I Sank The Bismarck Page 25
The German warships were already close to the Straits of Dover, so Esmonde elected to take off as soon as the squadron's Swordfish were ready; it was expected that they could be in the air at 1220, with an attack on the enemy ships commencing just fifteen minutes later. The Swordfish that was in the air, flown by Sub-Lieutenant Rose, had been recalled and the other crews had already moved out to their aircraft on their hard standings when he landed. Esmonde briefed Rose while he was waiting in the duty office for a telephone call that would confirm the enemy's position and tell him what air cover he could expect from the RAF.
A group of Royal Navy motor torpedo boats had been mobilized. They had made contact with the German warships and called in with the latest position. Esmonde hoped they would be able to mount an attack at the same time as the Swordfish were going into their dive. The RAF was going to put five squadrons of fighters into the air to defend the Swordfish, three from Biggin Hill and two from Hornchurch. They were scheduled to rendezvous with 825 Squadron over Manston, but again the pressure of time prevented proper coordination. Only one fighter squadron of ten Spitfires had arrived over the airfield when Esmonde ordered his Swordfish to take off. He felt that there was no more time to waste, because the ships had already passed thought the Straits and were steaming away at 28 knots.
Another two squadrons of Spitfires, however, did fly straight to the target area, where they were met by German fighters, but the aircraft from Hornchurch never managed to navigate to the scene of the action. Esmonde had briefed his squadron to form into two sub-flights of three planes each and to make an approach to their targets in line astern, to keep their profile as small as possible. German fighters pounced on them when they were still over the English coast and their Spitfire escort of just ten planes was utterly overwhelmed. The Luftwaffe had not only put Messerschmitt 109s into the air, but the new, faster Focke Wulf 190 fighters were also deployed and were the equal of, if not better than, the Spitfire mark Vs that were then used by the RAF.
The six Swordfish continued their approach to Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen. By now they had been joined by other German warships and were defended by a screen of eight destroyers, E-boats and flak ships. It was an absurdly small number of planes to send against two battlecruisers, a cruiser and their attendant fleet, which now totalled forty ships. When we attacked Bismarck we sent fifteen aircraft against just one battleship and scored at most three hits. The concentrated anti-aircraft fire that the Swordfish crews would have to confront does not bear thinking about. In addition, the German air force had more than two hundred aircraft on standby and they dominated the air above their warships. The Swordfish were hit by machine-gun and cannon fire from the Focke Wulf fighters that swarmed around them long before they could get within dropping range of their targets.
Lt Commander Esmonde was leading his flight in at 50 feet when he was hit. His aircraft's right lower wing started to disintegrate. Then another fighter manoeuvred behind him and started pouring bullets into his aircraft. The fuselage caught fire and one of the Spitfire pilots saw the TAG climb half out of the cockpit to extinguish it, but at this point Esmonde was killed and his Swordfish crashed into the sea.
The second Swordfish in the sub-flight, piloted by Sub-Lieutenant Rose, was also attacked. Rose was wounded in the back by a shell splinter and his air gunner was killed; the same burst of fire ruptured his fuel tank as well. He had lined up on Scharnhorst, but he lost control when the cannon shells ripped through his fuselage and found he was flying at Prinz Eugen. He managed to launch his torpedo, however, at a range of 1,200 yards, but the cruiser manoeuvred out of its way. Rose tried to gain height, but with fuel pouring from his ruptured tank he realized that he was going to have to ditch. They hit the sea, and he and his observer managed to clamber out of their cockpit, released their dinghy and lay floating in it until they were rescued one and a half hours later by one of our motor torpedo boats.
The third Swordfish in Esmonde's flight, flown by Sub-Lieutenant Kingsmill, had also been hit by cannon shells, losing two cylinders out of their Pegasus engine, but it still kept running. However, the signal flares in the dinghy had been ignited by tracer bullets and the centre section of his upper wing was on fire. He too was struggling for control of his aircraft, which had been hit by shrapnel, and so he launched at the target that immediately presented itself, which also happened to be Prinz Eugen. His torpedo failed to hit and Kingsmill crashed in his Swordfish just after turning away. He and his crew had only their lifejackets to keep them afloat, but fortunately they were picked up by a British fishing boat that had been engulfed by the battle.
The second flight had for some unknown reason flown into the attack at a higher altitude, and as they approached over the destroyer screen they were met head on by a section of Messerschmitt fighters and were all shot down. Only five men survived the attack out of eighteen who had set off from Manston.
We were all shocked by the news: 825 Squadron had been wiped out and many brave men had lost their lives. There were also very heavy casualties in the Spitfire squadrons, who had been badly briefed on what to expect. I could not help reflecting on how, a few months earlier, so much time had been spent searching for these ships, and now they had escaped after being barely 10 miles from Dover Castle. It was a sad, frustrating incident and my mood, and that of my squadron, was exacerbated by being stuck, helpless, 500 miles away in the Orkneys. Esmonde received a posthumous Victoria Cross for his part in the raid, but I feel that every single one of the men who flew that day deserved it. Like us in our attack on Bismarck, 825 Squadron was thrown into action as a last resort when everything else had gone wrong. We survived, they didn't.
15
Another Carrier
In wartime events could quickly lead to a radical change in circumstances, sometimes overnight. Within three or four days of our replacement aircraft arriving at Hatston we were instructed to fly to Machrihanish and then on to Belfast, where I had completed my first solo flight. Once there we loaded on to Formidable. The 'Formy', as we called her, had, like me, seen plenty of action since that day in early 1940 when I had flown over her at Harland and Wolff. She was a more modern aircraft carrier than Ark Royal, similar to Illustrious and Victorious. Like them, she had been built with an armoured flight deck and this extra weight meant that there was only one hangar deck, not two as there were in the Ark. This reduced the number of aircraft that could be carried. An advantage she did have over the Ark was that her deck-lifts were wider, so she could carry Sea Hurricanes, although at the time these were in incredibly short supply.
Formidable had been sent into the Mediterranean in January 1941 to take the place of her sister carrier Illustrious after the latter had been hit and badly damaged by German dive-bombers. Formidable had taken part in the Battle of Matapan, where her Swordfish had torpedoed two Italian cruisers and her fighters had shot down two Junkers 88 bombers. The 'Formy' took part in the fleet bombardment of Tripoli, but these armoured carriers always had to contend with the problem of keeping enough fighter aircraft operational, and sailing to attack Scarpanto airfield she was damaged by near misses from two 1,000lb bombs. Fragments from the blasts penetrated the boiler rooms and her speed was reduced. So, like Illustrious before her, she was withdrawn to Alexandria and then made the journey to the United States for major repairs. Once these had been completed she had returned to Belfast to have new radar equipment fitted and to work up before going into active service.
My feelings were mixed. Going to sea for another tour of duty would tear me away from Marjorie. I knew that after another few months I would be desperate for the sight of dry land, and the hills and fields of Scotland. Also, there was the feeling at the back of my mind that ever since I had survived the bomb blast at Worthy Down I had been quite fortunate, and I wondered how long my luck would last.
Our arrival on board was peculiar, I remember, because we flew to Sydenham airfield in Belfast then taxied our Albacore aircraft, with their wings folded, do
wn a narrow Belfast street to the dockside, where they were then hoisted aboard by crane.
Britain faced a very difficult situation at this time. The Japanese navy had successfully launched a major attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December, showing that they had learned the lesson of Taranto and that they understood the importance of naval aviation. Three days later their carrier-borne bombers had successfully sunk two British warships, Prince of Wales and Repulse, which had been sent out to reinforce the British fleet at Singapore. The Japanese army had quickly fought their way down through Burma and Malaya, and at about the same time as we were getting our aircraft on to Formidable, the order was given to the army in Singapore to surrender to the Japanese.
We had our hands full with getting the squadron and stores and administration embarked on the carrier, so we probably paid less attention to events in the Far East than we did to the German warships escaping down the Channel. Also, the German Afrika Corps under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was advancing in North Africa and it was clear that things were not going very well for us all round. Now we were going into a part of the world that was unfamiliar to most of us, to face an enemy that was unknown. There was a lot of talk in the papers about the inferiority of the Japanese and their poor ability as fighting men, but the latest events seemed to prove otherwise. When we had an odd moment, we pored over the charts to get some idea of where we would be going, and we tried to locate identification charts of Japanese warships and aircraft, but information was sparse.
Formidable had spent six months in the United States and her crew had become used to what we gathered was generous hospitality, with food and nightlife that it was impossible to find any more in Britain. The Fleet Air Arm squadrons that were now ensconcing themselves in the hitherto empty hangar deck and ready rooms were for the most part just out of training school and still had a lot to learn. However, there was no time to work up the ship and carry out the range of exercises needed to make sure that we would hold our own in combat. Our job was to get out to the Far East as quickly as possible to reinforce what resources we still had out there. What training there was going to be would have to take place during the journey round the Cape.
One pleasant surprise was the discovery that Admiral 'Slim' Somerville, who had commanded Force H when I was in the Ark, was going to be in charge of the Eastern Fleet, as we were to be known, and he was going to hoist his flag on Formidable until we got to Ceylon (Sri Lanka today). He was, of course, a stickler for training and maintaining high standards – it was partly due to his influence that Ark Royal had been so efficiently run – and he took a real interest in our flying-off times and how quickly we could land on, refuel and range up again. That, after all, is what an aircraft carrier is all about: the effectiveness of the entire fleet can hang on the efficiency of the carrier's flight deck.
Sure enough, as we sailed down the Irish Sea and set out on the first leg of our journey to Sierra Leone, there was a whole programme of exercises – in navigation, direction-finding, torpedo attacks – and anti-aircraft-gunnery practice for the gun crews on Formidable and our escorts.
Sadly, I took little part in any of this. The medical staff had inoculated us against yellow fever and other tropical infections, and I had been badly affected by some of the aftereffects of these injections. I was confined to the sickbay with a very high fever for several days and then forbidden to fly until I was fully recovered. I did not return to flying duties until we docked in Sierra Leone, but on the way down we had lost four Albacores through accidents, and it was clear that Somerville was not happy with the way the ship was working.
The Indian Ocean was second in importance only to the North Atlantic at that time in the war. It carried cargo and troop traffic not only from India, New Zealand and Australia to Europe, but also, with the near impossibility of getting anything through the Mediterranean safely, the western edge of the Indian Ocean saw all the traffic supplying the British Eighth Army in Egypt and North Africa. The Japanese advance to Singapore posed a serious threat to this and we were on a heightened alert for enemy submarines gathering around the Cape of Good Hope, so the flying programme became very intense. We were now called upon to practise nighttime operations as well. The potential strength in the air of the Japanese fleet led Somerville to think that our only chance of carrying out a successful torpedo attack on units of their navy was to do so under cover of darkness. At the time we didn't know whether the Japanese ships were equipped with radar – we thought that they weren't – so it might have given us an advantage. The radar that had been fitted to some of our Swordfish had proved very useful in the search for Bismarck, but there was more to a night attack than finding and fixing the position of the enemy. Judging the speed and distance to the target, the sea conditions and, crucially, one's height over it could all affect the success of a mission and required a lot of experience and nerve.
On any one day the flying programme would start at dawn with the standard reconnaissance patrols and anti-submarine sweeps. Then our Fulmar fighters would take to the air for practice in radar direction and deck landings. Formidable's single Swordfish would then tow a target sleeve over the fleet for firing practice and then a torpedo-attack exercise was conducted in the afternoon. Often Somerville would be a passenger in one of the Albacores and this certainly helped him gauge not only the expertise of his squadrons, but also their morale and general level of self-confidence. His willingness to get stuck in like this, and his general disregard for formality, extended his excellent reputation to those who had not already served under him. It did not endear him, though, to some of the regular navy types, who had not been brought up to get their hands dirty.
On one particular night-flying exercise, carried out by the Albacores of 820 and 818 Squadrons, several pilots found it hard to make a deck landing; four or five had to go round more than once without catching the arrestor wire. One pilot in particular found it hard and the deck landing officer remarked that if he didn't make it on the next attempt he would have to be shot down. He did finally land, but then, to everyone's growing alarm, the bridge realized that another aircraft had failed to return from the exercise. It was Mike Lithgow from 820 Squadron, who had been a friend of mine on the Ark and one of my colleagues when I flew against Bismarck. Most officers would have sailed on and started writing letters to the next-of-kin, but Somerville ordered his destroyer escort to continue while Formidable turned round and went back on her course. At slow speed, with our four 32in searchlights flickering over the surface of the ocean, we hunted for our lost airmen. I always remember the strong beam from the lights playing across the waves; wherever it stopped for a minute or two the sea would boil as huge shoals of fish flocked to the intense light. I wondered what good we could do, and thought that Mike was going to be another casualty of the war. Then a lookout suddenly shouted. He had heard the sound of a distress whistle in the darkness and a few minutes later there was the Albacore's crew, in their liferaft, the yellow lifejackets reflected in the searchlight's beam. They had ditched their aircraft because of engine failure. That night I think if Somerville had ordered us to fly to Tokyo we would have had a crack at it. He was later to do something similar on a grander scale, which again illustrated what we all thought was real humanity.
The pilot who was rescued that night, Mike Lithgow, later became a test pilot for Vickers and captured the world's absolute speed record in a Swift jet fighter. Sadly, in 1963 he was flying the prototype BAC 1-11 passenger aircraft when it stalled and crashed, killing him and his crew. But that night in the Indian Ocean he had all the luck in the world.
The intense working-up continued until we reached Cape Town, where at last we experienced the largesse of which the sailors had had their fill in the United States. We anchored at the foot of Adderley Street, the road that runs down to the dockside and seems to guide the eye up the steep sides of Table Mountain at its end. On our first run ashore we stood open-mouthed at the food and merchandise for sale. Piles of fr
esh fruit – oranges and bananas, which we hadn't seen for ages – shirts, tailored suits and clothing in the windows: it was a rather grim reminder of just how much rationing and austerity had affected us back in the UK. However, we were here now and we were going to enjoy it as much as we could. We found a restaurant, the name of which I can still recall – The Blue Lagoon; and then floating on a sea of good food and alcohol we continued up that wide street, our eyes peeled for any girls who wanted to make the acquaintance of a group of heroic pilots. We had only gone 100 yards when some of us found a large store selling a huge variety of musical instruments. The owner was very friendly and was happy to let us try out the instruments, and in no time at all we were putting together a small band, with me on the banjo, performing to a crowd that had gathered in the street. God knows what they made of us.
We received some remarkable hospitality. A regular RN friend from Glasgow, 'Jock' Stewart, and I were chauffeured everywhere by a couple of friendly, attractive women. We were met in the morning and driven out to the country for a picnic, then back in the evening to a night club called the Bohemian, and everywhere we went it was on the house.
Needless to say we were not keen to leave, but there was a war on and we once more put to sea for exercises and patrols. There were also plenty of games. A good ship will make sure there are plenty of competitive sports for people to take part in. In the Ark we had played deck rugby and soccer, and Formidable had a well-supported deck hockey league. Played by teams of seven a side, with various departments in the ship competing against each other, this could be quite hazardous. The rules were made up more or less as we went along, the puck was made of a rope's end, and the hockey sticks were any piece of bent metal or wood that could be pressed into service. The victors were not necessarily the most skilful, but the toughest.