J. E. MacDonnell - 028 Page 6

  But there were four battleships. Thirty-two fifteen-inch guns. Thirty-two chances of error. Four directors, sixteen training receivers would have had their pointers altered. Instruments were not infallible, men had been known to make mistakes. If one of those turrets had not been thrown-off correctly; if one of those one-ton shells landed where the director would be aiming...

  Too late now for worry, or trust, or hope. Abruptly, along the horizon, there belched a rippling line of flame.

  Directly above each bulking shape blossomed a cloud of dirty brown cordite smoke, blowing swiftly astern. I was in the rake party atop B-gun, waiting to plot the fall of shot. The rake, a wooden instrument shaped like a small rake, would tell us how far to the left or right the shells landed, and how far over or short. These errors would be signalled back to the firing ships.

  But the shells should not land to our left-not if they had been thrown-off correctly. They should land ahead of our bow. Well ahead.

  We counted fourteen seconds. That was a measure of the long range. Those one-ton messengers were hurtling towards us at a muzzle velocity of two thousand five hundred feet per second, each one flung by more than four hundred pounds of cordite. Yet we counted fourteen seconds before, ahead and on the port bow, there was a scream ending in a roar and the sea was convulsed into huge pillars of climbing white. "Over 100."

  We altered course promptly towards the spouts, doing our best to throw them off. The next salvos landed dead ahead, straddling our line of advance perfectly. After that, dodge as we might, those enormous geysers followed our course, plunging with awful precision into the sea right ahead.

  I thought of Bismarck, Scharnhorst-and Matapan. One of them had been there, too, when the Italian heavy-cruiser line was caught by the British battleships at night at point-blank range.

  For fifteen minutes it went on, the firing so accurate that even the sight and sound of full broadsides of fifteen-inch shells bursting into the sea ahead became monotonous. Now that we knew all guns had been correctly thrown-off...

  Then the distant blue flags hauled down. It was our turn.

  Finished with the rake party, I went up to the bridge. There one was in the middle of things. Keeping well back, clear of Dad and the torpedo-officer, I listened to the dialogue.

  The radio-telephone speaker near the pelorous crackled suddenly:

  "From Joan (flagship) to Susan (us). Engage third battleship from the right. I say again: Engage third battleship from the right."

  Then the signal yeoman, who had also been at Matapan, spoke without taking his eyes from his binoculars:

  "Executive signal, alter course twenty degrees to starb'd, sir."

  The captain spoke into the wheelhouse voice-pipe, whose side he never left:

  "Starb'd twenty."

  He spoke calmly, with a flat incisiveness to his tone. Yet now he was to be tested harshly; now was to be witnessed by officers immeasurably his superior the training programme he had drilled his ship at ever since she left Sydney. No mild reprimands from an understanding flotilla leader now; now he was to take her in against a battleship, his every move scrutinised by that ship's four-ringed captain and by the commander-in-chief.

  Yes, I thought, you're entitled to your ruddy great cabin...

  We had split up into two sub-divisions, and the three ships of ours, in line ahead, turned as one with the hauling down of the executive signal and plunged across the foam-splashed sea towards the line of target.

  From the bridge you could see the brown of the next in line's upper-deck as she rolled, her bow wave racing aft in a streak of white, a giant's brushstroke against the grey of her side and the blue of the sea.

  "Speed twenty-eight knots, sir. Executive signal."

  "Very well." Still calm, clipped. What was he thinking? What were his guts doing? You'd never know, not from the casual touch of his hand on the binnacle, steadying him, not from the composed set of his burned face.

  A speed of twenty-eight knots is close enough to thirty-two miles per hour. Standing on the bridge you actually felt this speed. The wind whistled through shrouds and stays in a high-pitched whine, the funnel roared behind you, and every now and then she dipped her slicing bow and the bridge was swept by a lather of spray and spume.

  Think of standing exposed on the running-board of a car at 30 m.p.h. in a rain-storm and you get some idea of conditions on the bridge of a destroyer at speed in a choppy sea.

  After each swell the ship's bow smacked down into the trough with a shock and shudder. Now and again a wave caught her down, and reared up over the foc's'le, leaving the decks streaming and lacy with white water.

  The battleships were closer now, a magnificent sight, taking the sea green over their mighty bows. Even more spectacular were the destroyers with us. Every thirty seconds they disappeared almost completely beneath a great cloudburst of spray which flew high above their topmasts. You realised that your own ship must look exactly like that, and pride was embarrassing and fierce in you. Gimme the boats...!

  We were in exact alignment, the three of us, three spuming bows dressed by the right. The muzzles of A and B guns below were cocked up at extreme elevation, sniffing towards the target. Came a report from the gunnery director:

  "Main armament ready to open fire."

  The signal yeoman spoke again:

  "Alter course forty degrees to port together."

  This was it. This was the turn to bring us broadside on to the target. And our ten tubes.

  As the bow swung off the R/T crackled again. It was the battleship.

  "Your forrard mounting is out of action."

  A-guns fell away to their fore and aft position.

  "You are seventy-five per cent, out of action. You should have full speed available."

  With that multitude of barrels now trained on us, I thought we were getting off lightly. The admiral had left us three tubes, one gun mounting, and full speed.

  And we'd almost reached our full power now. Nearly 2,000 tons of steel driving through at over forty miles per hour. Down in the after waist the torpedo-crews were closed-up round their charges. They hung on to lines and stanchions as the ship reeled and plunged like a thing possessed.

  "Assume first degree of readiness," from the torpedo-lieutenant on the bridge.

  The order was repeated, and the long grey tubes trained smoothly outboard over the ship's side. A few feet below their gaping mouths the spume-crested waves whipped past in quick retreat.

  The crew closed-up at their firing positions. Number One at his firing levers, Two and Three at the training handles, Four and Five at the breeches with cordite charges ready, and Number Six at the bridge telephone.

  Closer. Here came the battleship now, beautiful with her massive superstructure, hideous with her grinning guns.

  And now we were swinging on the full turn. Heeled at an acute angle, stern slewing round with all the torque that hard-over rudder and churning screws could give her, she spun round.

  The torpedo control officer crouched behind his sight. It was a simple, three-pronged affair of steel. His orders came clear and fast:

  "Target right-hand ship. Estimated enemy speed eighteen knots. Ship now making smoke. Deflection fourteen left. Forrard tubes ready, sir."

  The captain flung back over his shoulder:

  "Fire when your sights come on."

  Staring through his sight, the T.C.O. watched the battleship's stern, then mainmast, then funnel, slide by his sight.

  "Forty degrees to go, sir."

  "Thirty degrees to go, sir."

  "Swing faster, sir!"

  Dad bent, and the heel became more acute.

  "Sights coming on, sir." Then, as the huge bridge bulked dead in line: "Stand-by! Fire one, fire two, fire three!"

  From aft three mouths flamed redly. Three searing shapes cut the water clearly, and three wakes stretched like ribbons across the sea.

  The battleship was turning. But we were too close. The torpedoes lanced straight for her belly, disappearing underneath, and came, still running perfectly, clear out the other side.

  We should by now have been reduced to a twisted mass of smoking metal, but we'd punched three fish into her.

  The R/T came to life.

  "Joan to Susan. I have a message for you. Exercise completed. Exercise completed."

  The voice cut off. No praise, no admiration, no judgment. And no censure. That was all we wanted. The Royal Navy's measure of praise is traditionally meagre.

  With the wind and waves now astern we were rolling easily to the swell, eased down to a comfortable twenty knots. Eight cables astern the battleship was altering her ponderous bulk back into line.

  The yeoman took his glasses from his eyes for the first time.

  "Signal flying to reform single line ahead in fleet position, sir." A pause, then: "Executive signal, sir!"

  The flotilla swung into position.

  A "crash" destroyer's job is always an interesting chore. Positioned alongside her aircraft carrier, distant a couple of cables, she keeps station and waits.

  Then, when a pilot comes in too fast, or too slow, or too low, she dashes up to the wreck, fishes him out, regains station, and waits for the next.

  We have a seaboat manned all the time, fitted with an array of tube-cutters, axes, salvage suits, and so on, to rescue as much as possible of the aircraft before she sinks. But in most cases, particularly if the machine strikes with any force, the heavy engine just carries straight on to the bottom.

  You always get a perfect of the doings on the carrier's flight-deck. I never tire of watching aircraft take off and land at sea, especially the Seafires on escort carriers we've had with us occasionally.

  As the first Seafire comes screaming into land you wonder how on earth he will be able to pull up in time, how the pilot can possibly come in at the right level, with the ship's stern lifting twenty feet with each swell.

  Watching, you feel sure that he must go zooming straight along and off the bows of the ship. Actually, there is across the flight-deck at a suitable distance from the landing-on point a device which would prevent this happening. They call it the crash barrier.

  One morning I Saw four Seafires come in one after the other in swift succession, and every one of them was stopped in an incredibly short time, a few feet from the point at which its Wheels touched. It was such a superb piece of timing and skill, such a telling display of casual courage, that you just wanted them to go on and on.

  I was interested in how the aircraft are pulled up in so short a space. Watching from the seaboat you'd see them touch down at about ninety knots, then in the next second or so they'd be stationary. Later I found out:

  The device is actually quite simple. Stretched across the deck at intervals of about a dozen feet or so are arrester wires made of extra-special flexible steel wire rope, immensely strong for its size. These wires oppose a certain nicely-calculated tension, but also give to some extent to the size and weight of the aircraft coming in. The aircraft lets down a hook and this engages in one of the wires. A hydraulic system something like that of a turret-gun's recoil arrangement pulls the aircraft up.

  The first incoming Seafire swept once round the carrier, then her pilot lined her up about four hundred yards astern, aiming at the very end of the flight-deck. He is directed by a batsman, an officer who stands to one side with a couple of bright yellow-green discs in his hands, as though he is playing an imaginery and highly exciting game of ping-pong. If this batsman drops one of his outstretched arms, the pilot knows at once that his corresponding wing is too high, and acts accordingly.

  The aircraft's nose pulled up and the tail dipped down so as to engage the hook. Lower and lower he came, seeming to hang on his propeller, landing flaps down; then he was over the first wire, just missed the second, and caught the third.

  The wire gave, then held. The aircraft's tail whipped up under the strain, its nose jerked down, and the pilot's head threw forward. The next second it was safe on the deck, still.

  But all was not yet over. When you were able to breathe freely again you realised that yet another Seafire was coming in behind the first. So two members of the flight-deck crew rushed out, dropped on their bellies against the slipstream of the propeller and wrestled to disengage the hook. Then the aircraft taxied forward to the parking section on the bow. The other came in, and the miracle was performed again.

  It was obvious that speed was the essence of the operation, not only the speed at which the aircraft came in, but the time in which planes could land, refuel, and take off again in action. The rate worked up by these "pocket" carriers is very high indeed, so that the procession on and off the ship made a fascinating spectacle.

  In the meantime a squadron of Barracuda torpedo-bombers had formed up above the carrier. Peeling off in precise formation, they came plunging down straight for the ship. A bombing run this time, not a torpedo drop.

  They were aiming just ahead, to enable smoke marker bombs to be dropped, and three had unloaded with satisfactory precision off her bow, roaring away out of it into the blue, when the fourth bloke headed down.

  Almost vertical, a black streak, he shot out of the sun, faster and faster.

  We watched, fascinated. Somebody said: "God...!" Then, suddenly and quite definitely, I knew he wasn't going to pull out. Travelling at tremendous speed, still vertical, he flashed on and struck the sea in a back-thrust of flung water. We were quick, but it was hopeless. All that remained was a circle of foam on the sea.

  Another time a torpedo-bomber was taking off. We watched him rush down the flight-deck, bellowing, bat-winged. He reached the end, sailed into space. Then he dipped lower and lower towards the sea.

  If all our wills could have affected his flight he would have soared up like a rocket. But he couldn't make it, and a few hundred years ahead of the bow he met the sea with a whop and splather. The whole crew was picked up.

  Once with the Fleet we were ordered alongside a battleship to take a message on a line. The battler was steaming at twelve knots, with an aircraft carrier, a big fellow, about four hundred yards away on her starb'd beam.

  We had to come down from our position ahead, circle the stern of the battler and sneak in alongside.

  Of course, we could have gone right round both big ships, cut across the carrier's bow, and in that way. But as they were four hundred yards apart, and we're only three hundred feet long, the Old Man had a few hundred yards to play with.

  Which, in his opinion, was quite enough. So we came down the line, swept round, and headed in between battleship and carrier. Of course, it had to be close-but the big bloke to starb'd got a bit windy, and suddenly there were blowings of sirens and alterings of course and, I don't doubt, some hefty language.

  She was about forty yards away then, and I saw the Old Man grin a bit behind his binnacle. He'd had her closer than that without touching. As it was, due to the carrier's altering course, her great bulk loomed above us, we heard the roar of her fans, and her quarterdeck was washed by the wake from our screws.

  Next moment we were snuggled in under the lofty side of the battler, her crew, a French one, looking down at us open-mouthed. The line went out. Battleship Warspite, for some reason, was renowned as the finest gunnery ship in the British Fleet. During the Normandy invasion she stood off the beaches and with her fifteen-inch guns followed German tanks into woods and out again, potting them like a bloke shooting ducks.

  No one knew why she was so uncannily proficient. It was the same no matter what changes in her crew or gunnery-officers. She was just a fine gunnery ship.

  For some reason we've always been pretty good at bombardment. This day we were to carry out a shoot on a little-used track in the palms back about four hundred yards along the beach-another of those interminable exercises fitting us for the big things brewing as the Fleet grew and grew.

  The actual initial target was a tall palm to the left of the others, representing a gun emplacement, on the silencing of which we were to strafe the road leading to it.

  We had aboard a couple of Army liaison officers, who looked at the tree through glasses from well out to sea with a certain amount of apparent scepticism. They asked Dad if he weren't going in any closer.

  Dad looked surprised. He turned. "Target's visible, Number One?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Right."

  The ship increased to twenty-five knots, turned, and headed down the coast. On B-gun there came a sudden series of sharp rings from the gun shield, and a rasp of training machinery as the heavy mounting swung. The long barrels trained past the target, came back, and steadied. The snouts lifted in the air, sniffing tentatively as the layer got on, then were still. The next second the ship exploded in flame and smoke. We opened up with a ranging shot, up two hundred, found the target, and went straight into rapid salvos. The crew drilled in a smoothly-working cycle of efficiency, loading, firing, loading again, keeping always clear of those hot, recoiling breeches.