Cruiser (31 page)
Authors: Mike Carlton
Each morning, the throaty roar of the Duck's 635 hp Bristol Pegasus engine would shatter the silence of Suda as she lifted out of the bay, past the little clump of islands at its entrance, and climbed into the sunrise. One morning in March, when it was still dark, there was a sudden flash of light and an explosion as they were taking off, which startled the socks off them. It was an Italian speedboat attack on the heavy cruiser HMS
York
. Returning that afternoon, they found
York
beached and damaged beyond repair.
For months, the three men fought their own private war. Sitting on the Heraklion airfield on Crete, they were shot up by two Italian fighters and had to take refuge in a trench. There were a few bullet holes, but when they got back to Suda the rigger discovered a damaged wing root and declared the Walrus unserviceable for operational flying. On the way to Alexandria to pick up a replacement aircraft the next day, they
landed to refuel at a small field in Libya. An RAF corporal on a motorbike raced towards them, pointing to a cloud of dust on the horizon. âThat's the Jerries,' he said. They got away in the nick of time.
On Wednesday 23 April, Beaumont, Brian and Bowden rowed out to the Duck as usual, hitched their dinghy to the buoy and clambered aboard for yet another dawn patrol. They headed north-west for the island of Kithera, lying between Crete and mainland Greece. It was a flight of about 45 minutes, droning across an empty blue sea as the sun rose on their starboard side. They were circling low over a small village on Kithera when Bowden in the rear cockpit, hunched over his ancient Lewis .303 machine gun mounted on the fuselage, glanced up to find himself staring at the giant black Iron Cross of the Luftwaffe. They had been jumped by a pair of JU88s. Bowden thought they were done for:
I thought to myself, âCripes â this is it!' Our pilot had a rear vision mirror in which he could see me standing up in the rear cockpit which was completely open, and I was exposed from the waist upwards. Our Walrus was slow but very manoeuvrable and by comparison with the Dorniers
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we could turn on a threepenny bit. We had previously worked out a drill on what we should do if attacked. The observer in the front cockpit and myself in the rear cockpit would signal a turn to the pilot by raising an arm to show the attacking aircraft had turned and was lining up on attack.
This signal system worked very well and I felt we could have got away with only one aircraft attacking but with two it was no dice. They worked out a counter and I soon heard the explosive pops of the cannon shells above our engine noise as they hit and exploded. Beaumont also could hear the pops and threw our âPusser's Duck' around at the first burst, and I later told him I was sure glad I had hooked up my monkey strap to keep me anchored in the aircraft.
We turned off their line of attack and when our tail was
clear kept firing, and the Jerries showed us respect. This at first aborted their attack. However, as we dodged one, the other was on to us and I could see pieces flying off our tail and holes appearing in our aircraft. Whenever he could do so, the pilot flew along ravines in the island but the Jerries were waiting when we flew out again and away from the island. The flares stowed just aft of my position ignited and I grabbed them and threw them over the side. The port petrol tank caught fire and I could feel the flames blowing back over my head.
About this time I got a stoppage and I ducked down to clear the gun. I guess the Jerries thought I was a gone coon. What with my gun pointing up in the air apparently unattended and the aircraft on fire, it must have seemed that we had the âroger'. I was still working on the gun when I popped up my head to check and to my surprise one of the Jerries was coming up on our port quarter almost in formation with us. My gun was useless, but I swung it towards the Jerry and I guess he got one helluva surprise for he sideslipped and turned astern. I got my gun in action again and the attack and evasion continued. Our starboard petrol tank caught fire and it was not long after that we crashed on the water.
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Satisfied with their morning's work, the Germans flew off. That was a relief for the three men. At least they weren't going to be machine-gunned in the water. The Walrus was still afloat, just, but burning fiercely. Bowden wrestled to release the emergency rubber dinghy, dimly aware of the pain from some shrapnel that had hit him in an arm and leg and broken a bone in his wrist.
Beaumont shoved the raft overboard, pulling at the toggle on the compressed air bottle to inflate it, and the three of them tumbled in, Bowden not forgetting to snatch hold of a Verey flare pistol. Then they realised they had forgotten the paddles. Somehow, Bowden struggled back on board the burning Duck, grabbed them from their stowage and flung himself back into the sea. It was in the nick of time. Seconds later, the burning engine collapsed onto the spot where he had
been. They paddled away and watched, too stunned to feel fear, as the Pusser's Duck sank in a hiss of smoke and steam. Beaumont and Brian threw away their heavy flying boots but then retrieved one to use as a bailer.
Now what? The radio aerials had been shot away early in the dogfight, so they had not been able to get away a Mayday message. Nobody knew of their plight. At least the sea was calm and they could see Kithera on the horizon in the distance, so they tried to make for it:
The raft was a tight squeeze for the three of us and we found when we tried to paddle, the round raft kept turning in circles. Instead of getting closer to the island we seemed to be drifting further out. We debated swimming but we decided we had a better chance remaining in the raft. We were sitting in water and we were cold. I was probably more comfortable with my boots on but as we had the Verey pistol and cartridges we decided to stay put.
We estimated the air fight had lasted over twenty minutes and we got a certain satisfaction that with our hand signals and the pilot twisting and turning we were able to keep going for so long against two cannon-firing fast aircraft. The conversation soon lagged and we just sat, each with our own thoughts and watched as we gradually drifted away from the island. Early in the afternoon, we heard an aircraft and sighted a Sunderland flying boat at about 5000 feet. Beaumont fired flares several times, but to our dismay the aircraft veered away from us and proceeded on its way.
Time passed and several times I wondered if we had made the right decision staying in the raft when the island was still in sight. Darkness came and we arranged in turn to keep watch. I think it was Brian, the observer, who first saw the destroyer. We did not know then it was British, but actually by that time we did not care. We just wanted out. Beaumont again fired some Verey lights and to our joy the destroyer altered course towards us. She kept coming at speed and then we realised she was apparently
heading to ram us. Beaumont shot off some more Verey lights and the destroyer altered slightly and shot past us. We rocked in the wash and I thought we were going to turn over.
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The destroyer was HMS
Havock
. Slowing down and going about, she lowered a Jacob's ladder over her side. The three men scrambled on board and were hustled below for dry clothes and hot food. They had been luckier than they knew. The Sunderland which flew over them had reported them as a German submarine on the surface.
Havock
had been detached from a convoy to search for it and had come very close to firing on the dinghy in the dark. Exhausted, they slept like children. Back in Alexandria, they were given a week's survivor's leave. Then they returned to the war.
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Retreat and defeat â they were the only words for it. In Greece, the Wehrmacht had again proved unstoppable, as wise heads had predicted. The Germans continued to push south. The government in Athens prepared to surrender, and on 18 April the Prime Minister, Alexandros Korizis, went to his study, put a pistol to his head and blew his brains out. The next day, Wavell arrived in Athens to confer with the Greeks and his commanders, and the bitter decision was taken to evacuate the Commonwealth forces. The tens of thousands of men carried to Greece at such immense cost only weeks before would now have to be lifted off by whatever ships Admiral Cunningham and the Mediterranean Fleet could scrape together, in the teeth of the German onslaught. With the harbour at Piraeus still a shambles after the bombing of the
Clan Fraser
, the evacuation would have to be from whatever smaller ports and beaches could be found.
By now, the British were experienced at the desperate business of snatching an army from the jaws of defeat. They had done it in Norway and at Dunkirk. They gave this new undertaking the name Operation DEMON. The soldiers fought their weary way to the coasts, taking what cover they could by day, moving by night to avoid the incessant attacks
of the Luftwaffe. In Alexandria, Cunningham marshalled his ships to bring off their rescue. The original lift-off date was to be 28 April, but the rout was gathering pace. On the 23rd, the Greeks surrendered to their German invaders and â most bitter pill of all â to Mussolini's strutting Italians, who, like carrion crows, had come to feast on the carcass. The evacuation was brought forward by four days.
Since the
Clan Fraser
disaster,
Perth
had ploughed around the eastern Mediterranean in and out of Suda and Alexandria. To the north-west, the Luftwaffe had established bases in the Greek mainland, and to the east of Crete, on the Aegean islands of Rhodes and Scarpanto, bringing the bombers within closer striking distance. Air raids were now more intense than ever. Without even looking skywards, you could tell what sort of aircraft was attacking, just from the different engine noises. In Alexandria,
Perth
was given a new addition to her anti-aircraft defence: a pom-pom mounting placed amidships where her Walrus catapult had been. It had four barrels of quick-firing 2-pounder guns that made a splendid racket â hence the nickname â but which were already obsolescent and would prove largely inaccurate in action. The Bredas captured from the Italians were a far better weapon, which inflicted a lot more damage.
After accompanying the battle fleet to take part in a bombardment of Tripoli â the port that carried supplies to Rommel â
Perth
was back in Suda on 22 April for more sorry news. There had been a massive air raid the day before. One of
Perth
's shipwrights, Petty Officer Donald âBingle' Haddow, had been left behind to work as a diver on the beached cruiser HMS
York.
He had just come to the surface and was removing his heavy brass and copper diver's helmet in the diving tender when the bombs began falling. A near miss capsized the tender. Still with his lead-weighted boots on, Haddow sank like a stone and drowned. Born in Glasgow, he had joined the RAN in 1925. A popular man, a close shipmate of George Hatfield, he left a wife and two young children.
Perth
now joined Operation DEMON. The evacuations had to be conducted at night to avoid the Luftwaffe as much as possible, and this tactic was surprisingly successful, but it placed an extra strain on the ships' crews in loss of sleep and in the added difficulties of navigation on strange coasts and unfamiliar anchorages, with charts of uncertain accuracy. On the night of 25 April, Anzac Day, under a starlit sky, they escorted a convoy of soldiers and some British, Australian and New Zealand nurses from Porto Rafti in Greece back to Crete, emerging shaken but unscathed from the inevitable air raid the next morning.
So far,
Perth
's luck was holding. The next day,
Perth
and
Orion
, with Waller's
Stuart
in company, were despatched with a convoy of troopships to pick up men from the port of Navplion, on the Corinth Peninsula of southern Greece. At sea, Bowyer-Smyth spoke to the ship's company over the public-address system. Bill Bracht took notes:
D'you hear there. This is the captain speaking. The German army is in control of Greece. Most of the surviving allied forces have been evacuated to Crete. Tonight
Orion
and
Perth
are to take off the remaining units fighting the rearguard action. At 11.30 tonight we are to be off shore at Salamis; we will be close to the enemy forces and it is known that they have torpedo boats stationed at Piraeus, so absolute quiet must be maintained as we must not jeopardise this evacuation. The ship will be closed up at full action stations from 7 o'clock.
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Navplion had been bombed and strafed by day, and its streets were strewn with rubble and glass. Buildings were still smouldering. Australian, New Zealand and British soldiers, around 8000 of them, had arrived in small groups at night, gathering along the harbour front. The weather was closing in, with an occasional shower of cold rain, and from the docks the soldiers could see the blackened wreck of the
Ulster Prince
, a troopship that had run aground a couple of days before and
had been bombed by the Luftwaffe ever since.
That wreck, and a choppy sea blowing straight into the harbour, made it impossible for the convoy to enter.
Perth
and the other ships lay off the port and sent in their boats, in the rain and the starless dark, to bring off as many men as they could, loading them as deeply as they dared. They had orders to sail at 3 am, to be well clear of the land before dawn and the start of the air raids.
Perth
had nets and a ladder slung over the side for the soldiers to climb, and the cooks laboured in the galleys to give them something hot to eat and drink. The sailors, who had been through their own ordeal at sea, gave their guests the best welcome they could, ministering to them with that earthy tenderness that warriors have for men who have shared similar horrors. A digger of the 6th Division, Frank de Silva, was grateful he had made it: