The hasty conclusion that ships are impotent in the face of air attack should not be drawn from the Battle of Crete.1
Viscount Andrew Cunningham
Group Captain F. W. Winterbotham of the British Secret Intelligence Service claimed in his published memoirs that, as a result of the Battle of Crete, the British finally learned that warships were incapable of surviving in the face of exposure to large numbers of land-based enemy aircraft.2 For reasons that will become clear, it seems doubtful that this assertion—published many years after the event and entirely from memory—can really be representative of what Winterbotham actually thought at the time. His conclusion seems self-evident in the light of subsequent actions. The dramatic loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse to Japanese naval dive- and torpedo-bombers, and the great sea battles of the Pacific where aircraft played the dominant role, have led to lazy assumptions regarding the situation in western waters. Here, the Royal Navy was facing an enemy air force that was undeniably powerful but not comparable with that of the United States or Japan. This assertion that the warship of 1940 could not stand up to mass air attack without substantial air cover remains stubbornly rooted in the public consciousness despite the comparatively recent work of academics disproving this.3
As mentioned previously, a former German pilot, Lieutenant Gerhard Baeker, articulated the doubts of the Luftwaffe in overcoming the Royal Navy in these circumstances through the medium of a television documentary repeated periodically on digital television channels.4 Two authors have pointed out that prior to the loss of the Repulse and Prince of Wales there was no reason to think, even in late 1941, other British heavy ships could not operate in areas without guaranteed air cover and where there was a likelihood of heavy enemy air attack. Only three of the twelve capital ships sunk between September 1939 and November 1941 had succumbed to air attack alone and these were Italian battleships sunk at anchorage (but not permanently negated) by torpedo-bombers. One attack, on the German battleship Bismarck, was made by a combination of gunfire and torpedo strikes. Four ships were sunk by gunfire alone and four by torpedoes from submarines. Significantly, none sank by bombing alone, though smaller ships were more vulnerable. Twenty-eight British destroyers and five cruisers had been eliminated in this form of attack.5
In fact, Vice Admiral Sir Arthur Hezlet dismissed the ability of small warships to operate a flotilla defense in the English Channel in the face of Luftwaffe superiority. He also stressed the reluctance of the Home Fleet to face a single Air Corps (Fliegerkorps) in Norway, pointing out that the fleet would have needed to contend with five Air Corps based in France. If the Royal Navy had needed to engage in a suicide operation without air support, he argued, the result would probably have been worse than at Crete as naval forces would only have been slightly greater, whereas the enemy air force would have had roughly four times the strength it was to have at Crete. He also doubted the ability of the fleet to use the repair facilities between Portsmouth and the Humber while under air attack and asserted that Hitler did not invade “because the Luftwaffe could not defeat the Royal Air Force.”6
What is called for is a fresh look at the bombs versus battleships debate as it applied to the situation in 1940. In this context “battleships” means all Royal Navy ships including their personnel, together with the anti-aircraft (AA) defense of bases providing replenishment and emergency repairs. There was far more involved with Operation Sea Lion than the question of whether German airpower was a match for British warships in 1940, but it is the fundamental assumption that British warships could not stand up to Luftwaffe attacks that needs closest examination. As Hezlet has rightly made some comparison between the Battle of Crete in 1941 and the situation in home waters during 1940, this chapter provides a more detailed analysis of the problems. While several changes may have occurred over the eight months between September 1940 and May 1941, Crete provided useful indications into the strength of naval morale at this early stage of the war as warships and crews were subjected to unprecedented attack from the air.
There is no doubt that the anti-aircraft defense of the Home Fleet and the local flotillas operating in the Channel had some limitations. However, senior naval opinion was initially satisfied with it and believed it even more important than fighter defense. That this over-confidence pervaded all levels of the Royal Navy may be doubted. Lieutenant Commander J. A. J. “Alec” Dennis thought that the anti-aircraft defense was “pathetic.” While serving on the destroyer HMS Griffin as a junior officer, he was appalled to see how a radio-controlled Queen Bee target aircraft was able to fly straight and level through the fleet’s barrage and emerge unscathed on the other side during a 1939 exercise.7 An important reference book on naval weaponry has categorized naval anti-aircraft guns of a medium caliber to be within the range of 3 inches to 5.25 inches, firing explosive shells with timed fuses, and further supplemented by anti-ship guns to provide barrages often timed to burst at 1,500 yards. These were not very accurate but nevertheless extremely effective in closely packed formations of enemy bombers trying to make low-level bombing runs at medium and longer ranges. Also effective were the close-range guns automatically rapid-firing projectiles at less than 1,500 yards. A well-publicized handicap was the inherent limitation of the high-angle control system for controlling the medium guns, but anti-aircraft fire control was weak in all navies, with the possible exception of that used by the U.S. Navy.8
A detailed explanation of the working of the high-angle control system is complex, but it was competently explained in a wartime book written for a general readership. In essence fire control was managed by means of a director, which is a dummy sight usually mounted on the bridge or as high as possible. Elevation and direction positions could then be transmitted to gun layers who directed the guns onto the aircraft with the received data.9 It was conceded that the guns did not automatically follow the directors and required the manual following of pointers for aiming, an operation difficult to accomplish while under fire. In another specialist’s opinion, it was only likely to work properly with experienced personnel against slow aircraft.10 To try and improve the fleet’s air defense capability, a few older cruisers had their 6-inch guns replaced by 4-inch guns to carry out a new stop-gap role as specialist anti-aircraft ships. Inevitably this made the AA cruisers unfit for most other purposes. Consequently, a new class of cruiser was invented (the Dido) and this was just coming into service in 1940 with 5.25-inch guns for greater flexibility.
Largely because of inadequate gun mountings, the most vulnerable ships were the destroyers, most of which relied on World War I–vintage 4.7-inch anti-shipping guns for air defense. Being unable to elevate above 40 degrees they were vulnerable to dive-bombing attacks between 40 and 90 degrees. Luckily for some personnel, a few Hunt-class destroyers had 4-inch guns capable of high elevation. The majority of ships possessed close-range machine guns from .303 rifle caliber to 40 mm and in 1939, a situation similar to that of 1940, a typical major warship armament’s effectiveness owed almost everything to the skills of the operatives and comprised “two 8-barrelled 2-pounder pom-poms and four twin Lewis guns.”11 One naval critic blamed the 40 degrees restriction on “reactionary” Admiralty attitudes that mountings permitting elevation above 40 degrees might compromise LAC (low-angle control) ship-to-ship gun performance.12 This aside, by the mid-1930s the Admiralty needed to take account of having to fight a Japanese navy that reports indicated was already achieving gunnery accuracy well beyond anything the British could then achieve, and they were understandably reluctant to make the differential worse.13
Unfortunately, in 1940 all these problems were compounded by a shortage of the very effective Oerlikon 20-mm and Bofors 40-mm rapid-firing cannon for close-range defense. However, by 1937 a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence had already considered the problem of close-range anti-aircraft gun shortages. Serving on this committee were the well- known “appeasers” Neville Chamberlain and Sir Samuel Hoare. The Admiralty had been unlucky in backing the development of an inferior gun from the British manufacturer Vickers, and while this could supposedly deliver a higher rate of fire than the available Swedish-made Bofors gun “trials had proved most unsatisfactory.” Belying his popular image as a relentless cost-cutting appeaser, Neville Chamberlain argued that the financial effects of ordering the weaponry abroad were not “necessarily over-riding” and that he recognized “the essential need of obtaining a satisfactory weapon.” After much discussion it was agreed that the War Office could open negotiations with Messrs. Bofors for one hundred of their guns plus ammunition together with an option for extra ammunition at a later stage. However, British close-range anti-aircraft gun development would still have to be continued, as nobody was sure that Messrs. Bofors could satisfy the demand.14 Although not implicitly stated, hopes that British designs might lead to substantial contracts for British firms and a subsequent easing of chronic unemployment problems were bound to impinge upon the decision-making process. Unfortunately the Vickers was “slow to bear onto the target and slow in rate of fire.”15
Although the Chamberlain government has often been blamed for complacency and penny-pinching on defense matters, they were merely following the trend prevailing since the beginning of the twentieth century. Naval technical development had become so expensive that the Admiralty had circumscribed the activities of its own research establishments, increasingly leaving this to the private sector. Despite the Anglo-German arms race prior to World War I, the naval budget was subject to severe financial restraint in order to pay for the Liberal welfare reforms from 1908. For their part, private-sector armaments firms had little commercial incentive to spend money on unprofitable military development in peacetime. Even in 1909 the Royal Navy may have been over-reliant on Vickers and Armstrong.16 The situation had not improved much given the nation’s financial state during the 1930s and it was even suggested that by 1937, Vickers was “almost a branch of the Admiralty.” This critic claimed that British gun makers helped delay acquisition of more useful weapons such as the Swiss-made Oerlikon for the next two years and blamed the Admiralty for its alleged “age-old naval custom of opposing change.”17 Given these problems and the apparent over-reliance on an inadequate AA defense it might be expected that the Luftwaffe would have achieved spectacular results against Royal Navy warships in this early phase of the war. Surprisingly perhaps, this is not borne out by the evidence the Admiralty collected.
As would be expected, the Admiralty looked very closely at the effects of aircraft against shipping and prepared a report entitled Tactical Summary of Bombing Aircraft on HM Ships and Shipping from September 1939 to February 1941. Written in 1941, this report analyzed the experiences of the Merchant Navy and the Royal Navy during this early phase. As the authors admitted, the data had some limitations. It only included attacks where enough detail for analysis was obtainable and did not include ships damaged at anchorage, possibly because it was unclear whether the bombers were aiming at the ship or the harbor facilities. Even if the attacks were directly aimed at the ship, it could be argued that such attacks were unrepresentative as warships would be static and unlikely to be operating an anti-aircraft defense. Neither was it thought relevant to include ships refitting as these were not considered operational.18 A “successful” attack was considered to be one in which the ship was either sunk or forced to seek extensive repairs over several weeks or months. None of this necessarily represents the situation the Royal Navy would have faced during a naval Battle of Britain, but it does say a great deal about German bombing techniques and their effectiveness in a maritime role.
For example, it is clear that the Luftwaffe’s best ship-destroyer was the Ju 87 Stuka.19 The chart in Appendix I compiled from these Admiralty data (excluding that of attacks against merchant shipping) shows clearly that dive-bombing was the most effective bombing method to use against shipping, and the best warplane for this purpose was the Stuka. However, the report does not mention that the bombing potential of this aircraft depended to some extent on whether it was the B-1 or B-2 version.
Neither does it mention that dive-bombing is subject to reasonably clear visibility and a high cloud ceiling, preferably between 10,000 feet and 15,000 feet. This was rarely a limitation in the much more predictable and fine Mediterranean theater, but in the notoriously unreliable meteorological conditions in the North Sea and English Channel, an unexpected deterioration in the weather would have negated the dive-bomber as a weapon. It is also known that the Ju 87 was slow and vulnerable to AA fire, which was fine when diving steeply against isolated smaller ships unable to elevate their guns above 40 degrees but against larger ships it meant flying through intense barrages. Even when diving, the Ju 87 was slow, seldom exceeding 200 mph, as opposed to most American and Japanese equivalents that could do this at up to 350 mph. It was usually most vulnerable to AA fire during the pullout when the dive-bomber was within a few hundred feet of the warship.20
However, the majority of the Luftwaffe’s bombers were not Ju 87s, but twin-engine medium aircraft such as the Heinkel He III and the Dornier Do 17, which could dive-bomb but were really more suited to high-level bombing. An exception was the twin-engine Ju 88, a versatile all-round aircraft and, by 1943, a better dive-bomber than the Ju 87. However, in 1940, the Ju 88 had not reached the peak of its dive-bomber development and the limited number deployed proved much less fit for combat than the Heinkel and Dornier. Those aircraft engaging in high-level bombing achieved few successes because the altitudes of 6,000 to 19,000 feet were too high for accurate aiming. That bombs were being dropped from these altitudes indicates that the ships’ long-range anti-aircraft barrage was an effective deterrent. According to witnesses, the shells exploding in front of the formation had an unnerving effect and encouraged the bombers to accelerate from 200 knots up to 250 knots as soon as they burst.21 Had this high-altitude bombing method proved effective it seems unlikely the Germans would have abandoned the practice after May 1940. Low-level bombing runs were made at altitudes of around one thousand feet and undertaken mainly by twin-engine bombers but sometimes by Stukas on their way to, or coming back from, other targets. These were slightly more effective against destroyer/escort and trawler/auxiliary classes but unsuccessful against anything heavier. Very low-level attacks at six hundred feet or less were generally dismissed as machine-gunning runs with very little effect against warships. What was described as a “flat bombing trajectory,” where the biggest target was the ship’s side, made the use of bombs impractical and merely exposed the aircraft to anti-aircraft fire in exchange for a negligible chance of succeeding.22
As the foregoing report has indicated, dive-bombing was the most effective method for a Luftwaffe aircraft to engage a warship. According to figures held at the British Ministry of Defence, Naval Historical Branch, the Germans had 1,015 bombers and 346 dive-bombers available for operations from approximately 1 August 1940.23 This meant the Luftwaffe had 1,361 bombers, of which only 25.4 percent were effective ship-destroyers, with the burden falling on destroyer/escort and trawler/auxiliary classes. In comparison with Crete, the Germans possessed 430 bombers of which 150 were Ju 87 Stukas, although the Ju 87s were also supplemented by a few dive-bombing twin-engine Ju 88s. These (admittedly incomplete) data contradict the indirect implication in Hezlet’s book that with four times the aircraft available at Crete the Luftwaffe could be four times as effective in the Channel. It must also be remembered that the Germans needed to focus a significant proportion of their air resources on dealing with coastal fortifications and supporting their army as well as simultaneously engaging warships.
While dive-bombing was effective in good weather against the smaller warships it was still less effective than torpedo bombing. Armored decks and superstructures have to be pierced by armor-piercing or semi-armor-piercing bombs to do appreciable damage, whereas torpedoes were capable of inflicting massive damage below the waterline, and this was a significant weakness in the Luftwaffe’s capability. Only the Kampfgeschwader 26 bomber wing, comprising former naval pilots, had the relevant experience, but they were substantially handicapped with the Heinkel He III, a large, slow aircraft vulnerable to AA fire when making long, slow, and straight approaches. Only slow approaches were possible because the aerial torpedo used was fragile, and in consequence only seems to have been used against merchant shipping.24
In the absence of efficient torpedo bombers, much would have to depend on the efficacy of the bomb. After the war, Admiral Doenitz told British Naval Intelligence that the Luftwaffe had “bombs of far too small a caliber . . . to prevent heavy ships from coming to grips with the landing force.”25 It is well established that the Germans were so short of bombs at the outbreak of war that they resorted to the desperate expedient of manufacturing bombs from concrete. In the circumstances of 1939–40, priority went to general-purpose bombs rather than the specialized types more suited for maritime operations. On the other hand, specialized bombs were unnecessary against the smaller warships. An indication of the effectiveness of bombs against warships can be obtained from the files of government scientist Sir Henry Tizard, better known for his work in the development of the Radio Direction Finding system.
Tizard’s papers contained correspondence from Hugh Dowding, head of RAF Fighter Command, addressed to the Air Ministry regarding an Ordnance Board report concerning failed RAF attempts to successfully bomb German warships at anchorage on 4 September 1939. Dowding believed that earlier experiments known as “Job 74 trials” indicated that effectiveness against armor depended on the bombs detonating after contact in order for the explosion to damage the inside of the ship. He was also contesting an “expert” assertion that the semi-armor-piercing (SAP) bombs did not pre-detonate on the armor plate with the explosive fillings in use. Contrary to what had been asserted by ordnance technicians, the bombs used against the German warships had been bursting on impact as opposed to being detonated with a time-delay fuse as intended. In Dowding’s opinion, those involved were “‘specialists’ who are too lazy to read, or too stupid to understand the reports.” Much of the letter consisted of extracts from technical reports, but a number of interesting points are clear.
Quoting from the report, he drew attention to the fact that the 250-pound bombs with 0.1-second delay, dropped from 4,000 feet, hit the armored deck and rebounded before exploding. One 500-pound bomb dropped from 12,000 feet achieved much higher velocity and did more damage, but only succeeded in penetrating to the inside of the ship by striking concrete, as opposed to armor. In this case the ship’s bottom was blown out. Unfortunately, the other two 500-pound bombs were ineffective, one hitting an armored deck, the other an armored hatch resulting in detonation on contact—that is, by impact rather than fuses. Quoting an enclosure to a report (numbered 0365/74/S and dated 29 November 1938) on earlier experiments, he pointed out that a 500-pound bomb with a 0.1-second fuse dropped from this altitude should rebound before exploding after hitting an armored hatch, but in this case it burst on impact. Three 250-pound bombs with a 0.3-second fuse were actually more effective despite having half the velocity and weight of the 500-pound bombs. Another 250-pound bomb but with a 0.1-second fuse penetrated one deck farther than the 500-pound bomb before rebounding three feet against 4-inch armor. The report concluded that the latter bomb might have detonated “owing to the sensitivity of the filling, rather than its lack of armour-piercing qualities,” suggesting that the casing was probably satisfactory.
Dowding also doubted that fuse delays of 0.2 and 0.3 seconds would work properly for a semi-armor-piercing bomb. A bomb with a 0.1-second fuse delay dropped from 12,000 feet “not stopped by armour” burst in the bottom of the ship, but one with a longer fuse went straight through the bottom and exploded far below. Dowding argued the longer fuses for non-armor-piercing 250-pound bombs existed because there was no expectation of piercing the armor and it was considered more effective to allow the bomb to bounce around before detonating. It is not very clear from this letter why allowing the bomb to bounce was considered to be more effective than direct detonation onto decks and superstructures but the implication is that a ricocheting bomb might drop down an open hatch or explode in the sea immediately next to the hull where water compression would exacerbate the explosive effects. In effect, this would result in what the Admiralty defined as a “near-miss,” something capable of inflicting heavy damage because of the vulnerability of brittle cast-iron machine components.26 The long delay was only acceptable, Dowding argued, if it were known the longer-fused bomb would not penetrate the armor but if it did, then the full effect could be wasted because the bomb would explode too far beneath the ship. Finally Dowding ridiculed what he termed an “American idea” that bomb-blast effects can decisively damage a heavy ship, and quoted trials that took place ten years before showing that 1,200-pound light-case bombs only did localized damage. Finally, Dowding quoted another paper (0365/74/S, dated 29 November 1938), which further confirmed that the semi-armor-piercing bomb was “weight-for-weight” more effective for these purposes than the general-purpose instantaneously fused bomb. Dowding was understandably annoyed that results of the expensive tests he was involved with during his earlier career appeared to have been lost and had been forgotten by the Air Ministry. Consequently “we now have no means by which we can sink a German Battleship.”27
Dowding’s ridicule of an “American idea” is probably rooted in the experiments of U.S. general William Mitchell to sink warships by bombing during the 1920s. Mitchell had worked with British bomber advocate Sir Hugh Trenchard (no friend of Dowding) toward the end of World War I and ultimately became chief of the Air Service Army Group. His well-publicized experiment to sink a series of warships by bombing was exactly the sort of showbiz stunt that would have irritated the introverted, dispassionate scientist that made up much of Dowding’s character. In one test, a 2,000-pound bomb sunk the obsolete battleship Alabama with a center hit.28 The experiments were rightly criticized by the U.S. military for their artificiality, even though the ships had been sunk. After all, the warships had not been conducting an anti-aircraft defense or taking avoiding action. Also importantly, they possessed heavy armor only for the purpose of deflecting shells from the side rather than bombs from the vertical, suggesting that non-armor piercing bombs would have been sufficient in these instances. Mitchell subsequently made himself a nuisance to those in authority and, as many colorful characters do, alienated those who may have responded to a more tactful approach. But to the public his showmanship made him a hero and ensured his place as one of the prophets of airpower. Such was Mitchell’s status that Hollywood immortalized him with the release of Otto Preminger’s well-known feature film The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955). If any film has underlined the ascendency of the airplane over the warship in the minds of the Anglo-American public, this was surely it.
Dowding’s evidence indicates that bombs used against the armored ships of World War II needed to be at least semi-armor-piercing with a stronger steel casing to allow penetration, and fused for 0.1 seconds if 500 pounds. They also had to be dropped from an appropriate height (the report implied 12,000 feet) to achieve the desired velocity. As already indicated by Admiralty data, high-level bombing—though achieving the necessary velocity—was generally ineffective because the bomb-aimer had to cope with factors including the smallness of the target, the fact it was invariably moving, and the drift created by wind. What the Ordnance Board said about Dowding’s comments is not known, but his remarks seem justified, bearing in mind the RAF never showed much expertise in sinking warships by conventional bombing until 1944 against Tirpitz, and this was only achieved using bombs of immense power.29 It might also be remarked that the British experience may not have mirrored exactly that of the Germans but is still a reasonable indication of the problems that had to be faced. An anonymous “Serving Officer in the Naval Air Arm” informed a general readership around 1942 that fuse settings varied from several days to hundredths of a second but against ships would usually be a tenth of a second.30
British experts studied unexploded German bombs and the tactical summary referred to earlier statements that these were of various types and fuse settings. The summary tends to confirm much of what Dowding had said earlier about the greater effectiveness of bombs with slightly delayed fuse settings. Bombs that penetrated deeply into a warship or those that exploded in the water as very near misses would do much more damage than those going through and bursting well below the ship or those that simply exploded upon impact.31 The report indicated that German bombs varied in size from about 50 kilograms to 600 kilograms, though the latter only represented 2 percent of reports. The majority of the bombs reported (70 percent) were up to about 100 kilograms (no more than 250 pounds), and 73 percent of these were fused for delay, suggesting the Germans had some appreciation of the importance of timed fuses.32 Needless to say, “bombs reported” is not necessarily an indication of actual bombs available, and whether the men under fire could really be relied upon to have accurately counted the type and size of the bombs falling upon them seems unlikely. But it does provide some evidence of Doenitz’s assertion that the bombs were far too small against heavy ships. That a few large bombs were reported in this Admiralty analysis can perhaps be put down to the report covering the period up to February 1941, moving outside the danger period for invasion that ended in late October 1940. Armor-piercing 1000-kilogram bombs were used against the modern British carrier Illustrious on 10 January 1941 without sinking her, suggesting the larger bombs were only just coming into service (at least on any scale) by the end of 1940 and would not have been a factor in a large-scale Channel battle.33
Dowding’s letter tells us that the matter of obtaining an effective bomb for use against armored warships is more complex than weight alone, and this issue was one the Germans may have also found confusing. In the milieu of competing priorities before the war, there would have been no reason for Germany to devote significant resources to acquiring enough bombs of a maritime specification. German diplomatic efforts, however incompetently executed, were intended to avoid war with Britain, the only major maritime nation likely to be offended.
Germany did eventually develop effective bombs against warships. These were semi-armor-piercing bombs designated Sprengbombe Dickwandig (SD) of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds), 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds), and 1,400 kilograms (3,090 pounds), but there is doubt as to when they were introduced.34 Another source mentions reports of a heavy armor-piercing Panzerdurchsclags Cylindrisch (PC) of 1,400 kilograms (3,200 pounds) used against shipping and heavily protected targets, some of which fell on the Bristol area. Indications are that this size of PC bomb was not used until 1942.35 The latter type may have been developed because of the disappointing attack on Illustrious using lighter PC 1,000-kilogram bombs in January 1941, as described earlier. In his book The First and the Last, Adolf Galland stated that during the attacks on London that commenced in September 1940, German aircraft bomb loads varied between 2,500 pounds and 4,500 pounds and comprised individual bomb weights of between 150 pounds to 1,250 pounds “and very rarely 2,500 1b high explosive bombs.”36 As a fighter pilot, he obviously obtained these data from a source outside his personal experience, but it does tend to confirm what has been said about the lack of large bombs. The main bomb for the Ju 87 could be as small as 250 kilograms (551 pounds) and could be augmented by four wing-mounted general purpose Sprengbombe Cylindrisch (SC) 50-kilogram (110-pound) bombs. Given that bombs were, of necessity, externally mounted, the opportunity to make last-minute adjustments to fuse settings according to the type of target presenting itself did not exist for the Ju 87 crew.
From approximately mid-1940 onwards, it was the Ju 87 B-2 that carried the SD 1,000-kilogram bomb, and from February 1940 a deflection fork designed around this bomb had been under test at Rechlin.37 The testing appears to have taken some time. The Ju 87 B-2 was fitted with a more powerful engine (Jumo 211D) to lift 1,000-kilogram bomb loads, but few of these aircraft were available in 1940. Twenty-nine B-2s were ordered in June 1940 to be produced between July and September 1940. Another 100 were ordered for production between July and October 1940, with a final order of 98 sometime afterwards. During 1940, the Ju 87 B-1 gradually began to be brought up to B-2 standards by installing the Jumo 211D motor as aircraft were repaired in the workshop for battle damage. Despite this, probably no more than half of all Ju 87s could deliver this more powerful bomb load by September 1940. Only 230 B-2s were produced up to the summer of 1941 and an unspecified number were destined for the Italian Regia Aeronautica (Royal Air Force) during 1940.38
The merits of his bombs aside, a major consideration for the Luftwaffe pilot had to be hitting a vulnerable part of the enemy warship. It must be remembered that the first wave of German shipping was to cross at night, meaning that the problems of scoring hits on warships were greatly exacerbated anyway. As far as the heavy ships were concerned, retired naval architect John Harper Narbeth and Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon revealed some common weak points even before the war had ended. The points where bombs may have caused severe damage were: the lightly armored stern, where there was a possibility of damaging the screws or shafts; the funnel, where there was a possibility of destroying the boiler uptakes; the control top nerve center of the ship; the operating mechanism of the turrets at their bases; and the relatively thinly armored bow.39 All of these were fairly small targets that were difficult to hit. With all the limitations of AA fire, all warships had to rely on their passive defensive characteristics.
As the smaller ships were most vulnerable to air attack it was especially important for these vessels to dodge the bombs being aimed at them. British destroyers proved adept at this. Commander J. A. J. “Alec” Dennis was serving on the destroyer HMS Griffin while she was on lone patrol in the Channel on 6 July 1940. Griffin was attacked by thirty-six twin-engine Dornier Do 17 medium-bombers arranged in four formations of nine each. Swinging around at a speed of thirty knots, Griffin dodged bombs from the first three formations but was shaken by near-misses from the fourth. The ship then went into harbor to repair a few minor leaks but went hunting U-boats very soon afterwards.40 Perhaps Griffin was lucky, but such incidents can also be seen as a tribute to the skill of these British sailors and further evidence of the ineffectuality of high-level bombing against supposedly vulnerable destroyers. In my interview with Ron Babb, who served on a Class 1 Hunt-class destroyer in 1941, he also confirmed the reliance of small ships on evasion, maintaining he had survived many German aircraft attacks.41 Rear Admiral L. H. K. “Turtle” Hamilton wrote to Admiral Charles Forbes from the cruiser HMS Aurora in May 1940 and told him that Aurora had been subjected to a combination of continuous dive- and high-level bombing for thirty-six consecutive hours. He continued: “From my experience, I think that provided one has sea room and independence of manoeuvre in a ship of this size, one is most unlikely to be hit.”42
The captains of even larger ships recognized the necessity of dodging. On 26 September 1939, three Heinkel He III medium bombers attacked the aircraft carrier Ark Royal in the North Sea. Ark Royal’s gunnery officer (later Rear Admiral) T. V. Briggs held a clear view from the top platform deck mounted on the bridge. His account stated that the cloud base was 6,000 feet with visibility from three to five miles. The first bomber made a shallow dive from 5,000 feet along a 3,000-yard line on the port quarter. A “huge bomb” was dropped at 1,500 feet as the captain pulled sharply to starboard. This caused the bomb to narrowly miss and as the aircraft passed over at 150 feet the AA batteries opened fire but failed to shoot it down because the sharp maneuver had disrupted the tracking. The second Heinkel then attracted fire from four eight-barreled pom-poms and four .50-caliber machine guns as it passed over at 100 feet. This “terrific barrage” caused the pilot to lose his nerve and drop the load prematurely. Almost immediately the third Heinkel machine-gunned the flight deck without effect. Briggs recorded that many lessons were learned on this occasion—for example, the substitution of “cease-fire gongs” for voice pipes, and headphones to aid rapid transmission of orders. However, the main problem was associated with the rapid evasion of the ship because it threw out the HAC (high-angle control) system for anti-aircraft defense.
This was the reason why the Air Defence Instructions, 1939 did not permit fast avoiding action against dive-bombers. However, because of experiences such as the one detailed above, some commanding officers felt this action was appropriate when steaming at twenty knots at the start of the attack.43 Even at this early stage of the war, the matter became so controversial that it was referred to the director of the Naval Air Division in October 1939. In reply, the deputy director (later Vice Admiral) G. M. B. Langley pointed out that ship displacement was small during “time of fall” yet high-speed avoiding action might cause the pilot to change his aim in the dive, but he thought this was difficult for a pilot to accomplish. He stated that trials evidence had proved the ineffectiveness of low-speed avoidance but conceded to a probability that high-speed avoiding action would increase bombing error—everything depended on the speed and maneuverability of the ship and the ability of the enemy pilot. Reinforcing the official view, he then gave his opinion that it should not be done at the cost of throwing out the AA fire.
However, other types of maneuvering were considered acceptable. These included “changing course to bring the guns to bear and to produce a high relative wind across the direction of attack.”44 Bearing in mind the Royal Navy’s dive-bombers would soon have the distinction of being the first aircraft of the war to sink a heavy ship (Konigsberg), Langley’s opinion was not to be lightly discarded. Supporting this further, the director of Naval Ordnance expressed his disquiet about avoiding action “with the use of a large wheel” at high speed as it would handicap the long- and close-range AA defenses. There was still a grudging acknowledgment of the AA deficiencies by the statement that “ideal” long-and close-range weapons systems would not become available until 1942–43, and until then the only improvements attainable were likely to “come from practice.”45
Sidney Tyas, gunnery officer of the SS Southgate in 1942–43, was in general agreement with the above official views but acknowledged that his merchant ship was perhaps less maneuverable than naval destroyers, and that the vessels of 1940 were less well equipped with Oerlikon cannon. When “dodging” was necessary, he preferred the method of spinning 90 degrees back to the dive-bomber in order to make the pilot overshoot.46 Despite these objections, captains were going to depend heavily on the ability of their ships to dodge for some time to come. Commander Dennis has suggested that one of the reasons the new destroyer HMS Gurkha was sunk by air attack in the Norway campaign was because her captain was a “gunnery officer” who believed in the efficacy of the AA system and deliberately chose to keep a “steady gun platform without weaving.”47 Gurkha had “detached from screen to improve arc of fire” and had also lost the protection of mutual covering fire from the other warships.48
Bearing in mind the limitations of the AA defense and the heavy reliance on “dodging” it becomes clear that morale would have been crucial in any Channel battle. This was as true for the heavy ships of the Home Fleet as it would have been for the local flotillas bearing the initial brunt of Operation Sea Lion. At this stage, it is perhaps worth reflecting on what “morale” actually is. We are told “it is an imprecise term.” Carl von Clausewitz divided morale into two components of “mood” and “spirit,” the first being transient and liable to change in relatively short periods depending largely on the state of the soldier’s physical comforts. On the other hand, “spirit” is needed to maintain cohesion under extreme conditions, including “murderous fire.” The latter can be created by ceaseless military activity “warmed by the sun of victory.” More recent research indicates that Western armies create and maintain morale by attending to a variety of factors including a belief in the cause, effective training, leadership, a sense of honor, and good logistics. Logistics in this sense means the provision of comforts, food, postal services, and the fostering of self-worth. It is particularly important for the Western soldier to feel part of the substitute family represented by his mates, who rely on mutual support. This research also shows this sort of commitment can temporarily hold off the mental breakdown liable to occur when soldiers are placed under extreme stress for prolonged periods.49 This bears some relationship to what psychologists call “attachment theory” in an attempt to explain human behavior within a framework of social interaction.
It is often when the fleet is at anchorage for long periods that morale is susceptible to steady and potentially disastrous erosion. The revolt of the lower decks in the German High Seas Fleet and the crucial participation of Kronstadt’s naval garrison in the Russian Revolution of 1917 testify to the corrosive effects resulting from long periods of inactivity, which predispose men to defy the orders of incumbent authority. The Admiralty had recent experience of dealing with discontent among the fleet during the Invergordon Mutiny of 1931. Equally relevant were the naval mutinies of 1797, during a war with France and a serious invasion crisis. All of these situations indicate a failure of “spirit.”
Admiral Forbes identified one potential problem of morale at the beginning of the war. This related to the youth of junior ratings without combat experience, even to the extent of “not [having] even heard a gun fire before.”50 Forbes claimed that in HMS Rodney alone, 374 ratings were less than nineteen years of age. Addressing this issue, the director of Naval Intelligence noted that some 22,000 ordinary seamen and boy seamen had entered the fleet over three years, marking a period of rapid expansion. These youthful sailors amounted to 50 percent of all active seamen, and he considered that in the circumstances the high proportion of young men in all active service ships was not surprising.51 Whether Forbes was concerned about potential fighting efficiency or simply expressing a paternalistic noblesse oblige is difficult to ascertain, but “youth” was not necessarily a disadvantage. The advantage of “youth” for those individuals committed to a cause can be an inability to envisage the fatal consequences of engaging in battle. Members of the Hitler Youth fought with extreme tenacity in the fierce Normandy battles of 1944 despite an average age of sixteen, though it seems likely the factor of “youth” may work best if coupled with that of an intense ideological drive and training.
But it was the relative lack of action for the Home Fleet that caused the greatest concern. Despite the failure of the hunter-killer experiment intended to remove the U-boat threat from the Channel with mixed groups of heavy ships, there were no major actions to participate in. Apart from the sinking of Graf Spee and the expedition across the North Sea to test equipment against the Luftwaffe, there was not much action for the men beyond routine patrolling and escort work. Ron Babb of HMS Rodney reflected upon some frustration belowdecks that the enemy was not being engaged. Nevertheless, this was not seen as a significant problem of morale or a symptom of “no confidence” in the leadership of Admiral Forbes. The men were kept busy practicing drills and getting used to the equipment.
In 1940, the Royal Navy took the view that morale was primarily the concern of each individual ship’s commanding officer; however, Admiralty files do reveal some wider concerns over morale at the end of 1939. The director of Personal Services (DPS) commented on “very real and widespread resentment” among the men and their families that much of their work was not being adequately publicized. The DPS discounted the idea of mutiny as “absurd,” but noted how disheartening it was for the men to see other services receive “inspired publicity” while “they themselves and their arduous work are the main bulwark of the country” and were largely ignored. Interestingly, it was the lower deck that felt this the most and the ratings did not understand why it was not feasible for the navy to have the type of regular radio broadcast on the lines of “our observer attached to the Army/RAF” enjoyed by the personnel of the other services.52 The file was passed to the desk of Admiral J. H. Godfrey, director of Naval Intelligence, who obtained an interview with Fredrick Ogilvie, director general of the BBC. A discussion ensued on the lines of reducing the depressing frequency of broadcasting shipping losses and giving the navy a higher profile. On the latter item, some substantial progress seems to have been made. The BBC commentator, Bernard Stubbs, had already increased his output on naval matters, and possibilities of broadcasts from battleships or shore canteens were discussed. A proposed system of accrediting newsreels and photographers to naval commands was also being considered.53 This was all considered “satisfactory” and the file closed. However, the navy was never going to match the RAF for inspired publicity in 1940.
Morale was first put to the test during the Norwegian campaign in the spring of 1940. On 5 May 1940, the commanding officer of the AA cruiser HMS Curacoa reported that his Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve ratings manning the guns were “very much shaken after the first bomb salvo of near misses but after a few encouraging remarks, their behavior was all that could be desired.”54 Ron Babb in the engine room of the battleship HMS Rodney heard the Ju 87 Stuka sirens through the air ventilation system but as an engine room artificer, occupied with a great many jobs, found he was not overly concerned. While some of his colleagues working deep in the ship worried about having to get out of the bowels of the ship in an emergency, he could not recall anyone breaking down over it. Expressing confidence in the ship’s ability to fight the enemy, he rated Rodney’s gunnery and construction highly, pointing out that it was Rodney’s guns that later “did in the Bismarck.” This is surprising considering Rodney was a modernized but fundamentally old battleship built under the terms of the Washington Naval Agreement of 1921–22, which imposed severe tonnage limits on capital ships. When questioned further about morale in the Home Fleet during 1940, Babb asserted that it was high throughout the fleet and denied that it ever fell in the face of bad news. Because he took part in rugby matches and had conversations with other ships’ crews at the Scapa Flow base, he was able to state the prevailing attitude was one of “give us six months and we’ll knock ’em to kingdom come!”55
Writing to Admiral Forbes from HMS Aurora during the Norway campaign, Admiral Hamilton praised his men. On 27 May they had done fifty-one consecutive days “under weigh [sic] with no leave or let up to the sailors.” He allowed there had been a moment when the men got “a little jumpy over the bombing” but this was only at the end of thirty-six hours of constant air attack. Hamilton confirmed that it was the men between decks that got the most jumpy but even they eventually reached a point where exhaustion enabled them to sleep through a raid. One petty officer did go to the Sick Bay but threats to “disrate him and put him in cells, and if necessary . . . shoot him” kept him at his post. An unfortunate Chinese crew attempting to abandon their merchant ship was also dissuaded with violent threats. What particularly impressed Hamilton was the “alertness and awareness of the destroyers attached to me,” suggesting that morale was also high in the ships most vulnerable to air attack. A feature of the Norway campaign was the greater need for constant alertness among the crew, as the Luftwaffe could shield their approaching aircraft with the mountainous terrain and reduce the available warning time to a minimum. As the report of Curacoa observed, “In the fjords, everything is to the bomb-aimers advantage,” also a reference to the constricted room for defensive ship maneuvers.56 It seems, then, that those crewmen most susceptible to mental breakdowns were often less directly involved in the fighting, and because they could not see what was occurring had to contend with their destructive imaginations. But in any case the option of fleeing was hardly a feasible one. Where the captain wanted to go the sailors had to go too.
The most severe test for the Royal Navy in the early phases of World War II must have been at the Battle of Crete in May 1941. It must be stated that the circumstances of this battle could not have exactly mirrored that of 1940. The equipment was similar but not quite identical and the geographical and meteorological conditions somewhat different. As in Sea Lion, the navy needed to operate within close range of numerous enemy bombers in order to frustrate enemy land forces arriving by sea. Crete is an island approximately 160 miles long and with considerable mountainous terrain. The Royal Navy had to enter the Axis-“controlled” Aegean because Crete’s harbors, bays, and airfields were located in the north and facing the Wehrmacht waiting on the Greek mainland. Unfortunately, the warships also had the disadvantages of operating nearly 450 miles away from the main naval base at Alexandria. A related problem was that RAF fighters lacked adequate range to operate over Crete from North Africa for long periods. The Fleet Air Arm could not compensate adequately for this deficiency as they only had a few low-performance fighters operating from a single aircraft carrier. Consequently, the air defense burden from repeated and sustained attacks fell on the ability of the captains to dodge the bombs and upon the skills of their AA gunners. As in 1940, there were still not enough guns and the destroyers’ AA mountings were still generally incapable of high-angle elevation. This meant that a great deal still depended on the gunners’ ability to stand up to murderous fire and their skills in sighting through a primitive “spiderweb” sight.57 It did not help that many sailors were already tired from recent operations such as evacuating the army from Greece and from having to escort convoys to Malta. So great was the strain among the sailors that Admiral Andrew B. Cunningham (known as “ABC”), the C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet, was driven to warn the First Sea Lord about the pressures on his officers and ratings “particularly in the anti-aircraft cruisers and destroyers. . . . Never a trip to sea without being bombed.”58 On 20 May 1941, and as German paratroopers dropped over Crete, the Mediterranean Fleet attempted to prevent the enemy from landing seaborne reinforcements. The fleet was organized into four surface “forces,” A, B, C, and D. As the battle progressed, these groups would change their components but the ships would usually operate together, rather than as individual units. One consequence of operating so far from base was a shortage of AA ammunition, amounting to an approximate 25 percent shortfall in most warships.59
Alec Dennis was serving in the destroyer Griffin, which was part of Force B with her sister ship Greyhound and the cruisers Gloucester and Fiji. He has vividly described how Force B came under heavy air attack during 21 May. Twenty Ju 87s carried out the first attack, coming down in “groups of three, one after the other, dividing their attention among all four ships. It was a classic attack, technically interesting, physically terrifying and, actually, ineffectual.” Dennis went on to explain how all the bombs missed as they weaved around at full speed with the cruisers throwing up large amounts of flak. The AA fire was equally ineffectual. “We pooped off with our 3-inch museum piece, and our 0.5-inch machine guns did their best with their antedeluvian [sic] control system,” he was to write. With ironic humor he continued, “They deserved better luck as one could see holes appearing in the aircraft, but little bullets like that weren’t much use unless they hit the pilot in a painful place.”60
Force B then sailed west to rendezvous with battleships beyond Kithea but soon after the first attack the same Ju 87s struck, again without success. Only the night before, Admiral Sir Irvine Glennie’s Force D had destroyed an invasion convoy of twenty-five vessels of fishing boats (caiques) and coasters carrying troops, artillery, anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, and a few tanks. Then on 22 May, Rear Admiral Edward Leigh Stuart King’s Force C forced another invasion convoy of forty caiques back to Greece. If Force C had not come under massive air attack it seems likely it would have totally destroyed this convoy. Irritated at this lost opportunity and what he must have considered a bad error of judgment on the part of King, Cunningham was to write that the safest place for King’s ships would have been in the middle of the enemy convoy.61 Sadly, King may not have been the best person to command Force C, as he had difficulty maintaining a calm demeanor in a crisis. Commander Sir Godfrey Style wrote to the official historian after the war and told him that when there were problems on the bridge “ELSK would come in and push one out of the way.”62 These mistakes ended King’s seagoing career.63 For all that, these contributions by the navy ought to have won the Battle of Crete for the British. The Germans had intended to transport light tanks once sea communications were secured, but in the event this was not achieved until German airborne forces decided the issue by the capture of Maleme airfield.
The capture of Maleme and the subsequent British retreat left the Royal Navy to carry out an evacuation of British and Commonwealth troops under fire. Inevitably, evacuation piled further pressure onto the naval forces and the ships coming under air attack were now overloaded, a factor hindering the defense. Dennis wrote later: “Johnny [Lee-Barber] avoided all nine [Stukas] with great skill, turning as far as possible into the dive at 30 knots. . . . With all the extra weight on board, this meant a sickening roll over at each turn, and one wondered . . . whether we might turn over anyhow.”64 The fleet now took a serious pounding but the navy had done everything it had been called upon to do. Cunningham was later to write: “That the fleet suffered disastrously in this encounter with the unhampered German Air Force is evident,” he conceded “but it has to be remembered on the credit side that the Navy’s duty was achieved and no enemy warship or transport succeeded in reaching Crete or intervening in the battle during these critical days.”65
The Mediterranean Fleet did do its duty in dire circumstances because the sailors’ morale was strong enough to endure this trauma, and because the ships had sufficient defense capabilities to survive hours of constant air attack. The ships that went down did not do so easily. The light cruiser Naiad sustained an estimated 108 hits over two hours, having dodged over thirty-six near-misses in one ten-minute period. The cruiser Fiji endured over thirteen hours of air attack before being hit by a bomb in the forward boiler room. Another strike half an hour later caused the captain to order, “Abandon ship!” Many other ships endured heavy and sustained punishment including the destroyer HMS Kipling, which staggered through an astonishing eighty-three attacks within a few hours. Another destroyer, HMS Kandahar, was commended by Cunningham for her part in rescuing survivors from Greyhound and Fiji while enduring heavy machine-gunning and bombing; he also noted that she had undergone twenty-two separate air attacks over some four and three-quarter hours.66 Dennis condemned the initial splitting away of Greyhound to sink a caique as “a serious mistake.” He claimed that her fate could have been foretold by any of the men at the scene, and on trying to rejoin the other ships Greyhound was sunk by eight Ju 87s. The subsequent need to rescue survivors led to the splitting away of Fiji, which in turn was sunk. Shortly afterwards, the same fate befell Gloucester. These ships had been detached singly and therefore sustained unnecessary casualties and damage. Gloucester and Fiji were both low on ammunition, and in the case of the latter had been down to practice-ammunition (solid shot). Ruefully noting that Griffin was the last survivor of Force B, he wrote: “[T]he lesson of it all, which should have been known already, was: stick together.”67
Unsurprisingly, some mental breakdowns occurred in the wake of air attacks unprecedented in naval history. Today, psychologists recognize that the human endocrine system helps the response to emergency situations by flooding the body with adrenaline in preparation for the “fight-or-flight” syndrome. When this occurs, some fifteen bodily changes occur. This response works better in the short term, and if it occurs repeatedly or for longer periods the body will continue to pump hormones into the system. In the longer term the body will consume more resources that it can produce, meaning that the victim can no longer perform normally. In time, a loss of perspective will occur where the body will adopt an extreme reaction to even minor stress, having lost the ability to differentiate. Thus life-stressors are cumulative.68 Delayed and recurring stress reactions to life-threatening events are now categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder. Even if combatants are taken out of the combat area, they may continue to behave as if they are still under fire. This is most likely to happen if there is any prospect of returning to combat.
In the case of the Leander-class light cruiser HMS Ajax, the toll of mental breakdowns seemed high. Out of a crew of eight hundred men, approximately thirty breakdowns were reported, a worrying enough statistic but hardly representing a mass mental breakdown.69 Unfortunately for them, Cunningham was determined to force all damaged ships and battle-weary personnel back into combat. Ajax had a distinguished war record and the crew had already been recognized for their part in the sinking of the German battleship Graf Spee in 1939. It was therefore not surprising that much resentment was felt when Cunningham told them they had been “a little peppered but this is no time for men and ships to be loafing around the harbor.”70 In fact, the vessel had been hit by a 1,000-pound bomb and seriously damaged. Considering that Cunningham was directing operations from the safety of Alexandria, his handling of the situation was clumsy and tactless. On the other hand, if the way Admiral Hamilton of the Aurora dealt with men attempting to opt out was indicative of the military culture in the 1940s, then Cunningham’s action was not that unusual. His task was to ensure that “fight” was going to win over “flight,” and ruthless determination was necessary if the army was going to be rescued from Crete. He was still sufficiently worried about the mental state of his sailors to signal his concern to the First Sea Lord on 30 May 1940. Cunningham was not oblivious to their suffering, but in his opinion other ships were being forced to endure even more than Ajax, which had, he believed, been in harbor for ten out of the previous sixty days. This situation was compared with the AA cruiser Dido, which he claimed had only one day in harbor during the previous twenty-one days. As other warships were in a similar state, he was surprised to find the only real signs of mental breakdowns were in Ajax.71
This ruthless drive and determination allowed 17,000 troops to be rescued in under five days, and Cunningham was undoubtedly correct in stating that abandoning the troops would mean “our naval tradition would never survive such an action.”72 The C-in-C was also right about not drawing the hasty conclusion that ships could not stand up to air attack. As he pointed out, not just the HAC system, but no existing AA defense system could have dealt with heavy and repeated air attacks made from several directions at the same time. Experience had already shown that ships needed to cluster together for mutual support in the face of such attack. Therefore it was not just hindsight that allowed Cunningham to state it was a mistake for units to have been detached from the main formation of Force C to rescue Greyhound’s stricken crew, instead of sending the whole force in support.73 Dennis and his comrades on Griffin, with previous experience of attack from the air, were correct in stating that this was a lesson that should have been learned before King’s force had been decimated. As a result, the Mediterranean Fleet had suffered unnecessarily. The balance sheet showed that the Axis sank three cruisers and six destroyers, and heavily damaged thirteen ships including the sole aircraft carrier. The Italian Regia Aeronautica sank at least one of those destroyers, the Juno, on 20 May 1941. Tragically, some 1,800 personnel were killed in action. The damage limited the Royal Navy’s ability to operate in the Mediterranean for some time but the setback was temporary. Against all of this, the Luftwaffe sustained the significant loss of around 147 aircraft, mainly to the Mediterranean Fleet’s AA defense, and 73 “from other operational causes,” representing over 25 percent of their aircraft deployed.74 The Battle of Crete had been lost but it cannot be denied that the Royal Navy had given the army its full support. It achieved its objectives and did so without massive psychological casualties.
Hezlet suggested that in the event of German air superiority in the Channel and North Sea, it would not have been possible for the Royal Navy to use their local bases. As the Ju 87 B-1 had a limited operational range of 490 miles, this particular warplane operating from the Calais area could not fly north of the Wash and return to France. However, bases between Portsmouth and the Wash would have been within range.75 It is also known that the Luftwaffe had a small number of extended-range Ju 87R aircraft that would have had to operate without fighter escort against northern bases. Bases closer to the landing area would at least have had the benefit of a ground-based AA system with barrage balloons to protect the warships. In 1940, the only local base forced into temporary closure after dive-bombing attacks was Dover, but it must be remembered that the town and harbor were also under long-range artillery bombardment.
The vulnerability of ships in port was examined in December 1939 by R. M. Ellis, the director of Naval Air Division (DNAD), on behalf of the Chamber of Shipping. As he could only rely on the Spanish civil war experience, Ellis was contemptuous of the skills of the Italian Regia Aeronautica, stating “their average distance error against stationary targets might be estimated at 300 yards from an assumed height of release of 1000 feet.” In what appears to be an arbitrary calculation, he quantified their accuracy at “an unremarkable 0.025% per bomb” on their attacks on ports. While Ellis was prepared to recognize the superior skills of the Luftwaffe, he thought that the AA defense of British ports should compensate for their bigger bombs and loads. A hitting figure of 10 percent against a large merchant ship and 5 to 10 percent for dive-bombing was suggested, but disturbing high-level bombers with AA fire and erecting barrage balloons to deter dive-bombers should reduce the figures to the level of the Italian air force. Even taking into account the undisputed fact that docks crowded with larger ships were bigger targets, he was still inclined to think the rate would be less than 1 percent per bomb, “though DNAD has no information on this point.”76 Limited and arbitrary as this was, being based on an earlier conflict between different combatants, it does challenge Hezlet’s sweeping assertion about the “impossibility” of not being able to use the bases between the Humber and Portsmouth. Hezlet is also partly contradicted by his own statement relating to the “phony war” period that “the bombers of both sides had very little success against the fleets, either at sea or in harbor,” qualified by an admission that neither side had tried very hard and that the ships endeavored to keep out of the way.77
However, there was one problem that Ellis may not have considered. Rear Admiral Bruce Austin Fraser forwarded a report to the Admiralty on 26 July 1940, complaining about the over-centralization of fighter and AA defenses. He described an incident where an AA Bofors unit failed to fire at a German seaplane landing close to the RDF station at Bawdsey. This was because the procedure required permission from Fighter Command at Uxbridge and the unit could not obtain a clear telephone line, resulting in the seaplane escaping without hindrance. While this incident begged the question as to whether the commanders of AA units ought to be allowed to use their initiative, it also highlighted a problem with the organizational structure relating to early warning against attacks by enemy aircraft. Supporting Fraser’s arguments, Admiral Drax, C-in-C Nore, wanted RDF stations to alert AA units directly before the enemy aircraft came into sight. As will be seen in Chapter 5, the built-in delay in passing enemy aircraft information gleaned through RDF and the Royal Observer Corps via the filter room at Fighter Command HQ was too long for some critics. Some delays were inevitable because of the need to differentiate between enemy and friendly aircraft movements before alerting all units. As far as he was concerned, Drax thought it preferable to risk shooting down a friendly aircraft than permit an enemy aircraft to destroy a cruiser or destroyer with a mine.78 However, the problem was not quite as serious as this situation implied. Fraser indicated in a separate report that when the circumstances of “maximum air warfare” developed, large formations of enemy aircraft were going to be more readily identifiable than single aircraft. Clearly, an invasion situation would have formed part of this “maximum air warfare” scenario, and in these circumstances there would be far less reason for hesitation.79 Drax and Fraser could have made some reference to paragraph 14 of the Recognition Instructions (2nd edition, July 1939), which stated that “friendly aircraft should avoid naval anchorages.” Arguably, this placed the entire responsibility on friendly aircraft for the consequences of “friendly fire.”80
However, it was the RAF’s attacks upon the invasion barges moored in Dunkirk harbor during September 1940 that provides the best example as to how ineffective bombing could be. The British prime minister was unimpressed when he wrote: “What struck me about these photographs was the apparent inability of the bombers to hit these very large masses of barges.” He continued, “I should have thought that sticks of explosive bombs thrown along these oblongs would have wrought havoc, and it is very disappointing to see that they have all remained intact and in order with just a few damaged at the entrance.”81 An RAF aerial photograph corresponding to Churchill’s description, showing the limited damage inflicted on barges and installations at Dunkirk, was published in the Air Ministry’s official account of Bomber Command operations during the war.82 Why the Air Ministry released this as an example of effective bombing is a mystery.
With all this in mind, both Winterbotham’s assertion that after Crete ships could no longer survive against large numbers of land-based aircraft and Hezlet’s claim that “it was now proved beyond any doubt that command of the sea could not be regained by ships alone” must be re-assessed.83 “Command” is a difficult word because it implies absolute control and while the Royal Navy had overwhelming British naval superiority during the Norwegian campaign, it did not prevent the Germans transporting their army to Norway in a surprise move that caught the Allies off guard. Two years later, German air superiority allowed for temporary Axis naval superiority in the Aegean, but only in terms of inflicting “crippling” (but not fatal) losses. It did not prevent the interdiction of German seaborne reinforcements that only got through after the land battle had been decided with the capture of Maleme airfield. Neither did it prevent the Royal Navy evacuating the majority of British and Commonwealth forces. In fact, warships could successfully operate against large numbers of land-based aircraft, though at a cost. In reality, neither navies nor air forces can be strong everywhere and therefore sweeping assertions referring to command of the sea are meaningless.
On balance, the Germans did better around Crete than they were likely to have done in British waters a few months before. In the Aegean, the Luftwaffe had reliable weather for dive-bombing and better bombs, bearing in mind most Ju 87s could now carry the 1,000-kilogram SD and PC bombs. As previously mentioned, only a few months prior to Crete Ju 87s from Stukageschwader I and II severely damaged the aircraft carrier Illustrious with 1,000-kilogram PC bombs, scoring six direct hits and three near misses.84 While the failure to sink Illustrious disappointed the German aircrews, it indicated the Luftwaffe had improved its anti-maritime capability. During the evacuation, the British ships were heavily loaded, a factor making the smaller ships more sluggish to maneuver. Also, Cunningham’s men went into battle already tired and stressed by recent operations, something likely to have limited their overall effectiveness. Mistakes made in the heat of the battle also contributed to the heavy losses, and despite operational experience around Norway suggesting that ships needed to keep together for mutual support, this dictum was ignored during the Greyhound incident. Rear Admiral King’s failure to press home the attack against the second convoy meant a potentially damaging blow to the enemy was not made, and his force consequently suffered the full effects of air attack. Furthermore, the shortage of AA ammunition contributed to the difficulties experienced by the Mediterranean Fleet, and easy replenishment of stocks would not have been possible because the fleet was operating far from its naval base. Despite Hezlet’s assertion about the alleged inability to use bases between the Humber and Portsmouth for emergency repair and replenishment during Sea Lion, the evidence suggests that, unlike at Crete, warships could use bases (except Dover) for these purposes. Finally, at Crete, only one carrier was available. Had the RAF been unable to operate in the Channel during an invasion, the Admiralty could use all of its seven carriers and approximately 130 low-performance fighters.85 These Fairey Fulmars would have suffered heavily against German fighters but they would also have disrupted many Ju 87 attacks.
There is no guarantee that Admiral Forbes and the various flotilla commanders would have avoided mistakes, but we do know from Forbes’ correspondence with Admiral Hamilton that he was told about the importance of ships keeping together. A desperate Channel battle would have been a bloody affair and strong morale was essential for survival, but all the indications show that naval personnel would have vigorously stood up to the constant air attacks. Bearing in mind the crucial importance of defending the homeland, this vigorous naval determination and “back-to-the-wall” spirit pervading all levels of British society boded well for British victory. The evidence indicates that German bombers were not necessarily a match for British warships in 1940. While the circumstances of the naval Battle-of-Britain-that-never-was still hold a number of imponderable factors, what can be stated categorically is that the ships and men of the Royal Navy in home waters represented a formidable obstacle to the most determined invasion attempt. Whether the RAF existed as a similarly effective force will be examined next.