J. E. MacDonnell - 119 Read online

  J E MacDonnell - 119 - The Brave Men

  INTRODUCTION

  I suppose most of us who came through the war believed ourselves to be, well, normally brave; at least we didn't hightail it from our guns and tubes and boilers, and we did win. Lord knows there was more than one time when I thought, Thank God I've come through that lot. I don't mean physically whole and alive, I mean still at my gun and not cowering in some corner. But we - if I may speak for the great majority of us who won no gongs -were just normally, in control of ourselves; buttressed by the comradeship and the presence of known friends close about us, each man unwittingly helping the other to keep that upper lip from gibbering...

  This book - in the main though not exclusively - deals with the really, proven brave men, those who had little but cold courage to sustain them in what they did, practically alone amongst alert enemies in a hostile anchorage. Yet even in the actions concerning a ship and by implication her crew - in some cases several hundred men - it was still the decision and the responsibility of one man bravely to say Advance or Retreat. God knows a captain is a lonely man. Thus, at least, to my mind, the captain of a destroyer - or cruiser can be as deliberately courageous as the frogman, going about his murky work beneath a battleship.

  In some cases my information came from men who were actually engaged in the actions described. Details of other cases were culled from action reports and battle summaries in the files of the R.A.N. Historical Records Section; from commanding-officers' reports kindly sent to me by the Chief of Naval Information at the Admiralty in London; and from German and Italian naval histories. To all of these sources I am gratefully indebted.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Like space-travel and motor-racing, even war can produce its fringe benefits; things like radar and jet aircraft and plastic surgery and skin-diving. How many of you, wet-suitedly taking your weekend pleasures around reefs or wrecks, realise that your sub-surface mobility had its genesis way back in the 1930's, when an Italian inventor named Belloni produced his first "overall"?

  It was very much a case of necessity being the mother of invention. Italian troops had marched into Abyssinia. "I am backed by a million bayonets!" Mussolini had trumpeted from that balcony in Rome, puffing himself into the bellicose bullfrog of caustic Churchillian phrase. Fine, on paper. But the martial gleam from those million bayonets quite failed to delude the sight of the Italian Navy's High Command. Their eyes saw instead the British Fleets, then the most powerful and experienced afloat, and what a blockade could do to squeeze the life-blood from Italy's narrow body.

  The time was late 1935. Of necessity a new arm had - to be developed, comprising small, cheaply produced weapons of a kind wholly unknown to the enemy, and yet of such destructive capacity that not even his battleships would be immune. Thus the British superiority in tonnage and numbers could be reduced drastically, perhaps even to parity. And so a small group of Italian naval engineers, working with inspired application and devotion, produced something they called a "human torpedo," or more commonly and colloquially, a "pig." No other Navy had anything like it, nor suspected that such a weapon had been invented.

  But first, before the pig could be used, men had to ride it - totally submerged.

  Enter Belloni and his overall. This was a water-tight rubber garment (though nowhere near as body-flattering as the present wet suit), and provided with an underwater breathing apparatus which was fed, by high-pressure oxygen bottles. A flexible corrugated tube, looking much the same as that of a gas mask, carried the oxygen at: reduced pressure to the mouth-piece in the, diver's face-piece, which also resembled a gas mask.

  The diver exhaled through the same tube, but his breath was taken into a cylinder of soda lime crystals, which absorbed the carbon-dioxide. This was a principle something similar to the method used for freshening the atmosphere in a long-submerged submarine.

  Judged by modern gear the Belloni overall looked ugly and awkward, but it worked, and was the prototype for all future frogmen suits. Yet everything is relative - compared to the diver in his lead-booted, lead-waisted deep-sea diving suit, a man in Belloni's overall had the mobility of a dragon fly.

  And now for the pig. Perhaps a young engineer named Elios Toschi might be better fitted to describe it than I - being one of the inventors.

  "The new weapon," Toschi wrote, "is in size and shape very, similar to a torpedo but is in reality a miniature submarine with entirely novel features, electrical propulsion and a steering wheel similar to that of an aeroplane.

  "The innovation of greatest interest is the point that the crew, instead of remaining enclosed and more or less helpless in the interior, keep outside the structure. The two men, true flyers of the sea-depths, bestride their little underwater `airplane', barely protected from the frontal onrush of the waters by a curved screen of plastic glass.

  "At night, under cover of the most complete darkness and steering by luminous control instruments, they will be able to aim and attack their objective while remaining quite invisible to the enemy. The operators, unhampered by the steel structure, are free to move and act at will, to reach the bottom of the sea and travel along it in any way and direction, and are able to cut nets and remove obstacles with special compressed-air tools and, therefore, reach any target.

  "Equipped with long-range underwater breathing gear, the operators will be able, without any connection whatsoever with the surface, to breathe and navigate under water at any depths up to thirty metres and carry a powerful charge into an enemy harbour. Being utterly invisible and beyond the reach of the most delicately sensitive acoustic detector, they will be able to operate in the interior of the harbour till they find the keel of a large unit, fasten the charge to it and thus ensure an explosion which will sink the vessel."

  The specifications of such a weapon and its possible uses were formidable; to some officers at the Naval Ministry, incredibly so.

  Guns, they declaimed, were the only weapons for sinking major warships, or mines or submarine-delivered torpedoes: what could a couple of unprotected men, blinded by dark water on a dark night and riding a tinpot electrical toy, possibly hope to achieve against the massive protection devices of a fleet at anchor?

  Unhappily for us Admiral Cavagnari, Chief of the Italian Naval Staff, was of a progressive more than conservative turn of mind. He gave the project his blessing, and two pigs were ordered to be constructed at once. After only a few months but much improvisation - one of the propulsion motors was salvaged from a lift due for demolition - both prototypes were ready for their trials. Toschi again:

  "The first tests were satisfactory. They were carried out in the chilly waters of La Spezia Bay in January and gave us unexpected results and extremely novel sensations when our submerged bodies stiffened convulsively as we were carried along by the machines we had ourselves created. We felt a thrill of delight in the dark depths of the sea our tiny human torpedo was penetrating so obediently."

  This ominous test was carried out three years before Hitler marched on Poland and placed the British Fleet on a war footing. It impressed other people besides Toschi. This order came from the Naval Staff:

  "The Command of the First Light Flotilla (of human torpedoes and explosive motor-boats, called E-boats) is entrusted with the duties of training a nucleus of personnel for employment with given special weapons, and of carrying out experiments and tests concerned with the perfecting of the said weapons."

  CHAPTER TWO

  The close of 1941 was a bad time for the British Mediterranean Fleet. Until then - with Matapan in March of that year shouting a fearful warning to the Italian Navy - the British had enjoyed undisputed authority over the tideless sea. Then came November and December, bringing with them disasters whi
ch the First Lord of the Admiralty, a man not given to hyperbole, described as "the crisis in our fortunes."

  Admiral Somerville, of the famous Force H, sailed from Gibraltar on November 10. With him was the Fleet aircraft-carrier Ark Royal; the object of the exercise was to approach Malta, launch thirty-seven Hurricanes and seven Blenheim bombers for the island's defence, then return.

  The operation was completed successfully and the naval force headed back for Gibraltar, still in formation, still whole and unhurt.

  Men in the Navy go to afternoon tea at four p.m. On that day, November 13, no tea was served aboard Ark Royal. At 3.40 p.m. Lieutenant Gugenberger of the submarine U-81 had her 750-foot length in the graticule of his periscope lens. The great unsuspecting bow moved to meet the vertical line of his sight and Gugenberger said, "Fire."

  One minute later the long steel missile, fired with precise accuracy on an intercepting course, reached its destination. The warhead struck Ark Royal fair amidships and blasted a huge hole in her belly. Even her 22,000-ton bulk quivered, and the peaceful sky rang with the iron clangour of the blow.

  Somerville had seven destroyers with him. They sniffed around like hungry otters in a pool of fish. Ark Royal was not interested, like a stricken patient unconcerned with hospital routine. She had big compartments and the sea filled them eagerly, taking only a few minutes to list her heavily. Then she suffered a temporary loss of all power and light. The great ship lay leaning in the water, quite unable to succour herself, while down her length and around her prowled those destroyers not despatched after U-81. Somerville signalled for ocean-going tugs.

  By nine that night a pair of the powerful beasts had her in tow, and to some extent her list had been eased by admitting sea water to compartments on the opposite side. Then at midnight her toiling stokers raised steam in one boiler, and it seemed she would make it.

  Their hopes were stillborn. Two hours later a fierce fire broke out in the port boiler-room, and the impatient sea was worrying at her again. By 4.30 in the morning she was listed over at an angle of thirty five degrees from the vertical, an attitude she had never taken in even the heaviest seas. It was hopeless. The order to abandon ship was given. She sank at 6.13 a.m. - again that accursed number when no more than twenty-five miles from Gibraltar and the chance of life.

  Yet in another way the fates were kind - of a complement of 1,600, only one man was lost. So many times attacked and so often "sunk," Ark Royal had at last succumbed; a splendid ship killed by a single torpedo. Her sinking was a grave loss for Admiral Cunningham, Commander of the Mediterranean Fleet - now, with Illustrious and Formidable both repairing battle damage in the United States, he had no carriers at all.

  Yet a greater loss was to come, and this one Cunningham witnessed. Less than a fortnight after the Ark Royal disaster he was at sea with his Battle Fleet, in support of cruisers which had sought, and found and sunk, an Italian fuel convoy. This time it was U-331, and in her sight she had battleship Barham.

  The torpedoes streaked out, and when a few minutes after being hit Barham's magazines blew, there were dead Captain G.C. Cooke and 861 officers and men.

  Opposed to five Italian battleships, Cunningham now had two. And then there were none.

  Ark Royal, then Barham. Splendid, from the viewpoint of the Italian Navy High Command. Yet something just as significant in its implications had happened only a short time earlier. Carried to their destination in big cylinders on the deck of the submarine Scire, three pigs had breached the defences of Gibraltar harbour and sunk three British ships, one a large naval tanker, and totalling more than 30,000 tons. It was the first success of the human torpedoes, with all crews reaching safety in Spain.

  Then came news of the carrier and the battleship, and Commander Ernesto Forza, leader of the Tenth Light Flotilla of human torpedoes, cast an eager mental eye at the remaining two British capital ships in Alexandria. If they could be successfully attacked, leaving nothing comparable to challenge the forty-five 15-inch guns of the Battle Fleet in Taranto, then it was excitingly probable that British naval forces might be forced to withdraw from the Mediterranean something which had not happened since a similar evacuation in 1796. Such an event would have a tremendous effect on the course of the war.

  Commander Forza decided to send his pigs into Alexandria.

  It was an extremely courageous decision, for after the Gibraltar attacks and the sinking of heavy cruiser York in Suda Bay by explosive boats, the last two British battleships could be expected to have surrounding them every protective device which an experienced and alarmed enemy could contrive. Against these minefields and nets, sonic loops and guard boats, not to mention the Fleet's deluge of defensive fire, Forza proposed sending in six men riding on three tiny submarines.

  Objective: the destruction of 60,000 tons of armour-plated, 15inch gunned might.

  At La Spezia, a port on Italy's north-west coast not far from Genoa, Forza mustered his men and called for volunteers, for an operation "the return from which is extremely problematical."

  It is hardly surprising that of such a select group every man volunteered. Now Forza and Commander Valerio Borghese, captain of the delivery submarine Scire, had the task, both awkward and difficult, of choosing six men, three officers and three ratings.

  These were a brave sextet, and their names should be recorded in full: Lieutenant Luigi Durand de la Penne with his Petty Officer diver Emilio Vianchi; Engineer Captain Antonio Marceglia and P.O. diver Spartaco Schergat; Gunner Captain Vincenzo Martellotta and P.O. diver Mario Marina. Selected, though still ignorant of the mission, they began training. They were already highly trained, or thought they were. Night

  after night - the darker and rainier and rougher the better - they rode their chariots up and down and around, and encountered and overcome every obstacle which the devilish ingenuity of the taskmasters ashore could devise. And every day, after their professional exercises, they trained physically as if for a heavyweight bout.

  Meanwhile, Forza and Borghese had the additional and vital chore of dissecting Intelligence reports regarding the disposition, the standard of alertness, the protective measures and the general situation of the enemy Fleet in Alexandria.

  I remember (coincidently, it was in Alexandria) an Intelligence Officer coming aboard our cruiser and lecturing us on the general subject of security. There are no Mata Hari's to worry about, he told us in effect; the fellow to watch was that quiet, insignificant (always insignificant) little bloke drinking in the bar. He would never offer you drinks or joviality, nothing obvious like that. He would ignore you, ostensibly, while he drank quietly and absorbed himself in his paper - while in actuality he listened intently and with trained acuteness to the jabber of relaxed sailors around him.

  You would never, of course, said the Intelligence officer, openly declaim in a public bar that such-and-such a battleship or carrier was sailing at a certain time for a certain destination accompanied by so many destroyers. But you very well might hold an apparently harmless conversation like this:

  "Where's old Blubberguts? He's supposed to meet us here at five."

  "Give him time. It'll take half an hour to get up-harbour."

  "Yeah, I s'pose so. How does he like it down there?"

  "Bored stiff, he reckons, up and down all the bloody time, nothing but up and down. Gives him the tom-tits. Gunna put in for a draft to a cruiser, he reckons."

  "I bet. Here, it's your shout."

  And after a decent interval the quiet little man looks at his watch, frowns, folds his paper, drains his drink and goes out - having learned by skilled interpretation that the patrol boats cruising up and down past the entrance to the boom change-over at 4.30, at least in the afternoon, and that by then their crews are bored and thus relatively inattentive, and that four or four-fifteen might be a good time for a submarine to try and make its entrance, especially if the gate were open then to let a ship out.

  Maybe just a snippet of information, but enough of them could ma
ke up a detailed and valuable Intelligence report. Like this actual report which Forza and Borghese received from Axis agents in Alexandria:

  "Fixed and mobile defences ascertained: (a) Minefield 20 miles north-west of harbour; (b) line of `lobster-pots' (smaller mines but lethal if exploded against a submarine's side) arranged at a depth of 30 fathoms in a circle with a radius of about six miles; (c) line of detector cables closer in (electrical loops which reacted to a metallic object passing over them); (d) groups of lobster-pots in known positions; (e) net barriers relatively easy to force; (f) advanced observation line beyond minefield."

  How could they hope to get by all these obstacles? First, by experience and the intuitive sense of the trained operator; second, by hoping that Scire's deliberately streamlined length would allow her to slide harmlessly past any mine-mooring wire she might be unlucky enough to contact; third, by luck.

  Like all good plans, that of Forza and Borghese was essentially simple. Pretending to sail on an ordinary patrol (her pigs, carried in a lighter, would be hoisted on board and stowed in their cylinders after leaving harbour), the submarine would arrive off the entrance to Alexandria, distant a few thousand yards, on the night of December 18. The lunar phase would be favourable, with the nights dark.