God Damn Josephus Daniels! – the Royal Navy Returns to the East
The American successes in the Pacific War had been just that, with the forces deployed overwhelmingly United States in origin, although Australian and New Zealand forces were also involved, and there were a small number of Royal Navy units, usually cruisers and destroyers. Now with the war in the Mediterranean going the way of the Allies and with a growing number of land bases in Italy, and the Battle of the Atlantic over with the German submarine menace neutralised and the remaining major surface units stuck in port, the Royal Navy could send its major fleet units to the East. The operations of the Eastern Fleet had in any case been restricted following the Japanese attacks against Ceylon because of the lack of carrier air cover, and even had carriers been freed from European waters earlier, there would still have been the question of suitable fighters and even suitable bombers, as the Fairey Barracuda, yet another Swordfish replacement, was to prove ill-suited to operations in the tropics and was soon withdrawn and replaced by Grumman Avengers.
It was not just aircraft that were to prove problematic in the hotter conditions of the Pacific. The Royal Navy’s submarines had been adapting to changes throughout the war years. In the Mediterranean, the larger submarines had proved vulnerable, and although the minelayers of the Porpoise-class had shown themselves to be invaluable in carrying supplies to beleaguered Malta on the ‘magic carpet’ runs, something smaller had been needed which proved to be the Unity-class, one of which, HMS Upholder, proved to be outstandingly successful in operations against Italian and German shipping. For the Pacific, something larger was needed but so too was extended range. The answer lay in the new S or Safari-class. Later versions of this class had improved fuel provision by using part of the ballast tanks, and Freon air conditioning was also installed, at a time when this was unknown throughout the rest of the British fleet.
The prospect of increased British involvement in the Pacific was not welcomed by many senior officers in the United States Navy, including Admirals Ernest King, despite his stated desire to see greater use made of the Royal Navy, and Chester Nimitz. There were many reasons for this, some good, some bad.
Many Americans felt that they could finish the job on their own, and in some cases this was also a reflection of national rivalries and even animosity. Indeed, as has been shown already, there was some justification for the American view that this was ‘their’ war, and their victories by spring 1944 were evidence of success. There was also the fact that combining the operations of two fleets, and their aircraft, was in itself a major undertaking. Given the success of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in the post-war world, it is hard to realise just how difficult combined operations were, even with the forces of just one nation. International collaboration and exercises, including the creation of joint forces such as the naval standing forces in the Atlantic, English Channel and Mediterranean, had to await the creation of NATO. Had there been anything remotely like NATO combining and coordinating the British, French, Dutch and Belgian armed forces in 1940, the German advance westwards to the North Sea and the Atlantic could have been a very different story.
Even better reasons for American concern were that the British lacked bases in the area, while those of the United States Navy were being operated at full stretch as the rapid massive expansion in the service and the vast spread of ocean over which it was having to operate had placed everything under considerable strain. The British also lacked experience of the kind of massed aerial attack by carrier aircraft that had become something of an American speciality. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had almost twenty times the number of aircraft sent by the Royal Navy against the Italian fleet at Taranto; the operations being conducted by the United States from late 1943 onwards used more than twice the number of aircraft that had been seen at Pearl Harbor. In a very short time, the United States Navy had learnt how to operate large numbers of ships in modern fleet actions close together and do so safely and effectively. Even so, as we will see later in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, different elements of the United States Navy were not where they were supposed to be. In the early years of the war, the Royal Navy, however, had rarely put to sea with a balanced fleet of adequate strength, and this had only happened briefly and relatively late in the war in the Mediterranean. Had this been done earlier in the war, Glorious might not have been lost for want of aerial reconnaissance and battleship or battlecruiser support, or Prince of Wales and Repulse for lack of air cover, or Cornwall and Dorsetshire, or Hermes, caught almost alone with nothing more than a destroyer for company and without fighter protection.
The British point of view was that they did not want to be seen to be leaving an ally on its own, especially given the growing American involvement in the war in Europe. While the continuation of the war in Europe meant that substantial British air and ground forces were heavily committed, the way it was moving also meant that substantial naval forces were effectively surplus and could be put to good use elsewhere. Both Australia and New Zealand had been promised British support in the event of a Japanese attack before the outbreak of the Second World War, not realising that such an eventuality might well find the British under pressure from Germany and Italy! Again, much of the territory overrun by the Japanese was British, and they wanted to make sure that when Japan was defeated, they would get it back. Most important of these territories in economic terms was Malaya with its rubber and tin, but there was also Singapore and Hong Kong, Britain’s foothold on the coast of mainland China, and Burma as well.
While it is true that some Americans did not want to see the British regaining their colonial empire, there were many others who simply felt that they should just finish the job themselves. They had an unlikely ally in Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, who did not want to be seen as the junior partner in the war in the Pacific. Churchill would have been content to see the Royal Navy concentrating on regaining Burma and Malaya. His chiefs of staff took the opposing view and even considered resigning en masse. It was important to counter the growing US influence and for British forces to be seen retaking Hong Kong, for example. There were already fears that the dominion navies were falling under US influence. For this reason Australia, which had requested US assistance in 1942 when invasion by Japan seemed a possibility and had been very much the junior partner, also wanted to see the Royal Navy back. Not all Australians were so keen, and many British naval personnel were to recall in later years that they preferred Cape Town (strictly Simonstown, the naval base) to Sydney and that the hospitality there was so much better. South Africa was too far away and ships only called there when on passage to and from the Pacific. In the BPF, Australian warships were fewer than might have been expected as many were operating alongside the USN.
There were also many Americans who would have agreed with the British chiefs of staff, but for a different reason. Their rationale was that the United States had helped to defeat Germany; now it was the turn of the United Kingdom to help the United States defeat another common enemy, Japan. There was certainly much sense in this argument as Germany had been given priority because it could be reached by air from bases in England, and now Japan could take its turn in feeling the full force of American and British attack.
In the midst of a global war, the seeds of a firmer and more formal postwar alliance were being sown, paving the way for the future North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the less successful South East Asia Treaty Organisation and Baghdad Pact, both of which involved the USA and UK.
ILLUSTRIOUS RETURNS
Prepared for war in the Pacific, the Royal Navy’s Eastern Fleet had the USS Saratoga attached to it so that the Royal Navy could become familiar with American operating practices, but it was also intended that the British Eastern Fleet and the US Fifth Fleet would generally operate in different areas to avoid any problems of coordination and communication. It was to happen that crossover would occur from time to time, but the practice of giving each fleet different zones of responsibility eased operations considerably. When taken to extremes, this is the process known as ‘decon-fliction’, ensuring that the fleet units or aircraft do not come into contact with one another, but Anglo-American collaboration was sufficiently good not to need this. There were many changes that had to take place, not the least of which was that the two navies used different carrier deck landing officer or ‘batsman’ signals, to the extent that certain signals meant exactly the opposite to the other navy’s airmen! In the end, the Royal Navy standardised on the American signals, recognising that the USN was now the larger navy.
In fact, relations between the two navies were cordial, and Rear Admiral Douglas Fisher, in command of the fleet train, the merchantmen of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, was told that he could have ‘anything and everything that could be given without Admiral King’s knowledge’. Relations were doubtless helped by the availability of alcohol in the wardroom of British warships. There are stories that the Royal Navy even had a brewery ship, but there is little trace of this in the fleet list, and the one ship that might have qualified, HMS Stagpool, is classified as a distilling ship, but this may have been to provide fresh water, while the fleet train included a number of water carriers. Either way, one is as likely to think of a stagnant pool when hearing the name as of a stag drinking thirstily from clear, clean water!
There were, of course, rivalries between the two navies; sometimes friendly, sometimes not so friendly. King’s objections to cooperation with the Royal Navy in the Pacific were overruled quietly by the US President, Franklin Roosevelt, who maintained that the service was no sooner offered than it was accepted. He omitted to mention that he had overruled King.
The story is told of the commanding officer of an American ship being dined aboard a British ship in the CO’s cabin. The American admired the Briton’s drinks cabinet, and asked if he could send his ship’s carpenter across so that he could build a replica. The British officer happily agreed, but then, tongue in cheek, asked the American what he would put over the top of the cabinet, as his had the inscription ‘GOD SAVE THE KING’. ‘Why, I’ll put ‘‘GOD DAMN JOSEPHUS DANIELS’’,’ he replied. Daniels had been Secretary of the Navy in 1914, the US equivalent of First Lord of the Admiralty, and had introduced prohibition aboard US warships, well ahead of the prohibition across the USA in the 1920s, but when that was lifted ashore, the United States Navy still remained dry!
It was decided that aircraft from Illustrious and Saratoga should combine for a raid on Sabang. This was to be the Fleet Air Arm’s first experience of a massed air attack, and was comfortably away from the Fifth Fleet and its aircraft, but at the same time it was undeniably an important and worthwhile target, an island off the northern end of Sumatra with vital port installations and airfields.
For the operation, the Fleet Air Arm had at last what it had needed for years, a powerful fighter-bomber, the Vought F4U Corsair. During development, the Corsair had been the first American aircraft to exceed 400 mph in level flight, and in service it could carry two 500lb bombs. The low-wing, crank-wing monoplane was not everyone’s favourite however, since for every one who described it as ‘the best fighter of World War II’, someone else would describe it as ‘the bent wing bastard from Connecticut’. The main weakness of the Corsair was that it was big, so big that at first it was rejected for carrier service by the USN, which was one reason why so many were available for the Royal Navy. To accommodate heavier armament as a result of lessons learned in Europe, the cockpit was moved back 3 feet, restricting the pilot’s view forward, especially in the crucial final moments before touchdown on a carrier’s deck. The long nose meant that, like the smaller Seafire, this was an aircraft that could bounce and topple forward on landing. On the other hand, it was strong with good protection for the pilot, and had failsafe features, so that for example, if the hydraulic system failed, the undercarriage and tail hook would drop down, making landing possible. In an emergency the undercarriage could be put down using a CO2 bottle. The Royal Navy was also to find not only was the cockpit well laid out, ‘the cockpits of British contemporaries must have been designed by the office cleaner’, according to one British pilot. Maintenance was also simplified, not least because most US aircraft had the various components in the same place, reducing the amount of time maintainers spent scratching their heads and leafing through manuals!
‘ … They were damnably big fighters for their day,’ recalled Norman Hanson, a wartime Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve pilot aboard Illustrious. ‘They had a vast length of fuselage between the cockpit and the propeller which, together with a rather low sitting position and a not too clever hood (both of which were modified and greatly improved in the MkII version), made for very poor visibility when taxiing and landing.’
On the other hand, the aircraft had its advantages, not the least of which was an injection carburettor that meant the engine didn’t cut out at the top of a loop, a weakness with many aircraft of the time fitted with normal carburettors, and something likely to undermine the confidence of a fighter pilot just at an awkward moment! A Corsair cruised using around 60 gallons of fuel per hour, but this rose to 100 gallons at operational speeds.
The first attack on Sabang was made early on 19 April 1944, with aircraft flying off Illustrious at 06.50. The carrier sent seventeen Fairey Barracudas escorted by thirteen Vought Corsairs. The war in the Pacific was to see the Corsair operate through to the end but the Barracuda, only just satisfactory in the European theatre, was not to remain with the Eastern Fleet for long:
‘My first sight of enemy territory was of a luscious green island, basking in the early morning sunshine,’ Hanson remembers. ‘It was all so very beautiful that when red flashes burst from the deep, verdant green, I felt considerably put out … I was appalled that some vandal should set fire to Paradise. We dived down ahead of the Barracudas, firing enthusiastically at warehouses and quays and suddenly found ourselves at the far end of the harbour, unscathed. We were still green and hadn’t yet learned about targets of opportunity. So we milled around like a lot of schoolgirls and left it to the Barracudas, who made a splendid attack on the harbour and oil installations … returned … with a feeling of anticlimax. We had been to the enemy and had found no opportunity to cover ourselves with glory.’
Indeed, had the Japanese put up a strong fighter defence, the Corsairs would have been embarrassed to be at low level having wasted their ammunition while the Barracudas would have been vulnerable. Tactics needed to be refined at this stage. Strategy was also weak, since Sabang only received occasional attention, giving the Japanese time to repair the damage. Limited resources and more pressing priorities elsewhere were doubtless to blame, but a single day’s outing for two aircraft carriers was not enough. It was to take the arrival of additional ships before the Royal Navy was able to pull its weight in the Far East.
Part of the problem was, of course, the greater difficulty in keeping aircraft carriers resupplied and refuelled compared to a shore base, with some of the busier shore stations in the European theatre having their own railway links to ensure large quantities of fuel and ammunition could be delivered.
As it happened, several of the additional ships were delayed on their way to the Far East, and the Royal Navy in this theatre had a relatively quiet time of it during the second half of 1944. On 24 August, Victorious and Indomitable sent their aircraft to attack Padang, also on Sumatra, and then to attack the airfield at Sabang. The next major operation came during 17–19 October, when aircraft from Illustrious, Indomitable and Victorious attacked targets in the Nicobar Islands, Indian territory off the coast of Burma. Later, in December, there followed an attack on an oil refinery, this time at Pangkalan Brandan in north-eastern Sumatra, about 8 miles inland from the Malacca Straits to which fifty-six aircraft were sent, twenty-eight Grumman Avengers, sixteen Grumman Hellcats and twelve Vought Corsairs, with the raid pressed home in poor weather. These were becoming ever more intensive operations, but were still far short of what was happening further east.
It was decided that the main base for what became the British Pacific Fleet would be Sydney in Australia, with its fine natural harbour. There was also a Royal Australian Air Force base nearby at Nowra which became the air station for Fleet Air Arm aircraft when their carriers were at Sydney. Post-war, Nowra was to become the home base for the Royal Australian Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. In addition to Nowra, the Fleet Air Arm also established Mobile Air Bases, or MONABs, which were to follow the fleet and establish naval air stations ashore as the war moved ever closer to the Japanese home islands.
BRITISH PACIFIC FLEET
After the Japanese air attacks on Ceylon, the main base for the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean became Kalindi, near Mombasa in Kenya, from April 1942. The Battle of the Atlantic was still at its height and the Royal Navy was hard-pressed protecting convoys across the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay as well as to Archangel and Murmansk, the westernmost Arctic ports in the Soviet Union. The Mediterranean was effectively cut in two by Axis air power and the Mediterranean Fleet based on Alexandria and Force H based on Gibraltar functioned separately except when desperate attempts were made to break the siege on the beleaguered island of Malta.
The Royal Australian Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy were by this time frequently operating alongside the United States Navy, often with what was known, depending on the commanding admiral, as either the US Third Fleet or US Fifth Fleet, but also with MacArthur’s South-West Pacific Area Command.
While the USN could have taken the war to Japan on its own, the BPF did perform much valuable service, protecting the flanks of the Third and Fifth Fleet and making it difficult for the Japanese to reinforce their air power as the fighting edged steadily closer to Japan.
The United States had assisted the United Kingdom both with lend-lease and with training, and it was the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm that had gained most from US help with training. At first, aircrew training had been provided by the RAF, but as this force struggled to meet the increased wartime demand for pilots, it was difficult to find extra space, aircraft and instructors for the Fleet Air Arm. A measure of the RAF’s difficulties during the war was that British bombers were eventually flown with just a single pilot rather than the two that most were intended to have. The USN’s solution was the ‘Towers Scheme’, named after an American admiral, which saw British student pilots join their USN counterparts at the vast training air station at Pensacola in Florida.
Once qualified, the pilots then went to Royal Canadian Air Force stations in Canada where the Fleet Air Arm instructed them in the Royal Navy’s way of doing things.
While joint operations were conducted over Sumatra by HMS Victorious and the USS Saratoga, this was simply a prelude to the greater involvement of the Royal Navy. The British Eastern Fleet was growing in strength, and before long conducting massed air attacks against the oil refineries in the Dutch East Indies on its own account after being exercised in the use of massed formations of aircraft from more than a single carrier.
The British Pacific Fleet was the strongest and best balanced and supported fleet ever raised by the Royal Navy, although its strength was far inferior to that of the United States Navy. It gathered many Royal Australian Navy, Royal New Zealand Navy and Royal Canadian Navy units that had been operating with the USN. Officially denied USN base facilities, when it was officially formed on 22 November 1944 it used Sydney, in New South Wales, Australia, as its main operating base, with a shore station for carrier aircraft at Nowra. Sydney was too far away for such routine requirements as refuelling, so a forward base was established at Manus, one of the appropriately-named Admiralty Islands and described by one British officer as ‘Scapa Flow with palm trees’. At the same time, the British Eastern Fleet became the British East Indies Fleet and moved back to Trincomalee.
At first India had been considered as a base for the BPF, but growing unrest over continued British rule made it a difficult proposition, even though independence had been promised once peace returned. This meant that Australia was the only practical location for a base, but at the time the country had a population of just 7,000,000, while the BPF was planned to need 675,000 men and women, including the fleet train, hospital ships and shore facilities. The Australian economy and armed forces were already fully stretched, and so personnel and stores for the BPF could only come from taking them from American and Australian forces fighting the Japanese. This problem had not been recognised in London, or if it had, it had not been explained to Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, who arrived in Sydney on 10 December 1944 believing, wrongly, that Australia had asked for the BPF and had promised to provide for its needs. Two days later the acting Prime Minister of Australia, Frank Forde, announced the allocation of £21,156,500 for the maintenance of the BPF. This was followed in January 1945 by the US General Douglas MacArthur agreeing to release American stockpiles in Australia to support the BPF. This was not sufficient and the Australians soon became concerned at the voracious demands of the BPF works programme, which was criticised even by Australian military leaders. When Fraser publicly criticised the Australian government’s handling of waterside industrial disputes that were holding up British ships in April 1945, a diplomatic incident arose*, but the Australians agreed to allocate £6,562,500 for BPF naval works. Fraser was still not satisfied.
During its existence the fleet grew, and the constituent ships changed from time to time as ships had to be rotated out of the fleet for maintenance or repairs, or, in some instances, because they were lost in battle. Nevertheless, by VJ day and the end of the war it comprised four battleships, eighteen aircraft carriers with 300 aircraft and eleven cruisers as well as many smaller vessels, including destroyers, gunboats and submarines, and support ships such as submarine and destroyer depot ships, repair ships, hospital ships and those of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which included tankers, store ships and water carriers.
There can be little doubt that the Royal Navy was ill-prepared for war in the Pacific. Unlike the Royal Navy, many senior USN officers were naval aviators and King was one of them. In the United States, Congress had in fact decreed that all commanders of American aircraft carriers had to be able to fly. They knew about carrier operations, and both the potential and the problems of operating aircraft carriers. Compared to their counterparts in the USN, British warships were markedly short-legged; a legacy of having many conveniently-placed refuelling stations around the world, usually in the colonies or dominions, where fuel, water and food could all be picked up. Although the Royal Fleet Auxiliary dated from the late nineteenth century, in such matters as refuelling when under way at sea the Royal Navy had much to learn.
In short, the concept of extended operations some distance from a convenient shore base was new to a service that had enjoyed the frequent refuelling and replenishment afforded by a vast empire. A large chunk of this empire was now in Japanese hands. At the outset, there were just three tankers for fleet replenishment, although this later rose to five. While the Americans used the now widely accepted method of replenishing with the ships abeam, the British used the much slower method of refuelling astern, which also affected station-keeping and only allowed one ship to be refuelled at a time:
‘I had just come from the USS Lexington, the second Lexington,’ reported David Devine, who was a war correspondent for Kemsley Newspapers and transferred to a British ship. ‘I’d been living in her for a long time. Lexington would fuel willingly in a wind of Force 6 provided the sea wasn’t up to the wind yet. The American tankers could take a ship on either side in that kind of weather. They would have everything aboard, three lines pumping, in twenty minutes … KGV (the battleship King George V) went up astern of one rusty old tanker, which appeared to be run by two Geordie mates and twenty consumptive Chinamen and it took us, I think, an hour and a half to pick up a single buoyed pipeline, fiddling around under our bows.’
To be fair, during the war in the North Atlantic, on the Russian convoys and in the Mediterranean, even with the abeam method, refuelling at sea would have been tantamount to giving the enemy a sitting target. Even so, while the RN caught up, it was as well that the USN’s logistics officers took a liberal view of the degree of self-sufficiency that the RN was supposed to display. This was especially true when it came to equipping Manus for its role as a forward base and major anchorage.
Other changes also had to be made. British aircraft markings had already moved from the red, white and blue roundels that had evolved during the First World War to red surrounded by blue, which unlike the three-coloured roundel did not contrast too sharply with camouflage. Unfortunately, the most obvious part of this marking was the bright orb of red, which looked very much like Japanese markings for ships’ AA gunners, perhaps very twitchy after long hours under Japanese attack. The solution was to introduce a further modification to British markings for aircraft in the Far East, with roundels having an outer circle of dark blue with an orb of pale blue in the middle.
THE FLEET
First commander-in-chief of the British Pacific Fleet was Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser who had been C-in-C of the British Eastern Fleet. There was a somewhat inauspicious start as after striking his flag at Trincomalee to take up his new appointment, it was initially transferred to HMS Tarantula, a humble gunboat and possibly the most minor warship ever to have been able to lay claim to the status of flagship. Fortunately, Fraser was soon able to transfer his flag to the battleship HMS Howe, a far more suitable vessel for an admiral.
For ‘British’ one should really substitute ‘British Empire’, as not only did the fleet include ships from all four dominions, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, but the ships’ companies were also mixed, with many naval aviators hailing from New Zealand.
Operational command was devolved from Fraser to Vice-Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings, while Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian was in command of the carrier force. Depending on whether the USN was operating as the Third Fleet or the Fifth Fleet, the British Pacific Fleet was designed either as Task Force 37 or 57. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary contribution, plus the depot ships, was Task Force 113.
Before the BPF became operational, Vice-Admiral C.S. Daniel was sent to the United States to liaise with the USN over the supply and support of the new fleet. He then continued to Australia to take up the appointment of Vice-Admiral Administration, British Pacific Fleet. This may have seemed to be a cosy ‘behind the scenes’ role, but one commentator described it as ‘if unspectacular compared with command of a fighting squadron, was certainly one of the most arduous to be allocated to a British Flag Officer during the entire war’.
Even before war broke out, the USN had acquired a fleet train including ships of every type that would be required in a fast-moving highly mobile war fought over the world’s largest ocean, and with the constant threat of attack from the air, or under the sea, as well as from surface vessels. It was the world leader in under-way refuelling and replenishment. By contrast, the Royal Navy had to assemble a fleet train from whatever it could find among its own ships, the merchant ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, RFA, or that could be taken up from trade, that is ships operated by merchant shipping companies. In February 1944 the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, advised the War Cabinet that the BPF would need no less than ninety-one ships for its support, based on an assumption that the BPF would be active off the Philippines or would have a base there. As it turned out, neither assumption was correct as by March, before the BPF formally came into existence, the main battleground had moved north and King was unwilling (and at the time in any case unable) to allow the RN to have a base there. The ninety-one ships required to support the BPF grew to 158 within a few short weeks. This actually delayed the formation of the BPF. A significant problem facing the British was that there was an acute shortage of shipping due to wartime losses and the number of ships already committed to supporting the armed forces, and while many ships from maritime nations such as Norway or the Netherlands had escaped before their countries were occupied and had fled to British ports, there were many others that were held in occupied territory, but which in peacetime would have also served British trade. One result was that the British government had to balance the needs of the BPF against those of feeding its own people, and ensuring that adequate supplies of fuel and raw materials also reached British shores.
There were also problems with Britain’s warships, which had been more than adequate for service in other theatres, but which found operations in the Pacific a challenge. British warships had less capacity for desalination of sea water and only a third of the food storage and refrigeration capacity of an American warship, as well as the shortage of fuel capacity mentioned earlier. British submariners often grew a full beard, or a ‘set’, the only type of facial hair allowed by the Royal Navy’s regulations, mainly because fresh water was in short supply. American submariners were more often clean-shaven. American aircraft, such as the Corsair, had to have their wing-folding changed so that they could fit into the lower headroom of the hangars aboard British ships, but so too did British aircraft such as the Supermarine Seafire, which had to have its wings ‘clipped’ for hangar stowage.
In a world without NATO standards for equipment, inter-operability was hard to achieve, with even radios and oxygen masks differing.
PALEMBANG
The original plan was for the British Pacific Fleet to appear in force in Australian waters on New Year’s Day 1945, but this was over-optimistic and the morale-boosting arrival of a large fleet was put back to the end of the month. Meanwhile, it was decided that en route to Sydney, Illustrious could attack Palembang, the large complex of oil refineries in the east of Sumatra. This was a decision only arrived at after some soul-searching at the Admiralty, as many senior naval officers felt that the target was beyond the resources and the experience of the Fleet Air Arm at the time.
Palembang was a difficult target as it entailed aircraft flying over 150 miles of enemy-held territory, across mountain ranges and dense tropical jungle, so that the crew of any aircraft in distress would have difficulty baling out, let alone trying to make a forced landing. The area was also home to substantial numbers of Japanese fighters, and a combat training ground for fighter pilots whose instructors included many veterans from the Japanese carrier fleet. On the other hand, Palembang was also a very important target, with two major oil refineries at Pladjoe and Soengei Gerong. Thanks to the actions of American submariners, oil was now becoming a major problem for the Japanese, and that made an attack on Palembang all the more tempting.
By November 1944 the Royal Navy had assembled four of its fast armoured carriers at Ceylon, with Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian in command of the carrier force, in British terms RAA, or Rear Admiral Aircraft Carriers. The four ships were Illustrious, Victorious, Indefatigable and Vian’s flagship Indomitable. By this time, the aircraft available had changed, very much for the better. The poor performance of the Barracuda had seen it replaced by the potent Grumman Avenger, while another aircraft from the same stable, the Hellcat, was the fighter for the fleet. The Corsair stayed on as a fighter-bomber. A new arrival was the Fairey Firefly fighter-bomber, Fairey’s latest offering to the Fleet Air Arm and a successor for the Fulmar that had been so outgunned and outpaced during the fighting in the Mediterranean.
Navigation in poor weather and radio discipline had proved to be problems with the Sumatra raid in December 1944, and before attacking Palembang, the Royal Navy decided to hold a dress rehearsal.
Before this, on 4 January 1945, aircraft from Illustrious, Victorious, Indomitable and Indefatigable were sent to attack oil refineries in northeastern Sumatra, maintaining the pressure on Japanese oil supplies.
On 13 January, the day of the rehearsal for the raid on Palembang, the British carriers were sent to sea steaming in the Indian Ocean to the east of Ceylon and spent the day making attacks on the island. Both Colombo and Trincomalee were subjected to repeated heavy attacks, while every airfield on the island was strafed by fighters in what became known as ‘fighter ramrod’ operations. The RAF and shore-based Fleet Air Arm units in Ceylon were fully up to strength and were sent up to intercept the carrier-borne aircraft. Every carrier pilot managed at least three sorties, some flew four, and despite the confusion in the air, there were no collisions, something which one naval pilot viewed as miraculous. Unfortunately, under such intensive operations and with pilots becoming tired, complete safety could not be guaranteed.
At 15.30 the four carriers turned for China Bay and by 16.30 the last aircraft were landing on. One Fleet Air Arm Corsair pilot aboard Illustrious, Norman Hanson, was among the last and as he waited, he watched in horror as one of his comrades, Sub-Lieutenant Graham-Cann, ‘normally a safe and dependable deck lander, he made a bit of a mess of this one and drifted up the deck, failing to catch a wire’. The aircraft hit the crash barrier strung across the deck full-on, with the force of being so suddenly arrested unhooking the aircraft’s belly drop tank which swept forward to be cut in two by the propeller. A sheet of flame burst out and was swept aft by the wind over the carrier’s flight deck. Unharmed, Graham-Cann jumped out of his cockpit, stood on the wing as if planning to jump forward but changed his mind and jumped aft, slipped on oil, doubtless from a ruptured pipe on the stricken aircraft, and fell on his back into the flaming aviation fuel. Now burning fiercely, he got to his feet and staggered down the deck, to be caught by the deck party and wrapped in blankets before being taken to the sick bay. He was still alive but horribly burnt as the ship entered harbour, but died just as he was carried up the gangway of the hospital ship.
The impact of this on those still in the air can be imagined. There were at least nine of them, and unable to land until the fire on the flight deck was put out and the wreckage removed. They were now running low on fuel, so Hanson spoke to the ship’s fighter direction officer and requested permission to take the remaining aircraft to the air station at China Bay, where they could refuel and await further instructions. Permission was granted. Their troubles were not over, as on landing they discovered that the monsoon rains had found their way into the station’s fuel tanks, so refuelling had to be done through a chamois leather, a long and tedious process. As they lay on the grass well away from the aircraft and smoked, a despatch rider came up with orders to return to Illustrious. Hanson sent away those aircraft that had already been refuelled, and finally it was his turn and that of another pilot, Sub-Lieutenant Rogers. Rogers took off a quarter of an hour before Hanson. As he approached the ship, Hanson saw a splash off the ship’s port quarter but thought little of it, guessing that an Avenger had dropped a hooked-up depth charge. He landed and as he walked along the deck from his aircraft, Commander Flying leant over his bridge and beckoned to Hanson to come up to him.
‘Hans, how many are there still to come?’
‘None, sir. I’m the last.’
‘What about Rogers?’
‘Left just – well, ten or fifteen minutes – before me, sir.’
‘Then he’s the one.’
‘One what, sir?’
‘The one who’s just crashed. Went in on his approach turn.’
The splash that Hanson had seen had been Rogers’ aircraft after he had lost flying speed on his approach turn. The much-needed exercise had cost the Pacific Fleet two pilots within an hour.
The day of the attack on Palembang arrived. On 24 January 1945, at 06.00 on a dark and unpleasant morning with occasional squalls of rain, Hanson found himself strapped into his Corsair at the head of the aircraft ranged on the flight deck. He noticed a burst of black oily smoke as the engine room personnel flashed up additional burners to increase the carrier’s speed. Commander Flying, ‘Wings’ to Fleet Air Arm personnel, called on the tannoy: ‘Fighters start up!’
The Corsair pilots simply had to press their engine starter tits, and as the engines revved up in clouds of blue smoke, Illustrious turned to starboard into the wind. Then it was time to go. Within five minutes fighters, fighter-bombers and bombers were in the air and milling around as they got into their formations.
This was the Royal Navy’s second massed aerial attack after the raid on Sumatra on 4 January. The British Pacific Fleet was to the west of Sumatra off Engano Island. There were a small number of aircraft that didn’t get into the air, mainly from Victorious and Indefatigable, but all in all there were forty-three Avenger bombers, each with a 2,000lb bomb load, with a top cover fighter escort of sixteen Corsairs and below them a middle cover of sixteen Hellcats and eight Corsairs, with another escort of twelve Fireflies ahead of the main force, and finally a stern escort of eight Corsairs, led by Norman Hanson. All in all there were 103 aircraft, already a smallish force by the standards of the day.
As the aircraft climbed to cruising altitude, three Avengers suffered technical problems and had to return to HMS Victorious. Altitude was essential as the aircraft had to cross a 10,000-feet high mountain range on their way to the target. All in all, they had to fly some 200 miles. The Avengers with their heavy bomb loads were slow in the climb, and the fighters had some trouble waiting for them, throttling back to 150 knots. Realising that as they climbed they could well appear on Japanese radar, Hanson took his eight Corsairs out of line to allow them to build up their speed so that if they encountered Japanese fighters, they would not be sitting ducks. As the Avengers reached the required altitude, Hanson was shocked to find that the Fireflies were missing and that his aircraft comprised the entire low cover for the bombers. He couldn’t break radio silence to discover the whereabouts of the Fireflies, who were supposed to be providing forward or bow cover. In fact, a starter problem on the leading aircraft had held up everything behind it ranged on the deck, but the Fireflies were later to catch up.
Flying at 13,000 feet with the bombers, the aircraft flew over dense jungle broken only by the mountain ridges running down into the vegetation. The fighter pilots kept sweeping the sky with their eyes looking for Japanese fighters. Then, suddenly, they could see the massive oil refinery, the size of a town, straight ahead.
The radio silence was broken by top-cover warning of fighters: ‘Rats!! Eleven o’clock up!!’
The Avengers were by this time getting into position for their bombing runs as the fighters wheeled round to tackle the oncoming Japanese fighters. Hanson turned towards a Japanese fighter and fired, although he was never sure whether or not he had hit the enemy aircraft. Then there was a further warning of ‘Rats, three o’clock up!!’ This time two Japanese fighters came streaking in, and one flight of four Corsairs turned on one of them while Hanson led his flight towards the other, and was pleased to see bits falling off the Japanese aircraft before it fell downwards. The loss of the Fireflies was being felt by this time, for not only did this place extra pressure on the other fighters, but part of their role was to race in ahead of the Avengers and shoot down the barrage balloons tethered over the target area. They did arrive, nevertheless, to take part in the air battle that was soon in full flood.
The Corsair pilots were kept busy, mainly by ‘Oscar’ and ‘Tojo’ fighters – Nakajima Ki43 and Ki44 – of the Japanese Army Air Force, but their efforts were not in vain as they kept most of the fighters from the bomber formation. The defences would have put up even more fighters, but a fighter ramrod attack by Corsairs across an airfield destroyed thirty-four Japanese aircraft on the ground. As the fighters turned to regroup for the flight back to the carriers, heavy black smoke was starting to obscure the target – the bombers had done their work well. The Japanese fighters continued to press home attacks as the attack force withdrew, but the constant harrying fell away as the formation reached the sea. There was relief all round as they came upon the fleet, with the four carriers in a square formation around the two battleships, and already turned into the wind waiting to receive the returning aircraft. This was another hazardous operation as two aircraft could easily approach the ship from different directions and, while turning as they started their approach, fail to see each other as they banked.
Of the aircraft that reached Palembang, six Corsairs, two Avengers and a Hellcat were lost. This was not bad for a target that had been well defended.
The original plan had been to make a second strike at Palembang on the following day, but bad weather once again intervened and delayed the operation. Each morning the tannoy would burst into life at 01.00 and announce that the operation had been postponed for another twenty-four hours. It was not until 29 January that the aircraft were once again climbing away towards the mountains. The intervening period had not been wasted, as the squadron commanders carried out a post mortem on the first operation. One of the main complaints was that the fighters in middle cover should have given better protection to the bombers instead of looking for fighters to engage in combat. This was also a criticism made of the Luftwaffe’s fighters by bomber crews in the Battle of Britain – the temptation to look for a duel rather than simply warding off fighters and stopping them from breaking up the bomber formation. Once again, it was stressed that it was vital that the barrage balloons be shot down before the attack developed. Poor radio discipline once silence was broken was yet another point. Even so, on the second raid, two Avengers were lost when their wings caught barrage balloon cables.
Overall, during the two strikes on Palembang, the Fleet Air Arm lost a total of forty-one aircraft, of which sixteen were lost in air-to-air combat, another eleven ditched near the fleet, including Hanson’s aircraft returning from the first strike and as a result of which he was judged medically unfit for the second strike, while another fourteen aircraft were lost in deck-landing crashes. Against this, it was estimated that thirty-eight enemy aircraft had been destroyed on the ground and another thirty had been shot down. Most important, while Palembang was not completely destroyed, production was seriously affected for some months.
* The incident was sufficiently momentous for the post-war Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee, to feel obliged to express his regret for the misunderstandings to the Australian government on 8 August 1945.