in the chaos of what proved the real coup de grâce. That ramming was undoubtedly one of the prettiest little jobs of its kind, one of the most neatly finessed, ever brought off.
“Since running over the submarine and dropping the depth-charges the captain had turned the Whack through thirty-two points, a complete circle. This brought her back to a course just at right angles to the beam of the now helpless enemy, toward which she was driven to the limit of the last kick of the engines. Just before the moment of impact the screws were stopped dead, so as to sink the bow and reduce the chance of riding over the U-boat and rolling it under her stem, as has occasionally happened, instead of cutting it straight in two. The jar, when it came, was terrific, throwing from his feet every man not holding to something; yet there was that in the clean, sweet crunch of it that told me that it had accomplished all the heart could desire, even before the next second furnished graphic ocular evidence of it.
“The sharp, fine bows of the Whack drove home well abaft the conning-tower, and—though the staggering jar told of the resistance met—for all the eye could see, cut through like a knife in soft butter. Indeed, the amazing cleanness of the cut has always seemed to me the most remarkable feature of the whole show. The bow end of the U-boat, with the conning-tower, was the section which was cut off on my side—port—and the even cross-section
of it that gaped up at me was very little different from that I once saw when one of our own submarines was being sawed through amidships in connection with some repairs. Even the plating did not appear to be bent or buckled. The impression that ring of shining clean-cloven steel left on my mind was of a cut as true and even as could have been done in dock with an acetylene flame. This was largely imagination, of course; and yet how photographic my mind-picture is you may judge from the fact that I have distinct recollection of seeing the thin circle of red lead where it showed all the way round beneath the grey of the outer paint.
“The heavily tilted main deck of the interior of this section of the U-boat did not appear to be flooded at this juncture, though any water that had been shipped, of course, would have been in the now submerged bows. I have a jumbled recollection of wheels and levers and switchboards, fittings of brass and steel, and what I took to be three torpedoes—one on the port side, and two, one above the other, on the starboard. The most arresting thing of all, however, was the figure of a solitary man, the only one, strange to say, that anybody reports having seen. He was scrambling upward toward the opening, and I have never been quite sure whether he was ‘Kamerad-ing’ with his uplifted hands, or whether they were raised preparatory to the dive it is quite probable he intended to make into the sea.
“Whichever the attitude was, it had no chance to serve its purpose. The stern section of the U-boat—the one most heavily damaged by the depth-charges—was seen to sink abreast the starboard 12-pounder battery by the crew of that gun, but the forward part—the one with the conning-tower, which I had seen into the interior of—buoyed up by the water-tight compartments in the bows, continued to float. Observing this, the Captain ordered the helm put a-starboard, and as we turned, the 4-inch gun and my 12-pounder opened up together. My very first round, fired over the port quarter, hit and exploded fairly inside the gaping end of the section, right where I had last seen the man with upraised hands. That, and the two or three smashing hits by the 4-inch gun, finished the job. A whirlpool in the sea marked the rush of water into the severed end, and this section—for all the world as though it had been a complete submarine—tossed its bows, with their elephant-ear-like rudders, skyward, and planed off on an easy angle toward the bottom. Its disappearance was complete. There were no survivors, and practically no floating wreckage. Only a spreading film of oil and a tangle of torn wakes slowly dissolving in the wash of the driving seas marked the scene of the action. It had lasted something over ten minutes.
“The Whack suffered considerable damage from the impact with the submarine, though not enough
to give us serious worry, even in so heavy a sea. The stem was bent over to port, like a broken nose, and the buckling plates caused her to make quite a bit of water. We had no trouble coping with this, however, and made port, with the survivors of the Amperi aboard, without difficulty. There we soon had the—well, not unmixedly unpleasant—news that the Whack’s wounds were of a nature somewhat comparable to what the Tommy in France calls a ‘Blighty.’ Without having any real permanent harm done her, she was still enough banged up to need a special refit, the period of which, of course, the most of us would be able to spend at home on leave. Yes, indeed,” he concluded, grinning pleasedly, “that was a ripping piece of ramming in more ways than one.”
P—— went over and bent above the shivering “Gyro,” for a moment, took a long look through his glasses at the last of the now receding convoy, and then came back and rejoined me by the rail.