Warspite

by Iain Ballantyne

  The Warspite’s Walrus launches in the Indian Ocean during 1942. C. Pearson Collection.

  Japanese aircraft failed to find HMS Warspite off Ceylon in April 1942, but sank HMS Hermes. Taylor Library.

  HMS Dorsetshire was sent to Colombo to resume a refit and Cornwall was ordered to accompany her and then escort a convoy. Hermes and the destroyer Vampire were ordered to Trincomalee to prepare for a mission to take the French island of Madagascar which it was feared might fall into Japanese hands. Somerville’s decision to send these elements of his force back to vulnerable ports about to be subjected to intense Japanese air attack was later to provoke severe criticism.

  On the afternoon of 4 April the Japanese carriers were spotted by an RAF Catalina flying boat. Force A set sail from Addu, intent on obtaining a position south of Ceylon to launch a night strike on the Japanese by 6 April, while Force B would follow after finishing replenishment. Somerville called Dorsetshire and Cornwall back to him from Colombo and Hermes was ordered to clear Trincomalee and seek protection by hiding out along the coastline of India. The Japanese launched their air attack against Colombo on the morning of 5 April. Among the casualties in harbour was the destroyer HMS Tenedos, the Armed Merchant Cruiser Hector and a merchant ship.

  Prayers in Warspite’s chapel for those lost on the Dorsetshire, Exeter and Hermes. K. Smith Collection.

  The Admiral’s barge comes back aboard the Warspite after a fleet conference afloat. K. Smith Collection.

  At 1.44p.m., HMS Warspite’s radar picked up a swarm of blips – these were Japanese planes in the final moments of sinking the cruisers Cornwall and Dorsetshire. The two British warships stood no chance as they were attacked by eighty-eight aircraft.

  A scouting aircraft from the Japanese cruiser Tone was also picked up on radar, but luckily it never found the British fleet. British Albacores soon managed to locate the main Japanese fleet but their sighting reports were fragmented as they were set upon by Japanese fighters.

  HMS Warspite takes on fuel at the Seychelles, 1942. C. Pearson Collection

  Warspite’s Royal Marine buglers sound the Last Post in memory of their fallen comrades, lost in action against the Japanese off Ceylon in April 1942. K. Smith Collection.

  At 5.00p.m. on the 5 April, a scouting RAF Catalina spotted five ships heading towards Force A so Somerville pulled back, waiting for night to launch a torpedo strike against them. Though the torpedo bombers were armed and ready to go, with their crews sitting in them, Somerville hesitated, needing more accurate reports on the location of the enemy before he sacrificed any of his young aviators. He knew well the hazards faced by torpedo bomber crews having astounded his staff while commanding Force H by flying off HMS Ark Royal to get a taste of the naval aviator’s lot. He once remarked: ‘How I hate seeing them go off and wondering how many of the brave lads will return.’9

  In reality Nagumo’s force was sailing away, so the distance between the two naval groups was opening not closing. Aboard Warspite Somerville’s staff warned him against going to the last known position of Cornwall and Dorsetshire with his main force. Instead he sent ahead Enterprise, Paladin and Panther which managed to pick up 1,122 survivors.

  HMS Warspite coming up fast behind the Australian destroyer HMAS Norman. K. Smith Collection.

  Above and below: The view from Warspite as she replenishes an escort destroyer in the Indian Ocean. K. Smith Collection.

  Most of the Warspite’s crew had no idea what was happening and only learned later about the day’s events. Ken Smith remembers an agonizing day of uncertainty:

  We were at action stations for most of the time. It all felt very tense and dangerous. You were closed up for hours and hours. Your nerves were jangled every time alarm bells rang to warn that action was imminent. Sometimes they did this because they genuinely thought it might be and other times they did it just to keep us on our toes.

  A 6-inch gun battery is a long passageway, each of the guns in its own compartment with only a semi-divide between. You could see the other gun crews over it but that was all. Nothing else. It was pretty tedious. There was a crew of about seven on each gun and there was no sitting down – you stood for hours. When they stood down the alert status then you might be able to sit on the floor, but there would always be someone stood by the phone. You even had crews sleeping by their guns. We were not certain what was going on at all. They did tell us they were hoping to make a night attack. But whether that was propaganda to keep our spirits up or a serious intention I don’t know. We were told very little about what was happening – we found out the detail later.

  I believe had we gone on towards the Japanese for another five or ten minutes we would have been picked up by the Tone’s scouting aircraft. Thank goodness we turned about – there was no sense risking the whole fleet in seeking a hopeless battle with the same carriers which destroyed the American fleet. There but for the grace of God went I.

  Early on 6 April, Force A and Force B joined up and mounted a sweep towards the east. Two days later, with no contact having been made, the British withdrew again to Addu Atoll which the Japanese were still completely unaware of. Still seeking to destroy the Eastern Fleet, Nagumo’s strike force pounced on Trincomalee on 9 April. Having only damaged the monitor HMS Erebus and a merchant ship, the Japanese were disappointed at their catch but delighted to find HMS Hermes returning to Trincomalee, swiftly sinking her and two escort warships. Throughout this Warspite and the rest of the fleet stayed at a discreet distance. Commander Lamb recalled:

  We continued to maintain a position between the Maldives and Ceylon and we could just see on the edge of our radar screens the Japanese aircraft.

  With Ozawa’s roving group ravaging merchant shipping off the coast of India, Admiral Somerville convened a meeting aboard Warspite to announce his next course of action. It was perfectly feasible the Japanese could be preparing a pincer movement to trap and annihilate his sickly fleet.

  At the conference aboard the flagship, Somerville explained how he was convinced of the undesirability of operating his battle fleet, which lacked speed, endurance and AA gun power in Ceylon waters in the face of such superior Japanese naval and air power.10

  He therefore decided to send Force B to East Africa, to guard convoy routes to North Africa, while Force A would go to Bombay to try and deter Japan from raiding waters off India.

  The only strike on Nagumo’s force was conducted by some RAF Blenheim bombers which managed to slightly damage Nagumo’s flagship, the carrier Akagi, on 9 April.

  The Japanese left the Indian Ocean several days after the raid on Trincomalee. While the Indian Ocean was now there for the taking, the Imperial Japanese Navy failed to exploit it to support the Japanese Army’s attempted invasion of India. However, the IJN had managed to chase away any serious naval threat to its newly conquered territories in Indonesia and Malaya. Somerville’s actions in April 1942, were seen by many as cowardice and it was deeply dispiriting for a force as proud as the Royal Navy to avoid a fight. Gordon Wallace, one of the young aviators of HMS Indomitable who might have carried out the strike on Nagumo’s force, said in his book Carrier Observer:

  At the time and for many years after these events I was convinced that we had simply run away from the enemy...

  But, as Wallace acknowledged when he wrote his book half a century later, Somerville’s sober reflection on the choices he faced, and the assets at his disposal, meant he had no other choice of action.

  Commander Lamb was also convinced Somerville did the right thing.

  It must have been very difficult for the C-in-C. It was more important that he kept his fleet in being, as a continuing deterrent to the Japanese coming westwards into the Indian Ocean. In the circumstances I am not only grateful for my own skin that he did take that line but feel it was a fully justified one.

  Having narrowly avoided destruction at the hands of the Japanese, the Warspite soon found herself operating from Kilindini, near Mombasa. The enemy threat was more
imagined than real.

  ‘Japanese submarines did operate off Madagascar,’ said Commander Lamb.

  But I believe there were more German than Japanese U-boats in the Indian Ocean. I don’t remember any enemy submarines being reported off the Kenya coastline.

  Commander Lamb was soon on his travels again, this time sent as a liaison officer to the American fleet, to try and learn from its combat against the Japanese in the central Pacific.

  Admiral Somerville continued to use the Warspite off and on as his flagship and managed to retain the good opinion of her crew. Ordnance Artificer Charlie Pearson was one of those who came into contact with the Commander-in-Chief from time to time when maintaining AA weapons about the ship.

  I think Somerville was a gentleman. He had a good sense of humour and whenever he was ashore and sending us a signal would say: ‘I see Pluto is in position,’ meaning our ship’s mascot, Pluto the dog.

  For their part, the Japanese still hungered after humiliating the Royal Navy by inflicting another body blow. They were so desperate to destroy the legendary Warspite they claimed to have sunk her during the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May.11 Using hopelessly outdated intelligence reports they next ordered a midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour at the end of May, hoping to catch Warspite there. They sank the depot ship HMAS Kuttabul, killing nineteen sailors and wounding another ten. Meanwhile, eluding the Japanese, the Warspite led an uneventful life punctuated by exercises and action alerts plus the odd episode of humour. One of her sailors remembered one such incident:

  One morning in 1942, the Warspite was out in the Indian Ocean on exercises with her screen of destroyers. As flagship, Warspite announced the speed of the fleet by hoisting the signal flag ‘speed’ followed by the numeral flags for ‘one’ and ‘six’ (ie: speed sixteen knots). A destroyer on the far edge of the screen incorrectly acknowledged the instruction by rapidly hoisting flags ‘six’ and ‘one’ (sixty-one knots). Quick as a flash the Warspite’s Yeoman was ordered to make by Aldis Lamp the signal ‘circle the fleet twice and take off...’ which made us laugh a little.12

  As was customary for all midshipmen, young John Corbett kept a journal which was scrutinized by senior officers, as part of his training. Midshipman Corbett drew these outlines of the warships in the Eastern Fleet, including his future home, the battleship Warspite. J. Corbett.

  In the tropics, conditions aboard Warspite were intolerable, as she had been built to fight the Kaiser’s fleet in the North Sea not cruise off the coast of Africa. Ken Smith soon found his health, and that of many others aboard the battleship, was affected:

  She was a gigantic sweatbox. We’re talking extreme temperatures closed up at action stations in a 6-inch gun battery for hours. There was little or no ventilation – you just sweated and sweated. Hundreds of the crew went down sick – the sickbay was always full. You got dhobi itch, you got prickly heat, all sorts of lumps and bumps. It was those conditions that did for me ultimately. If you had any sense you got yourself a bucket and filled it with water from the shower room taps. That water was used for your first wash of the day and to bathe in later. Someone might give you a tot of rum to borrow it. You also used it for your dhobi. The bucket thing was against regulations, but, in such circumstances, a lot of things went by the board.

  But sometimes the Royal Marines got to work on the upper deck and there conditions were more tolerable, although, as Ken Smith recalled, some of the hazards they faced could threaten lives.

  There was this lad called Tom Brown and we were refuelling a destroyer in the Indian Ocean. He was part of a Royal Marines party being used to haul on the hawser that kept the oil pipes linked to the destroyer up out of the water. Suddenly it wrapped itself around him and he was pulled over the side, down between the two ships. Luckily the destroyer captain saw this and took action straight away, so avoiding cutting him up with the props. The destroyer picked Tom up and amazingly he only had a few bumps and bruises. He ended up coming through the war without a scratch.

  By mid-summer 1942, with the US Navy finally seizing the initiative from the Japanese at Midway, things were starting to run in favour of the Allies.

  The thrust towards Australia had been halted in Papua New Guinea and, while they would push briefly into India, the Japanese would ultimately find only disaster.

  In North Africa, the Battle of El Alamein would turn the tide resolutely against the Germans and Italians while at Stalingrad, the Russians would, by the beginning of 1943, halt the German advance to the Caucasus forever.

  In the meantime Warspite went down to Durban for a docking period and to partially change her crew. With events taking such a positive turn in favour of the Allies she was to be called home to prepare for a new mission which would take her back to the Mediterranean.

  Notes

  1 Cuningham, A Sailor’s Odyssey.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid.

  5 A Warspite veteran writing in Anchors Aweigh, the journal of the Warspite Association.

  6 Edited quotes taken from article by D. Cooper in Anchors Aweigh, the journal of the Warspite Association.

  7 A Warspite veteran writing in Anchors Aweigh, the journal of the Warspite Association.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Ludovic Kennedy, Pursuit: The Sinking of the Bismarck.

  10 David A. Thomas, Japan’s War at Sea.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Warspite veteran Frank Veal, in Anchors Aweigh, the journal of the Warspite Association.

  Chapter Nine

  DELIVERING A KNOCK-OUT BLOW

  Return to the Mediterranean

  During her time in dock at Durban, Warspite welcomed back a familiar face. Bertie Packer, who had served as a young Sub Lieutenant at Jutland and as her Gunnery Officer in the 1920s, now returned as her commanding officer.

  Saying goodbye to Warspite when she docked at Durban was Ken Smith whose health had finally collapsed after months inside the sweatbox battleship. Following emergency treatment in hospital, including surgery, he spent many months recuperating in South Africa. Joining Warspite at Durban was Midshipman John Corbett. ‘I suppose I was lucky to get her and not an R Class battleship,’ he told his Midshipman’s journal.

  On 16 April 1943, Warspite sailed from Durban for Freetown where she was to rendezvous with a troop convoy before sailing for the Clyde to rejoin the Home Fleet.

  Heavy weather revealed some limitations in Warspite’s design. Midshipman Corbett noted in his journal:

  ...our port 6-inch gun battery was soon flooded and the shelter deck made most uncomfortable. A wind of about Force seven carried spray right up to the bridge. We actually did some ten degree rolls which greatly surprised me as I didn’t think this ship could roll at all. However she certainly buried her head. The seas broke over the forecastle completely engulfing capstans, breakwater and most of A turret.

  Warspite secured to her buoy at Greenock on 10 May. The battleship had not seen home waters since April 1940 and, as Midshipman Corbett noted, no one seemed to care.

  Plans showing modifications to Warspite as carried out during her refit at Durban in early 1943. Goodman Collection

  Such was the homecoming of the mighty Warspite after Narvik, Calabria, Matapan and Crete... . Two years have elapsed since Crete, the ship’s company have dispersed and the ship is largely forgotten. I hope that now, with a new crew, we get a chance and succeed in once more making her world famous at the enemy’s cost.

  During the voyage Midshipman Corbett had been tasked with calculating the miles steamed by Warspite since the beginning of the war. After arriving at Greenock he recorded the following figures in his journal:

  1939 (from declaration of war in September) – 12,984 miles.

  1940 – 43,978 miles.

  1941 – 25,253 miles.

  1942 – 61,481 miles.

  1943 – 17,168 miles.

  The mileage per month since Midshipman Corbett had joined the ship was:

  March –
2,459 miles (twenty-three days in harbour, eight days at sea).

  April – 5,119 miles (sixteen days in harbour, fourteen days at sea).

  May – 3,586 miles (twenty days in harbour, ten days at sea).

  Before the month was out Warspite visited Princes Dock in Glasgow where Bertie Packer commanded the landing party which saw off arsonists during the 1926 General Strike. This time she was there for another attempt to fix her recurring steering problem which had surfaced again on the way back from Africa.

  June 1943 dawned and the Warspite sailed north to the anchorage of Scapa Flow where she had not been since returning from her victory at Narvik. Warspite was now to be prepared for a role which would occupy her for the rest of her fighting life – shore bombardment missions in support of land forces driving forward from a beachhead.

  Having inflicted a devastating defeat on Axis forces in North Africa – taking the surrender of a quarter of a million German and Italian troops in Tunisia – the Allies were preparing to invade Sicily as a prelude to an amphibious assault on the Italian mainland.

  Admiral Cunningham, who had been replaced as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet in April 1942, and sent to America as Britain’s most senior naval representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff, was now back in the Mediterranean as the Supreme Commander of Allied naval forces.