Heligoland (24 page)

The clouds of war were already gathering in March 1939 when the Prime Minister received a letter from Somerset Maxwell MP, wanting to know what reports he had received about the rearmament of the island. A polite reply, sent from the Foreign Office on Neville Chamberlain’s behalf, stated that Britain’s position had not altered from that set down by Eden in 1936, and went on: ‘Subsequent developments have shown clearly that no useful purpose would be served by taking up this matter with the German Government.’ Official documents now prove that considerable attention was given to the drafting of that reply, even the Admiralty being asked for its opinion.
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The file on this matter shows that: ‘According to a secret report which the Admiralty would not wish to be quoted, “Certain alterations” are now being made in the fortifications and they understand heavier guns are being installed. Some British Naval officers had been there last summer for regattas and had been able to see the position for themselves.’

Although the Admiralty knew what was happening on the island, scarcely anyone else in Britain did. There were several reasons why Heligoland had faded from public view. After the death of William George Black, the mantle of the island’s champion ought to have fallen to Erskine Childers, the yachtsman-author who knew those waters so well. But, quite unbeknown to the Royal Navy, just before the Cuxhaven Raid he had become passionately involved with Irish republicanism. Although he had fought for the British in the Boer War as an enthusiastic imperialist, Erskine’s lurch towards Irish republicanism was largely the work of his glamorous new American wife Molly Osgood, a prominent Boston-society Anglophobe. In July 1914 the couple had smuggled a huge cache of rifles from the Flemish coast to Ireland in their sleek ketch-rigged yacht
Asgard
, which Molly’s parents had given to them as a wedding present. Amazingly, within a month of that gun-running episode Britain was at war, and Childers soon found himself sent to the German Bight for the raid on Cuxhaven in December 1914. In 1922 he was executed by the Free State for treasonable activities, which made him something of a hero in southern Ireland, but his death deprived Heligoland of a potentially influential benefactor. Heligoland’s tenuous links with Ireland have never been wholly severed.
Asgard
, somewhat implausibly described by an Irish minister as ‘the most influential vessel in Irish history’, survived – neglectfully kept in a Dublin prison yard – and is being controversially restored to a fully-rigged condition.

One crucial consequence of the timing of the hand-over of Heligoland to Germany, many years before the modern British Commonwealth of former colonial nations began to take shape in the late 1920s, was that from that time on colonial history books almost invariably omitted to mention that Heligoland had ever been a British possession. A clear example of this can be found in the works of Professor Somervell, who was at that time a most popular historian of the British Empire. His works were read by a generation of students and other educated people who went on to become influential in public life. Highly significantly, in 1930 the first edition of his bestselling book
The British Empire
referred to Heligoland as an ‘uninhabited sandbar’. Subsequently, as the book went through several editions and reprints during the next few years, mention of Heligoland was gradually phased out, until by the fifth and final edition in 1942 it had ceased to be mentioned at all. It was as if there had never been any British involvement with Heligoland.

The question of why the island should have been swapped at all in 1890 was fleetingly considered in the 1920s by Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Salisbury’s daughter, who published a selection of his letters. Intriguingly, despite her privileged access, she claimed that there were no clues to his innermost thoughts on that matter. Also getting into print at this time were edited selections of Queen Victoria’s letters; these certainly mentioned her opposition to the swap, but no British historian thought to use this as a basis to question Britain’s record on the island.

Once the Versailles Treaty had been signed, and Heligoland’s political future thereby put beyond Westminster’s influence, parliamentary interest in Heligoland had virtually come to an end. From the mid-1920s, and for many years thereafter, almost no questions regarding the island – except on the subject of rearmament – were asked in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. Once the fortifications were dismantled, the island and the activities of its inhabitants ceased to receive any attention in the British national newspapers. It would be many years before
The Times
mentioned it at all. Nazi intimidation meant that even in 1935 a reporter sent to the island by the American journal
National Geographic
had to be careful not to be caught taking photographs. The last Englishman to write about a visit to Heligoland was the pioneering naturalist Ronald Lockley, who landed there in October 1936 to see the famous migratory bird-trapping centre which had originally been created by the controversial ornithologist Heinrich Gätke. In his book
I Know an Island
(1938), Lockley produced an account of that pre-war trip, eerily redolent of William George Black’s 1911 article for the
National Review
. He reported that when not ringing birds at the Fanggarten (he tagged an astonishing 752 birds of many species in just a day) he did what he could to explore the island, but found huge areas, most notably the fortress and the docks, fenced off with wire and ‘Verboten’ notices. Indeed, the non-military space had become so restricted that on fine summer days, when the ferries arrived and discharged thousands of sightseers, there could be as many as nine thousand people thronging the narrow streets. As the ferries docked, the crowds were so thick that no one could move one way or the other. Walking room was limited to the streets and the promenade around the island.

In such circumstances, most locals either remained at home or struggled to the 400-seater cinema. The films, which were changed weekly, usually included a newsreel and perhaps two or three propaganda films proclaiming the Nazi cause. Outside there would occasionally be demonstrations by some political organisation, which all young people had to attend. Almost every day a new ‘thought’ would appear on the notice-boards on the staircase joining the Upper and Lower Towns. ‘Bolshevism’ and ‘Return our Colonies’ were the most burning themes. There would also be entreaties to ‘Fly your Swastika’ and obey patriotic laws and etiquette.

But such exhortations were meaningless against the power of the sea. On 27 October 1936 Lockley witnessed a great gale approaching from the west. The waves leapt in billows over the naval base and swept into the streets of the Lower Town. No steamer could approach the island. In the space of just a few hours nearly half of Sandy Island was swept away; many people watched through telescopes as the buildings upon it crumbled and slid into the sea. Finally came the news that the lightship
Elbe 3
, positioned between Heligoland and Hamburg, had capsized and sunk with all hands. Lockley, a seasoned mariner, chillingly noted: ‘The whole shallow sea was perfectly white, as I have never seen in the white water of the Atlantic in its worst mood.’ Later, when the storm had subsided, he took a ferry to Cuxhaven. As it passed the forlorn anchorage where the lightship had gone down, preparations were already being made to install a new vessel. Poignantly, the Heligoland ferry paused for a moment and lowered its ensign in honour of those who had died.

At the outbreak of the Second World War in early September 1939 Britain’s approach to fighting in the Heligoland Bight differed markedly from its conduct there in the First World War. Now the main weapon against German forces were aircraft not ships, but their activities were restricted by Neville Chamberlain’s insistence that they operate within the terms of the 1923 Rules of Air Warfare, meaning they ought not attack civilian targets. Heligoland might otherwise have been attacked on the first day of the war by Hampden light bombers which overflew it that very afternoon. On 29 September 1939, eleven Hampdens in two formations were sent to search for naval targets. Six aircraft bombed two destroyers, but without scoring any hits. The second formation of five aircraft did not return. A German radio broadcast later declared they had been set upon by a ‘hornet’s nest’ of fighters and all the Hampdens had been shot down, killing eighteen of their twenty-four crew, including the squadron commander. The RAF eventually came to realise that the bombers’ movements had been detected by ‘Freya’ radar installations on Wangerooge island and Heligoland.
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Another RAF raid against German shipping in the Bight, on 3 December 1939, was soon claimed to represent a historic milestone. Twenty-four Wellingtons were attacked by Me109s and Me110s and in the ensuing combat the Wellington formations survived undamaged, while one Me109 was shot down. The bombers had been returning from a raid on German warships in which they apparently hit two cruisers; they dropped their 500lb bombs from 7,000– 10,000ft to give them a better chance of penetrating the decks. One Wellington of 115 Squadron, which apparently suffered a bomb hang-up on its bombing run, flew back over Heligoland and despite fierce flak ‘accidentally’ dropped the bomb on the island. This was the very first bomb dropped by the RAF on German soil during the war – or so it has been claimed by RAF historians. In fact the islanders, who seem never to have been consulted on this matter, have entirely different recollections. Eyewitnesses who were fishermen at the time remember that the very first RAF bomb dropped over Heligoland fell not on the island but in the harbour, completely destroying a naval ammunition supply vessel.

The massacre of the Hampdens, and other losses in subsequent weeks in raids against German shipping, had prompted the RAF to opt for a change of tactics. On 20 February 1940 twenty Wellington bombers (known affectionately to their crews as ‘Wimpys’) were despatched on an experimental raid with the object of finding and bombing German warships in the Bight at night-time, in an effort to avoid the heavy casualties of recent daylight raids. Two served as reconnaissance planes and eighteen as the bombing force; but a recall signal was sent because of fog, in which one Wellington crashed in England and another was lost at sea. The strategy was not instantly repeated, but that sortie became historically important for being Britain’s first mass night-time raid of the war.

For British planes to approach the Heligoland ‘hornet’s nest’ required great daring. High on the cliffs was a ‘Freya’ radar installation, with a range of 130km. It stood near the lofty six-storey, anti-aircraft artillery observation centre known as the Red Tower. The highest point on the island, it even overshadowed the lighthouse, and directed the fire of the antiaircraft batteries, including those on Sandy Island, called the ‘Hermann-Goering-flak’. To the Germans it had always seemed likely that air raids would come from the west. But on 21 May 1941 there occurred an audacious attack which the islanders still speak of with awe. Utterly unexpectedly, six Blenheim bombers escorted by fighters in search of warships in the harbour approached Heligoland from the north, the island’s ‘blind’ side. Racing towards the island at wave-top height, under the radar, they reached it undetected. At the last moment they climbed just enough to soar over the cliffs at the Lange Anna and then roared low over the astonished anti-aircraft positions and on to the harbour. Hitting three small ships and some jetties there they also reportedly machine-gunned the town.

A daring combined forces plan was formulated at the Admiralty in early February 1940 to send a naval force of four destroyers and three motor torpedo boats (MTBs), based in Harwich, to undertake offensive operations against enemy destroyers in Heligoland’s anchorages and the south-west part of the Bight at a suitable time during 8–15 February 1940. Operation ‘JB’ was intended to involve an air cover escort of Blenheims flying from Martlesham Heath, but as they could only be guaranteed to be present some of the time, the vulnerability of the MTBs to German air attack led to the scheme being cancelled on the advice of the RAF. The plan was devised by Ian Fleming.

By 1943 aircraft of the US 8th Air Force, stationed in Norfolk, were carrying out high-altitude daylight raids against Heligoland. Flying at around 26,000ft, out of range of the anti-aircraft guns, the aircraft involved were from the 91st and 303rd Bombardment Groups. Serving with the latter on one such raid was the celebrated B-17 ‘Memphis Belle’, about which William Wyler made a documentary and Harry Connick later starred in an award-winning movie. One objective of these attacks was assumed to be the three huge U-boat shelters which had appeared in the harbour. They were some 485ft long, with reinforced flat concrete roofs 14ft thick, and aerial reconnaissance photographs had shown that their construction was already in progress in 1940. By autumn of the following year they were complete, and painted with contrasting tones and shapes in order to break up the appearance of the flat surfaces. However, a confidential Air Ministry report entitled
Heligoland: Submarine Basin
, written on 30 October 1944, stated that: ‘Since the port was first photographed on 5.9.40 no U-boats have been seen in the harbour.’ This message is repeated in its conclusion: ‘No U-boats have ever been photographed in the harbour, but E/R boats have been seen on several occasions.’
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Thus it is all the more surprising that the decision was taken to make a quite extraordinary top-secret attack on these apparently unused facilities. The means to do so had been devised by an American Air Force officer, General Carl ‘Tooey’ Spaatz. Desperate to find a way to attack the underground bunkers where Hitler’s V-1 rockets were being produced, he evolved a method of flying large military aircraft, in effect crude guided missiles, by remote control. His technique, codenamed ‘Project Aphrodite’, involved two aircraft, one of them pilotless. Packed with explosives, this would be crashed into the target. The second aircraft would fly nearby and control the ‘bomber’ by radio. A television camera in the aircraft’s nose enabled the ‘bomber’ to be directed accurately to its target. The ‘bomber’ plane took off conventionally, the pilot baling out long before it crashed. The US Army and Air Force favoured using radio-controlled B-17 planes, and started using them on 4 August 1944. The US Navy favoured using B-24s, but with two pilots; their very first US Aphrodite bomber pilot was Lt Joseph Kennedy jnr, the elder brother of John F. Kennedy.