Eagle at Taranto (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  Mark Ward flew Ethel in a wide, anti-clockwise circle with the other eight Swordfish, waiting his turn to land on. Eagle was steaming into wind at the centre of that circle. Ten miles ahead of her and tiny on the horizon were the two battleships, Warspite, Cunningham’s flagship, and Royal Sovereign, with their destroyer screens. Eight miles ahead of them, over the horizon and only marked by their smoke, was the British 7th Cruiser Squadron. The coast of Calabria, the toe of Italy, was less than a hundred miles away on this course.

  This had been his first torpedo attack, his first testing under fire, and he had failed. He had seen flak before when Eagle’s guns had opened up against Italian raiders and he had tried to imagine what it would be like at the receiving end. But the reality was immeasurably worse than any nightmare conjured up inside his head.

  This was the ninth of July, just a month after Italy’s entry into the war. In the course of that month France had been defeated and forced to seek an armistice. Britain was left to fight alone. The French ships in the Eastern Mediterranean, instead of sailing with Cunningham, now lay at Alexandria. They were neutral, disarmed with fuel oil discharged. Motionless, toothless hulks.

  Cunningham’s Mediterranean Fleet had sailed from Alexandria on the seventh to cover the passage of two convoys from Malta to Alexandria. The Italian Fleet had sailed also, from Taranto, to cover the passage of a convoy to Libya. Mussolini was building up his army there for an attack on Egypt, there was no doubt of that. On the morning of the eighth the British submarine Phoenix reported to Cunningham that an enemy force, including two battleships, was at sea. Now that force was between Cunningham’s Fleet and the coast of Calabria.

  This could be Cunningham’s chance to bring the Italians to action — if they were ready to fight, or could be forced into it. The Italian ships were faster than his and that speed advantage might allow them to escape. So just before noon the Swordfish had flown off to launch a torpedo attack in an attempt to cripple and slow the enemy battleships.

  Mark thought now, with bitter after-knowledge: Good idea, but putting it into practice was something else. If you knew the enemy was at point x at a certain time, steaming a certain course and speed, then you could work out an interception. But if the enemy changed his course then the needle had slipped away to a different haystack. Mark and the other Swordfish had found not battleships but cruisers, smaller, leaner, quicker. They attacked them.

  The flak! Christ! The memory of that was horribly vivid. And of the ship he was attacking, seeming to wobble towards him because Ethel was skittering all over the place as he swerved her away from the tracers and the bursts of shell. He did not remember the drop although he knew he must have let the torpedo go, and he had no idea where it went. The rest was a jumble of pictures in his mind.

  Before they flew off, Tim Rogers, nervous, too cheerful and unable to stop talking, had asked, “D’you suppose it’ll be like the practice- runs?”

  “No,” Mark answered. It was a silly question, jerked out from apprehension: they both knew nobody fired at you on a practice attack. But he too wondered what it would be like.

  Now he knew.

  He banked Ethel to bring her in over the round-down of Eagle’s stern, watching the batsman standing on the port quarter. He held the bats, like big table-tennis bats, half out from his side, straight-armed and pointing down at the deck. Mark obeyed the signal “too high”, and eased the stick forward, brought Ethel down. He was still in that state of numb unreality which had gripped him in the attack, felt that somebody else was moving his hands and feet, flying Ethel for him.

  The bats were lifted above the shoulders now, the arms making a V: “O.K.” Ethel slid over the round-down and the bats whipped down to be crossed in front of the batsman: “Cut!” Mark set her down. It was not a bad landing, but stiff, wooden. The hook dangling under Ethel caught on the arrester wire and brought her to a halt. He stopped the engine and the deck-handling party ran in, swarmed around the Swordfish and rolled her to the forward lift.

  Laurel was there, eyes scanning Ethel for signs of damage then looking up to the forward cockpit. “Did she do all right, sir?” Hardy’s fat, round face peered sweating over Laurel’s shoulder. Both wore stained overalls in striking contrast to Ward’s khaki flying overalls.

  He answered, “Fine, thanks.” He saw them grin then he unclipped his harness and climbed down Ethel’s high side to the deck, edged through the crowd to stand clear of it on Eagle’s starboard side. He waited there for Tim Rogers, his observer, and looked back along the flight-deck, watching the next Swordfish lining up to land on. All the squadron had got home, anyway.

  He had been in Eagle for little more than a month but already thought of her as home and a fine, old, happy ship. He and Tim had joined her together as replacements in late May. There were always replacements. Even in peacetime there were crashes, aircraft sliding off the deck into the catwalk alongside — or the sea. In their month they had been coached by the senior pilots and observers, having the rough edges of their inexperience rubbed off patiently but remorselessly. And Mark had worked on creating his team. Rogers and Campbell, Laurel and Hardy, they knew more of each other now and of Mark, the man up front. There was mutual respect, cohesion, some trust and a little affection. Though they still had some way to go.

  Eagle had been laid down on the Tyne as a battleship, Almirante Cochrane, for the Chilean Navy but she was still on the stocks when the First World War broke out and the Admiralty bought her. They eventually completed her as an aircraft-carrier but her origins still showed in the battleship bow; there was no round-down forward and the long rectangle of the flight-deck ended sheer over the bow. At the outbreak of this war she was on the China station and only joined Cunningham in May after a tour of duty in the Indian Ocean.

  He needed her. She was the only aircraft-carrier in the Eastern Mediterranean. Eagle carried eighteen Swordfish in two squadrons, and three Gladiator fighters. Mark could see the latter ranged on the starboard side, aft of the island. Keighley-Peach, the Commander (Flying), had got them out of store in Malta. He was a former fighter pilot and had trained four of the Swordfish pilots to fly the others. They were the only fighter cover the Fleet had once it sailed, as it had now, out of range of the Egyptian bases of the R. A. F. — who were desperately short of fighters, anyway.

  Tim Rogers came over now, carrying the bag that held his chartboard and instruments. As observer he was also navigator, and in the last month had proved he was a good one. A year before he had been training as an accountant. He was a slight young man, his head barely reaching Mark’s shoulder. He pulled off his leather flying-helmet and the wind snatched at his sandy hair, ruffling it. He was normally cheerful, talkative, but he did not speak now.

  Doug Campbell joined them. Ethel was struck down to the hangar deck below, to be refuelled, serviced, brought up to the flight-deck again later, ranged aft and rearmed.

  Tim Rogers broke his silence to voice Mark’s thought: “We’ll have to go again.”

  Mark turned and started aft along the starboard side, Rogers on one side of him, Campbell on the other and a half pace behind. Eagle was still steaming into the wind at twenty knots to land on and fly off Swordfish and the gale sweeping in over the bow thrust at the backs of the three of them.

  Campbell looked shorter than Rogers but was not; it was simply that his broad shoulders gave him a stocky look. He was a regular, as much a seaman as any of those working the ship, had joined the Navy as a boy and was rated able-bodied before he took the course for T. A.G., Telegraphist Air Gunner. When he was ordered to join Ward and Rogers he was wary of flying with officers he regarded as amateurs. He did not say so, of course, but Ward knew. Campbell was a stoical young man, with his share of imagination, but not given to worrying over things he could do nothing about. He knew his job and did it, expected Ward and Rogers to do the same.

  This had also been his first real torpedo attack and he had known fear, but now he was ready for his midday meal: a bi
t of beef and veg with a figgy duff after and this time the cook might ha’ put a few more raisins in that flamin’ pudden. Rogers was saying nothing for once and that big Ward had a face like thunder. What was the matter wi’ the pair o’ them? Had they been expecting to sink the whole bloody Eyetie Fleet on their first torpedo attack? The morale of young officers was none of his business. Still — “Went all right, sir, didn’t it? Pity we didn’t get a hit but there weren’t enough of us. Don’t think anybody else scored.”

  He shouted it, but a Swordfish was flying off, engine bellowing, on anti-submarine patrol, and the two officers, sunk in thought, did not hear him. They turned into the island then, headed for debriefing, and Campbell thought, To hell with it. They’ll feel better when they’ve had something to eat.

  He went below, dodging around a canvas sack hung in the companion where it took a cooling breeze. The sack was beaded with moisture and held water for drinking. Eagle was an old ship and there were no refrigerators or ice-boxes aboard her. And because she was old her condensers could not purify enough sea water and after a few days at sea the supply of water for washing was restricted. These were facts of life and Doug Campbell accepted them, as he did the rats and cockroaches that infested the mess decks. The messes were scrupulously clean, scrubbed out daily, but the rats and roaches waited to come out at night.

  Tim Rogers’ words echoed in Mark’s mind all through debriefing. He felt the little he could remember added nothing to the picture the debriefing officer was trying to put together. Tim seemed to recollect more but he did not know where their torpedo had gone, either. There was no question of claiming a hit.

  “We’ll have to go again.”

  They ate lunch in the wardroom and Mark found to his surprise that he was hungry. Afterwards he lounged in an armchair with a cup of coffee. Tim was relaxing, returning to normal as the horror of the morning receded to the back of his mind. He talked idly, steadily, and Mark only had to interject a grunt here and there. His silence was not noticed because he was given to bouts of it. If he had nothing to say he kept quiet. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the piano. He hoped to God they wouldn’t ask him to play. He knew his hands would be all over the place, stiff-fingered, jerky, clumsy. But no one suggested it. At his best he was an indifferent pianist and wished he could play like Charlie Kunz. Now there was a man with the touch. Mark had often listened on the radio to Charlie, who had sometimes played one of his compositions. That was always a great feeling.

  He wondered: What the hell am I doing here? Why was he flying a Swordfish on torpedo strikes?

  He supposed because of Danny Soloman.

  He had always known he had some musical talent, but not the kind his mother hoped would blossom into a brilliant concert career. Still, to please her and because there was nothing else he wanted to do, he had enrolled as a student at the Royal College of Music in 1935 when he was seventeen. Most of the students, like him, were paying fees of fifty pounds a year and were supported by their families. Mark lived in lodgings in South Kensington near to the College and his father, managing director of a firm producing car components, allowed him two hundred pounds a year. He lived comfortably, worked hard, conscientiously, and un-spectacularly for two years. At the end of that time he was no better than an average student of composition, but he had discovered he could write songs, catchy little tunes he would never dare to play inside the august walls of the College.

  He was playing and singing some of these in a pub off the Charing Cross Road in the spring of 1937, not professionally, because he was a mediocre pianist by pub standards, and a terrible singer, but to entertain a group of friends, and Danny Soloman had cornered him after he had finished playing. Danny was dark, dapper in a good suit, and wore a regimental tie to which he was entitled; he had served more than a year, from 1916-17, on the Western Front and still had shrapnel in his leg.

  He asked Mark, “Where did you get those songs?”

  “I knocked them out myself.” Mark was defensive because he knew the songs were lightweight affairs, but he could write what he liked and thought it was none of this little man’s business. He was wrong.

  Danny asked, “Hawked ‘em around?”

  “What?”

  “Have you tried to sell ‘em?”

  “No, I just play —”

  “Written ‘em down?”

  “No, I haven’t —”

  “Can you score music?”

  Mark resented the barrage of questions and particularly this last. He answered stiffly, “I’m a student at the Royal College of Music.”

  “That’s not an answer.” But Danny grinned to take the sting out of that. “So you can score and do arrangements?”

  “Yes. But what do you —”

  “You write them down. I’m the professional manager of a music publishing house. That means I meet the professional entertainers and find songs that are right for them. I’ll get a chap I know to put some lyrics to your tunes and I’ll sell them.”

  “They’ve got words. Didn’t you hear —”

  “Rubbish,” Danny grimaced. “Mind you, most lyrics are rubbish these days but there’s rubbish that sells and rubbish that doesn’t. So — are you on?”

  Mark was unready, not sure what to make of this offer. “It’s awfully kind of you —”

  “No, it isn’t. It would be if I wasn’t taking fifty per cent for the house, but I am, so it’s business.”

  Now Mark suspected exploitation and burst out, “You want fifty per cent?”

  Danny chuckled. “Think you’re being taken for a mug? Those terms are usual. The house has expenses and we work for you. Ask people in the business if you don’t believe me.”

  Mark looked him in the eye, then nodded. “I believe you. It just seemed a lot.”

  Danny said patiently, “Now look here, son. How much have you made out of these songs so far?”

  “Well — nothing.”

  “So who wants fifty per cent of nothing? Are you on?” Danny held out his hand.

  Mark took it, laughing down at him. “All right, I’m on.”

  But he had still been doubtful, not of Danny’s terms but of his own confidence. Ward wrote down his songs, hoping for a few pounds but expecting nothing. Danny had lyrics written for them, and titles using words like love, June, moon, forever, good-bye, heartbreak, happiness. He sold them, and asked for more. He was scrupulously honest and paid Ward’s royalties on the nail. Mark was suddenly wealthy beyond his wildest dreams; he was only nineteen. He did not become rich overnight but he ran a little M.G. sports car on his earnings — and he learned to fly.

  One weekend he had motored down to Brooklands to watch the big racing cars hurtle round the banked circuit and he saw the flying training in the aerodrome inside the circuit. He knew at once that this was something he wanted to do, and now he could afford it. In the course of two happy weeks in the summer vacation he took eight hours of dual instruction on a De Havilland Moth and then went solo. It cost him thirty pounds, at a time when five pounds a week was a good wage. By the end of the fortnight he had his “A” licence as a private pilot — and hungered for more.

  He continued at the Royal College of Music, worked as hard as before and only achieved the same standard of passable mediocrity. He did not mind because he always did his best and he was enjoying life. The songs were bringing in three or four hundred a year on top of the two hundred his father allowed him, and he had all the money he needed. There were parties and girls, his M.G. — and flying. It had been a fine life while it lasted.

  He looked around the wardroom at the other young officers, wondered what Danny would say if he saw him now, and grinned. His reaction would not be sympathetic. More likely: “There’s no percentage in mooning over this morning’s balls-up. That’s past. This is now, when you’ve got to earn your money. Didn’t they teach you anything at that fancy school?”

  Yes, they did. One or two things.

  He had to do better next time.


  He walked out of the debriefing in the island and aft along the flight-deck past the big crane for hoisting seaplanes in and out. His heart was thumping.

  In a torpedo attack you flew into the muzzles of the enemy guns like a man walking towards a firing squad. To have any hope of scoring a hit you had to release the torpedo when flying straight and level and at some thirty to sixty feet above the sea. At any greater height it was probable the torpedo would enter the sea at too acute an angle, dive too deep and be lost. But when you flew straight and level like that you set yourself up to be shot at. For the enemy guns it was easy as a clay pigeon shoot. The attack was best made on the beam so the whole length of the ship offered itself as a target. This also meant that all the heavy artillery on the broadside of the ship — a maximum concentration of its armament — could be fired at the attacking aircraft. And Mark knew now what that was like.

  Tim came trotting behind him, hurrying to catch up. He fell into step alongside, the bag holding his chartboard tucked under his arm. He panted, “Do you think Cunningham’s caught them?” He was talking of the Italian Fleet.

  Mark stared out to the westward, where Warspite with Cunningham aboard, and the rest of the Fleet, were out of sight over the horizon — and in action. Eagle was steaming independently with only her escorting destroyers, Vampire and Voyager for company — and the partially disabled cruiser Gloucester.

  Mark said, “Maybe they’re hoping to catch us. We’re getting close to their airfields.” The Fleet had been bombed repeatedly by the Italian air force. Gloucester had taken a hit on her bridge that killed her captain and a score of other officers and men. It had also smashed her director control so, with her steering and her guns controlled only from the emergency station aft, she was pulled out of the line and sent to join Eagle. Now Warspite and the cruisers were engaging the enemy but they were fighting in an area not of their choosing, right in the Italian backyard. Was this an attempt to lure Cunningham into a trap to be sprung by submarines and bombers from the mainland?