The sun was setting over Ailsa Craig when, on the evening of 2 August 1942, Convoy WS 21S cleared the Firth of Clyde and altered to starboard to enter the North Channel. In the lead was Port Line’s 8,535-ton Port Chalmers with the convoy commodore, Commodore A.G. Venables RNR, on board. In her wake came eleven other fast cargo liners and two deep-loaded oil tankers. This impressive array of the cream of the day’s merchant shipping included the Almeria Lykes and the tanker Santa Elisa, both flying the Stars and Stripes, while the others were all under the British flag.
By the standards of the day, WS 21S, comprising just fourteen merchantmen, was a small convoy, but the cargo the ships carried, 150,000 tons of military equipment, ammunition and food, and 25,000 tons of high octane aviation fuel, was of vital importance. On the success or failure of this convoy depended the fate of the beleaguered island of Malta, Britain’s last remaining outpost in the central Mediterranean.
The importance of this ‘Winston Special’ was evident in the size and strength of the convoy’s escort: two cruisers and eighteen destroyers, now preparing to draw a ring of steel around the vulnerable merchantmen which no enemy U-boat or aircraft could hope to penetrate.
The island of Malta is just 17 miles long by 9 miles wide and lies 50 miles south of Sicily, roughly halfway between Gibraltar and Egypt. Said to have been first settled in 5,200 BC, it was used by the Phoenicians as a stopping off point on their trading voyages to Cornwall, and over the years came to be of huge strategic importance to anyone wishing to exercise control over the Mediterranean. Malta became a British colony in 1814, its main harbour Valletta being chosen by the Royal Navy as one of its major bases.
When Italy entered the war in 1940 and the struggle for supremacy in North Africa began, ‘Fortress Malta’ became vital to the Allied cause. Aircraft and ships based on the island were ideally placed to attack Italian, and later German, supply ships, and this they did to good effect. As might be expected, Malta soon became a primary target for the Luftwaffe and Mussolini’s Regia Aeronautica, who were determined to bomb it into submission. Over a period of two years the Axis powers flew a total of 3,000 bombing raids against military and civilian targets. The island fortress came very near to being reduced to a pile of smoking rubble, and it was only the indomitable spirit of its people and the gallant efforts of a small band of RAF fighter pilots and the men who manned the anti-aircraft guns that held the enemy at bay.
Convoys from Gibraltar and Alexandria fought their way through to Malta with food, ammunition and fuel, but the cost in ships and men was very heavy. By the early summer of 1942 the sheer mass of German and Italian bombers, torpedo bombers, submarines and motor torpedo boats ranged against the relief convoys was proving too much. Few ships were getting through, and it seemed likely that Malta’s days of freedom were numbered.
In mid-June the situation had become critical, leading to a last desperate attempt to maintain supplies to the island. It was decided to run two convoys simultaneously, one from Gibraltar and one from Alexandria. Operation Harpoon, consisting of six fast merchant ships carrying 43,000 tons of supplies and fuel, sailed from Gibraltar on 12 June. The ships had a close escort consisting of an anti-aircraft cruiser, nine destroyers, a minesweeper and six MTBs. In support, but keeping their distance, were a battleship, two aircraft carriers, three cruisers, and eight destroyers.
With such an unprecedented escort force it seemed that Harpoon could not fail to reach Malta. Then, when the convoy was just twenty-four hours from the island, hundreds of German and Italian aircraft swooped on the ships. The enemy bombers, based on Sardinia, less than 100 miles to the north, were able to fly multiple sorties and subjected the convoy to unrelenting attack throughout the daylight hours. At the height of the battle, Harpoon’s covering force was recalled to Gibraltar. The remaining escorts put up a spirited defence, but when the enemy bombers were joined by two Italian cruisers and five destroyers, it was completely overwhelmed. Four merchantmen, with their precious cargoes, were lost, and one destroyer was sunk, while the anti-aircraft cruiser and a minesweeper sustained severe damage.
And there was worse to come. That evening, when approaching Valletta, the surviving ships ran into an unmarked minefield. One destroyer was sunk, two others were damaged and one of the only two remaining merchantman was also damaged.
Coincident with Harpoon, Operation Vigorous was launched from the other end of the Mediterranean. A convoy of eleven similarly loaded merchantmen sailed from Alexandria with an escort of eight cruisers, twenty-six destroyers, four corvettes and two minesweepers. In support was a decommissioned battleship which had been converted to mount batteries of anti-aircraft guns.
Vigorous came under heavy attack by surface ships and torpedo bombers soon after leaving Alexandria. One merchantman was damaged and had to return to port, another dropped out with engine trouble.
The attacks went on, with German E-boats joining in what had begun to resemble a turkey shoot. Two merchantmen fell to the torpedo bombers, and the E-boats sank a destroyer and damaged a cruiser. German Stukas based on Crete joined in as the convoy fought its way past the island, and by the afternoon of the 15th another destroyer had gone and only six merchant ships were still afloat. That evening, when news was received that the remnants of Operation Harpoon had reached Malta, the Admiralty decided that no more could be achieved by Vigorous, and the operation was abandoned. The tattered remains of the convoy returned to Alexandria.
The two merchantmen of Operation Harpoon that broke through to Malta, one a tanker and the other a cargo ship, were gratefully welcomed by the island, but they were not enough. Malta had only a few weeks supply of aviation fuel for its defending fighters, and its population was on the brink of starvation. An idea of the gravity of the situation in the island may be gained from a statement made by the official in charge of food distribution in Malta at the time:
The present island-wide soup kitchen arrangements are fully organized and working well. The tinned and dehydrated ingredients are issued daily to the organizers, prepared on field kitchens and distributed from fixed points. These ingredients are the ideal for control and orderly administration but the last issue – the absolute last issue from island reserves – occurs in five days, on 15 August. After that we are down to the slaughter of horses and goats, once considered adequate for six month… The present census of animals in the island is estimated to last from five to ten days.
If in fact I chop and change between tinned supplies and slaughter without causing panic we might last until 25 August.
As the summer of 1942 drew to a close, the outlook for the island of Malta had never been so bleak.
On the morning of 3 August, Malta’s last hope of relief, Convoy WS 21S, was off the north coast of Ireland and heading out into the open Atlantic. The fourteen merchant ships had formed up in four columns abreast, with the Commodore’s ship Port Chalmers leading Column 2. The weather was fair, the often turbulent ocean putting on its summer face. During the day, the convoy’s already powerful escort force was joined by the battleships HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney, 34,000-tonners armed with an array of 16-inch, 6-inch and 4.7-inch guns, plus the aircraft carriers Eagle, Indomitable and Victorious. Then, on the morning of the 4th, the escort was even further reinforced by the arrival of the aircraft carrier HMS Furious, accompanied by the heavy cruiser Manchester and another five destroyers. The fourteen merchantmen, themselves well armed, were now protected by an unprecedented force of two battleships, four aircraft carriers, four cruisers and twenty-three destroyers. To many in those merchant ships WS 21S now seemed unassailable. Others who had travelled this dangerous road before were not convinced. One such was Captain A.N. Cossar, commanding the Clan Ferguson.
Sailing as second ship of the port outside column, the 7,347-ton Clan Ferguson was typical of the British cargo liners dedicated to keeping open Malta’s lifeline. Owned by Clan Line Steamers of Glasgow, she was four years old, a 17-knot twin-screw steamer with a raked bow and cruiser stern. For much of her life she had been employed on voyages to and from Australia and New Zealand, general cargo out, wool and frozen lamb home, but for the past twelve months she had been a regular on the Malta run. Taken under Admiralty control, her Indian ratings had been replaced by British volunteers and she bristled with guns. In addition to her 4-inch anti-submarine gun she mounted two 40mm Bofors quick-firing AA guns, eight 20mm Oerlikons, a battery of light machine guns and an assortment of FAMS and PAC rockets. These weapons were manned by a highly trained force of twenty DEMS gunners.
The Clan Ferguson was a ship to be reckoned with, but she was also highly vulnerable in that her cargo included 2,000 tons of aviation spirit in drums and 1,500 tons of high explosives. Thomas Kay, a DEMS gunner in the ship, described the situation in a blunt seaman’s manner:
The Clan Ferguson’s cargo was explosives. There were 800 tons of block TNT in the forward holds plus gunnery shells, ammunition and explosives (including, it was rumoured, poison gas shells). We also had petrol tanks on the decks. All in all the ship was a floating bomb! Just before we left Greenock a Commodore came on board and gave us a lecture warning us that if we got hit it would be every man for himself as there would not be much time for a proper abandon ship routine.
In times of peace, for the fast, well-found ships that formed the core of Convoy WS21S, the run south to Gibraltar would had been considered a pleasant three-day passage, the grim overcast of northern waters giving way to cloudless skies and warm sunshine as the miles went by. It was usually a time to prepare for the long voyage ahead, be it South America, the Far East or beyond.
Those balmy days were now just fond memories. Under strict Admiralty routing the convoy headed some 500 miles out into the Atlantic before turning south. In this way it was hoped to keep well clear of the U-boats based in the Biscay ports and the long-range Focke-Wulfs operating out of Bordeaux. And so what had once been an easy-going three-day passage became eight days of constant alert, with bridges double-manned and nervous gunners never straying far from their guns.
Whether it was the utmost secrecy surrounding the movements of WS 21S, or the reluctance of the enemy to tangle with the convoy’s massive escort force, is a matter of conjecture, but the run south proved completely uneventful. At no time did the constantly probing Asdics of the escorts detect a threat under water, no hostile aircraft sullied the untroubled skies.
When on the morning of 9 August the ships reached a position due west of the Straits of Gibraltar and altered course to enter the Mediterranean, it was assumed that the enemy was unaware of their approach. Unfortunately, this was not so. It later transpired that German Intelligence had been tracking the convoy from the time it left the North Channel. Berlin was aware that the fate of Malta rested on the safe arrival of WS 21S and the supplies it was carrying, and German and Italian forces in the Mediterranean were being mustered to provide a hot reception. Some 700 German and Italian bombers, dive bombers and torpedo bombers were standing by on the airfields of Sardinia and Sicily, eighteen Italian and three German U-boats were patrolling the anticipated route and a large force of motor torpedo boats, German and Italian, was also poised to attack.
Approaching the Straits of Gibraltar under the cover of darkness on the night of the 9th, with every ship completely blacked out, the convoy hoped to pass through the 8-mile-wide channel hidden from the prying eyes of the numerous German intelligence agents known to be keeping a watchful vigil from Algeciras on the Spanish side and Ceuta in Morocco. Luck was with WS 21S that night, for as the ships approached the narrows a blanket of dense fog descended on them. This was a mixed blessing, however, for although the fog shielded them from the shore, it also presented an unwelcome hazard to the fifty-eight ships, naval and merchant, steaming in close proximity to each other. None of the merchantmen and only a few of the naval ships were equipped with radar, and a game of ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’ ensued. Ships were forced to switch on their navigation lights, and in some cases their deck lighting, to avoid running into each other.
The fog lasted into the early hours of the 10th, a nerve-racking experience for all concerned. Speed was reduced to a crawl, but even so there were a number of near-misses. Multiple collisions, any one of which could have caused a disastrous pile-up of ships in the opaque darkness, were avoided only by extra careful ship handling and alert lookouts.
Fortunately, when the sun lifted over the horizon the fog was quickly dispersed, allowing the now hopelessly scattered convoy to resume some semblance of order. During the course of the day, the heavy units of the escort left to return to Gibraltar, leaving WS 21S, now officially Operation Pedestal, with its close escort. This consisted of the four carriers Eagle, Furious, Indomitable and Victorious, the heavy cruisers Kenya, Manchester and Nigeria, the anti-aircraft cruisers Cairo, Charybdis, Phoebe and Sirius, plus twenty-five destroyers. That evening, the RFA fleet oilers Brown Ranger and Dingledale arrived, and some of the thirstier escorts had their bunker tanks topped up.
The night that followed was quiet, and when dawn broke on the 11th the convoy, then passing 70 miles south of the Balearic Islands, was moving east at a good pace and still unmolested, a state of affairs that was shortly to change. The Italian submarine Uarsciek, under the command of Arezzo de la Targia, had been cruising on the surface at night and was just about to submerge when the leading ships of Pedestal came in sight. Astonished by the size of the convoy, Targia went to periscope depth and waited for the ships to approach.
When the convoy was within range, Targia chose one of the most vulnerable targets, the 23,000-ton aircraft carrier HMS Furious. The Furious, built in 1916 as a battlecruiser and converted to an aircraft carrier between the wars, was fulfilling a dual role, having on board thirty-two Spitfires to be flown off to Malta as well as being part of Pedestal’s escort.
Luckily for Furious, the Italian submarine’s brace of torpedoes went wide, and the carrier sailed on unscathed. Targia, meanwhile, confident that he had sunk Furious, was slipping away to safer waters, leaving Pedestal completely unaware that it had been attacked. But Targia’s botched effort was not completely in vain. As soon as Uarsciek was over the horizon, she radioed the German/Italian submarine base at La Spezia alerting it to the presence of a huge eastbound convoy.
However, Spezia was already aware that a large British operation was under way. An entry in their war diary for the night of 10 August reads:
According to an agent, a strong formation passed eastwards through the Straits of Gibraltar during the night of 9/10. According to an air report this formation was in CH 8178 at 1900, and consisted of two battleships, 2 aircraft carriers, 14 destroyers and 15 steamers. The boats were given permission to attack any targets of the formation.
On the morning of the 11th, other reports began to come in:
A large enemy convoy escorted by several aircraft carriers and battleships, as well as a large number of light units, was spotted by our air reconnaissance after 0800 and shadowed constantly.
Our air forces contacted a convoy eastbound from Gibraltar. Shadowers’ reports, composition and formation of the convoy were passed on to the boats. Convoy consists of about 65 vessels as follows: First group: 1 carrier, 4 cruisers, 7 destroyers, 1 merchant ship; second group: 3 battleships (the Rodney and the Nelson among them), 20 escort vessels including cruisers and destroyers, about 20 merchant ships; third group: 6 destroyers.
At 1827 the following radio signal with time of origin 1145 was received from U 73 (Rosenbaum): ‘Enemy convoy sighted in 9118. Enemy is proceeding at 12 knots, course 090°.’
Immediately after the transmission of this radio signal a radio message was transmitted by a boat, containing 1) Composition of one of the convoy groups 2) Success report and 3) Report on depth charge hunt. This radio message was probably also transmitted by U 73.
U-73, commanded by 29-year-old Kapitänleutnant Helmut Rosenbaum, had been operating in the Mediterranean since mid-January of that year, but had yet to sink an enemy ship. When the great armada that was Operation Pedestal came in sight, Rosenbaum wasted no time in attacking. Closing in at periscope depth, he turned his sights on the largest target in range, which happened to be the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle.
The 22,600-ton Eagle, whose keel had been laid down as the dreadnought battleship Almirante Cochrane for the Chilean Navy but had never been delivered, had finally been commissioned in 1924 as one of the Royal Navy’s first aircraft carriers, complete with 1918-vintage Sopwith Camels on her flight deck. She had narrowly missed being sunk while escorting Operation Harpoon two months earlier, and now her luck had finally run out. When within 550yds of the carrier, Rosenbaum fired a four-torpedo spread from his bow tubes, all of which hit the Eagle. Nineteen-year-old Fleet Air Arm air mechanic A.W. Rowell described her end:
We had shortly stood down from action stations from a threatened air attack, which at least on our side of the convoy had not developed, and I and a shipmate (Alistair Rintoul) had not gone down below, we had remained at our action station on the starboard side of the ‘Island’ (the superstructure on the starboard side of the flight deck). At about 1.15pm, 4 torpedoes struck HMS Eagle’s port side. She immediately listed to port, and although we did not hear any instruction to abandon ship, it became very apparent that she was sinking, so my shipmate and I blew up our lifebelts, tied a rope to a stanchion, went down it as far as the anti-torpedo blister (a second hull designed to absorb torpedoes), now about 15 feet out of the water, and jumped into the sea. We swam to get away from the possible suction, and saw Eagle’s last moments no more than 7 or 8 minutes after she was struck.
The ageing British carrier went down without a struggle, taking her aircraft and 160 of her total complement of 1,087 men down with her. Operation Pedestal was only 400 miles east of Gibraltar, and had already lost one of its most valuable escorts. Her executioner, Helmut Rosenbaum, in recognition of his audacious and successful attack, received an immediate award of the Knight’s Cross.
The air attacks began on the afternoon of the 12th, when the convoy was passing south of Sardinia. A lone German bomber appeared out of the clouds and swooped on the leading merchantmen. The 7,740-ton Blue Funnel cargo liner Deucalion was first in the line of fire, straddled by a stick of four bombs. Three of the four were near-misses, but the fourth scored a direct hit in her No. 5 hold. Listing heavily to port as the sea poured into her breached hull, the Deucalion slewed out of line, and dropped astern. The Clan Ferguson moved up to take her place as lead ship of Column 1.
Some three hours later, shortly after the sunset, the battle for Operation Pedestal began in earnest. A large force of German aircraft, consisting of thirty Ju88 bombers and seven He111 torpedo bombers, accompanied by six Me110 fighter bombers, came roaring in from their Sardinian airfields. The Brisbane Star in Column 3 was first to be hit, followed by the Clan Ferguson. David Royale, manning a gun in the escorting cruiser Charybdis, remembers:
The Clan Ferguson was steaming along – a fine-looking ship of around 12,000 tons, at approximately fourteen knots – following in our wake. I saw three Junkers Ju88s diving from astern but could not bring my gun down to bear because of the training stops. In any case our after guns had opened up. They hit the leading aeroplane but not before he had let go his bombs, scoring direct hits. It was a sight I shall never forget… one minute there was this fine vessel, the next a huge atomic-like explosion and she had gone, disappeared with just a blueish ring of flame on the water and a mushroom of smoke and flame thousands of feet into the sky. The other two Ju88s were caught in the blast and never reappeared, but that was a poor price to pay. Huge chunks of blasted ship splashed into the sea close to me, I thought some of the stern of the Charybdis must have been struck. Actually, only one of our crew was wounded by this rain of debris.
Second Officer Arthur Black, who was on watch on the bridge of the Clan Ferguson, gave a more detailed account in his report:
A signalman on watch saw the torpedo approaching from our starboard beam. He shouted, ‘Hard to starboard’ but the ship did not swing quickly enough. The torpedo hit between the engine room and No. 4 hold. Both flooded immediately and the ship caught fire; I could see flames coming up from the engine room skylight and through the ship’s side. The hatch covers were blown off No. 4 hold and 2 landing craft stowed on top of this hatch were blown off. I could not see any other damage to the ship as the flames were so intense.
We had high explosives stowed in No. 5 and No. 2 holds, and as the fire was spreading rapidly the order to abandon ship was given. We had 4 life boats and 1 jolly boat. No. 3 boat was destroyed by the explosion, and the remainder of the boats, with the exception of No. 1 which we got away, caught fire. We managed to release 3 rafts immediately while the ship still had way on and before the water caught fire round the ship, but the fourth one jammed in the rigging and was eventually cut adrift. The remainder of us who were still on board just got over the side as the ship sank, and I was so close that the paravanes caught against my steel helmet. Luckily the paravanes did not foul this raft so we were all able to get on to it. The ship sank at 2110, about 7 minutes after being struck by the torpedo. A little before the ship finally sank there was a violent explosion which appeared to be from No. 5 hold.
The oil on the water around the position in which my ship had sunk blazed furiously for about 48 hours. Cans of petrol kept floating to the surface and catching fire, and at one time there was dense black smoke rising which I think must have been caused by the fuel oil which was ignited on coming to the surface.
The convoy carried on, leaving in its wake the flotsam of the sunken Clan Ferguson and the crippled Deucalion drifting and abandoned. It seemed a small price to pay, but there was much worse in store.
The next day was Friday 13th, and for Operational Pedestal the day certainly lived up to its mythical reputation. In a prolonged and fierce running battle in the restricted waters between Sicily and the Tunisian coast, German and Italian aircraft, MTBs and submarines wreaked havoc amongst the Allied ships. The British escorts and the merchantmen in their charge fought a gallant action, but they were completely overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of their aggressors. When the final reckoning was made, it showed that Operation Pedestal had been an extremely costly undertaking, resulting in the loss of the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle, the cruisers Manchester and Cairo, the destroyer Foresight and nine merchant ships out of a convoy of fourteen. With those ships had gone 100,000 tons of cargo desperately needed in the besieged island of Malta. The total loss of lives in the ships, both naval and merchant, was put at 350, with an equal number ending up in Italian prisoner of war camps.
Four cargo liners, the Brisbane Star, Melbourne Star, Port Chalmers and Rochester Castle, survived to enter Malta’s Grand Harbour on the night of the 13/14th. They were battle-scarred but triumphant. Forty-eight hours later, they were joined by the British-manned American tanker Ohio. She was blackened by fire, her engines damaged beyond repair, and she was kept afloat by two destroyers lashed alongside her, but she still had most of her 12,000 tons of aviation spirit still on board. Only the courage and determination of her crew, who in the most perilous of circumstances had refused to abandon ship, had saved her.
The fog of war still surrounds Operation Pedestal, but of the Clan Ferguson’s crew it is known that nine men, including Chief Engineer John Wilde, were killed in her engine room when the torpedo struck. Above deck, First Radio Officer William McCory, Surgeon Hugh Bruce and DEMS Petty Officer Bill Goodban also lost their lives. The remainder of the Glasgow ship’s complement survived, thirty-two being rescued by a German flying boat and seven by an Italian Red Cross plane, while the rest, led by Second Officer Arthur Black, landed on Zembra Island, which was Vichy French territory.
Second Officer Black reported on their welcome, which was the stuff of comic opera:
We eventually landed in a little cove about 1200 and 2 Europeans came down to take us ashore. They took us to a fishing station where we were treated very kindly by the Italians living there who gave us food, wine and cigarettes.
They reported our presence to the Military Authorities who came from the next village to take us away. Two of the men who were unable to walk were taken by donkeys. As we arrived in the next village the French population came out to welcome us. They treated us very well, all the women of the village joined together to give us a good meal from their rations.
We left the village about 2000 and were taken by the Military Authorities to a camp at Bonficha where we arrived on 17th August. When I arrived at the camp I was surprised to see our 3rd Officer, he had been one of the 50 people who got away from the ship in the lifeboat.
From Bonficha we were taken to Le Kef. At this camp Lieutenant Morelle of the Spahi Regiment did everything he could for us. He was very pro-British and made himself very unpopular with the French Military Authorities.
We were never officially released and when we were trying to escape from the camp Monsieur Chastelle, the Civil Controller, and his assistant Monsieur Gantes remained behind in Sfax to cover our retreat, and had it not been for their assistance I do not think we should have been able to escape.