Authors: Anthony G Williams
Several hours later, nothing further had happened and the Sunderland began its return to Berehaven.
The naval base was a strange place, the pilot reflected.
Located in south-west Ireland and greatly resented by the Irish government, it was effectively cut off from the surrounding countryside.
It was known that the IRA kept the base under surveillance and suspected that they reported ship movements to Germany.
The British government had prudently ensured that the base was defended by Canadian troops in order to minimise friction, but there was still a tension not present at mainland British bases.
‘Radar contact dead ahead; range twenty miles!’
The pilot was jolted out of his reverie and called his crew to battle stations as he started the Sunderland on a steady descent towards the sea.
The ASV radar achieved its longest range at an altitude of a few thousand feet, but at that height lost contact due to sea clutter while still several miles away.
The shortest effective radar range was achieved at sea level, with the target silhouetted against the horizon.
‘Switch on camouflage lights.’
The pilot still found it difficult to believe, but the Sunderland had been fitted with a number of lights along the wings and the fuselage.
The boffins had apparently worked out that because aircraft always appear dark when seen at a distance against the daytime sky, they could be made harder to see by illuminating them.
The Capitano di Corvetta in command of the Marconi class submarine of the Regia Navale was pressing ahead with all speed to make contact with the reported convoy.
A part of the Betasom force based at Bordeaux, he was tired of the ill-concealed derision with which the slow, comfortable Italian submarines were regarded by the tough ‘sea-wolves’ of Dönitz’s U-boat fleet.
Something caught his eye low on the horizon.
At first he couldn’t make out what it was, but the view through binoculars shocked him.
‘Dive!
Emergency!’
He gripped the forward edge of the conning tower, cursing the lethargic diving speed of his submarine as the hull slowly slipped into the Atlantic.
He turned to enter the hatch but was caught in a hail of fire as the four 20 mm cannon fixed in the nose of the Sunderland sprayed the boat.
The pilot grinned fiercely as the submarine grew to fill the windscreen, large conning tower still above the surface.
The four 250 lb depth charges, on minimum depth setting, straddled the hapless boat and the rear gunner gave a yell of delight as the combined explosion lifted the submarine onto the surface.
The pilot banked the plane around to see if another attack was necessary, then froze in disbelief as cannon shells tore into the fuselage behind him.
‘Junkers!
Four of them!’
One of the gunners yelled as the dark shapes of the big long-range fighters swept past the Sunderland.
The pilot dragged the plane round and down to sea level, heading for home at full throttle.
He silently cursed the lack of attention of his gunners, realising that they had been distracted by their first attack on a submarine.
‘They’ve split up,’ the rear gunner’s voice was under control now.
‘Two coming in on the port quarter, two to starboard.
I’ll take the port.’
The other gunners acknowledged and shifted their turrets to cover the starboard quarter.
The Sunderland was heavily armed, with four 0.5 inch Vickers-Brownings in the rear turret and two in each of the two upper turrets, one behind the wing and the other just behind the cockpit.
Even so, they could not match the cannon-armed Junkers in range and hitting power.
The pilot began a game of cat and mouse, turning into or away from the repeated German attacks to confuse them, keeping always just above the sea so the attackers could neither get underneath him nor dive from above for fear of hitting the water.
The contest seemed to go on for hours, the desperate pilot dully aware of the Sunderland shuddering under the frequent cannon strikes, the rapid hammering of the defending guns and the continuous background howl of the abused engines.
Cries of pain from injured crew, yells of triumph from gunners, scarcely distracted him from his concentration on judging which way to turn, when to turn… and then there was silence.
The co-pilot came forward and slumped heavily into the seat next to him.
The pilot scarcely dared ask.
‘We’ve beaten them.
Shot one down and damaged another. The others have gone – probably getting low on fuel.
But we’ve lost Jackson. Merrit and Walker are badly hit, and the rear upper turret is knocked out.’
They scanned the instrument panel apprehensively as the pilot eased the engines back to a steady cruising hum.
One fuel tank had been hit but there should just be enough to get them back to base.
They looked at each other with that mixture of emotions so common after battle; shock at the encounter, relief at having survived, guilt about their friend who had not – and near-total exhaustion.
The Sunderland droned north into the evening, a bubble of life and death traversing the vast uncaring ocean.
Summer 1941
The large meeting room in the
Naval staff sat on one side of the long table.
They were flanked and faced by a motley collection of men in a wide variety of clothing.
Nearly two hundred of them packed the room, sitting behind the table and standing against the wall.
They were merchant navy captains and they were not happy.
Their grumblings fell away as the C-in-C Western Approaches rose to his feet.
After some initial words, he came straight to the point.
‘I know you don’t like having to wait for such a large convoy to be assembled, and that sailing with so many ships causes problems,’ the Admiral said quietly.
‘I want you to understand why we’re doing this.
You all know that your chances of survival are much better in a convoy than on your own.
What you may not realise is that the bigger the convoy, the better we can protect you.
A convoy of two hundred ships can be given four times the number of escorts than one of fifty ships, yet has only double the perimeter to patrol.
Furthermore, we are able to provide two MAC ships to provide continuous air cover throughout the voyage.’
This time the murmering was of appreciation.
The captains knew all about the benefits of air cover.
‘To add to that, we are assigning a hunting group to the convoy; with five destroyers and an escort carrier.’
The murmur became a buzz of excitement.
‘Finally,’ the Admiral continued smoothly, ‘We have a whole squadron of long-range maritime patrol aircraft with the sole task of protecting your route all the way across the Atlantic.’
With the dour captains showing as much enthusiasm as they were ever likely to, the Admiral chose his moment to hand over to the Convoy Commodore and depart.
The Commodore was a tough-looking weatherbeaten man in late middle age.
His approach was rather different.
‘There are other benefits to large convoys that the Admiral was too polite to mention,’ he began.
‘For a start, a U-boat can only sink so many ships in one attack regardless of the size of convoy, so there’s safety in numbers.’
The mood sobered instantly.
‘We have also managed to include five rescue boats to haul you out of the water, so with luck and hard work we can better the average fifty percent survival rate following a torpedoing.
What I am about to tell you now will minimise the chance of that happening to you, as long as you follow my instructions to the letter.’
He had their full attention as he took them through the rules and procedures governing the convoy.
After he had finished, the Captain in charge of the escort took over, stressing the vital need for maintaining position.
His concluding remarks were grim.
‘Remember these words all the way across: “Straggle and Die!”’
The bellow of the Pegasus radial engine filled the cockpit as the Swordfish struggled off the deck of the MAC ship and climbed with painful slowness to 2,000 feet.
The observer settled back, feeling thankful yet again that this plane was one of the latest models with a well-heated, enclosed cockpit.
It was theoretically early summer, but convoy OB150 was far to the north of the Great Circle route in the hope of avoiding U-boats, and a typical Atlantic storm was lashing the ships.
Only the slow take-off speed and short deck run of the Swordfish allowed it to fly in these conditions; the fast monoplanes on the escort carrier stayed in their hanger.
At least they had a hanger, the observer thought.
Their MAC ship was one of the early ones consisting simply of a flight deck with arrester gear, bolted on top of a large grain carrier which still was able to carry its full commercial load, although it was now in ballast like most of the ships in this outbound convoy.
The planes lived on deck, normally tied firmly down in conditions like these.
The Swordfish carried eight armour-piercing rockets underwing and four 250 lb depth charges under the fuselage.
It was further burdened with ASV radar and a Leigh light, as were all anti-submarine aircraft these days, but in the almost perpetual daylight at these latitudes visual sightings were still the most common way of spotting the faint track of a schnorkeling U-boat.
The observer picked up the binoculars and began a systematic search as the pilot commenced his ‘Viper’ patrol; cruising around the convoy at visibility distance.
The Captain in charge of the close escort watched the old ‘stringbag’ perambulating around the convoy, travelling perceptibly slower into the wind than with it, and smiled in appreciation.
Those boys seemed able to fly in virtually any weather and their appearance was a great boost to the morale of the convoy.
He settled back into his high chair on the bridge and surveyed the scene.
Huge Atlantic rollers swept by in the shrieking wind, lifting and dropping the corvette, spume blown from the crests spraying the windscreen.
The convoy’s ships were visible as the corvette crested each wave, struggling to maintain station.
The enclosed bridge on the new Hunt class corvette was still highly controversial in naval circles but the improvement in the comfort and effectiveness of the bridge crew was immense.
The Captain had spent too many North Atlantic patrols on windswept open destroyer bridges to want to return to them, and now that initial detection was usually achieved by HF/DF, radar or Asdic, the need for maximum field of view had declined.
The Captain reflected that many other things had changed in nearly twenty months of war.
At first the sheer numbers of U-boats had achieved significant successes, mainly against ships sailing alone.
As the importance of sailing in convoy had been realised, losses had dropped sharply; the MAC-based Swordfishes keeping surfaced submarines at bay while the new ‘pencil’ Asdic beams and Squid mortars proved devastatingly effective against submerged U-boats once the escort commanders had learned how to get the best from them.
Surface attacks at night, often by groups of submarines, had been held off by radar-equipped escorts like his own, later supplemented by Leigh-light Swordfish.
The Battle of the Atlantic was being won very comfortably, until recently… he bit somewhat harder on his pipestem as he thought about the new threat – the high speed electroboats.
A towering column of spray from the convoy caught his attention in the same instant that the lookout shouted a warning.
It was unmistakable: the signature of a torpedo strike.
‘Sound action stations.’
The clamour of the alarm bells rang through the ship, urging the crew to their positions.
The Captain sent a brief message to the other escorts then settled back to wait.
There was little else to do; there was no indication of where the torpedo had come from and the escort would have to wait until some sign of the lurking menace was detected.
He had time to think that the crew were better protected as well; the gunhouse for the forward twin 4 inch mounting was now fully enclosed against the weather with ready-use rounds clipped to the inside, and the Squid teams were relatively well-sheltered behind the bridge.
He settled back again and started brooding about that submarine.
How on earth had it been able to aim with any accuracy in this weather?
The Korvettenkäpitan heard the dull boom of the explosion and smiled as the crew of U470 cheered.
Four G7a torpedoes fitted with FAT pattern-running controls had been fired blind into the convoy from a range of more than 5,000 metres.
The torpedoes were set to travel straight for a certain distance before beginning a zig-zag pattern which took them repeatedly through the convoy until a hit was achieved or they ran out of fuel.
It was the ideal weapon for when weather conditions were too poor, or the escort too strong to close in for an aimed shot.