Operation Mercury (19 page)

Before the Greek invasion Admiral Cunningham made his daring and successful sweeps through the Mediterranean in complete disregard of the Italian Air Force. When Italian fliers did attack, the fleet put up an AA barrage [and] the Italians took avoiding action … But over Crete Waters, German pilots came out of the sun in steep power dives, utterly disregarded AA fire [and] released their bombs over the target … dive bombing was accompanied by high level bombing and torpedo attacks. Often the bombs struck before the bomber was seen. The fleet AA could only fire barrages into the sun [and] hope fir hits … In some cases of major damage or sinking the air attack had been of such intensity and duration … that the vessels were out of ammunition long before the bombing ceased.
¹

 

I had the vessel [in my bombsight] … From bows to stern she filled the circle, and then with decreasing distance she seemed to grow fast … this was a cruiser and now I saw two more of them in line ahead. This was something I had never seen before … My cruiser … shot at me with every gun barrel and her speed was so fast that she forced me to flatten my dive … I pushed the button immediately turning to starboard and the bombs dropped. I was now within easy reach of the light guns and the tracers … were everywhere … I would have given a fortune for more speed to get out of the range of those gunners. All of a sudden there were cascades of water coming up my way. They shot at me with heavy artillery planting water trees right in my course … I began to dance … ‘The AA Waltz', turn and turn upwards and downwards … It was not fun, however. I felt that there were professionals firing at me … This was my first encounter with British cruisers, I said and I am still alive, still flying … home to Eleusis.

The bombs had hit the wake.
²

 

Some two centuries ago Admiral Lord Nelson had defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain off Cape Trafalgar, securing Britain from invasion and establishing the fact of British naval hegemony. ‘Britannia Rules the Waves' was not mere jingoism, it was a factual statement and no maritime power came close to challenging the global supremacy of the Royal Navy until the Naval Arms Race with the German High Seas Fleet in the years prior to the outbreak of the First World War. Though the single clash between the opposing dreadnoughts at Jutland in 1916 was inconclusive, the High Seas fleet retired to harbour and made no significant sorties.

The development of submarine warfare and the increasing importance of air power had changed the face of war at sea. The loss of the French fleet after 1940 and the entry of the Italians, with their powerful navy, into the war threatened the whole British position in the Mediterranean. Beaten at Taranto and off Cape Matapan, the menace from the Italians largely evaporated but that posed by the Luftwaffe did not.

If the attempt to seize Crete by aerial envelopment represented a significant tactical innovation then the concurrent battle at sea would see a major air force take on a dominant battle fleet in a savage and sustained fight, the ships utterly unprotected from the air other than by the weight of their own AA barrage. The experience would, for the British Navy, be both chastening and costly.

By May 1941 Admiral Cunningham's ships carried an onerous burden, or series of burdens, shadowing the more numerous Italians, shielding Malta, blockading Libya, supplying the outlying bastion of Tobruk and, most recently, shipping the army to and rescuing it from Greece. All at a time when the RAF was least able to provide supporting air cover. Before the Battle for Crete began Cunningham was noting that his ships and crews were worn out, the vessels needed servicing and refitting and the men needed rest from the constant strain of action. Ammunition, particularly for the AA guns, was running at dangerously low levels.

During the course of the forced evacuation of the army from the small ports and beaches of the Peloponnese, the strain had increased significantly and twenty-two ships had been lost. None of these went down in ship-to-ship engagements; all were sunk by marauding German bombers and dive bombers and it was clear that the main danger came from the skies. The Italian ships, rarely sighted, now declined to engage and the Axis had no fleet other than theirs available, but the Luftwaffe more than compensated for the deficiency.

The cardinal lesson learnt from the Greek fiasco was that naval operations could now only proceed safely under cover of darkness; to be exposed at sea in daylight hours was to court disaster. Cunningham, understandably, had been wary of his ships' ability to protect Crete. One of the bitter lessons learnt, especially after the loss of the two destroyers
Wryneck
and
Diamond
off Nauplion, was that single ships or pairs were particularly vulnerable. Any foray needed to be squadron sized so the combined AA barrage could create a storm or ‘box' of shot, forming an anti-aircraft umbrella.

As a seaborne descent on Crete seemed likely, repelling any such armada was Cunningham's prime strategic role. Consequently he deployed his ships in three battle squadrons. Vice Admiral Pridham-Whippel and Rear Admiral Rawlings were given charge of the main battle fleet, itself divided into forces A and A1 – their allotted task was to cruise the western approaches to intercept any attempt by the Italian Navy to cover a landing. This powerful force included several capital ships:
Queen Elizabeth, Barham
,
Warspite, Valiant
, two cruisers and sixteen destroyers.

To see off any intruders Cunningham created two cruiser squadrons. Rear Admiral King (Force C) commanded
Naiad, Perth, Calcutta
and
Carlisle
, with four destroyers whilst Force D, under Rear Admiral Glennie, comprised:
Dido, Orion, Ajax
and another four destroyers. To avoid the perils of daylight sailing, the two cruiser forces would stay to the south and then, under cover of darkness, sweep the north coast; King bearing west once through the Kaso Strait with Glennie passing through the Antikithera Channel and sweeping eastwards.

The 20 May saw no major action at sea but on the 21st, as the Mediterranean dawn poured light over the ‘wine dark sea', King's squadron had a brush with the Luftwaffe which resulted in the loss of
Juno
.
³
As the day wore on the evidence of an attempted landing, gleaned from intelligence sources, mounted. Admiralty intelligence on Crete, managed by Captain J.A.V. Morse, was particularly efficient, relying on an established espionage network supported by aerial reconnaissance (sea planes, the Short Sunderlands, flying from Egypt). By midday Cunningham knew what was afoot and issued orders to King and Glennie to continue their coastal sweeps that night.

As the fast warships, moving at full speed, surged along the coast of Crete, the rather ramshackle fleet Student had been ordered by Hitler to assemble, comprised some twenty odd commandeered caiques, a handful of coastal steamers and only a single escort, the Italian destroyer
Lupo
and four torpedo boats; on board some 2,330 soldiers, mostly from Ringel's 5th Division, with an array of heavy weapons, field and AA guns, tanks, motorcycles and transport vehicles. For these Alpine troops the sea was as foreign as the skies: ‘Few of us had been on board a ship in our lives.'
⁴

At 11.15 p.m. Glennie's ships fell upon this flotilla in a singularly one sided engagement. The job was quite simply to kill Germans, as many as possible, and to send their heavy weapons to the bottom of the Mediterranean. For the men on board the British warships this was an opportunity to strike a blow – to make up for the hours of nerve shredding bombing and strafing they'd endured. It did not go to waste; for two and a half hours Student's armada was rammed, shot up and machine gunned; few of the leading vessels survived.

It was distasteful to fire on the hapless Greek crews press-ganged into hated service but this was war at its most brutal and business like. The job was to frustrate a seaborne attack and this was ruthlessly accomplished. The German flotilla, as a tool for invasion, was a total write-off, neither men nor any matériel reached the shore. The Royal Navy had fulfilled its promise to the letter. Jahnke, a soldier with the 5th Division, recounted the terror of the ordeal:

The
Lupo
did her best to protect the convoy. Hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, her captain fought his ship with great skill, courage and determination, despite the many hits she took. Having accomplished his mission, Glennie withdrew his squadron while still shrouded by the cloak of darkness. Cunningham was later to criticise this decision for it left King, still sweeping the north coast as dawn began to filter, exposed.

It was known that two flotillas had left the mainland. One was accounted for but that still left another which could not be allowed to proceed unmolested. Force C, therefore, continued on its northward course, soon sighted by enemy spotters and then harassed by scores of dive bombers. The AA Waltz struck up its deadly tune, Bofors and Oerlikons blasting in continuous, ear shattering concert throwing up the umbrella of fire and the enemy aircraft swooped and screamed like flocks of demonic gulls.

Mid morning and the British were less than a score of miles from the island of Milos, having already passed the small islands of Ios and Thera.
⁶
Then, having sighted a scattering of ships and a couple of enemy destroyers, the second convoy was discovered, a plum ripe for picking. At this point, however, King decided not to attack, a decision which later brought obvious criticism.

His expressed reasoning was that his ships' supply of ammunition was already too low; he then ordered them to discontinue the attack and clear away westwards. Cunningham, when he read his subordinate's signal to this effect, was outraged and immediately sent a reply ordering King to engage and destroy regardless of hazard. But by now the convoy had panicked into a random dispersal and scattered – the effect, in terms of the fight for Crete, was the same as it if had been sent to the bottom; neither troops nor equipment reached the island. The Navy had not broken its promise.

For the sailors of Force C there was another pressing concern, the prospect of a four hour dash to the Kithera Channel under continuous and sustained aerial bombardment. Now the might of the Luftwaffe, their aircraft barely thirty minutes' flying time away, was pitted against the skill and resolution of the Royal Navy and its exhausted gunners who faced the further, potential horror of their ammunition running out.

With
Carlisle,
the slowest ship incapable of more than twenty knots, and
Naiad
damaged by bombs, the duel began in earnest. The more damage sustained by individual ships and the slower the overall speed and manoeuvrability of the fleet, the quicker the precious ammunition was expended. Realising the desperate plight of his ships Cunningham ordered the main battle fleet, which now included Glennie's squadron, to steam eastwards and add their greater firepower to the fight.

It was now a fight to the finish. Like hungry hawks, spotting their prey below, the Luftwaffe pilots pounced, again and again, throwing their planes against the wall of fire, those refuelling, rushing back into the storm.
Warspite
was hit and damaged, losing part of her formidable arsenal.
Greyhound
on a solo mission was bombed into oblivion, sinking in fifteen minutes.
Kandahar
and
Kingston
were detailed to pick up survivors, supported by the guns of
Gloucester
and
Fiji
– both withdrawn when it was realised in what parlous state their ammunition reserves stood. This was an opportunity which the circling predators were sure not to miss, nor did they;
Gloucester
was lost.
⁷

Charles Maddon, Executive Officer on
Warspite,
provided a graphic account of what it was like in the confined spaces of a warship when such colossal punishment struck: