Returning to the East
The naval war in Europe continued, as did the Atlantic and Arctic convoys, and there was also some mopping-up of enemy forces in the Adriatic as well as minesweeping operations around many of the newly-liberated ports. Nevertheless, the main body of the Royal Navy, and especially the larger ships, were ready for a return to the Far East for operations against Japan.
Many senior officers in the United States Navy had strong reservations about the return of the Royal Navy to what was ‘their’ theatre of war. Some saw the British role as being centred on the reconquest of Burma, at best. Others felt that the United Kingdom was solely interested in reclaiming its colonies, especially Malaya, the financially most important and viable of them all. There was also the feeling that they could finish the war against Japan themselves, which was probably true, but in fact the British contribution would prove to be worthwhile and not insignificant.
Reasons for the British to return to the Far East were many. Some felt that after having had such strong American assistance in the war against Italy and Germany, as well as so much Lend-Lease equipment, the Americans were owed support. There were also political reasons as they did not want to be seen as having abandoned Australia and New Zealand, and as much of the territory overrun by the Japanese was British – not just Burma but also Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore – they wanted to be able to take the Japanese surrender in these territories. In fact, comparing the post-war record of the British colonies with those of The Netherlands or France suggests that in the longer term the British desire to be involved was the right one. Obviously, having been occupied by Germany, the Dutch and French were in a far weaker position, especially the Dutch as not only were they numerically weaker, much of their country was not liberated until Germany surrendered.
There were many practical difficulties to be resolved including communications and liaison, and this could be difficult enough in any large force, even a single navy. For example, in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, parts of the United States Navy were not where they were expected to be. In fact, the same could be said about the Imperial Japanese Navy whose organization began to fall apart during the battle.
There were difficulties on the American side, for having amassed a massive fleet, their supply and support systems were under considerable pressure, not helped by the speed of the American advance across the Pacific and the distances involved. A condition was laid down that the Royal Navy could not expect any use of USN facilities in the Pacific theatre.
Two of the senior American naval commanders, Chester Nimitz and Ernest King, felt that the British lacked the experience of mounting massed air attacks from carriers, despite the Fleet Air Arm’s attacks on the Tirpitz, and the means of supporting a fleet far from its bases. There was some reason to doubt the ability of the British to assemble a balanced fleet that was also modern and adequate in strength, as this was why the Royal Navy had lost so many important ships early in the war. British ships tended to be short on range and eye-witnesses attested to the Royal Navy’s slowness in refuelling at sea compared to the USN. Some idea of the distances involved can be gained from the fact that the journey from Japan to Singapore was about the same as Southampton to New York.
Undaunted, the Royal Navy started to resolve these problems. Simonstown in South Africa was already a suitable base, with South African Air Force airfields available for aircraft disembarking from the carriers as they entered port. There were also facilities, less sophisticated perhaps, in Kenya near Mombasa. Ceylon provided a forward base with naval air stations ashore and there were others in southern India. Australia became another important basing area for the new British Pacific Fleet which could use both Sydney and Brisbane, both with air stations ashore.
Not all senior American officers were opposed to British involvement and the prospect of having additional ships and aircraft appealed to this group. Liaison officers were exchanged and some of the problems of co-operation were resolved, initially by ensuring that the Royal Navy operated in one area and the United States Navy in another; another case of deconfliction. This did not mean that there was no co-operation and British, Australian and New Zealand ships did from time to time operate with the Americans and under their overall command. Locally, many American officers did all that they could to help.
Co-operation on a small scale was attempted at first, so that the two navies could get used to one another. During spring 1944, the USS Saratoga was attached to what was then the British Eastern Fleet, her aircraft joining those of Illustrious for the early raids on Sabang with the two ships forming the core of Task Force 70. It was a useful target, on a small island off the northern end of Sumatra, with a harbour and airfields vital to the Japanese war effort in Burma. It was also the baptism of fire for the new high-performance fighter-bomber for the Fleet Air Arm, the Vought Corsair.
This was not the first example of co-operation between the two navies. Apart from the North Atlantic convoys and the landings in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France, the shortage of flight decks experienced by both navies had resulted in some unusual compromises. One of these was that HMS Victorious, second ship of the successful Illustrious class, spent much of the winter of 1942–43 being refitted at the Norfolk Navy Yard before being loaned to the USN with the temporary name of USS Robin. She was released back to the Royal Navy when the USS Essex arrived, lead ship of the Essex class and America’s idea of a fast aircraft carrier, although with a wooden flight deck.
The ability of American industry to ramp up production meant that the Independence-class light carriers converted from the Cleveland-class light cruisers were probably not needed, bearing in mind that they were accompanied by mass production of escort carriers, known as auxiliary carriers to the Royal Navy. They were indeed as often as not more like ‘auxiliary carriers’ than escort carriers as many served as aircraft transports or maintenance carriers and, most important of all, many were used to provide cover for Allied landings, mainly in the Pacific but also off Salerno and the south of France. Those in the Pacific were mainly used by the United States Marine Corps, providing close support for troops landing on the many islands that lay along the route to the Japanese home islands.
The first attack on Sabang was made on 19 April 1944 with Corsairs escorting Barracudas, an aircraft that had seen action in Europe, notably against the Tirpitz, but would prove ill-suited to tropical conditions. Operating under the command of Admiral Sir James Somerville, the British Eastern Fleet was to be a thorn in the side of the Japanese. That first raid was unexpected by them and was devastating, despite the poor performance of the Barracuda. Fortunately, these aircraft were soon exchanged for the more capable and reliable Grumman Avenger and both ships were able to mount a second successful strike in May against an oil refinery outside Surabaya on the island of Java, with the loss of just one aircraft.
Operating together quickly exposed weakness in British organization. The British carrier air group was smaller than that of the Americans, but the Fleet Air Arm had to learn the importance of a fast turnaround of aircraft on the flight deck and in the hangar. Fortunately, these lessons were learned very quickly.
Completely integrated carrier operations by the two navies took some time and some adjustment. The signals used by the deck landing officer (DLO), more usually known as the ‘batsman’ as he used large bats (and lights at night) to signal to approaching aircraft, had to be changed as certain signals used by the two navies had exactly the opposite meaning. As the USN was the larger navy by this time, it was the American signals that were retained. There were other changes as well, some of them introduced many years earlier, such as the American idea of having a crash barrier, a net stretched across the flight deck to stop aircraft that missed all the arrester wires from crashing into those parked forward; however, this was a mixed blessing as aircraft hitting the net often stopped so abruptly that the pilot was badly injured.
One change that was forced not by the need to operate with the United States Navy but to avoid aircraft being mistaken for Japanese was to change the colours of the identification roundels on British aircraft. Officially these were red, white and blue from the centre moving outwards, although the white middle ring was omitted when camouflage was used. Because Japanese aircraft had a large red roundel, it was decided that British military aircraft would use a pale blue centre and a dark blue outer ring on their roundels, again without the white circle.
The Fleet Air Arm was allocated a number of particular targets. One of these was Palembang, with oil refineries and port facilities on the island of Sumatra, where the Japanese were subjected to heavy aerial attacks throughout December 1944 and January 1945. The most important attack on the island was Operation MERIDIAN I on 24 January 1945 with aircraft from no fewer than thirteen naval air squadrons flying off the carriers Illustrious, Indefatigable, Indomitable and Victorious.
As the war progressed eastwards and ever closer to Japan, a British Pacific Fleet was formed under the command of Vice Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings but operating under USN direction. The British Pacific Fleet was given a US task force number, becoming Task Force 57 when the US fleet was known as the US Fifth Fleet and Task Force 37 when the designation changed to the US Third Fleet. This unusual, possibly unique, situation was created because command of the US Pacific Fleet alternated between two officers: it was known as the US Third Fleet when under the command of Vice Admiral ‘Bull’ Halsey and the Fifth Fleet when under the command of Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance. The task forces also changed their designations depending on who was in command. When not in command, each of the admirals and their staff were ashore planning the next series of operations.
While the concept of the naval air wing had evolved in 1943, in 1945 the Royal Navy changed these to carrier air groups.
The new British Pacific Fleet was assigned to operate against the Sakishima Gunto group of islands through which the Japanese were ferrying combat aircraft to Okinawa, and did much to cut the volume of Japanese reinforcements. This was the BPF’s contribution to Operation ICEBERG, the attack on Okinawa, between 26 March and 25 May 1945. Landings on Okinawa started on 1 April and despite initial resistance being light due to a breakdown in Japanese communications, fierce and prolonged fighting followed ashore, while the aircraft carriers were all subjected to kamikaze suicide bomber attacks.
Operations against the Japanese involved additional hazards for the naval aviator. The Japanese never felt bound to observe the rules of the Geneva Conventions and if shot down the outlook for aircrew was grim. Many squadron commanders wore uniforms of a lower rank as some means of protection against interrogation and torture, and to avoid providing a propaganda coup for the Japanese.
Formidable was struck by her first kamikaze on 4 May, which had found the carrier relatively lightly protected as the battleships that could provide a dense curtain of anti-aircraft fire around the ship were away bombarding coastal targets. The attack came at 1131 with the flight deck crowded with aircraft ranged for launching. While the ship only suffered a 2ft dent in the flight deck near the base of the island, eight men were killed and forty-seven wounded. It was small consolation that it could have been even worse but for the fact that the medical officer had moved the flight deck sick bay from the air intelligence office at the base of the island as the AIO was the scene of most of the casualties.
Even worse was to follow. On 9 May, Formidable was struck again. The kamikaze hit the after end of the flight deck and ploughed into the aircraft ranged there. A rivet was blown out of the deck and burning petrol poured into the hangar where the fire could only be extinguished by spraying, with adverse effects even on those aircraft not on fire. Seven aircraft were lost on deck, with another twelve in the hangar. The ship later refuelled and obtained replacement aircraft. Nine days later on 18 May, an armourer working on a Corsair in the hangar deck failed to notice that the guns were still armed and accidentally fired them into a parked Avenger which blew up and started another fierce fire, destroying no fewer than thirty aircraft. Despite this terrible setback, the ship was again fully operational by the end of the day.
In the closing days of the war in the Pacific, the Fleet Air Arm was striking at targets in the Tokyo area when it earned its second Victoria Cross, but again, posthumously. On 9 August, Lieutenant Robert Hampton Gray, RCNVR, was leading a strike of Corsairs from Formidable’s Nos 1841 and 1842 Naval Air Squadrons to attack a destroyer in Onagawa Wan when he came under heavy anti-aircraft fire from five warships. He pressed ahead with his attack, even though his aircraft was damaged, and succeeded in sinking the destroyer before his aircraft plunged into the harbour.
Even with hindsight, it seems strange and very unsatisfactory that the Fleet Air Arm was granted just two VCs in the entire war.
The Escorts Arrive
Earlier, a small number of the Royal Navy’s escort carriers had found their way to the East. Many of these were to act as aircraft transports and as maintenance and aircraft repair ships, but some of the first were deployed on convoy escort duties. HMS Ameer maintained anti-submarine patrols in the Indian Ocean through which convoys from the United States passed on their way to the Gulf, then known as the Persian Gulf, carrying supplies for the Soviet Union. Ameer was present off the coast of Burma when Ramree Island was attacked by the Royal Navy and the Royal Indian Navy in January 1945, a few months before the combined amphibious and overland attacks that liberated Rangoon. Landings on the island were aided by Ameer’s twenty-four Grumman Hellcat fighters of No. 815 NAS so that the island was available as a springboard for the landings in Rangoon.
Operation SUNFISH on 11 April 1945 saw Force 63 attack Sabang and Oleh-Leh in the Netherlands East Indies, led by the battleships Queen Elizabeth and Richelieu together with the cruisers London and Cumberland with the latter leading the 26th Destroyer Flotilla, as well as the escort carriers Emperor and Khedive with No. 808 NAS with Grumman Hellcats. On 16 April, Force 63 attacked Emma Haven and Padang.
Many of the British warships were in Trincomalee in Ceylon on 8 May 1945, which marked VE Day in Europe. For those in the East, there was little to celebrate as the Allies fought their way through fierce resistance towards Japan, fully expecting to have to invade. On 14 May, Ultra intelligence warned that the Japanese cruiser Haguro and her destroyer escort were at sea having left Singapore, while the Nicobar Islands had been evacuated by a Japanese supply ship. The following day the escort carrier Emperor launched a strike of four Grumman Avengers of 815 NAS against the cruiser and her escort but one aircraft was shot down, although its crew were saved. A second strike, also of four aircraft, was launched but one had to return with engine trouble. Two of the remaining aircraft spotted five destroyers and spent some time trying to establish whether they were British or Japanese, eventually deciding that they were friendly which was fortunate as they were part of the 26th Destroyer Flotilla, also trying to find the Haguro. The remaining aircraft started looking for the downed crew but had been given the wrong search co-ordinates, and running low on fuel found first the supply ship escorted by a submarine and then the Haguro and her destroyer escort. The pilot signalled his findings and returned to the carrier with just ten minutes’ fuel left.
Emperor launched three more Avengers, which found the cruiser and dive-bombed her, achieving a direct hit and a near miss. The return flight of 530 miles was the longest attacking flight from any British carrier during the war and the only time that a major enemy warship at sea was dive-bombed by the Fleet Air Arm. While Haguro was only slightly damaged she attempted to return to Singapore, but after dark was finally cornered by the 26th Destroyer Flotilla and sunk by gunfire and torpedoes in the entrance to the Malacca Straits early on 16 May.
The first of the new light fleet carriers arrived in the Pacific just as the war was ending and did not see action; however, they did see the surrender of the Japanese in Singapore and Malaya and then brought home many British prisoners of war from the Japanese POW camps.