大象传媒

Captain Frederic John Walker: War Command
The following story by Terence Robertson is out of copyright and appears courtesy of and with thanks to Mike Kemble, and Captain Frederic John Walker.

The struggle to secure a sea appointment after Dunkirk proved more difficult than Walker had thought possible. The Battle of Britain was fought and won largely within sight and hearing of his office at Dover Castle; the threat of a German invasion provided a temporary outlet for his restless mind as he played his role in preparing the South Coast鈥檚 defences. Then came another and far more serious menace. The U-boats, already individually successful, devised their 鈥渨olf pack鈥� attacks and massacred convoys left burning trails across the seas. The peril he had planned for, and against which he had continuously warned at the Anti-Submarine School, made him increasingly impatient with Dover as his most responsible job in the war. With reports of increased losses at sea, he began to bombard Admiral Ramsay and Their Lordships with pleas which all rebounded with the curt, official reply: 鈥淩equest not approved.鈥� With every refusal, Walker became more determined to get back to sea. Had there been no war, he would have been content to remain a 鈥減assed over鈥� commander. His principal source of joy was Eilleen and the family; his needs were few, a comfortable home, a garden and sufficient money to give the children a reasonable education. But the moment Britain stood with her back to the sea wall, he impatiently threw aside dreams of a semi-retired existence. This was understood and shared by Eilleen who realised that any attempt to keep him at home would be selfish. She was quietly prepared to let him find his own place in the fight. When the shelling of Dover became fierce, his promise that their fourth child should be brought up as a Catholic was remembered. In a letter to his executors, he said: "Please note the fact that I wish my third son, Andrew. to brought up and educated as a Roman Catholic. Please ensure that this is done in the event of my death.鈥� In March, 1941, he travelled to London on leave and called at the Admiralty to see an old friend, Captain George Creasy, of the then Director of Anti-Submarine Warfare. Creasy was one of the few men who knew how badly the Battle of the Atlantic was going, how serious were our losses and how necessary it was to have the best men and equipment sent to Liverpool, the new headquarters of the Western Approaches Command. He knew Walker as an anti-submarine specialist: the fact that his friend had been passed over meant only that he had merely suffered in the cut-throat competition for a place on the pre war promotion list. Here was a man who should be usefully employed in the grim struggle at sea. He listened to Walker鈥檚 arguments for a sea command and ended the interview by promising to do everything within his power. This was not too great, but sufficient for him to be able to write a personal letter to the Commander-in-Chief; Western Approaches, Admiral Sir Percy Noble, outlining Walker鈥檚 qualifications and recommending a command.
It is inevitable in war that the customs of peace often get kicked out of the window. If at this time the Admiralty took a little longer to start kicking, it was only because its deeply ingrained customs were fundamentally good ones. 鈥榃e were losing more ships than we could hope to build, and one of the first customs to suffer was the practice of keeping 鈥減assed over鈥� officers in subordinate positions. Experienced officers, particularly those trained in anti-submarine warfare, were in short supply, and an obscure department was ordered to sift personnel. The process was slow but efficient, On receipt of Creasy鈥檚 letter, Sir Percy Noble started the machine to have Walker transferred from Dover to his own Command. In September, the Admiralty sent a signal to Dover which ordered him to Liverpool to assume command of HMS Stork for duties in the Atlantic under the Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches. The next few days were filled with contented excitement for the Walker family. Ordinary Seaman Timothy had been selected as a candidate for a commission in the RNVR and had been sent to an officers鈥� training unit; Cadet Nicholas of Dartmouth had become Mr. Midshipman Walker awaiting a sea posting; Gillian had another year at school before she could fulfil her ambition to join the Wrens; and Commander and Mrs. Walker handed in the lease of the house they had rented at Dover for more than a year, waved farewell to less fortunate friends who had to stay in a town still being bombed and under daily fire from the long-range guns of Calais, and set off for separate destinations. Mrs. Walker to her family at Hambledon, near Henley, and her husband to Liverpool to take over his own ship and prepare her to meet the enemy wherever he could be found. After months of office work at Dover, where extensive minefields were relied upon to deny the Channel passage to U-boats, bustling Liverpool presented an exciting, war-like contrast.
This great seaport and front-line base of our Atlantic operations teemed with industry as stevedores raced to unload and load the stream of dirty, unpainted freighters; cranes clattered in the docks while pneumatic drills throbbed in the repair yards; tugs scurried urgently up and down the wide Mersey, their whistles bleating anxiously; sleek destroyers, busy sloops and bouncy, brash corvettes marched and counter marched along swept channels cleared by patient mine-sweepers. Among the massive, smoke-blackened buildings lining the waterfront was Derby House, a comparatively new office block now transformed into the headquarters of Admiral Sir Percy Noble who, little more than a year before, had set up is Command to ensure the 鈥渟afe and timely arrival of our convoys鈥�. When he arrived with his Chief of Staff; Commodore J. M. Mansfield, and the Air Officer Commanding No. 19 Group of Coastal Command, he had only the promise of ships and men. The Admiralty had scoured the coasts and seas until the Western Approaches Command now controlled the destinies of thousands of men sailing from Gibraltar to Murmansk, from New York to the Channel. A vast headquarters organisation tracked each convoy and Escort Group round the clock; the Intelligence Division intercepted enemy wireless signals at sea to pin-point the positions of every known U-boat; the Air Staff sent their aircraft along convoy routes to the PLE, Prudent Limit of Endurance, of point at which they must turn back if remaining fuel was to last out. Into this organisation stepped Walker who at once found himself among strangely-assorted bedfellows. It seemed that by design or accident all the misfits of the Navy had congregated at Liverpool. Among his brother officers were many of his own kind鈥斺�漰assed overs鈥� who at some stage or other had become red-tape rebels. But the vast majority were officers of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, week-end sailors churned out by the recruiting machine often with inadequate training. The Royal Naval Reserve, those independent merchant men who would become sore boils in big ship wardrooms, somehow fitted in here by providing their expert seamanship to balance the ignorance of the willing, but lamentably 鈥済reen鈥�, RNVR A generous variety of these officers manned the ships of the 3 Escort Group when Walker took command of His Majesty鈥檚 sloop, Stork, and became to his surprise and delight the senior officer of the Group鈥檚 nine ships which consisted in addition to Stork, of the sloop, Deptford, and the corvettes, Rhododendron, Marigold, Convolvulus, Penstemon, Gardenia, Samphire and Vetch.
His first job was to find out something about the eight commanding officers serving under him, and try out the ships鈥� companies. All told, upwards of five hundred men who had never before set eyes on each other had to become a trained, well-knit team. This was the key to Walker鈥檚 personal plan; if U-boats were to be destroyed, the hunters would have to become a team, with himself as its playing manager. As the group left harbour bound for working-up exercises, Walker was grimly determined that each of the individualists astern of him would quickly learn that the 3 Group was to be a unit welded in one cause鈥攖he destruction of the enemy. The working-up routine had been skilfully devised by an expert in the art of driving both officers and men mad in the least possible time. All day they carried out anti-submarine and gunnery exercises; at night they sailed again to protect imaginary convoys. When the sleepless days and nights had stretched into weeks, and orders were given and obeyed automatically, they were allowed one night at anchor. Tired out, the Group collapsed into bunks and hammocks. But it was not to be. In the early hours, the energetic senior officer of the training school came alongside in a motor-boat. "Officer of the Day.鈥� 鈥淵es, Sir.鈥欌�� 鈥淵ou have been rammed forward, your stern is on fire and the enemy are preparing to attack the anchorage. Get cracking.鈥� Alarm bells rang and they were at it again. By the middle of November, they were about as trained as the brief course would allow. There was some co-operation between ships鈥攏ot much it is true, but some. There was no time for anything more. Sir Percy needed every ship on the Atlantic runs. A few days later, the Group returned to Liverpool and re ported ready for duty. Walker himself was not entirely satisfied that they were. The course had provided all concerned with an opportunity to get to know their neighbours, and it had been possible to see how the commanding officers handled their ships. It was also true that, when they took the field, he could now confidently expect them to know in which direction to kick the ball. But sadly, and quite understandably, they were not yet a team. He felt it urgent that every commanding officer in the Group should know exactly what to do in any emergency; and that every individual move should be related so that each ship was operating to a set plan. He would have to make the plans, and his team鈥攚hen it became one鈥攃ould then act accordingly. In fact, with a minimum of reference back they would be doing what he wanted them to do automatically and without waiting for orders. In the brief moments of relaxation during exercises, he had drawn up a series of orders to his captains which he called, 鈥� Escort Group Operational Instructions鈥�. They were succinct, concise and, like Walker himself, direct:
(1) The object of the Group while on escort duty is to ensure the safe and timely arrival of the convoy concerned. It is not possible, with the ships available, to dispose of the Group in such a way as to protect the convoy completely from enemy attacks鈥攖hese must be accepted and doubtless some losses. The only practicable course of action is to ensure that any enemy craft, either surface or air, which attack are destroyed.

(2) The particular aim of the Group therefore is to be taken as the destruction of any enemy which attacks the convoy. U-boats are the chief menace to our convoys. I cannot emphasise too strongly that a U-boat sighted or otherwise detected is immediately to be attacked continuously without further orders, with guns, depth charges and/ or ram until she has been destroyed or until further orders are received.
(3) I wish to impress on all officers that, although I shall naturally take charge of the majority of operations, I consider it essential for themselves to act instantly without waiting for orders in situations of which I may be unaware or imperfectly informed.
(4) It should seldom, if ever, be necessary to conclude a signalled report with the words: 鈥淩equest instructions.鈥� Action should be 鈥減roposed鈥� or 鈥渋ntended鈥� by the men on the spot鈥攁nd the senior officer can always say if he doesn鈥檛 like it.
(5) No officer will ever be blamed by me for getting on with the job in hand.
A slight clash with Derby House arose over a plan he had devised for dealing with U-boat attacks on a convoy at night. Using the private family name for his wife, he termed the plan 鈥淥PERATION BUTTERCUP鈥�. This, in essence, called for turning night into day by a generous use of every form of illuminant such as starshell and rockets. 鈥淚t is the practice of U-boats,鈥� he said, 鈥渢o attack our convoys at night, operating, trimmed down on the surface. Once the enemy has located a convoy several U-boats are likely to converge and attack at short intervals. Experience shows that, after an attack. the U-boat will either remain near the wreck of a torpedoed ship, or make off on the surface at high speed to escape the attention of slower escorts. 鈥淥PERATION BUTTERCUP" is designed to force the U-boat to dive by plastering the area round the wreck with depth charges and by illuminating the most likely directions of his surface escape. Once submerged, the destruction of the submarine is considerably simplified. The object of OPERATION BUTTERCUP therefore is to destroy any U Boat which has succeeded in attacking a convoy escorted by night by this Group.鈥� The technical method of carrying out this operation so impressed the Operations Staff that a copy was shown to Sir Percy Noble. It was basically sound, but the Commander-in- Chief instructed Walker to make amendments to those clauses with which he did not entirely agree. Walker obeyed with surprising meekness and in consequence the name 鈥淏UTTERCUP鈥�, hitherto reserved by the Walker family, was issued for the guidance of the whole Western Approaches Command with the Derby House endorsement that the Operation provided the maximum chance of sinking U-boats at night. Walker had begun to make his presence felt in the battle. His presence had also been felt in the sturdy little, peacetime- built Stork. Ships invariably take on the spirit of their crews, a happy, efficient crew means a buoyant, reliable ship which rarely sees the repair yard and answers willingly to any calls made upon it; a discontented crew鈥攚hich often means laxity and inefficiency鈥攁nd the ship is sluggish when she should be fast and ready for that tiny bit extra when most needed. The difference conies from the top鈥攖he captain. Stork had become a happy ship. Walker demanded a lot of his officers and men, but he rarely interfered with his officers on the details of their respective duties. His enthusiasm passed right down to the crew who became increasingly aware of the vital role each man played in the fighting of his ship. The men were keen and Stork was happy. She would behave well in battle.
Towards the end of November, 1941, the 3 Group sailed from Liverpool to take an outward-bound convoy to Gibraltar. This first trip, a test for them all, was fortunate indeed. A series of heavy gales hit the convoy, driving it into huge seas and howling winds which made it unlikely that U-boats would be operating seriously on the surface. Walker grabbed the chance to put his Group through a series of exercises, gunnery shoots and depth-charge drills which impressed the convoy. By the time they arrived in Gibraltar early the next month, he could congratulate himself on his handling of the Group and feel confidence in their team efficiency. At a meeting of commanding officers in his own ship he offered the toast:
鈥淭o the 36th Group and the total destruction of the enemy.鈥�

Continued.....
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