大象传媒

OPERATION PEDESTAL
PART TWO
(extract from autobiography of L.D.W Rees)

The moment of truth arrived. The re-forming of the convoy into two columns had begun and this was the time the submarines had been waiting for. It was five minutes to eight and the dusk was beginning to gather when two Italian submarines fired their torpedoes. Three ships were hit, the cruiser Nigeria, another light cruiser, the Cairo and the only tanker, the Ohio.
It was particularly unfortunate that these two cruisers had been hit because they were the only ones fitted out for fighter direction and were originally intended to lead the way through the Narrows. From now on the Spitfires from Malta would have to detect enemy planes by their own efforts for we had no ship left capable of directing them. My ship, the Penn was some 400 yards from Nigeria when she was hit. I got some excellent photographs of her listing over after the explosion, indeed at one moment I thought she was going to turn right over, but by very good damage control teamwork she slowly but surely began to right herself. The Tribal Class destroyer Ashanti went alongside her to take off Admiral Burrough and some of his staff, he was to be in overall charge of the convoy from here to Malta. Moral was still high. The three cheers which the ship鈥檚 company of the stricken Nigeria gave the Ashanti as they parted company should have been heard in Sicily and Malta, they were certainly heard all over the Fleet. They should have been heard in Berlin too, then Hitler and Mussolini would have realised that they were up against a spirit that would never give up.
An element of comedy came in here. The torpedo explosion in the Nigeria threw a signalman overboard and at the same time a Carley rescue float was thrown into the sea. This lad swam over to the float and climbed in. By now the float was nearer to the Penn than anyone else and amidst all the confusion and scurrying of ships going to the aid of the stricken ones, he stuck his arm up with outstretched thumb, just as if he wanted a lift on the A1. He shouted to our bridge: 鈥淎nybody going my way?鈥� This was sufficient to make us stop and pick him up. So he became our first survivor, but he was certainly not going to be the last.
The Nigeria got back to Gibraltar under her own power but the Cairo was damaged so badly that we had to sink her ourselves. The Ohio, with a hole in her side large enough to drive a double-decker bus through, had come to a stop and was on fire. Other ships of the convoy broke formation in order to avoid torpedoes and all this inevitably caused confusion. My impression was that we were caught in some gigantic minefield.
In the middle of it all and out of the gathering dusk came a large force of Ju.88. and Italian torpedo planes. This was the moment that we needed Nelson and Rodney鈥檚 terrific anti-aircraft barrage but they were one hour鈥檚 steaming away. These aircraft were very difficult to see until they were upon you so confusion got worse. The Empire Hope was hit by bombs, caught fire and had to be abandoned. The Brisbane Star was hit by a torpedo and came to a stop. The Clan Ferguson was hit and blew up setting the sea on fire. The cruiser Kenya was hit by a torpedo but managed to keep going. It was the end of a hard day but only the beginning of a 鈥榟ard day鈥檚 night鈥�.
The Empire Hope remained afloat and burning until just before midnight when she was torpedoed by a submarine. The destroyers were scurrying in all directions; going to the aid of ships in trouble and getting the undamaged ones back into a two lane formation for the night run through the Narrows.
With a superhuman effort the Ohio鈥檚 crew had got the fire out and were under way again, trying to catch up with the convoy. Her compass had gone awry and she was using emergency steering. The Ashanti, which had taken Admiral Burrough off the Nigeria, passed the Ohio at this time and her Master, Captain D.W.Mason, asked the Admiral to give him a guide through the Narrows because of the faulty compass. The Hunt Class destroyer Ledbury was given this job and by morning the Ohio had caught up with what was left of the convoy and had worked up to a speed of 16 knots.
The Brisbane Star had got underway again but by now was a long way behind the rest of us so her Master, Captain Riley, decided to try it alone by hugging the Tunisian coast. Everything was now quiet and except for the burning ships still in sight, you could imagine you were on a peacetime cruise.
About midnight we rounded Cape Bon. Two destroyers, with mine sweeps out, were leading the way and were followed by the cruisers Manchester and the damaged Kenya. Behind them were the Melbourne Star and the American Almeria Lykes with Glenerchy and Wairangi close up. The rest had not yet caught up and were being shepherded along by destroyers.
It was a perfectly calm night with hardly a ripple on the surface of the sea when what we really needed at that time was a force 10 gale. These conditions were ideal for the E-boats lying in wait for us with their lights out and engines switched off. There were to be 23 of them in all and from 0100 to 0500, when the dawn light began to break, the night was broken by a series of actions. At one moment it would be absolute quiet and pitch black, then out of nowhere would come the unmistakable roar of an E-boats engines. Suddenly it would be like Blackpool illuminations with searchlights and destroyers red and green fighting lights coming on all over the place. What a night! If anybody got any sleep he was most certainly not on the Penn.
The enemy鈥檚 first success came when two torpedoes hit the Manchester, one of the explosions wrecking her propellers. She was scuttled the next morning, her ship鈥檚 company getting ashore in the ship鈥檚 boats and rafts and being interned by the Vichy French. Little did we dream that in less than ten weeks time we would be back to liberate them.
The next victim was the Almeria Lykes , which had been close to the Manchester and everyone was now wondering whose turn it would be next. This proved to be the Wairangi and her survivors were picked up by the Tribal Class destroyer Somali.
A little after 0200 searchlights picked up the Glenorchy and she was hit by two torpedoes. Her Master, Captain G. Leslie, gave the order to abandon ship but refused to leave the doomed vessel himself. He was not seen again.
About 0400 the other American ship, the Santa Eliza was caught. The torpedo that hit her set the petrol she was carrying alight and she quickly became an inferno. Her crew managed to abandon her, most of them only having time to jump over the side just before she blew up and disintegrated. We, in the Penn, picked up the survivors who had managed to get into the lifeboats and a few from the water but then we had to move on. I only hope that somebody else picked up the other men from the water. They were easily seen because the red lights on their life jackets were bobbing up and down.
The last ship to be torpedoed before daylight drove the E-boats back to Pantellaria was the Rochester Castle. She was hit forward but her engines were not damaged and she was able to carry on.
As dawn broke we knew it would not be long before the air attacks began again. It was a toss up which was the worst, E boats at night or aircraft by day. However, by now we were near enough to Malta to have fighter protection, the only snag being that having lost Nigeria and Cairo, we could not direct our aircraft properly. That beautiful morning of August 13 saw only Port Chalmers, Dorset, Waimarama and Melbourne Star undamaged in the convoy. Rochester Castle and the tanker Ohio were damaged but making good headway.
Besides the air attacks we knew were to come, there was another worry. We were now in the place where, during the June convoy, an Italian cruiser squadron had turned up to attack our ships and inflict heavy damage. Thank the Lord they did not turn up that morning! They were at sea and intended to attack us but were denied air cover, so they got cold feet and went back home. This turned out to be a sad mistake for them for on their way home, Lt. A Mars, in command of the submarine Unbroken, found them and torpedoed two cruisers.
Dead on time at 0800 the Ju. 88鈥檚 were over us again and had an immediate success for the Waimarama was hit. The petrol caught fire and must have reached the ammunition because she blew up in a terrific explosion that set the sea on fire. I got the camera quickly working to record the horrible sight. The destroyer Ledbury immediately steamed into the burning sea and incredibly managed to rescue a few survivors but the vast majority of Waimarama鈥檚 crew would not even have known anything about it. The explosion was so great that it started a fire in the Ohio鈥檚 cargo of kerosene, which once again her intrepid crew managed to contain and extinguish.
In each raid from now on the Ohio was to be the main target, it being patently obvious that the enemy High Command had ordered their pilots to get the tanker. Soon after 0900 there they were again, more Stukas aiming for the Ohio. This raid continued for longer than half an hour with Stukas appearing from all directions. One was hit, either by Ohio鈥檚 or Ashanti鈥檚 gunners, but whether by design or accident the aircraft came straight on and hit Ohio starboard side forward, breaking up with one half of it landing on the upper deck and the other half falling into the sea. Miraculously its bomb failed to go off.
The next large-scale attack was just after 鈥榯ot鈥� time at 1100. It was a
mixed one with both Ju88s and 87s taking part. A fire was started in
the Rochester Castle but her crew managed to get it out. The Dorset
was hit and crippled but she was not burning so the destroyer Bramham was detached to look after her. The main force of this attack had been pressed home against Ohio and she had received no fewer than six near misses. She completely disappeared from sight behind the avalanche of water thrown up. Her engines were badly shaken and at long last she came to a stop and we in the Penn were ordered to look after her.
Although the Ohio鈥檚 engines were in a bad way her engineers somehow managed to get them to turn slowly and she proceeded to move forward at about two knots. We were now alone with the Ohio and for the next three hours we tried to tow our awkward customer. No sooner would we get our tow wires aboard than another attack by dive-bombers would commence and we would slip the tow. Mere near misses caused more damage and finally her engines gave up the ghost. Now with no weigh on her at all, each time we got our tow wire secured and started to pull, she did not want to come. As soon as we had the strain she would yaw off to one side and it soon became evident that this was going to be an impossible task for a single destroyer.
The Stuka attacks continued and our guns were working overtime. The problem now was, would we have enough ammunition to keep going? There was no point in keeping the crew of the Ohio onboard their possible incinerator at this stage, so we took them aboard Penn while waiting for someone to turn up and give us a hand.
Later in the afternoon the minesweeper Rye appeared so we put some of Ohio鈥檚 crew back onboard and tried to get her moving. But the Germans were persistent bastards and soon after we got Ohio moving they came again. The attack was pressed home with real determination and both ourselves and the Rye were badly shaken by near misses. One bomb exploded under Ohio鈥檚 stern causing more flooding and damage, whilst another bomb went straight into the engine room. Fortunately there was no one there to get killed but I very much regret to say that this bomb caused the only fatal casualty to the men of the Ohio. She had been fitted with a 5-inch gun aft, a 3-inch anti-aircraft gun in the bows, a 40-millimetre Bofors gun amidships and a number of Gerlikon guns around the ship. Gunners of the Royal Artillery Maritime Regiment manned the Bofors gun. The explosion of this last bomb sent a large steel ventilator into the air and it landed on the Bofors gun. It critically injured Gunner Brown of the Royal Artillery. He was still alive when the ventilator was removed but died later that day in the Penn. The tanker was abandoned whilst we waited for darkness to fall when we would try to tow her again.
During the evening the survivors of the convoy reached Malta. They were the Port Chalmers, Melbourne Star and the damaged Rochester Castle. Three out of 14 was not a very good score, but no situation ever stays still and a miracle was about to occur for out of the blue, entirely on her own appeared the great, big, fat beautiful Brisbane Star. Captain Riley had taken the coastal route and made it. Nonetheless with our warship losses on top of the lost merchantmen, we had suffered a heavy tactical defeat.
Back with the Ohio, that night the Rye and ourselves tried every imaginable method of towing. We pulled her, we pushed her, we dragged her: you name it, we tried it, and by God we were tired. We made about 20 miles that night. First thing in the morning the Bramham turned up. She had been standing by the crippled Dorset which, standing still in a calm sea, was an easy target for the Stukas and was sunk by them. The Ledbury arrived a little later. She had been looking for survivors in E-boat Alley.
Our Captain, Lieutenant 鈥擟ommander Swain, now made the decision that if the Ohio was ever to get to Malta we would have to stop slipping the tow each time the Stukas arrived. It was going to be Malta or bust and we lashed ourselves alongside the starboard side of Ohio using just about every wire left in the ship. The Rye was to tow in the normal way from forward and the Bramham was lashed to Ohio鈥檚 port side. The Ledbury was to have a wire secured to Ohio鈥檚 stern and try to act as a rudder. Three other minesweepers; Speedy, Hebe and Hythe, turned up from nowhere and would help in repelling air attacks. One good point was that we were now so close to Malta that we had very good Spitfire cover.
The enemy High Command had no illusions about what was at stake. Not only the future of Malta but the whole of the Mediterranean and the Middle East lay inside the battered tanks of the Ohio.
We did not have to wait long before a very large force of JU88鈥檚 appeared. The Spitfires were waiting for them and aircraft were falling out of the sky in all directions. Some of the Junkers had had enough: they dropped their bombs wide and ran. But there was one still coming through our barrage and if he hit this cargo with his large bomb we were all going west. The aircraft came through the last barrage explosions and dropped his bomb. It fell about 400yards off Ohio鈥檚 stern causing another hole in her hull and badly shaking us all. We did not know it then but this was to be the last raid. The enemy did not want to play anymore: the Spitfires were too good for them.

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