Biter was one of four ‘Woolworth’ carriers known as the Archer Class. They had started life as freighters, but were converted under lease-lend by the Americans to escort/assault carriers, building on a hangar and a flight deck from the main deck upwards. The work was done at the Hoboken Shipyard in New York in the space of a few months.
When we landed on board, and had seen our aircraft safely lashed down, we went round the ship. We found that we were each given a cabin with running hot and cold water, a desk, wardrobe and chest of drawers, and a very comfortable bunk. There were spacious briefing rooms, ‘Ready Rooms’, Met Offices, ADR plotting rooms, Ops rooms, huge sickbays, air conditioning, showers galore and many other luxuries. There were also proper bunks and comfortable messes for the ratings, instead of hammocks slung in any corridor they could find, and they had buffet eating arrangements with a choice of food served in separate dining spaces. So this was the life in an American carrier or in an American merchant ship.
Biter was always an efficient and happy ship. Our Captain, ‘Wings’ in the Courageous when she sank, was Connolly Abel-Smith. We were lucky with our Captain and crew. Others were not; notably Dasher.
We had arrived in Biter on 14th October 1942. We sailed from the Clyde for Operation Torch — the invasion of North Africa — on 25th October. We were in company with a huge convoy of 42 liners, merchant ships and escorts. Dasher, Furious, Victorious and ourselves made up the carrier force. Our morale was high. It was fun firing our four cannon into ‘splash’ targets towed astern. It was an impressive sight from the cockpit and from the flight deck, seeing about 50 shells-a-second exploding as they hit the sea and feeling the whole aircraft take a step backwards with the recoil of these powerful guns.
We ploughed and plunged our way 1000 miles into the Atlantic and were at last told of our new task — to provide fighter cover for an Allied invasion of North Africa.
Several of us had time to think about the progress of the war and how long it might last. We knew that things were not going well. The first months of 1942 had brought one disaster after another. Rommel had outmanoeuvred and outfought Auchinleck’s Eighth Army and was now at El Alamein, 250 miles inside the borders of Egypt. In February, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had escaped from Brest; Singapore and Hong Kong had been lost with scarcely a fight and Ceylon was threatened. The great carrier Indomitable was again being used as a ferry carrier in an attempt to reinforce the Far East with RAF fighter aircraft, but soon to be destroyed, on the ground, by the Japanese Admiral Nagumo’s carrier aircraft within hours of their arrival. Churchill had also reinforced the east with the entirely useless ‘R’ class battleships in addition to the now repaired Formidable and Illustrious in an attempt to discourage the Japanese and encourage Australia and New Zealand.
Had Admiral Somerville dared to use these ‘R’ class ships as Churchill intended, they would have disappeared without trace. As it was, he wisely withdrew them into the open wastes of the Southern Indian Ocean, and waited for Nagumo to go away. Had he risked a battle, his three carriers had but 39 fighters between them, only 12 of them Hurricanes. They would have had to compete with Admiral Nagumo’s four carriers with 120 Zero fighters and another 120 torpedo bombers. As for the British battleships, they remained at anchor in Addu Attol lagoon, growing weed and discontent, immobilising 3000 highly trained officers and men of their crews until they were ordered home. Even then it was as much by good luck as by judgement that Admiral Somerville’s fleet survived. All he lost was the carrier Hermes, with but five Swordfish on board at the time and no fighters, and the cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall. Nagumo then retired eastwards where his presence was more urgently required in the Pacific and where the angry Americans were growing in strength and numbers by the hour.
The Naval position in the Mediterranean was still very serious. Although Malta had been reprieved by the last two convoys — until October at the latest — the immense losses suffered per ton of stores delivered made it imperative that some other method, other than surface reinforcement, be adopted to relieve the strain on this vital Mediterranean stronghold. Submarines were used. Also the fast minelayer Welshman was used, anything to get through the Narrows with the vital stores and men needed to keep Malta’s fighter and reconnaissance aircraft in the air.
Many alternative relief operations were discussed between our new Allies in Washington and Churchill and the Army Chiefs in London. By July 1942, the Americans were at last convinced by Churchill and Cunningham that the solution to the Malta problem and to the land battle in North Africa should be a further landing in North Africa, to the west of the Malta Narrows. The aim of the landings would be to squeeze Rommel between Montgomery’s newly inspired, reinforced and retrained Eighth Army which would advance westwards from El Alamein and a newly landed army under the US General Eisenhower advancing eastwards from Casablanca. Two other landings would also be made, one at Oran and another further east still, at Algiers. Not only would such landings silence Russia, now demanding a Second Front (as well as more Hurricanes) but it would act as a final dress rehearsal for the final Allied landings in Europe.
French reaction to operation Torch would be difficult to judge. The French Generals, Admirals and politicians shifted their position as the weather in April. The various French governments in Northern France, in Vichy France and in the colonies in Algeria and Morocco, distrusted each other as well as everyone else. Likewise there was no telling what de Gaulle, the Free French leader in Britain, would do. As for the French Navy, none of them had forgiven the British for their 24 June 1940 sequestration of the French Fleets at Dakar, Casablanca, Algiers, Alexandria and Oran or for our take-over of Syria. Overall, lay a jealous Gallic pride which was close to hatred in the French Navy, planted by the French ignominy of 1940 and fed while Britain herself went on fighting afterwards.
However, the Americans had high hopes that the C-in-C of all French landforces in Africa, General Giraud, would unite the French Navy and Army once the landing had taken place, such that all would fight the common foe. Frantic diplomatic efforts were made to bring this about during the four days immediately before the landings took place.
Unfortunately, the French Admiral Darlan — the French equivalent of Sir Dudley Pound — happened to be in north Africa. He had heard of the Allies’ intentions. He was a pro-Fascist Vichyite and had an intense hatred of the Royal Navy. He was the last to give way to the American requests for help in their landings, and was mainly responsible for the French resistance at Oran, Algiers and Casablanca.
Because of the known French anti-British feeling, the landings were given all the appearance of being 100 per cent American. Our planes were painted with stars instead of British roundels. The first troops to land were to be American. All Allied airmen would carry with them the assurance that the US President, not the King, would reward handsomely any French or Arab soldier who handed over an airman unharmed to the Allies if he were shot down or captured.
We had slightly different ideas. We considered that our planes had been painted with white stars so that the American GIs would not mistake them for French aircraft which also used tri-colour roundels.
As the GIs had travelled all the way across the Atlantic and had never seen a Hurricane or a Seafire — Seafires were to be used from Furious and Victorious for the first time — and had yet to fire a shot in anger, our reason was probably the better of the two.
The three armies approaching Africa had travelled between 2000 and 4000 miles to get there. They were in 327 ships. They had 9000 vehicles and 400 carrier-borne aircraft. They were put ashore in 100 landings ships and protected by fighters from 12 aircraft carriers. Two hundred RAF aircraft from North Front at Gibraltar and Britain and another 250 US Navy aircraft from carriers would then arrive and take over the ex-French landing grounds.
By a series of ruses, the 20 German U-boats in the Mediterranean were encouraged to concentrate to the east of the landings. Those in the Atlantic were encouraged to go south to Freetown and not hang about the Bay of Biscay or the entrance to the Straits. As a result, and with our now instant ability to crack the German Enigma coding machine, not a single ship of the huge, converging, convoy was sunk by a U-boat.
Biter and the rest of our particular convoy took ten days to reach the Mediterranean. Only on the first and on the last two days was the weather any good for practice flying. Even then, only Victorious performed, perhaps because she was even more out of practice than Biter or Dasher. As we steamed in her wake, we could see Albacores of 832 and 817 Squadrons making practice landings on her pitching flight deck. Already we had seen two of her 17 Albacores float past us as they fell over her side. Their crews sat in their heaving dinghies, waving as they passed us and grinning all over their faces. As the third lot went by, our batsman said that he had seen the same crew twice, that of Sub-Lieutenant ‘Mat’ Wotherspoon. By the end of the day, there was a queue of destroyers waiting near Victorious to return the various aircrews to her, by jackstay transfer.
It was now 7 November. Bill Bruen summoned us to the wardroom to tell us some further details of our task. Our squadron was to provide the close escort for the first strike on Oran, against the French airfields. 804 and 891 Squadrons, each with eight Hurricane Mark IIs in Dasher, were to provide the top cover for this strike. The Albacores of 882 Squadron from Furious were to be loaded with 500 pound bombs. Their target was to be the French fighter and strike aircraft at La Senia, the main French military airfield. It was to be a dawn attack and we could expect French fighter opposition — up to 30 Dewoitine 520s. The other French airfield, Tafaroui civil airport, was to be covered by the newly embarked Seafires flying from Furious in 801 and 807 Squadrons. Their main job was to prevent DW 520 reinforcements reaching La Senia during our strike. The two Fleet carriers, Victorious and Formidable, would be providing the general air defence of the Fleet further off shore. This surface force, including Nelson and Rodney, would remain ready to provide shore bombardment or defence against any Italian or French Naval attempt from Taranto or Toulon to hinder the landings. In the event, the French scuttled most of their Toulon fleet to prevent the Germans from seizing it and the Italians did not appear at all.
We asked Bill Bruen what the chances were of the French fighters coming up against us. He replied that the French Navy was determined on revenge and their Air Force would back them up.
We were pleased to hear that each carrier would be controlling its own aircraft. There was also an HQ ship — a small liner bristling with aerials, radar, 20 mm flak, Admirals, Generals and Air Vice-Marshals — ready to take charge of the land fighting in its early stages.
Bill Bruen was particularly experienced in escorting strikes of Albacores against shore targets, for he had flown with 800 Squadron Fulmars on the Petsamo/Kirkenes raid in July 1941. He had not talked about the raid. One did not shoot a line in the Fleet Air Arm. We assumed that it had been a great success and knew nothing of its stark tragedy. As we got up from the meeting, Bill called out six names, mine and Greyhound’s among them, to report to the briefing room after supper. Greyhound and I exchanged winks for we had been chosen with four others to do the pre-dawn strike escort on the morrow.
After supper we went up to the Ops room and met the very down-to-earth and experienced Ops Officer, Lt/Cdr ‘Rab’ Phillimore, DSC, RN. First the Met man told us that the weather would be cloudy over the sea but clear over the land. Ops gave us our call signs, the layout of the French AA defences at La Senia and along the coast, and information that there were 200 French strike, torpedo and fighter aircraft at their two main airfields and at their seaplane base at Arzeu. We were also handed American automatic pistols and ammunition, about £800 (today’s value) in French money, and maps and escape gear. The six of us, Bill Bruen and Jock Ritchie, Bill Roberts and Outwin, myself and Greyhound, then went down to the hangar to have a last look at our aircraft and tell our crew that they would have to get up at ‘o-crack of sparrow fart’ the next morning. Greyhound and I slid a couple of empty wine bottles into our Hurricanes’ flare chutes to frighten the citizens of Oran as we passed overhead next morning. It had been an excellent briefing and we felt confident.
La Senia airfield was at the eastern end of a 25-mile-long, dried-up salt lake. It was about five miles from the coast and south of the town of Oran. The dawn raid was intended to make it impossible for French aircraft to attack our fleet or invasion barges. If we struck before dawn they would be caught on the ground. If we did enough damage, they would be discouraged from taking any part in offensive fighting at all. They might then show us white flags. We were told to look out for them. The fighting might all be over in a day.
Although our task had been made crystal clear to us, I was not at all confident on my and Greyhound’s night flying ability. I had only done six hours night flying in my life and only two of those on Hurricanes. Here we were, escorting slow old biplanes from some other carrier, in darkness, never having seen an Albacore at close quarters before and flying into a possible hornet’s nest of DW 520s. Howevers we put our trust in Bill. Furthermore, we had faith in our ‘Admiral’, Commodore Tommy Troubridge. He had come to visit us in the wardroom informally to get to know us. He was a great character, with his opera glasses round his neck, and his forthright manner that we could trust. We had heard of his extremely brave action in shining Indomitable’s searchlight in operation ‘Pedestal’ to give his Hurricanes a chance of finding his ship. We knew that he would not now be sending us on some sort of Balaclava.
Lt J. McNares was leading the Albacores. Bill had said at the briefing that he knew him well as an excellent strike leader with vast experience. He had told McNares that he would position our six Hurricanes in the dark part of the sky during the approach to the target so that he could silhouette the enemy fighters against the dawn sky if they came in to attack the Albacores. This, we all thought, was fabulous stuff. Not only had Bill taken the trouble to brief us on what he was doing, but he had also told the Albacore leader of his outline plan before we had even sailed from Greenock.
My diary, dated 10th November reads:
“On the morning of ‘D’ day, Sunday 8 November, we got up at 0430 and were given a few last minute orders and climbed into our aircraft. As usual we flew our own aircraft.”
“It was pitch black when we got up on the flight deck to man our aircraft and we thought it would be a matter of luck whether or not we managed to find the Albacores taking off from Furious that we were supposed to be escorting — close escort. Six Hurricanes from Dasher (all from 804) were doing the top cover.”
“We had to take off in any order, as our aircraft were not arranged properly except that the CO had had his aircraft moved to the front. I was doing ‘dots’ on my upward recognition light with Nav lights on. Bill did ‘dashes’ to attract Outwin. The CO did a ‘steady’.”
“We climbed up through a thin layer of cloud, still not seeing a thing except, down below, the wakes of a few ships here and there. Greyhound saw me all right. I looked out to the right and there he was, about 20 yards away, his exhausts shining red hot. I found the CO with Jock Ritchie and joined him. But Outwin didn’t find Bill Roberts and didn’t come at all.”
“The CO got the Albacores silhouetted against the lightening sky in the east and we went after them. The CO weaving above and behind, me and Greyhound a bit lower, and Bill underneath somewhere. We had about 200 feet difference in altitude between us as we weaved, trying not to overtake the Albacores which seemed to flying at about 75 knots to our slowest safe speed of 160.”
“The top cover (804 Squadron from Dasher) then arrived, very ropey indeed. One of them saw Bill on his own and tried to form up on him. He broke r/t silence to tell him to bugger off. The ‘applecores’ went so slowly I thought we should never get there at all. Some idiot — in 804 — had left his transmitter on and we had to listen to heavy breathing for most of the way in. The only way of finding out who it was, was to ask for a ‘tell off’ of all those present. The chap who doesn’t answer is the culprit. We had to try to keep quiet so we never found out who it was.”
“After the first 45 minutes, there was still no land in sight so we started to economise on the juice a bit. It was getting a bit lighter now and we switched off our lights. Greyhound said afterwards that he switched off his mag switches by mistake.”
“We arrived over the target after an hour’s flying, without any opposition, when I looked up and on the port bow, and beginning a dive down on the Albacores ahead — who were just turning right into the hangar area of the target — I saw what might have been Seafires from Furious. I called on the radio and slammed the throttle and fine pitch lever forward just in case they weren’t Seafires. I looked out at Greyhound. He had seen the puff of black smoke from my exhausts and had followed. (He is a super Number Two).”
“There were about ten of them and they were easy to see against the light sky. Then one or two of the leaders started to fire yellow tracer at something. I pushed the nose down to get a better look and saw another light-coloured fighter getting in behind an Albacore, already in its bombing dive. So I turned sharp right and followed him down. Before I could get in range I saw another yellow-looking aircraft on my port quarter above me. He fired and I could easily see the (20 mm) tracers, little yellow blobs chasing each other, as they passed me by to my left. I turned left steeply so that they passed me harmlessly behind.”
“By pulling hard on the stick I was able to out-turn the chap shooting at me and after two more complete turns I was beautifully on his tail, closing in on him all the while. After no more that a touch on the button I saw yellow flames coming from his exhausts and almost immediately I saw the pilot climb out of the cockpit and fall away. The DW 520 dived straight in and that was that.”
“I had not been able to watch my tail while I was chasing the 520 and there were aircraft all over the place. I took such violent avoiding action in case any Froggies were on my tail that I did a few turns of a flick roll by accident, before realising it. The nose had dropped and in pulling up out of the dive I blacked out, coming to in the usual steep climb and feeling very lonely.”
“No one could possibly have followed me in such manoeuvres for I was out of control myself, so I began to feel a little safer. I had a look below (I was at about 8000 feet by then) for a bit more game. I could see masses of flames from the airfield now in the distance to the south west, so I turned towards them. I next saw a yellow-painted job following a Hurricane and got him more or less in my sights, closing in under and behind, to get a good shot at him before he saw me. He turned too late and nowhere near steeply enough. I turned well inside him and I could not miss. He stupidly reversed his turn during the fight and made it even easier to get on his tail. This one only took another half second burst, if that, and he too disappeared in a yellow flash of flames as his whole aircraft blew up, 100 yards in front of me. The pilot didn’t seem to get out this time and he crashed like the first, just north of the airfield.”
“I felt thoroughly frightened by now expecting to be set on by furious Frenchmen who could not have failed to see what I had just done. I called up Greyhound on the r/t. He at last answered. I told him to start back to base and he agreed, but he said he was having a difficult time getting away from the Froggies. I told him to make for the town of Oran at 5000 feet, where I would wait for him. A few minutes later he told me that he was now clear and was going back on his own. So I did likewise. He sounded very excited, his voice reaching top C.”
“In the half-light of dawn I felt naked. I asked the ship for a homing vector. I sighted Furious and circled her for a bit, not sure where Biter was and short of fuel by now. I saw Rodney or Nelson in the distance and did not go near for they always fire at you. As Furious didn’t answer my r/t call and Biter did, I steered the course they gave, 060, hoping she wasn’t far away.”
“When I arrived over her I was down to 1600 revs and minus two boost, just enough power to stay airborne, and with the fuel down to five gallons. She then told me to land on Dasher instead.”
“When I landed on Dasher I found that the gun patches on the three outboard guns on the starboard side were still intact, ie three out of the 12 Brownings in the IIb that I was flying had not fired at all. No one could possibly believe me now, that I had got two DWs with only 60 rounds gone from the other nine guns and with 90 per cent of the ammo left. (I needn’t have bothered, however, as Greyhound, the CO and Ritchie all got one and all five were confirmed by the Army next day.”
“I asked the Ops Officer in Dasher why I could not land on my own ship and he told me that they had had a prang on deck and as I was short of fuel, Dasher had accepted me.”
“After this I thought that I ought to tell the Ops Officer in Dasher that I had seen several other Hurricanes orbiting Furious. One of 804 had had its flaps down and looked about to ditch. I also told him about 804’s attempts to join up with our close escort and that no one had seen anything of them the whole way in or afterwards in the air battle. He then told me the news that not one of the six Hurricanes of 804 Squadron had returned and that they were by now well overdue.”
Later that day, amid chaos in Dasher, we found that most of 804 had got lost. The ship had been miles out of position so they had failed to find her. They had then returned to the salt lake where several had made ‘wheels down’ landings. There was a chance that some would get back to the ship if they could get their aircraft refuelled by the Army. One of the six, Sub-Lieutenant K. A. ‘Piggy’ McClennan, a New Zealander, had baled out over a destroyer which had picked him up. Later, he told us that when he pulled the ripcord and his parachute opened with a jerk, his flying boots had come off and he watched them fall into the sea far below him. He was still going round the ship in his socks at the time, as his cabin was out of bounds because of a bad petrol leak nearby.
Outwin’s aircraft had gone U/S after take-off and he had landed straight back aboard Biter. Bill Roberts had not yet returned. He had landed on the salt lake too. When he got back next day his story was that he had borrowed fuel from some American Dakotas which had landed on the salt lake as well. Apparently these Dakotas had come from UK with paratroops and had also got lost. We wondered what tales 804 Squadron pilots would have to tell and why they had all missed the show.
I was, apparently, the only pilot from 800 Squadron in Dasher that day. There were a few pilots of 891 around. They didn’t seem to know what was going on either. Then, when I was beginning to think about breakfast, the Tannoy told me to report to the Ops room. I was told to take off alone, then join up with another five from Biter who were taking-off at the same time. I asked Dasher’s Ops what they had in mind, and was told that Biter’s aircraft would probably know but no one aboard Dasher had a clue. I was just to join up with them.
So, at 0930 I took off and joined up with what I soon realised was the Senior Pilot’s Flight of four, plus my number two, Greyhound. We flew round and round the beach at Arzeu and saw nothing apart from some dust and a little friendly flak. I noted:
“When we got back to the ship after nearly two hours of wandering about, I heard Biter tell us to land aboard Dasher. So we all went over to join her circuit, except Muir-Mackenzie, who landed aboard Biter.”
“When the five of us landed on Dasher, ‘Blinkers’ Paterson, the batsman, told us we were now in place of 804 Squadron who had all got lost. We took a poor view of this and told him so.”
“Soon we got to hear that there was a ‘flap’ on. Some French destroyers had come out of harbour from Oran and were about to make some sort of dirty dive at the nearest landing craft, or something. We asked anyone we saw who looked as if he might know, where they were. I and Andrew Thomson went up to the bridge to ask someone there, but they didn’t know either. Time was getting short, the aircraft were by now nearly all refuelled and the ship was turning into wind. Andrew and I rushed back down on deck and climbed into our aircraft with not a single clue on what, how, why or when, we should be required to attack the Froggie destroyers.”
“As Greyhound and I only had .303 guns in our particular Hurricanes, we should be a fat lot of good making strafing attacks on destroyers. Still, we were ready for take-off and I hoped that Andrew and I could make a go of it.”
“Luckily the Aurora (a cruiser) took care of the French destroyers and we didn’t have to go on this mad scheme at all. We just continued to sit in our cockpits, waiting for the next cock-up that this ridiculous ship would think up for us.”
“Just as we were allowed to climb out of the cockpits and go down to have some food for the first time since 0430, we were told that we would have to fly at 1300. As it was five minutes to one at the time, we duly got back on deck to try to find out what we might have to do. The choice, we though, was almost infinite. Yet not a soul appeared to know, not even ‘Blinkers’ Paterson, the only sane member of the ship’s company that we had met so far.”
“When we got airborne and were orbiting the ship asking Biter what we might have to do, Dasher at last came up on the r/t, for the first time ever, and said: ‘Patrol map reference position . . .’ (La Senia airfield apparently, after much juggling with maps in the cockpit), ‘and watch out for bogeys coming in from . . .’ (another impossible map reference position. Tafaroui?).”
“I was just about to set course when my engine stopped stone dead. I was in formation at about 2000 feet. I pushed under the formation and called Dasher for an emergency landing as my engine had stopped. They answered; ‘Wait. Over.’ I explained that I couldn’t wait. They answered something or other, but as I couldn’t make out what it was I put the hook down and selected coarse pitch to prolong the windmilling glide. I remembered what Pilot Officer Jack had said about allowing plenty of height on the turn in and the final approach, and miraculously arrived over the rundown with flaps and wheels down in time for a proper glide decklanding. I waited for the pull of the arrester wires. It didn’t happen and I continued on into the barrier. They had forgotten to put the wires up. The flight deck engineer had gone to lunch and couldn’t be found in time. So my beautiful Hurricane was wrecked in the barrier.”
“I suspected a fuel leak or something. But the very clued up Air Engineer Officer of 804 Squadron (Lieutenant ‘Spike’ Tracey) told me it was water in the petrol, so all Dasher’s flying was cancelled until the offending ship’s tank was found and the fuel lines purged.”
“They found the fault, so they said, by tea time. All refuelling after that was done through chamois leather filters and took three times as long as a result.”
The Archer Class of ‘Woolworth’ carrier had a water displacement system instead of the inert nitrogen gas used in RN ships to guard against aviation fuel vapour explosions in half empty fuel tanks. The American system caused continual trouble and made the use of chamois filters mandatory, until the Royal Naval system eventually replaced it. The diary continues:
“The morning’s alarms and excursions, orders, counter-orders and half-baked ideas all seemingly coming from the ship’s Ops room but with no one really owning up to them, made it the most twitch-making day I have spent in the war so far. All of us were browned off by tea time and we had nothing to show for it.”
“Next day, after sleeping in the Captain’s day cabin on camp beds in our flying overalls and feeling a bit unshaven, we sort-of stood by, sort-of took off, sort-of planned to shoot up some Froggie staff cars at some road junction or other. Actually we did none of these things and got more and more frustated.”
“Dasher could only make about 12 knots because of her engine trouble. There was a terrible smell of petrol everywhere down below and no one was allowed to smoke on board. We asked one of the junior engineers, who came down to the wardroom for lunch — complete with sweat rags, cotton waste in his overall belt and a dirty, anxious face — what was going on. He said that the ‘Bloody diesels had blown another pot’ and one engine was only giving half power. This explained why the ship was jumping a foot in the air at about 100 times a minute.” (See Appendix 4, HMS Dasher and 804 Squadron’s failure at Oran.) I noted:
“That evening after much palaver and entreaty, we were allowed to fly back aboard our ship, Biter. I was allowed to take one of 804’s spares. This was rather nice of their AEO who, I think, sympathised with us in 800 Squadron. It was so nice to see my own crew again and they quickly repainted the Squadron crest on 804’s spare aircraft.”
“No wonder I could not land on after the DW battle. This was because Greyhound had pranged his Hurricane, coming in on a semi-glide through lack of fuel, and making a full toss into the barrier. He said — in his priceless way — that he hadn’t even noticed the prang when he landed, he was so excited at having shot down a 520. He only remembered that ‘it seemed a bit lower that usual’ when he climbed off the wing.”
“Three Albacores had failed to return, but two of the crews were safe. The leader had, however, gone down in flames in his first dive. They had set the hangars on fire and there were a lot of extra explosions.”
The operation was as good as over for us. Twenty Spitfires from Gibraltar had now arrived and had taken over Tafaroui, and finally La Senia airfields, for their own use.
We eventually read in our history books that two RN sloops, Walney and Hartland, full of infantry and technicians, were sunk in Oran harbour. They had been wrongly informed that the French would allow them in but were cruelly and revengefully ambushed and fired on at 50 yards range by the French destroyers there, suffering murderous casualties.
As junior Subs in the RNVR we were, of course, impressed with the sight of Rodney, the bombardment ship. We assumed that she had done a good job. It was not until after the war we learned that because of the inaccuracy of her 16 inch armament, she was asked to stop by the HQ ship who could see what she was doing, as she was “preventing the Americans from getting ashore”. Future naval shore bombardments were done using spotter aircraft where possible.
Another point of interest was that on capturing the airfield at La Senia on ‘D’ plus one, and the seaplane base at Arzeu, the troops found that all of the 46 French aircraft destroyed had been fully armed with torpedoes or bombs. Had not our raid against La Senia succeeded so well, our two assault carriers would have presented them with a fairly easy target if they had been found in the poor weather, for the Seafire defence was mostly providing CAP over Tafaroui in the early morning. We had only 40 fighters at Oran. Although this was a huge number by RN standards, it was only a quarter of the number used by the Americans in their similar landing at Casablanca.
The Oran landing was the only one of the three which was decided by force of arms, and not by early capitulation by the French. Lt Barry Nation landed at Blida airfield near Algiers and accepted its written surrender. The document is on view at the FAA Museum at RNAS Yeovilton, Somerset. He flew back with it to his carrier — Formidable — and handed it to his Captain. Besides the seven DW 520s shot down, only one German aircraft was shot down — a Ju 88 from France. This was by Seafires of 880 Squadron from Argus, off Algiers.
On our journey back to Gibraltar, we sat down to a semi-formal dinner in Biter’s wardroom. We were feeling happy that night for we had just heard the news of Rommel’s first defeat — Monty’s breakout from El Alamein on 2 November. It was also the night of the second anniversary of the Battle of Taranto, already enshrined in FAA history. The Commander, the Mess President, made a speech. He voted 800 Squadron the best in the RN in spite of Taranto, and Bill Bruen modestly agreed.