The Scharnhorst and the Clyde

UP PERISCOPE--David Masters--Dial Press ($2.50).

A Heinkel roared out of an overcast Norwegian sky. It was the evening of June 5, 1940. The submarine Clyde of the Royal Navy (1,500 tons displacement, surface speed 22 knots) was on the surface, recharging her batteries. Able to travel thousands of miles without refueling, she was patrolling the North Sea. As the Clyde plunged into the protecting vault of ocean, she was sprayed with bullets and cannon shells, her steel-hided bridge pierced in three places. The Clyde could no longer surface to recharge her batteries in safety: from now on the area would be patrolled.

For five days she lay under water, sur facing cautiously, at night. On the after noon of June 10 the Clyde's commander sighted a target that made the strain worth enduring: a German pocket battle ship and a cruiser. She lost them. Early the next morning she sighted another huge enemy ship -- beyond her reach. For nine days more the Clyde searched and found empty sea. She had now been at sea for three weeks. The 50 men of her crew were grim, bitter, tense. They could not smoke, waited in fixed dullness when the Clyde was submerged, chewed sweets. On the morning of June 20, the seas were running high. Mountain waves made it impossible to see at periscope depth. As the day wore on, a 30-mile-an-hour wind whipped a writhing sea. Under these most difficult conditions, the enemy hove into sight -- two capital ships at two miles' separation, a destroyer screening them. Vision blotted out, the Clyde had to be brought up until the periscope standards were awash. The heavy seas made her too lively. Tons of extra ballast had to be shipped to prevent her from breaking surface. The Clyde maneuvered, got around the destroyer, came "face to face" with one of the enemy. It was the Scharnhorst. The Clyde steadied. The order to fire was given. The men waited -- it seemed longer than the 15 days and nights of skulking -- for two minutes and 55 seconds before they heard an explosion.*

A torpedo weighs over a ton. When the torpedoes were about to run, the ship had to take in more ballast to prevent her from "bobbing like a cork to the surface." These extra tons now carried her down steeply. She could not be checked. The needle would never stop. She was well down in the danger zone when she pulled up. "The pressure squeezed down on the hull, feeling cunningly for some weakness. . . . Loud noises issued from the metal. . . . The startled eyes of the men watched a four-inch solid pillar start to bend as the weight of the sea pressed down on the hull. One of the motors began to whine eerily. . . . For ten minutes the hydrophone operator heard the sound of ships near by, then the sounds faded, and the Clyde moved up to a safer depth and stole out to sea."

Up Periscope is a volume of 21 such tales of Royal Navy submarines taken from the British Admiralty records. Its hair-raising conclusion, quoted from submarine crews: submarine service is "the safest job in the Navy."

*The torpedo did not, however, sink the Scharnhorst, which was last reported near Trondheim, Norway (TIME, March 29).

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