Royal Navy Handbook 1939-1945 E-Book

David Wragg

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 518

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2005

Beschreibung

Overstretched from the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Royal Navy acquired First World War surplus destroyers from the United States Navy and embarked on a massive programme of construction, building and buying aircraft carriers, escort carriers and frigates and corvettes, building up a powerful submarine arm and, almost from scratch, re-creating the naval air arm taken from it in 1918. The service had to learn fast. It soon became clear that the Germans would not provide an opportunity for a major battleship to battleship fleet action along the lines of Jutland, but that submarine warfare and surface raiders were to be just as effective at undermining the British war effort. The Royal Navy was expected to be active in the North Atlantic and in British waters, and then after the Soviet Union was invaded by Germany, it had to protect the Arctic convoys. Meanwhile, it also had to keep control of the Mediterranean, alone after the fall of France, supporting ground forces in North Africa and then in Greece, send convoys to Malta and disrupt the Axis supply lines both in the Mediterranean and off the coast of Norway, and then it had to face the Japanese in the Far East. By the war's end the Royal Navy had grown from its pre-war strength of 129,000 to 863,000 men. Its fleet had also grown from 12 to 61 battleships and cruisers, seven to 59 aircraft carriers, and 100 to 846 destroyers, by 1945.

Leseprobe

ROYALNAVY

Handbook

1939–1945

ROYALNAVY

Handbook

1939–1945

DAVID WRAGG

First published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by

Sutton Publishing Limited

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© David Wragg, 2005, 2013

The right of David Wragg to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 5428 0

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Introduction

Acknowledgements

1 THE ROYAL NAVY IN 1939

2 NO PHONEY WAR AT SEA

3 BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

4 WAR IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

5 FIGHTING THE WEATHER AND THE GERMANS

6 OVERWHELMED IN THE FAR EAST

7 BREACHING FORTRESS EUROPE

8 RETURNING TO THE EAST

9 THE FLEET AIR ARM

10 THE SUBMARINE SERVICE

11 COASTAL FORCES

12 RECRUITMENT AND TRAINING

13 PERSONAL AND PERSONNEL

14 WARSHIPS

15 NAVAL BASES

16 NAVAL AIR SQUADRONS

Appendix I The Board of Admiralty in 1940

Appendix II Battle and Campaign Honours

Appendix III Victoria Cross Awards

Appendix IV Medals and Decorations

Appendix V Comparison of Ranks: Royal Navy and Army

Appendix VI Museums: Portsmouth, Gosport, Yeovilton, Chatham

Abbreviations

Chronology

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

‘Command of the sea is the indispensable basis of security, but whether the instrument that commands swims, floats, or flies is a mere matter of detail.’

Adm Sir Herbert Richmond, Statesmen and Sea Power, OUP, 1946.

Despite years of economic depression, in June 1939 the Royal Navy and Royal Marines totalled 129,000 men, which could be expanded by a further 73,000 men from the Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Today, in a period of economic prosperity and many uncertain dangers, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines numbers just about a third of its 1939 strength. Admittedly, we have lost the burden of empire, but all too often the responsibilities of the past come back to haunt us, whether it be in providing humanitarian aid – as most recently following the tsunami that caused devastation across the Indian Ocean, or simply during the hurricane season in the Caribbean – or maintaining an armed intervention as in Sierra Leone. It is clear that today we would be hard put to repeat the Falklands campaign of 1982, and even that was a close-run thing, with ships lost because of the lack of airborne-early-warning aircraft. In 1939 the United Kingdom had the world’s largest Merchant Navy, and we still had the remnants of it in 1982, but today a Britishregistered deep-sea vessel is a rarity, so there is no longer the trained back-up of seafarers to allow the rapid expansion of a fleet, and no longer the same opportunity to ‘take ships up from trade’ when a crisis occurs.

Of course, technological change has also helped reduce the number of ships and manpower needed. Modern warships do not need to spend years in refit simply to have their engines changed, or months to have boilers cleaned. The presence of helicopters aboard frigates and destroyers also helps. Yet from 2006 until 2012 the fleet will be without fighter air cover, and in recent years this has comprised just two squadrons, each of only eight aircraft, with only two of the three aircraft carriers active at any one time. The dependence on costly nuclearpowered submarines is also a weakness, as smaller, conventional submarines are not only cheaper and better for training, they are also much better for many tasks, including the insertion of special forces and operations in shallow waters. In one sense, it might not matter that for the first time in more than 200 years, the Royal Navy is smaller than the French navy, but in others it does. France does not claim to be a maritime power, yet most of our trade is by sea. We also have extensive offshore waters to protect, both for fisheries purposes and because of the importance of North Sea oil. Recent events such as the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq also show that France does not view the world in the same way. Yet politicians constantly demand more from the armed forces while providing less, and in the case of the Royal Navy, the construction of new ships is not an oper-ational question, but a political matter, so that the present government can safeguard its majority.

If one is to draw a parallel between the 1930s and the situation today, one shines through clearly. Between the two world wars, the ‘ten-year rule’ applied, meaning that there would be ten years in which to prepare for a major war. Today, much the same attitude is taken. But modern equipment takes much longer to bring to service. In fact, by the time the Eurofighter Typhoon 2000 reaches operational service in the Royal Air Force, more than twenty years will have passed since the first flight of its antecedent, the British Aerospace Future Combat Aircraft. In the meantime, the role for which the aircraft was designed has gone, and much time and taxpayers’ money has been spent re-inventing the wheel, simply so that work and technology can be transferred to European partners who have a different requirement. An earlier in-service date and new aircraft carriers capable of handling conventional take-off and landing aircraft might have meant that this fighter could have been a formidable addition to the Fleet Air Arm’s capabilities.

Today we are also looking at ten years plus for new ships, against three in the 1930s. Yet modern technology should mean that ships are easier to design and construct, with modular installation of equipment. All too often we are told that ships are simply ‘platforms’ for weapons and aircraft.

Looking at the world today, we see a heavily armed China emerging not only as an industrial power, but – while that country lacks democracy and maintains territorial ambitions – a regional, if not global, threat. The increasing centralisation of power in Russia also threatens a return to the dark days of the Soviet Union, which many Russians mourn as they face the uncertainties of life in post-Communist Russia. A modern ten-year rule is even more dangerous than it was during the 1930s, when just six years passed between Adolf Hitler’s assumption of absolute power and war breaking out. We no longer have the certainties of a known danger, as during the Cold War. After all, no one waking up on the morning of 11 September 2001 realised what that day would bring, and its implications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In researching and compiling any book such as this, an author is heavily dependent on the help and assistance of many others. In particular, I am indebted for the provision of photographs and other material to Lord Kilbracken, who, as John Godley, flew as an RNVR pilot; to ‘Bill’ Drake for photographs of his service; to my cousin David Wragg (yes, there is another David Wragg) for photographs of his late father’s submarine service during the Second World War; to Mrs Marjorie Schupke, for photographs of her brother, Sub Lt (A) Gordon Maynard, RNVR, who lost his life in action while flying with no. 1836 Squadron off HMS Victorious; to my late father, Lt S.H. ‘Harry’ Wragg, RN, for his collection of wartime photographs and other material.

Inevitably, official and semi-official sources have also been invaluable. Like many other researchers, I am grateful to Debbie Corner, Keeper of Photographs at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum at Gosport; Jerry Shore, Assistant Curator and Archivist of the Fleet Air Arm Museum, and his enthusiastic team; and to the Photographic Archive team at the Imperial war Museum.

No work on something as vast as our wartime Royal Navy can cover every inch of ground, and for those whose appetite is whetted by this book, I would draw their attention to the bibliography at the back. There are accounts of the war at sea from every perspective, including the all-important personal accounts, as well as volumes of sheer factual matter, essential for the serious student and the modeller alike.

David Wragg

Edinburgh

Summer 2005

CHAPTER ONE

THE ROYAL NAVYIN 1939

The Royal Navy of England hath ever been its greatest defence and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island.

Sir William Blackstone (1723–80)

‘Finally, let it be remembered that when the present naval re-armament is completed in about 1940 our figures will still be 21 capital ships as against 68 in 1914, 69 cruisers as against 103 and 190 torpedo craft as against 319.

‘With the exception of Germany, every other leading navy will be substantially stronger than before the last war.’

So wrote Lt Cdr E.C. Talbot-Booth, editor of the magazine Merchant Ships, on the eve of war in 1939. The period between the two world wars had not been good for any of Britain’s armed services, and it certainly had not been good for the Royal Navy. The First World War had marked a turning point. The nation that had prided itself on maintaining a fleet that was the equivalent of any other two foreign navies, the so-called ‘Two Power Standard’, had nearly been brought to its knees by a combination of the German U-boat menace and the reluctance of the Admiralty to institute a convoy system. The search for a decisive sea battle had led to the Battle of Jutland in 1916, but this proved to be anything but decisive. On paper, the Royal Navy had lost, suffering heavier casualties in men and ships than the German navy, although a strategic victory could be claimed, since the German High Seas Fleet put back into port and never ventured out again. The introduction of convoys and a sea blockade of Germany eventually meant that it was the Germans who were brought to the point of starvation.

STRUGGLING BETWEENTHE WARS

After the war, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 meant that the best the Royal Navy could aspire to was the ‘One Power Standard’; in other words it would be limited to the size of the navy of one other nation. In fact, the Treaty was very specific, for its provisions allocating maximum tonnages to each navy of the signatories meant that the other navy was to be that of the United States. In addition to the Treaty’s stipulating a maximum tonnage of ships for the main navies, it also imposed restrictions on the total tonnage for each type of warship, and maximum tonnages for individual vessels as well, with cruisers limited to 10,000 tons, for example; capital ships were limited to 35,000 tons and aircraft carriers to 27,000 tons, although both the British and Americans were allowed two carriers of up to 33,000 tons each. Both the Royal Navy and the United States Navy were limited to a total warship tonnage of 525,000 tons, while Japan, a First World War ally, was limited to 315,000 tons, and France and Italy to 175,000 tons each. These limitations had some unexpected results, with all three of the largest ‘treaty navies’ having battlecruisers in excess of their permitted tonnage, and all three took the option of converting two of these ships to aircraft carriers, although the Japanese lost one of their battlecruisers while it was under conversion, as a result of an earthquake, and converted a battleship instead.

The statistics tell one story, but there were practical differences that meant that the state of the Royal Navy was worse than it might have been. The first of these was the determination of successive British inter-war governments to tighten the Washington restrictions and drive down the tonnage of ship-types to much less than that allowed under the treaty, aiming at a figure of around 8,500 tons for a heavy cruiser and 23,000 tons for an aircraft carrier. Not surprisingly, the future Axis powers took an opposing view, and consistently understated their tonnages. At the London Naval Conference of 1930, the Japanese attempted to obtain parity with both the UK and the USA. Four years later, Japan formally notified the other Washington Naval Treaty signatories that she no longer considered herself bound by its restrictions. German desire for rearmament became increasingly clear after Hitler came to power in 1933, although the Paris Air Agreement of 1926 had already removed the restrictions on German commercial aviation and aircraft manufacture. The London Naval Treaty of 1936 paved the way for the reconstruction of the German navy, restricted by the Washington Naval Treaty to a coastal defence force, granting Germany a total tonnage equivalent to 35 per cent of that of the Royal Navy, although within this figure, what can only be regarded as an oversight or collective memory loss allowed Germany parity with the Royal Navy in terms of submarines! The Germans even managed to build extra ships once new tonnage was permitted, ordering the battlecruiser Gneisenau secretly.

The second problem was that the Royal Navy had lost its aviation element, the Royal Naval Air Service, with the creation of the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918. So it happened that between the wars, the navy that had invented the aircraft carrier and had come to know more about the operation of aircraft from ships than any other navy, found itself providing aircraft carriers for an air force to use. Many have drawn attention to the poor state of British naval aircraft at the outbreak of war, and some have blamed this on the Air Ministry, even though it too suffered from severe financial constraints until the late 1930s. The real problem, however, was the loss of experienced naval aviation personnel to the RAF in 1918. While the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Air Force had included a number of naval airmen, especially for the catapult lights aboard battleships and cruisers, most naval officers knew little about aviation and cared even less. It was the Admiralty who believed that high-performance aircraft could not be operated off aircraft carriers. By contrast, in the United States Navy, with control of its own air power, even including the shore-based, long-range maritime-reconnaissance aircraft, there were senior officers such as Read and Towers with a real understanding of naval aviation.

In fact, this leads us to another weakness of the Royal Navy between the two world wars. It had quickly forgotten the teaching of Lord Fisher that the future of naval warfare would be in the air and under the sea. It still clung to the belief that future war at sea would see major fleet actions dominated by the battleship, and officers continued to be taught the ‘lessons’ of Jutland.

So, here we have it. A navy that had played fair and abided by its treaty limitations, hampered by tightly drawn public purse-strings and by a zealous and unwarranted desire to reduce ship-sizes on the part of the body politic, facing opponents who had consistently ignored their treaty obligations and whose expansion plans had never been limited by money, but by shipbuilding capacity and the availability of raw materials.

The impact of all this on the individual serviceman should not be underestimated. Across-the-board pay cuts during the financial crisis of 1931 resulted in mutiny among ratings aboard the ships of the Atlantic Fleet at Invergordon on the east coast of Scotland. Officers without a ship or a posting ashore awaiting them all too frequently saw their careers interrupted by a spell on half-pay, and this was a danger of service life for officers as senior as rear admiral! Half-pay was not abolished until 1938 and in that same year, faced with the need to increase recruitment and improve retention rates, officers over the age of 30 years received a marriage allowance for the first time. The Women’s Royal Naval Service, the ‘Wrens’, was also reintroduced.

The outbreak of war did not come as a surprise to the Royal Navy, which had expected war from October 1935 onwards, after Italy had invaded Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia), and indeed many in the Mediterranean Fleet at the time were surprised and disappointed that the League of Nations did not sanction war with Italy. The successive crises over Czechoslovakia and Italy’s seizure of Albania had also increased tensions.

A BLUE-WATER NAVY

The world’s navies are generally divided into those that are ‘blue water’, or ocean-going, or ‘brown water’, which means that they are limited to coastal duties or perhaps a largely land-bound sea, such as the Baltic or the Black Sea. The Royal Navy has always been the consummate blue-water navy, with a worldwide reach, while also retaining the tasks that fall upon a brown-water navy, such as fisheries protection and, in times of war, keeping ports open through minesweeping. By contrast, the United States Navy was largely able to overlook many of these tasks, except minesweeping, because of the existence of the United States Coast Guard, in many ways a brown-water navy, which belonged to the US Department of Transportation during peacetime, but came under naval control in wartime.

By 1939, the Royal Navy had been through a number of reorganisations. The Grand Fleet of the First World War had become first the Atlantic Fleet and, later, the Home Fleet. The Inskip Award of 1937 had seen naval aviation handed back to the Admiralty, which formally took control of the Fleet Air Arm in May 1939.

In 1939, the distribution of the Royal Navy was:

The Home Fleet, which was the largest single administrative formation.

The Mediterranean Fleet, with its bases at Malta, Gibraltar and Alexandria.

The China station, essentially meaning Hong Kong.

The East Indies station, mainly centred on Singapore.

The American station, meaning Bermuda.

The African station, based on Simonstown, near Cape Town in South Africa.

The West Indies station.

On the outbreak of war in 1939, the Home Fleet was the strongest element within the Royal Navy. The commander-in-chief was Adm Sir Charles Forbes, who had 5 battleships, 2 battlecruisers, 2 aircraft carriers, 3 squadrons with a total of 15 cruisers, 2 flotillas each with 8 or 9 destroyers, and some 20 or so submarines. The main forward base for the Home Fleet was Scapa Flow in Orkney. Scapa had been neglected since the previous conflict, and it was only as late as April 1938 that the Admiralty had decided that Rosyth would not be adequate for the coming conflict. All too soon, Scapa itself was to prove insecure, but in any case this was more of an anchorage than a base, lacking the heavy repair facilities available at Rosyth. On the other hand, Rosyth, on the north or Fife banks of the Firth of Forth, was too far south, about twelve hours’ steaming from Scapa.

Also in home waters and in addition to the Home Fleet, another two battleships and two aircraft carriers were based in the English Channel, with three cruisers and a destroyer flotilla, while another two cruisers and a further destroyer flotilla were based on the Humber. Further escort vessels were based on Plymouth and Portsmouth.

Under wartime pressures, new North Atlantic and South Atlantic commands were created. There were also six home commands: Orkney and Shetland, Rosyth, Nore, Dover (created in October 1939), Portsmouth and Western Approaches. The last-named was initially at Plymouth, but soon moved to Liverpool. The China station became the British Eastern Fleet on 2 December 1941, with its own commander-in-chief, and was augmented by ships that had previously been allocated to Force Z. After the fall of Singapore and the Japanese attacks on Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the British Eastern Fleet moved its headquarters to Kilindini, or Mombasa, in British East Africa (now Kenya). Operations in the Indian Ocean were helped by a secret refuelling base at Addu Atoll (now known as Gan).

Despite this network of fleets, commands and stations, it was to be the British Pacific Fleet that eventually became the most powerful when it was formed late in the war and, despite the title, it operated as part of the US operation against Japan as Task Force 57, part of the US Fifth Fleet. The two best-known ‘forces’ operating independently of the fleets were Force H, based on Gibraltar, convenient both for operations in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and the small Force K, based on Malta.

In addition, the Royal Navy had far closer links with the navies of the British Empire than would be the case today, when these relationships have largely been overtaken by those with Britain’s allies within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO. There were differences, however, and the Canadians, for example, took a far more independent view than say the Australians or New Zealanders. Nevertheless, the four main Commonwealth navies were the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Indian Navy (which had been known as the Royal Indian Marine as late as 1935), as well as the New Zealand Division, which later under wartime pressures became the Royal New Zealand Navy. None of the other colonies maintained a naval force, although locally recruited personnel were present in many cases. While officially Egypt was an independent kingdom, it was still at this time run virtually as a colony by the United Kingdom, and the Royal Egyptian Navy was commanded by a British admiral.

In 1939, no other navy had such a spread of responsibilities as the Royal Navy. The French came closest, with the need to maintain ships in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, as well as a small naval presence in their colonies, but as a far weaker force. Much can be noted from the fact that instead of ‘fleets’, the Marine Nationale was divided into Atlantic and Mediterranean Squadrons, as well as a Far Eastern station (in French Indo-China).

The Royal Navy and Royal Marines in June 1939 totalled 129,000 men, of whom just under 10,000 were officers. To bring it up to maximum strength in wartime, it could depend on recalling recently retired officers and ratings, as well as two categories of reserves, the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), which between them provided another 73,000 officers and men in 1939. The Royal Naval Reserve consisted mainly of people drawn from the merchant navy, often bringing with them outstanding navigation and ship-handling capabilities, although, of course, there were other branches, notably marine engineering. The Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve consisted of people from all walks of life, and was to undergo massive wartime expansion, since most wartime recruits went into this servce. The old saying was that Royal Navy officers were ‘gentlemen trying to become sailors, RNR officers were sailors trying to become gentlemen, and the RNVR were neither trying to become both’! Doubtless, RNR officers from the smarter shipping lines, such as P&O, would probably have refuted any suggestion that they were not gentlemen.

Included in the 1939 total were 12,400 officers and men in the Royal Marines. The Royal Marines had a number of roles aboard ship, including security and the RM Band Service, but on cruisers and battleships they also manned X turret, one of the after gun-mountings. The Fleet Air Arm included a significant number of RM pilots and some observers. As early as 1923, the Admiralty had received the recommendations of the Madden Committee, one of which was that the Royal Marines should have a more ambitious role, raising a striking force based on amphibious warfare and also a mobile force for defending overseas naval bases. These far-sighted recommendations were ignored, probably as a result of financial constraints, until war broke out, after which they were to form the foundation of the Royal Marines Commandos.

The demands of war saw the RNVR grow to 48,000 officers and 5,000 ratings. Many RNVR personnel rose to command corvettes, minesweepers and destroyers; others took command of Fleet Air Arm squadrons as that element of the RN expanded rapidly. By mid-1944, the RN had reached its peak strength of 863,500 personnel, including 73,500 of the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Many of the lower-deck personnel in wartime were conscripts called up under the National Service Acts for ‘hostilities only’. In many cases, when merchant shipping was taken up from trade, the ships’ companies were signed up under special articles so that they became part of the Royal Navy and subject to naval discipline, with temporary naval ranks, although they retained certain Merchant Navy terms of service, such as danger money for working in a war zone.

The Royal Navy’s wartime casualties amounted to 50,758 killed, with another 820 missing, presumed dead, and 14,663 wounded. The WRNS lost 102 killed and 22 wounded, mainly in air raids. By contrast, the Merchant Navy lost 30,248 men through enemy action. One crucial difference between the two navies was that while ratings in the Royal Navy were paid less than their Merchant Navy counterparts, their pay continued if their ship was lost, while their better-paid Merchant Navy opposite numbers had their pay stopped immediately their ship was lost and not reinstated until they signed on to a new ship. This could be a serious loss of money for men who might have spent considerable time in an open boat, and then much longer after being rescued being taken to a port, where there might or might not be a ship looking for their services.

While many bases, including Singapore, had been neglected during the years of peace and recession, so too had many of the roles that the Royal Navy was to be called upon to perform, including combined operations. Deficiencies included the lack of suitable craft to place troops and their equipment ashore, and this shortcoming was only just beginning to be corrected as war broke out. It was not until Churchill came to power that the importance of combined operations was stressed, and in July 1940 he set up a special directorate to develop this form of warfare and to ensure that men were trained and equipment developed. Fortunately, Admiralty control of the Royal Marines made the task easier. Had this been done earlier, it is tempting to think that the outcome of the Norwegian campaign would have been different. Some historians blame the proponents of air power for the lack of attention paid before the war to ‘combined ops’, with the air-minded claiming that seaborne landings were hazardous and at risk from air attack, but the culprit was really the extreme cheese-paring inflicted by successive governments, aided and abetted by the ‘peace in our time’ lobby.

Before the war, Area Combined Headquarters, or ACHQs, were established close to Plymouth, Chatham and Rosyth, with all three services represented, but in reality these were mainly aimed at improving RN–RAF Coastal Command cooperation. As the war progressed, this system was extended to foreign stations. The Western Approaches ACHQ was moved in 1941 from Plymouth to Liverpool.

The fleet that went to war in September 1939 consisted of twelve battleships and battlecruisers, including HMS Hood (‘The Mighty Hood’, which despite its battlecruiser designation had been the world’s largest warship for many years), 7 aircraft carriers, of which 4 were either in reserve or earmarked for early retirement, 2 seaplane carriers of little use in the carrier age, 58 cruisers, 100 destroyers, 101 other escort vessels, 38 submarines and 232 aircraft. This compared badly with the 61 battleships, 2 aircraft carriers, 120 cruisers and 443 destroyers, plus many sloops for convoy protection with which the Royal Navy had struggled to maintain control of the seas in the previous global conflict. Yet by 1945, this fleet was to grow to 61 battleships and cruisers; 59 aircraft carriers; 846 destroyers, frigates and corvettes; 729 minesweepers; 131 submarines; 1,000 minor vessels and landing craft and 3,700 aircraft.

Much has been made of the contribution to Britain’s armed forces of the dominions and colonies but, in terms of equipment, this was insignificant in 1939. None of the dominions could offer battleships or aircraft carriers, and in fact had relied heavily on the imperial power for defence. In the event of a threat from Japan, Australia and New Zealand had been promised the support of the Royal Navy. No one seems to have considered the possibility of fighting three nations, a war on three fronts, while there was still time to do something about it.

By contrast, the German navy, or Kriegsmarine, in 1939 had 2 old battleships, really the old coastal defence ships permitted under the Treaty of Versailles, 2 battlecruisers, 3 armoured cruisers, 3 heavy cruisers, 6 light cruisers, 22 destroyers, 20 torpedo boats and small destroyers, and 59 submarines. The three armoured cruisers, or in German terms panzerschiffs (armoured ships), were known to the British as ‘pocket battleships’, in reality a description invented by the British media and a term not used by the Germans. Still under construction at the outbreak of war were the two battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz. In reality, the German navy was unprepared for the outbreak of war in 1939, having been assured by Hitler himself that war with the British Empire would not start until 1944 or 1945, with a major fleet battle probably not due until 1948. The Germans’ long-term planning for the war at sea centred on what was known as Plan Z, which had replaced the earlier plans X and Y. This called for a significantly stronger fleet with 6 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 4 aircraft carriers, 17 light cruisers and 223 U-boats. The U-boat figure was actually increased further under pressure from Dönitz, head of the submarine force. To put Plan Z into perspective, by the time of its completion, the Royal Navy would also have been much stronger, with at least six more aircraft carriers and several new battleships and cruisers. Another factor was that both the Germans and the Italians had internal problems to overcome before they could press ahead with completion of the aircraft carriers, as in both countries the air forces insisted that all air power should be under their control.

The Italian navy was stronger still, and as Italy did not enter the war until June 1940, that has to be the relevant date for comparison. The Italians had 6 battleships and 7 heavy cruisers, 14 light cruisers and a coast defence ship, no less than 122 destroyers and torpedo boats and 119 submarines.

On this basis, the Royal Navy was outnumbered and outgunned by the opposition, even without the need to dilute its strength through maintaining a worldwide presence. The Imperial Japanese Navy was not to be an opponent until December 1941, by which time the United States was also in the war, but by that date, the Japanese could boast 10 battleships, with 2 still building, 8 aircraft carriers and 18 heavy cruisers, 20 light cruisers and 108 destroyers, as well as 65 submarines. The Japanese navy was the only Axis navy to have aircraft carriers; both the Germans and Italians had such ships planned, but although construction had started and was well advanced, it was never completed. An unusual feature in the Japanese navy was the inclusion of aircraft-carrying submarines, something long abandoned by the Royal Navy after the loss of the experimental M2, and even more unusual was the fact that some of the Japanese submarines could carry two aircraft.

Looking at navies in terms of the numbers of ships and manpower is not enough. In 1939, the Royal Navy had radar, the Italians did not. The Royal Navy also had ASDIC, or sonar as it would now be called, which was far superior to the hydrophones used during the First World War. In fact, the Italian navy did not expect to fight at night! In addition, the Royal Navy had the advantage of belonging to a maritime power that had a substantial merchant fleet and a large fishing fleet, an obvious source of experienced manpower and, in an emergency, ships as well. Many passenger liners became armed merchant cruisers, and while this concept proved to be a failure with heavy losses whenever these ships were confronted by the real thing, the trawlers lifted from the fishing fleets did sterling service on convoy escort duties and minesweeping, while the smaller fishing vessels helped to carry out the many small but important tasks around harbours and anchorages. Ferries were also called up, with those for the Isle of Wight handling minesweeping, while the continental and Channel Islands ferries often found themselves working either as troopships or as hospital ships. The Merchant Navy also provided the ocean rescue tugs that did so much to help warships and merchantmen in distress, being positioned at strategic locations around the British Isles and sometimes abroad as well, and these were also responsible for moving the sections of the Mulberry harbours required for the support of forces put ashore in the Normandy landings.

ADMIRALTY

The big difference between the Royal Navy and the British Army and the Royal Air Force was that the Admiralty was not simply the power that directed the Royal Navy: unlike the War Office and the Air Ministry, it was also an operational headquarters every hour of the day and every day of the year. While the Royal Navy did have local commanders with substantial delegated authority, usually designated as the flag officer (flag rank being the Royal Navy’s equivalent to a general officer in the British Army, or air rank in the RAF), there would often be a commander-in-chief over and above any flag officers. The term ‘flag officer’ meant those holding the rank of rear admiral and above. As an example, the Mediterranean Fleet had a commander-in-chief, with subordinate flag officers for cruisers, destroyers and aircraft carriers; on the other hand, Force H, based on Gibraltar, had a flag officer and enjoyed considerable autonomy, moving between the Atlantic and the western Mediterranean as the strategic position required. As the war developed, not only was there a commander -in-chief for the Home Fleet, but also one for the Western Approaches as well.

As an operational as well as an administrative HQ, the Admiralty could, and did, send orders to individual COs aboard their ships over the heads of their local c-in-c, justified by the developments in naval intelligence. Indeed, the withholding of information by the Admiralty had contributed to the unhappy outcome of the Battle of Jutland in 1916, and that lesson had been learned. The Admiralty included an Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC), and this was to prove especially successful in countering the U-boat threat.

A long-established institution, the Admiralty dated from the reign of Henry VIII, and long before the Second World War was controlled by the Board of Admiralty, which itself had replaced the earlier post of Lord High Admiral. First Lord of the Admiralty was a political post and its holder a member of the Cabinet; at the outbreak of war the post was held by Sir Winston Churchill. The naval officers on the board were led by the First Sea Lord, who was also the Chief of the Naval Staff. The other sea lords were the Second Sea Lord, responsible for personnel; the Third Sea Lord or Controller of the Navy, responsible for ship building and repair, including the naval dockyards; the Fourth Sea Lord, responsible for victualling and supplies and the naval hospitals; and the most recent addition to this select group, the Fifth Sea Lord, in charge of naval aviation. Appendix I shows the constitution of the Board of Admiralty at the beginning of the war.

The First Sea Lord was supported by the Vice-Chief of the Naval Staff, who had wide-ranging responsibilities including intelligence, planning, communications, hydrography and navigation, and by three Assistant Chiefs of the Naval Staff, otherwise known as ACNS, who had responsibility for home, foreign and trade matters. In addition to these individual roles, each ACNS would also look after local defence, operations, training, gunnery and minesweeping.

The way in which this structure worked can be best shown by the example of the Western Approaches Command. This had responsibility for the Battle of the Atlantic and for the convoys, putting it under the direct responsibility of the ACNS (Trade). The Admiralty Trade Division planned routes for the convoys, working with the Submarine Tracking Room at the Admiralty, itself part of the Naval Intelligence Division. The allocation of merchant ships to convoys was the responsibility of the Naval Control Service, which had a presence in each merchant port. Escort vessels were organised into groups under the control of Western Approaches.

Within the fleets, major warships such as battleships, battlecruisers, cruisers and aircraft carriers, were organised into squadrons, each of which could have two or more ships. Smaller warships such as destroyers, minesweepers and submarines were organised into flotillas, again with varying numbers of ships, although destroyer flotillas often seemed to consist of five vessels. A destroyer flotilla would be subdivided into two divisions. Within ‘forces’, the squadron and flotilla distinction was usually dropped, so that Force K, for example, based on Malta at the height of the siege, consisted simply of two cruisers and two destroyers for part of its existence. A submarine flotilla often operated independently and could have any number of craft, while submarine commanders usually had considerable delegated authority; there was none of the centralised direction that characterised the German U-boat fleet and which soon became a liability, since once the German ‘Enigma’ codes were broken the constant stream of signals could be decoded and signals traced to reveal the location of submarine wolf-packs. Later, the Admiralty became heavily involved in combined operations, and when the time came Combined Operations took over landing ships and landing craft.

THE WHITE ENSIGN

The white ensign – the standard of St George with a Union flag in the upper left quarter – is today synonymous with the Royal Navy. This is because from very early times English ships wore the cross of St George, although at times this was combined with other devices, for example during the Tudor period, when the green and white stripes of the Tudors sometimes also appeared. After the start of the Stuart period and the union of the English and Scottish crowns, the Scottish saltire and the cross of St George were combined, and the resultant flag flown from the masthead, while English and Scottish ships continued to wear their own national colours as well. In 1634, the combined flag was reserved for the use of the sovereign’s own ships, although this was in abeyance during the period of the Commonwealth when Cromwell had warships revert to the cross of St George. In 1801, following the union with Ireland, the cross of St Patrick was added to the flag to create the Union flag as we know it today. As time wore on, a smaller version of the Union flag was carried on the bowsprit – smaller so as not to interfere with the rigging – and this became known as the jackstaff.

Meanwhile, the King’s fleet was divided into three squadrons, with the senior or centre division wearing the red ensign and the second-most-senior, or van, division wearing the blue ensign, leaving the junior or rear division as the white division, with a white ensign. At that time, the white ensign was simply a white flag with the Union flag in the corner. Unfortunately, the French naval ensign was also white, so to prevent confusion with what was, after all, Great Britain’s most usual opponent, the red cross was added. The system of having three different ensigns for the Royal Navy was itself troublesome, and quite irrelevant when ships were deployed singly or in small numbers. At Trafalgar, the entire fleet fought under the white ensign for the first time as Nelson was the vice-admiral of the white squadron. Ensigns were always worn at the stern.

After Trafalgar, the red ensign became the flag worn at the stern on ships not owned by the Crown, while the blue ensign became the flag for the Royal Naval Reserve and, later, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, as well as one or two other select users. Masters of merchant vessels who were members of the Royal Naval Reserve were allowed to fly a blue ensign on their ships, but this right was normally only exercised on a Sunday. The new Union flag, strictly only ever a ‘Union Jack’ when flown on a warship, once again became the preserve of vessels owned by the Crown, with ships in private ownership supposed to fly a white jack, that is a Union flag with a white border. The white jack has become something of a rarity, largely because the practice grew of merchant vessels flying their house pennant on the jackstaff.

The practice grew of the white ensign and Union Jack being flown only on ships in port or at anchor, with the white ensign flown from the masthead when at sea. Certainly, this became more practical with aircraft carriers and other ships operating aircraft over the stern. As with all other British national and service flags, these have been flown only in daylight when they can be seen – hence the practice of hauling down flags at dusk and raising them again at dawn – contrary to the practice in most countries.

When two or more members of the Board of Admiralty are aboard a ship, the Admiralty flag could also be worn from the peak, this was based on the old flag for the Lord High Admiral, a gold foul anchor on a red background.

An admiral would fly a simple St George’s cross when aboard a ship, his flagship of course, while a vice-admiral would fly a flag with a red ball in the top quarter closest to the mast, and a rear admiral would have a flag with a red ball in each of the two quarters closest to the mast. Commodores would fly a simple pennant with the cross of St George.

When on convoy duties, the convoy commodore, who could be a Merchant Navy master or a naval officer not necessarily of commodore rank, flew a pennant with a blue cross.

CHAPTER TWO

NO PHONEY WARAT SEA

In the wreck of the continent, and the disappointment of our hopes there, what has been the security of this country but its naval preponderance?

William Pitt, 2 February 1801

On looking back at the Second World War, one often hears mention of the ‘phoney war’, that period between the outbreak of war in September 1939 and the German invasion of Denmark and Norway the following April, when nothing seemed to happen. The Germans called this period the Sitzkrieg, the ‘sitting war’, which was far more accurate as the opposing armies sat on opposite sides of the French Maginot Line. For the mass of the population, but especially for the civilians, little seemed to happen after war was declared on 3 September 1939.

There was no such thing as a phoney war at sea. On 3 September 1939, the very day that war broke out, the liner Athenia, 13,500 tons, was torpedoed off the Hebrides, without the warning required by the Hague Convention. Out of the 128 who lost their lives, twenty-eight were Americans, giving Hitler the opportunity to argue that the ship had been the victim of a British attack intended to sour relations between Germany and the United States. Later, the U-boat commander was to claim that he had mistaken the ship for either a Q-ship or an armed merchant cruiser.

Whatever view one might take of these arguments, the Germans were determined to bring the war home to the Royal Navy at the outset. During the first months of the war, losses at sea became all too commonplace. Just two weeks after the start of the war, on 17 September 1939, after flying had ended for the day, the aircraft carrier Courageous was torpedoed by U-29 and sunk while on an anti-submarine sweep. The carrier sank in just twenty minutes, taking 500 men with her, many of whom would have been trapped below decks in the dark. Submarine sweeps were wasteful and hazardous, akin to looking for a needle in a haystack, given the available intelligence at the time. Worse was to follow. It was to be small consolation that the first German aircraft to be shot down, on 26 September, was accounted for by fighters from Ark Royal, for on 14 October, U-47 penetrated the sheltered anchorage at Scapa Flow in Orkney and torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak, which sank with the loss of 833 lives. The submarine had fired two salvoes, each of three torpedoes; two torpedoes of the first salvo missed, and the one that made contact failed to explode properly, but forty-five minutes later a second salvo exploded under the battleship, detonating her magazine.

November was no better, for on the 23rd of that month, while on convoy escort duty, the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi, a former P&O liner, was sunk by the German battlecruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst off Iceland. This was an unequal contest between the finest ships in the Kriegsmarine at the time and a ship that not only lacked the firepower, armour and speed of her adversaries, but was also unable to match their rate of fire and gunnery direction.

This succession of losses was reversed before the year ended with the first British victory of the war. The brighter news came from the South Atlantic when, on 13 December, the cruisers Ajax, Achilles and Exeter encountered the German pocket battleship, or panzerschiff, Admiral Graf Spee, which had been engaged in commerce raiding, near the mouth of the River Plate. Despite being outgunned, the three cruisers used superior tactics that caused the Graf Spee to divide her fire, and managed to damage her to the extent that she had to seek refuge in Montevideo, in neutral Uruguay. Here, she was allowed three days for temporary repairs, but instead put all but a skeleton crew ashore and sailed on 17 December, simply to be scuttled. Had she not taken that course, her opponents were ready to resume the Battle of the River Plate. Many theories have been advanced for this success, including the inability of the German ship to direct her fire in two directions simultaneously, or that she might have mistaken the two light cruisers, Ajax and Achilles, for destroyers.

Hunting for commerce raiders was slightly easier than chasing submarines, especially since a growing number of British ships had radar; moreover, battleships and cruisers at the time still carried seaplanes for aerial reconnaissance, although obviously the support of an aircraft carrier was far better. The danger was that the heavier armed units of the Kriegsmarine could usually outgun the cruisers sent to catch them: 11in guns were far superior in range and in the damage that they could inflict to the 8in guns of a heavy cruiser, let alone a light cruiser’s 6in main armament. British cruisers on foreign stations were exercised in dealing with a German surface raider, and by a curious twist of fate, during one such exercise in 1938, the heavy cruiser Exeter had played the part of a German pocket battleship.

The Germans believed that their panzerschiffs could only be countered by a British capital ship, but this was far from true. Perhaps it showed some foresight that before the outbreak of war, one of the Graf Spee’s sisters, Deutschland, was renamed Lützow because someone thought of the impact on the nation’s morale if Deutschland was sunk. In 1940, the panzerschiffs were redesignated as heavy cruisers.

As early as 16 October 1939, the Luftwaffe had mounted a raid on British warships moored in the Firth of Forth. On this occasion the need to avoid civilian casualties was very much in mind. The nine Junkers Ju88 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 30 had as their target the battlecruiser Hood, but finding her in Rosyth Dockyard, turned their attention instead to the two cruisers Edinburgh and Southampton, and both ships were bombed. Although the damage to Edinburgh was slight, Southampton received a direct hit from a 1,100lb armour-piercing bomb that went through the port side before travelling down through three decks and out through the starboard side, after which it exploded causing further damage to the ship. Had the bomb exploded before it emerged, the ship could have been lost.

The concern for civilian life was not to last long, and at the height of the ‘Blitz’, the Royal Navy’s three main home bases at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth were to be heavily bombed.

A pleasing footnote to the end of the Admiral Graf Spee came in the New Year. On 14 February, the Graf Spee’s supply ship, the Altmark, carrying British prisoners, merchant seamen from ships sunk during the commerce raids, was boarded by men from the destroyer Cossack in Jøssingfjord and the 303 prisoners set free. Altmark had sought refuge in Norwegian territorial waters after being challenged by Cossack while at sea, and the British destroyer had earlier been barred from entering neutral Norwegian waters by that country’s destroyers as neither ship should have been there. Captain (later Rear Adm) Philip Vian withdrew immediately after releasing the prisoners. The Norwegian government sent a strong protest to London against what it regarded as high-handedness on the part of the Royal Navy, but even so, allowed the Altmark to continue her passage to Germany. Many believe that the ‘Altmark incident’ was a factor in encouraging Hitler to invade Norway, but far more important was the need to secure the Norwegian ports and coastline essential for convoys bringing iron ore from Sweden, especially in winter, when the Gulf of Bothnia froze. No doubt he also felt that seizing both Denmark and Norway would also weaken the British blockade.

While the Royal Navy had been quick to introduce a convoy escort system on the outbreak of hostilities, having learnt the harsh lessons of the First World War, German naval operations were seriously inhibited at first by both the blockade and the need for submarines and surface raiders to sail around the north of Scotland and through the Denmark Strait to reach their operational waters. The fall of France gave the Germans established naval ports with open access to the Bay of Biscay and beyond. The more direct route from Germany down the North Sea and through the Straits of Dover was judged to be too risky – a factor that was to be made good use of later when planning the audacious ‘Channel Dash’.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy had also spent the first few months of the war engaged in other activities. The widespread belief in 1939 was that the fighting, once it started, would see a repeat of the trench warfare of the First World War, but in any case, the territorial integrity of France had to be defended from the almost inevitable German assault. Between September 1939 and June 1940, half a million men and 89,000 vehicles were moved to France across the English Channel, without loss. Despite fears that German U-boats would intervene, only one passed safely through the Straits of Dover. So successful were the defensive minefields laid by the Royal Navy that during October 1939, by which time the last of 3,600 mines had been laid to create a barrier, three U-boats were lost.

Nevertheless, the Second World War saw the Royal Navy at a disadvantage on the other side of the British Isles, where it felt the loss of its bases in the Irish Republic. Even though they were supposed to be available under treaty, the Navy was deprived of the use of Berehaven in the south and Lough Swilly in the north. The latter was relatively easy to replace, with nearby Londonderry, across the border in Northern Ireland, becoming a handy substitute, with the advantage that it also had airfield facilities to the east at Eglinton, now known as Derry City Airport. The Western Approaches would have benefited from the base at Berehaven, as would the Atlantic convoys, but Devonport, near Plymouth, remained operational despite heavy German aerial attack; moreover, new bases, more conveniently sited, grew at Milford Haven near the western extremity of South Wales, as well as further north at Liverpool and on the Clyde in Scotland.

Other steps were also taken to improve the security of merchant vessels, so that by March 1941 the Admiralty Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship (DEMS) organisation had equipped 3,434 ships with anti-submarine guns and had also put one or more close-range anti-aircraft guns on 4,431 British and Allied ships. Initially, naval ratings and army gunners were seconded, but later merchant seamen were trained to take their place.

NORWAY

The Royal Navy found itself presented with a challenge by the German invasion of Denmark and Norway. Denmark was overwhelmed quickly as German forces swept over the border and an invasion fleet was sent directly into the harbour at Copenhagen. Intervention by Britain and France was simply not possible. Norway was a different case, where defence was aided by the terrain and by the loss of key German commanders in the invasion, which also gave the Norwegian government time to move out of Oslo and organise resistance by the country’s small armed forces. Alerted to the impending invasion, the Royal Navy had already started to mine Norwegian waters on 8 April, the day before the invasion started. An Anglo-French expeditionary force with an initial 13,000 men was quickly assembled and by mid-April British and French troops landed in Norway, with the landings covered by the aircraft carrier Furious, which then moved to the role of aircraft transport while the newest carrier, Ark Royal, took over protection of the landing fleet and forces ashore. The Mediterranean Fleet aircraft carrier Glorious was immediately recalled to home waters, and the carrier Eagle, in the Indian Ocean, was ordered to the Mediterranean.

With few good airfields available ashore, the Norwegian campaign was ideally suited to carrier operations, had sufficient ships been available together with aircraft of adequate performance. As it was, the Luftwaffe gained the upper hand as early as 10 April, when it mounted an attack against ships of the Home Fleet south-west of Bergen, sinking a destroyer and causing minor damage to the battleship Rodney and three cruisers, Devonshire, Glasgow and Southampton, the last of these only recently repaired after her earlier encounter with the German airmen.

The battle was far from one-sided, however, and an even greater success was scored against the German fleet that same day. Blackburn Skuas of nos 800 and 803 Naval Air Squadrons flying from HMS Sparrowhawk, RNAS Hatston, on Orkney, attacked and sank the German light cruiser Kønigsberg at Bergen, the first major warship to be sunk by naval aircraft. The aircraft used bombs, just 500lb apiece; a light cruiser was probably the limit of their capability as the bombs would have bounced off the armour of a battleship, or perhaps even have broken up. Still on 10 April the Royal Navy proved that it could give a good account of itself again, with the first destroyer action in Narvik Fjord: British destroyers sank two German destroyers and several merchantmen, but two of their own number were also sunk. Far more successful was the second destroyer action at Narvik, often referred to as the ‘Second Battle of Narvik’, with the battleship Warspite and nine destroyers sinking the remaining eight German destroyers on 13 April.

Nevertheless, a combination of factors, including some reluctance to press home attacks by forces ashore, meant that the Norwegian campaign was gradually being lost to advancing German forces, and the decision was taken to abandon Norway in order to reinforce British and French forces as the Battle of France developed. In fact, the withdrawal and disengagement from fighting was sufficiently difficult that few if any of the resources freed from the Norwegian campaign were able to be redeployed in France.

The evacuation was covered by aircraft from both Ark Royal and Glorious. The RAF squadrons ashore were ordered to destroy their aircraft, since these did not have sufficient range to fly home, and evacuate their personnel. Despite having no carrier deck-landing experience, the pilots of the Hurricanes decided to save their aircraft by flying them to the carriers. Despite her shorter deck, Glorious was chosen because her larger lifts meant that the aircraft could be struck down into her hangars without having to have their wings removed. As the Hurricanes lacked arrester-hooks sandbags were attached to weigh down the tailwheels and the aircraft were landed successfully aboard the ship.

Short of fuel, Glorious left Norway on 8 June and steamed westwards at a stately 17 knots, which her commanding officer considered fast enough to save the ship from submarine attack. Despite the absence of radar aboard, her captain did not order aerial reconnaissance to be flown, nor even order a lookout from her crow’s nest. All of her aircraft were struck down, while bombs and torpedoes were removed and returned to the magazines. Her sole protection was an escort of two destroyers. On to this peaceful scene at 16.00 appeared the two battlecruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, among the few German ships to be fitted with radar. Both ships opened fire at 28,000 yards with their 11in guns, with Glorious having no chance of firing back. The carrier increased her speed and the order was given to launch her aircraft. As additional boilers were fired up, the five remaining Swordfish were brought up from the hangars and made ready to launch a torpedo attack. At 16.15, the Germans scored their first hit on the carrier, destroying the aircraft, which were still without their crews, and, the range having been found, further shells then penetrated the flight deck and exploded among the Hurricanes in the hangar below. Within minutes, the hangar deck was an inferno as fuel left in the Hurricanes ignited and their ammunition exploded. At 17.00 a salvo destroyed the bridge, but by this time the ship was a pillar of smoke, despite having increased her speed to 27 knots. The destroyer escorts, Ardent and Acasta, were both lost making a desperate torpedo attack on the Scharnhorst, which was damaged by one of Acasta’s torpedoes.

An hour later, Glorious slipped beneath the waves. It is believed that as many as 900 of her combined ship’s company and embarked RAF aircrew of 1,500 may have survived the attack, but just thirty-nine men survived two days in cold water, without food or drink, before they were rescued.

In the first twelve months of war, the lack of sensible precautions had cost the Royal Navy two of its scarce carriers, by coincidence sister ships. The run of bad luck continued, for on 13 June, when fifteen Skuas of 800 and 803 squadrons embarked in Ark Royal were sent to attack the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau at Trondheim, they flew into heavy AA fire from the ships and also met a strong fighter defence; the Skua, ‘more dive-bomber than fighter’, stood little chance against such opposition, so that eight of the fifteen aircraft were shot down and their crews either killed or taken prisoner. Although one survivor likened the operation to the Charge of the Light Brigade, the operation was far less successful, since when the Scharnhorst was struck by a bomb, it failed to explode.

DUNKIRK