Warspite

by Iain Ballantyne

  The French battleship Lorraine, which Warspite came close to firing on in Alexandria Harbour during tense negotiations between Admiral Godfroy and Admiral Cunningham in July 1940 following the fall of France. Goodman Collection.

  A Free French Naval Force fought with distinction on the Allied side, but it did not welcome any vessels from Alexandria into its ranks until spring 1943. For Admiral Cunningham in July 1940, securing the neutralization of a potentially serious problem in the heart of his most important base allowed him to focus on the real task at hand. Now he went in search of an encounter which would allow the British to stamp their authority on the Mediterranean. Cunningham would be given the domination he needed by the breath-taking gunnery of HMS Warspite.

  Victory With a Single Shot

  The island naval fortress of Malta was a dagger held to the jugular of Italian supply convoys to North Africa. While it could not host a major battle fleet, throughout its long siege it was home to submarines, destroyers, small attack boats and bomber aircraft which did their best to wreak havoc in enemy shipping lanes. From the moment Italy entered the war, Malta was therefore subjected to intensive bombing to try and wipe it off the map, although neither Hitler nor Mussolini ever grasped the necessity of occupying the island. A major part of the Royal Navy’s role during the war in the Mediterranean was ensuring convoys reached Malta with vital supplies to sustain it. But, when Cunningham took his fleet to sea after settling the French issue, he was going to meet two convoys carrying badly needed stores and personnel from Malta to Alexandria to consolidate the British naval base.

  The Admiral hoped to safeguard the convoys by drawing Italian naval forces onto his fleet which was split up into three packets he hoped might look tempting to the enemy. Warspite was with five destroyers while the battleships Royal Sovereign and Malaya were in company with the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle and ten destroyers. The third group was made up of five cruisers and a destroyer.

  The three task groups left Alexandria on 7 July, hoping to get early warning of any Italian moves from a picket line of British submarines strung across the central Mediterranean. At 5.15a.m. on 8 July one of these boats – HMS Phoenix – spotted and reported a strong Italian force which included two battleships about 200 miles east of Malta. That afternoon a reconnaissance aircraft reported two Italian capital ships, half a dozen cruisers and two dozen destroyers at sea, steering north-west about 200 miles from Benghazi. Cunningham decided he had to put his own force between the Italians and their main base at Taranto.

  The British fleet was by this time under constant air attack from Italian high level bombers. Their accuracy was poor, but the show they put on was impressive. British warships would be lost in a forest of bomb splashes and eye-witnesses thought them doomed, only to see them emerge unharmed. However, the cruiser HMS Gloucester was hit and her bridge destroyed. With her captain and twelve sailors killed, she also had to be steered from the aft position.

  The Royal Sovereign Class battleship HMS Royal Sovereign, lead ship of the class of super dreadnoughts built immediately after Warspite and her sisters. However, they remained inferior to the Queen Elizabeth Class battleships throughout the Second World War and were almost a liability. Royal Sovereign struggled to keep up with the action at the Battle of Calabria in July 1940. Goodman Collection.

  By the morning of 9 July the British naval force was concentrated to the south-west of Greece, with the enemy less than 150 miles away. It was a fine day for a battle – visibility up to twenty miles, a calm sea and above ‘a sky dappled with thin cloud.’2 The enemy force was now identified as a pair of Cavour Class battleships (with 12-inch guns) half a dozen heavy cruisers (with 8-inch guns) ten light cruisers (with 6-inch guns) and more than thirty destroyers. While Cunningham’s battleships had more powerful weapons – they were all armed with 15-inchers – the Sovereign and Malaya were slow and their main guns fell short of Warspite’s range by 10,000 yards.

  Eagle launched a strike but her aircraft only managed to find and attack a single enemy cruiser without causing any damage. At 3.08p.m. the cruiser HMS Neptune signalled she had the Italians in sight. Opening shots were exchanged half an hour later in an unequal duel between Italian and British cruisers.

  The British aircraft carrier HMS Eagle which joined Warspite for the Battle of Calabria in July 1940. Goodman Collection.

  At twenty-four knots Warspite was steaming as hard as she could. But, while she was eating up the miles, behind her Malaya and Royal Sovereign were making painfully slow progress and lagging ten miles behind. Even though he was badly outnumbered Cunningham felt he had no choice but to push on without his other two battleships to help his hard pressed cruiser force. Shortly before 3.30p.m. Warspite was able to come to the rescue, her 15-inch salvos persuading the Italian cruisers to turn tail and flee under protection of a smoke screen. There was now a lull in the action during which the Warspite circled to give HMS Malaya a chance to catch up. Royal Sovereign had become a lost cause. Half an hour later the Italian battleships were sighted – the fleet flagship Guilio Cesare and the Conte di Cavour, both of which opened fire. They straddled the Warspite without effect. Being on the Admiral’s staff, Leading Telegraphist Albert Cock got a pretty good view of the action:

  I was in the remote control office below the flag bridge and we had our own open deck on the side. The Italians had a greater range and they were putting shells wide and over us. Seeing the Italian shell spouts, I felt excitement mingled with a bit of apprehension but not fear. In fact during my war service I don’t think I ever saw actual fear in anyone’s face.

  Shells from the Italian battleship Giulio Cesare straddle Warspite at the Battle of Calabria. Sutherland Collection.

  High above the action was the Swordfish piloted by Petty Officer Rice. The Warspite was down to just one aircraft at the time, so he had his work cut out:

  Our other Swordfish had been flying in support of the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney but had failed to find the action she was involved in. Rather than bring a full bomb load back to the ship they thought they would go over and bomb the Italians at Tobruk. Unfortunately for them some RAF Blenheims had just carried out a raid so the enemy was waiting for them. They got shot down and ended up prisoners of war for five years. That left just my Swordfish. They used us for spotting the fall of Warspite’s 15-inch shots at Calabria. The Italians could do thirty knots but Warspite could only do twenty-four knots, so it was quite a chase. When the Warspite fired back at the Italians, initially her shells were falling short, so we were telling them to correct. They were adjusting by 200 yards but should have done so by 600, so they only got one hit. The Italians did fire on us with their AA but failed to hit my aircraft. Was I scared? No. I was only twenty-four and well trained in how to react when things turned hot.

  Warspite had opened fire on the leading vessel – the Guilio Cesare – from a distance of 26,000 yards and even though it was only a single hit amidships, it won the battle. Admiral Cunningham later wrote:

  The Warspite’s shooting was consistently good. I had been watching the great splashes of our 15-inch salvos straddling the target when, at 4.00p.m. I saw the great orange-coloured flash of a heavy explosion at the base of the enemy flagship’s funnels. It was followed by an upheaval of smoke, and I knew that she had been heavily hit at the prodigious range of thirteen miles.3

  According to Leading Telegraphist Cock a ripple of jubilation went through the Warspite: ‘The whole ship knew within seconds that we had struck the Italian and we were pretty pleased with our shooting.’

  In addition to putting some of the Cesare’s boilers out of action, and halving her speed, the Warspite’s hit caused over 100 casualties. Malaya fired, but her shells fell short while the Royal Sovereign was never in the frame to take part. Warspite’s single devastating hit caused the Italian flagship to turn around and retreat with haste, followed by the rest of the fleet making smoke furiously. Over the next two hours, Warspite’s Swordfish spotter plane kept above the Ita
lian fleet, reporting back on its disarray as it fled. There was a brief mêlée between British cruisers and destroyers and Italian warships forming a rearguard. Warspite and Malaya took part in this action but scored no hits – Warspite’s 6-inch guns fired occasionally on Italian destroyers dodging in and out of the smoke. The main purpose of the Italian withdrawal into smoke was to draw the British over some submarines and close enough to the mainland for their air force to attack. But, when the Italian planes did turn up, the first thing they did was to bomb their own warships. Finally turning their attention to the British, the Italian bombers inflicted a three-hour bombardment but their bombs failed to find the mark. The Warspite and Eagle were the most obvious targets and received the majority of the attention.

  A near miss by Italian high-level bombers as they attempt to hit the Warspite and Eagle during the Battle of Calabria. Sutherland Collection.

  A stick of Italian bombs nearly hits HMS Warspite at Calabria. Sutherland Collection.

  HMS Eagle had only two Gladiator fighters to send up but these two quaint looking biplanes managed a good score, shooting down a dozen Italian bombers.

  Skirting around the smoke screen, for fear of nasty surprises lurking in it (or under it), by 5.00p.m. Warspite and the rest of the British ships were in sight of the Calabrian coastline. They found the Italians had vanished through the Straits of Messina.

  Hoping for more action, the British remained around Malta for a day before trailing some convoys back to Alexandria which the fleet duly reached on 13 July. Under intense air attack from high level Italian air force bombers for most of the way, hundreds of bombs fell around the Warspite but, incredibly, no hits were scored.

  While the Battle of Calabria was seen by many as a frustrating encounter – there wasn’t much glory in putting a whole enemy battle fleet to flight with a single shell – it set the tone of the entire naval war between the British and Italians. Cunningham said:

  The one 15-inch hit they sustained from the Warspite had a moral effect quite out of proportion to the damage. Never again did they willingly face up to the fire of British battleships... .4

  But, even though he felt contempt for the Italian lack of fighting spirit, Warspite’s Signalman Donald Auffret, believed Calabria could so easily have been a defeat for the British.

  In hindsight I think now that had they not disengaged they would probably have made mincemeat of us. They had the firepower there, the number of ships and Warspite couldn’t possibly have survived.

  Inspiring the Japanese

  When the Imperial Japanese Navy was looking for a means to deal a devastating blow against the American fleet at Pearl Harbor it would seize upon Admiral Cunningham’s next master stroke for inspiration.

  For, more than a year before Japan unleashed the 7 December 1941 surprise attack on Hawaii, British naval aviators demonstrated the potency of air-launched torpedoes against battleships trapped in harbour.

  The Japanese – never slow to seize upon a good idea and turn it into something brilliant – looked on in admiration at what the Royal Navy did with obsolete Swordfish biplanes and decided they could do better.

  The event which would influence the Japanese so much was born out of frustration. After Calabria the Italian fleet resolutely refused to come out. This was a pity, as the Mediterranean Fleet started to receive badly needed reinforcements. Towards the end of July, Cunningham was informed he would be receiving HMS Illustrious, a brand new carrier with an armoured flight-deck, Warspite’s modernized sister ship HMS Valiant, equipped with some revolutionary new kit for detecting the enemy, plus the anti-aircraft cruisers HMS Calcutta and HMS Coventry. A passenger on the Valiant ordered out to the Mediterranean to help Admiral Cunningham hit back at enemy air attacks was Lieutenant Commander Lamb from the anti-aircraft range in Portsmouth:

  The Med Command felt they needed someone experienced in AA gunnery to improve the performance of the fleet and so I was appointed as Fleet AA Officer. Taking passage to my new appointment in HMS Valiant, I discovered she was one of the first ships to have been fitted with radar, or RDF as it was called in those days. It was a good opportunity to learn about something which was a closely guarded secret.

  Even though the Italian fleet might have made itself scarce, the enemy’s aviators showed no sign of letting up, frequently using the cover of night to attack Alexandria. This meant no rest for Royal Navy anti-aircraft gunners even in port, as they had to blast off saturation barrages to keep the Italians at bay. The techniques involved in this were instituted by the new Fleet AA Officer as one of his first jobs:

  One of things I did on arriving was establish an AA firing-range at Alexandria for ships of the fleet. I also found myself acting for Admiral Cunningham on an interservice committee concerned with the AA defence of Alex. I discovered there was a difference in outlook between how the RAF wanted to operate and how the Navy thought it should do the job. The RAF had night fighters to try and drive off the attacks but the Royal Navy thought perhaps the fleet should just look after itself. The advent of radar in the Med Fleet did enable us to use the deterrent effect of mass gunfire by giving more accuracy to defence by blind barrage which I duly instituted. This meant every warship would have a responsibility for firing in a particular direction. The ship with the radar would tell them when they should start their blind barrages judging by how far away the target aircraft was at that particular moment. The idea was to fill the air with a mass of gunfire that would deter the Italians from pressing home their attacks effectively. It was most inefficient if you compare the number of aircraft shot down with the ammunition expended, but survival was the important thing. The number of bombs dropped in Alex Harbour was very few and this is not criticizing the bravery of the Italian airmen – our blind barrages were formidable and I believe a very effective deterrent.

  Moonlit nights were a favourite for air raids but, in August 1940, there was a period where there was no moon. Both Warspite and Malaya were therefore put into the floating dry dock for essential maintenance. Warspite had her peacetime light grey painted over with a camouflage pattern.

  A shot taken from HMS Warspite of HMS Malaya (nearest), HMS Ramilles and the cruiser HMS Kent during the August 1940 bombardment of Bardia. Goodman Collection.

  In mid-August the Mediterranean Fleet was used to support the British Army’s drive into Italian North Africa by bombarding Bardia, with Warspite employing her 15-inch and 6-inch guns against Italian fortifications. Lieutenant Commander Lamb found Warspite most ‘unsatisfactory’ because he was too junior on the Admiral’s staff to get a cabin while in port and therefore had to live on another vessel. When he went to sea for operations he lived a refugee life on the flagship:

  I used to embark Warspite with a suitcase when the ship went to sea. I had a little nook and corner to live in and used someone else’s cabin to wash. I could have slung my hammock but I preferred to lay it out on the deck.

  His job meant he came into close contact with Admiral Cunningham, especially during air attacks.

  My detailed function was to watch the high level bombers and tell Admiral Cunningham how the bombs were falling near us so he didn’t have to lie down and take shelter on the deck until the last possible moment.

  By the end of September 1940 the Mediterranean Fleet had devolved into a highly capable A team – Warspite, Valiant and Illustrious – and a B team composed of the less effective Malaya, Ramillies and Eagle. That month Cunningham used his top team to escort 2,000 troops, embarked aboard the cruisers Liverpool and Gloucester, to Malta as reinforcements. During this operation a reconnaissance aircraft from Illustrious spotted four Italian battleships at sea but, even though he was desperate for a crack at the enemy, Cunningham decided not to seek battle. Delivery of the troops safely was his top priority.

  At the end of September Warspite welcomed another of her sisters, the unmodernized HMS Barham, together with some badly needed additional destroyers. With this strength in numbers and enough quality warships to ma
ke up for the elderly liabilities, Cunningham was in a better position than ever to seek a clash with the Italians. But the enemy still declined to emerge and give him satisfaction.

  The idea of a torpedo bomber attack on the main Italian base at Taranto was not a new one – it had been studied by planners in the Mediterranean Fleet since the mid-1930s. In October 1940, Admiral Cunningham decided it was time to put it into action. Commander Manley Power, Cunningham’s chief war planner, was responsible for fixing the fine detail of the raid, basing it all on a ‘scheme in my head and a few dirty bits of paper in my pocket.’5 With key staff crammed into Cunningham’s cabin aboard Warspite, perched wherever they could find space, the plan’s pros and cons were outlined and discussed. A reconnaissance flight by a Malta-based aircraft produced firm evidence the Italian main battle fleet was indeed skulking at Taranto and an auspicious date was set aside for the strike – 21 October (Trafalgar Day).