Operation Suicide
‘These second divers are not properly coursed divers, they are merely blokes who are very keen.’
—Acting Leading Seaman James Magennis, HMS XE-3
When Tich Fraser stepped back aboard HMS Bonaventure from the XE-3 on 25 June 1945 his white, strained face and red-rimmed eyes betrayed the emotions that had surged through him following the death of his best friend. Captain Fell had had as many divers as he could muster search the area where David Carey had last been seen, but to no avail. His body was never recovered.
Fraser felt responsible for his friend’s death. He had allowed him to make the dive. His heart felt cold inside of him.1 Fell assured him that what had happened was a tragic accident, and not his fault, but a lingering doubt would remain with Fraser for the rest of his life. Carey had been his first lieutenant and was not the boat’s assigned diver. Unlike Mick Magennis, Jock Bergius and the other highly trained divers, it was never intended that Carey should undertake a combat dive, so his time and experience under the water had been very limited.
Fell ordered Fraser back out the next day to complete the exercise with a different diver.2 Fraser knew that Fell was not a heartless or cold man, and that his decision was the right one under the circumstances. They were at war, and casualties were sadly to be expected, even in training. The nature of their job was extremely hazardous as it was. The missions had to take precedence over personal feelings. Fraser and the other men would mourn Carey when the job was done.
The other five XE-craft were also ordered out on exercise on 26 June. Aboard Pat Westmacott’s XE-2 the diver for the day was Bruce Enzer, normally the skipper of XE-6. Fell felt that it was important that commanders as well as assigned divers all gained plenty of practice cutting the cable. But the commander would only ever leave the submarine under the direst of emergencies. His job was to command the boat and his crew.
When XE-2 broke the surface of the bay on 26 June off Mon Repos Beach, Bruce Enzer was atop the submarine. He had been trying to retrieve the towed grapnel when something had gone wrong. The safety boat immediately pulled up alongside, a concerned officer leaning over the gunwale.
‘Are you all right?’ the officer shouted at Enzer, who was still fully dressed in his diving suit, DSEA and round facemask. Enzer didn’t even remove his mouthpiece, just leaned over and suddenly punched the officer on the chin, sending him sprawling into the bottom of his boat. Then, without a pause, Enzer dived headfirst into the sea and disappeared beneath the surface.
Pat Westmacott opened the XE-2’s main hatch a second later, in shock. ‘What the hell just happened?’ he called out to the officer in the launch, who was standing rubbing his jaw, a confused expression on his face, his eyes frantically scanning the surface of the water for some sign of the diver.
It had happened again. Enzer was gone, his body never recovered. Two highly experienced submariners had drowned in as many days. Fell and everyone in the flotilla was appalled. The reason for the deaths soon became clear.
Neither Carey nor Enzer had dived every day during the training in Hervey Bay. The assigned divers had managed to build up tolerance to breathing pure oxygen whereas Carey and Enzer, a first lieutenant and a skipper respectively, had not. Fell also discovered that both of the dead divers had overexerted themselves during their final dives, and had exceeded safety limits.
Although Carey and Enzer were the only deaths suffered during the working-up training, two other divers came close to being killed, highlighting just how hazardous ‘Special and Hazardous Duties’ were fast becoming. One diver bailed out of a W&D compartment while his submarine was submerged and only just made it to the surface. Another blacked out in the W&D but was saved by his colleagues.3
‘It was unthinkable that these two athletic men should be lost under the ideal training conditions of Hervey Bay,’4 wrote Max Shean of Carey and Enzer’s deaths. If they could lose men when everything was perfect, what might befall the rest of them in combat?
In light of the two tragedies, Fell imposed stricter controls over diving. The cause of the two deaths was provisionally noted as ‘oxygen exhaustion’.5
That night Tich Fraser went to David Carey’s cabin to pack up his best friend’s gear to send home to his mother. It was the saddest moment of his life.6
The gloom of the two deaths cast a long shadow over the other XE-men. They were considerably shaken up by the tragedies and some felt that the whole set-up was too risky. Two of the officers decided to leave the flotilla, which came as a further surprise to everyone. Lieutenant Terry-Lloyd, the South African commander of XE-5 requested a transfer to general service, as well as Sub-Lieutenant A.J. Renouf.7 Fell granted their requests without animosity but, with Terry-Lloyd’s departure and Bruce Enzer’s death, he was now minus two skippers. Sub-Lieutenant William Smith, the New Zealander first lieutenant of XE-6, was appointed to the same post in Fraser’s XE-3 to replace Carey. XE-2 and XE-6 were now both minus commanders and first lieutenants. As there was only one XE-craft skipper and one first lieutenant in the pool of spare crew this created a serious problem for Fell and the operational efficiency of his flotilla.8
*
Seven days after Bruce Enzer’s tragic death, Captain Fell sent a signal to Admiral Fraser’s headquarters. It read ‘Success’, indicating that his flotilla had perfected locating and severing an underwater telephone line. Fraser cabled back that Fell was to proceed to Subic Bay and lay his plans before Admiral Fife for his final approval.9
*
With trials completed for the two cable-cutting operations, now codenamed ‘Sabre’ and ‘Foil’, the Bonaventure arrived in Brisbane on 27 June under the temporary command of Derek Graham.10 Fell had ordered that the crew and the XE-men enjoy seven days’ shore leave. It would raise morale and hopefully allow them to start to get over the deaths of the two popular officers. After the second night the majority of the Bonaventure’s ship’s company found good homes to go to. The locals showered liberal generosity on the visiting ‘Poms’.11 While his men relaxed, Fell was ushered into Fife’s office at Subic Bay. It was make or break time for 14th Submarine Flotilla.
*
Fell had made another long and arduous journey by several planes to Manila, eventually arriving at Subic Bay. He returned once more to HMS Maidstone for a wash and a quick cup of tea before setting out for Admiral Fife’s office. Fell was in a considerable state of nerves when he sat down opposite Fife. The American took the binder from Fell containing the operational plans for Sabre and Foil and settled down to read them. Fell and Commander Davies, the staff officer, both nursing cups of coffee, sat in silence watching as the Admiral carefully read through everything. It was impossible to read anything from Fife’s face. After what seemed like an eternity, Fife looked up over his spectacles and spoke.
‘What about having a crack at the two cruisers in Singapore while we are at the cables?’12
Fell was astonished by Fife’s suggestion, so astonished that he didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he smiled, a broad grin forming across his face.
‘I don’t see why not, Jimmy,’ said Fell, ‘I don’t see why not at all.’
*
Admiral Fife took his British guests to his new mess, ‘giving me an old-fashioned [whisky-based cocktail] that nearly knocked my head off,’13 recalled Fell. Then with one of Fife’s staff officers as liaison and with Maidstone’s staff Fell got down to the new plan to take out the heavy cruisers and worked solidly for 36 hours until he felt it was ready to show Fife.
Fife approved the plan in principle and Fell immediately returned to Australia, a journey of 5,000 miles in 46 hours, to obtain Sir Bruce Fraser’s blessing and to get the Bonaventure under way for the operations.14
In Sydney, Fraser approved the new plan and Fell spent two days and nights collecting information, making adjustments and tying up loose ends before boarding a plane for Brisbane.
On 7 July, Fell assigned the boats for the cable-cutting operations. A rather casual conference was called aboard the Bonaventure.15 Apart from Fell and his second-in-command Derek Graham, the commanders of XE-1, 3, 4, and 5 were all present.
Because of the amount of underwater work that would be involved in the cable-cutting operations, and taking into consideration the fear of oxygen exhaustion when working at depth, the two selected XE-craft would each be assigned two divers instead of the more usual one. In this way, the workload could be shared.
‘Max,’ said Fell, turning to the Australian skipper of XE-4. ‘I’m assigning you Operation Sabre.’ This was the mission to cut the cable off the mouth of the Mekong River in French Indochina. Shean’s crew would consist of Lieutenant Ben Kelly, his Irish first lieutenant ERA Ginger Coles, and two divers, Sub-Lieutenants Ken Briggs and Jock Bergius. Two Australians, two Celts and an Englishman. It was a happy crew.
Operation Foil, the plan to sever the undersea cable off Lamma Island, Hong Kong, went to the New Zealand skipper Pat Westmacott and the XE-5. Apart from the regular crew of his XO, Beadon Dening, and ERA Clifford Greenwood, his two divers would be Lieutenant Bruce ‘Nobby’ Clarke and Sub-Lieutenant Dennis Jarvis.
*
Mountbatten’s Operation Zipper was now scheduled for the second week of August. Therefore, the Japanese communication cables needed to be severed by the end of July or the beginning of August.
The Bonaventure arrived at Manus on the morning of 13 July. After embarking fuel and fresh water, she left the Admiralty Islands at 5.00pm and set course for Subic Bay in the Philippines. Morale could not have been higher. ‘D-Day’ was scheduled for 31 July.16 On 20 July she arrived and anchored close to HMS Maidstone, depot ship for 8th Submarine Flotilla. This unit would provide the big ‘mother’ submarines that would tow the little XE-craft into action.17 The cable-cutting and heavy cruiser mining operations had both been laid once more before Admiral Fife, and he had approved both without any alterations.18 The green light was now well and truly on.
*
The next task was to assign operational crews and XE-craft to the attacks on the Japanese heavy cruisers at Singapore. They looked on the face of it to be targets as formidably well hidden and defended as the Tirpitz had been.
‘These, gentlemen, are what we’ve got to put out of action.’ Captain Fell placed two black-and-white prewar profile photographs of the Japanese warships onto the wardroom table. ‘Somehow the Takao and the Myoko have got to be neutralised before early August,’ he said to the small gathering of XE-craft skippers and their first lieutenants aboard the Bonaventure as she rode at anchor off Subic Naval Base.
‘How does that appeal to you, Tich?’ asked Fell, looking directly at Fraser.
‘All right, sir,’ replied Fraser, somewhat taken aback at being chosen without preamble by Fell. He thought that he’d have preferred pretty much any job to that which Fell had just sprung on him.
‘Tich, your target will be the Takao,’ continued Fell, his index finger landing on the photograph of the ship as he spoke.
‘Jack,’ said Fell, turning to Lieutenant Smart, commander of XE-1, ‘how do you feel about going after the Myoko?’19
Smart, who was stroking his beard, stopped and looked up from the photographs, his eyes briefly flashing.
‘Marvellous, sir,’ he said, in a tone of voice that sounded somewhat less than convincing. Smart’s face had taken on a very serious expression, and Fraser, when he glanced at him, knew exactly what his friend was thinking. Compared to cutting telephone cables, attacking two huge Japanese warships deep inside a heavily defended harbour was one of the most dangerous jobs any X-craft skipper could expect. Memories of what had befallen the three X-craft submarines that had managed to get close to the Tirpitz in 1943 were seared into the flotilla’s collective memory. For Fraser, there was a certain horrid inevitability about the whole thing. While Fell talked, his mind flashed briefly back to March 1944, when he had first arrived at Rothesay with David Carey after the two of them had fled the boredom of ‘pinging’ duties aboard the H.44 for the tantalising unknowns of ‘Special and Hazardous Service’. He had always had the buried knowledge that a day like this would finally arrive, and that he should have to do that for which he had been trained. But he had always secretly hoped that he would not have to do a harbour penetration.20
Another officer had joined the Bonaventure at Brisbane shortly before she sailed. Lieutenant G.C. Potter, DSC, was a member of Admiral Fraser’s British Pacific Fleet Staff.21 A naval intelligence officer, his task would be to brief the crews conducting the forthcoming operations on the latest British naval and RAF assessments.
Fraser leaned forward and carefully examined the photographs Potter had brought with him from Sydney.
‘Potter,’ said Fell, ‘you’d better fill them in on the latest intelligence.’
Potter nodded and began to speak. The Takao and Myoko, he explained, were practically the sum total of Japan’s surface warships in the Singapore region. They formed the 5th Cruiser Division, part of Vice-Admiral Shigeru Fukudome’s 10th Area Fleet, headquartered in Singapore. The only other surface combatant left in Singapore was the 1,700-ton destroyer Kamikaze as well as a few auxiliary patrol and minesweeping vessels. The Kamikaze was to be considered a target of opportunity for both XE-craft.
‘The Japs have been using their remaining heavy cruisers to bring troops into Singapore from outlying territories,’ continued Potter. ‘As you know, so far the Yanks and our good selves have managed to bag three of the blighters.’
Admiral Fukudome had watched his once-mighty fleet wither away. In early April 1945 the American submarine USS Char had torpedoed and sunk the cruiser Isuzu in the Java Sea. The most spectacular action had been on the night of 16 May when the five vessels of Captain Manley Power’s British 26th Destroyer Flotilla had encountered the heavy cruiser Haguro, the newest vessel of the Myoko-class, escorted by the destroyer Kamikaze in the Malacca Strait 50 miles off Penang. The Haguro was acting as a supply vessel for Japanese garrisons in the Netherlands East Indies and the Bay of Bengal. In what would turn out to be the last ship-versus-ship naval battle of the war, 26th Flotilla had attacked the giant Haguro, damaging her with gunfire, and then managed to slam three torpedoes into her side. Nine hundred Japanese sailors went down with the ship while the damaged Kamikaze managed to rescue 320 men from the sea before fleeing back to the safety of Singapore. British casualties amounted to just two men killed.
On 8 June the Royal Navy had scored another major victory when the submarine HMS Trenchant had torpedoed the Ashigara, another of the Myoko’s sister ships. At the time the Ashigara had been transporting 1,600 Japanese troops through the Bangka Strait from Batavia to Singapore.
With the destruction of the Isuzu, Ashigara and Haguro, Japanese naval power in the Malayan Peninsula region had been reduced to only three vessels: the heavy cruisers Takao and Myoko and the destroyer Kamikaze, all neatly bottled up in Singapore.
‘They’re both armed with eight-inch guns with a range of about eighteen miles,’ continued Potter, describing the Takao and Myoko. ‘The problem for us is where the Japs have moored them.’
He picked up a manila folder from a side table and took out several aerial reconnaissance photographs and laid them before Fraser and Smart. They were stereoscopic photos prepared by the RAF Photographic Reconnaissance Unit, and when a pair of pictures was viewed through a special tabletop stereoscopic device the images appeared three-dimensional, vastly increasing the detail that could be seen.
‘Here’s the northern shore of Singapore Island,’ said Potter, pointing with his finger. ‘And here’s the southern edge of Johor,’ he said, pointing to the southern coast of Malaya. ‘Between them is the Johor Strait, a mile or so wide at its widest point,’ said Potter, running his finger along the thin waterway that separated Singapore from the mainland. ‘You’ll enter from the eastern end here,’ pointing to a narrower series of channels that threaded past a collection of small islands off Singapore’s northeast coast.
Reading the reports and perusing the photos soon gave Fraser and Smart the impression that the Takao and Myoko were floating fortresses that constituted very formidable obstacles to British designs on the region. But no one standing around the Bonaventure’s wardroom table could deny that it was a mission that the XE-craft had been specifically designed for.
The ships were impressive targets. The oldest of the pair was the 13,500-ton Myoko, launched in 1927. She had fought in China, the Philippines, Java, the Coral Sea, Midway, the Aleutians and Guadalcanal. Damaged by an American torpedo in December 1944, the Myoko had been towed to Singapore for repairs. In February 1945 the Japanese had decided to keep her in harbour as a floating flak battery to counter American air raids.
The 15,500-ton Takao, 668 feet long and launched in 1930, had taken two torpedoes at Leyte Gulf in October 1944. Limping into Singapore, her wrecked stern had been cut off and shored up.
Apart from the flak guns, the two enormous warships’ turreted main guns cast long shadows on the fast-flowing waters of the Selat Johor, or Johor Strait. The Takao’s ten 8in guns could deliver 280lb high-explosive shells, allowing her to dominate the sea approaches to Singapore as well as southern Johor. Myoko had ten 7.9in guns. Combined, the two warships could pump out 60 shells a minute across a 20-mile radius. The damage such gun platforms could inflict upon Mountbatten’s Operation Zipper troops as they advanced south towards Singapore would be incalculable. As Potter explained, though both ships had been damaged, the British didn’t know whether the Japanese had managed to make them seaworthy again, and whether they might even sortie in an attempt to either reach Japan or try to disrupt any British landings on Malaya’s west coast at Ports Swettenham or Dickson. But the positioning of the ships suggested that the Japanese were intending to use them to dominate the land approach to the northern coast of Singapore Island. To all intents and purposes, they were as immovable and impressive as medieval castles.
The Takao had been positioned close to the old British naval base at Sembawang, while the Myoko was two miles further west near the Causeway, the narrow concrete and rubber roadway that connected Singapore to mainland Malaya. A prewar British antisubmarine boom closed off the eastern end of the channel, accessible only through a large gate that was guarded by a boom defence vessel.
‘Can’t the air force bomb them?’ asked Smart.
‘No. We’d need Lancasters armed with Tallboys to sink these behemoths and we’ve only got light carrier aviation in the region,’ said Potter. ‘The best they could do is to scorch the paintwork a bit. The Yanks can’t help either.’ The USAAF had redeployed its B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers from a base in India to the recently captured Marianas Islands in May 1945 to concentrate on turning Japanese industry and cities into piles of ashes. Before the move, the B-29s had made some raids on the naval base infrastructure and oil tanks, but Singapore had been at the bombers’ extreme range, limiting their usually huge payload to just four 1,000lb bombs per aircraft.
‘Anyway,’ continued Potter, ‘the bally things are bristling with ack-ack guns, not to mention the whole area is laced with protective flak batteries.’ He paused and rubbed his tired eyes. ‘An aerial torpedo strike has also been ruled out as the channel is too shallow. The only practicable way to get at them is for a couple of XEs to creep down the strait and basically emulate Operation Source. Try and break their backs using your side cargoes and limpet mines as we did with the Tirpitz in ’43.’
‘What kind of defences against submarine attack do the Japs have in place?’ asked Fraser.
‘There’s a contact minefield at the eastern entrance to the strait, and then the old British boom. We think that there may be hydrophone posts or indicator loops in the channel, but this hasn’t been confirmed. Of course, there will be patrol boats. I’ve prepared these reports for you on both ships,’ said Potter, passing across two bulging manila folders containing photographs, charts, target descriptions and assessments. The front covers were marked with the words ‘TOP SECRET’ and below ‘OPERATION STRUGGLE’ printed in bold letters.
‘“Struggle”, sir?’ said Fraser.
‘I thought it appropriate after what I’ve been through obtaining this mission for us,’ replied Captain Fell wryly.22
Fell leaned over the table and patted an enlarged photograph of the Takao with the flat of one hand. ‘You’re on big things now, chaps,’ he said to Fraser and Smart. ‘Things are humming up, and you must be ready to slip on the 26th. D-Day for both the cable-cutting operations and your ops is the 31st. Brief your crews and formulate a plan of attack.’23
‘Yes, sir,’ said Fraser. When he spoke he found that his mouth had gone rather dry.
*
Back in his cabin, Fraser had time to reflect upon the forthcoming mission. He had been worried for weeks already, a constant nervous strain buzzing in the background of his everyday duties like static. Every night-time worry about how he would perform on a mission was about to be transformed into reality. Now there was no turning back. There was no denying that David Carey’s death had hit Fraser hard, harder than he realised at the time, and brought home the full, ghastly reality of what he had volunteered for. Fraser, like all the other XE-men, submerged his private feelings into the job at hand. Keeping busy was the best defence against the jitters.
Fraser called his crew together to brief them on the mission and begin preparing a plan in concert with Smart. He kept his fears to himself, appearing calm and untroubled in front of Kiwi Smith, Mick Magennis and Charlie Reed. To Fraser, the crew of the XE-3 had always seemed so imperturbable to him, and he drew enormous strength from that.
*
Captain Fell ordered the four midgets that would take part in operations against the Japanese to be swung out immediately into Subic Bay to commence working up for the three forthcoming missions.24 Fell also laid on lectures on the intricacies of towing and communications for the operational and passage crews. Lieutenant B.J. Tonks, a highly accomplished New Zealander from the Bonaventure, delivered these vital talks.25
*
Although the targets had been identified and methods of attack settled upon, further detailed planning for the three operations continued in between practical training in the Bay. The crews of XE-1, XE-3, XE-4 and XE-5 spent hours cloistered in their skippers’ cabins aboard the Bonaventure, hunched over intelligence reports, Admiralty charts and RAF aerial photographs. Nothing was left to chance. Jack Smart and Tich Fraser required detailed maps of the Straits of Singapore and the Johor Strait, but the only available ones were large and designed for the normal-sized chart table found on surface warships. They did not fit on the small awkward area of the XE-craft chart table. Like schoolboys involved in a homework project, Smart and Fraser spent hours making their own smaller charts by cutting out the areas they wanted to the size that they wanted, and then sticking on a compass rose for measuring off direction.