by Alan Evans
Ward lifted the telephone and spoke to Rickman, the sub commanding the guns aft. “Engage the bird coming in astern.”
“Sir!”
Campbell opened fire, followed a split-second later by Vivacious and Worcester. Bursting shells made dirty smudges on a dirty sky, pocking it around the two Junkers. They kept on, still high, sometimes lost in wisps of cloud. Then Boston’s little armament added its clamour to the din. Ward swung round to sweep the sky astern of Boston, saw the first Junkers cruising in, bursts from the Oerlikons and the 12-pounder aft all around it, the bombs falling.
The Junkers tilted on one wing, swung away to port then climbed unscathed towards the clouds. The bombs burst in a row a cable’s length from the port side. Bailey in his engine-room would hear the concussion of their bursting but not close enough to worry him. Nor Ward. He turned forward, saw spouts lifting from the sea to starboard of Campbell but again well clear, the other two Junkers racing away and climbing into cloud.
Phillips bellowed, “Check! Check! Check!”
The guns ceased firing, their targets gone. Instead there came the brassy tinkle as empty shell cases were kicked across the deck and over the side. The immediate danger had receded. Now they remembered the other that was with them still as the flotilla raced eastward through a charted minefield. A destroyer’s skin was thin and a mine would blow the bottom out of Boston.
*
“…Air alert! Bearing oh-eight-five!” Charlie Barnwell read the signal flying from Campbell’s yard.
Again the searching of the sky and the yelled sighting report. A flight of three Junkers, but 87s this time, Stukas with their inverted gulls-wing configuration. Old enemies, becoming too old for this war. But they weren’t the only ones getting too old, and they were still killers. Ward glanced around the deck of Boston then at the destroyers ahead. Boston was still making twenty-eight knots. He touched wood again.
The flight of Stukas split up and came howling down on the flotilla. They were making separate attacks and one of them chose Boston. Ward heard the bang of the 12-pounder aft and then the rapid hammering of the Oerlikons. He spoke into the voicepipe, “Starboard twenty.”
“Starboard twenty…Twenty of starboard wheel on, sir.
Ward straightened, shot a quick glance astern and sky-ward. The Stuka was pointing right at him, wings and nose a flat W as he saw it head-on, the bomb hanging underneath between the spatted wheels. One of the Oerlikons was quickly on to it, the 20mm tracer arcing up, flame pale in the grey light of day but marking the path clear enough to the Stuka. The pilot was not liking it, letting the bomb fall early and turning away with the underside of the aircraft showing, the 20mm shells still stitched to it like a trailing thread. And now there was smoke streaming from the Stuka—Ward swung back to the compass and the voicepipe. Boston was heeling to the turn. “Meet her…Steer one-double-oh!”
“Steer one-double-oh!…Course one-double-oh, sir!”
The bomb burst off the port beam, too far away to be counted even as a near miss and they had Boston’s turn and the Oerlikons’ good shooting to thank for that. Boston was straightening, the Stuka sliding away, streaming smoke in a thin trail but levelling off low over the sea and heading for the rain-blurred horizon.
“Check! Check! Check!”
The guns ceased firing.
Ward ordered, “Port twenty.” To bring Boston back into line after that swerving turn out of the path of the bomb.
“Port twenty…twenty of port wheel on, sir.”
Krueger climbed the ladder and stepped on to the bridge. “We breathe again.” The sky was clear of aircraft.
Ward ordered, “Meet her…Steady. Steer oh-nine-oh.”
“Steer oh-nine-oh…Course oh-nine-oh, sir.”
Boston was back in the wake of Worcester, the undamaged flotilla still crashing on at twenty-eight knots. Ward said, “Not yet. We’ll breathe in ten minutes.” They would be out of the minefield then. “But softly.”
Certainly Boston had so far clung to the skirts of the hurrying old ladies ahead of her. But you never knew, you couldn’t make a bet.
Krueger was touching wood again.
*
At 1430 they were clear of the minefield and Ward swung back to the chartroom but a minute later was called out again to the front of the bridge by the yeoman.
“Signal from Campbell, sir. Course oh-seven-five.” And as the hoist was whipped down from Campbell’s yard: “Executive!”
Ward stooped to the voicepipe, watching Worcester ahead as she heeled under helm. “Port ten.” He turned his head to tell Krueger, “Judging by the chart we could meet them inside the hour; it’ll depend on their speed.”
“.… ten of port wheel on, sir.” That was Leading Seaman McCudden at the wheel now. Ward had told Adams to stand easy as soon as the minefield lay astern. He would be needed again, soon.
“Meet her. Steer oh-seven-five.”
Boston’s bow was again splitting Worcester’s wake, its foam washing around the forward 4-inch and sliding aft. Ward looked out at the humping sea, lowering clouds and shrinking horizon. They had said it would get worse. It had—and it wasn’t finished yet. Visibility was poor, and worsening. That might be all to the good. If you were facing a superior force and you couldn’t attack at night then maybe bad weather was the next best thing in the way of cover.
1445. Another air alert. The aircraft dropped out of the cloud cover and turned towards the flotilla. Ward switched on the speakers and said rapidly, “Check! Check! Check! Hold your fire. Aircraft friendly! Aircraft friendly!”
He switched off and watched the aircraft, a Hampden, coming up astern of them.
Then Charlie Barnwell the yeoman said, “Bloody hell!”
The Hampden had dropped a stick of bombs, some falling just astern of Mackay and hurling spray over her guns’ crews.
Ward said, “Maybe we should have hoisted battle ensigns. Shown him the red, white and blue.”
The yeoman answered, “Got ’em handy, sir.”
Ward nodded, but the Hampden could not see them in this visibility and they would not hoist battle ensigns until Pizey did. When they saw the enemy. If they saw the enemy. He looked at his watch. 1447.
Phillips groaned, “Oh, Jesus, no!”
The Hampden had circled away but now was returning. Ward tore his eyes away from it long enough to order again: “Check! Check! Check! Friendly aircraft!”
The bombs shrieked over Boston to fall very close to Worcester, drenched her in tall pillars of dirty seawater. This time when the Hampden turned away it kept going, followed by cursing. Phillips was breathing deeply: “One thing, sir, our lot were a bloody sight more accurate than Jerry’s.”
That took the heat of anger out of the moment. It was also true; the single Hampden had come closer to hitting than had any of the Germans. Ward said, “He was looking for the enemy and thought he’d found them, so we could be close. We might get more of that.”
Half an hour later they were still thrashing eastward. The weather had further worsened—and the visibility. Rain had now reduced it to three miles, sometimes less. The sea was higher and the forward 4-inch—the submarine gun—was living up to its name, its crew clinging to it as the sea washed around their legs.
Ward asked Mason, “What’s our position?”
“About twenty-two miles west of the Hook, sir.”
That was the Hook of Holland. Ward thought that by taking the bold course and cutting across the minefield they might just have made it. Any minute now Pizey could give the order to spread out to search for the enemy…
Ward had never commanded in a destroyer action. He had been at Narvik but was then only responsible for his own job, his own part of the ship. Now he had a command. He had to do it with Boston and her company of a hundred and forty-six men.
They had to do it with him, trusting him.
All right. There was a first time for everything as the bishop said to the actress. Do things by the book but be ready
to tear the book up if you had to.
Watch Pizey like a hawk.
The yeoman called, “Leader’s signalling!” A lamp blinked rapidly from Campbell’s bridge and Charlie Barnwell read, “R.D.F. - contact - bearing - one - four - five - degrees-nine-miles. I-intend-to-close-the-enemy-and-attack. When-enemy-is-engaged-ships-will-attack-independently.”
Ward shouted over his shoulder as he dived aft to the chart: “Acknowledge!” He found Mason already laying off the bearing and they did the sums together.
Back on the bridge Ward told the yeoman, “Keep your eyes on Campbell.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Patiently; he and the signalman spent their entire time watching every one of the ships for a signal.
Krueger said, “The coxswain is back at the wheel, sir.”
Ward nodded. “Looks as though we’re all right on this course to intercept. If we turn to meet them too soon we’ll lose ground. They must have been making about twenty-seven knots to be in the position they are now.”
Pizey’s flotilla was on a converging course ahead of the enemy but if he turned too soon he would be astern of the enemy by the time he sighted them.
He ordered no change of course.
The yeoman muttered to his signalman. “Get them battle ensigns bent on and ready.”
Krueger had gone aft and Ward used the speaker system to tell his crew: “We may be in action in less than thirty minutes. The enemy is about nine miles to starboard. The ship hasn’t let us down and I know you won’t let her down.”
He turned to Stewart, the Asdic Sub who would man the torpedo sight on the bridge. “We’ll be engaging to starboard. Tell the T.G.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Stewart picked up the phone to the tubes aft to tell the Torpedo Gunner.
Ward spoke to Bailey down in his engineroom. “All she’s got if I call for it, Chief, even if it shakes her to bits.”
“Aye, aye, sir. But she’s near busting herself already.”
Those last minutes started leadenly but accelerated. In what little time there was you thought of what you were about to do, not of your chances of survival. Ward knew the huge armaments of the capital ships, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen and that they were well screened by big, fast destroyers. That was enough to be going on with.
“Aircraft green five-oh!”
And that too was enough to be going on with. It was a Junkers 88 and it flew across the stern of the flotilla, the guns following, not firing because the range was too great. And it flew on, out of sight.
That report was the first of many. Some were enemy, Messerschmitt 110s and Heinkel 111s but there were also Beauforts, Hampdens and Spitfires. Some of the enemy attacked the flotilla while others fired recognition signal flares—four red balls in a diamond pattern—presumably to identify themselves to ships they imagined were friendly. Some of the British aircraft did not attack the flotilla but others did. And then Phillips bawled, “Gunfire! Green seven-oh!”
Ward lifted his glasses and looked out on the bearing. There were gunflashes, also the rising fireflies of tracer directed at aircraft and no doubt now who was firing. Though they would certainly have seen it aboard Camp-bell, he bent over the compass then told the yeoman, “Make to leader! Gunfire bearing one-five-oh.”
Boston’s signal was acknowledged. Then another hoist ran up to Campbell’s yard and broke out. The yeoman read, voice lifting, “Enemy in sight…”
Ward did not listen to the bearing, knew where the enemy lay, already held their flickering fire in his glasses and—He ordered, “Hoist battle ensigns!” He thought he saw…
There they were! At first just a long scattered line of low silhouettes: E-boats forming the portside screen and inside them the destroyers. Ward wondered if Dirty Bill was among the E-boats. The ships beyond were hidden in smoke, from the flak thrown up by the screen as they put up a barrage against attacking aircraft, and from the funnels of the destroyers. Flame from the flak cut the smoke and then there was more flame beyond. From guns. Two battle cruisers suddenly. showed as monstrous, insubstantial shadows in the mist then came up clear in the lenses. Not sharp, because rain and bad light furred their edges, but clear enough, big enough.
Campbell was heeling under helm, turning in on a course to attack. Pizey had said ‘attack independently’ but Vivacious and Worcester followed Campbell around and so did Ward: “Starboard twenty!” He had time, just, for one picture to be stamped into his memory, of the three destroyers ahead crashing through the big seas, attacked by enemy aircraft, battle ensigns streaming in the wind, every gun flickering with muzzle flashes and jetting smoke. Then Boston herself was heeling, sweeping around in a wide, threshing turn to settle into line astern of Worcester.
The forward 4-inch was in action now, submarine or no, engaging the screening E-boats. The ammunition number rammed the round home with his gloved fist, the breech closed, the gun fired. The trainer at his wheel was steadily traversing the gun to starboard each time it reloaded, until it fired one last round to starboard, right on the beam, then swung forward to point over the starboard bow once more as Boston crashed through the screen.
Ward was not using his glasses now, did not need them. The rating at the rangefinder was reading the range to the battlecruisers. Ward could not hear him above the din but Phillips was repeating them in a parade-ground bellow, “Four thousand!…” Two nautical miles. Water spouts straddled Campbell, great columns of seawater hurled into the grey sky. The flotilla was under fire from the 11-inch main armament of the battlecruisers and a hit from just one of those shells could finish any one of them. And Boston drove on, bow in the white wake of Worcester. Ward was no different now from a captain of Nelson’s day. All the myriad responsibilities of command were put aside save one, and that to bring his ship into action with the enemy. That responsibility lay on every man aboard, from stokers to coxswain. They were there to drive this worn old ship into torpedo range of the German battlecruisers.
If they survived.
Campbell was executing a fine zig-zag, leaning first to port, then to starboard as she swerved to evade the enemy salvoes. Vivacious and Worcester were doing the same and Ward copied them. “Starboard ten!…port ten!…”
Now Boston was straddled, as the other three ahead of her had been. Over the racket of the Oerlikons and the slamming of the 4-inch had come the ripping roar of plunging salvoes and huge watery towers had lifted first astern and then to port. Phillips intoned the shrinking range, “Three-five-oh!”
Thirty-five hundred yards. How long was Pizey going to hold on?
Campbell was turning to port, heeling, Vivacious following. Ward bent over the voicepipe, eyes on Worcester and beyond her the giants shrouded in smoke from more salvoes. He was aware of the Oerlikons ripping away aft. Boston was still under attack from enemy aircraft.
Worcester was not turning. Hadn’t she seen the signal? Ward ordered, “Port twenty!”
“Port twenty…twenty of port wheel on, sir!”
Boston swung out of Worcester’s wake and settled instead in that of Vivacious, trailing a little where the gap had been left in the line but there was no help for that. Boston was giving all she had just to keep station. Even with the last ounce he had warned he might demand from Bailey, she could not haul up closer on the other two.
A salvo howled in to burst astern and Ward turned quickly to see the white-topped towers collapsing, falling. He looked out over the beam to the battlecruisers, then forward to see the torpedoes leap from Campbell and an instant later from Vivacious. Stewart, at the torpedo sight, shouted, “Torpedoes fired!”
They plunged into the sea from the triple tubes on Boston’s deck. Now Pizey’s flotilla had to get out—if they could. Now that the job was done and the torpedo ‘zone’ no longer needed, the formation was breaking up. Proceeding independently the ships would offer three separate, smaller targets rather than one big one. Campbell had turned north-east and Vivacious north-west. Ward held Boston on course, splitting the angle between t
hem. The three ships fanned out, the distances between them rapidly widening. Ward looked astern over the starboard quarter and caught a glimpse, no more, of the enemy squadron before a rain squall blotted them out.
Had the torpedoes scored a hit? He didn’t know.
The weather had gone from bad to worse since they started the attack and Boston was shipping green seas both forward and aft. He had seen nothing of Mackay and Whitshed for ten minutes or more. He looked for Vivacious, then Campbell, but they, too, had disappeared into the mist and rain. He asked, “Anyone see anything of the others?”
“No, sir,” repeated around the bridge. Boston plunged on alone over an empty, gale-swept sea.
He spoke into the voicepipe, “Revolutions for twenty knots.”
“Twenty knots. Revolutions for twenty knots passed, sir.”
There was no sense in shaking the old girl to pieces rushing blindly northward. Boston’s speed fell away and at twenty knots she rode a little easier—which in her case meant not quite so badly. She still shook throughout her frame, rolled and pitched and shipped the big seas inboard, but at least she wasn’t battering herself to death.
The port look-out bawled, “Gunfire red nine-oh!”
Ward swung left, trained his glasses to port and picked up the long yellow flashes in the murk, made out a ship there.
“Port twenty!”
Boston turned and headed towards the firing—that ceased. The 4-inch was trained out over the bow, waiting the order to load but it was not given. The ship was Campbell.
Ward ordered, “Make: ‘Where is the enemy?’ “
The yeoman read the answer, the light flickering from Campbell’s bridge: “Have lost contact with enemy destroyers course north-east. Follow me course two-seven-oh.”
The two British destroyers headed westward and a few minutes later were joined by Vivacious. Five minutes after that they came on Worcester, stopped and on fire, life rafts and men in the sea alongside. The other three destroyers stopped to pick up survivors.