I Sank The Bismarck (31 page)

Our air group flew off and landed at Ratmalana, which was
south of the capital, and we carried out maintenance, swung
our compasses and flew operations from there until
Formidable
put to sea again. We made regular long-range
patrols, alert for any signs of the Japanese fleet. Looking
back, I am very glad I did not come across any sign of them,
because I don't think we would have lasted long.

When we left Colombo we met up with a much larger and
strengthened fleet. Our sister carrier HMS
Indomitable
had
joined us, and we also had three more battleships,
Revenge,
Resolution
and
Royal Sovereign,
and eleven cruisers. The fleet
patrolled to the south of Ceylon, with patrols taking up to
three and a half hours at a time. On one of these I got caught
in a
tropical storm, which blew up extremely quickly. We
could not, of course, get above the weather, so it became
extremely hairy. There was an enormous amount of lightning
and we were struck several times. Each time the compass
gyrated violently, there was a strong smell of ozone, and I felt
as though I had actually been shocked, although the plane
was not in contact with the ground and so could not transmit
a current.

More alarming was the presence of enormous thunder
heads, with extremely violent turbulence underneath them. I
feared for the plane's structure, as we suddenly rose in the air,
then descended like a stone for several hundred feet. We
fought our way through the driving rain, struggling with the
controls to keep an even keel, being hurled about in the cockpit
just praying that the compass had not been permanently
affected. After an hour of this I felt as though I had been
flying in a giant washing machine. I was utterly exhausted,
and anxious, not sure that we would get out alive. However,
we plugged on and eventually reached some calmer weather.
Was I glad to see the flight deck of the 'Formy' after that, and
the pink gins were lined up in the wardroom for me that
night!

It seemed that the top brass were so certain that Ceylon
would fall to the Japanese that we had set up a secret
refuelling base at a remote island group called
Addu Atoll in
the Maldives. The southernmost island later became known
as
Gan, and was an RAF base after the war. It is apparently a
tourist destination now, but then it was a godforsaken spot
and very unpleasant. Almost on the Equator, a runway had
been built for our aircraft out of crushed coral and large oil-storage
tanks had been erected. It didn't have the spares and
servicing facilities of a normal shore-based dockyard
and there was absolutely no reason to seek shore leave!

We flew our patrols as we journeyed there as well, and I
remember one particular incident that makes me wonder if
the heat and long, monotonous patrols didn't send us all more
than a little crazy. I was flying along the Equator on an
extremely hot day with the sun bouncing off a flat, calm
ocean. I was trying to concentrate on the compass and maintain
my visual search of the horizon. The fatigue level was
building up. I had my cockpit open, otherwise it became
absolutely stifling in the hot sun, and I felt a tap on my head.
The Albacore was different from the Swordfish not only
because the cockpit was enclosed, but because my seat was
entirely separate from the observer's and TAG's position.
There was a fuel tank between us, and we could communicate
only via our headsets. Then there came another, more insistent
tap on my head, so I turned. I saw a hand holding a bar
of chocolate level with my eyes. I looked up and there was my
observer,
Midshipman Woodward. He had left his seat and
climbed out in order to give me this piece of 'nutty' as we
called navy-issue chocolate. I grabbed it and he gave a
thumbs-up, then clambered back to his own cockpit. It was
some time after we had landed that it suddenly struck me how
absurdly dangerous it had been. He had become either so
bored or so blasé that he had completely ignored the risks of
falling to his death in the Indian Ocean.

We had berthed at Addu Atoll and were in the process of
refuelling, and loading any stores available, when we were
ordered to be ready to put to sea as soon as we finished oiling.
Reconnaissance aircraft had signalled the presence of
Japanese warships 200 miles to the east of us, and they were
heading north-west. At midnight we set off to find them. We
would not be able to stop them from attacking Ceylon, which
we were certain was their target, but might be able to launch
an attack on them as they retreated. The information about
them was patchy. Two Catalina aircraft that had approached
the enemy
fleet had been shot down before they could pass on
much more than their course and position. In fact, as we
found out later, the Japanese fleet was commanded by
Admiral Nagumo, who had taken part in the attack on Pearl
Harbor, and he had five aircraft carriers, with 350 aircraft,
and they had an escort of four battleships and three cruisers.

We had never before confronted an enemy that had its own
carrier fleet. The Germans and Italians had never possessed
carriers; the big threat we had faced in both Norway and the
Mediterranean was land-based fighters and bombers, particularly
those of the Luftwaffe. The
Japanese, however, had
invested heavily in their fleet's air arm. Their carriers were
designed for large numbers of modern aircraft, and they had
tremendous endurance. They were able to operate the fast
Zero fighter from their flight decks – the same aircraft that
was on front-line duty in the Japanese air force – and their
torpedo aircraft, like the
'Mabel' and
'Kate', were modern
single-engined planes able to carry a torpedo or 1,600lb of
bombs on a 700-mile mission. Like the Swordfish and
Albacore, they had a pilot, an observer and a reargunner, but
they were almost 100 knots faster. They also had another
dive-bomber, the
'Val', which could carry an 800lb bomb and
reach 260 knots. What was to prove most decisive, though,
was that the Japanese fleet could put these aircraft to sea in
great numbers.

On 5 April, the Japanese bombed
Colombo, causing considerable
damage. They lost seven aircraft, but twenty-five of
our Fulmars and Hurricanes were shot down by the Zero
fighters escorting the bomber force. They were outclassed and
overwhelmed.

However, as serious as this attack was, there was worse to
follow. Not all the ships in the Eastern Fleet had made it to
Addu Atoll with us on our refuelling trip.
HMS
Hermes,
a
small aircraft carrier built at the end of the First World War,
had been permanently on station in the Far East.
Hermes
was
modern in appearance, really the first purpose-built aircraft
carrier, but she was only able to carry a maximum of twenty
planes and was not very stable in any kind of poor weather.
These were the reasons she had never been moved out of the
Indian Ocean to take part in operations in the Atlantic or the
Mediterranean. She was in dock in Trincomalee undergoing
repairs, and two heavy cruisers,
Dorsetshire
and
Cornwall,
were also in port in Colombo.
Cornwall
had just escorted a
troop convoy, and
Dorsetshire
was carrying out repairs to her
engine room. I had last seen her at sea almost a year earlier,
when I had flown over
Bismarck
as
Dorsetshire
fired three
torpedoes into her hull. All three ships had put to sea at the
end of March, when the first indications that an attack on
Ceylon was about to take place were received. When this
seemed to be a false alarm, they had returned to port.

Now, a week later, when Somerville received the signals
that warned him of the Japanese fleet's presence, both
Dorsetshire
and
Cornwall
were once again ordered to put to
sea and make a rendezvous with us on our course from the
Atoll. The admiral's estimate was that, once they had made
their attack, the Japanese would head for home. We still, of
course, had no accurate idea of the size of their carrier force.
Most of the units that our reconnaissance had located were
battleships, they were still about 320 miles away and it was
expected that if we maintained our present course for the next
twenty-four hours a combined force of torpedo-armed
Albacore from us and from
Indomitable
might have a crack
at them.
Dorsetshire
and
Cornwall
were thought to be 120
miles south of the Japanese and moving away from them.
Radio silence was being strictly adhered to, so we did not
expect to hear from them until one of our reconnaissance
patrols spotted them. Then later that afternoon a signal was
received saying that the two cruisers had seen a shadower.
Nothing further was heard, but they must have been perfectly
sure that they had been located by the enemy, otherwise they
would not have broadcast the signal and given away their
position.

Around 1600 hours we were preparing for a briefing to
make our first night attack on the Japanese. The galley had
put on a decent grilled supper, although many of us didn't
seem to be very hungry.

Shortly before we sat down to eat, at around 1530, a
patrolling aircraft saw some wreckage floating in the sea, with
some survivors in the water. Another reconnaissance patrol
spotted the Japanese fleet again, this time 100 miles to the
north of us, and it included carriers and battleships. The
Japanese carriers put up a section of Zero fighters to attack
the reconnaissance patrol, which managed to make a successful
run back to
Formidable,
and it was now clear to us that a
large Japanese force was in the Indian Ocean and was not
planning on going home. It was probably searching for us,
and Somerville decided at that point that he was in danger of
meeting up with a far superior enemy. He made a decision to
cancel our planned attack and attempt to preserve his fleet.

The Japanese had seen our reconnaissance aircraft and had
to assume that we were aware of their presence and their
position. Somerville calculated that they would expect us to
retreat to the west. This we did under cover of darkness, but
we then turned and headed east again. We did not know what
had happened to
Dorsetshire
and
Cornwall,
but it was
obvious the Japanese had either sunk them or badly damaged
them. Somerville was determined to save as many of their
crews as he could and sent a cruiser and two destroyers ahead
of the main fleet. It was a very tense time. Throughout the
early morning our patrols went out and there were radar
traces of patrolling enemy reconnaissance aircraft, but
miraculously the Japanese never found us. It was a nasty
situation though. This was utterly typical of Somerville, and it
must have taken strong nerves to believe that his reading of
the Japanese intentions was correct. If he had got it wrong, we
would all have paid the price.

We found the wreckage of both ships, with hundreds of
men in the water, and we learned that they had been attacked
by between forty and sixty dive-bombers. Each cruiser had
been hit at least eight times. They had sunk within fifteen
minutes of the first bomb being dropped. The
Japanese pilots
were clearly well trained and determined. It was another grim
lesson for us, but there was a plus side: we had managed to
save twelve hundred sailors and there was a feeling throughout
the carrier similar to that when Somerville had retraced
our course to find Mike Lithgow. We had an admiral in
command who was going to look after us.

Admiral Nagumo had not finished with us yet, though. He
steamed north-east, then north-west, and on 9 April bombed
the port of
Trincomalee on the north-east coast of Ceylon,
again causing a lot of damage to the dockyard and to the
China Bay airstrip.
Hermes
was also caught at sea: she was
attacked by seventy dive-bombers and hit forty times. Her
escorts, the Australian destroyer HMAS
Vampire
and the
corvette
Hollyhock,
and two oil tankers were also sunk.

In the space of a few days we had lost two heavy cruisers,
and a carrier, several escorts and around twenty-five merchant
ships had been either sunk or damaged in the attacks on the
harbours. We retreated once more to Addu Atoll to refuel,
the heavier battleships with us having an endurance of only
four days at sea at high speed. Around this time,
Formidable
suffered a
mechanical problem when one of the large gears
driving the central propeller stripped its teeth and we were
reduced to 8 knots. It was said on board that the two near
misses that she had suffered in the Mediterranean had twisted
her frame and her central propeller shaft was permanently
misaligned but, whatever the reason for the failure, we were
clearly of no use until it was fixed, so we sailed slowly for the
docks in Bombay.

The repairs took ten days, and when we returned to
Colombo I was sorry to learn that a good friend of mine
'Bagshot' Thompson, whose father was the provost of
Edinburgh, had died on the
Hermes.
818
Squadron was disbanded
and I was attached to 820 Squadron. In company
with
Indomitable
we headed south and moored at the beautiful
harbour of Mahé in the Seychelles. There was clearly a
senior officer's conference, and the next day we were
informed that we were going to assist in the landings on
Madagascar, which was controlled by the Vichy government.
We feared that the island would be offered as a refuelling base
for both German and Japanese submarines, which would then
be able to attack shipping using the southern route via the
Cape of Good Hope. The Japanese had some large and very
long-range submarines in their fleet, and intelligence had been
received that they were planning to take up station in the
channel between Madagascar and Mozambique. Our landings
were to be made from landing craft, supported by
Illustrious
and
Indomitable,
and the battleship HMS
Ramillies. Formidable
would be further out at sea, providing
air patrols and a combat air patrol from our Fulmars and the
new American fighter bombers that we had on board, the
Grumman Wildcats. The amphibious force, composed of
infantry and Royal Marines, landed in the bay at Diego
Suarez in the north of the island. They met stiff resistance
from the Vichy forces and the fighting went on for several
days, with our forces suffering around five hundred casualties.
My contribution to this was to fly two long-range patrols
a day for around three days – eighteen hours in all. The
French army retreated to the south and we secured the port
on 7 May, but it took several months of sporadic fighting
before all the French forces had surrendered.