I know you got soul: machines with that certain something (18 page)

She was Japan’s third island, with 1,147 compartments. She was so big that she could and did carry seven aircraft. And yet despite all this size and weight, she could blat along at 27 knots. That’s faster than most modern jet skis.

Oh, and to protect her from air attack while she was busy pounding the main enemy to pieces she had 141 anti-aircraft guns.

But these were an
amuse-bouche
compared to her main 18-inch weapons, which were simply humungous. Each one could fire a 1.3-ton shell 25 miles. Yup, that’s right. 1.3 tons and 25 miles. And she had nine of them.

Now the British had once mounted one gun of this size on the
Furious
. But it was always felt that it would do more damage to the ship from which it was fired than the ship it was aiming at.

One of the crew members on
Furious
remembers a test firing, saying, ‘I think it had a range of something like 30 miles and I don’t imagine it would ever have found the right target but it was certainly very spectacular. The recoil was tremendous. Every time she fired it was like a snowstorm in my cabin but instead of snowflakes it was
sheared rivet heads coming down from the deckhead and partition.’

In other words, one 18-inch gun used to tear the
Furious
apart every time it was fired. And remember, the
Yamato
had nine. NINE!

Once I stood next to a tank that fired its miserable shell and the blast damn nearly knocked me off me feet. So God alone knows what it would have been like if the pride of Japan’s navy had ever fired all its main guns at once. They’d have heard the roar on the other side of the world. There’d have been tsunamis and hurricanes. It would have been biblical. Real, genuine ocean-parting ferocity. And then some.

And what would the recoil have done when twelve tons of high explosive was launched out of those barrels? She was built by Mitsubishi but it’s hard to imagine even their legendary build-quality was up to the task.

Then there was the man in charge of this awesome firepower, Admiral Yamamoto, a man who didn’t like the war. He was immortalised in
Tora! Tora! Tora!
and again in
Pearl Harbor
as the old sage who said, ‘I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant.’

He also didn’t like battleships, realising that
while they could tie up an enemy they weren’t much good at fighting, for all the wrong reasons: i.e., they cost too much.

Sure enough, his massive charge had a fairly undistinguished war, cruising around the Pacific a lot and mostly staying out of harm’s way. Her moment of triumph, the moment when she was elevated to greatness, came on 7 April 1945, during an operation called Ten Go. It was an operation designed specifically to kill her and it was mounted by the Japanese themselves.

By this stage the war was lost. The US forces had reached Okinawa and
Yamato
was the only big ship Japan’s navy had left. So she was given just enough fuel for a one-way trip and ordered out on a suicide mission against the invading Americans.

The Americans knew it was coming and were well aware by then just how devastating kamikaze raids could be. So they took the threat seriously, sending no fewer than 400 aircraft to deal with it. And in case this failed, six battleships were put on standby as well.

In the course of the war, the Americans had torpedoed the
Yamato
once, but little damage was done. They’d bombed it too, with even less effect.
They had also been on the receiving end of those gigantic guns so they knew full well it wasn’t going to be stopped easily. But even in their wildest dreams they couldn’t have imagined how much punishment this truly breathtaking ship would take.

The carrier-based planes quickly took out the
Yamato’s
little escort ships and in the next hour hit the main prize with a staggering twenty torpedoes. And still she sailed on, bringing her 141 antiaircraft guns to bear. Only after she’d been hit by seventeen heavy bombs did she finally roll to port and explode. Beneath a mushroom cloud 1,000 feet tall the greatest battleship ever built sank in two pieces in 1,000 feet of water.

Very quickly after the war people began to question the wisdom of these dreadnoughts. Few had been lost to fire from other battleships and the number of ships they’d sunk was minimal. They’d been used to bombard shore defences, but frankly aircraft carriers were much better at that sort of thing.

And so it was that aircraft carriers became the new flagships.

The last British battleship, HMS
Vanguard
, was removed from service in 1960, while the
Americans hung on gamely until 1998 before turning their last one, the USS
Missouri
, into a floating museum off Hawaii. Today there are none.

This is sad, because I’ve been on a Nimitz Class carrier, and while its nuclear power plant only needs refuelling once every millennium and its planes can reach targets even further away than a battleship’s guns and it can do an amazing 33 knots it’s a bit of a brute. Ugly too.

And that’s a charge that could never be laid at the door of the battleship, especially the
Yamato
.

Some might say that no machine conceived only to kill could ever be called beautiful. Magnificent maybe, and awesome perhaps. But not beautiful. The thing is, though, that in the battleship’s short life of just 90 years it turned out to be a less effective killing machine than almost any other weapon of war. All they did was steam around the oceans, making the people who paid for them feel good.

So I do consider them beautiful and I consider
Yamato
to be the most beautiful of them all.

In 1940 everything was tickety-boo for the Germans. They’d strolled into Poland and France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark and Czechoslovakia with no real problem at all and almost certainly thought the British would be another walkover. Mop us up. Bish bash bosh. And off we go to Moscow. Unfortunately, however, their plans were spoiled by one thing.

Since the Second World War ended – and we won, by the way – pundits have queued up to explain what, in their opinion, was the single most important weapon in the arsenal that brought us victory. Patton said it was the Willys Jeep. Many scientists say it was the invention of radar. The Great British public like to heap praise on the drunken Kurd-killer, Winston Churchill. Me though? I think it was the Spitfire.

Aaaargh, say those of a planespotting disposition. It is impossible, say the anoraks, to single out one fighter from this period as ‘the best’. The
P-51 Mustang, they argue, had a far greater range than the Spit and, in 1942, the pride of the Royal Air Force was definitely outclassed and outgunned by the Focke-Wulf 190.

Then there are those who claim that, actually, since there were more Hurricanes than Spitfires in the War this was the plane that won the Battle of Britain and therefore meant our little island could be used as a springboard by the Americans in 1944. Yes, they say, the Hurricane was the one true champion. The greatest of the great. The finger in the dyke that held back the menace of Nazism.

Bollocks. The only reason why we’re free to discuss the matter in books and internet chat rooms is because of Reginald Mitchell’s Spit.

Reg worked for a company called Supermarine, which before the war made all sorts of ungainly flying machines like the Walrus. However, the company was also heavily involved in the fabled Schneider Trophy. Established in 1913, it was effectively an international race for seaplanes.

A simple concept but flawed, because the instigator, Frenchman Jacques Schneider, said that if one country won the event three times on the trot, the Trophy would be theirs for good. Well,
Supermarine won it for Britain in 1927, then again in 1928 and then again, in front of 250,000 spectators, in 1929.

In doing so, the company learned a great deal about aerodynamics while Rolls-Royce, who made the engines, learned all about superchargers and power. So, when the government finally realised Germany was becoming a threat, and decided to give the RAF some new fighters to replace their ageing biplanes, Supermarine was in an ideal position to help out.

The company had been founded by a genuine British hero, Noel Pemberton-Billing. He was a yachtsman and racing driver, and decided in 1913 he should learn to fly. But being double barrelled, he wasn’t going to take his time. In fact he bet a friend £500 he could get an aviator’s licence not in a day – but before breakfast. And he did.

However, it was his chief designer, Reginald Mitchell, who came up with the Shrew, or the Shrike. Two names that were considered before everyone agreed that it’d be better if the new plane was called Spitfire.

I‘d love to say at this point that he drew a vague shape in the sand while walking on a beach and the world’s greatest fighter was born. But in fact
it was one of the most complicated and difficult labours in the history of aviation.

Famously, the first pilot ever to fly the prototype climbed out afterwards and said, ‘I don’t want anything touched.’ History has taught us that he meant he was perfectly happy with the performance but this wasn’t so. He was actually telling his ground crew not to change any of the components so that he could do another test in the same circumstances later. Actually, the plane was a bit of a dog.

Half the problem was that, despite the lessons learned in seaplane racing, and despite the astonishing 27-litre Merlin engine, it just wasn’t fast enough.

After a great deal of fettling and tweaking they got it up to 335 mph, but this was only 5 mph faster than Hawker’s much simpler and cheaper Hurricane. So, being British, the engineers took their pipes to the potting shed and realised that the propeller’s tips were encountering Mach problems. They were changed and whoomph – the speed shot up to 348 mph.

Great, but the new-found speed was likely to be lost on production Spitfires since they would be held together not with the smooth rivets used
on the prototype but with cheaper dome-headed rivets. To find out what effect this would have, they glued split peas to the wings and fuselage. That is the most British example of ingenuity I know.

It turned out that when the peas were fastened in place, the speed fell by a staggering and totally unacceptable 22 mph. But providing they were arranged in straight lines, the aerodynamics remained unaffected and so did the precious top speed.

Better still, Rolls-Royce were beavering away with the engine. They found that by pointing the exhaust outlets backwards they could use ejected gases to provide 70 lbs of thrust. The speed increased again, to 380 mph.

But as the performance increased, more problems came along, chief among which was the death of the Spitfire’s creator, Mitchell, from cancer, at the age of 42.

He left his colleagues with an inspired design that was riddled with difficulties. For instance, the rear-facing exhausts glowed red, and with the blue flames coming out of them the pilot couldn’t see a damn thing after sunset.

Then there were the problems of starting the
Merlin, oil-consumption, ‘float’ just before the plane landed, and ‘Spitfire Knuckle’, which was caused when pilots were pumping the undercarriage down by hand. Worst of all, there was a chronic shortage of headroom. Early Spitfires had a flat canopy. Only later models came with a bubble.

And then there were issues with altitude. The prototype Spit had reached 37,000 feet, which is the same height you reach on your way to Barbados today. Fine. But this far up, the guns froze. You pulled the trigger and… nothing.

Worse, as you came down they thawed out so that when you hit the ground even the mildest jolt would release a single round. Worrying for the ground crews.

Months were spent trying to get heat from the engine into the wings, to stop the Brownings seizing up.

And then there was the difficulty of actually making a Spitfire. Unlike the Hurricane, it was a monocoque with a stressed skin, which required specialist production techniques. Worse, because it was felt the plane couldn’t be made in a single factory – what if it were to be bombed? – the government approached Lord Nuffield, the car
boss, to ask if his Castle Bromwich plant would be available. He agreed but, even though war was imminent, the workforce did not, and responded in the only way the Brummies know how – with a series of industrial disputes.

Eventually the government became so weary of the problems in Birmingham they took control of the factory from an astonished Nuffield and gave it to Supermarine’s new owners at Vickers. The Spitfire was in business and all for a cost to the taxpayer of just £12,478. Has there ever been a better deal?

The list of countries queuing up to buy this amazing new plane was astonishing. Every air force in the world wanted a go. Cheekily, even the Japanese sent in an order – for just one. I wonder what they were going to do with it. In fact only one was exported, to France, before the War began.

It may have been hard to create the Spitfire but the finished product was demonstrably better than anything the Nazis sent our way. In essence, the Spit could climb, turn and fly faster than a Messerschmitt. More importantly, when an Me109 reached its ceiling the Spit had 3,000 feet in hand. And height, in a dogfight, is everything.

Yes, the Me109 had fuel injection, which meant the engine would work even when the plane was pulling negative g, whereas the Spit’s Merlin used carburettors that ceased to provide fuel if the g-meter started reading a minus figure.

Sadly, though, the first two planes shot down by Spitfires in the Second World War were Hurricanes.

Eventually Fighter Command sorted itself out, the radar stations came on stream and the Battle of Britain was underway.

It was agreed that the Hurricanes should go after bombers, leaving the Spitfires to take care of the Messerschmitt fighter escorts. But having read several accounts of what life was like in a dogfight, I know this was a nonsensical notion.

You dived down on the German formations, picked a target, fired a very short burst, and then found yourself miles from the action, twisting and turning to make sure no one was on your tail. Occasionally you’d encounter another plane and have another pop at it, but more often you’d lose sight of the battle completely. And then run low on fuel.