Fortress England

by Robert Jackson

  “That was close. Everybody okay?” The front gunner answered, in a rather shaken voice, that he was. The navigator went on with his unruffled monologue as though nothing had happened.

  “Steady, steady, steady…right a touch…okay, steady… Bombs away!”

  The Halifax leaped as its three and a half tons of bombs dropped away. The flak was coming up thick and fast now, the shell bursts of the large calibre weapons intermingled with glowing dots that were the shells of quick-firing automatic weapons. The whole effect was like a storm of orange and red sleet, rising unnaturally from the ground.

  “Bomb doors closed. Let’s get out of it!”

  The Halifax thundered over the harbour, pursued by the anti-aircraft fire. Armstrong resisted a strong urge to close his eyes.

  Then the rear gunner piped up over the intercom, “There go the flashes, skipper… I counted three. No sign of number four. That’s all. Looks as though they’re in the docks area, though. There’s a glow — I think we started a fire.”

  He sounded disappointed, as though he had been expecting a massive explosion.

  Pittaway grunted and continued on course, taking the Halifax some way out to sea before asking the navigator, now back at his table, for a course for home. As the bomber swung round on a north-easterly heading, Armstrong saw more flashes light up the sky over Brest as the other Halifaxes unloaded their bombs. He continued to watch for a long time, craning his neck, until the glow receded over the horizon.

  As the last of the attacking bombers droned away, Brest was the scene of feverish activity. Neither of the warships had been damaged in the attack, but one bomb had hit the Continental Hotel, killing several German naval officers who were staying there. But it was a second bomb that was to produce unforeseen consequences.

  The Scharnhorst, having been overhauled in dry dock, was now back in the harbour and moored to the north quay, protected by a torpedo boom. The Gneisenau, however, was still in dry dock, and a bomb fell close to her. It failed to explode, and because of the danger it was decided to move the battlecruiser out of the dock while the missile was rendered harmless. There was no room at the quay for the Gneisenau, so she would have to be run out into the harbour until the bomb was defused. The risk was judged to be acceptable. After all, the operation should not take more than a few hours.

  In the following dawn, as Armstrong and the others — all of whom had returned safely — slept off their post-flight meal of bacon and eggs, a blue-painted Spitfire of the photo-reconnaissance unit based at Oakington took off and climbed to 28,000 feet, heading for Brest. The photographs she would bring back would be among the most important of the War.

  Chapter Six

  RAF St Eval, Cornwall — Saturday, 5 April 1941: 1800 Hours

  “Familiar territory for you, this, Dickie,” Armstrong said over the intercom, as he brought the Harvard in to land. Baird gave a grunt in reply; he had spent some time as officer commanding the target-towing flight at another Cornish airfield, St Merryn, and had not enjoyed the experience. Armstrong had rescued him from that, when his own special duties squadron was in the process of formation.

  Armstrong touched down on one of the airfield’s runways — their construction had been completed just a few weeks earlier — and taxied up to the Watch Office, where he and Baird were met by the Commanding Officer of a Beaufort squadron on temporary detachment to St Eval from its usual base at North Coates. He was also a wing commander, and was far from pleased when Armstrong told him what his squadron’s target was to be.

  “The Gneisenau. In the middle of Brest harbour? Bloody suicide! We wouldn’t have more than one chance in a thousand of getting through. Brest is one of the most heavily-defended targets in Europe. What hope of success d’you think a torpedo attack would stand?”

  The wing commander had already been alerted by Headquarters Coastal Command that his crews were to stand by for a mission of the utmost importance, and that they would be briefed by Armstrong. The latter sympathised with him, but was prepared to argue the case firmly. He carried with him the package of photographs developed from the film brought back by the PRU Spitfire earlier in the day, and when the wing commander examined them in the security of his office a while later, what he saw did nothing to lessen his sense of foreboding.

  The inner harbour of Brest was protected by a stone mole bending around it from the west, and at its furthest point the mole was less than a mile from the quayside. The Gneisenau was anchored at right angles to the quay, some 500 yards from the eastern boundary of the harbour, about midway between mole and quay.

  “Look,” the wing commander said, indicating the photographs spread out on his desk top. “Put yourself in the position of an attacking pilot. In order to aim your torpedo, your aircraft would have to traverse the outer harbour and approach the mole at an angle to the anchored ship, which means that it would be exposed to crossfire from the gun batteries which we know are positioned on these two arms of land that encircle the outer harbour. And there’s more. See these ships in the outer harbour, just outside the mole? They’re flak ships, guarding the approach to the battlecruiser. And there are batteries of guns on this rising ground here, behind the quay, with even more around the inner harbour. Oh, and don’t forget the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Even if the other guns didn’t get you by some miracle, theirs certainly would. I don’t like the expression ‘wall of steel’, but that’s exactly what it amounts to.”

  Dickie Baird, who had considerable experience of dropping torpedoes, chipped in.

  “I have to say the wing commander is right, Ken. Look — even supposing an aircraft did get through, the pilot would have to line it up and aim and drop his torpedo before he actually crossed the mole, so that the tin fish would have the longest possible distance to run to its target. We’ve already said that the distance from the mole to the Gneisenau is no more than five hundred yards; if the torpedo were dropped within this range it wouldn’t have time to arm itself and settle down to its running depth, which means that it would pass under the warship.”

  The wing commander nodded. “Yes. Everything depends on the pilot’s approach to the mole being made at roughly the right dropping angle. He’d have only a few seconds between sighting the Gneisenau and dropping his torpedo, and there’d be no room for anything but the smallest adjustments to his course. During those few seconds, every gun in and around the anchorage would be firing at him. Talk about the charge of the Light Brigade…and what about after the drop? He might escape the fire of the bigger guns if he could stay down on the deck, but the instant he made his drop he would have to pull up to avoid the rising ground, so he’d be silhouetted against the sky like a clay pigeon. I’m telling you, it would be sheer suicide.”

  He shook his head and sighed, as though in surrender, then looked directly at Armstrong.

  “All right. I know the problems. We’re the only torpedo-bomber squadron within striking distance of Brest; the rest are scattered all over the shop. The trouble is, I’ve only got six aircraft. The other three are out on a strike. The best I can do is get the remaining six away at dawn. The Gneisenau is certain to be protected by torpedo nets, so I propose to send three aircraft in with bombs to rupture the nets. They’ll have an element of surprise, so they might just get away with it. I’ll send off the torpedo-carriers first, so that they’ll be loitering just off the harbour when the bombers go in. After that, it’ll be up to God and Providence. Let’s get the crews together, and get on with it.”

  The briefing did not take long. After a meal, Armstrong and Baird found themselves a couple of beds and snatched a few hours’ rest before emerging to watch the Beauforts taking off into the pre-dawn darkness. It had been raining heavily and the aerodrome was badly waterlogged; the three torpedo-carrying Beauforts got away all right, but two of the bomb-carriers became hopelessly bogged down and only one followed the first three into the dawn. It was now 0515, and sunrise was a quarter of an hour away over the eastern horizon.

  The
crew of the bomb-carrying Beaufort, forging on over the Channel through mist and rain, became lost. When daylight came and they managed to pinpoint their position, they found that they were many miles to the south of Brest. They dropped their bombs on an enemy convoy that was making its way along the coast and headed for home.

  Meanwhile, two of the torpedo-carrying Beauforts had arrived off Brest independently. The first to do so was piloted by Flying Officer Ken Campbell, a twenty-four-year-old Scot from Ayrshire who had joined the RAF just after the outbreak of war. The second, arriving a few minutes later, was flown by an Australian, Flying Officer Jimmy Hyde. The squadron’s most experienced pilot, Hyde had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross only a few days earlier.

  In accordance with their orders, Hyde and Campbell loitered outside the harbour, awaiting the arrival of the bomb-carrying Beauforts. Their instructions were to make their torpedo attack only when they saw the explosions of the bombs. They had no means of knowing that two of the Beauforts had not even managed to take off, and that the other had got lost. And there was no sign, so far, of the third torpedo Beaufort.

  Both aircraft continued to fly in broad circles, skimming through banks of mist and low cloud that hid the harbour area. They had been the first to take off, at 0430, and it was becoming daylight. Hyde knew that if they delayed their attack for much longer, their chances of survival would be infinitesimal. Yet there was no sign of the bombers, and Hyde knew that if they did not arrive soon, the attack would have to be aborted.

  Suddenly, Hyde caught a glimpse of a Beaufort flashing past, just underneath him. It had the code-letter ‘X’ on its fuselage, and he knew that it was Campbell’s aircraft. Moreover, it was heading straight for the mist-shrouded harbour. Hyde wondered what the other pilot was up to; there had still been no bomb explosions. He went on circling, determined not to sacrifice the lives of his crew needlessly. There would be little point, he reasoned, in getting themselves shot down and killed only to have their tin fish stopped short of the battlecruiser by a torpedo net.

  Campbell, meanwhile, raced across the outer harbour at 300 feet, heading for the right-hand end of the mole, his Beaufort slipping in and out of the low-lying cloud. Ahead of him, grey blurs in the murk, he could just see the flak ships; their gun crews, and those in the emplacements around the harbour, were desperately searching for the speeding torpedo bomber, which they could hear but not yet see.

  Campbell put his aircraft into a shallow dive towards the east end of the mole. Beyond it, he could see a huge dark bulk that was the stern of the Gneisenau. He turned to starboard and swung back to port, making an angle of forty-five degrees with the battleship. He sped between the two flak ships at fifty feet above the water; they still did not open fire, although by now the Beaufort must have been clearly visible.

  The mole was 200 yards ahead of the racing aircraft. As it loomed up in front of the Beaufort he lifted the nose a little to clear it, levelled out again and released the torpedo. It seemed to hang under the Beaufort for several seconds as the two flashed across the mole, then its nose dipped towards the water.

  At last, as the Beaufort pulled up to the left towards the sheltering clouds, the guns opened up, filling the sky with a rain of 37-mm and 20-mm shells. Glowing balls of fire seemed to pass through the Beaufort; it faltered in its climb, turned over on its back and plunged into the harbour in a glare of exploding fuel tanks, shedding debris. Neither Campbell nor the other members of his crew — the navigator, Sergeant James Scott, a Canadian from Toronto, the wireless operator, Sergeant Mulliss, a Somerset farmer before the War and the rear gunner, Sergeant Hillman, a Londoner who had once been chauffeur to a doctor’s family in Barnsley, Yorkshire — had stood a chance of getting out.

  The torpedo ran on across the harbour. It struck the Gneisenau aft and its 500-pound warhead exploded below the waterline, blasting a great hole in the ship. Immediately, she began to take on tons of water.

  Thirty minutes later, as the Germans launched almost every vessel in the harbour to support the badly damaged battlecruiser and damage control crews laboured to pump out the water, the third torpedo-carrying Beaufort arrived off Brest. Its pilot, Sergeant Camp, had gone a long way off course in atrocious weather. Now, as Campbell had done, he prepared to make a lone attack.

  At sea level, Camp flew between the two arms of land that encircled the outer harbour. Ahead of him he could see nothing — the mist, combined with the smoke of earlier shellbursts, was too thick. Suddenly, the sky around his Beaufort erupted in a red and orange glare as the anti-aircraft gunners targeted it. Unable to see a thing, with no real idea of the course he must follow to locate the Gneisenau, he prudently pulled away in a climbing turn to the east and found himself in cloud cover almost at once.

  The next day, a photo-reconnaissance Spitfire came back with evidence that the Gneisenau was once again in dry dock. But the photographs could not reveal the extent of the damage Campbell’s torpedo had inflicted on the mighty warship: her injuries were to keep her under repair for eight crucial months. And when the authorities in London eventually learned the full story, Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

  So the first blow had been struck in the battle to thwart the German Navy’s plans to send out a powerful battle squadron into the North Atlantic. But good news is often tempered with bad. Even as Ken Campbell was carrying out the last gallant, despairing action of his young life, German forces were smashing their way into Yugoslavia as a preliminary to the invasion and occupation of Greece.

  They struck with twenty-seven divisions, seven of them armoured, the whole force supported by 1,200 aircraft. The three fighter squadrons of the RAF in Greece, equipped with a mixture of Gloster Gladiator biplanes and more modern Hawker Hurricanes, had enjoyed considerable success against the Italians, claiming ninety-three enemy aircraft destroyed in the first three months of 1941 for the loss of only ten of their own; but now they faced a different and much more formidable foe.

  Even so, early skirmishing between the RAF and the Luftwaffe produced encouraging results; over Eastern Macedonia, where the RAF was providing air cover for Greek ground forces, twelve Hurricanes of No. 33 Squadron encountered twenty Me 109s and claimed five of them for no loss. Such good fortune, however, was not to last. Following a spell of atrocious weather, which severely limited air operations for the best part of a week, the German forces — after seizing their principal objectives in Yugoslavia — launched an all-out offensive against Greece with overwhelming air support.

  The RAF fighters — now strengthened by the addition of a fourth squadron hurriedly deployed to Greece from North Africa — were committed to patrolling over the Allied positions and to escorting Blenheims attacking the enemy by daylight. On 14 April, the Hurricanes were heavily in action against Junkers 87 Stukas that were subjecting the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps to furious dive-bombing attacks in the Thermopylae area; the British fighters claimed some successes and the Luftwaffe retaliated by striking hard in a series of low-level attacks on the RAF airfields. At Larissa, on the morning of 15 April, twenty Me 109s pounced just as three of No. 33 Squadron’s Hurricanes were taking off. Two were shot down and their pilots killed, but not before one of them had accounted for a 109; the third Hurricane pilot, a young and inexperienced sergeant, not only escaped the onslaught but succeeded in destroying a second 109, afterwards landing back at Larissa without a bullet hole in his aircraft.

  By 17 April, it was becoming clear that the Allied front in Greece was rapidly collapsing, and Air Vice-Marshal D’Albiac — commanding the RAF contingent — ordered the withdrawal of the Hurricane squadrons to the Athens area to provide air cover for an evacuation that was becoming increasingly likely. The withdrawal was carried out under constant pressure from the Luftwaffe, but the hard-pressed RAF fighters continued to give more punishment than they took. No. 208 Squadron, the last to withdraw, had a narrow escape: just after the Hurricanes had taken off from Paramythia, which
was still littered with the wreckage of forty-odd Yugoslav aircraft destroyed in an earlier attack, the Luftwaffe once again appeared in strength and wiped out a Greek Gladiator squadron on the ground.

  By 19 April, the four Hurricane squadrons in Greece could muster no more than twenty-two serviceable aircraft, dispersed on the airfields of Menidi and Eleusis. These airfields, in fact, were large enough to have accommodated five squadrons of Hurricanes, but there were simply not enough Hurricanes in the Middle East to provide replacement aircraft for the embattled units already in Greece, let alone bring five squadrons up to strength.

  The depleted squadrons had barely arrived at their new locations when they were compelled to fight a series of savage actions against large formations of enemy bombers and fighters attacking Piraeus harbour and the airfields near Athens. The climax of these battles came on 20 April, when fifteen Hurricanes of Nos. 33 and 80 Squadrons, all that could be mustered, took off again and again to intercept the Germans. There were many deeds of heroism among the dwindling band of Hurricane pilots that day; to give just one example, the Hurricane flown by Flying Officer Harry Starrett was hit and set on fire, and instead of baling out Starrett — knowing how desperately Hurricanes were needed — flew the aircraft back to base and made a wheels-up landing. As the Hurricane slid to a stop the glycol tank exploded, and although Starrett managed to stagger clear of the wreck his burns were so severe that he died two days later.

  The battles of 19-20 April cost the RAF five more Hurricanes, and on the 21st, with the danger that the German Panzer divisions might reach Athens before the British forces could withdraw to the beachhead, the British C-in-C, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, ordered the evacuation to begin immediately. On the following day the handful of surviving Hurricanes were flown to Argos, a small Greek training airfield, from where they were expected to cover the evacuation. Together with reinforcement aircraft flown in from Crete, this rearguard fighter force numbered just twenty-one aircraft.