Cruiser (34 page)
Authors: Mike Carlton
Things had not been going well for Elmo Gee and Jim Nelson. The two ship's buglers had been caught running their illegal Crown and Anchor game again. Regulating Petty Officer Albert Furey, a dour Yorkshireman, nabbed them red-handed in a quiet corner of their mess and marched them up to be
punished by the Commander, Charles Reid.
There was nothing for it but to plead guilty. Pricky came down hard. Elmo, the senior of the two, was stripped of a good-conduct badge and two weeks' pay. Jim had no badges to lose but was also docked a fortnight's wages. They consoled themselves afterwards that the profits from the game more than made up for it. The next day â the morning that Crete was invaded â
Perth
was at sea again.
Cunningham had sailed his fleet in four separate forces to block any coastal landings by the Germans and to deter any move by the Regia Marina to put to sea in support. It was a high-risk strategy, deploying his ships in the very teeth of overwhelming Luftwaffe air superiority, but he had little choice. His forces would carry out sweeps to the east and west of the island by day, venturing into the more hazardous waters to the north only by night, when darkness would give them some cover.
Perth
was part of Force C, with another cruiser,
Naiad
, and four destroyers,
Juno
,
Kingston
,
Kandahar
and
Nubian
. At dusk in the Kaso Strait north-east of Crete, they were attacked by Italian bombers.
The watch on
Perth
's bridge saw the aircraft coming â dark shapes dead ahead against the gathering night â and all the ships put up a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. The lookouts reported two torpedoes, coming straight for them. Bowyer-Smyth, conning the ship as skilfully as ever, dodged their silvery tracks and the aircraft were beaten off, but it was the beginning of a fiery evening. At eleven o'clock, still closed up at action stations, they were attacked by four Italian fast motor torpedo boats, which the destroyers drove off by gunfire.
The next morning, 21 May, not long after dawn, and further to the south of Kaso Strait, a new onslaught began from the air. An Air Raid Red sounded at 6.30, and from then on they were attacked almost every half-hour by waves of Stuka and JU88 bombers swooping upon them from a sunlit sky. There was no time for rest, no space to regroup and renew. Sweating men toiled at the guns, loading and firing as if they were machines
themselves, the empty brass shell cases clattering around them on the decks. Food was a thick bully-beef sandwich sent up from the galley and a quick gulp of water.
At around midday, the destroyer
Juno
was hit in an attack as swift as it was shocking. Four Italian Cant bombers passed high overhead in a diamond formation, releasing sticks of bombs that filled the air with a banshee scream that drowned out even the thunder of the anti-aircraft fire. Crouched on the after conning position, Brian Sheedy counted 32 bombs that seemed to be coming directly at him:
Most men on the upper deck, myself and the Commander included, lay flattened on the steel deck. We lifted our heads above the steel plating to see the destroyer
Juno
, which was almost alongside us, broken in two and sinking rapidly; she was gone in one minute, gone from sight beneath the sea's surface, gone to Davy Jones's Locker. A few of her ship's company were floundering in the water; many men were lost. Three direct bomb hits. Her whaleboat, with about twenty men on board, passed down our starboard side.
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Jim Nelson for'ard on the signal bridge also saw the destroyer's end:
It only took a minute as I watched the orange explosion of the hit amidships and the pall of thick black smoke rising in mushroom formation above her, blocking out any visual sight. When the smoke cleared
Juno
was not there, approximately a minute and a half, with only flotsam and a few survivors on the water. It was horrible, we steamed on as there was nothing we could do as we were still under heavy attack and fighting for our own survival. It has been sheer hell today. I can not find words to express my feelings of horror at the carnage witnessed, nor the emotions being experienced, ranging from the exhilarating adrenalin-charged high of battle, to the despairing lows of the death and destruction being witnessed.
I have recorded at least twenty bombs landing alongside as absolute near misses, not counting the many others landing all around us further out. The skill of our Captain, Sir Philip, in handling this ship like a destroyer, our desperate antagonistic A. A. defence ⦠combined with the training and coordinated skills of our crew, created the miracle that got us through the day. Relief was obtained at sunset with no further action during the night.
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At last there was a respite. The men on deck remained closed up in the dark at the first degree of readiness, helmets and lifejackets near at hand, but the bombers did not return and there was time to snatch a few hours of fitful sleep amidst the clutter of old cocoa cups and ashtrays in whatever corner could be found. The action that night was elsewhere, off the north coast of Crete near the capital. Force D, which included
Perth
's chummy ships
Orion
and
Ajax
, encountered a German troop convoy of up to 25 caiques escorted by the Italian destroyer
Lupo
heading for a landing at Maleme, and put paid to them in a bloody, one-sided battle lit by searchlights. The destroyer was sunk and some 800 of the enemy were lost.
Perth
achieved her own victory the next morning, under yet another heavy air attack. Red-eyed, drawn and grey, the lookouts spotted a vessel on the horizon. Bowyer-Smyth turned to investigate, twisting and darting at full speed as the bombs plunged towards them. Through their binoculars, the lookouts and the officers identified another caique, loaded with German troops in those distinctive coal-scuttle steel helmets, with the red, white and black swastika flying at the caique's stern. It was the first time in the war that
Perth
's ship's company had seen the Nazi flag afloat at sea â a vision both repellent and enthralling. The Captain's rangefinder on the bridge homed in on the scuttling boat. Up in the Director Control Tower, the principal control officer called range and bearing numbers down to the Transmitting Station to set up the complex equations of course, speed and distance that
would train and elevate the 6-inch guns. In the turrets, the shells were rammed into the breeches. The gun-ready lamps flicked on. With the ship thrusting now to starboard, then back to port, the rear turret arcs were open.
âCaptain, sir. X-and Y-turret ready to open fire.'
âVery good. Open fire.'
âShoot!'
The firing gong sounded its mechanical ting-ting. Orange flames stabbed from the gun muzzles. Within seconds, the water around the caique erupted in fountains of green and dirty yellow.
Perth
was both the hunter and the hunted, her engines throbbing, her plates straining, the battle ensign at her foremast as taut as sheet steel, and the wake from her four great screws boiling behind her as she surged onwards to her prey, almost unheeding of the attack above. Then the 4-inch and the pom-poms joined the barrage of fire. Brian Sheedy had a front-row seat:
It seemed the Luftwaffe pilots, hearing of the destruction inflicted upon their seaborne colleagues had gone berserk. They drove their aircraft at
Perth
and the other ships in the squadron as though they intended to smash headlong into the ship â¦
For every single round fired in efforts to sink the caique, three or four salvoes were fired by the H. A. 4-inch at aircraft diving on the ship from dead astern. Always the German aircraft angled their craft so as to come from dead astern ⦠and so it went on with plane after plane â the bank-up of German aircraft waiting to get a crack at the ship was never ending.
The gunlayers had difficulty coping with the wild jinking of the ship; gunnery from a stable platform was preferable, but the circumstances denied them this. Detached from the group's protecting umbrella barrage,
Perth
was alone in her struggle.
The pom-pom and machine gun fire directed at the caique in between short pauses of the attacking aircraft coming in from astern was erratic, raising spray all round the caique. We desperately needed to sink this enemy craft and get the hell out of there back to the sheltering gunfire of our companion ships.
A distance that, in the calm smooth seas prevailing, should have taken minutes to travel took half an hour. The ship came to within 100 yards of the caique before the 4-inch guns managed to put four rounds of HE into her at the waterline. I saw a Hun clearly; he was standing in the bows waving his hands when the first 4-inch shell hit, after which I saw him no more. He probably could not swim, else he would have joined his comrades, whose heads we could see bobbing around.
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High in the Anti-Aircraft Director Tower, Bill Bracht had a grandstand view:
One salvo from A-turret ⦠smashed into the ship and sent the deckhouse and bodies flying. We closed in closer. The Captain ordered the starboard side 4-inch gun to load and stand by to sink the boat. As we approached closer the deck became alive with German soldiers who threw their guns over the side and stood with their hands upstretched calling out âKamerad!'.
Suddenly, without orders, our starboard .5 multiple machine gun opened fire. The overwrought gunner, unable to control himself, had pressed the trigger. German soldiers went down like ninepins and others jumped overboard.
âCease-firing!' came down from the bridge and other ratings on the run had to pull the gunner from the gun.
âInhuman,' you say. War is inhuman and when a man has seen his comrades killed before his eyes he is apt to let instinct overcome reason.
âOpen fire 4-inch!' was passed from the bridge, and with the crash of the twin guns the boat disintegrated into splintered matchwood and twisted metal. Some unlucky soldiers were still swimming in the sea but we did not pick up the survivors, we had no time or room.
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The caique disappeared in a swirl of foaming water, but the sinking redoubled the fury from the air, and now
Perth
began to take hits. Bombs and cannon shells smashed around her, at
times so close that the men on deck, hunkered down behind what feeble shelter they could find, were drenched by the towering splashes rising to port and starboard. One stick of bombs whistled low over the ship between her two funnels, and one by one her wireless aerials and signal halliards were shot away from the masts, coming down in a tangle of snaking wires, rope and shattered glass insulators. On the after bridge, Sheedy and the Commander saw a cannon shell slam into the mast just three metres above their heads. The funnels and the crane between them were peppered by bullets and shrapnel. Another bullet passed through the Radar Office behind the fore bridge, missing the two radar operators by millimetres. More jagged holes were punched in the ship's sides.
And
Perth
was now beginning to run low on ammunition. Bracegirdle, furiously improvising, had two wooden vaulting horses from the gym dragged onto the upper deck and placed in the waist, port and starboard. Men crouched behind them with .303 rifles, shooting wildly at the bombers as they swooped past.
Somehow,
Perth
survived. Two of her companions were heavily hit:
Naiad
had two turrets put out of action, and the anti-aircraft cruiser
Carlisle
, which had joined only the day before, had her captain killed on his bridge. But the Australian cruiser came through those three hours of unremitting attack without losing a man and with all her armament ready for action. Her luck was still in â that and the skills and dedication of her crew. Even as they closed the battle fleet that afternoon and came at last under its protection, there was another Luftwaffe raid in which both
Warspite
and
Valiant
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were hit, although also with little damage. Ray Parkin noted a brief meeting with Bowyer-Smyth:
When I reported to the Captain that night, things had quietened down a bit. He was sitting relaxed in an armchair in his sea cabin, but the strain of the day still showed in his eyes.
âWell, Chief Quartermaster,' he greeted me. âThe Old Girl did not let us down once today. I was really proud of the ship's
company.'
âWell, sir,' I replied, âthey say that they are the luckiest crowd in the world to be serving under you.' He did not say anything, but only gave a funny sort of nod. I could see that he was touched, and he had no words for it.
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The battles at sea had been successful in preventing those German coastal landings, but at horrifying cost to the Mediterranean Fleet. The Luftwaffe's absolute control of the skies wrought havoc on Cunningham's ships. In waters barely over the horizon from
Perth
's ordeal, the destroyer
Greyhound
was sunk in just two minutes, and, when the cruisers
Gloucester
and
Fiji
were despatched to her aid, they too were sent to the bottom, with hundreds of good men drowned.
Worse was to come on the next day, 23 May. Off Gavdo Island, south of Crete, a flock of 24 Stukas struck at the three modern ships of Lord Louis Mountbatten's 5th Destroyer Flotilla, which had sailed from Malta to join the battle. The first to go was HMS
Kashmir
, again in just two minutes. Then Mountbatten's ship,
Kelly
, was hit in her engine room while she was at full speed under hard starboard helm, causing her to capsize and float upside down for half an hour before she, too, plunged to the bottom. Half her crew died. Mountbatten and about a hundred other survivors, who were huddled on rafts or bobbing in lifejackets, cheered her as she went down, even though they were being strafed in the water. Eventually, they were rescued, still under fire, by the third of the trio,
Kipling
.
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