Protecting them was just one naval corvette, hardly armed to the teeth – just one four-inch gun and four anti-aircraft machine guns were all it could boast. Having now formed up into two columns, they inched their way towards the Channel, aircraft often buzzing overhead. Most were identified as German, clearly watching the convoy with interest. There were no attacks, however, and as afternoon wore on to evening, the convoy continued on its leisurely way, calmly, even serenely in the still summer night.
Convoys of merchant shipping had passed through the English Channel since the outbreak of war; London, especially, remained a hugely important port. Of course, some ships had been lost, but it had nonetheless remained a viable trade route. Even after Dunkirk, the Channel remained open, including the Straits of Dover. As June gave way to July, however, this was about to change, and the Royal Navy and British Merchant Navy would pay a harsh price for their complacency.
Captain Rogerson was out on the bridge again at 6.45 the following morning. Overnight, the convoy had manoeuvred again, this time into lines of eight ships abreast. Single aircraft were once more overhead, enemy reconnaissance planes watching the convoy, which had now passed through the Straits of Dover and was heading along the south coast of England, although, as Captain Rogerson noticed, somewhat further south of their supposed course. After a brief breakfast, he took double altitude positions and realized they were even further south than he had thought, almost parading past the newly conquered French coast. ‘Good heavens!’ he remarked to the Second Officer, ‘We should be able to see Cap La Hague and Alderney.’ With that, he left the Chart Room and went back out on to the bridge. Visibility was excellent – about fourteen miles – and without bothering with binoculars he could see Cap La Hague and the French coast and all the now German-occupied Channel Islands. It did not make him feel easy. ‘In my opinion,’ noted Rogerson, ‘we should have wheeled almost 90 degrees as we were parading before the French coast.’
The reconnaissance aircraft – not to mention watchers on the French coast – had reported the movement of the convoy and shortly before 1 p.m. Stukas from St.G 2, led by Major Oskar Dinort, suddenly appeared overhead and in waves of six peeled off and began diving on the hapless ships below, their sirens wailing. Again and again they attacked, diving, releasing bombs, then climbing again for another diving run. Since his attack on British ships off Calais, Oskar Dinort and his crews had marginally improved – in any case, dropping bombs on freighters chugging along at ten knots was easier than hitting a speeding destroyer.
‘The enemy aircraft appeared to drop straight out of the clouds,’ noted Captain Rogerson on board the Hartlepool. Recently armed with a four-inch ack-ack gun and a twelve-pounder, his gun’s crew immediately opened fire. Three salvoes of bombs were dropped near the ship, with ten in all falling horribly close by, huge spumes of water erupting into the sky. However, as one of the Stukas came out of his dive, Captain Rogerson’s gunlayer managed to hit the aircraft, which then plunged into the sea. ‘It was probably a lucky hit,’ Captain Rogerson admitted, ‘but the gunner was hot stuff with the 4 inch gun.’ He had been practising every day and clearly this had now paid off.
Hartlepool escaped unscathed, but others were not so lucky. Captain Rogerson saw bombs hit the Irene Maria on his port bow; it immediately went up in flames and had to be quickly abandoned. He also saw the Britsum and Eastmore hit, the former also flaming. Further along the convoy, another ship, Dallas City, was also burning; frantic messages for help were coming over the radio. Captain Rogerson decided to open up the engines and go through the rest of the convoy.
As Hartlepool cleared the leading ships, a signal now arrived from the convoy commodore for the ships to turn forty degrees north, towards the coast. Shortly after it wheeled, a second attack arrived. From the bridge, Captain Rogerson looked back and saw the remainder of the convoy being dive-bombed. Flaming ships floundered, diving sirens could be heard, columns of smoke and spray were rising into the air. Captain Rogerson ordered the ship to increase speed again, this time to full steam ahead at nearly fourteen knots. Making towards Bury Head, he wanted to try and find some protection by hugging close to the shore. Soon after, however, came another signal, this time for the convoy to head into Portland, where the commodore hoped the harbour defences might make a better fist of protecting them than the lone escort corvette.
This was a bizarre decision that reeked of panic. At Portland, Oskar Dinort’s Stukas were nearing the edge of their range, and had they continued on their way the convoy would have been soon clear of the fray. By going into Portland, however, the ships would become sitting ducks. In any case, Portland could hardly offer them a wall of steel; the shortage of anti-aircraft guns had affected almost every port in Britain, but especially those further away from the vulnerable south-east, and which were naval as opposed to trade ports. In fact, Portland’s sole protection was a lone naval anti-aircraft guardship, HMS Foylebank, an ageing freighter that had been requisitioned by the Admiralty and on which had been bolted a number of anti-aircraft guns.
On board Foylebank was Ron Walsh, a twenty-year-old from Lymington, in Hampshire. Although he came from a naval family, Ron had never really wanted to go to sea himself. After school he’d briefly joined the Merchant Navy, then switched to the Royal Navy, only to desert after a year, and go and work on a farm. All was well until war broke out; eventually, Ron had known that his past would catch up with him as he was obliged to register for service. For a while he thought about joining the army, but at the last minute decided to return to the navy after all. Immediately put on a charge for desertion, he was offered a King’s Pardon with the promise that his desertion would be wiped from his record.
His first draft was to Foylebank, which he joined in Belfast after a rail and sea journey via Stranraer. The ship had only just been commissioned into the navy and almost immediately set sail for Portland. Ron’s action station was as a range setter on the starboard 3.5-inch ack-ack gun near the stern in X Turret, which was about twenty feet above the deck. At Portland, he had soon been relieved of his gunnery duties, as he had volunteered to drive the motor launch that took the crew and mail back and forth between the ship and the port. However, just the day before, on 3 July, another seaman had taken over from him so he had returned to his position on the guns.
The ship’s gunner had been quite active in the preceding days as various reconnaissance aircraft had come over. Clearly, the Luftwaffe had taken note, because a couple of evenings earlier Ron had been on the Mess Deck and had heard Lord Haw Haw come over on the radio from Berlin and warn the Admiralty to remove the anti-aircraft ship in Portland harbour or else the Luftwaffe would do it for them. ‘We laughed,’ says Ron.
Lord Haw Haw’s promise was no idle threat, however. Shortly after 1 p.m., Ron was on the Mess Deck when he suddenly heard shouting and running about from the deck above. Deciding he should head to his station immediately, he had just stepped over the combing of the door when there was an enormous crash and he found himself flying across the canteen. When he looked up again, he saw the hammock nettings were burning, the double ladders were all twisted, and tables had been grotesquely bent and turned over. He and a friend began making their way along the port side when another bomb went straight down the funnel and blew out the side of the ship. Frantically, he and his mate turned back and saw a number of men try and scramble up stairs to the deck only to be machine-gunned and tumble backwards. Clambering over the bodies, the two of them managed to make their way to the aft end of the ship, where the sick bay was, and where all the non-combatants were. There was also a ladder there that led up to X Turret. Ron began clambering up it with his friend following when there was another huge crash. A further bomb had gone through the upper deck and into the sick bay, killing all the men sheltering there as well as Ron’s friend, who had been only just behind him.
Dust and smoke was getting in his eyes and up his nose, but Ron eventually managed to climb through a hatch out on to the deck and bri
ght sunshine. The summer sun could not hide the carnage, however. ‘The guns were all bent to hell,’ he says, ‘and none of the crew to be seen.’ Above, he could see the bombs falling from a Ju 88. Someone shouted, and he turned and saw ‘Badger’ Otley, the captain of X Gun, miraculously still firing, even though the coconut matting around the gun was on fire. Despite this, Otley was screaming for more ammunition. Two sailors were yelling back at him, so Ron stumbled on, until he reached the front gun deck. Looking over, all he could see was bomb holes, bodies and twisted metal. A voice shouted up to him, Anyone there?’ It was the First Lieutenant.
‘Me, sir!’ Ron replied.
‘We’re going to abandon ship shortly,’ he called back. ‘Get down here!’
Ron jumped down – the ladder had been mostly shot away – landing on his back on the kedge anchor. Although he had badly damaged several vertebrae in the fall, adrenalin hid the pain. Making his way forward down a ten-foot-wide passageway, he had nearly reached the starboard pom-poms – the 20 mm quick-firing cannons – when a pile of bodies blocked his way. Ahead, beside the guns, was the Petty Officer, who yelled at him. ‘Clamber over them!’ he shouted. ‘They’re all dead. Get up here!’
Ron did so, only to see one of the leading hands, Jack Mantle, sitting on the seat of the pom-pom, desperately trying to switch the change-over lever from electric to manual; it had become slightly bent. Mantle looked a mess. His leg was shattered and around him lay his gun crew, all dead. Evidently, he had managed to heave himself back on to the seat, but was now cursing as an Me 110 from VIII Fliegerkorps had turned out over the bay and was now coming back towards them. Just as Jack got the lever down, the Messerschmitt opened up with his machine guns. ‘He fired four barrels of pom-pom,’ says Ron. ‘I don’t know what happened to the plane, but Mantle flaked out on his gun. He’d been hit across the chest.’
The Foylebank was now low in the water and it was clear she would soon sink. The Petty Officer sent some men to get Mantle down off X Turret, and ordered the rest of them to get the wounded into a number of civilian craft that had come to their rescue. He also called for someone to accompany the First Lieutenant down below to look for any other survivors. Seeing the ship’s Surgeon Lieutenant sitting on a bollard with his guts in his hand, Ron volunteered to go with the First Lieutenant. A lot of the ship was already flooded. They found one man slouching beside one of the bulkheads, so the First Lieutenant went over to him. ‘He touched him on the shoulder,’ says Ron, ‘and he fell apart.’
Hurrying back up, he helped the others get Mantle down. Having helped lower him from the fo’c’s’le on to a boat below, Ron then clambered down himself. Safely reaching the quayside, the survivors then mustered in the dockyard as Foylebank finally slid beneath the sea. Ron was one of the lucky ones. Sixty men had been killed and more would later die of their wounds, including Jack Mantle who, for his bravery that afternoon, was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
While Foylebank had been heroically doing her best to stave off the Stukas, the terrible folly of sending the convoy into port had become quickly apparent, not least because three freighters were hit almost as soon as they reached the port. Not until much damage had already been done were the orders countermanded. For Hartlepool, the orders had been an infuriating waste of time. She had already had to turn around in an effort to make for Portland and now had to turn back again. It was dusk by the time she and three others were finally making headway once more, now out on their own and quite apart from the rest of the straggling ships. But at least the attackers had gone, and as the light began to fade they could have been forgiven for thinking their ordeal was, for the time being, over.
At 9.30 p.m., four Schnellboote of the 1st S-Boat Flotilla left their docks at Cherbourg and began speeding their way, one after another in line astern, across the Channel. There was a kind of feline beauty to the Schnellboot. Perhaps less so when docked in port, but out at sea, with her three Daimler-Benz MB 501 engines opened to full throttle, these lithe, pale 35-metre-long boats, scything through the water, had an appearance of awesome power. Third in the line was S26, hurtling through the water at more than forty knots. The prow of the boat was quite clear of the water, a huge storm of white spray following in her wake. Either side of the prow were two torpedo tubes, while on the forward deck was mounted an MG 34 machine gun and at the rear a rapid-firing 20 mm cannon.
Commander of S26 was Oberleutnant zur See Kurt Fimmen, known to all as ‘Bobby’. Good-looking, with pale blue eyes and sandy-coloured hair, Bobby had turned twenty-nine in May. He had been born in Wittenberge, in Brandenburg, and had joined the Kriegsmarine in 1935, as an officer cadet, becoming a midshipman three months later. Two years later, he had joined the S-boat arm, a branch of the German navy that had very nearly been abandoned. A series of unreliable engines had dogged the S-boats that had been developed, but the OKM had persisted with them and by 1939 Daimler-Benz had produced the MB 501, a robust, reliable and powerful engine that soon proved ideal. Extravagant plans to dramatically increase production of S-boats never came to fruition – these died with the rest of the Z Plan – but the potential of these immensely quick inshore boats was realized and by the time the first victories in the Low Countries were taking place it became clear they could have an important role in harassing and destroying British merchant trade through the Channel. Although there were just two flotillas of nine and seven boats each, the S-boats had scored a number of victories during the Dunkirk evacuation, including the British destroyer HMS Wakeful. Bobby Fimmen and S26 had also scored their first victory when, in tandem with S23, they destroyed the French destroyer Scirocco, in a daring night-time attack. The ship had sunk in minutes, taking with her 480 soldiers.
With the fall of France, new opportunities had arisen. Because convoys passing through the Straits of Dover could be better protected by day than by night, the commander of S-boats, Korvettenkapitän Hans Bütow, realized that convoys would thus often be passing west of the Isle of Wight at night. This would provide great opportunities for his wooden-hulled S-boats, which could speed over magnetic minefields, smash the convoys, then speed back again. The ports of Cherbourg and Boulogne were ideal bases from which to launch such attacks.
The 1st and 2nd Flotillas had reached Boulogne on 25 June, and three S-boats from the 1st Flotilla, including Bobby Fimmen’s S26, had then moved to Cherbourg three days later; the rest of the flotilla arrived on 1 July. Bütow believed his S-boats could wreak havoc on Allied shipping in the Channel if they worked closely in tandem with VIII Fliegerkorps, which was now based in Normandy. If von Richthofen’s Stukas and Me 110 Zerstörers (‘Destroyers’) attacked by day, his S-boats could attack by night in a co-ordinated assault on British merchant shipping through the Channel.
Convoy OA178 had provided the perfect opportunity for Bütow to test his theories. Despite the pasting the convoy had received that afternoon at the hands of VIII Fliegerkorps, Bütow felt their effort had been somewhat half-hearted. However, as four S-boats sped across the Channel, the chance had come for the navy to show what they could do.
S-boat tactics were to cover the bulk of the distance in line astern, then, as they neared the enemy targets, they would split into pairs, or Rotten, as fighter aircraft also termed a pairing. The two pairs would then attack their targets together, having first slowed to around ten knots. This was necessary in order to fire the torpedoes; if they were going too fast, the speed would affect the trajectory of the torpedo. The second advantage was that at lower speeds the boats were considerably quieter.
It was around twenty minutes to midnight when the S-boats had a stroke of luck. From the shore a searchlight was casting a beam out to sea, and there suddenly silhouetted against it were four ships. In constant VHF radio contact with one another, the S-boats now throttled back and prepared to attack. Splitting into their pairs, Bobby manoeuvred beside S19, his adrenalin beginning to pump. From the bridge, he could see the pale grey forward deck stealing towards their targets. ‘You
don’t actually realize the terrible power of the S-Boote until you come in contact with an enemy ship,’ says Bobby. ‘During the attack, the boat is literally one with her torpedo.’
At ten minutes to midnight, on board Hartlepool, Captain Rogerson saw the track of a torpedo pass before his starboard beam, then disappear under Elmcrest on their right. Fortunately, it did not explode, but then Elmcrest blew a quiet signal on her steam whistle, warning the other three in their group of the danger. Wasting no time, Captain Rogerson once again ordered full speed and turning sharply to starboard began to zigzag frantically. It was too late for Elmcrest, however. S24 had fired the first torpedo and missed, but Bobby had now lined up for a shot in turn. On the signal to fire, the torpedo had burst out of its tube, speeding towards Elmcrest at forty-four knots. Immediately the boat whirled around to port with the sudden lightening of the load, but Bobby was able to glance back and see the torpedo had hit the large 12,000-ton vessel amidships. The ship had now stopped in the water as Bobby curved around for a second attack. She was a sitting duck, and Bobby made sure they did not miss. Most of the crew had already begun abandoning the ship and as the torpedo sped towards Elmcrest, it passed under one of the life rafts causing it to capsize. The torpedo struck the engine room, and tore the ship in two. Captain Rogerson watched, appalled, as the ship was silhouetted by the explosion. The tanker sank in less than two minutes.
Meanwhile, S24 had fired another miss. Leutnant Götz von Mirbach in S20 had also missed twice but his crew had now reloaded and was attacking British Corporal, and this time she hit. There was no huge explosion, but a high column of water, twisted metal, oil and debris shot into the air. Water began pouring into the engine room, the rudder was shot away, and although the ship was not listing, it was clear she would have to be abandoned.
The Battle of Britain Page 44