The Gathering Storm: The Second World War (63 page)

The First Lord submits these notes to his naval colleagues for consideration,
for criticism and correction,
and hopes to receive proposals for action in the sense desired.

The organisation of outward-bound convoys was brought into force almost at once. By September 8, three main routes had begun to work, namely, from Liverpool and from the Thames to the western ocean, and a coastal convoy between the Thames and the Forth. Staffs for the control of convoys at these ports and many others at home and abroad were included in the war plan, and had already been dispatched. Meanwhile, all ships outward bound in the Channel and Irish Sea and not in convoy were ordered to Plymouth and Milford Haven, and all independent outward sailings were cancelled. Overseas, arrangements for forming homeward-bound convoys were pressed forward. The first of them sailed from Freetown on September 14 and from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the sixteenth. Before the end of the month regular ocean convoys were in operation, outward from the Thames and Liverpool and homeward from Halifax, Gibraltar, and Freetown.

Upon all the vital need of feeding the island and developing our power to wage war there now at once fell the numbing loss of the Southern Irish ports. This imposed a grievous restriction on the radius of action of our already scarce destroyers:

A special report should be drawn up by the heads of departments concerned and sent to the First Lord through the First Sea Lord and the Naval Staff upon the questions arising from the socalled neutrality of the so-called Eire. Various considerations arise: (1) What does Intelligence say about possible succouring of U-boats by Irish malcontents in West of Ireland inlets? If they throw bombs in London,
⁵
why should they not supply fuel to U-boats? Extreme vigilance should be practised.

Secondly, a study is required of the addition to the radius of our destroyers through not having the use of Berehaven or other South Irish anti-submarine bases; showing also the advantage to be gained by our having these facilities.

The Board must realise that we may not be able to obtain satisfaction, as the question of Irish neutrality raises political issues which have not yet been faced, and which the First Lord is not certain he can solve. But the full case must be made for consideration.

* * * * *

After the institution of the convoy system, the next vital naval need was a safe base for the Fleet. At 10
P.M
. on September 5, I held a lengthy conference on this. It recalled many old memories. In a war with Germany, Scapa Flow is the true strategic point from which the British Navy can control the exits from the North Sea and enforce blockade. It was only in the last two years of the previous war that the Grand Fleet was judged to have sufficient superiority to move south to Rosyth, where it had the advantage of lying at a first-class dockyard. But Scapa, on account of its greater distance from German air bases, was now plainly the best position and had been definitely chosen in the Admiralty war plan.

In the autumn of 1914, a wave of uneasiness had swept the Grand Fleet. The idea had got round,
“the German submarines were coming after them into the harbours.”
Nobody at the Admiralty then believed that it was possible to take a submarine, submerged, through the intricate and swirling channels by which the great lake of Scapa can alone be entered. The violent tides and currents of the Pentland Firth, often running eight or ten knots, had seemed in those days to be an effective deterrent. But a mood of doubt spread through the mighty array of perhaps a hundred large vessels which in those days composed the Grand Fleet. On two or three occasions, notably on October 17, 1914, the alarm was given that there was a U-boat inside the anchorage. Guns were fired, destroyers thrashed the waters, and the whole gigantic armada put to sea in haste and dudgeon. In the final result the Admiralty were proved right. No German submarine in that war ever overcame the terrors of the passage. It was only in 1918, after the mutiny of the German Navy, that a U-boat, manned entirely by officers seeking to save their honour, perished in a final desperate effort. Nevertheless, I retained a most vivid and unpleasant memory of those days and of the extreme exertions we made to block all the entrances and reassure the Fleet.

There were now in 1939 two dangers to be considered: the first, the old one of submarine incursion; the second, the new one of the air. I was surprised to learn at my conference that more precautions had not been taken in both cases to prepare the defences against modern forms of attack. Anti-submarine booms of new design were in position at each of the three main entrances, but these consisted merely of single lines of net. The narrow and tortuous approaches on the east side of the Flow, defended only by remnants of the blockships placed in the former war and reinforced now by two or three recent additions, remained a source of anxiety. On account of the increased size, speed, and power of modern submarines, the old belief that the strong tidal streams made these passages impassable to a submarine no longer carried conviction in responsible quarters. As a result of the conference on my second evening at the Admiralty, many orders were given for additional nets and blockships.

The new danger from the air had been almost entirely ignored. Except for two batteries of anti-aircraft guns to defend the naval oil tanks at Hoy and the destroyer anchorage, there were no air defences at Scapa. One airfield near Kirkwall was available for the use of naval aircraft when the Fleet was present, but no provision had been made for immediate R.A.F. participation in the defence, and the shore radar station, although operative, was not wholly effective. Plans for basing two R.A.F. fighter squadrons at Wick had been approved, but this measure could not become effective before 1940. I called for an immediate plan of action. Our air defence was so strained, our resources so limited, and our vulnerable points – including all vast London – so numerous, that it was no use asking for much. On the other hand, protection from air attack was now needed only for five or six great ships, each carrying a powerful antiaircraft armament of its own. To keep things going, the Admiralty undertook to provide two squadrons of naval fighter aircraft whilst the Fleet was in Scapa.

It seemed most important to have the artillery in position at the shortest interval, and meanwhile there was nothing for it but to adopt the same policy of “hide-and-seek” to which we had been forced in the autumn days of 1914. The west coast of Scotland had many landlocked anchorages easy to protect from U-boats by indicator nets and ceaseless patrolling. We had found concealment in the previous war a good security; but even in those days the curiosity of a wandering airplane, perhaps fuelled by traitor hands, had filled our hearts with fear. Now that the range of aircraft exposed the whole British Islands at any time to photographic reconnaissance, there was no sure concealment against large-scale attack either by U-boats or from the air. However, there were so few ships to cover, and they could be moved so often from one place to another, that, having no alternative, we accepted the hazard with as good grace as possible.

* * * * *

I felt it my duty to visit Scapa at the earliest moment. I had not met the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Charles Forbes, since Lord Chatfield had taken me to the Anti-Submarine School at Portland in June, 1938. I therefore obtained leave from our daily Cabinets, and started for Wick with a small personal staff on the night of September 14. I spent most of the next two days inspecting the harbour and the entrances with their booms and nets. I was assured that they were as good as in the last war, and that important additions and improvements were being made or were on their way. I stayed with the Commander-in-Chief in his flagship,
Nelson,
and discussed not only Scapa but the whole naval problem with him and his principal officers. The rest of the Fleet was hiding in Loch Ewe, and on the seventeenth the Admiral took me to them in the
Nelson.
As we came out through the gateway into the open sea, I was surprised to see no escort of destroyers for this great ship. “I thought,” I remarked, “you never went to sea without at least two, even for a single battleship.” But the Admiral replied, “Of course, that is what we should like; but we haven’t got the destroyers to carry out any such rule. There are a lot of patrolling craft about, and we shall be into the Minches in a few hours.”

It was like the others a lovely day. All went well, and in the evening we anchored in Loch Ewe, where the four or five other great ships of the Home Fleet were assembled. The narrow entry into the loch was closed by several lines of indicator nets, and patrolling craft with Asdics and depth-charges, as well as picket boats, were numerous and busy. On every side rose the purple hills of Scotland in all their splendour. My thoughts went back a quarter of a century to that other September when I had last visited Sir John Jellicoe and his captains in this very bay, and had found them with their long lines of battleships and cruisers drawn out at anchor, a prey to the same uncertainties as now afflicted us. Most of the captains and admirals of those days were dead, or had long passed into retirement. The responsible senior officers who were now presented to me as I visited the various ships had been young lieutenants or even midshipmen in those far-off days. Before the former war I had had three years’ preparation in which to make the acquaintance and approve the appointments of most of the high personnel, but now all these were new figures and new faces. The perfect discipline, style and bearing, the ceremonial routine – all were unchanged. But an entirely different generation filled the uniforms and the posts. Only the ships had most of them been laid down in my tenure. None of them was new. It was a strange experience, like suddenly resuming a previous incarnation. It seemed that I was all that survived in the same position I had held so long ago. But no; the dangers had survived too. Danger from beneath the waves, more serious with more powerful U-boats; danger from the air, not merely of being spotted in your hiding-place, but of heavy and perhaps destructive attack!

Having inspected two more ships on the morning of the eighteenth, and formed during my visit a strong feeling of confidence in the Commander-in-Chief, I motored from Loch Ewe to Inverness, where our train awaited us. We had a picnic lunch on the way by a stream, sparkling in hot sunshine. I felt oddly oppressed with my memories.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.

No one had ever been over the same terrible course twice with such an interval between. No one had felt its dangers and responsibilities from the summit as I had or, to descend to a small point, understood how First Lords of the Admiralty are treated when great ships are sunk and things go wrong. If we were in fact going over the same cycle a second time, should I have once again to endure the pangs of dismissal? Fisher, Wilson, Battenberg, Jellicoe, Beatty, Pakenham, Sturdee, all gone!

I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!

And what of the supreme measureless ordeal in which we were again irrevocably plunged? Poland in its agony; France but a pale reflection of her former warlike ardour; the Russian Colossus no longer an ally, not even neutral, possibly to become a foe. Italy no friend. Japan no ally. Would America ever come in again? The British Empire remained intact and gloriously united, but ill-prepared, unready. We still had command of the sea. We were woefully outmatched in numbers in this new mortal weapon of the air. Somehow the light faded out of the landscape.

We joined our train at Inverness and travelled through the afternoon and night to London. As we got out at Euston the next morning, I was surprised to see the First Sea Lord on the platform. Admiral Pound’s look was grave. “I have bad news for you, First Lord. The
Courageous
was sunk yesterday evening in the Bristol Channel.” The
Courageous
was one of our oldest aircraft carriers, but a very necessary ship at this time. I thanked him for coming to break it to me himself, and said, “We can’t expect to carry on a war like this without these sorts of things happening from time to time. I have seen lots of it before.” And so to bath and the toil of another day.

In order to bridge the gap of two or three weeks between the outbreak of war and the completion of our auxiliary anti-U-boat flotillas, we had decided to use the aircraft carriers with some freedom in helping to bring in the unarmed, unorganised, and unconvoyed traffic which was then approaching our shores in large numbers. This was a risk which it was right to run. The
Courageous
attended by four destroyers had been thus employed. Towards evening on the seventeenth, two of these had to go to hunt a U-boat which was attacking a merchant ship. When the
Courageous
turned into the wind at dusk, in order to enable her own aircraft to alight upon her landing-deck, she happened, in her unpredictable course, by what may have been a hundred-to-one chance, to meet a U-boat. Out of her crew of 1,260 over 500 were drowned, including Captain Makeig-Jones, who went down with his ship. Three days before another of our aircraft carriers, later to become famous, H.M.S.
Ark Royal,
had also been attacked by a submarine while similarly engaged. Mercifully the torpedoes missed, and her assailant was promptly sunk by her escorting destroyers.

* * * * *

Outstanding among our naval problems was that of dealing effectively with surface raiders, which would inevitably make their appearance in the near future as they had done in 1914.