All three of us were dropping like stones on to an ‘R’ Class battleship. She was growing with fascinating urgency. I realised with pleasure that the stomach pain had gone and forced open the flap of the camera that was round my neck. As I got it up to my eye the foremost aircraft changed from a thin silhouette to fat silver wings and fuselage as it pulled out of the dive; then the second one too. Heavens we were close! The battleship seemed to fill one’s entire view—there was the black oblong of its single funnel, hot air shimmering aft. I was just about to click the shutter for the picture of a lifetime when a blurred stream of rushing sea replaced the target, followed by white sky, and the giant hand returned to force me down on to the floor of the cockpit. I resisted for a moment, during which the unspeakable knot again twisted my vitals, and then, almost crying with frustration, did a knees’ bend out of view. The resulting photograph—of out of focus instruments—was at least good for a laugh.
By good luck a great friend of mine, Edward Egerton,* who was a Midshipman in the newish cruiser Sheffield, also did his air course in the Ark at the same time. His parents—his father was another Naval Captain—were my honorary uncle and aunt and Ed and I had done lessons together at the age of seven before going to the same prep school and then Dartmouth, affording each other mutual support as each advance brought its difficulties to be surmounted. Having a better brain than myself, a very strong physique that brought success at most team games, and a pleasant but determined personality, Ed appeared destined for great things. Another keen horseman, he was too heavy for the Gibraltar racing scene and had to content himself with vocal encouragement of me. One day, with both fleets in, we climbed the Rock to gasp at the view into Spain and across the straits to Tangier; immediately below I counted nine battleships, two battlecruisers, three carriers, 14 cruisers and about 30 destroyers, an array that seemed as normal and permanent as the Rock itself.
The Sheffield was known to be fitted with a revolutionary device. Our sister ship Rodney had just been similarly equipped, but there were no others. It was very secret, the details being known only to those closely concerned, and even its presence not discussable. I was in fact slightly nettled when, under pressure, Ed would not volunteer a word. This of course was radar (to be known at first as RDF) awaiting at this time the major advance which was to come from Birmingham University in 1940 and put the British version well ahead of competition.
The Combined Fleet manoeuvres continued to unfold much as the year before but with an even greater urgency. Munich was behind us and I think that by now everyone knew what was before. As destroyers dashed and aircraft dived there was the uncomfortable feeling that soon these things would happen in earnest.
Almost before one realised it the Rock was shrinking astern for the second year and the Home Fleet making for its own chillier waters. The end of the Easter leave period came two days before my 19th birthday and four months before what my particular vintage were to know as the end of an era. The next and final cruise before the war was standard in content but marked by the ever-deepening atmosphere of foreboding. Exercises, the Regatta again and Scottish ports shaped the content and Hitler the atmosphere; most weeks saw a move of some significance by the ranting German Chancellor.
The Regatta came and went though to dismiss it thus is heresy. The whole energy of the ship went into it and this time, probably assisted by the fact that we had been longer in commission and were therefore capable of fanatical rather than merely ferocious effort, we won. Rodney was second and Royal Oak third. Great were the celebrations, culminating in a triumphal tour of the fleet by our drifter—unrecognisable in carnival rig and crewed by ‘pirates’. At the masthead was a passable imitation of the cock—traditional trophy of the whole affair. The real cock, a beautiful, lifesize, silver specimen, was presented to Captain Maceig-Jones by the Commander-in-Chief on the following Saturday. We cheered ourselves hoarse as the burly skipper approached the dais to collect it, the springy step that often accompanies a heavy man and wide smile denoting his obvious pleasure. It was indeed a fitting culmination to his appointment, due to end with the cruise.
Next stop was Rosyth whence we sailed in time for a social visit to the Firth of Forth by the French battlecruisers Dunkerque and Strasbourg, and three cruisers. Edinburgh was Johnny Bowles’ main stamping ground and I came in for a lot of pleasant poodle faking (Service slang for social pursuit of the female) as his willing accomplice. The ship passed Portsmouth breakwater on the morning of June 28 and steamed up harbour. Only a clairvoyant could have known it but the next time she was to do this was not so far off and with a ‘coach and horse’ hole in her bottom. The new Captain (G.J.A. Miles), relieved Captain Maceig-Jones at the end of July and shortly afterwards we sailed for Invergordon, Scapa Flow and World War 2.
* * *
HMS Nelson
Invergordon 24/8
It seems there will be a war as we are all pushing off to Scapa. This is doubtless secret, so don’t expect letters at my usual daily rate! Am in training for the battleships’ cross-country which is now off I suppose—very annoying. Was third in the ship’s race yesterday. I have just been showing round some of the Admiral’s guests and got them covered in paint! Had a row with a new Mid yesterday and got him six cuts.
I was now Senior Midshipman, a somewhat thankless position with a good deal of chivvying to do but little extra authority. The Sub who had relieved Hawkins had been too easygoing but had given place to another—H.R. Wykeham-Martin, a cheery, down-to-earth disciplinarian.
HMS Nelson
Scapa Row 30/8
I hear from an official source that the one thing that delays Hilter’s hand is fear of the British Women’s Land Army, particularly the Amazon Battalion recruited from Chailey district! We are right on the top line for anything now and the latest signal is permission to fire on hostile aircraft, which must be the last straw I am afraid. We have done nothing since my last p.c. but sit here and do occasional shoots. The fellow I got beaten just refused to do something I told him—writing out a list of Gunroom orders which he did not know. Some of the new Midshipmen are rather bolshie as they don’t seem to have had much discipline before.
The reference to the Land Army was a dig at my mother who had just taken over responsibility for our patch of Sussex. The following extracts from ‘Pop’ Snow’s journal (kindly lent following the demise of my own) chronicle the last days of peace:
26/8 Secured ‘A’ buoy, Scapa. Conference of all Admirals. ‘G’ dept fuzing shell all day.
27/8 Reserve officers join.
28/8 Ambassador Sir N. Henderson flew back to Berlin with the reply to Hitler’s peace plan.
29/8 Mediterranean closed to all British shipping. Merchant vessels ordered to leave Italian and Baltic ports.
30/8 Arrangements made to evacuate children from London. Many more reservists called up. Country—on paper—prepared for war. Ships in harbour raised steam for full speed. To sea 1715. Several German ships reported leaving Wilhelmshaven and large number of submarines in the Skaggerak. Steamed 040° throughout the night— Rodney, Ark Royal, Hood, Repulse, 6th Flotilla, etc.
A handful of discoloured naval signal forms, from among my papers, keeps the momentum going:
31/8 Fire may be opened on hostile aircraft. 1427.
31/8 Complete fuzing of all shell. Ship all warheads. Prepare for war. 1529.
1/9 Hostilities between Germany and Poland have begun so it is probable we shall be at war shortly. 1258.
From journal:
1/9 Turned south in forenoon and during the night passed through Channel Orkneys—Shetlands. German fleet is somewhere off Iceland as far as we know—1 battleship, 2 pocket battleships, 2 cruisers. Action stations 0530 and all day. Rendezvous made with ‘D’ and ‘C’ Class cruisers at 0630. These are now spread out on A-K line eight miles apart. So far we have not declared war though it was expected we should do so last night.
(From C in C Home Fleet):
3/9 Authoritatively lear
ned in London Henderson saw Ribbentrop 0900 BST. Gave him till 1100 BST to answer Britain’s ultimatum. (No time of origin.)
A popular pastime was the painting of weird designs on our ‘battle-bowlers’. I do not think that the lighthearted tone of my letters about then was put on for the alleviation of maternal anxiety; the prospect of a war was undoubtedly exciting and when it was given out over the broadcast system that an ultimatum had been delivered to Germany that we would declare war if they had not retired across the Polish frontier by 11:00 there is no doubt that (in the Gunroom at any rate) there would have been disappointment at such a retreat.
Those of us off watch sat around the clock. At 11:15 with, I suppose, a sense of history, I took a photograph of it; we received the expected signal ‘Total, repeat total, Germany’ and that, as someone said, was that.
* * *
HMS Nelson
6/9
Will you please send my sheep-lined gloves that may be in the hall chest. We are of course at war since starting this. It sounds rather stupid to hear Belisha and people promising that no one under 19 will be called up when there are boys of 15 and 16 serving here. When the declaration of war was broadcast one boy did not even trouble to stop reading his book. An old hand said ‘Doesn’t this mean anything to you?’ At which he looked up and said ‘Well, we won the last one, didn’t we?’ and went on reading.
I think we expected a sudden holocaust but the only obvious signs of hostilities were propaganda broadcasts from Germany, news of heavy losses in an RAF raid on Kiel and censorship of mail by Wardroom officers. Life became tedious at sea. Some wit has said that war is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear and we soon learned the aptness of the first part. What had been experienced only during exercises now became part of our lives. The ship went about with most of the massive steel doors in bulkheads, hatches in decks and so on closed, which made movement awkward; ‘darken ship’ became a nightly occurrence with its corollary in the morning and the ship’s company—at reduced defence stations all day—closed up at action stations at dawn and dusk. Being called 15 minutes before first light, not long after a night watch, was hardly popular and the Gunroom began to lose its glamorous ideas of war rather quickly. The long periods of boredom returned perpetually to mind, as nothing seemed to happen. Until at last it did.
The Ark Royal was astern on a blustery, grey day and the destroyer screen a tortured chevron in front when ‘Alarm starboard! Green seven-0; angle of sight six; engage—engage—engage!’ set the ball rolling.
Which is where we came in.
Our Heinkel became notorious. The optimistic pilot (one Francke) had seen only the initial eruption and within hours, the first of many ‘Ark Royal sunk’ stories was given out by ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, the loathsome but somehow difficult-to-ignore British traitor who had begun to whine at the UK on Berlin radio.
HMS Nelson
22/9
There is no repeatable news of course. The binoculars are very useful. I do hope poor old Captain M-Jones is alright, though we very much doubt it. What luck for little Larcom that it was not him. With the Russians in it we will certainly have a hard time as far as I can see.
W. Churchill was on board yesterday and gave us a very good speech.
The carrier Courageous had been sunk by a U-boat in the Western Approaches on September 17. This was the first loss of a capital ship, something uncomfortably like first blood to the Germans. Captain Maceig-Jones had gone from Nelson to her (relieving Captain Charles Larcom, who had in turn become Ed’s CO in the Sheffield). My fears proved sadly true. Captain Maceig-Jones was lost insisting, so we shortly heard, on going down with his ship. His brave end was very much felt on board; we knew he and Commander Atkinson had made the ship efficient and what was more done it with a minimum of pain. The question of Captains going down with their ships, still a strong sea tradition, became a talking point. I think it true to say that as losses mounted the tradition became outdated and died. Many Captains were to be lost simply because a sense of duty delayed their efforts at self-preservation until too late, but I only had personal experience of one other officer who seemed determined not to survive.
Stalin had just concluded a non-agression pact with Hitler and the outlook was grim. Churchill had returned to the government as First Lord of the Admiralty (the news was flashed around the Navy by the signal ‘Winston is back’) on the outbreak of war. What he said on this occasion to a representative gathering from the Fleet I do not remember, but no doubt it was a rousing harangue in what was to become the best tradition.
Shortly after this there was a high-level bombing attack on Scapa Flow and an enterprising U-boat got in and torpedoed the Royal Oak, with heavy loss, including her Admiral. Until satisfactory counter-measures could be completed the Home Fleet’s base was transferred to Loch Ewe, a sea-loch entered by a single gap, on the west coast opposite Skye. Its existence was supposed to be secret, reference always being made to Port ‘A’, but as far as the Nelson was concerned any trust in secrecy was misplaced.
At 07:00 one morning the communal Gunroom bathroom was its usual noisy self, four baths and several wash basins accommodating singing, whistling or merely splashing Midshipmen. I was lying back and thinking of nothing in particular, when there was an almighty CRUMP and my bath leapt about a foot, almost throwing me out. It continued to shake in a series of minor convulsions that coincided with an ominous rumbling sound. Some of the lights went out and the place became a shambles of spilt water and slithering bodies scrambling for clothes. It seemed obvious that the ship had been torpedoed and of course we were down in the chest flat and dressed in seconds.
Up on deck no-one seemed to know exactly what had happened but the ship was heavily damaged right forward, being down by the bow with a list to starboard. I was guiltily shocked to find the shores of Loch Ewe close around us; the boom had been passed some minutes earlier and the ship was stopped in the main anchorage. Guilty because I knew that the Cable Party must be on the fo’c’s’le. As the First Lieutenant’s ‘doggie’ (aide), which I then was, I should be there too. Presumably the return to harbour had been unexpected and I had missed the relevant bugle call. It was an even greater shock when my boss was carried past me, white-faced on a stretcher, the first of a steady stream of wounded. The explosion had caused the fo’c’s’le deck to whip about four feet, the whole of the Cable Party, two officers and some 30 men, being thrown several times into the air. None escaped with less than a broken leg but even worse were the casualties on the deck below. This housed the long line of lavatory cubicles, all full, it being shortly after breakfast. The unfortunate men came down again and again on the jagged edges of broken pans and some of the wounds were very serious. As I surveyed the rows of stretchers I realised that I would have been on one of them had it not been for a lucky failure to hear the Cable Party call. ‘Didn’t hear the pipe’ is a frequent but never accepted naval excuse—the broadcasting system being theoretically infallible—and my feelings were an uncomfortable mixture of shame and relief.
One made oneself useful here and there and was thus oblivious of the tension that gripped the bridge. The Fleet Navigating Officer was of the opinion that the Nelson had been torpedoed by a submarine that had ‘done a Royal Oak’ and got in. We could therefore expect another three or four torpedoes at any moment. Even if it was a mine it must have been laid by a submarine which might still be lurking. But nothing further occurred. It eventually transpired that we had passed over a submarine-laid magnetic mine, the enterprising U-boat having got in when the boom had been opened for the entry of a ship and similarly out again. Magnetic mines were set off by the magnetic field of a vessel passing overhead and this was one of the first successes of this new menace.
Shipwrights of the damage control parties were already hard at it, shoring up bulkheads against the sea that now filled several compartments. Even when the status quo was comparatively restored, there were many hundred tons of water in the ship and sh
e remained permanently down by the bow. We were allowed into compartments adjacent to the damage and one of these was the torpedo body room. It presented an astonishing sight; the 20-ft torpedoes, normally clamped in orderly rows and overhead racks, were jumbled like cigars in a half empty box that had been shaken by a madman.
The hole in the ship’s bottom, not seen of course until the Nelson docked at Portsmouth many weeks later, proved big enough to accept a double-decker bus. The damage was kept very secret as the immobilisation of a battleship for several months was serious. The Germans never got to know.
Meanwhile, my Midshipman’s time was drawing to a close; promotion to acting Sub-Lieutenant with courses at Portsmouth to follow would round off a packed two years.
HMS Nelson
3/12
We have one of Royal Oak’s Mids of my ‘pub’* group on board having had six weeks’ leave. He hardly moves without his Gieves waistcoat poor devil.
Gieves had produced a serge waistcoat with an inflatable lifebelt incorporated, more comfortable than the regulation rubber ring with supporting straps which we were all supposed to wear at sea. My next contact with the firm was infinitely happier. For Johnny Bowles, ‘Pop’ Snow and myself, the end of the month brought exams, farewell parties and then the train south for leave and Sub’s courses. We paused only to pick up our best reefer jackets in the Bond Street Gieves, the sleeves ego-inflatingly gilded with a single stripe. How every arm movement caught the unaccustomed eye!
*E.G.E. of my dedication.
*Public school entry.
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Destroyer ‘Sub’
Alarm Starboard!: A Remarkable True Story of the War at Sea Page 4
