Next day it was the turn of our Captain to go out in one of Nairana’s dinghies. Surtees’ credentials for small-boat sailing were of course impeccable. However, he turned up dressed in an old jersey and disreputable baggy trousers, and armed with a bottle of sloe gin. Three or four hours later, on his way back, his dinghy happened to pass our sister carrier Campania. It had obviously not escaped Surtees that there was a good deal of friendly rivalry between the two carriers. (Our view was that we did all the flying, they got all the leave.) And, as his dinghy passed astern of Campania, Surtees rose to his feet, brandishing his now empty gin bottle.
“Up the Campania!” he shouted.
This salutation was not appreciated by Campania’s Officer of the Watch and when our gallant Captain returned to his ship, he found waiting for him a signal complaining of the “reprehensible behaviour” of the occupant of one of Nairana’s boats. Surtees signalled in reply, “Suitable action has been taken.”
Next day, in company with the aircraft carrier Trumpeter, the cruiser Berwick and a strong escort of destroyers, we left Scapa and headed north, our objective this time not to protect another convoy to Murmansk but to strike at enemy shipping among the Norwegian fjords.
It is difficult to know what to make of this shipping strike, which went under the codename of Operation Sampler. At the time several of the Squadron felt there was an air of unreality about it. It seemed a somewhat pointless exercise, and the fact that we were given escape kits, revolvers, hidden compasses and Norwegian currency, and briefed on how to build a snow igloo in the event of our being shot down, made us feel we were about to embark on some Hollywood epic. In retrospect the whole operation seems even more improbable. Our target, the fjords between Bergen and Trondheim, was within easy range of hundreds of modern RAF bombers, so why send in a squadron of antediluvian Swordfish? We intended to fly off within sixty miles of the Norwegian coast; why risk valuable warships in waters full of U-boats and within range not only of enemy bombers but enemy fighters? At the time we were told that troops and vital war supplies (in particular iron ore) were being moved from north Norway to Germany for a last-ditch defence of the Fatherland, and that the RAF could disrupt this traffic by day but not by night, because they lacked the navigational skill and the manoeuvrability to locate and attack shipping in the dark among the steep-sided fjords. This may have been true, but we were still left with the feeling that it was all “much ado about nothing”. One member of the squadron has since come up with the theory that our objective was in fact to disrupt the shipment of “heavy water” from its processing plant near Narvik to the V2 launching pads on the Channel coast. If this is so, it would certainly go some way towards justifying the risks we were about to take.
If Operation Sampler had been a success it would have provided a much-needed boost to the Squadron’s morale. But it was not a success. It was aborted. And the manner of its abortion brought matters between Val Jones and Surtees to a head.
Dick Mallett had drawn up a comprehensive blue-print for the operation, based on the assumption that a full moon would enable our strike force first to make a landfall on the Norwegian coast and then to locate its quarry among the fjords. In other words good weather was a prerequisite of success. However, as we stood out of Scapa Flow on the first day of 1945 the weather was not good and Mike Arrowsmith predicted it would get worse rather than better, for a succession of low fronts was moving in from the Atlantic, and his forecast was for heavy seas, strong winds, nine-tenths cloud and frequent falls of snow. And of course no moon. It should have been obvious that in these conditions Operation Sampler was a non-starter. Surtees, however, was unwilling to accept the obvious and our task force continued to head north-east for the coast of Norway. On 2 January, in a brief lull between the fronts, Trumpeter managed to fly off her Wildcats on a fighter-sweep, but that evening the weather again closed in. The wind strengthened, the cloud-base dropped to 400 feet and it began to snow. Surtees ordered the squadron to prepare for take-off.
Our Swordfish were armed with either four 250 lb bombs or eight 60 lb rockets. Four were ranged on the flight-deck. The rest were ranged in the hangar. All aircrew were at the ready, strapped into their cockpits. At 0400 on the morning of 3 January, against the advice of our met officer and our Commander Flying, the first four Swordfish were ordered to take-off. First to get airborne were Bob Selley and the CO; they were followed by Doc Wilson and George Strong, John Defrates and David Beal, and Joe Supple and Johnny Lloyd. Bob reckons it was a near miracle they all got off safely. However, once airborne, their troubles were far from over. They formed up and circled the carrier which almost at once disappeared in a blinding snowstorm. The four aircraft clung desperately together, snow dimming their navigation lights and, only partly dissipated by the slipstream, filtering into their open cockpits. Soon the Swordfish began to ice up; their controls became sluggish and Bob found it impossible to get his airspeed above sixty-five knots – barely enough to stay airborne. It was almost exactly an hour before it was decided to postpone Operation Sampler and try to bring the planes back. To quote one of the Squadron officers:
“It was a very fine effort by four frozen and badly shaken pilots to land their planes safely on the flight-deck, a feat which would have been impossible without the skill and devotion to duty of our Deck Landing Control Officer, Bob Mathé. The rear cockpit of a Swordfish is more open to the elements than the front cockpit, and all four observers were almost literally frozen solid on to their aircraft and had to be lifted out.”
Although our met officer insisted that the bad weather would continue, with snow squalls becoming more frequent, Surtees refused to cancel the operation. He postponed it twenty-four hours. So the next night found us once again strapped into our cockpits at the ready. However, conditions during the night of 3/4 January were even worse than on the previous night. Yet Surtees was still reluctant to call it a day. He postponed the operation yet another twenty-four hours. Not until 5 January did a waning moon and some blunt talk from Val Jones convince him that the task force had no option but to return to Scapa.
There were two ways of looking at this aborted operation. Surtees felt that Val Jones had not been sufficiently eager to engage the enemy. Val Jones felt that Surtees had needlessly jeopardized the lives of his aircrew, and that anyone who knew the first thing about flying would have realized that in the prevailing weather the operation was impossible. This friction between our Captain and our Commanding Officer was not conducive to good morale.
No sooner had we dropped anchor in Scapa Flow than two bearded and disreputable-looking characters requested permission to come aboard. For a moment the Officer of the Watch was nonplussed. Then, behind the stubble and the scruffy clothes, he recognized the dapper Ron Brown and the scholarly John Eames, who were reporting back for duty after their adventures aboard the Cassandra and Bahamas.
“Good God!” he exclaimed not very tactfully. “We’d forgotten about you two!”
Forty-eight hours later Nairana was in the Clyde, and the Squadron had been flown ashore to Machrihanish.
Val Jones and Surtees now brought matters to a head. Val was seriously concerned, and it was soon to be proved rightly concerned, about the health of the Swordfish aircrew. He discussed the matter with the Commanding Officer of Machrihanish, Captain Howe, who at once arranged for Val to be flown to Lee-on-Solent for an interview with the Central Air Medical Board. As a result of what he told them, a team of naval doctors was sent post haste to Machrihanish to talk to the Squadron aircrew and give them medical tests. These tests were carried out within forty-eight hours, and when they had been completed, seventy-five per cent of our aircrew were declared unfit for flying! fifty per cent, it was decreed, were to be relieved of all operational flying at once and a further twenty-five to be relieved within a month. It was the end of the road for a lot of the squadron stalwarts – to mention only a few Bob Selley, Paddy Hall, Val Jones himself, Legood, McEwan, Murray, Pitts, Urwin and Wilson. They were se
nt on indefinite leave.
Surtees, meanwhile, had gone to the Admiralty and demanded that Val Jones be relieved of command of his Squadron. In furtherance of this demand, he put in a very adverse report on him, both as an officer and a commanding officer. The result was that Val was recalled from leave and ordered to appear before a Board of Enquiry.
With considerable courage, he refused to give evidence to the Board, but requested a full court-martial. For this, he reckoned, was the only way in which Surtees’ shortcomings as the captain of an aircraft-carrier could be brought to light.
The Board were now in a dilemma. They wanted to be fair, but they wanted also to avoid scandal and uphold the traditional sanctity of seniority. In the end they asked one of their number, a retired and kindly Captain RN, to take Val aside and, in a relaxed and informal atmosphere, talk things over with him. The Captain admitted, unofficially, that the Board knew Val was in the right, but no good would come, he said, of a court-martial and, if Val withdrew his demand for one, the Board would endorse the stand he had taken against Surtees and appoint him CO of 737 Observer Training Squadron at Arbroath, an important post which many would see as promotion.
It was now Val Jones who was in a dilemma. He didn’t like what he was being asked to do, but in the end, with considerable reluctance, he went along with the Board’s proposal. There was one last and moving moment. He returned to the carrier to collect his personal belongings and, when the time came for him to leave in Nairana’s jollyboat, the whole ship’s company mustered on the flight-deck to wish him God speed, for Val had been as popular below decks as among the aircrew. Three times his jollyboat circled the carrier, and three times as he passed the island the ship’s company gave him an enthusiastic cheer. Surtees was conspicuous by his absence.
During the next couple of weeks there were many changes among the Squadron personnel, as one by one the “old hands” departed and new aircrew (several of them straight from training-school) arrived. One of the last to join us, in mid-January, was our new CO.
Lt-Cdr(A) John Godley was a Swordfish pilot with over three years operational experience; latterly he had been in command of a sub-flight of three Swordfish from 836 Squadron, operating from MAC ships in the Atlantic. He took over the Squadron at a difficult time, with morale not particularly high, and the more experienced aircrew mistrustful of the Captain. He tackled the job, in his own words, “with a mixture of apprehension and exultation”, and it is greatly to his credit that he managed firstly to establish a modus operandi with Surtees and secondly to restore morale to something like its original high level.
After the usual spell of working up at Machrihanish, which this time included a number of operational A/S patrols round the mouth of the Clyde, the squadron rejoined Nairana on 22 January. The carrier at once stood north and that night Surtees called Godley to his cabin.
“It’ll be full moon again in a couple of days,” he told him, “and we’ll be going back to Norway for another crack at enemy shipping in the fjords.”
This time the weather was perfect. Our task force consisted of the carriers Nairana and Campania, accompanied by the cruiser Berwick and a strong escort of destroyers. The night before we left Scapa we were given a thorough briefing by Dick Mallet who explained that 835 Squadron from Nairana was to concentrate on shipping in Rovde Fjord, while 813 Squadron from Campania was to concentrate on shipping in Romsdals Fjord some fifty miles to the north. We were told what landfall to make, what height, course and speed to fly at and where the known ack-ack positions were. Finally Dick stressed that he wanted no heroics, no venturing into dark labyrinthine fjords and ending up splattered against the sheer-sided cliffs. Surtees attended the briefing, listened attentively and made no comment.
Late on 28 January we were in position to fly off, less than 100 miles from the Norwegian coast. It was a bright moonlit night, no cloud and no more than a gentle swell, as the carriers turned into wind. John Godley takes up the story.
“At 2000 hrs I got my green light from the bridge. Chocks away, and I open up full throttle. After 80 yards I fire my RATOG and am propelled skywards into the brilliance of the night. I keep my airspeed below 70 and make a long sweeping turn to port, so that the others can quickly form up on me. (The CO of 813, to avoid any risk of collision, is doing the same to starboard.) In less than five minutes we are in extended echelon formation, and I settle onto a course of 042° at a comfortable 80 knots. … The moon is so bright it is almost like daytime, and soon we can see ahead of us the great snow-covered mountains of the Norwegian coast. … Our landfall, Riste Island, is now clearly visible. It is inhabited, Dick Mallett assured us, by nothing more hostile than farmers and cows. But suddenly two batteries of Bofors ack-ack open up on us. Streams of multi-coloured tracer come streaking towards us: at first slowly, then with lethal acceleration. We should have been dead ducks. But our slow speed saved us. Accustomed to Mosquitoes flying almost four times as fast, the German gunners couldn’t believe we were stooging in at 80 knots, and the tracer passed well ahead of us. I put my aircraft into a steep dive to port, and the rest of the Squadron follow without delay to the safety of the wavetops. … Now we are flying at zero feet up the narrow waters of Rovde Fjord. Lights come on ahead of us in homesteads on both shores as we are heard approaching, and men come to their doors as though to show us the way. The whole country is deep in snow, with the white mountains bathed in moonlight rising high above us on either side. At last we sight a target: a small merchantman sailing towards us on her own. I lead the sub-flight over her, hesitate, and decide to fly up-fjord in search of larger vessels. But the rest of the fjord is empty. We turn back and climb to 1500 feet, the perfect height for rockets. … It amazes me now that at the time I never thought of the men in that ship. It was wholly impersonal as I fired my rockets in a ripple of four pairs and watched them strike the merchantman along the waterline. My next two pilots, Roffey and Payne, also scored several hits. Now I know she had no hope of surviving. She is stopped and on fire. I call up the others and tell them to break off the attack and seek targets ashore. Gough and Supple chose the ack-ack positions, and silenced them so effectively they never fired again.” (The first sub-flight now returned independently to the Nairana. Godley, however, remained in the fjord to guide in the second sub-flight.) “All around me the silent mountains, I can see each cottage on the rock-strewn shore. … Suddenly I spot two more merchantmen on the point of entering Rovde from a smaller fjord to the south. I call up my second sub-flight: three to attack each ship. … Summers, Paine and Cridland dive to attack one, scoring direct hits with at least six rockets. Provis with his bombs scores a direct hit and two near-misses on the other. The first ship is set on fire and beached. The second is settling rapidly. But I can’t stay to observe them, I’ve been airborne for over three hours, and we still have to get back to Nairana and land-on.”
Two aircraft, on their way back, had lucky escapes. No sooner had Leslie Paine and Derek Ravenhill made their attack than they suffered a complete electrical failure – radio, radar, homing beacon, the lot. They went down to sea level and circled an offshore island while they worked out what to do. There seemed to be only two alternatives: they could land in enemy-occupied Norway or they could try and find their way back to Nairana by dead-reckoning navigation. They agreed to attempt the latter. They were about to set course when, very luckily for them, they were spotted by Johnny Cridland. He realized they must be in trouble, went down to sea level and switched on his navigation lights. They formed up on him gratefully and the two Swordfish flew back together to the carrier. Leslie and Derek almost certainly owe their lives to Johnny Cridland. For Nairana had had to take evasive action to avoid a pack of U-boats; she was not in her expected position and it is extremely unlikely that Leslie and Derek would have found her by dead reckoning.
The other aircrew who were lucky, although they didn’t realize it at the time, were Godley and Strong. When they got back to Nairana they had been airborne for over three-an
d-a-half hours; yet Godley’s fuel gauge told him he still had about forty gallons of fuel left. He therefore decided to stay airborne and let his returning aircraft land ahead of him, one by one, as they arrived back from the fjords. So he was first to fly off (at 2000 hours on 28 January) and last to land on (at 0020 hours on 29 January). Later that morning, when he was in the hangar checking the serviceability of the Swordfish – not one had received so much as a scratch – his air fitter said to him casually:
“Did you know, sir, how much fuel you had left when you landed?”
“About thirty gallons.”
The air fitter shook his head: “I took a reading with a dipstick, sir. You had so little left it didn’t register. Your fuel gauge was U/S” (unserviceable). Another five minutes and their Pegasus would have cut stone dead. And there would have been no restarting it.
Our return to Scapa was uneventful, or, to be strictly accurate, it ought to have been uneventful. We were half-expecting an attack by torpedo-carrying Ju 88s, but it didn’t materialize, and by late afternoon on the 29th we had passed the Shetland Islands and air cover was being provided by RAF Spitfires from Grimsetter. Our Wildcats, which had been ranged all day at readiness, were being struck down. The last pair were about to be wheeled onto the lift when there was a sudden order to “Scramble”. Al Burgham and Bill Armitage happened to be in the Ready Room. They thought there must be an emergency, grabbed their helmets, sprinted down the flight-deck, tumbled into their cockpits and took-off while the carrier was still turning into wind. Once airborne, they waited for instructions to intercept enemy aircraft. But no instructions were forthcoming and the only aircraft they saw was the slow, peaceful and decidedly friendly Orkney-to-Shetland “airbus” en route to Lerwick. Al was not amused to learn subsequently that the moment Surtees learned that a “blip” had appeared on Nairana’s radar he had ordered the Wildcats to be scrambled without waiting for the “blip” to be identified. It was, as John Defrates succinctly put it, “typical of the Captain’s determination always to be first to engage the enemy whether he was there or not”.
Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea Page 22