Cruiser

by Mike Carlton

  On Perth’s quarterdeck, both Warwick Bracegirdle and Jim Nelson witnessed the next act of the drama. They froze in fear as a bomb whistled down. It missed them by only a few metres and plunged into the water in the narrow gap between the ship and the dock. If it had hit, it might well have penetrated below decks to the nearby after magazine, blowing the ship to smithereens. As it was, the force of the explosion, deflected by the concrete wharf, lifted Perth and tossed her as if she was a toy in a bathtub. The men on deck staggered and clung on for dear life as they were showered with filthy water and chunks of concrete.

  Below decks, there was something close to panic. There, the explosion reverberated like a giant hammer pounding on a steel drum. The lights went out, plunging the ship into inky blackness, and water began to seep through gaps where the blast had sprung rivets and some of her plating. Fearful that the cruiser was about to sink, the men in her bowels, in the engine room and boiler rooms, in the Transmitting Station and the Low Power Room, scrambled for the ladders leading to the upper deck. They were steadied by an order from the bridge to stay at their posts, and the panic died as quickly as it had arisen.

  By now, Bracegirdle had had enough. When Perth had arrived in Malta, the port authorities had instructed him not to use the ship’s main armament, her big 6-inch guns, while she was alongside. They feared the blast could damage the docks. But, with the carnage now all around him, Bracegirdle decided to disobey. The for’ard turrets thundered into life – although the chances of a direct hit on a diving Stuka were remote, to say the least. These guns were not designed for anti-aircraft work, but it was worth a try. The ship shook again, this time to a violence of her own making.

  The fires in the Essex were slowly brought under control and the last of the bombers faded away. The sirens sounded the all clear, and something like a silence settled on the scene. Perth had not been hit – in fact, the gun crews swore they had brought down two Stukas at the height of the battle – but all around her lay devastation and misery. Illustrious had been struck again, with a section of her flight deck peeled back like the lid of a can and smoke rising from her wounds. And the Germans had gone on to attack the Three Cities themselves. Homes and warehouses had disintegrated into piles of smoking rubble. A children’s refuge not far from Perth had been destroyed, and the dockyard buildings were a devil’s playground of concrete blocks and twisted steel girders. Roy Norris saw a bunch of dockyard workers that were just ‘a mangled mass of flesh and wreckage’, and there was a woman frantically screaming with the upper half of her child in her arms.

  Jock Lawrance’s action station was in charge of one of Perth’s damage control parties. With a small team of ratings, including George Hatfield, he went across the creek to Illustrious to offer what help they could:

  As we went on board, Maltese were carrying bags down the other gangway. I said to one of the Maltese: ‘What’s that?’

  He said: ‘This was a man.’

  Blood was coming through the sacks … it was a bloodbath, right throughout the ship. There was a paymaster with his head blown off. He was sitting at his desk like he was reading, but dead, with his head blown off. A piece of shrapnel had come through and whipped his head off. He was still there with a pen in his hand. I just shut the door again. The shrapnel went right through the bulkheads just like it was tissue paper.

  And they had a Stuka in the lift. Dead. Shot down. It had a big swastika on its tail. But the Illustrious was a butcher’s shop. There was a big engineer officer, a big bloke in his white overalls, still had his torch on, and a piece of shrapnel had taken out his stomach, just like that. That was the first time I’d seen bodies in war. It was shocking, blood everywhere.18

  Bill Bracht made his diary notes, too:

  On inspecting the damaged dock buildings we saw a 1000 lb bomb which had failed to explode, lying on the floor. Everybody gave it a wide berth. The building closest to the back and directly above the dock workshop was almost completely wrecked. There was one remarkable feature about it, though. The wall of one room overlooking the dock was untouched, and in the centre of this wall was a large coloured picture of Jesus Christ.

  Was divine providence guarding us that day?19

  In a strange way, the truly moving thing came that evening. It was a moment of dignity amidst the barbarism of Grand Harbour, an interlude so poignant that it etched itself in the memory of all who saw it. As the sun went down over the Three Cities, a small party of men marched aft along the blackened and buckled flight deck of HMS Illustrious and came to a halt by the flagstaff at her stern. A proper silence fell. The personnel on deck came to attention. The officers saluted. Solemnly, defiantly, magnificently, to the plaintive notes of a bugle, HMS Illustrious lowered her White Ensign in the hallowed naval ceremony of sunset. ‘Just as though nothing had happened,’ wrote Roy Norris. ‘That is something which makes this British Empire great. A small thing in itself, but it only goes to show what Hitler’s up against. After all the Hell of the afternoon – colours!’20

  Perth sailed for Alexandria that evening, as soon as steam could be raised. The near miss had left the ship a shambles below decks, with foul water and oil sluicing through the lower compartments. The damage control teams were kept busy plugging the gaps in her hull-plating with slabs of timber. Fuel oil was seeping from a ruptured tank into the after magazine and the engineers were worried about some unsettling vibrations coming from her two starboard shafts.

  To add to the misery, it was a cold and filthy night. Both the weather and the uncertain state of the engines caused Bowyer-Smyth to reduce speed to about 17 knots, and the ship plunged and rolled into a heavy sea. On the open bridge, the watch huddled in their duffel coats, whipped by a stinging spray, breathing almost more water than air. As a precaution against mines, they streamed paravanes – a cumbersome system of large floats and wires designed to snag a mine before it could hit the ship – but, to add insult to injury, the weather carried the gear away in the dark of the night.

  Two days later, exhausted but alive, they secured alongside their old friend Ajax in Alexandria Harbour. The good news was that the mail had arrived from home. Ray Parkin received 11 letters and a gold identity disc from his wife. Small things like these were infinitely precious. Just to hold a sheet of paper that had last been touched by a loved one, to read of a new baby or a successful crop of backyard vegetables, or a win by the local cricket club was tangible evidence that there was a peace beyond the violent world they inhabited and to which they would one day return. It helped you to keep going.

  CHAPTER 9

  DISASTER IN GREECE

  On Sunday 19 January, the day after Perth returned to Alexandria, a special train carrying Benito Mussolini wound through the wintry mountains of the Obersalzberg in Bavaria. Il Duce was not enjoying the journey. Once, he had been the elder statesman of Fascism, but now he was virtually answering a summons to meet Hitler at the Berghof, the Führer’s Alpine retreat near Berchtesgaden.

  Mussolini had been rocked to the core by the Italian defeats in Greece and Africa. He feared the Führer might humiliate him. His foreign minister and son-in-law, Count Ciano, recorded that he was ‘frowning and nervous’.

  Hitler greeted him at Puch, a little snow-covered railway station in the valley. The two dictators drove in a convoy of black Mercedes-Benz limousines to the chalet on the heights and settled down for two days of talks around the fire in the pine-panelled study. Mussolini and Ciano were relieved to find the Führer in a genial mood and tactful about Italy’s string of military debacles.

  On the second day, their host spent two hours delivering another of his monologues, this time on the evils of the Soviet Union, although he gave his guests no hint that he was planning an invasion in the east. But he offered to send substantial military assistance to his Axis ally in both Greece and the Middle East. A force to be known as the Afrikakorps would be despatched to Libya within weeks, to shore up the Italian defence against the British and Australians. It would be comman
ded by a panzer general who had been outstanding in the invasion of France: Erwin Rommel. Mussolini thanked his partner profusely and made his farewells. Not a moment too soon. That same day, the Australians began their attack on Tobruk.

  After the hammering in Malta, a buzz went around Perth’s mess decks that soon they would be heading home, back to Sydney, to repair the damage done. But it was wishful thinking. Perth went into the floating dock at Alexandria for a day’s inspection, and some patchwork repairs were knocked together – enough to get the ship going again. Flooded compartments were pumped out and her after gun turrets, jammed during the bombing in Malta, were freed up to train properly. The only man to leave was the Executive Officer, Commander Adams, Flip the Frog, who came down with some unspecified illness and was packed off to hospital ashore, his days in Perth at an end. Pricky Reid, the First Lieutenant, was promoted to Acting Commander as the new Executive Officer on 4 February. There was no going home – not yet. The RAN had more to do in the Med.

  The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Andrew Cunningham, now had to rethink his tactics for the war at sea. He was faced with thorny difficulties. On land, things were going well enough in North Africa. But Greece was a problem on a dark horizon. The ULTRA intercepts continued to show a steady build-up of German forces in the Balkans, with London now convinced that Hitler intended to invade Greece in support of the Italians. If that were to happen, and Britain in turn went to the aid of the Greeks, as Churchill was making it plain he wished to, Cunningham’s ships would have to carry the troops and supplies across the Mediterranean. At the same time, the fleet would have to continue to support the army in North Africa while denying supplies to the Italians there. All this with the Luftwaffe now having air ascendancy over the heavily outnumbered RAF in the region. And there was always the possibility that the Italian main fleet might summon the nerve to put to sea again.

  No naval officer was better equipped to shoulder this heavy weight of command than Andrew Browne Cunningham, or ABC, as everybody called him. In January 1941, he had just celebrated his 58th birthday. Born in Dublin, but with Scottish ancestry and proud of it, he passed out of the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth in 1898, tenth in his term, renowned as an amateur boxer and rejoicing in the nickname Meat Face. He fought on land in South Africa with a naval brigade in the Boer War and, as a lieutenant-commander, captained a destroyer, HMS Scorpion, throughout the First World War. He won a Distinguished Service Order in the Dardanelles in 1915, and later added two bars to it – no mean achievement.

  In those lean years between the wars, Cunningham’s career prospered. Most naval officers aspiring to the gilded heights of their profession hungered for postings to battleships, but ABC much preferred the dash and thrust of the smaller ships – destroyers and cruisers – which he believed were a better training ground for both seamanship and the arts of war. The years of peace that he spent on the Mediterranean Station gave him an intimate knowledge of the sea in all its moods, of its politics and ports, and the navies that sailed there. ‘I probably knew the Mediterranean as well as any naval officer of my generation,’ he wrote in his memoirs.1 He hoisted his flag as a rear-admiral in 1932. As a full admiral, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean – ‘the finest command the Royal Navy has to offer’, he called it – on 6 June 1939.

  Cunningham was nuggety and fit, a man who radiated energy and a formidable air of authority. His slightly watery eyes had a piercing stare but with lines about them that suggested a sense of humour, which indeed he possessed. He had a square and ruddy Celtic face with a jaw like a stoker’s shovel. He suffered fools not at all and his temper was legendary, his rages splattered with sailors’ obscenities. But he was also capable of great generosity, and he did not stint on praise when it was due. He drove his men hard but gave them loyalty in return, and it is fair to say they loved him as no admiral had been loved since Nelson. Like Nelson, Cunningham was impatient with the complexities of staff work. He thirsted for action. The victor of Trafalgar had inspired his captains with the simple credo that ‘no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy’, and Cunningham had imbibed that tradition to the full. He was Britain’s most accomplished fighting admiral of the twentieth century, and the last of the Royal Navy’s great fleet commanders.

  There was another plus to him: he liked Australians. Perhaps it was his Celtic blood. Unlike some English officers, Cunningham relished having Australian ships and men under his command. He and the Australians called a spade a spade, and everyone knew where they stood. A special favourite was Hec Waller, the Commander of the Scrap Iron Flotilla. The five gutsy little Australian destroyers – Waller’s own ship Stuart, and Vampire, Voyager, Vendetta and Waterhen – had ranged the eastern Mediterranean since the early months of 1940, rarely out of a scrape or a scrap. They had been in fleet actions and shore bombardments. They had been heavily attacked from the air, time and again. Stuart had put an end to the Italian submarine Gondar in September 1940, forcing it to the surface after a long and painstaking hunt. Battered but not beaten, their engines worn with age, the Scrap Iron ships did heroic duty. And so did their crews. With his own destroyer background, Cunningham knew better than most admirals the trials they faced. Confident in Waller’s qualities of fighting leadership, Cunningham put him in command as Captain (D)2 of the 10th Destroyer Flotilla, which included the Australian ships and four Royal Navy destroyers, Dainty, Decoy, Defender and Diamond.

  The last two weeks of January saw Stuart, with Vampire and Defender, and the old monitor HMS Terror3 bombarding Tobruk in support of the Australian 6th Division. When the Italians surrendered, Waller entered the port, somehow extricated his ships from a minefield into which they had unknowingly wandered, and then picked his way gingerly through a harbour spiked with wrecks. There were at least ten sunken ships, including two submarines and the Italian cruiser San Giorgio, down by the stern and blackened by fire, and the port itself had been reduced to little more than rubble.

  Waller allowed his men ashore, where they picked up a few souvenirs and shared some looted Italian wine with the diggers who had taken the place. Hec Waller did a bit of looting of his own. In Alexandria, the Admiral’s wife, Lady Cunningham, had a sewing circle of ladies to knit comforts for the troops and was keen to get hold of sewing machines. Somehow, she had heard they were available in Tobruk. She mentioned this to Waller, who said he would see what he could do. Cunningham recounted the story in his memoirs:

  Landing at Tobruk he was stopped by the Military Police. For fear of wholesale looting, nobody was allowed into the town. Waller argued with the man: ‘I had a hand in helping to capture this place. Surely I can go and have a look at the result of our bombardments!’

  ‘No, sir, I’ve orders to let no one in,’ the MP replied. ‘If I let one in we shall soon have the place full of these bloody Australians pinching every mortal thing.’

  What persuasive blarney Waller used to get his way I do not know, but some days later a lorry drove up to the Residency in Alexandria and discharged two sewing machines in crates.4

  Restored to service, Perth sailed again from Alexandria on 22 January, in company with the battle fleet. The end of the month was spent once again in the humdrum tasks of war at sea, patrolling here, shepherding a convoy there. They seemed to be on an unceasing shuttle to Suda Bay and Piraeus and then back to Alexandria again, with only the occasional aircraft alarm to relieve the monotony. The weather now was bitterly cold, with temperatures down to just a little above freezing at night, and the hills above Suda were thick with snow. Even with duffel coats, heavy scarves and sea boots, nights on watch on the bridge or closed up at the guns left men chilled to the marrow. These were the times when they envied those in the heat of the engine room below.

  Ships that had endured an ordeal together, or whose crews mixed ashore, or ships that just saw a lot of each other were known as ‘chummy’ ships. Ajax was a chummy. The two cruisers frequently found themselves working together, and over
time they developed an anti-aircraft gunnery technique that helped make up for the abysmal deficiencies of the high-angle control system. Ajax had radar – a primitive version, to be sure, but still capable of detecting oncoming aircraft in time to make some preparations. The two ships would put up a wall of steel, one firing high and the other firing low at an attacking bomber, which significantly increased the chances of a hit. It worked well. Over time, they became known in the fleet as the Hair-Trigger Twins – a nickname they accepted with pride. Sometimes, the two ships’ companies would mix together in the bars and sailors’ clubs ashore. The Australians called the British ‘kippers’, because that was what the Poms had for breakfast. Others, less kindly, said it was because the Poms were like kippers: two-faced and smelly.

  February found Perth and Ajax heading back to Alexandria again, the weather as fickle as ever. On Monday the 3rd, they were hammered by a sudden thunderstorm, which left drifts of hail piled up on deck. Three days later, with that perversity for which the Med was infamous, they ran into a blinding dust storm – or, more correctly, the storm ran into them. The Khamsin had arrived – a dirty cloud swelling up without warning from the North African desert. It rushed upon them in a gritty, choking blast that left the watch on deck rubbing their eyes and gasping for breath. The sun glowed an eerie red through the dust. With visibility down to less than a hundred metres, Bowyer-Smyth slowed the ship to little more than a crawl. There were known minefields off Alexandria, and, with no way of detecting them in the gloom, the Captain and the Navigator, Lieutenant Gerard Talbot-Smith RN, were taking no chances. They didn’t enter harbour and secure head and stern to their buoys until three o’clock the next morning.