Operation Manna (Timeline 10/27/62 - Australia)

by James Philip

  It must have seemed surreal to De L’Isle and Sir Robert Menzies after a day at the cricket going back into secret conclave with the other High Commissioners and military men who had flown into the capital of New South Wales to meet under the cover of the Fifth Test.

  Herbert Woodward[82], the South African Ambassador[83] later spoke about the ‘peculiar disconnect from the drama on the field with the literally life or death decisions we were making’.

  Woodward had only recently returned from South Africa after an absence of over a month. Travel across the expanse of the Southern Ocean by air was not at that time in any sense routine and he had made the passage by sea in both directions, spending only four days actually in South Africa, before returning to Canberra and Sydney via Freemantle in Western Australia three days ago with the Prime Minister of the dependent territory – colony by any other name – of Rhodesia[84], who had about him the air of a man still somewhat disorientated by his travels.

  Fifty-eight year old Winston Field had been born in Bromsgrove in Worcestershire and moved to Mashonaland in 1921. He first came to prominence in the 1930s as President of the Rhodesian Tobacco Association before, like so many Rhodesians he had volunteered for imperial military service in Hitler’s war. Later in league with Ian Smith, a former fighter pilot and Douglas ‘Boss’ Lilford, a wealthy tobacco baron, Field had created the Rhodesian Front Party in 1962, and found himself the unlikely figurehead of the campaign to stave off majority black rule in the colony. Cynics said that ‘the Front’ had needed a moderate ‘figurehead’; and Field had fitted the bill perfectly. People in the capital, Salisbury[85], sometimes remarked that Field could be imperious and intolerant but he was, in true English fashion, moderate in most things and no racist, who freely admitted that practically everybody else in the Party that he led was politically ‘to the right’ of him. In many ways he was a reluctant leader who was not, in his wife’s words, ‘really a political animal’.

  However, in these desperate times he was a patriot – an English Rhodesian emotionally, instinctively tied to the old country – nominally speaking for a nation which had aspirations not just to be Africa’s greatest tobacco producer, but the ‘grain bowl’ of the continent. Moreover, all talk of imminent Rhodesian independence as a black majority country was now on the back burner; and suddenly, there was a place again for ‘reasonable’ men in the politics of the Federation of Rhodesia.

  Or that at least was Winston Field’s conviction, insofar as he was a man who had any convictions.

  Sir Robert Menzies well understood that the men from Southern Africa came to the table with a different – or rather, a longer and decidedly more ideological – agenda than that which he and his friends in New Zealand had already agreed. But that was politics. In future the Commonwealth would be an alliance of the willing, not the previously colonised. South African participation, membership came at a high price, that was a given. Notwithstanding, countries unable or unwilling to stand by the old country, or on their own two feet against the likely tide of American fiscal, industrial and military might in the brave new post-cataclysm World, would have to do it alone or form their own ad hoc combinations. South Africa controlled the sea routes around the Cape of Good Hope, its ports opened onto the South Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Australia and New Zealand and the British protectorates and territories in the Pacific commanded huge reaches of ocean, and potentially limitless natural resources. The great undamaged ‘Southern Commonwealth’ might be the one stable foundation upon which to rebuild so much of what had been lost.

  The prize seemed so great that almost any price was worth paying to grasp it now before circumstance and fate could intervene, as surely they would do sooner or later.

  For South Africa, rich in diamonds, precious stones and gold; and for Australia, its peoples scattered around the periphery of a barely mapped great continent known to be blessed with uranium, boundless mineral ores and coal, surrounded by bountiful seas with limitless potential for growth, it was easier to speak of giving unconditional aid to the United Kingdom. For New Zealand and Rhodesia this was neither practical nor realistic if those nations were to survive without the charity of others. Such things were given, accommodated in the ‘heads of agreement’ discussed and agreed by the parties. Canada was a case apart, itself scarred and partially crippled by the recent war and still recovering, and discovering the true severity of its grievous wounds. However, all of that was secondary to their shared purpose, their shared promise: to give of whatever they could afford.

  There would be a time for reckonings another day.

  Although for Winston Field his reward would be to discover, within days of his return to Rhodesia that he had been supplanted as Prime Minister by his deputy Ian Smith; now that the rules had changed and black majority rule was no more on the cards in Salisbury than it was in Pretoria, the men behind the throne in Salisbury had no need of a ‘moderate’ figurehead.

  Commodore Donald Gibson, the Head of the British Naval Mission in Canberra, had suggested that the ‘Commonwealth Emergency Assistance Scheme’ might be called ‘Operation Homeward Bound’.

  It was Winston Field who countered with ‘Operation Manna’.

  It was to be his footnote in history.

  Thereafter he disappears into obscurity.

  Chapter 21 | Rules of Engagement

  Saturday 16th February 1963

  Coral Sea, West of Grand Terre, New Caledonia

  The Ark Royal battle group had pounded through the weather at speeds of up to twenty-seven knots until Julian Christopher had decided that his destroyers were taking too much of a battering. North of Lord Howe Island the sea conditions had eased and the flotilla had picked up the pace anew.

  Those who later claimed that the ‘Fighting Admiral was so keen for a fight that he put two of his escorting destroyers in dry dock for a month’ are materially incorrect in two respects.

  Although HMAS Vampire sustained minor damage in the heavy seas, and she and the Cavendish both spent time in dockyard hands in Melbourne shortly after returning to Australia when the excitement was over, in both cases this was for previously scheduled maintenance.

  Moreover, contrary to the mythology conspiracy theorists love to promote it took Julian Christopher’s Anglo-Australian squadron the best part of three days to arrive off Grande Terre, steaming at an average speed of slightly less than twenty knots. Frank Maltravers has repeatedly reminded interlocutors that if ‘the Admiral had been in a real hurry the Ark and the Belfast would have made the transit in nearer two than three days!’

  However, nobody has ever questioned that the reason the battle group was sent to New Caledonian waters was raw politics; nor that if in the final analysis blood needed to be spilled to ‘make a point’ about the freedom of navigation in the Southern Oceans then Julian Christopher was probably the ideal man to do it.

  Crossing north of latitude 24 degrees south the Belfast and the Ark Royal had separated with a view to putting thirty to forty miles of sea room between them as they approached the still allegedly ‘searching and rescuing’ US ships to the north-west.

  Ark Royal steamed almost due north for nearly two hours in company with Barrosa and the newly joined Caesar[86], while the Belfast headed east with Cavendish and Vampire in tow.

  At 15:40 hours Ark Royal flew off two De Havilland Sea Vixen interceptors, and ten minutes later, two Blackburn Buccaneers. These latter were rugged modern strike aircraft capable of operating at altitude, or ‘on the deck’ designed for anti-ship work. The Sea Vixens were armed with a pair of Firestreak air-to-air missiles, the Buccaneers with four one thousand pound general purpose iron bombs.

  Like the Sea Vixens the Buccaneers were ‘nuclear capable’; unlike the Sea Vixens a Buccaneer could carry a Red Beard free fall fifteen to twenty-five kiloton tactical atomic bomb internally in its revolving bomb bay.

  However, that day the big carrier’s ‘physics packages’ remained disassembled in her armoured ‘Special Magazine
No 1’ far below the waterline.

  ‘The CAP has eyeballs on a big cruiser and three smaller vessels, sir,’ Captain Francis Maltravers reported. ‘Barrosa has the nearest ships on her tactical plot. No air activity, sir.’

  Julian Christopher had found Maltravers’s predecessor to be a thoroughly able officer but Donald Gibson had been the right man for the Ark’s pre-war deployment, not necessarily the demands of the new ‘operating environment’. Besides, when a man had commanded a big carrier for a while he got tired, he needed if not a rest than a change of scene. Frank Maltravers, a cheerfully indefatigable rambunctious, larger than life character, had walked up the carrier’s gangway like he owned the ship and instantly imparted his never say die personality on the whole crew.

  By then Julian Christopher had changed, rotated, moved on or promoted three in every five commanding officers throughout the British Pacific Fleet. Many captains had been ‘on station’ for over a year and in command eighteen to twenty-four months, things had needed ‘freshening up’ and besides, his reorganisation of the Fleet had duplicated Staff and other key operational, communications, engineering and logistical roles across at any one time three separate battle groups. The most experienced and competent officers were at a premium and throughout Christopher’s command he was intent on ‘bringing on’ the next generation of ‘captains and senior men’.

  Julian Christopher’s handling of the men and the morale of the British Pacific Fleet in this period is often neglected, an extraordinary lapse given that many of the officers and men advanced in 1963 would be intimately involved in the desperate battles of 1964. Changing commanding officers, moving men from a comfortable berth on one ship to a challenging one on another on such a fleet-wide scale flies in the face of conventional wisdom; but Christopher deliberately pursued the policy at every level. The days when a man had to wait years in his rank or grade before ‘qualifying’ for advancement were over; the only thing that mattered was whether a man was ‘ready’ to face the responsibilities of his next job or posting.

  There was absolutely nothing tokenistic about the program now in place to rotate Australian and New Zealand officers and men throughout the British Pacific Fleet. Julian Christopher needed new blood, new enthusiasm, men not traumatised by the very thought of what awaited them at home – if they ever got home – to keep his ships in tip top fighting trim and the infusion of Australian, and to a lesser extent, New Zealanders into the Fleet not only brought new accents and attitudes into his ships but ‘in all honesty’, as Don Gibson told this author once with a rueful smile, ‘a breath of much needed fresh air!’

  Already, less than four months after the October War the British Pacific Fleet had changed in ways few would have imagined possible before the cataclysm.

  Now as Julian Christopher gazed thoughtfully at the repeater boards and screens of the flag bridge, he was half-tempted to go below to the Ark Royal’s CIC – still a thing of the 1950s – before he reminded himself that the object of the exercise was to make a point not to get into an actual fight.

  The Saint Paul had a main battery of nine 8-inch rifles and, he assumed significantly more modern, and therefore superior, fire control radar that his own ‘big gunboat’, the Belfast.

  Belfast had twelve 6-inch guns but she was of a generation before that of the war-built Saint Paul for all that she was only five or six years older, and only two thirds the size of the American cruiser.

  Not that Julian Christopher was ever going to allow the USS Saint Paul anywhere near his two big ships. There would be no long barrels propelling warning shots across his bows. No, that sort of nonsense was strictly ‘old school’. Unless the US Navy suddenly magicked carrier-borne air out of a hat the Ark’s Sea Vixens and Buccaneers ruled the potential ‘battlefield’ out here miles from anywhere.

  The Otago would have reported any untoward air activity.

  With regards to the New Zealand frigate if the Americans were paying attention they would have watched her turn away to the north, and might even have concluded that she had been sent to intercept the oiler Seventh Fleet must have despatched to New Caledonia to keep the, probably now low on fuel, Saint Paul and her escorts on station. That oiler, and perhaps, other replenishment ships must be close at hand or the American warships would have already departed.

  Instead, the heavy cruiser and her three smaller consorts had moved to within thirty-five miles of the west coast of Grand Terre, and remained deployed across some twenty square miles of sea less than fifty nautical miles from Nouméa. Pre-war the US Navy would have requested harbour and oiling facilities at the port in advance; but no such request had yet been made.

  Had it been the French authorities on Grande Terre would have been hard-pressed to accede even had those authorities been remotely minded to extend a hand of friendship to the uninvited American ships.

  Unlike the British crown colonies, dependencies and protectorates New Caledonia – Nouvelle-Calédonie – was to all intents a part of France. In 1953 all its some two hundred thousand inhabitants, regardless of their ethnicity or place of birth had been made full citizens of France, and the ‘special collective’ had subsequently elected two representatives to the French parliament.

  Although at the time the post-war picture of what remained of ‘European’ France could only be painted in broad brushstrokes, La Belle France still defiantly, proudly survived in its island outposts all around the globe. Notwithstanding the virtual absence of news from ‘home’ one thing was evident. Ever since Charles de Gaulle had established the Fifth Republic in 1958 Franco-US relations had been becoming frostier and the October War had led to a complete fracture. Half-a-world away from the ruins of Paris any US Navy man setting foot on New Caledonian soil risked being lynched.

  The ‘situation’ at home in France was dire.

  The Soviets had obliterated Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium, carpet bombed the Netherlands and West Germany with what seemed like maniacal attention to detail and ploughed a fiery thermonuclear furrow across a great swath of the northern and western prefectures either side of Paris. The great naval base at Brest had been targeted, as had the port of Cherbourg but mercifully all the other Channel ports opposite England had survived untouched, and likewise most of southern France with the exception of Marseilles, Toulon and it was believed at the time, the Riviera.

  Communications and limited ferry services had been re-established between English south coast ports and Dunkirk, Boulogne and Le Havre within weeks of the war. In February 1963 the consensus in England was that the French were ‘pretty much in the same boat as us’; hard hit, down for the count but attempting to stagger to their feet.

  Pertinently, among the ‘general orders’ governing the conduct of British Armed Forces issued by the UKIEA at the end of November 1962, had been a directive requiring that ‘all assistance was to be extended to French nationals, vessels at sea and to overseas territories’.

  The visit of the Otago to Nouméa was just one of several scheduled ‘courtesy calls’. Ten days previously one of Julian Christopher’s fleet oilers had ‘topped off’ Grande Terre’s strategic reserve bunkers at that port and unloaded over five hundred tons of diesel and petrol to alleviate the island’s increasingly critical fuel shortages.

  ‘We have the USS Saint Paul on TBS, sir.’

  ‘This is Admiral Christopher. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking? Over.’

  The C-in-C of the British Pacific Fleet did not plan to say anything to his opposite number in the US squadron that any third party might construe as being in any way ambiguous. The bridge broadcast circuit could stay live for the time being.

  ‘Saint Paul,’ a gruff, grim voice grunted over the circuit.

  Static thrummed over the channel as radars turned high in the superstructures of the ships of the two former allies.

  A sardonic half-smile had quirked at Julian Christopher’s lips. Like a wolf he knew now that the hunt had begun.

  ‘Very well, I shall work on the
assumption that I am speaking to the commanding officer of the USS Saint Paul. Over.’

  ‘You can work on any goddammed assumption you want, sir!’

  ‘Well, Saint Paul,’ the C-in-C British Pacific Fleet had retorted, ‘when I sail into somebody else’s waters I advise them of my intentions. May I ask you what you are doing in these waters? Over.’

  ‘I am exercising my right of navigation in international waters.’

  ‘Your rights do not include denying freedom of navigation to one of my ships. Over.’

  ‘Your ship was requested to stay outside my area of operations for twenty-four hours.’

  Actually, the Otago had been ‘warned off’ twice more in the last forty-eight hours.

  Julian Christopher’s patience was wearing thin.

  ‘Sir, I don’t know what you are doing in these waters. Frankly, I do not care. The French authorities have requested that you depart this area; you have ignored their requests. I am now demanding that you cease operations in these waters forthwith.’

  It was almost dark.

  Periodically, Ark Royal’s bow crashed into a larger swell.

  ‘Please acknowledge.’

  ‘Saint Paul to Ark Royal! We aren’t going anywhere! Out!’

  The circuit went dead.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Julian Christopher observed disgustedly. ‘Send in plain text to the Saint Paul,’ he declared, turning to Frank Maltravers and nodding to the yeoman, pen poised, at his shoulder.

  The message sent – continuously – to the US squadron was to cause a diplomatic firestorm.

  CINCBPACFLT TO SAINT PAUL STOP IMMEDIATE STOP ALL USN VESSELS CURRENTLY OPERATING WEST OF GRANDE TERRE WILL CEASE CURRENT EVOLUTIONS AND CLEAR SAID AREA BY ZERO-ZERO-ZERO-ONE HOURS LOCAL SEVENTEETH INSTANT STOP FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS ORDER WILL BE VIEWED AS AN AGGRESSIVE ACT BY CINCBPACFLT MESSAGE ENDS.