Seizing the Enigma Read Online Free PDF

happened, those feelings seemed to be justified.
    But Lemp had moved into position to attack. From in front of the convoy and to starboard, at periscope depth, he fired three torpedoes at a diagonal distance of 800 yards, or half a mile, at three steamers. Just as Baker-Cresswell was preparing to exchange noon positionswith the commodore of the convoy’s merchantmen, he saw a spout of water on the
Esmond
’s starboard side. A few moments later, the
Bengore
was hit. Her stern rose almost to the vertical and the crated cargo on her deck cascaded into the sea. It looked, one witness said, like “a child pouring toys out of a box.”
    Baker-Cresswell, recovering from his astonishment, swung the
Bulldog
to starboard and raced to where he thought the U-boat might be, determined to destroy her. At the same time one of Escort Group 3’s corvettes, the
Aubretia
, which had detected the incoming torpedoes on her asdic, increased speed and turned to starboard. Two minutes later she obtained an asdic contact, then lost it, so the captain stopped her engines to improve the reception. A minute later the
Aubretia
spotted a periscope dead ahead, about 800 yards away, traveling from port to starboard. She sped toward it and dropped a full pattern of depth charges, set to explode at 100 and 225 feet.
    The crew of the U-110 heard these explosions and were shaken by the speed of the attack; they had thought they would have fifteen minutes to dive and get away. The explosions, however, were distant. The submarine continued in attack mode. A few minutes later, Lemp, at the periscope, turning his submarine for a stern shot, spotted a destroyer coming at him with great speed. “Down deep!” he ordered. The crew ran forward to speed the dive.
    But no sooner had the vessel begun to tilt than at least a score of depth charges, dropped by the
Aubretia
and set to discharge at 150 and 385 feet, exploded very close to the submarine. They blew out the main electric motor switch, stopped the electric motors, shattered all depth meters, and started leaks in the oil bunkers; the submarine started to take water and sank even deeper. The plates that formed the deck of the control center, which normally butted one another, overlapped from the pressure. Wilde and others thought it was the end. Although they were frightened and felt helpless, nobody screamed or wept. Lemp, meanwhile, was trying to blow the tanksto get the boat to rise. Suddenly, the men felt her moving upward, perhaps pushed up by depth charges.
    Her rise caused a patch of water on the surface to become disturbed, drawing the eyes of the men on the
Aubretia
, the
Bulldog
, and another destroyer, the
Broadway.
Then, at 12:35, the U-boat burst up from the seemingly vacant sea. Water streamed from her uppers, and she rolled in the slight swell. Inside, the crew members felt the motion and knew, to their great relief, that they were on the surface. Lemp, instead of releasing pressurized air through a valve, opened the hatch. A cloud of dust blew out The crew was ordered to put on life vests and to get out. Ventilation ports and sea strainers were opened to let in water.
    Baker-Cresswell saw red when the U-boat surfaced. She had just sunk two ships, and now this embodiment of all the evil he was fighting had appeared before him. Firing his heavy guns, he ordered 12 knots—suitable ramming speed. But as he saw the German crew boiling out of the conning tower, he realized that they were abandoning ship.
    At that moment, there flashed into his mind a story he had heard at the Naval Staff College in Greenwich in the mid-1920s. It may have made an impression because it involved the father of a fellow student, Lieutenant Louis Mountbatten. During World War I, the Russians had salvaged a German codebook from a German cruiser that had grounded in the Baltic, the
Magdeburg.
They had delivered the code to Mountbatten’s father, who was first sea lord, the head of the Royal Navy. The codebook had enabled