by John Moffat
On this operation in November, which was codenamed Operation Collar, Force H was going to escort three cargo ships as well as the two cruisers carrying the RAF personnel. The merchant navy ships did not stop at Gibraltar; they went past and we had to make a rendezvous with them. On the morning of 26 November a Swordfish was sent off to locate them, while another flight was ranged up to be sent on anti-submarine patrol. This pattern was kept up all during that day.
Next morning there must have been some intelligence report that there were enemy ships at sea. I know now that a great number of enemy signals, both Italian and German, were being received and deciphered, but at the time this was obviously secret. We were never given any information about intelligence matters, but I do know that the Ark could pick up Italian radio traffic, and if there was a lot of activity on frequencies associated with the Italian navy, then it was easy to draw the conclusion that something was up!
That morning nine Swordfish were sent out on a wide-ranging patrol, searching the seas as far as 100 miles to the east and north. These reconnaissance patrols could be a test of endurance. You had to cover the area methodically, making sure the navigator was keeping track of the position; he would be constantly monitoring the wind speed and its direction so that he could take account of drift and keep in mind the route to be taken back to the carrier. The area on the horizon had to be scanned, because it was important not to be close to any ship we spotted, otherwise the target would be alerted and would take evasive action. Once a ship was spotted, a report was sent back to the Ark, and the Swordfish would then settle down to a cat-and-mouse game of staying in contact while trying itself to remain unnoticed, until relieved by another aircraft.
Later that morning, one of the patrolling Swordfish from 820 Squadron signalled back to the Ark that it had spotted a group of warships. Ten minutes later these were confirmed as two battleships and an escort of destroyers. The Italian fleet was at sea, and it was heading towards Force H.
There was immediate activity in the Ark. At the first report of a sighting there were six Fulmar fighters in the air, on a combat air patrol, and two relief shadowers were on their way to take over trailing the Italian warships from the three Swordfish that were still in contact. The remainder of the reconnaissance aircraft had to be landed on, as did a third section of fighters that needed refuelling. As soon as these aircraft landed, a strike force of Swordfish had to be ranged and launched. The Fulmars landing on would be taken down on the forward deck-lift, where they could be re-armed and refuelled in the hangar decks, while the Swordfish would be brought up on the rear deck-lift. They had been armed with torpedoes the night before in readiness, all nine of them, and they were ready to go. Two more Swordfish were now armed and made ready.
Meanwhile, the crews were being briefed and told about their expected targets. The latest information was that, as well as the two battleships with their escort of destroyers, there was another group, some miles way, of three heavy cruisers also protected by destroyers, bringing the total possibly to as many as seventeen warships. This was a sizeable fleet, bigger by far than Force H. The observers quickly mugged up on the identification silhouettes, the pilots checked the latest weather updates, and the TAGs made sure that Force H and Ark Royal had the up-to-date identification codes for friendly ships. The orders from the commander air to the operation leader, who was Lt Commander Mervyn 'Johnnie' Johnstone of 810 Squadron, were to attack the battleships if at all possible, and because of this the torpedoes had been set to run at a depth of 34 feet. This was the second torpedo strike from the Ark in just five months.
When the crews came out on to the flight deck the folding wings were already locked in place and the riggers and mechanics made final checks while waiting to start up the engines. All the propellers were turning before the attack leader would start his take-off. The noise was overpowering, and the aircraft behind the leaders trembled in their propeller wash. None of the riggers and other ratings manhandling the aircraft was on their feet at this point; they were kneeling by the chocks, keeping their heads down, trying to prevent themselves from being blown over.
Then one by one they were off. The signal to prepare for an attack was received on the Ark at 1030; in an hour the planes in the air had been recovered and eleven swordfish had been launched and were on their way to attack the Italian fleet.
In the meantime, Renown and the rest of Force H were steaming at full speed towards the enemy, preparing to open fire once they were in range. The guns of both sides started firing while the Swordfish were still twenty minutes away, and they could see the first British shells landing, the second salvo in amongst the cruisers. Then the Italian cruisers stopped firing and started laying down a thick smokescreen. The two Italian battleships had not yet begun to fire, but instead were still steaming towards Force H, and the attacking Swordfish approached them at about 6,000 feet. They were identified as Vittorio Veneto and Giulio Cesare. Lt Commander Mervyn Johnstone went into the dive and launched his torpedo at the rear battleship from about 1,500 feet, then pulled away. The remainder of the Swordfish aimed at the forward battleship. There was heavy gunfire from the battleships and the escorting destroyers, but none of the Swordfish was hit. Some of the pilots saw a column of brown smoke rise up from the far side of the leading battleship, but it wasn't until they all returned to the Ark that they could be debriefed and a possible hit on one of the targets was reported to the captain of Ark Royal and Admiral Somerville on Renown.
The Swordfish landed on at 1315, by which time the Italian ships had abandoned the fight and were heading at maximum speed for Cagliari on the Sardinian coast. They were still being shadowed by a Swordfish with an observer, my friend Sub-Lieutenant Henry 'Maxie' Mayes, and he reported at around 1330 that he had been fired on by an Italian cruiser, a San Giorgio class, which was stationary in the water, and it appeared that there was a fire in the after part of the ship. He thought that she had been hit by a large shell in the after turret. Mayes circled her for about half an hour before heading back to the Ark.
While the first torpedo attack had been taking place, there was another round of intense activity to prepare aircraft for a second attack. At 1410 nine Swordfish took off in pursuit of the Italian battleships. On the bridge they decided that they would prepare a force of Skua aircraft to carry out a dive-bombing attack on the stricken cruiser that Mayes had seen on fire. This decision was a risky one. Some of the Fulmars in the air had already made contact with Italian bombers approaching the fleet at around 10,000 feet, and detaching the Skuas to carry out a dive-bombing exercise would leave Force H with just one squadron of Fulmars for air defence. Moreover, most of the crews had carried out at least one if not two patrols already.
Twenty minutes after the second wave of Swordfish took off, ten Italian bombers staged an attack on Renown and Force H. They dropped a long stick of bombs from a height of 13,000 feet, the closest of which exploded over a mile away, but, sadly, one Fulmar was shot down. The Italian battleships were continuing their dash to the Sardinian coast, and if there had been any damage caused by the first attack it was not apparent when the second wave of Swordfish approached them, led by 820 Squadron's CO, Lt Commander Stewart-Moore. They approached from the west, and by this time they were coming out of the sun. Stewart-Moore saw that the battleships were in the lead, escorted by ten destroyers, followed by the three cruisers and four more destroyers. He had been told by Commander Traill, the commander air, that he should go for the battleships if possible, but ultimately to use his own judgement. At the back of both the commander air's and Stewart-Moore's minds was the relative inexperience of most of his pilots compared to those in the first wave. He looked at the position of the ships and realized that, if he wanted to continue his approach to the battleships in the van of the Italian ships, he would be seen by their escorting cruisers, who would have plenty of time to raise the alarm. He would also be vulnerable to their anti-aircraft fire as his Swordfish flew past them at a relative speed of just 50
knots. However, the final fact that influenced him was that they were now only about 30 nautical miles from Sardinia and he could see Italian aircraft circling over Cagliari. If he delayed until he could reach the battleships, then he would be placing his Swordfish in danger of attack from Italian fighters. He elected to attack the cruisers, and signalled the other nine aircraft of his intentions.
They went down in a shallow dive from 10,000 feet, then about 2 miles out dived to the surface, where they made their approach. The forward cruiser was shielded by the destroyers, so Stewart-Moore picked the last cruiser in line and dropped his torpedo. By now the cruisers were alerted and were firing at him. They changed course, turning into the attack, and the following Swordfish turned also to keep them beam on. The cruisers executed a broad circle and, as they did so, all the torpedoes were dropped. The destroyers were also firing and the Swordfish zigzagged away to avoid the anti-aircraft shells. As they made their getaway, several of the observers thought they could see a mound of water rise up along the side of the cruiser, as if it had been caused by an underwater explosion, and brown smoke poured out of one of the funnels, but they saw nothing else to indicate that a torpedo had scored a hit.
Seven Skuas had taken off from the Ark at 1500 hours to administer the coup de grâce to the damaged stationary cruiser that Sub-Lieutenant Mayes had sighted earlier. When they got to the reported position, however, they found nothing, so continued to search. About 6 miles away they saw another group of three cruisers, of the Condotierri class, armed with 6in guns. They were steaming in line astern at about 16 knots and were, it seems, entirely separate from those attacked by the Swordfish led by Stewart-Moore. The Skuas climbed to 9,000 feet, then dived on the warships, which were taken completely by surprise. The bombs were dropped on the last cruiser of the trio at around 900 feet, but out of seven 500lb bombs aimed at this ship, no hits were seen. As they flew away, pursued by bursting shells from the cruisers, they saw a wide oil slick, but nothing to indicate that the damaged cruiser they had originally been looking for had sunk.
This was the last attempt to damage the Italian warships that day, but it was not by any means the last of the action. Shortly after the Skuas had taken off, three waves of Italian bombers, flying at around 14,000 feet, headed for Ark Royal. Each wave of five aircraft dropped ten bombs, and they fell extremely close; at one point enormous gouts of water were cascading on to the flight deck from both sides of the ship. The noise of the explosions and the fire from the sixteen 4.5in anti-aircraft guns was deafening. The Ark steamed furiously through the bombardment, heeling over in sharp turns, avoiding stick after stick of bombs plummeting down. The ship's photographer had some photos of the Ark taken from Renown, and she was completely obscured by the explosions. When I saw them later, I wondered how long it would be before I was in an attack like this.
After the last attack by the Skuas, and this retaliatory attack on the Ark by the Italian bombers, Admiral Somerville did not pursue the Italian fleet as it retreated. Their warships were faster by several knots than Renown and the British cruisers. He was also concerned that to try to close on them would inevitably take Force H and the Ark very close to the airbases in Sardinia. Ark Royal was his biggest asset in Force H, and if she were lost then Gibraltar might as well close down. He considered it his main duty to continue to protect the three cargo ships and the troop-carrying cruisers, escorting them to where they could be handed over to the Mediterranean Fleet, which had steamed out of Alexandria to meet them.
It was Somerville's decision to abandon the pursuit of the Italian fleet that led to calls in London for his court martial, and the convening of a court of inquiry into his conduct. Everybody in Force H was 100 per cent behind him, of course. As part of this inquiry, evidence was also taken from the COs and pilots of the squadrons that attacked the fleet. There had been three attacks by aircraft from Ark Royal, but two separate torpedo attacks by twenty Swordfish and a dive-bomber attack by seven Skuas had failed to slow any of the Italian ships down.
It was an unsatisfactory result, and the general feeling was that there were two problems. Many of the pilots in the Swordfish squadrons were inexperienced. There was also a lack of training in torpedo attacks. The Swordfish squadrons were stretched, with patrol, reconnaissance and antisubmarine duties to be performed throughout the day, and there was little time to devote to training. I gathered this was going to change, and we were scheduled to do more of it. But there was a general feeling as well that there was a problem with torpedo attacks on high-speed targets. The results were not as decisive as had been expected during peacetime exercises. Many in the wardroom felt that there might be something wrong with the torpedoes, but nobody was in a position to do anything about it.
I felt that the inquiry was a bit of a cheek. The target, of course, was Rear Admiral Somerville, but it was felt to be a veiled criticism of Ark Royal, particularly as many questions were asked about orders given for the attack and the tactics adopted. I didn't take part, but questions were asked of some of the pilots that suggested that the admirals on the board of inquiry didn't know very much about flying, or about torpedo attacks. Everyone carried on as normal, of course, but there was a sense that something was being left unsaid. Fortunately, the court of inquiry exonerated Somerville of any wrongdoing.
7
Gotcha
The mood on the Ark was affected not only by the court of inquiry sitting in Gibraltar, but by the news of a stunning attack on the Italian fleet at its harbour in Taranto. I was still in Arbroath at the time, waiting for a posting to a front-line squadron. I was very excited, as was everyone in the Fleet Air Arm, because at the time it looked like a real knock-out blow. In our view it showed how vital naval aviation was, and how much of a threat a properly trained squadron of torpedo bombers could be. At last, we thought, the navy will wake up and begin to take notice of us. When I got on to the Ark, however, there was a slightly different attitude. Everyone was very pleased, of course, with the success of the attack, but there was also a feeling that the spotlight of publicity had shifted away a bit from the glamour boys of Ark Royal, especially as the efforts against the Italian warships in November had not resulted in any losses on their part. But this operation and the earlier attack on Strasbourg had been spur-of-the-moment things, rapidly assembled groups of aircraft flown off to intervene in the middle of a surface action. The raid on Taranto, on the other hand, had been planned for years.
The Mediterranean was a very important area for Britain. Our interest in it had never diminished since Nelson beat Napoleon in 1798 in the Battle of the Nile. Egypt and the Suez Canal gave access to the Middle East and India, so control of the route from Gibraltar through the Med was vital. The Mediterranean Fleet before the war had been second in size only to our Home Fleet. To be in command of it was an important step to very high rank in the navy.
When Mussolini came to power in Italy he wanted to expand the Italian empire in North Africa and the Horn, and started to build up the Italian navy. The Italians began modernizing Their First World War battleships and building new ones. Their submarine fleet, in particular, became very large. In short, Italian influence in the Mediterranean was expanding and there was a good chance that they would soon challenge Britain for control of the sea.
Admiral Sir Dudley Pound was in charge of the Mediterranean Fleet in 1935 and, before he moved on to become First Sea Lord in the Admiralty under Churchill, he started drawing up plans to attack the Italian fleet if it ever came to war. There were several important ports around the Italian coast, but Mussolini had promoted the construction of a major new one in the town of Taranto, a natural harbour in the large Bay of Taranto inside the heel of Italy. It was naturally defendable and with the construction of large breakwaters to create an outer harbour it was hard to attack in any way other than from the air.
In 1938, at the time of the Munich crisis, Pound's plan was looked at again by Captain Arthur Lyster, who was then in command of HMS Glorious, at the time attache
d to the Mediterranean Fleet. As a result of his concern about an alliance between Germany and Italy, Lyster started to put some of the groundwork of the plan into place. The two squadrons of Swordfish on board Glorious started carrying out exercises in night flying, and nighttime torpedo attacks. They started to look at improvements in launch and recovery techniques, and after two months Lyster and his commander air came to the conclusion that, with the right preparation, a surprise attack on Taranto was possible. Glorious, however, was later replaced by HMS Eagle in the Mediterranean Fleet and was sent with the Ark to operate off Norway, where of course she was sunk by Scharnhorst in June 1940.
The Royal Navy in the eastern Mediterranean needed to be strengthened and, in August, HMS Illustrious was sent down from the UK, travelling through the Med to help boost the air cover available for Admiral Andrew Cunningham's fleet in Alexandria. Illustrious was a modern carrier, designed and built after Ark Royal expressly to serve in the Mediterranean. The proximity of Italian airbases caused the Admiralty to call for a carrier that would be better protected against air attack, so Illustrious, and all the carriers that followed her, were designed with armoured flight decks, armoured anti-aircraft gun turrets and a thick belt of armour around the hull. Because of this increased weight above the waterline, she had to be built with a single hangar deck to reduce her freeboard. The consequence, however, was that she could not carry as many planes as the Ark and had a total complement of just thirty-six aircraft. On board Illustrious was the man who had worked on the fine planning of the Taranto operation, Captain Lyster, who had now been promoted to Rear Admiral and was going to take command of both Illustrious and Eagle under Cunningham. With both carriers, Lyster thought that he had enough Swordfish aircraft to carry out an attack on the Italian fleet in its harbour.