Dead Man Talking
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Hamburg
Magda
England
HMS Daisy
Christmas Cheer
The First Sea Lord
HMS Sheba
Scapa Flow
The Last Escort
Distant Gunfire
In Limbo
Alarm!
The Assyrians
Fire and Ice
The Encounter
The Beach
Epilogue
Copyright
For Captain Lennart Granqvist to whom I am indebted for my own Arctic adventure
Prologue
Throughout the drive into Suffolk and right up until the old man started talking, I recall a sense of deep irritation. A strong sense of guilt was to overwhelm me on the homeward journey, but I cannot forget the intensity of my annoyance at being summoned to meet yet another veteran of the Second World War. A few years earlier I would have happily undertaken the task which I had now been inveigled into. I had then been writing what I had presumed to call the definitive history of a naval campaign waged fifty years previously and I had been eager to glean anything germane to my research. A few years earlier I had been keen as mustard, but now I was exhausted with the effort of the task I had accomplished and, having survived the assaults of critical review relatively unbruised, wanted only to lay the job aside. Now to be told that there was something my researches had failed to unearth, something of such critical importance to the historical record that my book would have to be rewritten, simply infuriated me.
But I could not refuse to go out of sheer petulance and, in the end, what I learned on that golden autumn afternoon was something quite extraordinary, in the fullest sense of that oddly abused word.
My churlish irritation arose from the simple fact that I had received a telephone call from a woman who said that my book was inaccurate. Moreover, it was suggested that this inaccuracy was profoundly serious and it touched upon one of the most notorious disasters of the war at sea: the destruction of convoy PQ17.
This news was a mighty blow to my self-esteem, for veterans who had served in the Barents Sea had flatteringly described my book as comprehensive and accurate. It was my tyro work as a naval historian and I was heady with my own success, so to receive a message suggesting that it was very far from what I had believed it to be kept me from proper sleep in the four days between the telephone call and my appointment at the end of the drive up into a remote corner of Suffolk.
To write what was described as ‘a magnificent book’ and have it ‘thoroughly recommended’ seemed like fair comment after the labour of research and reconstruction. I felt that in interviewing and corresponding with some remarkable old men, in poring over charts, analysing weather conditions, dragging official reports from the dusty archives, reading unofficial documents and personal letters and staring at literally hundreds of old photographs, I understood something of those dreadful wartime voyages through the extremes of the Arctic Ocean. I thoroughly immersed myself in my subject so that, with the conceit of the artistic creator, my version had surpassed Voltaire’s definition of history: it was more than a fable upon which we, my sources human and documentary, agreed upon. It had become the absolute truth. Now I was the victim of my own hubris, hoist by mine own petard!
And this disagreeable news concerned an event, still controversial, upon which I had laboured in order to establish what I considered to be the fairest account yet written. Now a woman’s voice had told me that my account was inaccurate, and that inaccuracy was relevant to convoy PQ17.
Perhaps I had better explain. Convoy PQ17 had been a major operation, one of many convoys designed to force the materiel of war through to Soviet Russia which had been treacherously invaded by Nazi Germany in July 1941. Up until Adolf Hitler unleashed his forces upon the Russians, the two totalitarian states of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, although occupying the theoretically opposite ends of the political spectrum, had been allies. In 1939 they had carved up Poland between them, a circumstance that caused hostilities between Germany and Great Britain and France, though it was only the German action which attracted the declaration of war from London. Hitler, however, had imperial designs upon the grain-producing regions of the Ukraine as living space for the Master Race, hence the unprovoked attack on his quondam ally in June 1941. In London the hard-pressed British government, standing alone against Germany after the Nazi occupation of much of France, had begun to send arms to Soviet Russia in an attempt to reconcile the hardline Communist state to an alliance with the hitherto hated capitalist monarchy on the Atlantic coast of Europe.
By the summer of 1942 the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States of America was in the war alongside Great Britain. American armaments were also being sent to the Soviet Union in American ships and, for the first time with convoy PQ17, the heavy escort of the British Royal Navy was reinforced with American warships, operating under British command. The convoy formed up at a rendezvous off Iceland and sailed north-east in a great arc round the North Cape of Norway, whose coast was a base for aircraft, submarines and, significantly as it turned out, some heavy units of the German fleet, most notably the battleship Tirpitz. The convoy route was not only round this flank of the extended German Reich, it was hemmed in to the north by the ice fields of the Arctic Ocean.
Nevertheless, it was well provided for with an experienced close escort under Commander ‘Jackie’ Broome in the destroyer Keppel, and an attending ‘covering force’, a squadron of British and American cruisers under Rear Admiral Hamilton in HMS London, which would accompany the convoy for part of the way. Distant heavy cover was provided by the British Home Fleet, which, with some American men-of-war, including the battleship Washington, provided a powerful disincentive to any meditated interference from the heavy units of the Kriegsmarine. Lying in the remote fjords of north Norway were, besides the Tirpitz, the heavy cruiser Hipper and the two pocket battleships Lützow and Admiral Scheer.
To watch for any sortie by these menacing warships, patrol lines of British, Free French and Russian submarines guarded the Norwegian coast, Norwegian spies were observing the movements of the German ships and the Royal Air Force were overflying their anchorages. Moreover, a dummy convoy sailed shortly before PQ17 to act as a decoy, and a westbound convoy of empty merchantmen was making its way home from the previous outward convoy. This was routed closer to the Norwegian coast as an easier and possibly more tempting target, so that in theory the thirty-five laden freighters and tankers of PQ17 were ring-fenced by steel, sinew and all the cunning possible.
The Germans knew all about convoy PQ17 and planned to strike it in an operation denominated Rosselspring, or Knight’s Move. Ten U-boats were mustered to attack it, with air support by Luftwaffe aircraft from Bardo and Bardufoss aerodromes. Meanwhile Tirpitz and Hipper had left Trondheim, a movement reported by air reconnaissance, and while this failed over Narvik, Scheer and Lützow were also moving northwards towards Altenfjord where the mighty Tirpitz lay.
By the fourth of July convoy PQ17 was well on its way towards Russia. It had beaten off several attacks by U-boats over the preceding three days, along with air assaults by Heinkel torpedo bombers, but that morning the American Liberty ship Christopher Newport had been hit by an aerial torpedo and had to be sunk after her crew had been taken off. That afternoon Admiral Hamilton and his cruisers were ordered by the British Admiralty in London to continue to support the convoy further east than initially planned. Hamilton responded with a signal stating that he intended to withdraw that night, but the Admiralty countered
this by telling him to hang on. Among the officers responsible for the safe arrival of the convoy an atmosphere of impending and escalating threat began to be generated. In London the first whiff of confusion was forming.
Air reconnaissance over north Norway was unproductive and the precise whereabouts of Tirpitz was beginning to cause concern to the intelligence analysts on the staff of the First Sea Lord. Meanwhile, in the light evening of the Arctic midsummer, PQ17 had sustained a combined bombing and torpedo attack by the Luftwaffe. Two merchantmen were lost, but the damaged Russian tanker Azerbaidjan pressed gallantly eastwards, a manifestation of the spirit uniting the crews of the Allied merchant ships. Despite the enemy successes, the attacks had been beaten off with some heartening losses of enemy aircraft and the mood among Broome’s men was elated.
At the Admiralty, Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord and operational chief of the Royal Navy, called a staff meeting. The staff appreciation of an assault by the combined enemy forces thought to be in the vicinity of the North Cape concluded that both Hamilton’s cruisers and the convoy would be annihilated. This was an odd assumption, given the forces originally deployed to protect the convoy, but it was weighted by the assumption that the Tirpitz’s intervention would be decisive, for by this time the British Home Fleet had turned back for its base in the Orkney Islands. At the time, Pound and his advisers, uncertain as to the position of the German heavy warships and somewhat confused by imperfect intelligence assessments and the failure of vital aerial reconnaissance, thought it best if the convoy was broken up. Broome was therefore ordered to disperse the convoy; a little later he was told that the merchant ships should scatter. At the Admiralty the dispersal order was felt not to have instructed the merchant ships to diverge widely enough in their respective courses to avoid too many of them being sighted by German aircraft or U-boats. Pound afterwards admitted that he had meant to say ‘scatter’, rather than ‘disperse’ in the first place. He was tired and unwell and the error in terminology was nothing more than that.
Thus it was that the merchantmen of PQ17 were ordered to scatter after they had been told to disperse. This modified instruction was precise in its interpretation as regards the divergence of courses and was designed to spread the ships as quickly as possible. In fact it was designed to counter the mutuality of convoy integrity and reduced each merchantman to an individual unit. To the officers in those distant ships this change of orders was not seen as a mere amendment. To them it appeared to be an obvious escalation of the order and indicated a rapidly deteriorating situation. Both Broome and Hamilton considered attack by Tirpitz and her sisters to be imminent and, in accordance with their own orders from the Admiralty, withdrew their warships in the direction they expected the overwhelming German attack to come from. To steer towards the sound of the guns was in the best traditions of the Royal Navy and, while as yet there was no gunfire, it was anticipated at any moment. It was only later they realised they had been fooled. In a dawning of the enormity of the error they had unwittingly committed was brewed a terrible sense of desertion and dereliction of duty. The tradition of the Royal Navy as the protector of trade had been destroyed at a stroke.
In the succeeding days the almost helpless merchant ships were picked off in a turkey shoot, twenty-three being lost to the shadowing U-boats, who had watched with glee as Hamilton and Broome ran past them to the westwards. As for the remaining merchantmen, and the handful of lesser warships of the close escort whose task ended with the scattering of the convoy, they and their crews endured ordeals of almost epic proportions. The perception of the British Royal Navy by the United States Navy was dreadfully compromised by the Admiralty’s decision, but more serious was the damage to the relationship between the Royal Navy and the officers and men of Allied merchant ships. They thought, and went on thinking long after the event, that the Royal Navy had run away. Years after the war a celebrated libel trial in London argued over the matter and one of the challenges of my own book had been to try and get to the bottom of this matter. I thought I had done it. It had been due to a bungled order, a product of fell circumstances and the problem of the British Admiralty overriding the men on the spot as it exercised its prerogative as the remote command centre for naval operations.
It seemed that all the tragic consequences flowed from the simple fact that Pound was deprived of the accurate information he required and made a misjudgement. It was a decision confused by the fog of war but one that could, just, be argued on the face of the available evidence to be justified. Of course, realising his error, the First Sea Lord should have turned the escort and cruiser squadron round and sent Broome and Hamilton back to try and mitigate things. Hamilton could have defied the Admiralty and ordered the same thing. On the bridge of one British destroyer, as they heard the plaintive transmissions of merchant ship after merchant ship reporting an attack, they thought of pretending they had had an engine failure, dropping astern and then turning round and racing back to the scene, but the matter had passed beyond redemption. In the event, it was not that twenty-three merchant ships were lost, but that not one warship was lost in their defence.
It was a sad story, but I felt that in my book I had dealt with it as compassionately and fairly as was possible, given what fifty-odd years later we knew of ‘the facts’. As I have said, Pound was a sick man. His change of the order from dispersal to scattering was eloquent of a person distracted by pain. It was no excuse, of course, but it had been an explanation. He made a gross misjudgement, the consequences of which were fatal for a lot of people. His subordinates on the spot were chained by discipline and the notion that, as the operational director, Pound at the Admiralty knew a great deal more than they did. My version was what I thought in my presumption to be the historic truth.
And then a few days ago I had had the telephone call that suggested there was more to the matter. It seemed incredible, but it had me driving into a lonely corner of Suffolk, annoyed, irritated and, God help me, angry that some old fool had challenged the fable that had been agreed upon!
It was a state of mind that worsened as I was shown into the room where I was to meet my informant. What, I asked myself, could this emaciated old fellow tell me that was new?
I was about to taste humble pie.
* * *
I had driven east out of Woodbridge, along narrow straight roads that cut through forest, behind which one caught occasional glimpses of steel fences and the remnants of the American occupation of air-force bases, abandoned since the fall of communism. Breaking out of the pines and the low scrub I drove through farmland rolling down to the North Sea, which gleamed intermittently on the horizon. I came upon the house suddenly. It stood alone, behind a high brick wall and a series of laurel bushes, a red-brick, four-square, two-storeyed building. I gingerly edged the car on to the entrance to the gravelled drive. Beyond the gate an elderly, mud-spattered Rover was parked. I shut the gate and approached the house across a shorn patch of lawn. The rest of the garden seemed out of control, and although a handsome Magnolia grandiflora rose against the red-brick wall, the paint on the window frames was beginning to flake. A little apprehensively I knocked on the dark-blue door. Though this too could have done with a coat of paint, the brass, dolphin-shaped doorknocker gleamed in the brilliant sunshine of late morning.
I was met by his daughter. She was a little older than myself, sixty-one or -two, I guessed. A tall, handsome woman with short grey hair and an air of quiet competence. She invited me in and we shook hands in the hall.
‘I’m Charlotte… His daughter.’ She did not add what I learned later, that she was a widow.
The house smelt of long occupation and a tall clock ticked sonorously beside me as I noticed a handsome seascape in the rather gloomy light.
‘It’s good of you to come all this way,’ she said, half smiling. ‘I hope you did not mind my phoning, but my father particularly wished to see you and it is important, very important I believe.’
‘It’s a pleasure,’ I lie
d.
She caught my gaze and held it, briefing me before we met the old man. ‘You see, he greatly admired your book but… Well I’ll let him tell you himself, but he gets very tired and may drift off. Please make allowances…’
‘Of course,’ I responded politely.
‘You’ll see there’s nothing wrong with his mind, nothing at all, that’s what is so remarkable; he’s as sharp as a tack, though rather deaf.’ I smiled and nodded, not certain what was expected of me. ‘And you may stay the night if you think it is necessary. You must allow him to tell you everything.’
The air thickened with mystery. ‘About PQ17, you mean?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded and then turned on her heel. ‘If you’d like to follow me…’
She led me through into a room flooded with sunshine. I was aware of a fireplace, above which hung another marine painting, a brigantine working her way through Arctic ice among fantastically shaped icebergs. The flanking alcoves contained filled bookshelves, and on an end wall hung two portraits, an eighteenth-century naval officer and, presumably, his wife. The furniture was heavy and in the window, looking out over the rear garden – a sweep of mown lawn ending in bushes, trees and a tangle of undergrowth – sat the old man himself.
She accelerated her pace, crossed the room and bent over him. ‘Father, your visitor is here to see you.’ She enunciated the words clearly, raising her voice as she did so.
As the old man turned and I saw his face, I wondered what the hell I was doing there. The prospect of staying the night was not attractive and I wished simply to hear what criticism he was going to level at my book and get away as fast as possible to assess what damage his ‘revelation’ might do to its accuracy and to my credibility.
He began to stand up, waving aside his daughter’s outstretched hand. I sensed a fierce pride in front of a complete stranger. He faced me, his thin figure silhouetted against the sunshine so that I could not at first make out his features. I stepped forward and took the claw he held out in welcome.
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