Warspite

by Iain Ballantyne

  There were so many wounded coming back to Alexandria they didn’t have room. It was baking hot in that train, simply awful. Egypt is famous for its flies but, with my hands bandaged up because of my burns, I couldn’t even knock the little beggars off when they crawled all over me. The hospital we went to was in a cavalry barracks. Naturally we were all in great pain and calling out for something. They gave us Aspro.

  Petty Officer George Wyles was a diver serving aboard Warspite at Crete. Wyles Collection.

  Back in Alexandria there were a lot of furious men aboard the Warspite. Signalman Auffret was one of them:

  There was a lot of anger aboard because, while we later learned that it wasn’t through any fault of our Admirals, at the time we just couldn’t understand why we didn’t have fighter cover. The only aircraft in the sky were German. We blamed everybody and anybody. There was also a certain amount of resentment that Cunningham wasn’t aboard.

  Adding to the men’s anger was a fiery speech the Admiral gave when he visited the ship after her return.

  He told us ‘You’re only slightly hurt, if I want you to go out tomorrow, you’ll go out tomorrow’. There was muttering but the crew would have taken the ship out. I mean there would be no question, but the Warspite’s crew were shaken. I think we were amazed to find out that we weren’t invulnerable after all.

  Newly promoted Petty Officer Telegraphist Arthur Cock had not gone to sea with the Warspite because he was a member of Admiral Cunningham’s staff. During the battle he monitored the signals traffic coming back to Alexandria with high anxiety, not only for his shipmates on the battleship but also because he had a brother serving in one of the cruisers.

  When the bomb hit the Warspite off Crete it killed quite a few people that I knew. If I had still been on the ship I might have been in that mess at the time and died with them. My brother had just been sent to HMS Gloucester from a destroyer. He was only on there for two or three days before she went down. In fact I’d bumped into him at the Fleet Club in Alex just before the Crete battle. It was a chance meeting. I didn’t even know he was in the Med. We had a few drinks and that was the last time I saw him. Apparently my brother, as a Leading Stoker, was in a damage control party on the upper deck and was killed there. At the time I held onto a romantic idea that he might have swum to Crete and somehow survived, but land was too far from where the Gloucester went down. I had already lost another brother who went down with an Armed Merchant Cruiser earlier in the war. It was very hard to take, but lots of families suffered great losses during the war, and we all somehow picked ourselves up and got on with it.

  The Warspite’s damage was well beyond the capacity of Alexandria’s floating dry dock so other arrangements would have to be made. It was decided she should go to Bremerton on the west coast of the USA for repairs. Although America was still neutral, it was assisting the British by offering docking facilities secure from enemy bombers. A month after getting back from Crete – and the night before she left for the USA – Warspite suffered more damage when a 1,000lb bomb exploded under her during an air raid on Alexandria. It caused damage to her plating, making a docking period even more urgent. Admiral Cunningham watched his injured flagship leave Alexandria with regret:

  I was grieved at her departure, and was not to see her again in the Mediterranean for two years, and then in very different circumstances.4

  View from the Warspite as she passed down the Suez Canal in June 1941, headed for repairs in the USA. Sutherland Collection.

  But, as one of Warspite’s sailors points out, the battleship’s crew were not grieved to be going:

  Evacuating the defeated Allied armies from Crete had been nothing short of a bloody shambles. So, one dark night we steamed silently from our naval base in Alexandria, heading for a shipyard. Our exact destination, as always during wartime, was a secret. Seventy of our comrades would accompany us, but only in our thoughts. They had become statistics of war. To say that we were glad to be leaving was an understatement. Rommel stood at the gates of Egypt, the Suez Canal was in peril and the Mediterranean Sea had become a very insecure part of our planet.5

  Times were indeed still grim in the extreme. But the Royal Navy’s refusal to buckle under the appalling losses it had sustained in the summer of 1941 yielded signs that the tide could be turned. For, on 27 May, the killer of the Hood had been hunted down and destroyed to the south of Ireland.

  Player in a New Theatre of War

  The battered war veteran Warspite took passage through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea and made her way across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon. After another brief stop at Manila in the Phillipines, she called at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii to refuel before striking out across the Pacific to Bremerton. At Pearl Harbor the gunners of HMS Warspite, including Petty Officer Charles Hunter, were invited over to one of the American battleships.

  We had this meal with our opposite numbers on the Yank battleship and they showed us how they operated their turrets by electricity whereas ours used hydraulics.

  The fact that the American battlewagons were sitting ducks was patently obvious to Petty Officer Rice, especially with his knowledge of what the Royal Navy had achieved in a similar restricted harbour at Taranto.

  When I saw all these battleships packed in there I said ‘blimey you can’t miss!’ But the Americans were not at war so you can’t blame them really, whereas the Italians had no such excuse at Taranto.

  Warspite left Pearl Harbor on 4 August, and six days later arrived at the Canadian naval base of Esquimalt where 300 of her crew left, bound for home. The following day she sailed south to meet a US Navy destroyer escort which led her to Bremerton where she was to be refitted at Puget Sound Naval Yard.

  Rating ‘Tom’ Boler was on the upper deck as the Warspite secured alongside:

  Barriers were keeping a large crowd of Americans just off the port bow. They were shouting up for souvenirs. One bright spark had a ‘brain wave’ and, after dashing down below, reappeared with a large paper bag full of Egyptian cigarettes in packets of fives presented to the ship by none other than King Farouk of Egypt just before we left Alex. These cigarettes were thrown over the side, the crowd made a great scramble and I saw one Yank lose his shirt for them. Of course our lads were greatly amused.

  One of the first jobs undertaken after Warspite went into dry dock at Bremerton was taking all the ammunition off her, a process which Petty Officer Hunter helped supervise:

  We took it to this huge ammunition dump somewhere out in the woods beyond the city. In a canteen there the Americans had a whip round to get some dollars for us to spend on our runs ashore. It was a really nice gesture. I thought Bremerton was an appealing place but I didn’t stay long before I was told that my gun crew, and a large proportion of the rest of the complement, were going to be sent across America to Philadelphia to crew the Royal Sovereign Class battleship HMS Resolution. She had been in dock there under repair and was now going back to Britain. We were sad to leave the Warspite but we were more interested in going home than staying with her.

  Another of those who also headed back to Britain at this time was Petty Officer Rice who took up an instructor’s post at Lee-on-Solent near Portsmouth.

  Members of Warspite’s crew who remained with her throughout her time at Bremerton were either housed in an ex-ferry boat moored alongside, put into barracks or lodged with American families.

  Able Seaman Banks was amazed by the American hospitality:

  I think every member of the Warspite’s crew had a home-from-home. Every day, at about 16.00 hours, a long queue of cars would form up outside the dockyard gates, waiting for British sailors to come ashore to invite them to their homes. There were also hundreds of applications from American families to entertain us when our leave was announced.

  Warspite’s crew were treated like film stars when they visited New Westminster and Vancouver just over the border in Canada during October 1941. One young sailor found himself and his shipmates ‘drowning in a sea of adula
tion’. He continued:

  As we passed over the mighty Fraser River all hell broke loose. Motorcycle police officers, sirens screaming, surrounded our two buses. Next thing we were passing between an avenue of wildly cheering citizens. ‘Look,’ exclaimed my mate. ‘You’d think we sank the Bismarck single-handed!’ Lovely girls overwhelmed us that night in New Westminster, where a dance was held in our honour. The girls turned up in droves. It didn’t take long for those sweet young ladies to realize we were a shy bunch when it came to dancing. They literally dragged us onto the floor. It was a sailor’s fantasy come true – a fleeting glance at fame and we revelled in it.6

  In the meantime, away from the dancing and hero worship, the Warspite was under-going substantial work. Aside from repairs to the bomb damage, her bridge was improved, more anti-aircraft weapons were installed and she also received Type 221 radar for detecting surface targets and Type 281 anti-air radar.

  A 3.7-inch howitzer acquired in 1939 was landed and protection for the 4-inch guns improved. The 15-inch guns were replaced as they were worn out. To ensure they wouldn’t all be lost in one go, if a U-boat struck mid-Atlantic, the guns were sent across to the Norfolk Naval Base aboard separate ships. Special trains then carried them to the west coast. Also shortly to be carried west across the USA aboard a special train was a new draft of sailors and Royal Marines.

  Royal Marine Ken Smith, one of Warspite’s ‘new boys’ in late 1941. K. Smith Collection.

  View from the train carrying Warspite’s new draft of sailors and marines across North America to Bremerton. K. Smith Collection.

  Royal Marine gunner Ken Smith recalled their long journey to meet the train in America started at Chatham on a very cold day in mid-November 1941.

  Approximately 150 Royal Marines and NCOs were assembled in full marching order, dress blue uniforms and greatcoats. The order ‘HMS Warspite detachment fall in’ came. The Chatham Division Royal Marines Band was already on parade playing incidental music while the detachment was inspected by the Adjutant. By now just about everybody in barracks was watching the proceedings. The formalities over, the Parade Sergeant Major called everybody to attention, the band struck up the Regimental March and off we went to war. We arrived at the dockyard railway sidings to find about 500 Naval ratings, our future shipmates, also waiting to board the train. We knew the Warspite had been in the thick of the action, so we were excited about going to her. I had always been a reader of naval matters in the papers anyway and so I was especially elated about going to such a famous ship. There was no finer ship. She was the best known battlewagon in the Navy. But where was the Warspite? Some said on the Clyde, others that she was already back in the Med. Some said she was still in the States. The train left the dockyard sidings and worked its way around London and headed north. The first stop was Leicester, my home town. We travelled on through the night and we reached Edinburgh around breakfast time. A couple of hours later our train was running down by the banks of the Clyde and finally to Greenock and Gourock. Looking around we saw no sign of the Warspite, only a troopship called the Pasteur, our home for the next ten days. We were ferried aboard and found ourselves surrounded by thousands of RAF erks. After securing our billets we suffered the indignity of a health check by an RAF Medical Officer, complete with stick and torch. However, looking on the bright side, the smokers were introduced to Sweet Caporol cigs, the nutty fanatics to Babe Ruth and Oh Henry choc bars. We soon upped anchor during the night and by daylight we were well out into the North Channel, the Irish Coast disappearing on the port quarter.

  Marine Smith was taking it all in his stride and enjoying the fresh sea air, until the Naval Officer in Charge (NOIC), a Commander, assembled the Warspite contingent and gave them some rather worrying instructions. He told them:

  This ship has 7,000 souls aboard and only life-saving capacity for 4,000 and you, as Naval personnel, are not included in that 4,000. In the event of being torpedoed you will go over the side.

  Once the troopship was out into the open Atlantic, the weather started to turn nasty. ‘The Pasteur was by now really digging her nose and our escort HMS Garland, seemed to be disappearing every few minutes,’ said Marine Smith.

  After two days we lost our air escort and the two merchantmen with us detached off Iceland. The gale was really blowing by now, Pasteur rolling and pitching and she had what can only be described as a fair amount of ‘human debris’ waiting to die.

  One of Warspite’s new sailors was amused by the non-naval personnel aboard the liner all feeling rather green around the gills.

  It was a pretty rough crossing. I remember seeing some RAF blokes hanging over the side on the first day out and hearing one of them say ‘thank Christ we have a navy and thank Him that I am not in it.’ That summed up the feelings of them all.7

  But the rough weather eased and, on the tenth day at sea, land appeared over the horizon. ‘We saw lights,’ recalled Marine Smith.

  They were the first we’d seen since the war started. A couple of hours later we eased alongside at Halifax, Nova Scotia. Reporting to the docks, we boarded a train. This would be our home for the next six days. We steamed off into the night, the loco’s bell ringing and hooter blasting. A few hours later we stopped, and were sealed and examined as we crossed the border into the USA at Maine. The US was still neutral you see. Next day the train crossed back into Canada at Quebec. Moving across the St Lawrence River, we stopped outside Montreal. We were introduced to the meal of the day – venison, which went down well. The train steamed on to Sudbury, Ontario, where we had an hour to stretch our legs. Next came the long pull skirting Lake Superior. Leaving the Great Lakes we headed out into endless miles of prairies with a couple of brief stops for a leg stretch. We passed through Moose Jaw, Swift Current, and arrived at Medicine Hat which is where it all happened. This place was the ‘watering hole’ for the RAF training schools out in Canada. You can imagine the potential when a train load of frustrated matelots and bootnecks arrived and were treated to four hours leave. It does not take much imagination to understand what went on in the local hostelries.

  During the Medicine Hat stop some of Warspite’s new draft ‘jumped ship’, much to the amusement of junior rating Reg Foster.

  It was amazing – one chap found himself a lumberjack jacket, and slipped away. But they caught up with him later and ended up sending him out to meet us in Australia. He was standing on the quay when we arrived there a few months later.

  Reg Foster and Ken Smith were among those dutifully reporting back to the train. But, as Ken Smith explained, there was more than one aspiring lumberjack missing.

  Three hours ten minutes later heads were being counted and, needless to say several were not there. Getting concerned the Naval Officer in Charge decided on a search party. However, the train driver decided it was time to go, blew his hooter and off we went, leaving the man in charge behind. There was a certain amount of gusto put into the cheering and waving. However somehow our Commander was waiting for us at Calgary. We thought someone was conspiring against us. We were now at the foot of the Rockies and, after cresting by the Blackfeet Tribe reservation where we saw Indians riding their ponies, we descended down to Vancouver via the Fraser River, and arrived at New Westminster sidings. We said goodbye to our Canadian train crew and the Americans took over. Two hours later we disembarked at Seattle, took a ferry over to Bremerton Naval Barracks and crashed. It had been a very long and eventful journey.

  Reg Foster had thoroughly enjoyed his marathon ride across America: ‘I thought it was fantastic and said to myself “This is a good Navy”.’

  When the Warspite sailors and marines finally got their heads down in Bremerton it was 2.00a.m. on 7 December 1941 – the notorious ‘Day of Infamy’ that brought America into the war. While war warnings had been sent out to US bases throughout the Pacific there was no general alert. Instead military personnel went home for the weekend as usual. Ninety Japanese torpedo bombers and dive bombers fell upon the unsuspecting America
n battleships at Pearl Harbor, with a covering force of ninety-three fighters suppressing anti-aircraft guns and neutralizing attempts by US fighters to intervene.

  The battlewagons USS California, USS Oklahoma and USS West Virginia shuddered to the impact of torpedoes, swiftly followed by hits on the USS Nevada, USS Pennsylvania, USS Maryland and USS Tennessee. The USS Arizona blew up and capsized, entombing hundreds of her crew. To inflict this immense damage cost the Japanese thirty aircraft. It was definitely the raid on Taranto writ large. However, the Imperial Japanese Navy had failed to destroy crucial oil reserves or American carriers in port – the USS Lexington and USS Enterprise were at sea and the USS Saratoga was under refit in a US dockyard. Fear of a follow-up Japanese attack on the west coast of the USA caused pandemonium within hours of the last bomb falling on Pearl Harbor.

  Anti-aircraft gunner Jack Worth was on a run ashore in Bremerton when news of the raid exploded:

  The Americans went completely over the top. I lit this cigarette and someone yelled at me to put it out because they thought an air raid was due at any moment. I thought that was rich. Having been through it all in the Med, I naturally took exception to being told off by a twit thousands of miles from the nearest Japanese aircraft.