I Sank The Bismarck (32 page)

At the end of the month, surprisingly, the Japanese did
show themselves. Two corvettes patrolling the bay picked up
a sonar contact and started depth-charging the area. It was a
Japanese midget submarine and, despite the fact that it was
under attack, it fired two torpedoes, one of which hit
Ramillies,
while the other hit an oil tanker,
British Loyalty.
There were, in fact, two midget submarines, which had been
ferried to Madagascar by two of the large long-range oceangoing
submarines in the Japanese fleet. The second ran
aground without being able to make an attack and the crew
were killed.

By then, however, we had left and sailed to
Mombasa, on
the Kenyan coast, mooring in the Kilindini river. On the way
there a strange thing happened one night. Sailing in the
tropics, we got permission to use a campbed on the quarterdeck,
which was open at the rear. You were more or less
above the propellers, but got used to the noise – there was
nowhere quiet on a big warship anyway. One night I awoke
to hear a faint shout for help. I could not fathom where it was
coming from and crawled forward to the guard rail on my
hands and knees to listen.

Again I heard this faint call for help, so I crawled further to
my right and could just see a pair of hands hanging on to the
deck edge. I grabbed a wrist and shouted for assistance, and
eventually managed to haul a young officer on board. I have
no idea how he got there and neither, he claimed, did he. He
was lucky to be alive. The doctor arranged for him to be
locked in his cabin and he was discharged when we got to
harbour. A ship is no place for a sleepwalker.

When we arrived at Mombasa, I was sent to assist in the
building of an airstrip about 50 miles inland. The RAF
already had a base in Mombasa at Port Reitz, which was to
become Mombasa airport, but apparently another one was
needed at a small railway halt called
Mackinnon Road, on the
main line from Mombasa to Nairobi. It was in the middle of
nowhere, with absolutely nothing on the horizon, just a rail
sign. I was the only officer with two petty officers and about
thirty men. We lived in tents and all our supplies, including
water, were brought to us by train. There was one train in the
morning heading to Mombasa and another in the evening
making the return journey to Nairobi. The airstrip was a prefabricated
one, made of sections of metal mesh that we laid
down and joined together. The construction was completely
dependent on the irregular delivery of the metal sections by
train.

It was a very unpleasant and unhealthy place. The one
saving grace was that I had a Swordfish aircraft, so I managed
to fly to Tanga and Nairobi for a regular supply of quinine
tablets and other medication. I also had to ferry quite a few
cases of malaria to Mombasa hospital. There was a waterhole
a mile away which was regularly visited by wild animals at
night. In the dusk we could hear the lions making their loud
grunting roars and I managed to get some rifles to guard
against any attacks. It was an extremely debilitating task and
after a few weeks of intense heat, an infestation of scorpions
and large black spiders, I was very glad when I was recalled
back on board.

During the time that I was at Mackinnon Road, my first
visitor was an amazing female pilot flying a twin-engined de
Havilland Rapide. She was dressed in RAF battledress with
no rank or insignia, just RAF wings. Her name was Evelyn
and I enjoyed flying with her – and she was able to secure
quinine tablets more easily than I could. Evelyn had been a
commercial pilot in Kenya before the war and had answered
a call for volunteers in 1939. Her story was that the recruiters
had assumed she was male, so by the time she arrived at the
airbase in Nairobi she had been assigned a service number
and it was too late. She was not allowed to take part in
combat, but as far as I was concerned she was a damned good
pilot.

Mackinnon Road eventually became a town with a
mosque, all from a few bricks at the rail side and a metal
runway. Ironically, Tim Coode, my old CO of 818 Squadron
from the
Bismarck
attack, died there in January 1943 when a
Grumman Martlet he was flying crashed as he was taking off.

Back in
Formidable,
heading to Addu Atoll, I was
made
deck landing officer to replace
Lt Commander Cubitt, who
had had an unfortunate accident when he fell off the flight
deck trying to avoid an aircraft that had attempted to land on.
I found it a great relief, as the patrols in the Albacore were
beginning to get me down, although I had to be on duty early,
making sure that the aircraft for the dawn patrols were
ranged properly and that the flying schedule was organized
and properly notified to the squadrons.

So we went back to Colombo, in the company of
Illustrious
and
Indomitable,
patrolling the Indian Ocean, crisscrossing
the Equator, escorting convoys to India, training and exercising
but never coming across the Japanese who, after their
carrier fleet had made airborne attacks on Colombo and
Calcutta, and their submarine foray to Madagascar, had
abandoned any expeditions into the Indian Ocean. With a full
programme of flying, coordinating with two other carriers,
there were plenty of accidents, and one stands out in my mind
as being as dreadful as any I had witnessed.

We were towing a target buoy behind us for a dive-bombing
exercise and a Swordfish from
Illustrious
was taking
part. The plane was at 1,000 feet when the pilot rolled and
went into his dive, and suddenly the wings on his plane folded
back. I had heard stories of occasions when the bolts holding
the wings straight had started to loosen, but I had never
experienced it, nor did I know anyone else who had. The bolts
were checked by the rigger each time the wings were
straightened after coming up from the hangar deck.

But now there was nothing to be done. The Swordfish continued
uncontrollably in its dive: it went straight down
vertically, hitting the sea at 200 miles an hour. There was no
wreckage and no survivors, of course, despite the fact that a
destroyer circled the area for some time. I think it was the
most heart-wrenching accident that I ever saw, and I have seen
a few.

By August we learned that we were scheduled to return to
the UK via Cape Town – a move which I had wished for for
some time.

Shortly before this we left Colombo for Mombasa and then
were due to sail on and call at Durban. One evening, Brok
Brokensha knocked on my cabin door and asked me to play a
tune for him on my fiddle. Brok was an old colleague,
originally a Skua pilot on
Ark Royal
; he was also one of my
South African friends at Arbroath. In fact, he was one of the
three I had left at the hotel in Princes Street in Edinburgh on
my way to visit my parents on my last leave before joining the
Ark
myself. We had met up again on the 'Formy', where he
was flying Grumman Wildcats. He was a great pilot and had
shot down several enemy aircraft, being awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross. He had married a girl he met in
Scotland, a real stunning beauty, and I liked him a great deal.
He had the cabin opposite mine and we often spent time in
each other's company.

We sat and talked that night and I played, at his request,
'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' on my violin. Then we turned in,
as I had to be on deck first thing, and I knew Brok was on the
first combat air patrol to be launched the next morning.

Next morning, Brok's Martlet was ranged up and was
scheduled to be the first for take-off, but there was no sign of
him. Despite repeated calls on the tannoy for Lieutenant
Brokensha to report to the flight deck, he still didn't turn up,
so eventually I climbed into the cockpit of his plane and
taxied it out of the way so that the rest of the section could
take off. When the flying off was finished I went down to
Brok's cabin. His bunk had not been slept in. We never found
him. The carrier was searched from keel to flight deck, but
there was not a trace of him. Brok came from Durban, and
when we docked there we had a difficult visit from his
parents, who were naturally distraught, but couldn't offer any
reason for his disappearance. I was the last person to see him
alive and continually went over in my mind that last evening
that I saw him, when he had come to my cabin, but his
behaviour had seemed perfectly normal. It was a complete
mystery, and a very sad one.

So we left Durban, made a halt at Cape Town and Sierra
Leone, and eventually docked at Greenock. After a couple of
weeks' leave I was sent as an instructor to 824 Squadron to
assist in deck-landing training.

I had been there a few weeks when I collapsed with a very
high fever. At first I imagined that I had suddenly started a
bout of malaria, although I had not suffered from it at all
during my sometimes arduous postings in the Eastern Fleet. I
had been extremely nervous of getting it while I was based at
Mackinnon Road, but unlike many others there I had escaped
it. When a Wren saw me, however, she immediately called for
an ambulance and rushed me to hospital. She was right. My
arm and left shoulder had started to swell, and in the
emergency ward I was
diagnosed as having septicaemia. I was
seriously ill for around ten days, drifting in and out of
consciousness, until I awoke, very thin and weak, to observe
a buxom matron with more medals on her chest than
Montgomery standing next to me. I was extremely lucky to be
alive, she told me, and I believed her. I think that my natural
resistance to infection had been weakened by the inoculations
I had been given at the start of my cruise on
Formidable,
and
the stress and strains of the tour of duty had not helped, but
to this day I still do not know why I became so ill without any
warning.

On the day the matron said that I was fit enough to go for
a walk, she told me to go to the hospital gates and turn right.

'Why right?' I asked.

'Because left is to the pub.'

I did as I was told (I must still have been extremely weak)
and walked along a lovely stretch of road with the sea to one
side. After a mile I came to the local churchyard, which was
enclosed by an old stone wall. Quite prominent was a large,
black gravestone with the frightening words engraved on it:
H
ERE
L
IES
J
OHN
M
OFFAT
. I could not bring myself to walk past
it, and returned to the hospital.

After a period of sick leave, I had a medical examination
and was told that I would not be recommended for carrier
duties again. To my surprise, I found that I was not unduly
upset. Something had gone out of me – whether it was the
endless patrols over the Indian Ocean or the gradual weariness
at friends and colleagues dying I don't know, but carrier
operations no longer seemed so exciting. It was a truth that I
had not admitted when I first heard I was to be sent to
Formidable.
I had done the best that I ever could in the
Ark,
and deep down I did not believe that anything could reach
that pitch again. I needed something else.

I was
posted to become officer in charge of flying at a
satellite base in the south of England, Naval Air
Station
Cowdray Park, near Midhurst in Sussex. Here I was
responsible for the preparation of aircraft to go into squadron
service after they had been delivered from the manufacturer.
Later, with D-Day approaching, I took on further responsibilities
for organizing air transport around the country and
communications to liberated areas of France. I became
friendly with the CO of a Communications Squadron at Leeon-Solent,
Sir George Lewis, who, in civilian life, had been a
well-known lawyer. Sadly, shortly after D-Day, he died in
northern France when a Hudson aircraft crashed soon after
take-off, killing everyone on board, including Admiral
Ramsey, who had planned the amphibious operation of 6
June.

While I was stationed there I persuaded Marjorie to travel
down to meet me and get married. At last she consented. The
plan was that I would meet her in London and, because travel
restrictions in the south of England were getting tighter and
tighter as D-Day approached, I would be able to escort her to
Midhurst. I had pursued my relationship with her whenever I
had the opportunity. Naturally I had not seen her while I was
in the
Ark
or
Formidable,
but my dogged approach had paid
dividends. I had taken regular leaves in Scotland, and gradually
she had come round. We had decided to get married some
time before I went to Midhurst, but the question really was
when. My father, when he heard the news, was outraged. It
was utter foolishness to get married in wartime, according to
him – but I had never listened.

So I went to London and stayed at the Russell Hotel in
Russell Square in order to be able to get to Euston to meet
Marjorie on the platform as her train from Glasgow came in.
The next morning, as I was preparing to leave the hotel, there
was an air-raid warning. This was not for the Luftwaffe flying
overhead, but attacks from V1 flying bombs were now
commonplace throughout the south of England. I heard one
go over and crouched in the hotel lobby, thinking that I would
be late. The all-clear still did not sound. I decided that I had
to leave and started to walk north to the station. Suddenly I
heard another V1 clattering overhead and then it cut out.
I flung myself against a building and waited. The explosion
was tremendous: the buzz bomb had landed in the next street.
It was dreadful. A horrible stink of burned wood, rubble and
brick dust got up my nostrils. Pieces of debris were flying
everywhere, windows were shattered, and there was a deathly
silence after the explosion before the ambulance bells started.
I lay on the pavement, unhurt, but a little frightened and
covered in dust.