The Rainbow. A World War One on Canada's West Coast Timeline
- Thread starter YYJ
- Start date
There was a USS Charleston lost by grounding in the Philippines in 1899. I had that one confused for a while with the one that appears in the story, sister ship of Milwaukee.
USS Charleston (C-2) - Wikipedia
Thank you. Interesting that this USS Charleston was involved in chasing the Chilean steamer Itata that violated US neutrality laws. Shades of CC-1 and CC-2.There was a USS Charleston lost by grounding in the Philippines in 1899. I had that one confused for a while with the one that appears in the story, sister ship of Milwaukee.
USS Charleston (C-2) - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
A hammer blow.
Aug 21, 1452 hours. HMCS CC-2, off Victoria
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you sir,” said the chief engineer. The engineer stood beside Keyes on top of the conning tower, his face black with grease and soot. On the after deck, the engine room crew stood coughing, holding onto safety lines as the submarine rose and fell on the waves. The rear escape hatch was open to vent brown smoke from the seized diesel engine. This was a problem, because waves were breaking right across the submarine’s low deck, and salt water was cascading down into the engine room.
“Switch to electric power,” ordered Keyes. “We will continue on the surface for now, but I expect we will be diving soon.”
“We will get about an hour from the batteries at our full speed,” said the engineer, “before we go dead in the water. Maybe less.”
Keyes looked ahead, at the action in the Strait. “If we are still alive in an hour, I will eat my hat,” he muttered to himself. “Very well.” The engineer took a few deliberate breaths of fresh sea air before descending back down the hatch.
The sound of naval gunfire was constant. 5000 yards to the west, the German cruisers were steaming on an east-south-eastward course, furiously exchanging fire with Commander Hose on Rainbow. The Canadian ship was a further 7000 yards away, matching the Germans course, and her broadsides were flashing with a great rapidity. Hose looked to have scored first. The lead German cruiser already had a large fire burning on her bridge structure.
“Looks like the old girl still has some fight left in her,” commented Keyes, with appreciation. “You just keep the Hun busy Walt, we will get stuck in there ourselves.” He chafed at his boat’s slower progress, now that she was running on batteries. “Eventually. Ohh.” Keyes made an involuntary expression of anguish, as he saw two shells burst on Rainbow, amidships and aft.
The strong breeze blowing eastward across the Strait was carrying the cruisers’ smoke due eastward alongside and ahead of the ships in a band close over the water. The German and Canadian funnels were making prolific amounts of coal smoke, as the captains pushed their machinery to the limit. The burning German cruiser was adding to this smoke. Now Rainbow contributed her own smoke as well, as fires from German hits took hold on her decks. The battle Keyes was watching became increasingly indistinct, as the smoke haze blurred the ship’s outlines, and sometimes obscured them entirely. At times all he could see in the haze was the flash of guns and rising waterspouts. He looked aft. The drifting smoke from the fires in Victoria harbour and the Naval Dockyard blanketed the shore. The whitecaps on the ocean were now constant. He chanced to see young Willie Maitland-Dougall’s Boat One just rounding Trial Island, almost 2 miles astern of him, then he lost him again. The sea conditions and low hull made the little submarine almost invisible, even running on the surface at full speed in broad daylight.
Maitland-Dougall was following the same course Keyes had, turning closer inshore than the bigger cruisers had dared. By running between the Discovery Islands and Cadboro Bay, they had cut a corner, and several miles, off the distance the Germans had travelled. Keyes’ insistence at running his diesel at maximum revolutions, over the objections of his engineer, has given him a 7 or 8 minute lead over Boat One, but now his pig-headedness had caught up with him and he was left with only 10 knots from his batteries. Perhaps Maitland-Dougall was the wiser of the submarine captains. “I thought it was the young who were supposed to be the hot-heads. We shall see,” he said, wondering if Maitland-Dougall would reach the Germans first. But, he considered, looking at the situation, they would be hard pressed for either submarine to get into the action.
The conflagration of smoke, muzzle flashes and waterspouts continued to move east. Hose was doing a wonderful job of pressing the Germans against the gunfire of the forts. Waterspouts rose intermittently on the landward side of the German battle line. The slow firing guns of the forts were unable to reach the German cruisers, but did serve to remind them that they could not steer any closer to shore, and thus could not open the range to Rainbow to a position more advantageous to the longer ranged German guns.
Keyes attempted to set a course that would best allow his slow moving boat to intercept the speedy cruisers. He looked at his chronometer. The time was 1456 hours. There was no way CC-2 could cross ahead of the German line before they passed to the east of his present course. He tapped his knuckles on the conning tower rail. The Germans wanted to get back to the wide Pacific. They would be headed there now if Hose had not cut them off. Keyes could cross the wake of the German squadron, and place himself in their path when they returned to a western course, if the cards fell right. If he tried to chase the Germans east, he risked getting left behind when they reversed course. So he maintained his current southwest course. The German cruisers, shill shrouded in smoke, were now 3000 yards to the southwest, and looked to be set to pass directly across his bow in about 3 minutes at present course and speed, still well beyond the reach of his torpedoes. His boat only had one bow tube left, and the stern tube. He considered it unlikely that the stern tube would come into play.
More waterspouts from the forts rose, closer to his position at this time. He expected his boat would be impossible for the gunners to see. Which, he realized, made for another problem. As the Germans steamed east, the guns of the forts tracked to follow them. As Keyes closed on the Germans, he would reach a point where his course would pass through the arc of the forts’ fall of shot. It was unavoidable. He chuckled.
“Wouldn’t that just be something in the annuls of Canadian naval history” he said to himself. “If one of those old six inchers manages to score a bullseye on us.”
“What’s that sir?” asked the lookout.
“Nothing,” Keyes replied. “Keep a close eye on the Hun. I wish to stay on the surface for as long as possible. The smoke should mask us until they pass across our bow, but if it clears we will have to dive earlier. If the Hun see us, the jig will be up, and we will never get a shot.” Aft, he caught a rare glimpse of Boat One. Maitland-Dougall seemed to have made the same judgement as he had himself, and had set his course even further to westward of Keyes’ own. To south, the US Navy was gathered on the international boundary with everything they could muster, guarding the line like nervous sheepdogs. To the east, over the green slopes of the coastal range mountains, the snow capped volcanic cone of Mount Baker rose majestically, indifferent to the plight of the frail humans below.
Keyes did not have a clear view to the combatants, but from his vantage point it looked like both Rainbow and the leading German cruiser were taking a beating. The flashes of high explosive shells detonating against the ships’ hulls had a different look and sound to outgoing gunfire, and the smoke from shipboard fires had greatly increased. At 1500 hours on the dot, The German battle line crossed Boat Two’s bow, at a range of 2000 yards. The stern of the trailing cruiser began to emerge from the smoky haze accompanying the battle.
“Clear the bridge! Dive!” Keyes ordered. He heard the rumble of shells passing close overhead, and a pair of waterspouts rose just 500 yards directly ahead. “I’m going to have to have a word with the coastal artillery,” he muttered as he followed the lookout and helmsman down the hatch.
CC-2 slipped beneath the waves, and Keyes took up his station in the control room. Sailors were clustered around their respective outcroppings of gauges and controls. The stale air had a strong smell of burned oil. They could hear the sound of distant high-speed screws and shells exploding in the water, coming through the hull. The submariners on the 3-foot diameter wheels controlling the bow and stern dive planes worked them with a learned finesse, feeling into the subtleties required to have the cantankerous sub maintain its attitude in the narrow zone between heading for the depths and heading for the sky.
“Maintain course!” Keyes ordered. “Periscope up!”
Keyes swept the periscope through 360 degrees, then settled on his target. The Germans were still running to the south southeast, at a range of about 2000 yards. He figured they would be able to maintain that course for no longer than 10 minutes, before they crossed the line into American waters. Rainbow was just west of south from CC-1, at a range of around 8000 yards. The poor old ship was showing a lot of smoke from fires. As he watched she was struck again. One of the American cruisers was signalling and approaching her, to a proximity that was wildly unsafe, considering how much steel was in the air.
“Yes, I suppose Rainbow will be getting close to the American line indeed,” he said.
Rainbow initiated a turn to port, and was hit again. Keyes had to pull his eyes away.
“Periscope down!” he ordered. The seas state would help prevent the Germans from spotting his periscope, but the longer he observed, the more likely a German lookout was to see his periscope feather. “Steady as she goes.” CC-2 continued on her course. Every 2 minutes Keyes called “Periscope up!” and took a quick survey of the situation. At 1506 hours, Rainbow was well into a turn, and had brought her undamaged broadside to bear on the Germans. Keyes lost track of the Germans for a few minutes. He heard the sound of two pairs of high-speed screws getting louder, and the sound of shells hitting the water seemed to be getting closer.
“Periscope up!” Keyes saw a burning cruiser bearing down on him, 1000 yards to his east, and set to pass to his stern at a range of perhaps 750 yards. A huge German Imperial Naval Ensign flew from the top of her foremast. Near misses were landing about the ship. CC-2 shook from the explosions.
“Prepare stern tube!” he ordered. “No time to come about.” He lined the cruiser up in the graduated crosshairs of his periscope. He quickly calculated his firing solution. “Stern tube fire in 3,2,1. Fire!”
He felt the compressed air pushing the torpedo out on its way, and heard the sound of the torpedo’s screw in the water. The deck of the control room tipped up, as the boat’s stern, now 1500 pounds lighter, rose with the increased buoyancy. The sailors on the diving planes struggled to regain proper attitude. Keyes lost visual contact as the periscope ducked under water.
“Periscope down!” he ordered. “Bring us about!” Keyes ordered a west-northwest course to follow the fleeing Germans. The submarine rattled from shells bursting in the water nearby. Keyes counted. He could no longer hear the sound of the torpedo screws over other underwater noises. “28, 29, 30, 31…” When he reached a count of 45 he stopped, knowing the torpedo had missed for certain. He was now in a stern chase with his submarine capable of 10 knots following after the cruisers who were running at over 20 knots.
“Periscope up!” Keyes got a view of the German cruisers stern on. They had apparently not noticed his attack, and had not turned to rake his torpedo. The trailing cruiser, apparently still intact, was now trading positions with the battered and burning leading cruiser, which looked to have acquired a slight list. He saw no gun flashes from the damaged German cruiser. Waterspouts rose to their north. Both Germans had now turned several points southward, apparently to avoid coming within range of the forts. Keyes swung the periscope to the south. Rainbow was attempting to cut off the German escape route back up Juan de Fuca Strait.
“Oh, Walt,” exclaimed Keyes. “Your ship looks about done.” Rainbow was burning in more places than she was not. Her upperworks had been pounded into shapeless wreckage. Her guns were pointed askew and silent. As the range decreased, more and more German shots resulted in direct hits, now aimed mostly at Rainbow’s waterline. Rainbow had slowed, yet she was still under power, and steering a strait path, converging with the German battle line. As Keyes watched, the foremast fell, taking Rainbow’s Ensign with it. The German shell fire stopped. Rainbow maintained her converging course. Within a minute, a sailor scampered up to the top of Rainbow’s blasted wheelhouse roof and lashed a small ensign to a bent railing post, the tallest point remaining on the ruin of her superstructure. The German guns waited until the sailor had disappeared below before resuming the destruction.
At 1520 hours the range between Rainbow and the Germans had come down to 1500 yards. Keyes knew this was just within German torpedo range, but outside of Rainbow’s. But the Germans did not seem to be lining up for a torpedo attack, as they would have to with their fixed broadside underwater tubes. They appeared to be set to blow past poor Rainbow on their way to the Pacific. Barring some Divine intervention, Keyes was not going to catch the Germans. He had no idea where Maitland-Dougal had got to.
Then the trailing German cruiser made a sudden turn to starboard. Keyes could see lookouts on the forward searchlight platform opening their mouths and pointing. “One of the Hun has turned to rake a torpedo attack!” Keyes narrated. The trailing cruiser maintained the new course strait to the north, while the undamaged leading cruiser continued west. Directly ahead of the northbound cruiser, A submarine’s bow broke the surface at a crazy angle. The bow settled down, and Boat One emerged on the surface. The German cruiser, trailing smoke, and rapidly closing the gap, looked set to run her down.
“Helm! New course!” ordered Keyes, and Boat Two turned northward to intercept. A savage close-range engagement unfolded, framed in Keyes periscope lens. On the German deck, sailors sprang up from below, abandoning whatever damage control had occupied them, and ran for the guns. By now, the initial torpedo attack must have missed. Lieutenant Willie Maitland-Dougal appeared on the bridge of Boat One, and Keyes could see his mouth moving as he issued orders. One of the main battery guns on the German cruiser got off a shot, but the shell landed well over. CC-1 turned tightly, and Keyes realized that Maitland-Dougall was trying to bring his stern tube to bear. The range between the German and the CC-1 was down to a ship length.
Maitland-Dougall had not managed to bring his stern around quickly enough, and stayed in a tight turn to bring his rear tube in line. The German cruiser turned at full rudder herself, making a wider circle outside of the CC-1’s smaller circle. The sea was whipped up into a froth by the overlapping wakes of the combatants. German main battery gins fired, but had a hard time achieving enough depression and traversing at such short range. No German secondary guns seemed to have joined the fusillade.
The two adversaries were locked in this death circle for three full orbits. The smoke from the burning cruiser at times obscured Keyes’ view. The Germans brought a Maxim gun on top of the forward searchlight platform into action, and swept the bridge of the Canadian submarine. The canvas bridge rail covering became shredded, and Keyes could see sparks ringing off the periscope tubes. Maitland-Dougal took cover behind the periscope fairing, drew his revolver, and returned fire, then dodged back into shelter to reload. The German machinegun began to steam, then stopped firing. Then CC-1 made a sudden turn across the German cruiser’s bow, in a desperate attempt to run past and get a shot with her stern tube. She almost slipped past, but the German turned wide, and run up onto the submarine’s after deck with her ram bow.
Boat One rolled over onto her side, and Keyes lost sight of Maitland-Dougall, as the conning tower was plunged under the water. The German rode up on top of CC-1, then a great boiling of water rose from around her screws, and she slowed dramatically.
“Willie,” whispered Keyes. Then he announced, “The Hun has rammed Boat One, and is coming to a stop to avoid fouling her screws. Lieutenant Maitland-Dougal has sacrificed himself so that we can get this shot. Prepare forward tube, fire on my order. Range 1200 yards!”
The German cruiser had come to a full halt. The fort’s guns were drawn to this opportunity, but their waterspouts fell more than 1000 yards short. The water around the German screws continued to boil, and the cruiser slowly backed off of CC-1’s overturned hull.
“Range 1000 yards!”
The wounded submarine came free from the German hull, and her stern rose into the air, inverted, then began to settle with upwellings of escaping air.
“Range 800 yards! Fire!”
Keyes felt the torpedo leave the tube. He saw the trail of bubbles cross the intervening sea. Lookouts on the German searchlight platform opened their mouths and pointed.
Keyes felt the explosion through the water like a hammer blow. A huge water column rose directly under the German cruiser’s first funnel.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you sir,” said the chief engineer. The engineer stood beside Keyes on top of the conning tower, his face black with grease and soot. On the after deck, the engine room crew stood coughing, holding onto safety lines as the submarine rose and fell on the waves. The rear escape hatch was open to vent brown smoke from the seized diesel engine. This was a problem, because waves were breaking right across the submarine’s low deck, and salt water was cascading down into the engine room.
“Switch to electric power,” ordered Keyes. “We will continue on the surface for now, but I expect we will be diving soon.”
“We will get about an hour from the batteries at our full speed,” said the engineer, “before we go dead in the water. Maybe less.”
Keyes looked ahead, at the action in the Strait. “If we are still alive in an hour, I will eat my hat,” he muttered to himself. “Very well.” The engineer took a few deliberate breaths of fresh sea air before descending back down the hatch.
The sound of naval gunfire was constant. 5000 yards to the west, the German cruisers were steaming on an east-south-eastward course, furiously exchanging fire with Commander Hose on Rainbow. The Canadian ship was a further 7000 yards away, matching the Germans course, and her broadsides were flashing with a great rapidity. Hose looked to have scored first. The lead German cruiser already had a large fire burning on her bridge structure.
“Looks like the old girl still has some fight left in her,” commented Keyes, with appreciation. “You just keep the Hun busy Walt, we will get stuck in there ourselves.” He chafed at his boat’s slower progress, now that she was running on batteries. “Eventually. Ohh.” Keyes made an involuntary expression of anguish, as he saw two shells burst on Rainbow, amidships and aft.
The strong breeze blowing eastward across the Strait was carrying the cruisers’ smoke due eastward alongside and ahead of the ships in a band close over the water. The German and Canadian funnels were making prolific amounts of coal smoke, as the captains pushed their machinery to the limit. The burning German cruiser was adding to this smoke. Now Rainbow contributed her own smoke as well, as fires from German hits took hold on her decks. The battle Keyes was watching became increasingly indistinct, as the smoke haze blurred the ship’s outlines, and sometimes obscured them entirely. At times all he could see in the haze was the flash of guns and rising waterspouts. He looked aft. The drifting smoke from the fires in Victoria harbour and the Naval Dockyard blanketed the shore. The whitecaps on the ocean were now constant. He chanced to see young Willie Maitland-Dougall’s Boat One just rounding Trial Island, almost 2 miles astern of him, then he lost him again. The sea conditions and low hull made the little submarine almost invisible, even running on the surface at full speed in broad daylight.
Maitland-Dougall was following the same course Keyes had, turning closer inshore than the bigger cruisers had dared. By running between the Discovery Islands and Cadboro Bay, they had cut a corner, and several miles, off the distance the Germans had travelled. Keyes’ insistence at running his diesel at maximum revolutions, over the objections of his engineer, has given him a 7 or 8 minute lead over Boat One, but now his pig-headedness had caught up with him and he was left with only 10 knots from his batteries. Perhaps Maitland-Dougall was the wiser of the submarine captains. “I thought it was the young who were supposed to be the hot-heads. We shall see,” he said, wondering if Maitland-Dougall would reach the Germans first. But, he considered, looking at the situation, they would be hard pressed for either submarine to get into the action.
The conflagration of smoke, muzzle flashes and waterspouts continued to move east. Hose was doing a wonderful job of pressing the Germans against the gunfire of the forts. Waterspouts rose intermittently on the landward side of the German battle line. The slow firing guns of the forts were unable to reach the German cruisers, but did serve to remind them that they could not steer any closer to shore, and thus could not open the range to Rainbow to a position more advantageous to the longer ranged German guns.
Keyes attempted to set a course that would best allow his slow moving boat to intercept the speedy cruisers. He looked at his chronometer. The time was 1456 hours. There was no way CC-2 could cross ahead of the German line before they passed to the east of his present course. He tapped his knuckles on the conning tower rail. The Germans wanted to get back to the wide Pacific. They would be headed there now if Hose had not cut them off. Keyes could cross the wake of the German squadron, and place himself in their path when they returned to a western course, if the cards fell right. If he tried to chase the Germans east, he risked getting left behind when they reversed course. So he maintained his current southwest course. The German cruisers, shill shrouded in smoke, were now 3000 yards to the southwest, and looked to be set to pass directly across his bow in about 3 minutes at present course and speed, still well beyond the reach of his torpedoes. His boat only had one bow tube left, and the stern tube. He considered it unlikely that the stern tube would come into play.
More waterspouts from the forts rose, closer to his position at this time. He expected his boat would be impossible for the gunners to see. Which, he realized, made for another problem. As the Germans steamed east, the guns of the forts tracked to follow them. As Keyes closed on the Germans, he would reach a point where his course would pass through the arc of the forts’ fall of shot. It was unavoidable. He chuckled.
“Wouldn’t that just be something in the annuls of Canadian naval history” he said to himself. “If one of those old six inchers manages to score a bullseye on us.”
“What’s that sir?” asked the lookout.
“Nothing,” Keyes replied. “Keep a close eye on the Hun. I wish to stay on the surface for as long as possible. The smoke should mask us until they pass across our bow, but if it clears we will have to dive earlier. If the Hun see us, the jig will be up, and we will never get a shot.” Aft, he caught a rare glimpse of Boat One. Maitland-Dougall seemed to have made the same judgement as he had himself, and had set his course even further to westward of Keyes’ own. To south, the US Navy was gathered on the international boundary with everything they could muster, guarding the line like nervous sheepdogs. To the east, over the green slopes of the coastal range mountains, the snow capped volcanic cone of Mount Baker rose majestically, indifferent to the plight of the frail humans below.
Keyes did not have a clear view to the combatants, but from his vantage point it looked like both Rainbow and the leading German cruiser were taking a beating. The flashes of high explosive shells detonating against the ships’ hulls had a different look and sound to outgoing gunfire, and the smoke from shipboard fires had greatly increased. At 1500 hours on the dot, The German battle line crossed Boat Two’s bow, at a range of 2000 yards. The stern of the trailing cruiser began to emerge from the smoky haze accompanying the battle.
“Clear the bridge! Dive!” Keyes ordered. He heard the rumble of shells passing close overhead, and a pair of waterspouts rose just 500 yards directly ahead. “I’m going to have to have a word with the coastal artillery,” he muttered as he followed the lookout and helmsman down the hatch.
CC-2 slipped beneath the waves, and Keyes took up his station in the control room. Sailors were clustered around their respective outcroppings of gauges and controls. The stale air had a strong smell of burned oil. They could hear the sound of distant high-speed screws and shells exploding in the water, coming through the hull. The submariners on the 3-foot diameter wheels controlling the bow and stern dive planes worked them with a learned finesse, feeling into the subtleties required to have the cantankerous sub maintain its attitude in the narrow zone between heading for the depths and heading for the sky.
“Maintain course!” Keyes ordered. “Periscope up!”
Keyes swept the periscope through 360 degrees, then settled on his target. The Germans were still running to the south southeast, at a range of about 2000 yards. He figured they would be able to maintain that course for no longer than 10 minutes, before they crossed the line into American waters. Rainbow was just west of south from CC-1, at a range of around 8000 yards. The poor old ship was showing a lot of smoke from fires. As he watched she was struck again. One of the American cruisers was signalling and approaching her, to a proximity that was wildly unsafe, considering how much steel was in the air.
“Yes, I suppose Rainbow will be getting close to the American line indeed,” he said.
Rainbow initiated a turn to port, and was hit again. Keyes had to pull his eyes away.
“Periscope down!” he ordered. The seas state would help prevent the Germans from spotting his periscope, but the longer he observed, the more likely a German lookout was to see his periscope feather. “Steady as she goes.” CC-2 continued on her course. Every 2 minutes Keyes called “Periscope up!” and took a quick survey of the situation. At 1506 hours, Rainbow was well into a turn, and had brought her undamaged broadside to bear on the Germans. Keyes lost track of the Germans for a few minutes. He heard the sound of two pairs of high-speed screws getting louder, and the sound of shells hitting the water seemed to be getting closer.
“Periscope up!” Keyes saw a burning cruiser bearing down on him, 1000 yards to his east, and set to pass to his stern at a range of perhaps 750 yards. A huge German Imperial Naval Ensign flew from the top of her foremast. Near misses were landing about the ship. CC-2 shook from the explosions.
“Prepare stern tube!” he ordered. “No time to come about.” He lined the cruiser up in the graduated crosshairs of his periscope. He quickly calculated his firing solution. “Stern tube fire in 3,2,1. Fire!”
He felt the compressed air pushing the torpedo out on its way, and heard the sound of the torpedo’s screw in the water. The deck of the control room tipped up, as the boat’s stern, now 1500 pounds lighter, rose with the increased buoyancy. The sailors on the diving planes struggled to regain proper attitude. Keyes lost visual contact as the periscope ducked under water.
“Periscope down!” he ordered. “Bring us about!” Keyes ordered a west-northwest course to follow the fleeing Germans. The submarine rattled from shells bursting in the water nearby. Keyes counted. He could no longer hear the sound of the torpedo screws over other underwater noises. “28, 29, 30, 31…” When he reached a count of 45 he stopped, knowing the torpedo had missed for certain. He was now in a stern chase with his submarine capable of 10 knots following after the cruisers who were running at over 20 knots.
“Periscope up!” Keyes got a view of the German cruisers stern on. They had apparently not noticed his attack, and had not turned to rake his torpedo. The trailing cruiser, apparently still intact, was now trading positions with the battered and burning leading cruiser, which looked to have acquired a slight list. He saw no gun flashes from the damaged German cruiser. Waterspouts rose to their north. Both Germans had now turned several points southward, apparently to avoid coming within range of the forts. Keyes swung the periscope to the south. Rainbow was attempting to cut off the German escape route back up Juan de Fuca Strait.
“Oh, Walt,” exclaimed Keyes. “Your ship looks about done.” Rainbow was burning in more places than she was not. Her upperworks had been pounded into shapeless wreckage. Her guns were pointed askew and silent. As the range decreased, more and more German shots resulted in direct hits, now aimed mostly at Rainbow’s waterline. Rainbow had slowed, yet she was still under power, and steering a strait path, converging with the German battle line. As Keyes watched, the foremast fell, taking Rainbow’s Ensign with it. The German shell fire stopped. Rainbow maintained her converging course. Within a minute, a sailor scampered up to the top of Rainbow’s blasted wheelhouse roof and lashed a small ensign to a bent railing post, the tallest point remaining on the ruin of her superstructure. The German guns waited until the sailor had disappeared below before resuming the destruction.
At 1520 hours the range between Rainbow and the Germans had come down to 1500 yards. Keyes knew this was just within German torpedo range, but outside of Rainbow’s. But the Germans did not seem to be lining up for a torpedo attack, as they would have to with their fixed broadside underwater tubes. They appeared to be set to blow past poor Rainbow on their way to the Pacific. Barring some Divine intervention, Keyes was not going to catch the Germans. He had no idea where Maitland-Dougal had got to.
Then the trailing German cruiser made a sudden turn to starboard. Keyes could see lookouts on the forward searchlight platform opening their mouths and pointing. “One of the Hun has turned to rake a torpedo attack!” Keyes narrated. The trailing cruiser maintained the new course strait to the north, while the undamaged leading cruiser continued west. Directly ahead of the northbound cruiser, A submarine’s bow broke the surface at a crazy angle. The bow settled down, and Boat One emerged on the surface. The German cruiser, trailing smoke, and rapidly closing the gap, looked set to run her down.
“Helm! New course!” ordered Keyes, and Boat Two turned northward to intercept. A savage close-range engagement unfolded, framed in Keyes periscope lens. On the German deck, sailors sprang up from below, abandoning whatever damage control had occupied them, and ran for the guns. By now, the initial torpedo attack must have missed. Lieutenant Willie Maitland-Dougal appeared on the bridge of Boat One, and Keyes could see his mouth moving as he issued orders. One of the main battery guns on the German cruiser got off a shot, but the shell landed well over. CC-1 turned tightly, and Keyes realized that Maitland-Dougall was trying to bring his stern tube to bear. The range between the German and the CC-1 was down to a ship length.
Maitland-Dougall had not managed to bring his stern around quickly enough, and stayed in a tight turn to bring his rear tube in line. The German cruiser turned at full rudder herself, making a wider circle outside of the CC-1’s smaller circle. The sea was whipped up into a froth by the overlapping wakes of the combatants. German main battery gins fired, but had a hard time achieving enough depression and traversing at such short range. No German secondary guns seemed to have joined the fusillade.
The two adversaries were locked in this death circle for three full orbits. The smoke from the burning cruiser at times obscured Keyes’ view. The Germans brought a Maxim gun on top of the forward searchlight platform into action, and swept the bridge of the Canadian submarine. The canvas bridge rail covering became shredded, and Keyes could see sparks ringing off the periscope tubes. Maitland-Dougal took cover behind the periscope fairing, drew his revolver, and returned fire, then dodged back into shelter to reload. The German machinegun began to steam, then stopped firing. Then CC-1 made a sudden turn across the German cruiser’s bow, in a desperate attempt to run past and get a shot with her stern tube. She almost slipped past, but the German turned wide, and run up onto the submarine’s after deck with her ram bow.
Boat One rolled over onto her side, and Keyes lost sight of Maitland-Dougall, as the conning tower was plunged under the water. The German rode up on top of CC-1, then a great boiling of water rose from around her screws, and she slowed dramatically.
“Willie,” whispered Keyes. Then he announced, “The Hun has rammed Boat One, and is coming to a stop to avoid fouling her screws. Lieutenant Maitland-Dougal has sacrificed himself so that we can get this shot. Prepare forward tube, fire on my order. Range 1200 yards!”
The German cruiser had come to a full halt. The fort’s guns were drawn to this opportunity, but their waterspouts fell more than 1000 yards short. The water around the German screws continued to boil, and the cruiser slowly backed off of CC-1’s overturned hull.
“Range 1000 yards!”
The wounded submarine came free from the German hull, and her stern rose into the air, inverted, then began to settle with upwellings of escaping air.
“Range 800 yards! Fire!”
Keyes felt the torpedo leave the tube. He saw the trail of bubbles cross the intervening sea. Lookouts on the German searchlight platform opened their mouths and pointed.
Keyes felt the explosion through the water like a hammer blow. A huge water column rose directly under the German cruiser’s first funnel.
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Bravo, a well written nail biter as always! It seems like Nurnberg is well and truly dead while Leipzig may live to see another day. CC-1 doesn't look to have came off particularly well from that ramming attack, nor did poor Lieutenant Maitland-Dougal as fate would have it. We shall see if history repeats itself when it comes to him but it's good to see him atleast getting some of the recognition he deserves here.
If CC-1's stern pointed upwards, flipped over and slipped underwater with escaping air coming out, it's relatively fair to say that the submarine will be lost with basically all hands regardless of the torpedo impact. These submarines are incredibly small and of dubious quality even before a much larger cruiser parked its ram bow over them.
WOW! That's a fantastic battle sequence. It looks like Pathfinder isn't the first ship sunk by a submarine launched torpedo this time 'round; that wasn't until September. Thre will be plenty of pictures in newspapers.
The first action can have influence on future doctrine; subs clearly worked well in concert with surface ships--at least it seems so. Victoria crosses to be had!
The first action can have influence on future doctrine; subs clearly worked well in concert with surface ships--at least it seems so. Victoria crosses to be had!
Doesn't need to be - pre ww1 designed ships were very poor at surviving underwater hits
Unless the 2nd German cruiser can be beached its probably done for - especially as the fish has likely caused the engineering spaces - usually the largest in a given ship - to flood
I think Leipzig is fine, though which was what my point was. No more torpedoes, no more ships to fight.
If I'm the senior captain, if Nurnberg is still floating, and can make it to a place to beach, I want to pull all the ammo and crew off that I can. I know that the Canadian Navy has pretty much shot it's bolt. There's one more sub around, and I don't know it's out of torpedoes. But I know that the Canadians are out of options to hurt me. So, now, I'm really going to go wild with tearing apart everything I can on the coast. If I can get a couple of fast, long range freighters captured, I'll make some merchant raiders, and I'll send them out. Then, after I have destroyed all I can, I sail into a convenient US port and intern
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