Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea

by E. E. Barringer

  “Everyone had to work eat and try to sleep in a world that was constantly rolling through 80° – first a roll of 40° to port, then a roll of 40° to starboard. Although flying was not yet possible, we were told that U-boats had been reported ahead of the convoy. So a lot of our aircrew spent a lot of the time in flying gear in the darkened Ready Room [darkened to get their eyes accustomed to lack of light] ready to take off at a moment’s notice. It was impossible to get any sort of rest in these conditions, and already some pilots and observers were suffering from lack of sleep.”

  By the night of 27 October the convoy was approaching the last leg of its journey: the corridor between the Arctic pack-ice and the Norwegian shore. There were now reports of more than a dozen U-boats in the offing, and, although conditions for flying were appalling, it was agreed that the merchantmen must have air cover. At 0400 three of our Swordfish took off to patrol ahead of the convoy and from that moment Nairana and the other carriers provided continuous protection until JW61 reached the safety of Kola Bay. The number of patrols that we flew was small. But what patrols they were!

  To say that conditions were difficult would be an understatement. For the wind was still a full gale; the seas were still enormous; and it was now pitch dark for nineteen hours out of twenty-four, and a sepulchral twilight for four hours. For we were now 400 miles to the north of the Arctic Circle.

  First to take off at 0400 were Supple and Strong, Cowsill and Holley and Whittick and Worrell – the last two inexperienced aircrew being almost too literally “thrown in at the deep end”. They carried out a series of searches ahead of the advancing ships. No U-boats, however, were detected, probably because the weather was too bad for them to surface. All three planes stayed airborne for a couple of hours and managed to find their way back to the carrier and land safely. The next three were not so lucky. McEwan and Eames, Sadler and the CO, and Urwin and Legood took off at 0530. The Fair Flying Log records the tasks they were given: “Alligator” … “Cobra 25” … “Adder 25 stbd”; these were codenames for different types of patrol – some circling the convoy, some patrolling up and down in parallel lines ahead or astern, some screening the port or starboard flank. All three aircraft remained airborne upwards of three hours, and by the time they got back to the carrier, the pilots and observers in their open cockpits were numb with cold and exhaustion. As McEwan came in to land, the stern of the carrier swung violently up to meet him, smashing his tail oleo and landing hook. A few minutes later Pat Urwin landed even more heavily and his undercarriage disintegrated, leaving the Swordfish squelched like an overripe plum on the flight-deck.

  These, we reckoned, were good landings – because the aircrew walked away uninjured!

  Later that morning, in the grey half-light that passed for dawn, John Cridland had an even closer shave.

  “I was,’ he wrote, “coming in to land after a three-hour patrol. Although the carrier was pitching heavily, Bats seemed to think my approach was OK. I was within a few feet of the flight-deck, and within perhaps a second of being given the signal to cut, when the carrier dipped suddenly into an extra-deep trough and corkscrewed away from me. One moment I was poised over the round-down. Next I was heading straight for the bridge. I rammed the throttle full open, banked violently to starboard, and the bridge flashed by within inches of my wingtip. Indeed I was so close that my wing caught the radio and D/F aerials slung between the masts. No other aircraft could have survived and stayed airborne. But in spite of my damaged wing I was able to keep the faithful old Swordfish under control and go round again and make a normal landing. I think the only people NOT impressed were the Chief Petty Officer (Signals) and his ratings who had to re-rig the aerials in a howling 45-knot gale, lashed by sheets of spray.”

  It was about this time that Tracker took over flying-duties and, in spite of the heavy seas, managed at last to get her Avengers into the air. And one of them came near to achieving the success that had so far eluded us. It sighted a U-boat on the surface.

  The U-boat crash-dived. The Avenger came swooping down and dropped its depth-charges in what it reckoned was the right spot. But the sea that morning was a mass of “white horses” and driven spume. It was hard to identify the tell-tale patches of slick which remain briefly on the surface of the sea after a U-boat has dived. No oil or wreckage came floating to the surface. And the attack was therefore classified as “inconclusive”. (German records have subsequently confirmed that the U-boat did indeed receive no more than superficial damage.)

  With the knowledge of hindsight, it seems likely that the U-boat picked up the approaching plane on its radar, but thought it must be the usual slow-moving Swordfish; this would have given it plenty of time to dive. Its crew must have had the shock of their lives when the much faster Avenger came swooping down on them out of the murk.

  Soon it was pitch dark and our Swordfish were again circling the convoy. Conditions could hardly have been worse: heavy seas, strong winds, a subzero temperature and the horizon obscured by sea mist. To stay airborne the pilots had to rely on their instruments. And these, in spite of the efforts of our groundcrew, were beginning to prove fallible. Mick Murray and his observer John McEwan took off at 1530 hours, and almost at once suffered a complete radar and radio failure. It took John half-an-hour to rectify the fault, and the moment this was done they picked up a contact only fifteen miles from the convoy. They homed on it expectantly, but it turned out to be one of our destroyers hovering over the spot where Tracker’s Avenger had attacked the U-boat. This was not the end of their adventures. For, coming in to land, Mick hit the deck hard, ballooned over the first five arrester-wires, and was heading at forty knots straight for the barrier, when his landing-hook caught the Jesus Christ wire and, within a dozen feet, the plane was jerked to an exceedingly abrupt stop. Damage was limited to the Swordfish’s longerons and Mick’s head as it hit the windscreen.

  A couple of hours later we picked up H/F D/F bearings on a U-boat which was transmitting from the surface, homing its colleagues on to the convoy. Three planes were flown off to silence it. The first two (George Sadler and Val Jones and Eric McEwan and John Eames) got off the deck safely; but as the carrier slewed sideways in a particularly vicious swell, the third hit the bridge on take-off. The tip of the Swordfish’s wing was torn away. However, the pilot, Johnny Provis, not only managed to stay airborne but continued his search. Nothing was sighted, but the U-boat stopped transmitting and no more was heard of it. At the end of a two-hour search Johnny Provis managed to land his damaged Swordfish safely – a fine piece of flying.

  At midnight Vindex took over as duty carrier, and it was her planes that protected the convoy as it entered the final leg of its journey: down the swept channel through the minefields at the approaches to Murmansk.

  Not a great deal of actual flying had been done to protect JW61: only seventeen patrols involving some fifty hours in the air. These patrols, however, had been made in difficult conditions, and, in the last thirty-six hours of voyage, had been vital in keeping the U-boats at bay. And it is worth remembering that for every hour our pilots and observers spent in the air they spent at least half-a-dozen hours, in taxing conditions, either in the darkness of the Ready Room or strapped into the cockpits of their aircraft prepared to take off at a moment’s notice. No wonder, as on the morning of 29 October we dropped anchor in Kola Inlet downriver from Murmansk, we were looking forward to some rest and some shore leave.

  We got to know Murmansk and its environs quite well in the next six months. The town straddles the Kola River, about fifteen miles from its mouth. Its latitude is 69°N and its longitude 33°E, which means it is well north of the Arctic Circle and some way east of Suez. Before 1930 it was little more than a sprawling fishing village, with wooden quays and wooden houses. However, as part of an ambitious programme of modernization, it was decided to turn it into Russia’s major ice-free port. Roads and railways were built, linking the town to Moscow and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg); concrete quays were lai
d down, and part of the town was rebuilt in brick and cement. The outbreak of war brought this work to an end, and in 1942 Murmansk was subjected to the most severe bombing ever inflicted on any European city. The fires burned for three months and totally destroyed 98 per cent of the wooden buildings. Cement, in Arctic conditions, tends to be brittle, and the brick and concrete structures collapsed under bombing like the proverbial packs of cards. Not one house in the entire city remained intact; most were reduced to rubble. Neither the docklands of London nor the heart of Dresden suffered such complete devastation.

  By the time we arrived in the city in the autumn of 1944 some repairs had been effected and some rebuilding attempted. However, there were no shops and food rations had to be drawn daily from communal centres; there was virtually no social life; and most of the city’s hundred-thousand-odd inhabitants seemed to be living in scooped-out holes in the ground surrounded by rubble. Snow fell almost continuously for eight months out of twelve. The average temperature was −5°F by day and −15° by night. It would be difficult to imagine a more depressing existence.

  Our first contact with the Russians was when a river pilot came aboard to guide Nairana to her moorings. He was invited to dinner in the wardroom, and managed to consume with his meal no fewer than twelve bread rolls (“I don’t believe,” Bob Selley told me, “he had ever seen white bread in his life”) and almost as many double whiskeys. Our only conversation was in German, with George Gordon as interpreter.

  This set the pattern for our relationship with the Russians. They were not unfriendly, but communication was difficult and they were so preoccupied with the business of survival that they had neither the time nor the wherewithal to offer us hospitality. We heard, for example, that there was an “officers’ club” on the way to Murmansk, but when Sam Hollings and some of his friends paid it a visit, they were nearly shot by a trigger-happy sentry, and all they found in the “club” were a few broken chairs and a billiard table with no pockets.

  There were, however, two ways in which the Russians did us proud. They provided us with skis and their Red Fleet Choir turned on a truly magnificent concert. Murmansk is hardly the ideal ski resort; it is too flat, too rocky, and the snow is in good condition only between January and mid-April. On this our first visit the snowfields were sparse and soggy. However, we were loaned cross-country skis and the more energetic members of the squadron can now boast to their grandchildren that they learned their skiing north of the Bering Sea and east of Suez.

  On our last evening in Kola Inlet the North Russian Red Fleet (all male) Choir came aboard and gave a performance in Nairana’s hangar which would have won acclaim in the Albert Hall. The singing, dancing and burlesque were of a very high standard indeed, and – with due respect to ENSA – something altogether different from the usual fare offered to British troops. Inevitably there were moments of confusion. An offstage interpreter provided a running translation, and his announcement of one song as “Oh Happy Sailor, far out to sea” produced a burst of sceptical laughter, coupled with one or two observations (fortunately untranslated) about the absence of the Red Fleet sailors far out to sea. The interpreter, nonplussed, doubtless thought us a strange people. After the performance the officers and their political commissars were entertained in the wardroom where they valiantly resisted the efforts of their hosts to drink them under the table!

  Next day, 2 November, we weighed anchor in readiness to join the homeward bound RA61.

  This was another medium-sized convoy, thirty-three merchantmen, with the Commodore flying his flag in the Edward A. Savoy. The escort consisted basically of the same warships that had protected the outwardbound JW61: three escort-carriers, one cruiser, seven destroyers, and some dozen sloops, frigates and corvettes. Dalrymple-Hamilton again flew his flag in HMS Vindex – though this was probably a decision he was soon to regret!

  The official report on the convoy reads:

  “18 U-boats were assembled off the mouth of Kola Inlet, in an attempt to mount an attack on the convoy as it left the safety of Russian minefields. The frigates and carriers therefore sailed early to ‘put down’ these attackers. However, Asdic conditions were poor, and despite the strength of our forces no U-boats were sunk. We lost HMS Mounsey, torpedoed by U-295. Thanks to the efforts of carrier-borne planes no attack was mounted against the convoy. … During an uneventful passage home bad weather was experienced. … The convoy arrived without loss in Loch Ewe on 9 November.”

  For the aircrew of Nairana and (in particular) of Vindex, there was more to it than that. Both carriers on the evening of 2 November flew a continuous succession of patrols as the convoy stood out of Kola Inlet. Ours were successful. Vindex’s were disastrous.

  It was pitch dark as, at a little after 1600 hours, our first three Swordfish took-off to circle the convoy. Conditions, as usual, were difficult: heavy seas, mist and the aircraft compasses susceptible to excessive magnetic variation. And to add to our troubles, two out of the first ten planes to get airborne had to return with their engines running roughly. Ted Pitts had barely sufficient power to get back to the carrier. Nevertheless all patrols were successfully completed, and all aircraft landed safely.

  It was a different story for the unfortunate Vindex. She too had a composite squadron aboard: the twelve Swordfish and four Wildcats of 811 Squadron. 811 Squadron had a fine record – far more prestigious to date than ours! Earlier in the year they had been part of a “hunter killer” group which had accounted for several U-boats in the North Atlantic. Their standard of flying was second to none. However, many of their more experienced aircrew had recently been given shore appointments, and when, in October, 1944, they set out for Russia, about half the Squadron consisted of pilots and observers who had little operational experience. On the voyage home, within the span of forty-eight hours, the Squadron suffered such terrible losses that as a fighting unit it ceased to exist.

  Their first two Swordfish that flew off to protect RA61 got lost. When, at the end of their patrols, they returned to what they thought was the convoy, they found they had been circling a rain cloud. They began a square search, but after four hours there was still no sign of the convoy. Desperately short of fuel, they asked by radio for a homing bearing and this they were given. By the time they sighted the pale blue landing lights of the Vindex they had been flying for 4¾ hours and were numb with cold and exhaustion. Somehow they got down safely. “Somehow” because both pilots and observers were found to be literally frozen solid; they had to be cut free and lifted out of their cockpits.

  Next morning in the brief couple of hours of daylight, one of the squadron’s most experienced fighter pilots took-off in an attempt to intercept a shadowing aircraft. The light was poor and layers of low cloud and sea mist made it impossible to tell where the horizon was. The Wildcat flew straight into the sea. A destroyer was sent to try and rescue the pilot who had been seen in the water, but in the four minutes it took the warship to reach him, he had died of exposure. A couple of hours later a Swordfish trying to take-off toppled over the bow and into the sea. Its RATOG had failed to operate. Both pilot and observer were killed. Soon afterwards a Swordfish coming in to land went over the side. For perhaps thirty seconds it hung suspended by its landing hook which had caught on one of the arrester-wires. Then the strain was too much; the hook was torn from the fuselage and the aircraft plummeted into the sea. The pilot was saved, but the observer drowned; it was their second operational patrol. In the next twelve hours another Swordfish ended up in the barrier, and yet another shattered its undercarriage.

  Then, from the point of view of keeping the Squadron operational came the ultimate disaster. It was midday and two out of the squadron’s three remaining Wildcats had been brought up to the flight-deck in case they needed to be scrambled quickly in an emergency. They were being manhandled into position and lashed down when the carrier started to roll even more violently than usual in a series of enormous waves. The Wildcats, with folded wings and narrow undercarriages,
were unstable. And they were heavy. One of them started to glissade, out of control, across the ice-coated deck. The flight-deck handling party flung themselves on to it, fighting to hold it and lash it down, but, as the carrier rolled through 80°, the plane broke free, tossing off the handling party as a rolling log tosses off sparks. Then the other Wildcat too broke loose. And both aircraft, gathering momentum, went crashing into the catwalk and over the side, fortunately minus their pilots who had leapt clear at the last second.

  On the morning of 2 November 811 Squadron had been an efficient if somewhat inexperienced flying unit. By the evening of 3 November it had written off or seriously damaged seven out of its twelve Swordfish and lost three out of its four Wildcats.

  The final nail in its coffin was the breakdown of Vindex’s lift. This meant that there was no way of moving even the few aircraft which were undamaged between the hangar and the flight-deck. Both carrier and Squadron were hamstrung.

  Tracker too was incapacitated. Due to her open design and lightweight construction, she was pitching and rolling even more violently than her British-built counterparts. There was no way that her Avengers could get off the flight-deck, let alone land on it. Dalrymple-Hamilton therefore signalled the carriers to stop flying.

  Captain Surtees, however, saw fit to query this order: “My boys,” he told the Admiral, “can still fly.” As a result of his keenness, optimism, rashness, ignorance, devotion to duty or call it what you will, Nairana now found herself saddled with the job of providing air cover for RA61 singlehanded.

  It was a challenge, and the Squadron rose to it. The weather was too bad for our Wildcats even to think of flying; but whenever conditions permitted, over the next few days, it was Nairana’s Swordfish and Nairana’s Swordfish alone which circled and protected the convoy.

  Val Jones, with George Sadler as his pilot, was first to take-off – “to see if flying was possible” – a two-hour Cobra in the small hours of 4 November. And where he led, his Squadron followed.