大象传媒

Tales from the Bilges

Once upon a time long, long ago, there was I sitting in the port blister of Catalina MN-M, 600 miles southwest of Lough Erne, clipping through low puffs of cumulus cloud at about 1500ft. into brilliant sunshine. It was the morning of 26th May 1941, pleasantries abounded, the breakfast made and washed up for the eleven crew and their 鈥渞equests鈥� satisfied and as I sat I was witnessing the heaving Atlantic in crystal blue with contrasting southern rollers creating great splashes of foaming white. So be the advantages of crewman on a Coastal Command flying boat, no heat of battle here.

Blissfully unaware of ensuing events which I was to see within minutes, the like of which few have ever seen, for, breaking out of a patch of cloud, there was below me at an angle of about 30 or 40 degrees, the most beautiful ship I鈥檝e ever seen. She was racing south at full tilt into the southern rollers, hardly lifting her sleek bows so that the seas were sweeping over her foredeck, over her gun turrets and crashing into her superstructure.

Transfixed by the scene below me, I had no thought or time to think of danger from such a weapon of war, no thought of what was to become of those men below me in the hours to come, no thought of what 鈥�209鈥� and ourselves were to bring about, no knowledge of the closing Navy ships.

Gazing down in those precious minutes and seconds we leisurely cruised by this beautiful ship, no thought of human conflict, no human to be seen from either side, it was to be a battle devoid of personal contact, it was to be a battle between machines with men as fodder.

Full into her barrels on the beam I gazed, not a glimmer of fear did I feel, nor did time allow. Suddenly her turrets spoke and through great bursts of jet black smoke, red tulip centres showed and hid the ship from end to end; the beauty of the scene complete.

We turned away unscathed and beat a hasty retreat, their shortest fuses too long to bring us down for nothing burst between this ocean barbarian and ourselves. Chance had selected us as the winners but, for them, only our respect. Occasionally venturing closer either for information purposes or by accident, we reaped the odd blast of her armament and felt the Cat dance to the clump clump orchestration of her guns.

For five hours we clung at her heels, believing she was equipped with ship board aircraft, there were numerous warnings of enemy attacking aircraft, these to send me tearing from the galley to the transom gun position which gave the most non informative position on the whole aircraft. I learned years later that these sightings were mistaken ones; despite one member assuring us he saw the crosses on their wings. Given a bit more time, the Navy might well have lost a couple of Fairy Swordfish. Although I never saw them, I鈥檓 sure that鈥檚 what they must have been.

Having suffered some non-critical damage, F.Lt. Briggs and crew, who made the original sighting, advisedly left for base after we made some visual exchange with them. Thus we remained on station keeping up the output of information, then eventually seeing that she was out of control from the attacking Swordfish and headed North, we left the area to arrive back at Lough Erne over twenty hours after take off, tired and thankful to be there.

It has to be said on that day, May 26th 1941, so glorious for us because Britain had kept her sea lanes open and saved many a merchant ship and crew, but for Germany such a reversal of her recent triumphs was a catastrophe and a hint of what was to come, she had put forward her best naval effort with the Bismark, the most advanced battleship of its time and over two thousand two hundred of her sailors and lost the lot inside five days.

Lt. Johnson of the U.S. Navy accompanied us on that day, long before America entered the war. I spoke little to him on that episode, nor did I see him thereafter, I bet he had some tale to tell his fellow compatriots.

I trust he survived the war. He came to teach on Catalina handling, but learned a lot from we British. It would be an event if he could be located and invited to our Flying Boat Reunion(s).

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