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  A week later, on the afternoon of Thursday, 6 February, the Ark once more left Gibraltar, with Renown, Malaya and Sheffield. We were going to finish the operation that we had started with the attempt to breach the Tirso dam. I had been selected to take part this time, as part of a mine-laying attack on an Italian port. We steamed north-east, close to the French and Italian coasts, expecting to be attacked at any minute. There were several alarms as we were spotted by enemy planes on the way, and we had two accidents, one when a Skua pilot landed very heavily and collapsed his undercarriage, and the second when a Fulmar had to ditch with engine trouble.

  Early on the morning of Sunday the 9th, I was woken and went to the briefing room. Our plans for the raid were little changed from the previous week, but it crossed my mind that, after the torpedoing of the dam, the Italian coastal defences might be more than normally alert. I put this to the back of my mind as we went through details of expected weather and flying times to the target. In its entirety, the operation was an attack on three separate targets. Force H was going to split up: the battleships Renown and Malaya were going north to steam 10 miles off the coast of Genoa to shell the port with their big guns. There had been reports of two battleships and a heavy cruiser in the docks at Genoa, one of them, Duilio, installed in a dry dock undergoing repairs to the damage she had suffered at Taranto. There was no confirmation of this, and various other important targets in the town had also been selected. Swordfish aircraft from the Ark would act as spotters to direct the gunfire and would no doubt discover if there were major warships moored up. Another section of Swordfish was going to bomb the town of Leghorn, just south of Pisa, while I and three other Swordfish were to drop mines in the harbour at La Spezia, farther north along the coast from Leghorn.

  Renown and Malaya opened fire at about 0715. Renown hit the railway yards and factories on the banks of the Polceverra river, which entered the sea by the western part of the town. This started fires, and the battleship then moved her aim to the docks, which had been named by Mussolini after the East African countries Italy had invaded before the war, such as Abyssinia and Eritrea. Some merchant ships were hit, but no large warships were there. A salvo landed on the power station, causing a very big explosion – obviously the oil tanks had been hit, as the spotting aircraft saw the thick black smoke of an oil fire rising into the morning air. This started to make spotting difficult, but the guns shifted their aim again and began pouring shells on both the locomotive works of Ansaldo and another electrical factory.

  Malaya concentrated on the dry docks and the factories and warehouses in the eastern part of the port, which had houses clustered around them. One of the pilots of the spotting Swordfish I spoke to said that he saw a single shell knock down a complete row of houses before it exploded. It must have been an incredible shock to the inhabitants of the town. Just one salvo from Renown would have been six 16in shells, landing within 50 yards of each other. Their explosive power would have been devastating and it would have been repeated every few minutes.

  The firing continued for an hour, and I have heard estimates that it would have taken the Royal Air Force almost two weeks of bombing raids to have delivered the same amount of explosives as fell on Genoa in those sixty minutes. The attack was on a Sunday morning, so many of the factories and docks would have been empty of any workers; even so, there were 140 casualties, and most of those, of course, were civilians. Apart from the damage caused to the power station, and to the docks and factories, four merchant ships were sunk, a training ship was damaged and an oil tanker was hit by a 6in shell from Sheffield. One unexploded shell landed in the cathedral, where it is still kept on display in the nave. News of the bombardment must have caused some consternation amongst the Italian high command on that Sunday morning, but imagine what they must have felt when reports of other attacks started coming in.

  Fourteen Swordfish were ranged up on the flight deck of the Ark, and at 0500 they started their engines. As each Bristol Pegasus engine burst into life, sparks and flashes were spat out of the exhaust that stuck out from the starboard side of the engine cowling. You felt that they could be seen from afar and must be signalling our position to every Italian ship and spotter aircraft for hundreds of miles around. We had come 700 miles from Gibraltar, hugging the coast of Corsica, but soon the bombardment would start and we felt that there would be no hiding place.

  The Swordfish took off, heading for Leghorn. They were armed with 250lb bombs and incendiaries, and their intention was to attack the Azienda oil refinery in the port. They formed up over a flare dropped into the sea, then flew east to make a landfall north of their target, but lack of experience of night flying and the need for radio silence meant that two aircraft got lost and continued inland until they located a town. They had arrived over Pisa! I am not sure that they spent a lot of time looking for the Leaning Tower, but they made the best of a bad job and, circling low, with no antiaircraft fire being hurled against them, they searched out two likely targets. One attacked the aerodrome, dropping his bombs on a hangar and office building, while the other found Pisa railway yards and dropped his bombs on that. Neither of them could tell what sort of damage they had done, but they clearly had done what they could and so headed back to pick up the Ark.

  The other eleven aircraft managed to fly over Leghorn and started bombing the oil refinery. They had achieved almost complete surprise, with some slight anti-aircraft fire opening up at the sound of the first bombs, but in a few minutes tracer bullets were hosing up into the sky, and high-angle artillery was exploding around them. One Swordfish collided with the cable of one of the barrage balloons tethered all round the harbour; the plane was so badly damaged it spun and crashed into the harbour. The pilot, Sub-Lieutenant Attenborough, his observer, Sub-Lieutenant Foote, and the TAG, Leading Airman Halifax, were all killed.

  I was one of the last to take off that morning – a member of a small force of four Swordfish armed with 'cucumbers', the long magnetic anti-ship mines we carried under the fuselage. We were headed to the naval base at La Spezia, which was about an hour away, and we flew low towards the coast.

  At last I was flying on a mission to attack the enemy, but I was also extremely apprehensive about what I would find when I got there. Everybody had behaved as though this were just a normal anti-submarine patrol. My observer, Dusty Miller, had filled me in on the aiming points and the latest intelligence about the target in his usual laconic, matter-of-fact way; the rigger had bawled out his tuneless song about his mother's apple pie as he tightened my straps; and I too had been keen to appear organized and efficient. The engine fired first time, and we were on our way. As we formed up with the other three planes, the Swordfish seemed slightly heavier with the big mine strapped to it. I was nervous. I couldn't believe that I was going to fly over an enemy naval port without being challenged, shot at and attacked by enemy fighters. We were at war, after all, and this was the very first time that I had taken part in an attack on the enemy. I had been in the Ark for over two months now and it was high time I took part in operations of this sort, but my concern was not only what would happen, but that I would not make a mess of it.

  La Spezia is at the head of a narrow gulf formed by the Italian mainland and a small peninsula to the west. The harbour is protected by a mole that cuts across the gulf, leaving entrances at the eastern and western ends, and inside this is a smaller harbour, which was the main haven for the Italian navy. Our targets were the gaps at either end of the outer mole. They were narrow and if we could block them with mines, the commercial harbour as well as the naval basin would be unusable until all the mines were cleared. If luck was on our side, the Italian navy would not succeed in clearing them all and one of our mines might blow up under a ship, with the wreck blocking the port for a considerable time.

  I flew in to the coast south of the town, then headed north with the gulf to my left and the hills of the mainland to my right. It was just after 0600 and there was absolutely no activity. When we got to La
Spezia, we noticed that the streetlights were all on. I went down to about 500 feet, then turned to fly over the town and head south to the mole. We didn't see any fishing boats or other small craft moving about in the harbour. I was surprised, and relieved. I heard Dusty saying to me when we crossed the lighted town, 'It must be to help them on their way to mass.' He was always one to say something to help break the tension. It was one of the reasons that I liked flying with him. I couldn't help smiling, and was settling in my seat to go lower down to 200 feet, feeling that this might be a piece of cake, when I heard in my ear, 'Holy Jesus, look to your left.' I looked across at the inner harbour, and there was the massive superstructure of a big warship.

  No one had been absolutely sure where the remainder of the big battleships had gone after Taranto, but clearly at least one had ended up here. I kept straight and level now, flying at 100 feet and heading for the gap at the end of the mole, hoping and praying that nobody on watch on the battleship would raise the alarm. One minute, two minutes, and I pressed the button on the stick and the Swordfish rose up as the weight of the mine dropped away. Any conversation between us was superfluous. I kept the aircraft low, heading at full throttle out to sea. When we were 5 miles out, Dusty said that the guns of a battery had opened up and were probably targeting some of the other Swordfish, and also that some very bright flares that the Italians used, which we called flaming onions, had been fired and were slowly descending, looking from our distance like very impressive fireworks. In fact, when we returned and were debriefed we learned that some of our colleagues had faced low-level automatic cannon fire, which missed them, and some of the larger anti-aircraft guns had started firing blind into the air. None of our Swordfish was hit.

  We landed on by 0845, the Ark rendezvoused with the rest of Force H and then we went west for safety. The return journey was equally tense, with several Italian aircraft that were attempting to shadow us intercepted and shot down by our Fulmars. There was also an attack by two bombers, but their bombs, dropped from around 3,000 feet, easily missed us. There was clearly a lot of activity as the Italians hunted for us. We could hear the sound of aircraft overhead as we skirted along the southern coast of France. There was a thick sea haze and this must have given us a protective cover, because they didn't find us. Intercepted signals indicated that Italian warships had also put to sea, but they too failed to pinpoint our location. When we got back to Gibraltar, there was a feeling that we had pulled off something pretty impressive that would be a real shock to Mussolini and the Italian armed forces. Their morale, already damaged after Taranto, must have taken another blow.

  I could not help but think about that Italian warship in La Spezia and the fact that its presence had never been mentioned in any of the briefings. There was a real lack of reconnaissance carried out for Force H and I felt, and still do, that if we had had more support we could have achieved much more in the way of attacks on Italy and would have diverted Italian forces away from the Mediterranean Fleet in Alexandria. All we had were the Swordfish in our squadron on the Ark, and they would not have lasted long if they had been used for reconnaissance over the mainland.

  Nevertheless, I had taken part in my first real aggressive mission, and I felt pleased that I had done as creditably as I could.

  10

  Hunting the Scharnhorst

  I didn't want to take part in action through any bloodthirsty motive – far from it. I had a need, as a young man of twenty-one, to prove myself to more senior and experienced colleagues, and I felt that I ought to be engaged in the fight. It was akin to the feeling I had when I had looked up at the sky during that local village cricket match in the summer of 1940.

  Whenever we went out into the Med, escorting a convoy to Malta or Alexandria, we knew that it was us on the Ark who were the target for the Italian bombers that came overhead. If they had their way, we would end up like Illustrious after being hit by the German Stukas – a smoking hulk; or worse, like the cruiser Southampton, which had been destroyed in the same bombing attack, with hundreds of her crew killed. We knew that London, Liverpool, Coventry and other cities in Britain were receiving a pounding from the Luftwaffe every night and thousands of civilians were being killed. I think it was natural for us to want to fight back, but we would all have been happy to see the war come to an end tomorrow if that had been possible.

  An incident that involved one of my colleagues in 818 Squadron, Sub-Lieutenant Penrose, sums up the situation perfectly. He was an observer in a Swordfish and had been flying on a raid over Cagliari when his plane was attacked by a couple of Italian fighters, Fiat CR.32s. These were biplanes with an open cockpit, rather like the Swordfish itself. They were fitted with two forward-firing guns and were pretty obsolete. But one of them came in from the side and fired a few bursts at Penrose's Swordfish while the other made a stern attack. They seemed to make no impact, the Swordfish easily outmanoeuvring them. Both Italian pilots then throttled back and took up formation on either side of Penrose's aircraft, no doubt feeling that they had something in common with another biplane and obviously thinking that they were no threat to each other. One of the pilots seemed quite amused by the whole affair. Penrose carried a service revolver and drew it from its holster. Resting the barrel on the side of the cockpit, he took careful aim at the nose of the CR.32 on the starboard side and fired. The Italian fighter banked and, to the Swordfish crew's amazement, dived steeply and smashed into the sea. The chance of hitting the target with a service revolver must have been a thousand to one. The other fighter roared off and disappeared.

  Penrose was congratulated for this act of bravery, but in fact he was distraught. He was convinced that his shot had killed the Italian pilot, for a single bullet would not have caused enough damage to the plane, and he felt that his behaviour had been utterly beyond the pale. Nothing I or anyone else could say would alleviate his remorse. In the wardroom he became a little like the Ancient Mariner and we all wished that he would snap out of it. He did eventually, but continued to feel guilty about taking someone else's life, as he felt, in an underhand way. Yet I am sure if he had managed to bring the fighter down in the heat of a battle, he would have felt completely different. This is how I believe it was for most, if not all, of us, particularly the hostilities-only pilots.

  We were very exultant at our success in the attack on the Italian ports, but had little time to spend congratulating ourselves. No sooner had we put into Gibraltar than there was an urgent call to raise steam once more and prepare for sailing within two hours. We were called out to defend a homeward-bound convoy that had just left Gibraltar, because there had been a report that the German battlecruiser, or pocket battleship, Admiral Hipper had been observed in the eastern Atlantic. It turned out that an unescorted convoy of ships journeying from Freetown, in Sierra Leone, to the UK had come under attack from Admiral Hipper and had scattered. Seven merchant ships out of the nineteen in the convoy had been sunk or taken as prizes. We had to go and hunt for the German warship while rounding up the remains of the convoy and providing an escort. So once again I headed out into the Atlantic, carrying out long-range patrols from dawn to dusk. We managed to shepherd the freighters into some sort of order and they were taken off under the wing of the old battleship Malaya.

  After ten days at sea, without any sign of Hipper, which had in fact reached its haven in Brest, the German-occupied port on the west coast of France, we once more returned to our home, Gibraltar. It was certainly about time for us, because long periods of patrol at sea were a strain on the aircraft and after several days there began to be fewer available for flying each morning. Some repairs and maintenance tasks either needed more time than the mechanics and riggers had or needed the space and equipment of the North Shore airfield in Gibraltar. We, the aircrew, also got tired and a period of leave in Gibraltar was always welcome. We could catch up on mail and the news from home. I had been sent a rugby ball by one of my teachers at Kelso High School and we often played a scratch game of rugby on the fligh
t deck of the Ark when she was tied up. It was a great way of relieving a lot of the stress of operations. I still have that rugby ball today.

  Ark Royal was a famous ship, and of course very imposing, so if any dignitaries were being entertained by Admiral Somerville a tour of the carrier would always be included in their visit. These would sometimes be leading Spanish politicians and military figures, or sometimes British officials and top brass passing through. I was in a party of five, which included Captain Holland, formed up to show two distinguished guests around the ship. To my surprise, one of them, a lady, turned out to be my opponent from the Greenwich College dinner. During wartime the ship's port-holes were kept closed while in harbour. Going below decks, the captain said that any further would take us into the ratings' quarters. The lady said that she would like to see where the men lived, and so the captain said to me, 'Open the hatch, Sub- Lieutenant.' I did so and immediately the lady grabbed a handkerchief from her handbag, saying, 'What a horrible smell of men!' – whereupon Captain Holland retorted, 'Have you any idea what it would smell like if the ship was manned by women?' I was so proud of the captain: he had paid her back for her rudeness.

  Since I had been on the Ark as part of Force H, we hadn't seen any sign of the German air force that had moved into Sicily, punishing Admiral Cunningham in Alexandria with so many casualties. The German navy was, however, making its presence felt in the North Atlantic and it was this that occupied most of our time in February and March. Up until now it had been U-boat packs hunting in the Atlantic that had caused most of the British losses, but by March there were three German pocket battleships preying on the Atlantic convoys. Admiral Hipper had brought us into the Atlantic in February, and her two sister ships – we referred to them as 'the Ugly Sisters' – Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which had sunk Glorious off Norway, had now resumed active service. Both ships had managed to take the northerly route past Greenland into the North Atlantic to attack UK-bound convoys leaving from Halifax in Newfoundland. They sank four ships here, then steamed rapidly east to rip into another one, part of a convoy from Sierra Leone to the UK. Here they were spotted by the crew of the battleship Malaya, which was the convoy's escort, and the German warships made off. Malaya had on board a catapult-launched Swordfish fitted with floats to act as a spotter and they launched it. If the aircraft could maintain contact, then other escort ships in the North Atlantic could be directed to them and convoys could be diverted. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were fast ships, however, much faster than the old Malaya, and the Swordfish ran out of fuel attempting to stay in touch with the enemy. The ships disappeared, but this sighting was enough for us to be ordered to raise steam and leave Gibraltar, heading once more to the west.