National stereotyping and smoking: Two habits now viewed with disdain. In fact, if you were to flaunt them openly, you would be seen as a pariah to many. Yet as a submarine officer in HMS Seraph during World War II, I saw these two behaviors save 65 men from a horrible death.
It was 9 September 1943, the day after the Allies' peace agreement with the Italians was announced. The Royal Navy was doing its best to destroy Germany's warships and its merchant shipping. The Germans, meanwhile, were doing their utmost to further their cause by controlling the Mediterranean, thereby reigning supreme over the vast lands of North Africa, the Middle East, and Southern Asia with the regions' vital stocks of oil and raw materials.
There was a big drawback to my boat's mission. The Mediterranean is a relatively small area that, even in those days, could be patrolled easily by aerial bombers. Targeting submarines was like shooting fish in a barrel. We were constantly under threat from aircraft bombs as well as from warships and enemy subs. We knew the risks we took on each mission. British casualties in submarines peaked during 1942-43, reaching 50 percent in the Mediterranean.
By 1943 I had already suffered the loss of many friends whose submarines had been attacked by air and surface ships. One particular friend had been a constant companion, and we had cheered each other up in the wardroom of the submarine depot ship. His submarine was lost with all hands, and the thought of his early death still saddens me 60 years later. He was nicknamed Snowy for his mop of thick black hair. We would reminisce over lost friends and then laugh like schoolboys at our bleak situation. Black humor helped us carry on.
We remembered how we broke the tension when landing spies on the coast of France. One surefire joke was when we waited for these civilians to use the sub's heads. We gave them no instructions and knew that one false move with the flushing system and the contents of the lavatories would erupt, volcano-like, to our huge enjoyment and their consternation. It never failed to happen.
Such were the puerile comforts in the face of imminent annihilation. We even displayed a sense of humor when we painted emblems on the subs. In one case, for example, we avoided the obvious sharks with huge teeth and avenging devils and instead emblazoned our boat with an image of Ferdinand the Bull, who preferred to stay home and sniff the flowers rather than face the combat of the bullring. In any case, we knew that, like Ferdinand, we were the muscular best of the breed!
On this particular night our S-class sub was off the coast of Sardinia; we were fully surfaced and charging our batteries. This made a distinctive, loud noise, putting us at risk of discovery, so we were particularly wary, with two lookouts and an officer of the watch on the bridge, scanning the horizon in all directions. It was a dark night, with only a half-moon reflecting in a silver sliver on the relatively calm water. We were keen not just to protect ourselves but to find an enemy ship.
When something was sighted ahead of us, excitement ran quickly like a shiver throughout the boat. Every man knew his station in the cramped quarters of the submarine and was ready in an instant. The captain would decide with us, his fellow officers, whether to dive out of sight, to make the attack, or to remain on the surface.
Suddenly, up-moon of us, we had sight of our prey. It was the silhouette of an enemy submarine. This was indeed a thrilling surprise. Taking out an enemy sub meant saving the lives of hundreds, even thousands, of Allies who might be on board the boat's future victims-battleships, troop ships, as well as merchant marine shipping.
The relative visibility cast by the half-moon made a surface attack too risky. We went to diving stations, the men on the bridge scrambling down the ladders to the red-lit control room. The red light was designed to give us better night vision, an essential element to our survival. It was an eerie light, and the silence gave it a further edge. The orders were spoken in unraised voices that were calm but clear and unquestioned. We worked as one being.
"Up periscope to the floor boards only."
"Raise the periscope very slowly until I say stop."
We had to show the minimum amount of periscope. Too much and the telltale wake would mean our detection and reveal the direction we were traveling.
The captain remained at periscope, his quarry in sight. I, the first lieutenant, kept a beady eye on the depth gauges and the fore and aft angle of the boat. If the angle of the sub was out by just a couple of degrees you would risk the lives of the entire crew by showing too much periscope or you could lose periscope sight altogether.
"Bring all tubes to the ready," said the captain. "Steer 065. Stand by number one tube."
Our adrenaline pumping, we expected at any second the order to fire. Suddenly, the captain shouted: "Down periscope. Stop the attack."
We could hardly believe what we heard. Then he looked at us in the red light. There was exasperation mixed with a hint of humor in his voice as he explained: "Some f'ing idiot has just lit a cigarette on the bridge of that sub. He can't be a German."
The Germans were known for their Prussian-like adherence to discipline in all three services. To light a cigarette atop a submarine in wartime, whatever your nationality, was to put all fellow crew members at risk. Yet, ironically, it was this action that saved the submarine and her entire crew, who were within seconds of death. We quickly went on our way, leaving the Italian-for that is whom we knew him to be-to finish his cigarette, oblivious to his brush with death.
Years later, on a visit to Rome in 1949, I was told to make a courtesy call on the British naval attach?
. I was a lieutenant between appointments, and the British Embassy had arranged a meeting of British and Italian naval war veterans. At the reception I met a group of Italian submariners and related the story of the cigarette. One Italian officer, immaculately dressed in uniform, asked me for more details-the location and time of the incident. When I told him, he said it was extraordinary. He was certain the submarine had been his. He was smoking as he spoke to me.
The Seraph's Top Secret MissionsHMS Seraph, in which Rear Admiral David Scott served, participated in several of World War II's most famous clandestine operations. Under command of Captain Bill Jewell, the submarine played a key role in Operation Flagpole, which preceded the 8 November 1942 Allied landings in French North Africa. The Seraph transported U.S. Army Major General Mark Clark, several other officers, and three British commandos to just off the coast of Algeria, where on the night of 21-22 October 1942 they disembarked into folbots, foldable kayaks, and paddled ashore. After a secret meeting with the pro-Allied Vichy French commander in Algiers, General Charles E. Mast, the party returned to the Seraph in the early hours of the 23rd. General Mast had impressed on Clark the usefulness of including French General Henri Geraud, who had escaped German imprisonment and was hiding in southern France, in the Allies' invasion plans. Consequently, the Seraph received orders on 27 October to pick him up for a meeting with General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Gibraltar. But there was a hitch. Giraud refused to be transported in a British submarine, and no U.S. sub was nearby. An American officer, Navy Captain Jerauld Wright, was therefore placed in temporary command of the British boat, which for a short time operated under the U.S. flag. During a third Seraph secret mission, meant to mislead the Germans regarding Allied intentions before the invasion of Sicily, the submarine transported a large canister marked "optical instruments" from Scotland to just off the Spanish port of Huelva. The container held a body dressed as a Royal Marines major, and on the corpse, which exhibited all the signs of death by drowning, were documents indicating that the Allies planned to capture Sardinia and Corsica and then invade Europe through Greece. Captain Jewell, Scott, and two other officers were the only men on board in on the secret. During the early morning darkness of 30 April 1943, the Seraph surfaced and the officers placed the body in a half-inflated life raft, which they set adrift. The documents made their way into Nazi hands, resulting in Germany's altering plans to reinforce Sicily. Before the Seraph was scrapped in 1965, parts of her, including the periscope and a forward torpedo loading hatch were salvaged and later incorporated into a memorial to the submarine and Anglo-American cooperation that is located on the grounds of The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. To symbolize the boat's service under two flags, both the U.S. and British ensigns fly over the monument. -Eds. |
Admiral Scott continued to serve in submarines through the end of World War II. His postwar career included serving as head of the British naval mission in Washington, D.C., and director of the Royal Navy's nuclear Polaris program. He passed away in 2006. His daughter Julia Pullicino, who wrote this article based on her father's recollections, also passed away later that year.