The Last Torpedo Flyers by Arthur Aldridge

Author:Arthur Aldridge [Aldridge, Arthur and Ryan, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471102776
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

13

The Rock and a Hard Place

Wherever you looked around the world in that British spring of 1942, it was hard to claim with any great confidence that we were winning the war.

After invading Malaya, Singapore and Burma, the Japanese had targeted the British naval base at Colombo on 5 April. A total of 125 Japanese aircraft, including fifty-three Nakajima B5N2 torpedo bombers, had struck. They were under the command of Mitsuo Fuchida, who’d also led the attack on Pearl Harbor. The British weren’t much better prepared for the Japanese raid than the Americans had been. Two ships were sunk in Colombo harbour – the armed merchant cruiser HMS Hector and the old destroyer HMS Tenedos. The RAF lost twenty-seven planes, though they claimed to have downed eighteen enemy aircraft in the fight.

It didn’t stop the Japanese from mounting fresh aerial attacks later that day, south-west of Ceylon. HMS Dorsetshire, which had sunk the Bismarck back in May the previous year, suffered a similar fate herself. Having been spotted by Japanese fighters, she was sunk in eight minutes, at a loss of 234 lives. HMS Cornwall went the same way, bringing combined losses up to 424. The next day British steamships called the Silksworth, Autolycus, Malda and Shinkuang were all sunk. And on 9 April, the carrier HMS Hermes was also sunk off Batticaloa, at a loss of 307 men. Five Bristol Bleinheims were lost trying to bomb Japanese ships, which left the scene relatively unscathed.

Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, the British Commander-in-Chief in Ceylon, warned his forces in the immediate aftermath of the raid: ‘The Japanese fleet has retired to Singapore to refuel and rearm, and to organise an invasion force, which we think is coming back to attack us . . . You men must be prepared to fight to the last man to stop the Japanese.’ However, Layton also let slip that he might not be there to lead his men to such a glorious death, because he was going away in search of reinforcements. That didn’t impress those he intended to leave behind. He was nicknamed ‘Runaway Layton’ from that moment on.

The British couldn’t just give up on Ceylon, though – and not just because of its vast rubber resources. Ceylon was also supposed to command the Indian Ocean, and protect vital shipping routes to the Middle East and Persian Gulf oilfields. Yet the Japanese looked capable of taking over and seizing the strategic advantage.

The torpedo bombers of 217 Squadron were told that they were to be part of the cavalry coming to the rescue of the island, or at least coming to give it breathing space and hope, while a plan could be hatched to halt the Japanese onslaught. We were going to stop at Malta along the way.

Malta was just about the most bombed and beleaguered little island in the entire world at the time; hardly a safe stepping stone to our final destination. And the Italians – people I’d have considered compatriots as a small child – were making Malta’s suffering much worse.

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