'Watery Depths'

Excerpt from my new novel 'The Gateway to Gandamak'

Introduction

'The Gateway to Gandamak' (working title) is speculative fiction, based on historical fact, that follows a single family from the Norman sea-borne invasion of Anglo-Saxon England in 1066 AD, through the British defeat in the First Afghan War (the Last Stand of the 44th Regiment of Foot in 1842 is shown in the picture), through the Indian Raj and the Troubles in Northern Ireland to the present day. It encompasses military action, including code-breaking of the Enigma traffic by the British Code and Cypher School (now GCHQ, the equivalent of the NSA) at Bletchley Park during World War Two.

The excerpt provided here, 'Watery Depths' (from Book 1, part 2, Chapter 2) relates to the breaking of the German code that enabled the combined British and American convoys across the Atlantic to defeat the Nazi submarine attack. By 1940 Britain was facing a certain defeat due to the blockade of food and other supplies in the Atlantic; the action that is reported accurately here is based on information from newspaper reports at the time and later war histories. It was an important step in the code-breaking operation.

This excerpt has been shortened and adapted.

Watery Depths

“Coming or going, watery depth upon watery depth means danger.” - I Ching (29, Kan)

The declaration of war against Nazi Germany leads to the worst catastrophe the world has known. Everyone’s life will be turned upside down as they huddle around the radio on the morning of 3rd September 1939 and listen to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain intone:

"This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us…… I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”

 Then, of course, not much happens through the freezing winter of 1939-’40 and the “Phony War”. German action against Britain is confined to harassing shipping. As early as November, German submarines are in action and one, U-33, sinks three trawlers off the coast of Donegal. The Nazi High Command knows that shipping in the west will be critical, as will links between the shipbuilding in Belfast and the rest of the United Kingdom. It would be a mistake to think that the Germans fell back on the attack on Atlantic shipping much later after defeats in the air war; the naval war starts immediately hostilities are declared using submarines. It is well-planned and uses experienced, highly intelligent often fanatical officers capable of working alone in conditions most modern submariners would find intolerable. The Germans have led the world in the technology and tactics of the Unterseebot; Germany starts the war with sixty-five, the most powerful fleet in the world aimed primarily at attacking merchant shipping, not usually by a torpedo, but surface gunfire and laying mines. The trawlers are dispatched by gunfire, reportedly as the U-33 commander laughed, though how this was observed is not clear, and it sounds like a propaganda story. His behavior later does not suggest a man that would glory in killing sailors, he has a duty to undertake and he carries it out.  

 Despite the forward-thinking, the boats themselves are designed for surface operation but with a diving-capability, used when threatened or in an attack mode. They are small and cramped. Men sleep where they can. Without bathing or laundry, even freshwater for drinking is limited, the foul odor of the ship, diesel fumes, rank sweat, and fear is something that stays with crews forever.

Kapitanleutnant Hans-Wilhelm von Dresky revels in all this. He is a small man, aggressive and a Royale beard – small mustache anchored by a chin tuft that gives him the look of a fin-de-siècle intellectual rather than a sailor. He has been in the German Navy since he was twenty-one and a watch officer since 1936. Such is his skill and performance as captain of a small boat, that in late October 1938 he assumes command of the larger Type VIIA U-33. On his first two patrols, after hostilities are declared, von Dresky destroys twelve ships, just under 23,000 tons of shipping. He is a hero of the Third Reich, awarded the Iron Cross First Class.

On 5th February 1940, U-33 departs Wilhelmshaven for the Firth-of-Clyde in West Scotland to ostensibly to lay mines. It is a dangerous mission, close to a large British naval base and in waters heavily patrolled and covered by searchlights. Although the River Clyde leads to deep water, the approaches are less than forty meters in depth. As usual, he runs on the surface using his diesel engine, standard procedure with a short battery life that he must conserve at all costs in case he has to operate submerged.  There is some suggestion U-33 may have tried to get through the boom defense netting across the Clyde at Cloch between Gourock and Dunoon and failed. Many years later survivor Max Schiller tells a Scottish newspaper that he believes its last position was in fact between Wemyss Bay and Skelmorlie, 25 miles or so northeast of Pladda, where the official reports say U-33 was sunk. There is another mystery about two missing crewmen – was this a mission to land spies as well as drop mines? We do not know.

In any event, von Dresky noses his boat into the Firth in the early hours of 12th February where she is detected by the British minesweeper, HMS Gleaner, though later reports say there was a top-secret “Asdic” radar detection ring that also picked up the submarine. U-33 was caught but could have engaged the smaller vessel on the surface and very probably defeated it. It seems that in the dark von Dresky mistakes her for a larger cruiser and so he dives. For the next hour and thirty terrifying minutes Gleaner drops a pattern of depth charges that damage the U-boat. With a shallow depth, von Dresky has nowhere to go but up. Damaged, he surfaces and prepares to abandon the ship and scuttle.

The crippled U-33 is on the surface at around 05.30 AM in freezing gray dawn. HMS Gleaner, and by this time other British warships. are in the offing aiming to capture the submarine intact, but there is a dense, wet Scottish fog and the U-boat crew has time to disembark into the sea which is choppy. In the confusion, cold, already soaked to the skin with some injured, the crew behave in the best, disciplined traditions of the German navy. But mistakes are inevitable. Scuttling charges set by the Chief Engineer go off prematurely, he is injured, other seamen go into the freezing water with only life jackets and many succumb to hypothermia despite the efforts of the British vessels that by this time have located the sinking U-boat. Sailors, at least British sailors, don’t want to see fellow mariners drown, so they do what they can to rescue the German crew. Tragically, KapitanLeutnant von Dresky drowns, going down with his ship, as do three others, perhaps killed by the explosion or already too injured to move. Nineteen Germans survive and go into captivity. 

 Had the Kapitanleutnant survived the story would have ended as a minor event, probably unreported except in the local press. It would not be told here. But a mistake is made that alters the course of the war. The crew, especially commanding officers, are well-taught about the need to destroy codes, other secret information, and hardware. One of which is the Enigma encryption device. As the crew abandons the ship, von Dresky, intent on being the last man off the sinking U-boat after all his men have escaped, passes three of the Enigma rotor wheels, essential for the machine to operate, including rotors VI and VII, to engineer's mate Friedrich Kumpf. “Throw these in the sea!”, he shouts.

The machine itself, about the size of a large manual typewriter, is worthless without the rotors. The important elements are these Walzen, the wheels or drums – rotors – that are the heart of the machine. Bear in mind, Enigma is not a secret technology. It was invented in the 1920s for commercial and diplomatic use and was adopted by the German military at the core of its communications system. Every command unit of the armed forces has one, and Allied forces everywhere are briefed to capture one intact if they can – the desperate search conducted that foggy dawn for the damaged U-33 by the British naval force is not only for humanitarian reasons but to recover the Enigma machine they know is in the submarine.

In the panic and distress of the moment, Kumpf puts the rotors in his pocket and forgets them. When he is captured, they are discovered and immediately transferred to the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. Perhaps if the Herr Kapitan had survived, he would have ensured they were disposed of, but von Dresky is both a man with a strict idea of duty and a Kriegsmarine officer. He stands on the conning tower and counts his men off. Realizing there are three men left below, he climbs down into the dark, waterlogged, and broken boat to find them. Perhaps he is also aware that he has dealt with just three of the four Enigma rotors and wishes to retrieve the other one. We shall never know his motivation. Too late. Von Dresky may have been a committed Nazi, but in my estimation, he was a fine man, a fine leader. He understood that his duty as a naval officer in a great tradition, and his loyalty was to his men. He died, I prefer to think, trying to save them.

The Naval version of the Enigma has been issued with more rotors than the other military services. The machine uses three at a time, but five are issued allowing for exchanges based on a book of instructions. The Kapitanleutnant perhaps has this in mind also as he descends the steep ladder to his death. Much later another crew member, Schilling, claims that he had a rotor that he did throw into the sea, which adds poignancy to the captain’s fate. But the key fact is that the rotors that are captured are crucial to the war effort. An individual rotor, essentially a round disc with letters of the alphabet each with an electrical contact that is slotted into the bed of the machine, encrypts a plain text by substituting another letter for the original resulting in a cipher. Deciphering this kind of approach is child’s play, but it becomes more difficult the more times the original cipher is re-encrypted. This is the reason the Enigma can use up to eight rotors, though the Wermacht and Luftwaffe use three and the Kriegsmarine four. Now the British have captured three. 

The irony is that doing his duty leads to events that will be instrumental in losing the war for Germany. In trying to save three men, and in losing his own life, von Dresky inadvertently, unknowingly, and indirectly is one of the causes of Nazi defeat, as Bletchley Park eventually uses the rotors to help crack Enigma. Following his duty uncompromisingly at the ultimate cost to himself is an end in itself for a man like von Dresky. The consequences of these actions over which such men feel they have no control, undertaken correctly and in accord with the role prescribed to them, are beyond them.

U995 - a similar Type VII to U-33, displayed at the Naval Museum near Kiel, Germany

END

‘Gateway to Gandamak’ by G.J.Quartermaine will be published later in 2021