There was delicious irony in the selection of Captain Leach to take Prime Minister Churchill and his entourage across the Atlantic for Churchill’s first summit meeting with President Roosevelt. The senior naval officer on that historic voyage was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord. There is no evidence that either Pound or Leach ever spoke of the former’s attempt to court martial the latter less than three months previously.
The other two senior officers on board were Lieutenant General Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Air Marshal Sir Wilfred R. Freeman, Vice-Chief of the Air Staff. Other officers in the entourage included Colonel Leslie Hollis, senior assistant to General ‘Pug’ Ismay, Churchill’s Chief of Staff and Lieutenant Colonel Ian Jacob, the other principal senior assistant to Ismay and Captain Richard Pim, RN. Captain Pim was in charge of Churchill’s war room at the Admiralty where maps showed the positions of convoys and warships on the oceans of the world. Some at the Admiralty referred to it as ‘Pim’s sacred domain’107 and he set up a replica war room in the Prince of Wales.
Not all of the important personages aboard Prince of Wales were military officers. The civilians included Sir Alexander Cadogan, permanent undersecretary of the Foreign Office, Professor Frederick Lindemann, known to Churchill as ‘the Prof’ who ‘was Churchill’s interpreter on all technical matters whether scientific or economic’108 and John Martin, one of Churchill’s private secretaries.
One bright day on this historic voyage Churchill and entourage posed for an official photograph on the quarterdeck of Prince of Wales. Churchill is wearing a yachting cap and blue nautical jacket with brass buttons, the uniform of the Royal Yacht Squadron. In his right hand is an unlit cigar. In addition to the aforesaid a few others were selected to be in this photograph, one of whom was Captain Leach.
Prince of Wales’ passenger roster included the American Harry Lloyd Hopkins (see Chapter VI), President Roosevelt’s closest adviser and an invaluable liaison between Roosevelt and Churchill. Shortly before he embarked on Prince of Wales Hopkins had been with Marshal Stalin in Moscow. On 22 June Germany had invaded the Soviet Union in the most massive invasion in history but despite the extent of the German advance Stalin had convinced Hopkins that Russia was not about to collapse. Hopkins was only 50, but he was an ill man living on borrowed time. Flight Lieutenant D.C. McKinley had been hand-picked to fly Hopkins to Russia and they had travelled in an American-made PBY, which the British called the Catalina, from Invergordon on the east coast of Scotland to Archangel in Russia. On their return flight they flew directly to Scapa Flow so that Hopkins could join Churchill in Prince of Wales. It was a gruelling flight of over 2,000 miles. Hopkins, who had left his medical kit in Moscow, suffered from exhaustion and illness, but during their short time together McKinley had grown fond of his American charge. McKinley recounted his last view of Hopkins after he had landed his aircraft on the choppy water of the Flow.
At this stage Mr Hopkins had to make a hazardous leap from the aircraft to the launch followed by his luggage which was literally hurled across the several yards of open water separating us from the launch. My last glimpse of him showed him smiling and determined, though very dishevelled as the result of his wearing experience. As he waved us farewell we could not help feeling that very few persons could have taken what he had endured since we met at Invergordon on July 28. Circling overhead prior to our return flight to Oban we saw a launch wallowing heavily across the harbour and we wondered if there was to be any rest for a man so obviously ill and yet showing unbelievable courage, determination and appreciation for the services of others.109
That launch deposited Hopkins at the Prince of Wales. It was still over 24 hours before Prince of Wales was scheduled to depart and Churchill was not yet aboard. That night the Commander-in-Chief Admiral Tovey and Captain Leach hosted a dinner for Hopkins, but he was too ill to enjoy his food and Admiral Tovey immediately summoned medical assistance. The American was medicated and put to bed where he slept until the following afternoon.
Captain Leach was responsible for the safety of his ship and her company. Now he had the additional responsibility for his Prime Minister, the First Sea Lord, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the Vice-Chief of the Air Staff, the Permanent Undersecretary of the Foreign Office, the Prime Minister’s chief scientific adviser and the closest adviser to the President of the United States. The repercussions if the Prince of Wales had been attacked by U-boats, long range bombers or the Tirpitz, the sister ship of the Bismarck, would have been great indeed.
In the period before Britain entered the war on 3 September 1939, the defences of Scapa Flow had been badly neglected. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who put too much effort into the appeasement of Hitler, was partially to blame. At 0130 on 14 October 1939 U-47 entered Scapa Flow through a channel that was not properly guarded, and after dark located the battleship Royal Oak. The U-boat commander, Lieutenant Günther Prien, fired two salvos of torpedoes into the Royal Oak five minutes apart. Within minutes the Royal Oak capsized with a loss of 833 officers and ratings.
Libertymen leaving HMS Royal Oak the day before the attack by U-47.
The triumphant crew of U-47. (Courtesy of Korvetten-Kapitan Hans Wessels)
Three days later long-range bombers flying from airfields inside Germany raided Scapa Flow, damaging the former battleship Iron Duke, which had to be beached. These two attacks prompted the Admiralty to take immediate action. The Home Fleet was redeployed to bases on the west coast of Scotland and the Home Fleet did not return to Scapa Flow until March 1940. Counter-measures were taken to make certain that U-boats could never penetrate the Flow again, including the reinforcement of booms, additional blockships and controlled minefields. 88 heavy and 40 light anti-aircraft guns were mounted on Hoy and nearby islands, together with over 100 searchlights. On 3 January 1940 Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, sent a minute to First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound that questioned the number of searchlights to be installed at Scapa.
Is it really necessary to have 108 anti-aircraft lights? Is it likely that an enemy making an attack upon the Fleet at this great distance would do it by night? All their attacks up to the present have been by day, and it is only by day that precise targets can be hit.110
As Prince of Wales steamed out into the Atlantic, Leach’s biggest concern was not the risk of a night bombing raid, but the possibility that a German reconnaissance aircraft would spot the ship leaving the Flow and signal a U-boat on station nearby. There was little that Leach could do about that threat except to depend on his destroyers to detect and destroy any submarines. Unbeknownst to Leach, crypto-analysts at the highly secret intelligence centre at Bletchley Park, a Victorian mansion situated 50 miles north-west of London, were daily decrypting the German naval Enigma signals which included all patrol orders to U-boats. Based on this information Prince of Wales was diverted from areas where U-boats were known to be operating. The threat of the Tirpitz intercepting Prince of Wales was more apparent than real. After the loss of the Bismarck, Hitler ordered Admiral Erich Raeder to limit the Tirpitz’s operations to the Baltic and Norwegian waters where she could be protected by fighter aircraft.
Churchill’s long-time adviser and intimate friend Brendan Bracken, then Minister of Information, had invited two prominent authors to accompany Churchill to his historic rendezvous with Roosevelt. Henry Vollam Morton was a travel writer whose books included The Heart of London, In Search of Scotland, and In the Steps of the Master. Howard Spring was a Welsh novelist whose bestseller was Oh, Absalom. Shortly before 11.30 on Sunday 3 August, Morton and Spring boarded a train at Marylebone Station in London. Neither knew where he was being taken, but when they were assigned to a sleeper car they knew they were headed for Scotland. After lunch Morton noticed that the train was slowing down, and at a small country station he watched through a window as Churchill and his entourage came aboard. He heard someone call this name. It was Brendan Bracken, hatless, his auburn hair ruffled, his face beaming with delight. “‘Well, you see who’s on the train?” he asked eagerly. The train began to move. “Good luck!” he said as he leaped down on the platform.’111
Later in the afternoon Morton was talking to Spring in their day coach when Colonel Hollis joined them. He had been authorised by the Prime Minister’s secretary, John Martin, to tell them they were going to Newfoundland in Prince of Wales where Churchill would meet the President of the United States. They wanted to know how close a secret it was. “‘The best kept secret I can remember in Whitehall,” he replied.’112 They asked about the attitude of their Prime Minister. “‘Well, you see,” replied the Colonel, “He’s rather like a boy who’s been let out of school suddenly. He says it’s the only holiday he’s had since the war.”’113
Shortly after breakfast the next morning the train arrived in Thurso, the closest port to Scapa Flow. Morton and Spring were taken by a drifter called Smiling Morn to the destroyer Oribi anchored in the bay. From the deck they watched Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff board. ‘The mist had settled into a firm drizzle and the Prime Minister was offered shelter. “No,” he said, “the bridge.”’114
Captain Leach had planned a meticulous welcome for the dignitaries. Morton’s words describe the scene.
We saw a giant among giants, the splendid ship that was to be our home, her great guns pointing fore and aft, her crew drawn up on deck. How beautiful she looked that morning as she appeared out of the mist, full of power, strength and pride. As we approached her, bells rang in our engine room, we slowed and, tilting slightly against the sea, swung around to her and, as we did so, we saw that the battleship, which from a distance had looked so graceful and so lithe, now towered above us like a mighty hill of steel. Far above us the fifteen hundred odd members of her crew stood mustered on the decks, the bosuns stood at the gangway, the Officer of the Watch with his telescope, the Captain, the Royal Marines and their band upon the quarter-deck; and it was interesting to watch the expression of the Prince of Wales as we came alongside, for every pair of eyes was upon the bridge of the Oribi, where a man was smoking a cigar; and you see lips forming words and almost hear a whisper go right around the battleship – ‘It’s Winston!’
He crossed the gangway from ship to ship and as his foot touched the quarter-deck he saluted and then shook hands with Captain Leach – a tall, elegant figure with a telescope tucked beneath his arm.115
A young officer, Lieutenant Dyer-Smith had vacated his cabin so that Morton could occupy it. When Morton apologised for this inconvenience, Dyer-Smith brushed it aside telling Morton that it was a great privilege to be taking the Prime Minister to sea and that they were all tremendously proud to have been selected. The cabin would have suited Morton perfectly except that it was directly over the propeller shaft. The noise was thunderous and the vibrations were worse than the noise. Dyer-Smith told Morton they were doing a good 30 knots and that it was not always so bad; he thought Morton would get used to it.
Captain Leach gave up his quarters to the Prime Minister, which consisted of a drawing room with chintz-covered settees and armchairs, a dining room, a bedroom, a bathroom and a pantry. Leach had for many years lived a Spartan life at sea and such luxury was not to his taste. The quarters had been designed for whichever admiral flew his flag in the Prince of Wales rather than a captain.
On their first night at sea, just before dinner, Leach spoke over the loudspeaker and announced that Prince of Wales was to carry the Prime Minister and the Chiefs of Staff to Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, to meet the President of the United States. For most of the ship’s officers, Morton and Spring, dinner was served in the wardroom by Royal Marines mess attendants in white jackets. The Prime Minister, Harry Hopkins, the Chiefs of Staff and the other distinguished passengers dined in the Captain’s quarters. After the tables in the wardroom were cleared, comfortable chairs were brought in from the anteroom and a screen and projector were set up. Churchill’s party entered the wardroom formally attired; Sir John Dill was wearing a dinner jacket as was Harry Hopkins, Sir Dudley Pound wore his Admiral’s uniform and Churchill, who was the last to enter the wardroom, wore the mess dress of the Royal Yacht Squadron. Morton saw that he was ‘beaming all over and emanating a terrific good nature’.116
When Churchill retired for his first night in Prince of Wales, he could not have been in better spirits, but he soon reappeared in a petulant mood that he did not try to hide. The Captain’s quarters were in the stern of the ship, and while the noise and vibrations there were not as bad as they were in Morton’s cabin, they were bad enough. In the middle of the night Churchill proceeded to abandon the Captain’s quarters and the first officer he encountered was ordered to escort him to the Admiral’s sea cabin. This young officer thought the Prime Minister looked like an enraged cherub as they set out, Churchill wearing his famous zip up siren suit. It was not an easy journey as the Prince of Wales was blacked out and closed-down for instant battle and was steaming at full speed into gale force winds. Ascending and descending companionways in the dark the Prime Minister could have had a nasty fall, but he was able to reach his destination without mishap. Churchill found the Admiral’s sea cabin much more to his liking; indeed he liked it so well that he slept there for the entire remainder of the voyage.
Churchill had always taken a special interest in the Royal Navy. He knew its history by heart and venerated Lord Nelson, the Royal Navy’s greatest hero. He had also been the First Lord of the Admiralty at the outset of both world wars. On the outbound voyage to Newfoundland he read C.S. Forester’s novel Captain Horatio Hornblower RN; it was the first book he had read for pleasure since the war began. For all this interest in the service, Churchill might not have struck up such a friendship with the Royal Navy captain of the Prince of Wales had he not taken the Admiral’s sea cabin, which was quite near Leach’s own sea cabin. Volume III of Churchill’s memoirs of the Second World War, entitled The Grand Alliance, makes mention of the man who safeguarded him across the Atlantic.
The spacious quarters over the propellers, which are most comfortable in harbour, became almost uninhabitable through vibration in heavy weather at sea, so I moved to the Admiral’s sea cabin on the bridge for working and sleeping. I took a great liking to our Captain Leach, a charming and lovable man and all that a British sailor should be.117
Morton did not meet Leach until the day that Prince of Wales reached Placentia Bay. Prince of Wales with her white ensign unfurled in the morning breeze followed two American destroyers flying the Stars and Stripes into that vast bay which is 55 miles in width at its opening. Within a short time Prince of Wales came abreast of USS Augusta where the President stood on the bridge. As she did so bosun’s pipes shrilled and the Royal Marines band crashed into The Star Spangled Banner. From Augusta came her response, God Save the King. Morton found himself in conversation with a stranger on the quarterdeck.
While I was watching these incidents I met a strange naval officer upon the quarter-deck – a tall, elegant figure in captain’s uniform, striding in solitary state with a telescope under his arm. He had that definite air of ownership which captains assume upon their own quarter-deck. He was Captain Leach, who had been invisible from the moment of our sailing. He told me that he had been on the bridge for six days and nights, and was now properly shaved and clothed for the first time since leaving Scapa Flow. I said something about the responsibility of taking Winston Churchill across the Atlantic in war-time, and I received in reply an eloquent glance of tired blue eyes and a weary but contented smile.118
The next day was Sunday 10 August. Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that it was most appropriate to hold divine services, which the Royal Navy calls a ‘church parade’. That morning the sun came out for the first time and Morton met Churchill on the deck. ‘We have a grand day for a church parade,’ he said, ‘and I have chosen some grand hymns.’119
The American destroyer McDougal secured alongside the Augusta and took on the President, the Chiefs of Staff, Harry Hopkins, Sumner Wells, Averell Harriman and two of the President’s sons. As soon as the McDougal was secured to Prince of Wales a gangway was thrown across. Franklin Roosevelt was the first American to step aboard the ship; with his left hand he held the arm of his second son, Elliott, who wore the uniform of a captain in the US Army Air Force.
Captain Leach stepped forward to welcome the President, a meeting captured in a marvellous photograph held at the Imperial War Museum. Leach is shaking the smiling President’s hand. Behind Roosevelt and to his right there is a young American naval officer, the President’s third son, Ensign Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr, US Navy. Churchill stands five feet away taking in everything with apparent pleasure.
Immediately thereafter the Royal Marines honour guard presented arms with rifles flashing bayonets. The Royal Marines band crashed into The Star Spangled Banner and the President stood at attention with his hat over his heart. His two sons saluted.
Leach read the lesson at the service, verses 5 and 6 of chapter 1 of the Book of Joshua.
There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.
Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shall thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I swore unto their fathers to give them.
On the afternoon of Tuesday 19 August, Churchill and Roosevelt concluded their conversations aboard USS Augusta and the Prime Minister and his party returned in the last launch to Prince of Wales. At 17.00 Captain Leach’s ship passed slowly by Augusta, saluted the American cruiser and steamed out of Placentia Bay. The only concrete accomplishment of Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s first summit conference was the Atlantic Charter, which is no longer in use. In a radio broadcast to the British people on 24 August Churchill referred to it as ‘a simple, rough and ready war-time statement of the goal toward which the British Commonwealth and the United States mean to make their way.’120 His radio address gave larger emphasis to the ties that had always bound Britain and the US together rather than to the lofty, idealistic goals of the Charter.
We had a Church Parade on the Sunday in our Atlantic bay. The President came on the quarter-deck of the Prince of Wales, where there were mingled together many hundreds of American and British sailors and Marines. The sun shone bright and warm, while we sang the old hymns which are our common inheritance, and which we learned as children in our homes. We sang the hymn founded on the Psalm which John Hampden’s soldiers sang when they bore his body to the grave, and in which the brief precarious span of human life is contrasted with the immutability of Him to whom a thousand ages are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night.
We sang the sailor’s hymn ‘For those’ – and there are very many – ‘in peril on the Sea.’ We sang ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and indeed, I felt this was no vain presumption but that we had the right to feel that we were serving a cause for the sake of which a trumpet had sounded from on high. When I looked upon that densely packed congregation of fighting men of the same language, of the same faith, of the same fundamental laws, of the same ideals, and now to a large extent of the same interests, and certainly in different degrees facing the same dangers, it swept across me that here was the only hope …121
The Atlantic Conference failed to achieve agreement over Japanese aggression. Japan now possessed air bases within striking distance of Singapore. These air bases were located in French Indo-China which Japan had seized in stages after the fall of France. One of Churchill’s hopes at the Atlantic Conference was to convince Roosevelt that if Japan attacked either Singapore or the Netherlands East Indies, it would be in the paramount interest of the US to declare war on Japan. Churchill only managed to get Roosevelt to agree to a diplomatic note to Japan that would include the following words drafted by Churchill:
Any further encroachment by Japan in the Southwest Pacific would produce a situation in which the United States Government would be compelled to take counter-measures, even though these might lead to war between the United States and Japan.122
When Roosevelt returned to Washington, his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, strongly objected to this language. Churchill’s words were deleted.
In their off-the-record discussions about the menace of Japan, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed on a show of force that they believed might lessen her militaristic ambitions. The American deterrent would be the Boeing B-17 heavy bomber, often called the Flying Fortress, with a range of 2,000 miles and a payload of 17,600lbs. There were those in the US Army Air Corps who were sure that by virtue of its speed and its armament the B-17 would seldom be shot down. These views overestimated the B-17 and underestimated the Mitsubishi A6M2 Reisen.
Roosevelt’s idea for a British deterrent was a Royal Navy squadron of capital ships based at Singapore and the discussions between the two premiers may have been the reason for Churchill’s decision to send HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse to Singapore. On Prince of Wales’ inbound voyage to Scapa Flow Leach had more immediate concerns than a future war with Japan. At 0730 on Wednesday 13 August he told the entire ship over the loudspeaker that the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt had become known in Germany and that the enemy probably knew that it had taken place near Newfoundland. He went on to tell them that the danger of U-boat attack was imminent and that on the final run into Scapa the danger of air attack could not be overlooked. ‘If ever there was a time when the utmost vigilance is required … it is upon this voyage.’123 On Monday 18 August Prince of Wales reached Scapa Flow after a brief stop in Iceland, having seen no sign of the enemy.
Before departing Prince of Wales Churchill made a farewell speech to the ship’s company with whom he now felt a special bond. The officers and ratings waved their caps in the air and cheered. One of those present remembered that Churchill had smiled at the cheering sailors and brought out one of his best cigars. A destroyer was waiting with steam up to take him and his party to the Scottish mainland. As he departed he turned to bid a farewell to the Prince of Wales; he would never see her or her captain again.
Churchill wanted to show Leach his appreciation and in the second week of September he received a photograph of the Prime Minister together with a letter of transmittal signed by Lieutenant Commander C.R. Thompson. Thompson had been Churchill’s flag lieutenant at the Admiralty and had gone to Downing Street with his master. During the war Thompson made all of Churchill’s travel arrangements as well as carrying out personal assignments. The photograph was presumably lost with its owner, but Churchill’s inscription is believed to have included the following words:
To Captain John C. Leach
This is a small memento of a memorable trip with my best thanks to yourself …
Winston S. Churchill
On 12 September Captain Leach sent Churchill a handwritten note.
My Dear Prime Minister
I write to thank you most gratefully for the charming photograph which arrived today and to say how delighted I am to have it.
It was indeed a memorable voyage and it will be a very long time before my sailors stop talking and writing letters about it. Nor shall we forget the honour done to the Prince of Wales by your visit – I was so glad that an opportunity arose for you to go to sea in one of these two ships with which you have been so much concerned.
The material continues to improve – and it will continue to do so for some time yet. But I have no doubt whatever that it is at least twice as efficient as it was when we met the Bismarck and I am sure that it will in the end be thoroughly satisfactory and reliable.
Thank you again so much for the Photograph. We all hope that the Prince of Wales may one day have the honour of another visit.
Yours sincerely
John Leach124
It is believed that Leach kept the photograph in his quarters in Prince of Wales for the rest of his life.