The tapping continued at irregular intervals for the next two hours. They lasted for between two and six seconds and were closely monitored by Sirdar’s crew using supersonic telegraphy equipment to receive and amplify the strange signals travelling through the water. But they made no sense, sounding like the letter ‘S’ repeated over and over. Could someone be attempting to send out the Morse signal: ‘… --- … (S.O.S)’ but for some reason unable to tap out the whole signal or did not know the full code?
At roughly the same time HMS Tintagel Castle also reported ASDIC contact in the identical area received through an electronic sound transmitter and receiver housed in a metal dome beneath the ship’s hull. High-frequency beams – audible ‘pings’ – were sent out and bounced back when they hit a submarine. The time that passed before an echo was received showed the range of the submarine. The pitch of the echo revealed if it was approaching or moving away. Sea Devil and Trespasser monitored similar signals on their submarine frequencies. Tintagel Castle headed in the general direction of the signals at a slow speed while Sirdar attempted to send a reply confirming that the tapping had been heard and that attempts were being made to find who was sending them. It was generally agreed that the sender was an inexperienced man, most likely in some sort of trouble.
At five minutes past midnight the tapping sounds became louder and closer and Sirdar picked up the signal ‘A.M.’ – the accepted submarine signal for ‘am stuck on bottom’. There was jubilation among the search flotilla and all ships were ordered to head in the direction of Tintagel Castle with HMS Boxer appointed headquarters ship.
Rear Admiral Raw, directing operations from HMS Dolphin, asked senior officers in the flotilla whether they considered the time was now right to send explosive grenades over the side alerting Affray’s crew to prepare for escape. Raw was worried that Affray might be stuck on the sea bottom some distance away and when the stranded crew heard the charge they would begin escaping into an area far away from the flotilla.
The rear admiral was also concerned about atmospheric conditions inside the stricken submarine. Calculations carried out by the Royal Naval Physiological Laboratory showed that if parts of the submarine were flooded, the number of survivors plus efficiency and life of its air purification system meant that escape should not be delayed. But it was pitch black out at sea and the weather was quickly deteriorating with a heavy surface swell, making it difficult to locate any men coming from the depths below.
The Physiological Laboratory warned that atmospheric conditions inside the submarine were probably so bad that men would almost certainly begin their escape attempt without waiting for explosive signals. Raw decided to delay the rescue attempt until first light when sufficient ships had reached the area to help find and pick up survivors from rescue rowboats. An RAF Sunderland aircraft would also begin circling the area at dawn.
Everyone was certain they were now close to finding Affray, but they could not be certain and as Subsmash rescue ships headed to the area at full speed, Raw issued the following signal from HMS Dolphin:
1. If not already done, a buoy is to be dropped accurately over the submarine.
2. When ordered, carry out following organisation for picking up survivors –
a. HMS Battleaxe to illuminate buoy.
b. All ships send all available pulling boats to vicinity of buoy.
c. Ships to remain in a circle not less than half a mile from the buoy and illuminate water as necessary.
d. Reclaim to be stationed downwind and burn NUC light.
e. All survivors to be taken to Reclaim.
3. Delay is not – repeat not – acceptable. Escape should commence as soon as sufficient ships are available to ensure picking up survivors.
Raw urged Sirdar and Tintagel Castle to continue their attempts to establish contact with Affray and discover the extent of damage and flooding to the submarine.
At 0204 hours, Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth, Sir Arthur Power, made the bold move of sending the following signal to the Admiralty in London for circulation to the press:
Communication has been established by signal with Affray. The submarine is apparently stuck on the bottom in 33 fathoms of water. Searching vessels are concentrating on the position of the sunken submarine. The necessary signals to ships in the vicinity have been made to give the best chances of rescuing any men who leave Affray by escape apparatus.
The statement triggered off a bombardment of calls from newspapers and the BBC asking for facilities for reporters and photographers to go to the area and witness the rescue. They wanted to observe search operations, photograph survivors as they came to the surface and interview them. Requests were deliberately ignored.
Power was so certain that Affray had been found that he sent messages to RAF stations taking part in the search stating: ‘The submarine has been located. Cancel all searches. Further instructions for helicopters and Sea Otters follow.’ The Admiralty ordered Ministry of Transport Services to send an urgent cable to all shipping in the English Channel: ‘Submarine has been located. Submarine rescue operations are taking place in 50 10N 0145 W. All shipping is warned to keep well clear of this position.’
Power and his team were now working on the assumption that all seventy-five men on board Affray were alive and had gathered in the forward bulkhead of the engine room where the required number of twenty C02 canisters were stored along with a number of oxygen candles to supplement the regular air supply.
It was only a matter of time before they found her . . .
Shortly before 0330 a sports car screeched to an abrupt halt in front of security gates at HMS Vernon, the Royal Navy’s torpedo and anti-submarine shore base at Portsmouth. The duty guard had been told to expect the car and to direct it towards the only building still with its lights burning. On arrival he was to ask for Vernon’s commander, Captain C.D. Howard-Johnston.
As the driver climbed out of his car, a naval officer walked towards him. The driver introduced himself as Commander Lionel Crabb. Howard-Johnston knew who he was. His reputation had come before him and he was something of a legend to almost everyone in the Navy and the public at large. As a lieutenant during the Second World War, Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb had served with distinction at Gibraltar as a demolitions expert, bravely defusing limpet mines placed by enemy frogmen on the undersides of Allied ships. His work in Gibraltar had earned Crabb the George Medal and promotion to lieutenant-commander and he went on to supervise a massive operation to clear the Italian ports of Livorno and Venice of enemy mines before re-opening for shipping. For this he was awarded the OBE. After the war Crabb was sent to Palestine where he led a crack underwater explosives disposal team removing mines placed by Jewish rebels beneath British ships.
Crabb was a contemporary of Ian Fleming, who is said to have based many characteristics of his James Bond creation on Crabb, including 007’s habit of throwing a hat across a room to land perfectly on the hat stand, a love of cocktails ‘shaken, not stirred’, fast cars – and an eye for beautiful women.
Crabb was demobilised in 1947 and now, at the age of 42 was a civilian and member of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve who slipped in and out of uniform on any pretext that suited him. At that time he was engaged on top-secret undercover diving operations, including work for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment and as an underwater cinematographer for the Admiralty’s Research Laboratory at Teddington. He had come to public attention again after volunteering to dive on the wreck of HMS Truculent after it had sunk the previous year. Crabb dived on the submarine in almost total darkness, handunder-hand down an oily cable, only to find that survivors had already evacuated the submarine, most of them to perish from exposure in the icy water of the Thames Estuary. There were only ten survivors.
After hearing about the loss of Affray and her possible discovery, Crabb had contacted the Navy to again offer his services. He was told to report immediately to HMS Vernon where motor torpedo boats were preparing to depart for the search zone. Captain Howard-Johnston carefully briefed Crabb on the submarine’s possible whereabouts and difficulties he might encounter. Crabb claimed that if Affray was found in less than 120ft of water, he could reach her faster wearing his frogman gear than a standard diver wearing cumbersome underwater apparatus. Crabb was offered a meal before sailing, which he refused. He wanted to get on with the job in the small amount of time Affray’s men had left to be rescued.
By 0440 hours Crabb was travelling out into the Channel on a motor torpedo boat. Only after leaving Vernon did he learn that Captain Howard-Johnston’s eldest son, Lieutenant Richard Howard-Johnston, was a member of the missing submarine’s crew. Nothing had been said by his father at the shore base.
By 0355 the Admiralty had agreed to consider allowing some of the reporters and photographers now filling Portsmouth and Gosport’s boarding houses to visit the search area. They would board the tug Capable at 1040 to be taken out to HMS Starling, where they would remain on the frigate for just one hour before returning to shore.
Another upbeat press statement was circulated at 0513:
Affray has been definitely located and positioned by HM ships assisted by US, French and Belgian vessels with support from British and French aircraft. Ships sent to the vicinity are all ready for rescue. Rescue operations will have the best chance in daylight.
At 0527 someone at the Admiralty thought it wise to slightly rephrase the statement, striking out the word ‘definitely’.
At 0555 in a clear dawn and greatly improved sea conditions, the twelve-charge signal was dropped over the side of HM ships Agincourt, St Austell Bay and Hedingham Castle. At 0614 more hull tappings were heard, but they made no more sense than those monitored during the night. Scores of men from twenty-nine ships and seven surfaced submarines leaned over the railings of their respective vessels straining their eyes to see one head, and then another followed by dozens more break the surface into daylight. But they saw nothing more than an empty sea.
Knowing that the BBC and every newspaper in the country was pressing for more information, another statement was drafted:
Acting on the best information at daylight, sound signals were made at 0645 over the position where Affray is believed to be lying. These signals told crew that surface craft were ready in position to pick up any men who surfaced by means of escape apparatus. No survivors have been seen up to 0630.
Ships and submarines in the flotilla remained in their watching circle for several more hours while circling aircraft and Dragonfly helicopters were diverted in case survivors had come to the surface further west.
By now the country was reading positive banner headlines in their morning newspapers which must have cheered families and friends of those on board Affray: ‘Submarine is Located – Contact Made After Day and Night Search’ (Daily Telegraph), ‘Affray is Found: Crew Send Message’ (Daily Mirror). The nation rejoiced.
It is not recorded if Sir Arthur Power regretted authorising press statements claiming that Affray had been found and communication established. The hearts of families with husbands and sons on the submarine sank when they read early editions of the same day’s evening newspapers and Power’s latest communiqué, now casting doubt about the ‘discovery’.Power told the press:
Although Affray has been heard making signals intermittently, her precise position has not been fixed. Surface ships have formed a ring covering a wide area of probability and are waiting to rescue survivors who may be able to escape. Aircraft fitted with airborne lifeboats and helicopters are also searching the area.
By 1215 hours Power began to introduce a further shadow of doubt into his statements:
Search is continuing but it is regretted that no survivors have yet been sighted. There is increasing evidence that the search is being carried out in the correct place. The fact that the submarine has been submerged for such a long time reduces the prospects of success.
Power now demanded a report from every ship and submarine claiming to have heard hull tappings or received mystery signals. In a message to the submarines Sirdar, Sea Devil and Trespasser, he demanded to know: ‘In light of events and as a basis for further planning, are you completely convinced that you did have SST communication with Affray?’
The replies came back quickly: Sirdar, ‘Yes!’; Sea Devil, ‘Yes!! and Trespasser, ‘Signals heard but too feint to read.’
As the morning progressed, Power was quickly coming to the conclusion that communication had never been made with Affray in the first place or any reliance given to the noises and signals – ‘but they cannot be discounted,’ said an official Admiralty document. ‘Hammering in machinery spaces can well be mistaken for hull taps and it is probable that echo sounders and/or short transmissions from ASDIC sets or surface craft were also being used at the times stated.’ Lieutenant James Pardoe, Commanding Officer of Sea Devil, later that day reported that the tapping sound could have been attributed to ‘a chain block’ in his vessel’s engine room, although no one could be absolutely certain what it was.
It was time for another telegram to be sent to disappointed and grief stricken wives and mothers waiting for news of their men on Affray:
Much regret I cannot at present give you any information beyond that already broadcast but you may rest assured that everything possible is being done and you will be informed as soon as any definite news of your husband/son is established. Ends.
On the afternoon of Wednesday 18 April, James Thomas, MP, stood up in the House of Commons and asked Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, James Callaghan, whether he had any statement to make about Affray. Callaghan – later to become Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister – was expecting the question and had spent most of the previous night and that morning being briefed over the telephone by the Admiralty and Sir Arthur Power. He told the House:
HM Submarine Affray left Portsmouth on Monday for a practice wartime patrol designed to give officers of the Submarine Training Course experience at sea in a submarine under war conditions. She has on board her Captain and four ship’s officers and a crew of 46 naval ratings, together with 20 officers from the training course and 4 Royal Marines other ranks of a Marine Training Course. At 8.56 p.m. on Monday evening she signalled that she planned to dive at 9.15 p.m. She was then south of the Isle of Wight and her intention after diving was to proceed westwards through the Channel.
She was expected to surface and report between eight and nine-o-clock yesterday morning, but no report was received. A search was at once organised by the Flag Officer, Submarines, acting on behalf of the Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth. All available ships of the Royal Navy, aircraft of Coastal Command and naval aircraft, including helicopters, took part in the search. I also gratefully acknowledge the assistance given by ships of the United States, French and Belgian navies.
The Affray is fully equipped with the latest type of escape apparatus, including sufficient escape chutes for all on board. She is also fitted with a marker buoy at each end, which can be released from inside.
Just before 1.00 a.m. today, HM Submarine Sea Devil reported that she had heard signals which were definitely from Affray. Further signals were heard at 2.35 a.m. by another submarine. She is apparently lying on the seabed at a depth of about 200ft, near the place where she dived, but her precise position has not yet been fixed.
Explosive sound signals were made at 5.45 a.m. this morning over the position where the vessel is believed to be lying. These signals told her crew that surface craft were ready in position to pick up any men who surfaced by means of escape apparatus. Forty-four surface ships and seven submarines taking part in the search formed a ring covering a wide area and are ready to proceed to the rescue should any survivors escape and appear on the surface. So far none has been sighted. Aircraft from 19 Group RAF and five naval air stations are also taking part in the search, while RAF and Royal Naval helicopters are standing by. Some of the helicopters are fitted with airborne lifeboats.
The Board of Admiralty would like to extend its sincere sympathy to the relatives of the officers and men on board in their ordeal. I should also like to record the untiring and self-forgetful efforts of all those who have organised and are engaged in the search.
The relatives can be assured that everything humanly possible will be done by those who are carrying out the search as long as there is any hope that lives can be saved.
On that same day, Richard Pilgrim, from Cosham, Hampshire, was serving as a 21-year old signalman on board HMS Nightingale, a coal-burning minesweeper attached to the shore base at HMS Vernon. He remembers:
I remember seeing HMS Affray in drydock on a number of occasions, including the day before she sailed for the last time. A few days later HMS Nightingale sailed to the Scilly Isles covering much of the same route that Affray should have followed. We saw much of the search and rescue operation taking place in the English Channel and when we arrived in the Scillies we learned that the submarine had still not been found.
When we returned to HMS Vernon, we were told that the shore-based commander, Captain Howard-Johnston, would be coming on board to inspect us. We had learned that his son, a sub-lieutenant, was on board Affray. Even though he had broken his wrist in an accident and could have stayed on shore if he wished, Captain Howard-Johnston still came on board. Our hearts all went out to him, but obviously we could not let him know about our feelings. He acted as if nothing so terribly tragic had happened to him and his family. But duty had to be done.
Captain Bill Shelford, a specialist in deep diving and submarine escape methods, was rushed back to Britain by air from his base in Malta to help oversee the Affray search operation. He later remembered:
At the time the great mystery of the Affray’s disappearance bid fair to equal that of the Marie Celeste . . . Eight hours after taking off in a Lancaster bomber, I walked into the operations room at Portsmouth. Still in my white cap cover and tanned after two years in the Mediterranean, I must have made strong contrast to the strained white faces of staff officers who had not left their post for the last twenty-four hours.
Admiral Power told me straight away to take over the organisation of the search for Affray and any rescue operations that might be necessary. I quickly learned that the greatest search operation ever laid on for a missing submarine was in progress in the Channel, involving nearly forty ships and dozens of aircraft. But that so far it had proved completely fruitless.
There was one emergency with which we might yet have to contend – Affray might have dived into one of the many wrecks which strew the bottom of the Channel and be jammed, unable to surface, but otherwise undamaged. Admiral Power wanted plans made in this event to pass a wire around her stern with which to try and drag her clear. The Director of Salvage from the Admiralty forecast that such an operation would take four months and was practically kicked out of the Admiral’s office for his pains. I said that it might well take four months but, on the other hand, if everything went in our favour it might be done in twelve hours.
I gathered together a team of salvage experts and although they were at first sceptical, we worked out a plan to make the attempt if the situation arose. It would have been a very desperate attempt, but hourly the situation of the men in Affray was growing grimmer and more desperate. I had faith in the divers and equipment on board Reclaim. . . . I knew they could get down to the wreck and get a wire on her if only we could transfer the wire to one of the heavy lifting ships to make the haul.
Orders were issued for a full sweep of the sea bottom to be undertaken by five naval minesweepers. But there was a problem. The English Channel was, and remains, littered with the wrecks of scores of ships – some dating back centuries – and submarines including German U-boats from both world wars. Larger wrecks would easily register with minesweepers as a possible location for the wreck of Affray and demand further investigation. This would take time, and time was something the Navy had little of on the morning of 18 April, twenty-four hours after ‘Subsmash’ had first been called.
The search now covered the English Channel from the Isle of Wight to the French coast, down to Land’s End and the Channel Islands. By 1000 the search flotilla had split up and gone off in different directions and at the same time back in Gosport, a Daily Mirror reporter was knocking on the door of Blackburn’s wife, Jean, ‘sitting – alone – in her cream painted home in Foster Road’. Mrs Blackburn told the reporter: ‘It’s this awful waiting. If only we knew something.’
Her children, Anthony, 6, and Jill, 4, were playing with a ball in their grandmother’s garden just 200yd around the corner and knew nothing of their father’s peril. ‘My daddy’s a naval officer,’ Anthony told the reporter, ‘but now he’s at sea.’
Mrs D.L. Cowan, Blackburn’s mother-in-law, said: ‘Jean hasn’t even got a photograph of John. He took them all to sea to paste into the family album.’
The same newspaper also reported that Stoker-Mechanic Robert Cardno, 21, and his bride Jean Bratton, from Leeds, Kent, had been married only ten days before Affray went missing. The Mirror said that the new bride ‘sat weeping’ while waiting for news about her husband. It continued:
For the third time a mother sat by the phone last night waiting for news from a missing submarine. She was Lady Frew, mother of Sub-Lieutenant Anthony Frew, an officer in the Affray. Sub-Lieutenant Frew was one of those saved when the submarine Truculent was wrecked in the Thames Estuary in January last year. Her husband, Engineer Rear Admiral Sir Sidney Frew was serving in the submarine K.12 in the 1920s when it was reported sunk off the East coast. It was later found to be safe.
Lady Frew told the newspaper: ‘We have had such a lot of this in our lives. We can only hope that there will be good news.’
The Daily Express took a more sensitive line in an editorial leader column:
Somewhere in the Channel a submarine is lying on the seabed. A submarine which carries the loved ones of seventy-five wives and mothers throughout the country. To those who are waiting, the nation’s heart goes out. Their prayers are ours.
Hope rose again when a search aircraft reported ‘many yellow and white objects in position 135 degrees Portland Bill 29 miles’. There was every likelihood that the objects could either be men bobbing about on the surface of the water wearing their brightly coloured escape apparatus or marker buoys sent up by the stricken submarine. All ships in the vicinity were immediately diverted to the spot and ploughed their way through the water at top speed. On arrival they found nothing more than a large school of cuttlefish and empty boxes probably thrown over the side by a passing ship. Spirits plummeted again.
As the second day of the search drew to a close, the Admiralty issued its final statement of the day:
As a result of operations during daylight today, there has been no rescue of any survivor from Affray, although continuous search and watch has been carried out by surface craft, submarines and aircraft. This search and watch will be continued throughout the coming dark hours but chances of success are now very small. There will be no further report issued by the Admiralty until tomorrow morning unless something of importance occurs.
The statement was broadcast on the BBC’s 10 o’clock radio news bulletin and heard by King George VI at Buckingham Palace. As Commander-in-Chief of the country’s armed forces, the King had been following progress of the ‘Subsmash’ search operation on radio news broadcasts and pondering the question of how she might be stuck on the sea bottom. Before retiring to bed for the night, he instructed an aide to send the following telegram to the Admiralty: ‘From Windsor to Admiralty – Re: Submarine Affray. Humbly suggest get biggest explosives possible disturb seabed area possibly release to surface. Try it.’
That night, Admiral Sir Arthur Power sent a message to Rear Admiral Raw reflecting on the day’s events: ‘A large amount of today has been wasted by a false alarm which initially appeared to give grounds for the greatest hope since the operation started.’
Captain M.J. Evans, commander of the search flotilla and based on HMS Agincourt, wrote in his report on that day’s activities at sea:
I was not myself convinced that there was positive evidence of the presence of HMS Affray . . . Silence was impossible and the indistinguishable or poorly made Morse . . . smacked to me of transmissions from other searching ships heard through the back and sides of the oscillator. Echo soundings and ordinary ship noises can well be mistaken for hull tapping when operators are anxiously hoping to hear just such noises. I also felt that if the supposed operator in HMS Affray was sufficiently in command of his senses to look up groups out of the Submarine Signal Pamphlet, he would have sent a more useful message than ‘AM’.
Things might have been very different if an order had been issued to maintain total underwater silence among all rescue vessels – but no such order was issued or even requested.
By Thursday 19 April Captain Evans had ‘formed the opinion that the chances of survivors coming to the surface by their own efforts had, to all intents and purposes, ceased and that the problem was now one of finding and identifying the wreck on the bottom with the outside chance that, if found, one or two men might still be alive.’
During the night of Wednesday 18 April, a sailor on board the destroyer HMS Myngs – sent out the previous day to replace another that had returned to shore – jotted his thoughts about HMS Affray on paper in the form of a poem. Penned while on watch in the English Channel, the poem is now in the archives of the Royal Naval Submarine Museum at Gosport. The author is identified only as ‘MJS’, but his words probably summed up the feelings of scores of others also on watch that night searching for a submarine which by now was almost certainly not going to be found with its crew still alive.
Lest We Forget
Perhaps somewhere ’neath us who search,
Seventy-five souls are now at prayer,
With words not heard in any church,
Of alternative hope and then despair.
Thoughts of sweethearts and of wives
Who cry and know not restful sleep
For thinking of those feared lost lives
Who lie in waters enclosed and deep.
Give to them, my God, I pray
Swift rescue and the light of day.
Not my will, but thine be done,
Help us cry ‘The Battle’s won.’
Perhaps such is not your will at all,
But on their sins, please do not frown
And when your Bo’sun sounds the call
Give your blessing to their last pipe-down.
R.I.P.