The frantic disembodied voice roared down the tube and filled the radio room. “All hands!” Petty Officer Howard hit the switch for the automatic signal. The bells and the Royal Marine bugler’s call down the tube pierced every corner of the ship.
Three men jammed together in a closet-sized radio room looked up as the hundreds of sailors serving on HMS Portland thundered up the steel ladders, the sound ringing through the metal decks and walls.
Portland Ordinary Telegraphist Robert Henderson pulled one side of his headphones off so he could hear what was happening above them. In his peripheral vision he saw his mate, Gerald Downey, making a frantic sign at him, but Robert’s concentration never left the High Frequency/Direction Finding screen—HF/DF, the Huff-Duff—searching for U-boats under
