I Sank The Bismarck (19 page)

At this point I was not in a position to do very much. I
wanted the tanker to heave to so that a ship from Force H
could recapture it, but all I had was my forward-firing
machine gun. This was the .303in Vickers that was mounted
in the fuselage on the right-hand side of the cockpit – a
weapon that I had never fired before. I doubted for a moment
whether I could remember how to use it at all. Then gradually
the drill came back to me. Make sure the bolt is in the rest
position. Pull up the high-pressure piston rod, then pull back
the gun lever twice, ease the bolt forward and the gun should
be ready to fire. So I went down to 50 feet to put some shots
across the bows – a universal signal to heave to. Aiming about
50 feet in front of the ship, I pressed the button. The gun was
fitted with an interrupter mechanism to prevent bullets hitting
the propeller blades, so the rate of fire was extremely slow,
rather like the chiming of Big Ben. I felt that I could have fired
faster using a revolver. It was noisy, the fumes of cordite filled
the cockpit, and every shot made the fuselage shake. There
were splashes in the water as the bullets struck, but had the
message got through? I flew round the ship and there was still
no sign of any activity. I flew higher to see if I could see any
of our ships in the vicinity and spotted
Renown
about 15
miles away.

Then Dusty shouted, 'Jock, look at the stern.' I went down
again and
Bianca
was definitely lower in the water. Then a
group of crewmen appeared and started to lower a lifeboat. I
suddenly realized they had opened the sea cocks to scuttle the
tanker and were now trying to abandon ship. The bastards! I
was not going to get cheated like that, so I turned and made
a low pass, firing the forward machine gun above the lifeboat.
I had no intention of hitting the boat, or the sailors trying to
get in to it, but it was not a very gallant action. They didn't
seem to take any notice.

I shouted back to Hayman, my TAG, 'Can you shoot out
that boat?' He had already seen what was happening and
didn't need to be told. Four short bursts from his Lewis gun
hit the lifeboat and splinters of wood flew off into the air.
Hayman never missed! It did the trick. The German sailors
clambered back on board and went to see if they could do
something about the sea cocks. I then flew back to
Renown
and signalled them about the situation. They sent off a whaler
with a boarding party to recover
Bianca
and take the German
prize crew prisoner. The Germans, however, had not gone
back to save the ship – they had instead started fires on board.
The boarding party from
Renown
recaptured the ship and put
out the fires. Eventually she was towed into port.

When I returned to the
Ark,
there was a general air of
excitement in the briefing room because two more of the nine
Swordfish that had taken off that morning had located
another two of the tankers seized by
Scharnhorst
–
San
Casimiro
and
Polykarp
– which were now also being sailed by
German prize crews. Shortly afterwards
San Casimiro
was
retaken, but
Polykarp
eluded recapture. Three Fulmar fighter
aircraft were dispatched later that day to search for her. They
were much faster than the Swordfish, so it was hoped that this
would allow them to make an interception while there was
still some daylight left.

After nearly two hours one of the Fulmars returned and
flew over the
Ark,
signalling by a hand-held Aldis lamp for an
emergency landing. The
Ark
swung out of line into the wind
and the Fulmar landed on. The crew were in no danger, but
they had urgent news. They had flown north and seen two
ships in the haze. They were not
Polykarp,
nor any other
captured tanker, but the two German warships,
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau,
which had evaded us and the whole of the
Royal Navy in the Atlantic for weeks! The crew of the Fulmar
had been unable to report it immediately because their wireless
had broken, so they had been forced to return at top
speed to the
Ark
to pass the information on to Admiral
Somerville in
Renown.
At last, the ships for which we had
been carrying out an exhausting search over the last twelve
days had been sighted. But this crucial failure in communications
was serious. The information about the enemy
warships was at least one hour old.

Nine Swordfish were ordered to be armed and prepared for
a torpedo strike, but in the midst of the rapid preparations
and briefings, the reality of the position started to sink in. The
two battlecruisers were around 147 miles away and, when
last seen, were on a course due north at around 20 knots. The
light was already beginning to fade, visibility was no better
than about 8 miles, and by the time the Swordfish flight had
taken off and reached the last known position of the enemy
ships, it would be dark, in addition to the fact that the coordinates
they were heading for would be two and a half
hours old. Moreover, if the Germans had realized that they
had been spotted, they might well have increased speed and
enacted a radical change of course.

The crew of the Fulmar that had made the original sighting
took off once more to regain contact, but it was now a hopeless
mission. They could not find the warships, completely
darkened and running at high speed, hidden now by the
blanket of the night and the black Atlantic.

We slept that night not knowing what would happen in the
morning. Would we find the German warships again? If we
did, we would undoubtedly attempt a torpedo strike, but
we had been at sea so long that our serviceable Swordfish
were dwindling. I took off the next day once again as both
Swordfish and Fulmars from the
Ark
scoured the surface of
the sea, but it was fruitless.
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
had
escaped. It's difficult to say what the outcome would have
been if the radio on Lt Commander Tillard's Fulmar had been
working. There would not necessarily have been an encounter
between Force H and the warships, although the chances of a
battle being fought the next day would have been much
greater. As it was, my torpedo training at Abbotsinch had still
not been put to any use, and
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
had
eluded us.

We changed course for Gibraltar at the end of the next
day. We had been at sea for a fortnight and were at the end of
our resources, in terms of fuel, food and energy. One disturbing
event occurred shortly before this, however. A Swordfish
from my squadron, 818, was being prepared for an antisubmarine
patrol, with two depth-charges mounted under the
wings, ready to be catapulted off the front of the flight deck.
Each of these catapults was in essence a framework that could
support the fuselage of an aircraft, mounted on a trolley that
was secured to cables running along a groove in the deck. The
aircraft's engine would be started and run up to full power,
and at a signal the trolley would be accelerated forward by a
hydraulic ram pulling the cable. The plane would automatically
continue forward and detach itself from the struts
holding it when the trolley smashed into its end-stop. It
accelerated with considerable force and the crew had to brace
themselves as the catapult was triggered. On this particular
occasion, the artificer at the side released the catapult and it
shot forward, but the Swordfish did not separate cleanly.
It split in two, the rear fuselage and tail section remaining
fixed in the catapult's struts. The forward section, however,
including the cockpit and main planes, flew forward at takeoff
speed, hurled over the bows of the
Ark
and plunged into
the sea. Within seconds the huge bow wave had engulfed the
wreckage and the crew; then there was a deep, powerful
thump and the hull of the great ship bounced upwards, kicking
some people on board off their feet. The two
depth-charges had exploded under the keel. There was clearly
no hope for the three crewmen,
Sub-Lieutenants Peter Opdell
and
Charlie Hearn, and
Leading Airman 'Baron' Biggs, who
now brought the total of deaths in 818 Squadron on this
patrol to five. Opdell was a likeable young chap and once
more I had to pack a co-pilot's belongings with great sadness.
I wondered why I had to carry out this task, rather than the
squadron CO or the ship's chaplain?

I had been in the
Ark
for almost four months now and I had
started to fit in. We had largely to make our own entertainment,
and my early experience with the amateur operatic
society in Kelso came in useful, as did my ability to play the
banjo and the violin, though most of my shipmates called it a
'fiddle'. On the days that we were in port we would organize
concert parties, in which the more officious officers of the
ship – not that there were many – were held up to ridicule,
Hitler was lampooned, and our service
life and difficulties
were treated as jokes. We didn't venture much into Gibraltar
or La Linea, where there was little nightlife and no women,
apart from a female dance band that used to perform in one
of the bars. Gibraltar was not a dangerous place, but there
was something called the Gibraltar Dog, which was a particularly
painful form of stomach bug. I have seen people
writhing on the floor in agony with it, and the cure was a visit
to the chief medical orderly and a roughly administered
enema by a medical artificer. No thank you!

Nights in the wardroom after an operation could get very
raucous as people let off steam, drank a great deal and started
singing bawdy songs. It was at times like this, when the
original pianist had passed out, that I was often hauled out of
my bunk in my pyjamas, dragged to the wardroom and asked
to play. I was not really a good piano-player, but I could
follow a tune. I think most of the people in the wardroom by
then were too far gone to tell whether I had hit the right note
or not! Sometimes I would play the banjo instead. And so
another few days in port would pass. Many of the people
determinedly letting their hair down had seen a great deal
more than I had. I was beginning to appreciate that constant
flying, and the resultant losses, could take their toll.

I had seen more action in these few months than I had in
the whole of the previous year of war. While most of the
patrols were plainly boring, I had carried out my first of many
deck landings, intercepted a captured ship, raided an Italian
port and survived several attacks from the bombers of the
Italian air force. I felt that I had been kept extremely busy and
had been thrust into the thick of it. I had no idea just how
intense the next two months were going to be.

In April, following our unsuccessful pursuit of
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau,
we returned to the Atlantic twice more on
receiving information that they had left their sanctuary in
Brest, but both times that we steamed out through the Straits
of Gibraltar were false alarms. We also sailed twice more into
the Mediterranean, with Hurricane fighters on our flight
deck. These aircraft were brought down from the UK by
Furious,
another aircraft carrier that, like
Glorious,
had been
converted from a First World War cruiser, or by
Argus.
The
Ark
would moor up so that the stern end of
Furious
's flight
deck (
Argus
was the wrong height) could be connected by a
wooden bridge to our round down and the Hurricanes would
be pushed over from
Furious
on to our flight deck. They
would remain there until, after three days at sea, somewhere
in the Mediterranean they would start their engines and the
pilots would make their first and last carrier take-off, form up
and head for Malta. Even with auxiliary fuel tanks, the
Hurricanes could easily get into the air at a point between
the ship's island and the end of the flight deck. I often
wondered what bureaucratic obstacles had stopped Hawker
from producing a Hurricane with folding wings and a tail
hook before the war had started in earnest. If the Fleet Air
Arm had had fighters like them over Norway, it would have
been a very different story and might have changed the course
of the war.

The RAF pilots that I met had not had a great time on
Furious
; I gather they were not treated well at all. Later, I
could appreciate why, but at the time it sounded as if their
experience was similar to mine on the old
Argus
: very noisy,
not very nice food and cramped accommodation, half of them
having to sleep in hammocks. They were relieved to get on
board the
Ark,
where they got a decent cabin and we went out
of our way to make sure they felt welcome in the wardroom.
They had a difficult job. The auxiliary drop tanks that were
fitted under their wings to extend their range did not feed the
engine directly; instead they were used to refill their main
tanks. So they would wait until the point in their long flight
when their fuel gauges showed empty, then flick a few
switches and hope to see the needles start rising again. I
imagine it could be quite a tense moment. The auxiliary tanks
had been fitted while the aircraft were on
Furious,
and the
only way the pilots could tell if they had been installed
properly and were going to work when they were needed was
to climb into the cockpit, press the fuel-transfer switches 'on',
climb out again and stand close, with their ears to the tanks,
to see if they could hear the faint whirr of the pumps. On a
noisy ship this was not easy.

However, both our deliveries went off without any loss. No
sooner had we got these out of the way than it was out into
the Mediterranean again to escort another convoy of fast
merchant ships. The aim this time was not just the resupply of
Malta, but also to make deliveries to Egypt, where the
Eighth
Army was getting a battering from the German forces that
had taken over from the Italian army in North Africa.

The convoy was going to deliver 307 tanks to the army in
Alexandria, as well as forty-three Hurricane fighter aircraft,
in crates, to be assembled by the RAF in Egypt. HMS
Breconshire,
an auxiliary Royal Navy supply ship, would
transport fuel and munitions to Malta, and the battleship
HMS
Queen Elizabeth,
along with two cruisers, would also
travel the length of the Mediterranean to reinforce
Cunningham's fleet in the eastern Mediterranean.

By now all the Skuas that we had carried had been replaced
by Fulmar fighters and there were two squadrons of these
planes on board, numbers 803 and 807, but the
Fulmars were
not the most reliable of aircraft and only twelve in total
were serviceable and fit to fly. The Mediterranean had got
tougher in the few months I had been on the
Ark.
Not only
had we lost
Illustrious
to the Luftwaffe, but our troops were
on the retreat from Greece and the navy was suffering severe
casualties. German dive-bombers attacked two destroyers,
Wryneck
and
Diamond,
as they evacuated British soldiers
from Greece. Both of them were sunk and most of the crew
and soldiers were killed.

We sailed on into the Mediterranean, carrying out our
regular anti-submarine patrols, with a couple of Fulmars
keeping a combat air patrol above us. On 8 May we were
spotted by an Italian reconnaissance plane. We were very hard
to miss, with
Queen Elizabeth,
our normal companions
Renown
and
Sheffield,
two other cruisers and eight destroyers, and in
the midst of us the five mechanized transport ships. We must
have left behind a wake of massive proportions. The cargo
ships were capable of doing 14 knots, which was fast for civilian
vessels, but they were still far slower than we would have
liked. The Italian reconnaissance plane avoided being shot
down, but even if it had been the damage was done. At this
stage, however, three days into the voyage, we were close to
the Italian bases in Sicily and Sardinia, so we were closed up
ready to go to action stations very quickly.

When I wasn't flying, like most of the Swordfish crews I
had been assigned an action station in the
Ark.
Mine was
manning a quadruple 0.5in machine gun on a platform by the
flight deck. The gun had shoulder rests with a large round
sighting ring mounted above it. There were four of these platforms
around the
Ark,
two at the bow and two at the stern,
with two quadruple mountings on each. The four machine
guns were mounted vertically above each other and were
intended for short-range anti-aircraft fire. If the aircraft were
as close as this we had probably already been hit, but this
didn't stop me being pleased with my job, because it was marvellous
to feel that I would be able to fire back with something
when we were under attack.

And that is exactly what happened. Early in the afternoon
we were attacked by a group of Italian bombers. They were
flying low over the water, however, and I realized that they
were not the normal high-altitude bombers, but that
they were carrying torpedoes and were heading right for us.
They were
SM.79s, three-engined bombers that had been
modified to carry two torpedoes. A squadron of these planes
had been flying out of North Africa and had had some success
against merchant ships. They had also managed to hit the
cruisers HMS
Liverpool
and
Glasgow,
causing severe damage
to both of them. Now we were the target!

I started pouring bullets at them, and the rest of the guns on
the other ships also started firing. An 0.5in-calibre machine
gun is a big gun – bigger than the machine guns mounted in
the wings of fighters like Hurricanes and Spitfires. Firing four
of these at a time was like holding the combined firepower of
a fighter. I could feel the vibration through the deck plates and
in the air itself, the concussion shaking my body and my
internal organs. I was overwhelmed with the smell of cordite
and the noise was indescribable. However, despite this, I was
still able to notice how hard it was to fire accurately on the
low-flying planes. Some of the main anti-aircraft guns could
not be depressed low enough anyway, but even for those that
could be, like my machine guns, it was harder to allow for
sufficient deflection if they were really skimming the waves.
With the aircraft below the horizon, silhouetted against the sea
rather than the sky, it was not so easy to draw a bead on them.

The bombers dropped their torpedoes probably too far
away to hit us, but they continued their low-level flight after
they had dropped and they seemed to be heading straight for
us. They were too big too turn away quickly like we did in the
Swordfish; they had no choice but to bore on through
the escorts and climb out above us. It seemed that one would
go directly over my head. One of them had crashed before it
dropped its torpedoes, hit by shells from the big-calibre guns
on the destroyers, but two others dropped their 'kippers'
before they also were hit, one smashing into the sea close by.
For some strange reason there was a pause in the fighting and,
as the bomber seemed to rear up, then flip over and hit the sea
with an enormous impact, I could hear the strange noise of
the wings and fuselage disintegrating, bits of wreckage breaking
off and hurtling into the sky. At the same time a great
cheer went up from everyone on the flight deck and in the gun
positions. Then the
Ark
was twisting and turning to comb the
tracks of the torpedoes that had been dropped. There were
four torpedoes in the water altogether and two passed down
the port side of the
Ark
– I could see the tracks in the water –
while another two went past on the starboard. I waited tensely
for the sound of an underwater explosion, but none came.

The noise of these engagements was beyond belief. My
position was along from one of the 4.5in gun turrets and
when they were firing I was completely deafened, my head
ringing for hours afterwards. I wore a tin helmet, with an
anti-flash hood, which at first I thought unnecessary, but as
soon as the guns started firing there was a rain of pieces of
shrapnel dropping out of the skies as the shells exploded. At
the same time a running commentary on the battle was being
broadcast over the ship's tannoy by the chaplain, of all
people. Both the captains I served under in the
Ark,
Holland
and Maund, believed it was good for morale to let everyone –
in particular the men in the hangars and the engine spaces
below decks – know what was happening, especially if there
was action between the Fulmars and enemy aircraft some
miles away. In a strange way it was comforting to feel part of
what was going on and to be told that our fighters were getting
stuck in.

The torpedo bombers had been accompanied by a squadron
of CR.42 fighters, and their formation had been spotted by
Sheffield
's radar ten minutes before they were seen from the
Ark.
The two Fulmars that were already in the air, flown by
Lt Commander Rupert Tillard, CO of 808, and Lieutenant
Hay, saw the fighters climbing to attack them. They were outnumbered
three to one, but both pilots dived to make a
head-on attack on the fighters, passing directly through their
formation. The Fulmar flown by Lt Commander Tillard
carried Mark Somerville, Admiral Somerville's nephew, as
observer. They were the crew who had flown back to the
Ark
with news of a sighting of
Scharnhorst
in March. They went
into the attack in a steep dive and were last seen trying to level
out at 500 feet.

In the second Fulmar,
Lieutenant Hay started to follow
them down, but he was attacked in the dive by two CR.42
fighters and to evade them he turned into clouds, then dived
down towards the fleet, where he was fired on by the
destroyers in the anti-submarine screen. Fortunately, they
scored no hits. A section of three Fulmars had been ranged on
the flight deck when the enemy formation was identified and
they had taken off. A group of six CR.42 fighters flew in to
attack them, so they quickly became mixed up in a dogfight.

A confusing mêlée ensued, and
Lieutenant Taylour shot the
wing-tip off one of the Italian fighters, but before he could get
in another burst he was himself shot up by an attacker
closing in behind him. His plane was hit and his observer,
Petty Officer Howard, was badly wounded by machine-gun
fire.

The two other Fulmars, flown by
Petty Officer Dubber and
Lieutenant Guthrie, were both badly damaged in the dogfight,
but Guthrie, after pulling out of a steep spin at a very low altitude,
found one of the Italian torpedo bombers in his sights
and attacked it twice before his guns failed.

The Fulmar flown by Lt Commander Tillard had disappeared
and was never seen again. It had no doubt crashed
into the sea, but none of the escort ships saw it go in; nor were
they in a position to try to save the crew even if they had. The
other four of the five Fulmars in the air when the torpedo
bombers and CR.42 fighters struck were now all circling the
carrier, waiting to land; all had been badly shot up and one
man was wounded.

There was a lot of activity on the flight deck as the firefighting
teams got ready, and there was a call for hands to the
flight deck in case any of the planes crashed and needed manhandling
over the side, but they all managed to land on. It was
1440: the torpedo attack and the battle in the air had lasted
just one hour. The guns were now silent and the magazines of
the rapid-firing cannon were restocked, ready for the next
attack. The excitement and the adrenalin rush of action, the
chaotic noise of every gun in the fleet hammering away, were
gone, to be replaced by quiet. We were still at action stations,
and there was a quick delivery of hot tea and sandwiches. We
all knew that there would be another attack; it was just a
question of when. I found this the worst sort of waiting. I
would rather be firing away and not thinking about what was
going to happen.

I knew what was happening down below. The warning bells
on the lifts were ringing as planes were brought down from
the flight deck; the fireproof curtains were raised; and the
fitters and armourers were frantically trying to repair the
Fulmars that had just returned in a damaged condition, I
didn't know how bad. The already pathetically inadequate
number of fighters on the
Ark
had just been reduced from
twelve to seven; an observer was in the sickbay being operated
on; and the CO of 808 Squadron, who had been in the
Ark
since November, just one month longer than me, and had
several kills to his credit, was dead, as was his observer,
Lieutenant Mark Somerville.