I Sank The Bismarck (17 page)

In contrast, our raid on the Tirso dam had been a pretty ad
hoc affair. The pilots had been surprised by the heavy antiaircraft
defences, and the weather itself had been extremely
unfriendly. We had flown in with weapons that had been
designed to sink warships, not blow apart concrete walls,
using a high level of guesswork about the most appropriate
depth at which to hit the dam. Nevertheless, we had managed
to drop four torpedoes and had lost only one aircraft. Later
on in the war, when I heard about the attack on the three
dams in Germany by the RAF, I couldn't help thinking that we
had tried it first. That was a remarkable operation, by some
very brave airmen, but flying low and steady over water
towards the target was something that we knew all about – it
was what we had to do to launch torpedoes – and if we had
had something similar to the bouncing bomb that they had,
we would have blown that dam at Tirso to pieces.

By the time the Swordfish had landed back on the
Ark,
it
was 0900. I had woken up, flown my first reconnaissance
patrol of the day and come back for breakfast. Before the lads
had returned from the raid, the atmosphere was tense. It was
bad form to say anything, of course, but it was impossible not
to think about what might be happening to our colleagues 60
miles away over Sardinia, and not to wait, slightly apprehensively,
to see when they would return, and how many. As I
watched them land on, tired, their faces drawn, I was surprised
and relieved that only one Swordfish had failed to
come back. I thought, however, that the lost crew was the
least experienced and might well have been me. Perhaps Tim
Coode had made the right decision.

The raid on the dam completed, the plan was that we
would now steam north and make our preparations for the
attacks on Genoa and the other ports in northern Italy. We
were scheduled for take-off later that evening, but the weather
started to get rough, the seas became steeper and the ship was
pitching a good deal. Flight operations were reduced to the
bare minimum for safety.

Later that afternoon, the captain took the view that, given
the rough seas, aircraft could not be flown off in the dark and
only nine aircraft could be dealt with safely on the flight deck
at any one time. Then we were reduced to a speed of 15 knots,
and some of the destroyers escorting us were being damaged
in the rough seas. There was also a forecast of low cloud over
the targets. Two hours later, the operation was cancelled. It
was inevitable, given the conditions, and the wiser, more
experienced heads in the wardroom thought it was the right
decision.

We made our way back to Gibraltar. On the way we practised
torpedo drops, carried out live firing exercises, and I
flew one of the squadron's planes back to the landing strip
that had been built on the old racecourse at Gibraltar, so I had
some time ashore.

There was a bit of an inquest into what our Swordfish
crews had experienced when they flew over the Tirso dam.
There was some concern over the large discrepancy between
the intelligence estimates of the anti-aircraft defences given to
the squadrons and the quite formidable reality that had faced
the attackers on the day. The captain cleared lower decks a
few days later and addressed us, stressing the need for tighter
security and greater awareness of the fact that Gibraltar, and
La Linea in Spain where we sometimes went for meals, were
hotbeds of spies and that we should be extremely careful of
what we said. Evidently the senior officers believed that the
Italians had got wind of our raid. I thought, however, that if
our intelligence had been better we would have known about
the increased gun emplacements.

A week later, on the afternoon of Thursday, 6 February, the
Ark
once more left Gibraltar, with
Renown,
Malaya
and
Sheffield.
We were going to finish the operation that we had
started with the attempt to breach the Tirso dam. I had been
selected to take part this time, as part of a mine-laying attack
on an Italian port. We steamed north-east, close to the French
and Italian coasts, expecting to be attacked at any minute.
There were several alarms as we were spotted by enemy
planes on the way, and we had two accidents, one when a
Skua pilot landed very heavily and collapsed his undercarriage,
and the second when a Fulmar had to ditch with
engine trouble.

Early on the morning of Sunday the 9th, I was woken and
went to the briefing room. Our plans for the raid were little
changed from the previous week, but it crossed my mind that,
after the torpedoing of the dam, the Italian coastal defences
might be more than normally alert. I put this to the back of
my mind as we went through details of expected weather and
flying times to the target. In its entirety, the operation was an
attack on three separate targets. Force H was going to split
up: the battleships
Renown
and
Malaya
were going north
to steam 10 miles off the coast of Genoa to shell the port
with their big guns. There had been reports of two battleships
and a heavy cruiser in the docks at Genoa, one of them,
Duilio,
installed in a dry dock undergoing repairs to the
damage she had suffered at Taranto. There was no confirmation
of this, and various other important targets in the town
had also been selected. Swordfish aircraft from the
Ark
would
act as spotters to direct the gunfire and would no doubt
discover if there were major warships moored up. Another
section of Swordfish was going to bomb the town of Leghorn,
just south of Pisa, while I and three other Swordfish were to
drop mines in the harbour at
La Spezia, farther north along
the coast from Leghorn.

Renown
and
Malaya
opened fire at about 0715.
Renown
hit the railway yards and factories on the banks of the
Polceverra river, which entered the sea by the western part of
the town. This started fires, and the battleship then moved her
aim to the docks, which had been named by Mussolini after
the East African countries Italy had invaded before the war,
such as Abyssinia and Eritrea. Some merchant ships were hit,
but no large warships were there. A salvo landed on the
power station, causing a very big explosion – obviously the oil
tanks had been hit, as the spotting aircraft saw the thick black
smoke of an oil fire rising into the morning air. This started to
make spotting difficult, but the guns shifted their aim again
and began pouring shells on both the locomotive works of
Ansaldo and another electrical factory.

Malaya
concentrated on the dry docks and the factories and
warehouses in the eastern part of the port, which had houses
clustered around them. One of the pilots of the spotting
Swordfish I spoke to said that he saw a single shell knock
down a complete row of houses before it exploded. It must
have been an incredible shock to the inhabitants of the town.
Just one salvo from
Renown
would have been six 16in shells,
landing within 50 yards of each other. Their explosive power
would have been devastating and it would have been repeated
every few minutes.

The firing continued for an hour, and I have heard estimates
that it would have taken the Royal Air Force almost two
weeks of bombing raids to have delivered the same amount of
explosives as fell on Genoa in those sixty minutes. The attack
was on a Sunday morning, so many of the factories and docks
would have been empty of any workers; even so, there were
140 casualties, and most of those, of course, were civilians.
Apart from the damage caused to the power station, and to
the docks and factories, four merchant ships were sunk, a
training ship was damaged and an oil tanker was hit by a 6in
shell from
Sheffield.
One unexploded shell landed in the
cathedral, where it is still kept on display in the nave. News
of the bombardment must have caused some consternation
amongst the Italian high command on that Sunday morning,
but imagine what they must have felt when reports of other
attacks started coming in.

Fourteen Swordfish were ranged up on the flight deck of
the
Ark,
and at 0500 they started their engines. As each
Bristol Pegasus engine burst into life, sparks and flashes were
spat out of the exhaust that stuck out from the starboard side
of the engine cowling. You felt that they could be seen from
afar and must be signalling our position to every Italian ship
and spotter aircraft for hundreds of miles around. We had
come 700 miles from Gibraltar, hugging the coast of Corsica,
but soon the bombardment would start and we felt that there
would be no hiding place.

The Swordfish took off, heading for Leghorn. They were
armed with 250lb bombs and incendiaries, and their intention
was to attack the Azienda oil refinery in the port. They
formed up over a flare dropped into the sea, then flew east to
make a landfall north of their target, but lack of experience of
night flying and the need for radio silence meant that two
aircraft got lost and continued inland until they located a
town. They had arrived over Pisa! I am not sure that they
spent a lot of time looking for the Leaning Tower, but they
made the best of a bad job and, circling low, with no antiaircraft
fire being hurled against them, they searched out two
likely targets. One attacked the aerodrome,
dropping his
bombs on a hangar and office building, while the other found
Pisa railway yards and dropped his bombs on that. Neither of
them could tell what sort of damage they had done, but they
clearly had done what they could and so headed back to pick
up the
Ark.

The other eleven aircraft managed to fly over Leghorn and
started bombing the oil refinery. They had achieved almost
complete surprise, with some slight anti-aircraft fire opening
up at the sound of the first bombs, but in a few minutes tracer
bullets were hosing up into the sky, and high-angle artillery
was exploding around them. One Swordfish collided with the
cable of one of the barrage balloons tethered all round
the harbour; the plane was so badly damaged it spun and
crashed into the harbour. The pilot, Sub-Lieutenant
Attenborough, his observer,
Sub-Lieutenant Foote, and the
TAG,
Leading Airman Halifax, were all killed.

I was one of the last to take off that morning – a member
of a small force of four Swordfish armed with 'cucumbers',
the long magnetic anti-ship mines we carried under the
fuselage. We were headed to the naval base at La Spezia,
which was about an hour away, and we flew low towards the
coast.

At last I was flying on a mission to attack the enemy, but I
was also extremely apprehensive about what I would find
when I got there. Everybody had behaved as though this were
just a normal anti-submarine patrol. My observer,
Dusty Miller, had filled me in on the aiming points and
the latest intelligence about the target in his usual laconic,
matter-of-fact way; the rigger had bawled out his tuneless
song about his mother's apple pie as he tightened my straps;
and I too had been keen to appear organized and efficient.
The engine fired first time, and we were on our way. As we
formed up with the other three planes, the Swordfish seemed
slightly heavier with the big mine strapped to it. I was
nervous. I couldn't believe that I was going to fly over an
enemy naval port without being challenged, shot at and
attacked by enemy fighters. We were at war, after all, and this
was the very first time that I had taken part in an attack on
the enemy. I had been in the
Ark
for over two months now
and it was high time I took part in operations of this sort, but
my concern was not only what would happen, but that I
would not make a mess of it.

La Spezia is at the head of a narrow gulf formed by the
Italian mainland and a small peninsula to the west.
The harbour is protected by a mole that cuts across the gulf,
leaving entrances at the eastern and western ends, and inside
this is a smaller harbour, which was the main haven for the
Italian navy. Our targets were the gaps at either end of the
outer mole. They were narrow and if we could block them
with mines, the commercial harbour as well as the naval basin
would be unusable until all the mines were cleared. If luck
was on our side, the Italian navy would not succeed in clearing
them all and one of our mines might blow up under a ship,
with the wreck blocking the port for a considerable time.

I flew in to the coast south of the town, then headed north
with the gulf to my left and the hills of the mainland to my
right. It was just after 0600 and there was absolutely no
activity. When we got to La Spezia, we noticed that the streetlights
were all on. I went down to about 500 feet, then turned
to fly over the town and head south to the mole. We didn't see
any fishing boats or other small craft moving about in the
harbour. I was surprised, and relieved. I heard Dusty saying to
me when we crossed the lighted town, 'It must be to help them
on their way to mass.' He was always one to say something to
help break the tension. It was one of the reasons that I liked
flying with him. I couldn't help smiling, and was settling in
my seat to go lower down to 200 feet, feeling that this might
be a piece of cake, when I heard in my ear, 'Holy Jesus, look
to your left.' I looked across at the inner harbour, and there
was the massive superstructure of a big warship.

No one had been absolutely sure where the remainder of
the big battleships had gone after Taranto, but clearly at least
one had ended up here. I kept straight and level now, flying at
100 feet and heading for the gap at the end of the mole,
hoping and praying that nobody on watch on the battleship
would raise the alarm. One minute, two minutes, and I
pressed the button on the stick and the Swordfish rose up as
the weight of the mine dropped away. Any conversation
between us was superfluous. I kept the aircraft low, heading
at full throttle out to sea. When we were 5 miles out, Dusty
said that the guns of a battery had opened up and were probably
targeting some of the other Swordfish, and also that
some very bright flares that the Italians used, which we called
flaming onions, had been fired and were slowly descending,
looking from our distance like very impressive fireworks. In
fact, when we returned and were debriefed we learned that
some of our colleagues had faced low-level automatic cannon
fire, which missed them, and some of the larger anti-aircraft
guns had started firing blind into the air. None of our
Swordfish was hit.