I Sank The Bismarck (20 page)

Another attack could occur at any minute and we were
trying to keep four Fulmars in the air as a permanent combat
air patrol. Aircraft landed and refuelled every hour to make
sure that they would always have enough endurance to take
on enemy aircraft. We also had to keep some Swordfish in the
air for anti-submarine patrols, because we were approaching
the area where submarines would lie in wait. One of the
biggest handicaps we faced was that our route to Malta was
inevitably predictable.

The next attack was not long in coming.
Sheffield
's radar
spotted a reconnaissance aircraft circling the fleet and two of
the Fulmars in the combat air patrol were directed by radio to
intercept and shoot it down. At the same time the patrol
spotted an Italian SM.79 bomber. They all converged on it,
shooting enough bullets into it to make it break up in the air.
They then continued after the reconnaissance aircraft, but it
escaped. When the Fulmars were returning to the fleet, one of
them started to develop engine trouble. White smoke was
pouring out from the cowling and the pilot decided he had no
choice but to ditch in the sea, where the plane sank, though
this time the crew were picked up by a vigilant destroyer.

Another half-hour went by before
Sheffield
's radar plotter
reported several formations of aircraft approaching from
various points of the compass; two of them, we were told,
appeared to be large ones. We quickly ranged the rest of our
Fulmars and they were flown off, with instructions to climb
to 8,000 feet and circle at 5 miles' distance. All the pilots had
flown at least once that day and many of the Fulmars had
already been damaged and repaired. Three Fulmars from 808
Squadron were sent to intercept the approaching enemy formations,
but to emphasize how fragile some of them were,
one was forced to return to the
Ark
when the pilot couldn't
retract his undercarriage.

The other two Fulmars, flown by Lieutenants Kindersley
and Hay, in the air for the second time that day, continued
into the attack. Hay shot at a CR.42 from behind, causing it
to turn away, and then took on three SM.79 bombers by
flying directly at them in a head-on attack, firing his guns.
They were forced to break up their bombing run and decided
to jettison their bombs and seek shelter in cloud.

Meanwhile,
Lieutenant Kindersley was manoeuvring to
attack a group of bombers when he was ambushed by four
CR.42 fighters. He decided to fly into the fleet's anti-aircraft
barrage, where the enemy fighters refused to follow him.
After this attack was broken up, the two Fulmars were then
directed by the air control officer on the
Ark
to intercept
another aircraft that had appeared on
Sheffield
's radar. This
was another SM.79 bomber and Lieutenant Hay shot it down
in flames.

The third Fulmar in the air was flown by Petty Officer
Johnson, who avoided three Italian fighters attempting to fire
on him from the rear and then saw an SM.79 bomber which
he pursued and eventually caught, firing all his remaining
ammunition into it. By then he was 30 miles from the fleet
and had to be directed home, not landing until almost 1700.

While Lieutenant Hay and
Petty Officer Johnson were
making their attacks, three SM.79s had penetrated the antiaircraft
barrages and were heading for us, coming out of the
sun, which was now low in the west, clearly hoping to drop
their bombs down the centre line of the ship – the ideal
approach for an air attack. This was the first time I had seen
us targeted in this way, and I have to say it was alarming. All
the guns opened up, including mine, although the bombers
were at a height at which they were out of my range. The
4.5in anti-aircraft guns started blasting and the pom-poms
were also hammering away, attempting to smash the aircraft
out of the sky. One bomber did not survive the bullets and the
high explosive that we were hurtling up into the sky; it turned
away and jettisoned its bombs in a desperate hope to gain
some height, but crashed into the sea. The other two turned
to follow us.

It was new to me, but the
Ark
's crew had had to deal with
plenty of these attacks before. As the line of bombers
approached, the captain threw the
Ark
into a very tight
turn to port, with the ship vibrating at top speed and what
seemed to be an enormous amount of heel. The two SM.79s
released their bombs; I could see them in the air as they fell,
exploding close to the bows on the starboard side with a
sharp crack and an enormous gout of foam and seawater.
Close, but not close enough, thank God.

Just before this attack, four more aircraft from 807
Squadron had taken to the air, flown by Lt Commander
Douglas,
Petty Officer Leggett, Lieutenant
Gardner and
Lieutenant Firth. As they climbed to reach another enemy
formation, Gardner heard a sudden bang and his port wing
dipped: he realized that the panel covering the four machine
guns in his wing had been ripped off in the slipstream. He
requested permission to land on the
Ark
again, but then
realized that we were firing at the group of bombers
approaching the ship. Clearly this was not the time to try to
land on the carrier, so he climbed and attacked one of the
planes in the formation, despite the poor air-flow over his
wing, getting in several bursts before he lost his target in
cloud. When Gardner gave up the chase and left the cloud he
was fired at by the escort ships, so he too sought the shelter
of the clouds and waited for fire to stop before landing on the
carrier for his wing panels to be replaced.

The other three pilots also attacked the group of Italian
bombers, firing at and chasing them for some distance,
constantly hampered in their pursuit by the low speed of their
Fulmars. They too eventually lost their prey in the clouds.
They continued to maintain a patrol, occasionally being fired
on by their own ships.

Throughout the day we had been getting closer to Sicily,
and at 1918 the radar operators in
Sheffield
picked up echoes
that they interpreted as large formations of aircraft
approaching.

Was this the enemy we had yet to meet? Throughout the
day, at the back of my mind had been the knowledge that
the Luftwaffe had a large number of planes in Sicily. So far we
had had to deal only with Italian aircraft, but surely the
Luftwaffe was not going to stay out of it?
Illustrious
had been
attacked by thirty-three Stukas, and we had just six or seven
fighters left. Now we were facing another massive attack –
this time it could easily be the Luftwaffe assembling over its
airfields in Sicily.

I won't pretend that I was not apprehensive at that time.
You didn't have to be in the squadron office to know what the
situation was: we could all see the movements on the flight
deck and knew which planes were taking off, which were
returning and in what state. We did not have a great deal left
to throw at the enemy, whether they were Germans or Italians.

The pilots still in the air, on that evening of 8 May, were
joined by four others, all of whom had already seen combat
earlier in the day. They took off from the flight deck, their
Merlin engines hauling the heavy aircraft into the air. With
the
Ark
going at 20 knots they could be airborne about
halfway down the flight deck, less if the headwind was strong.
Lieutenant Richard Gardner's Fulmar had been repaired and
he was taking off for his fourth fighter patrol. Petty Officer
Dubber, Lieutenant Taylour and
Sub-Lieutenant Walker
followed him. There were now seven fighters in the air, and
these pilots, with their observers in the rear cockpit, were all
that now stood between Force H and the
German dive-bombers
approaching – by this time that was what we
believed them to be.

Our Fulmars went into the fight extremely aggressively,
despite the overwhelming numbers of enemy aircraft that
confronted them. The German aircraft had split up into
different sections and the fighter direction officer in the
Ark
thought that they were preparing to make a concerted
attack
from three different directions, so that the
Ark
would always
be presenting a perfect target to at least one section of dive-bombers,
the preferred approach being along the centre line
of the target ship, giving the pilot the maximum length of
target.

The three fighters that were already on patrol at 8,000 feet
were directed by the fighter direction officer to fly to the north
of the fleet, where the radar operators in
Sheffield
had identified
a number of aircraft circling above some stratus cloud. As
they approached they saw that they were a group of fifteen
Stuka dive-bombers under the protection of six Messerschmitt
Me110s, twin-engined long-range fighters. The Luftwaffe
really had arrived, and the news was radioed back to the
Ark.
Then Lt Commander Douglas in the lead Fulmar turned into
the Me110 fighters and fired at two in turn, seeing the second
one he hit go down into cloud. It was the first victory, but the
reargunners of the Messerschmitts both returned the fire and
Douglas's Fulmar was hit in the leading edge of both his
wings, his hydraulic system was damaged and fluid started
pouring out into the slipstream.

Petty Officer Leggett, Douglas's wingman, dived straight on
to the circling Stukas, but one of the German fighters
attempted to intercept him. Leggett turned inside the
Messerschmitt and fired a burst from his machine gun into its
cockpit, putting the reargunner out of action. The German
aircraft seemed to stall and turn, then dived into cloud with a
trail of white smoke behind it. Lieutenant Firth was met by
two of the German fighters climbing towards him and he
made a head-on approach, firing into the leading aircraft. The
pilot also turned away and dived into cloud, with smoke
pouring from one engine. The second Messerschmitt was also
fired on by Leggett, and it too manoeuvred away from the
attack into cloud.

These three pilots had, in an incredibly brave and aggressive
approach, driven off six
Messerschmitt fighters, probably
damaging at least three. The three Fulmar pilots continued to
search for them under the cloud, but could not locate them
and, running short of fuel and ammunition, they had to return
to the
Ark
and land on the flight deck. It had been a stunning
success. The Fulmar could fly at a maximum speed of only
230 knots and would have been outrun and outmanoeuvred
by the single-engined Messerschmitt 109 fighters. The
Me110s, however, were at more of a disadvantage, although
they had some powerful machine guns and cannon in the
nose, as well as a rear-firing machine gun.

The four other pilots that had taken off from
Ark Royal
to
intercept the formation of German aircraft climbed to 9,000
feet and saw that, as well as the six escorting Messerschmitts,
there was one group of sixteen Stukas and a second group of
twelve. Lieutenant Taylour dived into the formation to break
them up, carried out several attacks and pursued them into
cloud for about 30 miles. His plane was hit, however, and the
starboard undercarriage leg dropped down, forcing him to
return to the
Ark.
Petty Officer Dubber, Taylour's wingman,
made a head-on attack at a group of Stukas, then turned and
started firing at them from the rear quarter. One of the escorting
fighters then attempted to protect the dive-bombers and
made a stern attack on Dubber's Fulmar, from which he
escaped by diving into cloud.

Lieutenant Gardner had split off from Taylour's section and
aggressively attacked another section of sixteen Stukas, pouring
a burst of gunfire into the nearest one, which turned over
and dived into the sea. Gardner hurled through the formation,
firing at close range at several others. His own aircraft was
hit, with bullets smashing the windscreen and punching holes
in the engine radiator, but he broke up the formation and
several of the Stukas started to jettison their bomb load.
Psychologically, this was the point where the enemy was
defeated. They made the decision that it was pointless to
continue their attack, and so got rid of their load to give themselves
more fuel and speed to escape. Gardner's aircraft,
however, was badly damaged and he had to return to the
Ark,
but his number two, Lieutenant Firth, continued to attack a
formation of three Messerschmitt 110s, which scattered into
cloud. Searching for more targets, Firth flew on and attacked
a formation of Stukas before becoming embroiled in a dogfight
with an Me110, which broke off the action. Firth again
launched his fighter at the Stukas, pursuing a straggler into
cloud with smoke pouring from it. His air gunner, Leading
Airman Shaw, saw at least one Stuka go down in flames.

At 2139 all the Fulmars had landed back on
Ark Royal.
Not one Stuka had succeeded in making an attack on the fleet,
despite their overwhelming superiority. Yet the day wasn't
over. At 2030, before all the Fulmars had returned, a separate
attack was started. Sneaking in under the radar, while
everyone was focused on the attack from the German dive-bombers,
three low-level torpedo bombers flew both at
Renown
and at us on the
Ark.
One broke away after antiaircraft
fire started to hit it and bits of its fuselage were seen
flying off, but the other two launched their torpedoes. For the
second time that day we made a sharp turn to port after
torpedo bombers roared overhead, and the torpedoes passed
50 metres away on the starboard side.

This was the final attack of a day that had seen us face an
onslaught of more than fifty aircraft in total, defended by a
maximum at the beginning of the day of just twelve serviceable
Fulmars out of two squadrons on board. I thought it was
unbelievable. Some of us were puzzled that the German dive-bombers
hadn't pursued their attack with more
determination, and there were theories that the Luftwaffe
pilots mistook the Fulmars for the more effective Hurricane
fighters. Yet they had faced Fulmar aircraft when they had
successfully dive-bombed
Illustrious,
so this seems unlikely.