大象传媒

HMS PENN IN OPERATION PEDESTAL
(Autobiography of L.D.W.Rees)
Part one

Control of the 鈥淧鈥� Class Flotilla was transferred to the Cormorant at Gibraltar and our parish now became the approaches to the Mediterranean and the area down to Freetown in Sierra Leone.
Time passed more or less uneventfully until we entered Gibraltar on August 9 when it was immediately apparent that something was up. The pens were nearly full of destroyers refuelling and taking in fresh provisions. What the operation was going to be and where the big ships were we had no idea, although 鈥榖uzzes鈥� of every description were flying around.
I had two cameras onboard, a small folding Kodak and an old Box Brownie that my wife Flo had won in a magazine competition. I had no film however, as this was unobtainable at home, so I spent the afternoon of the 9th going through practically every shop in Main Street in an attempt to buy, beg or steal some films and eventually succeeded in obtaining eight rolls of Kodak film. Now whatever it was that we were going to do I had the chance of taking 64 snaps.
We sailed on the evening of the 9th and during that night passed through the Straits of Gibraltar now knowing that we were part of the escort of a large convoy to relieve Malta.
The next morning dawned on a rare sight for as far as the eye could see there were ships. In the centre were 14 large merchant ships sailing in four columns, six cables apart (1200 yards). There were 13 freighters and one oil tanker. Each of these ships had been specially chosen for this convoy because of their high speed and very sturdy construction. Two of them, the Almeira Lykes and Santa Eliza, were American owned and manned whilst the other eleven freighters were the pride and joy of the British Merchant Navy. The Port Chalmers, who was to have a charmed life during the next few days, was wearing the Commodore of Convoy鈥檚 pendant. Then came the Empire Hope, Deucalion, Brisbane Star, Rochester Castle, Glenorchy, Melbourne Star, Clan Ferguson,Wairangi, Waimara and Dorset. Each ship carried the same proportions of cargo, ammunition, petrol in five-gallon cans, flour and general foodstuffs. Their holds had been carefully and painstakingly packed in such a way that the sacks of flour would act as a shield, protecting the petrol and ammunition against the fire and blast of a bomb or torpedo explosion.
The tanker Ohio was American built and owned but was under charter to the Ministry Of War Transport. She could do 16 knots with ease and on this voyage was carrying eleven thousand tons of oil fuel and kerosene. She was manned by an all-British crew under the command of Captain D.W.Mason.
One glance at the escorting warships was enough to make one think we had half the Royal Navy with us. In the centre of the Fleet were the battleships Nelson and Rodney, both commissioned in the late 1920s but still more than a match for any other battleships in the world. They were of unique construction for no other nation had the nerve to build similar ships. Their main armament was nine 16inch guns and their uniqueness lay in the fact that all the guns pointed the same way, forwards. It was obvious that, whatever situation they were faced with, they could never run away, and whenever you were in company with these two ships you knew there was only one way to go and that was onwards.
Astern of the battleships were four aircraft carriers: Victorious, Indomitable and Eagle operating Hurricanes, Martlets and Fulmars for the defence of the convoy whilst the Furious was carrying 38 Spitfires for the future defence of Malta. These were successfully flown off when within range of the island and Furious returned safely to Gibraltar.
Also in close company were seven cruisers: Manchester, Phoebe, Charybdis, Sirius, Kenya, Nigeria and Cairo, the last two being fitted out as aircraft direction ships. Surrounding the whole armada was a screen of no less than 32 destroyers of various classes and it was a magnificent sight. Looking at the armada of ships that day steaming steadily on and on made one feel very proud indeed. It was an honour and a privilege just to be there. There was to be no turning back of this lot and Malta was going to be relieved, come what may.
The German and Italian High Commands knew that Malta was practically starving and would have to be relieved if she was to stay in the war on our side. They also knew that a very large force had passed through the Straits of Gibraltar during the early hours of August 10 so they were now busy preparing our reception. We did not know it, and perhaps it was a good job that we didn鈥檛, but in the next few days and nights we were going to be attacked by more than 750 aircraft: high and low level bombers, dive bombers, torpedo carriers and a few peculiar odd and ends. There were twenty German and Italian submarines in our path culminating in an ambush at the point where the convoy and escorts would be splitting up for the last leg of the run to Malta. Around the corner of Cape Bon and stretched out to the south of Pantallaria we were going to have to pass no less than 23 E-boats who would be waiting for us during darkness with their engines switched off and all lights out. The previous Malta convoy in June had been attacked by an Italian cruiser squadron when about a hundred miles from Malta. It had been successful from their point of view so the odds were that we would be attacked likewise.
August 10 and the following night passed without incident and we pressed steadily on into the Central Mediterranean. The first enemy contact was just after 10a.m. on the morning of August 11 when reconnaissance aircraft appeared on the scene. That afternoon the first blow was struck by a young German Lieutenant commanding U-boat U73. who cleverly manoeuvred himself under the convoy until he was in the right position to attack the Eagle and put four torpedoes into her. She sank in less than ten minutes taking about a quarter of her ship鈥檚 company of 1,200 down with her. I was very sad indeed to see her go because she was an old friend. She had been the China Fleet鈥檚 aircraft carrier throughout my commission in the Medway and we had been in company many times.
Later that evening, about half and hour before dark, came the first concentrated and co-ordinated air attack by three dozen Ju.88 bombers and Heinkel IIIs carrying torpedoes. They came out of the dusk and were very difficult to spot. For those of us in the screening destroyers this attack was a magnificent spectacle; we had the privilege of being in grandstand seats with practically no danger at all for the enemy were not interested in the small fry. It was the convoy centre the enemy were after and there were literally thousands of black blobs in the air as the entire centre of the fleet opened up with everything they had, including Nelson and Rodney鈥檚 鈥淐hicago Pianos鈥�. It was a terrific barrage and effectively broke up both formations of aircraft.
Not a single ship was hit and I had seen four aircraft crash into the sea. Many more of them must have been severely damaged during the last tremendous barrage. Round one had gone to the enemy with the loss of the Eagle but round two had definitely gone to us.
I, like a fool, wasted an entire precious roll of film on this attack for when the prints were produced there was hardly anything to see. The centre of the action was some 500 yards away and the light was not good enough for my simple camera.
The night of the 11th passed uneventfully and the 12th dawned with same magnificent sight to be seen as on the morning before. The convoy had not been touched and we had lost only one warship, albeit an important one. We were now only about 70miles from the enemy airfields in Sardinia and expected an attack in the early light of dawn when conditions would have favoured the aircraft. For some reason it did not materialise.
The dawn patrol of fighters took off from the carriers and soon got rid of the two reconnaissance planes. This was surely a waste of two good aircraft by the enemy. What they needed reconnaissance planes for, when their bases were only seventy miles away beats me. They were only some 30 minutes flying time away and we were not going to be far off in any half hour.
The first attack on the 12th arrived just after 9 0鈥檕clock. It was by twin engined JU. 88 and they had a tough time because our fighters were waiting for them. Only a few got through to the convoy and once again no ship was hit.
It was an excellent sight to see some enemy aircraft drop their bombs into the open sea and run for home away from the fighters. Six bombers were lost during this raid and some of the others were so severely damaged that they could never have got home.
The second raid of the day was the biggest one yet. It was a combined effort by the two enemy air forces, and all types of aircraft were used and some ideas that had never been tried before. The first wave was Italian bombers and fighter-bombers. These were successfully driven off with no ship having been hit. The second wave consisted of more than 40 torpedo carriers who split into two attacking groups and came in from both sides of the screen. One of the groups decided to use the gap between our bows and the stern of the destroyer ahead of us to break through the screen. There followed an unforgettable sight as this formation of 21 torpedo carriers came on and on to our gap, in perfect formation about 25 above the calm sea. As they came nearer we opened fire with everything we had and so did the destroyer ahead. The gap was no more than 500 yards wide and one would think they would never get through because a good shot with a catapult should have been able to hit the nearest one as he went through the gap.
Those Italian pilots certainly had guts, and incredible as it may sound, I have to report that from the combined efforts of ourselves and the destroyers ahead not one of those aircraft fell into the sea. We must have been hitting them because they were point blank targets. Nevertheless they carried on through our gap, still in perfect formation. However, the big ships鈥� guns very soon broke this formation and forced them to drop their torpedoes too far away from their real targets, namely the ships of the convoy.
The Italians then tried a trick that, if they had been lucky, would have caused a grievous blow. They had two single engined monoplanes made to look exactly like Hurricanes and fitted each with a specially made bomb. These aircraft approached Victorious as real Hurricanes were landing on and no one bothered about them as everybody thought that they too were Hurricanes. They flew over the flight deck of Victorious and dropped their bombs. One missed but the other landed bang in the centre of the flight deck. Luckily this bomb, instead of exploding on impact, broke into many pieces and did practically no damage at all. Both of the aircraft got away without a single shot being fired at them.
At this stage of the raid there was still no damage to the convoy, but suddenly eleven German dive-bombers appeared out of the sun. They were originally part of a much larger formation but our fighters had got at them and there were only these eleven left. This lot were experts at the dive-bombing lark and they picked on the Blue Funnel Lines Deucalion as their target. Only one bomb hit her, and this passed right through the ship. A couple of bombs exploded just ahead of her and three more in the sea so close to her starboard side that their explosions caused the ship to be lifted out of the water and very badly shaken. By the time her Master, Captain Ramsey Brown, had ascertained the damage done and that all was well in the engine room, she was too far behind the main convoy to have much chance of catching them up. She therefore set a course close to the Tunisian coast with the hopes of carrying on to Malta alone but for Bramham, a Hunt Class destroyer escorting her. She was sunk later that evening.
The main convoy, with only one gap in the four columns of merchant ships, steamed on for the remainder of the afternoon. The entire destroyer screen was pinging away with their Asdics in an effort to locate submarines we knew would be in the area.
We were now nearing the entrance to the Sicilian Narrows and coming up to the Skerki Bank, where the convoy escorts would split up; the battleships, aircraft carriers and some of the cruisers with twelve destroyers would remain in the area for some time to ward off any attack by the Italian Fleet and then return to Gibraltar. The merchantmen and the remainder of the escorts would form up into two lines to be guided through the swept channel down the Narrows. This operation of reforming needed quite some time and a very large amount of space.
It was the ideal time and place for a submarine ambush and they were there all right. AT 16.40 torpedo tracks were seen and the destroyer Lookout spotted a periscope. The Tartar joined in the hunt for this one, but the destroyers could not stay long. They severely shook and damaged the submarine but did not manage to sink it. While this little fracas had been going on, the destroyer Ithuriel, who was on the opposite side of the screen, spotted a periscope. She raced towards it and her first set of depth charges forced the Italian submarine Cobalto to the surface. The Ithuriel immediately turned around and rammed it, sending the Cobalto to the bottom with only slight damage to her own bows. It was, as her Captain said later, 鈥� A lovely crunch鈥�.
Five minutes after this a fresh fighter bomber attack developed but instead of pressing home their assault on the main convoy they picked on the Ithuriel who was by now all alone and picking up survivors . She was ready for them and her guns beat the raiders off.
By 18.30 we were just about ready to start the convoy鈥檚 reformation but we were by now within range of the Stuka Ju 87 dive-bombers stationed in Sicily. Suddenly they arrived, about 30 of them with a strong escort of fighters to protect them from our Hurricanes. Their strategy was obvious. As their main enemy was our fighters they concentrated this attack on the carrier Indomitable, a large group of them peeling off, one after another and diving down to about a thousand feet before letting go of their bombs. Indomitable was hit by three bombs on her flight deck. This made her unusable and put her out of the war for a long time. Her aircraft had to land on Victorious, which was now our only serviceable carrier. No other ship was hit by the Stukas, but at the height of their raid a perfectly coordinated attack by fourteen Italian torpedo planes developed. Their only victim was the destroyer Foresight whose stern was blown off, so that she had to be sunk. The convoy steamed on and on, the only ship still missing being the Deucalion.
At this stage Admiral Syfret in the Nelson and in overall command made a vital decision that in my humble opinion was a grave tactical error. We were about to start the regrouping of the convoy for the journey through the Narrows. It was 7o鈥檆lock in the evening and there would be another hour and an half before darkness set in. The torpedo bomber raid that was just over had caused ships to get out of line. It seemed as if there were ships all over the place instead of in a tight enough formation to put up a really effective anti- aircraft barrage. You did not have to be very bright to know that we would have further air attacks before nightfall. Yet at exactly 7o鈥檆lock Admiral Syfret signalled Rear Admiral Burroughs in the Nigeria 鈥淕od speed and good luck.鈥� And then began detaching the big ships and turned to the westwards and the way to Gibraltar.
It was suggested to me that he was very concerned about the fate of the carrier Indomitable that was then steaming for Gibraltar at 12 or 13 knots. I was only a mere petty officer serving in one of the destroyers of the screen, but in my opinion the plain duty of everyone engaged in 鈥淥peration Pedestal鈥� was to the convoy and nothing else. The Indomitable had played her part but was now useless to the convoy and if she was going to be sunk, that would be just too bad. But the decision had been made and the heavy units began to move westwards. In my heart I am positive that John Kelly or 鈥淯ncle 鈥� Jim Somerville would not have left us before nightfall if either of them had been in command.

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