Where on earth was Eagle? I enquired at Yeovilton and was told she was on the China Station, flying Swordfish only. I wondered how many Hurricanes she would have now that there was a war on — 20 or so?
The Captain’s Secretary at Yeovilton gave me a travel warrant to visit Their Lordships in London suggesting that they would know where she was. So I said goodbye to my immobile Wren, my dad and my MG and went up to London with kitbag and gramophone to ask Their Lordships. They told me she was in dock in Liverpool. They had no idea where her squadrons were, probably somewhere in Scotland. This was indeed a Silent Service.
I met my copper friend Ralph Kirker in London. He said that the Service was silent because it didn’t know anything, not because it had anything to keep secret. The RAF was not like that, he said. He suggested I should go straight to Eagle. At least she would have duty-free on board.
I arrived at Liverpool Station at about midnight. A taxi took me straight to Eagle. The driver told me she had just come out of dry dock, was loading ammunition and taking on aviation petrol. She would be off on trials soon, he said. He also said that he hadn’t seen any of her aircraft but “it was difficult to see her flight deck from the dockside”.
Eagle towered up into the black sky alongside the quay wall. She was in total darkness, emitting muffled sounds of high-speed machinery and cascades of cooling water from her condensers at intervals down her port side, a very impressive sound and sight.
I was shown to the wardroom. I opened the polished mahogany door. The sole occupant was sitting in an old black leather chair, his back to me and warming his feet on the surrounding high fender of a small electric fire in the centre. I crept around to one side, keeping quiet in case he was asleep. I saw that he had red stripes between the three bands of gold braid on his sleeves, so that he must be the PMO. (Principal Medical Officer). He glanced across at me, peering under bushy black eyebrows.
“Evening, sir,” I said by way of conversation. “You got anywhere to sleep — what’s y’ name?” “Crosley, sir, and no sir,” I said. “I’m O’Rourke,” he said. “Ring that bell and a steward may know of a cabin, or something. I’ve closed the bar, so that’s that.” Commander O’Rourke of O’Rourke dozed off again.
When a steward miraculously appeared from somewhere I asked him where I could sleep for the night. He suggested a camp bed in the Captain’s Secretary’s office opposite the wardroom. He explained that ‘Scratch’ was on leave, but he wouldn’t mind my dossing down there for a night or two, if I could get it cleared up by daytime.
I was desperate to know what aircraft Eagle had and what I should be flying and where. I asked the steward. He said that there were a couple of monoplane fighters in the hangar, brought back from Crete, but he had no idea where the rest were.
I could not spend another night wondering what aircraft I would have to fly, so I groped my way along the main deck until I came to a steel door labelled ‘Hangar Access’. I went in through the double doors into a dimly lit, steel-sided, empty cathedral of a place. There, in a far corner, I could see two Brewster Buffaloes, painted in light grey paint. My heart missed a beat, particularly as I saw that they were fitted with arrester hooks. I had heard terrible stories about the Buffalo — and that it had the unreliable Cyclone engine and very poor flying characteristics which made it particuarly unsuitable as a deck-landing fighter. Still, I thought, Their Lordships wouldn’t ask anyone to do the impossible straight off, and if we had to fly them they would give us time to learn. At least they weren’t biplanes. But I hardly slept that night. It must have been the thought of doing battle with the Hun in a Buffalo!
Next morning, I heard the Captain’s Writer come in. He soon started to type and I gave up the idea of trying to sleep. I suddenly realised that he of all men on board would know exactly where 813F was and what type of aircraft they would be flying.
“Ah,” he said, “you must be Sub-Lieutenant Crosley. I think you should be at Arbroath, I’ll give you a travel warrant, sir,” and, in answer to my inquiry: “They fly Hurricanes.”
Music to my ears. I could withstand any privation, climb any mountain, ford any stream, so long as there was a Sea Hurricane to fly at the end of it.
Two days later, after many vicissitudes, I arrived at Arbroath on the east coast of Scotland. There, the wardroom secretary told me that 813 Squadron’s mail was being redirected to Macrihanish. This was another RN Air Station north of Campbeltown at the southern end of the Mull of Kintyre — on the other side of Scotland.
The Naval bus ride took all day and most of the night. I piled out in darkness with kitbag and gramophone and knocked at the door of the only hotel in Campbeltown, now being used as an Officers’ Mess.
After the usual: “We haven’t got any bunks made up, there aren’t any cabins and there isn’t any food,” I was eventually allowed to sleep in a cabin whose occupant had just been killed night flying in a Swordfish and therefore wouldn’t be back.
A Wren officer woke me up next morning, but as it was too late for breakfast — she had only come into the cabin to make a list of the poor chap’s possessions — I spent my time asking anyone I could find where 813F Squadron was as I was their spare fighter pilot. No one knew for certain.
I went outside and listened. Like a good soldier, I determined to ‘follow the sound of engines’ which I had heard flogging around. Eventually I came to a small grass airfield. I could see a couple of Swordfish parked out by some lopsided, wind-blown trees in the corner. I was just about to give up hope when a Sub-Lieutenant came out of a tent and told me that 813F was back at Arbroath. It had left Macrihanish the day before and was now doing its ADDLs there.
Next day I caught the bus back to the other side of Scotland and ‘signed-in’ again at the wardroom.
Next morning I struck gold in the person of ‘Spike’ King-Joyce. He was 813F Flight Commander. He said: “You’d better fly with me as my Number Two. We’ve got two Hurries and they are both U/S. But tomorrow all four of us should be able to have a go at some ADDLs. The other two pilots in 813F are Bob Spedding and Bernard Bullivant. We’ve only got two Hurricanes.”
Spike had the brightest dark brown eyes, long shiny black hair and ‘buggers grips’ on each cheek. He was tall and well built, very good looking — in a typical Irish way. He wore his RN reefer jacket with the top button undone. Thenceforth I did also, like all other fighter pilots in first-line squadrons.
After lunch, Bernard and I walked over to the other side of the airfield and, as yet without leather flying jackets — for they were in short supply — nearly froze solid waiting for our turn to fly. We watched Bob and Spike showing us how it should be done.
The batsman said that he was wasting his time waving his bats about “at those two” and he told Bernard and I to be more respectful, particularly as Spike had just made his final landing making a ‘V’ sign as he flashed past. However, Bernard and I had already decided that we were no longer pupils but men of substance with minds of our own. Batsmen who had never flown Hurricanes should not be allowed to throw their weight about too much.
Spike’s approach to flying was verging on the intrepid. He never delved too deeply into an accident’s cause or apportioned blame. Provided no one was hurt, his only remark would be “Hard cheeze”, addressed kindly to the aviator concerned. He would sign Form A25 without commenting how a future accident of that sort might be avoided. He was to be my Section Leader for the next year and I could not have been more fortunate.
After a few more ADDLs — where Spike did the batting and so avoided any unpleasantness — we declared ourselves fully worked-up and capable of forming the entire fighter defence of HMS Eagle, as indeed we were. Spike and Bob flew our two Hurricanes back to Machrihanish. ‘Bully’ and I took the bus again with the ground crew. We spent hours peering through the streaming glass windows at blackened sheep, with one leg longer than the other as they struggled for a footing on the steep, barren hillsides lining the mountain roads.
It was New Year’s day, 1942 when we arrived for the second time at Macrihanish. The same day, Eagle appeared in the misty Clyde to the south, demanding her Swordfish back.
Spike and Bob flew on board the same day with our two Hurricanes and Bully and I followed in the back of a Swordfish, freezing cold and struggling for a footing against the slipstream and the tendency for a blackboard and easel, lodged in the gunner’s seat, to fly over the side. When we came to a sudden halt on the flight deck arrester wires, we and our kitbags and the blackboard and easel slid forward against a long-range fuel tank and everything smelled of petrol for the next few days. No one wanted us to share their cabins as a result and Bully and I were both told to bivouac in the Captain’s Secretary’s office again, this time tastefully partitioned off with a white enamelled canvas screen. It remained our cabin for seven months until Eagle was sunk. We each had a camp bed on the floor and the use of a small desk and two chairs for our clothes. Otherwise we lived out of our kitbags. There were no chests of drawers, wash basins, fans, wardrobes mirrors or such luxuries. However, I could see no sign of the Buffaloes — and this offset many a privation in our domestic arrangements. Had we have heard that the Gloster E.28/39 — an experimental jet single-seater, powered by a Whittle gas turbine, had made its first flight in England, we would have been further encouraged.
Eagle still had most of her original peacetime complement on board. The aircrew in her two squadrons — 813 and 824 — were ex-China Station, well established, and sure of their position in the wardroom. The fighter task, entirely limited to the chance shooting down of snoopers and not in any way intended to be a fighter defence against raiding aircraft, had hitherto been carried out by two Gladiators. The Gladiator pilots were now elsewhere, and we new boys who had replaced them, were therefore low down in the pecking order. Eagle had not yet heard of Churchill’s “Action this day” message demanding more interceptor fighters aboard our carriers, or of Cunningham’s “The Fleet must take its own air defence with it”. Neither, apparently, had anyone else. Eagle’s main purpose was still to supply the Mediterranean Fleet with long-range hitting power through her Swordfish. The fighters were but a small consideration. The only difference was that Eagle now had two Hurricanes instead of two Gladiators. As they were to be the very first in the Mediterranean, whither we were bound, we hoped that we would be able to use them well and put Eagle on the map. We had no doubt that the Sea Hurricane (albeit the Mark Ib instead of the Hurricane IIc) was the master of any Italian aircraft and we hoped that when we had to meet a Ju 88 snooper, that we should have the height advantage and be able to catch it up by diving on it. Once the fighting started, we expected the ship would take a little more notice of her four fighter pilots.
I could hardly wait for my first decklanding. It was all very well watching the Stringbags flop down, their undercarriage legs splaying out as they chuffed slowly into position over the wires. They had an easy task. Thus Bully and I felt conspicuous on the day chosen for our debut. The fire-party was much in evidence and the ‘goofers’, usually a platform abreast the funnels where aviators watched others doing decklandings, was packed to overflowing.
As Bully was a Midshipman, I had the privilege of going first. Apart from an instinctive tendency to keep high when coming over the round-down and consistently disobeying the batsman, I managed to do about six landings before the ship had to turn round to avoid Ailsa Craig. When Bully’s turn came, ‘goofers’ was empty and most of the interest had gone. It must have looked easy. It certainly seemed easy to us. The Hurricane was a lovely decklanding aircraft and we wondered what all the fuss was about.
Bully and I discussed the day’s flying in our ‘cabin’ afterwards. “The thing that got me,” said Bully, “was how small the ship looked when I had a look round after take-off. They must be mad, I thought, if they expect me to get down on that.”
“Did you hear that a Naval chap called Scruffy Bromwich had decklanded a hooked Spitfire?” I said.
“God, I’d hate to do that,” replied Bully, “I can’t imagine that they’d ever use them in carriers. You couldn’t see a thing over the nose.” “Yes, but it wouldn’t half surprise the ‘Eye-ties’, wouldn’t it?” “And the Japs too, it looks like,” said Bully.
I went down into the hangar afterwards and talked to the riggers and fitters who were looking after our two Hurricanes. They told me, in answer to my question about oil on the windscreen, that they were going to fit a ‘mod’ which pumped cleaning fluid onto it and this would keep it clear. They told me that the engines in our two Hurricanes had done about 200 hours each in sandy conditions — according to their log books — and were beginning to use a lot of oil.
The west coast of Scotland in a winter depression is hardly the place for seagulls let alone Fleet Air Arm sprog pilots. We were operating entirely without homing aids and as for the TR9D radio, if it worked, the ship’s did not, and vice versa. The cloudbase was usually down to the tops of the hills on the coast and visibility could vary from the length of the flight deck to one or two miles almost in the time it took to range the aircraft on deck and start them up.
One morning about eight Swordfish took off. The weather this time was anti-cyclonic and they had set off in bright sunlight. Spike and I were ‘standing by’ in our cockpits on deck to intercept two of them which were going to pretend to be snoopers. The Swordfish ‘strike’ went away about a hundred miles or so. By the time they came back they were flying over fog. We were still on deck in fog ourselves, with the ship vainly trying to find a clear patch in which to land the eight Swordfish. No word had been heard because their r/t was not working. The Captain — L. D. Mackintosh of Mackintosh, himself an observer and the first RN officer with wings to command a carrier (the only other one in World War II was Captain Bulteel, HMS Argus) sent a man up the mast with a Very pistol to see if he could see them above the fog. Apparently this worked for we could soon hear their engines flogging about overhead. However, the ship could not find a clear patch and the Stringbags, running short of fuel, made for the mainland. Miraculously they found a clear patch by Glasgow and landed at a small ‘matting’ airfield called Renfrew.
So far, we in the Hurricanes had not been frightened in this way. We badly needed an FDO — a product of the ‘stop-me-and-buy-one’ school — and I learned from Doc Whaley, the wardroom secretary and ship’s senior Surgeon, that a chap called Lt Tricky, RNVR, was due to arrive.
Lt J. Tricky arrived and immediately made a point of getting to know the four of us flying Hurricanes. He told us to go to the Supply Officer and get an Omega ‘beacon’ watch put on our flying clothing list. He would immediately get the ship’s beacon working and have some exercises with it on the next flying day. He obviously knew his onions. He was a Public School science master in civilian life and could therefore understand science and the young mind. We fighter pilots soon built up a superb rapport with him, and gained confidence in the radio, in the ship and in ourselves.
We were looking forward to being told our destination. There was a party of Royal Marines on board. They worked ‘X’ turret — two of the eight, 1912, six-inch guns which we hoped they would not fire while our Hurricanes were parked nearby. We watched closely in case the Marines embarked a fresh supply of tropical pith helmets, a sure sign we would be bound for the Arctic. Bully, who knew something about geography, said that running convoys round the northern route would be impossible in winter. There was total darkness and ice everywhere. So I wrote to my immobile Wren and told her that we hoped to go to warmer climates, but I found our later that this vital bit of information had been torn out by the ship’s censor. So she never knew that we had left the UK until we were 2000 miles away.
On 17 February we went to sea again. Something was up because we spent the following four nights at Lamlash Bay in the Isle of Aran, well away from possible foreign ears in the pubs of Gourock on the mainland. On the fifth morning out, we met Malaya and, later that day, four merchant ships. We knew we were off somewhere.
We had just read in the papers that Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and the cruiser Prince Eugen had escaped from Brest and had run up the Channel in broad daylight without our ships or the RAF being able to do anything to stop them. This was the crack of doom. It had not happened thus since the days of Van Tromp. Much later, we heard of 825 Squadron’s attack with six Swordfish, led by the gallant Eugene Esmonde. Why, we thought, had they taken off — from an RAF airfield too — without the RAF doing anything to help. We saw ‘artists’ impressions’ of the Swordfish meeting a ‘curtain of AA fire’ which shot them all down before they could deliver their torpedoes. However, we eventually got to hear that this was untrue for it was the standing patrol of about 40 Me 109s which shot down the six Swordfish, un-intercepted by a single one of the ten Spitfires which eventually turned up too late to protect them. The latter were unaccustomed to the task and lacked any support from their search aircraft, whose radar had been purposely and skilfully jammed from the outset. The German fighters, on the other hand, had a slow, compact target to intercept and which came to them, and for which they had no need to search. The strategic result of this action was that Their Lordships were heartened that a battleship — even a German battleship — could still protect itself from air attack and they continued to plan for another Jutland as before. The Germans, on the other hand, had already largely written-off the battleship as a waste of time and effort and they consequently made only low priority repairs to Scharnhorst and did not bother with Gneisenau at all. Both had been mined by the RAF on the last leg of their voyage to Germany.
Passing round the north of Ireland, we steered west for two days. After that we turned south for Gibraltar. We made this immense circuit out into the Atlantic to clear the U-boats in the Biscay area and to pass outside the radius of action of the Focke-Wulf armed recce aircraft which were beginning to organise U-boat ‘wolf-packs’ on a large scale.
The Swordfish took off in twos and threes and disappeared into the Atlantic murk on their A/S patrols. They carried small depth charges under each wing and they also had ASV radar aerials which could detect a surfaced submarine from a distance of several miles, giving by night or day its range and bearing on a small, shielded, display for the observer in the back of each Swordfish.
The Captain told us over the Tannoy that we were to become the carrier force in Force ‘H’, based at Gibraltar. Our new Admiral was Syfret, who had relieved Admiral Somerville. He, in turn, was taking over the Far Eastern Fleet to beat the Japanese. We wished him luck — having just heard what the enemy had done to our two battleships out there already.
We arrived 100 miles off the Rock on the evening of 24 February, my 22nd birthday. All except three of the Swordfish and ourselves, flew off to North Front airfield, leaving us to enter harbour in darkness that night.
After we had tied up at the quay under a huge crane, 15 huge packing cases were brought up by lighter and were lifted onto our flight deck by the crane. In darkness, a host of RAF men descended upon them, ripping off their sides and rolling out Spitfire aircraft in desert camouflage. Other cases had wings which were also quickly stowed down below in the hangars. By dawn, we had 15 Spitfires in the hangar and not a sign of anything on the flight deck.
I asked Tricky what was going on. He usually knew most things as his job was near the wireless office and he saw most of the signals. He told us that the Spitfires were for Malta. We could see that they had ‘Vokes’ airfilters on their air intakes and because they had desert camouflage, we thought that they were bound for the Desert Air Force. But how on earth were they to get to Malta? They only had about 250 miles range and if we flew them off the deck as near as that to Malta we would be right under the German and Italian fighter cover from Sicily.
After breakfast we went into the hangar to have another look at the Spitfires. Amongst the piles of ammunition, wireless sets, pilot’s seats, propeller spinners, tail steering arms, wing mats, sweating bodies and noise, we could see several huge slipper-shaped petrol tanks. Some of these were being offered up to the underside of the Spitfire’s fuselage — where a bomb might ordinarily be — and the fuel lines were being connected by an invisible, sliding fit. There was only a half-inch gap between the underside of the fuselage and the top surface of the tank, which was all of six feet long by two feet wide. We found that it could hold 90 gallons of 100 octane fuel. This was more than the Spitfire carried in its internal tanks. A closer study of the jettison arrangements showed that a Bowden cable release in the cockpit let go the lifting ring — stressed to three tons breaking strain — in the top surface of the tank. The tank then slid backwards onto two lugs sticking out two inches from the fuselage underside. The nose of the tank then dropped and the airflow forced it downwards and clear of the fuselage underside. The slightest skid, we thought, and the whole thing would come clear of the two lugs, slide back and hit the tail. However, the Spits would now have a range of 400 miles and would allow a fly-off to Malta well before we got to ‘bomb alley’.
Bully and I awoke in our camp beds next morning to the pipe: “Special sea-dutymen to your stations”. Soon, the ship started to shake and the paint started to fall from the deckhead as the ship’s main engines began to take over, and we set a course east-north-east for Malta. After breakfast we went on deck. There were the 15 Spitfires, glistening in the early morning sun. The Rock was still in sight astern. We could see Malaya and Cleopatra (the latter, a brand new Dido class cruiser, going through to become Admiral Vian’s Flagship at Alexandria to replace the torpedoed Naiad) and a few destroyers ahead. At breakfast I had found out from ‘guns’ that the reason why the Spitfires had been assembled in the hangar at night was because of the Germans with binoculars in Algeciras opposite the Rock. They reported everything that went on in Gibraltar harbour to their ambassador in Vigo, and from there to the German submarine base at La Spezia in Italy.
We saw that several of the Spits, with their noses pointed outboard and their wheels chocked up, were having cannon magazines loaded in their wing bays. The two 20 mm cannon and four .303 inch Brownings were then fired, with the whole aircraft jumping backwards and upwards with the recoil like a startled hare, with clouds of black cordite smoke drifting past us, the empty brass cartridge cases flying everywhere. We spoke to several of the RAF pilots. Some were Australians in their distinctive dark blue uniforms. One was a famous Canadian called ‘Screwball’ Beurling. Many had DFCs. When they found out that we flew Hurricanes, they asked what it was like taking off from the flight deck. We said that all you needed was about 20 knots of wind over the deck, a little left rudder and you were unstuck by the Island from a start position about opposite the aft gun turrets. This did not reassure them very much for, they pointed out, they would have an extra half ton of fuel on board, and not one of them had taken off in a Spit like that yet. We reckoned, we told them, that if their engines were the same power as ours, that they would be able to do a loop and a roll off the top once they were over the bow. There would be at least 30 knots of wind for them, as the Captain and Commander Coke, our ‘Wings’, knew their stuff.
During that afternoon and for some of the night, the Spitfires’ engines were run to check the functioning of the long-range tanks. By morning it was learned that very few of them worked reliably. They would neither suck fuel nor jettison satisfactorily. The Squadron-Leader in command said: “We’ve got no confidence in them whatever, at the moment. If they fail after take-off it means baling out or ditching, and that’s fatal either way, with a full tank hung up”.
So we returned to Gibraltar with the Spits pushed down below again and with the ship trying to pretend to the German spies in Algeciras that nothing had really happened.
A week later, on 9 March, we tried again. The pilots were much happier, as the tube feeding the fuel from the tank was now made of better material and could be checked visually by shining a torch up through a gap cut between the tank and the underside of the fuselage. After each fitter had checked it, the pilot ran up the aircraft to full power to recheck it before the aircraft was signed ‘S’ for serviceable in Form 700.
We arrived at the flying-off position two mornings later. With a natural wind over the sea of about 10 knots, the Captain gave the RAF pilots about 32 knots over the deck.
There were only two dramas. One was when one of the Spits swung badly on take-off and the pilot only just managed to pull up his nose in time before hitting the sea on the port side. The second drama was the sight of a Spitfire returning, after the rest had set off eastwards, with steam coming out of its engine cowlings. This was boiling coolant. The cause of overheating was that the starboard undercarriage had not retracted properly. This obstructed the airflow through the radiator under the starboard wing.
After circling the Fleet for about 10 minutes, the pilot eventually plucked up courage to bale out, as the lesser of two evils, and we all cheered as we saw his parachute. He baled out by turning the aircraft on its back at about 2000 feet and dropping out. The little Spitfire then stalled inverted and plunged into the Mediterranean, its short life snuffed out. The pilot was soon picked up by the whaler from a destroyer and we all turned back west and made for Gibraltar before the Italian snoopers could find us. Our Hurricanes had done nothing and we felt a little browned off. What on earth were the Italians doing? We were only a hundred miles from their Sardinian airfields at the time of the fly-off, yet they and the Germans in Sicily had not found us. They would certainly regret the day, for this would be the very first time that they would have to face Spitfires over Malta, a very different proposition to the Hurricane Ib in fighter v fighter combat.
We repeated the whole business on 23 March. This time there was no elaborate attempt at secrecy as the RAF insisted on proper assembly and testing in daylight and with plenty of time to cure the faults. Apparently, when the pilots had arrived on 9 March with the 14 Spits over Hal Far in Malta, the Germans were waiting for them. When they came to use their guns, none of them appeared to be properly harmonised. They only had three Spits left by the end of the third day.
Their second arrival over Malta on the 23rd coincided with the ‘Second Battle of Sirte’. This ‘battle’ was surprisingly claimed by C-in-C Med, Admiral Cunningham, as a ‘brilliant victory’ — even after the war — for which its leader, Rear Admiral Vian was knighted. (See Appendix 2 — Naval Air Power.)
After returning from this trip, Commander Coke allowed our two Hurricanes to fly ashore to North Front before entering harbour so that we could keep in flying practice. Next morning, Bob discovered an old Skua on the airfield and he thought he would fly it. He was an experienced Skua pilot. It was pushed out of the hangar one morning and we watched as he climbed up to the cockpit and disappeared inside.
He chuffed gradually down the runway on his take-off run and finished up, minus his undercarriage and in the flying position, neatly balanced on some oildrums at the far end of the runway. He had taken off in coarse pitch, forgetting that the fine pitch position of the lever was aft, not forward. Apart from a smear or two of oil, he seemed entirely unmarked by the incident.
There was always something amusing going on at North Front. It was the first stop for RAF replacements, flying out from the UK. They had flown 1000 miles over the sea and sometimes arrived at the end of their tether, in Beaufighters, Wellingtons, Blenheims, and Coastal Command’s Beauforts and Hudsons. The runway at North Front lay between the huge rock to the south and the Spanish border to the north. It had orginally been a horseracing track and, at the time it was converted, the runway length was sufficient for aircraft then in service. Today the runway stretches out into Algeciras Bay. In 1942 it was half the length and only sufficient for a safe arrival if the wind was blowing straight down it. A ‘Levanter’, a strong, sandy wind from the desert, would sometimes arrive very unexpectedly. It put the runway into the lee of the rock. Airflow was therefore extremely turbulent and came from all directions, including upwards and downwards. There were many accidents, because ferry pilots had no diversion and had to approach through the intense turbulence at either end of the runway whether they liked it or not.
To make matters worse, the twin-engined strike fighter, the Beaufîghter I, was very much under-finned, and if the poor pilot then had to make a single-engined landing, either in turbulence or, for that matter, in the short distance available, it always resulted in a write-off, even if he was lucky enough to touch down. Often the pilot was caught in the turbulence and never made the end of the runway at all.
The surfaced length of the runway was about 1400 yards. This was about 400 yards longer than the longest runway at Yeovilton and we considered, with our lack of knowledge of the cross-wind situation, that it was more than adequate for a Hurricane. I had watched other aircraft approach from the east at a time when the windsock at the far end was showing a westerly wind of 10 knots and, at the near end, an easterly wind of 10 knots. In between, a third windsock was showing no wind at all. As we had had no flying for about six weeks, Bully and I were impatient to get started. All we had to do, I reckoned, was to approach to land a little faster than usual to cope with the down-wind eddy, and then trust in the brakes to stop us going off the far end into Algeciras Bay.
All went according to the Crosley plan until just before I crossed the threshold of the runway where it met the Mediterranean. Here there was a huge increase in the aircraft’s airspeed as I hit the ‘fanning out’ of a down draught. The Hurricane went sailing aloft a 100 feet or more, miles over its proper approach height. I hadn’t touched a thing. I wondered what Pilot Officer Jack would do. It flashed through my mind that I could now expect a sudden reversal in the wind gradient or speed. Sure enough it happened! The down draught itself then hit the aircraft. The airspeed dropped from 100 knots to about 50 in the space of about a second. Dirt came up from the floor, the engine cut from the zero ‘G’ (which mercifully kept the aircraft from stalling) and I lost height rapidly. I selected full throttle and right rudder and waited. By some miracle, the engine came on at full power just as the airspeed needle wavered above the 70 knot mark again. I avoided hitting the sea by about five feet or less. This was booboo number four, I reckoned, and I was lucky once more to get away with it. I did not tell anyone, but put the aircraft U/S for brakes when I landed, so that Bully could not fly it and have the same experience. “You came in a bit fast, didn’t you?” said Bully.
That was the end of it, thank goodness. No one else took much notice of anything that the Navy did at North Front. It was usually so odd that the RAF in Air Traffic Control had given up trying.
Midshipman Williams — of Netheravon Battle fame — was at North Front. As Bob had pranged his only target-towing Skua he was wandering about with nothing to do. He had appointed himself ‘Naval Air Armaments Officer’, an odd appointment for a Midshipman. This entitled him to a key of the Naval Armoury which consisted of one Army revolver. He wore this in a Tom Mix-type holster, low on his starboard hip. He was practising the quick draw one day and had shot himself through the foot, luckily not very seriously. One afternoon he was asleep on his bed in the Nissen hut ‘dormitory’ and a large piece of the Rock came through the roof, just missing his bed. The Sappers (Army Engineers) had overdone the explosive while making some more gun positions in the Rock. They were also increasing the 25 miles of tunnel to accommodate a complete Brigade Group of the Rock’s garrison. Williams dived under his bed and hit his head on his Gieves tin trunk, requiring several stitches. He was a lovely chap, but he must have been a great trial to the Senior Naval Officer at North Front who had no sense of humour and took life far too seriously.
The SNO was a Lieutenant Commander, RNVR. There was no duty-free, there were no indigenous Wrens, no proper offices — the SNO’s office was one of the Spitfire packing cases with a soapbox as a desk — and no transport. He could not understand why Bully and I wanted to live ashore in such conditions and bother him, when life on board must be so luxurious. However, he did not realise that we eschewed the comforts in Eagle to avoid having to do ‘Assistant Officer of the Watch in Harbour’. In this duty we had found out that we did all the work and took the blame for everything but had none of the perks to go with it — such as ‘Up Spirits’, the issue of the daily rum ration. Typical of this low grade task was the Assistant’s telescope. It consisted of a piece of canvas-covered copper tubing with two bits of glass stuck in each end.
Our first stay ashore at North Front lasted about ten days. This was because Eagle’s steering gear had packed up at the end of our last ‘club run’ and she was having it repaired. During this period in the war the Royal Gibraltar Yacht Club had a most obliging Army Secretary and he allowed me to borrow the club Sharpies. It was important to keep clear of the RAF’s Sunderlands in the harbour. They ran up their engines, while taxying, to take-off power and endeavoured to catch us with their slipstream to capsize us when we weren’t looking. After a sail, I also had to clean off all the fuel-oil leaking from some limpet-mined ships in the harbour.
The best hotel in Gib was The Rock. This was halfway up the ‘Rock’ itself and commanded an excellent view. Most of it was taken over as the Wrens’ quarters. The hotel reckoned that if its charges were cheap to the Admiralty, they would recoup any losses from the resultant stream of Naval and Army types visiting the Wrens. However, it had not reckoned with the Queen Wren who guarded her young ones with the greatest care. All she allowed was a little harmless bathing at Sandy Bay, or tennis at the Pavilion, and ‘back on board the Rock by 2230’. Nevertheless, Force H’s ‘runs ashore’ were well catered for. There were several bars with orchestras which played Spanish music. Competition for thirsty sailors was intense. One bar had an orchestra composed entirely of Spanish ladies. Towards the end of the evening when things were really warming up, one or two of the ladies would accidentally allow a bosom to pop out while they were playing. The cheers could be heard across the border in La Linea.
The Rock Apes — recently reinforced at Churchill’s request — had inhabited the Rock through many wars. Nothing was new to them. Likewise the Gibraltarians were hospitable and their police were friendly. They sometimes gave us the benefit of the doubt. They and the ageless apes seemed to realise that we were young, fearful and far from home.
During this time, in the first three weeks of April 1942, Malta’s need for more fighter aircraft became even more desperate. Churchill, with the help of President Roosevelt, persuaded Admiral King, the Chief of the United States Navy, to lend the RN the carrier Wasp for ferrying purposes. While we were stuck in Gib for repairs, she delivered 47 more Spitfires on 22 April — in one go.
When our repairs were completed we made a third trip with Wasp, on 9 May. This gave Malta a further 64 Spitfires. (Wasp then returned to the Pacific War. She lasted until 5 September 1942, when she was sunk by a Japanese submarine while operating alone.)
By 9 May 1942, Malta had received 150 Spitfires since our first ‘run’ in late February. However, in spite of them the Island remained almost entirely under the heel of the German Air Force until the following March 1943. Then, at last, the Germans had to leave Sicily for good, allowing Malta to recover. During most of this time, the George Cross Island was bombed and strafed by an Air Force a third of the size of the RAF — some 250 Ju 88s, Ju 87s and Me 109s, and about 150 bombers and fighters of the Italian Air Force. Betweeen 9 April and 9 May 1942, the average tonnage of bombs dropped on Malta during 17 of these days and nights was equal to the highest rate dropped on London during the Blitz. The RAF was again towards the end of May down to 20 or so Spitfires so that another series of ferrying trips was planned.
After the 9 May ‘Club Run’, while I was getting a new eight-day clock from the stores at North Front for one of our Hurricanes (I had attached it with two easily-removed screws, so that I could rescue the clock if it became necessary to throw the aircraft over the side), I had happened to notice a couple of aircraft crates in the store. These turned out to be two Sea Hurricanes which had been intended for Ark Royal before she was torpedoed seven months previously. I soon convinced Spike that they were just what we wanted for they would double Eagle’s fighter force overnight. They were therefore assembled and Bully and I flew them aboard in time for the next ‘Club Run’.
At last Bully and I had an aircraft of our own, with our ‘own’ fitter and rigger. But they were terrible old things really, their engines so worn that they used most of their three and a half gallons of oil in an hour’s flying and had to be fitted with an extra oil tank. Their propellers even ‘windmilled’ on deck if the wind was over 40 knots. The main result of our having four aircraft instead of two was that the Captain felt free to ‘take risks’ with us and he allowed us to fly at the slightest whiff of a ‘bogey’ on radar. Tricky was also delighted as he could now practice fighter interceptions. He soon became very proficient. We seldom ever missed and Tricky could somehow manage to bring us up-sun and above our practice bogey nearly every time. He made use of a quirk of the type of radar that we had, as it had ‘null’ spots at certain heights and distances. This allowed him to assess the height of any approaching raid without having the more modern height-finding radar in the ship at all. Being a practical scientist he had worked this out for himself.
Also at this time, we had to fit a new ‘black box’ in the back of our Hurricanes. This was the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe), to help identify us so that we should not be mistaken for a German or an Italian. In addition, we had a new, four-channel, crystal-tuned r/t set — TR1196 — to replace the single channel manually-tuned TR9D. The new set had a lever which selected any of four HF channels. The old wire aerial was removed from between the tail and fuselage and a short ‘whip’ aerial substituted. The improved performance of the radio transformed the fighter situation. We knew now that we could intercept any raid provided it approached above radar height, and that we could trust Tricky completely to bring us in at exactly the most advantageous position each time. The ice cream tricycles and improved radar had achieved an immense breakthrough. All we needed now was a few Ju 88s or SV79s to come flogging over above 2000-3000 feet, and we could have a good chance of an interception.
One day, early in June, we noticed a newcomer in the harbour. She had the body of a liner but with the funnels, cabins and bridges sheared off and a flight deck substituted. We heard that the smoke came out through a hole in the flight deck — except when she was landing or taking off aircraft. Then, it came out somewhere else and blackened her beautiful teak quarterdeck. The Argus, for it was she, was called ‘The Flat Iron’. She looked exactly like one. We wondered what could have brought her to Gibraltar this time.
On the day she arrived and on the way to the airfield, Bully and I asked the driver of our taxi why she was in Gibraltar. He said that a complete squadron of Hurricanes had already landed that morning at North Front and, having hooks, they could only have come from Argus.
We were dropped off at the ‘frontier’ end of the runway and found that it was 801 Squadron, with 12 Sea Hurricane Ib’s. They looked a very force-on crowd, especially Pete Hutton, one of the Flight Commanders. He told us that Rupert Brabner, their CO, was a Member of Parliament — a good thing to have in the Fleet Air Arm. He had escaped with Alan Black from Crete just before the Germans had arrived — in a Sunderland of all things.
Soon the buzz started that we would be going on another trip to Malta, this time with Argus and with some merchant ships as well. Argus was to be loaded with Spitfires, and a few Fulmars as ‘dusk fighters’ and 801 would reinforce us, making 16 Hurricanes in all.
This fighter force, albeit only 25 — with spares — and with six anti-submarine Swordfish, was the very first occasion in Naval history when British carriers were put to their proper use in a defensive war, running convoys under enemy-occupied airspace. It had taken nearly three years of war for the Royal Navy to find out how to use aircraft carriers.