The Whale Has Wings Vol 1 - Rebirth (15 page)

The carriers launched the nine
Goshawks still ready on deck, then recovered the original CAP. These were struck below, and nine more fighters placed on deck, while the second nine were kept airborne. This routine was intended to keep air cover and replacement fighters available all through the day. It was felt that they would be needed again before it got dark, and this proved to be correct. It was never known if the floatplanes had reported the presence of fighters, or the second attack had already been allocated them, but this time a large blip on the radar turned out to be 24 He111 level bombers and 12 Me110 escort fighters. Again the carriers launched their nine ready aircraft (they had brought up another nine, but these had to be warmed up - the radial engines of the time would not perform properly or produce takeoff power until they had been warmed up), and the first nine were directed to the raid. When they radioed in the size of it, the rest of the CAP was directed onto it and efforts redoubled to get the next nine fighters in the air (fortunately at this time the Luftwaffe had neither the numbers or the training to conduct a multi-axis attack, as the primitive radar direction on the carriers wasn't up to handling one).

The first group of
Goshawks went for the bombers intending to break up their ordered structure. When they did, they were intercepted by the Me110's. The result was a confusing dogfight between the Me110's and the Goshawks. The German aircraft was faster, with a heavier armament, but the Goshawk could both outmanoeuvre it and out-accelerate it. The result was four Goshawks shot down for the loss of six Me110 (plus a number damaged, two of which would not make it home, and one which ended up in Norway).

While this was taking place, the He111 were still boring on into the heart of the fleet. They were intercepted
at about 10 miles out by the other nine Goshawks, but kept their formation and kept heading for the ships -in fact, it was very soon clear that they were heading for the carriers. Three of the Heinkels were shot down, for some damage to a Goshawk, but at that point the aircraft were ordered clear so the fleets HA guns could engage them. This was later adjudged to have been an error, but at this time the lack of efficiency of the HA systems was still not appreciated. Despite the orders, and the black puffs spotting the sky, one Goshawk completed its attack to shoot down a fourth plane. The other 20 planes headed for the carriers in an increasingly dense cloud of AA fire.

Given the state of the art at the time, the fire was not that ineffective. The fleet had an impressive number of 4" and 4.5" guns available (and at the angle they made, the destroyers LA 4.7" guns could also be brought into action
). Also, the Heinkels held their course with admirable dedication. As a result, three planes were seen to fall, and the formation itself finally broke up into a far looser grouping.

While this was happening, the carriers were making frantic efforts to get the last
group of fighters into the air. They managed it, just, but the planes could not engage the bombers until they had reached sufficient height. The rest of the planes were safely in the hangers, unarmed and unfuelled, with the in-hanger fuel systems purged (as per normal practice during an attack), and the ship fully ready for an attack. The Heinkels had by now spilt into two loose groups, one of ten and one of seven planes. The larger one attacked the Illustrious, the smaller group the Formidable.

While the decision to call off the fighters was already obviously wrong, the groups of planes had been turned from a coherent group able to 'shotgun' a ship, to a far looser grouping that would only get a hit by luck. This was enough to save the Formidable, as her captain dodged through the falling bombs at full power with the sort of agility you don
't really expect from 25,000 tons of carrier. The Illustrious was not so lucky.

While she also attempted to dodge the falling bombs, she was hit twice by 250kg weapons dropped from around 15,000 feet. Very luckily, neither penetrated
into the hangers. One bomb hit her rear starboard 4.5" mounts, destroying them both. Some of the explosion did vent into the hanger, but the bulk was directed up and out, and the hanger spray systems and fire curtains worked as advertised. Three aircraft were wrecked, but with no fuel or ammunition to turn the fire into a conflagration it was soon well under control. The guns flash protection worked admirably, although the magazines were flooded just in case

The second bomb came very close to missing completely - in fact, it actually went through the flight deck very close to its leading edge, and then dived into the sea near to the bow, leaving a rather impressive hole on the port side of the deck. The impact had initiated the fuse, and as a result the bomb exploded just before hitting the sea, showering the front port of Illustrious with splinters. While this caused some considerable damage internally, none of this was
considered serious (the hit was too far forward to be close to any critical areas).

Once the planes had dropped their bombs, they became the prey for the Goshawks,16 of whom were concentrating on them. Due to the inex
perience of the crews, all but three were on the Heinkels who had bombed Illustrious, as a result of which seven of the ten planes were shot down. Of the other group of seven, only one fell, although two others were seen leaving trailing smoke (one of these planes ditched on the way home, the second just made it to land to crash-land in Germany)

The fleet carried on at 25 knots, the damage to Illustrious being worked on. Although her deck was usable
in an emergency, for the time being her fighters were recovered to Formidable; due to the early sunset at this time of year it was not likely there would be any more attacks before dark, and if necessary she could launch fighters. It wasn't certain yet how much damage had been done to her catapults, so as there was no intention of flying off heavily loaded bombers, it was decided not to use them except in an emergency; the Goshawks could easily take off from the deck.

By the next morning, the fleet was well clear of both Germany and Norway, steaming north east to get back home. However there was one more action before they finally made it clear. It was obvious that the Luftwaffe was still searching for them; as the weather today was cloudy, and it would not have been possible to detect a search plane before it reported in, it had been decided to use the radar. They were now too far away for coastal monitoring to be useful, and it seemed unlikely that any plane could pick the emissions up. They did, however, stay under radio silence (all necessary reports had been made yesterday while under attack, since at that point it didn't make any difference). The radar showed an occasional echo which they thought were planes searching for them, but the only close contact came at 1300. This was a single plane, and as they did not detect any signals from it, it was thought they hadn't been spotted. In fact they had, and the planes radio was picked up shortly afterwards, by which time there wasn't much point in sending a fighter after it.

As it seemed likely there was time for an attack before dusk, the carriers sent up a new CAP and landed the old one so as to give the ones airborne maximum endurance. After yesterdays experience,
nine fighters were spotted on each carrier, three fully warmed up. At 1600 a large formation (22 planes) was detected approaching from the south at 50 miles. The ready planes were launched, and the rest warmed up to be launched as soon as possible. Meanwhile the CAP gained height, as these planes were at 15,000 feet. It wasn't clear what the planes were until they got visual contact; the formation was coming in fast, and at first it was thought they might have been Me110's, which were thought capable of a fighter-bomber role. When they were seen, they were identified as Ju88's.

The first interception was made at about 15 miles from the carriers, the Goshawks bouncing the enemy from above. This was made easier as they were steadily losing height, and it was assumed that they would try a level bombing at around 10,000 feet to gain accuracy. The Ju88 was a fast plane, as had been found out at Scapa, and as a result it took time to make multiple attacks against it. The earlier actions against the plane had, though, shown it was very vulnerable to the defenders 20mm cannon. The f
irst group of planes shot down four Ju88's in their initial attack, then turned to close and attack again. After the debacle yesterday, it had been decided that the planes would not be called off until they attack closed to five miles, and at that point the decision was up to the carrier.

Nin
e more fighters were heading for the formation, and as they were now only 10 miles from the fleet they made a head-on attack, which resulted in three more Ju88's either shot down or turned away with damage. There were still 15 planes heading for the fleet. The original CAP had by now caught up with the fast bombers again, and another two were brought down, two more retreating with obvious damage and trailing smoke. The remaining 11 saw yet another group of fighters heading for them, and at this point obviously decided to pick a target and get home, leaving the carriers alone as being too difficult a target.

Instead, they went for the nearest ship, which was the cruiser Southampton. What they did next surprised the defending fighters - they dropped into a divebombing attack. No-one had expected such a large plane to have this capability, and as a result the fighters did not react until th
ey had started their dives. Southampton's close range AA engaged the first group of three planes, while the fighters went for the four that still had not started their dives; due to the confusion, only one of these was shot down, the other dropped their bombs at random into the North Sea and escaped.

The cruiser wasn't as heavily equipped with light AA as desired, but she was firing everything she had. It was noted later that the defence seemed to confirm what had already been suspected (and would also be confirmed by the after-strike reports from the FAA own attacking planes), that the tracer streams seemed to make the attackers react more. The light AA f
ailed to shoot down any of the three attackers, however none of them managed any hits, although the impressively tall waterspouts were close enough to the ship to soak men on the upper deck and bridge.

The second group of three
were more successful. One bomb hit right forward, destroying the ships cable locker and some crew quarters - fortunately empty as everyone was at action stations, and starting a fire in her paint locker. The other was far more damaging, the 250kg bomb penetrating the ships armour and impacting in her forward boiler room. the ship slewed to a stop as power was temporarily lost due to shock damage, and a large fire developed around the ships seaplane, probably caused by a shell splinter igniting the fuel.

It was lucky for the Southampton that this was the last attack that day. While the fire would take a considerable time to quell, the one forward was not terribly dangerous, and once the fuel had burnt the one amidships was also brought under control. Power was restored quickly - the aft boilers and generators were undamaged, and while there was flooding due to the bomb, this did not spread further through the ship. As the air threat seemed to have passed, the fleet split into two section. Two destroyers and the AA cruiser HMS Curlew remained with Southampton to aid her, the rest of the ships continued to head for home. Half an hour after he damage, Southampton signalled she could make 20knots (in fact, she actually worked up to 23, the engineers understandably reluctant to take longer than necessary to get home)

Aftermath of the Raid

The safe arrival of the strike fleet back at Loch Ewe was greeted with relief in the Admiralty. Using such a substantial force in what had been seen as a risky operation, mainly because at this stage of the war the defensive efforts of the Germans could only be estimated (and in particular after the rough handling the two RAF raids had had). Pictures of the results of the raid, and the complete devastation of the harbour, had made it before the arrival of the fleet - indeed, one of the things taken onto the flagship when it anchored was not only the congratulations of Admiral Frazer, but a set of photographs to be admired and passed around. The pictures proved particularly popular on HMS Illustrious, since she, as well as HMS Southampton, had been claimed as sunk by the Luftwaffe - a claim that was to repeated a number of times for Illustrious as the war went on.

The analysis of the raid showed it had been as successful as might have been hoped.

Tirpitz had been on fire internally for an hour before fire crews arrived, and by the time they had managed to restore some sort of control most of the interior of the ship had been burnt out. There was significant blast damage to the superstructure, and splinter damage deep into the ship, plus water damage lower down due to the flooding from the near miss. In some areas the fire had been hot enough to cause some distortion. It would take 2 months to thoroughly survey the ship and determine what needed to be done to repair her, and the rebuilding plus a complete re-fitting-out was estimated to take over 2 years. In fact, while plans were made to repair and refloat her, by the summer it was decided she was a total constructive loss, her guns dismantled for coastal defence and the ship broken up for her steel

The Admiral Sheer, having blown up in the raid, was sunk on her side (the water not being deep enough for her to turn over fully), and a total wreck.

The three cruisers were also complete write-offs, and two destroyers were later found to be also, although a third was finally repaired. There was also damage to some of the U-boats under construction, two being declared unrepairable. Two more probably should have been, but maybe for political reasons they were rebuilt instead. There had also been considerable damage to the U-boat slips and fitting out facilities. The main damage, though, was to the morale of the Germans. Wilhelmshaven had been the second most important navy base, and to have it violated like this made the men mutter about what might happen to other ships in the future. It was bad enough having to face the Royal Navy at sea, but there you had a chance, in port you could be bombed while asleep in your bunk.