Torpedo Attack

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Alden had heard that a murderer in the dock could always tell whether the verdict was 'guilty' when the jury returned from deliberating, because none of them would meet his eye. It was a legend which implied reluctance and even inverted guilt on the part of those who condemned him. It was not at all agreeable to notice the same avoidance by the duty controller and his staff this afternoon.

  Group Captain Jameson stood up and faced the twelve men who were watching him expectantly: eleven, to be precise, for Hanbury was staring at the wall map, apparently absorbed in thought, fiddling with his moustache. He already knew the target. The red-taped track led to Zeebrugge.

  The station commander had a strained expression in his eyes, which his manner of controlled calmness did not disguise. 'As you can see, your target is Zeebrugge. More specifically, in Zeebrugge harbour. All of you will have heard, as schoolboys, and perhaps from your family and friends, of the famous naval attack on Zeebrugge in nineteen-eighteen, when a destroyer rammed the harbour mouth to block the exit of the U­ boats based there.

  'Your task today is at least as important. Your selection is a tribute to your skill and a proud distinction: you have been my most successful torpedo crews and this operation calls for the very best of which this station is capable. The enemy battle cruiser, Der Sieger, put into Zeebrugge yesterday for emergency repairs. She had sailed from Wilhelmshaven and Intelligence believe that she was bound for Dunkirk to take part in an invasion of our south coast.

  'It is your task to sink her at her mooring or to inflict crippling damage.' The Group Captain sat down.

  Wing Commander Hanbury took his place. 'We shall deliver our attack at dusk, and as close to last light as possible. The enemy will probably be expecting a bomber raid tonight, not a torpedo attack at any time. This will give us the advantage of surprise.

  'You will see in this morning's P.R. photographs that there is an enormous mole guarding the anchorage. You will also see that Der Sieger is moored only three hundred yards from the mole. You will immediately be wondering how we can sink her with torpedoes which need a minimum run of six hundred yards in order for their arming mechanism to complete its function. The answer is that a torpedo does not need to be in the water for that distance. The arming process starts immediately it is released, as you know. If, therefore, we drop our torps three hundred or three hundred and fifty yards before we reach the mole, they will have time to become effective.

  'As you also know, a torpedo plunges to an average depth of forty feet when it enters the water. The depth in the port of Zeebrugge is fifty feet at the seaward end: the water close inside the mole, that is. And that is where we must be sure that our torpedoes hit the water.'

  The briefing continued for an hour, with horror piled upon horror. The flak defences were strong and would certainly have been strengthened even further as soon as Der Sieger put into harbour. A flak ship had already been photographed lying near her and at least one more would surely be in position by now. The battle cruiser's own anti-aircraft armament was also abundant. There were barrage balloons permanently sited around the port and this would probably be increased by ship­ borne balloons moored to barges.

  Alden heard it all with a creeping sensation of deadening helplessness. He and all the others were held fast in a predicament from which there was no escape except in blatant cowardice and betrayal of duty. Everyone who volunteered for any inherently dangerous duty, in any of the armed forces, must share the premonition that had assailed Alden from time to time during his service. An event like this must happen someday. He and the others who would shortly be taking off for Zeebrugge had voluntarily undertaken to fly on operations against the enemy. Had volunteers been called for this specific mission, perhaps none of them would have offered himself. He was quite certain that he would not have. But he had no alternative to obeying the order to go and to doing it to the best of his ability and without flinching from the appalling storm of shot and shell that he knew awaited him.

  Do I feel better now that I've rationalised it? he asked himself. Yes, I think I do. This, or something like it, was bound to happen sooner or later. It's here. And perhaps nothing so horrible will ever confront me again. So, once we've done it, the very worst we are ever likely to face will be over and done with.

  Everyone was very quiet when they filed out of the Ops Room. Only the shuffle of feet broke the quietness; until Alden heard a clatter behind him that made him jump. God! my nerves are tight, he thought disparagingly. He turned. Dymond-Forbes was lying on the floor, tangled with a chair. He grinned up at Alden, looking pale but determinedly cheerful. 'Sorry to startle you, sir... didn't see the chair... walked straight into it.'

  'Are you feeling all right?'

  'Yes, thank you.' Dymond-Forbes rose and walked into the controller's dais. The platform stood two feet high and caught him just above the knee. He stumbled, reached out blindly, and fell again. 'Sorry, sir...' He peered up at the controller. 'Can't see... seeing double... sorry about that...'

  Alden gave the gunner a grim look. 'You are not all right, are you? What's the matter.' His voice took on a bitter note. 'Migraine?'

  Dymond-Forbes would not look him in the eye. 'I'll b­be all r-right, sir.'

  'I'm taking you to Sick Quarters.' Neither sympathy nor concern was apparent, but scorn was witheringly present. The harshness of Alden's voice drew a startled look from Lovell. Alden turned to him. 'Chris, go and find Sergeant Potter at once and tell him he's coming with us.' Several others had halted on their way from Ops and looked back. Both flight commanders had attended briefing and Alden looked at Courtney. 'All right if I take Lovell, sir, in place of Forbes?'

  'Yes, carry on.' Courtney's manner was as contemptuous as Alden's. He glanced at the squadron commander.

  Wing Commander Hanbury nodded. His face was a mask of disapproval and distaste. 'Sergeant Potter deserves to be given the honour,' he said.

  When Alden returned to the crew room after a wordless drive in Courtney's light utility truck to Sick Quarters, Sergeant Potter was in conversation with his fellow crew members and his demeanour was genuinely as pleased as his predecessor had pretended to be.

  'You are permanently in my crew from now on,' Alden told him.

  The flak reached out for them when they were a mile from the high bulk of the mole, in echelon starboard at eighty feet. Eighty-eight millimetre shells began to burst around them with their well-known and detested bok­bok that always sounded more vicious than any single detonation. Der Sieger's armament was the first to open fire. Then the shore batteries joined in. Eighty-eights were quickly supplemented by 37s, and when the mole loomed only a few hundred yards ahead, the 20-mils added themselves to the cacophany and the mosaic of red, yellow, white and green explosions and grid of tracer.

  The three pilots and their observers had pored over charts and photographs, devising means of ensuring that they would judge the essential moment in the operation, the period of three seconds during which they must drop their torpedoes, accurately. Judging distance when travelling fast was never easy. This time, it would be the most difficult measurement any of them had ever had to make. Alden had determined his own factors: the alignment of the beacon on the mole with a tall building at the dockside; the scale on the scene in the foreshortened view, at 80ft, of the towering obstacle and the breadth of the strip of water ahead which was now rapidly narrowing. But, despite his own calculations, he was watching the leading aircraft: Hanbury was the most brilliant pilot he had ever known, and where Hanbury decided to release his torpedo was bound to be the right spot; he would follow suit when he estimated that he, in turn, had reached the same distance from the target.

  Any second now, surely, Hanbury must let it go...

  In a literal flash of white and violet light that seemed to singe the eyeballs - Hanbury's aircraft was no longer there.

  The boiling turbulence of its explosion hurled reeking smoke into Alden's cockpit and a whirlwind of fire heated air to buffet his aircraft. He kicke
d it straight again and as he saw the swirling oily flotsam-littered water come level with him on the port side he launched his projectile.

  The 88s could no longer depress their barrels enough to get the Beauforts in their sights, now that the range was so short and the harbour wall so tall. But the 37s and 20s had only two targets left instead of the three at which they had had to spread their fire. Chunks of shell casing clipped lumps off N for Nut's wings and tail planes, a shell tore a hole in its tail fin. Alden knew that there was damage close behind him, in or abaft of the wireless cubbyhole, for he could feel and hear the wind gushing and screaming through rents and holes.

  He dived to within a few feet of the top of the mole and began a skidding turn that would not bring a wingtip down to crash into it. He saw the track of his torpedo running dead at Der Sieger. He climbed enough for safety, then banked and turned steeply, racing away from the tumult of the guns.

  Another torpedo was streaking at the battle cruiser. Alden turned his head and glimpsed Jenkins's Beaufort. It was turning tightly, above him and to one side. Jenkins gave him a thumbs up barely a second before two 88 shells hit his aircraft simultaneously. The wings, each in two separate pieces, the fuselage sundered into three, and portions of its crew, hovered in the air for a moment before falling into the still water of the harbour, where the wreckage of the Beaufort sank and the dismembered bodies bloodily floated.

  The mole was astern and Alden took his aircraft lower, until his propeller tips were almost slicing through the spume of the wave crests.

  It was only then that he became fully aware of the ache in his right leg and realised that he had been bracing it stiffly against the starboard rudder pedal ever since he released his torpedo, to correct a strong tendency to turn to port.

  'Check in, crew.'

  One by one, each with an irrepressible note of triumph in his voice, they confirmed that nobody had been hurt and that the gun turret and wireless were in working order, all navigation instruments and charts present and correct.

  In Alden's mind's eye was firmly imprinted the image of Der Sieger belching smoke from the explosion of his torpedo and the fire it had ignited, listing to starboard and shipping water; and of her bows dipping dramatically as Taffy Jenkins's torpedo blew a great hole clean through them, with another monstrous eruption of flames and smoke.

  His leg was going to tire long before he got the Beaufort back to England; and there was no Lala now to give him a spell and take the strain for a while with his leg that was as thick as a treetrunk. No second pilot to take over in any way if his strength failed.

  But making a safe landing at base - eventually – was the least of his worries. With Hanbury gone, Courtney would be given command of the squadron and promotion. He himself would go up to squadron leader and command B Flight. With promotion came a greater demand for leadership. And it was the leaders who, as had just been demonstrated, had the shortest life expectancy.

  Lovell handed him the statutory note about setting magnetic course, landfall and estimated time of arrival: S/C Felixstowe 175M E.T.A. 2235.

  He began to climb. He would not feel secure until there was at least three thousand feet between the Beaufort and the North Sea. You could still never tell about the engines.

  'We'll be in Jerry's fighter range all the way to landfall, Gunner, don't forget.'

  'I'm not dozy, sir. Thinking about the way we pranged Der Sieger will keep me awake all night: best sight I've ever seen.'

  'That goes for all of us, I should think. But Felixstowe is going to look even better. How about passing round the coffee, Chris?'

  'Coming up straight away, Pilot.'

  Alden's leg was prickling with pins and needles. He looked at his watch. Only another forty minutes to go. And then another half-hour to East Crondal. He could manage; provided no other battle damage evinced itself and made N Nuts more difficult to control. And there was still the landing to cope with… I wonder how soon we'll be on the Battle Order again? Perhaps Bruce will give us a couple of days off, in recognition of pranging the target well and truly. Maybe even six days: two for me, two for Taffy and two for Jack Hanbury. I'm sure they'd like us to have the time off on their behalf.

  If you enjoyed reading Torpedo Attack by Richard Bickers you might be interested in Churchill’s Flights by Jerrard Tickell, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Churchill’s Flights by Jerrard Tickell

  Prologue

  AT about eight o'clock in the evening of May the 26th, I943, a strange aircraft roared out of the steeps of the sky and alighted on the North Front at Gibraltar.

  Many pairs of binoculars were turned on her and the barrels of the Rock's Ack Ack batteries were swift to follow her course. They were lowered when it was observed that she wore the roundels of the Royal Air Force. But nobody on the Rock had ever seen anything like her before. She had the wings, tail, wheels and four engines of a Lancaster and she was in bomber camouflage. But her fuselage and square windows were distinctly odd and she was unarmed. She was flown by two Wing Commanders - two! - and her interior was fitted out with what amounted to luxury in those austere days.

  The Nazi duty spy at La Linea watched her excitedly through powerful glasses. Normally he would have expected forewarning of the advent of such a. rara avis. Since the time of the Spanish civil war, Goering's influence had been marked in General Franco's air force. Two radio stations - at Seville and Corunna - fed La Linea with information. It was even suspected that Kondors on Atlantic patrols were quietly refuelled on Spanish airfields. In addition to these professional aids, the duty spy's chain of bribed onion-selling muleteers constantly patrolled the coasts of Spain. All of them had hidden short wave transmitting sets and their orders were to report aerial activity of any description. This one must have kept well out of the sight of land. By straining his eyes, he could just make out the name painted on her nose.

  The Nazi spy was connected by direct land-line to Berlin. Within minutes, he was making his report. A strange British aircraft with square windows had landed on the North Front at Gibraltar; she looked something like a Lancaster bomber but she was not a Lancaster bomber; she carried neither cannon nor bombs and hers was obviously a transport role; when his agents employed on the North Front had had time to examine her interior, he would telephone full details. In the meantime, her name was Ascalon. He would repeat that at dictation speed-

  A-S-C-A-L-O-N. Heil Hitler!

  A staff officer in one of the several Intelligence Services which squabbled incessantly within the Reich had been a pre-war Rhodes Scholar at Oxford where he had read Greats.

  The word Ascalon struck a chord and he looked it up in his classical dictionary.

  Ascalon was the name of the spear with which Saint George slew the dragon.

  Chapter One

  SOME five weeks before the touch-down of this odd bird of passage in Gibraltar, a young R.A.F. officer had sat looking glumly at the IN and OUT trays in an office in the Air Ministry. Flight Lieutenant John Mitchell, D.F.C., was reluctantly 'flying a desk' in the Directorate of Navigation Training in London-and London, he felt, was not the place for him when great events were shaping all over the warring world.

  Arica had been all but won. The long menacing shadow of the Allied Armies slanted over Sicily towards the Italian mainland. The tide of war had surely turned and the R.A.F. penetrated even more and more deeply into Hitler's crumbling Reich. It was galling indeed for John Mitchell to foresee several more months of Air Ministry duty before he could hope to be posted back to an operational squadron. But wholly un­ known to the subject of their enquiries, faceless men had been probing John Mitchell's private life, loyalties and service record for several weeks. This is what they found out.

  John Lewis Mitchell was born in Sanderstead, Surrey, on the 12th of November, 1918, twenty-four hours after Armistice Day; he was educated at Bancroft's School Woodford Wells, Essex, where he had shown a predilection for science and mathematics. When he left school,
he served His Majesty's Honourable Board of Customs and Excise, happily specialising in breweries, gin factories and bonded warehouses. Like thousands of other patriotic young men, he entered the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve early in 1939 where his easy grasp of mathematics led him towards navigation. On September the 1st, 1939, he was mobilised for full­time service and, after a period of training, was posted to 58 squadron R.A.F., then stationed at Linton-on-Ouse in Yorkshire.

  At dusk exactly one year later to the day, Flying Officer John Mitchell led his crew of four non-commissioned officers to a Whitley Mark 5 bomber, registration number N 1427. Their target was Genoa which involved crossing the Alps twice and being air-borne for some ten and a half hours. It was, at the time, one of the longest and most arduous raids of the war. N 1427 reached and successfully bombed its target and turned for home, battling against strong head winds over the Alps. The fuel gauges dropped ominously and the young navigator knew that it would be a miracle if they reached home. The miracle was not granted and at dawn, N 1427 was ditched in the sea a mile or so short of North Foreland. Saturated in sea water and petrol-a few more gallons in the tank would have taken them to Manston-Captain and crew scrambled aboard a rubber dinghy and started paddling for the shore. Battered N 1427 cocked up her tail and sank. By the time the five shivering and sodden men squelched ashore, they looked back over an empty sea.

  Margate was largely evacuated while the Battle of Britain snarled and crackled overhead. The Superintendent of Police took the involuntary mariners under his benevolent, constabulary wing. Their first visit was to a gas works to dry out what was left of their clothes. John Mitchell then had a blissful hot bath-in an evacuated girls' school-which rid his body of that incredible irritation which a mixture of petrol and sea water can provoke. It also did much to restore his sense of humour. This was strained to the uttermost when he was driven to the Police Mortuary and invited to take his pick from a heap of garments whose original owners obviously had no further use for human raiment. With macabre hilarity, he chose an ancient frock coat, a silk scarf, an elegantly curved top hat and a pair of white plimsolls. His uniform trousers were just wearable. In his mortician's finery, he led his laughing crew into the town, stopping at a street corner to appeal to the isolated inhabitants for contributions to the Spitfire Fund. Silver rained into the top hat while an enter­ prising newspaper photographer recorded the scene for posterity.