Von Tiesenhausen then quickly submerged his boat, and, showing his periscope for only seconds at a time for quick observations, deftly maneuvered U-331, penetrating the screen of destroyers and cruisers undetected. It was a battleship he wanted, and it was a battleship he would sink! “Prepare all tubes forward,” he ordered.

  And there was a beauty in his crosshairs. The battlewagon was moving in front of him now, its bow about sixty degrees to the left of his line of sight, moving from right to left. “We will fire all tubes forward, make ready tubes one through four,” Von Tiesenhausen ordered. He then gave direction to his first officer. “The first shot will be a deflection shot from tube one, angle seven degrees left, set depth four meters.”

  U-331 carried a full complement of fourteen G7e electric torpedoes, each tipped with 280 kilograms of high explosive. The G7e was standard throughout the U-boat fleet. It was silent, and, unlike the American steam-powered torpedoes, left no wake.

  Seconds later, the forward torpedo room reported back to the conning tower. “Tube one ready, deflection angle set seven left, depth set four meters.”

  “Very well. Standby—fire one!”

  In the fo
rward torpedo room, the torpedoman pressed the firing button, and an electric torpedo was quickly on its way to the target. It was followed in quick succession by three other torpedoes, three more deflection shots.

  Soon a flash was seen through the periscope, and, a split second later, the explosion heard. But there was little time to gloat, or to savor the moment. U-331, now very light forward with all four forward torpedo tubes emptied, broached the surface, the boat’s bow, periscope, and bridge superstructure suddenly exposed to the enemy. Before the British could react, however, Von Tiesenhausen recovered control of the boat, ordering “all hands forward,” flooding trim tanks, and driving the boat deep, with the control planes on full dive, and at full battery power. As these maneuvers were still in progress, two more explosions were heard—then, nothing; the fourth shot was apparently a miss.

  Once the ship was deep, Von Tiesenhausen ordered U-331 into a tight right turn. Then U-331 was slowed, and crept silently away to the east. Except for the unplanned broach, Von Tiesenhausen’s boat had been unseen and undetected by the British throughout the entire action. Now he had only to once again evade the screen and make for open water.

  * * * * *

  It was 26 November, and the formation was still searching for the Italian supply convoys. Robby was on his watch station: forward port lookout, main deck. Suddenly, he was startled by a blinding flash to port, and, simultaneously heard the first explosion. He was sure that the Valiant had been hit—and certain he would soon be swimming in the Mediterranean.

  But it was not Valiant that was hit. Two more explosions followed, and Robby saw that the second and third flashes to port were across the water, and the Barham was the source of all three explosions. He was horrified to see the havoc wrought so quickly as the three torpedoes ripped apart the dreadnaught. The mighty Barham suddenly rolled over, and, just as quickly, her boilers and magazines exploded. In under ten minutes, she disappeared completely. HMS Barham took 860 men down with her to the bottom of the sea, in far too little time for Robby to process the tragic events that had unfolded before him.

  Later, two destroyers managed to fish another 489 men from the water—those who were able to clear the ship before it sank. Two of them later died from their wounds.

  U-331, the U-boat that had penetrated the screen and sunk the Barham, got away clean.

  The incident so rattled Robby that he didn’t sleep well for the rest of the deployment. There had been little enough opportunity to sleep on any deployment to begin with, and by the time Robby heard that the Italians had evaded them after all, and that Valiant was to return to Alexandria, he was worn to a frazzle.

  Time and time again he had pictured Valiant falling to the same fate as Barham. German torpedoes were electric, and left no wake. His ship could be struck at any moment, and no lookout, however astute, would ever see a torpedo coming. On watch, as a lookout, he was supposed to scan both the sky for aircraft, and the sea for periscopes. Robby, without even realizing that he was doing so, now gave short shrift to the former, and concentrated heavily on the latter, searching the sea for periscopes.

  You can see the bloody planes coming at you, after all, he thought, and shoot back at them. But there’s no tellin’ when a bastard Nazi sub’s got you in its sights—there’s no tellin’, and there’s no defense!”

  On 17 December, Valiant, in company with Queen Elizabeth, and the destroyer HMS Jurvis, returned a now battle-scarred and battle-weary Robby Cotton to safe harbor in Alexandria.

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  5

  Alexandria, December, 1941

  Luigi de la Penne’s fellow frogmen in the Decima Flottiglia MAS teased him, saying that the tall and lean de la Penne looked just like the American singer, Bing Crosby. He had heard it all before. Crosby’s movies and recordings had been popular in Italy for at least a decade, and the teasing had begun during de la Penne’s tenure at the Accademia Navale, the Italian Naval Academy in Livorno, when his classmates had first noticed the resemblance. He pretended to shake it all off, but was secretly pleased—Crosby, after all, was at least as well known around the world as Il Duce himself.

  There was a new moon on the night of 18 December, 1941, but the air was clear, and a southern breeze, coming up from Africa, pushed whatever wispy cloud cover there was out and over the Mediterranean. From the deck of the surfaced Italian submarine Scrire, Tenente di Vascello (Lieutenant) Luigi de la Penne, and his team of six frogmen, observed three important units of the British Mediterranean fleet as they entered Alexandria harbor.

  Luigi watched intently as the two battleships and a destroyer entered the anchorage. These, he knew, were HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth, along with the destroyer HMS Jurvis. The three vessels anchored close aboard an oiler, HMS Sagona, and two smaller auxiliaries. The British Admiralty deemed Alexandria a safe harbor, well out of reach of Italian Navy Units and German submarines. Now, Luigi hoped to shake that confidence.

  Launching from Scrire, de la Penne, his second, the buff and fit Sottotenente di Vascello (Lieutenant Junior Grade) Emilio Bianchi, and four others, drove three, two-man underwater assault vehicles into the harbor. The vehicles were disdainfully referred to by their operators as “maiali,” or “pigs,” because they were notoriously difficult to maneuver.

  The six divers each used an oxygen rebreather apparatus. These devices, originally developed by the British, used carbon dioxide absorbent canisters and oxygen bottles to supply breathable air underwater. This they did without expelling any gasses; thus there were no telltale air bubbles to rise to the surface.

  Struggling with their pigs, the frogmen managed to penetrate the harbor defenses and attach limpet mines to the battleships, the destroyer, and the oiler. It was de la Penne himself who attached the mine to the keel of the Valiant.

  But then things went very wrong for de la Penne. His mask began to leak badly, causing his rebreather to malfunction. There was nothing he could do—he could not breathe—and de la Penne was forced to the surface. Bianchi refused to leave his leader, and surfaced alongside him.

  * * * * *

  It was just toward the end of the evening watch. Robby Cotton was standing the watch as roving guard on the main deck, when he heard what sounded like the bursting of air bubbles, followed by the splashing of water, just off the port side of the prow and in the water below.

  “Who goes there?” Robby shouted down from the deck of the Valiant, shining his flashlight onto the two men bobbing on the surface not ten feet off the battleship’s port bow. Without hesitation, Robby sounded the alarm: “Divers in the water! Divers in the water!”

  As their four companions made their way back safely to the Scrire, and as their own discarded maiale settled into the harbor mud below them, de la Penne and Bianchi were hauled aboard one of Valiant’s motor launches. They were soon aboard the battleship.

  The two men were brought to the ship’s captain, Royal Navy Captain Charles Morgan, for questioning. “Very well, then,” he asked, “who are you, and what were you about?”

  De la Penne responded in English, “I am Tenente di Vascello Luigi de la Penne, Italian Royal Navy. And this is my second, Sottotenente di Vascello Emilio Bianchi, also of the Royal Navy.”

  Morgan asked again, this time addressing just the team leader. “Very well, Lieutenant, why were you mucking about under my ship? What was your mission?”

  De la Penne responded, again only identifying himself and his second by name and rank, and then keeping silent.

  Morgan tried again, this time addressing Bianchi. “And you, Lieutenant, why were you under my ship? What was your mission?”

  Bianchi responded only with, “I am Sottotenente di Vascello Emilio Bianchi, Italian Royal Navy.”

  And so it went for the better part of two hours, the Italians telling Captain Morgan nothing.

  It was already into the wee hours of the 19th, and Morgan decided that no British divers would be sent down to survey the vessel until daylight. He ordered the It
alians confined to a compartment belowdecks; ironically, the compartment was just above the exact location where de la Penne had placed the mine.

  Shortly before the mine was timed to detonate, de la Penne sent word to Morgan that an explosion was imminent, and that the ship should be evacuated. On hearing the report, Morgan was skeptical, but ordered the evacuation anyway. He then had de la Penne brought to him, and attempted to get him to reveal the mine’s location. De la Penne still refused, and Morgan returned him to the same compartment (which Bianchi had never left).

  The mine went off, and Valiant began to sink immediately. De la Penne was injured in the explosion, suffering lacerations to his arms and legs, while Bianchi went unscathed. Both men were brought up to the main deck in time to witness similar explosions under the Queen Elizabeth, Jurvis, and the Sagona.

  Robby Cotton’s ship—his first duty station—had just sunk into the mud beneath it. And Luigi de la Penne and his team had effectively disabled the British Mediterranean fleet for months.

  Another sneaky attack from underwater, Robby thought, and felt ever more defenseless.

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  6

  Benghazi, December, 1941

  Royal Italian Army Sergente (Sergeant) Marco Scarpetti never heard the explosion. The shell, which landed not forty feet from his position at the parapet, had blown him high into the air, and when he awoke, unharmed except for a massive headache and a buzzing in his ears, he was staring down the barrel of a British Enfield rifle.

  “Hands up, you Dago bastard,” yelled the soldier at the outer end of the rifle, “This war is over for you.”

  “So it would appear,” Marco replied. The soldier was surprised to hear his Italian captive respond in English. It was 23 December, and just two days before Christmas, 1941.