Chapter 1108: A Close Call

“Damn it! How were we spotted?” At this moment, this was the pathetic question that kept repeating in the mind of the commander of the Allied “Mountain Dog” convoy. They had meticulously planned all sorts of deceptions. Even many of the sailors on the transport ships had not known that the destination of this operation was Iceland.

They had used countless deceptive methods, even using false information to confuse the Germans. But now it seemed that all their efforts had been in vain. The German wolfpack was waiting for them on this very route.

BOOM! Another explosion from the distance finally pulled this Allied commander, who was deep in fear, back from his thoughts. In that brief instant, it was as if he had heard something different in that explosion.

But in such a short time, he was completely unable to find where that tiny difference was. And over there, the British and American destroyer units were accelerating and turning. The entire fleet had already begun to fall into chaos and collapse. And so he quickly turned his head and gave a loud order to his aide: “Have the fleet maintain its course! It’s almost dark. If we fall into disarray, it will be a disaster!”

“Your Excellency, General, if we maintain our course and speed in the face of enemy torpedoes, I think that is already a disaster,” the aide said in a panic to the general.

“Damn it! Are you the commander now, or am I? Order the fleet to maintain its course! If anyone dares to turn without orders, I’ll sink them!” the fleet commander shouted. And then he suddenly realized what had been wrong just a moment ago, so he turned his body in surprise and looked in the direction of the exploding ship with a strange gaze. “Something’s not right! Not right!”

It was as if he had seen a French feast when he was starving, as if someone had handed him a soft pillow when he was sleepy, as if… In short, this Allied commander, who just a moment ago had felt he was the unluckiest man in the world, at this moment, suddenly felt the favor of the goddess of fortune.

“The explosions didn’t continue!” he suddenly shouted in excitement. His eyes had finally regained their soul, and they were darting back and forth in their sockets. At this moment, he was ecstatic, because in this moment, his fleet seemed to be saved.

There were two kinds of tactics used by German U-boats. One was the single-boat-patrol ambush tactic. To put it bluntly, a single U-boat would wander the sea and sink whatever it encountered. The advantage of this tactic was that it was impossible to defend against, and it was difficult for the Allies to conduct targeted anti-submarine warfare. Of course, this tactic was not invulnerable, and its disadvantages were just as obvious—a U-boat doing this might not even encounter a single enemy ship before it had exhausted its fuel and had to return to base.

And the tactic that was its opposite was the one developed by the German Navy’s Admiral Dönitz, the famous “wolfpack” tactic. This tactic, to put it bluntly, was to use as many means as possible to discover the enemy’s target in advance, and then to concentrate all the German submarines that were active in the vicinity, to besiege and kill the Allied fleet at a certain location.

The reason the wolfpack tactic was so terrible, its first advantage, was the diversity and foresight of its early reconnaissance methods. For a submarine attacking a target, this was an innovation that was almost a technical revolution. As everyone knows, the submarines of the World War II era, due to their functional limitations, could only travel at a speed lower than that of a surface ship. This made it a low-probability event for a submarine to find a target and to obtain a good attack position.

And so, a large number of submarines could only wander aimlessly at sea, relying on luck to find and attack their targets. This kind of attack was clearly very inefficient and costly. In response to this situation, Dönitz, as a submarine expert, had proposed an improved plan.

This plan was to use the naval air arm, the spy agencies, and even his own country’s fishing boats, merchant ships, and raiders… all of this power, to provide the submarines with intelligence on the enemy’s shipping activities. With reconnaissance and intelligence, the submarines could, based on this intelligence, set up an ambush in a predetermined sea area in advance.

The wolfpack tactic had made up for the shortcomings of the U-boat war’s early detection conditions. It had concentrated a superior force to besiege and annihilate the Allied transport convoys, which was why it had been able to sink so many more ships and to inflict greater losses on the Allies.

In order to buy themselves time to escape, and to create the greatest chaos and to achieve the greatest results, the wolfpack tactic would generally, at a specific time, fire as many torpedoes as possible, and then, after one strike, they would disengage and flee a thousand miles. These underwater assassins would often, at the first opportunity, fire all the torpedoes they could, to achieve the greatest results.

But just now, just as the commander of the “Mountain Dog” convoy was beginning to despair, the sound of the explosions had gradually faded away. And after just a few bangs, it had come to an abrupt end.

Oh God! You are still on our side after all! After thinking this, this commander immediately began to give his combat orders: “Have the destroyers hold their positions! Don’t be impulsive! The enemy may only have one submarine! Don’t scare ourselves!”

His words had made the panicked bridge instantly quiet down. Everyone looked at their commander in disbelief, and then some of the sailors, who had experienced the interception of a German U-boat wolfpack, immediately realized something. “Hey! The explosions have stopped! The enemy’s attack didn’t continue!”

As if to confirm their suspicions, the entire fleet quieted down, as if it had not been attacked at all. If it weren’t for a giant ship in the distance that was slowly sinking, if it weren’t for the ship even further away that was on fire, if it weren’t for the fact that a ship had just exploded—they would have suspected that they had just been too nervous and had had a hallucination of a German U-boat attack.

“It was an attack by one submarine! Not a German wolfpack!” a sailor, who had been attacked by a German wolfpack and had been lucky enough to survive, said, leaning back in his chair. He let out a long breath and said with relief, “That’s great! It seems our luck hasn’t completely run out this time.”

This one sentence had spoken for everyone. And another explosion in the distance, in everyone’s ears, had also become less terrible. If there was only one German submarine, even if it was one of those new types, it would at most only have the opportunity to fire 16 torpedoes. Even if all of them hit, it seemed to be a loss they could afford!

But on the vast sea, how could such a fantastic thing as 16 torpedoes hitting 16 different ships happen? So at most, only less than 10 ships would be hit. On this North Atlantic route, the most dangerous in the world, to lose these was completely within an acceptable range.

As if to confirm everyone’s guess, the sound of explosions did not come again for a long time. An adjutant had already walked over with the damage control telegram and was reporting just how much damage that last attack had caused: “The transport Bottlecap is heavily damaged and has fallen behind… the Great White Bear has sunk… No. 1447 has sunk… the Beautiful Goddess has sunk…”

“Gentlemen! We don’t know if we will encounter more German submarines in the night! So we must increase our speed.” The fleet commander, at this moment, was as if he had been raised from hell to heaven. He had been prepared to lose half of his ships, and now he had been told that he had only lost four transports. This could almost be considered good news.

But just as he was secretly rejoicing, a transport ship at the rear of the fleet suddenly exploded again. A huge flame shot up dozens of stories high. It was clear that this was a transport ship that was fully loaded with munitions. Looking at its position, it was near the center of the fleet. Unfortunately for it, this was not a lucky position.

Everyone was silent, staring at the water column and flames that had risen in the distance. It was a long time before they had come to their senses. The experienced ones all knew that a German submarine had just fired a salvo of torpedoes, and it was definitely no less than six… In this situation, to have hit five ships could only be considered a very standard combat result.

“It seems we’ve lost another ship.” The commander, who had been silent just now, was, for the most part, still a little worried. He was worried that more and more German submarines would join in this slaughter. But as time passed, second by second, it was clear that his worries had not become a reality.

There really was only this one German submarine, and this one submarine had only had time to attack once. No matter how you looked at it, this was a chance encounter at sea. Their fleet had encountered a passing German submarine, and so, in the spirit of “a wild goose does not pass by without leaving a feather,” the German submarine had launched an attack. This was the script. There was nothing strange about it.

By the time the next day had dawned, B-17 bombers and other Allied aircraft had appeared on patrol above the Allied fleet. A patrolling British destroyer flotilla had also rendezvoused with them. It seemed the threat of the German U-buats had been completely lifted. That one German submarine that had suddenly appeared had become the only interlude in this transport. Everyone on the ship was rejoicing in their good fortune.

In Canada, in the building of the temporary British intelligence headquarters, an officer put down the phone in his hand and then shook his head at his adjutant. “This kind of thing happens every day in the Atlantic. The German submarines are almost omnipresent there. If we were to change such an important code just because we are worried, it would be an absolute waste and a loss.”

“But the ‘Mountain Dog’ convoy was indeed attacked by a German submarine. We can’t ignore this possibility. The Germans may not have had time to deploy more submarines, that’s also a possibility, isn’t it?” The adjutant frowned and argued.The British intelligence officer shook his head, then meaningfully advised his adjutant, “This code expires in two months. There’s no need for us to scare ourselves like this. You’re just being overly sensitive. Even if we haven’t encountered a single German submarine, you’ll still tell me, ‘The Germans might be trying to cover something up.’ Let’s change the code…”

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