At All Costs (17 page)

CHAPTER 27 •••

NIGERIA
AND
CAIRO

F
rom the “Most Secret” notes of the War Cabinet Meeting of Saturday, August 1:

THE PRIME MINISTER outlined the main features of the Operation. A crucial stage would be reached on the night before the convoy reached the narrow passage between Cape Bon and Sicily. In making the plan, the Admiralty had had to decide whether the heavy ship escort should carry the convoy right through to Malta at the risk of our two 16-inch battleships being heavily attacked by air or whether, during the final stage of the journey, escorting forces should be confided to cruisers and destroyers. If ill befell our heavy ships in the narrow waters approaching Malta, the whole balance of naval power would be affected. On the other hand, if it was decided not to risk the heavy ships during the final stage and the convoy suffered severe losses from attack by enemy surface ships, some searching questions would be asked. In view of the grave issues involved, he asked the War Cabinet to support any decision which might be taken.

Malta was Churchill’s rock, and everything else was the hard place. He said Malta had to be held at all costs, but not at the cost of the balance of naval power. The
Ohio
had been worth asking FDR for, but she wasn’t worth losing two battleships and two aircraft carriers for. The decision to turn back the battleships recognized that an attack on the convoy in the Sicilian Narrows might be so advantageous to the enemy that not even the biggest guns in the Royal Navy could fight it off.

Admiral Syfret was now the “man on the spot,” as the Royal Navy referred to a leader in position to call the shots. The Admiralty had determined that his Force Z—two aircraft carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, and thirteen destroyers—would turn back at the mouth of the Skerki Channel or dusk, whichever came first, and at 1817 he had signaled the convoy that Force Z would be turning back at 1915. But flaming aircraft carriers have a way of changing things.

It was now 1850, about an hour before dusk and ninety minutes to the channel. The air attack had lasted just twenty minutes, and six ships were scattered. The
Indomitable
was on fire and going off downwind, chased by her cruiser and two destroyers. The destroyer
Foresight
was disabled and rudderless, her stern blown half off by a torpedo bomber, and she was being towed by
Tartar.

The ships of Force Z needed to stay together to protect one another, but Admiral Burrough’s Force X needed them too. It was up to Burrough to deliver the merchantmen to Malta with Force X, which included the cruisers
Nigeria, Kenya, Cairo,
and
Manchester,
and eleven destroyers. He wanted air cover for at least another hour from
Victorious,
but her flight deck was a nightmare, so slimy with spilled gas and oil that men could barely stay on their feet; damaged planes were being pushed over the side to make room for those still serviceable, which needed to be refueled.

Burrough knew that fighter support for Force X wasn’t going to happen, despite the fact that it was dusk and another enemy air attack was possible. He accepted that sometimes you have to go to war with the convoy you have, not the one you might wish to have.

Syfret might have wanted to escort Force X farther toward Malta, but he knew that the deeper the battleships and aircraft carriers went, the harder it would be for them to turn around, especially when there were still submarines waiting to strike as the sea narrowed. The tighter it got, the better it was for the enemy subs.

It was a weighty decision, but it didn’t take him much time. At 1855 he sent his friend Burrough a message of “God speed” and turned Force Z around, twenty minutes early, instead of possibly thirty or forty minutes later than the planned time of 1915. He could have left a couple of the Force Z destroyers with Burrough, or even one of the cruisers, but he didn’t. Burrough was on his own with four cruisers and ten destroyers to escort thirteen merchantmen. One freighter,
Deucalion,
was damaged and lagging behind with a destroyer escort.

“In view of the magnitude of the enemy’s air attack at 1830 to 1850 it seemed improbable that a further attack on Force X on any great scale would be forthcoming before dark, and having reached the Skerki Banks, it was hoped that the submarine menace was mostly over,” reported Syfret, explaining his decision to turn back early. “The dangers ahead of Force X seemed to lie principally from attacks by E-Boats during the night and by aircraft the following morning.”

Admiral Syfret’s confident voice leaves him on this one, and equivocation defines the decision. “Seemed” improbable. It was “hoped.” Menace “mostly” over. Dangers “seemed to” lie.

But he underestimated the combined powers of the Luftwaffe, the Regia Aeronautica, and the Italian and German Navies. They had some experience with Malta convoys, too. They knew Force Z would be leaving, and they were waiting. They had all night.

“We felt very lonely when the battleships and cruisers left us,” said Larsen.

The freighter
Deucalion
was feeling even more lonely. Her hull had been holed by a bomb’s near miss, one of five within 20 feet, and flooding in number one hold had brought her main deck to within three feet of the waterline. Unable to keep up with the convoy, she had plowed south toward Tunisia in an attempt to sneak along in Vichy French territorial waters, escorted by the destroyer
Bramham.
When some of the crew of
Deucalion
had abandoned ship without the master’s orders to do so, Captain Eddie Baines of the
Bramham
had told his men to step on the fingers of any merchant seamen who might try to climb onto the destroyer from their lifeboats. He barked at the
Deucalion
crewmen to get back onto their ship where they belonged.

Near the coast of Tunisia,
Deucalion
was discovered by an enemy reconnaissance plane. It didn’t take long after that. “Just after sunset, when the light was very bad, two planes attacked simultaneously, the first from the port quarter, and the second from the starboard bow,” said
Deucalion
’s master, Ramsay Brown. “Both planes dived steeply, with the engines shut off. The first plane flew along the port side without attacking, then flew off, whilst the second plane flew along the starboard side at a distance of only fifty or sixty feet and dropped a torpedo, which was slung athwartships, from a height of seventy-five feet.”

It was as if the phantom dead-stick dive-bomber knew where the aviation fuel was stored, as the torpedo hit the hold with the gasoline. “Immediately the octane spirit ignited, flames rising to twice the height of the mast,” said Brown. “In a few minutes the stern part of the ship was a blazing inferno and I realized the ship was doomed, so I gave the order to abandon ship.”

They left the
Deucalion
burning bright in the dark, and boarded the
Bramham,
which raced to rejoin the convoy.

The Skerki Bank is a broken limestone reef that lies like a row of bad teeth across the mouth of the Strait of Sicily, blocking the entrance for ships with deep drafts such as the heavy cruiser
Nigeria.
But there’s a missing molar, a deepwater gap between Cape Bon and the first big rock, and Admiral Burrough signaled the convoy to merge from cruising disposition 24 to 21, four columns into two, in order to squeeze through the gap.

He sent the three minesweeping destroyers
—Intrepid, Icarus,
and
Fury—
to the front because it was assumed that the Skerki Channel would be mined. The ships in the second and fourth columns slowed to 8 knots, while those in the first and third columns moved to starboard and slipped between them. Burrough wanted to complete the maneuver before the convoy got too close to the channel, where the sandbars bounced false echoes back to the destroyers’ sonar, providing perfect cover for the subs.

So far the convoy’s destroyers had dominated the subs. When Force Z was along, the convoy had depth-charged its way through Regia Marina’s Zones C and B, patrolled by six Italian subs. There had been two dozen destroyers in the screen for most of that time: four destroyers per sub. Now Force X was in the heart of Zone A, with five more subs, and Burrough had but nine destroyers to protect the merchantmen from attack by the eleven submarines in the area.

Lieutenant Commander Renato Ferrini had watched the evening air attack from a distance, through the periscope of the
Axum,
although all he could see were the towers of smoke from the flaming
Indomitable.
When the bombers returned to Sicily he began chasing the convoy at full speed and a depth of 60 feet. By 1927 he had closed to 4.5 miles, and he entered in his log:

Alter course parallel to study situation.

1933: Fresh observation. Am able to establish that the formation comprises about 15 steamers, two cruisers and numerous destroyers.

1937: Fresh estimate of distance 4,000 meters.

1942: After a quick look at periscope depth, dive to 15 meters and go half speed ahead on both engines to close.

1948: Periscope depth. Angle of sight of cruiser in the second line 28 degrees. In the nearer line, ahead and astern of the cruiser, are respectively a destroyer and a large merchant ship.

He had two out of three right. The cruiser was the
Cairo,
and leading her was not a destroyer but another cruiser, Admiral Burrough’s flagship, the
Nigeria.
The large merchant ship was the
Ohio.

“At about a quarter to eight that evening there was a welcome lull in the air combats,” Anthony Kimmins told his BBC radio listeners from the bridge of the
Nigeria.
“Remember that everyone in those ships had been fighting almost continuously since daylight, and apart from the heat of battle, there had been the grueling heat of the Mediterranean sun. Now in the temporary lull, men slipped off their antiflash helmets and gloves, and seized the opportunity of cooling off.”

1955: Fire bow tubes in order 1, 4, 3, 2 of which 1 and 2 straight, 3 and 4 angled respectively to 5 degrees to starboard and 5 degrees to port. Directly after firing, disengage. Distance at firing from first line 1,300 meters, from cruiser 1,800 meters. 63 seconds after firing hear first explosion.

“Some of us had gone down for a moment to the navigator’s station,” continued Kimmins. “Suddenly there was a flash, a terrific explosion, and complete darkness, as the lights and most other things were shattered. A U-boat had got a torpedo home on us. The ship immediately started to list, and as we groped our way to the door and forced our way out through the fumes, the ladders were already well over at an angle. By the time we reached the bridge, Admiral Burrough and the captain were leaning across the starboard side, looking rather like yachtsmen at the tiller of a boat heeling well over to a fresh breeze. Some of the ship’s company were already grouping on the upper deck in the most orderly fashion, and as they did so they looked up to the bridge for orders. There was never a sign of panic, but the ship was assuming a somewhat alarming angle, and the memory of the
Eagle
was still fresh in our minds.

“But any doubts anyone may have had were immediately removed by the admiral. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll hold!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s have a cigarette.’

“And whatever momentary effect that great explosion may have had was removed in a flash by that casual remark. From that moment, everything in that ship was carried out like an ordinary peacetime exercise.”

Except that men don’t die, fifty-two at a time, during an ordinary peacetime exercise.

“On the 12th August, 1942, I was on the sloping deck of a torpedoed ship, and in what appeared to be a hopeless situation,” recalled Alfred Longbottom, a twenty-one-year-old seaman at the time. “With massive damage amidships, we could hear water rushing into the HMS
Nigeria.
Down by the bow, and with the stern rising, she was in danger of going down. Everything was out of action—the guns, radar, radio, steering—all gone. Flames were leaping out of one of the funnels, with the diesel on fire. Down below, 50 officers and men had perished, and others were wounded—some mentally.”

“The ship immediately assumed a list of approximately 15 degrees, and I realized that she would not be able to take further part in the operation,” reported Burrough. “I immediately ordered
Ashanti
to close as I felt that it was vitally important that I should regain contact with the Convoy who were moving South-East at about 14 knots.

“At 2020
Ashanti
came alongside
Nigeria
and, after satisfying myself that
Nigeria
was in no danger of sinking, I embarked with my Staff and proceeded to rejoin the Convoy.”

Thirty seconds after
Nigeria
was hit, Captain Ferrini heard two more explosions through the hydrophones of the
Axum.

This leads me to assume a hit on a unit in the first line and successively on one in the second line. Calculating from speed of torpedoes, distance on firing was less than estimated, being actually about 1,000 meters from the first line and 1,400 from the second.

There was a blinding flash when the second cruiser was hit, as chunks of steel and sailors from the
Cairo
flew hundreds of feet into the evening sky. Twenty-six men were lost with her stern, after she was hit by the
Axum
’s second and third torpedoes.

“‘Look out for debris!’ somebody shouted, and we all dived for cover as wreckage fell all round us,” said Norman Smart of the
Daily Express,
who was being sunk for the second time in the war. “The explosion had blown Y gun, aft, clean off its mountings into the sea. Royal Marines, manning the gun, had been blown overboard. I could hear them shouting for help—tiny black heads bobbing in the water.”

“Almost immediately
Cairo
lost way and started to settle by the stern, taking a slight list to starboard,” reported Captain C. C. Hardy. “I received a report from the Engineer Officer that the port propeller had been lost, that the starboard engine was unserviceable and that there was no prospect of getting it into action again; also that the stern had been blown off. On considering the factors, I decided to sink the ship.”