Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea

by E. E. Barringer

  Eric remembered that, as the Swordfish went down, it seemed to take him a very long time to struggle out of the shattered cockpit. This, as it turned out, was just as well, because, as he came up towards the surface, he heard the beat of the ship’s propellers getting louder and louder as they passed directly overhead. He surfaced in the Nairana’s wake. He could see no sign at first of his observer and telegraphist-air-gunner; then, as he was lifted up on the crest of a wave, he spotted them, hauling themselves into the aircraft’s dinghy. (He learned afterwards that, as soon as the Swordfish started to sink, its rubber dinghy stowed in the wing had automatically inflated and broken clear of the plane.) Luckily the corvette HMS Clover, which as rescue ship had been positioned on the carrier’s port quarter, was on the qui vive. She saw what had happened, stopped engines and lowered a cutter. The cutter made straight for the dinghy, and finding the two aircrew in it safe and uninjured, started searching for the third. “They found me in next to no time,” recorded the imperturbable McEwan, “and the three of us were taken aboard the corvette and put to bed, none the worse for our ducking.”

  Thirty-six hours later we were at anchor in the Clyde. We were given eight days’ shore leave, or, in the case of one of our ship’s company, indefinite sick leave. Over the last few months Edgar Bibby had worked himself to exhaustion on behalf of the squadron. It was typical of him that, instead of going straight to hospital, he insisted on flying to Liverpool to supervise the making, by his family firm, of the improved lights and screens which he had designed to help with our deck-landings. Captain Taylor was not too enthusiastic about these lights, and the Admiralty were never asked to approve them (it would, Bibby knew, have been impossible to get the go ahead quickly); nevertheless they were built and installed before the start of our next operation. Like most innovations they had teething problems, but there was no doubt about their usefulness, and their basic design – with a green light indicating a good approach, a white light a too high approach, and a red light a too low approach – has been the basis of all night deck-landing systems from that day to this. Edgar Bibby was everything a Commander Flying should be: knowledgeable, committed and able to establish a modus operandi between what the captain wanted to do and what the aircrew were able to do.

  His successor arrived a few days before we sailed. Lt-Cdr(A) Nigel Ball, DSC, RN, turned out to be a competent, pleasant and easy-going man who, as an ex-Swordfish pilot, had the right qualifications for the job. Rumour had it that he had won his DSC in the early days of the war by shooting down a Messerschmitt 109 (then Germany’s ace fighter) with his single antiquated front machine-gun: for which improbable feat of marksmanship he became known as “One gun Ball”.

  It was during this spell of leave that I was promoted to Lt-Cdr and confirmed as Squadron CO. Together with a couple of other aircrew and a fair number of ship’s officers I was spending my leave aboard the Nairana, for I had discovered there was a great deal more to running a squadron than flying. That evening we had a celebratory dinner in the wardroom. It made me think. Here I was only twenty-three years old and commanding a squadron which consisted entirely of RNVR and RNZVR aircrew who had joined up since the start of the war – evidence of the scarcity of experienced personnel in the Air Arm capable of filling even moderately senior positions.

  13 May saw us again heading into the Atlantic, this time as part of the 15th Escort Group. Our orders were both flexible and complex. We were to provide air cover for a succession of convoys in the mid-Atlantic gap, and in between times to join a “hunter-killer” flotilla to search for U-boats.

  Nairana had now been at sea almost continuously for six months, and her engines, like some of her aircraft and aircrew, were beginning to feel the strain. During her commissioning trials she had achieved a maximum speed of seventeen knots; now she could barely make fifteen. This reduction may not sound very serious, but, because it reduced the wind speed over our flight deck, it made take-off and landing in calm conditions particularly difficult. The heavily laden Swordfish now needed every inch of the flight deck to get airborne, while the Sea Hurricane came into land like the proverbial bats out of hell.

  On 16 May we went to the assistance of the inward-bound convoy SL157/MKS48. They were being shadowed by long-range German reconnaissance planes, which were acting as beacons and homing the U-boats on to them. The weather was bad, with low cloud, blustering winds and driving rain. Nonetheless our Hurricanes took off and succeeded in driving away the shadowers. The convoy altered course and, as soon as it was clear that both planes and U-boats had been shaken off, we moved to help another group of vessels that were under threat: SL158/MKS49.

  The protection of this large, slow and vulnerable convoy was our most demanding and eventful operation to date. The weather was bad: strong winds, heavy seas and low cloud, which meant that flying (and particularly flying at night) was never easy. Yet from the moment we joined the convoy on 19 May until the moment we left it on 28 May our Swordfish maintained almost continuous A/S patrols. There were plenty of U-boats about. Several times our observers picked up contacts on their ASV screens, but each time the plane was vectored towards the target it disappeared; it seemed that the submarines were picking up the emissions from our elderly ASV Mark II on their Metox detectors and were diving to safety as the Swordfish closed in. So once again we made no kills. We did, however, keep the U-boats under pressure and under water, with the result that not one of them got close enough to the convoy to make an attack. In view of the weather, this was no small achievement.

  How often do I find myself remembering the weather. It would be true to say that, in our operations in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, we had two adversaries: the Germans and the elements, and it was the elements which were the more dangerous. We lost more aircrew through incidents caused by bad weather than through enemy action.

  Flying from an aircraft-carrier always involves a certain element of risk, and this risk is increased when the weather makes flying difficult. In absolute calm, planes taking-off tend to topple over the end of the flight-deck before they can build up sufficient airspeed to get airborne, while planes coming in to land tend to approach so fast that they float or bounce over the arrester-wires and end up in the barrier. In very high winds navigation is difficult and this is especially true if the wind is variable. Rain clouds and snow squalls make the images on the observers’ ASV screens difficult to interpret; more than one of our Swordfish spent its night patrol circling not the convoy but a patch of particularly dense cloud! Poor visibility makes the carrier difficult for observers to find and the batsman difficult for pilots to see. Heavy seas will cause the carrier to pitch and roll, which means that, even if an aircraft makes the perfect approach, it is liable to find its touch-down area suddenly rising up, falling away or slewing sideways. These problems seemed to loom particularly large at night!

  We all accepted the need to fly in bad weather when the safety of a convoy was at stake. What we found difficult to accept was that we were sometimes asked to fly in the most appalling conditions and put our lives in jeopardy, without justification, at the command of someone who knew little about flying. What happened to George Sadler is a case in point.

  George, it should be remembered, was a matter of fact and down-to-earth Lancastrian, not the sort to gild the lily. So you can take it that his account of what happened a few days after we joined Convoy SL158/MKS49 is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  “It was 22 May, 1944,” he writes, “Nairana and Campania were operating in mid-Atlantic protecting a slow-moving convoy. It had been agreed that one carrier should fly routine patrols, while the other stood by. The weather was foul – mountainous seas, gale-force winds, low cloud and minimal visibility – and Campania had very sensibly decided that conditions were too bad for flying and had cancelled her patrols.

  “Aboard Nairana my air-gunner, my observer Stan Thomas and I were standing by. We had taken a look at the tactical plot and seen that no U-boat
s were about; it seemed obvious there would be no flying because of the weather, and we were about to get our heads down when Captain Taylor came into the air control room.

  “‘Fine night,’ he said, ‘to catch a sub on the surface. Campania not flying? I’ll fly.’

  “We thought he had to be joking. But he wasn’t. And when he said ‘I’ll fly’, that didn’t of course mean him. It meant us. We went to collect our flying gear. When we got back we found a heated argument in progress. Our Met Officer, Mike Arrowsmith, was telling the captain that flying was out of the question, and the captain wasn’t liking what he was being told. Arrowsmith was trying to explain that we were in an occluded front, that pressure was falling, that the speed and direction of the wind was changing, and that conditions were likely to get worse rather than better. The captain, however, was determined to have us airborne. What made the prospect particularly daunting from our point of view was that radio silence was in force and we could therefore expect no homing aids from the carrier; our patrol would have to be made entirely by DR navigation. I remember Arrowsmith’s last anguished plea to us: ‘For God’s sake keep checking the wind.’ Then we were fighting our way down the flight-deck to our plane. The diminutive Stan, hampered by his chart-board and gear, was almost blown over the side.

  “Take-off was no problem. The wind was so strong we were barely a third of the way down the flight-deck when we became airborne.

  “It was a terrible night, black as the Styx. We tried to find the strength and direction of the wind by dropping a flame float. From a thousand feet the flames were invisible. We tried from five-hundred feet, but the aircraft was being so buffeted about that straight and level flying was impossible; so too was taking bearings, because for most of the time the flame-float couldn’t be seen. We did the best we could and began our designated patrol, more concerned with survival than submarines.

  “After a little more than half-an-hour there was merciful relief. Someone – we learned later that it was our Commander Flying – realized we had been sent on a mission impossible and insisted we were brought back. Even though it meant breaking radio silence he insisted we were recalled.

  “However, finding the carrier and landing-on was to prove a great deal easier said than done. Our patrol had taken us astern of the escort group and downwind; so we now had to head back into the teeth of a 50-knot gale. Stan’s navigation was spot-on and after what seemed like a very long time his relieved voice told me he had picked up the Nairana on our ASV. He gave me a course to steer. At a range of two miles he gave me a slight correction. He kept asking me if I could see the carrier, but even when the range was down to one mile I could see nothing. I came down to 200 feet on my altimeter, but could still see nothing. With our eyes popping out like organ stops we peered into the driving rain. We were within an ace of flying slap into her. Suddenly her island loomed out of the murk about half a wingspan to port and above the level at which we were flying. (Before take-off I had as usual set my altimeter to zero, which should have given us a clearance of forty-six feet – the freeboard of the carrier – above the sea; however, the atmospheric pressure had dropped so sharply that the altimeter was now wildly inaccurate. I quickly reset it.) Stan had done his bit by getting us back. Now it was up to me to land-on. Since I couldn’t even see the carrier, this clearly was not going to be easy!

  “I guessed that she had probably turned into wind, set my gyro-compass accordingly and began what I hoped was a trial landing circuit. Flying at 200 feet in vile weather in pitch darkness and trying to land by instruments on an invisible carrier is not an experience to be recommended. Coming round into wind and approaching what I hoped was her stern, I at last spotted her deck-lights. These, however, could only be seen through a very restricted arc, and kept disappearing as the carrier pitched and rolled. I made no fewer than eleven approaches, but each time the batsman reckoned landing was impossible and waved me away. Then came near disaster. My gyro-compass must have precessed (i.e. toppled out of control through 180 degrees) because I suddenly found myself trying to come in to land downwind and over the bow. I swung aside just in time to avoid the island and almost decapitated poor “Bats” as he dived into his safety net. Enough, everyone agreed, was enough. I was told to gain height, circle the carrier until dawn, then try again.

  “The hours passed slowly. I knew that I would soon be running out of fuel. ‘Visibility 50 yds,’ Stan later wrote in his logbook. ‘Could not land on. Stayed airborne until dawn. Not a very pleasant experience!!!’

  “Dawn brought a sickly grey light, but no improvement in the weather. However, at least I could now see the carrier. Nairana turned into wind.

  “In the heavy seas she was pitching heavily, and her roundown must have been rising and falling a good thirty feet. I knew that trying to pick up the first or second arrester wire would, in such conditions, be dangerous. I therefore decided to try and land farther for’ard, as close as possible to the pivotal point of the deck. I came half-sideslipping in, in a steeper than usual descent. Bats gave me the signal to cut, and I managed to pick up the third arrester wire and was jerked to a stop. I’ve never known so many members of the flight-deck handling party rush out to grab hold of a plane to prevent it being blown over the side.

  “Captain Taylor called it a ‘good show’. However, to my mind he was guilty of a grave error of judgement in risking three lives and an aircraft to no material advantage. This sort of thing was inevitable when naval officers who had little knowledge of flying requirements were given command of aircraft carriers.

  “Looking back, I’m sure Stan Thomas helped me to get down that morning. He was a deeply religious man – never swore, never complained – and I knew that he had absolute trust in me. I felt it was up to me to see that his trust was justified and he came to no harm, and in my concern for him, my fear for myself seemed to disappear.”

  For a couple of days the weather was so bad that both merchantmen and U-boats were too preoccupied with survival to think of combat. However, on 25 May conditions improved; stragglers which had become separated from the convoy were rounded up, and this was as well because it wasn’t long before both long-range reconnaissance aircraft and submarines were probing at our defences.

  That afternoon two Hurricane pilots, Sammy Mearns and George Gordon, were on patrol ahead of the convoy when they sighted a pair of U-boats, close together, at periscope depth. The Hurricanes, lacking the fire-power to sink a U-boat themselves, called up for Swordfish reinforcements, and George Sadler and Johnny Hunt, who had been at readiness, were flown off. George (who as one of our more senior pilots knew what he was talking about) asked to be armed with “Oscar”, the Navy’s experimental acoustic torpedo; this, when dropped in the vicinity of a U-boat, was designed to home-in on the sound-vibrations of its target’s propellers. Captain Taylor, however, insisted that the Swordfish were armed with depth-charges and rocket projectiles. The result was that the U-boats picked up our approaching planes on their Metox and dived to safety before an attack could be pressed home. Depth-charges were dropped, but more in hope than expectation, and German intelligence reports have since confirmed that neither U-boat was damaged. They were, however, given a very considerable fright and dissuaded from returning to periscope depth; this meant that they failed to spot the convoy’s alteration of course and never got into position to launch an attack.

  SL158/MKS49 may have moved on unmolested, but from the point of view of the Squadron this was a frustrating incident, and George Sadler remains convinced to this day that if he had been armed with “Oscar” he would have achieved a kill. For the acoustic torpedo could have been dropped at long range at a comparatively early stage in the aircraft’s approach; it would then have homed on to the sound of the diving U-boats, and that for one of them would have been that.

  A couple of days later, if it hadn’t been for a quite remarkable piece of luck, I would have been stretched out dead on Nairana’s island. A little after 2100 hours our radar picked up an ene
my aircraft approaching the convoy. The summer evening was drawing to its close and, although there was still just enough light for our Hurricanes to take-off, by the time they had made an interception and returned to the carrier it would almost certainly be pitch dark. In spite of the risk, Al Burgham and Charles Richardson were flown off.

  They spotted the enemy plane, a Ju 290, and both managed to get in a burst of cannon-fire before it escaped into cloud. It disappeared from our radar screen, though whether this was because it was shot down or because it ran for home will never be known. After almost exactly half-an-hour our Hurricanes returned, eager to get down while there was still a faint glimmer of light.

  Nigel Ball and I were standing close together in our usual position on the island, watching anxiously, and Nigel asked me to do something that I don’t think I had ever done before. He suggested that I go down to the flight-deck, stand on the centre-line for’ard of the barrier, and watch the approaching aircraft so that I could warn him if anything looked like going wrong.

  Al Burgham came in first. As it happened, he was flying not his usual Sea Hurricane, but Bill Armitage’s, and Bill had warned him that on his last patrol he had had trouble lowering his flaps. And now, in the darkness, Al couldn’t read the indicators which in normal conditions would have warned him if the flaps were not fully down. He therefore decided, very sensibly, to come in a shade faster than usual in case the flaps were not giving him as much lift as they ought to. He made the perfect approach, but, because his airspeed was about five knots too fast, he bounced over the arrester-wires and crashed into the barrier. He had, of course, set his gun-button to “safe”, but after his attack on the Ju 290 one of his cannon still had a shell in its breech, and, as he hit the barrier, the force of the impact triggered it off. There was a staccato crack, and a cannon-shell smashed into the island, missing Nigel by a couple of feet, but sending a shower of ricochet splinters into his arm.