Wings (27 page)

This hubris was soon punished. Asdic was valuable, but not infallible. After the great conquests of the spring and early summer of 1940, Germany controlled a coastline that stretched from the
North Cape in northern Norway to Bordeaux. U-boats, long-range bombers and surface raiders had a multitude of bases on the French Atlantic seaboard from which to sally out. The toll rose steadily.
In June 1940 they sank ships totalling nearly 400,000 tons. These disasters forced a change
of heart. The navy reverted to the convoy system and the task of providing aerial
protection from the ravages of U-boats and long-range bombers fell largely on Coastal Command’s willing but pitifully equipped squadrons.

At the start of the war it had thirteen squadrons of aircraft and six of flying boats, organized in three groups. Their commander was Air Marshal Sir Frederick Bowhill, then fifty-nine. He had
started life as a merchant seaman. After taking flying lessons, he joined the RNAS and commanded HMS
Empress
during the Cuxhaven raid on Christmas Day 1914. According to the Air Ministry
mandarin Maurice Dean, ‘he had seawater in his veins (and) an appreciation of naval needs based on a lifetime’s experience’.
³

Bases were scattered around the fringes of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It had been estimated that 261 shore-based aircraft would be needed to secure Britain’s maritime
defence; 165 for convoy escort duty and 96 for reconnaissance. When war broke out, there were 259, which seemed to bode well. However, the paper strength disguised a fundamental weakness. At this
stage Coastal Command was the ‘Cinderella Service’, jostled aside in the rush for resources by the demands of Fighter and Bomber Commands. Only one of the aeroplane squadrons had an
aeroplane that was up to the job: the American-manufactured Lockheed Hudson. Eight of the rest had Ansons, and two had torpedo-carrying and obsolescent Vildebeests. The crews called the Anson
‘Faithful Annie’ and it was as dependable and unexciting as the nickname suggests. It had been built as a
six-seater passenger plane with a maximum speed of about
190 mph. Despite this, its reach was inadequate for its function. An Anson was incapable of getting all the way to the Norwegian coast – a vital area of naval activity – and back. It
also posed very little threat to any enemy vessel it might encounter. ‘The Anson was quite useless in any active wartime role, except a limited anti-submarine patrol to protect shipping, and
was really obsolete before 1939,’ judged Wing Commander Guy Bolland, who commanded Coastal Command’s 217 Squadron, based at St Eval. ‘The performance bomb load and armament were
totally inadequate.’
⁴

All of the bombs available were feeble. The experience of the previous war suggested that the best weapon for an air attack on a submarine was a bomb carrying at least 300 lbs of high explosive.
With the weight of the casing, that amounted to a bomb of 520 lbs. But in 1934, when a new stock of bombs was ordered, the sizes were 500 lb, 250 lb and 100 lb. Why they were chosen when so
obviously inadequate was never explained. The puny effect of the hundred-pounders was demonstrated when an Anson dropped one by mistake on a submarine, HMS
Snapper
. The only damage
suffered, it was said, was four broken light bulbs in the control room. Was the story true? Perhaps not, but the fact that it did the rounds gave some idea of the low regard those who would have to
drop the bombs had for their destructive powers.

Coastal Command’s effectiveness was further hampered by the lack of on-board radar, so crews had only their eyes to depend on as, hour after hour, on North Sea patrol or convoy
escort, they scoured the monotonous grey ridges below for signs of a small, dark shape. It was recognized that the activity could induce trances – similar to the
‘empty-field myopia’ experienced by pilots in the Falklands – which could have fatal consequences. On convoy duty the method was to fly back and forth across a fifteen-mile
‘box’ ahead of and on either side of the merchantmen. It was decided that it was good for morale if they remained in sight of the ship’s crews, so deeper searching was ruled out.
At night there was no flying at all.

It was hardly surprising that of the eighty-five attacks carried out by Coastal Command against U-boats in the first eight months of the war, only one resulted in a sinking, and that was with
the help of surface ships. During this period, as the official narrative admitted, ‘all we could do was harass and frighten,’ hoping to cause prowling U-boats to at least hang
back.
⁵
Depth charges, which were far more effective than bombs, eventually took their place. But it was not until 1941 that Coastal Command could
claim a ‘kill’ of its own.

The change in fortunes began with the arrival of better aircraft and on-board radar. The aircraft flying to the rescue were American not British. The PBY Catalina flying boats and Liberators
were both made by Consolidated Aircraft in California. The Catalina acted as a replacement to the Sunderland flying boat, which went out of production when the manufacturer, Short’s, were
told to switch to churning out Stirlings. It was a marvellous aircraft, initially intended for reconnaissance and bombing over the vast spaces of the Pacific. It was slow but had formidable
endurance and its
twin Pratt and Whitney engines were famously reliable. It was also highly versatile. Flying boats did not need airstrips. They had two thirds of the
earth’s surface to land on. A Catalina could spend two hours on station at a distance of 800 miles, 200 miles further than the Sunderland could manage for that amount of time. By June 1941
fifteen squadrons were due to be supplied with them.

The four-engined Liberator, which carried 2,500 gallons of fuel, could manage three hours patrolling at a distance of 1,100 miles. The Liberators’ great range was needed if the
‘Atlantic Gap’ was to be closed. This was the area of greatest peril for the convoys when they were beyond the reach of the air umbrellas that could be pushed out from Britain, Northern
Ireland and Iceland on one side of the ocean and Canada on the other. These were slower to come and by the end of 1942 had reached only four squadrons. It was not until well into 1943 that some
degree of cover could be provided by a combination of reconnaissance aircraft, bombers and long-range fighters.

Work on airborne radar had begun in 1936 and by 1940 twelve Coastal Command Hudsons carried an early version. The ASV (Air to Surface Vessel) Mark I was large and heavy. Its range was short and
found it hard to distinguish between a ship and the myriad signals sent back by the sea’s surface. Work persisted and an improved version emerged. The ASV II had a more powerful transmitter
and a more sensitive receiver and was more robust than its predecessor. It could scan twelve miles ahead and twenty miles to the side. Four thousand sets
were ordered and by
August 1942 most of the squadrons had them.

Although the land-based aircraft of Coastal Command belonged to the Royal Air Force, the Air Ministry had been sensible enough to cede effective control of it to the Admiralty. Relations between
the two were good on the whole and the arrangements were recognized as a model of the not always easy practice of inter-service co-operation.

The decision to return control of ship-borne aircraft to the navy had been made in July 1937. This brought to an end the highly complicated and unsatisfactory sharing arrangement that had
existed with the RAF since 1942. But it left the Admiralty with only two years in which to recruit and train air and ground crews and build or adapt shore bases and aerodromes to support their
extended duties. At this stage it was not clear what exactly they would be. The navy had few trained pilots at senior levels and – unlike the navies of the United States or Germany –
had devoted very little time to thinking about where naval aviation was heading. Initially it was thought that its passive tasks would be confined to reconnaissance and shadowing and spotting for
the fleet’s guns. Its active roles would include attacking a faster enemy in order to slow it down until the pursuing force could catch up, and fighting off hostile aircraft and submarines.
These would turn out to be only a few of the functions they would be called on to perform. In time they would be involved in convoy protection, covering amphibious landings, attacking enemy ships
in harbour and cutting enemy supply lines. It became in the
words of Hugh Popham, a FAA fighter pilot and historian, ‘one of the hardest worked of any of the
services’. For most of them, however, it was ‘severely – and for some of them, ludicrously – ill-equipped’.
⁶

One thing the navy did have was suitable ships. A new, modern aircraft carrier,
Ark Royal
, went into service in 1938 to add to the existing six older ones, and between 1936 and 1939
three more were laid down. Plans were made to train up the men and form the squadrons to fly off them. They envisaged a front-line strength of 540 aircraft and 1,570 aircrew by 1942. A recruitment
drive for short-service commission officers was launched and air-minded ratings started pilot- and observer-training. By the time the war started and the FAA was fighting its first actions, these
men were squadron and flight commanders. Beneath them were the men of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, who, like their RAF counterparts, had signed up when war loomed. The result was that the
squadrons were full of ‘lawyers and teachers, draughtsmen and geologists, actors and civil servants’, who all took the rank of Temporary Sub-Lieutenant (A).
⁷

Among the short-service officers was Charles Friend, an ex-grammar schoolboy who was working as a laboratory assistant in the Paint Research Station in Teddington, near London, and
‘apparently set to earn my bread in useful industrial scientific work’ when the Munich crisis broke. Friend spent those anxious days with the rest of the staff, ‘digging an
enormous hole outside with the intention of getting in it when the bombs began to fall’. The experience gave him a ‘full realization that
the war was coming. I
decided that I would not wait to be conscripted, but that I would volunteer.’ The decision set him off on a career that was packed with adventure and peril.
⁸

In March 1939 he joined the carrier HMS
Hermes
at Plymouth to start training. Friend had been impelled into the FAA primarily by a desire to fly, but it was made very clear that it was
the navy he was joining. He and the rest of the intake spent their initial time ‘exhaustedly pulling boats around the harbour before breakfast to sailing them for both duty and pleasure; from
proper behaviour in the Gunroom or Wardroom mess to the necessity to snatch a tiddy-oggy [pasty] at action stations’, before moving on to specialized training as an air observer at
Portsmouth.

They started on simulators. In ‘mock-up cockpits which bumped, yawed and generally gave a realistic impression of flying, we looked at a green floor through binoculars. Model ships
manoeuvred on it and spots of light were projected down around them as shell splashes.’ They reported in Morse code to instructors who marked their ability and progress. It was three months
before they actually took to the air.

The new boys were a mixture of grammar and public school boys entering an enclosed world peopled by officers who had been in the navy since they were thirteen. Like many of the outsiders thrust
into the services by the advent of war, Friend found much to like and admire in the environment. The ‘loss of complete independence inherent in service life at all levels was compensated for
by an abiding sense of belonging to an organization with a purpose’.

Friend first saw action in what was to be the FAA’s first big engagement of the war. In April 1940 he was attached to 801 Squadron aboard
Ark Royal
and in
the thick of Britain’s calamitous military debut on the still winter-bound shores of Norway.

He was flying as observer in a Blackburn Skua, the navy’s first monoplane aircraft, which was intended as a dual-role bomber and fighter, with a fellow midshipman A. S. Griffiths as pilot.
Their first mission was with a flight of six Skuas that set off to bomb a frozen lake that the Germans were using as an airfield. They were carrying under their wings eight 100 lb anti-submarine
bombs. ‘The flight bombed the lake in line astern,’ he wrote. ‘The ice split satisfactorily into large slabs. The aircraft parked on it slid into the water. As we –
“tail-end, Charlie” – pulled up from our dive, some tracer bullets came up past us. Griffiths said, “Someone’s firing at us – let’s go back and fire at
him,” and then turned to dive back, firing the front guns at a machine-gun position on the edge of the lake.’ As well as its four front-firing Brownings, the Skua had a Vickers mounted
in the rear cockpit from which Friend did his observing. Griffiths invited Friend to have a go and ‘flew back low past it whilst I fired half a pan of bullets at it too’. He had no idea
whether or not he hit anything, but ‘it was pleasing to see the Germans running for shelter when we made our dive on them’.

As with many experiencing their first taste of combat, Friend ‘had no sense of dangerous conflict as we were doing all this. Either of us could have and possibly did hit the men
below, but I did not understand the enormity of my actions until long after, when I had seen the results of similar deeds by others – wounded pilots, observers and air-gunners,
aeroplanes so damaged that they crashed, and ships damaged or sunk.’

For all its shortcomings, the Fleet Air Arm was to achieve early glory in a spectacular action which showed what could be achieved with enough planning, preparation and skill, even with the
limited aircraft and weapons available. In the Mediterranean, the loss of the French fleet (and the sinking of a significant part of it by Britain at Mers-el-Kébir) had sharpened the
necessity to deal with the Italian navy. Various plans had been drawn up to attack the Italian navy, the Regia Marina, at its home base of Taranto, a bowl-shaped inlet tucked inside the heel of
Italy. In the autumn of 1940 it was activated. The operation was preceded by extensive reconnaissance and the men detailed to take part were among the most experienced aviators in the service. On
the evening of 11 November from the brand-new carrier
Illustrious
, which had just arrived in the Mediterranean, twenty-one Fairey Swordfish from 813, 815, 810 and 824 Naval Air Squadrons
took off in two waves from a position off Cephalonia about 200 miles to the south, armed with torpedoes and bombs.