Inferno - Max Hastings [189]
Vice Adm. Edward Syfret took command of the battle fleet that sailed from the Clyde on 3 August, escorting fourteen merchantmen. Several of these were chartered American ships, notably the tanker Ohio, manned by British crews. All had been fitted with antiaircraft armament manned by soldiers, and on the passage to Gibraltar the convoy intensively exercised both gunnery and manoeuvre. The ships that set forth on 10 August to make the Malta passage formed a mighty array: the battleships Nelson and Rodney; the fleet carriers Victorious, Indomitable and Eagle; the old carrier Furious, ferrying Spitfires to reinforce the island as soon as the range narrowed sufficiently to fly them off; six cruisers; twenty-four destroyers and a flotilla of smaller craft. To one cadet aboard a merchantman it was “a fantastically wonderful sight.”
Only weeks had elapsed since the Royal Navy’s Arctic humiliation, and the service felt on its mettle: a destroyer captain, Lt. Cmdr. David Hill, said: “There was a strong touch of desperation and bloody-mindedness following PQ17.” One of the Pedestal destroyer flotillas, led by Jackie Broome, had endured that ghastly experience. A host of German and Italian eyes, watching Gibraltar from Spain and North Africa, saw the fleet sail. Axis commanders were undeceived by a feint convoy which sailed simultaneously from Alexandria, trailing its coat in the eastern Mediterranean. “I felt indeed that some of our party were entering the narrow seas on a desperate venture,” wrote George Blundell of the battleship Nelson, “and prayed to the Ruler of Destiny for his favour.”
On 11 August, amid a still, azure sea, the Furious began flying off its Spitfires, which set course for Malta, 550 miles distant, where most arrived safely. But now the first disaster struck. In the western Mediterranean, Asdic was confused by freak underwater conditions created by the confluence of warm seas with colder Atlantic currents: ships were thus acutely vulnerable to submarine attack. Even as the fighters were being launched, a salvo of torpedoes fired by U-73 struck the Eagle, which sank in eight minutes with the loss of 260 of her complement of 1,160 men. “She presented a terrible sight as she heeled over, turned bottom up and sank with horrible speed,” wrote an awestruck witness. “Men and aircraft could be seen falling off her flight deck as she capsized … It makes one tremble. If anyone took a good film of it, it should be shown throughout the country … I remember thinking of the trapped men.” That evening the Furious, its flight deck now empty, turned for home and safety. One of her escorts, the destroyer Wolverine, spotted an Italian submarine and raced in to ram; the Axis boat sank, but Wolverine suffered severe damage.
At 8:45 p.m. the first enemy air attack was launched against Pedestal, by thirty-six He-111s and Ju-88s flying from Sicily. These achieved no hits, and four German aircraft fell to the intense AA barrage. The next day at noon, a much more serious strike took place, by seventy bombers and torpedo carriers with fighter escort. The ensuing battle lasted two hours. The freighter Deucalion was damaged and later sunk off the Tunisian coast by a torpedo bomber, despite gallant efforts to save the ship by her master, Capt. Ramsay Brown. During the afternoon, the convoy survived a submarine ambush unscathed. The destroyer Ithuriel rammed and sank another Italian boat, at the cost of crippling herself.
That evening of the twelfth, the Luftwaffe and Italian air force came again. A hundred