It had been a gentle initiation for Val Jones and Surtees. However, it was obvious even at this early stage that there was going to be friction between them. For they were like oil and water, totally different not only in character but in their concept of duty. Val Jones, a quiet, reflective and caring man, was determined not needlessly to risk the lives of his pilots and observers – and the key word here is “needlessly”. Surtees, a thrusting man of action who was prepared to risk a lot to win a lot, was determined whenever possible to follow Nelson’s dictum and “engage the enemy more closely”. This was not per se a reprehensible objective. However, Surtees knew so little about flying that, in his thirst for action, he was for ever putting his aircrew needlessly at risk – and again the key word is “needlessly”.
So the Squadron found itself tugged two ways, with its CO crying “hold back”, and its Captain crying “fly off”.
This dichotomy was not too much of a problem during our benign and action-free passage to Gibraltar. It was to prove a far more serious problem when our scene of operations shifted to the more dangerous and hostile passage to Murmansk.
One man who saw the storm-cones being hoisted was our Senior Operations Officer, Jasper Godden. He asked to be relieved of his duties.
However, on its return to the Clyde, the squadron was kept too busy to have time to worry about the future. For no sooner had we dropped anchor than we received a signal. Our Hurricane IIcs were to be replaced by Grumman Martlet “Wildcat” VIs: our fighter pilots were to report at once to RNAS Yeovilton for a conversion course.
Some pilots were sorry to see the Hurricanes go. As Al Burgham put it, “I always felt comfortable in a Hurricane; they were great planes to fly.” And when, on 26 September, Ken Atkinson flew the Fleet Air Arm’s last operational Hurricane No. 231 from Nairana to the Maintenance Depot at Abbotsinch, he felt he was saying goodbye to a friend. The Wildcats, however, were to prove a great deal easier to operate. They were more robust and more manoeuvrable; they had a better rate of climb and a far better endurance; and above all they had been designed to work from a carrier and had automatically folding wings. Whatever our pilots may have thought about the change, it was welcomed with enthusiasm by our groundcrew.
Al Burgham and his team were all comparatively “old hands” with considerable experience of flying from carriers. They had no difficulty converting to Wildcats. However, an incident a couple of days after their arrival at Yeovilton warned them that they needed to handle their new aircraft with care. A Wildcat coming in to land crashed in the middle of the airfield, and its pilot, to whom they had been chatting only the night before, was killed. One trait in particular they found they needed to watch out for: because of its narrow undercarriage the Wildcat had a vicious propensity to ground loop. Another lesson they quickly took to heart was that, if they did have a crash, it would be best not to dilly dally getting out of the plane. The pilot’s seat was positioned squarely on top of the fuel tank!
While the fighter section was at Yeovilton, the TBR pilots and observers had hoped for some leave. Instead they found themselves involved in a programme of intensive flying that was every bit as arduous as most operations. For during the last ten days of September and the first ten days of October, in an unremitting round of deck-landings, Navexs and dummy Glow Worm attacks, the Swordfish flew over 200 hours and carried out over 150 deck-landings, about a third of them at night.
There were two ways of looking at this. Surtees felt that he was honing his ship’s company to a peak of operational efficiency. Val Jones felt that his squadron needed more rest and less flying. Whichever view one agrees with, the Squadron had now reached a remarkably high standard of flying. For in those 150-odd landings, the only accident was when George Sadler’s arrester-hook stuck in the fuselage, and through no fault of his own he went into the barrier – his one mishap in 178 deck-landings.
25. George Gordon with Al Burgham studies the film of his shooting down a Blohm and Voss 138 on 12 December, 1944.
26. Standing by in the Aircrew Ready Room on the way to Murmansk: December, 1944.
Back Row, L. to R.: Ted Pitts, Johnny Lloyd, John Cridland, Paddy Hall, Derek Ravenhill.
Front Row, L. to R. : George Gordon, Al Burgham, Pete Blanco.
27. Lt.Cdr(A)Edgar Bibby, DSO, RNVR.
28. (Belowleft) Lt. Cdr(A) Nigel Ball, DSQRN; his arm in a sling after he was shot by cannon-fire from one of our fighters that crashed on landing.
29. (Below right) Bob Selley, the longest-serving member of 835 Squadron (nearly two years and nine months) with the only female aboard HMS Nairana.
30. A Swordfish landing on HMS Nairana.
31. A Wildcat landing on HMS Nairana.
32. A Seafire landing on HMS Battler.
33. A Sea Hurricane landing on HMS Nairana.
And this is perhaps the place to make a point so obvious that it is easy to overlook it. Every landing (and to a lesser extent every take-off) made in our overloaded Swordfish now involved a certain degree of stress. You might of course say that any landing, any time, anywhere in any plane involves stress. Yet coming into land on an airfield is a lot easier and a lot less stressful than coming into land on an aircraft-carrier, and Nairana was a particularly difficult carrier to land on because of her narrow flight-deck: a dozen feet too far to the right or too far to the left, or half a dozen feet too high or too low, and you would very likely make the sort of nasty mess that no one walks away from. So every take-off and landing called for care and concentration. At the time we didn’t think about this a great deal or talk about it at all. We simply had a job to do and we did it and that was that. However, in retrospect it seems likely that the sort of non-stop flying now expected of the Squadron was bound in the end to lead to mental and physical fatigue – and hence to deterioration.
In the small hours of 14 October Nairana left the Clyde and rendezvoused with the 21st Escort Group off the Mull of Kintyre. The Group then headed north. This time it was obviously not Gibraltar we were bound for and, as the warships ploughed through the heavy swell of The Minches, word got round that we were on our way to Murmansk.
Probably the least pleased member of the Squadron was John Defrates. For in the hope of impressing the Gibraltar Wrens he had just bought a full set of tropical uniform!
5
“THIS WAS THEIR FINEST HOUR”
The most momentous day in the Second World War was almost certainly 22 June, 1941. This was when Germany invaded Russia and, in an instant, the USSR was transformed from a neutral to be suspected to an ally to be supported. Churchill put it very clearly: “Any state who fights against Nazidom will have our aid. It therefore follows that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people.”
Only a few weeks after the German invasion, it was agreed at a meeting in Moscow between Stalin, Lord Beaverbrook and Averell Harriman that Great Britain and America would send as much war equipment as possible to the Russians to enable them to sustain the conflict.
There were three routes by which this equipment could be delivered: via Vladivostok in the north Pacific, via the Persian Gulf and presentday Iran or Iraq, and via the Arctic ports of Archangel and Murmansk. The Russians always favoured the last of these routes. This was largely because first-class roads and railways linked the Arctic ports with strategic centres like Leningrad and Moscow and the equipment delivered could be brought swiftly into use. So throughout the war Stalin was continually pressing for more and more convoys to be sent to north Russia.
The Royal Navy, on the other hand, was continually pressing for fewer and fewer Russian convoys. “They are a millstone round our necks,” wrote Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, “a most unsound operation with the dice loaded against us in every direction.” A glance at a map will explain his lack of enthusiasm.
Most convoys to Russia assembled off and set sail from the north of Scotland, and for virtually the whole of their 1,500 miles to Murmansk their course lay parallel to the coast of
German-occupied Norway. This meant that they were under constant threat of attack by enemy surface warships, U-boats and bombers. It also meant that these German forces could sortie at will, choosing their time and place to attack, whereas the convoys had to be on guard at all times and at every stage of their passage. Another threat was the weather. Particularly in winter, huge seas and violent winds could not only scatter a convoy but could bludgeon some of the smaller vessels to destruction. More than one broke up or turned turtle with the loss of their entire ship’s company. A final problem was the pack-ice. In winter this extended so far to the south that the convoys were squeezed into, and forced to sail along, a narrow corridor between the ice and the north Norwegian shore. This corridor was a happy hunting ground for U-boats. For here they could lie in wait for the passing ships unseen: unseen, because the sea mist (ever prevalent at the confluence of pack-ice and open water) made it difficult for the escorts to detect them visually, while thermal currents in the ice-cold water made it difficult for them to be detected by Asdic.
In view of these problems, the amount of equipment delivered by the Russian convoys was remarkable. Between August, 1941 and May, 1945, forty-two convoys got through to Archangel or Murmansk – an average of almost one a month – some with fewer than half-a-dozen ships, some with more than fifty. All told, they delivered 4,252,000 tons of weapons and equipment, including 5,150 tanks, 7,000 aircraft, 800,000 tons of machinery and about the same tonnage of munitions (shells, high explosives, etc). This was almost ten times the amount of weaponry that was shipped to North Africa for the much publicized campaign in the desert.
The cost of fighting through these convoys was, for the Allies, 104 merchantmen, twenty-three warships and about forty aircraft. German losses were six warships, thirty-one U-boats and about 200 aircraft.
It is perhaps worth making the obvious point that, once the ships had unloaded in Russia, they had then to return (again in convoy) to the United Kingdom, and losses on the homeward voyage were sometimes as high as on the outward. Most ships returned in ballast; although, in an effort to obtain much-needed currency, the Russians sometimes unofficially loaded the returning vessels with timber, chrome, cotton or tobacco; while every now and then a more exotic item appeared on the manifest: “17 tons of badger hair … 52 tons of caviar.”
Initially the greatest threat to these convoys was thought to come from German surface forces, in particular the battleship Tirpitz. The fear that this powerful vessel might break out from some Norwegian fjord into the North Atlantic, attack a convoy and annihilate both the merchantmen and their escorts hung like a sword of Damocles over the Admiralty, and in March, 1942, the C-in-C of the Home Fleet gave a prophetic warning: “If these convoys to Russia must, for political reasons, be continued, very serious and heavy losses are to be expected.” His words came home to roost a few months later when, in the disastrous Convoy PQ17, fear of the Tirpitz led to one of the most tragic blunders of the war. In the mistaken belief that the battleship had put to sea, the convoy was ordered to scatter and its escorts headed off in the wrong direction to meet a non-existent enemy. To quote Convoys to Russia, 1941–1945 by Bob Ruegg and Arnold Hague:
“What followed was a disaster, as the merchant ships were now sunk at leisure by aircraft and U-boats who were enabled to roam the outward route of the convoy with impunity, seeking out and sinking the near defenceless merchant ships at will.”
Of the thirty-seven merchantmen which had set out with PQ17, twenty-four were sunk. As a result of this fiasco, the number of convoys sailing during the long hours of summer daylight was scaled down and the number of convoys trying to slip through undetected during the long hours of winter darkness was increased.
By the time 835 Squadron arrived in the Arctic the scenario had undergone a radical change. With the crippling of the Tirpitz, the threat from German surface warships had greatly decreased, but the threat from the U-boats remained. This in fact always had been and always would be the major danger, and there were now about twenty-five U-boats based permanently in Norway, and perhaps half as many from other bases operating in the Arctic. Many of them were of the latest Type XXI, equipped with “Schnorkels” (to enable them to recharge their batteries underwater) and armed with acoustic torpedoes. The threat from the air had, if anything, increased; for as the battleground in Europe contracted, German squadrons which had been serving in places like the Mediterranean now found themselves being pulled back to Norway. By the autumn of 1944 the Kriegsmarine had at its disposal between Bergen and North Cape upwards of forty reconnaissance planes, and the Luftwaffe upwards of 120 bombers and torpedo bombers.
As the nature of the threat from these German forces changed, so the defensive measures taken by the Navy also changed. To protect their convoys they came to rely more and more on aircraft-carriers.
American-built carriers, however, were not sufficiently robust to operate in the Arctic. This meant that the burden of protecting the convoys to Russia was about to fall almost entirely on the three British-built carriers, Vindex, Campania and Nairana.
It was, as we were about to discover, a demanding job, even when (as on our first convoy) there was little enemy activity and comparatively little flying.
* * *
Nairana arrived in Scapa Flow on 16 October, and it wasn’t long before the rumours about our destination were confirmed. We were, we were told, about to provide air cover for Convoy JW61 to Murmansk.
A week later we stood north-west from the safe haven of the Fleet anchorage, and rendezvoused with the convoy in the not-so-safe waters of the Iceland gap.
JW61 turned out to be a medium-sized convoy: thirty merchant vessels, with their Commodore flying his flag in the Fort Crèvecoeur. And what an escort had been assembled to protect them! As we took up our position in a box, between lanes 3 and 7 and towards the rear of the convoy, we could see more warships than merchantmen. There were no fewer than three escort-carriers: Vindex, Tracker and Nairana. In the convoys of 1942 and 1943 there had seldom been even one. Even more remarkable was the fact that the officer commanding the escort, Vice Admiral Dalrymple-Hamilton, was flying his flag in Vindex. This was the first time a carrier had been chosen as flagship of a convoy, an indication of the importance now attached to this hitherto neglected branch of the Navy.
We were told that each carrier would do eight hours flying a day, eight hours standing-by and have eight hours resting. This was fine in theory. However, in practice the inability of Tracker to operate her Avengers in bad weather, and the disintegration of Vindex’s 811 Squadron, meant that in the end Nairana found herself doing all the flying and all the standing-by and having none of the rest.
From the moment we joined the convoy the weather was foul: low ten-tenths cloud, with poor visibility, high winds and heavy seas. And what seas they were! Great waves three-quarters of a mile from crest to crest and up to thirty feet in height thundering in endless succession over the horizon. They hit us beam on. Soon the top-heavy carriers were rolling to over 350. Even worse off were the diminutive frigates on loan to the Russians as sub-chasers; they were tossed about like the proverbial corks, shipping it green and at times disappearing from sight. The fact that they managed to stay with the convoy is a tribute to the expertise of their builders and the skill and courage of their crews.
Val Jones, who invariably took on the most hazardous flights himself rather than risk the lives of his aircrew, flew the first patrol with one of the squadron’s most experienced pilots, George Sadler. It was pitch dark when they took off at 0700, and very nearly as dark when, a couple of hours later, they returned to land-on. For at this latitude at this time of year there are barely three hours of daylight. At 1000 hours our night deck-landing lights were still switched on; by 1400 hours all ships were darkened. In spite of the appalling conditions George and Val got down safely, as did John Defrates and David Beal who flew the second patrol.
By the time it was the turn of one of the other carriers to take over, conditions h
ad deteriorated still further. It was now impossible for Tracker’s Avengers to get off the deck, and Vindex reckoned conditions were so dangerous she declared her planes grounded. It didn’t matter. The weather was too bad for the Germans too. For forty-eight hours the convoy ploughed on into the teeth of a north-easterly gale, battered but unmolested – “wind 45/50ks, gusting 67/70” Mike Arrowsmith wrote in his Met forecast. It grew colder. Among little nooks and crannies in the catwalks the spray began to solidify to ice. Then, unexpectedly, the clouds dispersed. The seas remained as high as ever and the wind as malevolent; but one moment the sky was filled with cloud, next moment it was wiped clean as a blackboard cleansed by a damp cloth. And late that evening we saw the Northern Lights.
“Magnificent display of Aurora Borealis” Mick Murray wrote in his Diary. “Like a huge flame-thrower tossing bands of red, green and purple all over the sky. The bands wavered, shimmered, and gradually subsided into a layer of white semi-transparent light above the northern horizon. I wondered if it was the refracted image of the pack-ice?”
During the night of 25th/26th, as though to substantiate the idea that we were nearing pack-ice, the convoy altered course to almost due east. We were now coming up to the danger area.
Although the clouds had dispersed, gale-force winds and mountainous seas continued to buffet us. Conditions aboard were chaotic. To quote one of the observers:
Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea Page 17