Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea Read online

  This radar was the key to our battle with the U-boats. To quote a recently published book, The Arctic Convoys, 1941–45 by Richard Woodman: “Once airborne radar made it impossible for U-boats to surface in safety, the game (for them) was up.” I therefore make no apology for explaining how our radar worked in some detail.

  A transmitter was positioned in the belly of the Swordfish. This emitted impulses which were reflected back from any solid object on the surface of the sea within a radius of about forty miles. The reflected impulses were picked up by receiving aerials positioned on the struts of the Swordfish’s wings, and thence transmitted to a screen in the observer’s cockpit. The observer looked into the screen, protected by a rubber visor, and saw the reflected impulses as a “blip”. The centre of the screen was where the aircraft was; the top of the screen was dead ahead, the bottom dead astern. It was therefore easy for the observer to tell the pilot immediately what course to steer to home on to the “blip”, which would hopefully turn out to be a surfaced U-boat. A further and, from our point of view, equally important use of radar was that it also picked up the ships of the convoy which the Swordfish was protecting, and this enabled the observer to know what course to steer to get back to the carrier. In 1944 a refinement known as BABS (Blind Approach Beacon System) was fitted to our radar sets. This brought a short range (10 mile) homing scale into operation. A central line, graduated in miles, bisected the screen and, by keeping the “blip” of the carrier dead-centre on this line, the aircraft could be homed almost literally onto the flight-deck.

  The faithful old Swordfish accommodated this new equipment without complaint, just as she accommodated depth-charges, rocket-projectiles, additional passengers, luggage strapped to her fuselage and bicycles festooned from her wings, though it has to be admitted that as more and more weaponry was loaded into her, she put on weight, lost her performance, and became in silhouette more and more like an aerial clothesline.

  With observers and pilots again reunited at Lee-on-Solent, our working up continued with only the occasional burst of excitement. On 2 June Bob Selley and I carried out tests with an experimental petrol bomb. This was being developed to counter the threat of a German invasion, which in the summer of 1942 was still considered possible if not probable. A couple of days later Bob and Jack Teesdale located a British submarine which was in difficulties in the Channel and shepherded it safely to Portsmouth. A couple of days after that there was an invasion: not of course the real thing, but one of those exercises “designed to keep our boys on their toes”. Bob Selley recounts his role in it.

  “It was close on midnight when a naval officer, resplendent in oilskins and gaiters, burst into the wardroom and called for volunteers to ‘repel borders’. I gathered together a somewhat reluctant band of our maintenance personnel, and we set out to locate the ‘enemy’. More by luck than judgement, we found two or three dozen of them asleep in a barn. The barn had a roof of corrugated iron. I got my men to collect a whole lot of small rocks, and at a given signal we lobbed them on to the corrugated iron roof. It must have been a rude awakening. An extremely irate major, wearing an umpire’s armband, came rushing up to me.

  “‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  “’Everyone in the barn is dead,’ I told him. ‘We’ve lobbed hand-grenades into them.’

  “This obviously didn’t fit in with preconceived plans for the ‘invasion’. ‘I’m the umpire,’ he spluttered. ‘I’ll decide who’s dead. You lot are eliminated!’

  “I asked him if this meant that we could go back to bed; and, obviously eager to get rid of us, he agreed.”

  At the end of a pleasant if not particularly exciting month at Lee-on-Solent we were ordered to proceed to RNAS Hatston, in the Orkneys.

  Hatston was adjacent to the anchorage of the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow, and, in our innocence, we thought of it as a staging post to a carrier and thence to the Atlantic.

  As usual one half of the squadron made the move by land and the other half by air. Jack Teesdale and I were in charge of the land party, and we travelled first by train to London, then by the “Jellicoe Special” through the magnificent scenery of the Scottish Highlands to Thurso, then by ferry to Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkneys, and finally by RN transport to Hatston. John Lang then led our six Swordfish to the same destination via RAF Catterick and RNAS Arbroath, to be greeted on his arrival by the able and delightful but somewhat eccentric Commander of Hatston, “Loopy” Luard, resplendent in full dress uniform.

  * * *

  The Islands of Orkney straddle the 59th parallel. In winter they can be pretty depressing, great waves from the North Atlantic bludgeoning the shore, chill winds from the Arctic scouring the braes; you are lucky to get five hours of daylight. However, in summer there are times when the Islands can be unbelievably beautiful: seals asleep on the beaches, lapwing calling, the rocks at sunrise and sunset looking as though they had been bathed in fire, and over everything the sort of stillness and peace that people who live in cities can’t even dream of. We were lucky to be there in summer.

  Our working up continued. We did dive-bombing practice on Sule Skerry, much to the annoyance of the rock’s hundreds of thousands of gulls, shags, skuas and tern. We carried out dummy torpedo attacks on ships exercising from Scapa Flow and dummy depth-charge attacks on towed targets from the Woodwick Range. We practised air-to-air firing, navigation, homing on ASV contacts and beacons and aerial photography. And ADDLs ad infinitum. There were even one or two “real life” reconnaissances. On 14 June, for example, several of our aircraft searched for a U-boat which had unsuccessfully attacked HMS Nigeria. Taffy Jones and I sighted and reported a large patch of oil, but the fate of the U-boat was never proven.

  We embarked on a keep-fit campaign, and, as Squadron Sports Officer, I organized training runs and soccer, rugger, cricket and hockey matches. Sometimes we played officers v other ranks, sometimes other squadrons. The latter games were especially enjoyable and helped to create an excellent esprit de corps within the squadron. I remember that Harry Housser and I did battle at 0700 each morning on the squash court and that, since it didn’t get dark until after midnight, golf usually started at 2215 hours as soon as the wardroom bar closed. The fact that we had played the 19th hole before the ist, plus the fact that many of us were testing our golfing skills for the first time, led to a high mortality rate among our golf balls, many of which failed to survive the short 4th hole where a deep and sullen tarn divided green from tee.

  Another diversion were the station dances. 835 decided that we would like to host one, and I was given the job of organizing this. It proved easier said than done, for young ladies were in short supply in the Orkneys, and one had first to apply for a date for the dance, then hope that the “dancing girls” – the station Wrens – could fit it into their busy social programme. We were lucky. The girls turned out in force and our dance was a great success, so great a success in fact that, instead of ending it as arranged at midnight, I let it go on until 1 am.

  Next day I received an ominous invitation to take afternoon tea with the Chief Wren, First Officer Rumbelow-Pearce, generally and disrespectfully known as “Up-Spirits”!

  Anticipating a well-deserved reprimand, I presented myself for tea with some trepidation. However, the afternoon could hardly have passed more pleasantly. We talked about just about everything except the dance and I told myself I was in luck. It was only as I was about to leave that First Officer Rumbelow-Pearce looked at me very straight and said quietly, “You won’t keep my young ladies out so late again, will you?”

  It was the perfect reproach – courteous, brief and to the point, and I shall always remember that lady with respect and affection. Sadly she lost both her husband and son in the war. They were one of those families who gave everything to the Service to which they dedicated their lives.

  A less happy incident occurred towards the end of our stay at Hatston. By mid-August we had been working up for the better part of four m
onths and were getting bored. We reckoned it was high time we were posted to an aircraft carrier. On one particularly wet and unpleasant day, when flying had been cancelled, we found ourselves in the Ready Room with time on our hands. By mid-afternoon we had run out of meaningful tasks to set ourselves and Jack Cramp (a New Zealand pilot who had recently joined the squadron after a spell of distinguished service in Malta) produced a pack of cards and started a poker school. All went well until the CO happened to look in. He summoned me to his office and said that the poker game should stop immediately. He also said that, since the aircrew apparently had nothing better to do, they should each write an essay on one of the subjects he proceeded to enumerate. I passed on this somewhat curious order to my colleagues. There was a lot of muttering, but in the end everyone got down to his essay: everyone, that is, except Jack Cramp, who with typical Kiwi independence said the whole thing was “bloody silly”, and started playing patience. The subject I chose for my essay was The Atlantic Air Ferry and I wrote a short but vitriolic article, advocating that the Americans would be well advised to get on with ferrying their aircraft across the Atlantic by themselves, since although the British had aircrew fully trained and eager to fly, all they could think of using them for was to write pointless essays. Our literary efforts were then duly presented to “Blinkie”. After a while he again called me to his office. My essay was on the desk in front of him.

  “I could have you court-martialled,” he said, “for this.”

  I decided the best form of defence was attack: “I would welcome that, sir.”

  “You would?”

  “Yes, sir. To bring to the attention of higher authorities how good aircrew are being wasted.”

  I remained rigidly at attention. My eyes never left his. In a battle of eyes I obviously had an unfair advantage over the unfortunate “Blinkie”, and the interview ended with his saying inconclusively, “We shall have to discuss this later.” But we never did.

  Jack Cramp was right. The whole thing was bloody silly, and it is hard to say who was right and who was wrong. John Lang was obviously right according to the letter of the law, because gambling was prohibited in the Navy, except in the wardroom. I was probably right in thinking he might have been a bit more flexible in enforcing this rule and that telling us to write essays was ill-advised because it smacked of a headmaster disciplining his wayward pupils. And if you wonder why, after fifty years, I have dredged up such a trivial incident, the reason is that it brings home the fact that the squadron was about to enter a difficult period in its history, a period of increasing frustration when morale was none too high.

  As summer gave way to autumn, rumours began to circulate that the Squadron would soon be on the move.

  We had now been at Hatston for more than three months and had achieved a high standard of flying — over a thousand hours in the air, many of them at night and in poor weather, without incurring the slightest damage to any of our planes or the slightest injury to any of our personnel. (These times in the air may be small compared with the hours flown by many RAF aircrew. However, it should be remembered that flying the Fleet Air Arm involved flights of short duration. A hundred hours flying with Coastal Command would probably mean no more than a dozen take-offs and landings; a hundred hours flying with the Navy would probably mean a hundred take-offs and landings — the times when accidents are most likely to happen. Indeed, glancing through the Squadron’s Fair Flying Log, quite a few entries read “ADDLs: 20 mts;” and in those twenty minutes a pilot might take-off and land anything up to half-a-dozen times.)

  After all this working up we had high hopes that we might be posted to HMS Activity, the first of the British-built escort carriers to come into service. We knew that Activity had been doing sterling work in the Atlantic, and word had got round that her squadron needed a rest and that we would replace them. However, on 20 September we were ordered to report to RNAS Stretton, an unprepossessing airfield on the border of Cheshire and Lancashire.

  This was the start of a succession of seemingly pointless moves which can be explained only with the knowledge of hindsight. At the time we found it, to say the least, depressing to be forever shunted from pillar to post; and, to prevent the reader becoming as bored and depressed as we were, I shall limit myself to writing no more than a paragraph about each of the airfields which, in the course of the next year, offered us accommodation but never a home.

  We were at Stretton from 22 September to 28 October, 1942. This was one of our less memorable ports of call. Accommodation was poor – cold and uncomfortable Nissen huts – and our work unexciting. Our pilots found themselves undergoing a course in instrument-flying, and each morning, complete with sandwich lunches, they would report to the nearby aerodrome at Ollerton, where RAF instructors in ancient Oxford aircraft would wax eloquent on the need to trust one’s artificial-horizon and homing-beacon. In the evening the pilots returned to Stretton and, after a meal in the wardroom, most of us found our way to the local pub, the Appleton Thorn, where we soon became regular and most welcome patrons. It was in this fine old inn that we celebrated the award to Jack Cramp of the Distinguished Service Cross for his work with 830 Squadron in Malta. His citation read: “During a critical stage in a convoy in June, 1942, he led four Albacores on a strike against two Italian cruisers and five destroyers, and hit and stopped one cruiser.” I have only two other memories of Stretton. Each Sunday morning we attended Matins at the local church. Rather to our embarrassment, we found that the front three rows of pews were invariably reserved for us. And to our even greater embarrassment as we filed in all the local parishioners stood up, and repeated the performance as we filed out! My other, and most pleasurable, recollection is of how the station’s excessively “pusser” first lieutenant got his comeuppance. This gentleman was forever reprimanding the more carefree officers of the squadron for unseemly behaviour. However, in his self-appointed role as the upholder of Naval good order and tradition, he fell resoundingly from grace when, at a formal mess dinner, he rose in magnificent solitude for the Loyal Toast. (Ever since Charles II hit his head on a beam in one of his warships when rising to the Loyal Toast, it has been a tradition in the Navy that all should remain seated when the King’s or Queen’s health is drunk.) For this faux pas the First Lieutenant subsequently suffered the unceremonious removal of his trousers – and it was, I remember, some time before he got them back! For the rest of our stay he kept a low profile, and was doubtless much relieved when, after five weeks, we were posted to RNAS Machrihanish.

  We were at Machrihanish from 30 October to 12 November, 1942. Machrihanish was a typical Fleet Air Arm aerodrome. When, in 1918, the Navy harided over to the Air Force 126 of its airfields, it didn’t envisage that Naval flying would ever require the use of large aerodromes. Most of the Royal Naval Air Stations which were retained were therefore small in size, and, from the point of view of flying, poorly sited. Machrihanish, for example, nestles in a hollow, surrounded by hills, at a spot on the Scottish coast where rainfall is heavy and cloud prevalent. It would be hard to imagine a more idyllic spot scenically, but for aircrew operating at night and in poor visibility it is a death-trap. Yet this was probably the most-used Naval airfield in the war. For, since it was situated near the tip of the Mull of Kintyre, it guarded the approaches to both Liverpool and the Clyde. Liverpool was a major terminus for Atlantic convoys and the Clyde was a naval base, an assembly point for convoys and a training-ground for Fleet Air Arm aircrew. (It was in these waters that virtually every pilot in the Air Arm made his first deck-landings, more likely than not on the ancient aircraft-carrier Angus which spent the greater part of the war steaming up and down the Clyde between Ardrossan and Ailsa Craig.) Machrihanish was therefore in constant use for both operational flying and training. It was also used as a staging post for aircrew about to embark on a carrier. A squadron would fly in and wait, maybe a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks, for its carrier to appear in the Clyde; it would then fly aboard and its place in Mac
hrihanish would be taken by another squadron awaiting another carrier. No wonder the station became known as “Clapham Junction”. For the hundreds of aircrew who passed through it, it had obvious disadvantages; it was remote, isolated and devoid of night life. But it also had much to offer: heather-covered hills, magnificent sunsets, white beaches backed with grassy sand-dunes, and the peace and beauty of a landscape that can have changed little through the millennia. On long walks you could find plovers’ eggs, or, if you were lucky, see an eagle. And when the sun was shining and little clouds were forming, bowling along and then dissolving above the shore, there are few coastlines in the world more attractive to fly over than the Mull of Kintyre.

  On II November we received a most welcome signal. The Squadron was to embark in HMS Activity. We remained aboard this carrier from 13 November to 27 November, 1942.

  Activity was the first British-built escort carrier to come into service. Converted from a 10,000 ton merchantman, the SS Telemachus, she was a small but well-built and seaworthy vessel. She had only one lift for moving her aircraft between hangar and flight-deck, and the flight-deck itself was only 60 feet wide – since the wingspan of a Swordfish was 45 feet, 6 inches, there was obviously going to be little margin for error when we took-off and landed. Accommodation was spartan, with the officers’ cabins like matchboxes and the mess decks cramped. However, this didn’t worry us. We were delighted to be on a carrier at last. Activity’s captain, Guy Willoughby, welcomed us aboard and said he looked forward to a long and happy association with us, and we immediately began an intensive working up programme, consisting mostly of deck-landings and low level depth-charge attacks on a towed target. A glance at the Squadron Fair Flying Log confirms that all the deck-landings were accomplished successfully. Likewise all the depth-charge attacks. Yet, to our chagrin and disbelief, on 27 November the Squadron were ordered to disembark and return to Machrihanish. At the time we were never told why and some of us had a sneaking (but quite unjustified) suspicion that John Lang hadn’t pushed as hard as he might have for us to go on operations with the Activity. It has since become clear that there was a totally different reason for our being asked to leave the ship. The powers-that-be had decided to transfer Activity to training! This was in spite of the fact that she had only recently been commissioned and that the Battle of the Atlantic was going badly, with convoys crying out for air cover. In one month alone in the autumn of 1942 U-boats in the North Atlantic sank 122 merchant ships totalling 615,570 tons. With this background one wonders how such an order can have been contemplated, let alone promulgated.