I Sank The Bismarck (30 page)

On the night of 11 February four radar-equipped RAF
Hudson aircraft were patrolling the approaches to Brest, but
two of them suffered an equipment failure. In one of those
horrible coincidences, the three large German warships
slipped out to sea at the same time, accompanied by a fleet of
almost thirty destroyers and fast torpedo boats. This nighttime
move took us completely by surprise. The assumption
had always been that the Germans would seek the cover of
night to negotiate the Straits of Dover, and in order to obtain
this they would have to leave Brest and sail up the western
approaches in daylight, giving the Royal Navy and the RAF
ample time to intercept them. Leaving Brest when they did
meant that they would be in the Channel at Dover in broad
daylight, but their departure had given them an advantage of
secrecy which they were now able to continue to exploit. The
large number of ships steaming around the Cape of Ushant
and up the Channel was observed twice by us. The first time
they were spotted by two reconnaissance Spitfires, but their
pilots assumed it was just one of our large convoys; and the
second time the RAF pilots who saw the ships recognized
them for what they were but did not report their sighting until
they had landed for fear of breaking radio silence! All the
forces that had been mobilized to stop the German warships
were now caught on the back foot and were desperately
struggling to regain the initiative. There was still snow on the
ground when at 1055 on the 12th,
825 Squadron at the RAF
base in Manston received news of the German ships'
approach up the Channel.

Esmonde quickly got most of his crews together, although
one of the six Swordfish was carrying out some practice
torpedo drops in Pegwell Bay, and the armourers and ground
crew started loading torpedoes and topping off the fuel tanks
of the five at Manston. A joint attack with the Beaufort
torpedo bombers from Thorney Island near Chichester, part
of the original plan, now seemed very difficult to execute.
There was just not enough time to coordinate the routes,
radio frequencies and rendezvous times.

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.

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, down 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
fresh 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.

We steamed on across the
Indian Ocean, heading for
Colombo in
Ceylon. There was an important naval base on
the island at Trincomalee, and Ceylon itself was the source of
most of our supplies of raw rubber. With Singapore now in
Japanese hands, holding on to Ceylon was absolutely vital if
we wanted to keep control of the Indian Ocean. We expected
the Japanese to make a move on the island at some time, but
nobody knew when. Somerville had moved his flag on to the
battleship
Warspite,
and with the rest of the Eastern Fleet – a
First World War vintage cruiser, HMS
Enterprise
; a modern
County class cruiser, HMS
Cornwall
; and a few destroyers –
Formidable
docked in Colombo.