Chapter 977: Intelligence from Afar

In a dim, cramped space, Prien, the legendary German U-boat captain, sat in his bunkroom, which contained only a single bed. He had folded up the table and was now lying on his back, feeling the rhythmic thrum of the submarine’s machinery.

The German naval blockade of Iceland had not ceased for a moment. Obsolete submarines laid mines secretly in the waters around Iceland, while advanced, new-model U-boats were responsible for hunting down the ships that attempted to bring supplies to the island.

The long and tedious life underwater was far from the romantic image one might have. After all, by this point, the Allies had already begun to use a complete convoy system to barely maintain their forward base on Iceland. Under these circumstances, it was very difficult for a submarine to find an opportunity to surface and recharge, which limited the operational intensity of the German submarines in these waters.

Prien hadn’t shaved in days. His somewhat gaunt face was covered in a dense, bluish stubble, making him look like a wild man. But he was used to it. In the German U-boat force, one had long since disregarded one’s own dishevelment.

After all, compared to staying alive, a slight blemish in one’s appearance was nothing. What’s more, there were no pretty girls on the closed-off sea. Who were you getting all dressed up for? Most of the time, the lights in the submarine were off. Who would care about a little grease on your clothes?

“Captain!” From behind the thin curtain that served as a partition, the duty officer called Prien in a low voice. Prien, who hadn’t been asleep at all, immediately sat up and pulled the curtain aside.

“Another convoy has passed. Sonar contact. A considerable number of escort vessels,” the duty officer reported what he knew. To carry out a mission in such dangerous waters, not many submarine commanders in the entire German army had such courage. But with greater risk came greater rewards, so they now had firsthand intelligence.

Prien was taken aback for a moment, then stroked his stubbled chin, his brows furrowed in confusion. “Such frequent convoys, and all with a large number of anti-submarine escorts… What are they shipping to the island? With this kind of density, we have to notify headquarters.”

“Adjust course, 44 degrees to starboard! Turn the rudder,” Prien said, throwing his leather jacket over his shoulders and jumping down from his bunk. He followed the duty officer into the submarine’s control room. The sonar operator was holding his headphones. The roar of the engines from the fleet above sounded like a large number of ships.

“Adjust course to starboard, turn the rudder 44 degrees. Disengage from this area as soon as possible,” the duty officer ordered the helmsman to leave. The helmsman nodded and began to adjust the submarine’s rudder. The submarine turned slowly in the deep sea, like a giant shark waiting for an opportunity to pounce on its prey.

They had only one torpedo left and were in urgent need of replenishment. They were only waiting here to temporarily avoid these frequently passing American merchant convoys. So from the very beginning, they had had no intention of attacking, but were just dodging and observing. Now they were planning to leave, because they had to find a safe place to surface and send what they had seen back to the submarine headquarters in France.

In the surface fleet, a sonarman on a destroyer frowned. He had heard a strange sound in the water, not a sound of nature. It sounded like… like a submarine adjusting its course.

“Did you find something?” the extremely nervous officer asked, standing by the sonarman’s side, his voice slightly stammering. He did not want to run into those legendary German U-boats. He had heard from comrades who had encountered them before that it was a nightmare.

“It sounded like a submarine, but I haven’t heard anything else. They haven’t fired any torpedoes… at least not just now,” this sonarman said, taking off his headphones and answering his superior’s question. As a new recruit, he was also very nervous about the current situation. Who knew if a torpedo would come rushing over and blow their ship in two?

“Are you sure you didn’t mishear? The Germans have no reason to let our convoy go,” the officer said, swallowing hard and then asking cautiously.

“It’s… it’s possible.” Because of the large number of ships that had been launched, the U.S. Navy had too many newly commissioned sailors. The main force of the U.S. Navy was in the Pacific, so in the Atlantic, they had to make do with a large group of new recruits. Although the losses of the German U-boat fleet were high, compared to Japan’s conquests in the Pacific, the fighting in the Atlantic was still of a very low intensity.

So the United States was also boldly using new recruits. After all, the German Navy was still at least a hundred thousand miles from being able to cross the Atlantic and land in America. Therefore, the generally low quality of the officers and men of these escort flotillas was another reason why the German submarines were able to succeed repeatedly.

Just think about the drastic decline in the quality of the German army after its expansion, and one could deduce just how low the quality of the U.S. Navy was after its expansion. This low quality could only be described with the word “tragic.” There were even a large number of sailors who had not even learned to swim before they were thrown onto the cold and stormy surface of the North Atlantic.

After another half-moment, this newly trained sonarman once again took off his headphones and looked at the officer behind him. “I… I can’t hear it anymore. There’s no sound at all… It might have left, or maybe I… I misheard just now.”

And so everyone was happy. The nervous officer behind him wiped the sweat from his forehead and let out a long sigh. He raised his head, looked through a nearby porthole at the huge fleet behind him, a fleet that had been ordered to supply food and fuel to Iceland. As for why the scale was so huge, no one could say for sure.

In a huge castle near the French coastline, a group of high-ranking commanders of the German Navy’s submarine force was busy over a huge sea chart. Germany now had over 400 ocean-going submarines, and the number of submarines on duty near Iceland exceeded 90. These advanced wolf packs roamed the seas, tying down the British and American navies with an astonishing sinking ratio.

The German Navy was strengthening what it lacked. Raeder could finally, like a true World War II naval general, begin to equip his fragile carrier fleet with truly high-end warships. The commissioning of the new heavy cruisers had finally given the entire German Navy’s surface fleet some decent gunnery equipment of its own. The pressure on Germany’s traditional maritime power, which had been propped up by the battleship Grand Admiral Raeder, had finally been relieved. And at this time, the U.S. Navy was launching more and newer aircraft carriers.

“Admiral! Admiral! An urgent telegram from U-47,” a radio operator in charge of the radio rushed over and handed a highly encrypted piece of intelligence to Grand Admiral Dönitz, who was standing in a corner of the huge sea chart, studying the entire Atlantic.

This former commander of the German Navy’s submarine force, who had once been sent by Akado to the Netherlands to secretly form Germany’s first U-boat fleet, was now, in name and in fact, the number two man in the Third Reich’s navy. His wolf packs had a glorious combat record, and he himself was a hot-commodity, powerful general in the German Navy.

“Oh? A telegram from Prien?” Dönitz took the encrypted telegram and, after flipping a page, went straight to the decoded text on the back. His eyes scanned the sensitive words, and then he habitually raised an eyebrow and signed his name at the end of the document—Karl Dönitz.

He then called for his deputy. “Hand this document over to the Reich Intelligence Department. Remind me to call General Gascoigne later. This is a very important piece of intelligence. It indicates that the United States is helping the exiled British remnants on Iceland to strengthen their forces there.”

More frequent fleets… what on earth were they transporting? Dönitz frowned. He didn’t know what his opponent was thinking, but he knew that the Americans and the British were both trying to break his wolf packs’ advantage under the surface of the Atlantic. This was not a good sign. It was very likely the enemy was planning a counter-attack!

The original document had not yet been seen, but the news had already been passed to the Third Reich’s Wehrmacht Intelligence Department. In Gascoigne’s office, a group of intelligence experts were analyzing this telegram from the distant surface of the Atlantic. Prien’s submarine had, after careful calculation, discovered that the Americans were dispatching their transport ships at a more frequent rate, and other submarine units had also confirmed that the number of Allied submarines heading for Iceland was increasing.

What on earth were they transporting? This was a very important question. It was clear that a transport of this scale was not to maintain the existence of the Iceland base, but to expand it and to use it on a large scale. This was not good news for Germany. It proved that the Americans and the British were planning a counter-attack in the Atlantic.

“Immediately transmit a message to the spy branches in the United States and Britain. Have them find out as soon as possible what the Allied side is planning to do in Iceland!” Gascoigne said, pounding his desk and finally speaking to his subordinates. “No matter what they are planning to do, we must know in advance and stop them!”

In the SS General Headquarters, Heydrich was also saying the same thing to his subordinates. “I don’t care what methods you use, but you must find out the detailed plan of the Allies regarding the Iceland base and put it on my desk! Act immediately! Now!”

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