Warspite

by Iain Ballantyne

  27 Cunningham, A Sailor’s Odyssey.

  Chapter Eight

  DESPERATE HOURS

  Suicide Run to Tripoli

  The crushing victory over the Italians at Matapan was a rare shining moment for Britain. German military success more than made up for the lacklustre performance of the Italians. From the Arctic to the Pyrenees the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe had, with the exception of the Battle of Britain, ultimately outclassed British forces and the Kriegsmarine was making life very difficult for the Royal Navy.

  As far as the British Mediterranean Fleet was concerned the most worrying development was the arrival of the German-led Afrika Korps in Libya and the appearance of the Luftwaffe’s ace flyers.

  Cunningham had lost one of his carriers – HMS Eagle went home via the Suez Canal on 13 April – and his fleet was stretched covering supply convoys to Malta and conveying troops and supplies to Greece.

  At the beginning of April 1941, Rommel’s Afrika Korps steamrollered the British Army of the Nile back to the Egyptian frontier – Alexandria, the Suez Canal and Cairo itself were directly threatened. If this wasn’t bad enough, the Admiralty, prompted by Prime Minister and Defence Minister Winston Churchill in one of his madder moments, now came up with a truly desperate idea. Admiral Cunningham viewed it as insanity of the highest order.

  The old battleship hulk Centurion was put forward as a block ship for a suicide mission against Tripoli, but when she could not reach the Mediterranean in time it was suggested to Admiral Cunningham that he should prepare to sacrifice the key striking elements of his battle fleet - Barham, Warspite and Valiant. Goodman Collection.

  It was suggested HMS Barham should be sacrificed on a suicide mission to block the enemy’s major supply terminal at Tripoli. Losing the elderly and unmodernized Barham as a block ship was bad enough, but the Admiralty’s bright idea might also mean the suicide of Warspite or Valiant. The mission would mean sailing close to an enemy shore to carry out a bombardment and Tripoli was naturally heavily defended by both shore-based batteries of guns and airpower. Cunningham commented: ‘...I considered the risk to the ships to be completely unjustified.’1 The thought that soon all available ships would be needed to sustain, or evacuate, British and Commonwealth troops in Greece was probably foremost in his mind. Cunningham refused to use Barham as a block ship, but bowed to pressure for the bombardment. Only if Warspite, Valiant or Barham, were badly damaged – as was highly likely – would he then be prepared to send the fatally wounded ship in to block Tripoli harbour.

  On 18 April the fleet left Alexandria, ostensibly on a convoy escort mission. In addition to three battleships it also included Formidable, the cruisers Phoebe and Calcutta plus an oiler and escorting destroyers. By the early hours of 21 April the fleet was close in shore, four destroyers with minesweeping gear leading the way. They turned onto their bombardment heading around a navigation light on the periscope of the submerged submarine HMS Truant. Cunningham paints an evocative picture of this moment:

  The silence was only broken by the rippling sound of our bow waves, the wheeze of air pumps, and the muffled twitter of a boatswain’s pipe on the Warspite’s mess deck.2

  As they approached, an air raid by Wellington bombers from Malta marked Tripoli with fire and aircraft from Formidable showered the port in illumination flares at 5.00a.m. Joining the other aircraft aloft over the port was Warspite’s Swordfish spotting the fleet’s fall of shot.

  The gunners on the battleships found it difficult to make out targets clearly for not only was light bad, but, once the firing started, the smoke, dust and debris obscured Tripoli rather well. Enemy anti-aircraft fire laced the sky but shore batteries were slow to respond, only waking up when the British battleships were coming back for their second bombardment run.

  Despite firing hundreds of 15-inch and 6-inch shells, the Tripoli bombardment only sank one supply ship, damaged a couple of others and crippled a small warship. The port facilities easily survived the bombardment and within two days were running again. The British fleet managed to avoid any damage on the way back from this dubious mission. Despite Cunningham’s fears, aside from a trio of marauding Ju88s set upon by Formidable’s Fulmars, there were no air attacks. Cunningham knew the impact of his bombardment would be limited – he had been a destroyer commander in the Dardanelles during the First World War where he had seen far more intensive shelling of shore positions fail.

  The Admiral believed an intensive bombing campaign by the RAF, similar to the raids inflicted at that time on Germany’s Baltic ports, would have been more successful. But very few air assets were being sent to the Mediterranean and lack of fighter aircraft overhead would soon leave the Royal Navy at the mercy of Germany’s dive bombers off Greece and Crete.

  Catastrophe off Crete

  Now came Britain’s darkest hour in the Mediterranean and the Royal Navy’s most severe test. The power of aircraft had already been amply demonstrated by the British in the waters of Norway and against the Italians. The Germans, whose flying machines were more capable than the Royal Navy’s Albacores and Swordfish or the Italian bombers, would be given almost a free hand against Cunningham’s fleet. The Luftwaffe aviators who would inflict so much pain on the British, belonged to Fliegerkorps X and VIII, with 228 bombers, 205 dive-bombers and 233 single-engined and twin-engined fighters plus fifty recce aircraft.

  It took a month for the Germans to occupy the whole of Greece and now they had the island of Crete in their sights. It would make an excellent jumping off point for air operations against Egypt as Rommel’s forces smashed their way to victory on land. Having taken vital elements of the Army of the Nile across to Greece, sapping its strength as the Afrika Korps made its dynamic thrust for Suez, the Royal Navy now had to bring the bulk of those 51,000 troops back to avoid their capture. The Mediterranean Fleet also transported 16,000 British, Australian and New Zealand troops to Crete as its garrison.

  The Germans planned their move on the island for 20 May via a massive airborne assault. An attempt to mount an amphibious attack would also be made, although the Germans had no specialized shipping to do this, or experience in such operations. The Royal Navy’s task would be to prevent the Germans mounting their seaborne invasion. The evacuation of Crete’s defenders was also a possibility.

  The Germans suffered dreadful casualties in their airborne assault and made little headway initially. But still they came and, once paratroopers managed to capture the airfield at Maleme, troops poured in on Junkers transporters. The plight of Crete’s defenders became increasingly desperate. The Royal Navy was successful in preventing the Germans from getting any forces through by sea but was obviously unable to break the air bridge.

  The injuries suffered by the Royal Navy in defending the island and its evacuation were dreadful. Between 21 May and 1 June three cruisers, Gloucester, Calcutta and Fiji, and six destroyers, including Kashmir and Kelly of Mountbatten’s squadron, were sunk. Two battleships, Warspite on 22 May and Barham on 27 May, a carrier, HMS Formidable, five cruisers and five destroyers were badly damaged. Two thousand sailors were killed.

  HMS Formidable arrives at Suda Bay. Sutherland Collection.

  HMS Warspite at anchor in Suda Bay. Sutherland Collection.

  As German bombers attack, the fleet leaves Suda Bay. Sutherland Collection.

  Warspite did not have her lucky admiral aboard for her traumas off Crete. Cunningham had temporarily moved his headquarters ashore so he could more closely co-ordinate operations with other service commanders. The battleship also nearly sent Marine Arthur Jones back to Britain.

  The cruiser HMS Gloucester. Part of Warspite’s protective screen at Calabria and Matapan, she was sunk in controversial circumstances not far from the battleship during the battle for Crete in May 1941. Goodman Collection.

  HMS Valiant seen from Warspite as they cruise off Crete in May 1941. Sutherland Collection.

  I was on draft to come home. I had packed my kit bag and was getting ready to leave when I
was told, ‘Sorry, it’s not going to happen’. We were going back out into it.

  Warspite set sail as flagship of the 1st Battle Squadron, carrying Rear Admiral H.B. Rawlings. The day she was hit, the Warspite was about 100 miles to the west of Crete, together with HMS Valiant, a cruiser and ten destroyers.

  During the evening of 21-22 May Warspite’s sailors watched as high above Luftwaffe Ju52 transporters stacked up and curved in to Crete. An attempt was made that night by the Germans to get troops through using a flotilla of small boats but it was easily thwarted.

  During daylight hours, however, the British warships were utterly at the mercy of the Luftwaffe. At shortly after 1.30p.m. on the afternoon of 22 May swarms of enemy aircraft descended on the Warspite from all angles, including a trio of Me109s, plunging out of the flak from a height of 800ft. Turning hard to port, Warspite managed to evade two bombs but a third hit on the starboard forecastle deck and caused immense damage.

  Jack Worth (with hat) and the rest of his pom-pom crew on HMS Warspite during a lull in the action off Crete. R.J. Worth Collection

  Seconds after being hit by a German bomb off Crete, Warspite disappears under a towering cloud of black smoke. This photo was taken from an escorting destroyer, with the silhouette of HMS Valiant visible astern of Warspite. Sutherland Collection.

  On his pom-pom anti-aircraft gun Jack Worth was perfectly placed to see the bomb hit:

  I remember looking forward from my position and seeing this Me109 diving towards us, and there was this chap on our B turret firing away at it with a machine gun. Then this blob came away from beneath the German plane and hurtled my way. It was a bomb and it got bigger and bigger and bigger. But it didn’t hit my position, it took out the 4-inch gun beneath me. I looked down, and really didn’t think much about it in the heat of the action, other than to mentally note that what had been there before was now gone, replaced by a gigantic hole and a mess of flames and wreckage.

  The semi-armour piercing 500lb bomb had blown the 4-inch gun overboard, ripped up nearly 100ft of the forecastle deck and sliced open fifty feet of the ship’s side. It caused a flash fire in the starboard 6-inch battery which was soon raging out of control, while flames and thick smoke invaded a boiler room via a ventilation shaft forcing it to be abandoned. Thirty-eight men, including an officer, were killed or would die later from wounds, and another thirty-one were wounded.

  Among the wounded was Marine Arthur Jones, the only survivor from his 6-inch gun crew in the starboard battery.

  To be honest I cannot remember too much about what happened. I know I was sitting in the 6-inch casemate reading How Green Was my Valley when the bomb hit. All the air was blown out of my lungs... I started running and my feet were on fire... I think I wasn’t killed because I wasn’t where I should have been, in the gun layer’s position. My mate the gun trainer was in his position and we never found his body. It might have been washed overboard, who knows. They were all my mates. There was nine of us on my gun crew. One survived. Me.

  Arthur Jones, pictured here, front row right, with other Royal Marines aboard HMS Warspite. A. Jones Collection.

  Anti-aircraft gunner Bill Page lost his best mate:

  My very best friend and shipmate Bill ‘Scouse’ Patterson had his action station on the 4-inch gun that was blown over the side. Both our birthdays were on that day and, before we had proceeded to our guns, we’d exchanged tots of grog and wished each other a very happy birthday. I had not been on my gun a minute when I heard a swishing noise and the bomb from the Me109 hit my pal’s gun. I am not ashamed to admit that tears rolled down my cheeks when I realized what a birthday it had been for my pal Bill.

  Inside X turret, Petty Officer Charles Hunter knew something serious had happened:

  When we got hit it rocked the turret. That bomb killed two friends of mine. One was a Regulating Petty Officer whose job at action stations was to go around making sure all the watertight doors were closed. When the bomb exploded he was right below it.

  Signalman Donald Auffret had clocked off after the forenoon watch and went down for a break in the Communications Ratings Mess. ‘I think I had a cold meal and then the bugle call for air attack was sounded.’ Signalman Auffret decided he’d rather be on the upper deck where he could see things coming. With the Germans using armour-piercing bombs it was no safer below decks. That reasoning was to save his life.

  I went to the upper deck and I sat underneath B turret. An officer poked his head out the turret and said: ‘What are you doing there?’I said: ‘I’m just taking some air sir.’He said: ‘Get down to your retire station’. I was actually climbing down through the armoured hatch into the mess deck when it exploded in there. I was blown out of it like a cork from a bottle, hit my head on a bulkhead and blacked out.

  A quarter of a century after Commander Walwyn rushed to the scene of damage inflicted on Warspite during Jutland, the current Executive Officer, Commander Charles Madden, led the battleship’s damage control teams into the same starboard battery. On reaching the scene, Commander Madden’s most urgent task was deploying sailors to tackle the raging fire. Hoses sprang to life and jets of water crisscrossed the battery. Screaming and moaning from their injured comrades tempted the firefighting teams to put down their hoses and administer morphine. Commander Madden ordered them to keep at it and went to the aid of the wounded and dying himself. When the flames had died down and the smoke cleared, appeals for more morphine were shouted up through the massive gash to sailors on the upper decks. Visible above the charnel house hell of the 6-inch battery was a blue sky speckled with in-coming swarms of German dive-bombers determined to show Warspite no mercy. As the enemy planes got larger and larger there was a surreal silence because the hit had knocked out most, if not all, anti-aircraft weapons on the battleship’s starboard side. But then the surviving weapons opened up and the din of battle was restored. Some of the sailors below in the starboard battery vented their feelings of outrage by shaking their fists at the German aircraft.

  The wounded were taken to messdecks and laid out to receive attention from the ship’s surgeon. One of them was Arthur Jones, rescued from the 6-inch battery:

  When I came around I didn’t know what was happening. My face, my hands and hair were burned. I had third degree burns. I can remember the Surgeon saying, ‘I’ll have him next’ and I suppose they lifted me onto a table for him to see whether or not I was worth saving. They gave us morphine so that must have had something to do with me not remembering.

  Commander Madden went to the starboard messdeck and was greeted with another horrifying sight – the overhead armoured deck had been peeled open by the explosion and the force of the blast had created carnage. Horribly burned sailors were strewn all over the place. Many of the Communications ratings off-watch had discarded their anti-flash protection, because it was so hot, and had therefore burned to death. Luckily water pouring through from overhead put out the fire.

  Signalman Auffret was just regaining consciousness:

  The next thing I remember they were opening doors and bringing the dead and the wounded through to the temporary sick bay they had made and I think that was the first time in the war I was really frightened. I only had shorts on and I felt so vulnerable.

  On the day Warspite was hit Cunningham had signalled his fleet: ‘Stick it out. Navy must not let Army down. No enemy forces must reach Crete by sea.’ This message hid the Admiral’s deep anger over warships being sent out to face a withering Luftwaffe onslaught naked of air protection. Removed from events by his need to stay on land, Cunningham endured mental torture.

  The official Certificate of Wounds and Hurts issued to Arthur Jones after Crete, and signed by the Warspite’s Executive Officer, Commander Charles Madden among others. It explains the nature of his injuries and how they were sustained. A. Jones Collection.

  Warspite’s company at a hospital in Alexandria after the battle for Crete. Petty Officer Wyles is back row left, wearing PO’s hat. Wyles Collection.
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  In my office ashore close to the war room where the positions of all our ships were plotted hour by hour on the large-scale chart, I came to dread every ring on the telephone, every knock on the door, and the arrival of each fresh signal. In something less than twelve hours of fighting against the unhampered Luftwaffe we had lost so much...3

  To Petty Officer Charles Hunter and others back aboard Warspite fell the task of committing the dead to the deep:

  As the newest and youngest Gunnery senior rate on the Warspite, I got the job of being in charge of honour guards and burial parties. It was not a pleasant duty but we did our best to give our shipmates a proper farewell.

  Having weathered so many heavy shell hits at Jutland in the May of 1916, it was a bitter irony that one bomb from a single enemy plane had done so much damage to the Warspite in May 1941. But, even though she was badly hurt, the Warspite managed to get back to Alexandria under her own steam by 24 May. That same day, far to the north in the Atlantic, the battlecruiser HMS Hood, which started life as a fast version of the Warspite, and served alongside her in the Mediterranean pre-war, was blown apart by the German battleship Bismarck. Three of her 1,400 crew survived. When would the bad news end? As the Royal Navy recoiled under this hammer blow, Warspite’s wounded were being off-loaded onto trains and taken to Cairo, a journey which did nothing for their condition. Among them was Arthur Jones: