by John Moffat
One of the most important targets at Mers-el-Kébir was now escaping, so an urgent signal was sent to the Swordfish on their bombing mission to change course and make their attack, not on the ships in the harbour but on the fleeing warship, which was rapidly putting distance between herself and Force H.
This, of course, is one of the tasks that I was training for at Abbotsinch, although ideally the Swordfish would be armed with torpedoes. In circumstances like this, however, you do what you can with what you have. The Swordfish changed course and made an approach to the French battleship. Completely unobserved, they turned into their dive, releasing their bombs at 4,000 feet. Then the anti-aircraft guns on the French destroyers opened up, projecting a dense barrage of fire, which the planes managed to avoid. One or two possible hits were observed by the crew of the Swordfish, but the warships steamed on apparently unscathed. The 250lb semi-armour-piercing bombs had little effect on the armour plating of a battleship – something that had been discovered in the attack on Scharnhorst in Norway.
Somerville had been told that Strasbourg and Dunkerque were our most important targets. Dunkerque seemed to be beached in Oran, but Strasbourg was steaming away, most likely heading to Toulon to meet up with the rest of the French fleet. We needed to stop her, and a torpedo attack was rapidly organized. Six Swordfish from 818 were ranged on the flight deck, torpedoes slung in their cradles under the fuselage. The warheads had been fitted with Duplex pistols, fuses that would be triggered to explode on impact or if they were affected by the magnetic field of a ship. Ideally, they should explode beneath the waterline or under the keel of a ship, and the running depth of the torpedo can be adjusted to take account of this. Here they were set to run at a depth of 20 feet.
The planes took off at 1950, when the light was beginning to fade. They had a good fix on Strasbourg, however, and they flew along the coast about 15 miles off shore. It was now twenty minutes after sunset. Their ruse seemed to be successful. The torpedoes were launched from a position between two escorting destroyers, with deflections for an estimated speed of the target between 28 and 30 knots. The attack went almost unnoticed, until the gunners on the destroyers woke up as the last two Swordfish dropped; they burst into action, but it was too late. The Swordfish had carried out a classic, well-planned attack, but sadly there was no sign of any hit to Strasbourg – even if there had been, the darkness and funnel smoke obscured the evidence. The main focus of the Ark's efforts, and of Force H itself, had managed to escape and even now was steaming to safety.
Even though Dunkerque had been hit and was now beached in shallow water inside the harbour at Mers-el-Kébir, it was difficult to ascertain just how badly damaged she was, or how easy it was going to be to refloat her. Britain wanted to make sure that she was out of action for a long while, so two days later a new plan was put into operation: the Ark would carry out another torpedo attack. Around 100 miles from the Algerian coast a dozen Swordfish, six from 810 Squadron and six from 820 Squadron, were armed with torpedoes and ranged on the flight deck. Dunkerque's position made it difficult for an attack. She was close to the shore in shallow water, protected by a mole. To make a beam attack would require an approach either over the breakwater or over the town. The twelve aircraft would attack from two directions and so formed up into two sections. One group of nine would make its approach low over the sea out of the rising sun, dropping their 'kippers', as the torpedoes were known, just inside the breakwater, while the other three would approach over the town and attempt to hit the port side of the warship.
The nine aircraft coming in from the sea waited until they could see the rays of the rising sun hitting Dunkerque, then they started their dive, separating into two groups, one of six aircraft and one of three. They took the French by surprise, and their approach was purposeful and steady, without any of the anti-aircraft guns firing at them. Five out of the first six torpedoes, which had been set to run at a very shallow 12 feet, hit the target, although one failed to explode. It was seen to ricochet off the side of the warship, then continue running along the side of the ship on the surface until it hit a jetty, where finally the warhead, armed with a Duplex pistol, did explode, blowing fragments of wooden decking and massive heavy piling high into the air. The sixth torpedo missed the target and ran up on to the beach, where it too blew up.
The lead pilot, Captain Newson RN, took the group on another, lower approach, from 2,000 feet, but as they made a turn to launch their attack the anti-aircraft guns started firing and the pilots were forced to take violent avoiding action until they were over the breakwater. Captain Newson forgot to press his master switch, so his torpedo failed to drop, but the following two aircraft released theirs successfully. They then turned and made a low-level, erratic getaway, being fired on as they did so. As they flew behind a headland, the observer of the rear plane saw the smoke and red fireball of a large explosion rise into view. He thought it came from where Dunkerque lay beached, and could only have been caused by a magazine exploding.
The final attack, led by Lieutenant David 'Feather' Godfrey-Faussett of 810 Squadron, an extremely good pilot and a man for whom I had a lot of respect, made its approach over land, hitting the coast at Cap Falcon, keeping to the landward side of the high promontory of Point Mers-el-Kébir and then swinging over the town at very low level. Even with this stealthy approach they were fired on by anti-aircraft guns from another battleship in the harbour and from the shore batteries to the east. Godfrey-Faussett dropped first, but although his observer thought the torpedo hit the target, there was no explosion. The second Swordfish dropped at a longer range. The torpedo ran straight and true, but hit not Dunkerque but a tug, which disintegrated in a ball of flame. The third torpedo hit Dunkerque, but again it failed to explode.
These three Swordfish were the last aircraft to attack, and there had been enough time for the French to be on a high level of preparedness. Not only were the shore-based batteries ready for the approach of the last three Swordfish, but the French air force had managed to get some fighters airborne and these were now flying over the harbour being engaged by the Skuas. The pilots of the Swordfish were unaware of this fight going on overhead, but as Sub-Lieutenant Pearson, Godfrey-Faussett's wingman, was flying at about 100 feet above the waves, he noticed strange splashes on the surface on his port side, slightly ahead of him. It dawned on him with a shock that he was being fired on from behind by a fighter. The burst of adrenalin that had hit his nerves as he jinked through the anti-aircraft fire over Dunkerque had slightly dissipated, but now he realized he was in mortal danger yet again. Almost immediately his observer told him that a fighter had just turned away – then he added in a slightly tenser voice that another fighter was coming at them out of the sun on the starboard side. It was a French Dewoitine D.520. These were modern fighters, fitted with a 20mm cannon and four machine guns. They had the same speed as a Messerschmitt and were equally if not more manoeuvrable, allegedly having a turning circle smaller than the German fighters.
Pearson knew he was in trouble. By now every Swordfish pilot realized that there was only one way to get out of this situation, and that was to use the aircraft's superior slow-speed manoeuvrability. He was already flying at a height of 100 feet above the sea, a situation that most fast fighter pilots find uncomfortable. As soon as his observer told him where the fighter was, Pearson made a tight turn into him and a burst of bullets churned up the surface of the sea to port. The fighter came round again and made another attack. Pearson repeated his manoeuvre, with the same results. The fighter broke away, then made a stern attack. Pearson knew that his Swordfish was being hit, and he made a tight 180-degree turn to fly underneath the French fighter, who gave up the chase, perhaps nervous at how low he was getting – a tight turn at slow speed might be fatal at barely 100 feet above the sea. Then Pearson saw another Dewoitine: for the first time he realized there were two of them. He was nowhere near out of the woods. Yet again, gunfire poured into the ocean as Pearson, sweat pouring cold down his
back, his mouth dry, yanked his plane into the tightest possible turn and kept it there, his engine thundering away until the Dewoitine appeared through the disc of his whirling propeller. Then he pressed the button on his stick. The single fixed machine gun in the nose of the Swordfish added another metallic hammering to the cacophony around him as bursts of flame stabbed out of the recessed barrel. Fifty rounds were fired, filling the cockpit with the acrid smell of cordite. It was unlikely that a single one of his bullets did any damage, but the second French pilot didn't want to give Pearson another chance and he too was gone, clawing for the sky with all of his aircraft's 330-miles-an-hour speed – faster than the Swordfish and carrying enough cannon and machine guns to rip it to shreds, but outwitted and outmanoeuvred.
Elated, amazed at what he had just done, the young sublieutenant flew on to rendezvous with the Ark. Once the plane was down in the hangar, the riggers started totting up the damage. A cannon shell had smashed through the fuselage cowling on the port side of the cockpit and burst on the starboard aileron. One bullet had smashed the radio transmitter and another had twisted the ring of the TAG's rear-firing Lewis gun. It had been a very narrow escape for the observer, Lieutenant Prendergast. Some frames in the fuselage had been damaged, and several ribs in the lower wing had been hit, as had the centre-section rear main spar. The torpedo-release mechanism had also been hit and destroyed.
Dunkerque, meanwhile, had been hit by five torpedoes and was most definitely out of action. It had been another highly successful day, but the vagaries of the torpedo warheads were obvious, and they were unsettling. Dunkerque had been a stationary target, and out of nine torpedoes that had been observed to hit her, three had definitely failed to detonate. Whether this was the reason for Strasbourg appearing to shrug off what seemed a perfectly timed and coordinated attack two days earlier was hard to know.
It was an open secret when I joined 818 Squadron that pilots on the Ark were doubtful about the efficiency of the new Duplex triggers, but Admiralty instructions were clear: they were to be fitted and used unless there was no alternative. The torpedoes carried by the Swordfish were the Mark IX and were referred to as 18in torpedoes, which was the diameter of the warhead and body. These were smaller than those launched by our submarines, the Mark VIII, which had a 21in diameter, at 40 knots were faster and had a far greater range of 7,000 yards. More important, the warheads were very different. The airborne 18in carried a warhead of 250lb of explosive, compared to 750lb in the bigger Mark VIII. Some modern warships had thick enough armour, or specially constructed bulges in their hulls designed to limit the effect of a hit by a torpedo, and our small warhead would not necessarily cause enough damage to sink one of these ships. At best, as I was to be told during my training at Abbotsinch, all we could hope to do was damage a ship sufficiently to slow it down, or get enough hits in at the same time to cripple it. An unreliable warhead was merely adding to our problems.
5
Hard Lessons
I shouldn't give the impression that flying a Swordfish against enemy fighters or anti-aircraft guns was a piece of cake. It was remarkable that the planes that tried to hit Strasbourg or attacked Dunkerque were able to make it back to the safety of the Ark's flight deck in one piece. It took a very cool head and some fantastic flying skill to avoid two modern fighters in the way that Sub-Lieutenant Pearson had done over Mers-el-Kébir. The outcome wasn't always guaranteed: if you got into a fight you could easily end up dead. George Dawson of 810 Squadron told me about the horrible mess that he got into when the Ark was sent down to Dakar, in French West Africa. This happened in the middle of September 1940, when I was just starting my training at Abbotsinch.
General de Gaulle, who led the Free French in Britain, believed, for whatever reason, that the troops in the French colony might come over to his side if he presented himself and made a personal appeal to their loyalty to France. The plan was that he would go down there in a small force of British warships and Ark Royal, with around 6,000 Royal Marines and Free French troops, to make a public proclamation and negotiate with the French governor. As with Oran, the negotiations would be backed up with the threat of taking the port by force if they came to nought. Dakar was an important port on the west coast of Africa, and if German submarines started operating out of it they would cause a lot of damage to our convoys sailing round the Cape of Good Hope to India or the Red Sea. Another reason why it was worth taking Dakar, so it was rumoured, was because a lot of gold from the central banks of Poland and Belgium had been shipped there for safekeeping when Germany first invaded France. There were stories that up to £60 million in gold bullion was stashed away there.
So Ark Royal sailed down to West Africa with two battleships, HMS Barham and Resolution, with an escort of five cruisers and ten destroyers. They arrived in Freetown, in Sierra Leone, on 16 September, and then a few days later sailed for Dakar. Whatever the attitude of the Vichy forces to General de Gaulle might have been, it was unlikely that they would welcome a visit from the Royal Navy after our actions in Oran. Their fleet in Dakar had been reinforced by a modern battleship, Richelieu, which had sailed from Brest dockyard to avoid being captured by the Germans, and two other cruisers that slipped past Gibraltar from Mers-el-Kébir. The first attempt at persuading the French forces in Dakar to leave Vichy and join De Gaulle didn't go well. Ark Royal had embarked two French aircraft at Gibraltar and when they took off and landed at Dakar airfield, their pilots and passengers, all Free French officers, were straightaway arrested and jailed. Then two ships' boats that attempted to enter the harbour with De Gaulle's representatives were fired upon and several of their passengers wounded. This marked the start of a general French offensive. They knew of course what had happened at Mers-el-Kébir, and it is hardly surprising that they decided to get their retaliation in first.
Their shore batteries opened fire on the British warships, and Richelieu, with her huge 15in-calibre guns, also started blasting away. The battle lasted intermittently over two days, with Barham suffering a hit by one of Richelieu's shells, and Resolution being torpedoed by a French submarine. The French lost two submarines and a destroyer.
In the middle of this battle, General de Gaulle decided that he would attempt a landing along the coast and deliver an ultimatum to the Vichy forces. It was a hopeless effort in the circumstances. The landings were hampered by fog and two French cruisers managed to leave the harbour, raising the possibility that the Free French troops would be cut off and their reinforcements from the troop ships sunk by the cruisers that were now steaming along the coast. The Vichy forces also managed to send troops to the landing area at Rufisque, and they started to fire on the Free French soldiers. De Gaulle realized that the situation was lost and he would gain nothing from large numbers of French casualties, so the landings were abandoned and the Free French troops already on the shore were taken off.
Ark Royal had flown off some Swordfish to provide aerial spotting for Barham and Resolution during their attempt to shell the shore batteries and Dakar harbour, with the immobile Richelieu at anchor, but they met some organized resistance. French fighters were already on alert and maintaining combat air patrols over the coast. When the landings were abandoned, the two French cruisers turned and tried to return to port. Seeing an opportunity to weaken the Vichy forces, and under orders from the Admiralty, eight Swordfish from 810 and 820 Squadrons were ranged up to carry out a torpedo attack on the cruisers. They met some very fierce anti-aircraft fire, and five of the Swordfish failed to make it back. The observers that managed to return to the Ark reported that they believed they had managed to get two hits, but in the mayhem of the crossfire and their violent getaway they could not be sure.
All this was happening while I was engaged in my training at Abbotsinch, carefully guiding my Swordfish over the waters of the Clyde, waiting for the cameras mounted on the wing of my aircraft and on the target ship to tell me if I had carried out a successful drop or not. Perhaps if I had had an idea of what was happening in
the harbour at Dakar at that very time I might have been more apprehensive about my decision to transfer to Swordfish. I would certainly have been less complacent about my good results from the training course.
Back on Ark Royal in West Africa, the final operation was to be a dive-bombing attack on the French shore batteries, and George Dawson was the TAG on one of the Swordfish. Armed with 250lb bombs, they had originally been briefed to dive-bomb the 9.2in gun batteries located on the island of Gorée, lying to the east of Dakar, which effectively covered the entrance to the port. George was strapped in ready for take-off when a last-minute change of orders was handed to their observer: the Swordfish were now directed to bomb Richelieu. George, in the last plane of the flight of six, had not been told of the change of target and was alarmed when he realized that they were flying past the island and heading into the harbour. A French fighter followed them in and started firing. The Swordfish was hit, bullets thudding into the cockpit and the metal-covered forward part of the fuselage. George was uncertain whether it was from the fighter or whether it was anti-aircraft fire from the French ships at anchor, but it seems unlikely that the French guns on the ground would risk hitting their own plane. He was slightly wounded by some shell fragments in the arm, but kept his eye on the fighter, waiting for the opportunity to get in a burst of fire from his Lewis machine gun. He had warned his pilot immediately, but the Swordfish had not taken any evasive action. George then noticed that they were leaving a trail of smoke. He turned round to check where it was coming from and saw a horrific sight. His observer, Sub-Lieutenant Cross, was still seated, his eyes glazed and blood pouring from his mouth. Looking further forward and up to the cockpit, he could see the pilot, Sub-Lieutenant Wheeler, with his head flopping on his shoulder as if he were asleep, his yellow Mae West lifejacket covered in crimson blood. The Swordfish was flying crazily, doing violent zooms and dives, and the pilot's head rolled with the plane's gyrations. Then his arm came out of the cockpit and George saw that it was almost severed below the elbow, hanging on by just a piece of skin.