I Sank The Bismarck (7 page)

When it finally flew off the all-clear sounded and I
staggered out of the slit trench and down to the officers' mess.
The building was just a heap of red bricks; rubble and dust
covered the ground and bits of wooden beam and window
frame were scattered around. There was a horrible smell of
explosives. I never saw my three companions again; they had
all been killed by the single bomb. Their bodies were never
found.

I went to the sickbay and was checked out by the medical
orderly, but apart from a ringing in the ears there was
nothing physically wrong with me. I flew back to Eastleigh
with my uniform ripped and dirty. This incident had quite an
effect on me – I suppose I was suffering from some sort of
shock. I was very disturbed by the sudden deaths of my three
companions and my lucky near-miss. It brought me up with a
round turn, as they say in the navy. If sometimes during my
training it had been easy to forget that others were engaged in
a life-or-death struggle, this bomb was a harsh reminder. I
found it hard to get to sleep at night for some time after, and
was quite alarmed by sudden noises. I have sometimes read
that young men have no fear of death, but if this incident
happened too quickly to feel fear at the time, then I certainly
felt it afterwards as I searched the wreckage for any signs of
life.

Next day I had to borrow some clothes and set off to
Geives, the naval tailor in Portsmouth, for a new uniform,
which I had to pay for out of my own funds. Luckily I was
properly dressed, because the next day we were called out to
a parade and, quite unannounced, we were inspected by His
Majesty the King. I wonder what the reaction would have
been if I had stood there in my dust-covered, blast-torn uniform?

It was not long after this that I had my next meeting with
the enemy. I had been instructed to take a
Lieutenant Crane
to Kemble to pick up some spare parts. We were going to fly
up in a Skua, so we took off and flew north. I was in the
pilot's seat and he was in the rear in the observer's position. It
was a lovely summer's afternoon and we flew at about 5,000
feet. As we were passing over Marlborough College there
were shouts in my headphones and, looking in my mirror, I
saw Crane pointing frantically behind and there was this
twin-engined Heinkel coming for me. As we were on a simple
housekeeping flight, our aircraft had not been armed and we
had no ammunition. I gave the engine full boost and headed
down, but still he came on and I thought if I turned left or
right he would open up on me from his forward turret. It was
then that I noticed Swindon and the big railway marshalling
yards, so I dived down at a very steep angle and pulled out
about 50 feet above the rails. I could no longer see him, and
neither could I see Crane. We flew as low as I dared
and landed at Kemble, about 10 miles further on. I taxied
over to some RAF Hurricanes whose pilots were on standby
and told them where I had encountered the Heinkel. Within
five minutes three of them were in the air. Lieutenant Crane
had been thrown to the floor of the cockpit in my dive, and
he struggled out as we stopped. We obtained the spare parts
from the stores and then he said, 'I am pulling rank, so you
can go in the back.' That was the thanks I got for shaking the
raider off my tail.

Shortly after, although the lightning hit-and-run raids continued,
what became known as the
Battle of Britain started in
earnest, with heavy bomber raids on London and other cities
all over Britain, including Portsmouth and Southampton. The
main targets were the docks, but of course the bombs fell
everywhere, and many of the poor civilians would move out
to the surrounding countryside every night to avoid the heavy
raids.

The squadron that I was in then, 759, was referred to as
'The broken-down actor and windy jockey squadron'. We had
Ralph Richardson,
Laurence Olivier, the film star Robert
Douglas and the jockey
Frankie Furlong of Grand National
fame as members. If it hadn't been for the constant raids it
would have been great fun. Ralph Richardson was an
instructor and once told me, 'If you see a plane flying over the
airfield going like this,' and he mimicked a plane rising and
falling with his hands, 'then it's me. I suffer from kangaroo
petrol.'

Ralph in particular was great company, and of course
they could all drink like fish in the wardroom at night. We
had some very enjoyable parties, but sadly the airfield was
becoming just too dangerous and the navy decided to move us
all out to various places. The experienced pilots were sent to
boost the ranks of the RAF, where they were thrown into
action in the Battle of Britain.

This was a strange period, at times both frightening and
bizarre. The weather was extremely good – it was a glorious
summer. Here we were in the midst of a deadly war, with blue
skies and the sun shining. I had a forty-eight-hour pass from
Eastleigh – in fact I had two for successive
weekends. For the
first one I was invited by one of my fellow pilots, a chap called
'Lucky' Sutton, to visit his family at Kingston upon Thames.
About four of us went and we were made extremely welcome
by his parents and had a good night out at the local club.

The next weekend's leave saw the same group travel to a
fellow pilot's home in a village in mid-Kent. We ended up on
the Friday night in the local inn, being stood drinks by everyone.
The next day after lunch we went with our host to the
village cricket match. I always remember on this July day
sitting on a grass bank outside the pavilion, watching a rather
boring match. I have never been an enthusiast of the game,
but there was a great deal of local interest. Then I noticed the
sky: there were aircraft at about 10–15,000 feet having a
terrific dogfight. The noise of machine guns was faintly
audible and there were great swathes of vapour trails
stretched across the sky. A fight to the death was taking place
above our heads, and my heart went up to the boys in their
cockpits, knowing how they would be desperately turning,
their mouths dry, anxiously checking their mirrors, their
speed, their legs aching through pressure on the rudder
pedals, their planes shaking as the guns fired. I was the only
one looking up; nobody else was showing any interest in what
was going on above them – they were concerned only with the
cricket. It was difficult to comprehend.

Shortly after this the squadron was disbanded. However,
before our transfer one strange incident occurred which had a
profound bearing on my life, although if I had known at the
time just how it would affect me I would have been even more
disturbed by it than I was.

I was on afternoon duty in the air-watch office with a senior
officer. It was another nice summer's day, and I think it was
probably the weekend because everything was quiet. There
were just the two of us, smoking and chatting. On the table
were the telephones linking us to the adjutant's office and the
switchboard, and of course the red 'alert' handset. In a rack
on the wall were three sets of loaded Verey pistols, two with
red flares and one with a green. Suddenly the red phone rang
for an air-raid alert. So we sprang up and switched on our air-raid
siren, which was on a lattice tower. As the horrible wail
of the siren started up, my partner on duty noticed a Hudson
aircraft taxiing out from the Saunders Roe hangar on the
other side of the aerodrome. It kept coming out and lined up
at the end of the runway, turning into the wind. We both
knew how efficient our barrage-balloon operators were by
now; they would spring into action as soon as they heard our
siren. I rushed into the watch room and grabbed both the red
Verey pistols, rushed out and handed one of them to my companion.
He immediately fired it into the middle of the airfield
where it burst lazily, leaving a trail of red smoke. It didn't
seem to deter the pilot of the Hudson, and realizing he was
opening up to take off, I fired the second red Verey pistol.
Sure enough, the balloons were soaring up. To our alarm, the
pilot of the Hudson ignored both our danger signals.

'The idiot, what is he doing?' I shouted, but there was
nothing else we could do. The aircraft started rolling, reached
speed and took off. He must have been at about 200–300 feet
altitude when he reached the airfield perimeter where several
barrage balloons were stationed. I was tensed, waiting for the
inevitable, horribly powerless to prevent what I knew was
going to happen. I didn't see the pilot make any attempt to
manoeuvre. One wing struck a cable, bits flew off and the aircraft
dived into the ground, where it exploded. We stood there
for I don't know how long, as smoke from the burning
wreckage climbed into the sky. I felt sick. We learned later
that the plane had crashed on to a house in Nutbeam Road,
destroying it and killing both the Mayor and Mayoress of
Eastleigh who lived there.

The closure of the
squadron meant that I had to make a
choice about what I wanted to do next. I knew that I did not
want to continue training on Skuas. What I knew personally
about them, and what I heard about them in action, made me
think that they did not have much of a future in the Fleet Air
Arm, and their replacements, the Fairey Fulmar, did not look
any more promising.

One of the functions of the Fleet Air Arm that had been
stressed at different times during our training was to attack
enemy ships, sinking them or damaging them sufficiently
that they could not escape our fleet. There was a slogan that
summed it up: Find, Fix and Strike. We would locate the
enemy by searching vast areas of the ocean from the air, work
out his position and then mount a strike from the air using
bombs or torpedoes. This seemed a way forward that would
enable me to fight back against the enemy. The war was
happening all around me now, and I felt restless and out of it.
The cricket match at which I had been a spectator while the
war was being fought out thousands of feet above my head
had upset me. It was fine for the civilians, who were doing
what they could, but I was meant to be a pilot, not a
spectator.

So I made a formal request to be transferred to a training
course for
TSR aircraft, which stood for Torpedo Spotter and
Reconnaissance. I went north to another naval shore-based
establishment, HMS Sanderling at
Abbotsinch, which has
now become Glasgow airport. Here I was taught how to dive-bomb,
drop depth-charges and launch torpedoes into the
Firth of Clyde off the Isle of Arran.

I often decide on a course of action and then wonder
whether I have made a mistake, and I certainly felt that at
HMS Sanderling. The problem was not the course; it was the
aircraft I was flying. I was piloting the slowest pre-war
biplane still in front-line service. I refer of course to the Fairey
Swordfish. This aircraft seemed like a hangover from the
1920s, although it had actually come into service in 1936. It
was a biplane, and it had all the struts and wires reminiscent
of the First World War planes like the
Avro 504 that had first
excited my interest in flying. But the Battle of Britain was
being fought by fast monoplanes – Hurricanes and
Spitfires.
They were all metal, whereas the greater part of the
Swordfish, the wings and the rear fuselage, were canvas
covered. It was powered by a single radial engine that gave it
a top speed of barely 110 miles an hour. The Spitfire could
manage over 300 quite easily. The Swordfish was a big aircraft,
with a crew of three. The pilot sat in a forward open
cockpit, which was high above the centre line and gave a good
field of view. Behind was another cockpit, set slightly lower in
the fuselage, in which there was first the observer/navigator;
then behind him the telegraphist air gunner, or TAG, who
worked the radio and could fire a rear-pointed drum-fed
Lewis gun. Apart from this, there was a forward-firing
machine gun mounted in the fuselage behind the engine. The
huge wing area gave the Swordfish the ability to carry a bomb
load of almost 2,000lb, which was impressive for a single-engined
plane. It was manoeuvrable at slow speed and could
pull out of a dive without any trouble.

I felt that I was riding a carthorse instead of a steeplechaser
at first, but the more I flew it, the more I began to appreciate
its qualities. It was nicknamed the 'Stringbag'. Several reasons
are given for this, the most obvious being that at first glance
it looks as though it is held together by string. This is
deceptive. The main struts were made out of stainless steel,
the rigging was very strong steel cable, and the frames were
made of steel and duralumin, an aluminium alloy produced
for aircraft production. No, I believe the Stringbag got its
name because, like the old lady's shopping bag, it expanded to
accommodate whatever was demanded of it. It carried bombs,
depth-charges, torpedoes, smoke flares, and they even
mounted sixteen rockets under the wings in the later stages of
the war. There are stories of some squadrons moving rapidly
from airstrip to airstrip in the desert in North Africa, securing
motorbikes underneath the fuselage of their Swordfish and
then carrying them to a new location. It was a tough plane
and could take an awful lot of damage, as many aircrew were
to discover and be grateful for. Its low speed was also an asset,
it seemed, as our instructors told stories of Swordfish in the
Norwegian campaign being attacked by Messerschmitt 109s.
The British pilots employed the tactic of making 180-degree
turns at sea level towards the attacking plane. The Swordfish
had a much smaller turning circle than any fast fighter, and
moreover it had such an advantageous lift ratio that you
could reduce its speed to just 70 knots in the turn and it
would continue on a perfect line. Most planes need more
power to complete a turn, but not the Swordfish. The hapless
Messerschmitt pilot would not know why his target had
suddenly disappeared from view as he sped past.