The Group headed into the Atlantic in its usual hunting formation, the six sloops a mile apart and in line abreast. The two carriers, positioned centrally, were stationed roughly a mile astern.
In spite of bad weather, A/S patrols were maintained throughout 31 January, and these patrols were continued on 1 February. A little before midday Nairana had just turned into wind to fly off two Swordfish and land-on the two which were returning from patrol, when Wild Goose flashed us an urgent signal: “U-boat about to attack you”. Captain Taylor took violent evasive action and the two carriers withdrew at high speed, screened by Kite, Wren and Woodpecker, Wild Goose meanwhile dropped depth-charges in the spot where the periscope had been sighted and the U-boat, which had shown great skill and courage in penetrating so close to Nairana, now found itself hunted to death. In a creeping, aptly named “plaster” attack, the sloops Starling and Wild Goose dropped more than sixty depth-charges, set to detonate at 700 feet at five-second intervals. To quote Walker’s biography:
“Cease Fire was ordered and both ships stood by to wait for evidence of a sinking. It was not long in coming. Oil, clothing, planks of wood, pulped life jackets and the mangled remains of bodies provided all the proof that was needed of death and destruction.”
German records confirm that U502, Kapitänleutnant Jeschke, was sunk in position 50°29’N, 17°29’W. There were no survivors.
Next day saw more excitement – for the squadron if not for the Escort Group. McLaughlin, Cairns and Hamilton took off in mid-morning on a routine patrol. They should have returned after three hours, yet at the end of three-and-a-half hours there was still no sign of them. For some time I had had my doubts about Will Cairns’ ability as a navigator and only the day before I had said to his pilot that, if he ever found himself lost, his best bet would be to climb as high as he could, switch his IFF to distress and hope to be picked up and homed back to the carrier. After nearly four hours Alan Kerry reported a “friendly” blip on our radar screen. An experienced aircrew (Elliott, Winstanley and Defraine) were flown off and vectored towards the aircraft, which did indeed turn out to be our missing Stringbag heading in quite the wrong direction. It was guided back to the carrier. As McLaughlin came in to land, we all knew that he had been airborne for over four and a half hours and that four and a half hours was the maximum time a Swordfish could stay airborne before it ran out of fuel. An anxious “Bats” gave the signal to cut and land, but the irrepressible McLaughlin wasn’t happy with his approach and decided to go round again. We were all at praying stations as the Swordfish circled the carrier a second time before coming in to make a perfect landing. As the plane taxied for’ard of the barrier, its engine spluttered, coughed and cut stone dead. Not a drop of fuel was left in its tanks.
What happened next will always trouble me. There were two possible reasons for the Swordfish getting lost: faulty compasses or navigational error. I had never been entirely happy with the compasses in Swordfish YNE989, the plane which McLaughlin and Cairns had been flying. This aircraft had already played an unusual role in our squadron story: smuggling aboard personnel. As I mentioned earlier, our departure from the Clyde had been precipitate, and several people who had been on thirty-six hours’ leave only just got back to the ship before she sailed. Jack Dalton, in fact, didn’t get back; he had been on a romantic escapade in Manchester, cut things too fine and the ship sailed without him. This could have landed him in very serious trouble indeed. I therefore left a message with the RTO (Rail Transport Officer) at Greenock to tell Dalton that the moment he turned up he should make post haste for the nearby airfield at Renfrew, where we were due that afternoon to pick up a replacement aircraft. In the afternoon George Sadler, Eric McEwan and I duly arrived at Renfrew. I checked the replacement aircraft, YNE989 and noted with some concern that its compasses had not been swung recently. However, it was the only Swordfish available, so I signed for it and we settled down to wait for Dalton. We were about to take off without him when he turned up, jaunty as ever. I told him he was a bloody fool and advised him to hide in the rear cockpit and stay there until the plane had landed and been struck down into the hangar. Thus was he smuggled back aboard. At the time I thought I had done him a favour, but this was not the way things worked out. After Cairns’ and McLaughlin’s narrow escape, I asked another aircrew to go through a complicated manoeuvre with Swordfish YNE989, a manoeuvre which involved flying over the carrier at a precise time and taking compass bearings of the sun on north, south, east and west headings; these bearings were then compared with those taken at the same moment by the ship’s navigating officer. The results seemed to indicate that the Swordfish compasses were OK. I therefore decided that Will Cairns’ dead reckoning must have been at fault. In view of what happened next, I shall always wonder if I was right.
During the next couple of days, in spite of bad weather, we flew a large number of A/S patrols and a smaller number of fighter patrols. However, neither U-boats nor enemy aircraft were sighted. Early on 5 February two aircraft took off as usual a little before dawn: Selley, Newbery and Long in Swordfish HJ665; Costello, Dalton and Nield in Swordfish YNE989. The latter were never seen nor heard of again. They simply disappeared. No signals or distress calls were picked up. No wreckage was found. After four hours we started to search for them, using every available aircraft. The entries in our Fair Flying Log are repetitive: “search for lost aircraft”, “search for lost aircraft”, “search for lost aircraft”. The CO searched. I searched. Even Edgar Bibby, our Commander Flying, searched. But Costello, Dalton and Nield had vanished as though they had never been. I shall always think of those compasses and wonder if there was anything more I could have done.
It was a sad little group who gathered that night in Tony Costello’s cabin to play some of his favourite records on the gramophone which he had always said would belong to the Squadron if anything should happen to him. To say he was missed would be an understatement.
Next day, 6 February, we were ordered to go to the help of the huge homeward-bound convoy SL147 – eighty-one merchantmen and warships – which was being shadowed in mid-Atlantic by enemy aircraft and was under threat of attack by a pack of more than twenty U-boats.
Our first job was to get rid of the shadowing aircraft, and as we approached the convoy first Mearns and Sargent, then Armitage and Gordon, were flown off in their Sea Hurricanes. The weather was fine but cloudy and hazy, with eight-tenths cumulus coming down in places to no more than 1,000 feet – better weather for shadowing than for making an interception. The enemy aircraft were never engaged. They were, however, driven away. Their “blips” disappeared from our radar screen and never returned. But they had done their job. The U-boats had been homed on to the convoy and were all around us. Nairana and Activity moved into an open “box” inside the convoy. Here they were screened from the U-boats and able to turn into wind to operate their aircraft without disrupting the orderly lines of merchantmen. Captain Walker ordered all ships to action stations, anticipating that as soon as it was dark the convoy would come under attack.
He was right. His biographer sets the scene:
“As dusk turned to darkness … a heavy, damp mist covered ships and men in a white frostlike dew. Sea and sky merged into a haze of midnight-blue, so that the horizon was blotted out, and the vessels seemed to be flying through a layer of whispy low-lying cloud. As darkness closed in a hush settled over both sea and ships…. It was a game of patience, Walker and his officers waiting to see from which quarter the enemy would make his first lunge. The Merchant Navy captains waiting to see whose number would come up first: which of them would be the first to explode in flames.”
It would be idle to pretend that the Squadron played a major role in the battle that followed. On 7 and 8 February we flew more than thirty patrols, nearly all of them in poor visibility, and without doubt this helped to keep the U-boats submerged and at bay and prevented them from getting into favourable positions to attack the convoy. But this was the hour of Walker a
nd his diminutive sloops. In the course of fifteen eventful hours they sank three U-boats – and it is worth remembering that Churchill reckoned that every U-boat sunk had an effect on the course of the war equivalent to a thousand-bomber raid on Berlin.
Wild Goose was first to make contact. Her lookouts spotted a U-boat trimmed down on the surface with only her conning tower visible; she was trying, engines idling, to creep undetected through the screen of warships. Wild Goose first attempted to ram her, then, in concert with Woodpecker, carried out a creeping attack. Depth-charges rained down on the hapless U762, which, German records confirm, went down with all hands in position 49°02’N, 16°58’W.
Less than an hour later another U-boat (U734) was picked up on the opposite side of the convoy by Starling’s Asdic. Three sloops carried out a concerted attack on her. The last to attack, Woodpecker, dropped a pattern of twenty-six charges set to explode at maximum depth. As the sound of the last charge died away there was a moment of silence. Then came the most terrible roar as the submarine disintegrated. Once again the sea frothed and bubbled as oil, buckled plates and broken bodies came churning to the surface.
In the early hours of the morning Kite picked up an Asdic contact some miles ahead of the convoy, but this turned out to be no easy kill and, after making several attacks without success, the sloop came within a hair’s breadth of being hit by a torpedo. Magpie then made a “creeping” twenty-six-charge attack, but the submarine (U238), constantly altering its course, depth and speed, avoided them all. “This chap knows his job,” Walker was heard to remark. “It’s almost a pity we have to kill him.” Three hours and 150 depth-charges later. Magpie’s “Hedgehog” (a multi-barrelled bomb-thrower which flung depth-charges ahead of the sloop rather than rolling them off its stern) scored a direct hit, and that was the end of a brave and resourceful adversary. “U238”, the German Admiralty confirms, “Kapitän Hepp, was lost with all hands in position 49°44’N, 16°07’W.”
As well as making these confirmed “kills”, Walker and his sloops were so effective in keeping the U-boats’ heads down that not a single torpedo was launched against the convoy. The sloops themselves, on the other hand, came under frequent attack. Several acoustic torpedoes were fired at them, and on one occasion Starling only escaped destruction by exploding the torpedo speeding towards her by throwing her depth-charges into its path.
By midday on 9 February it was clear that Convoy SL147 had been saved. There wasn’t a U-boat within 100 miles of it. Walker and his sloops were therefore ordered to head west to protect another homewardbound convoy, while Nairana and Activity remained with the Sierra Leone (SL) merchantmen for the rest of their passage home. As Walker headed deeper into the Atlantic, where he was to sink another two U-boats, he sent us a signal which went a long way towards assuaging the disappointment we felt at still not having a U-boat to our credit: “Well done, Nairana. Your pilots have performed miracles.”
The rest of the voyage home may not have made the headlines, but, as far as the squadron were concerned, it was by no means lacking in incident. Almost as soon as Walker left us an enemy aircraft appeared on our radar, and Burgham and Richardson were flown off to attempt an interception. The plane, a four-engined Focke Wulf “Condor”, was sighted, but once again there was a great deal of cloud about, the enemy aircraft took refuge in a belt of cumulus and our Hurricanes were never able to get it in their sights. It seemed to Captain Taylor that the ‘Condor’ had probably been trying to home more U-boats on to us; he was therefore determined to keep A/S patrols circling the convoy by both day and night. Two Swordfish, the first flown by our CO, Lt-Cdr Miller, with me as his observer and Willie Armstrong as his telegraphist-air-gunner, and the second flown by Bob Selley, took off in the late afternoon. There was little wind, a lot of mist, and visibility was poor. All the same, it seemed to Willie and me that conditions for flying were not too bad and that our CO was making unnecessarily heavy weather out of what ought to have been a fairly routine patrol. It was as though he had something on his mind. After we had been airborne for the better part of our allotted two hours I got a message from Nairana ordering us to continue patrolling for a further hour. When I passed this message on to the CO, he seemed to be rather concerned. And we soon discovered why. It had not escaped our notice that Lt-Cdr Miller didn’t care for night flying. Not once since we left the Clyde had his name appeared on the duty rota for a night patrol, whereas some pilots like Johnny Hunt and Bob Selley, had flown half-a-dozen. And it was a not very confident pilot who now muttered that he had expected to be back before dark, that he hadn’t done any night flying lately, and that landing with so little wind was going to be difficult. Knowing how he felt didn’t do much for our peace of mind, and the rest of the patrol passed in a somewhat strained silence.
18. ‘Dusty’ Miller leaning against his Sea Hurricane at Gibraltar in the summer of 1944. He was killed in action off Murmansk, 12 December, 1944.
19. Some of the Squadron’s telegraphist air gunners:
Back Row, L. to R.: L/A Defraine, P.O. Armstrong, L/A Brown, P.O. Long.
Front Row, L. to R. : L/A Sellings, P.O. Sheldrake.
20.
21.
22. These three photographs, taken from the cockpit of a Swordfish, show a pilot’s view of what it was like coming in to land on the escort carrier HMS Nairana. No. 20 shows the plane at the start of its approach, coming in at an angle so that the engine-cowling doesn’t obstruct the pilot’s view. (Note that the Swordfish on the flight-deck of the carrier, for’ard of the barrier, has its wings spread.) No. 21 shows the plane, still at a slight angle, approaching the round-down. No. 22 shows the plane a couple of seconds before touchdown. It is too high. The batsman (arrowed) is giving the pilot the signal to ‘come lower’. If he doesn’t react quickly he will end up in the barrier! Note too that the Swordfish for’ard of the barrier now has its wings folded.
23. Barry Barringer’s speech at the dinner to celebrate his promotion to C.O. —February, 1944.
24. Wilf Waller’s party, Cabin 12, HMS Chaser.
Back Row, L. to R.: John Winstanley, Jack Teesdale, Wilf Waller, Barry Barringer, Sam Mearns.
Front Row, L. to R. : Bob Selley, three ship’s officers, Dave Newbery.
By the time we got back to the carrier there was not a glimmer of daylight. Miller’s first approach was too high and he was waved round again. His second approach was no better. Nor was his third. Sensing trouble, I told Willie Armstrong to secure his “G-string” (the wire which was supposed to ensure that, in the event of a crash, aircrew weren’t catapulted out of their cockpit). Although poor Miller’s fourth approach was far from perfect, “Bats” gave him the signal to cut. It was obligatory to obey this. Miller, however, was obviously afraid that this approach too was not good enough to ensure a safe touch down. He rammed open the throttle and tried to go round yet again. It was not to be. The heavily-laden Swordfish, weighed down with depth-charges and with little wind to give it lift, couldn’t gain height sufficiently quickly. As it tried to claw its way skyward, its landing hook caught the top of the barrier. It was a scenario for disaster. The Stringbag, its engine at full throttle, came crashing down on top of one of the Hurricanes parked on the for’ard part of the flight-deck. Sitting in the cockpit of the Hurricane, only seconds earlier, had been our senior fighter pilot Al Burgham, who is not sure to this day what instinct made him leap to safety as the Swordfish came lumbering out of the night. We slithered across the flight-deck and would have gone over the side if the Swordfish hadn’t still been attached, like a hooked fish, to the barrier. We came to rest in the catwalk. Looking down, the CO, Willy Armstrong and I could see the sea below us and the flight-deck somewhere above us. Wondering by what miracle we were still alive and uninjured, we extricated ourselves from the remains of our aircraft.
The unfortunate Miller was summoned to the bridge and placed under cabin arrest. Willy and I, our knees still knocking, watched our shattered Swordfish being hoisted back on to t
he flight-deck. And suddenly there was another shock. One of the armourers reported that the depth-charges were still primed. If the Swordfish had fallen into the sea, its depth-charges (which detonated on contact with water) would have exploded and that would certainly have been the end of us, and quite likely the end of Nairana too.
While all this was going on, Bob Selley had been circling the carrier, waiting to land. He couldn’t, of course, see what was happening but he knew by the long delay that Miller must have crashed. He knew too that, with a heavy load and no wind, landing wasn’t going to be easy. He asked permission to jettison his depth-charges. This, however, was curtly refused. After about fifteen minutes, by which time the flight-deck had been cleared, Bob came in and managed at the first attempt to make a perfect landing. When he reported to the bridge, he asked Edgar Bibby why he hadn’t been allowed to jettison his depth-charges. The answer was brief and to the point: “I wanted you to land with them on,” Bibby told him, “just to show it could be done. To keep up morale.”
As soon as we saw that Bob had landed safely, Al Burgham and I made our way to the wardroom for a much-needed drink. We had barely sat down when I was called to the bridge.
“I want you,” Captain Taylor said, “to take over the Squadron.”
I pointed out that, although I might have been the most experienced officer in the Squadron, I was not the most senior.
But Captain Taylor cut me short: “Just get on with it, Barringer,” he said.
Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea Page 12