I Sank The Bismarck (15 page)

Then they were hit by a storm, swamped again and had to
start baling once more. The wind was against them, so they
had to run before it, heading west. They were alone, in the
middle of the Atlantic, wet, cold and with the barest of
rations, when they saw another sail. They got closer and
realized it was another lifeboat with five or six men in it. They
were in the same condition as Pat and his crewmembers,
except that three of the men in the other lifeboat were dead.
They were Scandinavian and said they had been adrift for
fourteen days. Pat gave them some ship's biscuits, but the two
groups could not agree on the best course. Pat and his crew
still wanted to try to head east, but those in the other boat
thought it was better to go west, to Canada. They separated,
each going their different ways.

Pat drifted for nine days. The TAG started to develop
frostbite in his legs, despite the fact that they took it in turns
to massage each other to keep the blood flowing. But the
TAG's feet and lower legs turned blue, and he started to lose
any feeling in them. They then decided to head north, because
they saw some birds heading in that direction. They sailed for
another two days, then were hit by another storm, and it
started to snow.

By now the TAG was barely conscious, and Pat and his
observer were beginning to suffer hallucinations. They too
were beginning to get slightly frostbitten. During the night,
Pat had to dissuade the observer from trying to swim home.
When dawn came, I think Pat must have been near to breaking.
He had always been a religious man and he said that he
prayed a lot in those last days. Then, as they crested a wave,
he saw what he thought was a ship. He was sure that he was
hallucinating, but he woke up the observer, who was,
fortunately, lucid enough to see it as well. By a miracle, they
had kept their signal flares from the Swordfish and they fired
them off.

The ship saw them and turned. They managed to secure the
line that was thrown to them, but they were so weak that
three sailors had to climb down into the lifeboat and haul
them out to safety. They had been rescued by an Icelandic
fishing boat. All three survived, although I think the TAG lost
his toes. Yet to this day Pat has never forgotten the poor
buggers in the other lifeboat. He told the Icelandic authorities
about them and they put out a search, of sorts, but they
would have been adrift by then for almost a month and either
had been rescued already or were dead. They were never
found to his knowledge. Their fate has haunted him ever since
– perhaps more than the hardships he suffered himself. I was
very lucky that I found the
Ark
so quickly that day.

Yet it happened often. I had been on the
Ark
for a few
weeks when I was told that a new pilot was going to share my
cabin, a chap called Ferguson. He was a quiet, slightly delicate
soul. As I was on early flying duties, I didn't see much of him.
Within a few days his aircraft had failed to return and I found
myself assembling his few possessions, photos and other
personal items to parcel up and post to his parents. It was very
disturbing to have to do this. It really shook me up. It was not
as severe as the bomb that nearly killed me at Worthy Down,
but I could not but be affected by this sudden death. He was
about my age, and I thought of his mother's reaction when she
heard the news, and how she would feel when she looked at
the letters she had written to her son, whom she would now
never see again. I hoped that his death had been quick. I
thought of my parents too, waking every day not knowing if
I was still alive.

Of course, living in Kelso as they did, I was fairly sure that
they were safe, but there were many men on board the
Ark
who did not know what was happening to their parents, or
their wives and children. They had families in London, or
Liverpool or Coventry, cities that were being hit by air raids,
and whenever news of the
Blitz came through on the BBC a
ripple of anxiety went round the mess decks.

Whether it was this, or the ambience on board the
Ark
generally, but I felt that I was beginning to grow up. There
was an atmosphere of competence and confidence in which
you felt that if you didn't give of your best you were letting
the whole ship down. I too wanted to do my best and I started
to become serious about my duties – although like most
young men, I couldn't resist a challenge or a chance for some
sport.

Perhaps the most powerful
influence on me at the time was
my squadron CO, Lt Commander Coode. I had enormous
respect for him; he was an outstanding leader. He was regular
navy, and although he could have been only about
twenty-seven or so, he seemed like a god. I hero-worshipped
him slightly, developing an almost childlike desire to emulate
him.

The officers of Force H were very strong on exercises and
practice. Admiral Somerville and the captain of the
Ark,
as
well as the commander air, were well aware that we were not
always the most experienced pilots, so at every opportunity
we had training sessions. We did everything we could to speed
up our landings and take-offs, so that we could land on, clear
decks and fly off again in the shortest possible time – something
that could be vital if we came under attack. We carried
out torpedo-dropping exercises and often launched mock
attacks against the destroyers and cruisers in Force H to give
their gunnery directors experience in judging aircraft altitudes
and speeds, something they were notoriously bad at doing.

At the end of one of these sessions I was following Lt
Commander Coode in the circuit above the
Ark
as we came
in to land. As he came in he did a perfect loop above the ship,
then flew round to land on. I saw him and thought, 'I can do
that.' I forgot to tell my two crewmembers in the back that I
was going to attempt a loop, however, and down I went, then
pulled the stick right back up into the climb. It was a disaster.
I had failed to build up enough speed, so at the top we hung
for what seemed an eternity. There were cries of alarm from
behind me and everything in the rear cockpits, which of
course had not been secured, fell out. Pencils, slide rules, map
cases, plotting boards, ad hoc rations all descended from the
air; and worse, we were close to a stall. I was told that everyone
on the bridge was aghast as they looked up at this hapless
pilot, with the rain of equipment falling into the sea. I
managed to right the Swordfish, descended and went back
into the circuit, feeling extremely embarrassed. I was given a
severe talking to by the CO when I landed and made to feel
about a foot tall. Naturally, I was the butt of every joke in the
wardroom for days: 'Tried another loop yet, Jock?' But what
made me feel more sheepish than anything was the abuse I
received from Dusty and Hayman. I promised myself I would
never ever do anything like that again. But I did, as we shall
see.

It was rare for us to enter the Mediterranean without being
attacked by the
Italian air force. Sure enough, on our return
in January from escorting the ships of
Operation Excess to
Malta, we were attacked by ten Italian bombers, Savoia
Marchetti 79s, which flew straight and level and attempted to
bomb the battleship
Malaya.
Two of these aircraft were shot
down by the
Ark
's Fulmar fighters and the rest withdrew.
Some of the crew of the downed aircraft were rescued by one
of our escorting destroyers, and I remember seeing one Italian
airman standing on the fuselage of his slowly sinking bomber
trying to catch a line that had been thrown to him. He
was brought over to the
Ark
to be interrogated and also, I
heard, for some medical treatment. I thought that when he
had been rescued he hadn't looked particularly injured, so
asked if he was all right. 'No,' came the reply. 'He's got the
clap.'

This token
bombing raid was the only sign of the Italian air
force and it was not until we returned to port in Gibraltar that
we heard some sad and alarming news, which explained why
we on the
Ark
had got off lightly. The carrier that had
mounted the attack on Taranto,
Illustrious,
had been very
badly damaged on 10 January as she was providing air cover
for the small convoy of fast cargo ships that we had escorted
as far as the Straits of Sicily. So far, the major combatant faced
by us in the Mediterranean had been the Italian fleet and their
air force. The Italians had not had a great deal of success and,
perhaps more importantly from their perspective, had also
been getting the worst of it against the British army in North
Africa. The navy had been hammering their supply shipping
to the port of Tobruk in Libya and they were on the run. Some
intelligence briefings had suggested that the Germans had
stationed some aircraft in southern Italy, or in Sicily, but in the
Ark
we had not faced the Luftwaffe.

On 10 January, around midday,
Illustrious
had been carrying
out a manoeuvre where carriers are at their most
vulnerable. The combat air patrol of six Fulmars had been in
the air for some two hours and the planes, low on fuel, were
coming to the end of their endurance. On
Illustrious
's flight
deck were six more Fulmars, ranged and ready to take off to
replace them.
Illustrious
's radar had picked up a large formation
of enemy aircraft approaching from the north at about
12,000 feet, but the Fulmars in the air did not have the fuel to
engage them. The first attack, however, came from the south
in the shape of two Italian Savoia Marchetti 79s, three-engined
torpedo bombers, which made a low-level attack on
the carrier. The captain of
Illustrious
manoeuvred the ship so
that she combed the tracks of the torpedoes, which passed on
either side of her. Two of the Fulmars in the patrol had
descended to attack the torpedo bombers and both the Italian
bombers had been shot down. The Fulmars were now at low
altitude; it would take some time for them to climb again to
meet the next wave of attacking aircraft.
Illustrious
changed
course again, going to maximum speed and heading into the
wind so that she could start launching the Fulmars ranged on
the flight deck. As she did so, the first of the German dive-bombers,
for this is what they were, were going into their
attack manoeuvre.

This was the first time that these aircraft, the Junkers 87 –
a plane we all referred to as a Stuka – had been seen in the
skies above the Mediterranean fleet. They were aeroplanes
that epitomized Nazi aggression and the bombing of Poland
and France. They had a V-shaped crank in their wing, a
high cockpit and were quite unmistakable. They had been
specially designed as a dive-bomber and were extremely
effective.

Captain Eric Brown, an RNVR pilot who had joined up in
1939 and was another Scot, born in Melrose, flight-tested a
captured Stuka after the war. His report explains a great deal
about why these aircraft were so feared by ground troops.
There was a bomb-sight built into the floor of the pilot's
cockpit and when the target was aligned in this, the pilot
would pull back on the throttle, roll the aircraft 180 degrees
and start his dive. He would descend at a steep angle of 90–60
degrees, and even with the aircraft's dive brakes extended it
would reach a speed of 360 miles an hour. The aircraft
designers had incorporated a system into the plane whereby
extending the dive brakes triggered an automatic mechanism
that would simplify the whole process of pulling out of the
dive. As the Stuka reached an altitude of 1,500 feet, a light
flashed red on the instrument panel, signalling the pilot to
release the bomb. He would then press a button on the stick
and the bomb was released, thrown clear of the propeller by
a swivelling frame under the fuselage. As soon as the bomb-release
button was pressed, the automatic mechanism took
over. The dive brakes were retracted, the propeller pitch was
changed and the controls automatically pulled the plane out
of the dive and into a fast climb. When the propeller spinner
rose above the horizon, the pilot could take over again. This
took an enormous amount off the pilot's shoulders at a
critical moment. The bomb-sight was accurate and he knew
that the bomb would be dropped at the right height. He could
be confident that, even if he lost consciousness because of the
high G of the pull-out, he would not lose control of the aircraft.
All the pilot really had to worry about was keeping the
Stuka aimed bang on target. It's no wonder that these aircraft
were such a devastating weapon.

Now a whole wing of Stukas and their associated fighters
were based in Sicily. Their most important target was the aircraft
carrier that defended the Mediterranean Fleet.

Forty-three Stukas had taken off from their airfield in Sicily;
just ten of them were now searching out the two battleships
Warspite
and
Valiant,
while the remaining thirty-three were
concerned solely with hitting
Illustrious.

Despite a massive anti-aircraft barrage, the Stukas got
through. The Fulmars took off from
Illustrious
through the
fountains of seawater that were thrown up by near misses.
The last Fulmar to roll down the flight deck was machine-gunned
by a Stuka as it pulled out of its dive. It staggered into
the air, then crashed into the sea.

Illustrious
's flight deck had been armoured to withstand a
direct hit from a 500lb bomb, but the Stuka carried a 500kg
bomb as standard, and, if they dispensed with the reargunner,
the Germans could load it up with a 1,000kg bomb, the
equivalent of 2,200lb of explosive. Six bombs hit
Illustrious,
and the result was catastrophic. Both the deck-lifts were hit,
the rear one bringing a Fulmar up to the flight deck; that too
was destroyed, killing the pilot. One bomb destroyed the
steering gear and created fires in the stern. The carrier left
the line and steamed in circles while the crew tried to put
out the blaze and restore power to the rudder. Another bomb
penetrated the flight deck and exploded below it in the hangar
deck, where most of the pilots were standing by their aircraft,
their normal action stations when they were not in the air. The
hangar became an inferno; six of the Swordfish pilots who
had taken part in the Taranto raid were killed and many
others were gravely wounded.