Sink the Bismarck! HMS Ark Royal, 26 May 1941

[iang]

1 hour ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

I assume that each squadron would have a different section of the hangar(s) - that was certainly standard practice in later carriers, up to & including my era’s Ark.  This sort of multi-Squadron range would have been complex at the best of times, so you’d almost certainly want to bring the aircraft up from below Squadron by Squadron; trying to sort them into sub-flights etc once on deck must have been a really good game in that weather

 

 

 

Yes, I think that's right and still with their own squadron handling crew at this stage of the war. Ark Royal also alternated strike leadership between squadrons and designated flights into first and second waves within strikes. So earlier on 26th, 820's C/O Stewart-Moore led the Sheffield attack and first wave in 4A, with 810's Senior Pilot Godfrey-Faussett the second in 2B.  For the Bismarck Strike on the morning of 27th, leadership passed to 810's C/O Johnstone in 2A, with the second wave led by 818's C/O Coode in 5A.

 

Incidentally, this was limited to a 12 aircraft strike because only 12 torpedoes remained onboard.  When contact was made, Johnstone's observer signalled Tovey's flagship by Aldis lamp requesting that KGV, Rodney, Dorsetshire, and Norfolk temporarily ceasefire to allow Ark Royal's Swordfish a clear run in. There is no recorded response to this signal, but Johnstone's strike force continued to receive AA fire until Captain Patterson ordered KGV to cease firing, recognising the Swordfish as friendly. There remained a strong belief among Ark Royal’s aviators that there was a decided unwillingness at high levels to allow the Swordfish to sink the battleship.

Edited July 10, 2019 by iang

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

34 minutes ago, iang said:

 

...but Johnstone's strike force continued to receive AA fire until Captain Patterson ordered KGV to cease firing, recognising the Swordfish as friendly. There remained a strong belief among Ark Royal’s aviators that there was a decided unwillingness at high levels to allow the Swordfish to sink the battleship.

...and slightly afterwards, too, if Jock Moffat’s memory is to be believed; he reckons KGV shot at them even after they’d been told not to.

 

The belief that the Grown-Ups wanted Bismarck to be sunk by surface units rather than the upstart FAA comes across loud and clear in the 3 contemporary accounts I have read (Jock Moffat, Gerald Woods and Mike Lithgow); they clearly felt it very strongly.  I am a biased WAFU, of course, but it certainly rings plausible - but at least some of that would have been the surface / battleship fleet’s thirst for revenge for the demise of Hood.  Because we know what happened, and understand just how deeply flawed she was, it’s hard for us to picture quite what a symbol / talisman Hood was for the RN (& even the country) between the wars.  The professionals understood - Kerr / Holland were closing Bismarck as fast as they could when she was sunk, because they knew full well the danger from long range (& therefore plunging) heavy shells. 

 

Because of the way the RAF was formed in 1918, there wasn’t much real understanding of aviation at senior levels in the RN; the RNAS people who would have been Admirals 20 years later largely went to the RAF.  There were definite exceptions - Bell Davies for one - but in general the RN was still very much in thrall to big guns; being a good Gunnery Officer was seen as the most likely route to the top (Communicators, too).  But in general the full potential of aviation wasn’t universally understood in the surface fleet yet - especially in a high seas action (as opposed to a Taranto-style attack in harbour).  To be fair to the Fish-Heads,  the performance of Naval aircraft in 1940-41 was hardly enough to strike fear into many hearts.

 

Besides, aviators are young, tend to be noisy, and they are paid more - a sure-fire recipe for disdain.  The capacity to look down a patrician Fish-Head Commander’s nose at the antics of the sprog aircrew was alive and well in 1987, let alone 1941!  I used regularly to be told in Broadsword that I was merely a weapon system; not really a proper Naval officer at all.

 

But a lot of it was simply normal tactical doctrine at the time.  Fleet manoeuvres between the wars concentrated on using carrier aircraft to slow down the enemy, so that the battleships could catch up and sink them with guns.  This almost worked at Spartivento, and did work to varying degrees in both Bismarck and Matapan.  That was what aircraft were for, in their eyes.  It took the Pacific war to prove finally that carriers did not simply escort the High Value Units: they were the High Value Units.  But that was still a couple of years away, and anyway was at least partly to do with the conditions / geography of that war.

 

Besides, in view of the difficulty they had in getting Bismarck to sink, it is a moot point whether another Swordfish strike would have done the job unaided.

Edited July 10, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Richard502]

Ex-WAAFU: at about 3:15 into this film there are diagrams for spotting Swordfish on an Illustrious class carrier

HTH, Richard

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

...and just to prove that my life is not all pontificating about history, a small amount of modelling has broken out.  

 

As already observed, this Tetra brass is superb!

 

More tomorrow, probably 

 

Crisp

 

 

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Martian]

Nice brass worrying there Crisp.

 

Martian 👽

[Procopius]

14 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

There were definite exceptions - Bell Davies for one

And Denis Boyd, RAAC with the Eastern Fleet, whom Somerville cordially disliked.

 

EDIT: I'm coming down with something. Boyd wasn't in the RNAS, and was a torpedo specialist, but was considered an aviation expert.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Boyd was indeed an aviation expert - Captain of Illustrious at Taranto, for a start - and to this day commemorated in the Boyd Trophy.  But, as you say, not RNAS.

 

Murray Sueter stayed, and as we have said the Boyds of this world proved that some non-aviators “got” the potential (which is why the RN fought so hard to regain control of its own flying in the 20s and 30s), but even so ACM Sir Arthur Longmore, AM Sir David Grahame Donald & ACM Sir Frederick Bowhill were all ex-RNAS (& those are just the ones I know about).

 

Edited July 11, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Graham Boak]

19 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

being a good Gunnery Officer was seen as the most likely route to the top

Without disagreeing with your main point, I understood that being a specialist Gunner ruled you out from a top job, because you were then unable to stand bridge watch.  The top jobs went to shiphandlers.  This was also true for members of the Aviation Branch, who were regarded as specialists.  So anyone selecting service in the Aviation Branch was ruling himself out of future top jobs, and this was seen as a reason why the Navy was unable to provide a significant number of aircrew for the FAA between the wars.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Kind of.  The bigger problem was that (pre-Inskip and the formation of the “Branch” in 1937), to fly meant several years out of the mainstream, almost certainly under the command of another Service - or at best dual-hatted.  To fly at all (as a pilot, at least) you had 2 ranks; RN & RAF, and they often didn’t align.  The RAF rank reflected your flying experience, so it was possible to be, say, a Lieutenant Commander RN and simultaneously an RAF Flight Lieutenant or Flying Officer.  (Sometimes the other way round, too: Lieutenant RN / Wing Commander RAF).  

 

All this was was not conducive to getting the right reports from the right people in order to do well in your ‘batch’ - essential if you were headed to the very top. 

 

For Observers it was slightly different, in that in the 20s & 30s they were attached to ships, not Flights (later Squadrons); flying wasn’t seen as their primary task - the unspoken attitude was that any trained officer with a “seaman’s eye” ought to be able to do a bit of reconnaissance and spotting fall of shot.  It took a long time (RAF too) to recognise the non-pilot specialisms; Observers didn’t have their own flying badge (‘Wings’) until mid-War.  The RAF still have an element of this attitude (or did in my day, anyway); there was a definite pecking order and pilots were at the top of it.

 

Reverting to being reported on by the “wrong” people, I was warned in the 1980s that doing an exchange tour (which fell through for other reasons in the end) might have a detrimental impact at that stage of my career, because a 206 (annual report) from a non-RN Officer might not carry the same weight in promotion boards.

 

Gunnery Officers were ship handlers; they would have qualified as watchkeepers (including Ocean Navigation - astro, sextants, all that jazz, to you and me) before they went anywhere near the specialist gunnery (“Long G”) course.  Same for TAS officers, Communicators etc.; all members of the Executive branch, which then was (& still is) the only way to command a ship... and you must have commanded several ships to get anywhere as a Naval Officer.  Otherwise they’d have been fishing in a very small specialist Navigator pool for their Captains.  [For an example, see Boyd above: a torpedo specialist in destroyers for much of his early career - like Andrew Cunningham - he went on to command Illustrious and other carriers before reaching Flag Rank.] 

 

Gunners etc. are called PWOs (Principal Warfare Officers) now, but essentially it’s the same; it is technically possible, but extremely difficult, to get beyond Captain RN without a PWO qualification.  

 

I was a qualified seaman officer (‘X’, in RN jargon) before I started flying (I became ‘X(P)’ post-wings) and did a tour away from aviation as Captain of a minesweeper to keep my hand in / do some real Naval work (delete according to prejudice).  But had I stayed the chances of my commanding a frigate or destroyer (which is what matters) would have been small because I wasn’t a PWO.  

 

[Edit: it might shed a little more light on the challenge facing a 1940s aviator who hoped to reach the top to point out that it took until 1960 for a WAFU to make 1st Sea Lord: Caspar John.  He was just too young for WW1: Midshipman 1921, S/Lt 1924, Lt 1925, Wings 1926, and his active flying days were over by WW2.  His first ship command (as a Captain RN) was Pretoria Castle in 1944, quickly followed by the brand-new Ocean in 1945.  Arguably he made his name by his stellar performance in mid-WW2, first at the Ministry of Aircraft Production, then as Naval Air Attaché in Washington: in both appointments he was hugely influential in the massive expansion of the FAA (in numbers but especially in capability) during WW2.  He was also very early to see the potential of rotary-wing, meeting Igor Sikorsky as early as 1944.

 

There have been 2 other WAFU 1SLs since: Ben Bathurst and George Zambellas.  But it is very rare.]

 

 

Edited September 10, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[hendie]

I'm sitting here patiently at the back - keeping my mouth shut because:

1: I know nothing of nefarious  seafarious goings on

2: I am being educated

3: This is all incredibly interesting and very entertaining

 

great dialog - long may it continue.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

A bit more brass wrangling - this time with added Crisp-o-bodge (™)...

 

This one shows it best, probably.  Ark, as with most ships of the period, had a wind deflector arrangement on the front of her bridge.  Tetra produce brass of exquisite cunning to represent this thing, consisting of about 20 frames built around a single piece of origami.  But Mr Muppet here initially bent the origami the wrong way, and when I realised and corrected it... the brass objected to a 180 change in direction and fell apart at the bend.  Oh dear, I said - or words to that effect.

 

 

However, despite a sizeable contribution to the swear box, I think it is fixable.  It will just mean gluing a lot more tiny pieces together, rather than relying on Tetra’s fold designers.  Ah well.

 

 

Despite the visit from Commander Cock-Up, I am still having lots of fun.

 

More after the weekend; home tomorrow.

 

Crisp

Edited July 11, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[iang]

Looking good. I have this kit and Tetra set, so am watching with interest. A couple of things I've noticed. Merit have moulded three doors on the port side of the island where as there should be only two. Tetra's brass looks good, but they have missed one window. 

 

 

 

Personally, I'd be inclined to get the scalpel out and remove one of the doors, but I'm not sure I could be bothered to adjust the number of windows. 

 

 

[Edge]

Thoroughly enjoying this thread and am learning an awful lot about the subject.

 

I was fortunate to meet John Moffatt on several occasions as he was a friend of a friend - they both flew from Perth at the time. It never felt appropriate to ask much of John but boy I wish I had. Having grown up hero worshipping our soldiers, sailors and airmen of WWII, to meet a real life, and at that time little known one, was a real moment to remember. Much to John's chargrin my friend had him sign a copy of his book as a wedding present to me.

 

Looking forward to watching this build progress and to plenty more interesting facts that are doing so much to bring this thread to life.

 

Edge

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

1 hour ago, iang said:

Looking good. I have this kit and Tetra set, so am watching with interest. A couple of things I've noticed. Merit have moulded three doors on the port side of the island where as there should be only two. Tetra's brass looks good, but they have missed one window. 

 

 

Personally, I'd be inclined to get the scalpel out and remove one of the doors, but I'm not sure I could be bothered to adjust the number of windows. 

Good spot!  Tetra replace the doors anyway (Merit’s are generic clipped doors, whereas the real ones were sliding, and Tetra provide closed and open versions).  So easy to fix.  I think the voice pipes (?) along the side of the island at 01 deck level (an anachronistic term, I know; they would have called it “A deck”) are probably sufficiently prominent to deserve some lead wire... but I’m waiting to see where Tetra take me before I go down the road of adding more. 

 

I found this shot of the port face of the island the other day (in an old Aeroplane special about the Swordfish), which shows a similar view a bit further forward.  Nice view of things like the sirens (which I think Tetra have got slightly wrong) and semaphore signalling arms.  Detail views of the ship herself are not exactly common, so all contributions gratefully received.  I’d kill for a decent photo of the compass platform / bridge!

Edited July 11, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Courageous]

Fascinating stuff Crisp.

Is it possible to crop your images more on the tiny PE, cheers.

 

Stuart 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Generally yes, but I had my iPhone nicked in a cafe yesterday, so last night’s pics were taken with someone else’s borrowed phone, transferred to my iPad by email, and posted from there.  Editing was about the last thing on my mind, frankly!

 

Normal service will be resumed next week.

[Terry1954]

Shame 're the phone, I would find that mega annoying!

 

As Stuart says though this is fascinating stuff and that Tetra etch looks exquisite.

 

I think I will need to put the Merit Ark and Tetra etch on my Christmas list!

 

Terry

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

It’s the weekend, so no new modelling to report (it’s all up in that London, innit) - a bit more history / reflection instead [please feel free to skip if not interested].

 

It is terribly easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the Ark Royal of the 1930s & 40s was exactly the same as a modern carrier, just with slower aircraft... but of course that is nonsense.  These guys were very much pioneers - the speed with which Naval aviation (aviation in general, for that matter) developed between 1938 & 1946 is almost unimaginable.  It is also essential to view their performance through the lens of the tactics, preconceptions and doctrine of the time... rather than with a Retrospect-o-scope.

 

To us it seems inconceivable that HMS Glorious could possibly have been sailing home from Norway without a single aircraft in the air, escorted by only 2 destroyers.  Admittedly, there was some pretty odd stuff going on in that particular ship, with Commander (Air) landed to Scapa Flow before she went to Norway, awaiting Court Martial for disobeying orders from his Captain (orders which he thought were impossible and suicidal for his aircrew) - and a Captain who doesn’t appear to have entirely grasped the concept of using a carrier properly.

 

Even setting aside the unusual circumstances of Glorious, why on Earth was HMS Courageous lost while acting as a so-called “hunter-killer”, faffing around with minimal escort off the coast of Ireland, looking for U-boats?  Inevitably, she found a U-boat, U-29, which promptly sank her. What kind of insane misuse of an aircraft carrier was this?  To quote David Hobbs [The Dawn of Carrier Strike] again:  “Operating an aircraft carrier continuously in a circumscribed area with constant, predictable, turns into wind steaming a straight course to operate aircraft in an area that was likely to have several U-boats in it was not a sensible idea, and after the loss of Courageous it was not repeated.  ...[her] employment on such a hazardous task with an inadequate escort reflects little credit on either the Naval Staff or the First Sea Lord, who was anxious to see offensive measures undertaken without considering their likely effectiveness or danger.”

 

It could have been even worse; both HMS Hermes and HMS Ark Royal were doing the same thing in the early days of the war - indeed Ark was actually attacked by U-39 3 days before the Courageous sinking, off Rockall.  On that occasion the torpedo tracks were sighted and Ark avoided them, and the U-boat was subsequently sunk.  By Ark’s escort, note; not Ark.  It was almost as though the carriers were bait.

 

These people were not idiots (well, arguably the Captain of Glorious, but that’s a whole different story).  I just don’t think they really understood what they had in the carriers, or really how to use them - which picks up on what we’ve been talking about above.

 

The passage in Hobbs’ book that really prompted this post, however, was nothing to do with anti-submarine warfare, but the stuff which we think of as a carrier’s bread-and-butter; air defence of the fleet.  Hobbs describes in some detail the early efforts of the Skuas at air defence, which can best be described as ‘patchy’.  On the one hand the very first German aircraft shot down in WW2 was downed by a Skua - a Do-18 flying boat on 26 September 1939.  But on the other hand many of the early operations have an almost comically inept air to them - for instance, HMS Rodney passing radar contacts of enemy shadowing aircraft to the Commander-in-Chief in HMS Nelson... by flag signals (not necessarily silly in radio silence)... and the C-in-C not thinking they were sufficiently important to pass on to Ark Royal.

 

”...it appears that the scope of this new technology [radar] had not yet been fully grasped, perhaps because of the tight security that surrounded anyone with knowledge of its capabilities.  For whatever reason, the Admiral and his staff seemed to lack the situational awareness they would need to fight while within range of a powerful enemy force.  ... Fortunately, the Luftwaffe appeared to be hesitant in deciding how best to use aircraft in action against ships, and early attacks were neither well prepared nor executed. 

 

Before the advent of radar, the Admiralty had decided that no affordable aircraft carrier could carry sufficient fighters to maintain constant daylight combat air patrols against aircraft that could attack from almost any direction.  It had decided, therefore, that gunfire offered the most practical protection against aircraft.  Whilst regrettable, one can see some sense in this viewpoint, which had already led to the design and construction of armoured carriers capable of continuing to operate aircraft even after damage.

 

However, radar changed everything, and from 1938 the Admiralty could have used war-gaming at the tactical school and exercises at sea to evaluate its use more effectively - but there was just too much going on at the time, and the use of radar was not given priority.  Extemporised methods of fighter control were developed later by... Force H that led directly to our modern conception of situational awareness and fighter control; it is fair to say that from 1942 the RN led the world in this discipline.

 

In 1940, however, the Admiralty had not yet fully appreciated the improvements that command and control of carrier-borne interceptor fighters would bring to the air defence of the fleet.  Admiral Forbes [the ‘C-in-C in Nelson’ mentioned above] had certainly not appreciated it and both he and his staff retained the pre-radar dogma that placed gunnery before fighters as a means of driving off enemy air attack.  Therefore he ordered Ark Royal to strike down all aircraft into the hangar, including her fighters, and drain them of fuel to reduce the risk of fire.”

 

The emphasis is mine, because reading that really brought me up short.  OK, the Skua wasn’t the greatest fighter in the world, but to order a carrier to defuel all her aircraft and hide them in the hangar when air attack was likely shows just how far away we are from our modern conceptions of what a carrier is for.

 

Adjust your (mind)set accordingly.  These were not yet the sort of carrier ops that we would instantly recognise.  

 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Courageous]

5 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Courageous lost

Who's lost, not me.

Back to the history lessen...very interesting, not that I know anything about carrier operations, then or now.

 

Stuart

[TheBaron]

Extraordinary catch-up here in terms of both the historical knowledge and intricacy of modelling detail. Feel sure that this thread will become a classic reference Crisp. (Plus lovely to see so much brass in the offing...)

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

On 7/11/2019 at 9:54 PM, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Despite the visit from Commander Cock-Up, I am still having lots of fun.

 

More after the weekend; home tomorrow.

 

Crisp

 

He must have found someplace other than my house to visit whilst I was away! 

[Nick C]

This is great info, thanks for sharing. I'll be referring to this extensively (copying 😀) when I build mine!!

 

Cheers

 

Nick

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Thanks for your interest, everyone.  I hope you’re sitting down, because I actually have some modelling to show you.  With this amount of brass and only being able to do this on a couple of evenings a week, nothing is happening very fast - but at least something is happening.

 

I’ve been continuing to reconstruct the multi-piece wind deflector on the front of the bridge (the victim of last week’s cock-up).  You can see 8 vertical pieces added, but this is definitely a slow game, because you have to avoid the temptation to go anywhere near the next one before glue is fully cured.  The biggest challenge is going to be reconstructing the curved inner face of the bridge wall (i.e. the inside of the wind deflector).  All doable, but not fast!

 

So, as you can see in the background, I’ve been working in the funnel while waiting for bridge stuff to cure.  In particular, on the walkway and associated guardrails that sat inside the funnel - it was there for people to stand on while fitting the funnel cover in harbour (& probably for other stuff like cleaning the funnel uptakes, which must have been a hideous job).  3 out of 4 guardrails fitted, and then it’ll go inside the funnel a few mm below the top.  There is also a pair of brass brackets already fitted inside the funnel halves  (not visible in these photos) which will in due course support the 2 galley flues that poked out of the front of Ark’s funnel.

 

Apart from the brass, none of this is glued; it can all be deconstructed.  Tetra’s PE fits superbly, which definitely helps.

 

More later in the week.

 

Crisp

 

Edited July 16, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

P.S. I’ve also started correcting details on Merit’s island; as @iang pointed out a few days ago, the doors are wrong.  In fact further comparison with photos shows that the scuttles (“portholes”) are fictional too, so I’ve filled Merit’s and started drilling more accurate replacements.  Ark’s scuttles were the type with an “eyebrow”, and I have plenty of PE in the spares box to depict those and make them look tiddly.

 

But for now, a) Merit’s detail removed or filled (except the characteristic battle honours board, visible below the funnel); b) one of two PE replacement sliding doors fitted; and c) scuttles drilled but not complete.  The scuttles above the compass platform (brass deck) level are Merit originals; below that my drilled holes. 

 

The PE for the compass platform level seems to have shifted as I prepared for this photo , but you get the gist (not going to be glued for some time yet!)

 

 

More soon

 

Crisp

[Procopius]

On 7/14/2019 at 11:13 AM, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

In 1940, however, the Admiralty had not yet fully appreciated the improvements that command and control of carrier-borne interceptor fighters would bring to the air defence of the fleet.  Admiral Forbes [the ‘C-in-C in Nelson’ mentioned above] had certainly not appreciated it and both he and his staff retained the pre-radar dogma that placed gunnery before fighters as a means of driving off enemy air attack.  Therefore he ordered Ark Royal to strike down all aircraft into the hangar, including her fighters, and drain them of fuel to reduce the risk of fire.”

 

 

I remember this passage from Hobbs so vividly. Truly another world.