Enigma

back, turning again and so on, and on, until either its power ran out or a ship was sunk. The sensing mechanism was crude; it was not unknown for a U-boat to find itself being pursued by its own armaments. They were called FATs: Flachenabsuchendertorpedos, or 'shallow searching torpedoes'. Feiler fired four of them.

    FROM: FEILER
    IN NAVAL GRID SQUARE BC 6956 AT 0116. FOUR-FAN AT A CONVOY PROCEEDING ON A SOUTHERLY COURSE AT 7 KNOTS. ONE STEAMSHIP OF 6,000 GROSS REGISTERED TONS: LARGE EXPLOSION AND A CLOUD OF SMOKE, THEN NOTHING MORE SEEN. ONE STEAMSHIP OF 5,500 GRT LEFT BURNING. 2 FURTHER HITS HEARD, NO OBSERVATIONS.

    On the 25th, Feiler radioed his position. On the 26th, his luck turned bad again.

    FROM: U-653
    AM IN NAVAL GRID SQUARE BC 8747. HIGH PRESSURE GROUP 2 AND STARBOARD NEGATIVE BUOYANCY TANK UNSERVICEABLE. BALLAST TANK 5 NOT TIGHT. IS MAKING ODD NOISES. DIESEL PRODUCING DENSE WHITE SMOKE.

    Headquarters took all night to consult its engineers and replied at ten the following morning.

    TO: FEILER
    THE CONDITION OF BALLAST TANK NO 5 IS THE ONLY THING WHICH MAY ENFORCE RETURN PASSAGE. DECIDE FOR YOURSELF AND REPORT.

    By midnight, Feiler had made his decision.

    FROM: U-653 AM NOT RETURNING
    On 3 March, in mountainous seas, U-653 came alongside a U-boat tanker and took on board 65 cubic metres of fuel and provisions sufficient for another fourteen days at sea.
    On the 6th, Feiler was ordered into station in a new patrol line, code-named Kaubgraf (Robber Baron).
    And that was all.
    On 9 March the U-boats abruptly changed their Weather Code Book, Shark was blacked out, and U-653, along with one hundred and thirteen other German submarines then known to be operating in the Atlantic, vanished from Bletchley's view.
    At 5 a.m. GMT on Tuesday 16 March, some nine hours after Jericho had parked the Austin and walked into Hut 8, U-653 was heading due east on the surface, returning to France. In the North Atlantic it was 3 a.m. After ten days on station in the Raubgraflme, with no sign of any convoy, Feiler had finally decided to head for home. He had lost, along with Leutnant Laudon, four other ratings washed overboard. One of his petty officers was ill. The starboard diesel was still giving trouble. His one remaining torpedo was defective. The boat, which had no heating, was cold and damp, and everything—lockers, food, uniforms -was covered in a greenish-white mould. Feiler lay on his wet bunk, curled up against the cold, wincing at the irregular beat of the engine, and tried to sleep.
    Up on the bridge, four men made up the night watch: one for each point of the compass. Cowled like monks in dripping black oilskins, lashed to the rail by metal belts, each had a pair of goggles and a pair of Zeiss binoculars clamped firmly to his eyes and was staring blindly into his own sector of darkness.
    The cloud cover was ten-tenths. The wind was a steel attack. The hull of the U-boat thrashed beneath their feet with a violence that sent them skidding over the wet deck plates and knocking into one another.
    Facing directly ahead, towards the invisible prow, was a young Obersteurmann, Heinz Theen. He was peering into such an infinity of blackness that it was possible to imagine they might have fallen off the edge of the world, when suddenly he saw a light. It flared out of nowhere, several hundred yards in front of him, winked for two seconds, then disappeared. If he hadn't had his binoculars trained precisely upon it, he would never have seen it.
    Astonishing though it seemed, he realised he had just witnessed someone lighting a cigarette.
    An Allied seaman lighting a cigarette in the middle of the North Atlantic.
    He called down the conning tower for the captain.
    By the time Feiler had scrambled up the slippery metal ladder to the bridge thirty seconds later the cloud had shifted slightly in the high wind and shapes were moving all around them. Feiler swivelled through 360 degrees and counted the outlines of nearly twenty
    ships, the nearest no more than 500 yards away on the port side.
    A whispered cry, as much of panic as command: 'Alarrrmm!'
    The U-653 came out of her emergency dive and hung motionless in the calmer water beneath the waves.
    Thirty-nine men crouched silently in the semidarkness listening to the sounds of the convoy passing overhead: the fast revs of the modern diesels, the ponderous churning of the steamers, the curious singing noises of the turbines in the warship escorts.
    Feiler let them all go