A thousand suns

‘Oberleutnant Kleinmann, you have a decision for me?’

Max nodded. ‘My men and I will undertake the mission, Major.’

Rall smiled. ‘I was beginning to think you and your men had eloped after enjoying my coffee and cigarettes. Thank you, Kleinmann. I will have you and your crew properly billeted here in the bunker and supplies arranged shortly. You’ll be pleased to know I can lay my hands on some more of that South American coffee, but first I have some calls to make. Please excuse me.’

Rall nodded as Max clicked his heels and departed. He picked up the phone on his desk and dialled a number he had been reciting in his head over and over for the last hour. The telephone rang once and was picked up.

‘Yes… Heil Hitler. This is Major Rall. Please inform him that the operation is ready to proceed.’

Rall placed the phone back in its cradle and listened to the faint rumble of the raid over Stuttgart, twenty miles north. His meticulously laid plans were now starting to roll forward; after so many months of organisation, fighting for a rapidly dwindling pool of resources, it was finally beginning to happen. Now that they had managed to pull in a suitable crew, the American bomber was fitted with enough additional fuel tanks to achieve the range they needed, and the weapon itself was approaching final assembly, it was time to activate the last component of the plan. He looked at his watch; it was 11.54 p.m. on the 11th of April. In little more than two weeks this would all be over.

‘My God, it’s actually going to happen,’ he said aloud.

He looked at the phone, another call was necessary. It was time to track down the one remaining U-boat that was big enough for the job and still operational somewhere in the North Sea.

Chapter 18

One More Voyage

5 a.m., 12 April 1945, North Sea, fifty miles off the coast of Norway

Captain Lundstrom checked the chronometer — it was 0500 hours. He banged his fist angrily against the bulkhead. They should have been on the surface making the most of the darkness to recharge the boat’s flagging batteries, not skulking beneath the water; a stupid waste of the night hours.

‘Shit,’ he muttered to himself.

Time was running out for them. They needed to have at least another three hours on the surface running under diesel to give them enough charge on the batteries. Three hours’ charge would carry them through the next day underwater using as little power as possible, and then they could run the next night on the surface to get the batteries fully charged up.

If they surfaced now, Lundstrom estimated they could run for one hour more before the light of day exposed them, then they were vulnerable for the other two. It was unavoidable, they had to come up, and they had to do it soon.

He cupped his jaw firmly in a hand. His fingers massaged the coarse bristles of his recently grown beard, making long, exaggerated, stroking movements. That was just for show, for the men. His palm was wedged firmly under his chin to stop his head from shaking, a nervous tick that he’d seemed to have developed in the last year. Often, if the shaking was too noticeable, he would blame the cold. It was a convincing enough lie given that the confines of the boat were always damp and he could utter it amidst a cloud of condensation. Nonetheless, it was a bad twitch for a commanding officer to get; a shaking hand could be tucked away in a pocket, or easily folded under an arm. He knew it was getting harder to hide… it was definitely getting worse. But then, everything was.

His mind returned to the dilemma at hand.

Surface?… Wait?… Surface?… Wait?…

The longer they left it, the longer they’d be exposed up there while they charged. Two hours on the surface in the daylight was a bad place to be these days.

Nine months ago, Lundstrom’s boat, U-1061, a supply vessel, a ‘milk cow’ as they affectionately called them, had been servicing the U-boats that had been sent in to harass the supply ships feeding the Allied forces that had recently taken Normandy. Doenitz had decided, after months of marshalling what was left of his U-boat fleet, that now was the time to strike — to hamstring them while they were still vulnerable and literally just off the beaches. The attacks had been an unmitigated disaster. Lundstrom’s boat had gone in close behind the attack boats. During the principal night of the attack they had sat at periscope depth on the periphery of the action, listening to the cacophony of depth charge explosions and watching the Royal Navy destroyers circling the sea in tightening loops like buzzards around a carcass. Several times during the night Lundstrom distinctly recognised the faint signature sound of steel buckling and collapsing under pressure, the death rattle of another U-boat sent to the bottom, another crew of boys buried within a twisted and compressed tangle of metal.

Of the fifty-six boats that had been sent in, the Royal Navy and Airforce had sunk twenty-six. The U-boats had only managed to sink nineteen Allied vessels.