The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

countermanded. ‘And we dashed off to Dover,’ says Andrew Begg, one of
the ship’s engine room artificers (ERAs), ‘tearing up the Channel as fast as
we could make it.’ And it was pretty fast: Andrew and his fellows in the
engine room could get 35 knots out of Icarus. ‘She was exceptionally well
built,’ he says. ‘The engine room was beautifully laid out and everything
was handy. You could stand at one point in front of the controls and could
read every gauge by doing a 360-degree turn. We had no trouble
mechanically with her.’ And that was despite the abuse such ships suffered
at sea and despite already having had a very active war.
Very little might have happened in the air and on land before the
Norwegian campaign, but at sea it had been a different matter: the Royal
Navy had been busy from the outset and Icarus had been in the thick of it.
She had helped sink a German U-boat back in November, had rescued
survivors from a Norwegian ship in December, and then had been refitted as
a minelayer, joining the 20th Destroyer (Minelaying Flotilla) in February.
Throughout March, she had carried out minelaying operations in the North
Sea and Moray Firth and then, in April, had been sent to Norway, originally
to lay mines but then, when the Germans invaded, as a destroyer against
enemy shipping. She and her crew acquitted themselves well, capturing a
German supply ship, the Alster, of 8,500 tons. Andrew had witnessed that.
He’d been off watch and up on deck when the Alster had been spotted. It
was dark, around a quarter to midnight, but there was usually enough light
on the sea to spot the silhouette of a ship. They dashed towards it, pulling in
alongside and the boarding party leaping across as the for’ard decks were
about the same height. Someone started firing and then there was a burst of
machine-gun fire from Icarus’s bridge which brought the shooting to a stop.
Suddenly, however, there was a loud explosion. The enemy had dropped a
demolition charge over the side and blasted a hole in the side of the Alster.
‘To us lot on board Icarus,’ says Andrew, ‘it was obvious that the
German ship was starting to heel.’ However, the boarding party had secured
the ship and began towing her back to their oiling base in one of the fjords,
albeit at only five knots. By seven the following morning, they had reached
their fuel base and largely repaired the hole in the Altser so that it was once
again floating on an even keel. It was a big prize, although they had no time
to rest on their laurels, as they were immediately sent to the aid of a cruiser
that had dashed itself on a submerged rock. They made it in time after a
three-hour dash and rescued the crew.