Warspite

by Iain Ballantyne

  But, in the aftermath of Pearl anything seemed possible. Japanese carriers could be lurking off Bremerton at that precise moment. The Warspite, the American battleship USS Colorado, which was under refit, and some destroyers provided the only defence against air-attack Puget Sound Naval Yard had.

  Warspite’s gun crews were sent to Action Stations but didn’t have any ammunition for their weapons so a truck went off at top speed to get some from a nearby bunker. After a short while it was realized no air attacks were developing, or likely to, so Warspite’s gunners were stood down. Next day Warspite’s 600 new sailors and marines came aboard and Reg Foster was very impressed with his new ship:

  When I saw her in the dockyard I thought ‘they will never sink that thing’. Everybody who served aboard the Warspite thought her the finest ship in the Navy.

  However, not every newcomer was seduced by the sight of the Warspite. One matelot decided to slip away and visit a mate.

  I went down to Modesto, California, without asking of course, and hitch-hiked there only to find the people were not in. After a few days of roaming I was picked up by the Police and, as I had no ID, thrown in jail. In order to get out I wrote to the British Consul in San Franciso. They contacted Warspite on Boxing Day and the ship kindly despatched three lucky Royal Marines, including one burly Sergeant, to escort me back. After putting me on my honour not to escape I was more or less on my own, but during several train stops, I had to help the Sergeant round up the two marines. On arrival back aboard I had to crash down in the cell flat, as there was no room in the cells thanks to all the other miscreants.8

  The battlecruiser HMS Repulse pictured shortly before leaving for the Far East, where she was sunk on 10 December 1941, off Malaya while in company with the battleship HMS Prince of Wales. Goodman Collection

  The new King George V Class battleship HMS Prince of Wales, pictured in 1941 shortly before being sunk off Malaya by the Japanese. The loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse was a dark moment for the Warspite’s crew as they neared the end of their refit at Bremerton and prepared to sail into action against the Japanese. Goodman Collection.

  While Warspite’s AWOL sailors received their punishment, spurred on by their country’s brutal forced entry into the war, the naval yard workers worked ever harder to get the battleship ready for sea. Puget Sound’s facilities might be needed at any moment for damaged American warships.

  Three days after Pearl Harbor was blitzed, the brand new British battleship HMS Prince of Wales, and the old battlecruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by Japanese aircraft off Malaya.

  HMS Warspite under repair at Puget Sound Navy Yard. US Naval Historical Center.

  A US Navy destroyer is battered by heavy weather off the west coast of the USA as she escorts the Warspite during final gunnery trials before the British battleship headed west across the Pacific to rejoin the war. Specially commissioned painting by Dennis C. Andrews.

  It was a devastating demonstration of how vulnerable capital ships could be to air attack. The crew of Warspite were deeply shocked by the loss of the two British warships. Ken Smith remembered:

  The American papers had these screaming headlines about it and it was all over the radio. When you are young you are gung-ho and your attitude is ‘right let’s go and get them and sort them out’. But the loss of these two ships sort of brought home the fact that war is not quite that simple, that it is a serious business in which the enemy is not to be taken lightly. You have to remember this was in the days of the British Empire which really meant something. But this was the end of it really. Perceptions were changed by the sinking of those two ships. The Royal Navy which protected that empire for so long was not invulnerable.

  It was because of the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales that we suddenly had a lot more Oerlikons put on the Warspite. We realized how vulnerable a battleship might be to aircraft.

  Warspite recommissioned on 28 December 1941, and prepared to leave her American friends behind. On 7 January, exactly one month after the raid on Pearl Harbor, she set sail for Vancouver. The Warspite remained in North American waters for nearly three weeks more, carrying out sea trials under close anti-submarine escort from Canadian and American warships. Their worst enemy turned out to be dreadful weather which made life very unpleasant.

  The Warspite next headed south alone, staying close to the coasts of California and Mexico to minimize the submarine threat, then headed south-west across the Pacific. She indulged in the usual ceremonies of ‘crossing the line’ on 1 February 1942, just a week before the Japanese began their assault on the British naval bastion of Singapore.

  Out in the vastness of the Pacific it was easy for someone to be lost overboard as Able Seaman Banks recalled:

  It was one of those beautiful tropical evenings that one reads about in romantic novels – the seas calm, the stars brilliant and the air warm. Most of us were on the upper deck enjoying the evening breeze when suddenly there was a shout of ‘Man Overboard!’ There was an immediate dash for the lifeboat, by those who happened to be nearest, to await the order ‘away lifeboat crew’. Our Captain had to make a very big decision. For we were without any kind of anti-submarine screen. There was no hesitation on the Captain’s part. The ship was stopped and the lifeboat duly lowered, but after a search lasting over an hour we could find no trace of the unfortunate man. We were all aware that these were shark infested waters and therefore knew there would be little hope of picking him up.

  Traditional ‘Crossing the Line’ ceremony aboard HMS Warspite, 1 February 1942. K. Smith Collection.

  HMS Warspite cruises across the vast Pacific headed for Australia, early 1942. K. Smith Collection

  Meanwhile new boy Royal Marine Ken Smith was getting used to life at sea.

  The marines did all sorts of jobs. We manned Y turret of the main 15-inch armament which was unusual as normally aboard a battleship it was X turret for the Royals. We also manned the starboard 4-inch and 6-inch guns and some of the Oerlikons. I was on S3 on the starboard 6-inch guns. That was my usual action station. I was the rammer. These were 1914 pattern guns and I used a hand rammer like a big mop in a bucket. That is how antiquated the 6-inch guns were despite the Warspite getting that modernization before the war. The Valiant and the Queen Elizabeth came later and got the automatic 5.2 inch guns. Meanwhile our 6-inch guns were useless.

  Admiral Sir James Somerville. K. Smith Collection.

  On 20 February, five days after the Japanese raised their flag over Singapore on taking the surrender of 70,000 British and Australian troops, Warspite reached Sydney. Local people showed commendable hospitality during Warspite’s time in port, despite being justifiably angry at Britain’s incompetent squandering of Australian troops at Singapore when their country was under threat of invasion. The Captain warned his crew to be on their best behaviour during shore leave.

  Loading 15-inch shells aboard HMS Warspite in the tropics. K. Smith Collection.

  Ken Smith recalled:

  It was a grim time – Singapore had just fallen and the Japanese were rampaging everywhere. We didn’t know what was happening to us and where we would go. I don’t think they had decided. The whole idea of sending a battleship without proper air cover anywhere near the Japanese was not on. It was a bit of a humiliating time really. The Aussies did feel let down but on the whole they treated us pretty well. In those days the Australian bars opened at six in the morning and closed at six at night so you can imagine people were well entertained. The defaulters line aboard ship was certainly long. I wasn’t much of a drinker so I went to the cricket and also sight-seeing.

  Among those who joined the battleship at Sydney, having come out with a new draft from the United Kingdom, was Ordnance Artificer Charlie Pearson who was assigned to A turret.

  After gunnery practice off Sydney Warspite was destined to call at Fremantle but reports of Japanese submarine activity in the area meant she diverted to a safe anchorage near Adelaide.

  The cruiser HMA
S Sydney had been sunk the previous November and no one knew how at that time. In reality she had been in action with a German raider and both vessels had gone down, but before those facts became clear it was feared Japanese submarines had struck.

  Warspite was eventually ordered to join the Eastern Fleet at Ceylon and arrived at Trincomalee in mid-March where she piped aboard one of her former captains to raise his Admiral’s flag in her for one of the most frustrating, and dangerous, moments of the Second World War.

  Shadow Boxing With Nagumo

  Continuing heavy losses in the Mediterranean, and the need to keep the most modern and powerful fighting units in home waters to guard against the German threat, deprived the Royal Navy of forces to put together an effective fighting fleet in the Far East.

  Hence the Eastern Fleet under Admiral Sir James Somerville was a vulnerable collection of vessels, with the exception of his flagship, HMS Warspite. The Americans – still reeling from the shock of Pearl Harbor which had for the moment removed most of their Pacific fleet from the scene – were temporarily of no assistance. The Japanese seemed to be on the brink of invading Australia and adding Burma and India to their long list of conquests. As the Warspite arrived in the Indian Ocean, the Imperial Japanese Navy was not far behind her, surging forward to put to the sword the last significant naval force that could stand in the way of further conquest – the Royal Navy’s Eastern Fleet.

  Inadequate though it was, never has the preservation of a ‘fleet in being’ been more vital – for to have handed the enemy complete and undisputed control of the seas could only have made Burma and India more open to the rapidly advancing Japanese armies than they already were. Destruction of the Eastern Fleet would secure the flanks of fresh Japanese conquests in south-east Asia.

  And, if the whole of Burma and then India fell, and the Japanese moved even further west, they would be in a superb position to cut the convoy route up the eastern coast of Africa.

  Admiral Somerville had commanded the Royal Navy’s Gibraltar-based Force H and earned a formidable reputation fighting his way through to Malta while escorting badly needed convoys. But, when he was handed the job of heading a new Eastern Fleet, Somerville knew he was getting an inadequate force. With the Prince of Wales and the Repulse he might have felt more optimistic, but Winston Churchill’s unwise sacrifice of the ships in defence of Singapore and Malaya had deprived him of that sliver of hope. The fleet he commanded was not only fatally hampered by lack of adequate carrier air groups with which to counter the Japanese superiority, the bulk of his battleships were deeply inadequate Royal Sovereign Class vessels. Somerville had no choice but to divide the Eastern Fleet into two forces, to try and give some cohesion to any moves in response to the Japanese thrust. Force A (the faster ships) was composed of HMS Warspite, the carriers HMS Indomitable and Formidable plus the heavy cruisers Dorsetshire, Cornwall, light cruisers Emerald and Enterprise and six destroyers.

  HMS Warspite’s Walrus amphibian aircraft alongside the battleship, with HMS Formidable in the background. K. Smith Collection.

  Commander Charles Madden (left), chatting with Captain F.E.P. Hutton who commanded Warspite during her time with the Eastern Fleet, March 1942-March 1943. Foster Collection.

  Admiral Somerville in conversation (centre). K. Smith Collection.

  The Royal Sovereign Class battleship HMS Resolution, one of four inadequate R Class capital ships tasked with taking on the Japanese in April 1942 while under the flag of Admiral Somerville. K. Smith Collection.

  Force B (the slower vessels) was led by the four R Class battleships Resolution, Ramillies, Royal Sovereign and Revenge, plus the carrier Hermes, the light cruisers Caledon, Dragon and Heemskerck plus eight destroyers. The British carriers could only muster forty fleet fighters and around sixty torpedo bombers combined. In addition to flying machines that were inferior to Japanese naval aircraft, many of the British aircrews were very inexperienced and simply not up to combat standard.

  One valuable addition to Somerville’s team was Commander William Lamb. He had volunteered that March to become Fleet AA Officer for the Eastern Fleet, as his way of avoiding a desk job in Britain.

  I had embarked on an Imperial Airways flying boat in Alexandria and flew out via the Sea of Galilee and the Gulf to Karachi and then via Indian Airlines to Bombay. It was slightly strange that I should find myself in exactly the same place as I had been in Warspite in the Med, in the same little corner that I used when I was at sea there. However, following the battleship’s big refit in the USA, it had been buffed up into a real cabin that was allocated to me.

  At the time Commander Lamb rejoined the Warspite, Somerville’s nominal fleet was still scattered and time to concentrate was fast running out.

  Commander Lamb:

  There had been intelligence the Japanese were planning some sort of raid or foray into the Indian Ocean and we felt we had very little time to get ourselves in a fit state to meet them. The Warspite was at Bombay, the four R Class battleships were coming around the Cape to join, and the aircraft carriers, which had been occupied ferrying aircraft into Singapore for defence, had no recent combat action to ready them to defend the fleet. About a week after I arrived in Bombay the Warspite sailed and rendezvoused with this fleet. On paper it was most impressive. But in fact, when we finally all met up at sea, Admiral Somerville had not even had an opportunity to meet his captains or more junior admirals before undertaking the fleet’s first operation.

  The Japanese carrier Hiryu, one of the vessels hunting for the Warspite and the Eastern Fleet, April 1942. US Naval Historical Center,

  Japanese Zero fighters outclassed the aircraft of the Eastern Fleet. US Naval Historical Center,

  Colombo Harbour before the Japanese raid. K. Smith Collection.

  The Japanese Carrier Striking Force sent into the Indian Ocean was under the command of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. His five major vessels – Akagi, Soryu, Hiryu, Zuikaku, Shokaku – and the aviators they carried, were the elite of the Japanese Navy, having carried out the raids on Pearl Harbor and Darwin in northern Australia. Nagumo’s carriers could launch over 100 Zero fighters, plus 240 bombers and torpedo bombers.

  View over the forward guns of HMS Warspite in the Indian Ocean in the, summer of 1942. K. Smith Collection.

  The cruiser HMS Exeter, another Devonport-built warship, which was not as lucky as Warspite in avoiding the rampaging Japanese. Exeter was sunk in March 1942. Photo: Strathdee Collection.

  The squadron of battleships which escorted the carrier force –Kongo, Hiei, Kirishima and Haruna – were equally as old as the British battlewagons but, crucially, had all received extensive modernization. Meanwhile Vice Admiral J. Ozawa with the light carrier Ryujo and five heavy cruisers was prowling in the Bay of Bengal to attack merchant shipping.

  On 28 March – the first anniversary of the victory at Matapan – Admiral Somerville received further intelligence reports which confirmed powerful Japanese naval forces were heading his way and air strikes on Ceylon were highly likely. His two main bases of Colombo and Trincomalee would therefore be untenable. Somerville had at least managed to find a secret and secure base for his fleet 600 miles to the south-west of Ceylon at Addu Atoll in the Maldives. It was not the most attractive of bases, but it had the benefit of being so obscure it was unlikely the Japanese would ever find it.

  While he steamed south with Force A, the other half of Somerville’s force steamed north from Addu and they met up eighty miles off Ceylon on 31 March.

  HMS Indomitable, one of two modern carriers with the Eastern Fleet in April 1942. K. Smith Collection.

  Caught on its own, Force A might have put up a brave fight but Warspite and her carriers would soon have gone to the bottom. Allowing Force B to come anywhere near the Japanese would have been sheer murder – the four R Class battleships were slow, their guns lacked range, their deck armour was too thin to resist bombs and they guzzled water and fuel at an alarming rate. Yet Somerville was still trying to wield t
his force in a deterrent fashion, praying that under cover of darkness he might skirt close enough to the rapidly approaching Japanese to launch a torpedo bomber attack. One of Commander Lamb’s first jobs on Warspite was to draft AA gunnery policies, bearing in mind friendly aircraft from the Eastern Fleet’s own carriers would be flying in close proximity. He said: ‘This had to be done on one sheet of foolscap and signalled visually to the fleet as we did not wish to break radio silence.’ By 2 April, with no sign as yet of the Japanese, and with the R Class ships needing to refuel and take on water, the whole fleet withdrew to Addu. On seeing it for the first time Ordnance Artificer Pearson felt he would willingly let the enemy occupy Addu in exchange for leaving Ceylon alone. ‘It was a dreadful desolate place. Nothing there, barren as anything. Some people called it “Scapa with palm trees”.’

  HMS Warspite cruising in the Indian Ocean in 1942, while flagship of the Eastern Fleet. C. Pearson Collection.