On our voyage round the arid southern coast of the Australian continent, we had time to read newspapers taken on board with the mail at Fremantle. They made no mention whatever of any British activities in the Pacific although the BPF had already been a month and a half at sea in Operation ‘Iceberg’. In fact we wondered where the British carriers were, for they were not in Sydney Harbour when we eventually steamed through the Heads on 8 May. The reason for the news blackout had been that Admiral Rawlings wanted nothing to do with the Press aboard his Flagship, King George V. Although he eventually relented and allowed some very incomplete and inaccurate coverage so that Britain could read about it, few if any were allowed on board the carriers during ‘Iceberg’ and afterwards. These security considerations and the lack of space for journalists, contributed to the BPF becoming the ‘Forgotten Fleet’ in direct contrast to the Americans.
We flew off before entering harbour to a newly constructed Mobile Naval Air Base (MONAB) at Nowra. This airfield was carved out of the usual eucalyptus forest a few miles from the sea and about 60 miles south of Sydney. Morale of both squadrons could not have been higher while we were at Nowra. The beautiful city of Sydney welcomed us and the BPF with open arms. The hospitality of the Australian families, with their own sons still overseas or POWs and with a far higher percentage of their population in the forces than ourselves, had to be seen to be believed. There was only one minor incident during our stay at Nowra. Norman Goodfellow landed ‘wheels-up’ one day. It improved morale if anything, for if the Senior Pilot could do it, life wasn’t quite so critical for the more junior boys.
One night in a Sydney nightspot, Romano’s, Dougy Yate, Norman and I ran into Tim Singleton. We asked him why he had not yet joined our happy throng. He went straight back aboard Chaser and organised his immediate transfer. We were so glad to have him, with his wise good humour.
The VE Day party at Nowra went on until moonrise at 0100. We went outside the wardroom, a wooden hut with rafters and a tin roof, and we listened to the sound of revelry within. We could also hear the cicadas and the squabble of a few parrots, disturbed from their night quarters by the unaccustomed noise. Miles from home and with a sense of foreboding, we wondered what we were going to have to do now. We did not have to wait long. We were summoned aboard Implacable again on 24 May. All 22 aircraft which we had taken ashore landed-on in five minutes flat.
Our sister squadron, 801, has managed to preserve its Line Book. It is now in the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton. Of this period, I read the following:
“We were told to be ready to be back on board by 0630. We are still straining to go by 0800. A signal arrives, ‘ship delayed’. We are used to these little setbacks, having been attached to the lady for nearly seven months. Jimmie Primrose leads a small choir to while away the time. The morning is hideous with negro spirituals, and my landing-on twitch comes out in peculiar forms.”
“Around 0830, 880 leap into the air. The powers that be have ordered a rather significant delay of one hour before we are to follow. The ship was steaming along in perfect weather, for a change. We must have arrived early for she was just about in the rendezvous position so the usual square search wasn’t necessary.” Later on, the Line Book continues:
“As we near New Guinea (on the way north), 801, 12 Flight, make history. With a loud fanfare by the ship’s buglers and accompanied by the National Anthem, Lt Ray Saxe, S/Lt Squires, Lt McLean and S/Lt Temple walk out to their first Seafire ‘readiness’ in the Pacific. Or did they just shamble up, keeping out of the way of the deck hockey. Now you come to mention it, perhaps they did.”
There was, of course, much rivalry between the two Seafire squadrons, and our sister squadron was keen to uphold its seniority. Reading its Line Book for the first time in nearly 40 years, the competition seems to have figured much in our thoughts and this was probably encouraged because it helped to keep us all on our toes.
The voyage north had been without incident, except that Lt/Cdr W. R. MacWhirter went over the side like his predecessor. He was picked up, but his Observer was not. The Firefly Mark II with its Griffon engine seemed to have a nasty power-on stall, with little or no warning to the pilot.
The first night in the small, deepwater anchorage off Manus was disturbed by an air raid. This was the first Japanese inspired ‘red’ warning we had had. It was a fitting reminder, after Sydney, that we were in hostile territory, with the Japs not very far away in the hills of Manus and New Guinea a few miles to the south.
On the second day at Manus, some of the BPF arrived from Operation ‘Iceberg’ — three rather shaggy carriers, with Implacable’s ‘high speed finish’ standing out in the otherwise deserted anchorage.
Two days later, we all steamed out to sea. Although a huge exercise had been laid on, we spent the whole morning sitting in our cockpits on deck waiting for the fog to clear. At lunchtime the exercise was cancelled, but ten minutes later the fog cleared, so a new scheme was hatched up in Wings’ sea cabin on the bridge. This was limited to a single, 880 low-level ‘strike’ on the Flagship, Formidable, 40 miles away. It was a brilliant opportunity to catch the Admiral with his head down after lunch. Of course we went in at nought feet. By a miracle there were no navigation mistakes, and we happened upon the ‘enemy’ dead ahead. Twelve Seafires made a simultaneous beeline for the Admiral’s bridge in Formidable. We had terrific fun — according to my log book — and polished off Formid in ten seconds flat, before a gun had moved round to follow us.
In my diary I noted that we received a signal from Vian that day. It said:
“Proud to have you with us.”
Our Captain’s obsequious reply was no better. It said:
“Thank you. We hope to improve as we operate under your command.”
This reply gave everyone else in the BPF and future historians the wrong impression, for it was Implacable’s air group that led the way in combat and ground attack techniques and in carrier procedure in the forthcoming operations — albeit the ship, herself, had much to learn.
Next day we were back in harbour. At five o’clock we attended a ‘Fair’ on the flight deck, organised by the ‘springer’, the Physical Training Instructor. Coconut shies (with local coconuts), skittles, ballgames, Aunt Sallies and deck tennis. The ship’s company were issued with one bottle of beer each, whether they were tee-total or not. The big attraction at sunset was the final of the tug o’ war between the Stokers’ and the Petty Officers’ teams. The Stokers won.
More Seafires were obviously not going to be welcome in the BPF unless, first, we could operate for longer than the two hours maximum afforded by the existing slipper tank of 45 gallons. Secondly, we needed something else to offer besides CAP, for we would soon die of boredom if there were no Kamikazes and THAT was all we were allowed to do. We therefore determined (a) to find an alternative to the 45 or 90 gallon ‘ferry’ tank, and (b) to offer dive bombing as a subsidiary role.
The ship went to sea once more on 5 June and we practised strafing and making dummy dives at a splash target towed astern. No 801 Squadron’s Senior Pilot, Lt Bill Brewer, RN, had already done some bombing practice at St. Merryn before he joined. He led eight of 801 and I took four of 880 with a 500 pound bomb apiece and we dived from about 6000 feet in a 45 degree dive. Needless to say we did not hit the target, but it was fun while it lasted, until we heard that S/Lt Dane (801) had pulled his wings off in full view of the ship. He had been in the squadron since June 1944 and his loss was felt very much by 801 Squadron (See Appendix 11.)
Later that day, a new Admiral, Rear Admiral E. Brind, CB, CBE, whose designation was CS4 (Flag Officer Fourth Cruiser Squadron), waffled over the round-down in an Avenger to pay us a visit. He was going to command us from his Flagship, Newfoundland, in a forthcoming operation. A Walrus also ‘splashed’ on board. It was to be our Air/Sea Rescue craft.
Our next ground attack training effort was made on the unsuspecting island of Towi, a very small, uninhabited — we hoped — coral island offshore and suitable for a bombing target for our Fireflies, Avengers and Seafires. This was obviously a dress rehearsal for something, and we wondered what. By the end of the day all that a photographic Seafire could find of the island was “a few floating palm trees and excited monkeys shaking their fists”. Was it Churchill who said: “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at, without result”.
After two more days intensive flying, we returned to Manus on the evening of 7 June to store and replenish the ship. I see from 801’s diary that we played them at water polo and beat both their teams. We also attended lectures and heard our C-Balls — Major Scott and his assistant, Captain Bob Hudson — giving us all a lecture on photo-recce and survival in the jungle.
In the extreme heat and humidity of Manus, the skipper allowed bathing for the whole ship’s company. The ship’s boats crew threw small depth charges to scare the sharks. Johnny Boak and another Canadian pilot, this time from 801, did a 60 foot swallow dive from the flight deck and won a bet of five shillings (25p) each.
During these three rest days, our search increased for a replacement for the 45 gallon tank. We needed a 90 gallon torpedo-shaped tank, as in US Navy aircraft. We did not want a 90 gallon slipper tank designed merely for ferry purposes as used by 24 Wing in Indefatigable.
I was allowed to fly off in harbour to Ponam airstrip, to ask the Americans for help. There I was given a seat in a Stinson Reliant which took me to the Naval Air Maintenance HQ on Pittilieu Island, which we shared with the Americans. I was shown into an American Colonel’s office to talk about long range tanks. He told me to get my Commander (Air) to phone him on the TBS link or send a signal if we didn’t have a linkline (which we didn’t) and have a talk about it. He said that he knew of 60 or so Kittyhawk (P40) tanks in New Guinea. These were ex-Australian Lease-Lend torpedo-shaped, 90 gallon tanks and they would doubtless let us have them if we supplied the transport. He even gave me some rough drawings of them, which I took back on board.
It looked hopeful and C-H and Wings made the necessary arrangement for payment — two crates of Johnnie Walker — and gave the drawings of the tank to our Chief Air Engineer, Lt (E) Brian Hattemore, RNVR. He quickly produced some bomb-steadiers welded to our 500 pound bomb rack fitting and we were about to be in business. All we now needed was the supply of 90 gallon tanks to be sent from New Guinea.
On 12 June we steamed out of Manus once more and set course northwards. The ships in company were Ruler (escort carrier), the four cruisers Achilles, Swiftsure, Newfoundland and the Canadian Uganda, plus our faithful rescue destroyer, Terpsicore, and a few others.
Our target was to be Truk. The name Truk laid a cold finger of fear upon all of us when we first heard it announced. It was the Japanese Pearl Harbor, a possession of theirs since 1920 with 40,000 men in a 40 mile radius atoll, crowded with airfields and a deepwater anchorage sufficient for all the world’s navies. Stuart and I studied some recent American photographs. After this, we gladly concluded that it was an empty shell of its former self, consisting mainly of bomb craters, burned out buildings, sunken ships and with scarcely a target in sight. But you never knew with the Japanese. They might all be dummies.
At dawn on 14 June we were about 80 miles off the atoll. We started on the largest flying programme the ship had attempted. A couple of recce Fireflies took off before us in pitch darkness. Eight Seafires of 801 then took off as CAP over Ruler — our ‘spare deck’ — and another eight of 880 for CAP over Implacable and the five cruisers. At 0545 another four of 880 and another eight of 801 took off for photo-recce and strafing. Our targets were to be anything reported as worthwhile by the Fireflies, on the main island of Dublon. C-H was leading the two flights from 801 and I was leading my own 21 Flight.
Although we took off in a rain squall we still managed to form up without delay and set course for the target. However, there was a solid wall of black cloud ‘down-to-the-deck’ in front — we were operating in the middle of an intertropical front — and C-H was heading right into it. We were at sea level when we entered this thunderhead and there was absolutely no point whatever in attempting to fly in formation through it. It went up to 20,000-30,000 feet and raining stair rods throughout which obliterated the windscreen, and sideways visibility to half a wing span. There was nothing for it but for me to take my four on a gentle climbing turn through 180 degrees in the cloud and return to the ship, hoping that the ship would now switch on her beacon for us to get her position.
Still on radio silence, I came out of the cloud without Arkell, my number three. (My number two was Mike Banyard; Arkell’s number two was Scott.) Pete Arkell had lagged behind for the past mile before we entered the cloud and had not joined up close before we hit it. I flew the remaining two into a clear patch a few feet above the sea and climbed up into the cloud myself to listen for the ship’s beacon.
Having joined the other two again, I luckily found the ship (without the aid of the beacon which had not been switched on) and was sent, by Aldis lamp signal, to Ruler. She was not on the course given so I had to carry out a square search, still with only two Seafires besides myself, and worrying about Arkell. As wireless silence was still in force in spite of the ship being outside VHF enemy wireless range of Truk, I could not even tell them that Arkell was probably lost.
I and my two then landed on Ruler with our last five gallons. Just as I taxied forward, last on, I saw Pete appear out of a black cloud about two miles off. He just made it before the ship was engulfed in almost solid water. His propeller stopped as he opened up to taxy forward of the barrier after he landed, his tanks barely damp with petrol. ‘Bats’ then climbed up on his wing and bawled at him for stopping where he had. Pete’s reply was unprintable.
Then the squall of tropical wind and rain hit Ruler. In 20 yards visibility and in almost solid, stinging, stair rods hitting us at 50 mph, we helped the crews lash down our aircraft.
When it was over, our folded Walrus ASR aircraft parked forward of the barrier on the port bow had disappeared. The Captain reversed course to find it and we saw it just about to go down by the stern. That was the end of our Air/Sea Rescue arrangements. It had blown over the side, unseen by anyone.
I found out what had happened to Pete. After our take-off we had set course so quickly that no one noticed that he could not get his starboard undercarriage fully up. This had made his engine boil (the undercarriage leg obstructs the cooling air to the radiator unless it is fully locked up) and he had to reduce power. Whilst searching for the ship he had come across a Japanese aircraft. His story, told 40 years later, is as follows:
“It was a radial-engined job, perhaps a Myrt, and going very fast. It didn’t take any notice of me at all. I was boiling and couldn’t catch it, although I gave it a long distance burst, probably too far away to have any effect. When I went up to the bridge of Ruler to report, the Captain told me not to judge it so fine next time, presumably referring to my shortage of fuel. He wasn’t trying to be funny, either.”
The reason for the near loss of Pete and the probable reason for the actual loss of S/Lt Mervin Payne of 801 on this, his first operational trip, was doubtless due to his becoming lost on the formation entering rain and cloud at zero feet, and the ship’s insistence on radio silence. The forward view in heavy rain in a Seafire was nil. Even sideways view in tropical rain was only ten yards. Wireless silence also prevented a leader’s necessary tight control of the aircraft in such weather. The heavy rain, mixed with salt on our aircraft radio aerials, also caused r/t failure in most of our aircraft. Payne did not appear at the far end of the cloud with the two others from 801 Squadron in C-H’s Flight who made it to the target area. He was neither seen nor heard, after entering the cloud. In future operations, ‘r/t tell-offs’ were allowed on deck before take-off, even in conditions of wireless silence. This enabled pilots to check that their radio would work if they had to use it in an emergency.
On the subsequent land-on in Implacable, 801’s diary reports:
“Merv Payne did not turn up at the r/v and after waiting five minutes C-H turned once more into the murk and we made our way on instruments back to the steamer. There, the situation was nearly as fraught. Ben Tillet had to do an emergency (landing). The rest of us, still airborne, then had to watch an Avenger go into the drink before Gunson hit the barrier, causing still more delay . . . So with this inauspicious start for 801, we continue the day’s work, parking down in Ruler for a spell while Implacable sorted herself out.”
My diary reports:
“On our second trip we had a go at some oil tanks at Dublon with 500 pound bombs. (C-H was leading again, this time in better weather. Radio silence had at last been lifted, so everyone knew what was happening,) One of 801 Squadron’s eight Seafires said he read the gauges (on the oil tanks) as he went by and they were empty. We may possibly have cracked one of the tanks, but there was obviously nothing in them to catch fire. All our bombs were close together, downwind, as Seaweed had given us the wrong aim-off direction.”
“Next day, with the Avengers playing ‘intruders’ all night and keeping us awake, we were briefed to do some bombardment spotting. I obviously had to lead this, being an old hand at the game. I was given a complicated code and told that the four cruisers would each fire different-coloured smoke shells, so there would be no chance of the aircraft spotter pilots muddling up whose shells were which. There were six of us, operating in pairs.”
When I reported to the bridge after the spotting trip I was not particularly surprised to see long faces. It had been ghastly. The shoot had been a complete waste of time, as the ships’ r/ts had not been working properly. Furthermore, one of the ships reported that her ‘gunnery table’ aiming system was u/s and she was shooting independently. This she did all over the place, and confused the rest
However, shore bombardment was important to the Navy for it was the only independent contribution which the non-carrier fleet was capable of making in the Pacific. It therefore figured large in their reports to their Admirals and to the Press, and thus the history books, in spite of its insignificant accomplishments and vast consumption of valuable stores. The Daily Telegraph said, under a heading: “Japan’s Gibraltar a battered wreck”:
“Truk Atoll has been heavily attacked by elements of the British Pacific Fleet. Aircraft carriers, with a strong escort (sic) of cruisers and destroyers, directed a 48 hour battering of the Japanese garrison on the islands.”
“On the morning of the second day, closing in on the outer reef to some 8000 yards range, cruisers supported by destroyers, pounded the seaplane base, airstrips and oil installations. Over the targets, Seafire spotting planes led by Lt/Cdr R. M. Crosley of Sherborne, Dorset, observed the fall of shots. Fireflies led by Lt/Cdr W MacWhirter of Keyhaven, Hampshire, circled the outer coastal defences to neutralise any resistance. Large shell bursts could be seen on the seaplane base and airstrip and runways. . . .” etc., etc.
The results claimed were rubbish of course and must have made the Americans smile as it did us when we saw it several weeks later, repeated in our overseas mail.
When I arrived on the bridge afterwards — having seen no hits on anything — it was obvious that I was in the rattle. The Captain said:
“What actually did you say on the r/t Crosley?”
“Well, sir,’ I answered in my best manner, ‘we had very poor r/t from the ships. We missed a lot of their transmissions and they must have missed a lot of ours. They carried on shooting on their own and without any help from us. My target was already being covered with shots before I got there, by someone or other.”
“Yes, but what did you actually say?”
“Well, I think I said something like, ‘There’s only one bit of sea round here and all the shots are falling into it’.”
“It’s certainly offended the gunners. They are saying you were unhelpful.”
“Yes, sir, but we couldn’t help them. Their r/t was useless and I think their targets must have been too close to each other as their shooting overlapped.”
The Captain was determined to get to the bottom of it if he could.
“But they used different-coloured bursts, didn’t they? Couldn’t you see which was which?”
What the Captain did not know — or anyone else — was that the colours could only be seen if they burst in water. They could not be seen over the land, as coral dust made it impossible to see any colours.
“All right Crosley. I know you did your best and you’ve had a bit of spotting experience, I hear. Let’s hope we don’t hear any more of it.”
There was no debriefing, so no one learned a thing from it. Ships with intermittent and fading radio (probably caused by poor siting of the radio aerials) could never be expected to realise that it was their own radio at fault. Later, it became clear that, unable to communicate with the spotters, the ships had turned to ‘visual control’ from their bridges. They could see in the clear weather what they assumed were their own shell bursts. They had therefore made their own corrections, not realising that it was the coloured water misses they could see and not the lesser (uncoloured) explosions on the coral on land and which remained below their horizon. No wonder all their shells landed in the ‘oggin because that is where they were directing their own fire. Later, when I read of this, I learned that three of the four ships were new to shore bombardment and none had done it with aircraft before.
The lack of heavy flak and any effective air or sea opposition at Truk could have made us overconfident. Nevertheless much was learned by Implacable, and not without its tragedies. Charles Lamb was gravely injured by a Firefly propeller. It happened in the first range of the day, in darkness. The trolley which was used for catapulting Fireflies was being reset for the second Firefly. The tubular steel arms of the trolley had not sufficiently collapsed as they should have done, and, as they passed back through the undercarriage legs of the second Firefly, unseen in the darkness, they were struck by its whirling propeller. One of the hard ‘Jablo’ blades was flung off and all but severed Charles’s legs. He tells the fantastic story of being found on the flight deck in the darkness by a rating. He asked the rating to get a stretcher. ‘What for?’ was his reply. He was taken ashore at Manus, protesting in case Surgeon Commander Keevil, DSO, the PMO in Implacable, might amputate the remains of his legs. He recovered after a year, his life saved by American penicillin and his indomitable will. He finally returned home at the end of the war in Indomitable, a brave and unselfish man.
Lt Trevor David stepped into Charles’s shoes on the flight deck and life was able to continue.
Later, on the same day as this accident, an Avenger was catapulted off with only one strop. The aircraft went off the catapult ramp sideways and hit the sea. It was at night and the pilot was not picked up. The Observer and TAG (Telegraphist Air Gunner), however, got clear of the aircraft before it sank and both were picked up by Terpsicore. The third loss was, of course, Mervin Payne of 801 Squadron.
Two days later we were all back at Manus again. The ship was melting under a vertical, midday sun, bang on the Equator, on Midsummer’s Day. Even the fish in the lagoon had passed out and with their beautiful colours bleached white, were floating on their sides on the surface.
These were to be our last five days at Manus. We flew ashore with six Seafires from each squadron to Ponam. The airfield was in sight of the ship lying offshore. We had to say goodbye to Tim Singleton as well as Claude Leighton, and to Crabtree. All were suffering with the heat. David Crabtree eventually rejoined, but Tim and Claude were grounded by the doctors and could take no further part. Dougy Yate also had ear trouble and was temporarily in the sickbay.
Several new pilots joined the squadron at this time, all 20-year-old Sub-Lieutenants. John Marshall, John Joly and Roy Gilmore. I knew Marshall from Henstridge days where he had been my pupil with Lowden and Reynolds. He became my Number 2. John Joly made a good impression immediately and was able to take part in the forthcoming operations, but Gilmore and a few others lacked experience and could not cope with our attack methods. It would have been unfair to have asked them to join in immediately.
As the sun beat down upon Implacable in the tropical harbour of Manus and as sickness became a serious factor in the ship’s forthcoming usefulness, the ship’s officers waived their seniority rights to the better cabins, and the ship’s company ratings waived their ‘first come first served’ rights to the better mess decks and sleeping arrangements on board. The air department on board was then better placed to withstand the humidity and the high temperatures between decks. But the fans continued to blow hot, wet air through miles of steel trunking to no purpose. By the time it reached E deck and my cabin it consisted merely of a loud noise, the air itself having been waylaid en-route by many thieving devices. Showers were possible twice in the 24 hours, but no water had been brought up from Sydney and the ship had to make use of distilled water from her own evaporators, at a cost, so said ‘Chiefy’ of £2,000 per ton at today’s prices. The ship used 40 tons a day when at sea, and about 20 tons when in harbour, half due to steam leakages.
While at Ponam I arranged to fly a Corsair. In WW II, few strictures applied to flying each other’s aircraft and no questions were asked. The version I flew for a couple of hours was the F4U-2. I compared its responsiveness to that of a Lagonda to my much lighter MG, for it was half as heavy again as the Seafire. However, as it had geared tabs on the ailerons — being a much later design than the Spitfire — the aileron stick forces were half those of the Seafire at speeds above 300 knots. When the throttle was closed in the landing configuration it had the gliding angle of a brick and when it hit the runway with a thud, it stayed there, keeping itself straight with its lockable tailwheel. The view over the nose was far better than the Seafire’s, as its engine cowling was rounder and subtended a narrower angle, but the sideways view over the edges of the cockpit was not as good. The cockpit layout was immaculate compared with the hotchpotch of the Seafire, but the multitude of chromium-plated switches needed long arms to reach. The general comfort, cockpit air-conditioning, and lack of noise, was superb.
The Royal Navy’s social comforts ashore were in stark contrast to those of the Americans; but directly the Americans realised how we lived, our men were allowed to visit the American canteen on the island of Ponam. In fact, had it not been for the overall feeling that we were about to face further privations and death in the forthcoming operations against a fanatical enemy, we would have enjoyed our last five days on this island paradise.
Ashore, I had a reed hut to myself. It was beneath the palms, against a blue lagoon and with a snow white beach strewn with coconuts. Flying foxes with their prehistoric eight-foot wing spans crashed around overhead. Lizards scuttled to and fro in the brilliant sunlight. But sandflies and the humidity reduced our sleep, for it was too hot for mosquito nets until just before dawn.
There was often time for bathing. This was at a little bay along the side of the lagoon where either the Japanese, or the Americans after them, had scooped a deep pool out of the coral with explosives. We found it only slightly cooler in the lagoon than ashore in the shade. The temperature of the water was about 90 degrees F, like a warm bath, and, to cool down it was necessary to stand wet in the slight on-shore breeze which occasionally wafted the palm trees in the early afternoon.
Some of us put on shoes and walked out into the shallow expanse of the lagoon. Through the crystal clear water amongst the sea urchins and multicoloured fish we could see all manner of marine life. Huge clams, with two-foot, wide-open jaws, would suddenly snap shut and send sand and water six feet into the air.
Then there was the joy of a cool, early-morning flight over the outlying islands. We would open the cockpit hood for a clearer view of those below — the beautiful smiling native girls with their arms raised to us as we sped overhead. What could they be thinking? Then we would circle over more mundane things such as the Officers’ Heads. These consisted of a line of stalls at the end of a ‘T’ jetty over the lagoon. We flew as low as we could past them. We wondered what interesting arrangements the French would have designed for their Navy, had Richelieu or Dunkerque been around.
The RN wardroom ashore had the longest bar in the Pacific. American wardrooms were ‘dry’. Although we did not drink 12 hours before flying, we often had a night free. On one of these, Dennis Kirby won the jackpot on the fruit machine in the mess just before closing time. He was therefore late getting back aboard ship that night and he missed the liberty boat. He, Dancaster and Griffiths of 801, decided to swim back aboard, in deep water, regardless of sharks. Luckily the Officer of the Watch saw them in time and sent a boat to pick them up.
In spite of these diversions, we still had our troubles. We were doing ADDLs with the new boys one afternoon. Stuart’s boys were performing. S/Lt Peter Record was making the usual curved Seafire approach. As at Trinco, the station had been incorrectly laid out for curved-approach decklanders, so that the approach path of the Seafires lay straight over a wireless aerial post 150 feet high. We therefore had to move the touchdown position for our ADDLs further down the runway in order that the Seafires would miss the wireless pole by a safe distance, and near-miss a few palm trees instead. When Record had done his six ADDLs, he was told, over the radio, to land. However, forgetting about the aerial and not warned by the control tower, he moved his final touchdown position back to the unsafe position to get the maximum landing run. He hit the wireless mast. The Seafire overturned as it hit the runway, pinning Record in the cockpit. We rushed up and lifted the tail high in the air, and, had he been conscious, he might have been able to scramble out, helped by many others who had come running up. But he had hit the gunsight and had been knocked out. Suddenly there was a roar, and the whole aircraft went up in flames, engulfing us nearby and causing us to drop the tail back on the runway. Seconds only had elapsed and the fire tender arrived. But its crew were dressed in bathing shorts rather than their proper, fireproof, asbestos suits — because life would have been impossible in them — and they could not enter the flames at once. Neither would the CO2 extinguishers douse the flames sufficiently for Record to be immediately dragged clear.
After a full two minutes of this torture a crane arrived. It slid a strop under the tail to lift it. Record’s poor body was removed and taken to the sickbay. He lived for six hours. There was no escape from the war, for a day later, someone found a dead Japanese soldier trapped between rocks close by our bathing beach, where he had been for the past six months.
When we got back on board we found that 100 rusty Kittyhawk tanks had arrived. The Americans and Australians had delivered them just before wardroom bar-opening time, in a dishevelled-looking picket boat. The tanks obliterated the picket boat and crew up to a height of ten feet. We hoisted them and the crew aboard and stowed them everywhere, even in our cabins. The two American officers were entertained to lunch in the wardroom. We managed to make it a memorable occasion, for us, for they could not have remembered a thing about it themselves. Every time they asked for their gins to be diluted with water, they got water-laced-with-gin. It was a self-defeating process. They were mostly horizontal by the time they got back to the picket boat. Their crew wasn’t any better. The ‘gasoline gig’ picket boat took a very dangerous and unseamanlike course back to the jetty.
Two days later C-H and I were flown off in harbour to check out the tanks. We both complained about the tail buffet at speeds above 180 knots. It would have made their use impossible. I suggested dropping the tanks a further four inches to allow more air to pass between the fuselage and the tanks. This cured the buffet, but only allowed a mere four inches of clearance between this half-ton of petrol and the ground; not very much when the main oleos were compressed for a decklanding. However, the benefits were so great, the fuel flow so easily checked (we fitted a transparent feed pipe as well), and Admiral Vian would be so pleased, that we modified all 48 of our Seafires with the necessary ‘claw’ type fitting to hold the tank under its belly. We could then stay in the air for about three and a half hours and, except for bombs or rockets, take part in all the strikes and all operations on a par with the Corsairs and Hellcats in the other carriers.