The squadron leader of a Sunderland flying-boat who was used to flying over the ocean for fourteen hours on end remarked nonchalantly to the pilot of a Hudson: ‘You don’t need navigation on Hudsons - you are never out of sight of land for more than six hours!’
So Few; The Immortal Record of the RAF by David Masters
One hundred and sixty-three tired and hungry men in dark blue uniforms peered through the windows of a French train and stared glumly at an approaching town half-hidden in rain. It was Christmas Eve, but real Christmas cheer seemed far away and the war in Europe seemed very close indeed. The year was 1939 and the Germans were on the frontiers of France. The rain-wet town was Cherbourg and the men in blue were members of Australia’s first of eighteen Australian squadrons to serve in the European war. It was in July 1939, about the time Germany was preparing to sign a nonaggression pact with Moscow that British people first began to notice the unique Royal blue of the RAAF uniform. In that month a group of seven RAAF officers and fourteen airmen reached England to ferry back to Australia nine Short Sunderland flying boats, bought by the Australian Government to assist in the defence of the Commonwealth against the looming threat of war. But within weeks of their arrival, while the Australians were still learning to fly the thirty-ton flying boats, which the Germans called Fliegende Stachelschwein (Flying Porcupines), war was declared and they stayed to form the nucleus of 10 Squadron RAAF.
The Australians who spent that gloomy Christmas in Cherbourg in 1939 had left Australia in November to put 10 Squadron into the fighting line. It was the month Hitler escaped the bomb that wrecked the Munich Beer Hall, when the first German magnetic mine appeared and when the first German bomb fell on English soil. On the long sea journey to Marseilles (whence they went by train to Cherbourg) the Australians had a temporary taste of U-boat lookout, the task which, from the air, was later to occupy much of their time in the flying boats of 10 Squadron. But they saw no tell-tale swirl of water round a rising conning tower and on board the ship - the liner Orontes - the only incident remembered vividly was the burial at sea of an English admiral, who died on his way home to England. The RAAF men gave him his final guard of honour. During the voyage of these pioneers, an event of great significance in the annals of war in the air had taken place at Ottawa. There, on 17 December, representatives of the British Commonwealth of Nations signed the Joint Air Training Plan agreement - the great plan which, through the war years, provided an enormous reservoir of Dominion flying men which the enemy could never hope to empty. Out of this pool, following in the footsteps of the first group of Australians who reviled their luck that day in Cherbourg, came many thousands of other Australians - despite the Japanese threat in the Pacific and with them men from other parts of the Empire, to play their varied parts on a stage where the United Nations rang down the last curtain in 1945. 82
On dark December nights leading up to Christmas 1939 British families huddled around the wireless in the ‘best room’ and listened to the depressing war news on the BBC Home Service. The conflict was not going well for Britain but stirring tales of the RAF in action against the enemy boosted morale. On Boxing Day a Squadron Leader RAFVR regaled his audience with a story called Christmas Day in Coastal Command. The broadcast was about Sunderlands although the speaker deliberately fails to mention them by name. ‘As you can imagine’ he began, ‘the Royal Air Force in Great Britain has had to be on its toes over Christmas. This has been particularly true of the crews of Coastal Command aircraft. Co-operating with the Royal Navy, they are responsible for the safety of shipping on the seas of Western Europe. For them, there could be no holiday ... Enemy submarines for ever on the prowl... the possibility of German warships breaking out from their bases ... watch to be kept on the great convoys of merchant vessels on their way to Britain ... the traffic lanes to be searched for mines.
‘Since the war began, the aircraft of the Coastal Command have flown fully four million miles, on watch and guard over the North Sea and the Atlantic. In other words, in four months, the crews of this Command have covered a distance equal to more than 165 journeys round the Equator. A substantial part of this immense air mileage has been contributed by the Royal Air Force flying boats, many of which are flying boats of the type used on the Empire routes for the carriage of passengers and mails. In outward appearance these Royal Air Force and Empire flying boats are identical. But the interior furnishings are very different. In one, as you know, there are armchair seats, tasteful dining-rooms and comfortable sleeping quarters. But the inside of an RAF flying boat is an arsenal, with batteries of guns on both decks and a ton of bombs slung from a kind of overhead railway on the roof, ready to be run out for easy dropping from the wings. I spent Christmas Day in one of these flying boats on an anti-submarine and convoy protection patrol of upwards of 1,500 miles over the Atlantic. The crews of the aircraft were aboard, as usual, before dawn and took off in the darkness so that advantage might be taken of every minute of daylight at sea.
‘Before we boarded the flying boat, pilots and navigators received their instructions for their Christmas Day’s work in a small hut which is the Operations Room of the Squadron. Orders were read to them in front of a big map of the Atlantic seaboard on which seven white graveyard crosses are pinned. Each cross marks the spot where a German submarine has been destroyed by a flying boat of this single squadron.
‘Just before we left to embark, an orderly from the wireless station brought in a sheaf of messages. They were Christmas greetings from the pilots, crews and passengers on Empire flying boats which are still maintaining, just as in peacetime, their twice weekly, two-way services between Britain and Australia, Central Africa and South Africa. These messages of goodwill to the Royal Air Force flying boats had been sent from their sister flying boats while they were in the air over the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, Malay, Thailand, Burma, India, the Sudan, Egypt, Kenya and Uganda. Reading them in that tiny hut on the English shore of the Atlantic on Christmas morning, one could not help feeling some pride in the fact that the British Empire’s Command of its civil flying routes is still completely unchallenged. There was another Christmas Day message. It came from the Australian crews of flying boats now working with the Royal Air Force from a station further north on the west coast of Britain.
‘By dawn, which came in saffron splendour, we were having breakfast nearly 200 miles at sea. A FULL breakfast - grapefruit, bacon, sausages, eggs, coffee and toast, served piping hot from the galley next door. The cook reported to the young captain of the flying boat, a youth of twenty-two, that he wasn’t satisfied with the behaviour of the ice-box in the galley. Why he should be worrying about an ice-box 2,000 feet over the Atlantic on a freezing Christmas morning, neither the pilot nor I could understand.
‘Back in the control cabin which, like the gun turrets, was decorated with holly and mistletoe, we saw the answer to Germany’s propaganda claim that the Nazi sea and air fleets are blockading Britain. In the first flush of day, scores of heavy-laden merchant ships from Australia, New Zealand, Africa and South America were riding the seas triumphantly to Britain. Every mile or two for the rest of the day we came on more ships going on their business, unaccompanied and unafraid. But our special job for Christmas Day was to find and protect a convoy which had been assembled at a rendezvous from all parts of the world and which an escort of French warships was bringing along. We knew that the convoy was about twenty hours late and that it had gone far off the course set for it because of bad weather and threatened submarine attack. We could only guess the course it was taking. The ships themselves couldn’t help us to locate them. They had, of course, to keep wireless silence so that their position might not be betrayed to lurking U-boats.
‘Our flying boat combed the sea for 550 miles. Then we found the convoy. Rather, it nearly found us! Cloud had become so dense and low that often we could see only the nose of the flying boat and the wing-tip floats. I heard the pilot beside me whistle sharply. ‘Blimey!’ he said as he lifted the boat suddenly from the height of sixty feet at which we had been flying. In the nick of time he had avoided the masthead of a ship which had appeared beneath the wing. As he climbed to starboard, we saw another mast ... then another ... then mast after mast. His anxious look gave way to a happy smile. He took his hand from the joystick and cocked his thumb. He was over the lost convoy. Through the thick mist we could see the columns of ships flashing Christmas greetings to us with their lamps. The bank of low cloud which blanketed the sea was now more than 200 miles square. We flew through it for a couple of hours and then located the British destroyers which were waiting to take over from the French warships. By lamp signals we gave them the position and course of the convoy.
‘Our Christmas Day job was now half done.
‘We had to fly back to the convoy and for the remaining five hours of daylight, sweep the sea ahead of it for enemy submarines. As quickly as it had fallen, the thick belt of mist vanished. Wintry sunshine filtered into the flying boat as the crew sat down, two at a time, to a quick Christmas dinner of soup, goose and plum-pudding. Until dusk we cruised for 500 miles in the path which the convoy would take to England. There were no submarines about. At least, if there were, they kept their heads down for fear of our bombs. And a U-boat submerged at sea is as useless as it would be in its base in Germany. Part of the job of the Coastal Command of the Royal Air Force is to destroy them or, failing that, to keep them submerged.
‘Twice the look-out men on our flying boat gave the ‘action’ call to bring the crew to submarine stations. They did so by pressing a button which caused an electric hooter to scream ‘DAH-DE-DIH-DI-DOH’ throughout the boat. Both times a sea marker was thrown overboard by the lookout men and the pilot made the flying boat stand on its wing-tip so that the sea was like a wall in front of us, with the horizon over our heads. The pilot’s fingers caressed the bomb switches. But no bombs fell. As he swept round the column of smoke rising from the sea-markers, he decided that the ripples of water among the ‘white-horses’ which the look-out men had seen were not the footprints of a submarine periscope, but only the foam on the trail of drifting wreckage.
‘We had left the English coast in the morning black-out against air raids. Twelve hours later we came back to it -again in complete darkness, just in time for a second and more leisurely, Christmas dinner.
‘Today, Boxing Day, the flying boat is out again over the Atlantic, guarding the great convoy of merchant ships on another day’s safe march to England. Its crew and the crews of the other flying boats of the Squadron have asked me to offer you their good wishes.’
One of the first operational Sunderland sorties was flown on 3 September 1939; the day Britain declared war on Germany, when South African Flight Lieutenant A. S. Ainslie on 210 Squadron took off from Pembroke Dock in L2165 at 0500 on a convoy patrol sweeping ahead of seven destroyers that were patrolling the route to Milford Haven. His second pilot was Pilot Officer Ernest Reginald Baker, who before the war he was the second pilot of a Sunderland flying-boat. ‘My skipper, who taught me all I know about flying-boats, would win the DFC. He was the grandest chap I’ve ever known - we used to call him Angel.’ On patrol on 3 September they alighted at 4 o’clock in the afternoon they had no idea that war had been declared, nor had they a gun or a bomb on board.
In his book So Few: The Immortal Record of the RAF, published in 1941, David Masters described Baker as ‘the luckiest man in the RAF’ and few in the Royal Air Force or Royal Navy would disagree. ‘Information concerning him, however, was so meagre that one morning I trudged through the deep snow of a distant city to travel all day in search of someone who knew him. Around that city dozens of motor cars lay abandoned in the drifts, but the train gradually carried me into a belt of country that was quite balmy and spring-like, with no snow to be seen. It was an astonishing transformation. For hours I journeyed slowly through sunny valleys over which the touch of spring already seemed to hover. It was lovely country with beauty everywhere, far removed from war. The shoulders of the mountains piling up around were covered with snow. Now and again the sun was reflected by fairy-like waterfalls which had solidified into icicles and by evening I arrived at my destination.
‘Never in my life have I seen anything more beautiful than the scene which greeted me next morning. The snow on the peaks around was turned to a rosy pink by the sun, their bases were purple and blue, lovely clouds made a pattern in the sky and in the foreground were sparkling blue waters with ships falling picturesquely into place and Sunderland flying-boats at their moorings, while the buildings of the town were grouped so artistically round the waters that it was difficult to believe that this enchanted place was in the British Isles. Gazing on the scene to take in its full beauty before the changing light banished the exquisite tones, I went on to pay a call to try to find out something about the luckiest man in the Royal Air Force. He is at least 6 feet 2 inches tall, with a spare figure, very blue eyes, a small fair moustache to set off a well-cut mouth and firm chin and a natural wave in his fairish hair. Very modest, quiet of speech, with a sense of humour, Flight Lieutenant Ernest Reginald Baker DFC has wrought more havoc among the German U-boat fleet than any other man in the fighting services. He is the captain of a Sunderland flying-boat which he regards with as much affection and pride, as any owner of a shapely yacht. His flying-boat, which he christened Queen of the Air, has her name painted over the doorway leading into the hull and over the name are painted four white stars. Those stars are signs of high honour, for each represents a submarine which has been sunk by Flight Lieutenant Baker and his crew of the Queen of the Air. Happily the same boat and crew have taken part in all four triumphs.
‘It is not easy for anyone outside the navy or the air force to realize the magnitude of this accomplishment. There are captains of flying-boats who have patrolled since the beginning of the war for thousands of miles, far out into the Atlantic, right up into the Arctic circle, off the Scandinavian and European coasts without catching so much as a glimpse of an enemy submarine. For twelve and fourteen hours at a stretch they have flown over the sea, searching and seeing nothing. Other pilots of the Coastal Command have also carried out many patrols in their Hudsons and Ansons and Blenheims without seeing a U-boat.’
The 210 Squadron detachment in the Shetlands flew four sorties on 4 September. Five days’ later Flight Lieutenant Ainslie and Pilot Officer Baker in L2165 on 210 Squadron took off from Pembroke Dock on an ASP (Anti-Submarine Patrol) for a convoy and on this first war patrol observed the Empress of Australia on an evasive zigzag course. They were lucky enough to sight a U-boat on that initial trip. They at once attacked with bombs, but to their chagrin the submarine escaped. Shortly after leaving the convoy at 1310, the crew attacked a U-boat that had just crash-dived and saw a 25-yard patch of oil on the surface after the attack, but no other proof of a kill. 210 Squadron recorded four further attacks in September but all without definite result. During Ainslie’s and Baker’s second patrol on 14 September, they again sighted a submarine and let loose their load of bombs, but once more the enemy eluded them. On 16 September they went out for their third patrol and sighted their third submarine which was promptly bombed without avail. Three submarines sighted on three trips and not one attack successful - there is no need to touch on their feelings! 83 Hopefully they took the air again on 19 September and generous Dame Fortune gave them another chance to sink an enemy submarine, but although their bombs crashed down without delay, the U-boat got away. Thus on four successive patrols Ainslie and Baker had the unusual luck to sight four submarines and the misfortune to lose them all. The following months increased the experience of Flight Lieutenant Baker. On those long patrols which took him hundreds of miles out into the Atlantic to watch over the convoys of ships that were conveying essentials to Great Britain, his knowledge of the tricks of the weather and the sea grew with every hour that was added to his flying time. Baker then tasted the joy of being promoted to command a fine new flying-boat which to him and her crew was the Queen of the Air and he suffered the loss of his friend Ainslie, who was shot down by a U-boat.
On 6 September 204 Squadron had flown its first war operation when Flight Lieutenant Harrison piloted L5799 on a convoy patrol over St George’s Channel in co-operation with six destroyers. The sortie was uneventful until the flying boat returned to base, when it was fired on by a shore battery. Two days’ later Flight Lieutenant Hyde was on patrol in N9021 and during this sortie the crew made attacks on two U-boats, dropping four bombs on each occasion, but with no observed result. The following day Harrison bombed a ‘submarine feather’, an oily patch being subsequently observed near the explosion. 84 A little later, Flying Officer Phillips in N9046 attacked a submerged U-boat: The aircraft then called on three Polish destroyers to check out the area and these warships made depth charge attacks. Although there was no solid confirmation of a success, C-in-C Plymouth assessed the attacks as having been effective.
For 228 Squadron the outbreak of war saw five aircraft based at Alexandria and three at Malta. The squadron had spent a year in the Mediterranean and was ordered back to the UK, four more aircraft moving to Malta on 9 September. The following day four Sunderlands flew back to Pembroke Dock via Marignane, although one aircraft had both floats torn off when Squadron Leader Menzies had to land downwind in poor visibility. During the salvage operation the aircraft turned turtle and was eventually beached in that position. 12 September brought the unit’s first war sortie, Flight Lieutenant Smith taking N9025 and Pilot Officer McKinley L5807 on an anti-submarine patrol to the west of Ireland. Flight Lieutenant Skey made 228’s first U-boat sighting on 15 September, but the first attack was carried out on the 24th by Flight Lieutenant E. J. Brooks. On 16 September a new Admiralty policy decreed that aircraft be given patrol areas up to 200 miles out into the Atlantic, listening out on the merchant vessel distress frequency, the idea being to allow them greater freedom during their 10-hour patrol to adopt their own methods of finding and destroying U-boats. The first such operation was flown the following day by 204 Squadron, although the crew had nothing to report. On 18 September Flight Lieutenant Harrison piloting L6799 attacked a diving U-boat and in two attacks dropped two salvoes, each of four bombs dropped in the line of the submarine wake. A black object was observed on the surface shortly after the explosion of the second salvo, projecting momentarily from the water close to the position of the explosion. No oilier evidence of destruction was available, but the C-in-C Plymouth subsequently informed operations room Mount Batten that the submarine was considered sunk. After watching the position for 15 minutes, the aircraft returned to base. It was later revealed that this and the others already mentioned were not destroyed.
U-boats were not the only danger to Allied shipping and aircrews in the vast expanse of the Atlantic. Four days before the opening of April 1940 a very determined duel had been fought between a Sunderland and the enemy’s four-engined convoy hunter, the Focke-Wulf 200 or ‘Kondor’ engaged in bombing a British merchantman. The enemy was first observed five miles away on the starboard quarter flying out of the sun and succeeded in delivering its first attack on the ship before the Sunderland, which, being a flying boat, was considerably slower than the Focke-Wulf, could come up. Two bombs hit the ship and the ‘Kondor’ then went in to make a second attack while the Sunderland was preparing to engage a Ju 88 which had arrived on the scene. This second German aircraft joined the ‘Kondor’ and both attacked the ship, but missed. The Sunderland was now within 800 yards of the Ju 88, which at once sheered off to port and was not seen again. The ‘Kondor’ however, showed more fight and closed head-on in a shallow dive, opening fire with cannon, The Sunderland replied with its front guns and then with its side guns. The result was uncertain, but the ‘Kondor’ disappeared into the cloud, which was now down to sea-level and was not seen again.
The Sunderlands on 10 Squadron had been on operations since 1 February 1940 and had already sunk their first U-boat. They played their part in the Battle of France by providing air cover for the feverish removal of Allied and other merchant ships from such ports as St. Nazaire, Bordeaux and Brest. Ships of all nations were moving out from these ports, some towed by others, in a long, slow procession. These protective patrols had to be done by the Sunderlands in daylight because their base at Mount Batten was so jammed with ships that night fighting on the squadron’s basin was impossible. One of 10 Squadron’s Sunderlands struck trouble during the unit’s first reconnaissance of Bordeaux and St. Nazaire, made without escort on 12 July 1940 after the fall of France. Seeking pictures of ‘invasion-of-England’ barge concentrations and shipping at Bordeaux, the Sunderland was hit by AA fire, but little damage was done. The Australians’ activities had apparently been annoying the enemy, for three days later, at 1.30 pm on 15 July a Junkers 88 made an attack on the flying boat station at Mount Batten. As the enemy aircraft came in from the south-west two Spitfires were seen flying beneath it, but they apparently did not notice it. The Junkers turned into the clouds until the Spitfires were out of the way and then dropped four bombs on the station. One bomb failed to explode and the others did no important damage. There were no casualties. Warrant Officer E. I. ‘Lucky’ Long and a party of volunteers courageously removed the unexploded bomb from the fifteen-foot hole which it had made in the ground. The work took twelve hours with the party always in danger of the bombs exploding. Long was later officially congratulated. It was the first of many air raids on the station, including one of the heaviest made on any English port.
On Sunday 21 July Sunderland N9028 on 204 Squadron at Sullom Voe captained by Wing Commander Davis OBE DFC set out for a long range reconnaissance patrol to Trondheim, Norway. When he reached the Norwegian coast the Sunderland was intercepted and shot down by a Bf 109 flown by Oberleutnant Lorenz Weber of 8./JG77. Eight days’ later, Sunderland P9602 on 10 Squadron RAAF, en route for Gibraltar, was attacked by a Dornier Do 18 and returned to base. On Wednesday 31 July Sunderland P9601 on 10 Squadron RAAF on convoy patrol engaged Ju 88s attacking the SS Moolthan. Sunderland ‘B’ on the Australian squadron on patrol over the Western Approaches attacked a crash-diving U-boat but saw no positive results.
Between Dunkirk and the beginning of the Battle or Britain, statesmen were preoccupied with the political tangle arising from the fall of France, particularly with reference to North Africa and it was in this connection that 10 Squadron RAAF received its third Distinguished Flying Cross on 25 June 1940, the day the Battle of France ended. The award was made to Flight Lieutenant J. A. Cohen for his courage and ingenuity in extricating Lord Gort and Mr. Duff Cooper from a difficult situation in Rabat, Morocco. Cohen had taken Lord Gort and Mr. Duff Cooper from Calshot to Rabat. From the moment he brought his Sunderland down in the narrow estuary of the river at Rabat, the port authorities created trouble. The passengers were disembarked without difficulty, but the harbour master ordered the aircraft to move fifty yards downstream to an awkward position. At 9 pm Cohen received a cypher message to warn Lord Gort that his mission might not be successful.
When the Australian called for a shore boat to take his passengers off he was ignored by the authorities, so he set out in the Sunderland’s rubber dinghy. He was headed off by a police boat and when he showed signs of forcing his ray ashore a small boat with an armed crew compelled him to return to the Sunderland. But Cohen was made of tougher stuff than to be baulked by this and finally he forced his way ashore, revolver in hand, taking his first pilot with him. He was prevented from talking to the British Consul and the French authorities threatened to commandeer the Sunderland unless its captain returned to it.
Cohen pretended that his first pilot was captain of the Sunderland and sent him back while he himself went on to a hotel and delivered the warning message to Lord Gort. The party discovered then that the police would not allow them to return to the Sunderland and it was not until 3 am after much argument with the authorities that Cohen succeeded in getting Lord Gort and Mr. Duff Cooper into the aircraft. He took off in a rough sea, landed his passengers at Gibraltar and took them back to Calshot on June 27.
10 Squadron RAAF had its first combat with a Focke-Wulf ‘Kondor’ on the morning of 25 September 1940 when a RAF and a RAAF Sunderland on convoy patrol sighted one heading for the convoy the flying boats were protecting. The Australian Sunderland, captained by Flight Lieutenant I. S. Podger, a later DFC recipient, raced to intercept it. The FW 200 flew straight along the lines of the convoy about a mile and a half ahead of the Sunderland and dropped a bomb just astern of a motor vessel. Then it turned to port and headed towards the Sunderland at 800 feet, 100 feet above the flying boat. As the two aircraft closed, the Sunderland turned towards the ‘Kondor’ and the RAAF front gunner opened fire. The Focke Wulf made a climbing turn to port and opened fire from a gun position beneath the fuselage. Podger put the Sunderland into a diving turn and at the same time his rear and mid ship gunners fired short bursts. The Sunderland followed the Focke Wulf when it made for the convoy again and as the German came within range the destroyer’s anti-aircraft guns joined in the fray. The RAF Sunderland attacked and the Focke Wulf turned and disappeared towards the south-east. The whole engagement had lasted about fifteen minutes.
The three Australian squadrons in Coastal Command were credited by Admiralty with eleven submarine ‘kills,’ and a share in the destruction of two others, during the war. The RAAF Sunderlands scored five ‘kills’ each and each shared in destroying one other U-boat. One other ‘kill’ was credited to 455 Squadron RAAF, in April 1942, when the squadron was flying Hampdens. Many other submarines were claimed as ‘probables’. Squadron Leader C. W. Pearce DFC attacked 10 Squadron’s first submarine in the Atlantic on 17 June 1940. An ocean-going U-boat was reported operating 450 miles off Cape Finisterre and Pearce’s flying boat set off at 3.30 am in search of it. Five hours later a feather of water revealed the submarine and Pearce dropped two antisubmarine bombs. Then he swooped again and dropped two more bombs immediately astern and two, right above the submarine. Bubbles and thick oil poured upwards for forty-eight minutes, indicating a probable ‘kill.’ Pearce was awarded the RAAF’s first DFC on July 30 that year.
10 Squadron’s first confirmed submarine ‘kill’ - shared with one of the convoy escorts, the new Flower-class corvette HMS Gladiolus - came on Monday 1 July 1940 and earned a DFC for Squadron Leader W. N. ‘Hoot’ Gibson. He had been ordered to carry out an anti-submarine patrol in the Atlantic and was taxiing to take off in the darkness of the early morning when he received a message that the British freighter SS Zarian in convoy had been torpedoed. After some hours’ flying in the darkness the Sunderland sighted the Zarian about three miles away, just as dawn was breaking. The ship had been torpedoed aft and was slightly down by the stern. A British sloop, Rochester, stood nearby as the Sunderland circled the Zarian and then began its search for the marauder, U-26 commanded by Kapitänleutnant Heinz Scheringer. The U-26 had reached the Western Approaches in late June with serious engine problems. Despite the deficiencies, Scheringer had patrolled aggressively, sinking three freighters as well as damaging the Zarian.
The Gladiolus pounced on U-26 in favourable sonar conditions as soon as the echo grew slightly larger on the steady, green scan of the tube. Suddenly, Lieutenant Commander H. M. C. Sanders the Skipper shouted:
‘Hold that echo. Range and bearing every minute.’
‘Aye, aye sir’ answered the radar operator.
There was a strident clanging of alarm bells. Range and bearing on the echo went to the bridge every minute. The gap between the submarine and the corvette narrowed fast and the little cabin rattled as the engines thrust it along at full speed. Sanders was at the voice pipe again.
‘Cease reporting, Radar. We can see it now keep it on your scan as long as you are able.’
‘Aye, are sir’ answered the radar operator.
Depth charge crews were at the ready; the four-inch-gun’s crew were on target and the machine gun crews had their weapons pointing dead ahead. Six depth-charges sailed from the deck of the Gladiolus and exploded with a huge hammer-crack to make a semi-circle of death in the boiling sea around the U-boat. The seconds ticked away as Sanders brought the corvette around on the proverbial three-penny-bit. The depth charges exploded with a roar that rattled teeth and huge columns of water spurted skywards. In all, Gladiolus dropped thirty-six of her forty-one depth charges set at 350 to 500 feet. The charges badly pounded U-26, causing leaks but not fatal damage. In the early hours of 1 July Scheringer surfaced to charge his depleted batteries and to escape in the fog. Seeing U-26 surface, Rochester commenced a high-speed run to ram. Had the U-26’s diesels and motors been working properly and had Scheringer been able to charge batteries, the boat might have escaped. But with Rochester (believed to be a ‘destroyer’) bearing down firing her forward gun and the Sunderland overhead, he was forced under again.
About thirty miles from the torpedoed vessel Gibson’s First Pilot, Flying Officer H. G. Havyatt sighted a disturbance on the water about five miles off. It looked like a round path with a wake leading up to it. Gibson correctly concluded that this was from a U-boat preparing to dive. U-26 crash-dived as the flying boat approached and Gibson’s four 250lb bombs fell on the swirl, exploding very close and rocking the U-boat. The bombs did no real damage, but Scheringer had no battery charge left and the boat was still leaking in the stem as a result of the depth-charge attack from Gladiolus. Fearing U-26 would be fatally damaged by the approaching ‘destroyer,’ Scheringer surfaced, intending to scuttle. As Gibson circled, he saw the U-boat’s thin steel bows break surface again at a very steep angle, apparently because all its tanks had been blown in a rush to get to the surface after the bombs exploded. It shuddered, rolled and then slowly the conning tower and stern came into view and the submarine settled sluggishly upon the water on an even keel. U-26 was completely surfaced, moving forward slowly under the impetus of her rush to the surface, when Gibson’s Sunderland dropped four more depth charges at a low level but by then U-26’s chief engineer had set in motion scuttling procedures and the crew was leaping into the water.
Gibson saw the submarine immediately swing round violently to starboard and stopped. The conning tower opened and the crew scrambled out and lined up on the after-deck. The U-boat’s gun was on the opposite side of the conning tower and this indicated surrender. The submarine was slowly settling under its crew and when its decks were almost awash, its bow levered up at a sharp angle and it began to settle quickly by the stern. ‘I saw that the submarine was settling down, first of all evenly fore and aft’ recalled Gibson ‘but soon, when the decks were almost awash, she adopted a sharp angle and settled down very quickly by the stern. Now, no submarine would willingly go down by the stern in the normal way of diving. So I knew that this was no trick to fool us. She was definitely sinking. The bow rose right out of the water and she sank. The whole thing only took minutes from the time of the second attack.’
The crew jumped into the water and bunched together there to await rescue. Gibson called on the Gladiolus, some miles distant, to complete the ‘kill.’ After allowing the survivors to swim a while in order to scare them into talking more freely, three-quarters of an hour later, at 7 am, HMS Rochester fished all forty-eight men from the water. There were no casualties, but the scare tactic did not work. The U-26 crew was one of the most reticent to be captured, British intelligence reported. The Australian Sunderland crew watched from above before turning for base, 400 miles away. 85
On Sunday 20 October 1940 a Sunderland set out at 1700 hours from a Scottish base on a special mission. Two hours later a magnetic storm of the first magnitude developed. This put the wireless set partly out of action and gravely affected the compass. After seven and a half hours the Sunderland succeeded in making a signal saying that it was returning to base. It received none of the replies sent in return. Five hours later an SOS followed by a request for bearings was picked up at base and Group Headquarters. By then it was six in the morning but still dark. The Sunderland, its compass unserviceable, was lost and had no fuel left. The captain decided to alight. The gale was now blowing at 80 mph and the navigator judged the waves to be more than twenty feet high. Three flame-floats were dropped, but they did not burn and the direction of the wind was gauged by a parachute flare. The captain brought the flying boat down in the trough between two waves. It was lifted up by one of them, so large and powerful that it took all flying speed away from the boat, which came to a halt with both wing-tip floats intact. The crew were at once prostrated by violent sea-sickness and this endured for many hours. The wireless operators began to send out signals, not knowing if any would be received. One was and they presently picked up a message telling them that a warship would arrive in eight hours.
The Sunderland continued to drift in tumultuous seas at a speed of about 8 mph. How long she would endure the buffeting it was hard to say. The wireless set was dismantled, repaired and reassembled. The signals subsequently made were picked up by the warship, faint at first, but strong after midday. At 1420 the Sunderland signalled: ‘Hurry, cracking up.’ Fifteen minutes later she was sighted and the look-out on the bridge of the warship read the word ‘hurry’ flashed by a lamp. At that moment as the crew caught sight of the warship a wave larger than the rest struck the Sunderland head on. She began to break up and the crew - there were thirteen of them - were flung into the water. The captain of the warship manoeuvred her so as to approach the wreckage of the flying boat from the lee quarter. He took the way off his ship as the crew swept past abreast of and almost as high as his bridge. A Naval Commander and twelve ratings with lines secured to them went over the side and pulled on board nine of the crew, who had then been fifty minutes in the sea. The other four were lost. The Sunderland had remained afloat in a full gale for not quite nine hours. The name of the warship was HMAS Australia.
In the middle of October 1940 Flight Lieutenant Podger was patrolling in his Sunderland about 200 miles out in the Atlantic when a lifeboat full of men was sighted tossing about in the rough seas. Conditions were far too bad to allow the captain of the Sunderland to alight, so he dropped an emergency parcel of food and a first-aid outfit in a watertight container which floated close by the boat and was soon secured. Then the navigator of the Sunderland fixed the position of the boat while a message was flashed to the shipwrecked men that assistance would be sent to them. After the Sunderland flew away, the sailors trimmed the sail of the lifeboat and made what progress they could towards land. They sighted nothing next day, nor were they seen by the aircraft which sought them. During that night the seas quietened and just before dawn the shipwrecked men, some of whom were very cold and exhausted owing to the fact that they had escaped from the stokehold of the ship only half-clad, heard the sound of aircraft engines. It was the Sunderland of Flight Lieutenant Podger. At once the seamen began to flash a red lamp. A gunner in the Sunderland saw it and reported it to his captain, who was searching for the boat and the aircraft flew over and circled round for a quarter of an hour until it was sufficiently light to see whether conditions were suitable for alighting on the surface. It looked calm enough, but when he came down Flight Lieutenant Podger found there was quite a lumpy swell which made the Sunderland lurch a bit. Keeping two of the engines running, the captain of the Sunderland waited for the lifeboat to overtake him, but the ship-wrecked men, who were about four hundred yards away, were unable to do so.
Bringing the Sunderland round, the captain taxied to within fifty yards and stopped all his engines. ‘Lower your mast and come up to the bow!’ he ordered, being rather afraid that the mast might damage the wing of the Sunderland as the boat came alongside. Two or three sailors fended off the lifeboat while it rose and fell under the bows of the Sunderland, as their companions scrambled to safety. Some of them began to throw their kit from the lifeboat to the flying-boat. ‘Sorry I can’t manage your kit. It will make us too heavy to take off,’ said Flight Lieutenant Podger and the shipwrecked men were obliged to leave their kit in the boat.
‘What about these?’ asked the captain of the sunken ship, who had a big cardboard box under his arm.
‘Here are my ship’s papers!’
‘You can take those,’ was the reply.
In about half an hour the rescue was effected. Distributing the shipwrecked men throughout the Sunderland to equalize the weight as much as possible, Podger started up the engines. ‘It was a tricky take-off because of the confused swell and the additional weight,’ he reported. ‘We struck rather a bumpy patch in the course of our run which sent several cups scuttling off the galley table and we nipped the tops off two small swells before we were properly airborne. On the way back to base the rigger, who is our cook, gave the survivors as good a breakfast as he could on the food available, which unfortunately was not much for so many. But it was at least hot - cooked on the galley stove.’ So twenty-one shipwrecked men were picked up 150 miles from land and flown back to safety.
The Sunderland had a useful galley with a two-ring pressure stove, racks for stowage of crockery and stowage for food. A typical menu for a long maritime patrol sortie might be: Breakfast: Cereal, bacon and sausage, tea, bread and butter. Lunch: Soup, half the quantity of steak carried cubed and stewed, potatoes and vegetables, dried fruit, orange. Tea: Poached or scrambled egg, bread and butter, tea. Supper: Remainder of steak fried, potatoes and vegetables, bread and butter with cheese. The crew’s main wartime flying rations were tinned Maconachy’s stew, disliked by many. Members of the crew turned out to be very acceptable cooks. One of their ‘specials’ was soya sausages and corned beef fried in thick batter and tea, coffee or cocoa were regularly available and helped to keep crew active during the long, lonely patrols. Between the four hot meals chocolate and barley sugar were eaten and cocoa, tea or other hot drinks were provided by the cook, so that the crew could eat or drink something every two hours.
On Monday 28 October Sunderland P9620/K on 204 Squadron, Oban, captained by Flight Lieutenant S. R. Gibbs became lost on a convoy patrol when the compass failed in an electrical storm. The aircraft ran out of fuel and landed on the sea 100 miles from St. Kilda. It stayed afloat in a gale for nine hours before breaking up. Nine crew members were rescued by HMS Australia, but four were lost and are remembered on the Runnymede Memorial. Next day Sunderland P9622/W on 201 Squadron, Sullom Voe, captained by Pilot Officer Field became lost and flew into a hill 28 miles south-west of Wick while on an Air Sea Rescue search. Field and four others were injured, two escaped injury and four men were killed.
On 3 November 1940 an Australian Sunderland was flown to Alexandria and picked up the then Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir Andrew B. Cunningham GCB DSO and other officers and took them to Cairo. It remained there for a few days and then took Mr. Anthony Eden, then Foreign Secretary and senior officers, to Malta via Crete. After refuelling, the aircraft took Mr. Eden to Gibraltar and from there to Mount Batten. Mr. Eden flew again in Sunderlands several times, although he is a bad ‘air traveller.’ Perhaps his worst experience of air travel was as a passenger with Sir John Dill, then Chief of the Imperial General Staff, from Plymouth to Gibraltar in November 1940 during the most severe hurricane experienced in the Bay of Biscay for eighty-seven years. The Sunderland crew, captained by Flight Lieutenant H. G. Havyatt RAAF fought through this storm with an ever-present fear that their petrol would not see them through. The weather grew worse and Havyatt said he would send back a message asking for instructions, but Mr. Eden said ‘Push on,’ and the Sunderland drove on. It landed with ten minutes’ petrol left. A few days later 10 Squadron received a, telegram of thanks from Mr. Eden for the work of the crew.
On 21 January 1941 a Sunderland (T9049) on 201 Squadron captained by Squadron Leader Cecil-Wright flew up the Norwegian coast from Trondheim to Narvik. Twenty miles from that town German soldiers were seen on parade. They received a general purpose bomb and the rest of the load was dropped on a barracks, a motor convoy and a large ship in the harbour of Narvik. Immediately afterwards the Sunderland was hit by two bursts of AA fire, the first putting both front and rear turrets out of action, the second damaging the tail-plane. On the way home, as the flying boat was nearing Scotland, the clouds closed right down and the Sunderland ran into raging winds and blinding snow. Finally, Cecil-Wright had to ditch on the sea near an island some miles off the Scottish coast. As it touched down, the heavy seas damaged the port wing tip and float. While the pilot taxied slowly towards land, the available crew members, swept and frozen by spindrift, snow and winds lay out on the starboard wing to balance the boat. It had to be taxied up and down in the lee of a cliff for the whole night, thirty-one vain attempts being made to get the anchor to hold. The Sunderland was towed at dawn to a nearby cove and beached. The finale of this story is that the boat was buoyed with 400 herring barrels until temporary repairs could be made and some weeks later, took off for Felixstowe for refit stripped of all gear and guns. Out of the cloud loomed a Messerschmitt 110 and for the second time within weeks, the Sunderland was in peril. Fortunately, one member of the crew had brought a Tommy-gun and after firing one burst at the 110 through the empty turret, was amazed to find it had sheered off! It is recorded that from this day on this particular Sunderland, formerly known as ‘O for Oscar’ was always referred to as ‘One-gun Oscar’.
‘From time to time the trail of the enemy on the wide waters gladdened hearts and sent aircrew leaping to the attack’ wrote David Masters. ‘Coastal Command by the end of April 1941 were credited with 250 attacks, an average of one in every two days. Many a pilot who patrolled dozens of times without sighting a U-boat must have envied the luck of Flight Lieutenant Baker to whom Dame Fortune has been so lavish in her favours as to bring four enemy submarines under his deadly attack. He himself always points out that the credit for the third submarine is not yet settled. It transpired that a destroyer rushed up and proceeded to drop depth charges after the Queen of the Air had pressed home her attacks, so the decision is left open.
‘At the beginning of 1941 Flight Lieutenant Baker had already done 1,000 hours of active service flying. It looked as though Dame Fortune, who had given Flight Lieutenant Baker four chances to sink enemy submarines in the first month of the war, viewed him with disfavour. Then early on 16 August 1940 he dropped into the launch at the quay to be rushed out to the Queen of the Air and by 7 o’clock he opened the throttle, taxied over the water and took off to pick up a convoy and go on anti-submarine patrol. It was a dreadful day. The rain poured down and the base of the clouds was within 400 feet of the sea. The Sunderland thrashed through it, but the weather was so bad that her captain once said that he almost decided to go home. He changed his mind, however - which was as well.
‘Six hours of flying brought little improvement in the weather, but the activities going on at the primus stoves in the galley reminded the crew, whose appetites were in no way affected by weather or anything else, that lunch was ready, so they settled down to enjoy their meal and a friendly chat. The engines roared rhythmically as the flying-boat cruised over the sea with the captain at the controls. The second pilot kept a keen watch on the seas below, though the bad weather made visibility poor. Suddenly the second pilot let out a shout of ‘sub!’ and pointed to port. A glance revealed the U-boat to the captain who instantly sounded the warning Klaxon which made the crew drop knives and forks and jump to action stations.’
The submarine was U-51 commanded by 28-year old Korvettenkapitän Dietrich Knorr, which had left Kiel on 9 August on its fourth war cruise and was bound for French ports.
‘I put my foot on everything!’ was the graphic way the captain on his return explained how he unleashed all his power to get to the submarine before it could escape. ‘The U-boat was on the surface when we sighted it and they must have sighted us at the same time, for they started to do a crash dive. By the time the submarine was down, I was diving low over the top of it to attack. The result was terrific. The whole of the surface of the sea seemed to shudder for yards around and then suddenly blew up. In the middle of the boiling sea, the submarine emerged with its decks awash and then sank rather like a brick. I did a steep turn and came over it again just as it was disappearing. The explosion actually blew the submarine right out of the water. There was such an enormous amount of it out of water that my rigger saw daylight under it. I turned and climbed and as the submarine heaved on its side and sank I dropped my bombs right across it. Large air bubbles came rushing up - one was over thirty feet across. Then great gobs of oil began to spread over the surface until a wide area was covered. I waited for about an hour until there was no more air or oil coming up and then I fetched a destroyer from the convoy and signalled what had happened. After carrying out an Asdic sweep and reporting no contact, the destroyer signalled to me: ‘Nice work. I hope you get your reward!’
‘From the moment the submarine was sighted until was [claimed] destroyed only ninety seconds elapsed. A submarine can crash dive in about forty seconds and unless the first blow is struck at it within about this time, there is a good chance of it escaping, so it will be realized that the captain and crew of a flying-boat must act instantly, without a second’s hesitation, if they are to sink the U-boat. Obviously much depends on the distance at which the submarine is sighted and the time that the flying-boat takes to reach the spot. So steeply did the captain bank the Queen of the Air to bring her round with the least possible delay that each time he turned, members of the crew were flung about and the observer who tried to take photographs collapsed on the bottom of the boat in a heap. But it was the rear-gunner who came off worst. Sitting in the tail waiting for a chance to have a crack at something, he suddenly thought that somebody was having a crack at him, for the flying-boat was so low when she made her attack that the force of the explosion gave her tail a jolt which bounced him out of his seat hard up against the top of the turret, with the result that his souvenir of the action was a large bump on top of the head. Of course, the other members of the crew laughed - no one was in a mood to do anything else after their triumph.
‘But as base was informed and the Queen of the Air continued to guard her convoy, memories of the grandest chap he’d ever known crept into the mind of the blue-eye a pilot sitting so quietly at the controls. ‘Well, thank God, that’s one back for Angel!’ was his first reaction. As the rigger made a cup of tea to take to the captain, he was heard to remark: ‘I’ll bet those fellows in the sub are drinking salt water now instead of tea!’ The Queen of the Air taxied to her moorings about 7.30 that evening, after flying for twelve and a half hours. Shortly afterwards the first white star appeared on her hull.’
U-51 however had escaped destruction, although its survival and that of its 43 hands would be all too brief because just four days’ later U-51 was torpedoed by RN submarine HMS Catchalot in the Bay of Biscay west of Nantes.
‘On 29 August, just before dawn, continued David Masters ‘the Queen of the Air began to roar over the waters. The smoke from the adjacent city mingled with the mist to add to the difficulties of that particular base, but she got safely away and was soon heading out to sea to pick up her convoy. At dawn contact was made and thereafter for hour on hour the captain and crew of the Sunderland carried out their normal submarine patrol, circling the convoy and flying ahead to search for submarine or mines in the course of the ships. About 11 o’clock that morning the escorting destroyer signalled: ‘There’s a U-boat about here somewhere.’ The sensitive ears of the Asdic had detected the sound of the submarine moving under the sea and the naval commander had at once invoked the eyes overhead to help to find the enemy. Diving low, the flying-boat began a creeping line-ahead search, but it was about ten minutes before the keen eyes on the aircraft saw the track of the submarine’s periscope.
Instantly the captain attacked, flinging the crew about as he came round steeply to get in another attack before climbing to finish the U-boat off with bombs. He made no mistake. All that he had been taught about the distance a submarine can travel under water in a minute was in his mind as he made his three attacks along the track of the invisible enemy. Directly the Sunderland had finished attacking, the destroyer came roaring on the scene to add a few more depth charges just to make sure. The huge air bubbles which belched up to the surface and the gobs of oil which appeared and spread over the area marked the destruction of the enemy. When the destroyer carried out a sweep with the Asdic, she signalled: ‘No contact. Sub destroyed.’ That evening the Queen of the Air landed at her base at 6 o’clock with a very happy crew. If anyone had cause for complaint it was the rear-gunner who had another large bump on the top of his head to prove how the explosion had flicked the tail and jolted him hard against the top of the turret. But he was in no mood to grouse. He was quite willing to stand any number of bumps providing they got the U-boats. So, with due ceremony, the second white star was painted n the hull of the flying-boat.
‘The third white star was earned on 17 October, about 300 miles away from Cape Wrath, that bleak headland in the north of Scotland, where the Atlantic pours through the Pentland Firth into the North Sea, often with such fury under the lash of the gales that the English Channel, at its worst bears no comparison. Getting away in the dark about 5.30 in the morning, the crew of the flying-boat watched the dawn gradually light up the sea beneath them. For several hundred miles they cruised on their normal routine of guarding a convoy when, about 9.30, the warning Klaxon blared through the aircraft. The front gunner sighted the submarine on the starboard side and at once signalled and opened fire. It was on the surface and travelling towards the convoy, but a smart look-out was being kept on the submarine, for it immediately did a crash dive. Quickly as it tried to escape, however, it was seconds too slow for the Sunderland, whose captain sent her diving down to attack. Round came the flying-boat, throwing her crew about, to attack again. Just before this attack, all on board felt the flying-boat stagger as a great blow hit the tail. ‘There was a most colossal crack on the tail plane,’ explained Flight Lieutenant Baker later. ‘It gave us a big shaking.’
The rear-gunner, who received his usual bump on the head when the first attack was made, got a nastier bump still the second time round, for there was a big explosion inside the submarine and he saw pieces of wreckage flying up out of the sea and felt them hitting the tail plane. ‘The tail plane has been damaged by wreckage from the sub,’ he reported to the captain. They watched the surface of the sea belching great air bubbles, saw the oil gushing up and spreading wider and wider and as the sea quietened down the captain turned the flying-boat for home. ‘Are you all right?’ he inquired of the rear-gunner through the intercom. The rear-gunner felt his bumps. ‘There is no need for you to press the buzzer in future,’ he replied, ‘as every time I get a crack on the head I shall know you’ve got a sub.’ They landed safely at base, to find their tail plane fabric badly cut about in dozens of places by the wreckage hurled up from the exploding submarine. In due course the third star made its appearance on the hull of the Queen of the Air.
They were a happy crew who manned the Queen of the Air; they came to know each other so well during those long and, for the most part, monotonous patrols that in an emergency they knew exactly - what to do and did it automatically. If the skipper got a laugh at the bumps of the rear-gunner, the rear-gunner and the rest of the crew got many a laugh at the expense of the skipper. Often the Klaxon blared out to send them to action stations - where they waited tensely to attack, only to find that the skipper had dived down on some innocent basking sharks or a whale which he had mistaken for submarines. ‘They used to laugh themselves silly,’ the skipper once remarked.
‘So at his appointed times the captain of the Queen of the Air continued to take her across hundreds of miles of ocean to help to bring the tall ships, the food ships and ammunition ships and tank ships and aeroplane ships, safely to the shores of England. And throughout those long patrols, keen eyes on the flying-boat searched for a sight of submarine or periscopes, while the captain was ready to let loose death and destruction upon the German outlaws of the sea.
‘The weeks passed uneventfully until the beginning of December. At dawn on 6 December 1940 Baker took the Queen of the Air off the water and flew north to shepherd a convoy. The weather was unspeakable. The cloud base was down to 300 feet and visibility was nil. It was raining and snowing hard and the temperature was at zero. They thrashed along for hour after hour, peering out and seeing nothing, wondering where their convoy was and if the rain and flurries of snow would ever hold up. Then the miracle happened. Quite suddenly about 1 o’clock the weather broke in a perfectly straight line across the sky. ‘It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life. We stuck the nose of the aircraft out into clear weather while the tail was still enveloped in clouds,’ the captain said afterwards when he came to explain this phenomenon. ‘It took us a few seconds to grow accustomed to this bright light after flying in gloom for so long. As the second pilot and I blinked and looked ahead, we sighted a sub at the identical moment, turned our faces to each other, opened our mouths together and howled in unison ‘Sub!’ It was rather funny.’
‘In that clear area, about a mile away a large submarine of about 3,000 tons was travelling at ten knots on the surface. The aircraft which had been flying at cruising speed suddenly accelerated as her captain went after his quarry. He could see men on the conning tower and recognized her as an Italian submarine of the Ballilla class. The men on the conning tower saw their doom approaching. Quick as they were to close the conning tower and open the valves to flood the tanks that would take them down to safety, they were too late. As the Queen of the Air dived, her skipper saw part of the stern of the submarine still showing. He struck home on each side and there was a big explosion as he climbed to renew the attack. The rear-gunner, rubbing the usual bump on his head, looked down excitedly. ‘There’s a sheet of metal about six feet by four just been hurled out of the sea. It was all torn and twisted,’ he reported to the captain. The crew of the flying-boat, circling round, gazed on the waters. There was no doubt about the destruction of the Italian submarine. The air released from the shattered craft shot up like fountains for six feet above the surface. The oil gushed up and spread and spread until an area of about a square mile was covered with it.
‘These Italians seem to be having a hell of a fine time in this war!’ commented the wireless operator. ‘They’re getting it where the chink got the chopper.’
It was indeed amazing the way the weather cleared to enable them to sight and sink the submarine; it was no less amazing the way it closed down again as soon as their task was completed. The weather in fact grew so bad that the flying-boat could not make contact with her convoy, so she was obliged to return to base, where her skipper reported his fourth success and the crew with due ceremony painted the fourth star above her name. Thus by sinking four enemy submarines before the end of 1940, Flight Lieutenant E. R. Baker DFC made ample amends for missing those four U-boats in September 1939 while patrolling with his friend, the late Flight Lieutenant Ainslie DFC. As one of the crew of the Queen of the Air remarked: ‘If we don’t win this war, the crew of this aircraft will be in a devil of a mess.’
On 9 March 1941 Squadron Leader Birch flying T9047 on 10 Squadron RAAF attacked a U-boat. As it was estimated that the aircraft would only be able to escort the convoy for approximately forty minutes, the two port depth charges were hauled inboard in order to reduce fuel consumption. At 1153 hours a submarine was sighted on the surface two miles away. The aircraft immediately altered course and attacked with two depth charges from a height of 30 feet. At the instant the depth charges were released the tip of the U-boat’s periscope was still visible. The first depth charge exploded 20 feet on the starboard side and level with the bow of the U-boat; the second exploded 30 feet ahead of the bow and 20 feet on the port side. A smoke float was dropped 200 yards along the U-boat’s track and a second attack was made at 1155 with the port depth charges. No results were observed and a submarine marker was dropped. The Sunderland homed two destroyers to the area and they put down patterns of depth charges, still without apparent result.
On 19 May 1941 the newly completed German battleship Bismarck left Kiel on her maiden voyage, in company with the cruiser Prinz Eugen bound for British transatlantic re-supply routes. The battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had destroyed 115,622 tons during the cruise which finished at Brest on 22 March and the enemy plan was for the Bismarck to co-operate with them in the North Atlantic. The Scharnhorst was delayed at Brest after attacks by Coastal Command and on 21 May the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen were anchored in Dobric Fjord, Norway prior to heading for the Atlantic. They were spotted by a PRU Spitfire near Bergen and next day a Fleet Air Arm Maryland forced its way up the Bergen fjords at very low level in 10/10ths cloud down to 200 feet and established that the two warships had left safe harbour. The weather deteriorated and the German vessels were lost. Sunderlands and Hudsons were among the aircraft that reconnoitred the Faeroes-Iceland gap in an attempt to locate the warships, the Sunderlands maintaining a patrol from 0615 to 2115 and covering 2,000 miles in a single sortie. But they encountered strong headwinds, fog, rain-squalls and heavy cloud in which severe icing conditions developed. The German warships were spotted in the early evening of 23 May by Royal Navy ships in the Denmark Straight and a Sunderland from Iceland set off in the long twilight of the far northern latitudes to search for them.
On 24 May the Sunderland (L5798) flown by Flight Lieutenant Vaughan on 201 Squadron arrived in the neighbourhood of HMS Suffolk and, on sighting this ship, saw at the same time a flash of gunfire well ahead. ‘As we closed’, said Vaughan, ‘two columns, each of two ships in line ahead, were seen to be steering on parallel courses at an estimated range of 12 miles between the columns. Heavy gunfire was being exchanged and the leading ship of the port column was on fire in two places, one fire being at the base of the bridge superstructure and the other farther aft. In spite of these large conflagrations she appeared to be firing at least one turret forward and one aft.’ At first Vaughan could not identify the burning ship. It was HMS Hood. Vaughan turned towards the starboard column and noticed that the second of the two ships composing it was making a considerable amount of smoke and that oil escaping from her was leaving a broad track upon the surface of the sea. He approached nearer and as he did so HMS Hood, which was on fire in the column to port blew up. Bam Martyn the first wireless operator, who was taking his turn in the rear turret of the Sunderland, had an abiding memory of the ‘unbelievable flash of the explosion that killed Hood and the shock of the realisation that a ship had been sunk.’
A few seconds later the Sunderland came under heavy AA fire at the moment when its captain was identifying the ships in the starboard column as the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Vaughan was forced to take immediate cloud cover and when, five minutes later, he emerged into an open patch, the Hood had almost completely disappeared. When the Sunderland flew over the spot all that could be seen was an empty raft, painted red, surrounded by wreckage in the midst of a large patch of oil.
Despite the loss of the Hood, HMS Prince of Wales scored hits on the Bismarck which pierced the battleship’s oil tanks and reduced her speed and she was forced to leave the Prinz Eugen and make towards France. The weather was still poor and the shadowing Royal Navy ships kept losing contact but ‘Z-Zebra’ a RAF Catalina piloted by Pilot Officer Douglas A. Briggs on 209 Squadron found the great warship on 26 May. ‘Z-Zebra’ was hit and lost contact with the battleship but another Catalina, on 240 Squadron, was soon on the scene and regained contact. Fleet Air Arm Fulmar and Swordfish crews from HMS Victorious carried out a series of daring torpedo attacks and three hits crippled the Bismarck’s steering gear. On 27 May the Royal Navy force closed in and sank the Bismarck.
The Catalina general reconnaissance flying-boat with provision for a crew of 8-9 first entered service with patrol-bomber squadrons of the US Navy in 1936 under the designation PBY-I. With the outbreak of war Britain placed an initial order for 30 PBY-5 aircraft designated Catalina I. The first deliveries to the RAF were made early in 1941. Some of the first Catalinas entered service on 209 and 240 Squadrons of Coastal Command at Castle Archdale in Northern Ireland. Catalinas went on to serve Nos. 119, 190, 202, 210, 330, 333 and 422 in Coastal Command. The 196th and final U-boat sunk by Coastal Command was destroyed by a Catalina on 210 Squadron 120 miles North-east of Sullom Voe on 7 May 1945. 86
On 13 June Beauforts on 42 Squadron torpedoes the Lützow off Norway. By now the nineteen squadrons in the Coastal Command inventory in 1939 had grown to forty and more than half the aircraft of the Command had been fitted with improved ASV radar and the introduction of the airborne searchlight or Leigh light was imminent.
On 30 June 1941 Sunderland P9600 flown by Flying Officer A. Wearne on 10 Squadron RAAF was involved in a combat with a FW 200. The Sunderland fought the heavily armed German aircraft just above the surface of the Atlantic until finally it fled, damaged, into the clouds. Then the Sunderland crew found that the port outer engine oil tank had been holed and that oil was pouring out. It would be only a matter of minutes before the engine seized. It is just possible for a small man to stretch out at full length inside the wing of a Sunderland and LAC (later Corporal) Milton Griffin, a young Sydney air gunner, volunteered to do so. Wearne agreed after some hesitation. He feared the engine might stop while Griffin was inside the wing and that if they had to come down on the water, Griffin might not be able to get out in time. The struts inside the wing were slippery with oil and when Griffin opened an inspection plate, hot oil sprayed his face. The only light to help him came through a bullet hole in the wing, but he could see that oil was still pouring from holes in the tank. He crawled back into the body of the flying boat, got some plugs and going in again, stopped up the holes. But that was still not enough. Only about a gallon of oil remained in the tank, which normally held twenty gallons. Griffin went back again into the Sunderland cockpit and collected some Plasticine - which was carried by flying boat crews to plug bullet holes - a hammer and chisel, an empty peach tin and two gallons of oil. He pushed them in front of him as he went into the wing and laboriously chiselled two holes in the upper part of the oil tank. Then he made a funnel from the Plasticine and poured in two gallons of oil with the peach tin. It was trying work. Every time the Sunderland rocked he slipped and some of the oil was spilled. At last he came out and reported that everything was safe. Sweat and oil were dripping from him, but still he was not satisfied. He smoked a cigarette, then wriggled back into the wing and put two more gallons of oil into the tank. The Sunderland got home without further trouble. 10 Squadron’s first DFM was awarded to Corporal Milton Griffin on 9 July. 87
The story of one encounter between a Hudson and a Focke-Wulf ‘Kondor’ on 23 July 1941 can be told in the words of the Hudson’s pilot. The Hudson had just taken leave of a convoy which it had been protecting throughout the morning. The usual farewell signals had been exchanged, when a naval corvette was seen flashing a signal with its lamp. ‘Suspicious aircraft to starboard,’ it read. The captain of the Hudson thought that in all probability the corvette had mistaken for an enemy a Wellington of Coastal Command known to be in the neighbourhood. When he himself caught sight of it he made the same error. ‘I flew over,’ he said, ‘to have a look at her, pulling down my front gun sights just for practice. In fact I was just remarking to Ernie (the navigator and second pilot) that we were in a lovely position and that I had the Wellington beautifully in the sights, when he suddenly let out a wild Irish oath - Ernie was from Ulster - and shouted: ‘It’s a Kondor!’ ‘Automatically I increased speed and he ran back to man one of the side guns. The wireless operator grabbed another. The rear gunner swung his turret round and trained his twin Brownings. Flying towards the convoy, at about a hundred feet above the sea, was one of the big Focke-Wulf Kondors. We were overhauling him fast. Whether he saw us or not I don’t know, but at four hundred yards I opened up with about five bursts from my front guns. I don’t think I hit him. He returned the fire at once from his top and bottom guns and I could see his tracer bullets whipping past the nose of the Hudson in little streaks or light. But he missed and his pilot turned slightly to starboard and ran for it parallel to the course of the convoy.
‘We had the legs of him all right. We were overhauling him very fast. Once he put his nose up a trifle, as though meditating a run for the clouds. He must have decided he couldn’t make it and was safer where he was, right down on the sea. As we drew closer in, my rear gunner opened fire. He was firing forward and I could see his tracer nipping over my wing. Ernie watched it flash straight past him as he waited with his side gun pointing through the window.
‘We drew closer and closer. The Kondor began to look like the side or a house. At the end all I could see of it was part of the fuselage and two whacking big engines. My rear gunner was pumping bullets into him all the time. When we were separated by only forty feet I could see two of his engines beginning to glow. I throttled back a bit so as not to over-shoot him or, what was more likely, crash into him. For one short moment Ernie saw a white face appear at one of the windows in the Kondor’s side. Then it disappeared.
‘Just then the Kondor began to turn away. His belly was exposed to us and Ernie opened fire with the side gun, the rear gunner keeping up his stream of bullets all the time. There was a wisp of smoke, a sudden belching of smoke and then flames shot out from beneath his two port engines. He turned away to starboard and I made a tight turn to port ready to come round at him again. I remember vividly thinking that I must keep up, we were so close to the sea. We came out of the turn and I could see the Kondor again flying steadily away, seemingly unhurt. I was wild with disappointment. I thought he had got away with it. Then I saw he was getting lower and lower and next minute he hit the sea. I found myself yelling: ‘We’ve got him! He’s in the sea. Ernie, we’ve got him!’ The gunner was yelling down the intercom, too, great, strange, exultant Yorkshire oaths.
‘It was only then that we realised how hard and how silently we had all been concentrating and how full the Hudson was of cordite fumes and how short of petrol we were getting. We flew over the Kondor - its wing-tips were just awash - and Ernie photographed him. Four of the crew were in the water, hanging on to their rubber dinghy, which was just inflating. A fifth man was scrambling along the fuselage. We learnt afterwards that a Met man who had been aboard was .shot through the heart. The others were all right. Two corvettes were rushing to pick them up and the whole crew seemed to be crowded on the deck of the leading one, waving and shouting to us. One man was waving his shirt. Another was in pyjamas. Our relief Hudson and the Wellington on U-boat search were circling round too and as we made off for home we could see the white puffs of steam as all the ships in convoy sounded their sirens.’
Though U-boats were frequently sighted and attacked, the work more often than not is of great monotony. To keep an unblinking and vigilant look-out from the turrets and side-windows of a Sunderland or from the blisters of a Catalina flying over what seems an illimitable stretch of sea demands physical and mental-endurance of a high order. Sometimes a fishing vessel, British, Spanish, French, Norwegian, Icelandic, is seen; sometimes a raft, more rarely a periscope with a spume of foam about it. When that is sighted or when the submarine is seen on the surface, the klaxon sounds and the crew get ready for immediate action. Both bombs and depth charges are used to destroy the enemy. Many attacks were made. One, carried out by a Catalina, well illustrates the fortunes of war. Its pilot saw a U-boat on the surface. He dived towards it, but hardly had he put the nose down when he saw another on the surface also but closer at hand. He diverted his attack to this second U-boat and as he was delivering it, came under machine-gun fire from his original quarry. He carried on, got into a good position, but when he pressed the button his bombs hung up. Both submarines submerged. On landing at base it was found that the Catalina had been hit by one bullet only. It had severed the electrical connections of the bomb-release gear. This was but an incident in four days of intensive and successful attacks.
A Sunderland attacked an enemy submarine in a position 2850 Cape Finisterre 210 miles. Bombs were dropped within twenty feet when the submarine was at periscope depth and a large oil patch with air bubbles was observed. Later more bubbles appeared in the centre of the patch. After twenty minutes the oil patch extended with bubbles continuing to rise. The aircraft remained in the vicinity for three and a half hours.’ ...’Two 100lb high-explosive bombs were dropped which fell a few yards from the periscope. It is considered that the submarine was hit. Two large brown patches and a pale blue patch appeared on the surface about seven minutes afterwards.’ ...’One Sunderland reported attacking an enemy submarine U-26 in a position 2400 Bishop’s Rock 204 miles; forcing the enemy submarine to the surface....Bombs were dropped, one of which obtained a direct hit on the stern, causing the submarine to sink. Forty-one survivors were being picked up by a naval unit when the aircraft left.’ ...’A Lerwick on convoy escort attacked an enemy submarine and claims a direct hit on the conning-tower. Oil and air bubbles were seen after the attack.’ Passages such as these are to be found in plenty in the reports prepared by the Air Ministry War Room.
The Battle of the Atlantic was fought over more than ten and a half million square miles of sea, North to a line of latitude beyond the Arctic Circle and South to the Equator, to the East the coasts of Western Europe and of part of Western Africa, to the West the Eastern coasts of Canada, Newfoundland, the USA, the Central and certain of the South American States. It was realised that Scottish and Northern Irish bases alone would not be sufficient. Others had to be found from which to cover the North Atlantic. Coastal Command reached out and established itself in Iceland. That island, larger than Ireland, was occupied by British troops on 10 May 1940. It was not, however, until 27th August that half a squadron of Battles landed near a little fishing village on its South-Western shores.
The other half arrived on 14 September. Their flight, though uneventful, was none the less remarkable, if the limited endurance of this type of aircraft is remembered. It had been necessary to wait several weeks for favourable weather, for the endurance of a Battle would not permit it to cross the 700 odd miles of sea separating Scotland from Iceland unless there was a tail wind or no wind at all. They flew in two groups of nine preceded and followed by a Sunderland to ensure that there would be no navigational difficulties. Before the eyes of the pilots as they drew near stretched a line of black hills bearing no trace of trees or vegetation save for an irregular pattern inscribed upon their dark flanks in streaks of yellowish-green moss. Beyond, some sixty miles away, the shapes of high mountains and the foot of a glacier a hundred miles long were to be perceived, now dim and hesitant, now clear cut and bold against a sky whose colour and texture were in constant movement.
On this land of savage yet delicate beauty the Battles alighted by the mouth of a river flowing through a desolate marsh of lava and grey tussocky grass which divides the dark hills from the sullen sea. They began at once to take their part in the fight, a part subsequently played by aircraft more suited to the purpose. Thus by September 1940 the Northern bases had been increased and reinforced. By August 1941 aircraft using them were finding and attacking U-boats at the rate of one every other day in addition to maintaining patrols off Brest and the other French ports on the Atlantic seaboard to watch for any surface raider seeking to break out. Coastal Command presently moved much further south, a two days flight from England and in the first months of 1941 established a base on the West coast of Africa with a port of call at Gibraltar, which had been an outpost for flying boats since October 1939. Here, in the mouth of a wide river fringed with mangrove swamps and palm scrub, Sunderlands were stationed. Conditions in the North, which touched the Arctic Circle, differed appreciably from those in the South where it touches the Equator. At one station in Iceland the average temperature in December was 30 degrees Fahrenheit, falling sometimes to as low as minus 6 degrees, while at another in West Africa the average during the same month is 81 degrees in the shade, rising on occasions to 95 degrees. Yet the operational problem was the same at any point along this front of 3,540 miles. Iceland was of vital importance in the battle. It was, to quote the Admiral in command there, ‘the Clapham Junction of the North Atlantic.’ As such it is heavily garrisoned by American and British troops and protected by units of the Navy and Air Force of both Allies. It is a strange country, warm and inviting in summer, at all other times stark and inscrutable. Within the whole circle of its coasts there is hardly a tree. In summer almost without darkness, in winter almost without light, it guards the secret of its sombre mountains, its still active volcanoes, its geysers and its glaciers, silent and aloof under the Northern Lights.
Aerodromes had been built in the lava swamps on which the Battles landed in August 1940 and elsewhere. The runways were made of concrete and lava dust laid on a bed of stones. The aircraft were protected from the fierce and sudden winds by ‘breaks’ fifteen feet high built in the Icelandic fashion of lava faced with sods of turf. The crews and ground staff lived in Nissen huts, their chief enemy in autumn and winter being mud, in summer lava dust which spread over everything, caused sore throats and severely shortened the life of clothing and boots. The roads, of the consistency of a hard tennis court after heavy rain, were vile. Yet vehicles contrived to average a thousand miles a month. Major repairs - the driver of a car and the officer with him once removed a broken back axle and fitted a new one, dropped from the air by parachute, with the aid of a hammer, chisel and three spanners - had often to be carried out by the roadside.
For recreation in the South of the island there was salmon and trout fishing, shooting in the marshes, duck, mallard and snipe for the most part and hacking on sturdy Icelandic ponies, the most robust of the robust natives of the island. In the North such amenities were rare. Football and other games were played, one strongly contested match which took place in winter lasting from dawn to dusk, a period of little more than an hour. The Army and the RAF exchange concert parties and in the long, dark evenings of the Icelandic winter the men carved bracelets and rings from the perspex fittings of crashed aircraft. Officers and men did their own washing and darning and all available packing-cases were turned into furniture for the huts.
In June 1941 Fairey Battles in Iceland were replaced by Lockheed Hudsons for anti-submarine and convoy patrol. Their task and that of Sunderland and Catalina flying boats, Northrop float-planes, Wellingtons and Whitleys was not easy, for weather conditions in and around Iceland are among the most variable in the world. It is almost possible to see the depressions off Iceland, in peace time so prominent and disheartening a feature of the daily Press. Fog is frequent and clouds will move down upon an aerodrome faster than a galloping horse. Above all there are the winds. These can reach more than gale force in a matter of minutes. At one aerodrome the wind once began to blow at 62 mph. An hour later it was blowing at 76 mph and an hour after that at 89 mph. The maximum velocity of the gusts reached 133 mph. This hurricane turned the Guard Room on its side, took the roof off the Flying Control Headquarters and caused six Whitleys to move along the runway from their dispersal point, each dragging with it six 300 lb concrete blocks. ‘A Nissen hut took off at 10.00 hours,’ says the report’ and reached an estimated height of sixty feet before crash-landing on an adjacent runway.
At another aerodrome near by the anemometer broke down after recording a velocity of 90 mph ... The propellers of Hudsons were seen to be turning although the engines were completely cold.’ No aircraft was lost or damaged. Despite the hostility of the climate the average number of hours spent each month in flying has been high. To ease the strain the time of patrols was reduced when possible. Other difficulties concerned the behaviour of compasses, which vary often by as much as 11 degrees and of wireless installation, which not infrequently faded out entirely. It was, moreover, difficult to divert aircraft if their bases were obscured by fog or ten-tenths cloud, for landing grounds were few and far between. Once a Hudson was diverted to an emergency ground near the shore and it was ten days before it could take off again. During that time the crew consumed ninety-two tins of meat and vegetable ration and on their return regarded bully-beef and biscuits with much the same feelings as the Israelites displayed towards the fleshpots of Egypt.
On 27 August 1941 a Hudson crew on 269 Squadron at Kildadarnes on Iceland prepared for a patrol which was to make war history. ‘From all reports there are U-boats in packets of ten all over the wicket,’ said the Intelligence Officer brightly to his audience of four airmen. ‘The last reported sighting was here,’ he added, tapping a wall chart of the Atlantic which bristled with tiny flags. ‘A square search?’ Squadron Leader James H. Thompson, Hudson pilot, a Yorkshireman who was nearing his thirty-second birthday, asked his second pilot and navigator, Flying Officer William John O. Coleman. ‘Fair enough,’ was ‘Jack’ Coleman’s reply. Thompson and Coleman, together with Flight Sergeants Frederick J. Drake, the gunner and ‘Duggie’ Strode, wireless operator went out to ‘S for Sugar’ in the mud and mists of Kildadarnes airfield and at 0840 hours in near gale conditions set off on patrol. Three hundred feet above the wind-whipped wave-tops 80 miles south of Iceland the Hudson charged through a series of blinding squalls. ‘What chance of a sighting in this weather?’ thought the crew? ‘A million to one against. Million to one against. Million to one against.’
The twin engines seemed to chant the mocking odds. Thompson was thinking along similar lines. One of the oldest pilots flying with Coastal Command, he was old enough, he reflected, to have more sense than to flog a Hudson across the Atlantic in half a gale, seeking a ghost. And precisely at the moment that this cautionary thought crossed Thompson’s mind a U-Boat slowly and almost sedately surfaced 1,200 yards ahead! In the nose of ‘S for Sugar’ Coleman roared the alert a split second after Thompson had muttered ‘My God’ under his breath. The sight was almost unbelievable. Their aircraft had barely reached the spot from which, according to the Intelligence Officer, the last sighting of a U-Boat had been reported. And now a German submarine was rising from the sea mists right into their range of vision. It was fully surfaced and steering smack into the perfect position for a first-time attack from the air. Thompson throttled back into a shallow dive as Coleman bounded up the steps to his side, automatically opening the bomb doors as he climbed. And at that moment 32-year old Kapitänleutnant Hans-Joachim Rahmlow, Commander of U-570, which was on its first war cruise, came through the hatch on to the slippery bridge of the submarine. After a ‘rousing farewell party in Trondheim, where much beer and wine had been consumed, U-570 sailed at 0800 hours on 24 August but she was not as sea-worthy as she might have been and when the boat reached open seas, a large proportion of the crew became desperately seasick.’88
Rahmlow had just spent fifteen uncomfortable minutes at the eye-piece of the search periscope after the hydroplane operator had reported there were no surface echoes in the vicinity. Check and double check! He remembered the warning he had received from German Naval Chief Dönitz, ‘In the time it takes a U-boat to submerge, an aircraft can travel 6000 metres.’ It seemed reasonably clear and so Rahmlow had squeezed through the hatch. His eyes automatically went upwards towards the skies and to his horror he saw a fat little shape coming straight at him from the clouds. It was the Hudson. He shrieked the order to dive, but he knew that his boat was already doomed. When the U-boat surfaced, the Hudson crew picked her up on ASV radar. Presently, Thompson sighted ‘the swirl and wake of a U-boat’ about 800 yards ahead: It was then a little after 6.30am. ‘No actual part of the U-boat was seen,’ reported Thompson ‘and vision was very limited owing to rain-squall. Marked position with smoke floats ... and made a submarine sighting report to base.’
The Hudson cruised round for a little less than an hour, when it again sighted U-570, this time on the surface a mile away on the port bow. Thompson reached U-570 before she got under. ‘Let me know when to drop, Jack.’ His thumb stabbed the release button just as Coleman said quietly, ‘Now!’ In the rear turret of the Hudson, Drake saw the wind-flick of the 250lb depth charges set to detonate at fifty feet, as per the new procedure and then the ocean bulged up in four great, towering water pillars. Thompson opened the throttle and banked in a sharp turn to port after he had inwardly counted one-two-three-four. ‘The U-Boat was completely enveloped by the detonations,’ he recalled later ‘and I lost sight of the enemy as I turned away, getting into position for another pass. I had no depth-charges left, but we had any amount of three-o-three bullets.’
Coleman saw two charges straddle the bow as the submarine dived. U-570 was completely enveloped by the explosions and shortly afterwards submerged completely. Coleman jumped back to join Strode at the guns in the waist. All four men in the Hudson stared ahead. Thompson claimed later that he felt no excitement until his quarry foamed to the surface again, streaming green water. ‘It was rather disconcerting in some respects. I had hoped to see much more visible sign of damage.’ He did not realise then that he had scored a perfect straddle on the enemy, two depth-charges exploded on either side of the pressure hull. But Rahmlow and his men knew it only too well and U-570 had screwed herself almost upside down in the sudden eerie darkness after the blast. First came the preliminary shudder. Then the ear-drum shattering embrace of the two explosions to starboard which blew all lights. Then the roll, over and over. Over and down into emptiness. A man screamed in terror. Somebody else moaned through his teeth in fear. The man who screamed did so because his arm had been trapped in flailing machinery above his head - machinery which should have been underfoot. Somebody near the bank of batteries began coughing. Another engine-room rating retched helplessly. The wheezing and spluttering reached Rahmlow in the control-room, above the noise of the hissing escaping air which dominated the silence after the detonations. The boat seemed to be filling with deadly chlorine gas. ‘Up! Up! he urged, adding his weight to that of the man wrestling with the big wheel of the hydroplanes. ‘All hands on deck ...when I call.’ The boat was bow-heavy, but they were rising. Slowly, like a mortally wounded killer whale. Oberleutnant Bernhard Berndt the first watch officer sprayed his torch across the depth gauges, of the needles quivered, raced back, settled at zero. ‘I’ll chance it. Close the hatch behind me.’
Rahmlow deliberately trapped himself in the kiosk, his light wavering upwards like the doubt in his mind. He had left his crew below in temporary security. What lay beyond the top hatch was any man’s guess. The depth gauges could have knocked out by the shock wave he reasoned. There might be several fathoms of Atlantic pressing against the six butterfly nuts he was unscrewing, but there was no time to risk a try with the periscope, even if the housing was undamaged. Sweat blinded him and made the last bolt the worst of all. His breath gusted in relief as air, not tons of water, gushed down over his head and shoulders. He dropped back td first hatch and banged with his heels. ‘All out! All out! Get them out Berndt.’ He allowed half a dozen crew to clamber past him, stopped the next man and went up the steel ladder to take command on the upper bridge.
At that moment, Thompson, boring the Hudson back for the second calculated run, shouted over the intercommunication system, ‘Look out! They’re going for the gun.’ All four men in the aircraft, from different vantage points, saw the menace of water swirling away from the mounting on the casing. Coleman, who rarely swore, yelled, ‘Let the bastards have it!’ Thompson, thumbing the buttons for the front guns, ordered ‘Open fire on a target bearing. Points of aim ... gun and conning tower.’ Then, with a word over his shoulder - ‘Drake, don’t let them get near that gun as we pass.’ In his controlled urgency, he was annoyed at the seemingly lazy way in which the red tracer was clawing over the bridge of the enemy. He could see jagged white rents in the innocent green which heaved up and down in the lee of the submarine, but no holes in harsh metal. He saw the men in the yellow life-jackets break like a wave on the casing and flow back to the shelter of the bridge. There they were swamped by the second group scrambling from the hatch, in a welter of arms, heads and legs.
Thompson skidded his sweaty thumbs from the firing buttons and yanked the Hudson around in a tighter turn. Young Drake, in the rear turret, nursing his twin Brownings between his knees, flicked a tongue around a back tooth which had been bothering him and decided, in his diffident way, that his captain’s words made sense. He hated pain. Even less did he like the thought of inflicting pain upon others. This was impersonal enough. He sprayed the forward leading edge of the bridge in his turn until the range opened and then he felt naked at the realisation of what a vulnerable rump the banking Hudson must be presenting to the enemy below. They were round quickly enough and now roaring for the third attack. The 3.5-inch gun was still mute in the fore-and-aft position, but more and more Germans were crowding into the oval-shaped conning tower. ‘There was no indication of the enemy’s intentions and some of the Huns were getting very close to that ugly brute on the casing. We kept squirting, to sort-of keep their heads down.’
Coming down on the fourth pass, Thompson saw the white board of surrender was held aloft by Rahmlow. ‘Hold your fire,’ shouted Thompson. He eased himself back in the bucket seat and mechanically, he checked the instrument panel. Something might have been missed in the last half-hour of concentrated destruction. Half-hour? He looked at the wrist watch his wife had given him. Ten bleeding minutes! It was almost beyond belief. He shifted weight to peer down as he banked. A white flag was seen to be waved ... the crew also brought out what appeared to be a white board and held this up on the deck.’ The white flag was subsequently found to be the captain’s shirt. It was lightly starched and had frills down the front.
‘What do we do now, Jack? Tow the basket back to Iceland?’
‘We must whistle up the Navy - and quick!’ he observed as he put his aircraft into a series of spirals to gain altitude. Coleman had been studying the behaviour of U-570 for some minutes. ‘Don’t want to add to our worries, Tommy,’ he said rather too airily, ‘but the weather is definitely worsening and our pal is beginning to look a bit nose-heavy.’ ‘It is, as they say, going to blow a bastard,’ was the answer.
While the gunners kept their machine guns trained on U-570’s bridge, ‘Duggie’ Strode broke radio silence and requested help. Another Hudson on 269 Squadron, piloted by Hugh Eccles en route from Scotland to Iceland, picked up the message and headed to the scene, as did a Catalina (AH565) of Coastal Command’s 209 Squadron, piloted by Flying Officer Edward Jewiss, who had sunk U-452 two days earlier. 89. Freddie Drake told his hut mates later: ‘I went back to the astrodome. It was weird. We were really beginning to take a beating from the weather. When I looked at the poor slobs in the submarine tossing around. I began to feel sea-sick for the first time in my life. That big, ugly Catalina winging through the clouds looked like some angel of mercy.’
Thompson saw the Catalina at the same instant as his look-out shouted. He altered course and headed the larger aircraft away from the submarine, just in case the other pilot had not been briefed. They blinked recognition signals at each other. Thompson chuckled and passed a verbal message to Coleman. ‘Make him look after our sub - repeat, our sub - who has shown the white flag.’ Within fifteen minutes three more aircraft were over the area. ‘Worse than Piccadilly Circus in the rush hour,’ grumbled Thompson but he smiled as he said it. Hugh Eccles took photographs and served as a radio-relay station; Jewiss, fully armed with depth charges, circled, prepared to attack U-570 at the slightest sign that she was diving. Throughout the rest of the day the Hudsons and Catalinas took turns in guarding the prize, being over it for about eleven hours and a half. Then, low on fuel the Hudson had to leave. ‘Time we went home’ said Thompson. Fuel is getting low, anyway. Give me a course for base, Jack.’
When he flew over Kildadarnes, Thompson saw to his amazement that the station had turned out to the last man to cheer him in. The crowds even covered part of the runway. They were cleared just in time for the landing, but Thompson part of his attention undoubtedly absorbed by the crowds, was caught in a squall on landing and ‘S for Sugar’ ended its historic patrol ignominiously nose first in the mud alongside the runway. No one was hurt.
When it was realised that the U-boat might still have secret Enigma coding apparatus other secret gear and papers on board the fleet was alerted. Two four-stack ex-American destroyers, Durwell and Niagara, HMS Burwell and the Canadian Niagara; and four RNNS trawlers, Kingston Agathe, Northern Chief, Wastwater and Windermere were ordered to intervene and prevent the U-boat from being scuttled. The nearest vessel was the naval trawler Northern Chief, commanded by Lieutenant N. L. Knight, about sixty miles to the southeast, an eight-or nine-hour run in the heavy seas.
After having been airborne about sixteen hours (about thirteen of them circling U-570), Jewiss’s Catalina departed for Iceland to be replaced by Catalina piloted by Flight Lieutenant B. Lewin on 209 Squadron. Dusk began to fall and no vessel had yet arrived. ‘If it appears surface craft unable to reach position before dark,’ said an order issued at sunset, ‘after giving due warning you should sink U-boat.’ It was found possible, however, to arrange for aircraft to remain in relays over the submarine all night and to keep it in view by dropping flares. Its crew were to be ordered to remain on deck and to show a light throughout the hours of darkness under penalty of destruction if they did not comply. Before this order could be executed the Northern Chief arrived at about 22:00 in the gathered dusk and sought in heavy seas to take the U-boat in tow. A single-engine Northrop float plane manned by a Norwegian crew on 330 Squadron from Iceland suddenly appeared overhead and dropped two small bombs near U-570, then mistakenly attacked the Northern Chief, which returned fire. Contact was established with the Norwegians by radio, calmly explained the situation and refused their request to make a second attack on U-570. Presently a search for the Enigma and other intelligence documents proved unsuccessful.
At dawn on 28 August the Kingston Agathe and HMS Durwell and HMS Niagara arrived and the crew were taken off so that U-570 could be towed to Iceland, escorted all the way by aircraft 90 U-570 was almost certainly one of a large concentration discovered in Icelandic waters. Every serviceable aircraft of Coastal Command based in Iceland and the North of Scotland was dispatched in a series of sweeps maintained from first to last light. On 26 August 50 sorties were made, on 27th 34, on 28th 84 and on 29th 56; a total of 224 in four days.
U-570 was almost certainly one of a large concentration discovered in Icelandic waters. Every serviceable aircraft of Coastal Command based in Iceland and the North of Scotland was dispatched in a series of sweeps maintained from first to last light. On 26 August 50 sorties were made, on 27th 34, on 28th 84 and on 29th 56; a total of 224 in four days.
Both Thompson and Coleman were soon wearing the ribbons of the DFC for their part in the action and just when it seemed that the Navy had forgotten who had made the capture, there was a ceremony at which Thompson was presented with the Swastika battle emblem from U-570 and, as a personal souvenir, the commander’s binoculars. 91
On Christmas Eve 1941 there occurred the first attack by flying boats on an enemy merchant vessel at sea. Two Sunderlands on 10 Squadron RAAF took part with three RAF Sunderlands and two RAF Catalinas which had been sent out on a wide sweep for U-boats. In the Bay of Biscay, 100 miles off Cape Finisterre, soon after first light, the grey hull of a heavily laden tanker of 12,000 tons was sighted - a U-boat ‘mother ship.’ When the flying boats came in sight, the tanker immediately altered course. In reply to signals, the tanker said her name was Belinda. This was wirelessed back to base, which gave orders to attack. First to attack was Sunderland ‘K’ on 10 Squadron, captained by Flight Lieutenant A. V. ‘Vic’ Hodgkinson, one of the original Sunderland pilots on 10 Squadron in 1939 who would later serve in the South Pacific on Catalinas. The Sunderland approached the tanker down-sun at 1,000 feet and the ship immediately opened up a concentrated fire from near the bridge with machine guns and two heavier guns, badly damaging the Sunderland and wounding an airman. The Sunderland’s front gunner replied, scoring hits on the bridge, while the other gunners raked the tanker’s deck. A stick of depth charges and two anti-submarine bombs were dropped. They straddled the tanker and tall columns of water hid the ship. When the water subsided, billows of smoke were seen and the ship was listing and had slowed to about four knots, with a wide oil streak astern.
The attack was renewed next day by Flight Lieutenant J. Costello in Sunderland ‘S.’ As ‘S’ manoeuvred to attack, a Ju 88 came in on the Sunderland’s port beam and both aircraft opened fire at each other. Sunderland ‘S’ drove off the Ju 88 and dropped six depth charges and two bombs around the ship. At 09.30 the Royal Navy destroyer Vanoc was sighted and was given the tanker’s position and the Australians returned - to shadow the damaged ship. At 10.15 the Australians saw an explosion near the destroyer and seconds later it signalled that the same or another Ju 88 had attacked it. One Sunderland sped to the destroyer, circled it and then turned to meet the enemy aircraft head-on. The Sunderland passed over the Ju 88 firing with front and rear guns and her incendiaries ripped into the enemy’s fuselage and main plane, beneath which - so close were the two aircraft - the Australians could see the rows of bombs. The Ju 88’s speed slackened suddenly and it made off into cloud.
On 9 January 1942 Squadron Leader Garside on 230 Squadron flying Sunderland W3987/X bombed U-577 north-west of Mersa Matruh. The boat, which had left St Nazaire on its second war cruise under the command of Herbert Schauenburg on 16 December entered the Mediterranean two days before Christmas. The boat was lost with all 43 hands.
During the last quarter of 1941 Coastal Command had sunk fifteen ships for the loss of forty-six aircraft, but in the first four months of 1942 it sank only six for the loss of fifty-five aircraft. This was largely a ‘seasonal decline’. Better weather, coupled with increased resources in the form of four Hampden squadrons converted to torpedo bombers, soon gave rise to renewed hopes. By May the Command was attacking more fiercely and more frequently than ever before. Much the larger part of this work against enemy shipping fell to the Hudsons. With the help of the Hampdens, those of 18 Group (48 and 608 Squadrons) were responsible for strikes off Norway; those of 16 Group (53, 59, 320 (Dutch) Squadrons and 407 ‘Demon’ Squadron RCAF) concentrated on the traffic between the estuary of the Elbe and the Hook of Holland. With iron determination the pilots of these squadrons dived through the flak and released their bombs from mast-height - or so near it that damage from impact with ship or sea was distressingly frequent. On 28 May, for instance, 59 Squadron recorded that one of its aircraft ‘struck the sea with port prop-badly bent and homed on one engine at 60 mph’. The next day 407 Squadron reported. ‘For the second time in two nights Pilot Officer O’Connell successfully bombed enemy shipping. After this last episode he is seriously thinking of taking up paper-hanging after the war. He went in so low to attack that he struck a mast and hung one of the bomb-doors thereon’. As material for an impressive ‘line’ this was probably surpassed only by an incident two years later, when a pilot on 455 Squadron RAAF returned from a shipping attack near the Dutch coast with several feet of mast attached to his aircraft.
During May Coastal Command claimed twelve ships, ten of which were confirmed and many others were damaged but attacks at so low a level also involved severe losses; forty-three aircraft in May. The war diarist on 407 Squadron, wrote: ‘Since this squadron became operational again on 1 April we have lost twelve crews, in all fifty persons either missing or killed. During the past month six crews have been designated missing or killed on operations with the loss of twenty-seven lives. This does not take into consideration the fact that after every major operation of this nature at least two or three aircraft are so very badly damaged that they are of no use to this, or any other, squadron ‘.
By the end of June 1942 it was recorded that during the previous three months, out of every four Coastal Command aircraft attempting to attack, one had been shot down. The Germans were arming their merchantmen more and more heavily, surrounding them with more and more escorts-sometimes they now employed as many as four or five warships for a single merchant vessel. With his resources stretched to the utmost Joubert could not afford losses of anything like this order. In July he instructed his crews to abandon the low attack and to bomb from medium level. The resulting fall in casualties was equalled only by the decline in sinkings. The ineffectiveness of medium-level attack arose partly from the lack of a good bomb-sight for the type of work, partly from the drain of experienced crews - including two of the four Beaufort Squadrons - to the Middle East. The Hampdens, too, were not fast enough for work against the more powerfully escorted convoys. ‘There was’, records a member on 455 Squadron RAAF, ‘a very keen type who earned himself the nickname ‘Hacksaw’, because whenever he had the opportunity he sawed off some of the many appendages the old Hampden acquired, to try and squeeze the extra half-knot out of her’.
On 5 June during an attack on Convoy HG.84 in the Bay of Biscay, Sunderland W3986/U on 10 Squadron RAAF piloted by Flight Lieutenant S. R. C. Wood, picked up a contact on radar. A wake was then seen through binoculars, Wood dived towards it and he found a U-boat making 10 knots. It was the veteran U-71, commanded by 33-year old Korvettenkapitän Walter Flachsenberg. An attack was made from 50 feet at a speed of 205 knots, 25 seconds by stop-watch after U-71 had disappeared. Wood released eight shallow-set Torpex depth charges from the starboard quarter. The centre of the stick was aimed to explode at the presumed position of the conning tower, 130 yards ahead of the swirl and is believed to have exploded there; the depth charges straddled the line of advance. A minute later U-71 surfaced bows first, at a steep angle, an air bubble 25 feet in diameter appeared to port alongside the conning tower and oil bubbles rose in the wake, just ahead of the explosion mark. Then the bows dipped as the stem came high out of the water and gradually U-71 steadied, with its bows awash and listing to port. It was still moving ahead on the motors. In the next ten minutes the aircraft raked the U-boat with 2,000 rounds of machine-gun fire from the nose, port and tail guns in to the hull, upper deck and bridge structure, killing one of the crew. U-71 moved slowly in figures of eight, finally getting under way on the Diesels. Two men appeared in the conning tower but vanished when the tail gun opened up on them.
At 1635 some of the crew seized an opportunity, when the Sunderland had ceased firing to conserve ammunition and manned both the anti-aircraft gun, on the after end of the bridge and the main gun forward of the conning tower. They opened fire and hit the flying-boat several times but caused no casualties. Ten minutes later U-71 increased speed to 8-10 knots. At 1731 it reduced speed and submerged. A large oily patch remained in the position of diving and an oil streak continued to extend along the course. The aircraft sent a message to base at 1819, when the oil streak was moving at one knot and at 1924 established wireless contact with relieving aircraft. The Sunderland left at 1939 when the oil track was fading and was immediately attacked by a Focke-Wulf ‘Kondor’. The enemy made four attacks, all from abaft, beam or astern, in the course of an hour and five minutes. In the first three the Sunderland was several times hit by cannon fire and had the rear turret disabled; it was kept in action by hand.
The last attack was made from close range and the Sunderland then sustained five large and eighty small holes, the R/T aerial was shot away and both flaps were damaged. It returned fire from all guns that would bear, throttling back to reduce the range. The Focke-Wulf overshot and was hit repeatedly; it yawed at right angles, broke off the attack and disappeared eastward, flying low over the sea; probably it failed to reach its base. The Sunderland returned uneventfully though other enemy aircraft had come near the coast to intercept it. Some of the bullet-holes were beneath the water line, but arrangements were made to plug them as soon as it moored and it was quickly beached.
Wood recalled: ‘We had been so busy with the submarine that we had forgotten to eat and one of the crew was just preparing a meal when the Kurier appeared. We took evasive action making a diving turn to port, which brought a strong protest from the cook. His flour basin was upset and fish heads - it was fish and chips for tea - were thrown about and slithering all over the galley floor. We were busy with the Focke-Wulf for about an hour and the cook apologized for the meal being a little cold when we finally got down to it. We carried out an improvised repair to the rear-turret by putting surgical sticking plaster over a hole in an oil-pipe. The only casualty in the crew was a slight scratch on one man’s leg but the Sunderland had half a dozen holes big enough to put your head in, as well as something like a hundred little ones. As some of the damage was below the waterline we had rush her up to the slipway when we landed in case she sank. The ground crew were on her like a lot of ants and had her safe on her beaching chassis almost before we stopped moving.’ German PT boats raced out to escort U-71 into La Pallice. Repaired quickly, the boat re-sailed a week later, on 11 June.
On 6 June 1942 a Spanish radio report asserted that an Italian submarine [the Luigi Torelli of the 1,200-ton Marconi class commanded by Capitano di Corvetta (Lieutenant Commander) Augusto Migliorini] had been beached near Santander. The foreign radio reports that continued to mention the beaching added that two Sunderland flying-boats of Coastal Command, which had attacked the U-boat, had been forced down. The foreign radio reports were misleading. The Sunderlands were back at base. The episode involving the Italian submarine had all started on the night of 3/4 June. Air Marshal Sir Philip Joubert, knowing that only a successful operational demonstration of the capabilities of Leigh Light Wellingtons would carry the day had thrown caution to the wind and despatched four of the five Wellingtons on 172 Squadron into the Bay of Biscay. The Luigi Torelli was damaged by Squadron Leader Jeff H. Greswell and the crew on a Wellington on 172 Squadron (one of five Wimpys fitted with the Leigh Light) picked up an ASV contact. His target was outbound from Bordeaux to the West Indies. Greswell homed on the Luigi Torelli by radar and then switched on the Leigh Light but owing to a faulty setting in his altimeter, his approach was too high and he saw no sign of the submarine. However, Migliorini, mistaking the Wellington for a German aircraft, fired recognition flares, precisely pinpointing his boat. On a second approach with the Leigh Light, Greswell got the Luigi Torelli squarely in the brilliant beam and straddled the Italian boat with four shallow-set 300lb Torpex depth charges from an altitude of fifty feet. 92
Unsurprisingly, the blasts to Luigi Torelli forced Migliorini to abort and he headed to Aviles, Spain.
On 5 June the Luigi Torelli was hastily repaired and left Aviles the next day. Two Sunderlands on 10 Squadron RAAF, W4019/R flown by Flight Lieutenant Edwin St. Clare Yeoman from Victoria and W3994/X, flown by Pilot Officer Thomas A. Edgerton from Melbourne operating from Gibraltar found the submarine and after circling it realized that the Italian commander was unable to submerge. At 0358 hours Yeoman’s Sunderland received a contact three miles on the port beam. Visibility was 500 yards, with the aid of a young moon. The aircraft circled and homed and finally sighted a submarine making 12 knots. An attack with eight 250lb depth charges was made from 100 feet at an angle of 30 degrees to the track and the centre of the stick was thought to have been about 30 yards from the port beam. The submarine was then still fully surfaced and firing light flak, which hit the aircraft several times. As the aircraft broke away, the submarine opened up with heavy flak, hitting the starboard outer engine and holing the starboard float. The aircraft began to vibrate and Yeoman therefore set course for base, after firing about 1,075 rounds. No results could be observed in the darkness. A total of 15 depth charges were dropped on the submarine by the two Sunderlands and they hounded the boat into Santander. 93
At 0834 on 11 June Sunderland W3993/W on 10 Squadron RAAF flown by Flight Lieutenant E. Martin flying at 2,000 feet, in cloud and rain (using the beam aerials) saw a U-boat five miles ahead, in a patch of better visibility. It was U-105 commanded by 26-year old Kapitänleutnant Jürgen Nissen and it was making 8 knots. U-105 was still on the surface when six depth charges were dropped up the track from 30-50 feet (250lbs torpex, set to 25 feet, actual spacing 40 feet). They exploded all round it and on their subsidence it was seen to be lying almost stationary in the centre of the disturbed area, with a list to starboard. It porpoised slowly (first bows up, then stem up), turned sluggishly to port and eventually gradually submerged, three or four minutes after the attack. A minute later U-105 reappeared and opened fire with cannon. The Sunderland, returning fire, immediately attacked up the track from 600 feet, dropping an anti-submarine bomb, but it fell short. Another was then released and this exploded alongside. A great patch of oil then appeared; in spite of a rough sea which rapidly broke up the patch, it maintained a width of at least 50 yards. The Sunderland remained for 3½ hours keeping contact by Special Equipment in bad visibility, while U-105 remained on the surface, moving slowly; its speed now varied between two and four knots and occasionally it stopped, while its course was erratic, with a variation of 20 degrees. In all 700 rounds were fired from the aircraft, which was itself hit in the port wing. U-105 was damaged and Nissen put into El Ferrol in Spain where it remained until 28 June. A year later, on 2 June 1943, U-105 was sunk off Dakar by Antares, a Free French Potez flying-boat of 141 Escadrille. The U-boat was lost with all 53 hands. 94
On 28 July, with the gunner working feverishly to repair a jammed front turret, Sunderland ‘C’ on 10 Squadron RAAF deliberately circled for half an hour within range of enemy land-based fighters in the Bay of Biscay in order to attack an enemy convoy and its escort of two armed trawlers between Cape Higuer and Cape Machichaco. When the flying boat, captained by Flight Lieutenant R. W. Marks, prepared to attack, the front turret jammed. Since a successful attack depended largely on the front gunner’s ability to silence the convoy’s AA fire as the Sunderland closed, the captain decided to circle the ships and let the gunner repair the turret, although he knew that the trawlers would almost certainly SOS for land-based fighter protection. Half an hour later the damage had been repaired and the pilot began the run-up. As the ships opened fire a Messerschmitt Bf 109 appeared. Marks left it to his gunners while he took slight evasive action against the flak from the ships. In the first attack the Me 109 overshot, but it came in again on the starboard side and opened up with cannon and machine gun fire. The Sunderland’s midships and rear gunners poured tracer bullets in as it closed and the front gunner let it have a final burst as it flew across just below the flying boat’s nose. The Me 109 went past in a gradual dive. A wisp of smoke came from its fuselage and a moment later it burst into flames and crashed into the sea. At that moment a heavy shell smashed into the Sunderland’s hull. A fragment flew diagonally upwards, snipped a piece of the control column and whipped past the captain’s face and out through the port hole beside him. He felt the wind of it. Another splinter set fire to a marine distress flare. The cockpit was instantly filled with smoke.
The Sunderland’s navigator, whose aim the shell had disturbed at the last moment and caused his bombs to miss the trawlers, picked the flare up and threw it overboard. The pilot could not see his instrument panel for smoke, but he banked away and began the long flight home. Both inner engines of the Sunderland began to give trouble and soon the port inner stopped. The pilot had to ‘hold’ the aircraft in the air all the way home while the crew threw out the anchor and other movable equipment to lighten it. The Sunderland got home safely and soon the ground crew were making her ready for another sortie.
Several Hampden squadrons were converted to torpedo carriers in mid-1942 and the margin of safety for German supply shipping along the Norwegian coast was considerably reduced. When the German convoys reached Bergen on their way to the northern garrisons with vital stores, they had considered themselves safe from further air attack. Bergen was practically the limit of the effective range of Coastal Command’s Beauforts and Hudsons; beyond that point the ships had to contend only with British submarines. But the Hampdens, with their greater powers of endurance, could range much farther afield in search of their prey and fjords and anchorages north of Bergen, which were once looked upon by German seamen as ‘reception areas,’ now came within the danger zone.
10 Squadron RAAF was well on the way to having flown 3,000,000 nautical miles when 461, the second RAAF Sunderland squadron in Britain, had come into being, at Pembroke Dock, also the home of its sister squadron, on Anzac Day, 25 April 1942. Using Consolidated Catalinas originally. 461 soon took its own Sunderlands on strength, under the command of Squadron Leader R. B. Burrage OBE DFC. Part of 19 Group, Coastal Command 461 Squadron began working-up soon after formation and its first two boats were ready for operations on 1 July. By the end of that month, the squadron was at full strength as regards personnel and aircraft and now commanded by Wing Commander G. A. R. Halliday RAF. Determined to surpass the efforts of their already famous sister squadron, the crews of 461 were inexperienced initially; using the call-signs for the day, an Australian skipper called base on return from patrol to enquire, ‘Randy One, this is Randy Two - have you a buoy for me?’ It took some time for the pilot to live this one down! Backed up by depth charges, the Leigh light, radar and Torpex explosives which made up part of their Sunderlands’ equipment, the Aussies were ready to tackle the task. On 30 July, while on patrol off Ushant, the Sunderland on 461 Squadron skippered by Pilot Officer F. V. Manger drew first blood for the unit by destroying an Arado Ar196, one of three hostile aircraft which attacked the formidable flying boat in broad daylight. There was nearly a catastrophe on 9 August when a 461 Squadron Sunderland attacked a submarine vigorously, but happily no damage was done when the captain and crew realised that this particular vessel belonged to the Royal Navy. Mount Batten, where the unit was now based, was becoming so cluttered with the aircraft of the two Australian squadrons that 461 temporarily detached some of its elements to Poole, returning when the situation had eased.
On 17 July 1942 north-west of Cape Ortegal Whitley ‘H-Harry’ on 502 Squadron at St. Eval flown by Pilot Officer A. R. A. Hunt DFC who was from Oxford, spotted a U-boat on the surface. It was U-751 captained by 33-year old Korvettenkapitän Gerhard Bigalk who three days’ earlier had left St. Nazaire for the Americas to lay TMB (magnetic) minefields at Charleston, South Carolina. Bigalk had been awarded the Ritterkreuz for sinking the ‘jeep’ carrier Audacity in December 1941. Attacking from an altitude of fifty feet, Hunt dropped six 250lb Mark VII depth charges with Torpex warheads set for 25 feet. The close straddle literally lifted U-751 out of the water but Hunt decided to make a second attack with ASW bombs and machine guns. U-751 survived these attacks and Bigalk dived. Two hours later when he returned to the surface, a Lancaster (R5724/F) of Bomber Command on 61 Squadron on loan to Coastal Command and piloted by Flight Lieutenant Peter R. Casement DSO DFC, an Irishman from County Antrim, was orbiting overhead. U-751 was drifting helplessly on the fringe of an oil patch larger than a football field. Just before two o’clock in the afternoon, as Casement ran in to attack, U-751 returned fire with all her guns. At two o’clock, according to his log, he bombed the submarine again. The Lancaster dropped ten close Mark VIII depth charges and then a string of ASW bombs. The U-boat was now so low in the water that at times it disappeared in the wash of the bombs. At a minute past two the submarine’s crew jumped to the deck gun and fired at the Lancaster. A minute later the aircraft replied. Two minutes afterwards Casement bombed again. After another six minutes U-751 began to slide stern first beneath the sea and the crew threw themselves overboard ‘some of them shaking fists in defiance’ reported the Lancaster crew. The bow of the U-boat rose vertically and she sank. Three minutes afterwards the sea was undisturbed save for the bobbing heads of the German crew. No attempt was made to rescue the crew, all 48 hands being lost.
On 3 August 423 Squadron RCAF flew its first Sunderland operation since being formed at Oban in May when Flying Officer John Musgrave carried out an anti-submarine search. During August the Canadian squadron recorded eleven U-boat sightings and made six attacks on enemy boats. 461 Squadron recorded three sightings and one attack on 10 August when at 1413, E/461 flying at 2,500 feet sighted a U-boat on the surface five miles away on port quarter. The U-boat left a definite oil streak about 10 yards wide and 1½ miles long. Musgrave turned towards the U-boat, which submerged when 2½ miles away, but when the aircraft was about 600 yards from the swirl the conning tower and stern re-appeared for a short time. The Sunderland attacked from the U-boat’s port beam at right angles to its track and released six torpex depth charges (set to 25 feet, spaced at 35 feet) from 50 feet, 12 seconds after the second disappearance of the conning tower. The DCs straddled the line of advance at the point of aim, about 60 yards ahead of the swirl, which should have been the actual position of the conning tower. Five minutes after the attack an oil bubble 60 x 25 yards and two large air bubbles were seen 200 yards ahead of the explosion mark. This well executed attack certainly shook the crew severely and probably caused a certain amount of damage.
By September 1942 the average of U-boat kills from air attacks had fallen to 6 per cent per month despite improved tactics of search and final approach which, coupled with the gradually increasing number of aircraft devoted to anti-U-boat work.
On 1 September 461 Squadron’s first Sunderland was lost in a combat with two Junkers Ju 88s, all eleven crew members perishing. That morning A/461 and R/10 and U/10 were engaged on an anti-shipping patrol in the Bay of Biscay. While proceeding to the patrol area, U/10 got a Special Equipment contact twelve miles on the port beam and on homing sighted, at a range of five miles, a vessel that was emitting so much smoke that it was thought to be a merchantman. Approaching up sun and making use of cloud cover, the aircraft finally identified it as a large Italian submarine, travelling at six knots. It was the Reginaldo Guiliani, which was returning from a war cruise off Brazil. The submarine opened fire with light flak from the after end of the bridge, but at 1028 hours the aircraft pressed home the attack from SAP bombs while the submarine was still fully surfaced. Only one bomb was seen to explode and this about thirty yards to port of the submarine, but yellow smoke immediately issued from its port quarter and continued for about half a minute. At this point, R/10 came on the scene, having obtained simultaneous Special Equipment and visual contacts at ten miles’ range and carried out two machine-gun attacks on the Reginaldo Guiliani from stern to bow, diving from 1,500 feet to 500 feet and firing from nose and tail guns. The submarine replied from all gun positions, the cannon fire being intense.
A few minutes later, R/10 sighted A/461 one mile away. Meanwhile, U/10 had turned to port in a wide sweep and now attacked again from the starboard bow but, owing to an error, the bomb did not release. Eight minutes later R/10 attacked from the submarine’s starboard beam with two 250lb SAP bombs, turning to repeat the same manoeuvre with one more bomb. None of the bombs fell sufficiently near the submarine to do appreciable damage. After R/10’s second bomb attack the submarine ceased fire and did not fire again owing to casualties caused by the aircraft’s tail guns. R/10 sustained several hits but suffered no casualties. Throughout the action a large volume of bluish-brown smoke came from the submarine’s diesel exhausts, clouds of it trailed astern for half a mile. The three aircraft on the scene then contacted each other by R/T and from 1035 to 1055 circled the position, arranging a concerted attack, but before this could be put into effect, orders were received from base to continue with the anti-shipping patrol. The Reginaldo Guiliani could consider itself lucky that the aircraft were carrying anti-shipping armament and had a major objective which precluded the use of every bomb.
On the last day of the month Pilot Officer H. G. Cooke on 461 Squadron heavily damaged a blockade-running U-boat 700 miles west of La Pallice, forcing the enemy vessel to limp home for lengthy repairs. That same day 10 Squadron took part in a submarine attack when Sunderland W3983 captained by Flight Lieutenant H. G. ‘Graham’ Pockley of Randwick, New South Wales attacked the Reginaldo Guiliani, which had been attacked on 1 September by 10 Squadron RAAF. The Sunderland was on patrol over the Bay of Biscay when the submarine was sighted on the surface. Pockley dived, firing as he descended. As he rose to circle the submarine another 10 Squadron Sunderland (W3986), captained by Flight Lieutenant S. R. C. Wood DFC of Sydney, who, in 1936, rowed number four for Oxford, arrived and went in to attack, dropping a stick of bombs. Pockley followed in with another stick and then he swept down in two more gun attacks. During the battle an uncyphered message in Italian was picked up from the submarine: ‘Am being attacked by Sunderland. Captain killed and casualties among crew. Require immediate air protection. Viva. First Lieutenant.’
In Pockley’s last attack the submarine’s guns were silent. His gunner pumped in 1,000 rounds at point blank range and watched the bullets ricocheting off the conning tower. The 461 Squadron Sunderland, captained by Pilot Officer B. L. Buls had arrived during the attack and was circling the submarine when all three Australian Sunderlands were called to another target, leaving the submarine to be finished off by another Allied aircraft. Pockley was awarded the DFC and in November 1942 after further successes, added a Bar to his decoration. 95
On 9 September R/10 was again flying in the Bay, at a height of 3,500 feet, when a weak Special Equipment blip was received at 18 miles on the port bow. At ten miles the contact grew strong. R/10 continued to home just above the thin layer of cloud at 2,000 feet and at five miles’ range descended through it to sight a dark grey U-boat right ahead. The pilot climbed back into cloud and again broke through at 3 miles’ range, then dived at 195 knots, turning slightly through the 3/10ths cloud. Finally breaking cloud at 400 feet the U-boat was seen 1½ miles away on the surface, travelling at 8 knots. The aircraft turned slightly to starboard, observing men on the bridge and one man running along the upper deck and circled astern at a range of one mile, when it climbed to 900 feet, waiting for the U-boat to submerge. When the submarine was one mile on the starboard beam, the U-boat began to dive and the aircraft turned and attacked from its starboard bow, releasing six torpex depth charges with spoiler nose and tails (set to 25 feet, spaced at 21 feet) from 50 feet, while the top of the conning tower and the stern were still above water. The stick straddled the U-boat’s bow abaft the stern, three DCs on either side; they should have exploded just before the conning tower. The explosions were particularly heavy and two minutes later large air bubbles effervesced for five minutes over an area 50 feet across, 50 yards from the inside edge of the explosion mark and continued for a quarter of an hour, when the aircraft left to adopt baiting tactics. Nothing new was observed when it returned 40 minutes later. This model attack undoubtedly inflicted severe damage to the U-boat.
On 14 September Sunderland W6002/R on 202 Squadron at Gibraltar flown by Flying Officer E. P. Walshe was off the coast of Algeria, flying at 800 feet, when at 1430 hours an object was sighted five miles away. At 2 miles’ distance this was identified as a submarine painted grey and green. It was the Italian submarine, Alabastro. The aircraft approached from astern so that the enemy’s main gun could not be brought to bear, but there was some light flak, which ceased when the aircraft’s front gun opened up. An attack was made from 50 feet and five torpex depth charges were released while the submarine was still fully surfaced. One hung up and of those which dropped, one took the fuzing link with it. Two DCs fell on the starboard side, just forward of the conning tower and the other two along the port bow. Immediately the Alabastro lost all way and oil gushed out all round it. It then steamed slowly round in circles, keeping the gun trained and firing at the aircraft, until 35 seconds after the attack, when it gradually sank bow first. About forty survivors were left floating in the water or on their dinghy.
In October 1942 Halifax 209, a large fast convoy Europe-bound was successfully guarded from the attentions of a U-pack, which trailed the ships for four days, starting on 2 October. The Royal Navy, Coastal Command and the US Naval Air Arm co-operated in making things difficult for the submarine commanders. When the pack was reported, Catalinas of VP-73 swept down from Iceland to provide an air umbrella for the convoy. The pack held off. The next day the danger area was reached. Coastal Command Flying Fortresses, Liberators and Hudsons and a Catalina on a Norwegian Squadron of Coastal Command joined the Americans. Two U-boats partly surfaced. According to a contemporary account ‘American Catalinas pounced upon them like cats on unwary mice’. 96 The U-boats had to dive without being able to attack. Oil patches marked the scene of their diving. The same afternoon a submarine dived before a Liberator could reach it and afterwards the same aircraft forced another U-boat down before it could fire its torpedoes. In less than an hour this same Liberator attacked a third submarine with bombs and machine-guns.
Some miles away a Hudson on 269 Squadron piloted by Flying Officer J. A Markham stormed at a submarine with all guns firing. It was U-619, commanded by 26-year old Oberleutnant zur see Kurt Makowski. Markham then bombed the boat and in a few seconds masses of oil and exploding air bubbles festooned the sea surface. Ten minutes later wreckage floated up. U-619 was lost with all 44 hands. A Fortress spotted two U-boats, attacked one and caused the other to slink away into the ocean depths. When evening came on the night of the 5th/6th the American Catalinas had another chance to hit at the underwater buccaneers. They attacked two and one of them was credited with sinking U-582. The next day the crisis was over. Only two U-boats were sighted. A Hudson got to one (U-257 commanded by Kapitänleutnant Heinz Rahe) and attacked with depth charges which damaged the boat and forced Rahe to abort to France where battle-damage repairs required weeks;97 the other chose discretion rather than valour. Another watchful twenty-four hours passed and then the giant convoy was in British waters, the danger past.
In the Mediterranean on 13 November 1942 Flying Officer Mike Ensor piloting Hudson ‘S-Sugar’ on 500 Squadron, attacked and so severely damaged U-458 that it was unable to dive. The U-boat was forced to return to La Spezia. Ensor was born on a sheep station in New Zealand and his horizon was within the hills of Canterbury. He had arrived in England in April 1941 when he was twenty, to fight with the RAF. In January of the following year, he was seeking for enemy shipping near Heligoland. He flew down to mast height and bombed a German ship. He then flew his aircraft towards the mouth of the Elbe but was blinded by searchlights and the aircraft hit land in the dark. There was a crash and the aircraft bounced. The propellers of the starboard engine were bent over the cowling, the motor was so damaged that ‘Mike’ had to switch it off and the airspeed indicator and the wireless were both out of action. He climbed to 1,000 feet and set course for home but the aircraft was 180 degrees out of course and Ensor found himself flying in darkness over Holland. The Germans fired at them so that they had to fly inland and escape by hedge hopping. The observer came up beside Ensor and told him when to climb so that he would miss the trees and buildings. The flak was coming at them all the time, but they escaped over the sea. They flew through a heavy snowstorm in the pitch black night. ‘It was dark as the inside of a horse,’ Ensor said. With the help of Very cartridges he landed in a field in which posts had been erected, to prevent enemy aircraft from landing. The aircraft hit two of the posts but Ensor brought it to rest, with no mishaps to the crew except a black eye and one tooth knocked out, for the observer.
For this Ensor was given the DFC. When he went to Africa with a Hudson, to help to cover the ‘Torch’ landings, he was twenty-one. He had already attacked three U-boats and had been awarded a bar to his DFC. In the Mediterranean he attacked his fourth. The U-boat was raked by gun fire and several of the crew were killed. On 15 November, 35 miles north of Algiers, he attacked his fifth U-boat - U-259 commanded by 26-year old Kapitänleutnant Klaus Köpke - also in the Mediterranean, with four depth charges, one of which fell directly on the top side deck and caused a violent secondary explosion that threw the deck gun and entire conning tower skyward. U-259 then sank very quickly with all 48 hands. One of the explosions and the flying debris hit the Hudson, throwing the aircraft up to 500 feet. Ensor was unconscious for a few moments. When he came to, he found the perspex in a broken heap on his knees. The aircraft was diving steeply towards the sea and, just in time, he jammed forward the throttles so that the nose came up to meet the horizon. Six feet of the port wing tip were bent almost at a right angle. The starboard wing was also broken and bent. The aircraft was then at about 1,000 feet and the controls were almost useless. The only way Ensor could turn her on course for Algiers was by alternating the speed of the engines. He was able to make the aircraft climb to 3,000 feet and he ordered the crew to check their parachutes. Then the nose dipped and the aircraft descended to 200 feet and levelled out again.
The Hudson limped along at 100 miles an hour; little more than stalling speed. A few moments after, when the altimeter was registering 1,000 feet, Ensor saw Algiers in the distance. Then one of the motors cut out; the Hudson began to go into a spin and about twenty miles north of Algiers the crew had to bail out quickly. Two of the crew perished. The others were picked up by a sloop and brought to shore. Ensor learned later that the U-boat had been sunk. He was still twenty-one when a DSO was added to his DFC and bar. For some months after this Mike Ensor was on the Air Staff at Coastal Headquarters. But he was stubborn and embarrassed by files and he asked to be sent back to operational flying. Now, at twenty-two, he is leader of his flight, responsible for organizing, under the wing commander, a big slice of operational patrols, in addition to being captain of his own aircraft which takes its turn in patrolling the South-Western Approaches. 98
Two days later, in the same area, Squadron Leader Ian C. Patterson in another Hudson on Squadron 500 found and attacked the veteran U-331, commanded by 29-year old Kapitänleutnant Hans-Dietrich Freiherr von Tiesenhausen, who had sunk the battleship HMS Barham in the Mediterranean on 25 November 1941. Three depth charges and one ASW bomb wrecked the boat and blew open the torpedo-loading hatch in the bow compartment, flooding that space. Two other Hudsons on 500 Squadron, flown by Andrew W. Barwood and Sergeant Young joined Patterson and carried out depth-charge and strafing attacks, which killed and wounded some Germans who had come up on deck. Von Tiesenhausen ran up a white flag. The Hudson airmen cheered this second surrender (after U-570) of a U-boat to RAF aircraft. But the celebration was short-lived. A Fleet Air Arm Martlet fighter suddenly appeared on the scene and strafed the boat, killing more Germans and wounding von Tiesenhausen and others. Then an Albacore torpedo-bomber on 820 Squadron on the carrier HMS Formidable appeared from nowhere and sank U-331 with a torpedo, killing many Germans who were still below decks. The destroyer HMS Wilton, racing from Algiers to assist in the capture and a Walrus amphibian pulled von Tiesenhausen and sixteen other Germans out of the water. 99
A typical Sunderland sortie is described by Flight Lieutenant Jack Sumner, skipper of a 423 Squadron RCAF Sunderland crew at Castle Archdale in late 1942: ‘The time, 0030. The batman taps the sleeping skipper on the shoulder. ‘Time to get up, sir, briefing’s at one-thirty, take-off three-thirty.’ (Batmen could seldom tell the time in Service officialise). A few hours before, the weather had looked anything but promising. The sky was heavy with a low overcast and rain was pelting down - real ‘scrub’ weather. Bed felt especially comfortable and warm as the batman shuffled off to wake the other officers. Nonetheless...
‘Sleepy-eyed aircrew stumble through a drenching downpour to their Messes. Breakfast consists of porridge, bacon and egg, tea or coffee and ‘lashings of toast and marmalade’. ‘Looks like a really long stooge this time’, some pre-informed flight engineer remarks. Engineers had a talent for ferreting out the gen about forthcoming ops before anyone else. ‘Almost seven hundred miles out! They’d better have those petrol tanks good and full or there’ll be a lot of us in the drink waiting for the air-sea rescue types.’ ‘By briefing time the clouds have gone and the sky is a mass of stars. A strong wind has picked up, which means head-winds on the way out. Covering one wall of the briefing room is an Atlantic area map which itself looks as big as an ocean. Lines of ribbon run out from British ports to code-lettered sea positions that represent the latest reported positions of convoys in-bound from America. Just beyond 25 degrees west is a miniature submarine. ‘That’s where you’re going,’ announces the Operations Officer, pointing to the U-boat marker. ‘Americans patrolling that area yesterday came on a pack of subs. They attacked them but we don’t know what the results were. As you can see from the chart, there’s a convoy in the vicinity, but your job is those submarines. You’ll get the weather conditions from the met man.’
‘The weather-merchant is far from happy. Only the urgency of the situation, he admits, permits the operation in the first place. The weather overhead is purely a local condition. Information from the Atlantic is so vague that he cannot predict with any accuracy. There are several fronts out there, but their movements are indefinite. ‘If you’re lucky you may return under conditions just as they are now’ - and he adds, ‘or it may get thick.’
‘After a few words from the squadron commander (Wing Commander F. J. Rump), the air crews leave the briefing room. Sumner’s navigator, Warrant Officer Harry Parliament, is loaded down with maps and charts. The second pilot, Pilot Officer George Holley, carries two orange-coloured metal boxes housing Gertie and George, homing pigeons which will be released if the Sunderland is forced down at sea. At the docks crews board motor boats which take them to their flying yachts moored well out in the lake. There the rest of the crew of ‘J’ awaits them - Pilot Officer Art Mountford, Sergeants Jack Kelly, Hal Hutchinson, Phil Marshall, J. B. Horsburgh and A. J. Lunn. They have been in the aircraft all night, having slept aboard. Mountford is busy making tea in the galley. There is still time before take-off and the crew sit around the table in the wardroom, chatting the minutes away.
‘Suddenly the skipper looks at his watch, heaves himself to his feet and gives the order to douse cigarettes and the oil heater. It’s time to start up. In quick succession four Pegasus power-plants kick to life and then merge into an unsynchronised roar. The big ‘boat moves towards the flare path - a row of lights bobbing on the water - guided by a dinghy-borne airman flashing an Aldis lamp. Both pilots make their pre-take-off checks, the crew get into their take-off positions and presently the ship is trimmed and ready to go. Then, throttles opening wide in an angry crescendo, the Sunderland gathers momentum, pulls itself up on to the step and is soon moving over the lake at express train speed. Sumner brings back the control column in one smooth movement, with a slight jerk and ‘J-Jig’ gets airborne.
‘But the operation isn’t yet under way. Before reaching its patrol area ‘Jig’ is re-called because of threatening weather at base. It returns to the mooring place and the crew awaits another order to go. This comes sooner than expected and the routine begins all over again. This time it’s a convoy escort. The briefing is much like the previous one, except that one of the U-boats has been definitely sunk and another two probably destroyed by escort surface vessels. But a pack of them are still shadowing the convoy and it must have aerial protection - it’s that simple.
‘Taking off again in darkness the Sunderland, soon after first light, reaches the area where it is to pick up the convoy. Sumner and Holley scan the ocean for sign of a ship. Mountford is glued to his wireless set, Parliament checks and rechecks his navigation. Kelly swings his mid-upper turret slowly back and forth. The wireless operator calls the captain on the intercom and gives him a radio bearing on the convoy. A course alteration is made to starboard and soon the long lines of ships are in sight. The Sunderland begins to circle the convoy just within visual range. The armament of those ships carried quite a sting and it was considered unwise to venture too close to them until they’d sent out a recognition signal. It wasn’t unusual for such ships to shoot first and ask questions afterwards
The message of recognition is received, followed by a second message giving a bearing on a suspected submarine well to starboard of the convoy. Everybody aboard the Sunderland perks up. Even if they don’t see one, at least they’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that their presence is keeping one of the foe out of striking range. The circling goes on and on ... A welcome break in the monotony comes with the call to lunch. The crew retires in shifts to the wardroom to partake of thick steaks with potatoes and turnips and a ‘dessert’ of bread and jam. The next meal, tea, will feature fried egg sandwiches. Time passes - slowly - the monotony grows. Everyone is wishing the patrol would hurry up and end.