Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea

by E. E. Barringer

  It was quite dark by the time we dropped anchor in the safety of Scapa Flow. “Everyone,” according to Godley, “was in high spirits. We’d had success just when we needed it.”

  At the time most of the squadron reckoned our success had been modest. However, German records indicate that three ships (having a total displacement of over 5,000 tons) were sent to the bottom. This made the operation per se worthwhile. And it could be that its intangible results were of even greater significance than its tangible. For our Norwegian strike did undoubtedly help to bring about a rapport between Surtees and Godley, a rapport which had been conspicuously absent between Surtees and Val Jones.

  And it was as well that our Captain and our Commanding Officer were on the same wave length, for we were about to embark on the last and most eventful of all our convoys: escorting the outwardbound JW64 to Murmansk and the homewardbound RA64 back to the UK.

  We spent a week at Hatston – the usual dummy deck-landings and low-level bombing for the pilots, and swinging compasses for the observers. Then on 5 February, together with the Campania, the cruiser Bellona and a strong destroyer escort, we left the Flow to rendezvous with JW64.

  This was another fair-sized convoy – twenty-nine merchantmen, with the Commodore flying his flag in the Fort Crèvecoeur – and even before we joined them they had an escort of almost twenty destroyers, sloops and corvettes. So once again warships outnumbered merchant ships. It was, for Godley, a marked contrast to the Atlantic convoys that he had flown on less than a year ago, when four corvettes and a couple of MAC ships had shepherded more than 100 merchantmen.

  On our way to the rendezvous we were joined by a last minute replacement for Dusty Miller. Sub-Lt Moss had arrived at Hatston that morning only to find Nairana and the squadron that he was supposed to be joining had already sailed. Joe Supple was sent to pick him up in his Swordfish. Returning with his passenger to the carrier, Joe had trouble with his arrester hook, which refused to drop. However, he made a perfect landing without one, managing to pull up well short of the barrier and greatly impressing our “new boy” with the Squadron’s expertise in deck-landing.

  We joined the convoy a little after midday, took up position in our usual central “box” among the merchantmen and flew-off a pair of Wildcats to give their customary and morale-boosting display of low flying and aerobatics.

  It had been agreed that our two carriers would operate turn and turn about, twelve hours flying and twelve hours standing by, with both of us putting planes in the air in the event of an emergency. There was an emergency almost at once.

  Campania had taken over as duty carrier and several of our aircrew had jut started a game of deck-hockey when a “bogey” was picked up on our radar, a single plane coming in high from the east. The Wildcat pilots dropped hockey sticks and dashed for their planes; the carrier swung into wind and Mearns and Moss took-off and were vectored towards the approaching plane. But Campania’s fighters, who were already airborne, got to it first. Guns clattered. Smoke spirals patterned the sky and two planes, one Ju88 and one of Campania’s Wildcats, fell torchlike into the sea.

  The question was, had the Junkers managed to transmit a sighting report before it was shot down? Admiral McGrigor (who once again was in command of the convoy escort) assumed that it had and next morning he called all ships to action stations to meet the expected dawn attack.

  The first attack came at first light: about a dozen torpedo-carrying Junkers coming in so low they were within a dozen miles of us before they were picked up. Mearns and Moss, once again, were the duty pilots and they had barely time to get airborne before the Junkers were bearing down on the convoy. The escorts put up a fearsome barrage. At least one Junkers was shot down and the others, harried by our Wildcats and disconcerted by our ack-ack, dropped their torpedoes inaccurately at long range and sought the safety of cloud. No ships were damaged.

  About an hour later there was another attack, again by roughly a dozen Junkers. By now Mearns and Moss had landed. Armitage and Sargent were on patrol and the moment the German planes spotted them they, like their predecessors, dropped their torpedoes at long range and made for the safety of the clouds. One wasn’t quick enough. Hit repeatedly by the Wildcats’ cannon fire, it disappeared into a cloudbank, smoke pouring from both engines. This, at the time, was claimed only as a “probable”, but Luftwaffe records have since confirmed that the plane was indeed shot down.

  By midday the attacks were over. No ships had been hit or damaged. And, from the point of view of the Germans, the cost had been high. It is now known that no fewer than forty-eight Junkers of Kampfgeschwader 26 took-off that morning to attack the convoy. Only about half of them managed to find us. Of these seven were lost, four shot down over the convoy and three so badly damaged that they failed to make it back to their airfield.

  The Luftwaffe, however, were not to give up easily, and that afternoon their shadowing aircraft were back. While there was still a hint of daylight our Wildcats were able to chase them away, but by four o’clock it was pitch dark. Our Wildcats were grounded and then the shadowers closed in. Hour after hour we could hear the not-quite-synchronized beat of their engines circling the convoy. McGrigor decided to try out his “Secret Weapon”. This was an ancient Fulmar, overloaded with the latest air-to-air radar. Nairana had tried once before to use Fulmars as night fighters, with singular lack of success. Now it was Campania’s turn. However, the night of 8 February was not an auspicious moment for her Fulmar’s debut, for the seas were high, the clouds were thick and there was little light from stars, moon or Aurora Borealis. Nevertheless, at a few minutes to midnight the Fulmar was duly launched. She stayed airborne for the better part of two hours, but neither the skill of her pilot and observer nor the efforts of the FDOs of two carriers could enable her to make an interception. In due course she was recalled. What happened next was predictable. She crashed on landing, nearly decapitating the batsman and ending up a mass of wreckage strewn all over the flight-deck. It was some time before Campania was able to operate her aircraft, which meant that we were saddled (yet again!) with an extra stint of night flying.

  By the morning of 9 February, in worsening weather, we were past the 72nd parallel, more than 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Our aircraft patrolling at midday could see the distant glint of pack-ice. The convoy altered course to the east.

  There were U-boats about, homed on to us by the circling reconnaissance planes, and it was now the turn of our Swordfish to keep our adversaries at bay. To quote John Godley:

  “It was intensely cold, the wind was consistently gale force, there was much movement on the ship, and for the Stringbags there was a serious danger of icing-up, not to mention the discomfort of flying in open cockpits. But we managed to keep flying. In the 72 hours between nightfall of the 7th and nightfall on the 10th over seventy Swordfish patrols were flown by the two carriers. Each lasted between ninety minutes and three hours; so on average two Stringbags were continually airborne day and night.”

  These patrols were unrewarded, but no one could say they were uneventful.

  At midnight on 9 February Provis and Rose landed heavily, shattering an oleo leg; their Swordfish slewed sideways across the flight-deck and ended up with its wheel six inches from the catwalk. A few hours later Rogers and Eames, landing-on in a blizzard, had their undercarriage wiped off by Nairana’s upflung stern; their Swordfish squelched on to the deck, breaking its back; Rogers and Eames clambered out unhurt, but the plane was a write-off and had to be heaved over the side. Within twenty minutes another Swordfish was taking-off.

  The events of the next day, probably one of the most eventful in our squadron’s history, are well described by Ian Cameron in Wings of the Morning (The Story of the Fleet Air Arm in World War II).

  “The 10th February dawned fine but bitterly cold, with heavy seas, scattered cloud and a strong-to-gale-force wind. Two of Nairana’s Swordfish had taken off at dawn on crocodile patrols and one of these planes was flying at ab
out 900 feet between cloud and sea when the pilot, Lt-Cdr Godley, noticed a strange blur, like a thinly pencilled line, a little above the eastern horizon. The blur spread; it split into individual flecks of black; the flecks of black grew larger. And Godley suddenly realized what they were: about a dozen low-flying Junkers, in line abreast, heading straight for the convoy. And by a-thousand-to-one unlucky chance his Swordfish was slap in their path: a single slow and unarmed biplane face to face with a dozen fast, heavily-armed monoplanes. Godley shouted to his observer, George Strong, to warn the convoy, then he looked for cloud cover. But before he could make up his mind which way to turn, the Junkers had passed beneath him and the sky was empty. Strong got through a second time to the carrier, and Godley, taking care never to stray too far from cloud cover, resumed his patrol.

  “Back in Nairana Strong’s message was picked up at the same moment as a radar fix. The Wildcats on deck were started up, and the pair already airborne were vectored to intercept. Mearns and Moss were the pilots and they soon spotted the bombers coming in low and scattered on the convoy’s beam. They prised one away and dived on it again and again in a succession of attacks pressed home to point-blank range. The Junkers cartwheeled this way and that; her turret guns flickered defiantly; but a ten-second burst from Moss set one of her engines on fire. She fell seaward. Mearns followed her down, gave her another short-range burst and saw her plunge into the sea and disintegrate. The Wildcats reformed and were vectored out to the convoy’s bow where another group of bombers was coming in at sea level.

  “By now four more of Nairana’s Wildcats were airborne: Armitage, Sargent, Blanco and Gordon, although the last-mentioned found his engine failing as soon as he left the deck and had to land on again in a hurry. The fighters made their interception about a dozen miles beyond the outer screen, and there followed a series of chaotic dog-fights fought out in the pale ribbon of sky between cloud and sea. The Junkers tried repeatedly to force their way through, but again and again they were broken up by Nairana’s fighters. For the better part of half an hour the Wildcats harried the Junkers round and round the perimeter of the convoy, forcing them to jettison their bombs and torpedoes and seek the safety of cloud. Several were damaged – three of them so badly, it was afterwards learned, that they never got back to Norway – and only once did a group of planes break through to make a coordinated attack. But this attack came within a hair’s breadth of success and gave a hint of what would have happened to the convoy if it hadn’t been for the Wildcats.

  “A group of six Junkers in close formation managed to give the fighters the slip. They came diving down on the convoy, to be met by a terrific curtain of fire: first a box-barrage thrown up by the destroyers and corvettes of the screen, then a random eruption from the individual merchantmen, carriers and cruiser. The leader of the Junkers was a brave man. He flew low across the convoy’s bow, drawing fire, while his companions peeled off one by one to make individual attacks. One plane was shot flaming into the sea; another, badly hit, was forced to seek shelter in cloud; another dropped his torpedo from too steep an angle and had the mortification of seeing it explode on impact. The other two made accurate attacks. One torpedo missed a merchantman by less than a dozen feet. The other came straight at Nairana. The carrier swung wildly to port, so wildly that her rudder jammed and for two complete circles she cavorted out of control in the convoy centre, scattering merchantmen and escorts left, right and centre. But the torpedo missed her, exploding in the churned-up froth of her wake. Then quite suddenly the sky was empty, and the torpedo-bombers were gone – though not before their leader, hit again and again by a hail of ack-ack, had fallen in flames among the merchantmen he had attacked so gallantly.”

  The main attack was over. However, a handful of Junkers continued to make individual efforts to break through and it was another of these that now fell to our fighters.

  By 11.30 most of the German bombers were on their way back to Norway and most of our Wildcats had landed back aboard the Nairana to rearm and refuel. It was now that Al Burgham and Ken Atkinson were scrambled to provide a defensive shield against last-minute attacks. Only a few minutes after take-off Al spotted a solitary Junkers flying low towards the convoy. And the Junkers obviously spotted Al because it very hastily dropped its torpedo and started climbing for the safety of the clouds. Al can still remember exactly how he felt: “He’s dropped his torpedo so he’s no longer a threat to the convoy – and to protect the convoy is our first priority. On the other hand there don’t seem to be any other aircraft about, and if I get him today he won’t come back tomorrow.” He broke to starboard, hoping to attack the climbing Junkers from high on its port quarter. But the Junkers proved unexpectedly fast and Al found himself chasing his quarry from almost dead astern. A few seconds before it reached cloud cover he got in a long accurate burst. For a moment the Junkers disappeared. Then it came plummeting out of the cloud-mass streaming smoke. It fell faster and faster until it plunged vertically into the sea. Al had barely had time to report “a kill” when he spotted another Junkers, also making a beeline for cloud. He managed to get in a long-range burst before this plane too disappeared into the swirling mass of cumulus. Al hopefully skirted the cloud base, but this time the Junkers failed to reappear. When Nairana reported that all enemy aircraft had left the vicinity of the convoy Al returned to the carrier and landed-on. He was amazed to find that he had been airborne no more than thirty minutes.

  That night the German radio claimed nine ships in the convoy had been sunk. In fact not one had been so much as damaged. The Germans also admitted the loss of four torpedo bombers, but our intelligence men who monitored the Junkers’ radio transmissions confirmed our impression that Luftwaffe losses had been far heavier. For of the twenty-six Junkers which had left Norway that morning it is now known that eleven failed to return, while another three had been so badly damaged that they crashed on landing.

  It was, for our Wildcats, a famous victory, marred only by the fact that many of them had been repeatedly fired on by the very ships they were trying to defend. Indeed one of Campania’s fighters had been shot down and the pilot killed as he was trying to land on his own carrier.

  All this happened a few days before 14 February and on Saint Valentine’s day, by which time we had reached Kola Bay, our CO composed a Valentine card, illustrated by Jock Bevan, which was sent to the captains of all escorting warships:

  It would be nice to think the message got through. Certainly on our voyage home none of our aircraft was fired at.

  The last few days of JW64 were relatively uneventful, for us if not for Campania. U-boats were in the offing, now known to have been a pack of the Rasmus Gruppe, equipped with acoustic torpedoes. However, we managed to avoid them by hugging the edge of the pack-ice. During 11 and 12 February Nairana flew nine patrols, two of which had to be cut short because of sea mist. Campania flew seven patrols, the last three of which ended in disaster. On the night of 12 February one of her Swordfish went into the barrier and had to be written off. Another went over the side, injuring the batsman. Since Campania’s reserve batsman had also been injured, another of her Swordfish that was already on patrol had to land on our flight-deck, where it too ended up in the barrier! It was as well we were within sight of Kola Inlet, which we entered in the small hours of 13 February.

  Our stay inside the protective belt of the Russian minefields was a brief one. After only three days we were again standing seaward to provide air cover for another homewardbound convoy.

  It was sometimes the case with Russian convoys that the passage home was more eventful than the passage out, for the Germans knew exactly where we were and when we were leaving and had time to mass their forces.

  This was certainly the case with JW and RA64. The homewardbound convoy consisted of thirty-seven merchantmen with their Commodore flying his flag in the Samaritan. The escort was the same as on the passage out. It was numbingly cold as, on the morning of 17 February, we headed out of Kola Inlet. The thermome
ter on Nairana’s bridge recorded 40° of frost, the flight-deck was white with rime and a rating whose hand accidentally brushed the metal wing of a Wildcat suffered third degree burns. We were expecting trouble. For, on the night before we sailed, a U-boat (U452, Kapitänleutnant Bentzien) had been sunk near the mouth of the Inlet. There had been a handful of survivors and we learned from them that a “pack” had recently arrived from Narvik and were lying in wait for us. Almost as soon as we were clear of the minefields there was a shattering explosion and HMS Lark was hit by an acoustic torpedo which blew off her stern. She was towed back to the safety of Murmansk by a Russian tug. Conditions for flying became first difficult and then impossible, with mist gathering in a dense layer on the surface of the sea. This suited the U-boats, for their Schnorkels enabled them to stay at periscope depth near the edge of the pack-ice where it was almost impossible to detect them either visually or by radar. It didn’t, however, suit the Swordfish, and, with visibility down to less than 100 yards, all planes were grounded.

  It was now, while the convoy was bereft of air cover, that we suffered a tragic loss. A little after midday there was a sudden explosion, a sheet of flame and our guardship HMS Bluebell, which had been stationed only a couple of hundred yards on our port quarter, vanished. One moment she was there. Next moment an acoustic torpedo had struck her level with her magazines and she was pulverized in an instant to an acrid column of dust. Out of her ship’s company of more than 120 there was only one survivor.