The Whale Has Wings Vol 1 - Rebirth (11 page)

While he understood the logic of the decision, Churchill was not happy with what he saw as a Royal Navy too busy with defensive actions to take the fight to the enemy. While the main fleet simply couldn't see any way to tempt the German ships out into range of their guns, the FAA did have a plan they had been working on for
some years. Operation Chastise was presented to Churchill.

The day after, a memo arrived on the
First Sea Lords desk. "Chastise. Expedite immediately"

North Sea

On the 25th September news was received at the Admiralty that the submarine Spearfish had been badly damaged off the Horn reef and as a result was unable to dive. Admiral Forbes ordered the 2nd Cruiser squadron and 6 destroyers to proceed and extricate her. The battle cruisers and the 18th Cruiser squadron, with the carrier HMS Illustrious in company, sailed as a covering force.

On the 26th the damaged submarine was met by the cruisers and destroyers and safely escorted to Rosyth. Meanwhile German flying boats had started to attempt to shadow the covering force. The force had been operating under radio and radar silence until the first shadower was spotted, thereafter the Illustrious's radar was in use. It was found difficult with this early model to get an accurate reading on a single aircraft, but it proved good enough to guide one of the carriers CAP of Goshawk fighters into visual range. A number of the flying boats seemed to have been assigned to find and track the force, two of which were shot down. Although radar could show the presence of a single plane, it was difficult for the fighters to close with them as they continually took cover in cloud.

During the afternoon, a single bomber, believed to be an He111, attempted a glide bomb attack on the Illustrious. The primitive operations room had been concentrating on the shadowing floatplanes, and as a result had missed this single plane. It was spotted visually as it moved into attack, and received the undivided attention of 72 40mm c
annon from Illustrious and her two escort destroyers. The plane was shot down, but not before dropping its bomb, which missed the carrier by some fifty yards. The Illustrious's captain reported later the dedication with which the plane carried out its attack in the face of such heavy AA fire. Later analysis of this action led to the interesting comment that the fire from the twin mounts on the destroyers (which were using tracer as these mounts did not have a director) seemed to cause move evasion by the bomber than the much heavier fire from the carrier which only used minimal tracer.

What was identified as a full squadron then attacked in similar glide bomb attacks over the course of the next hour or so. This time, indi
cation was given by radar, and four of these planes were shot down either approaching or after their attacks by the CAP. No more planes were shot down by the close range AA, although a number of planes were damaged. What was noticeable, and worrying, for the force was the ineffective nature of the 4" and 4.5" AA fire, although it had been warned pre-war that this would only be effective against horizontal bombers (presumably attacking in formation). Although there were a number of near misses, no ships were hit by any of the bombs.

Admiral Forbes later stated in his despatch that 'the control personnel were obviously unprepared for such high performance divebombing', and as a result a review was to take place on how to better control and coordinate the close range AA defences of the fleet.
It had also been noted that considerable improvements needed to be made to the control and direction of the carriers defensive aircraft - fortunately the Germans had attacked in singletons, minimising the inexperience of the organisation.

The next series of carrier operations took place after the 5th October, when it was confirmed that Germany did indeed have commerce raiders at sea - this had been anticipated, but not confirmed until then. It was suspected that at least one of their pocket battleships was somewhere at sea, probably in either the North or South Atlantic where the bulk of unescorted merchant ships were.

This had been allowed for in pre-war planning - indeed, this was one of the reasons for building the light carriers in the first place. A number of them were therefore allocated to the hunting groups (in particular those felt least likely to have good land based air cover.

Venerable was detached from Home Fleet to the South Atlantic as part of raider hunting group G, with the cruisers Cumberland and Exeter (later Ajax and Achilles as well)

Courageous was detached from Home Fleet to the We
st Indies as part of raider hunting group N with the French ship Strasbourg.

Glorious was detached from Home Fleet to the
Cape of Good Hope as part of raider hunting group H with the cruisers Shropshire and Sussex

Ark Royal was detached from Gibraltar
and was based on Pernambuco as part of a raider hunting group K with the battlecruiser Renown

Eagle (which had
already been in the Far East) was based at Ceylon as part of Raider hunting group I, with the cruisers Cornwall and Dorsetshire.

As per the pre-war plans, e
ach carrier was accompanied by two of the carrier escort destroyers, to protect her and to help in close search and identification of a suspected raider. Given the nature of the threat, the light carriers carried an airgroup of 12 TBR and 12 DB , all of which could be used for reconnaissance, and three fighters. Given the time of year and the deployment areas, the FAA considered the use of a small deck park quite acceptable.

The rest of the carrier force was held with the Home Fleet; partly as a reserve for deployment as needed, and partly because they had the least experienced aircrew (the more experienced, with the exception of those of the Illustrious, having been sent with the deployed carriers).
They were as far as possible conducting exercises, particularly the aircrew, for Operation Chastise (while this operation had been developed over the last two years and trials and exercises conducted, many of the pilots allocated were not familiar with the techniques that would be required). It was expected that Colossus, Vengeance and Hermes at least would be allocated to convoy escort duties once the system was in full operation. (the Admiralty was also looking ahead to the protection of high value Canadian troop convoys which would be sailing soon and would require a heavy escort)

On the 9th of October, aircraft from the Ark Royal, which was on passage to Freetown with her two escort destroyers, sighted a stopped ship to the west of the Cape Verde Islands. She claimed to be the American S.S.
Delmar
. (It was later ascertained that the
Delmar
was in New Orleans on that date)
. Vice-Admiral Wells (Vice-Admiral, Aircraft Carriers) decided not to close and investigate himself, but instead sent one of his destroyers to inspect the ship. It was just as well he did, as the 'American' ship turned out to be the armed German supply ship the Altmark. As the destroyer closed and demanded that the ship allowed an officer about to inspect her and her papers, the ship fired on it with one of its 6" guns. Fortunately for the destroyer, a merchant ship with some guns added is rarely an efficient gun platform, although she took a few hits from the Altmark's light AA guns while taking evasive action and firing back. The Altmark was basically only a tanker, and the destroyers 4.7" guns soon had her in flames. The action was of course reported to the Ark Royal, which was a prudent 10 miles behind the destroyer. The action ended when the destroyer put two 21" torpedoes into the ship (armed merchant ships didn't have turrets, so it was often easy to fire on them from a point to which their guns could not be made to bear). The Altmark quickly sank, leaving the British to rescue some 80 survivors.

This was to prove of considerable inconvenience to the Graf Spee, as the Altmark was her tanker. The Altmark had sent out a message during the action, which
, while it was not received by the Graf Spee at the time, was relayed to her later. As a result arrangements had to be made for her to use the tanker originally intended for the pocket battleship Deutschland (which by this time was already on her way back to Germany). This change meant that the Graf Spee was only able to intercept one British Ship, the Doric Star, before she decided to change her hunting ground from the African coast to South America.

In the early hours of October 14th, the battleship Royal Oak was torpedoed while at anchor in Scapa flow by the U.47 captained by Leutenant Prien. As a result the fleet left Scapa to its alternate anchorage at Loch Ewe. The anchorage's defences had been run down over the interwar years, and although modernisation was under way it was not yet complete. Ironically blockships needed to close the approach Prien took would have been in place in a few weeks.

Three days later, the submarine raid was followed by an air raid by two squadrons of Ju88's. This was rather a disaster for the Luftwaffe for two reasons. First was, of course, that the fleet wasn'
t there, rendering the exercise rather pointless. Second was that while the fleet had left, two squadrons of Goshawk fighters, part of the fleet FAA contingent whose job was to protect the base, were still there while it was decided where to move them to (the final temporary anchorage for the fleet was still under discussion, and while Loch Ewe was a good anchorage, it had no facilities for aircraft).

The Navy had been experimenting for some time with a version of the RAF's fighter control system. While they thought it did a fine job for the RAF, their requirements were rather different. First, they had little need to track raids all over the place -
the only ones that concerned them were the ones heading for them. Second of course was that whatever they designed had to fit into a ship, one not designed for it. The system was operational at Scapa - indeed, Scapa was used as a test and trial system, where they didn't have to actually shoehorn the equipment into a ship, and so allowed much easier testing and development. It picked up the incoming raid on radar at 70 miles.

The FAA fighters were not, at that time, on such a high alert as was to become common for RAF fighter squadrons
later in the war. Up until now, only an occasional reconnaissance plane had come their way, and these were usually at too high an altitude to be easily intercepted (the Goshawk was, like the bulk of navy fighters at this time, optimised for performance under 20,000feet, as aircraft flying higher had little chance of actually hitting a ship at sea).

The duty
squadron had three fighters on 10 minutes warning, the rest of the squadron being on the field but not at their aircraft. When such a large raid was detected, the three ready planes were got up as fast as possible, while there was a frantic scramble to get the other 15 ready. The Ju88 was a very fast plane, unfortunately for them not as fast as the Goshawk. The defenders had about 15 minutes to get up to the Ju88's, and the ready planes managed this. The rest of the squadron was still getting airborne as the raiders arrived, but fortunately they were attacking the (empty) moorings, not the airfield. The attacking planes did do some damage; they dive bombed the old training ship HMS Iron Duke, damaging her and causing her to be beached, and did some minor damage to the base itself. They accomplished this for the loss of one aircraft to the AA defences. However once the Goshawks arrived it was a different matter. The FAA planes were armed with two 20mm cannon and two 0.5" guns, and the Ju88 was not a heavily protected plane. The initial attackers attacked with complete surprise, and although the later aircraft had to chase the Ju88's as they made their escape, the result was five aircraft shot down for no loss to the defenders (it was later found that three more planes had crashed on the way home, either due to accumulated damage or to running out of fuel due to damaged tanks, and one more had ditched in Norway!).

The FAA was quite pleased with the results, although it did show up some significant deficiencies in the detection and control system, and the amount of warning actually give, As a result improvements were put in hand, with some advice from the RAF, which led to a considerable improvement. It was noted that if the Luftwaffe had attacked the airfield as well, or had had better intelligence, the result would not have been nearly as favo
urable.

Battle
of the River Plate - 10th December 1939

The allied hunting groups seeking the German raiders varied considerably. The heaviest forces - those including a fleet carrier or battlecruiser - had been sent to patrol the areas though the most likely hunting grounds for the raiders. The movement of the Graf Spee from the coast of Africa to off the coast of South America had moved her away from some of the most powerful hunting groups. It was ironically the loss of her tanker to the Ark Royal's escorts that had caused this.

Covering the South American coast, which included the important food shipments from countries such as Argentina, was Force G under Commodore Harwood. The initial force had been the heavy cruisers HMS Cumberland and HMS Exeter, but this was considered too light a force to deal with one of the large pocket battleships, and had been reinforced with the light cruisers HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles, with the light carrier HMS Venerable to give the force air cover and reconnaissance capabilities.

Commodore Harwood had considered the likely areas a raider would go to if it wanted to interdict the merchant ships. He considered the most likely area to be close to the exit to the River Plate, which would give it the target of the regular shipping. The only problem was the size of the area - the mouth of the 'river' at sea was the best part of 100 miles across. Nevertheless, it was the best place to hunt a raider, and while he realised it might take a sinking or two to allow him to close, there was nothing else to do but to make his best guess as where to start. As luck would have it, the first contact with the Graf Spee was before it had managed to sink any ships in this area.