Westward Ho!
‘I remember Mick Magennis and other X-craft men. We thought very highly of them. They were brave men to go to sea in such small submarines.’
—Able Seaman John Clarke, HMS Bonaventure
The bang was very loud inside the XE-4, which veered violently off course, her trim and buoyancy shot to pieces as the little submarine was thrown around in the wake of whatever had hit her. The XE-4’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Max Shean, was ashore at the time. One of his crew, a tough Scot named Adam Bergius, had taken her out for a routine run when the accident had happened. ‘Jock’ Bergius, then an Acting Sub-Lieutenant, had joined the navy as a rating in 1943. He was trained as an X-craft diver, but in all the crews the junior officers were given opportunities to take command of the submarine to gain vitally needed experience. On operations, if the skipper and first lieutenant were incapacitated, any remaining officer among the crew would be expected to assume command.
An accident was the last thing that Captain Banks’s carefully worked-out training programme needed. The six XE-craft of the first division were being hastily readied for transfer to the Far East aboard the Bonaventure, and their crews had been working up their new boats hard since they had been delivered from the makers in November 1944. Banks had been given only a six-week window for the crews to become completely familiar with the new type. Then the boats were to be winched aboard the Bonaventure and she would sail for the Panama Canal. There would be little opportunity for training once the depot ship was under way, and everyone expected the flotilla to arrive in the Pacific ready for action.
Bergius grabbed the small brass handles of the periscope and pressed his face against the eyepiece. He saw only blackness. ‘Stand by to surface. Shut main vents,’ ordered Bergius, cursing his bad luck. As soon as XE-4’s flat deck was above the water he threw open the main hatch and clambered up the short ladder. ‘Christ, the periscope’s bust,’ he called back down into the submarine’s hull. The periscope was still raised, but it was twisted over to one side, its delicate head smashed to pieces. ‘Hand me the Aldis,’ said a dispirited Bergius, taking the large signal lamp as it was passed through the hatch by the ERA below. Steaming away from the stationary XE-4 was an American-built LST (landing ship tank), a big, grey-painted amphibious warfare vessel used for beach assaults. She had barely registered the contact with the little submarine and had declined to stop.
Ashore at HMS Varbel II, Shean had been looking across the loch at the exact moment his submarine had suddenly surfaced in the wake of the large transport ship. Kames Bay had become a very busy waterway in the months before and after D-Day. Assault craft of all sizes and shapes were continually travelling to and from the adjoining Kyles of Bute. Many were loaded with army commandos in training on Loch Fyne a few miles to the west.1 The new XE-craft exercised close to this busy channel, and good care had to be taken while submerged to keep within their allotted area. It was apparent to Shean that young Bergius had just made a very serious mistake.
As Shean watched he saw the Aldis lamp flash a message in Morse code to Varbel’s signal tower. Shean could read it. ‘Run down by landing craft. Periscope bent.’ Shean, cursing under his breath, started for the tower and ran straight into Captain Banks who was coming in the other direction. The flotilla commander was not happy either.
‘Yes, I read his message,’ replied Banks. ‘What was he doing outside the exercise area, Shean?’
‘I don’t know, sir, but he has some inexperienced crew under training. Possibly he overran his area. I’ll talk to him as soon as he berths, and let you know.’ Shean knew that damage to such sensitive equipment as a periscope, a submarine’s eyes, was very serious indeed.
‘Right, Shean. I will leave that to you.’ Shean turned to go but Banks grabbed his arm. ‘And Shean, tell him that I am bloody annoyed!’2
Apart from the slight delay caused to the already tight training window while XE-4 was being repaired, such an error on an operation could prove fatal. The periscope was the only way the submarine could visually navigate in enemy territory, and a blind boat was a dead boat. An accidental ramming by an enemy vessel would merely have alerted the enemy to the submarine’s presence, which was also tantamount to a death sentence for the XE’s crew. If the boat had been hit any harder major flooding could have occurred down the periscope well, a potentially fatal situation for the crew. Captain Banks worked the men of 12th Submarine Flotilla hard in order to minimise such life-threatening errors. Shean knew that; all of the XE-men did. Six weeks working up was not long and it was inevitable that under pressure-cooker training accidents would happen.
Nothing was left to chance. First came speed trials, followed by turning circles with the rudder set at different degrees to find out each boat’s turning radius. The XE-craft’s maximum safe depth was 300 feet, and each new vessel was harnessed to a boom defence vessel that lowered the submarine down to this depth so the crew could check the boat for leaks. The submarine was winched down rather than free diving to avoid accidents – a single telephone line meant the crew could speak to the boom vessel above.3
In Holy Loch the navy had set up a sound range.4 This consisted of hydrophones slung on buoys down the length of the loch. The XE-craft raced up and down on diesel engine or electric motor while the boffins ashore recorded their sounds. Then the submarines would moor up between a couple of buoys, dive with the engine stopped and, in telephone communication, run each of the pumps, motors and other devices to see how much noise they made.5 At the end of the exercise the crews would come ashore and the technicians would give them their recorded signatures and tell them which items to run, which not to run and which to get adjusted or repaired.
The final test was passing the submarine over indicator loops, special cables that had been laid on the seabed that detected the magnetic signature made by metal objects passing overhead. In order to prevent their detection by enemy indicator loops each XE-craft was fitted with degaussing equipment that demagnetised the vessel.6
*
It already seemed an age since the commanders and crews had brought their brand-new XE-craft to Scotland by train from England, such was the hectic pace of the training programme. But naval tradition dictated that each boat had a proper naming ceremony and Banks and his staff had laid this on.
‘I name this boat Sigyn, XE-3,’ announced Melba Fraser in a loud voice, her husband Tich standing atop the X-craft in his best uniform alongside David Carey and the rest of his crew. Melba, pregnant with her first child, had just left the Wrens. ‘Godspeed to all those who sail in her,’7 she said, and then she broke a bottle of champagne over the bow of HMS XE-3. Everyone applauded loudly as the submarine slipped into the water. The little naming ceremony had been arranged at a slipway at Ardmaleish on the Isle of Bute as commanding officers of X-craft were traditionally given the privilege of nominating the person to launch their boat. Fraser had naturally chosen his wife.
The day before, Fraser had brought the XE-3 up to Bute from a prefabricated harbour run by the Americans on the Clyde after his train ride from the makers. But it had been a far from glorious entry into the loch. The XE-3’s diesel engine had seized up shortly after starting out from the Clyde and Fraser’s new command had had to be towed to Varbel by a scruffy little fishing trawler. A spare engine would be fitted in her after the naming ceremony was over.
A few days later on 15 November 1944 the XE-men and their wives gathered again at Ardmaleish, where Max Shean’s new English wife Mary went through the same ceremony and christened XE-4, hauled up on a cradle. Shean had chosen the name ‘Exciter’ for his boat, thinking it very appropriate considering the job he was expected to do. The fizz, this time Australian as befitting the submarine’s new commander, had been salvaged from Shean’s hasty wartime wedding a few months before.8
One man taking part in this ceremony was probably one of the most experienced midget submariners in the service: Engine Room Artificer 4th Class Vernon ‘Ginger’ Coles, who had joined the navy in 1938 at the age of eighteen to escape a tedious apprenticeship in a tin box factory in Reading. He had served in Norway in 1940 aboard the destroyer HMS Faulkner and later in the Mediterranean. After a short course in Portsmouth Coles had qualified as an ERA. He had joined submarines after being egged on by a Glaswegian friend over several convivial pints, but after five combat patrols Coles decided that regular submarines were not exciting enough. Then he saw the Admiralty request for volunteers for ‘Special and Hazardous Service’. ‘I looked at this and thought “Shall I or shan’t I? Shall I or shan’t I?” In the end I thought, yeah, I’ll have a go.’9
A tall, rangy man with thick side-parted hair and a gap-toothed grin, Coles possessed first-rate technical knowledge as well as an astounding facility for finding the humorous side of mishaps that would have completely upset most people.10 During the Tirpitz operation in 1943 he had served as ERA aboard the ill-fated X-9, which had been scuttled on passage. Aboard the X-22 Coles had conducted training operations in British waters before he joined Pat Westmacott’s X-24 during the successful attack on the floating dry dock at Bergen in March 1944.11 Now he would be going to war for the third time aboard the new XE-4.
Ginger Coles was not unusual – the X-craft programme attracted men from all across the navy, and for a variety of reasons. As one historian has written, ‘There was no easily definable sort of person. What did bind them together was a certain restlessness, a taste for adventure and a willingness to take mighty risks.’12
Within a week, the first six XEs had been christened and formally inducted into the submarine service. The crews’ wives and sweethearts had been confronted with the reality of their loved ones’ secret work in Scotland when they had first seen an XE-craft. For several of them, including Melba Fraser, they were less than impressed by the new boats, and more than a little alarmed. ‘But it’s so small,’ Melba exclaimed as she approached the boat sitting in its cradle at Ardmaleish with Fraser, Mick Magennis, and the other two crew members, David Carey and ERA Maughan. Against the backdrop of the gorse-covered hills that framed the large loch XE-3 did indeed look tiny. Fraser smiled at his wife’s comment. ‘That’s the idea, darling. Small in this case is an advantage.’13 Fraser hadn’t told his wife much about what he was doing up in Scotland, and as a servicewoman herself, she knew better than to ask too many questions. Whatever the work, it was evidently important for the war effort. The other wives and sweethearts were all in exactly the same position.
A few weeks earlier Melba had managed to get leave from the Wrens and had stayed with Fraser for a weekend at Varbel. She had got her first brief look at an older X-craft quite by accident during lunch when she and Fraser were dining with Captain Banks and his wife Audrey. She had glanced out of the wardroom window and spied two X-craft floating on the still waters of the loch.
‘What on earth are those?’ exclaimed Melba, pointing out of the window. Fraser’s eyes met Banks’s, who said nothing but raised one eyebrow.
‘They’re, um, they’re motorboats, dear,’ said Fraser innocently.
‘I’ve never seen motorboats like those before,’ said Melba, staring intently at the X-craft at their moorings.
‘But you’ve never been in Scotland before,’14 said Fraser, smiling innocently. Fortunately for all concerned Audrey Banks neatly changed the conversation and nothing more was said about the strange craft on the loch. Fraser tried to keep Melba in the dark about X-craft for as long as possible. He knew that she would be deeply worried by the prospect of her new husband riding in such a craft to war, and that went for all of the wives.
*
If Melba Fraser had been privy to the highest echelons of command she might have slept a little easier at night. Operation Dracula, Mountbatten’s masterstroke against Rangoon that would open the way for a British invasion of Singapore, was cancelled. Hitler had remained a more formidable foe than either Churchill or Roosevelt had reckoned on, and the German Army was far from defeated by October 1944. The promised landing ships, infantry divisions and aircraft to support Mountbatten’s invasion could not be released from the European theatre.15
The new XE-craft already had orders to sail for the Far East in support of Mountbatten’s Southeast Asia Command. But with Dracula’s cancellation the future employment of the new machines was looking uncertain.
*
The six weeks leading up to Christmas 1944 was a very hectic time for the XE-men. The training had produced two types of officer. The first were the ‘Tigers’, who trained until they were as fit as big cats. They would rise early, run along the Dunoon road or up into the hills, returning for a lean breakfast of thin toast and ersatz scrambled egg. Hunger mounted day by day, the Tigers concomitantly becoming progressively leaner. The other school of thought argued that the best way to prepare for life aboard a poorly ventilated submarine was to take all the rest available. The second group consisted of officers who were likely to be found during their off-duty hours lounging before the wardroom’s log fire sipping gin, a thick fug of tobacco smoke giving the room the impression of a cosy public house or gentleman’s club.16
The six weeks were also marked by a lot of parties as the men let off steam. The rather ascetic life at Varbel II was considerably enlivened by the launching ceremonies, and by the cocktail parties that accompanied each launching. The XE-men soon had a renewed taste for the stuff that comes in bottles. Six weeks out on Loch Striven with the new boats was interspersed with a succession of monumental hangovers.17
The final operational crews were sorted out. Max Shean’s first lieutenant Joe Brooks, a good-looking leisure-time artist, departed to be replaced by an Irishman, Sub-Lieutenant ‘Ben’ Kelly. A second diver, Sub-Lieutenant Ken Briggs from Orange, New South Wales, joined diver Jock Bergius. Shean was very pleased to have a fellow Aussie among his happy little crew.18
The only change to XE-3’s crew was a new Engine Room Artificer, Charlie Reed in place of ERA Maughan. Jack Smart’s XE-1 crew consisted of Sub-Lieutenant Harold Harper as second-in-command, ERA 4th Class Henry Fishleigh and diver Leading Seaman Walter Pomeroy. Pomeroy had been passage crew on Smart’s X-8 during the Tirpitz operation.19 There were plenty of first-rate men to choose from, but final operational crews were the closest knit of all, and often the best of friends.
*
Anti-submarine nets were constructed from steel mesh arranged in a diamond pattern, and the problem the early X-craft crewmen had faced was how to stabilise their submarine in an underwater current while hovering in front of the net as the diver worked to cut a hole.
Shean realised that if the X-craft hit the net its bow would nestle in one of the diamond-shaped spaces. The submarine’s motor could be kept running on ‘dead slow ahead’ to keep the X-craft’s nose lodged in the net. The diver would then go out through the W&D compartment, collect hydraulic cutters from the craft’s stowage bay and proceed to carefully cut a large hole for the submarine to pass through.20
As the crews practised this procedure in the few weeks remaining before Christmas, the commanding officer, Lieutenant- Commander Beaufoy-Brown took to donning a DSEA and diving down twenty feet beside the cable to watch. It was a strange experience, watching as the XE-craft approached out of the gloom, pushing its bow into the net. Silently, a hatch would open for’ard and a figure dressed in black, wearing a cumbersome diving rig, would slowly emerge and make the cuts before disappearing silently back inside the submarine. ‘It was like watching something out of a science fiction film come to life,’ recalled Beaufoy-Brown.
‘How’s the trim,’ asked Tich Fraser, as the XE-3 approached the practice net.
‘Pretty good, Tich,’ replied Carey, turning the hydroplane wheel slightly to keep the submarine just below the surface.
‘Fifteen feet, slow ahead,’ ordered Fraser.
‘Aye aye, fifteen feet, slow ahead,’ repeated Carey.
‘Steer two-seven-oh,’ said Fraser.
‘Steering two-seven-oh,’ replied Carey.
‘Depth fifteen feet,’ announced Fraser.
‘Ship’s head on two-seven-oh,’ said Carey.
Fraser pressed his eyes to the night periscope. ‘Should be nearing the net soon now.’21
With a grinding noise, the XE-3’s bow came to rest in the net.
‘She’s riding quite steady, it seems,’ said Fraser, the XE-3 remaining against the net. ‘Right, Magennis, off you go.’
Inside the XE-3’s W&D Magennis flooded the chamber, equalised the pressure and opened the hatch. He eased his body into the position for rising out of the compartment. With his torso half out of the submarine, he held himself by the knees within the compartment and vented.22 The surrounding water was dim and freezing cold.
Once clear of the hatch and horizontal, the power of the tide pushed him aft along the submarine. Quickly, Magennis grabbed the periscope standard. Tidal pressure on the upper part of the DSEA breathing bag half-emptied it, causing Magennis to breathe much harder and faster than usual, what the divers called ‘guffing’. He moved along the submarine to collect the cutters, which were attached to a long pressurised cable, giving Fraser the thumbs-up as he passed by the night periscope. The skipper could respond to the diver’s hand signals by wiggling the periscope. After retrieving the big grey cutters, shaped like an oversize pistol with metal jaws, he made his way over to the net, dragging the water cable behind him.
Working quickly, Magennis made his cuts, his breathing laboured as he worked flat out and the tidal pressure continued to push upon him. As he completed cutting a hole for the XE-3, he started to feel tingling in his lips and limbs. Gulping air like an exhausted horse, Magennis slowly stowed the cutters, his wrists aching badly.23
I can’t make it, he thought as he tried to reach the open W&D hatch. His breathing was becoming more and more constricted. The heavy labour, coupled with working in the current, had exhausted his oxygen supply to the point where he was poisoning himself with every breath. Suddenly Magennis gave up, letting go of the XE-3’s hull and rushing towards the surface, kicking his fins wildly. He couldn’t breathe; he was suffocating. He might black out and drown. Magennis hit the surface of the loch and tore off his face mask, spitting out the DSEA mouthpiece before gulping down beautiful, clean fresh air. The rescue boat quickly came alongside him. But Magennis waved the launch away. ‘I’m going back,’ he declared breathlessly as he bobbed on the surface. Replacing his mouthpiece and face mask, Magennis dipped beneath the water and swam down to the still-stationary XE-3. As he struggled into the W&D the straps on his DSEA caught on the hinge of the hatch. Completely exhausted, Magennis broke the straps and breathlessly slipped into the compartment. With his last reserves of energy he flooded down and crawled exhausted into the boat, lying on the deck like a half-dead black fish.
‘All right, Mick?’ asked a concerned Fraser.
Magennis smiled gravely. ‘Fine,’ he said, rather unconvincingly. ‘Everything’s okay, sir.’
*
‘Let this be a warning,’ said Captain Banks once Mick Magennis was back on dry land. ‘Don’t be too clever.’ He was angry that divers were trying to break nonsensical time records and nearly killing themselves in the process. Beaufoy-Brown stood beside Banks, his face serious as he listened to his superior upbraid Magennis and the other divers. ‘If this had happened on an operation it would have given the whole job away.’24 From now on, there would be no more competitions. The divers were ordered not to over-exert themselves.
*
As the last Christmas of the war arrived, the crews had managed to achieve a high state of readiness for whatever missions, if any, lay ahead. They had become very close, their teamwork second nature. The Tirpitz veterans and the newcomers were virtually indistinguishable.25 There was a natural democracy among them that would have horrified senior officers, but due to the dangerous nature of their jobs and the claustrophobic, cramped confines of the XE-craft, distinctions of rank, education and social class, so important to the surface navy, were largely irrelevant. Their loyalty was to each other, their boat and to the 12th Submarine Flotilla. Their comrades had become their family. Their beloved leader, Captain Banks, was returned to regular duties in November 1944. His replacement was an officer who had already been intimately involved with the earlier X-craft programme, Captain P.Q. Roberts, DSC.
*
Christmas is a time for real family, and Captain Roberts granted everyone leave over the holiday season. Those that could contrive to spend a few days with their wives or sweethearts did so. Word had already come through that the first division of the new flotilla, consisting of XE-1 to XE-6, was to be shipped to the Far East in February 1945. Named the 14th Submarine Flotilla (thereby avoiding unlucky thirteen26), another familiar face from the original X-craft operations would be taking the new unit operational.
Captain William ‘Tiny’ Fell had earned his nickname because of his diminutive stature, standing just 5ft 7in, but to those who knew him or served under him, Tiny was a giant of a man. ‘He thought the world of his crew,’ said Able Seaman Ken Clements, an electrician on board HMS Bonaventure.27 Fell would assume full command of Bonaventure and the new flotilla on 22 January 1945.
A sympathetic type of man who was considerate to a fault in his dealings with other people, Fell was proud of his New Zealand parentage and of his long service in submarines.28 He was 48 years old, slightly built with a striking nose and a strong chin. He had first come to England in 1914, spending a term at Charterhouse where a relative of his mother was headmaster, and then two terms at Crediton Grammar School in Devon before joining the navy in 1915. He had fought as a midshipman in the First World War’s most famous naval engagement, the Battle of Jutland, before transferring to submarines in 1917.29 In the interwar period Fell had seen service in the Mediterranean and on the China Station. Made an OBE in 1937, he was due to retire when the outbreak of war propelled him back into the front lines. He would always feel that he had been very well served by the war.30 Fell had gone on to win a DSC in 1940 before seeing action in the Vaagso Raid on occupied Norway the following year.
Fell, whose son also served in submarines, had drifted into secret operations almost by accident. One day in March 1942 he was seeking out old friends at Northway House, a converted block of luxury flats in London that formed the wartime headquarters for the Submarine Service. Fell was asked whether he would consider rejoining ‘boats’ in an unusual capacity. When he replied that he would, Fell was immediately whisked in to see Admiral Sir Max Horton who told him all about Italian human torpedo operations against the British in the Mediterranean.
‘Are you interested in starting something similar?’ asked Sir Max.
‘I am, sir,’ replied Fell enthusiastically.
‘Well, get down to Blockhouse, find Sladen and two or three madmen he has collected, and build and train a team of charioteers.’31
From this beginning emerged the British Chariot programme of human torpedoes, and Fell would move on to play an instrumental role in the early development of the X-craft midget submarine alongside ‘Slasher’ Sladen. Fell’s ‘partner in crime’ could not have been more different, both physically and in personality. Sladen stood over six feet tall – big for a submariner – weighed 13 stone, and had four England rugby caps to his name. His personality was likened to a whirlwind. Before joining the Experimental Submarine Flotilla in early 1942 Sladen had commanded the regular submarine HMS Trident in which he had managed to torpedo the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.32
*
The decision to send the XE-craft to the Far East had been taken at the Quebec Conference in September 1944 in private meetings between the chiefs of the Royal Navy and US Navy.33 There was a strong belief at the time that the ingenious little submarines would be able to play a vital role against the Japanese now that the war against Nazi Germany was winding down. Lord Mountbatten was marshalling as many forces as possible under his control for forthcoming operations against the Japanese, and the new XE-craft would find no useful employment if they were left behind in Europe. The fighting had shifted on to land in both France and Italy. Hitler’s navy had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former self, with only the U-boats continuing to operate in the open seas, and those with much-reduced effectiveness. But Fell and 14th Submarine Flotilla, though they didn’t yet know it, would face less than plain sailing in making the dream of X-craft operations in the Pacific theatre a reality. For it was sorely evident to everyone in higher command that the war with Japan was primarily an American fight, and not everyone in Washington was happy to include the British in their plans. But in early 1945 the officers and men of 14th Submarine Flotilla had no inkling that they were going to be sailing into such a politically sensitive new theatre when they left Scotland. Instead, with Christmas over and the New Year chimed in, it was a time for goodbyes.
Partings were never easy, but partings during wartime were particularly painful. The uncertainty over whether husbands would ever see wives and children again was agonising. Max Shean’s moment, like nearly everyone else’s, came on a railway platform. He was at Glasgow’s main station on New Year’s Day 1945. He held his wife Mary in his arms while all around them bustled servicemen and their families, many others going through the same riot of emotions that Shean felt at that moment. Trains shunted and wheels squealed on the tracks while carriage doors slammed and guards’ whistles blew shrilly. Shean pulled away slightly and looked down into his wife’s damp eyes. He smiled, though there was a knot of emotion in his throat. It was such a wretched place to say goodbye, a smoky railway platform in cold, wintry Glasgow. He said the things that all husbands have said during such partings, soothing things, hopeful things. But he knew that this might be the last time he would ever see his new wife. Mary was going home to await world peace, while Shean was sailing to war in the Pacific.34 Their parting was suddenly interrupted by a shout of ‘all aboard!’ as the last passengers for his train hastily clambered into their carriages. He gave his wife one final embrace, feeling her warmth against him, the coldness of her frozen cheek against his neck. And then he climbed into his carriage, dumping his kit into the overhead rack. He stood at the compartment’s open window and held his wife’s hand as she reached up from the platform. She was crying. He held on as the train started to pull away until with a final squeeze of her hand he let go.
For a long time after the train headed out into the winter-darkened countryside, Shean stared blankly out of the fogged-up window. He saw only Mary’s face.