THERE was much that you could not believe when you heard it at times in
the cauldron of the war's hurly-burly, surprises, sensational news and exploits. In it you
probably heard this story, too, but here it is told in full for the first time. It will never be
forgotten; it is an epic of stark guts that you
will have difficulty in believing. It seems fantastic now that it could have happened but
every word of it is true.
From the Right Honourable Sir Archibald Sinclair, Secretary of State for Air, it called forth this message:
"Please convey my congratulations to the crew of the Sunderland
of 461 Squadron R.A.A.F. for their outstandingly gallant and successful action with a formation of Ju88's in the Bay of Biscay yesterday."
From Air Vice-Marshal J. C. Slessor, Assistant Chief of the Air Staff, came this message:
"Congratulations were never better earned."
It happened above the waters of the Bay of Biscay on 2 June '43. A lone Sunderland with a crew of nine Australians and two Englishmen routed an overwhelming enemy force which engaged them with the utmost fury and determination.
At 1331 hours Sunderland N for Nuts was air-borne from Pembroke Dock on an antisubmarine patrol. It carried an experienced crew. The pilots were Walker, Dowling and Amiss; the navigator, Simpson; the engineers, Miles and Turner; the wireless operators and air gunners, Fuller, Lane, Miller, Watson and Goode.
The eleven men and their Sunderland flew out across a grey sea, through cloud and drizzle. It was a dull afternoon but as they rode southward the weather improved until they were flying at two thousand feet in blue skies.
All the way down into Biscay the port inner engine gave trouble and the captain considered turning back, but after consultation with the engineer he decided to continue for another thirty minutes when, if it had not improved, he would return to base.
1835 hours. The crew changed watch and relief gunners moved into the turrets. The reports came over the intercom.
"Tail to Control. Goode in position."
"Midships to Control. Fuller in position."
"Nose to Control. Watson in position."
"Control to all positions-understood!" Simpson stood in his astro-dome searching the cloudless sky. "We have entered the danger zone," he said deliberately, "and I want you all to keep a keen look-out. Yesterday, roughly in this position, a defenceless British air-liner was shot down by German fighters. I needn't give you the details. You know them. The crew and twelve passengers are missing. We all know one passenger. He was Leslie Howard."
1845 hours. The boost gauge and the rev counter for the port inner engine still fluctuated. The sky was still blue although in the distance a few scattered clouds stained the horizon. The sea heaved gently, almost calm, but was marked faintly with long curving lines by the passage of the wind. A slight haze softened the colour of the water and the sky. If a dinghy were present they would have been able to see it.
1855 hours. The turrets moved slowly while eyes strained in the sunlight. This was the C46ger country", the slaughter-yard of hapless Allied aircraft, where all men knew the meaning of fear, where scores of solitary aircraft on patrol had vanished. The scene for unequal combats and for acts of despairing heroism. Here a man battled against machines more manoeuvrable and with twice his speed.
1900 hours. Goode was swinging his tail turret to the right. Suddenly he saw the Sunderland was not alone.
"Tail to Control. Eight aircraft. Thirty degrees on the port quarter. Six miles. Up one thousand feet."
"Eight aircraft!"
For a moment every heart stopped. Every man stiffened. Simpson jumped to the astro-dome. Walker rammed his throttles wide and sounded the -alarm. Dowling hauled on the pitch levers and the engines howled at
2,600 revs.
"Can you identify those aircraft?"
"Twin-engined. Probably Junkers 88's."
"Captain to Wireless Operator. Send a message to Group. Highest priority. 'Attacked by eight 88's'. How's that engine, Engineer? "
"She'll hold, Captain."
"Ready with those bomb racks?"
"Ready, Captain."
"Bombs gone. Run in the racks and get cracking with those galley guns. Who's manning them?
"Miles on the starboard. Lane on the port."
"Control to all positions. It's on! Three starboard beam; three port beam; one on each quarter. Range fifteen hundred yards; fifteen hundred feet up."
For a moment they waited.
"O.K.! They're coming. One peeling off from each beam. Prepare to corkscrew. Twelve hundred yards. One thousand yards. They're firing. Prepare to corkscrew star
board. Eight hundred yards. Corkscrew starboard. Go!"
Walker jammed over the wheel. The Sunderland screwed steeply down. Shell and tracer blasted through it.
"Corkscrew port. Port! Go!"
Walker savagely reversed controls. The boat shuddered and climbed giddily to the left.
The port outer engine burst into flames. Incendiary bullets tore into the cockpit. Walker's compass blew up and sprayed him with blazing alcohol. Liquid fire spread across the bridge and poured down into the bow compartment.
Through a confusion of sound and choking smoke Walker heard the navigator telling him to straighten up. But two more fighters were on the way in. "Take over," he yelled to the first pilot. "We'll have to stop these fires."
Second Pilot Amiss wrenched the extinguisher from its bracket and turned it on the captain. His trousers were burning.
The navigator's calm voice still came through the earphones. "Eight hundred yards. Corkscrew port . . . Corkscrew port . . ."
Again the Sunderland plunged down, Dowling fighting the controls.
The captain pressed the Graviner switch to extinguish the blazing engine. The fire went out but clouds of white smoke issued from the nacelle and the
engine failed completely. Walker turned to Amiss. "Give the wireless operator another message: 'On fire'."
The 88's had tasted success. They pressed home their attacks with increasing fury. Bill Dowling still struggled with the controls and now the huge aircraft was difficult to fly. It slewed to port into the dead engine. It took all his strength on the rudder even when he adjusted the trim.
The enemy re-formed, came again, repeating their tactics. The fire on the bridge was out. Walker resumed his position at the wheel.
Simpson's directions came clearly, but he felt their fate was sealed. They were disabled and the attack had hardly begun.
A new voice came over the intercom. Fuller in the midships turret began to sing: "'Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!' Come on you greasers. Come and get it!"
They came-one from port, one from starboard.
"One thousand yards and they're firing. We'll corkscrew starboard. Eight hundred yards. Corkscrew starboard. Go! Tighter, Col . . . Port! Port! Corkscrew port! "
Midships dropped his guns. Watched the attacker on the starboard close swiftly. Four, three, two, one hundred and fifty yards.
Bullets crashed into the Sunderland, all around Fuller. He pulled up his guns and took lightning sight. Hundreds of rounds streamed into the 88 as it broke away. Instantly it was enveloped in flame and black smoke. It flipped on its back and screamed vertically into the sea.
"First blood to Midships," chirped Simpson. "What a shot."
"Lovely," yelled Walker.
"'Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition'.
"It hasn't stopped them. Two more! Prepare to turn and dive to port. One thousand yards and here are the cannon shells. Turn and dive to port. Go!"
Down. A tight, giddy turn towards the sea.
Midships stuck to his sights, following the sweeping curve of the fighters. Nose tensely gripped his trigger-and waited.
Shells and armour-piercing bullets poured into the hull, shot away the elevator and rudder trimming wires, severed the
tail hydraulics, and slammed the turret against the stops. Goode slumped over his sight.
Still the enemy came in. The Sunderland gunners held their fire. The first 88 broke away. The second closed to two hundred yards.
Both turrets spat. Tracers zipped towards the Junkers. He pulled up, sharply, breaking away across the bow. Fuller and Watson followed him. A thin stream of smoke came from the fighter's starboard engine, then a sudden burst of flame. . . . He dropped towards the water, endeavoured to flatten out, struck the surface and bounced vertically. For a second he hung there, then plunged into the sea and broke up. A great column of oily
smoke shot into the sky.
"'Pass the ammunition'.
"Superb," said Simpson, not unmoved. "We're doing fine. That leaves six. What are the odds we'll . . . They're persistent blighters! Another coming in on the starboard. Prepare to turn and dive. . . ."
Walker yelled at Amiss. "Send another message: 'Two shot down'."
"Turn and dive to starboard. Go!"
Amiss lurched back to the wireless operator and scribbled the three words on the signal pad.
"And now they're coming up from below. Watch them, Galley; one on each quarter. You may get a bead there, Tail. Good shooting, Galley. You've scared him off. The bloke on the starboard is still coming in. Have a
go, Tail. Tail! Control to Tail
Say, Col, Tail's gone for a Burton."
"O.K. Captain to Second Pilot. Get him out. Put one of the galley gunners in!"
"Coming again. Closing swiftly on the starboard . . ."
Amiss stepped back and passed the wireless set just as the Sunderland lurched to starboard. The operator was keying the message. Suddenly the bridge filled with smoke and shrapnel. A cannon shell burst against the radio bulkhead, petrol gauges were shattered, and
the wireless was wrecked. Simpson went down with a lump of steel in his leg. He pulled himself up again and continued the commentary. Suddenly he realized the microphone was dead.
The first pilot and the wireless operator were injured. The bridge was a maze of twisted metal and broken glass.
The Sunderland's signals to Group faded out at the beginning of the message. Base assumed they were finished and immediately diverted three aircraft to search.
Conditions became chaotic. The aircraft reeked of cordite. The intercommunication system was shot away. The air speed indicator ceased to work. The instructions for evasive action had to be passed by hand from Simpson to the wireless operator and thus to the captain.
Walker and Dowling had to fly together. The maximum strength of the two men was required to keep the boat in the air. The control wires were damaged. The airframe had twisted.
Walker looked hastily out to port and saw another Junkers on the way in. At that instant the port outer propeller and its reduction gear fell off and tumbled down into the sea.
Amiss, on his way to the tall turret, clambered down the ladder into the galley. He met a shocking sight. Miles, a ghastly white, had collapsed across the starboard gun, mortally wounded in the stomach. With Lane's assistance, Amiss lifted the dying man clear and endeavoured to carry him into the wardroom. But the airframe was so badly warped that they were unable to open the door-nor any other door that was shut; neither could they shut the ones that were open.
There was nothing they could do. They laid him on the bomb-room floor.
The battle continued. Walker flung his crippled aircraft all over the sky. The second engineer came down from the bridge to man the starboard galley gun.
Amiss began his journey to the tail turret. He crawled. It was impossible to stand. The cat's walk was covered with oil and de-icing fluid from punctured tanks and hydraulic lines. The hull was riddled with holes and he was flung against the sides with the violence of the evasive action. He reached the turret. The rear of the aircraft was like a sieve. There were great rents from cannon shells and a multitude of small holes from machine-gun bullets. The turret was jammed over to port,
but as the pilot peered in, Goode stirred and shook his head. Amiss thumped against the turret door. The gunner grinned weakly and gave the thumbs-up.
On the bridge the pilots and navigator still struggled on in conditions of unbelievable disorder. Simpson stood in a pool of blood, but refused attention. The captain was aware of bums from the alcohol, but forgot them. They all realized that this wild state of affairs could not continue. The gunners, although they received no directions, carried on firing as each attack developed.
Goode recovered in the tall and operated his turret with body pressure, although he still suffered from shock and concussion.
The six surviving 88's re-formed for the third time and began a do-or-die blitz. One closed rapidly from the starboard quarter. Walker turned steeply into the attack, saw another coming from the port, and corkscrewed violently. The enemy to starboard slid away, surrounded by tracer.
Goode fiercely opened up on the port side, depressing the sears of his guns with his fingers ... saw his fire nip through the great jutting engines. The range was point-blank. Fuller sang savagely and poured two hundred rounds into its belly.
The 88 screamed away in a blazing arc and smashed into the sea at three hundred miles an hour.
Bewildered by this astonishing defence, but not cowed, the enraged Germans battered at the flying-boat from every direction; but they were beaten back by an impenetrable shield of lead. Never in the history of German operations in the Bay of Biscay had fighters met such phenomenal gunnery. Every aircraft was hit.
Another 88 closed in in a suicidal onslaught across the starboard bow. Watson emptied a pan of ammunition from the nose turret into its port wing. It disappeared with an engine ablaze and smoke pouring from the cockpit.
But in the heat of victory, on the bomb room floor, Sergeant Miles died.
Suddenly only two 88's were left in the sky. They stood at two thousand yards off the port beam, then peeled off for the last attack. At eight hundred yards they broke away without firing a shot. Utterly defeated,
morally and physically, they turned on to an easterly course and vanished in the distance.
At one thousand feet Walker throttled back his shuddering engines and slowly circled.
The crew relaxed, pale and trembling, their lips black, their tongues swollen tight in their mouths. For forty-five minutes they had been in combat, very close to death. If any group of human beings ever admitted the presence of God, Walker's men humbly did at that moment.
Five days later the Chief of the Air Staff wrote:
"I have just read the account of the fight by Sunderland
"N" of 461 Squadron against eight Ju 88's on the second of June. I should like Flight Lieutenant Walker and the surviving members of his gallant crew to be told of the admiration and pride which I felt on reading the details of this epic battle which will go down to history as one of the finest instances in the war of the triumph of coolness, skill and determination against overwhelming odds. I am sure that not only the heavy losses inflicted on the German fighters, but above all, the spirit and straight shooting of the crew will make a profound impression on the morale of the enemy in the Bay of -Biscay, and will thus greatly assist in the war on the U-boat."
But what of the enemy? Coastal Command Review made a simple summary: "Brilliant shooting, skilful evasive action and determination in the face of heavy odds altered what looked like an easy kill for the German force into a disastrous hammering. Thus three Junkers 88's were destroyed, one probably destroyed and the remaining four damaged."
The British Naval Listening Station, which maintained a constant watch on German frequencies, heard repeated calls to the enemy aircraft. Only two replied.
Just what did the survivors of the fighter formation tell their interrogators when they returned to France? We do not know, but shortly afterwards German Intelligence issued a report on the Short Sunderland. Briefly it classed the Sunderland as the most dangerous aircraft in the Bay of Biscay. It was supposed to carry a concealed 37-mm. cannon which was used with devastating effect. The aircraft was believed to be armour-plated as a
20 mm cannon shell had been seen to bounce off the bottom of the hull.
Innovations which the Sunderland crews would have welcomed.
Somewhere in Biscay, position unknown, Walker set course for England.
The second pilot now began his most arduous duty. He forced all his weight against the starboard rudder bar to keep the Sunderland on a straight course. When he could bear the strain no longer, he leaned down and pulled the port pedal with his hand. Across three hundred miles of ocean he stuck to his agonizing task.
The navigator, at last, permitted attention to his wounds. His flying boots were covered with blood, and his sodden trousers had to be torn apart. Simpson had behaved
with great bravery. Throughout the combat he had never wavered. His directions had been calm and delivered with leisurely precision. His range estimation was faultless. He sat on his table, drawing heavily on a cigarette, while they dressed the wound.
"What course have you set, Col?" Simpson said when they had finished.
"030 Should be about right."
"We'll see. I'll take a sun-shot."
"You can't. You've done enough."
"I'm the navigator of this aircraft, and I'll get you back to base. Give me a hand into the dome . . ."
 |
So they lifted Simpson into the astro-dome, and steadied him while he sighted the sun with his sextant.
He gave the captain a correction of course and collapsed over his charts. |
The second engineer, Sergeant Turner, stared at his starboard gauges. They were broken and registered zero. It was possible that the starboard tanks had been damaged. He opened the balance cocks to feed the three engines from the port side. He then crawled out into the starboard wing, well aware that if petrol fumes were present, he would be overcome.... The tanks were intact.
Walker went below to inspect the lower deck and congratulate the crew. The men in the turrets were cheerful. Bullets and shells had burst all around them, but no one was injured. Fuller, coming down from the midships en route to the wireless, said to the
captain: "Don't you think that after this I can get a fortnight's leave to see my sugarplum?"
Walker thought he could.
Goode was still dazed and in great pain with his head, but his main concern was Ted Miles and the young wife who was now a widow.
Walker distributed orange juice to the crew, sorry that the rest of the rations were gone; but that orange juice was the sweetest offering ever to pass their mouths.
The lads battered down the jammed doors on the bottom deck and commenced to plug the countless holes below the water-line with odd pieces of clothing. Walker estimated five hundred holes in the fuselage and mainplanes and realized that his aircraft could not stay afloat. He would be forced to beach immediately he landed.
The engineer began a tour of the aircraft with an axe. Every item of heavy equipment, including the wrecked wireless, was chopped out. Radar equipment, personal kit, anchor, mooring chain, pyrotechnics; all went overboard to lighten the load. They kept their guns, although they were now of little use. Nearly all their ammunition was
expended seven thousand rounds had been used against the 88's.
Fuller, the crew's wireless mechanic, connected up the dinghy radio with the aircraft's trailing aerial, and started churning out SOS's which no one received.
They sighted the English coast at 2235 hours.
In the long summer twilight they identified the Cornish coast in the vicinity of Penzance.
Home!
Walker realized he could not make Pembroke Dock before dark, so decided to ditch on the leeward side of the coast. The aftermath to their combat, after all, would be a dinghy. If he landed close inshore they would be able to paddle on to the beach.
They flew up and down the coast for half an hour, continually transmitting in the international distress frequency. Again their calls were not received.
They prepared for ditching. The captain was faced with many hazards. His air speed was unknown. His aircraft was badly holed and strained. He had three engines and no trim.
Walker edged close to the shore and at about eight hundred feet turned in along the swell. Under his wing was the village of Marazion; ahead of him a stretch of beach, Prah Sands. They throttled back. The starboard inner engine back-fired and cut dead. Walker's muscles tensed grimly. He flattened out close to the swell. A seven-foot sea rolled in towards the shore. The Sunderland dropped towards it and splurged in near the crest of a wave. It slid into the trough and pulled up, plunging heavily, three hundred yards from the beach.
"O.K.," Walker yelled. "All out!"
They went through, up on to the main-plane, and began inflating the dinghy. Walker stopped below and made a hasty inspection of the lower deck, but
"N" was not sinking as rapidly as he had expected.
He called the crew below again and decided to beach. He opened his two remaining engines and charged the sand at full bore. The aircraft began to go down. Water flooded number
one deck and rose two feet above the floor boards. Suddenly she struck and jarred to a halt
within walking depth of the shore. Two men came running along the beach
and three of the boys waded in to meet them. They said a few words, then the
conversation stopped, and they all turned to look back to the Sunderland. Four haggard
airmen were carrying a body ashore.
"God," a man said. "My God!" Then women were hurrying towards them,
carrying jugs and cups and plates. Walker splashed up on to the beach, filthy
and wet. "Thanks," he said simply. Soon the people took them up to the house.
They asked no questions, but gave them gallons of hot water and clean towels and fed
them on fried sausages and eggs.
Walker asked for the telephone. He shut
the door behind him and rang the Officers' Mess, Pembroke Dock. Time-midnight! "Wing Commander Douglas! I want to
speak to him". It was a dreary voice at the other end. "Just a tick. I'll get him." The wing commander was in the ante-room with a few members of the squadron.
He had been drinking to the damnation of all
Junkers 88's. Douglas got to the phone. "Who's speaking?"
"Col! "
"Col who?
"Col Walker."
"Walker. You're dead."
"Blazes I'm dead. This is no ghost you're talking to."
"Well I'll be damned. Where are you?"
"Penzance."
"What are you doing at Penzance?"
"Playing pirates."
"Come off it."
"I had to ditch the old girl."
"Are you all O.K.?"
"Some injuries and one casualty. Sergeant Miles. They got him on the starboard galley gun. But our wireless was
hit - a pity! We could have told some story."
"What story?"
"Shot down three or four. Damaged the rest."
"Now pull the other leg."
"I'm serious, Chief."
Douglas paused. It was a long pause. Then he said: "All right, Col. Let's have it . . ."
Next morning the world knew the story ... and N/461, pounded by heavy seas during the night, was scattered as wreckage for hundreds of yards along the beach. . . .
On 7 June, in drizzling rain, Pilot Officer E. C. E. Miles, having posthumously received his commission, was buried with full military honours.
IVAN SOUTHALL, R.A.A.F. |
