Just before returning to harbour three flights of bombers dropped live bombs in the sea just in front of the Nelson, who steamed through their discoloured aftermath. The next day was spent going round shore establishments, during which all available boats were sent away under sail, a considerable armada. Having ordered ‘Splice the Mainbrace’, the King finally left through lines of ships crowded with cheering men.
The Nelson sailed the following morning for the Clyde, reached after intensive exercises with four submarines. The new carrier Ark Royal, passed at anchor, was the subject of keen scrutinies; she looked massive and rather ugly, I thought. A gale was blowing when we anchored and the weather continued thus, on and off, for the whole of the fortnight there.
One night in my launch (a 40-foot mostly open boat) it was too rough to secure her to the boom and I decided to go inshore. There was no response when I hailed the Officer of the Watch on the quarterdeck; obviously the blighter was sheltering so I vented my midnight spleen with six energetic but successful wrenches on the klaxon horn. Return next morning, stiff and miserable, was enlivened by the Snotties’ Nurse: I had woken up the Admiral and my leave was stopped for a month. Bored with nothing to do in the ensuing dog watches (off-duty evening hours) I took over my friends’ boats so that they could go ashore. The weather continued atrocious, keeping me permanently soaked and the day we sailed for a social visit to Kristiansand in Norway I reported sick.
Having taken no interest in the following week it was with great surprise that I awoke in a large brass bed. My surroundings were so much more civilised than anything experienced since the last leave that it seemed at first I must be in a hotel. But if so it had a gently throbbing undertone, round brass windows and a heavy footed gentleman exercising outside with a ‘squeak-thump’ that was curiously familiar. I raised the telephone by the bed, at which there was an unusually quick response, and asked where I was. An incredulous pause, then ‘You’re in the Captain’s cabin, Sir!’ Even though he had a separate sea-cabin, this was particularly nice of Captain Maceig-Jones. Apparently I had been dangerously ill with pneumonia and he had cabled my parents daily bulletins. There would seem to be two or three morals to this story, but ‘Let sleeping Admirals lie’ must be the chief.
* * *
The Nelson went into dock shortly after return to Portsmouth and it was instructive to walk under the immense hull, now green with weed, and gaze up at the 20-ft propellers that had churned their way many thousands of miles even since I had joined. The Commander was relieved by Commander T.K.W. Atkinson, who proved most approachable with a cheery charm. He was very neat and won our early approval, shoregoing, by affecting a silver tie with a dark blue shirt. Moreover, he could see us all off on the hockey field.
By now Bowles, Snow and myself could be trusted to break our boats up only in exceptional circumstances, we were of some assistance to the Officer of the Watch in harbour and could at least make good cocoa at sea. Hawkins had even eased up a little, possibly a sign that we were getting into the groove. Instructions arrived for us to join destroyers for the prescribed three months’ experience and Johnny Bowles and I found ourselves on board HMS Esk of the 5th Flotilla, in the trot (a line of buoys at the inner end of Portsmouth harbour, thick with destroyers, two by two). Within minutes I was correcting charts under the dapper navigator (Lieutenant R.H. Fanshawe) and Bowles had disappeared in the opposite direction. More time was to be spent in charge of some small operation than being lectured about it, and one learnt, often after scathing comment, the hard way.
We messed in the Wardroom, slinging our hammocks in the officers’ cabin flat. A very young Gunner (T), (torpedo specialisation, which included electrics), just promoted from the lower deck, joined on the same day; all his uniform was, of course, brand new and I remember helping him that first evening with an unco-operative bow tie. The Wardroom lay athwartships at the bottom of a small steel ladder from the after superstructure. The heavily built, ruddy faced Captain, Lieutenant Commander R.H. Peters, who never seemed to miss a trick, had his day and night cabins just forward. Next came the engine and boiler rooms which were not connected for passage and extended below the ‘iron deck’. This was the long waist of the ship, where revolving quadruple torpedo tubes—each side of the after conning platform-were mounted on the centre line. With two 4.7-inch guns forward and two aft, a box-like bridge and two funnels, the ‘E’ Class destroyers, built about 1933, epitomised the current British destroyer shape.
The ship went out for local exercises at once. I had been sick in the Nelson in really rough weather but so had many other people. The Esk had hardly begun to raise and dip her sharp bow in a Solent sea that would not have moved the Nelson at all, when I began to feel bad. Amid amused glances from the sailors on watch, all rudely healthy with chin stays pressed into blue chins, I descended a deck to the bridge ‘heads’. This continued all day. Johnny Bowles looked on also amused and quite unaffected, which made it worse. When the welcome shelter of Portsmouth harbour was regained I had kept down nothing. Fanshawe said of course I’d get over it after a few days; but this did not happen. When the flotilla finally sailed for Scottish waters it was blowing hard. He and I had the middle watch (midnight to 04:00) and I felt that this four hours with not a lot to occupy the mind would be the acid test. Called at 07:15 with no recollection of the middle I found it was still blowing a gale and the kind hearted ‘Pilot’ had countermanded my shake. Having determined that seasickness would never be allowed to interfere with duty I was very put out; the issue was, of course, only postponed and I soon discovered to my considerable distress that I was indeed a chronic sufferer. This was to colour my entire career in the Navy, as can be imagined, the knowledge that Nelson had been similarly cursed being small compensation! Life in the Esk therefore became a turbulent mixture of pleasing responsibility and this depressing cloud that lowered at sea.
She formed a sub-division with Express, often working in concert and securing alongside whenever ships paired off. The two First Lieutenants, inscrutable and ageing officers (of about 26!) invariably went ashore together; hers had chromium-plated the handrails and other brass fittings on Express’ quarterdeck out of his own pocket and very good they looked.
Both ships were capable of minelaying and the Munich crisis saw us back in the Clyde where the deck rails and ugly black mines sitting on box-like sinkers were kept. The rails were being bolted on aft, warheads shipped on torpedoes and shells fuzed, so that the upper deck looked like an open-air machine shop, when I came out of the charthouse and into the hearing of a large and presumably unflappable, West Country signalman who was oiling the shutter of his 10-inch light. ‘Zaturdaie’, he growled, ‘Oi was going to Glasgow Exhibition [with rising indignation] but now this ruddy warr cum alarng and Oi can’t go!’ Three days later he went; Chamberlain had come back from Munich, and naval war preparations were cancelled.
Mine rails discarded, the Esk sped to rejoin the Home Fleet on the east coast of Scotland where a pleasant personal interlude occurred at Invergordon. The Captain had an understanding with one of the local farmers and sent me ashore to enquire whether we could shoot partridges (no one else seemed to have a gun on board). The farmer said the shooting was let to the Captain of a battleship but had no objection if the latter was at sea! I semaphored this back, the skipper’s answer was in the affirmative and we had a fairly fruitful day. The usual, more strenuous shooting went on all the time. With eight rivals the competitive element was always strong, as indeed it was in everything the destroyers did from streaming anti-mine equipment to simply hoisting the red and white pennant, to signify that the signal fluttering at Exmouth’s yardarm was understood. Though the Nelson’s signal staff were well drilled I wondered if they were as quick as these men who ripped flags out of their cubbyholes, clipped them together and seemed to have them shooting into the air all in one movement. Understaffed when things were really humming, occasion often arose for Bowles and I to give a hand, sometimes with success and sometim
es overwhelmed with the speed of flashed letter or fluttering flag. At bursts of speed over 30 knots the little ship seemed to hurl herself from wave to wave, vibrating with a thrilling urgency and heeling over like a yacht when under helm. The stern would sink as the screws bit deep, the sea was a blur past the iron deck and a white highway frothed for a mile behind. This was the life I thought, and then when it began to blow, was not so sure!
Attacks on the battlefleet presented the reverse of the recent Mediterranean picture. We saw half a dozen heavy, relatively motionless ships, occasionally obscured by a shimmering wall as our downward plunge shattered an oncoming wave into glittering fragments. The Torpedo Control Officer, squinting along his brass sight, would begin to intone ‘Ten degrees to go—five degrees to go’ as the target ship grew. ‘Flotilla stand by to alter course … 45 degrees to port together’ from the Yeoman, watching Exmouth. We were in quarterline and a glance to port showed a diagonal view of the next ahead, 300 yards away, an occasional puff of brown smoke streaming horizontally from her funnels; over one’s right shoulder the heaving bow of the next astern.
‘Two degrees to go.’ ‘Stand by.’ The Control Officer’s right hand felt for the first of eight small levers, set in groups of four. ‘Executive signal. Stand by to fire torpedoes’ from the Yeoman and the Captain brought the ship round. ‘Fire one’, said the Control Officer methodically, moving the first lever. ‘Fire one’, repeated his communication number, a sailor in contact with the tubes’ crew who also fired as an insurance. There was a slight whoosh and those with nothing to do saw the long silver cylinder with orange head leap out of its tube to dwell a second over the waves and then disappear with a splash. ‘Fire two’— whoosh—splash—‘Fire three’, ‘Fire four’ and so on until, the swing of the ship imparting a fan shaped pattern, an eight-fold area of potential menace was spread towards the enemy. As we surged upright on the getaway course the target ships changed silhouette. They were combing the tracks that would soon trace thin green lines among them. Our new course had put the flotilla in line ahead and opened the range quickly. Nine navigating officers were feverishly plotting the torpedoes’ final resting—or rather, floating—places. At the end of their run the practice heads automatically filled with compressed air and the great ‘fish’ would, it was hoped, await recovery, orange nose up and exuding bad-smelling smoke to assist recovery.
Incessant exercises with submarines, when we would sometimes take on the adversary solo, but more often in pairs, provided an introduction to the magic Asdic. A small cabinet in the corner of the bridge, just holding one man—though by bending over his shoulder one could see what was going on—emitted the intriguing pong-wong, pong-wong, amplified from the bottom of the ship. The second syllable was the echo off the submarine. It rose in pitch and frequency as the range closed, until, when the two sounds had almost run together, there was a stream of ping-ping, ping-pings. It was uncanny to hear the desultory pong, pong, feeling its unhurried way through the sea ahead, the direction altered by a steering wheel in the little cabinet. Then, suddenly, a faint but unmistakeable echo. ‘Sub echo 102°’ from the operator. Pong-wong, pong-wong. Sometimes it was not a submarine-bits of wreckage, fish, and even eddies often playing games with inexperienced hands.
The standard form of attack was for one ship, stopped, to hold the echo whilst radioing details of the target’s movements to her consort. The latter, coming in at an angle and in receipt of information from her own Asdic, was in a good position to pinpoint the target. The last seconds of the attack would rely greatly on the watching ship since very close range shortened the echo time to an impracticable extent. The submarine would tow floats in the early stages of training to save time when she got lost but the hunter’s Asdic team were not, of course, allowed to look at them. When proficiency became high the submarine Captain could try everything he knew (such as stopping bow on, diving to the bottom, last minute bursts of speed) and with all concerned from our skipper downwards straining every nerve, the contest of skill and guile had a fascination that turned hours into minutes.
One could imagine the white-sweatered submarine officers, icy, olive green fathoms between them and the sunlight, listening, calculating, listening. Reports of our movements would be coming from their own operators, and then as likely as not their Captain would act, breaking the tension with a getaway under full rudder perhaps, just before (or if Peters had been one move ahead—just as …) the token charge exploded nearby.
* * *
The end of our destroyer time came all too soon even if my innards were ready for it. Return to Gunroom life was anti-climax but there were compensations to come; the 1939 Spring Cruise in the Med more than lived up to its predecessor, providing delights equestrian, bibulous and aerial, to name only three. Poor Pierrot was sick but I soon got a line on another horse, owned and trained—most conveniently—by a taxi-driver. Mecaliff would call for me at 06:00 in a huge Buick and amidst much speculation among the quarterdeck staff as to my influential friend, I would be swept away to his stables at the North Front. There is nothing like a gallop before breakfast unless it is the taste of bacon and eggs to follow.
Rocambole, as the horse was named, turned out to be a miniature mass of near unstoppable energy and I would end a gallop gasping for breath; he would snort indignantly and paw the ground while Mecaliff sat, grinning, 50 yards behind. We came second in our first scurry and won the next, prompting entry in a pukka race of, I think, a mile; it was disappointing to lose this by a short head, especially when the rider of the winner received a gold cigarette case.
Sandwiched between these came an extended visit by some French cruisers. Being somewhat of a linguist I was told off as interpreter and lived during the day in their flagship Algérie.
Life on board was most enjoyable when one was not wrestling with the translation of technical terms in British signals. The French officers did themselves well and on the last evening there was a full-scale dinner. A new wine appeared with every course. When there were five glasses in front of me, most of them empty and one was then plied, as the British thing to do, with whisky, I suddenly remembered the few yards back along the jetty. The story ends there as I have no recollection of returning to the Nelson where I woke up fully dressed in my hammock the next morning. Presumably an understanding Officer of the Watch had done his stuff.
My head must have cleared quickly because following hard on this was our air course, a fortnight’s hectic familiarisation with the Fleet Air Arm in HMS Ark Royal. Though ‘Pop’ Snow was the only one to be seduced into eventual specialisation as a pilot, we all had the time of our teenage lives, going up as passengers during the Combined Fleet Manoeuvres, usually in a ‘Stringbag’, the now famous old Fairey Swordfish biplane that did everything: dive bomb, torpedo, reconnoitre and fight when it had to. With two open cockpits and a top speed of 120 knots it was very manoeuvrable but in fact hardly out of the First World War tradition. I had never flown before and whether waiting my turn to roar down the deck, gallivanting about the sky or approaching to land on an undulating grey strip that looked far too small, it was all one big thrill, as described in a letter home:
HMS Ark Royal
10/6/39
We did a torpedo attack on the battle fleet diving from 11,000′ to 0′ and having dropped the torpedo were attacked by squadrons of enemy fighters which had been waiting in the clouds. We spent about fifteen minutes twisting and diving and banking about trying to shake them off which had the most super Wembley sideshows absolutely flat. I did not feel in the least sick. Once the pilot outmanoeuvred a fighter and sat on his tail for about a mile going all out. During which I took photos of him in line with the gun sights which the pilot, Sub. Lt. Cooper, is rather keen to have!
It was certainly strange that I did not feel sick; not so everyone. Another Midshipman found in the pocket of his loaned flying suit a note from a pilot to his observer—‘The next time you are sick, lean further out of the cockpit!’
HMS Ark
Royal (cont)
I did a dive bombing attack on Cousin John which means dropping vertically from about 3,000 feet at over 200 mph and boy was it a thrill or was it a thrill?
In fact I was scared stiff! Whether the aircraft really dived vertically I do not know but I did look down the funnel of the Royal Sovereign (in which John Tothill was serving). Just before going was the worst moment. Our sub-flight of three, of which my pilot was the most junior, was in formation above wispy cloud. The leader spotted battleships through a hole and jerked his thumb backwards. With a slight check on the throttle and rocking of wings we were in line astern. One could see the four heads in front taking quick glances over the side. Suddenly the leading pilot raised his hand and tipped it over forwards. There was hardly time to gasp before his tail reared up in front of us, showing the red, white and blue bands, and then vanished. Seconds later No 2 followed suit right in front of our noses. We were alone. I knew a moment of intense fear. But nothing could be done about it, especially when there was a terrific lurch, an unseen hand pressed me into the back of the seat and another squeezed my stomach into an excruciating knot.
A second later we burst into the sunlight and I found myself suspended, body almost horizontal, over a wonderful scene. The other two aircraft were in line in front of us again, and beyond them a huge grey and cream lozenge, dotted with black. Its background of blue was broken at its blunter end by turbulent white lines that moved slowly outwards to disappear.
Alarm Starboard!: A Remarkable True Story of the War at Sea Page 3