Aircraft Carrier by John Winton

Author:John Winton [Winton, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Naval
Published: 2018-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

'Did you know him, Skipper?'

'Yes, I did, sir.' Somebody up in Miss Britannia's island - Skipper had a sudden, aching longing to be back there - had remembered him out here in this submarine and, out of politeness, had told him about his friend.

'That's why they sent us this, I guess. We don't normally get signals about Limey aircrew. Not unless they want us to pick them up, of course.'

That would mean yet another letter. He really must get down to it and write them. He certainly had to write to Cicely. The toast of their training course. The Wren of all their dreams. Everybody was in love with her. Only Robert Weston had married her. It was an odd thought, but it was very probable that Cicely, sitting at her desk in the operations room at Lee, had seen this signal long before Skipper. That was the problem about marrying Wrens. They were too close to the war and knew too much about it. But that certainly meant another letter: that was one to Fenton's people, one to Geoffrey's, one to Kittens' wife and now one to Cicely Weston. He could always get a job as an obituary writer after the war.

'Know him well?'

'Very well, sir. This man was on my flying training course. Joined the Navy on the same day as me. I even knew him before the war.' Skipper involuntarily shuddered as he said it: that was like saying one had known somebody in the Middle Ages.

'I can see it's hit you. Don't think I'm not sympathetic, Skipper, because it's happened to me more than once, but you gotta just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, as they say, and start in all over.'

'Oh, I know that, sir.' It was the universal advice, but it was curious to hear it from a Yankee submarine captain, miles out here in the Philippine Sea.

'He could be picked up yet.'

'Maybe.' It was possible, in the same way that it was possible a 100-1 outsider might win the Derby. No British aircrew shot down over the Sakishima Gunto had yet been reported as a prisoner of war.

The broadcast loudspeaker mounted on the forward bridge bulkhead crackled, and a voice reported something which Skipper, because of the American accent and the quality of the sound, could not catch. But Commander Mellow immediately put his binoculars to his eyes and searched the sky ahead and to starboard.

'Can't see it yet. Radar reports an aircraft. It will be one of the Dumbos.'

Commander Mellow put his binoculars down. 'Skipper, you haven't met Henry Jordan, our gunnery officer and officer of the watch right now. Henry Jordan Three, to be exact.'

'Glad to meet you, Commander.' Henry Jordan III was like the others, with neat blond, crew-cut hair, but unlike the others he had a small moustache. 'I'm from Paris.'

'Paris!'

'Not Paris, France, Paris, Missouri.'

'And this is our Vasco da Gama.' There was yet another officer standing beside the periscope standards. 'Navigator.'

'Glad to know you, Commander. I'm Joe Brewster.

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