I Sank The Bismarck (9 page)

Then, without any warning, the British battleships opened
fire. Somerville had told Holland to break off negotiations
and head out to the open sea. George Dawson in 810
Squadron, who had been on a reconnaissance patrol,
searching the coast of Spain, told me that all during his patrol
he had been listening to broadcasts from the French Radio
Lyons. Their news bulletins had been repeating the British
demands, so it was clear to him that they had been quickly
passed to the French authorities and were by now common
knowledge. He was not at all sympathetic to the French admirals
and couldn't understand how they had allowed
themselves to get into the position they were in.

He was now one of those Swordfish crews anxiously waiting
to land on when he was startled by the huge crash of
Hood
's heavy guns going off, blasting out clouds of black
smoke tinged with white flashes. He could see the impact of
the shells in the harbour at Mers-el-Kébir, and after a few
minutes of this barrage there was a massive explosion from
the harbour, and the smoke and debris from what was clearly
a substantial target poured high into the air, reaching an
altitude of, he thought, 1,000 feet or more.

The giant blast was caused by a battleship,
Bretagne,
blowing
up. A shell must have hit a magazine to cause such
devastating damage. Then almost immediately a destroyer
also disintegrated as it too blew up. The harbour was by now
covered in smoke from the explosions of the French ships and
our shells, with the result that the observers in the spotting
Swordfish found it hard to see anything. One of them thought
he could see ships preparing for sea, despite the fact that the
harbour entrance had not been cleared of the mines laid
earlier in the day. Some other ships had also been seriously
damaged.
Dunkerque,
which had received some hits, was
being driven on to the beach to save her from sinking, and so
too was
Provence,
another battleship of the same class as
Bretagne.

Two flights of three Swordfish had now taken off, with
racks under their wings carrying four 250lb bombs and eight
20lb anti-personnel bombs, to dive-bomb the remaining
French warships in the harbour. With this striking force
already in the air, one of the Swordfish spotter planes confirmed
what they had suspected ten minutes earlier:
Strasbourg
had raised steam and was powering through the
carnage in the harbour, determined to make its escape. A
signal was sent to Somerville in
Hood,
while the crew of the
Swordfish watched the harbour boom open and the raked
bows of one of the fastest ships in the French fleet passed over
five 1,000lb mines totally unscathed and headed for the open
sea. She was escorted by eleven destroyers that had also
managed to escape any damage from British shells or from the
mines. The Swordfish signalled to the
Ark
that
Strasbourg
was coming into gun range, and the
Ark
immediately changed
course and went at full speed away from her. But escape was
uppermost on the French officers' minds and they headed east
as fast as they could go.

One of the most important targets at Mers-el-Kébir was
now escaping, so an urgent signal was sent to the Swordfish
on their bombing mission to change course and make their
attack, not on the ships in the harbour but on the fleeing warship,
which was rapidly putting distance between herself and
Force H.

This, of course, is one of the tasks that I was training for at
Abbotsinch, although ideally the Swordfish would be armed
with torpedoes. In circumstances like this, however, you do
what you can with what you have. The Swordfish changed
course and made an approach to the French battleship.
Completely unobserved, they turned into their dive, releasing
their bombs at 4,000 feet. Then the anti-aircraft guns on the
French destroyers opened up, projecting a dense barrage of
fire, which the planes managed to avoid. One or two possible
hits were observed by the crew of the Swordfish, but the warships
steamed on apparently unscathed. The 250lb
semi-armour-piercing bombs had little effect on the armour
plating of a battleship – something that had been discovered
in the attack on
Scharnhorst
in Norway.

Somerville had been told that
Strasbourg
and
Dunkerque
were our most important targets.
Dunkerque
seemed to be
beached in Oran, but
Strasbourg
was steaming away, most
likely heading to Toulon to meet up with the rest of the
French fleet. We needed to stop her, and a torpedo attack was
rapidly organized. Six Swordfish from 818 were ranged on
the flight deck, torpedoes slung in their cradles under the
fuselage. The warheads had been fitted with Duplex pistols,
fuses that would be triggered to explode on impact or if they
were affected by the magnetic field of a ship. Ideally, they
should explode beneath the waterline or under the keel of a
ship, and the running depth of the torpedo can be adjusted to
take account of this. Here they were set to run at a depth of
20 feet.

The planes took off at 1950, when the light was beginning
to fade. They had a good fix on
Strasbourg,
however, and they
flew along the coast about 15 miles off shore. It was now
twenty minutes after sunset. Their ruse seemed to be successful.
The torpedoes were launched from a position between
two escorting destroyers, with deflections for an estimated
speed of the target between 28 and 30 knots. The attack went
almost unnoticed, until the gunners on the destroyers woke
up as the last two Swordfish dropped; they burst into action,
but it was too late. The Swordfish had carried out a classic,
well-planned attack, but sadly there was no sign of any hit to
Strasbourg
– even if there had been, the darkness and funnel
smoke obscured the evidence. The main focus of the
Ark
's
efforts, and of Force H itself, had managed to escape and even
now was steaming to safety.

Even though
Dunkerque
had been hit and was now
beached in shallow water inside the harbour at Mers-el-Kébir,
it was difficult to ascertain just how badly damaged she was,
or how easy it was going to be to refloat her. Britain wanted
to make sure that she was out of action for a long while, so
two days later a new plan was put into operation: the
Ark
would carry out another torpedo attack. Around 100 miles
from the Algerian coast a dozen Swordfish, six from 810
Squadron and six from 820 Squadron, were armed with
torpedoes and ranged on the flight deck.
Dunkerque
's
position made it difficult for an attack. She was close to the
shore in shallow water, protected by a mole. To make a beam
attack would require an approach either over the breakwater
or over the town. The twelve aircraft would attack from two
directions and so formed up into two sections. One group of
nine would make its approach low over the sea out of the
rising sun, dropping their 'kippers', as the torpedoes were
known, just inside the breakwater, while the other three
would approach over the town and attempt to hit the port
side of the warship.

The nine aircraft coming in from the sea waited until they
could see the rays of the rising sun hitting
Dunkerque,
then
they started their dive, separating into two groups, one of six
aircraft and one of three. They took the French by surprise,
and their approach was purposeful and steady, without any of
the anti-aircraft guns firing at them. Five out of the first six
torpedoes, which had been set to run at a very shallow 12
feet, hit the target, although one failed to explode. It was seen
to ricochet off the side of the warship, then continue running
along the side of the ship on the surface until it hit a jetty,
where finally the warhead, armed with a Duplex pistol, did
explode, blowing fragments of wooden decking and massive
heavy piling high into the air. The sixth torpedo missed the
target and ran up on to the beach, where it too blew up.

The lead pilot,
Captain Newson RN, took the group on
another, lower approach, from 2,000 feet, but as they made a
turn to launch their attack the anti-aircraft guns started firing
and the pilots were forced to take violent avoiding action until
they were over the breakwater. Captain Newson forgot to
press his master switch, so his torpedo failed to drop, but the
following two aircraft released theirs successfully. They then
turned and made a low-level, erratic getaway, being fired on
as they did so. As they flew behind a headland, the observer
of the rear plane saw the smoke and red fireball of a large
explosion rise into view. He thought it came from where
Dunkerque
lay beached, and could only have been caused by
a magazine exploding.

The final attack, led by Lieutenant David 'Feather'
Godfrey-Faussett of 810 Squadron, an extremely good pilot
and a man for whom I had a lot of respect, made its approach
over land, hitting the coast at Cap Falcon, keeping to the
landward side of the high promontory of Point Mers-el-Kébir
and then swinging over the town at very low level. Even with
this stealthy approach they were fired on by anti-aircraft guns
from another battleship in the harbour and from the shore
batteries to the east. Godfrey-Faussett dropped first, but
although his observer thought the torpedo hit the target, there
was no explosion. The second Swordfish dropped at a longer
range. The torpedo ran straight and true, but hit not
Dunkerque
but a tug, which disintegrated in a ball of flame.
The third torpedo hit
Dunkerque,
but again it failed to
explode.

These three Swordfish were the last aircraft to attack, and
there had been enough time for the French to be on a high
level of preparedness. Not only were the shore-based batteries
ready for the approach of the last three Swordfish, but the
French air force had managed to get some fighters airborne
and these were now flying over the harbour being engaged by
the Skuas. The pilots of the Swordfish were unaware of this
fight going on overhead, but as
Sub-Lieutenant Pearson,
Godfrey-Faussett's wingman, was flying at about 100 feet
above the waves, he noticed strange splashes on the surface on
his port side, slightly ahead of him. It dawned on him with a
shock that he was being fired on from behind by a fighter. The
burst of adrenalin that had hit his nerves as he jinked through
the anti-aircraft fire over
Dunkerque
had slightly dissipated,
but now he realized he was in mortal danger yet again.
Almost immediately his observer told him that a fighter had
just turned away – then he added in a slightly tenser voice that
another fighter was coming at them out of the sun on the starboard
side. It was a French
Dewoitine D.520. These were
modern fighters, fitted with a 20mm cannon and four
machine guns. They had the same speed as a Messerschmitt
and were equally if not more manoeuvrable, allegedly having
a turning circle smaller than the German fighters.

Pearson knew he was in trouble. By now every Swordfish
pilot realized that there was only one way to get out of this
situation, and that was to use the aircraft's superior slow-speed
manoeuvrability. He was already flying at a height of
100 feet above the sea, a situation that most fast fighter pilots
find uncomfortable. As soon as his observer told him where
the fighter was, Pearson made a tight turn into him and a
burst of bullets churned up the surface of the sea to port. The
fighter came round again and made another attack. Pearson
repeated his manoeuvre, with the same results. The fighter
broke away, then made a stern attack. Pearson knew that his
Swordfish was being hit, and he made a tight 180-degree turn
to fly underneath the French fighter, who gave up the chase,
perhaps nervous at how low he was getting – a tight turn at
slow speed might be fatal at barely 100 feet above the sea.
Then Pearson saw another Dewoitine: for the first time he
realized there were two of them. He was nowhere near out of
the woods. Yet again, gunfire poured into the ocean as
Pearson, sweat pouring cold down his back, his mouth dry,
yanked his plane into the tightest possible turn and kept it
there, his engine thundering away until the Dewoitine
appeared through the disc of his whirling propeller. Then he
pressed the button on his stick. The single fixed machine gun
in the nose of the Swordfish added another metallic hammering
to the cacophony around him as bursts of flame stabbed
out of the recessed barrel. Fifty rounds were fired, filling the
cockpit with the acrid smell of cordite. It was unlikely that a
single one of his bullets did any damage, but the second
French pilot didn't want to give Pearson another chance and
he too was gone, clawing for the sky with all of his aircraft's
330-miles-an-hour speed – faster than the Swordfish and carrying
enough cannon and machine guns to rip it to shreds, but
outwitted and outmanoeuvred.

Elated, amazed at what he had just done, the young sublieutenant
flew on to rendezvous with the
Ark.
Once the plane
was down in the hangar, the riggers started totting up the
damage. A cannon shell had smashed through the fuselage
cowling on the port side of the cockpit and burst on the starboard
aileron. One bullet had smashed the radio transmitter
and another had twisted the ring of the TAG's rear-firing
Lewis gun. It had been a very narrow escape for the observer,
Lieutenant Prendergast. Some frames in the fuselage had been
damaged, and several ribs in the lower wing had been hit, as
had the centre-section rear main spar. The torpedo-release
mechanism had also been hit and destroyed.

Dunkerque,
meanwhile, had been hit by five torpedoes and
was most definitely out of action. It had been another highly
successful day, but the vagaries of the torpedo
warheads were
obvious, and they were unsettling.
Dunkerque
had been a
stationary target, and out of nine torpedoes that had been
observed to hit her, three had definitely failed to detonate.
Whether this was the reason for
Strasbourg
appearing to
shrug off what seemed a perfectly timed and coordinated
attack two days earlier was hard to know.