The Tattie Lads

by Ian Dear

  7. T335/87.

  8. 29 May 1945. Clipping in ADM 199/2165.

  9. ‘Towing the ammunition ship Fort Confidence’ (http://alger-roi.fr/Alger/port/hudson/images/50_willem_pop_traduction.pdf) tells the story from Captain Weltevreden’s point of view. Admiral Morse made the mistake of telling the veteran captain what to do. Weltevreden put the ship’s engines in neutral, pointed out who the helmsman was, and retired to the chart room. The admiral had the good grace to apologise.

  10. The admiral’s report is in ADM 1/14512, as are the recommendations for decorations.

  11. The full citation in The London Gazette (supplement 36240, 5 November 1943) read: ‘For courage and skill in securing a line from H.M. Rescue Tug Empire Fred, to a hawser on a blazing ship in harbour to enable her to be towed out of the entrance.’

  12. ADM 1/14767.

  13. Harvey WJ, Turrell K. Empire Tugs. Kendal: World Ship Society; 1988. pp.37–38. This also includes a copy of the Order of the Day.

  14. 17 January 1944. Clipping in ADM 199/2165.

  15. Pink List ADM 187/22.

  16. ADM 1/15550.

  17. Close J. Beyond the Horizon. Hull: Riverhead; 2010. pp.102–103.

  18. World War II US Navy War Diaries, for September 1944 and 12/21/44 –1/20/45 in www.fold3.com

  19. There is a good description of this incident, and photographs of each half of Porcupine, on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Porcupine

  20. From: Cafferkey S. ‘The Royal Canadian Navy and Operation Torch’ in The Northern Mariner Vol. 3, No. 4.

  21. Supplement to The London Gazette, 8 June 1944, p.2572. The award was for bringing in a merchant ship, Empire Treasure, in storm force winds after she was disabled in the Atlantic.

  22. ADM 199/2069.

  23. A pattern running torpedo, called a motobomba, was developed by the Italians. It was dropped by parachute and moved in concentric spirals, varying between four hundred and five hundred metres, until it found a target.

  24. ADM 1/14387.

  25. HMS Derwent damage report, 25 March 1943, in ADM 199/2068.

  26. ADM 199/20626.

  27. 4 March 1944. Clipping in ADM 199/2165.

  28. From report by commanding officer of HMS Fantome in ADM 199/1039.

  29. Forczyk R. Fw 200 Condor vs. Atlantic Convoy, 1941–43. Oxford: Osprey Publishing; 2010. p.69.

  30. Plymouth/Portsmouth Command War Diary, December 1943, in ADM 199/633.

  31. Derwentdale’s war record is in www.historicalrfa.org

  32. ADM 1/16007.

  33. From a review by Kenneth Hadley of Epics of Salvage on www.stonebooks.com

  34. The London Gazette supplement, 11 December 1945, p.6022.

  35. Masters D. Epics of Salvage. London: Cassell; 1953. pp.228–34.

  36. Edinburgh Gazette, 19 December 1950, p.622.

  9

  The Far Shore

  The Allied invasion of north-west Europe was a long time in the making. The Dieppe Raid of August 1942 had shown that a frontal attack on a port – and a port was essential – would be too costly and unlikely to succeed. Instead, it was decided – and it seems to have been at least partly Churchill’s idea – to build two mulberries (prefabricated harbours) off the invasion beaches, a plan approved by the Allied High Command at the Quebec Conference in August 1943.

  The harbours were a truly astonishing undertaking, the bedrock on which the whole invasion plan rested, and was one in which the Rescue Tug Service played a vital role, providing some thirty rescue tugs from its force of eighty or so scattered around the world. The chosen landing area for the assault phase (Operation neptune) was Normandy’s Baie de la Seine. The landing beaches extended from the Cotentin Peninsula in the west to the Orne River in the east. The two most westerly ones were American, codenamed utah and omaha, with mulberry A being built at the latter, offshore from the village of Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer. The British and Canadian beaches, from west to east, were codenamed gold, juno and sword, and mulberry B was constructed at Arromanches to the east of sword.

  The harbours’ principal parts were steel roadways (whales), which floated on anchored pontoons (beetles) and connected at the seaward end to pier heads with adjustable legs (spuds). There were also more than two hundred hollow concrete caissons (phoenixes) of various sizes, which were to be sunk as a sea wall to protect the whales and the ships unloading at their pier heads. There were four different sizes: the largest were as tall as a six-storey apartment block (18m/60 ft high, 61m/200 ft long), and they displaced nearly 5500 tons. They had a crew of two, to work the sea valves that allowed the unit to be sunk into place, and a four-man gun crew for the anti-aircraft gun on top.

  To give extra protection to the mulberries, and to provide a sheltered deepwater anchorage, sixty-one-metre-long floating tanks (bombardons) were moored together on the 10-fathom line. Initially, five smaller harbours (gooseberries) were to be formed from sinking fifty-five superannuated merchant ships (corncobs), twenty-three of them American, and four obsolete warships. The gooseberries were designed to shelter small craft before the phoenixes were in place, then two of them became part of the mulberries, while the other three provided separate shelter closer inshore.

  The vastness of the enterprise can be judged by the fact that both mulberries totalled four hundred separate units weighing 1.5 million tons, nearly all of which were constructed in Britain, and each unit had to be towed across the Channel. To ensure there were enough of them, all rescue tugs escorting the North Atlantic convoys were withdrawn, and on 28 March 1944, the Admiralty signalled that the only ones available would be single vessels based at Campbeltown, Ponta Delgada (Azores), St John’s, and Reykjavik.1 If a ship was disabled when no rescue tug was available, the crews were to be disembarked and the ship sunk. However, if the Senior Officer (SO) of the convoy’s escort force decided there was a reasonable prospect of salvage, the ship was to be left abandoned and the matter reported to the authorities ashore.

  ‘To assist SO of Escorts in making a decision,’ the Admiralty signal concluded, ‘a daily signal commencing on 1st April will be made by the Admiralty to ships in Atlantic north of 35 degrees North, giving the position and employment of all rescue tugs in that area.’

  Another signal from the Admiralty to the C-in-C Mediterranean in March 1945 showed that this policy was still in place.2 It asked if any of the Assurance class then in the Mediterranean could be spared, as there were not enough rescue tugs available if a mid-ocean U-boat threat did develop. Luckily, none did, though U-boats were still sinking merchant ships up to the last days of the war.

  The design, construction and operation of mulberry B was mostly an Army responsibility, and the planning staff from Combined Operations, who had originally been handed the task, were moved to the War Office. The Admiralty was responsible for the design and placing of the bombardons, and for transporting the mulberry units, and it was consulted on the mulberry design and how they were to be moored.

  Once the landings had taken place, on 6 June 1944, the parts of the mulberries were towed to the Far Shore – as the assault beaches were rather romantically called in contemporary documents – and assembled. All vessels had to proceed to the assault beaches along predesignated marked channels, which started from an assembly point eight miles south-east of the Isle of Wight, later nicknamed ‘Piccadilly’. Three of these channels were reserved for the mulberry tows.3

  Assembling the mulberries involved ten thousand men and one hundred and fifty tugs. Those tugs suitable to cross the Channel with tows had ‘M’ for mulberry painted on their funnels. They numbered sixty-seven on D-Day, and fluctuated thereafter, rising to a maximum of one hundred and nineteen on 12 July.4 The British and Dutch provided most of the ninety or so larger tugs in the 1000/1500 hp range; the smaller tugs, of about 750 hp, were provided by the Americans.5

  COTUG

  The command structure for organising the tugs was an Allied one. In overall command was a British naval officer, Rear Admiral
William Tennant, designated RAM/P (Rear Admiral Commanding mulberry and pluto). Under him was Captain CH Petrie DSO RN, in charge of mulberry B, and Captain AD Clark USN, in charge of mulberry A. Another key player was Captain Ed Moran USNR, who in peacetime owned and ran a well-known New York tug business. Moran’s organisation, known as cotug (Combined Operations Tug Organisation), was based at Lee-on-Solent, where a local cinema became its headquarters. A signal tower, which had been built on top of the cinema, overlooked the tugs’ assembly area, and made an ideal control centre, and from early May 1944, the 17,491-ton tug depot ship Aorangi was anchored nearby. This converted troopship provided spares and minor engine repairs, as well as hospital facilities and accommodation for a pool of replacement crews. However, by the end of May, the Solent became so overcrowded that Aorangi was moved to Southampton, and in mid-July was replaced by the 16,810-ton destroyer depot ship Empress of India.6

  cotug’s responsibilities were wide-ranging. They included organising the sailings and administration of the vessels involved, making arrangements for fuelling and provisioning, executing minor repairs, delivering mail, collecting reports, and distributing orders and instructions. Because it involved so many vessels, the cotug organisation operated separately from the C-in-C Portsmouth’s Movements Staff, but at Plymouth, the Nore and Dover, tugs were sailed by the Staff Officer, Movements, in the normal way.

  cotug’s key to success was the close contact it maintained with the tugs and tug masters, and its equally close liaison with CCRT staff for White Ensign tugs, and the managers and agents for Red Ensign tugs. American representatives maintained similar contact with US Naval, War Shipping Administration and Transportation Corps tugs. The future politician Sir Walter Monckton wrote in his report on the part played by cotug in administering the vessels under its command:

  The selection of Captain Moran USNR as Tug Controller was extremely fortunate. It was realised that success depended as much on the efficiency and willingness of the tug masters and crews as on anything else; it was to be a long job from which there would be little respite. Particular attention was paid to their comfort by ensuring that they received their mail regularly, that they did not go short of rations and water, and that spare towing gear was readily available and that refuelling and minor repairs were prompt and efficient; having in mind that the tugs were operating all along the coast, this was not so easy.7

  The Admiralty’s rescue tugs were mostly based at Lee-on-Solent for towing duties under Senior Naval Officer Selsey. They were:

  Allegiance

  Eminent

  Mammouth

  Emphatic

  Assiduous

  Emulous

  Sabine

  Bandit

  Flaunt

  Saucy

  Buccaneer

  Freedom

  Sea Giant

  Cheerly

  Griper

  Seaman

  Destiny

  Sesame

  Dexterous

  Lariat

  Storm King

  Superman

  Antic*

  Krooman

  Resolve

  Note: *Delayed. Due to arrive in the UK on 22 June, but unavailable until a refit had been completed.

  Two other Admiralty rescue tugs, Bustler and Marauder, aided by the smaller Danube V, were adapted for what the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D Eisenhower, rated ‘second in daring only to the mulberry Harbours’. The operation, known as pluto (Pipe Line Under The Ocean), was certainly as ingenious. It involved towing 250-ton drums, called conundrums, to Cherbourg, once the port had been captured. These huge drums, thirty feet in diameter, were used to lay flexible steel pipelines on the seabed so that fuel could be pumped to France, and then distributed to the advancing Allied armies. It has been calculated that more than 172 million gallons of petrol were delivered by this method between August 1944 and May 1945. The first four lines were laid from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg, captured on 26 June, but as the Allies advanced northwards, seventeen more lines were laid to shorten the supply route, from Dungeness in Kent to Ambleteuse in the Pas de Calais.

  Five more rescue tugs – Attentif, Champion, Goliath, St Martin and St Mellons – were based at Portland for duties under sno bombardon, and Growler and Samsonia were also based there. They, too, were employed to tow parts of the mulberries after they had towed the old French battleship Courbet, engineless and filled with concrete, across to the Far Shore for use as a corncob.

  Once scuttled, the Courbet proved an irresistible lure for the enemy’s fire. Torpedoes were launched at her, and she was constantly shelled and bombed. This, of course, had no effect whatsoever on her efficiency as a blockship. To encourage this waste of effort and ammunition, the Courbet was decorated with a huge tricolour and Cross of Lorraine, and from then on she was attacked even more frequently.8

  Some rescue tugs were also employed towing into position the largest warships bombarding the shore. The biggest danger for these battle wagons were the German pressure mines, which could not be swept, so the largest warships were forbidden to turn their screws in case they detonated one.9

  Collecting the CORNCOBS

  The Red Ensign tugs controlled by the Ministry of War Transport were assembled as follows: twenty-six in the Solent for duties under SNO Selsey; seven at Portland for duties under sno bombardon, and another five for duties under SNO corncob; and five at Oban for duties under SNO corncob. One of these was Empire Larch and aboard her was Jim Radford, almost certainly the youngest person to take part in the Normandy landings. He later wrote:

  I left school at Easter 1944, with no plan except to go to sea as soon as possible. My brother Fred was already a PO in T.124T and our oldest brother, Jack, had been lost when the SS Cree was torpedoed in 1940. That should have deterred me – but we were a seafaring family, and Monday morning saw me at the Shipping Federation in Posterngate [Hull], asking for a ship. They explained to me that I couldn’t join the Merchant Navy until I was 16 and turfed me out. My next call was the offices of the United Towing Company. I was in luck – they needed a deck hand on the docking tug Bureaucrat and seemingly didn’t care about my age. I started work that day and for the next two or three weeks learnt the rudiments of seamanship in and around Hull docks. One morning the ship’s husband [an agent appointed by a ship’s owner to manage a ship] called me from the jetty. ‘Hey, Jim, we need a galley boy on the Empire Larch, do you want the job?’

  Did I? I knew the Larch was a deep-sea tug and that was where I wanted to be. I signed on that afternoon, collected my MN identity card from the Pool Office – no question about age this time – and joined her at Albert Dock. I never worked so hard before or since. The cook was a Scouse called Paddy Walsh, whose system was to show me once how to do everything, including the cooking, and then leave me to it. We sailed a few days later. No one told us where we were going and being at the bottom of the pecking order I didn’t ask. For the first week I was so sick I didn’t care.

  Eventually it became clear that we were going round Britain collecting a convoy. At each port we stopped – Blyth, Sunderland, Methil, Scapa, Oban – more ships joined us, all rusty old merchantmen with skeleton crews on board.10

  Empire Aid was another Red Ensign tug assigned to corncob, and her mate, Lewis Dohn, takes up the story when the convoy of blockships left Oban under their own steam six days before the landings were to take place:

  The convoy formed in two columns of three groups. Tugs were allocated to each group. Orders were to render assistance when necessary. It was anticipated there would be a fair number of breakdowns of one kind or another, and our job was to take them in tow until the problem was repaired. Strangely enough, we had no work to do and, as far as I know, only one tug had to put out a tow. From time to time, one of the ships would raise two black balls signifying ‘not under command’, and the whole group would scatter like scared rabbits to reform later when the signal was lowered.11

  The voyage was otherwise
uneventful and after being joined by air cover and six destroyers as escorts, the convoy made its way to Poole harbour and anchored there. The passage across to the Far Shore, Dohn wrote, was equally uneventful:

  Not a single enemy ship, plane or E-boat had been sighted. Occasionally a shell from shore batteries passed harmlessly overhead. Far more was coming in the opposition direction from our own warships some miles astern. The sky was filled with Allied planes. A few hours later we were at anchor and our assignment finished. Harbour tugs took over, and we watched as the corncobs were scuttled bow to stern.11

  After completing her mission to deliver the corncobs ‘in the cold grey light of 6th June’ as Jim Radford described it (see his song at the end of this chapter), Empire Larch towed a phoenix from Dungeness to mulberry a, and took a small 550-ton British coaster, empty of her cargo and with a smashed rudder post and propeller, back across the Channel. Later that month, she was one of the rescue tugs caught in the great storm of 19 June while towing the linked railroads (whales). Like all the others being towed that day, it broke up and sank.

  Empire Larch was also employed as a rescue tug. On the afternoon of 24 September, she left Lee-on-Solent to tow in LCT 651 but failed to find it. Instead, she found the stern half of another LCT (883), whose commanding officer requested he and his crew be taken off as the weather was so bad he felt the LCT was in danger of foundering. The crew of fourteen was taken aboard, and as one of them was injured, Empire Larch returned to Portsmouth. She arrived there in the early hours of 25 September, the injured man was transferred to an ambulance boat, and the rest of the crew was landed.

  Empire Larch sailed again immediately to bring in the bow of LCT 883, which had been found by Empire Aid, but she had fouled her propeller while connecting to the LCT, so Empire Larch took both in tow. After anchoring Empire Aid off the Isle of Wight, Empire Larch took the bows of LCT 883 to Stokes Bay. She then returned to pick up Empire Aid, but found she had already been towed away, so Empire Larch returned again to the mainland, and at 10.00 on 26 September anchored off Lee.12 A busy forty-three hours or so, but probably not untypical.