II.
U-C 6 pushed out from Zeebrugge before daybreak.
It was on September 28, a thick day, a very thick day.
With her were three other U-boats, three destroyers, and two float seaplanes.
The Commander of U-C 6 kept station in advance of the other three submarines as they passed through the swept channels into the North Sea. He was fully blown. The whole flotilla rippled along at eight knots.
The U-C 6 was an old boat, the last survivor of fifteen similar mine-layers. But it was his first command, and he was very proud of her. She had just been overhauled. Her paintwork was bright and the brass inside shone. True, she only had one periscope, but they had mounted a 22-pounder for him in front of the conning-tower, an ornament which no other of her class had carried. It was an old gun and not very accurate, and the recoil, when he tested it, had threatened to sheer the holding-down bolts or pull up the deck. But, as he said, it was better than nothing.
He led the flotilla up the coast of Belgium until he came to the Schouen Bank buoy, with its red lattice-work top hamper surmounted by a ball. Here he turned west towards England, along the northern edge of one of our mine-fields. At half-past eight o'clock he touched the southern arm of the Spider Web.
Suddenly, in the mist, only a mile away, he saw, six hundred feet in the air, a black body with wings.
At the sharp word of command his gun crew raced along the narrow deck to the 22-pounder. The breach was snapped open, a shell shoved home, the gun elevated, and then its discharge shook the whole structure of the submarine, which had not been designed to take the recoil.
The shell burst just in front of the flying-boat.
As the gun flashed the Hun Commander saw a long narrow object detach itself from beneath a wing of the boat.
It began to fall.
It wabbled slightly at first, but steadied.
It was coming straight towards him on a slanting path. Its black nose was pointing downwards and it looked to be travelling sideways.
In a shattering roar his universe disintegrated.
Partially stunned, shaking, and bleeding from a long gash across his scalp, he stumbled to his feet.
Passing his hand through his hair he felt that it was wet. He looked at it stupidly and saw that it was red. He could not understand.
He looked at the stern of his boat. The superstructure was torn away, and the steel deck, rent open like a sardine tin, gaped like a great lacerated mouth, the twisted metal turning up at the edges. His gun crew had vanished, where he knew not, but a pallid hand appeared above the surface of the water beside him, flapped feebly, made a few ripples, and disappeared.
Pulling himself together, and acting by instinct, he dropped down into the wrecked boat. At the foot of the conning-tower ladder he splashed into water. All electric lights were out. The interior was in darkness, except for the light from the conning-tower hatchway and the tear in the deck. He swayed unsteadily on his feet on the slippery deck, which sloped sharply down aft.
His crew below had been killed or stunned by the force of the explosion within the cramped and confined steel walls. A sodden mass, shapeless and horrible, washing against his feet, had been his second in command. The once orderly interior, a maze of intricate machinery, cunningly and carefully arranged by the sane intellect of an engineer, was distorted and twisted into an insane jumble. The bottom of the boat had been blown out at the stern, and he realised dimly that it was only the air in the tanks that was keeping her afloat. The chlorine gas, generated by the sea water mixing with the sulphuric acid in the storage batteries, bit into his lungs. The stern was sinking.
He felt sick. He had a great desire to get out of it all. He seized the lower rungs of the iron ladder.
A second heavy explosion shook the boat. Her stern went down suddenly. There was no light. He was thrown into the water.
The submarine sank.
Between the bow of the boat and the water was an air space. He flopped feebly on the surface in the inky blackness.
It was the end.
He let himself sink.
Only two minutes had elapsed from the time the flying-boat had been first sighted.
Up above in the mist were Billiken and Dickey in the flying-boat. They had pushed off that morning from Felixstowe in company with another boat, but the pilots in the second boat had found the mist too thick and had returned.
Suddenly, dead ahead, they had seen the U-C 6. As they roared towards her they saw her gun crew gather round the 22-pounder, and as Dickey pulled the release lever a shell burst just in front of their bow. The bomb hit the stern of the submarine.
Shells were now bursting all around them. This, to the pilots, was a mystery, for the gunners on U-C 6 were no longer at the 22-pounder. Then through the mist, and about a mile away, gun flashes were seen, and the crew of the flying-boat made out three submarines in line abreast firing at them. Behind the submarines were three destroyers, and behind the destroyers were two float seaplanes.
The pilots saw that U-C 6 was in serious trouble. She was down by the stern, the water was up to her conning-tower, and her bow was sticking up in the air. But they knew that submarines are hard to kill dead, often getting back to port after damage which makes the feat appear miraculous, and they were taking no chances.
Disregarding the shell fire, the flying-boat was taken again across the submarine, and the second bomb was dropped from a low height. It detonated immediately in front of the bow. With the explosion the whole structure of the submarine vibrated, she slid down backward under the water, and left on the surface, to show where she had gone down, a large quantity of blackish oil, foreign matter, and a silver cluster of breaking air bubbles, a cluster ever renewed from below.
Immediately on receipt at Felixstowe of the signal about the enemy destroyers and the sinking of U-C 6, flying-boats were shoved down the slipways and boomed out over the North Sea. Cuckney and Clayton sighted a hostile seaplane close to the water, but it sheered off and was lost in the mist. Young and Keesey found another enemy seaplane and chased it until it led them to two enemy destroyers. It was now very thick indeed, the mist changing rapidly into a fog, and while climbing to get well above the enemy in order to bomb them, the pilots lost their way and failed to find the surface ships again.
The following day, which was still misty, Gordon and Faux, while ten miles south-east of the North Hinder, saw a ripple on the surface, a streak of white water, and then the conning-tower of a U-boat breaking surface. It navigated along awash at about five knots. The pilots were at thirteen hundred feet.
Gordon dived, to eight hundred feet, but Fritz had seen him coming and submerged twenty seconds before the two bombs exploded about the place he should have been.
It was thought that this submarine was at least damaged, for when the black circles left by the explosion of the bombs had cleared away, oil came to the surface, and by the time the pilots left the vicinity it was covering a fair-sized area.