Daily Bulletin - 21.10.1940, Page 2

2
DAILY BULLETIN
Reporters eight day voyage
on British convoy.
BY BRYDON TAVES
United Press Special Correspondent.
Aboard a British destroyer, in the North Atlantic,
in October. — Germany is shooting the works to make
good its threat of total blockade of the British Isles
but after eight days aboard a little British flotilla
leader I can say that hundreds of ships are entering
and leaving British ports each week.
German submarine and air
attacks marked my voyage. Not
one day passed without action.
The British crew was either
manning gun and depth charge
stations to fight off a U-boat
or manning anti-aircraft sta-
tions to fight attacking planes.
I saw one British merchant-
man take a long range torpedo
squarely amid ships and sink
within a half hour. The next day
our destroyer evened the score.
A „Tin Fish“, meant for us,
missed by a scant thirty feet as
we wipped around it. Then we
rocked from the concussion of
our own depth charges and I
saw an oil patch spread slowly
over the surface, marking that
U-boat’s end.
The destroyer was engaged
in a typical convoy job, and its
duties were something between
those of a conscientious sheep
dog and a sister of charity lead-
ing a bunch of orphans across
a busy City street.
We were one destroyer and
one smaller warship escorting a
thirty ship convoy spread over
fifteen square miles of ocean.
Watching the line of hulls
stretching out behind us, I
remembered what a naval
h.
officer m a convoy control
room in a West coast port told
me, some time before I sailed.
“Give me fifty over-age
American destroyers”, he said,
“and I will guarantee to cut our
shipping losses by considerably
more than 50 per cent.”
Our destroyer was more than
twenty years old but she could
do thirty knots without strain-
ing and could turn around on
a penny. Her captain told me
proudly that he could stop her
dead within her own length
when moving at twelve knots.
Our operation orders were to
take an outwardbound convoy
to a point near mid-Atlantic,
out of range of subs, and then
pick up an incoming convoy and
shepherd it through the danger
area to coastal waters, where it
would be divided, the ships
proceeding to various ports.
On the fifth day, after we
had picked up the big inward
bound convoy of almost fifty
ships, a submarine appeared.
We were plowing through heavy
seas. The tail end of a gale was
blowing. I was on the bridge.
There was a dull boom among
the ships stretched behind us
and a column of smoke rose
from the side of the leading
ship on the port string of
freighters about a half mile
away.
The destroyer lurched so
quickly as it wheeled around
that in a moment our bows were
scooping up mountains of sea,
hurling them back high over
the bridge and into the yard
arms in geysers of spray and
foam.
The torpedo was fired from
a safe distance of as much as
five miles into the middle of the
convoy. Such long range shots,
which U-boat captains are said
to favor increasingly, are hit or
miss. They generally have less
effect when they hit and this
is why many ships lately hit by
torpedoes have been damaged
but not sunk.
This shot was lucky. It struck
a 4,000 ton freighter squarely
abeam. Our captain signaled a
sloop that had joined us that
morning to help track down
the U-boat, while the smaller
warship nicknamed “Heart
Disease”, was sent to pick up
survivors.
In the gathering darkness our