'The Few': Brushes with Death
GAS! R
BRITAIN’S BEST SELLING MILITARY HISTORY MONTHLY
THE MIGHTY HOOD Early Days of RN Juggernaut & Battle at Mers-el-Kebir
, WW1 S MOST
INFAMOUS
WEAPON
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The RAF’s St Valentine’s Day Massacre A County Reels After The Somme RMS Lusitania Truths
HARRIER PILOT RECOUNTS AIR RAID
Veteran Pilot Dave Morgan Tells of Runway Strike on Stanley Air Base
ZEPPELIN DOWNED
Legendary Raider Downed in VC Action
16TH DURHAMS AT BLOODY SALERNO Gallant Durham Light Infantry In Ferocious Invasion of Italy
From the Editor... B
RITAIN AT WAR magazine is a specialist publication which deals with the history of all of Britain’s military conflicts and operations from 1914 right up to the present day. This includes military operations since the Second World War - such as the Falklands, both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan. As such, its style and content is unique in the overall genre of military history publications. So, whether you have seen our magazine or not, we thought that you may like this free sample magazine compiled from features in some of our recent issues. Britain at War magazine has been published monthly since 2007 and offers a comprehensive range of subject material covering all elements of conflict and warfare; this includes land, sea and air actions as well as the involvement of civilians on the Home Front. Each month we cover world-wide news stories dealing with restorations, discoveries and events from around the world. The magazine has a team of regular writers and specialist contributors and invites contributions on relevant subjects from prospective authors. Our speciality is very much in telling the ‘untold’ stories of conflict, and from uniquely personal and human-interest perspectives, often told in the first-person, and drawing upon photographs and images that have frequently not previously been seen in the public domain. Additionally, many of our feature articles cover stories that have not previously been revealed or covered elsewhere. We very much hope that you enjoy this sample issue!
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FEATURES
6 From Peace to War
Bruce Taylor details the origins of HMS Hood, charting her pre-war days with the Royal Navy.
12 Baptism of Fire
In the second of his features, Bruce Taylor continues the story of the ‘Mighty Hood’, relating her involvement in Britain’s darkest days of July 1940 and the Royal Navy’s attack on the French Fleet.
20 Valentine’s Day Engagement
When two RAF Typhoon pilots set out on St Valentine’s Day in 1943 to provide air cover for a pair of MTBs in trouble off the French coast they encountered trouble themselves. Mark Crame tells the tragic story of a fatal engagement for the two young fliers.
46 Gas! A Deadly Weapon?
John Ash analyses the origins, usage and effectiveness of arguably one of the most defining weapons of the First World War – Poison Gas.
56 One Long Scene of Agony
The sinking of RMS Lusitania has always been controversial and Britain at War re-examined the facts of an infamous wartime event. Was it a war crime — or a legitimate target?
64 Tank on Tour
Alexander Nicholl tracks the route of the mighty armoured beast that was Britannia, an iron-clad ambassador sent to North America to raise funds for the war effort against the Central Powers.
32 Inside Thiepval
Martin Mace and John Grehan are granted rare access to the Thiepval Memorial ahead of its recent renovation.
38 Four Men in a Boat
The astonishing story of four German spies who made a nighttime landing on the Kent coast at the height of the Battle of Britain.
Contents FREE DIGITAL SAMPLE
6 From Peace to War 4
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46 Gas! A Deadly Weapon?
74 Inside the Avalanche – Salerno
Using first-hand interviews from the men of the 16th Durham Light Infantry, Peter Hart reveals what it was like to be in the forefront of action when the Allies landed at Salerno in September 1943.
82 Zeppelin Down
In this dramatic account, Ian Castle tells the story of Lt William Leefe Robinson’s VC action over South East England when he famously became the first airman to down a German airship over British soil.
94 The Day Sussex Died
Paul Reed details the harrowing tragedy which engulfed the Royal Sussex Regiment on the eve of the Battle of the Somme, an event which had a profound and lasting impact right across the regiment’s home county.
104 Galtieri – My Part in His Downfall!
Harrier pilot and Falklands veteran Dave Morgan describes his part in a fast-paced and low-level strike against the heavily defended Argentine-held air base at Stanley.
110 'You Left it a Bit Late'
Dramatic brushes with death experienced by RAF pilots shot down during the Battle of Britain are selected by Andy Saunders.
COVER STORY
In this dramatic portrayal of firepower, and of the might and pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Hood fires a powerful broadside during her fatal engagement with Bismarck in the Battle of Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941. Hit by shells from Bismarck, Hood exploded and sank with the loss of 1,415 men. Three days later, after a long chase, Bismarck was finally sank, taking some 2,000 men with her. (MODEL BY STEFAN DRAMINSKI (STEFAN@
❅
104 Galtieri – My Part in His Downfall!
BISMARCK3D.NETSTREFA.COM.PL), ILLUSTRATION BY PIOTR FORKASIEWICZ (
[email protected]))
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5
HMS HOOD: FROM PEACE TO WAR Ventis Secundis: With Favourable Winds
HMS HOOD From Peace to War 1919–1939 What makes a ship? Steel and man hours. What makes a ship famous? Her part in history. But what makes a ship legendary? Bruce Taylor opens this special supplement with his account of HMS Hood’s early years; the start of a legend.
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CLASH OF THE TITANS HMS Hood and Bismarck
H
MS HOOD was a favoured ship from her earliest years. She alone was spared the cancellation order which claimed her three sisters in February 1919, this despite the severe deficiencies recognised as being inherent in her design as far back as June 1916 following the Battle of Jutland. Steps had been taken to improve her protection within the limits of the possible, but as RearAdmiral Chatfield made clear at a meeting of the Institution of Naval Architects in March 1920, ‘if the Director of Naval Construction was going to design a ship today he would not design the Hood’. The determination of the Admiralty to press on with the completion of HMS Hood therefore reflects a conviction as to the worth of this particular unit that extends beyond her value as a fighting unit.
THE MIGHTY HOOD
This is not to say that Hood was not in most respects a magnificent fighting vessel by the standards of the time, with underwater protection, engineering and gunnery systems the equal of any. But there was always something different about Hood that must have been apparent from the moment the Director of Naval Construction Sir Eustace Tennyson d’Eyncourt unrolled his plans before the Board of Admiralty in the spring of 1916. More than any British warship before or since, Hood captured the power and innovation of her design in a symmetry of grace and beauty, and did so in a way almost anyone could appreciate. Hood, it turned out, succeeded in marrying the rakishness of a destroyer, the sleekness of a cruiser and the simmering menace of the greatest men o’war. Aside from her many technical superlatives, not
least her status as the largest and fastest capital ship in the world, this aesthetic point was not lost either on the Admiralty or on the British Government which immediately recognised her symbolic power and announced her arrival with a series of photographs of the ship running her speed trials that captured the imagination of all who saw them. Appropriately, where other ships earned nicknames that were by turns affectionate, jovial or even derogatory, there was nothing effacing about ‘The Mighty Hood’, the sobriquet which soon attached to her. So it was that for twenty years the Hood dominated every harbour and anchorage from Sydney to San Francisco, a potent reminder that while Britannia might no longer be the one standard of power, her ships were still the yardstick by which all others were measured: ‘God that
BELOW: The sole ship of the Admiral-class, battlecruiser HMS Hood, visits Sydney in 1924 as part of the flag-flying Empire Cruise circumnavigation of 1923-24 on which she sailed with HMS Repulse and was escorted by six cruisers. On their 38,150 mile tour they traversed the Panama Canal, Hood’s toll for that passage being $22.399.50! Both ships were new, among the fastest of their type, well-armed, and just two of the jewels in the Royal Navy’s crown. Sadly, both ships would meet an unfortunate end in 1941. Although both ships had won victories prior to their costly demise, perhaps their most important was this bloodless interwar battle; a ‘reassurance tour’ where the Royal Navy took on the world and won. (STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA, ALLAN C GREEN, ADAM CUERDEN)
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HMS HOOD: FROM PEACE TO WAR Ventis Secundis: With Favourable Winds
BELOW: Officers and men on the forecastle as Hood passes through the Pedro Miguel Locks, Panama Canal, 24th July 1924. (ILLUSTRATED
LONDON NEWS)
made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet…’. For a nation still bitterly disappointed that the Navy had failed to deliver the crushing victory that had so fervently been expected, here was tangible proof that the sinew of Britain’s seaborne empire had emerged strong and vigorous from the test of war. The sense of Hood as embodying the survival and perpetuation of the Empire was one she immediately acquired and never surrendered.
BELOW: The crowds disperse after another open day at Melbourne in March 1924, some of the 486,000 people who visited the Special Service Squadron during the eight days it spent in that port. (HMS HOOD ASSOCIATION/MACKIE COLLECTION)
EMPIRE CRUISE
The first overt sign of the favoured status Hood would enjoy for the rest of her career comes in March 1920 when the crew of HMS Lion, Admiral Beatty’s flagship of Jutland
and a storied veteran of the Great War, formed the nucleus of her first company. As the old battlecruiser passed into reserve so her mantle as the spearhead of the fleet was taken by a new generation of vessel. Moreover, the limitations on warship construction enshrined in the Washington Treaty of 1922 saw to it that she retained her status in splendid isolation. No sooner had Hood commissioned than she sailed on the first of her great cruises which within a few short years had made her the most famous warship afloat. These came to a climax with the World Cruise of the Special Service Squadron of 1923–4 which took Hood, Repulse and a squadron of light cruisers in a 38,000-
mile circumnavigation and which together with the Royal cruises made by the Prince of Wales in Renown and Repulse represents the high point of British sea power between the wars. Within the Royal Navy this exalted position was expressed chiefly by her prowess in sport which took on an unprecedented degree of importance after the Great War, particularly in pulling (i.e. rowing the heavy boats carried by each ship), cross-country running, football, boxing and tug-ofwar. In all of these Hood excelled at one time or another, becoming Cock of the Fleet in the Atlantic Fleet pulling regatta three years running from 1926–8, together with a host of other trophies.
ABOVE: One of the first shots of Hood at sea, seen either at Greenock or Rosyth on 9th or 13th January 1920 and with the aloft rangefinder yet to be fitted to the spotting top. She is riding high in the water, close to her 1916 design legend but showing greater freeboard than would ever be the case again. (BRUCE TAYLOR COLLECTION)
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CLASH OF THE TITANS HMS Hood and Bismarck
BELOW: Hood running trials off the Isle of Arran in March 1920. As a visible symbol of a nation’s power the Hood can scarcely ever have been matched. (NATIONAL
ARCHIVES OF SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH)
However, beneath the gilded image all was not well in the Royal Navy. Not only had the so-called 'Geddes Axe' of 1921–2 inflicted savage cuts on the officer corps and dealt a heavy blow to its morale, but the Admiralty had failed to grasp the extent to which the Great War had altered the social fabric of the nation and with it the broader outlook of the type of men who were joining the Royal Navy. As the 1920s wore on, more and more ratings began to chafe at the lack of lower-deck representation, the scant opportunities for promotion and the inequalities in pay, as well as the gulflike social gap between themselves and the wardroom officers.
UNPREDICTABLE TIDES
In June 1929 Hood docked at Portsmouth for her first and indeed only major refit. However, by the time she emerged in the spring of
ABOVE: The Hood’s officer complement pose beside ‘X’ turret in the summer of 1920. Capt. Wilfred Tomkinson and Rear-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes are seated in the centre. (BRUCE TAYLOR COLLECTION)
1931 and resumed her exalted status as flagship of the Battle Cruiser Squadron, Atlantic Fleet, it was quite obvious that matters had changed greatly since she had paid off and passed under dockyard control at Portsmouth two years earlier. For one thing she was now a ‘Pompey Ship’, having exchanged the outspoken Westcountrymen of her first four commissions with the more stolid crews of the Portsmouth Division. But, above all, the world to which she returned seemed very much less stable than it had in the summer of 1929. In October of that year the Wall Street Crash precipitated an economic depression that by the autumn of 1931 had put over 2.5 million out of
LEFT: A cheery party at work on the Hood’s boat deck during her stay at Hobart in March or April 1924. This was the last generation of Royal Navy sailors to carry out their duties barefoot as a matter of choice. (ILLUSTRATED
TASMANIAN MAIL)
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HMS HOOD: FROM PEACE TO WAR Ventis Secundis: With Favourable Winds BELOW: Hood sailing from Portsmouth shortly after the Invergordon Mutiny in late 1931 or early 1932. Note the Fairey IIIF seaplane on the quarterdeck. (BIBLIOTHEK FÜR
ZEITGESCHICHTE, STUTTGART)
work and made sweeping wage cuts a matter of urgent necessity for all civil servants, including the armed forces. The inequitable and inept imposition of these cuts on the Navy on 10 September 1931 set the scene for the mutiny which broke out while the Hood and the rest of the Atlantic Fleet was lying at Invergordon five days later. Historians will record that the ‘quiet mutiny’ as it came to be known was in fact less a revolt in the traditional sense than a strike over pay, though it was
one which after the frustrations of the Great War and the trials of the 1920s came close to destroying the Navy. The aftermath of the Invergordon Mutiny brought sweeping changes to the Navy both within the Admiralty and among officers generally, who acquired a greater awareness of the aspirations and financial strictures of those they commanded. In this respect, Hood was fortunate to have had one of the most gifted figures in the interwar Navy as her Executive
Officer from 1933–6 in the shape of Commander Rory O’Conor, a man of immense physical stature and conviction. O’Conor believed the surest means to a happy and successful ship lay in a genuine interest in the welfare of her men. Namely, that the Royal Navy was great enough to afford every man the chance of a fair hearing and punishment existed chiefly to maintain discipline rather than to enforce compliance. The mere exercise of that discipline could never substitute for engaging the men as befitted their skills and responsibility. BELOW: Hood alongside the South Mole at Gibraltar in 1937 or ’38. Lengthy interludes in Mediterranean waters kept her from the reconstruction she so desperately needed. (HMS HOOD ASSOCIATION/PERCIVAL COLLECTION)
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CLASH OF THE TITANS HMS Hood and Bismarck
ABOVE: ‘Comparisons with other ships are odious.’ HMS Hood serene in Bighi Bay, Grand Harbour, Malta, c.1937. (HMS HOOD ASSOCIATION/MASON COLLECTION)
In his concern for such matters, as well as in his recognition of the role and impact of a warship in wider society and vice versa, Rory O’Conor was years ahead of his time, and the volume he published on the basis of his tenure in Hood, Running a Big Ship on ‘Ten Commandments’ (1937) is one of the most influential naval treatises of the first half of the twentieth century. Although the Second World War would change O’Conor’s Navy for ever, the ethos enshrined in Running a Big Ship, that every man was entitled to the understanding and consideration of his officers, was to have a lasting impact on shipboard relations in the Royal Navy. In the final analysis, the ability of men of O’Conor’s stature to give practical expression to their convictions as war clouds loomed is a measure of how far the Navy had come since Invergordon.
TO WAR
In July 1936, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War provided the backdrop against which the ambitions and concerns of every power in Europe would be played out in a terrible orgy of violence and destruction. For the next two and half years a significant part of the Royal Navy was assigned to both patrol and humanitarian duties off both the Spanish Atlantic and Mediterranean coast, disrupting the ordered pattern of the naval year and deranging her complex manning and training regime during a period of urgent expansion. Where Hood is concerned, it can be argued with justice that she never performed more sterling service than during those years when she might otherwise have received the reconstruction she so desperately needed. By the time she sailed for Portsmouth from Malta in January 1939 it was already much too late.
In Hood, the notion of the warship as a tool of peaceful diplomacy reached its maximum expression, not only in her graceful form, speed and armament but also in the qualities of her people in whom Britain and the Empire were justifiably proud. Vested in her, too, was a symbolic power out of all proportion to her value as a fighting unit, and her annihilation two years later at the hands of the Bismarck temporarily shattered the morale of the nation and raised in the minds of ordinary Britons the spectre of total defeat. This, however, is only part of her story and although Hood was undeniably an engine of war, as with the greatest weapons her career was as much about preserving life as about taking it. Of her many legacies this shall perhaps prove the most enduring.
LEFT: Hood’s marksmen pose with their trophies and weapons on the quarterdeck at Portsmouth, c.1935. With them is Capt F. T. B. Tower, Cdr Rory O’Conor and Judy, O’Conor’s West Highland terrier. Note the brass tompions with the ship’s chough emblem decorating the muzzles of ‘Y’ turret. (HMS HOOD
ASSOCIATION/ CLARK COLLECTION)
ABOVE: ‘The monstrous anger of the guns.’ ‘X’ and ‘Y’ turrets engaging in a concentration exercise with another battlecruiser, probably Repulse, c.1925. (HMS HOOD
ASSOCIATION/REINOLD COLLECTION)
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BAPTISM OF FIRE: OPERATION CATAPULT Catapulted into Submission
BAPTISM OF Operation Catapult BELOW: The Hood seen from the Dunkerque while patrolling in mountainous seas off Iceland in November 1939. Gifts (including this photo) were passed between the two ships as gestures of fraternity; eight months later at Mersel-Kébir it was shellfire they exchanged.
(HMS HOOD
ASSOCIATION/ BARKER COLLECTION)
“It is with sincere sorrow that I must now announce to the House the measures which we have felt bound to take in order to prevent the French Fleet from falling into German hands.” Said Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on 4 July 1940. Bruce Taylor investigates the terrible yet necessary actions of Force H at Mers-elKébir, and HMS Hood’s role in that controversial action.
E
ARLY ON the morning of 10 May 1940 the German Army launched its great offensive in the West. Within two weeks the British War Cabinet, its troops outmanoeuvred and strategy in disarray, was taking the first steps towards the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force from the Continent. As these momentous events unfolded across the Channel, HMS Hood was quietly completing her refit first at Plymouth and then at the Gladstone Dock in Liverpool where Mussolini’s declaration of
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war was greeted with the looting of businesses and boarding of Italian vessels berthed there. When the Hood finally emerged from Liverpool on 12 June it was to find the evacuation from Dunkirk complete, and the Royal Navy girding itself to lift the remnants of the Allied armies from elsewhere along the French coast. On 17 June, as Hood lay at Greenock, the French government asked Germany for an armistice. Five days later the new premier, Marshal Pétain, accepted Hitler’s terms, thereby bringing the Battle of France
to a close. That night in one of his periodic broadcasts to the ship Capt Glennie asked his crew to remember that, though ‘we were likely to have certain dislikes for our previous allies … we were to treat them, even now, as our friends and try to realise their terrible fate in the hands of the Nazis’. There was certainly frustration but also relief that another dismal episode was over, that ‘on consideration, not having to defend France may be a blessing in disguise’. But, as the Hood’s company was shortly to discover, France’s agony was not yet over.
CLASH OF THE TITANS HMS Hood and Bismarck
FIRE 27 June. First constituted as a hunting group during the search for the raider Admiral Graf Spee in October 1939, Force H was now transformed into an independent formation based on Gibraltar but directly responsible to the Admiralty in London. Over the next eighteen months Somerville’s ‘detached squadron’ asserted a control over the western Mediterranean which would not be relinquished while the war lasted. This accomplishment, together with the many famous actions in which it was involved, gives Force H a special place in the history of the Royal Navy. It was this squadron Hood was ordered south from Greenock to join as flagship on 18 June, reaching Gibraltar five days later with the Royal carrier HMS Ark Royal.
ABOVE: Strasbourg returns fire. (COURTESY
PHILIPPE CARESSE)
LEFT: The harbour under shellfire. (P. CARESSE)
BELOW: Mers-el-Kébir as the British found it. From l to r: Dunkerque, Bretagne, Strasbourg, Provence and seaplane tender Commandante Teste. (P. CARESSE)
With the entry of Italy into the war, the Admiralty began taking steps to fill the void created by the collapse of French power in the western Mediterranean with a significant force of British ships. However, once the terms of the Franco-German armistice became known in London, as they had by 25 June, it was plain that this squadron must have a far more urgent remit. Under the terms of the armistice, the French fleet, still largely intact, was to be ‘demobilised and disarmed under German or Italian control’. This clause did not satisfy the British government which was already moving to prevent scattered units and squadrons of the French Navy falling into the hands of the Axis. The officer chosen to enforce this policy in the western Mediterranean was Vice-Admiral Sir James Somerville who assumed command of Force H on www.britainatwar.com 13
BAPTISM OF FIRE: OPERATION CATAPULT Catapulted into Submission RIGHT: Capt. Cedric Holland leaving Dunkerque after his fruitless meeting with Amiral Marcel Gensoul. (P. CARESSE)
BELOW: Bretagne settles. Provence in the foreground and Strasbourg just getting under way. (P. CARESSE)
ULTIMATUM
The first task to which Force H was committed was the neutralisation of the French Atlantic Fleet at Mersel-Kébir near Oran, Algeria, without doubt among the most unenviable tasks ever assigned to a British commander. After two days of earnest deliberation in Somerville’s cabin, Force H sailed from Gibraltar on 2 July stiffened by units of Admiral Sir Dudley North’s North Atlantic Command. His brief from the War Cabinet was to lay before his French counterpart, Amiral Marcel Gensoul, the following options for the disposal of his fleet, which consisted of two modern battlecruisers, two elderly battleships, a seaplane carrier and six large destroyers: that he (a) put to sea and continue the fight against Germany; (b) sail with reduced crews to a British port; (c) do likewise to a port in the French West Indies, or (d) scuttle his ships at their berths. Should these prove unacceptable a fifth was to be offered, namely that Gensoul demilitarise his force at Mers-elKébir. Any measure resorted to would have to be enacted within six hours, a proviso which greatly hindered both admirals’ freedom of manoeuvre. In the event of these proposals being rejected, Somerville was to present Gensoul with the ultimatum of having his fleet destroyed at the hands of Force H.
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SCREAMING IN HORRENDOUS HARMONY
Shortly after 0800 on the morning of 3 July Force H appeared off Mers-elKébir. Somerville had already sent the destroyer HMS Foxhound ahead with his emissary Capt Cedric Holland, but it was not until 16.15 that the latter gained direct access to Gensoul. The protracted and ultimately fruitless negotiations between the British and Gensoul, the stirring of the French Navy across the western Mediterranean and the mounting pressure from London all lie beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say that by 1730, some three hours after the expiry of his original ultimatum, Somerville found himself with no alternative but to open fire. Within a few minutes Boy Signalman Ted Briggs, later one of Hood’s’s three survivors, was hoisting the order for instant action to the starboard signal yard. Shortly before 1800 it was the order to open fire that he bent on to the halyard: “The response was immediate. Just as I turned round to watch, the guns of the Resolution and Valiant roared in murderous hair-trigger reaction. Then came the ting-ting of our firing bell. Seconds later my ears felt as if they had been sandwiched between two manhole covers. The concussion of the Hood’s eight fifteen-inch guns, screaming in horrendous harmony, shook the flag deck violently.”
Moments later the harbour at Mers-el-Kébir was being crucified by the first salvoes of British 15-inch ordnance. Within three minutes the battleship Bretagne had blown up with huge loss of life. Her sister Provence, and the battlecruiser Dunkerque, had to be beached after sustaining repeated hits, the latter mainly under Hood’s fire. The destroyer Mogador lost her stern to a direct hit which left her a
CLASH OF THE TITANS HMS Hood and Bismarck
“It is impossible for us, your comrades up to now, to allow your fine ships to fall into the power of the German or Italian enemy.” Ultimatum to Admiral Gensoul.
smouldering wreck in waters turned black with oil and writhing bodies. With the harbour shrouded in a dense pall of smoke, at 18.04, nine minutes after the action had commenced, Somerville gave the order to cease fire. A few minutes later, increasingly accurate salvoes from the shore battery at Fort Santon obliged the Hood to return a withering fire while the squadron sailed out of range under a smokescreen. This might have been the end of the affair, except that at 18.18 reports began reaching Hood that a battlecruiser was emerging from the harbour.
ESCAPE
Initially dismissed by Somerville and his staff, by 18.30 it was apparent that the Strasbourg, unscathed by the bombardment enveloping her companions, had negotiated the mine barrage laid by aircraft from Ark Royal and was making for Toulon with five destroyers. Hood turned to give chase, working up to over 28 knots at the cost of a stripped turbine while Ark Royal prepared to launch an air strike in the fading light. The Hood again came under attack as the
pursuit developed, first from a salvo of torpedoes fired by the light cruiser Rigauld de Genouilly and then by a flight of French bombers from Algeria. However, bomb attacks by Swordfish aircraft failed to slow the Strasbourg and at 20.20 a dispirited Somerville called off the chase. A second Swordfish strike at 20.55 reported two torpedo hits, but the Strasbourg’s speed remained unimpaired and she reached Toulon without damage the following day. Three days later an
announcement by Amiral Jean-Pierre Estéva at Bizerta that ‘The damage to the Dunkerque is minimal and the ship will soon be repaired’ brought Force H back to Mers-el-Kébir where Swordfish from Ark Royal put paid to her operational career. So ended one of the most regrettable episodes in the history of the Royal Navy. As Somerville put it in a letter to his wife: “We all feel thoroughly dirty and ashamed that the first time we should have been in action
ABOVE: HMS Resolution in the Indian Ocean with carrier HMS Formidable.
LEFT: F-class destroyer HMS Foxhound in December 1942. She carried Somerville's chosen emissary, Capt Cedric Holland, into the harbour.
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BAPTISM OF FIRE: OPERATION CATAPULT Catapulted into Submission
of the French fleet but I hope we shall not look back on it as too much of a mistake. Lord Haw-Haw has evidently been rendered speechless with anger — or perhaps it is that we just can’t pick him up on the wireless.”
SOMERVILLE’S ASSASSINS
ABOVE: Bretagne is hit and explodes. Provence in the foreground. (P. CARESSE)
BELOW/RIGHT: The destroyer Mogador burns after being hit by a 15in shell. Of her crew, 38 became casualties. On the right, a view of her intact.
was an affair like this. […] I feel sure that I shall be blamed for bungling the job and I think I did. But to you I don’t mind confessing I was half-hearted and you can’t win an action that way.” It was, he added: “the biggest political blunder of modern times and I imagine will rouse the world against us”. Those who expressed an opinion did so largely in the same vein. Writing to his family on 6 July, Sub-Lieutenant John Iago echoed Somerville’s fears for the wider implications of the engagement: “I think that the events in Oran were a great pity — they solved the problem
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In fact, Lord Haw-Haw, like the rest of the German propaganda machine, made enormous capital out of the incident, christening Force H ‘Somerville’s assassins’ in one particular broadcast. There was grim amusement to be had from this but also anger against the Axis for precipitating the disaster, and anger against Gensoul for not continuing the war alongside the British. Above all there was chagrin and astonishment that matters should have come to such a pass. But for all that there was no shortage of pragmatic opinion in the Hood. Midshipman Philip Buckett’s was one: “Coming back past the harbour we could still see large columns of smoke and small fires coming from the ships and the town behind. We realised, too, how unpleasant the action had been. Nevertheless it had been our duty and we had done it successfully.”
There were other voices, too, overheard by Somerville and related with some disgust to his wife: ‘It doesn’t seem to worry the sailors at all as “they never ’ad no use for them French bastards”’. Though they certainly existed, surviving accounts suggest that such opinions were neither widely held nor deeply felt. It was a vile episode from which no one could derive any lasting pride or satisfaction. Years later, Mid. Ross Warden recalled the atmosphere aboard as the Hood made for Gibraltar: “There was no elation aboard our ship that night. The gunroom was for once subdued, and from the Admiral down to the youngest seaman there were heavy hearts.” The Hood emerged largely unscathed from this her second action. Towards the end of the engagement she was straddled by a salvo from Dunkerque which blinded Able Seaman Patsy Ogan in one eye, wounded Lt G E M Owens in the arm and caused splinter damage to the funnels and starboard side. But that was all, and it seemed that she had got off lightly. For the crew, however, it was a different matter. The engagement off Mers-el-Kébir was the Hood’s
CLASH OF THE TITANS HMS Hood and Bismarck
first prolonged experience of battle and it left an impression on all who endured it. From the time the Hood cleared Gibraltar at 17.00 on 2 July to her return at 19.00 on 4 July there was barely a moment’s rest for any of the crew. The hands, changed into clean underwear, were piped to the usual dawn action stations at 04.45 on 3 July and then again at 08.30 as Force H closed Mers-el-Kébir. Then the waiting began. Grog was issued followed by a lunch in the brutal heat, but, as Midshipman Buckett wrote in his journal, ‘the anxiety of waiting for the French admiral’s decision began to have its effect on us in the afternoon’. At 16.00 the ship briefly went down to Defence Stations, giving the ship’s chaplain the Rev Harold Beardmore an opportunity to hand out cigarettes and offer what encouragement he could as the men waited at their posts: “…I remember we had been closed up at action stations since dawn, having had meals at our action stations, but the ship did not open fire until 6 pm.; thus, the canteen having been shut and the men confined in one space, cigarettes were hard to come by as the evening approached, so that when I went round during a lull in the action and handed out cigarettes, they were as welcome as another meal.” By 16.30 Beardmore was back at his post as broadcaster on the bridge,
after which the ship was in action almost continuously until 21.00. The intervening period gave the Hood her first taste of heavy-calibre gunfire as the Dunkerque and then the Strasbourg began to range on her. Ted Briggs: “Suddenly pinpoints of amber light punctuated the blackness. Above the roar of our guns came the highpitched, blood-curdling, crescendoing, low whine of being under fire ourselves by warships for the first time. There were vivid red flashes as a salvo fell just short of the starboard side. Within seconds came a series of blue flashes.”
SALVOES BURST
Peering through the periscope of ‘B’ turret, Ordinance Artificer Bert Pitman watched the French salvoes burst in towering geysers of red and blue water, ingeniously coloured to assist the officiers de tir in spotting their fall of shot. Meanwhile, battened down under armoured hatches in a damage-control party on the lower deck, Able Seaman Len Williams struggled to conquer his fear: “It was not a pleasant experience to be fired on, particularly when it is known that the projectiles coming your way weighed almost a ton. I, and
ABOVE: Bretagne capsizes.
(P. CARESSE)
LEFT: Better times: Valiant (lead ship) sails with French battleship Richelieu into action at Sabang almost four years after the events at Mers-el-Kébir.
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BAPTISM OF FIRE: OPERATION CATAPULT Catapulted into Submission RIGHT: A shot of the French battleship Bretagne under fire at Mers-elKébir. The ship would suffer 1012 casualties in the attack.
BELOW: Strasbourg gets under way. (P. CARESSE)
most everyone else, was scared stiff. To begin with, my action station was three decks below, in an electrical repair party, and although we could hear the shells passing over us like express trains, we could not see what was going on. “We did see our two wounded men being helped down to the dressing station below us, and their bloodstained appearance did not help us any. I had often searched my soul to try and analyse my feelings should I ever be faced with this sort of situation. How would I react? Would I show my feelings? Could I take it? Yes, fear was present without a doubt, but I was consoled by the fact that none of the others looked very happy either! And this made me realise that it was only a question of mastering it, and not breaking down under the strain.
“I have never in my experience seen so grim and sombre a question as what we were to do about the French Fleet discussed in a Cabinet… I leave the judgment of our action, with confidence, to Parliament. I leave it to the nation, and I leave it to the United States. I leave it to the world and to history.” Churchill to Commons 4 June 1940 Despite the loss in this sad encounter, the Association des Anciens Marins et des Familles des Victimes de Mers el-Kebir, led by Herve Grall whose father was killed at Mers, reached out to promote reconciliation. Strong, valued and poignant links were formed with the HMS Hood Association which remain today.
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CLASH OF THE TITANS HMS Hood and Bismarck
“Had we been given something to do, it would have helped. We just had to wait for a shell to come through the deck and if it did not either kill or wound us, we could then proceed to repair the damage. We talked when we did not feel like talking and we walked up and down in the limited space at our disposal, and in this way we tried to forget what was going on above us. We were all very thankful when the gunfire ceased and we were told that the action was over. Our highly strung nerves relaxed and we began to live again. It was some time before the memory of Oran faded from our minds.” In the Torpedomen’s mess, meanwhile, Able Seaman Joseph Rockey and his companions were distracted by one of the ventilation fans, which began to disintegrate in clouds of rust once the Hood’s main
armament opened fire. After it was over came the exhaustion that only battle can bring. Ted Briggs describes the crew’s first rest in perhaps 60 hours of exertion, tension and combat: “When I finally got below at 2200 [on 4 July] the messdecks were quiet. Everyone was dog tired, and off-duty watches were collapsed all over the ship. Many, like myself, were too exhausted to sling their hammocks. I joined a bunch of friends dozing on top of the hammock stowage. They were still fully dressed, with anti-flash gear on.” It had been, Mid. Buckett concluded, ‘a very terrifying experience for all of us, but a very necessary one’.
LINGERING SADNESS
Seventy-five years on, the events of 3 July 1940 continue to resist
judgement, a mark of the immensely complex situation from which they evolved. In retrospect, the tragedy of Mers-el-Kébir accurately reflects the scale of the disaster that had befallen Britain and France in the space of less than two months. It also foreshadowed the dark night of war that lay ahead for both countries. For the Hood there was the lingering sadness that her guns had received their baptism of fire against not only an ally but, in the case of Dunkerque, a companion in arms. The return by the Dunkerque’s officers of souvenirs presented to them by members of the Hood’s wardroom in happier times made this all the more poignant and unpropitious. With them came this bitter note: “The captain and officers of the Dunkerque inform you of the death for the honour of their colours on 3 and 6 July 1940 of nine officers and 200 men of their ship. They return to you herewith the souvenirs they had of their comrades in arms of the British Royal Navy, in whom they had placed all their trust. And they express to you on this occasion all their bitter sadness and their disgust at seeing these comrades having no hesitation in soiling the glorious flag of St George with an ineffaceable stain — that of an assassin.” There was one souvenir, however, that the French did not return. To this day an unexploded shell from the Hood rests in a glass case outside the wardroom of the naval barracks at Toulon.
ABOVE: Amiral Gensoul speaks at the burial of some of the 1,297 men of his command who lost their lives at Mers-el-Kébir. (P. CARESSE)
LEFT: Damage to Dunkerque and some of the 210 dead she suffered during both raids. (P. CARESSE)
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D s ’ e n i t n e l Va t n e m e g a g n E VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943
When a pair of Motor Torpedo Boats ran into difficulties off the French coast on St.Valentine’s Day, 1943, Typhoons of the RAF’s 609 Squadron were sent out to provide air cover. Mark Crame relates the tragic tale which subsequently unfolded.
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y a D
VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943
I
T WAS ‘A’ Flight's turn at readiness on 14 February 1943 when Red Section of 609 (West Riding) Squadron, Sgt John Wiseman and Flt Sgt Alan Haddon, took off in perfect flying weather from RAF Manston tasked with protecting Royal Navy Motor Torpedo Boats in difficulties near the French coast. With dawn breaking, and still in range of German coastal artillery, attempts were made to tow one of the MTBs to safety as the men on board were at the mercy of the artillery and also the Luftwaffe, who would surely soon appear. The squadron’s Form 540 Operations Records Book opens the story:
BELOW: Typhoon pilots of 609 Squadron, 1943, with Sqn Ldr ‘Bee’ Beamont standing in the doorway.
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VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943
on the farm with his own family, his grandfather being the foreman there. Charley also enlisted in the RAF once he came of age, but as a mechanic rather than aircrew. John's patience was rewarded when, on 28 June 1941, he was instructed to report to No.1 Receiving Centre at Babbacombe for basic instruction before heading to No.4 Initial Training Wing, Paignton, and then onwards, as Leading Aircraftsman Wiseman, to No.31 Elementary Flying Training School at De Winton, Calgary, Canada, where he arrived just over a month later on 17 September. His first flight followed ten days afterwards, in a Tiger Moth. Meanwhile, his companion on that fateful Valentine’s Day, Flt Sgt Alan Haddon, was nicknamed 'Babe' due to appearing more like a fifteen-yearold but was three years John's senior. ABOVE: ‘Wing Commander de Goat’ the 609 Squadron mascot. RIGHT: ‘Wing Commander de Goat’ and ‘Blitz’ the dog alongside a squadron Typhoon. BELOW: John Wiseman pictured with a Harvard during his period of flying training in Canada.
"For the IO to go away on a Sunday is as effective as the CO saluting W/C de Goat. Today it results in the 'Battle of the MTB', a success comparable to the classic 'Battle of the Dinghy' on 8/5/41. Though F/Sgt Haddon and Sgt Wiseman are lost, 4 other Typhoons between them score no less than 7 Fw190's destroyed or probably destroyed. Initial situation: an MTB disabled between Dover and Gris Nez after striking hidden wreckage. First to be airborne, at 1030, are Haddon and Wiseman" (NB: W/C de Goat was the squadron’s goat mascot) Sadly, the two young pilots would not return.
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TWO FIGHTER BOYS
Born on 31 January 1923, Sgt John Wiseman was the only son of Percy and Hilda, growing up at Grange Farm, Martham, Norfolk, with his elder sister, Betty, who would also end up in uniform as an ATS driver attached to the Royal Norfolk Regiment. John was remembered as a popular, kind and intelligent boy, a former prefect at Great Yarmouth Grammar School. Always keen on aviation, and hoping to become an airline pilot after the war, John worked on the family farm while waiting until old enough to enlist in the RAF, first joining the Home Guard with his childhood friend, Charley Gallant, who lived
VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943
LEFT: 609 Squadron Typhoon.
his physique, finally enlisting on 14 September 1940 reporting to No.2 Receiving Centre before commencing flying training in June 1941 at 15 Flying Training School, RAF Lossiemouth.
PARACHUTE AND CLOTHING ON FIRE
Born on 18 August 1920 in County Durham, Alan was brought up by his father, Joseph, a First World War veteran of the Highland Light Infantry who lost his wife and mother of Alan and younger brother Ron while they were still children. Alan had a difficult early life, but was well-liked by his peer group and had an eye for the girls, with whom he proved popular. A keen sportsman, excelling at cricket and bowls, he also did well at school before leaving at the age of fifteen to move to Leicester, attending college learning technical drawing and starting work as a trainee draughtsman. With the outbreak of war, Alan decided to join the RAF as aircrew but was rejected due to: 'insufficient expansion of the chest'. Refusing to be denied his wish he purchased a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course and improved
Haddon, the more experienced of the two fighter boys, had joined 609 Sqn six months later in December 1941 while the squadron were still equipped with Spitfires. A popular pilot, he had already been credited with one Fw190 destroyed, the first for the squadron since their conversion to Typhoons during the summer of 1942, and a further two probables in December, despite having told his CO, Squadron Leader Paul Richey, that he has "no intention of flying a big bastard like that!" The aerial victory with which
he is credited came on 15 December 1942 when he and Plt Off Henry Amor attacked three Fw190s. Amor hit one, but his aircraft was set alight and he baled-out although was never found. Haddon's combat report paints a vivid picture of the dangers faced on these standing patrols:
BELOW: Alan Haddon during his period of flying training. BOTTOM LEFT: John Wiseman (left) and Charley Gallant during their Home Guard service.
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VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943 BELOW: 'Wing Commander de Goat', the 609 Squadron mascot, pictured with one of the unit's pilots.
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"I followed the port enemy aircraft through cloud and on breaking cloud saw the Fw190 and gave three short bursts allowing three rings deflection at 150-200 yards range. On second burst a cloud of grey and white smoke and then black smoke came from enemy aircraft. Then I saw four Fw190's behind me firing a considerable amount of tracer, so I did a steep diving turn into cloud. On breaking through cloud I saw a pilot with parachute and clothing on fire plummet into the water. However, as there were still three Fw190's on my tail I had to go back into cloud as quickly as possible."
VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943
FIRST OPERATIONAL FLIGHT
Sergeant Wiseman had yet to open his scoring account, his posting to 609 Sqn being in August 1942 and his first flight with the squadron also being his first in a Typhoon, although it took until 16 October before he made his first operational flight with a 1 hour 40 minute patrol from North to South Foreland. Those that followed consisted almost entirely of standing patrols along the Kent coast, with one aborted ‘Rhubarb’ and a couple of ‘Scrambles’. On three occasions he spotted 'Jerry', the first on 23 January when he recorded: "Two Fw190s sighted at Dungeness but dived away into cloud". None of these occasions provided the chance of interception, the closest occurring whilst flying as No.2 to Flt Lt 'Joe' Atkinson, and being all the more galling when friendly anti-aircraft fire obscured the raiders. Things were heating up on the southeast coast, however, and only the previous day, while Johnny and ‘Babe’ were flying together, the Intelligence Officer, Frank Ziegler, writes in the Form 540 Operations Record Book: "F/Sgt Haddon and Sgt Wiseman are about to land after another patrol when they are told of a bandit approaching Dover. Turning back, Haddon sees a Fw190, silhouetted by the sun, turning at 14,000 feet. Section climbs after E/A through thin cloud at 11,000 feet, and have reached 15,000 feet when 2 E/A are seen diving for France."
INTO THE SEA IN FLAMES
And so, on the morning of 14 February 1943 and what was John's seventeenth flight of the month, the two young pilots are tasked with the job of close escort for one of the crippled MTBs
being towed by two more. The pair, with oxygen masks over their mouths and rudders trimmed to port to counter the torque from the massive three-bladed propeller, with the fuel mixture set to rich and the fuel cocks and radiator opened and fifteen degrees of flap set, prime the carburettors and switch on their ignitions. With the cylinders primed they push down on the coil boosters and starter buttons and each fire a Coffmann cartridge to turn over the twenty-two hundred horses locked away inside the Napier Sabre engine ahead of them. They taxi out, opening the throttle in response to the green light from control and surge forwards down the runway; Haddon takes the lead, lifting off at 10:30 in DN294 PR-O with Wiseman following in R7872 PR-S and the pair head out to sea. Then bad luck strikes the Navy; the cable that is being used to tow the stricken vessel breaks. With the boats now stationary, thankfully
out of the range of the German guns, Wiseman and Haddon can do no more than circle relentlessly around them at 500ft, a thousand yards apart in line astern. It is around this time that contact is lost between Red Section and Bill Igoe, the Sector Controller at RAF Biggin Hill, codenamed ‘Swingate', who has been visited only a few weeks before, on 8 January, by the pair and newly-promoted Belgian Flying Officer Lallemand with a view to greater mutual efficiency in controlling and being controlled; the day before Lallemand 'investigated' Wiseman's Typhoon, causing the latter to exclaim hurriedly: "Cheval, it's me! It's Wiseman!"
TOP LEFT: Ground crew of 609 Squadron watch as one of the squadron Typhoons makes a low pass. TOP RIGHT: Flt Sgt Alan Haddon, 609 Squadron.
ABOVE: John Wiseman pictured with his sister Betty, an ATS driver. LEFT: Roy Payne with his Typhoon ‘Micky’ (PR-H) named after his wifeto-be. www.britainatwar.com 25
VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943
ABOVE: Cheval Lallemand is congratulated on the award of DFC, March 1943. ABOVE RIGHT: Armourer ‘Spud’ Murphy of 609 Squadron with belted 20mm ammunition. BELOW: 609 Squadron Typhoon, DN329.
Shortly before contact is lost, at Vannes-Meucon across the Channel in France, a pair of Focke Wulf Fw190-A4’s of III./Jg2 ‘Richtofen’ take off. The Squadron Commander, Oberleutnant Egon Mayer and his wingman Leutnant Fritz Rösle fly low over the Channel and head for the MTB's. Sighting the Typhoons they pull up: Luftwaffe claim records put the times at 11:36 and 11:38 and Flying Officer Lallemand is to write later in 'Rendezvous with Fate': "Some weeks later in a Ramsgate bar I heard the sad story from an eyewitness: the captain of the damaged MTB. He said that soon after the Typhoons started circling the boats in Indian file, the sailors saw two Focke Wulf 190’s loom up at sea level. Unable to warn our friends they watched one of them shoot down both Typhoons in
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quick succession – one folding up like a book, the other plunging into the sea in flames, without either knowing what hit them"
HITS ON THE COCKPIT
Fg Off Lallemand is also in the air that morning; sent to patrol mid-Channel in Typhoon R7855 PR-D, with Fg Off Antoni Polek in R8899 as his No.2. They had taken off as Yellow Section to continue the escort, but soon ran into trouble, engaging the first of two flights of four German fighters. The Intelligence Form 'F' Combat Report records: "F/O Lallemand (Belgian) and F/O Polek (Polish) left Manston at 11:29 on defensive patrol and were then vectored to the position of the MTB. Flying at 300ft they sighted 4 Fw190’s in square formation, on the deck and heading
West. The Typhoons attacked and the 190’s split up; there was a dogfight. On his first burst from astern Lallemand saw no result. After various gyrations he saw Polek chasing a 190 with another 190 behind him and firing. Lallemand approached from the beam and fired at the 190 behind Polek, obtaining hits on the cockpit. Lallemand almost rammed the enemy aircraft which crashed into the sea. Polek meantime had fired at a 190 while it was turning and diving, and then gave it a long burst as it climbed. The 190 poured thick white smoke and made cloud at such a low rate that Polek, following, was at stalling point. Polek believes the pilot was dead as he made no attempt to evade or avoid stalling."
VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943
Lallemand takes up the story: "Ten minutes go by and it is time control relieved us. One more round trip, Boulogne – Calais – Boulogne, and surely they will. We are just making our final turn off Boulogne when I hear a distinct but very feeble voice uttering my call-sign: “Beauty Yellow leader, bandits approaching you from east.” It is Bill Igoe again. I scan the coast two miles away, wondering whether perhaps our turn has confused him and made him plot us as hostiles, but dutifully resume the turn to put us in a better tactical position. It is just as well, for at once I see four Focke Wulf 190’s to port, brushing the cliffs and dashing towards us. They have the yellow noses of the famous Richtofen group. Throttling back, I cry “Tally-Ho!” to warn Polek and the controller and as my speed drops I turn more tightly, adjusting the
propeller to fine pitch. Then, pushing the selector till I have ten degrees of flap, I give full gas and bank to the maximum. My mind darts back to the previous combat and how the German fighters broke up, and into the microphone I shout “SCRAMBLE!” They will be listening at dispersal and I know that Jean de Selys and Roy Payne will take off at once. In fact, as the twisting dog-fight continues and we gain on the 190’s, I already hear Jean’s airborne voice calling me. Will the 190’s separate and increase our disadvantage? It is not easy for two pilots to keep an eye on four enemies. I call Jean back, first in English, then desperately in French: “Jean, à Gris-Nez, nom de Dieu!” The Form 540 continues: "With the leading pair turning on a parallel course to port, Lallemand fired at one of the second pair from 15 degrees and it turned on its back. Whilst it was inverted he fired again from above, seeing strikes on its
belly. As he overshot the enemy aircraft was still inverted, travelling at great speed in a dive from 300ft. He believes it went straight into the sea. Lallemand then fired a full beam shot at the second enemy aircraft of the pair from 350-400 yards. Enemy aircraft dived and to his surprise burst into flames – Polek saw it go in. Polek himself got on the tail of another enemy aircraft (presumably one of the leading pair). This made a sharp climbing turn and Polek fired from the quarter at 100 yards range shortly before the enemy aircraft reached cloud and he had to break away as the fourth enemy aircraft was on his tail. Though he saw no results of his fire, Lallemand saw this enemy aircraft flying slowly along the coast below cliff level, losing height and pouring blue-black smoke." ‘Just a Minor Skirmish’ With Lallemand and Polek heading back to Manston after two combats with JG2, the day was far from over, with Fg Off Roy Payne's logbook noting:
ABOVE: Typhoon R7752 of 609 Squadron. LEFT: Alan Haddon, second left, at RAF Biggin Hill. BELOW: Sqn Ldr Roland Beamont by 609 Squadron’s state board.
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VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943
saw emerging from the cloud, as he had corkscrewed away.”
TWO AGAINST FOUR
TOP RIGHT: Mention in Dispatches Certificate for Alan Haddon. TOP: Typhoon R7752 of 609 Squadron. ABOVE: Telegram notifying the loss of Alan Haddon.
"PR-H. Escorting MT Boats. 50mins duration. 1 Fw190 destroyed over Calais" Speaking many years after the event, Roy recalled what he regarded as a minor skirmish. Airborne in R7845 PR-H as No.2 to another Belgian, Fg Off Jean de Selys Longchamps, in R8888, PR-Y, they scrambled when called by Lallemand and took around ten minutes to reach the MTBs mid-Channel at around 300 mph, flying "just high enough above the waves to get the wheels up!" “Just as we flew overhead the MTB’s, we couldn’t believe our luck; just about two miles ahead we spotted a very old Junkers 52 three-engined transport plane heading North, just inside the French coastline. We headed towards it, but fantastic flak came up at us from the coastal defences. As we were concentrating so hard on the Ju52 we made the classic mistake; we stopped
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scanning the sky for enemy aircraft. In those few seconds, I saw tracer flash over my wings from behind. We both broke away suddenly. I turned steeply then saw the Fw190s go up into cloud. I followed them in, and on re-emerging saw two planes. I thought the one in front of the other was Jean, so I called out to him on the radio. Then I opened fire on the closest of the two and saw my shells rip into his wing and lots of white smoke emerge from the fuselage. I thought I couldn’t claim it as destroyed because I hadn’t seen it hit the water, however on returning to Manston the Intelligence boys gave it to me. I think they wanted to keep the numbers up. Afterwards, de Selys and I wondered whether the Ju52 was there as a decoy, but quickly realised that logistically it would have been impossible. It turned out that Jean’s was not one of the pair of aircraft that I
Meanwhile, in the home county of the West Riding Squadron the following article appeared in the Yorkshire Evening News: TYPHOONS ROUT NEWEST NAZI FIGHTERS. F.W.s Routed While Attacking Launches The battles of the F.W.s began when six pilots from the West Riding of Yorkshire Auxiliary Squadron, flying over the Channel in their Typhoons, saw a couple of high-speed launches being attacked by five or six enemy planes. The Typhoons promptly went in to attack. A Belgian pilot was leading a section when, in his own words: “We met four F.W.190’s. They did not see us until we fired. They split up immediately and after a dogfight for four or five minutes I saw my No. 2 shooting at one F.W.190 and being chased by another. “I turned to help him and hit the Hun, who went straight into the water. I climbed again, found my No. 2 and resumed patrol, as there were on other enemy aircraft in sight.
A SECOND CLASH
“After fifteen minutes we saw another formation of four F.W. 190s making for Gris Nez, so we started climbing and got on their tails. I saw my fire hit one, but did not see what happened to him after he had turned on his back because I overshot him. I made a steep turn and got in some good bursts on another F.W. 190, which went down in flames.” The Belgian pilots pilot’s No. 2 was a Polish flying officer, who severely damaged other F.W.s
VALENTINE’S DAY ENGAGEMENT Typhoons in ‘Battle of The MTB’ – 1943 had written the final entry in the pages of his 1942 diary: "Jan 1st. And so ends an eventful year and I am on the threshold of another which has promise of lots more fun and excitement and maybe even a little glory if God wishes it to be so." The BBC's Nine O’ Clock News that night announced: “In the course of defensive patrols over the English Channel, Typhoons of Fighter Command destroyed five Focke-Wulf 190s, the latest type of German fighter. Two of our pilots failed to return.” No trace of either Wiseman or Haddon was ever found, their names recorded on the CWGC Runnymede Memorial to RAF personnel lost in NW Europe and who have no known grave.
“I could not wait to see if they crashed, because we were two against four,” he said “I got in a long burst against the first F.W. 190. He was climbing and turning very steeply all the time, but I saw a number of strikes and smoke. The Hun disappeared in cloud. “In the second dog-fight we were again two against four. I got in a burst before my target disappeared again in cloud. When I turned I saw him going down with smoke pouring out, making for the French coast.” Another Belgian, also a flying officer, shot down his first enemy aircraft. The fourth F.W. 190 destroyed was shot down by a Scottish-born flying officer."
LEFT: Alan Haddon’s last diary entries. BELOW: Royal message of condolence on loss of Alan Haddon. BOTTOM: Typhoons of 609 Squadron taxy out for another sortie. BOTTOM LEFT: The pilot wings of John Wiseman.
TWO OF OUR PILOTS FAILED TO RETURN
Luftwaffe records show JagdGeschwader 2 ‘Richtofen’ losing three Fw190s and the deaths of Unteroffizier Fridolin Armbruster, Leutnant Leonhard Deuerling and Unteroffizier Gerhard Bischoff. 609's score on Typhoons is now 17 Destroyed, 6 Probable and 7 Damaged, for the loss through enemy action of 5 pilots. Their total for the war is now 180 Destroyed, 64 Probable and 94 Damaged for the loss of 36 pilots. It is a year and one day since John Wiseman, with 391 hours flying recorded in his logbook, had been awarded his coveted wings and only six weeks since Alan Haddon, fifteen months a fighter pilot with 609 Sqn,
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INSIDE THIEPVAL Memorial to the Missing
T
HE GERMANS were dug in deep on the Thiepval ridge, a dominant position which was a key objective for British troops on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Thiepval was eventually taken, but it took three months to reach this point, and would cost thousands of lives. Many of those who were killed during the battle were lost forever, their bodies either never found or buried in graves marked ‘Known unto God’. When the British and French governments decided to erect a memorial to those missing men, it was to Thiepval their eyes turned, and no more fitting a spot could have been chosen.
In 1917 the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) was formed with the objective of ensuring the final resting places of the dead would not be lost forever. As a result the Commission built cemeteries, not just across the battle-torn fields of France and Belgium, but around the world. In the area of the Somme the Commission searched the ground at least six times for lost bodies and isolated graves. Despite this, tens of thousands of bodies were never recovered or were unidentified when interred. To ensure that these men would not go un-commemorated a great memorial was to be built, and the task of designing a suitable
INSIDE
THIEPVAL The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing is one of the most famous First World War monuments. It is visited by thousands every year, but few ever have the opportunity to see inside this huge structure. As a new restoration project begins, Britain at War is granted unrivalled access.
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INSIDE THIEPVAL Memorial to the Missing FAR LEFT: The Thiepval Memorial and, in the foreground, the Thiepval Anglo-French Cemetery, pictured from the air. (COURTESY OF AERO PHOTO STUDIO)
structure was handed to Sir Edwin Lutyens, a man often referred to as ‘the greatest British architect’.
WHERE AND HOW One of the first considerations facing the IWGC had been the question of where to erect the memorial. Lutyens himself had first suggested that the structure should straddle the Thiepval to Authuille road, rather in the style of the Menin Gate at Ypres which had been unveiled by Lord Plumer on 24 July 1927. Another option had been to place it on the exact site of the old Thiepval Château which, located roughly 220 yards north-west of the memorial’s current location, was destroyed in the fighting. This latter option was discounted by virtue of the fact that a large number of burials from the various first aid posts established in and around the Château already existed at this spot.1
MAIN PICTURE: The Thiepval Memorial and, in the foreground, the Thiepval Anglo-French Cemetery. The memorial is on the D73 route, next to the village of Thiepval, off the main Bapaume to Albert road. The door through which we entered the memorial’s interior during our visit can be seen at the bottom of the corner above the steps. (WWW.SHUTTERSTOCK.COM)
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INSIDE THIEPVAL Memorial to the Missing LEFT: The concept for the memorial that was eventually built at Thiepval, sketched on a sheet of Lutyens’ office writing paper. A timber model of this design, painted red and white, was displayed at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in 1925. (COURTESY OF THE CWGC)
FAR LEFT: The man behind the memorial at Thiepval: Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens.
By January 1929, the effects of a global economic downturn and the lingering legacy of Britain’s First World War austerity were making themselves felt. The first manifestation of this was a final move of location for the memorial — further up the brow of the hill, nearer the summit. In making this decision, Lutyens had bowed to demands of the IWGC’s finance committee: this site both removed the need for a ‘high and expensive podium’ for the structure and allowed for a much shorter access road.
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(US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
Similar concessions also led to Lutyens reducing the size of the memorial’s final design by about 25 per cent. As well as the financial savings, it also meant that the height of the Thiepval Memorial
would be just below that of the Arc de Triomphe, which, it was noted at the time, would otherwise be ‘displeasing to the French authorities who had approved the original design’.2
BELOW: Aerial photograph of the Thiepval Memorial’s unveiling ceremony on 1 August 1932. Note the shellcratered field just beyond the memorial. (HISTORIC
MILITARY PRESS)
INSIDE THIEPVAL Memorial to the Missing LEFT: Sir Fabian Ware, the founder of the Imperial War Graves Commission, talking to the Prince of Wales at the Thiepval Memorial’s unveiling ceremony on 1 August 1932. Sir Edwin Lutyens is standing behind and to the left. The ceremony had originally been scheduled to take place on 16 May that year, but was postponed due to the assassination of the President of the French Republic. Another event due to have been held on that day, and which was also cancelled, was the dedication of the Memorial to the Missing in the Fauboug d’Amiens Cemetery at Arras. (COURTESY OF THE CWGC)
Lutyens’ final plans for the memorial were submitted in January 1928 and permission for construction to go ahead was finally granted on 12 April 1928. Building work began the following year, with the digging of the foundations starting in March 1929. The memorial is hollow, and was built of engineering brick with large flat roofs. The builders soon encountered problems, however. At Thiepval, as elsewhere on the Western Front, the Germans had constructed numerous deep and solid dug-outs. When the foundations for the memorial were being dug in May 1929, to a depth of 24 feet so that the footings sat on solid chalk, the tunnels to three German dug-outs, part of the defenders’ second line of defences, were discovered, still equipped with boxes of unexploded bombs and shells. Just before this work began, the site had again been cleared, at which point the debris of war uncovered included the bodies of six German soldiers and an unexploded 15-inch shell.3 The building work was completed in early 1932. The result was a massive stepped pyramidal form of intersecting arches culminating in a towering 80-foot high central arch. Clad in brick, the memorial’s 16 piers are faced with white Portland stone
ABOVE: The scale of the foundations for the memorial can be gleaned from this picture of the open space at its base, most of which is below ground level. One of the wooden entrance doors is at the top. (HMP) ABOVE RIGHT: Construction work underway at Thiepval in the 1930s. (COURTESY
upon which the names of the missing are engraved (other dressings are of Massangis limestone). The original facing bricks came from a brickworks near Lille — over ten million bricks and 100,000 cubic feet of stone were used in the construction at an estimated cost of £117,000 (some £6m today). The whole structure sits on a ten foot thick ‘raft’ that was formed from 12,000 tons of concrete. The total cost at the time worked out at just £1 11s 0d per missing name. The structure was described in a report in The Times just before the unveiling of the memorial: ‘Rising 150ft.
from the ground, above the Stone of Remembrance, the monument stands on a site of nearly 40 acres of State land in the communes of Thiepval and Authuile. A brick superstructure is carried on 16 masonry piers, on which are inscribed the names of 73,357 officers and men. These piers are coupled by eight stone arches, running north to south, and thus form eight piers carrying four arches which run east to west. The four arches and their piers carry two arches, running north to south, and these in turn form two piers which carry the great arch 35ft. wide and 80ft. high, running east
OF THE CWGC)
RIGHT: Another of the many chambers in the basement area of the memorial. The narrow window in the centre is almost at ground level. (HISTORIC
MILITARY PRESS)
FAR RIGHT: Part of the network of drains and gullies that lace the basement of the memorial. (HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)
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INSIDE THIEPVAL Memorial to the Missing
to west; the piers diminishing in bulk as the arches increase in length and width. The structure is surmounted by a platform from which the battlefields can be viewed.’4 It is many decades since the public have been allowed to go to the top of the Memorial to view the battlefields.
THE UNVEILING It was originally planned to hold the memorial’s official unveiling ceremony on 16 May 1932, but it had to be postponed after the President of the French Republic, Paul Doumer, was assassinated by a Russian émigré. The inauguration finally went ahead in the afternoon of 1 August 1932, in the presence of the Prince of Wales and the new French President, Albert Lebrun. As the memorial neared completion, it was decided that an Anglo-French
ABOVE RIGHT: The large room containing the first of two metal staircases encountered during our journey up the memorial. This staircase is against the main central arch and leads up into the chamber above it. Note the remains of earlier doorways and staircases on the wall of the chamber, used during the construction phase but removed, as no longer required, once work was complete. TOP LEFT: Part of our journey through the heart of the memorial entailed negotiating the top of one of the arches that form part of the four corners of the memorial.
LEFT: The climb continues. The staircase seen here takes the visitor to the large chamber that lies either side of the main central arch, in turn above two corner pillars. (ALL THREE ON PAGE HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)
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cemetery should be laid out in front of the memorial to symbolise the joint efforts and suffering of both armies during the war. Each country provided the remains of 300 of its soldiers. Of the 300 Commonwealth burials in the cemetery, 239 are unidentified. The bodies were found between December 1931 and March 1932, from as far north as Loos and as far south as Le Quesnel. At the unveiling, the new French President spoke the following words: ‘Thiepval and Authuille, whose houses, all in mud plaster, timidly grouped themselves before 1914 round a humble belfry. Their inhabitants did not have any troubles but those of the sowing time and harvest. The battle destroyed Thiepval and Authuille to such an extent that it was impossible, after the war, to find any trace of the villages … In spite of the magnificent reconstruction, this landscape is touched with infinite sadness. There is about a persistent memory of death. Death, in fact, for such a long time ruled these places and withered in their bloom with a pitiless scythe so many young men, full of promises and hope for the future.’ A correspondent for The Times wrote the following report on 2 August 1932: ‘The Prince of Wales as president of the Imperial War Graves Commission
today unveiled the British memorial at Thiepval to the missing who fell in the battles of the Somme. This is the last and greatest of the War memorials erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission in France. An additional memorial remains to be completed for the Canadian Government at Vimy, but with the unveiling of the Thiepval Memorial the commemoration of the British soldiers who fell in France and Belgium in the Great War is complete … ‘The memorial stands like a castle, massive and magnificent, on the highest point of the Somme battlefield — the Thiepval Ridge, of glorious and terrible memories, that cost more bitter fighting to approach, more blood to win, than any other shellmangled, bullet-swept piece of ground that British troops had defied death to conquer. It towers like a citadel above the windy slopes, corn-covered and sunny today, towards which the British divisions hurled themselves in a frenzy of sacrifice 16 years ago, fighting their way up from the grisly morasses of the Ancre, gaining a precarious foothold on firmer ground, losing it again, crawling their way over the bodies of their comrades through murderous woods and gaspoisoned ruins towards the fortress on the hill where their names may now be read.
INSIDE THIEPVAL Memorial to the Missing
'On its [the memorial’s] great piers, above the names of the missing, are French names which have gone into British history, Beaumont Hamel, Mametz, Delville Wood, Pozières, Le Transloy, Flers. From the observer on the ground the old scars are hidden now by a cloak of vegetation, but from the summit of the memorial, where the British and French flags fly together, the trench lines can still be seen spread like a ghostly network over the fields.’ The unveiling prompted many other eulogies to those that lost their lives in the First World War. Among those was a reflective article, again published in The Times: ‘The nation that proudly and piously remembers its soldiers is a nation that does not intend to forget the war in which they fought … The War was over long ago, and we have only just finished rescuing and recording the names of our men who fell in it; we have only just completed an unmistakable declaration to the world that we mean to remember. Let us remember with all our heart and soul, and make of these memorials beacons to light us through the darkest hours that may come.’ Prophetic words.
RESTORATION Since it was unveiled, much maintenance has been required, and undertaken, on the memorial, and now an 18-month project to restore Thiepval Memorial is under way. Over the years the structure has been subject to the effects of adverse weather, exacerbated by its elevated position and height. Recent technical surveys have highlighted a need to address a range of significant issues with the structure. A landscape survey has also been commissioned to assess preparation requirements for the surrounding turf, to accommodate an expected increase in visitor footfall. The GWGC’s Western Europe Area Operations Director, Richard Nichol, who is leading on the project with the Estates Department, explained: ‘This is one of the most important pieces of restoration work that is being undertaken by the organization for some time and will ensure that both the monument and surrounding landscape are ready for the Battle of the Somme Centenary in July 2016 – an event that is already drawing huge public interest.’
TOP LEFT: The view of the Thiepval AngloFrench Cemetery as seen from the top of the memorial. TOP RIGHT: The entrance out on to the top of the Thiepval Memorial. BELOW: Looking out over the Somme battlefield from the observation area at the top of the Thiepval Memorial. In the middle distance can be seen the Ulster Tower.
The work will begin in the late spring of 2015 and will be completed before the ceremonies in July 2016. This magnificent monument will also be floodlit to make it a very part of the Somme night landscape. The project has received extra support from the UK Government, due to the many First World War events that will be held at Thiepval throughout the next few years. The interior, however, will remain beyond the public gaze.
NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.
Gavin Stamp, The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme (Profile Books, London, 2007), p.130. Michael Stedman, Thiepval (Pen & Sword’s Battleground Series, Barnsley, 2005), p.70. Gerald Gliffon, Somme 1916: A Battlefield Companion (The History Press, Stroud, 2009) p.428. The Times, 29 July 1932.
(ALL THREE ON
‘the trench lines can still be seen spread like a ghostly network over the fields.’
PAGE HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)
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Pied Piper, Tin-Eye and Cell 14. Moonlight landings by rowing boat on the Kent coast. It is the stuff of spy fiction — except it's all true. Joshua Levine reveals the story of the plot, capture and secret trial of Germany's preinvasion spies in 1940.
1.
I
N JUNE 2014, we learned that the British government was attempting to conduct an Old Bailey terrorism trial in complete secrecy. The Court of Appeal, mindful that transparent justice is a cornerstone of our democratic society, ruled that parts of the trial must be heard in public. Newspapers and television networks feared that a secret trial was beyond the pale. They all used the same word: unprecedented. But they were all wrong. A series of entirely secret trials had taken place in Britain during a period far more extreme than our own. The first, and most remarkable, of these trials took place in November 1940 at the Old Bailey. It concerned three Nazi spies, charged with treachery, who had landed in September on the south coast of England. They had been sent as the advance guard of the German invasion – and just as the Court of Appeal expressed its democratic concerns in 2014, so Alexander Maxwell of the Home Office wrote to the Home Defence Executive in 1940, expressing his department’s disapproval of the
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2. concept of secret trials. “Public opinion and public criticism,” wrote Maxwell, “is the most important safeguard for the proper administration of justice.” In his reply, Lord Swinton justified the secrecy: “I want to make it plain that there is much more in this than keeping the enemy in doubt as to the fate of his agents. The combined work of all the services has built up, and is continually adding to, a great structure of intelligence and counter espionage; and a single disclosure, affecting one individual, might send the whole building toppling. I have no love for unnecessary secrecy; but in this matter we cannot afford to take any avoidable risk.”
BELOW LEFT: The rowing boat in which Waldberg and Meier came ashore at Dungeness. Both were part of the operation codenamed Lena. BELOW RIGHT: Kieboom and Pons’ abandoned rowing boat on the beach. They were supposed to act as refugees from occupied countries.
The fact was that MI5 was building up a network of double agents whom the Germans trusted as loyal spies. MI5 had all sorts of plans for these double agents, a number of whom were Nazi spies who had been sent to Britain, captured, and been presented with a stark choice – either serve the British or face trial and execution. But not every captured spy became a double agent. Many were not considered suitable, and were sent for trial instead. And MI5 was brutally aware that a single piece of information from one of these trials had the potential to expose the entire ‘double cross’ system. The Home Office’s scruples about secret trials were admirable, but democracy would have to take a sabbatical to ensure its own survival.
FOUR MEN IN A BOAT Nazi Spies On Trial
1. Carl Meier
4.
2. Sjoerd Pons 3. Charles Van Der Kieboom 4. Jose Waldberg landmines, and weather conditions — but their training proved to be woefully inadequate. They received a month of sketchy instruction in Morse and cryptology, they were shown how to use their transmitters, and they were given a few perfunctory lectures about the structure of the British army. They were not told how to behave when they landed, nor were they provided with identity papers.
3. This particular trial was the culmination of a chain of events set in motion by General Alfred Jodl, the Chief of Operations Staff at Wehrmacht High Command. In July 1940, Jodl was responsible for formulating the preliminary plan for the German invasion of Britain. As part of his planning, Jodl spoke to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr (the German Intelligence Service) explaining that a network of spies was needed in Britain to serve as scouts in advance of the invasion. These spies, said Jodl, would have to identify suitable landing grounds, provide detailed information about defences, and guide the invading troops once they had fought their way off the beaches. Less than a week after Jodl’s preliminary plan had been delivered, Adolf Hitler issued his Fuhrer Directive No. 16, bringing Operation Sealion, as the invasion was codenamed, into official being. Sealion’s ultimate objective, according to the directive, was to occupy Britain “should it become necessary”. Hitler was not yet committed to an invasion. Given Germany’s inexorable military advance, his respect for the AngloSaxon people, and his desire to turn his attention eastwards, he remained confident that Britain would sue for peace.
When no approach had arrived by 19 July, Hitler addressed the Reichstag in uncharacteristically measured tones. It almost caused him pain, he told the assembly, to be responsible for bringing down a great empire which he had no desire to harm. He could see no reason why this war had to go on. His offer of peace reached Britain — and three days later, it was rejected by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax.
THE PIED PIPER Preparations for the invasion intensified. The most pressing preliminary objective was the destruction of the Royal Air Force, but with an invasion date set for the middle of September, it became imperative that Canaris’s spies were in place to guide the attackers. The operation to send them to Britain, codenamed Lena, was allocated to Major Nikolaus Ritter of the Abwehr’s Hamburg sub-office . A shortlist of candidates was selected by Walter Praetorius, a man known as ‘The Pied Piper’. He began searching for recruits in Belgium and Holland. This was logical: refugees from recently occupied countries were arriving in Britain in numbers. From a list Praetorius drew up, Ritter chose his favourites. The chosen few would be expected to report back on coastal troop positions, frequency of patrols, locations of
ABOVE FOUR PORTRAITS: The four spies. Recruited by the Abwehr, the German Intelligence Service, their task was to serve as scouts ahead of the potential German invasion of Britain. They were to provide detail on defence, to identify suitable landing places and guide invading troops once they had fought through the beaches. RIGHT: Used at the trial of the four men, this map showed the position where the two boats had come ashore and where Waldberg had been apprehended.
Such neglectful preparation might, perhaps, be the result of the speed with which they had to be turned into spies. But as MI5’s Guy Liddell observed in his wartime diary, it was difficult “to believe that they [the Abwehr] could have been so stupid, as having sent these men over without having schooled them properly and worked out plans by which they could be really effective.” www.britainatwar.com 39
This begs a question — was the Abwehr stupid, overstretched, or had it deliberately neglected the men’s selection and training? The answer may turn on the fact that the Abwehr was not a loyal Nazi organization. Wilhelm Canaris, although personally appointed by Hitler, was never a member of the Nazi party. He was, in fact, a consistent — albeit careful — opponent of Hitler and Nazism, who filled key positions in the organization with like-minded associates. And even those officers who were not actively anti-Nazi were often unconcerned by the quality of their work. In a post-war memo, the historian Hugh TrevorRoper, at the time a counter-intelligence officer, wrote: “The operational officers of the Abwehr sat in Paris and Athens, in Biarritz and Estoril, enjoying the opportunities for self-indulgence provided by these resorts, undisturbed so long as a quota of reports was sent in. Whether these reports were true or false was unimportant, since there was no centralized evaluation.” Canaris once told a fellow intelligence officer that he did not care if every German agent in Britain was under control so long as could tell German High Command that he had agents in Britain reporting regularly.
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The success of Lena may have been irrelevant to the Abwehr so long as it could show that it was dutifully sending spies across the Channel. But, to go a stage further, it is not impossible that the choice of spies and their pitiful training amounted to an act of internal sabotage by anti-Nazi members of the organization. Nikolaus Ritter, the man responsible for Lena, was, after all, a trusted protégé of Wilhelm Canaris. The first four Lena spies were certainly a motley crew. Charles van den Kieboom was a half-Dutch, half-Japanese YMCA receptionist. Carl Meier was a failed medical student who spoke English with an American accent. Sjoerd Pons was an unemployed ex-Dutch army ambulance driver who could barely speak English, while Jose Waldberg was a French-born German who knew no English at all. He was, however, a committed Nazi who had spied for the Abwehr in France before its fall. The others had no experience of spying and no obvious credentials for the job. Pons and van den Kieboom were not even willing volunteers; they had been blackmailed into spying. It is little wonder that among themselves, the spies described their mission as Himmelfahrt – ‘the journey to heaven’.
THE SPIES ASHORE The journey began with the men being brought to within a few miles of the British coast, placed in rowing boats, and pointed towards the Kent coast. In one boat were Meier and Waldberg, in the other, Kieboom and Pons. The boats landed in the early hours of the morning of 3 September; one near Dungeness, the other by the Dymchurch Redoubt. They had with them binoculars, wireless transmitters, cases containing clothes, cigarettes and brandy, £30 in bank notes, and enough food for a fortnight, by which time, they had been assured, the German invasion force would have arrived. As might have been predicted, only Waldberg had the makings of a decent spy. In his 24 hours of freedom on the Kent coast, he managed to make wireless contact with his German handlers. The other three men were truly hopeless. Meier gave himself away by knocking on the door of The Rising Sun pub at Lydd at nine in the morning and asking the landlady for a champagne cider, and a hot bath. Lydd was no hub of cosmopolitan activity in 1940, and Meier with his foreign accent and ignorance of pub etiquette did not blend in easily. The landlady explained to him that a bath was not on offer, and asked him to call back later. On his way out he smacked his head on light fitting,
TOP LEFT: The black fibre suitcase carried by Waldberg and Meier looked innocent enough …although hidden inside was their secret radio, now held by the Imperial War Museum. (IWM)
ABOVE RIGHT: Pictured in November 2014, this is the exact spot where Waldberg and Meier came ashore with the new Lifeboat Station in the background. (G PEARSON)
BOTH BELOW: The foreshore at Dymchurch where Kieboom and Pons came ashore and the same scene today. (G PEARSON)
FOUR MEN IN A BOAT Nazi Spies On Trial
breaking it. (The broken light fitting was still extant in the bar during the early 1980s, and at least up until the premises ceased to be a pub: Editor) When he returned, he spoke to an air raid warden who asked to see his identity card. He replied that he had no card, and said, ‘We arrived here last night,’ revealing the existence of his fellow spies. Two members of the public stepped up to arrest him. “You’ve caught me, I guess,” Meier told them, “and I don’t mind what happens to me, but I don’t want to go back to Germany!” By the time of Meier’s arrest, Kieboom was already in custody. His beached dinghy had been noticed by a patrolling soldier in the early morning gloom, and he was spotted minutes later. “I am a Dutch refugee,” he shouted, “and if I can see one of your officers, I can explain the situation!” Pons, meanwhile, was spotted by a soldier in a nearby field. When he was challenged, he shouted, “I am a Dutchman!” and tried to explain, in broken English, that he had lost his companion. Early the next morning, Waldberg was noticed by a policeman as he walked along a railway line.
TOP RIGHT: The radio with which Kieboom and Pons came ashore displayed by a soldier of the Somerset Light Infantry. (HMP) BELOW RIGHT: In one message transmitted by Waldberg he noted an ‘unfinished block house’. Almst certainly these are the now demolished remains of the incomplete structure.
Brought together again, the men were sent to Britain’s wartime spy prison — just around the corner from Richmond Underground Station. Latchmere House, known as Camp 020, was run by Colonel Robin Stephens, known behind his back as ‘Tin-Eye’ for his everpresent monocle. Stephens’s role was to interrogate his prisoners, and to decide whether they could be used as double agents against their German masters. Stephens enjoyed his job — Christopher Harmer, an MI5 officer, remembers him rubbing his hands with glee on hearing
gently that it would be better if he confessed, because Stephens could become very angry indeed. Stephens also invented ‘Cell 14’. Just as George Orwell’s Room 101 contained ‘the worst thing in the world’, so Cell 14 was created to conjure up the prisoner’s darkest fears. It was a perfectly ordinary cell around which a tale of death and madness was spun. The prisoner was told that the previous occupant had committed suicide, that it was opposite the mortuary, that he would remain locked up without human contact until he confessed — or until he was taken away ‘for the very last time’. Fear and vulnerability often prompted a quick confession. Perhaps surprisingly, Stephens would
that a fresh spy had been caught. But before a prisoner could be used as a double agent, he or she had to confess to being a spy. Stephens used his own carefully crafted methods to extract confessions. One tactic, which he called blow-hot/blow-cold, will be familiar to viewers of modern police dramas. Stephens would begin by behaving ferociously towards the prisoner. A calm officer would intervene, apparently trying to pacify Stephens. The kindly officer would take the prisoner aside and explain
never allow physical violence to be used against his prisoners. But this had less to do with progressive thinking than with an understanding that confessions gained by torture were rarely reliable. While in Stephens’s custody, Waldberg confirmed that he had been a willing German agent – but the others denied being spies. Sjoerd Pons claimed that he had intended to give himself up as soon as he arrived: “I want to take it all to you,” he said, “I want to tell the police and take him my apparatus under my arm.’”
‘BLOW HOT, BLOW COLD’
(G PEARSON)
BELOW LEFT: Now a private house, formerly the ‘Rising Sun’ pub in Lydd, where Meier had tried to buy ‘a champagne cider’ at 9 o'clock in the morning. (G PEARSON)
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ABOVE LEFT & RIGHT: This was the site at Boulderwall Farm where Waldberg had set up his transmitter. He was apprehended nearby whilst walking along the narrow gauge Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway line. Today, the scene has been transformed through many years of gravel extraction but this is almost exactly the same site with the water tower and water works in the far distance. (G PEARSON)
FAR RIGHT: This photo of Catharina Pons, wife of Sjoerd, was found on him when he was captured. The couple were married in 1939 and divorced after the war.
Pons was asked whether he would be willing to become a double agent. “It is difficult,” he answered. “Difficult, is it?” replied Stephens, “Why? You love Germany, do you?” Regardless of his feelings for Germany, Pons was facing a dilemma. On the one hand, he believed that the Germans would arrive in Britain shortly, and he did not want to risk betraying them. On the other hand, if he refused the British offer, he might be executed before the Germans arrived. He asked Stephens whether he could be sent to America, where, he claimed, he had wanted to go all along. The answer, unsurprisingly, was ‘no’. It did not take long for Stephens to conclude that the men could not be used as double agents. For one thing, three of them continued to deny being spies. For another, their arrests had been locally observed and discussed. News of this might have filtered back to the Germans. Another factor was that Waldberg had made wireless contact with his German handlers. It was one of Stephens’s rules that the initial contact between a double agent and his enemy handlers must be made under British supervision. Waldberg might, after all, have warned his handlers of his imminent capture, in which case they
would now use him as a triple agent. And so the ‘Four Men in a Boat’ were sent for trial at the Old Bailey – with the exception of Waldberg who pleaded guilty, firm in his belief that the Germans would shortly arrive to release him from his cell.
THE TRIAL The trial, held in Court One before Mr Justice Wrottesley, began on 19 November 1940. The three men were charged with the new offence of treachery, introduced to fill a loophole as the existing crime of treason only covered British subjects. The trial was held in total secret, with jury members being told by the judge to “Make up some story if you are asked what you are trying.” Mr Justice Wrottesley also told them to keep “an open mind” — but at a time when spies were feared and hated, when Britain was expecting an invasion, when the Blitz had been raging for over two months, and when Britain and its dominions were fighting without Russian or American help – an ‘open mind’ was an extremely tall order. Rarely can a jury have approached a trial in a more prejudiced frame of mind. Which makes what was about to happen all the more remarkable.
THE INCRIMINATING MESSAGES
When Jose Waldberg was arrested he had a notebook contain ing transcripts, in French, of messages he had already transmitted. They were: ARRIVED SAFELY DOCUMENT DESTROYED ENGLISH PATROL TWO HUNDRED METRES FROM COAST BEACH WITH BROWN NETS AND RAILWA YS SLEEPERS AT A DISTANCE OF FIFTY METRES NO MINES FEW SOLDIE RS UNFINISHED BLOCK HOUSE NEW ROAD WALDBERG MEIER PRISONER ENGLISH POLICE SEARCHING FOR ME AM CORNERED SITUATION DIFFICULT I CAN RESIST THIRST UNTIL SATURD AY IF I AM TO RESIST SEND AEROPLANES WEDNESDAY EVENING ELEVEN O’CLOCK AM THREE KM NORTH OF POINT OF ARRIVAL LONG LIVE GERMA NY WALDBERG THIS IS EXACT POSITION YESTERDAY EVENING SIX O’CLOC K THREE MESSERSCHMITT FIRED MACHINE GUNS IN MY DIRECT ION THREE HUNDRED METRES SOUTH WATER RESERVOIR PAINTED RED MEIER PRISONER WALDBERG 42 www.britainatwar.com
Section 1 of the Treachery Act reads: “If, with intent to help the enemy, any person does, or attempts or conspires with any other person to do any act which is designed or likely to give assistance to the naval, military or air operations of the enemy, to impede such operations of His Majesty’s forces, or to endanger life, he shall be guilty of felony and shall on conviction suffer death.” The penalty was death and the stakes were high. In his examination-in-chief, Pons told his festively-named counsel,
Christmas Humphreys, that the Nazis had caught Kieboom and himself smuggling jewels between Holland and Germany. The pair, he said, had then been given a choice — either agree to spy for Germany in England, or be sent to a concentration camp. They had agreed to spy, said Pons, but had decided that they would hand themselves in to the police as soon as they came ashore. Pons preferred, he assured his counsel, England over Germany. Once he was ashore, Pons said, he had decided to wet his wireless set to make it unusable before surrendering it to the police. “I found a ditch, there was an inch of water in it. I pressed it down into water and mud. That was the best I could do,” said Pons. “What is wrong
FOUR MEN IN A BOAT Nazi Spies On Trial FAR LEFT: German interest in Dungeness continued, with this Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance photograph from autumn 1940 showing the general area where Waldberg and Meier had come ashore, though their actual landing spot is just out of the photograph to the right. BOTTOM LEFT: Sir William Jowett, counsel for the prosecution in the spy trial.
with the sea?” asked the judge, “there is a lot of water there, you know…” “I could not find it again,’”said Pons. “Yes, you could,” said the judge. Pons then told Humphreys that having left his wireless set in the ditch, he had seen two men in the distance, and had walked towards them. These were the soldiers who arrested him. One of them had called out to him. “Did you mean to help the Germans when you got to England?” Humphreys asked. “No, sir!” Pons replied. He was attempting to convince the jury that he had done nothing, in the wording of the Act, likely to give assistance to the enemy. During his cross-examination, Pons was asked by the judge why he had not come ashore waving a white handkerchief. “We had all these incriminating things with us,”
Pons replied. “Why not throw them overboard and come ashore waving a handkerchief?” asked the judge. “I have not thought of it,” said Pons.
SUMMING UP AND VERDICT In his summing up, the judge offered his view of the evidence: “Had they [the defendants] gone to the first person they had seen and told the whole story, they had everything which was needed to establish beyond any doubt that their story was true: the boat, the brand new wireless set. Do you think that intelligent persons would have feared anything if they had taken that course? But instead of adopting a course like that, the course which they have adopted is one of hiding themselves so long as they could, the equipment so long as they
could — it is a difficult course of conduct to reconcile with innocence.” In relation to Sjoerd Pons’s defence, Mr Justice Wrottesley restated his opinion. “You may think,” he said, “that that is a cock and bull story.” The jury retired to consider its verdict half way through the third day of the trial — and an hour later it came back with a question. What should they do, the foreman asked, if they thought that one of the defendants had originally conspired with the others to spy for Germany — but that “when he arrived in England he decided that he would not do anything to help the enemy but he would make a clean breast of it here.” Sir William Jowett, counsel for the prosecution, stood and said that would be a verdict of not guilty. Minutes later, the jury returned with a not guilty
BOTTOM MIDDLE: The festively named defence counsel, Christmas Humpreys. Pons told him that he and Kieboom had been caught smuggling jewels between Holland and Germany. BOTTOM RIGHT: Treachery Act. "If, with intent to help the enemy, any person does, or attempts or conspires...any act designed to give assistance to the enemy... he shall on conviction suffer death."
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verdict for Pons, and guilty verdicts for Kieboom and Meier. In Jowett’s view, expressed after the trial, Pons was only acquitted because the jury were not keen to see him executed. Pons certainly seems to have cut a more sympathetic figure than Kieboom, and it is certainly not unknown for juries to decide cases on emotion rather than logic. On the facts as presented, however, Kieboom and Meier had made attempts to hide their equipment, and conceal their identities, while Pons was unresisting and relatively co-operative after arrest. The jury may, therefore, have believed that Pons’s actions revealed a genuine desire to surrender once in England. The three guilty men, Waldberg, Meier and Kieboom were hanged at Pentonville Prison in December. After the executions, the veil of secrecy was set aside, and the public was informed that three men had been convicted of treachery, and executed. A photo of Waldberg’s radio transmitter even appeared in The Times. But the public was never told that a fourth man had been acquitted. The existence of Sjoerd Pons had to remain a secret. Pons was instantly rearrested by MI5 as he left the
dock and interned as an enemy alien. He was described, during his subsequent five-and-a-half year internment, as ‘a difficult, dangerous and surly customer’, who ‘expressed anti-semitic views as well as admiration for German efficiency.’ This is hardly the victimised Anglophile who appeared before the jury — and one wonders how his admiration for Teutonic efficiency could have survived his Abwehr spy training. Pons was deported to Holland in July 1946 on a flight from Hendon alongside other Dutch internees. He was taken into custody in Holland, but released two months later. He moved to France in 1953, and then to Spain where he died in 1983.
LEFT AND ABOVE: Carl Meier and his American fiancée, and part of his farewell letter. TOP RIGHT: Another German comes ashore at Dungeness in 1940. Wounded Messerschmitt 109 pilot,Uffz Heinrich Bley of 4./LG2 (head bandaged in the bow) has been rescued by the RNLI. On the shore are soldiers of the Somerset Light Infantry and local fishing families who had all been caught up in the spy drama at this same location just four weeks earlier. (G PEARSON)
LEFT: On 7 September 1940 the Luftwaffe launched its all-out Blitz on London. This made the British authorities believe that invasion was now imminent. (G PEARSON)
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A search through the case files reveals letters that Meier, Kieboom and Waldberg wrote to their loved ones the night before their executions. They died believing that these letters had been sent via the Red Cross — but they never were. A section of Meier’s gives an insight into his true state of mind, rather different from anything he had told the jury: “I went into this with both my eyes open, telling myself that a man who has an ideal must be willing to sacrifice everything for it or else the ideal isn’t an ideal at all, or the man isn’t a man at all, but a humble creature who deserves only pity.” The story of the four invasion spies is not simply an episode of Dad’s Army recast by the German Intelligence Service. It represents the only part of the German invasion actually to arrive, and it helped to prompt the invasion alarm on 7 September when the codeword ‘Cromwell’, an alert for ‘immediate action’, went out to the army. The story tells of a secret trial held during a war fought — ironically — to preserve liberties such as open justice. The justification for secrecy was that transparency would have offered an unthinkable advantage to an enemy of unparalleled evil. This can hardly be challenged by hindsight — but will R v. Meier, Kieboom and Pons ever be cited as the precedent for a future secret trial? Whenever the right to trial by jury is discussed, this case deserves to be invoked. As a nation, we should remember it with pride. JOSHUA LEVINE published his first book in 2006, and has now written six best selling histories. His account of the Irish Troubles was nominated for the Writer’s Guild Book of the Year Award, and his history of the pilots of the First World War has been turned into a major British television documentary.. He has written and presented a number of programmes for BBC Radio 4. In a previous life, he was a criminal barrister.
GAS! A DEADLY WEAPON? The Chemists’ War RIGHT: British troops blinded by tear gas wait outside an Advanced Dressing Station, near Béthune. Each man has his hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him. (HISTORIC
MILITARY PRESS)
I
N THE poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, composed by soldier Wilfred Owen (published posthumously in 1920), the effects of chlorine gas are described. The famous line “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning” is scarily accurate; Yet, 93% of gassed British soldiers returned to duty. The Great War was waged on a scale never before seen. Some 6,000,000 British men were mobilised with some 11.5%, around 700,000, never returning home - the largest loss to conflict Britain has endured in raw numbers, but proportionally, a British soldier was more likely to die in the Crimean War. The war was not without its barbarisms, gas
being one weapon where the brutal personal effects cannot be ignored. The effects of gas as a weapon were, of course, dreadful. Putting things into perspective, though, its use accounted for only around 1% of nearly three quarters of a million casualties on the British side. On the other hand, the devastation reaped by artillery is unparalleled, the heavy guns responsible for some 60% of casualties. British records suggest shelling accounts for 59% of all combat deaths, while French and German files show that 76% and 85% (respectively) of wounds can be attributed to shelling. Historian John Terraine stated “artillery was the battle-winner, artillery was what caused the greatest loss of life, the most dreadful wounds, and the deepest fear”. A battle-winner
it was, in a way tanks, aircraft, machine guns, and gas, were not.
TRENCH WARFARE
The question is then, if so dreadful, how did the use of gas fail to have the same bloody effect as other arms? Naturally, the other arms were deployed on a larger scale, but no power was miserly in using gas either, even though it breached the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare. Trench warfare was not new, having been practiced for centuries. The use of trenches increased massively prior to the First World War, as it became the common means to protect soldiers from increasingly effective firearms and direct-fire artillery. Digging in
! GAS A DEADL !
Notorious, hated, and controversial, gas was one of the defining weapons of the Great War. At least, that is the
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The Chemists’ War
saved lives, even in the Great War, where losses were much higher in the mobile phases of 1914 and 1918. In the first months of the conflict, once the war of manoeuvre ended and the deadlock which necessitated trenches created, artillery could not operate in a direct-fire role. It was vulnerable to modern firepower, and could not effectively target entrenched troops. Increasing numbers of heavy guns and howitzers, firing indirectly, were utilised to break the stalemate – initially by attempting to soften defences, and later, more successfully (especially when coordinated with pre-registration and observation) to fire ahead of advancing troops to cover them, or to target enemy artillery and rear areas, where the bulk of casualties were inflicted.
LY WEAPON? perception. John Ash asks: how effective was Gas?
BELOW: The iconic depiction of gas warfare, ‘Gassed’, by American painter John Singer Sargent. The painting, finished in March 1919, depicts a line of blinded soldiers moving to an aid station after a mustard gas attack, assisted by orderlies. The 91in x 241in painting was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to help document the war. Sargent visited the Western Front in July 1918 with the Guards Division, and then American Expeditionary Forces. It was voted picture of the year by the Royal Academy of Arts in 1919 and is now held by the Imperial War Museum.
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GAS! A DEADLY WEAPON? The Chemists’ War
had enveloped. Many soldiers fled, others succumbed to the chemical, which reacted with water inside the body and produced a burning acidic compound. A British soldier, Anthony Hossack, remembered: “Plainly something terrible was happening. What was it? Officers, and Staff officers too, stood gazing at the scene, awestruck and dumbfounded; for in the northerly breeze there came a pungent nauseating smell that tickled the throat and made our eyes smart… I saw, while over the fields streamed mobs of infantry, the dusky warriors of French Africa; away went their rifles, equipment, even their tunics that they might run the faster. One
ABOVE: French Algerian troops ready to march to defend the city of Rheims, 28 October 1914. RIGHT: British horses and soldiers, September 1917. The horse gas mask consisted of a hood to cover the nostrils and mouth, connected to a filter. (HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)
BELOW: Soldiers from New Zealand don gas masks during training designed to help units’ cope with gas attacks. Taken by Henry Sanders, 25 August 1917.
A shell still had to hit a trench directly to be truly effective – a small target. If battles, such as the Somme, which employed heavy persistent bombardment showed anything, it was that this strategy offered little advantage, caused few casualties and warned the enemy of impending attack. Gas - which clung to the ground and occupied the lowest space was seen as a solution.
SECOND YPRES
Gas was first deployed long before the Somme, with the French allegedly using ethyl bromoacetate and later the more readily-available chloroacetone (tear gases) in August 1914. Later that year, the Germans filled shells with similar compounds and bombarded British positions. In both examples the gas was ineffective. The first large scale use of gas came in the last days of January 1915, where Russian positions were shelled with 18,000 rounds containing the tear gas xylyl bromide at the Battle of Bolimów, this too failed, the compound causing more
(NATIONAL
LIBRARY NZ)
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problems for German troops, often freezing, and failing to disperse into an effective aerosol. The first use of the lethal chlorine gas (bertholite) is readily accepted as taking place on the afternoon of 22 April 1915. It was developed by firms within chemical conglomerate IG Farben, which worked with Fritz Haber, who, ironically, later won the Nobel Peace Prize. Haber and the German military argued the use of gas deployed from cylinders was legal, as the Hague Conventions only banned gas shells. He was present on 22 April, near Ypres, when 168 tonnes of bertholite was deployed. Released over a four mile front the gas quickly engulfed colonial French troops holding the line. It lingered in trenches and craters and taken completely by surprise the French were soon in panic. Flemish civilians reported some after-effects, and horses would refuse to enter areas the cloud
GAS! A DEADLY WEAPON?
The Chemists’ War
“A man doesn’t live on what passes through the filter, he merely exists. He gets the mentality of a wide-awake vegetable.” THE BRITISH RESPONSE
man came stumbling through our lines. An officer of ours held him up with levelled revolver, “What’s the matter, you bloody lot of cowards?” says he. The Zouave was frothing at the mouth, his eyes started from their sockets, and he fell writhing at the officer’s feet.” Elsewhere, gassed, blinded, and panicked, soldiers ran into enemy fire. Some German operators were caught by their own cloud. Remarkably, just enough men held until French and Canadian reinforcements arrived. The Germans, who did not expect such results, failed to exploit the opening, though they successfully gained ground across the battle area as a whole.
The gas attacks during the Second Battle of Ypres caused some 7,000 casualties. These were mostly French, but the British defending Hill 60 recorded 148 deaths. As horrific as the descriptions of the attack are, the battle claimed some 87,000 Allied total casualties, only 8% due to gas. Among the first ‘casualties’ of bertholite, was Clara Immerwahr, Haber’s wife. On 2 May 1915, she fatally shot herself, allegedly in disgust of her husband’s involvement in overseeing the deployment of gas at Ypres. The use of chlorine gas at Ypres was not responsible for deaths of masses, but proved that against an unprepared foe it could incapacitate entire sections of front. Counters were rapidly devised, as the Canadians, in particular a chemist-turnedmedical-officer, Captain Scrimger, quickly identified the gas during the attack and knew a urine-soaked cloth held over the face could defeat the poison. This was no practical means of protection, but the birth of a countermeasure nonetheless. The commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir John French, likely summed up the thoughts of many after Ypres, stating gas was “a cynical and barbarous disregard of the well-known usages of civilised war”. Yet, he argued the British were now forced employ it. Keen to retaliate, they formed Special Companies within the Royal Engineers. Such was the stigma regarding the weapon, that to refer to it as ‘gas’ when serving in these units was reprimandable.
The BEF would first use gas at the Battle of Loos on 25 September 1915, where they released 140 tons of chlorine. Their attack failed, the wind was not favourable and the gas blew back into British trenches. Several unused canisters were ruptured by shellfire. The early flannel masks worn served their purpose for a while, but the wearer quickly overheated. With poor visibility, hot, and with little choice but to remove the masks, many inhaled the vile chemical. There were more British gas casualties that day than German.
ABOVE: New Zealand soldiers observe the operation of a gas cylinder as part of their training to cope with gas attacks, also taken on 25 August 1917 by Henry Sanders. BELOW: C-in-C BEF, Sir John French in 1915.
A NEW WEAPON
As the effects of gas diminished, a German commission was tasked with improving the lethality of the weapon. They selected phosgene, previously developed by the French. Colourless and with a more natural odour, it
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GAS! A DEADLY WEAPON? The Chemists’ War
to sustain heavy casualties to gas that day was 49th Division. They were in the reserve lines and the warning did not reach them in time. When the division was sleeping, a bombardment of German gas shells hit their positions. Most men woke, but some did not. Of 1,069 gas casualties, including 120 dead, 75% were from the 49th Division.
MUSTARD GAS
The most infamous of weaponised gasses is sulfur mustard, a vesicant odourless chemical agent more widely known as ‘hun stuff’, or ‘mustard gas’. It caused severe burns and blistering both when inhaled and on contact with skin. Mustard gas was particularly potent as it did not need to be inhaled and small exposure was enough to cause blistering. Larger concentrations could burn skin to the bone. The chemical was most effective against the eyes, nose, armpits and groin, but these were rarely uncovered in a prepared unit. Mild exposure typically resulted ABOVE: Gas Alarm: British soldiers put on gas masks. and stand to. (HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)
BELOW: German troops occupy an Allied trench after launching the first poison gas attack of the First World War, April 1915.
(WITH THE KIND PERMISSION OF BRETT BUTTERWORTH)
was deadlier and responsible for at least 85% of all lives claimed by gas during the war. Phosgene symptoms often took time to develop however, so seemingly fit victims could still fight on during the attack, succumbing hours later. Denser than chlorine, phosgene was harder to deploy, and existing countermeasures were partially effective against it. Therefore, it was often mixed with chlorine to overcome these constraints. The first German use of phosgene took place on 19 December 1915, near Wieltje, Belgium, but it was not successful. The British were aware of the plans, and their precautions minimised casualties. The release of the gas cloud was accompanied by trench raiders, but the British repelled them. There was no panic or breach of the
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line. They had developed a system where in conditions which favoured gas attacks, the men were put on alert. Gas alarms and protective equipment were tested every 12 hours and each soldier had his mask and greatcoat to hand. Special lubricants, designed to allow weapons such as Lewis Guns to function in clouds, were distributed – vital when in places No Man’s Land was barely 20 yards across. According to British official histories, after this failed engagement, the Germans realised gas on its own could not break the deadlock. The only British unit
ABOVE: A British-made gas rattle, produced by M Bros, used to warn troops of a gas attack, giving them time to quickly put on any protective clothing. (WELLCOME IMAGES)
GAS! A DEADLY WEAPON?
The Chemists’ War
CIVILIANS The release of gas was not only a threat to soldiers. Nearby towns were often at risk, as the wind could carry gas clouds for miles. Few towns had a warning or alert system, and civilians did not have the same access to protective equipment. Estimates vary, but between 100,000 and 260,000 civilian gas casualties were sustained throughout the war, with some subject to the same lasting after-effects which afflicted the most unfortunate soldiers. Commanding officers on both sides knew of the risk, in many cases with little concern, or perhaps a lack of understanding of their weapon. It is often cited that Field Marshal Haig wrote: “My officers and I were aware that such weapon would cause harm to women and children living in nearby towns… However, because the weapon was to be directed against the enemy, none of us were overly concerned at all.”
must be agonising because usually the other cases do not complain even with the worst wounds but gas cases are invariably beyond endurance and they cannot help crying out.” However, even this awful weapon could not replicate the results generated at Second Ypres. The gas even hindered offensives, as it clung
to the ground, settling into a liquid. This remained at the bottom of trenches and craters for days, even months, and could easily be churned into a gas again by a shell hit or by soldiers diving for cover. This made it unsuitable for most offensive actions, although during the Battle of St. Quentin on 21-23 March 1918, mustard gas was used as part of the German’s five hour 3,500,000 shell bombardment, the largest of the war, but primarily against targets which needed to be incapacitated, not immediately captured. The proportion of sulfur mustard fatalities to total casualties was, as with all other compounds of the period, low. Of all mustard gas casualties, in the British Army as few as 2% died, most to secondary infections. However, being the hardest gas to counter, and considering its ever increasing use, the ‘hun stuff’ would produce nine tenths of British gas casualties from the time of its introduction in 1917.
LEFT: A depiction of a gas attack on Canadian troops in Flanders, 24 April 1915, by Loius Raemaekers. (WELLCOME IMAGES)
BELOW: Men of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders pictured in a trench during May 1915, wearing early issue pad respirators and goggles. (HISTORIC
MILITARY PRESS)
in swelling, temporarily blindness and blistering. Fever and pneumonia were common after exposure. There was little countermeasure developed to prevent skin injuries other than to cover up. ‘Bath trucks’ were used to allow soldiers to be quickly decontaminated, oils were used to treat the burns. This particularly nasty chemical was not usually ‘lethal’ in the sense of killing outright, but the wounds it could cause were nothing but hellish. In extreme pain, a soldier burnt by mustard gas could lie in hospital, blind, covered in yellow blisters, for over a month while he slowly choked. One British nurse reported: “They cannot be bandaged or touched. We cover them with a tent of propped-up sheets. Gas burns www.britainatwar.com 51
GAS! A DEADLY WEAPON? The Chemists’ War BELOW: A British cartoon by Louis Raemaekers depicts a sleeping French soldier under attack by a striking snake, symbolic of a gas attack on the unprepared. (WELLCOME IMAGES)
BOTTOM: 46th Division attacking the Hohenzollern Redoubt on 13 October 1915, as part of the Battle of Loos. Note the gas and smoke clouds in the centre.
DEFEATING GAS
Protections against gas developed rapidly, and were effective. Improvised respirators were rushed to the front after the Second Ypres – the first examples, made from cotton pads, sodium hyposulphite, sodium bicarbonate and glycerine, arriving within two days. These were less than effective, but useful. Simple flannel masks followed, and then by December 1915 the P helmet, a cloth hood effective against chlorine when soaked in sodium phenate. Soon after came the PH helmet, effective against deadlier phosgene gas, which throughout 1916 had resulted in a marked increase in casualties. Some 23 million of these two masks were produced. These were also soon replaced by the highly effective Small Box Respirator in early 1916. Able to protect the wearer for up to five hours, nearly 30 million were produced. To defeat these counters, the Germans in particular utilised gases which penetrated protective equipment and caused nausea. The aim was to force the wearer to remove his mask, and follow the attack with lethal chemicals.
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Additionally, it quickly became clear those who fled were more likely to be affected, as they moved with the cloud. Those on the ground or taking cover at the bottoms of trenches suffered more than those at higher elevations. Even at Ypres, many French were spared by an order to ‘stand-to’, mounting the firing steps in the belief the advancing cloud hid advancing infantry, and those remaining at their stations tended to survive. Discipline and training, holding the line, was key in defeating gas and measures quickly developed. The psychological impact of weaponised gas (especially mustard) was truly terrifying, far in excess of
the weapon's actual effectiveness even against an unprepared formation. The added stress of the constant threat of gas often led to cases of ‘gas shock’. One soldier remembered: “With men trained to believe a light sniff of gas might mean death, and with nerves highly strung… it is no wonder that the gas alarm went beyond all bounds… For miles around, scared soldiers woke up in the midst of frightful pandemonium and put on their masks, only to hear a few minutes later the cry of “All safe.”… Two or three alarms a night were common. Gas shock was as frequent as shellshock.” Professor Edgar Jones of King’s
GAS! A DEADLY WEAPON?
The Chemists’ War
were eating when another yelled “GAS!” There was no attack, but the men rushed to the aid station, stooping and vomiting. They were calmed and returned to the trenches.
PRACTICALITIES
Strategically, gas rarely offered an advantage. Unpredictable, it frequently blew back and entered friendly trenches. When attacking a salient, the cloud could pass the defenders and inadvertently gas friendly troops on the other side. During a major gas attack at Hulluch, on 27 April 1916, German troops released a potent mixture of chlorine and phosgene. Visibility was reduced to three yards, the smell was noticeable 15 miles away. The wearing of masks was necessary nearly four miles to the rear, a number of early masks were faulty, and elements of the Black Watch Regiment had been ordered to remove their masks as their commander erroneously believed them to be single use. Two days later,
College London highlighted several examples of the disease-like spread of fear, among them the situation confronted by Lieutenant G Grant, a medical officer of the London Scottish. In September 1915, Grant was faced by vast numbers of officers and men who were convinced they had been gassed. Yet, none showed symptoms, and each returned to trenches after being treated with a placebo. On another occasion, in February 1918, a soldier of the 1/22nd London Regiment developed a sore throat. Within hours, he, and two thirds of his unit, had been evacuated as gas casualties – there were zero reports of an attack taking place. An American report noted how a group of soldiers
a second cloud was released, but the wind reversed and German troops were caught unawares. Despite all this blunder, gas casualties were as few as 1,600 British, and 1,500 German. Unless fired from shells, gas was rarely a weapon of surprise. Leaky gas cylinders drove rats from the trenches, as observed by the British at Hulluch. Shelling could detonate a prepared cylinder, and reconnaissance frequently picked up early preparations. Ten days of warning was received prior to the gas attacks on British troops at Wulverghem, Belgium, on 30 April 1916 and the warnings were confirmed when shelling detonated cylinders. A second attack took place on 17 June.
Across both releases, 14,000 British soldiers donned masks. Fewer than 200 died, despite that the trenches were often yards apart, offering mere seconds to react, and despite that the cloud was potent for miles behind the lines, killing animals and vegetation. The use of gas could give away the location and timing of a planned attack, and both at Wulverghem and Hulluch, the German raids which followed were repelled (though raiders did reach British lines at Hulluch). It was not uncommon for attacking units to forgo gas to help maintain surprise. The best strategic asset the use of gas offered was the huge impact on morale and that it tied up aid stations. On average, gassed men were removed from duty for six weeks, typically, the average time spent recuperating in American units was 60 days for chlorine, 48 for mustard, and 45 for phosgene.
LEFT: The grizzly aftermath of a phosgene gas attack in a British trench at Fromelles, 19 July 1916. BELOW: Indian troops stood to, prepared for a gas attack in trenches near Fauquissart in France, 9 August 1915. (THE BRITISH LIBRARY)
ON CASUALTIES
The contribution of gas in relation to total casualty figures was relatively minor. The British maintained accurate accounts from 1916 onward, and recorded that as few as 3% of gas casualties were fatal and 2% permanently invalided. Yet, 70% were fit for duty again within six weeks. Eventually, according to medical historian Leo Van Bergen, 93% of gassed British soldiers returned to service. The Imperial War Museum asserts that of the 600,000 war disability pensions being paid in 1929, only 1% were to gas casualties. Other armies produced similar figures, including Germany. The nation with the highest gas casualties being Russia, where countermeasures were not as widely distributed.
DEHUMANISATION OF WAR Imperial War Museum historian Ian Kikuchi has suggested that gas, as a vapour, brought to the minds of the victims thoughts of ghostly apparitions, phantoms, and other such morbid supernatural phenomena. He also suggests that protective equipment, unfamiliar in shape and dehumanising (especially when combined with the steel helmet) caused a soldier lose his identity - he looked and sounded like nothing but a squealing ‘man-pig’. These are unusual arguments, but considering superstition was rife amongst soldiers, and among the typical images of the First World War is the masked and helmeted ‘faceless’ British soldier, the psychology of gas and the dehumanisation of warfare was a real concern and instead of embracing masks, soldiers felt emasculated and claustrophobic while using them. One British officer recalled: “We gazed at one another like goggle-eyed, imbecile frogs. The mask makes you feel only half a man. The air you breathe has been filtered of all save a few chemical substances. A man doesn’t live on what passes through the filter, he merely exists. He gets the mentality of a wide-awake vegetable.”
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GAS! A DEADLY WEAPON? The Chemists’ War
ESTIMATED GAS CASUALTIES: Nation
Gas Fatalities Total Gas Casualties
Total Military Total Military Dead Wounded
British Empire and Dominions
8,109
188,706
949,454
2,101,077
German Empire
9,000
200,000
2,037,000
4,215,662
France
8,000
190,000
1,357,000
4,266,000
Russia
56,000
419,340
1,700,000
3,749,000
Italy
4,627
60,000
460,000
947,000
Austro-Hungarian 3,000 Empire
100,000
1,200,000
3,620,000
United States
72,807
116,708
204,002
BELOW: A British soldier wearing a PH Helmet stands ready to ring the bell in use as a gas alarm. (HISTORIC
MILITARY PRESS)
1,462
The German case is particularly interesting, as toward the end of the conflict, British, French, and Americans deployed more gas. The reasons for heavier use is threefold. First the Allies were generally on the offensive, secondly, the production of gas was expensive and Germany’s supply was dwindling, and lastly, the prevailing wind in Western Europe typically blows toward the east, meaning the Allies had more favourable conditions. Despite this, German gas casualties remained similarly low.
However, these figures cannot show how many died post-war due to gasrelated injuries. Many gassed soldiers had scarring on the lung, which could develop into cancer or tuberculosis (cases spiked during the early 1940s) or left the victim vulnerable to Spanish Flu. Respiratory disease and failing eyesight were common afflictions. The difference in soldiers using countermeasures compared to those without is remarkable, approximately 60% of Canadian gas casualties at Second Ypres were still unfit by the
“For miles around, scared soldiers woke up in the midst of frightful pandemonium and put on their masks, only to hear a few minutes later the cry of “All safe.” 54 www.britainatwar.com
Armistice, three years later. The figures also cannot show how many men were initially incapacitated by gas, and killed by other means. Such a figure could potentially be quite high, but still a low overall - considering how few soldiers became gas casualties once proper protections were in place. The effects of gas on the unprotected individual were undeniably hideous. However, gas, strategically, was rarely effective despite the development of tactics, the British in particular firing smoke with gas shells to better mask an attack. A weapon of diminishing returns, the attacks at Second Ypres were never replicated during the conflict. Once effective protections were introduced, thankfully, gas casualties generally remained low, with hundreds of thousands spared a unique and cruel agony. Gas was unquestionably a horrific weapon. The physical and psychological effects were ghastly in the extreme, and in some cases fatal, but it cannot be seen as either a truly effective or a decisive weapon. Neither did its use have anything like the effect upon the conduct of the war that popular belief might often suggest.
1917: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY
This 132-page special from the team behind Britain at War magazine, tells the story of the fourth year of the Great War.
A
SPECIAL
Despite victories at the Somme and Verdun, the fourth year of the Great War saw no relaxation of Allied efforts.The war of attrition that had seen the incremental weakening of the German Army, and the German nation, had to be maintained, even accelerated, throughout 1917. Features include: The Zimmermann Telegram
With Germany increasingly being forced onto the defensive, the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann, advocated a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare.
The US Enters the War
On 2 April, President Wilson delivered a speech to the joint houses of Congress, in which he stated that the US had some ‘very serious’ decisions to make. These decisions related to the conduct of Imperial Germany, following its announcement of unrestricted submarine warfare
The Third Battle of Ypres
The Germans were demoralised and exhausted after suffering a catastrophic defeat at Messines, and the British artillery continued to hammer at the German positions to the south and east of Ypres.
The Battle of Cambrai
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The Passchendaele offensive had ground on for months with no sign of a breakthrough. Casualties had amounted to around 200,000 men and all that had been gained was a few hundred yards of ground. It was against this background that Colonel J.F.C. Fuller, proposed ‘a tank raid south of Cambrai’.
Rationing Begins
The actions of the German U-boats and the enormous demands the war imposed upon Britain’s merchant fleet, meant that food supplies in the UK came under increasing pressure in 1917.
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LUSITANIA The Truth
LUSITANIA THE AGONY, THE AFTERMATH
AND THE TRUTH The sinking of the RMS Lusitania, causing the deaths of over 1,000 passengers and crew, horrified the public on both sides of the Atlantic in May 1915. To most, it was an awful war crime, but others claimed that owners Cunard should take the rap. John Grehan recounts the story of the sinking, its courtroom postscript — and the truth that has only just been revealed.
O
N 4 February 1915 Germany declared the seas around the British Isles to be a war zone. The world was given two weeks’ notice, meaning that from 18 February that year Allied ships in the area would be sunk without warning. Even before this dire warning had been issued, passenger traffic had markedly reduced, but there were still enough people willing to risk travelling across the Atlantic for the Cunard Line to continue the sailings of its majestic liner RMS Lusitania.
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Lusitania and her sister ship, Mauritania, were built by Cunard in 1907 with financial assistance from the British Government. The £2.6 million construction loan and the subsequent £150,000 annual subsidy were granted by the Government only because the ships were to be designed to Admiralty specifications which would enable the liners to be employed as large, high-speed auxiliary cruisers in the event of war. On 3 August 1914, the day before Britain declared war on Germany,
both Lusitania and Mauritania were requisitioned by the Admiralty as per the terms of the original contract with Cunard. When the ships arrived at Liverpool a Royal Navy officer was tasked with converting them to their new role by clearing space on the decks to give clear arcs of fire for the guns that would be fitted, and to find room for magazines.
LUSITANIA The Truth MAIN PICTURE: The Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania before the war. When launched, she was the largest liner in the world. (ALL IMAGES US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE)
RIGHT: A stylised depiction of the moment that a torpedo from U-20 struck the RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915.
Before the bulk of the conversion work started, however, the Admiralty had a change of heart. Within days of the declaration of war most of the German liners were blockaded in their ports and no longer posed the threat which had been imagined. Though the two British liners remained on the Admiralty list and subject, if necessary, to Admiralty instructions, Lusitania and Mauritania were not armed. Back in passenger service, Lusitania continued her transatlantic runs to and
from New York. Her usual route to the United Kingdom took her round the southern coast of Ireland, where, on 4 May 1915, the German U-boat U-20 was on patrol. This U-boat had been at sea on a war patrol since the end of April 1915, and had already attacked three Scandinavian ships — one each from Denmark, Sweden and Norway — a British schooner, the steamer Candidate, and the cargo liner Centurion which was on passage to South Africa.
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LUSITANIA The Truth
TOP MIDDLE: William Lionel Wyllie’s painting depicts survivors of the sinking of Lusitania among the dead and wreckage in the water. (HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)
Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger sank just three of these — but in so doing had used all bar three of his torpedoes. He intended to leave two torpedoes for his voyage back to base. However, Schwieger had received a message from Germany advising him that Lusitania was due to make its approach round Ireland to its home port of Liverpool. So, now with just one torpedo to use, Schwieger prowled the shipping lanes that skirted the Irish coast. When the great four-funnelled liner steamed into view, Schwieger could hardly believe his luck. Though Lusitania carried civilians not guns, Schwieger believed that he was fully justified in attacking the great liner.
TORPEDOES! Eighteen-year old Leslie Morton had been posted as starboard lookout on Lusitania’s forecastle head that afternoon, 7 May 1915. Previously Morton had been an apprentice on a sailing ship but had signed on with his brother
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as crew for Lusitania at New York. It was the ship’s 101st voyage from the USA to the UK, and she was nearly home. Morton spotted a streak of spray rushing towards the ship approximately 500 yards away. He called the bridge through his megaphone, “Torpedoes coming on the starboard side” and then rushed below to warn his brother who was off watch at the time. In his haste to find his brother, Morton did not wait for an acknowledgement from the bridge. The call was never heard by the officers on the bridge and the great liner sailed serenely on its course to Liverpool, unaware of the danger ahead. Then the lookout in the crow’s nest, Thomas Quinn, also saw the approaching torpedo, but by then it was only 200 yards away. Quinn hailed the bridge and this time the call was heard. But it was now far too late to take evasive action. Lusitania’s skipper, Captain Will Turner, ran up to the bridge as soon as he received the message. He got to
TOP LEFT: Launched on 18 December 1912, and commissioned on 5 August 1913, U-20 (second from left) in Kiel harbour in 1914. ABOVE LEFT: A survivor ashore still wears his life jacket.
his post just as the torpedo struck. A “terrific” explosion shook the ship, recalled a passenger who was leaning on the starboard rail on the boat deck. This explosion was followed just a moment later by “a sullen rumble in the bowels of the liner”. Another man on the port side of the ship, Charles Lauriat, said that he experienced “a heavy, rather muffled sound”. Almost immediately, Lusitania began to list to starboard. As water poured into the hole in her side, the bows of the liner were dragged lower into the sea. The ship was sinking, and sinking fast.
BOTTOM: RMS Lusitania leaves New York during the winter of 19141915, on one of its last such occasions — the last being on 2 May 1915. At the outbreak of war Lusitania still retained the Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing.
LUSITANIA The Truth
THE GERMAN DECLARATION On 4 February 1915, the German government issued its declaration of the naval blockade against shipping heading to or from the UK. It stated: “The waters round Great Britain and Ireland, including the English Channel, are hereby proclaimed a war region. On and after February 18th every enemy merchant vessel found in this region will be destroyed, without its always being possible to warn the crews or passengers of the dangers threatening. “Neutral ships will also incur danger in the war region, where, in view of the misuse of neutral flags ordered by the British Government, and incidents inevitable in sea warfare, attacks intended for hostile ships may affect neutral ships also. “The sea passage to the north of the Shetland Islands, and the eastern region of the North Sea in a zone of at least 30 miles along the Netherlands coast, are not menaced by any danger.” In due course the German embassy in the United States also took the step of placing a warning to travellers in 50 American newspapers. Dated 22 April 1915, it announced: “Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.” Those intending to sail on Lusitania, and other trans-Atlantic ships, had been warned.
“Then from every companion-way, there burst an endless stream of passengers,” Captain Turner told the Daily Mail in May 1933. “The boat-deck was crammed with a silent crowd – mothers and fathers clasping their little ones, sons searching for their parents, and sweethearts clinging to each other, all wide-eyed with terror.” It was claimed that there had been no boat drills during the passage and no instructions on the wearing of life jackets. As the ship was still moving forward at speed, Turner thought that the lifeboats could not be launched safely and he ordered those people who had climbed into the lifeboats to get back out onto the deck. Only two of the port side
BELOW: As a concession to the increased danger following the outbreak of war, Lusitania was equipped with a number of additional collapsible lifeboats. RIGHT: Captain William Thomas Turner OBE, RNR, was in charge of Lusitania at the time of the sinking.
lifeboats were launched and because of the angle at which the ship was now listing, they slid down the side of the ship instead of dropping into the sea. As a consequence, both of these were so badly damaged by the rivets on the hull of the ship that when the boats hit the water they sank, leaving the passengers floundering amongst the waves. On the starboard side of the ship, just six of the lifeboats were successfully launched. At 14.28 hours, less than 20 minutes after she had been torpedoed, Lusitania went down. “In the twinkling of an eye the monster disappeared,” remembered
Oliver Bernard. “What I saw in the water was … one long scene of agony … floating debris on all sides, and men, women and children clinging for dear life to deck chairs and rafts. There were such desperate struggles as I will never forget. Many were entangled between chairs and rafts and upturned boats. One by one they seemed to fall off and give up … One poor wretch was struck by the oar which I was sharing with a steward … he seized and clung to the oar like grim death until we were able to drag him into the boat … we saw a woman floating quite near us. Her face was just visible above the water and her mouth was covered with froth.”
“The boat-deck was crammed with a silent crowd — mothers and fathers clasping their little ones, sons searching for their parents, and sweethearts clinging to each other, all wide-eyed with terror” Captain William Thomas Turner told the Daily Mail
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LUSITANIA The Truth LEFT: The body of a victim of the liner’s sinking is carried away on a stretcher covered by a flag at Queenstown.
BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL For the survivors it was a battle for life. Miss Chrissie Aitken later gave this account: “One of the crew noticed that I had not a belt and he took off his own and fastened it round me. The ship was dipping over to one side terribly, and after we got into the boat, and it was lowered, a remark made by one of the stewards made me think our boat was to be swamped like the one before it, and I jumped overboard. I don’t remember anything then for a long time, but the lifeboat seems to have got away all right, for afterwards I saw some ladies who were in it, and they hadn’t even got wet. But a lot had happened before I regained consciousness. When next I remember anything I was floating amongst the wreckage, and the ship had gone. Everything seemed calm then, but I was a bit dazed and don’t remember clearly. A little bit away there was an upturned boat and three men on it. I struggled to it and the men pulled me up. We stayed there for a time – I don’t know how
long, and then a collapsible boat took us off, and later a minesweeper took us into Queenstown [now Cobh].” Another of the survivors was passenger William Scrimgeour, whose account of the sinking was published in the Dundee Courier on Wednesday, 12 May 1915: “I was at lunch when the first torpedo took effect. The dining-room was crowded, and there were many women and children at the table. Suddenly a terrific thud was heard. The concussion about wrenched the tables from their fixtures, and sent dishes clattering in all directions … Even the children knew that a dread calamity had befallen the Lusitania and when the murderous torpedo struck the liner’s side there arose a pitiful wailing cry all over the saloon. Women and children wept, and strong men clenched their teeth, seeing to stem a flood of emotion. “The entire company at once made tracks for the boat deck, two flights of stairs above the saloon, and within a few minutes the boats were
ABOVE: Beside the main A24 London to Worthing road in Holmwood, just south of Dorking in Surrey, is this memorial to Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. One of four American “men of world-wide prominence” named in the 1918 film The Sinking of the Lusitania, Vanderbilt was last seen fastening a life vest onto a woman holding a baby. The inscription reads, “In Memory of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt a gallant gentleman and a fine sportsman who perished in the Lusitania May 7th 1915. This stone is erected on his favourite road by a few of his British coaching friends and admirers.” (COURTESY OF
ANDY POTTER)
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BELOW RIGHT: According to the original caption, this picture of two survivors from Lusitania shows “Gardner brothers”, believed to be William (centre) and Eric (on the right), on 24 May 1915. The pair, New Zealand nationals, had been travelling with their parents, James and Annie, both of whom were lost. The elder of the brothers, Eric subsequently enlisted in the New Zealand Army and was killed at Passchendaele on 15 October 1917. William suffered from epilepsy following the sinking and was institutionalized for 40 years.
surrounded by anxious passengers. No one risked going back to the cabins for lifebelts. Within a few more minutes the boats were being lowered, but the work was rendered difficult by the fact that after she was struck the Lusitania listed heavily. “It was the second torpedo that settled the Lusitania’s fate. If the Germans had simply wanted to sink the ship and had had the least concern about the safety of the innocent people on board, one torpedo would have been quite sufficient. I believe that everybody would have been saved … “I did all that I could to assist in putting women and children into the boats, and when I could no more I had to shift for myself. Knowing the ship so well and being a swimmer, I had long had a confident feeling that I would survive. I thought at least that I would be able to keep afloat until some rescue boats put in an appearance.
BELOW: Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, a millionaire sportsman and son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, was one of the many who died on Lusitania.
“Running aft, I reached the water by sliding down the log-line, and as a result I sustained severe cuts on the fingers of both hands. I had not been in the water for more than two or three minutes when the Lusitania disappeared, and the action of the salt water on my cut fingers made my position uncomfortable. “I had been swimming about for some time, when a boat came along, and I was pulled on board. Before I left the Lusitania I cast off my boots and my jacket and vest. There were 63 passengers in the boat, which was supposed to carry only 50. Two-thirds of them were women and children, and we were two hours in the boat before a vessel took us into Queenstown.” Aitken and Scrimgeour were amongst the lucky ones as the disaster resulted in the loss of 1,195 passengers and crew. Just 764 survived, though for some time
LUSITANIA The Truth
this number remained uncertain. “The death toll in the Lusitania disaster is still not certainly known,” reported the Manchester Guardian on 10 May 1915. “About 750 persons were rescued, but of these some 50 have died since they were landed. Over 2,150 men, women and children were on the liner when she left New York, and since the living do not number more than 710, the dead cannot be fewer than 1,450. What the American people think of the crime is plain. Their newspapers are violent in denunciation; the public, except for the German-Americans, who have celebrated the event as a great and typical victory for their native country, are enraged. How President Wilson regards the affair no one knows. A semi-official statement issued from the White House says he knows the nation expects him to act with deliberation as well as firmness.”
LITIGATION After the loss of Lusitania a series of actions began against Cunard. Whilst some of these were brought in Britain, 67 actions against the Admiralty were instituted in the United States. All of the actions were brought either by passengers who claimed to have been injured or by the representatives of passengers who had lost their lives. The total damages demanded in the 67 US actions amounted to $5,883,479. Most of this was claimed for loss of life. The total claims for personal injuries amounted to $444,700 and there were some relatively small claims for loss of baggage. Many of the claimants contended that the Cunard Company was responsible
FAR LEFT: Needless to say, British and Allied propaganda capitalized on the sinking of Lusitania, portraying it as an act of German barbarism. Though America remained for the time neutral, the sinking of the liner caused a significant hardening of opinion against Germany, which eventually led to her entry into the First World War. ABOVE MIDDLE: A recruitment poster for Irish regiments. ABOVE RIGHT: Even on the opposite side of the Atlantic, the sinking of Lusitania was used for various propaganda and recruitment purposes, as this poster for the US Navy testifies. RIGHT: Two female victims of the torpedoing of Lusitania recuperating in hospital in Ireland. (HMP)
because portholes were left open, because collapsible boats were not left open and because the crew did not distribute life belts. The claimants also stated that even though Germany had announced publicly that the seas around the UK had become a war zone, Cunard did not take the necessary measures to ensure the safety of the passengers. There were a number of reasons for this. First, passengers had been assured that because the liner was such a fast vessel, submarines would not be able to intercept her. However, in order to keep costs down (to compensate for the reduced number of passengers willing to risk crossing the Atlantic), one of Lusitania’s four boilers had been closed down, reducing her speed from 25.5 knots to around 22 knots. In fact she was going far slower than that when she was attacked. The claimants also said that the ship followed its normal route, thus making it easy for German U-boats to lay in wait. No attempt was made to zig-zag and the captain had been instructed to enter Liverpool in daylight, rather than at night, when she would have had a better chance of avoiding submarines.
Some also said that, as Germany had given due warning, the sinking was lawful and that it was only because of incompetence on behalf of Cunard and the captain that the ship was sunk. Others also contended that the liner was loaded with highly explosive materials and that these exploded when the steamship was torpedoed. Finally, the liner had been painted in grey (when it had been requisitioned by the Admiralty) and thus “had the appearance and characteristics of a war vessel”.
ABOVE: Justus Miles Forman, an American novelist and playwright who died on Lusitania. His body was either never found or remained unidentified. Forman’s butler would later state that before boarding, Forman had been anonymously warned by an individual with a German accent that Lusitania would be attacked, but he disregarded the warning and sailed anyway.
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LUSITANIA The Truth LEFT: The English-born explorer, Commander Jospeh Foster Stackhouse USN (Retd.) was another victim of U-20’s attack. Returning to be reunited with his wife and 12-yearold daughter in London, one of the last people to see Stackhouse alive had seen him “standing calmly on the stern”, having refused to get in a lifeboat saying “There are others who must go first”. His body was recovered and he was duly buried in Cork.
“There are others who must go first” Commander Joseph Foster Stackhouse
DEFENCE OF THE REALM ACT In June 1915, a proceeding was held in the Wreck Commissioners’ Court in the UK to inquire as to the circumstances of the destruction of the vessel. Lord Mersey, Wreck Commissioner of the United Kingdom, presided at those proceedings which continued from 15 June to 1 July. Thirty-six witnesses were examined. However, on 10 June, just before the hearing, significant changes were made to the Defence of the Realm Act, which made it an offence to collect or publish information about the nature, use, or carriage of ‘war materials’ for any reason. Previously, this had only been an offence if the information was collected to aid the enemy. This was used to prohibit discussion about Lusitania’s cargo, which was known to have included war materials. However, all the evidence presented at the inquiry that was deemed pertinent to Judge Julius M. Mayer’s American hearing was sent to New York. The American trial itself was opened before Judge Mayer and continued from 17 April to 6 May 1918, with 40 witnesses examined. A decision was rendered on 23 August. According to the Judge, the ship had more than enough lifeboats to hold the people on board and Lusitania was “seaworthy in the highest sense”. He also declared that “the proof is absolute that she was not and never had been armed nor did she carry any explosives. She did carry some 18 fuse cases and 125 shrapnel cases consisting merely of empty shells without any powder charge, 4,200 cases of safety cartridges and 189 cases of infantry equipment, such as leather fittings, pouches, and the like. All 62 www.britainatwar.com
these were for delivery abroad but none of these munitions could be exploded by setting them on fire in mass or in bulk nor by subjecting them to impact.” There was also evidence from passengers and crew that daily boat drills were undertaken and that the reason why some people had not witnessed this is because they were elsewhere during those sessions.
pressure of the water rushing in from the starboard side against the weakened longitudinal bulkheads on the port side would cause them to give way and thus open up some apertures on the port side for the entry of water. Later, when the water continued to rush in on the starboard side, the list to starboard naturally again occurred, increased
THE LUSITANIA MEDAL
IRRELEVANT The speed of the ship was the next subject dealt with by Mayer. In this he accepted the need for reducing the ship boiler capacity as justified under the circumstances. With coal in great demand in warships and even at her reduced speed she was still “considerably faster than any passenger ship crossing the Atlantic at that time.” Mayer also said that the reduction in speed was “quite immaterial to the controversy”. Mayer believed that Cunard director, Sir Alfred Booth, was correct in continuing to operate “unless he and his company were willing to yield to the attempt of the German Government to terrify British shipping. No one familiar with the British character would expect that such a threat would accomplish more than to emphasize the necessity of taking every precaution to protect life and property, which the exercise of judgment would invite.” Mayer saw that the main reason for the large loss of life was the second explosion. “The explosive force was sufficiently powerful to blow debris far above the radio wires — i.e., more than 160 feet above the water ... It is easy to understand, therefore, how the whole
The so-called ‘Lusitania Medal’ is familiar to collectors of First World War memorabilia in the form of an iron reproduction of an original produced by Munich medallist Karl Goetz. The piece has a diameter of 56.5 mm and is about 3 mm thick. It has become an almost iconic and instantly recognisable piece of period memorabilia. The original, however, was a rather more finely detailed bronze medallion. Goetz’s intention was to represent wilful neglect by the British authorities in allowing the Lusitania to sail in the face of the published German warnings in the USA. On the obverse of his medallion design, Goetz placed a depiction of passengers jostling to buy tickets from a skeleton in the Cunard booking office as the German Ambassador to the USA wagged his finger in warning. Meanwhile, a prospective passenger reads a newspaper bearing the strident headline: ‘U-Boat Warning’. However, the mere fact that the sinking had been ‘commemorated’ in Germany was a gift to British propaganda which seized upon its issue as demonstrable proof of the enemy’s frightfulness. Capitalising on this sentiment, reproductions were made in iron and sold in cardboard presentation boxes with an illustration of Lusitania on its lid and complete with an information sheet carrying the sarcastic heading: ‘ A German Naval Victory’. Beneath, details of the sinking were set out along with a comment in relation to the illustration on the medallion: ‘This picture seeks apparently to propound the theory that if a murderer warns his victim of his inclination then the guilt of the crime rests with the victim.’ Proceeds from the sale of these reproduction medallions in Britain and its Empire went to the benefit of St Dunstan’s Blinded Soldiers and Sailors Hostel.
LUSITANIA The Truth TOP MIDDLE: The body of an American victim of the liner’s sinking arrives back in New York on 24 May 1915. It is stated that 124 US citizens perished in the disaster, there having been a total of 159 Americans on board at the time. ABOVE LEFT: A Lusitania survivor pictured in London with an injured hand, 25 May 1915.
and continued to the end. As might be expected, the degree of list to starboard is variously described but there is no doubt that it was steep and substantial.”
THE SECOND EXPLOSION The subject of the second explosion has been, and continues to be, the subject of much discussion. Many theories have been put forward, but Mayer, not having before him the testimony of Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger, decided that both explosions were caused by torpedoes. “There was, however, an interesting and remarkable conflict of testimony as to whether the ship was struck by one or two torpedoes,” wrote Mayer, “and witnesses, both passengers and crew, differed on this point, conscientiously and emphatically, some witnesses for claimants and some for petitioner holding one view and others called by each side holding the opposite view. “The witnesses were all highly intelligent and there is no doubt that all testified to the best of their recollection, knowledge or impression, and in accordance with their honest conviction. The weight of the testimony (too voluminous to analyze) is in favour (sic) of the ‘two torpedo’ contention ... because of the unquestioned surrounding circumstances. The deliberate character of the attack upon a vessel whose identity could not be mistaken, made easy on a bright day, and the fact that
the vessel had no means of defending herself, would lead to the inference that the submarine commander would make sure of her destruction. Further, the evidence is overwhelming that there was a second explosion. “The witnesses differ as to the impression which the sound of this explosion made upon them — a natural difference due to the fact, known by common experience, that persons who hear the same explosion even at the same time will not only describe the sound differently but will not agree as to the number of detonations. As there were no explosives on board, it is difficult to account for the second explosion except on the theory that it was caused by a second torpedo.” Mayer then painted the scene as he visualised it: “Two sudden and extraordinary explosions, the ship badly listed so that the port side was well up in the air, the passengers scattered about on the decks and in the staterooms, saloons and companionways, the ship under headway and, as it turned out, only 18 minutes afloat — such was the
LEFT: At Albert Dock, Liverpool, and within sight of the old Cunard building, is one of Lusitania’s four 23-ton propellers. It was salvaged from the wreck in 1982, by Oceaneering International. Other items recovered have included the ship’s whistle, docking telegraph, portholes, windows, dining plates and small items including several hundred military fuses, proving beyond doubt that the ship had been carrying munitions. (PHOTOGRAPH BY
MIKE PEEL; WWW. MIKEPEEL.NET)
TOP RIGHT: Lusitania Memorial in Cobh, Ireland. (WITH THE KIND PERMISSION OF PAUL O’FARRELL)
situation which confronted the officers, crew and passengers in the endeavour to save the lives of those on board.”
VERDICT — AND TRUTH Judge Mayer concluded that Cunard was not responsible in any way for the loss of the liner of her crew and passengers. The cause of the sinking of Lusitania “was the illegal act of the Imperial German Government, acting through its instrument, the submarine commander.” The case was dismissed without costs. Yet history has shown that Judge Mayer certainly did not have all the facts at his disposal. Rumours abounded throughout the 20th century that Lusitania was indeed a legitimate target because she was carrying a much wider range of munitions than had been declared, including thousands of rounds of .303 ammunition. Various dive teams reported the presence of armaments around the seabed wreckage. Successive British Governments would not be drawn into commenting on such a historically sensitive matter. Only in 2014 was the truth finally revealed under the 30-year rule that determines the release into the public domain of official British Government documents. It had warned salvage companies in 1982: “The facts are that there is a large amount of ammunition in the wreck, some of which is highly dangerous.” War crime or legitimate target? You decide.
BELOW: Like Lusitania, U-20 did not survive the war. On 4 November 1916, it grounded on the Danish coast south of Vrist after suffering damage to its engines. The following day the submarine’s crew set off torpedoes in the bow to disable their vessel.
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A TANK ON TOUR
Financing the American War Machine
A TANK
O
Having entered the First World War in 1917, the United States’ many other Allied nations – including the need to finance its war effort. savings schemes and to encourage people to dig deep, as Alexander Nicoll
64 www.britainatwar.com
A TANK ON TOUR
Financing the American War Machine MAIN IMAGE: As the banner proclaims, this Liberty Loan tank is named Britannia. It is participating in a parade down New York’s Fifth Avenue on 27 September 1918. The distinctively-shaped building on the left in the background is the Flatiron Building. Note the armoured cars of the New York National Guard behind Britannia. (US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
ON T OU
R
Having entered the First World War in 1917, the United States’ government found itself dealing with the same issues as were faced many other Allied nations – including the need to government found itself dealing with was thedulysame finance its war effort. The American population targeted through numerous war Theloans American population was duly targeted through and and savings schemes and to encourage people to dig deep,numerous as Alexanderwar Nicollloans reveals, a Britishatank was deployed the streets on of New andof other reveals, British tank wasondeployed the York streets Newcities. York and other cities.
issues as were faced
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A TANK ON TOUR
Financing the American War Machine tank and its crew to North America, where it would tour both the US and Canada.
CAPTAIN RICHARD HAIGH MC
ABOVE: The Liberty Loan tank on tour in Washington DC during April 1918. In the trees in the background it is just possible to see the General Rochambeau Statue which is located off Lafayette Square. (US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
T
HE ISSUE of war bonds, and the publicity campaigns surrounding them, became a part of everyday life in all of the main combatant nations during the First World War. Such debt securities were issued by a government to finance military operations and other expenditure in times of conflict. They also had the additional benefit of removing money from circulation and thus helped to control inflation. Following its formal declaration of war against Germany on 6 April 1917, the US government faced the same need to raise funds which was experienced by all the Allied nations. It was immediately apparent to the American authorities that huge sums would have to be made available by the US Congress, not only for its own expenses but also those of its allies. The stupendous cost of the war to the UK, France and Italy
RIGHT: Another view of Britannia passing down Fifth Avenue on 27 September 1918. RIGHT MIDDLE: Britannia pictured in front of the captured German U-boat UC-5 in New York’s Central Park. (US LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS)
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in particular clearly indicated that the United States needed to secure a war-chest of thousands of millions of dollars. Taxation and bond issues were the only means by which the required money could be raised. On 24 April 1917, Congress duly authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to issue bonds of the United States to the extent of $5,000,000,000. According to the Massachusetts Historical Society, ‘because the First World War cost the federal government more than $30 billion (by way of comparison, total federal expenditures in 1913 were only $970 million), these programs [usually referred to as Liberty Bonds, Liberty Loans or Victory Notes] became vital as a way to raise funds.’ Exhortations to buy war bonds were soon being made throughout America, often accompanied by appeals to patriotism and conscience. Drawing on the experience of the Allied nations, all possible means were used to promote or support the sale of war bonds. As part of this, the decision was taken to send a British heavy
The tank despatched across the Atlantic, which had been named Britannia, was a British Mark IV Female tank, with at least one researcher stating that it was a Mark IV Tank Tender (unarmed vehicles used to carry supplies) which had been altered by having its supply sponsons replaced by machine-gun sponsons. Introduced in 1917, a total of 1,220 Mark IVs were built, 420 of which were Males, 595 Females and 205 Tank Tenders, making it the most produced British tank of the war. The fact that Britannia was fitted with a cab roof is unusual, this feature only being fitted to a very limited number of Females made by Metropolitan in the serial number range 6001 to 6020. The Mark IV was first used in action during the Battle of Messines Ridge in June 1917, remaining in service until after the Armistice. Whilst it is not known whether Britannia was a combat veteran – unlikely given the fact that it had arrived in the US on 18 October 1917), the same could not be said of its commander. Captain Richard Haigh MC was a veteran tank officer. No stranger to the front line, he had served in the Royal Berkshire Regiment in France since 1915, going on to see action on the Somme before joining the Heavy Branch Machine Gun Corps, which in time became the Tank Corps, in the winter of 1916/17, serving in D Battalion. In one account Haigh described his first view of the interior of a British
A TANK ON TOUR
Financing the American War Machine heavy tank: ‘When you enter a tank, you go in head first, entering by the side doors. (There is an emergency exit – a hole in the roof which is used by the wise ones.) You wiggle your body in with more or less grace, and then you stand up. Then, if it is the first time, you are usually profane. For you have banged your head most unmercifully against the steel roof and you learn, once and for all, that it is impossible to stand upright in a tank. Each one of us received our baptism in this way. Seven of us, crouched in uncomfortable positions, ruefully rubbed our heads … Our life in a tank had begun! ‘We looked around the little chamber with eager curiosity. Our first thought was that seven men and an officer could never do any work in such a little place. Eight of us were, at present, jammed in here, but we were standing still. When it came to going into action and moving around inside the tank, it would be impossible – there was no room to pass one another. So we thought. ‘In front are two stiff seats, one for
the officer and one for the driver. Two narrow slits serve as portholes through which to look ahead. In front of the officer is a map board, and gun mounting. Behind the engine, one on each side, are the secondary gears. Down the middle of the tank is the powerful petrol engine, part of it covered with a hood, and along either side a narrow passage through which a
man can slide from the officer’s and driver’s seat back and forth to the mechanism at the rear. There are four gun turrets, two on each side. There is also a place for a gun in the rear, but this is rarely used, for “Willies” do not often turn tail and flee! ‘Along the steel walls are numberless ingenious little cupboards for stores, and ammunition cases are stacked high. Every bit of space is utilized. Electric bulbs light the interior. Beside the driver are the engine levers. Behind the engine are the secondary gears, by which the machine is turned in any direction. All action inside is directed by signals, for when the tank moves the noise is such as to drown a man’s voice.’1 By the time he arrived in North America, Captain Haigh had already been seriously wounded in action. The same was the case for most, if not all, of his sevenman crew of two sergeants, one corporal and four privates. As Britannia’s tour progressed, the team had increased to eighteen and included one Sergeant A.G. Blunt. Blunt fulfilled the duties of a road manager, travelling in advance of Britannia to help set up its displays or events, arrange crew accommodation and brief the press.
A PRESIDENTIAL TANK
Between October 1917 and the end of the war, Haigh and Britannia travelled extensively across America and Canada appearing in over forty towns, cities and army camps, some more than once – New York, for example, had five visits and Chicago three. The length of each stay depended upon the size of the city and the number of events booked, though they generally lasted between three and ten days. As its journey progressed, it soon became considered fashionable to be associated with Britannia. This perhaps explains why she was involved, to a greater or lesser degree, with no less than four US presidents past, present and future – Theodore Roosevelt (26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909), Woodrow Wilson (the incumbent), John Calvin Coolidge Jr. (the 30th President), and
LEFT: Captain Richard Haigh MC (centre) and some of the crew of Britannia pictured at Camp Dix (now Fort Dix) in New Jersey during February 1918. During the two-week period Britannia was based at Camp Dix, a series of demonstrations, were held. These involved the tank climbing six feet of perpendicular frozen ice and a snow-covered bank just north of the Hostess House, breaking down trees and even, as a finale, demolishing a wooden barn. (HISTORIC MILITARY PRESS)
LEFT: Two posters which, depicting the tank Britannia, were used to promote the Hero Land Exhibition which was held in New York’s Grand Central Palace between 24 November and 12 December 1917. (BOTH US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
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A TANK ON TOUR
Financing the American War Machine
Dwight D. Eisenhower (the34th President from 1953 until 1961). It was not until 19 April 1918, however, that Woodrow Wilson encountered Britannia. One newspaper detailed the events that day: ‘President Wilson rode around the White House grounds in the British Fighting Tank Britannia, which was brought here in connexion with the Liberty Loan campaign. After thoroughly inspecting the machinery, the President entered the side door of the Tank. There were loud cheers from the crowd as the monster lumbered away.’2 As far as can be established, Britannia’s first public appearances were actually in Canada, and more specifically Hamilton, Ontario, on 18 November 1917, and Montreal the following day. In both cities Haigh’s team participated in Victory Loan parades. From Montreal, Britannia headed south, crossing the border into the United States. Ahead lay the most important event of her fund-raising career.
THE ‘HERO LAND’ BAZAAR
The Hero Land Exhibition was held in New York’s Grand Central Palace between 24 November and 12 December 1917. Under 68
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TOP: The Liberty Loan tank parked up in front of the Treasury Building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC during April 1918. (US LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS)
ABOVE: According to the original caption, this is Britannia being guided through a park in Washington DC. (US LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS)
RIGHT: A car is crushed during a demonstration by a tank named Britannia in the town of Duluth, Minnesota, on 17 June 1918. Note how, on this occasion, the tank’s name is stencilled on the front of the hull and that it has been painted in a camouflage scheme.
the leadership of John Moffat of the National Allied Relief and the Committee of Mercy, the object of the event was ‘to bring home in vivid pictures to the American people some of the actualities of warfare as carried on by the Germans’. Two of the most prominent exhibits were Britannia and the captured German minelaying U-boat UC-5. As a report in the Vassar Miscellany News pointed out on 10 November 1917, the Grand Central Palace was transformed for the exhibition, which included reproductions of forts, trench lines, bomb shelters, and battlefields (one of which, located in the basement, was reportedly modelled on a section of the Hindenburg Line): ‘It will be held in Grand Central Palace which occupies a block on Lexington Avenue. Practically the entire building and the one next will be given up to the Bazaar for nineteen days beginning on November 24. The entire proceeds over and above expenses will be devoted to war sufferers … ‘The fourth floor has been given to the French Government for war relics, etc. In the lower part of the adjoining building the English Government will show models of the war trenches, both German and Allied. The great “war tank” will also be on exhibition.’ Amongst the ‘relics’ were gas masks, helmets, bibles with bullet holes, machine-guns and sections of a downed zeppelin. As for Britannia, she was housed in a purpose-built shelter positioned just outside the venue. Such was the size of the crowd pressing to gain entry on the first day, the Police were forced to open the doors early. The following account describes the exhibition in more detail: ‘The “Heroland” Bazaar, described on the programme as “the greatest spectacle
the world has ever seen for the greatest need the world has ever known,” opened its doors to New York last evening, and, in the course of a few hours entertained more than 10,000 visitors. It is a magnificent spectacle, magnificently staged in the Grand Central Palace with the aid of 67 war relief organizations wider the auspices of the League of the Allies. ‘One of its chief features is an exhibition of British war relics which has arrived here at exactly the right moment after a triumphant tour through the country. Its management and arrangement is transferred to a committee of Americans, Englishmen, and Canadians … ‘It would be impossible to overestimate the good effect which these relies are exercising. New Yorkers last night were able to inspect the wreckage of a Zeppelin and of a Fokker aeroplane, but what interested them most as a political exhibit was a great collection of parcel post packages sent from this country before its entrance into the war. The packages reveal the almost
A TANK ON TOUR
Financing the American War Machine
ridiculous ingenuity with which German sympathizers in this country concealed bits of rubber, nickel, and other things badly needed by Germany in the coverings of photographs and other apparently innocent things. ‘The bazaar, of course, is making the most of a Tank brought here at the request of Lord Northcliffe. Daily for the next 10 days this Tank will charge over German trenches, firing its guns and adding immensely to the realism of the reproduction of the Hindenburg Line, a portion of which has been reconstructed according to designs by a famous American architect, Mr. Paul Shalfin, assisted by Major Beith and a captain of the Tank Corps.’ More than 250,000 people attended Hero Land, generating a net profit of $571,438 (about $10.3 million today) which was distributed amongst the various charities involved.
AN IRONCLAD AMBASSADOR
Once the Hero Land exhibition had closed its doors, Britannia’s journey recommenced. First stop, on 19
December, was Camp Upton, a US Army training camp on Long Island. Whilst there, Haigh put his tank through a number of demonstrations which including knocking down trees and firing its Lewis guns at a selection of targets. The list of destinations continued to mount. There was Camp Dix in New Jersey (February 1918), Washington DC, Philadelphia, Duluth in Minnesota (where Britannia demolished a car as part of demonstration organised by the Canadian Army, probably under the auspices of the British and Canadian Recruitment Mission), Detroit, San Francisco and even Chicago. By April 1918, Britannia and its crew had arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, and was soon being put through its paces once more. A reporter writing in The Tech of Wednesday, 10 April 1918, provided the following description: ‘The British tank Britannic [sic] which is now visiting Boston for the purpose of securing
recruits for the Canadian and British armies, gave an exhibition of its destructive powers Monday afternoon at 3 o’clock when it tore down several walls of Engineering A and B of the old Technology buildings on Trinity Place, which are now being razed by contractors. Without seeming effort it pushed over two brick walls several feet in thickness, as if they were made of straw. Any doubt which might have possessed the Boston people as to the stories of the giant caterpillars power, were cleared away when of the two walls originally standing there remained only a mass of bricks and mortar. ‘Much danger was involved in the operation, inasmuch as several thousand people had assembled to witness the performance, and the police experienced great difficulty in keeping them back out of the danger zone created by the falling walls. After easily pushing down the first two walls which it attacked, there was an attempt made on the part
ABOVE: The Liberty Loan tank heads off into Boston. Soon after this picture was taken, Britannia was put through its paces by knocking over walls in the grounds of the Technology buildings on Trinity Place. (LESLIE JONES COLLECTION, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY)
TOP MIDDLE: Members of the crew of Britannia pictured before the tank’s involvement on one of the many Liberty Loan parades it was part of during its tour of North America. LEFT: As some of its British crew look on, no doubt including Sergeant A.G. Blunt, Britannia (or indeed Britannic as some local papers called it) is unloaded from its railway wagon to begin its tour of Boston in April 1918. (BOTH LESLIE
JONES COLLECTION, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY)
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Financing the American War Machine
of the officers in charge of the tank to have it push over a very high wall situated nearby, but the crowd pushed in so close that it was deemed too hazardous an undertaking. There were even people standing and clinging to the wall in question, and as fast as the police cleared the wall, others in the meantime had scaled it again, so the attempt was finally given up. It is almost a certainly that the tank would have met with very
little opposition from the wall. ‘There were several moving picture operators located in points of vantage from which the entire crowd as well as the deeds of the tank could be photographed. Nearby roof-tops, fire-escapes, windows and all other places which offered a view of the walls were covered with people, and the streets in the rear of the Copley Place were packed with humanity. Automobiles aided in
ABOVE: Two postcards showing Britannia during its presence at the Allied War Exposition which was held in Los Angeles in August 1918.
LEFT: President Woodrow Wilson pictured sitting on the hull of the Liberty Loan tank. These two pictures, and others, illustrate the fact that at least two different British tanks were involved in the various parades in 1917 and 1918 – that seen here being fitted with its guns for example. The name Britannia, as well as that of ‘The Liberty Tank’, was applied to whichever was parading at the time.
(BOTH US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
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making a congestion, and it required several policemen nearly a half hour afterwards to bring the traffic to normal again. ‘The officers took advantage of this crowd by talking of the Third Liberty Loan and also recruiting. Accompanying the tank was a truck from the Majestic Theatre advertising the play “Getting Together,” featuring Blanche Bates and Holbrook Blinn. The proceeds from this play are all given to the British and Canadian armies. It required the full width of the street in order to turn around, but the tank whirled on its own tread and ambled off down the streets to its garage, turning in its own length. ‘At a signal that the tank was about to make its first plunge against the wall, the police cleared a square, but the crowd pressed in so close and there seemed to be some danger that the tank would swing about and strike some of them. One of the mechanicians [sic] gave a glance around and Capt. Richard Haigh gave a signal to which the tank responded by swinging about on one of its runners and as gently as a turntable could have accomplished it headed for the brick wall. ‘Capt. Haigh stepped aside and the tank started for the wall, not with a ramming effect as one would expect, but just a gentle push, and as it rose up slightly on its runners the wall split up and went crumbling down in a mass of crushed bricks and mortar. This feat was received by wild cheering, in which Brig.-Gen. Johnston and his staff, who were among the eyewitnesses, joined. ‘At small look-outs in the front were the grinning faces of the two “chauffeurs,” and they made ready to take yet another wallop, but by this time the contractors, who felt the jar of the crumbling walls and realized that the tank was about to go over the top, called a halt in the activities. Many students of the Institute were present to witness this further destruction of their old home …’
A TANK ON TOUR
Financing the American War Machine
AN IRON DEMON
One of the last venues visited by Haigh and his team was Pittsburg in Pennsylvania. Even though Britannia had been touring for a number of months, the interest she aroused had not abated. This report appeared in the local newspaper under the headline ‘British Tank Stirs City’: ‘The coming to Pittsburg of the British tank Brittania [sic] aroused the populace to a high pitch of enthusiasm. This very iron demon of destruction had hurled havoc into the ranks of the Huns in some of the fiercest fighting in France. When it rumbled up Fifth Avenue [New York] it typified to all beholders the might that would sooner or later crush the hopes of the Prussian tyrants for world domination and send them back to their lairs beaten and cringing for mercy from their conquerors, whom they had sought to destroy. ‘When on Sunday, April 28, 1918, the day following its arrival, the tank rested on Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park, it was viewed by no less than a million Americans. They crowded as close as possible to the Brittania [sic] which was used as a rostrum for speakers and singers. The throng would not be content with a mere sight of the powerful
machine that had helped so valiantly in the winning of the war. Every beholder wanted to touch it, look into it, and ask questions about it and to compare it to the pictures they had seen of similar machines. ‘As an aid to recruiting, the coming of the tank exerted a powerful force. It proved to be a great stimulus to the spirit of the people.’ Britannia, it would seem, was still fulfilling her role.
Whilst Haigh and his team eventually returned to the UK, having done their part for the Allied war effort, Britannia’s final fate has never been established. It is known that she was transferred to the US Army in October 1918 and was reported in South Carolina awaiting shipment to Camp Colt in January the following year, but it is there that information on her remarkable journey through North America ends.
NOTES
ABOVE: The US President, Woodrow Wilson, is introduced to the Liberty Loan tank, named as Britannia in some accounts, in the grounds of the White House on 19 April 1918. (US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
1. Richard Haigh MC, Life in a Tank (Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1918), pp.30-1. 2. The Times, 20 April 1918.
LEFT: Members of its British crew and the American public on top of the Liberty Loan tank whilst it was parked up in front of the White House during its tour of Washington DC in April 1918. (US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
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INSIDE THE AVALANCHE Voices From The Front
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AVALANCHE The men of the 16th Durham Light Infantry were at the heart of the action when the Allies landed at Salerno in September 1943. In riveting first-hand interviews given in the late 1980s to Peter Hart of the Imperial War Museum Oral History Project, they describe what happened.
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INSIDE THE AVALANCHE
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HE SALERNO landings, code named Operation Avalanche, were to be carried out by the US Fifth Army, commanded by General Mark Clark, on 9 September 1943. Salerno not only had beaches suitable for landings, but was relatively near the vital port of Naples and under the umbrella of Allied air cover flying from Sicily. British Eighth Army commanded by General Bernard Montgomery had already landed on 3 September at Reggio at the ‘toe’ of Italy.
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The US Fifth Army consisted of the British X Corps (46th and 56th Divisions) and the US VI Corps. X Corps (commanded by Major General Sir Richard McCreery) was to land on the northern section of the Salerno beach, whilst the 36th Division of the US VI Corps landed south of the River Sele at Paestum. Once the beachheads were secure, the main force was to move inland to form a perimeter in the hills surrounding the beaches. The plan was predicated on establishing total naval and aerial superiority in the Salerno area.
BOTTOM LEFT: Landing on Salerno beach, 9 September 1943. (IWM NA 6630)
TOP LEFT: Walking along Salerno beach, Generals Harold Alexander, Mark Clark and Richard McCreery, 15 September 1943. (IWM NA 6822)
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INSIDE THE AVALANCHE Voices From The Front
style came, ‘Hear me, hear me!’ and the voice of the captain told us that he had been commanded to inform all that the Italian government had surrendered and all Italian troops had been ordered to lay down their arms. A cheer rang through the ship. - Private Kenneth Lovell, D Company. To the sweating troops packed below decks it seemed for a fleeting moment
ABOVE: 46th (West Riding) Infantry Division vehicles waiting to be embarked at Bizerta docks, 3 September 1943. (IWM NA 6354)
RIGHT: Men of D Company, 16th DLI, at Blida, July 1943. BELOW: 46th Infantry Division vehicles embarking aboard LSTs at Bizerta docks, 3 September 1943. (IWM NA 6351)
The 46th Division (commanded by Major General John Hawkesworth) was ordered to secure the beachhead between the River Picento and River Asa some 3-4 miles south of the city of Salerno. The 128 Brigade, (2nd, 1/4th, 5th Hampshire Regiment), were to be first to storm Red and Green Beaches on 9 September. They would be followed ashore by the second wave composed of elements of the 139 Brigade (16th Durham Light Infantry, 2/5th Leicestershire Regiment and 5th Sherwood Foresters) and the 138 Brigade (6th Lincolnshire Regiment, 2/4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and 6th York and Lancaster Regiment). These units would be responsible for enlarging and consolidating the bridgehead. Then the 46th Division would as a whole swing left to secure the high ground behind Salerno.
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The rifle companies of the 16th DLI embarked on three Infantry Landing Ships (LSI) and set off on 5 September. At first rough seas and seasickness had the virtue of distracting the men, at least for a while, from what lay before them. As they recovered, news came of a breathtaking development as the Italians finally showed their hand. The night before the invasion we were having an inspection when over the tannoy in the American-
that their prayers had been answered. We thought, ‘Brilliant, landing at Naples, at a harbour and it’ll be all over - just a matter of occupying Italy!’ We were wrong! Sergeant Threadgold said, ‘Don’t you believe it, make sure your weapons are clean!’ He was right! - Lance Corporal William Virr, B Company. Herded below decks, the mood became subdued as they approached the beaches.
INSIDE THE AVALANCHE
Voices From The Front
A lot of us were going into action for the first time, I certainly became a little more pensive than I was normally. A lot of men became rather quieter; some became much more chatty. I wondered what it was going to be like, what my reaction would be, whether I’d be able to stand up to it, worried lest I might turn coward. I prayed that if anything happened to me I’d rather be killed rather than losing my limbs or sight: death was preferable to being maimed for life. I wondered what it would be like to have people shooting real bullets at me. - Private Kenneth Lovell, D Company. As they sailed into the Bay of Naples the men were called up on deck. Peering around they became aware of the vast fleet that surrounded them. As the first wave approached in the dim moonlight, the rocket ships opened up for a final blistering bombardment. On Red Beach everything went well, the l/4th Hampshires moved inland and occupied the low lying hills ahead of them. Unfortunately the 2nd Hampshires intended for Green Beach were landed on the wrong side of the River Asa, and faced German positions relatively untroubled by the bombardment. Under heavy fire they crossed the Asa and moved inland as originally intended. However the delays meant Green Beach was unsecured. Behind the Hampshires came A and C Companies of the 16th DLI. Major Arthur Vizard found a challenging situation still faced the second wave. They had 88mm Tiger tanks hulldown on the sand dunes and they
were banging away. The 128 Brigade were about a 1,000 yards inland, they’d had a lot of trouble - and a good deal of the trouble was still there, because they’d over-run some of it. These Tiger tanks were still banging away at us and bits were flying off the LCI. We started to get off and I said to the skipper, ‘Well don’t hang around!’ ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘I’m stopping here till you’re all ashore!’ And he did. I was the lead man off, there were two ramps. Tom Logan took one and I took the other. Then we had two subalterns, they were standing behind and we organised ourselves into three platoons. No. 1 Platoon moved off to its right, rushed up the beach, No. 2 rushed off moving to the centre and No. 3 to the left. We all got ashore and ran like hell up the sand. Major Arthur Vizard, A Company. There was a considerable amount of German fire directed at the beach. Nonetheless, the Durhams moved forward and took up defensive positions a quarter of a mile inland. Overall the landing had been successful. By the evening of 9 September the Allies had established a bridgehead some 30 miles long, although it was shallow in depth and the Germans still overlooked them. The German commander, Albrecht Kesselring, reacted swiftly. The German divisions facing Eighth
Army were ordered to harry and delay Montgomery’s advance, while the rest of Kesselring’s forces were massed for a counter-attack at Salerno. At around noon on 10 September. the 16th DLI moved forward to occupy defensive positions. Around them were grim reminders of the fighting. We moved up and it was on my way I came across my first dead German. I climbed over a wall and just in front there was a bush. Suddenly a huge cloud of flies came up and there was a terrible stink. A sweet sickly smell, something I had never smelt before. There was a German half-track that had received a direct hit from a shell. The whole lot, nine or ten men had been killed, all sprawled in grotesque attitudes, many of them black from burns. I spewed my heart up, it really made me sick, the smell, the stench and the sight of seeing men so violently killed. Private Kenneth Lovell, D Company. On 11 September, the 16th DLI were ordered to relieve the 6th York and Lancs on the hills below a sanatorium or Hospital Hill as it would be known. Here they would be one of the last lines of defence protecting Salerno's port from counter-attack. D Company took up positions just left of the hospital and on a slightly higher promontory known as ‘The Pimple’, with C Company on a similar feature just to their left.
TOP LEFT: Men of the DLI. Back row left to right: A Sacco, L Smith, Ronald Elliott. Front row: C Grey, D Jordan. taken in Cairo, March 1944. TOP RIGHT: British troops pass a road block while moving through Salerno, 10 September 1943. The Allies met growng resistance as German forces trickled in. Over the next few days the Allies fought to expand their foothold but progress was slow and a major counterattack, correctly predicted by General Alexander, was launched on September 13. (IWM NA 6785)
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INSIDE THE AVALANCHE Voices From The Front RIGHT: German Panzer Grenadier in action with a MP40 sub machine gun in Italy. (IWM MH 196)
TOP LEFT (OPPOSITE): German troops at Salerno move up for a counter attack against the invaders. (IWM MH 235)
TOP RIGHT (OPPOSITE): A Universal Carrier passing through Salerno, 10 September 1943. This example is armed with a Vickers machine gun. BELOW RIGHT: Major Arthur Vizard, A Company, DLI. BOTTOM: Soldiers watch as the Allied invasion fleet enter the Bay of Naples early on 9 September 1943. (IWM NA
6575)
Further back A and B Companies were positioned in vineyards on either side of the secondary road leading back to Salerno. The 2/5th Sherwood Foresters were stationed to their right, astride the main Salerno-Avellino road, while to the DLI left lay rough country, with the nearest British troops, the Commandos, ensconced on Castle Hill. It was now the German mortars began to make their presence felt. The most distinctive was the Nebelwerfer. It was awful, really terrifying. We could hear them start off, because they used to be fired electrically from six barrelled mortars, we used to call them ‘Wurlitzers’. They had a note as the barrels fired in rotation. Then you knew you had about 20 seconds before the bombs arrived. Terrifying it was. You used to lie at
the bottom of this hole, looking at a beetle or something, wishing you were somewhere else. - Lieutenant Gerry Barnett, C Company. The screaming mortar shells crashed down around their trenches. I remember one young fellow started screaming and I had to guess how to handle it. I just gave him a good clout in the face and he stopped. I was – and am – a great fatalist and I have a very strong faith too. I’m not saying that I wasn’t frightened – I had the same sort of fears and apprehensions as anybody does, but I refused to let it worry me. I think it’s just sort of ingrained in me – my mother always used to say, ‘You can’t help being frightened but never show it!’ And I didn’t! - Lieutenant Ronnie Sherlaw, C Company. On the morning of 13 September, A Company, under Major Arthur Vizard, tried to infiltrate round to the left of the hospital. Vizard was not aware that the Germans were building up ready for counter-attacks all along the front. They soon ran into trouble. There was tremendous burst of Schmeisser machine pistol fire from
not more than 300 yards away on the right-hand side. Simultaneously, Sergeant Major ‘Nutty’ Wilson, I and Tom Logan jumped. Unfortunately, poor Tom, he jumped a bit too late. I landed on top of the Sergeant Major and Tom landed on top of me. But he’d been wounded badly through the stomach. We got him dressed as best we could, got him on a stretcher and evacuated him, but he died. Major Arthur Vizard, A Company. Vizard called up support fire from the Vickers machine guns and mortars, while deploying all his own Bren guns, until he was able to resume the advance. Still the German mortar shells crashed down around them. We began to sustain quite a lot of casualties. The stretcher bearers were at work - it was mostly shrapnel splinters, I don’t remember anyone getting a direct hit, but it still did a lot of harm. It was quite clear that they had switched from the flank - they were now coming over the hospital. The poor old nuns inside must have had a rotten time of it! Major Arthur Vizard, A Company. They struggled on another 200 yards further up Hospital Hill. Then Vizard’s own luck ran out. I was crouched and one of these mortar bombs landed to the right of me and a splinter zipped through and got me at the bottom of the back. It wasn’t particularly painful at first, it was very largely a flesh wound, but it had damaged the spine a bit. It was difficult to walk. I got patched up and continued moving forward. But the medical sergeant who was with me said, ‘You ought to jack it in, you’re losing blood!’ I said, ‘Well, no, it’s all right!’ So we pressed on and in the end he was right because I passed out from loss of blood. Nothing I could do about it. - Major Arthur Vizard, A Company.
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
In the late 1980s the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive selected the Durham Light Infantry (DLI) to be the subject of a major oral history project, recording as many of the veterans as possible for a series of detailed interviews that averaged over 8 hours in length. These focused on many of the key British battles of the Second World War, because the DLI had an almost unrivalled involvement around the globe. As a result we can examine the nature of the Salerno campaign landing from the detailed criss-crossing memories of 16th DLI veterans. Sadly most are now dead but their voices live on at the IWM.
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INSIDE THE AVALANCHE
Voices From The Front
Vizard was stretchered back to a dressing station. I got 96 stitches in the back and I got clips put in which halted most of the bleeding. The trouble was the spine was chipped. All regimental aid posts and dressing stations were very gory places. Like a butcher’s abattoir. It was shocking! Fellows covered in blood from head to foot. All over their hair and faces and everything else. Blokes coming in and they only had a matter of minutes to save a life. Amputations were carried out with incredible speed. I saw one fellow have his leg taken off and it didn’t take more than a minute and a half. Away it went. - Major Arthur Vizard, A Company. German counter-attacks were raging all along the line, but at Hospital Hill the main thrust came as night fell on 15 September. Infiltrators from the Panzer Grenadiers of the 16th Panzer Division swept over the positions of D Company on their ‘Pimple’. Jerry got right up on top of the hill. The first thing we knew he was starting to fire down. I put my hand out along the slit trench to get a hold of my rifle and the bullets smashed it - the butt was blown to bits! There was no question of getting the rifle it was just a matter of trying to keep down. We had a couple of grenades and we lobbed them back. What saved the day was somebody wired down and
the mortar platoon started firing up there. - Private Robert Ellison, D Company. Amongst the mortar teams was Sergeant John Henderson who described his role in a letter home. Two 3-inch mortars which I had in position to meet such a situation opened up and fired 150 bombs in ten minutes, thereby demoralizing the Germans who were ‘easy meat’ for the boys who went into them with the bayonet. - Sergeant John Henderson, Mortar Platoon, HQ Company. Further up the hill, Ken Lovell had just stripped down his Bren gun when he received the grim order. Suddenly Lieutenant Woodlands came galloping up and said, ‘Right, fix bayonets, we’re going to go into a bayonet charge!’ He led us, at the
front, up the hill, over the slope and into the Germans. We really ran as fast as we could: Woodlands called out, ‘CHARGE!’ and we charged! Now the Germans were virtually amongst the positions of 16 and 18 Platoons. We got stuck into the Germans. I hadn’t got my Bren gun because it was still in pieces, but I’d got a Tommy gun.
ABOVE: General Hawkesworth, 46th Infantry Division's commander, known as the ‘the little man with the big stick’. (IWM NA 6847)
LEFT: A battery of notorious German sixbarrelled mortars, known as Nebelwerfers, with the rocket projectiles caught on camera. (IWM STT 5572)
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INSIDE THE AVALANCHE Voices From The Front Thanks to Tom Tunney and for more information see his website: http://16dli. awardspace.com/ index.html
RIGHT: Private Kenneth Lovell, D Company, DLI, taken in 1944. BELOW: Landing ships offload British troops and equipment, in this example, 25 Pounder guns and their gun tractors, at Salerno beach on the first day of Operation Avalance, 9 September 1943. The Allies faced some strong resistance, but by the end of the first day, they had advanced between 5 and 7 miles inland. (IWM NA 6631)
As we were going I was firing from the hip. I suddenly saw a German lying down behind a machine gun. He looked at me and I looked at him - I pulled the trigger and nothing happened so I just swung the Tommy gun round, grabbed it by the barrel and smashed him over the head. I didn’t know whether I’d killed him or whether he was unconscious. I went on. I think they were taken by surprise. There’s a lot of stories that the Germans don’t like cold steel, but I don’t think anybody does come to that! I think if some bugger had come at me with a bloody bayonet I might have done a side-step or something! The Germans fled into a box barrage that our mortars had put down behind them. We took quite a number of prisoners, killed quite a few. I went back and saw this German that I’d slammed. I don’t think it was the fact that his head was stove in, but rather the idea of having killed another human being. All right, he’d have killed me if he’d got the chance, but nevertheless I was physically sick, I vomited. Private Kenneth Lovell, D Company. The German counter-attacks had undoubtedly caught the Durhams by surprise – but nowhere more so than in the C Company sector under the command of Major George Jobey. George Jobey had his company headquarters on the rear slope in a tiny hut, used by the Italians no doubt in the vineyards. It was on one of the terraces where there were these few vines. At dusk he sent for us, the three platoon commanders for an ‘O’ Group. We all gathered in this tiny hut, but
Peter Hart is the author of a 'Voices from The Front' book detailing the 16th Durham Light Infantry in Italy, 1943 - 45. Published by Pen & Sword Books, ISBN 184884401-8, RRP £12.99 it is available from bookstores, Amazon or via the publisher at: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk 80 www.britainatwar.com
we never got round to getting the orders, because there were sounds of firing. Someone flung open the door and said, ‘We’re under attack!’ Sure enough the Germans were coming down the terraces, throwing grenades and firing with Schmeissers. They were right through our positions. - Lieutenant Gerry Barnett, C Company. The situation was critical - they were all that remained between the Germans and a dangerous breakthrough. There was a box of grenades in George’s hut so we all grabbed a handful of grenades and ran out. Of course there was no sort of orders or directions, we just started attacking back up the hill. It’s just an instinct really – when you see Germans in the flesh to attack – there’s nothing else you can do, you can’t run away, we didn’t know how to, it never occurred to us. Sort of unwilling but duty bound. - Lieutenant Gerry Barnett, C Company. The situation was horribly confused as the light rapidly faded on Hospital Hill. Lt Ronnie Sherlaw was close by Gerry Barnett. I was going forward with a .38 pistol in my hand, which is a useless implement. As I crawled up a sort of slit trench I put my head over it and a German helmet came up! I immediately pulled the trigger and I shot him – not very straight! I had a horrible feeling, that was the first time I’d ever been face to face. It was fortunate I had shot him because he’d have shot me! Lieutenant Ronnie Sherlaw, C Company.
Perhaps the sheer desperation of their attack caught the Germans by surprise as C Company fought their way up to a little saddle below the ‘Pimple’. By that time it was night, but moonlight lit the scene. It was at this point that Sherlaw made an error of judgement that could quite easily have cost him his life, as witnessed by Gerry Barnett. I could hear the Germans talking in loud voices as they seemed to be digging in while they used a machine gun to fire at us. Ronnie for some reason thought they were some other company’s troops, ours, and he stood up in bright moonlight and shouted, ‘Stop firing, you bloody fools, this is C Company!’ I said, ‘It’s the Boches, Ronnie!’ On which he dropped down smartly under cover! - Lieutenant Gerry Barnett, C Company.
INSIDE THE AVALANCHE
Voices From The Front
It was obvious that the Germans were still up on the Pimple. We could see the flashes coming from their Schmeissers as they fired at us. There were about five of us. We were firing at them and throwing our grenades; they were firing back and throwing grenades. I was lying down between bursts of fire, then kneeling up so I could see just over the crown of the hill, see their flashes and then firing back with my Tommy gun – when it worked. The first time when I got up there I pressed the trigger and there was just a rough grating noise as the bolt slid forward because the dust was slowing the action. So I got back, lay down again, pulled the oil bottle out of the butt, oiled the bolt and like a good soldier put the oil bottle back in the butt. I got up and it worked, fortunately, it fired then. Then I heard a little noise to my left and glanced – just as a grenade went off about two feet away. I
carried on firing and then I noticed that my Tommy gun was getting very slippy. I could feel the warm blood coming onto the weapon, felt around and found that it was coming from my chin, I had a flap hanging down, an artery had gone and it was spurting out. I bandaged myself up, put my chin back on and wrapped my field dressing round it because I’d heard it said that if you put the flesh back it seals. Wrapped my field dressing round my head and put my tin hat back on to hold it on. I carried on and the action finished very shortly after that. We captured two prisoners, one wounded, the rest had gone. I said to Ronnie, ‘Well I’ll take these down because I’ll have to go and get this chin sealed up - I can’t stop it bleeding!’ It was dripping you see. Lieutenant Gerry Barnett, C Company. The confusion can be illustrated by what befell Sergeant John Henderson whilst organising the resupply of ammunition for the Mortar Platoon. I found myself preparing a load with a lance corporal as sentry, it was dark, about 9 pm. Suddenly he calls me and says there are four men going up alongside the wall to our left. I chew him up for not halting them and, drawing my revolver, go to investigate. It is only some boys from another company. Following the same route I had taken I return to the ammunition, but when I get to within 20 yards, Bang! Looking back on this I cannot help but laugh. Actually what had happened was that the lance corporal had got the jitters. Being left entirely on his own, his nerve had gone and, when he saw me coming back, he
let go without asking any questions. When he knew what he had done he went into hysterics. Shouting, ‘I’ve shot the best friend I ever had!’ and crying and sobbing. Major Worrall, who helped put the field dressing on me, called out, ‘Take that man away for God’s sake!’ However, I asked him to allow me to talk to him. When he came I told him to shut up and listen to what I had to say. ‘You have done some good work for me these last few days. I couldn’t have done without you. Now I am going out for a while, you will be needed more than ever, so snap out of it and go help them up the hill.’ He quietened down, we shook hands and away he went up the hill. I understand he was taken prisoner five days later. So you see, I haven’t been contaminated by a German bullet or shrapnel - it was only a good old British .303 fired by a good lad with the best of intentions but, unfortunately, a little unbalanced by the trying circumstances. Sergeant John Henderson, Mortar Platoon, HQ Company. In the event, the German attack was beaten back all around the Salerno perimeter. The beachhead survived – and that allowed ever increasing quantities of artillery and armour to be safely ushered ashore, ready for a breakout towards Naples. A few days later the Germans withdrew north to their next line of defence along the River Volturno as they feared being trapped between Fifth Army and the advancing Eighth Army. The Italian campaign had only just begun – it would be a long hard slog for the men of the 16th DLI.
TOP: A StuG III assault gun fires on British positions at Salerno. The very successful Sturmgeschütz III was the most produced German armoured fighting vehicle of the war. (IWM MH 6325)
LEFT: General Mark Clark greets General Bernard Law Montgomery on Salerno Bridge 24 September 1943. 'Monty' would lead Eighth Army until December 1943, when he was reassigned to command 21st Army Group. Montgomery was highly critical of the early campaign in Italy. (IWM NA 7108)
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‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War
‘A Dull Re Britain’s defences seemed woefully impotent in trying to successfully counter the Zeppelin attacks on the country which had gripped much of the nation with fear for over a year. Then, one hundred years ago this month, came the first success in bringing down one of these menacing airships. Ian Castle tells the story.
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‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War
ed Glow...’ A
S THE population of Britain ticked the final days of August 1916 from their calendars, Zeppelin attacks were again casting a threatening cloud over the country. After a threemonth hiatus coinciding with the short summer nights, which made airships more vulnerable to attack, Zeppelins carried out two raids at the end of July followed by
another four in August. But for the defenders the results were the same. Since the first Zeppelin raid in January 1915, German airships had appeared over Britain on 37 nights, but on no occasion had aircraft or anti-aircraft guns succeeded in bringing down a Zeppelin on British soil. This left the population feeling exposed and helpless in the face of this brooding menace.
Although on paper shooting down a target around 600 feet long filled with up to 2 million cubic feet of highly flammable hydrogen would seem simple, in reality it proved extremely difficult to achieve. Hydrogen only becomes flammable when it combines with oxygen, so before ignition it first has to mix with the air. Early incendiary bullets proved ineffective and gave birth
MAIN IMAGE: The final fiery moments of German airship SL 11. (PIOTR
FORKASIEWICZ)
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‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War when it was descending to its home base, over England Zeppelins could easily out climb the defence aircraft sent up to attack them thus preventing them gaining the height advantage they needed to drop their bombs.
FROM HEATH ROBINSON TO LEEFE ROBINSON
Besides standard bombs a number of extraordinary devices appeared in the anti-Zeppelin arsenal, all but one needing a height advantage for deployment. The 3.45-inch incendiary bomb, released through a tube in the aircraft cockpit’s floor, was fired by electrical contact strips and came with hooks attached that would – hopefully – catch onto the envelope, the airship’s outer covering. In a similar vein, the Ranken dart, a 1lb explosive-packed pointed tube, released spring-loaded vanes as it fell, again intended to catch onto the airship covering after the dart had penetrated. Then came the fearsomely ABOVE: 21-year-old William Leefe Robinson joined the RFC after initial service with the Worcestershire Regiment. Joining as an observer, he quickly fell in love with flying and trained as a pilot, qualifying in September 1915.
to an incorrect theory that an inert gas contained within the body of the airship prevented combustion. Therefore the authorities concluded that the only way to destroy a Zeppelin was to drop bombs on it. Events in Belgium, when a Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) pilot, Reginald Warneford, destroyed a Zeppelin with bombs in June 1915 had reinforced this view. Yet there was a major flaw in the theory; Warneford had caught his target
RIGHT: Outclassed on the Western Front, by late 1915 the Blériot Experimental 2c (BE2c) had become the standard Home Defence Zeppelin nightfighter. When armed with a Lewis gun firing new explosive and incendiary bullets it became the airship’s nemesis. MIDDLE: A diagram of L.33, downed on 24 September 1916. (KEY
COLLECTION)
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named ‘Fiery Grapnel’, in essence a four-pronged grappling hook loaded with explosive charges. The idea being that the pilot lowered the grapnel by cable, trying to hook the Zeppelin like a fish, then electrically fired the charge. But no one appeared to have much faith in this oddity. Some aircraft also carried Le Prieur rockets attached to their outer struts, which had seen some success against observation balloons on the Western Front. But these devices all had one thing in common, none of them ever brought down a Zeppelin. There was, however, another weapon, introduced in 1916, that would change the face of the Zeppelin war at a stroke – new incendiary and explosive bullets. A determined New Zealand inventor, John Pomoroy, finally had his explosive bullet accepted by the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) after trials in May 1916, having initially received a cool response in 1914 and again in 1915. Meanwhile a naval officer,
‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War BELOW: SL 11, the latest airship from Zeppelin rivals, Schütte-Lanz. Although more streamlined than early Zeppelins, the woodenframed airships were more popular with the Army Airship Service than the Naval Airship Division who felt them unsuitable for service in the moist conditions experienced over the sea. BOTTOM: Wilhelm Schramm (1885-1916). Born in London where his father worked, Schramm lived in the capital until his father died in 1900. Schramm joined the army as an officer cadet in 1905 before transferring to the Prussian Army Airship Battalion in 1910. (PHOTO
COURTESY OF
PETER AMESBURY VIA RAY RIMELL)
Flight Lieutenant Frank Brock of the famous fireworks family, had developed a bullet with both explosive and incendiary attributes, which the Admiralty ordered following a second trial in February 1916. While at the same time a Coventry engineer, John Buckingham, developed a true incendiary bullet; after trials the Admiralty placed an order for his bullets in December 1915. The War Office also ordered quantities of the Brock and Buckingham bullets after completing their own tests in April 1916. Although none of the bullets appeared completely effective on their own, when fired in combination they showed great promise; it was hoped the explosive round would blow a hole in the gas bags contained within the body of the airship, letting the hydrogen mix with oxygen, and a following incendiary would then ignite the now volatile gas. Later that month an officer of No. 39 (Home
Defence) Squadron, Captain Arthur Travers Harris (known to later generations as ‘Bomber’ Harris), engaged Zeppelin LZ 97 with the new Brock bullets. Although at long range, he made two attacks, but both times the bullets jammed in his Lewis gun. Another pilot from the squadron, 2nd Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson, also failed to engage LZ 97 that night because his guns jammed too. But Robinson’s time would come.
A HERO IN THE MAKING
William Leefe Robinson was born in southern India in July 1895, where his father owned a successful coffee plantation. Having completed his education in England in 1909, at the outbreak of war he gained entry to Sandhurst, earning a commission in December 1914 in the Fifth Militia Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment. His subsequent posting, however, to Cornwall and a seemingly endless round of guard duty, trench digging and training recruits, did www.britainatwar.com 85
‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War in April 1916, he flew a second patrol on the night of 24/25 August when he saw nothing of Heinrich Mathy’s Zeppelin L 31 as it bombed south-east London causing damage estimated at £130,000 – the second highest total of the war from a single raid. But just eight days later this unknown 21-yearold pilot became a national hero.
THE AERIAL ARMADA
ABOVE: Developed by naval officer, Francis Ranken, the Ranken Dart was one of many unusual devices in the anti-Zeppelin arsenal. These darts were to be dropped on a Zeppelin whereupon the iron point would penetrate the skin and detonate, three spring-loaded vanes held the dart in place.
not satisfy his desire to ‘do his bit’. He applied for a transfer to the RFC and was delighted to receive orders in March 1915 to join No.4 Squadron in France as an Observer. Robinson immediately fell in love with flying, but early in May over Lille he received a shrapnel wound in his right arm. While recuperating in England he began flying lessons and qualified as a Flying Officer in September 1915, eventually joining No. 39 (Home Defence) Squadron; it soon became clear that Robinson was a natural. But following that first Zeppelin encounter
After Mathy’s successful foray over London, Germany planned its biggest airship raid of the war for the night of 2/3 September 1916, although not all participants were Zeppelins. A rival company – Schütte-Lanz - also built giant rigid airships, the main difference between the two being that while a Zeppelin’s framework was built of duralumin (an aluminium alloy) those of Schütte-Lanz were constructed of plywood. But to those on the ground living through the nightmare of this first blitz the difference was irrelevant, to them all German airships were simply Zeppelins. On that early September afternoon 16 airships set out from Germany to attack England: the navy mustered 11 Zeppelins and one Schütte-Lanz while the army sent a Schütte-Lanz and three Zeppelins. Commanding the army’s single Schütte-Lanz was Hauptmann Wilhelm Schramm. This 30-year-old army officer had been born in London where his father worked for the German engineering company Siemens, but he moved to Germany following his father’s death in 1900. He had been on board SL 2 when she bombed London a year earlier and had commanded LZ 93 in two raids over England in April 1916. Now he had command of SL 11, the latest addition to the army’s airship fleet. But any
hopes Schramm and the other airship commanders had of delivering a heavy blow against London and its population that night quickly evaporated. German forecasters had predicted fair weather, but the reality at high altitude was very different. Here the airships encountered heavy rain and ice and were battered by adverse winds, destroying any chance of a concerted attack on London. At least half of the navy airships, unable to reach the capital, selected secondary targets across a wide area between the River Thames and the Humber. British naval intelligence received warning of the raid in the early evening. In all at least seven navy airships came in over East Anglia but none of RNAS aircraft stationed on the east coast had much luck in locating them. As the naval airship captains continued their missions, displaying varying levels of determination, the army airships made their appearance. One developed mechanical problems and turned back over the North Sea, but the other three pressed on for London.
OVER ENGLAND
The first of the army airships, Schramm’s SL 11, came inland over Foulness near the mouth of the Thames Estuary at about 10.40pm. From there he steered across Essex and Hertfordshire, sweeping around London to approach the capital from the north-west. His route took him beyond the patrol area of No.39 Squadron of the RFC, guarding the north-eastern approaches to the city. Twenty-five minutes later a second army airship appeared over the Essex coast, but she only flew inland for about 35 miles, dropping her bombs on the Essex/ Suffolk border before turning for home.
ABOVE: Metal superstructure such as this from L.33 did not litter the Cuffley site, as unlike other German airships, Schütte-Lanz airships had a wooden girder framework and there was no metal skeleton left when the fire died down.
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‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War BELOW: Although airships presented a massive target, each one full of highly inflammable hydrogen, they had proved extremely difficult to shoot down. Ordinary lead bullets merely made small holes in the individual gas cells, of which there could be up to 19, allowing some gas to leak away but they could not ignite the gas.
'The Army airships pressed on for London'
No. 39 Squadron had two BE2c pilots assigned to night flying duties at each of its three airfields: ‘A’ Flight, based at North Weald, ‘B’ Flight, about twelve miles to the south at Suttons Farm, Hornchurch, and ‘C’ Flight flying from Hainault Farm, a little to the west of the other two. Advised of an imminent raid, the squadron received orders to fly their standard patrol lines at around 11.00pm. Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson of ‘B’ Flight took off from Suttons Farm in his BE2c, climbing slowly up to 10,000 feet to patrol towards Joyce Green, an airfield on the south bank of the Thames near Dartford. Within five minutes both lieutenants Clifford Ross, of ‘A’
Flight and Alfred Brandon of ‘C’ Flight, were also in the air, with Ross patrolling from North Weald to Hainault Farm and Brandon covering the line from Hainault Farm to Suttons Farm. As the three pilots reached patrol height the third German army airship, LZ 98, appeared over the English Channel at about midnight. Flying inland over New Romney she steered a course across south-east Kent towards the capital. Lieutenants Ross and Brandon, peering from their cockpits into the blackness of the night, saw no sign of enemy activity during their patrols and returned to their airfields. Expecting the return of Robinson at any time, the three pilots
taking the second patrols were dispersed differently; two were directed to patrol south of the Thames, leaving just one pilot north of the river. Fortunately for the now undermanned defence line north of the Thames, 21-year-old Lieutenant Robinson was still airborne.
TARGET LONDON
Having reached 10,000 feet, Robinson commenced his patrol southwards on what started as a beautifully clear night. Even so, he had seen no sign of enemy activity as he approached the end of his allotted patrol time. But then, at 1.10am, after two hours in the air he noticed two searchlight beams fixed
BELOW: The first two postcards in a sequence of four depicting the final minutes of SL 11 after Robinson’s attack using the new rounds. The last two postcards show the descending red blur of SL 11 moments before crashing at Cuffley, Herts, with the last image timed at 02.25.
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‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War
CAUGHT IN THE SPIDER’S WEB
ABOVE: Soldiers and men of the RFC amongst the wreckage of SL 11. BELOW: Leefe Robinson as he is cheered by his comrades on September 3 1916.
on a Zeppelin away to the south-east towards Woolwich. As he turned in pursuit, however, cloud cover was building up and the searchlights were finding it difficult to hold their beams on the raider. This distant airship was LZ 98, the army Zeppelin that had arrived over the coast at New Romney just over an hour earlier. Anti-aircraft guns forced LZ 98 to turn back eastwards, dropping a number of bombs as she approached Gravesend at about 1.15am. For the next ten minutes, Robinson’s aircraft
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only gained slowly on LZ 98 as he preferred to maintain his 800 feet height advantage until ready to swoop down and make his attack. But LZ 98 steered into a cloudbank, becoming lost to the probing searchlights and the pursuing airman. Robinson searched for his elusive quarry for another 15 minutes but, frustrated, he finally abandoned the hunt and turned for home. Ten minutes later though a red glow over north-east London attracted his attention: ‘Taking it to be an outbreak of fire I went in that direction.’
Having swung around London, SL 11 passed south of St. Albans and began dropping bombs between London Colney in Hertfordshire and North Mymms at about 1.20am. He released further bombs near Enfield and more as he passed Southgate at about 1.40am. These all created the fires on which Robinson now homed in. From Southgate, Schramm gradually closed on central London. But over Hornsey in North London, just before 2.00am, the searchlights positioned in Finsbury Park and Victoria Park pierced the night sky and caught SL 11 in their beams. Now, brilliantly illuminated, the airship shied away to the east, but almost immediately came under heavy fire from the anti-aircraft gun deployed in Finsbury Park. Schramm swung his airship to the north-east, heading over Tottenham as the guns at Victoria Park, West Ham, Beckton and Wanstead joined the attack; more searchlights locked onto the target too. The central London guns now opened fire, from King’s Cross, Paddington, Green Park and Tower Bridge, adding to the crescendo of noise thundering across the city.
‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War
'A crash that could be heard for miles'
anti-aircraft guns. Schramm began dropping bombs again over Edmonton, but his respite was brief, for a searchlight piercing the night sky from Chingford quickly pinpointed him again, a cue for the watching thousands to cheer enthusiastically. Twisting to the north he released more bombs at about 2.15am over Ponders End and Enfield Highway. Now, three more sweeping searchlights caught the hunted airship and the anti-aircraft guns positioned near Waltham Abbey opened fire.
DUEL TO THE DEATH
Awoken by this storm of fire, London was wide-awake. Watching breathlessly, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands stood in their doorways and gardens, peering up into the night sky to watch the unfolding drama as SL 11 desperately attempted to escape the beams of light that seemed to trap her like a fly caught in a spider’s web. Some even climbed rooftops to get a better view, oblivious to the dangers of falling anti-aircraft shells and shrapnel. Previous Zeppelins over London had been viewed with apprehension; these
vast airships with their droning engines, shining silver in the searchlights and threatening the city with a brooding menace, had always appeared to be beyond reach and impervious to attack. But this time it was different. Never before had such a volume of fire filled the London sky. Now over Wood Green, Schramm took advantage of a bank of clouds or heavy fog, which swirled around North London that night, becoming lost to the searchlights and thundering
Ten minutes earlier, Robinson had caught his first sight of SL 11 in the searchlights. With the experience over Gravesend fresh in his mind, he put his nose down and gained on the airship as quickly as possible. As he sped towards the fugitive, he could see the bursting anti-aircraft shells, then, when about 3,000 feet from the target, he noted that those explosions became audible above the noise of his engine. The keenest-eyed observers on the ground caught glimpses of an aircraft flitting like a moth through the searchlight beams as Robinson’s
ABOVE: Great crowds of onlookers watch as servicemen roll up the vast quantities of wire from the crashsite, much of which the Red Cross turned into souvenirs to help raise funds. LEFT: Two of the many souvenir postcards issued to commemorate Robinson’s deed in being the first man to shoot down a German airship over mainland Britain. He became an instant media celebrity and his value to morale led to his withdrawl from operational flying. (COURTESY OF DAVID MARKS)
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‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War BE2c closed on SL 11. Although dwarfed by the massive 570-footlong airship, he headed directly towards it and, from a position 800 feet below, flew along the underside from bow to stern, emptying a drum of ammunition into her. He fired a cocktail of Brock and Pomeroy bullets with, presumably, Buckingham incendiary bullets doubling as tracers, although he does not mention the latter in his report. Much to his dismay, however, they had no effect. And now, alerted to his presence, the six machine guns on SL 11 opened up in response, seen from below as ‘flickering red stabs of light’ in the dark. Undaunted, Robinson turned to make a second approach, this time spraying another drum of mixed ammunition all along one side of the airship, but again, frustratingly, without result. As he manoeuvred into position for a third attack Robinson noted that the searchlights had now lost SL 11 and the anti-aircraft guns ceased firing. This time he closed up directly behind her, estimating that she was flying at about 12,000 feet as he positioned himself 500 feet below. Concentrating his fire on just one spot this time he reported: ‘I hardly finished the drum before I saw the
part fired at glow. In a few seconds the whole rear part was blazing.’ A newspaper reporter watching the action in the sky described the scene that followed. …the blazing airship swung round for an instant, broadside on, as though unmanageable; then the burning end dipped, the flames ran up the whole structure as her petrol tanks one after another caught fire. In another second or two the Zeppelin, now perpendicular, was falling headlong to earth from a height not much short of a couple of miles, a mass of roaring flame… With ever-increasing momentum she sped down, until at last she struck the earth with a crash that could be heard for miles. A dull red glow brightened the heavens for a few seconds, and a distant mass of still burning wreckage was all that was left. The doomed airship fell to earth in a field at the village of Cuffley, near Potters Bar, in Hertfordshire. Hauptmann Wilhelm Schramm and his 15-man crew perished in the flames.
ROBINSON VC
The final moments of SL 11 - a flaring, roaring inferno - illuminated the countryside up to thirty miles away. Those watching observed the final
'Londoners no longer felt defenceless'
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‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War OVERLEAF: The outpouring of joy and relief felt by the population of Britain after the destruction of SL 11, following the unchecked Zeppelin menace that had existed since January 1915, is captured in this celebratory postcard. BELOW & OVERLEAF BELOW: The distintive metal framework of L.33, the most major difference between this and Schütte-Lanz designs.
down over mainland Britain - and elevated Lt. Robinson to celebrity status. The government reacted quickly too, with the King awarding Robinson the Victoria Cross at Windsor Castle just five days later. And the souvenir industry, recognising a marketing opportunity, produced numerous lurid postcards illustrating Robinson’s deed, while the Red Cross sold off much of the wire salvaged from the wreck as souvenirs to raise funds.
harrowing spectacle in silence, but as the flames engulfed the stricken airship, the mood changed. People began to dance and cheer and sing in celebration, while the sound of bells, hooters and the screech of train whistles joined this triumphant tumult. At a stroke Londoners no longer felt defenceless in the face of the Zeppelin menace that had haunted them for the last fifteen months. One newspaper described it as ‘the greatest free show that London has ever enjoyed’. When the elated Robinson finally arrived back at Suttons Farm, he had been in the air for three hours and thirty-seven minutes and his petrol tank was almost dry. He also discovered that the intense
LEFT: The downing of an airship soon became a public spectacle. BELOW: An example of a SL 11 wire souvenir, attached to a brooch, sold by the Red Cross.
heat of the burning airship had scorched his jacket, and in his excitement he had managed to shoot away part of the centre section of the upper wing and the rear main spar of his own aircraft. He was fortunate to get back in one piece. In a year that so far had brought nothing but bad news from the war, including the seemingly endless casualty lists from the Battle of the Somme, here at last was something positive to report. The newspapers filled their columns with stories of the destruction of SL 11 - the first airship shot www.britainatwar.com 91
‘A DULL RED GLOW…’
Fighting back in the Zeppelin War RIGHT: The monument erected at Cuffley in 1921 honouring Leefe Robinson VC, paid for by Daily Express readers. The crash site is now buried below a housing estate but the memorial is about 100yrds from where SL 11 landed. FAR RIGHT: The grave of Leefe Robinson, VC, in All Saints Church cemetery in Harrow Weald. Having become POW in April 1917, he remained captive until the end of the war. Returned to Britain in mid-December 1918 he, much weakened by his experiences, fell victim to influenza and died on 31 December 1918. BELOW: Initially buried in Potters Bar, in 1966 the remains of SL 11's crew were reinterred in a mass grave at the German Military Cemetery at Cannock Chase, Staffordshire.
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A CASUALTY OF WAR
Recognising his value to public morale, the authorities promoted Robinson to Captain, but withdrew him from operational flying, to begin an endless round of public appearances. Keen to return to active service, Robinson finally got his way and arrived on the Western Front in March 1917 where, less than three weeks later, his aircraft came down behind enemy lines following a bloody encounter with Manfred von Richthofen’s squadron. Captured, he spent the rest of the war in various prison camps from which he made a number of ultimately unsuccessful escape attempts. During this time, his health suffered badly. With the war at an end, William Leefe Robinson arrived back in Britain in the middle of December 1918 but, severely weakened by his experiences, he quickly succumbed to the influenza pandemic that swept the planet and died shortly afterwards, on New Year’s Eve 1918. After Robinson’s success in the early hours of Sunday 3 September 1916, the air war over Britain changed dramatically. Robinson’s victory saw the first destruction of a German airship over mainland Britain since the war began. But in the next four weeks the new bullets added two Zeppelins
to the bag while a third fell victim to anti-aircraft fire. Then, in November, the bullets claimed two more Zeppelins off the British coast. Although the German navy continued to wage the Zeppelin war sporadically until August 1918, the German army turned away from airships, putting its faith in bomber aircraft to take the air war to Britain. But it was that first victory by a lone airman in the dark skies above Hertfordshire in the early hours of a September morning 100 years ago that ultimately marked the beginning of the end of the Zeppelin menace.
SPECIAL
saluting the world’s
most powerful warbird Since October 2007, enthusiasts across the United Kingdom have basked in the raw power and agility of Avro Vulcan XH558 - but all knew that its time back in the air was limited. Since then millions have thrilled at the sight and the sound of the incredible mighty delta and rallied to the call to help keep it flying. This year is XH558’s swansong, as it is finally retired and begins a new life as the focus of a heritage and educational centre. As a tribute to the most challenging and complex returnto-flight project ever, FlyPast magazine presents a unique 84-page souvenir devoted to a much-loved icon: Vulcan XH558. Created with the assistance of the Vulcan to the Sky Trust, the story of the world’s only civilian operated V-Bomber is revealed. FEATURES INCLUDE:
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THE DAY SUSSEX DIED Royal Sussex Regiment
The Day Su The scale of losses at the Battle of The Somme in July 1916 eclipsed anything that had gone before, and those experienced by the Royal Sussex Regiment on the very eve of that battle paled into comparative insignificance, although those losses had a profound impact on communities the length and breadth of their home county as Paul Reed records. 94 www.britainatwar.com
I
N 1914 Sussex was a largely rural county with few large towns, dominated by Chichester in the west, Brighton in the centre and Hastings to the east. Other towns like Eastbourne and Worthing had grown in popularity as seaside resorts during the Edwardian period, but most of Sussex was a mix of villages and hamlets where life had barely changed in centuries, the rural landscape dominated by the
rolling chalk uplands of the South Downs. The advent of war in August 1914 had already seen many Territorial units making camp at locations across the South Downs, but, with mobilisation, the Depot of the Royal Sussex Regiment at Chichester was swamped with men returning to the regular army from the Reserve. Of the two regular battalions, one was in India and the other at Woking already making preparations to
THE DAY SUSSEX DIED Royal Sussex Regiment
ussex Die depart overseas with the British Expeditionary Force. The three Territorial battalions were also mobilised but were under strength and unlikely to be used beyond home shores. The much lauded phrase of 1914 was that the war would be ‘over by Christmas’ but Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, did not subscribe to this popular view. He knew that in any protracted conflict the regulars and territorials would
dwindle and need to be supplemented by volunteers. So, in August 1914, he called for 100,000 men to join ‘Kitchener’s Army’ as it was soon dubbed. In Sussex, a 7th or ‘Service’ Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment was raised at Chichester on 12 August 1914. Using old soldiers from the Depot, new recruits were encouraged to enlist. The regiment was in for a bit of a surprise: ‘... the scene for the following fortnight almost baffles description.
A depot filled beyond capacity with recruits and more arriving every few hours... all joyfully expecting to be immediately issued with a rifle and bayonet and sent to France.’ The 7th Battalion was quickly raised, an 8th following. The majority of men who joined were from the west or central parts of Sussex and unlike other parts of Britain, where local or ‘Pals’ battalions had been formed, there was nothing like this in Sussex representing the whole county.
ABOVE: Bath Parade at Cooden Camp: still in civilian clothing, the volunteers of the 11th Battalion among the tents of the early camp at Cooden.
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THE DAY SUSSEX DIED Royal Sussex Regiment
ABOVE: Eastbourne men at Cooden Camp: taken soon after enlistment, this shows men from the Eastbourne company in typical civilian dress worn by those who joined in September 1914. RIGHT: Now in uniform, these men of the Southdowns battalions have been issued with 1914 Pattern Leather equipment which the battalions took to France in 1916.
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THE DAY SUSSEX DIED Royal Sussex Regiment
One man who strove to change this was Lt Col Claude Lowther MP. Lowther was the MP for Westmoreland and Cumberland but lived in Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex. Having fought with the Mounted Infantry during the Boer War, and recommended for a VC, his initial idea was to form a mounted unit of Sussex men, but cavalry was not required by the War Office who wanted infantry. So, in September 1914, he sent out a call across Sussex: Men of Sussex: You will not be separated! Together you will train! Together you will fight! Together you will die if needs be, But Together, pray God, you may return!
LOWTHER’S LAMBS
In the space of 56 hours, starting on 7 September, Lowther brought together 1,100 men to join what was initially the 9th Bn Royal Sussex Regiment, soon to become the 11th Bn, which he called the ‘South Down Battalion’. As the unit grew it became known as simply ‘The Southdowns’. The press quickly dubbed them ‘Lowther’s Lambs’ and interest in joining among the men of Sussex went beyond a
single battalion. Thus, in October, the 12th was raised, and in November the 13th Bn, with a Reserve Battalion in 1915. With so many men in uniform the problems of housing, clothing and equipping them, then feeding and paying them quickly became apparent. Essentially, Lowther had raised a private army and it would take a mammoth effort to prepare it for war. At first, men were billeted with the people of Bexhill and Hastings but this quickly became impossible with the numbers enlisting and a special camp was constructed at Cooden. Tents were first available, then huge wooden huts were built, nearby buildings requisitioned and even a swimming pool constructed. Like most volunteer units, the Southdowns’ had little to do initially except drill and parade. The three battalions were formalised into the 11th, 12th and 13th (South Down) Battalions Royal Sussex Regiment, keeping recruits together in specific companies; men from Eastbourne served together, lads from Worthing were not split up and even those from specific villages serving alongside each other. By the summer of 1915 Lowther needed to hand over the battalions to the
War Office. Very young and very old soldiers were discharged, new commanders appointed and the battalions moved out of their own county to Detling, Kent, followed by a move to Aldershot for more structured training and then to Witley Camp, near Guildford - a huge wooden hutted site like Cooden, but with more of a military feel to it. Marcus Banfield of the 13th Battalion preferred it to Kent: ‘Witley Camp is situated in a beautiful spot... The huts are of wood, are fairly water-tight and quite comfortable. For the first time we have a separate mess room, which is rather nice.’ It was clear that final preparations for active service were in hand. Training moved up another pace. While they had to endure another winter in uniform, but still not on active service, by early 1916 the last elements of ‘Kitchener’s Army’ were being sent to France for the big offensive later that year. Ron Short of 11th Bn remembered the news finally arriving one March morning: ‘Col Grisewood called the men on parade and told us we were going to France. Everyone cheered. This was it; we were finally at war!’
TOP LEFT: Recruits at Cooden still in civilian dress before the issue of uniforms. ABOVE LEFT: Gales struck the huts used by the Southdowns during the winter of 1914/15 causing much damage. TOP RIGHT: A much photographed tent at Cooden. This image is signed by the occupants and from this we know only two of these faces survived the war.
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THE DAY SUSSEX DIED Royal Sussex Regiment
TOP & ABOVE: Christmas dinner at Cooden: the range of soldiers, old and new, are visible here as the NCO wears the medals of one the Victorian ‘small wars’. MIDDLE: Digging the Thames defences near Detling.
THE MOVE TO FRANCE
On a series of cold March mornings in 1916, troop ships carrying men of the South Downs battalions docked at Le Havre. Following disembarkation, they moved by train to Rouen and from here to the town of Estaires, Northern France. Only a few miles from the front line, it demonstrated the first visible signs of war to the men in the three battalions: buildings damaged by shell fire, and war graves in wayside cemeteries. Attached to regular army units in the 8th Division, who had been in this sector since November
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1914, they took over trenches in the Fleurbaix sector. The ground was flat and boggy, the trenches a mixture of breastworks built up above ground and trench works dug into the damp soil. Here, they lost their first man on 12 March 1916; Pte David Thomas Dunk from Bexhill on Sea. An original South Down man, he was shot by sniper while serving with the 11th Bn. A move to the Givenchy sector saw the men’s first experience of going out into No Man’s Land as they worked on their front line positions patrolling the ground between the trenches close
to an area speckled with mine craters called ‘The Duck’s Bill’. In late May 1916 they moved to the Cuinchy sector, just south of the La Bassée Canal. Cuichy was dominated by a huge brick works and towers of undelivered bricks were piled up in around the village, becoming part of the local defences on both sides. Towering above the battlefield, the Brickstacks, as the flat piece of land between Bethune and La Bassee came to be known, saw numerous minor actions and by 1916, evenly distributed on both sides of the British and German trenches, the bricks
THE DAY SUSSEX DIED Royal Sussex Regiment
were being tunnelled into, dugouts established and sniper and machine gun posts set in the summit of each pile. Neither side could move in the open without being seen, or without loss. Consequently, fighting went underground and both sides tunnelled beneath the battlefield regularly blowing huge charges of explosive. The 11th Bn had a taste of this at 08.45 on 4 June when a mine exploded 25 yds from their front line. Pte Albert Turner of Rotherfield recalled: ‘... I shall never forget it. The trench trembled like jelly and then up she
went like one immense black cloud. Tons of earth and stones were thrown into the air and came down on top of us. We were all buried, and there were groans and cries all round. Dick Mitchell and myself were in the same bay and buried up to our armpits, but managed after a long struggle to get out. One poor little chap in the next bay had his neck broken by falling earth, and numbers of others had to be dug out.’ Several hours later, British tunnellers exploded their own charge under German lines north of the La Bassée
Canal. And so this strange form of warfare continued.
PREPARATIONS FOR RICHEBOURG
Into the second half of June 1916 there were many rumours of a large offensive about to take place on the Somme. Speculation arose as to whether the Southdowns would take part, until final orders arrived showing that they would play a role, but in one of several diversionary attacks to take place on the eve of the great offensive.
TOP LEFT: As the summer of 1915 approached, most men of the Southdowns were in khaki Service Dres. ABOVE: A patriotic postcard which almost every man in the Southdowns purchased during the winter of 1914/15.
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THE DAY SUSSEX DIED Royal Sussex Regiment
But there was no change in plan. Instead, Grisewood was sacked and sent home and the 11th Bn relegated to a support role. Preparations began at once, the Southdowns taken to a training area near Bethune to prepare before a return to the trenches for the attack.
THE DAY SUSSEX DIED
ABOVE: An unknown soldier of the Southdowns battalions 1917, quite possibly a survivor of 30 June 1916. TOP MIDDLE: German issue Prisoner of War Card filled in by a Southdown soldier captured at Richebourg.
BELOW: Witley Camp: the Southdowns moved to here from Aldershot, into a large semipermanent hutted camp.
The idea was to confuse the Germans as to where the real battlefront was, the Southdowns assault to be on German positions at Richebourg L’Avoue, Pas de Calais, known by the British as ‘The Boar’s Head’. In fact, the 2nd and 1/5th (Cinque Ports) Bns, Royal Sussex Regiment, suffered heavy losses here in the Battle of Aubers Ridge on 9 May 1915. Exactly the same ground where the new attack would take place. Orders for the attack around the Boar’s Head caused surprise and concern among the Southdowns’ officers. It was now 23 June 1916 and the operation was planned for the 30th; less than a week to prepare and train and hardly time to make ready for such a large enterprise, especially since the men had never been in action before. Opposition was resigned, but one who would not keep quiet was Lt Col Harman Joseph Grisewood, CO of 11th Bn. His objections were simple; lack of planning, training and knowledge of the ground would result in a massacre. Southdowns veteran Bob Short remembered the rumour going round that Grisewood told the Brigadier: ‘I’m not sacrificing my battalion as gun-fodder’.
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At 02.50 on 30 June, the scheduled bombardment began and shells dropped on German positions around Boar’s Head. Zero Hour was at 03.05, the 13th Bn attacking on the left and 12th on the right, with ‘D’ Coy of the 11th in support; assault battalions to take the positions either side of Boar’s Head, straighten the line a little, and hopefully draw German attention away from the Somme. But as the men left their trenches the leading waves came under terrific machine-gun and rifle fire. Pte Jim Smith of the 13th Bn recalled, ‘…talk about Dante’s ‘Inferno’, it was never in it with our affair.’ In the darkness, men in the first waves were raked by fire but the Germans were firing blind and very soon the first Southdowns had reached the enemy front line. In most cases, the wire had been cut or damaged enough to allow access. Certainly, the 12th Bn got into the front line fairly quickly and it was here the real battle began. The Germans reacted, trying to evict the Southdowns who had made it into their trenches. Officer casualties were already very high, and it was left to men like Coy Sgt Major Nelson Victor Carter to step in. Carter was CSM to ‘A’ Coy, 12th Bn, but had arrived with the fourth wave of the attack. Armed only with a pistol he took on and silenced a German machine-gun team, leading the assault down some of the communication trenches. As the morning wore on it was clear that holding on indefinitely was going to be impossible. The objectives were out of reach.
No Man’s Land was now being swept with German shell fire and many wounded men were caught in the barrage and killed. The 11th Bn men suffered as they attempted to move across. One of the few officers left in the German trenches was Captain H T K Robinson who decided withdrawal was the only option. He made sure all the wounded were carried out, and one of those who helped was CSM Carter, a regular soldier from Hailsham. Robinson recalled: ‘I next saw him about an hour later. I had been wounded and was lying in our trench... [Carter] repeatedly went over the parapet - I saw him going over alone - and carried in our wounded men from No Man’s Land. He brought them in on his back, and he could not have done this had he not possessed exceptional physical strength as well as courage… it was going over for the sixth or seventh time that he was shot through the chest. I saw him fall just outside the trench; somebody told me that he got back just inside our trench, but I do not know for certain.’ One veteran told a similar story, stating that Carter had gone out once more to rescue a friend from Eastbourne who was calling out for help. Carrying him across his broad shoulders, Carter fell as a German sniper caught him on the parapet. His body was dragged in, and buried just behind the lines that evening. He was later awarded a posthumous VC. By now it was late morning and the German bombardment was easing off, but in the space of a few hours the men of the Southdowns battalions lay dead, dying or wounded in their hundreds. It was a disaster. As the battalion roll calls were made, the full horror became apparent. In the 12th, few remained to take the call. The CO had been wounded in the attack, and all his company commanders casualties, with six officers dead, seven wounded and three POW. Losses among other ranks were fearful; 136 men killed in action
THE DAY SUSSEX DIED Royal Sussex Regiment
or died of wounds. The 13th fared little better, Lt Col Draffen reporting ‘... our losses were heavy’. Contemporary sources showing nine officers killed and nine wounded. Among the men, 169 were killed or died of wounds. ‘D’ Company of the 11th also suffered badly. It’s commander, Captain Eric Cassels, was wounded, along with two fellow officers. Two Subalterns of ‘D’ Coy had died. Among them, 2nd Lt Francis Grisewood, Colonel Grisewood’s younger brother, in what was a bitter validation of the Colonel’s anxiety. Total casualties were
15 officers and 364 other ranks dead and 21 officers and 728 other ranks wounded; nearly 1,100 Southdowners.
SAD TESTIMONY
These figures belie the full human tragedy of Richebourg. In 1919, the HMSO published Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-19, volume 40 covering the Royal Sussex Regiment. This source shows where each casualty was born and enlisted and an analysis of the effect of the casualties at Richebourg on the county of Sussex can be made. Of the other ranks killed in action on
30 June 1916, Soldiers Died shows that 70% were born in Sussex, the majority of the others residents of Sussex. It is also possible to ascertain that 77 towns, villages and parishes were affected by fatalities; the greatest number from Brighton and Eastbourne. The latter is not surprising, considering there were several companies of Eastbourne men in the 12th Bn. As the source does not confirm where men were living, the figure may be nearer 100 communities affected by the dead alone. With over 700 wounded, there were few places in Sussex unaffected.
TOP RIGHT: In the huts at Cooden. It seemed the Southdowns would always be based in Sussex, but having been taken over by the War Office a move was imminent. ABOVE: Entrench at Cooden: civilian dress has been replaced by Kitchener’s Blues as these men of the 11th Battalion practice trench digging.
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THE DAY SUSSEX DIED Royal Sussex Regiment
ABOVE: Officers of the 11th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment in France 1916. TOP RIGHT: Memorial to Lt-Col H.T.K. Robinson DSO who recommended Nelson Victor Carter for the Victoria Cross. BELOW: ‘A’ Company, 12th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment (2nd Southdowns) at Witley 1916. Nelson Victor Carter VC is seated in the front row.
Among the dead were dozens of tragic stories. Corporal Percy Parsons of the 13th Battalion who had dodged the sick parade to ensure his part in the attack had died on the German wire. Lance Corporal Frederick Chandler of the 12th Battalion had written to his parents in Eastbourne claiming he would ‘... get one in for Fritz’ to avenge his brother Stewart who had died at sea in 1915. Chandler was killed in the early stages of the attack. Private Harry Mercer had enlisted in the 11th Battalion at Hastings aged only sixteen; he died after a year and a half in uniform. Private James Honeyset of the 13th Battalion was killed at Richebourg. Aged 36, he was a veteran of the Boer War; his brother killed alongside him. Elsewhere, five other pairs of brothers
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lay dead on the battlefield. The Blaker family of Worthing, the Burton family, the Bottings of Balcombe, the Bristows of Wiston and the Sumners of Crawley all had double bereavements. The Jackson family from Amberley joined them when, on 3 July, both sons died of wounds within hours of each other. Worse, the Pannell family from Worthing had three sons in the 12th Bn and one in the 13th; William and Charles died with the 12th, Alfred with the 13th and the fourth son POW. After the war, none of their graves could be found, their names listed together on the Loos Memorial; a sad testimony to one family’s supreme sacrifice. For Sussex, this was one day in a long war. For the Southdowns, nearly
two years of fighting lay ahead but the events of the next day, 1 July 1916, and terrible casualties on the Somme, dwarfed events at Richebourg to such an extent that by the 1980s it was a story few had heard of. Except, of course, the veterans. Despite all the later actions the Southdowns battalions took part in, Richebourg dominated in terms of human tragedy and the sheer horror of modern war. The veterans never forgot Richebourg, even though they might try. Many years later one of them, Albert Banfield, regularly wrote to me on 30 June each year ‘in memory of the comrades I lost’. He once concluded: ‘It was a terrible waste of all those fine men. In many ways it was the Day Sussex Died.’
NORMAN CONQUEST 950TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL A
SPECIAL
The Battle of Hastings and the subsequent Norman Conquest was arguably the most significant event not just in English history, but that of the world. The unified nation that eventually emerged from the Conquest grew in strength and self-belief as it too conquered other territories and peoples, ultimately creating the largest empire ever seen. This 100-page special examines why the Normans invaded in 1066, how they defeated the Saxons at Hastings and then completed their Conquest of the country. This fascinating story is brought to life in a rich assortment of unique illustrations.
FEATURES INCLUDE: The Men from the North
The Viking invasions of Britain and Western Europe.
Swords Around the Throne
The reign of Edward the Confessor and the rival factions for the English throne.
First Blood
The Vikings land in the north of England, only to be crushed by England’s new King Harold at Stamford Bridge.
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William of Normandy arrives near Hastings, Harold rushes to meet the invaders. In a prolonged and
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desperate battle, Harold is killed and the Saxons routed.
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William stamps out all opposition, wiping out large parts of the rebellious north of England, until the whole country is finally conquered.
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GALTIERI: MY PART IN HIS DOWNFALL! Falkands Harrier Pilot
GALTIERI W
HEN ARGENTINA invaded the Falklands in 1982, the RN’s Sea Harrier force was still building up to full strength. Some RN pilots had flown RAF Harriers, and a couple of RAF Harrier pilots were posted to RN exchange posts. David Morgan was one of the exchange pilots, but an unusual one in that he had begun his flying career as an RN officer
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before transferring to the RAF. After his exchange tour, he transferred back to the dark blue. In addition to the established Sea Harrier exchange officers, more RAF Harrier pilots undertook a rapid conversion, so that the war was fought by 29 RN and 7 RAF Sea Harrier pilots. Sea Harriers accounted for 21 Argentine aircraft without sustaining any air combat losses.
GALTIERI: MY PART IN HIS DOWNFALL!
Falkands Harrier Pilot
MAIN PICTURE: RAF Harrier GR3s about to launch from HMS Hermes with a mix of RAF and RN Harriers parked and waiting the next operation. BOTTOM RIGHT: Dave Morgan earned a DSC during the Falklands conflict and was the highest scoring pilot of operations in the South Atlantic and finished his career as a Lt Cdr.
MY PART IN HIS DOWNFALL! The only front line combat air-assets possessed by the South Atlantic Task Force during the 1982 conflict were the Harrier aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force. One of the first Harrier pilots into action was David Morgan who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his part in the conflict. Here, he shares one of the dramatic highlights of his short but outstanding war.
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GALTIERI: MY PART IN HIS DOWNFALL! Falkands Harrier Pilot
position and a further one seen from a position crouching down behind the gunsight camera, where I suspected I might be during the final stages of the attack.
SLAMMED THE THROTTLE OPEN
TOP LEFT: Conditions in the South Atlantic were often atrocious, as this image of a wind and spray-swept deck of HMS Hermes with parked Sea Harriers, Harrier GR3s and Sea Kings illustrates. TOP RIGHT: A Sea Harrier and Harrier GR3 over-fly HMS Hermes.
ASSAULT ON STANLEY AIRFIELD
In April 1982, I was just one third of the way through my Sea Harrier conversion course as an RAF exchange pilot at RNAS Yeovilton. I was no stranger to Vertical/Short Take-Off and Landing flying, having just spent three years serving as a Harrier pilot on 3 (F) Squadron in Germany but very much a new boy when it came to air defence. It was all a bit of a surprise, then, to find myself on the deck of HMS Hermes as dawn broke on 1 May, about to carry out my first operational mission against the Argentine enemy. As I settled into the cockpit, I mentally ran through my part in the plan. It was essential that everyone carried out his individual role as perfectly as possible to preserve the integrity of the attack. I was partly responsible for planning the first assault on Stanley airfield and was aware that the odds were very much against us all returning safely. I double-checked all the weapons and head-up display aiming data, adding two marks on the sight glass just in case I suffered a display failure. These marks both coincided with the weapon aiming point; one seen from my normal sitting
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At 1040Z (0640 local time) the order came booming over the flight deck broadcast system: ‘Stand clear of jet pipes and intakes. Start the Sea Harriers’. After a few minutes the flashing anti-collision lights showed that all twelve fighters were ready to go. There was time for a quick glance at the en route map before Hermes turned into the prevailing westerly wind and the chocks and chain lashings were removed leaving the aircraft ready for take-off. I inserted the ship’s heading into the nav kit, re-checked: flaps down, armament master switch live, nozzle stop set at 35 degrees, trim 3 degrees nose down and ejection seat live. Exactly on time, the flight deck officer dropped his green flag to launch Lieutenant Commander Andy Auld, ahead of me. My machine was buffeted violently by Andy’s jet efflux and as the grey bulk of his aeroplane threw itself off the end of the ski-jump. I taxied forward to the take-off point and slammed the throttle open. Within two seconds the jet was accelerating at a terrific rate towards the ramp, driven by the ten tons of engine thrust. As the end of the deck disappeared below me, I rotated the nozzles and leapt into the air some 70 knots below conventional stalling speed, accelerating rapidly to forward flight.
LIKE A FIREWORK DISPLAY
The initial transit towards the islands went without incident and we soon settled down into a flexible transit formation, with everyone scouring the rapidly lightening sky for enemy aircraft. After 12 minutes, we made our planned landfall at Macbride Head, the most north-easterly point of East Falkland. My first impression was of its similarity to the Scottish coast, which made it quite difficult to believe that we were not on one of our more familiar routine exercises, rather than bent upon a real errand of destruction. By the time we reached Berkeley Sound, with only 90 seconds to run to the airfield, we had split into three sections. Four aircraft were pulling up off Volunteer Point to toss 1,000lb bombs onto the anti-aircraft defences from three miles out and three others were setting themselves up to approach from the north-west whilst Andy Auld and myself headed for the east side of the pair of 900-foot high mountains to the north of Stanley. As I rounded the face of Mount Low, tucked behind and slightly to the left of my leader, the target came into view. The airfield and the entire peninsular on which it was built seemed to be alive with explosions. Anti-aircraft shells carpeted the sky over the runway up to a height of 1,000 feet and missiles, fired from the airfield and outside the town, streaked across my path, chasing the previous attackers out to the south-east. Tracer fire criss-crossed the sky and as I watched, a number of guns turned in my direction. The tracer curved lazily down, rather like a firework display
GALTIERI: MY PART IN HIS DOWNFALL!
Falkands Harrier Pilot
and not initially conveying much feeling of imminent danger. As it got closer, however, it suddenly seemed to accelerate and began whipping past my ears, bouncing off the grey sea all around me.
LOLLING AT DRUNKEN ANGLES
I hauled the aeroplane hard left and then right, to pass between the Tussock Islands and Kelly Rocks, themselves only 30ft high, and pressed on towards the airfield below the level of the sand dunes, accelerating to 480 knots. Inspection of the gunsight film later in the day, showed that we were flying at a height of somewhere between 5 to 15ft as we approached the target. I became aware that a number
of Argentine soldiers were firing down at me from the sand dunes, their bullets kicking up the water all around me. I dropped the trigger on the front of the stick and squeezed it hard but the guns would not fire. I thought that they must have jammed but realised later that in the heat of the moment I had failed to select the gun master switches on. As I crossed over the beach, I yanked back on the stick and levelled at 150ft, the minimum height required for my cluster bombs to fuse properly. I instantly took in the damage caused by the rest of the formation, the airport buildings were billowing smoke and a number of aircraft on the ground were lolling at drunken angles, obviously badly damaged. The fuel dump to my right was a storm of orange flame, under a gathering pall of oily black smoke and huge lumps of debris were
still falling from the sky from the explosions of the 1,000lb bombs. One aircraft, which seemed undamaged, was a small Britten-Norman Islander transport. I quickly lined up my bombsight, raised the safety catch and despatched my three cluster bombs.
DAMAGE TO THE TAIL
Suddenly there was a huge explosion and my aircraft started vibrating like mad. It was impossible to read any of the cockpit instruments but the aircraft still seemed to be flying, so as soon as the last bomb had cleared the wing pylon, I dived my machine for the smoke beside the control tower. I still have a very clear recollection of passing below the level of the tower windows as I entered the cloud of thick black smoke. (When I returned to the airfield after the war was over, I discovered that the tower windows were only about 15ft above the ground.) I waited a short pause inside the smoke, then pulled the aircraft into a hard turn to the east.
TOP LEFT: Sea Harrier armed with 1,000lb bombs ready for ground attack operations. BELOW: Sea Harrier ready to launch from HMS Hermes.
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GALTIERI: MY PART IN HIS DOWNFALL! Falkands Harrier Pilot
checked in. I believed that we would probably lose two or three aircraft on this raid because of the intensity of the ground defences. I was hugely elated, therefore, when everyone came up on the radio. Once safely clear of land, I slowed down and climbed gently up to 10,000ft. As I reduced speed, the vibration began to reduce to acceptable levels and I was able to check out the aircraft systems. I was amazed to find that everything appeared to be working correctly except the rudder trim gauge. This in itself was of no consequence to the operation of the aeroplane but gave me the first indication that damage had been done to the tail of the aircraft.
CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE TOP LEFT: Harriers operating from Stanley airfield after the fighting with wrecked Pucaras in the background. BELOW: Dave Morgan’s cockpit ‘selfie’, at low-level and with his Number 2 tucked in close behind.
As I punched out of the smoke, I was locked up by a radar-laid antiaircraft gun. I racked the aircraft into a break to the left through 90 degrees and flicked out the airbrake to release a bundle of chaff into the airflow. Despite the Heath Robinson design, the chaff did its job; the radar lost lock and I was able to haul the vibrating aircraft back onto an easterly heading and run out to sea and safety. As we cleared the target area, we changed radio frequency and
READER OFFER! 108 www.britainatwar.com
Once back in the overhead of Hermes, Flight Lieutenant Ted Ball came up alongside me to inspect the damage and after a few seconds said: ‘Ah yes... you have got a bloody great hole in the tail’. The control surfaces appeared to be working correctly but there was a distinct possibility that the reaction controls might have taken some damage. I therefore decided to carry out a rolling vertical landing. This entails running the aircraft onto the deck with a certain amount of forward speed and is not an approved manoeuvre as there is a distinct danger of running over the side into
For a more comprehensive look at Harrier operations in the Falklands Conflict see Bob Marston’s ‘Harrier Boys’. Published by Grub Street, ISBN 978-1-909808-29-4, and with a cover price £20.00, this is bein g offered, including P&P, to Britain at War readers for £16.00. This may be ordered via www.grubstreet.co.uk, quot ing code HB15, or by calling 02079 243966 and quoting the HB15 code. (Note: The £16.00 including P&P offer appl ies only to the UK. Overseas customers will need to add £7.5 0 for shipping)
the sea. It does, however, reduce the reliance on the reaction controls and might have given me the option to overshoot and try again if the controls had jammed. After a pretty hairy but successful landing, I discovered that the hole was about six inches across and had obviously been caused by a 20-millimetre shell, which had entered the left side of the fin and exploded, causing considerable damage to the right-hand side of the fin and tailplane.
I COUNTED THEM ALL BACK
That evening Brian Hanrahan, the BBC’s reporter on the spot, sent his report of the raid with the phrase which later became famous: ‘I cannot say how many aircraft took part in the raid, but I counted them all out and I counted them all back’. We had had our baptism of fire and achieved considerable success, without loss – a good start to the conflict. Over the next six weeks I flew a further 54 operational sorties and was jointly responsible for the sinking of an Argentine spy ship and the destruction of three Argentine helicopters. My final action took place on the evening of 8 June 1982 and made me the last British pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft in air combat.
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a t i t f e L u ‘ Yo ’ ! e t a L t i B 'YOU LEFT IT A BIT LATE!'
Battle of Britain Combat Survivors
Baofttle Britain
75th ANNIVERSARY 1940-2015
BATTLE OF BRITAIN COMBAT SURVIVORS The RAF fighter pilots shot down during the Battle of Britain who lived to fight another day were able to recount remarkable tales of courage, endurance and dry humour. Andy Saunders selects and adds some detail to a few such accounts made by the men themselves. ABOVE RIGHT: Pat Wells in the cockpit of his Hurricane, GN-O, 249 Squadron. FAR RIGHT: Fg Off Pat Wells, 249 Squadron, 1940. TOP: Flt Lt ‘Butch’ Barton of 249 Squadron with ‘Wifred’, the squadron’s pet duck. TOP RIGHT: Pat Wells carried out multiple attacks on a formation of Heinkel 111s before being shot down on what was later recognised as the first day of the Blitz.
Sky Black with German s
Fg Off Pat Wells, Hurricane pilot: 249 Squadron ‘I had been up on two squadron ‘Scrambles’ during the day and we were scrambled again in the latish afternoon. I was flying Hurricane GN – O. We climbed up with Flt Lt ‘Butch’ Barton leading, because the CO, Sqn Ldr John Grandy, had been shot down and wounded a day or so previously. Eventually, we were vectored onto a mass of German aircraft – He 111s, Ju 88s, Dornier 17s, Me 110s and Me 109s. The sky was black with them. I think this was at about 20,000ft. They were flying up the Thames Estuary and obviously bound for London. We made a copy-book beam attack from the north with full deflection, however, contrary to previous practice where Me 109s were always protecting the rear of the bombers,
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this time they had them flying on either side of the bombers. They came down on us as we were attacking and there were some casualties. I was the only one who escaped and got in a decent shot at a He 111 which started streaming coolant and oil from its right engine. I broke downwards and came up again hoping to join some friends but the sky was empty except for Germans! I made a couple of passes at the formation which drew immediate retaliation from the Me 110s, so I decided to wait for my damaged He 111 to turn for home, which he did quite soon. I followed and practised a bit of air-to-air gunnery on it; frontal, quarter and beam attacks – after which his right engine was windmilling, bombs were dropped
and undercarriage down. I was manoeuvring for a final blast up its stern when three Me 109s pounced on me and very shortly thereafter I had no controls, was injured and there was a small fire burning in the well of the cockpit. Records state that during this action 249 Sqn had a lot of losses and a nil score. Well, that isn’t quite true. My He 111 was at least a ‘probable’. I decided to abandon the aircraft which must have been upside down, because as soon as I released the harness I shot out like a cork from a champagne bottle. I estimate this must have been 18,000 ft. Maybe lower. I delayed opening the parachute until about 10,000ft to get away from the Me 109s which were reported to be shooting up pilots on parachutes.
'YOU LEFT IT A BIT LATE!'
Battle of Britain Combat Survivors
‘I decided to abandon the aircraft which must have been upside down, because as soon as I released the harness I shot out like a cork from a champagne bottle.’
7 September 1940 This I do not believe was true. My flying boots shot off at the jerk of the parachute opening! It seemed to take a long time to reach the earth and I had lost a lot of blood so decided to have a little sleep and must have passed out at about 6,000ft. I landed unconscious and on waking up found some Army people standing over me. I asked the usual question: ‘Where am I?’ and got the answer ‘Dunkirk’. Now, this was a little disconcerting until somebody qualified that statement with ‘The Dunkirk near Canterbury.’ The soldiers, though, had relieved me of my rather nice gold cufflinks while I was still unconscious. I was then taken to a civilian doctor in a small nearby town who gave me a couple of tumblers of whisky before I was taken off to hospital. When I
got there I found it was the Chartham Lunatic Asylum – not by any means the first disconcerting episode of the day. Whilst I was probably mad to have waded into so many Germans, I didn’t think I was yet quite that mad. Fortunately, I discovered that part of the hospital was now an emergency casualty station. From here, I was transferred to Rumwood Court Hospital near Maidstone and after about a week there, quite incredibly, a policeman arrived with my flying boots which I have to this day. He said nobody would touch them when they landed for fear of a German booby-trap! But I never saw my cufflinks again. After treatment and a bit of leave I re-joined 249 Squadron at North Weald on 1 November 1940.’ www.britainatwar.com 111
'YOU LEFT IT A BIT LATE!'
Battle of Britain Combat Survivors
ABOVE: Plt Off ‘Bill’ Millington of 249 Squadron was also shot down on 31 August 1940. Here, he is pictured with ‘PipSqueak’, the squadron’s pet dog. (KRISTEN
ALEXANDER)
TOP RIGHT: Plt Off Pyers Worrall, 85 Squadron 1940. ABOVE LEFT: The adjuster from the rudder bar of Pyers Worrall’s Hurricane. TOP MIDDLE: Sqn Ldr Peter Townsend was also shot down on 31 August joined Worrall and Millington in a Croydon hospital ward. ABOVE MIDDLE: Worrall, Townsend and Millington, were all taken to the nearby Royal Oak, Hawkhurst, for a drinking session after being shot down. They are reputed to have left there in a somewhat inebriated state!
Rudder Bar Shot Away
Plt Off Pyers Worrall, Hurricane pilot: 85 Sqn. ‘At 12.50 hrs I took off from as No 3 in Green section. As I took off, the aerodrome was being bombed and I lost the squadron owing to heavy oiling on the windscreen. I climbed after bombers at 25,000 ft SE of Tunbridge Wells. I circled above the last and highest Me 110 which had a roundel round the cross about the same size as a British one. I attacked once from the rear and above at 30 degrees from perpendicular and then from 50–100 yards dead astern with a six second burst. As I broke away the enemy aircraft wheeled down over to the left apparently out of control. I could not see the damage due to oiled up windscreen and goggles. As I broke away a cannon shell blew away the rudder bar and elevator controls and I prepared to abandon the aircraft which was climbing semi-stalled and out of control when a second attack of eight seconds was made on me. A cannon shell exploding behind the seat did not get through the armour plate. On landing, Private Jones J, 190 Field
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Ambulance, stated that he saw a twin engine aircraft in front of my machine go down to the left in smoke, and lost sight of it low down.’ The report is an immediate and factual rendering of his story that day, although his mother later wrote to his sister, Mary, outlining rather more detail: ‘I am writing this before breakfast for speed. We all came to the conclusion that you were saying your prayers very hard last Saturday between 10.30 and 12.30, as I was, during a raid over London. Pyers had just been talking to Bill who had taken a platoon of his Welsh Guards over to see Pyers’ squadron of Hurricanes at Croydon when the bombs began to fall around the Hurricanes. As Pyers went into the air his oil gauge broke and he and his goggles, mirror and windscreen were covered and drenched in oil. However, he had to go on and picking out his Hun at a great height he thinks he got his second ‘plane down but not being able to see behind through his mirror a
Hun got him and shot away back of his ‘plane and all the controls. In spite of being shot at by the Huns on the way down he made a wonderful descent from 25,000 ft which took about a quarter of an hour. So cool was he that he studied his map on the way down and found he was near Ashburnham and would you believe it but he landed where Claude was doing a tactical exercise. Claude took him to the Dressing Station as he has got some bits of shrapnel in the back of his leg. He then heard that his squadron CO was down a few miles away and they both went back to Croydon together. They are now at the General Hospital there, and Pyers is getting on very well and will soon be out. He has such a nice Squadron Leader who is in the bed next to him. He, poor fellow, has lost his toe.’ That ‘Squadron Leader’ was, in fact, Peter Townsend and he, Pyers and an Australian pilot named Plt Off ‘Bill’ Millington met up in The Royal Oak, Hawkhurst, after being shot down
'YOU LEFT IT A BIT LATE!'
Battle of Britain Combat Survivors ‘I had done a lot of patrols, but didn’t see any German aircraft close up until mid-August and I was fairly frightened when it finally happened. I felt a nasty chill when I saw that black cross on the aircraft and thought: “My God! It’s going round the back of me.” I wasn’t going to let it get on my tail. I worked hard to make sure it didn’t, doing a high speed stall and getting around to follow it. Luckily, I had a height and sun advantage. I chased it, fired at it and thought I got it. It was smoking, went on its back and went down through the cloud. But looking back I’m sure that, as a nineteen year old newcomer, I was firing at it from too far away to have finished it off. I was shaking as I flew back to base. I kept seeing odd aircraft through cloud cover and kept wondering: “Is it German, or is it one of ours?” I had shot my bolt, both physically and mentally, and my main purpose was to get home as fast as I could. I wasn’t looking to do any more fighting that day. When I landed, I didn’t say very much. I didn’t say much for a full half hour. I was overawed.’ If Plt Off Tim Elkington was overawed by what had happened, then nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to experience the very next day:
31 August 1940 in the neighbourhood that day. More than slightly inebriated, Townsend was delivered to the local Cottage Hospital where the resident surgeon considered he would likely not need much anaesthetic given the quantity of alcohol he had consumed! Later, he wrote of Pyers Worrall: ‘During that fight, I was hit head-on and had to bale-out. As I floated down I saw a Hurricane plummeting earthwards; it was Pyers’ aircraft from which, thankfully, despite being wounded he had jumped with his parachute. Tall, well-built and with a sense of humour he was an excellent and brave pilot. I admired especially pilots like him who had little experience on Hurricanes, and even less in Battle. But they never hesitated to join the fray. We later had a long and rather painful ride in a lorry back to Croydon where, with ‘Bill’ Millington, we spent a couple of weeks in the same ward. I shall always feel grateful, as we lay there, for Pyers’ company and high spirits. He was a great chap.’
‘I was top weaver. That was a very exposed position, going back and forth over the top of the squadron, looking everywhere for enemy aircraft. Suddenly, I looked down and the squadron was gone! I was just sitting up there all alone, wondering what the heck to do. Then I saw a 109 going out over Portsmouth, so I went after it.
Shot Down as Mother watched
ABOVE: Plt Off ‘Tim’ Elkington who was shot down on 16 August. BELOW: ‘Tim’ Elkington pictured in 2014.
Plt Off Tim Elkington, Hurricane pilot: 1 Squadron – 16 August 1940
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Battle of Britain Combat Survivors
RIGHT: The burnt control column recovered from the wreck of Plt Off Elkington’s Hurricane in 1976. Unfortunately, the control column top was stolen from Tangmere Military Aviation Museum in the 1980s where it was on loan. FAR RIGHT: Plt Off Elkington became the 22nd victim of Luftwaffe ‘ace’ Major Helmut Wick, seen here with the tally of victories on the rudder of his Me 109. BELOW: The Hurricane flown by Plt Off Elkington when he was shot down on 16 August 1940. It carried the cartoon character ‘The Jeep’ on its cowling – painted there just the day before being shot down.
Previously, I’d been jinking all over the place, waltzing all over the sky, making sure that nothing was sitting on my tail. But I straightened out to go after that 109 and that was my fatal mistake. Something hit my aircraft, and suddenly it was on fire. I tried very quickly to get out, got half way over the side and was thrown back in. I tried again and was again thrown back in. So I sat down in the cockpit and thought, and decided that if I really wanted to get out I should undo the radio and oxygen connections that were attached to me. I undid them, and looked at my watch. It was 1.40. I thought it was a good time to go, and out I went. At that time, my mother was living at Hayling Island which was right under where I was shot down. Against all the odds, she was out on the balcony looking at what was going on above. She saw a Hurricane chased by two Me 109s, saw it hit and
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saw the pilot bale out. It was me. Of course, she had no idea that it could have been me, and I had no idea she had seen it – although I had an ambulance girl telephone her later to tell her I was alright.’ Tim Elkington’s burning Hurricane crashed into a ditch on Manor Farm, Chidham, close by Chichester Harbour and exploded on impact, although with much of the wreckage being driven deep into the ground. As the wreckage burned, so it baked the surrounding yellow clay into slabs of
red brick in what must have been a fearsome blast-furnace heat. Plt Off Elkington, meanwhile, drifted down on his parachute over the sea, but was convinced that the actions of a fellow 1 Squadron pilot Sgt Fred Berry, had saved his life, as Sgt Berry protectively circled and, more importantly, caused his slipstream to gently waft Tim’s canopy back inland. Landing at West Wittering, the injured pilot would spend until the end of August in the Royal West Sussex Hospital, Chichester, before returning to flying duties on 30 September.
'YOU LEFT IT A BIT LATE!'
Battle of Britain Combat Survivors
Better Late than Never Fg Off Desmond Sheen, Spitfire pilot: 72 Squadron – 1st and 5th September 1940 Australian Spitfire pilot, Des Sheen was shot down and baledout twice over the Kent countryside during the Battle of Britain and left his own written record of both hair-raising episodes: ‘The first time, on 1 September, eight of us were airborne in the late morning to intercept a formation of enemy aircraft approaching towards Tunbridge Wells. I had just lined up a bomber to attack when I glanced behind and found six Me 109s bearing down on me. I mixed it with them for quite a time, but during the dogfight I managed to collect a shell in the engine. I broke away from the engagement but as the engine was running I climbed again to re-engage, but then the Spitfire started to burn and I was left with no option but to get out. I unstrapped the harness, pulled back the canopy and pushed the stick hard forward. The aircraft bunted, and I went out clean as a whistle. As I came down, I watched dogfights all around me and saw six aircraft go down
within just a couple of miles. I landed in a field near Hamstreet in Kent with nothing more than a slight bump and started to roll up my parachute, but moments later an Army Lieutenant arrived and started waving a revolver in my face. Clearly, he thought I was German as I was wearing the very dark blue Australian Air Force uniform. I ignored the revolver, exchanged pleasantries and my true identity was quickly established. I was at once taken to a fine house where I was served cocktails on the lawn. Well, it was Sunday lunchtime after
all. At the time, there seemed nothing surreal about standing on the lawn of a country house, quaffing cocktails and watching the progress of a battle up above that I had just so recently left. Looking back, it was completely surreal.’ Sheen had been taken to the home of Lord and Lady Oliver at Capel House, Orlestone, and whilst enjoying his drink, Lady Oliver thrust a correspondence card and pen into his hand and asked for his autograph. As he signed, the wreckage of his Spitfire burned across the adjacent fields at Court Lodge Farm and .303 ammunition cracked and banged in the flames. With hardly time to recover from his ordeal, Des Sheen was again shot down just four days later: ‘We had been sent down to the forward airfield at Hawkinge and after spending a short time in a shelter due to a shelling warning we were again ordered off. We had climbed to about
20,000 ft when I heard a warning of fighters above, but at exactly the same time my aircraft was hit. I was hit in the thigh and got splinters in the left hand and face. I think the oxygen bottle had been smashed because I passed out. When I came-to the aircraft was going down vertically and very fast. Large chunks were off the port wing and I had no control at all. I had no idea of height but knew it was time to leave. I undid the harness and was immediately sucked out of the cockpit but my feet caught in the top of the
windscreen and I found myself laying along the top of the fuselage. For no apparent reason my feet came clear and at once I pulled the rip-cord of my parachute. This opened with an almighty jolt and in seconds I went through the tops of some trees. My parachute caught in the branches, and I landed as light as a feather. I released the parachute and crawled to a clearing in the wood with a path running through it. Shortly afterwards a Bobby appeared on the proverbial bicycle. He pulled out a hip flask, bless him, and handed it to me. ‘You left it a bit late!’ he said.’
ABOVE: Fg Off Desmond Sheen who went on to have a distinguished career in the RAF and, post-war, in the aviation industry after retiring with the rank of Wing Commander. He died in June 2001. (KRISTEN
ALEXANDER)
LEFT: The correspondence card signed by Des Sheen on 1 September 1940 for Lady Oliver. Other pilots who baled-out in the area also signed later: Plt Off C A Cooke on 4 September and Sgt J Bell-Walker on 14 September. LEFT: ‘Ron’ Ronaldson who witnessed the crash, with the propeller after its recovery in the early 1980s.
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Battle of Britain Combat Survivors
A Spot of Bother Plt Off Cardale Capon, Hurricane pilot: 257 Squadron – 12 October 1940 ABOVE: The front page from Plt Off Cardale Capon’s flying licence. TOP RIGHT: Plt Off Cardale Capon, 257 Squadron 1940. TOP LEFT: The salvage instruction for the recovery of Carl Capon’s Hurricane. Noted on the document is: ‘Fuselage cleared. Engine in ground’.
‘Dear Mother and Father I expect you may have heard that I ran into a spot of bother yesterday afternoon, but I am OK. I’ve just got a sprained ankle and a couple of cuts from shrapnel. I will probably be out of hospital tomorrow, or even today if they put my foot in plaster. The Hun blighter must have come up behind me when I was at 27,000 ft. The cockpit caught fire and the wing or tail or something must have been shot off by cannon fire, because the aeroplane was immediately uncontrollable. I then got blown out of the cockpit like the shot out a gun and started a delayed drop. I didn’t go over and over, but shoulder first and I had a frightful job turning onto my face to see how near I was to the ground every so often. I could just
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manage a quick roll over onto my back again and could not see very well as I had some blood in my eyes from the tiniest scratch you ever saw. I pulled the rip-cord at about 1,000 to 1,500 ft and the ‘chute opened with me head first having fallen 26,000 ft, or nearly five miles! I did this so that Jerry would not get much chance to shoot at me on the way down. By the way, I don’t think this is far off the delayed drop record. It’s really rather nice once you have your ‘chute open, but very strange before you pull the rip-cord. Will probably get a couple of days leave, so will see you then. Cardale. 13 October 1940’ Known universally as Carl, Plt Off Capon’s Hurricane finally crashed to
earth at High House Farm near the village of Stone in Kent’s Isle of Oxney. Once the young pilot had had pieces of shrapnel removed from his body he returned to flying duties with 257 Sqn. Here, he resumed his place as trusted wingman to the CO, Sqn Ldr R R Stanford Tuck, although whilst having further pieces of shrapnel removed on 11 November he missed the infamous ‘Spaghetti Party’ when 257 Sqn intercepted a raid by the Italian Air Force over the East Coast. (See Britain at War, February 2015) Carl Capon was killed in a flying accident on 1 January 1941 when leading his section in to land at RAF Coltishall when a blizzard unexpectedly developed, causing Carl to crash. He was 20 years old.
