Splinter on the Tide by Phillip Parotti

Author:Phillip Parotti [Parotti, Phillip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Historical / World War II
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2021-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

15

Chaser 3, the screening ships Ash had under his command, and the 19 vessels in their convoy emerged from Raritan Bay by 0800 the following morning, formed into a compact body with a heavy Greek refrigerator ship serving as formation guide, and started northeast up the coast at 12 knots, zig-zagging in accordance with one of the Navy’s many standard plans. Immediately, upon execution of the appropriate flag hoist, Ash started the escorts patrolling their prescribed sectors, and then Ash took Samarango in hand, instructing him about the new method of station keeping, something the bosun had never practiced before.

“You see how it’s done, then?” Ash asked after giving his watch stander an hour’s close supervision.

“Yes, Sir,” Samarango said. “Beats the hell out of having to shoot a bearing to the guide and read his range with a stadimeter every five minutes … if you don’t mind me saying, Captain. This is the kind of station keeping that I could almost stand to marry.”

“Enjoy it while you can,” Ash said. “COMDESLANT might shoot me a rocket for having tried it.”

They moved on then, the plot showing that they advanced slightly under 12 miles each hour owing to the zig-zag, but aside from a few fishermen looking for a catch and a destroyer coming down from Cape Cod with four empty oilers in convoy, they didn’t sight so much as a single vessel the entire day. And to everyone’s surprise, the seas remained utterly tranquil beneath a windless sky throughout a long morning and a longer afternoon. The sun finally set, glowing red and throwing a sheen over the water, at about 2015 that evening. As soon as Ash had shot evening stars, he reoriented his screen by means of flashing light, sending the most senior of the new chasers back behind the convoy where, he hoped, it might be able to intercept any U-boats that tried to sneak up and intrude on the convoy from astern. And before midnight, south of Nantucket–no more than 10 miles off the beach–to everyone’s surprise, if not shock, one did.

As the action developed and as Ash later deduced, the U-boat’s skipper had made a mistake. Making good speed on the surface, coming up on the convoy’s port side from astern, the Nazi commander had apparently assumed that the convoy would not be as well protected as it turned out to be and that, on the inland side, it would be even less well protected than it would be to starboard where it might have expected an attack from the middle of the Atlantic. The U-boat commander also failed to imagine that the escort would have enough ships to patrol across the convoy’s rear. As a result, an alert lookout standing watch in the chaser’s crow’s nest had managed to spot the U-boat’s conning tower silhouetted against the glow coming off the distant shores of Nantucket, whereupon he had instantly sounded the alarm. The chaser’s commander had then gone straight to General Quarters and attacked,

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