For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II. Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ by the Germans until quite late on the morning of the operation. Victor Beamish obeyed the rules and did not speak to warn the British organisations, but flew home and landed first, which let the Germans get up almost to Boulogne before any attempt was made to do anything about it.

       John Milne Checketts

      The British coastal guns had so far fired on the vessels without success, and I cannot remember the exact times, but it was round midday. The cloud base was 300 feet, the Navy sent up six Swordfish armed with torpedoes out to attack these vessels, and they were all shot down by the Germans without success. Their leader, Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

      We were sent out into the area where these vessels were and made contact with them off Ostend, but we could do very little against them. We destroyed some German aircraft and attacked E-boats – successfully, I might say – and were applauded for our action. However, it was of little consequence as far as the vessels themselves were concerned. I was impressed with their size and their speed; they were immense ships and the British were caught wrong-footed and had little that they could put against the ships. There were mess-ups with torpedoes and torpedo-carrying aircraft, and bomber aircraft had little chance to bomb from such low level. The only success against them were actions by aircraft which had laid mines ahead of the ships. Scharnhorst was mined and lay idle for nearly half an hour, but was not intercepted. The British destroyers were severely handled by the Germans and the torpedo-bombers were not effective; it was a convincing victory for the German Navy and a sad day for Britain.’

      Following upon the German offensive against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Arctic became the main route for the despatch of supplies to Russia, Britain’s new ally. The first convoy sailed in September 1941. By May 1942, with almost perpetual daylight and the rapid build-up of German naval and air strength in northern Norway, the convoy route had become very hazardous indeed. Not least was the risk from major units of the German Navy, including the battleship Tirpitz, attacking the convoys at a time when British capital ships could not be exposed to the overwhelming German air superiority in the region.

      Lieutenant Commander Roger Hill, RN, in command of the ‘Hunt’ Class destroyer HMS Ledbury, was involved in some of the Russian convoys:

      ‘Our first Russian convoy was PQ15, which sailed from Iceland on 24 April 1942, and our job on this was to screen the tanker – I can’t remember the name – and we went and lay in a position called “Y”, so if there was a Fleet action and the destroyers needed fuel they would come there and fuel from the tanker, or the ones going to Russia would come and the ones coming back from Russia also. So we made a rectangle which was labelled “AUNTY”, and we just steamed round this to keep the tanker moving all the time, as it would be very easy for the Germans just to send a U-boat to pick her off. The whole Home Fleet came by – the battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers and destroyers – a most tremendous sight. We had a system of identification where you had to signal certain letters. The battleship Duke of York signalled the wrong letter and later on in Scapa I was sent for by the Commander-in-Chief. The Captain of this huge ship, which seemed absolutely colossal to me, with its great big guns and enormous quarter-deck, said, “Oh we had a bit of a mix-up over the recognition, didn’t we?”

      Roger Hill, Commanding Officer of HMS Ledbury, on his bridge.

      I said, “That’s all right, sir, I knew you would know I wasn’t going to open fire,” and I thought he was going to choke, going to have apoplexy.

      Then we went on another one, PQ 16, and then we came to 17, when for the first time we were in the close escort of the convoy. By this time (we know now) the enemy main code had been broken and the Admiralty would intercept the German signal when they ordered the Tirpitz to sail, if she was going to attack the convoy. She was lying in the fjords in the north of Norway and we never got this signal. However, Admiral Dudley Pound, who was the Head of the Navy, he got this fixed idea that the Tirpitz was coming out to attack us.

      We had a mother and a father of an air attack; about 50 or 60 torpedo-bombers came scarcely over the top of the sea right over the top of the convoy. We shot one down, which was great, and I thought that they had made a brave attack, lots of ships firing at them, so I picked up the chaps we had shot down, despite the pom-pom’s crew saying, “Come on, sir, one short burst, one short burst.”

      I said, “You can’t do that – you’d be had up for war crimes.”

      Anyway, we picked them up and they were quite nice chaps and after this I know we were all very cheerful – only one ship had been torpedoed – and suddenly the Yeoman of Signals said to me, “My God, sir, the signalman in the Commodore’s ship has made a balls.”

      I said, “Why?”

      He said, “They’ve got the signal up to scatter!”

      So I said, “Oh Christ,” and it wasn’t the signalman. They had got the signal from the Admiralty: “You are about to be attacked by a vastly superior surface force – your duty is to avoid destruction and pick up survivors.” I’ve never known the Navy to have had such a bloody awful signal as that, and then this order to scatter was made.

      We all formed up behind the Kepple with Captain [D.] Jackie Broom ready to do a torpedo attack. I hadn’t any torpedoes, so my idea was to ram something, and everybody was just looking for the Tirpitz to come over the horizon, which was the effect of the Admiralty signal. Then nothing happened and all the merchant ships went off in different directions, and they said, “Cruisers are to retire at high speed to the west.” We had two English cruisers and two American cruisers, the London, Norfolk, Wichita and Tuscaloosa, and the Admiral, Admiral Hamilton, signalled us by lamp to join him and form a screen. We asked whether we could go back and we were refused, and then we went into thick fog and he made to me [signalled] “Try to keep up but don’t rupture yourself.” I remember because we only went 23 knots or 26 knots, whichever it was, which was the speed they were going, and I thought should I just slow down quietly and go back, but then, you see, from the moment you join the Navy you are taught obedience and it is very, very difficult to disobey. I did after that, but not then. And so we went on, and we came up out of the fog and eventually got back to Scapa.

      There were 23 ships sunk in that PQ 17, 190 seamen killed, 400-500 aircraft were lost, about 300 tanks and 100,000 tons of war material. That’s what resulted from that Admiralty signal. It was really terrible – even now I have never got over it, because for the Navy to leave the Merchant Navy like that was simply terrible. And the Tirpitz was not within 300 or 400 miles of the convoy. She came out eventually, but not that day, the next day I think, or the following day. She was sighted by a submarine which made a signal, the Germans intercepted that signal and called her straight back to harbour. All these poor merchant ships – one merchant ship signalled, “I can see seven submarines approaching me on the surface,” and there was continual air attack. It was simply awful. Anyway, that was PQ 17.’

      The ‘County’ Class cruiser HMS Norfolk took part in many of these convoys. Arthur Denby, a Signalman on board that ship, recalls that:

      ‘The first convoy I was in, there were four cruisers, there was Norfolk, Cumberland, London and I can’t remember the next one – it might have been Suffolk. We steamed around the convoy firing off everything that we could find at all these aircraft, and we got quite a few of them, but they made most of the attacks on the merchant ships. There was an oil tanker with a sort of catapult from which they fired off this СКАЧАТЬ