Alarm Starboard!: A Remarkable True Story of the War at Sea Read online

  ALARM

  STARBOARD!

  ALARM

  STARBOARD!

  A remarkable true story

  of the war at sea

  by

  Geoffrey Brooke

  To

  John Persse, Lieutenant, 7th Rifle Brigade

  Edward Egerton, lieutenant. Royal Navy,

  Sandy Buller, Pilot Officer, Royal Air Force

  First published in Great Britain in 1982 by Patrick Stephens

  Published in this format in 2004 by and reprinted in 2009

  by Pen & Sword Maritime an imprint of

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd

  47 Church Street

  Barnsley

  South Yorkshire

  S70 2AS

  Copyright © Geoffrey Brooke, 2004, 2009

  ISBN 1 84415 230 8

  The right of Geoffrey Brooke to be identified as Author of this Work has

  been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical

  including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and

  retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

  Printed and bound in England by

  CPI UK

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword

  Aviation, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Wharncliffe

  Local History, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics

  and Leo Cooper.

  For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

  PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED

  47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

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  Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 Prewar Midshipman

  2 Destroyer ‘Sub’

  3 Bismarck and Churchill

  4 Prince of Wales and Repulse

  5 Fall of Singapore

  6 On the run

  7 Sederhana Djohanis

  8 Operation ‘Torch’ and Arctic convoy

  9 Kamikaze

  10 Under Nimitz and Vian

  Acknowledgements

  My grateful thanks for assistance of various kinds are due to many, but particularly: Captain A.H. Barton, Commander W.T. Blunt, Captain E.H. Cartwright, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, GCB, Mrs M. Luce, Captain C.W. McMullen, DSC, Mr B.A. Passmore, Captain D.G. Roome, Lieutenant Commander P. Snow and Vice Admiral D.B.H. Wildish, CB. In addition the following two books proved invaluable: Atlantic Meeting, by A.E.W. Mason, and Battleship Bismarck, by Burkhard Von Müllenheim-Riechberg.

  Introduction

  This is not the story of a famous sailor, even a successful one, so it may be wondered how I have anything to say. In defence I would quote Admiral Sir William James, and a young female acquaintance who exclaimed, after my recounting a somewhat bizarre brush with the police, ‘Why is it that such odd things are always happening to you?’

  Strange things have happened to me, and this remark, coupled with Admiral James’ dictum that every Naval officer has a good story to tell so long as he does not pontificate, started me off. An Irish weakness for a tale has helped but the going—entirely in my spare time—has proved harder than expected.

  I am sure to have made mistakes, but have also been lucky. Quite unexpectedly my mother produced most of my letters written home during the period covered (1938–1945) and having always been a magpie I do have a store of contemporary papers. Some of these sources are quoted verbatim (the letters are all to my parents, except where otherwise stated) as they give the atmosphere of the moment better than any subsequent reflection. I must admit that some of them have also proved salutary; it is disconcerting to have dined out on a good story for years only to find that it did not happen quite like that!

  The spelling of Indonesian place names may offend some, but I have found them to vary as much as my memories of that fascinating area.

  It happens that battleships, carriers, cruisers and destroyers all figure intimately herein, laced with a lot of seasickness, a little sport and a happy home life. Therefore I hope it is not too presumptious to claim that, viewed though it is from a low ‘height of eye’, this very personal account—though with enough background to set the scene—presents a fair view of the Royal Navy during the traumatic years covered. That is before it was decimated by a feckless country unwilling to read either history or the writing on the wall.

  There goes one pontification, but there won’t be too many more!

  G.A.G. BROOKE

  Beech House, Balcombe, Sussex

  May 1982

  1

  Prewar Midshipman

  ‘Alarm starboard! Green seven-0; angle of sight six; engage—engage—engage!’ A near-black bomber—though the first ever seen it was clearly a Heinkel 111—had broken through the scudding clouds and was diving on the battleship and the carrier. All three officers in the former’s Air Defence Position had seen it at the same moment and we were feverishly pressing buttons and shouting into telephones and voice-pipes; to be acknowledged from far below by staccato orders and the metallic thuds of closing breeches.

  Not in time, however, and the enemy aircraft roared down unmolested, straight for us in the Nelson. There was nothing more to do. I felt a dastardly desire to take cover and stole a glance at Whitting, the other Midshipman, to see his reaction. As often when tense moments stamp the scene on one’s inner eye, I have a clear impression of the sun on his weatherbeaten, snub-nosed features, the eyes narrowed to slits as he gazed upwards with complete unconcern.

  At the last moment the plane jinked to its left, steadied up on the Ark Royal astern of us and let go what in those days was a huge bomb. It fell deceptively slowly, like a fat cabin trunk, as we stared fascinated. Landing with a huge splash a few yards off the carrier’s starboard side, it burst beneath, heaving her bow right out of the sea so that the angular, brown-painted forefoot jutted clear. At the same time a massive cowl of black smoke and dirty water rose up about twice the height of the flight deck and obliterated the entire forward part of the ship. My heart missed a beat and there were gasps from the others. But the Ark sank back, the upheaval subsided and we were astonished to see her unscathed. The guns’ crews were stood down and the two ships continued their patrol of the unhospitable grey waste of the North Sea.

  The clang of feet up the steel ladder to our eyrie forty feet above the bridge heralded reliefs and Johnny Bowles, flushed with the effort, was soon beside me. Ignoring his ‘You were all fast asleep, I suppose?’ I followed his gaze to the destroyer screen, a dipping, wriggling arrowhead of purposeful little ships, each with its pennant number painted on the side. They were ‘E’s of the 5th Flotilla and instinctively we scrutinised the Esk as she rose and fell, the figures on her bridge occasionally ducking as a sea broke clean over them. Johnny turned to me with a malicious grin. I knew what he was thinking. We had done our three months’ destroyer course together in the Esk and I had been dreadfully seasick most of the time. I made a rude gesture at him and went below to the welcome fug of the Gunroom.

  After wolfing some tea I got out my journal—a mammoth diary we had to write up daily—and recorded the Heinkel’s doings while they were still fresh in my mind. The war was two weeks old and the b
ig, ugly bomb—this was it; the real thing that we had been preparing and training for ever since I had joined the ship nearly two years ago.

  It did not seem two years since that cold January morning at Portsmouth when the three of us had presented ourselves to the Officer of the Watch (‘Midshipman Brooke come aboard to join, Sir!’) resplendent in round jacket with its vertical row of brass buttons, ‘snotties” white collar tabs and bright new dirk. I read again, with a patronising smile, the first halting entry in my journal; how it brought it all back.

  We new arrivals, directed down to the Gunroom, were being eyed like lepers by the senior Midshipmen when in strode the Sub-Lieutenant. He gave each of us a silent scrutiny and we took stock of him with hardly less interest, a tallish, fresh-faced and—after a few to-the-point remarks—obviously live-wire customer called Hawkins. He saw Johnny Bowles of medium height and very broad, with black hair (usually a bunch of it over his forehead) and dark, lively eyes; ‘Pop’ Snow, very small but well built and already going bald—hence the nickname-unflappable and phlegmatic; and me, tall, thin, keen (according to my reports!) and maddeningly vague. Because of the latter I sensed trouble with the Sub and was not far wrong. I had been the first cadet of my term to be beaten on arrival at the RN College, Dartmouth, and the last before leaving. Still very much a Gunroom tradition, it looked as if this painful progress—my posterior was poorly upholstered—was going to continue. (As it happens it did not, more a measure of the forbearance of Hawkins, who certainly drove us hard, than of me.)

  It should be explained that Midshipmen were found only in cruisers and above. Their mess, the Gunroom, was presided over by a Sub-Lieutenant who had powers of life and death except in the realms of education and leave. These were the responsibility of the ‘Snotties’ Nurse’—a Lieutenant Commander saddled therewith in addition to his normal duty—who now introduced us to the Captain, W.T. Maceig-Jones, and the Commander. The former was huge—he had been a heavy weight boxer in his time—and rather intimidating at first, though not on closer acquaintance. The Commander really was intimidating but my morale was restored by the Gunnery Officer who asked whether I’d done any pheasant shooting and said ‘I’ll give you a pom-pom director—it’s much the same thing’.

  Boatrunning, in charge of one of the ship’s many boats and quarterdeck watchkeeping, as assistant to the hard-pressed Officer of the Watch, started at once. HMS Nelson was the Home Fleet flagship and one was constantly coping on the quarterdeck with important visitors to the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse. The ceremonial ramifications were at first overpowering; only those of the Nelson herself seemed greater. Getting to know the big battleship was a bewildering if fascinating task. Often one would be more than a deck out in one’s calculations after emerging from an overalled exploration of engine room, magazine, store room or gun turret. The main armament of 16-in guns (postcards on sale at the canteen showed grinning sailors emerging from their gaping barrels) and all their ancillary machinery, from the loading arrangements that brought the sinister, black projectiles up from their beds, to the delicate fire control table, were laboriously explained to us. (The latter was in fact a huge table, solid to the ground with gears, spindles, cams, electric motors and differentials; all the paraphernalia that enabled one to set data and have it point the guns at the correct spot in the sea so that when the shells arrived 30 seconds later they would, hopefully, find the enemy there too.)

  Early in the third week, fallen in so as to line the ship’s port side, we heard the tugs ordered to slip. The deck began to vibrate under foot and on the first of umpteen occasions in my naval career the Portsmouth panorama unfolded steadily: the Hard, fronting its railway-bounded lagoon, the stone frigate Vernon (home of naval torpedoes) and the ancient quay that Nelson knew. An exchange of salutes with bugle or pipe marked each authority until, with Southsea fading in the drizzle on our side and the Spithead forts looming on the other, ‘Disperse—make up wires and fenders’ had us guiding the arm-thick hawsers back on to the reels as they had not known for weeks.

  * * *

  The Home Fleet’s year was divided into three cruises followed by leave periods, much like school terms, and we were now embarking on the Spring Cruise to the Mediterranean. The main object of this was the Combined Fleet Manoeuvres with the ‘Med’ Fleet, all of us based on Gibraltar where the ship berthed a few days later. The weather was kind, the band played lively times to encourage the hundreds of men painting the ship’s side and life was good. It became even better.

  My father, a retired Naval Captain, had told me to ‘look out for Colonel Sturges, he’s an old friend of mine!’ Naturally the only steps I took in this direction were to ascertain that he was the Fleet Royal Marine Officer on the Admiral’s staff, and it was a surprise to receive a summons to his cabin. He said he had been offered a mount in the amateur ‘scurry’ at the races on Saturday, would be unable to get away and would I like to take over? Thanking him profusely and accepting the loan of his racing boots I went off in a haze of excitement. It was difficult to contain myself, but at last the owner, a sunburnt young man with sleek black hair and a pencil moustache was inferring that ‘Pierrot’ had every chance, though he eyed my disproportionate length, attired in ‘mauve, grey-silver cross, mauve cap’, without enthusiasm. It was a flag start. A paternal dictum had recently come back to me that few people rarely drop a flag cleanly; they always raise it a fraction first in the unconscious effort to get a quick movement.

  ‘Are you ready?’ A twitch from the flag and I dug in my heels. It went down all right and I seemed to have pinched half a length. Nobody got it back and an unashamedly excited jockey slid off Pierrot in the winner’s enclosure, to be projected into a little circle. A distinguished old gentleman, afterwards revealed as the Governor, handed over a nice cup and asked where I had learned to ride ‘short’. ‘At Chattis Hill’, I said, without a thought that it might mean nothing to him. ‘Ah’, he said, obviously well informed, ‘I call that hardly fair!’ (Chattis Hill was the racing stable of my uncle, Atty Persse.) However, any personal kudos was largely evaporated the next Saturday when the process was repeated, the Governor being almost disapproving as he handed over an exact twin, and the jockey’s part was still further discounted when Colonel Sturges, pounds overweight, rode the gallant Pierrot to victory the third week. But it was gratifying to be instructed by the Sub to produce the cups on guest nights. They gleamed most satisfactorily in the candlelight and helped to bolster my ego in those early uncertain weeks.

  Gunroom guest night was an amusing affair. At least for the hosts. Wardroom guests would be chosen primarily for their gladiatorial ability, to be tested after a more or less set progression of pitfalls (such as mention of a lady’s name before passage of the port) had been fixed and fallen into. After replacement of the port stoppers, ‘Dogs of war’ marked the end of such decorum as remained. A Midshipman would be. accused of some misdemeanour and up would go the cry ‘Dogs of war on Mr X’, the signal for all the others to rise and project him bodily through the door, if possible removing his trousers in the process. In the case of a powerful fellow this took some minutes, he taking advantage of every pillar or post that intervened. Black eyes sprouted fairly freely but as soon as the victim felt the cold passage deck on his behind the mob would disperse and return for more. (On one occasion the victim was Whitting, currently unpopular for continually pronouncing that he wished he had joined the Army. After a struggle we had him outside and as I had been the nearest ‘dog’ initially I was now on top of him and underneath a dozen other ‘dogs’. My nose bleeds fairly easily; it now poured on to poor Whitting’s boiled shirt front and it was a very long time before those on top condescended to get off.)

  The hitherto omnipotent Sub would be hoist with his own petard and then would come the pièce de résistance—the unfortunate guests, amongst whom the wiser ones would have already slipped out and changed into an older pair of trousers. ‘Dogs of war on Commander —!’, and the first o
f several real battles—Wardroom honour being at stake-would begin. One of the better gladiators was Lieutenant Commander A.C.C. Miers, a submariner doing his big ship time. Though short, he was of immensely strong physique. It would take one of us on each limb to keep him down and he would sometimes descend to the Gunroom after an evening game of deck hockey and incite a rough-and-tumble for the fun of it. (He was to demonstrate not only physical toughness when in 1942 he took the submarine Torbay into an enemy harbour, to win the VC.) Events would then take a less personal turn—feats of strength, bawdy songs round the piano—until ‘lights’; a plea to the Commander for an extension, and then the end of that, with most people ready enough to desist.

  Such high-jinks were really but bright interludes to endless exercises in the local Atlantic. Most enjoyable of these was live practice with my pom-pom director, of which I was inordinately proud, usually at red sausage-shaped targets towed behind Gib-based aircraft. Mounted on a projecting sponson high up on the side of the bridge (it had a twin the other side), the director itself was a miniature application of the universal gunnery principle that a gun is better aimed and fired by remote control, away from the ‘dust of the battle, the din and the cries’. Though entirely a matter of how far to aim in front of the target, that was about as near to pheasant shooting as it came, there being a cartwheel sight among the rings and spokes of which one placed the target, as accurately as possible. Movement was recorded electrically at the gun, where the layer and trainer followed pointers in dials. It was a considerable thrill to press the trigger and loose a shuddering cacophony of fury as the eight kicking barrels pumped away below, deafening anyone near and living up to their Press nickname of ‘Chicago Pianos’. Two shells left each barrel every second and great things were expected of multiple pom-poms (not really fulfilled in the acid test, especially, as will be seen, against Japanese suicide aircraft.)