The FLEET AIR ARM p

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 8, 24 April 1944, Page 10

The FLEET AIR ARM p

By

A Broadcast Talk given from the 8.8. C. on October 8, 1943

My ordinary job is writing history. I’m going to-night to speak of history that has been going on under our eyes — the history of the latest branch of the Royal Navy ; and, first, I’m going to ask you to put your mind back to a day in September, 1939, when the Home Fleet was steaming off the Norwegian coast. It was such a lovely day that, as a pilot of the “ Ark Royal put it to me, all the pursers had come up on deck and were enjoying the sunshine. Suddenly three German aircraft appeared. The old-fashioned fighters of the Ark Royal ” went up and brought one down, but an hour later Lieutenant Francke, of the Luftwaffe, dived out of the sky and almost hit the “ Ark Royal ” with a 2,000 lb. bomb.

The point is this : had the Germans sent not one dive-bomber, but one hundred, or, worse still, torpedo-carrying aircraft trained to attack battleships, they might have sunk the Home Fleet ; they might have done what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbour and off the Malayan Coast. Fortunately, they had been foolish. Their vast Air Force was trained

with all their usual thoroughness, for co-operating with Armies and knocking out cities like Warsaw and Rotterdam, but it could not knock out a fleet, because it had not thought out how and was not trained to cope with the kind of conditions that exist at sea.

The Nazis had no Naval Air Service. They have not* even to-day. But we have. The Fleet Air Arm used to be a part of the R.A.F., but in 1939 the Navy took it over, and for this reason : there is a difference between the work of the R.A.F. and the work of the Fleet Air Arm. The R.A.F. —even Coastal Command — operates from land. The Fleet Air Arm operates from the sea. It is part and parcel of the Royal Navy. Its pilots and observers, telegraphists, air gunners, and maintenance crews have to share the life and dangers of the sea. They could not do the work the Navy needs of them unless they were seamen as well as airmen. They live in ships and they fly from ships.

I want you to think of another day—it was just before Christmas, 1939. We had just learnt that the pocket-

battleship “ Graf Spee ’ had been engaged by our cruisers. For weeks she had been attacking our sea lanes. It was the Fleet Air Arm that had tracked her down, the old, slow, steady Swordfish of the “ Ark Royal,” flying day after day over the vast spaces of the South Atlantic. By finding where she was not, they pointed to where she was. You remember Nelson used to call his frigates the eyes of the Fleet —that’s what the carrierborne reconnaissance aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm are to-day. But instead of having only a few miles of vision, a carrier can see hundreds of miles.

But don’t imagine it is easy. The aircraft fly far out in the ocean without landmarks. They have to fly, like ships sail, on a dead reckoning. If the enemy is near, they cannot be guided by wireless, for that would give away their carrier’s position. Their only aerodrome is a tiny moving speck covered perhaps by cloud or fog, to which they must return before their petrol is exhausted. Perhaps, while they are hundreds of miles away, she may be forced to alter course.

Unless they can guess her direction from their knowledge of fleet movements they may never find her again. The observer has to depend solely on himselfall he’s got to guide him is his training and sea experience. Then he has got to know everything there is to be known about the appearance of ships, both ours and the enemy’s. His eyes feed an Admiral’s brain. He has got to get his news through by wireless, and up there with the clamour of the engine in his ears, cold and cramped for space, the telegraphist air gunner has got to tap the message out correctly. On the opinion of a single observer, perhaps only catching glimpses of the enemy in flying spume and cloud, the movements of a fleet may depend. That is why, though Fleet Air Arm pilots are partly trained in the great flying schools of the R.A.F., observers and telegraphist air gunners have to be trained from start to finish by the Navy. On no single body of men in the Service does more depend.

Now switch your mind to another year— November, 1940. We are left

alonethe whole Axis against us. Our cities were being blitzed night after night. Hitler, stopped by the Battle of Britain, was doing what Napoleon did when he also could not cross the Channel, attempting to break out of Europe southwards across th'* Mediterranean. He had called Italy into the war—ltaly with half a million troops on the far side of the Mediterranean—ltaly with a battle fleet twice as large as our Mediterranean Fleet. Only one thing could give our Navy a chance to stop the Axis from pouring unlimited men and supplies into North Africa—could keep the ring of sea

power round the aggressor and hold him in Europe till the forces of freedom were ready. That was a fleet action in which the Italian superiority in battleships could be decisively reduced. The battleships cannot attack a battle fleet covered by land-based aircraft. Battleships can only fire 15 miles. The Italian airfields could fire 200. Our need was a capital ship that could fire 200 miles. And in the fleet aircraft carrier, with its death-dealing torpedobombers, we had one. On the night of November 11 two squadrons from the “ Illustrious ” and “ Eagle,” flying off the “ Illustrious,” and manned by men who had been practising for just such a chance for years, dived on the Italian battle fleet as it lay asleep under the guns of Taranto. And by next morning the Italian Fleet’s two-to-one advantage was down to parity. Taranto proved, a year before Pearl Harbour, that carrier-borne aircraft, adequately trained and handled, can inflict damage equal to the guns of the strongest battleship and at a far greater range. It reintroduced into war the principle that Nelson taught the Navy—■ that the best defence for the country is to lay one’s ships alongside the enemy and annihilate him. That was what the Swordfish of H.M.S. “ Illustrious ” did. They had their reward three years later when the Italian Fleet steamed into Malta.

Even when carrier-borne aircraft fail to destroy the enemy’s battleships, they can cripple and delay them till their own battleships arrive. This happened at Matapan. It happened too, with the “ Bismarck.” The strongest ship in the world, after sinking the “ Hood,” and damaging the “ Prince of Wales,” was winged by the Swordfish of the “ Ark Royal,” taking off and flying in the teeth of an Atlantic gale. They left her slowly and helplessly revolving in circles till our ships closed in and finished her off—much to the disappointment of the Swordfish pilots, who were hoping for that pleasure themselves. Now cast your mind back just one year from to-day. It is the worst time of the Malta convoys and of the Russian convoys, too. The Germans are right up to the Nile Delta. The BritishAmerican landings have still to come, and the whole North African coast-line is in Vichy or Axis hands. The Russians are back to the Volga and have suffered terrible losses. The United Nations are grimly holding on till they can stage a come-back. Everything depends on getting convoys through to Russia and Malta, where our aircraft and submarines are alone preventing the Axis from building up invincible strength in Africa. And for days those convoys

and their escorts are subject to ceaseless attack by Axis aircraft flown from shore airfields. ” Only one thing can save them protective fighters flown from carriers. From morning to night they are in the air, nearly always outnumbered, and repeatedly returning to their parent carrier for fuel and ammunition. And when their work is done they have to land on the deck of a ship steaming at full speed and with her stern lifting as much as 70 ft. Naval aircraft land from the signals of a deck-landing control officer or batsman, as he is called, who stands with arms outspread and braced against the wind, with bats like pingpong rackets in his hands, or at night, lights ; as the aircraft comes down he runs beside it, concentrating on making its pilot touch down on the exact spot where the arrester wires can catch it and bring it up in a few feet from 80 m.p.h. to a standstill. It is tremendously exciting. The moment it lands, the handling crews waiting in the galleries on either side of the long, flat deck, scramble up, in their wind-jackets and coloured wind-caps and race to the landing aircraft to hustle her out of the way or down to the hangar below before the next one lands. And, when on convoy, the pilots and air gunners tumble into their bunks or hammocksthey have to snatch what sleep they can, with boots clattering in the hangar overhead where rhe maintenance crews are servicing their aircraft —while loud-speakers blare, in straining, noisy ships constantly at the alert and in danger. And if they are on a Russian convoy in winter they have to live and work under conditions of cold and storm that no landsman can realize.

I have only time to speak of one other of the many jobs done by the men of the Fleet Air Arm. Of all our victories of the past yearmore important even than North Africa and the invasion of Italyprobably the most important has been our success against the submarine. It is this which has made everything else possible —the arrival of American aid, communication between the Allies, the very life of this island. In 1940, after the European coast-line fell, our position at sea seemed almost hopeless. Our trade routes were outflanked on every side. The only way we could protect our convoys was by catapulting aircraft from merchant ships to which there was not much hope of return. But late that year we captured a 5,000-ton German motor-ship, a fireblackened hull, which we covered with a 400 ft. flight deck and rechristened the “Audacity.” From that gallant little ship six Martlet fighters taught the world that with the help of small ships rebuilt as carriers the U-boat could be mastered in the very heart of the ocean. The “ Audacity ” went to the bottom of the Atlantic, but her soul and her work go marching on. To-day a great and growing armada of converted merchantmen equipped as escort carriers and carrying not only fighters but bombers armed with depth-charges, are teaching the German under-sea men what it is to challenge the resource and endurance of the Royal Navy. And by doing so, in conjunction with the escort ships and Coastal Command, they are not only giving us • our daily bread, but creating that absolute command of the sea which is the only possible foundation of successful invasion of the Continent.